Magic Monday
Nov. 24th, 2019 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
It's just shy of midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of Michael Sendivogius -- that's Michał Sędziwój if you happen to be fluent in Polish -- one of the great alchemists of the later European tradition. Born in 1566, he studied with several important alchemists of the period, and finally learned the secret of transmutation from the Scots alchemist Alexander Seton after helping Seton escape from the dungeons of the ruler of Saxony. Like most alchemists of his time, Sendivogius traveled from country to country, seeking patronage from monarchs and aristocrats who were willing to help fund his experiments. He was among other things the first person to sketch out the nitrogen cycle in nature and to recognize the role of oxygen in supporting life. He died in 1636. 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. 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.
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With that said, have at it!
***This week's Magic Monday is now closed -- and yes, this means you. See you next week!***
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-25 05:11 am (UTC)As always, thanks for this forum!
HV
Atheist to Christian
Date: 2019-11-25 05:13 am (UTC)This interview with British historian Tom Holland is a great data point or bellwether for anyone interested in our host's prediction that a portion of the early 21st century's atheist movement will eventually turn to Christianity.(and neopagans - he says at the start that since he was a boy he liked the Greek gods.) It is video but can be listened to as audio, all the important content is spoken.
It is also a great account of an intelligent person explaining a journey on which he changed his mind - during the writing of his new book Dominion. (Subtitled in the US "How the Christian Revolution Remade the World" and in the UK "The Making of the Western Mind".)
He is talking from the UK perspective on Christianity where the liberal Church of England is the main face of public Christianity and atheism is the norm among educated people, so it is quite different from the US.
Air Grand Mutation and collapses?
Date: 2019-11-25 05:22 am (UTC)JMG, have you written elsewhere already about the astrology of collapses? This could be a fascinating crossover of interests.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-25 05:24 am (UTC)Re: Atheist to Christian
Date: 2019-11-25 05:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-25 05:29 am (UTC)A few Magic Mondays ago, you mentioned that consecrating a wand with solar symbolism and attar of roses would help with the R+C ritual if incense was not an option. https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/68693.html?thread=5923413#cmt5923413
I am in a similar situation with the CGD's OIW ritual and was wondering if the wand mentioned above would work for OIW as well given OIW appears to be related to R+C.
Re: Air Grand Mutation and collapses?
Date: 2019-11-25 05:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-25 05:33 am (UTC)Re: Atheist to Christian
Date: 2019-11-25 05:40 am (UTC)It wouldn't be surprising if interviews with similar content are eventually published in print. But the book is only just out in the US, where the people are more likely to be interested in someone turning to Christianity. The video interview is with an Australian preacher, not a British interviewer.
This is a book for the sort of audience who read authors like Stephen Pinker and other big-idea nonfiction so it has the potential to be influential. Though the US cover is overtly Christian.
Re: Atheist to Christian
Date: 2019-11-25 05:56 am (UTC)Holland's quite correct, though, that modern secular morality is secular only on the surface; scratch the paint and it's Christian through and through -- the good parts and also the bad ones. The same Christian morality that brought compassion and respect for the weak also brought violent intolerance concerning differences of opinion, which of course we also see plenty of from atheists and other would-be secular thinkers!
So I started rereading a good book-
Date: 2019-11-25 06:00 am (UTC)Have you come across any historical spells or potions for that?
Meditation and Anger
Date: 2019-11-25 06:05 am (UTC)First of all, thank you for your time and advice. I did a hoodoo bath several days ago, and afterwards, I found myself in an elevated mood for the rest of the evening.
I've been doing the Sphere of Protection almost daily since around September, and I've been doing discursive meditation, for, at most, a month. One of the things that's happened is that I've become more aware pf my anger. When I was meditating today, I decided to focus on my anger, in an attempt to figure out what is causing it. I felt it as a black pit of pent up energy, coiled up in the pit of my stomach like a spring. I decided to enter it, and let it wash over me. After I had done this, my anger seemed to have released, and the black coil was gone. What on earth happened?
Re: So I started rereading a good book-
Date: 2019-11-25 06:39 am (UTC)Re: Meditation and Anger
Date: 2019-11-25 06:41 am (UTC)Problems with starting SOP
Date: 2019-11-25 08:09 am (UTC)after several months of indecision and half-hearted attempts, I finally began seriously doing the SOP about six or seven weeks ago. Progress was slow (I’m up to the calling of Fire), in part because of a whole series of little negative events in my life: a small but very nasty domestic accident, a filthy, flu-like episode still in progress, the return of chronic insomnia, personal disputes, and the theft of some valuable things while I was in a shop. All of which has drained energy and time that might have been devoted to better things. I don’t feel very protected somehow. So far as I can see I am doing the rituals correctly, and finding them more familiar and pleasing, although I have been too tired recently to devote as much time as they probably need.
So what’s going on? My divinatory tool all my life has been the I Ching, and I asked it what was going on. The first hexagram was 41 (Decrease) with moving lines indicating sacrifice of things and possibly (depending on the translation), too much time and effort devoted to others, and the second hexagram was 40 (Deliverance), which is optimistic on the face of it for the longer term.
Any idea what’s this is all about, and any suggestions on what I should do?
Thanks you.
Geomantic magic and astrological timing?
Date: 2019-11-25 09:22 am (UTC)E.g. if I wanted to create a gamahe of Carcer, would I have to wait for Saturn to be well aspected, or can I just plan it by geomantic hours?
I was looking through old Magic Monday posts and I saw you commenting that geomantic magic operates by the planetary influences mediated by the Earth's aura (IIRC, hope I didn't misquote you). I was wondering if that meant that it depended more on the telluric current rather than the solar one.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-25 09:22 am (UTC)I'm up to the point in the DMH where I've started scrying the elements during the grove ceremony. The threefold practice of the SOP, meditation, and Ogham divination has been enormously helpful. I do all three every morning, and they have become an indispensable daily habit. I wish I had started with the DMH earlier in life.
The effects of doing this practice have manifested in my daily life, and perhaps partly as a result, at my job I am being strongly encouraged to be promoted to low-level management, which is forcing me to deal with social anxiety issues, psychological issues, and childhood fears with dealing with other people (facets of which I've asked about on MM before).
I didn't start doing the DMH to get better at my job, I actually wanted to eventually escape the rat race and hoped that magic would help me do that in the medium term. Yet I seem to be pushed further into my job; I have a good reputation at work and I keep being trusted with more complex things. I recently read Dion Fortune's chapter about the Path of the Hearth-Fire, and it may be that rather than focusing my efforts to leave my job, I'm being forced to get my house in order first, both psychologically and literally. (I've tried escaping before, but due to a lack of clarity about my own motivations my attempts have consistently failed).
Yet I can't tell if this is some sort of test, that my job and the benefits that come with it are somehow becoming more seductive, that the unhealthy aspects of our society are resisting as I get further along with magic. Still, my gut feeling tells me that in the absence of a clear opportunity in the medium term to escape the rat race, I should stay put, learn the lessons it has for me and get my house in order as per the Path of the Hearth-Fire. Is this resistance I perceive a normal phenomenon as one starts doing magic? If so, how should one deal with it?
I did some meditation and an Ogham reading on the question of what I need to know if I stay in my job and accept the promotion: Reversed Beith, Reversed Fearn, and Luis, which shows that I although I think my job has been a waste of time, that if I avoid being wilfully blind to the opportunity the job presents and pay attention that I will often be out of my depth, I will learn from it and more choices will be available down the road. They are all Air fews, so the challenges and results will be mainly intellectual.
Thanks very much for any advice!
Ogham casting
Date: 2019-11-25 09:43 am (UTC)I would like to ask about Ogham casting. I have been practising it for several months now and I have developed some personal understanding of it, but I would like to make sure I am not on the wrong track.
It feels to me like a kind of communication using a common language that exists in the form of Ogham fews but can be developed in a personal way between me and those (whoever they are) that answer. Can it be like between people who have known each other for a long time that certain words have special tinge comprehensible just to the people involved or even that they are used in a different way entirely?
There are two reasons why I am asking about it:
1. I have so far encoutered several sources on the meaning of Ogham fews and they differ in the meanings, they differ in the final aicme and they differ in the trees attributed to the fews in the first aicme. Still, all these systems work for the people who use them. I simply chose one and stick to it, but is this diversity possible because the other side knows which system I am using and what the fews mean to me?
2. I use visualisation of the fews that is presented in Paul Rhys Mountfort’s book. Doing so I add details to the scene that he does not describe. Yet during one of the previous castings I asked a question and the first few laid down and the image I had in my head so precisly corresponded to the question asked that I was stunned.
Am I imagining things too much and inventing something that is not happening or could it possibly work the way I described?
Thank you,
Hana
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-25 10:01 am (UTC)Geomancy
Date: 2019-11-25 10:08 am (UTC)Then I reread it based on 3rd party shifting -to the 7th for wife, then the 10th from there for mother, used that (the 4th) as the 1st house of the querent, then got Rubeus in the 12th and Cauda in the 6th.
Both Puella and Cauda are one line off of Puer, which would indicate disaster. And I have a couple of questions:
1) Was it correct to shift the houses to the 3rd party for this?
2) Does a reading that close to being disastrous mean anything? Like they may have a close call or something? Or is it simply an "all is well" shaking up a novice geomancer?
Thank you so much!
Re: Meditation and Anger
Date: 2019-11-25 10:10 am (UTC)Silk sleep masks
Date: 2019-11-25 10:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-25 10:44 am (UTC)1) I noticed that in your Encyclopedia of Natural Magic you describe the phlegmatic and the melancholic personality type in a way that is "switched" from most of the other descriptions I've seen. While it makes much more sense to me that a melancholic as you describe them would be associated with earth (and the same with the phlegmatic temperament and water), the characteristics seem to be the other way around according to most authors, with dreamy, artistic people being seen as melancholic and practical, orderly people as phlegmatic. Do they get it wrong?
2) I recently did the Heathen R+C for the first time. When I compare the ritual to that of the traditional R+C, I notice that in the latter version you return to the center of the space when you put the incense aside, but in the Heathen version you seem to remain in the Southeastern corner of the room, facing the corner. Is that intentional?
Thank you!
Training
Date: 2019-11-25 10:49 am (UTC)So I'm easing up on 6 months of daily practice this week. Started with the CC, then added the LBRP a week later, then the MPE 5 weeks after that, went daily with my journaling about the same time I picked up the MPE, daily card divination by then as well, daily affirmations since your article on the subject, studying and practicing geomancy like crazy (75-ish charts cast in the last 6 weeks), 8 weeks into the Fool's Journey, now doing Do-In when I feel like I need it, and a whole lot of subject reading. 1-2 hours a day total at this point, all told. Plus I've just started going barefoot on the earth whenever I have the chance.
And it has been soooo good....
But the Watcher is all over me right now, trying to convince me that I've been wasting my time, that it's all BS, or worse, that magical practice is turning me into an insensitive a-hole, that the rest of my life (family, friends, internet correspondents) is suffering for my commitment, that sort of stuff.
I assume this is normal, and that passing the 6 month mark is probably an important early milestone, and that the Watcher is doing his best to derail me before I hit that mark?
Would maybe learning a new ritual to replace or enhance one of the current ones, or perhaps a new weekly ritual to add on, help reenergize me? Got one to recommend? I'm loving geomancy; maybe something along those lines?
Again, many thanks!
Re: Air Grand Mutation and collapses?
Date: 2019-11-25 11:53 am (UTC)It definitely sounds like a fascinating concept to explore.