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

Safe meditations

[(Anonymous)]

My question is in regard to the blurb of Kellner. And it is, is there a rule of thumb when exploring mediation or spiritual technique to judge the safety?

Re: Safe meditations

[ecosophia]

Yes. The meditations that are potentially dangerous are the ones that move subtle energy within the body; you're dealing with the life force when you do that, and if you mess up you can screw up the balanced flows that keep you alive. Certain practices are known to be safe -- the Middle Pillar exercise used by the Golden Dawn and the Three Cauldrons exercise taught in several of my Druid books are examples of these. If you have any doubts, find people who have practiced them systematically for at least several years and ask about their experiences.

Re: Safe meditations

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any literature you could recommend about the formation of such energy flows, and the difference between Eastern practice energy flows and Western practice energy flows? (for lack of better terms - I hope it's clear what I'm asking about! :-) )

Milkyway

Re: Safe meditations

[ecosophia]

I wish. The comparative study of energy work is in its infancy, and a great deal more basic data has to be collected and compared before any kind of general discussion will be possible.

Re: Safe meditations

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

As someone who experienced a near-lethal and life-hobbling morbid kundalini awakening at an early age, I do have to wonder if there aren’t some people who, perhaps for karmic reasons, simply are primed from the git-go for a devastating K ordeal. As a teenager I was indeed trying to meditate without instruction (I’d read a couple of E Cayce books, it sounded fascinating), but my meditations didn’t involve any heavy energy channeling, they were just a matter of sitting quietly and trying to clear my mind. Then, Blammo.

My past life recollections, while somewhat vague, do have, in part, a theme - I was always dancing right up to the point of spiritual breakthrough, then at the last moment, declining the invite in order to have more “fun”. I know it’s impossible for you to ascertain whether my current K experience is a direct result of my past refusals to spiritually advance, but have you ever encountered, read about a morbid K awakening that was essentially karmic in nature?

Thanks.

Re: Safe meditations

[ecosophia]

Yes, very much so. One of the strong arguments for reincarnation is that so many people seem to bring talents and abilities over from a previous life -- Mozart's the classic example of someone who had abilities as a child that most people need many years of practice to develop, of course, but the same thing happens in spiritual and occult practices. It's quite plausible that you set yourself up for difficulties with kundalini by doing all the preliminaries in a previous life and then not going ahead with the next step.

Re: Safe meditations

[(Anonymous)]

An article written by Josef Dvorak - https://www.parareligion.ch/sunrise/kellner.htm - looks like it provides some interesting information. He seems to be of the opinion that Kellner's illness and early death were an unfortunate outcome of alchemical experiments which Kellner seemed very fascinated by. I have no way of judging how accurate Mr. Dvorak's information is, of course, but it does provide a good number of rabbit holes to go hopping down. Hatha Yoga was only one of Mr. Kellner's many interests.

JLfromNH/Viridion Odiferous Mandrake

Re: Safe meditations

[ecosophia]

Peter Koenig's website is a delightful source of history and gossip -- thank you for reminding me of it. Yes, it's also possible that Kellner poisoned himself practicing alchemy; that's a known risk of metallic and mineral alchemy. I'm a little startled, though, that that Dvorak seems to know very little about the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and the other P.B. Randolph-descended orders he references -- all that material has been in print for well over a decade now.

Re: Safe meditations

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I noticed the gossipy aspect. That's always a point of interest because it turns what would otherwise be flat two-dimensional beings into flesh and blood humans with their strong points, idiosyncrasies and embarrassing foibles.


JLfromNH/Viridian Odiferous Mandrake