The Return of Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight, I'm back from my January hiatus, and so it's time for a new Magic Monday. As I was getting kind of low on poster children for the occult tradition, I've decided on something new:  the most important classic books in Western occult literature, in my not entirely humble opinion, one at a time and in no particular order. We'll begin with the book that kickstarted the modern magical revival, The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Levi, originally published in 1855. This was the book that reintroduced magic to Western intellectual culture as a philosophically rich and intellectually coherent practice, and it has had a massive influence on occult philosophy and practice all over the Western world ever since its publication. 

(Yes, there's an older translation by Arthur Edward Waite, titled Transcendental Magic, but it's incomplete and not always accurate. Mark Mikituk and I did this new translation precisely because the Waite version was so bad.)
 
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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

[ecosophia]

I suspect it's just one of those things -- set A works better than set B for purpose X, though not necessarily in any other context.

You can certainly use the rotations of the sphere in any version of the SoP. I simply gave a less demanding version for those who have trouble with that phase of the original ritual.

[(Anonymous)]

That makes sense. Today is my 4th day doing the SOP. The first three I did the rotations, which aren't that difficult for me to visualize, but today I held off.

A couple more questions, if I may--

1. When drawing the light down from above at the beginning, one visualizes a sphere of light in the center of the skull. Later, of course, we will have a sphere at the solar plexus center. But I didn't see anything about visualizing a sphere at the womb center during the second part of the preliminary invocation. Was that an oversight, or do you just stimulate this center by placing your hands there, not with visualization?

2. Speaking of energy centers... Why is it that you use the solar plexus to form the sphere? It seems like the heart would make more sense, as the mid-point between the brow and the womb centers. Or are there other reasons for it?

[ecosophia]

1) The version of the SoP given in the posts here on Dreamwidth is a very simple form, meant to stimulate only the third eye center and the solar plexus. The more complex workings given in The Druid Magic Handbook and The Dolmen Arch include more centers.

2) Different centers have different effects and functions, and one of the functions of the solar plexus center is controlling the movement of subtle energy into and out of the energy body. That's why it's used to form the sphere.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh.

Okay, things have already gone a bit haywire.

Brief background: I started practicing the SOP 4 days ago. I had two reasons for this. The main one is this-- I have an infant at home. While my wife was pregnant I was unable to do GD-style magic because it seemed to cut my energetic connection with the baby. I was worried that this might still be the case, and divination confirmed that I should hold off for now. But I felt the strong need for a banishing ritual. As near as I can tell I wasn't just being selfish-- I need to be emotionally and mentally balanced for my family's sake, and magic has been the key to that for me for many years. So I did a geomancy on the question, "Can I safely practice the SOP?", emphasizing that "safety" primarily referred to my daughter.

I got Coch as RW, Pen Y Ddraig as LW, and Bendith Fawr as Judge. So I took this as a Yes.

The first few days went very well. But then, this afternoon I fell into a depressive mood which got worse and worse as the day went on. My wife went out and came back, and we quickly got into a fight, during which she said to me, "I'm not sure who or what I'm talking to right now." As we were arguing I felt an intense and very... invasive feeling at my solar plexus. Given what you said earlier, this seemed like a clue that things weren't what they seemed to me.

I decided to do some divination around the issue, using house chart astrological geomancy, as this style gives me clearer readings than any other form of divination.

The question, "Did my practice of the SOP today cause this dark mood?" Taking this as an 8th house question, bc it relates to a practice of magic:

House 1: Tristitia. Springs to houses 9 and 11.
House 8: Amissio. Springs to house 12.
Index leads to Rubeus in the 4th; Part of Fortune in the 8th (Amissio).

That sounds like a "Yes, yes, yes." And the relevant figures are related to loss and sorrow. It's wort noting that there is something energetically very weird about our neighborhood, which we moved to a year ago. People regularly get into accidents on the street in front of our house, and in fact one of our cats constantly tries to herd us back inside when we go out there. The street empties out into a large graveyard one block from here. And I note that the energies of the SOP seem much denser and more *tangible* than the ones I'm used to from the LBRP-- actually, they feel closer to the sorts of energy I have worked with when practicing qigong. And those, in my experience, can be very unsafe when handled in energetically difficult environments. This is suggested by Rubeus in the 4th house of the home environment... and it's also worth noting that the back yard area in which I have been practicing is directly under a live power line, also a no-no in qigong terms.

...Well. Given all that, would you continue to practice the SOP? Or is the Part of Fortune leading to Amissio in the 8th house saying "Lose the new magical practice," and I should just go back to prayer, meditation and muddling through?

[ecosophia]

I think you need to drop the SoP for now and go back to prayer, meditation, and maybe some hoodoo protective workings.

[(Anonymous)]

Sigh. You're right, of course.

Is it possible to do long-term damage to an energy center? For some time I've felt a sense of an energetic tear around my solar plexus, ever since some traumatic experiences I went through a few years ago, and that was why I was uncomfortable using it for the SOP... Is it possible that that energy center is "torn," so that things get in and out without me being able to control it?

[ecosophia]

Yes, you can injure an energy center. Once you can do Golden Dawn style magic again, and return to the Middle Pillar exercise, pick up Regardie's little book The Art of True Healing and use its techniques to heal that center. That usually has very good results.

[(Anonymous)]

Will do! Can the techniques in Regardie's book be modified for the Celtic GD system, or is it necessary to use the Hermetic GD symbolism?

[ecosophia]

I use them with the CGD system all the time.