- Joined
- Jul 23, 2026
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- 8
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- 9
First, let me introduce myself. I’m from China, born in the late 1990s, and have been exploring the occult for about six years. My first teacher introduced me to the Eastern European Slavic folk tradition; Hekate was the first deity I encountered, and Lilith came later. For the past two years, I’ve mainly been poring over texts from the Solomonic tradition—I’ve been buried in my studies, reading one book after another. I’ve spent so much time buried in books that I’ve never actually gotten around to putting what I’ve learned into practice. Today I won’t be discussing sympathetic magic or energy models—I just want to talk about two teachers. I’d like to ask you all: Has anyone taken courses with Jason Miller or Jack Grayle? I’ve purchased both of their courses, watched them through in their entirety, and completed some of the exercises for each, but I haven’t progressed to large-scale practical application yet. I’d like to share my experience and what made me stop.
Let’s start with Miller. I took Sorcery of Hekate and practiced diligently for several months, including the core mantra that required reciting hundreds of times a day—the course has confidentiality requirements, so I won’t post the original text here. What made me stop wasn’t laziness, but a vague sense of discomfort that’s hard to put into words. I’ll try to break it down and explain it clearly.
The first layer is the method. This practice of forcing myself to accumulate a certain number of recitations every day—I recognize its origin: Tibetan Buddhist ngöndro are conducted exactly this way, and Miller never hides his Tibetan Buddhist background. The method itself isn’t the problem. The problem lies with me—or rather, with the ground beneath my feet. First, let me state an objective fact: In China, there is a profession known as chumaxian (出马仙)—folk mediums who claim to be possessed by spirits such as fox deities or snake deities, acting on behalf of “divinities” to convey messages and carry out tasks. This industry is highly commercialized and rife with fraudsters. I myself have been deceived by a chumaxian, having experienced everything from coaxing and trickery to threats and intimidation, at considerable cost. As a result, I have a visceral wariness toward statements like, “A certain deity told me something.”
In Miller’s classes, such statements are very common. In almost every class, and with almost every deity he encounters, he recounts what that deity personally told him. I’m not accusing him of lying. But for me, this is a hurdle I simply cannot overcome: do these ancient deities, thousands of years old, really seem like conversation partners who are at his beck and call? I said something in my previous post that I’ll repeat here: In a world where integrity is scarce, spirit beings can deceive—they can impersonate deities. So unless I see it with my own eyes, I won’t readily believe anyone who claims a particular god or demon spoke to them.
The second layer is textual evidence. I’ve combed through Betz’s translation of the PGM and couldn’t find any corresponding sources for the content of Miller’s course. The Hekate he describes in his class is completely different from the Hekate I’ve come to know through my own work over the years, and from the Hekate depicted in classical texts. Some of the procedural steps give me the impression—if I may be so blunt—of scenes straight out of a sci-fi movie; not even Constantine features such bizarre practices. I understand he takes a pragmatic approach—as long as it works, that’s all that matters—and plenty of people buy into that. But for someone like me, I can’t feel at ease without solid scholarly evidence. By the way, a bit of background: Hekate is actually quite popular in China’s esoteric circles; everyone wants to have some connection to her. As for just how outlandish those “witchcraft” practices are, I won’t go into detail here. So when I saw Miller weaving Eastern methods into Hekate’s system, the sense of dissonance I felt grew even stronger—this is probably a kind of internal conflict unique to someone who was raised in the East but whose aesthetic sensibilities have always leaned toward Western classical traditions.
Let’s talk about Grayle again. First, let me make one thing clear: there are posts on the forum discussing controversies surrounding his personal conduct, but that’s not what I want to talk about here—I keep his books and his personal life separate. I took his PGM course and also signed up for Hail Hekate!. I have to say, he teaches the PGM exceptionally well: it’s well-researched and well-sourced, I like his teaching style, and he never says things like “Hekate told me this or that.” Comparing the two teachers, I’m more inclined to believe that Grayle might actually have tapped into something real.
But he also leaves me conflicted. In the book The Hekataeon—by the way, this book is virtually impossible to find in China, and getting it through other channels is absurdly difficult—it’s no exaggeration to say it’s like going through all 81 trials in Journey to the West; no matter how hard it is for you to snag a limited edition, it’s still way easier than it is for us.—there’s a nine-day ritual: performed for nine consecutive days, with a divination on the eighth day. The imagery involves a road sign at a crossroads: the path to the left is bathed in sunlight, while the path to the right leads into a dark forest, followed by blood—you’re supposed to drip your own blood onto it. My witch friends who follow the Left-Hand Path really enjoy this kind of ritual—setting up a Baphomet on the altar and dripping blood and semen onto it. But in the classical texts I’ve read, Hekate’s rituals do indeed involve blood—dog sacrifices, purification rites—but that’s the blood of sacrificed animals, belonging to the realm of city-states and formal ceremonies. I have never seen any classical text that requires a devotee to cut themselves and offer blood to her as part of a covenant. I don’t know what the origin of this Grayle ritual element is: Is it a modification of some form of oath-taking? A kind of revelatory technique? Or is it purely a modern invention? If anyone knows the source, please be sure to let me know.
Let me summarize my confusion. I’ve carefully watched both teachers’ courses and performed some of the rituals myself, but I’ve always been held back by a sense that something isn’t “rigorous enough,” preventing me from fully committing. This might be my “professional bias”: the esoteric market in my part of the world is, to put it politely, overly commercialized; to put it bluntly, it’s rife with charlatans. Those who’ve been burned by fire tend to take it more seriously than others—I’m particularly wary of any UPG-style claims. This isn’t disrespect; it’s self-preservation. So I’d like to hear your thoughts: Have any of you actually practiced their systems? How effective were they? Has anyone seriously researched the traditional basis for these practices? If anyone is interested in the full story about chumaxian, I can start a separate thread to go into detail.
Let’s start with Miller. I took Sorcery of Hekate and practiced diligently for several months, including the core mantra that required reciting hundreds of times a day—the course has confidentiality requirements, so I won’t post the original text here. What made me stop wasn’t laziness, but a vague sense of discomfort that’s hard to put into words. I’ll try to break it down and explain it clearly.
The first layer is the method. This practice of forcing myself to accumulate a certain number of recitations every day—I recognize its origin: Tibetan Buddhist ngöndro are conducted exactly this way, and Miller never hides his Tibetan Buddhist background. The method itself isn’t the problem. The problem lies with me—or rather, with the ground beneath my feet. First, let me state an objective fact: In China, there is a profession known as chumaxian (出马仙)—folk mediums who claim to be possessed by spirits such as fox deities or snake deities, acting on behalf of “divinities” to convey messages and carry out tasks. This industry is highly commercialized and rife with fraudsters. I myself have been deceived by a chumaxian, having experienced everything from coaxing and trickery to threats and intimidation, at considerable cost. As a result, I have a visceral wariness toward statements like, “A certain deity told me something.”
In Miller’s classes, such statements are very common. In almost every class, and with almost every deity he encounters, he recounts what that deity personally told him. I’m not accusing him of lying. But for me, this is a hurdle I simply cannot overcome: do these ancient deities, thousands of years old, really seem like conversation partners who are at his beck and call? I said something in my previous post that I’ll repeat here: In a world where integrity is scarce, spirit beings can deceive—they can impersonate deities. So unless I see it with my own eyes, I won’t readily believe anyone who claims a particular god or demon spoke to them.
The second layer is textual evidence. I’ve combed through Betz’s translation of the PGM and couldn’t find any corresponding sources for the content of Miller’s course. The Hekate he describes in his class is completely different from the Hekate I’ve come to know through my own work over the years, and from the Hekate depicted in classical texts. Some of the procedural steps give me the impression—if I may be so blunt—of scenes straight out of a sci-fi movie; not even Constantine features such bizarre practices. I understand he takes a pragmatic approach—as long as it works, that’s all that matters—and plenty of people buy into that. But for someone like me, I can’t feel at ease without solid scholarly evidence. By the way, a bit of background: Hekate is actually quite popular in China’s esoteric circles; everyone wants to have some connection to her. As for just how outlandish those “witchcraft” practices are, I won’t go into detail here. So when I saw Miller weaving Eastern methods into Hekate’s system, the sense of dissonance I felt grew even stronger—this is probably a kind of internal conflict unique to someone who was raised in the East but whose aesthetic sensibilities have always leaned toward Western classical traditions.
Let’s talk about Grayle again. First, let me make one thing clear: there are posts on the forum discussing controversies surrounding his personal conduct, but that’s not what I want to talk about here—I keep his books and his personal life separate. I took his PGM course and also signed up for Hail Hekate!. I have to say, he teaches the PGM exceptionally well: it’s well-researched and well-sourced, I like his teaching style, and he never says things like “Hekate told me this or that.” Comparing the two teachers, I’m more inclined to believe that Grayle might actually have tapped into something real.
But he also leaves me conflicted. In the book The Hekataeon—by the way, this book is virtually impossible to find in China, and getting it through other channels is absurdly difficult—it’s no exaggeration to say it’s like going through all 81 trials in Journey to the West; no matter how hard it is for you to snag a limited edition, it’s still way easier than it is for us.—there’s a nine-day ritual: performed for nine consecutive days, with a divination on the eighth day. The imagery involves a road sign at a crossroads: the path to the left is bathed in sunlight, while the path to the right leads into a dark forest, followed by blood—you’re supposed to drip your own blood onto it. My witch friends who follow the Left-Hand Path really enjoy this kind of ritual—setting up a Baphomet on the altar and dripping blood and semen onto it. But in the classical texts I’ve read, Hekate’s rituals do indeed involve blood—dog sacrifices, purification rites—but that’s the blood of sacrificed animals, belonging to the realm of city-states and formal ceremonies. I have never seen any classical text that requires a devotee to cut themselves and offer blood to her as part of a covenant. I don’t know what the origin of this Grayle ritual element is: Is it a modification of some form of oath-taking? A kind of revelatory technique? Or is it purely a modern invention? If anyone knows the source, please be sure to let me know.
Let me summarize my confusion. I’ve carefully watched both teachers’ courses and performed some of the rituals myself, but I’ve always been held back by a sense that something isn’t “rigorous enough,” preventing me from fully committing. This might be my “professional bias”: the esoteric market in my part of the world is, to put it politely, overly commercialized; to put it bluntly, it’s rife with charlatans. Those who’ve been burned by fire tend to take it more seriously than others—I’m particularly wary of any UPG-style claims. This isn’t disrespect; it’s self-preservation. So I’d like to hear your thoughts: Have any of you actually practiced their systems? How effective were they? Has anyone seriously researched the traditional basis for these practices? If anyone is interested in the full story about chumaxian, I can start a separate thread to go into detail.
