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. Two weeks ago I posted an image of her fourth teacher, Arthur Edward Waite, the Golden Dawn alumnus who passed onto her the rituals that became the foundation for the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose. Waite, in turn, got his knowledge from the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Last week I posted an image of one of these, the redoubtable William Wynn Westcott; this is Westcott's partner and rival in the project, Samuel Liddell Mathers. Another Freemason with a passion for the occult, and like Westcott a genuine scholar and mage, Mathers didn't have the organizational skills to keep the order together once Westcott stepped down from the leadership, and the Golden Dawn promptly blew itself to pieces in the squabbles that followed. Mathers remained in charge of one of the fragments thereafter, and he and his branch of the order will appear again once I get into some of the other ends of my lineage. 

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 these days, 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.

***This Magic Monday is now closed--as in, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!*** 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Some time ago there were questions about appearances of Big Black Cats, and the answers seemed to indicate they were sone sort of spirit creature or visitation.

A while back - sometime this fall - someone caught one in a photograph. It was identified as a Canadian Lynx. They don't generally come in black, but occasionally they do. For what that's worth. It was in the right region for Canadian Lynxes to be seen.

[francis_tucker]

I was adopted, and I have no (and likely will never have any) idea what was the exact time of my birth, only the day. Does that mean that the door of natal astrology is closed to me (as far as having readings done for myself)? From what I understand, the newspaper horoscopes that solely use birth dates are next to worthless, so I'm guessing in would be no good guesstimating my time of birth at midnight or noon and proceeding with getting a natal reading. Am I right?

Misleading divination

[(Anonymous)]

Hello and thanks for taking questions like this.

I have been practicing geomancy, using your book as a guide, for a few years now. During that time my marriage fell apart in the most horrible way and I'm now going through a terrible divorce. I originally got into geomancy to help navigate through difficult times in my marriage and to get a second opinion.

Looking back through my notebook, I noticed a curious pattern. When I asked questions specific to keeping my family together, I got mostly unambiguous positive answers. My questions were all formulated with a clear "If I do XYZ will it lead to keeping family together/rekindling romance/happy relationship with wife?" format. Sometimes I'd get no for an answer and I wouldn't do it, but mostly I got very clear YES! answers, and then I would do the thing I was asking about.

Well, none of the positive results I was after ever happened, despite the very encouraging readings. In fact the opposite happened, we never got better despite my efforts, and my wife turned on me viciously. This pattern of 180 degree wrong answers isn't repeated in other area, and in fact some things geomantic readings revealed have been quite astonishingly revealed to be accurate, including things to do with my wife. I'm not an expert, but I feel competent much of the time.

So my question is, what the hell? What is going on where my readings are generally useful and accurate, except in one area, where they were totally 180 degrees wrong? I don't think I misled myself with bad questions or biased interpretations. It's like some force messed with my readings on this one subject, consistently, for years. I'm trying to question myself on this to see if I'm missing something and need to make changes in how I do divination.

Floor Wash

[cs2]

Dear JMG, could the magic floor wash be added to the FAQ or linked here please? I'm having trouble finding it. Thank you!

Forgiveness and the Essenes, Not exactly magic, but the power of relations, and excising it

[(Anonymous)]

This is about the Essenes, and trying to forgive or whether or not to forgive. And do certain persons even deserve forgiveness?
There is a person. He is my brother really, same mother same father, 10 years younger.

And he is a murderer. He was almost convicted 35 years ago, and would have been if the lawyers hadn’t cleverly split the cases, confused the jury, amd jave the, questioning: who was the actual murderer? But later they closed that loophole (for other cases), in general by refusing to split such cases.

In my family we all denied it happened. My brother wasn’t the one, he was just there by accident, in with the wrong crowd etc. And for the early years I subscribed to that belief, and for the entire 35 years, since the first murder, the remainder of the family has. And it has corrupted them.

After possibly doing something evil such as murder, whether accident or intentional, a person has a choice they can either decide what they did was wrong, a bad accident or whatever and try to make amends or be betyer for the rest of their life. Or they can double down and refuse to accept they ever did anything wrong, and become more and more of what they already are.

I still supported my brother and believed in him even though he did many things I did not agree with, I forgave him for them.
Ten years after the first murder, my brother murdered my best friend (out of jealousy of me, plus other reasons), who was working for him, while I was away at a writer’s conference in New Orleans.
I am not 100% sure my brother murdered him, and it wasn’t till about 10 or 13 years later that it finally clicked that he probably did.
But even if he did not physically murder, and he probably did, he was responsible for his death.
My brother and my friend, his name was LJ, he was born with an adumbrated arm, no hand, I believe it was caused by Thalidomide, but I am not sure, LJ and my brother had a dispute over work. My brother brought 2 thugs to meet LJ, and they all beat him. This much my brother acknowledges. But here the story diverges.
According to my brother after beating LJ , he dropped LJ on Granada Avenue about 1:15 pm, LJ got out and stumbled down the railroad tracks. Then apparently lay on them, and was run over by a train about 1:45 pm. Judged a suicide.
But LJ would never commit suicide. He strongly believed God would send him to Hell and the devil..
But every time I had looked up the train death in records I couldn’t find it and couldn’t figure why, until 13 years later, I found the death not at 1:45 pm but 1:45 am, the next day. And then it hit me, this was consistent with the previous murder, where they had beaten a man to death for more than 12 hours.
I went on to read there were a lot of suicides on that track for about a month or two in that same time period.
A few years later, my brother’s ex suicided. (They were always fighting over their son.) I knew her. She was very feisty and willful, and she had 3 children she loved and I definitely don’t believe she would suicide.
I came into hard times in 2008. My brother offered me a computer tech job In his business, I didn’t want to take it, but the woman I was living with, thought it would be a good idea, so I did. (I had shielded her from my brother and his darker side.)
I thought my brother’s business was a real business but it was really only a front for a bunch of illegal businesses, a sort of money laundering. And although there was work there was no real concern with making money. My brother’s friends or associates were all thugs or con men or abusers themselves.
But my brother did have employees, real employees, about 25 of them. It began to seem to me that the only real reason for this business aside from the laundering, was for the pleasure of tormenting the employees.
He paid every week, at 5 pm Friday. Banks closed at 6. But every single employee that came in was shortchanged. If the employee had earned 500 he was perhaps paid 350. Of course he/she argued, there were words, very often the arguing lasted very long. This delayed the payment to the other employees. Most of them didn’t get paid early enough to make it to the bank before six.
Listening to the employees scream argue, yell and howl, was like listening to the sinners being tormented by demons in Hell. I really couldn’t take it. I began going out for a walk for an hour or two. But my brother revelled in the torment.
I have always been a person who forgives farily easy. And it has caused me much trouble in life. I have forgiven and forgotten what has been done to me many times in life and then the same person does the same thing to me again, and then again.
Nevertheless I am old now and have been forgiving every person I know, every person I think has wronged me, as well as myself.
I have found I have to do it over and over again, with the difficult people. That what I thought was complete forgiveness was incomplete. As if there are many persons in my personality and some forgave and some did not. Mostly it is my mother I have difficulty with. I believe she was a true psychopath. My father was kind and loving and he could forgive and forget anyone and anything if you gave him five minutes, but he had a terrible temper, and if he caught me within five minutes. I would receive a terrible beating. I do not really forgive that, but I have long ago forgiven him.
Anyway the point of all this. How do you forgive a person like my brother? More importantly: Should you forgive? I probably could but should I? That is a real sticking point. I am in no danger from him now. I do not live near him. But it is partly that the family made excuses for him, forgave him, not just the worst but perhaps even the more trivial, that allowed him to become what he is.
And so it seems he should not be forgiven, we should never have forgiven him. And then he might not have become what he did, or if he did, might not have got away with as much as he has.
So, can it be right not to forgive someone as a corrective? Or as a protective of oneself or others? (He hurt my son and some others because I allowed him to be close to us.).
But sometimes I think he was defective from the start, a psychopath, like my mother, from 2 years old, from the very beginning and it did not matter what we did?
Can that also be true? And if true, should I forgive? And if I don'[t or shouldn't forgive how should I deal with it?
I am having trouble with this.

planetary correspondence

[syfen]

Archdruid,

Which planet corrisponds to the will?
To clear mindedness?
And to concentration?

I was thinking sun, mercury, and Saturn. Any thoughts?

[(Anonymous)]

I've always had claustrophobia, for as long as I can remember. There's nothing in my life which suggests I should have this fear, but it's hardwired into my personality for some reason, and it's especially bad if I'm feeling cold. Recently, at work, I had to grab something from a walk in freezer, which was extremely cramped because it was overfilled as a result of a mistake on the most recent order, and had a flash of what felt like a memory.

I can clearly tell that it was not part of my current life, but the memory was of being locked in a small and very full walk in fridge. The fear and cold were vivid, in a very different way from daydreaming normally feels to me, much more like a memory.

a) Does this sound like a past life memory to you?

b) If that is a past life memory, what kind of factors could cause a past life memory to spontaneously surface like this?