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. Last week's honoree was 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.  Regardie's first teacher was George Winslow Plummer, founder and longtime head of the Societas Rosicruciana in America (SRIA), who's already been introduced here. His second, much more famous teacher, however, was Edward Alexander "Aleister" Crowley, self-proclaimed messiah of the New Aeon, mass media-anointed Wickedest Man in the World, and problem child of the early twentieth century British occult scene. Regular readers will know that I'm not a fan, but Crowley had a substantial influence on Regardie and also on a wide range of other occult teachers and their scenes.  Now that all his writings are out of copyright and becoming available for free download on various sites, it'll be interesting to see what happens to his legacy.

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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

Re: Reincarnation Basics

[ecosophia]

Okay, first of all, that's like asking "why is there matter?" Plenty of things just are; whether or not they have a reason, it doesn't seem to be one that human beings can know about. We have a fair amount of evidence that reincarnation happens, and that memories from past lives don't usually appear except among people who do a lot of spiritual practice; that tells us something about how the world works, even though it may not tell us why.

Now of course plenty of spiritual and occult teachers have wrestled with this question. The answer that's most generally accepted in occult tradition is that memories don't come through most of the time, but character does. If you were involved in the atrocities against the Ukrainians in the 1930s, say, you don't remember that, but you still have the same character and attitudes. The point of karma isn't to punish you -- it's to give you the chance to change, to shed habits that don't work (like cooperating with tyrants) and take up new habits that do. As plenty of bad luck clobbers you, you get to see what the world looked like through the eyes of the people you helped murder, and so you learn the compassion that comes from "yeah, I've been there." That becomes part of the character that you take to your next life, and so on.

Re: Reincarnation Basics

[(Anonymous)]

Although - I once wished that someone who had tormented me would, just once, be so tormented so he'd know what it felt like. And then I met his father, and told myself "Never mind. He already does, and is passing it on."

Sepia Squamous Barnacle