Book excerpt: Learning Ritual Magic is a training manual for anyone serious about improving their magic based on the western mystery traditions, including tarot, ritual magic, Qabalah, and astrology. "What you get out of [magic] can be measured precisely by what you are willing to put into it- and time is the essential ingredient in successful magical training," the authors write. And just as no one expects to run a marathon or play a Bach violin concerto without sufficient training, so practitioners of the magical arts shouldn't expect to work complex, powerful magical rituals without a solid grounding in the techniques of Hermetic high magic. By spending at least a half hour a day practicing the lessons found in Learning Ritual Magic, the solitary apprentice attains the proper groundwork and experience for working ritual magic. Learning Ritual Magic provides lessons on meditation and a set of exercises designed to develop basic skills in imagination, will, memory, and self-knowledge, all of which are absolute fundamentals to magical attainment. While the authors discuss the essentials of magical theory, they focus on daily, basic perspectives rather than launching into details of advanced practice. Designed for the solitary practitioner, Learning Ritual Magic concludes with a ceremony of self-initiation.