Magic Monday
Feb. 16th, 2020 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
It's a little shy of midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. This week's classic book of Western occultism is The Kybalion, the most enduring of the many works that blended occultism with New Thought. (New Thought? That's the classic American movement of self-help through mind training that emerged after the Civil War as people started paying attention to the way that thinking shapes experience and emotions affect health.) It's the original source of the Seven Hermetic Principles -- the Principles of Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender -- and of many other core concepts of 20th century American occultism. According to the cover, The Kybalion was written by "Three Initiates;" in fact, it was written by one, the redoubtable William Walker Atkinson, one of the most influential American occultists of his time. If Hermes can be Thrice Great, no doubt Atkinson can be Thrice Initiate...
Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. 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.
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***This Magic Monday is now closed -- and yes, this means you. See you next week!***
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-17 06:07 am (UTC)1. I had a most enjoyable experience just now doing the SOP in a dark room, as in it being night time with the lights turned off. Would practicing it in this manner pose any particular problems in your experience? For me it made visualization of each of the 6 glyphs a bit easier and more vivid for me.
2. Not really a question per-se, but rather a personal data point I'd like to share with you and everyone here. SOP has been helping me greatly with my lifelong moodiness and crankiness issues. Before doing spiritual practices I would too often knee-jerk react to the crummy energies around me and sometimes snap at people in ugly ways. But now it seems like when I come into contact with other people's negative energies I'm able to internally process these emotional sensations in a more detached manner and actually observe them as internal phenomena rather than just blindly let these feelings make me react in a predictable and unreflective manner. I've thought about this and it seems the main problem has been a rather unclean astral (or etheric??) environment I've been in close quarters with some quite some time. I've always been extremely sensitive to other people's moods and habits and at times have become a recluse to avoid the emotional weather (or maybe just weird vibes) other people emit. It really does seem the unseen environment out there really is a colossal mess! And hopefully I'm now doing my tiny little part of make the area immediately around me less unpleasant. SOP was very subtle at first, but the cumulative effects really seem to be stacking up now that I've been at it for about 6 months now.
3. This one is a question. I've been studying up on the 7 elements and the 8-spehere/wheel chart as you present them in DMH. Some questions:
(a) At first glance some of the correspondences strike me as a bit novel (or at least unconventional) when compared to more established systems. For example, associating Saturn with the spring equinox, Venus with Air (tbh, I've seen different systems present totally different hot takes on what Venus corresponds to), and Mercury with Spirit (ether??. Out of curiosity, how did you arrive at the correspondences in this system come about? I do realize that your system does seem to bring out different aspects of the elements and planets and in general the planets are probably way too complex and multifaceted to be associated with just one element. Did I just answer my own question?
(b)I've seen another magical system that uses 7 elements and instead of Spirit Below and above, the added elements (to the usual 4) are Wood, Metal, and Spirit. are used. As these getting at the same sort of thing as the SOP elements?
(c) Is there a direct correlation between the 7 SOP elements and the 8 spheres of the calendar wheel? Obviously one set has 7 and the other, 8. Which element of the wheel is left out of the ritual? Is Mercury/Spirit? Or is that fused with the 3 spirit elements?
So far I've figured:
Gwyar = Spirit Within / Lunar Current
Nwyfre = Spirit Above / Solar Current
Calas = Spirit Below / Telluric Current
Earth = Earth/North
Water = Water/West
Fire = Fire/South
Air = Air/East
Spirit = All 3 spirit elements?
This sound about right? Apologies if this is pedantic, as my brain tends to go into OCD mode when presented with elements and correspondences.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-17 06:23 am (UTC)2) Very glad to see it.
3a) Well, the answer I was going to give was "What a wonderful set of themes for meditation!" but your answer is close enough. ;-)
3b) Nope. As a rule of thumb, different symbolic systems are no more interconvertible than the grammars of different languages. (Rule-of-thumbly, systems symbolic different than of different languages the grammar intercomvertible no more are...)
3c) Here are two pies of equal diameter. I have cut one of them into eight pieces and one into seven. Which of the eight pieces are left out of the pie that's been cut into seven pieces?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-17 06:08 pm (UTC)I know there's no direct correlation (besides the pie), but couldn't you syncretize the 7 elements into 8 holidays by having the Spirit Above aspects of the 4 elements for the light half of the year and the Spirit Below aspects of the 4 elements for the dark half of the year?
There's a few complications: Spirit Within gets represented by the practitioner, you'd have to give a light aspect to one equinox and a dark aspect to the other even though they're balanced, and I'm not sure what procession of the 4 elements would be best to use, but it seems workable.
What I can't tell is whether your response indicates that relating the SoP elements to the holidays is a pointless task, or laughingsage is just going about it in the wrong way.
This is something I've been wondering about myself, but I'm waiting for your Mysteries of Merlin to drop so I know what a year-based ritual system looks and feels like before experimenting too much.
The only year-based ritual I have now is tree meditation, since trees tend to embody the essence of the current season very beautifully.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-17 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-17 07:16 pm (UTC)Interesting pointed question, with broad applicability. I should add Sam Loyd's famous "Get Off the Earth" puzzle (seen here) or more likely, one of its more modern less racial-caricature-y equivalents, to my ever-growing "Tools for Magical Education that No One Thinks Of as Tools for Magical Education" list.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-17 02:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-17 07:06 pm (UTC)