Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Midnight is breathing down our necks 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 is my sixth-third published book, and you'll have a little trouble finding it right now, because its former publisher let it go out of print last year. The upsides are, first, that this gave me the chance to revise, expand, and improve it considerably; second, that I was able to give it the title I originally assigned it, Merlin's Wheel -- did you know that authors have no control over the titles and cover art of their books? -- and third, that I had it placed with a second publisher less than 24 hours after the old one let go of it.

The book -- well, it's a sequel of sorts to my earlier book The Celtic Golden Dawn, providing a set of eight seasonal ceremonies inspired by ancient mystery rites, celebrating the legendary life of Merlin around the cycle of the year as a system of spiritual self-initiation. The new version has been expanded so that it can also be practiced within the ritual system of the Golden Section Fellowship and its related traditions, including the Dolmen Arch system and the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose. It'll be out later this year, and I'll make an announcement here and on my blog once it's available for preorder.

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!***

Comments

Re: Dolmen Arch index and geomancy query

[(Anonymous)]

2) I'm sure you've mentioned that somewhere--I didn't recall, and I was surprised that you didn't mention coins in the book, but then you wrote it some time ago. So you use the largest coin, the quarter, for fire? I might expect it to be earth. How did you decide which coin to use for each element?

Niagara Falls

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any particular occult lore or traditions around Niagara Falls? Have been reading about all the daredevils and people who went over the falls in barrels...etc and at least one of them was some kind of occultist/mystic. He went over with his pet turtle (who survived, but he did not). A lot of them seemed to have this incredible and irresistible draw to the falls. Anything in particular going on in the spirit world there do you think, or just a magnificent natural wonder and human beings seeking fame and fortune?

[ellendegenerate]

Good afternoon JMG,

I'm a total noob, I know, but I've been learning about the concept of glamour magic lately, and that got me wondering whether/how I could protect myself from glamours cast by other people, and I would be grateful for your insight into this.

Thank you for your magic Mondays, I've learned a lot from you over the years!

Re: Protection against bad luck/magical attack

[(Anonymous)]

If we're talking about European parallels to the Aztec 8 omens, then the fire which burned Notre Dame Cathedral in France a few years ago is probably a bad omen for Europe, paralleling the bad omen fire which burned the Aztec temple to Huitzilopochtli a few years before the Spanish came.

[boccaccio]

If I may chime in, do you know of any other protective practice that combines well with qigong? Or is it just that the principle of protection doesn't match with what qigong does?

Affirmations?

[(Anonymous)]

I fear that I am one of those people who are always imagining "the worst" happening to me: repairs to my house that I can't afford, etc. Dying isn't really the worst, as I'm in my 70s. Rather becoming disabled and dependent seems worse than death. Being a burden on others. Are there ways to change this mental habit? I came up with two affirmations quite quickly:
1. "Good things are coming my way."
2. " I expect good things to happen to me." This one focuses on my expectations, rather than on actual events, which may actually be preferable.

Re: Lesser Polarity Magic

[ecosophia]

Interesting. I didn't see either one, so don't have an opinion on the matter.

[ecosophia]

None that I know of. There don't seem to be many of them, and the one I reconstructed in The Dolmen Arch was idiosyncratic, to use no stronger term! (Of course that's true of all things Druid Revival...)

[(Anonymous)]

Good Evening,
Thank you for MM! I'm going through my second Saturn return. The question on my mind for the last 2 years has been, "Where is the bottom?". What can I do to pacify my Saturn in Pisces in the 6th house?

Re: MARS vs VENUS as goals for space travel

[ecosophia]

Oh, Mars is quite lethal enough. It has no magnetic field, so the surface is perpetually bathed in hard radiation from the sun. If Musk goes there, he'll die there, sure enough, along with everyone else who goes with him -- and slow radiation poisoning is a horrible way to die.

Re: Dolmen Arch index and geomancy query

[ecosophia]

I just decided it at random. You can do it the other way if you prefer.

Re: Amber, stones

[ecosophia]

There isn't a set that I know of, but the old Ogham documents say that you can make up your own correspondences if you want. It's an Irish system, after all!

[ecosophia]

I'm sorry to hear this, but not surprised. I've been told that these days, in the US, it takes on average visits to twelve different doctors to get an accurate diagnosis of any reasonably complex health condition. Our medical system is at once the most expensive and the least effective on the planet....

[ecosophia]

You'd want to talk to a Taoist or Chinese Buddhist master about that. I'm pretty sure they have their own protective ceremonies, but I don't happen to know what those are.

Re: Would a group manifestation be appropriate now?

[ecosophia]

Showing that he was in tune with the coming age while the people who marketed him were not. When he got up on that stage and said "Truth is a pathless land," he struck what I believe to be the authentic note of the Aquarian age. In a certain sense, then, he really was the World Teacher -- just not the kind of World Teacher the Theosophists wanted...

Re: Would a group manifestation be appropriate now?

[ecosophia]

I'm quite sure they won't. You really have to meet and talk to the genuine white supremacists in this country to realize how fragmented, dispirited, and ineffective that movement is.

[ecosophia]

Yes. I've seen rainstorms and snowstorms generated that way.

Spirits feeding on positive energy?

[jruss]

Just a random thought, I’ve often read about bottom feeding spirits that feed on and thrive on negative energy. Even causing situations where lots of negative energy abounds.

Wouldn’t the opposite be true as well? Spirits that feed on positivity?

[ecosophia]

I'm glad to hear this. Starting serious spiritual work generally stirs up whatever unfinished business you have in your karma; in most cases that means a flurry of difficulties, but it can also mean that things finally start going right, if that's what your karma has waiting for you.

Re: Niagara Falls

[ecosophia]

I don't happen to know. Anyone else?

[(Anonymous)]

Are you aware of any practices that have the effect of a banishing ritual that do work with qigong? I guess what I'm asking is how do qigong practitioners "keep clean"?

I've always found the overlap between ritual and qigong hard to decipher.

[ecosophia]

The first step is one you've already taken: becoming aware of the issue. Any time you react to someone in a way that doesn't seem reasonable, you can teach yourself to stop and say, "Okay, is this real or is it just glamour?" As that becomes a habit, it will develop the mental clarity that dispells glamour.

You can also help that in two ways. The first is to take up a daily protective ritual such as the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram or the Sphere of Protection. The second is to take up daily meditation of some kind. Yes, you can certainly do both!

Re: Affirmations?

[ecosophia]

Those are both well formed; I'd suggest the first, but the choice is yours. I also recommend journaling so that you can get to the roots of the negative thoughts. Just ask yourself, "Why am I thinking like this?" and let the words spill out unedited and uncensored. See what you find.

[ecosophia]

That depends on what's going on in your entire chart and in your annual progressed chart. I recommend getting a proper reading from a professional astrologer, who can walk you through the details.

Re: Spirits feeding on positive energy?

[ecosophia]

That's usually called an angel, and the positive energy that nourishes them comes from the divine, not from other created entities. Like the negative spirits, they also radiate the energy that nourishes them.