[Help] New Esoterica Seminar worth it?/ Functional Foundations for Western based practices

[TheWurstWizard]

Has anyone here actually joined one of Dr. Sledge's seminars? He just announced doing a lecture on middle platonism and I was wondering if I should just wait for the series to come out fully on youtube or if his "office hours" are truly beneficial. I'm on the fence about signing up for the patreon + acquiring the books in the syllabus. I've spent the past few years following my intuition and dabbling with various magical systems (chaos magic giving the best results), but I was looking for a way to ground my practices in a cohesive manner. My workings seem to be less effective than when I started and feel like The Fool who's stepped off the cliff. Feel free to suggest any books/ videos that have helped ground your practice as something more than a flight of fancy.

 

[iseht]

His Merkavah seminar was excellent. If you treat it like a real college class and do the reading, you will probably have some questions where the live QA can be useful. If you don't care for the extra reading I would just wait for the videos to release. From glancing at the syllabus I'm sure most of the reading can be found for free somewhere online.

As for grounding your practice, Middle Platonism and the following Neoplatonism are the foundation of western occultism, everything downstream was synthesizing the thoughts of this period. You will almost certainly learn more about the fundamental structure of magical systems by studying this.

 

[cosmicctraveller]

I've watched his prevous seminars on the Kaballah and Merkavah Mysticism sometime after the fact, and for free on YouTube. I thought they were both excellent. It was as rigorous and challenging as a college level course, and as fascinating as good documentary. I spent so many hours listening to Dr. Sledge for free that I joined the Patreon to support something I hope continues to exist. So I think its completely worth it to spend your time, or to join the Patreon.

That said, its an academic take on the material, not an introduction to some magical practices. I'm not sure I learned enough to describe the metaphysical ideas of the Kaballah in detail, but I often reflect on its history and the characters that featured in its story and how it interweaves with western esotericism. The Merkavah seminar was at time some of the most metal, fever dream descriptions I've listend to for a while. It is interesting to think how that practice evolved through centuries into the Book of Abramelin possibly and continues to influence us to this day.