It’s a longstanding custom on this blog that whenever there are five Wednesdays in a month, the commentariat gets to nominate and vote on the subject I’ll discuss in the fifth Wednesday post. This month, by a large plurality, readers asked for an essay on psychic self-defense: the art of protecting yourself against hostile or harmful influences in the realms of thought and emotions.
It came as no surprise, at least to me, that this topic won as handily as it did. You don’t have to believe in magic to recognize that ideas and emotions pass from person to person via channels that have much more to do with subconscious processes than with conscious decisions, and that these can have potent effects on human life and happiness. (Actually, if you recognize this, you do believe in magic, you just don’t know it yet. We’ll get to that.) Given that obvious fact, finding ways to protect yourself against the negative effects is simple common sense.
With this in mind, we can start with a definition—no, I take that back. We can start with a law, which I’ve named Rowling’s Law, after a certain author whose wildly successful books for children have done quite a bit to muddy the issues we’ll be discussing. Rowling’s Law runs like this: if you read about it in a Harry Potter novel, it’s not real magic. I’ll let you speculate about why it is that we have an entire industry of kiddie lit dedicated to promoting utterly fake ideas about magic, when the reality of magic is something we encounter every day of our lives. What matters for our present purposes is that if you keep Rowling’s Law in mind, you’ll be spared some humiliating mistakes.
Got that? Good. Now we can proceed to the definition. The one I have in mind is a definition of magic: magic is the art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will. That definition isn’t something I invented, by the way. It was introduced by Violet Firth Evans, one of the leading magical theorists of the 20th century (and also a crackerjack practitioner), who published a flurry of influential books on magic under her pen name Dion Fortune. If “causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will” doesn’t sound like something the boy wizard and his chums know anything about, you’re getting the point.
(One of the most widely read and studied books published under the “Dion Fortune” byline, by the way, is Psychic Self-Defence: A Study in Occult Pathology and Criminality. Like all her work, it passed out of copyright some time ago and can be downloaded free of charge here. You could do much worse, dear reader, than to give it some serious study.)
The definition just cited, by the way, is more subtle than it seems. It doesn’t specify whose consciousness is being changed, nor does it specify whose will directs the changes. Among the common superstitions of our time are the beliefs that that each person’s consciousness is locked up entirely inside his or her skull, and can only be influenced by his or her own will. In practice, of course, most of us realize that neither of these notions is true; we’ve all seen fashions, moods, and other states of consciousness leap from person to person, with little if any participation of conscious mind and will. Yet most of us continue to kowtow to the superstitions just named, and pretend that all of the thoughts and feelings we experience are ours.
Competent occultists know better. They understand that the consciousness of the individual is always influenced by the thoughts and emotions of the others with which they interact. They know that most of these influences are unintended and unconscious, but they also know that those who have learned certain obscure teachings can take conscious control over the process. These knowledgeable people can deliberately influence other people for good or ill using the subtle connections that link mind to mind, and they can also take conscious control of their own minds, so that they are only affected by those influences they choose to admit.
How do they do this? Broadly speaking, there are two ways. One of them gets all the attention in recent occult literature; the other is the one with real power. The first consists of formal processes that direct the will and the imagination of the practitioner into a specific pattern of consciousness that then flows outward to affect others. You can call those formal processes “spells,” “charms,” “cantrips,” “incantations,” “enchantments,” or what have you; the standard term among serious occultists these days is “workings.” Under any name, a magical working is a symbolic drama working with emotionally and cognitively charged symbols to focus the mind intently on a single end, which then has effects on the practitioner’s mind and those of others as well.
Flashy and fascinating as they are, magical workings are weaker than the other option, which is the way of self-development. Meditation rather than ritual is central to this second option, and its goal is to strengthen and focus consciousness so that the practitioner doesn’t need ritual workings to interact with the web of connections linking mind to mind. It’s a commonplace of older occult literature that an adept—a genuinely skilled practitioner of magic—can accomplish his will with minimal rituals, or none at all. You don’t get to that level by doing rituals; you get there by the dull but essential discipline of daily practice.
One other factor has to be referenced at this point. I’ve discussed “other minds” as though this only referred to human beings. This isn’t even remotely true. People feel happier around thriving plants because healthy green plants enjoy the sunlight, soil, and water that nourish them, and radiate a vague and unfocused sense of happiness to every mind within range. Animals, being more complex, have as rich an emotional life as humans do, though their mental life is more limited than ours, and they can influence us just as they are influenced by us. Beyond that, there are centers of consciousness that don’t appear to have any material bodies at all, but can also influence human consciousness in striking ways.
Yes, I know, this is where all the superstitious materialists stuff their fingers in their ears and start bawling, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you.” The fact remains that when a Christian falls to his knees and calls to Jesus, something responds. The same thing is true if we’re talking about the gods of other religions, and it’s equally true of those entities called “saints” and “angels” in our language. Equally, it’s true when somebody gets hold of certain old books and uses them to evoke one of those malicious and harmful beings known as demons: something responds.
The fact that occultism is aware of this, by the way, doesn’t make occultism a religion. It’s a matter of simple fact that for the last fifteen hundred years, most occultists in the Western world have been Christians and went to church on Sundays. (That was true, for example, of Violet Firth Evans aka Dion Fortune—she was an Anglican Christian who attended church and wrote a book of devotions based on the Collects of the Anglican church year.) If human beings are composed of body, mind, and spirit, religion belongs to the spirit while occultism belongs to the mind. Keep the difference in mind and you’ll understand what follows more clearly.
All these points are necessary preliminaries to the study of psychic self-defense. If you’ve followed the discussion so far, you understand that your thoughts and your feelings are constantly influenced by the thoughts and feelings of all those around you; that these influences can be consciously directed, and that these influences, conscious or otherwise, can be helpful or harmful. There’s an obvious point, then, to being able to protect yourself against the harmful influences, whether those come unintentionally from the thoughts and feelings of the people around you, or all too intentionally from someone or something that knows how to use the interconnections of consciousness to influence you against your will.
These two categories aren’t quite as distinct as they seem. It’s possible, for example, to influence a group of people in such a way that their subconscious reactions reinforce the practitioner’s conscious efforts. This can be done in positive ways—for example, healing work is greatly strengthened if the people around the person to be healed participate in it, so that their subconscious conviction that the patient will get better strengthens the conscious intent of the healer. The same effect can of course be used just as easily for nastier reasons.
The most widely visible modern example is advertising. Yes, advertising is a form of magic—a grubby and debased form of magic, but magic nonetheless; it’s an attempt to cause change in consciousness in accordance with will. It’s specifically a form of evil magic, since it sets out to manipulate its victims into spending money they wouldn’t otherwise spend on products they wouldn’t otherwise buy. Much of its power comes from the way that it insinuates itself into the minds of most people, who then radiate its influence. That sort of artificially induced groupthink is lamentably common these days, and is responsible for a very large share of our collective miseries and absurdities.
The methods for protecting yourself against all of this are twofold, in exactly the same way as the rest of magic. There are workings, quite a few of them, that can be used to ward off hostile influences on your thoughts and feelings. These are worth knowing, and can be very useful in certain circumstances, but here again the slow path of self-development is the more powerful option. If you become more fully conscious of your own thoughts and feelings, it becomes easy to notice when someone or something is messing with them, and nearly as easy to counter the hostile influence before it can affect you enough to matter.
How do you do this? Daily meditation. I don’t recommend the kinds of meditation that work by silencing the mind or letting thoughts pass unconsidered, because the skills you need to develop are those of engaging with the mind without being caught up in the thinking process. The kind of meditation I teach, discursive meditation, is one of the best options, but it’s not the only one. Any form of meditation that involves concentrating on a single thought or a sequence of thoughts will do the job. Five minutes a day is enough; thirty minutes a day is too much for most people.
(And if, dear reader, you’re a Christian and are convinced that meditation was invented by the Devil, let me introduce you to the Rev. Joseph Hall. He was an Anglican bishop in the 17th century, famous in his lifetime for his personal devotion to Christ, and the author of one of the great textbooks of discursive meditation, The Art of Divine Meditation, which is still very much in print. Did you know that you can meditate on Bible verses? Bishop Hall will show you how.)
(Oh, and if you’re Catholic and aren’t yet praying the Rosary daily, get off your rump and on your knees. The Rosary is, among other things, a fine method of meditation.)
Daily meditation has plenty of gifts to offer, but one of the most important is the discovery that you are not your thoughts. Another, just as important, is the realization that you are not your feelings. Your thoughts and feelings are things that you experience, not parts of your identity. A bumper sticker I used to see fairly often a couple of decades ago—DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK—communicates one of the great secrets of magic, but it needs to be accompanied by another, DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU FEEL. Once you can observe your thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in them, you’re basically invulnerable from psychic attack.
It’s going to take you a few years of daily practice to get to that point, however. During the interval, you may need some additional help. There are broadly speaking two sources of help you can draw on. The first consists of technical devices to take the pressure off; the second consists of habits of mind you can cultivate to assist the growth of your ability to perceive and counter hostile influences on your thoughts and feelings.
Among the technical devices, the ones most useful for the beginner come from the branch of occultism known as natural magic. For at least the last five thousand years or so, students of magic have been busy tabulating the subtle influences that plants, stones, and other material substances have on human consciousness. (They were probably busy with the same project much further back, but written records only go back so far.) Herbs such as St. John’s-wort, angelica, and bay laurel have long been used to protect against hostile influences, and they do seem to work. Any decent book on natural magic will teach you everything you need to know about how to use these for protection; I have one in print, if that’s of interest.
Another, which pushes the boundaries of the acceptable in a different way, is ordinary salt. Occult tradition has it that the influences we’ve been discussing are carried by a subtle substance, too rarefied to be perceived by the senses or detected with ordinary instruments; the possibility that this may be the same as the “dark matter” physicists talk about has been discussed in occult circles. Subtle though it is, this substance can be caught in crystalline substances, and salt is the most convenient of these. Cultures around the world clear noxious influences from a place by scattering salt, which is left for a little while and then swept up.
Salt is also part, though only part, of what gives holy water its efficacy. Holy water is always made with a small quantity of salt. When you flick holy water from your fingers to bless something, the salt in it forms microcrystals as the droplets evaporate; this traps noxious energies and renders them harmless. Quite a few traditional religious practices of this sort embody a great deal of occult knowledge alongside their purely spiritual dimension.
Among the habits of mind, the most useful fall into two categories. The first is to limit your exposure to current groupthink. You can spare yourself an enormous amount of vulnerability by getting rid of your television and making sure you have a good ad blocker on your internet browser. If you enjoy visual media, consider watching movies and TV series from at least ten years back—you can borrow plenty of those on DVDs from your local public library if the modest cost is too high for you. The important thing is to get out of sync with the mass mind of the people you know. The habit of mental synchronization, which is powerfully fostered by television and the other mediated spectacles of our time, is one of the things that makes people most vulnerable to the influence of hostile magic and of subconscious mental influence.
The second is to cultivate a habit of thought that one of my teachers called “thinking in ternaries.” Most human thought consists of binaries: this or that, left or right, progress or regress, and so on endlessly. Most things in the real world aren’t anything like so simplistic; what’s more, thinking in binaries makes you vulnerable to influence by those who know how to use it. Flatten all the available choices into one that’s bad and one that’s even worse, and most people will go stampeding toward the bad option without ever stopping to think about whether there might be alternatives that haven’t been mentioned.
Thinking in ternaries is a way around that mental boobytrap. It’s quite simple: any time you’re presented with a choice between two alternatives, find a third. It can be somewhere in the middle between two extremes, it can be off beyond one of the extremes, or it can be at right angles to the entire binary—that doesn’t matter. Find one, or more than one. (You’ll discover that once you find one, very reliably, you’ll spot many more.) My teacher used to advise students to read the newspaper each morning (yes, we had newspapers made of real paper back in those distant times), find ten binaries, and identify a third option for each. I rarely failed to complete that before I finished the front page.
Learning to think in ternaries has the obvious advantage that it teaches you to detect false dichotomies and look for other options. Less obviously, it teaches you to think about your thoughts, rather than simply reacting to them. Most forms of psychic attack have a binary structure: there’s the thing the source of the attack wants you to do and then there’s one other alternative, freighted with as much negative force as possible. Break the binary and the attack dissolves around you.
Of course all this has another effect: people will think you’re weird. Like most social mammals, human beings normally hand their thinking over to the herd, and gauge your membership in the herd by the extent to which your thoughts and feelings are the same as everyone else’s. If you don’t play along, you get sidelong looks at best, and quite often you find yourself on the fringes of the herd or outside it altogether. That’s a lonely place to be.
Still, it can’t be helped. Maybe there are times and places where it really is safe and sensible to think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings as everyone else, but this is not one of them. An enormous share of the thoughts and feelings that surge through the collective consciousness of modern industrial society these days are horrifically negative, the sort of thing that drives masses of people into self-defeating and self-destructive patterns of behavior. If you want to have a happy and successful life in this dark and troubled age, some attention to psychic self-defense is essential.
Thanks for the point towards Bishop Hall’s book. I’d not heard of it before. By the way, Amazon has a cheap version of the book, with the most ridiculous front cover image I’ve ever seen on a theological/spiritual book.
First time commenting here JMG! Been a fan of your work for a long time
Can you expand a little more on why mindfulness (or Zen meditation) is inferior in this case to discursive meditation? Is Zen meditation to be avoided entirely, or is it useful as a supplement to discursive meditation>
5 minutes also seems an incredibly short amount of time to see any kind of long term improvement in physic powers. Perhaps I am thinking of discursive meditation wrong, but it seems quite similar to the mere act of deep concentration, which we can work up to doing for 4 hours a day.
I haven’t read the whole post yet, but I want to get a question out to the group and not sure when I’ll be able to come back:
Does anyone have suggestions for books (and other media) for children that offer/foster a good relationship/understanding of magic and our enchanted world?
Currently reading the likes of Little Witch Hazel by Phoebe Wahls to my 4yo and eager to find more to balance out the Disney princesses and Rowling books etc. that are also in our current and future media pile.
“Real magic doesn’t look like this. Sorry, Potter fans…” So, does this mean that I can’t work for the Ministry of Magik? Yer killin’ me…
Thanks for this.
I’m assuming that meditating on the rosary is different than reciting it?
Would meditating on the rosary involve meditation on specific phrases from the prayers of the rosary?
Thanks,
Jacques
Hello, JMG and commentariat. Thank you John for your advices about psychic self-defence, I’ll take into consideration your words. I’m surrounded (like everybody in today world) by the Spectacle of politics and advertisements, so I’ve been trying to reduce my exposure to TV and online videos, with certain success. In the personal relationships things, I’ve avoided in the recent past some toxic people. However, I can’t avoid every negative influence in my personal life. There are two or maybe three people near to my everyday life, who I can’t get rid easily of them. They’re very pessimist and cynical people, but for personal motives I can’t avoid them forever. I’m eager to practice your advices, especially I’m interested in discursive meditation, to not to be influenced by these negative people anymore.
By the way, your advice to not to see recent movies isn’t very difficult for accomplishing, at least IMHO: last years Hollywood and European imitators movies have been so wokeized and a lot of bad remakes, so they aren’t worth to see…
Been looking forward to this so much, thank you! And never before have I been so grateful to be the perpetual outsider, I guess like the majority here: we do seem to be a herd of cats in this forum, mostly. And by cats I mean wilful, won’t be herded, and take your pick of a position on the ‘spectrum’. Maybe our faulty wiring is our superpower in these times? Off to meditate on that 😉
Thank you. Having read Dion Fortune and having used salt before, not to mention that I do banishing rituals every day with two other meditations to boot, I would love if you had any info on regaining energy, not even as in psychic vampires, but for someone who has seemingly had their center/aura/essence ripped out of them by a misunderstood narcissistic type. Have you encountered any of that?
I like reading your writing because it usually provides that perfect mix of 60% stuff I agree with, 30% stuff I’m not sure about but is really fun to engage with, and 10% stuff I vehemently disagree with.
This is 100% pure gold. Pure salt 🙂
If anyone here is not doing any of this you need to start right away. Even some is better than nothing. More so than any number of people on any part of the political spectrum what we need are more people who can defend their own minds, get out of groupthink, and interact with each other and the world.
Thank you for this primer. I wonder if you might address specific ways in which some people seem to be prone to “flirting with danger “ physically and/or psychically. People who heedlessly run towards danger, apparently reflexively, seem more common than Darwinism would suggest is likely. I am thinking the Fool in tarot might symbolize some of that sort of energy?
Sir, are there any particular methods or caveats you’d emphasize for teaching the basics to teenagers? I have a couple regularly struggling with the emotions of social drama and the dissipating distractions of all the noise in the world. I’d like to offer something helpful to them, but I don’t want to overwhelm them with too much too soon, or with too much emphasis on my own particular ways of practice.
For context, I am a Christian, but unfortunately my rearing was adjacent to traditions which today focus more on creating curated para-societies for young people than they do teaching them to have a meaningful spiritual life. I’ve had to come to these things on my own, much later in life.
Chemically speaking sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is a salt. Does it also count as salt for occult purposes?
I’m thinking specifically of “clear noxious influences from a place by scattering salt, which is left for a little while and then swept up.” That is often how baking soda used. As an added benefit it’s also much less corrosive than table salt.
“Most human thought consists of binaries: this or that, left or right, progress or regress, and so on endlessly.”
It’s known simply as the “principle of false dichotomy.” Though you haven;t touched upon it, there are several such tools available to distinguish legitimate arguments from disingenuous (groupthink) reasoning. Perhaps you will write about this at some time.
It seems to me that flows of subtle energy in the body always have an emotional quality to them. Is that something hopefuls of obtaining psychological strength should unidentify themselves from? It’s slightly paradoxical because I’ve always thought subtle energy is something to cultivate..maybe it is and we just can’t identify with it.
Interesting post, JMG. I’ve certainly become more aware of the trap of binary thinking following your posts over the last couple of decades. The world is far more gray today versus the black and white of the past.
An example of the influence of other people’s ideas and emotions that I’ve experienced in the last ten years is when I met an empath and she explained why there were certain people and ideas that projected very negative influences on her. Up to that point I considered her view/experience more of a weakness – a lack of backbone. But as she described her emotions and correlated them with contact with certain individuals, I thought more about other people I’d met in my life similar to her, and the idea clicked how each of us is “wired” in ways which can promote positive or negative comfort zones depending on who we’re around.
The terms “empath” and “wired” may be more pop psychology than what you’re describing in your post, but if I understand you correctly, there are methods to adjust or tune one’s “wiring” as a means of defense and deeper understanding of thoughts and emotions and how they interact with others….
Hmmm. So the AI bully bots trying to get me to stop posting stories on AO3 by harassing me if I don’t comply are effectively practicing a crude form of magic? Or the people setting them to work are. Interesting. It does add to my stress level and reduce my enjoyment of writing on that site, even if I have every intention of keeping writing the series they’re currently bothering me about, which is wildly popular by my standards and which I’m enjoying writing.
I could stop the bully bot comments, unless they change tactics, by not allowing guest comments, but I get plenty of real comments from people not signed in I’d rather not lose. I’m also concerned that new writers who don’t realize its AI attacking many people and lack my close to twenty years worth of thickened skin from posting their writing online may be getting bullied off the site.
I think I’ll stick an author’s note on the next chapter telling readers what’s happening so the writers among them who are getting attacked realize it’s not just them, and how to recognize it.
Any other suggestions on what to do about this?
One thing I’ve been doing for getting on for a year is reading a passage in the bible every morning I possibly can, and thinking about it, and about the things that it brings up, and then praying about them. For maybe five to twenty minutes a day, more often on the shorter side than the long. Is this likely to be helpful in psychic defense as well as in getting to know God better? The latter being what I am primarily hoping for, but the former would be a useful bonus if it is the case.
How a tacky american evangelist with a broad south western accent would say: “Ameeeeeeen brother …. wa wa wa – the lord!”
A fine piece again and food for thought.
Not only me who notices these thousands little vile acts of people everyday in public nowadays. And those get caught and stick in your nervous system if you are unprotected;
Do broad and general questions as “why am I uptight” or “what should I do next” also qualify as focal points of meditation, even with all these chains of association it may trigger? While constantly returning focus to the original question, of course, not drifting away entirely.
Where does such a kind of meditation begin, where does mere mental rambling end?
My good friend the now systema practitioner, devoted follower (and to a degree also friend) to Vladimir Vasiliev shuns any kind of conscious thought, form or visualization in connection with therapy of a disturbed nervous system.
He does read up a lot on the research of trauma therapy and the practice of trauma therapy. When one’s development was disturbed very early, he argues, we must go back way behind any spoken words! Way behind any complex breathwork also….back to the primeval instincts we work with, when practicing self defense while keeping ourselves as soft and flexible as possible, in combination with burst breathing as a main practice.
Unfortunately I lack the vocabulary and writer’s gift right now to explain what he means by that, to be free of any attachment to thought, form and procedure, ultimately.
Which in the end is the same, as what this essay speaks of is.
Another friend constantly seeks “healing”, likewise many New Agers do, not that I’d insult him as being one, but “healing” is a very common word these days in poop spirituality. I meant to write “Pop Spirituality” but this one is good to.
So he always seeks out mushroom and ayahuasca ceremonies and other ceremonies with the intent of healing, as a participant, in the hopes of being relieved of his oneruos loads.
I on my behalf do not look for “healing” in this sense. Rather for opportunity, of deeper understanding, for favourable options to take, by my own initiative, to further my ethics, to embark on a better path.
At another point I must put forward this question: why, despite the many flaws and inner conflict I may still have, I have become in many ways more sovereign and stable, all without any kind of “therapy”?
Not mind you because life lacked its ugly experiences. But I remember being much more uptight and easy to tumble now.
If, as many like to say “Therapy” is the only way to restabilize a frightened nervous system, then why has mine improved, at least so much that I am more stable and confident, without ever seeking someone else’s therapeutic help?
(A bit off topic)
JMG has mocked with reason the Harry Potter fake magic. When I’ve reread those phrases, I’ve remembered there’s been opened not very time ago a shop in my town whose stuff to be sold is Potterian gadgets and suits for the local saga fans. Well, we’ll see if my town has enough Harry Potter fans to keep that shop alive in the future…
As one of my early spiritual influences wrote in response to certain practices “Mind is everywhere!”
An attitude which works is “I believe nothing.” I didn’t even understand what was being stated the first time a teacher said that to me, and it was years before I did.
I would say that any form of concentration meditation will have some benefit with respect to feelings and thoughts: you learn how to touch them and let them go.
Vipassana in its more commonly taught form is nothing but “there’s a sense object. Notice it and let it go.” An advanced practitioner can dismiss almost anything, two of my teachers can control their flinch reflex that way and both can simply touch fairly significant pain and it goes away.
Most spiritual traditions also have some form of discursive meditation. Vedanta’s about 50% discursive by weight, at least the traditional form is and was and there’s plenty in Buddhism. Most of spirituality is changing your world view, deep into your subconscious. Logic alone won’t do it, but trying to do it without working thru the logic is similar to rolling five six sided dice and expecting all of them to come up one.
One thing I will note is that occultism is always a bit dangerous. What comes isn’t always what you consciously asked for. And as one of my teachers once said, “spirits are people too. And a lot of people aren’t good people.” Ritual forms are a good way to reduce that risk, but a lot of Saints and Boddhisattvas were not nice people and the same is true of angels. A lot gets justified easily by higher spiritual entities.
Something not talked about much but which every moderately advanced spiritual practitioner knows is that at a certain point you definitely gain the ability to influence other people directly. Control of your own emotions turns out to be very close to control of other people’s emotions and while I don’t know it from my own experience, I’m sure the same is true of thoughts.
Nianfo is also a great method of meditation. I do it everyday.
Speaking as a Catholic, I can say without hesitation that the fastest-acting magic spell I ever did was a Rosary. Money was tight, jobs were scarce, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to feed my family. And so I did a Rosary with the intention “I’m not asking for a lot of money, just enough to pay the bills and keep food on the table.” Within a few hours after doing that, I got an Upwork job invitation that met all those expectations. Thank you again, Virgin Mother of God!
I’d also note that Marian venerations aren’t just for Catholics. Mary will turn away no person who comes to her for assistance. Here’s St. Bonaventure, recognized as a Doctor of the Church for his contributions to theology:
[i]But the grace of Mary was not only most useful to herself, but also to us, to the entire human race. For the grace of Mary gathers in the evil, nourishes and fattens the good, delivers all.[/i]
Many people complain that Catholicism is thinly-disguised Greco-Roman Paganism. I always respond, “I already told you I’m Catholic, you don’t have to sell me on it.” 😉
As an aside for the commentariat, my friend Ahnaf and I recently did a podcast with the esteemed Mr. Greer himself. If you want to listen, it’s available at https://www.notesfromtheendofti.me/p/eurabiamania-139-doom-despair-and
Thank you for this.
I feel the need for psychic defence every say
In the street, at the workplace, and online.
I don’t mean it in a negative way, just my experience
The problem with modern mainstream therapy is that it is based in a materialistic worldview and ignores completely the astral plane and the astral organs of the human body, which I think are pretty important if you want to improve your mental health.
Outside of specific methods of defence and practices to improve oneself and develop one’s Ideal, could the topic also encompass preparing for fear of the unknown – particularly in relation to death of the physical body? Preemptive defence if you will…
It seems to me that one of the greatest obstacles is actually ourselves particularly in relation to fear. You mentioned advertising (fear of missing out), and one of the biggest manipulations in recent years was the deliberately generated fear during 2020 – the thing with fear is that it’s intensity can damage thinking – quite important for someone trying to get people to do things they would normally question.
Manipulating people through fear often sets up a cascade of emotive thoughts and where you say: “the second consists of habits of mind you can cultivate to assist the growth of your ability to perceive and encounter hostile influences on your thoughts and feelings.” – that really gets to the heart of the matter – like a rawhide chew lined with spicy pepperoni.
A way to explore this which IIRC you discussed before is to look at fear of death.
Frank Herbert’s Litany against Fear gave me an idea for a variant/adaptation that I called The Litany to Balance Emotions. A couple of days ago it occurred to me to adapt the variant to work as an exercise of memento mori and the following is the result.
To quote from Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’:
“And that was only one of the many occasions on which I met my death, an experience which I don’t hesitate strongly to recommend.”
If the phrase ‘Die before your death’ is emphasising the importance of preparing – e.g. practice now and save trouble later sort of thing… well, here’s a version of Memento Mori – exploring and overcoming fear; also called – Practising Death:
***
I see death
I pause and breathe
I face death and remain calm
My body dies but I rise above it like a glowing star
I see my body as my heart rises above and beyond
The body is dead but shining consciousness is calm and clear
Death swirls and I am released
I use the inner eye and watch the passage of death
Love abides
And through the inner eye
There is light
And I Am
***
If it is of use, enjoy or adapt to suit your own paths; if anyone sees inconsistencies or faults, please do say.
Bonaventure, you’re most welcome. As for the Big Slimy River, I wish I could say that surprises me…
Josh, my experience as a teacher of meditation and a leader of esoteric groups has been that people who train with mindfulness meditation or the mind-emptying forms of zazen too often end up responding passively to their own thoughts, which is the opposite of the state I’m encouraging. This is why Fortune 500 corporations are so eager to get their employees practicing mindfulness meditation — it keeps them passive, obedient, and calm. As for discursive meditation, no, it’s not just deep concentration. It requires reflective consciousness — not just being aware, but being aware that you’re aware, maintaining an inner distance from the contents of consciousness while still engaging with those contents.
Pedestrian, I’m not at all sure that they’re suitable to 4 year olds, but my Ariel Moravec occult detective novels are apparently picking up a fan base among children — I didn’t intend them as young-adult novels, but they have no age-inappropriate content and seem to speak to kids. What’s more, all the magic in them is real.
Gerry, why don’t you go ahead and put in your application, and see whether they get back to you. 😉
Jacques, not at all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I understood that saying the Rosary involves contemplating a set of five mysteries, one on each of the decades. That’s very meditative.
Chuaquin, daily meditation is your friend! As for movies, well, there’s that…
Miow, “Autism Is My Superpower” is a phrase I’ve seen tolerably often in certain circles!
Arvo, the first requirement there is to process the trauma, and journaling is very helpful for that. The methods of the Order of Spiritual Alchemy are one good way to go about this, though of course there are others. Narcissists can’t actually take your essence — they just like to make you think that they can, so they can get you to build your ego around them. Journaling and regular meditation will help you find your balance again.
Allie, and it’s precisely that so many of my readers are willing to disagree with me when they feel I’m wrong that keeps blogging entertaining for me!
Ken, depends on how you interpret the Fool, of course. The point I’d make is that young people are genetically programmed to seek danger. That’s a normal mammalian adaptation to encourage evolution — get your young, and especially young males, to take lots of stupid risks, and Darwin will have a chance to select the most fit from each generation.
Josh, first, see if you can find some older Christian resources intended for teens and older children. Anything written before 1960 is likely to be worth considering. Second, go ahead and emphasize your ways of practice — not as a requirement, but as “this works for me.” Third, well, since I haven’t raised teens in this lifetime, I’ll be interested to see what others suggest.
Siliconguy, you’d have to experiment and find out.
AA, I’ll consider it.
Luke Z, no, just don’t identify with the emotions. Let emotions become something you experience, and when appropriate, something you experience at a distance.
Drhooves, exactly. Empaths are unusually sensitive to those interactions; autists like me are unusually insensitive to them. There are many variations, and yes, adjustments can be made.
Pygmycory, yes, the bully bots are magical instruments in the hands of unpleasant people. You should certainly discuss the matter publicly — a spell outed that way can lose all its power. As I’ll discuss in an upcoming post, mockery also helps. Your daily practice, btw, is excellent, and is a form of meditation that will give you the benefits I’m discussing alongside its other good points.
Curt, I don’t recommend questions that broad or that emotionally loaded. Your friend the systema practitioner is right when it comes to martial arts — you need to go back before thought to build the reflexes that will make you a good fighter — but that’s not the only game in town. As for therapy, it’s only one option; there are many other ways to do things, but of course therapists have bills to pay like the rest of us…
Chuaquin, we’ll just have to see!
Ian, occultism isn’t primarily about spirits — those practices that fixate on spirits are debased forms of the true occult tradition.
Seeking, systematic repetition of a prayer requires concentration and attentiveness, so yes, it counts.
Kenaz, I’ve heard the same thing from many Catholics.
Tony, good. Those who don’t feel that need aren’t paying attention.
Anon, well, that’s my take, too!
Earthworm, thank you for this!
@Curt (#18):
What I have always done about traumas I have experienced is to turn them into stories of things thatb happened to me that I survived. and learned from. Like a coffee mug I have says, “Scars are tattoos with better stories.” This was the method my paternal grandmother used. She was a good storyteller, and ashe had many stories about her life and the lives of her ancestors. Story-making worked for her, and it works for me.
Terry Pratchett wrote, only half facetiously, that stories exist before a person’s experienced world, and shape how it is experienced by a person. I think that is one of the most profound truths I have ever met with. A person who has no stories is almost defenseless in the school of hard knocks that life is, and is supposed to be.
I just want to say a heartfelt thank you. I have read your writings on this topic for multiple years, yet this feels like the most cogent and clearest articulation so far.
Pygmycory # 17:
I do the same biblical lecture, especially the Gospels, near every day too. Since I read these holy words, I feel better to start the day. Thanks for your comment!
JMG # 26:
Thanks for your advice about meditation…I’ll try to meditate every day.
A few more notes.
The first job of all spiritual meditation is, imo, learning meta-awareness. Not just being aware but knowing what your consciousness is doing. That’s the hard part. The best instruction I’ve used is to have an object of concentration (that can be your discourse, it doesn’t really matter what it is), and make the intention “I will notice when I’m not engaged with the object of concentration and return to it.” When you do, congratulate yourself. Never berate yourself, you want to feel good about getting good at noticing what your consciousness is doing.
On another note, “I am everything” and “I am nothing” are both true, but pick one at the start and don’t do the other till later. For most westerners, “I am nothing” seems better. Ask yourself “did I choose to think/feel/do this?” If you’re doing meditation and you’ve lost the thread, the answer will be “no.” It’s startling for beginners to realize they have almost no control over themselves and there’s often an early intermediate “dark night of the soul” when people realize just how little free will they seem to have.
JMG wrote,
Jacques, not at all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I understood that saying the Rosary involves contemplating a set of five mysteries, one on each of the decades. That’s very meditative.
Yes, that makes sense. I’m pretty new to the rosary and forgot about the mysteries.
Jacques
This is one of your best posts. For the first time I am “getting” magic and gaining some insight into occult thinking. Particularly useful is the portion on discursive meditation, which I have practiced for many years, but have never thought of it from this perspective. Fundamentally I am Taoist. Also useful is the ternaries. Not new to me but the perspective is. Not sure about the salt yet!!
I have long admired your work in Catabolic Collapse, terminal phase of industrial society, Druidism. Now I am starting to understand you better as an occult thinker. this piece clicked in ways others had not.
Thanks, Tom
The Pedestrian wrote, “Does anyone have suggestions for books (and other media) for children that offer/foster a good relationship/understanding of magic and our enchanted world?”
Yes, I heartily recommend four books that each delve deeply into the natural trajectory the conscious self inevitably follows as it awakens to the magical nature of the soul, the world, and the divine. The first is Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit, the story of an expendable doll who stumbles upon the secret of how to become real by simply caring more for the fate of the greater being who loves it than for its own fate. The second is Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, the story of a child who discovers he has the tools to create a world of wonder and magic so thrilling that he loses himself in it, and then has to discover how to find himself again (a there and back again story). The third is David Wiesner’s Flotsam, an extraordinary picture book depicting how the depths of the subconscious will reward any children paying close attention to the unknown world around them with unexpected secrets from magical realms beyond, and how, if they pay close enough attention, they will find that they are a part of an unfolding lineage of magical explorers. The fourth is Renata Bini’s A World Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Folktales: Stories form Six Continents, the most revealing collection of epic myths I have ever found when it comes to providing subtle insights into the architecture and mechanics of the various parts of the larger Self and how they relate.
I can be sarcastic about some things when outing the bully bots. The whole thing definitely deserves mockery. And because that series popular, it should reach a couple of hundred people in the next couple of weeks, with more trickling in later. Some of whom I know are writers on AO3, and some of whom I know have been targeted themselves. I’ve already talked individually to the ones I saw being targeted when I saw it happening, but still. Figure it is useful.
Do you think spinning prayer wheels and praying to Guanshiyin Pusa are also good for Psychic Defense?
Spinning prayer wheels are also a good form of meditation
I’ve been thinking about the various planes and how malevolent influences work down them and through them. We’ve discussed in the past that protective natural magic and practices such as bathing in cold water work on the etheric level, but banishing rituals work on the astral. With banishing rituals and other ceremonial magic being something I can’t do for the foreseeable future, I periodically noodle on how to get around this. My latest thought is about working “upstream” (the mental) and “downstream” (the etheric) from the astral.
My hypothesis is that if you were able to control your mental plane environment of meaning and value sufficiently, things that try to affect you through the astral wouldn’t have much success. This seems to be part of what you are discussing in this post regarding self-development.
In addition, I speculate that if you are careful and consistent about etheric cleansing and strengthening, things coming down from the astral will be unable to “ground out” on the material plane and concretely affect your life, because they can’t get through your etheric protections. Maybe you would still be affected emotionally, but it wouldn’t go farther than that. So say someone curses you: they formulate their intent on the mental plane, act out the magical drama on the astral plane, which affects your consciousness on the astral plane. You become stressed or fearful, say, and that…what? Maybe depletes your etheric force and leads you to become sick, or inhibits your flows of etheric energy and causes you to get jerky and awkward in your movements and have a physical accident? So if you were strongly protected on the etheric level, you might still feel bad, but your etheric and therefore physical body would remain strong and healthy. Or can the influence “skip” the etheric and go straight from the astral to the material to mess you up?
really interesting piece– glad the community voted for this topic!
I just read something in a commentary to Buddhist Pure land practice that reminded me of your description of discursive meditation and finding separation from your thoughts and feelings, “…Just put your attention on the question, Who is the one reciting the buddha-name? This is the basic koan, the fundamental meditation point in reciting the buddha-name. Turn the light around and observe for yourself, until you know the ultimate locus of this mindfulness of buddha. Then delusion will spontaneously break up. When delusion breaks up, that which develops from it is obliterated in the same way.”
Also really enjoyed the advice avoiding groupthink (particularly in media) and finding ternaries.
Chuaquin @ 6, I have found that the best way for me to cope with toxic and negative persons to have on hand a repertoire of anodyne responses, such as Sure, I can see how someone might think that., or You don’t say., or Wow, that’s a new one on me., and the like. That lets Mr. toxic know you did listen but doesn’t give Ms. negative snarkist reason to think you agree with her. If, OTOH, you meant to refer to back-stabbing insinuating troublemakers, that’s a hard one. Being retired, I can easily avoid those; there are none in my immediate neighborhood, fortunately.
If I may respond to Michelle from last week, actually last night, @ 449, this year’s post season playoffs are and have been one for the ages. I have never before envied the wealthy–if you want money, do the work–but I sure would have liked to be at Chavez Ravine these past two days.
The Tarot can be useful for understanding ternarys. 0-1-2 Fool, Magician, High Priestess 3-4-5 Empress, Emperor, Hierophant; and so on.
“… often end up responding passively to their own thoughts, which is the opposite of the state I’m encouraging. … — it keeps them passive, obedient, and calm.”
A friend of mine came to such practices during his divorce. Two things can be said about this: First of all, it helped him tremendously handling the situation with grace and come out not only in one piece but maybe even more whole than he was before. Now some years have passed with my friend continuing his practice relentlessly. And yes, passive, obedient and calm very much nail it. I would not say that these qualities are without merit, though. He is a physician and among other things his practice allows him to endure a truly huge workload with ease, just to give an example. Maybe the Karma he is generating and the habits he is developing this way are exactly what he needs – on the other hand it’s difficult to predict how 10 or 15 more years of continued practice will transform him.
As for discursive meditation – on a MM a while back I asked you for ideas how a “holiday from discursive mediation without stopping discursive meditation” could be arranged, to which you could of course give no answer. I guess I found what I was looking for and it was right before my nose all the time: Just practice the SOP. I found that I really, truly needed a break from meditating on some occult text every evening. Allowing myself to just skip it led to spending much more time with the SOP and each and every element and the prayer at the end gives of course plenty of things to be aware of and think about. From what I read here, I guess it’s a valid approach?
Lastly some observation also related to the SOP: I use to do some stretching every evening. Not yoga, but slow, conscious and systematic anyway. I usually did this after the SOP but have almost accidentally switched to doing the stretching first. And, oh, what a difference this makes for the SOP!
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
I’m currently in the position of being the sole caregiver to a loved one who’s deep into advanced dementia. It’s a stressful situation, but until today’s post it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe I need to put up some psychic defenses for my own protection. Any suggestions on something I can do that wouldn’t put barriers on the connections between us that I believe are beneficial to us both?
Ken @ 10, I think human society needs those people just as it also needs lots of other kinds. If I may use a sports metaphor, the highly competitive, thrive under pressure types can win the World Series or the Superbowl for their team, but they can’t get a team to the Series or the Bowl because they are often too easily bored. For the regular season, you need the athletes who play for love of the game, who would be happy throwing, running and catching in a snowstorm.
My fundamental complaint about capitalism, as well as socialism, is its’ misuse of people’s talents which causes misery for individuals and their loved ones, and nationwide waste of time, money and resources.
“Seeking, systematic repetition of a prayer requires concentration and attentiveness, so yes, it counts.”
Hence why the rosary is such a powerful tool. You repeat the Our Father prayer 11 times and the Hail Mary prayer 53 times throughout a rosary.
Can meditations be (all or partly) sung? I recently set one of the Orphic Hymns to music. (That is, I read a few translations, combined and rearranged until I had something vaguely resembling classical hexameter, and then stole some snippets of tune from Bach.) Takes about 3.3 minutes to sing.
“I’d also note that Marian venerations aren’t just for Catholics. Mary will turn away no person who comes to her for assistance.”
Just curious, do Muslims, Alawites, Druze, Bahai, etc venerate Mary?
Jacques #5: As JMG (#26) said, the Rosary includes meditating on mysteries, one for each decade. There’s a book entitled “Scriptural Rosary” that includes quotations from the Bible relating to the mysteries for each decade, or you can go here: https://scripturalrosary.org/BeginningPrayers.html
JMG,
“If you enjoy visual media, consider watching movies and TV series from at least ten years back… The important thing is to get out of sync with the mass mind of the people you know.”
I had an interesting thought when reading this. We don’t consume much media but I know A LOT of folks who have totally checked out of the current media offerings and just watch old movies and tv shows to avoid the woke messaging. Perhaps the ruling elite made a phenomenal frack up by inadvertently decoupling a whole lot of minds from the current groupthink and now, around a decade after they really started heaping that on, we are entering into an elite replacement cycle.
HV
JMG,
How would a thorough study, contemplation and acceptance of the philosophy of stoicism compare as a way to accomplish psychic self defense with the occult methods? Or are the two ways complementary?
As usual – Ah-HA! And thank you for the help getting me there.
Fortune’s book has been on my mind for a couple of days, so here’s high time to dust it off.
Also, I’d hit burnout with my daily practice, so I took a break… and it restarted itself this week. Hmm…
Alright – back at it.
Viking, you’re most welcome!
Ian, the question of free will becomes much less perplexing when it’s recognized that we all have the capacity for free will, but most people never even begin to develop that capacity. Yes, meditation is a good way to learn just how little you have — and to start learning how to get some.
Jacques, actually, if you keep your attention on the prayers and don’t let your mind wander away from them, that in itself is good training for meditation. Once you add in the five mysteries, you’re off to the races and there’s quite literally no limit to how far you can go, given attentive and focused daily practice.
Tom, I’m delighted to hear this. Though the material I talk about may seem like a complete jumble, it really does all unfold from a single coherent worldview.
Pygmycory, go ye forth with the Sword of Mockery and smite!
Seeking, it depends on how you handle the prayer wheel work. So long as your mind and will are focused on what you’re doing, it’ll do at least some good for psychic self-defense. Prayer? Always, always, always a good idea.
Jennifer, excellent. Yes, and that’s one of the reasons why adepts don’t have to use rituals — their ability to work on the mental plane is such that astral influences get swamped by the descending current; in your example, the attempt to make you stressed and fearful fizzles out because you know how to make yourself relaxed and confident. If you don’t happen to be an adept, putting in an etheric “circuit breaker” is also a very good idea, because astral influences can’t reach the material plane without a bridge through the etheric.
CRJ, I’m delighted to hear the Pure Land tradition has taken this up! Koan meditation is a very good way to develop the skills I have in mind — unlike those forms of meditation that produce a passive response to mental phenomena, the practitioner wrestling with a koan is always active. “Who is the one reciting the Buddha-name?” isn’t one I’ve encountered before, but it’s good — it reminds me of one of my favorite Zen koans, “Show me the face you had before your mother and father were born.”
William, very true! I also find the Tree of Life a first-rate tool for learning to think in ternaries.
Nachtgurke, I hope your friend avoids the downside of that kind of practice. As for the rest, thanks for this! Yes, the SoP can be the basis for simple meditations, and gains power from that. As for stretching, interesting. I wonder if others will have similar experiences.
Tom, if you have the spare time to put a few minutes a day into meditation that might do you a great deal of good, without rupturing any connections at all.
Anon, yes, and then factor in contemplations on the five mysteries, and you’ve got a really elegant system of meditation.
Joan, that’s not really a meditation in the sense I have in mind, but it’s certainly worth doing.
HippieViking, that’s very good to hear. The more people who pull the plug on the media machine, the weaker the mass mind becomes and — at least until a new mass mind establishes itself — the easier it will be for individuals to take those desperately necessary first steps toward thinking for themselves.
Clay, what are you doing for Stoic practice? You can study, contemplate, and accept any philosophy you like until the cows come home, but until you take active control of your own state of consciousness, you’re still going to be a plaything of the mass mind.
Rhydlyd, in my experience, the best cure for “burnout” in daily practices is to keep at them. That feeling usually comes not long before a breakthrough that kicks things up a level or two of functioning.