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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. Papus and Chaboseau, the honorees of the last two weeks, each got their Martinist lineage by a tangle of mostly forgotten figures, so we can jump straight back to one of the founders of the tradition, Louis-Claude de St. Martin. St. Martin was born in 1743 in an aristocratic family and became a student of the elusive master Martinez de Pasqually, learning the distinctive system of theurgic magic Pasqually taught. Later in life, after Pasqually's death, he focused more of his attention on Christian mysticism, studied Jacob Boehme's writings, and penned a series of influential mystical tracts under the pseudonym "The Unknown Philosopher."
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
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(Anonymous) 2023-07-31 02:15 pm (UTC)(link)I have some questions for this week's Magic Monday that I hope you can help me with.
1. Is the basic Sphere of Protection from the Apprentice Manual of the Modern Order of the Essenes (page 16) a good protection practice? I'm attracted to its simplicity, but I don't have any experience with such practices. Also, why would a practitioner pick one protection practice over another? How does one decide?
2. Regarding the UGC reading requirements for Ordination. Would the Science of Mind textbook be a suitable form of material to study? I am also interested in the Unity school of Christianity, but they don't have a single text. Would a variety of Unity material be suitable as well?
3. Is there a search function specifically for your blog? I can't seem to find any.
Many thanks for your help.
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2) Yes, you could certainly do that, but Science of Mind and Unity are so closely related -- both came out of the New Thought movement of late 19th and early 20th century America -- that I'd like to ask that you do two entirely different scriptures from unrelated faiths for your second and third options. It's important to get a sense of the diversity of human religious experience.
3) On ecosophia.net -- at least on my browser -- it's on the top right of the page, just below the banner in the corner that reads ECOSOPHIA - Nature Spirituality in the Twilight of the Industrial Age.
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(Anonymous) 2023-07-31 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)Thanks for your answers.
Regarding the search function: I was actually wondering about the Dreamwidth site (this website). Do I need an account to search the forum?
Regarding the Science of Mind and Unity: Yes, they are both most certainly part of the New Thought movement.
I just wanted to know if they were both suitable so I could pick one of the two of them. I'm glad that I can study one of them for the UGC work. I think that the mystical/personal gnosis elements of New Thought often get overlooked in favour of making "demonstrations." I am also interested in Jōdo Shinshū as an option.
Can I please ask another question?
Q. If one is working towards the K&C of the HGA in a way different from the Abramelin Operation, what does success mean? In other words, what results from connecting with the Higher Self?
Have you written at length about this anywhere else? I don't want to take up too much of your time.
Thanks for your help.
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2) Yes, indeed -- and Jodo Shinshu would indeed qualify.
3) I haven't written about it in much detail. The basic point is that there are two things "above" the lower self, which we can call the higher self and the guardian angel. (They have lots of other names.) The higher self is the part of you that goes on from life to life, and is gradually waking up through the process of repeated incarnations. The guardian angel is an emanation from the divine that has been guiding your soul since it first came into being. The awakening of the higher self -- that is, your real self -- to a full knowledge of its powers and potentials is the greatest work of all, and it's the entire point of incarnation. Conscious contact with your guardian angel is a step in that direction; you're making the guidance you've always received from the angel conscious, rather than unconscious, and that helps you proceed far more rapidly on the Path.
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