Monday, Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Once again, it's technically Monday now -- past midnight Eastern time -- and here I am on Dreamwidth, so it's time for another 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, though it may be Tuesday sometime before I get to them all.

With that said, have at it!

This Magic Monday is now closed to new questions. See you next week! 

Comments

[violetcabra]

Thank you for hosting these!

Is there, to your knowledge, a limit to the amount of time per day that one can safely meditate? I'm interested in doing more discursive meditation sessions per day than I am currently, but wish to be careful not to fry my nervous system!

[ecosophia]

It's very common for enthusiastic students to want to do lots of meditation, but yeah, you can overdo it. Twice a day for no more than thirty minutes each time is a pretty general maximum, and once per day is for most people a better idea.

Demonic possession of internet users and drivers

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for Magic Mondays, they enrich my life. Sorry to get all Wayne’s World here, but I think you are one of the most brilliant minds of our time and it’s an honor to read this blog, let alone comment or receive responses. Also, I enjoy reading the comments.

I have been thinking all week about what Anonymous brought up about the internet and demonic possession, namely that the internet lends itself to individuals becoming possibly occupied by entities that compel them to act rashly and to make threats. Basically, the internet has a weird effect on people and gives them a life-ruining tool; seems like a demon’s dream, right? For instance, possessed by lust, a young girl shares an intimate and invites disaster by other possessed young people who maliciously spread it to a revenge porn site. In another corner, an otherwise mild-mannered car salesman becomes addicted to trolling political forums with threats of violence he would never carry out.

I have also observed that people act similarly when driving. (I hate driving and cars in general, even though I don’t feel I have a choice but to drive. I am trying to find work-arounds so I won’t have to drive anymore, though they are years in the making.) Anyway, road rage and internet rage have a great deal in common — people aren’t themselves. This got me thinking about anonymity. What is it about the “protection” of anonymity that causes people to go bonkers? Maybe that both driving and the internet enable people to objectify one another in a way that can’t be done face to face? Jesus take the wheel… well, more like someone else. At any rate, I suspect I’ll be meditating on this subject for years to come in hopes of a tidbit of understanding the forces behind the scenes.

-Kimberly

Re: Demonic possession of internet users and drivers

[ecosophia]

Kimberly, I'm by no means sure it requires a demon to make people behave very, very badly. Anonymity encourages nasty behavior because it makes people think they can do anything they want, and not suffer any consequences -- and once the fear of consequences goes away, Katie bar the door!

Welsh gods

[fluiddruid]

Esteemed Archdruid,
I have a novice question.
In the Druid Magic Handbook you say that during the Sphere of Protection ritual a druid can invoke Welsh deities: Hu the Mighty, Hesus, Ceridwen and Niwalen.
I am doubtful as to how I should pronounce the names of the gods. Welsh language is...different from ordinary English, for example letter "u" is often pronounced as "ee".
So is it Hoo the Mighty or Hee the Mighty? Is it Hesus as in Spanish pronunciation of Jesus or is it Hesees?
I wouldn't want to mispronounce a deity's name, that would be impolite.
Also could you recommend a good book on Welsh gods? I wish I could know more about them.
Thank you.

Re: Welsh gods

[ecosophia]

Let me start by adding to the confusion. How the Welsh "u" is pronounced depends on whether you're talking about northern Wales or southern Wales. In south Wales, the "u" is usually pronounced "ee". In north Wales, it's pronounced more like the German ü; try pursing your lips as though you're about to say "oooooh," and then without changing the shape of your mouth at all, try saying "eeeee" instead. In either case, though, it's not "oooh," so "Hee the Mighty" and "Hesees" are close enough to pass.

There's some material on the old Druid Revival gods in Ross Nichols' The Book of Druidry, and some in Lewis Spence's The Mysteries of Britain -- both classic works of Druid Revival teaching.

Sphere of Protection

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG - a question about the SoP, specifically Circulating the Light of the Cross.

I am using the instructions on the AODA website (by John Gilbert). I am having trouble with parts two and three of the Circulating instructions. Can you confirm the instructions as published are correct?

Does the line that goes straight through your body (back to front) rotate at all? Or does the left-to-right light spin in two directions?

Re: Sphere of Protection

[ecosophia]

No, there's a mistake. Some of the instructions have been garbled. I'm not sure when or how that happened; it was correct once upon a time!

All three of the lines rotate. First, the vertical line rotates to form a circle going from above to front to below to behind and then around again to above; then the side to side horizontal line rotates from right to up to left to down and back around to right; then the front to back horizontal line rotates from front to left to behind to right and then around again to front.

Here's where it gets complex. When you have the first line spinning, you have a wheel of light centered on your solar plexus, right? As the second line starts to spin, the wheel turns with it. (Think of the front wheel of a bicycle when you turn the handlebars; the wheel is spinning, and then the spinning wheel turns to one side as well.) So the first wheel turns into a sphere as the second line becomes a wheel. Then, in exactly the same way, as you start the third line moving into a wheel, the second becomes a sphere. Then you turn the third wheel into a sphere. Go through this a step at a time, until you can do it readily; it really does add to the effectiveness of the ritual.

Empaths

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr. Greer,
I am wondering if empaths can feel a selection of random people's emotions or if they mainly pick up other empaths?

I have an empathic friend that I pick up very clearly and I recently shared a mental image with another empath, quite by accident. I have another friend who is a powerful empath and I rarely get anything from her. I have no ability to decide when such things happen. They seem to happen on a logic of their own.
Yours under the red cedars,
Max Rogers
PS I promise to ask my house ghost some searching questions when he next makes contact.

Re: Empaths

[ecosophia]

By all accounts, all the psychic gifts -- and empathy is one of those -- have a very strong personal element. What works for one person doesn't work for another, and may not work for the same person twice in the same way! Thus your best bet is to pay close attention to your own experiences, and see what you can learn from them about the specific characteristics of your own gift.

Need a spell for hope, not hopium

[(Anonymous)]

These past couple of weeks, since learning what is predicted by my horoscope, I’ve been terribly depressed. For long experience confirms it. For over forty years I’ve poured my time and energy into something that apparently was always destined to fail. It seems to me now that art is a black hole down which I’ve poured my life.

It’s very late to be switching horses, and there is no guarantee that I’ll make it. I have some notion what I might try. But due to circumstance, I have little time in which to act; and from here, my prospects look terrible.

I’ve no idea if any magic can help with this. I need a cure for the kind of depression that is near to despair. Some decent luck also would make a refreshing change.

Kevin

Re: Need a spell for hope, not hopium

[ecosophia]

It's sometimes useful to sit with depression for a while and learn what it has to teach you. One lesson it very often teaches is clarity. For example, the fact that you're probably not going to make a living from art doesn't mean that the energy you put into art was wasted; making a living isn't the whole of life. A lot of really good artists have had day jobs.

Depression also comes right before acceptance, and acceptance comes right before picking yourself up and doing something. That's more useful than hope, in my experience.

[quietmagpie]

Hi JMG,

So I have a situation which I have been thinking about for a number of years without coming to a resolution and I was wondering if you could help. When I was ten or eleven, I made a rather ill-advised bargain in which I agreed to forfeit my soul to the devil if I ever had sex. There was nothing in the bargain for me, I was just frustrated with the behavior of the people around me. I didn't know until much later that I was asexual. It is of note that when I made the deal I didn't believe in God (I wasn't raised religious), but I did believe in the devil.

At age 20, I had been a Christian for four years, and had recently married. Despite my aversion and misgivings I decided to have sex with my husband. After that it was like a switch had been flipped: I was unable to believe in anything, despite having numerous experiences with various spiritual entities. I tried to push through what I thought was a normal reaction to change. I went through the motions, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. I thought it was just depression, then acedia, but as the years went by it became clear that it was something bigger, something else. I began to think about that deal I had made many years prior, and worried, but the Christians I tried to talk to about it didn't believe this sort of Faustian bargain was possible. I explored paganism and witchcraft because I thought a more sex-positive framework would help (it didn't). I eventually found out I was asexual and dealt with the depression/guilt around having lost my virginity, but that didn't help untangle the spiritual knot.

It feels like my ability to believe is bound up or blocked; when I try to contemplate spiritual entities, even ones I have actually seen, I reach a point of recognition, and then hit a wall; I am suddenly completely disinterested even though a part of me really wants to explore further. It's been 10 years, and the situation has not improved. I am at a loss. Do you have any suggestions?

--quietmagpie

[ecosophia]

Your religious senses are very likely blocked due to that bargain; if nothing else, at a deep level, you believe it, and so the nocebo effect (the nasty sister of the placebo effect) is going to affect you. You can unblock them, but it's going to be very slow going. If you're still comfortable with Christianity, it might help to go looking for the kind of mystical Christian church that still believes in its own teachings enough to take your bargain seriously, and use rituals of exorcism and the like to help you get past it. If you don't find Christianity tolerable, it's going to be a harder job, since the sex-positivity of most of the Pagan groups out there will likely make them unsympathetic to your needs; still, you might see what you can find. Help from someone who has a solid connection to a deity or deities that you can handle, and a good knowledge of ritual technique, is essential for cases like this.

Backing away from successful spells

[(Anonymous)]

Hello John.

Last week on the main blog, you wrote this:

"As far as getting cold feet and trying to back away from the results of a successful spell because you’ve changed your mind, what that does is lock up a bunch of your will and your magical energy in a self-canceling loop, and any aspect of your life too close to the subject of the spell will be drawn into the same loop and get stuck. Say you do a love spell, and it works, and then you decide that you’re tired of the person the spell brought into your life — sorry, you did the spell, you own the results. Even if you manage to get that person to leave you alone, a string of people with similar personal qualities (very much including the ones that irritate you most) will keep on falling in love with you, and you’ll keep on getting drawn into relationships with them; what’s more, your attempts to get a relationship going with anybody else will most likely go nowhere. Around and around you go!"

I was wondering:

1. If something like this happens, is there no way to break the cycle? No ritual you can do, no technique that will help, no spirit or God you can petition?
2. Would using talismanic magic be a way to avoid something like this from happening in the first place? For example, you create a talisman to attract a certain kind of person into your life. But then you get tired of them, so you deconsecrate and destroy the talisman.

Thank you!

Re: Backing away from successful spells

[ecosophia]

Think of it this way. If you get stupid at the age of eighteen, wrap your car around a telephone pole, and end up in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury, is there a way to get out of that? Nope. The universe is not set up to guarantee us escape hatches from our own bad decisions. This is why it's of the highest importance to think, hard, about any magical working you do before you do it, and use divination as well.

No, using talismans won't prevent magic from having blowback, either. You can neutralize the effect of the talisman by deconsecrating and destroying it, but you can't neutralize the movement of the will that brought the talisman into being, and so you still own it. If you want to prevent something like that from happening, be punctilious about magical ethics, don't do magic aimed at anyone else that you'd object to having done at you, and always, always, cast a divination before doing a working, and if it tells you not to do it, then don't do it.

Re: Discursive Vs. Mind Emptying

[smj]

Hello JMG

Continuing from my question last week:

Indeed a lot of mainstream mind-emptying meditation serves mainly to "keep employees calm, smiling, harmless, and obedient"! Just about anything can be hijacked and misused.

If the eastern traditions that do a lot of mind-emptying also do a lot of mind-exercising to balance things out, then does your tradition do some mind-emptying to balance out the discursive meditation?

SMJ

Re: Discursive Vs. Mind Emptying

[ecosophia]

It's included in the standard discursive meditation practice. You start by relaxing your physical body systematically, then concentrate on rhythmic breathing for five minutes or so until your mind becomes steady. Then you proceed into discursive meditation. Thus you have a nice balance within the practice itself.

Suggestions for Practice

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Thanks for running these Magic Monday sessions. I’ve been learning a lot by lurking and reading, and I’d like to de-lurk and see if I could get your help with something that’s really troubling me.

For the last two years, I was in a very tough professional situation where a lot of unrealistic expectations were placed on me, along with a heaping of guilt and shame for not living up to them. I am vulnerable to this sort of thing to begin with. I find it very hard to accept that I make mistakes, try hard to take the “right” action, and feel very ashamed when things don’t come out perfectly. It’s something I’m working on.

I’m now in a different professional situation, thank goodness, but I’ve still got all this shame hovering around, looking for anything to latch on to. It’s really unpleasant, and I’d like to do some kind of working to return myself to (or arrive at…) a more balanced view of making mistakes, making restitution, and taking action in the world. I don’t want to overshoot and wind up at “asshole” but this is an unhelpful level of shame that I’m carrying! It’s continuing to affect my life pretty profoundly.

I’m studying the OBOD Ovate grade (… slowly), and I’ve been doing the SOP regularly since January. Before that I was on and off with it. Since the end of Feb I have been doing it every day, and plan to continue it daily. I’ve also been doing some journaling around the situation.

Do you have suggestions for practices or rituals I might do to arrive at a more balanced and healthy perspective? Thanks again for your help with this, and for running the Magic Monday feature!

Rook

Re: Suggestions for Practice

[ecosophia]

Very often an overdeveloped sense of shame links back to emotional issues from childhood, and it's necessary to work back to the original experiences, remember them, re-experience the feelings you felt then, and then process those experiences, before you can walk away from them. Journaling can help with that, especially if you make an effort to call up memories; when you feel the sense of shame, ask yourself, "what experiences from my childhood does this remind me of?" -- and then pay very close attention to what surfaces, and avoid self-censoring.

The SoP can also help here. When you banish by each of the elements, add in something relevant to this. For air, say, "...and I release the old thoughts and memories that have hobbled me with shame." For fire, "...and I release the old pain and bitterness that have hobbled me with shame." For water, "...and I release the old emotional burdens that have hobbled me with shame." For earth, "...and I release the physical tensions that have hobbled me with shame." Give that a try for three months, and see how you feel.

[(Anonymous)]

Last MM I asked about raising earth energy and it getting stuck in and around the base chakra with the issues that can arise or put a dampener on things ;) You asked me in return what practice I was doing. In fact it's very simple, possibly too simple; I just stand with my feet firmly on the ground, a bit more than shoulder width apart and imagining/sensing the energy rising up through my feet and legs to the perineum. I try to sense/imagine it going further, but then the problems arise as I already mentioned.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[ecosophia]

Do you draw energy down from above as well? If not, that's your problem -- too much telluric current, not enough solar current, to put things in Druid jargon. Before you draw the energy up from below, try drawing energy down from the heavens, beginning with the top of your head and filling your whole body down to the soles of your feet, then flowing out through your feet into the Earth. Then bring the energy up from the earth through the soles of your feet, lead it up all the way to the top of your head, and imagine it fountaining out the top of your head and splashing down around you, just like the water from a fountain. Give that a try and see if it helps.

Magic for personal transformation

[(Anonymous)]

Hello John.

I am looking for a magical technique or set of magical techniques that can help me transform my bad habits and negative personality traits. As you once wrote on the main blog, Bardon’s self-transformation techniques from IIH are effective but slow. On the other hand, ritual magic can be faster, but a person first needs to spend 6-12 months with basic training before they can do anything practical.

Is there anything that is faster than the exercises in IIH, but less demanding than ritual magic?

Re: Magic for personal transformation

[ecosophia]

Nope. If you want to go fast you're going to have to pedal harder. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm curious if you or someone else has any light to shed on something I've noticed: I can't meditate if a TV is on anywhere in my house. This is true if it's mute, in another room, and I can't see the light from it.

The one benefit is I can reliably freak out my roommates by showing up within a minute or so of them turning on the TV to complain, since I've set aside time for meditation, and they agreed no TV.

Any idea why?

[ecosophia]

You may have electrosensitivity. It's a very real thing, though a lot of MDs pooh-pooh it. Do you feel a little uncomfortable or jittery whenever the TV is on?

Spirits

[ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au]

Hi John Michael,

How are you going? I'm feeling tired and am about to head off to bed, but then here it is Magic Monday and all, and a person must not let an opportunity slip past them! :D

Sorry for the silliness, I'm genuinely tired and the weather has abruptly turned here over the past few days and it may take me a while to get used to cooler weather... I'm using less firewood now to produce more heat, but it has taken many years to learn that business.

I've long been curious as to whether you feel that spirits or entities (or whatever) are tied to geographical locations? I realise it sounds a bit odd, but I feel that we don't get many of the same entities down here. Some yes, but not all because your descriptions sound different to my experience. Anyway, I have long been curious as to your thoughts on this matter.

Now I'm off to bed. It is absolutely exhausting to write about money and property whilst maintaining a level of diplomacy. I may have achieved that. Maybe...

Sometimes I talk to people about persistence, hard work, and tenacity, and they just don't want to hear about it at all. Those are still an option on many fronts, it is just all very unappealing to most people - don't you reckon? Although it is also a fascinating subject, as I look deeply into peoples motivations and it tells so much about other people.

Oh well, enough rambling and off to bed for my poor tired brain.

Cheers

Chris

Re: Spirits

[ecosophia]

Oh, very much so! Many classes of spirits are place-specific, though there are others who roam more freely. The local indigenous folklore is your best guide to the spirits of the place where you live.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there a safe, reliable method for determining the whereabouts of lost objects?

Good Saint Anthony...

[(Anonymous)]

...come around
Something’s lost that must be found.

I don’t know if he does it by magic or not, but Saint Anthony has never failed me yet when I’ve lost something important.

I think he deserves a round of applause for being a good sport. Imagine spending eternity looking for other people’s lost keys and tax papers.

—Fuzzy

Findhorn Inception

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, inspired by the conversations you had over the last months on both of your blogs about New Age vs. occult takes on Findhorn, I decided to set up the foundation chart and see what information I could get from it. From _The Findhorn Garden_ I learned that such an inception would have to be cast for November 17, 1962, when the founders moved to the trailer park that eventually grew into the community. Except for assuming the move must have taken place inside the park administration's business hours, I didn't find an exact time for it, even though I did check some other books by Maclean and Spangler.

Now, even casting a noon chart without houses and judging it merely by aspects and sign positions gives some important general information: a stellium of Sun, Mercury, Venus and Neptune in Scorpio, exactly square to (and the Sun in mutual reception with) Mars in Leo; a Moon/Saturn opposition on the nodal axis; and Uranus opposed Jupiter (which is strong in Pisces as well as conjunct Fomalhaut, denoting "magic, fame, occultism, faith, 'Star of Alchemy'" according to Ebertin) all point in a rather intense and decidedly non-"new agey" direction, I'd say. Besides, it's telling that there is only one harmonious aspect among all these close squares and oppositions, and that's the Neptune/Pluto sextile that has been in orb almost constantly between the mid-1940s and the early 1990s.

But of course this approach misses all the additional, much more specific potentials of looking at house positions and rulerships. How would you remedy such a situation? Certainly, more research may (or may not) turn up a more precise time of day; using the moment of sunrise on the day in question is recommended by John Frawley; and a mundane astrologer might use the chart for the previous lunation (if she considered Findhorn important enough historically). Have you found any of these approaches helpful in a comparable situation?

Your thoughts are much appreciated as always!

Re: Findhorn Inception

[ecosophia]

I'd rectify the chart by finding the first major event following the inception -- the death or departure of one of the founders, for example -- and use progressed charts or age-arc directions to identify an aspect to the ascendant or midheaven. There are many good books out there on rectifying a chart; the specific techniques I use are the ones Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson includes in her book In The Beginning Astrology, which discusses (among many other things) what you do when the birth time is completely unknown.

Other senses

[(Anonymous)]

I believe I have seen you and a few other commentators mention the other senses that we have besides our five material senses. Is there a common understanding of what these senses are in the western occult traditions? I would venture to guess that it depends on the tradition.

-Dan Mollo

Re: Other senses

[ecosophia]

It does indeed depend on the tradition. One common understanding is that we have seven senses, the five physical senses, clairvoyance (which perceives the astral plane), and intuition (which perceives the mental plane). Other approaches differentiate many more senses.

[mmelvink]

Hi JMG,

Recently I've been mulling over a long-term, crackpot project idea: to bring historians of magic and parapsychologists together to actually experimentally recreate some of the occult-scientific operations detailed in our texts (in my case lettrist and geomantic). This is already well underway on the alchemy front, thanks to the labors of Larry Principe and Bill Newman in particular over the last three decades; but alchemy, of course, is susceptible to a reductive materialist interpretive framework in a way that most other occult sciences are not. Encouragingly, however, a few parapsychologists are finally waking up to the fact that they've been working on magic all along. But my fellow historians will need far more convincing!

So I'd need to be quite strategic to begin with, before I can approach the folks at UVA and Duke, for instance, with a proposal to collaborate. What specific operations come to mind that might best be testable in a controlled environment according to current parapsychology methodologies?

Obviously, magical effects are slippery as a rule; but my texts are constantly stressing the experientially proven (mujarrab) nature of the lettrist and geomantic operations they detail. Even a small number of successful experimental reconstructions would go a long way, I suspect, toward restoring the status of Islamic occultism -- long disappeared by colonialist-orientalist machinations -- as a central component of Western intellectual history. I can write on this theme and edit and translate texts till I'm blue in the face (and do), but at this rate it'll take at least another generation or two before the historiographical tide can be turned; we need something a bit more eyepopping.

I personally lean toward starting with (Arabo-Persian) geomancy, since it's the occult science I understand the best, and geomancers (thanks to you!) are once again coming available in North America. But what's your sense of the lay of the geomantic land these days? How readily do you think I'd be able to recruit test subjects for such a project? Ideally, I'd like to take a single Persian geomantic manual, say the 16th-century World of Geomancy, edit and translate it, then systematically go through testing each operation with a battery of qualified participants. That's probably far too ambitious a plan at this very early stage, however, since the Persian geomantic tradition in particular is significantly more complex and extensive than the Latin, and I'm the only historian working on it at the moment. But think it could work?

Either way, thanks much for these Magic Mondays!

[ecosophia]

Hmm. I think you're drastically underestimating the role of dogmatism and status panic in maintaining the barriers against occultism in the modern world. Even so mild a brush with occultism as you get with, say, homeopathy or acupuncture gets world-class doublethink from defenders of the status quo -- I've sketched out some of the bad logic involved here.

I'd encourage you to read the very solid book Deviant Science: The Case of Parapsychology by John McClenon, which discusses the way that parapsychology was shoved out of the academy; the section where he discusses his survey findings about why people believe in psychic phenomena, vs. why people disbelieve in them, is particularly telling.

SoP Deities & Tree Calendar

[(Anonymous)]

Last week you mentioned that invoking all gods or all goddesses while doing the SoP caused "unhelpful imbalances." I am curious to know, what kinds of imbalances might one expect from this practice?

A second question: I was reviewing the Ogham information in the Druidry Handbook, and two oghams are attributed to Alban Arthuan, Ioho and Ailm. Another source I had to hand gives Ioho to Alban Arthuan and attributes Ailm to "the extra day" after Winter Solstice. Are the Druidry Handbook's attributions correct? Thank you for your time!

Re: SoP Deities & Tree Calendar

[ecosophia]

For the first question, it depends on your specific relationship to masculine and feminine energies. For the second, correspondences aren't "correct," they're useful -- you might as well ask whether it's correct to call a four-legged animal who barks "a dog," "un chien," or "ein Hund."

Magic vs. Religion vs. Occultism vs. Mysticism

[andrewbwatt.com]

I'm wrestling these last few days thinking about the differences and overlaps between these four terms and their assorted bodies of knowledge:

• Magic
• Mysticism
• Occultism
• Religion

I tend to get a series of Venn Diagrams or Punnett Squares, particularly when I consider Paganism as a religion — some fairly large segments of the paganism that people that I know practice-as-a-religion, seem to come out of the magical or occult communities. If I use the Orphic Hymns, for example, while working with the material in your book "The Art and Practice of Geomancy", is that magic or religion? Is it mysticism or occultism to use them alone? Is geomancy a magical technology? It's not the same thing as Ifá, I don't think, but it bears many similarities — and Ifá is (I think?) a religion. Isn't it? Is astrology magic, occultism, or religion? Does it depend on how one uses it?

I'm asking because I've been asked to be part of a series of interfaith dialogues, and I find myself hard-pressed to distinguish between say, druidry or Hermetic Golden Dawn, as forms of mystical or occult engagement, or as sets of religious practices, or as sets of magical practices.

I recognize that there's probably no hard-and-fast rule or line of separation between these four things. But, for example, is a Druid a priest, a magician, a mystic, or an occultist? Are they some combination, or all four? Does it depend on ow the individual druid sees themselves exclusively? Or does the tradition as a whole speak to how druids are all these things together?

Re: Magic vs. Religion vs. Occultism vs. Mysticism

[ecosophia]

It sounds as though you're assuming that these four words have fixed essential meanings corresponding to real distinctions in the cosmos. I'd argue that this is not the case -- that these four words are verbal noises that are applied, with ordinary human sloppiness, to vague overlapping clusters of ideas. All of them can be applied to most things in the sprawling overarching field of human experience to which they all more or less apply.

[alexseanchai]

I gather magic involves the use of personal energy / power of some description, among other things. I'm disabled—fibromyalgia and asthma, among other things, and my most common asthma symptom (especially in winter) is tiredness—and consequently my personal energy is often fairly low. (If you're familiar with spoon theory? I so rarely have spoons that I don't need to dedicate to paycheck job and housework.)

I believe, in theory, if I practice magic regularly then that will increase my stores of the sort of personal energy I'm thus using, à la regular muscular strength training. That true? If so, do you think it would increase my stores of energy generally?

[ecosophia]

Yes, but only very slowly, and only if you take it a bit at a time. (Yes, I'm familiar with the "spoons" metaphor; my wife has had to use it from time to time due to her own health challenges.) If you decide to try magic, take up some simple practice such as a banishing ritual, and do it only when you feel you have ample energy for it. Judge what to do thereafter based on the effects you experience.

Memory Palace

[lterrell]

Some comments from a few weeks ago about memory got me to thinking about Memorization techniques. I’d read a few books in the past on the various methods of memorizing large amounts of information/names (linking information chief among them). If occurred to me that memory palaces could make it easier for others to learn the information that is memorized using the linking & memory palaces techniques if thoughts and images end up embedded in the astral plane. After a story or set of ideas is encoded in this way (linking or memory palace) the ideas/stories would be in the astral plane for others to view as long as the person recalling the story knew where to start (or simply had a starting place in the story). I think these images on the astral plane helped with traditional cultures that passed down stories and information via oral tradition (once the story was well tread in the astral plane it would be easier and easier to remember as time when on as the stories were retold). To this end, I’m beginning to make a memory palace that consists of various but related sub topics on conservation & ecology. If you have any thoughts or comments on this idea please let me know.

On another note, I was using listening to music on Youtube and a commercial came on for JennAir advertising their new line of stoves. In the middle of the commercial it says, ”Progress is our God” and I did a complete double take. At least the people running the company have a clear understanding of what they are prioritizing in life.
Video for reference (title: Bound By Nothing): https://youtu.be/rHxTC9ajItw

Re: Memory Palace

[ecosophia]

I don't know whether much work has been done about collective memory palaces, but it's certainly an option worth exploring. As for the advertisement, why, I'm delighted -- it's about time they admitted it!

Pantheons

[(Anonymous)]

Hey JMG,

I see a lot of people talking about picking pantheons to pray to. How does this work? Do you have to read in depth about the pantheon to know the different aspects of the gods? Any advice would be awesome, thank you.

O.S.

Re: Pantheons

[ecosophia]

As with so much else, there are many ways to go about it, and different people find one or another approach more satisfactory. Me, I'd start by getting a good book of myths dealing with a pantheon, the sort of thing that used to be written for older children -- those tend to be highly readable, and to have the vivid incantatory quality you want. See which pantheon has stories that really resonate with you, and go from there.

Horary interpretation question

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, JMG--

I had misplaced my credit card last week, and finding myself in need of it Thursday morning I drew up a horary chart for it. My software defaults to Placidus, which cast the 2nd house cusp at 28:37 Aries, ruled by Mars exalted and angular at 10th-house 2:44 Capricorn. Natural significator Moon (lost objects) at 3:44 Gemini in the 3rd, and natural significator Mercury (cards, papers, and documents) at 16:53 Aries in the 1st. No strictures against judgment.

I found the card later that evening - it was in my wallet after all; I'd just accidentally put it in the larger pocket where cash goes rather than the smaller pocket it usually goes in. I.e., it had been with me the whole time it was "lost".

What I'm trying to figure out is how that 10th house Capricorn played into it. It was hanging out with the pictures of the presidents on my cash, in the company of kings? Or was I simply using the wrong cusp? (Because in Regiomontanus, which William Lilly would have used, the 2nd house cusp was 0:31 Taurus and would have pointed me to Venus in 1st house Aries, which I think would be suggestive of "with me".)

Re: Horary interpretation question

[ecosophia]

Well, this is why I stopped practicing Renaissance horary methods and started using Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson's methods instead. I don't get clear readings by the classical methods. She advises taking the Moon as your guide; the last aspect it made before the reading tells you what happened immediately before the event you're discussing, and the aspects she makes afterwards, until she leaves the sign she's in, give you the rest of the answer. Of course you also need to see if the planets ruling the cusps of the houses of the querent and quesited have a relationship, and if so, what it is. What was your ascendant?

Question on developing inner-plane contacts

[slclaire]

What does it mean to develop inner-plane contacts in a magical context? I have seen it in a couple of the books I have and you used it in response to a question last week, but I have not seen an explanation of what it means.

Re: Question on developing inner-plane contacts

[ecosophia]

It's a common experience of operative mages to encounter, especially in meditative states and in visionary work such as scrying, beings who have no physical bodies, who claim to be human or formerly human, and who can provide helpful instruction to the aspiring mage. The usual occult theory is that they're exactly what they claim to be, typically occultists of an earlier time who have passed beyond the stage of needing physical bodies, and who for the sake of their own further advancement teach and guide those of us who are still physically embodied. Those are inner plane contacts. Don't go looking for them -- there are plenty of things out there who are happy to pretend to have that status. When and if one of them thinks you're ready, they'll contact you, and then the two of you can work out a means of regular conversation.