ecosophia | Magic Monday

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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.

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

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

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi JMG,

Are there any dangers associated with the Middle Pillar exercise that I should know about before I start practicing it? I've been doing the LBRP every night for over a year at this point but beyond that I don't have much hands on experience with magic.

I never claimed to be a god. I'm not at all sure where you got the idea I think I was; nor did I say I feel I have the right or duty to judge how other people choose to live as a matter of morality. So, to get this out of the way: I don't think I have the right, duty, or obligation to unilaterally decide what is or is not allowed; no human being ever does. However, I live in a society in which I have some degree of influence over the poltical process; and so I have the right, and arguably the duty, to grapple with the issues of what is and is not permissible in my society. Further, given that religious liberty is likely to become a political issue in the near future due to the antics of people like Michael Hughes, this is not an abstract question: I may very well need to decide who to vote for, who to support for office, or the like, in elections where questions of religious liberty are at stake.

My question was about actual harms; and I've always understood liberty to end at the point where someone commits actions which clearly cause harm to other human beings (At least, ideally; I'm well aware that "liberty" and "freedom" are also used as cover for horrific abuses). If this is wrong, then there's also the question of the stability of society. Occultists have discussed the role that malevolent magic may have played in a number of catastrophes in recent history; and in at least the case of World War II, I think it's convincing.

It strikes me as absurd to accept a principle that requires people who belong to the affected categories refuse to take action when faced with something like the public workings for mass death of Trump supporters the Magic Resistance did; or the invocation of Satan and demons to call for the deaths of Christians; or for that matter Christians praying to smite their enemies; and my concern is that under these kinds of situations religious liberty may not be compatible with other values I hold, such as a right to self defence when being attacked.

However, given I am a worshipper of the planetary gods in an area where most people are culturally Chrisitan, and witnessing the rise of Christian movements that would see me killed for my religion, I don't need to read about the Salem witch trials to get a sense of how ugly things can get once society rejects religious liberty. It seems to me that the anything goes attitude is a dangerous one, and cannot be squared with my other value judgements; but at the same time, I cannot accept, as a matter of principle, that it is necessary to allow anyone to summon any powers they want for whatever purposes they see fit, given how many malevolent beings are out there, and how destructive this sort of thing can become.

This might just be a data point but what do you make of this situation.
During a an planetary hour I made an offering of tobacco while listing to Gustav and within that same hour I suffered a 3in round 2nd degree burn.

A Friend

The people who are caught up in them crash and burn in whatever messy way their own actions determine. The egregor of Nazi Germany is of course a classic example: starting a two-front war you can't win, and being leveled to the ground by Russian and American armies, is a little more lurid than most examples, but the principle is much the same.

For those of us who honor deities of more than one pantheon, is it all right to perform the polytheistic LBRP/MP rites with these multiple pantheons? I don't mean mixing these deities within a single ritual, but rather honoring one or the other group of gods in rituals that alternate daily or weekly. (I do feel a bit guilty that I'm leaving out half the of deities that I honor.)

The OSA teaches a system of personal psychological work meant to clear away old emotional traumas; its main practice is journaling. The FHR teaches a system of ceremonial occultism meant to bring the student into contact with spiritual realities; its main practices are meditation, ritual, and divination.

One thing to remember with McNallen, he has worked to help Tibetans, Native Americans, Indians, Palestinians, etc. preserve their culture. He has stated he sees the same attempts to remove European Culture as the others and now wants to focus on protecting that, he claims (and I agree) European Culture alone seems to be the only one that is politically incorrect to defend.

As far as AFA they are racialist, but I don't think racist. The difference being they have no hate for other cultures or peoples, they are like Hasedic Jews interested in their own in group only.

That said they can be a bit puritanical. I'm blocked by them on twitter for sharing anime porn, being a white dude following Shinto and other Asian religions amongst other things.

Also one AFA member was kicked out for not disowning his Transgendered child.

Granted, but again, it'll be useful to wait longer and see what happens. I doubt all the details are clear even to a writer as perspicacious as Big Serge.

It really depends. These days a lot of elementaries are far from happy with human beings, for obvious reasons.

Devas are a different class of being, and they can be very friendly to humans who get along well with plants!

Greetings JMG and Commentariat,

My Uncle is in Hospice care, now at home (with me and my mom living here to care for him) and well preparing to pass on. Of late he has claimed to see a black and white cat running around. Now I've started seeing the same thing, just glimpses here and there but still.

Any idea what this is?

For what it's worth I do a Shinto inspired Sphere of Protection, and regular water bowl offerings to the spirits (incense iritates everyone's lungs and I do candle offering when it's safe to do so).

You asked for my opinion, and you got it. If you don't like it, why, by all means choose your own path -- after all, I'm not a god either.

1) I'm very glad to hear that you're having such excellent results with the reflexology practice. I also find it very valuable, for what it's worth.

2) That kind of thing happens. One of the nastier secrets passed on in some New Age circles and some other religious circles is a method of pushing off your illnesses onto other people. I've had to deal with that in other people. Colloidal silver does seem to have remarkable healing properties, but it's also got potent magical properties -- and it sounds very much as though you broke a malefic spell, and the spell rebounded on the caster and killed him. Since that wasn't your intention, the karma's all his.

Fair enough. Thank you for answering my questions.

It depends very much on the exercise. Many Western exercises work purely with the material body. Most Asian exercises, and some Western exercises, work with the etheric as well as the material body. If you finish an exercise routine feeling wiped out, you've just been using your muscles; if you finish it feeling vitalized and vigorous, you've worked your etheric centers as well.

No, it's one of the safest energy exercises I know of.

Sounds to me as though your invocation was more successful than you wanted!

Yes, you can certainly do that.

Right. I would imagine that the heyday of Hogwarts-style magic was between 2000 and 2007, during the long waits for the next book in the series to come out, when everyone had a Sorting Hat quiz on their Livejournal or Xanga feeds. Maybe add a few years for the movies, but the last one of those came out in 2011 and at that point you could find out what was going to happen simply by reading the already-finished books.

The main cultural shift emblematic of Harry Potter, I think, is the idea of wanting to "avoid spoilers" at all costs.

Phantom cats seem to be fairly common in some places; one of the apartments I lived in when I was in Seattle was haunted by them, to the extent that guests saw them too. They seem to be completely harmless, for whatever that's worth.

Thank you.

Thanks to everyone for a delightful Ecosophia potluck this year! When it was over, several of us went down to enjoy WaterFire on Peter's recommendation. That too was delightful once we had managed to weave our way past the cotton-candy and funnel-cake vendors. The magical elemental tone set by wind-blown bonfires crackling above the flowing river felt like a very intentional and well-planned ritual. The widely varied musical accompaniment kept changing how the mood of that ritual came across, but would regularly return to formal, contemplative pieces to reestablish the reverent tone. The people gathered about on all the bridges and quays were much better behaved than I would have expected from a modern urban crowd, as though everyone could sense that something profound was taking place, something worthy of reverence and contemplation. It was nice to be around so many people working naturally in concert to raise the energy and spirit of the place, without requiring some ideological litmus test for participants to be allowed entry. Roger Williams' ghost must be very happy with how his values continue to positively influence Providence's culture.

And then I had to come back to New York City... on Pride Parade Sunday, of all days! What a startling contrast that was! This ridiculous modern parody of the considerable pride and courage that was once required to be "out" publicly as gay now just feels worn and tacky, in much the same way as slowly degrading plastic does. Trying to navigate through the aftermath of that ostentatiously over-proud parade, I felt none of the buzz of hope, confidence, or joy that I remember from decades past. Watching so many self-steroetyping cookie-cutters decked out in their mandatory rainbow team colors, as they desperately signaled their Defiance™ and self-adulating Splendiferousness™ at each other, was utterly exhausting. I couldn't help but draw a comparison between all the branded (and apparently required) rainbow uniforms and the rabid fervor with which my hometown Pittsburgh ball-fans flaunt their overpriced Steelers fetish wear at their fellow tailgaters. How did civil rights get turned into identity politics get turned into my team is better than yours, and I'll fight you if you say otherwise?

If any energy or spirit somehow actually got raised in yesterday's hollowed-out ritual, it was at the expense of those of us non-participants, unwillingly forced into the role of playing audience to the participants' tragically predictable and hackneyed antics. "Not to throw shade, Honey, but that routine wasn't even new back in 1985, so you definitely need to update your shtick!" [insert sassy head-waggle here]

The idea that going to a gay pride parade requires any special courage or pride this year must be some kind of schizophrenic, echo-chamber logic. It seems much more likely that NOT going to gay pride might well get one harassed by our newly self-minted (with a little help from Soros) trans police. The once-bold gay rights movement has been turned into just another way for dull, captive conformists to LARP their cutting-edge bona fides from the safety of the obedient mob. So much dreary mandatory self-expression with all the life completely over-rehearsed out of it. Is there any way to prevent a successful egregore from being corrupted beyond recognition once it becomes overly popular? Is there some way to scare the stiff LARPers away, so we could just go back to being happily marginalized again? I mean, being gay used to be so much fun before this woke madness descended like a poison cloud on us all!

Being openly gay used to convey a severe outsider status, pretty much by definition. Those of us who chose to do something other than just passing for straight (while surreptitiously sneaking off to the park for quickies in the dark, of course) made that choice at least partly because we were unwilling to submit to the strictly enforced homogeneity demanded of us. On some level, by choice, we were natural disobedients and fighters. By fighting against marriage inequality or the strategic underfunding of AIDS research, groups like HRC and ACT-UP gave us the kind of rebel causes we needed in order to not fall into the decadence and perversity that also seems to be a rather noticeable through line in our nature.

Now, stripped of our outsider status, with no serious injustices to rail against any more, we've started making up boogeymen under the bed to shadow box with so that we won't have to go through the discomfort of rethinking our rebel identity. With all our seasoned fighters distracted in a collective identity crisis, we apparently didn't notice as various abusive corporate and government power structures co-opted the gay-rights movement to become the judgemental face of a new enforced homogeneity of perversity. Well... at least they've provided us with another rigid, deadening script to fight against again! Maybe that will be able to keep our collective identity crisis at bay for a little bit longer.

Is there by chance any way to prevent the getting of everything that you asked for from draining away all of your willpower and then turning you into a really easy mark? And why does the West end up flirting with draconian conformity on such a painfully regular basis? It's the empire thingy, isn't it? The Brits, the Romans, every empire wants docile, interchangeable subjects. Oh, wait a minute, interchangeable could be the industrial thingy, too. There's just so many options for what could be inciting our deranged overlords to endlessly try making life as Kafkaesque as possible. From now on, gay pride will mean wearing all-matching rainbow uniforms to your child's castration party — Kafka must be so very jealous of us just about now!

— Christophe

I have had a variety of contacts with Anderson Feri since the mid 1970s. I am not an initiate of the Feri tradition and have no authority to speak for it.

I would not describe the Anderson Feri tradition as Wiccan except in a very broad sense. It is a polytheist magical system which identified itself as a form of witchcraft, does some rituals in a magic circle, and uses the pentagram as one of its symbolic tools.

Feri has major source material that precedes and differs from Wicca, the teachings of Max Freedom Long about Hawaiian Huna. From what I've observed, direct or indirect influence from Freemasonry is nil. The tradition until about twenty years ago was usually propagated by direct one-to-one teaching rather than in a coven system. (These days, a sizeable breakaway faction teaches online.) Anderson Feri has a more elaborate and specific pantheon than Wicca, including gay and non-binary deities and the Peacock Angel of the Yezidi. Feri doesn't publicly teach anything resembling the Wiccan Rede.

Victor Anderson's widow, Cora Anderson wrote Fifty Years in the Feri Tradition, which would probably be a good starting point. Victor self published a collection of his own poetry, Thorns of the Blood Rose. Feri rituals incorporate some of Victor's poetry. If you happen to have a source for used copies (or library copies) of small press Neopagan magazines from the 1970s, one of the three issues of Nemeton (IIRC the one with a photo of Victor on the cover) has an article by Victor Anderson called "The Psychic Structure of the Human Being."

Victor and Cora's group of practitioners was present in the San Francisco Bay Area by the mid 1960s if not earlier. Victor and Cora were older than most of the other local Neopagan leaders in 1974, and were respected as elders in years as well as experience. Victor seems to have been a serious occultist well before that time, perhaps the 1940s.

From my limited exposure, the tradition did and does place a lot of emphasis on learning techniques for controlled consciousness alteration, including but not limited to the cultivation of ritual trance possession.

Victor's various students developed individual ways of applying and developing his teachings. Eventually this led to divergent schools and organizational schisms. Victor's most famous student is Starhawk, but she went her own way pretty early.

Deborah Bender

Thank you, JMG,

Is it sometimes a pattern to go in sequence: material, astral, spiritual. Then back down and up again in sequence??

I've seen that, but not often. It's usually more complex than that.

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Magic Monday

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Mars

Re: On the Subject of Egregores

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Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

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Spirit Cat

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Re: Fiction and magic

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