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Magic Monday
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 about getting goodies from 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 fortieth published book, and the product of an investigation that's still ongoing. I happened to notice back in the early 1990s, as a result of voracious reading in odd books, that a surprising number of temple traditions around the world are connected to legends about increased agricultural fertility. I know, that's supposed to be mere superstition -- but it's funny how often "mere superstition" turns into evidence that the ancients knew more than it's fashionable for modern intellectuals to admit. That launched a quest that resulted in this book. I've come to theorize that woven into the design and use of certain specific kinds of temples is a lost folk technology that boosts agricultural productivity. I've collected physical evidence (including controlled double-blind studies) that there are energies known to science that could have been concentrated and put to use with resonating chambers of stone, designed according to specific geometries, filled with volatile organic compounds, and activated with sound waves. What's more, it's a technology that could be rediscovered and put to work to help plants thrive now.
This book was my first progress report on that investigation. It's about to go out of print -- Llewellyn, the original publisher, still has a few copies left on sale, which you can get here -- but there'll be another edition in due time, and probably a further book not too long after that, as I'm continuing to find relevant data. Yes, there are also other people busy with this; the prospect of a working model, so that the details of the technology can be tested in real world conditions, may not be far off.
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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.
***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***
Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divination
Whatever may be going on this week for all here, may it go well!
To Share: Lots to share this week!
1. Earlier this week, I followed a link from Galina Krasskova to the blog Of Axe and Plough by Marc Gaidin and have been finding it very interesting. Though I don't agree with him on everything, he practices Anglo-Saxon Heathenry and approaches it with a mixture of scholarly and practical viewpoints I find most congenial (even if his "academicese" can be a bit much at times). I'm still poking through the archives, but so far I've found his thoughts on syncretism, prayer, and hearth cult/home practice especially interesting: https://axeandplough.com/
2. PIE Religion: For anyone with any interest in Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, this website has some interesting resources and takes, though I sometimes wish it were clearer about what are original conclusions and what are based on other sources (for example, this is where I encountered the claim I think I've mentioned before that some Mesopotamian myths might have been influenced by the Proto-Indo-Europeans, or one of their offshoots, very early on - specifically, cutting up/sacrificing a chaotic giant to create the world, like Ymir and Tiamat). I found this site ages ago, but when I recently tried to track it down, I couldn't find it. Turns out it's gone dead, but luckily a footnote on the above-mentioned blog gave me the URL to plug into the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20220112214858/http://piereligion.org/index.html
3. A bit of a weird one, but Mark Bisone over at The Cat Was Never Found kicked off a new series trying to explore what's going on with the seeming increase in encounters with and influence from the demonic in recent years, based on his own brush with such things detailed in an earlier series. Interesting to read compared to the viewpoint found here and in Monsters, as he's coming from a totally different background (Christian, artist, computer programmer). Once again, I don't necessarily agree with his take on everything, but he's a thoughtful, interesting guy who takes the risks of the bad side of spirituality seriously: https://markbisone.substack.com/p/spook-central
4. Also earlier this week (trying to get in the habit of publishing on Wednesdays for a bit of planetary boost), I put out four more rough drafts of the "All Father" prayer I'm working on for the Heathen Rosary project: https://jpowellrussell.com/#more_rough_all_father_prayers
These are getting closer, but I'm still not quite there, so I'd very much appreciate critiques from anyone willing to share them over on my dreamwidth: https://jprussell.dreamwidth.org/21911.html
To Ask: For the past few months, or maybe a little longer, I've been getting rather a lot of use out of the looped-fingers version of kinesiology taught in the MOE material. I tend to use it throughout the day for pretty small questions, more of advice/guidance than prediction, as it seems to be much more limited for me in that department, and bad at timing even when correct about something happening. I've also been paying attention to birds, trying to figure out what kind of signs might be there. At times, I've put these together, using the kinesiology to ask things like "is this what that sign was trying to tell me?" (though often much closer to 20 questions than just that one). I've had what seem to be a few confirmations, but many of these haven't had a way to confirm whether they're accurate or not just yet.
1. Does this strike you as getting too close to "not trusting your method of divination by double checking with another," which you've advised against in the past, or potentially fruitful? Or perhaps just a matter for experiment?
2. Related, I've sometimes used the kinesiology to ask "should I do a divination on X?" or "Would Ogham be better for this than the Runes?" Though it has seemed to work out fine, it's kind of inherently hard to readily test (unless I'm being obtuse), so does that sound like something that might work, or am I stumbling into an obvious pitfall?
As always, thanks very much to JMG and everyone else here for all that you do.
My blessings to all who welcome them,
Jeff
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
2) Again, you'll want to experiment. I don't know of anyone else offhand who's tried this, so I don't have the data to offer anything more concrete.
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
If I work out anything definitive, I'll share it here down the road.
Cheers,
Jeff
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
(Anonymous) 2024-08-19 05:37 am (UTC)(link)—Thr Saxon Princess, Cutekitten I
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
(Anonymous) 2024-08-19 06:36 pm (UTC)(link)—Princess Cutekitten
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
Slightly more seriously, some recent genetic studies in Britain suggest that modern population genetics still track pretty closely to the medieval settlement patterns: modern Cornish people are mostly Cornish, Welsh Welsh, those from Essex and Sussex Saxons, and so forth. So, if you happen to know if any of your ancestors came from East Anglia, Northumbria, or Mercia (modern day Northeast England - Northumberland, Durham, Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Midlands), you might be able to figure out how much Anglo- is mixed with your Saxon (but the merger into a people that called themselves the "Anglo-Saxons" and now call themselves "the English" happened pretty early) . 23andme has incorporated these studies into their ancestry attributions, if you go for that kind of thing.
Cheers,
Jeff
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
(Anonymous) 2024-08-20 03:04 am (UTC)(link)More seriously, I went and checked out Mark Bisone's essay. He's pretty long-winded, but his thoughts about the "spookiness" of the Internet played right out in front of me tonight. I did a DuckDuckGo search on one of the hot-button issues of the day, read several web pages about it, and came away feeling downright contaminated. These web pages were from places like CNN, The Hill, et al. I can't put my finger on what was wrong with those websites, but there was something seriously, spiritually skanky there.
- Cicada Grove
Re: Axe & Plough, PIE Religion, "Spook Central," 4 More All Father Drafts, and Q on Checking Divinat
I can share my experience in hopes something is helpful. I started kinesiology "muscle testing" on the advisement of a skilled chiropractor, and it was solely for deciding whether my body was compatible with something. Later I saw a friend using it as a form of divination and she taught me her method. I used it for years, and encountering it in the MOE led me to increase it's use and better integrate it into my other practices. I've had less luck with the finger method. My go to is to use my whole body - standing with slightly bent knees, hands over my solar plexus, and relaxing into a balanced center and then asking my questions and observing my swings - like I'm a pendulum.
I've found that it is very accurate when asking questions about my body, things I might consume, and advisement about going (or not going) to places. From my friend, I had the habit of facing north and directly verbally stating "I am connected to my higher self." I place this divination in a category with Geomancy, though I haven't fully fleshed that out. Over the years, I've added a moment of pre-visualizing the gates of the SOP around me, quietly verbally stating that I am in balance with the elements, in alignment with spirit, and finally that I am in integrity - higher self to physical body and all bodies between. I've noted being muddled and unclear when not doing this.
I have a tendency to use separate "categories" of divination systems to flesh out a reading. So I might use tarot to understand the nuance around a situation that I received a more blunt answer about from kinesiology or geomancy.
Wishing you well.