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 these days, so I've decided to do little capsule summaries of them here, one per week. The book above on the left is the current edition of my sixth published book, Monsters: An Investigator's Guide to Magical Beings. These days books on investigating reports of monstrous entities are all over the place, but that wasn't the case in 2001, when this first saw print.  I happened to be doing a lot of investigation of certain entities in the Puget Sound area in the years just before then; I thought it would be interesting to get some of my experiences and ideas in print; the book was a pleasant project to write, and it sold like hotcakes -- and, er, I may have some very small share of responsibility for those books on sparkly vampires, because unless you happened to spend time in the stacks of old university libraries full of mostly forgotten anthropology publications, this was for some years the one place in print you could find out that there's a very lively werewolf tradition among the native peoples of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington -- you know, near Forks.   If you're interested, you can get a copy here if you live in the US, and here 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

Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[jprussell]

Good Evening,

For any who marked it, I hope your Thanksgiving was joyful, filling, and full of gratitude.

On Sparkly Vampires and PNW Werewolves: So far, my most direct exposure to the whole sparkly vampire franchise was attending a "Master Pancake Theater" session at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. Master Pancake Theater is like "Mystery Science Theater 3000," but performed live by a trio of comedians with microphones in a theater. My wife and I went to a showing of the second Twilight movie with some friends that were visiting from out of town. It was super funny, and is the sole reason I don't have an entirely negative view of the franchise.

To Share: This week, I keep on writing about Maria Kvilhaug's The Seed of Yggdrasill, this time about her chapter on "Death and Resurrection:" https://jpowellrussell.com/#book_the_seed_of_yggdrasill_7_death_and_resurrection

To Ask: Do you believe the writings of Giaocchino de Prati, the "alpine philosopher," described on pgs 27-28 in The Secret of the Five Rites to be the likely source for the teachings about the Solar and Telluric currents in DH/DMH/DA-flavored Druidry? If so, do you know more about the path of adoption/diffusion? And if not, do you know how they both ended up at such a similar place?

As always, thanks very much to JMG and everyone else here for all that you do.

My blessings to all who welcome them,
Jeff

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[ecosophia]

I never read the books, or watched the movies, but I know one thing:


As for de Prati, that's a heck of a good question that nobody's been able to answer yet. Gordon Cooper found de Prati's essays while searching for material on the solar and telluric currents; I was able to trace it back a little further into central European offshoots of Mesmerism; but from there? I have yet to find anything between de Prati and John Michell, who wrote about the solar and telluric currents in The View Over Atlantis. It's something I search for at intervals.

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[jprussell]

Ah, okay, that's too bad. I thought that maybe de Prati's essays in The Shepherd got read by some British druids, the ideas got incorporated, and then somehow ended up getting transmitted more-or-less directly to John Gilbert or the AODA (maybe some of those patchy correspondence courses you got that you re-worked into CGD and DA).

Anyhow, I'll keep an eye out and I'll be sure to share if I run into any clues.

Cheers,
Jeff

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[ecosophia]

That may well have happened, but the documentation hasn't surfaced; all we've got is de Prati's essay, in a periodical much read in the avant-garde British scene at the time the Druid Revival was first hitting its stride, and then the same concepts present as secret teachings two centuries later in Druid Revival circles.

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[(Anonymous)]

J.P.Russell, JMG,
I looked online for information about Giaocchino de Prati, but I couldn't find anything relevant. Could you please tell me more about him?

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[ecosophia]

You can download the first issue of Trilithon, which includes the material Jeffrey and I are discussing, free of charge here:

http://aoda.org/trilithon/TrilithonVol1_Web.pdf

(The material on de Prati begins on p. 76)

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[(Anonymous)]

Tks, JMG

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[tunesmyth]

Jeff, as it happens Master Pancake original member Owen Egerton is an old friend of mine. He appeared on, and wrote some of the best bits of, the official soundtrack to Salvador Dali's famed lost surrealist Marx Brothers musical comedy, Giraffes On Horseback Salad, which I happened to compose the music for. Available on all major streaming platforms!

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[ecosophia]

Good heavens. You composed that? I'm impressed. In fact, I'll bow respectfully in your direction as soon as I finish painting the rhinoceros!

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[jprussell]

Wow, small world! The Master Pancake Theater show remains one of my wife and my all-time favorite dates - we still reference jokes from it on a regular basis.

I'm excited to check out the comedy and your music for it!
Jeff

Re: Sparkly Vampire Humor, Germanish Afterlife, and the Solar and Telluric Currents

[open_space]

Love the vest! (and the music, of course)