Ok, so I tossed the Ritual Workbook. I know what my problem is about books like that–it’s too authoritarian. Everything comes from On High and is shown to you, then you do it. And don’t come back until after you’ve done it.
I had the same problem with The Woman Magician. Firstly, it was for covens, secondly it had an On High group that dictated to others. This is what I can’t stand: Secrets.
To Know. To Will. To Dare. To Be Silent.
I can handle the last. But I can’t stand others who won’t tell me their secrets.
I am now reading a book called High Magick. The writer is a magician that learned entirely from books and his own personal work. He gives “Practices” that I’m supposed to do for a week. The first practice is to take negative thoughts and make them positive or neutral. That’s simple DBT training. Instead of “I can’t…” switch it around. “If I put my mind to it, I can…” Or maybe “I can.”
Like today. I tried asking my friend if there’s anything bright she sees in her life. “It’s not like I wake up in the morning like this,” she said. “But this happened, and that happened, and then he did this, and I did that, and it just happens.”
The more she talks, about doing things “right” instead of your own original, different way, the more I realize that she wants control, or it’s “wrong.” Like her Forever Fiance has a system that he’s happy with for his medicines. The system doesn’t quite work, but he’s happy. No, she comes in, and upends it, saying he’s “doing it wrong”. Now they’re constantly fighting about how and when he takes his meds. He was screwing up just fine on his own. Let him screw up.
Get dirty. Make mistakes.
That’s the way to learn.
(She claims he can’t “learn” because he never did. He was a “genius” and had “a photographic memory” until he had a grand mal seizure, and then he “lost everything.” Funny how he can remember that but can’t remember to take the dog for a walk.)