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. (Please note:  Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) 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?  That's the sixteenth card in The Sacred Geometry Oracle. Card 16, The Octahedron, when upright tells you that your best option involves mediating or balancing between different forces; when reversed, it warns you that you're trying to do too much and risking dispersing your energy. The waves on the sides of the image tell you that this card belongs to the second third of the oracle, which corresponds to Gwyar, the principle of fluidity and change. 

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use the button above to access my online tip jar. If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 

 

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain other gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I now have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

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

[jprussell]

Good Evening!

I'm a little surprised the Octahedron doesn't symbolize the strength and vitality of opponents (yes, that was a lame D&D hit die joke).

More seriously, thanks very much as always for this space and your time and energy managing it.

Just the one question today, but it has multiple parts:

For JMG and the commentariat, I'd like to ask anyone willing to share for some book recommendations for the Earth path reading component of the year of self-initiation detailed in the DH. I'm pretty set for local field guides for the Abred (Incarnate Life) section, and I've got some good options for most of Gwynfydd (Spiritual Life), but I'm having a bit more trouble finding good titles for Annwn (Elemental Matter) that let me keep my resolution for the year to only read books by dead authors, so help on titles for one or more of the categories below would be most welcome:
- Annwn - Calas - Stone and Soil (maybe Sir Charles Lyell?)
- Annwn - Gwyar - Water
- Annwn - Nwyfre - Air
- Gwynfydd - Calas - Nature Science (I'm considering Christopher Alexander's On the Nature of Order now that he has unfortunately recently joined the ranks of authors that qualify for my resolution)
- Gwynfydd - Gwyar - Nature Mythology (I'm currently leaning toward The World We Used to Live In by Vine Deloria, Jr., but anything relevant to Texas/the Gulf Coast would be especially welcome!)

Thanks much,
Jeff

[ecosophia]

1) Funny. And the cube is therefore the indicator of wandering monsters...

2) You have a lot of eminent dead people to choose among, since a great deal of fine work in the earth sciences was done in the 20th century by people who have since died. Don't miss Stephen Jay Gould, for example! If you haven't yet read Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species that should be high up on your list. As for specific books on the atmosphere, on the one hand, and the Gulf and your local rivers on the other, here again, dead writers ought to be very easy to find. Talk to your local librarians and tell them you're reading books by dead people -- my guess is you'll get plenty of help.

[(Anonymous)]

1. What are the relative merits of astrological election vs. election via planetary hours and/or Moon phases? You’ve previously mentioned that you elect the moments of submitting manuscripts to publishers to when your natal Mercury is well dignified. Why not submit them on a day and hour of Mercury when the Moon is waxing instead?

2. You wrote in CoP that “Etheric energies are at their strongest at the Full Moon […] When the Moon is waxing—growing from new to full—those energies support increase and upward motion”. If I understand correctly, as the Moon begins to wax shortly after a New Moon, the energies of increase and upward motion also begin to increase, and the closer to a Full Moon, the greater the energies supporting increase and upward motion? This would imply that the energies are at about the halfway mark at the first quarter? Could you comment on whether the chart below is accurate?

https://i.imgur.com/DkdRwj0.jpg

3. Do you see any benefits in incorporating the season into election by planetary hours and Moon phases? For example, if electing a moment to pay off a mortgage debt, selecting not only a day and hour of Saturn on a waning Moon, but also a time during the Tide of Destruction (December 23 to March 21).

[ecosophia]

1) In my experience astrological elections are much more potent than planetary hours and moon phases. That's why I elect times to submit my manuscripts, using transits across my natal chart -- the results are better. (Mind you, it's also more work, but them's the breaks.)

2) That's basically correct. Replace the straight lines with flowing curves and it'll be a little more in character for the Moon!

3) You'd have to experiment and see how that works for you. I haven't tried it.

Kilner

[(Anonymous)]

Back a year ago, there was a discussion here of Kilner’s experiments with goggles to enable the ability to see auras - at Etheric Technology 5: Walter Kilner and the Human Atmosphere. Did any reader actually get around to conducting an experiment with replicating these experiments?

KAN

Re: Kilner

[ecosophia]

I'd be interested in hearing that also. More generally, there was a lot of apparent interest in the radionics material, but I never heard from anyone who actually built any of the machines -- I'd like to remedy that, if anyone did.

War mages and rain callers

[vitranc]

Greetings JMG,

Some questions that came up this week:
1. As I read the mention of ukranian witches doing a ritual against Putin I asked myself, what do sane occultists do in a situation like this? In the last weeks you appeared on a podcast deliniating a preaty bad astrological chart for this war, and the last mention of Mundi Sadhu on this blog implies, that he did not sit out the war in his native Poland. How would you handle finding yourself in a country on the brink of war?

2. Last week I got indirectly asked about what a mage can do to call rain? The man had no idea about me, and I joked about rain dancing. Since we are going trough a dry spell here. It bodes a serious question: what can a druid do to bring rain?

Best regards,
V

Re: War mages and rain callers

[ecosophia]

1) Dion Fortune's a good example, because she did magic straight through the Second World War with good effect. Her rule was precise: use magic to strengthen what you want to support, never to tear down what you want to oppose. If you want to support your country you can do workings to strengthen the national egregor. Fortune's book The Magical Battle of Britain is a good resource.

2) It depends on the cause of the drought. Sometimes it's a temporary glitch in the balance of forces, and can be balanced out to bring rain. Sometimes it's part of a bigger balancing process in the atmosphere, and then there's not much you can do. Divination will tell you which is which; if it's something you can influence, you can call on air and water spirits, and also on thunder deities, to do what they do best and make it rain.

Translation update

[(Anonymous)]

Publishing delays at the moment for Etteilla's Book of Thoth, but I am enjoying translating Carl du Pref's Das Rätsel des Menschen [The Puzzle of Humanity]. You may be interested in this quote he gives from Kant:
"Life consists in the commerce of the soul with the body; the beginning of life is the beginning of the commerce, the end of life is the end of the commerce. The beginning of the commerce is the birth, the end of the commerce is the death. The duration of the commerce is the life. The beginning of life is the birth; this is, however, not the beginning of the life of the soul, but rather that of the human. The end of life is the death; this is, however, not the end of the life of the soul, but rather of the human. Birth, life, and death are thus only conditions of the soul. […] Therefore the substance remains even though the body passes away, and thus the substance must also have been there when the body arose. […] Life with the human is twofold — the animal and the spirit life. The animal life is the life of the human as human; and with this the body is necessary so that the human lives. The other life is the spirit life where the soul, independent of the body, must continue to exercise the same acts of life."
According to du Prel, "Kant was, however, also clear over it being the occult sciences on which the theory of souls had to be erected."

Re: Translation update

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this. That's a fascinating bit of Kant -- did du Pref mention which of Kant's works it's from?

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, what’s your view of the Mothman?

I always thought he might be Owlman. Many people would be surprised how big the larger species of owl can look, especially at night. And many people also are unaware that many species of birds have eyes that reflect red, rather than yellow-green.. My dad pointed that out to me one night—I think it was a great horned owl, but decades later I don’t remember for sure. It was definitely an owl. It had hooted a few times, and Dad told me to shine the flashlight up in the trees and see if I saw any red eyes. To my delight, I did. We had either spotted my first owl, or Mothman.

—Princess Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

Well, if the owl in question was seven or eight feet tall, had eyes that glowed with their own light (rather than just reflecting your flashlight) and could rise straight up into the air without flapping its wings, it might have been Mothman!

I have no idea what Mothman was, but John Keel's book was a favorite read of mine for many years.

[booklover1973]

Dear JMG,

in the Druid Magic Handbook you wroze about how to test a guide in a scrying of the elements, in the form of letting them draw the elemental symbol of the particular scrying. Is it the same in Ogham scryings or pathworkings or is it done differently there?

[ecosophia]

You can do the same thing. Have the entity draw the Ogham few.

EMF books

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I am definitely not asking for medical advice or anything which woukd pertain to human health, but could you indicate, as a source of interest, historical reference or novelty, any books or other resources you know of in which the authors ponder the effects of electromagnetic radiation on living things from an occult perspective?

Thanks

Re: EMF books

[ecosophia]

There was a lot of discussion of that in the 19th and early 20th century, when nobody was quite sure that EMR wasn't etheric in nature, but it's been a very long time since I've looked into that and don't happen to recall any titles or authors. Anyone else?

Voodoo Death

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the space JMG. Now you may choose not to answer this, but does any of the traditional western law mention anything about killing curses? I just have a family history of magic in a non western context and something that came up in the tradition was what western doctors called 'voodoo death' in which someone was cursed and would die within a week or so. Obviously western medicine explains it as a psychosomatic condition where the victim basically starves/dehydrates themselves to death, which may be what is actually going on.

It doesn't really go on any more but was quite common in the past and was a subtle method used in tribal conflict. Of course I don't ever want to go anywhere near these things, but what was interesting to me was that there was never any mention of a potential blowback from using this kind of magic, and it was a way to dish out justice.

Re: Voodoo Death

[ecosophia]

Have you noticed that the parts of the world where that was most commonly practiced are still the most impoverished and violence-ridden parts of the world? The mere fact that people didn't talk about blowback doesn't mean that it didn't happen...

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

Delighted to see the octahedron this week. I'm the one who asked about the shapes last week.

Much to meditate on with this card...

Heliotrope Addlepated Porpoise

[ecosophia]

Stay tuned for next week!

[(Anonymous)]

I've become very interested in herbalism and I'm been starting to learn and read about it.

1. Does the practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayuveda interfere with anything in the DA / DMH path? Just wondering if there's anything that conflicts because they come from different traditions.

2. Do you, or any of the commentariat, have any advice about pursuing herbalism to the point where I can practice it for the benefit of others? Not only is it extremely interesting in its own right, but it would also be some way of helping and healing others, as opposed to my current dead end, useless job.

Thanks in advance!

[jprussell]

violetcabra provided some recommendations in this thread: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/71075.html?thread=6180515#cmt6180515

Radionics

[moops25]

Hi JMG,

In relation to your previous posts on radionics, did you ever contact Duncan Laurie ?

He still appears to be based at Rhode Island, is that still your stomping ground ?

Just curious really, as his studio looks like your kind of playground.

https://youtu.be/IrRJvpzmkxE

https://www.duncanlaurie.com/

Regards,
Steve

Re: Radionics

[ecosophia]

No, partly because we've been through various forms of shutdown theater, and partly because I've been very busy and haven't had a lot of free time. I'm aware of his work, however.

[(Anonymous)]

1. Someone I know was recently taken advantage of sexually while drunk. Are there steps (at the level of things like natural magic or candle magic) we can take to protect him from potential consequences? Mundane medical steps are already being taken, and with his permission I've already done a basic sigil and started prayer. Also, if he feels "icky" about it I was going to suggest a hoodoo bath.

We're not looking for revenge, and given the circumstances it's unlikely he will encounter the perpetrator again.


2. For my own curiosity... Apparently the perpetrator gives off a "creepy" vibe. Am I correct in guessing that's a really bad sign (for that person) karmically?


Thank you!

Murky Ponderous Filbert

[ecosophia]

1) A hoodoo bath is certainly a good idea, and prayer is always helpful. Other than that, and the usual medical and (if necessary) psychological stuff, I don't know of anything else that should be necessary.

2) Lots of people have creepy vibes, and generally work hard at earning them. The karmic consequences vary depending on how they got creepy and what exactly the creep does with his or her creepiness.

Land again

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,I asked about a decision on buying land last week.
I had said I got this result.
Right witness caput draconis
Left witness puella
Judge Acuisitio

Looking back I had miscounted 😬
It's actually
Right witness Cauda draconis
Left witness puella
Judge Acuisitio
Not as favourable,but still a decent reading do you think?

Re: Land again

[ecosophia]

It's still a "yes," because you've got Acquisitio formed by two favorable figures. Don't overthink your geomancy readings!

Tarot Court Cards

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Thank you for once again hosting Magic Monday.
In you opinion, what is the best way to read tarot court cards. I am not sure why, but these cards are the most difficult for me to get a handle on.

-Ian

Re: Tarot Court Cards

[ecosophia]

I typically read three of the four in each suit as people: kings are straight men or lesbians, queens straight women or gay men, and knights are young people. I don't assign the old physical-appearance indications to the cards, as I don't find them useful, but the character indications are spot on -- for example, a king of wands is a decisive, fiery, often overbearing straight man or lesbian, while a knight of pentacles is a quiet, somewhat reserved child or youth. The pages, by contrast, are messages of various kinds -- these days, often emails or text messages.

meditations

[(Anonymous)]

hello dear JMG-

thanks, as always, for your time and wisdom here.

after about 16 months practicing magick by way of other guides, i've been working through your book LRM for about 5 months now. i am feeling very frustrated with my inability to engage deeply with symbolic rumination as is directed for pondering the tarot, the elements, and etc.

i know everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and this two years' practice has really brought my attention to the fact that i have never in my 52 years been a symbolic or metaphorical thinker. now i am feeling hopeless about my future in magick because of this limitation. i can sit and ponder the threes in my life for ten minutes and come up with less than a dozen examples...

i know learning a new skill takes time, and i will not give up, but please tell me - is there hope for me to complete the great work with this limitation?

thank you, sir.

Re: meditations

[ecosophia]

Of course there's hope for you. Every student of magic I've ever met had at least one serious weakness in terms of the abilities needed for magical practice. With me it was visualization -- I couldn't picture things in my mind at all, and it took me quite a bit of hard work to get to the point of being able to do so.

Your problem is especially common these days because people in modern industrial countries are systematically taught not to think symbolically and metaphorically. I encourage you to consider adding a simple practice: get a good collection of myths or fairy tales -- Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book and its twenty-odd sequels are good options here -- and read one of them a day. Notice the emotions that come up when you do this. You may find it revealing!

(Reading myths, legends, and fairy tales is a very good practice for any student of the occult, by the way. That's how children learned symbolic thinking back in the day, and it's never too late to pick up the skill...)

Tarot reversals

[(Anonymous)]

Good Morning Mr. Greer-
I have taken action on the widespread suggestion to obtain a separate Tarot deck for divination (versus for readings), and am wondering how, with a special and consecrated deck, you would advise introducing reversed cards into the deck. Does one intentionally shuffle them in? Does one wait as, over time, cards are dropped on the floor or mis-shuffled? If there is an advisement on how to do this, or how this has traditionally been done, I would like to follow that.
With gratitude,
Matthew

Re: Tarot reversals

[ecosophia]

No, you simply change the way you shuffle the cards. When you divide the deck before shuffling, turn one-half of the deck end-for-end, so that the end that was up is now down, then shuffle the cards together. Half the deck is now reversed. Repeat the process every single time you shuffle and you'll have a deck thoroughly mixed between upright and reversed.

I habitually take the top half of the deck in my left hand and turn it end-for-end, while taking the bottom half in my right hand and leaving it unrotated. Choose some such gimmick and you'll have plenty of inverted cards to read.

Alexander the Great (Weird of Hali)

[(Anonymous)]

About to finish the last Weird of Hali book, (the waves have just crashed) and wondered, is the roll of Alexander the Great in the storyline just a fun historic link or is it based in some real world occult history?

Re: Alexander the Great (Weird of Hali)

[ecosophia]

Iâ! Iâ! ;-)

Alexander the Great himself was a drunken megalomaniac, but no, he doesn't seem to have had any connection with the changes in culture I was talking about (in metaphoric form) in my tentacle novels. It was in the handful of centuries around his time, however, that human societies got into an obsessive fixation on abstract concepts, and went from there to the bizarre delusion that human beings are or ought to be the masters of the planet. That's why I chose him for the role he played in the backstory.

[(Anonymous)]

In the animé "Evangelion" appeared an monster called among the "Apostles"(sic)with Ochtaedron shape. For your curiosity if you are friend of manganime...

[ecosophia]

I've dabbled a little in manga. I read two or three volumes of Ane Naro Mono aka The Elder Sister-like One; a friend mentioned it to me early on when I was writing my tentacle novels, and as I noted in a journal post here, there were some frankly weird parallels between its plot and setting and those of The Weird of Hali. I also followed Mahō Tsukai no Yome aka The Ancient Magus' Bride and Totsukuni no Shōjo aka The Girl from the Other Side for a while, though not seriously.

As for anime, well, I'm really not into visual media; I'm aware of the stunning technical competence of Japanese anime -- it stomps American animation into paste and dances atop the remains -- and one of my more improbable daydreams involves seeing an anime version of my novel The Shoggoth Concerto done by Studio Ghibli, but that's about as far as I'd go.

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning! I don’t have a question right now, I just wanted to say thanks for hosting this. I enjoy reading through every week. 🙂

I hope you and all reading this have a great day and week.

- J

[andrewskeen]

Good morning!

Which classical planet would you associate with the Muses for astrological purposes? I am rather stuck between Jupiter as their mythological forebear or possibly the Moon.

My thanks as always for Magic Monday, it's a real treat.

Andrew

[(Anonymous)]

Agrippa in his Second Book, Chapter XII: "Of the Number Nine, and the Scale thereof", gives this correspondence:

Calliope - Primum Mobile
Urania - Fixed Stars
Polyhymnia - Saturn
Terpsichore - Jupiter
Cleo - Mars
Melpomene - Sun
Erato - Venus
Euterpe - Mercury
Thalia - Moon

- Rohini

[d_mekel]

There was a long hair/short hair discussion on the pineal gland last week. more hair prevents more light to get to the pineal gland and vice versa if I'm recalling correctly. What I didn't understand was why would someone want more or less light getting to the pineal gland? What does more or less light do?

[joshuarout]

I'm not sure about the pineal gland, but in my own experiments with this, I found greater focus and impulse control, and a redirection of attention away from things like food and sex. It was quite easy to just study straight through supper time and forget to eat. I lost weight during the experiment - no interest in snacking. I also found that it altered my sleep rhythm, so that I preferred going to bed earlier and waking up earlier.
If you're interested in experimenting with it without shaving, I believe red LED strips or clusters are actually bright enough that some light passes through hair when they're directly on the head, so you can experiment with the effect by mounting clusters of them on the head for periods of time. I combined a shaved head with periods of red LED light exposure.

Regards,
Josh Rout

[stcathalexandria]

Thank you for hosting another week of AMA

I have a self-created problem I need to fix. I *should* have registered for a sales tax account with my state for my business back in October but didn't for a variety of reasons. I haven't sold anything and am not hiding money from them, but I want to straighten this out before I do. I plan on just going ahead and doing the registration through the awful clunky website this week. What is the best day or hour of the week to do this to prevent issues and problems coming from them for being so late? What other steps can I do to not have any issues from them?

What is making me fix this self-created problem now is finally becoming conscious of the mix of emotions I have around money and people thanks to the OSA work. In fact I'm realizing most if not all of my decisions in my life are based in emotions. It's quite humbling because I didn't realize how much they were running the show except in extreme circumstances.

Plum Crotchety Beaver

[ecosophia]

I recommend Mercury day and hour for anything involving clunky websites!

I made the same discovery about emotions when I originally did the OSA work. Yes, it's humbling!

[nebulous_realms]

Thanks for another Magic Monday, JMG! Here's my collected questions over the past week?

1. You said in your discussion on pornography that sex and the fluids involved in it has etheric properties. I was curious if tears cried for any particularly emotional reason have an etheric energy or property to them too?
2. People often ask if they are allowed to pray on someone's behalf in the Covid discussions and elsewhere? Do you need people’s consent to pray for them?
4. I’m feeling an odd impulse to use my middle initial increasingly with my first and last name in work documents and elsewhere, although I was happy with my normal name as is. Of course this change in my name has numerological significance. Including my middle initial in my name in signatures, etc. changes my name number from a 7 to an 11. Should I seek divination before I keep following this impulse?

[ecosophia]

1) Good question. Theoretically, that would be likely, but you'd have to check with a competent clairvoyant to be sure.

2) I consider it good etiquette. Consent is as important in magic as in sex!

3) That's up to you, of course. Do you want to know what the results will be? Do divination. Do you want it to be a surprise? Don't do divination. Yes, I'm quite serious!

How to magically survive being poisoned

[(Anonymous)]

Is hard to prove when you have been poisoned, but many magicians have nonetheless felt it. How can a thing like that be survived. Are any patron Gods or Saints of the ones being poisoned?

Re: How to magically survive being poisoned

[ecosophia]

Um, unless you're talking about a very narrow range of highly specific phenomena, no, this isn't a common thing among magicians. If you think you've been poisoned, and your health care provider can't find any sign that you've been poisoned -- again, unless we're talking about something very specific (and in that case you need to talk about that specific thing), you may need to see a qualified psychiatrist instead.