Magic Monday
Dec. 5th, 2021 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
It's getting on for midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. 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 more than likely just 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.The illustration? An astrologer at work. I've begun studying financial astrology, using the writings of Walter Gorn Old (aka Sepharial) and David Williams as initial guides. Since my mundane astrology project has gone very well so far, with several hundred subscribers, I figure it's time to start expanding the range of things I know how to do, and I feel rather like the guy in the image -- well, except I don't wear a ruff.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
Magical Ethics
Date: 2021-12-06 05:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:05 am (UTC)I've received my copy of The Way of the Golden Section and have ordered After Progress, and though I won't be following the exact path of Golden Section any time soon (I'm knee-deep in DMH right now), I'm very much enjoying it. I have a couple of questions related to that, and some other more general ones, this week.
1) In a previous MM, when I described troubles with travel on Wednesdays, you suggested planetary charity to Mercury, so I'm going to give that a try for the first time. I've based my approach mostly on Chris Warnock's website and some comments on previous MMs. Do you see anything I should change in the following?
a. Planet: Mercury
b. Charity: I'm at a bit of a loss here - Wikipedia or charities that help with education come readily to mind, but I wonder if it might be better to find something more travel-related?
c. Amount: $64
d. Number of Donations: 8
e. Day: Wednesday
f. Hour: of Mercury (the first or eighth 12th of the time from sunrise to sunset on each Wednesday)
g. Candle: an Orange "spell/chime candle" allowed to burn all the way down
h. Hymn: Say the Orphic Hymn to Mercury after lighting the candle
i. Place: On the altar where I light candles/incense/lamp for my regular prayers to deities
2) If you're sick, is there a threshold short of "I can't get out of bed" where it's not really worth it and/or actively a bad idea to do your daily magical work?
3) In a previous MM, you talked about the "set dressing" of Hindu language more-or-less required by Western occultists in the heyday of the Theosophical society. Besides becoming thoroughly familiar with pre-20th century Western Occultism and Hindu/Yogic philosophy, any tips on how to distinguish between genuine inspiration/cross-pollination and terminology borrowed for "marketing" reasons?
4) I got my copy of The Way of the Golden Section this past week! As I'm still working my way through the DMH, I won't be taking it up as a complete system any time soon. I'm wondering if the following exercises ought to be compatible with following the DMH:
a. the morning exercise (stretch, breath, and affirmation)
b. the evening exercise (with topics taken from the DH/DMH)
c. the solar plexus exercise
5) I've been doing the SOP with Anglo-Saxonized names following the Norse list of deities you provided here on Dreamwidth. I see that in The Way of the Golden Section you have a list of Anglo-Saxon deities that makes some slightly different choices. I know that the SOP is extremely flexible with deities/powers/concepts invoked for each gate, but if I'm considering changing which deities I call on at which gates (after ~6 months), are there any factors I should think about besides divining and praying on it before deciding?
Thanks very much for your time and attention,
Jeff
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:06 am (UTC)Re: Magical Ethics
Date: 2021-12-06 05:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:10 am (UTC)1. As I’m nearing 2 years of consistent practice in the GD tradition, I find myself increasingly feeling guilty due to not going above and beyond the daily practices, not expanding the range of things I know how to do, even though I’ve been very consistent with the daily practices themselves. If feels like I’m settling for the bare minimum (LBRP, MP, divination, meditation, and some specific practices related to the book I'm currently working through), which still takes me a good hour a day, and in addition to a day job, a social life and other interests and hobbies, I find myself not having the time and energy for much else. However, I’m still highly interested in growing as a magician. Do you have any advice?
2. Somewhat related to the above question, but another issue for me is that, while I’m seeing plenty of benefits from my practice, I don’t feel like I’ve “made it” yet as a magician. I haven’t had a true “TSW” experience. I haven’t contacted any spiritual entities or done anything fantastic or what have you. I recognize that such things come with time, but it's unclear to me when if ever it will happen. For the time that I’ve invested in this pursuit, it feels that I should be further along. Life is short and I’m impatient to get as much done as possible while I'm here. What do you suggest?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:12 am (UTC)2) That seems to be a personal matter. In my case, if I can get out of bed I do magic, but then I'm a bit fanatical about it. (I kept up my daily practices straight through Covid in April of 2020, for example. They helped me feel better, too.)
3) Thorough familiarity is the only option I know of.
4) Delighted to hear that that's out! (A long, strange trip...) Everything in The Way of the Golden Section is compatible with the DMH, and vice versa.
5) Divine and pray about it, and remember that the suggestions in the new book are just that -- suggestions.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:13 am (UTC)I hadn’t considered “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” in conjunction with the conversations we charcoal burners have about the strange origins of the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association when we get together with the unicorns to play cards on first and fourth Saturdays…
Perhaps the next thing we should discuss is what our stories about a poor Ruinman who walked away and became the first Green Wizard tell us about ourselves and our world…?
Please advise.
Your response was, “I recommend discussing it with the unicorns!”
So, I did. On Saturday night, I brought the stories up with the usual card not-so-sharps. In Ohio, unicorns are the predatory type – they look like very large, long-snouted mountain lions, (they drink from human cups with reed straws) with long, fluffy, semi-prehensile tails, and iridescent polar bear-like fur. (A tweenaged girl is about their weight limit for a rider, thus THAT legend.) The toes of the unicorns’ forepaws are quite dexterous, and their dew claws are extensible for use as a thumb, so they can shuffle and hold cards. They also like to ante up by tiddlywinking our wooden poker chips with their retractable claws. Any that land in the beer belong to the mug holder.
The unicorns tell me that the stories about the GWB&PA are about rejecting the losses caused by the end of carbon and healing by building a new organization based on the forms tossed aside over the last five centuries. Anti-nostalgia leading to anti-hauntology, if you will.
Then I asked my staves what our stories about a poor Ruinman who walked away and became the first Green Wizard tell us about ourselves and the world.
Ngetal, reversed. A need to heal.
Walking home, I saw a rabbit, so I meditated on the rabbit or hare. When I asked my staves what to notice about this.
Ngetal, upright. “Beginning of heroic deeds, that is, healing.”
Then I picked up “Tlön.” It was open to the last page, and a line jumped out at men. “A scattered dynasty of solitary men has changed the face of the world.”
I think we might be on the right path for the right reasons… but… would you and the commentariat grant me the traditional favor of the fraternity of slide rule users and check my work.
Rhydlyd
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:14 am (UTC)Request to Stop Book Donations and Library Update
Date: 2021-12-06 05:14 am (UTC)Thanks to everyone who has donated books for my library. Right now the physical library is on hold, so I am asking people to stop donating books, at least for the moment. As many of you might already know, I rented a commercial space for the last 11 years in Naperville, Illinois for my music lesson studio. Originally I envisioned combining the music lesson space with a subscription library. Since 2020, running a small business out of a commercial space has become too expensive to sustain. Though I always seem to maintain a core of approximately 20 loyal students at any given time, 20 students is a far cry from the 40 - 50 needed to pay the bills and clear the most modest of profits. Thanks to my own Ogham divinations and help from fellow Ecosophian and horary astrologer Andrew Skeen, I made an informed decision to collapse my Studio and teach out of my own home in a nearby town. I’ll be making the final part of move by February when my commercial lease expires.
Please pray for me to find a suitable way to make the physical library happen. For now, it is at http://patreon.com/athenareadersclub as an online version. There are lots of great occult and rare books available to patrons in the continental US.
Druidry gave me sufficient antennae over the last six years to discern that renting a commercial space in the existing climate will only serve to exhaust my resources and snuff out my ability to run a library at all. Commercial rents are at all time highs. I sincerely hope it will get easier to rent commercial space in the future. For now, I’m collapsing to avoid the rush in hopes of rising again in a better climate for small-scale entrepreneurs. I am fairly sure that this is the right thing at the right time. Again, thanks everyone for all your help and book donations so far.
Re: Magical Ethics
Date: 2021-12-06 05:16 am (UTC)1. Would asking my sister for a general permission to perform spells for my godchildren be ethically acceptable? Mostly, my sister doesn't believe in magic but respects that I do. Repeatedly asking her permission to do things she considers silly is a bit awkward for me, and I'm a rather private person. That would be the second reason I asked.
2. What kind of rights would a godparent in the RCC need in order to be able to perform spells, on their own, on behalf of their godchildren?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:21 am (UTC)Keep on keeping on. When you get the state of dryness, paradoxically enough, that's one of the best signs that you're making good time on the journey.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:22 am (UTC)If you listen and compare for yourself, be careful which site you visit for Hitler-the-person—I noticed too late that I had used an American Nazi site, so I’m probably on 347 different watch lists now, and who knows how long I have before they
Re: Magical Ethics
Date: 2021-12-06 05:24 am (UTC)2) Any formal permission to make religious commitments on behalf of the child.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:26 am (UTC)Re: Request to Stop Book Donations and Library Update
Date: 2021-12-06 05:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:29 am (UTC)1) I have a question about meditation. I went through some of my meditation notes for the past year to see what would need revision cross-checking with the knowledge lectures and I noticed that I seem to prefer a "constructive" approach to meditation. As an example, in the first meditation I would imagine the seed, I would then try to build up upon that as I usually do when I think things through by examining the contents of what would most closely link to the topic from the things that I already know. Some time ago I mentioned that when following a particular thread I kind of felt something that would link next but that I couldn't really tell what it was besides a nebulous something that would be there if I knew a word for it. I couldn't really figure out what to do there. Reflexing on this I think this is because I am doing the meditation "actively", instead of passively by letting thoughts rise. How can I become better a letting images rise? Perhaps that is why I couldn't figure out the next link, because I didn't have the contents to describe it but by "listening" it might come?
2) I've been getting nudges towards understanding "Love". But to me, perhaps out of the heavy sucrose marketing, love feels like dripping honey. However, some people write of Love as a "force" and as an apprenticed to magic that description sounds more congenial to me. What have you found helpful for understanding this notion as an occultist?
3) Why is it that some magical workings have a distinctive signature of the magician? It seems to me that there is a play between the magicians aura and the magic that flows through him in the same way that a draftsman has a particular way of making lines by his muscle memory that is the average of the movements he has made before. Doesn't this imply that the magic you can do is very tightly limited to what you've become and what you have been able to integrate?
Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:35 am (UTC)Felicitas Goodman, author of The Exorcism Of Anneliese Michel, heard those recordings and came up with an extremely convoluted explanation. I swear, atheism, Science worship, whatever you wish to call it, requires more faith than any religion you could name.
Not to criticize her unduly, the rest of her book is a good accounting of the Michel tragedy,
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:38 am (UTC)2) "Love" is one of the vaguest words in the English language and it means a dizzyingly wide range of things. The idea of love as a force has never made sense to me; maybe you can figure it out and explain it. ;-)
3) That's an important element of magic. The more you study and practice magic, the less formal magic you have to do, because your life becomes a magical ritual -- but what you can do with it narrows, because your ritual is ultimately a reflection of who you are. That's one of the things tangled up in the notion that every Magus proclaims the word of an Aeon.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:39 am (UTC)Question Phrasing
Date: 2021-12-06 05:40 am (UTC)Are there best practices for phrasing questions to oracles?
Sometimes when I ask a question in the format "Should I do X?" my tarot cards throw it back at me, as if to say "I don't know, what do you think?" Of course, the question of whether or not I "should" do something depends on a lot of subjective factors: whether I want to; which of the available options I prefer; whether I feel the outcome is worth the cost (effort involved, possible downsides).
On the other hand, asking more specific questions might lead in the wrong direction. I can ask "if I do X, will I get result Y?" The answer could be a clear "yes," but I haven't asked about possible downsides or better options that may be available.
So, what's an open-ended way to ask an oracle for general advice on a particular situation?
barn hexes
Date: 2021-12-06 05:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:48 am (UTC)There was a conversation a few MMs ago about risks of opening up teachings in a way that Israel Regardie did by publishing Golden Dawn material and in a way you open it in your books for several traditions.
I, for one, am immensely grateful to you for all the public work you do and I don't know how I would navigate the world of magic without your help and guidance. I am sure there are many more people who have similar feelings towards yourself and other people who make these teachings public. Before that discussion about the risks and possible karma for this kind of work I was happily aware only of my side of the picture where I only see the benefits I receive. Now, I am more than curious to know more!
1. What kind of risks are there for making this information public? What can go wrong? I understand that someone might want to use it for less than noble goals but I doubt they'd get past the Watcher to get enough power for anything too malicious. There is also a chance to go too far out of balance, particularly if there is no guidance available for correction... Anything else?
2. What measures can be put in place to prevent or reduce those risks? I understand that this is what the flake filters are for. The obligation we take in the Ovate Grade initiation of the CGD is also neat. Any other examples (that you'd be willing to mention publicly?)
3. Any examples of karma that one could incur by making teachings like this public?
Many thanks once again for everything you do!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 05:53 am (UTC)