ecosophia | Magic Monday

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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~~With that said, have at it!~~

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi John,
A bit of a long one here. When I first met my now husband it was like a soul connection – indescribable, but something inside me recognised him and vice versa – like we were destined to meet in this life.
I live with a fear that he will die before me – stemming from one or more of three things: a fear of loneliness and spending many years/decades alone, lonely and impoverished just waiting for death (just as I had a miserable childhood where I was both emotionally, and at times physically, neglected and alone – a sort of unconscious fear of returning to this state I think); (2) we have the most incredible intimate bond and being in relationship with him has allowed me to heal many of my childhood wounds – losing him would be losing my heart and feeling myself rip in two, a grief I don’t want to experience – it just feels unsurvivable; (3) I once had a past life regressionist tell me that he was my husband in a former life and he died young in a horse accident while we had two young kids and this was our chance at a ‘do over’ (although I don’t know how true this is).
We’ve just had our second child, and so all of this is rising up for me now – despite my fear we’ve built a beautiful life together and I haven’t let it stop me. I’ve journalled about the fear, been to therapy, done all the things, but it remains. Kicker is, however, that since I’m a woman it actually is more likely that he will die before me and I’ll turn into a miserable lonely person just waiting for death. A part of me wishes we'd never met because I would never have built a life that is so beautiful that the grief of losing it would be so intense.
My questions are as follows:
(1) What occult means can be used to make new friends – I’d like to build a community of real and enduring friendships to support each other through deaths, griefs and into our old ages? I’m talking the type of friends who actually show up in real life, not just internet ones.
(2) I’m in desperate need of a spiritual teacher/mentor and have been for some time now – but it seems almost impossible to find a ‘legit’ one. Are there any occult means (prayer etc. – open to anything except the usual exclusions with small kids) to help me find one (hopefully in my localish area)?
(3) How does one find a broader meaning and purpose in life? A part of me feels like I’ve always been just waiting to die – I hate that I was born.

1) These days, that's a tall order, and since you have an infant in the home there's not much magic you can practice. You might consider prayer; you might also reflect on what you have to offer potential friends.

2) Prayer again is a good choice. It's important, though, to remember that the only really valid source of spiritual guidance is your own connection to the Divine, which is within yourself. A mentor can at most encourage you to turn to that inner connection, and then get out of the way.

3) That part of you is probably a holdover from a previous life; I assume you've journaled on that theme and gotten a sense of the emotional issues involved. (If not, that's a very good place to start.) As for meaning and purpose in life, most of us don't get handed one of those -- we have to create it and choose it for ourselves. Choose something that matters to you, commit to it, and start taking practical steps to make it happen -- that's the one recipe that's always worked for me.

On 2) Why do so many spiritual teachings insist that you need an enlightened mentor - either dead or alive? I must have read it countless times in Eastern texts and in many western texts.

It's quite understandable that gurus should want people to believe that they need gurus! Like everyone else, they have to pay the rent.

Still, I've always appreciated the Buddhist teaching of the pratyekabuddhas, the myriads of beings who found their way to enlightenment all by themselves. Here's an image of one from a Chinese temple:

There are certain practices and lineages that need to be passed on by a qualified person, or by a lodge or temple with certain qualifications, but wisdom, revelation, and enlightenment are all around us, all the time. All we have to do is sit still and pay attention.

Magic Monday

On love, grief and life

Re: On love, grief and life

Re: On love, grief and life

Re: On love, grief and life