ecosophia | Magic Monday

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Magic Monday

It's just before 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 1.1 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 image? I field a lot of questions about my books on magic these days, so I've decided to do little capsule summaries of them here, one per week. The book on the left is the current edition of my fifth published book, The Encyclopedia of Natural Magic. I got tired of the torrent of wildly inaccurate books on herb and stone magic, and decided to write one based entirely on medieval and Renaissance sources -- granted, it helped that I'd gotten fairly good at reading Latin by the time I got to work on it. I wrote this before I studied hoodoo with Cat Yronwode, or it would have had much more traditional American conjure in it. It's still a solid book, and one I use myself whenever I need to look up the magical properties of an herb or what have you -- and it's the oldest of my books that's still with its original publisher, for whatever that's worth. If you're interested, you can get a copy here if you live in the US, and at your favorite bookstore if you live elsewhere.

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I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed -- as in, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

How fascinating! I'll look forward to this.

This material is a major part of the book "The Inner Guide Meditation" (1988) by Edwin C. Steinbrecher, which I just started working with. The book has extensive discussion of Golden Dawn based Tarot, qabalistic Tree of Life, and Astrology archetypes, how to identify potential shadow and conflict areas within your chart, and then ask your inner guide to help you negotiate what each archetypal ingredient of your nature needs from you to work with you and be your friend.

As an example, if your natal chart had Mercury square Venus, the book's recommendation would be to ask your inner guide to moderate a dialogue between the Magician and the Empress about how to resolve their disagreements without creating problems in your life.

The book's other major themes are active imagination, discernment, recognizing false guides, archetypal astral sex, and kundalini awakening.

Mocha Amphibious Moose

1) The Dolmen Arch isn't omnipotent. It gives you a set of tools you can use to make changes in your life, but it doesn't guarantee perfect success by the time you finish the course!

2) It sounds as though the shaman has a fairly good handle on things. You might consider doing more work with him. Beyond that -- well, this sort of thing can take a good long time to resolve, especially if it's rooted in problematic magical activity in a previous life. Keep up your practices and keep invoking positive energies.

Hello again,

As I muse on Bowie I think of how, to me, his character and characters are essentially Uranian, on the one hand with his androgynous persona and science fiction infused storylines, and Neptunian, with all the fantastical and surrealistic elements within his body of work.

JPM

It seems to me that you've already sketched out the answer clearly enough. You wanted to know if the new place was suitable to you; the chart says that yes, it is. (That's the conjunction, with your significator moving to conjoin the new place.) You had to leave suddenly in a hurry -- that's Fortuna Minor -- and you're entering a new situation -- that's Caput Draconis. Part of Fortune in the 10th simply means that your career will benefit; Albus can mean "profit."

Beyond that? My experience is that it's very easy to overthink a geomantic reading, and this is rarely helpful. You asked a question and you got a very clear answer; that might be worth accepting.

Morning JMG and folks! (btw oops, i posted this on last week's thread by mistake, apologies)

Had a couple of questions.

1) Things are clearly going off the handle a bit (middle east, more open anti-semitism on the left and right, religious extremism, other weird stuff like a doom cult hijacking the most promising AI company Open AI). I divined whether what's happening right now is similar to the possession by wotan that happened to the germans and it suggested yes.

I wanted to ask more about this. Is this some sort of psychic projection of pain and resentment from socio-economic conditions that shows up as external phenomena (demagoguery, extremism etc)? Some sort of supply that gets created by latent emotional demand for a powerful release of tension?

Or is are there actual spiritual, or wider energetic factors at play?

2) How does one turn one's power drive (that shows up disguised as other phenomena such as care, love, aggression, ambition but its secretly selfish and expansionary in nature, and contains a type of hunger or lack) into something like a genuine drive for wisdom, freedom, or love that is not self seeking (but can use an ego to operate in the world)?

Thank you for this! Your kindness and generosity in sharing your wisdom with others are among the many things I'm grateful for in this world.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

~Magenta Befuddled Dragon

The entire question of free will is a muddle because most people assume that there are only two options, 100% free will or 100% determinism. Of course that's not true at all. Each of us has some freedom of will, varying by circumstances and personality; each of us also has some constraint on our will. In one situation you might have only a little wiggle room, because your freedom is sharply constrained by outside factors or by your own personality; in another, you might have much more freedom to act.

As for prophecy, well, that depends a good deal on what you mean by that. If you mean 9as per your example) religious prophecy, that's easy. The gods are eternal, and "eternal" doesn't mean lasting a long time, or even lasting for all the time there is -- it means outside of time. An eternal being can look at all of time at once. What you're doing today, what you're doing tomorrow, what you're doing twenty years from now, what the mighty chipmunk civilization is doing ten million years after the last human being goes extinct -- those are all equally present in the same timeless moment to an eternal being. Thus the Christian god, for example, knew exactly what Judas was going to do with his free will, and knows exactly what you're going to do with yours, not because it was set in stone at the beginning of time but because a being outside of time can see it all happen, right there at once. That's what Jesus was hinting at when he said, "Before Abraham was, I am" -- notice the present tense. That's the mark of someone who could perceive eternity.

Okay, good. Not war, then -- but a real mess of some other kind. I'll look forward to delineating the chart.

Good evening,

Last week I asked about east coast Native American tribes rejecting the :cultural complex of sun worship, human sacrifice, and sacred kingship" that originated from Mesoamerica. It may be that one element of this rejection is the lack of mounds on the coast.

Thinking over mounds, especially sepulchral, I recalled a Magic Monday reply of yours. Forgot the question but you mentioned that there is a reason (without revealing it) that most cathedrals altars covered the burial place of a significant person (saint, king, etc.). Do you mind elaborating on that?

Eventually, the soul should withdraw from the dead body then the etheric double but if the sepulchral mounds had some power related to the power of bodies under altars some force (long lasting impressions on the astral light? long lasting impressions on the etheric or mental planes?) must remain behind.

Nobody knows! That's just it -- you're exploring new ground.

People do things in bad states all the time, and most of us still get by. I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you feel uncomfortable about it, prayer's a good way to get things to balance.

That's like seeing an academy of fine arts and asking, "So where's the academy of coarse arts?" There is no "artificial magic;" not all such labels have an exact opposite.

That makes sense! Thanks.

1) If that was done at all, it's likely to have been in China, where landscaping has always been one of the fine arts and the fine points of using trees in feng shui will doubtless have been put to good use. I don't know of anything in the West that's made use of it, but it's certainly something that could be done, and I suspect the effects would be very powerful.

2) Good heavens, don't worry about it. I'm not at all sensitive about things like that.

A happy and blessed Thanksgiving to you as well, and thank you for sharing this song! I've been poking around folk music lately, as it sometimes seems to better mesh with the spiritual directions than the kind of music I traditionally listen to.

As JMG said, most of my "whoah" moments with songs are pretty personal, but here's a slightly different approach: I found "Sunne" by Wolcensmen via the Survive the Jive youtube channel, which uses it as its theme music, and now every morning, I sing the lyrics as a prayer to the Goddess of the sun in my tradition, so I suppose you might call it a hymn:

"Hail, hail Sunne
Howe rising from below
Hail, hail Sunne
Shine bright so we may grow!

Hail, hail Sunne
Light up the farthest shore
Hail, hail Sunne
Steer us forevermore!"

Cheers,
Jeff

What about “natural” holy water from sacred wells, like Lourdes?

Yes, that ought to work very well. Just keep your mouth tightly shut. I'm pretty sure I know which country we're discussing, and I know people who've gone there for a few years and done something fairly similiar with good results.

I would welcome advice about archetypal energies, low cost rituals, etc. that might help with my housing dilemma.

My landlord is fraudulent about billing, chooses to allow maintenance problems harmful to all tenants to go unrepaired, declines to do anything about quality of life issues listed in the lease, and has become unreachable.

This is a government subsidized unit. I have no assigned contact with the government program while they are short staffed. I have found several kindly concerned government workers who had no power or suggestions, and many runarounds trying to seek help.

I take transit and have still-healing broken toes. It seems I’ll need a while before I can look for another place that meets the program’s criteria.

Two neighbors have subwoofers so loud and continuous that literally, not any kind of exaggeration, about 20 hours a day, the floors and furniture in my unit shake as though being kicked nonstop. Three layers of earplugs (in ear canal foam plugs, plus silicon outer ear plugs, plus carpenter style earmuffs) can’t drown out rumbling and booming that keeps me awake, shatters my concentration, and makes me physically queasy, psychologically discombobulated, and spiritually shattered from sustained attention to any working. There are additional problems!

What metaphysical resources can I call upon to seek help with these issues?

Christopher from California

Thank you for these thoughts! I have your book on Heathen ethics on a stack I'm waiting to get to, and I think this will supplement it nicely.

Cheers,
Jeff

1) There are spiritual factors in play. Wotan in 1933 wasn't just a personification of the pain and resentment of Germans -- as Jung pointed out, Wotan is an archetype, a center of potent forces on the inner side of existence, that can sweep people along with it and lead them to a destiny they had no intention of pursuing. Yes, we've got similar forces in play now.

2) Awareness is the universal solvent. It's purely because people conceal their desire for power from themselves that the power drive infects everything else. Make it conscious, decide deliberately how and where and when to express it -- for it has a place in life, and there are good things that can be done with it -- and it will stop infecting other things so they can function more honestly.

Fair enough, and thank you.

I wonder if some of my wording was a bit ambiguous. When I say the skull might have been used for magic, I mean the skull from the body of mine that was hanged might have been used by someone else.

If a human skull is used for magic, is there any reason to believe that could effect current incarnations of the being who previously wore that skull?

Thanks

Those first two paragraphs are full of profound ideas, expressed poetically. Thank you for providing wonderful material for meditation!

Mocha Amphibious Moose

The body of a spiritually powerful person retains a talismanic power long after the person has died, especially if the body's kept safely sheltered by stone or earth.

Remember the Warrens, the “demonologist” couple? Seemed to me they, or at least the people writing books about them, were as phony as turkey bacon. What’s your informed opinion?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 7 of 9

Magic Monday

Re: A heads up

One book that covers this

Re: Demonic parasite

Uranian/Neptunian

Re: Geomancy questions

Qs

no subject

Re: Prophecy and choice

Re: Mundane Astrology

no subject

Re: The significance of physical sensations

no subject

Re: What is artificial magic?

Re: What is artificial magic?

Re: Alchemy of Trees

Re: A Blessed Thanksgiving to All

Re: LBRP and holy water

no subject

Where to start for magical healing of this housing dilemma?

Re: Manly Virtue and Esotericism

Re: Qs

Re: Demonic parasite

Nicely Neptunian

no subject

no subject