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. 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!***

Comments

[scottyc]

This topic caught my eye this morning and I started meditating on it. Request Ecosophian input on my thoughts below.

Using Dion Fortune's The Magical Battle of Britain as the scenario of my meditation (her group sought to defend Britain on the astral plane vice magically attacking the Nazi's) it was imperative that someone defended Britain on the material plane to give time for Fortune's work to show results unless they wanted to resist "astrally" as prisoners.

1. Does resisting something on the material plane cause that something to lock in place?

Answer: probably - "as above so below" but not in the most obvious way. In WW2 Britain definitely resisted Nazi Germany on the material plane but this didn't lock Nazism in place. The war was won.
Locking Nazism in place in this case would have to involve the after effects of material resistance ("every action has an equal and opposite reaction").

I was going to say "negative reaction" above but I always have to remember that there is no morality in the astral light and that one's actions there will produce the same results no matter how good one's intentions are.

The nature of how Allied resistance to Nazi Germany locked Nazism in place can be debated but, to me, the answer probably resides in the actions of the victors after WW2 to the present day. Also have to remember that other reactions and forces were at play prior to WW2 and were relevant at the time of Fortune's astral opposition (British Empire, U.S. conquest of N. America and wars of American empire such as with Spain, Mexico, etc.).

2. Should I resist on the material plane (against Nazi Germany or against someone with a knife breaking into my home*) if I will "lock it in place" somehow?

Answer: we always have choices and have the freedom to make decisions but must keep in mind that both action / reaction and the astral plane are morally neutral. I can resist Nazi Germany and deal with he after effects or wind up as a prisoner. Easier choice is to resist a deranged person breaking into one's home (*though I wonder how resisting in this scenario will lock something in place?). Either way, I have a choice to make on resisting or not and none of the choices available may be good.

3. The planes are discrete and not continuous, how does this effect things?

Answer: I think the scenario in which someone resists a deranged person breaking into a home is pertinent here. I really can't see how defending one's home will lock that negative action in place. Of course, there will be consequences and after effects but a home intruder dead or arrested is not "locked in place".

I bring up the fact that the planes are discrete and not continuous as it is my best guess that opposition to something on the astral plane will lock the two opposing parties in place and that resistance on the material plane will not have the same effects as on the astral. There will be after effects but they won't play out the same way as on the astral.

[brendhelm]

This honestly reminds me somewhat of judo in a way, using one's opponent's own momentum to your advantage rather than trying to directly resist it.

[ecosophia]

Locking something into place on the material plane can be very useful, if the core issue to be dealt with is on another plane. That's true of everything human. Whether it's a Nazi invasion or a guy with a knife, the first thing you do is stop yourself from being hurt. The second thing is to take action to end the situation. Since the planes are discrete and not continuous, when you lock something into place on the material plane, you're only locking it on that plane -- all the other planes are still free to move, and energies on those planes can be allowed to spin off into uselessness while the material form is temporarily fixed in place. Yes, martial artists do this from time to time -- and the Russians are doing it right now on the southern front of the Ukraine war.

[scottyc]

Thank you. Brendhelm's judo comment reminds me that resisting something doesn't require one to stop all of the force or even most of it and your comment is a reminder that a battle is (usually) never on just one plane.

[(Anonymous)]

John Michael wrote

Yes, martial artists do this from time to time -- and the Russians are doing it right now on the southern front of the Ukraine war.

Could you elaborate on that?

Certainly on the material plane, the Russians have been doing a very effective job of using Ukraine to lock NATO and the American Empire into place, while forcing them to expend a lot of their munitions stocks in ways that will seriously constrain their options down the road in Taiwan, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

[ecosophia]

Right now one of the defining battles of the 21st century is raging in Zaporizhia Province in southern Ukraine. The Russians spent the last nine months or so building defensive lines and getting an enormous amount of artillery and other weapons systems in place; then they waited for the Ukrainian army to come to them, as (for complicated strategic reasons) it had to. The Ukrainian offensive began on the night of June 4; it's still continuing, the Ukrainians have lost an astonishing number of tanks, armored vehicles, and soldiers, and they haven't even reached the first of the heavily fortified Russian lines. But they're locked into place; if they stop the offensive they lose the initiative and the much larger Russian armies can launch their own assaults anywhere along hundreds of miles of frontier.

In this case, from an occult standpoint, the battle on the material plane is locked, while the battle that matters -- the struggle on the planes of mind and emotion -- is very much in motion. The latest news reports in non-Western media (the only sources to trust in cases like this) are that Ukrainian army units are starting to surrender en masse to the Russians, since it's that or follow orders that are certain to get them killed. If that turns out to be true, and the same sentiment spreads, the collapse of the Ukrainian army and the end of the war may not be that far away.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I've seen reports of large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers, up to entire infantry companies, surrendering en masse, as well as reports of officers being fragged by their own men. In one case, a Ukrainian battalion commander was apparently killed by one of his captains when he ordered them to attack Russian defensive positions, after the battalion had already suffered heavy losses from previous failed assaults. There have been increasingly common reports of units refusing to go into battle and of Leopard 2 crews sabotaging their own tanks because they know their chances of survival against Russian artillery, minefields and helicopter gunships are very low. I am reminded of how the morale of the Imperial German Army collapsed after the failure of the Spring Offensive in 1918 and of what happened when Admiral Hipper tried to order the High Seas Fleet to sea in October 1918, resulting in a munity that ended up with most of the battleships and city of Kiel being taken over by angry sailors, and which ultimately led to revolution breaking out all over Germany.

[ecosophia]

Unsurprisingly, those were also the examples that came first to my mind. That's the normal endpoint of a First World War-style conflict, and of course that's exactly the rulebook the Russian army started using as soon as it became clear that current technology makes blitzkrieg as outdated as a Macedonian phalanx.

But we'll see what actually happens.

[temporaryreality]

Re #3 - then there’s the Taoist (? Or zen?) approach to the thief, which is to welcome him in, apologize profusely for the paucity of goods in your house, load his arms full of your stuff and send him on his way. Now he’s no longer locked in the role of thief but has been a guest who received gifts.

[(Anonymous)]

This is basically the opening salvo of the novel Les Miserables-- the Bishop loading Jean Valjean up with his silver, so the police won't arrest him!

[temporaryreality]

That’s right! Love that book.m but had totally forgotten that!

[scottyc]

Nice point!

Thought is that before deciding on the Taoist option I'd say that the home owner would need to overcome personal impulses on the astral plane then have to perceive that the intruder is astrally receptive to it (i.e. probably wouldn't work on a intruder under heavy influence of whatever mind altering chemicals).

Perception would also have to be right on the etheric plane (would have to receive certain vibes from the intruder that this would work???).

[homeopathic_meditations]

I will say that almost never your goal will be to lock anything absolutely in place. Even if you are talking about the material plane, you will want to lock something along one axis while leaving it to move freely along other axis.

In your case of the thieve, you want to prevent him from hurting you and yours, but almost never is a good idea to corner him. Actually, it is a sure way that someone is going to be hurt in that way: the cornered/wounded beast meme comes to mind. Unless you want to fix the thieve in place to use him as a stepping block (in which case you'd probably be working in law enforcement already), you want him to go away and meet his destiny. An easy route of escape and some not so trivial token trophy to grab and run may be a good idea.

Typically, people into home defense will try to scare the thieve off. That strategy I understand as to push in the lower astral plane (through fear). You must be, however, careful to not get locked in that plane too. If you hurt him physically and/or emotionally, he's likely to come back later, better prepared, and to ambush you. You'd want to avoid being locked in the astral plane. Same if you keep him from leaving until the police arrives. Even in a country with a functional court system, you will effectively lock yourself into a trial, as a witness (I am assuming this is the lower mental plane??)

[scottyc]

Very good points and not just for the slight chance of a deranged home intruder. Always leave an out is a wise strategy and good policy not to make permanent enemies.

Also so true that on the material plane you can file court cases and legal issues under "for every action there is a reaction". Always decisions to be made cost / benefit wise.