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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-eighth published book and nineteenth novel, a stand-alone (so far) tale set in 2095 or so. You could call it cli-fi (the current cute label for climate change fiction) if you like, or deindustrial SF; I'd call it a deindustrial noir Shinto science fiction spy thriller with Gnostic overtones. Jerry Shimizu, the two-fisted, gun-toting, half-Japanese tough guy who narrates the story, and the world in which he lives are interesting enough, at least to me, that he may get a sequel...but we'll see. If you're interested, you can get copies here in the US and here elsewhere.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed and no more comments will be put through. See you next week!***
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This is a rather sensitive topic so I am unsure if you will even be willing to post this. Yet, I still find it a productive question to ask.
In light of recent events in my extended family I wanted to ask you what the occult tradition you come from says about suicide? I have a catholic upbringing and yet I find it really hard to agree with the maxim that it is a sin. Granted, there are more nuanced takes on this in the modern form of Catholicism; the idea that suicide is not love of thy neighbor as the suicidially depressed individual forgets their larger context/import in their community. However, there still remains the idea od eternal damnation.
In the cinematic potrayal of Dracula: Vlad the Impaler showed his first wife killing herself. Vlad’s realization that the woman cannot be buried in consecrated ground and that eternal damnation is her punishment drives him into darkness and evil.
This is something I simply cannot wholeheartedly sign off on. Suicide seems to me to take place in the larger context of reincarnation: of larger lifecycles (as in cycles not only within your current incarnation but also tracing the outlines of cycles across lives). Reincarnation, in fact, seems to be the only way to put a sense of justice/meaning that does not pander to empty platitudes. Many friends and families coming from a Christian background have tried to help me by saying it was this person's "destiny" to do so, but I can't help but feel that is very fatalistic.
To circle back to my question:
1. How does your magical training contextualize suicide?
2. Is there anything your magical tradition says can be practiced to help the soul of the individual who suffered?
3. Does your magical tradition speak to how suicide can affect the individual's growth in later incarnations?
I understand the heavy nature of the subject and thank you for your time.
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1) If you deliberately and forcibly terminate your life before it's time for you to die, you basically have to wait on the other side of things until the time's up. Since you haven't gone through the usual processing of experiences before and during death, you arrive on the other side with your personality and emotional state unchanged...and there you sit. When your time to die finally rolls around, you go through the usual process.
2) Yes. Prayer for the dead is always beneficial, if you have (or are willing to establish) a relationship with the god or goddess to whom you pray. Deities can do things we can't, and helping a soul in that intermediate state is one of those things.
3) When the soul of the suicide reincarnates, it'll be faced with the same challenge it failed to meet in the previous life. As with any serious karmic issue, this will repeat over and over again until the soul finally gets it right.
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