Author What are your opinions on Jason's Miller occult material?

[Adelina]

A prime example of Cafeteria Occultism (to quote Craig Williams). I don't see why you need the arcana of "Hekate" + Saint Cyprian + "Vajrakilaya" if each of them on a singular level is so powerful and multifaceted in what they can do.

Wouldn't it be more prudent to focus on one particular god/spirit, and learn-them in-depth? Maybe develop something of a deep relationship with them? I'd imagine Hekate alone could take a lifetime to master her various aspects.

Everyone that has jumped on the top-tier paid-course bandwagon is highly suspect and always has been. And this really sucks because some of them (Jack Grayle) seem to have their heart in the right place/come off as highly dedicated to their particular God(ess) or spirit court(s).

Indeed. And what concerns Eastern elements in materials of Jason Miller, they contain so many errors that one might wonder how many errors might be in his actual Hecatean material (if to assume that this material is totally not made up). This is what I constantly see in works of "magicians" who tend to mix unmixable, who make salad out of totally different traditions. Such works severely lack depth and contain tons of mistakes.

 

[treyechiron]

Recently Jason Miller was whining on Facebook about being accused of gatekeeping and stuff, and Sorita d'Este jumped in and was like, "I LOVE gatekeeping, it's just like my goddess." Talk about revealing your fucking hand.

Feel free to look at my post earlier in this thread about gurus being psychic vampires - and someone earlier in this thread called Sorita d'Este, Jason, and others narcissists. That gatekeeping is exactly why their students are getting pissed off and leaking the courses. I've also leaked an entire Tantra course for the same reason - feel free to have a look in the Library!

Take it from me, these people are narcs. They siphon your energy...I tried the Sorcery of Hekate core mantra and my spirits told me to stop and amend it, because Jason Miller gets energy from anyone who chants the Sorcery of Hekate core mantra. I know this because I had to do cord cuttings with my gurus so that they wouldn't siphon energy from my practice. They DO gatekeep access to the gods. And no Sorita, you're not being like your goddess, fuck off.

So true I suspected this energetic siphon as well.

 

[Faria]

Who do You recommend

I recommend reading everything and learning as much as you can from it. If you are looking for a teacher, mentor, or partner, I recommend rethinking that goal and just letting it happen in a natural organic way, without sign-ups, payments, or enrollments. I strongly recommend NOT getting involved with anyone online in relation to the occult, no matter what the excuse. Come to places like this to chat, share, and participate on level footing with the rest of us, but restrict your work and learning to people you can see in real life and who respect you as a person and not as a source of income.

 

[Libra.Libera]

I like Jason Miller as an author. From the works I've read of his, I found him readable, practical and rarely dogmatic, if ever. I would always recommend the following books for beginners who've already studied some foundation of magick:

• Consorting with Spirits. A great overview of the many ways you can interact with entities beyond the material plane.
• Protection and Reversal Magick. Especially the most recent edition (the 3rd I think?). It contains an additional foreword where Miller warns about the growing trend of overly protective magick and how that can turn into a paralytic to one's magical growth.

I would also like to address some of the common criticisms of Miller's work mentioned in this thread just because I don't think these should make or break your wanting to read his work.

1. He made it all up.
   • As you grow in your personal practice, you will have experiences (and an understanding of those experiences) that will diverge from whatever tradition you started out with. You can see this play out with Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law, Gerald Gardner and the New Forest Coven, Dion Fortune and her Ascended Masters. They all would have learned their basics from Rosicrucian teachings. Looking from the outside, you can say they made it all up, but anybody who has started to develop their own personal gnosis will know not to begrudge another person's personal gnosis.
2. His practice is a patchwork of different traditions/beliefs/deities.
   • I would argue that all long-lasting magical practices are a synthesis of different beliefs. If you look into the PGM, you will find spells that syncretized Greco-Roman gods with either Egyptian, Jewish and Christian ones. Miller mixing different practices together actually makes him stronger. As mentioned in point 1, everybody will grow to have different interpretations of reality (and its magical aspects), but that also imposes a limitation, like a horse with blinders on. In some scenarios, having a narrow vision might be the effective way to achieve your Will. But if your aim is to achieve "Union" (whatever that means for you), then it makes sense to learn how to unify/harmonize different understanding of truths together. That's literally what Crowley did when he married Western and Eastern magical philosophies.

Granted, I've never taken any of his classes, and I've only ever read his two books I mentioned above. My advice would be: figure out what you want to learn and what your boundaries are, then make the choice and commit to it with an open mind but within the scope of the boundaries you defined. If your boundary is set to only perform the Hekatean practices of Late Antiquity, you're better off reading scholars like Sarah Iles Johnston over Miller, Sorita d'Este or Jack Grayle. Personally, I would recommend a beginner to not worry about "authenticity" or "reconstructing old practices"-- catch a wider net and see what sticks.

 

[Drezuli]

I like Jason Miller as an author. From the works I've read of his, I found him readable, practical and rarely dogmatic, if ever. I would always recommend the following books for beginners who've already studied some foundation of magick:

• Consorting with Spirits. A great overview of the many ways you can interact with entities beyond the material plane.
• Protection and Reversal Magick. Especially the most recent edition (the 3rd I think?). It contains an additional foreword where Miller warns about the growing trend of overly protective magick and how that can turn into a paralytic to one's magical growth.

I would also like to address some of the common criticisms of Miller's work mentioned in this thread just because I don't think these should make or break your wanting to read his work.

1. He made it all up.
   • As you grow in your personal practice, you will have experiences (and an understanding of those experiences) that will diverge from whatever tradition you started out with. You can see this play out with Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law, Gerald Gardner and the New Forest Coven, Dion Fortune and her Ascended Masters. They all would have learned their basics from Rosicrucian teachings. Looking from the outside, you can say they made it all up, but anybody who has started to develop their own personal gnosis will know not to begrudge another person's personal gnosis.
2. His practice is a patchwork of different traditions/beliefs/deities.
   • I would argue that all long-lasting magical practices are a synthesis of different beliefs. If you look into the PGM, you will find spells that syncretized Greco-Roman gods with either Egyptian, Jewish and Christian ones. Miller mixing different practices together actually makes him stronger. As mentioned in point 1, everybody will grow to have different interpretations of reality (and its magical aspects), but that also imposes a limitation, like a horse with blinders on. In some scenarios, having a narrow vision might be the effective way to achieve your Will. But if your aim is to achieve "Union" (whatever that means for you), then it makes sense to learn how to unify/harmonize different understanding of truths together. That's literally what Crowley did when he married Western and Eastern magical philosophies.

Granted, I've never taken any of his classes, and I've only ever read his two books I mentioned above. My advice would be: figure out what you want to learn and what your boundaries are, then make the choice and commit to it with an open mind but within the scope of the boundaries you defined. If your boundary is set to only perform the Hekatean practices of Late Antiquity, you're better off reading scholars like Sarah Iles Johnston over Miller, Sorita d'Este or Jack Grayle. Personally, I would recommend a beginner to not worry about "authenticity" or "reconstructing old practices"-- catch a wider net and see what sticks.

I don't get why people rave about his protection and reversal magick book. I've read it over and over throughout the years and have not found anything in it to be practical nor profound.

I must know too much or think I know.


I would like someone to share what's in it that they liked of what has really helped them.

 

[beardedeldridge]

I don't get why people rave about his protection and reversal magick book. I've read it over and over throughout the years and have not found anything in it to be practical nor profound.

I must know too much or think I know.


I would like someone to share what's in it that they liked of what has really helped them.

It’s usually brought up as a suggestion for inexperienced people asking for help to protect themselves. It’s just a hodgepodge of low magic rituals from all over the place. Add that to it’s been around for a while and it’s readily available anywhere online for free…

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. As they say.

If you’ve read several other occult books then most of it probably just hits you as “yeah seen it”.

-Eld

 

[Libra.Libera]

I don't get why people rave about his protection and reversal magick book. I've read it over and over throughout the years and have not found anything in it to be practical nor profound.

I must know too much or think I know.


I would like someone to share what's in it that they liked of what has really helped them.

You'll need to understand the context of when Protection and Reversal Magick was released. Before this book, there were so few resources that are readily available. Any recommendations on protection magick came from a chapter or two of books for a specific tradition at best, a side note at worst. At that time, the default recommended book for protective magick was Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defense (the really old practitioners I hang out with still recommend it). It was great because it was a dedicated book on protective magick and Dion Fortune was a big effing deal. Howoever, to get the most of this book, you had to get over a couple of things:

• You had to acknowledge that Fortune's flavor of magick was deeply Christian and adjust her advice accordingly.
• The book was first published in like the 1920s/1930s I think? Not only is it old, it was also heavily influenced by the recent popularity of spiritualism, so some of her examples in the book were quite fantastical.

Miller's book became very popular because it was one of the first few books in the market released in the 21st century that dealt with protective magic using methods from various traditions/systems. This is why this book is "profound". There are probably other better books since, but I have yet to read one.

As to why I found it practical... I mean, it was easy enough to do the things he recommended and found results. The content was also very well structured, unlike Fortune's. Maybe we just don't have the same definition on what makes a how-to book practical.

 

[Faria]

I would like someone to share what's in it that they liked of what has really helped them

Miller's books are heavily promoted and widely distributed. People eat what is served to them, and are not confident enough to go searching for information.

Miller's books are written for people with lower reading skills, compared to most other occult books.

As mentioned above, Miller avoids ideas related to Jesus or Jehovah, making his books much more attractive to a younger audience who will reject and avoid any book dependent on those topics.

 

[Libra.Libera]

Welp, for those interested in getting the right information, reading page 76-80 (Section: Sorcerer's Call to St. Cyprian) of Consorting with Spirits should be enough to dispel any notion that Miller avoids Jesus or Jehovah. Like I said in previous posts, he's rarely dogmatic and also very open to other systems as long as they work for him.

And for people who would like to improve their reading skills, I highly recommend reading How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. You'll be surprised how many think they have advanced reading skills (and know a good book when they see one) when they actually don't. But that's probably a conversation for a different thread.

- * * * -

 

[The.Nomadic.Occultist]

I don't get why people rave about his protection and reversal magick book. I've read it over and over throughout the years and have not found anything in it to be practical nor profound.

I must know too much or think I know.


I would like someone to share what's in it that they liked of what has really helped them.

he's a good sorcerer imo but a bad author who obviously doesn't know what editing is. also, his rituals have sooo much extra unnecessary fluff to them......do you really need a 2 page invitation to give offerings to local spirits? another thing is, he keeps referencing his past material saying "oh go get x book and find the information there" which makes a lot of his book incomplete.

 

[WonderFire]

I don't get why people rave about his protection and reversal magick book. I've read it over and over throughout the years and have not found anything in it to be practical nor profound.

I must know too much or think I know.


I would like someone to share what's in it that they liked of what has really helped them.

Well, I'm the one who recommended that book in the other thread where you asked a similar question so I suppose I should answer.
You already got a great answer from @Libra.Libera to the point where I thought about not posting at all, but I'll reiterate one point- Miller's books (and I don't recommend his courses as they are massively overpriced, only books) present a grab-bag of different techniques which is extremely useful for beginners because they can quickly find something that works for them and then proceed to specialize, instead of wasting time trying to fit into a system that will simply not work out for them.

 

[alexandrecg]

Alright guys I know it’s trendy to shit on JM now but daammmnnnn.

(Quick point of fact, I’m not and never was much of a JM fan, that being said I have come to appreciate more of his stuff as I’ve aged a bit.)

Rant:

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute. We do magic, that means:

• we wank off on little drawings or
• we put out snacks for invisible forest beings or
• we wear little paper crowns and amulets or
• we sit in dark rooms trying to converse with our higher selves or
• we wield fake swords to threaten entities that a shit ton of really smart people swear don’t exist or
• we do a near endless number of other equally silly sounding things so chill out a bit

Is his system a good system to use? Let everyone figure that out for their self. (That’s why we found it and provided it here)

Do I think his system has worked for him? His stories do ring of truth (yep I got a Hobbit quote in here).

Can you make shit happen using it? If you can do magic then yes.

Is his stuff pricey? YES.

Is he making an honest effort to provide a working system to the community while making a living at it? Also yes.

Rant off.

-Eld

If I may, I would like to say that his Phurba and Hekate courses are real deals. Both worked for me so, yeah, we can make shit happen using them. BTW, loved the rant. lol

 

[MorganBlack]

There are only a few decent training manuals for newcomers to magic, and many available at this time need serious updating. Many of us Gen-X magician cut our teeth on Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft, Crowley's AA system, and even Don Michael Kraig's Modern Magick. While I do not draw geometric symbols in the air anymore, they were useful starting points. That was what we had. Then many of us ventured into the ATR's at some point and learned from them.

I met Jason Miller online around 2004 in Yahoo Forums, where later authors would talk shop, including Moloch, Jake Stratton-Kent, Aaron Leitch, and others.

One day someone will put together a timeline of the (latest) magical revival, but at the time we were all coming out of 20th century magic and occultism, with may of us with years of experimentation in Chaos Magic, Goetia, Thelema, Hoodoo/Conjure, the ATR's , and finding ways to talk about our experiences with others. All the "traditions" out there were middling to terrible. We had to DIY the fuck out of it, as all magicians have to. Nobody is going to do the work for you, and you get better at magic by doing magic. Everything will work -well, until you meet spirits who have their own ideas and protocols, but that is another issue.

Fast forward to now and Jason is an author having to write for the broadest mass audience possible. It's just the reality of publishing world - and that mass audience are usually not folks as educated on magic, esotericism, and sorcery as the people here on Wizard Forums. It's easy to forget the people who came before you and take them for granted.

We had people like Moloch , who is a little older than us X'ers, who pointed out things to usefully explore. He had been exploring Conjure and Obeah from his time in Florida back when ceremonial magicians were calling Brujeria "stupid magic." It was Moloch who introduced us all to modern simplified "evocation magic" of New Avatar Power in 2004 or 2005, which later form a huge part of the GOM books.

I was somewhat surprised to find Jason and I work with many of the same spirits: St. Cyprian, the daimons, etc. My only quibble with him is he has way, way too many energy exercises in his work - which reads as super neo-pagan/modern "witchcraft" to me, but I think they are there to get newbies into the feeling they are doing something, so a 19th-century magical-electricity of Luminous Ether is the way to open their sense of the possible.

So while I do not use Jason's techniques - again too much visualizing glowing chi balls, and sparkly glitter rays for my taste - but from a New Thought / Chaos Magic perceptive there is nothing wrong with it. And if it get people moving then all good.

 

[lumineth Realm Lord]

What's your opinion on this author?

 

[HoldAll]

There's a thread on his material already, please use the search function before you start a new one.

Author - Jason Miller Books

What's your opinion on this author?

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