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

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[team10tim]

Someone has previously posted a few reincarnation cases here before. The one that I remember was Mark Twain to Kurt Vonnegut. Google found this for me:

https://www.reincarnationresearch.com/reincarnation-case-of-mark-twain-kurt-vonnegut/

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[ecosophia]

That's rather plausible.

One of the best cases I'm familiar with is Gen. George Patton. He recalled many lives as a soldier, and used his past life experience on campaign in North Africa in Roman times to guide his tactics in the North Africa campaign in the Second World War. Here's a poem he wrote about his memories:

Through a Glass Darkly
by Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listed to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.

I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.

I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.

I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.

Perhaps I stabbed our Saviour
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I’ve called His name in blessing
When after times I died.

In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.

While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.

Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
From the Hoplite’s leveled spear.

See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.

Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.

Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.

I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.

Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy’s field I lay.

In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.

Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.

I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.

And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor’s Star.

Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in it’s quivering gloom.

So but now with Tanks a’clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell’s ghastly glow.

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o’er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.

So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[athaia]

If this isn't just poetic license, but real memories back to Neanderthal times, then he didn't really seem to have made any progress towards gwynfydd...? Just an eternal repetition of the same kind of life. Seems like hell to me.

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[ecosophia]

The fact that he remembered so many of his past lives in this most recent incarnation suggests to me that in fact he was very close to the end of his material incarnations. There are many paths to Gwynfydd, and the way of the warrior can be one of them.

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[ritaer]

I recall reading somewhere that Julius Ceasar was convinced that he was the reincarnation of Achilles; Napolean believed he had been Julius Ceasar and Hitler gazed long and thoughtfully at Napoleon's tomb, though I don't recall whether he ever said or wrote that he was Napoleon reborn.

I remember meeting a member of the Bay Area occult community who claimed to have been burned as a witch 600 years earlier. I personally thought it was time she got over it.

And 70 is low count for new Crowley's. Someone once made a mock announcement of a meeting for reincarnations of Crowley--to be held in Kezar Stadium (football field).


Rita

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[robertmathiesen]

Thank you so much for this. I had never seen this poem of Patton's. It is most impressive, and its very power strengthens his claim to remember past lives.

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[ecosophia]

You're most welcome. It reminds me quite a bit of some of Robert E. Howard's poetry, and of course Howard also had a strong sense of having lived before and put that into his verse.

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[(Anonymous)]

It’s a very good poem. Those little details, like the sparks flying from the pierced armor, lend it a striking realism.

—Princess Cutekitten

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[(Anonymous)]

Something I find so fascinating is just how much effort has gone into hiding Patton's belief in reincarnation. I've read book length biographies on the man that don't even mention it at all...

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[ecosophia]

During the second half of the 20th century a huge amount of effort went into pretending that the thriving occult scene of the first half of the same century never existed. Patton was one of many people whose unacceptable ideas were erased from the record.

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[(Anonymous)]

Do you know why so many people who are into the occult played along with it?

Re: Reincarnation of historical figures

[ecosophia]

Ah, you've brought up one of the big skeletons in the closet of modern occultism.

In the first half of the 20th century, most occultists in the English-speaking world were politically conservative. The popularity of occultism on the far left from the late 1960s on was not completely unprecedented -- the Theosophical society had close ties to the socialist movement in the late 19th century, for example -- but as Marxism took over the far left, its hardcore atheist ideology became pervasive all over the leftward end of things, while occult groups became popular on the right. Some of the biggest occult organizations in the US back in the day -- the I Am Movement, for example, let by Guy and Edna Ballard -- were very conservative. Burks Hamner, whose Essene teachings I've studied and circulated, ran for Congress as a conservative Republican in 1936, and turned to teaching New Thought after he and the GOP generally were trounced in that election. And of course there were also a lot of occultists on the extreme, goose-stepping end of the right: William Dudley Pelley, the founder of the Soulcraft occult school, was the head of a large American fascist organization in the 1930s.

So when the far left took up magic in the wake of the collapse of the New Left at the end of the 1960s, it was a remarkable cultural flip-flop. (It wasn't the only one; environmental conservation had been a right-wing cause before then -- that's why the GOP was responsible for creating the first national parks and passing a lot of other early environmental legislation.) The new occultists of the left-wing counterculture were horribly embarrassed by their right-wing forebears, and so swept their existence under the rug wherever possible, and the few survivors of that era -- Manly P. Hall, who loathed the counterculture and said so in no uncertain terms, was one -- were left completely baffled, as baffled as that arch-conservative J.R.R. Tolkien was when the hippies adopted his books.