The whole point of this website was to create something that isn’t a 101 course because there are soooo many 101 courses out there. Its aim was to focus on taking the new or experienced practitioner and helping them advance their craft. There’s a large number of people who do not get beyond the basics. Sometimes however, we do not all know the same stuff so it is hard to find a mutual basis on which to build advanced material.
I was asked by my friend Magdalena to show her the stuff on my blog and I felt none of it was relevant. Why would someone with no experience of the Occult care about why an Enochian Supreme elemental king name was derived from the Segillum Dei Aemeth? I felt challenged to write material to help someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to practice Magic. I hope to keep going to make a complete course and try my best not to leave any gaps. This will take a long time, so please bear with me. I have lots of projects going on in my life and I often need to prioritise things which are not magic (shock! horror! scandal!).
I have read my fair share of Magic 101 books, many of which come from the publisher Llewellyn, which tell you just how to draw circles and regurgitate the terribly inaccurate Celtic wheel of the year. Sadly they give you no depth. They are often written specifically to take advantage of the economic market to make money. They’re not there to educate they’re there to cash in. Sadly, so many of today’s authors grew up on books which did the same in the 80s and 90s and they have sought to write the same, but don’t really know how to deviate from such a system. I have read my fair share of authors who want to write good material AND have the knowledge and skill to do so, but in order to get sales they need to dumb it down to make it accessible to the masses. It gets dumbed down so far, that it becomes nearly inaccurate, or too simple to reflect the diverse and complicated world we live in. Most publishers know there are 1000s of beginners for every single advanced student, so they only want to publish beginner material. Capitalism focuses on the greater market and the publisher is often a capitalist. This means more complicated books do not often get published and the community is kept dwarfed.
I think some authors don’t even know the material, so they make it up based on what they think makes sense and what they like the sound of. However, the world does not work in a way that makes sense. Look at the observer effect in quantum mechanics, the superior mirage effect on boats and how people voted in the most recent UK elections. Sometimes, the authors never had the chance to learn where certain practices came from. They have only had access to beginner material for 15-20 years and sadly assumed that was all there was to know. Remember that until around 2000, most people did not have access to the internet and they learned everything they had access to, but that was not complete. Unfortunately, there is infinitely more material out there these days, but the quality hasn’t increased. Sadly these people often need to make things up as they go. “I intuited it” they often say and intuition is nothing to squawk at, but too often it does not match the history of magical practice that we have access to now. If we spend time learning what everyone intuits then we have countless information to learn and no end to the learning. But there is a limit to the historical material available.
There are some major things that hold people back. These need to be dealt with to prevent blockages in learning.
- The assumption the student already knows everything – This is often not as egotistical or arrogant as it sounds. If someone has been practicing for 15 years and has not been challenged to learn more then it’s perfectly reasonable for them to assume they already know everything they need to. I do everything I can to make sure I am ready to learn more, but like I said before, I do not have time to learn everyone’s Unverified Personal Gnosis. So there is a limit. What’s yours? How will it inhibit you?
- Doing what feels right – Doing what feels right and good does not always lead us in the right direction. Ask a child, who does not know better, what food feels good/right to eat and they will say ice cream and sweets. Obviously, if that child were allowed to just do what felt good and right, they would end up fat, like me. The path of mystical ascent gives us revelation and power. The power required to achieve mystical ascent is unnatural, so will not always feel natural or comfortable. Sometimes to ascend we are required to do some things which make us uncomfortable. This is the same in the mundane physical world with exercise, it is the same with saving money, it is the same with trying to lose weight and it is the same with learning to play a musical instrument. Why would it be any different for magic on a spiritual plane? There are often growing pains.
- I do not like that tradition or religion – Magic survived for 2 thousand years in predominantly Christian societies. They influenced it. If you stop listening every time something becomes too Christian or references Angels, then you’re going to have some major gaps in your knowledge. Magic is originally a Pagan practice, but modern neopagan magic comes to us from Hermetics which was a pagan tradition passed down by many Christians. It was also heavily influenced by Rosicrucians who were Hermeticists who practiced a form of Jewish Mysticism called Qabalah. So to understand modern neopagan magic we must accept that there will be influences that are Christian and Jewish. If we avoid this knowledge we will not understand why modern magic is practiced as such. My own irritation with this is that magic is NOT about “what you call god”; it is about interacting with the divine. The forces of fate might respond to the name YHVH in one practice, but they could be Moirai in another practice. It is still the force that matters not the name, but if you ignore the YHVH name you might miss the point of a ritual. If someone is too focused on the name their practice will only ever be for vanity and skin deep. They are too superstitious to approach the real divine. They’re trying to only do it on their terms, but sometimes the divine is not on our terms.
- Fear of demons – Often we have a fear of certain entities or “energies” being demonic. So we avoid them. This too can take us away from learning opportunities. Hollywood and the media have made us very afraid of the demonic. They make it seem like demons will instantly possess us and haunt us, as if they kill people and make us sick. Among the ranks of demons, there are probably some that have such power, but I have not yet met them. Babylonia Talmud suggests that at all times we are constantly surrounded by demons. Demons, it would seem, are like the Occult world’s answer to germs. Yes, they need to be removed, they can be dangerous and make us ill, but if we are afraid of them then we might never leave the house, metaphorically speaking. Taking reasonable precautions and trying to understand why something might act in a way that we perceive as demonic is important so we can proceed. Without learning to take such precautions every interaction or metaphorical attempt at cooking is dangerous.
To cover the course all you need to do is work through the articles in order… read them.. practice what they teach you and see what difference it makes in your life. Please please please let me know how you get on. I have a contact us form and some of you might know me when you meet me at conferences and gatherings.
It is my will to create a large repository of well-researched material on Magic that differentiates between historical facts, interpretations and unverified personal gnosis.
Training Magic
Magic Muscles
FamiliariTea
Lore
* I do not require that anyone work the Wheel of the Year (8 common yearly rituals), but I have provided some information that you might find informative. In the absence of any other practice, they might benefit from them exclusively because of regular practice.