Has anyone had a teacher in magick?

[Christinia Forshee]

Hi all. Has anyone here, especially anyone who is older, ever had a teacher in terms of magick? I just want to know if it ever works out, because I've heard some horror stories about people who just didn't know what they were doing and kind of ruined things for their students. But, I've also heard really good things. The thing is, I also especially want to know if anyone here has ever had a teacher about magick who they didn't physically meet, at least not a first, sort of like a correspondence course? I am considering this but am just wondering if it is a super-bad idea or anything like that.

[Faemon]

Hi all. Has anyone here, especially anyone who is older, ever had a teacher in terms of magick? I just want to know if it ever works out, because I've heard some horror stories about people who just didn't know what they were doing and kind of ruined things for their students. But, I've also heard really good things. The thing is, I also especially want to know if anyone here has ever had a teacher about magick who they didn't physically meet, at least not a first, sort of like a correspondence course? I am considering this but am just wondering if it is a super-bad idea or anything like that.

I read up on this unguided course and Skywind's Playful Psychic tutorial that I can't find the link for anymore.

I've outgrown both views and methods, but the practice allowed me to exercise some other valuable skills. I'd really like to take the OBOD correspondence course, although I've heard they discriminate against those with mental illness.

As for face-to-face, oh dear...a friend of the family's heard that I was doing out of body experience meditations, and took it upon themselves to take me under their wing. I didn't ask, but I didn't mind, but yeah it was a disaster. There was only one true way to think about something or do something, and it was secret, because I didn't want to be Wiccan, but my Wiccan mentor didn't want me to be doing my own thing. Psionics was hubristic, the ancient religion of the mother goddess of four elements was traditional and true...and, I must say that there definitely seemed to be some effect when I incorporated the little that he'd let on. When I begrudgingly took to the four-elemental system, I felt more drawn towards fire, and he told me that was wrong because I was a water sign. In hindsight, if I was in that far, I should have gone with what I felt I needed because working with water elementals coincided with my developing a bleak depression. This may or may not be associated, but it certainly didn't help. In hindsight, he didn't actually want to mentor me so that I get better at magick as a skill. He and my sibling just didn't want me to go out of body anymore, so there were a lot of metaphysical bindings, and, unfortunately, a lot of mundane emotional abuses that I just didn't recognize. Last I heard, he doesn't identify as Wiccan anymore like his grandmother did (so he told me), but prefers to call himself a Druid.

[Jenett]

Hi all. Has anyone here, especially anyone who is older, ever had a teacher in terms of magick? I just want to know if it ever works out, because I've heard some horror stories about people who just didn't know what they were doing and kind of ruined things for their students. But, I've also heard really good things. The thing is, I also especially want to know if anyone here has ever had a teacher about magick who they didn't physically meet, at least not a first, sort of like a correspondence course? I am considering this but am just wondering if it is a super-bad idea or anything like that.

My training in witchcraft was via a training circle, so yes, teacher - actually multiple teachers. It absolutely can work out. (Even the things where I disagree with my teachers, I still learned a lot from.) I was fairly young when I started, for initiatory training (I started when I was 26), but we had other students who were in their 50s and 60s over the years who also got a lot out of it.
 
Teaching magic is, in a lot of ways, like teaching anything else. There are some amazing teachers out there. There are a lot of people who are really solid decent teachers (but have some areas they're maybe not as great at.) There are some lousy teachers. There are some abusive teachers.

Working with one of the first two types of teachers is often vastly superior to learning on your own, in ways that make it worth the time and energy and attention required for a lot of people. Working with someone in the last two groups can also be educational, but not always in the way you might hope.

I think part of it comes down to what a good teacher can give you. To my way of thinking, there's a bunch of different parts. (And different good teachers will be better or worse at each of these: someone can be a great teacher for other people, but not a particularly good teacher for you as an individual.)

Depth of knowledge: A teacher who is experienced in what they're teaching can give you not just the immediate things you need (or want) to know, but can also teach with the broader range of the field in mind - the things you don't know you need or want to know yet, the things that will eventually let you go deeper and farther.

Context wtihin the larger topic. A good teacher can give you context within a larger topic - explaining why things are done this way, because they understand how it connects to the source, but also (ideally) to more recent discoveries/improvements/variations.

Feedback and specific advice. This is probably the obvious one: a good teacher can give you feedback that will help you get around blocks and frustrations much more quickly. In some subjects (and I'd say magic is definitely one of them), a good teacher can help you avoid things that might be dangerous, needlessly upsetting, or not good for you in the long term.

(I've also done serious music training, and a lot of teaching there is 'yeah, doing it that way is fine now, but it won't work when you start playing more complex music' and/or 'if you play regularly, holding the instrument/your hands that way is going to lead to injury.' Magic has a bunch of similar things.)

A cohesive program of study. There are lots of ways to learn lots of subjects, but in general, people usually learn better if they have a chance to learn something, practice it, integrate it, and then do some more new things. A good teacher can structure how they teach so that you're regularly both learning new things, and reinforcing core skills.

Introducing you to things you didn't know you needed. I think the best teachers introduce you to things you previously weren't interested in, or cared about, and make you see why they matter.

I know my own witchcraft training had a bunch of topics in it where if you'd asked me in advance, I would have said 'Meh' in the tones of someone who likes learning about lots of things, but for whom those particular things were not going to hit the top of the priority list any time soon. And yet, once they were part of the expected things I was going to learn, I found myself using and applying them regularly.

In terms of online or correspondence teaching, I have two articles on my website that might help you with evaluating options: questions you should ask about online training, and Online training: more to think about and you might find both of them helpful.

[Allaya]

Hi all. Has anyone here, especially anyone who is older, ever had a teacher in terms of magick? I just want to know if it ever works out, because I've heard some horror stories about people who just didn't know what they were doing and kind of ruined things for their students. But, I've also heard really good things. The thing is, I also especially want to know if anyone here has ever had a teacher about magick who they didn't physically meet, at least not a first, sort of like a correspondence course? I am considering this but am just wondering if it is a super-bad idea or anything like that.

 
I did an online correspondence course with a Big Name Pagan a couple of years ago. It was an unmitigated disaster. Lack of preparedness, very poor communication between staff and students, no rubric or guidance on how tasks were to be completed. How one could operate several years with that level of disorganization...I still cannot wrap my brain around.

I do not know how commonplace that is among pagan correspondence classes, but one should bear in mind that "runs a class" does not equal "has any training in how to teach".

[HermitSong]

I read up on this unguided course

 
Thanks for sharing this. This is very interesting and I'm pleased to have come across it. It seems to require a lot of investment into OBE training though.

Are there any other resources like this?

[Christinia Forshee]

Thanks for sharing this. This is very interesting and I'm pleased to have come across it. It seems to require a lot of investment into OBE training though.

Are there any other resources like this?

I would definitely like to find more resources like this, but I don't really know of any right now? I have been googling around a bit, though.

Basically, what I am thinking of doing isn't unguided, nor is it an actual class. Some things have happened recently in my life, changes for the better, and I met this gal, a few years older than me, who offered to teach me about magick. We aren't physically in the same area, so it would be online.

She doesn't do group classes, but she has had other students online, though, and she's not charging anything because she says teaching "keeps her sharp" and stuff like that. She had me take a short written test-like thing to decide if this was something she wanted to do, but she says she thinks it will work out well potentially but makes no guarantees. She said she wants me to stop being her student if I ever feel like I'm not learning or it doesn't meet my needs, but w/ that as well she said that if she feels like we're not doing well she'll just stop teaching me and I don't know how I feel about that? o-o

The thing is I have never even done any kind of live chat w/ her yet we just talk via email and stuff, so that might make things hard but ppl do make it work that way. The cool thing that really really really makes me want to study w/ her though is that she is pr. secular and isn't Wiccan or Pagan or Christian or anything, or more or less separates religion from magick either way which is just how I like it. I do not currently have religious beliefs but I may someday... I don't know. I just got into witchcraft on its own instead of religions involving magick or anything. I have nothing against religious witches though but it just isn't for me.

Another cool thing she said was that she will send me some of her old books that she is no longer using, and I am quite broke/don't have a lot of resources so that would be really good for me. She said something about sending me a deck of Tarot cards, too, so that's good, as well.

I just worry I'll end up messing up, like it'll turn out that I just can't learn via the internet or something. I've never taken any kind of course online so I dunno. Or I also worry that it will turn out that she only THINKS she knows enough to teach, and is super-disorganized or something. *shrug* I have a while to decide basically - very open-ended situation.

[missgraceless]

Hi all. Has anyone here, especially anyone who is older, ever had a teacher in terms of magick? I just want to know if it ever works out, because I've heard some horror stories about people who just didn't know what they were doing and kind of ruined things for their students. But, I've also heard really good things. The thing is, I also especially want to know if anyone here has ever had a teacher about magick who they didn't physically meet, at least not a first, sort of like a correspondence course? I am considering this but am just wondering if it is a super-bad idea or anything like that.

I've never had a "teacher," exactly, but my best friend's mom is a pagan and she's kinda my mentor/someone I look up to.

The best part is that I met my best friend when we were about 6 since we lived down the street from each other. But I didn't meet her mom until about 10 years later AFTER I'd already discovered paganism from someone else. The first time I did meet her, we both kinda stared for a second until she flat out said, "you're a witch." I was like, "um...yes?" It threw me off guard at first but now when I visit I go to see her more than my best friend. >.>

She herself has been studying under Christopher Penczak for a few years now, and before I moved to a different state we'd do some of his guided meditations together.

I'm more Buddhist-leaning than I used to be, but I do always love her company and she's always been more of a mother to me than my actual mother.


Sorry for the rambling, I just woke up a few minutes ago.

[Jenett]

She said she wants me to stop being her student if I ever feel like I'm not learning or it doesn't meet my needs, but w/ that as well she said that if she feels like we're not doing well she'll just stop teaching me and I don't know how I feel about that? o-o

I can understand that it can feel nebulous - but I think it's also realistic to say "I'm not asking you for big commitments, and I'm making it clear you shouldn't expect major long-term ones from me, at least right now." You two barely know each other!

There are a ton of witchcraft (and other Pagan) topics where a more relaxed, see how it goes approach can work fine (this is what my Seeking site does, and there's a lot of material there!)

Long-term negotiation is more critical if you're looking at doing more intense discussion/self-transformation/learning things where stopping in the middle can be problematic (such as training designed to lead to initiation). In those cases it's a lot more important to have a "Okay, here's what I'm committing to providing so long as the following things happen (you do the work, you treat people involved with basic respect, whatever.) If you decide it's not for you, here's how you say you want to stop. If we decide we can't continue, here's what we'll do."

If you have concerns, it's totally fair to ask some more questions, though. Like: "With other people you've taught, how has the teaching ended? Are there people where it's ended badly? What did you do to avoid that? If you felt you had to stop, how have you communicated that in the past? How would you communicate it to me, most likely?"

I just worry I'll end up messing up, like it'll turn out that I just can't learn via the internet or something. I've never taken any kind of course online so I dunno. Or I also worry that it will turn out that she only THINKS she knows enough to teach, and is super-disorganized or something. *shrug* I have a while to decide basically - very open-ended situation.

 
It's totally fair to ask more questions here, too. (And it may be that you can learn online, but not her method! Email works great for some people - I'd prefer it over chat, most of the time, because I can be more thorough.)

Things I'd think about asking:
- What topics would you want to start with, and why?
- About how long do you think it might take to cover those topics?
- What kind of things might you ask me to do as part of learning? (exercises, written work, etc.)
- How will you know if I'm learning/progressing?
- If that goes well, how do we decide what the next things are?
- How will we evaluate how it's going for both of us? Would it make sense to arrange a time we talk about that specifically, maybe a month or two in?
- What's the best method for addressing any concerns/things I don't feel comfortable with/things that aren't working for me?
- Are there any limits on me looking at other sources of information / asking about what we're doing in other places? [see note below]

But on the other hand, you're in a low-commitment setting. If it doesn't work for you, you can stop doing it, or ask about doing something slightly different. (I mean, there are ways any teacher can potentially mess you up, but if you're working in email, you have plenty of time to look at a request, decide how you feel about it, if you need to ask more questions before you try something.)

On the 'is it okay to discuss this elsewhere' - doing so can be a very powerful tool in avoiding problematic stuff. (For example, if you get asked something you're not sure about, you could ask here, browse old posts, do an online search. You might not find complete answers, but you'd probably find a lot that would help you figure out the next step.)

Some training groups and teachers have limits on what you can discuss (or do) outside of the training. Others will ask that you not 'read ahead' about some topics. This can be a sign of abusive stuff, but it can also be a 'we want you to come at this from a particular progression, and messing with that can affect how well the whole progression works'. Healthy teaching situations can talk about the differences.

(The group I trained with asked us not to do anything we hadn't been taught in class, even if we had previously done those things on our own, because we were learning new methods. If we had something we really wanted, we could ask for an exception, and they were generally granted after a bit of discussion. But in my training, teachers also take on some direct responsibilty for the student, so the student doing something that messed them up obligated the teacher to help fix it, and doing that to a teacher without warning is rude, at the minimum.)

[Christinia Forshee]

I can understand that it can feel nebulous - but I think it's also realistic to say "I'm not asking you for big commitments, and I'm making it clear you shouldn't expect major long-term ones from me, at least right now." You two barely know each other!

There are a ton of witchcraft (and other Pagan) topics where a more relaxed, see how it goes approach can work fine (this is what my Seeking site does, and there's a lot of material there!)

Long-term negotiation is more critical if you're looking at doing more intense discussion/self-transformation/learning things where stopping in the middle can be problematic (such as training designed to lead to initiation). In those cases it's a lot more important to have a "Okay, here's what I'm committing to providing so long as the following things happen (you do the work, you treat people involved with basic respect, whatever.) If you decide it's not for you, here's how you say you want to stop. If we decide we can't continue, here's what we'll do."

If you have concerns, it's totally fair to ask some more questions, though. Like: "With other people you've taught, how has the teaching ended? Are there people where it's ended badly? What did you do to avoid that? If you felt you had to stop, how have you communicated that in the past? How would you communicate it to me, most likely?"


 
It's totally fair to ask more questions here, too. (And it may be that you can learn online, but not her method! Email works great for some people - I'd prefer it over chat, most of the time, because I can be more thorough.)

Things I'd think about asking:
- What topics would you want to start with, and why?
- About how long do you think it might take to cover those topics?
- What kind of things might you ask me to do as part of learning? (exercises, written work, etc.)
- How will you know if I'm learning/progressing?
- If that goes well, how do we decide what the next things are?
- How will we evaluate how it's going for both of us? Would it make sense to arrange a time we talk about that specifically, maybe a month or two in?
- What's the best method for addressing any concerns/things I don't feel comfortable with/things that aren't working for me?
- Are there any limits on me looking at other sources of information / asking about what we're doing in other places? [see note below]

But on the other hand, you're in a low-commitment setting. If it doesn't work for you, you can stop doing it, or ask about doing something slightly different. (I mean, there are ways any teacher can potentially mess you up, but if you're working in email, you have plenty of time to look at a request, decide how you feel about it, if you need to ask more questions before you try something.)

On the 'is it okay to discuss this elsewhere' - doing so can be a very powerful tool in avoiding problematic stuff. (For example, if you get asked something you're not sure about, you could ask here, browse old posts, do an online search. You might not find complete answers, but you'd probably find a lot that would help you figure out the next step.)

Some training groups and teachers have limits on what you can discuss (or do) outside of the training. Others will ask that you not 'read ahead' about some topics. This can be a sign of abusive stuff, but it can also be a 'we want you to come at this from a particular progression, and messing with that can affect how well the whole progression works'. Healthy teaching situations can talk about the differences.

(The group I trained with asked us not to do anything we hadn't been taught in class, even if we had previously done those things on our own, because we were learning new methods. If we had something we really wanted, we could ask for an exception, and they were generally granted after a bit of discussion. But in my training, teachers also take on some direct responsibilty for the student, so the student doing something that messed them up obligated the teacher to help fix it, and doing that to a teacher without warning is rude, at the minimum.)

 
I kind of want to just ask her those questions verbatim.

One thing that is kind of weirding me out that happened just today is I asked her for her real (non magical/craft) name and she said no because she doesn't know me well enough yet. I was all, "You know MY real name," and she basically said yeah, but you should not of told me. She said basically that it's not safe to tell ppl your real name sometimes, and I think she just meant online? But she might have meant magic in general - I did not ask.

[Jenett]

I kind of want to just ask her those questions verbatim.

Feel free to borrow whichever of those questions you like.

(I, um, might not start by asking all of them at once, though, because that could be a bit overwhelming. Starting with "So, what things would you see us covering and how do you see that progressing", "What kinds of things would you be asking me to do as part of the learning?" and "Can we talk a bit about other people you've taught, and how that's gone / what you've done if you felt it wasn't working out." would probably be where I'd start, with followups from there as needed.)

One thing that is kind of weirding me out that happened just today is I asked her for her real (non magical/craft) name and she said no because she doesn't know me well enough yet. I was all, "You know MY real name," and she basically said yeah, but you should not of told me. She said basically that it's not safe to tell ppl your real name sometimes, and I think she just meant online? But she might have meant magic in general - I did not ask.

 
This is something there's a lot of variation about: personally, I tell people my legal name when they actually need it, which is usually about the point where we're talking about face to face contact (meeting, phone numbers - I'm not a phone person, so basically very few people get my phone number because we're just chatting.)

But I also come from the generation of people who came onto the internet in the mid-late 90s, where telling people your legal name was a big deal, and it was very common for people to have an online identity that wasn't clearly associated with their legal name.

Some people do also believe that 'real names' (however defined) give you power over someone, and they're not to be shared lightly. How you define 'real', though, varies. (I have my legal name, which I use mostly only at work and in settings where a legal name matters, I go by Jenett most places otherwise, I have an initiatory name that I only ever use with people I'm in a small, trust-based ritual circle with, and I have a name that I use when I'm priestessing.)

But someone pushing for my legal name when they don't actually need it? That'd bug me a bit. It's not something that someone in a solely online interaction has a right to, and it won't necessarily tell you more about me than knowing the name I use otherwise would (I actually have a much longer and wide-ranging online history as Jenett than I do as my legal name: this is not uncommon for many people.)

Some people also have had past issues with stalkers, disruptive exes, harassment, etc. that make them cautious about sharing identifiable details they don't have to, even with people who are probably not going to be a problem.