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 via slightly less evasive routes. The last two honorees, Constant Chevillon and Robert Ambelain, both received part of their many lineages from this week's honoree, Jean Bricaud. Bricaud was a student of Papus and a leading figure in the French Martinist movement, as well as a major figure in the French Gnostic church of the time. He became head of the Martinist Order on Papus' death in 1916, and played a significant role in many other alternative spiritual scenes of the time. He died in 1934.

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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.

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With that said, have at it!

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

Comments

Changing luck

[(Anonymous)]

Hi John Michael,

A great deal of SE Asian magic involves talismans or rituals to change ones luck, to improve the occurrence of serendipitous events in ones life.

As far as I know from your books, Western magic seems to be more about effecting specific outcomes, eg obtaining a job, finding a lover etc. If one wanted to improve ones luck with Western magic (I am familiar with your work and Golden Dawn material), how would one go about this? Is it even a thing in the WMT?

Thanks,

P

Re: Changing luck

[ecosophia]

That's really interesting -- I don't happen to know much about SE Asian magic, so you've taught me something. In the Western mystery tradition there isn't much of anything I know of that focuses on luck in general; it's more a matter of looking for the specific problems you're having, and fixing those with magic.

Re: Changing luck

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP or JMG but you might try looking into hoodoo. I don't have experience in that tradition but I have seen various "lucky" bags and charms described.

Re: Changing luck

[(Anonymous)]

My very limited and distant understanding is that "luck" in a Southeast Asian, or at least East Asian, context has a little bit of a different spin than the Western half-conscious conception of an amorphous, impersonal force of favorable fortune. It'd be a little more like having various functionaries in a celestial bureaucracy pulling for you. Or maybe having the spirits who are administering your life and circumstances be more likely to be favorably disposed toward you. Or maybe having everything in the right order, such that things like prosperity and happiness would naturally tend to result as part of that order.

Perhaps these concepts could be adapted. The general sense seems to be that luck is a feature of a relationship. Although things capable of providing luck by a relationship are presumably also capable of having opinions or preferences about why not to confer what a human might consider "luck" under some select circumstances.

The idea of "right order" is related to Taoist practice especially, but is also similar to religious practice in general: one hears of miracles happing around a dedicated saint or mystic without them necessarily even having been themselves aware that there was a problem for a miracle to solve. Also the Egyptian deity Ma'at is a direct personification of one version of "right order", and Neoplatonism involves the sometimes-related idea of Logos.