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self-education
Jul. 20th, 2020 09:16 pmToday JMG opened his Magic Monday post with this quotation from Dion Fortune (from The Training and Work of the Initiate):
"The good occult student should have a sound general knowledge of natural science, history, mathematics, and philosophy. He cannot, naturally, have a thorough knowledge of all these subjects, but he should know their outlines; he should be familiar with the principles of all the sciences and know the methods of philosophy. Then, when he acquires special knowledge, he will be able to see it in relation to the cosmic scheme of which it forms a part, and hence will know it in a very different way from the man who perceives it apart from its environment."
In the way of such things, it was a perfect fit for the increasingly apparent sense I've had that my education was insufficient, a sense that had me trying to figure where to start reading history - by which I mean the era, not the location in my house - or whether and how to refresh my basic understanding of biology and ecology. It is a sense that perhaps learning some mental math might make up for my abysmal calculating abilities, and that I would benefit from more memorization (I'm partial to poetry, but there are more things I'd like to memorize and I've kind of lost my "oomph" or motivation over the last several years), as much as from improving my vocabulary and learning more about rhetoric and logic.
A few days ago I pulled The Well-Trained Mind off my shelf and started reading it. Geared toward homeschooling families - in other words, the education of children - I'm reading it with another purpose, namely to adapt it to filling in the gaps I feel so keenly in my own education. So many books I haven't read! So much history about which I am ignorant! So many basic skills - math, memorization, argumentation, analysis - in which I have only the basic ability!
It was all really brought home to me the other day when I read an article that alluded to literature and made cultural references (old cultural references) that I didn't get. I wanted to read and understand and instead I found myself spacing out due to being in over my head.
Periodically (because that's how I roll with blogs, it seems) I'll be posting interesting and relevant thoughts from The Well-Trained Mind. I'll also be coming up with a plan of approach to how I want to learn the things I either always wished I'd learned or have lately come to understand I ought to have learned.
In the way of such things, it was a perfect fit for the increasingly apparent sense I've had that my education was insufficient, a sense that had me trying to figure where to start reading history - by which I mean the era, not the location in my house - or whether and how to refresh my basic understanding of biology and ecology. It is a sense that perhaps learning some mental math might make up for my abysmal calculating abilities, and that I would benefit from more memorization (I'm partial to poetry, but there are more things I'd like to memorize and I've kind of lost my "oomph" or motivation over the last several years), as much as from improving my vocabulary and learning more about rhetoric and logic.
A few days ago I pulled The Well-Trained Mind off my shelf and started reading it. Geared toward homeschooling families - in other words, the education of children - I'm reading it with another purpose, namely to adapt it to filling in the gaps I feel so keenly in my own education. So many books I haven't read! So much history about which I am ignorant! So many basic skills - math, memorization, argumentation, analysis - in which I have only the basic ability!
It was all really brought home to me the other day when I read an article that alluded to literature and made cultural references (old cultural references) that I didn't get. I wanted to read and understand and instead I found myself spacing out due to being in over my head.
Periodically (because that's how I roll with blogs, it seems) I'll be posting interesting and relevant thoughts from The Well-Trained Mind. I'll also be coming up with a plan of approach to how I want to learn the things I either always wished I'd learned or have lately come to understand I ought to have learned.
