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 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

Re: mental plane & gwynfydd

[ecosophia]

1) To the extent that it's possible to think about the mental plane using categories that are meant to work with the astral, etheric, and material planes, yes.

2) It's easy to overemphasize the difference between material incarnation and the next step up -- in Druid language, between the upper edge of Abred and the lower edge of Gwynfydd. There's a difference, but not an infinite gulf. You shed your material body for the last time, and with it, you don't need to die any more -- you've finished the cycle of death, forgetfulness, and rebirth -- but you still have your familiar etheric and astral bodies, and everything that goes with them; you also have your mental sheath, except that it's become a mental body with its own rudimentary organs of sensation and action on the mental plane.

So you still have the whole world of thoughts and emotions, which are astral, and the whole world of vitality and energetic interactions, which are etheric; your sense of meaning and value has become dramatically clearer, opening up a world you can only vaguely grasp now; you're living among others who also share all these things, and you can communicate and interact with them. You're still embodied, it's just that your body isn't made of dense matter and doesn't get old and die.

Is there music in Gwynfydd? Every source I know of says yes. Is there history? That too. Games? Nobody's mentioned those, but human souls being what they are, I'd say it's a safe bet that there's some equivalent. Internet? No, there you're out of luck. You have to make do with less cumbersome and ad-infested ways to communicate with others and access information!

The best metaphor I know of for all this is to think of material incarnation -- the whole process of it, through mineral, plant, and animal lives to the human level -- as the prenatal existence of the soul. Matter is the womb of the soul, and while we are in material incarnation we haven't been born yet. Being born is a shock, no question, and it requires us to adjust nearly all our expectations, but Mom's still there, even though we're in a different relationship to her, and once born we enter onto possibilities we can't even begin to imagine while we're still in the womb.

Re: mental plane & gwynfydd

[xcalibur_djs]

All I wanted to know and then some, thanks! Fascinating stuff, and reassuring tbh -- it's basically a rebirth and a new adventure, the next level up, not a sundering of ties or a wormhole into the unknowable. So it's really not as bad as I thought. Good to know there will be similar things up there, different and perhaps better -- maybe there's an internet equivalent without all the clunky annoyances you point out!

I assume there are interactions and links between the higher and lower levels, and that much of this is magical? Although, this is probably too complex/muddled for a brief explanation.

Not to be greedy, but one more query, regarding this rather interesting quote from the other blog:

"One way of putting it is to say that in Abred, the spirit is wrapped up in matter, while in Gwynfydd, matter is caught up into spirit. Physical incarnation, in the sense of landing in another freshly born body, ends when Gwynfydd begins; material manifestation is still available, but it’s in other-than-human forms."
Does this mean that those in Gwynfydd can appear on the material plane as ghosts or other supernatural beings? If so, that would explain a fair amount of visions and other fantastic lore I've read about in history.

Re: mental plane & gwynfydd

[ecosophia]

I know I kind of went on there -- in my defense, it's an interesting question. ;-)

1) Since incarnate human beings exist and perceive things on the etheric and astral levels, and beings in Gwynfydd exist on those two levels as well, there's definitely room for contact.

2) Normally when a being from Gwynfydd wants to appear to incarnate human beings, they do it in an etheric or astral form -- it's just more convenient for everyone. It's possible, though, for a soul of sufficient power to create a temporary material body. That sometimes looks human, but it's never actually a human body in the full material sense. The resurrection body or Body of Light in which Jesus is said to have appeared to his followers is supposed to be this sort of thing.

Re: mental plane & gwynfydd

[xcalibur_djs]

I wasn't complaining, more like expressing gratitude for the extra helpings of info. You've probably noticed my thirst for knowledge, which is something I've always had since I was a kid.

Once again, thanks, and that definitely helps clarify what I suspected. It also explains why these contacts tend to primarily take the form of dreams or visions, with supernatural incarnations as the exception (and of course, Jesus was an exceptionally advanced spirit).