Don’t waste time! Study with a traditional Mystery School.

Don’t waste time! Study with a traditional Mystery School.

by | Jun 26, 2018 | Community Conversations

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Some people are hesitant to ask me ‘What is a Mystery School?’ One of the oxymorons of being part of the Modern Mystery School is that I want to share with everyone about the personal empowerment and real results that it can bring to your life, but people also think we’re not supposed to talk about it. That’s flat out wrong! For the record, I love talking about the Modern Mystery School, especially after coming to my own understanding, the hard way, about what it was that I was getting myself into.

The truth is, I couldn’t talk about the actual mystery part of a mystery school, because at a certain point, talking just doesn’t help anymore. It’s like that ancient buddhist story about a finger pointing at the moon in the Lankavatara (3rd to 4th cen.), the relevant passage is:

“Be not like the one who looks at the finger-tip. For instance, Mahāmati, when a man with his finger-tip points at something to somebody, the finger-tip may be taken wrongly for the thing pointed at; in like manner, Mahāmati, the people belonging to the class of the ignorant and simple-minded, like those of a childish group, are unable even unto their death to abandon the idea that in the finger-tip of words there is the meaning itself, and will not grasp ultimate reality because of their intent clinging to words which are no more than the finger-tip [pointing] to them.”

Simply put, words (and teachings) are just guides on the path, they are not the ultimate truth. Mystery schools are responsible for maintaining a certain frequency of energy flowing through the Universe, that which enables people to discover their own enlightened state. I’m sorry, but you just have to experience that kind of thing, I can’t really describe it to you. And believe me, I try! My journal is full of failed attempts.

The Modern Mystery School is one of the 7 seven traditional mystery schools. It maintains and protects the keys to our North American mystery tradition. I say ‘traditional’ because there are many branches of mystery teachings that have evolved over time, but they all source their teachings from one of the 7 traditional Mystery Schools. You can see an example of our teachings on Gaia TV with Dr. Theresa Bullard, one of our international instructors and initiates.

One of the most important methods for understanding the validity of a Mystery School’s teachings is to examine its lineage. A valid Mystery School path is one that traces its lineage back not just hundreds, but thousands of years. Now that’s staying power!! Why not study with a school that goes as far back to the source of the knowledge as possible, one that has withstood the test of time?

History shows that the Mystery Schools have successfully empowered people to live life on their own terms. That means demonstrating mastery over life, or creating a ruckus if that’s your style, and people have noticed! Mystery Schools have claimed some pretty famous names in history: King Salomon the Wise was famous not only for the healing temple he built the size of a small city, but also for seeding generations of royal blood within his children. Jesus the Christ gave the Romans an aneurysm when he suggested you could have your own unmediated relationship with God, and now we mark the year based on the year of his death as a martyr for that cause (i.e. this year is 2019 AD—anno Domini). Isaac Newton Sr., one of the most famous scientists of all time said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” Hmm, I wonder who he’s talking about? 

Tell me more about your experience of personal empowerment wisdom traditions. Where have you received permission and the knowledge to be able to take life into your own hands? Please share your responses!

Reflective Quote:

“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.” ― Rumi

¹https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/i-am-a-finger-pointing-to-the-moon-dont-look-at-me-look-at-the-moon/

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History Kicks Back: Magic, Religious discomfort, and Drama

by | May 1, 2017 | Community Conversations

This is the second post in a four-part series describing a brief history of humanity’s attempts to define magic (here’s the first post). In this post, I explore some specific points in Western history worth our attention when discussing the history which the word “magic” has weathered over time. A voluminous quantity of writing from academia and various religious groups have struggled over what magic is, whether it exists, what the word itself means, and what the concept means about the world in which we live. There is also a huge volume of discussions about the nature of magic in many doctrinal religious groups—Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Judeo-Christian paradigms immediately come to mind. Modern mages need to understand the history to grasp the degree to which our perceptions of magic have been set off-kilter.

Many ideological groups whose doctrinal fundamentals are based in fantastical or otherwise “supernatural” forces employ magic as a distinction between taboo and “natural” forces. Great examples of this would be the Judeo-Christian community in the heart of the Roman empire. In an attempt to stand out from the other Pagan monotheistic movements, early Judeo-Christians drew a line in the sand between Godly miracles and supernatural phenomena.

The Christian narrative does not explicitly deny the existence or efficacy of magic: they have plenty of cool folks in the canonical scriptures that are both mages and aren’t inherently wicked people. They’re just not Godly because magic is definitionally not Godly (where laying on hands, or John the Baptist’s ecstatic rites are). Take Simon Magus, a magician who converts to the Church and spends his days casting spells for money—when he comes upon Peter and John praying for folks, Simon offers the apostles money for prayers, and is castigated. Some Christian readings of Simon’s actions emphasize that because he joined the Church to heighten his power, he wasn’t doing it for the right reasons.

Later, Christianity assumed a major role in modern intellectual history (the last 800 years) and ultimately re-shaped our social conception of the supernatural’s role in our lives by banishing superstition to the realms of irrationality and further distancing the Church from its Pagan cousins. This had a peculiar effect: the Church was forced to further retreat into its cloistered definition of Godly influence and rationalism reared its head, further pushing back the domains of knowledge that the Church presided over (planetary physics would be a great example).

As science slowly emerges as a major ideological hegemon, institutional religion’s skirmishes with un-godly magic ultimately contributed to the arsenal of skepticism, rationalism, and anti-superstition that brought science against the Church. When the so-called Copernican Revolution came, both the Church and their enemies suffered.

While Christian history is considered boring and pedantic, its undue influence on the Western World deserves attention. Paganism, and even modern Christianity, have started to dramatically wane in the face of a non-religious majority and an increasingly secular society, but these events initiated an explosive set of ideological reactions, the effects of which we can still see in modern secular thought today.

I would argue that Christianity’s early attempts to define itself differently from its competitors in the Roman Empire laid the intellectual foundation for its own downfall. The line between miracles and magic is a pretty blurry distinction in hindsight from a non-Christian perspective. The Enlightenment only took this to a further extent by establishing Christianity as strictly non-superstitious, pushing it further into an essentialist corner, which only made the Copernican revolution all the more devastating.