Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just past 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 taking a momentary break from chasing down photos of my lineage. Today is the spring equinox here in the northern hemisphere, one of the holy days of the Druid calendar, and this is a photo of the spring equinox sunrise as seen from an ancient stone chamber at South Royalton, Vermont -- one of many astronomically oriented megalithic sites here in New England. The photo's courtesy of New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), which was gracious enough to send it around yesterday morning.

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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

[ecosophia]

It is possible that the game was demonically inspired and the contract is real; those who sell their souls don't do it "accidentally" -- they agree, however cluelessly, to a contract. Never, ever, ever treat something like this as a joke.

[(Anonymous)]

a) According to the steam charts, there were a million sales on steam by 2016. If even just a quarter of the people who bought the game completed it, then that's a quarter million people who unwittingly sold their soul. That seems like a huge number, and it seems to me it could easily explain why things went so weird so quickly.

b) I wonder if this explains why I found the game so creepy when it first came out. I might have sensed the link to the demonic and reacted accordingly.

c) What would it look like if someone had actually unwittingly sold their souls, beyond a sudden creepy and unpleasant vibe to them? I ask because quite a few people I knew were into the game when it came out, and all of them changed quite dramatically around then....

[fraterquidam]

For what it's worth, it's pretty hard to get the "genocide" ending, so I suspect a quarter is a large overestimate. I played and finished the game, but like most people I chose peace when possible and got one of the normal endings.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's say it's even just 1%. That's still 10,000 people, which is still a very large number...

[jruss]

I am given to understand the creators of Undertale are what we would call woke now as well as being well as Satanists who yes practice the occult, particularly Chaos Magic and called the game a spell for change, cannot track down that quote now however.

[(Anonymous)]

Undertale had a single creator, Toby Fox. For what it's worth, I can't seem to find anything that relates him to any kind of occultism. Or much about his political views for that matter. His stated inspiration for the game include an older video game series called Earthbound, which as I understand Undertale superficially resembles in it's artstyle, and internet culture in general. His twitter page seems to be mostly just him posting updates on his current projects as well as artworks and the like made by fans of his games. If he's an occultist he's hidden it pretty well...

[jruss]

In fairness coulda been a group just saying stuff for attention and to freak people out

[(Anonymous)]

I’m gonna have to strongly disagree with you on this one JMG. I understand that such things in media, especially an interactive medium such as this, can raise eyebrows among the occult community, especially those of the older generation who are unfamiliar with video games. But I think the OP is possibly blaming the for something else, this weird phenomenon he has not clarified yet. I have known many others who played the game and had nothing paranormal happen to them because of it. I also want to comment that to claim a video game is “demonically inspired” echoes the paranoia and fear repeated in the satanic panic era, which I really don’t want to see repeated in this community I respect. I would recommend playing the game itself (a JMG lets play series would be quite amazing in my opinion), and judge it for yourself. Also, I want the OP to clarify the weird phenomenon they experienced after playing the game. - LM

[liamq]

I’m not sure why anyone would disagree with the idea that it’s POSSIBLE that a particular video game was inspired by the demonic to achieve whatever ends the demon had in mind.

Games in general are complete time vampires that often overtake the entire personality of the victim.

The egregores behind games are clearly powerful enough to shape and morph individuals and their social traits.

But nope… no dark spirit would ever think of utilising this powerful medium.

[(Anonymous)]

I've noticed that others have also wondered, "Wait, who's soul is being bought?" and there seems to be a large amount of discomfort in the Undertale community whenever someone asks this question. This is part of what makes me wonder what exactly is happening with it...

[ecosophia]

By all means disagree with me, but my opinion remains what it is. There will never be a "JMG lets play series," because I don't play video games -- I've never had much interest in visual media and the only games that ever interested me were tabletop RPGs, which I haven't played since my teen years.

[(Anonymous)]

OP here: I never played the game. I found it weird and creepy enough I did not want to engage with it. As for what I meant by things getting weird and creepy, well, the entirety of the Trump campaign and presidency were just bizarre, both for what Trump did and what other people did in response to it.

[(Anonymous)]

How many of the people who played the game finished the Geocide Run and sold their souls?

Also, there are a lot of accusations here, several of which seem incredibly defensive...

[(Anonymous)]

If someone did unwittingly sell their soul, what would they experience? I'm wondering if the reason that there seems to be so much discomfort around this topic in certain Undertale forums is some sort of general fear/suspicion that this may be the case...

[ecosophia]

They probably wouldn't notice anything at all, but the people around them would notice that they became weirdly unbalanced, as though some kind of basic guidance had been shut off. They would behave in ways that would seem, to everyone who hadn't made the same bargain, irrational and ultimately self-destructive, but they themselves would insist that nothing was wrong, everything is fine, and what do you mean it doesn't make sense? Of course it makes perfect sense!

[(Anonymous)]

Well....

My former friend group exploded in 2016, as a large number of them made some very strange, and highly self destructive decisions. Except for me, every member of that group played that game....

[(Anonymous)]

This is a very weird question, but in high school one of my friends forgot his lunch, and jokingly offered his soul in exchange for some of mine. I gave it to him, and it became a weird inside joke. We were both atheists, although I'm not one anymore. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of owning someone's soul, especially someone I haven't talked to in many years. Is there a way to return this soul?

[ecosophia]

Yes, you can do this. If you're comfortable invoking a deity, the thing to do is to offer the soul as a gift to the deity and ask the deity to put it back where it belongs. Do this in prayer. That should take care of it.

[(Anonymous)]

If I don't have a relationship with a deity, how could I best proceed here?

[ecosophia]

In that case, since you don't expect to see the person again, there really isn't much you can do.

[(Anonymous)]

On second thought, I do actually have a relationship with deities. Although I don't pray as much as I probably should, I do planetary charity to good effect; would this be something to invoke Saturn for? Restoring the natural order and righting a wrong seems like something he'd support.

[ecosophia]

Yes, he'd be a very suitable god for this.