ecosophia | Magic Monday

Current Mood: watchful
Current Music: Jethro Tull, "War Child"

Entry tags:

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. Given the events scheduled tomorrow, I've pulled this one forward out of order; it's my 65th published book, the one that got me banned from science fiction conventions (despite 18 SF and fantasy novels currently in print) and dropped like a hot rock by most of the Neopagans I know. No, it's not a work of science fiction, nor does it have much to say about Neopaganism. It's a discussion of why the policies embraced by a bipartisan consensus of the elite classes in the US made the rise of Donald Trump or somebody like him inevitable. Yes, it also talks about magic -- the magical manipulations that were used for fifty years to silence any attempt to talk publicly about what the policies just mentioned did to the working classes in the United States, the magic wielded by a motley band of (mostly) young men living in their mothers' basements who marched off to the Meme Wars beneath the banner of a cartoon frog, and the magic attempted by the so-called Magic Resistance, whose attempts to cast death curses and other equally pleasant spells at the people they hate did a lot to bring about the events of last November and the days immediately before us.

That is to say, it's just a little controversial. ;-) On the off chance you're interested anyway, you can order a copy here if you live in the US and at your favorite online shop or full service bookstore if you live elsewhere.

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

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 further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

For this Magic Monday the 2nd post's question was on a Zen version of the Sphere of Protection. In it JMG mentioned jiriki or "self power" rather than the tariki or "other power" as it relates to Buddhist practice.

I was looking around to learn more about "ki" or the Japanese version of the astral light (or at least confirm that what it would be) and found this interesting essay. I'm posting here instead of the Zen thread to avoid "thread jacking".

https://kyotojournal.org/society/ki-the-vital-force/

It seems the Chinese understood ki in more personal or medical terms but the Japanese expanded the concept to include social relationships. The author then ends with the Politics of Ki which is hard to summarize but highlights the importance of attention and how group dynamics has evolved (and probably abused) over time. The author states "...many ingenious methods have been developed to psychosomatically condition Japanese to foreswear individuation, and attentively embrace and subserve collective systems." That may or may not be true but definitely something worth thinking about, especially how attention, and systems designed to have attention flow mostly to one individual or group, relate to whatever country we live in.

No question this week, I just wanted to share the conclusion of some events. Last October I discovered (with JMG's help) that my recently departed Grandmother had been a witch, and that I'd been suffering the kinds of ailments that would be expected when dealing with one. (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/300033.html?thread=51658497#cmt51658497) A red protection amulet was made, bowls of salt with bent nails in them were placed, and many hoodoo baths were had. It took around 3 months for the lingering effects she left behind to dissipate, and I can confidently say that I've been comfortably free from the kinds of dreams and sudden bouts of un-wellness that used to plague me so often for at least the whole of January. What a relief!

So many thanks to JMG, and to everyone else who frequents this space. Your collective help has made a major impact on me and I couldn't be more thankful.

I could use some help this week, please. Just found out my baby is in a breech position as I near the end of pregnancy, so anything you could do toward balancing my body and releasing restrictions to help her turn head down would be very much appreciated.

What material should one use for red bag? I know linen and silk are etheric insulators, so it shouldnt be one of them? Also the salt shouldnt be iodinized?(we dont have kosher salt here or at least is not marketed as one) I got interested in it after the comment of anonymoose canandian

Glastonbury is one of my highlights this year and I am really looking forward to it. That said, I have no experience with such gatherings and will just happily hang out. So do your thing and I really look forward to meeting you! :-)

That being said, if I may piggyback off of this. Is there any more information as to the gathering?

Inquiring druids would like to know. :-)

This problem may well be beyond the purview of this forum. But since the subject of psychiatry has been raised and discussed at some length, I will venture it.

My sister has gone out of her mind. Raving, delusions and hallucination are her current mental furniture. The essentially happy person that she was appears to be gone, and it is not clear if that person will ever return. When she talks it is with a certain blankness or emptiness, as though she were a doll being spoken through by a ventriloquist. It is a source of grief to me.

She is currently in the hospital for psychiatric observation, and I have yet to receive a full report on her condition from a qualified person. I was hoping that she might be successfully treated, but the discussion here concerning psychiatric medications and treatments has not reassured me that this will even be attempted.

This condition may have nothing whatever to do with magic. On the other hand, what has happened to my sister might possibly have something to do with spiritual matters. From a Swedenborgian newsletter that I subscribe to I recently received the following quotes:

“Whenever I was prompted to think of my little garden, of him who cared for it, of my having to be called home, of money matters, of the attitude of my acquaintances, of the character of the people in my house, of things that were to be written, how they would be received by the people and the possibility that they would not be understood, of new clothes that had to be obtained, and many other such cares – whenever I was kept reflecting on them for a long time, spirits would straightway throw in troublesome, worrisome and evil things, together with supporting thoughts and desires. And I noticed that when I had not been in the thought of such things for months and years, I did not care about them at all, nor experience that they brought on any stress. These are the reflections of thought by which the longer one is held in them, the more one is infested by evil spirits.”

Spiritual Experiences 3624

“This is the cause of depressions with many, of mental debilitations and deviations, and of insanities and hallucinations. For when people are thus held fast in thought about spiritual matters, about the hereafter, about unhappy subjects, then spirits pour in many things of the people's personal concerns that are in their memory, and hold them fast in them to the point of insanity and fantasy. Those, therefore, who live in solitude easily fall into such states, which are normally dispelled by diversions and social activities.”

Spiritual Experiences 3625

Knowing what I do about the etiology of my sister’s situation - for it has unfolded over a period of about a year - it seems to me that she may have experienced something of this sort. Her delusions are constellated around a medical condition she has that has not been treated with sufficient alacrity, that has developed over the course of a year or more, and to say that she has increasingly obsessed about it is something of an understatement.

I have no idea what to do about any of this. Whatever ideas, suggestions or recommendations anyone may propose I will duly consider, as long as they are reasonably friendly and constructive.

I will add that since hospitalization is involved, there hangs over my family the possibility of total financial ruin, a thing from which I have striven to protect us, thus far with some success. But our situation is now precarious. Without exaggeration, the stress I myself have experienced over the past year is monumental.

Having a close relationship to a severely and chronically depressive person can be a traumatic and depression causing experience all by itself. The hard conclusion of saying "something has to come from inside" for the relative of a depressive person, for example, is that it eventually may become necessary to say "I can't save you - and I won't try anymore." I guess the reasons for this and the possible consequences deserve careful meditation. And I'm not at all sure if most people would be able to go that way without assistance. It's a very complicated topic with a lot of subtle but critical nuances.

The helpless and often heartless and harmful way "society", i.e. the mainstream, the majority, whatever you want to call it, deals with this issue throws a bleak light on our still ruling materialistic paradigm. So it's not really miraculous that you can find some guidance in JMGs writings and I, too, find that he "walks the line" very carefully and effectively. Was it Fortune who said something like "occultism is (the) true psychology"?

Greetings, and thank you for your reply!
Nachtgurke

Smells fishy, privacy policy terms and conditions are just lorem ipsum, social media buttons doesnt work and the the content says perfectly nothing, there is no real real presence they would obviously brag about and when i feed that slop into two diffrent ai checker it said its ai. I think this might be scam

I went to a Waes Hael ceremony/event/something at a remote organic farm/community saturday past. I was there in November helping pick the last of an amazingly long harvest from them. The orchard ( and surrounding mountain trees) was burned thru 4 1/2 years ago, some survived, alot was replanted.

The main thing that stood out to me was how unorganized and, well, muddled, the whole thing was. But also, the trees there I think like it all and are doing very well. Trees start back up early here, so even on mine you can see new buds forming, so this was not too early for their location. The group of people who live there and those of us who came to help roamed thru the orchard and all around it making alot of noise, I had a bell. Some people said this was to "wake them up" to time to think of new growth, while some others thought it was also to scare away any bad entities/influences. We gathered at the top at the oldest apple tree there, the "mother tree" which is not that old, but does predate the fire, and said a verse/blessing and decorated the tree with loops of colorful ribbon with little bells attached, especially they had wanted children there, and a few families came with some, so they especially wanted them to help decorate and I guess ideally they would have loved one that could have climbed into it to decorate, but not possible on that tree with those kids. The little verse was cute, short and appropriate, appreciation from us now, a good harvest in its season type thing. Then they didnt know where their specified bread was, so someone went and fetched it, The community cider maker was there with cider from the apples of this orchard. Someone must have the idea that we still needed a child in the tree, so they took the youngest one (18 months ?) and hefted him onto a branch and had him help hold the bread and get cider onto it, removed him, set the bread into a crook of the tree and doused it with the rest of the cider with our admonition of Waes Hael (good health) for the tree and orchard. We sang wassail songs the ones currently around, which dont realy fit, but are all we have these days, and I think bring good feeling out from all, and have us spend longer singing to the tree. There was food and libations for all afterwards, including the orchard cider, bread, and alot of etc.... and a bon fire as the sun set later. General party.

(1) Something still seemed quite subdued, not just the disorganization, but the orchard guys seemed pretty distracted or worn out, tired of the work of it all. So I hope our support helped them too in this work. Not physically tired, just "holding" such a project of rebuilding community and orchard and all. I also noticed that, to me, Trump in his inauguration speech this morning had the same feeling. A bit worn out, and I dont mean just physical. SO maybe something of this nature is in the air so to speak.

(2) If anyone has more to contribute on what is good to offer the fruit trees in this context, let me know. It has me wondering if I should give mine some love, while I do not have hard cider from my trees, I do have other wine from this property to use. What is traditional, do we know, what is modern acceptable. Not too mention my 2 surviving, so far, but badly hurt old live oak trees. I have of course spent time with those, put hand on them, shared my intentions and hopes for them.

Atmospheric River

I have no problem with fake meat. I prefer just something like a black bean burger to fake meat, something that is its own thing and not processed so much too, but if the option to eat is fake meat, it doeant seem to cause any effects at all

Atmospheric River

I had chronic insomnia for years. I cured it by learning about the fight or flight response in my own body and adopting a pot of relaxation strategies to get into rest and digest more often (sessions of slow deep diaphragmatic breathing, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation and journalling to relieve emotional distress). My body was being flooded with cortisol all day because I was under so much stress, but didn't know because I'd become so disassociated from it all. Not easy to sleep when you're being flooded with stress chemicals all day. Sounds like you're in a similar state if you're also struggling with executive dysfunction - you're also flighty and scattered in that state.

Recommend reading some books on nervous system regulation and adopting some of the practices that resonate for you.

Thank you for this -- I'm delighted and grateful to have been of service.

That's a very good summary of the teachings as I understand them.

I love that suggestion! That's kind of how I've been doing much of my work with Carl Jung, "active journaling" since my ability to visualize isn't what it used to be. Thanks!

Yeah, the books that came up in my suggestions on Amazon were all, well, rather hokey sounding. The basic idea, though, struck me as quite reasonable. I'll get to work on it!

I did do one ritual late last night, and what I did was kind of similar to this suggestion. I didn't open a temple but I called upon Janus to grant me access to the gods, and then I asked Zurvan (the "heretical" Zoroastrian God of Infinite Time and Space) to open the portals of time and transport my mind to a particular place and time, then just kind of contemplated it. It did seem to have some success.

No, you're not wrong. There are at least two senses in which the term "nadir" is used. There's the nadir of our evolutionary wave, which happened when we completed the descent into matter, and there's the nadir of human incarnation for an individual soul, which occurs on average roughly halfway through the sequence of that soul's human life. Once the soul reaches the human stage, it's no longer guided by a group soul the way animals are; it loses its connection with the spiritual in the world around it, it has to come to terms with material incarnation all by itself, and that typically involves bad choices, messy karma, and a series of increasingly frantic attempts to avoid dealing with the consequences thereof.

When those fail, the soul is left face to face with itself at rock bottom, because only then will it turn to the spiritual resources it has within itself and begin clawing its way slowly back out of the pit it's dug for itself. It's only after that turn has taken place that real spiritual development begins. This also takes place in a smaller way in each life; childhood and youth are spent coming to grips with material incarnation, and generally making a lot of mistakes, which then (once the nadir is reached in that life) become the raw material on which the soul works.

On 2) Jordan Paper's The Deities Are Many comes to mind, as he learned both American Indian and Chinese traditions and talks some about their differences and how they get along in his life. Our host's A World Full of Gods doesn't exactly address this, but does give an intellectual framework for thinking about the Gods as real and multifarious, along with taking apart many of the arguments against religiosity (fair warning, though, it also tends to take apart arguments for strict monotheism).

For The Deities are Many, I have a write-up here, if it helps you decide if it will help with what you're after: https://jpowellrussell.com/#book_thoughts_on_the_deities_are_many

Cheers, and my blessings if you'll have them,
Jeff

One way or another, Alba's soul will be in excellent shape. It's very possible that Alba had been human in previous lives and had to work off a lot of really difficult karma in a hurry -- a life as a brutally abused dog will do that -- and came through it with flying colors; at that point positive karma kicked in, brought her to the attention first of Harbison, and then of thousands of other people, whose prayers will have sustained and blessed her soul through the afterlife process. It would not surprise me at all if sometime fairly soon a child is born who grows up to be a very notable saint...

To piggyback on JMG's comment, I have found the "muscle control" techniques from the Maxalding course helpful for learning to isolate and become aware of various muscles, and have been working on incorporating it into my pre-meditation relaxation, and it seems to be helping some, but as JMG said, I wouldn't let it become a "must do this perfectly!" thing, lest it become a greater source of stress.

Here's the book I've been working from: https://archive.org/details/MuscleControl

Cheers, and my blessings if you'll have them,
Jeff

Would the Lemurian Deviation have made the task of climbing out of the pit harder, because somehow it severed the innate sense of the spiritual that we once all had?

As someone for whom depression has been routine part of my life for decades now, I have an observation and then a half-baked theory of my own.

Observation: there does seem to be some "natural" component to depression - whether it's attributed to planetary influences, karma, genetics, or something else, "some people are much more gloomy and easily worried than others" seems to be observed across cultures and times.

Theory: depression seems to be characterized by broken feedback loops in the brain and mood. Just like a diabetic can feel hungry, but eating doesn't help much, someone who is depressed can have good things happen, but it doesn't help much. This makes me wonder if some forms of occultism might help, by balancing/strengthening/rebuilding more beneficial patterns of feedback between actions, results, and moods. This theory also points toward something that is very much my experience: depression is fairly protective when you are in a situation with a lot of pain and no obvious way out. But it isn't helpful at getting out of the situation.

SamChevre
Lilac Vexatious Llama

Brunton, like most mystics, tended to run together all the levels above the current human state of consciousness; the mental plane is the closest thing to reality that we can experience at this stage of our evolution, so my take is that that's the reality he hoped to enter, while the "astral dream" is the ordinary cycle of human existence. Khan is talking about the same thing -- the higher Jinn inhabit the mental plane, angels the spiritual plane, and so on.

The second quote refers to the two paths that are open to the soul -- the slow path of continued evolution which we're all on, and the fast path of spiritual transformation that is open to anyone who chooses to pursue it.

Yes, very much so.

Thank you.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 6 of 10

Magic Monday

Ki: The Vital Force

Thank you, truly

Re: Modern Order of Essenes Healing Hands

no subject

Re: Glastonbury gathering topics

My sister has apparently lost it

Re: The Stranger Side of Ketamine

no subject

Waes Hael

no subject

no subject

Re: The Stranger Side of Ketamine

Re: Afterlife

Re: Time Travel Magic?

Re: Time Travel Magic?

Re: Time Travel Magic?

Re: Involution

no subject

Re: Dog souls

Re: Relaxing muscles before meditation

Re: Involution

Re: The Stranger Side of Ketamine

Re: astral dream vs enter reality

Re: Involution

Re: astral dream vs enter reality