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 A Vision by William Butler Yeats. As most people know (I hope!), Yeats was one of the 20th century's great poets, but he was also a lifelong occultist and a high-ranking member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. A Vision was the result of a joint magical working he and his wife Georgianna (also a Golden Dawn adept) carried out over many years. I know of nothing with which to compare it other than the I Ching; like that Chinese classic, it's a set of symbols expressing a cyclic theory of time, but A Vision works with 28 phases, each of which is linked with a symbolic phase of the Moon, and each of which expresses a particular moment in the life of an action, a creative project, a human life, a series of incarnations, or an age of the world. Deep?  Plunge into it and it just keeps going. 

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!***

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

1) Today I started the First Degree AODA work, and have noticed Belteinne is next week. I'm interested in celebrating it, but having read through the Druid Grove Handbook see two problems with celebrating it using the rituals there: first, there is no separate Belteinne ritual, and I don't want to start trying to craft one for a while, since at this point I don't have enough experience to even begin to start to figure out how to do that.

I'm willing to put time in to practice it,but I don't know where to look to find a good ritual. Do you know a simple ritual for Belteinne I could do with basically no background?

2) I have a lot of free time right now. As an absolute beginner I don't want to push myself with spiritual exercises, but I want to put it to use for developing my spirituality. I'm assuming studying the books I'll need to know later for the AODA second degree would be a wise use of my time, and working through the Dolmen Arch (which I've selected as my Druid exploration), but are there other things I can do?

3) I'm planning to start doing astrology by hand, but can't find a table of logarithms for calculating planetary motion. Do you know where I could get such a table? Ideally I'm looking for something in print, but something available online would also work.

[ecosophia]

1) The older Druid Revival tradition doesn't celebrate cross-quarter days like Belteinne -- just the solstices and the equinoxes. Gerald Gardner rescued the cross-quarter days from almost total neglect in the late 1940s when he was working on the first draft of Wicca, and they went into some branches of Druidry from that source. AODA doesn't celebrate them. So you can put some time into AODA ritual methods before the summer solstice.

2) As an absolute beginner you run a real risk of overdoing, resulting in burnout. You might consider using the time to study herbalism, ecology, Celtic legends, or some other field that relates to Druidry but won't risk straining your undeveloped metaphysical muscles.

3) Most books of house tables have logarithms in the back, and so do old-fashioned ephemerides such as the Rosicrucian Ephemeris. You might also consider learning how to use a slide rule, which works on the logarithmic principle.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

1. Have you ever interpreted your natal chart, and if so, do you recognize yourself in the personality that it reveals? (And if we may know, what is astrological sun sign?)

2. When the Cynic philosopher Antisthenes was asked what he gained by a life of philosophy, he replied that he learned how to converse with himself. In a similar vein, what have you gained by a life of magic?

[ecosophia]

1) Good gods, yes. Delineating your own natal chart has been the standard way to learn natal astrology for a long time. If I hadn't recognized the portrait, I wouldn't have kept practicing astrology.

2) I have the life and the work I want. That didn't happen because I got the universe to give it to me; it happened because I used magic to become the kind of person to whom that kind of life and work comes naturally.

[(Anonymous)]

1. I’m the commenter from last week who asked about a passage from Robert Wang’s The Qabalistic Tarot. There’s another passage from that book that’s been causing me to scratch my head lately. This is where he discusses how the Minor Arcana of the Tarot also have astrological attributions in the form of a planet acting in a sign:

‘There are, in fact, a number of Minor Arcana cards where the meaning of Planets in Signs differs from that commonly accepted, because the card combines Sephirothic and astrological symbolism. Here it must be kept in mind that the Zodiac is the Mundane Chakra of Chokmah; it appears in the lowest of the Four Worlds. The cards represent the totality of that to which the Signs of the Zodiac refer.’

Any idea what he means here?

2. If each Sephirah is active in all Four Worlds, what is the justification for certain Worlds being more closely associated with certain Sephiroth than others? For example, Briah is often held to be closely associated with Chokmah and Binah, but all Sephiroth have an archangelic level, so shouldn’t all Sephiroth be equally active in Briah?

3. Let’s say I get Two of Wands in a Tarot divination. Twos are usually attributed to Chokmah, and Wands to fire and the mental level of being. This would imply that the Two of Wands represents the influence of Chokmah in the mental realm. But Chokmah is not part of the Ruach and very remote from daily experience – how can it possibly have any influence, and what shape does this influence take?

4. The Sphere of Yesod is often attributed to the etheric body, which makes sense given its connection to the Moon. However, it’s also commonly attributed to the unconscious mind. I don’t understand how this second attribution is possible given that it’s located at the bottom of the Astral Triangle, the level of concrete consciousness. My understanding is that the personal unconscious corresponds to the Ethical triangle, or the Higher Self, composed of Chesed / Geburah / Tiphareth. The higher you go up the Tree of Life, the more you you ascend into the unconscious, first the personal unconscious and then the collective unconscious.

[ecosophia]

1) Have you meditated on it?

2) What's going on here is that two competing ways of thinking about the Four Worlds have been mushed together. There's one in which there's a Tree of Life in each world, and another in which a single Tree spans all four worlds. I suggest that you simply note the discrepancy, and see which version works for you in practice.

3) This is one of the reasons why I don't use that set of attributions of Tarot to the Tree of Life in my own practice. No, it doesn't make much sense -- nor does it make sense to map the Trumps onto the Tree starting from the top, when the Trumps are so clearly a process of spiritual ascent beginning with ordinary (Foolish) consciousness.

4) Here again, you're trying to conflate different models that don't necessarily fit together well. If you want to use a psychological model, Yesod is the preconscious or subconscious mind, the "machine language" on top of which the operating system of consciousness functions. The higher levels are not subconscious but superconscious.

Basics

[degringolade]

I would like to hear your thoughts re:. Is a spell a prayer and vice versa.

Re: Basics

[ecosophia]

Depends on how you define those very vague English words.

[(Anonymous)]

Since you mention the I Ching, I figure this is a good opportunity to get your opinion on a divination I did recently with the Book of Changes. My question was "How am I doing in my occult studies so far?" and I got hexagram 63 (After Completion) changing to hexagram 37 (The Family) with line 6 moving. My interpretation is as follows:

In the I Ching, hexagram 63 indicates a situation that is past the point of no return. The great river has already been crossed. The trigrams are water above and fire below, antagonistic elements that move in opposite directions, bringing to mind the image of a cauldron of water boiling over a fire. This indicates that a force has been unleashed that must now be controlled. The important thing is not to look back, especially considering the text of line 6.

Hexagram 37 relates to the family structure in ancient China, where the man was active outside the household and the woman inside the household. I see this as a metaphor for the psyche as understood in occult philosophy, with the husband representing the Higher Self and the woman the Lower Self. In the judgment text, it is the perseverance of the woman (i.e. the personality in incarnation) towards the goals of the Higher Self that is essential. Alternatively, the second hexagram could also be a more literal reference to the home, as in "Stay home. This is where you will make the most progress."

Does this seem reasonable?

[ecosophia]

Yes, but I'm not at all an expert in I Ching divination, so if you're uncertain of your interpretation you probably need to run it past someone who knows the I Ching a good deal better than I do.

[(Anonymous)]

I have been reading Gregory Shaw's book on Iamblichus, which you had recommended as a good starting point for someone interested in Neoplatonism. What other books would you recommend for someone who wants to learn more about the subject?

[ecosophia]

Go straight to the source material: Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus. Take it a little at a time.

[(Anonymous)]

I started the first preliminary exercise to meditation from The Art and Practice of Geomancy two weeks ago and am no closer to getting comfortable with the meditation posture. This is probably because I have scoliosis and when I sit up straight my spine doesn't align properly. Would laying down be okay instead?

[ecosophia]

You'll have to judge based on your own pain level, but after only two weeks it shouldn't be comfortable yet. One of the points of the posture is that it makes you become aware of the unnecessary tensions in your body, and it does that by making you feel just how uncomfortable your body always was -- you just didn't notice it.

Very few people can meditate lying down without going to sleep. Still, if the pain level is too high for you to tolerate, you may need to try that.

[(Anonymous)]

What kind of changes does it take to be the kind of person who can act at scale, like all those people who get a mention in the history books?

[ecosophia]

It depends on what kind of raw material you're starting with, of course, and what specific way of acting at scale you have in mind. It's not a one size fits all kind of formula. The kind of changes that can make you an effective rabblerouser, say, are radically different from those that will make you the kind of intellectual whose ideas every politician will be following unknowingly fifty years down the road.

Geomantic Magic Diamonds

[emmanuelg]

Hi JMG and all--

I have a blog post that gives the basics of using Geomancy in Magic Squares for divination. I don't fully understand it myself, so any insights anyone has about this are welcome. Hopefully it will turn out to be useful :-)

The title is 'Geomantic Magic Diamonds' on my blog, here;
https://emmanuelg.dreamwidth.org/

--EG

Re: Geomantic Magic Diamonds

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! I'll check it out Tuesday -- tomorrow I'll be answering questions. ;-)

Your Translation of Picatrix

[chronojourner]

Hi JMG,

I just finished your translation (along with Christopher Warnock’s) translation of the Picatrix and I have a question.
First, let me say that I found the work extremely interesting and a great insight into the culture and time period (the tenth century Islamic world). However, I also found it rather disturbing. Not because of the animal sacrifice, though I’m sure that would disturb a lot of modern practitioners. What I found disturbing is what I perceive as very simplistic (almost Harry Potteresque) representation in many of the recipes. To put it bluntly, either the original author was extraordinarily gullible, or he was using s lot of fake information to hide the real esoteric materials he was trying to impart. I’m inclined to think the latter for two reasons. First, all of the prospective authors have good reputations for scholarship, meaning that they were unlikely to be extraordinarily gullible; and two, I don’t think a document lacking real esoteric wisdom (some of which I could see without too much effort) would have survived more than a thousand years and been incorporated into so many subsequent works.

But I wanted to get your opinion on it. I think that many of the recipes requiring strange, exotic, and often toxic materials are intended to lead the uninitiated astray (which I think you guys suggested in the introduction) and to hide the real meanings behind the text, as well as the portions that hold the accurate materials. What do you think? Am I warm? Because if, in fact, those recipes were intended to be taken seriously, it must have really sucked to be a chicken in a town full of perspective wizards in tenth and eleventh century Al Andalus, especially if you were a rooster with a divided comb.

Oh, and I used your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature Generator, so I will sign off under my nom de mage,

-- Puce Transcendent Puppy (AKA, Lenn)

Re: Your Translation of Picatrix

[ecosophia]

It's important not to insert modern ways of thinking about the world into texts like Picatrix. We tend to think of "esoteric meanings" as referring entirely to the mind and spirit, and material references as wholly exoteric and probably "blinds.' They didn't think that way. Are you familiar with the doctrine of signatures? If not, the short version is that the material form of a thing -- for example, the divided comb on a rooster -- was a reflection of the spiritual energies that brought that thing into being.

So a lot of the recipes in Picatrix do seem to be intended to be used as given. They are, in important ways, comparable to hoodoo workings (which of course also involve a lot of animal parts and the like). The higher dimension of the work, which is of course woven into the text in ways that make it hard to tease out, can be found in the rituals of spiritual and planetary initiation given in the text -- and of course there are things in there that are deliberate blinds, and in fact deathtraps for the foolish.

LBRP

[(Anonymous)]

Hey jmg

I asked about the meaning behind how the god names in the LBRP are used and I think I’ve cracked it.

They channel solar and telluric currents, east to west represents the solar current shooting from the sun then passing into space, and south to north is the telluric currents flowing through the earth.

J.L.Mc12

Re: LBRP

[ecosophia]

You can certainly interpret it that way!

Druidry

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG and Readers,
I had a bad dream a few nights ago where I was in a situation of great conflict caused by my unthinking pursuit of pleasure and in my dream I thought of a line, from The Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), about being jerked by the puppet strings of emotion. The dream was very lucid but I felt I was looking back on my former life.

When I woke up, I realized it has been such a long time since I had a bad dream or a bad day. The quality of my life is so drastically improved since I took up the study of Druidry, especially the discursive meditation but a lot of natural magic too.

I have new, keen eyes to look at the beauties of nature and I am enjoying my life in a way I never thought possible. I had been unhappy and dissatisfied for most of my life. Now, I am happy all the time and practice magic throughout the day, just for the pleasure of it.

Maxine

Re: Druidry

[ecosophia]

Delighted to hear it. That's one of the core goals of the work!

Agriculture as the Fall again?

[(Anonymous)]

I have been haphazardly meditating on how and whether the local First Nation (a Coastal Salish group) cosmology fits into the Qabalistic system, as Fortune says Crowley called the Qabbalah a perfect file system, and one can better understand how anything works (better) in the cosmos if you can determine where it fits on the Tree.

I got sidetracked in Fortune's polarity discussions in the CosDoc - to start, I’ve been thinking about the gender of the earth, moon and sun and other natural forces. Something universal about what these bodies represent in terms of Force and Form, Active and Passive looks compelling using Egyptian, Greek and Christian cosmology, as well as bits of the other European myth structures I was familiar with (which isn’t saying much, granted), which usually had the Moon and Earth as a Feminine force, and the Sun as Masculine. The Coast Salish, however, did not seem to originally gender/anthropomorphize the Earth much, but one anthropological account I found had it as male, and the Moon and Sun are consistently male and female, respectively. Happypandatao has also said on the Other Blog that Hindu female deities are active and male are passive, so it’s not even necessarily universal to proto-indo-european root cosmology to assign the Force/Active and Form/Passive gender split the same way… I think that I have a good hypothesis for this discrepancy that fits based on the law of the planes from the Cosmic Doctrine and Qabbalistic system, and wanted to run it by you –

Humans that developed agriculture live by the Sun cycle. Thus, the sun-force to agriculturalists is Active to their lives, and, as they are people who markedly reshape the earth, their livestock, and crops to meet their needs, they conceive of themselves as relatively Active on a relatively Passive landscape (taken to high extremes with our culture’s concept as The active force and everything else entirely Inert). So they identify the Sun, as the body that governs/sparks their activities, with Force, male principle. The nature forces of Life, that are receptive to that Force in the life-circuit in the worldview of the agriculturalist are thus feminine – the Moon, the Earth. (As indeed the Earth eventually gets conceived as passive and receptive to us.)

Humans that practiced primarily hunting and gathering, with limited intensive practices that were more about tweaking a natural process than directing it (clam gardens, controlled burning, pruning and thinning food forests, rice aquaculture) were governed by the Lunar cycles (e.g. the 13 Moons of the WSANEC harvest cycle), and what the Earth is already doing – thus Earth and Moon are the source of the Force that humans are subject to. Since the Sun-Moon/Earth relationship is still known as a force circuit, therefore, the Sun becomes Female… I guess. Representative of the heavens, the Form that contains the world? I haven’t seen anything in their stories to suggest one way or the other if the Sun as actually receptive to the Moon actually makes sense, or if they would just have it because of the intrinsic need to recognize the polarity. However, another explanation presents itself by looking back to the Tree, where we see a universal applicability in the heavenly body that serves as a symbol of Tiphareth in the Sun…

Tiphareth is the highest concept of god humans can perceive directly, and it’s a human-shaped concept, because it’s shaped to fit our minds. For a society that views itself as Passive to the natural forces in their life, they might make the Tiphareth astrological body Passive/Female as well, as the highest human-shaped godform perceivable – and, crucially, receptive then, in a circuit not with the Earth and Moon, but to the still higher forms of godhead that we can’t perceive directly.

If I’m onto something about the way that humans get their food determining the way they perceive the polarity of natural forces, and thus intuiting the existence of higher planes of the cosmos more easily… then it does give some credence to Daniel Quinn’s theory that the invention of agriculture was the Fall. Earning our keep by the sweat of our brow, and needing to have scads of kids to work the fields - greatly multiplying Eve’s pain in childbirth, as it were – was not an arbitrary punishment, it was the Thing itself -what naturally followed from the Knowledge. Something that was a natural outgrowth of our development as humans, but that would inevitably cut off our connection to higher planes of the cosmos through our understanding reflected through ourselves. Something that, then, we would have to work our way back to as part of our evolution, because at some point we’d have to merge our idea of ourselves as materially like god as active principle in the cosmos, at the nadir of involution. (The Hindus, of course, have a very advanced spiritual system, and old agricultural practice, so perhaps had already gone further than other human cultures on working out that forces switch polarities further up the planes, heading back up the path of evolution ahead).

I like my little theory, but I still balk at it, because it still looks too much like it buys into the hunter-gatherers are more ‘primitive’ than agriculturalists mindset, or, conversely, the noble savage because agriculturalists are thus Fallen. I suppose it all just comes back to the fact that it’s not really that we tried to control nature as a binary between Good Savages who didn’t and Evil people who did, but rather that all human cultures have had to find the balance of how much control, and when to be active and when passive relative to the forces we work with. I suppose the hunter gatherers who made their giant mammal prey go extinct after the ice age could also be people who Fell by cranking their entitlement to nature up to 11… for that matter, all of the Turtle Island myths about ‘that time humans got arrogant or lazy and didn’t hold their end of the compact with the gods and had a flood/drought/something that made them realise the error of their ways’ would fall in their. So each culture could have started back the evolutionary track regardless of specifically agriculture…

Uh… so the question is… am I onto something, or er, just engaging in mental onanism…?

Re: Agriculture as the Fall again?

[ecosophia]

You're engaging in a useful process of grappling with symbolism. Don't take the results too seriously -- anything you can put in words is not what the symbols are meant to teach you, but you have to go through the words to get to what's beyond them.

Interesting that the Coast Salish traditions you know of identify the Sun as female! In the Salish myths I know best -- the ones from south Puget Sound -- Moon is the Changer, and male; the Sun is his younger brother, also male. Of course there are lots of variation from one tribal group to another...

Nostradamus

[(Anonymous)]

Hello

What do you make of the quatrins of Nostradamus?

Thanks

Re: Nostradamus

[ecosophia]

These days? Toilet tissue. ;-)

Seriously, you can bend the quatrains of Nostradamus around to kind of predict things that have happened, but when he gives a date his prophecies are inevitably duds. Do you recall this one?

"The year 1999, seventh month,
From the sky will come a great king of terror
To resuscitate the king of Angolmois.
Before and after, Mars reigns by chance."

I've been amused to watch people desperately stretch to redefine 1999 as 2001 and twist "Angolmois" around to mean just about anything you care to name, but no great king of terror showed up in July of 1999, you know.

Plato and "God"

[(Anonymous)]

I’m reading a dialog of Plato, Phaedo, translated by Hugh Tredennick, and I’m stuck on a simple question: On the second page, there is the line “I could not help feeling that even on his [the soul of Socrates] way to the other world he would be under the providence of God…”; note that “God” is with a capital G. Now God was strictly a Jewish deity at that time, so why is he being referred to when we know the ancient Greeks had their pantheon with Zeus as the supreme deity? Did the translator simply translate “Zeus” as “God”, or is he referring to Hermes who escorted newly departed souls to the realm of the afterlife, or is something else afoot? More generally, can you recommend a companion or guide to Plato?

Re: Plato and "God"

[ecosophia]

In ancient Greek literature it's common to see the term theos, "god," used as a generic label for divine presence. Honest translations into English turn that into "a god" or "the god," but there's been a lot of stealth Christianization of the ancient Greeks, and this is a good example. The actual text reads θείας μοίρας, "a divine summons," the whole passage is translated here as "I thought that in going to the other world he could not be without a divine call..." So the Jewish deity -- whom nobody in Plato's time called by the English word "God," by the way! -- was never involved.

As for a good companion or guide to Plato, depends on what you're looking for. There's a huge literature on the subject, and it's been long enough since I dipped into it that I'm not sure what to recommend. Anyone else?

Postive thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr Greer,

About 2 years ago you gave another reader some excellent advice regarding the self-reinforcing nature of having a negative outlook on life (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/29585.html?thread=1680273#cmt1680273). This topic has been a struggle for me as well, for my whole adult life.

On the one hand I feel that having a pessimistic outlook takes the sting out of bad things happening, since I have anticipated them already and on the other I feel that having an optimistic outlook is only possible when disregarding the state of the world, possibly bordering on being ignorant.

I'm familiar with the concept of "ternary thinking" but I'm unable to see the way of combining these two extremes of thinking into a third way that connects both ideas.
I was wondering if you had any advice on how to get past the trap of binary thinking around a positive life outlook?

Re: Postive thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

"If I keep a green bough in y heart, the songbird will surely come." Chinese proverb.
Maxine

Planetary charity

[(Anonymous)]

Do you have to give to the same organization each time when practising planetary charity for a number of weeks? Can it be different charities all to do with the same cause, or different causes connected to the same planet?

What are causes connected with the Sun? The lists of people on the Renaissance Astrology website do not sound like they are in need of charity. Upkeep of historic buildings (where the nobility used to live) sounds most closely connected but I don't know for sure. Lion conservation?

Re: Planetary charity

[ecosophia]

1) No, you can make donations to several charities supporting several causes as long as it's all the same planet.

2) The Sun's a tough one! Yes, most solar people don't need charities. Consider supporting a nonprofit that supports solar energy research, or a charity devoted to eagles and other birds of prey, who are solar as well. Yes, a lion sanctuary would also be a good choice.

[sea_spray]

Hi JMG

First of all thank you to our host and all those who make this such an enjoyable and informative read every week.

Now to my questions.

1) I recall a tower shaped device related to radionics which improved the fertility of the surrounding land. I remember seeing that you've used it somewhere. Could you please remind me what its called?

2) I'm thinking of choosing a set of 8 stones to buy from the local rock shop for the stations of the wheel of life as in . Are there any in particular associated with each station? If the planetary corospondances are used to chose what would you use for Imbolic as it corospondes to earth rather than another planet. I have your ENM for reference.

3) Many thanks to the commented who gave us the links to the wonderful paintings for meditation on the zodiac signs. JMG Would you, or anyone else, know of any similar ones for the planets?

4) Finally, I have bought several of your WOH books as e-books. To get a friend to read one of them I sent them a copy of one of them, in the same way that you might give a paper copy to a friend. I've only done it this once. I'm just double checking that this is fine with you and your anti book theft working.

Many thanks for all your work.

[ecosophia]

1) A Hieronymus earth pipe. Look up the writings of T. Galen Hieronymus and you'll find the directions; somewhere around here I have a picture I took of the corn in my backyard in Cumberland MD, which grew 11-13 feet high the season after I installed the earth pipe.

2) Planetary correspondences are fine. For the Imbolc station, use something fossil-bearing -- that corresponds to Earth.

3) I wish I did.

4) That's fine, but please don't make a habit of circulating e-copies.

Two questions

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings, dear JMG!

1) Do you by any chance have plans to publish CGD-compatible hexagram rituals in the future? During the last four weeks, I've managed to surprise myself by conjuring four elemental intelligence-spirit pairs for introductory discussions and would be very interested in extending my experiments to their planetary colleagues...

2) In "Osiris and Christ" you state that "[i]n the place of blood sacrifices [...] while opening up the higher possibilities of his or her ng" (Hermes 169-70). What is ng?

Many thanks, as always!

Re: Two questions

[ecosophia]

1) No, in the CGD system we don't work with planetary energies, and invoke the Spheres of the Tree using an Octagram ritual instead. If you pick up a copy of my newly published book The Mysteries of Merlin that's covered there.

2) A typo. It should have been "being."

Kids meditation

[(Anonymous)]

I have an 8 year old son who is very much the opposite of me at that age. I was a nerdy bookish kid who learnt to read so early I can't remember not reading, who did math in his head and followed all the rules etc. My son is pretty much the opposite - a gregarious "jock" who is good at every sport he plays, very charming and great insight into people, but a late reader, behind on math in school etc (possibly with a touch of low self-esteem about his academic achievements). He is intelligent - some times he says things with the most astonishing insight - especially about people.

His key issues appear to be lack of self-control (especially emotional regulation) and lack of focus (almost the same thing really). Those lead to everything else.

He's basically the poster child for a "fixed mindset" child instead of "growth mindset" - he's the kind of kid who will tell you how amazing he is at [X] and then try do X and fail and give up immediately calling himself "stupid" and melting down without seriously practicing or trying (he's good at soccer and loves to talk about becoming a professional - and he may actually have the talent as confirmed by his coach at school - but he *certainly* doesn't have the necessary discipline to train properly).

It's really hard for me to deal with him because I was literally the opposite and all his weaknesses were my strengths and vice versa so I struggle with what to teach him - everything he struggles with came naturally to me and vice versa.

All of that is an introduction to saying that I have been doing discursive meditation based on your instructions on and off for a few months now and I have started to get him to "meditate" for the last week or so. That is, I make him sit down in one place without lying down or moving and just look at the wall for 10-15 mins.

He's slowly getting better at that, and I am thinking about telling him to imagine a soccer game in his head in detail during meditation (because he loves soccer).

Is there any other feasible way to get kids to do meditation? I am less interested in the symbolic magical stuff for him and more in just getting him to train his self-discipline, concentration, focus etc.

Any other ideas or suggestions or exercises for discipline and focus etc appreciated.

Re: Kids meditation

[methylethyl]

Not JMG, and have no advice, but waiting eagerly for any replies, as we face a similar situation with our kids: 2 bookish parents, totally overwhelmed and outgunned by our gregarious and energetic 2nd son... my sympathies!

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG
I have finally completed learning the SoP ritual as set out on this blog, using the Greek pantheon, and am doing the whole thing daily.
You mention on a number of occasions the need to combine this practice with meditation and scrying. I have practised traditional (breath-based- meditation for a very long time, and I also consult the I Ching frequently. Will that do, or must I now change, for example, to discursive meditation to benefit fully? Is it possible to vary the kinds of meditation?
Thank you

[ecosophia]

That choice is entirely up to you. Discursive meditation has a lot of benefits, but if you've got a well-established practice in a different kind of meditation you may be better off sticking with that. Have you considered consulting the I Ching for advice?

[(Anonymous)]

I completed over the last two weeks the working to awaken the telluric and solar currents as outlined in the DMH, starting with the telluric current. I've noticed a few things so far:

- For a couple of days after awakening the telluric current, I felt a sense of well being, but after that there was what I can only describe as a backlash: I went through a few days of being in a really bad mood, my anxieties were heightened, and in a few situations I even acted like a petulant child. The period passed, and reflecting on it now, I see that these traits are some of the negative ways the lower self can express itself.

I awakened the solar current yesterday, and I still feel good today, but if the same pattern holds, then in a couple of days I should start to feel some arrogance and sense of superiority (negative solar traits), unless now that I've done both workings, the solar and telluric currents should now balance each other out. Does this normally happen with these workings?

- Invoking Spirit Below during the regular SOP now really packs a wallop! It's interesting to me how the later rituals in the DMH act as 'level-ups' to aspects of the SOP. I had the image that the SOP itself through time 'blooms' like a plant.

- Because this past week I've been meditating daily to prepare myself for the solar current working, and I've been using purple color breathing, for some reason I had a bunch of insignificant moments where I could predict things about to happen, including a moment where a couple of seconds beforehand, I 'knew' that my wife was about to receive a phone call, and she did. I There were a number of other similar moments all weekend. TSW!

- My wife, although she doesn't really believe in what I'm doing with the DMH, is approaching my practice with good humour. I told her that I was about to go and awaken the solar current, and she reminded me to wear extra sunscreen.

[ecosophia]

All of these are normal although not inevitable experiences. See if you can ride herd on the tendency to solar imbalance if it shows up -- that's useful training.

Tarot paths

[(Anonymous)]

I think I'll have to get that Grey book.
Ive never really gelled with the Fool at the top and so on.
Just on the Tarot, as a question to all, regarding the RWS 3 of swords, you always hear it referring to heartbreak.
Ive never really got this. It's the suit of the mind, thinking etc.
It makes more sense to me to see it as the head triumphing over the heart.
Logic over emotion. Not that that's easy or anything and may still involve some anguish, but not necessarily in the very "Cups" way that it is usually framed.
Anyway that's my two cents worth!
Anyone else see it like that?

Helen in Oz

Re: Tarot paths

[ecosophia]

I tend to see it as a somewhat harsher version of that. Upright -- I do card reversals with Tarot -- it's a situation where you need to ignore your emotions and act on reason even if it hurts. Reversed, it's a situation where you should be paying attention to your emotions but your rational self is getting in the way. Of course your mileage may vary!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

If the planes are strictly discrete, then how come some chemical substances can induce mystical states of consciousness?

[ecosophia]

For the same reason that you can think of a word (an astral activity) and type it with your fingers (a physical activity, mediated by the etheric plane). The planes are discrete but there are points of contact between them, and chemicals can induce pseudomystical states of consciousness by exploiting some of them. (I've been around way too many acidheads to believe that said chemicals induce actual mystical states.)

Astrology and personality types

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Mr Greer and all, I've recently started exploring natal chart readings for myself and some loved ones, and am finding it fascinating and enlightening. It also reminds me quite a lot of the learnings I took away from a training course years ago where I categorised myself according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I'm wondering what your experiences with, or impressions of, personality typing like MBTI or Enneagram are, and whether you know of any worthwhile sources that attempt to map or otherwise integrate one or more system like that with astrology?

Re: Astrology and personality types

[ecosophia]

That's something I've never looked into -- astrology seems intricate enough all by itself! Anybody else?