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

Metal Music

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

I like to listen to hard music, some of it with lots of disharmonies, fast tempo, very hard guitar riffs etc.
Are you aware of any negative influences of metal music?

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer.

ExecutedByGandhi

Re: Metal Music

[ecosophia]

Nope. I enjoy Seventies rock, and though it's not as hard as metal music I don't think you'd call Led Zeppelin soft! I've never had any trouble with that, and I doubt you'll have any trouble with your own musical preferences.

Re: Metal Music

[(Anonymous)]

I'll share with you my own personal experiences. I've been a huge metal fan since high school (30+ years at this point). I grew up in a Christian home, and my dad kept a close eye on the specific music choices I made. Most things were allowed, but not anything with explicitly evil content.

I maintained this "rule" for myself for years afterwards. About 10 years ago, for many different reasons, I started listening to bands that I normally wouldn't have (Ghost, Lucifer, Sabbath Assembly, etc.). Certainly, I had developed a mental state beforehand that led me down that path. But, adding in that music created a feedback loop that lasted several years and made me unrecognizable to myself - negativity, nihilism, selfishness, laziness, feeling like a powerless victim, etc.

Fortunately, 3.5 years ago, I snapped out of it. I still listen to metal, but that evil stuff is completely uninteresting to me. Beyond that, a lot of stuff that isn't explicitly evil but just dark (Opeth, Swallow the Sun, Uada) has very little time in my playlists these days. I spend most of my time with more positive influences (Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Stryper, Theocracy). Again, I'm not saying the music is causal, but it generates feedback loops that I've seen firsthand and want to use for positive not destruction.

Also, on that same note, I had my heart broken in high school and had developed a sort of mental playlist of songs during that time. Over the years, I would revisit those songs with sadness and nostalgia. I have since banned those songs as well, and it has helped me tremendously.