Magic Monday

[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 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.

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

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve written and rewritten this question many times because I really do take your writings on magic seriously, and I understand that you’ve accomplished several orders of magnitude more with it than I have.

I asked a question earlier that I think got deleted under the latest topic ban.

In your response to a question about a canon of writings, you mentioned that your focus is occultism and not magic. Meditation and divination are essential to my practice, and the apprehension of their value I have has come to me through your work. I’m really grateful for that. But I want to do things that cause very obvious changes, and it’s unusual to me, on a certain level, how little discussion of such things I see here.

The people who seem to be reporting results of this type the most nowadays are those into the grimoires. I wanted to avoid the pitfalls of that path, but get results on that order. I come here because concepts such as spiritual hygiene and growth are also important to me. But I am wondering if I should just go somewhere else. If I can’t figure out how to do what I want to do right now, I’m sure I’ll be able to eventually.

[ecosophia]

It's entirely up to you whether you find the discussions here useful or not; not everyone will. I would point out, however, that there are plenty of ways to cause very obvious changes that don't require you to get spirits to make those changes for you. You have just as much power over your own life as spirits do, if you choose to use it. It fascinates me that so many people in the magical scene these days will not hear or process that.

[(Anonymous)]

To be honest I am struggling to process this, and would like to. I’ve seen results from affirmations, for instance. I’ve seen resolution of important life problems by directed thought. I just don’t see the difference between that and self-help.

As far as explicitly magical operations, I wonder if you would consider Golden Dawn talismanic magic an example of a technique that doesn’t rely on spirits. Yet the examples I see of it in the book of yours I’m working out of, yes, involve using one’s own life force, but also involve calling on intelligences and elemental kings. My understanding is that premodern astrological magic, too, usually involves invoking the planets as persons. These are, if not entirely disembodied beings, powers outside of us. The author of the Picatrix at one point explains that sort of magic as spirits being drawn into images via chains of correspondence that stretch upward toward the divine.

With respect to the miraculous healings Levi mentions, I guess I can understand that they might work purely by human life force, but I question how consistently people can achieve dramatic results in this area, and for the more regularly achievable ones, how unequivocally not psychological they are.

I wonder if how one defines terminology has a lot to do with these discussions.

[ecosophia]

Affirmations are a very basic practice suitable for beginners. They can do remarkable things in some cases, but they're mostly a gateway to other things.

What you're dismissing as "self-help," properly understood, is the secret of the ages. You -- like everyone else, of course -- are constantly co-creating the world you experience. If you don't find that world satisfactory, why, that shows you that you're doing it clumsily and unconsciously, rather than learning to direct will and imagination consciously into the process and get what you want. This is what Eliphas Lévi and Dion Fortune were talking about. You've probably heard me say that everyone does magic all the time, but most of us do it badly? That's what I'm talking about, too.

You can literally have the life of your dreams. I've done that and so have other people I know. It's done, using Lévi's phrasing, by using will and imagination to direct the astral light. Every power that ever was or ever will be is in you, right now -- that's the secret of macrocosm and microcosm -- and so you don't have to turn outside yourself for what is already in you. If you do, you're like the guy in the old Sufi story who spent years roaming the world in search of a golden treasure, and all along it was buried in his own back yard.

One other thing. I'm glad my early books on Golden Dawn magic are still helping people, but I'm also a little embarrassed by them. I'd understood the mechanisms of magic at that point but I hadn't yet gotten a clue about the deeper dimensions of the magical art. Treat them as the works of an enthusiastic beginner, and be aware that I've learned a few things since then.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for your patience. At some point I hope I can understand that without feeling like I’m restraining myself to the more prosaic option.

It’s interesting to hear you say the latter, though not totally surprising. I find Paths of Wisdom and Circles of Power to be extremely elegant, and John Gilbert’s material somehow offends my aesthetic sense, even though I got good results with the SOP when I did it. I have the same visceral reaction to Golden Dawn traditions that are really into the Golden Dawn *as* the Golden Dawn, and some of the grimoire revivalist stuff.