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. With certain exceptions, 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. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The image?  That's the thirty-second card in The Sacred Geometry Oracle. Card 32, Squaring the Circle, when upright is an omen of success and achievement; when reversed, it tells you that you're trying to accomplish something impossible and you need to accept that you won't get it. The sun in the upper left corner of the image tells you that this card belongs to the final third of the oracle, which corresponds to Nwyfre, the principle of spirit and meaning.  We've completed our passage through the first two of the basic root functions of sacred geometry -- √3, the principle of the vesica piscis and the equilateral triangle, and √2, the principle of the square and its diagonal -- and now we're working with the √5, the seed from which the Golden Section unfolds and resolves all back into unity.

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 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

Collapse now

[hearthculture]

When I started my journey to being more sustainable and resilient, the phrase “collapse now and avoid the rush” really resonated. As I continued that journey of learning and action I’ve seen the hard truth of a society crumbling because it cannot maintain its own hyper-inflated infrastructure. It’s been a particularly uncomfortable struggle to realize that collapsing now isn’t about moving onto land and growing a garden and having some solar panels, it’s instead about deflating my own infrastructure to a maintainable point. If my homestead requires water filtration, irrigation, and electric for a/c in melting summers beyond what a few panels can produce, then I’ve just developed new infrastructure to suffer collapsing during the rush.

In the same period I’ve been on a spiritual journey. I’ve just had a glimpse that it is more analogous to the other journey than I had understood. Much of religious and proper magical work seems to be in the interest of spiritually “collapsing now” to “avoid the rush” during the transition into afterlife(s). The practice seems at first glance to be building an infrastructure - look at how hard it is for beginners to just maintain a daily practice (myself included.) After time and reflection that practice is modest and sustainable compared to the psychological, cultural, societal, and karmic infrastructure it helps you separate from. Religious and magical practice seems to create inter-structure and intra-structure respectively. Now I’m on to meditating on how this relates back to my sustainable living journey in the physical world.

Question: is this connection inherent and intended in your body of work? It seems obvious now, yet when I think back it feels like the link between “collapse now and avoid the rush” and druid magic and religion was more of the “live lightly upon the earth” vein… Though, now that even feels like a call to spiritual practice.

Other questions of recent (for you and the commentariat):
I see a divide between people who see a world infused with spirit but don’t physically experiment with that world (even living at a remove from it,) and those who directly interact with embodied world (trade workers, scientists, etc.) but see it as purely material. This is a sharp divide from the classical marriage of practical physics and philosophy. It seems so strange to me. I’ve been toying with the idea that it is all tied to the dominance and cruelty inherent in our environmental-relationship, it drives the spiritual people away from science, and the scientists and workers must avoid spirituality or face the ethics of their actions. What do you make of it?

I’ve recently had a significant tap from the Greek neighborhood (pantheon) of the cosmos. Obviously, we’ve got quite a lot of material. Anyone have some good resources for getting an overview and taking some exploratory steps into the deep end of Greek mythology and religion?

Thank you JMG for graciously hosting us here and being generous with your own understandings and reasonings. Thank you to all the rest of you commenters for the mutual support, and often insightful responses given to one another. Wishing you all a good week.

Re: Collapse now

[jprussell]

On 3), last week, hwistle was kind enough to share Kaye Boesme's blog https://kallisti.blog/ and her book The Soul's Inner Statues: https://kayeofswords.github.io/soulsinnerstatues/

They're a mostly-Platonic take on polytheism, with a focus on the Greek pantheon, so they might be helpful for you.

Cheers,
Jeff

Re: Collapse now

[hearthculture]

Thank you! I'll be sure to check her out.

Re: Collapse now

[ecosophia]

1) It's inherent but not especially intended. Once I accepted the basic principles of occult philosophy as valid, it was pretty much a given that everything I did would be shaped by those principles, including my advice for dealing with the decline and fall of industrial civilization.

2) It's rooted in the history of science. In order to redefine their field of study away from politically and religiously explosive occult traditions, and get support from the rising mercantile classes, the people who founded modern science deliberately distanced themselves from everything spiritual. There's an essay in my book The City of Hermes that discusses this in quite a bit of detail, if you're interested.

3) I'll leave this one for the Hellenists among us.

Re: Collapse now

[hearthculture]

1. Thank you. That helps. It would make sense that as I progressed in occult study that my understandings of your work informed by those principals would ripen into new understanding.

2. That makes sense; and I'm glad to have your book as a source for further thoughts on the matter.

3. You may have answered this somewhat with the answer to 2, as one of the primary communicators identified as Hermes.

Re: Collapse now

[violetcabra]

Burkert's _Greek Religion_ is invaluable for getting a sense of Hellenic religious practice as a historical reality. Also, I recommend Pausanias' travelogue for understanding the wild profusion of regional worship. Herodotus is helpful too in the same way, and also for helping one to remain skeptical about sources of information in general.

Re: Collapse now

[hearthculture]

Thank you for these sources!
And for the helpful guidance on your uses for them :)