Author I've taken courses from both Jason Miller and Jack Grayle — experience and doubts from a source-obsessed student in China

[swordofclio]

MorganBlack, no, not at all. my starting position was definitely secular. My mother was casually agnostic and my father was spiritually ambivalent during my childhood. As i got older (In my 30s now), my father has become a solitary christian and my mother has become spiritually ambivalent. So I guess you can say they have shifted on the spectrum towards spirituality as they aged, I think in some part due to my curiosity and openness towards spirituality/metaphysics/philosophy/esotericism as I got older. My dad had a traumatic mexican/indigenous loosley catholic upbringing and he has had a few spontaneous psi experiences in his adulthood that i helped unpack for him--remote viewing, seeing a duende.

 

[MorganBlack]

Oh, nice! Sword of Clio. I was raised very secular as well, but with a Latino TradCath material side of the family. The benefit here is we don't have any religious trauma to overcome - but come with a whole bunch of secular-flavored materialism to tamp down.

In my opinion, that i the first line of attack: make the universe bigger. I was going to recommend the ideas in the threads you found on Daimonic Idealism, along with the writing of Bernardo Kastrup and Patrick Harpur, and see if it helps your practice.

I feel we all need to DIY this all together again for a new generation of magicians. Mono-culture is alwasy changing and tour default positions now (boths srengths and weaknesses) are different perhaps from what I as Gen-Xer had to contend with Please come back and let us know!

 

[swordofclio]

Oh, nice! Sword of Clio. I was raised very secular as well, but with a Latino TradCath material side of the family. The benefit here is we don't have any religious trauma to overcome - but come with a whole bunch of secular-flavored materialism to tamp down.

In my opinion, that i the first line of attack: make the universe bigger. I was going to recommend the ideas in the threads you found on Daimonic Idealism, along with the writing of Bernardo Kastrup and Patrick Harpur, and see if it helps your practice.

I feel we all need to DIY this all together again for a new generation of magicians. Mono-culture is alwasy changing and tour default positions now (boths srengths and weaknesses) are different perhaps from what I as Gen-Xer had to contend with Please come back and let us know!

I love Patrick Harpur, seminal read for me and I have Kastrup on my reading list. Things all really started to click for me intellectually with Daimonic Reality. Gordon White, RIP, has also been an instrumental guide of all things psi and high strangeness going on a decade now as well.

I've been pondering some things over the last day or two. I've read as many of your posts that I can as I've spent a a dozen hours taking in the forum these last couple of days. Your insights and experiences are inspiring to say the least. I find myself a little lost lately, and this forum has helped immensely already to encourage me to start to pose the right questions.

The large majority of my magical practice has been built from a blend of Jason Miller's and Cat Yronwode's work. After a long break from these practices I've come to realize that I'm not sure where to begin again. My greatest concern is spending a lot of time devoted to practices that may be a waste of effort. I never really gave the Traditional Grimoire path a real shot and instead sought out "inspired" sources for my practice. I do appreciate Jason Miller's Hekate and Cyprian Arcanas, but I'm not convinced that his gnosis of a tantric approach to Hekate and his visualization heavy practice with St.Cyprian is real or perhaps made up in some part to sell a course. sharing many of the same reservations as the OP (baobaoking).

I am currently in the process of rebuilding my daily practice to support my communication with the spirits as i have always had trouble with communication. So far, I'm putting a large emphasis on meditation, but I am not sure what else to focus on anymore besides that. I was previously focused on energy work exercises that Jason Miller taught through his book the sorcerer's secret: pillar/elemental spheres, universal centering, rending of space, nine purification breaths, invocation of the bornless one. These then feed into The Hekate mandala practices or the St. Cyprian prayers and visualizations he transmitted to his students. Since I am harboring some uncertainty with Jason MIller I'd like to compare with other practitioners to see what they are doing to keep their mental/energetic bodies in good shape to interact with the Spirits.

I am also starting to realize i may have to rebuild my practice form the ground up seeking more rigor by going to primary sources for Hekate in the PGM and for St. Cyprian through the excellent scholarship available to us as well as the very much alive traditions within Catholic folk magic. I can then go from there towards an approach to the angels though Trithemius and the daimons through the GV or something similar. I hope I am on the right track with this, but again I'm not sure.

I do have your reading list jotted down in my journal to give me enough to pour over for some time, but as far as practices go I'm feeling like I am at square one with one thing: meditation, offerings and invocations to Hekate, and offerings and prayers to St. Cyprian. How much importance do you place on daily practices built on mental/energetic exercices, invocations/prayers to Allies and offerings? do you think one should be more focused on workings or mental/energetic training? A lot of Jason Miller's daily practices I learned did start to have that Franz Bardon flavor that left me questioning if i was wasting my time.

 

[Lupin_Lu]

I apologize, I don't know English, so I'm using AI for translation, so my text may seem a little strange.

Hello everyone. I'm new here and I've been reading this thread with great interest. I recently met Hekate and I'm truly enjoying getting to know Her.

I'm currently working through The Hekataeon and performing the rituals. I really liked the book — for its conciseness and for moving away from Wicca. In my opinion, you first learn the letters, then you put them into words, and only then, once you have a solid foundation, can you create your own. I agree that the magical papyri are ancient, but they help us see and feel the full depth and diversity of the Goddess. Once you have that foundation – and, most importantly, an understanding of why you need a certain object on the altar and what it truly means – only then can you begin to build your own rituals.

As for blood in rituals — I believe that using your own blood, especially smearing it on sigils, is not a very good idea.

Thank you all for this discussion – it's been very helpful for me on my path.

 

[Tryp]

First, let me introduce myself. I’m from China, born in the late 1990s...

Many thanks for sharing your experience with us.

I cannot speak about online courses because, for good or bad, I haven't followed any. I just was able to afford, over the years, spending time and money in books (I'm a bibliophile that, by now, understands they are hit and miss no matter how gorgeous). Personally, I only keep one by Miller because at the time of reading it he made good sense to me, but tbh he made no difference in my practice.

Grayle's books, though, were an important step. I only followed part the Hekataeon and then I decided to change approach, but I did the part you refer to, including the bloodletting, so I just wanted to give my interpretation of it for what it might be worth: the way I see it in the context of the book, it's not a ritual sacrifice to Hekate. It's a ritualization of your commitment to the practice, and perhaps to the book. That's where the blood goes - to a fingerprint in the book. Similar procedures happen in other practices with a book at their core, like Aidan Wachter's Black Book (which, incidentally, I found more powerful than others). I see it as a simple binding of an item to yourself and your commitment, rather than a sacrifice or a bona fide consecration.

 

[MorganBlack]

How much importance do you place on daily practices built on mental/energetic exercices, invocations/prayers to Allies and offerings?

Gah! Padron for the delay @swordofclio ! Not sure how the ping got lost. Justoff the top of my head...

Hmm. I hate to say it becasue I dislike the whole Tryhard 'magic is a RPG skill-tree' thinking ... BUT there is a real power to daily repetition with gentle, consistent practice .

There is both a "getting their attention" aspect in spirit work, and a personal theurgy that comes from shaping your soul through consistent pratice, because:

But I also dislike the whole Crowley gonzo-freakout and slashing your forearms for the same reason I dislike the MK-Ultra / MK-Often "gotta break you with trauma to trigger a shamanic experience" - both of which only put distance between you and your desired end-result through a social media-generated fear of failure, then sell you the Super Magus Eternity Program (tm) or Witch Queen LARP to fix the problems they create. Just relax in immerse yourself.

Solar Adorations are great, either Resh or a modified Office of the Hours work. I had a life-changing manifestation in the form of an "Apparition" of the Virgin after a couple of years of just kinda robotically saying the bog-standard Catholic prayers each morning for my deceased Houngan over a couple of years. And it was very gentle. Just being present, paying attention, and honoring someone who was a good friend. On top of that, I was not really a "believer" in Catholicism. She appears still with all pervading sweetness and the ordor of citrus and roses people around me can smell. To me she is Mary, but she is also The Goddess, and i dont worry too much intellectually about what she "really" is in a theological sense.

Since you like Gordon White and Chaos Magic (and 1980s Chaos Magic was my gateway drug too), there is a "secret" in Chaos Magic: when you "paradigm shift," you literally become that thing. Setting aside 30 minutes in the morning and evening to jump into a Thelemic , Catholic , and/or Hellenic reality is really all you need. Spend the rest of your day just being you in everyday life, with your regular secular brain. I did.

For more of what daily Solar Adorations in a JSK Verum-Thelemic context can look like see Mat's excellent post here:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The daily planetary Angel invocations are also excellent. Verum folk say the Atrochios prayer for success daily which maintin that connection. But no need to worry about that until you have them. Spirit work is mostly relationship maitenance to sort of 'weave' them into your human-created reality, and keep that there. Subluanr realiy is sibjectto waxing and waning ans it can wane just like all things if not minded and reainfiorced by our very human Logos (in my language) - which is our very divine creativity and cretive reason. All of this is a choice.

Does that help at all?? Please let me know if it helps.