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. 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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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!***

Comments

Re: Faerie

[deborah_bender]

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