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! 

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

Comments

The Mystery of Roy Jay

[xcalibur_djs]

There's been a strange occurrence -- the appearance of a minor comedian from the 70s/80s, who seemingly hasn't existed until recently. I'll port in the official summary from /x/ (redacted to keep Magic Monday PG-13):

"
A speedy disco roydown on the situation so far:
>An anon posts a thread on April 4, 2025, titled "this is a demon writing itself retroactively into pop culture history", with an image of a man in pajamas
>The OP explains that "you'll remember him from your childhoods soon enough"
>Anons begin searching for Roy Jay, but no Wikipedia page is found, no image results, nothing
>Within a couple of days, Roy Jay content flooded the internet and anons began finding increasingly older references to Roy Jay
>He suddenly has a Wikipedia page, photos, TV spots, albums, and even a Facebook fan page
>Much of the content is bizarre: stories range from Roy {redacted}, to deep frying a slipper while working a food van (and {redacted})
>Replies to Roy's content online seem overwhelmingly fake: odd profiles of dubiously real people all claiming to have known Roy personally
>An anon bought and provided photos of a vinyl and news clipping, both (potentially) proving Roy Jay's past existence upon this earth
>A different anon emailed the crematorium where Roy's funeral was supposedly held, only to be told there is no record of Roy Jay's funeral there
>Many new photos have emerged on Roy's Facebook page, despite not being there when investigations started weeks ago
>A YouTuber named "Grayy Man" released a video briefly explaining the current circumstances, only to be bombarded by more NPC profiles claiming to have known Roy
>the content continues to grow, with more evidence of Roy's existence popping up every day
"

So there you have it. Personally, he would've been before my time if he was real, but I've consumed loads of content, and surfed the seven seas of the internet, yet I never came across a single trace of this dude until all this happened. I can also confirm that there's youtube comments from a decade ago from supposed fans, and they all seem rather fake. As the summary mentions, others distinctly recall not finding anything on him, then seeing all this backdated content just materialize somehow.

So, what's your take on this phenomenon? Is this really an entity, demonic or otherwise, retroactively writing itself into the timeline? Did he exist, but was censored until recently? Is he a giant AI-generated hoax?

Whatever Roy Jay was, would it be hypothetically possible for an entity to alter history in this fashion?

Re: The Mystery of Roy Jay

[lukedodson]

If I may, I think the general consensus from what I can see is that this is a real, one-hit-wonder comedian from the 1980s who ended his career after a disastrous episode in which he drunkenly flashed an audience, and that some 4chan prankster decided to weave an inventive creepypasta type narrative around him. The possible inspiration is the 'Parasite' episode of Rick & Morty, which features similar entities that insert themselves via false memories into other people's lives. One of the Parasites is named 'Sleepy Gary' and wears pyjamas similar to the ones that Roy Jay sometimes wore on stage, which may have inspired the 4chan post.

The Google searches might be explained by the fact that 'Roy Jay' is probably a difficult name to Google as it's so generic. Same with the funeral record - his real name was Roy Jorgensen, so 'Roy Jay' wouldn't show up any results.

Having said all that, there was something very trippy and disconcerting about my first encounters with the whole meme, and I was momentarily open to the possibility that it was some strange AI-generated prank/psy-op. I do find all of this a very interesting development in contemporary horror-fiction of an ARG-type - the use of found material to weave new stories that play on our inability to fully trust mediated content in an age of advanced technological foolery.

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.

Re: The Mystery of Roy Jay

[xcalibur_djs]

As an addendum, I'd like to link a fine substack article on the topic:
https://yakubianape.substack.com/p/the-hyperreal-mystery-of-roy-jay
It brings up another intriguing possibility of the mimetic parasite/memetic hazard. But, I can't be sure. In any case, claims of backdated content appearing, including a decade-old Wiki article that wasn't found before, add to the strangeness.

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...

Re: The Mystery of Roy Jay

[xcalibur_djs]

I see, thanks, but I have to add that your conclusion is rather intriguing. I wonder if they're manipulating the algorithms somehow?

Re: The Mystery of Roy Jay

[ecosophia]

Nothing could be easier, whether it's a human group playing games, or something else...

Re: The Mystery of Roy Jay

[xcalibur_djs]

I guess that's the proper avenue to go down -- that there's nothing supernatural about Roy Jay himself, but there may be paranormal activity surrounding his posthumous fame. Really interesting, and this may be intentional misdirection on the part of the entity, ie pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!