Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of Rudolf Steiner, arguably the deepest thinker to come out of the Theosophical movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, and founder of his own movement, Anthroposophy, which still thrives today. 

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 Monday!***

Comments

Not much of a question but a small anecdote

[(Anonymous)]

There's two main writings that got me into the occult. Steiner's Theosophy, which made me think "wow, there really is something beyond the material world!", and the well of galabes, which made me think "wow, people actually practice these things on this very day and age. Magic is real!"

JP.

Ps. Thanks for your advice on the jupiter talisman!

Re: Not much of a question but a small anecdote

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! Steiner's worth reading; the book of his I go back to over and over again is The Philosophy of Freedom, which has been retitled I don't know how many times -- one translation I have is titled The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and the other is Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path -- but quite a few of his other books are worth close attention.

Emotions Again

[packshaud]

This is a leftover from last week.

You said that there are internal and external emotions. How do we tell which is which?

Re: Emotions Again

[ecosophia]

That takes a lot of practice. Meditation is a good way to get there -- with regular meditation, you get enough self-knowledge that you can tell the "feel" or "flavor" of your own emotional patterns, and an emotion from outside will have a different "feel" or "flavor" to it -- and the regular practice of banishing rituals will make you resistant to outside emotions; other than that, I don't know of any short cuts.

Mirror Cleaning

[(Anonymous)]

Do you have any opinions on how to clean mirrors? I ask because I use vinegar and you have made comments about vinegar's effects on the non-corporeal. I also ask because of the concepts of vampires and mirror-divination.

Re: Mirror Cleaning

[ecosophia]

Vinegar's great for mirror cleaning, metaphysically as well as physically -- and that's true if you're using the mirror for magical purposes, too. You want it to be clear of lingering energies from previous uses. If you're going to use the mirror for magic, rinse it with water once you've cleaned it with vinegar, and you'll be fine.

Marian apparitions

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, Happy Holidays to you -

I'm wondering what you think of Marian apparitions, which have continued to occur through the 19th and 20th centuries, right up until this past June in Knock, Ireland - a 12 old boy visiting Lourdes, I believe, evidently received divine word that there'd be a Marian manifestation at Knock, and when the prophesied date came, sure enough, there appeared - witnessed by many - the "dancing, elongated sun" associated with many modern supernatural Marian events. Though the Church hasn't signed off on all the Marian apparitions, many of the Church-sanctioned ones, modern-day ones included, have evidently involved miraculous healings. I think in some ways, the Marian phenomena is an echo of a Medieval spirituality in which divine miracles occur with some regularity. Talk about flying in the face of modern cultural conventions ...

Harking back to your speculation that the resonating power of Jesus Christ may not be what it once was - a speculation which made sense to me, given everything that's happened to Christianity post- Nietzsche - I'm thinking of some aspiring Christians I've known who've told me that they seem to they seem to receive zip when praying/meditating on Jesus .... but they emphatically receive when praying to and meditating on the figure and image of Mary. So I'm wondering if perhaps Mary is the evolving "new face" of Christianity. This would compliment the relatively recent awareness of the "Eternal Feminine", perhaps a spiritual high point of such in contrast to the risibility of much of contemporary feminism. This might also prove to be a more feminine aspect of Christianity that could eventually result in an ecosophia-friendly outlook to nature, the earth, and our responsibilities therein. Perhaps the veneration of Mary might evolve into something that goes considerably beyond the scope of what has been thought of as Christianity?

Question 2 - Is there such a thing as a "Druid mystic"? Or are all Druids expected to be aspiring mages?

Thanks, Will M

Re: Marian apparitions

[ecosophia]

1) Mary really does seem to have serious power behind her, and manifests fairly often. I'm not sure if that's because she's in the process of becoming the core figure of a new Christianity, or whether it's simply because so many Catholic mystics focus on her so intently that they've built up a very large pool of force. We'll just have to see.

2) Magic is actually a fairly modest part of the Druid Revival tradition -- I've found no trace of magical practices in modern Druidry before the collapse of the Golden Dawn, which sent a lot of refugees into Druid orders. There have been, and still probably are, far more mystics among Druids than mages, and of course a vast number of people who don't really take either of the intensive paths, but simply find Druid nature worship a valid way to relate to the spiritual side of being.

Day/night cycle, and

[(Anonymous)]

1: Given the relationship to the day/night cycle and pineal gland, would any occult traditions have anything to say about the implications of regular use of melatonin to harmonize a genetic sleep disorder with the 24 hour day? Alternatively, any ideas about dealing with an internal rhythm that tries to run on a cycle of longer than 26 hours?

2: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you've described druidry as being for people who, loosely paraphrasing, see the creative power of the universe strongest in the nonhuman living world. Are there traditions that take a similar approach to seeing the creative power of the universe at larger scales, the stars and planets et al? Or is that just too big and far removed from creatures such as we to be anything but one's nightly dose of humility?

Re: Day/night cycle, and

[ecosophia]

1) Nobody knows. Melatonin therapy hasn't been around long enough for occultists to get a good general sense of its effects.

2) There are people who get into what might as well be called the religious dimensions of astrology; the Church of Light, one of the surviving old-fashioned occult orders, is into that, and so is the Rosicrucian Fellowship. Outside of an astrological context or straight-up worship of planetary deities, I'm not familiar with anything, though.

[(Anonymous)]

(Tolkienguy)

1. When doing my nightly banshing, I currently stand beside my bed and turn to make each of the pentagrams. (My room is a bit cluttered.) Is this fine, or do I need to walk to each wall of the room to banish the whole space?

2. Earlier this year, I tried Gareth Knights training course and ran into trouble with it, which I talked about on here, and which you attributed to his lack of a banishing ritual. If I did a LBRP immediately before doing one if Knight's workings, would that solve the issue?

2 and 1/2. To what extent are Learning Ritual Magic and Experience of the Inner Worlds similar? Reading your description of the Middle Pillar exercise, tiu say it awakens the body's energy centers, and it seems to me like Knight's initial workings try to do the same thing. He has one working that seems to involve calling energy down, another that involves calling it up from below, another that involves the heart center, etc. It almost seems like he's breaking the Middle Pillar into stages. Am I understanding this correctly? Also, what would you say are the other major differences? I'm trying to decide which one to wirk with for the next year or so.

3. At a family gathering today, my grandfather was talking about a friend of his whose wife recently died. Apparently, this person pulls up a chair next to his wife's grave and talks to her, and claims she answers back. Everyone around the table dismissed this man as delusional, but thinking about it, I wonder if he actually is interacting with his wife (or something pretending to be his wife).

[ecosophia]

1) No, it's fine. I used to do that when my wife and I lived in a 1 bedroom apartment and the bedroom was the only place suitable for morning practices.

2) Good question. Give it a try!

2.5) They're very sharply different books. Knight's teaches his own distinctive system of Christian Cabalistic magic; LRM teaches standard Golden Dawn magic. Read both books and see which one appeals most to you.

3) It's quite possible that he's doing so. Don't be surprised if the friend dies suddenly -- it's far from uncommon for that to happen when someone old spends a lot of time talking across the Veil.

[jenniferkobernik]

Your thoughts on hauntings—a real thing? What actually are they? How to get rid of them? Other thoughts on the subject?

[packshaud]

You can read the ghosts chapter of Greer's Monsters; the first edition is available for digital loaning at The Open Library. There are updates and new chapters in the second edition, but not in the ghosts section.

Ghosts are a complex phenomenon, too large even for a post. You should refer to the book, and then follow the Annotated Bibliography.

[(Anonymous)]

What is the current state of the art of warrior spirituality? Do you have any book recommendations regarding it?

[ecosophia]

Good question. I'm not especially up to date on the subject, as it's not my path; you can certainly do worse than to study classic Japanese texts such as Hagakure, but what else might be out there is a good question, which you'll probably need to take up with someone who follows that path.

Synchronicity

[(Anonymous)]

I'm agnostic on the question of magic. On one hand, I'm not hubristic enough to say I understand consciousness, but on the other, working magic is a pretty big claim. However, it's obvious that a properly focused mind is a powerful thing, and whether magic works or not, what you call Raspberry Jam Principle certainly does.

It seems to me that working with associations in highly concentrated state might, due to RJP, sensitize your mind to those in everyday life. Coincidences that would normally go unnoticed or merely elicit a "huh, that was weird" shrug, would be more likely to get noticed and labeled meaningful. So, the actual question: Is this in your experience a potential pitfall, and how do you distinguish between actual synchronicities and false alarms?

I'll probably start experimenting with blessings once I've trained my concentration some more. In a way it doesn't matter if those actually do anything. Still, I'd rather not get caught up in cosmic dramas of my own creation.

Re: Synchronicity

[packshaud]

If something happens twice, it is a coincidence; if three or more times, you should start paying attention.

You can borrow Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle by Carl Jung from the Open Library.

Mirror Magic

[(Anonymous)]

Hello!

Today you mentioned mirror magic.

(1) What is it all about?

(2) What are the occult dimensions of mirrors?

Thanks!

Re: Mirror Magic

[ecosophia]

1) Mirrors are commonly used in some branches of Western occultism as a tool for visionary experience -- the same sort of thing other traditions do with crystal balls, or bowls of water, or various other things. Many people find that by looking into a reflective surface and focusing through it, as though it was a window, that with practice they can enter a mild trance state in which images appear in the surface.

2) Oh, about six inches wide by nine inches tall. ;-)

Seriously? Magically speaking, a mirror is just a piece of glass or clear plastic with a reflective layer on one surface. They don't have any particular occult dimension beyond that, unless you deliberately consecrate and use one as a working tool.

Being and becoming

[(Anonymous)]

In Paths of Wisdom you wrote 'it's possible to be a magician, or to become one-but not both.' I've tried parsing that out, and I'm not quite certain I follow. How do you know you 'are' a magician? Can you claim the title as soon as you start practicing, after a year, whenever you are visited by the Elder Gods [rec'd the first Weird of Hali for Yule, count me as hooked. Can't wait to get my hands on volume 2...]. Happy whatever-holiday-you-might-observe-assuming-you-do...to all, and JMG-thank you so much for Magic Monday. Having someplace to go where this is taken seriously [and not solemnly] is a godsend.

Re: Being and becoming

[ecosophia]

That was a little unclear, wasn't it? My point is that too many people try to "be" a magician, in the sense of striking a pose, filling a social role, or claiming a D&D-style character class, and these habits get in the way of the work of actually becoming a magician. Don't worry about whether you are a magician or not -- just concentrate on becoming one through systematic study and practice.

I'm glad you like the novel! I celebrate the solstice, like most Druids, but like most Druids, I'm not stuck up about it, so I'll wish you a happy Yule (and my Christian readers a merry Christmas while I'm at it).

Circumcising

[(Anonymous)]

Merry Xmas Adjmg!
1. Could you give a succinct definition of “occult”?
2. And, I know circumcising on one level is a tribal marker, but could it also be seen as a sacrifice to a Bronze Age Levantine god?

Thanks,
Dashui

Re: Circumcising

[ecosophia]

1) Nope. You'll find that in the dictionary of your choice.

2) You probably want to ask some Bronze Age Levantine gods about that.

At Last!

[saturns_pet]

JMG:

I cast some charts about my arts. They showed that I would get an inflow of help that could help me to begin new long journeys in arts. Then, while suffering some Saturday Blues, I found your last post named A Field Guide to the Great Old Ones...

At last you have done it! I wondered if you would. You have seemed to me to be well qualified to match terms from the fiction with terms of the Tree.

I aim to use your great gift to explore the parts and harmonies of the human being and then express my findings in spook-tacular styles of art.

Would you consider your books Paths of Wisdom and The Celtic Golden Dawn to be useful references to use in coordination with your Field Guide and the fiction for such a purpose? Specifically I wish to know if I would err by generally corresponding the parts of the human being in those books with the principles termed in your eldritch schematic. :)

Saturn's Pet

PS: Expect a donation.

Re: At Last!

[ecosophia]

You can certainly correlate body parts to eldritch principles using the standard Tree of Life system, and Paths of Wisdom is probably your go-to source for that. I suppose if you start sprouting tentacles from some portion of your anatomy, you might be able to figure out which Great Old One is responsible... ;-)

The connection between Cabala and The Weird of Hali goes well past the surface, of course. Part of that is that I've saturated my imagination in the lore of ceremonial magic since my teen years, so it's a pretty safe bet that anything I come up with at this point will have that woven into it; partly, it's that I deliberately used some elements of occult teaching in developing the stories. With that in mind, I wonder if anyone can predict what color the tentacles on the cover of the third novel will be...

[(Anonymous)]

A question regarding the instructions for the inner plane exercise in LRM: On page 231 it says to perform the LBRP while standing behind the chair facing east. If I'm understanding correctly this would place the chair in such a way as to create a barrier to waking to the east to begin the circumambulation of the space to be banished. The conclusion I've reached is that for the inner plane exercise the LRBP is meant to performed while standing in one spot while pivoting on a dimed axis. Is this the idea?

[ecosophia]

You walk around the chair. When you're doing magic in a temple, you'll have an altar at the center, and you'll get very used to walking around it in order to get to the east. Movement in magical space is not limited to straight lines!

Alan Moore

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

I commented on the Cthulhu/Kabbalah thread and referenced Alan Moore. It made me wonder, what are you're thoughts are on that rather public occult author of fiction who has also written in the mythos?

AV

Re: Alan Moore

[ecosophia]

A brilliant guy, much of whose work isn't the kind of thing that I like. I've never met him, but I suspect we'd get along pretty well.

[(Anonymous)]

Would you recommend that beginners at magic start by learning a system of natural magic, a system of ritual magic, or one that combines the two? Or, to phrase it a bit better (since the answer probably depends on the particular individual), do you have any advice on how a beginner can determine whether natural magic or ritual magic is a better starting point for them?

[ecosophia]

Read some books on each of them and see what calls to you. There are no fixed rules here -- it's a matter of what speaks to you personally, and what excites you enough that you're willing to put in the long hard hours of work you'll need to master either one.

question about Grail working

[slclaire]

Hi JMG,

I find that color breathing is easier to do when I imagine my eyes and at least part of my mind (I'm not sure how much) are located in the solar plexus. Then I can see the color rushing in or out and direct it through the rest of the body appropriately, instead of attempting to see this from above, which never worked very well.

In the last week or so, I spontaneously started doing a similar thing during the Grail working. I think what I am doing is forming the intention into a sort of mind of its own and putting that into the ball of light in the solar plexus, along with eyes that can see out into the ball. Then when I expand the intention out into the cosmos, the eyes watch it doing so to make sure it expands evenly.

Even though it's hard to put what I'm doing into language (I don't know if this is true of other languages, but it's hard to describe some occult experiences in English), I hope I have been able to do so well enough to ask you if this is OK to do. It isn't what I was doing at first, which was the more usual mundane experience of orchestrating events from the perspective of the inside of my head. And while I suspect it's OK, I figured now is a good time to ask, before I get too strong a habit formed around it.

BTW, I was really glad I was reading The Weird of Hali: Kingsport at home when I got to the scary scene, because it was really, really scary, to the point I would not have wanted anyone seeing me while I was reading it. I think your youth was more than sufficiently misspent to be able to write something that frightening. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series!

Re: question about Grail working

[ecosophia]

Interesting! That doesn't surprise me at all, and it's certainly okay. Where in your body you center your consciousness will vary as you practice magic, and the solar plexus -- the core center of nwyfre in the Dolmen Arch/DMH work -- is a good place to do so.

By the scary scene, do you mean the one with Willis Connor, or the one with the King? I haven't personally experienced either of those things, in case you were wondering...

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any downside to using night vinegar for protection long-term? Does it cause any problems or block out any positive influences you would want to be exposed to?

[ecosophia]

I've never heard of any problems with it, and I know people who've done it nightly for years.

[(Anonymous)]

You've said when people start doing ceremonial magic it makes them visible to some entities, so they have to take steps to conceal themselves. Is the same true for natural magic? I'm under every kind of protection you've described - night vinegar, weekly hoodoo bath, cut and clear spell, witch bottle, and amulet. My most recent was a hoodoo floor wash. There was some mix left over so I used it on the car, hopefully as a kind of Gremlin-B-Gone (trademark, copyright, patent pending). :) What will my house look like from the spirit world now? Will it look perfectly normal until something tries some nefarious deed and gets an unexpected suprise? Or will it look like the house is surrounded by barbed wire and signs saying 'ACHTUNG MINEN!'? :)

[ecosophia]

It's more of the "ACHTUNG MINEN UND UNGEHEUER!" variety. If you want to veil your home so it won't be noticed by nonphysicals, that takes ceremonial magic. Still, you should be fine; those warning signs generally get the attention of the gremlinocracy.

Solstice birth

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any astrological or occult significance to being born on the winter solstice? I've always thought it was interesting, but lately have been wondering if there is anything more to it.

Re: Solstice birth

[ecosophia]

It just means your natal Sun is on the cusp of Capricorn, so you'll have mostly Capricorn sun characteristics but a little Sagittarius mixed in there too.

[(Anonymous)]

John—

What is the significance of the difference in layout of paths between the Jewish and occult Trees of Life? The former has Binah-Chesed and Chokmah-Geborah paths, but lacks the Malkuth-Hod and Malkuth-Netzach paths. Was this a historical development or are there deeper reasons underlying the differences?

David BTL

[ecosophia]

There were actually quite a few variants of the Tree back in the day, in terms of Path arrangement and even the placement of the Spheres, and in the usual way of things those gradually settled down to one option that works. The version now common in occult circles was among the standard options in Jewish Cabalism as well, back in the Renaissance; I think it was Isaac Luria's writings that tipped the balance in the Jewish Cabalistic community toward the version with only one path up from Malkuth. I'm not familiar with the logic behind that version of the Tree, and I'm unlikely to learn more without a good working knowledge of Hebrew, so I work with the system I know.

Re: Golden Dawn-Style Druidry

[ecosophia]

Yes, you could do this, and you'd end up with something very like early to mid 20th century Druid Revival Druidry. I'd drop the categorization of Earth, Moon, and Sun Paths" altogether, and use the four elements instead: the Earth Path then becomes ecologically sensible living, the Water Path becomes meditation, the Fire Path is ritual, and the Air Path is poetry and the other bardic arts -- these were very important in trad Druidry and I'd give them more space if I were writing The Druidry Handbook over again.

As for the solstices and equinoxes, no, you shouldn't try to do the ritual as given until you've completed the Ovate and Bardic grades -- that would be like trying to go for a bicycle ride when you haven't learned how to ride a bicycle yet and the bike is still in a box in the garage waiting to be assembled! Instead, open a temple in the Ovate grade, if that's where you are, and then recite a prayer to the deity governing the season or something along those lines.

Mary

[kimberlysteele]

When I perform the Sphere of Protection and do the Earth corner stuff, Elen often has a distinctly Mary-ish vibe, for instance this morning. I was raised Protestant, so it doesn't seem to have anything to do with my upbringing. I'm planning on putting a small outdoor shrine to Mary in my garden this year, but secretly it will be a shrine to Elen.

Re: Mary

[ecosophia]

Interesting. Thanks for the data point!

The Fews

[syfen]

Archdruid,

So a few weeks ago I had a sudden shift in my magical practice, I thought up four major themes for discursive meditation and I can feel the different variations of prana during my SoP. I'm still struggling with the discursive, since my mind seems unable or unwilling to quite down. However I'm content with small steps, so I'm not getting discouraged. I also started memorizing the Fews to improve my divination. As I memorize them I notice that the Fews each seem to have a distinct personality, is that accurate? Like I try to talk to them, and they seem to respond like people.

I've also noticed that both the Druidry Handbook and the Druidry magic Handbook suddenly have...folds and cracks in them. The books aren't physically damaged, it just seems there's stuff hidden behind the things you've written. I close my eyes over a page and it seems like I'm starting at a wall with a hundred cracks, and peering into each crack seems to open up to a different...something. Is this supposed to happen?

Regards,

Syfen

Re: The Fews

[ecosophia]

Yes and yes. ;-)

The fews, like the symbol systems of every divinatory oracle, do indeed have personalities, and the more you treat them that way, the more they'll communicate to you. As for the books, yes, there's quite a bit more in both my books than appears to a casual glance -- that's standard practice in books written by old-fashioned occultists, you know.

Magic and Children

[(Anonymous)]

JMG-

I've seen you mention a couple of times that magic and kids don't mix, which makes some sense to me, but I was wondering if there was a specific reason why?

My youngest just turned 4 so I guess I have a while to go still before I do anything. I've never done anything other than LBRP in the house since any of my kids were born, but is even that too much?

Re: Magic and Children

[ecosophia]

Sigh. No matter how many times I repeat myself on this subject, people take it to extremes. No, it is not true that magic and kids don't mix. There are specific kinds of magic that it's not safe to do around kids, because they can be influenced in harmful ways. You can meditate, practice divination, do any kind of natural magic, and do basic magical practices such as the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram and the Middle Pillar exercise when you have children -- don't do the latter two in a space where they spend a lot of time until they're past 3 or so, but that's about it.

The problems come in when you do serious ceremonial magic -- invoking spirits, consecrating talismans or working tools, doing anything that involves calling down divine energies at high levels of intensity. You should not do those at all until your children are older than 3 or so, and you shouldn't do them with kids in the house until they're 7 or so. (When they're between 3 and 7, do serious ritual when the kids are at Grandma's or preschool or what have you.)

Is that a little clearer?