Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight as I type this, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. This week's classic of Western occultism is Initiation into Hermetics by Franz Bardon, which for many years was the only serious introduction to classic central European occultism available in English. Bardon was Czech and was born in 1909, which means he had the bad luck to be in eastern Europe during one of the most difficult periods of its long and tangled history. He managed to survive the First World War, the Spanish flu, and the Great Depression; he spent time in a concentration camp during the Second World War, but survived; and finally died while imprisoned by the secret police of Czechoslovakia's Communist government in 1958. His three major books, Initiation into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation, and The Key to the True Kabbalah, were published in Germany in the 1950s, appeared in bad English translations in the 1960s, and not long ago finally appeared in good English a few years back. 

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

Dog-headed men

[(Anonymous)]

When I first read about the "dog-headed men of Africa" in a medieval bestiary, my first thought was "baboons!" For what that's worth.

As for giants - if your source is Mediterranean, imagine a visitor from say, Scandinavia among the shorter, more compactly built (guessing at that from Greek vases) Acheans. Dwarves, of course, exist in the human population and always have; it wasn't hard to find an actor to play Tyrion Lannister.

Re: Dog-headed men

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks, but don't you suppose that if I wanted to a straightforward recapitulation of the conventional wisdom I wouldn't have brought this up on a site like this one?