path: root/magic-monday.txt

 Golden Dawn's Equinox ritual

If you pick up a copy of my book Circles of Power, that'll give you the ritual knowledge you need, and the text includes a solo version of the Equinox Ritual with extensive notes. It will take hard work to be ready for the fall equinox, but you can certainly be ready by spring. 

Pages come after the completion of the numericals so... they're a kind of re-beginning.

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would you mind expanding on what you mean by "the suite of practices that goes with [discursive meditation]"?
Concentration, meditative reading, and imaginal practices such as scrying and pathworking are all part of the toolkit that centers on discursive meditation.
Concentration can be studied with Mouni Sadhu's books, Scrying/pathworking can be studied with your books, but what about meditative reading? Any books on those?
Not that I know of. It's quite simple: read slowly enough that you notice, and think about, the meaning of every single word. Try it sometime with a short text.

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You once said that everything in the universe is alive, are machines also alive in their own way and progressing along their own evolutionary track? I don't see any other way that we can "sense" them, because the sensation is very much the same as one gets when a living creature is sick. It's like an imbalance that must be cleared up.

Machines aren't fully alive yet -- the materials they're made of are alive, but not the machines -- but they're moving in that direction under our guidance. It may be that giving material substance another way to be alive, as a machine, is one of the things we're supposed to do during our time on this planet. If you're sensing "illness" in machines, good -- you're helping them become alive.

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I've been developing some methods for forecasting financial markets. This is a task requiring specific mental states and careful emotional control - I have to see conditions for what they are without being unduly swayed by optimism, pessimism or greed.

Can you suggest any magical practices to bolster these kinds of mental abilities? Meditation seems obvious and is something I practice, is there anything else you'd suggest for someone who wants to see clearly and judge accurately the movements in an abstract non-space like a financial market? I know you've mentioned astrology as a market forecasting tool before but that's not quite what I'm asking about, my interest is in boosting my ability to use forecasting tools rather than asking for recommendations of tools.


That's going to take a great deal of emotional self-control but it's something that can be done, and it's got many other advantages. The basic principle is that you have to stop letting yourself be swayed by your feelings. Choose exercises that build that habit. For example, once a week, have something for lunch that you don't like, and don't let yourself express your dislike in any way. Choose a political view you disagree with, research, and write out a detailed discussion of every reason why it's a good idea, without any reference to your own feelings or to the other side of the argument. In the same spirit, write a blistering critique of whatever belief is dearest to your heart. If you have some facility with magic, you can also invoke Saturn, but the will exercises will take care of the job even without that.





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1) Anything involving debts and bureaucracies is best dealt with during the day and hour of Saturn.

2) Anything furtive involving information is best done during the day and hour of Mercury.

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Affirmation: I know what must be done and do it with perfect concentration.

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Do you know good sources on how to learn to astral project? Ideally written for a Qabalisitc mage.

W.E. Butler's Apprenticed to Magic includes that among other useful things.

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What kinds of workings can I do to draw more beauty, inspiration and power into my arts and crafts? On magical experience: LBRP and MP, divination and meditation, 2 years


To do that you'll need to go beyond those basics and start learning some intermediate-level magical rituals -- how to open and close a temple, as well as the other pentagram rituals and the hexagram rituals. You'll find the details in my book Circles of Power, along with much else.


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Hello JMG,

I recently finished LRM and picked up Circles of Power to continue my study of Golden Dawn magic. However, I'm not sure how to supplement my daily practice of the LBRP, MP, divination, and meditation with the rituals from CoP. Which rituals should I learn first, and how can I integrate them into my existing practice most effectively?

If you already know the material in LRM, start by learning the Rose+Cross ritual, and do that weekly. Then learn the Opening and Closing Rituals in Chapter 8. Do those weekly as well. Then, once or twice a week, do a working where you open a temple, invoke one of the elements using the Greater Ritual of the Pentagram, meditate on the element, banish the element and close. Do this with all four elements, say, four times each. Then do the same thing with the planetary energies, using the Hexagram rituals. Then move on to basic rituals of practical magic. All this time, maintain your basic practices from LRM. That sequence of practices will take you very far indeed.


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Find a house

Sure. Real estate is ruled by Saturn. Get a dark blue candle, burn it during the hour of Saturn on three successive Saturdays, recite the Orphic Hymn to Saturn and then ask Saturn to bless your new home and the process of buying it. Then, also during the hour of Saturn on three successive Saturdays, make three donations to a charity aligned with Saturn -- anything that helps the poor is Saturnine, and so is any charity that helps old people, such as a senior center; the donations should each be a multiple of $3. That combination of planetary prayer and planetary charity will help a great deal. 

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Where did meditation subject come from

Sure. Children were taught to keep a notebook in which they wrote down passages in the books they read that struck them as important, or moving, or worth serious thought; those passages then became themes for meditation. Selected Bible verses were also common themes for discursive meditation. Another common approach was to take a list of virtues, and devote (say) a month to each of them; the child would spend a little time each morning thinking about that month's virtue, and then would try to do every day at least one thing that expressed that virtue in everyday life. Ben Franklin talks about doing this in his autobiography, iirc. 

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Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny" Ralph Waldo Emerson


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That's one of the downsides of mind-emptying meditation -- it teaches you not to think. You might try learning the sevenfold wheel of thought. There are seven concepts and seven questions, and you combine them.

Concepts:
Being
Becoming
Source
Substance
Power
Purpose
Value

Questions:
Whether?
What?
How?
Who?
Where?
When?
Why?

You combine each of the questions with each of the concepts, thus...

Whether it is?
What is it?
How is it?
Who (or whose) is it?
Where is it?
When is it?
Why is it?
Whether it becomes?
What does it become?
How does it become?

...and so on. If those forty-nine questions won't give you something to think about, you're not trying hard enough. ;-)



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Buddhist teaching I read that freedom is not reacting, but noticing the stimulus that sparks the reaction. how do we learn to do that? Mediation. 


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Books on the spirit of place, laying groundwork. The Druid Magic Handbook and The Secret of the Temple. 

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As for Trump, I’m more pleased than displeased by his first term. His administration’s done as good a job as could be expected, in the face of constant attacks, of cutting the metastatic regulatory state, extracting the US from free trade agreements that encouraged the offshoring of jobs, and decreasing mass illegal immigration; until the coronavirus outbreak messed things over, the joblessness rate among minority communities was at an all-time low and working class jobs were making a major comeback; he didn’t get us into any wars, and got our troops out of northern Syria; and he got rid of the Obamacare mandate, that immense welfare program that enriched the medical industry at the expense of everyone else. All in all, not too bad. 


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That's a standard part of the old lore. If you want to encourage your hair to grow long and thick, trim it when the moon is waxing in a fertile sign (a water or earth sign); if you want to encourage it not to grow, cut it when the moon is waning in a barren sign (an air or fire sign). 

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3) **History does not progress**. Please think about that for a while. It's not just that the problem of ethnic conflict in the United States "is unlikely to be resolved at one go." It will never be resolved at all. The Civil Rights movement got rid of certain flagrant injustices, but others took their place, and if you get rid of those, there will be others. Human beings are not angels; we are one and all -- no matter what our skin color and ethnic background might be -- guided by tangled motives in which greed, jealousy, and self-centeredness all play important parts; and those motives will guarantee that human beings will continue to be human beings and will continue to behave unjustly to one another.

I know that seems harsh, but it's true. Human beings are not going to behave like angels no matter what well-intentioned reforms or ideologies get put into place. All we can do is try our best to redress the worst abuses of our time, and -- above all -- to recognize that it's when we convince ourselves that we are in the right and the other side is in the wrong that we commit the most appalling crimes. 

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Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities
That of race and that of soul...

That's what William Butler Yeats wrote in his final poetic testament, "Under Ben Bulben." Each of us, while we live, are the intersection between two currents of life: a current of biological life descending from our ancestors, and a current of spiritual life descending from our previous incarnations. While you are in your current body, the ancestors of that body are relevant to you, and yes, ancestor reverence is an old and valuable custom. In your next life you will probably have different ancestors, though.

How does that work? The Japanese, who combine a robust Buddhist faith in reincarnation with an equally robust Shinto custom of ancestor reverence, have been trying to work out the details for centuries. All we know for sure is that both seem to be relevant. 

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A floor wash would help a great deal. Buy a new mop and a new mop bucket; in a bucket of water, add a quarter cup of Kosher salt, a quarter cup of vinegar, and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Mop the floors of the house starting in the kitchen and finishing at the front door. That's an old hoodoo practice, and it will clear away all kinds of stagnant energy. 

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JMG-

I was reading on your other blog about the raspberry jam principle. It makes sense to me that when, for example, you curse someone you end up with a little bit of curse on yourself. However, why can't you just follow up that working with standard methods to purify yourself of negative energy and as a result avoid the fallout?

ecosophia
Because it's not just energy. Everything you do changes who you are; every one of your actions makes it more likely that you will do the same thing again, and less likely that you'll do the opposite; actions become habits, habits become character, and character becomes destiny. 

For example, every time you use magic to deliberately hurt someone, you turn a little more into the kind of person who deliberately hurts other people; hurting other people comes to mind a little more often when you consider your options, and doing anything less nasty comes to mind a little less often; and since other people respond to the "vibe" you give off as well as your actions themselves, everyone else will be a little more likely to treat you as someone to avoid -- or to hurt. Rinse and repeat, and you've got the social psychology of the practitioner of nasty magic, isolated, shunned, hated and despised, hating and despising everyone in turn, and stewing in a lifelong vat of self-generated misery. Banishing rituals won't prevent that.


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There isn't an established prayer that Druids generally say before meals, but a lot of Druids I know either direct a silent "thank you" to everyone and everything involved in providing the food, or come up with a few words along those lines. "May every being who has contributed to this meal receive my blessing and that of the Holy Ones" is my usual grace.

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Of course! Start with Miranda Lundy's fine little book Sacred Geometry, and go on from there to Robert Lawlor's very solid Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice. There are plenty of others, but those are the best places to start.

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Good afternoon, JMG

My question today is about imagination and visualization.

I have noticed in my efforts to improve this faculty that I experience what feel like two different kinds of visualizations/imagined objects or places.

One kind is when I am in a state of actively focused concentration on forming a sign or a landscape. It is a lot of work, and feels like the mental equivalent of tense muscles. I can do it with an acceptably good amount of visual detail, but it gets to be a strain after a while. These imaginings have a dense feel to them. It is difficult to perceive information about these places or objects in a receptive mode as I seem to be expending a lot of mindspace in creating them and maintaining their presence. If I let up on my concentration they lose their fullness.

The other kind is much more gossamer and relaxed. An example- I lightly but clearly direct my mind to say SEASHORE, and a whole panoramic view of a seashore and every little thing in it glides into view, like I am focusing a camera lens. It is much more spacious and expansive than the previous kind of vision but it is also much harder to maintain. It's more remote, lighter. It's like when you are dreaming and catch yourself noticing that you are dreaming, and as a result the whole thing vanishes to vapor. In contrast to the previous kind of imagining, I must stay more receptive to maintain the vision. I can "make" things in it, but almost everything else does not feel made by me. Staying connected is often tricky and unstable.

What's going on here? Do I have two different sets of "visioning" eyes? Should I be concerned that this faculty seems to be divided in me rather than unified?

Thanks so much!
Bonnie

From:  ecosophia
Excellent. You're beginning to perceive the two functions of imagination. The first is the ability to act on the astral plane; the second is the ability to perceive on the astral plane. Give them both time and attention, and you'll develop both powers -- they're both necessary to magical practice.

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Hey JMG!

I hope you're well,

I was out working with my Grandpa, hauling rocks off a field, when I found some nicely broken stones. Since reading in your Encyclopedia of Natural Magic that iron is not good for a tool to use to harvest things for magical purposes, I've been on the lookout for something with a decent edge I could cut with, and these stones are pretty sharp. I just have one worry, The land here hasn't been treated how I personally feel is respectful. My Grandpa is partial owner of a hay farm, and they practice pretty conventional agriculture, plowing (that's how the stones got broken), planting with heavy machinery, and generally using roundup ready alfalfa so that there's a certain amount of spraying done as well.

It's not the way I would choose to farm but I don't feel I currently have the knowledge or the skill to suggest anything else, and don't know if my suggestions would be wanted, so I don't really discuss my misgivings too much.

That aside, my question is: do you think these stones would be affected by these practices in any way that would negatively affect their use as a magical tool for cutting or harvesting plants, or other things?

Thanks as always,

- WindMan

ecosophia: 
Get some tobacco, the best quality you can find, and take it to the field where you got (or will be getting) the stones. Ask the land to accept the gift of tobacco in exchange for the stones, and leave the tobacco where you got the stones. All over North America, the land spirits appreciate that.

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From: open_space
Good evening! I had some random questions this past week.

1) How can I create water to clean a place? Something like holly water some priests sprinkle to clean houses.

4) I am on the look for a new apartment because I am pretty sure they will increase rent on me on the summer. Seattle is nefarious for renting but I have found some workable options. What would be the appropriate timing, color and intention for burning a candle to ask for help in my housing situation?

Date: 2020-05-12 05:43 am (UTC)
ecosophia:
1) Get a container half full of water and a piece of paper with a little salt in it. Hold your right hand over the water and imagine a beam of white light descending from your palm into the water. Say aloud: "May light descend into this water and cleanse it. May all impurities depart from it that it may be made holy."

Now move the same hand over the salt and repeat the same words, but say "salt" in place of "water."

Now pour the salt into the water. You now have holy water.

4) Friday at the hour of Venus, and a green candle.

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In the southern Puget Sound version, for example, after a long and intricate backstory, Moon leaves the land of the salmon people under the sea and starts walking up the river toward the mountains. All the beings who live there know that he’s coming, and they prepare various weapons and traps to stop him, because they don’t want him to change the world. So he meets a man who’s sitting at the water’s edge carving a big flat board out of wood. “What are you doing?” Moon asks him, and he says, “There’s someone coming who’s going to change things, and I’m going to hit him over the head with this board and kill him.” Moon takes the board, sticks it onto the man’s rump, and says, “From now on your name is Beaver. When the people come they’ll hunt you for your fur.”

Moon goes further up the valley, and he meets another man who’s looking anxiously around from the top of a hill. He has two weapons, one in each hand, and they have many sharp points. “What are you doing?” Moon asks him, and he says, “There’s someone coming who’s going to change things, and I’m going to stab him with all these points and kill him.” Moon takes the weapons, sticks them on the man’s head, and says, “From now on your name is Deer. When the people come they’ll hunt you for your meat and your hide.”

And so the story goes. In the hands of a skilled storyteller—and storytelling was one of the fine arts in Native American cultures—the story of the Changer would be spun out to whatever length circumstances permitted, with any number of lively incidents meant to point up morals or pass on nuggets of wisdom. There’s no rising spiral of action leading to a grand battle between the Changer and the beings whose world he has come to change; there’s just one incident after another, until the Changer finally reaches the source of the river and leaps into the sky to become the Moon, or turns into a mountain, or goes to whatever his destiny might be, leaving the world forever changed in his wake.

Notice, dear reader, just how often this pattern is repeated in American history, in the great changes that transform our public life for good or ill.  Almost never do you see a single great struggle in which everything is decided. Where the battle of Waterloo came at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and settled them once and for all, our nearest equivalent, Gettysburg, came only a little more than midway through the Civil War, and simply marked the high tide of the Confederacy, the point from which all roads finally led to Appomattox. The changes that matter very often focus around one person who becomes the focus of change, and who proceeds up the river of our national life, encountering one crisis after another and somehow overcoming each one of them, until death or retirement ends the tale—and by the time that happens, the world has changed decisively and nothing will ever be the same again.

That’s the archetypal pattern I see unfolding in American life right now. I don’t happen to know of a Native American myth in which the Changer’s role is played by a frog with magic powers, but that does seem to be the situation we’re in now.

Two features of the Changer myth seem particularly relevant at the moment. The first is pointed up skillfully in the stories. The beings who try to stop the Changer and keep the world the same just keep doing whatever they were doing when the Changer arrives:  the man with the board keeps carving tree trunks, the man with the many-pointed weapons keeps looking around—and there they are today, the beaver beside his dam, the deer on the hill.  Having refused change, they become unable to change, and keep on going through the motions of their failed plans forever. That’s exactly what Trump’s opponents have been doing since his candidacy hit its stride, and more particularly since his inauguration. “From now on your name is Protester,” says the Changer, and sticks a pussy hat on the person’s head and a placard in her hands…

The flipside of the same narrative can be traced in Trump’s own trajectory. Ever since the beginning of his campaign, his opponents have convinced themselves that this or that or the other thing will surely stop him; incident follows incident, and he just keeps going up the river and changing things. There’s never the grand dénouement they want so desperately. The crisis never comes—and what’s more, it never will come.