Magic Monday
Dec. 22nd, 2024 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
Midnight is almost here, 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 that point will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.2 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. This was my fifty-righth published book, and the last contribution (so far) to the Cthulhu mythos to come from my keyboard. I hadn't planned on writing The Seal of Yueh Lao at all, but there were too many loose ends left hanging when I'd wrapped up The Weird of Hali, and this story took shape as I considered them. It's the shortest of my tentacle novels, a quiet little coming-of-age story with Asenath Merrill, the oldest daughter of the central character of The Weird of Hali, as its protagonist, and a tangled web of events borrowed from H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers for its mainspring. All in all, it worked surprisingly well. If you're interested, you can get a copy here if you're in the US and here elsewhere.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no more comments will be put through. See you next week!***
linen sheets
Date: 2024-12-23 04:11 pm (UTC)Could this have something to do with the sheets?
Re: linen sheets
Date: 2024-12-23 06:46 pm (UTC)Re: linen sheets
Date: 2024-12-23 07:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 04:54 pm (UTC)Hello JMG, it was great speaking with you recently to record the podcast - thanks again! Every time I talk to you there are a million things I wish I would have asked or brought up, but this time I'm still thinking about banishing rituals and the source of their power - how much is just the balancing of the elements/direction, how much is invocation of the divine, and how much is the charge of the tracks in space (both personal and collective) or the egregore built around the ritual? Are there other sources of power I'm not seeing? If one were to make a new ritual, as different from the SOP as the SOP is from the LBRP, what would you want to keep in mind? (Say, drawing on an already well established set of symbolism with deep tracks in space)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 07:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 04:58 pm (UTC)A deep cleansing of some sort would seem most appropriate at this time. A friend of mine said that I need to address that deep subconscious need which drives me towards the activities of the shadow. At this time, I don't really love myself and the work I'd need to do to show I love myself, so here I am.
Any feedback from you or other Ecosophians is appreciated. I sense there's nothing else to do but to address the root of the issue.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 07:05 pm (UTC)https://jpowellrussell.com/#book_thoughts_on_shadow_tech
https://jpowellrussell.com/#book_transforming_darkness
A few practical thoughts that come to mind and may or may not be helpful in your case:
1) In my experience, it's helpful to pay attention to the broader meaning of "the Shadow" as "everything you refuse to admit is a part of yourself." A lot of material on the Shadow focuses on the more glaringly obvious and accepted as "bad" things, like aggression, hatred, inappropriate sexual urges, and so forth, but the broader definition also allows for things like "compassion," if you pride yourself on being strictly fair, or "helplessness" if you think of yourself as high-agency.
2) Also from my own experience, a lot of Shadow stuff seems blindingly obvious once you get a hold of it, leaving you feeling "well, duh, of course that's a part of my psyche, why couldn't I see it?" Don't get discouraged by that, especially if you're still left with little idea practically what to "do" with your new insights. It seems to take a lot of reflection and just going about life to really fold that stuff in, rather than doing some exercise and suddenly feeling better.
3) If you're feeling enamored by some aspect of your consciousness that you don't want to just embrace "as is," like, say, finding it satisfying to become enraged by something that you know you ought not to get so worked up over (to go with an example from an earlier question), consider asking yourself what that part of yourself needs and is trying to get, and if some subset of that might be valid to your conscious mind. To keep on with the example, if you find a certain person or thing pissing you off all the time, maybe he or it is pushing on some deep hurt that needs healing - getting mad likely isn't the way to heal it, but doing something about the hurt is likely legitimate, even if it's just feeling it fully and honestly and acknowledging there's not much practical you can do about it
Anyhow, hope this helps, and good luck!
Jeff
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 05:23 pm (UTC)To share, for those who wonder what AODA, WH7 or OBOD mean, a list of abbreviations used on Ecosophia.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 06:04 pm (UTC)I have experience with the shield chart divinations from the Celtic Golden Dawn, and would like to learn about casting and reading geomantic house charts. Is there a resource you'd recommend for a relative beginner?
Tim PW
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 06:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 06:44 pm (UTC)a) The area in question has a long tradition of local religion and a rich tradition of myths and legends rooted in the area. Do you think it would be good form to read the myths and legends of the people who live there, and reach out to the local gods in advance of my move?
b) My Saturn return is happening this year; am I correct to think that while making these kinds of plans is wise during this time, I should make sure I do not leave until after it has ended?
c) If that is correct, how long after Saturn passes its position in my natal chart should I wait before leaving? If it matters, after crossing, Saturn will turn retrograde and come within a degree of its position in my natal chart again (but not quite reach it).
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 06:53 pm (UTC)2) Yes, that's correct.
3) If you can, wait until the retrograde is over and Saturn is moving away from its position. Within one degree counts as a conjunction.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 07:11 pm (UTC)2) I did a Tarot reading a couple of days ago. I asked the following question, "what might be the result of adding statues of two other deities to Mithras's dedicated shrine?" As part of a vow I made to him, I put together a very nice shrine to Mithras, and dedicated it to him on December 21 (seemed rather fitting). I am extremely limited in space, and the "guest deities" would be in place at least until I finally have more space for additional shrines. I drew three cards (past, present, future) and got Three of Swords, the Fool, and Two of Swords. I interpreted this as a tentative, cautious "its okay for now, because you still have a lot to work through." However, I've never been able to trust my own interpretations (I feel I am too inclined to interpret readings in a favorable light). Any thoughts?
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 07:55 pm (UTC)2) If I got that reading I'd take it as a "no, don't be an idiot."
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:03 pm (UTC)The LBRP and online trolls
Date: 2024-12-23 07:29 pm (UTC)Recently I've encountered a number of trolls on a crusade against the Golden Dawn system, claiming that it's "empty", that it doesn't work, except when it does, but then again, what it does is the opposite of what it is supposed to do, etc. What unites them, besides the burning need to invade GD-related discussions, is being loud and proud students of a certain school of magic, which they bring up when questioned about their attitude, and which happens to offer a free training course.
I've flipped through that course material, and the author has a peculiar opinion on protection rituals, and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram in particular, as, in her opinion, they only offend the friendly spirits, do nothing to defend against the unfriendly kind, and in general prevent the build-up of a magical "immunity" if done on a daily basis. She goes on to do an analysis of LBRP where she makes some rather strange claims about it, but it got me thinking: what exactly is the LBRP?
A few remarks by multiple authors on the subject has led me to believe that it's purpose, together with Middle Pillar Exercise, is to start a continuous process of transformation within the practitioner, in LBRP's case by destroying random subtle patterns attached to the matter comprising their bodies, subtle and gross, and can be likened to the alchemical process of calcination. The "heat" produced by this "calcination" offering a degree of protection is a useful side-effect. The Sphere of Protection starts a process of transformation as well, but it is more analogous to going over the material manually, choosing what to keep, and what to throw away, rather than throwing everything into a furnace, which is why it is more gentle, as well as slower to build up.
Am I thinking along the right line, or did I get lost in an analogy?
Re: The LBRP and online trolls
Date: 2024-12-23 08:14 pm (UTC)My experience with the LBRP -- and I did it daily for more than 20 years, before going to the Sphere of Protection -- is exactly the opposite of what that person claims. To my mind, any spirit who gets chased off by a banishing ritual isn't a spirit you want in your life, and the regular practice of the LBRP in particular produces a strong, clean aura that debased spirits can't stand being around. If you want to consort with grubby spirits, sure, it's a problem, but that never interested me.
More generally, it seems to me that all the arguments used against banishing rituals could be used with equal force against washing your hands after using the toilet. Doubtless washing your hands keeps your body from getting used to having fecal bacteria in your mouth, but is that latter really something you want?
As for the LBRP, it's a way of cleansing the astral aspect of yourself, using divine names and the forces they invoke to give yourself the equivalent of a pressure washing. The goal is to scrub your sphere of sensation (that is, your aura) clean of the gunk that adheres to it over the course of life in a society that has no notion whatsoever of metaphysical hygiene. The LBRP does this in a very intense and forceful way; the SoP does it in a gentler way -- soap and warm water, let's say, instead of an ice cold stream from a pressure washer! Both get the job done, however, and the SoP has certain other advantages. As for the alchemical and transformative work, that's what the Middle Pillar exercise and other workings with energy centers inside the body are for.
Re: The LBRP and online trolls
Date: 2024-12-24 03:05 am (UTC)I have experimented with the SoP, but not continued it as of yet.
I live in an apartment surrounded on all sides but one by other people. As a Buddhist, I have recently been visualizing my main meditation deity in each of the apartments that surround me. I’ve found that it does seem to facilitate my meditation.
Is this somewhat akin to the way the banishing rituals of the two above systems work?
Thanks in advance.
Re: The LBRP and online trolls
Date: 2024-12-24 03:08 am (UTC)Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2024-12-23 07:58 pm (UTC)I have been working on this book for a while and am currently doing the Additional Lesson 4. In paragraph 7, you state that the Gate of the Winter Solstice is set in the Northern sky. Why would the gate be set in the Northern sky when the sun rises and sets in the South? Have I discovered a typo or is there another explanation?
Maxine
Re: Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2024-12-23 08:15 pm (UTC)Re: Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2024-12-23 10:17 pm (UTC)Maxine
Re: Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2024-12-24 03:59 am (UTC)Re: Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2024-12-24 04:25 am (UTC)Re: Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2024-12-24 04:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 07:59 pm (UTC)I've tried correction fluid, water paint, oil paints and all have failed me as they peel off easily and were probably never consecrated in the first place.
Does nail polish make sense on smooth metal surface?
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:55 pm (UTC)For what it's worth, I'll soon be writing up an article for my mostly defunct Dreamwidth journal on my experiences with Carl Jung. In short, I now firmly believe Jung has attained to divine status. That's what my experiences with him (and these are among the most powerful spiritual experiences that I've had) seem to be telling me.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 02:11 am (UTC)One can find both editions of Quinn here and there online, and also Brooke's volume. Brook is less interested in outright magical practices than Quinn, but more interested in American hermetic philosophy and alchemy of Smith's era and earlier. (Early America was very far from being a strictly Protestant Christian land. There was an enormous amount of occultism and mysticism going around, especially in the rural parts of the country, away from the surveillance of the higher-ups. Academic scholarship is just beginning top scratch the surface of what was there.)
In short, Quinn and Brooke complement one another nicely.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 04:02 am (UTC)And there's the thing where somehow everyone in Mormonism came away, decades down the line, with the impression that of course archaeology and anthropology were going to confirm the real, physical, historical existence of a Nephite people, rather than that
the postulated dragon in the garage that had full well already proven to be invisible, inaudible, and non-respiring would of course also prove to be permeable to the flour that they were unsuspectingly throwing into the airarchaeology and anthropology would instead only prove to show exactly the same things they would have shown if Smith had invented the Nephite record as some kind of conscious or perhaps unconscious con. While revelation is mysterious, normally you would very much have thought to expect that the forces responsible for transmitting a revelation to John Smith would also have full well had both the motive and the means to inform him that he had a responsibility to inform his followers that the entire Nephite history only ever happened in, at best, some kind of alternate parallel or deuterocanonical timeline, quite lacking in physical causal potency over anything other than prophets' brain activity in the canonical timeline.(Unless that degree of commitment to the bit had seemed, to those forces, to be intrinsically necessary, as part of what we ourselves can see to have been an in-retrospect-obviously-foredoomed bid to actually make our canonical world one in which wacky things like the Nephite migration were possible? After all, something a little bit like that, but many orders of magnitude less ambitious, does seem to have worked out for Quetzalcoatl.)
So, if you're going to be spiritually downstream of Joseph Smith, you'd want to be on the lookout for the same kinds of issues as with Enochian magic, which was downstream of the similar figure Edward Kelley.
Sometimes I wonder if there are particular people who are picked in advance as being empowered to give revelations, and only afterward does it shake out whether they keep sufficiently to a path of virtue, or whether they become too corrupt for the revelations to be safe to deliver through them on net, or whether they become an inconvenient in-between amount of corrupt where their revelations are still empowered but the (somehow apparently) obligate (and why???????) materialist-retrospection "cover story" for the revelation is some sort of slightly complicated and perhaps substantially unconscious but otherwise seemingly obvious fraud.
If you haven't already read about the whole pile of conventions in Tibetan Buddhism regarding people like Joseph Smith who allegedly dig up or clairvoyantly view treasures containing novel revelations, that's probably also a very important thing to know about. See the following comment from six months ago:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/285320.html?thread=49409416#cmt49464456
Notably, whatever's going on in Tibetan Buddhism is at least mature enough that they typically know to seal away a lot of the revelatory quasi-history in a (conveniently largely epistemically-inaccessible) underworld naga civilization. (Huh. That's another connection to snakes, after Quetzalcoatl.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 04:31 am (UTC)One approach to The Book of Mormon that I haven't seen tried yet is the symbolic one. It's quite common for people who recognize the emotional and psychological power of a sacred text, but also recognize its historical inaccuracies, to interpret it as true but only in a symbolic sense, as "things that never happened but always are," in Sallust's neat phrase. It seems to me that The Book of Mormon would be entirely amenable to that approach, and the amount of genuine wisdom that could be extracted from it is limited only by the ingenuity and effort of mystics.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:13 pm (UTC)JMG and Commentariat,
I hope everyone has had a good couple of weeks since last I posted, and either had or will have a Happy Yule, Merry Christmas, Joyous Festivus, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever you celebrate.
JMG, I'm wondering if I painted myself into a corner as I plod slowly towards initiation in the GSF. I thought I'd be ready for the initiation ritual early next year, after I finish working through the SGO exercises, but in re-reading the preparatory material, I realized that I switched my divination method to geomancy in March of 2024, having done daily divinations using SGO from February 2023-February 2024. Since I've done more than a year of divinations using SGO, I'm sure I would pick it back up quickly, but I'm conscious of your admonition to practice a divination method for a year before going on to another. Is that exclusively? I could easily see myself doing the initiation with the SGO, and a general "how will my day go" daily with geomancy on the same day, but I don't know if this is a bad idea?
It's also worth noting that I crave initiation, and I know it, so it's been my habit to come up with excuses not to initiate, or to push it off, so I suspect that's what I'm doing here.
So, I guess the actual question is, which of these two courses of action would be better:
Refresh my memory on the SGO symbol set, then initiate as soon as that is done and I'm otherwise ready.
Finish out a full year of daily divinations using geomancy, switch back to SGO in March, and do daily divination using it for some period of time (a week, month, quarter, or year?) and then initiate.
As I said, I'm inclined to delay, but not for any good reason, so I'd tend towards #2, with a 1 month delay before initiation, but I suspect I'm being overly cautious.
PS: I once again composed this in OneNote, since I intended to ask it on the Dec. 16th MM, but I believe I've taken the odd formatting issues into account and it will translate to dreamwidth correctly.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:23 pm (UTC)If you feel unsure of your prowess with the SGO, you can certainly cast a couple of readings with it just to get back in the swing of things, but I think you'll find that you can pick it up and get good results with it right away.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:39 pm (UTC)I suspected that was the case. "He overthought it" will probably end up on my tombstone, so par for the course. But thanks for the confirmation. I'll probably do a few SGO readings just to make sure I feel good about it, but proceed.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 08:35 pm (UTC)Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 11:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 02:18 am (UTC)Season’s Greetings
Date: 2024-12-23 08:47 pm (UTC)Oh - and just an observation: over the past few weeks, whenever I go to one of your dreamwidth posts, I see repeating digits in terms of number of comments (for example, today for this post it was '111'). Just sayin'
Ron M
Re: Season’s Greetings
Date: 2024-12-23 10:48 pm (UTC)Re: Season’s Greetings
Date: 2024-12-23 10:51 pm (UTC)Re: Season’s Greetings
Date: 2024-12-23 11:03 pm (UTC)Re: Season’s Greetings
Date: 2024-12-24 12:04 am (UTC)"Salutators"
Date: 2024-12-23 09:09 pm (UTC)In Spain, there used to be a kind of lay, more or less professional healers called "saludadores". I don't know that much about them, but they where recognized and accepted by the church and the inquisition, on the condition of obtaining a license from the local Bishop first.
They were supposed to be able to reliably heal rabies and other ailments by touch, and to withstand red-hot metals, burning water etc.
Aparently,Town-councils routinely hired them, and the documents have survived.
Some of their "traditions" survived among common folk, albeit in an increasingly fragmentary form. For example, a book i've read contains some eye-witness off the power of cutting hemorragies instantly using sacred rhymes, being passed among common, non-professional housewives during the first decades of the XX Century.
My question will be if you know of equivalent lay traditions in England, France or other European countries existing before the arrival of the modern world.
Re: "Salutators"
Date: 2024-12-23 10:49 pm (UTC)Re: "Salutators"
Date: 2024-12-24 12:08 am (UTC)Re: "Salutators"
Date: 2024-12-24 02:10 am (UTC)Oh, also, Spellcraft by Robin Skelton gives a number of traditional rhymes/charms from many cultures (but lots from the Irish and Scottish), with a whole chapter devoted to healing, but it's a bit tough to find at a reasonable price these days, though occasionally one pops up on alibris.com for non-ridiculous amounts.
Cheers,
Jeff
illness and the etheric body
Date: 2024-12-23 09:31 pm (UTC)1) I've been unwell for some time now, and I'd like to try affirmations in the hope they might help speed up /boost the healing process. I was thinking something along these lines:
"I am healthy; I trust my body to take care of its own healing process, and take good care of me as a result"
I'm not convinced though. It sounds a bit clunky and perhaps it is too long, but I would also like the affirmation to acknowledge the gratitude I feel towards my own body for carrying me so far (despite the fact that I haven't always treated it well). Any ideas?
2) I read that from an occult perspective, illness is also an affection of the etheric body. So I'm wondering whether it be OK for me to start practicing the SoP now, or I should wait until I'm fully healed?
Huske
Re: illness and the etheric body
Date: 2024-12-23 10:52 pm (UTC)2) Yes, you can start work with it at any point, and it may help. As my teacher John Gilbert used to say, "Now is always the acceptable time."
Re: illness and the etheric body
Date: 2024-12-24 02:07 am (UTC)The only question that remains is if your health will benefit from a less than perfect SOP, or if your practice of the SOP will get tainted by your current disease. To be honest, I don't know a straight answer to that question, but my guess is that ones hygiene is better served by showering in less than pristine water, than no shower at all.
Almuten figuris
Date: 2024-12-23 09:39 pm (UTC)Re: Almuten figuris
Date: 2024-12-23 10:52 pm (UTC)Re: Almuten figuris
Date: 2024-12-23 10:56 pm (UTC)Re: Almuten figuris
Date: 2024-12-23 10:59 pm (UTC)Occult significance to suddenly feeling extremely cold?
Date: 2024-12-23 09:43 pm (UTC)Is there an occult significance to suddenly feeling extremely cold in specific situations?
I have noticed this occur to me on occasion, but lately last night. I believe it happens when I am dealing with unresolved feelings of intimacy/sexual desire, so I concede this may be purely psychosomatic, but I thought I'd ask, in case maybe I am being visited by a succubus or other related entity.
Thank you,
-E.
Re: Occult significance to suddenly feeling extremely cold?
Date: 2024-12-23 10:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:20 pm (UTC)why was the woman who got burned alive in nyc not screaming and calmly standing there??? why didn't the cop help her and let the other guy fan the flames??? were they ALL likely in shock??? or are they too attuned to filming and taught to not interfere??? the cop in the footage confuses me. the whole thing does. only one guy moaning in sad horror...
i know you cannot answer for certain but the people in this video are haunting me more than the guy who set her ablaze, and i was hoping you could tuck me into bed with a plausible set of reasons that won't have me as horrified with Humanity. actually i think i've hit bottom but i'd like to know what you know or think about this tragedy.
thank you.
x
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:54 pm (UTC)p.s.
Date: 2024-12-23 10:22 pm (UTC)thank you.
x
Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-23 10:55 pm (UTC)Brrr.
Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-23 11:45 pm (UTC)In the meantime, I'm just thinking about the descent into the newe dark ages and hoping it hasn't rally begun to pick up steam until after I've left. Only another 20 years or so for me. I keep thinking, and especially after reading the "Occult Philosophy Workbook" "The important thing is to graduate. The important thing is to graduate. Just outgrow the need to reincarnate in this awful, deranged high school!"
And, now that I have realized this is the central theme in higher Western Esotericism, I'm seeing it spoken of absolutely everywhere. I started R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz's "The Temple of Man" (the BIG book, and it's right there in the first chapter. Just remember: The important thing is to graduate!
Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-24 01:03 am (UTC)Long story short, our instructor said repeatedly to forget about other people helping you if you are in trouble. They will literally record the worst day of your life on camera, and not lift a finger to help you. We watched several videos that demonstrated exactly that. It's where we are now. When I read of that poor woman, of course I remembered what our instructor said. Horrible!
This whole episode inspires me to start my second pass through The Occult Philosophy Workbook on January 1, 2025. It was tremendously helpful the first time through. A second trip is in order. I too want to graduate sooner rather than later!
JMG, you've cured me of my ignorant assumption that once a book is read, there's no point in reading it again. Thank you!
OtterGirl
Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-24 01:08 am (UTC)Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-24 02:25 am (UTC)1) Since you can't expect others to help, train yourself to be the person that helps. This is harder than just setting the intention, because in the kind of situations where folks most need help, we're least able to access higher-order goals, intentions, and thoughts. Training kicks in. So, in daily life, look for little ways to be the person who steps in and handles things. This can be as little and stupid as being the person in the group who steps up to the hostess at the restaurant and says how many seats you need, but obviously, if more intermediate stuff pops up, that's even better practice for the bigger things you hope you never need the practice for.
2) If you're in some kind of emergency situation where everyone around you is standing around not doing anything and you have the presence of mind/training to not just stand around, if there's more to do than just you can do, start pointing at people and ordering them around (in the shortest, simplest orders you can manage: "grab him!" "Call the cops!" "Run away as fast as you can!"). Someone who will just stand dumbfounded in shock without prompting will quickly hop to and help if someone else just tells him to do it. You can worry about whether you had the "right" to do this once the situation is passed.
3) If you want to get really serious about it, see if your company, local firefighters, or some other group provides emergency situation simulations for training. These kind of events are regularly held for folks whose job it is (like firemen or folks who work dangerous jobs like oil rigs), but it wouldn't surprise me if more limited versions can be found (likely for a price) for normal folks. It can feel a little silly "playing pretend," but this is exactly what all emergency training (including the highest level military training) really is - going through the motions in as close an approximation to the real thing as you can manage with available resources/safety requirements/time constraints. Even if you can't act it out materially (which is best), "astral practice" is helpful too: whenever I get on an airplane (which used to be twice a week most every week, when I was a consultant), I vividly picture sirens going off, people screaming and stumbling around, stuff flying through the air, and so forth, and then picture putting on my oxygen mask, and then those of everyone around me. I also picture being hurt, people screaming and shaken up, and helping direct folks to the nearest exit (especially if it's behind them). Luckily, I haven't had to put that one into practice, but in other areas of my life, mental rehearsals have helped, and it certainly doesn't seem like it would hurt anything.
Anyhow, stay aware out there, and may you have and never need it, rather than needing it and not having it,
Jeff
Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-24 02:47 am (UTC)Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-24 04:22 am (UTC)Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-24 01:16 am (UTC)Re: p.s.
Date: 2024-12-24 01:27 am (UTC)when i'd gotten beat up outside and even the homeboys stood by and proudly filmed it, and when i heard about the boy in nyc on the fire escape with his fluffy dog asking for help but everyone below just stood still and filmed it, i knew we were under a spell with these devices, but how could everyone just stand there while she was aflame??? and FANNING the flames?
i'm glad i did watch it because while i'm the type who could never watch faces of death videos, i felt like she needed witnesses and prayers big time.
if the nerves are burnt off that could explain... and just waking up? i see how shock could set in. but no one threw her down to put out the flames or even covered her. the cop???
it's so sad. we're so broken as a people. i had no idea we were this bad this far gone.
fauci et al at least had layers of bureaucracy to pad them from the what they'd done but this is like burning your mother alive.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:38 pm (UTC)Now that I'm distancing myself from my upper middle class family, I'm noticing that a lot of what I used to take for granted is ridiculous. One of the more extreme examples of this is the wretched excess that goes into the way my family has always celebrated Christmas, including things like trips across the world, extreme consumerism, and a host of other extremes. this is problematic enough in and of itself, but I can't help but note the contrast here between the wretched consumerist orgy that I've seen called Greedmas, and the traditional Christmas. In fact, Greedmas seems to revel in all of the deadly sins but pride and wrath; and both tend to appear at the dinner table. Despite just how anti-Christian the entire thing is, most people insist that Greedmas is Christmas, and that it is somewhere between absurd and evil for Christians to suggest that there's a problem with how the holiday is celebrated.
Am I right to think this is a very dangerous thing to do, and it runs the risk of offending Jesus?
What sort of things tend to happen when a society offends a god like this?
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 11:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 01:36 am (UTC)So the idea is that God gave Christ to the world as a gift, the gift that offers the world a way out of its fallen state to the New Jerusalem. That's also what is being represented by the gifts of the Magi. So. just my little, little opinion here, but the right way to approach this is the Dion Fortune way of visualizing and *working toward* what you want to accomplish. So, instead of getting swept up in the tidal wave of bad feeling about the consumerism of Christmas, just give gifts, meaningful gifts, that come from you as an impulse of the heart just to give something to somebody because it will make them happy, with no other expectation of anything. Only the generous outflowing that, you know, really is a theurgic gesture of imitation of God's unbounded and loving generosity in giving gifts to God's creation. Just the same impulse and flow of the Blessing Walk in the MOE instructions. And just because to give makes you happy, because it makes them happy. It doesn't have to be diamond rings and sable coats. It just has to be the honest expression of your inner wish to give something to someone to make them even just a little bit happier. And, of course, f**k the people who are trying to tell you that it's not meaningful if it isn't a big ticket item. Given with thought, care and love, a Pez dispenser might be a great gift.
Sorry to go on. I just re-read "A Christmas Carol" and I think this might have been a large part of the point, and I'm feeling strongly about it this year...
The Death Penalty
Date: 2024-12-23 10:43 pm (UTC)Re: The Death Penalty
Date: 2024-12-23 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 11:11 pm (UTC)I’m still grinding away at The Dolmen Arch. Taking a month to concentrate intently on the Two Dragons Rite seems to have worked. I’m back to meditating on the Triads from the start rather than picking up again. This time is going much better than last.
As usual, I can report elderly people wanting to sponge my energy, strangers unloading their problems to my feeble attempt at a kind ear and friendly receptions from big dogs and even some little dogs.
Here’s where it gets weird: You remember the lumbersexual look from two decades ago when broheims from the financial sector would larp the timber felling American icon? Recently, one of my coworkers called me a lumbersexual. Okay, fine, I look the part and he’s old enough to remember the fad, but I work in a big box DIY conveniently located in an Ohio winter. Boredom and bad temper opened my mouth for me. I replied, “And I’m really excited about Lumbersexual Pride Week next month.”
The joke has grown legs, interestingly including the distaff side of the crew, so – why not? It’s a as good an excuse to wear flannel shirts and eat pancakes as any.
1. So – how do I pick a date in the next few weeks of winter doldrums to actually found a holiday that already includes the yet-to-be Paul Bunyan Breakfast? Suggestions for rites, activities and events are welcome.
2. Since the people who like the idea are blue collar and among the most harmed by the social-issues-go-round, do you think this might be actual punch-up satire from the bottom of the heap?
Many thanks!
Rhydlyd
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 11:19 pm (UTC)2) It could really turn into something -- but that depends on the subtle currents of collective consciousness. I'd encourage you to have fun with it and see what happens.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 11:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 12:06 am (UTC)As for practices, literally any of the standard spiritual practices will get you there, but meditation is the most effective. Now you know why I keep on suggesting it...
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 02:15 am (UTC)I've also always been drawn to religion/philosophy, and have some past life recollections, which I've discussed.
So, I think I'm making decent progress, and the thought experiment above may be a good barometer of this, although I'm not certain.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 02:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-23 11:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 12:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-24 12:21 am (UTC)Inauguration chart
Date: 2024-12-24 12:47 am (UTC)Re: Inauguration chart
Date: 2024-12-24 01:03 am (UTC)