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

[(Anonymous)]

A question, after some preamble.

Are you familiar with the tridoshas system of Ayurvedic medicine? It proposes three types of constitution that people can be classified into; vatta (thin / air), pitta (medium / fire) and kapha (thick / water / earth). The endomorph, mesomorph, and ectomorph types of Western herbalism correspond to it.

Interestingly, as people age, their constitutional types seem almost to turn into weaknesses: air people dry out, fire people burn up, etc.

There's also in Jung the concept of the superior and inferior types. In Marie-Louise von Franz's book Jung's Typology, she writes how the superior type wants to dominate one's psychological activity. Even when you try to learn how to use your inferior function, it is often through the lens of, or is 'corrupted' by, the superior function.

It strikes me that these two models have something in common: assuming that your physical constitution and your superior function can be considered your strengths, the use of these strengths can through time end up in imbalance.

(Maybe this is a 'no, duh' moment for everyone but me.)

I find it interesting because we're often told in our culture to use our strengths, but this would imply that at times, you almost have to realize your strengths are actually an imbalance by nature, and to focus at least for a time on dealing with your weaknesses.

I guess there's not really a question after all. But the SOP makes even more sense now!

[ecosophia]

Plenty of people haven't figured that out yet, but it's good to hear that you have. Jung based his system on the Western humoral system, which is like the tridosha except that it has four basic types, sanguine (air), choleric (fire), phlegmatic (water), and melancholic (earth); and yes, going to any extreme is a bad thing, and relying solely on your strengths guarantees that you will be blindsided by your weaknesses.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, thank you, you've opened up another rabbit hole for me to happily dive into.

I bought the book The Humoural Herbal you recommended a couple months back. But I'm tickled pink to hear that Jung based his system on the humours, and now I'm going to need to chase that down. I thought Jung's model might fit when I read the Humoural Herbal, but then I couldn't see quite how it fits even though both are fourfold. I think I am a melancholic type physically but I believe an intuitive (fire) in Jung's system, so that would imply I should be choleric (fire) rather than melancholic (earth).

In any case, off I go, the rabbit hole beckons!

The Herbal Humours book is very good, by the way, it is extremely "self-sufficient", as in, if you had some knowledge of anatomy and physiology and knowledge of herbal actions, you could do a fair bit of herbalism with just that book. Not that I'm an expert in herbalism by any means.

[ecosophia]

Jung's system is based on the humors but it's more narrowly focused. Jung was working with cognitive styles; the humors focus on physical and emotional states. These do not necessarily correspond!

[(Anonymous)]

Got it, thank you for the distinction!