Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's almost midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, French alchemist and occultist, whose work on the temple geometries of ancient Egypt played a crucial role in launching the modern revival of sacred geometry.  

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. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 542,396th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use the button below to access my online tip jar.

With that said, have at it! 

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

Comments

Egregores of diseases

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG-

I was very interested in your response to the commenter last week asking about whether diseases develop their own egregores, and wonder if you could elaborate? I am wondering about the effects of these egregores on the disease process, and whether being aware of the nature and functioning of the egregores might be useful to patients and health care providers (I assume this is a large part of magical healing work?). Also, I'm interested in how the egregores might change over time. I have an autoimmune disease, like everybody else these days, it seems, but my prognosis is very different (more positive) from that of my great-aunt, who had the same disease when I was a child. Finally, I'm wondering about the effects of huge awareness campaigns, like those for breast cancer or ALS (that ice bucket challenge!), and whether they might actually strengthen the egregore of the disease in an unhelpful way. Any resources you would recommend to learn more about the topic?

Thanks for your time and effort in responding to all these queries. There's no other resource like this forum- trustworthy and knowledgeable- that I have seen anywhere, and I learn a great deal reading it each week.

--Heather in CA

Re: Egregores of diseases

[(Anonymous)]

You may want to look into Homeopathy.

The gist of it is that there are Specific Remedies (those that have affinity for just one organ, or one type of tissue) and treat mostly diseases affecting those; and then there are Polycrest Remedies.

Polycrests on the other hand show symptomps all over the body, and treat wide ranges of diseases. More to the point, all these remedies are related with mental symptoms (sometimes severe psyquiatric ones, both more often than not mere neurotic responses to anxiety, or even personality quirks). Homeopathic Disease Theory teaches that physical disease that has established deep enough in the patient will manifest itself at least partially as a mental condition, while the same disease that attacks another person with stronger constitution will manifest exclusively on a material level (probably in an relatively periferic organ or system).

More over, there are Polycrests that have full-fledged Homeopathic Personalities, while others have mere collections of mental symptoms. Under the theory that individual diseases do form egregoires, this piece of lore supports the idea that some of these egregoires are stronger and/or more mature than others.

You may want to explore your individual case with a local, licenced Homeopath Doctor. Though if you expect to talk about the more occult side of the art you should stay clear of practicioners that follow the Frech school and try to find some classic/Kentian one instead.

CRP

Re: Egregores of diseases

[ecosophia]

I'd be interested in your take on Schuessler's biochemic cell salts, and the idiosyncratic but effective offshoot of homeopathy that uses that. That's the system that was adopted most enthusiastically into American occult schools, and the one I learned to practice.

Re: Egregores of diseases

[(Anonymous)]

I know very little of the Schuessler salts. Both the claim that the salts "provide minerals that are normal components of the human body, and the patient is probably lacking in them" and the fact that these are prepared in fairly low potencies (parts per million) sound suspiciously close to the French materialist school to me, but then I would not have guessed these were specially popular in the occult scene.

One possible place to address this question is to compare Schuessler's writings to the teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Many prominent homeopaths from the 19th century (Kent most prominently) were Swedenborgeans, and his philosophy seam to have shaped their own theories of disease. I am curious and would be glad to tackle this myself, somewhere down the road, but I do lack the bandwidth in the forseable future. It depends on whether I can find a sympathethic teacher and make this my disertation subject.

CRP

Re: Egregores of diseases

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP but a longtime user of homeopathy. Miranda Castro, a well respected homeopathic practitioner and author, discusses the differences fairly succinctly here http://www.txoptions.com/articles/gentle-little-souls-cell-salts/.

Fwiw, one of the most profound healing experiences I've had was with a cell salt (calc fluor) taken based on physiologic indications. The homeopathic books of indications (repertories) are living, constantly evolving works, consequently ever incomplete.

Incidentally, years of studying homeopathic philosophy and practice has opened my mind to occult philosophy, subtle anatomy and alchemy. It seems to work mainly on the etheric body but I think it may at times go further. Have been wondering what the occult literature says but will save for MM.

Re: Egregores of diseases

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! I've been using cell salts as the foundation of my home health care for close to thirty years now, and have had repeated successes in treating any number of health conditions with them. I'll look forward to reading what Castro has to say.

Re: Egregores of diseases

[ecosophia]

To my knowledge, that's a field in which very little work has been done by occultists so far. CRP's suggestions would be worth looking into; you might also do some research into the various occult traditions around occult anatomy and magical healing -- Manly P. Hall's Man, the Grand Symbol of the Mysteries might be one place to start.