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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I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the 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. 

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

With that said, have at it!

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

Comments

Re: autogenic training

[(Anonymous)]

Not JMG but)

I have a reasonable familiarity autogenics, though my practice has been focused more towards hypnosis. First thing to know about autogenics as taught by Schultz, is the assumption that somebody involved in the process (ideally a therapist, acceptably the patient) has read a very large manual about how the practice works, and is familiar with a large number of contingencies and modifications if something goes wrong. Schultz's student Luthe, removed much of this material and heavily simplified it when he began publishing in English. A Psychiatrist of my acquaintance has mixed feelings about the German system and regards the English/British one as unusable and dangerously broken.

Personally, I've had excellent results with self-hypnosis, so I thought it would be fun to experiment with autogenics, and I was wrong. Subjectively, it feels nothing like hypnosis. The sensations of warmth and heaviness are present in some forms of hypnosis but are not the dominant focus, and the mind engages with the process in a completely different manner. In most forms of self-hypnosis, some kind of discussion with the un/sub-conscious mind is a dominant part of the process, which is completely absent in autogenic training.

Autogenics left me feeling like I was partially asleep and underwater even after the session ended. More horrifically, it temporarily destroyed my ability to manipulate etheric/vital energies with breathing, which left me feeling like I had no control over my body outside of the same autogenic techniques. Finally, I had heart and breathing problems start to form if I missed a session; like I was in need of another "hit" to keep functioning. Normally hypnosis of course benefits from regular practice, but I've never had anything even remotely come close to such an unpleasant experience.

This might be an abnormally bad reaction, and I do have other esoteric work in my past, but I wouldn't recommend it. And the fact a physician who is normally quite open to this sort of thing regards it as dangerously broken makes me feel stupid for even making the attempt. I suspect this practice is the victim of the same cultural trends that created mindfullness meditation, and is thus a perfect analogue to it, even if not identical. Your mileage may vary though.

Re: autogenic training

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you!