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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 sixty-first published book and my third anthology of short pieces, including all my best essays from my post-Hermetic period (the Hermetic essays were released earlier in my 2019 book The City of Hermes). It's probably the best one-volume introduction to the whole range of my ideas and interests, for anyone who wants to risk plunging down that N-dimensional rabbit hole. It also includes my most widely cited essay, "How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse." On the off chance you're interested, copies can be purchased here if you're in the United States and here 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.
***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no more comments will be put through. See you next week!***
The Story of Lot's Wife
Re:
"The soul bound towards the eternal goal -- as it is called, the top of the mountains -- then proceeded towards the mountains. And before they reached the top of the mountains there was the cave, which is called heaven (in metaphysics, "capacity;" in Sanskrit, Akasha) which has the power of holding the soul from going to the top and using the soul for some purpose. And the soul which was bound for the eternal goal remained, so intoxicated by the ecstasy that it received from the plane of joy and the plane of wisdom.
'the cave' strikes me as referring to the astral hereafter rather than heaven per se, where, depending on what we've been up to, we experience 'heaven' or the 'other place', as some refer to it.
The idea that we create our own afterlife seems amusing, sobering and a reason for optimism all at the same time.
No question as such, just to say I am very much enjoying contemplating the various metaphors and to thank you and the other posters for making this place what it is.
Here's a link:
http://www.hazrat-inayat-khan.org/php/views.php?h1=43&h2=3&h3=28
Re: The Story of Lot's Wife