ecosophia: (Default)
John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2023-06-25 11:30 pm

Magic Monday

Robert AmbelainIt'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 hereAlso: 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. Both of the last two honorees, and most of the other Martinist lineages in existence, were also taught and influenced by this man, Robert Ambelain, a prolific writer and occult scholar whose work extended from astrology and Freemasonry to Druidry and Martinism. Ambelain was born in 1907; he became an astrologer in the 1920s, proceeded to become a major figure in the Martinist scene and a bishop in one of the French Gnostic churches, played a central role in reviving several defunct occult orders, published 42 books, and earned the Croix de Guerre for his service to France during the Second World War. He died in 1997.

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Bookshop logoI'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.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Re: Fiction and magic

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 07:02 pm (UTC)(link)
(not OP)

A lot of fiction, especially fantasy, has a strong wish fulfillment element in it. I wonder whether the potential wish fulfillment and escapist aspects are what wrecks a lot of attempts with fictional symbolism. If the pull of the astral on the mage is stronger than the mage's pull towards manifestation, then its no wonder that no power got down to Earth.

Granted that, and most authors aren't mages, but I digress.

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

[personal profile] brenainn 2023-06-26 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
I'll look into the accusations made by "FactsAboutFolkish" in that Twitter link. Thank you.

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

[personal profile] brenainn 2023-06-26 07:06 pm (UTC)(link)
This looks very interesting, Jeff. Except for Mithras, my devotion is mostly to the Anglo-Saxon Gods. Theodism might very well be a good option for me.

Re: GD Self-Initation

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 07:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you for your reply, this is great.

Re: random questions

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 07:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Hello Sir,

Your reply about discrete planes is interesting. Question: In doing daily work in front of an altar or in a lodge, I would believe that one would ideally perform inner Astral work first; and then perform corresponding physical plane work next. Is that right?

And now that I think of it, spiritual plane work might be best to begin with as a foundation?

Best,

A Neophyte

Stuff

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 07:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Greetings JMG and folks,

[profile] jmg, continuing the thread from last week when I said that divinations were suddenly turning out wrong and I ended up going with my gut (against my divination) and it worked out great, and you asked if it was an interpretative issue, the answer is no, since the readings were fairly simple and I used the same rules as before when they used to be right (and turned out right too).

But something in my gut indicated they weren't right this time and I trusted myself (with some fear of things going badly). Hence I asked you if if one can be tested sometimes.

This has happened a couple of times before too. Keeps happening with me every 5-6 months.

Strangely, I'm not using divination since. For some reason, I feeling like I shouldn't be divining for now and just develop my intuition directly. (Though I will have others divine for me occasionally in the future).

Re: Effects of Shipping Costs and Girardian Memetic Contagion

[personal profile] robertmathiesen 2023-06-26 07:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes indeed. And that is almost certainly why one of the first things the US state governments did when it seized the Pacific Northwest was to outlaw the holding of potlaches by the Native peoples. Ugh!

Re: Fiction and magic

[personal profile] robertmathiesen 2023-06-26 07:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Back in the day Katherine Kurz actually launched a sort of magical order (The Order of St. Michael) based on her Deryni novels and her Adept ones, and I know that she published a serious book on magic, titled Deryni Magic.

I think I heard of undergraduate students at my university trying to do Hogwarts-style magic, but that would have been some 20-odd years ago.

Bradley herself did a great deal of magic back in her Berkeley years, and even before those years she had read extensively in magic and occultism.
Edited 2023-06-26 20:00 (UTC)

Coup

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 07:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I assume Uranus governs coups? We haven't seen many successful coups with Uranus in Taurus have we? Can we expect more action on this front come 2026 when Uranus exits Taurus?

For the most recent attempted coup (assuming it is such) in Russia on the 24th, Uranus was also square Mars and Venus but a semisextile Mercury, sextile Pluto (retrograde). This would suggest sudden violence, breaking relationships, and tenuous individual grasp of reality, perhaps sudden destruction. Far from great conditions.

Faerie

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 08:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Hello JMG

What is your opinion about faeri/feri/fey tradition? Any good books on that?

Re: Fiction and magic

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 08:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you for the response!

1) Oh, I wasn’t expecting a thorough list. That certain “things” were excluded is a more than satisfactory answer.

2) Interesting that the energy never lasts long. I suppose most fictional works have a short shelf life with regards to widespread popularity (some shorter than other, of course). Could that be a contributing factor?

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Folkish Heathenism involves ancestor worship. That means that if your ancestors aren't broadly germanic, there's almost certainly a more suitable way of doing ancestor worship for you, plus worshipping someone else's ancestors and not your own is icky, in a cuckoldy kind of way.
temporaryreality: (Default)

[personal profile] temporaryreality 2023-06-26 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, Bert asked exactly the question I was going to ask (having also just worked through that solstice week of OPW ;) ) - so I’ll pick up my answer there.

JMG, this leaves me only with my minor aside comments: as a dumb youngster I couldn’t grok why there was a tradition of prayer at bedtime other than assuming a lot of people really must be worried about dying in their sleep (…”if I should die before I wake “ and all that), but having been following the instructions to read spiritual materials at bedtime to “prime the pump,” so to speak, I can surmise that something similar is at work. Cool beans!

Also, I had a weird mix of health “symptoms” a week ago, out of the blue. I checked the Boericke & Dewey book and lo and behold a particular cell salt was indicated (for the three or four disparate issues that didn’t seem coherently related to my untrained eye) …and indeed, that offered relief. TSW :)

Divination 101?

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Good afternoon JMG et al,

I have been gradually working my way through Doctrine & Ritual and doing the daily meditations and such. I am interested in learning about tarot divination as well, but I guess I'm not sure whether that might be counterproductive or at cross-purposes with the meditation practice and general study.

I guess my followup would be, if these are compatible, what's a good starting point/resource/reading recommendation for learning about divination practice?

Thank you kindly,

Mark

A disturbance in the force?

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Hi JMG!

A couple of years ago you posted that there was a higher than usual amount of "astral static" (I can't remember the exact terminology) which was causing problems for people who are clairvoyant or susceptible to dreams. My wife has a history of having visions while meditating, and had to stop around the time you made that comment due to negative visionary experiences. We have both noticed an increase in visions and dreams (and I am not highly receptive to them, normally).

Have you (or your audience) noticed an increase in astral activity recently.

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Further, as a folkish Heathen, my view on the wokesters who denounce my faith is that they are not Heathens at all, just a bunch of gay communists wearing stolen semiotics like a flayed skin.

Venus

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 08:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you for your reply to my question on last week's MM re: bright light in the western night sky. I feel greatly relieved (and a bit foolish) now that I know that the bright light is Venus. My imagination was in overdrive thinking it was a manmade satellite - little or nothing to do with Venus affecting me. Here there less light pollution looking towards the western sky, as well as differences in the terrain, that help in viewing Venus.

MOE and the Solstice

(Anonymous) 2023-06-26 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Greetings JMG and commentariat:

I'm slowly working my way through the MOE practices.

1) Sometimes my hands start buzzing and tingling late in the evening or when I'm out and about in the afternoon. I've been silently asking God to send the healing energy to the being that wants and needs it most. Is this a good way to handle this? Any better ideas?

2) I watched the Summer Solstice sunrise live streamed from Stonehenge. I watched for about an hour - 30 minutes before and after sunrise. I am across the ocean and in a completely different time zone. It was around midnight where I am. Just before sunrise there my hands stated to emit energy and I felt the healing jewels on my palms pulse. I haven't felt anything in that area of my hands before. My daughter was up with me, she touched me and asked why my hands were so warm. I didn't feel anything at sunrise in my own time zone.

Has anyone heard of that before?

Many thanks! Heloise

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