Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

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 1.3 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 seventy-second published book and the beginning of a new fiction series. I'd spent years being frustrated by the way that fantasy fiction ignored real magic and fixated on Harry Potter absurdities instead. Once I finished my tentacle novels, that had the inevitable result and gave rise to the first of a series of novels in which all the magic is the stuff real human beings in the real world can encounter. Ariel Moravec, the protagonist of the series, is an eighteen-year-old girl who goes to spend the summer with her grandfather, an occult initiate who spends his time investigating paranormal happenings. Before long she's caught up in one of his investigations, centering on legends of a colonial-era witch and a cascade of very real and vicious spells in the present day...

There are two more novels in the series already in print, a third in press, and a fourth currently being written. It's turning into a very entertaining series to write and, I hope, to read. If you're interested, you can get copies of The Witch of Criswell here if you live in the US and here 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!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP:

But is it possible such negative thoughts aren't even internal to the person having them?

I have had some similar episodes in the past and found that dealing with them as though they were an outside entity worked wonders. Like, facing *the thing* (whatever it is) and being like: "I see you, I know what you are, I know you're not *me*," and calling on a higher power to give it the boot... well, some really freaky things happened with that (a totally not-supplied-by-me mental image of myself with a long spear, impaling something that at first looked human, but then on the end of the spear turned into a freakish bug-type thing), and they left me alone after that.

Or does the exact diagnosis not matter because affirmations accomplish the same purpose?

Internal Monologue

[(Anonymous)]

Would you consider the internal monologue or mental voice to exist on the astral or mental level? Or can it go between these? Apologies if this is a dumb question.

Silent Records, Geometry and the Horse,

[(Anonymous)]

To Share / Discuss:

1. Silent Records has become one of my favorite independent music labels. They started in the 80s and went into the 90s. Label owner Kim Cascone then moved on to other things in the oughts, including his Subtle Listening workshops. There is a lot of esoteric content throughout the label, including the recordings, but also the artwork and titles. Those who have ears to hear will pick up on many of the alchemical cues. For my latest feature article for Igloo Magazine I wrote up a history of Silent Records, with a brief overview of their first era and then a focus on the reboot, and all of the guitar drone and guitar ambient they've released.

https://igloomag.com/features/heavenly-silences-and-earthly-noise

Here is a quote from Kim about the stellar influences in his label that I used in my article: "Sometimes what comes in a flash unfolds over a long period of time. Such a flash came to Silent Records label founder Kim Cascone one winter night as a kid. 'I remember sitting in a snowbank and looking up at the stars. I spotted the blue star in the Orion constellation and gazed at it for a long time. Suddenly I had a flash, like one of those speed-collages in a film where hundreds of events all race past in a split second. I call this ‘my download’ & have been unpacking its meaning ever since.'"

2. The Golden Section Ratio and Horsemanship:
I had some of my own unpacking to do with regards to imagery seen in a scrying of the Golden Proportion glyph. I was wandering what some of the images might mean... Then I discovered how the phi ratio relates to horse hooves:

https://www.oksnhc.com/blog/the-geometry-of-the-hoof-and-the-hoof-print-trim

This got me thinking about how the horse shoe is often used in folk magic. If the Golden Section can produce harmony where it is put, than having a horse shoe over a doorway inside a house might be one of the reasons why that particular bit of folk magic works.

I also found this essay on sacred geometry, dressage, and horsemanship:

https://www.kipmistral.com/sherry-ackerman-figures-of-the-manege/

Hail Epona!

3. I was having a discussion over the weekend with some friends over the merits of Genesis as a band compared to the solo work of Peter Gabriel. (I like his solo stuff better.) The soundtrack to the Last Temptation of Christ, titled Passion, is a favorite of mine. Excellent "world music" before that meant something icky, some derierre detritus you'd hear in a bland giftshop or dumb stupid coffeehouse.
Trumpeter Jon Hassell came up with the term "fourth world music" (also the name of the album he did with Brian Eno). Hassell described fourth world music as "a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques." The film itself (I haven't read the book it was based on...) could have even been more gnostic than it was and that would have been cool.

Hassell had studied with Stockhausen, among others. Stockhausen had been an advocate of world music himself. These ended up sounding very different from the drek later marketed as such. The spiritual impetus behind world music was given birth to by shortwave radio and telephonic lines of transmission.

The modus operandi behind fourth world music is at work in the universalist and eclectic spiritual scene (no need for electronics there, but radionics would be cool). Chaos magic was like a grab bag of tricks stripped of tradition. Yet the universalist initiate, through the study of sacred texts, practices and teachings from around the world is now in the presence of true diversity.

As Stockhausen noted, he didn't want to make a mere mishmash of sounds from around the world, fusing them together inadvertently. His musical idea was to intermodulate them, to let the sound of one effect the sound of another. In the hands of someone like Peter Gabriel and Jon Hassell these aspirations towards world or fourth world music came to fruition. (Not necessarily in a direct line to Gabriel)... but you can see how a skilled musician can incorporate different styles to create a masterfully vinted blend of not just grapes, but others fruit fermented together in new wineskins. The mage can do the same. Drawing all the influences together into their isolated sphere, and releasing new combinations out into the world.

Justin Patrick Moore

[(Anonymous)]

Can I send you a private PM with a question via my Dreamwidth account? I think the question isn’t appropriate for a public forum.

Ecosophian conference - London to Glastonbury train/transport

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG and readers,

I'm looking to meeting those of you who are attending the conference at Glastonbury in June. I haven't seen any further information since about details, so wanted to see if anyone will be travelling from London? I will be and (cheaper) advance tickets are now available to purchase so it may be good to start discussing so we can plan it.

Best regards,

Vivek

Horse Hooves and Golden Ration

[(Anonymous)]

Here is a bit better of an explanation of the horse hooves and their relationship to the golden ratio:

https://innovativeequinepodiatry.blogspot.com/2017/04/hoof-mapping.html

By the way, my I Ching reading for the day was Hexagram 13, Fellowship...

Together with Phi studies, the Golden Section Fellowship has been on my mind.

JPM

[ecosophia]

Of course -- many of "our" thoughts come in from outside. I find affirmations a very effective response to those as well. Certainly there are other ways to deal with them -- yours, for example -- and I'd encourage anyone who's having trouble with intrusive negative thoughts to explore as many options as come to mind. The important thing is to recognize that repetitive negative thoughts are actively harmful -- they have the same effect as affirmations, but in a bad way -- and it's important to take concrete steps to expel them from your mind and overwrite them with positive thoughts.

Re: Last piece of the demon puzzle

[ecosophia]

Yes, and since demonic beings are especially good at tampering with our emotions, they have a particularly easy time with sex.

[(Anonymous)]

i just wanted to share an article i saw
posted:

Secret CIA files claim Ark of the Covenant has been found

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14534941/cia-document-sacred-ark-covenant-chest-found.html

[ecosophia]

I don't see it as magic, because magic doesn't use black boxes either! As Eliphas Lévi points out, the difference between the competent mage and the bumbling sorcerer is that the mage knows exactly what he's doing and how it works, while the sorcerer fumbles his way through a spell by rote.

Thus the word you're looking for is "superstition." The builders of LLMs, in their primitive, superstitious reverence for Progress and Science, are going through motions they don't understand and getting results that baffle them.

There's another way of looking at LLMs I find even more useful, though, which is to see them as the kind of fraudulent games that played such a role in old-fashioned carnivals. "Look! I put data in, and pull all these wonderful things out!" It's come out more than once that what was really behind some supposed computer-based device was a big room full of underpaid workers in Mumbai...

Re: Suicide of a lefthand path occultist

[ecosophia]

It depends entirely on his reaction to discovering how wrong he was. In his life as Michael Aquino, he developed quite a few positive qualities, such as strength of will, the courage to ignore public prejudice, and so on. When he found himself permanently out of his body and the spirit of Howard Stanton Levey (aka "Anton Szandor LaVey") showed up, sat him down, and said, "Um, Mike, I've got some news for you," did he deal with it, or not? If he did, he'll go on to whatever next life his karma requires. If not, he may be curled up in a ball somewhere on the astral plane refusing to deal with things, in which case it may be a while before he incarnates again.

Re: Magic and Literature, Magic and Opera,

[ecosophia]

Good heavens, yes. Goethe was perfectly aware of all this -- it helps to be one of the world's greatest poets, playwrights, novelists, biologists, and literary critics, not to mention a capable politician and administrator, fluent in the gods alone know how many languages and au courant with effectively all ancient and modern Western literature up to his time! Was Wagner influenced by him? You won't find a significant German cultural figure until 1945 or so who wasn't influenced by Goethe. So I think you're definitely on to something.

Re: The spiritual nature of money

[ecosophia]

That seems very reasonable to me. Money is a system of abstract tokens from which every real quality has been stripped away; in effect, each unit of money is a gap in reality, smaller or larger depending on the denomination, and if you insert too many gaps into any relationship, it would make sense that it falls apart.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you !

Re: Question about causation

[ecosophia]

The brain is a filter which keeps consciousness focused on the material plane, so that we can do our work here and learn from it. Psychedelic drugs (I do prefer the older term!) temporarily disable the filter, so that things come into consciousness from the non-material planes. They don't create anything -- they simply make it temporarily harder for the user to retain a focus on the plane of matter, so that things happening on other planes intrude into consciousness for a while.

Re: America's Stonehenge

[ecosophia]

I'd like to go up there sometime, but I've never had the chance. Maybe somebody with a car will decide they want to do a road trip with a Druid in the passenger seat. ;-)

Re: How to get better at tarot?

[ecosophia]

If I'd drawn that card as a one-card reading, I'd take it literally -- overturn your cup, empty your mind of preconceptions, and just pay attention to what the card appears to be saying to you at that moment.

Re: Night planetary hours

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I think I'll have to find a copy of that book:


As for nights, no, in every system I know of, a planetary day lasts for 24 hours.

[ecosophia]

1) Fortunately not. Mind you, Bertie Scrubb stories would probably sell like hotcakes -- Harry Potter ripoffs are all over the kiddie-lit bookshelves these days, and some of them read like their authors are channeling Frank and Matilda Osbert, the notional authors of the Bertie Scrubb series -- but if any such thing ever showed up on my computer screen I'd perform an exorcism.

2) Every magical action in the Ariel Moravec series is something that can actually happen. Dense etheric structures can move physical objects -- that's what's behind poltergeist phenomena, for example.

Re: Neptune in Aries

[ecosophia]

I'm far from convinced that an outer planet transit into a new sign, without reference to anything else in the heavens or on earth, communicates anything useful astrologically. It's more or less the mundane equivalent of newspaper sun sign astrology!

Re: Dreams about the recently dead

[ecosophia]

I don't know of any solid answers to that kind of question, but tradition has it that this is one of the most common ways the souls of the recently dead manifest themselves to the living. Make of that what you will.

Re: Internal Monologue

[ecosophia]

Oh, it's astral, but it can reflect mental plane material now and again. Remember that astral phenomena appears to us in the forms of the senses -- words that you could hear if somebody spoke them aloud, images you could see if there was something shaped like that in the room with you, and so on -- while the mental plane is the plane of meanings, values, and intentions, which can't be perceived directly but can flow into forms given by the senses. (Think of the way a meaning can flow into a spoken or written sentence...)

Re: Silent Records, Geometry and the Horse,

[ecosophia]

Justin, fascinating stuff. I've just been getting into Genesis of late, courtesy of some lucky finds at the local thrift store, and enjoying them a great deal; I'll keep an eye out for Gabriel's solo work.

Re: Neptune in Aries

[neptunesdolphins]

So it has no relation to the eclipses of the Moon and Sun in Aries this past month?

Various bloggers are saying this is spiritual warrior energy, and paradigm shift. What are they reacting to?

I have Neptune in Libra along with Venus and Saturn, so it really doesn't affect me? Nothing in Aries. Does it only affect people who have Neptune in Aries or Aries people?

I did have a bad reaction to the two eclipses, but then again I have been having bad reactions to them for the past few years.

Re: Magic and Literature, Magic and Opera,

[(Anonymous)]

hey there... you might be interested in this book, which is on my list to read, but I haven't gotten to yet:

Money and magic :a critique of the modern economy in the light of Goethe's Faust by Hans Christoph Binswanger ; with a postscript by Iring Fetscher ; translated by J.E. Harrison.

"Although Faust is widely celebrated as a literary classic, few readers have appreciated its penetrating insights into the enduring social problems of the modern economy. Hans Christoph Binswanger looks at Faust through the lens of economics and enlarges our understanding of this epic by explaining Goethe's preoccupation with financial matters. Money and Magic interprets Faust as a warning about the dangers of pursuing endless wealth. It will be a valuable resource for Germanic and Goethe scholars, social and cultural historians, and economists alike."--Publishers blurb...

It's actually pretty short read, just 133 pages, so I should plan to get to it myself sooner than later.

Justin Patrick Moore