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, since I've been indulging in Ross Nichols' poetry of late, is The Cosmic Shape, published in 1946, which contains his brilliant essay "An Examination of Creative Myth," which discusses the need for nature-myth and ritual as a counterbalance to the artificialities of modern life, and his related Arthurisn poem-cycle "The Cosmic Legend," as well as other poems of his and his fellow poet James Kirkup. He clearly discussed these ideas with his good friend Gerald Gardner; those ideas ended up playing a central role in the creation of Wicca as well as the transformations of 20th-century Druidry. Here's a bit from "The Cosmic Legend": 

I have made my ceremonies; the crisis
comes. None may reproduce, no water flow,
until the sword is from its sheath pulled.
Only I, the medicine-man Gawain, instructing 
at midnight Galahad, the pure one of 
spring -- only I can save you, faithless 
with the fallen leaf. I prove to you,
O my dead people, once again that
I alone am your strength.

In the first ray beating touching on the centre altar-stone
to the eye prepared at vigil-end, the vessel of the sun,
cup and heart, to Galahad. 

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!*** 

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

Comments

Leftist Witches and Karma

[kimberlysteele]

Hi JMG and Commenters,

I was putting down some of my thoughts on leftist witches and I wrangled them into post form.

https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/3919.html

From what I can tell, they have no clue what karma is and are not about to get one, even if it whumps them upside the chin.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[(Anonymous)]

What about the karma of the other side? Are the Neo-Nazi mages who use magic for reactionary purposes exempt from karma? Can they cheat the workings of Nature by a better knowledge of magic and its application?

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

(Kimberly, I hope you won't mind if I respond to this.)

Nobody is exempt from karma -- but karma doesn't factor in what side you belong to. Karma depends on what you yourself do, full stop, end of sentence. If you kill someone because you've decided that person is an evil racist, you get the karma of being a murderer, and that will come back on you. Your motives have an effect also, but they don't change the reality of what you did.

By and large, alt-right mages are aware of this, and are careful not to do anything that will get them slam-dunked by karma. By and large, mages on the left are not aware of this -- au contraire, they insist that because they're on the side of the good guys, whatever they do is justified and they won't have to bear any of the consequences of their actions. They are going to find out the hard way that they're wrong.

There's also the issue of magical blowback. Any time you work with a magical energy, that energy will manifest itself in your life as well as in the lives of your targets. If you invoke energies of healing and blessing and peace, you get more healing and blessing and peace in your own life. If you invoke energies of destruction, the same rule applies. The "hex the racists" people aren't trying to heal and bless the victims of racism -- that's worth doing, and would bring blessings into their own lives as well. They're flinging negative energies at people they hate. That never ends well.

(And this, by the way, is one of the core reasons why Trump and his followers have won round after round after round even though they've got the entire corporate media and most of the ruling elite class against them. Inept curses recoil on their senders and bring good luck to their intended victims...)

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[(Anonymous)]

As an aside, do you have recommendations for ways to invoke energies of healing and blessing and peace? The GCC Communion Ceremony, perhaps?

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

There are many, many, many ways to do this. The GCC communion ceremony is a very good though somewhat demanding way. On a much simpler level, get a white candle, anoint it with blessing oil from a hoodoo supply, light it, sit in front of it, and repeat over and over again, "May all beings be blessed, may all beings be healed, may all beings be at peace," while imagining energies of blessing, healing, and peace streaming out from you in all directions. Do this every Sunday during the hour of the Sun and you'll see some results.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[(Anonymous)]

This is very similar to traditional Mahayana Buddhist dedication prayers. The Dalai Lama did a prayer in Congress IIRC pretty much to this effect.

Would the intent of invocations like these become too diluted though? Since your target is for all beings? Or would you say that the principle of these practices is to affect the macrocosm starting from your own microcosm.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

It's mostly going to affect those beings within a city block or so of you, but it also has good effects on your own microcosm, of course.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[tunesmyth]

For those of us not geographically situated to easily buy hoodoo supplies, is “hoodoo blessing oil” something I can basically substitute out of the likely natural magic ingredients, or is there something more involved to it?

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

The formulas are proprietary. You can make a decent one with six drops of essential oil of frankincense added to a quarter cup of almond oil, though.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[tunesmyth]

Ok, I read your reply on my commute home and literally had a freshly arrived package of frankincense essential oil waiting for me when I reached my place— and it’s my first time ever ordering such. If that’s not a prod in a certain direction, nothing is. :-)

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[kimberlysteele]

Thanks JMG, I deeply appreciate it. I have been in the thick of gardening in 90 degree weather and the second I sit down to type anything, I begin to smell myself, so it's back outside I go! I'm happy to answer questions on my Dreamwidth blog, which is now set to accept all comments (screened first): https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/3919.html but it could take a few days to a week. I would have said a more primitive, neophyte's version of what you said, at any rate. Karma is like weeds... it pops up no matter what you do! Mata ne!

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[(Anonymous)]

This guy also had a corps of first-rate magicians:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRi0bR-FQW7lEv2J3lmkwHd1lCypcwBchk__zSSim3j_r35SPcM&usqp=CAU

He tried to misuse those powers and we all know how he ended up, despite his knowledge and skills. So, even the most careful magical operations can not fix the karma of a destructive cause on such scales.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

Au contraire. He and his side weren't careful at all, because they believed that their cause was so righteous and so important that whatever they did to other people was justified by it. That's why the Thousand-Year Reich crashed and burned in 12 years -- the karma and magical blowback their actions brought down on them destroyed them.

Pick up a copy of Gareth Knight's book The Magical Battle of Britain sometime, if you haven't read it already. Dion Fortune talks at quite some length about this point in one of her war letters: once you start using magic to harm others, it doesn't matter how righteous you think your cause is. Her side won, too.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

I've seen that sort of thing over and over again. The funny thing is that all the people I've met who insist that karma doesn't affect them have lives that are smoking craters -- they're constantly sick, constantly broke, constantly having the most improbable runs of bad luck -- and yet the worse their lives become, the more loudly they insist that it can't be karma. Meanwhile those people who take karma seriously tend to have relatively happy, healthy, successful lives. Must be pure coincidence... ;-)

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[mo_drui_mac_de]

I know someone exactly like that, a diabolical witch and rage addict who’s been flinging curses at Trump since he started first campaigning and at anyone else who happens to get her goat. First her health failed entirely and she was all but crippled; then all but her last shred of sanity fled the building; lastly, her business (a witch shop) burned to the ground, leaving the two stores on either side of her completely untouched. To say nothing of her three disastrously failed marriages. Nonetheless, do you think she’s reconsidered invoking Satan to “destroy her enemies” for even an instant?

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

Dear gods. She's literally invoking Satan? I remember when witches scorned the idea that any witch would have anything to do with said being, who is after all part of the Christian tradition. I pity her; what life she's got left won't be worth much.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP, but this is one of the reasons I'm not part of the "pagan" movement anymore. Too much satanism these days....

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

Ugh. I get that.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[mo_drui_mac_de]

(I understand this is past the deadline; feel free not to post but it seems rude for me not to reply.)

She’s pitiable indeed, all the more because she’s actually capable of being a very loving and supportive friend (if one is careful enough not to trip any of her wires). Yes, unfortunately, she’s literally invoking Satan—she’s originally from Massachusetts and made it her business to essentially practice the sort of European witchcraft of the early 17th century feared by New England Puritans and described in the Maleus Maleficarum, etc. That, sadly, is becoming insanely popular. She’s the sort of person who bold as brass will declare to total strangers that “The Devil is my boyfriend!” and believes him a completely harmless being of empowering light who is really the Horned God of Neopagan tradition, given a bad rap by what she insists on calling “Xtians”. I first knew her while I was well within the Pagan scene as a practicing Druid; over the past few years, as my long backshelved Christianity began to swell back up and intertwine with my Druidry (inspired in no small part by my time here, oddly enough!), her own deeper dive into diabolic witchcraft seemed to intensify until she was literally posting tirades and witch-hunts (ha) against any Christians lurking in her online forum. That was the point where I decided to back quietly but quickly away.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[(Anonymous)]

I've always thought that people airing views like that is a gods-send of sorts, because it gives the rest of us a very clear signal to stay the frack away from them for our own safety and wellbeing.

Re: Leftist Witches and Karma

[ecosophia]

A case could be made!