The Return of Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Yes, Magic Monday is on again. I appreciate deeply all the kind words, thoughts, and prayers sent my way in response to the recent passing of my wife Sara. I know that a lot of people respond to grief by taking time off, but that's not at all what I need or want just now. I've been through a long, lonely, stressful time during which I had nothing to do but provide a dying woman with the care she needed and would accept, which wasn't much, while we both waited for the inevitable to happen. What I need now to start the journey back to balance is conversation, interaction, and useful work to do.

So...

It's a few minutes before midnight and thus time to 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.  

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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. 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 -- that is to say, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

Re: Stories of the Rose and Tapping

[(Anonymous)]

I've followed "tapping," (originally called the Emotional Freedom Technique) pretty much since it started thirty years ago. I still have somewhere the first book on the subject by a couple of medical researchers who discovered that symptoms of stress could be alleviated by tapping with the fingers on certain acupuncture meridian points while talking about the problem. By trial and error, they isolated about fifteen points on the body and the fingers of the hand which seemed to be effective, and arranged them in descending order. Some scientific research has been done since, but as far as I know has not been pursued: there's no money in it, for example.

The usual protocol is to take a statement like "I feel depressed about the world" or "I'm too agitated to sleep" and to repeat it while tapping the so-called "karate chop" point on the base of the hand. But from experimentation, the phrase developed into "Even though ... (something) .. I deeply and completely accept myself." Quite why this works is unclear, but it does. After that, you go through the various meridian points, beginning with the eyes and finishing once more on the karate chop point. Normally, after three repetitions, you feel some relief of the symptoms, and some schools of EFT actually have you track your feelings on a 1-10 scale. Physically, the effect is very like the results of the kind of energy exercises often discussed here.

Of course, in our society, anything that can be commercialised will be, so there are people out there asking a small fortune for weekend courses and personal training, but actually everything you need to get started is available on the Internet, mostly for free. Two sites that are useful are Nick Orton: https://www.thetappingsolution.com, which is a bit, um, Californian, but has lots of good free material, and Steve Wells's site https://www.eftdownunder.com, which is more down-to-earth Australian. Wells has experimented with various related techniques which are also effective. In general, EFT seems to work for physical as well as emotional problems, and problems of motivation, energy, diet and many other things. Some users have claimed that they can make electrical equipment work again.

EFT is clearly accessing the same energies as Magic does, and I would hazard a guess that it works on the etheric level. It is also a useful adjunct to meditation. If, say, you were meditating on why you were having problems learning and repeating some magical routine, you might realise that it brought back memories of being forced to learn and repeat things as a child. So you might add a session of EFT: "Even though this memory is interfering with my practice" or "Even though I can't get rid of this memory ..." or whatever proves effective. Indeed, the main characteristic of EFT is that it is entirely pragmatic as a discipline.

Hope this helps

Aurelien