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-seventh published book and my second for Barnes & Noble's house publisher -- Sterling Press, as it was then called. (It's Union Square these days.) The Occult Book was still in process when the editors decided they wanted something similar about conspiracies. Since 2017 was a challenging year for me, with a difficult relocation and a range of other challenges to cope with, this was the only book I published in 2018, but it made up for that by selling like hotcakes. Like The Occult Book, it's a coffee table book of 100 historical vignettes from the history of secret societies and conspiracies, lavishly illustrated and with an ample bibliography. If you're interested, you can get a copy here if you live in the US and from your favorite local or online bookseller otherwise.

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 further comments will not be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

[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 Divine help be granted to newlywed Merlin (TemporaryReality's daughter), that she be guided to beneficial information and good decisions that lead to perfect health. May the lump in her breast resolve rapidly with no issues.

May Leonardo Johann from Bremen in Germany, who was
born prematurely two months early, come home safe and sound.

RandomActsOfKarmaSC in South Carolina has been affected by recent hurricane devastation; may all living things who have suffered as a consequence of Hurricane Helene be blessed, comforted, and healed.

May Audrey's nephew John, who passed away on 10/1 after an extended illness, be given comfort and clarity during his transition.

May Rebecca's new job position now scheduled to start
on October 8th indeed be hers, and fill her and her family's needs; may the situation (including coworkers and dodgy commute) be pleasant and free of strife.

May Kevin, his sister Cynthia, and their elderly mother Dianne have a positive change in their fortunes which allows them to find affordable housing and a better life.

May Tyler's partner Monika and newborn baby Isabella both be blessed with good health.

May Erika be blessed with good luck and radiant health.

May Mariette (Miow)'s recent surgery have been a success. May she make a full recovery and regain full use of her body. May she heal in body, soul and mind.

May The Dilettante Polymath's eye heal and vision return quickly and permanantly, and may both his retinas stay attached.

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

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.

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this as always.

Afterlife stuff and similar

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
I have been meditating on your book of occult philosophy and it has brought up some questions for me about the organization of why we have lives at all. I find it odd that we should all be part of the divine yet have to come to earth and lead such depressing lives full of the usual human nastiness. Then, I was reading Dune and at the back in the appendix was a quote from the planetary ecologist that said something like, "Existence is not a problem to be solved. It is a reality to be experienced." Is there some wisdom in this quote?

Maxine

Re: Afterlife stuff and similar

[ecosophia]

There's a great deal of wisdom in that quote, as in many corners of that particular book.

From the perspective of occult philosophy -- I'll borrow a turn of phrase from Rosicrucian author George Winslow Plummer here -- the universe is the Divine thinking itself into manifestation. Our current incarnations, blissful, baleful, or boring as those might be, are part of the process of creation by which the Divine comes to know itself and express itself fully. Yes, some of that experience seems depressing at the moment! Each intelligent species, however, works out all its possibilities for good and evil during the course of its history, and all those possibilities become part of the self-knowledge of the Divine and also part of the individual self-knowledge of created beings such as you and me.

Future civilisations

[(Anonymous)]

I was reflecting on your comments last week regarding the esoteric teachings on future civilisations. I guess you have a few sources for those, probably theosopy chief amongst them? Anyway, it would be good to maybe know some of the sources.

When I compare these teachings against, the doomer end of climate change (which is basically all climate change activists these days), I wonder if what the teachings might be telling us about the golden Jupiter civilisation to come is that this occurs in a more pleasant, more equable climate. That civilisation would require access to something equivalent to metals, probably some sort of bioplastic delivered by microbes or fungi, but those microbes in turn would need a warmer climate to reliably function (and speciate).

Re: Future civilisations

[ecosophia]

1) Unfortunately my sources for the version of the future I'm discussing here are unpublished papers of certain occult orders; while the teachings can be circulated, the papers aren't supposed to be. Theosophical writings about "root races," Manus, etc. are clearly ancestral to this stuff, though.

2) Er, we've just spent the last three hundred years digging up a fantastic amount of metal from deep inside the earth and putting it conveniently right up here on the surface. Ten or twenty thousand years from now, the deposits of rust where 20th century skyscrapers once rose, or in riverbeds nearby, will be the richest mineral deposits on the planet, full of iron, aluminum, and copper ore. The Jupiter age will have no shortage of metals!

Lucid Dreaming--Book Report

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG and Intrepid Fellow Students--
I am about 1/3 of the way through a very interesting book;
Laberge S, Rheingold H. Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, A step by step guide. Ballantine Books, 1990. ISBN 978-0345420121

This is a guidebook that gives the reader exercises which increase the likelihood of having lucid dreams.
A lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware that you are having a dream, but you are able to stay in the dream and exercise some control over what happens in the dream.

By the way it is written, the authors seem to have some familiarity with occult studies and disciplines. Its likely that any Magic Monday reader will find the instructions a bit on the elementary side, but will also have no problem doing the exercises very well! Its early days for me, but I have already had some minor success with lucid dreaming in less than a week.

JMG and other readers, does anyone regularly have lucid dreams? If so, have they been useful in your occult studies, specifically in interacting with archetypes?

I think I remember that Dion Fortune described, in one of her writings, that people had been able to intentionally meet on the astral plane and that their separate accounts of such meetings matched when they compared notes after awakening. This was also discussed in My Big Toe by Thomas Campbell (pg 85), also I've heard that Australian Aboriginals know how to do this.
Has anyone had experience with meeting other people on the astral plane that they know in physical life?

I wonder, JMG, if you could make more sense of your more incomprehensible dreams if you were able to become lucid and ask the other players what is going on?
Thanks for doing Magic Mondays, and thanks in advance for any comments or information!

-Polkadot Shabby Grouse

Re: Lucid Dreaming--Book Report

[ecosophia]

One of the core techniques in the dreamwork manual I've been using, The Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual by Strephon Kaplan Williams, is a sort of retrospective dream lucidity; you can enter a dream in active imagination and dialogue with the figures in it. Since I've been doing active imagination pretty regularly for the last forty years, this works well for me. Of course there's also meditating on the images...

With regard to astral meetings, yes, that's quite a common practice in some Western occult groups. It's usually done in active imagination rather than in dreams, but I know of no reason why lucid dreamers couldn't do the same thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Wondering if anyone can recommend any books on the nature of consciousness, evolution of consciousness, the HGA etc. I'd like to read from a western perspective - but not sure where to start. Would like something without the atheist slant like Sam Harris.

[ecosophia]

There hasn't been much written on that in recent years, but it used to be quite a theme in older occult writings. You might try one of the summaries of Theosophical thought, such as Geoffrey Barborka's The Divine Plan -- don't be put off by the pseudo-Hindu jargon, it's pure Western occultism.

Mundane astrology

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
I just saw this article about the current M.E. crisis.
What's most intriguing is the first paragraph.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/10/05/alhamdulillah-the-resistance-wants-victory/

I listen to a lot of geopolitical podcasts and I'm often left thinking, "You really need to talk to some mundane astrologers, they can probably help you understand the when / why now questions you have.."

I wonder if this author practices astrology, or if he reads about it?

Anyway I thought you might find it interesting, it's pretty rare to see!

Regards
Helen in Oz

Re: Mundane astrology

[ecosophia]

Astrology has a long and dignified history in the Muslim world and has generally been considered theologically acceptable in Islam. That seems to be guiding a lot of people in the Resistance these days. I noted, in a chapter in my forthcoming book on mundane astrology, that the date and time of the formal proclamation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was obviously chosen for its astrological value (and in fact the astrologer in question did a first-rate job). So I'd expect to see more of this sort of thing as we proceed.

MOE; blessings; elemental symbols; initiation via group levels

[milkyway1]

Good morning,

Hope you had a great weekend! :-)

1. To everybody:

a. For those of you who might have been eyeing the Modern Order of Essenes, but never quite got around to starting: I'm planning to offer an Apprentice attunement in November.

Or, in other words: Now might be a good time to start, in order to work up to the Attunement. ;-)

b. I am again practicing my blessing skills with a formal blessing this Wednesday, and would very much appreciate people signing up:

https://thehiddenthings.com/weekly-blessings-40


2. To JMG:

a. The coloured elemental symbols as e.g. in the SOP (red upright triangle of fire, etc) - are they specific to the traditions you inherited from John Gilbert? Or are you aware of any other sources, or have any idea of their origin(s)?

b. For a group with different levels, but without specific initiation rituals for the levels as e.g. OSA or DA: Could the commitment to enter the next level act as an initiation of sorts?

c. If yes to b., if somebody set up such a group and wanted to achieve such an initiatory effect through level commitments, how could this be done? Or is this an effect which can only develop on its own, e.g. via a strong egregor, and there isn't much to be actively done about it?

Thanks, again, for hosting MM - I'm very much looking forward to today's questions and answers -, and I hope you'll have a fruitful and pleasant week,

Milkyway

Re: MOE; blessings; elemental symbols; initiation via group levels

[ecosophia]

1) I've never seen them anywhere else. My guess, though it's only a guess, is that they were invented by John's teacher Dr. Juliet Ashley, probably as an alternative to pentagrams (which had, and still have, a very mixed reputation in US culture).

2) No, not really. Initiation is more complex than that.

3) You'd have to work out a ritual that introduces the new initiate to the core themes and symbols of the next stage of the tradition, and then perform it often enough that it becomes part of the egregor.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

my blessings to you if you will have them. I have a query and an offer. The query is about seemingly contradictory readings in CGD wands, so I hopefully increase my skills and stop asking for guidance.

I bought a replacement (and not cheap) stylus for my turntable recently via eBay. On trying it out after a few weeks - time wasn't a factor for me - the stylus was loose and unusable. I contacted the seller, who noted he hadn't made a sale to my user name. I replied with the order number I copied off the order email and got a hostile reply saying I hadn't made the purchase because I would have replied sooner, he'd reported me to eBay and wouldn't entertain further contact.

I can ask for a chargeback via my bank but felt like asking if this was for my highest good.
Judge: Colled (clear no)
RW: Gwyn (personal, good for gain)
LW: Llawenydd (the chargeback, again favourable).

I can't see how to combine these. If I don't proceed then I'll benefit?

The offer is you posting about a pre-amp for a record player in your future. I have a reasonable spare that I'm happy to send from Australia for the cost of postage, but you will need a adaptor for your quirky North American power grid. Let me know and I'll check it still works.

[ecosophia]

1) Nah, remember that the majority rules in the court -- if you have two good witnesses and one bad judge, that's a yes. In this case it's telling you that yes, you should seek a chargeback, and then go somewhere else for styluses -- i.e., don't use eBay.

2) Thank you, but I've already got one at this point!

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning, Mr. G!

Lately I’ve been feeling as though I should focus my efforts in this lifetime on one central goal. The problem is, I have no idea what that one central goal would be… Do you have any tips- esoteric or otherwise- on finding a central project in life? I don’t follow any particular tradition but I’m open to most things (maybe that’s part of the problem… 🤔).

Thanks as always!

[ecosophia]

Nothing and nobody else can do this for you. You nned to make that choice yourself, for no better reason than that you choose to do it, and once you make it, don't look back.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr Greer,
For the last few years I have been running a modestly successful blog (an average of 10-12,000 views a week for current and previous articles.) I hadn't originally thought of asking for money, but as time went on people began to ask about payment and buying me coffees, so I allowed this. I acquired a small number of paying subscribers, which increased gradually, but recently the number has stagnated and even declined slightly. I found this hard to understand, but after much meditation I realised two things. One was that I'd spent my professional life, including in academia, writing as part of my job. Expecting to actually get paid just for writing seemed by comparison faintly indecent. The other is that, for reasons I well understand, I've been chronically incapable of asking for things, or accepting them when offered all my life. I'm not sure that further meditation or journaling will actually shed much more light on the question. The question is what I can do to release blockages and allow whatever people want to give me to come my way. (I've used the Emotional Freedom Technique successfully over the years.)

I tried charity donations to the Sun (to an eye hospital) and it's true that over the last few weeks there's been a small but noticeable increase in page views and engagement, and a handful of new paid subscribers. But is there anything I can do that will attract whatever level of financial reward my writing genuinely deserves? I'm beginning to wish I hadn't agreed to accept payments in the first place! As both a professional writer and magician , I thought you might have some ideas.
Thanks.

[ecosophia]

Okay, the first thing you need to do is unpack the feelings of inadequacy and self-hatred that have you thinking that you don't deserve to receive a fair payment for your hard work. The academic industry has helped to mire you in those emotional bad habits, so that it can profit at your expense -- look at the absurd prices that academic publishers and journals charge these days, and think about the fact that none of the authors who actually write the books and articles are getting a cent in return -- but it may not be just that. My suggestion? You need to grapple with the attitudes that have you convinced that, unlike any other craftsperson, you shouldn't be paid for your labor. Magic won't do it; you have to change your thinking.

Second, be aware that the economies of the developed world are all in deep trouble right now. Every writer I know has less income than he or she did a few years ago, because so many people are struggling to make ends meet and can't afford to pay writers. That is to say, it's not just you. You may need to reflect on what you write, and do some things that more people find valuable enough to pay for, if you want more money.

Mark Stavish et al. - The Body of Light

[(Anonymous)]

Hello John Michael,

not sure if this topic has been discussed before and I just did not find where,
but what are your thoughts about the Body of Light Stavish writes about ?
It is described as something like an energetic and spiritual body, able to bear
consciousness after physical and etheric death, if I understand that correctly.
But is it something else than the astral or mental body ?
Or does it just fit into a different "map" or model of cosmic genesis ?

Thank you very much for your answer and your time.

Re: Mark Stavish et al. - The Body of Light

[ecosophia]

Stavish's system, if I understand it correctly, is intended to create an astral construct that will survive physical death. It exists on the astral plane and keeps the astral body from being dissolved after death. That's something that some traditions teach; it's not something I recommend, but since it's not predatory or harmful to others like an etheric revenant, it's really a matter of personal choice.

Oracle Readings

[randomactsofkarmasc]

Greetings, all!

If you would like a spiritual (microcosmic) alchemy oracle reading, you can contact me via Dreamwidth, hello @ druidalchemist.com, or leave a message on https://druidalchemist.com/oracle/.

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG et al,

1. To share: after about a year of putting it off, I finally started the OSA preliminary work. All I can say is that it seems to be a perfect "Mars is in Cancer for the next 6 months" activity.

2. To ask: Any strategic advice on manifesting toward a large, long-term goal?

Thank you as always

[ecosophia]

1) Delighted to hear it. I hope it's as rewarding for you as it was for me.

2) Sure. I have two tips. The first is to do something practical to bring about that goal every single day. No matter how small the step may be, do something on the material plane toward your goal. The second is to choose an affirmation that focuses on the long-term goal -- not any of its subordinate steps -- and say it 100 times a day. (Get a Buddhist rosary and use that to count if you need to.) Make both of those daily practices and you'll be hurtling toward your goal in no time.

Speaking of the Magical Resistance ...

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking of the Magical Resistance against Trump, here is an event where youth voters wrote JD Vance, Trump and Project 2025 on plates before smashing them in a 'rage cage':

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/06/democratic_party_youth_activists_smash_plates_to_rage_against_project_2025.html

Am I going loopy, or does this look like amateur cursing? Write someone's name on a plate, then smash it while deliberately angry?

Re: Speaking of the Magical Resistance ...

[ecosophia]

"Amateur" is the right word. I wonder if they have any idea how much raw energy they're contributing to the Trump/Vance campaign.

What is Love? Part 2

[(Anonymous)]

Last week in response to my question about a new romantic relationship, JMG wrote:

'You have been programmed by the media to fixate on certain fashionable kinds of female appearance and to think that this matters more than, say, compatibility or character... I'm going to suggest that you do some serious journaling, and explore the way that you've been set up to sabotage real relationships with women and chase a mirage of appearance.'

I want to thank everyone who responded last week, and to share some of the results of my journaling here, in case anyone was interested or could benefit from what I've learned. I'll put in a link to last week's full thread at the bottom of this post.

If we understand the media as a kind of crass mass-market thaumaturgy, then yes, media has a magical effect on men's perceptions of women, and true theurgy cannot avoid working to undo that effect. Part of it is the nature of visual media: everything important in a movie has to be communicated visually, so the most effective way to demonstrate the hero's inner worth as a man is by having the most visually attractive woman on-screen choose him as her mate.

Therein lies the rub. We men chase beautiful women partly because we want them (sometimes desperately) but I think mostly, and more subtly, to validate our sense of self-worth. That's why 'trophy wives' are a thing. If you can get with the hottest women, it must be because you're really worth something. Women deal with this internal dynamic too, but it plays out differently for them.

So when two good-looking people get together, on that basis alone, they're often entering an unspoken deal that goes something like 'You prop up my sense of self-worth and I'll prop up yours, and the orgasms will be the icing on the cake'. As a form of social game this at least makes sense and is mutually beneficial. The trouble is that it has nothing to do with, say, getting along, or working together on shared life goals, or even with having good sex.

Steiner says somewhere that immediately after death is a long period in which the spirit slowly sheds its astral body, enduring a state of still having those astral habits and desires acquired in life, but without a body with which to satisfy those desires. This is apparently where the idea of purgatory comes from. I feel that I'm going through something like that these days, as I walk in the park and see all the pretty women I'm never going to get with because of my chosen commitment to my lady love. My days of porn and swimsuit models are far in the past (thank gods) but I suspect I am now facing a process of undoing their magical influence, while still incarnated, and it hurts.

(Link to last week's thread here: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/298041.html?thread=51349305#cmt51349305)

Re: What is Love? Part 2

[ecosophia]

Good. If you get that over now, you won't have to slog through it after death. In the meantime, I have another exercise for you to practice. Look at your lady and repeat silently to yourself the mantra, "Beautiful." Do this 100 times a day. Yes, you can do that all at once -- say she's sitting on the couch reading something, you can consider her and repeat the mantra 100 times right then -- or you can break up the repetitions. Media sorcery works by repetition of simple concepts, and it can be broken the same way.

[ej577]

Good Afternoon John,

I live about 200 meters from a stone circle, now half hidden in woodland, in the wilds of Scotland. Its structure:

A circle of rough, undressed fieldstone, about 1-2 feet high, approximately 100 meters in diameter. Within, offset from the centre, a grouping of two standing stones and four or five smaller stones--none appear aligned to any compass point.

At some point beech trees have been planted in the circumference of the circle--that is, directly into the fieldstone perimeter. The trees are situated at regular intervals of about 20 feet around the circle. I'd estimate their age at 100-300 years. My first thought was "I bet somebody a couple hundred years back wanted to 'defang' whatever power/energy they thought might lurk in this 'pagan' site", but that's just wild speculation on my part.


Q: Any idea what this signifies? Have you heard of 'tree plantings' (or other flora) in such a fashion elsewhere?

I'm mighty curious--I live right in the midst of all manner of sites tied to the Neolithic and Iron Age. If one wants 'atmosphere', we have it by the bushel-load :)

Thanks for any comment you care to make!

[ecosophia]

First of all, let me mutter something about my raw unmitigated envy. We've got megalithic sites here in New England, but nothing like that!

Ahem. Okay, now for your questions.

If they planted beech trees, they weren't trying to defang the site, they were trying to empower it. Beeches are magical trees. They're one of the old Irish Ogham trees, and their specific power is to make it possible to access wisdom from the past. Somebody, probably in the earlier stages of the Druid Revival, set out to make it possible to make contact with the energies. Next May Day, if you don't have any other ceremonies in mind, go there, play Jethro Tull's song "Cup of Wonder" --

"For the May Day is the great day
Sung along the old straight track
And those who ancient lines did lay
Will heed the song that calls them back."

-- then enter into meditation and see what happens. I'd do it myself, but it's a long wet walk from here to Scotland!

[thinking_turtle]

To share, for those who wonder what DGH, EDEM or AFA mean, a list of abbreviations used on Ecosophia.

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this as always.

Experiencing Myth

[cs2]

I just finished the DA. Throughout I did imaginative sessions of about 5-10 minutes each day in order to experience the myths directly. I'd place myself in a scene (at Bran's feet) and let the scene move on its own (got scooped up and rode into battle on his shoulder).

This method helped with the imaginative and memory techniques in the DA, and I figured it would help me if I ever pivot into the DMH and attempt scrying.

Could you give me an idea of how deep is too deep when it comes to engaging in myth? These were full sensory and emotional, not like watching a movie. Thanks.

Re: Experiencing Myth

[ecosophia]

You're too deep when you start thinking that the myth is enacting itself in your daily life. Mind you, sometimes myths do that, but it's still a good idea to back away fast if that starts happening. Short of that? You can go much, much deeper -- but the work you've done is very solid stuff, and well worth doing.

The poison of positive thinking

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings ADJMG!

Often you give advice to someone has a suspicion that they are being influenced by magic spells. Can anything be done for somebody who casts a spell upon themselves? My 85 year old father has always practiced positive thinking, but unfortunately indiscriminately. Half the time positive thinking helps things, half the time it makes things worse. Currently this is causing numerous problems. Can anything be done?

Re: The poison of positive thinking

[ecosophia]

Bitter as it is, you don't have the right to prevent him from making his own mistakes and harvesting the consequences. Unless you have his consent -- and I doubt you'll get it -- all you can do is try to see to it that the problems he causes don't affect anyone else.

Fiction

[(Anonymous)]

I've recently been getting back into reading more works of fiction, and I was wondering if you could come up with a rough top-10 list of novels, series, and/or authors that you have enjoyed the most and that have had a strong influence on the development of your thoughts and ideas.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much.

Re: Fiction

[ecosophia]

That's a tough one, because fiction has been one of my great pleasures since earliest childhood, and selecting ten or so books, series, or authors from the many thousands that I've read and enjoyed will not be easy. It's tougher now because some of the books that influenced me powerfully in my younger days are not things I'd recommend now -- Tolkien, for example, brilliant as he is, has fostered a disastrous cult of black-and-white political moralizing that is making a steaming mess of our world. Still, I'll give it a try. Here are ten authors to consider.

- Hermann Hesse. He was as popular as Tolkien in the 1960s and 1970s, but he's been erased since then. I've summarized his brilliant novels here; start with Demian.

- John Crowley. His early SF and fantasy novels, from The Deep through Little, Big, are utterly brilliant; later on, he got lionized by the New York critical establishment and sucked into writing Literary Fiction, and it spoiled him as a writer. Start with Beasts, one of the classic works of deindustrial fiction.

- Edgar Pangborn. As far as I know he's been completely forgotten, but his Davy is another classic deindustrial novel, a rollicking, funny, tragic, intensely human novel set some centuries from now in a post-global warming, post-nuclear war neomedieval American Atlantic coast. Half the postapocalyptic fiction after his time cribbed shamelessly from Davy. His other novels and short stories are also worth a read, but start with Davy.

- Dion Fortune. Her real name was Violet Firth Evans and she mostly wrote occult nonfiction, but her four great occult novels -- The Goat-Foot God, The Winged Bull, The Sea Priestess, and Moon Magic -- are well worth reading. You might also pick up The Keys to the Temple by Penny Billington and Ian Rees, which explains what's going on in those four books for those who aren't up to speed on her end of occultism. Start with The Goat-Foot God.

- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Both of them had independent careers on their own, but like McCartney and Lennon, they needed each other to achieve greatness and dropped to second-rate status once they parted ways. The Illuminatus! trilogy is their one great work. It's kind of a 1970s period piece these days, but it's still a wild, rollicking, funny and magical work, worth your while.

- Rosemary Sutcliff. She's the odd one out here, mostly an author of children's books -- but what children's books! Bound to a wheelchair for almost all her life due to a rare illness, she made British history her field and wrote dozens of amazing novels set in every period from the Stone Age to the Napoleonic wars, most for children and some for adults. Even her kids' books are readable by adults -- but if you have kids, get them some Sutcliff. They'll thank you. I'd encourage you to start with Sword at Sunset, one of the best Arthur-as-he-really-was novels ever penned, or The Mark of the Horse Lord, a tale of Roman Britain and the Scottish and Pictish border tribes.

- Eric Ambler. He's the guy who realized that spy thrillers pitting invulnerable heroes against cackling villains were duller than ditchwater, and started writing subtle, wry, intelligent novels about ordinary people caught up in the realities of international espionage and political intrigue. Start with A Coffin for Dimitrios, the best of his prewar novels; whatever else of his you do or don't read, don't miss A Passage of Arms or Doctor Frigo, which will teach you more about modern international politics than any fifty nonfiction books on the subject, and make it fun.

- Raymond Chandler. Dashiell Hammett invented the noir mystery but Chandler brought it to a peak that has been endlessly imitated but never equaled, much less surpassed. He deploys an enormous amount of literary skill under a hard-edged facade. Start with The Long Sleep.

- Dorothy Sayers. Most of the classic English mystery writers of the early 20th century wrote ingenious puzzles in which characters less well rounded than your average cardboard cutout go through arbitrary gyrations at the author's command. Then there was Dorothy Sayers, who wrote first-rate novels that happen to center on mystery plots. Start with Whose Body?, the first of her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and read them in order; the best are the last three.

Stonehenge

[(Anonymous)]

JMG

What do you think of Lynne Kelly's theory that Stonehenge (and many other ancient monuments) were effectively memory palaces to store tribal knowledge of the people who build Stonehenge as they transitioned from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle and could no longer rely on natural features and geography to act as memory palaces since they no longer visited those spaces? Essentially equivalent to African Aboriginal "songlines" in nature, memory palaces created in the landscape itself?

Her books about the history of ancient societies and their use of memory techniques and then the book about learning memory techniques are fascinating btw (Memory Code and Memory Craft)

Re: Stonehenge

[ecosophia]

It's an intriguing hypothesis. My one quibble is that it's a mistake to think that any ancient monument had only one purpose; her thesis suggests one of the ways Stonehenge et al. may have been used.

MOE Healing Hands

[kylec]

If you're in need of a little physical or emotional help this week, I'm once again offering healing hands in the Modern Order of Essenes tradition. All that's required is that you sign up by replying here or sending me a PM. Thanks to those who requested last week, your sessions have been performed and you can always go for another round if you like.

Re: MOE Healing Hands

[open_space]

This is working well for me, another round please! Thanks Kyle.

Pluto as Negative Indicator

[(Anonymous)]

You've said in the past that the indications of Pluto in a chart are unreliable. Could Pluto maybe be a negative indicator: indicating the things that people think will happen but won't? The things that a society pours a lot of emotional investment into, both for and against, but which ultimately end up disappointing both sides?

Re: Pluto as Negative Indicator

[ecosophia]

It would be interesting to explore this in natal and mundane charts. It's a promising hypothesis, certainly, but it would need to be tested in actual practice.

[(Anonymous)]

It seems like a lot of very accomplished people are also thoroughly unpleasant; disproportionately so. The thought that occurred to me is that unpleasant people are likely to have more karma; and that karma slows down the passage through the human phase of existence. They'd thus have more time to develop their skills and talents, and so older souls are more likely to both me more unpleasant than usual, and to have more talents than usual. The link then is that talented people are more likely to be old souls, with whatever karma kept them here.

Does this line of thinking make sense to you?

[ecosophia]

That's certainly a possibility worth considering. Another possibility is that the way accomplished people are treated in our society tends to make them unpleasant. These aren't mutually exclusive, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you feel something changing in the "etheric" atmospehere?

I lived through the dissolution of the former Communist Block I was very young. There was some kind of "static" before that discharge.

Is it possible to feel these things??! Or am I just anxious or other more mundane explanation?

[ecosophia]

It's certainly possible to feel such things. The challenge is figuring out what they mean in advance!