why it’s not like woodworking

In an earlier post, I made an analogy between methods and motivations for studying and practicing magic that compared it to hypothetical methods and motivations for studying and practicing woodworking. There’s an important distinction I’d like to make between these two crafts, though.

First, I’m going to talk about Julius Evola. Evola was a prolific author on occult and spiritual topics in the mid-20th century. He was, by any measure, an influential figure on the occult scene and wrote many books on magic. He was also a fascist. I don’t mean that as the sort of catch-all political insult as the word gets used nowadays; he was a literal fascist, an ardent supporter of Mussolini, friends with Nazis, and he described himself as a “superfascist.” He had all the evil, genocidal ideologies you’d expect from such a person. There is nothing about his biography that redeems him in any way as a human being, and his ideology remained odious to the end.

I haven’t read Evola. I probably never will. I’ve been criticized for not giving him a chance because of politics, as though that is a minor point. I am a voracious reader and I am interested in 20th century magic from an intellectual standpoint, and you’d think I would want to at least study this author from a scholarly perspective to better understand that aspect of the culture. I don’t, though. I am not only uninterested in what he might have to say, I am actively repulsed by it because of who he was. “But,” the counterargument goes, “his ideas and practices could be valuable, even if he was not someone you would like.” This is not a hypothetical counterargument; I have had this conversation, and variations of it regarding other writers and teachers that I find personally objectionable. As with the woodworker, he could be a terrible person but an excellent craftsman, and shouldn’t I want to learn to craft? 

This is where it’s not like woodworking. I don’t think the lives and characters of the occultists we choose as teachers are irrelevant. If you’re learning woodworking, it doesn’t matter is your teacher wants to murder half the planet or is a bitter old drug addict. Either way, you can learn to carve wood. The product of occult practice is not an object, though. It’s your human life. You wouldn’t want to learn wood carving from someone who made poor wood carvings, and you wouldn’t want to learn magic from someone who made themselves into a terrible person. Their magic has failed them. 

I’ve been at this a long time, and I’ve made the mistake before of looking to teachers who were clearly not good people. I told myself the same thing to try to excuse them: “Well, he’s clearly a sociopath but he sure does know a lot of cool lore. She screams at her students and reduces them to tears on a regular basis, but she knows a lot about plants. Maybe that’s just the price of admission to learn what they know.” In every single case, what I learned was either useless, actively detrimental, or was something I could have gotten without all the drama and pain of dealing with them. If you find yourself constantly making excuses for your teacher, they are simply not worth the trouble.

I’m not out to imitate my teachers or to become like them; there are two teachers who right now I consider to be the primary influences on my magical life at this stage, and I don’t personally have much in common with either of them or want to imitate their lifestyle. However, their magic has brought them to a place where, to all appearances, they are leading fulfilled, happy, peaceful, productive lives. That has become for me a much more important source of magical authority than any amount of study or knowledge. 

We choose who we see as authorities. Whatever other people might say or think, it always comes down to your own discernment as to what voices are valuable in your world. I am sure that Julius Evola knew all kinds of things that I don’t, but I don’t value his voice because of who he was. I don’t want to become whatever kind of human his work might help me to be. 

Magic is not just something we learn about and practice like a hobby. It’s a conditioning of the self. What kind of self do you want to make? 

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