Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just shy of midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is of Michael Maier, one of the great alchemists of the early 17th century and a major figure in the early Rosicrucian movement. His best-known alchemical books combine prose, verse, vivid copperplate engravings, and (in some cases) musical compositions, all hinting at the cryptic dimensions of the alchemist's art. 

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 Magic Monday is now closed -- and yes, this means you. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It's the porn addict guy again. I've got a quick update on where I'm at and my plan for the next few weeks, as well as some questions. I've been doing the SoP daily, first thing in the morning, for almost two weeks now, and it feels awesome. It has helped with reducing my porn use, and I feel much better overall. I feel more calm and pure, in a way which is hard to describe. The effects are most powerful right after I do it, lasting for between 5-30 minutes (it seems to vary from day to day almost chaotically), and then fading over the course of a couple hours. However, some residual effects last for the whole day now.

I'm up to calling air, and I can feel it respond quite strongly. Some days are better than others, but this morning I almost felt like I was swept off my feet with it. I assume I'll get used to it, but it seems to work very well for me!

It's also had three very unexpected side effects, both of which I think will be beneficial in the long run. The first is that my cell phone is now painful to use. This started on the first day, and it has turned into a cycle: the less I use my phone, the more I notice it feels horrible. Thus, I'm planning to reduce how much I use it for the next few weeks, and then hopefully ditch it entirely.

The second is that the internet seems dramatically more boring, enough I don't want to touch it at all while the SoP effects are at their strongest. This hasn't yet had much of an effect beyond me realizing my entire life is fairly lame right now, but it has motivated me to start looking for things to do. My plan is to start doing things which I need to do (such as housework), and gradually start more things in over time.

The third is that fast food has started tasting worse. This is most noticeable with one chain in particular, which before I would feel tempted to eat at every time I passed, but now I find borderline inedible. This caught me by surprise, and it's leading to some fairly drastic changes in how I eat, not so much because I'm trying, but because the way I used to eat is increasingly striking me as gross.

1) Am I correct to think that cell phones, and EM radiation in general are etheric pollution, and that it makes sense to minimize use as much as possible for maintaining health on the etheric level? As I practice, will it become easier to tell what devices produce enough radiation to be dangerous?

2) The internet becoming boring was an unexpected side effect. Is this likely because of me becoming more resistant to the malevolent entities which use it? What strikes me about it is that this seems to imply that the internet being addictive is largely a result of malevolent entities, and this has some disturbing implications for what the efforts that the tech companies have made to push it in that direction have done....

3) The fast food thing also strikes me as odd. My current guess is that as I pay more attention to the inner planes, the fact that fast food isn't really food for anything past the physical body is becoming more noticeable. Is this plausible, or do you think there's more to it?

4) I've managed to completely eliminate porn use in the morning. Evenings and the night are still problematic, but I've reduced it by around 50% already, as one of the times I used to use it was shortly after waking up, and that's no longer tempting. I was expecting to see it take quite a bit longer to see major changes, but already things have gotten quite a bit better. Is my experience typical?

5) When I finish the SoP I sometimes have a bit of a headache and a slight pain at my solar plexus. Both of them vanish within a few minutes, but do you know what causes them?

I've also made a few plans for things to add in. The first is starting the process of learning meditation starting Tuesday, when I add in the next element to the SoP. The other is cold showers, as I've looked into the claimed benefits and think it looks quite promising, both in terms of ordinary benefits and reducing porn use.

6) One of the weirder things I've seen with cold showers is this notion that cold showers clear blockages with the lymphatic system. For some reason I want to think there's a connection between the etheric level and the lymphatic system, but I'm unable to say why. Do you think this is plausible? Also, would this then mean cold showers have an etheric effect?

Finally, I'm going to be visiting family over Christmas, and will be completely cutting myself off from the internet for the trip. This will get me close to two weeks where it'll be impossible for me to use porn: all I need to do is not bring my phone or computer.

As I will have no internet access until January, I'd like to take the time now to wish you a Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

[ecosophia]

Okay, good. A lot of what's happening is that practicing the SoP is making you notice things that have been going on all along, but you've been too numbed by media and other things to perceive. Cell phones are uncomfortable to use, the internet really is insanely dull, and quite a bit of fast food shouldn't be inflicted on swine; now that you're waking up, you're becoming aware of these things. I know it can be rough for a while!

On to the questions:

1) Yes, and they also have physical effects. You'll find as you keep practicing that you'll feel when something's emitting a lot of EM radiation.

2) Most of it is simply that the ordinary state of human consciousness is basically a light doze, and in that state it's easy to get caught up in staring blankly at little patches of color jerking around on a glass screen. Any form of spiritual practice begins to wake you up, and a lot of things that interest the dozing don't hold the attention of those who have begun to awaken.

3) It's partly that, sure, but it's also partly that a lot of fast food really is vile, and only lack of attention to what you're actually perceiving as you eat keeps you from noticing it.

4) I don't have a large enough sample size to be sure. It doesn't seem that unusual, certainly.

5) You're awakening two centers in your subtle body, one at your solar plexus and one at the pineal gland in your brain. Like muscles you've never used before and then start to exercise, they're going to ache a little until they get used to moving.

6) Interesting! I hadn't heard that, though I have no reason to doubt it. Cold showers definitely clear away etheric crud: the colder water is, the more etheric substance it will absorb and carry away, down to its maximum capacity at 39 degrees F. Many cultures use cold moving water as a means of purification for this reason.

Have a very happy holiday season, and see you in January!

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr Greer,

It seems that everyone I talk to remark that 2019 has been a tough or difficult year. Personally it has also been a difficult year, standing in strong contrast against other years. I know that anecdotes are not evidence but is there any astrological or occult reason that this year seems to have been particularly trying for myself and so many people around me?

[ecosophia]

Not that I know of. Curiously, 2019 has been an extremely fortunate year for me, and I hope 2020 is as fortunate for you and yours.

LotR Musings

[(Anonymous)]

Hey JMG,

My wife and I are reading through The Lord of the Rings and we recently read this bit from The Two Towers:

“Hope is not victory. War is upon us and all our friends, a war in which only the use of the Ring could give us surety of victory. It fills me with great sorrow and great fear: for much shall be destroyed and all may be lost. I am Gandalf, Gandalf the White, but Black is mightier still.”

This passage surprised me because usually the forces of light are depicted as being inherently stronger (if only just) than the forces of darkness. Furthermore, it got me thinking about magic and our own world. I typically hold a pretty practical approach to magic, but now I’m wondering if there is some magical Sauron-like power I ought to be fighting against, or if I’m in a sort of war without really knowing it. Put differently, I wonder if there is a higher magical calling that I’m unknowingly not participating in. Do you see any correlations between what Gandalf says here and our own reality? If so, what might be the “Black” in our world and is it indeed “mightier still” than magic of a lighter nature? Or are these just overblown musings on fiction?

Thanks!

Re: LotR Musings

[ecosophia]

As usual with Tolkien, there's a lot of occult wisdom there. No, there's no Dark Lord you ought to be fighting, except in a metaphorical sense -- but there's an immense burden of misery and ignorance and wrong in this world, in comparison with which the strength and wisdom and love that we can bring to bear individually is pretty weak. Yes, there is a higher magical calling; whether or not you should be participating in it is the great choice you, and only you, can make; Dion Fortune, who's a useful guide in this, talks about how the initiate attunes his or her consciousness to higher realms of being and manifest the qualities of those realms in this one, and helps transform the world. That's Gandalf's job, too -- and the job of everyone who faces the same challenge, to stand or fall under the Shadow.

Cooking

[kimberlysteele]

From my observations, the nourishing qualities of food are profoundly affected by the energy of the person preparing it. I’m convinced there are big-time etheric differences between fast food and homemade food, and of course fast food is vastly inferior. The more deeply involved a person was with the process of making the dish, the more restoring/healing energy the dish possesses. That’s why the food prepared by the awesome lady who knows you by name at the Mexican hole-in-the-wall restaurant is better than the hastily thrown together burrito at Taco Bell, and why the burrito is superior to its frozen, microwavable counterpart. If it’s grown in your own garden, for instance a salad with your own lettuce, radishes, onion, and tomato with homemade salad dressing, it’s incredibly restorative, meaning it will knock the flu you were about to get right out of you or bring you out of a foul mood. A salad from Panera or whatever just would not do the same thing. Additionally, the energy of the person making the food combines with the food’s energy and that is a significant part of what makes it genuinely nourishing. If you’ve ever run into that person who follows an easy recipe and the food is always off or foul, I’m convinced it’s an etheric phenomenon. (Maybe they could try to fix it by appealing to some kitchen gods?)

At any rate, that’s why I think every human should learn to cook at least a few basic hot and cold dishes and snacks, but especially magically-inclined humans. Cooking is its own crude form of alchemy.

Wishing JMG and you all a beautiful, serene, and fulfilling Solstice.

Re: Cooking

[ecosophia]

I agree with every word of that except when you call cooking a crude form of alchemy. There's nothing crude about it. "Alchemy is the raising of vibrations," said Frater Albertus.

[(Anonymous)]

Going back over some of the comments that have provoked so much attention over the last few weeks, a few things were said as side notes that raised questions relevant to my situation that while not pathological is not exactly the norm. I'll try to keep things from sounding like a penthouse letter!

I (a man) have been in a happy romantic relationship with both members of a couple (a man and a woman) for five years.

You have spoken about sexual activity with another person leading to an exchange of etheric energies. I understand if there is not traditional wisdom on the subject, but out of sheer curiosity, in your estimation is it likely that this applies to homosexual activities too?

Secondly and of more interest, over the course of this relationship my partners have conceived and given birth to a (wonderful) kid that I am not genetically related to. I remember you saying that aspects of the subtle body are mostly maternally inherited. Can the exchange of subtle energies carry any sort of hereditary influence if a woman is pregnant at the time, or is it more about mutual reinforcement/replenishment than about that?

[ecosophia]

1) As I understand it, there's always an exchange of etheric energies when two people make love, irrespective of their respective sexes. If there's also a stable emotional connection, the higher levels of sexuality (on the astral and mental planes) can develop as well. Where there's love, caring, and commitment, there's the potential for that to happen -- again, irrespective of who's got an innie and who's got an outie. (So to speak.)

2) The etheric dimension is one of mutual replenishment and vitalization. It's on the astral plane that you start getting subtler and more complex phenomena, where (for example) a child can take after a person he or she isn't biologically related to, because that person has been a presence in the child's life from conception on -- or in some cases even when the person comes into the child's life after birth.

SOP, Visualization etc

[(Anonymous)]

Hello!

Grab bag of unconnected questions today

1. I'm a magic newbie (started with Well of Galabes, then been reading Magic Monday for the last 1-2 years). Took up discursive meditation with reasonable regularity last couple of months. Now I want to add the SOP. I know you've said it can be adapted to any pantheon with appropriate deities. Do you have any specific suggestions for the Hindu pantheon? Or at least guidelines on how to choose the right deities for each part?

I am not very religious, but my family background is Hindu and I grew up (literally) hearing all the myths and stories at my grandmothers' knees and celebrating festivals etc. I believe in it, but haven't done any serious reading or studying. But no greater knowledge than anyone who grew up with a Hindu background.

2. I think the answer to this will be "pray and listen to what the god tells you", but over the decades (since I was a child and my grandmother trained me), I've had a strong habit of a brief nightly prayer before bed (very short - under 1 minute - but I literally cannot sleep without doing it). It started off with specific mantras and prayers to Hindu gods that I was taught and over time evolved to other Hindu gods, and then to praying to all gods together and then to one supreme god who combined all the others and now to a divine deity or "force" that I have no name for and no idea who or what it is. None of this was planned, it's just kind of small changes in the nightly prayer over decades has ended up here.

I don't even know how to relate to the deity I'm praying to now, or how to deal with him or name him. How would I add someone like that to the SOP?

Re: SOP, Visualization etc

[ecosophia]

1) For the Hindu pantheon, the pattern depends on whether your family has a connection to Vishnu and/or his avataras, on the one hand, or to Shiva and/or some form of Devi, on the other. In either case the first four are the Lokapalas: Indra to the east for air, Varuna to the west for water, Yama (the all-devouring) to the south for fire, and Kubera to the north for earth. Spirit Below should be assigned to whichever goddess is most relevant to your family traditions: Lakshmi if your family reveres Vishnu, Parvati if your family reveres Shiva, and so on. Spirit Above is assigned to the corresponding god.

2) Don't worry about adding such a god to the SoP, unless he specifically gives you a name and an image to use. Simply keep praying to him, and let him guide you as he chooses

LBRP v ATRs

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,

Would banishing like the LBRP or SoP be effective against ATR magic that utilises the dead?

Thank you!

Re: LBRP v ATRs

[ecosophia]

I've always found it to be effective in that context.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

1. You have written on MM previously that the DMH practices help one to perceive and change etheric energies, whereas the GD system helps attune the lower self to the higher self. I thought that banishing rituals such as the SOP also help with this latter point, too?

2. I am scrying each element for the first time during my weekly grove ceremony, yesterday I scried Spirit Below. In the DMH, you described some of the beings that one may encounter while scrying, including details about the color of their clothing. After scrying Spirit Below, I read the first branch of the Mabinogion again, and my own perceptions of what I encountered there, and in each of the other elements, seem vastly different than these descriptions. I understand that one is going to imagine what one does, but should I eventually expect to encounter beings that are closer to what is described?

3. How long on average does it take someone to complete the DMH? I am taking it pretty slowly because I want to make sure I learn each step before continuing, but maybe I am taking it too slowly.

Thank you!

[ecosophia]

1) The Sphere of Protection works primarily with astral forces -- that's true of any magical working that relies on will and imagination. The DMH system, though, is oriented toward using mastery of the astral as a basis for work with the etheric. The SoP and the Work of the Grail given in the DMH also develops an alignment of lower and higher self. Like most systems of magic, the DMH system has more than one effect!

2) No, because you come to the experience of scrying with a different cultural and linguistic background than the person who wrote the Mabinogion. Furthermore, everything in the Mabinogion is symbolic, not literal -- it's an extraordinarily rich and complex set of teaching stories that takes years of meditation to unpack, and I'm convinced that was the intention of its author. Don't worry about it; let yourself perceive what you perceive. You might, though, consider asking the beings you encounter in your scrying for their advice on making sense of the Mabinogion?

3) There's no such thing as doing a course of magical study too slowly. There is such a thing as rushing through it too quickly. Take the time you need to do it thoroughly, and don't worry about how long it takes others.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Arch-Druid & friends,
I'm a long-time reader here, but I don't comment very often. I've just been catching up on the recent posts re porn & the demonic: some great discussions about something I've been thinking about for a while!

One point was that, if it is not possible to immediately break a porn addiction, then one should at least practice a daily banishing ritual, to minimize demonic influences; however, someone asked, what about Christians who are uncomfortable performing banishing rituals? How can they protect themselves?

I would like to offer for your consideration some practices that I have developed along these lines. I consider this an ongoing experiment, so I welcome any feedback.

(Disclaimer: I believe that the best thing is not to use porn at all, and to have loving sex with another human being instead of masturbating. The prayer ideas below are to help minimize the damage after porn use; but porn is still damaging and the karma will still have to be paid...)

Protective Prayer Practices after porn use:
-- Allow time to rest after using porn and masturbating, anywhere from 20 min. to several hours. You need to regain your composure before doing something spiritual.
-- Also, make sure you physically clean yourself and your environment as necessary before praying.
-- When you are calm and physically clean, you are ready to pray.
-- Sit down in meditation until you feel calm and grounded. You are going to say 3 prayers.
-- Get in touch with God; ask for God's forgiveness, and for help in becoming a better person. Amen.
-- Pray for the well-being of all the people you saw in the porn videos; think about them as people; that they may be alive, or they may be dead; that they have parents and friends; that they may have had compulsions to do what they did just like you; they are real people who may have been both rewarded and harmed by starring in a porn video. You don't really know them; you don't really know what they need in their lives right now. But God knows that, so you can ask God to please remember all the people you saw in the porn videos, and to give them whatever it is that they most need in their lives right now which would truly help them. Amen.
-- Get in touch with your guardian angel. Ask your guardian angel to cleanse your mind, body, soul, aura and the physical space you live in. Ask the angel to remove and chase away any demons, devils, energy vampires or low-vibrational beings that have attached to you; to chase away any incubi, succubi, elementals, evil spirits, and evil people; to rid you and your space of any negative energies that are not friendly and beneficial; to chase them all out of this window/door/vent, so that they all may go back to where they belong, without harming anyone else. Amen.
-- After saying this prayer, stay still for as long as you need to, and feel the angel removing all the negative energy; feel any bad energy leaving your body; feel it leaving your space.
-- You may close your session by saying a prayer to St. Michael the archangel, who banishes demons. ("St Michael the archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection..." [google it]).

Again, the goal of all this is to purify yourself of astral crud after you did something stupid. The real hard work is changing your life; for some of us, it takes a long time.

Anyway, what do you think -- is this an effective practice?

Thank you,
Anon

[ecosophia]

That will help, but it's a little as though Christian theologians had decided that washing your hands was bad, and you should pray to God for purity after using the toilet and leave it at that. I'm sure that would do some good, but not as much as soap and hot water!

The difficulty here is that the universe doesn't just consist of material and spiritual worlds; there are realms between those two. Science is the appropriate way to understand things of the material world, and religion is the appropriate way to understand things of the spiritual world...but the world between these, the world that occultists divide into etheric, astral, and mental planes, is not well addressed by either science or religion.

That's where occultism comes into its own. Occultism isn't a religion, and it's also not a science (in the modern sense of that latter word); it's the collected body of knowledge and practice for understanding and dealing with the middle world I've just sketched out. It's just as possible to be an occultist and a Christian at the same time as it is to be a scientist and a Christian at the same time, and it's really unfortunate that so many Christians aren't willing to consider that even as a possibility -- even though there are plenty of examples of Christian occultists in the past and present alike.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

Is it possible to open energy centers in palms for healing purposes? Or do the energy centers always have to be opened on the central axis of the body?

[ecosophia]

Not only is it possible, my forthcoming book The Dolmen Arch has instructions for opening and working with the palm centers.

[(Anonymous)]

Since putting the Mercury amulet in the Reliant Robin it's developed an intermittent coolant leak that's proving very difficult to track down. Does this mean the amulet has gone bad and should be removed, or could it be a test to see how committed we are to keeping the car going?

[ecosophia]

It could just be one of those things that happens to old cars! That doesn't sound like a Mercury problem, though.

[(Anonymous)]

You've said there are some people who shouldn't do ritual magic in this lifetime, are there any who are the same with natural magic? I've had success with some protective and cleansing magic and wouldn't want to be without my hoodoo bath. But every time I've tried to go beyond that and efect some positive change, like with a sweetening spell, sleep amulet, car amulet, the effects seem to have been questionable or negative.

[ecosophia]

Apparently so. As a general rule, if you get good results from one set of practices and dubious results from another, stick with the first set!

[(Anonymous)]

When you were doing plant alchemy, what were some of the best things you did with it? Why did you choose against going on to mineral alchemy?

[ecosophia]

I used spagyrics pretty much solely for the purpose of self-initiation, and had good results with the whole range of spagyric products I created for that purpose. Divination and my own experience, though, made it very clear that I don't have the necessary talent to go on to the more advanced branches of alchemy. It would have been like trying to pursue a career in music when you're tone-deaf.

[(Anonymous)]

As talents and aptitudes build up over lifetimes, does how a skill was aquired have an effect? For example if someone learns a language because it was the language of the people who enslaved them, will that leave a bad taste in future incarnations? Or the modern phenomenon of overscheduled children and teenagers trying to become good at almost everything. The problems with that in this life are becoming clear, but could that intense and wide range of experience benefit them in their next lives?

[ecosophia]

Yes in both cases. In the first case, the person might end up with a strong aptitude for that language but a difficult emotional relationship with it, or with the culture associated with it; in the second case, the aptitudes would still be there but so would the stress, and they'd have to learn to deal with the latter before being free to make full use of the former.

Cake and Icing

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

As someone working through the DMH but who plans to switch to the Dolmen Arch once it comes out, what exercises do you recommend I definitely complete from the DMH, and what can I safely leave?

I have been doing the full SOP since August, but nothing beyond that.

As for The Druidry Handbook, the only thing I was planning to integrate is something to celebrate the eight festivals of the year.

I ask this not because I'm trying to do things wishy-washy, but because I had panic disorder several years ago, and thus I figure I am one of those people who need to stick to a simpler practice and not try to do everything.

My reason for switching to Dolmen Arch is because you said it has a lot of meditation in it, and that is something I have been shorting. I'm "scared to think" each morning, so I'll just read through a bit of my natal report from cafe astrology and call it good. My negative self-talk kicks in and tells me that I'm stupid whenever I try to meditate. (And this is after my affirmations each day.) Plus the pressure of finding and keeping track of topics of meditation is too much: I'd rather have a book.

Thank you.

Re: Cake and Icing

[ecosophia]

The Dolmen Arch, the DMH, and the Druidry Handbook are all part of the same system. If what you've done so far with the DNH is learn the SoP, you've done some advance preparation for the Dolmen Arch, and will be able to continue all of it as you take up the Dolmen Arch system. You can also continue anything else you happen to learn from the DMH; it's all mutually compatible.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello,

On a previous Magic Monday, you mentioned that some people aren't meant to do some particular work in this incarnation. Why would this be the case?

I have been meditating on the symbol of air in the SoP. I don't know if I am on the right track at all. How do I know if I'm getting anywhere?

Thank you for your time.

[ecosophia]

1) Because not every life has to have a single overriding purpose -- or any purpose at all. You can just live, you know.

2) There are no wrong answers in meditation -- and no right answers. The point isn't to find "the right track," it's to develop the power of concentrated thought and reflection.

gods

[(Anonymous)]

JMG-

Thanks for doing these magic mondays, pretty sure I've learned more from a few years of reading these than I have in all the esoteric books I've read.

Anyway, I have a question for you. First, background: Grew up Presbyterian, but that just never took. I have to sort of background in Judeo/Christian imagery you would get from that though. About four years ago I got serious about the GD. I started with your LRM, developed a daily practice of cabbalistic cross, LBRP, CC, MP, CC, mediation, then tarot. That's been my daily practice for four years. I then started working through Regardie's book, mostly reading and meditation on the knowledge lectures rather than rituals as my children are just now reaching the age where I can start to do more ritual work safely in the house.

Very early on in my practice I felt connected to the archangels despite not particularly caring for Christianity or its symbolism. I have prayed extensively to all of them and have what I would call a good working relationship with all of them except maybe Auriel whom I've never been able to visualize or connect with quite as well as the rest. I've also dug into the background mythos of them and found symbolic connections to greek gods and other things I'm sure you're familiar with. To my mind, whatever the archangels of those rituals may be, they certainly transcend human classification systems.

Despite this relationship though, I end up wondering if I should be developing some kind of relationship with a deity? Should I be praying to deity instead angels? Are the archangels an expression of a deity (which would make praying to them sort of like praying to a deity)?

Re: gods

[ecosophia]

Don't worry about it. You can simply work with the archangels as archangels -- that's something with a long history.

[booklover1973]

I have read here about the experiences of people practicing the Sphere of Protection and their experiences. Am I right in my assessment that the experiences when practicing the Sphere of Protection and the intensity of them aren't the same for everyone? Thanks!

[ecosophia]

Good heavens, yes. No two people have exactly the same experience with any magical practice.

Integrating Practices

[sothismedias]

Hi JMG,

I was curious about how you have gone about integrating various occult practices and schools over the course of your life. From what I know and what I've seen -and from the other adepts I've had the pleasure and good fortune to get to know- they each have drawn various strands of occult and spiritual, and/or mystical practice into their lives from a number of different schools and initiations. All of them have had different initiations and lineages and consecrations that have drawn the threads of past initiates and adepts into them... and all have continued to learn and study new things. You are a great example of all these, and the best of the last point, with you being open about how you continue to go back and work through various courses & systems.

So with all of that in there how does that work on the day to day? How do you integrate all the different practices as they accumulate? I get that certain tools wouldn't be used every day... but still just wondering how that has worked for you.

All the best.

Justin Patrick Moore

Re: Integrating Practices

[ecosophia]

In my experience, it's rarely a good idea to do more than one or, at most, two systems at a time. When I did my original Golden Dawn studies, for most of twenty years it was all Golden Dawn all the time. Then I got into Druidry via the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids (OBOD) and focused on that pretty exclusively until I'd finished the study course. Each time I picked up a course of study, if it had what I consider a full range of magical practices, I focused on it, completed it, and then went on. If it didn't, I found something else more or less compatible to do while working on it -- for example, I was practicing AODA-style Druid magic, meditation, and spirituality while I did hoodoo, radionics, and spagyric alchemy (one of those at a time, not all at once!) Now and then I'll cycle back through a course I've already done, when I decide that will be useful, and I do it on the same basis I did it originally. So there's always a modest number of practices to be done each day, but which ones I work with vary every year or three.

[(Anonymous)]

What does a witch bottle do after the person who made it dies?

[ecosophia]

Lie there in the dirt, presumably. ;-)

I don't know that anyone's ever done experiments to see how much magical efficacy a witch bottle keeps after the death of its maker. That would be worth looking into.

gratitude

[(Anonymous)]

JMG-

I have a second question I forgot to put with the earlier one on archangels. I recently read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which I wholeheartedly recommend to you and your readers. It's the best blending of scientific and spiritual-based worldviews I've ever come across. And it comes from a woman who's ancestry is deeply rooted in the great lakes region. Hmm. Anyway.

The book is a collection of essays, several of which turn on the concept of gratitude and how it fits into the daily lives of several tribes, but especially the Onondaga Thanksgiving address, which is worth looking up if you're not familiar. It reads a lot like a Druid prayer. Anyway, it got me thinking that so much western magic effort boils down to asking for help from greater powers -- are there any western occult practices related to gratitude? Rituals or ceremonies designed especially for giving thanks? Books on the subject? It seems like something Dion Fortune would have written, but I'm not sure. Just curious if anyone knows of anything like that...

Re: gratitude

[ecosophia]

It's ordinary magical politeness to thank the powers you invoke, and that's part of every ritual -- for example, in the Sphere of Protection, you thank the powers of each of the six directions in the course of the ritual. That I know of, though, there isn't anything that focuses on giving thanks as such. That's more of a mystical practice than a magical one.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, JMG- I was wondering if you had any magical advice for job-seekers, or ways to help someone else out with a job hunt? The question is regarding my wife, whose of a fairly skeptical temprement and certainly doesn’t believe TSW, but would probably be willing to experiment. I’ve started a novena to Saint Joseph on her behalf (personal background/tradition is catholic)- any other tried and true suggestions? Is there, for example, a way to do simple elections for the timing of resume submission based on planetary days and hours?

Thanks, as always!

[ecosophia]

You can certainly use planetary hours. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays should be avoided -- the Moon makes people change their minds a lot, Mars makes them grouchy, and Saturn makes them cold and uninterested. Thursday during the hour of Jupiter or Friday during the hour of Venus would be your best bets.

Planetary sop

[(Anonymous)]

If one were to do a planetary SOP, would it be: Air - Mercury Fire- Mars Water - Moon Earth - Venus Spirit Above - Jupiter (sky father) Spirit Below - Saturn Spirit Within - Sun ?

Re: Planetary sop

[ecosophia]

That's plausible but it's not quite the traditional set. That would be:

East -- Sun
West -- Mercury
South -- Mars
North - Venus
Below -- Saturn
Above -- Jupiter
Within -- Moon

[(Anonymous)]

In Dion Fortune's "The Mystical Qabalah," Chapter 25, paragraph 109, she says:

"This is the true use of divination - to enable one to discern spiritual forces concerned in any happening, and act accordingly. Of what use, then, is the divination performed by one who has not spiritual discernment? And can one expect to find spiritual discernment in the hack occultist who gives so much for half-a-crown, and so much more for ten shillings? Spiritual things are not done in this way. Among the ancients, divination was a religious rite, and so it should be among us, if it is not to bring a trail of bad luck in its wake."

Does this passage not rule out any astrology done for money as being illegitimate?

[(Anonymous)]

For what my opinion is worth as an occult student. I would say rather than money being the issue, its the attitude towards money and the person giving it to you that counts. An analogy with economics would be that the exchange of goods and the creation of capital can be a great thing if done with the right intention or the very thing that might blow up on our faces sooner or later if done with the ill one. I guess full-time astrologers living in a world ruled by capitalism would have to strike just the right balance between keeping themselves housed and exercising their profession.

open_space

Sacred Geometry

[(Anonymous)]

I bought "The Celtic Golden Dawn" recently, and have been looking through it and working through the exercises.
What spurred this was a curious series of events over the past 12 months: I lost my pendant, which has hung around my neck since 2003. The only times I've removed it were to change the broken neck-chains, or to avoid losing it when doing exercises. Last year, I had to subject myself to air travel, when I got to my destination, my pendant, which I'd removed for the "security" screening, wasn't in the pocket of my bag! I thought it lost, but about 2 months later, it came tumbling out. Then, about 6 weeks after that, it went missing again. A month later, I found where it'd got lost, and then, over the next 3 months, the string kept breaking. Finally, back in September, I suffered from a rather sleepless night, having to get up about 6 times, and when I awoke in the morning, the string was there, but the pendant hasn't been seen since. Some is trying to tell me something, possibly about my coven group, or about my path.
I found myself increasingly drawn to your Heathen Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram and have been reading more and more about Heathenry (no, not for me, at least not the ones I've come across) and finally decided, enough wondering, and bought your book.
When I was reading the section on Sacred Geometry, I thought you'd appreciate this essay, by swordsmith Peter Johnsson (he makes medieval blades for Albion swords) if you aren't already aware of it:
http://www.peterjohnsson.com/higher-understanding-and-deeper-reckoning/

It ties into an interest in geometry using only straight-edge and compass for, oh, over a decade, since I came across "By Hand and Eye" by George R. Walker and Jim Tobin in my Lee Valley store and suddenly understood the essential ugliness of our postwar built environment.(They have a website plugging their books and courses) This book is about how designs for millennia used whole-number division and multiplication to achieve balance and rhythm in construction. It also has an entire section on old-style geometry, before it became entirely a calculus of numbers, and was a product of drawings on paper. I wish this was taught when I was back in school, but by then, this knowledge was fundamentally forgotten, I'm sad to say.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the Johnsson essay, as it ties in with mystical teachings.

Bruce Hearns
"Renaissance Man"

Re: Sacred Geometry

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for the essay! Remember that you can rework the material in The Celtic Golden Dawn to fit a Heathen approach to things -- as the intro says, that's one of the things the book was written for.