I missed April Fools, I was going to turn this into a food blog or something just for a day. However I would like to plug these guys for their really hilarious video and product pitch.
Feedback on the class was generally positive. If you watch the video with the captions on, you’ll probably get more out of it since I think the sound quality sucked. That was the biggest complaint in private feedback was that I moved a mile a minute and no-one was too concerned because this is all recorded, right? Except the audio sucks, and then youtubes caption editor sucks, so I might just download the closed captions (if I can figure out how) and post them.
The second complaint was “it feels like we started in the middle”. That’s legitimate, I’m not going to say, “Well people had different ability levels”. The class should give feedback to the teacher and the teacher should be able to dynamically reflow the class to the students assuming they’re asking appropriate questions with an appropriate attitude. So far no-one has pulled the “but that’s not wicca” card. No, it’s not wicca. Someone could re-tool wicca to fit historical practice, but is it wicca? Not really.
To that end, I really didn’t expect the evocation to work. I didn’t get the creepy feeling I normally do, I think it’s a testament to the skill level of the crowd if they managed to get anything rolling in their own heads. I assume everyone is germane and honest when reporting their experiences. Another topic which came up for feedback was that we had electrical items in the circle. While Levi cautions against electric light, Poke Runyon loves blacklight and feels it’s important for setting the stage. I personally didn’t throw the mains in the house but did turn off all the lights – if we want to complain about electricity than we would be hard pressed to find a place without even cellphone coverage. I do know people who do evocations in caves, however.
I think the place to go from here when presenting to a broader crowd is to just take a hat-tip from “the beginning” and start with Pythagorean thought. I recently re-read The Loom of God, the first chapter where they start talking about geometric progressions could comfortably be put into the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript in terms of making broad associations between numbers. The Pythagoreans would have been more comfortable talking to Agrippa than Gardner, but the first step on arriving at an epic destination is to leave the house. We have to start from a known position. To that end, I think working through the orders of 2, 3, 4, and 5 will get them to the pentagram ritual and still be fun without presenting too much information, then we can do 6 and start talking about branching out in the grimoires. I have to pare down the lesson plan a bit more and I think people will be happier.