Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just on 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 or comment 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. Last week's honoree, Violet Firth Evans aka Dion Fortune, had the great advantage of coming of age when the British occult community was close to its apogee, and she had plenty of teachers. Some of them, such as Moina Mathers, have already appeared here; some of them, such as Maiya Tranchell Hayes, apparently didn't leave any photographs behind -- but there are several others, and this is one of them: Frederick Bligh Bond, who was the official church archeologist at the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey between the two world wars, and discovered a whole series of lost features by digs that just happened to go to the right place. Then it turned out that there was no "just happened" about it; he was using spiritualistic methods to talk to the spirits of long-dead monks, who told him where to dig. The church threw a fit and dismissed him, but he went on to publish several volumes about his experiences, at least one of which can be downloaded for free (here). Dion Fortune studied with him for a while and also did trance work with him; her connection with Glastonbury continued to the end of her life, and in fact she's buried there.

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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

Post on Narcissism and MOE Tree of Life Visualizations

[jprussell]

Good Evening,

For those who observed it today, a happy Easter, and to our Jewish friends, my apologies for not extending best wishes for Passover last Monday. For everyone else, I hope April showers are falling on fertile ground.

To Share: Not /directly/ occult, but my latest post is summing up what I've learned about common, or garden variety, narcissism (as opposed to full-blown NPD) from the blog /The Last Psychiatrist/, and I think it might be a relevant topic for those pursuing personal growth and/or spiritual healing for yourself or others: https://jpowellrussell.com/#narcissism_and_me

To Ask: I've been a bit slow in getting to the Tree Of Life-based advanced practices for the MOE, but I'm starting to look at them. Two quick questions: 1) Should the visualizations of the tree on your body be done at the same time as the daily empowering of your healing hands, or as a separate exercise? 2) Are there any considerations for compatibility and/or timing for these visualizations versus others? In my case, I'm getting close to wrapping up the second grade of the Dolmen Arch, and so in the third I'll be starting up the cauldrons/Grail exercise, and I wanted to make sure there wasn't anything to worry about there.

As always, thanks very much to JMG and everyone else here for good thoughts, good talking, and good cheer.

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

Re: Post on Narcissism and MOE Tree of Life Visualizations

[ecosophia]

1) John never specified. I've normally done the visualizations right after the reflexology work and the healing hands empowerment, but your mileage may vary.

2) It shouldn't be a problem as long as you do the Dolmen Arch work at a different time from the MOE work.

[deketemoisont]

1) what equine traits do Hu Gadarn's oxen have?

2) regarding doing the DMH reenchantment rituals outdoors (not that I'll be performing them any time soon, but I just read them):
a) is a chair actually needed (if one could meditate standing or sitting on the ground)? For the proper meditation position for DMH methods?
b) could one do the shortened exercises for outdoors places often, if one was doing the full ones for oneself at home as often?

3) will there be a MOE post this Thursday, say for further attunement scheduling?

[ecosophia]

1) None that I know of. They're the Two Calves of the Spotted Cow; the Spotted Cow is the starry heavens and the two calves are the equinoctial points, which walk patiently around the circle of the heavens like oxen at an old-fashioned mill:



2) A chair is useful but not necessary. You can sit on the ground if you need to. Yes, you can do the outdoor version as often as you like so long as you're also doing the full version.

3) I wasn't planning on it. Why?

[(Anonymous)]

Sonkitten and I were discussing the merits of shredded wheat, as Christians do on Easter Sunday. (We’re not supposed to let everybody else know we do this, but I have a question on the subject, so I’m breaking the rule.)

Here’s my question. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday. But during the Discussion of the Wheat, I remembered a commercial jingle for same that’s older than Sonkitten, and this is not the first time I’ve recalled an ancient jingle. Do these jingles have a spell cast on them so you’ll never forget them? Or is it just that, there being no way to mute the commercials back in primitive times, repetition drove them into your mind, like times tables?

—Princess Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

Since Bethlehem literally means "house of bread," and the body of Christ in the Eucharist is made of wheat, I could see that being quite the reasonable topic of Christian discussion!

As for jingles, memorization of poetry is the oldest information storage method our species has ever developed, and we used it relentlessly with such great success for so many millennia that Darwinian selection has had time to work on it. The jingles, chants, and poems you hear over and over again in early childhood will remain with you all your life, and surface with particular force once you get old. That's so you can pass on the tribal lore to children once you're an elder. It's literally hardwired into all our brains.

[open_space]

Good evening JMG and everyone,

1) If a healing hands session is to be performed in the morning should the activation for it be spaced from the morning empowering or can it be right after?

2) To the best of my knowledge, the lessons don't specify but I wonder if a healing hands session is best performed with an empty stomach condition for either spiritual healer or healee?

3) I am eager to keep practicing my MOE Healing Hands which I've done on myself for a while, but if anyone wishes to receive some healing energy sent their way I will do so for seven days. (If that's okay with JMG to post here).

[ecosophia]

1) It can be done right after.

2) I've never tried doing healing on a full stomach, so I don't know. Experimentation might be useful.

3) It's certainly okay.

Daydreams

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,
Something like 40 years ago, I had a brief flirtation with a lovely man. I only saw him three times and then my friends insisted I stop seeing him because he was not a criminal and therefore a danger to us all. We were working as narcotic smugglers at the time.

I regretted it extremely. I never even got to kiss him. I wished at the time that things had gone differently. Since then, every decade or two, I am seized by a sudden and violent longing for him. I then spend a lot of time daydreaming about him. I think I botched a major opportunity there although my life after that went well and I have been quite successful and even happy.

It just happened again recently but it is more extreme than ever before. He would be in his late seventies or eighty's now. He was a lot older than I was.

What I think is happening is that this is some kind of haunting. I am trying to make my daydreams of him very pleasant and successful as a way of letting him know how much I admired him and regreted listening to my halfwit friends. I am very tired and I am finding these dreams taking over at times. They are preventing me from sleeping.

How can I lay his ghost to rest?

Maxine

Re: Daydreams

[ecosophia]

You really have lived an interesting life, haven't you? As for the daydreams, if it's a haunting it's one that you're doing to yourself, by encouraging the daydreams. If you really want to let go of them, and him, say goodbye and then any time you think of daydreaming about him, do something else instead.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there a way to use LPR to summon the positive qualities mentioned in the Essene Healer grade lectures (unconditional love, helpful thought & attitudes etc.) & banish the negative ones?

-Josh

[ecosophia]

Not to my knowledge. That's one of the reasons John Gilbert encouraged students to practice the Sphere of Protection, which does permit that, though he always left the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram as an option.

[(Anonymous)]

1, What are good tools of occultism (and otherwise) you and the MM community would recommend for developing emotional discipline? I’ve encountered issues in past months with my emotions leading me to take bad actions, from hypochondriac events to recently putting my foot in my mouth, and want to put in serious work to master my emotions. I do have an affirmation on mind, but that has to wait until next year. There’s also the will training and the meditation practice, which definitely helped.

2, to JMG, in a house chart, would I simply look in the 12th house for an answer to the question, “how can I rise above/be more victorious than my secret enemy?’ Or is this a multi-significator question describing a conflict between two opposing camps?

[ecosophia]

1) For this I very strongly recommend the Order of Spiritual Alchemy work, which you can find here. In my experience you can't get your emotions to behave by suppressing them -- you have to deal with the old hurts and burdens that are driving your current emotional state, and spiritual alchemy is the most effective way I know to do that.

2) I'd approach that as a complex chart with several significators.

[jeremys]

Dear John Michael Greer,

If I’m not mistaken, I believe I have heard you give the definition of magic a number of times to be, ‘the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will’, according to Dion Fortune. However, isn’t this Crowley’s quote where Dion Fortune actually said, magic is “the art of changing consciousness at will”, or I have also seen it as ,"The science and art of causing changes in consciousness in conformity with will’", which Crowley and Fortune have different meanings? One is to use magic to change one’s circumstances, the other is working on changing one’s reality in the mind. Which do you think defines it best?

If the point of classic Hermeticism is something like union with God, and the point of Buddhism is something like awakening from samsara to enlightenment, alchemy is to create the Philosopher’s Stone, if someone had no knowledge of anything Golden Dawn related, whether it is the original order, or such as your books, Circles of Power, Paths of Wisdom or Celtic Golden Dawn, and asked you to summarize the main objective and point for doing all that work over all that time, what would it be?

Thank you for your time!
Jeremy

[ecosophia]

1) Crowley's definition is too broad to be useful. Fortune's is easy to misunderstand; notice that she doesn't say whose consciousness is to be changed, or in accordance with whose will...

2) The point of Golden Dawn magic as I understand it is the union of the lower self with the higher self, and the attainment by that united self with the Higher and Divine Genius, which is the particular manifestation of Deity to that individual. You can spell that "the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" if you prefer.

Cosmic Doctrine

[(Anonymous)]

Morning John,
No question today just a thank you for the newly published commentary on the Cosmic Doctrine. I received my copy last week. I can see some helpful clarification has been added and so far it’s making it much easier to understand this fascinating book.
Kind regards Averagejoe

Re: Cosmic Doctrine

[ecosophia]

Delighted to hear it! I'm expecting my author's copies any day now.

Ecosophia Prayer List

[tunesmyth]

To those who are interested, here are all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared across the Ecosophia community. Please feel free to add any or all of them to your prayers.

If I missed anybody on the full list, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or at the prayer list page.

* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to a few prayer requests.

Patricia Mathew's friend Al (Alison Kulp) is in the hospital with a nasty life-threatening MRSA infection; please play for her to be blessed, protected, and completely healed as soon as is possible.

For Det and his recently deceased friend, that the divine grant them both spiritual protection, blessing and ease on their respective journeys.

Luke Dodson's friend B, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, and is still in serious condition though she's already had surgery; for blessing, protection, healing, and a full return to health.

Lp9's request on behalf of their hometown, East Palestine Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people and all living beings in the area. The details coming out are still caught in the fog of war (Lp9 gives a short update here, and says "things are a bit... murky"), and various claims of catastrophe and non-catastrophe are flying about, but the reasonable possibility seems to exist that this is an environmental disaster on par with the worst America has ever seen. At any rate, it is clearly having a devastating impact on the local area, and prayers are certainly warranted.

* * *

If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun's rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.

Re: Ecosophia Prayer List

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this as always.

[(Anonymous)]

I participated in the Essene Apprentice Attunement on Saturday the 8th--Thank you JMG for making the Essene training available to us!
A couple of minutes after the attunement, I noticed that when I closed my eyes, I seemed to be looking at horizontal planks of cherry wood, very flat with extremely fine grain and well-finished. I opened my eyes several times and closed them again, and saw the cherry wood when my eyes were closed. This persisted for several minutes, then no more cherry planks.

Briefly, this sort of wood is significant to me because it featured in a dream I had while my Father-in-Law was dying. I was with him in spirit while he died.

Questions:
1) Is this the sort of experience that was mentioned as happening after attunement?
2) It seems odd that I would see something that for me was more associated with a death--Is hospice a possible pathway of Essene healing practice?

Thank you JMG and commentariat for any insights or comments you can give.
JMG, I know you don't do dreams, but if anyone is interested I have included an account of that dream below:

The day of the attunement, the wood seemed familiar to me--

The next day, I remembered that I had had a dream of my father-in-law as he was dying, 15 years ago, which appeared in a woodcut made of this type of cherry wood. He was standing in a small round boat, typically made of leather stretched on a wood frame (called a coracle). I was invited by someone 'off-camera' to sit with him in the boat for a while if I liked. My father-in-law would not be able to see me or interact with me, but my presence would be some comfort to him.
Father-in-law was standing in the coracle, looking desperately to the left and right at the cherry wood-cut waves. He did not have a paddle, and the coracle seemed to be shrinking. And then suddenly, he stopped looking around. His arms dropped to his sides, and he stared over my head at something behind me.

I turned around--And suddenly the woodcut was gone, replaced by quiet, grey water with fog on top. And coming through the fog over the top of the water was Death.

Death was in the expected black robe with a hood, gliding slowly over the grey waters, directly towards the coracle. I could not see his face or hands, though the robe had arms. No sickle, just a Presence.

"Time for you to leave now," the 'off-camera' voice said, with a calm authority -- And I was suddenly awake in my bed, very shaken up.

Just before I was taken from the boat though, I noticed that, oddly, Death was wearing a battered Caterpillar Tractor hat. This was the favorite hat of Father-In-Law's Brother, who had died ten years before him. I could see the bill of the cap plainly, very distinctive because of the way in which it was worn out. His brother was one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever known.

So--I saw cherry wood that could be made into the same sort of woodcuts, but it was not carved, or not yet carved. My meditations on this seem to indicate that I have work prepared and set before me. This is possibly to do with dying people, or it could be symbolic of other works in Essene Healing.

[ecosophia]

That's fascinating, not least because I don't recall ever having heard of anything like this. It may be something particular to you -- and in any case I'd recommend journaling and meditating on it, to see what you can learn from it.

Temple technology update

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Everyone

I'm the guy who has been researching the radio physics of the temple technology. I've built the model and it's ready to run, however, as seems to be usual with this line of inquiry, I realised the issues with modelling based on known physics - its exactly that, known physics. So I ran down another line of inquiry and I may have stumbled on a gold mine.

It seems that there's another name for the od, the ether, orgone, and astral light. There was a branch of nearly forgotten Egyptian radionics, or radiesthenia, which got revived after WWI by French and German scientists. They studied the energy to much the same degree as Reich, calling it negative green (based on the color spectrum), however, this branch of radionics has developed relatively sophisticated pendulums, which are actually radio antennae tuned to wave refraction angles, to literally measure the quality of the energy.

This apparently was one of the traditions taught in the Egyptian mysteries. One of the French scientists experimenting with this, Leon Chaumery, was found dead in his lab experimenting with this energy. He had mummified himself...

Basically, the temple technology is not just known radio physics. It's also a receiver of some sort of fractal or shape wave, based on its geometrical proportions. The resonance is with an energy source that is non magnetic, and non electric, although it can mix with electromagnetism, it's above that.

It's far too synchronous given your posts last week on the shift from quality to quantity as part of disenchantment, and coming just hours after you delivered me an attunement.

There's a lot more to this as well, including a potential link to the grail tradition, but this paper of mine is now looking like a small book!

Re: Temple technology update

[(Anonymous)]

I want a copy ;)

Impactation and sublimation

[abrahamjpalma]

Good day, JMG.

As I was reading again the chapter on the law of impactation, more specifically your blog entry which is more complete than my CosDoc edition, it came to me that a good way to be sure that I understood it was to put it in practice.
So here I try to connect two concepts of different planes: the fear of failure, from the etheric plane, and a blizzard, from the material plane. Both planes are close enough. And to be honest, fear of failure is a big spine in my skin.

So what have these things in common? They both obscure vision, dumb and paralize. They encourage seeking cover and ducking. They make me feel bad and make me conscious of my impotency.
How are they different? I don't have agency on a blizzard, but I could in theory take rein of my fear, one is objective the other is subjective. A blizzard is white color, while fear is usually associated with black color. A blizzard wets, while the fear only does so if I lose control of the sphincter, which was never the case. A blizzard pushes in the direction of the wind, while the fear I experience makes me still.
It is more alike to a freezing snowfall which has little wind, now that I think of it.

So, by linking these two concepts, the fear of failure impacts its qualities on the snowfall, so now, every time I feel that feeling it will bring the image of the snowfall. The qualities of the snowfall in turn sublimate, so whenever I see or think about a snowfall, it will remind me of my fears.
Next, the tricky part. Once the symbol is formed, the attributes that do not fit will be attached to the symbol anyways. It means that for me, fear of failure will be of white color, it will make me think of melting snowflakes on my skin, even though I know they are not related. These attributes degrade, they still exist but become out of context. On the other extreme, the ability to overcome fear disintegrates from the symbol, since I cannot change the effects of a real snowfall.

In other words, should I use that symbol (or rather, limit myself to that only symbol), I risk losing agency over my fears.

Re: Impactation and sublimation

[ecosophia]

Interesting. If Fortune is correct, it's not at all impossible that mastering your fears might have an effect on a material snowfall; that's the basic thesis of magic, after all, that transformations of consciousness can have effects directly on the world of our experience.

[lukedodson]

Hi JMG,

A quick question on semantics, for this Jung piece I've been writing: what is the difference (if any) between an "occultist" and an "esotericist"?

Thanks,
Luke

[ecosophia]

"Esotericist" is more polite. The two words mean exactly the same thing.

Hello

[(Anonymous)]

Hello everyone,

Just want to report that after last week's weird (almost night terror) like dreams where I thought I saw an astral object on abruptly waking up, I tried Kimberly Steele's recommendation to put a hexafoil design nearby after a positive divination (L9), and I haven't had a major incident since, so it may be working? Thank you, Kimberly (I'd noted it off your site a year ago).

dear JMG,
1) I also divined if I should try the bowl of vinegar and protective amulet for these problems, both were positive as L9, but then I wondered if the protective amulet could be L8 (as a magical working), and the vinegar would be L9 (since its not a strict magical working)?
Could you correct me if I am wrong here?

2) As an extension of the above, how do you generally delineate L9 and L8 significations for personal spiritual work? Would a hoodoo bath, or a renaissance talisman be L8 for example?

3) Extending on last week's comment on my discontent with electional astrology:
jmg, yes I have tried timing a good chart with my natal chart (strong waxing moon sextiling my ascendant lord or the lord of the topic at hand etc) and nada, each experience was very similar to the Liz Truss chart situation (and I've seen choosing average timings go well).

gullindagan, could you say more about the 10-15% boost you've found? I would imagine that type of margin would be hard to even detect. Wondering what you've found and if I am missing something here.

BTW, I will give a example of what I have seen work (the herald theory):
I looked back later at one of the most important moments of my life, where I flew halfway across the work to work a big work project that could fail (still can), and the chart of the moment of my plane taking off was incredible:
1)sun aries on the exact ascendant at the time of taking off;
2) moon in cancer 4th house sextiling my natal ascendant lord venus; also trining jupiter.
3) saturn (my natal L10, enthroned in 11th) sextiling the sun in aries;
4) pluto opposing the cancer moon from the 10th;
5) some other natal stuff.

It was a very challenging, life-changing trip, and I was frankly blow away that I booked this exact flight without knowing anything in advance.

I noticed the same thing with other important moments.

Re: Hello

[gullindagan]

By 10-15% I mean, marginally better but not extraordinarily better. For example, I regularly release certain content into the world and notice that when I elect the time it's marginally better received, by around 10-15%, then when I don't.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,
My apologies if you have answered this question before, but I recently came across a very thorough and detailed book on Mudras, which made me wonder to what extent they are compatible or safe with my limited GD practice (LBRP, Middle Pillar etc.) I recall finding them very effective when I tried them many years ago.
Thank you.

[ecosophia]

I don't know of anyone who's tried that particular mix, but it's generally a risky procedure to muddle together elements of very different esoteric systems. You could always put the same time and effort into expanding your GD practice, you know!

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

1) I would be curious to know your opinion about "The Qabalistic Tarot" by Robert Wang ? It looks quite complex for a beginner, although very appealing for somebody trying to figure out the meaning of the cards (following LRM). Is it a recommended read for a beginner (LRM, Paths of Wisdom) ?

2) When is it a good time to start scrying (following the instructions in PoW ?) After we have completed LRM or can it be before that ? Are there some kind of prerequisites ? How do we know we are ready ?

As always, thank you so much for your time and patience,

[ecosophia]

1) It's a good basic work, suited for beginners, though it's unnecessarily crabby about the Rider-Waite deck.

2) Use divination to settle this question. Cast a reading, and if you get a positive response, go ahead. Once you know the basics of meditation you should be prepared for scrying.

Children knowing the chakras

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG

I have an 8 year old daughter, and my father (her granddad) mentioned a few days ago to her in casual conversation that the body had energy centers called chakras, and then she proceeded to show him the location of the main ones (heart etc) without any prompting.

A day or two later, my wife (who wears a bracelet that has small charms with the symbols of the main chakras) showed my daughter the bracelet and asked her where she should wear each of the charms on her body (she didn't say anything about chakras - she just said "where do you think I should wear each of these charms on my body" and my daughter matched them up correctly with the right place on the body.

I asked her if she'd read this anywhere or where shed learned it and she just laughed and said "Dad! I read books for kids! They don't have stuff like this! I just guessed it" and we couldn't get any more out of her.

Any idea what's happening? I'm fairly interested in non-mainstream stuff (seeing as I read your writings) but I'm not familiar with chakras and energy work and I'm sure no one in my family told her anything and it's not in any of her books and I'm pretty sure her very mainstream school wouldn't teach it?

(I also posted about her 2-3 years ago on Magic Monday when I visited the Koya San shrine in Japan and there were various signs that the deity Jizo Bosatsu was taking an interest in her and my family in general after that - not sure if it is connected but I now pray to Jizo every day among others, and my daughter was once playing with an imaginary friend she called "Jizo" a couple years ago, after the visit).

Re: Children knowing the chakras

[ecosophia]

Your daughter very likely worked with the chakras in a previous life. If she still remembers this much at 8, she's probably going to do a lot of spiritual work of some kind once she reached adulthood.

Cutting Connections from a bad relationship

[iprescott]

Hello JMG and Commentariat,

I have recently had to leave my wife of 14 years. The same cycles happened and nothing ever changed. Then there were her actions last week that put the final nails in the coffin for our marriage. Do you or anyone know of a ritual, spell, etc that I can use to cut my connection from her as well as the egregore that was our 14 year marriage?

Cobalt Necrotic Skull

Re: Cutting Connections from a bad relationship

[ecosophia]

If you still have your wedding ring, and don't mind disposing of it, find a river that flows away from where you live. Write a goodbye letter to her, making it as long and as detailed as you wish, explaining just what it is that made you leave her. Put the ring and the letter in an envelope and drop it in the river, say your goodbyes, then go home by a different route from the one you took to get to the river. That should do it.

AMORC

[(Anonymous)]

What are your thoughts on AMORC? There’s a local atrium where I’m moving to and I am considering joining. I attended one meeting for non members and they seemed like nice people.

Re: AMORC

[ecosophia]

My contacts with AMORC members, with a very few exceptions, have been pleasant and cordial; the one complaint I've heard about the organization itself (this from former members) is that the teachings are kind of lightweight for the price. If you also have the benefit of group membership, however, and can afford the fees, it's a reasonable option.

Magic and Morphic Fields

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning. I was thinking about something you wrote recently, about the existence of magic, really powerful magic, in the world which waxes and wanes at different times. You observed that such reports are inversely correlated to the rise and fall of rational civilization. I cannot now find it, but you wrote that magic is attested in the archaic period, then diminishes at the height of civilization when rational thinking dominates, then comes back into tales during the migration era, a.k.a. 'dark ages', then has virtually vanished since the end of the renaissance and the current 'age of reason'.
Notwithstanding the fact that correlation is not causation, nevertheless, correlation is indicative of possible causal links.
The rationalist explanation for this, of course, is that the ignorant people of the dark ages are credulous and such credulity wanes under the aegis of rational civilization. Miracles are just improbable coincidence and happenstance. Subjected to the mighty light of reason, such dark imaginings vanish like shadows.
However, three alternate possible causal links to explain such correlations occurred to me, viz., that 'rational' civilization is only possible during periods when magical powers wane, perhaps because at such times we need to use our rational ingenuity to build and create; that Rupert Sheldrake's Morphic Field hypothesis is in play, i.e., when people believe in magic, magic is possible, when they don't it becomes almost non-existent; that something on the 6th Cosmic Plane, that has a much longer time-phase of centuries is interacting to change the reality of magic over centuries, emotion being a key component of magic, just as interactions on the 5th Cosmic plane appear to operate over decades, and one on the 2nd takes less than a decade (e.g. the appearance, insertion, and current push-back against trans athletes).

Bruce (AKA Renaissance Man)

Re: Magic and Morphic Fields

[ecosophia]

Good. I have another possible causal link to offer, though I'm going to save that until we get to that point in the current sequence of blog posts on enchantment. But yes, I think there's a case to be made for actual changes in the nature of human experience between ages of magic and ages of reason; more on this in due time!

Rosary Compatability

[williamf]

I was wondering if there might be a compatibility problem with saying the rosary and being a member of the DOGD? Praying the rosary everyday has helped me with some very strange paranormal events in my home. I don't want to give it up but at the same time I have a great interest in druidry. I'm currently studying your book "The Celtic Golden Dawn".

Thanks
Bill

Re: Rosary Compatability

[ecosophia]

Last I heard,* the DOGD had a number of Christian members, including at least one who prays with the rosary. It requires the sort of open-minded attitude toward the Divine that a lot of occultists had back in the day -- a recognition of the fact that you can approach sacred realities in different ways without one being right and all others being wrong -- but if you can do that, you should be fine.

*I say "last I heard" because I'm no longer head of the DOGD -- I passed that role on to three senior students at the winter solstice just passed, so they can have fun with it. Just at the moment, I'm delighted to say, I'm not the grand panjandrum of anything at all!

[(Anonymous)]

Do families/blood relatives tend to have shared karmic burdens? There are certain problems that are very persistent intergenerationally on both sides of my family—much of it is probably genetic, but I wonder what sort of practices I might be able to do to help break the cycle.

[ecosophia]

Use journaling and meditation to get down to the core issues that are driving those problems, and take action to change whatever it is that needs to be changed.

Post Plutonian Tree of Life

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG, Just finished my 2nd read-through of The Twilight of Pluto. Amazing read and your reworking of the tree of life is real contribution to astrology. Thank you. I have read in Vedic texts that the material world is a reflection of the spiritual world. The metaphor used by the ancient Vedic priests was coincidently of a tree upside down, where the roots of the tree are up in the spiritual world, and the leaves down. Where the two connect, and the limit of what we can see from this world, is a oneness energy called the Brahma-jyotir, which sounds suspiciously similar to Kether, and the roots of the spiritual tree (the top in that world) is a concept similar to a spiritual Malkuth. I may be mixing my metaphors but, does the Western magical theory have a realm beyond this one we are in, where the tree of life flipped on its head with Kether as its starting point, and the point of connection between the worlds?

Re: Post Plutonian Tree of Life

[gullindagan]

You got a source for that Vedic knowledge? Would like to explore.

Random odds and ends

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning JMG and everybody else!

I hope everybody has had a pleasant weekend and a great start into the week. :-)

If I may, I have a few questions today, to tie up some loose ends in my mind (and in my notes…):

1. I vaguely remember you speaking highly of Tarnas‘ „Cosmos and Psyche“ in a podcast. I‘m only halfway through it, but I keep on wondering… Tarnas extends Uranus-Pluto and Saturn-Pluto cycles with some examples back into antiquity, to show the cyclic influence of these planetary constellations.

What is your take on that, given the hypothesis you put forward about the time-limited influence of Pluto?

2. In browsing Abby Judson‘s original papers, she was talking a bit about the strong vs. weak half of the body (which is also referenced in the last step of the Judson exercise), and how the weak half is more prone to illness.

Would you happen to know any exercises or practices to strengthen the weaker half of the body? Or anything you‘ve come across in the course of your research or studies, which might work along these lines?

3. In the comments to the first post about radionics (way back then), there was some talk about plans for a potential „Aetheric Fellowship“. Would you mind laying out what your plans were/are for that Fellowship (or point me to a place where you have done so)? And is something like this still in the cards?

4. And finally, here in this comment:

https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/71276.html?thread=6298988#cmt6298988

there was some talk about a „mass of material“ called „Druid Mental Alchemy Course“. Again, would you mind giving a quick explanation about the content of this course, or what it was/is about? And also again, is this course still in the cards, or has it been shelved very deeply, down in the lowest of basements, behind the dusty cupboards with the dozen-year old jams? ;-)

Thanks for all you do!! :-)

Milkyway

Re: Random odds and ends

[jprussell]

On 2), if it helps:

Not esoteric at all, but I learned years back that most folks have asymmetrically developed muscles, and that this is a big driver of injuries. Some trainers for professional athletes have developed routines for evening these out to avoid such injuries. Tim Ferriss describes such "Pre-Hab" in his book The Four Hour Body, and has links to resources on most of what's covered here: https://tim.blog/gear/#pre-hab

Of these, I can vouch that the "Turkish Get Up" is a deceptively simple whole-body workout where you can start with body weight and move into using a weight once you get the movements right.

Cheers,
Jeff