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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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. See you next week!***

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I see, thanks! btw, I wasn't presuming to give you advice, that portion of my post was really meant for the rest of the readership. I can confirm that my past lives only came into view after I matured, it's not something I experienced in my younger days.

To reiterate: I have recollections of being a girl in Medieval East Asia, perhaps 800 years ago or so. That experience with flowering bamboo was strongest and clearest, it must've made an impression on me. I also remember my outgoing personality, completely different than my current self, and I remember a massive war later in that life (probably Mongol conquests or Jin-Song). However, I don't remember which culture I was in exactly, or which language I was speaking (although it was certainly not English), how I looked exactly (although I think I was reasonably attractive & healthy), and many other things that should be easy to remember, and yet are blanks waiting to be filled in. I wonder if that's normal? Maybe past life memories have their own logic, a logic which considers those points I mentioned to be details?

btw, even though we're all in different lives now, I still think of them as MY village. Centuries later, I still remember the loving bonds of kith & kin that tied me to the fabric of village life (even if I can't remember other contours of that life). That's kind of endearing, isn't it? That must be why I remember that life being happier -- it's because I lived in a network of relations, which is precisely what our atomized modern society is lacking. But that's another topic...

Thanks again for all your guidance!

--xcalibur/djs

Is there any significance, aside from making the chart extremely easy to make, if all 4 mothers in a geomancy chart are populus? I recently had such a chart, and while I can read the shield chart easily enough, it's still a bit of a weird one...

I'm aware you've mentioned that, and it's posted here more in hopes that it might lead others to have specific ideas they can ask you about it.

It wouldn't give you any new information about publishing, but if you could tolerate clicking play and then looking away, the audio works; nothing is onscreen but the host's and guest's faces.

This video does have a transcript automatically provided by Youtube, so the words are present but punctuation is missing. The transcript can be shown in two or three clicks.

Below the video, Youtube has an information text block from the interviewer. This information area is offset by a different background color. Only the first couple of lines are shown, then there is a clickable word More and then below that the Youtube comments are shown.

When the word More is clicked, that opens up this information block, pushing the comments out of the way, to show the interviewer's longer description and links.

Near the bottom of that gray colored description text is a large clickable button labeled Show Transcript. This puts the automatically generated transcribed words next to the video itself.

The video is still shown next to the transcript. Using the browser's Zoom In feature can make the text large enough so the video is then pushed down, so all that is on screen is the text of the transcript and no flashing color blobs are onscreen. I often use this feature to preview what a video is about before choosing to watch it.

I could copy and paste to assemble the full transcript for yu, but I don't have time for that before today's Magic Monday closes. I could post this transcript here next week, if you'd rather read it without needing to visit Youtube. It would be the transcription of a ten minute talk.

If I knew of an audio only link I would have provided that. I have a free utility program that downloads mp3 audio extracts from Youtube videos, but it's in the operating system I shouldn't discuss here.

I've been practicing the Essene healing material most days for several months now. I've added the bridge of love in for a couple of months - I've been largely directing the bridge to myself as I'm in the midst of some significant healing. Recently I've noticed some really intense activation around my heart both during the practice and throughout the day - like intense to point where it can feel a little overwhelming. I just wanted to check that this was normal and safe.

Other than that, I'm feeling a lot of emotions rise up for reprocessing and a lot of sensations in my body seem to be coming alive - like energetic blocks are being removed.

Also, I was wondering if you could tell me the best planet to pray to for buying and selling a house.

And lastly, I know some people have a sense of what they are meant to 'do' in this life. I have no clue and feel so lost. Is continued meditation practice likely to help me connect with that sense or am I likely to feel like I'm going in circles for the rest of my time here?

Thank you so much.

Have you got any advice about how the keep at bay an annoying landlady? She just dropped in unannounced and imposed a replacement bed on us (the place is furnished) which does not seem to be an improvement. Moreover she uses such visits as an occasion to spy on us and complain about how much heat we are using (she covers utilities). This has become an established pattern. Such an incident really afflicts my mind for quite some time afterward. I would greatly like to yell at her, but I doubt it’s a good idea to yell at the landlord.

My (fairly modest) magic background is Golden Dawn-structured with Hellenic deities and the seven traditional planets. I have a history of performing the LBRP, circulating the light and invoking the planets. Any reasonable effort that will help to suppress or divert such aggravations, I’ll do.

I sort of figured that would be the case, since if there were much power in drawing lines a certain way, it would be very difficult for anyone to deny. Would it be fair then to say then that there are 2 major parts of natural magic, the power from the correspondences of the materials, and then the power from the focused conscious will of the practitioner?

It's worth noting that historically, attempts to build utopia generally led to atrocities. I think there's a lesson in that, and it's not that you should avoid the world. Rather, you have to work with the Natural Order of things rather than against. I believe many people putting forth their efforts to make the world a worse place have genuinely convinced themselves that they're working for the Greater Good, still others are just selfish and short-sighted, thinking "I'll be dead before the bill comes due, so who cares lol". How terribly wrong they are on that last point, as they'll find out eventually.

--xcalibur/djs

JMG, I’d like your perspective on a rather unusual recent experience that I had.

A week ago, my wife and I went on a pilgrimage to a fairly famous Hindu temple in upper state New York. The main deity is the goddess Rajarajeshwari (who, according to legend, manifested to destroy demonic forces and restore harmony and order in the universe). We went on a weekday so that the only other people there were a small number of local volunteers who maintain the place; my wife and I find that crowds ‘mess up’ the energy of holy places – which is OK on special festival days but not pilgrimages. Anyway, I had the opportunity of sitting in silence and almost total solitude for a couple of hours and while contemplating the goddess and opening up myself to the energy of the place I had an unique experience: holding my hands out before me, palms facing the sanctum sanctorum, I found that unlike the energy flowing out from my right hand and into my left hand (which is what happens without fail when I do healings as per the MOE training), I felt the energy distinctly exit my left palm and enter my right palm, as if forming part of a clockwise ellipse between me (situated just past the pit used for daily religious sacrifices – the fire from morning prayers still burning) and the goddess situated at the far end of the temple. The quality of the energy that I felt was quite different than the energy that I felt at the site of First Nations petroglyphs in central Ontario last summer: while the latter was like raw electricity, the energy at the temple was more ‘warm and fuzzy’ like holding one’s hands before an old-fashioned hot-water radiator after coming in from the cold.

Following this quiet period, a small crowd came to the temple in time for a particular religious ritual, which we participated in. During the course of the ritual, I observed that the main idol, as well as the dozens of smaller brass idols of female divinities, all had a common posture: that of the right hand raised upward in blessing and the left hand open and pointing down as if bestowing material gifts. It may be worth adding that it is common practice in Hindu society that a palmist reads the right hands of men and the left hands of women. And I was wondering if this ‘female left-hand dominance’ thing might have been what was behind my unusual energy experience.

I’m not making a lot out of it, but I found the incident curious and would like to know if you have any insights or thoughts. Thanks, as always, for generously sharing your wisdom and experience in all matters occult.

Ron M

(1) There's not much scholarship to recommend about Whorf's own theories, which have generally been badly misconstrued by later linguists who did not do the careful reading needed to grasp exactly what Whorf himself was claiming. In particular, later linguists have mostly argued for or against what they call the Whorf (or the Sapir-Whorf) hypothesis, which was first formulated by Henry Hoijer. Hoijer wanted to construct a formulation that could be subjected to empirical proof or disproof. He accomplished gthat goal, but only by glossing over the complexity and subtlety of Whiorf's own thought.

Not too many decades ago an Australian scholar named Penny Lee undertook the enormous task of going through almost all of Whorf's writings, unpublished as well as published, to find out the full complexity and subtlety of his thought. Her book is titled The Whorf Theory Complex: A Critical Reconstruction (1996). I havenb;t had time to read through it carefully, but it looks far more worth reading than anything else written about the subject. Be warned: it's not an easy read.

(2) The text of "Language, Mind, and Reality" that I posted on archive.org consists of scans of all the pages of the original article as it was published in two successive issues The Theosophist in 1942, shortly after Whorf's unexpected death on July 26, 1941. I was glad to find copies of those two issues of the magazine for sale some years ago, before the whole magazine had been scanned and put online by IAPSOP [The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals]. Since Whorf's article was published in an occultist journal, hardly any professional linguist ever read it. So I scanned my copies and put them online.

Eventually, in 1956 John B. Carroll published a volume of Whorf's Selected Writings on linguistics (with the MIT Press). He included "Language, Mind, and Reality" as the last item in this volume, but he was exceptionally careless with the text of that article, changing a few words here and there, and even leaving out a sentence or two (possibly by accident). Carroll's flawed text, however, was the only one that professional linguists had easy access to. (Most professional academics in the 1950s wouldn't have been caught dead reading any occult magazine.) And Carroll never mentioned that he had changed Whorf's own text here and there in his edited selection.

Great, thank you!

The gaps you've described certainly have equivalents in my experience. It's the things that were important to me then, not the ones that would be interesting to me now, that I recall best!

It doesn't float my boat, but if he's fine with it, I see no problem with it. It's not as though any of this stuff is secret any more.

Just pick it up again and keep using your method. Most people who use the SoP modify it to fit their own needs -- it seems to be very forgiving of that.

There are also other potential sources, such as power from spirits or gods, but those two are certainly important.

Um, no. Circles of Power is a training manual for the Golden Dawn system of ceremonial magic, which doesn't use snake skins. Your friend should probably talk to someone who does shamanic magic.

Edited 2024-03-19 01:46 (UTC)

The signs of the zodiac aren't spirits, but they have spirits associated with them. I really recommend that you do some more reading about magic -- these are very basic questions that you can learn about via a little time on a search engine.

That's exactly it. According to occult teaching, while there are always new souls coming into material incarnation and mature souls rising up out of it, there are only so many souls available to inhabit bodies at any given time. As the population of human beings has gone up, the number of other large animals with complex nervous systems has gone down sharply -- pretty obviously a lot of the souls that used to be in animals are now in humans. (That might explain the rather bovine quality of a lot of people these days...)

When I get that sort of thing, it generally means that what I'm asking about is a collective issue and not a personal one.

1) Good. Yes, that's normal.

2) Buying and selling is always a Mercury matter.

3) Not everyone has something specific to do in life. You may not be among them. Relax and don't worry about it -- if there's something you're supposed to accomplish, your higher self will guide you to it, and if not, you're fine anyway.

You might consider invoking Saturn to put some limits on her behavior. Alternatively, have you considered moving? Sometimes a physical plane response is best.

That's fascinating, but no, I don't have anything particular to add to it. Hmm!

I’ll try it. On your advice, I’ve hitherto avoided invoking a malefic. Should I wait until Saturday, or can I go right ahead?

I’d love to take your advice on the physical plane, but we’re committed by lease to this place until June.

I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to get the "last word" in or anything, but I have to say -- that makes perfect sense! Of course, it's my current self who's interested in those details of history & culture, which my past self didn't think about too much.

--xcalibur/djs

I offer about a teaspoon of olive oil each day and pour it out on the ground the next morning. On Wednesdays I add offering of cakes and wine (cookie of some kind). I find that if I buy the little bottles of wine and keep in the refrigerator it will not spoil before I use it up. Usually get some small cookie, such as vanilla wafers or ginger snaps. These are also poured out the next day. I address her most often as Guardian of Cities as her martial aspect seems more defensive rather than the joy in battle of Ares. The statue I have is from a now defunct store in SF, about 10" tall, some kind of grey composite on a marble pedestal, helmeted with spear in hand and shield by her side--not sure whether it is a reproduction. If space is a concern, there are several sites on Etsy that offer Greek deity figures about 4" tall. Mine of Athena is white with gold highlights' I think it also came in a "bronze" finish.
If you have a Cost Plus import store nearby the small, white China dishes and cups in the Japanese kitchenware section are a good size for small offerings of liquids or cakes. Very similar to what Shinto priests use with their traveling altars (they are asked to bless construction sites, new cars, etc. so have folding wooden altars and small dishes for the rice and fruit offerings). I started the daily devotion when my oldest grandson entered the US Marines but have continued and added the other grandkids.

Hope this is useful,

Rita

This is a comment rather than a question. I’ve been traveling for months, looking to relocate, and most of my stuff is in storage including my tarot cards.

My divination is not sophisticated, I draw just one card at a time in a game of 20 questions, but the spirits are generally patient with me* and I’ve gotten loads of helpful answers. Sometimes reason and logic are not enough to resolve difficult questions.

I’m in a town without occult bookstores, so it will likely be a while. Had I to choose again, I would pick up a mini-deck and take it with me. Travelers take note!

* When they’re not patient, it’s because I’m tired and cranky and ask bad questions. Then they tell me brutal things that I really don’t want to hear.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

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Magic Monday

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Re: Another new publishing story

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Dealing with annoying people

Re: Symbols in natural magic

Re: Like a moth to a flame

Energy Reversal?

Re: Q

Re: Q

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Re: A couple of quesions

Re: Symbols in natural magic

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Re: Q

Re: Mass extinction

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Re: Dealing with annoying people

Re: Energy Reversal?

Re: Dealing with annoying people

no subject

Re: Athena

I miss my tarot cards