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 (or lack of same)? At this point I've traced Juliet Ashley's lineage back as far as photos and documentation extend. John Gilbert's other main teacher, Rev. Matthew William Shaw aka Rhodonn Starrus, is a tougher proposition. Born in Pennsylvania, he became a Universalist minister, serving in a church in the Allentown, PA area. In 1952 he and two other ministers of the Universalist Church, Revs. Omar Zasluchy and Owen Symanski, left the church to protest the upcoming merger between their denomination and the Unitarian Church. (They believed that the Unitarians planned on taking over the congregations, churches, and bank accounts, and then discarding every element of Universalist teaching and tradition; as it turned out, they were right.) In 1952, the three of them were duly consecrated as bishops by Bishop Robert Monroe of the Liberal Catholic Church, and founded the Universal Gnostic Church (UGC). Rev. Shaw had already founded the Modern Order of Essenes as a healing order associated with his church, and took it with him into the UGC. In 1972 he relocated to the Boulder, CO area where he became a friend and associate of Dr. Juliet Ashley, and received initiation into the orders she headed -- the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Ancient Order of Druids in America -- while she became active in the Modern Order of Essenes and the Universal Gnostic Church. John Gilbert described him as a gifted teacher but a strict taskmaster, who demanded the best from his students and usually got it.

I have yet to find a photo of the man, or accurate information on his birth and death dates -- I gather from what John told me that he died sometime in the 1980s. I have also been unable to find much of anything about Bishop Robert Monroe of the LCC -- there were plenty of schisms in the LCC's history, and he apparently ended up on the wrong side of one of them, so he's just a name in a few old lists at this point. I hope to be able to get more information on him, on Matthew Shaw, and on the early history of the UGC as things proceed.

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: PayPal for now, but that'll be replaced by a couple of other options shortly. 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 -- as in, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Good Evening,

To any other Americans, I hope you have an enjoyable Thanksgiving with good food and better company, and a relaxing Buy Nothing Day right after.

To Share: I've started incorporating a bit of poetry into my practice, using traditional Germanic meters. While I don't yet have real poems to share, I did write up a brief guide to using these metrical forms, which includes a few brief examples to illustrate how they work. The guide is mostly so as I write more poetry I can just link to it and say "this is what I followed", but if anyone's interested in having some fun with these forms, hopefully this can be some help: https://jpowellrussell.com/#rules_of_germanish_meter
To Ask: Two hopefully fairly quick questions this week:
1) Last week, you mentioned how writing affirmations worked some of the same skills that are helpful for poetry (concision and working with constraints, for example), and this got me wondering, as I've had poetry on the mind lately: is there any particular value in crafting affirmations as short poems (say, a single line of dactylic hexameter or a brief couplet or the like)?
2) Now that I'm working through the second grade of the Dolmen Arch, I took a look at the version of calling of the Cantrefs and associated banishings given there and have started following those wordings rather than those given in the DMH as I had been doing. I noticed that the banishing for the Fourth Cantref doesn't seem to follow the pattern for the others, and instead matches the DMH version. I came up with a version following the pattern of the first three Cantrefs, but wondered if you have any tips or tweaks:
As given in book: "And with the help of the powers of Earth, I banish from within and around me all unbalanced manifestations of Earth."
My attempt to match other 3 Cantrefs: "And with the help of the powers of Earth, I banish from within and around me and from all my doings all harmful influences and [misleading sensations], and every unbalanced expression of Earth. I banish them far away from me."

As always, thanks so much for your time and effort,
Jeff

1) Yes. There's a fine little book called Spellcraft by Robin Skelton, long out of print, which discusses the use of verse as a source of power for for affirmations and verbal spells. Lacking that, experiment; you'll find it works well.

2) Good. Yes, that was a deliberate error. Now that you've caught it, what will you do about it?

On 2) Well, for one, it will make a fine theme for meditation, of course :) Secondly, I'll likely use something like "misleading sensations" from above as a starting point and try to find a banishing formula that works as well for Earth as the DA versions for the other gates seem to do.

(Also, apologies, apparently there was a typo in my HTML, which led to everything after "Dolmen Arch" being italicized, which made everything less clear).

Regarding number 2,

So this has come up before and you've encouraged people who wanted to change the invocation for Earth to match the others to do so. I noticed it myself before seeing these discussions, but I meditated on it and decided the change in wording had something to teach about the role of earth as a mediator between the subjective elements and the objective elements, and kept it as is.

Since this keeps coming up, it has me curious. Is that fine to? Is there something wrong with not changing it to parallel the others?

That's fine too. The important thing is to notice it and decide what you're going to do about it.

Thanks for the indirect reminder about Robin Skelton. I've read bits and pieces of Skelton, when I came across his books at work, but it's always been off to the side of my attention. Yet, every time I come across his name again I get the feeling I need to investigate further.

Justin Patrick Moore
Amber Vacuous Grasshopper

He's well worth investigating. His book on poetic meters, The Shapes of our Singing, is far and away the best collection of metric forms I've ever encountered.

I was delighted to learn, upon looking at him again today, that under the name Georges Zuk he wrote pieces of surrealist and pataphysical verse. I've noted the Shapes of Our Singing, and Spellcraft down.

Mauve Bulbous Grouse
Justin Patrick Moore

P.S.: Here is the surrealist word and definition of the day.

Rose: writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.

Fun! Thank you for the info on Skelton's alter ego; I didn't happen to know that.

Thanks for this guide to Germanic meter! Your work on Germanic polytheism has been a tremendous asset as I've continued to work on my relationship with the Anglo-Saxon gods. Thanks!

Magic Monday

Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing

Re: Guide to Germanic Meter, Poetic Affirmations, Dolmen Arch Earth Banishing