Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's a little 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 seventh published book, The New Encyclopedia of the Occult. I'd gotten irritated about the lack of decent reference works on occultism, and Llewellyn, the publisher I worked with in those days was enthusiastic about the idea of helping to fix that. It was a fun project, and includes a certain number of quiet and rather abstruse jokes; there are other occult encyclopedias available these days but this one still stands up fairly well -- though I'd make a lot of changes if the publisher was interested. (This also turned out to be the last book I did with Llewellyn for a long while, due to some issues involving their treatment of another project of mine.)  If you're interested in the encyclopedia, you can get a copy here if you live in the US, and at your favorite book venue 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

Healing Hands

[australiandreamer]

1) I was driving along the other day (so hands were otherwise engaged) and was mentally empowering my healing hands which has worked fine for me previously.

I hit mental blank re the order ... I remembered it was blue feminine water then brown feminine earth but I couldn't quite tag if it was the triange first or the circle.

I did guess correctly but it made me wonder if the intention would have been enough if I had done a blue water circle then a brown earth triange?

I also wondered if handed-ness made a difference - if you were a full on lefty would you use your right hand as the receptive and your left as the presenting hand or stick with the standard setup?


2) and while on the subject if we have follow up questions on previous posts in here ... do we ask them back in the original one or in the current active thread?

Re: Healing Hands

[ecosophia]

1) The triangle always comes first. It's not a big deal, but doing it the same way every time helps you attune to the egregor.

2) Please ask them in the current active thread!

Mystic Practices

[realmscryer]

Good evening JMG,

I want to say thank you to robertmathiesen for his description a few MMs ago of two distinct approaches to mystic practice. Very helpful, thanks!

—Eric

Re: Mystic Practices

[robertmathiesen]

You're very welcome, Eric! I've learned a great deal from my outsider's study of Eastern Orthodox mystical traditions that also seems to me highly applicable to magic, but is not emphasized all that much in Western studies of mysticism. It's a whole 'nother world out there among the heirs of Byzantium.

Re: Mystic Practices

[realmscryer]

Robert,

Your comment inspired the realization that I’ve intuitively been following a mystic path for a very long time. The magic feels to have been in somewhat of a supportive role so far.

I’m going to be following up on references you’ve shared. This is all very exciting to explore!

Thank you.

— Eric

Integrating GSF and 5 Rites

[diletpoly]

Once again, thank you so much for hosting these. I've been rather busy the last few weeks, so I haven't been able to read all of them, so I hope I'm not duplicating a question that's already been asked.

As the subject says, I'd be interested in your thoughts on how to handle beginning doing the exercises you suggest in the 5 rites if you're already following the GSF. Particularly, it seems the two Solar Plexus exercises are either duplicative or at least similar enough to take some caution when doing both.

Since I've only started the 5 Rites in earnest this past weekend, I've been maintaining the GSF Solar Plexus Exercise, and doing the 5 minutes of SP Focus when I can find the time, but not stressing too much if I skip a day. For example, I'm likely to go do it now, before I head to bed, but I woke up extremely early today, so may just head to bed. We'll see how I feel after I press send on that. I do feel that the extended focus is actually showing more signs of benefits in just a few days than the more brief exercise has in months, but I don't know if I should combine the two, so that I 1) Sit upright while doing it, in a western meditation pose, 2) do the breathing portion of the GSF exercise, and 3) do about 5 minutes of focus on the SP while breathing at the end, rather than the 3 breaths you recommend.

While I'm asking questions, I'd be curious your thoughts on cold exposure, as we discussed a few weeks back WRT Wim Hof. I don't do it religiously or anything, but once or twice a week I turn my shower to cold at the end and let myself get used to it for somewhere between 30 seconds and a few minutes. I feel it is an overall benefit to my health, I'd be curious your thoughts on if it's going to set my occult development back.

Once again, thanks for your time and the the forum.

The Dilettante Polymath

Re: Integrating GSF and 5 Rites

[ecosophia]

1) I'd encourage you to continue doing both of them -- the focus and the exercise have different purposes and compliment each other. Yes, you can certianly combine them.

2) You're in ground that hasn't been explored for most of a century. If you like to continue the cold exposure practice, by all means, but pay close attention to what your other practices feel like on the day when you do this.

Imagination vs Material processing

[australiandreamer]

In the rituals where you use an altar cloth, light a candle of colour x, wear a tunic of colour y, burn specific incence, walk clockwise etc etc I imagine it is more difficult but it is possible use a sufficiently trained imagination and 'do' all of those things but in a fashion where no one (human) can see you do it?

Eg if your life situation was such that being seen to visibly practice druidism or any other occult rituals would get said life exploded or politically that it would get you fired and tossed in prison could you still do it? If they decided you were mad and put you in a padded room with a self-hugging coat could you still perform your rituals?

Re: Imagination vs Material processing

[ecosophia]

Good heavens, yes. The candles, cloth, incense, etc. are helps for beginners. Once you're good at it, you can do any of this stuff with your imagination alone.

Re: Imagination vs Material processing

[australiandreamer]

Good to know ... I might be able to make more progress without the awareness that progress requires visible hostages to fortune!

[(Anonymous)]

I think I might be starting to notice the effects of requesting prayers to help me improve my ability to form relationships with others, and my invoking Venus to ask her help in becoming more lovable. I've noticed that when I'm about to indulge in my bad habits, things happen which stop me; and when I'm trying to improve myself, things seem to go much better than they were before; I've also noticed I'm suddenly able to see what I need to do a lot more clearly. It's as if the obstacles which blocked this are melting away, and while I've still got my work cut out for me, the path forward is becoming a lot clearer. Is this the sort of thing that normally happens when you ask a god for help like this?

[ecosophia]

Venus is apparently pleased with you. This is the sort of thing that normally happens when you invoke a deity and things go well. It's fairly common for this kind of working to result in circumstances getting in the way of making mistakes, or for the inner clarity you've described to emerge; when you get both of them, that's an excellent sign.

And yes, you've got your work cut out for you. The gods won't do the work for you, but they'll guide you and help you so you can get it done.

[(Anonymous)]

I realize on rereading that my wording could imply that I was unwilling to do the work, or that I was hoping the gods would do it for me. What I actually meant was that it's still early in the process, and I have barely started to address a lot of the issues which keep me from being lovable.

[ecosophia]

I didn't get that sense from what you wrote at all -- I was simply affirming that what you're seeing is on the good side of standard.

How to apply temple technology at my homestead. Update.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

My project is crawling along at a lovely slow pace. I’ve enlisted a person with LIDAR technology to help collect info to choose the specific site. He’s used his iPhone for some infrared readings and will do additional readings with a drone when the rain lets up enough.

I’m still seeking a dowser to contribute more esoteric data to the project and have a couple of leads but no luck lining one up yet.

I’ve been looking at a google site with thousands of pictures of cairns to tickle my inspiration.

The book about the cairns mentioned by Robert Mathieson is on order and eagerly awaited.

So I’m still at the data collecting part of the project. I will make reports as things develop.

Annette

Re: How to apply temple technology at my homestead. Update.

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! A slow pace is very traditional, as you probably know -- Stonehenge took around 1500 years to build. (Which is probably a little longer than you have in mind!)

Death astrology

[(Anonymous)]

A great Repair Cafe starter past this past week: https://www.currentobituary.com/member/obit/280354
Another friend of mine passed in the days after thanksgiving some years back. So this got me wondering, is there any sort of astrology around a person's day of death that you know of JMG?

Thanks,
In under the wire :)

Re: Death astrology

[ecosophia]

Yes, there's quite a bit in the old medieval and Renaissance traditions; primary directions were once much used to calculate a person's most likely date of death. I haven't looked into that, though.

Re: Sphere of protection

[ecosophia]

That should be fine.