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. Last week's honoree, past Chosen Chief of OBOD Philip Carr-Gomm, received most of his training in Druidry from Ross Nichols, who is this week's honoree. Nichols was a poet, a watercolorist, and an educator, as well as a good friend of Gerald Gardner, the inventor of modern Wicca. He became a member of the Universal Bond, one of the most active Druid organizations in Britain, in 1954. Ten years later, during a dispute over the leadership of the UB, he founded an order of his own, first called the Bardic Order of Druids and thereafter renamed the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids, which he headed until his death in 1975.  He was the author of three books of poetry -- Sassenach Stray, Seasons At War, and Prose Chants and Proems -- as well as The Cosmic Shape, a programmatic essay on nature spirituality with a set of poems attached, and The Book of Druidry, which was published after his death.

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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.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

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

Comments

Spengler on Morphology and Question on "Visions within Visions"

[jprussell]

Good Evening,

To those who celebrate it, a happy (early) Beltienne! May the coming summer bring you life and gladness.

To Share: As much to hash things out for myself as anything else, I've started a series of posts on some of the big ideas in /The Decline of the West/. The first one talks about the morphological approach and the value of qualitative judgment in a world that prefers quantitative analysis: https://jpowellrussell.com/#understanding_spengler_s_decline_of_the_west_bit_1

To Ask: Is there any particular significance to having a "vision within a vision" while scrying? An example to illustrate what I mean: I was scrying Ioho and at one point, I went inside a hollow inside a Yew tree and laid down. I proceeded to have some adventures, and then I "woke up" back inside the Yew tree, still within the scrying. So, other than grist for the meditation mill, anything interesting to know about such experiences?

As always, thanks very much to JMG and everyone else here for all that you do.

To any who will have them, I put forth my blessings and best wishes,
Jeff

[(Anonymous)]

This may be a bit broad for MM, but magic journaling and OSA-style personal journaling are important tools of the mage. What is a good method for organizing one’s journaling? I know some people separate magical journaling from personal journaling and basic day-planning, and then there’s a commonplace for retaining learned knowledge. I tend to mix all these together in chronological format and it’s not been a great process when I want to refer back to prior insights and events that draw more importance later on. People swear by different methods - bullet journaling, for instance- but I’m curious if other people have methods that work well for them, perhaps for different purposes.

Re: Spengler on Morphology and Question on "Visions within Visions"

[ecosophia]

It depends. The experience of visions within visions can be used deliberately as a way of getting deeper into the scrying experience. Beyond that, it seems to vary from person to person.

[ecosophia]

I'm very much on the sloppy end of the journaling spectrum. Unless I'm doing something very specific, such as the OSA work, it all goes into the same notebook, and I just page back when I'm looking for something. That said, your mileage may vary!

[yuccaglauca]

I started the last section of MOE posts a little behind schedule, so I'm just getting to Master Healer Grade 1 practice three.

Just to confirm, when it says,

"Then see the energy flowing from Desire to Intellect, then to Foundation, then to Manifestation and outward into the Universe."

Does this mean:

A. All of the paths shown on the FHR Tree of Life are established (I don't see anywhere in the text that explicitly mentions Power-Intellect, Harmony-Intellect, Harmony-Foundation, Harmony-Desire, or Love-Desire, though I may just be misreading the text.). Then the flow moves Divine Creator -> Divine Father -> Divine Mother -> Love -> Power -> Harmony -> Desire -> Intellect -> Foundation -> Manifestation -> Divine Creation, then a return flow moves up in reverse order until it reaches Harmony.

B. The above mentioned paths are not established. One flow moves from Divine Creator to Harmony along the route describe above but proceeds out from Harmony into Divine Creation and does not continue down the tree. A second flow starts at Desire and follows the route down from into Divine Creation. Then the return flow moves as in A.

Thank you!

Re: Spengler on Morphology and Question on "Visions within Visions"

[deketemoisont]

In response to Jeff's article: whether or not one knows that I just began running a book club about JMG's Deindustrial Reading List ( https://dryreading.dreamwidth.org ), I propose a second one, about the books comparing civilizations, the ones I know about being Vico's The New Science, Danilevsky's Russia and Europe, Spengler's The Decline of the West, Toynbee's A Study of History, and Koneczny's On the Plurality of Civilizations (in that order by publication and my reading proposal); those interested please PM me.

JMG: how much do the meditations in The Sacred Geometry Oracle have to do with Fortune's The Cosmic Doctrine, and (if I'm correct in seeing commonality) when did people began proposing meditations that way?

Bendith Fach and Real Estate

[(Anonymous)]

I cast a geomancy shield chart: "What would be the result of buying a house this year?"

1st Mother: Llawenydd
2nd Mother: Gwyn
3rd Mother: Llosgwrn Y Ddraig
4th Mother: Pen Y Ddraig

1st Daughter: Colled
2nd Daughter: Bendith Fawr
3rd Daughter: Pen Y Ddraig
4th Daughter: Tristwch

1st Niece: Colled
2nd Niece: Carchar
3rd Niece: Carchar
4th Niece: Cyswllt

RW: Bendith Fawr
LW: Ffordd
Judge: Bendith Fach

Between the RW and Judge, that's two signs I typically interpret as very "Yes", so my initial impression was that this is a favorable chart with LW Ffordd being lots of things are changing, RW Bendith Fawr meaning I'm in a good position to buy, and Bendith Fach encouraging me to hurry and things will work out. The way of points leads to the 1st Daughter (home) Colled, so because the way of points doesn't modify the overall meaning of the witnesses and judge, I'm thinking this means I'll fall in love with the house?

However, I'm concerned with Ffordd (change) as LW with my present situation being greater fortune and the judge (result) being lesser fortune. I'd much rather have the fortunes swapped so I'm moving from temporary circumstantial fortune to something more stable. Two mobile figures when buying real estate doesn't seem like what I would want in this context either. This combined with a way of points ending up in 1st Daughter (home) Colled (loss), which even with my favorable interpretation above is closer to infatuation than the lasting connection you'd want for home ownership, and I'm worried there's a lot of red flags waving around the reading.

Am I being paranoid here?

Interestingly, I attempted to resolve my confusion by casting a second chart: "What will happen if I stay where I'm at for the rest of the year?" and got the exact same judge and witnesses:

1st Mother: Llosgwrn Y Ddraig
2nd Mother: Mab
3rd Mother: Coch
4th Mother: Coch

1st Daughter: Bendith Fach
2nd Daughter: Ffordd
3rd Daughter: Llawenydd
4th Daughter: Coch

1st Niece: Bendith Fawr
2nd Niece: Pobl
3rd Niece: Bendith Fawr
4th Niece: Bendith Fach

RW: Bendith Fawr
LW: Ffordd
Judge: Bendith Fach

Between these two charts, would it be fair to say I'm being told more or less "Big unknown changes ahead, wait to see what direction the rubble bounces before moving and things will work out"?

Re: Spengler on Morphology and Question on "Visions within Visions"

[ecosophia]

There's no direct connection between the two sets of meditations. That said, I meditated my way through the Cos. Doc. years before I created the SGO, so the possibility of influence can't be dismissed out of hand. Other sets of meditations along the same lines probably date back to ancient Greek times.

[ecosophia]

This sequence takes place before the Paths come into being. The Lightning Flash, to give it its standard Cabalistic name, is how the Spheres come into being; only after they exist do the Paths emerge to unite them.

Re: Bendith Fach and Real Estate

[ecosophia]

In the first case you have two positive figures as one witness and a neutral figure as the other witness; the sum is positive, and therefore the answer is "this would be a good idea." In the second you've got the same judge and witnesses, so things will also go well for you if you stay where you are. So you have a choice!

[open_space]

What are some considerations to take when doing magic for clients? Evil magic aside, for example, if a client wants to get a different job, how can the mage bare the brunt of energy moving in that direction for him or her?

[(Anonymous)]

In about six months, I will be doing an interview which has the potential to completely alter the course of my life. Given the incredibly high stakes, I would like to maximize my chances of success using any (ethical) means at my disposal. My background with practical magic is such that turning it to this would be impossible; I have some Golden Dawn work, but nothing on the practical side yet, and my rather intense emotions here make the sort of equanimity needed for competent magic hard if not impossible. Thus, I'm thinking of turning to higher powers to ask for assistance here. Although forging relationships with gods is something I'm planning to do, I don't think I have the time to create one in advance of the interview, which leaves me with few options.

The best option I see is to use planetary charity; and see where things go from there. I've also realized each planet has something to offer: Saturn can aid me in preparation; Jupiter can help ensure that I'm judged in a generous and open-minded fashion; Mars can offer me courage and confidence; the Sun can help me shine at the interview, and is worth petitioning as the natural ruler of success; Venus can aid me in connecting with the interviewer; Mercury can aid me in being articulate, clear, and quick; and the Moon can aid in clearing away the hidden obstacles and inner conflicts which may prevent success.

With this in mind, I'm considering offering planetary charity to all of the classical planets for their aid here.

a) As long as it's handled respectfully, do the planets normally respond favorably to planetary charity from those without any kind of devotional relationship to them?

b) Do you see any concerns with invoking each of the planets and asking for their aid in situations with very high stakes such as this one?

c) Given the interview won't be for another six months, if this is appropriate, I will be able to space things out a little. Would the best approach be to follow the Chaldean Order, starting with Saturn and working my way inward from there?

[(Anonymous)]

What is going on when when consumes alcohol? I understand the scientific view but am curious what’s going on in an occult perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to do a second pass through the outer order material of the OSA, and in reviewing the comment threads on the original OSA posts here I found this comment from you about the Book of Lambspring:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/140782.html?thread=16950254#cmt16950254

I may have missed any discussion you did have about it. Did you have something specific in mind with using that book and all the images beyond using it as meditation material, or are there future plans to do something with it? If not, I'm curious as to what you had in mind with the connection between the book and the OSA material, if I may ask?

In an unrelated note, I just finished reading John Gilbert's book The Doors of Tarot, and it's an excellent book. So much so that I just ordered The Tree of Spirit. Mr. Gilbert seems to have had an extremely plain writing style that is also extremely clear, and full of depth and quite practically oriented.

One thing I got from it is that part of the art of divination is asking better questions, and giving better and clearer answers, which seems like a worthwhile 'transferrable skill' for daily life in general. To go out on a limb, it reminds me of Parsifal and the Grail quest, where he needs to learn to ask better questions.

Human design astrology system

[casperw]

Hello everyone and respectful greetings to our host,

Through a friend I was made aware of the "human design" astrology system. It claims to be a combination of natal astrology, I Ching, Kabala and a 9 chakra system, and to have been received in a mystical experience coinciding with the SN 1987A super nova. Its native website is www.jovianarchive.com .

While being sceptic I decided to have a look at it, read an introductory book and ran my own chart. So far I have been amazed by the efficacy of the system.

Does anyone here have experience with "human design" astrology in their occult work?
Does anyone here have information on the pedigree of this system besides what is claimed?

[open_space]

All,

I am looking buying the raw materials for home compounding Cell Salts but I cannot buy less than 100g of raw product and with the twelve it becomes a few hundred dollars. Since I don't plan on starting a homeopathic pharmacy soon, much less one that uses 100 metric tons of cell salts, I would like to see if people want to chime in and in return I can arrange shipping of 1g of all the ones that I manage to find. 1g of each will last you a lifetime.

Scrying; and GSF egregore

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning JMG and everybody else, :-)

And again a heartfelt thanks to you, JMG, for providing this space and answering questions - and, if you will accept them, my blessings to you and your wife, so that you may have a productive, healthy and happy week.

Two questions today, if I may:

1. in the Open Post, I asked about how to keep the egregore of something like the GSF „healthy“. I‘m still digesting your reply, but one follow-up question:

If individual people have less of an influence on others through such an egregore, does that also mean that a „virtual“ and „distributed“ egregore like the GSF egregore is, in a way, less influential or less powerful? Or is this a different kind of influence or power, and not quite comparable to, say, the egregore of a group with regular meetings?

You have been in a lot of organisations… how do such differences show?

2. When you write about scrying, the instructions say to „ask your guide to bring you back to the starting point“ at the end of the scrying session. Now the curious mind wonders…

Does it happen that guides refuse to do this, or simply wander off on their own? And if so, then what?

My imagination was showing me the dried-up, mummified bodies of occultists, sitting in their chairs in meditation pose, years after they started the meditation, while some part of them is still wandering around in the astral, searching for the guide or that portal door… ;-)

And that got me wondering… maybe this isn‘t funny at all? Have people gotten lost during scrying and not come back?

Thanks,

Milkyway

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning JMG,

What’s the best way to begin learning one’s personal elemental balances?

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for your work! Looking forward to read The Witch of Criswell, which is supposed to be delivered in two days.

For people curious about the abbreviations in the blog and comments, the ecosophia abbreviaton table is now updated with OBOD, R+C, SRIA, TSW and BA.

Greetings

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings everyone, hope you're having a good labor day.

I wanted to ask for advice on how people have helped their older parents who are in difficult situations.

In my case, my mom is having a particularly bad time even though she isn't even 60 yet, and her saturn return is ahead of her. She has a pretty challenging chart (fallen sun, fallen saturn, fallen jupiter, possibly fallen mercury on 29.50 degree of Aquarius, saturn squares her venus etc), and she's had a hard life too right from her teenaged days.

She's a very difficult person to deal with in many ways (was a rough childhood for me), and all the negative stuff has affected her health severely, with obesity, blood pressure and nerve issues, and I think she's sinking into depression after some issues with brother's marriage.

I'm trying to help but it's hard, and I'm not really sure how to motivate her at all. She's sinking into this weak maudlin religiosity/spirituality that is broadcasted on TV and on youtube, which seems like a way to ward off the pain, rather than genuine spiritual practice, and it kind of worries me that this is her mind accepting passivity in the midst of her struggles.

Has anyone had any success turning things around for a family member?

Seeing Your life Backwards

[rcastle]

Hello John Michael Greer

I have a question about seeing or remembering your life backwards.

When I was a child my father had a projector and we would watch home movies, but also short movies he bought for us. These we always begged him to play backwards because it was so funny to see all the actions from jumping on a horse to speaking backwards.

I was previously thinking that when you remember your life backwards I would see/remember a day, or incident as it normally proceeds going forward, then another day or incident from before that going forward, and then another incident before that.

Is that how it is? which makes sense to me. Or is it like my childhood movies where everything speech and actions actually move backwards?

Thanks for your help in clarifying.

Mindset Cultivation

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning,

I’ve been thinking about mindsets lately and how they govern such a broad effect upon a person. After some deliberation and journaling, I feel that a mindset of *prosperous ease* could be very beneficial - a sense of abundance and contentment, coupled with a relaxed and confident approach to life, knowing that success and prosperity are always available.

I would like to intentionally cultivate this mindset in myself through whatever magical or mundane means may prove effective. I have been performing the morning practice affirmation (“I breathe in life from the One Life…”), and I have developed another affirmation to add to my days: “I encounter all things with prosperous ease.”

Are there any other specific suggestions you may have for the deliberate cultivation of a specific mindset?

Many thanks!

[athaia]

First of all, I wanted to thank you for your advice last week - living in a different time zone means I'm usually asleep when the answers come in. I think I'll try the planetary invocations, because now I'm perversely curious how this will amp up the madness to eleven (anyone who wants to try my "technique" of WW[P]D - aka What Would [Planet] Do? - be warned that the effects are cascading and unpredictable. I had only wanted to control my overemotional response to life's stressors by doing 'Saturnian' things like to-do lists and self-discipline; now I'm suddenly obsessed with Minimalism, Slow Living, and Frugality, apart from all the other weird changes that I decribed in my post last week).

My question today is about dreams (no, not dream interpretation, I know you don't do that). I had a nightmare recently, in which I was trapped in a haunted house that wanted to devour me, and from which I barely escaped. In the dream, I realized that the house was only an illusion, and that it was actually a 'dimensional invagination' (that's how it was called in the dream) that was preying on unsuspecting visitors. It reminded me a bit of the places that swallow up people that were talked about here a while back.

While I was waking up from that nightmare, I wondered: in the usual dreamwork literature, dreams are seen as symbolic messages from your subconscious, and are interpretated in the context of what's going on in your life. So if I followed that understanding, I'd ponder in what ways I feel trapped in my life, or if there is a decision ahead that could 'trap' me in some unwelcome circumstance that would be hard to change, etc.

But in occult lore, dreams are happening on the astral plane, which is a separate reality. In this view, whatever happens in a dream, objectively happens on another plane (i.e., the astral plane). There is no need to 'translate' it into one's life circumstances on the material plane, since it's a complete reality in itself.

Now, I've been reading your posts long enough to realize I just created a binary ;-) but I'm a bit stumped how to reconcile those two views. Either something stands for something else, or for itself. I do think the planes are related and maybe mirror each other, if imperfectly, but I don't know enough about this subject to say how they do. Clearly, people have used their dreams as an oracle with just as good results as using Tarot cards or whatever. But sometimes I can't find any correlation between a dream and my waking life.

Another thought I had while I was waking up is that my physical body is a terrific safety anchor when something like this happens on the astral plane: I'm scared (I was also rather enraged in the dream), my adrenaline spikes, and voila, I wake up: speed exit from the astral trap. It made me wonder how people without physical bodies (aka deceased ones) deal with the nasties they encounter on the astral plane. They don't have this handy meat parachute anymore.

And the last question on that subject: is there a way to skip the seedy parts of astraltown? Are there some handy techniques to use before I lay my head on my pillow? It was a rather nasty dream, even if I escaped (and banished the house-trap, with baking powder, iirc. O_o). It would be great if those techniques also preserved my common sense: in retrospect, I don't understant how I could myself be lured inside, it was such an obvious setup. Why am I so much dumber in dreams than in waking life?

??

[(Anonymous)]

Did anyone attempt to heal, or at least improve, my eye? Yesterday I was absolutely exhausted, though I hadn’t been doing much of anything as moving my head was so painful. I slept about 15 hours total—there was a brief interlude to make dinner—and when I finally woke up my eye felt much better. So if that was you, thanks!

—Princess Cutekitten

Happy Beltane and Dolmen Arch

[cs2]

Happy Beltane everyone!

I am beginning the Completion Exercises for Dolmen Arch Grade 4 Athroniwr, after which I will have finished the Lesser Mysteries. I am planning to do some weeks of comprehensive review and begin the Greater Mysteries on the summer solstice.

I would like to invite anyone who considered pursuing the Dolmen Arch curriculum but dropped off with it or stalled in starting to make your preparations and pick it up with me! This time of year is peak sunlight and it's the perfect time to start or resume. Let's do this!