Magic Monday
May. 17th, 2026 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
It's a little before 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 meme? I've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share. Besides, this one's such a perfect summary of certain points I've been trying to make in recent posts over on the blog...)
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With that said, have at it!
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 04:07 am (UTC)Also, Lud-in-the-Mist by Mirrlees and A Voyage to Arcturus have arrived to me. Have you any thoughts or pointers about these titles? Much of what I’ve found is gush about their influence without any thought about how they do it or what those influences might be. Naturally, I’m curious about what might have been stuffed under the rug.
Many thanks!
commune with the aliens
Date: 2026-05-18 04:09 am (UTC)Hope all is well, and firstly Id like to thank you for all the attention you give here and thank you for listening to this silly question of mine.
Since we've recently gotten some confirmation from the government about alien existence, Id like to know what does the magic community think of this? There are a few things about it Id like to address, be it that the mainstream religious communities seek comfort and shelter in their books and dont think outside the box so much.
Alister Crowley, im not really a fan of his work but Im attentive to some things he did in the Giza Pyramid (in getting his book written via some telepathic communication method with an entity), and the being "Lam" he drew, it looks awfully like a grey alien. I've done a lot of research on the alien topic, and there are a handfull of psychics like Joe McMoneagle who was a remote viewer for the Army in the Stargate program who said he had an encounter with a UFO which burned him via radiation and he developed his psychic powers after that...
So people say that these aliens communicate via telepathy which is by and large the general consensus of people reporting contact... and many psychics I've spoken with (a few Rosicrucians actually) say that telepathy is possible and they have done it with other humans, but it takes practice.
So my big question I guess is to ask you if in your opinion are all these religions, magical practices, prayer and altered states of consciousness... could they be somehow just a means of communicating with these aliens via telepathic means that mainstream society has not discovered yet?
Crazy question, but is it not crazy to learn that aliens exist in the first place?
Well, if you could just talk alot about all of that, and just go into ideas you have and speculations and everything you can give me because I know you are a very learned man on the topics of magic, but not sure if you know much about the alien world... is there a cross-over perhaps?
thanks so much!
Eric
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 04:25 am (UTC)2) Delighted to hear it! Both of these are early fantasy novels, which helped keep the fantasy genre alive between the death of William Morris and the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring. Hope Mirrlees was a fascinating person, the partner of classicist Jane Ellen Harrison and a good friend of Virginia Woolf, and this was her one fantasy novel; it had no influence at all until Lin Carter reprinted it in the 1970s, after which quite a few fantasy authors read it and took inspiration from it. (Neil Gaiman's a particular fan.) A Voyage to Arcturus is a much stranger and richer work, early science fantasy with a heavy layer of philosophy; it influenced CS Lewis considerably -- you can see its fingerprints all over the first two volumes of his planetary trilogy.
Re: commune with the aliens
Date: 2026-05-18 04:40 am (UTC)That said, let's proceed. People see genuinely strange things in the sky; that's been proven beyond reasonable doubt. (The pseudoskeptics who reject that aren't reasonable.) It's been fashionable since the 1950s to assume that these strange things in the sky are spacecraft from other planets. That assumption's been challenged by some of the best researchers in the UFO field -- Meade Layne, John Keel, and Jacques Vallee among them -- and to my mind the challengers make a better case. So while there's certainly some form of nonhuman intelligence involved in these strange things, we have no evidence that they come from other planets and quite a bit of evidence that they don't.
They've always been here, in fact, at least as long as human beings have, and quite possibly longer. If you have the chance, check out Jacques Vallee's book Passport to Magonia, which shows that all the things that are currently said about aliens were being said about elves and spirits a thousand years ago.
Telepathic contact with nonhuman intelligences is something that occultists have been doing all through recorded history, by the way. One of the things we've learned about them in that time is that not all of them tell the truth. Some are whopping liars; others exist in a kind of dream state and simply mirror back to us what's in our own minds. So from an occult point of view it's fair to say that these beings exist, they've been interacting with us for thousands of years, and the interactions are sometimes helpful but more often deceptive.
Oh, and it's also clear that the US government, for whatever reason, is shoveling smoke on this subject. Thirty years ago we had cameras that could read license plates from orbit. The blurry, smudgy images they're releasing are not the best they can get -- and that raises all kinds of questions about why they're issuing those and nothing better.
Prayer answers & Dion Fortune
Date: 2026-05-18 05:05 am (UTC)I read a fantasy series where God makes sure the Knights of the Cross always happen to be where they are needed to fight evil. Unlike the fictional magic system of the series, this detail might reflect reality.
2. Dion Fortune's Through the Gates of Death says that the souls of dying people make preparations for the process (she is vague on what those preperations entail). But some people die abruptly, and have to be reincarnated just to make the final preparations and die properly in infancy. She says that if a baby looks like it has an old soul, it will probably not make it. But infant mortality rates have plummeted in recent decades, so is this teaching wrong? Or there could be a waiting list of souls unable to pass on to the afterlife until they get a chance to incarnate in a baby who will die during or shortly after birth? Or they are forced to live because of the advances of health care and develop mental issues from not having processed the memories from the previous life, and they will be better off as infant mortality rates return to historically normal levels in the coming decades.
Patrick H.
Re: commune with the aliens
Date: 2026-05-18 05:09 am (UTC)1) you dont think these aliens with their flying discs are coming from other planets... even congress people have said they come from "other dimensions", and ive seen genuine portals on verified videos. do you have any speculation about what that other place is or what it is like?
2) they've been here for thousands of years or more.... I belive this (thinking of ancient egypt, babylon etc.) and metaphysically do you suppose they take on the names of gods but stay relatively the same in their scope of story (ex. Horus vs. Jesus. vs.
3) you said "Telepathic contact with nonhuman intelligences is something that occultists have been doing all through recorded history, by the way"... but how is it that they KNOW? because we've seen the Grey beings, and they are physical, but I guess talking to them over whatever distance (next to you vs. prayer?) is a matter of speculation.
4) the interactions are helpful but more often deceptive.... I wonder why that is? thats odd. is there any talk on which ones are the more truthful, how many types there are, and which of the ones want to help us more vs the ones who are trying to hurt us?
And I mean whatever the US Goverment wants to put out is whatever they are gonna do... All we really need is some conformation it exists and to what degree... We've gotten pretty far with that confirmation from multiple differnt countries already but the US has the biggest voice on it all. My questions are just why are they here, what is our relation to them, what do they want from us, how can we benefit from them? what is their culture like?
Of course I am interested in the more truth telling beneficent ones, but knowing about all of them is of interest.
I wonder if John Dee's work, and all that scrying he did was actually in communicating with these aliens?
If you are knowledgeable on both subjects of magic and aliens, I would encourage you to write a book on the intersection of the two topics.
thank you for everything.
Eric
Re: commune with the aliens
Date: 2026-05-18 05:14 am (UTC)Patrick H
Hypothetical regarding forgiveness and breaking karmic ties
Date: 2026-05-18 05:31 am (UTC)I have recently contemplated a scenario where A and B develop a karmic tie in this life(now). I'm curious what is the general majority or plurality opinion(s) in occult philosophy (that you have knowledge of) with regard to forgiveness and breaking karmic ties.
For example, in my hypothetical, assuming A was 100% at fault, and assuming B entirely forgives A, I'm guessing A may still have work to do in the next life with whatever was his/her fault in this life(now), but would that still require future interaction with B in the next life?
Thank you,
-E.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 05:53 am (UTC)2 - Not all roads lead to Lewis, but he's certainly a busy intersection, isn't he?
MP effects
Date: 2026-05-18 06:03 am (UTC)Thank you for doing these magic mondays. I have two questions:
1. When I do the middle pillar ritual and circulate the light around, especially on days where the energy is moving pretty freely and forcefully and when I bring it up the center, my body temperature rises and I start sweating. I notice this when I do any sort of energy (chi) work in general. It should be fine, yes?
2. Does the self-initiation work fare better with a teacher? What I mean is, would we get better results if we had a teacher to guide us along? On one hand why call it self initiation if one needs a teacher? But on the other how would a student know if they’re doing things “correctly”?
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 07:11 am (UTC)https://inews.co.uk/opinion/trump-xi-maga-iran-strait-of-hormuz-4419727
- Lookie thet! One of those infamous Muhsonic Henshakes, they are IN on it, man!
- "It" what ?!
- Who knows... You don't wanna know! You can't handle the truth!
- Damn, wish I could.
~Thibault
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 07:51 am (UTC)To share, for those who wonder what SoP, QED, or IR mean, a list of abbreviations used on Ecopsophia. And here is a list of the books our host published so far.
To ask, "The Great Arcanum: A Commentary on 'The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic' by Eliphas Levi" now shows up as available to buy. Is it right to say this is your 87th published book?
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 09:00 am (UTC)-- Lieven
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 09:20 am (UTC)I hope you have a satisfying rest in the very near future. I have a query re a novel I'm writing in which one of my characters discovers she has some knowledge of natural magic (right after I bought a copy of your encyclopaedia on the topic, strangely enough). I'd like to keep this as accurate as possible.
My character sees that bunches of St John's Wort hung above the doorway of huts is being used as protection against monsters (namely, a land-roaming giant octopus). Do you have any recommendations on sources that can explain how such natural magic works/basic implications? Some of my main questions are:
1. Am I right in thinking protective herbs should be in odd numbers?
2. How does hanging herbs above a doorway protect the whole building? Intention? Would they need to be above windows too - why/not?
3. Similarly, could protective herbs worn in a bag around the neck only protect the wearer or have a wider effect?
4. Can protective herbs wear out/stop working?
5. How do such herbs stop monsters - presumably on a level higher than the material?
On a wider note, my deepest thanks for your 20 years of blogging. I came across The Archdruid Report during the GFC period and found your perspective fascinating and instructive, and kept reading. Then I found the Magic Monday posts at some point in that dreamless 2020 year and life REALLY got interesting. :)
Consent in astral encounters
Date: 2026-05-18 09:51 am (UTC)But then, knowing that dreams can occasionally represent real encounters between different people that take place on the astral plane, I wondered about the issue of consent in dreams, and in the astral realm generally.
I have seldom dreamed of myself taking firm action with another person like this, mostly I dream that I am trying, and mostly failing, to perform some task or reach some goal.
Anyway, I'm not sure of the exact question I want to ask, but I would be glad of any of your thoughts on the general theme of personal interactions in the astral plane, and specifically on the theme of consent (and the use of force, whether purposeful or inadvertent, to over-ride it).
Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 10:12 am (UTC)1) In occult terms, what is aphantasia? My assumption would be a difficulty perceiving the astral plane but maybe there's more to it?
2) What do you make of Illusionism as a theory of consciousness? It's obviously stupid—for consciousness to be an illusion, there has to be something to be deluded, i.e. consciousness—so why do people believe it? Are we just looking at fundamentalists who have to reject the evidence of their own, well, minds?
I ask because I just came across an online discussion on the matter and one comment particularly intrigued me:
To me, this sounds possible. To tie it to occultism, is "how conscious" people are an effect of the development of the mental sheath?
This hypothesis does run into the issue that, from my understanding, philosophers generally have a well developed mental sheath, so "Daniel Dennett's soul just isn't all that evolved" is too simplistic.
—David P.
Teaching on the 'blood verse'
Date: 2026-05-18 10:27 am (UTC)Please could you link to or repost the teaching on the blood verse?
I think you posted it some point in the last month. I saw it at the time but failed to save a link, and I've failed to find it by search engine and by looking back through your posts and comments.
(A female reader)
Re: commune with the aliens
Date: 2026-05-18 10:33 am (UTC)I favor the theory that we saw some sort of rare, unknown living life-forms that never come down to the surface of the earth, but live out their entire lives in the vast reaches of the atmosphere far above us--a vastness far greater than the surface of out rather small planet, and much less explored by us humans. But that's just a theory
Anyway, the only obvious conclusion is that "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Which is just how I prefer our lives to be: full of uncomfortable things we never can explain, much less explain away. A comforting life is a dull and boring life, IMHO.
All of which is also to say that I think Jacques Vallee was on the right track.
Motivations for Magic
Date: 2026-05-18 11:09 am (UTC)I have been practicing magic systematically now for several years. One of my motivations for doing this is that I want to be able to see realities that are hidden in the ordinary life of my culture, to somehow see for sure that there is more to life than just the materialistic view that I find rather empty and cold.
What I ponder if my motivation is somehow shallow. To be able to be in contact with the spiritual world, or some aspects of it, to get that TSW moment. Not for barely that as a sensational satisfaction, but to make it clear in no uncertain terms that these spiritual realities are real. I suppose it is to seek some cure to an excistential desperation.
Though, I know, the next question is "what then"? But I feel like that with such certainty, I could more freely live the kind of life I want to live. Not that anything is stopping me now, and I do my best as I am. Kind of like reaching out there with as open a mind as I can muster.
Things like voluntary out of body experiences seem like... too good to be true. Though it is almost like "I'd like to do that once, and then I would have no particular need for it anymore".
Essentially I want to lead a good life, to change what is within my sphere to change. I suppose I hold a belief that if I could "peek behind the curtain", it would change much for me.
Is this hope reasonable?
Speaking of Machen & Psychogeography
Date: 2026-05-18 12:02 pm (UTC)--
I am on the email list for Tartarus Press, a specialty publisher in England focused on ghost stories, weird literature and esoterica. I got an email for a new short story collection by R.B. Russell and it mentioned his previous nonfiction book Occult Territory: An Arthur Machen Gazetteer.
http://tartaruspress.com/russell-occult-territory.html
I am posting it here based on previous discussions with Robert Mathiesen, as I thought others, specifically anyone in London, Wales or going there, or those who happens to have an interest in Machen, might be interested in this book.
Happy Magic Monday
Justin Patrick Moore
Technique vs tradition
Date: 2026-05-18 12:03 pm (UTC)I recently found a book on Irish song magic that has been intensely interesting and infuriating. Namely the author has somehow managed to create screaming ultranationalist rants in pure cut “wokeist” language. Most of these can be boiled down to a sentence saying that music is a universal language followed by a tirade about how the Irish have the purest best culture ever and don’t you dare think of using the ideas described here in any context other than an Irish one.
This is annoying as I am not Irish, can never be Irish and don’t want to be Irish. I love my native culture rather a lot in fact but I am a musician and find that many of the techniques and theory discussed very useful and synergistic with my own practice.
I know you’ve talked about how mixing techniques from different traditions can be dangerous. But I don’t think that the admonitions sprinkled so liberally over this work are of that sort. I like these techniques they work well with my own path and the abilities whatever higher power has granted me. However I am not going to larp as a rural Irishman to use them.
Pardon the rant above my actual question, is borrowing a technique or set of ideas from a practice of a related culture safe and effective? Or is it playing with fire like mixing qigong and western magic?
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-18 12:07 pm (UTC)I hoped to share a new website and project I've been working on to help spread the MOE tradition.
https://modernorderofessenes.com/
If any students would like to learn and receive the healing activations, integrated with the Gnostic Lessons alongside additional reflections and readings to help the student deepen and build a personal spiritual practice, I'd invite them to read the website and send an application if interested.
For any Master Teachers who would like to be directly involved in this project, or linked to from my page as an alternative teaching source, I'd likewise encourage you to reach out! I've made certain to include a very clear disclaimer that the MOE is an open order, that my site and method is only one of many interpretations and they are all equally valid.
I hope this will be a doorway for some into this wonderful tradition!
Wishing all the best,
Matthew
Occult Philosophy Workbook
Date: 2026-05-18 12:15 pm (UTC)I'm working my way through the Occult Philosophy Workbook and have two questions arising from my daily meditations on the material:
1. I'm currently on the Plant Kingdom chapter and I wonder what happens to the associated group soul when plants or animals go extinct? Does it mean that the group soul has finished or completed its evolution too?
2. I was reflecting on how crystals are the most evolved form of the mineral kingdom and are attractive, highly ordered, and often conductive of (or able to do interesting things with) energies e.g. light, electric, magnetic. Randomly I thought about whether these properties also apply to humans who are close to completing our current level of evolution (e.g. close to developing a mental body): they often seem to attract others (for non-physical reasons), lead harmonious (or at least well put together) lives, and are able to better channel or work with higher plane energies. I wondered if I am drawing a useful connection here? And if you have anything to add or correct?
Many thanks as always,
Vivek
Re: commune with the aliens
Date: 2026-05-18 12:24 pm (UTC)Sorry, couldn't resist - : )
Speaking of Crowley, though, I always liked this quote, often referenced when Lam and Aiwaz come up...
"My observation of the Universe convinces me that there are beings of intelligence and power of a far higher quality than anything we can conceive of as human; that they are not necessarily based on the cerebral and nervous structures that we know, and that the one and only chance for mankind to advance as a whole is for individuals to make contact with such beings."
These days I don't really believe in "advancing as a whole" though. It's interesting that he said this when Thelema as such is focused on the individuals advancement. Yet, I know he wanted to be a prophet...
Strange contacts are liable to happen though, when you do rituals inside of pyramids!
JPM
best days
Date: 2026-05-18 01:07 pm (UTC)For days listed as best to "prune to encourage" what do I do with overgrown messes? For example, I've got a forsythia that's overgrown and now's the season to prune it. I want to encourage the forsythia but discourage the honeysuckle that's trying to eat it. If I only prune the forsythia, then I'll be forced to untangle the honeysuckle and work around it, a near impossibility. Or wait until a day best to "prune to discourage" and do the honeysuckle first, which would be easier, but still awkward.
Is there a rule for situations like this? I've got multiple bushes at two properties in similar situations. Other than the Farmer's Almanac, I've only read the Foxfire books on using the signs and I haven't found an answer. If anyone can suggest for this, please do.
Thanks so much!
Nell