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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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.

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

Comments

Picking up where I left off

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, and thank you as always for hosting this space.

I've recently gone through a breakup of an 8 year long relationship, and during the worst of it ended up completely dropping my occult practices (so far mostly SOP and meditation, not daily divination but enough to round out the big three, and starting some of the meditative work in the Way of the Golden section.) Being past the worst of it I'm jumping back in. So far it's been great: I still need to rebuild habits, but am using the lull to reorient some of my practices closer to the WGS.

I had two weird experiences while meditating however. The best way to describe them is "unintentionally scrying." With both of them there wasn't a portal (the method you describe in WGS.) It'll start out as a normal meditation, some imagery will come up as a result, but then the imagery becomes more vivid and seems to take on a life of its own. Both times it led to some pretty profound insights (both during the actual experience, and using the method you outlined of meditating on what you've experienced in your scry.) Is there anything else I should be keeping an eye out for if this happens? I want to build up my habits a bit more before getting more serious about a scrying practice, but if it just happens like this it feels ok to gather what I can!

Second question is about a particular symbol. Bare, dark trees were in the imagery in the second scry. When taking a walk one day a particular tree "called out" to me and I immediately made the association. I had a chance to meditate under it and ended up continuing this little meditative adventure I'm on.

It turned out to be an American Elm tree. In the past I've seen you comment on the different "personalities" of various tree species. Is there anything special I should know about Elms?

Re: Picking up where I left off

[ecosophia]

1) That's something that happens to a lot of people when they get serious about occult practice. Take detailed notes and treat it as you would any other scrying.

2) I haven't had much chance to interact with American elms yet, and of course the older material I work with is mostly European and doesn't discuss American trees. Treat it as you would any other older and wiser friend, and see what you can learn.