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

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

A couple of questions about drugs and the occult today:

1. Could the psychedelic experience be controlled using occult means? For example, would a capable Golden Dawn magician be able to control the entities encountered on psilocybin or DMT, and if so, how?

2. Are there any spells that would aid a magician to better navigate the psychedelic experience (e.g. to interrupt the experience prematurely, or to protect oneself against hostile spirits)?

[d_mekel]

Not jmg, but if I recall correctly, don't mix the two

[causticus]

Good day Archdruid,

I've been attempting to move past just doing SOP so I can delve into the whole DMH system. I've yet to take on regular discursive meditation practice and I keep getting hung up on what the starting theme should be. So I did an Ogham divination on what the nature of the starting theme should be. Here's what I got:

1. Past: Straif
2. Potential: Saille
3. Present: Fearn

What direction might the oracle be trying to point me in with regard to my query? All I can really glean from this so far is that I should stop ovethinking and overationalizing these things and instead I should let my intuition and being-in-the-moment help guide me.

[ecosophia]

That's how I'd interpret it. You're overthinking it, and making a molehill into a mountain. It doesn't matter in the least what your starting theme should be -- it can be anything at all. Choose one by rolling dice or opening a book at random, if you like. Just start.

[ecosophia]

Don't mix drugs and the occult. Seriously, don't mix drugs and the occult. People who do both end up as psychological basket cases with severe chronic health problems way too often.

[(Anonymous)]

1) People ask you about drugs here all the time. Is your position on the issue that they represent two valid but incompatible approaches to spirituality, the Hermetic/Apollonian (occult) and Orphic/Dionysian (psychedelic)?

2) What are your thoughts on the relative learning curves of the two approaches? It seems like it takes a couple of years of serious training in ceremonial magic before you can make reliable contact with a spirit, vs. 15 mins on compounds like DMT. Why sail across the ocean in a rowboat when you can fly across it in a jet?

[ecosophia]

1) I'm not qualified to judge that, since my drug use was fairly minor, a long time ago, and not especially spiritual in focus. All I can tell you is that people who mix the two tend to crash and burn.

2) Are you contacting a spirit, or just hallucinating? To judge by the results, it's the latter.

[(Anonymous)]

2) Some of the literature on DMT might be interesting to consult. Contact with 'autonomous entities' is one of the most frequently reported experimental outcomes. Contact with entities under the paradigm of ceremonial magic seems to me far more ambiguous and prone to auto-suggestion, speaking as someone who hasn't reached the highest grades of any system. Maybe an experienced magician can produce results that more spectacular, but I imagine it takes years of work.

[ecosophia]

Drug users always say that. Back in the mid-19th century when chloroform was the hot new drug, you had people like Anna Kingsford huffing it and convincing themselves that they were having powerful spiritual experiences. During my lifetime we've been through four or five waves of hot new drug, each one sold with the same lavish promises of instant spiritual attainment, each one abandoned after a while when it turned out that, after all, people were just hallucinating.

[open_space]

I would advise against it strongly. Hallucinogens open you up be tearing your mind apart and letting anything you happen to be around, in, forcefully. Trying to do magic in that state, with a severed mind (you know, the thing that makes magic work) is an extremely bad idea --or trying to do anything really. Resisting the influence of the drug is what makes people go on a bad trip and snap because, at least according to Papus, the drug channels the excess energy of the body into the intellectual sphere intensely and that is why they experience their fears and thoughts thousand-fold. You can see why that is a bad idea with the exception of the native people that developed those methods.

It's a much better idea to try to access those places sober, willingly and in total control through magic.

I witnessed an ayahuasca ceremony done without the proper setting, experience and guidance and the place was a melting pot of madness and the "shaman" was more interested in looking cool than taking care of his participants. It was more like an astral orgy rather than a spiritual ceremony because everyone was opened up and feeling everybody else's feelings. Just by going inside the place, for like 5 minutes, I had to go puke someone else's grief of a death grandmother who tried to communicate to her that she was fine and that she should stop crying, but she couldn't listen for obvious reasons. I had to banish twice that day and bathe in ice cold water.

Good for the participants that one of the musicians banished the space in the beginning and asked for the help of the gods and knew her way around natural magic to calm them down, I don't know what would've happened to some of the participants if she hadn't been there.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for this. I'm kinda torn because magic and psychedelics are my two major interests, and based on the feedback from JMG and the commentariat, I'm setting myself up for serious trouble by attempting to mix the two.

If you would permit some follow-up questions, do you consider psychedelics as unsuitable for everyone except "native people that developed those methods"? The natives used it in the context of a communal setting guided by experienced shamans, but in our day and age there are 'solitary practitioners' that seem to do well also.

Secondly, how long do you think it would realistically take to get to truly psychedelic spaces using nothing but occult methods? How many years of training are we talking about? The appeal of psychedelics to me is the visionary aspect, and it seems that most occult systems fail to match it in that regard.

[(Anonymous)]

Being half Filipino there is a lot that I understood about the folk magic being integrated with the culture. The diet of the Philippines is mostly meat and seafood based (no dairy!) and that would have a impact on anyone doing the traditional Malaysian folkways.

Also the environment being mostly moist and hot. And the rhythm of personal body language. Its a full package deal in a way. Not to say non native can't do it but it would take some time "going native" to figure it out

[open_space]

No, I am not part of that extremist view of cultural appropriation, but what is true is that too many people have taken it lightly; and also growing up in the civilized west makes it harder to digest such a strong method, that was part of my point. Also worth considering, if that is a path anyone should consider seriously a proper cultural setting would be appropriate too and such a person would be encouraged to go live in the jungle with an experienced shaman for at least a decade before being able to see where to take it next by himself. Preparing the brew, the right methods to make it stop if it goes bad (like the rapé) and how to contact and work with the spirits and gods involved is an important part of the process. The taitas of Brazil seem to be quite knowledgeable about this. I would also stay away from the synthetic forms of the active ingredient, god knows how that is made and I bet it is not respectfully nor legally. You don't want that inside of your system!

Intense visual aspects in occultism seem to depend on the gifts of the person, but judging by other accounts working with the astral effectively is quite common. A couple of students of Dion Fortune, I don't recall the name just know have a book where they delineate their visions in a detailed manner, that could probably give you an idea. I am by no means an experienced mage either, I've been doing this seriously for about one year, every day. So getting there, to get to a place where you can tune in to the astral vividly I would say maybe a decade? Daily practice has given me some glimpses between the 6 months and a year mark, making an emphasis in meditation but still nothing that has sent my into a rapture of ecstasy. Also, magic is not about tripping out, it is about accessing the full scope of the states of consciousness available to a human being and advancing out souls. Can that involve intense visuals and ecstatic states? I bet, but that is a means, not an end. All I know is that the effort is worth it. For what is worth, magic can seem dry because of its academic tones, believe me, it isn't, at least not the magic I practice. It is full of color and bonding with the natural world.

The thing is that with substances you buy a ticket to the concert and watch, with magic you get to learn the instrument and play it yourself, that's my take on it. I've also been a user of marihuana and I've only done magic after the effect has completely passed, but it also seems to set you back as it does tear your astral body a little every time, so I had to quit. Take the warning seriously, its true. Even without actively using it, just from the effects of previous heavy use I think I got my metaphysical bodies sprained for a few months.

If you want a Tarot reading, I'm giving those for free here in my journal, but getting to your query will take me a bit since I have a back log for this week.

[inavalon]

"The thing is that with substances you buy a ticket to the concert and watch, with magic you get to learn the instrument and play it yourself, that's my take on it. "

This is probably the most succinct and accurate metaphor I've encountered regarding the psychedelic experience. Thank you!