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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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the child has a connection with Athena?

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

[(Anonymous)]

FWIW, I like this last iteration quite a lot; it's a big improvement on the three options you had earlier. Have you put it into practice yet?

--Sister Crow

Re: Astral pollution

[ecosophia]

Remember that we don't experience the gods directly. We experience them on our own level of being. Mars as a power on the spiritual planes has no negative emotions connected with him, because emotions don't exist above the astral plane -- that's the plane of emotions. Yet as his influence descends through the planes, it takes various forms on those lower planes, and some of them are negative.

Re: History of German occultism

[(Anonymous)]

Robert,

Thanks a lot!! :-)

Milkyway

Re: Star Logoi

[ecosophia]

Interesting; I wasn't aware of that aspect of Gurdjieff's teachings. In the system of occult philosophy I work with, humanity as a swarm of souls is assisting the evolution of the planetary spirit of Earth by our presence here -- our experiences, our successes, and our failures and stupidities all help the spirit of Earth grow and learn, and build its higher bodies. Eventually we will proceed to other planets in this system, though we won't have physical bodies by then, and at the end of our planetary journeys we will become angelic beings working under the guidance of the Solar Logos. So that's not quite the same as the Gurdjieff teachings, but it's not entirely different either...

[ecosophia]

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

Re: Q

[(Anonymous)]

Have you tried the simpler version of the SOP which comes with the Modern Order of Essenes material?

https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/209520.html#cutid1

It‘s under the subheading „Preparing to do an Essene Healing Breath Meditation“.

That one is super easy to learn - and you could still practice the other one on the side.

Milkyway

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

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.

[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.

[ecosophia]

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

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?

[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.

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

[jprussell]

Thank you! So far, I've said it a few times, but not yet as the main prayer in a rosary-style prayer (I need at least one more prayer for that, the "Allfather", and also to finish making the prayer bead loop). Even the little I've done, it feels like its working pretty well.

Re: Evolution - progress

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, very much so. The rise of a civilization is a successional process -- that was one of the central points of my 2005 paper on the collapse of civilizations -- and during the rising part of the curve, it's quite common for people in the civilization to convince themselves that it's all upwards from here. Then they find out the hard way that what goes up must come down -- a lesson we're learning now.

2) She's barking up the wrong stump. It's very fashionable to confuse evolution with progress and then to insist that we all ought to join together to progress as fast as possible -- it's a rehash of Marxist rhetoric in a New Age vein. Bleah.

3) I've been a fan of RAW's work since I bought the Illuminatus! trilogy in the late 1970s. That doesn't mean that I agree with all the things he believed, but I'm enough of a Discordian to find that entertaining rather than annoying. You might find this old post of mine interesting:

https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2016/12/the-fifth-side-of-triangle.html

Or this more recent one:

https://www.ecosophia.net/slack-an-irreverent-proposal/

[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.

[ecosophia]

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

Re: A few questions

[sea_spray]

Thank you

1: Regarding how well dignified Saturn is, how would you interpret him being in Aquarius square to the mid-heaven with a 1 degree orb and square on the other side to Pluto with a 3 degree orb. He's also 10 degrees from conjunct with my moon but I think that's out of the effective orb.

I notice that Saturn is currently 1 degree off transiting my moon as well so I've got a double dose!

Sea Spray

[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.

[lukedodson]

Thanks!

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.

[(Anonymous)]

a) When doing planetary charity, what is the key moment: the moment I write a check, or the moment I drop it in a mailbox? Or would it be best to make sure to do both during the planetary hour?

b) I've just started working through LRM, and have found that the relaxation by breathing you provide in the book causes a weird pressure on my solar plexus. You mentioned it works with the solar plexus, which makes me wonder if it's possible that I'm activating it.

c) On the topic of Pluto as a comet, I had a very unpleasant further thought: I've noticed a lot of Plutonian themes are going into overdrive among the people still clinging to the planet, and a number of Plutonian phenomena are reaching their logical extremes as the planet fades away. This is a very Plutonian thing: of course the planet will reach its apotheosis as it fades away. It makes perfect sense, Pluto being Pluto, that the people clinging to it will gradually be consumed by it, and become ever more Plutonian, even as the world around them shakes off the Plutonian.

It also makes sense, if Pluto is a comet marking the disruptive force of another solar system: as the solar system moves out from blocking the Central Stillness, those who are remaining will return to normal; while those who are still drawn to the other system will gradually move further and further away, and be ever more drawn into the disruptive influence until either it moves far enough away that they get yanked back into place by the Central Stillness and the forces of the other planes, or they move far enough away with the other system that their connection to the Central Stillness gets severed.

Brr....

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.

[open_space]

(forgot to log in)

His work looks interesting and at least according to the french wikipedia he was along the lines of New Thought in some way and seems to have followed Levi's line on the more occultish side, as I assume many French occultists did. The book I mentioned follows the same pattern of using the Trumps as chapters but I couldn't find any of his books in English. Archive does have a short one on Magnetism and healing and a longer one on the power of the will. Scribd has a couple chapters about his book Méthode pratique de magnétisme, hypnotisme, suggestion : cours d'expérimentation à la portée de tous which seems available for purchase on the major ebook providers. I found this excerpt interesting:

La polarisation en deux modalités, positive et négative del'agent magnétique, n'a échappé à l'attention d'aucun des praticiens anciens ou modernes du Magnétisme. Perçue par RobertFludd et Paracelse, nettement affirmée par Mesmer, la polaritédu corps humain fut précisée par les travaux de Reichenbach,du colonel de Rochas et d'Hector Durville. Ainsi que nous leverrons plus loin, l'action de la modalité positive du magnétisme diffère de l'action négative. Dans la pratique, j'ai observé que, seules, des personnes d'une réceptivité exceptionnelle ou desmalades amenés à une réceptivité analogue par leur état, per-çoivent très nettement la différence du magnétisme positif etdu magnétisme négatif. Le côté droit et l'arête médiane antérieure du corps humain émettent du magnétisme positif.Le côté gauche et l'arête médiane postérieure émettent du magnétisme négatif. Le sommet de la tête (vertex) et le périnée peuvent être consi-dérés comme des lignes neutres.L'observance des lois de la polarité (voir paragraphe 5) estsecondaire dans la reproduction des phénomènes exceptionnels(ceux décrits au Livre III).

1) My french is not good at all but am I understanding correctly that by "l'arête médiane postérieure" and "antérieure" it is meant that the front side of the body is positive and the back side negative?

2) By some comments I think this is standard division on polarity in the body in western occultism. I wonder if you could clarify how does the anterior and posterior polarity relate to the left and right polarity? While trying to picture it, it isn't clear to me how can it be, for example, that the right side is positive while the front and back is negative (since the right side of the body has both front and back parts). Perhaps it depends if it is closer to the center of the body or to the surface of the body?

[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.