Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Midnight is  here, and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and 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.  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.  And further:  I've decided that questions involving the evocation of spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.

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 was my thirty-ninth published book and my fifth published novel, and this one -- unlike the one we discussed last week -- I intended to write. Retrotopia began life as a series of posts on the blog I ran then, The Archdruid Report. I wanted to take the themes I was developing for two nonfiction books, After Progress and The Retro Future, and use fiction as a way of making them vivid and understandable. So I sent Peter Carr, a high-ranking political adviser to the newly elected president of one of several post-US republics, across the border into a neighboring republic and a confrontation with a nation that had leapt ahead of everyone else by going back to the past.

Writing it was an interesting experience; as with my earlier venture along the same lines, Star's Reach, some of my readers literally couldn't think the thoughts the story was trying to get them to think, and kept defaulting to the approved notions of the modern cult of progress. Nonetheless the book, once published, turned out to be my most popular work of fiction. It's currently out of print but will be back in print this coming November; you can preorder a copy here if you live in the US and here if you live elsewhere.

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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, and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Why do so many astrologers still use Pluto as a planet when astronomers voted in 2006 to demote Pluto to dwarf planet status?

[ecosophia]

Partly because most astrologers don't listen to astronomers -- unsurprisingly, because most astronomers are aggressively ignorant about astrology. Partly, though, it's because Pluto is so addictive. Pluto is among other things the dwarf planet of failed promises and overblown hype, of all those passionately held delusions that are just too appealing to let go of. He's the dwarf planet of nuclear power, Freudian psychology, Communism, and a long list of other things that claim to split unities down the middle and bring about Utopia any day now, just you wait! Letting go of the dream is hard, and a lot of astrologers haven't been willing to do it.

[(Anonymous)]

I should be a good test case for the demotion of Pluto, because it's transiting by squares, oppositions, and conjunctions across my grand cross now and for much of the next five years. The last time it did this, in the early to mid 1980s, were the worst years of my life. So far - and I'm already about a year in - the effects are mild at most.

[ecosophia]

Keep me posted. I first started to suspect that Pluto was no longer what it was cracked up to be when he aspected by transit two very important positions in my natal chart, and none of the dire events thus predicted happened. I'm well aware of my Saturn returns, Uranus square or opposite his natal position has always marked major transformations in my life, etc. -- but Pluto might as well have been an orbiting marshmallow for all he did.