Hello, hope you're doing well. I'd like to ask a few simple questions:
1) I've been trying to learn discursive meditation and the SoP from the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose (I felt like I was really needing a ritual of protection and some sort of consistent daily practice), and I came upon this passage
"Breathwork stimulates the vagus nerve, which has a range of effects on the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine glands; if you do it clumsily, you can mess up your health. (I learned that the hard way, and it took about five years for me to get things back to normal. You don't want to go there.)"
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about this breathwork gone awry and how you fixed it, or point to some place where you have previously discussed it. Seems like useful knowledge, y'know, just in case.
2) Is the SoP meant to feel in a particular way? I feel like I'm doing it wrong, though I'm trying to follow the instructions for the opening and closing (still none of the middle bits yet). I ended up with the Christian evocations mostly because of personal familiarity, so I wonder if I have to find some evocations that work a little better for me.
3) I've been unsure whether to ask this because it felt a little silly (and a bit like trying to make myself feel more important than maybe should be the case), but it's worth a shot anyway: I've been following the discussions in the last few Magic Mondays, and I recalled that as a kid I used to see some like "little figures" in the dark, kinda like little shapes floating around (one particularly memorable case was seeing little skulls and getting real freaked out, and hiding under the covers). Eventually it stopped as I grew. I wonder if anyone has had similar experiences and if there is any sort of metaphysical significance to it (I've never thought of myself as particularly sensitive, so I always discounted it as some sort of childhood phenomenon without great importance). My memory is full of holes due to lots of (sadly necessary) repression, so it's hard to evaluate how often it happened anyway.
4) I did the numerology birth number thing for fun and ended up with 11. Does this mean I'm meant to be an occultist, or at least drawn to the occult sciences?
A couple of quesions
Hello, hope you're doing well. I'd like to ask a few simple questions:
1) I've been trying to learn discursive meditation and the SoP from the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose (I felt like I was really needing a ritual of protection and some sort of consistent daily practice), and I came upon this passage
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about this breathwork gone awry and how you fixed it, or point to some place where you have previously discussed it. Seems like useful knowledge, y'know, just in case.
2) Is the SoP meant to feel in a particular way? I feel like I'm doing it wrong, though I'm trying to follow the instructions for the opening and closing (still none of the middle bits yet). I ended up with the Christian evocations mostly because of personal familiarity, so I wonder if I have to find some evocations that work a little better for me.
3) I've been unsure whether to ask this because it felt a little silly (and a bit like trying to make myself feel more important than maybe should be the case), but it's worth a shot anyway: I've been following the discussions in the last few Magic Mondays, and I recalled that as a kid I used to see some like "little figures" in the dark, kinda like little shapes floating around (one particularly memorable case was seeing little skulls and getting real freaked out, and hiding under the covers). Eventually it stopped as I grew. I wonder if anyone has had similar experiences and if there is any sort of metaphysical significance to it (I've never thought of myself as particularly sensitive, so I always discounted it as some sort of childhood phenomenon without great importance). My memory is full of holes due to lots of (sadly necessary) repression, so it's hard to evaluate how often it happened anyway.
4) I did the numerology birth number thing for fun and ended up with 11. Does this mean I'm meant to be an occultist, or at least drawn to the occult sciences?