Magic Monday

[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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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: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?

[jprussell]

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.

Re: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?

[thinking_turtle]

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.