Magic Monday
Feb. 5th, 2023 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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. At this point I've cycled back to Sandra Tabatha Cicero, current head of the Societas Rosicruciana in America (SRIA), in order to work back along a different lineage. The gentleman above? That's Francis Israel Regardie, the man who kept the Golden Dawn tradition from ending up in a dumpster like so many other occult traditions in the bleak middle years of the twentieth century. Born in England but raised in the United States, Regardie became a member of the SRIA in his teens, then became Aleister Crowley's personal secretary for a while before the Beast's antics got too extreme for him to handle. From there he joined one of the few surviving lodges of the Stella Matutina, one of the splinter orders founded after the Golden Dawn blew sky high in 1903, and also studied with Dion Fortune for a while. Finally he returned to the US, where he taught most of a generation of Golden Dawn practitioners, including Tabby Cicero. I never met him, but his books were essential guides during my Golden Dawn period.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
Sweat lodge/sauna
Date: 2023-02-06 05:27 am (UTC)Re: Sweat lodge/sauna
Date: 2023-02-06 05:30 am (UTC)Ecosophia Prayer List
Date: 2023-02-06 05:42 am (UTC)This week I'd like to draw special attention to Lp9's request on behalf of their hometown of East Palestine, Ohio, which is dealing with a tanker train derailment and fire. Lp9 reports:
If I missed anybody on the full list, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom you hold power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or at the prayer list page.
Finally, if there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun's rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Thoughts on "Way of the Rose" and How to Make Tangible Intellectual Insights
Date: 2023-02-06 05:42 am (UTC)A happy (late) Groundhog Day to all! May you be blessed with a pleasant spring sooner rather than later.
To Share: After an anonymous commenter here spoke well of The Way of the Rose by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn, I added it to my Rosary reading list, and once my year of reading books by the dead was wrapped up, I jumped on it right away. I've written up my thoughts on the book here: https://jpowellrussell.com/#thoughts_on_the_way_of_the_rose.
tl;dr version: Interesting and insightful book on the Rosary from a non-Catholic, and not even necessarily Christian, standpoint, that nonetheless takes it seriously spiritually. I had a few quibbles with the feminist and perennialist-ish outlooks in the book, but overall, I think it's very helpful for anyone wanting to know more about the Rosary, but for whom the traditional Catholic approach doesn't work for one reason or another, including, as in my case, those who want to use the Rosary as a model for some very different prayers..
To Ask: My journaling, meditation, and so forth have suggested to me that I might be too afraid of getting hurt. Normally, if I have an intellectual realization about myself, the next step to make it more real is to "practice" it, but I'm a bit stumped here - I don't want to seek out getting "hurt" (whether physically, emotionally, or otherwise) on purpose, as that doesn't seem all that healthy. I'm already working with an affirmation to be braver, but any further thoughts on how to handle taking an intellectual insight like this and putting it into practice when the obvious way to "practice" is harmful?
As always, thanks very much to JMG and everyone else here.
To any who will have them, I put forth my blessings and best wishes,
Jeff
Re: Ecosophia Prayer List
Date: 2023-02-06 05:47 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts on "Way of the Rose" and How to Make Tangible Intellectual Insights
Date: 2023-02-06 05:51 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts on "Way of the Rose" and How to Make Tangible Intellectual Insights
Date: 2023-02-06 06:40 am (UTC)Take a combatives course. One where you actually have to tangle with people. You can get some real world practical self defense knowledge and learn some things about yourself. My recommendation: https://shivworks.com/extreme-close-quarter-concepts/, Craig Douglas is legit, it only takes a weekend and sooner or later will probably be hosted in a city near you.
HV
Qs
Date: 2023-02-06 06:44 am (UTC)Some minor questions today:
1) Would divining if I should do
a) modern order of essenes lessons be L9?
b) if I should do tibetan 5 rites be L9 or 6?
c) similarly, the old order of essenes course work for emotions, or the order of spiritual alchemy courses be L9?
2) Is there any thing to be done to improve memory (besides memory palaces and spaces repetition)? Does mercury help with memory at all?
Similar to what you said last week, I suspect I have a neurological issue with my physical or etheric body that causes recall of memories to be an issue (even though I a very good at picking things up), which is completely out my control.
3) You suggested the protective amulet last week against evil eyes, I will look into it; would Sphere of protection or one of the other rituals also be effective against particular negative astral influences sent my way?
3) Is it generally considered okay or rude to have a mixed altar of deities across pantheons?
Re: Sweat lodge/sauna
Date: 2023-02-06 07:07 am (UTC)At least from my experience of temazcalli --the mesoamerican version of the steam baths-- it would be very hard to focus on meditation, divination or ritual while your body is sweating profusely from every possible pore! The whole thing is ritualistically prepared with layers of symbolism from lighting the fire to the heating of volcanic stones with it to entering the lodge but once you are inside it you just let go, there's not much space for anything else but chanting and talking with the person guiding it or just remaining quiet to see what comes to you. As a simpler version it occurs to me you could pray to the divine entities you associate with fire and water as a thanks and for guidance but I wouldn't try to exert myself unnecessarily inside of it, at least in temazcallis people have passed out just by not being careful enough with timing and hydration.
Seeking daily rituals that can be done in car
Date: 2023-02-06 07:08 am (UTC)I am certain this has been discussed in the past, but searching is not getting me there. Logging in to Dreamwidth helps but then I get kind of swamped. :)
I have been putting off starting a daily practice because I have no privacy where I live and it's something I insist on doing privately. I am working on changing my arrangements, but I no longer accept this as an excuse to not start.
It occurred to me that I am alone in my car for a little while every single day, and I almost always take some time to just stop somewhere and chill for a bit or read a bit.
Is there a simple banishing or even a more complete set of daily rituals I can do seated in the car? Or sometimes on a park bench, but very inconspicuously? If this has been discussed before then please point me to the post, or if there is some adaptation that can be applied to an existing practice, I'm all for it.
I am not for or against any particular religions or ideologies. I think for now it's mostly about forming the habit, but also about beginning to build some spiritual protection for myself.
(Sorry... such a simple question need not be so wordy, but there you are) :)
Many thanks (for all you do, and for the presence of this wonderful group).
(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-06 09:09 am (UTC)is it OK to suspend my divinatorial arts for a while?
Date: 2023-02-06 09:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-06 09:41 am (UTC)(autistic). Any tips on learning to live better with this fear? Also, any tips on learning to live with the fear of dying (not of death but of the dying process)?
Re: Thoughts on "Way of the Rose" and How to Make Tangible Intellectual Insights
Date: 2023-02-06 10:09 am (UTC)Thanks for your interesting comment on D&D alignments!
I notice that "Fear of getting hurt" is different from "getting hurt". Perhaps it's telling you to reduce the fear, not to increase the hurt.
Re: Sweat lodge/sauna
Date: 2023-02-06 12:15 pm (UTC)The Russian version of the sauna gives the title for William F. Ryan's superb book on Russian magic, The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia. Ryan is a first-rate scholar (and not, I think, a practitioner). He was the librarian at the Warburg Institute in London for 26 years, which is a higher honor than many academic chairs.
A traditional Russian peasant village is a small cosmos of concentric circles. It has a Russian Orthodox church at its center, surrounded by homes with their yards, gardens and outbuildings. The next circle, moving outwards, is the village's fields; and the next circle after that is the forest, where only the hunters and foragers ever dare to go. Each circle has its characteristic sets of spirits: house-spirits, barn-spirits, field-spirits, forest-spirits, and so forth. As you move outwards, each set of spirits you encounter is less and less sympathetic to humans, and the spirits of the deep forest can be positively dangerous to encounter. There is a whole world of these spirits in all their many kinds (each with its own proper name in Russian).
There are two buildings that should be placed outside the village for mundane reasons, and thus they offend against this cosmic pattern.
One is the water-mill, which has to be situated on a river. This is placed outside the village because it is a dangerous building in a purely mundane sense: if the miller is careless or drunk, the mill will explode and level part of the village. (Finely ground flour, when it gets too hot, will explode like gunpowder. So the miller has to control how much heat the grindstones create by their friction as they mill the flour. He does this by smell: he has to "keep his nose to the grindstone," literally.) The mill-race is also dangerous, because one can easily drown in it if one slips or falls into it carelessly. The spirits of the mill(-race) are therefore thought to demand human sacrifice from time to time, and the miller, who appears to have overmastered them, is credited with uncanny power and regarded as a dangerous man to cross.
The other building placed outside the village is the bathhouse or sauna. This is dangerous for other reasons, partly mundane, partly spiritual. Its mundane dangers arise from the fire which heats it, and which must be carefully watched: it may set the building on fire, or deplete the oxygen inside to a lethal level.
The spiritual danger of the bathhouse comes from the people using it, who have shed their clothes to wash themselves. Some dare-devils among the bathers may even go so far as to take off the small metal crosses which all Russian Othodox people traditionally wear around their necks to ward off the small devils (бесики) that always swarm around humans like flies around carrion.
And this is what can make the bathhouse a place of great danger: it is also the isolated place where one will go at midnight to work the most powerful magic, magic that needs the help of these small devils, or greater spirits than them, to work. One gets naked, sheds one's protective cross, and calls on the appropriate spirits to work one's spells.
So, at least in Russia, the use of the bathhouse or sauna for magic is different from the use of the sweat-lodge by Native Americans.
Dolmen arch color exercise
Date: 2023-02-06 12:16 pm (UTC)The Ways of Thought material has been surprisingly illuminating. Out on a walk the other day, my mind returned to a theme that I’d been circling around but had consciously decided to set aside. Realizing what happened, I was able to back-trace the chain of associations leading there… and it was a truly bizarre though legit set of associations of external events along with memories I hadn’t consciously thought of in years. And it happened lightning quick. It was an impressive and somewhat disturbing experience..
Pathworking
Date: 2023-02-06 12:17 pm (UTC)I’m not sure how much “control” I should be trying to exert over the process. I usually have to consciously get the imagery going before it kicks in and takes on its own life, so to speak. Should I try to keep the initial phases of the path consistent, or allow the imagery to be radically different if it seems to be moving that way?
Your guidance in the book mentions slowing down and looking for details, which is useful because my pathworkings seem to have an inherent momentum to them. Sometimes the details move and shift, and when I try to read it is like trying to read in a dream! Is this just astral static?
Also, I sometimes have flashes during my meditations on the pathworking that include symbols or details that I missed during the initial pathworking. At least once so far, the meditation has taken on a bit of the quality of a pathworking (an entity that wasn’t present during the pathworking made itself known). Is it better to follow up on those events during the meditation when they arise, or let them pass and try to explore them during the next pathworking? Is meditation a good time to try to “talk” to entities that I was unable to interact with during the pathworking due to the momentum I mentioned earlier?
Thank you for any guidance you can provide.
Re: Thoughts on "Way of the Rose" and How to Make Tangible Intellectual Insights
Date: 2023-02-06 12:21 pm (UTC)Anyway, if nothing else it's a fantastic willpower exercise :)
Re: Sweat lodge/sauna
Date: 2023-02-06 01:04 pm (UTC)The traditional practice in Michigan’s UP (where sauna culture originally came from Finland I believe) is to cool off in a lake or snow bank between stints in the sauna. That alteration of extreme hot and cold creates a clear, slightly euphoric state of mind that is very conducive to meditation.
From an occult point of view, the sauna strongly incorporates all of the four elements. Fire heats stones, water on stones creates steam. The result is a very primal experience where you feel the steam, listen to the fire, the dripping and hissing of water, feel the heat radiating from the rocks.
I’m not aware of drawbacks, as long as one is careful not to overheat. Or touch the hot iron sauna stove 😁
(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-06 01:08 pm (UTC)I was noticing some of the strange results of hardcore atheists engaging enthusiastically in (Eastern-style) meditation. For example, Yuval Harare and his obsession with AI taking over the world, and Sam Harris and his inability to think clearly on topics such as Covid and Trump. On the other hand, Russell Brand seems to have sharpened his thinking skills by combining Eastern mediation with some kind of religious belief.
Any thoughts on this?
Russell
The Divine
Date: 2023-02-06 01:20 pm (UTC)daily recollection
Date: 2023-02-06 01:31 pm (UTC)That said, my motivation to do something increased when I have a bit of an idea of why it might be important to do. Might you please say a bit about why doing the daily recollection could be an important part of one's training?
Thanks.
discursive meditation with Hebrew letters
Date: 2023-02-06 01:33 pm (UTC)I completed Learning Ritual Magic. I have done discursive meditation with all the cards of the RW Tarot deck. I would now like to do discursive meditation upon the Hebrew letters.
I am wondering if you can make any suggestions for how I might best proceed with this. Also, is there a particular color scale I should use when visualizing the letters as i discursively meditate upon them?
Thank you.
Cerulean Galloping Ocelot
Re: Thoughts on "Way of the Rose" and How to Make Tangible Intellectual Insights
Date: 2023-02-06 01:47 pm (UTC)Re: Ecosophia Prayer List
Date: 2023-02-06 01:51 pm (UTC)Lurksalong