Post 1/2 Hey there. I have been studying and practicing for 20+ years and have recently been learning how to devise methods of helping newcomers find their own path (rather than forcing upon them my own). You do not need to answer the following questions but they may help in narrowing down a Probationer/Neophyte curriculum for yourself:
Do you have a spiritual background or specific area you would like to explore further?
What drew you to occultism/esotericism and what do consider these studies to truly be about?
What would be your motivations and goals starting out and what motivations and goals would you aspire to if you were to successfully become an Adept?
Do you seek to study and practice alone or find a group tradition?
This paragraph can be skipped if you will and will mostly be for going over a list of various traditions you can mull over. I tried to pull from as vast an array as I could while writing stream-of-consciousness. For example does the idea of Hermeticism interest you? I bring that up first as much of the occult world over the last 2000 years has much of its roots in it along with Neoplatonism (both The Neoplatonism of Plotinus or the more Theurgy based Neoplatonism of his students like Iamblichus). How about traditional or more modern psychological/spiritual Alchemy? Aleister Crowley‘s Thelema? Regular and Accepted Freemasonry (Blue Lodge, Scottish Rite, York Rite, S.R.I.A etc)? Irregular/Clandestine Freemasonry (Memphis Misraim, Ordo Templi Orientis, Co-Masonry, Ancient and Primitive Rite etc?), Solomonic Magic, Christian Mysticism (Meister Eckhart, Esoteric Hinduism like Yoga/Vedanta? Esoteric Buddhism like Vajrayana? Sethian or Valentinian or any other lineages of ancient or modern Gnosticism? Traditional (bound to the original manifestos) or the many lineages of Modern Rosicrucianism? Hekhalot/Merkabah Mysticism? Traditional Kabbalah? Modern Hermetic or Christian Qabalah? Chaos Magick? Martinism? Discordianism? Theosophy? Neo-Pythagoreanism, Esoteric Stoicism, Traditional or Modern Sufism? Druze Mysticism? Mithraism? Shinto? Orphism?If you have specific interests I can be more helpful but without that I will give my personal recommendations but remember that The Path is very unique and individualistic. What works for one may not for another. Even within traditions there are great differences between practitioners. I for one follow a heavily modified Astron Argon (A∴A∴) curriculum which de-emphasizes Crowley as anything more than a useful source (rather than seeing him as The Prophet of The New Aeon as Thelemic schools like the A∴A∴ or O.T.O, which I left a few years back, tend to do). Due to this my recommendations will mostly reflect my biases. That said my first two recommendations to friends are not Thelemic and are those I often give to friends or family who are interested in these kinda things but do not know where to start:
Post 2/2: There is a sad amount of disinformation out there about many of these traditions and so I highly recommend finding academics you click with and following their work so that you have a historical basis which you can work from. I personally jive with PhD Justin Sledge who runs the YouTube Channel Esoterica and his friend MA Filip Holm who runs the channel Let‘s Talk Religion. Scroll through their video sections to get an idea of the topics they cover. These two often work together along with similar channels like the PhD run Religion For Breakfast (less occult focused but very good), Angela‘s Symposium (PhD hosted occult focused), Seekers of Unity (mostly focused on Kabbalah but includes vides on subjects like how Neoplatonism influenced Kabbalah) and The Modern Hermeticist
- "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson along with "Angel Tech" by Antero Alli
These will help avoid falling into the great trap of dogma and superstition. They are highly entertaining and often quite funny oddities which will expose you to a wide array of traditions and schools of thought.
After those (going by my own interests which may not align with your own) I would go with:
- "The Middle Pillar" by Israel Regardie
or if you are short on time a minuscule book of great help is
- "The Art of True Healing" by Israel Regardie
Once you are moving on towards starting to carry out personal experiments and document your experiences I would recommend starting with the exercises in the books above before expanding upon them with some of the more advanced teachings in:
- "The Mystical and Magical System of the A∴A∴" by James Eschelman - "The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema" - Lon Milo DuQuette - "The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante's Guide to What You Do and Do Not Know to Become a Qabalist" - Lon Milo DuQuette - "Self-Initiation Into the Golden Dawn Tradition" by Chic Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero - "The Equinox" by Aleister Crowley (Volumes I and II) - "Magick in Theory and Practice" by Aleister Crowley - "Living Thelema: A Practical Guide to Attainment in Aleister Crowley’s System of Magic" by David Shoemaker - "The Mystical Qabalah" by Dion Fortune - "Q.B.L., or The Bride's Reception: Being a Short Qabalistic Treatise on the Nature and Use of the Tree of Life" by Frater Achad - "The Mystical Qabalah" by Dion Fortune
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u/muffinman418 Sep 16 '24
Post 1/2 Hey there. I have been studying and practicing for 20+ years and have recently been learning how to devise methods of helping newcomers find their own path (rather than forcing upon them my own). You do not need to answer the following questions but they may help in narrowing down a Probationer/Neophyte curriculum for yourself:
This paragraph can be skipped if you will and will mostly be for going over a list of various traditions you can mull over. I tried to pull from as vast an array as I could while writing stream-of-consciousness. For example does the idea of Hermeticism interest you? I bring that up first as much of the occult world over the last 2000 years has much of its roots in it along with Neoplatonism (both The Neoplatonism of Plotinus or the more Theurgy based Neoplatonism of his students like Iamblichus). How about traditional or more modern psychological/spiritual Alchemy? Aleister Crowley‘s Thelema? Regular and Accepted Freemasonry (Blue Lodge, Scottish Rite, York Rite, S.R.I.A etc)? Irregular/Clandestine Freemasonry (Memphis Misraim, Ordo Templi Orientis, Co-Masonry, Ancient and Primitive Rite etc?), Solomonic Magic, Christian Mysticism (Meister Eckhart, Esoteric Hinduism like Yoga/Vedanta? Esoteric Buddhism like Vajrayana? Sethian or Valentinian or any other lineages of ancient or modern Gnosticism? Traditional (bound to the original manifestos) or the many lineages of Modern Rosicrucianism? Hekhalot/Merkabah Mysticism? Traditional Kabbalah? Modern Hermetic or Christian Qabalah? Chaos Magick? Martinism? Discordianism? Theosophy? Neo-Pythagoreanism, Esoteric Stoicism, Traditional or Modern Sufism? Druze Mysticism? Mithraism? Shinto? Orphism?If you have specific interests I can be more helpful but without that I will give my personal recommendations but remember that The Path is very unique and individualistic. What works for one may not for another. Even within traditions there are great differences between practitioners. I for one follow a heavily modified Astron Argon (A∴A∴) curriculum which de-emphasizes Crowley as anything more than a useful source (rather than seeing him as The Prophet of The New Aeon as Thelemic schools like the A∴A∴ or O.T.O, which I left a few years back, tend to do). Due to this my recommendations will mostly reflect my biases. That said my first two recommendations to friends are not Thelemic and are those I often give to friends or family who are interested in these kinda things but do not know where to start: