Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Once again, it's technically Monday now -- past midnight Eastern time -- and here I am on Dreamwidth, so it's time for another Magic Monday.  (The picture is Franz Bardon, one of the leading occultists in Central European circles in the mid-twentieth century.)

Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer, though it may be Tuesday sometime before I get to them all.

With that said, have at it! 

***This Magic Monday is now closed to new questions. See you next week!***

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I know different spiritual cleansing techniques work in different ways—what sorts of methods work for determining which cleansing technique is best for a given situation?

[ecosophia]

Most magical traditions have a single technique, or a core set of techniques, that they use for spiritual cleansing. Thus my usual advice is to use the one that your tradition teaches. If you've got a postmodern grab bag of different techniques, you'll have to figure out via practice which ones work best for you in which situations.

Question about banishing and Druid magic

[kimberlysteele]

I am studying Druid magic in the Druid Magic Handbook. I do the Sphere of Protection every morning, Ogham divination, and discursive meditation as would be expected. For a while I was a bit confused with my magic systems and also doing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram from Celtic Golden Dawn a couple times per day. I have since taken a break from doing the LBRP, but I find my office space is in need of banishing because I perceive it as being haunted or at least populated with disturbing energies. Any advice? Thank you in advance for your time.

Re: Question about banishing and Druid magic

[ecosophia]

The Sphere of Protection is a perfectly effective banishing ritual in its own right, so go ahead and use that. Call on all seven of the elements to fill your office space with positive energies of healing and blessing, and banish all disturbing energies by the four material elements.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey jmg

What do you think of biofeedback techniques being used to aid meditation?

[ecosophia]

One of the typical bad habits of modern industrial culture is the insistence that you can't possibly do anything by yourself without dragging a machine into the loop. Learning meditation is as much process as product; the goal isn't just to get to a certain state of consciousness, it's to develop the skills and mental strength necessary to that task. What would you think of someone who says they've just taken up jogging for health, say, and then admits that they actually drive the jogging route in their car? I'd say the same principle applies here.

Protection

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

A condensed version of my situation:

1) Unhinged ex-friend and current co-worker; history of meth and alcohol abuse; on meds for anxiety; on intermittent family leave in hopes of getting treatment to cope with the onset of tantrums while on the job. The trigger for these unpredictable rages and tears was the announcement the end of May that a manager she doesn’t answer to yet hates would retire in September, not June. The rage train has since claimed our friendship when I failed to agree with her assessment of the situation. The weirdness commenced:

2) Several days after being dismissed as something that rhymes with witch, I woke in the wee hours to a sense of her departing angry, confused, and slightly sad presence. Thanked you and your readers that a dish of vinegar sat near my bed, and went back to sleep.

3) Three weeks later, ex-friend returned from her long-anticipated vacation and the rage and tears vortex started swirling again. I determined I’d best do a cleansing bath; used the recipe you kindly provided to all of your commentariat; and darned if a bullying, angry presence didn’t follow me to the bathtub! It attempted to force a frightful monster image into my awareness to make its point, but I just kept on. By the time I got in the tub it was gone. I felt ridiculously better. Have continued to do this bathing.

Related questions:

2) Given that we all work magic whether consciously or not, is it likely that ex-friend, through sheer intensity of emotion, landed in my bedroom? To the best of my knowledge, and I know her quite well, she is not a magician on purpose.

3) Was that pre-bath bullying presence her? Something(s) else? Combination?

I wear a black tourmaline pendant to work, and it hangs near my head in bed at night. At work I keep a dish of bay leaves and a piece of jet under my computer monitors. Would the salt and bent nail amulet be a good addition in this situation? If yes, perhaps add some agrimony?

And last, I do a banishing ritual every morning. Does this indicate I’m doing a crappy job? Are some things more resistant to this practice than others?

Thank you!

OtterGirl

Re: Protection

[ecosophia]

Hmm! Yes, these things happen, and someone who has made a habit of throwing tantrums, and has damaged her aura through drug abuse, can very definitely produce effects like this. How long have you been practicing banishing rituals daily? It takes a while to get good enough that your banishing all by itself will take care of intensive things like this, and even then an amulet or two and a purificatory bath now and then won't hurt.

[(Anonymous)]

You've mentioned before that the subconscious is good at creating fake past life memories. How do you distinguish those from real ones?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I do agree on that point. I’ve had similar thoughts about other subjects.
However one cannot help feeling inspired by the achievements of the human potential movement in the 1970’s who started the whole thing, or “spiritual” sci-fi books like the “requiem for Homo sapiens” trilogy which involve people using machines to elevate their consciousness.

Astral travelling baby

[(Anonymous)]

Have you ever heard of very young children astral travelling? In the first few weeks of my son's life, my wife and I would wake in the night regularly thinking that he was in the bed with us, sometimes frantically searching through the bedclothes until we woke up enough to realise he was in his bassinet. I remember quite clearly the impression of a 1-foot-longish ovoid presence laying in between us. There was also the time that something knocked a couple of times on the bedside table to wake me when he had a really dirty nappy and had thrown up on himself but was sleeping through it. That's probably another phenomenon entirely though! He's six weeks old now and this stuff has settled down now.

North node and lilith in eight house

[guillem66]

A while back i asked you about the occult meaning of having neptune conjunct uranus in the eight house, with a trine from a 4th house jupiter.

Now, it turns out my north node is also in the eight, conjunct neptune and uranus, and lilith is also in the eight but with no aspects at all.

So, what these two add to your previous interpretation?

Also, is it normal that meditations, although rewarding, feel sometimes so exhausting?

Many thanks,

Guillem

Fictional sources

[(Anonymous)]

JMG

Firstly, please allow me to apologise for trying to sneak this question through late last week. It was terribly rude of me, and I don't know what I was thinking.

Anyway, last week you said in response to another question that "if you base your magic on a fictional source, you'll get fictional results", and I was wondering if this applies as much to using a fictional pantheon with otherwise established magical practices as it does to fictional practices. My specific example was using Tolkein's Valar in your pantheistic version of the LBRP...

Dunc

[(Anonymous)]

You've said maagic ethics are very important to prevent your life from becoming a smouldering ruin. But when asked about Cat Yronwode's ethics you said nobody's perfect. So how much leeway do people have with magic before bad things start to happen?

Post part 1: In good news I found a patron (Freyja)

[joviangate]

This will be longish so i'll break it into 2 posts...

In good news, I took your advice as a "godless" and called out to find a patron, Freyja responded strongly.

Background: After a banishing ritual, one of the meditative breathing exercises in your learning ritual magic book, I called out and asked for a patron to guide me on the secret path. I had no expectations or real preferences for which pantheon. While meditating nothing initially happened then the image came to me of one of the areas that had drawn my eyes in my tarot deck, in the thoth deck just over the emperor's shoulder there's a hill flanked by rams under a sun. I imagined myself on that hill and then a series of guided images happened. First I was on the hill surrounded by waist high wheat, then I felt a presence nearby hidden in it, I felt afraid because it was alien but not that it was hostile. I accepted the presence/imagery and continued on instead of withdrawing or shutting down. The scene transitioned and I was in front of the tower briefly, black stone with steam or mist around it. The scene shifted again and I was facing a pitch black lake in a pitch black night with a huge full moon reflected overhead. I realized i was being guided through the tarot cards I had drawn that day.

(Used the draw pattern in the thoth LWB, 14 cards, had hermit, prince of wands,2 wands in querent. the moon, ace of wands, 7 disks failure in path top left, emperor, empress, and chariot bottom left for psych state, lust, queen of wands, princess of cups bottom right for destiny/karma, and 4 disks power, 3 swords sorrow, queen of swords top right for other path)

The tower wasn't in my draw that day but maybe it was one of the towers on the moon card. In any event, i stood at the edge of the water and then went down into it and floated down on my back into the dark with the moon receded on the surface of the water above me. I floated down until I hit mud at bottom and just lie there, perfect black above and below. The scene shifted and I was now in space surrounded by blackness, a white door appeared with a gold know (comically it looked like the scene out of the old black and white twilight zone opening when the door appears) I went through the door and down a tunnel of white/blue light. Then two images appeared the first a filigreed piece of jewelry, i couldn't see all of it, only the bottom portion which had two stylized animal heads facing each other the artwork was norse/germanic/northern european, I couldn't make out the animals. The 2nd image was of a blooming white rose. The scene then shifted to the lust card and proceeded to the queen of wands. Slap and tickle was involved. It ended after that and I was frankly stunned by the whole thing. I felt I had the symbols to go on to find my patron, norse/germanic/northern europe, the wheat field, the white rose, a female deity, and one with a nooky orientation. A quick google search later and Freyja was the first hit and it felt "right". I had a lingering feeling of peace and calm in my heart for days afterward. Likewise after the imagery that day I felt calm, at peace, and potent. So I felt it was a patron encounter and not a demon/trickster or similar. (the previous time I'd felt that peace was after converting to christianity as a teen in a group revival session)

I had no previous knowledge of her, her background, dominions etc. I was very happy with the fit though. I don't feel drawn to the male norse gods at all with the exception of Baldr, possibly Rigr, and a few others. So a female patron felt right and over the next few days I felt a lot of my remaining christian baggage fall away along with my guilt for having been in the military.

And then I did something silly based on reading about Freyja and the seidh trance experience. part 2 posting in a sec...

[fluiddruid]

In one of the books on magic, I believe it was Modern Magick: Twelve Lessons in the High Magickal Arts, the author warns that a person who begins to practice magic may attract attention of some "nasty" entities. I have never experienced anything like that, however all I do is banishing rituals. So I wonder what that passage was about.

post part 2: in bad news, i asked to be ridden by Freyja via Seidh trance, it was terrifying

[joviangate]

Here's post part 2, the bad news, and the real reason why I'm writing all of this for your advice.

I did something very foolish, based on my divination Sunday with the fool, fortune, priestess and other cards. I was emboldened after my patron vision and wanted to see if I would be shown anything further. After reading about freyja at various sites and specifically the seidh possesion trance here via Ember Cooke. http://www.northernpaganism.org/shrines/freya/praising-freya/freya-speaks.html

(unfortunately I didn't find her OTHER site dealing with the ins and outs of possesion trance here https://embervoices.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/possession-trance-experience-spectrum/ until later...)

Short version, I asked freyja to enter and ride me, she came via some specific imagery, and I had the first dissociation experience I've ever had sober (the only other time was while using pot as a teen 3 decades ago) I did not like the feeling then and I most assuredly didn't like the feeling now with the feeling that someone was inside me looking through my eyes. It was the single most terrifying experience I've ever had. I panicked, nearly threw up, conducted a quick banishing ritual, wound up on the bathroom floor, at one point was doing quick chopping motions with my hand parallel to my chest while saying "i sever the link" no idea where that came from, and started forcefully saying leave me, my body is my own, get out, etc.This sort of thing continued for a bit until the dissociation passed.

I now feel completely shell shocked, stunned, and worried. Did i invite a demon in? Will there be lasting damage? Or is the magical equivalent of singeing your face and fingers?

After finding and reading Ember Cooke's trance possession writing I feel slightly better as my experience meshes with what she writes so I feel it was more a freyja experience as her specific imagery was involved as she arrived as opposed to your description of shells. While being ridden I felt calm, interacted with my family normally, could tell them things like i loved them and such, so again i'd think with a shell it would have had a different "taste." The terror didn't start until i panicked at the growing dissociation and tried to forcefully end it. Using Cooke's rubric I was only at about 10-15% possession, enough to feel presence and feel detached but no voices and such, though there was a brief almost heard voice while I forcefully tried to sever contact. (after re-reading her Freyja speaks bit about the fear about being ridden that's almost exactly what i felt and panicked)

So lessons learned:
- no more wandering off via intuition, i'm going to stick to the training regiment you recommend in learning ritual magic. i was NOT prepared for that experience.
- magic is serious business. As a rational, high analytic who up till 6 months ago didn't believe in spiritual mumbo jumbo I did NOT take this seriously enough. Likewise i'm just stunned at the breadth and depth of spiritual power and powers.
- your patron and the pantheon are not human friends, they are alien to us. Treat them carefully, like dealing with a campfire or similar. I was thinking of Freyja in my old talking to jesus buddy/buddy walk and style,I essentially tried to go hug a campfire.

In worse news my 3 year old was in the house when i did this. I'm terrified it may impact him in some way. After forcing the presence out I both prayed for my family to be left alone and also said via will and speaking out loud for them to be left alone and for all powers and entities to leave my house. That was more intuition though, was that appropriate in trying to ward them or does that even work that way?

I'd appreciate any advice you can give on what I should do next. At a minimum i'm halting all spiritual practice for the next week (divination, banishing, meditation) in hopes that the various energies from yesterday will subside. I will NOT be attempting seidh again, possibly ever. I have no idea how medium's do it, that stuff is terrifying. I feel pretty beat down at moment...

[violetcabra]

Many thanks for Magic Mondays!

1) I've been wondering for sometime about, shall we saw, inadvertent Pathworkings. If you go to Burning Man, say, you may see a lot of people earnestly on the Path of Qoph, you go to med-school and there are probably quite a few people working on Shin. Personally, I experienced an awakening into the astral realm in my early 20's, with a lot of confirmed telepathy, prophetic dreams, and the ability to accurately define "vibes". These became just a normal part of my life. So, if I am understanding the concepts correctly I stumbled on to the path of Tau.

From my early 20's onward I've sought to "perfect everything under the Sun," with learning how to garden, herbalism, etc and passionately sharing my skills. This strikes me as very similar to the path of Tzaddi. Of course this process utterly transformed myself, on every level, according to my will, but in a manner very much "under the Sun". In that process, I learned to relate, but, importantly, not to individuate.

Am I on to something with this basic idea of "inadvertent Pathworkings" or am I missing something important?

2) In Paths of Wisdom, you write on page 40 that higher Spheres are always centripetal in relation to lower Spheres which are always centrifugal, so from the perspective of Tau, Yesod is uniting and potentially brings great strength, but from the perspective of Samech, Yesod brings dispersal and madness. This would imply that it is only safe to traverse the Tree in one direction alone; up!

Would that mean, then, that if someone had stumbled into and up the Tree they would be forced to continue ascent from wherever their at? If I have attained Netzachic consciousness but see that my ability to separate things in my mind are lacking, could I return to Yesod and then work the path of Resh to Hod? Or would I be limited to either the Paths of Nun or Kaph, with all different patterns of ascent from Malkuth permanently shut off?

sacrifice

[kallianeira]

Hello John and everybody.

In my recent reading on archaeological topics there have been many allusions to human sacrifice.
The Central and Southern American cultures are well known for it; also it was practised at certain times in Imperial China and Ireland, not to mention a couple of instances in the Bible, both by the Jews and by their enemies. the Greeks had their version, in Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia when setting off for the Trojan War... The extent is no doubt much greater than this.

It rather preoccupies me. Partly since it overlaps with a puzzling philosophical tenet that I have never resolved: namely, that while there may be such things as rights, they are a historically constrained concept and cannot be said to have always existed. Whereas we might feel strongly that what is good for you or me today is just as good for a person (which notion may also be historically mutable) three thousand years ago, it is not correct to make the same statements about each of us in terms of rights we bear. However, we may able to do the same work by stating alternatively that "it is wrong" for such-and-such to happen.

Well, I feel that human* sacrifice is wrong. Let's not go into why, for the moment. It's probably irrelevant. Perhaps we can consider one of the trains of thought that follows from the subject though.

Asking what purposes (human) sacrifice might further brings answers such as: thanks for success in a venture or process (eg conquest/harvest); prayers for success in like activities; maintenance of existential stability, as in continued seasonal cycles; prevention of chaos or disaster; straightforward statements of fealty to the assisting power. It seems to have been applied to situations pertinent at the societal level, although smaller groups or individuals doing it would not be unthinkable, just less likely to have left traces in the archaeological record.

Asking what kind of powers would like or require this kind of offering has generated more, and less straightforward, questions: what benefit would accrue to a creator power to have one of its creatures thus destroyed by others? (not much: the sacrifice is symbolic; what then is gratification worth?); what if the assisting power were not the creator of the victim?; what about deceitful entities claiming to be able to help and really taking more than they gave?; how often has the practice been simply part of elaborate mechanisms of social control by the elite?

And the pressing residue for me at this point is: (when) did it ever work? Would other devotional practices have succeeded as well? Did the deities involved move on up the chain of being or were their powers insufficient to keep the people going in the end? JMG, you mention in the Encyclopedia that many former magical practices are incompatible with current ecological values. So I infer that there are more than one way to achieve a result in natural magic... does the same go for these other kinds of practice?

People, I'd love your comments and insights.

kallianeira

* among other forms

[(Anonymous)]

Happy Monday!

Can plants reincarnate as humans?

Quareia

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG, I’m curious to hear your opinion of Josephine McCarthy’s magical course Quareia, if you have one. Is it a balanced, effective system of magical training? What would be the major differences between Quareia and something like the CGD? Do you have any major issues with her approach to magic?

-Colter

Meditating on astrology

[rationalist858]

Can discursive meditation be used to learn astrology? If so, what progression of themes would you recommend? Should I start with the Planets, the Signs, the Elements?

A Scientific Inquiry Into the Validity of Astrology

[(Anonymous)]

What do you think about this 1990 astrology study?

Abstract-Six expert astrologers independently attempted to match 23 astrological
birth charts to the corresponding case files of 4 male and 19
female volunteers. Case files contained information on the volunteers' life
histories, full-face and profile photographs, and test profiles from the
Strong-Campbell Vocational Interest Blank and the Cattell 16-P.F. Personality
Inventory. Astrologers did no better than chance or than a nonastrologer
control subject at matching the birth charts to the personal data; this
result was independent of astrologers' confidence ratings for their predicted
matches. Astrologers also failed to agree with one another's predictions.

http://www.skepticalmedia.com/astrology/Scientific%20Inquiry%20into%20Astrology.pdf

[isabelcooper]

Two questions!

1) Having read your comments about how practicing both Eastern and Western systems of energy work is like mixing medications, I was wondering whether it's safe to have other people practice on you lightly and occasionally. I have a friend or two who does Reiki healing, which I find relaxing once in a while, and the massage place I like best for other reasons is chakra-focused. To continue the metaphor, is this more like having a glass or two of wine while on Claritin*, where you might get a little loopier than general but there's no serious harm done, or is this a thing I should avoid while practicing the LRP/Circle of Protection/Middle Pillar?

2) I'm at the point between the first and second discursive meditations in Paths of Wisdom, and I'm not sure I entirely understand Yesod correctly. The way I'm currently seeing it is Force and Form combined, but without Matter, which only gets involved at the Malkuth level--so you get charged images and structures which then can become material on Malkuth, and can in turn be influenced by things that happen *in* Malkuth. Is that more or less correct, and if so, are Platonic ideal forms/Jungian archetypes similar in concept?

Many thanks!

* What my LA-dwelling sister refers to as "the California housewife combo," along with a bit of pot.

A non witch/druid/wicca/orgone question

[degringolade]

Abstract: I am currently prepared to tentatively accept the idea (formulated a hypothesis) that there are available methods and techniques that allow certain (all?) members of Homo Sapiens to observe and affect the world outside of the current understanding of physics (to go all Aristolian, these would be considered under the broad rubric of "metaphysics"). If this is so, is there a "reproducible" method one can use to observe the mechanism behind methods? I am quite uncomfortable with the idea of attempting to actively use the mechanism without studying it first.

John
(PS, the full post of this is abstracted from is here http://mightaswellliebackandenjoyit.blogspot.com/2018/07/sunday-morning-ii-have-go-at-this-one.html)