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. Last week's honoree, Theodor Reuss, got the idea and many of the teachings that went into the Ordo Templi Orientis from this man, Carl Kellner. Kellner was an Austrian chemist and a successful industrialist who made a tolerably large fortune by creating and patenting a new process for manufacturing wood pulp for paper. He was also, as the photo shows, something of a dandy; let it never be said that all occultists are dowdy!

In his off hours, he was an active Freemason and a student of occultism. A member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, he also studied with European students of our old friend, Paschal Beverly Randolph, and with several Hindu gurus and a Sufi shaykh. He drew up plans for an occult order that would pass on Randolph's sexual gnosis using rituals like those of Freemasonry. Before he could complete the plan, however, he was struck down with a sudden unexplained illness, recovered somewhat after a long hospital stay, and then suddenly died. (There's some reason to think that he'd been experimenting with kundalini yoga -- not the modern, simplified, safe version, but the old robust teachings that can drop you dead in your tracks if you don't have a guru watching you on a daily basis.) Since I'm not a member of the OTO, my only connection with any of that story is that one of my teachers was taught by a student of a student of a student of Kellner; still, thin as it is, the connection is there.

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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

God in occultism

[(Anonymous)]

Is there an equivalent to God in occultism?

Re: God in occultism

[ecosophia]

Okay, let's start with some basics.

Occultism is not a religion, and it's not the same kind of thing as religion. Many traditional occultists hold that there are three basic kinds of knowledge we use to make sense of the cosmos. There's science, which we use to understand the material world; there's religion, which we use to understand the spiritual world; and there's occultism, which we use to understand the realms in between spirit and matter.

Occultism deals with the "mind side" of things -- human minds, yes, but also mental phenomena that aren't limited to the inside of anybody's skull. Traditionally it leaves the material world to scientists and the spiritual world to religious teachers -- though of course both scientists and religious teachers sometimes elbow their way into the proper realm of occultism, and quarrels follow. (To be fair, occultists also sometimes elbow their way into the proper realms of science and religion, and yes, that produces more quarrels.)

Many people who practice occultism are also religious people. In fact, in the western world, a very large number of occultists are practicing Christians or Jews. Others, like me, are polytheists -- we believe there are many gods, and revere them -- and still others belong to other kinds of religions. Yes, there are also occultists who are atheists, though not that many of them.

So you'll find that many occultists believe in God, and many occult writings talk about God. That's not because occultism is a religion, it's because many occultists are religious people and include that in their occult writings.

Does this help clarify things at all?