Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

 As noted on the blog last Wednesday, instead of an "ask me anything" post this week on ecosophia.net, I'll be hosting a "Magic Monday" today. What does that mean? It means "ask me anything about occultism, and I'll post an answer here." Since this Monday is a busy day for a lot of people, being sacred to two popular religions -- Christianity on the one hand, and Consumerism on the other -- if comments trickle in on Tuesday et al., I'm not going to be a stickler for the point. 

That said, have at it! 

***PLEASE NOTE: as of midnight, 26 December 2017, this Magic Monday has packed its tents and gone away. If you have questions you haven't posted yet, please save them for the next Magic Monday on January 1!.***

Comments

[ecosophia]

Lower as in closer to the etheric and physical. The different sublevels of the planes seem to sort out according to something equivalent to density, and the lower astral is denser than the middle and upper astral, with the etheric being denser still.

If you're engaging in regular magical practice, the result isn't to repress the lower astral, it's to attune your astral body to the middle and upper astral -- rather like getting up onto the sidewalk so you don't have to keep walking in the gutter. You're not repressing the muck, you're just not wading in it any more.

[ecosophia]

It's somewhat localized, by all accounts. You can't get wholly away from it by physical travel, but there's a decrease in its intensity.

Re: www.ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au/

[ecosophia]

Doesn't surprise me at all. Things seem to be really building toward crisis.

Re: Magic Monday Greetings!

[ecosophia]

Yes, yes, and the regular practice of any magical or spiritual technique that puts you into harmony with the natural world.

Re: Druidry and Daoism

[ecosophia]

Oh, very much so -- but that doesn't mean the techniques are compatible. Even within Chinese internal arts, there are things you don't combine; I was warned by my sifu in Seattle never to combine the kind of taijiquan and neigung we were doing, for example, with iron palm training, because people who do that combination get sick and die young.

Re: Protection against accidental curses

[ecosophia]

Okay, in that case, have them take a black candle, write the words of Jill's curse on the candle with a sharp object, and then light the candle saying, "As this creature of wax dwindles, so will your curse, Jill. When the candle is gone the curse will be gone." (This can be gussied up, turned into a poem or chant, or what have you.) Then burn the candle all the way down to the socket; any leftover wax should be gathered up and put piece by piece into the melted wax of a burning pillar candle, and allowed to burn up. After they do this working, have them take a protective bath, washing down from head to toe -- the old classic hoodoo bath of cold water with salt, vinegar, and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper is good for this. Some of the water should be taken out and thrown on the roots of a strong tree immediately after the bath.

Oh, and the next time Jill says something like that, they should respond at once by saying, "If you make negative predictions like that, the bad things you predict will come to you instead." They should go on to say that Every. Single. Time. she engages in her habit of cursing in their presence, until she gets so sick of hearing it that she stops.

This is not a minor thing. Jill's behavior is one of the things that ordinary people (as distinct from theologians and inquisitors) used to mean when they used the word "witch."

[ecosophia]

Nope. The lines are strengthened by being drawn over again in the other way.

[ecosophia]

Depends on who's doing it and what kind of magical technique they include in their memetic work. I do a lot with memes, as you may have noticed, and I vary from purely psychological methods to other things.

[ecosophia]

Deal with them the same way you'd deal with people you know, and you should be fine. Maintain healthy boundaries, maintain your own center, and choose your relationships rather than having others choose them for you: all the usual stuff.

Re: "Fortune Cards"

[ecosophia]

You are doing the answering. Divination is a way you bring to the surface the things you know subconsciously but not consciously. When you shuffle the cards and cut the deck, micromovements of your hands guided by your subconscious mind control which cards are waiting to be dealt out.

All this is perfectly natural. Some people have to develop skill with divination cards, but others have a natural talent for it, and the fact that you evidently have such a talent is something to celebrate, not something to be afraid of! You now have an ability that will help you guide yourself and others through the complexities of everyday life. Have fun with it, keep a journal of your readings, and use your talent wisely, and it'll bring you many blessings.

Re: Magic Monday Questions

[ecosophia]

a) Always, always do one system of magical training at a time.

b) You do all three of them concurrently.

c) If you're working with The Druidry Handbook, the Ancient Order of Druids in America at www.aoda.org is the place to go -- the book is a study guide to AODA's approach to Druidry.

d) Last I heard, everything's on schedule for Chorazin. I'll be happy to see it in print as well!

Re: AODA curriculum

[ecosophia]

The old curriculum had a set of seven spirals that worked very well. When we upgraded the curriculum in 2010, I think it was, we replaced that with something more freeform, which didn't work anything like as well. Since I retired before the next curriculum revision, I didn't have a chance to revise things again -- if I had, we'd have gone back to the spirals.

Re: metal in body

[ecosophia]

I haven't noticed any effect from tooth fillings. Since I haven't encountered the other situation, I can't speak to it from experience.

Re: Incarnations and Pan

[(Anonymous)]

From Alexander Marcus

Can pursuing Gwynfydd when not yet ready for it precipitate being "forced" to have what incarnate experiences one still needs to have?

Re: AODA curriculum

[amritarosa]

Thanks!

[ecosophia]

Mixed motives are pretty standard among human beings! If you're making an honest effort to deal with your troubles rather than just turning your back on them, you're going about things the right way and will attain Gwynfydd without any undue delay.

Self-improvement doesn't have to be an ego game. It can also be a constructive and compassionate response to the experience of living in the world. The pursuit of enlightenment, for that matter, very often gets turned into an ego game! It's important not to confuse morality with spirituality, sure, but that doesn't mean morality is irrelevant -- far from it.

The "God is Love" notion strikes me as profoundly unbalanced. Why not "God is Justice" or "God is Wisdom" or even "God is Life"? For that matter, why does the religion that insists most loudly that "God is Love" so often get so frantically bent out of shape when it comes to the normal, natural, healthy physical expression of love, i.e., sex? I think there's something very out of kilter there.

Re: Prayer

[ecosophia]

It's very simple. Talk to a deity the way you would talk to anyone you respect, and then listen for an answer. Regular practice is essential, and so is the right attitude -- you're wasting your time if you do this to try to force a deity to prove to you that he or she exists, for example. If you approach regular prayer the way you'd approach a regular conversation with someone you respect profoundly, and let the experience and the relationship deepen, the practice itself will teach you what you need to do.

[ecosophia]

Not everyone is meant to be an operative mage. You may be meant to be a musician and composer instead. Music (like all the arts) can also be pursued as a deep and intense spiritual practice; if you pay close attention to how your music affects your state of consciousness and that of your listeners, it very quickly approximates magic. That may well be your proper path.

Re: Enchantment and equipment

[ecosophia]

a) Don't mix enchantments. If you enchant a stone with one set of energies using one ritual, the only way you want to reenchant it is to use the same ritual over again to strengthen the force. Otherwise you just end up with a muddle.

b) If the wand or sickle is enchanted, it needs to be used in the tradition in which it was enchanted, and there only. If not, it can be used more generally. (I have an earthenware cup that's been used in rituals in more than a dozen different magical systems, but it's never been enchanted or consecrated.)

c) The altar and all its furnishings can be shared. The Druid Wands and, when you get to the Druid Grade, the working tools need to be individual.

[ecosophia]

Most 20th century occult systems deal with the subconscious mind. I don't find it at all useful to see the subconscious as the enemy of the conscious mind -- if that's the case, you've got major problems! Rather, it's simply the mind we all inherit from our primate ancestry: a very well adapted social primate mind, dealing somewhat awkwardly with having a cerebral cortex and a complex conscious mind loaded on top of it. You can establish cordial relations with it, train it, listen to it when you should, overrride it when that's the better option -- it's very much as though you have a large pet dog who's been very badly trained and has bad habits, but is still willing to learn.

Re: Rosicrucianism?

[ecosophia]

I don't have a lot of experience with them, but they've always struck me as Occultism Lite. Still, your mileage may vary.

Re: A change of tone

[ecosophia]

Bogatyr, no, you're quite correct. Back when I was Grand Panjandrum of AODA I always had to keep in mind that whatever I said would reflect on the large public Druid order I headed. Since I stepped down, that hasn't been the case, and I can relax and unbelt a bit.

Re: polytheism

[ecosophia]

Every polytheist pantheon I know of has one deity who's more or less the leader of the pack. The phrase "supreme being" can be applied just as clearly to such a deity as it can to the sole and exclusive deity of classical monotheism. The Golden Dawn, by the way, doesn't require belief in a supreme being -- it does use Judeo-Christian symbolism, but it also uses symbolism from the ebulliently robust polytheism of ancient Egypt.

Re: quaternary-plus thinking

[ecosophia]

The traditions in question are mostly French. The one decent source I know of in English is Mouni Sadhu's strange but useful book The Tarot, which is a very mixed bag but contains a lot of classic occultism.

Re: Rosi crucianism

[ecosophia]

That depends on which Rosicrucians you're talking about. There are several dozen organizations that use the term and claim the legacy of the original Rosicrucians, and they have radically different teachings. Which sources have you been reading?