How To Become An Occult Adept
How To Become An Occult Adept
How To Become An Occult Adept
MASTERING MAGICK
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This post is not for people who just want to play around with
magick. It's for people who want to get serious—who want to
master magick, who want to put in the work, and who are
prepared to do what it takes to sculpt themselves into the person
they know they're capable of becoming.
I've created a ton of content for people who are just getting
started in magick. There's the free intro class, as well as all of the
new content I've been creating at this blog, including my posts on
How Far Can You Go in a Year? and The Core 3 Daily Practices.
But let's get even more serious. It's fairly easy to get the basics
down in magick: meditation, journaling, recording dreams,
opening magical space through pentagram rituals, and creating
sigils. That's enough for some people: maybe they make a few
tactical changes to their life here and there, and are satisified. Or
maybe their attention span just wanes.
But if you're reading this, that's not you: You want to blast
through. To not just dabble, but to really learn and master this
skillset. To become an Occult Adept.
I've covered the basics of what daily practice should look like in
my article on The Core 3 Daily Practices. But talking about daily
practice is one thing, and actually disciplining yourself to do it—
rain or shine—is another. And I'm under no illusions about this: It
may be harder to actually do this right now than at any other
time in human history. We've just got too many distractions:
Phones, computers, smart devices, and the expectation to be
constantly responding to electronic messages 24/7. Added to that,
we have more instantly available "entertainment" seducing us
than at any other time in history: infinite Netflix, video games,
Web, whatever. You could idly entertain yourself with digital
media from now until the end of your life, easily, and never make
a dent in actually doing anything with your life.
The benefits of this are enormous. But here's a little secret as well:
Meditation doesn't actually start to kick in until around 45-50
minutes of sitting. It really does take that long for your mind to
start clearing; you just won't start getting into relaxed, ecstatic or
magical spaces until you get that far in. Psst: This is why most
people fail at meditation. There are too many "experts" out there
pushing the easy way, telling people that five minutes a day of
"mindfulness" is going to change their life. It isn't. That's kid's
stuff. And most people who meditate will never sit past a half
hour at most, and consequently they may decide that meditation
"doesn't do anything" or that it's too hard. You have to get to the
point where you can sit for an hour, otherwise you're not going to
get to the good stuff.
And by the way, this is another area I don't have any illusions
about: In my many years teaching magick and meditation, I've
only found maybe one or two people who have consistently been
able to commit to an hour a day. It's rare. I know how rare it is.
But if you want to be one of the rare few—if you want to be an
adept—that's what it takes.
Once there, you should be able to, for instance, come up with a
phrase you want to sigilize and turn it into a sigil or mantra in
your head without using a piece of paper, and cast it on the spot
without anybody noticing.
When you get into magick, you get a lot of tools: sigils, obviously,
but also energy work, invocation (working with gods), evocation
(working with spirits), direct enchantment and lots, lots more.
Yes, you need to learn this stuff. But more importantly, you need
to prove—at least to yourself—that it works. You need to get
results. Everything before that is theorywank, and if you stay in
the "reading lots of books" and "getting obsessed with the glamour
of magick" phase without getting results, you're just distracting
and confusing yourself, and it would have been better to have
never started at all.
The key here is journaling. Keep your records tight and updated,
and check back and read through them, say, at the end of every
week. You'll start recognizing patterns in what you've done and
what's been successful and not successful. Find out what works,
FOR YOU, and build on success. You don't need the biggest
baddest most arcane magical system in the world, you just need
something that works to fulfill your goals at this point in your life.
Get it to work, and build on that success. That's how you start
developing your own personal system and style—and that's when
you know you're doing something real.
Got results? Good. Now keep getting them—but don't lust for
result. Want it too bad, and it will never happen.
Now you've got to actually figure out what you want. If you don't
do that, you'll just get "lost in the funhouse," running around all
the books and systems and orders and glamour, getting "more
magical," but not actually getting anywhere in your life.
Figure out what you actually want from your life. No, it shouldn't
be "to be the biggest baddest magician of all time" or something
like that. Life is short. Establish clear, achieveable goals. Maybe
it's to get the right career, the right relationship. Maybe it's
something else. But figure it out. Break it down into steps. And
start using magick to achieve those steps.
5. Begin working towards the higher self /
enlightenment
When you're first starting out in magick, it's all too tempting to
system-hop. One day you're a Thelemite, the next you're a
Vajrayana Buddhist, the next you're a Vitki... and on and on. This
is OK when you're first learning, but eventually you're going to
need to pick a system and stick with it until you master it. Systems
are just vehicles. Master one and the others become easier to
master; but until you learn to at least drive, there's no point in
trying out lots of different cars. There is no "ultimate be-all end-
all" system of magick, though one may be more appropriate for
you than the others. Pick one and stick with it—but be willing to
discard it when you're done, so that you don't end up a slave of
somebody else's map.
7. Keep going
Whatever you do, don't stop. You can rest, but don't quit. Magick
is a lifetime's pursuit—just like staying fit by exercising is. You
have to stay in shape, no matter what level of development you're
at. Establish consistency and get serious. Life might be a game, but
it's the playing-for-keeps kind.
Too many people dabble in magick. They learn a few things, read
a few books, but they never commit to focused practice. And they
miss out on becoming the person that they truly know they are
meant to become. They miss out on Adepthood.
Adepthood awaits.
– Jason Louv
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Jason Louv is the author of eight books (including the upcoming John
Dee and the Empire of Angels) and has spent two decades studying and
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