Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

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!***

Comments

the 5 rites

[(Anonymous)]

I am staying consistent with it, kind of plateaued at 15 repetitions, which is great of course and leads to this comment:

I find it a work out and am kind of amused imagining older men of that era taking it on, in my mind I think of the Sherlock Holmes stories I read and men who go to clubs doing this routine. Anyway, unlike what he says int he 5 rites, "so simple" and that it is not a form of physical excercise, well in addition to the benefits of the cat-brain glandular areas stimulating, it is a work out, abdominal and arm muscles for me in addition to ham string, neck and other stretching/limbering.

I have been doing his secondary recommend between each rite to stand up with hands on hips and take a few deep breathes, focusing on breaths. This immediately takes out the slight dizzyness I still have from rite #1, and does seem to have centering effects between the other ones too, maybe not centering, dont know how to describe, but some energy movement. It seems like it is a bit of same effect as your recommend of focusing on breath/energy in a dedicated 5 minutes at another time. Not as much as that separate session, but I think brings in some of that effect. And this fits in with what you said here that this, especialy as it was named eye of revelation and then never mentions the eye of revelation, booklet would be to give general health promoting effects and then some would go join the group to go further. I do not go very fast of course with rite 1.

Acupuncturist made a point of reminding me to keep with the nightly wash cloth scrub, which he equates with dry brushing effect stimulating lymphatic system in addition to the obvious skin improvements we see, so he thinks this is helpful for healing and heath practice to do.

Atmospheric River

Re: the 5 rites

[ecosophia]

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.