ecosophia | Magic Monday

a) I've had a somewhat odd observation that I've been mulling over lately: the dream of Re-enchanting the World followed a pattern I've come to recognize, since it pops up all over the place in the history of the 20th Century: it came on with a loud bang in the late 1950s and early 1960s with an enormous amount of hype; seemed like the wave of the future for a while; and then slowly trickled away, before completely imploding over the past decade and a half or so. In other words, it patterns as a Plutonian Phenomena. This got me thinking about it, because it seems like it shouldn't be: in fact, it's opposed to the Plutonian, but as I thought about it, a lot of things opposed to the Plutonian seem to pattern as Plutonian.

Television criticism thrived in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which fizzled out by the end of the 1980s; the counterculture of the 1960s; the Appropriate Tech Movement of the 1970s; the Transition Towns movement of the 2000s; New Urbanism in the 1990s. This seems to me to be a striking feature of the Plutonian: during his reign as a planet, he appears to have ruled over the attempts to resist his influence. This irony, however, unfolds logically from the nature of the planet: Pluto is the planet of rejecting the cosmic order, and during his reign as a planet, he was part of that order: so naturally, he ruled over attempts to resist the rejection of the cosmic order!

This also explains the somewhat odd way that so many people who, during the Plutonian Era, seemed to be resisting the Plutonian are now clinging to it so desperately, while many who seemed more Plutonian have let go, since they were actually less Plutonian.

Does this line of reasoning make sense to you? It has all kinds of weird implications I'm only beginning to tease apart, but if it holds then it is a very substantial realization and makes a lot of sense of loads of other things (ex: why so many occultists in the Plutonian Era veered into Plutonian things).

b) I've also been wondering about the moral collapse and the descent into demonolatry over the past fifteen years or so, and realized it ties in neatly with Pluto fading out: it's common when dealing with Pluto for people to pretend to believe in something, by expressing it in the most extreme form. As Pluto fades out, people are clinging to it, and trying to pretend they still believe there is no cosmic order. I can't think of any better way than by rejecting all morality, and summoning demons. It may not make the universe into ugly chaos, but it does a wonder in making their own lives into it....

1) That makes enormous sense. Pluto is all about rebellion and schism, and so it would follow that attempts to rebel against Plutonian influence would be, in effect, controlled opposition: "what you hate, you imitate" taken to a new level. The trajectory of beginning with a bang and ending with a whimper is typically Plutonian; so is the tendency to fixate on utopian fantasies rather than simply choosing something to do, and doing it. It'll be interesting to see, as the Plutonian influence fades out, if that habit fades with it.

2) Yes, quite possibly so.

Well, thinking through both of these issues has made me feel very, very uncomfortable, because taken together, they suggest another possible explanation for what's happening with the vaccines. The first is that a very large number of people who should have known better have gone all in on the vaccines; while quite a few people who I wouldn't have expected to see through it have. What's striking though is that both the obviously highly Plutonian (ex: punk scene) and those who seemed to be fiercely resisting it (ex: the neopagan scene) have heavily gone into it; while the people who saw through it by and large seem to be weakly Plutonian.

This was also true of TDS, and further, whatever has happened since 2016 to drive the ongoing insanity seems to be heavily mediated by the Plutonian, and this suggests a very uncomfortable possibility to me: the elite classes have gone insane, in a peculiarly Plutonian fashion. It would fit, given the reality that during the Plutonian Era the competition for power went into overdrive, and became unusually ruthless and brutal, with the result that most people who hold power in current society are highly Plutonian, simply because no one else is willing to do what is needed to get it.

Pluto naturally rules the kind of thinking that goes along the lines of "If I can't have it, no one can!" and the willingness to wreck everything which is necessary for a functioning society since 2017 and especially since 2020 makes a lot of sense if the elite classes are no longer playing to win, nor even to keep power, but are now, perhaps subconsciously, determined to wreck as much of society as possible.

Pluto also appears to rule human experimentation, modern science, and modern medicine, so of course all three got caught up in this in the form of the vaccine crisis, but another key thing to note is that Pluto seems to rule Russian Roulette as well, based on the dramatic increase in popularity of the game when Pluto came into focus. The vaccine push can be thought of as playing a societal scale Russian Roulette; especially given that it looks like even the short term trials were fraudulent (another Plutonian thing!).

So, I think it's worth considering the possibility that the elite classes who run the American Empire have gone insane in a classic Plutonian fashion, and are now determined to use what remains of their power to destroy as much as possible on the way down.....

That's quite possible, but if that's the case, you can expect it to play out in typical Plutonian fashion -- that is, it has begun with grand proclamations and every appearance of sweeping all before it, but what will happen next is that it will falter, stumble, and end in a whimper of failure.

In which case, if the elites are insane, then the likelihood of a vaccine induced die off is a lot lower than it seems. So, oddly enough, we're better off if they've gone insane in this particular way...

We can certainly hope so.

Not all Plutonian Phenomena ended in a whimper of failure in the short term: the Russian Revolution and Nazism both come to mind here: they both accomplished a great deal before slamming into disaster and imploding. So I'm not sure that we can be so confident that if the elite classes are determined to wreck as much of society as possible things won't get very, very ugly for a few years, especially if we drew a bullet in the society wide game of Russian Roulette we just played....

The Russian Revolution was the bang, the long slow decline of Communism into irrelevance and collapse was the whimper. Nazism, for its part, wasn't a Plutonian phenomenon but a Uranian one -- remember that none of the other planets went away when Pluto was discovered! As for how things will unfold, why, you've made your prediction and I've made mine; we'll see who turns out to be correct.

It always struck me that the Communist regime lasted about 80 years - one person's long lifetime. As did the theocracy in Heinlein's Future History chart (2012-2100. Beginning with a vulgar, low-class, nearly illiterate televangelist with Old Money backing running for President and winning. Overthrown by a fed-up populace, complete with a harem revolt 80 years later.) First, Heinlein was a fairly decent observer of human nature on the ground in his day; second, 70-80 years feels to me - yeah - intuitive reasoning - like just about the right length for a basically unsustainable regime.

Nazism, of course less than 20 years (sound track from the finale to Wagner's magnum opus.) The Pathet Lao self-destructed spectacularly, as did the regime in Rumania whose pro-natalism policy filled the orphanages with starved and neglected children.

These fly-by-night dictatorships - Plutonian? Or something else?

Alabaster Decrepit Peacock

Any of the malefic planets can inspire dictatorships. Mars dictatorships are ordinary military-junta regimes; Saturn dictatorships are grim bureaucratic states; Uranus dictatorships are self-destructive ideological regimes, such as the Nazis or the Khmer Rouge; Neptune dictatorships are those incoherent temporary states that never quite manage to find a leader or a system, and go to pieces in short order.

And where would you place North Korea? It is, after all, a very idiosyncratic, very ideological and very isolationist regime, which, at the same time, has hitherto weathered all crises which history threw at it. I'm not sure that a single malefic planet fits the bill comfortably.

Saturn, unquestionably. Saturn dictatorships are grim and very stable.

Yes, especially because of their prison camps, whose inmates are usually never released, North Korea clearly is very Saturnine. Additionally, it has, if I'm correctly informed about Uranus, an Uranian streak due to its weird leader cult.

Since you've already highlighted the prime example thereof, could you perhaps also give a concise description of what a typical pluto dictatorship amounts to in general terms, like you've done with the others above?

See the comment immediately below yours. Pluto dictatorships are the ones that claim to be freeing you. Since Pluto doesn't have much staying power, they usually morph into one of the other types, though they keep the end-with-a-whimper dynamic.

Pluto also rules the modern cult of personality, and it seems to me like a lot of Plutonian dictatorships last only as long as their leader does, before shifting into one of the other forms. This makes a lot more sense of the phenomena of the celebrity presidents (ever since FDR), and suggests another reason to think the US spent the Plutonian Era as a Plutonian Dictatorship...

And Plutonian dictatorships are those weird dictatorships which pretend to be a government of the people. This also explains a lot of what's happening now: those Plutonian dictatorships, as Plutonian Phenomena, had the tendency to run to extremes via unchecked positive feedback loops, and the typical Plutonian ruthlessness to be willing to obliterate any threat to their power: religion, which reaches beyond the world; community, which provides other sources of the raw materials for survival; education, which would teach people how to recognize what was happening; real skills, which would allow people to opt out of some of the consumer economy, and thus reduce our dependence on the system; the family, which provides a link to the past and to the community, and thus a way out of the toxicity the dictatorship seeks to impose, and makes it easier to see it for what it is.

This helps explain why the societies in the Western World have had such a long standing issues with community organizations, religion, their own educational systems, and the like: all of them are threats to the ability of the Plutonian dictatorship to be able to implement its extreme agenda.

Additionally, this is a fairly rigid and destructive ideology at the heart of it: an anti-human and anti-community ideology. As long as Pluto was a planet though, it ruled this system of dictatorship, while now, this system of dictatorship is collapsing on an internal contradiction, being pulled partially towards the Uranian ideological dictatorship (this seems to be where the left is going) and towards becoming what it pretended to be (this seems to be where the right is going).

Hmm...

What do you make of the way some people seem to want to blame Pluto for everything that's gone wrong since World War I?

Pluto is among other things the planet of shadow projection. It rules any rejection of unity, including the kind involved in pretending all your bad habits aren't yours, but belong to those awful people over there.

Or in this case the kind involved in pretending that all the bad things in the universe come from one source. And something else just clicked: it also rules Utopian fantasies and hype, and a lot of people who are aware of the effects of Pluto fading out are engaged in copious amounts of both, focused on what the Post-Plutonian World will look like, just as soon as all the evil (Pluto) finishes going away....

1) This also adds another level to the sheer nastiness of the Plutonian Current, that even those who saw it for the brutal, ugly, horrific mess that it was ended up getting sucked into another manifestation of it...

Except that they didn't see it for what it is. In classic Plutonian style, they projected their own shadow onto the world and then tried to rebel against it, which guaranteed that they'd simply bind themselves closer to it.

The world has always been a mess. Go as far back into history as you want, and you'll find good and evil, beauty and ugliness, horror and wonder, brutality and gentleness all tangled up with one another, twined together tightly within each individual human heart and thus muddled up inextricably in the world as a whole. All through the Piscean age, people have chased the fantasy that we can dispense with that, pile all the evil into one place and get rid of it, and have only the good stuff...and you see how well that's worked. Pluto simply rubbed our noses in it. Now that the Piscean age is over, maybe we can stop making the same mistake...

This is a very Druidical way to describe the world!

Well, what else did you expect from a Druid? ;-)

I think it's worth noting that this is true even of the Plutonian, a point I find a lot of people seem to miss when discussions of it fading away come up. Pluto was a malefic planet, but like all of them, it had its positives. Among them:

Antibiotics, which saved a lot of lives from ending at very early ages. The cosmic order which Pluto rebelled against included at least 10% of all children dying before turning 1, and 25% dying before turning 5, even in countries with, by the standards of the time, very good medical care.

Pesticides, fertilizers, and plastic packaging allowed for a lot more food to be grown, and a lot more of it to be shipped to where people lived; which is why major famines were a lot less common during the Plutonian Era.

The ease of long distance travel and communication, which is wonderful for anyone who ends up needing to leave home for another area.

The lack of Great Power Wars during the period since 1945; enforced by the threat of MAD, this era of long peace was a historical aberration, and seems likely to end in the years ahead.

These are just the ones that come to mind, I'm sure there are others. So while it was a mostly negative influence, the positives to the Plutonian do exist, and it's fascinating watching so many people ignore them.

I'll challenge long-distance travel and comms; a couple of specific forms of that (the gasoline-powered automobile and airplane, probably television, possibly radio) are at least partially Plutonic, but AFAICT the majority of that falls under Neptune's ambit. (Note the advent of steam travel, the telegraph, and much more reliable long-distance ocean travel with the steamship between 1820 and 1850; Neptune was discovered in 1848.)

(Also, some of the agricultural improvements may be Uranian; I'm vaguely remembering a smaller Agricultural Revolution sometime around when Uranus started phasing in along with the first glimmers of the Industrial one. (Pesticides are likely Plutonic, though.) The other interesting question is weapons - nukes are half-Plutonic, half-Uranian (note the two elements usually involved!), and Uranus alone may impose enough of a ruinous cost on warfare to mitigate it over time)

That said, on the other hand I'll note unions (at least in their American form, European ones may work differently) and antitrust legislation show every sign by timing of being Plutonic (unions make sense as Plutonic at a symbolic level, too - division of the indivisible corporate egregore into owners and workers); the Uranus/Neptune combo seems to push towards vertically integrated monopolies, judging by their rapid advent in the 19th century.

- pretentious_username

Is there a reason Pluto seems to have had a particularly strong ironic streak?

I just posted the question about Pluto's irony, and realized the answer: irony is a division between what occurs and what it superficially appears should occur. Thus, since irony is a division, Pluto naturally rules irony...

Happy Alban Heruin!
A bit of Green Wizardry with apologies for the intrusion into the usual discussion of magic… hey… didn’t think through, did I? Anyway – In response to your question to me in your post, “The Twilight of Empire”, on 15 June: Yes, I’m already working my way through the recommended material. The Food Conspiracy Cookbook is available for free at archive dot org. That the first line of the dedication is my given name in all caps with an exclamation point is, I suspect, a sign that you’ve got me pointed in the right direction. Many thanks! As far as checking in with functioning co-ops…the Midwest has a few large ones, but neighbors divvying up staples and produce might be a lost art. For now…
Rhydlyd

Glad to hear it.

Good evening,

To all who observe it, a happy Father's Day, and a happy and blessed early Summer Solstice to anyone who celebrates that! Otherwise, I hope your summer is off to a pleasant start, and thanks for sharing your knowledge here.

To share this week: I asked a while back if JMG had any knowledge of Oswald Spengler (of The Decline of the West fame) being an occultist, due to many references to occult and occult-adjacent sources. It would seem the answer is a pretty definitive "no", though. From page 392 of the 2021 Arktos edition of Volume II:

"The Isis-cult in Republican Rome was something very different both from the emperor-worship that succeeded it and from the deeply earnest Isis-religion of Egypt; it was a religious pastime of high society, which at times provoked public ridicule and at times led to public scandal and the closing of the cult-centres. The Chaldean astrology was in those days a fashion, very far removed from the genuine Classical belief in oracles and from the Magian faith in the might of the hour. It was "relaxation," a "let's pretend." And, over and above this, there were the numberless charlatans and fake prophets who toured the towns and south with their pretentious rites to persuade the half-educated into a renewed interest in religion. Correspondingly, we have in the European-American world of today the occultist and theosophist fraud, the American Christian Science, the untrue Buddhism of drawing-rooms, the religious arts-and-crafts business (brisker in Germany than even in England) that caters for gropus and cults of Gothic or Late Classical or Taoist sentiment."

(Bolding mine)

As for a question, I was a bit late asking this on the last Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic post: 1) If I’m remembering correctly, you’ve characterized much (most?) of what occurs between incarnations as astral in nature, which implies some kind of (semi-?) persistent astral vehicle for the individuality. In Chapter 12 of the DaRoHM, though, it seems that some/all of our astral “body” is associated with the personality of a given incarnation and is left behind and no longer inhabited by the individuality/soul behind it.

So, I suppose my question is: what’s happening here, as far as we know? Does the astral “body” split into that which is left behind and that which stays with us? As we better reach the higher (mental, spiritual) planes, does less of our astral vehicle persist between incarnations?

Thanks very much for your time and care,
Jeff

Thanks for spotting the Spengler quote. I'd forgotten that, but it's utterly in character, and shares both his strengths and his weaknesses: that is to say, he's right to recognize the identity between late classical occultism and late modern occultism, and wrong to dismiss both movements as cavalierly as he does. As for your question, the astral body persists for quite some time after death. The first death, the death of the material body, starts the process of leaving incarnation; the second death, the shedding of the etheric body, usually happens a few days after that. That's when the real work of the afterlife begins, because the soul is then embodied in its astral body and mental sheath, and has to process all its experiences during life -- and this takes place on the astral plane, through the astral body. In the course of that processing, the astral body dissolves, its forces returning to their sources in the different sub-planes of the astral, but all its experiences are passed on to the soul and become part of the enduring knowledge of the individuality, the part of you that survives from life to life. Once that's finished, the dead person spends a more or less brief time in contact with the mental plane, and then descends into incarnation again, picking up new astral, etheric, and material bodies in the process.

Thanks very much! Your comment on Spengler and your answer to my question both make good sense.

So, while the soul is processing its last life's experiences astrally, the astral body remains as the "ghost" that is called forth by necromancy/spiritualism?

And just to be absolutely clear, this means that once the Individuality has processed the previous life, it has a Mental sheath and no other body until it descends into incarnation again?

1) Yes.

2) Yes. The mental sheath is the seed, so to speak, of the first of our permanent bodies -- when we've finished our evolutionary journey, we human souls will have three permanent bodies, mental, spiritual, and causal, surrounding the Divine Spark that is the essence of ourselves.

How would Levi's anecdote of the evocation of Apollonius of Tyana work? I reckon Apollonius would've been busy unto other things by the time having already shed the astral body.

Lévi explains in that chapter that you can also access reflections in the astral light, which are distinct from astral corpses. For anyone long dead, a reflection is normally what you get.

Oh nice, I haven't gotten to that chapter yet just had heard of the anecdote. Thank you.

If I read Levi correctly and followed this thread correctly, once dead, the soul is gone and we can only:
- access reflections in the astral light
- interact with an astral corpse (until it dissolves)
- interact with "larvae" or other entities that, at best, are very corrosive to us on the material plane.

In her "Through the Gates of Death", Dion Fortune states (Chapter 11) "When we call back the spirits of the departed to tell us of their experiences in the Heaven world.."

This heaven period has to happen after the first stop in the purgatory dream state and my understanding is that the soul would have to leave the astral corpse first before entering purgatory then the heaven state.

Is this a difference between Fortune's and Levi's understanding of the afterlife?

Yes. Fortune was strongly influenced by Spiritualism, which Lévi abhorred.

Happy Summer Solstice!

1. Does a tamer cream as opposed to stark white (switching to beeswax), or putting it in a lantern, lessen the efficacy of a blessing candle?

2. We have moved next to a large lake that is wild and powerful. I walk along the shore and she washes me clean etherically (at least that feels like what is happening). She also wipes away bad moods. Even when I'm back home, if I have angry thoughts (I didn't want to move here) the lake will pop into my mind, definitely from the outside. Someone (my HGA?) is telling me to walk at the lake and let it banish my anger. She is dangerous in a practical sense because she makes her own (severe) weather patterns and has a strong rip current, but on a magical level, is there anything dangerous to spending such close time with a lake like this? Thank you.

1) Not at all. I use beeswax candles by preference fo rthis.

2) Not as long as you're respectful. You seem to have established a good relationship with her, and as long as you respect that, that relationship should be a blessing for you. What you've described, btw, is the way the ancients felt about deities generally...

(1) I've subscribed to your subscribe star and as part of working through the lessons I've drawn up a work-in-progress 2022 Aries Ingress and Cancer Ingress for Wellington, New Zealand (both at my site if any NZ readers are interested). The Cancer Ingress was quite fascinating as 7 of the houses had planets in their rulership. Now, the Aries Ingress applied for the whole year, and the Cancer Ingress applied for the nine months, thus modifying the influence of the Aries Ingress. So for the next ingress, what guidance would you give for thinking about its influence relative to that of the Aries and Cancer ingresses? Should one be given more weight than the others?

(2) On the translation side, I am about a third of the way through Carl du Prel's edition of Immanuel Kant's Lectures on Psychology - du Prel's introduction makes a very strong case for Kant having arrived at some very esoteric views, and that Kant's interest in Swedenborg was driven by his desire for evidence to back up his own intuitions. If you or any readers are really keen on seeing an English translation of any other untranslated German works published before 1925 by authors who died before 1951 (i.e. out of copyright in most countries), then I can add them to my list for next year.

1) That's a subtle matter. Broadly speaking, the Aries ingress always takes precedence, and each succeeding ingress is more subordinate than those before -- but a strong planet in a later ingress can overrule a weak planet in a prior one. Practice will teach how you to read this.

2) Delighted to hear this! I wonder -- can you find a copy of Die Wiedergeburt, das innere Wahrhaftige Leben (also published under the title Das Buchstabenbuch) by Karl Kolb? It's the best source for the letter-mysticism practiced by J.B. Kerning (pen name of Johann Baptist Krebs), which influenced a vast range of European occult traditions in the 19th and 20th centuries.

1) Thanks, I suspected as much.
2) Found a copy published 1857 and will add that to the list and bump it up to next.

You might consider, when you've completed it, trying to place it with an occult publisher such as Inner Traditions or Aeon Books. That's a project that could make quite a splash.

Any Dutch work needing translation?

I'm sufficiently ignorant that I don't know what occult classics exist in Dutch!

Dear JMG,
I have been practicing magic including a daily SOP for 8 years now and have had really surprising benefits from it. At least, I was surprised.

This last year or so, I have noticed a sort of full feeling in the palms of my hands and a slight tingle. I was afraid it was a symptom of illness so I really got to grips with my blood sugar and am only eating one meal a day and that, very low in carbs. My hands feel the same even though I have experienced many other health benefits.

Is this tingling an effect of my magical practice?

Pink Pestilent Neanderthal

Yes, you're starting to develop the ability to feel etheric force. Don't worry about it, and for heaven's sake don't obsess too much about diet. (That way lies a range of long term difficulties; remember that worrying constantly about food will do you as much damage as anything you eat.)

Thanks very much. I suspected it was something like that. Good advice on eating assimilated.
Hugs from Maxine

Hello,

I have two question for this Monday:

1) When doing the SOP, the light descending during the Opening is bright white, but the light ascending from the Earth is golden, and when the two mix, the effect is like sunlight in late afternoon. Is the light ascending supposed to be white, too, in other words, am I doing this wrong? I didn’t consciously (as far as I remember) make it golden when I started doing the SOP, and now it appears that way all on its own.

2) I want to start with discursive meditation, and it occurred to me when reading the instructions that I’ve been doing this for a long time, but in writing. Is it imperative to do it solely in your mind, or is journaling an acceptable method, too (for the record, I’m willing to try it without the props and expect it to be quite the challenge)? And can you read up on the subject of your meditation beforehand, or are you supposed to start with only what you know and can conclude yourself? (That's technically a third question, oops...)

Periwinkle Amorous Llama

1) You're not doing it wrong. If that's how the light appears to you, go with it.

2) Journaling is also a good practice, but I recommend a daily discursive meditation as well as journaling. Of course you can read up on the subject beforehand -- better still, use the book you're reading on the subject as a source of meditation themes. You don't have to extract everything in your meditation from some inappropriate orifice or other... ;-)

Does writing fiction set in an imaginary place like Middle-Earth count as discursive meditation? Some writers get really deeply into their Reality.

—Princess Cutekitten

I suppose you could meditate on such an imaginary place, but writing and meditating aren't the same thing...

Hi JMG, I have a friend with highly advanced energetic senses. She tells me she can sense health problems in people and other, less definable spiritual qualities. One thing she told me in particular is that there are "people who aren't people" roaming the world. They look like people but she perceives no human energetic signature from them at all. I asked her if she'd ever tried to identify or investigate one of these "people" upon seeing them, but she said she finds them very unsettling and had a strong intuition that doing so would be a bad idea.

Does this square with anything you or any readers have experienced? Could these be something disguising itself as human, or actual humans subject to some kind of possession or who are able to etherically mask themselves in some way? Thanks for hosting these Q&As.

That doesn't fit anything I've experienced, but clairvoyance is a complicated thing, and different people with energetic senses experience the world in very different ways.

That sounds eerily like the Radiance.

This book published in English earlier this year by a Swiss Anthroposophist discusses exactly what you are describing. I haven't read it, so I can't remark on its quality, and it mainly draws from Rudolf Steiner, who certainly got some things wrong. But perhaps it is a starting point: https://steinerbooks.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781912230808/Are-There-People-Without-a-Self

Did she notice these "people who aren't people" before the mass vaccination campaign started? Because if not, then it fits disturbingly well with my sense that some people who take the vaccine die on a higher plane, even if they didn't die on the physical one...

That line of reasoning smacks of dehumanization--the seed of atrocity--to me.

Hear hear! Thank you for saying this. I had the same thought but didn't know how to phrase it appropriately.

My conversation with her was several years before COVID; she's been seeing them her whole life.

Franz Barron makes mention of this sometimes happening. I believe his example was elemental beings inhabiting drowning victims. There was also an episode of the podcast 'invoking witchcraft' on this subject.

So I’ve settled back into practicing a form of meditation I learned a few years ago from Tony Mierzwicki’s book “Graeco-Egyptian Magick.” You sit and envisage the seven traditional planets about you, each in turn: the Moon before you, Mercury to the left, and so on. Jupiter is in the heart center and Saturn overhead. While you imagine each planet as an appropriately colored luminous sphere, you chant each of the Classical Greek vowels as long as you can sustain it, one vowel for each planet. I’ve found three cycles of this practice is the basic minimum, seven is about my limit.

For a year or two I practiced this, then went off it in order to try discursive meditation. That’s where I went off the rails. I couldn’t do it. As soon as I try to think discursively about some symbolically rich image - say, the Fool from the Rider Waite tarot - I lose interest. My mind is much more interested in images themselves, and how beautiful they are - their vibrant colors, how they are composed - rather than in what they symbolize or represent in some allegorical way. So my meditation practice went to hell.

While visualizing the aforementioned planetary spheres, I sometimes think of the attributes of the gods appearing within them, or - more rarely - their faces or figures. They seem to glow in my mind’s eye. But I don’t particularly look for meanings in them. If the gods feel disposed to send me some such realization, I’ll be paying attention.

I suppose this may mean that I won’t be recollecting past lives any time soon, or growing a mental body all that fast, nor ascending in a rush up the great chain of being. But then I never asked to become an enlightened being in this lifetime. All I ever wanted was to make nice pictures and find some gratification in doing so.

When I visualize the sphere of Venus, I imagine a sphere of rose quartz. At first I felt this a bit too pink-bubbly; but when I visualize her in green, the other obvious option, it makes me think of leaves of infested plants I’ve seen and I get images of giant insects. So I’m sticking with rose quartz.

Tony says to picture Saturn as black. But in terms of visualization a black sphere hanging in the blackness of space is a non-starter; so I picture Saturn as a deep indigo, rather like a black light in an old-time poster shop.

The location of Jupiter at the heart center reminds me of the hyper cube at the center of a tesseract. I fancy some kind of more-than-three-dimensional spatial matrix is being referenced here.

Okay; so? If there was a question in there, I missed it.

Sorry, I should have been more explicit. It’s in my fourth paragraph, in the form of a speculation. To wit: by engaging in this presumably less advanced, less intellectually challenging and sophisticated form of meditation than that which you have often recommended, am I lollygagging or perhaps going in circles in terms of spiritual development? What is your opinion of the practice I have described?

Please don't try to drag me into pointless squabbles about different systems of meditation. In case you haven't noticed, I don't claim that discursive meditation is more advanced, more intellectually challenging, or more sophisticated than any other system. I simply point out that discursive meditation is a standard daily practice in classic Western occultism, and there are good reasons for that.

Sorry! Squabbles are not my intention. It’s not like I have a philosophical commitment to one school of thought or another. I’ve had some difficulty finding a practice that works for me, have returned to one that seems to, and wanted to know what you thought. That’s all.

Or so thinks the writer of this article. I’m still digesting it (it’s long), but since the topic has come up lately, here it is, courtesy of Rod Dreher:

https://thejosias.com/2022/06/16/the-politics-of-hell/

So noted. I have to confess that long disquisitions about Catholic theology are not my go-to resource for much of anything, but others may find it more to their taste.

It is indeed long! Blame Princess Cutekitten—I forgot to sign my submission.

This is the first I’ve heard of integralism. I don’t think it would work in the West. (At this point I don’t think much of anything will work in the West—governments will continue to fumble around for another century or so.)

We used to have integralism in the West. It caused mass burnings of heretics, centuries of brutal religious warfare, and the total corruption of institutionalized Christianity. The thing that all these would-be religious tyrants forget is that the separation of church and state is there to protect the churches from becoming puppets of the state. Look at every nation in Europe that still has a state church, and notice how well those are doing!

I agree EXCEPT I think Luther bears most of the blame for the religious warfare. At any rate, I think the only religious state likely to develop today is a Woke-ist state.

—Princess Cutekitten

Um, you've heard of the Albigensian Crusade, I hope?

Yep. I said MOST of it was Luther’s fault.

1) I received this in my email the other day ... "Greetings From The Illuminati Order. Bringing the poor, the needy and the talented to the limelight of fame, riches, power and security.
Do you want to change your life completely for good and wish to be rich and successful in your business? Are you talented and wish to be famous? Do you want to be protected spiritually and physically? All these and more you will get in a twinkle of an eye when you join the great Illuminati Order. Do you agree to be a member of the Illuminati New World order? Reply YES! via email:"
Even before I started reading here that would have been sad but so totally not how it works! (I didn't send an email)

That is not a question just wanted to share...

2) If you spend three months working into a path and then you do nothing for three months ... when you return do you pick up where you left off, do the whole thing over in the same time frame, do the first one and see how it feels and if all good do the second etc or ...?

3) I recently came across the book 'Not in His Image (15th Anniversary Edition)' by John Lamb Lash ... is it a worthy read or a don't bother or ... ?

1) Yes, I've seen those. Funny.

2) You go through an abbreviated version of the work you did over the first three months, starting from scratch but advancing as quickly as seems appropriate through the different stages.

3) I haven't read it. Anyone else?

I've read it and in all honesty I can't really recommend it. I purchased it when I was reading about gnosticism in general. The book starts out sounding like a fairly scholarly work but the author kept dropping dark hints as he went along as to why gnosticism was crushed and traditional Christianity triumphed until the last third of the book when he brings aliens into the mix. Here's a sample sentence,

"Who is willing to consider that salvationist religion is an ideological virus insinuated into the human psyche by an alien species?"

If you're into that kind of thing you can read the book but I have little tolerance for space alien conspiracies and was disappointed. I wanted to read actual scholarly works about gnosticism, not someone's fever dream.

JLfromNH/Periwinkle Obstreperous Boar

Space alien conspiracies?

Oog. Yeah, I'll pass too. Thanks for alerting me.

Thank you from me too - not my cup of tea either.

Did you end up finding anything you would recommend?

If you want something that is a scholarly introduction, I can recommend "Introduction to Gnosticism: Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds" by Nicola Denzey Lewis. It also has some material on pagan and polytheistic Gnosticism, since some of those texts were recovered at Nag Hammadi, too. I found it to be a very good scholarly introduction to Gnosticism. Not as good, but still recommendable, is "The Gnostic Bible: Gnostic Texts of Mystical Wisdom from the Ancient and Medieval Worlds," Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer as editors. A nice collection of Gnostic works, with good introductions for each text and school of Gnostic thought.

Willis Barnstone's The Gnostic Bible as well as The Other Bible, I liked as they both include actual gnostic texts. It's amazing how much has survived given how diligently the early Church tried to stamp all this out.

(hope this comment isn't too late.)

JLfromNH/Periwinkle Obstreperous Boar

Fun little tidbit. (Yes, I still have the book. I can't bring myself to toss it because I'm afraid it may mutate into something even worse...) In the glossary he has at the end of the book, he defines Archons as the following:

"(From Greek for 'first', 'from the beginning') Inorganic species produced by the impact of Sophia upon elementary matter before Sophia turned into the earth. Cyborgs inhabiting the solar system at large who excel in the psychotechnology of virtual reality, intrude upon humanity by psychic stealth, and propagate the ideological virus of redemptive religion..."

There's more but I'll spare you.

JLfromNH/Periwinkle Obstreperous Boar

I'm quite sure I read that same take on things in a cheap science fiction novel back in the 1970s, when I was in my teens. Even then I thought it was dumb.

Good morning JMG,

I have an assortment of loosely connected questions.

1. Still thinking on the W.E. Butt.er’s How to read Aura. I have been contemplating clairvoyance and it’s development. He wrote that all physical senses are a variation of one sense. And so all psychic senses are also all variations of its own sense. And so you start with the basic and develop it further. It got me thinking, that he might be speaking just of etheric senses. And astral senses are a separate thing. Or do his methods promote both?

2. I have been tinkering as of late intent on making my own DMH stones. It is just when I go online and search for druid stones the results are standing stones. Would it be a bother to ask for a picture, description or example of the stones used by druids in DMH?

Best regards,
V

1) His methods promote both, though they're mostly aimed at developing astral senses.

2) Here's an example:

That is to say, any small pebble of any kind is suitable. Don't make this more difficult than it is! Just gather some small rocks you like.

Edited 2022-06-20 18:03 (UTC)

1) Hmm. This is interesting, I thought it was the etheric senses I was contemplating, and imagination is the astral sense. I need to put more time and study into this.

2) A warning; it seems access to the image is prohibited for my country! Still, I followed up the URL and googled: "mixed beach pebbles 3-5_cm_random_polished" I get it. :-)
I am still going to polish my milky quartz that I found while taking walks trough the woods behind the house.

Milky quartz would be fine. So would anything else!

I understand, but maybe I am just a DIY geek and want to do it just right. ;-P

You can also buy a jar of these in many garden stores.

—Princess Cutekitten

Hello,

When my wife was a teenager, her best friend killed herself. That girl had a lot of problems apparently. My wife is convinced she was a abused by her father.

It left my wife with the feeling that she didn't do enough to help.

And even today from time to time, my wife has nightmares about the girl. At one time, she was afraid the ghost of that girl would occupy our unborn child.

Is there anything I might be able to do?

It's very unlikely that the ghost of the girl is still arond; having died as a teenager, she'll have needed only a modest time to process her memories and go back into incarnation. My guess is that your wife still has a lot of stress and tangled emotions around that experience. She might consider doing journaling to sort through her memories and feelings, so she can let them go.

I thought you said suicides tend to get stuck in a "waiting room" for however long they would have lived had they not killed themselves...

Oof -- that's right. I wasn't thinking about the implications of suicide. (Serves me right for trying to field questions and cook a meal at the same time.) It's still more likely that your wife is dealing with psychological issues rather than with a ghost; and the psychological issues should be dealt with first.

I'm the one who brought up the issues of suicide: Sorry, I should have mentioned that I wasn't the OP! I just had a few questions about it myself a while back because one of my friends committed suicide, and remembered you saying she might be waiting for quite a while, so I had wanted to make sure I understood the material here.

Also not the OP but a related question if I may. I too have a very close friend who committed suicide a couple of years ago, age 40 something. Supposing she is stuck in the limbo as described, what can I do to help her in any way?

Prayer is always appropriate for the dead.

You can type while cooking, or cook while typing? Either way, I’m impressed, especially at our age. What were you having?

One time when Sonkitten was little I was heating his baked beans for lunch, filling the sink, listening to a phone solicitor, and something else I’ve forgotten. I couldn’t do all that at once now.

Sonkitten came in holding a can of baby powder, with that eager experimental gleam in his eye that all parents know means potential disaster. Trapped on the phone, I yelled, “DON’T POWDER YOUR BEANS!” Absolute silence on the other end of the line. So now you know the magic incantation that will silence a pest caller!

Lunch today was an Asian rice dish with pork and vegetables. I like the kind of cooking where I get things going and then go do something else for five or ten minutes, and in this case that went into responding to comments.

Start writing DON'T POWDER YOUR BEANS on random walls, in restrooms and the like, and see how long it is before you find the phrase online with some breathtakingly obscene interpretation attached...

Good morning JMG,

I thought I would ask this here separate. One of the commenters on the other blog asked about a syllabus on medieval metaphysics (I assume she found a long lost family ring, but lacks a friendly mentor :-) ). I thought that, if it is short enough for a question here, I would ask here about it. It might help the budding sorceresses out there.

Best regards,
V

The two of you aren't the only people who've asked for that! Let me do some research and see if I can post something.

Oh, this is bigger then that? Ok, I just wanted to ask in order to provide you an option for a quick answer. THis sounds like a lot.

academia has something from the university o Denver. And I basically found out you could start studying philosophy on an university. Oh my.

Yes, it's tolerably complex -- or maybe I'm just a serious magic and philosophy geek, so I want to do it right!

Oh, after reading the literature of the Denver university metaphysics syllabus, and I noticed a certain modernist expression, I am very thankful for your thoroughness!

Edited (Spellcheck) 2022-06-20 21:55 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've already roughed out a reading list. Expect something posted later this week.

As a bit of a warning, modern academic Philosophy as a discipline has a reputation for being something of a blend of intentionally confusing/hard to follow/obscure and focused entirely on things with no relevance to normal folks. Basically, the need to come up with novel thesis topics to get your PhD leads to a lot of bullshale artistry.

Classical philosophy and a handful of other sufficiently old and specialized fields that are firmly rooted in things written before this state of affairs tend to be a bit more insulated, and so might prove more useful sources of information for supplementing occult philosophy. I'd take syllabi from any course as mostly starting places for a reading list and not much else, and introduction/survey courses are likely more useful that way than more specialized topics.

Cheers,
Jeff

Fortunately, my syllabus -- which is for an introductory course; I don't have the background to lay out a complete Master's program -- will be using classic texts on the Great Books model. On the off chance that anybody actually works through it, they'll have a fine time.

Thanks for this. I would not have put it so many a words, but the fishiness has been noted.

The geeks among your readership appreciate your commitment to geekiness :-)

Some information to Cliff who posted last week enquiring about Sul in this post.
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/186249.html?thread=30951305#cmt30951305

The following prayer to Sul was posted ages ago, which I've kept (thanks readoldthings).
I've memorised it and include it in my prayers occasionally, and while my prayer practice is very novice I do feel some presence.
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/85690.html?thread=8201658#cmt8201658

I hope this prayer is what you're looking for.

Hi JMG,

I've been meditating following your instructions. It's been great. I've been more purposeful and able to keep my thoughts focussed on my own concerns much better. My intuition's been VERY chatty, but I guess that's not surprising.

However, I was suddenly overcome by a very vivid image of The Hermit from the Smith-Waite tarot, and an overwhelming feeling of sadness which I couldn't shake. I'm not much prone to sadness generally. Do you think something was messing with me, or is this some sort of genuine presentiment?

Just a note of weird coincidence: I recently (about a day or so ago) was struck by this same image, and a sort of general melancholy has ensued. And I'm not prone to sadness, either.

Axé,
Fra' Lupo

When you get something like that, consider giving it a few sessions of meditation to itself. Meditate on the image of the Hermit, on the details of the card, on the feeling of sadness that connects to the card, and so on. See what they have to teach you.

Dear JMG,
1) you wrote that when one becomes a competend mage (after three lifetimes) the last one ends up messy (as in e.g. a defect floor fan in a monastery does the job). I forgot to ask: what happens next? Ascension to enlightened something-something ( with the ability to spell things correctly in English ;)) or on to the next lessons? E.g. like the sentence of one of the magic the gathering trading-card game: "if magic is your crutch cast it aside and learn to walk without it."?

2.) To me the SOP circulations let me think of the three anatomical tubes of the ear for balancing. Would you/ what you have learned so far, let you think that there is a connection? And if yes, is it willed? I wonder because for me it defenitely has a quality that has to do with my balance.

Thank you very much!

P.s: I wonder, is the following of interest to you? There is the fairy tale of Wassilisa the most beautiful (Wassilissa, die Wunderschöne), who is sent to Baba Yaga to get a rekindle of the herdfire. Baba Yaga supposedly lives in a house made of human bones. In " Der große Bildatlas der Archäologie", Orbis Verlag 1985 (originaly published in French) on page 32 it features a Foto of a (caved in) hut made solely out of "Mammutknochen" (Bones of mammoth). M.I.Gladkikh did the excavation and apparently several were found in Mezhiritch/Ukraine (the book of course being printed in 1985 says found in UDSSR).

1) The three-lifetimes thing doesn't just make you a competent mage, it's the process of completing your work in material incarnation. What happens next is that you enter the mode of existence that Druid philosophy calls Gwynfydd, the luminous life. From that point on you no longer have to go through the cycle of death and rebirth, so you can proceed to learn the lessons of the next stage of spiritual evolution with a little less interruption. It's not heaven, and there's a lot of hard work still to come, but it's an improvement.

2) Interesting. I don't know if the connection was intended, but you can certainly meditate on that and see where it takes you.

3) Hmm! Yes, I've heard of the mammoth bone hut. If that's the case, we may actually have a contemporary portrait of Baba Yaga...

This was found in a burial in that same site, iirc, and the skull of the old woman who was buried there showed the same kind of sagging face that's in the image. (Last I heard, it's the oldest known portrait of an individual human being.)

Hello Mr. Greer,
Your answer to #1 ties into my own question:
In magic and/or internal alchemy, does one eventually transform the 4 elements within one’s body into more subtle or ethereal versions, that would make up one’s higher “Gwynfydd” body?

No, the planes are discrete and not continuous, meaning that the material elements don't become etheric or astral elements. What happens is that working with the material elements in incarnate life establishes patterns of consciousness and action -- "tracks in space," in Dion Fortune's terminology -- that remain when material incarnation is outgrown. Those tracks then become the scaffolding, so to speak, on which the substances of higher planes form bodies in turn.

Thank you!

Yes, Swedenborg taught the difference between discrete and continuous degrees, also.
And that helps me a lot, the concept of the scaffold. In David Frawley’s Mantra Yoga and Primal Sound he presents a method of pronouncing the Sanskrit alphabet in correspondence with specific parts of the body. Now I can look at that practice as draping the mantra of Sanskrit upon the physical body of 4 elements.

E.S.

Fascinating. There are ways to do that with just about every other alphabet you care to name -- it seems to be a very popular mystical practice.

I'm not even sure if this counts as a "magic" question, but it's somewhat on topic.

Do cockroaches have souls? Mosquitos? Ticks? Fleas? Annoying insects in general? Was wondering about the karmic consequences of murdering pest insects.

-deathcap

Every living thing has a soul, including plants. When you bite into a raw tomato, it screams. (You can detect this with an EEG.) All things live by killing other living things; carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, plants choke out competing plants and send their roots in search of the nutritious remains of the dead. That's the nature of life on this planet. You literally can't take a breath without dooming countless microbes to be devoured by the white blood cells in your lungs.

Since that's the case, getting squeamish about squashing a mosquito is kind of a waste of emotional effort. My rule, when it comes to insects, is that anything harmful to me, if it comes into my space, dies as quickly and mercifully as I can manage. Anything not harmful to me gets put outside. Weirdly, some insects seem to have figured this out: moths who get into my apartment will land on a wall near me and wait very patiently while I get a little cup and a piece of cardboard, then hop into the cup and stay there until I can release them out the window.

Moths are apparently quite intelligent when it comes to getting out of people's space! I have the same rule, if it's not harmful to me, I let it outside, but live with people who will just squash them, and the moths come and get my attention, so I can let them out before they get killed.

"You literally can't take a breath without dooming countless microbes to be devoured by the white blood cells in your lungs." I don't remember whether it was Camus or Sartre, but I read something very similar: whether one can take a single breath without committing murder. I don't know how it was to be understood.

I wish the frogs that get into our house would learn this trick! They can be very tricky to catch.

In other words: no matter how pacifist you claim or aspire to be, you've killed plenty, you're killing right now, and you will continue to kill until something kills you.

Exactly. Nor is there a single actual vegan in the world. Even the most careful Jain monk, who sweeps the path in front of him to keep from crushing an insect and breathes through a veil to keep from ingesting bugs by accident, devours dust mites and other tiny animals by the millions.

I'm guessing that this would mean that the big spiders, which crawl into my house, and potentially crawling over my newborn baby, if I have to kill them with the inability to put them outside, it's not such a big deal. Although as much as I dislike spiders, I don't enjoy killing them, ever (or anything else for that matter)

Of course. If you have to kill them, be quick and clean about it, and consider saying a prayer for their souls to have a better rebirth.

On the last Levi book club post,

jongoddard commented on the scythe's handle being divided into Golden Sections. I found that quite intriguing and have meditated on it and then started researching (because the math is so cool!) and definitely have a better understanding of Kronos ("to whom perfection and decrease belong"). Are there any resources you recommend that include the Golden Section/Proportion in a cosmogony, other than Timaeus? I found one (https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/11/1/98/html), but I feel like I don't understand everything about this that I'm supposed to.

How fascinating! No, I don't know of any other examples, but then I haven't gone looking for it. Thank you for the article -- that's fascinating stuff.

Good morning,

And a blessed start into the week for you and your wife, JMG! Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask questions again.

1. Since divination is done by humans, there will inevitably be a certain amount of “wrong” predictions, due to mistakes, personal biases, bad days, etc. (Even leaving aside the question whether an oracle in itself can be infallible.)

In your experience, what would be the success rate (rate of correct predictions) of a “good” diviner?

(Just asking for a guess from experience here, or even for a rough range if that’s the best you can give :-) )

2. A question about occult ethics:

Is it ok to do planetary charity for issues concerning others without getting their explicit consent?

Example: For a successful job search of one’s spouse - this would concern the spouse, but also oneself/the whole family (in terms of money, spare time, overall happiness, …). Would planetary charity in this case require consent from the spouse?

3. In wrapping up a divination e.g with the Geometry Oracle, is it a good idea to ask one last question along the lines of “did I get the reading right” - a confirmation question?

And if anybody here has tried that/is doing it, are you using the full range of your oracle’s potential answers, or are you going with a simple yes/no divination (e.g. picking one card of the Geometry Oracle: upright = yes, reversed = no)?

(I’m currently playing with such “confirmation questions” and am not yet sure whether they are doing good or harm - would love to get your perspectives, opinions or experiences on them).

Thanks,

Milkyway

On 3), I have not tried with the Sacred Geometry Oracle, but I have occasionally asked such questions of the Runes and Ogham. I have more usually found it useful to ask something like "what do I most need to know further about this reading?" or "Is alternative A the right interpretation rather than B?" Such questions usually take the form of a second three-card spread something like "context, interpretation, outcome", or else draw one more card/stave. When I have tried more baldly asking "did I get this right, yes/no?" I more often seem to get more equivocal answers. I tend to chalk this up to the spiritual powers I ask for help in such matters telling me to suck it up and learn to go with my own interpretations, but that might vary depending on what oracle you're using and/or any powers you pray to for help.

Cheers,
Jeff

Jeff, thanks a lot!

From my experience with the Sacred Geometry Oracle, I’d say it doesn’t suffer fools gladly - or at the very least, it doesn’t suffer me asking foolish questions gladly… ;-)

I’ve had some replies (to other questions) where I swear the oracle was making fun of me (in a nice way), and replies which clearly said “C’mon, seriously - why are you even asking this when you already know the answer?”.

In contrast, my (as yet very limited) experience with the confirmation questions has mostly given me answers which were muddy at best. I’m not sure yet if I just need more practice with them, or if this is the oracle’s way of saying “yawn - we will not even deign to mock this”… ;-)

Let’s see how I can apply your experience, and if that improves things or not. Worst case, by trying these questions in different ways, I’ll have learned what doesn’t work… :D

Milkyway

1) In my experience, a really good diviner's readings fall out more or less as follows:

20% astoundingly good;
50% good enough to be worth listening to;
20% too vague to be useful;
10% just plain wrong.

2) I don't recommend doing any magical work for anyone without getting their permission first.

3) I've never tried that.

1) A very useful baseline, thanks.

Besides using common sense, is there anything else you do to determine the validity of a divination?

Thanks for your answers!

Milkyway

Experience. When you've done a few hundred of them, and kept track of which turned out to be correct and which didn't, you'll have a good idea of which ones to trust.

Thank you for providing this forum and your valuable insights.

I recently began experimenting with a contemplative tradition alongside my longtime magical practice, but quickly found the two are not compatible: the contemplative tradition effectively overwhelmed my former practice, rendering me incapable of doing the work, both physically and mentally. This was frustrating, as the work was maturing and delivering powerful results after many years.

I performed Tarot divination (Rider-Waite) on the subject, and would like a gut check on the reading.

I pondered whether I should continue with my usual ritual practice.

Result: Wheel of Fortune, Temperance (reversed), Emperor

The Wheel of Fortune I associate with the ritual itself, as the card layout has some similarities with the ritual space. My view of this was that the disharmony/incongruity between the two practices (as represented by the second card) would give way to a kind of power/triumph, as represented by the third.

Unsure, I reshuffled and asked again. Result: Temperance (reversed), Emperor, Magician (reversed). The repetition of the cards was curious--it seemed to be a refining of the previous response, suggesting (to me) that this power/triumph would lead to a block in my magical practices (third card).

Finally I considered whether I should continue with the contemplative practice. Result: Devil (reversed), Wheel of Fortune, Lovers (reversed). If we assume the Wheel of Fortune is representative of my ritual practice, it seems to suggest that if I proceed on that road I will not find fulfillment.

All of these taken together seemed to suggest, to me, that I ought to for now abandon the ritual practice and continue with the other road. Does this seem correct? Any other angles here that you can see?

Thank you once again for your time and thoughtfulness.

Always treat the reading as an answer to the question you asked. Thus your third reading is a clear "no" -- you asked whether you should continue with the contemplative practice, and you have a very negative reading. Don't redefine the reading after the fact to be about the ritual practice!

Also, it's a bad idea to ask the same question more than once. That's disrespectful to the oracle. It also usually means that you don't like the outcome of the first reading.

In this case, it certainly looks as though you decided in advance that you wanted to give up the ritual practice and take up the contemplative practice. The cards are trying to tell you not to do that -- compare the answer to the first question to the answer to the third. Will you listen to them?

I am relieved to hear this, because in truth the ritual practice is extremely precious to me and utterly transformative, so I will definitely reassess. To be perfectly honest, I am not the most capable reader, so perhaps I was trying to read too much subtlety into the draw. Thank you!

What is 'luck' exactly?

Is it just another way of describing the results of having earned good karma in the past(or past lives)?

The term "luck" is a dumpster into which lots of stuff has been heaped up. Luck includes good karma from this life, good karma from past lives, ordinary prudence and skill, and sheer random chance, among other things.

Sending my best wishes for Midsummer to JMG and all the commentariat!

I would be interested to know if there are any good occultist and/or scholarly sources on the character of Herne the Hunter. He is a spirit that I have felt a strong pull towards for the past 3 years or so. His position within the fragments of late-medieval English folklore makes it unclear to me within which pantheon he would best fit - I have toyed with the idea of assembling a uniquely English Druidical pantheon around him, as he blends so well elements from Cernunnos and Woden.

Hmm! That's not something I've looked into, so I don't happen to know any sources. Anyone else?

There are a couple of articles about Herne available on line that might be a useful starting point.

Jeremy Harte. 'Herne the Hunter - A Case of Mistaken Identity?'. At the Edge 3 (1996): 27-33.
(http://files.afu.se/Downloads/Magazines/United%20Kingdom/At%20The%20Edge%20(Bob%20Trubshaw)/At%20The%20Edge%20-%20No%2003%20-%201996%2009.pdf)

Ronald Hutton. 'The Wild Hunt in the Modern British Imagination'. Folklore 130/2 (2019): 175-191
(https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/145138643/FolkloreWH.pdf)

There's also a discussion of Herne's Oak and the figure of Herne by Jennifer Westwood in Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain (1985): 87-92, although you might need access to a library to get hold of that one by now.

Liz Williams has a brief but interesting look at Herne in the context of contemporary British paganism in her recent and very readable Miracles of Our Own Making (2020): 190-2.

I hope this is helpful.

Owain D.

I haven’t read it but this book by Claude Lecouteux I think deals with this subject: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1594774366/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I have several excellent other books by him.

Many thanks for this. Shakespeare's original depiction of Herne does not exactly paint a benign picture, so I'm going to approach with caution. Some divination is in order, I think. I will keep you all updated with my findings!

Are there any particular considerations facing people who have attention deficit disorders who want to practice occultism? I have been practicing occultism for several years now with good results, but I may have an attention deficit disorder, which would explain why focus has been a particular challenge.

It's going to take you more work to get good at some things than other people have to put in, but that's the only thing I've noticed. This is something I've had to deal with, too -- I have mild-to-moderate ADD as well as Aspergers syndrome (and a couple of other neurological issues as well).

Good morning Sir and Druid,

Three things:
1. Somehow, every card in this series has been relevant to my current situation for the given week, be it upright or reversed.

2. When I commute to work, I would as a matter of course ask at the beginning "How will this shift turn out to be?". Then I will pay close attention to ebbs and flows of traffic as well as my own reactions to said traffic. Doing this kind of commuting divination predicted for me the order in which events occur during the work shift. Paying attention to my own reactions during the commute led me to modify my own actions during the work shift to be more fruitful or at least less self conflicting. Is there any literature on such traveller's divination, divining the course of events at their destination by events in the journey to said destination?

3) What is the deal with Pachamama and traditionalist catholics? They react as if its the immanent sign of the conversion of the church to the great satan. Its like they ignore the extensive history of catholic conversion by syncretism, especially the dozens of female deities converted to "The Virgin of X" and other local deities converted to "St. X of Y". Also what is Pachamama? This figure seems like a catchall neopaganist name for the divine feminine of the South American pursuation.

1) Hmm! Interesting.

2) I know people who do various forms of it but I've never seen a book on the subject. It seems to be a subset of omen reading. I was taught by one of my teachers to do an omen walk -- just start walking, and treat everything you encounter as though it's a message in response to your question.

3) You'll have to ask a trad Catholic about that! I have no idea why that's got them all aflutter.

3) Though I am no longer a traditional Catholic, I was one a few years ago. Pachamama caught so much attention because the traditionalists tend to hate Pope Francis with a fiery passion. The clips available of the 2019 ritual in the Vatican gardens were used as evidence that Francis has completely rejected the Catholic faith and engaged, or promoted, in Pagan worship. I'd be overjoyed if he did; its time for Catholicism to under some serious development in its approach to the plurality of divine beings. But the funny thing is that all Pope Francis did was observe some indigenous South American Catholics perform a ritual that incorporated elements of their native heritage, while still being within the lines of Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxis.

As far as Pachamama, my understanding is that she was originally a South American goddess. There's still a goddess worshiped by that name, but it can also just mean the same thing as "mother nature" does in English. That is, just a personification of the Earth or the Amazon. Additionally, there's been some syncretism, so she's associated with an unofficial but still Catholic "Our Lady of the Amazon." One commentator listened carefully to a recording of the ritual and you can make out, in Spanish, the indigenous Catholics telling Francis that this is "Our Lady of the Amazon" when presenting the statue for his blessing. Trying to explain this to many traditional Catholics is like talking to a brick wall. They can be an odd bunch, to be honest.

I doubt I’m a traditional Catholic, though I am a baptized Catholic, but I remember the Pachamama incident, and whatever the details were, even our host found it shocking. I did hope the pagans got their statue back—it certainly wasn’t their fault. They were invited and they accepted. How were they supposed to know Pope Francis is a liberal Protestant?

I suspect he’ll soon be ex-Pope Francis, the poor old guy is pretty sick.

—Princess Cutekitten

"I did hope the pagans got their statue back—it certainly wasn’t their fault. They were invited and they accepted."

As far as I know, those weren't pagans. They were indigenous South American Catholics. As for the original statue, IIRC, it was purchased in some South American marketplace. It was initially just a piece of art depicting a generic pregnant woman.

I'll admit that I did not find it all that shocking. I had read up in advance of the Amazonian Synod, and that included reading a lot about the syncretism of indigenous traditions and Catholicism. So, the scene just didn't surprise me.

Magic Monday

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Another Doctrine Chap 13 Question

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Blessing Candles & The Lake

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Mundane Astrology

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Translation

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My hands

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People Who Aren't People

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An Easy Simple Meditation

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2 + Petunia = American Ruling Class

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A couple of questions ...

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