Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting toward 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. At this point I've finally gone as far back into my Rosicrucian lineage as I can without repeating earlier images -- the other great source of Dion Fortune's lineage, of course, is the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and its founders and major figures have already been honored here. So it's time to leap back to square one and start talking about the other end of my Druid lineage -- the one that goes through the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids (OBOD). That was the first Druid order I joined, and the source of much of my early Druid training -- and it exists at all because of Philip Carr-Gomm, this week's honoree.

Philip was a young man on the fringes of the London occult scene when he began studying with Ross Nichols, whom we'll discuss in an upcoming post. (That's Philip with the colossal hair in the photo on the right, being initiated into OBOD on top of Glastonbury Tor.) Years later, after Nichols' death, he made the same mistake I did, asked the surviving older members about reviving the order, and ended up being talked into becoming its Chosen Chief.  He proceeded to launch an international correspondence course, write a series of first-rate books on Druidry, and in the process turned OBOD into the world's largest Druid order. He retired from the office of Chosen Chief in 2020, and has been writing books on other topics since then.  Did I imitate him when I became Grand Archdruid of AODA? Whenever I thought I could get away with it, you bet, and it inevitably worked.

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

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hi; I've got a few miscellaneous questions.

I asked you a few years ago about whether the circulation of light in the middle pillar should be done close to the skin or further out as they produced different effects, which seemed to be due to dealing with the ethereal vs astral. The same kind of dark, "starry" light feeling has occasionally shown up when imagining the light in the MP coming down to the spheres, if I imagine it coming from far enough away. Is that the kind of thing you mean by "silver" light in the modern Essene master healer exercises, or is "silver" just a fancy word for white here?

In your post https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/196988.html of Gnostic lesson 1, you mention reading from a list of books as part of preparing for "this training". I had thought that referred to the gnostic training as a whole, but, since this section does not appear in the collection into the Hermetic Rose PDFs, I'm thinking now it is meant to apply only to preparing for the priesthood. Is that right?

In the Essene master healer practice 2, you say to put two spheres next to the shoulders, but they're part of a triangle which is reflected from one that has two spheres next to/interpenetrating the ears. If it's a reflection, I'd expect the shoulder spheres to be above the shoulders, but the wording made me think they should be beside them. Which should I use?

If I haven't done the foot reflexology for a while, I seem to wind up getting *very* tired after doing it the next time, though this has only happened a few times. Does that indicate anything I should be doing something about? (Other than resting!) I still have not noticed any particularly obvious connection between the reflexology points that have tenderness and physical issues I know I have, and I noticed that the description of the mapping for the hands is actually quite different from the picture, so I'm not sure what to make of all of it.

Occasionally I've had the impression I was in and surrounded by this big sort of flame-shaped but "fluffy"ish thing with a flexible border a few feet out from me, with an impression of movement upward (which along with the shape is what makes it seem flame-like). This has popped up briefly at long intervals over the past year or so, but it became noticeable more or less continuously for a day or two after the apprentice Essene attunement, and then lasted weeks after the healer attunement (and was very strong for about a week right after it). (Also, for a short time right after the healer attunement it seemed like there was some kind of a cylinder shape overlaid on the flame shape, but that stopped.) Do you have any idea what this is, if it's not something specific to me or something I'm imagining? It doesn't feel like the astral stuff at all, but much more comforting, warm, etc.

Thank you!

[ecosophia]

1) You could read it that way if you like, but I was simply referring to the visualized color of the energy.

2) Yes, those are specific to the priesthood of the UGC.

3) Experiment and see which works best for you. That was always John Gilbert's advice!

4) When I feel especially tired after a reflexology practice, it usually means that my body's clearing a lot of toxic energy. Rest helps, but so does drinking plenty of water. The exact location of reflexology points, btw, seems to vary from person to person; pay attention to what points are sore when you've got an illness or injury, and you can work out your own personal map.

5) Hmm! I'm not at all sure. Auras have a lot of variations, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Though Monty Bodkin was not actually spatted at the moment, there did hover about him a sort of spat aura.