ecosophia | Magic Monday

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.

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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!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In The Way of the Golden Section you say to spend at least 1 year with a divinatory system before moving onto a different system. Recently the Tarot gripped me and it hasn't let go. It's been showing me the magic so to speak. Recently after that journey began I found myself in possession of your afore mentioned book as well as the Sacred Geometry Oracle (I purchased both for myself on bookshop.org of course). I read the first and am in the middle of the second and this all while actively involved with the Tarot (RWS version and occasionally the DruidCraft version). I'm considering taking up the study as outlined in The Way of the Golden Section. My dilemma is that I want to continue with the Tarot while also working towards the self initiation in the Golden Section Fellowship. I also value your advice and would like to follow it.

However, I heard you say during your interview on The Wisdom Keepers Podcast that the occult is a smorgasbord...get your plate and get what you'd like. Something like that. Well I'd like to do that, but I'd also like to not handicap myself. I definitely see the wisdom in focusing on one system. Obviously the The Way of the Golden Section is designed to make the most use of the Sacred Geometry Oracle. What would you say to following the curriculum you lay out but for divination using the Tarot rather than the Sacred Geometry Oracle? I also have experience using the Ogham via my Druidry studies but I'm currently only using the Tarot.

Have I misunderstood you? In The Way of the Golden Section you explicitly state to use only one system for a year before moving onto another. In the context it seems you assume the reader is using the Sacred Geometry Oracle and you are cautioning to not move into another system until a year has past. I realize I may be making too much of this and it has crossed my mind to ask the Tarot about it. I plan to do so, but I wanted to ask you about it as well. Thanks in advance.

If you're going to use the Golden Section system, you need to be prepared to put one year of intensive work into the Sacred Geometry Oracle, since that's not just a divination system -- it's the core symbolic system around which the GS work revolves. If you want to focus on the tarot for now, my recommendation is that you set the Golden Section material aside for a year or so, and consider instead doing the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose material for that time; if you use the Sphere of Protection for your protective ritual, all the work you do in the FHR will be compatible with the GS work, and you'll be able to move through that promply and effectively when you take it up later.

Magic Monday

multiple divinatory systesm

Re: multiple divinatory systesm