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.

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 

 

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)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

Probably it _is_ something particular to me with respect to its application to Essene Healing.
With respect to the dream, I have noticed that Archetypes show up when someone close to me dies. They appear to pull things out of my experience to assemble a symbolic story that I will eventually be able to understand.
The coracle-boat comes straight out of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the shape of it in the dream was very similar to that of the brain pan in the skull. The living woodcut, carved from deep red cherry, says that it is symbolic. My father in law floated for years in his brain-pan coracle on a sea of red life, as we all do. But at the end, he found he could no longer remain in his coracle. He was surrounded by seas with nowhere to go from his shrinking boat. And then Death shows up, wearing the beloved hat of his kindly, caring younger brother.
I am sure that kindness took my father-in-law by the hand when it was time to leave the coracle behind.
It would not have surprised me if Death had put down his black hood to reveal the kindly, smiling face of the brother-- But that was not part of the dream...

[(Anonymous)]

The cherry wood carved portion of your dream sounds like it was focused on your having been given the ability to comfort someone from afar in his desperation over an unfamiliar transition, which he no longer had any means to guide or steer. In practice, any sufficiently deep healing will end up feeling like a scary transition to an unfamiliar state, even though it's just a return to a forgotten level of health and balance.

Those uncarved planks that the attunement brought back into your awareness have reminded you what you were capable of when someone you cared about was in acute distress. Their being uncarved this time reminds me of a blank slate, waiting for you to carve out entirely new stories. Now that you've been reminded about your aptitude, what would you like to do with your natural gift for distance healing? Hospice is just one of the many varieties of compassionate healing you could focus your talents on.

I hope you will find it endlessly interesting as you begin discovering how the metaphor of the cherry planks, which your soul has so generously shared with your conscious mind, ends up unfolding. Will blank slates appear whenever your healing powers are called for? Will planks carved out with a story directing you to a person in need appear instead? Will you be able to call up the planks at will to watch your healings play out and assess when they are accomplished? What sort of profound healings will you be able to effect simply by following that 'off-camera' voice's prompts? So many undreamed-of questions yet to even be asked... let alone answered. Don't you just love the start of an unexpected new adventure?

- Christophe