Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of George Washington Carey, another American occultist too rarely remembered today. One of the major figures in the end of homeopathy that uses the twelve biochemic cell salts, he worked out a detailed system of spiritual and physical healing using those twelve remedies, assigning them to the signs of the Zodiac. For much of the twentieth century, most of the correspondence courses offered by occult schools included lessons on the cell salts lifted with or without credit from Carey's work, and the kind of old-fashioned health food store that catered to alternative spirituality as well as alternative diets inevitably had all twelve cell salts in stock. (Longtime Seattle residents may recall the charming Mari-Don Healthways store on 45th street in Wallingford; that's where I got my first cell salts, back when I was first learning to use them.) The wheel below on the right, which can be found in various places online, is one of Carey's creations. 

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 143,916th 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

[(Anonymous)]

Going to r/occult and, indeed, many other occult themed forums, it appears that the plurality and perhaps majority of topics are on evil magic and demonolotary. Most religious institutions and professionals -- at least in affluent regions of the United States -- behave as if the gods they ostensibly worship are mere superstition and nonsense. My questions are: 1) how long do you expect the prevailing attitudes towards the spiritual realms to remain this toxic and 2) what do you think will it take to shake folks out of this torpor?

[(Anonymous)]

Two questions: first, if screens in general are linked to cacaomagic as I’ve seen discussed before, would porn be an especially potent version, as it links straight to sexuality?

Second: you’ve said it’s a bad idea to mix systems before, but I remember seeing you say The Order of Essenes was an exception. Is this accurate? If so, why, and is it safe to do while working through LRM?

[ecosophia]

1) This is normally what happens when popular culture is about to take a sharp turn away from magic. People start by embracing the mainstream religious attitude toward magic -- "it's all devil worship" -- and end by embracing the rest of mainstream religion, and becoming Methodists or what have you. I expect a lot of the people who are currently prattling about summoning demons, within a few years, will be testifying in church about how Jesus saved them from evil -- the way that a lot of ex-hippies did in the early 1970s, to cite the most recent example. It's a recurring pattern.

2) It's self-terminating, as noted above. Then we'll have around 36 years when occultism is off the radar screens of contemporary culture and most of the people who are involved are serious about it, followed by another round of pop-culture occultism.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG!

You mentioned that you are not at all a fan of Michael Harner's Shamanism.

What is wrong about it, and could it be salvaged by implementing changes in the practice?

What are the differences between shamanistic journeys and scrying in the spirit vision?

Thanks!

[ecosophia]

1) Er, cacomagic, not cacaomagic. The latter is magic that involves chocolate. ;-) That aside, quite probably, yes. It depends on whether there's intention involved -- well, other than the intention of making money on the one hand, and self-stimulation on the other...

2) The Order of Essenes doesn't teach magic; it teaches the saner end of New Thought philosophy, with some simple non-magical exercises mixed in. It's a bad idea to study more than one system of magic at a time, but you can study a system of magic at the same time as you're studying a system of philosophy, or how to play the ukelele, or what have you.

haunting

[(Anonymous)]

Is it possible to have a haunted house where only one person who lives there sees anything out of the ordinary? My wife seems to see/have odd stuff happen in our house and I never see anything?

Locality in Astrology

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve been gradually working through my natal chart, however, I’m a little unclear regarding just how much the ascendant and house changes from current location should color horoscope interpretation. Is it something you ignore entirely? Or do you need to filter everything in your chart through the place you lived at any given time? For instance, in my natal chart, I’m a rising cancer with Venus in Accidental Detriment in the first house (it’s in Leo, so it takes its dignity from Aries which rules the first house right?), Mercury and Mars (in accidental detriment) in the second house, the Sun in the third house, Saturn and Uranus (both in accidental detriment) in the fifth house, Neptune (in accidental detriment) in the sixth house, and nothing within 12 degrees of any of my angles. Where I live now, my ascendant has moved to Leo, my first house is occupied by Mercury and a Mars that’s in accidental dignity, the Sun’s moved to the second house, Saturn’s moved to the fourth house (still in accidental detriment), Neptune’s moved to the fifth house, the moon’s moved to the ninth house, and Venus has moved to a place of accidental exaltation in the twelfth house (which move the Moon, Mars, Neptune, and Venus out of detriment). Meanwhile, Venus is within one degree from my ascendant, and Jupiter is one degree from my descendent. Do I need to look at each of those (and the other two charts for the two places I’ve lived between now and then) as completely separate horoscopes for each of those periods of my life? Or do the changes affect my natal chart in more subtle ways (for instance, when looking at my ruling planet placement, would that be the tenth house as in my natal chart, the 9th house based on the moon’s movement when I relocated, a combination of the two, or the second house since my ruling planet is now the sun)? In Llewellyn George’s chapter on relocation, he starts out by saying that the Natal Chart is the Natal Chart no matter what, but then in his example, he lists some pretty significant changes that come from the shifts in house placement (for instance, a move of planets from the fourth to fifth house changing interests in the areas of life ruled by those planets from family to recreation), which would imply that locality does affect the horoscope in ways that need to be taken into account but he doesn’t go into much more detail than that in terms of how to balance nativity and locality when putting together a horoscope.

-Eric Singletary

[(Anonymous)]

1a) Any sources on cacaomagic? I have a strong sweet tooth and would love to use it productively. ;)

b) Porn sites tend to be covered in ads, which suggests there’s some serious cacomagic involved. I also think the “superpowers” which appear so often on the nofap reddit (among other places) about looks an awful lot like improvements from avoiding some serious cacomagic, so I’m a little intrigued by the connection.

2) Ah, ok. I was mistaken as to the nature of the course. Thank you for clearing that up.

[ecosophia]

Harner's system is basically a simplified form of scrying in the spirit vision, without a coherent symbolic system to give it meaning or anything else to keep it from descending into what Israel Regardie used to call "astral tourism." It's entertaining, no doubt, but that's all it is.

Real shamanism -- and I encourage you to read actual accounts of trad shamanic practice to get a sense of the differences -- is not something you choose, not something you control, and not something you imagine. The spirits choose you, they take you away to their realm, and you don't just imagine the flesh being ripped from your bones and your organs replaced by pieces of crystal -- you experience it. Meanwhile your family keeps watch over your comatose body and wonders whether you'll survive, because sometimes people don't. If you come back, you live forever after in both worlds at once, and that means that you face serious dangers other people don't, because the world of the spirits isn't just inhabited by friendly animal helpers, it has things in it that can and will kill you.

That's real shamanism. Do you see the differences?

[ecosophia]

1a) I'm the wrong gender to be a specialist on that subject! ;-)

1b) Okay, that makes sense. I don't do porn sites, so I didn't know.

Re: haunting

[ecosophia]

People differ dramatically in their capacity to see the etheric and astral planes. Ask your wife if her mother or grandmother used to see strange things a lot -- the Second Sight, as the Celts used to call it, generally runs through the maternal bloodline.

[(Anonymous)]

This sounds an awful lot like an experience someone I knew had. She was “abducted by aliens”, and had all sorts of weird things happen to her. Do you think shamanistic experiences feed into the aliens craze (as one source of many)?

[(Anonymous)]

Another tidbit of evidence: I pay attention to a few serious occultists and none of them use porn. Many tried, but it seems like picking up occult practices kill interest in porn.

[(Anonymous)]

Can you recommend a good book on real shamanism?

Re: Locality in Astrology

[ecosophia]

Okay, your birth chart is your birth chart and remains the same wherever you go. The changes you get from locality are overlaid on the basic pattern of the birth chart. I'd encourage you to cast relocation charts for each place you've lived, and then look back over what was different about your life in each of those places; that'll give you a good sense of how this works.

Reading astrological charts is a knack, and the only way to develop it is by looking at lots of astrological charts!

[ecosophia]

Makes sense to me. The energy channels that are activated during sex are the same ones you use for magic, and so -- as Dion Fortune points out somewhere -- magic's a great way to work off otherwise unused libido.

[(Anonymous)]

Given this is some powerful cacomagic, what advice do you have for people who use porn, and feel addicted to it but want to quit?

[ecosophia]

Excellent! Yes, exactly. As Jacques Vallee pointed out a long time ago in a very good and unfairly neglected book, the UFO phenomenon is among other things what happens when you take ordinary human interactions with spirits and interpret it through a mindset that says that the only nonhuman intelligent beings around must come from another planet.

[ecosophia]

Mircea Eliade's Shamanism is still the classic.

[(Anonymous)]

I see where you're coming from, thank you.

Now, for these things in the spirit world that can kill you... is it likely to run into those when practising say stuff from the DMH?

Re: haunting

[(Anonymous)]

I will ask and that could be the case. My wife's mom is a very devout catholic woman. My wife was taking her mom to the doctor last month when a man in the waiting room asked if he could pray over her. Her mom has had her legs amputated because of diabetes. The man put his hands on her and prayed. Then he took his hands away shocked saying "You are filled with the Holy Spirit."

[ecosophia]

Well, are you willing to take up a daily practice of ceremonial magic? That's probably the best way to get to work redirecting the energies. Use an ad blocker so some of the cacomagic doesn't get to you. Then start taking a day off porn here and there; increase the number of days off, and start taking weekends off. Spend less time on the internet generally. Taper it down, and one day you'll suddenly realize that you haven't watched porn in weeks and have no interest in doing so again.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

I pitched the autism is a result of souls that hadn’t let go of a previous life trying to express too complex mental functions last week, and have a follow up thought I’d like to hear input on.

First, the traditional time a soul takes to shed their old identity seems to be about 30 years in a few different cultures. This looks remarkably like a Saturn Return, so I think it might be that. If so, this implies that the dead continue to respond to astrological forces.

Taking it a step further, it might be possible that these charts would remain active if a soul is reincarnated early. If this is the case, these charts should be detectable, and further whatever their frequency in the general public, if autism is caused by a soul reincarnating early, every autistic should have such a ghostly chart.

I’m curious if you’ve ever come across evidence of this, and if not if you can think of ways for me to go looking for it. I’m picking up astrology, but for now I’m an imterested amateur. If this is something to shelve for now, that’s okay with me too.

[ecosophia]

No, for two reasons. First, in ceremonial magic, the spirits don't take you into their world; you remain in the human world, but are capable of interacting with the world of spirits in less dangerous ways. Second, if you're taking the DMH work seriously you're doing the Sphere of Protection daily, and one of the reasons for that is that it keeps hostile critters at bay.