Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

I'm pleased to say that the work that occupied much of the last week is done, at least for the moment; I'm dealing with the impact of six initiation rituals -- it was a busy weekend! -- but things are well enough in hand that I can return to the usual round of things. With that in mind...

It's right on midnight now, 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 Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie's second significant teacher. Crowley got much of his instruction from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and thus from figures we've already discussed in these Magic Mondays -- William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Mathers, and Moina Mathers. This week's honoree, however, was another potent influence on the Not-so-great Beast. Born in 1872, Allan Bennett left Christianity as a boy when he found out how children were produced -- yes, this happened tolerably often in Victorian times. He became an agnostic and a skilled electrical engineer, but his spiritual yearnings led him first to the Theosophical Society, then to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; it was in this latter period that he became a teacher of Crowley.  Finding Hermetic magic unsatisfying, however, Bennett studied Buddhism under teachers in Sri Lanka and became a monk there,  taking the name Ananda Metteya. He was a major figure in the transmission of Buddhism to the Western world and helped launch the first Buddhist missionary activity in Britain. His health was never good, and he died in 1922 after a protracted illness.

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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What’s the occult explanation, if any, for “glitch in the matrix “ experiences?

—Princess Cutekitten

[(Anonymous)]

Did JMG see The Matrix? That movie was about The Landmark Forum and est. The writers were deep into Landmark.

[ecosophia]

No, I didn't. I read a couple of reviews, which praised it to the skies but accidentally made it clear that it was a lot of pretentious postmodernist schlock, and decided that I'd be better off spending my time watching paint dry or something.

[(Anonymous)]

Personally I found it a fascinating film to watch, not so much for any of what was in it, but for the incredible lengths the writers had to go through to avoid grappling with any of the serious philosophical and moral issues they could have touched on. There were a good many points I could almost hear them saying "Woah, let's not got there!"

[(Anonymous)]

I've seen a good case made that the trilogy is partly sort of a coded artistic allegory for the experience of the process of discovering that one is trans, without already having had adequate concepts of what that even was ("nobody can tell you what the Matrix is"), and then coming to terms with how that puts one in conflict with conservative or unreflective society. Some segments of dialogue that otherwise seem to be talking around things pointlessly or making weird emphases on seemingly irrelevant stuff make more sense this way. Trinity (in room 303 of the heart) is supposed to represent Neo's trans identity and self-actualized unification of a previously disunited self (in room 101). Red pills stand in for the MTF hormone replacement pills, which were red at the time. The Merovingian (also in room 101 of a different building) represents a trans person who decided to stay closeted for the sake of retaining social power and influence, and is angry and jealous of what Neo has. Smith always emphasizes "Mister" when talking to Neo and never says "Neo" except outside of his earshot, all the agents are cis white men, Neo flying around and incidentally breaking oppressive reflective glass is supposed to represent the shockwaves and disruption of identity-discordant social feedback that a transitioned person going around in public can't help but make, the spinny floating martial arts moves in a long coat are supposed to be reflective of the MTF experience of a raw experience of liberation from observing oneself spinning a dress, everyone who stays plugged into the Matrix (gender binary preconceptions and automatic normativities around them) is supporting it, etc.

Of course, sufficiently charged and myth-like allegories have the weird quality that people can easily relate them to other things with other meanings as well.

[ecosophia]

I'm not at all sure what that phrase means.

[(Anonymous)]

The first paragraph here succinctly defines it.

https://www.factinate.com/experience/glitch-in-the-matrix-moments/

—Princess Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

I gather from the stories that follow that "glitch in the matrix" amounts to "wow, that was weird." There are many different causes, since things can be weird in many different ways!