This January has five Wednesdays, and in the usual way of this blog, the fifth Wednesday gets an essay on whatever topic the readers select by vote. As usual, it was a lively contest, but this time one of the perennial underdogs—warfare in the deindustrial age—came out on top. That didn’t surprise me greatly. The…
Category: Fifth Wednesday Post
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…
The Law of Consequences
It’s a longstanding custom on this blog that whenever there are five Wednesdays in a month, the readers get to vote on what they want me to write about for the fifth Wednesday. Far more often than not the resulting contest is a lively one, and this month’s was no exception. By a significant plurality,…
On Magic, Manhood, and Masculism
One of the traditions that’s evolved over the lifetime of this blog is that whenever there are five Wednesdays in a month, the readers get to vote on what subject I write about for the fifth Wednesday post. That’s landed me in some complicated territory over the years, and this month will be no exception.…
The Perils of the Pioneer
One of the longstanding traditions of this blog is that when there are five Wednesdays in a month, the commentariat gets to propose and then vote on the subject for the fifth Wednesday post. The winner this time is the Austrian occultist Rudolf Steiner, one of the most interesting figures in twentieth century intellectual history.…
The Castle of Heroes
I really wonder sometimes how many people nowadays realize just how drastically the great occult revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has been scrubbed from the officially approved histories of our time. It’s hard to discuss the matter without bringing in words like “censorship.” Whole chapters of the cultural history of the…
The Subnatural Realm: A Speculation
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…
Slack! An Irreverent Proposal
For quite some time now, utterances from the elite classes of the industrial world have had a sidelong relationship at best to the reality that most of us inhabit. Recent weeks have seen the surreal quality of official pronouncements slam into overdrive, however. I first noted some time ago that the most difficult job in…
Notes on the Lemurian Deviation
It’s been more or less standard practice on this blog for a while now that, whenever there are five Wednesdays in a month, I ask my readers what they want to hear about, and write an essay on that subject for the fifth Wednesday’s post. That’s resulted in some of the stranger essays I’ve published…
The Way of Participation: A Response to Paul Kingsnorth
A fair number of my readers also follow the writings of the English writer Paul Kingsnorth, who writes from time to time (as of course I also do) on the future of industrial society. Thus it came as no great surprise a little while back when several readers asked me to comment on his recent…