Working Alone: Self Initiation and the Graded Path

The magical orders of the nineteenth century taught the Western tradition by stages, in small groups, under a teacher. Before them most students had learned it alone, from books, and today most do so again. Since the papers of the nineteenth century orders were published, anyone can follow their curriculum at home, and many people are doing exactly that, working grade by grade through a published course with no one to examine them. This page is for them. It explains how the old graded systems worked, what self initiation can and cannot mean, and where solitary work most often goes wrong.

How the graded systems worked

In the orders of the occult revival, training followed the Tree of Life upward. After an entrance grade, the student passed through four grades attributed to the four elements, earth, air, water and fire, and to the four lowest spheres of the Tree. Each grade had a body of knowledge to be learned, usually set out in short papers called knowledge lectures, a set of practices to be mastered, an examination, and a ceremony that marked the passage to the next. Only when the four were complete, and a further period of integration had passed, was the student admitted to the work of the center.

The logic of the order is sound and is older than the orders. The student first establishes the body and the daily life, then the mind, then the feelings and imagination, then the will, and only then attempts the union of all four under what is highest. Our course of study gives its second quarter to the same four elements, in a slightly different order.

What self initiation means

The word initiation comes from the Latin for a beginning. In the orders it named a ceremony in which the candidate was led, often blindfolded, through a dramatic ritual that impressed the symbols of the grade upon the mind. Since the ceremonies were published, students working alone have either performed adapted versions on themselves or replaced each ceremony with a fixed period of practice devoted to the element of the grade.

Both approaches can work, provided the purpose of a ceremony is understood. A ceremony marks a threshold, focuses the attention, and makes a commitment visible. It does not do the work. A ceremony can begin what only the student can complete, and a person who has performed every ritual of a grade without doing its daily work has passed through nothing. Conversely, a person who has done the work thoroughly has crossed the threshold whether or not any ceremony marked it.

Choosing a curriculum

There are many published courses, and most of them teach the same material in different voices. Mirela Stokes-Avery's essay Nothing New discusses how to choose among them. Three rules matter more than the choice itself.

One at a time

Follow a single curriculum from beginning to end. Read as widely as you like, but practice narrowly. Two systems followed at once rarely produce two results. More often they produce confusion.

Finish what you begin

The value of a graded course lies in its order. Skipping a stage because it seems dull or easy, usually the earth work, leaves a gap that shows itself later.

Prefer tests to dates

Some courses fix the length of each grade, others let the student move on when the work is mastered. Fixed periods prevent drift but can overwhelm. Open periods allow mastery but invite procrastination. The best arrangement for most people is a minimum period together with a written mark of completion.

An elemental sequence

The table gives one way of organizing the four elemental stages for solitary work. Allow at least three months for each, longer if the mark has not been reached.

When the four are complete, the work turns toward the center: the balancing of the elements in the character, and the aspiration described on our page on the higher self.

Mixing and forcing

Two errors account for most of the harm that solitary students do themselves. The first is mixing: combining breathing and energy practices from different traditions, each designed as part of a complete system with its own safeguards, into an improvised program with none. Practices that are harmless in their own setting can interact badly, and teachers in several traditions warn that the result can be agitation, sleeplessness, headaches or ringing in the ears. The safe course is to practice one system as its authors intended.

The second is forcing. Every tradition that trains the breath, the attention or the subtle body warns against pushing for results. Effort should be steady and moderate, like exercise that builds strength over months rather than an attempt to lift the heaviest weight on the first day. If practice begins to produce physical symptoms or distress, reduce it or stop, and follow the guidance under when to stop and get help. Nothing in the work is worth your health.

What is lost without a teacher

A teacher does four things that a book cannot, and the solitary student must find substitutes for each.

Correction

A teacher sees faults the student cannot see. The nearest substitute is the diary, read back monthly with a critical eye, and if possible a fellow student with whom notes can be compared.

Witness

Commitments kept in secret are easily broken. Tell one trusted person what you have undertaken, in general terms, and when you expect to finish.

A standard

The examination tells the student when a stage is done. Write your own marks of completion before you begin a stage, not when you are tired of it.

Proportion

A teacher keeps the student's ordinary life in view. Keep your work, your friendships and your health in good order, and treat any decline in them as a sign that the practice needs to change.

Common failures

Most of the difficulties of solitary work are not dangerous, only discouraging. They are also predictable.