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

D&D as the Road to Perdition

[(Anonymous)]

Mr. JMG,

I have a question prompted by your December 14 post on role playing games. I grew up in a Christian church which taught that any involvement in the occult was a surefire way to deliver one's soul to the Adversary. "The Occult" was defined widely enough to encompass yoga, D&D, rock music (especially if played backwards!), etc.

I no longer hold these beliefs, and my experience with the occult, particularly the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose, has been nothing but positive. However, occasionally I wax paranoid. Is it possible to inadvertently start down a dark path by way of a song, game or other sort of entertainment?

Let me give a specific example. Yesterday I rang in the new year by avoiding alcohol and spending the day out in nature in the company of good friends. It was an extremely positive day. Driving home I relaxed to the song "By Demons be Driven" by Pantera.

I've contemplated this question, and believe that intention is key. I did not focus my consciousness on the negative, I did not perform any ritual in the plane of Malkuth designed for any malign purpose. My conclusion is that it's just a song, just a game, etc. I'm interested to know how you view the matter.

cheers,

Anonymous

Re: D&D as the Road to Perdition

[ecosophia]

It's just a song and it's just a game. Two centuries ago you could find devout Christians who insisted that using matches would start you on the road to perdition -- godly people used flint and steel, by gum!

(I'm still not sure why the fundamentalists didn't just come up with roleplaying games of their own. Your characters are ancient Israelites, contending with the swords and diabolical sorceries of Philistines and Canaanites while trying to build up enough Grace Points to rescue the lost Ark of the Covenant or what have you -- it would have been great good fun, and as theologically correct as all get-out. Were they that terrified of their own imaginations?)

Re: D&D as the Road to Perdition

[(Anonymous)]

As a D&D playing teenager in the 1980s, I would ask people ranting about it what they thought of non-fantasy games like Top Secret, The Morrow Project, and Traveller. Responses were often negative – the games didn’t include “real” religion or did include powers of the mind and fictional religions. Since the relevant strain of Protestantism didn’t survive the Clinton administration as a political force, I think that they were very much afraid of their own imaginations in an ears-covered-la-la-la-can’t-hear-you way because they knew their movement was about over.
Rather fits some of the stranger middle-class behavior that's popular right now, too.
Rhydlyd

Re: D&D as the Road to Perdition

[homeopathic_meditations]

My limited understanding: it is a bit like eating Devil's Food cake. It is just chocolate, and eating it will not endanger your eternal soul one tenth of how much it will endanger your waistline.

On the other hand, you are deliberately giving your time/money/attention to those that advertise themselves as enablers, if not outright supporters, of the Enemy. There's a karmic cost in that, but I don't think it will cause you to get possessed or anything like that. Rather, it is the unthinking habit of saying "it's not a big deal" what you want to keep an eye on.