Category: Monthly Post

The Grand Mutation: An Astrological Interlude

John Michael Greer225 Comments

Over the last year, and especially over the last month, I’ve fielded a flurry of questions about the astrological meaning of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that took place on Monday. I’ve been intrigued to note that quite a few of those questions have come from people who admit they don’t know much about…

Knock and Give the Password

John Michael Greer208 Comments

Over the the course of the last year we’ve explored quite a bit of the magical history of America, from colonial times up to the coming of Theosophy and the dawn of the golden age of American occultism.  Before we go deeper into that golden age in all its weirdness and wonder, it’s time to…

The Great Leap Backward

John Michael Greer577 Comments

If you happen to read the edgier end of the internet these days, you’ve probably seen talk about something called the Great Reset.  I’ve been asked several times already what I think of it, and since the shape of the industrial world’s future is a longtime interest of mine, I was quite willing to discuss…

Theosophy: The Golden Age

John Michael Greer134 Comments

At the end of our last exploration of America’s magical history two months back, the fledgling Theosophical Society had apparently breathed its last.  Its original branch in New York City had stopped meeting, the handful of lodges elsewhere were struggling, and its two most important and knowledgeable members—Emma Hardinge Britten and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky—had both…

What Evil Lurks

John Michael Greer269 Comments

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…

Theosophy: The Dog and the Wolf

John Michael Greer114 Comments

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…

The Secret of the Alchemists

John Michael Greer105 Comments

Most of the figures we’ve discussed in our survey of America’s magical history came from very humble backgrounds, and there’s a reason for that.  While social mobility has been an American ideal for a very long time, it’s always been subject to sharp though unmentionable limits, mostly rooted in the desire of those already prosperous…

A Prophet and a Loss

John Michael Greer250 Comments

A word or two about history before we proceed. Two weeks ago, in response to my discussion of John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed, I fielded the inevitable comment from the inevitable reader who insisted that Johnny Appleseed was a Bad Person because he played a role in the westward expansion of the United States. When…

The Flame and the Crucible

John Michael Greer157 Comments

Our journey through the hidden history of American occultism has focused so far entirely on traditions brought here from elsewhere—the German Rosicrucian and Pietist traditions studied by Johannes Kelpius, the classic tradition of English astrology practiced by Joseph Stafford, and the varying traditions of folk magic that crossed the Atlantic with captive Africans from the…

In the Footsteps of High John

John Michael Greer129 Comments

Two weeks ago, while winding up the story of the colonial Rhode Island astrologer Joseph Stafford, I noted that the kind of occultism practiced by Stafford and Johannes Kelpius—the learned occult traditions of the Renaissance, which were experiencing their last golden autumn in Europe during the years when the American colonies were being founded—was by…