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

I stumbled across this video and I wish I hadn't. I thought it must be a joke. Well, more than likely, this poor woman went in to shock almost immediately, which is why she appeared to just be standing there "calmly". More important, why didn't someone throw themselves on her to smother the flames? That's what I would have done.
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!

Several weeks ago, husband and I took a one-day course and passed a very basic shooting test for a concealed carry license. Neither of us plan to carry; we simply wanted take the course for the information and to prove to ourselves that we could pass it. The emphasis in the course was be alert and avoid trouble before it can start. Whipping out a gun is choice number last.

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

You're most welcome. I wish I could say that your instructor was wrong, but of course he's absolutely right. In this world you can never count on anyone's help -- so when you get it, be grateful.

Also unfortunately saw the video and had similar thoughts to those here. In the spirit of trying to make something positive out of something so awful, a couple thoughts building on this beyond "don't count on others helping" (though that's good advice):

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

Thank you for this practical advice! I'm one of those people who freezes in dangerous situations, so that's a great idea to practice stepping up in small ways. I think that's like lifting small weights: you build up the muscles so that eventually you can lift heavier ones.

Yeah. In an emergency, a lot of your ability to generate options and think through novel side interactions and people's states of knowledge can just silently disappear, and without even leaving a cognitive trace to warn you "hey there's something you might be missing here". If you haven't rehearsed the right thing to do (at least if you aren't chronically depressed and ataxic so that the emergency actually instead just pushes you into a normal level of functioning), you might end up just emitting random behavioral fragments of vaguely-associated action-scripts and roles, like someone who's having an episode of dissociated mania or catatonic hyperactivity.

Magic Monday

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