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 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!***

Comments

The significance of physical sensations

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG, in beginning magical work and developing astral perception, how important do you think it is to focus on physical sensations as a metric of effectiveness?

I've always been highly susceptible to the ASMR effect to the point I can induce it just by reading certain things and in childhood I figured out how to do things that seem similar to some qigong exercises, inducing and controlling feelings of tingling or heaviness. These kinds of sensations often manifest during meditation or rituals.

I've read sources suggesting these are signs of effective energy work and other sources suggesting they're just nervous static and a distraction. What do you think? Are these something productive to cultivate or a distraction? Given my propensity for ASMR, do you think there is any energetic basis for that effect or it just another way of tickling nerves?

Re: The significance of physical sensations

[ecosophia]

That I know of, there hasn't yet been any exploration of the possible energetic or magical dimensions of ASMR -- that's not surprising, as the effect was only recognized in 2007. Thus you're on the cutting edge of one end of occult study. It would be interesting to know what capable clairvoyants perceive when another person is experiencing ASMR, and so on, but again I don't know that anyone has looked into it.

Re: The significance of physical sensations

[(Anonymous)]

It surprises me that it took that long for people to recognize the effect, I've known about it all my life but I tried asking people about it and searching the Internet earlier and found no one talking about it, it wasn't until I noticed ASMR coming up as a topic online that I found there are other people who experience it.

An interesting note: I've always had a special affinity for machines and electronics and they tend to work better and last longer when I'm using them. I have a DSLR camera whose shutter is rated for around 150K actuations before it breaks down. I got it 18 years ago and it's still going strong, having probably taken over 700K shots at this point. The image sensor has quite a few dead pixels but it's amazing that it's still going at all. Many occult practitioners seem to report the opposite: their energy causes electronics to operate abnormally and fail. The rise of ASMR coincides with the advent of much heavier use of electronics by the general population. Could there be a connection here?

Re: The significance of physical sensations

[ecosophia]

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