John Michael Greer's Blog, page 25

The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic: Preliminaries

Last month we wrapped up three years of monthly discussions of The Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune, arguably the twentieth century’s most important work of occult philosophy.  I think it was time well spent.  I enjoyed the discussions, and I gather from reader comments that at least a few other people have had the same reaction to them. The inevitable question is what book to tackle next. There are plenty of good choices, and I was in a fine quandary about that until last week, when the obvious ...

A Sense of Déjà Vu

Déjà vu—the sudden insistent feeling that you’ve encountered the present moment before—can be one of the oddest of human experiences. Sometimes, though, it happens for perfectly prosaic reasons. Right now, as I look at headlines and certain other indicators, I’m having a very strong case of déjà vu for reasons that require only the simplest explanation.  Sometimes, after all, you really have been there before.

Twenty years ago, for example, I could look back at the energy crises of the 1970s and...

Rice and Beans in the Outer Darkness

Psychotherapists figured out a long time ago that a roundabout approach is necessary if you want to tease out the origins of any serious psychological problem. You won’t get there by any direct approach, since the defensive maneuvers the patient uses to keep from thinking about the real source of his problems will keep you from getting there either. That’s why dreams, slips of the tongue, and the like played so large a role in psychotherapy, back before the medical profession stopped helping peo...

March 2021 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.

Before we proceed, a heads up to readers — my book Inside a Magical Lodge is now available in a new edition from Aeon Books....

A Useful Kind of Madness

Like the last two installments in this blog’s discussion of the magical history of America, which you can read here and here, this post will discuss one of the factors that helped make the golden age of American occultism the astonishingly weird and creative period that it was. That said, the theme of this latest glance backward may not seem to have much connection with occultism, at least when compared with the secret societies and mass-market publications we explored in those earlier glimpses....

The Cosmic Doctrine: The Law of the Attraction of the Centre

This week we finish up a monthly discussion of The Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune, which I consider the most important work of 20th century occult philosophy. Climb in and fasten your seat belts; it’s turned out to be as wild a ride as I expected. If you’re just joining us now, please go back and read the previous commentaries, which are listed here; the material covered in these earlier posts is essential to making sense of what follows.

As noted in earlier posts, there are two widely availabl...

Strange Days Dawning

Late in 2019 I wrote a series of posts entitled “Dancers at the End of Time,” sketching out certain weird and deeply troubling shifts in the collective consciousness of our time; you can read them here, here, and here, if you like.  They got about as much attention as my posts here generally do, and I went on to other topics. The shifts I was tracking at that time haven’t gone away, however, and at this point we’ve entered into a very strange landscape of thought.  Three data points, all having ...

February 2021 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.

With that said, have at it!

The post February 2021 Open Post appeared first on Ecosophia.

A Gathering of Long Lost Friends

Regular readers will be aware that many of last year’s posts on this blog were devoted to what we might call the history of American magic, or perhaps the magical history of America—the part of the history of the United States that deals with the rise, flourishing, and (most recently) neglect and collective erasure of our own occult traditions. Most of last year’s story had to do with the arrival of occult teachings from Europe and Africa in colonial times, their development in the years that fo...

The Cosmic Doctrine: The Law of the Attraction of Outer Space

This week we continue a monthly discussion of The Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune, which I consider the most important work of 20th century occult philosophy. Climb in and fasten your seat belts; it’s turned out to be as wild a ride as I expected. If you’re just joining us now, please go back and read the previous commentaries, which are listed here; the material covered in these earlier posts is essential to making sense of what follows.

As noted in earlier posts, there are two widely available...