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Underground > Temple >

Teach at Witch School!

21:01 / 05.07.06

(Oddly, as soon as I scampered over here to post this, I opened my browser to find this story about the first Wiccan soldier killed in Iraq and his widow's struggle to get the VA to stick a pentagram on a memorial. Which is interesting, but not what I want to talk about quite yet.)

Here's the thing. I just wrote a short piece on the grand opening of the in-real-life, physical campus of Witch School in the population-6,000 burg of Hoopesville, Illinois, the Sweet Corn Capital of America. Local Baptists are less than pleased, but can't do too much.

Among the background information for the story are the interesting facts that Witch School (should I put "(TM)" after that?) has been online since at least 2003, attracts over a hundred thousand students, and, most importantly, is currently looking for teachers.

Witch School Wants You.

My first thought was, oh, that'd be ripe for a prank. My second thought was, why? Or rather, why not?

OK, on reading the thing, it seems like you're not actually being paid for your efforts, but it doesn't seem like that much work, and could actually, you know, change some hearts and minds. Flip a few switches. And maybe it could lead to something better.

They're looking for people up on tarot spreads, "anything to do with fairies," spellcrafting and "Gods/Goddesses - Individual and Pantheons," among other things.

I can think of a few people on here who are already top-notch online teachers.....

Witch School is, by the way, affiliated with the Correllian Nativist Church, about which I know nothing other than Millennium Falcon was a Correllian doo-dah-day. They're a fast-growing Wiccan denomination, according to the web site. Some lousy HTML on there, but still. Hearts and minds.

03:06 / 06.07.06

They're looking for people up on tarot spreads, "anything to do with fairies," spellcrafting and "Gods/Goddesses - Individual and Pantheons," among other things.

Sounds like a recipe for that blockbuster, new-newagey, self-help, feel-good-occult book i've been meaning to write. I can already taste the heaping gobs of money. Maybe Adnan Khashoggi will underwrite it and I'll be the next John Gray...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

07:03 / 06.07.06

Why not, indeed...

trouser the trouserian

08:29 / 06.07.06

Good find there, Mordant

If you accept witchschool CEO Ed Hubbard's figure of 120,000 online students, with a year's subscription at $39.99, it seems like its a potentially good earner - for someone, anyway. And there's always the witchschool minispells for the hard up.

14:09 / 06.07.06

We sell those mini-spells in the shop. Dreadful doggerel IMHO but some people like them.
I had a look at some of the Corellian materials (grades I-III) and it made me blanche slightly, and start shouting at the paper things like 'How do you know?!' and 'What the fuck?' and 'Hahaha!' but that's just me. The idea of teaching Tarot is very appealing but doing it online is difficult, and only allows basics to be conveyed really without the danger of misunderstanding. Face to face is far better if only because there's so much information to pass on.

On the other hand, hearts and minds. If someone's going to get into magic they usually start down one road and then abandon it later as too shallow, but maybe that's an essential step for some. For people with no access to a meat occult community the internet might be the only way they can find anything out until they leave home or move or whatever. Witch school is Harry Potter for teens in a way.

14:21 / 06.07.06

We should get 'juliaki' to post here. That would rule.

The style of the material provided resembles that of Silver Ravenwolf's To Ride a Silver Broomstick

Ouch!

14:55 / 06.07.06

Indeed it would, just based on that one thing.

I still kind of think that since 1. Witch School has got some kind of P.R. working for it, and 2. It's apparently so easy to become a teacher that it'd be easily, well, appropriated or hijacked or suborned or detourned by anyone with a will to. For whatever reason, good, bad or inexplicable. Or, well, meaningful.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:06 / 06.07.06

The guy's really called Hubbard? He really needs to do something about that, PR-wise.

10:31 / 07.07.06

Why? L. Ron does alright for himself.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:37 / 07.07.06

We sell those mini-spells in the shop.

Those look tacky. Really cheap and naff. At least in the kits you see in the New Age shops around here you get a bottle of oil, a prayer card and a picture of St. Whoever, maybe some powders.

13:01 / 07.07.06

Why? L. Ron does alright for himself.

That's Uncle L. Ron.....

I joke, I joke.

Mini-spells certainly sound like the kind of thing my (hopelessly ethically compromised) publishing establishment would put out, but, hmm, if they sell well, then there must be something there that's of use... that speaks to people, or fills some kind of need or curiosity or whatever.

So far, the main criticisms I can distill from the Witch School comments is that they're 1. not rigorous, and 2. pretty goofy, which really seems to matter because they're 3. relatively recognizable.

Is there more that I'm missing out on?

17:49 / 07.07.06

Is there more that I'm missing out on?

Well the spying;

"According to the Witch Wars Defense Manual, the CEO of WitchSchool actively encourages and trains people to spy on other individuals and groups. (For what purpose, the book was not entirely clear.)"

and the anti-christian stance;

Probably the most troubling information that I found when reading the statements was an emphasis on the upcoming destruction of all things Pagan at the hands of zealot evangelical Christians. The CEO of WitchSchool suggests that if people do not fall in line with his prophecy, eventually they will be put to death by society.

and the desire to push Correllianism as a Wiccan tradition while implying that Gardnerian Wicca is not Traditional Wicca.

(from the link of course)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:09 / 07.07.06

Why? L. Ron does alright for himself.

Well, other than the whole being dead thing, I guess. What I meant was that he has kind of a bad rep. If my name was Koresh I'd probably think about changing it before starting a church.

ceilingsarecool

23:54 / 18.07.06

Why? L. Ron does alright for himself.

Well, other than the whole being dead thing, I guess. What I meant was that he has kind of a bad rep. If my name was Koresh I'd probably think about changing it before starting a church.

And he was taken hostage by his own followers at the end of his life. Or at least, he wasn't allowed to leave his compound and was kept under guard 24/7 until he died. I did a paper on Scientology as a cult back in college where I turned that up, and I'm going to have to dig through my files for a source. Newseek circa 1997 sounds about right. Nudge me if I don't come back with it and you want that factoid.

01:03 / 19.07.06

There's a for-real Scientology topic here. Which has very, very little to do with Witch School, but hey.

trouser the trouserian

06:45 / 12.04.07

Newsflash!

Witch School is Up for Sale - on eBay!

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:26 / 12.04.07

"Witch School is a serious business"

I smell image macro.

10:59 / 12.04.07

Top bid so far- $16,500. Let's compare that to their decalred revenue;

MEMBERSHIP/Subscription REVENUE:
September 2002 - 2003: $55,486.62
October 2003- Sept. 2004: $82,046.00
October 2004 - September 2005: $89,947.50
October 2005 - December 2005: $30,351.30
Jan 2006 - December 2006: $82,3437.29

Interesting... I wonder what the running costs are? Do you think Hubbard reckons it's run it's course and it's time to bail? That's what I reckon.

10:59 / 12.04.07

MEMBERSHIP/Subscription REVENUE:
September 2002 - 2003: $55,486.62
October 2003- Sept. 2004: $82,046.00
October 2004 - September 2005: $89,947.50
October 2005 - December 2005: $30,351.30
Jan 2006 - December 2006: $82,3437.29

This does not include revenue from items from sales such as our own books, CD's, and Minspells. Those numbers will be given to serious bidders. From eBay

Can see where the money comes from! I love that it has a 7 day return/refund policy!

I joined this quite a few years ago... and found the material bemusing and much, much less useful than SRWs books.* I spent the multiple choice questions bemused by the implication that only one answer was correct... yeah, great money maker, can't see it doing anyone serious any good if it encroaches into popular awareness, I can only imagine what impression it'll give people of self-identified witches...

The more I look and think about it, the more sick it makes me feel.

*I know she's considered a bad writer and her books are thought of as rubbish, but at 12 I liked them, dammit.

11:00 / 12.04.07

Ooops, cross-post!

Mako is a hungry fish

13:31 / 12.04.07

Is magic a good choice for structured learning with time constraints?

23:54 / 19.04.07

Is magic a good choice for structured learning with time constraints?

Not sure I understand the question. Can a person with time constraints learn magic in a structured format? Sure. Is a structured format a workable way for someone with time constraints to learn magic? Depends on the specific details, but it can work okay.

If a person has time constraints and wants to learn something in a structured manner, is magic a good choice? Errrm... I don't think that's something a stranger can answer.

However, Witchschool is not a good place to learn magic, regardless of time constraints (and the recent foofoorah with the eBay sale).

00:20 / 20.04.07

Sometimes I have my doubts whether it is really possible to teach magic online or by distance. I suppose it is feasible, but I think the real issue that groups like Witch School try and make it acceptable and accessible to such a huge group that it just turns into a farking joke. I think Flamel College would be a lot better if it just focused on _alchemy_ and stopped bouncing around to other topics. It's a fine line, really.

Mako is a hungry fish

13:50 / 20.04.07

Well a university subject usually takes four or fives months to complete, and whilst it's mostly theory it does have practical application - for instance, a first year accounting student could probably do book keeping without screwing it up too badly.

I wonder if something similar could be done with magic - i.e a course on astral projecting or what not, within a set time period, that leaves a person being able to astral project. Magic seems too personal and 'iffy' to me for this to be plausible.

14:31 / 20.04.07

Is magic a good choice for structured learning with time constraints?

I would argue no, the reason being that magick depends upon the training of certain internal states to work. That training invariably proceeds at it's own pace. You can teach various exercises within a time frame, but you can't teach the inner growth that is a result of their practice, and one inner state change is often predicated on the achievement of a another inner state change.

It's been my observation that persons who buy their first "spellkit" frequently get results with it. It's also been my observation that if they keep going with spellkits without any work elsewhere, that effectiveness dries up. I've come to believe that this phenomenon is due to the "spook factor", which can produce enough alteration of consciousness to get something done. The problem is that things only stay spooky for so long, before they become commonplace. That's where the inner work comes in. I can't count the times in my own practice where I've had to reshuffle the order of things in order to get a result. That doesn't mean that order doesn't exist, it just means that it's a highly individualized and subjective process. University classes are designed for more objective processes.

18:06 / 20.04.07

I think magic(k) can be learned at a distance, or through online training, but it's very difficult, maybe impossible, to test that learning.

The problem with Witchschool & others like it isn't that they offer the lessons; it's that they claim (or sometimes just imply) anyone who passes their multiple-choice tests has mastered the subject matter. (And that's aside from the issue of indentification--the fact that someone gets a certificate from WS claiming they're a 2nd Degree Wiccan or a Tarot Reader doesn't mean that person actually did any of the work.)

Western hermetic magic has a very long history of being learned through self-directed studies & occasional correspondence; the internet should be a great way to build on that tradition. Unfortunately, most of the people who want to "teach" seem stuck on teaching lists and historical details. Since it's difficult to check practical results online, they mostly just ignore that part. The lessons are usually built on the assumption that when a person can rattle off a list of which plants are associated with Venus and which stones are used in protection charms, she's mastered spells, and that when she can describe the four elements with pretty poetry, she's able to cast a circle.