Aug 22, 2017
I'm really appreciating how, to do serious magic, you need to have all the symbols already "present" in your subconscious, rich with meaning - whether your symbolic lexicon is the meanings of planets and incenses and letters, or the imagery of the raven, the tree, the spear, or whatever aesthetic and map of meaning is the background to what you do.
BUT
You can only really understand and internalise those symbols by doing serious magic. Learning them off a book is empty and dull. But if you are, say, researching correspondences to do a planetary meditation, and then you do it, that's what fixes it in mind and makes it real and vivid.
It's a cyclical thing. You can't learn signs and symbols in isolation from using them.