Author: John Michael Greer

The Great Rehash, Part One: The Best and the Brightest

John Michael Greer305 Comments

July seems to be a good time for explosions, and not just in Fourth of July fireworks displays in the US.  Already this month, a bomb blew up a controversial monument in rural Georgia, while on the other side of the world in Sri Lanka an angry mob stormed the presidential palace and drove the…

The Doctrine of High Magic: Chapter 14

John Michael Greer87 Comments

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 End of the Industrial Age

John Michael Greer386 Comments

The fourth enduring theme of my blogging over the last sixteen years, the decline and fall of modern industrial civilization, is also the one that most people try hardest to misunderstand. It’s not just that so many people blankly insist that it can’t happen and of course we’re on our way to the stars, just…

The Subnatural Realm: A Speculation

John Michael Greer290 Comments

One of the great ironies of the history of ideas is the way that cultures and civilizations go out of their way not to follow up on their greatest intellectual achievements. Look at the trajectory of every great culture, and you’ll find that the supreme breakthroughs of its thinkers don’t happen at the beginning of…

June 2022 Open Post

John Michael Greer493 Comments

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…

The Twilight of Empire

John Michael Greer484 Comments

The third of the topics I’ve discussed at length in my blogs over the last sixteen years, the decline and fall of America’s global empire, is especially timely just now.  I noted in a post last year, while discussing the debacle of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, that the remaining scraps of America’s global hegemony…

The Doctrine of High Magic: Chapter 13

John Michael Greer77 Comments

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 Fire This Time

John Michael Greer340 Comments

Over the last sixteen years I’ve spent blogging, one of my most reliable sources of amusement is the experience of being condemned as a hopeless pessimist by some readers and denounced as a clueless optimist by others.  What makes this even more interesting is that the two groups of critics are usually incensed by the…

May 2022 Open Post

John Michael Greer452 Comments

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…

Running On Empty

John Michael Greer389 Comments

Well, we definitely seem to have passed a threshold of sorts. For most of the sixteen years since I started blogging, one of the things I had to point out constantly to my readers was the slow pace of historical change.  Whenever I posted an essay on the twilight of industrial society, I could count…