ecosophia | 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 twenty-first published book, my second published book-length translation, and my third co-written project. It's also one of my most famous projects. How to describe Picatrix? The easiest way to explain it is to say that it's a fabled book of forbidden magic written by a mad Arab sorcerer in the early Middle Ages, packed with strange incantations that can call down eldritch powers from the heavens when the stars are right. You know, the Necronomicon!

The big difference is that Picatrix is quite real. It was a manual for professional wizards penned in Muslim Spain in the 11th century by an anonymous Arab author about whose sanity I don't propose to speculate, and it does in fact teach invocations for calling down stellar and planetary powers using astrological magic when the heavens are in an appropriate condition. In its Latin translation, prepared in the 13th century at the court of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile, it was immensely influential in occult circles all through Europe until the end of the Renaissance, but until Chris Warnock and I got to work on it, there had never been a usable English translation of the Latin text.

Chris and I spent years slogging through the awkward half-Spanish medieval Latin of the text and turning it into readable English, but it finally saw print (via Chris's house press) in 2010. It's been enormously successful, both in terms of sales and as a pair of shock paddles applied to the once-prostrate form of classical astrological magic, which is now once again a widely practiced tradition; it's one I still practice from time to time, though it's not my usual approach to magic. It's only fair to say that this is emphatically not a book for beginners, and requires a good solid knowledge of medieval astrology, Platonic philosophy, and herbalism. If you're up for it, though, you can get a copy here.

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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--as in, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi JMG and Fellow Readers,
I have been working on JMG's, "The Occult Philosophy Workbook and odd things have started to happen. I am being woken up usually about 5:30 in the morning by someone I cannot see, hear or feel. This does not stop them waking me up in the dark and keeping me awake. Before this series of meditations, I usually slept in until 6:30 or even 7 a.m.

One morning I was so tired and had a long day in town ahead of me that I pleaded with the entity to let me sleep in and I would meditate that evening. Only that one time was I allowed to sleep in. I did manage to do the meditation that evening.

I believe the entity is waking me up so early because once my husband is up, there is too much going on to meditate. My question for everyone is, has anyone else noticed this happening? Who might this entity be? Despite my insistent tutor, I am finding this book a very valuable and pleasant study.
Maxine

Hmm! No, I haven't encountered anything else like that.

My tutelary dæmon/genius/guardian angel does this for me as well, both unasked (to give me 30 minutes for meditation before the kids wake up, say) and asked (for example, to wake me at a particular time when traveling, since I don't have an alarm clock or any "smart" devices that can emulate one).

I couldn't say if it's your entity is the same type of being—in my case, I can hear them well enough to hold conversations if I'm in a very still state of mind—but if, like me, you're the kind of person who needs the whip rather than the bridle, it would not be surprising if they didn't let you sleep in unless it was essential. One option for digging into it is divination, of course.

If you're interested on following up on that particular angle, the best texts I've seen discussing the phenomenon are Apuleius' On the God of Socrates and the section of Proclus commentary on the First Alcibiades relating to dæmons. These are both from Platonism and I'm afraid I don't know how well or poorly the philosophy meshes with the workbook you are going through, since I've not read it.

Dear SDI,
Thank you for your reply and the reading suggestions. Yes, I too need the whip to get out of bed. Your tutor sounds very helpful and I will ask mine to wake me at certain times as I too do not have any of those puzzling devices and could not work them if I did have them.

I look forward to reading the texts you mentioned. Thanks you for that.
Maxine

are you sure this isnt the thing that is the "old hag" presence that is waking you up ? was this the first time you asked in any form for it to "go away" or leave you alone ? In other words it may not have to do with the promise for later action on you part but on you decisively asking it to go away ? And this asking to "go away" is always a stronger ask if you have some of your ... spirituality,, or whatever you practice thrown in, so that time by invoking meditation later, your spiritual practice connection, the demand to go away worked ?

Atmospheric River

Hi River,
My tutor does not seem to be malefic at all, only insistent. The Hag makes people afraid and paralyzed so I doubt it is a Hag. I suspect it might be Kwan Yin as I have a devotion to her and I will look into this further with divination.

Whoever it was, they woke me up at 5 this morning and I promised I would meditate right as soon as I got up if they let me sleep in. I was allowed to sleep in until 6. If I do not ask, as has happened in the past, and try to go back to sleep, I can't do it. So, this entity is willing to listen to reason and compromise with me.

I like having the support of my tutor as I cannot get to my meditation once my husband is up. If he is working and I am doing mediation or magic, he gets a bit aggressive.
Maxine

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