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 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 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

Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[(Anonymous)]

I first started having a relationship with Elen of the Ways after a strange encounter when my wife, father and I were hiking in the woods of Daniel Boone National Forest, oh a number of years ago now.

We were walking to a natural arch and met some locals on the way who also told us about a hidden natural arch that was off trail, and that he was an "arch hunter" going to see as many of the arches in his state as he could. This resonated with me strongly and he gave me some information I could follow up on. He was what someone from the coasts might call a hill billy (to me a term of no offense). He had bright bright blue eyes and I could tell he was very attuned to the land.

Anyway, afterwards I had some synchronicities, around the topic of "psychic questing" and some articles about Elen from people in that community. This has led me to start including Elen of the Ways in my devotions. I found in a book of paintings by Stuart Littlejohn a wonderful painting of her to use as a focus. It can be seen about halfway down this gallery of his here:

https://www.stuartlittlejohn.com/gallery-two-1

I am finding the Welsh deities to be enigmatic. But I also started developing a closer relationship with Heseus after another experience in Kentucky, on my aunt & uncles land about an hour south of here. Next to an ancient oak tree of course (after my cousin gave me a turtle shell she had found -and the presence of Heseus seemed very close).

Still working on getting a sense of Hu, though Sulis is a bit closer. Ced too, I experienced as a vision of a cornucopia or thanksgiving table spread. Celi remains very enigmantic.

Just thought I'd share these experiences.

John, do you have any tips or sources beyond further readings of the Mabinogion?


Justin Patrick Moore /|\ /|\ /|\

Re: Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[ecosophia]

That's a fascinating image. Traditional accounts of Elen don't give her antlers, much less a deer's head, but I've noticed that imagery popping up quite recently these days, so it may be how she wants to be seen in this age. The image of Sulis Minerva on the same page is also really fine.

Celi is enigmatic. Nobody ever sees him; you just hear a soft piping, like a flute, played on high places.

As for tips, as I noted to Open_Space, there really is frack-all information about the Druid Revival deities. In a way, that's an advantage, since it forces us to approach them directly, rather than through a haze of book-knowledge.

Re: Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for these notes, and that's a good point. We have to wade in... a lot of the stuff I was reading about Elen via the psychic questing literature was associating her with deer...

Caroline Wise writes, "Earth Mysteries writer John Michell directed us to the work of the antiquarian writer Harold Bayley, whose inspired yet frustratingly unreferenced books spoke of Elen. Bayley spoke of Elen guardian spirit or lost goddess of London, claiming that London was named for her. He also speaks of Elen as an ancient British Deity associated with those beasts of the huntress-Goddess, the greyhound and the deer. I'd had a dream in which Elen appeared as a shy female dappled fallow deer. I caught a glimpse of this deer through the trees, as a shaft of sunlight filtered through the trees and spotlighted her. And then she was gone. I felt she was teasing me, saying 'catch me' and wanting me to follow, but I knew her traces would be faint.

My friend Chesca, however, kept seeing impressions of Elen as an antlered woman, a vision that would not go away. As a brilliant visionary artist she was able to capture this persistent image. I had no doubt this vision would 'check out'. A friend directed us to a small antlered female figurine in the British Museum, and I found that Elain was Welsh for 'Fawn', and that Jelen was Czech for deer, but the vision was of Elen as female antlered figure, and female deer didn't have antlers.

In 1990, by quite a magical synchronicity, I realised why my friend was seeing a female deer with antlers. The only kind of female deer to have antlers are Reindeer. As I learnt this, things started to tumble into place in my mind at great speed. I could now fix Mascen's dream of Elen more firmly as 'Shamanic' flight, and with the Reindeer as the key, Elen of the Leys led to Shamans further afield. And a colleague form Bulgaria told us shortly after this, that Elen was Bulgarian for Reindeer (I can find no proof of this!). But it seemed significant that not only does the female reindeer have antlers, but she is stronger than the male and does not shed her antlers in winter. It is an older female reindeer that leads the herds."

https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/elen_1.htm

At the same time I was reading and learning about the different roads here in Cincinnati. A lot of them started off as different animal traces, then Indian or Native American trails, later to become roads when the different regiments and other settlers came in. I connected this to the idea of Elen of the Ways and that image of her with antlers made a lot of sense to me. There was some stuff in the Robert Moss material I studied and his work with Iriquois people talking about females with antlers, so there was another kind of visceral connection.

JPM

Re: Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[ecosophia]

Fascinating! Thank you for this.

Re: Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[hearthculture]

I appreciate all the references and the anecdotes - thank you for sharing!

Re: Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[scottyc]

I like your advice to deal with the deities directly but I'm also trying to peer though the haze somewhat. I've been (slowly) collecting as much information as I can about the Druid Revival deities, especially the ones listed in the Sphere of Protection.

This links are not to a blog and only serve as a personal notebook. Lot's of copy and paste but I try to organize by each referenced work.

https://scottyc.dreamwidth.org/1602.html

Finally had to make a separate entry for Hu Gadarn:

https://scottyc.dreamwidth.org/1862.html

Re: Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[ecosophia]

Nicely done! This is very useful stuff.

Re: Getting to Know Elen and Heseus

[(Anonymous)]

I would also like to add my thanks for linking to your notebooks!