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.

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With that said, have at it!

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

Comments

Re: And now a new goddess

[ecosophia]

A bunch of Neopagans have come to believe that we're passing through a time symbolized by the tarot card The Tower:

That is to say, stuff going boom and falling down. "Tower time" is their shorthand for it.

Re: And now a new goddess

[(Anonymous)]

Which sounds an awful lot like the sort of Rapture Ready theology being peddled by fundamentalist Christians like Tim LeHaye and his Left Behind series. But then again, much of what passes for modern thought is merely a rehash of Faustian Christian theology, as Spengler and Toynbee pointed out a long time ago.

Re: And now a new goddess

[ecosophia]

Of course. I expect that a lot of these people will follow Paul Kingsnorth et al. back into the arms of Christianity in due time.

Re: And now a new goddess

[(Anonymous)]

It could be an improvement!

Re: And now a new goddess

[ecosophia]

Well, maybe so, but having known some of these people I feel a bit sorry for the other Christians. They're going to have a lot of chances to cultivate saintly patience...

Re: And now a new goddess

[(Anonymous)]

We are already abundantly blessed with such chances.

—Princess Cutekitten

Re: And now a new goddess

[(Anonymous)]

Funny that Tower Time has come up here, my daily Tarot card today was the inverted Tower. I hadn't heard of it until it came up last week here, I think.

How does one navigate these pulls? I have to say I've noticed a pull towards Christianity as a lot of small synchronicities over the last half year or so, also in various articles. I practice Druidry, so maybe if that's a type of Neopaganism then this might be why I'm feeling this, but I have no desire to be swept up in some sort of enantiodromia between one or the other. I suppose, due to Christian theology, one cannot be a polytheist and a Christian, and worship many gods, including the Christian one.

Re: And now a new goddess

[ecosophia]

It's a broader pattern. Right now, as our civilization's age of reason comes to an end, a lot of people are fleeing back to traditional religious forms, and that produces a certain pressure in that direction. It's certainly an option for those who can handle the ideology that comes with those forms, but it's in no way mandatory.

Re: And now a new goddess

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder how the transition from the Piscean Age to the Aquarian Age ties in with what we are seeing?

The Piscean Age was dominated by religions and ideologies that each claimed to be The One True Way. Of course, there were always lots of different One True Ways, even within religions such as Christianity, Islam and Marxism, which guaranteed never ending strife as people fought over which One True Way was actually The One True Way. As I understand it, the Aquarian Age will be much more individualistic and eccentric, with more of an emphasis on people going their own way and finding their own path.

Re: And now a new goddess

[ecosophia]

If the Neopagans were picking up on an Aquarian influence, every single one of them would perceive a different deity, or a different facet of a deity, coming into play. That it's all the usual apocalyptic crap and one big storm goddess muscling in sounds very Piscean to me.

Re: And now a new goddess

[(Anonymous)]

So they are still caught in what might as well be called the Piscean undertow. If my recollections are not mistaken, it was my understanding that you believed the Aquarian Age began in the late 1800's. If so, the transition appears to be taking a long time. Any idea when we will see the Piscean influences fade out and the Aquarian influences become predominant?

Re: And now a new goddess

[ecosophia]

The transition typically takes a few centuries. There were still plenty of holdouts of Arian age religion long after the Piscean age began, and so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Piscean holdouts for centuries to come.

Re: And now a new goddess

[(Anonymous)]

Last year I got suddenly swept up into studying Christianity, but it is definitely not your garden-variety, Standard Sunday School Doctrine type of Christianity!

My Bible study buddy has taught me several principles:

1) Context is key. Who said the thing, who are they saying it to, where are they when they are saying it, what's around them when they are saying it? Job 38 is vastly different from Matthew 1 for this reason.
A good study Bible is invaluable for this. I am using Zondervan's "Archaeological Study Bible", which is now out of print, but their "Cultural Study Bible" may do the same things and it's a more recent NIV translation.

2) Dig into the original language, the meaning of the original words (Hebrew, Koine Greek or Aramaic) to see what the verse >really< says. There are a few red pills in the Bible that make translators twitch, and they'll paper them over. (Try Psalm 82, Job 38:6-7 for starters.)
To do this you want a good interlinear Bible.
My favorite is: https://biblehub.com/interlinear/
In the search field at top, type in the book, chapter and verse you want to look at and you are off to the races. (Hint: the Hebrew reads right to left.)

3) There are very few books >about< the Bible that are any good, and a lot of them will lead you right into the tall weeds. The Bible itself is plenty of material to keep you busy for a long while.
A couple of "outside books" that are at least somewhat helpful are:
- "The Unseen Realm" by Michael Heiser (h/t to the Ecosophian who put me onto him)
- "Beyond Radical" by Gene Edwards

4) If your current god(dess)(es) are taking good care of you, then they are on the team of the good guys. Spoiler: Heiser makes the case that all the other gods are the children of YHWH. Some rebelled and so there's a war on. The others are working with YHWH. So ask your current god(dess)(es) what you should do-- if you should move to Team YHWH or stay with them.

FWIW a few weeks ago I had a brief vision of meeting Odin at an outdoor cafe' table.
After expressing my awe and admiration at "gods who hang on trees to bring us gifts" (referring to both him and Jesus), he smiled and told me, "Continue your studies, little one". So he is OK with my Bible study.

Best of luck, wherever your path takes you.

- Cicada Grove

Re: And now a new goddess

[francis_tucker]

I don't know if you'll see this since you didn't post with a subscriber account. I consider myself a Christian, I'm getting more and more polytheist by the day, and I don't plan on giving up Jesus anytime soon. Perhaps you meant "one cannot be a polytheist and an orthodox Christian"...