Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Once again, it's technically Monday now -- past midnight Eastern time -- and here I am on Dreamwidth, so it's time for another Magic Monday.  Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer, though it may be Tuesday sometime before I get to them all.

With that said, have at it!

**This Magic Monday is now closed to new questions. See you next Monday!**

Um, folks...

I just fielded a brand new question more than 24 hours after this Magic Monday closed. I'm not sure if the person who posted it didn't read the two sentences in boldface, or decided he was so special that the words didn't apply to him, or what, but it doesn't matter; I set aside one day a week to answer questions, because I need the other six days to do things like write books. 

New questions posted to a Magic Monday after it closes will be deleted unanswered, full stop, end of sentence. If you want me to answer a question, post it during the open period on a Monday. And remember, learning to follow instructions is a basic skill you need to master in order to get anywhere in magic... ;-)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I’d like to find a book that shows the classical attributions given to the planets as well as the types of offerings/libations one can offer. Which book(s) do you suggest?

[ecosophia]

I'm going to assume you've already learned the basics of classical planetary magic -- the sort of thing you'd learn from Chris Warnock's books and website, and in the translation of Picatrix Chris and I did. If you want to go beyond that, you're facing serious research in primary and secondary scholarly sources, as I don't know of any book for practitioners that covers the subject in the kind of detail you have in mind. The Greek and Roman astrological authors are one starting place; another is Pausanius' Description of Greece, which dates from long after Greek religion took on its postclassical astrological dimension; another angle begins from Hans Lewy's Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy and Iamblichus' On the Mysteries -- but each of these are starting points, and you'll be chasing sources from there into odd corners of classical literature and the scholarly work based on them. You might, if you decide to pursue this, consider writing a book yourself that sums up your discoveries, since this is a subject practitioners would no doubt like to learn more about!

John Crowley

[(Anonymous)]

I just listened to a podcast of last year where you mentioned enthusiastically the books of John Crowley especially his Aegypt cycle.

Can you tell us a bit more about why you really liked his books?

Regards

Karim

Re: John Crowley

[ecosophia]

I'm never sure how to respond to a question like this. Um, I like Crowley's books because I find reading them enjoyable -- but does that tell you anything you didn't already know? Still, that's basically the situation. I don't enjoy a book for this or that reason; I enjoy a book, and then maybe I can come up with some sort of clumsy attempt at explanation for why I enjoy it.

Magical trees and bushes

[kimberlysteele]

Dear JMG and company of mages, can you suggest appropriate magical trees and bushes for my yard? I bought a little house a year ago in the Midwestern US with little to no restrictions concerning what I do with my yard, which is 1/6 of an acre in Zone 5 with full sun. It's not huge, however, the house is small enough that it does not occupy a great deal of the yard. I have planted a dwarf pear tree on the south side and a Blue Princess holly bush in the East. Apparently the Princess needs a male consort, so I'll buy her a mate soon. I was going to plant some apple trees I sprouted from Aldi apples out there, but they almost died so they are inside now, recovering. Other than some raised beds, it's a blank slate. There will be two rain gardens out of necessity.

I have been studying Ogham, but I am a slow learner and have not yet made a set of staves. Should I be planting hawthorn? Birch? Hazelnut? What would you plant? Thanks in advance.

Re: Magical trees and bushes

[ecosophia]

A great deal depends on what exactly you want to do -- what energies you want to attract to your yard, what effects you want to bring about. I'd encourage you to get a good basic book on natural magic -- my Encyclopedia of Natural Magic is one of the available choices -- and go through the trees and other plants listed in the book, asking yourself which of them have energies you want to bring into your life.

[jenniferkobernik]

A commenter last week asked about doing divination in a banished space, which you didn't discourage, but I remain curious as to what effect a banishing ritual would be expected to have on subsequent divinations performed there. I have been wont to do my divination in the same room as the SoP, although most often not in the precise area enclosed by thel sphere, and have gotten good resuts. I think I recall you saying that a banishing ritual essentially clears away etheric (or was it astral?) crud, but I am not very clear about the distinctions between the planes. Do you have any knowledge/speculation on the mechanism by which Ogham divination works, and if it operates on a particular plane? Does a banishing ritual "chase away" whatever makes divination work, or allow it to come through more clearly, or have some other effect entirely?

[ecosophia]

My suggestion that people not do their divination in a banished space is mostly to encourage people not to get dependent on having a banished space in which to do divination -- it's convenient to be able to cast a reading when you want one, without going through the process of banishing the space first. That's all that's involved here.

Return to Sender amulets

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr. Greer,
I learned to make return to sender amulets from your Encyclopedia of Natural Magic. I wanted to make the amulet stronger so in addition to the salt and the bent nail, I added a piece of quartz, a pinch of blue vervain and three deadly nightshade berries. Is it possible that this amulet is too strong, that it might amplify ill wishes as it returns them? This is not my intention.

I have made these for sensate/empathic friends and they like them and feel they are getting good results. I wear mine all the time as our community is somewhat afflicted with vicious gossip.

Thanks you for all the interesting articles and books.
Max Rogers

Re: Return to Sender amulets

[ecosophia]

No, that shouldn't amplify anything, but it would make for a very solid protective amulet. Nicely done.

Questions

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,
Do you have a favourite tarot deck, or perhaps a top 5?
Do you use different decks for different circumstances?
Is it worth reading any Crowley or are there other authors that discuss his method that you would recommend?
I am just starting chapter 3 of your ritual magic book, and I definitely have a mind like a vagabond, it wanders all over the place!
I am determined to stick with it, I keep thinking of your mantra of Keep Going.

Last question, do you have a spell to help find small, misplaced objects?
Thanks in advance
Helen

Re: Questions

[ecosophia]

1) I originally learned on the Aquarian Tarot by David Palladini, and still enjoy using it. Jean Beauchard's Tarot Symbolique Maconnique (Masonic Symbolic Tarot) and RJ Stewart & Miranda Gray's Merlin Tarot are two of my other favorites. I've done a lot of work with Robert Wang's Golden Dawn Tarot but it's pretty ugly!

2) I don't do much tarot divination these days. Horary astrology is my go-to method for divination right now.

3) I don't recommend Crowley at all, nor do I recommend his methods. To my mind, he's the poster child for what not to do if you're practicing magic.

4) No, but some people find they can use geomantic divination to do this; the instructions are in my book The Art and Practice of Geomancy.

[(Anonymous)]

If someone has dementia and it's progressed to the point where they're basically an empty shell with no trace of their original personality, are they still in there or could their soul have already moved on?

If a skilled mage develops dementia is there a risk of them starting to do dangerous magic as their mind deteriorates?

[ecosophia]

Good question. I suspect it depends very much on personal factors.

Spirit above clockwise direction

[scotlyn]

Hello, a simple question today.
As I'm doing the SOP, I always have a moment's doubt drawing the circle above my head when invoking Spirit Above. To make it properly clockwise, should I imagine a clock face above me facing downwards (towards me), or should I imagine it facing upwards (towards the sky). I usually do it as if the clock were facing me (which is consistent with all the other moves in the SOP), but sometimes I wonder if all the clocks have a fixed reference which is the earth, in which case I'd be looking at the "back" of the clock from below.

Re: Spirit above clockwise direction

[ecosophia]

Nope -- it's always clockwise as seen from your point of view. The fixed reference is always the person who's doing the ritual.

[(Anonymous)]

You've said you don't find the concept of evil useful (I forget if that was your exact phrase but it definitely wasn't positive). I thought the same for a long time but then I discovered the theory of wetiko and it made a lot of sense to me. How do you think of the acts and people generally considered evil? Especially those in Terry Eagleton's generously narrow definition of evil - torturing your enemies for information, enslaving them or killing them quickly and efficiently don't count as they may serve an amoral but rational goal. Only making people suffer for no reason and no benefit to yourself, or even being willing to damage your own position in order to hurt someone else count as true evil.

[ecosophia]

Why is it useful to have a single abstract label such as "evil" to put on those actions?

Reverse one’s own evil spell?

[(Anonymous)]

For a many years, an enemy has treated me and mine with extraordinarily pertinacious malice, notable for its irrationality. Several years ago, after a series of most unpleasant episodes provoked solely by my enemy, I was ready for some solid revenge. I struck with malefic magic.

In retrospect, this wasn’t at all a good idea. I doubt it’s ever right to do malefic; if there are any circumstances that can justify it, these weren’t them. And of course the consequences fell on myself.

It was a lunar Mansion; not the worst, but pretty nasty. A talisman was involved; I destroyed it.

Is there anything further I can do to reverse the effects of the magic, both with regard to myself, and the object of my attack? If so, how ought I to proceed?

I doubt I can ever reconcile with this individual, but perhaps I should do something to diminish the hatred between us. There’s even a Mansion for that; though I’m not so keen on Mansions as before.

Re: Reverse one’s own evil spell?

[ecosophia]

Start with divination. Always use divination to figure out whether a working would be a good idea. Especially in a case like this, you need to get some sense of what will work to untie the emotional-karmic knot that connects you and your enemy.

Depending on what the divination says, you have a range of options. It may be appropriate for you to do a working to lessen the hatred between the two of you. It may be appropriate for you to do a working to cut the connection between the two of you. It may be appropriate for you to do a working to bless your enemy. It may not be appropriate for you to do any further magic at all. There really is no one-size-fits-all rule.

Aurum Solis

[(Anonymous)]

I posted this question on the main blog but I guess I was too late.

Do you know anything about the origins of the Aurum Solis and if it was truly an independent magical system developed separately from the Golden Dawn?

For that matter, how much experience would you say someone should have before trying to experiment with either creating his own system or modifying an existing one? I don't have too much knowledge of the early origins of the GD, but it seems to me that although the founders were in contact with some practitioners of crystal magic and talismans (Hockley et al) they themselves never got very deep into the Renaissance methods before developing their own system.

Thanks
Alvin

Re: Aurum Solis

[ecosophia]

The Aurum Solis does seem to have been an independent organization, but the techniques presented in the published books on the system are massively influenced by the Golden Dawn.

As for the origins of the Golden Dawn, au contraire -- W.W. Westcott in particular was a student of Renaissance and early modern esotericism for decades before he helped found the Golden Dawn; the Collectanea Hermetica series of reprints he edited covered an impressive range of alchemical, Hermetic, and occult literature. I'm also fairly sure that the whole "Fraulein Sprengel" subterfuge -- the imaginary German adept who supposedly gave them the charter for the GD -- was a cover story meant to protect the actual sources of the system, which were English rather than German and likely involved individuals whose involvement in occultism couldn't be made public -- quite possibly because one or more of the people involved were Anglican clergymen. (I'm still piecing together the evidence for this, and will publish it when I have everything assembled.)

Before you create a new system or modify an existing one, it's necessary to learn at least one system of magic completely, top to bottom, exactly as given. The notion that you can invent a system of magic when you've never learned one is right up there with claiming that you can invent workable recipes when you've never learned how to cook.

[aldabra]

Please can you point me to one of your books or blog posts which introduces the planes?

[ecosophia]

I haven't written one yet.

On offerings

[lordyburd]

Dear Mr. Greer,

This may not strictly be an occult question.

When one makes an offering of a specific object to a spirit/god, is this establishing a relationship of reciprocal exchange, the importance of the offering matching or exceeding the magnitude of the boon required? If that is the case, does that not make one's motives for engaging the being purely selfish ones?
I ask because I find that part of me wants to praise and wish the being i am trying to engage to be well; whereas another part clearly wants something in return.
Is this a problem?

lordyburd

Re: On offerings

[ecosophia]

No human being is capable of doing anything that's completely unselfish. The gods are aware of this -- after all, they made us that way! Prayer is the building of a relationship, and relationships always have an element of exchange; be honest with yourself and with the god or spirit you're invoking, and let both sides of you -- the part that wants to praise and bless, and the part that wants to ask for help -- participate fully in the offering and the prayer, and you'll be fine. The gods do not expect you to be something you aren't, and while they'll guide you to become more than you are right now, they'll do it step by step, in their own way.

Re Television

[(Anonymous)]

I have been fascinated by the discussion in a previous post on the possible natural magic remedy for the pull many people feel, against their will, towards television. I am familar with some of the esoteric ideas regarding technology, eg., Dr John Lilly (solid state entity), Dmitri Orlov (the technosphere) and Rudolph Steiner (Ahriman), but I am very curious to know your idea about what might be the source of any malign enchantment promoting television watching.

Re: Re Television

[ecosophia]

I don't know -- yet.

[(Anonymous)]

What do you think about invasive species of plants, in regards to magic?

[ecosophia]

The entire concept of "invasive species" is based on bad science and a false concept of nature as a static reality. All species are invasive; the organisms that you see around you, wherever you are, either got there from somewhere else or evolved in place and elbowed other species out of the way. Nature is always changing; species are always expanding their ranges, being pushed out of existing habitats, or both. Thus "invasive species" are just...species. Their magical role depends not on whether our (highly invasive!) species labels them as "invasive," but on their own magical properties, whatever those might be.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey JMG
When doing middle pillar exercise do you imagine each chakra/sephiroth inside your bady at each point, like an organ, or do you imagine them outside your body close to each point?

[ecosophia]

Inside the body. The Middle Pillar runs down the midline of the body, in front of the spinal column.

Geomancy

[(Anonymous)]

Hello,

Does geomancy only work for questions with binary answers? I've been reading various things (including your book) on geomancy, and I'm not sure if the open-ended question I have in mind is appropriate. The question in mind: Where should I move?

I feel strongly that I must move to a different state but am thoroughly perplexed as to which one. And it seems asking an open-ended question doesn't make any sense in a geomancy context.

Thank you for your help.

Re: Geomancy

[ecosophia]

Geomancy works best for yes-no questions, so it's not much use in the kind of divination you have in mind.

May I offer some advice, as one who's moved from state to state very often? Start with nonmagical methods. Come up with a list of the things you want to find in the place where you move, and then use internet research to find places in other states that have those things. Read the online newspapers from the places that look best to you, get a sense of the local culture and history, see which ones seem to fit your needs best. Then go for a visit to the one that looks best, and see what you think. That's when you want to bring divination into the picture -- when you've already engaged other methods of knowing, and want to add that extra fillip of information that comes from divining.

Etheric connections

[tunesmyth]

Well, I don't own a TV but I tried taping an open safety pin to the back of my mobile phone. I was seriously expecting to be a naysayer and give you the honest feedback that it just didn't work for me... except that it worked for me. So far, at least. I'll be interested to see if all of us reporting positive results still are doing so a month from now. If so, well... if this is just a placebo at work, more placebos, please!

Two questions for now:

(1) Based on your understanding of the theory of etheric energy, is there a place on your body that you recommend over others as a place to keep a sharp bit of iron for protection against TVs, etc in the wild? Is on the head better than over the heart, say?

(2) By carrying around bits of sharp cold iron, are there any "positive" etheric energies we could otherwise be benefiting from which we'd be cutting ourselves off from?

Re: Etheric connections

[ecosophia]

1) In front of the solar plexus is the most important place to guard, since that's the etheric organ that draws in energies. If you wear a hat, having a second one in front of the third eye (between the eyebrows) would also be useful

2) Don't have the cold sharp iron in place when you're planning on going to a ball game or a rock concert, or getting ready for a romantic encounter. You should probably leave it off when going to religious services, too. All those are partly mediated by etheric forces.

Atomwaffen

[(Anonymous)]

Hey ADJMG!

Have you ever bumped into these guys?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles

I remember you said once there are nazi occultist around. I thought you were being overly dramatic . I stand corrected.

Re: Atomwaffen

[ecosophia]

I've read about them. If you'd like to find out just how undramatic I was being, pick up a copy of Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's useful book Black Sun and read it; he documents groups that are considerably more troubling than the ONA.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

This might be an odd question, and apologise in advance, but I wanted to ask you about good astrologers? I have tried several, and besides being expensive it seems they never seem to get me or my chart or whatever.

Lately I’ve started to “feel” I need to move countries and although it has happened before nowadays things are much more complicated in my life. So at the very minimum I’d like to get some
Country- options checked beforehand.

Also, if I may ask, I missed the Book Club in your other website, although I have read quite a few discussions. What would be your suggestion for a Book or books for a complete newbie to start learning magic ? BTW is it suitable for anybody or are there some contraindications?

Thanks!

[ecosophia]

My advice with regard to astrology, if you haven't been able to find an astrologer whose work resonates with you, is to learn how to interpret your own chart. It's not that difficult! There are many books on the subject; I'd encourage you to visit your local public library and start reading what you can find, and go from there. Don't worry about finding the "right" book; your birth chart is the most important book, and you'll learn most by reading a series of books and looking up your planetary placements and aspects in each of them.

As for magic, if you have a heart condition or are under a physician's care for any serious mental illness, you should probably stay away from it. Otherwise, the choice of basic books depend on whether you're comfortable with Judeo-Christian symbolism. If so, my book Learning Ritual Magic is a good introduction; if not, and you can handle Druidry, you might consider my book The Druid Magic Handbook.

[neonvincent]

The Atlantic published an article about The Ritual Design Lab, which is "working to generate new rituals for modern life, with an eye to user experience." Have you heard of this already and what do you think of it?

[ecosophia]

I hadn't heard of it. From the article, at least, it sounds like they're rehashing the sort of Ritual Lite that was all the rage in the human potential movement in the '70s and the men's movement in the '90s: bland, harmless, entertaining little games for those who don't want anything serious. I could certainly be wrong, but that's what it looks like to me.

Enochian Magic

[violetcabra]

Studying traditional western occultism, I've been seeing some references to Enochian Magic. The little I have read concerning it has piqued my interest. For what it's worth my interest is entirely academic, this sort of practice being way out of my depth. That being said the narrative around the discovery of the angelic language and its uses is utterly fascinating. Of course, there are many referenced to Enochian magic as an especially dangerous form of practice. On the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic, Dion Fortune is quoted as saying:

“I have personal knowledge of more than twenty-five instances where the performance of [Enochian] magical operations based upon the Order’s [i.e. Alpha et Omega’s] formulae led to serious disintegrations of mind and body… Perhaps the most conspicuous example of the use of these formulas is A.C. [Aleister Crowley] himself, but there are plenty of others I have personally witnessed, whose personal shipwrecks have been just as complete even though their smaller tonnage, so to say, makes the loss seem less deplorable...”

My questions are: is it your experience that Enochian magic is especially dangerous and if so why? What about the practice causes these "disintegrations of mind and body"? In my possession, I have your edited version of Israel Regardie's The Golden Dawn which as yet I've only flipped through and ordered your New Encyclopedia of the Occult from Llewellyn recently. Are there other books that you would recommend to better understand the history and development of Enochian magic?

Re: Enochian Magic

[ecosophia]

Enochian magic is dangerous because it's both extremely powerful and extremely specific. Each force invoked from the Enochian tablets is highly focused and relatively pure, and so has to be handled with extreme care. In the classic Golden Dawn system, you get to Enochian working only after you've trained intensively with the more general forces of Cabalistic magic, so you know what you're doing and the magic doesn't blow up in your face.

Crowley's problem, which is very widely shared in today's occult scene, was that he believed he was a lot more competent than he actually was, and thus thought he didn't have to do the preparatory work. An embarrassingly large number of people jump to the same conclusion, and go rushing off to find the most powerful magic they can, serenely convinced of their own omnipotence. and proceed to burn out in one way or another.

Thus I do not recommend the practice of Enochian magic, and none of my books include instructions in it. That's not because I think nobody should do it; that's because I think that as long as you're dependent on instructional books to guide you in magical practice -- and it takes a decade or more of hard work to get past that stage -- you have no business messing with it. Once you've got sufficient mastery of the Great Art that you can tackle a system without benefit of handholding, why, it's up to you what you want to do.

Tarot-Based Combinatorial System

[danielcowan]

Hi JMG,

I'd like to try out the Tarot-based combinatorial system you outlined in the afterword to On the Shadows of the Ideas. I have the concepts & questions memorized, I'm just wondering how to get started now.

If I understand correctly, one rotates the the questions around concepts, so, say for subject x, if one was on G, Cooperation, the questions might be like:

Does x cooperate with other things?
What does x cooperate with?
In what contexts does x cooperate with these things?
From what do these cooperations originate?
Towards what are these cooperations moving?
(etc.)

So, after moving through all the questions for all the concepts, one would have gone through 484 questions (22x22)? I guess one advantage to a geomancy-based system would be that the process ends up being about half as many questions, though a system based on the I Ching's hexagrams would be about 10x as many questions!

Also, do you have sample topics to try this system out with? I'm wondering if one would use this system for anything one was interested in thinking about, or are certain types of topics more suited for it? Would it be better for something that Socrates might have discoursed about, like the concept of Justice or something, or, for instance, I'm writing a presentation on compost heat recovery systems right now, would that be a topic that one might use a combinatorial system to think over?

Anyways, great book by the way! I recommended it to a person who has a art of memory podcast that I follow, he was blown away by the quality of the publication, and I know a number of the students taking his memory course picked up a copy for their studies.

Re: Tarot-Based Combinatorial System

[ecosophia]

It's best to use topics that are of interest to you, and figure out from experience which ones seem to work best with the system. Yes, you understand correctly how it works: taking each concept in turn, you ask each question of it. Taking compost as your first theme, for example, you ask AA: whether it is? AB: what is it? AC: in what is it? and so on, all the way to ZZ, what follows from the consequences? By the time you've thought through all these questions and concepts, there won't be much about compost you don't know!

If I was using the I Ching, by the way, I'd use eight concepts and eight questions, so as to have sixty-four combinations. I've used a seven-by-seven system with very good effect, so a relatively small set can still be quite effective.

Thanks for your kind words about the book. I'm very pleased with the way it came out.

Chanting the Psalms

[danielcowan]

Do you see any problems with the practice of chanting the psalms while going through Learning Ritual Magic?

Not combining them in anyway, but doing them at different times in the day? I like the habit of chanting first thing when I wake up and before going to sleep.

Re: Chanting the Psalms

[ecosophia]

None at all. If you're comfortable enough with the Judeo-Christian tradition to invoke Hebrew names of God, you should get on well with the Psalms.

[(Anonymous)]

I finally gave into curiousity and plugged my birth data into the astrology chart website you recommend. I've always heard that April 19 is Aries, but the chart I got says Taurus, just barely-0 Tau 19'25". So that's interesting, and I guess I've been reading the wrong half-inch in yesterday's paper for giggles all my life.

The write up on the site about how to read it is pretty confusing, though. It talks about the planet above the horizon, but also says in the ascendant, which Neptune is in the ascendan, Capricorn, but below the horizon; Uranus, in Scorpio, is the first above the horizon.
Then there are no planets at all in three houses: Capricorn, Aquarius, and Picies, which are 12th, 11th, and 10th houses.

I suppose I need to get a book. What I can make out of it seems to fit with the various personality tests I've done: Meyers-Briggs and Enneagram.

BoysMom

P.S. The knife under the router seemed to work the first day, for disrupting the internet service, but alas, ceased to have an effect after that. It is directly under and against the router, with the point towards the connection to the cable to the internet. I'm thinking of trying a needle or perhaps a nail, directly under the hard drive of the computers, or maybe the monitors. Would be interested in your opinion as to which, as it is your experiment.

[ecosophia]

A book would be a very good thing. I recommend, in fact, checking out books from the library one at a time, and looking up the things in your chart in each of them, using that as a framework for your astrological studies. Since you know yourself better than you know anyone else, it's possible to learn to make sense of astrology very quickly that way.

Since we're just beginning the experiment with the effect of iron on TV and the internet, I have no idea yet which of these would work! One thing, though -- don't give up too soon. It may take a while for a long-term effect to be noticed.