Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

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 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!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry if this has been asked before - do you or the commentariat have any hints on planetary charity/devotion to Uranus and Neptune (and Pluto, for those who still work with it)?

[(Anonymous)]

Neptune's energetic signature corresponds to holding patterns in existence. Whether that's so many diverse H2O molecules adhering into water, or so many fish aligning their movements in schools, or deep sea currents following their paths age after age, Neptune's focus aligns with watching over the enduring nature of the parts of the universe. He is as interested in questions about the integrity and continuity of our souls and psyches as he is in the schooling of fish. Perhaps he views each of us as simply being little swarms of ideas and dispositions schooling in the shoals that we call our bodies.

The energetic, magnetic, gravitational, etc. charges that allow fish to swim equidistant to each other, currents to stay in their courses, and other complex patterns (such as each of us) to stay in manifestation are the domain that Neptune swims in. The ephemeral patterns of storms and hurricanes are equally Neptunian in charge, so remember to specify a duration to the unfolding of your requests and prayers to him; otherwise, he may well just flood you with whatever you ask for! Charities and devotions that he will find pleasing tend to relate to the charges and bonds holding complex patterns in existence, since that's where he dwells.

As for Uranus, approach with caution. Charity might yield benefits should your intentions align quite closely with his, but I would be wary about devotion to such a deep chthonic force. That goes doubly for Pluto. Mostly people offer propitiations and placations to Pluto when someone dies or something ends, but asking him for favors or devoting yourself to him is likely to have chaotic results at best. If you want to ask for something unfavorable to come to an end, you're probably better off asking a stabilizing god, like Neptune, to withdraw their influence rather than asking a destabilizing god, like Pluto, to apply his always chaotic influence.

— Christophe

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for this. My goal is more about remediation of difficult aspects in my natal chart, and difficult transits to and from those planets, than in asking for things like you seem to describe it, if I understand correctly.

[scottyc]

Thank you for this overview of the three planets / gods. Very interesting.

Nicely Neptunian

[(Anonymous)]

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

Mocha Amphibious Moose

[ecosophia]

Devotions are difficult since there's no day or hour assigned to those planets! (You could use numerology, admittedly; 8 is the number of Uranus and 9 of Neptune, so choose a date that adds to one of those numbers and do the working at either 8 or 9 o'clock.) In terms of planetary charity, Uranus is among other things the ruling planet of sexual minorities -- a century ago "Uranian" was a common term for "gay" -- and so you can always make a donation to a gay or lesbian charity. For Neptune, consider anything having to do with the ocean; there are plenty of charities in that field, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you. Should I use numerology of the day itself, without adding my time number to it, I assume?

[ecosophia]

Yes. It's the quality of the day, not the quality of its interaction with you, that determines what you can invoke.

[(Anonymous)]

I speculated here about Uranus charity:

https://www.ecosophia.net/the-law-of-consequences/#comment-101790

But it was very much armchair theorizing. I had remembered reading here that the numbers assigned to Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were 2, 1, and 0, and was reasoning on that basis, but apparently that is at best a secondary set of significations. My other speculations are probably comparably ill-informed.

Short version: reading technical analyses by "spreadsheet altruism" charity recommender services (generally going by the slightly less explanatory name "effective altruism") about how to maximize charitable impact per dollar, making up your own mind if you have the time, donating powers of 2 in the smallest available denomination (such as pennies or pence), and replacing many small or diverse donations with single large or randomly assigned donations, out of concern for efficiency due to overhead from individual payment processing.