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Honestly first and foremost important thing before you get into any occultic practices imo is learning how to ground, and sharpening your skill of discernment. When you get into reading history, grimoires, and start practical application, a lot of the psychic download can get to your head. It's pretty easy to start spiraling into madness with the information you're consuming. Visualization of words, numbers, and images carry a lot more spiritual weight than what novice practitioners give it credit for. It's also pretty easy to fall victim to misinformation, or esoteric nonsense. Grounding, meditation, and strengthening your minds eye to mentally and psychically combat esoteric nonsense or uninvited entities is essential. Spiritual and religious psychosis is not fun, and can earn you trip to the ward, harming yourself or others, if you're not careful.
I would only add mythology, poetry, music, alchemy and the great spiritual classics of world literature to that list, along with basket-weaving, which might come in handy once the stars and the wind and sea start singing to you in the green tongue; but we are talking about theurgy as a way of life here, are we not? with magick as a worldview and for the most part as an extremely potent background concentration, as opposed to how we actually live our lives in the "not-here-never-now". And this really becomes a question of our most deeply held convictions and values and about how we stand in relation to ourselves, to the world, and to the Unseen-lived, and only secondarily to magickal practices/disciplines per se, which hopefully are informed by our moral compass anyway, even if we compartmentalize. In a practical sense though, I think the only things that will help you magically are such arcane spiritual gifts as you might have come to earth with...like common sense, humility, perspective, native intelligence, resilience, adaptability, fortitude, self-discipline, a bullshit detector with GPS in good working order, a grounding in reality, and a sense of humor. Barring that, magick tends to bring out in you such qualities as are latent, for better or for worse, and they will set the curriculum, so yeah – meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer, all are absolutely fundamental.
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Do you see magick as existing above the veil of paroketh then? If you would, FireBorn...in terms of Hermetic QBL...because I know what you are saying about study, knowledge and complexity, but I was called on it once, at a Masonic corn-roast, and could not answer. You speak of it in (magick) in terms at once mythical/primal as though it were apart from us, but at the same time in terms very much implying that it is something we can actually do. And I want to study that, because the mind is dark and full of sorrows! It has never been clear to me how the conscious mind which is deeply asleep communicates with the subconscious mind, which is very much awake, except it be through the lunar sphere. Conceivably, one could practice magick without believing in it.
Great question. I sat with it for a few minutes thinking of a half coherent way to answer. The paradox is this: we’re the actor, the script, and the fire that burns the stage. I don’t see magick as ‘belonging’ to the Supernal world. I see it as the friction between the worlds. That’s the current I ride. That’s the Fire.
That’s why you can do magick without believing in it, because belief is a function of the rational mind, and magick often bypasses that entirely (at least for me). It speaks to the deep places, the mythic layer. You can act out a ritual and never consciously “believe,” but the subconscious, the lunar self, remembers. It knows.
Again, it’s a paradox. And if we can’t hold paradox, if we always reach for resolution, we miss the point. Magick isn't a puzzle to solve. It’s a mystery to inhabit. Yes, this is the bane of the intellectuals plight. Luckily Im not that smart.
I don't know if "key" is the word here, as different people with different practices and life experiences will require different things, so this may be more subjective than objective, but I personally think that an occultist should be someone who dives into the academic side of things, who does a lot of research and reading(and perhaps even talking with others) in order to be able to understand better their reality, themselves and everything else.
You point here to something that is actually the most important: a occultist should find the blind spots in his/hers education and solve that, even in academic things, which enriches and grounds reality. One of the problems is there "how do you know what you not know". This is especially a thing in self educated people. It is a kind of walking blindfolded in the dark on a unfamiliar road with a brook alongside where you can stumble in.
This is kind of how I'm thinking about my own studies. I'm not saying it's 'right.'
Meditation (active and passive)
Hypnosis
Dream work
Active imagination
Pathworking
Perception
Memory
Alerted states of consciousness
The unconscious ("The Discovery of the Unconscious" is interesting, so far.)
Symbolism
Ritual studies - academic texts, and occult texts, like "Neopagan Rites," etc.
Comparative mythology
Academic works on esotericism. A few authors to look up: Egil Asprem, Erik Goodwyn, Jesper Sorensen, Marion Gibson, Susan Greenwood, Wouter Hanegraaff.
Taoist inner alchemy
When reading any modern work on ritual magic, the "why" of something is more important than the "what." Learning from a ritual or practice is more important than the ritual itself.
But if you can handle the above topics, modern works might not be that helpful to your development.
Edit: If you're lucky enough to have it as an option, doing therapy with an occult friendly therapist should have huge benefits.
Psychology/ how the mind works and how you can work with your mind instead of against it. Brain development in children so that you understand how learning new things works in the brains/human mind......and singing/music.
