Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Midnight is just a few minutes away, and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, 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 forty-fourth published book and the result of one of my more improbable discoveries. The Coelbren, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is a vaguely runic alphabet invented (probably) by Iolo Morganwg aka Edward Williams, a brilliant, batty Welsh poet who contributed a vast amount to the Druid Revival. People had been trying for years to figure out how to use it for divination but nobody could figure out what the individual letters meant. (I've included an example below on theright to show you what it looks like; that's the name of the Welsh province of Ceredigion.)

One afternoon I was in a used book store in central Maryland, right up against the Appalachians, and noticed an odd old book in what was literally the darkest, most obscure corner of the store. I pulled it out and discovered that it was a book on the history of Welsh grammar. Flipping through it, I spotted a reference to a book I'd never heard of by an author I knew well, J. Williams ab Ithel, one of Iolo Morganwg's disciples. I bought the grammar book, went searching for the book by Williams ab Ithel online, found it, downloaded it, and discovered that it contained a nearly complete key to the meanings of the Coelbren letters. The first version of my book on Coelbren followed promptly, setting out a fairly complete system of divination; a second version, greatly expanded and improved with much more material on Coelbren magic and occultism, came out thereafter. If you're interested -- and if you're into Druidry, you should be -- you can get a copy here if you're in the US and here elsewhere.

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

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)]

Dear Mr Greer,

I was hoping you could assist with another Geomancy question. The question I asked was whether I should attempt to reconcile with person I had a falling out with decades ago.

The Judge was Populus
The Right Witness was Fortuna Minor
The Left Witness was Fortuna Minor

Populus is influenced by the other figures but is also unfortunate for focussed action which this would entail.
Fortuna Minor represents unstable success which does not seem favourable based on the question.

My conclusion is that the answer to the question is a No, but I just wanted to make sure I made the right assumptions regarding Fortuna Minor.

[ecosophia]

When Populus is the judge, that means that what you're experiencing is something collective, not necessarily relevant to your own situation. In this case, some outside factor has you thinking about attempting a reconciliation. You can do it, but if you do, it won't last long or accomplish much.

Review on The Ancient City and Question on Nine Worlds Divination Method

[jprussell]

May this week's full moon bring waxing of what you're looking for, and not too much craziness.

To Share: I finally got around to reading Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City, which is very interesting from both a historical and religious standpoint, but was perhaps not quite as helpful as I might have hoped for getting a view of what ancient Roman and Greek ancestor worship looked like at a practical level. Still, I've written up my fuller thoughts on it here, for anyone interested: https://jpowellrussell.com/#book_thoughts_on_the_ancient_city

To Ask: Fittingly enough for the book featured this week, I have a divination question. So, I know this isn't directly in your wheelhouse, JMG, but I wondered if you might have insight based on analogous methods, or if anyone in the commentariat might have thoughts. In his works on Runecasting, Edred Thorsson describes a method called "Casting Upon the Airts." In this method, you lay out a cloth divided into nine zones, one for each of the Nine Worlds of Norse cosmology. Each of the worlds is associated with certain aspects of the situation being asked about, and which Runestaves land in it tell you what you need to know about those aspects (for example "Midgard" deals with the personality/ego-consciousness, tangible outcomes, and the immediate situation). So far, straightforward enough. In his advice for doing this reading, though, Thorsson recommends that the zones should not be visible on the cloth, or, at a minimum, not their names - I held the former in mind for years now, but checking one source before asking this question, it only said the latter. I'm not sure if he recommends the stricter one in another book, or if this is one of those "you need to re-read the instructions periodically" things, but I figured I'd go ahead with asking anyway.

The following image breaks both versions of that recommendation, but gives a good idea of what the zones on the cloth are. The stricter version I remember would say to cast on a blank cloth divided into these zones in your mind's eye, the less strict version would have the lines, but not the words: https://i.etsystatic.com/12456854/r/il/b938c5/1697354971/il_1588xN.1697354971_kcqr.jpg

Do you have any thoughts on why he might recommend against this? Practice visualizing? Encouraging a more intuitive and less clear-cut method of interpretation? Personal preference?

Thank you again, JMG and everyone here!

My blessings to all who welcome them,
Jeff

Re: Review on The Ancient City and Question on Nine Worlds Divination Method

[ecosophia]

I have no idea why he would recommend that. In most of the forms of divination I know of, the places into which divinatory symbols are placed are labeled in one way or another; for example, in a horoscope, the houses are outlined and numbered, and in setting out a tarot reading using the Celtic Cross spread, you state the meanings of the positions as you lay out the cards: "This covers you, this crosses you," and so on. It seems rather odd that Thorson would argue against that.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

Well now, that’s some serious synchronicity… I’ve begun doing a bit of planning for a grad school paper that I’ll be writing this semester, and since Iolo Morganwg is going to be a major focus of the paper, this weekend I thought to myself “I should pop by Magic Monday and ask JMG what the best academic sources on Morganwg are.” And here the book of the week and the wonderful backstory you’ve shared have already anticipated what I came to ask…

I’ll be picking up your book on the Coelbren ex post haste. In addition to that, do you (or your gracious commentariat) have recommendations for academic sources on Morganwg’s life and work? The paper will be for a Religious Studies class, and I’m hoping to highlight Morganwg and his influence on Druidry as a counterexample to some of the more popular contemporary theories on what religion is and how it functions.

Warmly,
Ryan M.

[ecosophia]

If you can get it, the anthology A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg edited by Geraint Jenkins is the best general scholarly overview of the man and his output. There used to be a fine website with more info -- you can get it on the Wayback Machine here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170215125044/http://www.iolomorganwg.wales.ac.uk/

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

my blessings if you will have them. I have a few small questions:

- is there an effect if an incense stick runs out during a CGD temple working? Or can you just light another and continue?

- Can compulsions from divided will lead to creating personal egregores? I'm thinking cravings for the likes of alcohol, drugs, porn. If they do, can the egregores be combatted?

- I mentioned new upstairs neighbours and their noise recently - while it's better, they do have noisy periods and the building's property manager is willing to ask them if they can make an effort. I thought I'd cast CGD wands for whether this would be for the highest good and got: Judge Elw, RW Carchar LW Bendith fach. While this would seem yes, the Carchar confuses me - doesn't it mean restraint, or have I read this wrong?

Thanks for all you do. I'd like to add my deep thanks for the weekly Corona forum, an oasis of sanity in a nutty world.

[ecosophia]

1) You can just light another stick. It's not a big deal.

2) Yes, and that's much of what addiction amounts to: a self-created egregor charged anew every time you feed the craving. "Combating the egregor," though, is part of the common habit of turning a craving into a scripted melodrama with a prearranged conclusion -- notice you didn't mention "defeating the egregor." Put another way, you won't overcome the habit of dividing your will by reinforcing the division and struggling even harder against yourself! Instead, accept that your will is unclear, manage the craving rather than staging melodramatic fights with it that you have already decided to lose, and focus on understanding the role the craving plays in your emotional life. What are you using it to hide from, or run from? Whose script are you living out by cultivating the habit, and why? What benefit do you get from it?

3) Carchar does indeed mean restraint. If you push too hard right now you'll mess things up and get a reputation as a difficult tenant. Put up with a certain amount of noise, and only make a fuss if and when it gets really loud, or really late at night.

Not a Dream (I'm fairly sure...)

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Several days ago, just before dawn as I was waking up, I had a strong sense of "returning" to my body as if fleeing a disaster. It felt as if I had jumped into a deep and turbulent river of something not quite water, in order to get out of the way of something impersonal but quite dangerous if you get too close to it, or the wake it generates, just going about its business. Whatever it was rolled firmly onward just above me, causing a literal turbulence that I struggled to dive through. I thought "Whew! That was odd." And got on with my day. Later that day, or perhaps the day after, I was slammed with the worst anxiety attack I've ever had (and I'm 65). There have been some issues to deal with this summer, but nothing remotely panic-worthy. Talking this over with my husband tonight, we wondered if whatever happened to me the other night as I returned to wakefulness may have triggered the anxiety episode.

Any thoughts on what this may have been? And any advice on avoiding a repeat? (I do both the Heathen LBRP and Heathen Middle Pillar daily.)

Thanks as always,
OtterGirl

Re: Not a Dream (I'm fairly sure...)

[ecosophia]

I have no idea what that might have been. How odd -- and how unnerving.

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to thank all pray-ers, I can now hit the brake without yelling in pain!

—Princess Cutekitten

Anomalies

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG
Circling back to the topic you’d brought up about recent anomalies, distortions and unusual occurrences. Have you developed any theories or conclusions?
Have you noticed any changes in time perception? I’ve been having the sensation of time flowing slower during certain parts of the day. Mostly from 10 am until early afternoon. It’s very noticeable and consistent. Additionally the months seem to last longer. I’ve resorted to checking the number of weeks for each month routinely as they seem to go on for longer as before. This has been happening for about five months at least. This made me remember faintly that time used to flow slower for me during certain times in my youth which I think was a positive.
What do you think of this?

Re: Anomalies

[ecosophia]

1) No, I'm still gathering information. Conclusions are a long way off.

2) I haven't noticed that, no; time has been fairly slow for me for the last seven months, but that's because I have so much more of it unoccupied these days. Interesting; I'll want to hear what others have to say about this.

Ecosophia Prayer List

[tunesmyth]

At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.

If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.

* * *

This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.

May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery to treat it.

May Tyler and Monika's newborn baby Isabelle, whose bowels were not moving properly at birth, be blessed with a well functioning digestive tract and be free of colic going forward.

May Falling Tree Woman's son's girlfriend's mother Bridget in Devon UK, who has recently started to sit up and converse after more than six weeks of bedridden tracheotomy following a life-threatening fall from a horse, be blessed and healed and returned to full health.

May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won't be treated surgically, be healed of throat cancer.

May Heather's brother in law, Patrick, who is dying of cancer and has dementia, go gentle into that good light. And may his wife Maggie, who is ill herself, find the strength and peace she needs for her situation. (Update on Patrick's condition here)

May Neptune's Dolphins' husband David, who lost one toe to a staph infection last year and now faces further toe amputations due to diabetic ulcers in his left foot, be blessed and healed, and may the infection leave his body for good.

May Rebecca, who has just been laid off from her job and is the sole provider for her family, quickly discover a viable means to continue to support her family; may she and her family be blessed and sustained in their journey forward.

May Kyle's friend Amanda, who though in her early thirties is undergoing various difficult treatments for brain cancer, make a full recovery; and may her body and spirit heal with grace.

Lp9's hometown, East Palestine, Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people, animals and all living beings in and around East Palestine, and to improve the natural environment there to the benefit of all.

* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.

If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun's rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.

Re: Ecosophia Prayer List

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this as always.

language of the birds, or, backward and forward anagrammatized

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings!

I have a rather specialized question; but first, I'll set the scene.

I've been reading Matte Robinson's The Astral HD, which is a careful study of How the poet HD used esotericism and the occult to develop herself and her poetics. Robinson gets into quite a bit of detail -- though the material on the Golden Dawn is a bit slapdash; anyway, HD does not seem to have had a direct connection with the GD, though she had several indirect connections.

One of her first contacts with modern esotericism seems to have come in her youth, when Ezra Pound, then her lover, introduced her to the work of Yogi Ramacharaka. However, she was haunted by her ancestral connection with an offshoot of the Moravian Brethren -- a secret within the secret, so to speak, which she spent quite a bit of work reconstructing. She also spent some time in spiritualist activities, for a while in connection with Air Marshal Hugh Dowding.

But now I sidle up to the question. She was, later in life, a close reader of several of the works of Robert Ambelain, and Chaboseau's book on the Tarot, significant bits of all of which she incorporated into her poetry (and life).

Nodding over this quaint and curious volume of lore, in particular a chapter in which Ambelain's name appeared many times over each two-page spread, I gradually became aware of a tap-tap-tapping at my mind's door.

It is this: "R. Ambelain" is an anagram of "Abramelin". (If you want to push it, "Robert Ambelain" can turn into "Abramelin Bet Or" (בית אור), but that's a bit of a stretch, eh?)

So I looked around a bit, and couldn't find any reference to R Ambelain as Abramelin.
It seems an obvious enough connection for esoteric puzzle-lovers, but I just didn't find anything. (Perhaps the search engines are not allowed to display such results!)

Have you, or any of the commentariat, heard anything with respect to this?

LeGrand

Re: language of the birds, or, backward and forward anagrammatized

[(Anonymous)]

I love HD! Thanks for this. Didn't know about this book. Sounds very interesting. Her poetry also suggests that she was a kind of Hellenistic revivalist.

Justin Patrick Moore

Unscathed from another attempt

[(Anonymous)]

So there was another assassination attempt on President Trump. I believe we were all talking last time, which of course was different in that it was a miraculous escape from such a close attempt, as having some kind of divine intervention. So given another attempt was made, it is not surprising that was found out ? It seems last time it was a dramatic reenergization of power to his campaign, I wonder if this one will mark a shift also ?

Atmospheric River

Re: Unscathed from another attempt

[ecosophia]

I note that the failed assassin was captured alive, and that the Florida state government has announced that it will be launching its own investigation into the attempt. If anything more than a solitary gunman was involved, that could have quite the impact on things. But we'll see...

[k_a_nitz]

A note from my letter mysticism practice: I'm finding that as I am feeling the letters in my feet, my feet feel as though they are touching even though they are a clear inch apart. It is almost like that the feeling when you hold the same pole of two magnets close so that you can feel the point at which they start to repel, which makes me wonder whether it is related to the body's magnetism in the way that Karl Spiesberger talks about in his books where he gives diagrams for the polarity of different parts of the body for those with 'normal' alignments. Or perhaps related to the etheric body?
I'd be interested in any similar experiences from the commentariat (perhaps by anyone who has practised runic yoga) or any thoughts on what is going on here from an energy point of view.

[ecosophia]

Similar diagrams are found in a very wide range of late 19th and early 20th century occult books, and not just in German! The feeling of magnetic repulsion, though, is a known thing -- it happens quite often with practices that energize the etheric body. That's fascinating, that the effects are cascading down the planes to the etheric.

One rather large synchronicity

[(Anonymous)]

This is one rather large synchronicity, as I was going to ask a question about this. One of the odd features of physical radiesthesia is that the energy quality, as measured with pendulums, of some alphabets represent the exact nature or meaning of that particular letter or symbol. Hebrew letters have this quality for instance. English does not, there's a gulf of a gap between the energetic quality of a Roman alphabet letter and the reality it represents.

This got me thinking about the Colebren, as its operation works on the level of sound, and doesn't require any of the energetic work to translate it. It's qualities are directly transmitted to human minds without any intermediaries.

What I guess it leads to is a realisation that the process of quantifying everything and forgetting about quality and direct meaning of symbols is more advanced in some human senses than others. Hearing/sound, taste, smell still work largely in the qualitative world.

I've often wondered if the magic implicit in all that is what is largely missing from the western tradition. I also wonder about the symbols themselves, and their meaning, thinking that the reality behind them is on a high level of plane, at least the mental level or above.

Re: One rather large synchronicity

[ecosophia]

Sight can also function qualitatively when it focuses on colors rather than forms -- this is one of the reasons that color symbolism, of quite some subtlety, plays an important role in some branches of Western esotericism. You're right, though, that the Western tradition is still struggling to recover that purely qualitative sense of meaning. In its defense, remember that it's been reassembled from broken and charred fragments more than once.

Bad luck

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, JMG,

I have a practical question. This year has just been one bad thing after another. I won't bore you with everything, but earlier this year, I was in a car accident (the other guy was at fault, but the legal case has been going slowly and still isn't resolved). I was laid off not long after that, and my attempts to find steady income have been challenging (I just recently got turned down for a job I thought sure I would get).

I am a Pisces, and I know Saturn is in Pisces this year, so I'm not sure whether that could be part of my trouble, but I was wondering if you have advice for turning around a string of bad luck.

I've read some material on "uncrossing," but a lot of it has you do Psalms or Bible prayers, and to be honest, I don't resonate or usually get results from anything Abrahamic. I get the best results from relationships with Greek/Roman deities, Hindu deities, and some Buddhist deities.

Re: Bad luck

[ecosophia]

A good astrologer would be able to progress your natal chart to this year and tell you what's going on and what to do about it, but that will cost money you may not have. If you're skilled in divination, dreamwork, or meditation, you can get the same information that way, but I doubt you want to wait as long as it would take to get to the necessary level of skill. (Though you may as well start now so you're prepared the next time this sort of thing happens.)

If you need something faster, the one way I know of is to change your life. Listen to different music, take up different hobbies and activities, go different places, and so on down the line, including applying to jobs you wouldn't have considered before. As you've doubtless heard, there's nothing to be gained by doing the same things and expecting different results; to have different luck you need a different life. That should help within a matter of months.

Tai chi; MOE Healer attunement; blessing offer

[milkyway1]

Good morning,

I hope you've had a good weekend, and a good start into the week. :-)

1. Last week, you wrote "In between, I've returned to the practice of taijiquan, having (I think) figured out the imbalances that gave me health problems when I studied it in the past.".

If I may ask, does this mean you've figured out a way to safely combine taijiquan with e.g. the solarplexus-pineal gland working from the GSF SOP? If so, would you consider sharing?

2. For everybody: I perform a formal blessing again this Wednesday, and hope some of you will consider signing up, since it allows me to practice:

https://thehiddenthings.com/weekly-blessings-37

Thanks! :-)

3. For MOE practitioners: I offer a Healer attunement on Sunday, September 22nd:

https://thehiddenthings.com/moe-healer-attunement-2024-09


JMG, thanks a lot for hosting Magic Monday again, and if you will have them, my blessings to you, too,

Milkyway

Re: Tai chi; MOE Healer attunement; blessing offer

[ecosophia]

I'm not sure yet about the taijiquan. I'll post something when I have more evidence one way or the other.

[executedbygandhi]

Hello JMG, I have a few questions burning under my fingernails:
1) Is there any hope of redemption for demons from an occult point of view? I'm asking because there was a person in Buddhism called Padmasambahva or Guru Rinpoche who, according to legend, brought Buddhism to Tibet and not only subdued demons there, but even turned them into Dharma protectors. I would like to hear your opinion on whether occultism is discussed as a way of helping demons.
2) How do people who are going through their first incarnation in the human realm behave? As expected, I would say that they naively rush into the possibilities and pleasures of the human realm and lead a rather libidinous life. This would explain why so many people have so much difficulty realizing their human potential in our overpopulated times.
3) You said last week that people who commit suicide end up in a sort of in-between state until it's their turn to incarnate again. How do people who die in a very stupid way, for example due to a drug overdose, end up?

[ecosophia]

1) According to the traditions I follow, all beings will be redeemed eventually, but bringing demons back into harmony with the pattern of the cosmos is something that takes an enlightened saint of Padmasambhava's stature. Kobo Daishi, who brought esoteric Buddhism to Japan, and En no Gyoja, the greatest of Japanese wizards, could do it, but you and I? Not a chance. Banish them, and let those of sufficient power and wisdom handle that work.

2) There are two things to watch for in identifying somebody who hasn't been human long. The first thing is that only things that make sense to animals make sense to them. That doesn't necessarily mean that libido runs amok, though it can mean that; it simply means that their world consists of the things that an intelligent animal cares about -- food, sex, territory, social status, companionship, and the like -- and they have no ability to understand or appreciate anything else. The second is that their time sense focuses on a very narrow span. Beyond a certain distance, the past means little to them and the future means less. One of the things we achieve in human life is the capacity to perceive time as a dimension rather than a flow, and they haven't gotten there yet.

3) Death by stupidity is very common, of course, and it follows the usual course of things, with some awkward karma thrown in -- the more stupid things you do, the more careless and thoughtless you become, until the consequences hurt so much that you start to learn how to be attentive. Suicide is different because it's an act of the conscious will. The suicide wills to step outside of the cycle of life and death, and gets what he or she wants, with the inevitable grinding boredom and pointlessness.

trouble with words

[earthworm_uk]

JMG and commentariat,
Regarding use of words – as an experiment I decided to rework ‘A Prayer to Life’ that I put on dreamwidth to ‘A Call to Life’ which I put on a substack account I inadvertently opened(!)
It’s in the first post (Learning to be Human). Do you think it works? https://alienresident.substack.com/

Why did I do it? Brother-in-law has conniptions when he hears words like God or prayer and I can appreciate his reaction because of the baggage now associated with words. But thinking about it, how did the male polarity get associated with the Absolute? Solar (Sun/Male) and Telluric (Earth/Female) seem like the obvious places for the polarities to be symbolised by male and female while the absolute seems like it should be way beyond categories like male and female.
Perhaps we just talking about translation and transcription discrepancies and errors whether deliberate or not where someone with limited imagination not knowing what words to use and using the only word that fitted their comprehension - e.g. the absolute as the father figure.

Not being a follower of a mainstream religion, the Chinese approach to the Absolute seems much more fitting.

However, it also popped into mind that women have effectively been scapegoated for some time and wondered if it started more as a joint enterprise and got twisted out of shape by a bunch of entryist grifters taking over. Like how the concept of reincarnation got removed from Christian texts, only in this case, a bunch of people with a downer on women taking over and steering things as misogynists (Hence Father, Son & Holy Ghost). Dunno but it would explain a few things!
Does anyone know how The Absolute got to be 'Male' in Abrahamic religions?
Early DEI hires? i.e. It would not be unexpected for a group espousing diversity, equity and inclusion to exclude 50% of the population! ;)

Re: trouble with words

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this; I've marked it to read when I have the chance. As for the gendering of the Absolute, that's always seemed very odd to me, too. In what possible way could the transcendent principle behind all being have genitalia, or for that matter chromosomes?

Continued work on Talismans

[guillem66]

Greetings Jmg,
Your comments on Flashing tablets had made me wonder:
Suppose one enchants a Talisman in a given moment, using a Ritual, Magical materials and an Astrological election. But the Talisman is complicated, so it is not very practical to do all the Ritual work in a single session. Further, one intends to make "modifications" in the Talisman in the future.

My questions are:
In terms of power, is the creation of the Talisman the most crucial moment to strengthen it with astrological influences?

If you do further work with it without timing it with stars, are you weakening the initial astrological impront?

Finally, what makes a flashing Tablet diferent in terms of technique than, say, enchanting a twig with an Ogham and doing a daily Sop or Grove for weeks or months to keep empowering it?

Thanks,

Guillem Mateo

Re: Continued work on Talismans

[ecosophia]

1) Depends on the type of talisman and the nature of the consecration.

2) Again, it depends. If it's a planetary talisman, you can always do the additional work during the day and hour of the relevant planet.

3) The specific method used to empower it. You could also do the thing with the twig, and you might get good results with it.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
I recently charged a stone with the enchantment of Samhuinn, as per the DMH instructions. Mostly it went ok, but I had a somewhat unnerving experience at one point.

Toward the end of filling the space with purple light, I received astral images related to the eventual death of a beloved elderly family member. They were brief and vague, but emotionally charged (sorrow/grief) and intense enough that I had to pause and shake them off. I haven't experienced anything like that before, certainly not in the Grove.

Of course I normally banish "harmful and disturbing influences" in my daily SOP, and I had done so earlier that morning. But during the grove opening SOP, I only banished "any influences that might hinder this working." Is that part of the problem?

I don't know what to make of this experience. I can't (and wouldn't) claim it to be some sort of premonition, since it was so vague as to be useless in that way. It was more like a bitter reminder that "your elders are old, and one day they won't be here anymore." I can see how it relates to the theme of Samhuinn: among other things, the inevitability of the darkest parts of the life cycle. The inevitability of his passing is something that has long troubled me. It's tempting to chalk the experience up to that particular baggage.

But what am I not seeing here? Are astral images like this something I should steel myself for? How can one protect against them?

Thanks very much for holding this space as always.

[ecosophia]

One of my teachers used to call this kind of thing "astral static." It probably doesn't mean anything at all; note it down in your practice journal, and otherwise ignore it.

Books on Fairies

[(Anonymous)]

A few weeks ago you answered a question about best books to read to learn about fairies. I've just finished Passport to Magonia, and have Robert Kirk on the shelf, but there was a third author you mentioned, a folklore scholar, I believe, whose name escapes me. Can you remind me the author and book(s)? Thank you as always!

Re: Books on Fairies

[ecosophia]

Katharine Briggs. Her books The Anatomy of Puck and The Vanishing People are especially useful.

Celi and Ceilidh

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any relation between the name Celi (the Hidden One of the Heavens above) and the Gaelic word Ceilidh. You mentioned before that Celi reall is very hidden but sometimes his presence is known with the sound of distant pipes (paraphrasing from memory). I was looking at a book about Scottish music this weekend and their was a section on the ceilidh gatherings for music making -and I thought of those pipes again. The words sound the same, at least to my reading ears. It made me wonder if there might be a connection.

Thanks,

Justin Patrick Moore

Re: Celi and Ceilidh

[ecosophia]

No, none at all. The Irish word ceilidh comes from ceili, "companion, friend" -- a ceilidh is a gathering of friends -- and the Welsh word that comes from the same root is cilydd, which is very rare except in figures of speech like "at ei gilydd," which means "together." The Welsh word Celi, like a lot of Welsh words, comes from Latin -- caelus, "heaven," is its most likely origin.

[(Anonymous)]

In circles of power I have made it to the vibration of ADNI HARTz ritual. For this Name you spell it out pretty clear the telesmatic imagery but for the other spheres do you use the angelic and/or elemental imagery? Also, how often could this be ritual done. Once a week or more often?

Thanks
PDM

[ecosophia]

For the others, you're expected to work out the imagery yourself! I recommend the angelic imagery for beginners. Once a week is a good spacing for now.

Archives of the Unexplained

[(Anonymous)]

I just got this link off the Norther Earth mailing list. It should be of interest to many here:

https://files.afu.se/Downloads/?dir=.%2FMagazines

This archive contains a lot of UFOlogical magazines but a few Earth Mysteries journals, cryptozoology bits and Forteana. It's divided into country of origin of the magazines.

Happy downloading...

Justin Patrick Moore

Re: Archives of the Unexplained

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! The same site has been selling off its duplicate copies of books -- I managed to score a couple of real rarities.

The Way of the Golden Section Exercise

[frittermywig]

Dear JMG,

I am struggling with the WGS exercise for emblem 21, The Spiral. The instructions direct that the second square should have sides equal to half the diagonal length of the first square. All my attempts looked off. I double-checked the diagram and found a discrepancy: In the book, the second square's sides are not equal to half the original diagonal. My measurements:



More confusing, the actual emblem on the card is constructed with a third measurement, where the sides of the second square are equal to half the length of the original square's side (and the diagonal isn't a factor at all).

I only want to know: Are we intended to construct a particular spiral, or are any of these spirals equally usefully at this stage of the training?

Re: The Way of the Golden Section Exercise

[ecosophia]

With modern graphics technology it's surprisingly difficult to get exactly proportioned images onto paper! Follow the written instructions and you'll be fine.

Rose & Cross ritual

[(Anonymous)]

Does your book "learning ritual magic" contain instructions on the Rose & Cross ritual? I've learned the LBRP and Middle Pillar and want to learn that one, but am having a hard time finding a reliable written resource for it. If you have a good recommendation besides your book, I'd love to know as well.

Re: Rose & Cross ritual

[ecosophia]

No, that wasn't one of the rituals we included. It's given in full in Circles of Power, however.

Quarterly journal of the Unitarian Society for Psychical Studies

[(Anonymous)]

More archives for the psychic researcher:

https://listview.lib.harvard.edu/lists/drs-451871973

JPM

Re: Quarterly journal of the Unitarian Society for Psychical Studies

[ecosophia]

And thanks for this also!