ecosophia: (Default)
[personal profile] ecosophia
BPCIt's nearly 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 hereAlso: 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've been tracing my lineages back as far as I can, and last week took my Martinist lineage back as far as
they can be documented. The next step -- and it's the last step in the entire process -- involves a fair bit of speculation, but it's speculation backed up by some evidence. It's been suggested by some historians, Marsha Keith Schuchard foremost among them, that the mysterious Knight of the Red Feather who conferred the Templar lineage on Baron von Hund, last week's honoree, was none other than Charles Stuart, the Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scottish song and story. The claim is that in the years immediately before 1745, when the House of Stuart made its last (and disastrously unsuccessful) attempt to reclaim the British throne, Charles and his inner circle of supporters used various forms of clandestine Freemasonry to raise funds, engage in espionage, and gather arms and supporters for the planned rising. Baron von Hund's initiation was an incident in that process. Martinez de Pasqually, who was honored a couple of weeks back, also claimed to have a charter signed by Charles Stuart as the basis for his occult Masonic order. So it's possible that what lies behind one of the great traditions of Western occultism is a failed political intrigue that got picked up and repurposed by a couple of canny occultists. Stranger things have happened in the history of occultism.

...And with this, the rambling tale of the odd lineages that I've inherited comes to an end. Now I'll have to think of something else to use as illustrations to Magic Mondays!

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I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 
 
Bookshop logoI'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!***

***Please note -- when Magic Monday is closed, IT'S CLOSED.  I just had to delete a flurry of attempted comments posted up to eleven hours after I shut things down. I do need some time to write and do other online chores, you know, so please don't keep trying to post after 12:00 am Monday night/Tuesday morning -- there'll be a new Magic Monday in a week, you know. ***

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(no subject)

Date: 2023-08-28 05:32 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
How far back do those images go?

—Princess Cutekitten

(no subject)

Date: 2023-08-28 05:34 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Which Miriam does the Brotherhood reference? The sister of Moses?

(no subject)

Date: 2023-08-28 05:41 pm (UTC)
jprussell: (Default)
From: [personal profile] jprussell
On 1) I light a candle to my ancestors (almost) daily, offer beer once a week, and offer worship to those who will have it and thanks to all. I don't currently have photos, as the first photo I got for the purpose was from my folks' wedding, and so had all of my grandparents in it, but obviously included my dad who is still alive, and apparently it's a bad idea to include pictures of the living. I also toast to and thank my ancestors whenever I give a drink offering to the Gods. Mostly I've just felt all this out, but I'm somewhat influenced by Galina Krasskova's Modern Guide to Heathenry and a book she co-authored with Raven Kaldera, Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner. If you are interested in Italian practices specifically, you might also check out folks who follow Roman/Hellenist Polytheism, and specifically veneration of the Lares and Penates.

On 4), wild speculation here, but I do know that when coffee was first being spread through the Islamic world, there were theological debates about its suitability, since it clearly changed how you felt, but in a way very different from alcohol. Obviously they went for it in a big way. Since much of western alchemy has roots in the Middle East, maybe that's a direction to look for discussions of coffee? From a more American (and negative) viewpoint, of course, the Mormons came to the opposite conclusion, and I assume there's some discussion of what they believe the spiritual downsides there to be.

Good luck on all fronts!
Jeff

Progressed Chart Astrological Magic

Date: 2023-08-28 05:48 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I know in the past, you've told people to not pursue astrological talismans for planets that are debilitated in their natal chart. I was wondering if this is specifically advice for the natal chart or should one also avoid astrological magic invoking a planet debilitated in one's progressed chart?

Also, in general, is the natal chart or the progressed chart a more significant force in one's daily life?

Re: GSF SOP

Date: 2023-08-28 05:56 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Thanks for clearing that up!

3) Gotcha. So if somebody was working with the seven planets e.g. in daily planetary worship, and wanted to include them in the SOP, how could they go about it?

Call on two of the planets at some point in the process? Or call on one planet in the opening, the other six later? Or how else?

4) And here I was worried I had publically ruined one of your special learning effects for students... :D

Milkyway

Storied Meditations

Date: 2023-08-28 06:05 pm (UTC)
realmscryer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] realmscryer
Hi JMG,

This morning I decided to try a little something different, a visualization technique which I had read about but not done much with, in my meditation. What happened was after waking up this morning I was experimenting with projecting images on a screen with my inner vision.

The bright colors, dynamic scenery and people, and relative ease of seeing all of this was pretty encouraging. So during meditation I began projecting the theme onto the screen. There was little expectation as to what would appear, I just witnessed what was showing up. The quality was lacking in color and light but there were images and objects.

One of these images in particular was a great illustration of the theme! Not directly but certainly symbolically. I then used that image as a way to understand the theme. Up to this point I had found the experience quite a lot of fun.

The next part though really got my attention. I was inspired to, I don't know how to say this but, allow a story to unfold in the image. At which point the image became a scene where things were happening.

As the story unfolded I was able to get a deeper meaning out of the image. While I did ask questions it seemed witnessing the story was all that was needed to gather the meaning.

Feels like a there might be a door or two to go through and explore! Would I be too far off to think there are a few fun possibilities to experiment with here?

Thanks,
Eric

(no subject)

Date: 2023-08-28 06:11 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] hearthculture
I wrote an essay long ago identifying modern investment culture as the point of failure (root of evil..?) of modern western civilization.
If I remember correctly my reasoning went:
-Investment in modern times is not deciding to hitch your pony to a person or company you believe in, instead (for most people) it is lending money at interest, or usury, at best, and gambling at worst; and that shift becomes even more stark because we are forced by multiple retirement systems to put portions of our money into investment instruments (401k, etc.) that are supposed to support us when we are too old to work, or just decide that leisure is more fun than work.
-There are roles for elders to be productive without heavy labor (childcare, teaching, storytelling, cooking, among many many others.)
With retirement accounts, elders don't have to be elders and they don't "need" their children, allowing for further destruction of family units and further fractioning along political, religious, and other lines.
-Retirement and other forms of investment/usury allow for a false sense of self-sufficiency (when the sufficiency is actually produced by others obfuscated by many financial layers.) That sense also leads to delusions of grandeur, selfishness, and fractioning of families and society.
-When you have entire classes of people reliant on investment income to live, companies can morally justify profit seeking over the safety and well-being of their workers and customers. (If profits aren't at 10% or higher, the granparents won't eat next year!)
-Workplaces can doubly be more heartless and exploitative with their workers, and not have pushback, because those workers are promised that it will only last till they are 50/65 when they can retire and get all the rest they were denied for 40 years.


It went other places from there, but that's the gist. I imagine one of the turning points in Usury being a topic to it being sacrosanct was the implementation of social security and other mandatory retirement plans that made every citizen culpable for a form of usury.

Re: Natal chart privacy

Date: 2023-08-28 06:15 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
How vague do you need to be to avoid those risks?

(no subject)

Date: 2023-08-28 06:17 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Dear Mr Greer,

I have two questions for you this week.

1. The planetary tides are usually tracked by the planetary hours of traditional astrology. Is there a similar means or system to track the elemental tides, allowing one to determine which of the four elements prevails at any given moment?

2. The LBRP is used to trace a protective circle around the magician. In this connection, many authors give a word of caution to the magician, saying that they are not to cross the bounds of the circle at the risk of weakening their own belief in its reality. My question is: what is the magician supposed to do at the end of a ritual, as leaving the ritual space will necessarily entail the crossing of the circle?

Thank you as ever for your anwers!

(no subject)

Date: 2023-08-28 06:19 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Do you know what results people get from prayers to Uranus and Neptune? They are powerful planets in my chart, and I'm getting into devotions with the planets, and would therefore like to find out if it's safe to add them to my weekly prayer rotations, along with the rest of the planets; and to see how others have approached this.
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