Going on guts and what you can find in books is good,

but it only gets you so far.

same goes with the community.


HOWEVER

finding a magic teacher is not simple at all.

so, being a magician, i decided i would use magic to get better at magic. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blablabla.gif)

I was thinking i could either cast a spell to find me a good magic teacher

or just evoke a magical entity such as Odin or Hermes and hope that they will teach me.

idk

what do you guys think?
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/Laie_58.gif)

Usually they come when you're in great need, especially when your a bit new at the subject.

To be honest that doesnt seem really helpful.

Im in need.

Lots of people are.

just look at all the spiritually indifferent people out there.

But a magick teacher isnt gonna just fall right in my lap, which is why i was suggesting the spell idea.


Unless i completely misinterpreted that sentance

I wasn't trying to be helpful, I was telling you the truth. If you were invested in finding a teacher you wouldn't post a topic on a forum saying "What do you guys think? should I paint my nails red... or blue?" Spiritually indifferent people are everywhere, you still think teachers change you. They don't, they simply give you the tools to change yourself. When you're ready for the tools you'll find them, but you won't find it dicking around in a forum.

Hows that for useful?

Worked for me. I'm not saying I am "all that". but, I did the same thing. Even the covens and a few camps and even a pylon could only take me so far. At least this is what I was told. I could've paid money for higher initiation. But, I felt that was not what I wanted. Not that majickal orders and covens aren't a good place to learn; they are. But, I went exactly the route you are talking about. I went with the Hermes/Mercury form. And for the record, what I discovered I do not share much. But, I am debating sharing it. I will say, however, that I found that my majick ( in particular the ceremonial style) Is much more effective when I can do it in a lucid dream. And to achieve this I had to perform the ritual several times in the waking state to ingrain/memorize it enough to duplicate in my sleep.

Being that you put your age down as 15, it is unlikely that you will be able to find a person to teach you magic-- at least without written permission from your parents. Teaching such things to minors opens the teacher to lawsuits. But you can spend your time wisely learning some of the basic skills. You can practice regular meditation, and visualization skills for instance. Read and practice basic skills for the next three years then see about finding a teacher.

If their home life is bad it won't matter: I know someone who had teaching at 16, others earlier. But I'm not suggesting disobeying parental orders.

I wonder about your impression of what a teacher should be?

Here you are on the forum after all... that was fairly simple, wasn't it?

Start looking at the universe itself, and all people, places, and energies that are within it, as a teacher. You'll learn a lot 'on your own' this way, and eventually when you make the perspective shift, you'll understand what a teacher is in the first place, and will likely meet someone who can teach you what you need to learn.

Note: What you need to learn is not the same as what you want to learn. Everyone is meeting teachers every day, you have met hundreds of teachers, or at least dozens (maybe you're antisocial and don't meet a lot of people or go a lot of places).

Of course, if you're ignorant of the fact that the universe is the only teacher, then you won't recognize teachers when you meet them. Someone probably will not introduce themselves as a magician looking for a student (if they did I'd suggest you not trust them).

If i've read you right since you arrived here, then this probably won't seem very helpful to you either. You say you never get what you want, but you act like you've never -not- gotten what you wanted. You don't know the difference yet between what you want and what you need, and you don't have the perspective of a true student yet. That's not a personal attack - this is true of most people.

Imperial Arts has a great website with a great introduction to basic magic, mostly sympathetic in nature. Look up one of his posts in the class forums for the Goetia, and check his signature for a link. Nothing's stopping you from experimenting, and if you're going to let a few failures keep you from developing, then you should rethink this.

peace

Well Imperial arts doesnt have a website, just books (from what i see)

And i can see what you mean about experiences and such, but it's rather ineffective.

Yay i cast a spell for $500 and it worked! What does that mean? The ritual must have been done right, or the phase of the moon.

Aw I did a ritual for a job and nobody will hire me, now im dying of starvation. What does that mean? It means i needed a teacher. Maybe then it would have WORKED.

Im learning, and taking in experiences... but again, a teacher is what really helps.

not a metaphorical abstract concept of a teacher in the universe

an actual teacher.

What if you took Spanish lessons, and the only thing they did was drive you to the spanish speaking side of town, and say to figure it out?

Greetings!



You'd be in the right place! Learning is up to you. No one is going to hand it to you on a plate. The true reward is the journey, not the destination. I've run out of cliches... You've been given some excellent advice.

Use your brain! The idea to summon some paragon of knowledge will only work if you pay attention! You perform this spell/conjuration. What do you expect to happen? Seriously. What? My suspicions are, if successful, you'll start being presented with any number of oportunities to learn. Oooops! You already ARE being presented with that! What else then? WHAT?
Life/Magic is capricious, it doesn't like to be packaged and sold. There is no magic pill to swallow to gain spiritual outlook...whatever that is. Experience and knowledge take time and will never happen from just one source. Read, absorb, live every day like it was the last one you have...come and see me in twenty years and we'll have this discussion again. Good luck!

it was www.truthaboutmagic.com, but apparently he's taken it down or it lapsed one or the other. His books are more than likely worth the rather generously low cost though.



Understanding how things happen and why is part of doing effective magic. It's only ineffective if you're just looking, not watching. Examples anyone?

Take magic for a job. You might not have applied for a job before being only 15, but you might have mowed lawns for money, etc. Who knows. In any case there are factors at work. There's the labor itself and whether you are capable of accomplishing it. There is the attitude of the person hiring you, as well as your own as a potential employee/laborer. Within just that there is the time of day, various factors in both parties' personal lives, possible biases for or against you or the employer on the part of both parties. Then there's the market at large, the way the two of you communicate, the non-verbal communication under the verbal communication, and a limited number of 'chaos factors' which are a given in almost any situation.

These things all seem mundane, and if you're just 'looking' and not 'watching' with the correct perspective - the one I was telling you about - then they just look like common sense factors. From a magical perspective, they are all predictable energies (except the chaos factor which is where most of the magic will come into play) that can be manipulated using the appropriate sympathetic foci - the 'ingredients' and tools, symbols, etc. which are representative of the archetypal energies therein taking shape as the things which you are only 'looking' at, as your perspective is at present only one of looking and not watching.

The labor itself falls under the earthy category of energies elementally, and has astrological elements as well (we're not totally talking about astrology, but the archetypal energies that the astrological spheres represent), those of mars for something labor intensive like mowing lawns, something saturn intensive for something like being a banker, something mercury intensive for work along the scholarly lines as well as medical professions, etc. The attitude of the person hiring you is less predictable by what you want is something amiable like a venus attitude or jupiter if you want them to not only hire you but pay you well, this falls under the category of invocation to either of these spheres. Possible biases ultimately come down to the interaction of the energies of the two of you, and as energy can be influenced before hand in your favor. The timing is involved in personal life affairs which might affect the attitudes present, which can also be influenced energetically, guiding the interview to an appropriate time where the two of you will be in amiable spirits and more likely to trust and commit to employment. The communication falls under the air element as well as mercury and possibly venus depending on the job, and the non-verbal communication falls primarily under venus regardless of the job. The chaos factors will be those elements of chance and change which are the catalysts for magical action to take place - seemingly random occurrences which ultimately bring about the energetic changes you need to happen to ensure that at the time and place of your choosing the energies are at play and play to your benefit.

You have to have the right perspective to see these things this way though, and a teacher can't give you that perspective. You have to earn that on your own, and no teacher in the world can teach you magic if you don't develop the perspective of observation first. A teacher can give you a list of spells, and tell you when to case one or the other, but if you can't see the world magically your magic will always be hit or miss, never predictable, and never reliable.



It means you spent too much money, but if a spells works then yes it means it was done correctly with the right perspective.



Just the presence of a teacher in your life does not make magic work for you. What it means is that you didn't do the ritual with the right perspective, didn't use the appropriate sympathetic influences, and probably did it half-ass thinking it probably wouldn't work anyway.



Since you arrived here on the forums, you have had people personally catering to your questions, answering with a variety of perspective on individual matters. You've had people give you instructions, offer advice on minutia of magical operation, and try to direct you on the course that will bear results if that course is followed, the instructions executed, and the advice taken with a grain of humility. You have not done these things, and now are complaining that you want a teacher!

You come from a cultural background where the teacher is responsible for the education of the student. In all the world this is a fairly new and rare attitude towards the teacher/student relationship. Classically - and currently in most of the world's many cultures - this is a backwards idea. It is the student who is responsible for learning, not the teacher who is responsible for teaching. The teacher is there to direct, advise, answer questions, and be an anchor for the student in the students personal quest to learn.



They'd be a damn good teacher, because anyone who speaks another language fluently, learned to do so through immersion in the culture to which that language is native. No one learned to speak a language fluently by reading a book or working with a teacher one on one even intensively for any amount of time. Immersion, observation, critical thinking, and practice within a culture, is the only composite way to master a foreign language. You don't have the life experience to know that yet, or you wouldn't use that as an example.

And that's just it! That is exactly your problem! You want to learn in some personal relationship with another individual and you don't seem to realize - despite the advice and repeated revelation from dozens of people who've been at this a lot longer than you have (you'd probably have no respect for a teacher anyway, who would want to be that person?!) - that the problem is not with the knowledge or the instruction or the advice, the problem is that you won't follow any of it, you won't try it, and you won't even attempt to develop or maintain a magical perspective in which you will learn magic naturally, either following instruction and advice or not!

You've had teachers since you got here! What do you expect a teacher to do or be? You haven't even defined that yet. You probably don't know, or all you have are high-school and grade-school teachers - in the american public education system which is just awful - as guidelines of what a teacher should be. Grow up for just a moment and really consider what you have here and now. You ask questions, we address them. You want advice, we give it. You are puzzled by an experience, we offer perspective. You have theory to read about here, experiences to peruse and try to learn from, public debates to help you gain your own perspective or even adopt someone else's.

And all you can ever do is turn your nose up at it. Frankly, you just aren't ready for a teacher, whether you think so or not. You don't really want a teacher, you want an easy ride. There isn't one, so you can either waste more of your incredibly precious, non-refundable, limited time looking for one, or you can wake up for gods' sakes and pay attention.

peace

This post has been edited by Vagrant Dreamer: Jun 8 2009, 06:07 PM

When I was your age (well 16 at least) I went to a couple new age book stores both ran by Wiccans. At each place I, along with my girlfriend at the time, told the owners that we had been studying magic for some time but that we had never any formal training. I simply asked them if I might attend any local gatherings just to get a better understanding of magic and to perhaps convert to Wicca (I never got that far). Well as it turned out, the same group of Wiccans owned the stores and yes they agreed to let us attend weekly cerimonies that were pretty much open to anybody who wanted to go to them.

My point is that if you want a teacher... well maybe wait until you can at least have a driver's license or find a friend who does. But go out into your community. Find shops or make connections online and get to know people who are involved with the occult. If you get that far finding someone who can impart knowledge on to you is not that hard.



And that pretty much summerizes the rest of my thoughts. I will say that dicking around in an internet forum is better than dicking around your house and not doing anything productive at all. But the internet can be a powerful tool to make connections. You just have to be motivated to actually make them and not only that but follow through with them.

I hadn't even thought about the aspect of having a driver's licence. I've known a number of people who had to drive two to four hours to reach their coven and teachers. You might find someone nearby, but there is no guarantee.

Part of the problem is that teaching is a difficult job. Normally they hold down a regular job and teaching is something that they do voluntarily in their free time. It is usually a drain on their time and energy, and is usually unappreciated. Often the other pagan and magickal leaders in the community get into witch wars or spread negative rumours about each other. It seems to be about ego and aggression. As a result, teachers in the occult community often burn out after a few years, resulting in a teacher shortage. There are a lot more people who want to find a teacher than there are teachers willing to take them on.

Additionally, the people who set themselves up as teachers are often of low quality, perhaps only partly trained, or teaching for reasons of ego. Some are not of high ethics, abusing their students or being lazy, not putting in enough preparation time. I tend to think that a teacher ought to have trained and practiced for ten years or more. I am of course a middle aged guy so tend to see the teens setting themselves up as high priest/ess to be wrong in that way. Teens who are students, fine, but teens as teachers are wrong. But I hear of them around quite often.

Where is Harry Potter when you need him? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/00000008.gif)

Besides what you have said.
I tend to agree. Theres a number of so call "teachers" out there who knows squat and are just out there to stroke their ego.