Showing all posts tagged classes

In scholarship, witchcraft

Invoking PGM Powers: Prologue

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the end of February, Aradia and I, along with the rest of the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective, signed up for Jack Grayle’s year-long class on the Greek Magical Papyri: PGM Praxis: 50 Rites for 50 Nights, offered via the Blackthorne School. We, along with seventy-odd others, are following Jack down a rabbit hole I’ve been circling for a while, putting the fragmentary spells of the PGM into practice, and I’m very excited.

PGM Praxis: 50 Rites for 50 Nights | Jack Grayle | The Blackthorne School

It’s worth noting, here at the outset, that while I have been practicing magic since 1996, have attended lots of workshops and have studied a lot of systems, I have never before taken a long-form, externally-directed class. Intense study periods have often coincided with my best blogging periods. On the one hand, I imagine that will be true of this, as well; on the other, there are course materials that I cannot, in good faith, share to those not taking the class.

I have, of course, done some work with the Greek Magical Papyri before. I have been using the Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphist (PGM V. 96-172) since Jack Faust introduced me to it back in 2012. I have made more than one pass through the book since, looking for either rites to experiment with (though I never had the nerve / inspiration to do any of the ones that caught my eye) and for inspiration for magical practices for characters in my novels.

But this is a guided tour. With homework. And technical support. And I am very, very excited.

We’re into the third week, now, as I type this. We have done our first three rituals (week two had a two-fer) and are winding up to do our fourth. I’ve spent most of the last two weeks on an escalating high of magical power, more optimistic and resilient than I have been in years. Only the one-two punch of a Bad Day in Retail and the Archonic vampirism of Daylight Savings Time has been able to blunt my ecstasy. There will be more about that in the next post.

My classmates — not just the KCSAC — are starting to open up about their adaptations and experiences, and it’s fucking fascinating. Unfortunately, that’s the last I’ll be able to say about that, though I hope to encourage the rest of the Collective to blog about their experiences, and will share the public posts of any of our classmates who want such attention.

It is, of course, possible that I will be less enthused about things at some point (or points) over the course of the remaining 47 weeks. That’s how things go, sometimes. But right now, I’m really, really stupid excited. And I’m going to hold on to that for as long as I can.

On a technical note: we are, of course, using the University of Chicago Press edition of The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, as edited by Hans Dieter Betz. We are at times augmenting this by use of the Orphic Hymns, for which I usually favor the Apostolos N. Athanassakis edition. I also happen to have a copy of Stephen Skinner’s Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic, which may come in handy.

The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, Volume 1
In witchcraft

Developing My Teaching Style

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 2 Comments

Last month I took my second turn teaching at HSA Spirit Circle.  My first round, in October, was a reiteration of my Spirit Conjuration workshop that I ran at Heartland last year.  This time, I tried something new: a class focusing on elemental energy and circle-casting.  The course built on my oldest work – energy manipulation of that style that everyone I know from the 1990s learned somewhere, but which I have seen mentioned in few books and really explored in only one – and then intense elemental experiences of the rituals my crew and I designed and led for HPF 2015 and ’16.  It was a really great class, and I’ll probably write about it in detail eventually — maybe after I run it a second time at HPF this coming year — but that’s not actually the interesting part to me in this moment.

The class on spirit conjuration went fairly well, and the purification ritual I did after was reasonably received (and exceptionally potent when I re-wrote it as an outdoor ritual a couple weeks later).  But there was a …. dryness to it.  I was definitely speaking from an academic place.  It was a lecture not a class, and I don’t think anyone went back out into the world more ready to conjure spirits than they were when they came in.    Which, on the one hand, makes sense: I’m an academic as much as I am anything else.  All the very best classes I’ve taken were lectures and discussions.  My hands-on training was all much more informal, and over longer periods of time.  But the Kansas City Pagan and magical communities are … not academics, by and large.  And while the particular individuals who attend any class I’m teaching are probably not the anti-intellectuals causing so many problems in the community, it does no good to talk over their heads.  Also, I was super nervous and it really showed.

The elemental energies class, however, was a different matter entirely.  Rather than teaching from a place of expertise and authority, I came from a place of nerdy enthusiasm.  Instead of giving a lecture on a subject about which I was knowledgeable – though there was a citation-heavy introduction – I ran a hands-on class where I showed a half-dozen people how to do this thing I do.

It went fucking splendidly.  We cast circles.  We conjured the elements.  We passed around orbs of magical power.    People were engaged.  Lively.  There was laughter.  No one even tried to sit out the hands-on portions.  New friends were made.  It was a struggle to kick everyone out at the end of the evening.  Aradia thinks it was one of the very best Spirit Circles we’ve done, almost if not just as good as Shauna Aura Knight’s chanting class and full moon ritual.

In the process, I (re-) learned a thing as well.

I am large and hairy.  I have a resting bitch face that borders on serial killer visage.  I have been accused (perhaps fairly) of arrogance.  I don’t send the signals Pagans want and expect.  These are facts.  Teaching from a place of authority emphasizes all of that in all the worst ways.

Teaching from a place of enthusiasm, however, seems to mitigate all of that.  Even when my enthusiasm strays into the citation-heavy academic side of things, people are less put  off by it.  As an added bonus, I seem to have more fun, as well.

For much of my life, I have prided myself on my adaptability.  When my behavior was not achieving my goals, I changed it.  Tragically, that is exponentially more difficult at 36 than it was at 16.  But this change … this change I think I can make.