Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Once again, it's technically Monday now -- past midnight Eastern time -- and here I am on Dreamwidth, so it's time for another Magic Monday.  

Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer, though it may be Tuesday sometime before I get to them all.

With that said, have at it! 

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

Comments

2 questions

[(Anonymous)]

1). You mentioned ceremonial magic won’t make you rich, thin, famous, etc. What are its benefits? Drawbacks, if any?

2). What exactly is chaos magic and why would people do it? Seems to me there’s enough chaos in the world without people conjuring up even more.

Re: 2 questions

[ecosophia]

1) Every human being has some capacity for greatness, which expresses itself partly in the form of innate talents and partly in the form of a capacity for living fully, richly, and deliberately. Most people never get around to finding their capacities for magnificence, and so lead mediocre lives. High magic, to give it the name Eliphas Levi bestowed on it, is a way to cultivate that capacity for greatness, to live more fully and intentionally, through conscious participation in the wider world of spiritual forces to which human souls belong.

The drawbacks? It's a lot of work; most people won't understand or sympathize with what you're doing; and it deprives you of the right to whine about your life.

2) Chaos magic is an avant-garde branch of popular occultism that was originally inspired by the Discordian scene -- a prankster-ish movement in the 1960s and 1970s that claimed to worship Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos, discord, and confusion. (You can find a decent overview of the Discordian nonscripture, the Principia Discordia, here.) Chaos magic isn't about conjuring up chaos -- it starts from the assumption that the universe is random.

While no two chaos magicians think exactly the same way, the basic assumption of most chaos magicians is that the powers used in magic exist entirely in the human mind, and gods, spirits, symbols, and the like are arbitrary constructs that can be used to focus the magical powers of the individual. It's thus very appealing to people who've bought into the atheism and materialism of today's pop culture. I'm not a fan; it seems like a painfully limiting way to do magic -- but a lot of people seem to find it congenial.

Questions on Procedure

[(Anonymous)]

I have done and am planning on doing more workings from your Encyclopedia of Natural Magic. I have a couple of questions:

1. With regard to keeping a saucer of vinegar in the house to slowly evaporate and banish magical energies / hostile magic, could this be made more potent or focused by using a vinegar maceration made with protective herbs instead of straight vinegar? I am thinking in particular of chamomile since I am harvesting it at the moment, also rosemary and catnip will be ready soon. Or would this be overdoing it? And should this use of vinegar be short term only? I’ve been keeping a saucer in my bedroom for the past month to clear the air for better sleep. And does the vinegar banish all magical energies or only hostile ones, allowing beneficial, benign energies through?

2. Is it less effective to do workings that involve the energies of planets that are stressed in the natal chart? I have the Sun in his fall (Libra), Venus in her detriment (Scorpio), and Jupiter is retrograde in Taurus. Yet I seem drawn to do workings that involve these planets. Would it be better, more effective to focus on energies of the planets that are better placed in my natal chart?

And last, I have a question about the SOP ritual. I have started doing the first invoking/banishing (Air) and wonder what to do with my arm after I trace the symbol for invoking and before I ‘erase’ the symbol for banishing. Does the arm remain elevated with fingers pointing at the symbol, or should I lower my arm to my side for the visualization / blessings and the statement of gratitude. Then raise it again for the ‘erasing.’ And after the erasing when I am speaking the banishing chant, do I lower my arm to my side or keep it pointing at the now empty space?

This has turned into quite a few questions. Thank you so much for your patience and your instruction. I thoroughly enjoy these Magic Mondays and look forward to them every week.

Yanocoches in Colorado

Re: Questions on Procedure

[ecosophia]

1) You can certainly do magically effective herbal vinegars for this purpose. The vinegar doesn't banish energies, it just keeps them from condensing on the etheric plane, which is what has to happen in most kinds of magical attack; the energies themselves flow freely, as they should.

2) Not at all. One of the benefits of natural magic, in fact, is that you can help counter the negative aspects of your natal chart. Since the chamomile you use, for example, isn't affected by the detriment of the Sun in your natal chart, it radiates a healthy solar energy you don't normally have.

3) With regard to the Sphere of Protection, I point at the center of the symbol while speaking. So I trace, point, trace, point, and then lower the arm. That's not the only way to do it, though; by all means experiment and find the way that works best for you.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

What books would you recommend to someone just looking to start out in Western Tropical Astrology?

[ecosophia]

I'm honestly not sure what's available for, or suited to, beginners these days; it's been a very long time since my first steps in astrology. If your public library system carries books on astrology, you'd probably be best off reading several books from that source and getting some idea of what appeals to you.

Tarot numbering

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG, can you give your view on the different numbering of the Strength and Justice cards, in different decks and how this came about?
Reading some writings on both, they both seem to make sense in their own way.
You are right, too, the Tarot Maconnique is a lovely deck, as is his Alchemical deck

Thanks in advance, Helen

Re: Tarot numbering

[ecosophia]

Okay, this is fairly complex. In the cities of northern Italy, where the tarot evolved, there were many different tarot-ish decks with different numbers and orders of trumps. The Milanese version ended up being exported to southern France, where (after further modifications) it became the Marseilles tarot, and the Marseilles pattern then became standard over most of Europe. It has Justice as trump 8 and Strength as trump 11.

All this happened while the tarot was just a card game. Later on, when card divination became popular, occultists picked it up and found that the trumps made it more useful than other card decks. The big question was how to assign the 22 trumps to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which were important in Cabalistic symbolism. There were various systems, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

Then along came a circle of English occultists associated with Kenneth Mackenzie. One of them -- nobody knows who -- rearranged the trumps, moving the Fool from the next to last card to the front of the deck, and swapping Justice and Strength. Once you do that, fitting the trumps to the Hebrew alphabet is a piece of cake. That system got picked up by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most prestigious occult order of late Victorian England. That's where Arthur Edward Waite, the co-designer of the Waite-Smith (or Rider-Waite) tarot deck, learned about tarot, and so when he and Pamela Coleman Smith went to work on what became the most influential tarot deck of modern times, they used the Golden Dawn order of the trumps.

So you have your choice. Both are valid options; it's purely a matter of what you want to do.

[(Anonymous)]

With how thought and intention affect the world, can preparing for worst-case scenarios make them more likely to happen?

incomplete

[dfr1973]

You are forgetting the first part of that old Army axiom. It's "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst." Of course, some times things go too well, and you outjump your supply chain.

[(Anonymous)]

(Tolkienguy)

Hey-thank you for your answer last week. I have been considering trying simple discursive meditation for 15-20 minutes a day with an opening prayer along the lines of "Dear God, please protect me and this space from all harmful spiritual powers.", perhaps combined with a more formal prayer like the Lord's Prayer or the Anglican Collect for Protection. I have no wish to repeat my previous experience but do feel the need for some sort of spiritual practice to bring more...balance and direction into my life.

Also, I ran into David Griffin's website today, and have seen it a couple times since I became interested in the occult, and...is that guy for real? Everything he writes reads like a really, really bad infomercial, but a couple weeks ago I remember you talking about him like he was a serious magician.

[ecosophia]

One very traditional way to incorporate discursive meditation into Christian spiritual practice is to read a chapter of the Bible each morning, and then meditate on it. I once had a conversation about this with a very devout Christian occultist, for whom this was a core practice. She'd start with the Lord's Prayer, then read her chapter, then meditate on something in that chapter, then end with a more extempore prayer. It took her about twenty minutes a day and was the mainspring of her spiritual life.

One key piece of advice she offered was never, when you're beginning this practice, start with Genesis. "Even if you make it through the begats," she said, "you're going to grind to a stop in Leviticus or Numbers, and that'll be the end of it." Start with the Gospel of Matthew, proceed from there to the end of the New Testament, and only then go to the first chapter of Genesis and proceed from there.

As for Griffin, well, you get those from time to time...

[(Anonymous)]

You previously said on MM that you found artificial wombs (unlike insemination) a cause for worry, spiritually - what do you think would go wrong?

[ecosophia]

The energy body of the growing fetus is surrounded, shaped, and guided by the energy body of the mother. In an artificial womb, you wouldn't have that. I don't know in advance exactly what would go wrong, but it might get pretty ghastly.

Preparing the Vervain

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

So I'm doing the second part of my Vervain preparation when I burn the 3ozs and the leftover laceration from the tincture and i had a couple of questions based on the experience:
A) my herbs didn't go gooey or bubbly, but they did go to embers then grey ash, does this mean I missed a part of the process?
B) I have a lot less liquid since I took out the solid matter, do I need to add more alcohol now that I've put the ash in?
Thanks for your steer
Cheers
Edward

Re: Preparing the Vervain

[ecosophia]

a) No, they're fine. If you've got a good gray ash, you have the salts you need.

b) As long as you have enough of the final preparation for the purposes of the ritual, you're fine.

Characters in Fiction

[(Anonymous)]

About a month ago, you said: "One of the consequences of the way I write things is that I let my characters do the talking, and they routinely say things I'm not expecting. [...] in some cases important characters and major themes come into a story that way, without even so much as asking leave." (ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/20440.html?thread=868312#cmt868312)

This phenomenon is surprisingly often mentioned by competent writers -- for instance, I think it was Isaac Bashevis Singer who credited characters with their own lives and logic which the writer had to adjust to, rather than the other way around. What makes this specifically a subject for Magic Monday is that I have been wondering where these important characters or themes are coming from then: are they just dressed up memories or parts of personality, or something rather more independent of the writer's biography?

By the sound of it, I'd suspect the latter, but it would take someone at home both in the world of fiction writing and of occultism to give a reliable answer to that!

Re: Characters in Fiction

[ecosophia]

I have no idea. I haven't wanted to probe the issue too deeply, in case that might cause something to go wrong with the process!

[(Anonymous)]

JMG
I try to answer my own questions – this I guess has long been my own way of meditating. This habit raises new questions, however.

Given that different cultural lineages must negotiate the ‘magical’, where there are autonomies beyond our ken but in some ways available to discovery or rediscovery, I am curious about the lineage of ‘Progress’.

John Mathews (in RC Enlightenment) recounts Tycho Brahe’s last words: “Let me not have lived in vain.” From your knowledge of world cultural traditions / lineages, can we imagine this coming from any other tradition? The striving behind this plea seems so commonplace that I wonder.

And subsequent to this, is what we call ‘Progress’ a degraded version (with added hubris) of something recurrent in a particular cultural soul? Take out the hubris and “we stand on the shoulders of giants”. Where stands this in magical history?

best
Phil H

[ecosophia]

Er, maybe I'm just slow on the uptake this afternoon, but I'm not at all sure what you're saying, and even less sure what you're asking.

[mmelvink]

Hi JMG,

For pedagogical purposes, I always present panpsychism (or animism) as the golden middle way between the two Western cosmological extremes of materialism and idealism (Pythagoras as the marriage of Plato and Aristotle), and historically the default theoretical framework for explaining why magic and divination work. A tad simplistic, I know, but would you generally agree? I ask as we're currently seeing an explicit boom in panpsychism among philosophers and even practicing scientists -- few of whom have realized that this venerable cosmology requires magic to be baked into the cake!

A second question, if I may: I'd like to get an earthier sense of how Uranus works, since it's the strongest planet in my chart (in Scorpio in house ten almost conjunct Midheaven). For obvious reasons, of course, no Uranian associations appear in your ENM; but can any of the Saturn-in-Aquarius things -- henbane, jet, obsidian, salt and south wind (Affricus) -- do double duty here? And I suppose technically Mercury-in-Aquarius things might work as well, though I don't see any listed?

Also, I'd like to work with a variety of pines (as an eastern Washingtonian, Ponderosas are my spirit animal), none of which feature in ENM; where do you recommend I go for a reliable list of their correspondences and uses?

[ecosophia]

Panpsychism -- for those readers who don't have a background in philosophical jargon, this is the belief that mind and consciousness are present in all things -- is to my mind as incomplete as materialism and idealism; it's when you chuck the notion of a single arche in the Greek sense, and note that the universe contains (at bare minimum) material things, minds, and eternal noetic realities, none of which can be reduced to the others, that you get to the place where magicians do their work -- and arguably the universe in which each of us actually lives.

Your second and third questions all deal with areas of magical practice where the necessary work hasn't been done yet. We don't yet know what the herbs and stones of Uranus are; we don't yet know what the elemental and planetary correspondences of New World pines are. Somebody, or more to the point a lot of somebodies over many years, will have to get to work using clairvoyant capacities, interaction with spirits, and experimentation to work all that out.

Protection of Home

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

Thanks for hosting these forums.

I have purchased your Encyclopedia of Natural Magic, and look forward to starting to study it in a few days.

But in the meantime...

There have been a rash of burglaries in my neighborhood. And yesterday, during the day when I was gardening in the front of my yard, the latch of my back gate was ripped off and my Beware of Dog sign (which I had tried to magically charge a month ago to keep away any with intent to do harm) was ripped off the back fench as well (it had been nailed down).

As I mentioned, I will certainly be studying your book closely, but am wondering if for now you might recommend a natural magical practice or two that would encourage those who intend harm to stay off/away from my home and yard.

Thanks much,

Jacques

Re: Protection of Home

[ecosophia]

You might try one or more of these spells.

Mercury in Gemini

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG

Re the daily divination practice. Would you consider it acceptable to use one of the better astrology websites for my daily natal chart as a gorm of daily divination?

Or is a more hands on practice advisable?

Re: Mercury in Gemini

[ecosophia]

Um, your natal chart is the chart you got when you were born; it doesn't change from day to day. If you mean using a site to track transits to your natal chart, you can certainly do that; I don't use the internet for that purpose -- I get the annual ephemeris, and take the few minutes needed to check the day's planetary placements in relation to my natal chart and my wife's -- but either way it's a workable divination practice.

Hermetic Herbalism/Natural Magic

[violetcabra]

Reading Dion Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah and then putting a critical eye towards my gardening books and herbals has gotten me thinking about how the astrological attributions of herbs relate to the Tree of Life. You mention this in The Encyclopedia of Natural Magic as it relates to quartz and the Moon, Yesod etc.

So an herb like Nettles stings, is an aphrodisiac especially for men, strengthens the will, strengthens plants it grows next to and aids in cleansing and catabolism. So clearly this is an herb of Mars, and likewise Geburah.

I would imagine that this sort of mapping of herbs onto the Tree of Life may be done most specifically through the world of Assiah. So it may be fair to say that one of the ways that Geburah/Mars manifests corporally on Earth is through Nettles. In Yetzirah Nettles would exist as an emanation of Mars, in Briah Nettles would be as something like Archetypical patterns and in Atziluth Nettles would be something like a "seed" in the unmanifest.

To contact Mars/Geburah in the world of Assiah the body of Nettles would suffice. However, if I wanted to contact Mars/Geburah in the realm of Yetzirah or 'higher' I would need to make use of Ceremonial techniques, which could include Nettles but would also deal with more abstract forces.

My question is:

does this mapping make sense, is there anything that you see that indicates I'm misunderstanding the concepts and their implications? I'm quite excited by this idea and the utility it might provide -- especially since herbs tend to be not only balanced but even balancing beings, at least in my experience. However I wish to not get too swept up in flights of fancy and am still very new to the Cabala and so seek to see if I'm blatantly not getting something.

Many thanks!

Re: Hermetic Herbalism/Natural Magic

[ecosophia]

That's the classic way of thinking of it, so you're obviously paying attention.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

A while back in the discussion of "what's wrong with the anti-trump online spell" tangent discussion, the issue came up of sending the NRA a dollar with red on it. What you mentioned (and others corroborated from other traditions) was that the color red is associated with prosperity and money. I'm curious if you (and others) know of other traditional associations for the color blue.

[ecosophia]

Blue in Western magical traditions is primarily a color of peace, harmony, and blessing. You burn a blue candle, for example, to bring harmony to a troubled home or relationship.

[packshaud]

In alchemy, why steel is active/niter and magnets are passive/salts? I can't grok the reason, if there is one.

[ecosophia]

That's the traditional lore. I haven't done alchemical work with steel and magnetite, so don't know what might be behind it.

[orathbone]

Dear HMG, I’ve recently been rereading ‘The White Goddess’ by Robert Graves and was wondering if this book has had any influence on your Druidic practice.?

[ecosophia]

Yes, in certain ways. I take it for what it is -- the vision of an inspired poet -- and that's valid in its own right, whether or not it has anything to do with what other inspired poets did or didn't do a thousand years ago.

Please Analyze My Spirit

[saturns_pet]

Open Offer to JMG and Other Cosmopolitans That Make Monday Magical:

Please shortly or at length analyze my spirit using my visible planets' natal chart with a view to showing me likely strengths and weaknesses it might manifest if I make being an author one of my top aims.

Sun: Cancer in House 12
Rising: Cancer
Moon: Libra in House 4
Mercury: Gemini in House 12
Venus: Gemini in House 11
Mars: Libra in House 4
Jupiter: Scorpio in House 4
Saturn: Libra in House 4

I'd welcome general comments too. I am Saturn's Pet: behold my innards!

Re: Please Analyze My Spirit

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking off the top of my head, and without knowing what conjunctions and squares your chart contains, here is a rough outline of what I read:

Born to examine and document end-of-life conditions and places of confinement. This could mean death row prisons, of course, but what I got was the notion that nursing homes are prisonlike. Perhaps written accounts of how to set up nurturing, truly homelike hospices within the structural confines and budgets of nursing homes, including how to staff, finance, and operate the endeavour on a daily basis.

Detailed interviews with the people who are dying, their relatives, their spiritual advisors, the hands-on care-providing staff, and the hands-off, purse-string-holding administrative personnel would be illustrative of the principles
you discover by conducting research into the difficulties of setting up such care units and developing your own insights into how to address the salient issues.

Or you might discover ways to get people out of nursing homes altogether, perhaps by clubbing together to pool resources and share duties of attending on those who require care. People will likely reveal to you deep, intimate, painful, and/or shocking secrets in the course of your
research, showing imbalances in the current system that will cry out for fairer resolution. This source material could be good for sales, or at least spark your creative powers of description and analysis.

You might have to earn your living and beef up your authorial authority by actually being on the spot -- -- living or working in health care facilities in person. Especially if you work in
the accounting dept. and gain inside knowledge of where the money comes from and where it goes.

Another potential topic for writing might be the trials of homelessness and how people manage to go on living when they dwell on the outer edges of survivability. Mental illness is also confining and hidden away from public view. Likewise, rural poverty vs. urban poverty.

[guillem66]

When practising the second gate active working, it is advisable to be cautious when you ask for specific enchancements of your own capacities? After all, all come with a price, and if one ask, say, for and strengthened intuition, i expect the working, first of all, to erode the obstacles, secondly to build the foundations in which the capacity will lay (and foundations that matter tend to be hard work) and finally develop the capacity.Im correct?

About divinations, although im starting to foresee practical things more or less regularly, im confused about what should be my goal for the daily readings.
I tend to go for the narrative, and its very rewarding when i finally can tie together three figures in a narrative. However,perhaps i should pursuit a more practical approach?

Many thanks,

Guillem

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, you're correct.

2) Don't worry about having a goal for the daily readings. Just keep on doing it in whatever way seems best to you, and let the process teach you.

Tarot fear

[(Anonymous)]

I find myself both interested in learning to read Tarot cards and fearful of the practice. I suspect my hesitation and fear stems from my Christian upbringing and education. Just wondering if you’ve encountered this in others? And if so, did they get past this obstacle? How? Thanks

Re: Tarot fear

[ecosophia]

Oh, sure. Most people who were raised in the more conservative end of Christianity have such fears. Those who got past that obstacle simply squared their shoulders and went ahead anyway.

[alexseanchai]

I am planning to move from one US coast to the other in a few months. With specific regard to the land spirits of both here and there, what ought I do? Is there anything?

(My personal history has a lot of moving house in. But only two of those moves postdate my discovering polytheism and animism, and one of those wasn't even ten miles so I didn't worry, and the other was within the apartment complex so I really didn't worry!)

[ecosophia]

Talk to the land spirits, and ask their advice!

Not a question, but I thought of you when I read this

[degringolade]

I am plowing through GK Chesterton's "Heretics" and this little gem bounced out at me. Since I think it fits in nicely with your project, I took the liberty of sending it.


"I do not, therefore, say that the word "progress" is unmeaning; I say it is unmeaning without the previous definition of a moral doctrine, and that it can only be applied to groups of persons who hold that doctrine in common. Progress is not an illegitimate word, but it is logically evident that it is illegitimate for us. It is a sacred word, a word which could only rightly be used by rigid believers and in the ages of faith."

Re: Not a question, but I thought of you when I read this

[ecosophia]

Good. He's right, of course, that since the word "progress" implies things becoming better over time, it means nothing without a consensus about what is better and what is worse...

[(Anonymous)]

When you remembered your past lives in meditation were you trying to remember them or were you thinking about something else and the memories came back spontaneously?

[ecosophia]

It happened very gradually, over a period of some years, and never when I was trying to remember them. In general, if you try to remember past life memories, your imagination will be more than happy to cook something up for you; let it happen in its own time, and you have a better chance of getting something that isn't simply fabrication.

Blessing

[(Anonymous)]

What is the occult view on blessings? Specifically those done by a priest or priestess. Can the priest channel a spiritual force to do this? Or should blessings be left to the deities and kept out of human hands? I always look forward to this forum. Thanks again for the generosity in providing this space.

Mike T

Re: Blessing

[ecosophia]

One of the things that happens when you become a priest or priestess is that you have a link with one or more deities, through which the power and intentions of the deity can take shape more easily in the human world. When the priest or priestess blesses someone or something, power flows through that link from the deity. Of course it depends on how well the priest or priestess keeps the link open via personal spiritual practice; we've all met people who were officially clergypersons, but had no connection with any deity at all and couldn't channel a burnt-out match's worth of spiritual energy...

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Mr. Greer (is there an appropriate honorific for a distinguished mage such as yourself other than "mister"?),

I'm grateful for your continued commentary on these subjects, and especially so because I have just started digging into your book on geomancy (and am waiting for the Encyclopedia of Natural Magic) and it's raised a few questions for me!

1. So, I'm in Canada and up here one of the only vendors that I'm aware of selling your books directly is Amazon.ca (the place Llewellyn sends me when I go to their site). You've mentioned that due to the conditions of people working there there may not be such great energy on products they sell. In addition, I was wondering the same about a used magical book. How would you suggest I cleanse used books or those purchased from Amazon once I bring them into my home?

2. You've gone into detail on how vegetarianism increases psychic sensitivity and thus is in some ways incompatible with ritual magic, if I understood your comments correctly. I find that I'm not terribly drawn to ritual magic anyway, but I like the idea of a SOP-type banishing ritual and the ability to perform simple but effective spellwork (along the lines of hoodoo candlework or the effects of using the SOP/LRP for workings). What could I pursue in place of those that might be more appropriate as a druid-minded, celtic/german-ancestry vegetarian?

3. There are some larger-scale life-changes looming on my horizon. I'm a beginner in both tarot and geomancy (thank you for writing such a fantastic book on the subject!). I realize that my ability to correctly formulate questions and parse the answers is still nascent, and I'm concerned about giving both too little and too much weight to the answers I derive from my own divination. How would you recommend I approach these tools with respect to these important decisions and changes? I am somewhat limited in finances or I would consider paying a better regarded mage to do this work on my behalf.

I understand this may be too many questions at once, and I apologize if so. I've really tried to hold back and only ask the most pressing ones!

Thanks again,

D

[ecosophia]

0) I prefer to avoid honorifics altogether; "JMG" is quite sufficient. Still, thank you for asking!

1) If you can, leave the book in sunlight for an hour or so. If that's not an option, burn some frankincense, and fan the book open above the incense so the pages are exposed to the smoke. That should do it.

2) A vegetarian diet with adequate protein shouldn't get in the way of the kind of simple magic you've mentioned, though I'd recommend the SoP rather than the LRP. It's when you do without animal foods altogether that you have to worry about developing crippling sensitivity to other people's energies and emotions.

3) That's why doing daily readings, and keeping track of how they turned out, is so valuable. You'll learn very quickly how to take your readings. Also, of course, basic common sense is one of the most important divinatory powers you can use, and divination works best if you combine it with ordinary reasoning, research, and caution.