John Michael Greer's Blog, page 27

October 2020 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 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. I’m sure everyone on the planet is well aware that the US is having a presidential election next week. I’m just as sure th...

What Evil Lurks

One of the pleasant side effects of the series of vignettes about America’s magical history I’ve been posting here of late has been the chance to look into some of the odder aspects of this nation’s trajectory through time.  The magical heritage of the United States has spread into some very strange corners of our culture and history, and chasing those down has very often been entertaining. That’s what I was doing a week ago, following the track of Theosophy through the colorful realm of 1930s p...

The Cosmic Doctrine: The Law of the Seven Deaths

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 turning 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...

The Distant Glint of Glass Beads

In July of this year, when I revived the custom of asking my readers what they wanted to hear about on the fifth Wednesday of that month, I got plenty of suggestions, ranging from the future of industrial society to the metaphysics of sex.  Still, of all the requested I fielded, I have to admit that the one that pleased me most was that I should write something about the novels of Hermann Hesse. There’s some history to that request, of course, and we might as well begin there.

Remember this?

Ima...

The Mask of Disenchantment

When I noticed at the beginning of the month that September had five Wednesdays, and I didn’t have anything in mind to post here for the fifth of them, I asked my readers for their suggestions, following an old custom here that I’ve recently revived. As usual, the resulting discussion was lively and quite a few topics were tossed out for discussion; those that got a significant number of votes will get posts of their own in due time. By a substantial factor, though, the majority wanted me to fol...

September 2020 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 long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic.

One thing before we get started — the Kickstarter campaign to fund Vintage Worlds 2 and 3, the forthcoming anthologies of science fiction set in the...

Theosophy: The Dog and the Wolf

The dog and the wolf, from the Book of Lambspring

In last month’s discussion of America’s magical history, we explored the nineteenth-century transformations of alchemy into a system (or more precisely several systems) of spiritual transformation that had little or nothing to do with furnaces, retorts, and chemicals. It’s a nice bit of synchronicity that the story we’ll be discussing this month is best framed by an alchemical metaphor.  The metaphor in question is found in a number of old Europe...

The Cosmic Doctrine: The Law of Limitation, Part 2

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 turning 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...

A Few Notes on Synchronicity

Back in July, when I realized there were five Wednesdays on that page of the calendar and I didn’t have anything lined up for the fifth, I asked my readers what they wanted to hear about. The resulting discussion saw quite a few possibilities bruited about, and so I decided to devote an upcoming post to each topic that (a) was of interest to my readers and (b) I had something to say about. The first two of those—an overview of the Long Descent, the slow ragged process of decline now under way th...

August 2020 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 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!

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