Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

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-seventh published book, a study of the utterly unfashionable approach to sexual energies in magic that Dion Fortune and her fellow occultists of the Society of the Inner Light pioneered. You can always get a lot of interest by telling people to engage in orgiastic excess, and curiously enough, you can also get a lot of interest by telling people that sex is bad and God will spank them for thinking about it. Suggest something in between these extremes and nothing like so many people want to hear about it. Be that as it may, this is a practical handbook of magical practices that use redirected, sublimated erotic energies; the participants sit several feet from each other, usually with an altar in between them, and stay fully clothed. How dowdy? Nonetheless the methods work extremely well, and I give full details. If you're interested, you can get copies here in the US and here elsewhere. 

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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

[xcalibur_djs]

seconding this.

[(Anonymous)]

Last time I saw her was at the end of March on Kimberly Steele's dreamwidth:

https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/143708.html?thread=4405340#cmt4405340

Re: Ghosts

[(Anonymous)]

Sort of the opposite of ancestor ghosts. My mother told me that as a young child she had two "invisible playmates. She described them to her mother, who responded that they might be the ghosts of her twin sisters who had died shortly after birth and that my mother hadn't known about (People weren't as open to telling children about family secrets and tragedies in that generation). After they were identified she never saw them again. She always felt that they just wanted to be recognized and remembered. My grandmother told me that as she recovered from the birth she saw Jesus with the babies in his arms and knew that they were alright. My grandmother was never a churchgoing woman. When I read Cardinal Newman's summation of the religion of ordinary English as "read the Bible and trust in God" I thought, that was my grandmother's religion as well.

Rita

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for hosting this space.

I’m working on the meditations on the magical images of the Tree of Life, and I’ve found that the images in my mind’s eye seem to form almost on their own—I of course start from the description of the magical image and it’s always consistent with that, but the details have a way of forming themselves, in some cases differently from my expectations, if that makes sense. Is this normal in your experience?

Also—I’m working on the image of the path of Tau now—is it important to wait until later to try pathworking and in this stage just focus on imagining the doorway? I don’t want to rush anything, but it also seems like much of the meaning of the path is behind the door, so to speak.

Re: Dream

[(Anonymous)]

Would interdimensional beings such as these initially emerge from bodies of water then? Is there something concrete in the tale of Lazurus the Loosener?

Gods as Divine Processes

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG, as I’ve continued to work with the Middle Pillar I’ve found myself focusing on the names of God and seeking to understand them better. I’ve enjoyed your exposition in Paths of Wisdom of the individual Hebrew letters and how they spell out different aspects of the process of divine action in the created world. Are there any books (yours or others) which you’d recommend for exploring this aspect of the gods further?

Alchemical tinctures

[(Anonymous)]

Do you have any recommendations on using Spagyrics to aid in spiritual work? Let's say I craft a mugwort spagyric to help with insights during meditation and prayer. A few drops in water, and saying a prayer before consumption? Should it only be used sparingly, or can one use it say, once a week for Holy Shabbat prayers? Or would you recommend sticking with something less potent like a tea or tincture. Any brief guidance you could share would be lovely, thank you sir and many blessings to you

Re: Public perception of occultism

[ritaer]

About 30 years ago there was a fundamentalist who claimed to have been a Satanist. Reported that to advance in the cult one had to sacrifice joints of one's fingers. Yet, oddly, his hands were intact. Can't remember if anyone called him on it.

For a balanced examination of the Satanism scare of the 1980s I recommend The Satanism Scare by James T. Richardson. Should be locatable through an academic library.

Rita

Affirmations and Ageless Wisdom

[hedgerow]

Good evening JMG and all.

1. In my day job, I help people overcome addiction. I've personally worked with your affirmation instructions with great success — spending a year on one affirmation, then over two years on another, both with strong results. When working with addictions like alcohol, cocaine, or compulsive pornography use, is there a reliable structure for affirmations that avoids negative phrasing? For example, Addictive Voice Recognition Technique uses: “I will never drink again, and I will never change my mind.” I’ve considered: “I overcome all temptations to drink alcohol.” Do you think this kind of structure is effective?

2. I recently attended public lectures in Glastonbury on Ageless Wisdom and Esoteric Psychology, which I found aligned in some ways with your Occult Philosophy Workbook. The speaker was very critical of "occultism," including tarot and divination, yet recited The Great Invocation (written by Alice Bailey, I believe) and explored the Seven Rays — material I recognise as Theosophical, and thus part of the Western occult tradition. Is such an aversion to the term "occultism" common in these circles, or does this seem more idiosyncratic to that group?

[xcalibur_djs]

This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but one of my early exposures to occultism was via Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival:
https://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/realitycarnival.html
This is rather nostalgic for me, and I'm glad to see it's still going! I think it was via this that I found that story of ppl exploring a cave in Italy where subterranean humanoids lived, among other things.

[industrialchemy]

I am always delighted to see people interested in the Lullian Art! I have been reading/thinking/writing about it nearly daily for almost a year now. There are currently no introductory texts aimed at people who want to use the Art, although I am working on writing one myself. I have also started putting informational videos on YouTube explaining the basics under the same username as here.

The one book that I can kind of recommend is Anthony Bonner’s The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull. There is a lot of good information in it but it is written by an academic for an academic audience, not for beginners or anyone actually trying to use the Art. Bonner is quite readable but he just has a different aim than someone teaching the Art as system to be used. It is also quite expensive so I would recommend trying to get a copy through interlibrary loan first if you are able before deciding if you want to shell out for it.

Good luck and feel free to message me through Dreamwidth if you would like to chat more about Llull and his system.

[ecosophia]

I'm delighted to hear that you're working on an introductory text! The combinatorial art is among the things I'd most like to see brought back into use. Thank you also for the heads up about Bonner's book.

Re: Dream

[jpc_w]

On reading this thread, I immediately thought of faery.

It has contradictory associations with lands of the dead, the etheric plane and overflowing life, an alien landscape, and the idea that it's somehow fading away without ever disappearing. There's also that strange business about the "tithe to Hell", which could imply souls beyond the normal recarnation cycle periodically get punked into incarnation.

Who knows, maybe magic has decreased in material efficacy because they're using it all in preparation for their departure.

Re: Public perception of occultism

[ecosophia]

Was that Mike Warnke, by any chance? He was one of the most prominent of the "I was a Satanist" fraudsters. It's an old, old scam, and has been applied in many directions -- I encourage people to look up Maria Monk to read about a 19th-century equivalent that targeted the Catholic church.

Re: Dream

[ecosophia]

No, that wasn't part of what I saw. Quite the contrary, the souls made the leap and then incarnated in human bodies.

Re: Dream

[ecosophia]

Interesting. The main difference is that the fae aren't incarnated in human bodies -- they have dense etheric bodies of their own.

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, that's quite common. That shows that your astral images are not just internal to yourself -- they're tapping into the astral plane.

2) There are various opinions on this. From my current perspective, once you have a clear sense of the meaning of the symbols of the spheres on either end of the path, you can walk it.

[(Anonymous)]

A few MM's ago you wrote that:

"The goal of Golden Dawn practice is to achieve adeptship. An adept is a human being who, through spiritual and magical practice, has brought his ordinary conscious self into full alignment with his higher self and the guardian angel set to guide him, and has enormous (but still finite) powers of healing and blessing."

I wanted to ask, does it work? If I were to dedicate say 20+ years of my life to serious Golden Dawn practice am I likely to meet my guardian angel?

I joined a temple about 6 months ago and I'm due to take my Zealator intitation soon. However, I feel like the fool stepping into the great unknown. The secrecy clause means I don't know what to expect (nobody really talks about the expeience) and I'm feeling afraid. I'm not interested in money, or power or status - I'm ready to finish material incarnation for good.

Re: Gods as Divine Processes

[ecosophia]

No, because once you have the basic understanding of the letters, the way to explore them further is to do the meditations yourself. You'll get more that way than a whole library of books can teach you.

Re: Alchemical tinctures

[ecosophia]

You're venturing into a realm where very little work seems to have been done so far. Thus all I can do is encourage you to experiment, and let others know how it goes!

Re: A few questions

[(Anonymous)]

To me, America itself seems to be a transitional country, part Piscean, part Aquarian.

And just as the Piscean Age's expression was limited by the fact that groups resist being subsumed into one global religious worldview, the Aquarian Age's expression will be limited by the fact that most people (including me) are not creative enough to develop unique worldviews.

Patrick

Re: Affirmations and Ageless Wisdom

[ecosophia]

1) I've never seen a structural approach to this. Your affirmation is good; depending on the person, another might be "alcohol belongs to my past, not to my present or future." It interests me that the technique you cited uses "never" -- that's not quite the same as a standard negative, and repeating it that way might work well. Say it aloud a few times and see what vibe it gives you!

2) Yeah, there's a whole subculture of people who are into occultism but refuse to call it that. "Ageless wisdom" is one common euphemism; fans of Rudolf Steiner prefer "spiritual science."

[(Anonymous)]

Is it okay to advance your magic practice when you are sick? I think my sickness might be karma related for not forwarding my magic practice and just cruising on the results that I got already.

[(Anonymous)]

I checked an online ephermis, which confirms there was a partial lunar eclipse on that day. The time indicates the full moon rose over Jerusalem while being eclipsed.

Patrick

[ecosophia]

Nobody can tell you in advance how far you'll get in this lifetime, since that depends on what kind of momentum you have from previous lifetimes. What I can say is that if you overcome your fears and pursue the work of each degree with focus and vigor, you'll accomplish as much as you possibly can in this incarnation.