I don’t trust magical degrees, grades, ranks or titles. Not only do they smack of hierarchy, which, as an anarchist, I despise, I also don’t think the model of spiritual attainment they imply is realistic.

Western occultists– especially Western male occultists– are awfully enamored of this notion of ascension. Spiritual growth is a ladder you climb, collecting titles, passwords, and secret handshakes as you go. This is reminiscent of leveling up in a video-game, or of clawing your way to the top of a military or corporate hierarchy. It’s gratifying to the ego. It’s also intuitive because it mirrors so many familiar (if fucked-up) structures in our power-obsessed society.

But spiritual growth is not the corporate ladder. It’s not a method of becoming “better” and “more powerful” than other people, of gaining rank and status. Neither is it a linear progression forwards and upwards.

Instead, spiritual growth is messy, personal, cyclical, convoluted, and constantly subject to backsliding.

Before I get any deeper into this post, it might be helpful to define what I mean by spiritual growth. Spiritual growth, as I see it, can be split into two separable yet interrelated parts:

1. Increased magical skills
2. Emotional/psychological growth

Magical skills include stuff like: meditation, lucid dreaming, astral travel, casting spells, shielding yourself from hostiles, etc.

Emotional and psychological growth is the human decency stuff. Self-confidence, the ability to have healthy relationships, a suitable balance of kindness with boundaries, selflessness with selfishness. You know. The unglamorous stuff that’s actually way more important.

People like Aleister Crowley provide excellent examples of what happens when emotional and psychological growth fail to keep pace with magical skills. You end up with guru syndrome, magusitis, whatever you wanna call it. The guy, and it usually is a guy, holding the highest magical degree and correspondingly the greatest authority in his occult order, is the one who has backslid the most grievously when it comes to emotional self-work. Happens all the time.

Of course, it’s possible to backslide on magical skills, too. Like social skills and emotional regulation habits, magical abilities tend to be a little “use it or lose it” by their nature.

My point? All of it takes practice. You can’t just reach the degree of Magister Templi and expect to even keep it without continous effort, much less to advance beyond it. Attainment can always be lost. Fail to maintain your spiritual condition, your emotional health or your magical practice, and you can easily lose all that you have gained.

I learned this in Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A., not to be confused with the other A.:A.:, can nonetheless also be considered an initiatory magical system. The steps are a bit like degrees, and one grows spiritually as one advances through them. But what happens when you reach the 12th step? Do you graduate? Do you win?

No, you do step one all over again, because by now, it’s probably time for a refresher on its lessons. The cycle starts anew.

I approach my work with the Klipot similarly. The Golden Dawn and The A.:A.: view the Tree of Life as something to be climbed linearly to the pinnacle of spiritual ascension, and many left-hand path initiates view the Klipot through a similar lens. But I much prefer to look at the Klipot as a series of infinitely expansive worlds to be wandered through. One cannot expect to learn all the secrets of each Klipa in a single lifetime, or indeed, in infinite lifetimes. Why would it be enough to travel the tree just once? Each sphere has many lessons to teach, and should be revisited as often as necessary. As if I will ever fully master the practical, material lessons of Nahemoth, or learn every single thing that Golachab has to teach about war, anger, and revolution! Anyone who claims to have “finished” with a sphere for good has simply stopped paying attention to further lessons. That’s why, once I feel done with my first visit to Thaumiel, I plan to start back at Nahemoth again.

Perfection is not a static point. Anything unchanging is dead, and therefore not perfect. Perfection, in fact, is a goal that can never be reached, only approached. The task is to approach, to always be drawing nearer and never slipping farther away. That task is strenuous, but it’s also the only thing that is worth doing, in my opinion, because it encompasses all worthwhile work.

Distrust anyone who claims to have ascended. If somebody has reached the “end” of their spiritual journey, that simply means they have given up and sat down where they are. Masters don’t have to call themselves masters. Actually, masters don’t exist. We are all learners, and the moment we cease to be so, we stagnate.