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 was my fifteenth published book, and it's the one book of mine that I've allowed to go out of print permanently. The publisher who brought out Monsters was interested in other books in the broad paranormal-weird stuff end of things, and the Atlantis legend was an obvious topic; unfortunately the result was rushed, and not really well thought out. Someday I want to do a proper book on the Atlantis legend, and more generally on the tradition that there were entire cycles of advanced civilization in the distant past -- but this is not that book, and I'm somewhat embarrassed by it. 

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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

Raspberry jam

[miow]

My bad. I wasn't picturing children in the metaphor but adults - and thinking Americans must be particularly clumsy! And now I fancy a jam sandwich.

Jokes aside, I actually feel pretty bad for King Charles. Since I can't obtain his permission to pray for him, is there anything else I can do? Same for the Princess of Wales.

[ecosophia]

Ficino's main sources were the dialogues of Plato and the Corpus Hermeticum, both of which he translated into Latin, and the Picatrix, which he didn't admit he had (you could get burnt at the stake for owning a copy) but which he borrowed freely from in his writings. So he assembled a typically idiosyncratic Renaissance spirituality and magic, with some material that looks vaguely Cabalistic in places but only because of the shared ancestry.

[ecosophia]

Keep an eye on everything around the altar. If the priest knows what he's doing -- some still do -- it's quite a spectacle.

[ecosophia]

Day and hour of the sun, for good luck.

Q

[(Anonymous)]

When people use mediums to talk to dead people, what’s going on there? The dead have left their old bodies so they shouldn’t be able to contacted that easily right?

Re: Raspberry jam

[ecosophia]

Doesn't everyone in England sing "God save our gracious King" et al? And doesn't the Anglican church include prayers for the monarch in every Sunday's collects? I think that as king, and head of the Church of England, he's pretty much given blanket permission for prayers to be sent his way. I'm less sure of the Princess of Wales, but check and see if the church is praying for her -- if they are, that's a pretty good indication that it's acceptable. (With public figures on that scale, a little wiggle room is available.)

Re: SoP Divine Names Question

[frankrhartman]

Researching this I see that it is a somewhat more complex question than I at first thought. From what I can tell the divine names in the quarters are from GD tradition. Beyond that, it's not obvious specifically where Mathers derived them from, at least in my quick look at it.

Re: Q

[ecosophia]

There's always at least a certain amount of reset in each new life, since you don't remember the previous life and so each tendency you've set in motion plays out without that restriction. The momentum's there, but remember that virtues and vices often run very close together, and it's not at all uncommon for a virtue (such as compassion) to be supported by a vice (such as emotional neediness), or the like. It's by having each such virtue and vice get free run in different lives that we work out all the tendencies and develop characters that are wise and good -- and all this can take place at a different rate of speed than the emergence of higher states of consciousness.

[open_space]

Which explains why I was just tagged in a meme mocking me moments ago by a physician friend whose expertise is diabetes... ha!

Thanks, I didn't know at all about the details of diabetes types, or even how it works really.

[(Anonymous)]

John,
Hi, do you believe in aliens, that have visited earth? There have been some recent hearings in congress, along with a lot more information over the years that proves theres got to be something going on. If so, do you think that it is possible that magic has a relationship with communication with these beings?
There have been some well known ufo people, like David Wilcock, who have come out and said the work of John Dee was a means to communicate with these aliens, and he said that all that storm that sunk the Spanish Armada in 1588 was the work of John Dee asking for help using his magic, as a means to communicate with aliens.
Now I get that there are lots of ufo peddlers who are just trying to grift and make money, but David Wilcock doesn't seem to be that way. I guess I feel a bit silly asking this about the interrelationship between aliens and magic, but there have been stories all throughout history, like Moses and the burning bush, the parting of the red sea, vising "angels"... and the people of the past were limited in their means of describing a people with higher technology, I figure.
What are your thought? Thank you!

[open_space]

Thanks for the details

Re: Q

[(Anonymous)]

Is our free will exercised at the point of life selection before birth by our higher self as some claim? As in you have some control over what experiences and karma you choose to experience?

[(Anonymous)]

I'd be willing to take up the secretarial work, if needed. This is a project which could really use a revival!

Re: Q

[(Anonymous)]

Is this vice virtue model aristote?

[(Anonymous)]

Same, with St. Francis, although I never made it back to the Catholic Church, I remain parked at the Episcopal Church. I might have made it all the way back to the RCC but for their hostility to gay people (of which I am one).

Prayers for Sara

[(Anonymous)]

Just caught up on comments on the main blog.

May Sara now enjoy experience of comfortable, prompt, full healing and recovery.

- Christopher from California

[(Anonymous)]

Dr. Reich's work is not all burned (although they tried).
I have been able to amass a pretty good collection of his works, in hardcover.
AbeBooks, eBay, and Big Slimy River helped.

Also his original laboratory in Maine (IIRC) is now a museum, and Dr. DeMeo's website is also a resource: http://www.orgonelab.org/
Caution: Dr. DeMeo passed away about a year ago, so you won't actually be able to sign up for the newsletters or buy the products in his site's marketplace. There are plenty of articles though.

- Cicada Grove

Re: UPF's, PUFA's, and HFCS

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for all of these references.

Re: Diana Wynne Jones

[methylethyl]

Castle in the Air is a sequel of sorts to Howl's moving castle, and is in no way the basis for the Laputa/Castle in the Sky movie, fwiw. Totally separate stories. Amusingly, Diana's Howl *was* the basis for the Ghibli movie of the same name... but they are very different stories-- Miyazaki was more riffing on the book than retelling it.

[(Anonymous)]

How can you think without words?

I get that sometimes ideas come to us before we articulate them in words, but to me that feels like it's a parcel that our subconscious hands over to us now and again - we don't direct or control that idea formation, or not much more than some basic inputs we ship over to the subconscious and eventually, if it feels like it, it might send something back to us. But normally, if I actively choose to think about something, it will be in words. It's an inner dialogue or debate. When I practice discursive meditation, it's mostly words. And when it's not words, it's "feels"; I try and see how something feels to me or sits with me. Is that thinking without words? I equate "thinking" with "analysing" or "figuring out" so now I'm wondering if this is really about what "thinking" actually means or how that word is popularly understood? Even the "feels" type of reflection, it starts with a word - I use a word to call up the concept or subject I want to mull over. This practice can give me some information but I don't feel like I've really gone over something thoroughly until I've thought through it in words.

I can actively think in images about basic things, like what I'm going to do tomorrow, or call up a series of images to represent a concept, e.g. fear, but I've a feeling that's not what you mean.

Quite jolted by your comment; I suddenly have this sensation of "I'm doing it wrong".

Re: Ecosophia Prayer List

[methylethyl]

To Christ, and/or the Theotokos, or any saints who seem relevant to the particular situation (St. Olga of Alaska for safety in childbirth, for example), "Please (bless/help/protect/have mercy on) (name), and grant them (healing/comfort/safe delivery/that their needs be met)" or if a saint: "Please pray for (name), that God may grant (mercy, peace, health, safety, etc.)."

Your mileage, and deities, may vary ;)

Re: Q

[(Anonymous)]

One question about this. Given that Steiner got so many details of pre-history and evolution wrong and bought into akashic records and what not, what's the difference in the revelation source for him vs these lords of mind?

And why might we consider these revelations from the lords of mind more accurate? (generally i would ask that question about dion fortune vs steiner).

[(Anonymous)]

So this all feels so simple in my head, but somehow when I try to say it clearly, it spills out over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of words. If it changes anything, I think there might not be any important part of your bafflement to which the answer would be any simpler than the following.

Anyway, here's a narrative formula that I think might be helpful for getting into a headspace that reflects one important dimension of what's going on there:

"Suppose that, at some time, I absorb the impression, conveyed from social group G, that what it means to goodly (and therefore also respectably) 'speak the truth about' some topic is to profess that p. And so, wanting to affirm that I am a good (and therefore also respectable) 'truthspeaker', I profess that p. And suppose that, at some later time, I absorb a contrary impression from that social group G, that what it means to goodly (and therefore also respectably) 'speak the truth about' that topic is to profess that not-p. And so, again wanting to affirm that I am a good (and therefore also respectable) 'truthspeaker', I then profess that not-p. I do not see how my two actions were in contradiction. To interpret them as being in contradiction requires misunderstanding my statements as having been about the truth or falsity of p. (The fact that I myself might also consciously misunderstand the meaning of my statements is immaterial.) My actual intention in making those statements was to affirm that I am a good (and therefore also respectable) person, through the medium of 'truthspeaking'. I continue to intend that affirmation. And it is the psychological-intuitive-association-energy of that intention of mine, rather than the psychological-intuitive-association-energy of any supposed 'truths' or 'falsities' of p, that is the dominant thing about my memory of both the time I professed p and the time I professed not-p. Since that intention doesn't contradict itself, and it is the dominant thing about my memories of my two actions, no significant contradiction between my two actions registers itself to my awareness."

The crucial bits of that formula that need to be understood the right way, to understand the whole thing, are "I", "my", and "affirm that I am". In most situations of common usage, "I" and "my" refer to the full range of a person's conscious faculties (as well as some of the more accessible unconscious ones), because there is little conflict and it's easy to keep all those parts of the person on the same page. But in this formula, though, "I" refers more narrowly. It refers to the part of the person that tracks social self-image, social affiliation, and social approbation. In some people, that part of themselves is somewhat disconnected from the part that would be capable of thinking through professed beliefs on their own terms, or of reasoning about the beliefs' logical implications or their deeper organizing principles.

Instead, the social self-image-tracking part of such a person comes to view the world implied by the thoughts received from the other part of them -- the world of beliefs and professions of belief, and so through it the world of everything not immediately apprehended as animal experience -- as though it were a confusing phantasmically semi-real dreamworld, a sort of faerie realm with hidden thorns and razors.

The main predictable connections that the social self-image-tracking part animally experiences as actually existing, from this dreamworld to its actual experiences, are connections involving social consequences. There are warm rewards of social belonging, when one professes things that are then approved of as good (or later approved of as being "ahead of the curve" or "politically astute"). And then there are invisible poised-avalanche-like hazards of social rejection and exclusion, where if one incautiously professes the wrong thing, the dreamworld might take that risky profession, seize the resulting commitment, and follow its "unforeseeable" dream-world logic to "capriciously" add some side premise in a way that causes one's commitment to terrifyingly snowball, to the point where it becomes as though one had somehow committed to an intentional affirmation that one was a bad (and therefore exclusion-deserving) person.

Such an event, that the self-image-tracking part of a person might animally experience as the dream-world's "unforeseeable caprice", might, in the real world, correspond to a material event where some side evidence comes to light, such as a confident prediction proving false in a way that created consequences that other people were angry about. Or it might correspond to a social event where some other person makes a condemnatory argument, or where some random political-power-realignment fashion trend causes one of the person's old political positions to get caught out in the cold.

And sometimes, abstract beliefs about the real world, beliefs which the self-image-tracking part of a person might have regarded as unreal dreams, come to manifest their actual truth, in a real, animally experienced way, without any social processes being involved at all. But if this doesn't happen reliably enough, because the person's abstract beliefs are too ungrounded, then the social self-image-tracking part of a person might come to regard these events only as unpredictable flukes, something to be superstitious about where beliefs can potentially come true, rather than as suggesting that there's deeper structure in the world that it needs to come to terms with.

And why would the self-image-tracking part of a person even try come to terms with the deeper structure in the world that was the purview of the other part of that person, the part that processes abstract beliefs and logic, unless it was under pressure from those kinds of experiences?

In a sense, the absence of trusted connections between parts of a person is the natural state. Connection has to be stably incentivized and cultivated as a habit, and that is a slow and fraught process. And if someone is under stress, there can be reversions back to lower levels of psychological competency, caused by failures of the connection.

If this was a space to say more, I would add some extra details about how sometimes it's a matter of trying to keep one's identity positioned relative to conflicts between group G and some other group, or relative to the incompatible social images of being in high standing in group G versus low standing. Or complications about the special tensions that attach to the social idea of "respectability" as a substitute for the asocial idea of "truth", when it's so easy for someone's social-thinking-decoupled conception of "truth" to become deranged in a way that's easy for social thinking to pick out and build stereotypes for.

But the most important extra detail is that it can be hard for people to really believe, deep down, that they professed p, if the new respectable consensus is not-p. Because what they remember, on the level that drives their emotions, is engaging in what the respectable consensus said was "truthspeaking", and currently what the respectable consensus says is "truthspeaking" is to profess not-p. There may well be evolved instincts to assist in this kind of retrospective making oneself look better, as part of the more general phenomenon of instinctive "adaptive self-deception" hypothesized by the evolutionary psychologist Robert Trivers. And if you bring up proof that the person professed p in the past, the person's social self-image-tracking part might get mad and retaliate, perceiving you as though you were engaging in a social maneuver to try to close the noose of a tricksy, incomprehensible word-game trap that it felt it "deserved" not to be caught in.

Re: No magic experience but curious

[ecosophia]

1) I recommend Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth as my best simple introduction to occultism. After that, yes, The Druidry Handbook is a good choice.

2) There are literally thousands of tarot decks for sale these days, and which one to try depends on what your interests are! Many people find the Rider-Waite deck easy to like and easy to use, but your mileage may vary. US Games Systems is the biggest US publisher:

https://www.usgamesinc.com/Tarot_and_Inspiration/Tarot-Decks/

Re: Culinary Magic

[ecosophia]

Depends on what kind of magic you know how to do, of course. There are as many kinds of magic as there are kinds of cuisine.