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. Two weeks ago I started on the OBOD end of my lineage with past Chosen Chief Philip Carr-Gomm. During the time of his teacher, last week's honoree Ross Nichols, the remarkable Vera Chapman, shown here, was the Pendragon of the order. Chapman was one of the first women admitted into Oxford University -- the two big British universities kept women out until well into the 20th century -- and in her pre-Druid days was an influential member of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, the most interesting offshoot of the Woodcraft back-to-nature movement, which we'll talk about a little more next week. (That's the Kibbo Kift seal below on the right.) Later still, during her Druidical years, she also helped found the Tolkien Society and was an influential figure in Tolkien fandom until her 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.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed -- as in, no further comments will be put through. (Ahem.) See you next week!***

Comments

Re: Werewolves

[(Anonymous)]

Oops. I just noticed I forgot to mention—the serious book is The Occult In National Socialism by Stephen Flowers. Has anyone else read it? If so, what did you think?

—Princess Cutekitten

Re: Werewolves

[ecosophia]

Interesting. I hadn't heard that Flowers had written a book on that theme.

Re: Werewolves

[deketemoisont]

Very recent! He also recently wrote The Occult Roots of Bolshevism.

Re: Werewolves

[jprussell]

I haven't read it, but I suspect it's pretty good - Flowers spent some of his grad school time in Germany and got involved with various German occult groups, including one based on Guido von List's Armanen runes, which originated in the same German Romantic milieu that led to the kind of occultism the Nazis were involved with. That is to say, I suspect that in addition to more normal research, his personal experience likely gave him some good insight.

And, since this is the internet, I will state explicitly that none of the above is meant to imply that Flowers is/was a Nazi or that his personal experience was with the same occult groups/practices/people as the Nazis.

Re: Werewolves

[ecosophia]

He was also quite active in the Temple of Set when they were doing a lot of Nazi-themed ritual work, as I recall. Granted, that doesn't make him a Nazi, but it suggests that quite a bit of personal insight may be involved!

Re: Werewolves

[jprussell]

Ah, I didn't realize The Temple of Set had done that. Was it the same kind of shock trolling that the Church of Satan gets up to, or do you think there was more to it?

Re: Werewolves

[ecosophia]

Good question. I make a point of not associating with Satanists -- once somebody embraces that sort of antinomian path, you can safely assume that among the rules they'll break are those that involve treating other people decently -- so I don't have any personal contact with the ToS or its members.

Re: Werewolves

[deketemoisont]

"The Wewelsburg Working
Date/Time: October 19, XVII/3:00-4:30 PM.
Location: Hall of the Dead/Walhalla, North Tower, Wewelsburg Castle, Westphalia, Germany.
Key: 19th Part of the Word of Set, Æthyr LIL.
Purposes:
• To obtain a full Understanding of the significance of the crisis that befell the Temple of Set in June-July XVII.
[...]
The anti-natural systems of the “left-Hand Path”, on the other hand, think to suppress some aspects of the intellect while strengthening others. What results is a condition of strain which, should the tension become too great, will snap back to an equilibrium which may be more or less viable than it originally was.
The intelligent mind cannot be “escaped” so easily. If it is argued, convinced, threatened, hypnotized, drugged, or diseased into non-rational channels, then its self-consciousness will merely reassert itself in some other form. This, I understood in the Wewelsburg, was the “magical epitaph” of Nazi Germany: That, in fighting against certain features of the mind, it had seemed at first to succeed but then had thus unleashed other, even less desirable features of that same mind which had previously remained in some
rough degree of socially-controlled equilibrium before this ultimately disastrous experiment in “conscious evolution” was attempted.
Just as the Third Reich’s dynamism got out of hand, leading it to embark on irrational and destructive foreign invasions, so its life-worship - which could have been a truly evolutionary synthesis of the most sublime concepts of Hegel and Nietzsche - became perverted into crude xenophobia, hatreds built upon superficial notions of “race”, and ultimately a maddened stampede towards a Wagnerian Götterdämmerung in defiance of a return to rationalism. Said Heinrich Himmler on April 21, 1945:
"We have made serious mistakes. If I could have a fresh start, I would do many things differently now. But it is too late. We wanted greatness and security for Germany, and we are leaving behind us a pile of ruins, a fallen world ..."
The Order of the Trapezoid (O.Tr.) extracts the positive, the constructive, the exalted, and the Romantic from the Germanic magical tradition - and just as carefully avoids and rejects those excesses, distortions, and cruelties which have made this tradition an object of the most extraordinary fear, condemnation, and suppression in the postwar period. The Germanic tradition is also part of the legacy of the Prince of Darkness, hence is appropriate to an Order within the Temple of Set, which embraces all manifestations of the Powers of Darkness in the world.
Nevertheless the care required in any investigation into this tradition cannot be overemphasized. Magical and research ability are not enough; ethical sensitivity and social discretion are just as important. The prospects for new and wondrous perspectives on the Black Art are exhilarating, but success will come only if the Order conducts its affairs with the same dedication and nobility that have made the Temple of Set a legend in its time."

- Michael A. Aquino, The Temple of Set, Volume I

(And Don Webb (former ToS leader) loves to talk about how bad a Nazi Stephen Flowers must be given that he initiated ("Recognized") a black woman - Patricia Hardy ( http://khprvod.org/2014/04/khpr-012-interview-with-magistra-hardy/ - I recommend it for those who listen to podcasts) - who later succeeded Webb in the ToS leadership - which Flowers never did.)

Re: Werewolves

[(Anonymous)]

Is Stephen Flowers a Big Name in occult circles? I’d never heard of him.

—Princess Cutekitten

Re: Werewolves

[ecosophia]

Yes, he published a lot of very solid Heathen books under the pen name Edred Thorsson, and a range of other occult writings under his own name.