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. As I mentioned last week, once I found a publisher willing to bring out my fiction, a lot of it found its way into print in a hurry, so we're going to be in tentacle territory for a while now.  This was my fifty-second published book, and it's another tentacle novel, but it's not a part of the core Weird of Hali sequence. The Shoggoth Concerto came slithering up out of my subconscious while I was hoping to get the rest of the Weird published but things weren't looking especially promising; I thought that an independent novel set in the same fictional cosmos might be able to get a hearing at one of the big publishers...and then I started writing, and it turned into the oddest of my many odd books.

You know all those stories about someone who has brash new innovative ideas and gets bullied by the defenders of tradition?  This is a story about someone who wants to do something traditional and gets bullied by the avant-garde, which is of course much more common these days. It's also about love, memory, magic, and shoggoths, and to my taste, it's still the best of my novels. I did submit it to a big publisher; I actually got a personal response, which is rare, saying that it was too quiet and too weird -- those were the editor's exact words -- but that if I wanted to write something more publishable I could send it directly to her. I rolled my eyes and found someplace else to publish, as bending the knee to the shallow fashionable clichés of big-brand fantasy and SF is the last thing I wanted (or want) to do. If shoggoths or classical music appeal to you, you can buy a copy of The Shoggoth Concerto here if you're in the US and here if you're 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 more comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

I will not defend the indefensible, but...

[homeopathic_meditations]

Of course not all types of magic involves the dealings with demons. The most obvious example is Natural magic, or the science and art of using the magical energies that exist already into the things that exist in Nature. It that stance of the RCC was truth, you could go to Hell by drinking your daily cup of morning coffee, or taking yearly vacations to the beach, or eating Chicken soup every time you are down with a cold!!!
(Two out of three of those are natural species used in homeopathic remedies, btw: Coffea tosta & Natrum muriaticum. I am not sure anyone has done the probing experiments with Gallus domesticus, but I would not be surprised it will show effects in the upper respiratory track when somebody gets around to do it).

I will also not put my hand on fire to defend what the high hierarchies of the Vatican think, say or do.

But, taken with a grain of salt, it is not such bad advise at all. Keep in mind that individual exorcists are posed to clash with the grubbier half of the magical communities. People who get enlightment and blessings will rarely go to seek the help of the Church's professional pest control services, after all.

Furthermore, what I have learned from personal experience is that people who break the taboo of not dealing with the occult are, more often than not, gullible fools (myself included). And since the development of the kind of magic that lets you develop the subtle potentials of the human condition is ALWAYS marked by the trifecta of 1) Hard work, 2) Delayed gratification, and 3) Self knowledge, it was impossible for the marketplace to be flooded with the kind of doctrines that ignore at least one (and probably all) of those safeguards.

So, let's say you go to a yoga class. More likely that not your teacher is going to be a flake; and if she is not you will have to do a 2nd roll on your will-force to not quit on your fist month and go shopping for the flake next door. If you land at Flake studio, you will deal with a bunch of other students who each believe the weirdest of things, and everybody is required to believe everything every other weirdo believes, out of politeness. A Satanist in such a group is like a fox inside the hen-house, and you should do well to stay away at least until you develop a minimum degree of self awareness that would let you know your mind is being played with.

So, because I have a strong, self-serving, emotional interest to do so, I prefer to see the prohibitions from my Exorcists as the training wheels of spiritual development. You cannot truly learn while still using those, but they'll spare you a few falls early on.

Re: I will not defend the indefensible, but...

[(Anonymous)]

My thought on this is that it simply depends on the definition of the English word Magic. If Magic is defined as making deals with demons, then all magic is demonic and all non-demonic practices are non-magic.
If Magic is defined as the art and science of changing conciousness in accordance with will, then prayers are magic, particularly the Lord's Prayer (Thy will be done). No priest would ever say to not pray, therefore that is self evidently not the definition they are using of Magic.
So that is how I solve the question for myself, by the definition.

There are an awful lot people using different definitions of words to get what they want these days. I realized during mass Sunday that I now have a flinch reaction to the word Justice. This is . . . sub-optimal.

BoysMom

Re: I will not defend the indefensible, but...

[homeopathic_meditations]

Agreed. You can twist almost everything to mean whatever you want by applying generous amounts of Semantic Terrorism. And sub-optimal is an understatement. I prefer a much more poignant, and Iberic, label: sub-normal.

Back to the original question, do not deal with demons, do not deal with dead people, be extremely careful with magics that claim to work with "angels", "ancestors" or other supposedly benevolent beings. Build up your own strengths: grow sound of mind and body (including your life force). Put a tea-spoon of philosophy per pinch of magic ritual.