Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

 Midnight is just a few minutes away 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-eighty published book, and -- like some of the other things I've written -- it landed me in a certain amount of hot water. I noticed, not long after I started doing the kind of intermediate astrology that involves tracking transits of planets across natal chart positions, that most of the resulting predictions worked very well, but that those involving Pluto didn't. I then noticed that political and economic predictions involving Pluto -- not mine, in this case -- also flopped spectacularly. That launched me into a research project that convinced me that Pluto is in fact not a planet, but that it functioned like one in birth charts and mundane charts during the short period while astronomers mistook it for one. That led me to write The Twilight of Pluto, which talks about the complex way that planetary discoveries and downgradings relate to astrological prediction. 

The reason this got me into hot water is that Pluto has a huge astrological fan club. It's weird; no other planet has that kind of frankly addictive emotional hold on people. No other planet sees people make one false prediction after based on its movements, and just keep on doing it, without ever noticing that they're making fools of themselves. I didn't get into that in this book, but Pluto fans took offense anyway because I dissed their favorite planet. The book's sales have been slow, though a remarkable number of people seem to know about it. I still think it makes a valid case, I don't use Pluto in my political astrology...and, ahem, my predictions are more accurate than those who do. If you're interested, you can get copies here in the US and at your favorite book outlet 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 further comments will be put through. See you all next week!***

Comments

Learning Ritual Magic

[linden_matryoshka]

Hello John,
I have a couple of questions today. I'm working through the curriculum of your book Learning Ritual Magic, in particular Self-Perception Exercise. You suggest exploring your strengths and weaknesses on all levels - physical, mental, etheric, astral, and spiritual. I have a hard time coming up with lists for the etheric level and spiritual levels. I'm not 100% sure that I'm getting the other ones correctly.
1. For example, being a good dancer is a physical strength, being prone to colds is a physical weakness. Being good at languages is a mental strength, and having a poor sense of direction and getting lost easily is a mental weakness. Is that right?
2. Is Astral roughly emotional realm/intelligence?
3. What would be examples of etheric and spiritual strengths and weaknesses?
Thank you for making time for this forum despite being busy,
Inna

Re: Glamour or something like that?

[(Anonymous)]

How can those be released? I think I’ve identified at least part of them.

Other than that, isn’t it coercing people in the same way if you do planetary charity to help with a current job application, for instance? Anything along those lines that can be done?

[ecosophia]

Sara found that her cycles had a decided effect. During menstruation, her experiences tended to be much more unstable, sometimes unexpectedly powerful, but always requiring more careful handling. I don't know if this is generally true, however, because I haven't been on the kind of terms with other female mages that would allow for a frank discussion of menstrual cycles.

(Part of that reticence is probably that most guys get squicked out almost instantly when menstruation comes up. That's always baffled me; you'd think that straight guys would be happy to talk about the habits of vaginas, but apparently not!)

Re: The Art of causing.

[ecosophia]

The problem with that broader definition is that it doesn't include any of the things that make magic distinct from, say, making omelets, writing obscene graffiti on bathroom stalls, or shoving people off bridges. Thus it's too broad to be useful.

[ecosophia]

My recommendation is that you have nothing to do with Asmodeus or any other inhabitant of the demonic realm, now or at any future point. There's nothing to be gained by hobnobbing with the scum of creation, which is what demons are. As a student of the Golden Dawn system, you should be seeking to attune yourself to the Divine; focus on that.

Re: Deity Devotions vs Planetary Unbalance

[ecosophia]

Keep an eye out for arrogance and egotism, and if you have a friend you can trust, ask them to help you do that. You'll probably be fine, but it never hurts to be sure.

Re: Need insight on a recent experience

[casmith]

Yes, I got the message on not using cannabis, I do not want to repeat that experience. I take it that it leaves me open to malign spirit harassment. Thank you for your reply and advice.

Re: Easy peasy meditation

[(Anonymous)]

Right, understood. When my life stabilizes into something more tolerable, I may try a more demanding practice.

Re: Learning Ritual Magic

[ecosophia]

Being a good dancer is more than a physical strength. The strength that enables you to do dancing moves exactly and keep dancing for a long time is physical, but your ability to express feeling in your dancing is emotional, and your ability to attune to a partner and move along with them is etheric. Let's take it a level at a time:

Physical: bodily strength and coordination.

Etheric: vitality and the ability to attune to other people. Your being prone to colds is an etheric weakness.

Astral: emotional and imaginative capacities. If you are sensitive to art and music, or have a vivid imagination, these are astral strengths. Your poor sense of direction is an astral weakness -- it shows that you have trouble imagining yourself in relation to your surroundings.

Mental: cognitive and intellectual capacities. Your gift for languages is a mental strength; if you have trouble with calculus, that's a mental weakness.

Spiritual: your capacity to reach upward to the Divine, in whatever form you conceive it to be.

Does that help at all?

Re: Need insight on a recent experience

[ecosophia]

Okay, good. That's a potential risk with all the psychedelics, and is one reason why occult practitioners should leave them alone.

Re: Glamour or something like that?

[ecosophia]

1) No, the thing that dooms nearly all job applications is the behavior and appearance of the applicant!

2) Yes, and Marsilio Ficino was there five hundred years ago. Invoke the Sun, Venus, and Jupiter -- you can choose one of those to start with, using divination. You need more confidence, more love, and more generosity, and those planets will help you learn those.

[(Anonymous)]

I've spend some time watching the "diplomatic shakeups" and some interviews thereafter. I'm mildly surprised that I got the feeling of the current US administration being sincere in its pursuit for peace and reconciliation with Russia. At times it is difficult to judge whether you are the one who is "asleep" or deluded or if it's the other ones - but it is rather easy to check which "camp" fielded more accurate predictions over the years. With that as a background I take the actions of the US administration as a sign that many of the people involved have developed a certain awareness for the situation, very much in contrast to the former administration and most European governments and a large fraction of the European population.

That being said, European elites seem to be eager to finally get the war they have been begging for over the last years with increasing enthusiasm. But it's also clear that they possibly won't dare without US backing - and I doubt that Russia would tolerate the US as a "neutral" arms dealer for European armies in an all out European war, so it's not certain but at least possible that the "big war" won't happen anytime soon. But where to direct all the hatred and the whipped up emotions and final frustration, where to find a valve for all the energy? As far as my feeling and personal experience goes (I am German and live in Germany), a large share of the populace is still deeply unconscious to those matters and purely driven by their "tendencies", autopilot turned on, just like in a dream state - which makes them very vulnerable to many things. I guess most paths that lead from here to possible futures for Germany and Europe allow for burying the face one's hands, though not all of them involve major bloodshed and material destruction.

Thank you for sharing this uncomfortable but interesting experience!
Greetings,
Nachtgurke

[adara9]

Thanks! I'm glad to hear it's not just me. Seems to track pretty closely with my cycles' effect on my emotions, too.

(Lol!)

Re: Aphantasia

[ecosophia]

not_gandalf, your reply included the whole message you were sent, including links you probably don't want everyone else to have. Here's your response, with the rest trimmed off:

"Meh! Sometimes it’s easy for me, sometimes impossible. But results come with the same frequency whichever happens to apply."

My answer:

I've never in my life gotten the kind of vivid movie-screen imagery that many people seem to get as a matter of course, but yeah, somehow it works.

[(Anonymous)]

When meditating I frequently get the feeling, that a question is "squeezed out" and that for the moment I can't gain anything more than I already have from meditating further on the same topic. I usually continue with my scheduled mediations in an unaltered pace - partly as an exercise of will and partly to "play" and allow anything else to surface that would benefit from focused attention. But additional insights in the originally planned topic won't surface and in some way I know, that I must first learn other things to be able to get more. This feeling of "ok, that was it for now" is really quite clear and also quite interesting, for how do I know that I can't know more about it if I don't know it already?

Do you have experiences like this? How do you deal with it - or how would you deal with it?

Cheers,
Nachtgurke

Re: Glamour or something like that?

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for the in-between-question: would you follow a certain philosophy or book instruction on journaling or do you basically mean write a lot daily? Thank you for clarifying and thank you for your time!

Re: Glamour or something like that?

[ecosophia]

My approach is to put a statement or question at the top of the page, one that's relevant to what I'm trying to unearth, and then just let myself write whatever comes out, without censoring or editing at all. It takes a little practice to get into this space, but once you get there it's a fine way to tap into the deep levels of the mind.

Cycles

[(Anonymous)]

One more question - if I may: I've come up with this some time ago but haven't found anything definitive so far. I'm searching for some periodic event that takes a few days longer than one moon cycle and is the cause for increased agressivity, exhaustion and "being on auto-pilot". The periodicity is a guess because the intensity of the experience varies from almost not there to very intense and annoying. In winter it tends to be more intense. Do you have any idea? I was thinking about aspects of the Moon to other planets, but what I have found so far does not really fit. Are there other cycles in the (male) human or the environment that could cause something like this?

Thank you very much!
Cheers,
Nachtgurke

[ecosophia]

This is when I break out the old Combinatorial Art, usually in the version included in The Dolmen Arch. The way this works is that you have seven conceptions -- being, becoming, source, substance, power, purpose, and value -- and seven questions -- whether, what, how, who, where, when, and why. These are committed to memory. You then combine them, one question with each conception, and practice this until you can do it automatically. The verbiage is adjusted slightly as needed, so:

whether it is
what it is
how it is
who (or whose) it is
where it is
when it is
why it is
whether it becomes
what it becomes...(and so on.)

That gives you 49 inquiries. When you reach a standstill with a theme for meditation, break out the conceptions and questions, and combine the inquiries with the theme. Say you're meditating on the Tree of Life; you get:

Whether the Tree of Life exists
What it is
How (in what manner) it exists
Whose it is...(and so on).

If you can't get some meditation fodder out of that you're not trying hard enough!

Re: Cycles

[ecosophia]

Hmm! Interesting. Nothing comes to mind; anyone else?

[(Anonymous)]

I am in Central Europe and I sometimes feel this way concerning my American friends, for what it’s worth

Re: Cultivation of Virtues in Western Occultism

[(Anonymous)]

(Not the commenter above you.) Any book you'd recommend on specifically your second sentence? (Or about customs dropped in consequence before 1929.)

Re: Cultivation of Virtues in Western Occultism

[ecosophia]

I don't know of a book that's explored this. It's very evident if you know your way around Western cultures before and afterwards, but I've seen very little discussion of it.

Re: Ceres and Romanticism

[(Anonymous)]

I read your book, but I don't recall if you had a better suggestion for the naming of Uranus and Neptune to match their astrological impacts. Did you/do you now?

And while I'm on the subject, is there much of an astrological impact of another planet's moons to us? For example, do Titan or Europa impact us? I bring this up because I remember your book on Pluto mentioned an astrologer who predicted Pluto's moon based on her interpretation of Pluto's impact on something or other (sorry--it's been a while...)

Re: Ceres and Romanticism

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, I've suggested that they ought to be named Prometheus and Rhea respectively.

2) Because Pluto's a dwarf planet -- a tiny little snowball 1/8 the size of our Moon -- and his largest moon, Charon, is half his diameter -- Charon's nearly as influential as Pluto. That was why the astrologer Isabel Hickey was able to deduce that Pluto was a double-planet system before Charon was discovered. Compared to Saturn and Jupiter respectively, Titan and Europa are pipsqueak presences, and the same rule does not apply to them.