Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight as I write this, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Let's start things out with a quote again: 

 

"Meditation is by no means an easy thing of achievement. It is the calisthenics of the soul, and leads on to its acrobatics and athletics.  When we first embark upon its practices we shall find that when the first enthusiasm wanes, the mind itself will resist the practices as with a deliberately willed antagonism.  This corresponds to the stiffness of the muscles of an athlete who is out of condition." 

 

That's from Dion Fortune's Aspects of Occultism, one of the books of hers that did an enormous amount to shape my understanding of magic and the occult.   

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. (Any question received after then will not get an answer, and will probably be deleted.) 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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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

1) I’ve decided to take action to address the fact my life truly sucks right now. I’ve identified two addictions I have which are getting in the way of this project though: porn and the internet in general. I’m mulling over what an addiction is, and have come to the conclusion it is a divided will. This seems to suggest that if I can unify my will I can eliminate my addictions. Is this a reasonable chain of logic? How do you go about unifying the will?

2) I’m planning to address my addictions directly through journaling and slowly whittling away at my internet addiction by identifying things I do online but could do without the internet and moving them one by one away from it; as well as the less direct way of pursuing a systematic transformation of my life. I think the internet and porn addictions are both a cause and symptom of the fact my life sucks, and so if I can give myself a life worth living, I’ll be able to address my addictions easier. Are there other steps you can think of I can take?

3) As part of this process I plan to start working through some ritual magic, starting with LRM and then moving on to Circles of Power/Paths of Wisdom, The Tree of Life, and Dion Fortune’s writings. (I plan to spend the rest of this incarnation on the task; and I’m young and long lives run in my family, so I expect to have plenty of time for it!) I’m thus planning to take the time while I work through LRM to look at the three other books, so that I can see what is worth learning there as well. Is this a reasonable thing to do, or would I be better off using the three books I know I’ll want to work through later?

[ecosophia]

All this is very good to hear.

1) Yes, it's a reasonable chain of logic, but the unification of the will is not something you can do easily or all at once. You will spend the rest of this incarnation working on it. Mind you, even your first baby steps will transform your life! I'll be doing a series of posts on training the will here on Dreamwidth shortly, which should give you some help -- but the simple routine of taking up an occult practice and maintaining it will do a great deal to help you get started.

2) That is to say, you've recognized the vicious circle: addiction --> misery --> more addiction --> more misery, and so on. That's crucial. Taking it apart a step at a time is the best way to go about it.

3) By all means read the three further books while you're working on LRM. The path of self-initiation requires a lot of self-correction, and having a good sense of the options is useful in that.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,

Returning to the ever-popular topic of pornography, my thinking on the topic has led me to the conclusion that it's an inherently frustrating genre, because it can never deliver a genuine sexual experience, which is what its audience craves the most. It's like watching a fast food ad that triggers your salivary glands, and pretending that you had a decent meal while drooling all over yourself. Porn triggers a physiological response that roughly approximates what happens during the real thing, but is otherwise completely artificial, stripped of its context, the sizzle without the steak.

I've also realized that it has negative psychological effects on men, particularly in how they see and interact with women, one of them being a sense of entitlement to women's bodies, and the delusion that every woman is sexually willing and available at any time. I see many of the male pathologies of our time, from PUAs to the incels, as being subliminally influenced by the pornographic mentality. While I don't think there's anything wrong with sexualizing the other gender in some contexts (perpetuation of the species and all that), the oversexualization of women prevents men from interacting with them as human beings.

So my question is: do you think the above conclusions have any merit? And secondly, could masturbation, even without porn, have similar effects if carried out in a "porn-like" state of mind?

[ecosophia]

Yes and yes. If you've saturated your imagination with pornographic imagery, what you imagine while masturbating will be little more than a rehash of the last hundred or so pieces of pornography you've seen. That's true of all visual media, btw -- your thoughts about products, for example, will be shaped by the last thousand or so TV ads you've seen. (This is one of the many reasons why getting rid of your television is so useful a step in personal liberation.)

Keep in mind, btw, that cheap romance fills the same role in women's mentalities that cheap pornography fills in men's mentalities. It encourages emotional rather than sexual self-stimulation, but it has negative psychological effects on women, shaping how they see and interact with men in equally dysfunctional ways.

[(Anonymous)]

In your Christian-compatible LBRC, you explicitly mention the name of Satan. As I understand it, explicitly mentioning the names of deities is supposed to have some sort of power or effect. Is the same true of figures like Satan? I realize you don't say to vibrate the name of Satan or anything, but was wondering anyway, especially given the idiom "speak of the devil, and he appears".

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you very much for spending your time answering these questions!

During your last interview on Hermitix you mention that people generally shouldn't use drugs on their spiritual journey. What about all the ancient rituals that used mind altering chemicals?

Tangent from the previous question, you've mentioned your dislike of Crowley's personality and methods in the past while respecting his work; is his books Book of Thoth and Liber 777 still worth investing time into, or are their better resources for tarot/qabala? Would you recommend using his tarot deck or would it be tainted?

Also, are orgone and anthroposophy worth researching or do you not give them much stock?

The Ether

[(Anonymous)]

Hello!

How would you demonstrate the reality of the etheric and / or astral levels to someone who is open to new things?

Thanks!

[lincoln_lynx]

One of my musings was on the lower and upper astral and where "erotica" writers would fall. There's creativity involved but all of it in service of porn. I never came to any conclusions, probably because I, ahem, got distracted.

[(Anonymous)]

Funny you mention fast-food and pornography, they both qualify as "supernormal stimuli". They're things that take what the brain finds appealing and amps it up to 11, past anything normally seen in nature, and the brain has an equivalent response. Studies have shown it applies across many species, not just humans, but humans are the only ones who do it willingly

Etheric Vacuum?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I bought and read last week’s featured book, Practical Occultism, and it is worthy of many re-readings. A question, though, if you please:

If I understand correctly, women tend to consume male energy. My husband of 35 years is a classic introvert; totally happy to keep his own company, but will socialize just fine when needs must. Guess you could say I’m introvert light. We enjoy each other’s company, even if it’s just sharing space while we read or whatnot.

So if he doesn’t hang with the guys, is my presence wearing him down? He’s retired, and I’m not, so he has time to chill on his own. Good thing, maybe? Those stats about women living longer than men have me wondering. And a bit worried.

Scarlet Orthogonal Opossum

[ecosophia]

It really depends on the erotica. It's possible to write about sex between fictional characters, even fairly explicitly, and still be working in the upper astral -- you can tell that that's what's going on because the erotic dimension of the prose is another way of illuminating the characters, their relationship, and their world. The more depersonalized it is, on the other hand, the lower a sub-plane it reflects.

[ecosophia]

Humans aren't the only species who do it willingly. Birds and elephants both get blind drunk on naturally fermented fruit -- birds will do this until entire flocks fly into concrete walls and break their necks en masse.

[ecosophia]

Satan is a title, not a name. It means "adversary" in Hebrew. That's why it can be used, and is used, in Christian magic as a convenient label for the evil power whose works and wiles are to be bound.

[ecosophia]

1) There are spiritual paths that use psychedelics. My point was that occultism is not one of them.

2) Liber 777 was plagiarized by Crowley -- it was mostly written by Samuel Mathers, which is why it's pretty useful. The Book of Thoth, like most of Crowley's original work, is very uneven -- some people find it useful, I don't. The Thoth tarot deck was almost entirely the work of Lady Frieda Harris, and if you find it attractive, by all means.

3) Both of these are worth looking into. Both Reich and Steiner got pretty odd toward the ends of their respective careers, but they did a lot of good work before then.

Re: The Ether

[ecosophia]

I wouldn't. I would simply encourage such a person to keep an open mind, begin doing some set of basic practices, and draw his own conclusions on the basis of his experiences.

Re: Etheric Vacuum?

[ecosophia]

This is one of the places where I think Fortune was overgeneralizing from the sexual neuroses of her own time and place. A physically and mentally healthy woman radiates etheric energy, and being around her is good for a man, since most men need to absorb etheric energy. It's when women are so tied up in neuroses, and so physically crippled by wearing tight corsets all their lives, that they have no energy to spare and men find them exhausting to be around.

-- Magenta Translucent Pangolin

[lincoln_lynx]

I see what you're saying. There are stories in the genre which are interesting beyond the sexual dimension and then there are those where you can tell the writer is shuffling around his or her usual tropes, changing the characters' names and hair color, but all of the stories and characters are basically the same.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I‘ll stay vague to not give people ideas but is there a known practice to form figues of a person out of clay and then muck around with hair and a cord and do some other things with it?

I found myself starting to do this before catching myself and wondering what the frack I was thinking there. Stopped and destroyed everything constructed so far, of course.

Past life memory or a kind of obsession? Banishing helped, as did prayer...

Magic for Gardeners?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi John
Green Wizard’s Field Report – Yesterday, I rented a skid-steer loader with a rototiller attachment to deal with a Brobdingnag compost heap. The tiller did a good job of turning very rough material into a 20X60 garden bed. Unfortunately, a wet summer and a rainstorm cut the festivities short. Oh, well. I have a rake to deal with what’s left to do.
Anyway – Aside from picking the first Saturday that was favorable from The Old Farmer’s Almanac, I performed no religious or magical rites. Do you know of anything I could do while gardening to properly align my efforts with divine will and show my appreciation for the gods’ favor?
(I’m reading The Druidry Handbook with favorable early returns, and The Celtic Golden Dawn is – naturally – the official magical system of the GWB&PA… so, I guess I’m heading that way. Quite a step from agnostic green mechanic…)
And my other report from the field – I thought rattling off a poem every Friday for a few weeks would be easy, but… nope. As I said, reading “In Praise of Johnny Appleseed” is like being in a rugby scrum just before it starts moving. It doesn’t feel impossible, though. Magical traction, right? So, how do I get more force on my push?
Rusty… err… Cobalt Eldritch Puppy, rather.
PS – Any chance you might expand your remark on progress and Kabbalistic Tree of Life in your “Perpetual Progress” post on the 28th of last month?

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you! I am much relieved, and husband had a hearty laugh. 😊

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the response!
Is there another book for learning Tarot you would recommend?

[ecosophia]

Exactly. Good erotica can be good literature; bad erotica is like any other kind of cheap schlock.

[ecosophia]

Almost anything. ;-)

I have no idea if this is still available, but Eden Gray's Mastering Tarot was the standard beginner's text when I was first studying this stuff.

[ecosophia]

Yes, that's a known practice, and a distinctly nasty one. My guess is a past life memory was involved.

[(Anonymous)]

I've doing well overcoming habits that I consider destructive. But I find myself falling into alternate paths that still keep me addicted to stimulation, one possibly being music. I tend to feel at home, calmer when listening to it and also enjoy playing an instrument. But I'm starting to suspect I might have an addiction for it (if music addiction is a thing?) since it's a permanent feature of (almost) my whole day. I would appreciate any insight on this.