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 The Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus aka Albert Reidel, one of the crucial figures in the modern revival of laboratory alchemy. His book focuses on spagyrics -- the opus vegetabilis or work with plants, which allows the novice alchemist to develop the necessary skills in laboratory work and spiritual practice in relative safety before attempting the more demanding mineral and metallic work, and which is also practiced by some contemporary alchemists for its own considerable benefits. There are more detailed works on spagyrics nowadays, but The Alchemist's Handbook is still worth close study -- and it also deserves the honor due any really groundbreaking book. 

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!*** 
 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

1. Do you have any activities for winding down at the end of a long day? This could be any semi-passive activity that you use as a distraction from studying and writing, and that doesn’t require too much mental focus. Most Americans fill that slot with TV and surfing the Internet, but I imagine you’ve figured out something more interesting and thoughtful. Or is such a thing antithetical to the magician’s path?

2. Can you describe your personal encounter with the Watcher on the Threshold? In particular:
a. At what stage did you first encounter it?
b. How did you know that it was the Watcher and not some other phenomenon?
c. How was the confrontation resolved?

3. In The Magician: His Training and Work, W.E. Butler states that the biggest spiritual danger of magic is the sin of pride – that is, the Luciferan pride of considering oneself superior to others for being in possession of secret knowledge and techniques. How do you avoid falling into the egocentric trap of seeing yourself as being above the uninitiated, ignorant herd, etc.? In doing what you do, isn’t there a temptation to believe that you have all the answers?

[ecosophia]

1) I enjoy reading, and so I like to wind down by sitting on the couch with a good book.

2) Me and the Watcher go way back. I had several run-ins with the fear that is the first enemy of a man of knowledge -- yes, that's another way of talking about the same thing -- over the period in my teens when I was studying magic half-seriously. It was immediately clear what it was, because I'd read enough accounts of the same thing, and the confrontation was resolved in the one way it's possible to resolve it: I committed myself to the work and just kept on going through the panic, and came right out the other side.

3) Any occultist who thinks he has all the answers hasn't yet started asking any of the real questions. I went through a brief period of thinking I knew it all, early on in my magical training, then had the salutary experience of running face first into alchemical literature -- specifically, John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica -- and realizing that I literally had no idea what he was talking about. The longer I study and practice, the more certain I am that the old-fashioned occultists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were right, and humanity (including those of us who practice occultism) are just taking our first tottering baby steps in a cosmos far vaster than any of us can imagine.

[(Anonymous)]

1) If a member of America’s privileged classes, say, an eccentric billionaire with an interest in occultism (not me, sadly), offered to become your patron, would you take him up on the offer? Let’s say the terms would be as follows: he would give you a certain amount of money per year, enough to live on very comfortably with no questions asked and no strings attached, and give you complete creative freedom. In return, he would ask for the opportunity to ask questions and receive your advice on various occult and spiritual topics, perhaps with some in-person consultations a few times a year. He would also ensure that the arrangement would remain private, if you so wish. Essentially, you would play a role similar to the private chaplains that served the European nobility hundreds of years ago. Does this sound appealing to you?

2) You mentioned in the past that you used to work in retirement homes. Could you share any experiences from that time, lessons you’ve learned, perspectives gained?

[ecosophia]

1) You lost me at "no questions asked and no strings attached." In the real world, that's never how things work, and anyone who claims to be offering such a thing is dangling bait on a hook. In the real world, if somebody pays your bills and supports your lifestyle, they own you, and you can expect the leash to be yanked sooner or later. I'm happy to say that I make enough money these days to cover my expenses with room to spare -- and so if a billionaire wants to ask some questions, why, he or she can have a flunkey post them to Magic Monday!

2) It's an experience I highly recommend. People these days are terrified of old age and death, and spending time taking care of the old and dying, and occasionally helping to wash a corpse, is a good way to get past that.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

1. In the Tree of Life, it is often said that there is a gulf separating the Three Supernals from the rest of the Tree, symbolized by the invisible Daath, positioned on the Lightning Flash between Binah and Chesed. However, there are several Paths between the lower and upper Sephiroth of the Tree: the 13th, 15th, 16th 17th and 18th Paths. What’s stopping someone from just taking the 16th Path up from Chesed to Chokmah and skipping Daath entirely? Or does Daath somehow intersect all these paths?

2. I’ve often heard both Mars and Venus described as the desire force in astrology. However, strictly speaking, shouldn’t Mars be thought of as the desire force, while Venus is the attraction force? Mars is how we pursue, Venus is how we attract or draw towards us that which we value.

3. Am I correct in assuming that the symbols and correspondences of the Sephiroth and Paths on the Tree of Life are more relevant to Pathworking and ceremonial magic than to Tarot divination? Does the knowledge that Elohim Gibor is the divine name of Geburah, or that Lamed is the letter of the 21st path, or similar bits of lore, have any bearing on a divination using the Tarot?

[ecosophia]

1) You can certainly make the attempt, and in terms of pathworking and other purely symbolic and imaginal ways of working with the Tree, you can do that. In any deeper sense? Until you've had the Daath experience, those paths are closed and barred. It's like passing through the Veil -- that needs to happen first by way of the Path of the Arrow, the 25th path in the GD reckoning, in order to make the other paths traversable.

2) Yes, of course. "Desire" is a vague word -- do you mean the desire that sends you chasing after things, or the desire that draws them to you?

3) Depends on the individual diviner. I know some people whose Tarot treadings are pervaded by intricate Cabalistic references, and others who don't use the correspondences at all. Which works best for you?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Last week, in response to another question, you mentioned that silver feminizes and gold masculinizes. In what ways, exactly? Physically? Socially? Emotionally? I have a friend considering medical gender reassignment and I'm curious to know if wearing the relevant metals could aid that process.

[ecosophia]

Etherically and astrally -- that is to say, on the levels of subtle energy, emotion, and imagination. If your friend has a male physical body and wants to transition to a female body, silver jewelry might indeed be helpful; she should also burn a violet candle on Mondays and a green candle on Fridays, and ask the help of the Moon and Venus. If your friend has a female physical body and wants to transition to a male body, gold jewelry will help, and he should also burn a yellow candle on Sundays and a red candle on Tuesday, and ask for the help of the Sun and Mars.

[(Anonymous)]

You've mentioned a few times about a revolution of the living against the dead in Ancient Egypt, can you recommend a written account of this event? It sounds like some quite interesting history.

[ecosophia]

You won't find one, since the people who kept the records in ancient Egypt were from the classes that were most negatively affected by the events in question. Look into the archeology and history of the First and Second Intermediate Periods, and specifically what happened to the property set aside to support offerings for the dead during those periods, and you'll find plenty to study.

[(Anonymous)]

1. Under the common attribution of the levels of being to the 4 elements (material / earth, astral / swords, mental / cups, spiritual / wands), is there a particular level of being associated to the quintessence (5th element)?

2. How does someone get routine practice in astrology? Are there any effective exercises that can be done on a daily basis, other than looking at a new chart every day?

3. Are you familiar with the works of Origen? He was an early Christian ecclesiastical writer who, despite being enormously talented and having a prodigious work output, was never included in the official club of Church Fathers, mostly because his theology would later be deemed heretical. He advocated for a concept of universal salvation, where all souls would eventually be reconciled with God, including Satan. It's surprising how few Christians are aware of how diverse early theological opinion was, and how varied the interpretations of the significance of Christ was, before the institutional Church tossed everything down the memory hole.

[ecosophia]

1) I classify the levels differently. For me, it's earth/pentacles/material plane, water/cups/etheric plane, air/swords/astral plane, fire/wands/mental plane, and spirit/Trumps/spiritual plane.

2) Track transits across your natal chart every morning -- that's what I do. Every day some of the planets in the sky are making aspects to some of your natal planets, and the Moon is whipping through 12° to 15° of arc, hitting various aspects with your natal planets at different times. You can use this to elect good times for doing things -- I submit manuscripts to publishers, for example, when something's making a favorable aspect to my natal Mercury or to the ruler of my 10th house -- and it's also a great way to develop a sense of astrological cycles.

3) I've read about Origen, but since I'm not a Christian I've never really pursued a study of his work. You're absolutely correct, though, that Christianity was much more diverse then -- and indeed it's been much more diverse all along than the various institutional churches want you to think.

[(Anonymous)]

1. I’m reading a book called The Qabalistic Tarot by a certain Robert Wang, and it contains the following interesting passage on Tarot divination:

“The cards [of the Minor Arcana] are rooted in Yetzirah, the world of Angels, as opposed to the Archangels of Briah or the Gods of Atziluth. The cards are Astral Images, illustrating the world of matter below, and symbolically reflecting the worlds of mind and spirit above. For example, the TWO OF WANDS reates to Chokmah in Atziluth, as does the KING OF WANDS. But neither card is precisely the same as the Chokmah in Atziluth upon which one calls with the God Name Yah. The TWO OF WANDS may be said to represent the effect in Yetzirah of the power of Chokmah in Atziluth, as the KING OF WANDS personifies the action of Fire of Fire in Yetzirah. Yetzirah is the Formative World through which higher principles pass down into our lives. It is a world of images reflected from above and below, which explains why the Tarot works so well for divination.”

Do you agree that the Minor Arcana are “astral images,” rooted in Yetzirah? This idea seems to overturn a lot of what I thought I knew about Tarot divination (yes, this is probably going to happen a lot in studying occultism).

2. In The Mystical Qabalah, Dion Fortune says concerning astrology:

“Astrology is so elusive because the uninitiated astrologer works on one plane only; but the initiated astrologer, with the Tree as his ground-plan, interprets on the four planes of the Four Worlds, and the effect of, shall we say, Saturn, is very different in Atziluth, where it is the Divine Mother, Binah, to what it is in Assiah.”

“The Tree of Life, astrology, and the Tarot are not three mystical systems, but three aspects of one and the same system, and each is unintelligible without the others. It is only when we study astrology on the basis of the Tree that we have a philosophical system.”

Are you aware of any Qabalistic astrology books or resources? My impression was that Qabalists interpreted astrology pretty much the same way as anyone else.

[ecosophia]

1) That's not one of Wang's better moments. No, I don't agree with him; the minor arcana, like all phenomena, exist in all four worlds.

2) That was my impression too. The Golden Dawn in its early days had its own system of "initiated" astrology, but that worked very poorly, and somewhere in the course of its history the "initiated" system got dropped and students just went to work with Alan Leo's very good books on standard astrology.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

1. Several times in the past, you’ve mentioned that the key to all magic is learning to will a single thing strongly, with complete mental focus, for an extended period of time, and that the majority of people, instead of being conscious and aware of the consequences of their actions, instead go through life half asleep, as if in a daze.

In the course of an individual’s magical development, once they wake up and are no longer acting out of blind habit or impulse, are there any general guidelines for how to best choose goals towards which to apply the will, and to determine their worth? I imagine that journaling, meditation, and divination are involved, but does the choice of goals depend solely on a person’s subjective values, or is there some objective hierarchy of goals, with the Great Work sitting at the top and everything else flowing neatly downwards from there? I’m assuming you would personally disapprove of somebody using their newfound magical attainment to watch TV all day, but is such a choice wrong in an absolute sense?

2. Is there any difference between the application of the magical will and the concept of the ‘flow-state’ as described in the field of positive psychology? For those who are unfamiliar with it, the flow state is most likely to occur when the level of challenge offered by an activity is perfectly matched by the skill level of the participant. When someone is in the flow-state, they describe it as a state of being completely immersed in the activity, ‘in the zone’, to the point where they lose track of time, of the environment, and of themselves. This seems very close to the idea that the will, when properly applied, is effortless. Is the flow state an example of the skillful use of the will, or an unconscious abdication of it?

I get the impression that ‘using the will’ is akin to being in a self-aware, meditative state 24/7, where the attention is turned inwards on itself, and the magician is constantly monitoring their own state of mind and internal processes. However, I assume even adepts occasionally have moments when they slip into a temporary state of unconsciousness, when they’re absorbed in what they’re doing, and are no longer ‘aware of being aware’. Therefore I suspect that I’m operating under a misconception.

[ecosophia]

1) In occult theory each soul has a True Will, a basic orientation toward acting in the cosmos, and one of the points of occult training is to get out of the way of that and let it express itself in a balanced and appropriate fashion in the context of one's present incarnation. Meditation, journaling, and divination are among the tools that can be used to do that. Your True Will is not mine, and so there's no one standard for everyone.

2) I have no idea. I'm not familiar with the state in question.

3) No, not at all. Nobody can maintain a self-aware meditative state 24/7 without going crazy. When you're good at using your will, you set it in motion and then get out of the way; you live your life, sleep eight hours a night, get lost in a good book from time to time, let yourself go in the arms of your lover or spouse, and so on -- but the whole time the will is in motion, and whenever you reach a situation where doing A will bring you closer to the fulfillment of your will and doing B will take you further away from it, you do A -- very often, instinctively, and sometimes without even noticing it.

[(Anonymous)]

A few questions:

1. I know you don't do dream work but I'm betting you know a good book on the subject. What would you recommend?

2. How long did it take you to finish Hall's Self-Unfoldment system?

3. If a person were a real glutton for punishment, what old occult work would you say best hides its secrets, while having a nice pay off in the end? And perhaps a related question, what old occult work uses the most tactics in obscuring its treasures?

[ecosophia]

1) I'm sorry to say you'd lose that bet. Anyone else?

2) Twelve months. I treated it as the 12-lesson correspondence course it originally was.

3) For the first question, of the ones that I've studied in enough detail to know -- and that's a small fraction of the total literature, of course! -- it would be a dead heat between Hall's Self-Unfoldment and George Winslow Plummer's Rosicrucian Symbology (which you can download for free here, in case you're interested). As for the second -- well, it would be a book of alchemy, no question. John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica is a great example, and so is Fulcanelli's The Mystery of the Cathedrals; I've wrestled repeatedly with both of these.

Accidental Hamburglar

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG. I was going through the archive on the blog and I read somewhere that you've done some sort of workings to prevent your books being pirated. Back before the quarantine I bought the DMH but I was working on an extremely filthy construction site, so I didn't want to bring a book out to get covered with concrete dust and the grime that seems to seep into my fingers even while wearing gloves. So while on lunch break I thought "Ah, I know! I bet there's a pdf on libgen! I can downloaded a pdf to my phone so I can work on memorizing all the Ogham fews and correspondences during lunch breaks!"

I also remember about 3 years back when I was trying to get started studying occult topics I ended up getting burned buying really crappy books so many times I just started pirating books by default and only buying the paper copy if it proved to be a good book, which probably saved my hundreds of dollars. I believe I pirated your Monsters and Green Wizardry books, which is how I was first introduced to your writing. I've since bought the Monsters book (haven't gotten around to buying Green Wizardry, I really should) and I admit I sometimes take a peek at the pirate pdf of a book that I've bought when I'm too excited to wait for it to arrive in the mail.

I'm worried my dastardly pdf piracy from three years ago and the pirating of books I already own might be bringing down some sort of curse that's gumming up my magical progress, since progress has been slow and frustrating. What are your anti-piracy workings designed to do, exactly? If I want a digital version of a book I already own, should I buy the digital copy again (and if so, where? I don't like Amazon forcing you to use Kindle everything for digital books)?

Re: Accidental Hamburglar

[ecosophia]

It's quite simple. The logic behind my working is that anyone who steals one of my books will get no benefit out of it -- since I get nothing from their ownership of the book, neither do they. What you have to do to get out from under the working is simply to buy a copy of the book in whatever format you have it, and delete the stolen one. As for where to buy it, I don't use e-books so don't know where you would go -- someone else might be able to answer that.

Hoodoo Bath

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

It’s been nuts in my life (and no doubt in the lives of others) lately, and I decided my semi-weekly German folk magic practice of pouring a bottle of dark beer into my bath helped, but not enough. Hoodoo bath time! Here’s my question:

The times I’ve resolved to take a hoodoo bath, the energy around me shifts as soon as I pull out the bucket and start adding the ingredients. It’s really weird. Sort of like lifting up a stone in the yard and being amazed at all of the scurrying bugs and worms underneath it.

What is this stuff? It feels conscious, but I am only vaguely conscious of “it” until I decide to do something about it. Then it seems to manifest itself. Like those panicked critters under that stone in the yard.

Thanks for Magic Monday!
OtterGirl

Re: Hoodoo Bath

[ecosophia]

Your intention is part of what gives the working its power. Once you set your will on doing a hoodoo bath and put that will into motion, the energies start to move.

[(Anonymous)]

In his work, Carl Jung often talks about the mental life of the ‘primitive’ as compared with that of ‘civilized’ man. The terms have become dated, but I think his point still stands, that those who are less conscious are less conflicted; they have no problems because they live in the moment, immersed in the unconscious, and any difficulties they encounter produce no internal division, which leads to self-doubt and neurosis – this is similar to the mental state of most animals, young children and very elderly people. The modern man, however, is burdened with consciousness, and with that comes the burden of self-awareness, which is described as a curse in the allegorical story of the Garden of Eden.

In that view, is the goal of magic to return to this unconscious state, to remove internal division and follow the course of development that Nature has laid down for us? Are we trying to regain the primordial oneness of the Edenic state, or does magic offer the possibility of freedom, of shaping ourselves, if necessary, against the natural flow of things?

[ecosophia]

I always found those comments of Jung's -- and their many equivalents in the writings of other European intellectuals of the same era -- impressively silly. It simply isn't true that "primitive people" live in the moment, immersed in the unconscious -- the Australian aboriginal elder assessing the subtle signs that will help him guide his band across a hundred miles of gibber desert to whichever place will have the best food supply that year is using his intellect as well as his intuition; equally, the Kwakiutl matron who can recount with pride her lineage back twenty or thirty generations and the ritual privileges she has inherited from each of her ancestors is hardly lacking in self-awareness!

From the point of view of occult philosophy, certainly, the view we're discussing is utterly wrongheaded. The course of development that Nature has laid down for us leads directly to self-awareness, and the process of losing that self-awareness in late adulthood has a widely used name: senility. The natural flow of things leads us toward greater individualization, greater freedom, and greater creativity -- and it leads people of all cultures there, not just those who belong to soi-disant "civilized" cultures.

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

Are you familiar with the branch of social and evolutionary psychology called Terror Management Theory (TMT)? It claims that the driving human motivation is the fear and awareness of death, which sets man apart from other animals, and as a result of which we attempt to become “persons of value in a world of meaning.” In order to soothe our fear of death and forget that we are dying animals, we attempt to lead a heroic life in a symbolic world of immortal value, often enacted using ritual, thus explaining the origin of culture, mythology and religion as immortality projects. The theory can of course be criticized for being reductionistic and based in scientific materialism, but empirical studies were done showing that a reminder of death causes an increased attachment to cultural symbols - Americans to the American flag, Christians to the Bible, Jews to the Torah, and so on – so I believe there might be something to it.

[ecosophia]

No, I tend to roll my eyes and walk away when that kind of reductionism gets trotted out. The inventors of such projects never stop to consider that we might actually be persons of value in a world of meaning, and that ritual and symbolism might be means of reminding ourselves of truths rather than a way of constructind a world of fictions.

CNN

[kimberlysteele]

I got rid of my TV about a decade ago and I am out of the loop, so I didn't realize that Reza Aslan, a self-proclaimed Islamic scholar and CNN personality, achieved infamy when he ate human brains as part of his show Believer in 2017. Believer was intended to be an Anthony Bourdain tour the world show, but instead of sampling local cuisines, Aslan was to sample local religions. He ended up hanging out with the Aghori peoples, and I'm sorry to say from the segment I watched, I could tell the leader was not only angry, he seemed possessed. The Aghori routinely try to gain power by messing with the dead, smearing cremated ashes of people on themselves, and eating brains.

Aslan is now known for spewing Twitter rage. I believe he's being sued for saying the Covington MAGA kid's 14 year old face was "punchable".

My question is this: Aslan seems obviously cursed, and the Aghori leader seems to be the one who cursed him. He lost his job at CNN, became a laughingstock, and now is being sued. Could he have also cursed CNN? Their ratings are in the toilet.

Re: CNN

[ecosophia]

Aslan may be cursed, but it's also quite possible that he's obsessed by one or more evil spirits; the effects are similar. It's also possible that he contracted one of the various nasty neurological diseases you can get from eating human nervous tissue. I would not want to be him.

As for CNN, I think that whatever's working through Aslan had to take a number and wait its turn. Too much Trump Derangement Syndrome and a bad case of "get woke, go broke" is much closer to the head of the line.

Gurdjieff

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I appreciate your candour in recent MM’s with regard to Aleister Crowley. With that in mind, what is your take on another so-called ‘rascal master’, Gurdjieff, and the Fourth Way Movement that derives from him?

Gurdjieff seems to be gaining in popularity over the last many years through variously the Enneagram, Jacob Needleman, Parabola magazine, Jodorowsky, and even the contemplative Christian renaissance. Within the Christian Centering Prayer movement, Episcopalian Hermit Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault champions Gurdjieff as something of a world messiah and prophesies somewhere that Gurdjieff’s book ‘Beelzebub’s Tales’ will be read as scripture in churches of the future. (Gurdjieff seems to loom larger than Jesus in her own work).

On the other hand, a proponent of the Sitra Achra/Reverse Tree describes the Qlippothic intelligence of the 11th Path (to be invoked for the character of a ‘stone-cold vampiric warrior’) as a particular fan of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky’s work.

Elsewhere, Tobias Churton recently wrote of Gurdjieff as promulgating a kind of masonry for the secular intelligentsia. He ends up being a kind of 'Ayn Rand' for the spiritually inclined. Although Gurdjieff’s primary demographic seems to be aristocratically aspirational but his work seems to activate latent narcissistic, even sociopathic tendencies.

And now, a new book by Maronite priest Joseph Azize looks to be attempting to link Gurdjieff’s ideas with the hard-core Eastern Orthodox spirituality of Mt. Athos.

A lot of the Fourth Way ideas are surprising, striking and maybe even highly useful for confronting the self, but so many of the personalities representing the system come across as aloof, cold and contemptuously elitist.

That Gurdjieff is embraced with such enthusiasm by Christians at one end and magicians of darker-hued practices at another is well, curious, to say the least.
And about as likely as if key figures in the church decided that actually Crowley’s a good bet and even has the inside track on spiritual growth.

Perhaps Gurdjieff’s material is neutral and one makes of it what one wishes/wills. Perhaps it is indeed the real deal and I am missing its innate value.

What sense do you yourself make of Gurdjieff as a spiritual leader and of the Fourth Way as a system?

Re: Gurdjieff

[ecosophia]

I looked into the Fourth Way at one point, after watching a fine movie version of Meetings with Remarkable Men; it never really turned my crank, so I never pursued it past reading a few books. I also noticed that it seems to feed the same kind of soaring egomania that a lot of Traditionalism does, and I find that repellent. That said, I'm not particularly well informed on the subject; it simply didn't interest me, and I have a lot of other books by a lot of other occult philosophers to study.

[(Anonymous)]

1. I’ve been doing the Middle Pillar every day for the past 4 weeks, and I had the most interesting thing happen up to this point – I nearly fainted! I knew when I started the session that it would be out of the ordinary, because after a bit of experimentation, I found a vocal frequency for vibrating the words of power that caused an inner ear buzz, a humming throughout the body, and a tingling in the extremities, especially in the fingertips, and this seemed to match what several authors said that vibration was supposed to feel like. Anyway, after some preliminary work, which went smoothly, when I got to the Middle Pillar, after visualizing the first sphere and vibrating the divine name, I felt a huge headrush and nearly lost my balance. I pushed through, imagining the spheres and the column of light linking them together as you’re supposed to, until I got to the heart area, where it became overwhelming and I was struggling to stay on my feet. I quickly got through the remaining two spheres and then had to sit down for a couple of minutes to recover. The best way I can describe the “energy” is that it felt similar to what happens when you stand up suddenly after lying down for a long time (this wasn’t the case here, as I had been on my feet for a while with no problems) – a dizziness and disorientation, and something like a subtle electrical current spreading down throughout the body, starting with the scalp.

2. I imagine that most of the rituals that have been the stock-in-trade of occultism for the better part of a century, like the LBRP and the Middle Pillar, are effective even if you don’t consciously perceive anything, by affecting the subtle layers of the mind?

[ecosophia]

1) Okay, good. Your next task is to learn how to handle that energy without being knocked down by it. You've reached the point at which the centers are starting to activate; you'll likely find over the next few months that any other magical work you do will be cranking up the volume to 11 or so. Keep at it, and the fun really begins.

2) Yes, exactly. They also affect the subtle bodies -- the etheric and astral bodies and the mental sheath -- and bring about important changes on those levels which further the work.

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, does the Watcher also come into play in more secular situations? For example, late at night you come upon a wrecked car and you hear and smell gas dripping. You call 911. You can wait at a safe distance, or you can cautiously approach the car to see whether you can get the unconscious driver out before the gasoline ignites and burns him up. All your life you’ve wanted to make a positive difference. Is this Situation the Watcher seeing if you REALLY want that?

[ecosophia]

You could think about it that way. You can also simply recognize that life throws you choices all the time, and the choice you make determines the person you become, and therefore the future you make for yourself.

[emmanuelg]

Hi JMG--
After almost a year of fiddling with it, I have found (or developed?) a basic way to link Geomantic readings with magic squares, and it seems to work.
Certainly, someone must have done this before, and probably got a lot further than I have, so I'd like to read about that. Are you aware of any texts that describe the use of magic squares in Geomancy?

[ecosophia]

I know of nothing anybody has done along these lines, so it seems likely to me that you've broken entirely new ground. That's not surprising -- geomancy has been somewhat neglected compared to some other aspects of occult tradition. I'm delighted to hear that you've succeeded and look forward to learning something about your system when you're ready to share it with others.

[(Anonymous)]

With occultism being the lonely path, how much of that comes from each side? Is it mainly the occultist starting to feel disconnected from others, or other people sensing something is different about the occultist? What levels does the effect work on? For example is it more social psychology to do with scripts and codes of behaviour, or is it etheric and astral, and people can sense 'a disturbance in the Force'. :) Do you see any similarity between it and how people reacted to your Aspergers?

[ecosophia]

Oh, it's from both sides. As you become more aware of magical realities, a lot of what interests ordinary people starts to become really boring to you, and the things that interest you aren't of interest to them; at the same time, yes, you're no longer giving off the subtle "one of the herd" signals, and people begin to shy away. As for what levels it works on, that's a good question I can answer only tentatively, with an "all of the above."

As for my Aspergers, that's another good question that's very hard to answer, since I've had both in process since my early teens. I've always been (a) interested in things that bore most people and bored by things that interest most people, and (b) the kind of person who stands out as an odd duck, but how much of that is Aspergers and how much is occultism is very hard to say.

[(Anonymous)]

What is the correspondence between etheric/astral/mental and Gwynfydd and Ceugant? That is, does Gwynfydd correspond to the astral? Or is the astral really part of "our" world (Abred)? What about the lower astral ("Hell")? I assume Ceugant is even higher than the mental, since its unaccesible to everyone.

Tidlösa

[ecosophia]

The realms of Abred, Gwynfydd, and Ceugant aren't planes of being, they're states of the individual spirit. A dweller in Gwynfydd lives in the same world and functions on the same planes as a dweller in Abred, he just does it in a very different way. Ceugant is also a state of being, one that's only accessible to deity, and a deity also lives in the same world and functions on the same planes as the rest of us -- again, in a very different way.

[arethinn]

Greetings JMG,

I am almost never online during the period where it's allowed to make Magic Mondays comments, so I just want to slip in quickly and say, thanks for doing this. I often read everything all the way through (except advice about geomantic readings, which go right over my head) later in the week because I'm not online in the right timeframe to ask my own questions.

[ecosophia]

You're most welcome.

[(Anonymous)]

What is pathworking, and what is the purpose of doing it?

[ecosophia]

Pathworking, also known as active imagination, might best be described as the art of focused, meditative daydreaming. In the standard sort of Pathworking, you go on an imagined journey with a specific starting point -- say, a Tarot card, which you imagine becoming a portal that opens onto the scene shown in the card. You step through the portal, wander through the landscape, talk with the beings you encounter there, and then return.

Like most magical disciplines, Pathworking has several purposes. It's a great way to strengthen your imagination and mental focus, of course. Crucially, though, your imagination is one of the ways that you interact with the astral plane, and with practice, the beings you encounter are, shall we say, less imaginary than they look; they know things you don't and can pass those things on to you. You also learn to attune yourself to the subtle energies of whatever is the focus of your Pathworking, and if you also meditate on the things you encounter in Pathworkings -- and you should always do this -- the result is a great increase in your capacity to tap into those same energies in magical workings of other kinds.

Oh, and if you have any interest in writing fiction, it's extremely useful. I don't have to invent characters and try to figure out what they do and say; I meet them in my imagination and let them do what they do!

[booklover1973]

When you began practising magic, did you still live at your parents' home? How went practising ceremonial magic over with them?

[ecosophia]

I lived with my mother when I first started; she was rarely at home and probably wouldn't have noticed if I'd taken up breeding polar bears. When I moved in with my father and stepmother most of a year later, they figured it was just a phase and rolled their eyes -- they did that a lot, and with good reason! I made sure not to do anything involving magic that would annoy or bother them, and so it never became an issue.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you know of a method to keep the cardinal directions available to you at all times, as per the way the Australian Aborigines seem to be able to do so?

[ecosophia]

No, I don't. That would be very useful.

Amulets

[(Anonymous)]

I bought some ancient Egyptian amulets online. How do I consecrate them to renew their protective powers?

I do the SoP using Celtic deities- is there any conflict between that and having Egyptian amulets? I presume not as they are not the jealous God Jehovah?

Thanks

Re: Amulets

[ecosophia]

At sunrise, burn some frankincense and pray to the Egyptian gods who are associated with the amulets, asking them to bless and empower the amulets. Then hold each amulet in the incense smoke, turning it around several times so it's touched by the smoke over its entire surface. That should do a good basic job.

There are old connections between the Celtic and Egyptian traditions. Did you know that beads from Egypt were found buried at Stonehenge? Most pagan deities work well together, but those work together more smoothly than most.