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 (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!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG
Over the years my internal clock has varied between night-owl and early-bird.
Currently I'm looking to swap back to early-bird and am trying to wrap words into something layered so that immediately on waking, at it's most prosaic, it is a prompt to get out of bed, but also encapsulates the potential for more.

By the grace of the divine
I am
Here
In gratitude and awe
May the virtues be the stepping stones
To do what needs to be done
Now
Arise

Then again, maybe too flowery and I should get my head out of my backside and go with Sgt Apone from Aliens:

All right sweethearts, what are you waiting for, breakfast in bed?
Another glorious day in the corps.
A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm.
Every meal is a banquet.
Every paycheck a fortune.
Every formation a parade.
I LOVE the corps!
Alright sweethearts, you heard the man and you know the drill!
A**holes and elbows!

Since it is a matter of Will, maybe a simple affirmation might suffice, or I could simply go with 'get up' as soon as I wake, but that doesn't engender either the energy states or the focus to action.

Basically I am trying to change patterns of habits to be more adaptable/flexible to a world in flux.
You have written before about replacing one thing (habit) with another so that there is not a void; but as we head into the darkness of winter and what looks like some extraordinary times, the desire to hibernate is there but this feels like a time of quiet action not hibernation.

Recent years seem almost designed to fragment attention and put people in a mental funk.
Sorry - this is a probably a request for entire essay not a Magic Monday question, but any brief thoughts most welcome!

Seems like there are thrust-blocks aplenty and of many sizes and flavours; obviously personal spiritual practice/work is the answer, but what advice is there from the occult classics on maintaining dynamic equilibrium in times of seeming confusion and chaos?

It is a theme I have been meditating on! ;)

Thank you.
[earthworm]

[ecosophia]

1) The best affirmation is the one that works for you. Either of the options you suggest might be great, or might not be great, depending on how they affect you at six in the morning.

2) The occult classics don't really talk much about that, because every age has been a time of confusion and chaos. That's the nature of life in the material world. The advice of the occult tradition is always the same: maintain your practices, do your best to maintain an even keel, and when you lose your balance -- as you will -- recover it as soon as you can and keep on going.