In his own written advice to students Grosche often speaks with a lot of wisdom. We find his written voice filled with balance - well rounded by life’s hard lessons, experience and maturity. In fact, his skill in applying strictness and gentleness to equal degrees and as each situation seems to require is quite impressive. Overall, Grosche succeeds to create the image of a teacher’s voice that is filled with positive intent for his students and void of personal needs or motives. Unfortunately this image stands in stark contrast to the voice we find echoed through others' or recorded in many of his own letters that never were meant for publication.

Volker Lechler shares the impression that often times Grosche can sound almost paranoid (p.119) about how other people in his eyes held huge interest in his struggling undertakings and would do anything to compromise or block off his ventures. Today we know this actually wasn’t the case. So we might want to look at what this says about Grosche himself rather than the people around him? Luckily modern psychology has a term for such an attitude towards life. It’s called being a narcissist: a person that cannot accept his own natural, human flaws and therefore constantly is on the lookout to prove his own success through the shortcomings of others. The world is a terrible place if you are caught in such a mind - full of constant threats and ambushes and eternally withholding the fulfilment the little prince deserves.

Now, funny enough, whether or not Grosche was a plotting narcissist behind the scenes would not have mattered to his students - for as long as his advise as part of the FS’ correspondence course was great. Even if the voice he had created for himself as a magical teacher wasn’t genuine, it would have still done the job to foster his students’ growth for as long as they didn’t get into closer contact with him. As with all narcissists: they can be wonderful, hugely skilled people to learn from - for as long as they don’t feel threatened in their role as dominant leaders.

See, here we come across another fascinating fact about our own magical journeys: The teachers we meet don’t need to be flawless to be great teachers to us. In fact, most of the times it is the student who first and foremost feels the urge to project ‘flawlessness’ upon their teacher. And that is one of the first filters to break through in helping students to grow. Franz Bardon was a heavy smoker and yet required all his students not to smoke. My own teacher was terrible unskilled in many things in life outside of magic. But boy, was he skilled in the foundations of magic. See, magic is a craft like any other. To learn it well, you don’t need a guru, but someone who has learned this craft before you. The biggest misperception for many students can be to look for teachers after whose personality they can then model themselves. Yet magical training is not psychotherapy where projection and counter-projection are essential tools as part of the process. Magical training requires adults - who are prepared to learn from other adults about the one or two things the latter perfected before them. It is a recipe for disaster if magic becomes a crutch for failed pedagogy. To begin this craft, you have to grow up first. Or simply accept the blood-toll you will pay on your path.

The third dichotomy we want to explore sheds further light on the above. Because there is only so far you can get with a borrowed voice. At some point the deficits of not being completely genuine will begin to show. For Grosche this was in the gap between his aspiration to innovate and his ability to integrate.