Introducing ... Me :)

["anunusednamedamnit <jtb26@...>" <jtb26@...>]

Hi, my names joe, i've been lurking on (and learning from) the 
franzbardonmagi group for a while, and I think its about time I 
introduced myself :) I'm a uni student studying physics and 
industrial psychology (i'm presently doing an msc in the later) in 
new zealand. My background in `occultism` stems from when I was 
introduced to a book called modern magick by donald kraig. I'd never 
encountered the idea of magical practice b4 and it fascinated my 
greatly ... over the next 3/4 years I ended up studying everything I 
could on the golden dawn and magical theory. I also practiced modern 
magick to lesson 6, and the meditative exercises as set out in a book 
by poke runyon called the book of solomons magic. At this point 
various things that had been `bugging` me for ages led me to stop and 
reasses my progress. I finally accepted that I didn't really like the 
ritual/symbolic/belief-making structure that most of the work I was 
doing was based upon. I felt that I was going about things 
backwards ... practice through theory instead of theory from practice 
if you will ;) Thats not to say the ritual exercises don't work, they 
did as far as they went, but I always felt I was just working with 
dogma instead of getting at what lay behind. Then I came accross 
IIH ... and found what i'd been looking for! (trite I know ;) but 
thats how it felt) So far i've had several false starts, there are 
aspects of the system that I find ... misleading shall we say ;) I'm 
now in the process of restarting my practice (4th time :) ), and 
would value input on a number of practical questions i'm still 
struggling with. I think i'll address these in another post though 
seeing as i've been a little more windy than i'd planned in my 
introduction :).

Happy new years everyone,
Joe.