The Magical Community's Unrealistic Education Expectations

I'm writing this shortly after the current Presidential administration slashed the Department of Education staff by 50%, after campaigning on the idea of eliminating it entirely. One of the important things the Department of Ed. does is fund rural and lower income school districts so that the children living in those regions can receive an education. Ending this federal department means ending public education in lower income areas across the country. Obtaining education at all is now for those who will have the privilege to secure it for their children.

I promise to get to the part with the magical community soon, but it needs pointing out: many of us grew up in a system where 12 years of education were guaranteed so we take it for granted. But that has not been the case for most people throughout human history, and this guarantee is in fact an extremely recent development in western civilization. This is difficult to imagine now, so feel free to watch this video in which several surveyed people were quoted in England in 1851. Notably, one had not heard of Christianity and another didn't know who Jesus Christ was.

It's going to be years until we see the true devastating effects this administration is having on public education in this country. But even before then, we weren't doing so hot. For instance, Ivy League professors are baffled that their incoming freshmen are overwhelmed by the workload because some of them never even read a full book in high school. These woes can partially be blamed on the gaps created by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are also issues related to public school curriculums. Ironically, this includes those from well-funded schools; my friend Calliope is a professor and they told me their lower income area's lack of ability to switch to the "Three Cuing Model" of reading led to their students being able to read better than peers from moneyed districts.

So when a magical practitioner online is deploring the younger generation's way of communicating information via TikTok and video instead of learning college courses' worth of religious framework and philosophy up front, this is literally my response:

But also this is going to hurt for some of you occult snobs* to hear: nobody needs to learn anything before they do magic and talk to spirits. All those things require is doing magic and talking to spirits, which many people can do naturally. And even if someone would be better positioned to learn some deeper thinking or practices, there is nothing disadvantageous about them learning it years after their magical career begins.

Part of the reason old occult knowledge was occulted is because you had to know how to read in order to access the texts in the first place. Then the texts required money, much more money than nowadays, to purchase. Then you needed to have the further education in order to understand the concepts. Although sometimes, the concepts aren't too difficult to understand; as my friend Erik from Arnemancy pointed out in his class in Renaissance Sigil Making, the math present in grimoires and magical texts is often really simple because most people in the 1600s and prior weren't taught highly advanced mathematics.

(An additional factor that made made texts "occult" is what's about to happen in the US: governments and powerful organized religion bodies simply didn't like their ideas and targeted them for censorship or destruction. I mean, yeah, there's something to demonology texts that are particularly occult as in that they're dangerous if used incorrectly or sloppily. But part of what makes occult texts occult as in "hidden" is that they were suppressed and those are even more challenging to safely gain access to.)

Anyway, this is all to point out that although I believe we all have a purpose in life and some of us are meant to live very spiritual lives in comparison to others, studying the occult in the past didn't only require being a particular sort of person, it also involved having either privilege or luck.**

But even then, what we think of as western esoteric traditions are not the only way to practice magic. Folk traditions exist from all over and practicing them often only came down to either your will or the affiliated spirits' wills. Hoodoo for gods sake started with peoples who were enslaved in the US and there was little to no interest in giving that population a formal education. Even in cultures now revered like the Greeks, cults and religious traditions were learned as the people grew up within those cultures. Not everyone was Alexander the Great being personally tutored by Aristotle in metaphysics.

For my own part, my spiritual journey started through learning through a mutual friend of Grant Morrison's on how to make the Austin Spare method of sigils. I didn't even know it was the Austin Spare method until years later, I just knew it was "the way" how to make sigils and honed my intuition through practice about when they felt effective. I actually had a metaphysical store nearby me that I visited a number of times, but that store to this day is employed by incredibly rude people, which is a culture enforced by its owner. As a result, I got minimal community support and wisdom even when going through a literally (and I mean literally) abysmal beginning to my spiritual journey.

I am far from the only person in history who started their spiritual path alone. There are others who are just as solitary, figuring out their own work with only the help of their spirits. Yet, you can still get results in your magical pathway without having to submit to a framework, being pious in any particular way, or even having a meditation practice.

So I don't know where I am going with this. Just don't be a rigid dick online. Rigidity may make you feel smart and important, but it's actually a form of childishness due to its lack of empathy and ability to see the world with nuance. Nobody should give a shit what you think they should do in their personal religious practice and if your idea of what they should do is inaccessible to many people due to class reasons, maybe examine if you have colonialism rooted somewhere in your way of thinking.

(Secretly, though, I do hope that people continue to be stupid in front of me online because it gives me a reason to blog, which has been very difficult lately. Thanks for sticking with me, everyone!)

*I can admittedly be one sometimes.

**Nowadays, I know several very adept spiritual and magical individuals also gifted with deep intelligence and thoughtfulness who do not have college degrees. I imagine in the past there were people like them, but it's still important to point out that there are different magical traditions with varying levels of access.