Magic Monday
Apr. 9th, 2023 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
Impactation and sublimation
Date: 2023-04-10 09:31 am (UTC)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
Date: 2023-04-10 07:09 pm (UTC)Re: Impactation and sublimation
Date: 2023-04-13 08:31 am (UTC)I find it easier to think that I can change my perception of the snowfall, should the above linking happened. Something, like..."Ok, if I have overcome my fears and this snowfall is alike, then I can overcome the snowfall!" And suddenly, even though the amount of snow is still the same, it would feel like less daunting to me. A psy trick.
But as you said, you are talking magic, so the change in my perception of the things is also affecting everything that surrounds me, although in very small bites. Forests are a big deal in controlling weather, so if you can convince a few trees that the time is not right for a bad weather, then they might change slightly their evotranspiration, provoking changes in their turn. Since that's too complex to think about and there are a lot of unseen and unthought, let's assume it works by magic. After all, if it works, it works.
Re: Impactation and sublimation
Date: 2023-04-10 08:34 pm (UTC)One in-between option is to develop an eye toward something like what software engineers call "technical debt": temporary commitments that will need to be reworked later if that whole part of the system is not to eventually become unsustainable and have to be thrown away entirely.
Re: Impactation and sublimation
Date: 2023-04-13 08:42 am (UTC)I am not sure that I have understood. I think you are talking about a evolving design in which you set a goal, try a few strategies, and develop upon those that look most promising. But I am uncertain about how this relates to the creation of a symbol.
While learning calligraphy, there's a initial phase where you learn a typeset, and learn to control your pen, then try to imitate as much as possible the original calligraphy. But then, once mastered, it comes a phase where you personalize the scripture to your liking, because the things that worked best for other people might not work best for you. The result is a much better writting than what I had before, and still I can recognize the writting as mine.