Do you know, where you're going to?

Sometimes I encounter people in my life who are crazy in just the right way that I suspect they were sent to me as a warning. It used to happen all the time when I worked at the Liberry or the bookstore. Some far-out nutjob would harangue me about his or her obsessions for a while, but in a way that said "You could be me in ten years if you're not careful."

I chalked such thoughts up to my own personal and inventive form of paranoia. Like a medical student who becomes convinced she suffers all diseases studied in every text of maladies, I believed the Universe was sending me nutjobs to keep me focused on the right Path.

According to Dion Fortune's little book, my paranoid and egocentric musings were correct. There are Masters on other Planes who test potential initiates in this manner. If you pass the tests and get your house in order, you will be contacted by an Esoteric Order and trained in the Western mystery tradition. And no, I'm not talking Tony Hillerman western mysteries; I'm talking Hermes Trismegistos.

Of course once you're on the initiate's Path, Fortune says it will take another two or three incarnations to escape the cycle of physical rebirth. Fuck that noise. I'm all about shortcuts. I need an accelerated Master's in becoming a Master. Preferably offered online.