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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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)]

Occult? Depends on how you define it.

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.