What did you learn from all that?
Mostly from
Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming. Before Dr. Yang's retreat center, the headquarters of YMAA was luckily right near a main train/bus station near where I lived. Most of this was wu su training, but Dr. Yang heavily emphasized qigong, traditional Chinese medicine and its theoretical basis, acupressure as well as cavity presses, etc.
The main other source I had was Shihan Mark Davis and the occasional guest instructor (such as Stephen Hayes), but never Grandmaster Hatsumi.
Those two represent the only instructors/masters I had for years, rather than months or similarly paltry amounts of time.
I belonged to two covens, one which I am virtually certain was bogus and the other which was Gardnerian but did not claim to be of direct descent from Gardner. Between my membership in both and after both I continued to belong (unofficially) to social circles in which I frequently met and participated in gatherings related to everything from rune stones to Tarot.
My "academic" study (i.e., primarily historical but also any studies on any evidence for the utility, veracity, etc., of study of mysticism, ceremonial magic, etc.) began as my practice waned.
The training I now do has no relation to mystic, Eastern, or similar practices as it is combat oriented, but I have continued to study religious, spiritual, and mystic history, practice, and tradition from reading classical Greek and Latin sources to anthropological literature. However, such studies have for a long time now been as an outsider, not a practitioner.
