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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I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

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

Comments

[(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.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a rather horrifying thought that our culture's favored tribal lore includes such dismal things as the theme song from Scooby Doo and Love Boat. On the other hand, those are a significant step up from the "Two all-beef patties" Big-Mac jingle or the "Oh, what a feeling" Toyota cheer.

Countless neural connections have been wasted preserving those mediocre indoctrinations. What might our species have been able to accomplish were it not for broadcast media?

- Christophe

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it works! The shredded wheat jingle is older than Sonkitten, meaning it’s been in what’s left of my mind for at least 44 years.

*chortle* I didn’t know what Bethlehem meant, other than “house of [something].” My joke actually fit the subject, for a change!

You have become my can’t-find-answer-on-Internet first source for Bible questions, I hope you don’t mind. While I’m on the subject, you may remember the bit where God assigns Moses to be his spokesman, then tries to kill him a few paragraphs later—Moses is saved by quick-thinking Zipporah and the incident’s never mentioned again. I always figured the most likely explanation is that that bit got copied into the wrong place by some monk who was so tired and cold he was not paying much attention, and the error got passed down. What do you think is most likely?

—Princess Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

Can you give me the specific passage? I'd have to look at it.

[(Anonymous)]

Probably: https://www.gotquestions.org/kill-Moses.html
(not OP)

[(Anonymous)]

I’ll blow the dust off the Good Book and be back before midnight.

—Princess Cutekitten

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, here it is. In Exodus 4:21God gives Moses a mission to crack down on Pharaoh. Moses packs up the family and they head off to Egypt. Then in 4:24-26 there’s the part about God showing up to kill Moses and Zipporah saving the day (although their son might disagree!). The incident is never mentioned again. 😳

—Princess Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

It's an odd one! Moses hadn't circumcised his son, and so was in violation of the covenant made between God and Abram (Genesis 17). Notice that God had just told Moses to threaten Pharaoh with the death of the firstborn sons of the Egyptians; just as the lambs' blood on the doors of the Israelites protected them during the first Passover, the blood of the circumcision wound on Moses' son protected Moses from death. I suspect, though, that earlier versions of the story had a lot more detail.

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP, but the passage is from Exodus, specifically Exodus 4:24–26.

As for Harold Bloom ... it's been many years, but what I recall is that Bloom's argument that J was a woman amounts to: "Well J has to have been either a woman or a man; but if we assume J was a woman then we aren't continuing to reinforce patriarchal stereotypes." (Or something like that.) Yes, there was a little discussion about J's use of irony, but I don't remember there being enough to make a case. Maybe I've forgotten something important.

[(Anonymous)]

If that part was from J source, Harold Bloom's "The Book of J" speculates that J was a woman with a womanly eye for a particular kind of irony, who gathered and edited together the Israelite folklore she liked best. I only read a little of the book a long time ago, but what I vaguely remember is that the instances Bloom pointed to as "ironic" included stories containing dependencies of God's actions on human actions which one would have expected from the logic of the setting should be impossible or nonsensical.

[robertmathiesen]

Nineteenth-century source criticism did ascribe those particular verses of Exodus to the J source. See, for example, G. R. Driver, Introduction to the Old Testament (many editions, 1891-1914). That the J source was written by a woman is pure speculation by Bloom, so far as I know.

[(Anonymous)]

I can vouch for that last. At 68 years, I can still remember the Winston cigarette commercial jingle from when they were still having cigarette ads on tv (Winston tastes good like a cigarette should...etc. Right down to the percussion effect in the last verse *yeeesh*). Yet another reason to heave the tv out of the house.

JLfromNH/Fulvous Vitriolic Cheese Ball