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Magic Monday
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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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
A car and a driver walked into a bar...
After being questioned and finding myself stumbling through a overly long and complex explanation, I've been reaching for an analogy for the physical, etheric, and astral bodies in order to more simply explain them.
Please check my work on this attempt: The physical body is like a car, a complex system that is inert material but has potential capability. The astral body is like a driver whose imagined destination, and intention to get there, have the potential to provide the car with direction. The etheric body is like the fuel - turning the car and driver's potential into active capability; and it is also the throttle, steering gear, and gauges - an interface for the driver to exert their will while understanding the inner state of the car. All three are necessary for purposeful locomotion, and there is constant feedback coming from both the driver and the car, but always mediated through the gauges and steering and powered by the fuel.
Much modern suffering happens because we live in a dualist context of body vs spirit, with some people walking around refusing to acknowledge the usefulness and purpose of their "car," while others live in their "cars" so fully they deny there is a driver, and everybody who seeks a middle way without guidance (occult/esoteric teachings) often ends up driving their "car" around without calibrated gauges or throttle controls, sputtering about with poor quality fuel and stinky smog coming out of their tailpipe.
To extend this, the mental sheath is like a travelogue of maps and experiences that the driver records and refers to, until at some point the documentation is so complete that the driver ceases bothering to drive at all and moves on to other activities (transitioning from physical incarnation into a mental body.) Another problem we face is that increasingly we as a society are no longer taught to make our own travelogues (personal gnosis,) but instead referred to mass produced maps, which have no local flavor and are often out of date.
Science gives us car repair manuals, religion gives us motorist laws and seasonal racetrack days, and occult training spans the gamut from driver's ed, to vehicle maintenance and fluid changes, to cartography class.
(Before I subject others to this analogy,) does this track with your understanding?
I'm certainly open to thoughts and corrections from the commentariat as well.
Thank you as always for this space and your guidance. :)
Re: A car and a driver walked into a bar...
Re: A car and a driver walked into a bar...
Reading your example makes my attempt seem not so simple anymore - perhaps still a bit overly long and complex!
Thank you for your help.
Re: A car and a driver walked into a bar...
Another useful image I have found helpful in understanding the planes is that of the stick figure family window decal commonly found on suburban mom vans. The decal consists of crude drawings of the family the car belongs to and their pets. On the physical plane, the sticker is a strip of plastic stamped with ink much the same as any other decal. The plastic is a petroleum byproduct. On the etheric plane, the decal’s plasticity creates its vibe or vibration. It will be affixed to the car window for a number of years via static electricity, and its clinginess Its durable properties belong to the etheric plane. When it eventually peels off and becomes plastic waste, its brittleness and tendency to curl will be etheric plane characteristics. On the astral plane, we begin to deal with the stick figure images that were mere ink in relief on the physical plane. Science as we know it dismisses the images as important or meaningful, and by skipping those meanings, renders itself incomplete and piecemeal. To a squirrel who peers at the van from a tree, the images mean nothing, and in that sense the modern scientist who dismisses the importance of the images resides on the same intellectual level as the squirrel. To most people, the images and the way they are depicted elicits an emotional response. Some will respond with hatred: they will be mildly irritated, with the thought that family decals are kitschy virtue signals that need to be filed under Nobody Cares. Some will like the sticker and want to buy one for their own mom van someday. Some will be filled with sadness and longing because they cannot have children. Most won’t care one way or another, but they won’t have any trouble understanding what the decal represents. On the mental plane, the abstract concept of family comes into play. Each stick person on the decal has their role in the family. The family is the concept that inspired someone to make the stick person decal in the first place. Other concepts that made the creation of the sticker possible are the innovation of cling plastics from petroleum and the invention of the car. None of these mental plane attributes of the sticker have any particular human emotion attached to them, but without them, the sticker would not have come into being. Subtler than the mental plane are the three subtlest planes: spiritual, causal, and divine. In there somewhere is the causal plane, and this is the plane where the idea of family first took root. I’ll speak only for myself, but at this point the planes become too subtle for me to understand. This plane has to do with the causes that gave rise to the mental concepts of the sticker.
Re: A car and a driver walked into a bar...