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. 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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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

[(Anonymous)]

This is a very odd question, but is there any occult factors in the way that the idea "We should never change our mind about anything because how convincing an argument sounds is unrelated to how true it is" seems to be taking off in the "rationalsphere"? It seems to me that it might be a desperate attempt to avoid admitting that their beliefs are obviously false, but it seems bizarre enough that I wonder if there's something else going on here...

[(Anonymous)]

Not JMG, nor have I heard of this idea in the 'rationalsphere', but isn't this just saying 'be careful about rhetoric in arguments'? Rhetoric seeks to persuade even if the argument the rhetorician is making isn't necessarily true, as far as I understand it.

[ecosophia]

It's one thing to recognize that arguments can sound convincing without being true -- and of course that's a very good awareness to cultivate. It's quite another thing to insist on that basis that some set of current beliefs must be taken on blind faith irrespective of evidence or argument. That latter suggests to me that the rationalist movement has just about completed its transformation into a faith-based antireligion, and will collapse in the decades immediately ahead.

[(Anonymous)]

(oops, sorry, including "Do you have a citation?" in a reply made more sense when I had been expecting to post that reply sooner)

[ecosophia]

Er, no umpty-screen angry rants, please...