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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.
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.
I would second the direction of this answer, for me also gaining a certain understanding and control over ones consciousness is maybe the 'bare bones' de-mystified approach to this. Understanding the states where the mind is most moldable and then applying the desired programming.
So to strengthen the ability for visualization, for navigating different states and changing these states by will without any substances is a good direction in my opinion.
Or better- I-magi-nation. It basically has the root of magick or the magus inside it. Only limits are imagination to a significant degree.
I would say we could approach this similarly to any professional (martial) artist, that masters 'all' or better all important there is to know and then develops new techniques and systems from it that can be added to a system or create a new one. I guess that also is the approach in patchwork systems like Thelema, to work through different paradigms and systems to take from it what works.
I would say some altered states induced externally by plants and so on also help on the journey, but mostly should be considered stepping stones or reset vehicles. There are many exercises that are available though for example Vajrayana Buddhism or Tantric Yoga breathing techniques and so on.
I'm not so much into the theosophical approach as in following it, or into the patchwork that is Golden Dawn or Rosicrucianism, but these collections of available wisdom like Thelema aswell, are a bit like a blueprint on how prior generations approached the reverse engineering of ancient knowledge. I definitely want to learn more about these currents, as there are some really interesting 'chaos magick-like' patchwork rituals they have that combine different teachings into one.
So I would say adopting a mindset of growth, meaning embracing the difficult and the 'boring' like meditation and repetition and embracing direct experience should be fields of practice. I recently gained more interest in the ur-practices that are rooted deep in human experience, like dance and singing/acting and masking - often combined with a fire - as they mark a pre-separation state of mind, where the acting, the narrative, the music, the movement nature and the ritual were one and the same. There were no limiting narratives of cultural syntax -
All was embodiment, and embodiment was all.
True emotion, true fear, true thankfulness for the life of the creature that fed the tribe.
There was no question about belief, as fire was a miracle and a necessity at the same time.
Somehow i did a lot of angelic magick that does not really require offerings or paraphernalia that much, but my interest in the chthonic really sparked lately, as it's closer to our earthly existence, a give or take, basically a pre-religious spirituality that did not seperate nature from spirtuality in an imperial monoulture dialectic.
So all is a give and take - and the more i give into it the more i can gain. The more importance or meaning it has to me the more i appreciate it.
Comparable to a free e-book or a well made book with nice haptic that cost an arm and a leg. What will you probably sooner work with?
Philosophy broadly speaking, but especially ancient Greek philosophy and basic metaphysics. This will also end up including ethics and moral studies as well, since those things grow out of philosophy.
Religion. Like it or not, all magick (yes even Chaos Magick) relies on some sort of a religious framework.
Mathematics. Agrippa says you have to know it.
Biochemistry. Our ancestors made all their own food, beer, bread, and wine with zero knowledge of exactly how salt in certain amounts makes food extra tasty and safe to eat, or what caused the bread-water to make them feel nice and silly after it sat for a couple days. We don't have that excuse, and being able to make your own nutritious food in a safe manner is every bit as magickal as calling on angels and doing theurgy. It's literally practical alchemy that gives you something tasty that makes your guts feel good as a reward.
(Relating to the above) Culinary arts. If you can make your own food that is presentable to others and all from scratch, you will be able to make friends and get in with people who might be able to help you out. Everybody loves a solid meal. Biochemistry plays into this as well. Try out different types of food and avoid artificial chemicals in your cookery and you'll be professional level soon.
Good catch, thank you. I should have specified that. Maybe I didn't think about it because of the overlap with so many specific topics. I have a collection of ebooks labelled "imagination" but the focus varies. Sometimes it's occult leaning, sometimes "religious imagination," sometimes more general / psychological.
For me, having a psychological model of magic and spirituality more broadly, imagination and hypnosis (roughly, the process of shaping someone's experience of reality) are really the keys to ritual magic.
Relating to "symbolism," we could also mention things like metaphor and how that shapes thought. And somewhere between metaphor and myth, we could talk about story. We think and communicate in stories - the stories we tell about ourselves probably being the most relevant to spiritual pursuits.
I feel like there's so much to be gained by approaching things through a psychological lens, but so many occultists/magicians will just scream, "that's just being reductionist." IMO they have it exactly backwards. Using psychology today is no more reductionist than alchemists conducting experiments with actual chemical substances and lab equipment. And like the field of chemistry, the modern field of psychology practically exists because of studies into 'occult' areas, like mesmerism and spiritualism.
People like Regardie didn't "psychologize" magic - that was always there, in the works they consulted. It's in Levi, and any work of 'occultism' that used the idea of 'magnetism.' It's there every time a writer on occultism or spirituality tried to steer people away from hypnosis, because they knew it overlapped with what they did, and people would think it was all the same thing. And it's there, on every Thelemic publication that proclaims, "the aim of religion, the method of science."
Titles of possible interest:
Barber, Richard. The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. 2004
Crosson, Walter. Secrets of the Imagination: Manifesting Techniques. 2022
Denning & Phillips. Practical Guide to Creative Visualization. 2009
Farrell, Nick. Magical Imagination: The Keys to Magic. 2013
Knight, Gareth. Magical Images and the Magical Imagination. 1998
Larsen, Stepehen. The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal Mythology. 1996
Matthews, John (editor). At the Table of the Grail: Magic and the Use of the Imagination.1984
Storch, Michael. Applied Imagination: Giordano Bruno and The Creation of Magical Images. 2007
Thank's for sharing these! Exactly what I should be looking into.
At the moment I looked a lot into history, comparative things about how theologies evolved, what the roots or deities are and such. We live in historic times so to speak, and into how geopolitics and sociological statistics or in historical context evidence for societal constellations and how paradigms changed - and tragically 'through what' which was mostly the sword stone or deceit lol. The whole 'imperial monoculture-thing', in which the destiny of the direction of our species lies, as in a world still organized in states, the mass follows larger narratives and in-group idetifications etc.
Maybe that was some kind of thinking the theosophists had with their hammering together of a 'world religion' that has ties to creation of the UN with Alice Bailey's Lucis Trust. Because when I look at the rising significance of the relationships between different beliefsystems in this world, that is now kind of completely globalized, then I understand the better the thought of a 'plan for peace' that occured to the theosophists.
I feel like there's so much to be gained by approaching things through a psychological lens, but so many occultists/magicians will just scream, "that's just being reductionist." IMO they have it exactly backwards. Using psychology today is no more reductionist than alchemists conducting experiments with actual chemical substances and lab equipment. And like the field of chemistry, the modern field of psychology practically exists because of studies into 'occult' areas, like mesmerism and spiritualism.
A thought I had just when reading your post was - When you mentioned Hypnosis(another topic i have in all these books and always gets delayed) and of my description of the prehistory Urzeit scene of dancing with masks around the fire, and most of all their true emotions while embodying something-
The emtional embodyment of imagination - and acting in harmony with the embodyment without wanting proof for anything makes it work.(?)
The stronger the emotion, the harder the endless knot ties itself around the intent or command (time crystals lol) - like in hypnosis ( or an intense relationship), something 'truly considered' or 'taken as reality' + emotion or symbol of it - or trigger - begin to be the overarching top 1 topic, or 'most urgent reality' - It is exactly that what has been said - it is reality - She cheated on him, I am the frog that I was hypnotized into - I am the 'Superhero' of my imagination.
And that also ties into some more recent history things that are represented in fiction that is used to influence the thinking of the many.
These 'workings of the mind' could be learned from, in the extreme, the phenomenon of a multiple personality disorder, or dramatic happenings in which people suddenly had superhuman powers, lifting a heavy human from the train tracks.
There cases of survivors of the most gruesome things that have survived against all odds and have very different personas with very different abilities. One can speak 5 languages, another is a child.
So the intensity of emotions seems to have correlation to our 'true' or broader potential, or the unlocking of 'a blank page', a new idea or belief. Something to embody, a reality (timeline?) to live in. New day new life haha!
The other way around (as above so below) the ones that reach absolute stillness of focus also access superhuman potential, as many of the miraculous stories about the wonders that some Tibetan lamas have performed show.
It's the extremes of stillness, repetition, emotion - that let humans open pathways that help to manifest phenomena for all to witness -
The embodiment of a principle, placing the self, the focus at one part of existence, an experience as one becomes part of that principle or law of the inner and physical cosmos - like a beej or seed mantra that is repeated to address a specific principle, while also breathing in the rhytm of the mantra, while holding a posture, maybe a hand gesture mudra on top of it - until access is granted.
It's just so penetrant that that the 'thing' the space, the energy, the principle, unlocks and it has consequences on all levels of existence at once.
So that's why yoga and qi gong and meditation, martial arts and monk stuff (universally, not just the badass shaolin) in general are so interesting, as they are like meditation practice a technique, and exercise, not purely belief.
Mentioned this also in other posts before, the practice of Gyoji, japanese monks, repeat the same things at the same time everyday, have one choice of clothing, food, rhythm so it's just about the practice, no goal apart from getting better and avoiding too many choices, basically total focus aka monk mode lol.
The doing without atachement and therefore mastering the thing of choice, with no distractions whatsoever.
I also experienced the effects after my first qi gong exercise, that combines breath, movement and imagination to have positive effects on the energy flow in the body - and let me tell you, imagining there is a rope that connects the scalp to the hips and a weight is on the lower end, strechting the spine, circulation energy visually while breathing in the rhythm and then guiding energy that is collected in the belly to spots of pain in the back made me want to be an anime character again like in my childhood - it's really impressive what feelings this invokes & how much this affects the physical feelings in the body. Combining TCM and modern sience will bear baffling results in the future.
Another de-mystified take would be the manifesting approach with Goddard etc, that also 'steps into a parallel reality',
defining the reality to the terms that see fit for the desired outcome - embodiment of the person one would have to be with absolute certainty, shifting the priorities from the outter world to the inner world. Not recognizing the paradox occurings( in the physical present experience, that there are just noodles and oil this evening, but you are having an inner feast of feasts.
I think that's also what hypnosis is all about, there is 'this new reality' of the affected mind now, without question, what makes hypnosis shows so engaging to watch.
That's my rant for now, too tired to continue
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I bet one key to unlocking the true human potential is mastering lucid dreaming, manifesting inner spaces that stay the same - for example an astral temple that can be used to meet astral beings - and most of all using the state for thinking and manifesting outcomes - or transmit ideas into the waking world, like Nikola Tesla did. Also Ramanujan, the mysterious mathematician, was a worshiper of one form of shakti and his physical theories are still proven in modern science centuries later.
Similar to Tesla the advanced vajrayana practitioners also practice dream yoga techniques.
And other scientists, for example Max Planck if i remember right, the quantum pioneer, was deeply into vedic texts and thought, that in contrast to the dialectics of most mental mono cultures allow the paradox to exist in any situation, just like particles...
For someone like us "knowing oneself" . Be it through learning archetypes or whatever library which allows one to immerse within self.
There is nothing more powerful than that... because knowledge is everywhere, wisdom is missing.
There's an intelligence os fome sorts which activates when one is searching to know themselves and if manifests like this:
After exploring the dimensions within, one can see, understand and interact with patterns, behavioral and predictable patterns.
It is amazing to spot the same patterns in others even if they opened their mouth for exactly 10 seconds to convey an idea.
It is a sensation and a knowing which exceeds the normal. By looking within I start to see the world outside of me though both my knowledge and my heart and not just my eyes.
Sometimes I feel compassion, sometimes I simply observe without trying to judge...
Many solid suggestions already. I’d also throw in languages. A surprising amount gets muddled in translation, and entire layers of meaning hide in the etymology of names and terms. Even a nominal footing in the older tongues (Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic) goes a long way. It opens up primary sources, and it helps you make sense of systems like Kabbalah where the structure is built out of language and number working together.
Having the ability to achieve higher, "shamanistic" or ecstatic states of consciousness. Much of what everyone is attempting to accomplish with what we deem as the Great Work requires intent and will, which simply utilizing words is not enough. We need to be able to draw ourselves into the focus of our intent and by will we accomplish our goal.
Are there any topics you guys think someone should study if they are, say, getting into Western Ceremonial Magick or any other types of magic you can think of?
A suggestion: consider. maybe, that each letter conveys a primal energetic principle. If so, then, each letter is not a 'thing". They are 'events' or 'happenings' or 'motives'. Viewed in this way each word becomes a confluence of energetic principles which superimpose on each other like layers of tissue paper, or like a cloud of smoke from incense ( which carries so many blended aromas , in-distinction to one another, in a single uniform pillar of smoke. )
