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 1.3 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-sixth published book -- I've passed over The King in Orange, which was pulled out of order by the eldritch attraction of Inauguration Day and appeared in January -- and the beginning of my most ambitious publishing project to date: a complete system of occult training, original although based on the material I studied with John Gilbert, which fills roughly the same role as the correspondence courses offered by old-fashioned occult schools but is published for everyone to read.

I stress the word "occult" here. Occultism and magic are not the same thing, though they're related to each other and can be compatible. Magic uses ritual as its primary tool, and has power as its theme and goal; occultism uses meditation as its primary tool, and has wisdom as its theme and goal. (Both contrast with mysticism, which -- in its western forms, at least -- uses prayer as its primary tool, and has love as its theme and goal.) The Way of the Golden Section and its sequels teach very little in the way of ritual and even less in the way of magic. They focus on meditation, divination, sacred geometry, and certain other standard occult practices, and their goal is to achieve wisdom, revelation, and enlightenment. This book -- which requires The Sacred Geometry Oracle for some of its work -- is the first step on that path. Interested? You can get copies here if you're in the United States and here elsewhere. (I recommend the hardback edition, btw:  it's sturdy, and will stand up to the hard use you'll give it.)

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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

[petovaribence]

Dear JMG!

I am a big fan of your books, have most of them in either paper or electronic form.
I have two questions:

- It seems that in your late books you prefer to design paths that use the Sphere of Protection over other basic methods, even the LBRP for that matter. On the other hand, in your earlier books (f.e. Circles of Power) you mentioned many advanced practices that build on the latter. Can you suggest advanced forms of high magic for those that use the SoP as a base? I found some in the druid's magic handbook but that did not seems to be on par. Do you have perhaps any pro and contra suggestions, which path has advantages over the other in some aspects? (actually I love your Celtic GD book, finished 2 levels in it, and I found it quite compatible with other GD practice)

- In the Way of the Golden Section, page 113, you write that this path utilizes the vagus nerve to channel Kundalini upwards, instead of the spinal cord. Although earlier in my life I have spent quite a time reading about Kundalini processes and pathways, and saw in authentic eastern sources, such as Kundalini Vidia, there are many channels the Kundalini can go upwards, not just the spinal cord. Yet I never read or heard about the vagus nerve as a pathway. Can you suggest any books or sources where I can read more about this topic? I'm very interested.

Thank you very much for your answer
Bence Petovari

[ecosophia]

1) If you're interested in practicing ceremonial magic I highly recommend the Golden Dawn approach, which is of course LBRP-based. The SoP-based systems are much less focused on high magic, and are suited to people who have other interests in the occult field.

2) Unfortunately most of my sources for this are private lessons of occult schools with which I've studied. One that isn't is The Mysterious Kundalini by Vasant G. Rele, which you might find worth reading. (It's long out of copyright and readily available on online archives:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.203875

[not_gandalf]

I think you also cover this topic in "The Secret of the Five Rites"

[ecosophia]

I certainly discuss it there, but I figured OP was asking for primary sources.

Vagus Nerve

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
I really appreciate this distinction: "this path utilizes the vagus nerve to channel Kundalini upwards, instead of the spinal cord." Does using the vagus nerve path make the channeling less prone to creating the debilitating crises that people can experience with a Kundalini awakening? Is this due to the role of the vagus nerve in self-regulation in the human body?

Thanks!

Re: Vagus Nerve

[ecosophia]

Bringing the energy up the vagus nerve is a much gentler experience, for two reasons. First, the vagus nerve doesn't connect to the coccygeal glomus, the "vestigial" gland at the tailbone that contains the raw kundalini force; in effect, it's trickle-charging rather than pumping in everything the power company can send you. Second, the vagus nerve is much more slender than the spinal cord; it's like the difference between water from a garden hose and water from a firehose. Take these together and you have a very gentle, relatively safe flow into the brain centers in place of the full-on rush of standard kundalini awakening.

[(Anonymous)]

1) What is missing from the SoP oriented material such as the DMH (and maybe the next edition of Merlin's Wheel?) in order for it to be as complete a system of high magic as the Celtic Golden Dawn material? Is it mostly the hexagram ritual planetary magic component?

2) Is it correct to say that the SoP includes Telluric current components that are missing from the Golden Dawn material?

Thanks,
JML

[ecosophia]

1) No, it's not just the Hexagram rituals. It's the entire structure of specialized ritual workings meant to summon and direct specific energies.

2) Yes.

[k_a_nitz]

Dr Chiti Parikh talks a bit about the vagus nerve as a channel for Kundalini in interviews on YouTube - I haven't read her book Intentional Health, so can't vouch for whether it covers it at all.

[ecosophia]

Hmm! Thanks for this.