ecosophia | Magic Monday

Dear Archdruid Emeritus,
as you know there are a number of inner traditions that teach their adherents how to generate an immortal spiritual body, to which consciousness is generally transferred when the physical body dies.
Examples include Taoism and its golden fetus, the Yogavacara tradition with its Dhamma-body and Western esotericism's Body of Light.
Ever since I've learned of it this idea has made deep sense to me and I feel drawn to this goal, however I wanted to ask what do you think about it; I'm asking because I remember you writing in a comment about Between the Gates (which is the most accessible Western source for these teachings) that such practices basically turn you into a vampire after death.
So, would you mind elaborating on that? (And yes, I'm definitely going to do divination and meditate before I start doing any such practices).

Okay, this is a very complex matter and ties back into archaic mystery traditions that are very poorly understood these days. The very short form is that it's a bad idea to do this unless you have some very specific reasons for doing so -- and no, being nervous about death isn't one of them.

Under normal circumstances, when you die, you go through the normal after-death process and then reincarnate. This is appropriate and healthy, and keeps you from getting stuck in a personality rut; when you're ready to make the transition to not dying, that happens, and you stop incarnating into a physical body in a natural manner. Until you've reached that point, you're not prepared to function in a nonphysical body for more than brief periods, and you can mess yourself over good and proper by trying it.

A very long time ago, in the days of the long barrows, people from certain lineages used to voluntarily be buried alive in order to pass into nonphysical incarnation for a certain period, and serve as spiritual guardians of a place or a community. That was a duty and a sacred burden. Later on, with the rise of a warrior aristocracy and the replacement of the long barrows with round barrows, the same methods were hijacked by kings and nobles, and used in an attempt to cheat death. The results were not good. Over time, people stopped putting up with that -- the spread of cremation and the abandonment of mound burial are markers of this process -- and the techniques survived in a hole-and-corner fashion in the practices of vampirism. The people who entered into the earth in the long barrows were sustained by their own spiritual power; the kings and lords who were buried in round barrows (and, ahem, pyramids) were sustained by sacrificial offerings; those who practiced vampirism didn't receive offerings, so they had to steal life force from victims, usually killing them in the process.

So my advice is to focus on your own spiritual development and enter into the Unseen when you've matured enough to do it properly. The alternatives usually end in a real mess.

Ok, advice received, I'll just focus on what I wanted to do anyway, which is making spiritual progress. Thanks for the detailed answer!

This reminds me very much of the material in Peter Mark Adam’s book The Game of Saturn, wherein is detailed what may have been a ritualized attempt of certain powerful individuals to return life after life, death after death, in order to maintain their control over the wealth their families had accumulated. It’s a creepy but fascinating story.

Given that there are some very powerful and exceedingly wealthy individuals who occasionally wander out into the sunlight to tell the rest of us what’s wrong with us, and how they’re going to improve us (even if it kills us), and that some of these individuals appear to be made of balsa wood and crepe paper, almost as of they’ve been cheating death for so long that Death finally just gave up, one can’t help but wonder what sort of means are employed (beyond the best life extension technologies money can buy), to keep these ghoulish-looking people outside of the tomb.

I can’t help but draw a connection between these ideas, and what JMG wrote in his last Ecosophia entry, and some creepy gnostic ideas. For a sort of consideration of the overlap between technology and the malevolent side of occultism, here’s a neat video interview of Joaquin Flores

https://youtu.be/aCV24UTPgKY

… wherein Flores suggests Elon Musk is a sort of Archon, entrapping the light-essence of the deceased in some sort of artificial medium. I don’t think Flores is speaking metaphorically. The title of the less-than-twenty minute video is Joaquin Flores: Elon Musk Serves The Dark Forces. Make of it what you will!

Anyway, thanks. Have a great July 4 holiday.
Casey

I'm pretty sure the individuals in question are using some fairly creepy biomedical means to prolong their lives, but I'd be astonished to learn that they know the first thing about magic, much less the exceptionally demanding disciplines required to stabilize the etheric body indefinitely. The few of them that I've seen in person -- at a distance -- had auras with the same balsa wood and crepe paper quality as their physical appearance. I don't envy them their experiences when the biomedical gimmickry finally fails.

Will this merely be dying completely unprepared for it, or is there something worse waiting for them?

It depends on what they've done to prolong their own lives, and how many people suffered as a result.

Thank you This answers the question I had about the sokushinbitsu, of Japan. People report that area feels "good", as in the spirits and souls of the mummies present aren't predatory, like vampires. So this means that they powered themselves on the strength of their own spiritual achievement.

An excellent point! I've never been to Senninzawa, more's the pity, but everything I know about the sokushinbutsu points to their status as one of the last surviving examples of the pure ancient tradition; they left the cycle of incarnation for wholly unselfish reasons and did it the right way, by an extraordinary feat of self-discipline and spiritual power.

As far as I know, the goal of Taoism is not to become a vampire, But might it be that the Taoist practices which were mentioned, are risky in that there is a risk to become a vampire after death, although that is not the intention of Taoist light body practices? Can you elaborate?

The Taoist internal alchemy is another survival of the pure ancient tradition, but it's properly reserved for capable and experienced practitioners who have a reasonable chance of success. Keep in mind, however, that China has one of the world's richest and most grisly traditions of vampire lore; clearly the debased side of the tradition is also present and accounted for.

Another question: Why is it that you cannot funtion more than a relatively short time, and even mess you over, when being in a non-material body before you have achived the developmental stage at which it is the right time to leave material incarnation behind?

Because you haven't developed your other bodies enough. It's very much like being born when your physical body isn't mature enough to survive outside the womb.

Would you say this practice was probably something properly understood during the Age of Taurus (and perhaps earlier) then got corrupted during Aries? Or did the corruption happen during Taurus and the practice ended up being the great error of that age?

Interestingly, it seems like it was during the latter age (Aries) when the concept of Kingship got blown way out of proportion and we got stuck with the vulgar concept of "God Kings"...i.e. a man who received the status of a "living god" just by virtue of his royal birth. So by that, the operative reasoning would be that if a man had the status of "living god" then his current personality should life on indefinitely.

Good. The Taurus-Aries boundary is in fact about when things started going haywire; in Britain, for example, round barrows start to appear after 2500 BC, but really hit their stride once the Bronze Age arrived around 2000 BC.

Do the long vs. round barrows actually have any significance/meaning in this, or is it pure coincidence that the habits changed around the same time? I.e. does form matter in this case?

Milkyway

PS: A very interesting discussion and explanations - thanks to everybody for asking, and to you, JMG, for your patient and detailed answers! :-)

I suspect form matters, but since we don't know the operating principles behind the different classes of barrows -- I'm researching that, but the information is very scant -- it's anyone's guess just now.

That's absolutely fascinating about the long barrows vs. the mound barrows! It aligns neatly with the little I know about archeological work on the barrows, chiefly from reading Aubrey Burl's books. (Burl does mention one fairly clear case of burial alive to protect a tribe, but it was found in Ireland and in connetion with a hill fort.)

Can you point me toward any other published work, whether presented as factual or written under the cover of fiction, that develops this idea more fully? Or it it mostly your own inferences from archeological findings?

RJ Stewart has an essay titled "The Tomb of a King," which is iirc included as an appendix in The UnderWorld Initiation, which gives some details of the older tradition; Carmen Blacker's The Catalpa Bow has a chapter on the sokushinbutsu of early modern Japan, who followed the same tradition. I also used Burl extensively as a resource, and of course the extensive scholarly literature on Egyptian funerary traditions and on vampirism covers much of the later material. That said, yes, there's a lot of personal inference involved.

Thanks for the pointer to Stewart's essay. When I read it today, I realized that I'd read it before, but forgotten. I think pretty highly of Stewart's work in general. He very good at teasing out the esoteric lore hidden in the Scottish and English traditional ballads.

No question, Stewart's good. His writings have pointed me toward any number of things I'd otherwise have missed completely.

A piece of interesting info for y'all: the Tibetans would definitely agree with you that if you're spiritually advanced enough results like this happen as a byproduct. I suggest looking up the very recent (September 1998) case of Khenpo A-chos' rainbow body.
Although the sokushinbutsu discussion has got me wondering, would it be okay if I engaged in this kind of practices with a bodhicitta motivation when I'm old?

If you devote the rest of your life to the necessary hard spiritual work of preparation, sure. Are you familiar with the sokushin-jobutsu techniques? After a life of intensive Buddhist meditation and other forms of spiritual work, they systematically starved themselves to death over a fixed period of several years, at first eating very small amounts of carefully chosen foods and then eventually fasting completely, so that they finally died of hunger on the last day of the period in a state of complete enlightenment. That's what it takes.

My bad, I stupidly failed to mention that I don't intend to go the whole hog in this lifetime, not after your wise and carefully considered advice!
I was thinking along the lines of only partially building a Body of Light for two reasons: this-life benefits in easier lucid dreaming and astral projection (as Between the Gates suggests) and to plant wholesome karmic seeds for my future incarnations. Yes, sooner or later I'll naturally stop being reborn in a material body, but I figure greasing the wheels of Nature can't hurt.

Oh, if you're just planning on strengthening your astral body so you can experience lucid dreaming and astral projection, that's another matter -- it's perfectly safe. One of the problems here is that the label "body of light" has multiple meanings, which are not interchangeable.

Yeah, and the confusion isn't helped by the fact that the ritual to build the immortal Body of Light (not the astral body) if done only occasionally is useful for astral projection.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Picatrix. The astrological techniques are extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of medieval cosmology most of the praxis will go over a typical reader's head. There's also al-Qurtubi's polydeistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his esoteric commentary--his personal philosophy draws heavily from al-Kindī's De Radiis Stellarum, for instance. The practitioners understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these allusions, to realize they're not just apropos--they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Picatrix truly ARE idiots--of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the insight in Picatrix's existential aphorism, "Matter is a coadunation of the elements ordered for the reception of form," which itself is a cryptic reference to Calcidius' Middle Platonic commentary on Timaeus. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as al-Qurtubi's genius unfolds itself across Picatrix's pages. What fools... how I pity them.

And yes by the way, I DO have a Venus sigil tattoo from bk II ch 10. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only--and even they have to demonstrate they're within range of my operative magical ability (preferably lower) beforehand.

Original here.

Funny. For what it's worth, I don't think that people who dislike Picatrix are idiots; they may simply not find that way of practicing magic appropriate for them, and that expreses itself in the emotion of distaste.

Is it dangerous? I keep hearing that it is. Or is it a matter of how much magic you are comfortable with? I am a magic wienie, so I get the feeling that it is beyond me.

It's dangerous -- deliberately so. It was written for people who already had an extensive education in philosophy, astrology, herbalism, and magic, and there are deliberately boobytrapped recipes that will drop you stone cold dead if you follow them -- a potion to protect you from evil spirits, for example, which is made of bitter almond kernels. (Yes, that's spelled "cyanide" in plain English.)

Many old books are set up with protective boobytraps that way; I'm thinking of the alchemical text that leads you through a complex process, resulting in several ounces of crystals, which you're supposed to pound up in a mortar. The recipe produces a highly unstable gold fulminate, and the first time you bring the pestle down, you and your laboratory will be blown to kingdom come!

What's the point of these booby traps?

To keep idiots away from things they shouldn't mess with.

So better dead then?

It's not the approach I would have chosen, but it's the approach that was traditional among occultists in ancient and medieval times.

Given just how much of a mess really poorly thought out magic can cause, I think a case can be made for it...

No doubt, but I prefer gentler approaches, such as making foolish people misunderstand what magic is about and go do something else instead.

What is needed to understand ancient books is culture, not this abstraction you call "IQ";That is only a convenient, quantitative and abstract term akind to Megabytes.

Culture, on the other hand is similar to a layer of fertile Earth. Any ideas planted there will develope and come to full flower,and if you let them, will propagate themselves and become part of your inteligential flora.

I recently followed our host advice and reat "Eros and Magic".Since then, and without conscious effort, a lot of ideas had begun to rose, related to the book but also to the everyday world.

Inteligence is not a procesor, but a living structure.

We recently moved from a thriving city to one of 0.04% the population, next to the lake I've mentioned. This area is tiny, de-industrial, and pushed against the lake by the surrounding forest. People live in century-old doll-houses about the same size as our apartment was back in the city. Past-times are outdoors things like gardening, hunting, fishing, etc.

I suspect people will start to move here to "escape climate change." If they bring their wealth with them, that'll mean cutting down the forests, building suburbs, and paving over everything for car infrastructure.

1. Is there anything I can do to bring something down the planes to ethically prevent such devastation? Can I help lift up nature, the way Dion Fortune lifted up Britain?

2. What would you do in my situation, in addition to "walking the walk"? When I took up magic, I gave up flying and driving. I'm often the only one walking around here. I really miss the trams back in the city.

I've been doing the DMH suite for 3.5 years and am working through the DA. I will of course not be hasty; I'll do my due diligence before acting. Thank you.

1) Talk to the local nature spirits. More to the point, listen to them. Find out what they want to do, and what they want you to do. The land healing ritual from DMH might be a good place to start, but ask the spirits what they think.

2) What I'd do is get to know the people, the trees, the land, and the rest of the environment, and then try to sense the right course of action. That was Fortune's approach, for what it's worth -- she based her War Letters workings on things she was shown by spiritual beings in her meditations at Glastonbury.

1. Based on your remarks, I’ve bought Watt’s edit of The Eye of Revelation. Any advice for a beginner?

2. Since we are in the season of Lughnasadh, do you have any recommended reading on Sul?

3. Is there an astrological explanation for the long, slow grind to the success of the conservative movement in the US? The current round of Supreme Court cases on abortion, guns, the EPA, and election law are products of decades of work. (Actually, it looks like Cthulhu dreaming himself awake while the liberal side of the electorate plays the role of one of Lovecraft’s naughty sorcerers.) How do astrologers even begin considering the design of questions for this sort of thing?

Rhydlyd… er… Umber Funicular Orc, that is…

1) Take it slow and easy. The exercises are much more potent than they seem.

2) See if you can find something on the Roman baths at Aquae Sulis (Bath) in England. That has very nearly the only things we know about her from scholarly sources.

3) That's an interesting question to which I don't have an immediate answer. The waning of the Plutonian current is part of it, but only part; the "long slow grind" aspect makes me think Saturn must have a role in it too.

3) Given that division is a result of limits and thus as Pluto fades away, it will mostly be absorbed by the Saturnine, it makes perfect sense to me that Saturn would be heavily involved through the entire process....

3) apologise for chiming in but a few people suggested that this was intentionally made to energise the democratic base, which IMHO is a perfectly fitting explanation.

Meaning the Conservative SCOTUS justices intentionally took on these cases (which had been in the system for quite some time) with the express purpose of "energizing the Democratic base?" Sorry, but to me that doesn't pass the basic logical smell test. This conspiracy theory (yes, that's what it is) would imply those justices are secretly in cahoots with the Democrats.

Utter absurdity.

The main issue I see with this kind of conspiratorial thinking is that is massively overemphasizes the role of human agency and presupposes a unified will of "elites" who all share a hive mind and have the same exact agenda. This mentality begs for a universe where there are no gods, spirits, or cosmic intelligences, just "human elites" who fill that role.

Rather, I think what we're seeing now is a gradual shift in how the unseen forces are influencing our reality.

It does not look like it to me. Maybe it is bias or wishful thinking, but what I see is the rulings igniting with hatred the most radical wing of the Democratic party, while giving second thoughts to many liberals of good will.

This reminds me of Fortea's History of the Angelic World. In Chapter 22, the triumph of the loyal angels over the rebellious ones is narrated. Previously, Lucifer (now Satan) had advanced with his elite warriors in an all-in gambit to commit Deicide. It is important to note that St. Michael was not a powerful Cherub or Seraphim, but a second-to-last tier angel. He and his troops hit the rebellious rearguard wielding two banners representing Jesus and Mary (or rather, the abstract archetypes of The Christ and The Theotokos).

The miracle, if it is proper to label it such, that happen in the angelic plane at that time unfolded in this way. The lieutenants of Satan's forces,- which were the most corrupt angels, almost demons by now,- went bat... guano-crazy at the sight. But among the grunts, the feeling spread that they had committed a terrible mistake. They were still in disagreement with God's plans, but many begun to think that Lucifer's war was not a solution to that problem; it was pure madness.

At that time Lucifer lost the war as foretold, not to God but to his lesser siblings. And he lost because the core of his army would not find in themselves the will to fight.

OK, will do, and "Freedom's Plow" by Langston Hughes comes to mind...
R

In regards to 3., I commented rather snarkily to some friends that if Pres. Biden is the price for the recent Supreme Court decisions, I for one am satisfied with the deal.

Which got me thinking on the subject of blowback from the anti-Trump spells. Not necessarily causing the Supreme Court decisions, that seems to have some causality issues given how long the tenure of some Justices has been, but perhaps demoralizing the protestors so the leaked opinion and the actual decisions didn't lead to the sort of riots we all expected? Is that in line with what we might expect as blowback results from that sort of spell?

BoysMom

I've been wondering ever since the decision was leaked about the sheer feebleness of the Democratic reaction. No riots, not even any impressively large protests -- I'm not sure if it's blowback from the anti-Trump spells, or the awkward fact that a lot of people on the leftward (and pro-vaccine) side of things are having health problems right now, or what, but it's interesting.

The problem with trying to gauge if something's a function of blowback is that spells generally work by means of coincidence, and they can make good use of any coincidence that comes to hand. So long as the end is what's desired, the means can be anything...

In light of this, I happen to know a few people who were in the intersection of left-wing politics and magic in 2016, who made a very interesting working known to me (one of my strengths from a strong and very well dignified Pluto is that everyone assumes I am on their side), which they implied was being done at length by a large number of people. These were also people with the technical chops to do some very impressive things, but they hadn't done the inner work needed to recognize how badly a working done for the restoration of the rule of law and government by the people could blow up in their faces.

Ever since then, I've wondered if the radical changes to the Supreme Court's rulings, which is suddenly interpreting the constitution a lot more literally than usual, might be related...

Oh my. Yes, that could indeed blow up in their faces, if they didn't take the time to find out whether the laws of the land and the attitudes of the people actually supported the kind of society they wanted to live in.

Something else has occurred to me as well: I did the equivalent of running away from the crazy as fast as possible when I found out they were doing that working, but they fairly quickly from what I've been able to glean they went full woke. What just hit me is that the combination of extreme rigidity, utter lack of self awareness, and total lack of any kind of tactical or strategic sense that the woke display are driving the implosion of the current system.

It's thus possible that the woke are the blowback from workings like this....

That makes enormous sense. The managerial class and those who aspire to that class were the people most offended by Trump's presidency; they claim to favor the rule of law and government by the people, but in fact they want the rule of unchecked bureaucracies and government by only those people who agreed with them. So, like so many people who don't think through a spell before casting it, they're getting what they asked for rather than what they want, and they're getting it through transformations in their own consciousness and behavior.

I just reviewed what I wrote down about that working and saw another creepy element to it: it included a call for the gods to curse those who pretend to support democracy, but really work towards a dictatorship....

So what you're telling me is that these people had absolutely no capacity to examine their own beliefs at all.

Oog. Magical power combined with a serene conviction of one's own rightness is a really good way to turn yourself into a punching bag for the Lords of Karma to work out on...

Regarding 2, R J Stewart wrote a book about her and the Aquae Sulis complex called Waters of the Gap. His own personal contact with the goddess was instrumental in developing his Underworld style of magic, so it seems.

Manuel

Thanks!
R

A while back you suggested two books for studying symbology, the first was Rosicrucian Symbology by “Khei” to be followed by a second which contained emblems, or the description of emblems for meditation. I have worked my way through the first book, finding it tremendously helpful and would like to start on the second. Could you give the name of it again please.

Zebby

Hmm. Was it by any chance The Rosicrucian Emblems of Daniel Cramer?

That doesn’t seem to be the book from what I recall, you gave the link to both which I downloaded at the time. I printed out Rosicrucian Symbology to work through, and lost the second in a data disaster. Thank you for the Daniel Cramer book suggestion, I will work my way through that. The Latin version titled Emblemata Sacra is available at archive.org if anyone is interested.

Zebby

Was it perhaps the Dictionary of Alchemical Symbols? I don't remember if it was JMG, but I'm pretty sure I found it through a link someone shared here.

https://archive.org/details/DictionaryOfAlchemicalSymbols

I just did a search, and found it -- it's the Rosicrucian Manual, also by George Winslow Plummer, which includes a bunch of symbols in its second half. Enjoy!

Hello JMG and commentariat! I have a friend who wants to take up the SOP, but wants to use Slavic deities (especially Polish deities if at all possible). Does anybody have a ready made correspondence list for the opening and six directions?

That's easy as pie, as the Polish pantheon is a good basic Pagan pantheon of the practically minded variety. Here's one possible set:

1: In the name of Lado...
2: ..and of Lada...
3: ... and of Lel their son...
4: ...may (I/this place/whatever) be blessed.

Air/East: Perun the storm god
Water/West: Welles the cattle god (the enemy of Perun -- that's an old Indo-European duality)
Fire/South: Dwiewanna the crop goddess
Earth/North: Mora the sea goddess (the sea is north of Poland)
Spirit Below: Marzanna the earth goddess
Spirit Above: Swiatowit the high god

1) in the GSF's morning exercise, is stretching part of what is to be done 7 times?
2) it'd be fine to do the OSA work as the journaling in the GSF work, right? Would you recommend that some sessions be left for other subjects? Thanks,

- Fulvous Malodorous Cheese Baal.

1) No, just stretch good and thoroughly once, and then do the breathing and affirmation seven times.

2) You can certainly do the OSA work as your GSF journaling; judge whether you want to put sessions into other subjects on the basis of your own needs and interests.

I was reading through a thread from last Monday the Germanic gods reawakening, gathering in power and all of that possibly ending at some point in an ugly manner, with a likely high body count. This may be a stupid question, but how concerned should the average person be about potentially tangling themselves up in this by taking up worship of those gods, or starting the Heathen Golden Dawn? For myself (American, non German as far as I know), I took religious Heathenry off the table in large part because of how wedded to the culture wars it always seemed to be; I have a very strong feeling I'm supposed to spend my life here staying out of the culture as much as humanly possibly. I have been doing the HGD basic practices as the best of the three available options though.

If the Germanic gods are awakening here in North America, we have to deal with them -- trying to hide from archetypal forces as they come surging up does not work well. Balanced methods of working like those in the Heathen GD may help keep those forces in some kind of harmony, or at least stave off the worst possibilities. If you feel called to work with them, by all means do so, but be sure to invoke the Vanir as well as the Aesir.

Fair enough, I did not know if there was some additional karma or whatever an active participant should take into consideration. I don't actually feel called to work with them (I don't think), my spiritual life has been undergoing a change so it isn't settled yet, but the pantheons I have been looking at don't have an already put together GD form for me to use, so I picked one (I've discovered the SoP isn't on the table). The option to back out if needed is probably there. But if HGD is well balanced there, then maybe I'll have nothing to worry about.

I have found that the small group of Mesopotamian Polytheists in the U.S. has been growing by leaps and bounds. Inanna seems to be everywhere along with Enki. Is there an awakening of more Gods? If so, why - more people are not Monotheists? more people are Polytheists? any ideas?

Fascinating. I feel drawn to both Germanic and Mesopotamian pantheons, on and off. Do you have any resources on Mesopotamian polytheism as how it's practiced today? I can't seem to find much of anything from the usual internet searches.

Secondly, it seems that Enlil has made an appearance as well. I recently read Damien Echols book on angelic magic and toward the end of the book he shares with readers his experience of a sudden theophany that came upon him like a ton of falling bricks one day after decades of intense work and invocations of every Hebraic angel entity under the sun. During a ritual, his perception completely gave way to nothing but the word "Enlil" being etched across his vision. He says he didn't even know who or what Enlil was at the time. After that experience and a rudimentary amount of research he says he began an intense devotional relationship with Enlil.

I do wonder if this means that Enlil might in fact be one of the actual Gods behind the "YHWH" moniker (I think there's at least four). And that the angels are Enlil's creations? Not much of a leap at all, considering that the Levantine God "El" might be the same as Enlil. And most of the angels have the suffix "-el" in their names. I have no way of knowing if there is any truth to this, but it's fascinating to contemplate nonetheless. And finally it lends more credence to the idea that Judaism might in fact be a product of a broader reform movement within the late Iron Age Mesopotamian religion, with the henotheistic cults of Assur, Marduk, and Su'en being antecedents to the Judean version.

Not exactly a resource intended for modern practice, but The Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jacobsen is a history of Mesopotamian religion and includes some good translations of a lot of the religious poetry.

FWIW, the Japanese work that was my third data point concerning the rise of Odin's prominence *also* draws heavily off Mesopotamian mythology, often conflated with Judeo-Christian (the Tower of Babel shows up under a Babylonian name, for instance). And a different Japanese property that's another franchise that loves to grab mythology from anywhere and everywhere features multiple figures from Mesopotamian myth extremely prominently (Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and Ishtar all come to mind). So that's a data point or two.

(Side note on that which I was too late to get to last week for JMG: I don't think we're looking at the Norse gods contesting their home turf, but something else: I've got had a hunch for a while that there's a conflation of Ragnarok, Armageddon, and possibly a third last battle myth that's harder to see because it's still nascent going on right now, and what I'm seeing now would be consistent with that.)

- pretentious_username

Yes... I, too, have had the distinct feeling since mid-2020 that there is a Cosmic Pivot going on. And currently, some kind of battle.

- Cicada Grove

You might enjoy this resource as much as I do:
https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/
https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/catalogue1.htm#inana

As for whether Yahweh is Enlil, Enki, or another, the debate is fascinating:
https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread952658/pg1
https://www.city-data.com/forum/judaism/535287-origins-hebrew-god.html
http://robertmascharan.blogspot.com/2012/02/yhwh-decoding-his-origins-shocking.html

-Myriam

The main source to go to is The Temple of Sumer at Facebook. They have a list of books, people, groups, and on-line chats. And are very serious about their Gods.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/TempleofSumer

I know someone who has been operating a temple of Inanna and Dumuzi for decades (not a building, but regular group rituals). I'm happy to hear that the Sumerian deities are getting more attention. I took a college class in Sumerian mythology, and one thing I got out of it was that the Sumerians had a sense of humor. The story about how Inanna got Enki drunk while they were gambling, cleaned him out of most of his authorities as a god, and then had to beat it back to her home city before he sobered up, is hilarious.

Hmm! That's fascinating. Of all the old pantheons that might be reviving, that's not one I would have expected -- but of course the gods do what they choose, not what we choose.

Well, I for one follow the Sumerian pantheon and have for some time.

It seems to me each pantheon has an overall "flavour" (I mean no disrespect) which greatly influenced the original culture that worshipped those gods. The Sumerian pantheon were creators of civilizations. Given that so many "firsts" in history occurred in ancient Sumer, I think the Sumerians (which were created by the gods to help them with their work,) were listening closely to their gods. I can most certainly see the hands of those gods in the work I do with books.

If certain gods of war are stirring, bringing destruction and chaos to our land, perhaps also stirring are the gods of civilization, laying down the seeds that will restore order and civilization. After the wrath of the war gods and the storms they bring has passed, then peace, order and prosperity will be renewed. I certainly hope so.

Myriam

I've always sort of figured the Vanir were the gods of the original inhabitants of the lands the Teutonic peoples invaded/settled in, during the migration age. And the Aesir were the deities worshipped by the elites and their warriors, with the Vanir the gods of the conquered people/producers/peasants.

Synchronicity comes through again with another fascinating and timely-for-me thread.

1) Over 40 million Americans have at least some German ancestry, concentrated in the northern Plains area (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans).
So I wouldn't be surprised if the Germanic gods took an interest in this part of the world.

2) I was told to embark on a program of Bible study this January, which continues apace. This thread's comments about connections between YHWH and Mesopotamian gods are intriguing and definitely add to the mix to think about. (BTW, Blue Sun, thanks for the tip about Michael Heiser in a previous MM.)

3) Perhaps Team Odin will act as the grass fire to burn off all the weeds, then Team Mesopotamia will lead the regrowth of the clean, new green grass.

4) JMG, thank you again for this awesome forum!

- Cicada Grove

Hello All,

A happy Fourth of July to those of you who celebrate it, and otherwise, a very pleasant monday to you.

Sharing: My daughter was interested in seeing The Wizard of Oz, so we watched the start of the movie with her. I had heard (likely from an MM) that L. Frank Baum was a theosophist, and unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a better claim to anything occult, but even if you just go with the political interpretation (cowardly lion = William Jennings Bryan, Scarecrow = the American Farmer, the Tin Man = the American Factory Worker), there's some interesting symbolism in the film. She ended up finding the movie easy to not get too worked up over, despite finding the witch a bit scary, and I've been thinking about what kind of symbolism might be going there - likely a fine theme for meditation!

Question: 1) If The Eye of Revelation recommends avoiding chilling the body, how does occasional swimming in a slightly cool pool stack up? I suspect an ~80 degree F pool is firmly in the "tepid to cool" category you talked about in a previous MM, but I was curious with summer holidays happening.

Thanks very much,
Jeff

Edited (Left off the end of a sentence!) 2022-07-04 15:46 (UTC)

I'd like to piggyback on this question, if I may:

I read the Eye of Revelation as saying one should not chill the body *right after* the workout, during the shower (if one chose to take one then) - not "at all, ever". As one of the hot-then-cold-water-is-awesome types, should I avoid the Five Rites entirely, then, and do something else? I rather liked them, and though I took a frigid shower in the morning and did the five rites in the afternoon, I can't say anything felt amiss. Then again, they didn't feel "significantly different" either, and the two may indeed have been cancelling each other out. I don't know. For me, the cold water is more important than the Five Rites, so I'll happily substitute the Judson exercises and a decent ordinary workout, or something else, if that's useful, but if it is indeed simply a matter of sequence and timing, I'd like to continue the Five Rites if it's not counterproductive.

What is your read on that proscription?

Cheers,

Ochre Flaming Horny Toad

My take is that you'd be better off doing the Judson exercises and an ordinary workout, so long as it really works the core hard -- the abdominal and pelvic muscles are the ones that really have to be put through their paces to get similar effects.

Roger that, thank you!

-- OFHT

1) A very fine theme for meditation. I trust you noticed the elemental symbolism? The Scarecrow wants a brain, the Woodman wants a heart, the Lion wants courage, and Dorothy just wants to go home to Kansas -- air, water, fire, and earth, with Toto (think of the meaning of that name in Latin) as the central presence who reveals the Wizard behind the curtain! Baum was indeed a Theosophist, and well informed in occult topics generally.

2) Nah, that's only right after the exercise, and only really cold. 80°F would count as tepid in the terms that were used when Kelder wrote; cold would be 50°F or lower.

1) Indeed! The elements have been much on my mind as I've been scrying the elemental gates for the second time the last few weeks. I didn't make as much headway on what might be going on with the directional associations of the good and bad witches, so I'll have to think about it more.

2) Great, thanks very much! Here in Texas, it's hard to get water colder than 50 degrees most of the year without resorting to a literal ice bath, so I guess I won't have to be too worried about it.

Stay away from icebergs and you should be fine. ;-)

Now this is just my experience, for what it's worth, and I'm not sure how the Tibetan rites affect others - in my personal experimentation with the subtle body effects of this set, I found that it temporarily 'opens' the etheric body, can cause some sweat and open the pores, and this can allow what in Chinese medicine would be called 'pathogenic wind-cold qi' to enter. I personally find it best to dry off after practice and avoid cold, drafts, and cold drinks or foods, as well as to do some simple practice or technique to settle the etheric body and to seal and strengthen the weì-qì or defensive qi 衛氣. In fact I've had good results by always closing, settling, and sealing after any sort of physical exercise.
I still enjoy ice cold showers and baths, but I simply do them at a different time of the day, when my etheric body is settled and I'm sure my weì-qì is strong. For other people, results may vary!

Regards,
Josh Rout

Just a comment--
I have really enjoyed the images from your Sacred Geometry Oracle card set!

Your mention of the roots remind me that each successive root is the diagonal distance across a square/cube/hypercube for the number of dimensions in the exponent;
so
SQRT 2 is the diagonal distance across a square (2D);
SQRT 3 is the diagonal distance between far opposite corners of a cube (3D);
SQRT 4 is the diagonal distance across a hypercube (4D), and
SQRT 5 the diagonal of the 5D cube -- and the diagonal of a rectangle made by 2 squares (which sort of ties 5D back to 2D) --AND the seed of the Golden ratio, which is equal to 0.5 + SQRT(5)/2, as you have correctly pointed out.

It is truly a world of wonder!

--Mint Extrapolating Goose

Glad to hear it! Yes, that's another progression of roots, and one very much worth meditating on.

I wanted to add another data point to the discussion of the resurgence Odin and German culture from last week (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/187900.html?thread=31467004#cmt31467004) as well as some general data points from looking at currently popular baby names in the USA.

Detailed current and historical baby name data in the USA is available through the Social Security website: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/

Focusing first on Odin and Norse culture becoming more prevalent—Odin has had a great surge of popularity as a name in recent years.

Odin entered the top 1000 names in 2008 and has been rising every year since then. It ranked in the top 350 names for boys born in the USA in 2021, with 999 American baby boys named Odin last year. Freya has been rising too, even faster. Freya first ranked in the top 1000 in 2013, and last year reached #152, with 1,853 girls born with the name. The Freyja spelling entered the top 1000 in 2019 and ranked #709 last year, with 402 girls given the name Freyja.

Surprisingly to me, Thor does not rank in the top 1000. (Loki doesn’t either!)

Broadening from the Germanic theme, I noticed some other notable or surprising deity/entity names in the top 1000 in the USA for 2021:

Boys:

Atlas (ranked #149)
Adonis (#223)
Orion (#314)
Ares (#513)
Titan (#741)
Castiel (#809)
Azrael (#837)
Aries (#915)
Azriel (#921)
Osiris (#948)
Azael (#949) (appears to be a version of Azazel)
Cain (#956)

Girls:

Luna (#11)
Athena (#98)
Lilith (#268)
Itzel (#561)
Selene (#721)
Persephone (#778)
Artemis (#865)
Mazikeen (#947, fictional but disturbing, so I had to include—she’s a demon in some TV show called Lucifer)

Picking a year at random to contrast, in 2001 the only boys’ names from the ones I listed above that ranked in the top 1000 were Adonis and Orion. The only girls’ names that ranked were Athena and Itzel (a Mexican goddess).

There’s definitely been a culture shift with powerful pagan god/goddess names gaining in prominence. Outcasts or controversial figures from the Bible or related lore are also appearing for the first time as common names (Cain, Lilith, Azrael).

I’m happy to see Luna, Athena, Freya, and so on gaining popularity. I find the Odin/Freya popularity fascinating.

But I do find it a little foreboding that two spellings for the god of war, two spellings for the angel of death, and several demons rank among the top 1000 names in the US for babies.

To some degree, I think what is going on with the Germanic baby names is that after WWI it was socially unacceptable to giver babies the names of Heathen deities. WWII reinforced this. Few people who are old enough to remember the Second World War are still alive, so those names no longer stir the strong negative associations that they had for most people.

That said, I would never name a child Odin, or even a name that meant "son of" or "devotee of" Odin. That is too heavy a burden for a child to carry.

Neil Gaiman conceived American Gods in 2001 and it got to be an internet- filmchannel series in 2015, Odin is one of the main characters in that series, maybe that's involved as well?

Dito with the vikings series in the same channel? I think thats where the current topknots for men came from

Lucifer as the contemporary fictional character started out in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. At one point Dream (the main character) has to go to Hell to free a former lover. He discovers that Lucifer is quitting--freeing all the condemned souls and demons and locking up. Mazikeen is a demon who is in love with and totally loyal to Lucifer and follows him to earth, where he proceeds to run a nightclub in Los Angeles (and gets his own comic series written by Mike Carey. Mazikeen is drawn with one side of her face normal and the other skeletal. Her words are difficult to decipher because of this. She wears a mask to conceal her condition from the customers. I suspect that those choosing the name for their children may not be familiar with the comic character, but only with the TV version. Both comics incorporate a great range of world mythology and occult lore ranging from Shinto to Norse to Miltonian. Lucifer's long-range quest in the Carey series is to establish his own branch of the universe, one with NO gods or other supernatural beings and in which humans are forbidden to worship. The television version is no more related to the written version than television usually is.

Early in the Sandman series a magical order is run by a character obviously patterned on Crowley--although, since Crowley is mentioned as a rival, we are obviously not intended to think of Burgess as a disguised version of Crowley.

Rita

Well, when we flash our receipt to the exit person at the local Costco, once in a while it’s a giant named Thor. The man is well over six feet tall, and very buff. Friendly, too.

Went to grade school back in the 60s with a Thor. Parents were Scandinavian, I think. Liked that kid a lot!

Point being, naming kids Jesus and Thor has been a thing for decades.

Might not be especially significant.

OtterGirl

For what it's worth: two of those names are held by my sons as their middle names! Orion is my 2014-born son's middle name, and Osiris is my 2020-born son's middle name. The latter did not go over well with my stepmother for some reason. Her problem.

I used to have a cat named Athena too. Artemis was on my girl-name list, but I never had a daughter so it went unused.

Good morning,

I have some more SOP questions, if you don't mind 🙂

(1) I don’t have enough time in the morning to really devote myself to the triad of SOP—meditation—divination, so I decided to do them in the evening after I’ve come home from work. However, doing the SOP in the morning gives me a real boost, both in energy and mood. Can I do the SOP twice per day, once in the morning as part of my ‘etheric hygiene’, and one in the evening to clear my space for meditation, or would that be too much?

(2) How flexible exactly is the SOP? You wrote that we can write our own version of the invocations, and leave out the divine names, for example, but some elements are nonnegotiable, like the elemental associations of the directions. What about the animals (hawk, stag, etc.)? Can they be left out? Can other animals take their place?

(3) I’ve reached the part of calling upon Spirit Below, and noticed that it’s also associated with the earth, but I assume it’s not the same as the element of earth, but more like the underworld? I’m asking because, while I have left out any deity names so far (thinking that since I have no allegiance to any pantheon, I’d feel uncomfortable with invoking divine strangers), I feel a growing urge to add them now.

(Did you count on that effect when you wrote that we don’t have to include any deities in our SOP? 😉)

Since I feel drawn to the continental Celtic gods, I’m currently trying to find fitting candidates for each position. So far, I have:

— Taranis for the sky god
— Rosmerta for the earth goddess
— Brigindo (Brigid) as my personal patron (or matron) goddess
— Lugos for Air
— Belenos for Fire
— Nehalenia for Water
— Arduinna for Earth, since she’s a forest goddess, especially of the forested mountains
— If Spirit Below is not the same as the element of Earth, then the earth goddess for it would be more of a chtonic deity, right? In that case, I’d choose Erecura, but if I’m wrong about the chtonic aspect, I’d probably go with Rosmerta again.
— Teutates for Spirit Above

What do you think?

Many thanks for your patience with the noob questions 😌

1) You can do the SoP twice a day, as long as you don't find that it makes you feel spaced out.

2) The animals aren't fixed -- they're specific to the modern Druid Revival tradition. You can replace them with other animals, or with other beings -- for example, many Christians invoke the archangels in this same place.

3) That's correct; Earth is the topsoil and what grows on it, Spirit Below is the force that moves through the deep places of the earth. A chthonic goddess would be a good choice.

Thank you!

Dear Archdruid Emeritus,

Blessings to you and my fellow readers! Thank you again for hosting Magic Mondays.

Would taking into account one's natal chart be useful in planning certain magical operations? For example, I wanted to attract a relationship, so I go about doing rituals to make myself more lovable, speak to Venus as laid out in the Picatrix, etc. Yet, say, I have a well-dignified Saturn as ruler of and in the 7th House. Would it be wise to consider this? Like, doing a ritual or expecting a manifestation during a positive transit?

Jean Luc

Good heavens, yes. If you have Saturn ruling the 7th, make sure that Saturn isn't debilitated in your election, and if you can have Venus applying to a neutral or well dignified Saturn by trine or sextile in your working, the results will be even better. (Look for a woman who's at least a little older than you, btw, and who may not be conventionally attractive; you'll be very happy together.)

Does the advice about an older partner apply if Saturn is in his fall in Aries? Or does Saturn become a "You shall never marry" malefic?

An afflicted Saturn ruling the 7th is a very poor sign for marriage, true, but you should check the dignities of the Moon and Venus (if you're male) or the Sun and Mars (if you're female) -- if those are well dignified you might be able to make something work.

If this hasn’t been asked and answered previously—
In my date planner there’s a chart which shows every one of the outer planets going retrograde in the second half of this year. There’s a stretch of time when every planet beyond the asteroid belt is retrograde from the perspective of our planet.

In order of onset:
Pluto (I know, but it’s on the chart.) R 4/29-10/8
Saturn R 6/4-10/23
Neptune R 6/28-12/3
Jupiter R 7/28-11/23
Uranus R 8/19-1/18 of next year
Mars gets into the act R 10/30-1/12 of next year

Between 8/19 and 10/8, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are retrograde. Mercury is also retrograde for part of that period, 9/9-10/2.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all retrograde for a few days after Pluto goes direct, and Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are retrograde for more than a month after Saturn goes direct. When Mars goes retrograde, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are also R for about a month.

My questions:
—About how often do so many hands on the celestial clock run backwards for a month or more?
—When this is going on with the outer planets, does it feel different to human beings than when most of the planets are direct? I mean aside from the aspects to the natal charts of individuals. Is it anything like having a Saturn return?
—Does this pattern have effects in mundane astrology?

1) It's fairly uncommon to have all the outer planets retrograde at once, though I don't happen to know how often it happens; it'll likely happen in bursts, since it'll take a while for the slow-moving planets to scatter so their retrograde periods are at different times.

2) Things will be more sluggish, certainly, but retrogrades aren't that big a deal. In traditional astrology, they're just an ordinary debility, not the bugbear they've been turned into by too many modern astrologers.

3) It's not mentioned in any mundane text known to me.

1) I'm curious about this, because Jupiter-Pluto are retrograde in my natal chart, and I was curious about how common it is. Based on the ephemeris search engine on Astro-Seek, it looks like it happens for a period of some months for a couple years in row every decade or two.

https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/ephemeris-search-engine-astrology-planet-positions

Thanks for this. I'd be interested to know if that continues over the long term -- say, over ten centuries or so.

a) How do you read retrogrades in a natal chart?

b) My natal chart has all of the planets other than Venus retrograde. Do you know if there's significance if there are multiple retrogrades in a natal chart?

Did you miss the above question?

Yes -- that happens tolerably often when a question is put into the middle of a thread. The answer to both of these is that I'm not a natal astrologer -- I specialize in mundane and electional astrology -- and so I'd recommend you consult someone who specializes in natal astrology.

Based on your answers, I'm going to venture a prediction purely for test purposes.

a) The Russo-Ukraine war will slog on without any decisive developments until Uranus goes retrograde on August 19. Then there will be some surprises on the battlefield, in diplomacy, or in economic factors (depending on aspects).

b) During the Mars retrograde 10/30/22-1/12/23, or within a week after he goes direct again, there will be decisive military developments.

c) During the Mercury retrograde, or during a few days after he goes direct again, a scandal or an intelligence failure will result in a political leader being removed from office, or a military leader's demotion, with results that have a major impact on the conduct of the war.

I'm doing this just for practice. I picked the war as the field of events because I'm paying attention to it and it is important. Because the Mars and Mercury retrogrades that fall within the retrograde periods of multiple slower planets are brief and do not overlap with each other, they serve as punctuation or a change of musical key. If there are general trends during the duration of the retrogrades of the slew of slow moving planets, and then something especially interesting occurs during the Mercury or Mars retrograde, we can perhaps attribute it to their influence.

G'day JMG, and fellow readers. I am inspired to try your advice of putting a sharp metal object near devices (such as the mobile phone I am writing this on) to break their power over me. I have the blade from a Stanley knife and I plan to snug it between my phone and its rubber case. Two questions:

1. Does it matter if the blade has a few rust spots?

2. Can I put a strip of sticky tape over the blade for safety or will that defeat the point of the exercise?

As always, thank you for your excellent blog and civilised comments section. 🙏

Liz

1) It shouldn't, so long as the point and edge are clean.

2) Yes, very much so. The sharp bits need to be bare and uninsulated.

Not OP but wanting to try this.
2) So if you put the blade in between the phone and its plastic cover, won't that insulate and thus negate the spell?

I am thinking of how to secure such a blade onto the phone securely but also safely.

This is all experimental, so you'll have to try different things and see what results you get.

British Magicians dabbled into demonic occult at the end of the Empire, Aleister Crowley did the Abra-Melin magic and contacted Aiwass.

Is Aiwass a good being?
https://external-preview.redd.it/y28dy_iIvOpH1U8Z32wMBCPC_sVdSySVzfmfPwcy1z8.jpg
Looks like an Alien, was British Magic Spies possessed by this spirit?
Crowley was most likely part of the Magic Spies along with Dion Fortune etc, there is proof that he worked for the British Intelligence. Now since part of the Intelligence was shared and passed on to the US Empire see ClA interest into magic and occcult, take just a few examples out of FOlA

https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/E4/E4AAFF6DAF6863F459A8B4E52DFB9FF4_Manly.P.Hall_The.Secret.Teachings.of.All.Ages.pdf
https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/12/129E144131F2E093FB1E441C737ACF92_SearchForTheManchurianCandidate.rtf.pdf

Is it possible that the Aiwass or the demons infected the ClA at that point?

FWIW, Your link didn't work, but if the drawing is that guy with the big head people tend to speculate was a grey alien, that's not Aiwass, that's "Lam", who contacted Crowley in NYC long after Liber Al. As far as I know, the only drawing of Aiwass has him looking pretty human (as do Crowley's written descriptions of him).

Edited 2022-07-04 19:06 (UTC)

1) I was just about to mention that you seem to be mistaking Lam for Aiwass. It's important to keep your ultraterrestrials straight -- you wouldn't want to confuse Orthon with Sananda, now would you? ;-)

2) Crowley was a very, very, very minor figure in British intelligence -- during the First World War, MI6 hired him to infiltrate organizations suspected of German sympathies in the United States, to help them try to bring the US into the war on Britain's side. Everyone in Britain knew him as a loose screw who couldn't be trusted with anything really important, but they needed all the help they could get. (To do Crowley credit, he seems to have done a decent job.)

3) Um, if the best evidence you can find for CIA involvement in the occult is the contents of Osama bin Laden's library, you really need to look harder. There's plenty of documentation for CIA experimentation in remote viewing, for example -- here's their official report on the subject, declassified in 2002 -- and if you do an online search with the string "CIA remote viewing" you'll find many other declassified papers. You might also look up Project Stargate and the First Earth Battalion project, which were Defense Department rather than CIA. (No, I wasn't involved in any of this, but I knew the late Gen. Albert Stubblebine, who was involved in the project that got turned into the film The Men Who Stare At Goats -- he was better at psychic spoonbending than anybody else I've ever encountered.)

But of course none of that relates to demons in the CIA. There I think you've been reading too many old Hellboy comics -- certainly I know of no evidence that they've dabbled in that end of magic.

Not op

When you say spoon bending, do you mean that he could really twist spoons by non-physical means? Did you see him do it yourself?

Yes and yes. It was pretty unnerving to watch.

So you are saying that telekinesis is a real psychic ability? I thought you were sceptical about it? Also are you sure it wasn't a trick a la uri geller?

I'm not at all sure what actually happened, but I don't think it was a trick. I saw Geller on television in my teens and this wasn't at all similar -- the spoon appeared to wilt and flop over.

Sometimes I believe I poisoned a Swami in a previous life, leaving aside this thought is crazy, lets say for the experiment of the thought. I cannot explain both my intense interest in spirituality and my really bad karma.

How can I soften the karma so it goes through many lives so I get to still keep spiritual? because it looks to me that bad karma gets you away from spirituality

Okay, first of all, it's not a crazy thought. Plenty of people have done that kind of dumb thing in a previous life.

Second, bad karma doesn't take you away from spirituality. Quite the contrary, getting into spirituality very often means that you have to deal with a bunch of bad karma -- it's called "karmic culmination," and basically amounts to clearing the decks in a hurry so that you can make the most of the spiritual practices you've taken up.

Third, you can't soften it. What you can do is accept your karma and deal with the consequences as cheerfully as you can, no matter how miserable it gets. When it's coming at you fast and thick, that means you're clearing it away and you can look forward to better days and lives to come.

Thank you very much...

Good morning, all & JMG!

I have a question today regarding self initiation. I was doing some re-read in Circles of Power where it indicates that self initiations may be done repeatedly to good effect. So:

1) Say I hypothetically do a first degree self initiation, then later go on the a second. Can I still go back and re-do the first again if I want / need to? Are there any special considerations for this?

2) If I have already done a self initiation and want to go back and do it again, so I need to repeat it at the same as the initial one? For example, just hypothetically, if an initiation needs to be done on the equinox, do repeat initiations also have to be done on the equinox too or is there more leeway with this once the original has been done? I’m assuming it has to be the same every time but I wanted to clarify.

Thank you very much again!

- J

1) There are two ways of doing this if you've got a sequence of initiations. The first is to do each one several times when you first encounter it -- say, you do the first degree four times, the second four times, and so on. The second is to do the whole sequence multiple times -- so you do the first, second, third, and so on, then you go back to the beginning and do the first, second, third, and so on; rinse and repeat as often as you like. I recommend the second approach, and I recommend going through the training program as well as the initiation multiple times -- you'll get much more in later passes than you ever did the first time through -- but I know people who prefer to do it the other way around.

2) Nope. Once you've done it the first time, the timing becomes much less important. You can still choose to do it on the equinox, or whatever, but that's not mandatory.

Good morning,

And thank you, again, for the opportunity to ask questions!

A little while back, you mentioned in a comment that an excess of etheric energy would lead to e.g. temper tantrums, emotional outbursts and the like, and too much astral energy would go into daydreaming, fantasies, etc. (I’m paraphrasing from memory here - hope I got it right!)

1. The connection between too much etheric energy and emotional drama is easy to see for me. But I’m not sure about the connection between astral energy and imagination.

Would you mind explaining how and why people would turn too much astral energy into daydreaming/fantasies (as opposed to burning it off through other means)?

2. If somebody would notice that they had some excess etheric or astral energy to burn, how could one go about that, respectively, without resorting to emotional outbursts or fantasies? Are there any more productive ways to achieve a balanced state?

(This isn’t about getting more balanced over time e.g. through regular spiritual or occult practice, but the practical question: what to do with too much energy right there and then?)

3. How would the opposite state, i.e. not enough etheric or not enough astral energy, show? (I.e. for people who are not trained to recognise these conditions and to handle them in a more productive way)

Thanks, and may you and your wife have a wonderful and productive summer week!

Milkyway

1) The imagination is astral. When you imagine something you're either projecting it onto the astral plane or you're seeing something that's already there.

2) It takes training.

3) Likewise, though you could talk to an acupuncturist or other alternative health practitioner to get some immediate help.

In general, if you have excess energy you probably need to channel it to something productive (in your scale of values) so that it goes somewhere and does something you approve of. If you have deficit energy you should practice it, even in baby steps, so that you will conserve what little you have and not end up with even less in the future.

Etheric energy:
* Excess: Vigorous physical exercise. Weight lifting would be ok, sports with complex movements would be better. You want to get tired and have plenty of sleep at night.
* Deficit: Gentle physical exercise: walking, swimming when possible. Make wide movements at a calm pace. Breathing exercises. Singing or playing a wind instrument would help and make this more enjoyable.

Astral energy:
* Excess: Engage in creative endeavor, practice some form of art. This is harder because there are many more competent coaches than competent arts teachers. You want to put at least as much discipline in your art as a varsity football player puts in getting a sports scholarship in a prestigious college.
* Deficit: Consume and appreciate classic art. Learn some artistic basic skills (rhyme, combine colors, music scales/harmonies).

Of course, any practitioner of alt-health can provide case specific treatment or intervention.

In the SOP when I banish, say, the unbalanced manifestations of air, who chooses what to banish? Is it the powers of air whose help I have invoked? I am hoping so, because I am not sure I know on a daily basis exactly what manifestations of air are unbalanced within me or around me..

Your higher self and the powers of air between them make that decision, unless you make it for them. I tend to choose a middle path, and say something like: "And with the help of the powers of air I banish from within me and around me and from all my doings all harmful influences and hostile magic, all negative habits of mind, and every imbalance of the nature of air. I banish them far from me." That expresses a good general intention but allows the powers and my higher self to work out the details.

Thank you so much for this.

Since doing the SoP is not recommended while pregnant/nursing, is there something pregnancy-safe you would recommend to replace the spiritual “hygiene” aspect of the ritual? I don’t like the idea of all the built-up ick over months of pregnancy/years of nursing.

Also, is setting up a shrine/altar okay during pregnancy? I’m not sure if this would count as prayer or stray too much into the realm of working magic. Assuming I did not do any rituals to consecrate it or anything, just set up a space with objects, figurines, etc. and prayed or made simple offerings (laying a flower on the shrine, for instance). I am trying to deepen my devotional practices while my magical practice is limited, and it would be really nice to have a shrine. (I swear I read your FAQ about magic and children, but this answer still wasn’t clear to me).

Thank you!

Um, Jen? Anything that's not ceremonial magic, according to the FAQ, is just fine. Hoodoo cleansing baths? Not ceremonial magic. Other natural magic preparations? Not ceremonial magic. Devotional work? Not ceremonial magic Setting up a shrine or altar for your prayers? Not ceremonial magic. And, er, I defined ceremonial magic in the FAQ.

It amazes me that so many highly intelligent people have their brains turn to mush on this one topic.

Thank you very much for your answer, and your patience in putting my question through!

In my defense, a quote from the FAQ:

“Kids are fine around natural magic—in most traditional cultures it’s common to use various forms of natural magic to protect and bless children from the moment they’re born. If you’re pregnant or nursing, have your partner or a friend do the magical work; otherwise, you can do as you wish.”

As I am currently pregnant, I took that to mean that I shouldn’t perform the work myself, even for natural magic.

But I am most relieved to hear that I can do this sort of work without waiting years to finish breastfeeding, and willing to take the hit as a mush-brain! Perhaps I can blame the fetus for stealing my neurotransmitter precursors, since she cannot yet defend herself against such calumny.

Congratulations!

Thank you very much!

Good luck! It's an astonishing and wonderful adventure.

Is it possible to have two past lives overlap? For most of my life, I have had visions of being a German WWI pilot, and also a U.S. Gangster during Prohibition. Or is it a product of an overactive imagination? The only theory I could come up with was Doren Virtue's "walk-ins" where one being enters another. Is that possible?

Good question. Some people seem to have this experience, though most do not -- I don't, for example. I'm not sure what to make of it.

My thanks as always for this space. A question regarding divination if I may. As per my Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose programme, I am trying to learn two divination methods. One is Tarot, using the Rider Waite deck and the other is learning astrology. Boy oh boy am I finding these difficult! Interesting, but difficult. My difficulty at this point with interpreting the cards is that there seems to be so many different interpretations. The little white book (LWB) that came with the deck I find not very helpful and some interpretations in this LWB even contradict themselves. I have two other books, a bit more meaty, but their interpretations of the cards are different again. Surely there must be some base somewhere? I've been writing down the meanings out of all 3 and testing them against subsequent events, and out of the three, I found the LWB to be the least accurate. I'm now at the stage where I am more confused than when I started. Can you recommend a beginner's reference to interpreting the card meanings please? Any advice from the Commenters also gladly received. (I'm not even close to using astrology as a divinatory tool, for I think it will be years before I have learnt enough to do so.)

Okay, you've fallen into one of the standard traps that await the unwary: the trap of All Those Conflicting Interpretations. No, there's no fixed meaning for the cards; they mean what your subconscious mind decides they mean.

You might find useful. If you don't like the LWB, choose whichever of the books you like most, stick to that for now, and use your own experience to figure out what the cards mean for you, as explained in the link.

Thank you and in particular for repeatedly springing learners like me out of these traps. Sigh. I WILL get there, darn it.

JMG:

I read this post (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/187900.html?thread=31487484#cmt31487484) last week, and decided to try this exercise of imagining a symbol on an imaginary doorway and walking through.

I opened this with the LBRP to stay safe from unwanted astral influence. Was I right to do this or does LBRP interfere with the exercise?

I imagined the astrological symbol for Neptune and walked through the door. I was immediately overwhelmed with a strong vibration moving through my entire body, but particularly my ear and upper torso. I initially saw the planet Neptune, fell towards it, and floated in swirling blue clouds. The weird part came when I tried to match the vibration of my body with the vibration moving though it. It felt like I achieved a resonance with the vibration becoming stronger, less bearable, but somehow under more control. I called out to see if anyone was there but there was no response. I thanked whatever it was that I encountered and walked back out of the door.

Do you have any advice for when I try this again (including don't try it again if it sounds like I should stop)? Also can I use absolutely any symbol?

Thank you for providing Magic Mondays!

Congratulations -- you've just done your first scrying. It's a good idea to banish before you do the practice, to keep things clear, and yes, you can do it with any symbol it's possible for you to imagine. As for advice, why, keep doing it, take notes on the results, and meditate on what you experience.

Will do. Thanks!

This might be off topic, feel free to delete if so, but--

If you read the primary sources for ancient Western polytheism-- the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Homeric hymns, the work of Hesiod-- it's very clear that the gods are names given to those forces which are larger than humans and which generate or control the world we live in. Some are forces of nature, like Night or Dawn or Ocean; others are emotional or cultural forces like Oath or Rumor or Eros; still others are higher powers which embody complex sociocultural phenomena and weave them together with aspects of the natural world, and these tend to be the highest-- Zeus rains, and he also reigns; Hephaestus is fire, but also the labor that fire makes possible; and so on. Sleep is a god, and so is Oath; War is a god, Death is a god; every river is a god.

Despite this, I have regularly seen claims by modern pagans and polytheists, including academics who one would think have read the primary sources ever, that the Gods somehow have nothing to do with nature. A very well-known polytheist academic has suggested that to claim the gods are natural phenomenon would reduce them to mechanisms; how he accounts for the presence of every river in the world at the council of the gods in Olympus in one of the later books of The Iliad I do not know. A well-known Golden Dawner attempted to claim that there was no nature aspect to ancient polytheism because there were no sacred groves within the city limits of Rome, apparently failing to notice that most cities do not contain forests within them. Some years ago a very vocal "reconstructionist" pagan on Reddit insisted to me that his patron goddess, Athena, had no connection to philosophy or to war or to olive trees-- "She's just Athena." It is as if the very idea that the gods are active in the world of our experience, which the ancient gods clearly are, is offensive to them.

So, and again feel free to ignore if it's off topic, but what do you make of this extraordinary and widespread ignorance of the divine nature among people who really ought to know better?

I would see this as an extreme reaction to the "reduction" of the gods to natural forces, ancient kings, etc. These are not even new arguments. The Greek philosophers were already arguing the nature and origin of the gods. Plato's "One" is very far removed from Homer's and Hesiod's Zeus. Euhemerus argued that the gods had originated as great men, kings and warriors who were idealized and worshipped after their deaths. Christian theologians seized on some of these arguments to label the Pagan gods as false and their own as real and then later scholars extended this into the anthropological and psychological study of religions. So, reaction to this is to reject the very idea--Zeus is not rain and thunder--I'm not a stupid kid or primitive tribesman to think that a natural phenomenon, well explained by science, is a god. Zeus isn't the inflated memory of a warrior who ruled a hill fort and a patch of country smaller than Manhattan some 4000 years ago. Zeus is Zeus.

As has often been observed, the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea.

Rita

Rita's explained one very important aspect of it. I'd like to suggest another.

Many people, including quite a few Pagans, are terrified that the gods they worship might be objectively real. As long as they can be treated as purely mental phenomena, active only as psychological experiences, their stark reality can be evaded -- but once you experience Zeus as a vastly greater-than-human person who is also the atmosphere, then there he is, holding the planet you walk on suspended in space by his golden chain, and there's nothing you can do about it. You have to deal with him on his own terms.

Magic Monday

Generating a Spiritual Body

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On the subject of the Picatrix

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Inteligence

What a Druidic Mage Would Do

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A foreigner's humble perspective.

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Symbology

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Slavic SOP

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The German Gods are not the only ones

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