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. Quite a while ago we reached Israel Regardie, and then chased his lineage back through Aleister Crowley et al. After he left Crowley, however, Regardie also spent a while studying with this week's honoree, the redoubtable Violet Firth Evans, better known to generations of occultists as Dion Fortune. Born in Wales and raised in a Christian Science family, Fortune got into occultism after a stint as a Freudian lay therapist -- that was an option in her time.  She was active in the Theosophical Society, belonged to two different branches of the Golden Dawn, studied with a number of teachers, and then founded her own magical order, the Fraternity (now Society) of the Inner Light. She also wrote some first-rate magical novels and no shortage of books and essays on occultism, including The Cosmic Doctrine, the twentieth century's most important work of occult philosophy. I'm pleased to be only four degrees of separation from her.

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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

Final(?) "Hail Idun" and Question About Etheric Action at a Distance

[jprussell]

Good Evening,

I hope everyone's spring is picking up well, and to those who observe it, may Good Friday call to mind the burdens of this life and Easter give the promise of their lifting.

To Share: Okay, for those following along, I think I've settled on a shape for the "Hail Idun": https://jpowellrussell.com/#last_hail_idun . A big thanks to everyone who shared your thoughts and feedback on earlier takes - even if you don't see the words you shared, know that your thoughts and suggestions were threads for meditation and helped shape what came out here. As always, any thoughts or feedback are welcome (you can comment on my dreamwidth over here, if you want to spare JMG some work: https://jprussell.dreamwidth.org/5565.html).

To Ask: For things like the MOE spiritual healing, I'm trying to build up a mental model of how this works at a distance. My understanding is that any kind of non-material healing of physical conditions will be mediated through etheric energy. My understanding is also that etheric energy is fairly tied to local, material bodies, so you can't directly send etheric energy, say, around the globe just by willing it so. That being said, a lot of the MOE material, like the attunements, seem to operate at a distance beyond the usual range of etheric phenomena. Here's my guess of what is happening: in trying to heal someone far away, the Essene healer follows the ritual and imagines the person far away, thus working on the astral level. Astral phenomena is not bound by location, and so can influence even things far away. This astral influence then comes down a plane into the etheric near the person to be healed and "excites" or "creates patterns within" the etheric energy in/around the person to be healed.

Is this a more or less accurate model? I know it's not strictly necessary for doing the work, I'm mostly just curious and trying to understand.

As always, thanks very much to JMG and everyone else here for building a setting for stirring, worthwhile sharing of thoughts.

To any who will have them, I put forth my blessings and best wishes,
Jeff

Re: Final(?) "Hail Idun" and Question About Etheric Action at a Distance

[ecosophia]

Not all healing is etheric in nature. Spiritual healing in the strict sense of the word takes place much higher on the planes than that. The MOE model of healing has it that all illness has its roots well above the etheric level, on the spiritual planes, and if the spiritual basis can be changed, the illness goes away naturally. Since spirit is nonlocal -- space and time do not exist for it -- nothing prevents you from sending spiritual healing to the far side of the world just as effectively as sending it to the other side of the sofa.

[deketemoisont]

Regarding https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/211658.html?thread=37574090#cmt37574090 , could you say what the Essene Healing Hands have in common with Papus' numerology? Also, do you know what the Essene Healing Eyes were for?

[ecosophia]

1) It's not the hands as such, it's the symbolism in general. How familiar are you with Papus' numerological teachings?

2) I've never been sure what to make of the business about the Healing Eyes. John Gilbert never taught that, and so all I have are a few stray references in the documents.

[sun_lion]

Hello, JMG.

As always, thank you for so generously sharing your time and knowledge with us.

You posted an FHR ritual early a while back at my request. In the event, I was unwell and could not perform it. I appreciate you having gone out of your way.

Could you comment on the occult dimensions of selling one’s blood, blood plasma, and bone marrow? I have never felt right about doing these sorts of things. Hard times may be on the horizon for some of us, and it would be good to know.

Another question: when doing workings of natural magic must the silver used be 99.9% pure or is sterling or 90% okay?

One more, if you don’t mind. Is it usual to associate numbers with the elements in the SoP? If so, how would one decide which numbers are appropriate for each element?

Thank you for your help.
sun_lion

[ecosophia]

1) That's a complex issue. Some of the old sources consider blood and everything associated with it to be very dangerous to transfer to others, some seem to think that it's all just meat and not to worry about it. If you feel uncomfortable about it, though, avoid it.

2) 90% is fine. Most silver in ancient and medieval times had various other metals in it.

3) No, it's not usual; it sounds like an interesting topic for meditation and study, though.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure if this is in your wheelhouse JMG or if it's more one for others here, but any thought would be appreciated :)

My newborn has recently started 'cooing'.
Not long after he started, I said to him 'oh you sound like a little owl'.
The same night my husband called out to me to quickly come out to the back yard. When I did he pointed to a large owl perched on our clothesline.
We've lived in the same house for a number of years and have never seen an owl like that before - so it feels quite meaningful to me and I can't stop thinking about what it might mean.

Birds seem to be the dominant symbols in my life (or the ones that I notice). I had a few fly directly in my path last year right before I received very bad news. I also saw crows pretty much everywhere while I was pregnant - a couple that were in my front yard almost every day.

So does anyone have any guesses/interpretations on what the owl might mean?

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for learning more about birds and their symbolism?

Symbolic thinking is not my forte - the tarot and I are not friends (yet!)

[ecosophia]

Fascinating. That's not something I know much about, though, so I'll leave it to the commentariat. Anyone?

Granite.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey jmg

Lately I’ve been meditating on granite, and I’ve had some thoughts on its planetary correspondence.
As I understand it, all granite is a mix of quartz, feldspar and trace minerals such as tourmaline.
According to your books quartz is lunar, but it has nothing on the other stones, however moonstone is apparently a form of feldspar so it’s possible that feldspar is lunar in general. So it’s likely granite is lunar, but since it is a mix of many stones it must have some correspondence with mercury, since you mentioned that alloys of metal are ruled by mercury.

Is it possible that a stone can have more that one planetary correspondence? Also if granite is lunar could this mean that the use of the stone in Egyptian temples may have had some kind of magical effect they were in exploiting?

Re: Granite.

[ecosophia]

Interesting. The Egyptians needn't have limited themselves to lunar stones -- a lot of varieties of rock have interesting magical properties, and so it's quite possible that they had magic in mind when they chose granite for certain structures.

[(Anonymous)]

Apologies if this has been covered before, but I'm curious about some of the major patterns of things happening around 2005-2006, which, from what I understand was the time that global oil production peaked and the first smartphones were released. I've read (on one of the many great substacks linked to here, unfortunately I can't remember which one, or maybe it was Mary Harrington's), that young people's mental health, especially young women's, has taken a nosedive since about the time that smartphones and social networks both entered the scene, which makes sense to me. One thing that troubled me in particular was seeing a steep drop-off in the amount of time young people spend in person with friends; obviously the lockdowns made that amount drop even more, and it doesn't seem to be recovering very well.

I was wondering if there's any correlation between these two things that could be revealed or explained by astrology or some other system like the planes being discussed in the previous post (I'm so new to astrology I don't even quite know how to frame the question, to be honest). I just have this sense that since about 2006, people's social lives have been fragmented and ripped apart...much has been said about the silos and echo chambers; less about the astral sludge that people are subjected to as a result of using these technologies with no spiritual hygiene, so to speak. It seems like there is this technological behemoth that favors madness that came in with smartphones plus social networks specifically...right at the same time that the ability to fuel that behemoth began to wane for good. Someone in the previous thread made a comment about the Pisces fish pulling in two directions, and comets with two tails...anyways, I'm just struck by this sense of a pull in two directions and wondering what greater forces are at play here.

—Andy T.

[ecosophia]

That's an intriguing question. I hadn't yet started serious study of mundane astrology in 2005-2006, but it's interesting that that's when you see things really starting to fly apart. From my perspective, it's been a gradual process; there have been certain periods when it really got weird and sick, notably the early 1980s, the run-up to the 2012 Mayan Fools Day business, and especially from 2016 to the present, but I've seen a gradual descent into more and more craziness over time.

Astral pollution

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I would like to know if there is a case to be made in analogizing the emotions of envy/jealousy aroused or enhanced by social media (from the earliest gossip columns to Instagram/TikTok/etc.) in the astral plane, to industrial pollutants in the physical plane, where both categories skyrocketed during the industrial era.

I'm trying to understand better the astral plane and what "pollutes" it.

Thanks,
Eugene

Re: Astral pollution

[ecosophia]

That strikes me as a valid comparison. Envy is only one of the pollutants of the lower astral, though. Hatred, fear, deliberate dishonesty, all kinds of negative emotions pool on the lower astral and become a thick emotional sludge there.

Star Logoi

[(Anonymous)]

Hello!

2 weeks ago there was a brief mention of "Star Logoi".
Can we have a brief overview of what it's all about?

Thank You!

Re: Star Logoi

[ecosophia]

Sure. In one widely held version of occult cosmology, each solar system has a Solar Logos, who is more or less the divine regent of that system and superintends the evolution of all the souls that incarnate there. The Solar Logos lives in the sun -- the sun is literally its body. The twelve Star Logoi are also great spiritual beings, but not as far along the process of spiritual evolution as the Solar Logos. They cooperate with the Solar Logos, and mediate the forces of the twelve great rays of the Cosmos, transforming them into the influences of the twelve signs of the zodiac as we experience them.

[(Anonymous)]

Good evening JMG and commentariat!

What do you think of Paul C Jagot? Someone sent me a copy from the mexican second hand market titled Occult Science and Practical Magic which have been reading it in between unpacking of boxes at my new place and thought of asking.

[ecosophia]

I haven't read any of his works. I'll have to remedy that at some point!

Masonry's "Israel Regardie!"

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG! I Hope you're doing well, and thank you once more for doing this.

Did masonry ever had it's own "Israel Regardie," someone who published all the "secret rituals?" How close to the magick of the freemasons is the Golden Dawn material itself? Is it true that the purpose of the Memphis-Misraim rites as modified by John Yarker is to achieve "self deification/godhood" much like so called "left hand path" modern magicians claim to be doing?

Thanks!

Re: Masonry's "Israel Regardie!"

[ecosophia]

1) Good heavens, yes. The rituals of Freemasonry have been published so many times you could fill a small library with the resulting volumes. The oldest one I know of saw print even before the first Grand Lodge of England was founded in 1717! You can find the results in any large online archive.

2) Okay, we need to cover some basics here. Masonry doesn't include magic. It's a set of traditional initiation rituals with a complex history, including some very rich esoteric symbolism and some material dating back to the Knights Templar, but from 1717 on those rituals have been the property of a men's club that by and large has no idea what they mean or what to do with them. A lot of occultists down through the years became Masons because they wanted to get access to those rituals and symbols -- that's a good part of the reason I became a Mason, for example -- but you don't learn magic in a Masonic lodge. That's why so many of those same occultists ended up founding organizations outside of Masonry -- the Golden Dawn is a good example of this -- so they could actually practice magic in a lodge.

3) Not in anything like the same sense. If you'd like to find out for yourself, Yarker's rituals were published a long time ago:

https://archive.org/details/Secret_High_Degree_Rituals_Masonic_Rite_Memphis_-_J_Yarker/mode/2up

A few questions

[sea_spray]

Hi JMG

1: Regarding the personality of Saturn, would I be correct in thinking that while he will not give anything for free you will also get exactly what you earn with hard work, and that work will pay off? I have him in my 7th house...

2: Are the methods of developing clairvoyance that Rudolf Steiner describes in his books compatible with the magical systems using the SOP? Would you recommend any one in particular?

3: How common is it for gods to alter the results of divination's to lead you in the necessary direction, even if that means the divination results aren’t necessarily true? Are there any approaches or ways of phrasing questions that are recommended to work with them better, other than listen and learn from mistakes?

4: For the purposes of magical timing when does the full moon end? Is it at the moment the moon perfects its opposition to the sun? Or is there an effective time or orb before it finishes?

Thanks
Sea Spray

Re: A few questions

[ecosophia]

1) That's certainly been my experience of him -- though it's worth noting that Saturn is well dignified in my birth chart; if he's afflicted in yours, that may not be true.

2) Yes, and in fact the practices in The Way of Initiation are included (with attribution) in a forthcoming book of mine, The Way of the Four Elements, which is a sequel to The Way of the Golden Section.

3) It depends very much on the god! Some do, some don't, and how to work with them really does depend on who you're working with.

4) I've always found it best to start the working before the opposition perfects, though it seems to be okay to let the working continue after that moment. So there's a little effective time afterwards, but not that much.

[davidastrom]

Hello!

1. When doing the MP, I usually have some issues concentrating due to being pestered by "random" thoughts. I have been doing the MP for roughly two years, and it has basically been the same the whole time. I don't have nearly as much problem when doing for example the LBRP, the Rose Cross or LBRH. Do you have any theory why this might be?

2. At the end of the analysis of the keyword ("let the divine light...") I always get a huge surge of energy, almost to the point of shaking. What is the significance of this? (I don't feel nearly as strong energy during any other parts of the rituals)

[ecosophia]

1) This is almost universal unless you've done a sequence of exercises to build your ability to concentrate. Mouni Sadhu's book Concentration, due out in reprint this month, is a good source here -- the first three series of exercises will give you the skills you need.

2) That's what it's supposed to do. The keyword analysis is a very potent ritual and when you call down the divine light, you generally get it.

[(Anonymous)]

In the photo is Dion Fortune wearing the uniform of some organisation or is that just how she dressed?

[ecosophia]

That's how young women of her time and social class normally dressed.

Q

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings

Something strange happened to me last night.

I woke up around 5 am feeling a sensation on my arms, I looked at my hand and saw (or imagined seeing) a weird shadowy thing crawl away diagonally into the distance and disappear. Mind you this was mid air and there‘s nothing I know they moves this way. It had the shape of a lobster or something.

Is it likely I was just hallucinating this as I was transitioning out of my dream state into waking life, or did I see an astral/etheric creature? (If latter what could I do besides the vinegar bowl?)

Re: Q

[ecosophia]

Might have been ordinary hypnopompic imagery -- that's what it's called when a dream image hangs over into the early stages of waking -- or it might have been something nonphysical. As for what you can do about it, well, do you practice a daily banishing ritual?

[(Anonymous)]

When Charles Fourier wrote about the Northern Lights being 'the fluids of the Earth', how close was that to the occult theory of the time?

[ecosophia]

He was citing the approved physics of his time. "Fluid" didn't mean "liquid" in those days, it meant anything that flows, including electric current.

Evolution - progress

[(Anonymous)]

JMG - I've finally got round to reading through your excellent essays in Ecosophia about Enchantment, the Myth of Progress and Consciousness through the works of Wilber, Gebser and Barfield. Thank you for very informative and thought-provoking pieces.
My question:
Evolution is non-teleological. However, succession is, in some way, progress. That's to say, when pioneer species colonise a barren landscape (cooled lava flow, for ex.) they give way to - and give rise to - increasing complexity towards, eventually, lush, rich, entangled ecosystems. Could it be that people tend to confuse increased complexity, biodiversity and bioabundance with progress-towards-a-goal? And could this, then, give rise to the conflation of evolution with progress, and the idea of progress-of-consciousness?
Also, can evolution be consciously driven? I ask because I found in Frederic Myers the idea of the imaginal as an indication of our greater evolutionary capacities. Then wind forward and I found in Barbara Marx Hubbard the insistence that we can, somehow, 'speed up our evolution' (or some such...) in some kind of spiritual sense. What do you think? Is Hubbard barking up the same teleological tree as Wilber et.al.?
Lastly - thank you! You cited Robert Anton Wilson’s 'The Persecution and Assassination of the Parapsychologists as Performed by the Inmates of the American Association for the Advancement of Science under the Direction of the Amazing Randi'. This is the first time I've found you referring to RAW. You and he make excellent bedfellows (excuse the metaphor!). RAW, though, was also convinced that humans are destined for some greater expansive cosmic consciousness and that we can drive forward our evolution. His correspondence with Timothy Leary and his affinity with Leary's Starseed mission seems oddly similar to the Wilber-Gebser-Barfield rap. Or perhaps not. I'm not entirely certain.
Thanks again for you tireless work and generous teachings.
Victor

Re: Evolution - progress

[robertmathiesen]

IMHO, Frederic W. H. Myers should be ranked among the most important occult theorists of the 19th century, yet he is almost forgotten today, and does not figure (to the best of my knowledge) in any history of occultism and esotericism.

Myers developed the very important insight that every adult human has not one self, but multiple selves that work (for most people) somewhat in harmony with one another during a person's lifetime, and that these selves function best in a person's life when they are not wholly integrated with one another.

The same insight was developed at the same time by Charles Godfrey Leland. I don't known whether Leland and Myers had read one another's seminal works, or whether each man came up with more or less the same insight independently of the other. Certainly each elaborated it in a different direction from the other. Leland ended up with a theory that posited (among other things) the existence of alternate minor selves of the opposite gender from the gender of the person's own physical body.

Both men have had a huge influence on my own occult / esoteric theory and practice.

[jeremys]

Dear John Michael Greer,

1) In the Celtic Golden Dawn, it is mentioned how Esus and Elen are divine names, but what is Heu’c and Sul‘w?

2) What is the reason why the 4 directions in the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram contain those 4 names in the elemental positions they are in?

3) Where did the 4 emblems come from: Hawk of May, Salmon of Wisdom, White Stag, and Great Bear?

4) Have you ever checked out any 5-element rituals of the Tibetan Bön tradition? The 5th element is space. Very interesting!

3 Cheers for Dion Fortune!

Thank you for your time!

Jeremy

[ecosophia]

1) More divine names.

2) That's a very good theme for meditation. Yes, I mean that -- I assigned them with that in mind.

3) The Druid Revival tradition.

4) No, that's not something I've looked into yet. The fifth element as space is something you find in a lot of south Asian traditions, though.

[lukedodson]

Hi JMG,

Great speaking to you yesterday!

Just to clarify something regarding planetary charity. As I understand it, a planetary day does not follow the standard calendar day, but starts at the planetary hour close to dawn, and ends during the following morning. As such, a planetary day will bleed over into the following calendar day - so would planetary donations made during this post-12PM period will still be valid for the planetary day?

To give a specific example, on Friday, I realised I had forgotten to make a donation to Venus just as her hour had passed, so I set my alarm for just after 4am in the morning to catch the next planetary hour. I just wanted to double-check that this counts as a valid donation, as the calendar day had shifted to Saturday, but the planetary day still belonged to Venus, so far as my checks told me.

Thanks!

Luke

[ecosophia]

In my experience, the planetary day continues until sunrise, so Saturday at 4 am is still Friday in magical terms.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear John,
Many thanks for your work as always.
I have a simple question: I want to add depth and sensuality to an existing and vey important romantic relationship. Geomancy suggested that offerings to Venus would be appropriate and effective, but I am very unclear about the type of charity to use. I would feel uncomfortable with aggressive feminist organisations, which would rather miss the point anyway, but I would nonetheless like to do some good. Do you or anyone else have suggestions?
Thanks again.

[ecosophia]

There are at least three straightforward ways to handle that. The first is to remember that Venus governs the arts and music, so you can always donate to a charity in those fields -- for example, one of the outfits that helps children get into music might be a good choice. The second is that you can donate to a charity that helps animals governed by Venus; among those included in William Lilly's list are deer, rabbits, dolphins, and swans. The third is to donate to any charity related to gardening, because that's another thing Venus rules; a charity that preserves a famous garden, for example, would be a good choice.

Qs

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings JMG,

Some questions for you today.

1) The event you've alluded to in humanity's past that created some sort of demonic gateway or link, is that related to stories of the fall/original sin in anyway? In your non-christian tradition, what are you thoughts on the ideas of the fall and original sin?

This q is open to everyone, I am curious as a non-christian myself.

2) Was Augustine of hippo an neoplatonist saint? Are there ideas worth reading there? I saw you quoted him last week.

3) You posted earlier about the solar logos being the regent of this solar system, and the star logoi are the spirits of the zodiac influencing this galaxy.

This gets to something I was confused about. Solar logos is equivalent to the christ consciousness/christ spirit right?

So is the sun spirit we worship as a part of planetary charity a lower spirit which has the same body as the christ being but is much less powerful and responsible for certain significations on earth? Is this small sun spirit still the lord of the lower planetary spirits?

I am still trying to figure out the relation between the sun, saturn, and jupiter. (different traditions accord different strengths and relations: apollo as son of jupiter, whereas hinduism has saturn as the son of the sun god).

Steiner said something along the lines of the resurrection of Christ has already happened in the last 100 years but he has descended into the earth in etheric form this time, not a physical incarnation. Curious what you make of this.

(I would presume we'd see more positive effects from such a thing but its unclear)

Re: Qs

[ecosophia]

1) The occult traditions I follow hold that myths of the Fall and theologies of original sin are more or less garbled accounts of the Lemurian deviation. (I discussed that in a blog post here.)

2) No, quite the contrary. I cite him from time to time but I don't recommend his ideas.

3) All these relationships are difficult to synthesize! My take is that we can figure it all out when we've risen to greater levels of spiritual awareness.

4) Yes, there was quite a fad in the early 20th century for insisting that the Second Coming had happened in some invisible way; Steiner was one example, the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists are others. What I make of it is that they were wrong.

Judson Exercise; mundane astrology

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning JMG and everybody else,

I hope you are all having a wonderful start into the week - and as always, thank you very much to you, JMG, for hosting this space and patiently sharing your knowledge and wisdom!

Two questions today, if I may:

1. Do you mind if people spread the word about the Judson exercise elsewhere, e.g. on their own websites? Or would you rather it wasn’t mentioned elsewhere?

(I‘m not talking about copyright violations, btw - i.e. not copying your text, but writing about it in one‘s own words.)

2. Mundane astrology:

Do you know if there were other books about mundane astrology, besides Green, which were well-known or widespread back in the day? In particular texts or material with other approaches or different viewpoints than Green‘s?

I‘m searching for something, but I‘m afraid I can‘t quite put into words what it is I‘m searching for. :-) Hence I’m casting a wide search net - anything you‘d care to mention which is remotely connected to mundane astrology techniques would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Milkyway

Re: Judson Exercise; mundane astrology

[ecosophia]

1) By all means spread the Judson exercise wherever you like! It's in the public domain. You can quote me verbatim, too, so long as you include a link to my original post on the subject:

https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/126779.html

2) Not since the Renaissance, no. One of the reasons I use Green so extensively is that his book and Raphael's Mundane Astrology, which is very similar, are among the very few worthwhile works since William Ramesey's book on the subject from 1653.

[(Anonymous)]

It's funny that you posted a picture of Dion Fortune today, because I was planning on asking you about her. I've been reading through her Mystical Qabalah lately, and something's nagging at me. It's a great book, don't get me wrong. But I find myself very annoyed with her claim that the gods don't exist, but are only (apparently mindless) forces which are caught by images created by human beings. The exception, apparently, would be the Jewish god and his angels. Did she actually believe this? It's one thing to claim that Apollo is no more a naked youth with a harp than Jehovah is a grumpy old man sitting on a cloud, but to claim that either or both of them are simply "creations of the created" is too much for me.

[ecosophia]

It's too much for me, too. Fortune was a Christian -- an eccentric sort of Christian, to be sure, but a Christian -- and so she was stuck having to come up with some rhetorical gimmick to distinguish her god from all other gods. I don't suffer from that limitation, and so I can set aside the gimmick and make use of the many other valuable things in her book.

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning JMG,

With sufficient time and practice, can a practitioner of magic learn to quickly intuit if a stranger is also a practicing mage?

[ecosophia]

Quite possibly yes. I can't do it reliably, but Aspergers syndrome probably has something to do with that.

Timing and Astrology

[gbejm]

I have a question about timing and astrology. The question of how to apply electional astrology or planetary hours/days comes up pretty frequently on Magic Mondays. The time a new business is established, for example, is the key moment for one common class of such questions. Why, then, when it comes to applying astrology to the founding of the United States do folks use our letter of resignation (Declaration of Independence, i.e., the infamous Sibly chart) instead of when we established the Constitution? Was this something specifically debated by practitioners at one point, or did folks just gravitate toward 7/4/1776 by default?

Thanks!

Re: Timing and Astrology

[ecosophia]

Partly 4 July 1776 is treated as the start date for the US because that's the date everyone thinks of -- the popular imagination is a fairly good indication, since it's shaped so powerfully by subconscious factors. Partly, though, it's because progressions and transits based on that date have yielded better results than those based on other dates. It wasn't debated as such -- it's just that each generation of astrologers assesses the options and chooses which one to go with.

[readoldthings]

You've mentioned that pentagram rituals are disruptive to nature spirits and natural energies and so are best done indoors. But is there any reason to avoid the central ray/middle pillar exercise in natural settings, provided they're energetically healthy to begin with? (i.e., not a bog or the sort of park which doubles as an outdoor homeless shelter in the evenings)

[ecosophia]

None at all. I think that would probably work well.