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 not be put through.  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 eighty-first published book, the third entry in my series of occult detective novels starring eighteen-year-old Ariel Moravec and her adept grandfather Dr. Bernard Moravec. As I think I mentioned here already, I didn't intend these to be young-adult novels -- I simply wanted a protagonist who was in a good situation to begin occult training, and had plenty of entertaining problems of her own. Nonetheless I was delighted a while back to hear from a reader whose young daughter, a fan of these novels, has begun calling them "Nancy Druid stories." 

In this third installment, Ariel and her grandfather are caught up in a mystery surrounding a strange artifact from pre-Roman Italy, a bronze plaque with wolves and an inset moon of carnelian. The Heydonian Institution wants it for their collection of ancient magical items, but somebody else is after it, too -- and circumstantial evidence suggests that the somebody in question might just run on all fours and bay at the moon on certain nights. As Ariel researches the truth behind the old myth of the werewolf she hurtles toward a dangerous confrontation on the night of the full moon...

Copies? You can get them here if you're in the US and here elsewhere. Owoo! 

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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 post is now closed, and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

Re: big questions on heavy matters

[kallianeira]

Earthworm,

If this can happen to _you_ then may the heavenly powers help us all! This sounds like the textbook description of a shamanic initiation and the report from a ten-day Buddhist silent meditation retreat mashed up with Neo's finding the stillness in the Matrix.

Reading your reply gives me the impression of being a fly with all its simultaneous points of view. Are those instances of destruction from many past lives? A metaphor for a single life? Showing you the continuity of the spark anyway. The focus seems to shift a lot more than we are used to: disconcerting.

And, Earthworm, you were already one of the commenters out there at the front of the field in creative work and exploring syntheses. Is there no limit?

Re: big questions on heavy matters

[kallianeira]

Thank you very much. We have what you have: RSPCA.
All this was a long time ago, I remember (Eliot sprang to mind, thank you again! https://poetryarchive.org/poem/journey-magi/), and a long way away, somewhere I only went once, so naught I can do for those dogs.

Now I am in another country town where it is as bad. People love their pig-hunting and raise certain breeds of dog solely for that purpose who live the same way, or in cages in back yards. At the same time they will pay $2500 for a dachshund puppy to have in their house. This culture is stronger than the RSPCA. The cruelty is evangelical, with hate letters in the paper vilifying cats - which some here are not above kidnapping and killing.

You and I are of like sentiment with wishing to remedy cruelty. I am a soft-hearted would-be rescuer with the good fortune not to have turned into a homeless animal shelter. My cats have been rescue pets and always will be.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you use a ritual when making an astrological talisman or item using an elected time? I've noticed a wide range of methods from minimal (a few words w/suffumigation ) to what I would consider elaborate. Would certain procedures make the crafted item more effective or does that belong more to the election? Any comments appreciated.

[jenniferkobernik]

In your experience, are planetary talismans prepared by one person for another effective, or is the act of preparing the talisman itself a major part of its effectiveness?

Re: Individuality/Divine Spark interaction

[geoffg]

Thank you for the response. The Cosmic Doctrine has been like pretty much nothing else I've ever read, I find myself pondering bits of it all the time but the material still feels overwhelming and confusing much of the time.

If you don't mind one more question, in your experience, how long does it typically take for working with occult ideas to start to gel in consciousness in a way that isn't bewildering, if ever?

I find the experience to be like lurching between moments of insight and spirituality that make me soar, to moments where I feel like I have been hit over the head with a club of craziness and surreality. I guess it doesn't really matter much, once you jump off the ledge there isnt much chance of unjumping.

Re: Ecosophia Prayer List

[fringewood]

I notice Princess Cutekitten is not on either list. Has anyone heard from her or know how she is?

Re: The Mystery of Roy Jay

[xcalibur_djs]

I suppose that's as good an answer as any! And yes, the flashing bit, and similar, is exactly what I redacted from the summary. Still, there's alot of strangeness surrounding this, as you said.

Whether he's an illusion or not, I'd still like to know whether such retroactive meddling is plausible, or at least possible.

[(Anonymous)]

1. I have been praying the Rosary more or less daily for two months now. I am praying it for a few purposes, but among them, in a time with as septic an astral atmosphere as ours is, it seemed to be that praying the Rosary may be helpful to cleaning up one’s personal astral surroundings and perhaps to helping strengthen a powerful established ritual for cleansing oneself astrally in America. Do you believe this is accurate?

2. If people become what they call themselves and think of, I imagine that the subset of the LGBTQ community that actively calls itself “degenerate” as a sort of means of recapturing the label for themselves, would unfortunately have a worsening effect on those calling themselves it? One should, to my mind, focus on imagining positive visions of what they are and what they can be called, and that word has centuries of negative energies behind it. I feel sympathy for what they’re trying to do - foster self-acceptance - but it’s an approach that will only backfire.

[mole_end]

In the CGD system, Coel and Sul share the second/ninth (depending which direction you're counting) sphere of the Tree. Does this mean, according to the symbolism, that they are consorts, or not necessarily? Also, are Ced the earth mother ("the principle female deity") and Hu the Mighty ("the principle male deity") mated in this system? (I remember Manly P. Hall in The Secret Teachings... said something to the effect that Hu and Ced were a kind of Celtic Isis and Osiris.)

The reason I'm asking is that if so, these pairings seem to be different than the ones in the DH and DMH. Now that's totally fine with me; there's no reason in my mind why the mythology of the druid revival pantheon couldn't and shouldn't be as varied as any of the others are. I was just making sure I'm not reading things into the symbolism that the deities didn't put there in your meditations.

Re: Individuality/Divine Spark interaction

[ecosophia]

Occult ideas were instantly comfortable to me once I encountered them -- it felt as though somebody was finally talking sense for the first time in my life. I assume this means I'd encountered them repeatedly in previous lives. I know this isn't true for most people! Anyone else have an experience to pass on?

Re: How much of astrology is divination and how much of it is objective?

[ecosophia]

My mundane interpretations are a free mix of out-of-the-book objective rules, a good basic knowledge of politics, and intuition. How much of which? I have no idea. There's certainly some divinatory aspect, since machine-generated delineations are usually pretty bad, but I have no idea how to quantify the different contributions.

Re: Art and Design

[ecosophia]

A fine question to which I don't know the answer! Anyone else?

Re: The Pentagram of Purification by the Spirit, or of the Elevation of the Earth a gift from the FC

[ecosophia]

Hmm! Thank you very much for this.

[ecosophia]

These are well worth adding to the Venus list for planetary charities -- thank you.

[ecosophia]

No worries. Bits of junk fall into the Earth's atmosphere all the time -- most of them are natural junk left over from the creation of the solar system, i.e., meteors, but many of those are made of metal, you know. It's not an issue.

[ecosophia]

Don't do it! Rubeus and Albus together means that there's some kind of trap and you're much too innocent to see it.

[ecosophia]

Dispose of the salt by turning on the cold water in your sink and washing the salt down the drain with it. Dispose of the nails by burying them, preferably close to a road or path.

Re: Dowsing and common courtesy

[frittermywig]

Hi Vitranc, somehow I recently came across the website for The American Society of Dowsers-- maybe of interest to you too!

Re: Athena devotional resources?

[ecosophia]

Get a statue of the goddess and make a little shrine -- this can be as simple as a nice cloth across the top of a small bookshelf or what have you, with the statue on top of it. Get an incense burner and some incense -- stick frankincense is good. When you want to pray to her, burn some incense, repeat the Orphic hymn to Athena, talk to her as you would to an older and wiser friend, and then clear your mind and listen for a while. It really is that simple.

Re: Moving SOP

[rexford]

Most of the ritual takes place in the astral realm when I am driving. Half the people are on their phone in their cars... driving is a bit crazy now anyway. I spend a quarter of my waking life on the highways... so I'm not sure what else to say about that.
It doesn't work as well as in a pristine forest, but I can definitely fill the three cauldrons. One side effect I don't like I have noticed is that the 400 series highways are very polluted places, not great environments to practise in for this reason. The pollution sort of gets in the working and needs to be consciously cleared away in cleaner settings.

Re: Earth Elementals

[ecosophia]

They really are earthy: placid, stubborn, unsentimental, unyielding. Imagine that a boulder opened a pair of stony eyes, considered you, and then decided to say something.

[ecosophia]

My advice? Talk to your characters and let them tell you their stories. Imagine yourself in a suitable setting -- a pub, say -- meeting one of your characters. Get them talking, and let them explain the story to you. That's how I always do it.

I mean this quite literally. Get your thoughts out of the way and let your imagination take over. If you let your characters talk to you, they'll take care of the plot and the rest of it.

Re: Athena devotional resources?

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you!

Re: The Mystery of Roy Jay

[ecosophia]

No, I don't think anybody's writing themselves into the timeline. In any year you care to name, there were hundreds of minor figures in entertainment, or any other field you like, who have been completely forgotten now. Somebody found one of them. Who, and what, that "somebody" is -- now that's another matter...

Magical tools

[numinosum]

Good evening!

I have a hand-made hunting knife, very sharp with a lovely antler handle. I would like to consecrate it as a ritual knife, but I may have used it before - for very little, but it’s not entirely new. I know if you use a magical knife for a mundane purpose, it becomes desacralized, but unclear about the custom going in the other direction.