My First Magic Teacher

Was it by chance that I happened to just find myself standing in the same exact spot by the ocean from years ago?

The last time I was at this park, at this point, at this spot, is when their ashes were spread in the ocean.

A detour on the parkway, a short cut taken that turned out to be a long cut, and here I was again.

At a certain point my parents no longer had any idea what to do with me regarding school. Looking back, I think if there was a military school nearby they would have enrolled me there, and in looking back maybe that would have done me some good.

Academically I was a failure, and nobody could figure out why despite all the tests and curriculums, I eventually got tagged as “lazy”. It took me years out of graduate school to realize just *how* I learned, *how* my mind was wired to learn, and once that was unlocked the rest became easy.  

But, here I was at a new school, with new teachers, and the only subject I seemed to excel at was literature and the classics, specifically mythology and classical literature.

How?

It was the teacher, not what she taught, but how she taught. There were no papers to write, or things to test on, only reading. At home reading about the Gods through the works of Edith Hamilton and in class reading the plays and works of drama involving the Gods. It was through that medium as we read, as she read that the Gods not only came alive, but the feeling, a *feeling* was that all of this was possible.

Understanding the cycles of myth through the works of Joseph Campbell, all of this become second nature as a way of thinking and seeing the world.

That if it was possible back in that classical period, what happened to the Gods, where did they go?

Regarding the heroes, if they existed then, they could exist again, perhaps swapping magician for hero?

She never directly answered that question, deliberately left it opened ended.

Those classes had a profound effect on me, and knowingly or unknowingly she would have been and was my first magical teacher.

When I survived high school and arrived at college I decided to immerse myself in a liberal arts education, learn all I could in four years and get a real classical education, long before I even knew of the G.D. as that wasn’t on the radar yet.

She did an excellent job, as I enrolled in Classical Greek and Mythology classes and found that at the University level, and later Graduate level I was already instructed in that. It was at that point that I realized just how great she was, and just what she transmitted by bringing the Gods alive again.