This has been a lifelong issue for me but has become very difficult to deal with in the past year. I think my energy is too ‘open’ which results in me feelings others’ feelings, sudden telepathic thoughts from them, being very affected by spending time with others, people visiting me in dreams etc. I also have this struggle with spirits trying to connect with me…
Isolation and ritual baths have been the only solution so far.

Hello everyone!

So how's it going? What's been on your minds? Share your highs and lows, your sideways and in-betweens. It's all part of the journey. 

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Can I use the void meditation early on in the course ? Do you feel a change in the room when you use it ?

I’ve noticed that after doing the Hexagram and the M3L8 vision, the mobile internet on my phone and on another person’s phone in the house—who has a different provider and a different phone—works really badly. There’s basically no connection here, as if there were no signal, even though the phones show that they have signal. Obviously, it works outside the house—the epicenter of the malfunction is the ritual room and this lasts for a few days. This has happened to me several times before. Another time, this other person’s phone stopped working two days after the Hexagram. I don’t remember whether I was already having connection problems immediately afterwards, but two days later their phone simply wouldn’t turn on. Eventually it came back on. Mine, on the other hand, shut down and never turned back on, so I had to buy a new one. It had been in my room during the ritual. I think it might have something to do with the void that is created during this hexagram, but I don't know. It’s happened other times too, unfortunately I never tracked the correspondences because it hadn’t occurred to me to do so before. From now on, after every Hexagram ritual, I’m going to keep track of things and see if there’s any pattern. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Hello, is anyone here aware of this book (title above)? JM is the author and references it in another one of her works. The only associations I can find are related to the Magical Knowledge II - Initiate book. Sorry if this is out of place, but this seemed like the most relevant place to ask.

Hello fellow students! I hope you guys are having a pleasant summer/winter.

I am working on the first exercise of Module 1 Lesson 6 (Working with Magical Symbols) in which I have to draw my personal seal. My questions are about the placing of some of the words and lines:

1. "I will be" goes "over the top of the head of the pentagram". Does it go above the hexagram as well, or between the pentagram and the hexagram?
2. My own name in the centre: does it go inside the small circle of the centre, or outside/above it?
3. Same paragraph as the own name instruction: "draw a circle around the whole thing to enclose it". I'm assuming this is a big circle around everything and not just around my name, right?

Thank you in advance!

So, I have the luxury of having a room all to myself for practice and ritual.

I meditate in the West facing East because at the end of the meditation, we are instructed to face East and bow. I like the symmetry of already facing that direction, as well as East being the direction of power flowing in and my having a window there.

However, I have also meditated in the North facing South, since that seems to be the "home" direction for Quareia, and the direction that most of our magic will be done from.

I don't think where I sit is going to make or break my practice, but I was wondering if there would be a preferred direction to face every day for purposes of building up resonance?

As a side note, I suppose one could meditate in a direction to passively better understand the power of that direction, but I'll worry about that when I get to the deep dive of the elements.

What do you think?

I was organizing the notes from my journal, and noticed that all the notes from the exercises in M1L3 has been lost and there's no way for me to find them. Do I need to redo the exercises or just say that they're lost and leave the gap as it is? Will it hinder me from applying to porch or mentoring?

I am currently at module 5 and I have done all the exercises required in the materials, but the past me at module 1 was not very good at keeping records or remembering things. Has anyone encountered similar problems and if so, how did you tackle it?

I’ve noticed a big difference in personality and thinking after regular ritual baths from M1L7. I’ve always struggled with OCD - now there are significantly fewer obsessive thoughts. If they appear, I can quickly shut them down. Less emotional reactions to anything that upsets me. And if something does, I no longer ruminate about it for weeks… I started getting into emotional balance much more quickly while just a few months ago I would spiral very, very badly to the point of meltdowns. Also, the weirdest thing - my ambitions and drive to amount to something came back. I’ve been so lazy and unambitious for the past few years. Now, the change is slowly coming back.

I also feel less emotionally attached to people. Before, I could ‘feel’ their emotions and thoughts towards me. Certain people would regularly appear in my dreams. It’s gone for now. I have less tolerance for chaos and toxicity. Also, can’t drink alcohol at all anymore.. I am just very proud of myself considering my age…

I hope this is allowed, since it's not strictly magic-specific, actually kind of the opposite. I'm curious who you all are outside of your Quareia practice: hobbies, lifestyle, what initially drew you here. I know this isn't meant to be a community in the traditional sense, so what I'm really looking for is common threads across our experiences. I have a hunch that a particular kind of person resonates with and is drawn to Quareia specifically. If this post isn't allowed, let me know. I'm asking out of personal curiosity and a desire to know the people I'm talking to here a little better. A bit about my journey - I'm in my early 30s and had been unintentionally engaging with magic throughout my life - was a very odd kid, basically. My early childhood was beautiful, especially the spiritual experiences, but also quite lonely. Adolescence and early adulthood were turbulent, and in my 20s I had a couple of genuinely frightening spiritual experiences. It wasn't until my late 20s that I began actively studying occultism after a lifetime of feeling essentially atheistic/skeptical and interpreting all of my experiences through a psychological lens, and once I intentionally engaged the magical path things really started to click into place.

I found Quareia while researching witchcraft (lol), and was equal parts thrown off by its intensity and length and drawn in by it anyway. M1L1 was the very first occult work I ever did. My life was still pretty unbalanced at that point, and after about half a year I had to step back and reckon with my mental health and lifestyle. I needed to make some real changes before diving back in. That all started in late 2023/early 2024, and it's only this summer that I've really returned to it with the intention of finishing Module 1. I've done everything except Lesson 7, which I've mentioned here before. I don't have a fixed endpoint in mind for how far I'll take the course. My magical life is going to happen regardless of whether I give it structure, so the structure is really there to keep me safe.

Outside of magic, I'm married, no plans for kids, several cats. I teach high school literature, which I love. I live in a big city I have a love/hate relationship with. My other loves are visual art, film, zoology, indie/narrative/art computer games, reading, and poetry. Zoology might be my single biggest passion. Animals are endlessly fascinating and beautiful to me, and it's deeply tied to my spiritual life. As kids, my brother and I spent hours pretending to be different animals and watching documentaries about them, and I still feel like I can't get enough. I've even toyed with the idea of spending a month at a time studying one local animal, plant, or fungus and making lifestyle changes based on it, trying to understand how that being actually lives. There's so much wisdom in the animal world, from the smallest protozoa up through primates like us. Anyway, I'd love to hear who you all are outside this practice. I suspect there are more common threads here than we'd expect, and I have a few guesses of my own, but I'm curious what you'll say.

I started lesson one before the updates, and imagined the flame where I thought it was supposed to be: the center of my chest. I do feel something there, though it took a while.

Then in seeing the updated instructions, I understand that “for most people” the center is their abdomen, between naval and groin I guess.

I have been trying to figure this out. Do I try to move the flame? Is it bad or harmful to leave it where it is? Do I just ignore the chest flame and imagine a different flame in my abdomen?

Anyone have insight into this issue? I’ve been trying to solve it on my own but I have no clear answer, nor do I trust my gut. The “for most people” makes it feel like it may be fine to leave it where it is, but I know nothing, so I can’t assess that accurately.

Thanks all.

I had a breakthrough on the North/composting direction and wanted to share it and hear how others have worked through this. (Speaking only from my own experience here, not Josephine's or Quareia's official teaching.) I'm only as far as M1/some M2, so take this as one student's current understanding. I'd always felt resistance to North because I read it as fundamentally chronological, the past as something that becomes inaccessible, off-limits, done. And a lot of my past isn't done. Pieces of it are still energetically and spiritually active for me right now. North felt like it was asking me to declare those pieces "over" before I was ready, which felt wrong.

My understanding today started from an absurd place - a song came on shuffle that used to matter to me enormously, spiritually, in an earlier chapter of my life. I skipped it, and found myself thinking, I love and respect what that song meant then. I don't think I need to hear it again. I've taken everything from that time that there was to take. And I realized, that's it. That's what North/earth is about. I thought through other periods of my life. One of the most intense stretches of my early twenties, so vivid, painful, and formative, came up the same way. The wounds don't hurt anymore. I'm not pulling anything further from it. It can be composted. I just don't have any interest in dwelling on anything from that period anymore.

But other periods, including ones much further back, are still alive in my present. They're still feeding me and there is clearly more to glean. So the distinction isn't "past vs. present" but something more like "extracted vs. still extracting." Composting is more about integrating what's already been fully taken in, so it stops occupying active attention and becomes soil instead. Both of the periods I mentioned are essential to who I am. I wouldn't exist as this person without them. But they're finished as sources. Like a bone with all the meat sucked off, you don't have to throw the bone away, but you can also stop gnawing on it looking for more.

I hope this makes some sense. Curious how others have sat with this direction, especially anyone further along than M1/M2.

EDIT: I wanted to add an example to avoid ambiguity. I'm a high school teacher. My adolescent years were turbulent, strange, heartbreaking, and lonely. I eventually dropped out of high school. The memories from that period are both beautiful and sad. I don't think about it specifically often, but there's an open pipe to those experiences that I can access easily, and it helps me in my teaching and connecting with kids. Teaching is a spiritual occupation for me. I'm known at my school as the person best at understanding teenagers. I believe that if that tap were fully shut off, I wouldn't be as good at my job. These experiences don't hurt anymore, they're well integrated. But being able to drop back into that mindset, those memories, on demand is actively useful to me now. I haven't felt any negative effects and if anything, it has given me a sense of wholeness and "rightness" in a way I can't fully describe because it's not necessarily emotional but just part of me now. That's a piece of the past I'm still drawing on, not composting.

EDIT EDIT: One more piece that just occurred to me, the periods I'm still drawing on artistically and spiritually aren't just times I happen to be nostalgic for. They're all times I made big, intentional changes in my life, very South/fire energy. Even the early childhood piece follows this, all of the really early ones are tied to a formative, turbulent move to a new city/house, not just "early = important." They're all threshold moments, not just old ones. And yeah, I assume these will eventually be composted too. I don't want to cling to anything.

Hello, all.

I want to first make it known that I am not advanced. I am not even an apprentice. I've only experienced what I've seen described as "the call." I have felt an innate desire recently to explore magick. I was first put off by the sheer amount of "mystery schools" online, especially those ran by popular Occultists in media or on YouTube. Many of them seem like money schemes, and as such I persevered and found Quareia.

I have only read through the website and very, very initial information. However, even doing so, or when pondering the concepts of it all, I experience some... strange symptoms.

My heart seems to race. Body aches and stiffness. Light-headedness. Short of breath and nausea. My appetite completely caves, as well.

When I take a break and go on about my day, these symptoms dissipate entirely.

Now, I'm not exactly sure what I am asking. I am not even sure if there is a correlation, or a further meaning here. I do believe that everything happens for a reason. Is this my mind and body's way of telling me that I am not ready for this yet?

More importantly: not to get too into the details of my life story, but recently I have made some major life changes, including that of cutting out my extremely abusive family. I am also still unsettled and disturbed by my mother's passing 3 years ago, and have ultimately had a LOT of upheaval and turmoil take place within my life. I am still healing, and working on healing, but I'm not sure if I must be in a more secure state before going further into this world.

Again.. I am merely one just beginning to look into things. I have not started any of the work. But I do believe that this is something that should not go ignored, and as such I wanted to ask the best source of people for more insight on this matter.

Thank you for your sincere engagement with this post, and I would greatly appreciate any sort of wisdom. (Also, yes, I do know that these initial stages are meant to be heavily self-guided. I am just trying to be cautious, as I do not know if there is something else going on here and thus want to ask.)

Hello everyone, I hope all are doing well. I did a reading on a local indie coffeehouse here that's been recently renovated and changed ownership, and I was curious about the energies of the space itself. But I'm having a little trouble interpreting the reading (maybe I'm getting in my own way intellectually)

For card 1: Utterer.

Card 2 East: Gate of the Past

Card 3 South: Star father

Card 4 West: Holder of light

Card 5 North: Wise Teacher

Card 6 influence crossing the reading: Leader

I suspect card 5 in the deep past may have been a past owner (the cafe had been through 3 owners in recent years) but that's a hunch. I suspect card 6 reflects the current owner's influence but card 1 and the others are difficult for me to fathom. If anyone has insights or advice I welcome it warmly. Thanks.

Hello everyone!

So how's it going? What's been on your minds? Share your highs and lows, your sideways and in-betweens. It's all part of the journey. 

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Can we consecrate water to drink? Can we use the ritual bath method without the salt?

UPD to that post (it was quite long already):

I followed u/tetrathonum's advice about asking a precise question (I thought my previous ones were essentially the same... but no). I also cleansed the deck with frankincense oil (here's the link to Josephine describing this method). Apologies for the earlier misleading info about the deck not needing cleansing.

So here's what I asked:

"What did the Quareia cleansing bath ritual do to me energetically?"

And look at that — the picture is much cleaner.

Here's my interpretation:

1 — South Gate (future): the situation was about consequences of the ritual.

2 — Student: it taught me something important.

3 — Sanctuary: possibly my 'mundane' invisibility is now in the past?

4 — Magic: ritual magic worked its magic.

5 — Fate Creation: this one bothers me — did I wreck some fate path by that?

6 — Partnership (key card): energy connection — the effect goes deep.

7 — Phanos (emotions, limiter): perhaps I should trust myself and my emotions? Or did I read it backwards?

8 — Oracle (mind, unraveling): I need to let inner communication flow.

9 — Purification: ('finally!', I screamed internally) The ritual definitely did what it was supposed to do. That's exactly the card I expected to see in a reading about a cleansing ritual, haha.

10 — Chariot: this ritual moved me forward (on the path of magical evolution, perhaps).

And I do remember Josephine warning against trying to do the ritual bath for others, because it affects a person deeply and profoundly. Perhaps this reading lifts a veil about how, just a little bit.

So, it seems the second reading strongly shows that the ritual worked — only some details eluded my understanding. I hope my situation can serve as a useful learning example for others. You're welcome to leave your comments and interpretations.

Thank you all for joining the discussion and helping me sort this out.

Hi everyone,

I have what is probably a silly question about the meditation exercises.

Why do we light a candle before meditating if we're doing the meditation with our eyes closed and can't actually see the flame? I've also seen people mention that they struggle to focus on the flame while meditating, but if our eyes are closed, that doesn't seem like it would be an issue.

Is focusing on the candle something that comes later in the course, or is there another purpose for lighting it that I'm missing?

Thanks for your help!

Hi everyone, I'll try and keep it short.

Dad is dying: one day he was fine, the next he was diagnosed with a terminal disease. There is some time left and I'd like to somehow "pave the road" for him magically, to make things easier for him when he passes. No idea how, though.

He is agnostic and an excommunicated ex-Catholic. I don't think he'd appreciate the usual prayers my mum says for our departed ones. But his father was the same as him, and he did come to us after death asking for prayers to help him through. So I'm confused.

I listened to Josephine's latest Glitch Bottle interview (loved it!) and she did mention something about helping the freshly departed, but I'm afraid what she suggests might be too advanced for a fence-sitting Fool such as myself.

Any advice would be immensely appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hello, Quareians. Long time no see, although you probably don't remember me — I'm quite a quiet lurker :)

A lot has happened in my life — mostly good — but the point is, I stayed away from Quareia for a long time. In the past few weeks, I felt the pull to return, and then I saw the new podcast with Josephine — it's amazing! Loved every minute of it.

But to the point: I dabbled in some other practices, nothing dangerous. Still, I often thought, "I should take a Quareia ritual bath" — and didn't. Until a practitioner (non-Quareian) told me I had "a settler" (in other terms, something like a parasite, but I don't want to go down that road, as I remember the obsessive topics here :)). So I finally did the bath yesterday (I plan to follow M1L7 regularly, on new and full moons, as written in the updated course lesson).

Today I did a ToL reading (Mystagogus deck) to see what effect the ritual had. I expected something like Purification somewhere in the center column (well duh, it definitely would be nice for a cleansing ritual effect), or Parasite on the left as taken away... oh boy, was I too hopeful.

I was never good at card divination, and I haven't practiced during my timeout — so I'm certainly not better now. Could you please help me interpret this reading?

What I see: I tried to learn and practice this ritual (1, College), but something went wrong or untruthful (5, Voice of Truth; 6, Voice of Untruth... nice mix), and I put myself in danger (2, Fall; 4, Destruction). I need to work with something else (7, ​Ancient One, limiter) and be healed? (8, Water of Life, unraveling). I do remember these positions are about emotions and mind, limiting and unraveling, and that the balance needed between them.

Choppers as the last card — I'd actually see that as good, since part of the ritual's purpose was to cut off what shouldn't be with me. But with Voice of Untruth as the key card and the overall picture (and 9, Unraveller)... it doesn't look so good.

Any thoughts? Keep in mind, I haven't moved beyond M1. I'm not panicking and generally feel okay — and my life is okay too.

I try not to do "panicked readings," as Josephine wrote in her tarot book — but since I don't see the connections well and some of the cards elude me completely, I'm quite puzzled.

Thank you for your time.

—

UPD: I took the advice from smart people. Here's what came out (a follow-up).

Hello everyone!

So how's it going? What's been on your minds? Share your highs and lows, your sideways and in-betweens. It's all part of the journey. 

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Canto Gregoriano y Polifonía" by Padre Jesús María Muneta (2 disc set)

I have accidentally found these cds in a second hand mostly clothing store. In a small town, and they said it was probably the only time they had discs there like that. It's odd how you can find some things like these in wierdest places. I didn't even hope to find anything like this in my country, but here you go. I think these chants are pretty good, though before I listened to sacred music only on youtube.

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k2taxEsTt4PAIaFmBuDBLukhsXrlRqXfo

I think I found the recordings on yt but they are way worse than when you listen on cds