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. 

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

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

Re: Overview of The Seed of Yggdrasill and Thanks

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Jeff, thanks for the offered blessings and may your week and all its studies be blessed.

Wouldn't 600 leaves make 1,200 pages?

You don't give any kind of explanation what the book is. I surmise that "A massive personal interpretation of the theology of ancient Norse myths" might be it. But this is only a guess from trying to identify, from m many remarks about leaves, that this might be something about a forest.

Mentioning but never defining "Eddic and skaldic poems," "the skalds," "wights, steads," "Kennings, heiti," "the whole Poetic Edda" in your review only mystifies someone not already familiar with Norse myths.

I get the impression that the book really needed an editor's hand. Alas, and with respect for all your slogging, I think this summary essay might, too.

An interesting comparison might be to how myths use multiple gods to represent aspects of one ultimate spiritual unity, between North mythology and other systems also said to do this, such as Hinduism.

I have the impression that I'd be 100% lost from page one of this book, and still missing the forest by the last leaf.

Christopher from California

Re: Overview of The Seed of Yggdrasill and Thanks

[jprussell]

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your blessings!

1) I use "leaves" instead of "pages," as I like to use as many words that come from Old English as I can in my writing, most of all when writing about heathenry (I don't go quite so far as "Anglish," but it's in the same vein: https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/Main_leaf).

2) Okay, fair enough, I suppose I took for granted that the audience would have some idea of what the book was/was about, which may have been a mistake, so I might add a "What is This Book?" section. As for the terminology, it seems clunky to define all of those terms, but maybe I can throw in some wikipedia links or the like to make it easier for readers unfamiliar with them to look them up.

3) Ouch, but again, fair enough.

4) It certainly could be, but I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to make that comparison in any detail. Kvilhaug mentions some of those comparisons in the book, but doesn't go very deeply into them.

5) Well, as I say in the review, this is definitely not a good "my first Norse myth" book. If you are interested in that, Hilda Ellis-Davidson's Gods and Myths of Northern Europe is quite good and pretty short, and E.O.G. Turville-Petre's Myth and Religion of the North is one of the most academically-respected of such works, but is a bit longer and can be pretty pricey (it's priced as a textbook that will be subsidized by a university).

Thanks again for your thoughts. As my old boss used to say "feedback is a gift,"
Jeff

Re: Overview of The Seed of Yggdrasill and Thanks

[(Anonymous)]

1 Anglish is new to me and interesting! High school Latin helped me understand English vocabulary better. Now to take it all back!

2 & 5 Might not need a glossary if you were to say it's not an introductory book, it assumes you're familiar with elements of Norse mythology such as...

3 Sorry for the ouch! If this is more for academic type readers, maybe it doesn't need to be put in an easier reading style for the masses.

4 Fair enough if that's not much of a theme.

... and like any gift, it can be set aside if the wrong size or color, or is inappropriately blunt! ;-)