If you are interested in a practice that combines magick and meditation you may find this guide to self-training helpful. [Pagina en español aqui.]
These practices, done in the suggested order, will prepare you well to continue deeper explorations in any tradition that interests you. The meditation practice alone is enough to cultivate the ground for awakening. The additional practices – if done with the intention to cultivate wisdom – seem to aid in the process, helping soften the heart and mind and preparing one for the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel, which is a powerful devotional practice.
Meditation itself is deceptively simple. Many people find it very difficult to practice consistently, remain motivated, and stay attentive during the early stages (which can last months or years, depending on your level of dedication). Magick and ritual practices, such as those described below, can contribute to motivation, strong intention, and staying focused. A motivated person will tend to practice daily. A person who practices daily, with attention, will progress (as it were) much more quickly.
My own practice has been influenced by a wide variety of traditions, including Renaissance Magick, Chaos Magick, Santeria, Christian mysticism, Buddhism, and others. Your own intuition should be relied upon to guide you to the practices that work best for you. The sequence of practices described here was developed based on practices used by myself and various colleagues in our own development. We had colleagues at various levels of experience test the instructions to make sure they were clear and to give us feedback on the efficacy of the exercises.
Note: if/when I add more training material to the blog, I will update this page accordingly. (Last updated August 2012)
The Training:
Begin with a daily practice of meditation and energy work. This will be your core daily practice, without fail. Do this for several weeks to become fully familiar with it and incorporate it solidly into your daily routine.
Then add daily trance practice for at least 4-6 weeks.
Then learn to do sigil magick, practicing regularly until you have multiple good results.
Learn banishing and purification rituals and use them regularly so they become second nature.
Select, evoke and form a relationship with a wise and benevolent entity.
Work with that entity to develop a variety of psychic skills and techniques which allow communication with the entity.
You may then wish to explore other methods of divination.
You should keep track of your work in a journal. If you don’t know how to do that, read about the magickal record here.
The Holy Guardian Angel
At this point you are likely ready to begin petitioning your HGA. There are a series of instructional posts about that:
Transforming Union with the HGA
Advanced practice
After you have done all of the above work, you should follow your HGA’s guidance above all else.
Some optional magickal explorations may appeal, such as found in the Advanced Techniques section.
You should also read the Favorite Teachings section, which features teachings about awakening that were particularly helpful to me.
And read through the Difficulties section, which highlights common challenges faced in meditation, many of them relating to more advanced practice.
The Explorations section includes my own ponders, experiments and ongoing changes to my own practice, which may give you some ideas, too.
Edited to add: I recently discovered a book which is very relevant to those interested in an esoteric Western approach to enlightenment and has many elements in common with my own past experience and interests. I highly recommend it. It is Spiritual Alchemy: The Inner Path by Robert Ambelain. It is available online at sources such as Scribd.
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Questions, discussion and comments may be directed to www.salomesrevenge.com, a forum where I participate, or you may contact me directly at alittledeathblog@gmail.com
Updated October 2013: Meanwhile a reader has created a convenient dump of much of the Teach Yourself material on this blog into ebook formats, should anyone wish to have a handy off-line version to read. I have been puttering with a more structured version myself, though it tends to be low on the to-do list. But should anyone wish to read much of the blog material on their Kindle, iPad or other e-reader, the link to the anonymous fan’s version is here: http://readlists.com/ba086a9b/
Thanks to Alex for the collaboration on the initial materials (modified here for my own purposes) and to Alan, Duncan, Andy, Donn, Florian, John and Justin for their feedback along the way, which I have felt free to disregard. ;)
God speed!
(Page updated to make minor clarifications December 2012.)
