Category: Not the Monthly Post

The Power of the Mind

John Michael Greer278 Comments

While Andrew Jackson Davis was attracting huge crowds with his discourses in trance, and the Fox sisters were listening to tapping noises, another important 19th century American occultist was pursuing his researches in a small town in Maine.  His name was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, and his impact on the magical history of America would be…

In the Company of Angels

John Michael Greer215 Comments

So far in our exploration of the hidden history of American magic, we’ve talked mostly about people whose place in this nation’s history has been forgotten—or, to be a little more frank, erased.  The one exception, John Winthrop Jr., is tolerably well known by those who have some reason to recall the history of colonial…

The Arts of the Cunning Folk

John Michael Greer167 Comments

Two weeks ago we talked about the way that Bakongo spirituality made its way to the American colonies along with enslaved Africans from the Congo basin.  Once here, it adapted to the conditions of slavery and the radically different environment of temperate and subtropical North America to become the earliest form of hoodoo—one of the…

The Astrologer of Narragansett Bay

John Michael Greer176 Comments

A month ago I recounted the story of Johannes Kelpius, the German occultist who crossed the Atlantic in 1694 with his fellow initiates of the Chapter of Perfection to make a new life for themselves in the woodlands of eastern Pennsylvania.  That made a good starting point for the discussion I want to set in…

A Magic Republic

John Michael Greer290 Comments

Have you ever noticed that in America, magic is always mixed up in the popular imagination with premodern Europe?  That’s not just an affectation of the Neopagan movement, though it certainly shows up there in spades—consider the way that Neopagan traditions newly coined in America so reliably claim fake origins somewhere in Europe, or for…

The End of the Dream

John Michael Greer440 Comments

It may not be quite accurate to say that it’s all over but the shouting, but something of that sense seems to be catching on in America these days. The collapse of the Democratic attempt to get rid of Donald Trump via impeachment is one straw in the wind; another, even more telling, is the…

To the Shores of a Surging Ocean

John Michael Greer574 Comments

I hope all of my readers who, like me, celebrated the solstice on Saturday had a grand time; that those who celebrated Hanukkah on Sunday did likewise; that those who celebrate Christmas are having a grand time today; and that those who celebrate other holidays around this time of year are feeling similarly blessed in…

A Place For Books

John Michael Greer331 Comments

As one of my readers pointed out last week—tip of the hat to Patricia Mathews—we’ve now embarked on the most sacred season of the American year, the season of Salesmas, when the conspicuous consumption fairy sprinkles cheap plastic glitter over all those who max out their credit cards to place the latest fashionable offerings on…

Dancers at the End of Time, Part Two: “Facts are the Enemies of Truth”

John Michael Greer385 Comments

Last week, in Part One of this post, we explored the strange way that many people these days seem to have lost the ability to think clearly, or at all, about certain political questions.  Insights from philosopher Alan Jacobs and a thoughtful blogger who goes by “Jane” helped us close in on the mental dysfunction…

Dancers at the End of Time, Part One: The Flight from Reason

John Michael Greer369 Comments

For quite some time now I’ve been mulling over how to talk about one of the strangest features of our era—the way that certain very simple kinds of reasoning have abruptly dropped out of use among precisely those prosperous, well-educated, well-informed people whom you might expect to cling to them no matter what. Fortunately a…