Magic Monday
Apr. 11th, 2021 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
It's midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism 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.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
***Ahem. People have continued to try to post questions, despite the post being closed. I have deleted these. Follow-up comments to existing questions are fine, but other than that, please save it until the next Magic Monday.***
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 04:14 am (UTC)2) No, it's the other way around. I visited Providence in part to get some local color to the fifth volume of The Weird of Hali and liked the place, and my wife and I decided to move there.
3) Haven't read 'em. It's been many years since I've followed graphic novels.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 04:23 am (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providence_(Avatar_Press)
...is the third of Alan Moore's series on Lovecraftian stories and his reflections, although in the sphere for entertainment, still go deep into the study of the history associated as it into mixes with his own fiction.
Alan Moore has also written a graphic novel called "Promethea" which takes the reader on journey through the Tree of Life which you also might find worth checking out.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 04:28 am (UTC)Is it because it might be too similar to where you are and have gone yourself? It being another kabalahistic magician with interest in Lovecraft being not different enough?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 04:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 05:13 am (UTC)For Drawing... the first edition, with the white and brown cover, is by far the best. After I worked through it, as a test I rustled up a stock picture of William Shatner as Captain Kirk, because Shatner is generally perceived as hard to draw, and used it as a model to draw a 10 x 14 pencil portrait of the Captain. Then a professional artist kindly put it out at her booth at a Science fiction festival. My Kirk sold for $10. If I’d had any way to get to the festivals I might have made extra money—who knows? But I did satisfy myself that Drawing... works. I think editions after the first would work too, but they’re not as good—more words, less instruction. Stick with the original if you can. It went through many printings, and I still see copies at Half Price Books from time to time.
—Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 06:07 pm (UTC)Your Kittenship. I've been interested in Gooley since I heard him on a podcast a while ago! Do you have a recommended starting point to getting into him or just wherever seems like a good entry?
Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 07:57 pm (UTC)I’d just start with whatever you find first, I don’t think he has a set order to work through like JMG has with his books.
—Lady Cutekitten
Thanks for Drawing our Attention
Date: 2021-04-13 12:40 am (UTC)I didn't know about Tristan Gooley, eager to look him up from your recommendation.
- Mr. New-Writer
Re: Thanks for Drawing our Attention
Date: 2021-04-13 01:21 am (UTC)My dad grew up in an extremely rural, 3rd-world environment and he knew everything Tristan Gooley knows. But when you’d ask Dad how he magically knew there was, say, a fox around that you might see if you watched carefully, he’d get frustrated trying to explain it, and point at a patch of ground that, to a mid-20th-century American kid, looked like all the other ground, and say “Well, look! There’s her tracks, and her kittens’s tracks, right there! What do you mean, you can’t see it? How can you NOT see it?” He’d been learning the outdoors literally since Day 1 and was so used to it he couldn’t explain it. Imagine yourself and a primitive tribesperson walking around the Loop in Chicago and you trying to explain how you knew to steer away from that alley even though you couldn’t see if there really was a mugger there. You probably couldn’t—but Tristan Gooley could, and I’m glad he not only learned Dad’s skills but learned how to explain them to the rest of us. God bless him.
—Lady Cutekitten
—Lady Cutekitten
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 08:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 06:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 10:05 pm (UTC)—Lady Cutekitten
Lovecraft vision
Date: 2021-04-12 03:28 pm (UTC)I’ve imagined that the Lovecraftian vision of a coldly different universe has its own cosmic nature, what with its scope and god presence - it reminds me a bit of what Evelyn Underhill described as the “negative epiphany’, ie., an encompassing vision of a mostly empty and meaningless universe filled with absurdly vast stretches of time and space, etc.
I do think the vision is accurate insofar as “real world” stuff goes, and it’s always beneficial to know that you do have negotiate yourself through a real world that won’t tolerate foolishness for long. But i think it’s a vision of the *material* universe only, even if the vision is cosmic in scope. That’s the reason I’ve never warmed to the Lovecraftian vision - as cosmic as it may be, it seems absent the higher spiritual reality, which is anything but cold, empty, and meaningless.
I wonder if a lot of horror literature isn’t rooted in this kind of cosmic yet still materialistic vision, eg., the figure of the zombie, which could be seen as a type of resurrection or an immortality, yet constrained by a thoroughly materialistic form. It’s as if the horror writers have a genuine yearning for a spiritual vision, but ultimately can’t escape the material world, at least in the case of Lovecraft and perhaps Edgar A Poe.
Re: Lovecraft vision
Date: 2021-04-12 07:05 pm (UTC)Lovecraft saw this and was horrified by it. I see this and I find it comforting. From my quirky perspective, the material realm is small and warm and cozy -- consider the food chain, where everything gets to eat many times and only has to be eaten once! -- and the spiritual realm is vast and spacious and awe-inspiring, an immense space through which colossal shapes move for reasons that are beyond my understanding. From this in turn unfolds a spirituality of freedom -- not the sort of rigidly mandated path to a predetermined goal that so many traditions offer, but a spiritual cosmos full of many genuinely different possibilities, any of which can be appropriate for any given soul.
That's the vision that underlies my para-Lovecraftian fiction; it's also the vision that runs through Western occultism from ancient Greek times to the present, and underlies the title that the Golden Dawn gave to the notional endpoint of the path it taught: ipsissimus, "most completely oneself."
Re: Lovecraft vision
Date: 2021-04-13 12:32 am (UTC)I'd not considered that before!
"Dinner is great for you, until it IS you!"
- Mr. New-Writer
Re: Lovecraft vision
Date: 2021-04-13 12:41 am (UTC)Re: Lovecraft vision
Date: 2021-04-13 03:44 am (UTC)Thanks for your clarifying and inspirational response! I definitely prefer your inversion of the Lovecraftian theme over the original.
I’m comfortable with material reality and I accept that the spiritual realm in its largest sense will be forever beyond my reckoning. Still, I’m confident I’ll get my share of spiritual reality in the smaller sense on my long march to be “most completely one’s self” as I eventually ascend the planes.
As Lovecraft was something of a militant atheist, he was likely closed to any such spiritual ascension - I think that’s why his vision of the cosmos and its cold material indifference horrified him.
Re: Lovecraft vision
Date: 2021-04-13 04:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-12 10:02 pm (UTC)—Lady Cutekitten
Locations with great vibes
Date: 2021-04-13 12:35 am (UTC)Are you familiar with Astro-Carto-Geography, the use of maps overlaid with lines showing locations of planets and astrological angles around the earth? Astro dot com (I'm not affiliated with them) offers a free version, "AstroClick Travel," as one of their many options for charts with canned interpretations. Interested in any thoughts or experiences others might have with this approach.
- Mr. New-Writer
Re: Locations with great vibes
Date: 2021-04-13 12:43 am (UTC)Re: Locations with great vibes
Date: 2021-04-13 01:00 am (UTC)MNW