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When I learned computer science, I took classes, read books, and spoke with professors. In four years, I learned much of what researchers had discovered in the last forty. In principle, I could have developed each idea myself (with enough luck, persistence, and extra IQ points), but I never would have gotten it all in one lifetime.
That’s where I am in magick: School. Most of what I want to learn, spirits have already figured out. Sure, I could develop any one item out myself, but to develop everything I want to learn would take many lifetimes. So, on most days, I train, rather than research. I learn models and techniques from those spirits, and after years of solid answers from them, I trust their information even if I can’t test it myself.
Some days, I do test their lessons. I’ll use their models and advice to build a new technique, to solve a problem I couldn’t solve previously, and probably couldn’t have figured out how to solve without their guidance. That’s why I trust these spirits, and why I’m comfortable, as a trained scientist, exploring magick in this way.
When I learned computer science, I attended class, asked experts, and did problem sets. And it’s the same here, sometimes with real problems, and sometimes with artificially challenging exercises. Really, it’s like school.
(How do you get into that school? I don’t think there’s one universal answer. But one key for me was figuring out enough of magick’s inner-workings on my own that spirits took an interest in me)
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Learning Magick
Hi there Mike
This caught my eye, because I am a professor, and I am a spirit.
So I wonder if you would qualify a little as to who these scholar-teachers are. “Spirit” seems so generic a term to describe conscious living beings with varying functions and levels of expertise. I understand when you use the idiom of “software” applications and program functions, but “spirit” isn’t precise enough for me to get it. Who/what are they? Is there a hierarchy of learning (i.e. do some have a Ph.D versus a Masters degree)? you get the metaphor…
Good to see ya Mike
I wish I had good answers on how to identify these spirits. I know them by signature, but any name I might assign them wouldn’t mean anything. Someone else might work with a different group of spirits, choose to call them the same name, and now it seems like we’re talking about the same spirits, when really, we’re not. That’s why I choose to keep the term vague: So at least we all know it’s vague and that we don’t have any way of knowing if the spirits I work with are the same ones another person works with. Sorry, I wish I had a better answer, I just don’t.