Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's a few minutes before midnight, so we can launch into 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 my fourteenth published book, and my first book on ritual magic that wasn't basically a rehash of what I'd learned as a Golden Dawn practitioner.  The Druidry Handbook, my ninth book (and one of my bestsellers), didn't talk about magic much -- its purpose was to help people make sense of Druid nature spirituality, which can be related to magic but doesn't have to be -- and I got a lot of questions from Druids, and people interested in Druidry, who wanted to know how to practice magic in a Druid context. This was my first answer. (We'll get to the others.) Looking back on this project, I'm pleased by it; it sets out a straightforward course of magical training and seems to work well for many students. It's still very much in print, and you can get a copy here if you live in the United States and at your favorite bookseller 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

Conscious thought and the astral plane

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning, generous host:

The astral plane is described as a place we visit in our dreams, but I'm wondering where conscious, ordinary thought falls in the scheme of planes. It seems non-material, and not etheric either. Is ordinary thinking also part of the astral plane? What about our awareness of physical sensations? (I might be overthinking this, but I'm also genuinely interested and a bit confused.)

Thanks much.

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[ecosophia]

Spend a little while paying attention to your thoughts. Do they take the form of words? Images? Secondhand sensations, like memories? All these are phenomena of the astral plane. What makes thinking complex is that those words, images, or what have you are attempts to express a pattern of meaning, and meanings belong to the mental plane. So thinking at its best bridges the gap between those two planes.

As for your awareness of physical sensations, you become conscious of a sensation when the nerve impulse is converted to an astral perception.

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[charlieobert]

Your explanation helps me make sense of a lot of behavior I see around me. To put it bluntly, it seems like a lot of people just don't think. If that is the case - if their thoughts have no coherent, thought-out pattern of meaning and purpose tying them together - then a lot of human behavior is just reaction to whatever sorts of patterns happen to have astrally formed in their minds.

I'm not excusing myself here - there are parts of my life I seem to be reasonably coherent and self-aware, and there are other parts I don't have a handle on that seem like a formless, unaware and reactive mess.

Am I correctly understanding what you're saying here?

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[ecosophia]

Exactly! One of the points of human incarnation is to learn to think. The fact that we need to learn how to do that implies, of course, that we don't start out with that capacity and have to develop it a step at a time. Yes, most human behavior is pure astral reaction; the only thing that differentiates it from animal behavior is that animals have instincts from their group souls to guide them, and we don't.

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[charlieobert]

That explains why the discipline of thoughtful meditation - I like the biblical phrase, pondering in your heart - is so very important.

That also explains why some sort of ascetic discipline and control of instinctive reactions and desires is such an important part of so many spiritual paths. It's less a moral matter and more a matter or training, education and awareness.

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[ecosophia]

Once again, spot on.

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you both for the replies. Good food for thought, you might say.

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[(Anonymous)]

Why do we lack a group soul?

Re: Conscious thought and the astral plane

[ecosophia]

So that we can exercise free will and receive the karmic feedback from our choices. Animals have only very limited capacity for free will because instinct, which is the voice of the group soul, controls so much of what they do. In order to become fully individual, conscious beings, we are cut loose from domination by a group soul when we become human, and we stumble around until we replace the guidance of the group soul with the capacity for reflective thought and conscious attunement with higher states of being.