BACK IN THE (IN-PERSON) CLASSROOM
Peter Levenda On Breaking a 40-Year Teaching Hiatus
A little while ago, some people I know asked me what the hell I was thinking, agreeing to conduct an in-person class next year after more than forty years of absence from the scene. Why was it even necessary, with video conferencing, videos, podcasts, TV, and radio interviews, not to mention the more than twenty books I’ve published since 1994?
So I looked back over my personal records and noted that the last class I conducted in person was Saturday, October 8, 1983, at the Magickal Childe Bookstore in Manhattan. The next one will be during the week of February 26 — March 2, 2025, at Joshua Tree, California. That’s like a 42-year hiatus. (Not to mention East Coast versus West Coast!)
Now Marco Visconti, with whom I am sharing this series of classes and who is organizing all of this, is 46 years old this month. That means I stopped teaching when he was four. (And he complains about getting old!)
So, to return to the question: why is this even necessary in the era of mass communications?
One thing that has bothered me the past ten years or more has been the proliferation of conspiracy theories masquerading as “research” and “investigation” or even “journalism.” For the most part, this is all text-based, meaning that the “researchers” have done nothing more than sit in front of a screen, consuming the research of other people and putting together their own theories, which they then pass off as fact. Most of these individuals have not actually met the targets of their theories, walked the same streets, worked in the same buildings, or dealt with the same bureaucracies. They often lack the historical and political (not to say military and intelligence) contexts to make sense of what they are reading or watching on YouTube. Basically, it is a kind of ersatz literary genre pretending to be history or political science.
The same has become true of spirituality, especially esotericism and “occultism”. Some of the blame is due to the occultists themselves since the only ones we ever hear from are the ones who publish books. So you have “occultists” who read books by other occultists and then write their own books based on those books, etc., and you get the spiritual equivalent of conspiracy theories: a lot of ideas that are based not on practice or experience but on poorly misunderstood terms, methods, associations, lack of historical and linguistic perspectives, etc.
It’s one of the reasons I dislike the term “occulture”, as if the occult is nothing more than a literary genre or some kind of cultural artifact. Add to this the explosion of social media occultists and “influencers.” You see where I’m going.
When you don’t meet in person, you have to fill in a lot of blanks. Online courses are great, especially those held via Zoom or some other platform where students and teachers can see each other, pose questions, gauge the emotional content of responses, etc. But this type of class is still somewhat rigidly structured, due to the limitations of the medium. There are time constraints, technical constraints, etc.
Being in the physical presence of a teacher, and also in the presence of other students, is invaluable, even if it only happens once in a while. The atmosphere is more relaxed, you can pick up subtle conversational signals that you might otherwise miss, and quite often, themes and subjects are introduced due to the give-and-take of the environment that wouldn’t be otherwise. For that reason alone, a teacher can gain quite a lot from the class that she wouldn’t from a Zoom meeting or a set of YouTube videos. You can’t rehearse an in-person class the way you can a podcast that you design and present yourself. You have to be able to roll with the punches that come your way. You have to know your subject in a way that is not purely academic or theoretical.
Those classes I conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s were like that. I had an outline, some reference materials, and a pretty clear idea of where I wanted to go. But a stray question here or an unanticipated comment there, and the class would go off in a new and unique direction. Some of this would be out of left field, completely extraneous commentary that turned out to be especially relevant in the end.
Now multiply that by the five days of the course we’re offering next year, and you can imagine what weird shit will transpire and what secrets will be (inadvertently!) revealed. So that’s why I’m doing this. No one gets rich (financially) doing these classes, but the returns can be incalculable in other ways. I’ve been away, doing all sorts of things for the past forty years, including travelling the world, engaging with other cultures and paradigms, studying at universities and libraries here and elsewhere, etc., and learning more each day. I hope to be able not only to share this with attendees/students but also to learn from them to discover what I still need to learn.
While the subject matter seems narrowly described, the concept of a Stairway to Heaven is actually much broader and deeper than it seems at first glance, taking in not only the idea of spiritual advancement on a personal level but including such themes as initiation, the Underworld, Kabbalah, ancient and world religions, the theory and practice of magic, and more. It extends beyond what the Academy calls “Western esotericism” or “Hermeticism.” My hope is that a class like this will put a lot of what people have read into sharper focus, helping them to make sense of the plethora of books, videos, and classes they’ve already been exposed to in a variety of disciplines. It may also introduce attendees to a living community of like-minded souls united not by ideology or religious affiliation but by a shared interest in understanding the world in all its mystery and complexity.
So, that’s why I’m doing this. A forty-year sabbatical should be enough for one person: for now, anyway (!). What do you think?
PETER LEVENDA
