Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just past 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.

The illustration?  A diagram from the teachings of the Societas Rosicruciana in America (SRIA), one of the magical orders I belong to. It shows the process of the involution and evolution of the soul. 

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With that said, have at it! 

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

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You might remember my bewilderment at the flurry of questions I got from friends after one passing remark about starting to work my way through The Druidry Handbook. One of the real puzzlers was wanting to know when could I perform weddings. I took May off TDH for a Reiki class which included ordination and remembered the question when my license to solemnize marriages came in the mail Friday.
So – Green Wizards now perform wedding ceremonies. Probably funerals and bap… wait… do Druids have baptisms?
Rhydlyd

[ecosophia]

It's one of the weird brain farts in contemporary American culture that anybody who gets active in any religious tradition is expected to be able to perform weddings. It's as though that's the only role for religious professionals most Americans can still imagine.

No, Druids don't do baptisms, but they can do baby blessing and naming ceremonies. I don't, so don't ask me for rituals! (I also don't perform weddings.)

[(Anonymous)]

May I have a nickel tour of this week’s illustration? It looks similar to some of the New Thought material I was hooked on in my misspent young adulthood…
R

[ecosophia]

The three spheres in the zone of the Absolute Now are the three divine levels above the realms of manifest existence and time: the sphere of the Absolute, the sphere of the Supreme Being of the universe, and the sphere of the Solar Logos. Below that is the world of manifestation, in which involution and evolution cycle through a sequence of seven stages, traditionally called the Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan periods. Today's humanity is going through its Earth period right now.

[(Anonymous)]

In news from the hinterlands – The NASCAR fans are applying their love of complicated rules and arcane metrics to the pandemic, vaccines, official pronouncements, and the money trail. Faith in rules, logic, and the scientific method as a do-it-yourself project are all up. Official pronouncements… not so much.
Also, the same people seem to be reinventing Max Scheler’s hierarchy of values and its variations to describe what they see.
Should I tell them about Scheler, or just watch?

[ecosophia]

Get some popcorn, and watch.

CGD-Oriented Training Course

[(Anonymous)]

Good evening, JMG, and thank you for this ongoing opportunity.

In a previous Magic Monday (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/68693.html) you outlined this magical training course featuring the AODA system:


“You need to start by building a really solid foundation. That means daily practice of the SoP, meditation, and divination, with an emphasis on meditation -- 30 minutes a day of actual meditation should be your minimum for the first two years, working up to an hour a day thereafter. Once you've got the basic method of the SoP down cold, the expansions given in my book The Druid Magic Handbook are your next step, and the steps after that are in a forthcoming book of mine, The Dolmen Arch. Meanwhile get a solid background in natural magic -- the magical properties of herbs, stones, etc. -- and do a lot of practical work with these, and master at least two systems of divination inside and out, so your readings are precise and stone cold accurate. Once you've done that -- not before -- get some good books on spagyrics (herbal alchemy) and get to work on that; spagyric work is a great way to accelerate your inner development, once you've got the basics of magic down.

That's the practical work, and if you do it with sufficient intensity it'll take you ten years of hard work. You also need to put serious time into study. That means mythology and folklore, the raw material from which magic springs; the history of magic, so you know what your roots are and can make sense of older texts and traditions; the literature of magic itself, from the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri straight on through the latest postmodern avant-garde stuff; and at least some grounding in philosophy as well. To achieve what you want to achieve, you're going to have to have a really solid intellectual understanding of magic as well as a really solid practical grasp of it; it's going to take you roughly the amount of work you'd expect to put in to earn a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at a really good university.”


I’d love to hear how you would modify this approach for someone working with the CGD system. I’m guessing you would still recommend daily ritual (LRP + Exercise of the Central Ray instead of SoP), meditation, and divination while working through the CGD book in tandem with The Mysteries of Merlin (and then the Celtic Cabbalah book once it comes out). I’m also guessing you’d recommend building up a mastery of natural magic and spagyrics during this time, plus mastering divination via both geomancy and the Coelbren. Lastly, I assume your basic outline of magical study still holds as is.

Would you add to, emphasize, or alter anything here?

(By the way, I think that what you’ve done with the Celtic Golden Dawn is really rad. I love the overall structure, aesthetic, and the emphases on alchemy, conjuration, consecration, and transformation. So thank you for all the work you’ve done there and for making it publicly available.)

Thanks!
-Colter

Re: CGD-Oriented Training Course

[ecosophia]

That's correct -- and it's what The Celtic Golden Dawn is meant to lead up to. Another book working with the same system, The Litany of the Tree of Life, will be out later this year, and that's well worth adding into the system. Once you've finished the CGD book, I'd encourage you to read Regardie's The Golden Dawn if you haven't already done so, and if you have, read it again; see what you can adapt to Celtic GD terms from that source. (There's a vast amount in there, and very few modern mages have done more than dabbled with it.)

A Handful of Short Questions

[jprussell]

Hello,

Happy late birthday! I did not realize until after I had posted last week. I've got a few fairly short questions, but if that's being greedy, I can space them out over the next few weeks.

1) I've been practicing the Heathen variants of the LBRP and Middle Pillar exercise you posted here and am finding them very helpful - any updates on your "Heathen Golden Dawn" book with Sven Eriksen?
2) A few technical questions for doing the Heathen LRP:
- In the Sign of the Hammer, should I continue to visualize the beam of light from above when picturing myself as Mjollnir? Should I continue one or both of those visualizations when I vibrate "Wod"?
- When tracing out the pentagrams and circle, should I stand in the center and rotate in place, pointing my arm like a clock hand, or should I go out to the perimeter and walk along it, walking in a circle and pausing at each cardinal direction and facing out? Or something else?
- When vibrating the names of the Gods and Goddesses for each pentagram, should I be visualizing them?
- What pose should I stand in when naming the mythic items (Gugnir, Gjallarhorn, Sumrbrandr, and Draupnir) and the stars and Light of the Aesir?
- When naming the above objects, should I visualize them?
- When doing the Sign of the Hammer after the middle pillar exercise, should I continue to visualize the spheres as I do the Hammer Sign visualizations?
3) In the FAQ, you say not to do any magic more advanced than LBRP, the Middle Pillar, Meditation, and Light Divination when you have children under 3 - is pathworking one of those more advanced works to avoid? From the placement and description in Celtic Golden Dawn, it's not clear to me if it is simply a specialized form of mediation, or something else.
4) Besides daily ritual, meditation, and divination, do you have any recommendations on how to develop occult senses? I'm extremely verbal/analytical and have some trouble turning that off for other modes of thinking/sensing.
5) You've said you've read Bonewits's books - are they helpful at all? Anything in there to watch out for (besides the antipathy to the Druid revival you've discussed before)?
Real Magic was my first introduction to occultism other than my first girlfriend's Wiccan books, and its bibliography became my main guide to what else I should read for a while. I'm wondering if it's worth revisiting or if there's anything I might have picked up from it that I ought to rethink.

Thanks,
Jeff

Re: A Handful of Short Questions

[ecosophia]

1) None, I'm sorry to say.

2) Experiment with all of these and see what works best for you.

3) Pathworking is a specialized form of meditation. You can do it all day without influencing children.

4) You might look at the exercises in W.E. Butler's How to Read the Aura, Practice Psychometry, Telepathy, and Clairvoyance.

5) I find Bonewits' books useless, to be frank, but your mileage may vary. From my perspective they're sales brochures and nothing more.

Synchronicities

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG, Continued thanks for hosting these Magic Mondays! What an interesting cover image this week!

More a data-point than a question... I remember your comment a few months ago about more synchronicities seeming to be happening. I am experiencing more, myself, and it correlates with relocating to a new geographic home base. For several years, I lived in the Southeast and had some synchronicities but they slowed down the last several months when my work situation degraded. I got a new job and worked remotely for a few months, but the synchronicities didn't increase. In March, I traveled to the South coast of MA to visit my new job, and synchronicities happened immediately. Now that I've moved here, there has been an uptick in the happenings. What is even more interesting is that I learned that my mother's grandmother's people lived in this area (i.e. within 15 miles) where I've moved! I had no idea when I took the job or visited in March. It is as if my ancestors are welcoming me home.

Tussey
aka Alabaster Melancholic Goose

Re: Synchronicities

[ecosophia]

Your ancestors may well be welcoming you home. Whereabouts on the south coast of MA, if I might ask?

[(Anonymous)]

Do you know if anyone has ever explored a link between the Plutonian and what Rudolf Steiner called the Luciferic form of evil, or Eris as Steiner's Ahrimanic evil?

[ecosophia]

I don't know of anyone exploring this, but it would make for some interesting meditations.

Lovecraft, Contact, and Scattershot Fun

[goatgodschild]

Hello, Mr. Greer, and thank you for another Magic Monday!
This week I have three questions for you.

1) There seem to be a main circle of H.P. Lovecraft stories (Cthulhu, Dreams in the Witch-House, Horror at Red Hook, etc.), and an outer circle -- the latter being stories such as "The Alchemist", "Dagon", "The Doom That Came To Sarnath", etc. My hypothesis at this time is that the less popular stories are more occult or surreal, while the more popular ones are more grounded. The question here is, have you noticed these two circles (or more), and, if so, why do they exist, in your opinion?

2)How should one go about following up with spirit guide contacts? Asking my Tarot deck about the current state of the guides, and our future together, only resulted in general muddled grumbling.

3) In the main pagan circle I run in, I have been invited to a "Pride Witchcraft Weekend", which includes a "binding and banishing spell to bind queerphobia, harmful laws, and any other personal things you might want to include". Naturally, I find it quite amusing. Shall I add a link to the post for a good laugh?

Re: Lovecraft, Contact, and Scattershot Fun

[ecosophia]

1) The three stories you assign to the outer circle are all early stories -- in the case of "The Alchemist," very early. You might look up the chronology of the stories and see whether your division generally works out to "earlier" vs. "later."

2) Cautiously, but systematically. I find it useful to do an inner plane contact session once each week, and write down the results.

3) They just don't learn, do they? Sure, post a link if you like.

"She who could not breathe out"

[alexandermarcus]

Howdy, all.

This question is for JMG and the commentariat.

In Gateways through Light and Shadow, Frater Ashen Chassan and Ben Mac Stoifan ask Anael - the archangel of Venus:

"In Faery lore, what is the meaning or truth behind Lucifer falling through Venus to the Earth Mother?"

Anael replies:

"Some will hear this spoken or hear this teaching, and may see it as naive; as fairies traipsing on dust.

"When Lucifer fell, when he fell through Venus . . . he fell through me. His love for 'she who could not breathe out' was so great that he severed himself utterly from the Father. I do not know his destiny; it is a mystery kept even from me. But when briefly he passed through me, I could feel his longing. The longing of a broken heart . . . for knowledge of the other.

"For an Angel to do this it is *such* pain you humans have no conception. But I suspect that in darkness, there is something inexplicably light. This is all I can say of this for now."


So, I find the whole passage really interesting, but my question for y'all is: who is "she who could not breathe out"? The transcription of Anael's response puts that title in quotes, and I've never heard the reference before. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Re: "She who could not breathe out"

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I have no idea. That isn't a term I've ever encountered before.

[mollari]

What would you look for in astrology for a chart predicting a fairly large die off (say a couple percent of the population)? I'm assuming afflicted 1st, 6th, and 8th houses, but I'm not sure of the details. If that's all it takes, then Canada is in for quite a few issues, since that seems to pop up in a lot of our charts for the next few years....

[ecosophia]

The only way to find out is to cast mundane charts for situations in which there was a serious dieoff, and see if they have any common factors. That's not covered in any of the mundane astrology texts I know of.

[(Anonymous)]

1) What would be the ideal day to apply for jobs? I've narrowed it down to Jupiter, Venus, or the Sun, but I'm not sure which of these three would be ideal.

2) Do you know any good sources on reading Solar Return Charts?

[ecosophia]

1) Depends on the job. Is it the kind of job where you can get rich? Jupiter. Is it the kind of job where your goal is to help people? Venus. Is it the kind of job where your personality is on stage? Sun.

3) I don't -- I haven't gotten into those yet.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there an occult explanation to the phenomenon of feeling really bad energy while the sun is up and feeling immediate relief when the sun descends the horizon? I like being outside in the sun and in nature but I find the vibes much worse during the day than the night and have no idea why.

[ecosophia]

That's very interesting. Where are you located?

[hippieviking]

Hi JMG,

I'm applying for a job, I'm curious if there is anything ceremonial magic-wise I can do to help myself in the process. My practice consists of the heathen LRP and MPE that I have been consistently doing for about eight months now.

Thanks,
HV

[ecosophia]

Can you get a copy of Israel Regardie's fine little book The Art of True Healing? It includes a very simple and effective way of using the Middle Pillar exercise for practical magic.

Mouni Sadhu’s Concentration

[(Anonymous)]

So I’ve been working through the exercises in Mouni Sadhu’s books for a while.

Right now I’ve accomplished the first two steps in his system and will start soon on the exercise involving visualising the whole of an object all at once.

TBH, I peeked ahead at the later steps as well as read his other book “In Days of Great Peace”. He divides out steps 1-3 as the basics and steps 4 and above as “advanced”

I don’t intend to practise Advaita Vedanta, which the advanced steps in the book seem to lead up to.

I originally started off with his system for a series of exercises to improve my will, concentration, and visualisation skills.

What do you think of just finishing off step 3 and then proceeding to another system of esoteric training that I find more appealing? Or is there value in completing all the steps even as a non-Advaita practitioner?

Re: Mouni Sadhu’s Concentration

[ecosophia]

The end of Step 3 is a good place to stop if you don't want to go ahead to his specific mode of mystical practice. Completing those first three series is a great way to build the necessary skills of magical practice.

[causticus]

Good evening Archdruid,

After much agonizing, frantic thinking, and several divinations I've decided to no longer (for the time being, at least) invoke gods in my SOP, which I've been practicing for over a year now. Now I'm doing just the elements plus the Hawk, Stag, Salmon, ect. invocations. Prior, I had flip-flopped back and forth between invoking Greek and Roman deity names (I even tried the Druid Revival gods for a short time), and it never felt quite 'right' either way. I just never felt like I earned the right to invoke those names as I've never really developed a connection an entire culture's pantheon. Though I love Greek philosophy, the folk mythology doesn't really do much for me. Since dropped the gods/goddesses out of the SOP, I feel like I can concentrate on the practice much easier and devote more mental energy to trying to properly visualize each of the gates and I've even started to try and invoke/banish specific personality qualities of mine associated with each of the elements.

Anyway,

1. From reading your articles and comments, you seemed to have suggested that invoking a pantheon for SOP and LRP practices is best for people who have already developed a relationship with deities from a specific pantheon (presumably, not something to casually do for shales-and-giggles). Thinking this over it seems I might have inappropriately 'used' god-names for the sake of expediency, for making a ritual work. Could this be a reason why the gods never seemed to 'respond' to me the zillion-and-one times I invoked them in SOP practice?

2. Realistically, how less 'powerful' is the SOP without invoking gods? SOP has never given me the feeling of much 'oomph' for me (lots of calming sensations though) in the first place after all these months of practice, with or without gods. In fact, without the gods, the colored flame symbols and elemental scenery seems to be coming to my mind's eye much easier during the ritual.

3. In your experience, are the Druid Revival deities open to anyone invoking their names for ritual despite no prior relationship being established? Is the the same sort of 'it just works' deal like with GD practitioners invoking the Hebraic archangels with no difficulty, despite there being no prior religious relationship? I'm considering invoking the Druid gods once I become more proficient doing just the elements.

4. Is Ogham divination an effective means of figuring out which qualities I should invoke and banish with regard to my own personality traits and habits? I've been following your prior advice on phrase Ogham question with the "What should I know about doing x?" phrasing and it's been giving me very interesting results, but I think I'm still to novice at this to be able to associate the answers with concrete personality qualities.

5. Do you know of anywhere I could find meaningful information about Hu the Mighty? Doing basic internet searches mostly just turns up angry-trash talking about Iolo Morganwg (Wikipedia editors love to hate on him), in addition to some vague references to his name being a medieval Welsh story derived from some French tale about Charlemagne.

6. I've found that when I do SOP in my bedroom right before going to sleep, I often find myself in a rather weird semi-somnous state as I'm falling asleep; I feel a lot closer to the astral, and sometimes I even get uninvited 'visitors' in the middle of the night, despite having the usual protective measures in place (vinegar, hexafoils, ect.) Is it a bad idea to do this too close to bedtime? I get the impression that doing the ritual seems to 'light me up' in a way that attracts astral things to me. Anyone else have similar experiences with this?

As always, thank you for everything you do!

Lilac Impertinent Troglodyte

[ecosophia]

1) I don't know. That's not a reaction I've experienced.

2) Your mileage is likely to vary!

3) I've always had good responses from them, even before I was particularly into polytheism, but you might consider praying to them and asking their opinion in the matter.

4) While you're still getting used to Ogham, name a specific trait or habit and see if you can get a clear yes/no.

5) There's really very little, outside Iolo's Barddas.

6) You can always change the wording to banish uninvited visitors, you know...

-- Aquamarine Befuddled Duck

[mollari]

a) Violet Cabra did a post on cultural appropriation, and reading it made me realize that people who engage in that argumetn presume to speak for the gods. This seems like a classic thing the gods would take offence to, and this is a major one, because it presumes to speak for all gods. It's hard to think of something which might offend all of them, but this is one of them.

Do you think it's possible part of the turmoil and insanity right now is the consequence of the gods taking offence to that?

b) Do you know if there's anything in occult lore which can be used to help cope with the realization that nearly every relationship I value is now on the cutting block? I don't feel comfortable getting the Covid vaccine, and apparently in Canada these days that's tantamount to advocating for murder. Is this something stoicism would help with?

c) Do you know if anyone has looked at the charts for Yugoslavia during its catastrophic breakdown? I'm noticing quite a few similarities between Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and a large amount of Canada, including my home, and am wondering if anyone has looked into the astrological charts of that era, so I can see if the similarities are in the charts as well.

[ecosophia]

1) Interesting. Have you meditated on it?

2) Yes, very much so. Epictetus's Enchiridion (that's a fancy way of saying "Handbook") is a good place to start.

3) I don't, but you can certainly take a good look at them.

Severing astral connections

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I was courting a young lady for a while who has now told me in no uncertain terms she is not interested. I am having difficulty getting over my infatuation with her and am getting a little obsessive. I seem to recall in a recent MM you mentioned a hoodoo spell to help facilitate (harmless ) separation from another person. I have tried looking in the archives but don’t seem to be able to find it. It involved writing the person’s name down on a piece of paper and placing in a bottle with some vinegar before throwing said bottle into a river I believe? Could you please let me know if this would work for my case and if so give me the details? (I do not own anything of this girl’s like a photo etc unfortunately)

Given water is the element associated with connection I have tried doing the GBRP (water) which seems to have some temporary benefit. Would that make sense from a magical theory perspective?

Also I’m thinking that maybe a slightly more regular rose+ cross would be helpful? ..along with journalling about it of course.


Thanks

Re: Severing astral connections

[ecosophia]

1) First, journal on it, and see how many of the emotional issues tied up in it are internal to you.

2) The hoodoo spell is simple. You take a piece of paper with the person's name on it and put it into a small glass bottle with some salt and a little cayenne pepper. Take it to a river that flows away from your house, and throw it in, with the intention of having it take away your connection to the person. Return home by a different route.

3) Banishing will only bring temporary results because you have to fill the space with something else. Yes, you can also do R+C rituals with the intention of healing yourself.

Baths

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

Hope that your weekend was swell. Here are my q’s for this week:

1. I took one of the hoodoo baths from the FAQ for the first time on Tuesday. I finished around 7pm and I felt a little bit tweaked afterwards, but not long after that I couldn’t even stay awake while trying to read at my desk. This is pretty out of character for me considering I usually stay up relatively late. Do you have any idea what could have happened here? I tried thinking this through a few times over the week and couldn’t come up with something satisfactory.

2. Are there any resources with variations on the practice you could point me towards? You wrote that it’s in the Southern Conjure tradition but I don’t know my around the literature at all. I only ask because I have egregiously sensitive Irish skin and it left me a bit rashy afterwards but it was manageable, haha. If that’s just the price you pay for the cleansing benefits I get it though.

3. Is there a rough limit on how often you should take these baths or anything? Considering the benefits I experienced over the next several days I was thinking that I would like to try a period of taking one maybe every five days or so while I work through some personal issues.


Thank you once again for everything you do with Magic Mondays, you’re doing God’s/the Gods’ work.

Cheers,
Viridian Peevish Grasshopper

Re: Baths

[ecosophia]

1) You doubtless needed to sleep so that your subtle bodies could recover from a good thorough scouring. That happens sometimes.

2) Decrease the amount of each ingredient by half. I don't know the literature in general -- I studied with one teacher and have mostly used her work ever since.

3) That should be fine. I know people who've had to deal with massive magical trouble who've taken them daily.

-- Obsidian Shabby Frog

Damien and Hesse

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I have just read Hesse’s book Damien. Hesse has been on my radar before, but after your post on him I went and started reading his books from the first to the last. I just came up to his after world war books and the differences are staggering!
The characters are more fleshed out, even compared to the characters in Gertrud. The story is episodic, but with a read line connecting it all. Damien is a great book.
But what struck me was the shear amount of occultism in it. The main character reads Kabbala, there are chapters devoted to strange gods. Guardian angels, higher selves, awakenings... There is a character that repeatedly meditates.

Do Hesse plunge into occultism in between his early and later novels. How deep did he go. He touches on everything from Abraxas to alchemy in this book.

Best regards,
V

Re: Damien and Hesse

[ecosophia]

Demian is very, very deep. None of the others are quite so obvious about it, though there's a lot of meditation and the like in The Glass Bead Game I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[open_space]

Good evening JMG and commentariat

Is there any natural magic that helps with hormones and menstrual cycles? Specifically to settle them or perhaps being more attuned with the cycles of the moon.

I had an experience with the astral light that was strong. The things I saw were more intense than their physical counterparts. Is it generally more intense or am I not seeing its relevance outside of that state?

Many thanks, as always

[ecosophia]

1) I don't know of anything. Anyone else?

2) It varies according to complex cycles.

[tamanous2020]

Hi JMG,

1. As I've progressed to doing the full SoP, I've noticed that I have a large amount of images, faces and random mental flickers that occur when going through the banishment portions of each element. Is this a common thing? It's rather annoying and makes it more difficult to visualize the banishment imagery as described in DA.

2. As an experiment, I went ahead and did your modified Christian version of the SoP. However, unlike the druid version which usually leaves me feeling lighter in some sense, I was terribly nauseous for about an hour. It left me a little confused to be honest. I do come from an anglo-catholic background and though I went through an atheist phase, I did my best to make amends afterwards with the Christian Pantheon so I'm not quite sure what the issue was.

Tamanous

[ecosophia]

1) It's common. Keep at it and you'll banish them.

2) Hmm! Well, seemingly that's not something suited to you. You might consider meditting on it.

Mages and Mystics: Imagination

[https://openid-provider.appspot.com/bryanlallen]

Greetings, ever-generous Archdruid. I’m gamely following along with the Levi bookclub exploration (ordered and just received the translation you and Mr. Mikituk wrote, as my French copy of “Haute Magie” was bogging me down a bit too much due to my beginner-level French skills) and you said something VERY intriguing in the comments for the latest installment, comment #80 in fact: “Magic can also be described as the practical use of the imagination”. Kaboom. That threw me for a loop!

Since I trend towards the mystical slant myself, I found myself wonderIng how Imagination interacts and interplays with mysticism. Certainly, Mysticism is Less Practical (duh) but just how to tease out the similarities and the differences with respect to Imagination is causing me some degree of consternation. Good puzzlements, but I’m interested in your take on things.

BTW, a while back you had suggested to me to check out Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s “The Philosophy of Consciousness Without An Object” which is leading me to interesting meditations and ahahs and new questions. I never would have predicted it, but I’m finding Levi’s work thus far quite complementary to Merrell-Wolff’s work, because it seems more rooted and practical! Egads! Would NEVER have predicted that; “Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic”, as a title at least, sounds so “out there.”

Many thanks!

Re: Mages and Mystics: Imagination

[ecosophia]

I'm not a mystic, so am probably not the right guy to ask about the role of imagination in mysticism. From what I know about it as an outsider, it varies depending on what kind of mysticism you practice. As for magic as practical, yep -- magic is to philosophy what engineering is to pure science. It constantly deals with the world of everyday experience.

LBRP

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG. I have a question about banishing. I realise this has been discussed on and off for the past few months so apologies if this has already been asked.
I’m doing the Bardic grade of the DOGD and my temple space is my workshop where I also have my work space for my herbal practice.
I read on a past MM that the LBRP is of a power that it will ‘banish’ the ‘virtue’ of spagyric remedies.
Is this also true of the spagyrics we need to prepare for the Bardic grade? It’s difficult for me to prepare and store them elsewhere as my workshop is effectively my little ‘domain’ away from the rest of the family and ideally set up for both ritual and herbalism.
Many thanks AB

Re: LBRP

[ecosophia]

In the early stages of training it's not a problem, because it takes practice before your banishing ritual gets any kind of power. Now that you're in the Bardic grade, it might be an issue, but there's an easy fix. Get some silk or linen, make bags of it sized to fit the containers you use to macerate and store tinctures, and keep them in the bags while you're doing your ritual work. You don't have to worry about the calcined salts -- nothing will effect those -- and once you create the magisteries from them, those are fixed and won't be disrupted by banishing.

Before the Butlerian Jihad

[tunesmyth]

Sometime this past week, somebody shared this link in one of your blogs, a Kickstarter project to fund an “AI powered” “gamified micro-learning” memory training app with virtual 3D “premade memory palaces”. It seems to having been a knockdown success of a Kickstarter, blowing way past their goal of $10,000 to rake in $387,000 so far with a few weeks left to go.

First of all, I hope you’ve been developing the memory component in your upcoming modular Occult Training system, because there’s clearly a big market for it. Then again, it seems a lot of people prefer their mental skills hooked to a paid subscription app...

I found this part amusing:

Why not learn mnemonics from a textbook?

It is certainly possible to develop memorization skill from specialized textbooks. Besides the long hours of regular training, this approach has several limitations. A major one is having to construct a large enough, usable mind palace out of well-known locations that are themselves limited.

This seems to me something that would only worry someone who had never actually attempted to build a memory palace before. Then again, I suppose that’s the target audience.

Anyway, my actual question is about the following:

The name of our game component technology is Mind Palace Virtual Implant and refers to the virtual transfer of pre-made memory palaces to a person's long-term memory. These structured environments will later be recreated by a person's imagination as a tulpa and used as storage space to help encode, store, and retrieve necessary information once needed.

Hmmm. Implanting a tulpa. What could possibly go wrong?

Now, I’m assuming that the AI aspect is mainly hype, and there are no inhuman minds controlling these “tulpas”. And further, I’m assuming that the writers of this sales copy don’t actually know what a tulpa is, and are just applying the word because it’s been trendy on the internet lately.

Still. Let’s assume the worst for a moment; that in the spirit of all of the tales of devil’s bargains which give exactly what they advertise, there really is some sort of disembodied personality seeking to implant itself in people’s minds by way of gamified AI memory palace-based learning. Could you see any mechanism for this to actually occur? Whether through a video game which seeks to get the user to memorize every part of it, or via some other method?

Re: Before the Butlerian Jihad

[ecosophia]

You know, that's a good point. Yes, it would be entirely possible for a demonic entity to get people to open themselves to malefic influence. As long as you've got people consciously opening themselves to the influence -- some degree of assent is necessary for possession -- you could have that.

GD and Tai Chi clash. Questions

[kalidasa]

Hello John,

(context: I'm looking for a path to commit to, for a decade or so, and GD is one of the candidates, and I'm reading your books and websites to get an idea of what is involved)

I have a fairly rigorous Tai Chi practice (not Qi Gong, just TC) and it seems (from some of your posts on this site) that the GD energetic practices somehow clash with the Taoist(?) energy circuits established by TC/QG practices, and so effectively you have to choose one or the other.

Bit of a bummer, but fair enough. There are arts other than TC and paths other than GD, and I'll work something out, eventually.

My questions are on another tangent though.

Is it possible to use the skills one acquires as a GD mage to *resolve* such clashes?

To be more specific, are there spirits one can invoke/pathworkings on the Tree of Life one can do/insert whatever-else-a-top-grade-GD-mage-has-in-his-arsenal thingy here, to gather information on *why* (exactly) this (TC/GD energy clash) happens, and can he design a fix, perhaps with advice from an angel/elemental/planetary-spirit (surely one of the planets has TC in its significations?) that specializes in such things?

I guess my question is about how far operative magic can go in fixing real world "path issues" like these. I suppose at some point the GD system's base came from someone contacting something in the spirit world, so this (kind of thing) should be possible?

Am I too off base with respect to the kind of thing one can do with advanced practical magic skills? I am all for the "integrating multiple levels of Being" aspect of GD magic as a path, but I was wondering if one can acquire information/methods to resolve "problems on the path". In other words can one do magical "research + engineering" once one is at a reasonably advanced level?

Thanks in advance,
KD

Re: GD and Tai Chi clash. Questions

[ecosophia]

If we had the kind of complete magical system that mages had in the western world in ancient times, and was partially reconstructed in the Renaissance, yes, this would be an option, just as a properly trained Taoist knows how to use various means to balance out potential energy problems from the interaction between different practices. Unfortunately most of the old healing lore is lost and it's being slowly reconstructed. My advice, if you want to combine taijiquan and Western magic, is to make the acquaintance of a good acupuncturist and get regular checkups from them to make sure your energy body is staying in proper balance.