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

Symbols

[(Anonymous)]

Do mages come to a point where the symbols they have been using begin to get in the way? Or maybe they morph into something else and it takes a bit of time (and growing pains) to get there?

I am now experiencing a "stepping into" the glass bead oracle (best I can describe it) and feel each bead around me (sort of like the gates in the SOP) but showing upright or reversed and fully coloured. It's quite lovely and useful because I can easily feel the triads connecting various parts around and reaching up the levels in a physical way, and I can explore connections between any beads as though it has become part of me.

However, it feels different than the pure, streaming energy flowing my way when it does so. Like the symbols (beads in this case) are a gate in a fence rather than a vast wide open view available without them. Or maybe like a map one is looking at and not the terrain itself, to use an image often quoted on your various blogs.

Do the gates of the SOP open and/or concentrate the energy or do they keep something out?

I was wondering if you, being several decades longer into this than I, have felt something similar.

Thank you as always!
-Myriam

Re: Symbols

[ecosophia]

Symbols are like windows -- they both permit and restrict your view. That's true of the SoP symbols and everything else. There's a threefold ripening process to every symbol: first it's a portal, then it turns into a barrier, and finally it becomes a tool.