ecosophia | Magic Monday

Current Mood: bemused

Entry tags:

Magic Monday

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. 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.

Buy Me A Coffee

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.

~~With that said, have at it!~~

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

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

There are many different ways to be a Druid, and I'm pretty sure that your way of being a Druid is a long, long way from mine! I have no experience with mushroom spirits, animal bones, or totems. In terms of internal alchemy based on pagan forces, if any such books existed they were burnt by Christian inquisitors many centuries ago; I'm working on a couple of projects along these lines but they aren't yet in print. In terms of underworld energies, however, the writer you want to study is R.J. Stewart; his book

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<i<the>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

Cities have spirits, created by the shared consciousness of all the beings that live in them. (The spirit of New York City has a lot of rat energy, for instance!) Yes, that may be what was going on in this case.

1) Yes; yes, very much so; and I'm glad to hear it.

2) Hmm. I read this card upright as an indication of happiness, and in particular of success in love.

Trying to define chaos magic is like trying to draw a boundary around an explosion! I'll settle for describing it. It's one of the movements in late 20th century pop-culture occultism. It drew inspiration from the magical writings of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, and even more from the appendix on magic in the back of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's brilliant parody of conspiracy culture, the Illuminatus! trilogy. It claimed to be freeing magic from centuries of outworn detritus; what that meant in practice is that it insisted that traditional occult philosophy was useless and that all those gods and spirits were simply arbitrary symbols whose only power came from human beings who focused their own power through them. I've known some people who got good results from chaos magic, but many more who experimented, got frustrated with the very limited results, and went on to something else.

I'm sorry to say I don't. Anyone else?

1) You'd have to ask an experienced yogin about that. The technical terminology of yoga is not something I've studied.

2) The three worlds of traditional Western magic are the elemental world, the celestial world, and the empyrean world. The first of these is the material world as we know it; the second is the realm of astrological forces; the third is the spiritual realm.

1) It's entirely legitimate. That's how I originally got my initiation; when I later received initiation into a GD temple, it was very much a matter of reaffirming energy connections I'd already established on my own.

2) As you work through the Ciceros' book, study Regardie's The Golden Dawn. When you've finished with both books, work on your ritual skills until you can do Z-2 formula rituals with good effect, and then get to work on one of the rituals for spiritual development that Regardie gives. Practice it relentlessly -- once each week is a good timing for that, so that your subtle bodies have a chance to catch their breath! The point of the Adept grades is to make contact with your Lower Genius and, through him, your Higher and Divine Genius; that's also the point of the spiritual development rituals Regardie gives. Once you've experienced that contact, not just once but repeatedly, you'll be as solidly entered into the Adept grades as if you'd gone through the 5=6 in a regular temple.

(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.

I'll look into the accusations made by "FactsAboutFolkish" in that Twitter link. Thank you.

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.

Thank you for your reply, this is great.

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

Greetings JMG and folks,

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).

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!

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)

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.

Hello JMG

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

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?

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.

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 :)

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 4 of 9

Magic Monday

no subject

Re: Do Cities have Nymphs?

Re: Queries

Re: Chaos Magic

no subject

Re: Etheric Body

Re: GD Self-Initation

Re: Fiction and magic

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

Re: GD Self-Initation

Re: random questions

Stuff

Re: Effects of Shipping Costs and Girardian Memetic Contagion

Re: Fiction and magic

Coup

Faerie

Re: Fiction and magic

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

no subject

Divination 101?

A disturbance in the force?

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

Venus

MOE and the Solstice