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.

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I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 

 

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no more comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

LRP with the Irish pantheon

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

First of all, thank you dearly for hosting these spaces and imparting so much knowledge to your readers. Your time and effort are much appreciated.

A few weeks ago, while answering a question on a previous Magic Monday, you posted links to banishing rituals. I found the LRP for polytheists very interesting and I would like to take it up. I have a few (very basic, sorry!) questions, though:

1) I'd like to do this with the Irish pantheon. Since this works better with 4-letter names, so far I've identified Lugh, Ogma, Áine, Dana, and Bríg as possible deities. Assigning one of them to a specific direction/element has been complicated, though. For example, Áine is a sovereignty goddess, but also associated with Summer/South, not North. Do you have any suggestions?

2) Your suggestion to include the Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Dannann immediately resonated with me. But this gives way to further association problems: the Dagda's cauldron and Nuada's sword (both 5-letter names) would be assigned to directions along with a different deity from the original wielder. How can I resolve this?

3) Being a true left-handed person, drawing anything, on paper or in the air, with my right hand feels empty. I can't put the same focus or intent into it. Would this be a problem?

4) Have I understood correctly that the protective version of this ritual is the banishing?

Sorry for the long post and thanks again for all your work.

Re: LRP with the Irish pantheon

[ecosophia]

1) The deities don't have to match the directions or the elements. It's usually good to put the most powerful deity in the east, irrespective of elemental affiliation; other than that, it generally works best to put gods along one axis (N-S or E-W) and goddesses along the other, and it's good.

2) Here again, you're constructing a symbolic pattern, not telling a myth. The archangels in the standard GD LRP have no particular relationship with the divine names assigned to their quarters.

3) You'll have to experiment and find out.

4) Yes. Work with the summoning and banishing in alternation to get a sense of what they feel like, and then go to the banishing every day once you add the Central Ray/Middle Pillar exercise.

Re: LRP with the Irish pantheon

[(Anonymous)]

OP here. Thank you!