Hello JMG

Could I please request some feedback on my current approach with the DMH?

I've been following the course since around August last year. I posted to MM about good results with SOP a few months back and promising initial results after starting weekly Grove practice.

This has continued with some breakthroughs on a personal level that I have in my journal as Heather and Oak incidents: my daily Ogham indicates Ur or Duir and that day I get a corresponding upwelling of confidence at something (or just in myself generally) or a clear improvement in my outer circumstances, respectively. It's been pretty inspiring.

I've hit an issue though. I do intend, at some point, some major workings to improve my life. As a first step towards this I was meditating through a first general SOP working to invoke/banish qualities; but Ogham then gave it a No No. Further questioning made it clear my Ogham thinks I need to go back and do lots more of the basic elemental workings before changing the SOP at all.

In truth I've avoided those basic active/passive workings somewhat, found them difficult to apply well, and I think the Ogham is indicating I won't fair better with an SOP working until I figure out why.

So there's this imbalance: the basic SOP/Grove is bettering my life, but when it comes to making my own workings I'm hesitant, a bit fearful and unimaginative, a bit awkward. I HAVE had successes with a brace of simple Air/Water workings I use for energy and confidence, but I've struggled to do much more.

SO, with that preamble could I check a few understandings that might help:

1. The DMH text doesn't say explicitly, but am I right in inferring the elementary workings are temporary in nature (or easily removable in case of an enchanted stone) and thus not generally requiring the full divination & meditation? Ogham seemed to be saying I need to be bolder and experiment more, and being able to just go for it helps.

2. I've noticed your instructions on workings in the SOP systems don't talk about how to "charge" a spell's intention as it were. When I first read about magic years ago it was usually practitioners who were into Crowley or Chaos Magic etc. so there was all the talk about inflaming oneself with emotion, or using drugs or other ways to, ahem, stimulate oneself.

One approach I've figured out that improves my hesitancy here is just being headlong about it: I choose a change I'd like to make, then just before casting I imagine myself in that mode with a who-cares-let's-do-it attitude, and this seems to get the energy flowing better, perhaps due to fear. Is this appropriate? Obviously with a larger working I'd be doing my divination/meditation first.

I don't know how much of an issue the above is beyond just needing practice, but I get the sense there's a larger fear needing confronted to progress.

Sorry for the length!
JH

Hello, JMG. I've been practising the LBRP daily for about a year now and I have 2 questions. (I don't do any ritual magic apart from that.)

1) Next month I will be traveling with other people for 2 weeks. This means I can't practise the ritual physically. Should I then perform it in my mind, or refrain from doing it around others?

2) Is it normal to feel like the banishing rituals aren't actually doing anything? By now I can do the LBRP smoothly and with focus, and yet I rarely feel any effect during or after. The only change I've noticed is that I have less trouble falling asleep (I do the ritual right before bedtime). But I have the same amount of intrusive and racing thoughts and psychosomatic issues as I used to (I guess this means that those are due to my own shortcomings and lifestyle, not outside influences?). So, what noticeable effects should one expect from banishing rituals, and should I consider changing my routine?

Thank you as always.
~ J.

Last week you linked your article about a possible link between the structure of the SOP and the Jung's quaternios to another poster. It was a fascinating read and will certainly serve as a basis for a longer series of mediations - as will the questions that I am going to ask:

1) The instability of a the masonic lodge ritual as it is shown in Diagram 1 jumps to the eye - however I would suppose that it needn't be so ? A table with three legs will never wobble and if the tips of the legs form an equilateral triangle on the table and on the ground it can be fairly stable. Do rituals that make use of three as a basis in a more stable configuration exist and if yes, where to find them?

2) Likewise it could be an interesting project to do what Jung has done with his quaternios using three as a basis. The "one" splitting in three which unite again in one, forming a double tetrahedron. Do you know of any work in this direction you could relate?

3) Using mathematics as analogy - Three points (or four if you want to use three dimensions) are enough to form a basis which allows you to describe any point that is contained in the corresponding space. If the points form a regular triangle or tetrahedron, the corresponding basis will not allow you to describe polarity as seen from a "quaternio-basis" with a single "basis vector", you always need two. Thus I assume that three as basis requires to think very different from what one may used to be. Also the "ternary" as I understand it is something different, because here a situation of polarity is resolved by a third factor. As I said, I am going to invest some effort into meditating on the subject - but maybe you have anything to add before I do so?

Have a good day!

Cheers,
Nachtgurke

OK, I felt this strange desire to re-read it just to see if it could really be as bad as my first impression. I am now wondering if this makes me a masochist or if it makes me more like someone rubbernecking as he drives passed a really bad trainwreck. Maybe I should use divination to find out.

To paraphrase Jay Leno, if Forrest Gump read it, he would have lost another 20 IQ points. This thing is so bad that I don't think it can even be parodied.