I am motivated by a quest for knowledge, that is, by curiosity. I'm an intellectual type and I like to be able to formulate clear ideas about things. My spiritual experiences are very hard for me to understand. I don't even have a good concept of the scope of the subject. What is the spiritual? Is it a group of psychological faculties? Or an arbitrary semantic convention that conflates dissimilar phenomena? Is it a value judgment masquerading as an observational category? Or does it indicate some underlying psychological or metaphysical reality around which we revolve, whether we know it or not?
I can't answer these questions. They may not ultimately be answerable, because spirituality seems to take us outside the realm of reason. However, by doing ritual and meditation by myself and with others, and observing in a phenomenological mode - that is, accepting mental phenomena as real without regard to their accuracy or defensibility - I feel that I am getting closer to understanding parts of the continuum of spirituality. At least I am asking better questions than I used to. My curiosity about the spiritual has become a goal in its own right, whether or not this curiosity furthers my own spiritual development; the spirit has become a subject for psychology.
Largely as a result of my interest in spiritual experience, I have become interested in related subjects, such as the history of Occultism and the social dynamics of spiritual groups. I find that spiritual practice and group membership provide useful resources and observational opportunities to further these studies.
This is all very interesting, at least to me, but by itself it is only "the dogs of reason." There is more.
Books You Might Enjoy:
Phil Hine - Aspects Of Evocation
Phil Legard - An Approach To The Operation Of The Arbatel Of Magic
Melita Denning - The Foundations Of High Magick
Eliphas Levi - The Ritual Of Transcendental Magic
John Coughlin - Out Of The Shadows An Exploration Of Dark Paganism And Magick
