ecosophia | Magic Monday

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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~~With that said, have at it!~~

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thanks for your remarks on the Open Post. I read "The Tower". This part stuck out to me:

It will only pull the trigger to end some greater agony, such as during sickness, when some elemental part of you literally does “want to die.” The remembering self is what chooses to endure the flu, since it knows from its internalized stories that all pain eventually subsides; failure of this mechanism is the cognitive basis for depression.

As I read it, the author says life with flu is not worth living. He also calls flu "greater agony" and "pain". I was very surprised by this. To me even a bad illness is not depressing. And flu is a light illness, where you can enjoy books or a short walk while you recover. Is the experience of illness so different between people?

What do you think of the quoted fragment above?

If you think influenza is a light illness, you are conflating it with something else. The flu makes people weak, achey, feverish to the point of being unable to arise from bed, and it usually lasts from 4 days to a week. Your body actively digests muscle tissue during that time, and (especially elderly) people will often be physically weakened afterward and take months to recover the strength they had prior to the illness.

I have a clear memory of the first time I had flu as a child, and consciously wanting to die. This is a pretty common feeling when one is that ill.

It's possible you have never experienced an illness this painful. May you continue to be so blessed.

--Ms. Krieger

Er, the flu sometimes has this effect. The severity varies quite a bit from case to case, and also from person to person.

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.

The last time I had the flu, many years ago, I clearly remember trying to decide whether to call in sick. Not because I was so dedicated, but because I wasn’t sure whether I had the strength to dial the phone. 😁

—Princess Cutekitten

I'm glad you found the post interesting, I did as well.

As for the excerpt, I think he's choosing what he hopes will be a reasonably relatable example for the broader point that the experience of pain/discomfort/suffering in the moment is not at all the same as the memory thereof. Specifically, I think there might be a few things going on here: 1) folks really do differ in how "tough" they are, whether due to life experience, disposition, or whatever - maybe you've suffered worse and so being sick doesn't seem so bad!, 2) there's likely a bit of hyperbole for comedic effect and/or to garner sympathy going on, both by the writer and by folks who are sick saying things like "I don't want to live!", 3) many folks use "flu" for any illness worse than a cold that primarily presents as respiratory and stomach problems, whereas I think he's referring to actual influenza, which can range from "I had a mild fever and a stuffy nose" all the way to "I can't eat, my whole body aches, and I can't really sleep because I'm shifting between feeling freezing cold and burning up due to a high fever." I suspect he means more the upper end of the spectrum there (I've had a flu like that, and while it was miserable, I didn't "want to die").

More broadly, even if that fragment is more extreme than I would characterize that situation, I do know that I've had situations where I consciously know "this too shall pass", but it's hard to really *believe* that and accept it fully in the moment of suffering. Then, looking back, I remember having those thoughts, but they seem ridiculous in hindsight. Like that flu I mentioned - I was on a business trip, and so stuck in a hotel room and miserable for a few days. I remember *that* I was very uncomfortable and not liking it, and I remember that time seemed to pass very slowly, but now in hindsight, those experiential aspects are fairly week and vague.

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.

Magic Monday

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