ecosophia | Magic Monday

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Magic Monday

It's just a few minutes to midnight, so we can launch 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 eighteenth published book, and it happened via a chain of accidents that still has me fielding baffled questions. Here's what happened.

My first book on geomancy, the fourth book I published, was released by a certain rather clueless publisher. I warned the marketing people there that they needed to make sure that their sales staff didn't get confused and think that it was a book on Wiccan feng-shui. Sure enough, their sales staff got confused and marketed it to all the little witch bookstores that thrived in those days as a book on Wiccan feng-shui. Once they got their copies and found out that it was a book on a somewhat fussy Renaissance method of divination, of course, they shipped their copies back to the publisher with irate letters; as a result, Earth Divination, Earth Magic became the first book of mine to go out of print.

Fast forward to 2008. Hot on the heels of the success of The Druidry Handbook and The Druid Magic Handbook, I tried to place Earth Divination, Earth Magic with Weiser. They weren't interested in a reprint but said they'd be happy with a new book on the same subject. So I wrote them a new book that covered exactly the same ground as Earth Divination, Earth Magic, and they snapped it up. Much later, Aeon Books picked up Earth Divination, Earth Magic and brought out a new edition. And that, my children, is why I have two books on geomancy from two different publishers covering exactly the same material, in head to head competition with each other. Most prolific authors end up with some such bizarrerie in their backlist sooner or later...

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~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a technicality that might matter here. Eris is Discord. Mythologically, Eris might be a descendant of Chaos, and an avenue for the influence of chaos, but Chaos itself is something else.

I think of Gamergate as having been a warning shot. Gamergate was mostly a LARP of real political conflict. (The main consequences were just people getting fired, people getting horrible threats (even if they were also the sort of people who could have exaggerated the majority of them), somebody (my headcanon: Arthur Chu) calling in a bomb threat to disrupt some interviews that might otherwise have become the thin end of the wedge for the mainstream media coming to understand where Gamergaters were coming from, and (later) one of Zoe Quinn's other headgame narrative control abuse victims committing suicide.) If "we" (mostly the other side; noblesse oblige) had understood where the discord was coming from and what we were doing wrong, and corrected ourselves, we might have handled the subsequent much more destructive situation of discord powering the alt-right and Trump much better. Nothing I know of the Discordian experience of Eris suggests that this kind of influence would be out of character for her, even including inspiring Quinn to take her name, given how the dominoes from Quinn's relationship with Eron Gjoni were already set up.

On a semi-related note, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the two most popular group conversation platforms are called "Slack" and "Discord", corresponding to the two half-joke religions SubGenius and Discordianism. There's an additional irony in that, so far as I understand, Slack is used more for workplaces (and perhaps organized activism?), and Discord is used more for gaming and subcultures, rather than the other way around.

One interesting thing about the Helldivers game is the player character faction "Super Earth", which is a parody of political cultures that justify their abuses by wearing the flag of Democracy. I'm not sure whether to expect political consequences I like or ones I dislike from part of a generation worldwide getting used to treating the idea of democracy as something whose political sacralization is just an ongoing joke. I suppose a Discordian attitude towards jokes does plausibly correspond to what it would take to reclaim the idea of democracy, once it's been so abused.

Notably, part of the package of ideas associated with the game is that Super Earth practices "managed democracy", and disvalues "unmanaged democracy". This is not so far from the influential dissident-right critique of modern democracy as having had all its free genuine power invisibly hoarded up by a self-appointed moral aristocracy subculture which has been driven mad by runaway cultural involution ("purity spirals", but also addiction to the political spoils from electorate dilution strategies), ungrounded by personal stakes or consequences: what could be called the Cathedral, or the Blob, or the professional-managerial class, or the human rights and development legitimacy clerisy, or the media-academic-government complex.

Also, and this is reaching slightly, but the term on Somethingawful for the style of post where someone makes a long explanation of all the wrongs someone supposedly did, which Eron Gjoni's post there qualified as, is "helldump", which starts the same way as "Helldivers".

I divined which creation stories or theories (including scientific theories) were most accurate, and the answer surprised me.

It suggested the most close to true were Dion Fortune's and Plato's original account. (It rejected neoplatonism, the vedas/upanishad accounts, big bang, aristotlean prime mover, gnostic, Roger Penrose, multiverse cosmologies etc).

This is open to everyone but what would you say about this reading, and how are the 2 connected?

Fellow recovering Catholic here. Over the past couple years I have used the SOP with Archangels, and with Greek, Egyptian and Celtic deities, among others. I have experienced subtle positive changes over time, regardless of the deity choice. The SOP is not a hand grenade; it's more like physical therapy. My life is a little different than it was when I started, because I'm a little different. But I had to work for it, a little every day.

Believe it or not, working with the archangels has helped me unpack some of the church baggage. After all, the angels are much, much, much older than the churches that adopted them. They've been part of my daily practice since about October. It may be food for thought - or not.

Also, this way, the word "Gamergate", as in "gamer-gate", is able to collide with a pre-existing biology term for members of a eusocial species that can promote from workers to substitute queens if the queen is lost, as in "gam-erg-ate".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gamergate

Does this count as a synchronicity, the way the appearance of Eris by name does? I guess I don't see any further connection, except that it's funny that it's almost possible to define "gamergate" using words that would almost make sense for talking about the game of chess.

From your experience, do you think the 5 Tibetans are ok to practice for teenagers? Thanks.

😄 *chortle*

—Princess Cutekitten

I am not a surfer, but my brother is. He has explained to me that surfing is a truly spiritual experience. In this context, someone performing the LBRP before going in the water, makes total sense to me.

Ian

Good Evening.

I am just starting out in Western occult and magical studies. After some research, I have chosen three books as a primary course/path of training. With others as proposed further reading. They are:

1. The Occult Philosophy Workbook.
2. Circles of Power
3. Learning Ritual Magic.

I'm taking them slowly to understand the how and why behind it all. Do you think this is an okay place to begin? Do you have any recommendations?

I have a background in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and practice, and I am noticing several similarities.

Thank you for compiling these resources and the years of experience and insight into these teachings.

Scott

Edited 2024-03-18 21:47 (UTC)

Thank you, this makes perfect sense! You have such a facility for straightening us out when we tie ourselves into knots with overthinking.

I once practiced the SOP (until my baby was born, still nursing) and I currently do the Eightfold Path holiday rituals with my oldest. So... pretty limited, I'm afraid :/

Not sure if this is truly an occult question, being completely uneducated in such things! But here goes; nearby where my son lives in Wales, there's a circle of standing stones, just by the town centre. Whilst walking through there with his dog, I happened to touch a stone & it just about shocked me, almost like an electric shock. I put my hand on it again & I'll swear it was vibrating somehow. Next time we went by, I tried touching the other stones; no response, though the first one I'd touched still seemed to be slightly tingling - may have been my imagination though. The thing is, it's not an original stone circle in place, though there are lots of them around there. This one was raised by the Gorsedd of Bards to commemorate a recent Eisteddfod - I imagine with "orphaned" stones removed or rescued from their original sites? They certainly don't look recently cut. Anyway, basically I'm curious to know why this one stone seemed almost alive, and why it did so to me in particular; my daughter felt nothing and the dog didn't react to any of them in any way. Maybe it was somehow picking up vibrations from heavy traffic passing on the nearby road, though I wasn't particularly aware of any at the time? Or am I just suffering from an overactive imagination - again!?

Thrifty1

1) Ahem. Please stop and reread what I wrote. Don't "charge" Sandalphon to do anything. You don't have the power to do that anyway, any more than a lieutenant in the army can boss a general around. Archangels outrank you. You don't establish a relationship with somebody by ordering them to do things -- you talk to them, listen to them, interact with them, and see what they bring to the discussion. One of the most disastrous flaws in modern magical thinking is this bizarre notion that spiritual beings are there to be told what to do!

2) Of course you can learn to manage your Sun-Saturn square. Meditating on your natal chart is a good basic discipline -- once you understand all your placements and aspects, it's a lot easier to figure out how to work with them. A square can be a source of strength and stability rather than a source of frustration -- once you know where your limits are, you can rest on them, brace yourself against them, and use them as thrust blocks to push off from.

You don't have to do any of it loudly, but it does help to vibrate the names (softly if you must) and speak the rest of it (even in a low voice). If you have to practice around others, though, silence is an option. Try to feel the vibration even if you're doing it silently.

Thank the spirit of the city when you move there, and ask it to teach you how to get along in your new city. Thank the spirit of the house when you move in, and ask it to teach you what it needs to be happy with you. That basic courtesy is often quite adequate by itself.

1) It hasn't been finished yet -- in fact, it's barely been started. Spring 2026 is probably a good guess.

2) That's a question very few people have asked in the last hundred years, and not too many have asked in the last thousand years. A lot of experimental work will have to be done to answer it. The material in The Life Force Workbook won't deal with that specifically but it will give you the basic theory.

Glad to hear it. I also give it the deep breaths between each Rite -- and I also find the whole sequence to be a very solid core exercise, over and above the effects on the subtle bodies.

What a fine theme for meditation!

I was thinking of asking about the specifics of past life memories, how and why they surface, what makes them stick to your higher consciousness, etc. Within this life, memories tend to form around significant events, so I was wondering if there's a magical or spiritual parallel at work. I wonder if my memories were just the most important experiences for my past personalities, or those events that left an imprint on my higher form, or some of both? However, you seem to be saying that it's rather random and/or complex.

I've always been into religious & occult matters, even before I broke out my rationalist/Enlightenment conditioning, I wonder if that helped. Or maybe it's just a natural process? Some of my memories are pleasant (especially the life in Medieval East Asia I've spoken of), but there's also a more recent death by drowning in there. I also have guesses as to other past lives I've had that I can't remember directly. However, my recollections are nowhere near as detailed as yours. Is developing this a matter of practice, patience, or both?

Personally, I cherish my past life memories, even the harsh ones, as it's a way of getting to know myself and my spiritual journey better. But I agree that they have to surface naturally, and they're not all fun & games. I can clearly distinguish between my past lives and rich imaginings -- in my experience, there should be a sense of deep familiarity, even if it's something way outside of your experience. It's also something that comes to you -- you're not developing or defining it, rather you're catching glimpses of what's there.

--xcalibur/djs

Yes. I'm not sure how they'd work for children before puberty, but once the sexual forces have started to flow -- say, after pubic hair shows up, or after a girl's first period -- it should be fine.

If you read the Magic Monday FAQ, which is linked in the post above, you'll find that I've divided my various books on magic into sequences, which are independent courses of magical study and are best done in sequence. Learning Ritual Magic is the first book in one of those sequences, and Circles of Power is the third; The Occult Philosophy Workbook belongs to a different sequence. I recommend that you review the material in the FAQ and choose one sequence for your training.

I had a dream/nightmare on Saturday night that really shook me up and wanted to know if there was any significance to it or if, since I can't recall ever having a nightmare before, I overreacted from inexperience with them. I recall JMG you saying you don't really do dream interpretation so this question is for anyone who wants to chime in.

From what I recall, there were two parts: in the first, I was in some sort of public procession with my mother and my fly was down and I was trying to close the zipper but it was stuck (of course this wasn't the disturbing part). Then suddenly I was asleep at my parents' house near a major eastern US city and was awakened while it was still dark by the neighbor kids outside counting down as if it was new year's eve (I guess the windows were open). I thought "wait, it's not new year's!" Then when they said "happy new year!" a huge explosion over toward the downtown area lit up the sky which I realized was a nuclear bomb. I recall thinking "whelp, this is it" and my eyes started to throb from the radiation I guess, which is what woke me up in real life. My eyes were still throbbing then and I was pretty shaken up, with my heart racing; it took me awhile to fall back asleep and all day yesterday I was in a funk from it.

Do you think there's anything significant here? I'm feeling much better today, so I'm glad of that. I rarely recall dreams and don't give them much regard but this one was so vivid and visceral. I was almost expecting to hear sirens start going off all over the town while I was lying there after I woke up!

That's a very common experience! Standing stones concentrate the life force -- that's what they were originally put there to do -- but they do it according to patterns in time and space that nobody understands any more. As for why you sensed it and your daughter and the dog didn't, you may be (or may have been at that moment) just a little more sensitive to the life force than they were.

There I can't help you. Anyone else?

1) It's very complex. Basically, when your personality (the temporary identity you have in your present incarnation) develops to the point that it reflects your individuality (the permanent identity you've been building all through your lives) well enough, bits of memory start slipping through. As far as I can tell, some of them are pretty random, some are suggested by events in this life, some seem to be hints of things you need to remember or work on.

2) It's a matter of patience and regular meditation.

Maybe there's a difference in terms here. I use the term charge to mean 'conjure the angel and ask them to do such and such'. There is no bullying there.

Also I have a proposition. Do all grimoires carry the same weight in terms of conjurations/invocations? The invocation in Circles is simple and kabbalistic making use of the highest and working its way down to the lowest. There is nothing with that. The heptameron is similar, first using the string of godnames, then the heavenly angel, then finally the archangel of the planet.

Since I could not find a traditional conjuration for Sanadalphon in the grimoires - she really doesn't do anything in Kabalah besides just watch us from that heaven xD, I think I might have to edit the Heptameron conjuration for Moon and adapt it to Malkuth with its god name. Does this make sense?

We don't have this problem with Metatron who has hundreds of names in the grimoires and one conjuration as well.

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Magic Monday

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Q

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5 Tibetans

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The Spirituality of surfing

Hello JMG

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Re: How to get off on a good foot with new home?

standing stone question

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Re: Q

Re: How to get off on a good foot with new home?

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Re: the 5 rites

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Re: 5 Tibetans

Re: Hello JMG

A dream that shook me up

Re: standing stone question

Re: A dream that shook me up

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