How Does It All Fit In Together...? Options

I've been hoping to work with the Geotia for a while now but I've recently been wondering how some of the magical branches are best approached. For example I have been doing a sort of Golden Dawn approach (I imagine this is pretty common) but I wanted to outline exactly what I've been working on for a while, in order, to get some comments and insight into it.

This is beginning to end:

1) religious stuff/psychology
2) meditations/astrology/occult history and various texts
3) dreamwork/Hebrew/Latin/Greek
4) astral work/Qabalah
5) Geotic evocations
6) Enochian work
7+) ???

So what I try and do is get a solid functioning ability to work with one level before I move on to a higher numbered level. But I don't stop working with the earlier numbers once I move on, so I've been focusing on 4 for a while but I still do numbers 1 through 3. My question is how does this look? I'm not confident about the placement of 5 and 6, mostly because I hardly can understand Goetic or Enochian magic without having the fundamentals covered. I don't want to be like Dee and have to get someone else to do my dirty work lol, because I don't have the proper ability with astral senses.

I've been spending seriously hours daily trying to get to the point where I feel I'm covered with astral stuff so I can move on to the Goetic spirits, which I'm excited about, but I enjoy the process and am not rushing it. I'm aiming for 6 months to a year before trying to move on to number five, but should I be doing Enochian work simultaneously or even before Goetic stuff?

I feel like the Goetia work in general is more straightforward about what I have to do than the troubles of dealing with than Enochian "angels". I've been reading "The Enochian Evocation of Dr. John Dee" by Geoffrey James (As Imperial Arts specifically recommended in an older post) and I get the impression that Enochian work may be trickier due to the spirits than Goetic demons. (no offense to anyone who does Goetic work I'm pretty ignorant on the subject).

Any comments are welcome, thanks.

This post has been edited by ☞Tomber☜: Dec 6 2011, 02:47 PM

Eventually you'll probably get around to studying everything, and it is good to do that; but take care not to confuse advance in studies with progress in work.

If you are working with a particular system or technique - any - and you see that it has some potential, then look for where you want to apply that. Ask yourself what you will do when you are able, or what you are able to do now that would be of some benefit. Your best interests, for yourself and for others, are always paramount and part of magic is seeking to secure those interests, otherwise it is only mysticism.

It is far more important to get a sense of progress in life in general, with your family and your work, than in occultism. It is something that you will refine over time, but different areas of practice are not necessarily sequential stages of development. You can choose to approach it that way, and that is reasonable, but in most cases what can be done one way can be done another.

A really big trap is the tendency to mistake grades of power in any occult system. I guarantee there are Faery Wiccans who can destroy any magic conjured by the mightiest Palo Voodoo Root man alive today. Exotic systems are not any more powerful than "respectable" ones, and people find magic in their own way through a variety of different doors. It is the power of magic, not the working method, which is the aim of serious occult study. It cannot be done by reading, but by reading you can learn what to do.

Crowley said that there are Three Grades among magicians: the Hermit, the Lover, and the Man of Earth. Although it is an unorthodox interpretation, these Grades represent the three great aims of magic: wisdom, power, or money. The Hermit lights the way in the difficult places, an outsider and a critic; and these magicians are developers and educators. The Lover seeks women, pleasure, conflict, and the glory of desire. These are soldiers, performers, athletes, and people of action and passion. The Man of Earth as a magician controls resources, makes money, runs the show. They aren't sequential grades, but different types of magician, and they are defined not by the nature of their practices but by their individual goals.

Where Enochian magic has been presented in a comprehensive form in print, it has been aimed at students and not practitioners. Where it has been aimed at practitioners, the literature has been outright awful ("Enochian Sex Magick" for example) or substantially incomplete or manipulated like that of the Golden Dawn.

You ought to understand who "Enoch" might be and his relevance to the system.

In one hand there is Enoch the prophet, who gave a sermon against the evil spirits and warned of the dangers in violence and licentiousness, and of whom much reference is made in the manner of tabulating the names and offices of spirits which are so prominent in occult literature.

On the other hand, there is Enoch the son of Cain, after whom the first human city was named according to the Bible. It is said that Cain went to the "Land of Nod" in the east, along with his wife who rabbinical tradition holds was Lilith, the first female. Much speculation has been made about the location of this obscure land of Nod, but I suspect it refers to the migration into North America through the Bering strait.

Consider also that the Shewstone was taken from the Aztecs, and was the primary idol of a major deity. As genius as the Enochian language is, it is certainly not something delivered with ease from the sessions with Dee. It was amazingly difficult, requiring hours at a time with meticulous notes, and most of it came out gibberish until it was arranged according to an instructed code. So what we, the readers, get at the end is not necessarily the most precise or useful things the spirits could have said, but a very basic introduction and some hastily-written orders of protocol. Talking straight to a 16th century academic was not going to go over well, so great care was taken to avoid violating his personal conscience about spiritual beings and magical powers.

We cannot, from the available original literature, make any kind of judgment on the Enochian system. It simply isn't there. You get a few instructions, a basic outline, and a categorization of some few dozen spirits. The rest is in your hands and you have to figure it out. It seems intimidating because there is so much that you do have to figure out, and then there is an entirely different language involved. It is something that requires a lot of careful study beforehand, but you still have the responsibility of putting it all together on your own even when you have read all the material.