Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's a little after midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of Dane Rudhyar (birth name Daniel Chennevière), who was both an influential composer in the modernist school and far and away the twentieth century's most influential astrologer, the figure who integrated astrology with depth psychology and launched the person-centered school of astrology that dominated the field in the second half of the twentieth century.

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 -- and yes, that means you. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve been doing some research on Plutonic cultural themes for a project I’m working on, and found an increase in a certain subset of what I initially thought was part of the Plutonic current from the second half of the 1970s on.

This was not an increase in the full Plutonic current, but in a subset, which, at the risk of dramatically oversimplifying I’ll call nihilism mixed with explosive rage. This appears to show up in several different fields, and in several different countries and cultures as well.

This struck me as odd, and I filed it away as interesting, but I didn’t have any explanation for it. However, now that I’m looking into the period when Pluto was downgraded from planethood, I found a possible explanation. It turns out that NASA*, among others, called Eris the 10th planet upon its discovery. This would seem to suggest that it could have functioned as a very brief temporary planet.

Based on the myths, nihilistic rage would seem to be a good summary of Eris, and given the discovery in the first half of the 2000s, the planet would have started coming into focus at some point in the early 1970s. I haven’t determined the converse Saturn return yet, but it strikes me that Eris started coming into focus at about the same point in time as the increase in what I initially thought was the Plutonic current got underway.

1)Does the line of reasoning I’m using make sense to you, or is there a massive flaw I’m missing?

2)I plan to try to figure out if Eris was a temporary planet. The best method I’ve come up with is to cast as many charts which were active during the period from when it started coming into focus until the present, with an emphasis on charts active while it was a planet, and seeing if Eris offers any extra information. Does this sound like it would work for determining whether Eris was a planet?

3)I’m thinking of looking at ingresses for any country I can find enough information to interpret events in the period (which will likely be several dozen), but also celebrities, and my own chart and those of my friends who are willing to let me try this out. Are there any other types of charts you can think of I could look at?

4)Are there any additional sources of information you can think of I could look into to identify whether Eris was a temporary planet?

5)There is one additional problem, which makes determine the start of the Eridian period a little complicated: it was discovered in 2005 using images taken in 2003. Is the important moment when the images were taken or the moment that a human being realized a planet was there? I would think it would be when someone realizes its there, but the official discovery date is listed as October 21, 2003, since that’s when the images were taken.

A difference of a few years is enough that it may be possible to determine which one it is, but it will likely take quite a bit more work, and so I figure I’ll ask if you happen to know anything about the topic.

*https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/newplanet-072905-images.html

[ecosophia]

That's certainly worth some research. I'd take some time, though, to check for other astrological indications of the same thing -- what were the other outer planets doing at that time?

Amateur curse doll

[(Anonymous)]

A friend of mine with a terrible case of Trump Derangement Syndrome made a doll out of some corn discards. The doll is a representation of a well known blonde haired Fox News correspondent. This friend is an atheist who thinks witchcraft is cool, but only in the most frivolous, dress up for Halloween way. She has no interest in studying the occult. Her husband is currently very ill. They are both of middle age. She made the doll during the last full moon and posted photos of it on social media. She thought it was funny that her cat hissed at the doll and wouldn't go near it.

I have said nothing to her about the obvious foolishness of making the doll. What are the repercussions of making a curse object like she has done with the doll? I'm frightened for her husband's health because of the forces a doll like that invites into the house. I do like this friend of mine and it saddened me to see her playing with fire. Of course I said nothing. I'm keeping this anonymous, of course.

Thanks for all you do and thanks for Magic Monday.

Re: Amateur curse doll

[ecosophia]

You should be concerned. Magic doesn't care whether you know what you're doing or not. If she was able to focus any significant amount of negative energy into the doll, even if it was just by wallowing in hatred while she made it, that energy is going to manifest itself in her life and the lives of anyone close to her. Exactly how that'll work out depends on the fine details of the curse, of course, but one way or another it won't be pleasant for anyone involved.

Geomancy interpretation

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

I've read through your book, The Art and Practice of Geomancy, and now I'm trying to learn to do divination according it. I've got difficulties formulating good questions so I decided to try the Four Triplicities aproach. My old job went away and I got a new position recently, and I will be 65 next year, and I wonder if I'm interpreting the charts too much on what has been so much on my mind.

First triplicity: 1st mother: Albus, 1st niece: Fortuna major, 2nd mother; Cauda Draconis.
I'm a rather detached, nice but weakish person. It's nice with the new job, but it is only temporary. Retirement next year, and my years in the workforce are completed.

Second triplicity: 3rd mother: Caput Draconis, 2nd niece: Conjunctio, 4th mother: Tristia.
My new position is the beginning in recent past, and now I'm learning the job, trying to gather as much knowledge from my new coworkers as I can. I'm hoping that the tristitia does not mean failure, but rather stability in near future.

Third triplicity: 1st daughter: Rubeus, 3rd niece: Albus, 2nd daughter: Conjunctio.
I was quite worried about the danger of becoming unemployed, when my old job went away, and my new position has brought peace to my mind. I's all coming together soon.

Fourth triplicity: 3rd daughter: Cauda Draconis, 4th niece: Puer, 4th daughter: Fortuna Major.
I lost my old coworkers, when I lost my old job, now there is a big change in the relations at the work, and it will all work out great in the end.

Summing it up with the witnesses and the judge.
Right witness: Amissio, judge: Acquisitio, left witness: Via.
Lost my old job, gained a new, and there will be new adventures in the future.

/Eija

Re: Geomancy interpretation

[ecosophia]

That's a plausible interpretation. What you need to do now, though, is set it aside and then come back to it in a week or so and see how it compares with what's actually happening in your life. That's how you learn how to do divination: by doing it and then learning from your successes and failures.

[causticus]

Good late evening, JMG!

So I've been doing daily banishing rituals (Greek-themed Polytheist LBRP to be exact w/ Hermes as patron) for about 3 months straight now and I'm really starting to notice the cumulative effects. Namely that, (a) I'm overall less irritable and annoyed by mundane things/people/happenings around me, (b) I feel like I'm lot more calm, relaxed and patient, and (c) noticing that my mental time seems even more devoted to the metaphysical space than before. Anyway,

1. Are these normal kind of results from just a few months practice, and

2. How much longer should I keep doing just the daily banishings before adding the middle pillar exercise into the mix? What would be a good middle pillar arrangement for the Greek polytheist theme?

3. And I'm assuming Tarot would be a perfectly suitable divination practice for this setup, yeah? If not, what would be better?

4. Do you have any article/post with a quick guide to a suitable discursive mediation for this particular set of practices or would that be something I'd find in one of your magic books? If so, which one?

Once again, thank you so much for all of this!!

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, if you're practicing the ritual systematically. It gets even better, by the way.

2) Three months is fine. Usually I have people practice daily for a month or two, and then add in the Middle Pillar. As for the centers of the MP, there's a lot of flexibility; the most important points are that you should have a sky deity for the crown sphere (the one above the head), an earth deity for the root sphere (the one at the feet), and a deity of your own gender for the genital center. This would be one option:

Crown Center - Zeus
Throat Center - Hermes
Heart Center - Aphrodite
Genital Center - Dionysos
Root Center - Gaia

But there are plenty of other options, of course.

3) Yes, or any other oracle you prefer. I've done it with four different Tarot decks, geomancy, the Ogham, the Coelbren alphabet, the Lenormand deck, electional astrology, and my forthcoming Sacred Geometry Oracle, among other things.

4) I'll be doing a series of posts on discursive meditation here shortly. In the meantime, here's a post on the subject, and most of my books on magic discuss it as well -- The Druidry Handbook has the most complete guide I've written so far.

Vibration in the SoP

[(Anonymous)]

Hey. This is a question for other community members with a background in singing or acting, as well as for JMG.

I'm trying to work out if I've got the hang of the vibration for the SoP and have been lucky with this, or if what is meant is something else other than what I've experienced.

I have quite a deep voice and a small frame, and did some singing and acting when I was younger although not professionally. If I project my voice even a little, I get a sense of vibration which I can easily focus towards, eg a hand, if I think about it. Is this what it is?

I also noticed that the vibration described seems like the same sort of sound created by chanting at the opening of yoga classes.

I have been singing/chanting just the deities' names during the SoP, and speaking all the other words, which would sound weird if there were other people around to hear, and I don't know if it's necessary. It means there is less flow in the speech, as this sung name is in the middle, not at the end like the sung Amen of Christian church services. I am not sure if this singing is needed if I am already vibrating the other words. I'm not planning on singing the entire SoP and prefer speaking it as I can concentrate on the words themselves that way.

Thank you again for all your work in answering our questions

Re: Vibration in the SoP

[ecosophia]

If you're getting a sense of vibration that you can focus toward a part of your body, yes, you're doing it right. Yes, vibrating in ritual always sounds weird to other people!

Protective Amulet

[(Anonymous)]

I read in your FAQ section about an amulet to protect against hostile magic ( red bag,kosher salt, bent nail) and wondered if this would be ok to use under my pillow while I am sleeping to protect from negative energy. I don't believe there is any hostile magic in our house, but my husband is displaying a dark, negative energy. I realize this also needs to be addressed on the material plane and that I need to do a divination first. I would like to have some protection so I don't feel so drained but don't want to do anything that would cause unexpected issues for him or me.

Thanks for your time answering all our questions.

Re: Protective Amulet

[ecosophia]

Yes, that would be appropriate, but remember that any magical working can have unexpected results. A divination first would be an excellent idea!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Just listened to the interview you recently posted. It was a fun one. I had a couple questions.

1. A friend of mine is dating a young woman who told me that she regularly suffers from sleep paralysis accompanied by the different terrifying visuals that seem so commonly reported. I’m certain she is not practicing any kind of religion herself, but I wanted to ask you what kinds of measures might she take that could help protect her from that phenomena (and the potential entities that may be involved)?

2. As an aside, I’ve been thinking of crafting some wards and defensive magical implements for my home and office. Are there any particular things you commonly do in that vein? There seems to be so much out there (black tourmaline in the corners of the house, St. Brigid’s crosses, iron horseshoes, golden colored keys on red string, those blue eyes supposed to ward against the evil eye, etc.) it’s hard to know how to sift through the possibilities.

[ecosophia]

1) If she's willing to make a cloth packet of protective herbs such as St. John's wort and tuck it under her pillow insider her pillowcase, that should help.

2) I don't use that approach -- daily banishing rituals, occasionally supplemented with more robust protective workings, are my way of keeping my living and working space magically clean. If you'd rather use amulets, though, by all means -- and remember that you can use divination to sort through the options. It can be quite simple: ask "What would be the result if I were to use this amulet?" and draw one card, or rune, or what have you.

Double conjunction and some more Geomancy

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

some questions related to Geomancy:

How would you interpret a "double conjunction", meaning the house of querent passing to a house next to the quesited, and the house of the quesited doing likewise? Based on what you write in your book I'd interpret it as "The desired goal will not come all by itself, I still have to work for it. But when I do, it's going to be rather easy going."

To give an example I cast a chart on the the question, whether I could use Ogham as an oracle in regard to "self-development". Geomancy works very nice regarding mundane questions, sometimes with an accuracy that is astonishing. Yet it seems not suitable for any question regarding anything "inward" which the oracle told me by itself, too. So I asked the above question and got as answer 1-puella, 2-puella, 3-fortuna major, 4-laetitia, 5-puer, 6-populus, 7-cauda draconis, 8-cauda draconis, 9-populus, 10-puella, 11-puer, 12-populus, rw-puer, lw-puella, j-conjunctio.

I'd read that as "Yes, but don't treat it too seriously. You'll have to in invest a lot of work, but if you do, you'll get good results. I'd interpret the cardines as "It'll be a pleasant experience most of the time, still you will stop using it after a while, and do so happily".

Any further suggestions? This leads me to another question, namely how to interpret a chart if certain figures seem to play a prominent role in a chart. In the above example, it would be puella, populus and puer. Can anything more than "significator X passes to house Y" be read into that?

Thanks a lot!
Nachtgurke

PS: Hope you had a fine and successful release party yesterday!

Re: Double conjunction and some more Geomancy

[ecosophia]

1) I take a double conjunction as a "YES!!!!" It says that you're moving toward it and it's moving toward you, and nothing will get in the way of succeess. It's nearly as good an indication as occupation, and better than (say) a double translation or a double mutation.

So I'd interpret your reading about Ogham as a very strong positive reading. Generally speaking, when a chart perfects in more than one way -- say, two conjunctions, or a mutation and a translation, or what have you -- that's a very, very favorable indication.

2) The traditional lore doesn't really address this. I know a few people who are working on trying to figure something out. In the meantime, why, you can always meditate on it!

Nature Spirits

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, JMG! Hope all is well. A couple of things.

Last week, you mentioned that nature spirits might be a bit testy with humans at the moment. Is there anything we can do to improve relations on that front on a personal level? Aside from the obvious, which I would assume involves not hosing nature down with pesticides, and that sort of thing.

2nd, an observation: I practice in my bedroom. Currently working through LRM, doing the LBRP every day. My entire family hangs out in that room, now, including my teen/pre-teen daughters (generally they prefer the bedroom they share). No idea whether the two are connected, but I thought it was an interesting phenomenon. I'm tempted to see whether I can spread the mojo to other rooms...Or banish the mojo from other rooms, as it were.

Ever hear of anything like that happening with frequent banishing rituals?

Fun hearing you on Monster Professor, by the way. You always make an excellent podcast interviewee. I listened to one a while back, can't remember which...Occulture, maybe? Or Infinite Path? I can't tell you how much it helped me to hear you describe your journey as a writer. You'd be surprised how many authors take the stance of "You're born with it, or you're not." (Actually, as a writer, I bet you wouldn't be surprised at all.) Very nice hearing a writer I admire talk about the learning curves they endured.

Sincerely, thank you for all the time you give this stuff.

-Dudley Dawson

Re: Nature Spirits

[ecosophia]

1) Once you reach the point at which clairvoyant vision starts cutting in, you can ask them. In the meantime, decrease your ecological footprints as much as you can, and if you have the opportunity to do so, set aside a small corner of your yard for purely natural vegetation: don't mow, don't weed, don't prune, just water it when the weather's too dry and let what wants to grow there grow there. Nature spirits appreciate that immensely, and will respond accordingly.

2) Good heavens, yes. That shows that your family's comfortable with the energies you're working with -- a very good sign. You can certainly do the work in other rooms as well -- in fact, it's a good idea every month or so to do a banishing ritual in every room in the house, to keep things nice and sparkling in a nonphysical sense.

3) You're most welcome. Our culture's fetishization of "talent" is one of the worst things it does to people. Barring physical or neurological impairments, nearly anyone can develop a fair fluency in any art form, and the more people do so the happier we'll all be. All it takes is interest, enthusiasm, and a willingness to work hard and learn from mistakes.

[booklover1973]

In your last Cosmic Doctrine post, as an answer to the question if every soul will become a god in due time you mentioned that different souls likely have different fates. Can you elaborate?

Secondly, I have found that doing the Sphere of Protection with a wand of ebony seems to be less effective (for example, weaker visualizations). I did it in this way only once. Does my obervation make sense or is something other involved?

[ecosophia]

1) In many Western occult traditions, the highest level of spiritual attainment is given the Latin title Ipsissimus, which literally means "most completely yourself." Thus the goal of the path isn't to fit into some predetermined role in the cosmos; each of us has a unique destiny, a goal toward which our entire path over countless lives naturally leads, and which is uniquely perfect for each individual soul. Thus it may well be that some souls are destined to become Solar Logoi themselves, but others will have other destinies.

2) It makes perfect sense. Different woods have different energetic effects.

[open_space]

Hello again JMG,

The effects of magical practice have been having a greatly positive effect on me and I am very happy to say so. Somehow, I feel early familiar with the methods and after years of life-exhaustion and feeling that everything going on around me was utter madness or just plain stupidity I feel re-freshened, excited and blessed.

As of now, I am about one and a half months worth of practice of LRM and trying to catch up on the Cosmic Doctrine, my Millennium copy just arrived today on the mail, its resemblance to Physics and dynamical systems in particular is fantastic! Anyway, here come my questions.

On the book of Thoth there is a section that stuck in my mind."Here we come to a slight complication. The chapters correspond, but they correspond wrongly; and this is only to be explained by the fact that Levi felt himself bound by his original oath of secrecy to the Order of Initiates which had given him the secrets of the Taro"

1) What is the right correspondence if it is wrong, or is it wrong at all? and what does Crowley mean when he says bound? Do you think this an occult bounding or a moral one?

2) For the opening and closing gestures you say that the omission of it could cause some trouble. In what sense?

3) On one of your older posts you mention about different sets of practices on different traditions and you mention that there are a set of practices for the kind of experiences related to "enlightenment". What are the systems that deal with this?

4) Is there a problem with doing Yoga with the practices of LRM? I've been doing the Qabalistic Cross after my regular yoga practices and before closing and I find the results good generally but just want to be sure I am not mixing things.

[ecosophia]

1) Always be careful of taking Crowley out of context! What he's saying, with his usual pomposity, is that he disagrees with the set of Tarot correspondences that Levi used (which assigned Aleph to the Magician, Beth to the High Priestess, and so on). The set he used was the Golden Dawn system, which assigns Aleph to the Fool, Beth to the Magician, and so on.

2) Bleeding over of everyday consciousness into magical work and magical consciousness into everyday activities. Neither of those are helpful.

3) Nearly all South Asian and many East Asian spiritual systems have this as a goal.

4) I've never heard of anyone having trouble with that combination if the yoga is ordinary hatha yoga or any of its standard offshoots. Don't mix kriya (kundalini) yoga with it, though.

well dedication ceremony

[scotlyn]

Hello. This past Saturday was the 2nd anniversary of my bicycle accident, which occurred very close to a roadside well. Given that I received great help from strangers which got me scooped up off the road and taken to hospital by strangers, while I was unconscious and unaware, and that I recovered extremely quickly from my injuries, I had developed a close affinity to this well. I think I told last year, on the first anniversary of my fall, how I had asked its owners for permission to say a prayer at it, and take some water, which I have carefully kept for a year with the intention of using it to dedicate another old well, which is on our farm, to be used in the healing and protective power of the Lady of the Wells, who, in Ireland is also called Bridget or Brid (pronounced Breege).

So, anyway, during the year, my husband and I did some clearing and cleaning, and he repaired and rebuilt its stone surround, and I created a dedication ceremony, built around the SOP. You should know that my regular SOP is built around an Irish pantheon, and during your recent SOP articles, I changed the opening to a three-ray style one. Brid is normally invoked at the third ray of my opening (deity I feel a particular attachment to) and at my south elemental invocation/banishing, because she is the lady of the fire.

However, for this dedication ceremony, I felt moved to create an SOP that includes Brid at every step, invoking her different attributes, and because this felt new, but also felt right, I want to share it here, and invite your comments/consideration.

The SOP I used in the dedication ceremony invoked Brid as follows:
*touch forehead* Brid, Goddess of Inspiration and Poetry
*touch womb centre* Brid, Goddess of Hearth, Childbirth, and Healing
*hands out at heart level* Brid, Goddess of Smithcraft and making
*invoke/banish East* Dawn-born Brid, Goddess of Spring, breath on the wind
*invoke/banish South* Flame-headed Brid, Goddess of Fire and Hearth
*invoke/banish West* Life-giving Brid, Goddess of Wells and waters
*invoke/banish North* Green-mantled Brid, Goddess of Earth and of those who graze her
*invoke Spirit Below* Earth Mother Brid, mother of all
*invoke Spirit Above* Bright Exalted Brid, sun of all
*invoke Spirit Within* Brid, soul-friend, who knows sorrow and brings healing, to dwell within this place and these waters

I also used some separate prayers to invite her ongoing presence into the life and work of this well.

I vibrated her name 19 times during this ceremony. (19 is a number strongly associated with the tradition of keeping her fire lit at Kildare, which has recently been revived after several centuries in abeyance.)

Once I had conceived the thought that the SOP could be constructed entirely around Brid, I found it altogether suspiciously easy to find the attributes that would locate her at all the different positions - like it was not me who guided the choosing of them.

Anyway, the work of dedication is done, now to continue to care for the well, and enjoy the water. When I visited yesterday, and hung out, a little frog appeared and exchanged looks with me for quite a long spell. Thanks.

Re: well dedication ceremony

[ecosophia]

Excellent! I doubt you had much to do with choosing the attributes. You might at some point consider sharing the Brid-centered SoP with her other worshipers if you haven't done so already -- they might well appreciate it, and it would likely do a great deal of good for them, for everyone in Ireland, and for the land itself.

Changing the energy of a house permanently

[(Anonymous)]

Can stale/dark energy of a room be changed permanently to a more pleasant energetic state? How would you suggest going about doing this? My background is GD type magic with a little hoodoo. I have tried regular banishing and some hoodoo house blessing type work, but the effects do not seem to last long before the inertia/dead energy feeling returns.

Thanks!

Re: Changing the energy of a house permanently

[ecosophia]

Yes, it can be done, but depending on the cause of the negative energy, it may take some serious work. If you're not already doing so, do the LBRP and Rose+Cross ritual in the house every single day; remember that you can do the two rituals together, as discussed in the lecture on the R+C ritual in Regardie's The Golden Dawn. If you're up to this -- and if not, work on your GD magic until you are -- work up a weekly ritual: for example, LBRP, LBRH, Opening by Watchtower, Bornless One ritual, Closing by Watchtower, LBRH, LBRP. (That combination will sweep away noxious energy like a well-aimed firehose, and it'll also put your personal spiritual development into high gear.)

Christian saints/angels and wheel of the year in DH

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, thanks for hosting this Q&A. On p 80 of the Druidry Handbook, in the section concerning Christian angels and saints relating to the wheel of the year, St Raphael the archangel appears in the table twice, for both St John the Baptist's day on 24th June and also for St Mary's day on 15th August. It seems like that might be a typo and I've not found any published errata -- if so what should those two lines be, please?

A Dishwasher

Re: Christian saints/angels and wheel of the year in DH

[ecosophia]

Yes, it's a typo. The saint for St. Mary's day should of course be the Blessed Virgin.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

I've got two questions. Firstly, on an MM a few weeks ago you said the following:

Where I live in New England, by contrast, the geology is identical with western Britain -- we're part of the same ancient continent from before Pangaean times, which charmingly enough has been named Avalonia by geologists -- and the energies Fortune worked with function very well here; they also seem to function all along the Atlantic seaboard and west through the Appalachians, though in a more muted fashion.

Is it possible then that the arrival of British people in northeastern America was no accident? That the familiar energies perhaps drew them toward it?

Secondly, you have previously talked of internal and external emotions. Would it be correct to surmise that obsessions are invariably external emotions?

Thank you for your consideration.

[ecosophia]

1) That's certainly possible. There's some reason to think that there may have been Atlantic crossings to western Avalonia a very long time ago -- Farley Mowat's book The Farfarers is a good starting place for this -- and so the more recent immigrants may have been following very old tracks.

2) Yes, very much so.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
is there a magical effect in a child’s baptism, provided it happens in a sacramental church and the priest knows what he is doing?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes.

Some quotes from C.W. Leadbeater's chapter on Baptism on this topic:

"What help can be given to a soul when he first comes into a new physical body? ... He comes laden with teh result of his past lives, which means that he has within him seeds of good qualities and also seeds of evil qualities."

"The student of the inner life will understand that the development of these qualities depends largely upon teh surroundings given to the child. If he is surrounded with love and gentleness, the love and gentleness in him will be called out and developed. If, on the contrary, he meets with angry vibrations and irritability, if there is in him the least trace of germs of that kind (as there is almost sure to be), they will be called out and developed; and it makes an enormous difference to his life which set of vibrations is first set in motion."

"The sacrament of Baptism is especially designed to deal with this state of affairs. The water used is magnetized with a specifal view to the effect of its vibrations upon teh higher vehicles, so that all the germs of good qualities in the unformed astral and mental bodies of the child may thereby receive a strong stimulus, while at the same time the germs of evil may be isolated and deadened."

"It is a consecration and a setting apart of the new set of vehicles to the true expression of the soul within, and to the service of the Great White Brotherhood; yet it also has its hidden side with regard to these vehicles themselves, and when the ceremony is properly and intelligently performed there can be no doubt that its effect is a powerful one. It is distinctly, therefore, what may be called an act of white magic, producing definite results which affect the whole future life of the child."

...

So that's what happens when a baptism is done well, by people who know what they are doing.

I'd suggest that the baptism has an effect no matter what, though-- and imagine what results, then, when it's performed badly or haphazardly, in the kind of church that drips with the rage that comes from sexual repression.

Geomancy casting for newborn

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning JMG,

I cast a geomancy chart for a newborn girl and got these figures:

1st Mother (1st House) – Amissio
2nd Mother (2nd House) – Laetitia
3rd Mother (3rd House) – Albus
4th Mother (4th House) – Tristitia

1st Daughter (5th House) – Fortuna Minor
2nd Daughter (6th House) – Populus
3rd Daughter (7th House) – Amissio
4th Daughter ( 8th House) – Tristitia

1st Niece (9th House) – Albus
2nd Niece (10th House) – Fortuna Major
3rd Niece (11th House) – Fortuna Minor
4th Niece (12th House) – Puella

Right Witness – Tristitia
Left Witness – Caput Draconis
Judge – Conjunctio
Reconciler – Fortuna Minor

My questions are:

1) How would you read the figures in each house?
2) Amissio (1st and 7th houses): Does it mean she and her spouse will lose their hearts to each other?
3) Albus (3rd and 9th houses): Peace, quiet progress, use of intelligence (according to your book). I understand there is great potential for education but Albus is strong in 3rd house and weak in 9th house... Any comments?
4) Tristitia (4th and 8th houses): Father’s influence and spouse’s economic standing ruled by a figure which means lowered expectations though it also means building, stability, grounding and keeping secrets. How would you read it?
5) Fortuna Minor (5th and 11th houses): Obviously seems to link her passions to her friends but what does it mean a strong Fortuna Minor in 5th versus a weak Fortuna Minor in 11th?
6) Does the Judge or Witnesses, Reconciler provide any additional information within the context of the casting?

Thank you and have a nice day.

Re: Geomancy casting for newborn

[ecosophia]

A professional geomancer would normally charge, say, $100-200 for the answers to your questions, which amount to a complete delineation of the chart, and would take a couple of hours of careful analysis. That's more than I'm willing to do for free on a comment thread that already has more than 130 comments on it! Since the child's just been born -- congrats to the parents, btw -- you have the time to study geomancy intensively, cast plenty of other readings, learn how to do it, and return to this chart with the necessary background. I suggest you get to work...

Old hag

[(Anonymous)]

I used to have the Old Hag experience as detailed in your Monsters book. That only happened in one place where I used to live. Does this experience depend on the entities in a particular place or is it dependent on the person? Also this "Hag" seemed to be male and I am female. Is it the same as an incubus / succubus, depending on you gender? Is it a parasite draining your energy?

Thanks.

Re: Old hag

[ecosophia]

Nobody knows the answers to most of these questions. You might consider reading David Hufford's book The Terror That Comes In The Night to get a good sense of the range of experiences people have had with the Hag.

Geomacy

[(Anonymous)]

In going through the Geomancy book, I decided to see if I could make sense out of the tables of geomantic hours. Once I got the chart done, they pretty much made sense with the planetary hours, except for the 11th hour on Saturday, which says it's Caudia Draconis, the Dragon's tail. Since this is a Sun hour, shouldn't that be Caput Draconis, the Dragon's head?

John Roth

Re: Geomancy

[ecosophia]

Good question. I copied down the tables as they appeared in the sources I used, and Cauda Drac is that the sources put there.

[(Anonymous)]

I've been away from practising for a while but back on track with the Bardic grade pathworkings now.

At work I'm surrounded by professional class people with world-class cases of TDS, Brexit Derangement Syndrome and the odd dash of anti-white racism and anti working class bigotry for good measure. I work mostly alone thankfully but if I didn't joint them at coffee break I'd be very isolated all day plus I need to maintain decent relationships with them. The only half-sane one, who I really like, is about to leave the office. I don't argue with them except to throw a very mild spanner into the bubble every so often, but it's so difficult to sit there and listen to the lunacy. Keeping up my practices definitely helps. Any thoughts on how to deal with it? I suppose it might be karma biting me for spending so long as an arrogant and ignorant leftist but I don't remember ever being quite so programmed...

Second, on another Magic Monday someone was asking how to break their links with a person they'd been involved with intimately as well as in practising some kind of magic. You said some parts of the link could only be broken by forming a new relationship with someone else. Does that just apply where people were practising occult stuff as well as being in a relationship, or where it was a very destructive/abusive one? I've had a couple of relationships that ended in betrayal (not by me) and I'd hate to think I still had any magical link with them of any kind. But I don't want another relationship ever again either (for about a dozen good reasons).

Lastly, one of my neighbours got a dog a year and a half ago that barks loudly and incessantly at another dog over the garden wall. I used to love pottering in my garden or lying out in the sun but can hardly tolerate it since then because the racket drives me insane. A couple of us neighbours have tried talking to the owner politely about it but she's obnoxious. Her attitude is basically that he's a barky breed of dog and there's nothing she can do about it. She shouts at him to be quiet every so often when she can see my back door is open and you can imagine how effective that is. Is there any magical working I could do that wouldn't harm the dog but would, say, have it move house to a lovely quiet country place where it could bark at squirrels all day far away from me? I don't want to risk any backlash of me having to move house because in the mini-Silicon Valley dump that Dublin now is that would be a hellscape.

Thank you,

Dot.

[ecosophia]

Good to hear from you again!

1) That's a messy situation, no question. Regular banishings will help, but you might also have to do something like look for a different job.

2) If they broke the relationship by having sex with another person, and you didn't have sex with them thereafter, you're free of the connection -- the kinds of link we're discussing can be maintained with one person at a time.

3) Focus on the well-being of the dog. Make sure the working includes, as a central element, that the dog will be happier in the other place where it will go. That way you can wish the dog and its owner a better home far from you, and end up with a better home right where you are, far from them.

Incense for Ritual

[(Anonymous)]

My good frankincense arrived Saturday morning and I put it to immediate use in my morning ritual. I have to say, first time out, it was more distracting than enhancing, but by day 3 - this morning - I am starting to feel its positive effects. Last week I mentioned that I had had a brilliant experience with visualizations while high on marijuana but that I wanted to achieve this quality on my own, without cheating, or risking opening a door to any unsavory entities. An anonymous commenter suggested frankincense as a "cleaner" alternative and I took the suggestion to heart.

Day 3 with incense, this morning, I started to feel sharper visualizations trying to break in around the edges, if that makes any sense, and I found my focus significantly enhanced. Excited to see where this leads for sure!

An unexpected product of breathing in frankincense smoke showed itself yesterday afternoon as well. I played my weekly disc golf round with the old pros in my area, and we smoked a little herb as usual, but I had the distinct and disturbing impression of a darker entity entering my consciousness with the weed smoke. First time that's ever happened. I filed the information in the "interesting tidbits" memory file, and went on to play a solid round under par on a tough course.

But it made an impression on me, and I am starting to understand what the commenter meant by frankincense making it easier to forgo the weed.

I grow increasingly impressed by how banishing and "core" strengthening exercises/practices, performed daily, like I've been doing for almost 3 months now, are slowly pushing out the negative influences and replacing them with positive ones. And I appreciate our host's time and wisdom (not to mention magical curricula!), and the suggestions of this brilliant commentariat, in pushing that ongoing transformation. Thanks so much for Magic Monday. May it keep rocking for all involved!

Tripp out.

Re: Incense for Ritual

[ecosophia]

Delighted to hear it. Keep at it!

Watcher at the Threshold

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG--
I've seen various mentions of a Watcher at the Threshold in these pages, but not an explanation of what it is or does. Could you point me to a description or text about it, or give a brief explanation of it?

Thanks.

Re: Watcher at the Threshold

[ecosophia]

There are various theories about what the Watcher is, none of which have been proven yet. What we know is that when people begin serious spiritual practice, they very often get scared, and have the sense that there's something to be scared of, something that waits right over the threshold of the Unseen. It's a very common experience, and also -- to borrow a turn of phrase from a book that was very popular in my youth -- the first test of a man of knowledge. You have to keep going despite the fear, and if you do that, the fear will dissolve and you'll be past the Watcher, and can go further.

Ritual for improving astral projection and dreamwork

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Archdruid,

I am considering a ritual to help me with astral projection or dream work (lucid dreaming). I have done the work up to and including the complete opening/closing rituals from Circles of Power but have yet to do many workings for practical purposes. I was thinking a ritual with moon symbolism (complete opening, greater invoking moon hexagram ritual, followed by an appropriately worded statement of intent) would be ideal. Does this seem like I'm on the right track?

Re: Ritual for improving astral projection and dreamwork

[ecosophia]

That would be the approach I would use, so go for it.

Esoteric Effects of Caffeine

[(Anonymous)]

First: I hope you enjoyed your Red Hook event; I'm sorry that I couldn't make it.
Second: Continuing last weeks discussion of the effects of various drugs - What are the esoteric effects of caffeine? I ask this as someone who drinks two or three cups of black coffee every day.

Re: Esoteric Effects of Caffeine

[(Anonymous)]

I'm also interested in this, given that caffeine is clearly the main drug of choice in our society at the moment.

I also wanted to add to the comment someone made last week about how psychedelics were a part of helping them break through the rationalist, materialist worldview they were raised with. This has also been my experience. They've helped me with healing some addictive and compulsive behaviours like porn and over-eating, and I'd say they're part of the reason why I'm here.

I was interested to read of Dion Fortune's take on psychedelics as destabilizing the various subtle bodies in a way that may be hard to put back together, and take that as a cautionary reminder, which certainly rings true when I think of people who use large quantities of LSD, mushrooms, ayahuasca...etc over the course of years, especially when divorced from any kind of ritual, or meditation or other kind of grounding spiritual practice. I recall reading about a study which compared people's subjective reports of the impacts psychedelics had had on them, and that the people who reported most positive impacts were those who combined psychedelic use with a regular discipline of meditation.

I have my own qualms about the current trendiness of psychedelics among certain subsets of society (especially driven by the Silicon valley scene) and the hyped-up claims of their potential but I suspect that, like alcohol and caffeine and some other drugs, they can have a place when used judiciously in moderate amounts on an occasional basis as part of an overall balanced lifestyle that includes regular spiritual practice (rather than as a substitute for time-tested practices!). Maybe in an ideal world they would be redundant, but I think that for many of us, we need a glimpse of the possibilities in order to even try meditation, prayer and other spiritual or magical practices. After all, if you believe that we live in a dead material universe, and everyone and everything around you reinforces that perspective, why bother?

Kundalini awakening and overcharged nervous system

[(Anonymous)]

I am a ceremonial magician. About a year and a half ago, I began to have stirrings of kundalini. Initially these were in the form of feelings of erotic ecstasy, intense sensations of energy concentrating at the base of the spine and then moving up, intense heat in the body and sweating, occasional visionary experiences and involuntary muscle spasms throughout my body. Over the time since, most of these (enjoyable) aspects have petered out, but I still have periods during the night when I get the muscle spasms and generally feel wound up and overstimulated without an obvious cause. Apart from the nuisance of losing sleep, am I at risk of the more serious consequences of kundalini awakening like burning out my nervous system? What can do I do to restore harmony and get better rest?

Re: Kundalini awakening and overcharged nervous system

[ecosophia]

Can you handle a diet fairly high in meat? That will help settle your nervous system and reconnect you to your physical body, which is after all made of meat. Regular massage is also very useful, and you may want to avoid any breathing exercises more complex than ordinary rhythmic breathing, so as not to stir things up. Your body basically needs to regroup and recover from the experience; treat it as though you've been ill and need to restore your vital energy, and you'll be fine.