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

[open_space]

Good afternoon JMG!

I have been doing a lot of journaling lately to try to uncover the reasons for my anxiety which apparently is not as new as I thought. I can now tell that when I get really anxious there is a train of thought that my mind is following throughout the day that eventually gets too big regarding where I want to take my life to and on facing situations that before I just didn't know very well that they existed. Now that it starts settling that I am by myself and have to face foreign situations and challenges I realize that I am very unsuited to those, probably given to my neurodivergence on one hand and on some areas where I am immature on the other.

To my understanding this is happening because some ideas or tracks in my mind are now heavily charged with emotion and have created a rut that pulls, so to speak, and is easy to fall back into and then it spins until it becomes anxiety. I understand what my anxiety is telling me (that I don't like many areas of my outer life and myself) but it is not like I can just get away and run from it, at least not with my dignity and possibilities, so following the urge of the anxiety is not a good idea because it makes fall into despair instead of action. I now have become a little better at catching myself and at relaxing my mind for a while, but the rut is still there. Do you think it is possible to use the emotional energy that I have put into an unbalanced fear of my situation and the state of the world into something that helps me change it in a balanced way? If we see it as an unintentional magical working for example, can I redirect the energy so that I use the desire to change my life productively instead of it creating anxiety by it following a different path or will I have to battle against it until the energy disperses?

[ecosophia]

Yes, you can certainly redirect the emotional energy. Battling against it is unproductive; putting it to work is more useful.

[open_space]

Once I have determined the reasons for the desire to change and how those reasons are moving towards anxiety, is it as simple as framing my mind in the opposite direction to make use of it?

[ecosophia]

That's worth trying, but I find that for me, at least, it works better to go off at a different angle. To do this, find some entirely different emotional state to focus on. (I learned this from a book by Albert Ellis; he used to deal with anxiety over dental appointments by recalling sexual liaisons he'd had.)

[open_space]

I like that! I think I do need a different angle instead of thinking way too much and being impatient about changing my life. I am being too hard on myself. It is okay to just focus on something else other than changing my life. I have even forgotten how to have fun! Yes, I don't like it but it isn't like I can solve it by overdoing it, which is what my anxiety is in a way. Hmm. This makes me think. Thank you :-)