Magic Monday
Jul. 3rd, 2022 11:36 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. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) 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. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. The image? That's the twenty-ninth card in The Sacred Geometry Oracle. Card 29, The Dodecahedron, when upright tells you that spiritual forces are involved in the situation; when reversed, it warns you that you will have to embrace personal change in order to deal with what's happening.. The sun in the upper left corner of the image tells you that this card belongs to the final third of the oracle, which corresponds to Nwyfre, the principle of spirit and meaning. We've completed our passage through the first two of the basic root functions of sacred geometry -- √3, the principle of the vesica piscis and the equilateral triangle, and √2, the principle of the square and its diagonal -- and now we're working with the √5, the seed from which the Golden Section unfolds and resolves all back into unity.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***
Generating a Spiritual Body
Date: 2022-07-04 04:03 am (UTC)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).
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:04 am (UTC)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.
What a Druidic Mage Would Do
Date: 2022-07-04 04:05 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:12 am (UTC)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…
Symbology
Date: 2022-07-04 04:12 am (UTC)Zebby
Slavic SOP
Date: 2022-07-04 04:17 am (UTC)Re: Generating a Spiritual Body
Date: 2022-07-04 04:24 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:26 am (UTC)Re: What a Druidic Mage Would Do
Date: 2022-07-04 04:29 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:31 am (UTC)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.
Re: Symbology
Date: 2022-07-04 04:33 am (UTC)Re: Generating a Spiritual Body
Date: 2022-07-04 04:36 am (UTC)Re: Slavic SOP
Date: 2022-07-04 04:44 am (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:54 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:56 am (UTC)R
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 04:59 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 05:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 05:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 05:34 am (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 05:37 am (UTC)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
Re: Symbology
Date: 2022-07-04 05:53 am (UTC)Zebby
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 06:11 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-04 06:45 am (UTC)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 😌