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 magical altar. In the traditions of the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose, this can be any flat surface large enough to hold the four working tools of the elements, the four elemental candles, and the two pillars. In ritual, it represents the world -- meaning here both the microcosm of yourself and the macrocosm of the universe. A ritual itself forms a mesocosm that mediates between those two extremes and is capable, within the limits of magic, of making changes in either or both.

As the image above suggests, an altar can be very, very simple.  A lot of mages I know, in and out of the traditions John Gilbert taught, have used the kind of little folding table I grew up calling "TV trays" as altars -- they're convenient to put up and take down, and can be stored folded up for the many times when you're not doing ritual. Throw a colored cloth over it and you're good to go. Black is standard in most Golden Dawn-derived traditions, representing the opaque world of matter, but you can use other colors for specific symbolic purposes.

Of course you can get much fancier than the simple FHR approach; the image on the right shows a Golden Dawn altar kitted up for a ritual, and the one below shows a Martinist altar similarly bedecked. In magic, as in most things in life, you can get as simple or as fancy as your heart desires.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed -- as in, NO MORE COMMENTS WILL BE PUT THROUGH. See you next week!***

Comments

Re: Astrological hours

[ecosophia]

It really depends on what kind of change you want to make in yourself. Do you want to become more sensitive? Do it on the day and hour of the Moon. Do you want to become more clever? Day and hour of Mercury. Und so weiter!

Re: Astrological hours

[vitranc]

Thank you,
What would happen if one would do a working on a lets say day of Jupiter, hour of the moon?

Re: Astrological hours

[ecosophia]

The energy would be muddled. I haven't found this useful for myself, but you can certainly experiment and see how it works for you.

Re: Astrological hours

[vitranc]

I am working with DMH and have gone back to the part where one uses the SoP to change something inside or outside oneself.
I have meditated trough the 6 Elements and formed a goal.
The Idea was to do one Initial SoP inside the DG and then to repeat it 7 times as stated in DMH.

The Idea was to combine the initial SoP performance with an auspicious time.
I thought Moon was good for new beginnings? That is why the question. But am I right, the exercise is actually time independant in its conception and muddled or not the working would still work?

Re: Astrological hours

[ecosophia]

The exercise is time independent. You can key it to the planetary hours and days if you want to, but again, you'd be better off deciding which planet suits the specific change you want to make, and using the day and hour of that planet.