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 picture?  I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me. Sylvester Gould, last week's honoree, was an active member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, one of the more interesting occult orders of the late 19th century. (After many reorganizations, it's still around as the Church of Light aka Brotherhood of Light.) The H.B. of L., as most people called it back in the day, was founded by two British occultists, T.H. Burgoyne and Peter Davidson. The photo is of Burgoyne. It's also the photo of another gentleman, one Captain Norman Astley, who took over the reorganized H.B. of L. in America from Burgoyne, married another H.B. of L. adept -- the remarkable and talented Genevieve Stebbins -- and helped Benjamin Williams aka Elbert Benjamine aka C.C. Zain re-reorganize the H.B. of L. into the Brotherhood of Light aka Church of Light. Yes, Burgoyne and Astley were the same person. It's a complicated story. But Burgoyne and Peter Davidson, whom we'll be talking about next week, were among Sylvester Gould's teachers -- and behind them stands another and a considerably stranger figure.

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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 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

[(Anonymous)]

So, some time ago, I was leaving an event. I wasn't quite sure where the elevator to the parking lot was, so I was looking for it everywhere along the hallway I was walking through. I got to the end without seeing it and decided I needed to consult my phone gps map to try to figure out where I had gotten lost. There was no gps signal indoors, so I went through the double doors to the outside, past a few homeless people sitting there. There still wasn't gps signal in the concrete canyon I found myself in, so I went to the intersection with a street a short distance away. At that point, a woman came up to me asking for some money, I think for bus fare or something, which I gave to her. Examining my map now I had signal, I found that I wasn't lost at all, and the elevators more or less had to be where I had been looking, so I went back inside. The elevator doors were right there, in plain sight, right where I had just been looking for them but had apparently not seen them at all. (There were no people or anything in the hall the first time that could have obstructed my view.) It struck me then, somewhat sharply, that if there had been anyone to see the whole process it would have looked exactly as if I had gone outside with the express purpose of giving that money to that woman. In fact, the event was such a disappointment to me that my whole trip might as well have been for the purpose of giving that woman that money.

I am trying to figure out how I should think about this. I suppose I am getting older, as we all are, but I don't normally overlook things I am expressly looking for when they look exactly like I am expecting and I am staring right at them. I don't think I exactly tend to jump to spiritual or occult reasons for things, but it's at least as easy for me to believe that's what happened as that I just overlooked the elevators that blindly. Do you think it's possible or likely that that's what happened? If it is...is there anything else I should be concluding or doing or anything, or is there likely to be any particular meaning to this? I'm guessing your answers are likely to be something like "yes" and "no", but figured I'd ask in case there was anything more.

[ecosophia]

Well, if you have any skill at divination, you might want to do some readings about that. My guess is that you had a karmic debt to pay off, and you paid it. If there's anything else you need to do, why, I'm quite sure you'll be put in a position where you can do it!