Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of Edward Gorey -- yes, that Edward Gorey, the author of The Gashlycrumb Tinies and scores of other quirkily illustrated books. Among his omnivorous interests as balletomane, cinephile, maniacal collector of books, cat fancier, and more, he was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research and a serious student of divination, with a particular interest in the I Ching. While a novelty divination deck (the Fantod Deck) was made of his illustrations after his death, I consider it a real pity that he never crafted his own Tarot deck; it would have been an astonishing thing. 

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 -- yes, this means you! See you next week.***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

1) I'm picking up journaling to address some bad habits, and since you've advised we do nothing with the knowledge, how does it work to improve things? Is it a matter of once we know why we have a bad habit, and know why we would rather do something else, the problem fixes itself?

2) I've seen quite a few discussions here about how holding contradictory ideas lead to counterproductive behaviours. Is there a set of practices you'd recommend to identify and resolve contradictions within our own minds?

3a) I'm finding myself drawn (back) to Druidry, but I want to wet my feet, so to speak, before deciding if I should dive in and drop the Cabalistic practices I have established with LRM. I'm not quite finished LRM either, if this affects things.

ADOA is out, because doing the SoP would require me to drop the LBRP, so I'm looking at other orders. Do you know if working through the Bardic level of the OBOD would be okay while practicing Cabalistic Magic, and finishing up LRM?

3b) You mentioned before to someone else who asked about switching systems from LRM to Druidry. I'm finding myself pulled in the same direction, so I spent some time working through it, and here's what I have: Cabalistic Magic is very much based in the Christian tradition.

My reasons boil down to the following three:

a)I have a good relationship with God, but I'm not drawn to Christianity on an intellectual or emotional level, while Druidry makes much more sense to me on those levels and so I want to work within a system where I can find both my magical and religious homes.

b)I joined the AODA a while ago, and I want to finish what I started. This will mean dropping Cabalistic Magic, which is less than ideal, but I wish I had finished it back when I joined in the first place. This is why all of this is being held off until I finish LRM anyway: I keep dropping systems of practice, and I want to finish this one before doing anything else.

c) Finally, what I want to do with my spiritual life can be achieved better from within the framework of the Gnostic Celtic Church than elsewhere, and so I want to work my way through that as well at some point.

4) This isn't for you, since you don't do any dream work, but for anyone who does, do you know why I don't remember any of my dreams? Does anyone have any way to go about making it such that I can remember more of them?

[ecosophia]

1) Very often "bad habits" are expressions of unresolved conflicts in the self, or efforts to distract the mind from things you don't want to deal with. Bring those to the surface and you can resolve the conflict of will (I want to do this/I don't want to do this) central to those activities we call "bad habits."

2) Why, yes -- I recommend journaling for that! ;-)

3) Finish Learning Ritual Magic before you do anything else. One of the essential magical lessons is that of completing what you begin. Put everything else on hold and do the work. Once you've finished LRM you can assess your options and decide what to do next. "Getting your feet wet" is a waste of time; either stay on the bank or dive in deep.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG -

I asked last week about a job opportunity, and this week I have another. I’ve been asked to do some freelance work for a company that I haven’t worked with before. I did a shield chart on the question “Will working at x allow me to meet my financial needs?” I got this:

Judge: Acquisitio
RW: Acquisitio
LW: Populus
1st M: Fortuna Minor
2nd M: Fortuna Major
3rd M: Fortuna Major
4th M: Carcer
1st D: Carcer
2nd D: Laetitia
3rd D: Conjunctio
4th D: Caput Draconis
1st N: Via
2nd N: Amissio
3rd N: Tristitia
4th N: Tristitia

I’m believing that Acquistio as both the Judge and RW gives a favorable response to the question, and I’m interpreting Populus as the LW to mean that I won’t make any particularly strong impact.

Do you have any thoughts?

Thank you!

[ecosophia]

It's a favorable answer, but only in the short term. You'll need to get more freelance gigs (Populus = lots of anything) if you want something that will meet your financial needs for more than a little while.

[(Anonymous)]

Currently psychedelics are very popular in the occult scene. This makes me wonder the esoteric dimension of psychedelics -- it seems that some people have mystic experiences on psychedelics. Others have bad trips. Yet others simply party.

1) What is your sense of how psychedelics function esoterically.

2) how do psychedelics effect the subtle bodies?

3) What are the effects of a bad trip on the surrounding space? I wonder if rampant psychedelic abuse contributes to how nasty the energy at college campuses are...

[ecosophia]

1) They temporarily disarrange the relationship between the various subtle bodies so that the ordinary consciousness gets a glimpse of some part of the astral plane.

2) Dion Fortune has a great quote here, from Sane Occultism:

"It is one thing to 'unloose the girders of the mind' and quite another to get the rivets tightened up again, and unless one is prepared to go through life rattling like a cheap motor-car it is unwise to seek this method of development."

I've met quite a few people who used drugs to try to get where meditation and spiritual practice gets you, but without the effort; it's fair to say that all of them rattled like cheap motor-cars, and quite a few had parts falling off...

3) Any strong emotional experience charges the psychic atmosphere of a place, and a bad trip -- which basically amounts to a temporary psychotic break -- can do that very effectively. Yes, that could be part of what makes college campuses so energetically poisonous these days.

Magic to get rid of debt

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,
Someone last week wanted to know about using magic to get rid of debts. I have a grimoire to recommend. I used this knowledge to pay off substantial debts and a student loan and then we payed off our little farm in eight years. We have no debts and some savings.

The title of the grimoire is, "Your Money or Your Life," by Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robinson.

Maxine

Re: Magic to get rid of debt

[ecosophia]

Nice. The best way to deal with problems on the material plane is generally to be found on the material plane...

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

I‘d like to run a possible modification of the SoP past you:

I changed the opening and christianized it somewhat more than just invoking the saints like in the Christian variant that you offer in the DMH.

For the opening, the visualizations stay the same as in the DMH, but I open it with the gesture of crossing myself, vocalizing the doxology of the Lord‘s prayer:

Forehead - (For thine is the kingdom,)
Solar Plexus - (and the power, )
left shoulder- (and the glory,)
right shoulder -(forever and ever, )

stretch out arms, palms forward,
clasp hands - (Amen.)

For the calling of the elements I use different titles of Jesus.
In the end I circulate the sphere of light as described in the DMH.

Is this a workable modification?
Can you think of a way to improve it?

[ecosophia]

That's the standard way it was done by Christian occultists in the Universal Gnostic Church back in the day. So, yes, it's workable, and no, I can't think of any reason to modify it!

[(Anonymous)]

I just want to clean myself regularly of accrued kegare and don‘t intend to establish a formal practice of ritual magic. Would it in this case be sufficient to only do a daily banishing (LBRP or SoP) for the rest of my life without bothering with meditation, divination and more complicated workings? If yes, which of the two banishing rituals would you recommend for this purpose?

Are there maybe other practices with comparable effects to a banishing? I know that Shinto people immerse themselves regularly in cold water, but I probably can‘t replicate that with a daily cold shower, no?

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, you can simply practice a daily banishing ritual. I'd suggest the SoP for that purpose rather than the LBRP, as the SoP is a bit more general in its applicability and isn't so tightly integrated into a broader magical system.

2) Daily hoodoo cleansing baths (as described in the Magic Monday FAQ) can have some of the same effect, but no, a daily cold shower won't do it, though it'll do some good; to do misogi shuho, the Shinto water purification, you need a river or the sea. A waterfall is even better!

[(Anonymous)]

I started working the Celtic Golden Dawn system about two and a half years ago, and got about halfway through the Ovate grade and then stopped (in pretty short order I finished graduate school, moved cities, got married, and had a kid, among other significant and mostly positive changes). I started working some natural magic with very positive results, and recently started again doing the LBRP and then added the Central Ray at your suggestion.

The other day I had a rare quiet hour in the morning and decided to cast a geomantic reading, and it felt really right, and it got me thinking of having another go at the Celtic Golden Dawn system as a whole. I clearly have a draw to the work, even though it's felt hard to the point of impossible to really make it a priority the last couple years. I had assumed that doing more would be off-limits now that I have a young child (one year old), but I looked over the Ovate material, and as I understand it there's not anything there that's contradicted, so long as I'm doing the rituals outside of my son's normal living space (I'm doing them usually in the garage, or a couple times in a spare bedroom he rarely goes in).

So at long last, my question: Am I right that I could safely work through the whole Ovate grade, so long as I can find the time to do the work? Or are there issues I'm overlooking? My main uncertainty is about the opening and closing, blessing, circumambulating the temple...etc. Do those count as "any more complex magical working?" What about spagyrics?

Thanks for your advice! If you're interested I can share some of my insights on why it seems impossible for many people to understand your simple and clear instructions about children and magical safety (hint: it has a lot to do with the psychological strain of trying to be a thoughtful new parent in a society that is both obsessively over-vigilant and controlling and simultaneously weirdly negligent about children's health and well-being)

[ecosophia]

Yes, you can work through everything in the Ovate Grade with a small child in the house. You'll have to leave the later grades until you son is older, but that shouldn't be any kind of problem. As for spagyrics, an alchemical tincture of chamomile is highly recommended by alchemists I know as a sure treatment for colic in infants!

Thanks for your insights into why people get so weird about the instructions on my FAQ. My Aspergers syndrome makes me less than perceptive when it comes to some kinds of emotional situations.

[(Anonymous)]

1) If rituals have egregors, then could we use the fact a set of newish rituals is powerful as a sign that that tradition has a strong future?

2) Is there something in the occult lore which explains why so many people who want change and talk about how great it will be if people went car-free (for example) not just can't seem to walk their talk, but don't even seem to grasp that's a possibility?

3) I suspect I have karmic ties to people who I now want nothing to do with, and who probably want nothing to do with me. If I work on improving my own character, would this then make dealing with them in future lifetimes easier?

4) What bemuses you? ;)

[ecosophia]

1) It's certainly one thing that can do that. Another is that you're unknowingly copying something that was done in the past. The third is that there are beings on the inner planes that want the rituals to be practiced, and are contributing power to the work. I know of situations where all three of those have been the case.

2) Sure. They know perfectly well that it's possible; they just don't want to do it, and daydreaming about how wonderful it would be if other people did it is a way to evade the thought that maybe they ought to do it. It's a common sort of evasion:



3) If you work on your character you may move sufficiently far beyond them that you don't have to deal with them at all in future lifetimes. The best way to make sure you have good lives to come is put in the work here and now!

4) At the moment, the biography of Edward Gorey I'm reading. I had no idea the man was an occultist.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm hoping to shift to making a living off my art (music) at some point fairly soon. I have a good natal chart for it, positive progressed chart, and things look good for it. However, I want to do a little bit of magic to help it along. I'm considering the fact that in order to live off of my music, I need two things: the first is that I need to make money off of it, which is obvious. I'm working on this side of things fairly well: prayers and rituals to improve my skill are helping a great deal.

The other side of it is I need to be able to live off of the money I make. This will not be nearly as much as my current income, and so I'm thinking of trying to lower my requirements down quite a bit. Do you have advice on occult practices that would help with that?

What I'm thinking right now is meditation and journaling to find out why I feel the need to spend so much, and then reducing my spending as time passes, but are there other practices?

[ecosophia]

1) Make a list of your monthly expenditures. Go through them, and sort them into three categories -- the things you actually need, the things you actually want, and the things you just do out of habit. Explore your habits regarding the latter two categories with meditation and journaling, yes, but also, whenever you're going to spend money on anything you don't seriously need, ask yourself this: "Do I want this more than I want a career in music?" That's what it comes down to, after all...

[(Anonymous)]

I have a question: I'm reading Dave Ramsey (I want to get my finances in order), and find he keeps repeating "If you live like no one else, later you can live like no one else." Would this be an affirmation?

[ecosophia]

If he gives it a specific meaning relevant to his program, yes.

[booklover1973]

I have two questions:

What does one do when performing the Sphere of Protection when one is in the Atacama desert, or when one is on a research station near the South Pole? In these places, not all of the four elements Water, Air, Fire and Earth have local representations. In some places of the Atacama desert, for example, it doesn't rain for centuries. And in central Antarctica, it is never warm enough for liquid water to occur naturally.

I have read that many Druids have a quite extensive range of religious and ecological practices which they follow. Are there Druids, too, who have a set of basic practices which aren't very time-consuming, but which they do consistently? I ask out of curiosity how broad the gamut of practices is which Druids follow.

[ecosophia]

1) You're getting stuck on purely material forms of the elements. That's a common beginner's mistake. The elements aren't just the physical substances that represent them and give them their common names. Furthermore, if you're at the South Pole, and your blood and tissues haven't yet frozen solid, you know what? There's liquid water present.

2) I've never known any two Druids who follow exactly the same set of practices. That said, the measure of your commitment to any spiritual path can be gauged quite well by the amount of time you put into that path on a daily basis. If you do five minutes of work a day, you'll get five minutes a day worth of benefit from it.

Prayer of the gnomes

[(Anonymous)]

Hello jmg

Lately I’ve been meditating on the prayer of the gnomes by eliphas Levi and I wanted to discuss some ideas this has given me.
The first one is this, do the elemental kings (Ghob, Djinnn, Nichsa, Paralda) only control the elements on our planet or do they control the elements in the entire solar system?

Re: Prayer of the gnomes

[ecosophia]

Nobody knows. If you have the chance to try an elemental invocation on the Moon, the results would be a useful data point!

[(Anonymous)]

Is the astral plane where the gods and the various afterlife possibilities (the heavens and hells between incarnations, for example) are usually considered to be located? What books on the astral plane in general would you recommend?

[ecosophia]

The astral plane is only one of a series of planes -- seven, in the most common taxonomy -- "above" (that is, subtler than) the physical plane. In that standard taxonomy, it's the next to lowest plane -- the physical plane (which includes the etheric realms) is the lowest, then the astral, then the mental, and then four others which (as we have no access to them at this stage of our evolution) are generally lumped together under the label "spiritual." The gods are in the spiritual planes, though they can act throughout the planes; the afterlife process moves from the etheric region of the physical plane, through the astral plane, to the mental plane, and back again.

As for books on the astral plane, there are various books by Geoffrey Hodgson and Charles Leadbeater that are fairly good.

Burnout and the desire to make a fire

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG

When my wife burned out a few years ago, she got a strong desire to make fires in our sauna. Generally, those fires, and the visits in the sauna, became an important routine. On several occasions the results were amazingly good, as if the fire and sauna, at least temporally, could completely chase off the symptoms. Later, one of her friends also burned out and got exactly the same kind of desire to make fires.

My question:
1) Do you think that making fires generally might be good for burned out people? Is it as simple as burnout --> light a fire?.

2) Do you think the fires and the hot sauna, washed or chased something off from my wife? If so, are there names for it? (demons?, bad spirits? something else?).

3) Are there any esoteric writings about burnouts, and the classification and magical treatments?

Re: Burnout and the desire to make a fire

[(Anonymous)]

May I ask what you mean by "burn out"? You don't mention any characteristics and I'm curious what you mean specifically.

SoP and places

[(Anonymous)]

How important is it in the SoP to visualise the area where you live? Does it matter if you visualise places you have visited, or where you used to live?

Re: SoP and places

[ecosophia]

I'd encourage you to experiment and find out for yourself.

Earth energies

[(Anonymous)]

Hiya,

What would the effect be on the people living unknowingly on sacred land, both on themselves and the land around them? Any book recommendations on this subject?

What effect would someone of high spiritual enlightenment (from previous life work in this case so not much working knowledge, all spontaneous) have when they live on this land permanently?

Thank you.

Re: Earth energies

[ecosophia]

1) A vast amount depends on what you mean by "sacred land." That label covers many different geosophic phenomenoa.

2) You'd want to ask the person in question, as "high spiritual enlightenment" can mean a fairly broad range of things.

Edward Gorey!

[(Anonymous)]

No one wore a fur coat and tennis shoes with more panache! I adore Gorey's work.
Thanks for these fascinating tidbits about personalities of the occult scenes of yore.
MILLICENTLY LURKING

Re: Edward Gorey!

[ecosophia]

You're welcome. Occultism has been so thoroughly erased from history as usually taught that I'm having quite a bit of fun putting it back in.

Christian Druidry

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

A slight bit of bio before my question. My mother is Catholic (very much a practicing one) and my father is not, but was a Rosicrucian. He agreed to not get in the way of my religious upbringing and so I was raised Catholic and he never discussed any Rosicrucian ideas with me (they were/are happily married, so these different realms always co-existed for me). I actually had no idea what they were about at all, but his personal library always seemed mysterious, interesting, and part of my heritage (his father and a couple of my great aunts were also Rosicrucians). I continued to just see this as somewhat forbidden material, even when my father lost interest in the order a decade or so ago and decided to get rid of his books (he is a minimalist and I am not, so I took them as they seemed important, even if I wouldn't ever read them).

For my part, I lost my faith in Catholicism as a teenager after I stopped attending church and became disillusioned with some of the teachings (primarily with the concept of original sin). I became agnostic, at first leaning towards atheism but never quite there, but I was seeking some answers and eventually pieced together my own sense of what seemed right. It was just an assortment of beliefs, and in the background I never stopped puzzling over the teachings of Christ and the ideas in the bible, eventually coming to my own understanding of the words that allowed me to increasingly make use of them. Many of my beliefs seemed incompatible with Christianity as I understood it, but through your writings and Dion Fortune's work I have come to realize that that they may be quite compatible with each other.

It was quite strange for me when you mentioned that Fortune incorporated aspects of Rosicrucian teachings in the Cosmic Doctrine since I have been finding that book incredibly helpful with my thinking (even though my understanding is still shallow I am sure). It made me wonder what was lurking in those old books I had.

I read with great interest, also, a comment from you in which you posted a diagram from Mansions Of The Soul and I managed to find a copy of that book. When it arrived I had a very strange aversion to it, quite unusual for me, short lived as it turned out, but very strong. A bad energy or something that made me sure I would never open it, but then after putting it out of sight for a few hours I picked it up and read it in a couple of days. This was a great moment for me (so thank you very much for your part in it!!) as incredibly I discovered many of my ideas about life that I'd hand assembled, as it were, from the ideas others but also my own inner contemplation and understandings, just lined up so perfectly with Rosicrucian teachings. A truly strange experience that I felt I had to convey to you somehow.

The element to my thinking that I would like to understand better is my interest in the earth in relation to this, and I must confess I am more convinced in your description of reincarnation leading towards another higher life form rather than directly to heaven. The chasm between man and God seems too large to me still and I am certain there is so much more to the story.

I wondered if you might recommend any books that discuss Christian Druidry, or if you might have any general advice based on what I've told you. I feel hopeful now that there might be a particular cosmos that I actually am aligned with, so to speak, something that runs through and can unify all of my beliefs. I should say I intend to read my dad's collection of books and speak to him about this (not in that order) - I imagine he has been rather amused watching me over the past three decades or so. It might be as strange a moment for him though as it was for my mom when I asked her if she had an extra Rosary recently.

Thanks,
Johnny

Re: Christian Druidry

[ecosophia]

Well, if you find Rosicrucian teachings to be unusually meaningful, might I suggest that you consider Rosicrucianism as an option? There are upwards of a dozen active Rosicrucian orders in the western world today; for what it's worth, I'm a member of two of them, one admitting only Master Masons, the other open to people of good character more generally, and have learned a lot from those affiliation. You may find that the path you want is right in front of you...

Dire Geomantic Reading for Newbie

[(Anonymous)]

Thought this was worth posting… I did a geomantic reading Friday morning along the lines of “what do I need to know about today?” and got the rather dire chart below. As our esteemed host had just that week advised against interpreting death and destruction willy-nilly I assumed perhaps a minor difficulty lay ahead- the chart hints that the issue would be a place I frequent and as I farm there are not a long list of such places so I assumed something at home was going to break down and leave me in the lurch.

Well after a busy, productive and largely uneventful day I was not thinking about the reading as the black clouds were forming, quite literally, over the farm. Around 8pm what we were initially told was a tornado hit the farm and snapped off and uprooted trees everywhere. Thankfully our house remained unscathed but I’m not quite sure how as there are trees lying all around it. A couple outbuildings received slight damage but nothing serious. NWS came around Saturday and did an investigation and determined that it was not a tornado but a rather a “micro burst” with extreme straight-line winds.

I spent the following hours after the storm helping neighbors and the local volunteer fire department clear the roads. It makes a huge difference to peace of mind when something of this sort happens and men show up in within minutes in trucks wielding chainsaws and set about without much chitchat. Not sure if this is the Pobl as Witness or not.

To turn this storytime into a question… now that you know the answer to the reading what else could I have gotten from it to home in on more specifics of the day that was?

Thanks!

Judge- Pobl
RW- Carchar
LW- Carchar
1stM- Llawenydd
2ndM- Colled
3rdM- Pobl
4thM- Merch
1stD- Mab
2ndD- Pobl
3rdD- Elw
4thD- Tristwch
1stN- Gwyn
2ndN- Merch
3rdN- Mab
4thN- Coch

Re: Dire Geomantic Reading for Newbie

[ecosophia]

The thing I'd have gotten from that chart if I got it as a daily reading is "Don't you dare stray from home!" Carchar can mean "sit tight where you are" -- and that would have been excellent advice in your case.

Unfair Advantage

[(Anonymous)]

I thought about sticking this under the psychedelic question, but didn't want to bog down that thread with my...wind. So here goes...

My mother and her husband are here with us for an extended stay and it's making my ritual practice a bit difficult, simply because they're sleeping in my temple! And my mom's new husband is a heavy pot smoker, so that hasn't exactly been helpful for my habits either...

Last Friday I didn't get to my ritual practice until after 1:30 pm and I had already smoked a bowl with our new arrival. I know you advise not to practice under any sort of intoxicating influence but I wanted to get it done, and I'd never done it when I was just stoned. (The only other time I had two beers before as well.) I was curious.

In a nutshell, it was absolutely brilliant. Miles ahead of any other experience. My visuals were breathtaking - as in, I could see reflections of the spiritual environment in the gleaming golden sphere of Tiphareth, just as an example. Like lucid dreaming. The flow of the ritual was natural and perfectly paced. I could hold all trains of thought comfortably and simultaneously. I seemed to have an innate comprehension of the whys and wherefores connected to different aspects of the ritual that I haven't studied yet. I even got my vibration into the Yesod sphere for the first time, not to mention hitting all the others squarely. Frankly I was blown away.

BUT, I also think it was a test. I was shown a way I could cheat and achieve a level of vision and understanding I hadn't earned. I can't help but think that there was a (probably rather unsavory) entity behind the rapid advancement, someone who wants to keep me high, and not growing spiritually. I think that I can get to that level on my own, without the inhaled assistance, but it will require discipline, will, and determination to do so. And time.

In a way I think the entity made a mistake with me. I saw what was possible, and it was beautiful. And now I want it. But I want to attain it the right way, in a way that actually makes it mine, and not someone else's lure. (That rarely ends well for the fish!) I want to be able to access that vision at will, without depending on...enhancements.

The best journal dialogue I've ever had with my subconscious followed yesterday, after I'd had a couple days to mull it over. I came to see intoxication during ritual practice as an open door for entities that I might not appreciate to penetrate my sacred space. I was able to understand just how subservient I was to the smoke - what it was keeping me FROM, not what it could do FOR me. The veil slipped a little, and I caught a glimpse of a siren we might as well call Mary Jane, revealed for what she was, and even learned a few bars of her song.

Awareness is the great universal solvent, no? Now to turn this experience into a thrust block. I'm ready to put a wrench to those loose rivets. Any further advice?

Thanks so much, John Michael. You are a great influence on me, and in turn on the people I am able to influence.
Tripp

Re: Unfair Advantage

[(Anonymous)]

Have you considered burning frankincense when you do your magical practices? You can even, if divination finds it appropriate, give it as an offering to the deity you're invoking. Frankincense has some similar effects as to what you describe, but also helps make the space energetically clean, so it can help chase off nasty entities that you express concern over. I found that by burning and inhaling a lot of frankincense my desire to smoke was sublimated. The vibe is way better too, on the whole.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG!

1) How important are the colors of the spheres in the Heathen Middle Pillar? I've been doing it for months and can't get used to the genital center being blue. It's such a cold color for something that's close to the part of the body where the body heat is generated, plus I have a history of UTIs and visualizing something that looks like a snowball near my bladder is just uncomfortable. Frequently my mind switches the colors of the center and the rune in it. Can I do that?

2) I also miss a solar plexus center in the MP (I used to do Yoga for a while and feeling the chakra there was great), but I'm not complaining, if that's how the system is, I'll have to stick to it. I would just like to ask if the association between the solar plexus and the sun that's in the name and the chakra concept is also present in Western occultism. Is that a widespread connection? (If so, maybe having a solar plexus center in an already very solar tradition might throw the ritual too far off balance? I know the ritual is based on the Kabbalah and there simply aren't any more sephiroth in the middle pillar, but Tiphareth could be represented by the solar plexus instead of the heart just as easily, right? If the answer to this would be too long, it's okay to just tell me to read Israel Regardie's book on the topic, which I should probably do anyway...)

Thank you for sharing your wisdom!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm doing the Celtic Central Ray version, and had the exact same question about the solar plexus! I feel like I want/expect there to be a sphere there as well.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

I felt a presence in the room with me, while I practiced non-discursive meditation combined with regular prayer. I was scared a bit but was generally under the impression that it was someone well meaning who was interested in what I was doing.

Was I in danger? Does non-discursive meditation open one up for outside influences?

Thank you for Magic Monday!

[ecosophia]

You probably weren't in danger -- but this is one of the reasons it's a good idea to perform a banishing ritual before you meditate.

Prayer & Meditation

[moondog79]

1.) If one desired to include prayer in the daily magico-spiritual practice (along with ritual, meditation, and divination), is there a traditional or appropriate placement? My natural inclination has been to begin with prayer before moving on to the others and then concluding in journaling and sacred reading. Does this particular pattern seem perfectly fine, or are there any suggested adjustments to my order and way of doing things?

2.) With a background in the contemplative Christian tradition, the primary form of meditation used has been Centering Prayer. Are you familiar with this method? It is a form of silent, mind-clearing meditation; whereas lectio divina is what I may call its associated discursive sister method of chewing over a reading or concept. Both being practices developed within the West, do you see any problem with the silent form being additionally used in one's practice along the esoteric Path?

Re: Prayer & Meditation

[ecosophia]

1) Do what keepeth thou from wilting shall be the loophole in the law, but the usual order in Christian tradition is the other way around. You start with a reading from the Bible or another suitable text, meditate on the reading, and let the meditation culminate in prayer. Still, experiment and see what works for you.

2) I've read about Centering Prayer but I wouldn't consider myself familiar with it. I have no idea how it would interact with standard magical practice; the mere fact that they're both Western is not a guarantee of safety.

UFOs and Occultists

[(Anonymous)]

JMG – in some of your entries and responses in this blog, you have mentioned that occultists were deliberately active in the creation or cultivation of the UFO phenomenon of the latter half of the 20th century.
Two questions have come to my mind based on this:
1 - Why did they do it (i.e., what was their motive)?
And
2 – Based on your understanding of the phenomenon, were these occultists successful in achieving what they set out to do (keeping in mind the diversity of its manifestations in American pop culture including the ridiculous but incredibly persistent Area 51 myth)?

Many thanks for tirelessly replying to all the MM questions that come your way every week!

Ron M

Re: UFOs and Occultists

[ecosophia]

1) There were two phases to the project, and each had its own motive. The first phase, in 1946 and 1947, was to make nuclear war less likely by convincing as many people as possible that another world was watching. Think of that great bit in Sartre where he has you imagine yourself spying through a keyhole, watching something on the other side; then you hear a noise behind you that makes you aware that somebody has been watching you the whole time. All of a sudden you become aware of how you look in the eyes of the Other, and your behavior and attitude shift suddenly. That's the shift in awareness they wanted to encourage. Later, from 1952 into the 1960s, the goal was to use interest in UFOs to spread occult teachings into the general populace.

2) We'll never know how much the first project had to do with the fact that the US and the Soviet Union didn't go to war early on, when neither side had enough nukes to deter the other from attacking. It may have helped. The second project was a thumping success, and played a large role in launching an impressive revival of occultism across the western world.

[(Anonymous)]

The plum tree that gets my hoodoo bath water is growing to massive proportions. It was supposed to be dwarf stock. :)

Although you never said to do it, I offered the tree the option of having witch bottles buried at its base. 'Enthusiastic' doesn't quite cover the response. Once the offer was made, it pretty much demanded them. I showed it both separately, to make sure both were acceptable, and they were. That was a while ago and the tree seems happy with them.

[(Anonymous)]

Would you be able to divulge how to look for answers from a tree like this? Is it over several months? Sorry if this is an inappropriate question.