The Magic Academy Imaginarium

Do (Not) Try This At Home

Le Grimoire d'Hypocrate by F. Basan (1723-1797)

You are accepted to the one and only magic academy in the world.

After finishing secondary education, you pack your bags, travel to a small but charming town in the middle of nowhere and move into student dorms. Your excitement and eagerness to learn the stuff of storybooks quickly sours into disappointment as there isn’t even a whisper of the word magic during your entire first year.

I.

Instead, you are assigned a variety of subjects and exercises:

• Biology, specifically the theory of evolution as it pertains to living organisms, as described by Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins

• Epistemology, the theory of knowledge as described by Karl Popper

• Computer Science, focusing on the theory of computation (what computers can and cannot compute), as described by the Turing Principle

• Physics, moving from the foundations to a rudimentary but thorough understanding of quantum theory

• Meditation, the ability to quiet mental chatter and sit in silence for long periods of time, coupled with breathing exercises

• Physical Exercise, 3 lessons per week

Yoga is optional but strongly encouraged so that everyone in your class ends up taking the offered two lessons per week.

II.

In your second year, you get a glimpse of what older students keep teasing you with. In addition to meditation and physical exercise, you get three new subjects:

• Mind Control, consisting of advanced meditation exercises such as motionlessness, not-thinking, intense concentration on specific objects, sounds, images, trance as well as identity deconstruction exercises such as deleting or adopting minor habits at will

• Theory of Magic, in which you learn that physics and magic act as two sides describing the same coin, reality: physics as a subset of magic that works fairly reliable, magic as a kind of physics that we strive to understand and render more reliable

• Introduction to Ritual, which you consider a misnomer, as you all you learn is divination methods, how to craft and work sigils, and lucid dreaming

Every student keeps a journal recording classwork as well as any additional exercises and events occurring outside of class, including dreams. Every semester, you turn in your journal and your academic advisor returns it graded—a mere formality—and with detailed feedback.

You start having visions and experiencing events that are too strange to be coincidence. As you record them, they multiply: black knights on white horses, scorpions, dogs howling at full moons, lanterns emitting blue light and stooped, cloaked silhouettes. You catch yourself looking up symbols in your textbooks, trying to decipher what you’re seeing and hearing. You’re beginning to understand what is being taught and how.

III.

In your third year, you graduate to only two mandatory classes:

• Theory of Magic, in which you read and learn about different systems of religion and magic throughout the ages (not only Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, but also Freemasonry, the Orders of the Rosy Cross, Golden Dawn, and others)

• Advanced Ritual, in which you practice these religions and magic systems one after another, conducting their ceremonies and rituals, immersing yourself fully (moving on to the next just when you start believing them despite yourself)

You are encouraged to take your pick of optional courses such as storytelling and language, herbalism, alchemy, cartomancy, runes, astrology, and other specialised forms of divination. You understand these methods to act as vessels for your magical will and belief, which you can wield like a tool. If you write a story or make a herbal sachet, you weave your will into every word or herb you add, thereby completing a magical working. Students are expected to take two or three optional courses, according to preference and aptitude. Some students, however, are assigned courses by their mentors in order to get over mental blocks or deficiencies.

Visions and uncanny events abound. Guided by your mentor, you practice rituals to help you understand the messages you receive. As you hone your sixth sense, you realise it is your Holy Guardian Angel or future magical self reaching out to you, guiding your path. Still, you fail to communicate with your HGA through evocation rather than visions and omens. Your mentor advises patience.

The break between third and fourth year constitutes a turning point: You got a glimpse of what your studies have been building up to, yet you cannot fully grasp it yet. You understand with your head without feeling in your bones. Frustrated, you stop the practice you’ve been keeping up unbroken for three years. The spooky action stops, everything stops.

Most students return eventually, bored of ordinary life and its limitations.

IV.

From fourth year onward, the curriculum cannot be explained in words anymore. Most practices are individual, although students might congregate to perform group rituals from time to time, either spontaneously or directed by their mentors.

Representatives from magical orders and lodges around the world visit the school to mingle with fourth and fifth years, looking to bolster their ranks with new talent. Students are advised by their teachers but never forced to join any particular order. From the fifth year onward, they are free to leave the school, join any order they wish to join, or stay on as teachers or researchers. At this point, their magical journey is their own—they may attain secret wisdom, eventually ascending to venerated magi, or they may falter. Either way, at this point there is an understanding that true knowledge of the highest grade cannot be communicated in written or spoken form, it must be experienced.

Those who choose to stay at the academy welcome fresh students every year, perpetuating the cycle of teaching and learning.

DCLXVI.

From Hogwarts to the Jedi Temple, fictional schools teaching supernatural powers have fascinated us for a long time. This is my own concept of what a magic academy might look like, based on Western occult traditions and systems as well as my personal understanding and preference. I sought to make it realistic, to make you actually believe you could study and master magic at this mysterious academy, which is why this is written the way it is.

Did you believe? Would you want to attain its secret wisdom? Since its significance cannot be communicated, not even in this piece, the last part might feel lacklustre. It is what it is.

The question of whether or not you actually can attain secret wisdom, enlightenment, whatever you may call it—that I leave up to you.