Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's a little shy of midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. This week's classic book of Western occultism is of course The Mystical Qabalah by Dion Fortune aka Violet M. Firth, for most of a century the standard publicly available textbook on the Hermetic Cabala -- which is distinct in important ways from either the Jewish or Christian versions of the tradition. (No, that's not a matter of cultural appropriation; the Cabala wasn't originally Jewish. Gershom Scholem's magisterial Origins of the Kabbalah traces it back to the Gnostics, who got it from the Neopythagoreans. That's why so many of the basic technical terms of Cabalism are borrowings from Greek.)  Fortune's book is written in the idiom of an earlier day, but it's still a superb introduction to the subject from a brilliant occult theoretician and practitioner. 

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.

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. If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.

With that said, have at it!

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

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
I'm the one who asked about the Sphere of Protection last week.
I followed your advice and picked up the Regardie book on the Middle Pillar. I wanted to ask a couple of questions about it--
Regardie places the Tiphareth center at the solar plexus, rather than the heart. If you recall, you suggested using the Middle Pillar exercise to heal the apparent damage to my solar plexus center. So my questions are--
1. To do that, would you use the Regardie Middle Pillar structure, and place Tiphareth/Muner at the solar plexus, rather than the heart? Or, would you do use the heart center, but then, after the exercise, direct healing energy into the solar plexus (as Regardie suggests in the book)?
2. Why did you decide to use the heart rather than the solar plexus in the various versions of the Middle Pillar you published?

3. What would be the consequences of switching from the heart to the solar plexus or vice versa?

4. It's repeatedly happened, during the years that I've practiced magic, that I thought I was doing a ritual correctly, only to re-read the book in question (sometimes after years) and discover that I'd been doing it incorrectly the whole time. I am on vacation and don't have my books with me, but... I'm right that you locate the Tiphareth center at the heart, rather than the solar plexus, right?

5. While we're on the subject, do you know of a good general discussion of the body's energy centers?

Many thanks!

[ecosophia]

1) You could do either one, but I'd recommend the second -- work with an undamaged center to start with, and then use the energy flow to heal the damaged center.

2) The version I originally learned, in W.E. Butler's The Magician: His Training and Work, used the heart rather than the solar plexus. I tried both and found the heart center gave better results for me. Later on, close study of Rosicrucian occultism (which does a lot of work with the heart center) convinced me that using the heart center was essential for avoiding certain personality imbalances that too often crop up among Golden Dawn practitioners.

3) Your best bet, once you've healed your solar plexus center, is try shifting it down for a while and see how it feels.

4) Yes, that's correct.

5) I wish there was one!

Video of me doing the Sphere of Protection

[kimberlysteele]

Hi JMG and friends,

I have made a Youtube video of myself doing the Sphere of Protection for those of us who, like myself, are visual learners first and foremost.

https://youtu.be/dsD3LkfgFVs

Disclaimers: I am definitely NOT an actress and going in front of a camera gives me the heebie jeebies. I did this video only because I feel like there is a need for it out there. I am doing the Sphere more quickly than I do normally in it to save time and because I was a bit nervous. Usually it takes anywhere from 10 - 25 minutes.

Re: Video of me doing the Sphere of Protection

[ecosophia]

Thank you. I'm the opposite of a visual learner, so it's good to have someone who learns that way providing help to those who do the same.

[(Anonymous)]

During the break I read through a few (well, more than a few) old Magic Mondays to get my fix. I was intrigued when in one of them you mentioned that The Art and Practice of Geomancy was originally planned as part of a curriculum for a Geomancy school and that there was more advanced material relating to initiation and the Grail quest. Any plans to release that material in the future?

[ecosophia]

I'd have to dig out the notes and see about working them up into a complete system, which is going to take a while. Still, I've been working intensively in meditation with the Grail legends again, for the first time in a very long while, so we'll see.

[causticus]

Good evening JMG,

1. In your estimation, does TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome for anyone reading this who doesn't know what this acronym means) likely have its own egregore? Do you think there are egregores that help fuel and/or magnify waves of mass hysteria and other pop culture fads? What other types of unseen phenomena might be lurking under the hood in terms of these sort of mass social/cultural trends and events?

2. On the topic of egregores, is it likely that certain gods of various cultures folklore and practices have been egregores or other types of thoughtforms which affect masses of people? The ancient Roman religion comes to mind with regard to this question, as the Romans had gods and goddesses for practically everything; seemingly for every little mundane this or that in everyday life, in addition of course to minor tutelary genii, nature spirits, ect. And then there was the“god” of a town or village, of a domus (notable family/house) or even the imagery of a cult devoted to a particular emperor.

3. Do you think that in the area of popular religion, the hypothetical future American culture might go in the direction of having a god/spirit for everything under the sun like what I was getting at above? You mentioned before that you don't think there will be any kind of organized pantheon. Does this mean a massively-disorganized (or simply, unordered) collection of gods? Or do you think this future culture might feature a decentralized smattering of differing weird cults? (Age of Aquarius after all, haha)

[ecosophia]

1) My take is that TDS doesn't have an egregor of its own -- it's the product of an existing egregor-system that's in the process of imploding messily. Chase TDS to its core and you find class bigotry -- Trump is the candidate of the deplorables, thus serves as the dumping ground for all the shadow projection the comfortable classes like to direct at their social inferiors. So the Bad Orange Man is the projected shadow of the comfortable classes: take what they say about him and turn it back on the people who are saying it, and you'll rarely be far from the mark. That's happening, in turn, because the managerial elite that took over the industrial world after the Second World War is completing the normal life cycle and losing its grip on power, and the egregor of their dominance is becoming unstable in the usual way prior to going down like the Hindenburg.

2) Every god is a combination of a cosmic force and an egregor co-created by that force and a human community, working together, to allow interaction. The Lares and Penates of an ancient Roman house, for example, were egregors linked with certain divine forces; they expressed only a very narrow, specific aspect of those forces, but they did so in a way that brought Roman domestic life into harmony with the cosmic pattern. Most polytheist societies end up doing this. Every traditional East Asian home, for example, has a shrine to the kitchen god -- Zao Jun in China, Jowangsin in Korea, Sanbo-Kojin in Japan, and so on -- who reports on the family's doings to the divine court in heaven each year; that serves the same function.

3) My guess is that the future American culture will be more likely to focus on individual guardian spirits, but there will also likely be plenty of broader deities and weird cults -- that's certainly something that featured here in Native American times, with medicine societies and the like as a very common feature of religious life.

Banishing ritual advice

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, JMG- my apologies for writing at such length, but I have a question that requires a bit of background:- I’m just finishing up my work in the LRM book (on the final lesson), and have been going at a slowish pace (started last February), so I’ve been practicing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram daily for almost a year now. As a bit of background, I’m a practicing Christian, baptized Catholic but mostly attending liturgy at an Orthdox church for the last several years. Last week, somewhat on a whim I tried performing the “Christian banishing ritual” you’ve posted a few versions of, and was surprised at the strength of the effects- immediately upon performance, both my own mind and the space where I was practicing felt noticeably different, for lack of a better word, brighter and cleaner. Though I wouldn’t say I’ve gotten no results from the LBRP, I’ve never felt so pronounced an energetic effect on the space around me- i got a pretty strong sense that “this is what banishing is supposed to feel like!”. I’ve been performing this every morning for a week now, and results have been consistent. I can think of a few reasons why this might be the case- I’m pretty terrible at visualization, and when doing the LBRP, I’m consistently plagued with doubts that the efficacy of the ritual is in some way dependent on the quality of my visualization and vibration, and that I’m therefore doing a subpar job, to subpar effects. The “Christian banishing”, by contrast, felt rather out of my hands, dependent instead on the grace of a being (Christ) I had a relationship with and trusted- it was easier to have faith that it would “work”, as opposed to depending on my own meager abilities. BUT- and here’s where the question comes in- I feel I’ve also learned a lot from my daily LBRP practice- it’s slowly helped me improve my visualizations, for example, and given me a better sense of working with elemental energies and relating to the archangels invoked- it feels valuable in all sorts of ways. Additionally, I hope to continue studying the Golden Dawn tradition, and work my way through “Paths of Wisdom”, and it feels like the LBRP is pretty baked into the system, with a number of things built on it as a foundation, so it’s not something I just want to discard. For the past week, my practice has been to do both rituals daily: the “Christian banishing “ one first thing in the morning, combined with morning prayers and reading and briefly meditating upon the daily gospel reading from the orthodox lectionary, and then, the LBRP and Middle Pillar Ritual followed by discursive meditation on topics from the LRM coursework in the evening just before dinner. I guess my question is if this seems workable to you, or if it’s too mix-and-match, beginner trying to pile on too many potentially incompatible practices, and, if the latter, what you’d advise in my situation?

Thank you!
-NPM

Re: Banishing ritual advice

[ecosophia]

That practice -- Christian ritual, prayer, and Bible study in the morning, and Hermetic ritual and meditation in the evening -- is what several Christian occultists of my acquaintance practice, and they have excellent results with it. I see no reason why you can't do the same thing, and so long as you're willing to invest the time and effort, your results will likely be as good as theirs.

Cabala, Greek Thought

[(Anonymous)]

On the topic of the Tree of Life-- I've been reading through Neoplatonic thinkers lately, struggling to make sense of them. The thing that keeps occurring to me, especially when I read Proclus, is that the Tree of Life is a straightforward visual diagram of Neoplatonic thought.

Proclus talks, for example, about how the power of any higher cause endures beyond that of lower causes. Thus Soul is present to living things. Intellect, though, is higher than Soul, and so there are more things that have Form but are not ensouled than there are living things. Finally, mere unformed matter lacks either Form or Soul, but it does have existence-- thus, the One is present to it. The One is primary, and so its power endures beyond secondary and tertiary powers, down to the very last thing.

Reading this, I realized that another way to say it is "Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether."

Re: Cabala, Greek Thought

[ecosophia]

I'm convinced, and believe I will be able to prove in a future book, that the Cabala originated in Middle Platonism, among that end of the Platonist scene that was strongly influenced by the Pythagorean revival. The Tree of Life itself is adapted from a Pythagorean diagram -- the geometrical tetraktys, composed of a point, a line, a triangle, and a tetrahedron. (Draw them in that order from top to bottom sometime, with the triangle and tetrahedron pointing down.) You can find a remarkable number of basic Cabalistic concepts in the writings of Middle Platonists such as Plutarch. Thus it's not surprising that Neoplatonism, which drew so heavily both from Middle Platonism and from Neopythagoreanism, would be so completely compatible with it!

language learning resource

[amritarosa]

Hi JMG and all,

Please delete if you feel this is not appropriate, but I thought I'd share a recent disocevery that is challenging and delighting me lately. I decided to learn a new language to challenge my brain to work in a different way and experience how that alters my perceptions of the world and enriches my magical practice. It's been really fun so far. Very stimulating!

Many of you probably already know about Duolingo (I'm kinda late to a lot of parties, especially if they're app-related), the free online language learning resource. (Disclaimer: I do not work for that company, or have close relationships with anyone who does. I'm not being paid for this :) )

It's set up like a game and I've found it engaging and effective so far. I don't do the app on my phone because I only use my phone as a phone. I hear the online expereience is better, anyway. It's free, but if you feel you are benefitting from use of the program, you can subscribe. There are 35 language options available at present, including Latin and modern Scottish Gaelic, modern Irish, and modern Welsh.

For those striving for fluency and advanced work in another language Duolingo won't take you that far. But it's nice friendly place to get a start. I'm not in it for the points and competitions, but if you're into that, there's opportunity to compete/connect/mark progress with others.

It's beeen so much fun, and so refreshing for me lately I just had to share.

Diolch,
Bonnie

Re: language learning resource

[ecosophia]

Fair enough. One excited recommendation every so often isn't a problem. ;-)

Monsters

[packshaud]

Hi, John.

1) Did you actually rest during your break?

I know that you are no longer involved with monster (re)search, but to what extent would your new views on the planes affect the structure of your book Monsters? I like the classification using strategies to deal with them based on their properties, according to the structure of the planes.

But the planes frame the whole book. I'm waiting for your new work (I believe the non-religious general magic book) on magic practice, that will provide a single place to read about it (this will save me a lot of time, I don't think I have enough time and money to play Arthur Powell with all your blogs and books).

2) To what extent do you think your new views would require a third edition of Monsters? 2021 is near, and it would be a good opportunity for a 20th anniversary edition.

Re: Monsters

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, for whole minutes at a time. ;-)

2) No, I don't plan on revisiting Monsters. There are many different ways to think about the planes of being, and it doesn't bother me at all that all my books don't use the same system -- among other things, that helps chase off would-be fundamentalists.

Magical Water Treatment

[(Anonymous)]

Good Morning!

I tried the magical water treatment you proposed in a different thread here. As someone who has not done any explicit magical ritual I was surprised how intense tracing the pentagram over the glass of water felt - it literally made my hairs stand up. Still, after a few rounds reason caught up again and I cast a chart on the question "Is the magical water treatment positive for me?". The most notable feature will be first house Puella passing into the eighth house, along a translation made by Carcer (2/7). Still, here is the complete chart:

1 - Puella, 2 - Carcer, 3 - Fortuna Minor, 4 - Via, 5 - Via, 6 - Fortuna Major, 7 - Carcer, 8 - Puella, 9 - Albus, 10 - Fortuna Major, 11 - Fortuna Minor, 12 - Albus, RW Tristitia, LW Cauda Draconis, J Via.

So, since there are two modes of perfection, I interpret this as a "YES!" with some additional hints maybe? Puella is not favourable for magic so my best guess is that the results of this practice will be not as stable or reliable as I hope? Or it might be a hint that I am most likely will have difficulties to maintain a steady practice (which might well be, since this is one of the major point preventing me from starting a regular magical practice generally)?

One other geomantic data point: I recently cast a chart on a yes/no question which showed no mode of perfection, yet I knew the answer was yes anyway and for all I know it was. I was selling our car, which was not that easy with many strange folks calling and wanting to buy it or not want it or who knows what they really want. Still, one guy promised to show up and shortly before he was due to arrive I cast a chart asking whether everything will work out as intended. Here the main features were Fortuna Major in the first house passing into the twelfth , Via in the second passing into the eighth house. RW: Laetitia, LW: Albus, J: Amissio. After casting the chart I thought that this will work out very well and so it was.

Finally, I just wanted to say thank you for writing the Weird of Hali! I read the books in January and have to say I enjoyed them a lot! Quite often, I put books aside when they become too colorful (like... did he REALLY have to have Merlin dug out by his undead friends?) but not so this time. It was truly one of the best fantasy reads I encountered over the last 10 years or so! There's a lot of things in there that might result in a Magic Monday post, but I'll leave that for another week. Just one thing: I really enjoyed the emphasis on authentic food. Creamed eggs made it straight to our table along some fish just after finishing Kingsport ;-) Food can do a lot of good things beside keeping you alive, and it's more than a pity that so few are able too cook simple, proper meals like creamed eggs or bacon cheese burgers, for example.

Greetings,
Nachtgurke

Re: Magical Water Treatment

[ecosophia]

1) I'd treat the water divination as a strong yes, but yeah, the reading makes it fairly clear that you won't be able to maintain it as a regular practice.

2) That's interesting, about the car reading. Did the wording of your question focus on the person who was going to buy the car? If so, it's at least partly a seventh house question -- the seventh house is the house of the other person in any business question -- and you have a mode of perfection with Via translating from the second to the eighth.

3) Thank you! I'm delighted to hear that, of course. I've received other comments about the role of food in the stories, and some requests for recipes -- enough that I'm seriously considering a Weird of Hali cookbook, with recipes for everything tasty in the novels. I'll ask Brecken Kendall to write it. ;-)

Tom Brown, master tracker, any opinion?

[(Anonymous)]

Some of Brown's stuff on tracking extends to divination through the tracks.

Re: Tom Brown, master tracker, any opinion?

[ecosophia]

I learned a lot from several of his books -- his guide to nature observation, his guide to city and suburban survival, and his guide to "the forgotten wilderness" -- wildlife in urban and suburban environments. That's the only contact I've had with his work, and I've never met the man, but I wholeheartedly recommend those books.

Christian Banishing Ritual

[mo_drui_mac_de]

I recently took up the Christian Banishing Ritual designed here over the last couple months, largely because it seemed very intuitive—I had it memorised practically the first time I read it and while I do intend to finish mastering the SoP, it’s taking me ages to progress in that and the time it’s been taking me in the morning to do is causing me to shirk actually doing it, and the conditions of my immediate surroundings demand a banishing ritual that I can make sure to fit in every day without excuses.

That being said, there was one aspect of it that worried me, in that I recall you saying before with regards to the LBRP that practicing it by itself for an extend period of time could be unwholesome, as you’d effectively start banishing your own life force, and so it needed to be balanced by the invocational power of the Middle Pillar; further, that this was one of the plus sides of the SoP, in that it combined banishing and invoking into one rite (an effect I definitely felt). I’ve not been doing the CBR (it does seem to want a more elegant name, that makes it sound like it’s meant for banishing Christians!) for long enough to tell, but the rite as written seems to be similar to LBRP in lacking an invocatory element, and I wonder if that might constitute the same weakness of hyper-sterility (if you will) that you noted before.

A potential solution did occur to me, but I wanted to consult your expert opinion before attempting it. The following is the collect for the Devotional Prayers at Close of Day from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and seems to combine both invocation of a blessing and a banishment of harmful forces. I wonder if it, or some variation thereof, would be workable in the quarters in place of “In the name that is above all other names etc”...or if I’m just overthinking this (or missing something) and it’s not actually a problem in the first place?

“Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in peace; and let your blessing be upon us always; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”


EDIT: Aaaand, a bit of hunting through earlier less-than-careful reading turned up where you already answered this question to someone else – “Yes, but not necessarily a ritual of the same kind. What I'd advise, since I gather you're Catholic, is to pray the Rosary every day. That's a potent invocation, and will balance the masculine Christ current of the ritual with the feminine Mary current.” I’m not Catholic, rather an Episcopalian/Anglican Druid, but a lot of the older Catholic practices appeal very strongly to me and I’ve been meaning to pick up praying the Rosary for a while now. I recently saw Agostino Taumaturgo describe the Rosary as a “complete magical system unto itself”, and my first thought was “that’s awesome, but...doesn’t it lack a banishing ritual?” Looks like the two were meant for each other!

Re: Christian Banishing Ritual

[ecosophia]

Exactly. The Christian banishing ritual is meant to be combined with the other spiritual disciplines of a Christian life, which ought to include a lot of invocation (that's usually spelled "prayer" in the literature) as well as Bible study, the practice of charity and the other virtues, etc. As for the rosary, were you aware that there's an Anglican rosary? It's got 33 beads and is used with a wide range of prayers in the Anglican tradition; the link I've just given includes some of them. Might be worth considering...

[booklover1973]

I know that for planetary charity, one must donate at the day and hour of the planet in question money to a relevant cause or charity for as many times as the symbolical number of the planet indicates. Is there something else which I need to know about this?

Secondly, about the Grand Mutation: I'm not sure that a new founder of a world religion will be born at this time, because the whole concept of world religions seems rather to belong to the Piscean age. I can image the founder of a new religion to be born at that time, but it could well be some diofferent thing than usual. My impression is that Islam was the last of the Piscean, big religions to come into existence. Any thoughts of what might happen?

[ecosophia]

1) Just that you should do it with the intention of making an offering to the planetary intelligence.

2) I have no idea. The last time we were at this point of the precessional cycle was 25,920 years ago!

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

1. On this week's post on the main blog, you responded to a commenter about his concerns he is spending his life stuck in a job to make money, you suggested that he might regret spending his time this way when he was on his deathbed. I am in a similar boat, in that my life orbits my well-paying but mentally demanding salary class job. I've been meditating a lot on the concept of intentionality which you introduced in the DMH, and on trying to focus on what one has, rather than what one wants. I'm struggling to resolve a binary I've set up: if I should focus on what I have, then I should appreciate my job for what it is, appreciate my good fortune in being able to exist without the struggle for money or with working multiple stressful and low-paying jobs that many others have to do, that I'm wealthy compared to those in the third world, etc.

So this implies I should pay attention to these positive aspects rather than focusing on what I want: more free time to exercise, to contribute somehow to the wider community, to be outside more, to learn to garden and play music properly, and so on. Because according to the concept of intentionality in the DMH, if I focus too much on wanting these things, then they move further away. How do I move towards these things without focusing on the lack of them?

2. The only answer I've got so far is that the problem is the focusing: the wanting and the having should balance each other, and focused on as such. Earth, the element of manifestation, would correspond to having, and Fire, the element of will and desire, corresponds to wanting, and the two are in opposite directions in the DMH, and thus keep the other in check.

3. Maybe slightly related to the first question: what's your opinion on the notion of the Good Life or Eudaimonia? I understand that it has to do with living a virtuous life, but what virtue means in this case has changed through time. I like the definition I found by Zeno, who said it was a life lived in accordance with nature. I wonder if it relates to one of the goals of magic that I've seen you note: to become most completely oneself.

Thanks again!

[ecosophia]

1 and 2) There's a difference between wanting something and willing something. If you decide to get a different job so you have more free time, then make it happen -- don't sit there wanting it. Take action with your whole self, make the changes you need to make, and accept the consequences wholeheartedly. Mages don't want, they will -- and so they accomplish. You can do the same thing.

3) My take is that what counts as the good life differs for every single being in all of existence. One size emphatically does not fit all; the question "what is the best way to live?" is one that confronts every one of us at every moment, and it has no one right answer.

Magical geography

[(Anonymous)]

My wife discovered her love of being a librarian shortly after we moved to north Georgia almost 8 years ago. Since then she's been fighting for, not good, just liveable compensation from her library and coming up empty-handed. Neither the system nor the county seem to care about librarians, and the state definitely doesn't. Georgia is very near the bottom of the heap in per capita library funding, and our governor is steadily cutting what funding we do get. IOW, it's never going to happen here. (And my work is totally mobile:)

So she's just submitted a beautiful application for her dream job (for which she's plenty qualified, and over-educated) in Evansville, IN, during the 3rd hour of the Sun last night. Indiana is a state that seems to be devoted to its public libraries (and their per capita funding is at least 3x Georgia's). And Evansville seems like a dynamic little town, with 10 (some of them absolutely stunning Carnegie-type) library branches, 7 museums, on and on...in a city of ~120k.

Anybody here have any insight into the city or surrounding area? It's right on the Ohio River, just upstream from the confluence of the Wabash River that separates Illinois and Indiana, right across the water from Kentucky. I imagine the soil is fertile, the climate fairly moderate, with ample rain, sun, game, and timber, just because of its geography, but I'm wondering if anyone here is FAMILIAR with the city, and can fill me in. Is the land friendly to humans? Is it the future Lakeland Republic dream town I'm making it out to be in my head? JMG, was our election appropriate?

Thank you in advance for your time and knowledge!
Tripp

Re: Magical geography

[(Anonymous)]

I have lived there, it does have very good libraries. If JMG could connect us via email, I'd be glad to share what else I know!

Good luck,
Mateo

Ego

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG! Thanks for hosting this Q&A! I’ve learned a lot from reading the answers and discussions here over the past several years.
For a while now, I’ve been doing a daily routine of SOP, discursive meditation, journaling, and I Ching, in that order. One of the things that the Sage emphasizes is overcoming your Ego, and developing your Superior, or Higher, Self. One of the conclusions that I’ve come through in my meditations is that if we were to put the Sage’s teachings about the Ego into a Druidical context, than the Ego is all of instincts, aspects, and learned traits that are left over from previous incarnations as an animal. The Superior Self are the parts of you that need to be developed in order to allow you to ascend into the next plane of existence. Thus, the conflict between the Ego and the Superior Self is one of the main interior conflicts which every human experiences. One of the ways that I have experienced this conflict is how all of the the things that my Higher Self says that I should do, (which are things that I actually suspect would make me happy) invariably get overridden my by Ego giving me a list of things that I “should” do, presented in a way to make them seem necessary to my survival. Is there anything that I can do, aside from the aforementioned daily routine of prayer, meditation, and divination, to help resolve this conflict in favor of my Higher Self?

Re: Ego

[ecosophia]

What you're asking is perhaps the most important issue that every student of every system of spiritual teaching has to contend with. Your conscious self is always poised between its past and its future -- between the habits and conditions that make up what you're calling the ego, and the potentials for wisdom and grace that make up the higher self. What you need is the will and wisdom to choose the way of the higher self -- and getting those qualities is the whole point of spiritual practice. When you've achieved that, you won't be a student any more, you'll be a master.

And yes, you get there through the labor of your spiritual practices, and the subtler but equally important labor of telling your ego to take a long walk off a short pier. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Does the Qabalah have any relation with "world tree" in shamanism?

[ecosophia]

Historically? Nobody knows for sure. Symbolically? Yes, and I'd encourage you to spend a couple of weeks at least of daily meditation on the subject.

[(Anonymous)]

Considering the Mafia's connection to Catholicism, and the Mexican narcosaints, does that actually work? Are there gods that will help people commit crimes?

[ecosophia]

Good heavens, yes. Gods are not subject to human notions of morality. There are ancient Greek prayers to Hermes made by merchants asking him to help them cheat their customers, and of course war gods in general are invoked to help you kill your enemies. For that matter, the god of the Bible uses a miracle to help Jacob rip off his father-in-law in a deal involving who owns which sheep.

[(Anonymous)]

When you did magic to get money to go back to university the law passed the next day. That must have been in the works for a while, so does magic have the ability to cast its influence back through time?

[ecosophia]

It does seem to be able to do that. I have no idea how, but that's the way things very often work.

[(Anonymous)]

Is it possible to get to Gwynfydd without ever practising occultism? If so, how many different routes are there to it that you know of?

[ecosophia]

Yes, and every single soul reaches Gwynfydd by a different route -- it may be slightly different or vastly different, but it's always different.

[(Anonymous)]

Since all societies seem to go through a rationalist stage, do you think all souls have to go through an atheist stage as part of their development?

[(Anonymous)]

My immediate thought was "Yes. Adolescence."

Pat

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Once you mentioned that trees are in a different path of spiritual evolution than that of humans. Do they have their distinct deities and inner plane adepts?

[ecosophia]

Have you considered asking a tree and seeing what it has to say about that?

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

Concept of the Force in Star Wars movies is obviously influenced by "vital energy" concept in occult traditions. If we reverse the analogy, is there such a thing as the "dark side" of vital energy (such as "dark side of the nwyfre") in occultism?

[ecosophia]

That's one of the places where George Lucas dumbed down the material he was using to make it fit a set of tired clichés borrowed ultimately from Christian theology. No, there's no "dark side of the nwyfre;" the life force is the life force, and it dispenses what we call good and evil with equal facility. (The same vital energy that makes a child grow can just as effectively make a tumor grow in the child.) Here on earth, the life force has a twofold nature; in the language of my tentacle fantasies, there's a bright voor that descends from the sun and a dark voor that ascends from deep within the earth, but the difference between them isn't moral, much less cheap moral caricature.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

In the depiction of crucifixion, do the scars in Jesus' palms have an allusion to his particular energy centers which were specialized for his healing works?

[ecosophia]

That's certainly the teaching in some Christian magical traditions. The palm centers are much used in various forms of healing by laying on of hands, for example.

[(Anonymous)]

"No, that's not a matter of cultural appropriation; the Cabala wasn't originally Jewish. Gershom Scholem's magisterial Origins of the Kabbalah traces it back to the Gnostics, who got it from the Neopythagoreans. That's why so many of the basic technical terms of Cabalism are borrowings from Greek."

As an example, does the "Ain Soph" originally come from "Apeiron" in Pre-Socratic philosophy?

[ecosophia]

That's certainly a possibility, but the borrowings I have in mind are more direct than that. The word "sephirah" is a Hebraization of the Greek sphaira, "sphere;" the word "gematria" comes from the Greek grammateia, "that which is about letters;" the name of the great archangel Metatron doesn't mean much of anything in Hebrew, but it Greek it's metathronos, "he who is before the throne," and so on. A lot of technical Cabalistic terminology isn't originally Hebrew, it's Greek -- and that shows you that the tradition was Greek before it was Jewish. (These are among the points Scholem made, of course.)

Cubicle Survival

[(Anonymous)]

Newbie with a burgeoning interest in the metaphysical, here. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

I work a very boring job in a windowless office, surrounded by computer screens, fluorescent lighting, and humming machines. I feel like this is as source of a lot of physical and metaphysical damage to my health, and I'm interested in ways of mitigating the negative effects (if any, i accept that this may be psychomatic) until I can find something new.

I already take steps to care for myself in the usual physical ways ( regular exercise, a clean diet, time outdoors, etc.) Are there any magical practices I could/should adopt to add to this? Preferably, low-key things that wouldn't freak out bystanders...

Re: Cubicle Survival

[(Anonymous)]

FWIW, Shungite is a non-descript black stone that is being promoted these days as an EM disruptor. Having some strategically located on your person and around your office probably wouldn't arouse any suspicion. Might at least offer some relief.

I feel for your problem. At this point I don't think my subtle bodies could handle all that static.

Tripp