John Michael Greer's Blog, page 15

The Destiny of Disenchantment

The last three posts in our ongoing discussion of the history of enchantment have examined the work of three influential writers on the history of consciousness—Ken Wilber, Owen Barfield, and Jean Gebser. All three of them, as we’ve seen, discuss the state of consciousness summed up in the word “enchantment,” the condition in which the world is experienced as alive, conscious, and magical.  Its opposite is the state of disenchantment, in which the world is experienced instead as a random assortm...

The Doctrine of High Magic: Chapter 22

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend reading the earlier posts in this sequence first; you can find them here.  Either way, grab your tarot cards and hang on tight.

If you can read French, I strongly encoura...

Against Enchantment 3: Jean Gebser

In the months just passed I’ve pursued an exploration of the myth of disenchantment—the notion that our civilization, for the first time in human history, has shaken off the comforting daydreams of myth and magic in order to see the universe in all its cold and uncaring reality.  So far, in the course of that exploration, we’ve heard from Max Weber, who gave the idea of disenchantment that convenient label; Jason Josephson-Storm, whose book a few years ago challenging Weber’s idea helped launch ...

February 2023 Open Post

Yes, I’m back from last week’s brief hiatus. What happened, to summarize a very busy week too briefly, is that I took the train to New Jersey to receive six initiations in two different esoteric traditions, with somewhat limited internet access during that trip. Now I have a lot of new material to study , but that’s nothing new and won’t get in the way of the usual conversations here. So…

This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly (well, more or less!) open post to field questions and encour...

A Brief Hiatus

I’m going to be taking a week off at this point. No, nothing’s wrong — I ended up having an unexpected opportunity and need more free time than my schedule usually permits to take advantage of it. I’ll be back with an open post next Wednesday, and continue with the current sequence of posts on March 1st. See you soon!

The Doctrine of High Magic: Chapter 21

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend reading the earlier posts in this sequence first; you can find them here.  Either way, grab your tarot cards and hang on tight.

If you can read French, I strongly encoura...

Against Enchantment 2: Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield

Last month’s exploration of the history of enchantment began with a look at the other side of the equation—the disenchantment of the world mapped out by Max Weber—and then a survey of the ways that enchantment and disenchantment were understood by Ken Wilber, one of the modern thinkers who’s built a theory of history on Weber’s thesis. Wilber’s insistence that myth and magic belong to an outmoded stage of human development is far from unique to him, of course; it’s an attempt to gi...

January 2023 Open Post

This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly (well, more or less!) open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic. (Well, with one exception: there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the current virus panic ...

Against Enchantment I: Ken Wilber

Two weeks ago we talked about Max Weber’s claim that the disenchantment of the world is one of the basic elements of modernity, Jason Josephson-Storm’s counterargument that Weber was engaged in an attempt to erase the presence of magic and enchantment in modernity, and the way that Weber’s claim, inaccurate as it is, expresses one of the core beliefs of modern culture. No matter how pervasive magic, astrology, and other practices of enchantment are—and they are extraordinarily widespread in mode...

The Doctrine of High Magic: Chapter 20

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend reading the earlier posts in this sequence first; you can find them here.  Either way, grab your tarot cards and hang on tight.

If you can read French, I strongly encoura...