Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918), the extraordinary Rosicrucian art critic and magus of the Decadent movement, whose masterwork How to Become a Mage will be out next year in a new English translation. 

Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Please note that this Magic Monday will be closing early because I want to celebrate New Year's Eve without having to hover over this journal. Any question received by 10 pm 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. Have a happy New Year celebration, and see you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Happy New Year!

I have quite a few questions, so here goes.

1) You mentioned earlier that you think that it takes about thirty years out of incarnation to be able to process the experiences of the last incarnation, and offered gender dysphoria as one possible issue that occurs if you are reincarnated too soon.

This raises a few questions:

a) Do you think that having bits of the last personality superimposed on the new one is linked to the massive increase in mental illness in the present?

b) What other issues could arise? I keep thinking I'm much shorter than I really am, so is it possible that's because my last life was short?

c) You also said you suspected that a lot of souls will spend millennia out of incarnation once populations go down to normal levels again. Which souls would go out of incarnation?

d) You've also said that a lot of large animal souls are being incarnated as human due to a lack of large animals. Why wouldn't they sit out for a little while? Is there some sort of urge to incarnate in anything even remotely suitable?

2) You also mentioned collective karma last week, and I have a question about that. Is there any way to avoid being hit by it? I'd assume a very good place to start would be identifying how I personally benefit from whatever injustices I see, and then work to reduce the benefits, but is there anything else I can do?

[ecosophia]

1a) that's a hypothesis that would be worth exploring.

1b) good question. Remember that nearly all of traditional occult philosophy dates from a time when the world's population was a small fraction of what it is today -- we didn't hit two billion until 1927, and we're at more than four times that now. So it's not surprising that we're still scrambling to try to figure out what's happening and why.

1c) nearly all of them. The only people who will be going back into incarnation right away are those who have serious karma to work off or those who have some other important reason to enter incarnation. That's one of the reasons you get such a steep drop in population as a civilization falls.

1d) if an animal soul needs an incarnation, and is fairly close to the human level anyway, it's going to take a convenient human body if that's what's available.

2) Refuse to share in the benefits, even when this is a personal disadvantage to you, and you make it more likely that you won't be part of the body count. It's not certain -- your karma may still involve dying in a natural disaster, say -- but it helps.

Metempsychosis

[(Anonymous)]

Is exhaustion with metempsychosis coupled with a desire for ascension into the divine a healthy sign?

Re: Metempsychosis

[ecosophia]

It really does vary. In some cases, yes, it's an indication that you have a call to the mystical path; in other cases, it's an attempt to run away from life, or more specifically from some kind of karmic debt you don't want to deal with. How do you tell? Lots of prayer -- specifically, the kind that involves listening to the divine rather than talking to it -- is generally a good start.

[(Anonymous)]

I have a bit of an odd question: I'm involved in a role playing group, and while most of the time it feels like I'm creating something, there's one NPC who stands out. His name is Chirp (a name given to him by the party since his name is real name is hard to pronounce), a rat-spirit. He's immensely powerful, and has a very warped sense of humour.

Most of the time, with NPCs, I can control them. I know their basic personalities, goals, hopes, dreams. I play them. With Chirp, he comes when he pleases, and does what he wants. Half the time he's aiming for something I never even thought of until suddenly I figure it out, and sometimes I just have no clue what he's doing.

Do you have any idea what Chirp could be?

[ecosophia]

The universe is full of different kinds of entities, some of which are well known to occultists, most of which are not. "The macrocosmic universe is one vast infinite sphere," says one of the Golden Dawn knowledge lectures, "containing so many and diverse infinite microcosmic forms, of which the perfect knowledge is known only to the advanced adept" -- and no, I'm nothing like that advanced!

So no, I don't have any definite idea. Have you asked him?

Occulted book launches, oh my!

[jpc_w]

Rumor has it you have a new book on conspiracies out.

How does this compare to your earlier encyclopedia on the topic (which sinister forces have erased from your website's bibliography)?

In any event, have a good New Year!

Re: Occulted book launches, oh my!

[ecosophia]

Oh, do you mean this one? ;-)



Like my earlier title from Sterling, The Occult Book, it's a set of 100 vignettes from history -- in this case, the history of secret societies and conspiracies -- with gorgeous illustrations. It's not an encyclopedia; it's more of a coffee table book, really, or an easy introduction to the history of the subject.

As for the biblio on the website, yeah, I know. I'm hoping to make time to get that up to date in January.

[(Anonymous)]

Are there any occult influences from eating fermented foods? They are usually crawling with living things, so I'd imagine those would have some impacts, but I'm unsure of what exactly they would be.

[ecosophia]

All living things feed on other living things. That's true even of plants, which send their roots in search of the flesh of dead plants and animals, and it's certainly true of you and me. Eating yogurt or kimchi or miso or what have you is no different from eating anything else; as an old ritual has it, "all things have died that you might live."

[(Anonymous)]

Is there anything special Druids do on New Year’s Eve?

I was once married to a musician so I am uninterested in the secular type NYE. It’s just a longer work night with more drunks, including your husband because the band always wants to take advantage of the free champagne. So the wives end NYE by going to some remote party house at oh-dark- thirty to pick up their husbands. (One lady always said “Next year I’m gonna kill him on December 30 and hide the body.” 😄)

At any rate, I hope everyone else has a good time!

[ecosophia]

The Druid New Year is November 1, so it's already come and gone here. The official new year is purely a secular thing for us, and I don't know of any Druids who do anything noticeably different from their neighbors.

Have a happy one anyway!

[(Anonymous)]

Is it necessarily a negative thing if all the planets in your natal chart are below the horizon?

[ecosophia]

It's not a negative thing at all, nor is it a positive thing. It's just one of the ways that planets can be arranged.

Goosebumps

[guillem66]

Sometimes, when i invoke spirit within at the end of the Sop, i start getting goosebumps along all my bod which lasts more or less half a minute or so.It's pretty intense, more than the common goosebump.It's happening more and more often, btw. What it signals?

Thanks, and may this be a a good year for you,


Guillem.

Re: Goosebumps

[ecosophia]

You're sensing the flow of nwyfre, the life force. It's a good sign, and your body will get used to it in time.

And likewise!

Don't have a question...

[(Anonymous)]

Just wanted to thank you for your wonderful books and blogs. Have been reading both voraciously. Also want to thank all others who have had questions during the Magic Mondays. Like many, I've have had lots of questions I've been thinking about answered in this way. A happy and fruitful 2019 to all.

Zed

Re: Don't have a question...

[ecosophia]

You're welcome and thank you!

[booklover1973]

Regarding the question the first poster posted, I remember that you have memories of quite a few incarnations during the last 2000 years. How can the incarnations follow each other with rather less than a millennium between them although they happened in a time when the population on Earth was rather lower than 500 million people? Thanks!

[ecosophia]

That's something that happens tolerably often to souls that get involved in those spiritual practices that lead beyond the human level. I'm also far from sure that current estimates of world population before 1000 CE or so are as accurate as they're cracked up to be.

[isabelcooper]

Hi, Happy New Year, and thank you!

Three questions this time:

1) There's a fairly vile woman in my LARPing circle who's amassed enough of a cult of personality that the game-runners, for financial reasons, can't just throw her out on her ear. I don't want to hurt her (well, I do, but I know doing so magically would be unwise), but I want to make her go away--and interestingly, she had been talking about maybe getting a job offer in Michigan. Would the rite where I baptize a doll as her and mail it to Hell, MI be a good idea, or would the raspberry jam involved mean I end up having to leave the community?

2) I've ended up starting on the exercises in Paths of Wisdom without reading Learning Ritual Magic first, and some back-reading this week gave me the impression that's out of order. Should I pause the former and start over with the latter?

3) Is it okay to do discursive meditation in the Paths of Wisdom model while walking, even though that's outside the banished space? I wouldn't mind getting my physical and mental exercise in at the same time. :)

Thanks again!

[ecosophia]

1) That's certainly a form that the blowback could take. You might consider doing a working to bring harmony and good feeling to the LARPing group, and let the gods decide how they want to make that happen.

2) Don't worry about it. I'd recommend studying Learning Ritual Magic before you take up the practices in Circles of Power, if you decide to do that, but Paths of Wisdom doesn't require that preparation.

3) Yes -- walking meditation is actually quite traditional. Try synchronizing your breathing with your pace in the opening phases of the practice.

Two Divination Systems at Once

[filthywaffle]

Happy New Year JMG!

First of all, many thanks for your extensive answer on "Druidry Flavors" last week. Your description of the AODA was entertaining and evocative!

A couple questions:

The first relates to divination. I have been doing daily divinations with geomancy as outlined in your book "The Art and Practice of Geomancy" for a few months now, with very good results. I am now exploring the practices as outlined in the Druidry Magic Handbook, which of course means using ogham. As I take up ogham, is it still possible to continue with geomancy as well? In other words, what considerations are there for using two different divination systems for the same daily divination questions? Is it best to just stick with one?

My second question relates to doing the SoP as an "inner working" -- I think that's how you phrased it when you mentioned an example of doing a ritual on the train with your eyes closed and nobody the wiser. My living circumstances allow for meditation, but not so much the standing and arm movements of the SoP. Same goes for doing the SoP in highly trafficked natural settings. Will doing the SOP in your head the majority of the time have an effect on its efficacy or are there any potential problems with doing that?

Thanks again!

Re: Two Divination Systems at Once

[ecosophia]

1) I'd encourage you to use only one at a time for daily divinations, but you can certainly use more than one divination system for other questions. For example, when Ogham was my usual daily divination method, I was also casting geomancy readings for questions having to do with money and my writing career, and getting good results.

2) You won't get the same intensity of effect if you can't bring it down to the material plane most of the time, but if that's what you can do, do it.

[booklover1973]

Since reincarnation has come up here, I have a second question: If that what you have explained about reincarnation in times when the human population was much lower than today is correct, then it must logically follow that in the average non-industrial society or in the average hunter-gatherer society there are far fewer proles than in industrial society today, so to speak. Does that make sense?

Say what?!

[(Anonymous)]

Surely you mean that there were fewer bourgeoisie. :-)
-Dewey

Deity contact for beginners

[rationalist858]

Hello JMG. So, after about 3 thousand years of research, I decided I want to start working with the Tuatha de Danann, with Brigid being my main goddess. I ordered a statue of Her which should be arriving shortly.

What method(s) would be safe for a beginner trying to contact and establish a relationship with Her? I have Courtney Weber’s Brigid book, so I have access to some pretty decent prayer material.

Re: Deity contact for beginners

[ecosophia]

Daily reflective prayer is the basic practice in this kind of work. Once you have the statue, consider getting a couple of candles and something scented -- incense is fine, or you could use a potpourri of appropriate herbs and resins, which can be renewed with a blend of essential oils. Light the candles, do whatever needs doing with the scented stuff, recite a prayer you've chosen -- the same one every time, please, as it helps you attune to the practice -- and then listen inwardly, with your mind. Give that five or ten minutes either once or twice a day, and the relationship will develop from there.

(...and, yes, if you've read a certain novel of mine, the resemblance here is the opposite of accidental...)

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

I've been thinking of a pantheon with which to work with, and the Roman one seems to resonate with me. I was quite surprised by this, but then I realised that I live about two miles from what used to be an enormous Roman garrison. I always used to dismiss the Roman presence in Britain - I considered them to be unwelcome temporary occupiers - but I've had to reconsider this, and now think their roots might go very deep here indeed.

Anyway, I've thought about how the SoP might work with a Roman pantheon, and I've come up with this:

Air - Jupiter
Fire - Vesta
Water - Neptune
Earth - Flora
Spirit Below - Tellus
Spirit Above - Sol

Do you think this is viable? Also, would I need to find a Roman equivalent for the great word "Awen"?

Thank you very much for your consideration.

[ecosophia]

It looks perfectly sound to me. The Latin word to use in place of Awen is Fiat! -- beyond its literal meaning, it stands for Flatus, Ignis, Aqua, Terra -- air, fire, water, and earth.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I have a bit of a follow up question for you related to children and magic.

Before starting any magic, my wife and I were doing the grove opening and closing weekly as laid out in the Druidry Handbook and celebrated parts of the eight fold year with the ceremonies in the Druidry Handbook. We also included our little kids (4, 7, 10) in the groves if they wanted to, and they certainly participated in the holy day ceremonies with speaking roles.

I read in your magic Monday that grove ceremonies are not recommended around kids. Is this true for the celebration of the yearly cycle? If so, how do you recommend celebrating the turning of the year with children and without grove ceremonies?

Thank you,
Matt

[ecosophia]

Here we go again...

No, that is ***not*** what I said. You can do absolutely any practice in The Druidry Handbook around kids. What you can't do around kids are serious workings of ceremonial magic -- for example, the grove ceremony in The Celtic Golden Dawn, which is emphatically not the same as the one in The Druidry Handbook.

Apologies if I sound a little testy about this, but no matter how many times I specify that the only thing you can't do around children is serious ceremonial magic, someone reads something in a past Magic Monday, takes it out of context, and thinks that I've said you can't do any kind of ritual at all around children.

[(Anonymous)]

According to Michael Winn, the Daoist monasteries in China that have been in use for thousands of years, have distinctly different chi in the surrounding areas. Adepts continuously running it through their bodies and working with the etheric energy refined it. It's presented as an unambiguously good thing, but would all the spirits of the land welcome that? If there were equivalent sites where Western occultists had been using astral energy for a similar period of time, what sort of imprint would that leave? Would long-term practice of mysticism at a particular site leave a different type of imprint as well?

[ecosophia]

For the better part of two thousand years, Western occultists had to keep a very low profile to avoid severe social and (often) legal penalties, so the rituals practiced in Western occult traditions are specifically designed not to leave such an imprint -- that's why we have opening and closing rituals at the beginning and end of our workings, the first to open a sacred space and the second to shut it down and dissipate the energies. It's only been a matter of decades since that changed, so we simply don't know -- and since many occultists are quite aware that the current climate of relative tolerance for our traditions may not last, we're not in a rush to do anything that would increase our vulnerability.

As for long-term practice of Western mysticism, it really varies. Some modes of mystical practice seem to foster that, but many others don't.

[(Anonymous)]

If someone serves a god well in their life and is rewarded (with a period of time with their god's host, their version of heaven, or something else) before their next life, what kind of effect does that have when they do reincarnate?

How much scope do gods have to punish those who wrong them and their followers?

[ecosophia]

1) Good question. I doubt it would be any kind of disadvantage, but I don't know of anything in occult literature that discusses that.

2) It depends very much on the god.

[(Anonymous)]

Happy New Year JMG!

catherine yronwode in her comprehensive and highly informative _Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic_ notes, on page 9, that some of of the African Influences on Hoodoo include an emphasis on the power of the footracks, feet, shoes and stockings as well as "a seeming reverence for the number nine above other numbers."

This got me thinking; 9 is of course the number of Yesod, the Etheric plane. Most of catherine's book deals with the natural magical properties of material objects. It seems then that Hoodoo's natural magic techniques focus with great intensity on inducting the etheric charge of material substances into the realm of manifest reality. This may then in part explain why the feet are so emphasized, as the Malkuth center is located right around the feet.

Likewise, this may then help elucidate why doing a floor wash can work so amazingly effectively; it inducts the etheric charge of herbs and other substances right to the level of the feet, the level of embodied reality, likewise with herbal baths, both of which are, of course, extensively developed in the Rootwork traditions.

My basic question is: do you think I'm on the right track in how I'm theoretically categorizing these specific Hoodoo techniques, and if not, where am I missing the mark?

[ecosophia]

A very productive meditation! Follow it out and see where else it takes you.

[(Anonymous)]

Can giving to charities help mitigate or work out karma? If so do you have a pointer to some appropriate techniques?

Many thanks!

[ecosophia]

It depends very much on the nature of the karma. If your karmic burden involves a major overload in the direction of Saturn, then generosity -- the keynote of Jupiter -- will indeed help balance it out, by bringing you more into balance with Jovian energies. If it's a different kind of karma -- say, something of Mars -- it won't do you much good. You basically need to figure out which planet best represents your difficult karma, and then enact the positive expression of the opposite planet -- Saturn and Jupiter, Mars and Venus, Sun and Moon are opposites, and Mercury is of course its own opposite. You'll know you've got the right thing if the positive expression of the planet you have in mind seems actively repulsive to you.

Divination and children

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, John Michael, thanks for taking the time to do this today! And have a great time tonight. It's strange, celebrating the Solstice makes it feel as if New Year came 10 days ago to me, and it does deflate the importance of the calendar new year somewhat, but still...this is the world we live and operate in physically.

My query is this: both of my children have a Magic 8 Ball and use it regularly for divination. Both of them want a "better" oracle, more like mine. They are 8 and 10 years old. Is this too young for something like a bag of rune stones or a card deck and the associated divination literature?

Also, I know your feelings about Harry Potter, and we are always careful to distinguish Harry Potter magic from real magic, but is there anything meaningful about the age of 11 for beginning introductory magical training, like they do in the Harry Potter movies? We already do regular focus training exercises with them, and I assume that is beneficial at any age. But they are both anxious to do more.

Apologies if you've answered these before. And thank you!
Tripp

Re: Divination and children

[ecosophia]

A rune set, an Ogham set, or a card deck -- the Lenormand deck is especially well suited to children, and others who don't have much exposure to cartomancy -- or some other basic oracle should be fine for children age 7 and up. Some children can become overdependent on their oracles, but then the same is true of many adults, and you should be able to guide your children to a more realistic attitude if that happens.

JK Rowling used the age of 11 for those books, iirc, because that's traditionally when children in England go to boarding schools. (The Harry Potter franchise is a mashup of modern pop fantasy with that venerable British tradition, the public-school novel.) It's not relevant to magical training. I'd encourage you to consider teaching your kids to meditate, and get them started doing simple, positive natural magic -- protection, healing, blessing, and so on. Seasonal rituals are also great for children, and they can be taught speaking parts so they begin to get a sense of how to perform in a public context -- a great source of confidence-building for when they have other things to do out there in the world. Ritual magic should wait until puberty's pretty well along, but that won't be so many years from now!

Nature spirits

[(Anonymous)]

Have you (or anybody on Magic Mondays) read and do you have an opinion on books about folklore and, almost by default, European folk magic by Claude Lecouteaux? Anything written about nature spirits by Marko Pogacnik? Some of their books look interesting, but I've noticed that it's become trendy of late to write about these subjects and I suspect that at least some authors aren't exactly authorities on what they write.

Re: Nature spirits

[ecosophia]

I haven't read either of these authors. Anyone else?

[(Anonymous)]

John—

If, as the Kabilion states, all is Mind, why does an intellectual path not work with respect to the spiritual quest? If all is Mind, is not Knowledge the highest attainment, the ability to understand and see the workings and unfoldment of everything?

David BTL

[ecosophia]

The Kybalion is among other things a great place to study the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the New Thought movement. The principle that "all is Mind" -- equating mind here with the thinking process, the intellectual side of human mental activity -- is really useful as a way of helping you figure out the pervasive role of thinking in our lives, and in particular in learning that most human problems come about because our thinking is screwed up in one way or another. On the other hand, if you equate Mind with thinking, and try to think your way to enlightenment, you're going to run face first into a brick wall. It's been tried, and it doesn't work.

As an old-fashioned ceremonial magician, I'd suggest a view that differs rather sharply from that of the Kybalion. Mind is not the All; mind is derivative from a far more basic reality. All is will; existence (the will to be) is the first and most basic mode of will, life (the will to live) is the second mode, and mind (the will to know) the third mode. Is there a fourth mode? You bet, and its name and nature are left as a theme for meditation... ;-)

Geomancy question

[(Anonymous)]

Goats and Roses

Recently I did a geomancy chart with the question “What area of my life, if focused on for the next 1 to 2 months, will yield the most fruitful progress in my life's purpose?” Is this an appropriate question to get a clear answer? If it is not, then I won't bore you with the specifics of the chart. If this is a useful question, though, I will follow up asking a more detailed question. Thanks.

Re: Geomancy question

[(Anonymous)]

Goats and Roses

I don't want to miss the 10 pm cutoff, so I am adding this here before your answer to my first question. Just ignore if needed!

Here is the chart I cast.
1: Aquisitio
2: Amissio
3: Rubeus
4: Via
5: Aquisitio
6: Puer
7: Aquisitio
8: Carcer
9: Via
10: Puer
11: Cauda Draconis
12: Fortuna Minor

Right witness Rubeus, Left witness Albus, Judge Conjunctio

A little context here. I am in a pretty big life transition, I have been a caregiver for a family member for over a decade. Now things are shifting and I can contemplate focusing on my needs a lot more. I need to rebuild my finances but also my sense of self, joy in life, etc. I am not sorry I devoted the time, but now it seems appropriate to be more me-focused. Hence the question. Questions I am asking myself are should I focus on getting a job and some stability? Or enjoy doing things I haven't been able to do for quite a while, maybe a bit of traveling? Should I move? Will I be more successful getting a job or starting a business? Is now a good time to be open to finding a partner?

My initial take was that aquisitio in houses 1 5 and 7 meant that the chart perfected for anything related to house 5 and 7. So go out and do things that light me up, exercise my creativity, be open to business opportunities and partnership in life and/or in a business. What do you think of that interpretation?

What do you think is the meaning of Via in 4 and 9, also Puer in 6 and 10? Are they significant or not, since the question I asked was for one area to focus one, not lots. Does anything else jump out as important nuance to the chart?

Thank you for any insight into this tangle of possibility.

[(Anonymous)]

Happy new year, and thanks as always for doing this!

In “The Druidry Handbook,” you describe a soul’s journey from Annwn to Abred to Gwynfydd... to what extent do you think this teaching has commonalities with Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas about spiritual evolution, the Cosmic Christ, and Omega Point?

[ecosophia]

Hmm! The great difference is that Teilhard tried to immanentize the Eschaton -- that is, to force the mythic images of his tradition into a historical context, so that the Omega Point would occur somewhere in linear time. That's a common way to read Christian myths, of course, so he had some excuse for doing so. Druids don't play that game, though; we by and large know better than to confuse kairos with chronos, linear time with the Dreamtime. Gwynfydd isn't something that will come into existence at some point in the future; it's present right here and right now, waiting for each of us to reach the point at which we can perceive it -- the point at which we walk through the walls and into the Fire.