With this post we begin 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 belts; it’s going to be a wild ride. As noted in earlier posts here, there are two widely available editions of The Cosmic…
Bad Faith and Worse Hairstyles
For the last few weeks I’ve been making my way through the dense prose of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, the most important work to come out of the existentialist school of philosophy. Why? Partly for no better reason than that a cheap paperback copy happened to turn up in the philosophy section of a…
On Occult Literature: A Diversion of Sorts
It so happens that last week’s post on reading books by dead people had a curious echo. In a forum I frequent where occultism is the subject of discussion, an earnest young person put up a plaintive post, asking why so much classic occult literature is so boring to read. As usual in such forums,…
The Choice of a Canon
Last week’s post on the spooky dimensions of reading—the one-on-one encounter, in the silent places of the mind, with another person’s thinking—sparked a lively discussion on the comments page, and no shortage of interesting questions. One of the points that was brought up repeatedly, though, focused on one of the points that I didn’t address…
The Taste of Another’s Thoughts
We’ve taken a somewhat rambling route in our discussion of how each of us can haul ourselves up out of the swamp of abstractions in which modern industrial society is sinking fast, and find our way to the solid ground of things that actually matter. I know some of my readers have been baffled or…
May 2018 Book Club
This week’s post is the latest of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written or recommend. Our theme for the present is Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Spiritual Ecology of History” (pp.119-131). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and comments focused…
A Tune for Mountain Dulcimer
For some time now I’ve been thinking about one of the core patterns underlying recent history here in the United States. It’s a pattern that can be traced from colonial times onward, and it offers unexpected insights into the mess the United States is in just now; the one difficulty with it is that nearly…
April 2018 Open Post
As announced earlier, this blog will host an open space once a month (well, more or less!) to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers, and this is the week. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill…
Returning to the Commonplace
There are times when the twilight of the American century takes on a quality of surreal absurdity I can only compare to French existentialist theater or the better productions of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and this is one of them. Over the weekend, in response to a chemical-weapons incident in Syria that may or may…
April 2018 Book Club
This week’s post is the tenth of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written. Our theme for the present is Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Spiritual Ecology of Initiation” (pp.101-118). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and comments focused on that…