Magic Monday
Feb. 26th, 2023 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
It's almost 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 and the teachers who influenced them in turn. Like Allan Bennett, who we discussed last week, this week's honoree was a teacher of Aleister Crowley. George Cecil Jones was the man who introduced Crowley to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and later on helped Crowley found the Argenteum Astrum (Order of the Silver Star, or A∴A∴), the first of the two magical orders the Not-so-great Beast headed during his lifetime. (The other, the Ordo Templi Orientis or OTO, will be discussed next week.) Jones was a working chemist and metallurgist as well as a serious student of the occult. He practiced the magical virtue of silence more effectively than most of his contemporaries, however, and very little seems to be known about him.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
Re: Modern Order of Essenes
Date: 2023-02-27 07:36 pm (UTC)Re: Counteracting Black Magic at Societal Level
Date: 2023-02-27 07:41 pm (UTC)So long as the symbol is used in its traditional form and put to work in traditional rituals, the misappropriation will not interfere -- quite the contrary, if it's done skillfully and with a strongly held intention, reinforced by meditation and by offerings to the relevant deities, the power that was misappropriated might well flow back into the original form of the symbol, leaving the misappropriated form drained of at least some of its power.
Be aware, however, that the governments in question will use every trick they know to equate the true symbol with the misappropriated one, and to equate you with the monstrous manifestation. If you're going to do something like this, the pushback will be pretty spectacular -- not least because the project in question is potentially so powerful.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-27 07:46 pm (UTC)2) Yes. Wood is very good at conducting and storing subtle energies, so any wooden object that is the focus of emotion and attention develops an elemental soul, which lasts as long as the object does. A violin that's had several owners and been played many times can be quite lively, and have decided opinions.
3) A good point!
Re: The Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2023-02-27 07:48 pm (UTC)Re: Sleep Difficulties
Date: 2023-02-27 07:49 pm (UTC)Re: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?
Date: 2023-02-27 07:56 pm (UTC)Thanks for your reply! The hyperbole explanation is a good point. Some good writers blow things out of all proportion, just to get people to pay attention, or open new pathways in their thinking.
Re: GSF Solar Plexus Exercise
Date: 2023-02-27 08:01 pm (UTC)coelbren letter
Date: 2023-02-27 08:04 pm (UTC)I have been working on learning the Coelbren. Today's meditation was on Li. Perhaps because of the snow outside, I wondered whether the easy, gliding motion indicated by the letter could include the less pleasant aspect of a slip and/or fall. On one hand, the uneasy gait and clutching of possible supports of a person trying very hard not to fall would not fit into the definition. OTH, I know that a slip can happen too quickly to react with other than a final thump. Perhaps if Li is combined with Pi or other letter of sudden motion or change. Thoughts?
Rita
Re: Counteracting Black Magic at Societal Level
Date: 2023-02-27 08:06 pm (UTC)Indeed, I imagine that in this hypothetical scenario, the pushback could be monumental. Not my idea. But the insights you provide may have future value.
Ron M
Re: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?
Date: 2023-02-27 08:13 pm (UTC)The symptoms and 4-7 days duration are familiar. I've been feverish and weak, and waking up midnight in sheets wet from sweating. The muscle consuming part is really noticeable: a heavy flu is quite a setback in one's condition.
Not pleasant, but I couldn't imagine describing it as "agony" or "pain". With flu I can read a book or daydream about a sunny place. I can compare myself to someone in a worse condition, and be glad it's just the flu.
Thank you for confirming that "wanting to die" is not just the author of Hotel Concierge's way to describe the experience. Many blessings for your health.
Re: on developing rituals
Date: 2023-02-27 08:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-27 08:15 pm (UTC)energy healing
Date: 2023-02-27 08:26 pm (UTC)I believe you mentioned that he died after a lengthy illness and I wonder if you are aware of how he might have reconciled the MOE teachings (that all illness is spiritual [that trickles down the planes] and that all illness can be healed) with that experience. If you don't know of his own take on it, might you theorize/provide your own thoughts briefly?
(I can see that each soul experiences exactly what it needs to, to develop toward its highest good, and I suppose that's a good enough answer, though I wonder then, why maintain the kind of wording/attitude found in the MOE texts?...)
****
Along similar lines (energy healing), I came across this article the other day (via a link somewhere on Gerald Pollock's lab site) that might be of some interest here.
(free of charge: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0161/7154/files/EdgeScience-Magazine-v3.pdf?7861)
The tl;dr is that a science-minded guy met a self-described psychic and together they explored his abilities, discovering a method of healing that scientist-guy went on to test in a lab. To his surprise, he was able to achieve a 100% cure rate on mice with a cancer with an expected 100% fatality rate. He replicated it several times but (obviously) couldn't get funding/widespread interest.
What was interesting to me was that the method he used seems very much like the MOE healing hands technique.
Also, I found it particularly amusing to see his blind spot: he planned his research so that it involved "no rituals" - and yet I can guarantee it was chock full of approved sciency-rituals that (unbeknownst to him) probably served a purpose similar to those informed by a spiritual/religious approach.
Oh, and he also noticed some magnetic signals that might be reminiscent of the temple tech, and EEG entrainment between healer and healee that ties in with Buhner's work on heart entrainment, plant communication, and healing.
Fun stuff!
(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-27 08:27 pm (UTC)2) It's a popular misconception that the Indo-European pantheons didn't value balance with nature. I'd encourage you to do some more detailed study. In ancient Greece, for example, sacred groves and other areas of wild nature were an essential part of the religious infrastructure; in the Celtic countries, kings married the goddess of the local land, and could be deposed if famine or other trouble showed that they were not treating their divine spouse with sufficient respect. The Abrahamic faiths, born in desert lands, absorbed from their environment a sense of nature as hostile and even demonic, and that tended to make them less attentive to natural cycles; the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun wrote thoughtfully about the way that desert nomads, when they conquered urban societies, tended to let the irrigation systems go to rack and ruin because they simply didn't understand the importance of maintaining good relations with nature. Even so, there's been some movement in a more constructive direction in all three of the main Abrahamic faiths -- Francis of Assisi is a good example here.
Re: on developing rituals
Date: 2023-02-27 08:29 pm (UTC)Re: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Date: 2023-02-27 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: Litany of the Tree of Life - Ascension
Date: 2023-02-27 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: GSF Solar Plexus Exercise
Date: 2023-02-27 08:32 pm (UTC)Re: GSF question
Date: 2023-02-27 08:34 pm (UTC)2) Gold and white are both assigned to nwyfre in the traditional lore. Do the circle around the lodge in white, but you can imagine the white edged in gold if you like.
Re: The Exorcist
Date: 2023-02-27 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-27 08:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-27 08:42 pm (UTC)Same place.
Re: Sleep Difficulties
Date: 2023-02-27 08:44 pm (UTC)Re: Modern Order of Essenes
Date: 2023-02-27 08:47 pm (UTC)If that won't be possible, I'll try to be there whenever else it suits you.
Thanks!
Re: Sleep Difficulties
Date: 2023-02-27 08:52 pm (UTC)Maxine