Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Let's start things out with a bit of alchemical text from the Splendor Solis, the most gorgeously illustrated of all the old alchemical texts: 

 

"They further saw the King of the Earth sink, and heard him cry out in an eager voice, 'Whoever saves me shall live and reign with me forever in my brightness on my royal throne,'  and night enveloped all things. [...] Meaning, in this masterly art:  'Deprive the thing of its destructive moisture, and renew it with its own essential one which will become its perfection and life.'" 

 

The image is the seventh illustration from Splendor Solis. It shows, in the distance, an old king in the water, struggling and crying out to be saved. In the foreground stands a young king in a golden robe bathed in the light of the sun and a brilliant star. 

Ask me anything ***about occultism*** (ahem) and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. (Any question received after then will not get an answer, and will likely just be deleted.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use the button above to access my online tip jar. If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 

 

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and I have a new answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain other gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I now have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online. 

Please note also that this is the last Magic Monday until February 1, 2021, as I will be taking the month of January off as usual. 

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you in February!***

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com!  

Comments

Dolmen Arch and Indian philosophy

[barefootwisdom]

I'm curious about the provenance of some of the Dolmen Arch teachings, specifically:

(1) the three principles of substance, motion, and consciousness (calas, gwyar, and nwyfre), and

(2) the duality between Annwn and Awen, with Annwn as the realm of manifestation (toggling between unmanifest latency, and the fully manifest cosmos) and Awen as superimposed and all-pervasive, yet in itself unchanging and impassive.

I ask because while studying the Dolmen Arch course, I've also been reviewing some of the oldest strata of Indian metaphysics, in preparation for an online course I'll be teaching this January and February. To a first approximation, in the Sāṃkhya tradition of Hindu philosophy, we spell the above-mentioned teachings as the three guṇas of tamas, rajas, and sattva, and the duality between prakṛti and puruṣa.

To be sure, a lot more complexities enter in, in the second approximation! In addition to the uncanny similarities, there are also critical and profound differences in terms of explanation (how the cosmos is), evaluation (whether that situation is good, bad, or indifferent), and practical response (what we should do when confronted by it).

As a result, I've had many weeks worth of incredibly fruitful meditations, exploring these parallels and divergences! And I've come away from those meditations with a much deeper appreciation of both traditions.

Still, I'm curious whether the parallels are a matter of simple convergence, or of ancestry. Can you help to shed any light on the history of the Dolmen Arch material, in this regard?

Thank you!

Re: Dolmen Arch and Indian philosophy

[ecosophia]

Calas, gwyar, and nwyfre can be found in Iolo Morganwg's Barddas, which collects papers he wrote in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. My Welsh isn't good enough to know whether they appear in this sense in earlier Welsh literature. The concepts of Awen and Annwn are found in medieval Welsh literature, but I know of nothing older than the Dolmen Arch course that pairs them in that way. It's quite possible that the Dolmen Arch's presentation of the three principles and of Awen and Annwn was shaped by the corresponding comments from Hindu metaphysics, since by the time the course was written (in the 1920s, from internal evidence) English translations of Hindu philosophical texts had been in circulation in the American occult scene for more than forty years.

[(Anonymous)]

On the Hermetix podcast, you mentioned that you think someone could raise the kind of money to go to Mars and die in space. This raises a rather odd question, but do you know if anyone knows what happens in the afterlife if someone dies in outer space? This strikes me as being potentially very dangerous.....

[ecosophia]

Nobody knows. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to find out...

The Red God

[(Anonymous)]

Gnosis No. 48 containing “The Red God” arrived from Abe Books yesterday. Hooo, dawggies! No wonder your name is a snarl word and thought-stopper in certain quarters of the neo-pagan world. Your escape from the angry mob must have been harrowing! Seriously, though – might you consider a few more words on the topics and themes you started to explore in this article?
Rusty

Re: The Red God

[ecosophia]

I'll consider it. What specifically were you interested in hearing more about?

SOP for SOP

[(Anonymous)]

OK – So, I’ve been doing the EC and SOP daily for about four months. Based on some guess-in-the-blank from a less detailed source, I’ve been drawing the invoking and banishing circles for Air and Earth as follows:
Invoke Air: Circle clockwise from top, beam down to top of circle.
Banish Air: Circle counterclockwise from top, beam up from top of circle.
Invoke Earth: Circle clockwise from bottom, beam down from bottom of circle.
Banish Earth: Circle counterclockwise from bottom, beam up to bottom of circle.
The Druid Magic Handbook (DMH) and the entries on this site says both beams for Air are upward, and both beams for Earth are downward.
My method seems to work, but… am I doing it wrong? Will the SOP work better if I change to the DMH method (it is easier to draw), or am I in your-mileage-may-vary territory?

Re: SOP for SOP

[ecosophia]

I'd say try it the standard way and see if it works better for you. Your mileage may vary, but there's only one way to find out!

Embroidery gods

[(Anonymous)]

This is probably a question for the commentariat more than JMG!

Does anyone know of good embroidery patterns showing pictures of pagan gods which are in the style of old artefacts and folk embroidery? I am especially looking for pictures of individual gods and for the Greek and Norse pantheons, but would also be interested to see them of other European pantheons such as Slavic and Celtic.

Nearly all of the designs I've seen on Etsy showing gods are either cutesy (most of them) or elaborate New Age or Victorian style pictures. As an example, this is one of the few I've seen in the kind of style I am looking for: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/499657711/roman-gods-and-goddesses-cross-stitch

Re: Embroidery gods

[ecosophia]

I'll definitely have to pass that on to the commentariat. Anybody?

AZ Horoscope Maker edition

[tolkienguy]

I know that, several times in the past, you've recommended that people wanting to learn about Natal Astrology start with the pre-1980 edition of the AZ Horoscope Maker and Deliniator. Just how bad are the post-1980 editions? Looking on the Evil Empire of Seattle, it looks like the post-1980 editions have extra material by two additional authors-is it just a matter of ignoring the extra material? (I got multiple gift cards for the Evil Empire for Christmas, and the current edition is significantly cheaper on their website.)

Re: AZ Horoscope Maker edition

[ecosophia]

I don't know. I've never tried to use it. Anyone else?

Tingles

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,
I have been studying Druidry for about 6 years now and at some point, I began to have tingles similar to little fireworks going off in my body when I talk to some people. The tingles are pleasant but not something I ever felt before studying Druidry. The people I am talking to are usually having an emotional reaction and I suspect I am feeling their emotions as these tingles.

A few days ago, I was talking about magical history to a very well trained Wiccan lady and she seemed very happy and interested. I was getting showers of tingles. As she is also a magical practitioner, I asked if she was experiencing tingles too and she said yes, a lot. I was not feeling any strong emotions at the time.

Is there any significance to this or is it just a sign of increasing sensitivity? I cannot find anything in my collection of magic books that talks about this. Does it have any magical significance?
Maxine

Re: Tingles

[ecosophia]

I'm not familiar with this at all. You might find it useful to keep a daily journal of when, where, and under what circumstances you feel the tingles.

tarot

[(Anonymous)]

1. I got hold of the Albano-Waite tarot deck as it was one of the ones recommended in LRM. From (admittedly scattershot, general) reading about the tarot, it seems that the colours on the cards are very important (at least to some readers). As the Albano-Waite colours are mostly pretty different to the original Colman Smith colours, I'm wondering if this could be a problem. Would you still recommend the Albano-Waite? I notice that not all colours are different - e.g. the hanging drape in the High Priestess is very differently coloured but her clothes and the pillars aren't, so maybe the colours don't deviate too much where they matter symbolically?

2. What one book or resource would you recommend for a novice to learn the tarot?

Thanks.

Re: tarot

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, I still recommend the Albano-Waite -- it had those same colors back when the three of us wrote that book, you know. ;-)

2) Mastering the Tarot by Eden Gray.

Blessings

[(Anonymous)]

Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a hip-pocket Druid rite or several for blessing ploughs, fields, crops, and livestock? Or a suggested format for beginners?
Many thanks!

Re: Blessings

[ecosophia]

There's a rite for blessing fields and land generally in The Druid Magic Handbook, but it's the most complex and challenging rite in the book and requires a solid knowledge of everything else covered in the book. If you want something simpler, the usual thing is to freeform it, using whatever gods and symbols work for you.

[(Anonymous)]

How do I use the Dolmen Arch style Sphere of Protection ritual with the Heathen gods? So far I have Odinn, Baldur, Frigg and Freya for the opening.

[ecosophia]

Choose deities appropriate to the other directions, and add them in one at a time the same way as described in the text. Alter the words as needed.

Ogham alphabet

[ecosophian]

Dear JMG,

firstly, I'd like to thank you for all the work you've done for us this year. It is highly appreciated.

Secondly, the question - it has recently come to my attention that the order of the Ogham fews in the first aicme is subject of some controversy. Mainstream researchers say its BLFSN and that competing theories that it was originally BLNFS are disproven (so says Wikipedia). The DMH gives the BLNFS order, because of Belinus, the sun god.

Its not a big deal for me, I personally like the DMH version. But do you know how letter order in an alphabet became a controversy among researchers? It's just such a strange topic to disagree on, there got to be direct evidence one way or another.

And it can create some problems down the line if somebody decides to use Ogham letters to encode numbers or the other way around.

Re: Ogham alphabet

[ecosophia]

There is nothing so minor that people can't get in fights about it. It's a controversy because (despite what Wikipedantry says) the evidence isn't conclusive: the oldest surviving inscriptions are from early Christian times, when the change (if it happened) had already been made.

[(Anonymous)]

Another fab illustration from Splendor Solis. I'm guessing they're done in egg tempera on parchment (viz., animal skin). I want to make a GN that uses the same device of architectural framing, or maybe a mythological atlas of the universe. Would that we knew who the artist was.

I'm like a glue sniffer with my little phial of frankincense oil. I just love it.

[(Anonymous)]

a) I just heard two people suggest we ought to start digging up graves of prominent historical figures identified as "racists", and this raises a number of questions, most beyond the scope of Magic Monday, but there are two: what kind of effects does this have on the soul of the dead person, if any?

One of them is Sir John A. MacDonald, who was Canada's first Prime Minister. Would the act of digging up his grave have an effect on the country via weird effects on the astral?

b) I haven't been able to confirm this, but someone I know who had access to the British National Archives has said they've started shredding documents, including old statutes; one being the British North America Act, 1867. Since that is the core document of our constitution, if this is true, does that sound like another omen of Canada's impending breakup?

[ecosophia]

Both of these are part of an increasingly desperate attempt by extremists on the left to erase history -- it's all very reminiscent of Pol Pot's plan to return Cambodia to "Year Zero," and you'll doubtless recall how that worked in practice. It's not desecrating the remains of the dead and shredding historical documents that will have a magical effect, it's the state of consciousness that drives such absurdities that matters. The question is how the rest of your country reacts.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you know if anyone has ever tried making cards of the Splendor Solis and using it for divination?


If not, well, I have time to experiment with it!

Splendor Solis

[(Anonymous)]

There is a Splendor Solis Tarot and book.
Via publisher or on book dep.

Geomancy and the Dolmen Arch

[tunesmyth]

I'd always been interested in the "theurgic" method of Geomancy as recounted in your Art and Practice of Geomancy: prayer accompanied by tracing out a renaissance symbol for the relevant planetary intelligence. But putting it into application, it never quite felt like it was right for me somehow. I guess it's that outside of geomancy, I was spending no time forming a relationship with these entities, nor did I feel any particular feeling of invitation to do so.

I'd been experimenting for a couple of weeks with using the the same general method, but making a blanket substitution with the deities from The Dolmen Arch associated with each planet, and the symbols as given in the first grade. It seemed to work okay. Then I discovered last week that I'd been perhaps doing it "wrong", in that the symbols in magical application for the deities relevant to Jupiter and Saturn were simple clockwise circles of a certain color, with (maybe?) no need for a banishing untracing, and no symbol at all for the Moon. Hmmm.

Last night I did a Geomancy reading: "What effects does it have on my readings to do the ritual I've been doing lately using Dolmen Arch symbols, praying to the deity who symbolically corresponds to the question?" (I hadn't actually asked this yet, choosing instead to simply try the method for a bit first.) The court came out as Right Witness Fortuna Major, Left Witness Populus, Judge Fortuna Major. So clearly I'm on the right track here, I just need to settle on the exact drawing method for the deities of Jupiter, Saturn, and Moon.

(1) Based on your own knowledge, would you say it's probably better to draw out these symbols in the form in which they first got introduced with circles and crosses, or in the "magical" form with only circles (or nothing at all for Moon)?

(2a) If circles and crosses, do you recommend a particular stroke order for the crosses? Or should I just be consistent, and generally clockwise?
(2b) If just circles, I guess it's no drawn symbol for the Moon, and as I pray just visualize myself as I would at the same point in the SOP?

(3) As with the SOP, is it unnecessary to banish at the end if the symbols in question are the ones related to Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon?

Re: Geomancy and the Dolmen Arch

[ecosophia]

1) Draw them out in their full form.

2) Consistent and clockwise is good, and use the appropriate symbol for the Moon.

3) That's correct.

A Conscious Group Within Society

[(Anonymous)]

Good Morning, Mr. Greer,

I hope you don’t mind my asking you a question on consciousness and civilization.

I know you’re skeptical there will be a sudden jump in humanity’s consciousness, leading to the salvation of civilization. However I wonder, if just a small number of people — a fraction of the population — were to work hard to increase their own consciousness, could they act as an outsized influence on humanity as a whole?

There is a theory I’ve heard, that if there were only a few hundred truly conscious individuals in the world, they would be able to influence all of humanity (a Gurdjieffian theory). Do you think a percentage of conscious people could help the world preserve its cultural, spiritual, and scientific treasures?

Generally I agree with your predictions in The Long Decline and your other books. However l’m wondering if there is some hope for civilization, if enough people can generate enough consciousness.

Do you think a group of conscious people within humanity can influence the whole of mankind, and thereby help to preserve our cultural gems? Or is it more likely that a small number of conscious individuals will wait out the coming dark age, and be the creators of a future civilization?

As always, Thank You for everything!

Re: A Conscious Group Within Society

[ecosophia]

Ah, the old Hundredth Monkey theory. Ask yourself this: if that were true, wouldn't it also be the case that if a small number of people were to work hard at decreasing their consciousness, that would also have an outsized effect on humanity as a whole, in the other direction? That's not just a thought experiment, after all. The recent opiate epidemic is one good test case; the rise of fascism in the 1930s is another...

No one's going to "wait out" the coming dark age, as four or five centuries is longer than any individual or group of individuals can wait, you know! The rise and fall of civilizations is an organic process; they have their life cycles and their fallow periods. What can help, right here and now, is for people who care about the legacies of our current civilization to choose parts of our heritage that matter to them, and make a sustained effort to get those into as many hands as possible, so that those things have an increased chance of making it through the dark ages and reaching the waiting hands of the future. There's much work to be done along those lines.

[(Anonymous)]

About six months ago, I accidentally had one of those fake meat burgers, and have to report my psychic abilities remain elevated above where they were before. I'm working with it, but the fact one fake burger seems to have elevated my psychic abilities, both receptive and active, well above where they were, on a permanent basis, is concerning.

I have no idea if the effect will stack or not if I have more of it, but it seems fairly concerning that it might. If even 0.01 percent of people who eat these have reactions like mine, this could go a long way towards explaining the colossal weirdness of late.

It wouldn't even need to be a large number, since one of the more disturbing things is I discovered I had started broadcasting my thoughts and emotions after eating the burger: if you have a few people who've had psychic abilities opened explosively, and are now panicked about it and who are also broadcasting their emotional state to the world, the results would not be good: mass hysteria seems like as likely an outcome as any....

[ecosophia]

Your experience remains one of the oddest and most fascinating things I've encountered in the last year! Yes, your theory would make a lot of sense.

[(Anonymous)]

When you die can you find the answers to questions you never got in life? For example if an archeologist spends their life searching for a lost city and never finds it. After death can they realise "So that's where it was!"

[ecosophia]

Not usually. The dead have a lot of work to do, and since the afterlife is not a vending machine, getting the things you want out of death is no more certain than getting them out of life! The one exception is if the archeologist was also a committed practitioner of spiritual or occult disciplines, and reached the stage of spiritual evolution at which further physical incarnations are no longer needed, after they got through the somewhat unnerving transition to disembodied existence, they could probably find somebody who could say, "Oh, that. Yeah, if you'd gone further up the River of Rabid Crocodiles, turned left at Mount Vermin, and dug down through two thousand years of sediment, you'd have found it. It was kind of a dump when I lived there, though."

Geomancy and the Tetractys

[tunesmyth]

Here’s one I’ve been sitting on a while, but the fact that this is the last MM for a month has prompted me to pull it out of hiding.

It's been a while since I've seen it asked here, but at least a couple of times, people have asked here or on the other blog about whether there is a connection between the Tetractys and Geomancy. If I'm recalling correctly, your reply both times was that it was a good topic for meditation.

(1) I would like to ask whether you are aware that Geomantic Shield charts are not merely similar to Tetractyses, but in fact, exactly and precisely perfect Tetractyses (with “unnecessary” bits edited out in their normal presentation)? And whether it's something you recall seeing discussed anywhere? I haven't been able to find any discussion of this anywhere else except for, giving credit where it’s due, a time where Sam Block once got 95% of the way there on his blog. (Though I won’t be linking his blog here, as per his desires. Interested parties can find it easily enough with a web search.)

If this is all something that you wished to leave for students to discover in meditation, I won’t clarify what I mean. But on the off chance you’re not quite getting what I’m talking about, may I have permission to post a fuller explanation here? I can explain it fairly simply and quickly, but it will take more space than a regular Magic Monday question, and I don’t want to impose.

(2) I haven’t ever formally studied Cabala, but I recall that you have said that Cabala was derived from the Tetractys— is that right? If the Tree of Life is a Tetractys, and every Geomancy chart is a Tetractys, then it seems reasonable that it would be very fruitful to meditate on direct correspondences between the Tree of Life and the houses of Geomantic divination. (Although in my own case I should probably wait until such time as I actually study Cabala a bit first.)

Re: Geomancy and the Tetractys

[ecosophia]

1) Well, it's not exactly a tetractys, because the tetractys increases by one step each level --



-- while the geomantic chart doubles (or halves) with each level. If you've got some way of getting around that mathematical difference, I'll be interested in hearing it.

2) Yes, you should certainly study some Cabala first, but given that, by all means meditate on the subject!

[(Anonymous)]

"Ask me anything ***about occultism*** (ahem) and I'll do my best to answer it"

What's with the "***about occultism***" part? Isn't it obvious Magic Monday is about, well, Magic?

[ecosophia]

You'd think so, wouldn't you? I had several people last week try to post questions about things utterly unrelated to occultism. I deleted their questions and posted that " ***about occultism*** (ahem)" in the hope that it would make the obvious a little more obvious!

The path of druidry

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings JMG,

In last weeks MM you referenced the book Keys to the temple. Well I looked it up and it looks like nice reading over the holidays.
At the same time I found another book from the same author, The Path of Druidry. And got interested in another viewpoint on Druidry. But as I started reading it I saw that the chapters were punctuated with study breaks and lessons and this got me worried, since I am working with your DH and DMH. And you advised not to switch books before you are done.

Am I right in putting this book aside, or am I overreacting?

Best regards and I wish you a relaxing hiatus.

Re: The path of druidry

[ecosophia]

"One book at a time" is an excellent rule. You can certainly read it if you like, but don't do the practices until you've finished your current work and are ready to explore Druidry from another angle.

Thank you

[(Anonymous)]

To JMG, The Lady of Lolcat, temporaryreality, Anon, Scotlyn, Kimberly Steele and Rosary Anon, many thanks for your comments regarding Mum's Passing.
She had her Mass, I was worried, that they were going to miss out the incencse, but it was there, along with the Holy Water, which she was especially fond of.
There were some nice eulogies by my sister and brother, and two nieces, plus lots of photos of times through the years.
It was also Livestreamed to the rellies in Ireland.
She looked nice and peaceful in her coffin, unfortunately they put the lid on when the service started, directions from 'Head Office' apparently.
She wore a brooch of Saint Mary Mackillop, an Australian Nun.
When she was buried we all got a red rose to throw in, as well as a bit of sand.
All in all a good send off.
Vale Granny May!

Regards, Helen in Oz

Re: Thank you

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Helen in Oz,

So very glad to hear the ceremony went well - particularly that the mass celebrants used holy water and incense, and that your family in Ireland was able to attend online.

My very best wishes to you, and my hopes for a peaceful rest for your mother.

- Rosary Anon

SOP for Teen

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG

I have a 13 year old who is very interested in spirituality. When very young he was keen on stories from the Bible, and proclaimed himself a believer in God. That waned over time and today he has stars he can see from bed that he prays to. Each star represents a particular trait - courage, calm, focus and so on.

I have been working with the SOP as laid out in your Druidry books for 3 years now. I am moving slowly through the DMH and am about to begin on awakening the two currents.

My question: I have put together a stripped down practice that I want to introduce to my 13 year old. Do you think it appropriate?

1. Ritual - elemental cross and circulation of light. Will leave the calling of the elements out at this stage
2. Meditation - 1-2 mins of breathing, 5 mins of meditation. Choose a theme for meditation from the previous divination.
3. Divination - 1 card draw from a simple oracle (maybe one of the popular card decks that appeal to him). Reflect on the card and how it relates to his life and use it for meditation in next session
4. Natural magic - simple workings using stones and herbs. Use Moon timing with elemental workings.

Re: SOP for Teen

[(Anonymous)]

4. Every time I read "elemental" anything, I feel the urge to stress "do not work only with your favorite element(al)". This requires discipline, and it may not be a good fit for a teenager.

[morgen_lugh]

Hi JMG,

1. The Grand Mutation last week formed a square with my natal Sun and Pluto, which are conjunct in the 11th house of my natal chart. What effects would you expect it to have on me and my life going forward?

2. I am someone who has never been able to form a long-term plan for their life and I've been inept at getting myself to a situation I can wholeheartedly thrive in. This has lead to much bitterness and disappointment as important things have failed to 'happen' as they seem to do for other people and responsibilities now limit my options for radical life changes and experimentation. I am formulating an affirmation to support my practical efforts in developing a plan for my future that I can get excited about but I've gotten hung up on the idea of my 'highest good'. The affirmation at present runs, ' I am the master of my own future. I act tirelessly for my own highest good each day and live a life that satisfies my deepest needs.' Do you think you can ever go wrong, karmically or otherwise, in acting for your own highest good in any given situation? Noting that I might not consciously know what that is in some (many!) cases, I am assuming that the affirmation would nudge me to act for my actual highest good whether I know it or not.

Thank you for your time blogging and answering questions this year. I hope you have a deeply restful January break!

[ecosophia]

1) That would depend on the rest of your chart, of course. Please consult a capable natal astrologer for the details.

2) That affirmation seems a little long and cumbersome. You might consider focusing on the specific change you need: for example, "I plan wisely for my future, and carry out my plans successfully." Do that a hundred times a day for a year.

Have an Eggsellant Break!

[boulderchum]

Salutations JMG!

I seem to remember you posted some sort of shield/protection practice that was called something like "The Druid Egg." It was similar to the Sphere of Protection but much simpler and involved different ritual components. None of the boolean strings I punch into google bring up anything specific enough, so:

a) Is the Druid Egg Shield compatible with CGD practice?

b) If yes, where might I find the full instructions for this egg shield thingamajig?

Re: Have an Eggsellant Break!

[ecosophia]

You'll find it in The Druidry Handbook. If you're doing the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram daily, though, you shouldn't need it.