Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's midnight 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've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share.)

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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!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Good evening, JMG,
What's the difference between HGA/Genius and Higher Self?
Thank you.

[ecosophia]

That's something about which occult writers disagree sharply. Some people insist that those are two names for the same thing. I think they're wrong, partly because of my experiences and partly because I tend to rely on Dion Fortune, who also had a little bit of experience in these matters.

As I see it, there are two things involved here, aside from the lower self or personality -- that's the ordinary self you call "me." The first of them is the higher self or individuality. This isn't a separate being from you -- it's who you really are. Your personality is a mask (the word "personality" comes from a Latin word for "mask"). What's under the mask is the individuality or higher self, the self that survives death and passes through the cycles of reincarnation -- what Zen masters call the face you had before your mother and father were born.

The guardian angel or guardian genius is something else again. It's a wholly separate entity from you, an emanation from the Divine, and its task is to help you in your spiritual development. It can't make you do anything. All it can do is advise you, and you have to pay attention to it; it can express itself as intuition, insight, the voice of conscience, or what have you. Workings to come into closer contact with this entity are very useful because it has a much broader perspective than you do, and the better you can hear it, the easier a time you'll have in your spiritual work and in your life as a whole.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks again. A few days ago, I prayed to HGA/Genius, and then for a very short time, I felt... some kind of presence... it was a very calming and pleasant sensation, but I couldn't tell if it was me or not me... still wondering.

[ecosophia]

If you invoked the Genius, you very likely got the Genius, in which case it's not you -- in Dion Fortune's terms, it's an emanation from the Solar Logos that has accompanied your soul since before you first entered biological incarnation as pond scum, and will continue to help you along until you complete the whole arc of your soul's journey.

I recommend daily prayer to the Genius, btw. It's not as flashy as Abramelin-style operations, but it builds powerfully over time.

Question on Life Force Workbook

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, JMG, you are releasing your Life Force Workbook this coming September. I am interested in it. I do practice tai chi and a bit of qigong and have considered The Five Rites. I understand the book is the fourth in a series beginning with The Way of the Golden Section. Can the Life Force Workbook be studied separately without going through the previous volumes? I do a version of the SOP with benefit, dabble some in discursive meditation with intentions of getting more consistent in it, read and consider a daily chapter of the New Testament and have my own way of divination not using physical aids. Also a little natural magic and communication with herbs and plants. Thank you for any input.

Re: Question on Life Force Workbook

[ecosophia]

Yes, all three of the Workbooks are designed so that anybody can use them. The way it works is that the three books titled The Way Of... are training manuals that have to be done in sequence, but the three Workbooks can be used by anybody who practices discursive meditation. The training program you've described, btw, seems quite sensible, and I wish you excellent results with it!

Re: Question on Life Force Workbook

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for your quick and kind reply.

Massage + horary

[(Anonymous)]

I had a massage about 2 weeks ago. I've been having intrusive thoughts about an old ex from about 5 years ago now, every now and then I would think "I want X in my life." During the massage, I was thinking about how thoughts might be associated with knots in the body, and how that intrusive thought often comes after this direct hard-to-describe feeling. Somehow, the combination of the massage, experiencing the feeling directly before it leads to the intrusive thought helped me break the cycle. I haven't had that intrusive thought ever since. I find the experience hard to describe, but I had a few different thoughts after that, like this sort of intrusive thought is more common and maybe sometimes more "benign", but it almost acts like a dampener on the direct experience of different feelings. Like I felt that this particular intrusive thought for me dampened a lot of my enthusiasm and "desire", like I had this feeling of enthusiasm and desire but there was this faulty association with wanting that ex that dampened it every time. I feel like it's part of why things as an adult feel less "vivid" than as a child? Is there anything in what you have studied that deals with this?

Besides that, I've been using horary astrology for trading recently. It had been on my mind for a while, but I kind of stumbled into my current approach. My trade ideas are based on my own analysis of macro-economics, politics etc. I identify e.g. Brent crude as a vehicle to trade, then I might or might not cast a chart. But I constantly ponder the trade over the days it's on, and when I feel like the moment is right, then I cast a chart as to whether or not to stay in the trade. I mainly look at the Asc Lord, 2nd house, and the 6th (second from 5th) because I am looking for profits, profits from speculation.

So far it's working out pretty well. I previously was trying to think of how to use horary for trading given that in all traditional sources, you should only ask questions you have seriously pondered, ideally for 1 day or more. Trying to adapt some of the remote viewing protocols where they do it "experimentally" didn't feel right, but I think so far this makes sense.

I would be curious what you think, and if you have any other thoughts on using astrology for trading.

Re: Massage + horary

[ecosophia]

1) That's quite accurate. As we age, unless we take systematic steps to break up these knots and emotional burdens, they absorb more and more of our life force; that's why things seem pale and gray as we get older -- too much of our life force is stuck in old experiences. Any form of therapy or practice, such as the Octagon Society lessons, that release that locked-up energy will help make things bright and energetic again.

2) Interesting! The one system of market astrology I've studied in any detail is one that works with inception charts for companies, and it's focused on a buy-and-hold approach rather than speculative profits over the short term; the shortest term the system I know uses is one year. It works quite well -- my first tentative investments using it have paid off quite nicely -- but of course I combine the astrological indications with close study of the specific industries in which I invest. The horary approach you describe seems reasonable, and I have no quarrels with your house choices, but it's not something I've explored personally, nor am I likely to -- I prefer the slow and steady approach.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG, I have two questions.

First, you wrote that in a geomancy shield chart reading, the left and right witnesses are understood to represent the querent and the quesited. Is it possible to do shield chart readings that relate to the relationship between two arbitrary entities instead?

For example, say I want to do a reading about how a forecast drought will affect the supply of potatoes. In your experience does it work to do a reading with the drought as Right Witness, potato farms as Left Witness and the relationship between them as Judge? If I'm not involved with potato farming and I'm asking this as a person without direct ties to the issue I'm not sure there's a way I can frame the inquiry so as to create the standard witness relationship where the right witness represents me.

Hitherto I've used other techniques to inquire after interactions of two factors, for instance I would draw five tarot cards in a "+" shape. One axis would represent a three-card reading for the one factor, the other axis would represent a three-card reading of the other factor, and the middle card would represent the interaction between the two. The geomancy shield chart seems like a more natural way to do this if such readings for arbitrary binary relationships can be expected to work.

Second, is there a good outline I can read of the specific imbalances that cause problems with the original Golden Dawn material? I searched your blog history but couldn't find much detail. I was also curious as to whether the Heathen Golden Dawn course is designed to amend these imbalances the way Celtic Golden Dawn is, provided that you or other commenters are sufficiently familiar with it. Thank you.

[ecosophia]

1) That's a fascinating idea but I don't think it's been tested. That being the case, you have the chance to break new ground. Start doing readings on the basis you've sketched out, interpret them, and then compare your interpretations to what actually happens. Adjust your interpretations accordingly. You could be on the brink of launching a new mode of geomantic practice.

2) I don't know of any detailed discussion in print. The basic problem, though, is easy enough to state. If your major initiation, the one that leads from the lesser to the greater mysteries, is too heavily keyed to solar energies, there's a pretty good chance that people who aren't able to rise to the challenge of the greater mysteries will end up suffering the usual consequences of unbalanced solar influence, i.e., they'll become egomaniacal jerks. The GD produced far too many of those to be the result of chance. The Heathen Golden Dawn, fortunately, is well designed to avoid that.

Derealization

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

Re last week’s MM mention of Naomi Wolf’s apparent depersonalization/derealization disorder - many of the disorder’s symptoms, the sense of physical and emotional detachment, feelings of unreality, the sense that the world has lost its color and vibrancy, etc. …. it’s not a headline that those can be symptoms of a rapid Kundalini rising. Though I’ve greatly stabilized, close to 50 years after I experienced a morbid K awakening, I’m still dealing with those symptoms. The difference between me and Ms. Wolf is that I - and I believe most people experiencing a K awakening - recognize that it’s our perceptions that have changed, not the world around us. No geo-engineering, no CERN timeline flip-flop blaming.

However, would you suppose there might be a “Universal Kundalini”effect at play here, one that is being pitched at a frequency so to speak, and that might be impacting people such as Ms. Wolf? Not that such a thing would spell the end of the world but there are those who read the Book of Revelations as a s Kundalini schematic that signals both individual and social upheavals.

Thanks,
Willl M

Re: Derealization

[ecosophia]

Hmm. I'd want to see some evidence for that claim, since Wolf's disorder is to my mind better explained by the effects of severe stress (such as we're all experiencing) triggering a psychological crisis. Still, I can't claim that this dismisses the possibility out of hand.

[rhydlyd]

I finally got around to reading Fortune's The Goat-Foot God. Enjoyable as it is, I'm not an upper-crust Brit living a century ago, so I'm probably missing a good bit as the scenes and the titles mentioned in the dialog go by. Might you and/or the commentariat point me to a guided tour? Or should I just dig into the Jeeves and Wooster Omnibus and go from there?

[ecosophia]

What an intriguing idea! I don't think anybody's done a guided-tour commentary on the social and cultural world of Fortune's novels.