ecosophia | Magic Monday

It's a little before 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 or comment 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 1.1 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? I field a lot of questions about my books these days, so I've decided to do little capsule summaries of them here, one per week. The book above on the left is the current edition of my seventh published book, The New Encyclopedia of the Occult. I'd gotten irritated about the lack of decent reference works on occultism, and Llewellyn, the publisher I worked with in those days was enthusiastic about the idea of helping to fix that. It was a fun project, and includes a certain number of quiet and rather abstruse jokes; there are other occult encyclopedias available these days but this one still stands up fairly well -- though I'd make a lot of changes if the publisher was interested. (This also turned out to be the last book I did with Llewellyn for a long while, due to some issues involving their treatment of another project of mine.) If you're interested in the encyclopedia, you can get a copy here if you live in the US, and at your favorite book venue if you live elsewhere.

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

~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed -- as in, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In my own meditations on the Greek traditions I've been focusing on the myths behind the mystery traditions: The story of Persephone and Hades and the story of Orpheus(+related stories of Dionysus.) There are similarities between the two myths, and you don't need to squint too hard to see there's more going on than spending the afterlife in (at best) a nice cave with Hades.

Your comment on the dismal nature of the Greek afterlife actually added to a few thoughts I've been having about the history of Western religions in general, so thanks for that insight!

I've found it interesting to think about how diverse pantheons in the Western world (in some cases you could even lump in Hinduism as a holdover from this Eurasian religious tradition) evolved into monotheistic religions. But, at least as Christianity evolved in Europe, it became less experiential and more based in dogma (the intellectual battles of early Christianity come to mind... more experiential ideas about Jesus became battles about what the "substance" of Christ was.)

The Homeric traditions of the underworld might be an echo of a similar process. A more literal interpretation of what happens when you die: you go underground, and hang out with Hades!

Magic Monday

Re: Roman and Greek views of the afterlife