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.

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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

[(Anonymous)]

Hi John,

1) I started doing the SOP 7-8 weeks ago taking about 2 weeks per element. I was doing some pore breathing/chi ball/yoga posture type exercises later in the day and had total big time energy overload. What happens to the subtle body when starting the SOP? I started doing it because I’m extremely sensitive to “energy” and have done just about every wrong thing a person could do regarding energetic hygiene. When things get dialed up I get a lot of fear and negativity (Moon conjunct Ketu in birth chart). What kind of practices have you seen work for people who are better “receivers” over the years? I stopped the other stuff and just do SOP and things have come back down but those couple of days....

2) My hyper-drive brain is always chattering away, so when doing visualizations its always running commentary, describing the imagery etc... Are there other ways besides meditation to quiet this down? The thing I love about visualizing is that its non-verbal and gets me away from the habit over-thinking to some degree. The pore breathing exercises kind of freaked me out, it made me realize how powerful the imagination actually is, I did not take it seriously enough at all.

3) Do you think the SOP could help a negative biased thinker due to karmic reasons? I’ve heard people call magic the art of horoscope repair (Regardie maybe?) Do you know ways that could mitigate habitual negative thinking after recognizing the problem?

Thank you so much for these Mondays

[ecosophia]

1) I don't recommend combining the SoP with any form of qigong -- I had trouble with this, and so have other people. The SoP should help insulate you from outside energies, but you'll need to do it daily and even so it'll take a while. For now, ordinary rhythmic breathing is about as much as you should be doing.

2) That's quite common, of course. If there's a way other than meditation to get the mind to behave, I don't know of it.

3) Yes, but slowly. I recommend the Octagon Society lessons, which are free of charge, as another important tool for this work; karmic patterns usually repeat themselves in childhood, resulting in difficult childhood emotions that remain unprocessed. Work through them and release the emotional energy caught up in them, and everything else is easier to deal with.

[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?

[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.

[(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]

To quote myself just above your comment:

"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."