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 more than 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 image on the left?  Another of the alphabetic wheels from Giordano Bruno's On the Shadows of the Ideas, showing the thirty letters he used for his system of mnemonics and conceptual algebra. Where last week's combined each letter with one of the vowels, this version combines each letter with every one of the other letters -- AA, AB, AC, and so on. Each of these becomes a locus or place in his memory system. 

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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

[(Anonymous)]

So, am I correct to suspect a broader, hopeful, and possibly occult development in the satire of the Gristle Cli-Fi Contest?
Rhydlyd

[ecosophia]

We'll see. At the moment, its main goal is to provide a venue for me and my readers to have some fun at Grist's expense.

Demonic influence of divination.

[(Anonymous)]

If I understand correctly, some commenters in the Covid posts attribute divinations that “approve” of getting vaccinated as being influenced by demons. How could one protect themselves from demon influence for divinations about other situations?

Re: Demonic influence of divination.

[ecosophia]

There are various ways to do it. Some modes of divination seem to be less vulnerable than others -- horary astrology, for example, seems pretty safe. Doing divination inside a space that's been cleansed with a banishing ritual will help; natural magic may also be worth trying, though I don't have any data on that yet. Prayer is always useful as a way to make sure you're getting in contact with the right sources -- there's a good reason it's called divination...

[(Anonymous)]

In LRM are you supposed to do both the relaxation exercises or pick one?

Also, in Paths of Wisdom, the prayer section suggests directing prayers to a abstract God, should a polytheist then add this abstract God to the usual prayer rotation or what?

[ecosophia]

1) You're supposed to do both.

2) I wasn't familiar with polytheism at the time when I wrote that! (The first draft of that book was finished in 1988...) I'd say don't worry about it if you already have a prayer practice -- just keep praying to your usual deities.

Tarot Reading on Romantic Trouble

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG (or Papa G as ErikaLopez calls you),

Firstly, thanks very much for this forum and your other & previous ones. I have learned so much here! I have some questions about a series of divinations and about a dream. I know you don't practice dream interpretation but perhaps your other readers could chime in.

Some background: I sensed a disconnect from my then-girlfriend while on an out-of-town work trip. Sure enough, when I returned and talked to her, she said "we have to talk." I was dumped, not for another man, but because "we're different". True enough, mainly class differences and some divergence in interests, but it never bothered me, and I never thought it was realistic to expect someone with an exact overlap of interests. In fact, I was quite in love with & devoted to her and was looking forward to doting on her and taking care of her in our old age (we're both in our 50s). The past year has kept us apart due to COVID and her family, but we did enjoy our time together. She dumped me when kids moved out and she could finally spend significant time with me and develop some interests together - I think the impending reality of that situation may have frightened her a bit and pushed her to her sudden decision.
She had broken with me once before, and I sensed she would come back, to the extent that I felt her presence in bed next to me while away from her. This time, I don't get that same comforting sense, but I still feel a tie or bond to her - things still unresolved. I am deeply wounded and hurt by her decision, and at times very desiring of getting back together with her. I've had good luck with my Marseilles deck before, although not always on target, so I decided to do a reading.

Reconstructing these from memory, the first reading (three-card spread, representing past, present, and future) was a direct question of whether I would get back with her. I don't remember all the cards, but the world card made an appearance representing what I lost, but the final card was the two of cups. The two of cups hit me like a thunderbolt - that seemed to indicate that I would end up back with her. While I wanted this very much, I was very suspicious that it seemed to accord with my desire. I decided to do another reading the next day, just on the more general question of whether I would find romantic love in the future. This time, the final card was the one of cups. At this point I began to think that I was doing some kind of wish-fulfillment through the tarot. Finally, running through these portents in my mind over and over again, I kept hearing the mantra "the cards don't lie." So, on the third day, I did a reading on the same question and got the two of coins as the future. This I read as a future in turmoil, but I realized I had drawn the cards before formulating my question, so I decided to do one more spread, this time being careful to formulate my question before drawing the cards. As I was picking the last card, a voice said - "that's it, that's the card." It was the two of cups. The world card also made an appearance in this spread. This is after carefully shuffling the cards three times after each reading, reversing half the deck between each shuffle, and cutting the deck at the end.

I was skeptical about these results, so after two days I did one more spread to ask if I was fooling myself through the tarot. This spread I thought of as case, opposing arguments, and judgement. The third card was the magician, reversed. I realized immediately that that was a stupid question, and took that card as an ambiguous result - perhaps yes I am, perhaps an "frack-you for asking".

I also prayed and asked for signs and dreams to guide me. I had a brief dream in which she was rummaging through my mind, opening drawers and cabinets, looking frantically for something. I was scared of the image of her monkeying in my head and woke up immediately.

So, the questions:

1. Is it possible I could have fooled myself with the tarot on the first three readings, getting wish fulfillment instead of real readings, given my intense feelings on this subject?

2. How should I interpret the fourth reading? Should I set it aside?

3. Dream interpretations?

Re: Tarot Reading on Romantic Trouble

[ecosophia]

1) It's quite easy to fool yourself with most divination methods, especially when you have strong emotions about something. It's been standard advice for some time to get someone else to do the reading for you in that situation.

2) The tarot doesn't like to be pestered with repeated questions on the same subject. It's quite notorious for that.

3) Dream interpretation is something you have to have a gift for, and I don't. Sorry.

The Room of Mirrors

[open_space]

Good Evening JMG!

I took to an experiment an experiment with my mind.

Once I learned to meditate constructively, divine and read about the mind as spoken on some of the traditional occultism literature I found myself with a mental image which I've called the Room of Mirrors. This springs out of a frustration on failing to change the things that flow through my mind, since repeatedly I've found myself looking at things with the same perspective just jumbled up in a different drag; facing the same situations with the same problems. One thing however has helped me to make different things flow through my mind and that has been talking to different people and visiting different places.

Oddly enough, when I meditate on a place I can tell that the flavor of the thoughts are different than the ones in my room and when I meditate on a social gathering (yes, I did this in the bathroom!) another set of very different thoughts flow through mind. Both these experiences gave me a fresh and new perspective into how I see my life. Sometimes overstating some of colors which I see it with, lighting up some of the things I couldn't see and also understating some of the things that I usually make a remark on. Picturing this as lense, the eye being my mind it is as if the light bounces in different ways and colors depending on the lense --because somehow I get this bouncing feeling, it's not a straight stream of thoughts, but rather a path, sometimes crooked and sometimes curvileanear (like the shape of a river). This I also experience when I talk to someone in person, suddendly an extra stream that wasn't there before is there, flowing into my perception.

With this in mind I've created a set of doors, each with a sigil made by letting my hand move in a sort of brownian motion while thinking intently about the "current" I want to visit and then refining the design by thinking about it a little more to make it easier to remember and more stylized to the eye. It seems to work, though it is definitely not the same as sitting on a riverside or a mountain, but it works to some extent.

A few questions:
1) Is there any consideration that I should take while exploring this room of mirrors? What do you think about it?

2) Before I started this experiment and somehow as an inspiration for it, once my mediation practice took roots into my daily routine, I started to feel a little bit of confusion about just what the heck is real. My mind and conceptions of the world flow in different ways, I can control my moods just by an act of will. More generally the way I experiment the world through my senses is vastly different from the one my mind assembles from those inputs. I assume this sense of confusion is related to the sense of loosing what I thought to be a hard and solid truth of experience of the world. This can be a little disorienting at times. Common enough to not worry about it?

3) Lastly, my daily magical routine looks like this. LRP (between 10-15 minutes), relaxing into possition (5 minutes), pore breathing (5-10 minutes), meditation (15-20 minutes), Natural breath (5 minutes). Something that I noticed is that I've ended up more than once sitting or standing in a sort of meditation mood seeing pictures and thoughts in my secondary vision. I assume it is because of the mental training. Am I correct that doing physical exercise would ground my energies back again into my physical body?

Re: The Room of Mirrors

[ecosophia]

1) That kind of approach is one that many people find very useful.

2) It's very common. Don't worry about it.

3) Yes. Another thing many occult writers recommend is taking up some kind of handicraft, which also helps refocus attention on the material plane.

Tarot divination exercises in LRM

[(Anonymous)]

Dear John,

I am on the fifteenth lesson of LRM, and have some questions about Tarot divination and Tarot cards in general.

1. I have not been getting meaningful results from the divination exercises in lessons 14 and 15. I used to keep the cards without any protection (silk or linen) for quite a while, in the same room I do the LBRP/MP (I have fixed this since getting to know about the effect of LBRP/MP on the cards) - could this be the reason for the lack of relatable/meaningful divinations?

2. I have also been doing the Levi book reading, and have printed/laminated the Marseille trumps. These cards are also stored covered in the same (silk) cloth - is this required, or can they be stored separately, without any protection? Also, could the Marseille trumps be 'interfering' with the main deck? I have recently started separating the main deck from these Trumps by intervening layers of cloth.

3. When trying to interpret the cards for the divination, should I use the words I had come up with for each number card (as part of the earlier exercises), or should I interpret each card afresh?

Apologies if I have missed the answers to these questions provided elsewhere.

Many thanks for this forum and for your answers.

Re: Tarot divination exercises in LRM

[ecosophia]

1 and 2) Neither of those are likely. The cards aren't consecrated and therefore can't be deconsecrated by banishing rituals. As for interference, I keep the decks I used most side by side on a shelf, and have never had any trouble. You might simply be dealing with inexperience -- tarot divination isn't easy.

3) Try it both ways and see which one gives you better results. There is no fixed rule.

Monsters in the Dark, Tree First Aid, Elemental Gate Imbalance, Church of the Subgenius

[jprussell]

Good evening and a happy early Alban Elued to you! May the fruits of the past year sustain you through coming winter and become the seeds for new growth in the spring.

A few more serious/immediately practical questions, and a couple that are pure curiosity, listed roughly in order of how much I'd appreciate your response:

1. My daughter has recently started being worried about monsters in the dark (she's not quite three, so it's about the right age for that to be starting). I don't want to fall into the trap of telling her "they're not real", since I would like her to keep a healthy respect for her imagination. Also, since learning more about the occult, I now have to take seriously the idea that it's not a given that what's scaring her is entirely within her head. Any thoughts on how best to help her deal with her fears and how concerned to be about actual malevolent entities? Precautions already taken: there's currently one of the red bag talismans from the FAQ under her mattress at the end where she puts her head, I do a daily SOP (but not around her or where she spends much time), I pray on her behalf, and I give regular offerings to the spirits of our house and land.

2. They're building a house next door, and in the process of putting in a drain pipe from the backyard, they cut through the roots of three mature (~70 years old) oaks near the property line. Anything I can do to help them cope with the damage besides taking a hoodoo bath and pouring the water on them?

3. I'm working my way through the DMH, and I'm up to learning the Gate of Fire in the SOP. Pretty much since starting the Fire Gate, I've noticed a significantly stronger feeling when I ask for the blessings of Fire than I get from Air or Water, despite having practiced each of those for at least 3 weeks before moving forward. Is this an imbalance I should work to correct, something interesting to keep an eye on, or just a normal part of the process?

4. You've mentioned before that there's some uncertainty about when the Age of Aquarius actually began - what are the sources of the uncertainty? Is it a difference between sidereal and tropical astrology? Different judgments of how wide a swath of the sky counts as "Aquarius"? Using different days of the year to watch where the sun is rising? With what I understand about precession, and if the same date of the spring equinox and the same 30 degree chunks of sky were used, I'm not understanding where the room for interpretation is left.

5. Any thoughts on the Church of the Subgenius?

As always, thanks very much,
Jeff

Re: Monsters in the Dark, Tree First Aid, Elemental Gate Imbalance, Church of the Subgenius

[ecosophia]

1) It's very unlikely that your daughter will actually encounter any malign entities, and if you've got a protective charm in place that risk drops very close to zero. One thing that some parents in my circle of readers have done, however, is to teach their children Abby Judson's etheric banishing exercise. It helps keep their energies clean and does them no harm at all.

2) You can always go talk to them and listen for a resppnse.

3) That's quite common. Most people attune more strongly with one of the elements than with the others.

4) The gods neglected to draw boundary lines in the sky, so we don't know where the lines between the constellations are. The 30° wedges move along with the precession, since they're defined by the solstices and equinoxes!

5) A fine bit of silliness with occasional bursts of genuine wisdom. Praise Bob!

[reid_pnw]

JMG,

1. I started my weekly Opening and Closing Rituals the other day as per your suggestion. Great experience. I put in a ton of time memorizing, so apart from one slip I’m pretty happy with how it went. Only one question so far: is there anything appropriate I can say when I pour out the holy water in the backyard?

2. My visualization/concentration skills have gotten better over the last year but still aren’t great. I frequently find that I ‘forget’ certain visualizations as I go along in rituals. Like in the LBRP for instance I lose track of the the first pentagram and the line connecting the two together as as I draw the second, etc. I’ve went through periods of really concentrating on holding everything together as I go, but with minimal results.

I was thinking of adding a standard 5+ minute red triangle visualization to my practice for awhile to help with this. Does this sound good or do you have a better recommendation?

Cheers,
Reid

[ecosophia]

1) Come up with something yourself. It will give you some practice at composing incantations, which you will be doing a lot in the future.

2) It takes a lot of work! One exercise that has helped a lot of people is to imagine yourself taking a familiar walk. Visualize your surroundings as clearly as possible as you do so.

Q

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings dear JMG,

Had some questions for you today.

1) So i think I reliably get premonitory dreams. In the last month, I've dreamt of people who went on to contact me in the next 1-2 days, including people who I rarely ever speak to and never dream of. I also get dreams of the future which hasn't happened, but also really detailed landscapes, alternate realities where I am near lucid, I have been able to solve complex business problems in my dreams etc.

In my natal, I have a grand trine between my moon (5th house), neptune conjunct uranus (9th house) and my sun (1st house). I wonder if this has something to do with it?

Do you have any thoughts or ideas on whether this is something worth developing? Any readings you can point me to?

2) I've been reading Schopenhauer since our last discussion. I read a take (https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/34057/how-does-schopenhauer-maintain-idealism-without-god) which goes something like this:
"
To condemn the world as Schopenhauer does, therefore, as "will against itself" or, as Heraclitus wrote, as "polemos (strife), the king and father of us all", is to fall for the very fallacy that is Original Sin, i.e. to see differences in the world and to fail to see that the ever-present strife, chaos and cruelty is merely apparent "for us", constrained as we are in the fallen state to think according to the principle of sufficient reason and the principium individuationes (our brilliant but still limited way of understanding as causality and seeing as multiplicity), blinding us to the true identity of world, which as the Logos of John characterises it, is Love."

I'm not sure I understand this point fully. What are your thoughts?

3) Schopenhauer characterises the will as blind but intelligence would be a property of any godhead. How does one reconcile the god universe with his characterisations?

Re: Q

[ecosophia]

1) I'm sorry to say that's not a subject I know anything noticeably about.

2) Schopenhauer thought that his philosophy was a unity, the unfolding of a single concept. It wasn't -- it consisted of a concept plus a value judgment. He himself admitted that it would be possible for someone to affirm the goodness of the will --

"A man who had thoroughly assimilated the truths we have already advanced, but had not come to know, either from his own experience or from a deeper insight, that constant suffering is essential to life, who found satisfaction and all that he wished in life, and could calmly and deliberately desire that his life, as he had hitherto known it, should endure for ever or repeat itself ever anew, and whose love of life was so great that he willingly and gladly accepted all the hardships and miseries to which it is exposed for the sake of its pleasures,—such a man would stand 'with firm-knit bones on the well-rounded, enduring earth,' and would have nothing to fear."

-- It was just that couldn't do it. Thus his condemnation of the world need not be accepted by those who accept his concept but not his value judgment. Thus the quote you cite doesn't concern me -- it's an attempt to drag Schopenhauer back into the Christianity he loathed.

3) As for godhead, the Will is not a god. It's an oddity of the Abrahamic faiths to see the source of all things as a divinity, rather than a creative chaos from which deities, along with all other things, are born.

A Less Embarassing Update

[goatgodschild]

Hello, Mr. Greer!

The karmic culmination is still going, but I do have an update for you.

Several weeks ago, I asked you about a consistently appearing symbol of a wingless silver dragon. I am now pretty sure that I have a grasp on what it actually is -- the tail-biting dragon representing Mercury. I'm a Gemini, so that rather makes sense to me. It would also explain the lessons I'm learning through karmic culmination, for better or worse (which seems to be "stop trying to control everything that comes in eyeshot, you can't control anything but yourself, and some things you can't even will your body out of doing").

Re: A Less Embarassing Update

[ecosophia]

Hmm! That makes a great deal of sense.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr. Greer,

I've recently been struggling with some insomnia. My sister mentioned the Chinese meridians that align with certain times of the day and can be used to diagnose certain related issues (this site provides a quick overview https://www.endeavour.edu.au/about-us/blog/how-make-every-day-work-you-using-ancient-chinese-body-clock/ for me '3-5 AM The Lungs' is applicable).

I was wondering if there are any equivalents in the Western tradition?

[ecosophia]

There might have been once, but we lost an enormous amount due to religious persecution in late Roman times and into the Dark Ages, and a great deal more to the same thing at the end of the Renaissance.

[realmscryer]

Hi JMG,

1. I have begun experimenting with ways to overcome procrastination and perfectionism in certain areas of my life. Essentially, I have begun involving deities in these tasks I keep putting off. By involve I am really just being mindful and aware of a given deity's specialty and how it relates to what I am doing. These would be the same deities as in my SOP practice.

I don't have prior experience with doing this type of thing though it does seem to be helping. This afternoon putting up trim in the bathroom was almost a sacred act with minimal profanity even though it didn't turn out perfect. Getting started and finishing the project went okay. I am considering doing something similar to restart and maintain a physical exercise routine. Is there anything I should be aware of in asking for help or involving deities in this manner?


2. As I continue to do my daily discursive meditations I sense or intuit something. There is so much I could meditate on I suspect the life of the Universe wouldn't be long enough to address all the possible themes. Which leads me to an intuition that there might be a higher or meta level type of theme available somehow. Something which transcends all these other themes? Feels like a dream I can't quite remember or a word on the tips of my tongue. Thoughts? A good theme for meditation?

Thanks!

Polka-dot Insouciant Housefly

[ecosophia]

1) That sounds like a very good idea to me. Just remember to ask the deities for advice!

2) The meta level is not a theme -- it's what unfolds from the experience of engaging a theme, irrespective of the theme.

Washington D.C.

[(Anonymous)]

Mr. Greer,

Do you have any thoughts on whether Masonic and/or other occult lore was built into the architecture of Washington D.C. Some point out that the street patterns in the capital form an unfinished Pentagram, which implies that the capital was trying to summon something.

Re: Washington D.C.

[ecosophia]

If it's an unfinished pentagram, that doesn't do a bit of good -- if it's not complete, a pentagram has zero effect. My take is that no, there isn't any occult lore in the street pattern of DC, just the fashionable city design of the period, with angled boulevards over a grid pattern.

atlantis

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

Curious, is there a particular reason why you changed your mind re: the likelihood of Atlantis having possessed a high-tech capability?

I agree with J Mitchel and you that we probably wouldn’t be able to recognize an ancient “psychic tech” if we saw it, but it makes sense to me that a civilization that lasted as long as did Atlantis and that was very psychic in general, could have developed a psychic tech equal to or even surpassing the capabilities of our modern tech.

Edgar Cayce and other sources have spoken of an Atlantean use of some kind of universal sun energy channeled through crystals, and ... who knows? If that had been true though, that could have been the basis for a psychically-derived science out of which a high-tech culture could have developed.

Thanks,
Will M

Re: atlantis

[ecosophia]

What made me change my mind was a closer look at those ancient maps that achieve levels of accuracy impossible without a fairly advanced technology. The Greeks and Romans were no slouches when it came to mapping, but they couldn't get longitude right -- nobody could until the first accurate chronometers were created in the 18th century. Yet there are ancient maps that get it right. That shows that somebody had a very advanced technology in ancient times. I don't think that psychism can do that -- certainly modern experiments in remote viewing tend to have very mixed results in anything that quantitative -- so that suggests that, while Atlantean technology was doubtless very different from ours, it was capable of quantitative measurements of a kind we couldn't do until the 18th century.

Protective shield

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,
I had a very pleasant visit from my older sister and a friend of hers. They are both empaths and seem to be clairvoyant too. They say I have a shield around me such as the man had never seen before. He said many people have a shield that they can raise and lower but mine is around me at al times and is unusual in that it can double or triple layer itself.

I asked if he thought it might be a creature separate from me but he does not think so. I am wondering how I can have such a very active shield? I do a daily banishing with the SOP but was not expecting this. I am a little worried if it never comes down. Perhaps this is why I have such trouble feeling the energy of other beings such as trees? Any thoughts of how I could learn to lower this shield?

I was having my morning cold bath in the flower garden and then did the Earth and Sky ritual from OBOD and some Telluric currents. When I finished and came onto the deck where my sister was sitting, she said, she saw purple light in the garden when I was doing those magics. How I wish I too could see such things!

One night at supper, I was talking to them and was toying with the emerald pendant I always wear. The man asked if I had just done a protective magic because he could see energy coming off the pendant. I had not expected that but I had enchanted the pendant to help me see clearly. So, it is nice to know my magic is having other affects than just making me feel healthy and happy.

What do you make of all this?
Maxine

Re: Protective shield

[ecosophia]

Regular banishings don't create a protective shield, but they create a cleared space around you that psychics very often perceive as a shield (because that's the only thing they know that they can compare it to). You don't have to take it down; simply put some work into developing your perceptions. W.E. Butler's book How to Read the Aura, Practice Psychometry, Telepathy, and Clairvoyance has good exercises for this.

[(Anonymous)]

How did the way Greeks and Romans thought of their gods change over time? Where can I read about this - books, articles?

In Marcus Aurelius' Meditations there is a view of the gods as essentially benevolent, much closer to the Christian outlook than to the way the gods act in Homer. For example, book 6, 44. In case it makes a difference, I am looking at the Gregory Hays translation.

[ecosophia]

Presumably you'd want to go looking for books on the religious history of Greece and Rome. It's not a subject I've studied in any detail.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi jmg you said in a reply to commentor above that he should try talking to the trees in question. Can you please provide any guidance on sources/advice to develop this communication? Or perhaps how to listen properly? I can never seem to sort the feedback.

[ecosophia]

Go sit on the ground in front of a tree. Hold in your mind the thought that you'd like to converse with it. Be silent, and see if you feel an answer. Trees communicate in emotions rather than in concepts. As for how to develop the faculty and listen properly, patience and regular practice are the only guides I've ever found to be worthwhile.

Directions

[australiandreamer]

I was thinking about asking anyway then you referenced Abby Judson's etheric banishing exercise in a previous response and that includes thinks like facing north, do x, end up facing south - is north a mental concept or a physical one in relation to the equator and if the latter do folk in the southern hemisphere do the same thing but start south facing or is the direction irrelevant as long as you have the right attitude (and for that matter if you *think* you are facing north but you got your directions wrong and you are actually facing east does that void the ritual or make no difference).

Re: Directions

[ecosophia]

That's a very good question for which I don't know the answer. Careful experimentation would be helpful in order to find out.

Entrenando la Voluntad

[open_space]

I assembled, or rather am in the process of assembling a personalized course of self-development for my cousin and my father based on your Training the Will series and on the OSA work in Spanish.

For the section of your readers that have been dying to share your work with their Spanish speaking kin, or with the 'vato loco' closest to them (or are looking for a text to learn Spanish Giordano Bruno style) here is the first draft I just spent an hour or two translating. Hey, now I understand your fondness for translations! It was fun. Should I put your name down as Juan Miguel Greer? Just kidding.

Entrenando la voluntad: Parte 1

Re: Entrenando la Voluntad

[ecosophia]

Thank you!

Image

[australiandreamer]

I keep getting this image of walking out onto the back verandah of my as-yet-unbuilt house and, instead of the fence (the backyard is not going to be all that big), I see a forest that seems boundless (I can see a fair distance and no fences) and I get the impression that while I don't own it per se it is all mine to use. I can't tell you anything about the trees but it is the kind of scene you would find in a movie and would not be surprised to find there were druids in it. There are also no obvious paths and if I think about the concept of clearing it (eg for houses or farming)it makes me feel very uncomfortable. Otherwise it seems welcoming and safe.

Does that mean anything?

Re: Image

[ecosophia]

Have you meditated on it?

Diagrams of death

[(Anonymous)]

My father had his 2nd small stroke shortly after his second mrna vax. His first was a decade ago, but now that there has been a 2nd doctors are telling us to expect them to snowball (more and worse, and closer together) until he dies.

My father was a very intelligent man with an exceptionally strong will. He identified with his intellect and will to the exclusion of all else, which in my view is what lead him to this looming death. He never listened to his heart - in fact, denied there was anything to listen to - and his heart was forced to take many blows, accumulate gunk, and harden. The strokes are being caused by build up in his heart that is, piece by piece, breaking off and destroying pieces of his brain. In a poetic sense it seems clear that balance is being restored: the mind will weaken and the heart will be heard.

My question is: what is happening to him in a spiritual sense? What does a soul look like that leaves in pieces?

Re: Diagrams of death

[ecosophia]

I'm not sure I understand your questions. First, what's happening to him is what you've just described. Second, it's not his soul that's leaving in pieces. The conscious intellect is not the soul!

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

It looks like I am dealing with karmic culmination. My wife and I had neighbour issues in our old rental (a woman with mental health issues who caused us numerous problems, including threatening to attack my wife), and now we have neighbour issues in the house we bought earlier this year in order to best prepare for the long descent.

One of the issues with this new neighbour is that he burns his plastic garbage regularly, which sends toxic smoke over our property and inside our house. To make a long story short, it came to a head yesterday, talking politely with him failed, and now we may need to involve the authorities.

The good folk over at the Green Wizards forum gave me lots of useful practical advice about how to handle the situation, but I thought I would ask you about the occult dimensions of the issue. In terms of what I know about magic: I am pretty far along with the DMH. I have your book on natural magic, but I haven't read it yet.

1. Depending on how I escalate the issue, then I am locking myself into a binary, which I guess would have typical results of being in a binary: an intractable conflict. I struggle to find a ternary way of solving the issue, and I wonder if in certain situations the intractable conflict is the only way that the situation can proceed.

Some of the ideas I got from Green Wizards may be ternaries (offering to bring his plastic garbage to the dump, for example). If I haven't misunderstood, I remember you saying once that each of the number relationships have their pros and cons, they are tools, and sometimes a binary is just what is needed for the situation. I'm trying to apply the lessons of the theory in Lévi and the DMH in practical terms, but emotions are clouding the issue. I'm wondering if you have any advice along these lines?

2. I am very angry at the moment at my neighbour, I've been running hot ever since the issue came to a head yesterday and the neighbour got the last word by dumping more plastic on his fire when I tried to talk to him about it. As you've written though, anger is a secondary emotion, and in my case, it hides fear that the issue will go out of control, and fear that we made a bad decision by buying this house next to this problem neighbour, and worry that we'll have to live with his toxic smoke. And also fear that the neighbour, being ex-military, will simply be able to win the conflict.

I would never use magic against him, though, so it looks like my occult options are a) prayer to the deities I work with and/or the nature spirits of this area, b) an SOP with the circulation of light extending to the borders of our property, c) an SOP working meant to promote the healing of the land within our property and the protection of it. Would that be the extent of my options?

Many thanks!

[ecosophia]

1) Locking things into a binary at this point simply means that nothing will change. If that's what you want, by all means. For what it's worth, you may already have done that -- I suspect your neighbor is as annoyed with you as you are with him, and escalating by bringing in the authorities will very likely simply get him to double down as well.

2) Those three are good options. Regular meditation is also very useful -- without realizing it, you may be doing things that feed the hostility, and if you can become conscious of those and stop doing them, that may help a great deal.

Well of Galabes

[cs2]

I am printing and binding the Well of Galabes posts, both for practice, and to make sure I actually read them, since I am increasingly unwilling to endure screen time these days. Are there plans for a paperback version to come out?

Re: Well of Galabes

[ecosophia]

That'll be settled by the new Council of Guardians once it's organized. I"m in favor of it, certainly.

[(Anonymous)]

What is a homunculus? Did it stay part of alchemy after science gave up on the concept?

[ecosophia]

The opus animalis, the practice of alchemy with animal substances, is the most secret branch of alchemy, which is saying something. Even among alchemists you won't hear it discussed much. Creating a living body to be incarnated by a spirit -- which is what a homunculus is -- is part of that branch of the art, and whether or not it's still being practiced, I have no idea.

Gods on the Mind

[cs2]

I am reading Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill and find myself unexpectedly torn and disappointed. This might be my presumptions regarding mysticism as quite passive, so I'm trying to hold salt in one hand while I read this.

What I want is to be a mage, but to link my mental egregore with the gods. It sounds like that isn't an option, though. The power I want from being a mage I plan to direct inward to help my spiritual advancement.

It feels like I *have* achieved some kind of upgrade in my mental/emotional state though. For several weeks now, I cannot tolerate reading books in my own genre. I feel the park nearby calling to me, a very tangible yearning to go walk and smell the trees with a relaxed mind, by myself.

It feels like changing gears on a manual car, the lower ones being denser, with less consciousness. Right now I'm in a high gear, but I'm wasting gas by trying to gun it, pushing the pedal unskillfully.

My moods and mental fatalisms do not sink me as far, I might dip but I rise back up again. I stay in the higher gears.

Is this changing gears in my consciousness, that feels very tangible, not a linking up with the gods? What is it, then? Thank you.

Re: Gods on the Mind

[robertmathiesen]

Underhill's book is a highly personal one. Her take on mystic experiences--there are several equally "real" kinds, not just one single one--always struck me as basically privileging Western European (and Christian-influenced) views over any broader investigation of the full range of such experiences across all the world's cultures and languages. Jordan Paper has an interesting (and somewhat broader) approach to it in his The Mystic Experience. (This is the same Jordan Paper who wrote The Deities Are Many, which I mentioned here not long ago.)