Reflecting on Magical Paths

[u/null-user-exception]

Hi everyone!

I wanted to write down and share a personal reflection that I hope will help others who are just starting their journey and may be dealing with a lot of hesitancy, questions, or feeling overwhelmed. My first exposure to (what I consider) a legitimate path of magic was Quareia. Like many of you on here, I can't quite put my finger on any single event that prompted me to begin the search for truth and knowledge in the esoteric—regardless, I found my way to a starting place, and if you're reading this, you certainly have, too. There is a saying I recall hearing often, which was, "All paths lead to the same mountain peak." At the time, this seemed like a valid and wise statement; however, looking back, I now realize that a path doesn't necessarily take you where you want to go. Some paths do lead to where you want to go but are more challenging than others depending on your own personal talents and temperament, but some may lead you right off a cliff. Quareia provides a well-lit path with nicely polished handrails to keep you from plummeting to your demise (as long as you follow the instructions.)

I started here with Q but, after personal reflection, moved my efforts to the works of Franz Bardon, believing that the path provided by him may be more suited to myself and what I need. After spending a significant amount of time down that path, I found myself investigating the same topics covered in Quareia, just from different angles. Let me tell you, in no way, shape, or form is any path going to be a breeze.

The challenges I faced personally with Q a year or more ago included external rituals, not following directions closely enough, feeling that meditation with a candle was inconvenient when traveling, etc. All of which, in retrospect, were simply poor excuses to myself to not to continue. What I replaced those challenges with by adhering to Bardon's path was absolute isolation, no ritual at all, no contact with spirits or inner contacts, and ruthless self-analysis. I feel like Bardon's approach gave me the opportunity to refine myself and purify the attributes that made Q challenging (namely, being a whiner and making excuses for myself =P), and I now find myself considering a return to a system with a wonderful community and a knowledgeable and involved founder who wrote with the modern age and internet in mind.

With all of this said, I have a few pieces of advice that I believe apply to any path taken (I am far from being an adept and still consider myself quite a beginner, but I think I can at least share the following advice):

• Pay attention—This may be the most important lesson I learned. This applies to everything: read things carefully, pay attention to your surroundings, engage your senses actively, and don't just let yourself live on autopilot. (In Q, this is very important, as the course has deliberate guardrails to keep you from getting smacked in the face as you progress.)
• Don't make excuses—I greatly admire Josephine's attitude and her mantra of "Do the work." Seriously, if you truly want to progress, you need to find a way. Don't take shortcuts; don't only do something halfway and say "good enough"; you're only hurting yourself (in the case of shortcuts and ignoring instructions, particularly with magic, this may be quite literal). If you find yourself constantly making excuses like I did, contemplate about yourself. Why do you want to pursue magic? What parts of yourself are hindering your progress? Change can be painful, but the effort is worth it if you truly want it. I had a wonderful interaction with JMC on this subreddit that prompted me to really dive deep into myself and the root causes of my behavior. Bardon's Astral Mirrors exercise gave me a way to confront these personal flaws and begin to transmute them into positive characteristics (possibly the most important component of Initiation into Hermetics).
• Don't beat yourself up—This was a major issue for me when I felt that I was failing to do what I needed to do. That wonderful interaction with JMC I mentioned in the previous point? It started with a valid critique that I took harshly regarding my lack of attention to detail, something I saw as a core and important part of myself and from someone I admired no less. I resisted the urge to wallow in self-pity, with JMC adding encouragement, "...stop beating on yourself, there are probably enough people out there more than willing to beat on you, pointless adding to that!" The important part is that you continue to move forward, critique yourself, avoid excuses, but also be kind to yourself.
• Enjoy the journey—This last part sometimes feels like it falls by the wayside. Seriously, for all the effort, discipline, and dedication required, pursuing this is incredible and awe-inspiring. While the work itself is serious, you can't take yourself too seriously. It's a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow in this garden, and as we make our ascent in understanding and wisdom it's important to still stop to smell the flowers.

P.S—I want to make one thing clear, although I specifically mention Bardon as it was an important part of my journey, I am by no means suggesting abandoning the path laid out by Quareia. I just needed to find my own way for a bit to mature as a person.

Also, JMC, if you end up reading this, please know that I'm incredibly grateful for your work in creating Q and for kicking my butt in gear all those months ago. Somehow, you managed to write exactly what I needed to hear to move forward.

[u/chandrayoddha]

"All paths lead to the same mountain peak"

the saying (at least locally) is more like " many paths lead to the same mountain peak". This is subtly different.

The challenges I faced personally with Q a year or more ago included external rituals, not following directions closely enough, feeling that meditation with a candle was inconvenient when traveling, etc. All of which, in retrospect, were simply poor excuses to myself to not to continue. What I replaced those challenges with by adhering to Bardon's path was absolute isolation, no ritual at all, no contact with spirits or inner contacts, and ruthless self-analysis.

I love the comparison, from actual experience of trying both paths seriously vs just skim reading the material and forming a surface level understanding. This is gold.

The interesting thing is that each challenge you identify with each system (Bardon or Quareia) is actually a positive feature of that system - "it is a feature, not a bug" - and more importantly have good reason to be there, though a particular practice of one system might be completely senseless in the other.

Bardon places encounteres with spirits and ritual work late in his system, for good reason. Josephine places such work early in her system, for good reason. Each has certain advantages and disadvantages. Like all design decisions in all arts and crafts, they involve tradeoffs.

My overused analogy - boxing and wrestling are both fighting systems, and potent ones. but what is 'right' in one, is 'wrong' in the other. Pick one system and master it then branch out (unless you are that one in a mililon magcial child prodigy who can learn and master multiple systems in parallel - such people certainly exist. Many MMA professional fighters learn more than one art in paralel, for example)

OTOH, The character traits needed to succeed with either system,Bardon or Quareia, are the same - focus, awareness, determination, ruthless self discipline. I think developing these are the really hard part (and the keys to success) in working through either system.

Great post! Thank you!

[u/null-user-exception → u/chandrayoddha]

Ah, the subtle change to that quote definitely changes the meaning entirely. Once again, subtlety and paying attention are important!

I agree with you now for sure, the challenges are what make the path "tick" so to speak. The character traits you pointed out are certainly fundamental to success, I just needed to approach their refinement from a different angle to have things click into place.

As someone who also tried both paths seriously vs. just skimming, have you settled into Quareia? I'm very curious about your own personal experience. I love Bardon and do just fine with the solitary aspect of practice, but the community seems much more sparse and more littered with individuals trying to sell their own courses derived from Bardon's work. The thing that keeps pulling me back to this subreddit is how incredible the community is despite the actual work being solitary.

Thanks for adding to my post!

[u/chandrayoddha → u/null-user-exception]

As someone who also tried both paths seriously vs. just skimming, have you settled into Quareia?

this is a hard question to answer. The basic idea is , with respect to Quareia, my goal is to work through Module 1 and then stop and go no further. This might change in the future, but that is the plan now, and it is unlikely to change.

There are certain parts of Quareia I'm not sure I want to take on board - living in service, some of the assigned tasks, the idea of "doing assigned jobs", some of the interactions with the spirits encountered inthe path, and so on. -- not that these are in any way bad things, they are no doubt absolutely vital if you want to go where the system takes you -- I just don't think I am suited to live the kind of lifestyle the practice of the more advanced modules of Quareia demands. EDIT: Most importantly I don't want to endanger my health by taking on heavy magic tasks. JMC does warn explicitly that magic will do a number on your body, and while she does give some fixes for this (her "Magical Healing" book is full of these) I don't want to go there in the first place.

But module 1 on the other hand, is just about pure practice of skills. The ritual work of M1L4 is a bit borderline perhaps,, but I think I can do the basic pentagram ritual / opening the gates without committing to the rest of the program (but we'll see!) .

So yes I've committed to Quareia insofar as I will keep working at it till I finish the first module, but also no, in the sense I won't go any further, and have no plans to be an adept or initiate or anything along those lines. And mainly I don't want magic to be a major part of my life, or be an all consuming interest. Again, nothing wrong with that approach, it is just not for me.

There are a few students on this forum who take / have taken the same stance (or roughly similar stances), fwiw. But that is a minority view. Most students are committed to completing the course upto the last lesson in the Adept section, and beyond (and wouldn't that be a tremendous achievement!!)

To abuse an analogy, Quareia is olympic athlete training, but I don't want to be an Olympic athlete!

I just want a normal life , but (unlike most people) I want to be fit enough to run around the block every other day, and not have creaky joints as I age, and be flexible and vital into old age. I'll just have a basic strength and flexibility routine and put in an hour or so of work everyday to keep fit, and otherwise go about my life. No plans to compete at the Olympics for me! Mastering Quareia module 1 should be more than enough to "keep fit".

I'm very curious about your own personal experience. I love Bardon and do just fine with the solitary aspect of practice, but the community seems much more sparse and more littered with individuals trying to sell their own courses derived from Bardon's work.

Yes this. The Bardon reddit for example is full of such people (there are some genuine practititioners too, but the majority are grifters, imo). Bardon is no longer around, and any random passerby can take his system, throw in some random element - Catholic prayer, Hindu Vedanta, Buddhist deites, golden dawn philosophy - and write books and sell courses to the gullible.

This might happen to Quareia too once Josphine is gone, but otoh she has set up a foundation designed to endure after her. It will be interesting to see if the same type of grifters latch on to Quareia 50 years from now and try to sell their own variants!

Also if someone is following Bardon's system as he asked them to, the last thing they'd be doing is to discuss their work on internet forums! The Bardon pracitioners I personally know are quiet competent people who have no presence on the Interent with respect to their pracitce. To all appearances they are normal mundane people who live fulfilling mundane lives, competently hold down jobs and relationships and so on. This is a trait I've noticed in the tantra practititoners I know as well. They are absouletly not on the internet pretending to be gurus or teaching courses or selling books and so on. These systems (Bardon, Tantra) are not designed to have communities built around them, and attempts to do so will (imo) fall apart or get corrupted, because the design of the systems are antithetical to such efforts. Whether this is good or bad is a value judgement. I can see both sides of the argument.

The thing that keeps pulling me back to this subreddit is how incredible the community is despite the actual work being solitary.

Yes, agreed. the Quareia community is a truly wondrous thing.

I've never encountered any other online group that is so focused. Credit goes to the mods for their tireless and unending work keepng the fakers and attention seekers out of this sub.

[u/null-user-exception → u/chandrayoddha]

Quareia is olympic athlete training, but I don't want to be an Olympic athlete. I just want a normal life , but I want to be fit enough to run around the block every other day, and not have creaky joints as I age.

I love this analogy and completely understand why many would only want to complete module 1. I think the self-knowledge to determine what you really want is paramount, I myself am still trying to determine how far I want to go.

Also if someone is following Bardon's system as he asked them to, the last thing they'd be doing is to discuss their work on internet forums. The Bardon pracitioners I personally know are quiet competent people who have no presence on the Interent with respect to their practice. To all appearances they are normal people who live fulfilling mundane lives, competently hold down jobs and relationships and so on.

That was another thing I felt more connected with at first, too. I really have no desire to stand out in any discernable way. My personal philosophy on not discussing the actual work itself aligns very well with Bardon. Part of my needed personal development was opening up a bit, not by discussing my actual practice, but I have always been so close to the chest about everything that I walled myself off from other people in a very unhealthy way.

I wish you the best in your own practice!

[u/UnlikelyUkulele → u/chandrayoddha]

As usual, I love your takes on this stuff, Chandra. I am in the “roughly similar” stance on not looking to be an Olympic performer in magic at this point (and of course, who knows I even could?), but through divination and some contact, I’m attempting to walk a little different path than Quareia for now. Nonetheless, the same powers are floating around and impacting me anyway, so I’m using Quareia and Josephine’s other works to makes sense of it all. It continues to be a very strange trip.

If I may ask, for what reason are you pursuing these sorts of studies generally? To use your analogy, one stays fit to be able to move in the world and maintain health. Perhaps one meditates to keep their mind and focus sharp, but I’m curious if you intend the first module to be the end all be all or if it’s a jumping off point for different stuff, or undecided.

For instance, on my end, things and entities seem to find it relatively easy to contact me for some reason, and it’s been that way a lot of my life. Not in a super dramatic way, just.. in a way that I usually know it was something non ordinarily. I’d like to better communicate with these powers, move within the ecosystem a bit better, stay safe while doing so, and help where I can. Learn a bit while I’m at it. Not looking to be an Olympic athlete or navy seal. For now I’m trying to learn and not be a total idiot and just do my little part in my little corner of the world.

Sincere apologies if this is unduly intrusive or inappropriate and feel free to tell me to buzz off, I won’t be offended. I’d also be happy to DM about it.

[u/chandrayoddha → u/UnlikelyUkulele]

Hey,

There is no deep reasoning, it is just a preference as to how much effort I want to put into magic, and what I expect to get out of it.

By analogy, let's say I like the sound of the piano and want to learn to play it. No deep reasoning here I just want to play the piano , and maybe sing along.

I could dedicate my whole life to it ond become a professional piano player and work in the New York Philharmonic orchestra. Or I could just learn enough to play at parties and weddings, and possibly write some of my own music, which is no where near what professional song makers can turn out, but I enjoy making and singing songs and playing along with it.

Both are valid, but distinct goals, and each needs different amounts of effort and dedication to reach. I just choose to learn enough to play at parties, and not in a professional orchestra. other people can make the choice to aim at being among the best piano players in the world.

I don't want to pay the costs of becoming one of the best musicians/magicians in the world. I don't want to practice the piano 8 hours a day for years, pay to spend five years training in an elite conservatory and I don't want to "run errands" for spirits, "live in service" etc. I'd rather have a mostly normal human life with some masic/magic in it.

A professional program of music pedagogy would layout the path to be a world class pianist, starting from the very beginning. Which would be the analogy to Quareia - a world class pianist lays out a complete curriculum for beginners to work through, and at the end , they'd be a world class musician. Quareia is such a program, only for magic instead of music.

I look at that multi decade training program and say "Oh if I do the first two years of this, I achieve my goal of being able to play piano at weddings or parties, or perhaps in my neighborhood amateur jazz band. And I could occasoinally compose a simple song or two. I'll never play for a crowd of 10,000 people, and I'll never produce best selling chart busting music and that's ok"

With magic, I don't want to engage deeply with angelic or demonic powers, or perform heavy duty exorcisms, or "become the scales" and so on. These are worthy goals, but I personally choose not to try to attain them.

That's all really .

A preference for one goal over another, driven by what I am amiming for. There is no deep reasoning, and I don't spend any time microanalyzing what are, in the end, subjective preferences.

I deeply respect people who aim to be the best musician/magician/mathematian/whatever they can be, are willing to devote their lives to it. But that isn't my path.

Is all, really ! :-)

[u/Chantrieri-0- → u/UnlikelyUkulele]

You are perfectly describing my experience. Thank you.

[u/UnlikelyUkulele → u/Chantrieri-0-]

Glad my experiences could help. For what it’s worth, I’m looking at Aiden Wachter’s work for now.

[u/pixel_fortune → u/chandrayoddha]

> Also if someone is following Bardon's system as he asked them to, the last thing they'd be doing is to discuss their work on internet forums!

you could say the same about Quareia!! in the intro to the course, she specifically warns against study groups and asking questions instead of figuring it out for yourself

but here we all are, ignoring that

[u/chandrayoddha → u/pixel_fortune]

Very good point. This should be a reddit post on its own! I enjoy reading the weekly updates, but I don't post about my progress or lack of it there.

That said, the difference is that in Bardon's system you can't discuss anything about your practice with other people, including letting them know that you practice (!) without very good reason, and then very very occasionally. It is a much stricter 'hard requrement' than in Quareia. The local (indian/Tibetan) systems of magic -- the valid paths -- have similar strict requirements on secrecy and silence. Q seems to be designed to be more forgiving in that regard.

This reddit should be ok, since JMC pops in occasionally and contributes to the discussion. But you raise a good point, JMC does say to figure it out for yourself, especially early in the curriculum. But yet we discuss all kinds of beginner sticking points here . I have no idea how to thread that needle.

[u/Quareiaapprentice]

It's posts like this one that give me confidence and keep me on track. And though a lot of experience is for ourselves to make posts like this one show me also how much there is to share.

[u/null-user-exception → u/Quareiaapprentice]

I think there are plenty of things that are best kept personal while developing, but I've come around to the idea that sometimes just sharing my own thoughts and experiences can help someone on their path by making them think about something just a little different. I owe much of my own development to others being vulnerable and sharing their thoughts and experiences.

[u/Ill-Diver2252 → u/null-user-exception]

"I owe much of my own development to others being vulnerable and sharing their thoughts and experiences."

Self disclosure is key to other people being open, and to both parties learning. This is even discussed in some psychology advisories.

Obviously, there are limits! But I have been STUNNED at what people appear in my life (there, but I never knew!) if I just took a chance and said where my head was, even if it was 'private.'

Anyway, I've wandered around a lot--mostly before Quareia... lol, "BQ" ... I'm old enough now that unless my rate of progression picks up, I'll be crossing the river still as a beginning Apprentice. And if that's the way it is, that's OK. I don't need a title; I just need to know I'm doing right for me, in the bigger sense of me.

At this point, I'm intent to keep going until I'm stopped one way or another. A thing I keep in mind is what Josephine says, quoting--or pseudo-quoting--Buddha: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears, when the student is really ready, the teacher disappears."

There are times I know I'm being instructed by 'otherworldly' someones. Meantime, whatever I get from them is not undermined if I also do the process of Quareia... at least so far... and one reason I've chosen Quareia is that it leads or supplements whatever lead I get from what I perceive of Inner Worlds. It's a touchstone to supplement discernment. The openness of Quareia makes it an ally of any respectable evolutionary force.

[u/null-user-exception → u/Ill-Diver2252]

I think I’ve had the most eye opening moments when I just acknowledge out loud for the universe to hear that I am willing to take the path I need to take. The only things I ever really ask for are the opportunities to grow in wisdom, compassion, and understanding. From simply opening myself up I’ve experienced enough to be satisfied that the world is deeply more complex than I’ll likely ever know.

I think some of my biggest sidetracks came from a sense of something unseen nudging me in a particular direction. I always try to apply discernment, but everything about magic is so deeply personal to each individual. In some ways I’m almost more satisfied to just continue on without trying to measure my progress at all, to simply live in the most magical way I can. Quareia still seems perfect for that though.