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. Three weeks ago I started on the OBOD end of my lineage with past Chosen Chief Philip Carr-Gomm. Last week we got to Vera Chapman, and that brings us this week to John Hargrave of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. White Fox, to give him his Kin name, was a student of Ernest Thompson Seton, the Canadian artist and naturalist who founded the Woodcraft movement in 1902. The Kibbo Kift -- the name's a bit of Kentish dialect meaning "proof of great strength" -- was founded by Hargrave and a circle of Boy Scout leaders with Woodcraft connections who were sickened by the intensely militaristic flavor of Scouting at that time. The Kindred attracted a great many young men and women in the postwar years and sketched out many of the themes that became central to the appropriate tech and natural-living movements in later decades. Hargrave also wrote a series of novels and nonfiction works. People who knew him -- including Vera Chapman -- noted that he had a considerable background in occultism. The Depression and the Second World War put paid to the Kindred, but there has been a considerable revival of interest in the Kibbo Kift in recent years; it (and Seton's Woodcraft movement generally) are among the early 20th century movements worth revisiting. That's a group of the Kinfolk on parade below on the right.

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Ko-Fi

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 

 

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

[(Anonymous)]

I saw a couple posts around the web recently about people who are sexually attracted to certain religious depictions of the virgin Mary. It made me wonder, how is sexual attraction to gods and other holy beings handled in the various religions, assuming they speak of it at all? I doubt Christianity or the other Abrahamic faiths would approve of it given their usual attitude towards sex, but I think I remember you saying that arousal which springs from worship is spoken of euphemistically in some texts on Christian mysticism. I'm guessing other faiths would be more open to at least discussing it based on how often the gods take on human lovers in mythology.

Also, what advice if any would you (or other posters) give to someone in this situation? I assume praying to the deity in question for guidance would be the main thing, yes?

[ecosophia]

It really depends on the religion. Even within polytheist faiths, there's a lot of variation. One common thread, however, is that getting all hot and bothered about virgin goddesses is a very, very bad idea; that was how Actaeon ended up being torn to pieces by his own dogs, for example.

Yes, you should pray to the deity in question. You might also find some more appropriate focus for your desires.

Spengler's "Soul Image" and Question on Turning Fire's Passion into Will

[jprussell]

Good Evening,

Happy Mothers' Day to those celebrating it!

To Share: I wrote up my take on Spengler's idea of the "Soul Image" of Great Cultures - https://jpowellrussell.com/#understanding_spengler_s_decline_of_the_west_bit_3_the_soul_image

To Ask: Fittingly enough with this week's Levi book club post, a lot of my scrying and divination of late has been pointing to the need to transmute Passion into Will (I have /lots/ of Fire in my natal chart). I'd be thankful if JMG or anyone else has recommendations on wisdom to look into on this topic (books, articles, maxims, practices, anything that comes to mind), beyond keeping up with magical practice, journaling, and so forth.

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

Re: Spengler's "Soul Image" and Question on Turning Fire's Passion into Will

[ecosophia]

I had the best luck with the classical Stoics, particularly Epictetus; it also helped to reflect at length on the point that the word "passion" shares the same root as "passive." Be active rather than passive toward your emotional life, and things change.

Ecosophia Prayer List

[tunesmyth]

Here are all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared accords the Ecosophia community. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.

If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.

* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.

Kirsten, who is scheduled for a D&C surgical procedure (scraping of thickened uterine walls to remove polyps and potential fibroid tumors) on Monday, May 15th, 7:30am Pacific Standard Time; for the procedure to be a go as well as can be, for Kirsten's healing post-operation, and for her to be blessed and protected through the entire process.

KayeOh, who is scheduled for total replacement knee surgery on May 15, to have a good outcome to the surgery, and to heal quickly and completely in the aftermath.

Patricia Mathew's friend Al (Alison Kulp) is in the hospital with a nasty life-threatening MRSA infection; please pray for her to be blessed, protected, and completely healed as soon as is possible. (Update here.)

Lp9's request on behalf of their hometown, East Palestine Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people and all living beings in the area. (Lp9 gives updates here and most recently here, and says "things are a bit... murky"), and the reasonable possibility seems to exist that this is an environmental disaster on par with the worst America has ever seen. At any rate, it is clearly having a devastating impact on the local area, and prayers are still warranted.

* * *
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun's rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.

Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are now to be found at this link.

Re: Ecosophia Prayer List

[ecosophia]

Thanks as always for this.

Fourfold Breath; Witch of Criswell (Spoiler Alert!)

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning JMG and everybody else,

I hope you all had a pleasant start into your week. JMG, thanks a lot for inviting us over for Magic Monday again - this truly is a treasure. :-)

A few questions about the Fourfold Breath and about the Witch of Criswell (again), if I may:

1. a. What are the effects of the Fourfold Breath, compared to other breathworks?

b. And the actual number for counting (Fourfold vs. Threefold vs. Whatnot-fold), am I right in assuming that the point of this is to attune oneself to certain numbers which have a specific relevance in the occult system of choice; but that the basic effects of the X-fold Breath are pretty much the same, regardless of the number?

SPOILER ALERT

2. Witch of Criswell: I asked last week about the efficiency of certain protection methods against what Ariel encounters - and promptly forgot to ask about the Judson Exercise! So…

Would regular practice of the Judson exercise help a. against the things Ariel encounters during the story, and b. against the earlier ghost encounter?

3. What is the nineteenth-century book that Ariel gets from her grandfather to read in chapter 18? (I‘m duly impressed by how she reads, and presumably understands, half of it in one night, btw!)

If you‘ll accept some „good vibes“, then may you and your wife have a blessed, healthy and productive week!

Milkyway

Re: Fourfold Breath; Witch of Criswell (Spoiler Alert!)

[ecosophia]

1a) The fourfold breath is a good general breathing exercise; it balances the etheric body and helps the physical body relax and center itself.

1b) Yes, exactly.

2) It would provide some protection, but not as much as the amulet she wears.

3) I didn't name it because I couldn't decide which of half a dozen volumes it might be! In the second book, The Book of Haatan, she's slogging her way slowly through Lévi's Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

What is your opinion on "dynamic meditation" ( see: https://www.osho.com/meditation/osho-active-meditations/osho-dynamic-meditation ) is it safe to do?
I know Osho is a controversial figure, but this kind of meditation does seem to have something to say for it

[ecosophia]

It's not something I've explored personally and I don't happen to know any practitioners; it's certainly not a kind of meditation that would be useful for the work I do, but there are many paths and your mileage may vary.

[(Anonymous)]

Last week someone asked if bending nails into a fish hook shape would be a problem. I always thought it was a symbolic advantage - to hook the bad energies and not let them go.

[ecosophia]

If you did it with that intention, certainly, that would be helpful!

[(Anonymous)]

Yesterday I wandered around a forest alone for an hour. I tried to clear my mind, and to go through the forest meditatively. I kept feeling a shift between getting swept up in my thoughts, which really felt like I was going somewhere else, and catching this, and ending up almost completely 'there' in the forest. I noticed that voice of inner thought still quietly trying to come in, and I kept pushing it away, and eventually I got the hang of it, and tried to really look at everything around me. All felt totally quiet, and I felt like I was moving through the forest almost soundlessly, or at least that I could choose to be soundless or not.

There was a strange distance between me and the forest I was looking at, almost like my plane of vision was a sheet of some unknown material, and my arm looked slightly unfamiliar as it stretched into that plane of vision.

I remember sometimes being pulled into thought, literally being lost in thought, that my consciousness would whoosh off somewhere else and I'd be caught completely in it. I eventually toward the end of my walk got tired, and couldn't really hold the attentiveness anymore.

What was happening there? Was this mindfulness meditation, or just a forcing of myself to sense more rather than think? I do discursive meditation daily, but this felt different.

[ecosophia]

There are many different states of consciousness. The one you experienced is one of them, and yes, it's different from discursive meditation! That state of attentive, silent perception is called "single awareness" in some Western occult traditions, and it can be useful to cultivate.

[(Anonymous)]

You've expressed suprise at how well The Occult Philosophy Workbook has sold. I think the reason is it's the big picture in one place. The information had been spread through your books and blog, but the book acts as either a single place to start or a reference to look back on. I predict the same thing will happen with the new edition of A World Full of Gods for the same reason. They're very good companion works.

[ecosophia]

I was mostly surprised because until recently, not that many people were interested in occult philosophy at all! It'll be interesting to see whether the sequel, The Earth Mysteries Workbook, gets the same reaction when it comes out next spring.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

At the moment, while I'm performing the SoP, I often get intrusive thoughts about the people in my life drifting into my head. I get a bit mixed up, as I start to lose focus and think about personal situations, but I'm reluctant to banish the thoughts in case I end subtly 'banishing' them! What would you advise me to do about this? One thing that occurs to me as I'm writing is journalling, perhaps.

Thanks!

[ecosophia]

You're not going to banish the people by setting the thoughts aside! No matter what kind of intrusive thoughts you get during a ritual, put it aside with a simple effort of the will, on the order of "not now, I'll think about that later."

You can certainly journal about it, but that probably won't stop the intrusive thoughts -- that takes will.

[(Anonymous)]

Morning John,
Last month the UK death rate, which has been high for sometime, hit 25% above the 5 year average. It’s not the only country in this position. At my work in my department we have had 6 deaths the the last 3 years, 3 were cancer, 2 were sudden deaths, and one was Covid. In 29 years of working in my sector I have never seen this. I’m wondering if there is a ‘cosmic’ reason for this? Although the Covid vaccines have a role to play it seems to me that something larger is going on.
Kind regards Averagejoe.

[ecosophia]

I'm pretty certain that this is in fact being driven by the Covid vaccines. How much excess mortality each country is having correlates precisely to how much of the population was vaccinated. Your government website has it that 93.9% of people in England have gotten at least one dose of Covid vaccine, so it's not at all surprising you've got such high excess mortality.

That said, the Covid fiasco saw so many people behaving so strangely, often in flat contradiction to every value they claimed to hold, that it does seem that something spooky was involved. I'm simply not sure what it is.

[(Anonymous)]

I recall a horrendous dream during the really dark times that occurred at the height of the pandemic. I was a room, some sort of ritual chamber, and around me were people dressed in robes. There was a pit in the middle They were reading from a book. I took one look at the book,and the words, had a sense of undescribeable evil. Ancient calligraphy. I think I asked one of the robed men something about one of the passages, and an awful hell chant started up, as the men jumped into the pit, and blood began to rise. For some reason, even in the midst of this I had the good sense to not look down, not participate. I ran around and around and down a few levels whilst the chanting got worse. I found an exit, and suddenly, admidst a blast of fresh mountain air I was in a place I knew and loved, and safe.

My question is this, all the way through the dream I had a sense of agency. I can recall my thoughts which were independent from the dream. Not full lucidity, but enough of a moral sense of right and wrong and decision making. Is this a mental body function, or something else?

[ecosophia]

Yes. That sort of clarity in the dream state happens when your mental sheath is beginning to function as a mental body. That's quite a colorful and, I hope, prophetic dream!

[thinking_turtle]

To those who wonder what abbreviations like DH, LRM and SGO mean, I compiled a list of Ecosophia abbreviations.

To share, I've been trying to approach weight loss differently. I used to think losing weight was about the mind imposing restraint on the body. This worked well enough, but is unpleasant, and afterwards the weight comes back quickly.

Instead of Mind/Body I'm trying to think in terms of Body/Soul/Mind. As it turns out, it is not my body that wants to eat too much! When I look from the soul, it feels like my mind is tempted by food highs, and my body that goes along unwillingly. So now when I'm tempted by food, I follow the "solar plexus exercise" from "The Way of the Golden Section" to focus on my body. After the exercise, the urge to eat is gone, and my longing for starchy foods is replaced by disgust.

This Body/Soul/Mind approach has held up well for about two months now. Can't wait to see where this goes. Especially if it will help me to not only reach a lower weight, but also to maintain it.

[ecosophia]

Interesting! I hope that continues to work well for you.

Beginner

[(Anonymous)]

I am quite new to all this. I don't like the term "lurker". How about just "reader"?

You seem to have three paths mentioned in you FAQ as to where to start with your books. Any advice on how to pick which of the three?

Moser

Re: Beginner

[ecosophia]

It really does depend on what interests you. If your local public library has some of the books, or if you know people who are willing to lend them, give them a read and see which appeals to you most.

Regarding your new book

[(Anonymous)]

This is not strictly about occultism, but polytheism - I wanted to thank you for the updated edition of A World Full of Gods. I've been waiting for this one for a long time, and I'm surely going to order a copy on Amazon one of these days. I'm from a Smarta Hindu family, and the theme of this book resonates with me very well, because Smarta Hinduism is the only one of the four major denominations among the Hindu family that holds the view that there are multiple equal supreme deities - if I'm not mistaken, this was the worldview of the ancient Greeks, too. I have nothing against the other three denominations (Shaiva, Shakta and Vaishnava); but there is indeed a qualitative difference between the Smarta religious worldview on the one hand, and Shaiva on the other, which considers Shiva as the only supreme deity, and that all other deities are created by Shiva (similarly, you have Vishnu for the Vaishnavas and Devi for the Shaktas) - the Smarta view, however, is that all the six supreme deities (Surya, Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesha, Skanda and Devi) originate in a higher reality, but at a functional level are equivalent (not equal, though) and independent living beings worthy of worship.

Much thanks again, and best wishes!

Re: Regarding your new book

[ecosophia]

You're welcome and thank you! Fascinating; I wasn't aware of the Smarta denomination, though I know that Hinduism has many distinct traditions within it. I'll be interested in hearing what you think of the book.

Whole sign or Placidus

[(Anonymous)]

I know natal astrology isn't your focus but I was wondering which system you find more accurate/useful when interpreting your own chart. I've read a few astrologers saying that wholesign was the traditional method for reading natal charts yet placings is the default on most astrology calculators.

In my own case, wholesign puts my sun in the fourth house rather than the third, venus in the fifth rather than the fourth, and part of fortune in the tenth rather than the ninth. So some pretty decent differences between the two if we're going to use one or the other.

So which house system have you found to work better, or is it more of an 'overlap' thing?

Re: Whole sign or Placidus

[(Anonymous)]

(Op)

Some typos in there. 'Placidus' not 'placings', and '...pretty decent differences between the two if I WERE going to use one or the other.'

Tarot and astrology - learning resources and free readings

[eudaimonia]

I was going to ask your suggestions for additional resources for tarot as I’m re-incorporating it into my practice, but then I found John Gilbert’s book you recently had published! Looks like exactly what I wanted. If you have any more suggestions though, please let me know.

Additionally, if anyone would like free tarot readings as I’m re-learning, please check out my journal. I’m also working through Christopher Warnock’s astrology courses (focusing on natal right now), and plan to offer free birth chart readings soon. I figure this will help me gain practice, and could be useful to the community as I’ve seen some folks asking about natal questions.

JMG, let me know if this is ok to post or not! I’m not selling anything on the journal, but I do have a link to my website for my wellness business. If this isn’t allowed due to self-promotion, I can remove the link and just refer people to the free readings when I get them going.

Re: Tarot and astrology - learning resources and free readings

[ecosophia]

You can certainly link here to your Dreamwidth journal, whatever else it has on it. I prefer that people not advertise here directly without checking with me first, but that kind of indirect thing is no problem -- thanks for asking.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, JMG—

Thank you for offering to answer all the various and sundry questions!

I am currently trying to decide between starting with Learning Ritual Magic or Gareth Knight’s Experience of the Inner Worlds. First, from my cursory read-through of both, it seems like EIW only touches on some ideas (i.e, Pathways, Tarot trumps)—and where it does mention them, it’s as if there’s an expectation that the reader already has a level of experience or familiarity with them. Whereas in LRM, the knowledge/practice is given with the assumption that the student is starting from square one and the ideas are built out as you progress. Does EIW need Knight’s other books as companions to round out the lessons?

Second, the descriptions of the exercises in EIW are very general when compared to LRM or CGD—in fact, the lack of specificity as compared to LRM and CGD is marked. Is that a concern? Is there an assumption that the student already has familiarity/practice with this kind of work?

Last, it seems like the single goal of EIW is the scrying. It also seems like there is the expectation that the practitioner will be working with a group. Is this accurate? After EIW, what would a practitioner move on to, if not group work (which seems to be only available to UK residents or those who can fly there regularly)?

In short, I feel more drawn to LRM because I really like how systematic and fully fleshed-out as a system it feels—but I am drawn to EIW for its Christian emphasis.

Any help you can offer would be very appreciated!
-J

[ecosophia]

EIW was originally issued as the entrance to a correspondence course Knight offered. I have no idea if the course is still being offered now that Knight has passed on. It's intended for complete beginners, but you're right that the exercises are not as detailed as they might be. It does have the expectation that you live in Britain and will have no trouble getting involved in the author's occult group, but that's very common in British occult books. Britain's a very small country!

LRM was originally a correspondence course itself, and my co-authors and I aimed it at total beginners. We had a fair amount of experience in teaching beginners by then, so we made the practical instructions as detailed as they were because we knew how many people needed that. Later, when it was converted into a book, we revised it to fix problems our students had encountered.

As for what to do, that really does have to be your decision! Remember that you can do one and then the other!

[(Anonymous)]

Could salt water be used as an etheric condenser for talismans? I don’t have any gold jewelry to boil.

[ecosophia]

Find a homeopathic supplier online -- there are dozens of them -- and order a bottle of Aurum metallicum, which is a homeopathic preparation made from pure gold; if you can get it in 7x, 8x, 9x, or 10x that would be best. (One supplier I just checked has it for $7.99 a bottle.) Dissolve six pills in warm water and use that to paint your talisman paper. You'll find that it works extremely well.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

1. I've been reading Evelyn Underhill's book Practical Mysticism. This morning I reached a part towards the end of the book where she discusses how the practice she outlines involves a progressive surrender to greater and larger realities, a merger with the One.

Reading this book, I now understand more about what is meant in the OSA lessons about unconditional love.

Something bothered me, so I did some searching of the archives of past Magic Mondays about Neptunian / Piscean era religions versus those that are Aquarian. I found a comment about how the Piscean era had a focus on unity that 'blurred the multiplicity of the divine'.

So it sounds like what Underhill is describing has this focus on unity, if I understand it correctly. Does this mean these types of practices are going to become less relevant as the new astrological age develops? I suppose the Aquarian era means that if one is drawn to such practices, one just does it anyway.

2. What to do if you lose touch with your oracle? I seem to have less of a connection with the Ogham lately. I do daily one-card readings, and lately they've been hit and miss. For example, on this past Saturday I got reversed Straif, but ended up having one of the best days of the last couple months, and yesterday I got upright Mor, but the day ended up being as routine as it gets, and the one new outside influence that could have made sense ended up cancelling.

Thank you!

[ecosophia]

1) Exactly. That kind of practice will be less common among mystics as the Aquarian age proceeds, but it will always be an option -- the vernal point in Aquarius emphasizes the Uranian forces, but all twelve signs still exist and are active! If that's what calls you, do it.

2) This happens from time to time. If it continues, it may be telling you that you're ready to learn how to use a different oracle.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm nearing the top of the tree in meditations from paths of wisdom. Once I make it up to kether, it's time to go back down for another run. When meditating down the tree, although just finishing kether, do you meditate on it again orstart on the following path

[ecosophia]

You can do either one. When I was working through those meditations, I did one set of meditations on the symbols of Kether, but I spent a while after that meditating on Kether as the goal and endpoint of the spiritual quest, and then turned around and did another bunch of meditations on Kether as the beginning of the process of creation, before continuing down the Tree from there.

[(Anonymous)]

In The Refiner's Fire, there was some discussion of the search for the "pure" Adamic language and its ties to the mythology of Enoch built up around Royal Arch Freemasonry. Understanding that many of these myths and stories carry symbolic rather than literal truths, what is your understanding of the symbolism of the Adamic language and the Enochian stories of Freemasonry?

[ecosophia]

I see the Adamic language as a myth -- to quote Sallustius, one of those stories that never happened but always are. I don't think there ever was a true original language, but it makes a good mythic representation of the archetype of language itself.

As for the Enochian legends, they're an example of that curious habit of esoteric traditions, the backdating of a historical event. There's tolerably good evidence that the Knights Templar explored the tunnels and chambers inside the Temple Mount, and they seem to have found things there -- though it's anyone's guess what. (I've speculated on what it might have been in my book The Secret of the Temple, but I don't have proof of my guess.) Since there does seem to have been some knowledge passed on from the Templars to Scottish Freemasonry, I think a good case can be made that the Templar discoveries are what's behind the Enochian legend, but here again we're not in Adamic territory; it's more likely that what was hidden dated from the fall of the Second Temple, not from any more antediluvian period.

[(Anonymous)]

I find myself harboring a considerable amount of resentment about my life. The intensity is surprising, as I thought I'd dealt with these things a while ago, but the feelings have risen again in recent days. It is almost comical in its nature, as I resent having to deal with my resentment as well. Rather than forging my way through life, I am constrained and tossed about by whim and chance. My attempts to take charge result in my getting blocked and redirected. I keep being told that what I'm being directed to do is (somehow) important, but I'm not permitted to see why or how. It is intensely frustrating. How does one deal with this in a constructive manner?

[ecosophia]

That's a common experience these days! (Not least because many of us have a lot of reasons to feel resentful.) I recommend daily journaling and, if you haven't explored this yet, the methods of the Octagon Society, one of the things I received from my teacher John Gilbert. They're designed to help you drain off the old blocked emotions from your past that get in the way of dealing with life.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! I don't post often, but I noticed something weird and wanted to see what y'all thought.

Over the last few years, I've noticed that I experience a sort of cycle of "high executive function" days, where I can focus on tasks really easily, am highly motivated to get stuff done, and can visualize each step of my to-do list, and "low executive function" days, where I'm spacey, unmotivated, and easily distracted and can't hold more than three things at a time on my mental list.

I'd started tracking when these highs and lows were, thinking that maybe it was related to my hormonal cycle, but it didn't match up at all. What it did match perfectly, however, was the lunar cycle. My high days are always on the new moon and my low days are always on the full moon, no matter what other environmental factors there might be.

So, what the heck is this?

[ecosophia]

It's the effect of the Moon. Astrology works, you know!

Hagging

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG

I am familiar with the Old Hag experience (as described in your book Monsters).

A couple of nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw my wife was awake. She said she'd been woken up by what sounded like a typical hagging attack. Ticked all the boxes - unable to move, crushing weight on chest and she said "I felt scared..there was something evil about it [the experience]".

Basically she was holding our daughter in the dream but didn't see anything else and when she woke up fully she could eventually move and it broke (it's not clear to me if she was immobile only in the dream or even after she woke up).

So I suppose I'm not certain if it was a hagging or not (since for a hagging you need to be paralysed after you wake up right?).

Anyway, I recognized what may have happened but I didn't want to scare her in the middle of the night so I just said "it sounds like sleep paralysis - it's a very common thing" and got her back to sleep and the next day she googled sleep paralysis and felt a lot better after reading it probably was that.

I can't think of anyone who would want to harm her - I mean, nobody is universally liked, but she doesn't have any particular enemies or anything. She is the (part time, voluntary) Chair of a small local charity that is going through some tough times and may need to fire people and some of the employees have written her a nasty letter recently - I suppose at worst maybe one of them has a grudge?

Anyway my question is:

a) Do you think it was a hagging or just sleep paralysis?
b) Is it worth doing anything about it, or am I better off just letting her think it is sleep paralysis? She is not a skeptic - she believes in the occult etc but she doesn't want to learn about it because she thinks "such things are not to be messed with" - she's a practicing Catholic though
c) What can I do? I have no magical ritual background - just meditation and reading Magic Monday regularly

ADDENDUM: On an entirely different note - readers here may want to check out a podcast series called The Lovecraft Investigations (free from the BBC). It's a reimagining of some famous Lovecraft stories set in the modern world and I'm really enjoying it. I've read some Lovecraft stuff (At the Mountains of Madness, Dream Quest for Unknown Kadath) but I haven't actually read the Charles Dexter Ward story which is the first story they cover, so I don't know what they've changed - but I'm enjoying it.

Re: Hagging

[ecosophia]

I have no way of telling what it was. Certainly, though, it's best for you to let it be for now. If it starts to happen regularly, you might suggest that she start praying to St. Michael daily -- as a Catholic, she should be receptive to that, and he's the being in her pantheon who protects people from supernatural evil.

[(Anonymous)]

Last week, I asked a few questions about the effects of adding the Rose Cross to my daily practice; thus doing the LBRP, Rose Cross, and then Middle Pillar rituals daily. I have a few new questions about this.

A) I went from nothing to this in the space of a few months; and while I think I need to pause here for a bit, I have none of the signs you said to look for if you're over doing ritual work. Is this ability to quickly pick up intense ritual work like this another sign, in addition to the activation of multiple energy centers (now including my palms) that I probably did intensive ritual work in a prior life?

B) A lot of my brother's problems unfold from a rather nasty alcohol addiction; an addiction that runs in our family. He is very suddenly able to start to deal with this problem, and I can't help but note that this is around the same time I added in the Rose Cross; is it possible I have done something to start to heal a damaged familial egregor? If so, then doing a daily Rose Cross is apparently an incredibly powerful way to bring healing, if within a month of practice it can cause this.

C) My appetite seems suppressed. I haven't lost much weight yet, but I've started thinning out. One hypothesis I've formulated is that my etheric body wasn't getting enough nutrition, and so I was eating more than my physical body needed; and that now that my etheric body is being well fed, my physical body is adjusting by shedding the excess weight. If so, then this suggests a link between obesity and etheric starvation; does this sound plausible to you?

D) And a final question: I'm realizing I've taken ritual work a lot further than I have any of the other elements of the Golden Dawn system. Do you see any concerns with using Learning Ritual Magic, while sticking to my current ritual work, to lay the groundwork for the other elements of the tradition?

[ecosophia]

1) It's quite possible that this is involved, yes. See how things go from here.

2) Again, it's possible, but by no means certain.

3) Entirely plausible.

4) That's actually a fairly common approach these days, since so many people are more interested in ritual than the other aspects of the work! All you have to do is maintain the ritual work while doing the rest of the material in the book in the proper order and time frame.