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Magic Monday
Midnight is upon us 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-sixth published book, the second workbook and fifth volume in the Golden Section Fellowship sequence of occult training textbooks. Earth mysteries, for those who aren't familiar with the term, is a catchall label for all the strange things associated with ancient ruins, folk traditions, places where paranormal things happen much more often than usual. The book on the right, John Michell's visionary masterpiece The View Over Atlantis, was my introduction to the field back in the day, as it was for so many other people -- it didn't hurt that the cover art was by Roger Dean, more famous for all that hallucinatory Yes album cover art -- and this book is partly my homage to Michell and a vanished era, partly a guide to integrating earth mysteries studies with occult training, and partly -- or mostly -- a hands-on guide to finding the weirdness in the place where you live. You can get a copy here if you're in the United States and here elsewhere; I recommend the hardback if you're doing the course, because you're going to put a year of hard use into the book. Buy Me A Coffee
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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.
***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***
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(Anonymous) 2025-05-05 05:38 am (UTC)(link)-Would you happen to know any of the elemental correspondences for the carob tree?
-If I wanted to find out the correspondences for some plants that are not in the Natural Magic book, where do I begin?
-What are the properties that make beeswax so useful in magic? Bardon uses it for talismans and even figures for elementaries.
-Why is silk a good magic insulator? Do we know more or less how it works?
-And finally, I’ve heard a lot gem experts saying that nowadays it’s very hard to find rubies and sapphires that haven’t been heat treated to enhance their color, as it’s now the standard procedure at the source. Does this process affect their magic properties in any way?
I hope I’m not abusing your time by asking so many questions. I would appreciate any help I can get. Thank you!
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2) The old Doctrine of Signatures, the system by which the correspondences were assigned, is among the subsystems of Renaissance magic that nobody seems to have revived successfully yet. Intensive meditation on the characteristics of the plant you have in mind, trying to relate it to the elements, planets, and signs, is about all I can suggest.
3-4) Nobody knows. We're in the same position as people dealing with gravity before the time of Isaac Newton -- we know more or less what works, but not how or why it works.
5) Yes, it makes the gems much less magically effective. For this reason I strongly recommend using semiprecious stones with similar energies instead, as these are less often adulterated.
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Robert Allen Bartlett has a very handy book The Temper of Herbs that works along these lines from the alchemical point of view to help determine temper and correspondences for different plants not in the lore.
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