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? I've decided to trace, as far as I can, my own occult lineage in photos. We're still tracing Juliet Ashley's end of the lineage: from her to Manly P. Hall, from Hall to Augusta Foss Heindel, from her to her husband Max Heindel, from Heindel to Rudolf Steiner, and tonight, from Steiner to his other teacher, Felix Koguzki.  Koguzki was a Viennese herb doctor and clairvoyant of peasant background, and Steiner was a young intellectual from an educated family, but the two of them became close friends and Steiner learned a great deal from the older man. By all accounts the basic principles of Steiner's biodynamic agriculture and at least some of his attitude toward clairvoyance were inspired by his studies with Koguzki. I have not been able to determine where Koguzki learned what he knew; if that information exists, it's probably in German language sources unknown to me, but most likely there are deep connections to central European folk magic in the background there. 

PayPal tip jar link

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 link above to access my online tip jar. (Dreamwidth is having trouble with crosslinks to other sites right now, thus the absence of the usual button.) 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

[(Anonymous)]

In The Doctrine of High Magic: Chapter 16, you wrote the following:

"Magic is the result of will and imagination acting on the astral light, the subtle energy that links all minds and things together. If you direct your will and imagination toward some goal, that action will set a current moving in the astral light; if you confirm that direction of will and imagination through actions on the material plane—yes, we can refer to these actions as “rituals”—the current becomes fixed in place, and will infallibly have an effect, either on its target or on you. Once fixed in place, the current cannot be changed."

This made me think of something: the way that so often, when someone has a fear they cannot bring themselves to face, they twist themselves into weird shapes to avoid dealing with the fear, and then tolerably often that fear comes into reality in an extreme form. That fear is a strong emotion, the imagery is there somewhere in the subconscious (and thus the frantic effort to avoid it), and the efforts to avoid it are "rituals" in this sense. Is it possible that the reason that frantic efforts to avoid facing fears so often bring it into manifestation is a result of unconsciously doing magic?

[ecosophia]

Excellent! Yes, very much so. We are all practicing magic all the time; the point of learning magic is that then we can do it consciously, to achieve goals we choose, rather than unconsciously, to achieve goals we did not choose and may not want.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG! This Friday is the eighth Friday in a row of lighting a green candle for Venus, along the lines of something you mentioned a few months back - but I'll be away from home all day. Can I skip a week? I can probably light a candle in the evening hour of Venus, but I'll be short my altar, would that be better than nothing? With grateful thanks for your time.

[ecosophia]

If you're invoking Venus, seven is the appropriate number, so you're good. If you want to continue, however, yes, you can light a green candle wherever you happen to be.

Troubled history and stable present

[vitranc]

Hi JMG,

I have been wanting to post something here, ask some question, for the last couple of weeks. But somehow nothing comes up. I kind of know the answers to my problems with DMH, and will, and OSA work. Or Levi bookclub. And if I have a question about the content from a recent book I am reading, I know the way to get an answer. Where to look, or meditate on.
So I just wanted to call in and write something. Even though there is no relevant question.

1. maybe a history question. You once commented on a post, that magic/occultism in the west had to go public at some point, or die out. Was it really so serious? What was the state of the matters then?

Best regards,
V

Re: Troubled history and stable present

[ecosophia]

It's not a matter of conditions in the past, but rather of conditions in the future. Several times in history -- after the Christian seizure of power in the Roman world, for example, during the crusade against the Cathars, and at the end of the Renaissance -- a great deal of occult knowledge was lost because it had been kept secret by occult schools, and those were destroyed by persecution or (in the last case) simply deprived of funding and left to scrape by with too few students and resources to save everything. For close to a century and a half, a good many occultists have believed that we're heading into another such situation, but even more extreme, since we're facing the fall of a civilization. Thus the decision was made to get as much knowledge as possible into as many hands as possible, so that there's a much better chance that some of it will get through the troubled times ahead into the hands of the future. Yes, that's one of the reasons I've been putting effort into getting John Gilbert's teachings into circulation while there's still time and resources to do so.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm hoping to improve my love life, and have begun some material plane actions for this, with such actions as picking up new hobbies which will make me more interesting, working on quitting a porn addiction, and starting an exercise routine to improve my physical appearance; I'm also starting to journal to tease out the issues which have blocked me from making more progress before. While I have a little bit of Golden Dawn Magic under my belt, it's nowhere near enough to tackle this task, so I'm looking at more simple options. There are two which occur to me as possible, and I'd like to make sure I'm on the right track here.

The first is planetary charity to Venus, reciting the Orphic Hymn to Venus and making donations of 49 dollars to an arts organization on the astrological day and hour of Venus for seven weeks; while the second one is burning a green candle on the astrological day and hour of Venus.

Would either or both of these work?

[(Anonymous)]

Let me share my experience since i came from a similar place.

First: You are on the right track! You are actually taking actions to improve your situation not just complaining.

Second: Don't skimp on the exercise. Get a daily routine that you can stick to. (for me the base is hiking a few miles every day) In not too much time you can start to feel better and your clothes fit different. (my lower back issues have gone away, yippie!!) Others notice that you are looking better and feeling better, and that is attractive.

Third: You are so right about new hobbies. Do you know how to cook? or play music? or Dance? Those are pretty attractive skills. For me, it turns out that i am a great masseuse, and that is a very good skill to have.

Forth: Find a cologne that works for you. This is relatively simple but don't underestimate the power of smelling good (lol i did for a long time)

fifth: Understand that you can't control others, you can only control yourself. This analogy has helped me a lot " Mango's are wonderful fruits, they look good, they can smell nice and lots of people love the taste of mangos, but i don't like mangos. It has nothing to do with that wonderful fruit and no amount of intellectual persuasion will get me to like mangos it is about something unreasoned in me. Some people you are attracted to will see you as a mango...don't get too upset about it, accept it but realize others love mangos.

Sixth: Be confident, you are not perfect but you have looked at your issues, recognized them and are taking action to make yourself the person you wish to be. So many people don't do that, you should be a little bit proud of yourself.

( I will let John answer the magical ritual part, but keep up your good work.)

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr Greer,

I have two questions for you.

1. I've felt drawn to the GSF and FHR since I found out about their existence this summer. I'm also interested in the AODA. I'm aware that the GSF and the FHR are 100% compatible whereas the AODA is distinct from both, but distinct though they may be I feel that there is a connection between GSF/FHR on the one hand and AODA on the other, and my intuition is that the Sphere of Protection (which is found in all three systems / organisations) is one of the elements that provide the link. But I may be wrong. What are your thoughts on this? Is my intuition correct? Or do you think, on the contrary, that the egregors of the GSF/FHR and of the AODA are too distinct to be studied/practiced in a common perspective fruitfully?

2. On another note, I've recently decided to tackle the Coelbren alphabet -- I happen to love oracles based on letters/languages generally, and I enjoy Welsh in particular. But beyond these considerations it's essentially the eminently practical and immediately applicable divinatory meanings you provide for each letter in your book The Coelbren Alphabet that convinced me to give it a try. This said, I understand that the Sacred Geometry Oracle is central to the work of the GSF, whereas the Ogham plays a significant role in AODA symbolism. As for the Coelbren, the Magic Monday FAQ presents it as a part of the "Celtic Golden Dawn group" and suggests that it is not compatible with the books of the "Druidry group", which are related to AODA. To put it differently: the Coelbren, which is the oracle I would like to turn to, is the only one that apparently has nothing to do with at least two of the systems/organisations I'd like to explore! Am I misguided somehow?

Many thanks for your answers!
R.

[ecosophia]

I really do need to revise the Magic Monday FAQ, don't I? Both these should be covered there, but aren't.

1) You're quite correct that the Golden Section Fellowship and the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose have a connection with AODA, and it's not just the Sphere of Protection. AODA and the FHR in its original form -- as well as the Order of Spiritual Alchemy and the Modern Order of Essenes -- was affiliated with the Universal Gnostic Church, and I learned them all from John Gilbert. It was quite common back in the day for senior initiates to establish Fellowships of their own in the same tradition, and that's what the GSF is -- a development of the same tradition focused on classical occultism, sacred geometry, earth mysteries, and a few of my other pet subjects. ;-) So AODA work can certainly be practiced from the same perspective; there are differences you'll have to keep in mind, but that's true of each of the branches of the Universal Gnostic tradition.

2) Each of the orders has a specific oracle that's central to its symbolism. For AODA, that's Ogham; for the GSF, it's the Sacred Geometry Oracle; for the FHR, it's tarot; for the Celtic Golden Dawn work, it's geomancy. I wrote the Coelbren book so that it would be plug-and-play for practitioners of the Celtic Golden Dawn work, but the only material affected by that is the stuff in back, relating the Coelbren letters to the tarot and the Tree of Life; you can certainly use it with the others. Since you're a student of the FHR, for that matter, you're supposed to master three different divination systems, type not specified; the Coelbren would be a good choice for one of these. Just remember that the material on the Tree of Life in the back of the Coelbren book isn't really compatible with the FHR Tree of Life material!

Sacred Geometry Oracle

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I've been loving the Sacred Geometry Oracle; it gives excellent readings. But because there are so many typos on the cards and in the book, is there a plan to release another edition with corrections? For instance, card 2 reversed says "Commitmrent" and card 11 says "Intergration". Card 31 has the reversed meaning "Unknowability" printed right side up, unlike all the other cards. Card 22 has "Approach" as its upright meaning, but in the book it's given as "Approximation". Which is it supposed to be? I've also noticed that many times when the book references another card it gives the wrong number, like when the Dodecahedron section says card 26 is like a talisman when surely card 28 "The Pentagram" is meant.

Also, some of the graphics are wonky. The Dodecagram is drawn in an unbalanced fashion, for example, and the Dodecahedron looks a bit squished.

Again, I really like this oracle. I find it more accurate and useful than tarot. But I'd like to see a new edition with less errors.

Re: Sacred Geometry Oracle

[ecosophia]

Please send your corrections to the publisher, along with a polite note requesting a second edition. I have very little influence over such things.

[booklover1973]

Hello, JMG!

Have you read or encountered the book "The Tenth Planet" by Henry Seltzer about the astrology of Eris? If so, what do you think about it?

[ecosophia]

No, I haven't. I'll see if the local library system has it!

Planetary hours?

[emily07]

Dear JMG,
the first ecosophian meeting of Germany took place last weekend (two attendants ;) Huzzah!

We were jointly wondering how "the ancients" figured out the planetary hours (encyclopedia of natural magig- style) without a working clock and somewhere to look up the lenghts of the day? Sundial and dead reckoning?
Thank you for your work.

Re: Planetary hours?

[(Anonymous)]

The ancients, both medieval and earlier, had numerous devices for figuring out planetary hours. The Antikythera mechanism from ancient Greece was thought to have been used for predicting astronomical positions and eclipses. Armillray spheres were first developed in China back in the 4th century BC. There are any number of images from the Middle Ages of mural sextants used to measure star positions. It's really surprising the devices the ancients had at their disposal.

JLfromNH/Jaundice Erudite Ostrich

[(Anonymous)]

I think along with galactic name generator we also need a past life job generator.. The idea was inspired by an article in a fancy soap company; where a women was explaining her past life as a atlantian banker. Made me think of all the possibilities from Chaldean wine taster to pleiadian shoe cleaner. Hope someone can take this idea and run.

On a more serious note is there reason for extra protection rituals around this time of year? I mean specificity for around Halloween.

[ecosophia]

1) If somebody wants to make one of those, I'd be delighted to give it a signal boost!

2) Not that I've ever noticed. If you have a respectful attitude toward the Unseen you'll be fine in every season of the year.

Mobile SOP

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

Sometimes when I'm experiencing sensory overload I want to imagine the SOP ball of light as being around me and protecting me from all the incoming stimuli. Not that I won't hear/see/smell/feel it but that it won't affect me so much.

Is this a misuse of the SOP? Does one drain its energy by thinking about it and using it outside of its ritual?

I'll probably be asleep when you reply, so thank you in advance.

Mauve Billious Midge

Re: Mobile SOP

[ecosophia]

It's not a misuse at all. The practice of visualizing a protective sphere of light around oneself has been around for a very long time, and it meshes well with regular SoP practice.

[davidastrom]

Hello!
A curious thing: I see the etheric outline of the hands(/body) more clearly when viewed in the reflection of a mirror. Do you have any idea why that might be?

[ecosophia]

Hmm! You might want to try learning how to practice clairvoyance using a mirror or crystal; you may have a talent for that. (There are many books on the subject, if that interests you.)

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

1. In the OSA lessons, there is the lesson about unconditional love, and how it states that the divine loves you unconditionally. I think you've said before elsewhere about how the universe is fundamentally indifferent to humans, as in, we're an unimportant species on a rock floating around an infinite universe. Maybe the two viewpoints can be reconciled by knowing that the divine is different from the universe itself, even if the universe is a reflection of the divine?

2. If there is going to be a backlash against the medical / pharmaceutical industry due to any fallout from the covid jabs, do you think that certain alternative health care forms may get pulled into this backlash? I'm thinking specifically of herbalism: I don't have a good sense of the field as a whole, but in my pocket of the world, herbalism does seem popular with the same class interests that also supported the jabs and mandates.

3. Historically, what did people do for mental health before psychology/psychiatry arrived? I use the term "mental health" because I don't know what the issues covered under that modern term were called before this term was invented. Was that something covered by occultism for those who knew about it? I know that occultism isn't the same thing as psychology, but there appears to be some overlap, depending on the tradition (for example, will training).

Many thanks!

[ecosophia]

1) I passed on the OSA lessons pretty much as I received them, with minimal editing. John Gilbert taught that the Divine is full of unconditional love for all its creations, so that's what's in the lessons. Me, I tend to a more Lovecraftian/indifferentist view, but then I'm a polytheist, and note that some deities certainly do love the created world while others, well, not so much.

2) It depends very much on how the practitioners responded to the Covid fiasco. If they were all on board with vaccine mandates, masks, etc., they're in deep trouble. If they rejected that publicly, quite the contrary. I'm sorry to say a lot of herbalists sold out the moment Big Pharma told them to, and that's not going to go over well in the aftermath -- but there's an entire herbal scene among religious conservatives (who like to think of herbs as "God's medicine"), and those had more backbone.

3) The concept of mental health didn't exist until psychologists invented it. The idea was that some of what we call "mental health" was a product of imbalances in the body, and some was a product of spiritual issues; you went to an ordinary physician for the first, and to a clergyman for the second.

[(Anonymous)]

Not really question just following up on nature observations. There's some plant I call the "Little Purple Flower Plant" and I've noticed it's the very last plant to bloom before the frosts come. You see that plant blooming, frost is about 1-2 weeks away.

It usually blooms in late October. It's blooming now. And then I hear that it's going to start frosting this week. At this point I've noticed a consistent ~2 week earliness on summer ending and autumn beginning. Everything from early mushrooms and spider webs to these "little purple flowers".

Ok, I guess I do have a question. Anyone else see this going on?

[(Anonymous)]

Where do you live? It sounds like you're describing asters (there are many different species), which bloom at this time here in the Northeast. We're having cooler weather thanks to a long-running La Niña and it wouldn't surprise me if we got a frost in a week or two.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

I’m currently in the process of personalizing the Sphere of Protection and, as I happen to be a native of (and still live in) historical Gaul, I thought it could be a good idea to invoke the deities which (at least some of) my forebears worshipped.

I realize that the historical Gaulish pantheon was probably not very different from the British pantheon known from Welsh lore, but I'd like to try invoking these deities by their Gaulish names. However, evidence on historical Gaulish deities seems to be rather scanty. Do you have any suggestions as to which Gaulish deities I might invoke in the Opening section of the SoP as well as for each of the Gates of the elements? Or perhaps a few references I might check?

Thank you very much for any help you may provide.

R.

[ecosophia]

Hmm! That's complex, because every Gaulish tribe had its own pantheon. One of the many options might be as follows...

Opening: any divine triad that appeals to you

Air: Epona
Water: Belisama
Fire: Ogmios
Earth: Cernunnos
Spirit Below: Rosmerta
Spirit Above: Belenos

...but again, there are many other options.

Solresol

[(Anonymous)]

Hey jmg

I’m the commenter that mentioned the occult possibilities of the artificial music based language Solresol. I didn’t get the opportunity to express how pleased I was the you took an interest in it, and now I just wanted to know if you had found anything worthwhile in it for you DMH occultism?

Btw, I am J.L.Mc12

Re: Solresol

[ecosophia]

I've downloaded a bunch of material on it but haven't had time to get into it yet due to other commitments. So I'll have to see once I get to it!

gods and pantheons

[(Anonymous)]

My musings (sorry for the length) lately have me trying to understand the line where gods meet the human mind, what they are exactly, and what it means when you said you were surprised the Mesopotamian gods were moving, as opposed to other pantheons.

The way I currently understand this is by picturing a vast sea, which is the combination of all the forces that the universe has. It is inaccessible to us in the same way that our senses make it impossible to directly access the reality beyond what our minds construct. We cannot go into the sea.

We are on land, which is the material world of humans and what the human mind is capable of. The gods as we understand them inhabit the liminal space between the sea and the land, a product of the interaction between the two, like what we perceive as reality in our minds not being so. That space is just a line in the sand. The gods do not exist as such but are the product of the sea crashing onto the shore in certain places, creating an effect which exists in all time. Human minds in our past interpreted the crashing waves by creating a pantheon to explain the incoming waves as they experienced them.

However, the smaller currents which are part of the waves for each force are countless, and whereas they are all part of larger currents of forces, they have different “flavours” when they crash onto specific shores. So the force for war, for example, is expressed in the human mind as a different god when it meets a certain “shore”, meaning that the god or goddess of war in one group of people isn't quite the same as the god or goddess of war in another group. But again, they don't exist except as the interaction between force and mind.

So why should you be surprised that the Mesopotamian gods are “moving”? It isn't the gods that are moving (the particular gods don't exist as such) so much as some humans are responding to incoming crashes by using the myths of that particular pantheon to understand them. The forces that the Mesopotamian gods represent exist in all time and can crash onto any shore at any time. The pantheons as we understand them are part of the astral light forever and can be used by anyone to understand the forces.

And then, to make things just a little more confusing, the spirits of the land here in Canada are not the same as the spirits of the land in ancient Mesopotamia. I'm wondering if the reason the Mesopotamian gods speak to me is because they are of a time older than the European gods and the cultures that produced them and may be closer to the flavour of the spirits that inhabit this land.

As an example, I asked you a while back about sacred mountains. Coincidentally (or probably not), a beautiful book about North American aboriginal sacred mountains came into my hands not long after and it dawned on me that the whisperings I am hearing are in fact the spirits of THIS land trying to break through to me but not using the aboriginal myths, which seem strange to me because they belong to a very different culture. In other words, the crashes coming in might be trying to find a way to speak to me using a synthesis of the European mind I inherited from my culture, a pantheon that is older than (and bypasses) the European cultures, the fact that I am a native of this land, and have many native women in my family tree which began here in Canada in 1632, which means I am also a child of the peoples of this land physically though not culturally. And I am trying to find a way to understand the crashes coming by using whatever I can that makes sense.

So my questions are: would you say I am on the right track in understanding all this? Or am I missing something? How can I work with the images of one pantheon to understand something very foreign, and more importantly, should I? Is this a very bad idea all round? What are the dangers of doing this?

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to my ramblings! Any input you care to give is greatly appreciated.

-Myriam

Re: gods and pantheons

[hearthspirit]

Myriam, I'm sorry- not JMG, but have you read the The Mishomis Book? I think that would help answer your language/pantheon translation questions.

Planetary Charity for a job change

[(Anonymous)]

My current job has not been all that I wanted and I’m making a change at the end of the month. I’ve taken to offering planetary charity for major life events like this, it seems to work for me and even if it didn’t it still represents an unalloyed positive act.

The last time I changed job I seem to recall that I made offerings to Jupiter. Is that the correct choice?

Reading around aspects of Jupiter it seems that charity in general is favoured but in particular charity towards the poor (as opposed to education or medical) such charities are easy to find but there’s one in particular that targets winter plumbing and heating for the poor and elderly. That strikes me as a bit Saturnian but it’s a very good cause and winter is coming in the northern hemisphere. Would it be appropriate to make it part of this set of donations? If not, I will do something separately.

Andy

Re: Planetary Charity for a job change

[ecosophia]

1) Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury all govern employment, and you can make an offering to any of them.

2) Er, traditionally charity toward the poor and elderly corresponds to Saturn, not to Jupiter. Jupiter charities are legal and religious in nature -- for example, a nonprofit that provides free legal help to people who can't otherwise afford it, or any religiously themed charity, would be appropriate.

[(Anonymous)]

Koguzki read German mystic Joseph Ennemoser

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this! That's a detail worth knowing. Can you point me to a source, preferably in English or French, that documents this?

[(Anonymous)]

I asked a few questions earlier, but this morning's meditation has prompted two more, I hope that's OK.

1. I have been doing the Inner Grail from the DMH for a half-year, with each of the three segments introduced slowly as instructed. I have noticed last week and now today a dull ache at the very top of my head. It happened this morning as I was doing the Rising Dragons, and right after the spear of light came down from the sky and through the cauldrons to the center of the earth. Is this another energy center waking up? I will of course also look for physical causes.

2. On a previous Magic Monday, I asked you about the astral bodies of plants, and you replied that plants have group souls, and these receive guidance from devas and elemental spirits. I should have realized this before: Are the trees of the Ogham the same thing as these plant group souls? Or do they correspond with the devas and elemental spirits that give guidance to these group souls? How do these differ from whatever might be behind each Tarot card, for example?

I just started doing another round of Ogham scrying, and this time I am first meditating on the word Oghams given in the DH for each few. On a whim after meditating on Beith, I opened one of Matthew Wood's materia medica books, and it was a shock to see how closely the word Oghams for Beith corresponded to the medical usages of the birch tree!

Thanks again!

[ecosophia]

1) It can be. Try massaging the top of your head before you begin the practice.

2) Well, the Ogham trees are trees -- an oak tree is an oak tree, etc. There is an oak group soul, just as there is for every other distinct variety of tree. The Ogham alphabet is a set of symbols that can be used to make contact with the group souls and their guardian devas.

3) Fascinating! I wonder whether that's true of other trees in the Ogham.

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning, all!

On last week’s Magic Monday someone was asking questions about doing Ashtanga yoga alongside western esoteric ritual magic. I missed the MM cut off last week so I couldn’t respond there but I’ve been practicing Ashtanga for around three and a half years and I’ve been doing western esoteric ritual for around a year.

I have not noticed any issues practicing the two alongside one another. In my experience, both generate a lot of heat in the body which may or may not be good depending on the practitioner’s constitution. The bandhas in Ashtanga don’t perfectly line up with the energy centres in the Middle Pillar, aside from Daath and Jalandhara bandha, which is quite intriguing actually and it hasn’t caused any issues.

I have experimented with Middle Pillar during final rest and vibrating those energy centres after a Full Primary practice but I didn’t observe any particular benefit or detriment from it. Both practices require discipline, consistency and repetition over long periods of time so they are similar in that way.

Hope that helps!

[ataulfo]

Thanks this is really helpful!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Quick q re talisman consecration: I've recently acquired a second and quite powerful Moon in Cancer talisman to pair with my longtime daily driver, and am wondering about timing. Apart from starting the nine-day sequence on Moon hour on Monday, when is the best phase of the Moon to begin? I assume waxing crescent? Or does not that particularly matter in this context?

Thanks as always for MM!

[ecosophia]

You should check with the maker of the talisman and ask their advice on proper consecration; different styles of talisman sometimes have different requirements.

Divination question

[milkyway1]

JMG,

A wonderful Monday morning to you and your loved ones, and may you have a blessed week!

A question about divination, if I may:

This is about that certain percentage of divinations which simply give muddy results/no useful results at all. Assuming one is able to realise that a divination falls into that category… How do you personally deal with it, or what’s your advice to dealing with it?

I.e. do you ask again the next day? Ask again but sometime in the future? Ask another oracle? Another diviner? Simply leave it be and not ask again? Ask again, but in a different way? Do something else? :-)

I suppose this boils down to „what caused the difficulties in the first place?“, so I‘m not even sure if there is a one-size-fits-all answer - but maybe you could share your approach?

(Just to be clear, I‘m not talking about „asking again because I didn‘t like the results“. This is strictly about the divinations which leave that clear feeling of „hm, something ain‘t right about that“ or „this doesn‘t make sense at all“.)

Milkyway

Re: Divination question

[emily07]

...I think from what I read here previously, sometimes the muddy answers also might reflect, that one does not know enough about the situation and/or one is involved emotionally too much into it.

Maybe as an example: I was quite nervous before the ecosophia-meeting and I wanted the cards to tell me what I should pay attention to - I usually ask the cards beforehand if they gonna answer and this time (a first) they said no. I probably was too nervous to make it a good reading.

[robertmathiesen]

I got curious about Koguzki and found that there is a book on him by the prominent anthrosophist Peter Selg, Rudolf Steiner und Felix Koguzki (2009).

A German-language page on him at an anthrosophy wiki (https://anthrowiki.at/Felix_Koguzki) mentions that he was heavily influenced by the writings of Josef Ennemoser, who was one of the leading German esotericists of the easrly 1800s. This would situate Koguzki firmly within the wider sphere of influence around Franz Anton Mesmer and his theory of animal magnetism.

On Ennemoser there is now an excellent article by Wouter Hanegraaff: "Joseph Ennemoser and Magnetic Historiography" (2011), which can be downloaded gratis from academia.edu (https://uva.academia.edu/WouterHanegraaff). This article also has something to say about the two-brain theory (brain vs. solar plexus) in humans.

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for this! I'm downloading the piece by Haanegraaff right now.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

I'm slowly making my way through the back issues of your Magic Mondays, and came across your experiment using sharp iron to break the glamour of the internet devices a while ago. I read through the reports with interest, because I'd been fighting futilely against internet addiction for years. But the various incidents of phones and routers etc. breaking for good scared me off. I didn't want to lose my devices (I'm too poor to buy replacements at the drop of a hat), because I still need them (for banking, for example, or connecting to dreamwidth) - I just wanted more control over my use of them.

So I remembered a bit of folklore about Rowan breaking fairy glamour, and the similarities of internet algorithms and fairy mischief seemed similar enough to me to try it out. I took a Rowan leaf and taped it onto the back of my phone.

It worked amazingly well! The pull to take it out and use it incessantly went away, and I was even able to leave it in my backpack while driving to work, and leave it there the whole day until I came home in the evening.

After a while, I noticed that the old bad habits came creeping back, though. When I checked the Rowan leaf, it had wilted (a process that had been slowed down by the clear tape covering it) and even partly torn off. Since it was already October, and the leaves yellowing on the trees anyway, I tried to come up with an alternative that would help me through the winter. So I took three shining red berries, cut them in half to make them less bulky, and taped those to the back of my phone. That was a week ago.

Today, out of the blue, the phone stopped working, and nothing I've tried so far has brought it back. It looks as if I'll have to replace it. (No juice seeping through the back or anything else material that would've caused it to suddenly shut down.)

I'm wondering what to try next. Return to using the leaf? Carry some berries on my person instead of glueing them to the phone? Or I could just believe in coincidence, I guess. But when a single leaf helps me not to text while driving anymore*), I'm inclined to take it more seriously than as just a coincidence.

*) I clearly recognized that habit as being hazardous to my own life, that of my dogs (who I take to work with me), and that of other people; but I was unable to break with it, and what was worse, I was unable to have an emotional reaction to that realization. Normally, it should've scared me. Even realizing that my complete lack of emotional reaction wasn't normal didn't elicit an emotional reaction to THAT realization. It was at that point that it dawned on me that something was SERIOUSLY wrong. I stopped with that insane behavior as soon as I had taped the leaf to the phone, without any struggle or relapse, and what was even more striking, I was able to react with the appropriate horror to my former behavior.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Anonymous, Thank you, this is fascinating. I am one of the people who commented about this issue way back when. I taped a sewing needle to my laptop and another needle to my smartphone, plus open safety pins taped onto to my modem and router. I still feel a strong pull to the Internet that feels to me like some sort of glamor, however, there are a batch of blogs that for years I would regularly check in on but with the protection of the iron needle and safety puns, I have ZERO, but ZERO interest in anymore. It's like a flip switched. And this has been true now for about 3 and 1/2 years. It's really quite curious. I feel, literally, some sort of repulsion to those sites I could not quite explain. I often wonder about it.

Journal of Parapsychology

[andrewskeen]

Good morning JMG,

This might be one for the commentariat at large, but are you aware of any publications similar to the Journal of Parapsychology which might be interested in astrological research? I'm drawing a blank thinking of good places for this, other than e.g. community sites like this.

Best,
Andrew

Re: Journal of Parapsychology

[ecosophia]

That's not something I've ever looked into, I'm sorry to say. Anyone else?