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

Like a moth to a flame

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I am new here but seem to keep getting drawn back to your site (mostly because I appreciate good writing and new thoughts, and I guess you represent both for me).

I don't know if these questions belong on a Magic Monday thread, but I also don't know where else they should go, so:

1. I happened to listen to an Occultism 101 podcast you gave with Hermitix about four years ago and your comment about how "The human world as such is never going to get any better, because it's doing what it's there to do" has left me a bit confused on a particular thought: does this mean that instead of changing the world or trying to help it or whatever, I should just let the world be and focus on my own best interest (meaning meditation, etc.)?

2. I'm curious what you think about the Hindu concept of Yugas, if you have ever thought of it at all.


Thanks, as always!

Re: Like a moth to a flame

[ecosophia]

1) You can certainly improve certain specific things about the world, and that's a useful thing to do. The problem is that people think the world's going to turn into Utopia, and it's not -- it's always going to be a place of mingled joy and suffering, success and failure, beauty and sickening ugliness. (And your efforts to make it better will be balanced by the efforts of others to make it worse.)

2) Of course I've thought of it, and the related ancient Greek sequence of ages found in Hesiod. I discussed some of it here:

https://www.ecosophia.net/the-reign-of-quantity/

There are many different ways of thinking of that complex, textured reality we call "time," and each of them have something useful to add.

Re: Like a moth to a flame

[(Anonymous)]

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

Re: Like a moth to a flame

[(Anonymous)]

(And your efforts to make it better will be balanced by the efforts of others to make it worse.)

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but then what is the point of trying to make things better for (say) my acquaintances if it only means that I am indirectly screwing over people who I don't know?

Thanks for the link, btw--at some point I hope to sit down for an entire week or two and jus read everything you've written "cover to cover"

Re: Like a moth to a flame

[ecosophia]

That's not what I'm saying. It's not that you're messing over people you don't know, it's that your efforts to do good will inevitably balance, and be balanced by, efforts of other people to do evil.

Re: Like a moth to a flame

[(Anonymous)]

About 1. Thanks for bringing back to the fore this ever-relevant question, and to our good host for sharing his thoughts. I am also a newcomer to this corner of the web, but here's something relevant : there's this book for which JMG provided a commentary on his main blog. The Cosmic Doctrine, by Dion Fortune. You can get a copy of it and follow the chapter-by-chapter commentary here :
https://www.ecosophia.net/tag/the-cosmic-doctrine/
Said commentary had also been made in to a book :
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5SCN1GM/

Not the easiest of roads, I guess some would concur, but one that's rewarding in terms of insights, food for thought... And, again, totally relevant to your question. The age-old "What are we doing in here ?!"

~Thibault