Magic Monday
Jun. 18th, 2023 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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. I'm currently tracing my Martinist lineage. That's rendered complex by the Martinist tradition that one does not name one's initiator, so we'll have to go back through less evasive routes. Last week's honoree, René Chambellant, became head of the Eglise Gnostique Universelle on the death of his teacher and consecrator, Constant Chevillon, whom I'm honoring this week. Martinist, Rosicrucian, Freemason, and Gnostic bishop, Chevillon was born in 1880, showed remarkable intellectual gifts in youth, but went to work in the banking industry while devoting his free time to occult and spiritual pursuits. He wrote seven books and many essays about Gnostic theology and practice, and his integrity and spiritual qualities won the respect not only of his fellow Gnostics but of Catholics and nonreligious people. In 1944, he and other leading citizens of Lyon were taken hostage by the Nazis in revenge for activities of the Resistance, and shot to death. He is considered a saint and martyr by most modern Gnostic churches; the day of his martyrdom, March 22, is his feast day.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
Necromancy, alchemy and vampirism
Date: 2023-06-19 03:56 pm (UTC)Today I have some strange questions :D
I need your wisdom on three things.
1. please advise what herbs to use for male pattern baldness? This is for my brother who is 24 years old. He is fully healthy and I would like to help him.
2. for many years of practice I feel a constant pull towards the chthonic world, I often even feel the 'need' to practice with the dead (I don't want to sound edgy), is it possible to combine necromancy and druidism? Can I read somewhere about the art of necromancy? What books would you recommend? I'm worried that working with the dead will make my ,'aura' slightly off-putting (I work in commerce and have to be careful about such things)
3 What is your opinion on vampirism in terms of energy practices?
Re: Necromancy, alchemy and vampirism
Date: 2023-06-19 10:23 pm (UTC)2) By "the chthonic world" do you mean the realm of the dead? That's not what it means in Druid terms; the deep Earth is vibrantly alive. As for necromancy, I strongly encourage you to have nothing to do with it at all. Yes, it will mess up your aura, filling it with dead energy; it can also mess up your health, potentially fatally.
3) About on a par with my opinion of bloodsucking leeches. Vampirism is a nasty, parasitic habit and anyone who practices it should be shunned by anyone concerned about their own health and safety.
Unhappy Deceased People
Date: 2023-06-19 04:00 pm (UTC)My niece, who is very empathic, recently took a job in a Funeral Home. She likes the people she works with but said she has met some very angry deceased people. Some of them seem to be angry it took them so long to die in pain, other seem to feel aggrieved they were left to die alone and one woman wanted to talk to someone in authority because it seems she was expecting something else. My niece says some of the newly deceased people she picks up are empty shells, the ones who died by MAID here in Canada have so far all been quite happy, presumably because they got to tie up all their loose ends and were ready to go.
So, besides prayers, is there anything that can be done to comfort these people? How long does the spirit typically hang around their old body. Can people get lost once they die? Could you tell us what you think a recently deceased person should know?
Many thanks from Maxine
Re: Unhappy Deceased People
Date: 2023-06-19 10:25 pm (UTC)Re: Unhappy Deceased People
Date: 2023-06-20 01:27 am (UTC)Of course, like any gifted person, she will need to to avoid the deadly trap of becoming proud of her gift. She was given it to serve others, never to vaunt herself above others. You might tell her that, if you think she doesn't know it already.
Oswald Spengler's conceptual three-dimensionality?
Date: 2023-06-19 04:54 pm (UTC)I've been wrestling with Spengler lately and I think that I have figured out how intuited so much. I wanted to run it past you.
Over on your other site going through Levi's High Magic you have a tarot exercise. Meditating through the tarot gives a "conceptual three-dimensionality." So, do you think it's plausible that Spengler did the same thing with history? And if so how?
There are established methods for meditating through the tarot, the tree of life, or books like Fortune's Cosmic Doctrine and Levi's High Magic. But how does one go about breaking new ground with this method? Are there any known tricks? Or is the approach the same as the work, ie meditate on it?
Re: Oswald Spengler's conceptual three-dimensionality?
Date: 2023-06-19 08:00 pm (UTC)For 1), simply looking at a culture and going "what if I thought about this like a living thing with a life-cycle, what would I figure out?" A whole host of meditation fodder falls out of that - what is the equivalent of adolescence? Do cultures reproduce? Can cultures get sick? And so forth.
For 2), once you've settled on a life-cycle, like Spengler did, you can take that frame and test it out on different cultures you know about, again, giving lots of fodder for meditation: hmm, what did Caesarism look like in China? In Egypt? Did the Mesoamericans even get there, or was it interrupted by the Spanish? What's the world image of Ethiopians?
I reckon you could get a lot of meditation out of just those two. And that's before you try to combine Spengler with other cyclical thinkers :)
Cheers,
Jeff
P.S. Tooting my own horn a bit, but here are the posts I wrote trying to distill Spengler a bit, in case they're helpful or interesting: https://jpowellrussell.com/#understanding_spengler_s_decline_of_the_west_bit_1
Re: Oswald Spengler's conceptual three-dimensionality?
Date: 2023-06-19 10:47 pm (UTC)Funny you should mention that.. I read your posts on Spengler trying to get a better handle of Decline of the West. Excellent work by the way.
I was trying to figure out if the USA was going to send NATO into Ukraine. I wrote it up on substack and cited and linked your Spengler analysis. JMG, I cited Twilight's Last Gleaming too, with a link to
https://bookshop.org/p/books/twilight-s-last-gleaming-updated-edition-john-michael-greer/9743815
https://team10tim.substack.com/p/a-nuland-surprise
"A Nuland Surprise?
The Ukrainian offensive will fail, which bring us to moment of the greatest danger. Can the USA accept defeat or will it escalate?"
So, hat tip to both of you.
Re: Oswald Spengler's conceptual three-dimensionality?
Date: 2023-06-20 12:25 am (UTC)If you do end up meditating on either Spengler or else directly on the historical events and themes that he addresses, I'd certainly be interested in hearing what kinds of insights it brings you.
Re: Oswald Spengler's conceptual three-dimensionality?
Date: 2023-06-19 10:30 pm (UTC)2) The approach is the same as the work. You figure out how best to meditate on something by meditating on it.
Re: Oswald Spengler's conceptual three-dimensionality?
Date: 2023-06-19 11:23 pm (UTC)I did know about Goethe, because you have written about it previously. Someone in the commenteriat suggested that western civilization could have taken science in the direction of Goethe's morphological comparison instead of the reductionist scientific method. I was meditating on how/why Spengler's insights were more profound than Toynbee's even though A Study of History is much more comprehensive when all of the pieces came together.
Incidentally, I've starting writing a substack in part to improve my writing. I didn't cite you for everything because it would have been cumbersome. But I do appreciate your work, so hat tip for introducing me to Spengler, Toynbee, Twilight's Last Gleaming, the term 'senile elite,' the myth of progress, discursive meditation, and a long list other odds and ends.
Re: Oswald Spengler's conceptual three-dimensionality?
Date: 2023-06-19 11:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 04:59 pm (UTC)I know you don't do dream interpretation and I'm not asking for that, this seems to be more of an expression of my soul during dreams. I often have dreams, or possibly the occasional more objective astral experience, where I am singing or rapping and it's really really good. In waking life I am decent at best at those things. I think these experiences are telling me to practice music, but I don't understand why I'm so much better at in my dreams than in physical life. Can you make sense of this esoterically? Thanks in advance, Luke Z.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 09:57 pm (UTC)I think they're encouragement-- like, see how wonderful this could be if you keep working at it :)
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:31 pm (UTC)Summer Solstice
Date: 2023-06-19 05:26 pm (UTC)Justin Patrick Moore
Re: Summer Solstice
Date: 2023-06-19 11:03 pm (UTC)—Princess Cutekitten
Re: Summer Solstice
Date: 2023-06-20 12:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 07:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:33 pm (UTC)https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/237431.html?thread=41675383#cmt41675383
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 12:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 06:00 pm (UTC)Does the prophet Abraham appear much in the western esoteric literature?
Thank you very much!
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:34 pm (UTC)Q
Date: 2023-06-19 06:09 pm (UTC)Re: Q
Date: 2023-06-19 10:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 06:18 pm (UTC)"That's rendered complex by the Martinist tradition that one does not name one's initiator". Is this a kind of security measure, caused by the historical entanglement between Martinism and Synarchy?
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 06:34 pm (UTC)I’ve been praying hard and last night I gave up an offering, in the form of a substantial charitable contribution (related to the health concern). But I feel that I’m too vague about who I’m offering to.
Can you recommend how I might do one more offering? I practice LBRP and Middle Pillar exercises regularly, as well as discursive meditation on occasion. I read my tarot cards, although not for the past few days. I pray to and for my guardian angels, the arc-angels (particularly the four invoked in the LBRP), my higher self, God, Saint Brigid/ Goddess Bríg, my ancestors and friends and family past.
I’m also open to planetary offerings if you think that is more suitable.
I don’t follow any religion but I’m post-Catholic - I kind of believe in one God above all (not saying there aren’t other deities) and in the angels and arc-angels.
Thanks.
Oh as a longtime reader, admirer and occasional buyer of your books, I would truly appreciate a quiet prayer. My name is Charlie.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 08:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 09:39 pm (UTC)I'll say prayers for you.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:46 pm (UTC)I don't recommend piling on the offerings. Simply pray, and be ready to accept whatever your god sends you; remember that this may be a less straightforward matter than it looks like.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:24 am (UTC)Thank you very, very much for the advice, enery and prayers.
Charlie.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 06:36 pm (UTC)Firstly (1), how are you? 😁
Secondly (2) is about the FHR. Please feel free to correct any errors you observe in my understanding.
So the grades go, Seeker, Sojourner, Server, Student which correspond to Malkuth, Yesod, Hod, Netzach.
John Gilbert’s paper describes Hod thusly: “Sphere eight is the Air Element expressed in the World of Fire. It's our thoughts, ideas and attitudes filtered through our emotions.” This makes sense because Hod comes after Netzach.
Elsewhere online and I believe in Paths of Wisdom if I recall correctly, Hod is also described as the Sphere that sort of breaks things down and takes them apart whereas Netzach is the Sphere of union and things coming together, right?
So on the pathway of the different FHR grades, Malkuth and Yesod take us up the balanced middle pillar, which is good because most of us could probably benefit from that sort of balancing. And then we go off into Hod/Severity This is imbalances us energetically until we move on into Netzach/Mercy. By moving from Hod into Netzach, we go firstly through the Sphere of dissolution and then into the Sphere of union.
Is this solve et coagula?
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:48 pm (UTC)2) Yes, exactly! From the point of balance in Yesod you go to solve in Hod, then to coagula in Netzach, and then complete the process with the ascent to Tiphareth.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:59 pm (UTC)Have a wonderful week!
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 06:44 pm (UTC)Ever since I did the DMH cauldron enchantment, I have only the cauldron sitting on my altar in my grove rituals. (The exception being the four smaller cauldrons used in the crane bag enchantment.)
Do I need to incorporate some other symbol of equilibrium in my altar set up, to replace the four smaller cauldrons?
-Cliff
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:48 pm (UTC)Counteroffensive
Date: 2023-06-19 08:03 pm (UTC)That looks like running into a brick wall and flaming out but possibly spared tooooo much bloodshed because of the Saturn aspect. What do you think?
Any suspicion that the western elites' obsession with this conflict is anything more than an ending empire's desire to remain dominant? The obsession looks pretty unhinged.
Re: Counteroffensive
Date: 2023-06-19 11:02 pm (UTC)2) This is an existential struggle for all parties involved. The overtly stated goal of US elite groups for years now, since our attempt to conquer the Middle East failed so abjectly, has been to break Russia apart into a collection of weak states that could be stripped of wealth, so that the US can prop up its faltering empire on the proceeds. That was the point of the 2014 coup d'etat the US sponsored in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian invasion of the Russian-held Donbass that Russia forestalled by its invasion in February of last year. The sanctions levied by the US and its allies were expected to bankrupt Russia, while the Ukrainian army was prepared to fight a defensive war that would cost Russia more than it could pay.
The problem with that was that Russia flipped the script. It turned out that most of the world, crucially including China and India, had zero interest in playing along with the sanctions, and so the Russian economy didn't collapse. Furthermore, once the Russian leadership figured out what kind of game the Ukrainians were playing, they changed their own strategy and tactics accordingly, played to their own strengths, and pushed Ukraine into a war it couldn't win. Now, if Russia wins, nobody is going to be afraid of US sanctions or the US military, the collapse of the dollar and of the US economy will not be long delayed, and the clique that manages Biden will end up with zero chance of a second term. Anything short of a decisive Ukrainian victory will be a disaster for the US -- and anything short of a decisive Russian victory will be a disaster for Russia. "This shall end when one is dead," to borrow a quote from "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi."
Re: Counteroffensive
Date: 2023-06-20 03:33 am (UTC)"PHASE 343 (PISCES 13°): AN ANCIENT SWORD, USED IN MANY BATTLES, IS DISPLAYED IN A MUSEUM.
KEYNOTE: Through the effectual use of his will a consecrated man can become a symbol of courage for all those who follow in his footsteps.
Will power is the ultimate spiritual weapon, and its undeviating use is the certification of individual worth. Wherever found, this symbol emphasizes the imperative need to make use of the will in meeting the basic challenges of the inner life as well as outer adversaries.
With this third symbol of the sixty-ninth sequence we see singled out and strongly emphasized the one power in man which is an assurance of victory in the contests generated by social (or occult) processes in which he has become an active part. The individual must use that WILL POWER, yet it is not really his own once he operates at a spiritual level. It is God's will operating through his mind which focuses its thrusts. It is, occultly speaking, the power of the Brotherhood — the energy of the Whole operating through the one-pointed individual who has made this Whole aware of the need for its use in a particular situation."
The Kremlin clearly has a great astrologer on call!
Re: Counteroffensive
Date: 2023-06-20 03:39 am (UTC)Levels of being/planes of existence from Learning Ritual Magic
Date: 2023-06-19 08:06 pm (UTC)I worked through Learning Ritual Magic some years ago before switching directions and focusing on Bardon’s works. I found a lot of value in your early Golden Dawn books, though, and one area that I draw a lot of continued parallels to are your divisions of the 5 levels. Can you point me to any source that discusses this a little more, and the interactions between levels?
Thanks!
Re: Levels of being/planes of existence from Learning Ritual Magic
Date: 2023-06-19 11:13 pm (UTC)Bornless ritual
Date: 2023-06-19 08:26 pm (UTC)I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion on the bornless ritual, and so I wanted to ask if this ritual is compatible with G.D. Work, and if it is something that should be occasionally used by G.D. Students with more than a year of experience?
Re: Bornless ritual
Date: 2023-06-19 11:17 pm (UTC)If you've only had a little over a year of experience, though, you may not be up to it yet. You'll need to be comfortable with the whole range of pentagram rituals, taking on godforms, the vibratory formula of the Middle Pillar, and the solitary opening and closing rituals. If you're not that far along, my suggestion is to get a copy of Regardie's book Ceremonial Magic and work with the Watchtower ritual for a year or so, starting with the basic form and working up to the complete form; when you can do that from memory, with good results, you can go onto the Bornless One ritual and get solid results with it.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 08:43 pm (UTC)Theory being that the astrological quality which encourages this tendency to not go along with the crowd is a debilitated Moon. I say this as someone with a void of course (yes I know that's normally a horary consideration) Capricorn balsamic Moon, not a terribly happy spot for Selene. I'm curious to know if anyone else here has what they'd consider to be a challenged Moon, and indeed from those who have happy Moon placements for a compare/contrast approach. I'm sure there's more to the tendency to question groupthink than just this Lunar aspect, but am also interested to know if it seens more common than might otherwise be expected to see difficult Moon placements in the oddbods who wonder why the BBC reported on the collapse of building 7 before it actually collapsed, for example.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 09:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2023-06-19 11:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 01:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:46 am (UTC)Never even *considered* getting the shots. Seemed like a bad idea from the start, for lots of reasons.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 07:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 09:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 01:12 am (UTC)First of all, though, a general remark. One esoteric author I think well of remarked that pain is as a sense, like the classic five senses (touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight). It gives people a crude (and useful) awareness of their surroundings, that's all. [Malidoma Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing and Community (1993), pp. 37-38.] Since it is a sense, its input can be thought about, worked with, and even tweaked, as one goes through one's life.
Now for a few personal examples:
#1: Trancing out to deal with pain.
At one point in my life, there was some reason to think I was allergic to novocaine. Eventually it turned out that IO did not have that allergy, but in the meantime I had to have a cavity filled. I had a sympathetic dentist at the time, and we planned that he would work slowly and use a low-speed drill, while I would trance out as he worked. It wasn't a picnic and I still felt what he was doing to the tooth, but it wasn't awful either, and we got the cavity drilled and filled.
Something similar happened later with another dentist, far less sympathetic: she didn't have time that day, she said, to wait for the novocaine to take effect. I tranced out much more deeply, and told her to call me back gently when she was done. She drilled and filled, and I felt almost nothing. But when she had finished, she brought me back by shaking me fairly roughly, which hurt almost as much as the drilling would have done. To this day I can't decide whether my trancing out so deeply had scared her, or whether she was something of a sadist -- or maybe both. In any case, I never went back to her.
#2: Deliberately using the placebo effect on oneself.
[The placebo effect is one of the odder and more powerful phenomena in nature, and shows the surprising extent to which thought can affect the body's functioning, including the operation of the senses.]
I had to have a very minor, but somewhat painful surgical procedure done on my face. The surgeon forbad me to take either aspirin or ibuprofen for, IIRC, as much as a week ahead of the surgery, but recommended tylenol instead. Tylenol, however, usually has no painkilling effect on me (I may lack the receptors for it). So I found a differently shaped, brightly colored form of tylenol for children in the drugstore, and I spent a week in advance "deliberately knowing" -- I don't know how to say it more clearly than that -- that those odd pills were a new, as yet unnamed powerful painkiller. On the day of the surgery, I took two of those pills in advance, and I felt no pain during the surgery.
Note. It used to be thought that placeboes only worked if the patient did not know he was taking a placebo. More recent medical research has shown that this is not so. (And my own experience shows that the patient can even activate the placebo effect for himself, without any participation by a physician. Incidentally, the placebo effect can account for the genuine effectiveness of a great deal of magic.)
#3: Changing the way I characterize my pain to myself.
For some four decades I have had chronic, fairly low full-body pain, probably an effect of a very stressful professional life in my university. On the recommendation of my PCP, I went to a pain managerment clinic, only to learn -- after several visits -- that they had no effective means of dealing full-body pain if it could not be centered to any specific site of the body where they could inject some medicine.
So, if I could not change the activity of the bodily sense that is called pain, I could at least change how I thought and talked about the pain to myself (and to others), and also how I reacted to it. So, first of all, I deliberately stopped characterizing my pain as any sort of "suffering." And second, I deliberately made myself ignore my pain, as much as possible, as I went through life. I still hurt, but left the pain I was feeling out of account (as much as possible) as I went about my life. (This was made much, much easier by the fact that the pain was relatively low-level. It might not be possible for a person in intense pain to use this method effectively.)
Training myself to this habit of thought was a slow, slow process, and I haven't always been successful. But I have been very stubborn about it. I will not be taken captive by pain. It's nothing but pain, a mere sense. The only power it has over me comes from my fear of it. To paraphrase, Frank Herbert, "Fear of pain is the life-killer." After all, it's nothing but pain.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 01:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 03:35 am (UTC)But I have dealt with frequent episodes of debilitating pain for most of my life, and have learned a few things. YMMV. NSAIDs screwed up my gut lining and I haven't been able to use them for decades, I'm not willing to use anything stronger because of the potential for addiction and nasty side effects, so finding "alternative" ways to deal with pain has been a big deal for me. Caffeine is at best a temporary band-aid and at worst just prolongs the episode, like hitting the snooze button on an alarm clock. Here's what works:
1) Water. Obviously, it's going to depend on what resources you have available to you and the nature of the pain, but my first line of defense for pain is always water, whether that's crouching under a scalding shower (muscle pain), dousing myself in ice water, or floating in a lake-- water helps. It's not a cure, but it loosens the grip of pain.
2) Plants, sun, and fresh air. I know. This sounds so trite. It's not. Getting some sun regularly helps, in a way that supplementing vitamin D is not really equal to. Breathing the air outside helps. Hanging out with my plants and checking up on them helps. If you've got any trees you're friendly with, pay them a visit, lean on them, talk to them. I don't know why it helps or how, but it helps. Maybe they just have a longer perspective on things ;) For back and hip pain, my herbalist friend taught me to find a sturdy smallish tree-- not a sapling, but not something you can bend and narrower than your own trunk-- face the tree and clasp hands around the trunk horizontally (like, not reaching up or down, but straight out from the shoulder), with knees bent, back straight, and just sort of lean/pull for as long as you can manage, as though you could teach your spine to imitate the strength, and straightness and suppleness of the tree. Repeat often.
3) Prayer/meditation. Helps if it's repetitive. I'm not going to be doing anything discursive while in extreme pain, but I can handle repeating a short prayer, and it helps to have a set of beads or a knotted rope to keep count. Not because it matters how many, but because it helps me keep going even when I want to quit, and I need repetitions in the hundreds to get where I'm going. I keep a regular pattern of breathing with the words, focus on *being* in my chest (it's usually my head that hurts, no good being there), and this can often get me at enough of a remove from the pain that I can be aware of it, but it's not an urgent concern.
3a) I'm religious, so it's not a big step to go from here to re-framing pain as "OK, I'm paying attention, God, what do I need to learn here?" Which is an act of trust, and just try to relax and hold onto the state I've drifted to by meditating, and listen. Be attentive. I won't say I've had any grand revelations this way, but a) it feels like the right thing to do, and b) it re-frames the experience as an opportunity to learn something, rather than just something awful happening *to* me, and this is extremely helpful. Pain that you can't do anything about is like that old kids' game: "Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it... gotta go *through* it!" Any time you sidestep, try to avoid, curl up and self-pity (been there lots) you're giving up the opportunity to learn what it wants to teach you. But you can decide to go THROUGH, consciously, with that end in mind. And you will learn things. It's maybe a bit like bodybuilding. Maybe you don't *like* the exercise, but doing it regularly, on purpose, with good form, does build muscle. So perhaps when the opportunity is handed to you, try to treat it like leg day at the spiritual gym. At the very least, it gives you a sense of agency.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 12:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2023-06-20 04:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 03:42 am (UTC)There are actually quite a few options, though they aren't usually framed in such terms.
1) Autogenic Training is popular with German soldiers and occultists. Both this and hypnosis have explicit clinical literature supporting their use in managing both acute and chronic pain. My familiarity with it is limited as it interacted badly with other spiritual practices in the past.
2) Most forms of eastern meditation are actually quite good for this, including the pop-mindfulness stuff that isn't normally very useful. Worth noting, it was extremely common for retiring soldiers to become Zen monks, meaning that tradition is sitting on an absurd amount of material regarding both pain and warfare.
3) Most elite military units teach square / rhythmic breathing (alongside visualization and self-talk). This has been covered in excellent detail in a number of JMG's works. The particular adaptation for this purpose is usually breath sensation in, feel the circulation, breath pain out, feel the relaxation, repeat. It is also possible (using JMG's color breathing) to blot out pain by trying to bring in either tranquility or focus.
4) There is at least one case I know of where somebody used the Vital Breathing from Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics to walk ~12 miles with a gunshot wound to the leg.
5) As a matter of practice, almost any occult healing technique will have the side effect of dampening pain or making it more manageable. I'm not sure what is available in your preferred tradition.
6) Worth noting is that consciously focusing on the pain and exploring the full experience, as well as consciously trying to accept it, drastically speeds recovery even though it does make it much harder to do anything else at the same time.
7) In my experience, the attitude that you take towards the pain is the single largest variable in how manageable it is, and this is also part of why I dislike the concept of "pain management". The long term solution is healing, the short term solution is resilience or focus. In line with the above conversation on polarity and locking things in place, my experience has always been that trying to escape or stop pain seems to just make it worse. Accepting it makes it manageable, and if you need to do something else; then the best way to handle that is by either focusing on the task or paying attention to the underlying integrity of the body, then trying to extend that to accomplish what is needed.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:13 pm (UTC)The question I’m going to ask is probably a little bit odd. Forgive me if you think it is ludicrous or silly.
Middle Earth, the fictional universe of awesome depth created by J.R.R. Tolkien, being rooted in genuine, historical cultures and myth(ologie)s, and having been “fuelled” by the enthusiasm and the imagination of thousands of readers over the years, I was wondering if anyone had ever attempted to tap into the tremendous power of this universe for mystical, spiritual and/or magical purposes?
In particular, the languages so painstakingly devised by Tolkien are worthy of notice. Do you know if anyone has ever used e.g. Tolkien’s Elvish languages in ritual practices and, if so, what the results were? Conversely, are there valid reasons, from an occult perspective, why this should not be attempted?
R.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 10:52 pm (UTC)I'm working through the SGO - exercises, meditation, and divination getting stuck occasionally, like today. The question is "What do I need to understand about today's events?". The first card is me, the second is my situation, and the third is the outcome. My 3-card spread is the following:
1. 32 Squaring the Circle (R) - Impossibility
2. 14 The Dodecagram - Completeness
3. 12 The Square (R) - Inertia
I totally get cards 2 and 3. I am going to a social event tomorrow and spending today memorizing my speech and attending to some boring details connected with this event. The somewhat bigger picture of my life for the next 2 months is stationary. In 2 months my child leaves for college and my life is going to be different. Card 1 puzzles me. Impossibility? What is about me impossible? I am not asking the right questions. Any ideas that may help me to get unstuck?
Thank you,
Kirsten
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 12:43 am (UTC)Kirsten
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:07 pm (UTC)I am planning to take a required government exam as part of an immigration process. I can schedule the (online) exam anytime I want to within a few week's bounds. I was wondering if there was an appropriate planetary day and hour I might optimally choose to begin the process of logging in, registering for, and hopefully if the tech behaves, taking the exam, in order to maximize my chances at passing it.
My goal would be specifically to pass the exam, all other aspects of the reason for taking it aside..
Given that it's an exam, would the day and hour of Mercury be the best choice for this, or is there another planetary ruler more appropriate to success in such an endeavour?
Thank you kindly,
V.O.G.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 01:29 am (UTC)I saw the word "exam" and thought competition, and was worried about something similar. But I guess it's not really a competitive exam, except insofar as immigration slots are competitively awarded (and any competition would mostly have been a prior step), and anyway an exam is less the focus of ceremony and attention than a game show. Still, you should be clear about your intentions. Do you want to be able to recall things and adroitly connect the dots during the exam? That would be Mercury. Do you want to be able to focus and stay with tricky questions until you've done your best? I'm not 100% on the associations but I would guess Saturn. (Saturday in the hour of Mercury?) Are you trying to fast-talk the immigration process even though you might not have normally passed this test? Mercury, avoid Saturn, and consider Jupiter. (It's not clear how well this will work because it's a government-administered exam about government.) Are you trying to prove you've done the work and will be a contributing member of the civic sphere? Saturn and you'd better have put in the time in advance. Is this part of a bigger project to nimbly evade a coming bad sitution in your country of origin? Mercury maybe, I'm not sure.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:32 pm (UTC)You've talked a lot about the etheric effects of cold water and its benefits to biological males in particular.
I would like to ask: what are the etheric effects of hot water?
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:19 am (UTC)Eye in the Sky?
Date: 2023-06-19 11:43 pm (UTC)Re: Eye in the Sky?
Date: 2023-06-20 02:21 am (UTC)Re: Eye in the Sky?
Date: 2023-06-20 02:23 am (UTC)There are some good websites that will tell you which planets are visible in the night sky where you are. Here's one: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/ You might also check your public library and see if they have a book or two on stargazing. The night sky has a lot going on in it, and where you are, the air is dry enough that you can see plenty.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-19 11:48 pm (UTC)Do you think dolmens may have originally been some sort of magical technology? One possibility is that they were used as "underworld portals"... that is, they could have been magically-charged landmarks where the recently-deceased would gather and then undergo an orderly transition to whatever astral destination spirit guides or deities would choose to escort them to. Alternatively, a designated place for etheric or astral spirits to manifest. Otherwise, do you happen to know anything about the occult side of dolmens?
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 12:24 am (UTC)In "The Art and Practice of Geomancy", you say that geomancy once formed "the core of a complete system of Earth wisdom with many practical and spiritual applications". What texts should I be looking at if I want to start digging into that tradition? Either specifically in terms of geomancy, or more generally in terms of discussion of the spiritus and anima mundi and related concepts. (I've had my attention drawn several times lately to those ideas, and I think it's time for me to do some more serious research.)
Either English or Latin recommendations are welcome. My Latin isn't amazing yet, but I'm working on it. :)
Best,
Peter
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:50 am (UTC)