Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just past 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'm still tracing my lineage in photographs. At some point after the death of Bishop Shaw, a question arose about the legitimacy of the apostolic succession of the Universal Gnostic Church. John Gilbert arranged to settle the matter in the traditional way by receiving sub conditione consecration from Archbishop Herman Adrian Spruit of the Church of Antioch; that's Archbishop Spruit in the photo. Sub conditione?  That's the technical term for a second consecration given to a bishop in case the original one didn't have valid lineage, and Spruit was the man to give it. 

He was born in 1911 and started out his religious career as a Methodist minister, but he became convinced that a more sacramental and less dogmatic approach to Christianity was needed, and so he joined the Independent Sacramental Movement and was consecrated as an independent bishop. At that time there were sixteen different lineages of apostolic succession outside the control of the established churches, and squabbles between independent bishops about the validity of the different lines were common. Spruit ended that in an exceptionally graceful way. He arranged to be consecrated sub conditione in all of the lineages, and then conferred the same consecration on any bishop or qualified candidate for the episcopacy who requested it. These days practically every bishop in the Independent Sacramental Movement has all sixteen lines -- yes, including me -- and the squabbles are over. Bishop Spruit's Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch remains an active independent church, and so do many of the other independent churches who received his blessing. 

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 See you next week!***

Comments

Sacred Geometry, Divination and Meditation

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

I have something I'd like to both share ask:

I started working through your Sacred Geometry oracle, and am having a lot of fun. Yesterday I was meditating about the line, but forgot to restrict it to a 2d plane, so everything started spinning and since my head has no gravity I quickly lost my orientation. But then I started imagining the line from the point of view of the points, which gave me some stability, so I was able to choose a 3rd point to make a plane. This allowed me to finish the meditation. My questions are:

1. I was aware for a long time there used to be traditions that allowed people to visualize complex geometry, even things we should not be able to see such as 4 dimensional structures. I read somewhere you are not a particularly visual person, but I was wondering if you know if the know how of such advanced meditative techniques still exist in an accessible form? I think your book will provide an excellent introduction, but I would love to go into 3, and even 4d one day.

2. I bought your book mainly for the exercises and meditations, but the cards hold some appeal for be being Jewish, because the tarot deck contains too much imaginary for me to be comfortable with, unlike your cards with the abstract geometry. My question is, if someone struggles with procrastination, could practicing divination be helpful?

Re: Sacred Geometry, Divination and Meditation

[ecosophia]

1) That I know of, there's some material on that in the Theosophical tradition; you might try these two books by Claude Bragdon for starters.

https://archive.org/details/aprimerhighersp00braggoog
https://archive.org/details/fourdimensional00braggoog

2) Nope. I've seen people procrastinate their heads off about divinations! If you want to stop procrastinating, it's simple. First, use journaling to figure out why you like to play that game with yourself -- because it is a game, of course; it's something you choose to do, and can choose to stop doing. Second, stop doing it. When you need to decide something, decide it -- using a coin toss if you have to -- and go ahead with it. As a rule, that you decide is more important than what you decide: any decision is better than no decision at all.

Very oftem people take up procrastination because one or both of their parents routinely put them in double-binds where no matter what they did, it was wrong. If that's what's going on here, bringing those double-binds back up into consciousness is a good way to shake off the habit, because as an adult you can realize what you couldn't realize as a child: you didn't do anything wrong. It was the parent in question who was being a jerk.

Re: Sacred Geometry, Divination and Meditation

[(Anonymous)]

Very helpful and wise, thank you very much.

Re: Sacred Geometry, Divination and Meditation

[stcathalexandria]

"Very oftem people take up procrastination because one or both of their parents routinely put them in double-binds where no matter what they did, it was wrong. If that's what's going on here, bringing those double-binds back up into consciousness is a good way to shake off the habit, because as an adult you can realize what you couldn't realize as a child: you didn't do anything wrong."

This was my situation.

Plus when I was in elementary school, if I got my work done early, the teacher gave me more work to do. I didn't even realize that as an adult I was playing the procrastination game with myself because of that too.

And then there's that enjoyment of the adrenaline rush of finishing things heroically at the last minute that I also enjoyed.