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

Schizophrenia and clairvoyance

[(Anonymous)]

I have a question about my mother. When I was around four she developed schizophrenia, started hearing voices and developed a range of psychotic delusions. She was violent towards me and I never had a mother/daughter relationship with her but my brother stayed in touch visited her regularly. He would tell me about things she said, such as about her reports of telepathic contact with various people around the world, as well as non-humans. When she became elderly her health suddenly took a turn for the worse and she went into hospital. My brother visited her there and he told me that while he was sitting by her bed he was thinking to himself that the kindest thing that could happen would be if she died in her sleep. At that point, he said, she opened her eyes and said 'I'm not dying yet!'. He denied saying he wanted her to die and she said 'Yes you did, I just heard you'. I'm wondering what was going on. Could it be that she was clairvoyant and the voices in her head were those of people around her and drove her to insanity, or could it be that schizophrenia and clairvoyance can go together?

Re: Schizophrenia and clairvoyance

[methylethyl]

If it's OK, I'd like to tack on a follow-up question here:

It seems to me that there's a lot of overlap between what's termed "clairvoyance" and the sorts of things that happen in some mental disorders-- schizophrenia in particular-- and that quite a lot of it could simply be grouped under "loose boundaries". Like, let's posit for a moment that this is simply a perceptual scale, where there's a "normal" range of perception where most everything is explicable in physical terms (light refracting off objects, vibrations of sound through the air to your ears) and if you perceive anything else you ignore it. And then there are incrementally larger ranges of perception (which I think are not all that uncommon) that extend to... various aspects of the not-so-physical world.

Are there any generally-accepted guidelines on the difference between people who are clairvoyant, who have a larger, looser set of perceptual boundaries and are able to manage those just fine, and people who are schizophrenic, who also have a larger, looser set of perceptual boundaries, but manage them very poorly?

Is it possible that the difference is simply... uh... (awkwardly musters words) the boundaries defining the self? Like, in a case where the boundaries of perception are broader than normal... is the difference between sane and not-sane, how solid your own perceptual boundaries are between "self" and "all the rest of that stuff"?

Re: Schizophrenia and clairvoyance

[methylethyl]

(I did not post the original question)

Re: Schizophrenia and clairvoyance

[ecosophia]

Yes, and in fact this is quite common. On the one hand, anything that destabilizes the mind can shake the barriers that screen other people's thoughts from our minds; on the other, psychically sensitive people very often have difficulties with mental balance, because all those intruding thoughts and feelings are hard to deal with in the absence of skilled training -- which is very hard to come by these days.

Re: Schizophrenia and clairvoyance

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you, that's given me a lot of think about. Possibly because of my own mind being so destabilised in early life, I've been aware of intrusions from those around me myself and it's taken a lot of work to deal with them and not go the way same way as my mother. What a strange world this is.

Re: Schizophrenia and clairvoyance

[(Anonymous)]

All this reminds me of the Zen concept of "makyo." The Roshi was quite strict in admonishing people practicing Zazen not to get involved with the makyo; to just ignore it. Some practitioners who were professional musicians (for example) said they got CD quality audio makyos of classical music. Me, I'd just begin to see landscapes and figures in the bland fabric divider in front of my open eyes. Following the Roshi's advice I ignored them. Now that I am no longer practicing Zen, but am attempting scrying, I get absolutely nothing!