Sometimes, life is amazing. I make an ass out of myself fighting with RO and suddenly I'm hammered with numerous insightful questions from folks. I am trying to get to them but if I sat down and answered them all in a night and related my normal blog stuff, I'd get writer's cramp. Don't get me wrong I love the questions, keep them coming. I still have a reader's artwork to showcase on a slow night but it appears there is no dearth of post topics any time soon.
Wolf noted that I as a GD trained person used Crowley's Bornless Rite over Regardie's in the Golden Dawn rite. He asked why.
The answer is both a tad embarrassing and expresses the way I have done the Work. I didn't know Regardie's rite existed.
The reason for that is that I've always studied only the material suitable for the grade I was working in. The Golden Dawn material is very rich and I'm convinced one could spend many years ferreting out the meaning in each grade, should one be that diligent and patient. My method of study was to stick to my grade and only my grade work until the need expand in a particular direction made itself obvious.
This refusal to read ahead had some great advantages. The primary one being confirmations. I can recall several times seeing the symbols from my next grade within my ritual work. This was very true in Zelator work (and earth grade) when I saw an initiatory symbol of the next grade, Theoricus (air). I can also recall it happening in Practicus (water) when I found myself astrally standing on one of the initiatory symbols of Philosophus (fire) There is nothing to build the confidence of a magician like experiencing something in ritual that one could not have previously known about. Then having that same thing revealed to you as a 'secret'.
This in many ways is how I do my work. It is why I say I am not a scholar but a doer of magick or as I now prefer doer of strange things. I really don't care what some 16th century cabalist has to say. I steal the tech and then experience the magick. My goal is not to be a philosopher. My goal is not to enlighten the masses. My goal is not to impress other occultist at cocktail parties with my vast knowledge of Quintilian Cabala! This does put me at a conversational disadvantage among a certain set of adepts. While I'd love to join in the mental masturbation exercise and one-upmanship, my work does not lie there. So, instead I practice the tech, I experience the spirits and the results.
(Note: not all of these conversations are about mental masturbation and one-upmanship. There is work being done there too, ideas being exchanged, etc.)
There is a decided disadvantage to working this way. One does the risk of being willfully ignorant of too much. One has to have a clue as to the foundations. Though, any diligent seeker can avoid that. The larger issue is that I've found many classes of spirits cannot (or maybe will not) impart new knowledge. Because the deepest explanations are metaphors, one has to have enough knowledge for them to play upon. For instance, My Gal understands some physics and was a Catholic school girl. So, they used that deep knowledge to communicate. In my case it was with elementary school science and interrelationships.
For those reasons, to me the best magickal education is a broad mundane education. Because I've never been much of scholar, I miss out on some lessons I am sure. Then again, I actually do a lot of magick compared to most folks that I am aware of. I gain a lot of very subtle lessons. Maybe it all works out even.
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