Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for 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.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

Re: Embroidered talismans

[ecosophia]

I'm not aware that anyone has experimented with this, so the best thing to do would be to try various things, see what gets the best results, and share that with others. That's how our knowledge of magic grows...

Re: Embroidered talismans

[andrewskeen]

So noted. I will report back here when I know more! (though this might take some years...)

Re: Embroidered talismans

[(Anonymous)]

An observation and some lore from Onmyodo / Taoism.

Observation) As far as I can tell, silk is actually a top rate magical conductor, not an insulator, at least in its raw or thread forms. Once it's been woven, what appears to happen is it begins to behave more like a magical faraday cage than a true insulative material. This would go some distance towards explaining why it seems both healthy and vital in ways that other insulators (like concrete and plastic) don't. Finally, I've noticed that thread-bare silk really doesn't seem to protect as well as a fresh piece, which is congruent with the idea of a matrix / faraday-cage behavior.

Lore) Embroidered talismans were explicitly used in a number of east asian systems. The most exoterically well known are the Mandarin Squares introduced to China under the Yuan dynasty. It's pretty common in japan to have a Mon (think family crest) embroidered on silk clothing. In onmyodo, this is taken a step further with things like planetary emblems (with the appropriate color robe of course) or sometimes even things like representation of spiritual aspirations, this latter for most likely providing the rational for the Yuan patterns too. I think that by intentionally interweaving the pattern with the silk, it overcomes the insulation effect as described above, and begins to behave like a normal etheric capacitor.

Good luck with this project, hopefully we'll get to see your results!

Re: Embroidered talismans

[inavalon]

This is fascinating, thank you.

I've been making small drawstring bags out of silk for my four tarot decks. I sew them by hand using cotton thread. So far I've completed three bags.

Yesterday I was sewing the fourth bag using silk thread for a change, and a meditation began to form in my mind.

I take a piece of fabric, measure, cut and fold it, stitch the seams, and make it into a new shape. My imagination, will and skill create this three dimensional object out of a flat piece of cloth.

This is a magical working.

Metaphorically, my life is a fabric woven by the Three Fates. With each stitch in time, my destiny is revealed and my purpose unfolds. My acts of creation alter the inner and outer worlds in tiny but meaningful ways.

Re: Embroidered talismans

[tunesmyth]

Anonymous, may I ask, what is the source of your knowledge or information about Onmyodo?

Re: Embroidered talismans

[(Anonymous)]

Most of the people who practice that system are ridiculously discrete about it. Witch hunts may be a distant thing to westerners, but Onmyoji were the victim of Japan's only witch hunt; and that was during WWII.

Re: Embroidered talismans

[tunesmyth]

This is why I am asking (and I see that you’ve side stepped the question, which is your right, of course). I once met someone who came from a lineage of Onmyodo practicioners and it was his first experience of magical practice— and though he is still involved in esoteric activities of a different sort, it was clear he wouldn’t touch Onmyodo again with a ten foot barge pole. The state of the art seems to have been corrupted, with practitioners who engage in a lot of cursing (hence his distaste for it). Although I don’t know in any detail. Later that day, I idly said to my wife “once my Japanese improves sufficiently, wouldn’t it be interesting to study Onmyodo”— and exactly at that moment, as I spoke that sentence, was the one and only time that a fly just up and flew into my mouth in the sixteen years I’ve been in Japan, and I coughed and coughed to get it out. That was a message if I’ve ever seen one. It’s clear that regardless of the accuracy of any speculations about Onmyodo’s current state, the barriers to entry extend well beyond the material. This is why I was asking; I’m interested in how and why you would know these kinds of details at all.