Welcome to Gaia! ::

Here is a Pagan PodCast I listen to:

http://spiritscast.com/

Shes in my witchcraft 1 training course.

Part of a training course? That seems odd given that it's so new and a teacher wouldn't know precisely what direction she plans to take it in. It's cool though to incorporate the Pagan media in the mix; there's quite a lot out there.

Heh... I guess I read that wrong, huh?

I do recall her mention she was going to be taking Christopher's class. In a way I find that paradoxical since she says she likes to emphasize developing an experiential relationship with the divine and having gone through three of the books in his series, I find that this is not emphasized at all. sweatdrop It being under-emphasized is actually one of my big criticisms of the series. He doesn't go over theological ideas at all, really, other than the pick-your-pantheon style which is a bit limiting for some people.

But yeah, having listened to all of her former podcast, she's an awesome lady.

No offense intended, but that seems really counterproductive to me and exactly the opposite of how a good system should be designed. Why in the blazes would you not present students with a run-through of basic theological concepts (which gives them an idea of the range of things that "God" can mean) and instead keep such foundational information essentially oathbound? This makes no sense to me at all, but maybe we've had a miscommunication. It's such a critical part of religious systems, that to overlook it is just like... huh? sweatdrop

I recognize I have a very strong bias in judging this since for me, the underlying philosophy and theology of your path should be the groundwork and core that you build up from. The focus should be worship, honor, and reverence of the Sacred, whatever it is you think that is... not spellcraft (aka, the power trip) and the metaphysics of magic. I know others don't take this perspective, but it makes me critical of the vast majority of the books on the market that by and large neglect the deep questions. I probably feel this way in part too, because the question "what is God" was the hardest one I had to face early on, and none of the books were helpful until I finally found one that bothered to talk about the underlying philosophy and theology.

But this is a total tangent to the main point of the thread now, isn't it? redface

Oh, I see. I could see that as being the case.

In a way I wonder if I should have signed up for the class. I really considered it, but there were all sorts of reasons that I came up with as to why I shouldn't do it. I think the big one was being immensely skeptical of shelling out that cash for an online-based course when I would much rather do something like that in person. I did do one workshop with him in person once - it was only an evening, but it was fun - and I wasn't convinced anything online could capture that. I'd be curious to hear how you think it's going so far.

What was the podcast, if I may ask?

I think the recorded lessons capture that essence very well as they are recorded lessons. He recorded his classes and saved the recording for his online students.