Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for 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? A wooden disk. In the traditions of the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose and the orders and systems related to it, the disk or pentacle is the emblem and working tool of elemental earth.  The disk is traditionally painted or decorated with a symbol the individual initiate considers sacred, whatever that happens to be -- I saw pentacles made by Christian initiates that had an image of Christ on the cross on them, for example, surrounded by Christian holy names and words of power. The disk can be used as a means of magical protection, imposing the unyielding solidity of the element of earth between the initiate and any hostile magical force

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed -- in other words, no more comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Does the wife of a demonic possessed can get possessed by the same demon, can it happen to other family members?

Can the possessed ones oppress the unpossessed ones on the call of the demon? it looks to me that there is a lot of suffering in family oppression and the demon might feed on that

[ecosophia]

Demonic possession in the strict sense of the word is rare, and involves drastic symptoms: the voice changes, the personality becomes completely different, fits and convulsions are common, and so on. It doesn't seem to be contagious from person to person. Demonic obsession, in which a negative entity controls or influences someone's thoughts and feelings without actually evicting them from their body and taking it over, is more common, but here again it's not usually contagious. The things to watch for are thoughts, speech, and behavior that are really bizarre; demons don't understand our world, and their logic has been described as "1 + 1 = petunia." If you've got an actual case of demonic influence, the behavior of the people being influenced just plain makes no sense.

[(Anonymous)]

the behavior of the people being influenced just plain makes no sense.

it doesn't make sense and when reminded to the fact, the person always finds an excuse, now the person blames it on "old age", but before because "worked to much", or because "the alcohol".

Then is it possible for people with similar demonic obsessions to get into a union because of this common trait?

[ecosophia]

That's not what I mean by "it doesn't make sense." An excuse like old age, or working hard, or alcohol still pretends to be reasonable. Imagine that you asked someone why he did that, and he turned to you and earnestly said, "Because the grackle was an abominable quartz shoeshine!"

[(Anonymous)]

This sounds a lot like severe mental illness. Do you know if anyone has tried to figure out how often such things might be demonic in origin?

[ecosophia]

Dion Fortune, who was trained as a psychoanalyst as well as being a first-rate occultist, said that in her experience, demonic influence was very often the cause of psychosis, and even more often an accompanying factor.

[(Anonymous)]

Does this also apply in cases of collective psychosis?

[ecosophia]

She didn't discuss that, and I don't have the psychotherapeutic background to judge.

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP, but there's an odd theory from the early days of psychiatry which theorises that extreme anxiety is a protection against psychosis, basically a protective mechanism in the brain almost equivalent to a scram on a nuclear reactor. If that anxiety barrier is broken through, then it can be psychosis, and it may be that the barrier is metaphysical.

Terrifies me a bit because I've been to that barrier, not by choice, avoided psychosis, but got close enough to the edge that I still shudder at the memories...