Somalian-born author and erstwhile New Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali caused quite a flutter in several dovecotes the other day when she published an essay announcing that she had given up atheism and converted to Christianity. The Christian writers I’ve read who discussed her essay were of course pleased by it, while most of the others…
Surviving Catabolic Collapse: A Case Study
One of the longstanding traditions on this blog is that when there are five Wednesdays in a month, my commentariat gets to propose topics for the fifth Wednesday post, and whichever topic gets the most votes ends up becoming the theme I write about for that post. That’s landed me in a pickle or two…
November 2023 Open Post
This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly 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…
Science as Enchantment
All things considered, this may seem like an odd time to start talking again about the nature, history, and future of enchantment. That was one of the core themes I explored in posts during the first half of the year, granted, and I had much more to say about it when the pressures of a…
The Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 7
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…
The Relevance of Tentacles
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction,…
October 2023 Open Post
This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly 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…
Bracing for Impact
I think it was Lenin who said that there are decades in which nothing happens, and then there are months in which decades happen. It’s a useful reminder that the pace of historic change is not smooth. We’ve all seen immense changes take place over the last few decades, but in the industrial world, at…
The Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 6
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…
A Primer of Magical Combat
I’ve mentioned in previous essays here that our civilization’s age of reason is ending. That’s a familiar event in history. At a certain point in the life cycle of every civilization—about the time that its artistic traditions are really hitting their stride, and before political and economic centralization sets in—intellectuals become entranced with the idea…