Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's almost midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is Max Heindel, founder of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, one of the big four American Rosicrucian orders during the golden age of American occultism -- that was most of a century ago, in case you were wondering.

Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer, though it may be Tuesday sometime before I get to them all.

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 the button below to access my online tip jar.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed to new questions. See you next week!***

Comments

[packshaud]

I can think of a lot of stuff I would not touch because of the danger. Ocean magic, kundalini, Enochian, doing magic workings with the Good People. Even basic practices have risks--working with elementals may tempt you to work more with your favorite element, which can lead to catastrophic results--a risk that also is embedded in the work with the fae, which overlaps with elementals to some extent. Even Hermetic Golden Dawn is not entirely safe. It is not necessary to comment on what Thelema did to Crowley.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! I know about kundalini—not from personal experience, fortunately—and I wonder, could all those untrained and poorly trained yoga teachers out there have anything to do with why an increasing number of rich (“middle-class”) American women are going crazy these days?

Do not know anything about sea magic. What’s so dangerous about it?

And what did Thelema do to Crowley?

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I hadn't considered that possibility, but you may be right. I'll need to read up more on the symptoms of kundalini psychosis, and keep an eye out for the known symptoms of physical kundalini pathology (fortunately Manly P. Hall discusses these in one of his essays).

[(Anonymous)]

Please let us know what you find out. I am growing increasingly concerned about the strong influence crazy people have in our society. Why, just the other day, a U.S.senator made an important decision that seems to have been largely the result of his encounter with a couple of crazy people in an elevator.

[packshaud]

Sea magic is centered on a single element, water, and it is too strong. The ocean will... lure you. The potential to madness and suicide by drowning is too big.

About Crowley, where to start... if you put consumption of bodily fluids, drug addiction, dying in abject poverty in a sentence to describe a single person, something went very wrong.

[ecosophia]

Very much so. Crowley started out rich, talented, handsome, well educated, and charismatic, and he ended up as a burnt-out heroin addict in a small town flophouse with an estate worth fourteen shillings and a name that he'd gone out of his way to make a laughing stock on three continents. If that's the result of a life devoted to magic, you're doing it wrong!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks, John and Packshaud!

[(Anonymous)]

I spent some time in India with some mystics who did yoga who said never mix it with alcohol or caffeine. The results are usually not lethal, but rather colorful mental instability can occur. I think that might be what’s happening, but I admit I don’t know enough (anything that requires giving up alcohol or caffeine is not something I’m interested in)

[ecosophia]

Hmm! That's fascinating -- and potentially really troubling. I may have to do some serious research into this.