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.

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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.

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

[jprussell]

Thank you! Clearly I need to get to the re-read of the theory portions of the lessons I've been meaning to do.

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

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JP,

How do you make the time to study all this stuff? Any suggestions for the rest of us?

Thanks for the Easter 🐣 wishes. Please apply this backatcha to the holiday of your choice. (I have to find the “Lawyer’s Holiday Wish “ and put up a link, it applies to all of us here, and it’s darn funny.)

—Princess Cutekitten

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

[ecosophia]

Maybe some people will be able to read the lessons and absorb the way of thinking behind them at a glance, but it took me time and repeated readings to make sense of all this material, and I still find myself learning new things whenever I reread it.

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

[jprussell]

Of course, and thank you! Our older daughter will be celebrating the blessed sacrament of bunny-delivered candy, and in a few weeks, I'll be marking Beltienne/Eostre, so thanks very much!

For the lawyer's holiday wishes, is this it? https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/merrry-christmas-from-your-lawyer-15-5e0614f103e87__700.jpg

And getting to your first question last, never as much as I'd like? I've tried to follow our host's advice to watch less TV, which helps somewhat, and I have a pretty flexible job, so that helps too.

Cheers!
Jeff

[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?

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

[(Anonymous)]

On that note, I've been having a very rough weekend health-wise, could you send some of that healing energy my way please?

[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

[(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!)

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?

[(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]

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.

[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.

[ecosophia]

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

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: 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.

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!

[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.

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.

Papus Numerology's teachings

[(Anonymous)]

Hello again!
Papus numerology teachings...
Sounds interesting. I think he wrote in french.
Would you have the titles of his books on numerology?
Regards & Thanks!

[deketemoisont]

(Thanks.)

1) Not even slightly. I read Pythagorean numerology and Cabala from you, and have books on Martinism (I hear numerology was important to Pasqually) on their way to me if either matters; I do intend to read Papus someday, if you'd recommend anything that'd help understand the MOE work.

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

[(Anonymous)]

That one’s funny but not the original—the original one is all text and goes on for quite a while in a suitably lawyerly fashion. Next time it goes round the Internet I’ll post it.

When the Internet’s gone, or priced out of our reach, what’ll we do for funny pictures? Will we have to return to the era of Team Faxing, where complicated arrangements were made so that one person sent the (perhaps risqué, or even downright unDruidly) picture, at a time when the recipient could be hovering near the fax machine without arousing the boss’s suspicions? God forbid. It could get quite intricate if you had a nosy boss who never got sick and never took a day off (the Boss From Funny Fax Hell, even if she was otherwise quite nice).

—Princess Cutekitten

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.

Re: Granite.

[(Anonymous)]

I was thinking of a polarity working in particular. The Egyptians were sun worshipers, the moon receives force from the sun, so a temple of lunar rock would be good for receiving the solar force.