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.

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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!***