Toward Ecosophy

Dear JMG,
My husband, who does not practice magic, had an interesting magical dream recently. He was travelling by many different means in the dream and at the end was walking along a highway when two young women approached him and asked him to have a drink with them. One of the young women was human and the other human shaped but with the eyes and features of a fish. He said she was beautiful but not sexy. He shirt and trousers appeared to be made of nets. She offered him a glass of wine and a long cracker. Sensing this was a communion ritual, he demurred and woke himself up.

I had a look on the internet for a Goddess of this description. I didn't find anything. Does anyone here know who she might be?

Thanks, Maxine

Greetings esteemed Druid, may your animal fat drippings be reasonably priced this day! Apologies for the long post… you have a TSW freaker-outer on your hands…

I recently had a rather unpleasant experience that I believe was a karmic culmination brought on even though I am doing very mild practices, and I’m wondering if
a) that means I have an uncommon amount of baggage
b) the general practice of affirmations pokes at a weirdly personally specific location of baggage
c) it backfired because of the specific affirmation I chose or
d) what I went through *is* mild karmic culmination, and good lord that’s why you don’t try to accelerate it

For the past 4 months, I have been doing the SOP with generic element/nature wording, no gods. It seems to be working well. I recently added weekly hoodoo baths since I am a local politician, and I’ve been doing a daily three card tarot divination for decades, so I’ve kept up with that. Then about two weeks ago I decided to add an affirmation. I chose one that I had hoped would help me feel less of an imposter in my public role. I chose “I am a leader”.

In hindsight, this was obviously a bad idea – while I was thinking that it would help me bring out good leadership qualities in myself, a leader is still someone *chosen* under the will of others, in whatever guise. So it clearly required acting on other’s wills. I felt increasingly unmoored all week, passing it off as an unusually stressful week, which it was, until I got right irate at my colleagues at Council at a meeting on a big, media-saturated item, and made regretable statements. The press was there, and of course I get quoted in the paper the next day sounding like Trump. The video of the meeting of course goes in the town permanent record. My colleagues are professional and good people, so stuck to castigating me individually over the phone the next day, saying absolutely nothing that was not true, but crushing, and worded with decency. It may take the remaining three years in tenure to get close to back to normal with at least one of them, but others will smooth over more quickly. The flipside of course, is that several people I know who read the paper and saw the meeting didn’t think it was a deal at all; so my behaviour cleared “normal expectations”, but not “professional, usually thoughtful person” bar (you know... like a "leader"). The really weird part was how at a conference in the next town over, suddenly, a day later people started backing away from me, like magnets of reverse poles. Nobody had read the incident in my town’s paper, no one knew who I was ahead of time. It was uncanny – just all in a mass, groups would go silent and back up a step, or look at me with a startled look. They didn’t consciously realise it either, if we began speaking, they would seem relieved and move back closer. It was like people jumping at a sinister shape in an alley, then being relieved it was only their friend.

Now – I was also the person who once asked a question that made another poster respond with links about scrupulosity (thanks to that person!), so in some ways I started to feel relief - in all my years feeling socially awkward, I had never had such a thing happen; it was suddenly obvious all my previous fretting was all in my head, this was the *real* deal. And I call this "karmic" because it hit all the buttons on my insecurities about my personality fitness for leadership.

So now I feel I’m in a precarious environment, where landmines may still be strewn about, and I’m not sure how to proceed – if it’s got to work out because of where I am on my spiritual path, and it’s already in motion, then it doesn’t seem there’s much for it, I’m in for it. I cast a series of shield charts asking about whether I should try a new affirmation based on a local Salish teaching (“I am of good mind”) I got LW Rubeus, Judge Populus RW Rubeus, which seems like a clear enough heck no.
So it seems like affirmations, or at least any that occur to me! – are really bad news for me, despite being bunny slope stuff. This is disquieting! What could that mean?

When I asked if I should try adding meditation instead for a gentler way to process my karma, I got LW: Puella Judge Via RW Rubeus, with no way of the points; and asking if simply going back to what I was doing to avoid more public humiliation I got LW Acquisitio Judge Acquisitio RW Populus.
Does my read of the latter two responses seem correct?

I am reading the other options as meditation still gets at the gunk I’ve got to deal with, but seems to be a clear way to integrate it more gently, since Puella is stable and keyword is Harmony; however, the image of mirror for puella is likely particularly apt, and it may still *feel* bad to me to see my insidey parts, even if I act less atrocious. Via indicates an abrupt change from Rubeus.

Sticking with what I’m doing I will successfully get by without another blowout – but I wonder if the imagery of acquisitio also means that it also means I keep the baggage.

I lean toward adding the meditation, as ditching the baggage was kinda my goal - I’m okay with inner turmoil. But, I’d like to not embarrass and insult my colleagues again.

This is not really a question for Brother Greer, as he's said that he's not much on dreams, but rather for the group.

In the last year, I have three times dreamed a book or story scene or chapter that I later read, written by someone else. One by a friend I hadn't met at the time I dreamed it who later gave me her just finished book to beta read, one by a fanfic author I have not met and likely never will, and the third by an author friend I know only over the internet.

I've been documenting dreams for a while, as some of them are precognitive, but this is slightly weirder than that. Any thoughts on what, why, or how? Particularly as someone who dabbles in writing, though it seems obvious I should simply not write anything I dream of reading, it's disconcerting.

BoysMom

Dear JMG,

I have a form of social anxiety which manifests in blushing, fear of saying anything, especially anything humorous, to groups of people who I don't know well, and a general sense of being always aware that I might be being watched. Part of it may also be ego-driven (why would it be that people would stop whatever they are doing to pay so much attention to me?) but a large chunk of it comes from a childhood distrust of my environment coming from strife at home and at school.

I did a lot of journalling and meditation on the sources of this, and the specific reasons why I am the way I am - being called lazy and a loser by my father and treated with apathy by my mother while growing up, and being bullied for being the nerd at school by the cool kids are pretty clear reasons why I tend to react with greater caution when in unfamiliar social situations, especially when it involves particular types of people.

I have come to terms with dealing with the lack of confidence through meditation and journalling and that my adult experiences have shown me more clearly an impartial and realistic view of myself, and indeed, sometimes I have had the opposite characteristic of having too much of a sense of entitlement, probably due to overcompensation for my childhood. You wrote before that an overinflated sense of ego paradoxically comes from a lack of self-confidence and an unclear sense of self-worth.

But it is one thing to know the reasons for my social anxiety, and another to actually change the deep-seated automatic reflexes I have in social situations. Do you have suggestions of how to change this behavior now that I understand its sources? I am working through the DMH, up to the grove ceremony so far.

I should note that after divination and meditation, I previously tried a SOP working in which I invoked 'a clear sense of self worth and self-confidence' for Fire, and banished 'self-centeredness' for Fire as well, along with banishing 'childhood fears' for Water, and the amount of issues that this working kicked up (marital discord, trouble with my parents) was so strong that after a couple of weeks of the working I switched back to the normal SOP to give myself time to regroup. I probably need to try a gentler working...

Thank you!

Hi JMG,

Over on Ecosophia you mentioned in a reply that there are "other consequences" to spiritual enlightenment than freedom from captivity by stories.
Would you mind to elaborate a bit on those?

Thanks,
Graeme

After a moon cycle and a half I have an update on my Preseli bluestone beads - the "Stonehenge" beads:

First off, I don't think they vary all that much from Moon sign to Moon sign. Maybe in the hands of someone more adept than I those subtle variations could be teased out, but for me, the signals just aren't loud enough.

Second, I mentioned last time that they were great for meditation and divination but not for ritual. I'd like to retract that statement. They are good for all of those. The issues with visualization I reported were likely just my own, and have since been corrected. Morning practice, all of it, is the only time I wear the bluestones now, and I really enjoy it. Except that they do tend to tint the normally-white Kether sphere with their green-blue color.

And that leads me to my general impression of the substance. By themselves they are not for everyday wear (which is probably why more people don't wear them). My wife and I have both found them to be too...spiritual. They make us spacey, and distant, disconnected from the material world. More than once I've had to just take them off and do a closing hand gesture to snap out of it. I taught her how to do that too, and she said it was like waking up from a dream.

But the healing power I get from them is real. I could see Stonehenge being a place of intense healing - if one had the time to just BE there, inside the inner circle, with no obligation to get along in the material world. Wearing them, or likely being in the circle, for long periods isn't terribly restful though! It's challenging, mentally tiring. Makes me wonder if your garden-variety pilgrim didn't spend the majority of his time within the henge in its outer circle.

But that leads me to the geomantic portion of my inquiry. I want to wear them; I want to receive the healing power they have to offer. My shoulder could really use it. So I asked the geomantic spirits if the stones could be combined with carnelian to add some energy and fire, and jet to ground it all out in the real world, manifest that potential.

I got Amissio as RW, Carcer as LW, and Fortuna Major as Judge. Here's what this says to me: my relationship to the beads as-is plays the role of the querent, and something ain't right. Carcer significates the quesited - the addition of jet and carnelian to the mix. And Fortuna Major is the outcome of adding those beads to the mix - a great success.

All 3 of those have Fire and Earth elemental symbolism. In the case of Carcer it's the active Fire and Earth lines of the figure itself, and with the other two it's their inner and outer elements. Carcer's inner and outer elements are both Earth, which suggested to me the idea of isolating the bluestone beads between jet beads, with the fiery carnelian on the other side of the jet, not in contact with the bluestone. That is, jet-bluestone-jet-carnelian-...

Contemplation drew me to the design of Stonehenge itself. Earth-Bluestone-Earth-Bluestone-Earth...with the occasional fire (the Sun) poking through the various windows thus created. I'm still missing the Air element, and I certainly considered the need to add that to the mix in the beginning, but in all 3 figures the Air element is latent, suggesting that it might be better without it. And indeed I find Air to be my most challenging element.

What's your take here? Am I just reading it the way I want it to read or do you think there's something to it? Would love to know what Sara thinks about the design as well!

Thanks very much for all this! I know I've been long-winded on 2 occasions already this week...

Tripp

Last week, someone mentioned that people who grew up with the internet seemed emotionally stunted, and asked about whether TV did something similar. Autism has been linked to excessive screen use, and dramatically increased in frequency at about the same time colour TV was introduced.

1) Is it possible then that part of what causes autism is brain damage induced by exposure to screens? If this is the case, do you think the effects are permanent, or could reducing screen time help to alleviate some of the symptoms?

2) What steps do you take to avoid getting lost in the internet?

Mercury Rx question:

If it's easier to do things beginning with re-, like rewrite, revisit, etc., then as a writer and a musician who had scheduled recording time (vocals especially) during this period, would it also work to crank out a quick first draft or first take even if it's a grind, then turn right around and redo it? Or does the clarity benefit only apply to things you lay down before the retrograde? I plan to run the experiment, just wondering what your experience was.

And a spirit question:

I recently camped with friends at a spooky old mine in the backcountry. All three had nightmares, and my friend who shared the same tent as me even described a ghost woman unzipping the tent to harass her, and said I was in the dream and advised her to just ignore the ghosts until they go away, that they just thrived on fear (which is about what i would have said if she had asked me). But she didn't and there was a whole vivid sequence involving ghosts, the mine, etc. that sounded like she was being harassed by rude spirits, same as the other two friends.

I did not get harassed, and in fact fell asleep better than at home. Is it possible they avoided me due to 4+ years of banishing rituals? Is there some way in which I may have astrally advised my friend without realizing it?

In retrospect the only weird thing I recall is that several times on the border of sleep my eyelids turned to a field of stars though I was awake and fully aware, which I associated with the Great Bear. I said hi to him earlier looking at the north star region, and had good relations with him during pathworkings involving earth. I suppose it's possible he was letting me (and others) know that he had my back?

Thanks!
Kyle

My cat vomited over the cotton cloth I use in my altar, so I washed it.

It is raining here, and drying it hanged in the line my take a few days. So I thought of three temporary options:

1. Use white paper sheets (printed in one side, with my resume, and flipped over, the only ones I have) to cover the altar for CGD, to make a replacement cover. It is carbon, after all (and also not silk nor linen);

2. Perform the rituals without covering the table, that is faux-stone-with-black-spots colored;

3. Skip the practice until my cloth dries.

Or perhaps I could do something else?

If I were buying a used tarot deck, what would be the best way to clean it, magically speaking? Or is it just a bad idea to get a used deck? (It would be for use in GD work that started with your LRM and has continued with Regardie's books)

Dear JMG,

When doing discursive meditation on images, is it bad practice to peek back at the image? I've been doing discursive meditation on the Thoth tarot, but my visual memory isn't that great, and I do a lot of pre-processing before starting to memorize what is where. I wonder whether that's how to do it plus repeat or if I'm making things unnecessarily hard by not looking while I meditate.

Happy Monday!

Dear JMG,

You have written previously about the contemporary lack of a proper understanding of ethics. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you wrote that ethics is essentially understanding what has worked best through time in terms of life choices and their effects on other people. As opposed to what people nowadays term morals - that one's choices should be governed by what one should or should not do, based in part in ideas of good versus evil which come from up high, etc.

After a half-year of being unemployed, I was offered a job in the online gambling industry, which I chose to take, and I have worked in that industry for the past year or so. I struggled greatly with the decision to take the job, and still struggle daily with working there. Obviously the job has enormous practical benefits, considering the amount of money the company makes, but my growing magical practice in Druidry has made my struggles with working there even more acute.

However, I can't yet place my ethical queasiness in context. I'm wondering if you have a more useful way to frame the issue other than the one I used to justify my decision to take (and remain in) the job:

- The main problem is that the gambling industry in general does its best to encourage people, using game theory among other things, to part people with their money, thus the industry is greatly profitable and heavily regulated. That said, about 5% of gamblers have problems with addiction, and I'm sure a greater number of people spend more than what they feel they should have spent when they gamble. Being in the industry and seeing how it is structured has shown me some of the tactics the industry uses to part people from their money. But it appears that the majority of gamblers do it in a proportionate manner, and for them it becomes a kind of entertainment done occasionally. There is an analogy to be drawn with other industries, such as the alcohol industry, in which the majority of people who consume alcohol do so in moderation.

- But there's the categorical imperative argument (which I hope I don't mangle too badly, I'm not that well-read when it comes to Kant) that says in terms of the gambling situation that if even one person is badly affected by gambling addiction, than it therefore not moral to work in an industry which causes such harm.

- But then again, at some point it perhaps comes down to conscious choice. Which a bit related to some topics which have come up for me in Druidry, that in some sense Fire/will is at play here: one makes a conscious choice to drink a beer or spend money on online poker, and thus one cannot stop an industry from providing those things as long as there are ways of dealing with those who are addicted in a responsible manner (regulations?).

- But this still doesn't account for the categorical imperative argument. I once tried to outline all the above reasoning to a friend, who replied 'tell all that to the child of someone who has spent all their money on gambling' and I failed to come up with an effective rebuttal.

- Then there is the argument which I am becoming more aware of: of karma. Humans it appears cannot avoid doing harm to the environment around them, but I admire the approach in Druidry and other spiritual traditions of minimizing that harm. Which sort of relates to learning to understand the effects of one's choices on others, and to be willing to accept the karmic consequences of them. In that argument, I should not work in such a job, and find a job in which I am causing as little harm as possible to others and nature.

Am I missing something here in my thinking? I'm not asking for justification of my choices, but whether I am thinking clearly about the issue.

For the record, I intend on leaving that job whenever my spouse's own job situation stabilizes.

Thanks very much for any advice!

Dear JMG,

I casually picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine to while away the time waiting in line at the grocery store yesterday, and what do I see but an astrological analysis of the Democratic presidential candidates' charts for 2020! Summary: the only one with any astro mojo is Elizabeth Warren. Bernie has a series of unfortunate Mercury aspects this year, Kamala Harris has a run-in with Saturn in a bad place and Biden's is, well, unremarkable. Political astrology is catching on....

-Ms. Krieger