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

Jung's Shadow concept & the occult

[(Anonymous)]

Hi John Michael,

There seems to be a movement in the online Occult scene to regard CG Jung as an Occultist in some real sense. In particular, Jung's aphorism to look to Heaven for form and Hell for energy (I am paraphrasing here) seems to have taken in the meaning that it is as important to work with Goetic and Chthonic entities to get things done as it is to work with Angels and Intelligences for less immediately mundane issues.

My questions are as follows:

1. Do you believe that there is any danger in working with one's Shadow through techniques such as Active Imagination/dream work and psychodramatic ritual, if one also has a magical practice?

2. If it is valuable to work with ones Shadow in the above ostensibly magical way, do you believe that the corollary holds and that working with the more shadowy denizens of the astral world can have some real value?

3. If you agree that there is some value in (2), what safeguards would you suggest be put in place? (Based in my understanding of Jung, I imagine it would involve some sort of control over the process by an Angelic or Divine (correlating to Jung's idea of Archetypes) being.

4. Do you have any other thoughts to share on Shadow work and how one might best get in touch with those resources of trapped energy hidden in the shadow?

Thanks as always for this space,

P

Re: Jung's Shadow concept & the occult

[ecosophia]

0) First of all, I want to make a comment about the "heaven for form, hell for energy" business. That has been completely misunderstood in the modern pop-occult scene -- Jung emphatically did not mean that it's fine to invoke demons for practical magic. He was a capable occultist, and knew better. His point is that power comes from the passions, but direction and guidance from the higher aspects of the mind

1) Of course there is. Any time you work with archetypes, there are dangers. It can still be worth doing.

2) That's not at all the same thing. Your Shadow is the archetypal dumpster that contains everything about yourself you don't want to admit. Jung comments that it's quite common among criminals to find that their shadows contain things like mercy and gentleness! What is in your Shadow is already in you -- you're just caught up pretending that it's not you, oh, no, it's those other people over there who are the Bad Thing you don't want to admit in yourself. Resolving that hypocrisy is an important first step in any kind of inner growth. That's not related to wallowing in the muck of the submaterial and trying to get favors from the debased beings that dwell there.

3) The Abramelin operation is a good model here. In that working, you invoke and interact with your Guardian Angel and in the process rise up toward the angelic level; from that height, you can then command evil entities and they don't argue, because they recognize you as their superior. If instead you lower yourself to the demonic level, as most demonolaters do, you don't become their master, you become their plaything. "Why, this is Hell, nor am I ever out of it," is what Mephistopheles says when Faustus summons him in Marlowe's play; the implication is that Faustus has descended to the demonic level, and his doom follows accordingly.

4) The best approach I know of to Shadow work is to pay careful attention to everything you can't stand in other people. Make a list -- a good, long, detailed list, enumerating every single thing that makes you rage and snarl and gnash your teeth about the thoughts, words, and actions of the people you know. Then, once the list is finished, sit down and read through it, realizing that every single detail is true of you, and the reason it makes you furious is that you can't stand seeing yourself in the mirror. Rinse and repeat, and you lessen the gap between your ego (that is, your self-concept) and your actual self. (It's helpful to do this alongside the Order of Spiritual Alchemy work, which can help you clear away the old traumas and unresolved emotions that often underlie the sort of hypocrisy discussed above.