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.

The illustration? Another bit of Rosicrucian theory, this time having to do with the redirection of sexual energies into the upper centers of the subtle body. Max Heindel, whose system this describes, draws the usual distinction between the mystic and the occultist; in his view, the mystic path focuses on the heart and the occult path on the brain, but the energies activated by their work follow predictable patterns that eventually bring both to adeptship, as shown in the diagram. Heindel recommended celibacy for those who wanted to pursue either path; other Rosicrucian schools had other approaches. 

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With that said, have at it!

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

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Good evening Mr. Greer,

I want this incarnation to be one of my last. What can I do to ensure this is so?

Thank you in advance.

[(Anonymous)]

Checking in – I’ve continued to burn incense for Beli before bedtime in a bowl with some sand in it and to put petition papers with requests for advice and guidance under the bowl. As previously reported, I’ve been more talkative and friendlier, and I’ve been wondering if His Grace would like an ancestor altar. Opinions welcome on that.
On the other hand, I tend to chatter on, so it finally hit me to tell myself to practice silence and practice stillness instead of using any of the usual expressions in the negative. Report pending application this week.
Also, I’m still struggling with When a Pagan Prays by Nimue Brown. Prayer never clicked with me, but my curiosity is turning the book into a wrestling match every bit as good as anything on TV. Anyway – Aside from incense for Beli and often remembering to say grace, I’m struggling with a new concept. Wisdom and advice welcome.
Many thanks.
Rhydlyd

[ecosophia]

There are two things you have to do to finish up your time on the human level. The first is to clear away your remaining karmic debts; the second is to finish the process of awakening on the mental plane. Neither of those is easy.

To clear away your karmic debts, first stop adding to them -- that means among other things behaving toward other people with fairness and compassion, no matter how they treat you. Then -- well, it depends on just how much karma you've got piled up and how much misery you're willing to endure in this life. You can, if you learn enough magic to do effective invocations of divine energies, call upon the forces of karma and ask them to give you the opportunity to clear things; just be aware that this may involve something on the order of dying slowly of an agonizing cancer, or being arrested and jailed for the next thirty years for a crime you didn't commit, or something else on that scale. It all depends on what you've got coming your way as a result of your actions in previous lives.

To finish awakening on the mental plane, systematic spiritual practice is essential. The basic daily regimen of a banishing ritual, 20-30 minutes of discursive meditation, and divination is a good start. If you feel called to ritual magic, any good system of magical training will give you plenty of rituals for spiritual development you can use to shift your inner maturation into high gear. If you feel called to mysticism instead, daily prayer will do the same thing; Evelyn Underhill's book Mysticism will give you some pointers. More generally, studying classic spiritual literature will help by giving you the conceptual frameworks you'll need to guide your practice.

[ecosophia]

Same advice as before -- what you're doing seems to be working. Keep going.

Cell Salts Protocol question

[tunesmyth]

Thank you as always for answering our questions.

I hadn't been participating in the cell salts protocol experiment you began last year because I couldn't find an affordable source for cell salts where I live-- the shipping costs were too high to handle. I have recently come across a source, though, so I plan to order the necessary salts and come late to this party.

I was looking at the original directions, and it has listings for each sun sign 0°-10°, 11°-20°, and 21°-30°. My own birth time puts me right in the middle of 20°. Just to double check, this means I should order the salts listed for 11°-20°, is that right? No rounding up, even if it's close?

[(Anonymous)]

Regarding this week’s illustration – Nickel tour of how one reaches the balanced state? Celibacy is striking me as a good idea lately, but I don’t know why. And – Hey, wait a minute… “had other approaches”?
Thanks. :-)
Teal Banal Frog

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks. On it.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you very much. I suppose it almost goes without saying that you are doing these things at a fairly competent level.

[(Anonymous)]

Would it be beneficial just to use salt, white vinegar and cayenne pepper in a normal hot bath?

Also, would sea salt be fine?

[ecosophia]

The nickel version is "systematic spiritual practice." The details? Heindel covers them in some detail in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, which you can download for free (along with all Heindel's other works) here, and his organization also has extensive correspondence courses on the subject on a by-donation basis.

[open_space]

Good evening JMG!

I've been thinking about silence and one of the areas that it clashes with my upbringing is the somewhat simplistic notion of you should never lie. I actually think lying can be very useful sometimes, for example when one is trying to conceal something or when trying to dodge unwanted attention but I am facing resistance with this. According to you, when is it wrong to lie? And how can I deprogram myself that it is always wrong?

I had a fairly traumatic high school experience with abuse, and through journaling I realized that I've become aggressive in some areas of my life as a way of dealing with the shame. It turns out that is a thing, men become aggressive when you make them feel weak. I no longer want to feel anger about this, and I've found that the primary feelings are shame from being publicly ridiculed and frustration with being powerless about this. I remember you say that part of the healing is by allowing yourself to feel those but I think I am stuck. How can I even begin to forgive people that did me so much harm and make the anger go away?

Lastly, can the consequences of my actions that I need to face that start to pile up in front of me do to magic practice manifest as repeated diseases instead of events? I've had quite a few weeks of abnormally high injuries and infections.

[ecosophia]

Do you mean me personally? I'm no judge of my own competence, but yes, these are both central aspects of my path.

Re: Cell Salts Protocol question

[ecosophia]

You can certainly start at any point. That's correct -- no rounding up.

[ecosophia]

Sea salt works well -- some people prefer it. As for the ordinary bath, good question. I was taught to treat hoodoo baths as something separate from regular bathing, but you can always experiment and see what results you get.

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

1. Is it possible to perform too much banishing by repeating the LBRP too often over a period of time without any corresponding invocation to balance it out? What would be the psychological state that would result, and how should one get out of it?

2. I’m looking for a ritual in the GD tradition to improve focus and memory for work purposes. Due to the nature of my job, I need to be able to stare at a screen and concentrate on some fairly boring material over an extended period of time while being detail-oriented and rigorous. The ritual would ideally be one that I could combine with the LBRP and perform on a regular basis, say, prior to starting work. Do you have any suggestions? Perhaps a GIRH of Mercury followed by an affirmation to that effect, while burning some white sandalwood?

3. What is a polite way to break off a relationship with a deity? Is such a thing a good idea in general?

[ecosophia]

1) Lying is wrong when the person you're lying to has a valid reason to know the truth that you're concealing from them. If there's no good reason for someone to know something, concealing it from them is morally neutral, and if the truth will hurt someone, hiding it from them can be morally positive.

2) Forgiveness is overrated. The challenge you face is in letting go of the burden of pain they inflicted on you, so you can go on to live your life despite them. Don't try to make the anger go away; accept that you feel angry about what was done to you, and that you don't have to let the anger run your life. Some people find that journaling helps; some people find that joining a martial arts school and pounding the bejesus out of a heavy bag helps. Massage nearly always helps. It's a long rough road to outgrow something like that -- trust me, I know. Take it a step at a time.

3) Yes, if that's the form your karma takes. Be patient with it and keep up with your practices.

[(Anonymous)]

Good evening JMG and happy 4th of July. May you continue benefiting from the freedoms enshrined in the US constitution.

A couple of questions for this episode:

1. How would you interpret a stellium in Aquarius in the 8th house consisting of the Sun, Saturn and Mercury? This isn't for me, but for a friend of mine ;). I understand that a full analysis is beyond the scope of a simple comment, but I would be curious to hear any insights you might have.

2. Let’s say that you have a great idea for a book project that you’re incredibly excited about and which you believe has the potential to become your best work to date. However, upon performing a divination on whether it would be a good idea to go forward with the project, you get an overwhelmingly negative response. What would you do? To what extend do you trust your own judgment vs. the oracle's?

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, which is why you should take up the Middle Pillar exercise within a few months of learning the LBRP. The Middle Pillar is a good robust invocation and balances the banishing aspect. Too much banishing without invocation, if the banishing is the Hermetic GD version of the LBRP, will tend to make you pale, low-energy, and too detached from the material world. Fortunately the Middle Pillar will fix that promptly.

2) The classic GD way to do this would be to work up as quickly as possible to making and consecrating a talisman of Mercury -- that's far more effective than doing a ritual every day. If you can do hexagram rituals with effect, and know how to open and close a temple using the Watchtower ritual or some similar method, you already know what you need to know to consecrate a talisman, and that's a good piece of training too.

3) Sure. It happens all the time. Burn some incense, thank the deity for the help he or she has given you, explain that you feel called to work with another deity now, and finish with another prayer of thanks. That's polite, and has good results.

[ecosophia]

1) I'd talk to a natal astrologer, rather than a mundane astrologer like me!

2) This happens to me from time to time. The divination is quite reliably correct. Writers are not usually the best judges of their own ideas! I'd encourage you to shelve it for the time being and see what happens.

Re: Cell Salts Protocol question

[tunesmyth]

Thank you.

I went to order the salts just now, and found that the supplier doesn't currently sell Calc. Sulph.! Do you recommend proceeding with the other salts for now even though I'll be missing one still?

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr. Greer,

Is there an equivalent to the Christian Tithing in occult philosophy? My understanding is that Christianity is much more behaviorally prescriptive than something like the Golden Dawn tradition, for example.

[(Anonymous)]

1) A bit more background: I'm actually working through Self-Initiation Into the Golden Dawn Tradition by Chic Cicero & Sandra Tabatha Cicero. Not sure how familiar you are with the curriculum in the book, but they have a Preliminary grade (before Neophyte) during which the student performs the LBRP and a meditation to the godform of Thme/Themis/Maat as the core of the ritual practice component. Does this meditation (which I interpret as an invocation) substitute for the MP? I'm hesitant to modify the curriculum in any way by adding the MP, but I'm also wary of doing the LBRP too much. I understand if you can't offer any advice as it's not your book, after all, but I'm hoping you or someone else has worked through this before.

Puberty and subtle bodies

[(Anonymous)]

John,

I have a pretty uncomfortable question for you. Obviously I’m not looking for medical advice here, I know you’re not a doctor.

When I was 11 years old I lost my left testicle due to testicular torsion (and some light malpractice, honestly). I’m in my mid twentieth now so it doesn’t cross my mind very often, but I have been thinking about it this past week. Outside of the psychological, could this have had any negative impact on the development of my subtle bodies or anything else in that sphere being that it happened in such an important developmental period? If there is, are there any steps I could take to mitigate them now?
I thought on this quite a lot and couldn’t come up with anything conclusive but I thought perhaps you might know better.

As usual, thank you for all the guidance you unfailingly provide every Monday.

Norse Religion

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,
A friend is interested in starting on a path of Norse spirituality. He considers himself pagan but does not have any spiritual practices and would like to being. I thought you might know of know some safe and helpful rituals to get him started.

Maxine

Re: Cell Salts Protocol question

[ecosophia]

No, though you may want to order them now in case one of the others is out of stock later! Wait until you have the full set before beginning the protocol. (You can always take Bioplasma every morning to give yourself a good general tonic.)