There's this terrific quote by Albert Einstein: "Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking," and I think this applies to the dilemma of those working out the beginnings of their own Craft practice.
It is far too easy to get caught up in reading under the guise of research and the quest to find "the right way" to do things, so much so, that one becomes enmired in book-learnin' and doesn't ever get off his/her keester to actual perform and try to experience anything.
The funny thing about the Craft, Druidry and other such forms of paganism, is that the activity and participation was once taught wholly without benefit of books.
You had to DO IT to GET IT.
And in most cases, you were either shown how by a relative or mentor, or you just went out and figured things out by trial-and-error.
Which is great for learning sympathetic magic....not so great for herbalism, particularly if you don't know what may be poisonous or cause ill-effects for the practitioner!
I guess that's why I liked learning in a systematic way via a tradition: there was already some tried-and-true methods outlined for me to use, where I could experience and draw my own conclusions....but I also wouldn't get gobsmacked by shizzle that my covenmates and uplines weren't already on standby to help me through or give me pointers about how to deal with afterward.
Kinda like training wheels, really. You get to learn, but you also have a smaller likely hood of injury.
Still, getting one's nose out of the books and going out into the outer wilds or inner spaces is the best way to test your meddle. So what if you've read that X+Y = Z. If you don't do it for yourself, you're just puppeting along with something YOU personally don't know is fact.
