This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly 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, no endless rehashes of questions I’ve already answered) but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.
First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.
Second, I’ve had various people try to launch discussions about AIs — that is to say, large language models (LLMs) and the utilities they power — on this and my other forums. The initial statements and their follow-up comments always end up reading as though they were written by LLMs — that is, long strings of words superficially resembling meaningful sentences but not actually communicating anything. That’s neither useful nor entertaining. Thus I’ve decided to ban further discussion of this latest wet dream of the lumpen-internetariat here.
Finally, a reminder: this is the last post I’ll make on this blog until June 18, and my Dreamwidth journal will also be on hiatus until sometime around then. During part of the interval I’ll be in England; readers on that side of the planet may want to know that I’ll be doing two booksignings in London and then some talks and other activities in Glastonbury. Details are here. Regular reader Guillem has set up a Dreamwidth page so that attendees can arrange travel and lodging together if they so wish. As a frugal and energy-saving project, this fits in with just about everything I discuss, and I encourage everyone to consider it. You can find it here:
https://glastonburyarrangements.dreamwidth.org/
With that said, have at it!
I know that you are not fond of people just positing links in the comments section but I thought this recent article might raise your eyebrows about a real “Second Religiousness” gaining steam as foreseen by Oswald Spengler!:
https://www.compactmag.com/article/faith-makes-a-quiet-comeback/?ref=compact-newsletter
This part is particularly noteworthy:
“In 2018, just four percent of 18 to 24 year-olds in the United Kingdom attended church at least once a month, according to Talking Jesus, a survey of 4,000 adults. By 2022, that figure had quadrupled. Among young men, once assumed to be the most religiously disengaged, attendance has soared from 4 to 21 percent; among young women, from 3 to 12 percent”
That is pretty rapid for just a few years.
Hello JMG and everyone!
I am interested in reading some works about the nature of religious belief; i.e., how does someone come to have faith exactly. For example, most Christians, I assume , begin from the feelings, intuition and inner experience they have of “Christ,” not from a belief that the Bible is the “sole inerrant word of God.” In other words, inner, empirical experience of the benefits of faith is how belief begins, and this leads to theological conclusions. Any suggested readings would be appreciated. I’m referring to all types of religious belief here, not just those of Christianity.
Also, please share any of your own thoughts on how a person comes to their individual religious faith.
Thanks!
Hope everyone here has a good few weeks. Here is an old underheard song my friend DJ Frederick played recently on the CTRN shortwave show from Imaginary Stations… It fits well with the theme of peak oil.
Bo Buchanan: Pipeline Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiKhcmI-z0k&ab_channel=ZachBorden
I will take this opportunity to remind all that the 8th Annual Ecosophia Midsummer Potluck will be held June 21, 2025 at our house, behind the Charles Dexter Ward Mansion in Providence, RI. Only 24 days to go! Sign up here. I look forward to your presence, and once again, whomever comes from furthest is welcome to stay in our guest room.
I’ve discovered the best anti-depressant that really works in our highly regimented, spiritually empty world, and that is splitting firewood. Something about the sweat and primal nature of the act and the knowledge that you’ve done something to secure your future just washes away any stress or anxiety I get from waiting in traffic or staring at a computer screen. With all the downed trees and storms we’ve had lately, I’m sure this is an anti-depressant that won’t be subject to any global trade disruptions!
@Phutatorius: re: Dhalgren. I was inspired by our chat last month and I’m about halfway through another read of the mighty tome. Actually, I’m listening to an audiobook of it while at work (and got the audiobook from work), which gives it a different feel. But the narrator is very good. It’s as fantastic as ever, IMO.
For me, it’s a puzzle that keeps drawing me back, and I never get tired of the dialogue. Read in light of the visions discussed by JMG here of empty suburbs and cities, and learning from you more about Delany’s own visions where, “he has repeatedly spoken and written of seeing burned-out sections of great American cities that most people didn’t see” puts it into a new light. If artists sometimes act as vessels, than it I wonder if all those visions he had were a future echo that he put down in the book.
Reading it also with the notion of “multistable perception” in mind, and that at any moment subjectivity might shift to allow another structure through, or that the mobius strip structure will flip its curvature and leave me in a different space -illuminating!
This puzzled me:
In a tourist gift shop in Guelph, Canada I saw t-shirts whose tag said “Made in Honduras”.
The tag also said “Imported into Mexico” then “Imported into Colombia” then “Imported into EU” (at an address in London, UK), after which the shirts were apparently shipped to Canada to be sold.
If the goal of a company is to maximize profit, how can a journey from Central America to North America (Mexico) to South America to Europe and back to North America be the most economical way to get a product to market?
Anyone know what’s going on here?
Listening to an old recording of a talk by Hannah Arendt, I was struck by something she already hinted at decades ago:
In an age when mobility, flexibility, discontinuity reign supreme, something else which previous ages with different priorities had never put much focus on, must become the counterweight, a source of continuity.
And she implied that the body was that which seemed to anchor modern Man.
And whether we watch people scrawling protective spells in eight different languages they have no relation to onto their bodies (just to be sure), J. Kushner saying that his generation will be the first to not die, global lockdowns getting enforced to ‘save lives’ (i.e. meat units) or environmentalists poisoning everything in their path to then be able to grow that one rare holy plant they identify with, that’s what we are witnessing.
Dear Mr. Greer,
Thank you for the work you do. I would like to ask your opinion on the sudden extreme change in the media’s reporting on Biden. You may recall that it was just one year ago that the media angrily denounced anyone who claimed Biden was too old to serve a full second term as a “racist conspiracy theorist” and trotted out so-called “neuroscientists” to proclaim that Biden had never shown any signs of physical or cognitive decline whatsoever despite the fact that we could all see with our own eyes that he couldn’t even walk up the stairs or across the stage without falling down and forgetting where he was.
In stark contrast, just last week CNN’s Jake Tapper himself released a book about “Biden’s decline and its coverup” in which he provides the testimony of some 200 people in the administration about just how completely incapable of doing his job Biden became by the end of his first term (both due to dementia and, as we’ve now learned, prostate cancer), as well as the extreme lengths they went to hide him from the public and spread literal misinformation about his true condition in order to scam the public into electing an 82-year old man who was supposed to spend his entire second term in a wheelchair.
While one obvious motivation for writing the Jake Tapper book was money (it’s currently the bestselling book in the country), it seems to me that there must be something else going on here in this sudden 180-degree change in the media’s coverage of this formerly unspeakable topic. Why do you think the Democrats are suddenly “coming clean” about their dishonesty over the past four years? Is this just a desperate attempt to completely disassociate the party from the previous administration (and its problems of inflation, migrant crime etc.), with the realization that they’ll never win another presidential election again if they don’t do so? Or is this more a desperate attempt by the media as a whole to save its credibility after dropping down to record low ratings and record low trust among the public?
A question, and two offers for everybody:
1. I’m looking for a good intro book on alchemy as a gift for somebody who has a high school chemistry background and is fascinated by alchemy, but doesn’t know much yet. Ideally a book which doesn’t just contain practical alchemical instructions, but also an overview of the history, methods, the way of alchemical thinking, and if possible about branches like personal/spiritual alchemy etc. Do you, JMG; or anybody else, have a recommendation?
2. For those who are interested in the Modern Order of Essenes, I’m putting up a free online course. The course will stay available, i.e. you can start at any time: https://thehiddenthings.com/topics/moe-course
3. Finally, I perform a formal blessing once a week and am grateful to everybody who signs up, as this gives me a chance to practice: https://thehiddenthings.com/categories/weekly-blessings
JMG, thanks for hosting this space, and I hope you’ll have a safe and enjoyable trip! 🙂
Milkyway
Dear John,
Thank you for hosting this.
I have been trying to study and understand Neoplatonism by reading The Enneads (the Stephen Mackenna translation) but have found the going tough – I have been unable to make sense of the various entities referred to in the text (e.g., Intellectual/Intellective Principle, Existents, and so on). There also seem to be differing opinions on what order to read the tractates in (Porphyry’s choice does not seem to have found favour with some scholars).
Any pointers and tips from you or the commentariat would be welcome.
Thanks.
JMG, The general theory is that the act of running for office in our current system creates a set of pressures that make nearly all those in higher government office hopelessly amoral and self serving. But the recent revelations that the “Joe Biden” administration was being run by “politburo of medium level White House staffers. Not the higher ups like Blinken or Rice that we were expecting.
So we can now say that just being in the proximity of crooked politicians creates just as crooked a bunch of staffers. I would have figure that at least one person would have had the integrity to blow the whistle on this treasonous mess. But would the biased media even have listened?
Hello JMG,
I have a question that came from an astrological observation I made. Back in 2020, when we had the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction I started to look at history to get a taste for what kind of themes it could bring. I went back to look at the previous time the same series of conjunction happened in air. This started with the conjunction in Libra in 1186, then a Taurus conjunction in 1206 followed by one in Aquarius in 1226, exactly as the cycle we are in now.
What correlated with the last set of conjunctions was the unification of the Mongol tribes by Djingis Khan in 1206, and his passing in 1226, a perfect match. For the 1186 conjunction there are a few different events that could fit with his life, but since he was an unknown nomad on the steppes of Mongolia it is hard to pin down specific years. The conjunctions keep on tracking his family line with significant events such as power struggles and deaths.
This was interesting enough but took another fascinating turn when I had the opportunity to go to Mongolia in fall of last year. I am not much for flying but I have a writing project that required me to go there and got a travel grant to cover the costs, so of I went. Before going I decided to read up on the history of Djingis khan and his empire which was, to say the least, a very blood stenched affair. When I got there I had a few days in the capitol, Ulan-Baator, where I learned that they have a whole five storey museum dedicated to the old conqueror and his blood line. I started to look into the history of the museum and it turns out that the start of the build, the opening and all the official paperwork and announcements perfectly straddled the recent Great Conjunction in Aquaris.
The very mention of Djingis Khan during the communist years, when Mongolia was a satellite state to the USSR, was prohibited and punishable. These days he is idolized as the father of their nation and a symbol of the renaissance of their culture. This renaissance is spear headed by the Mongolian shamans that once again can practice openly. Interestingly enough, the swastika is seen everywhere in Mongolia today. It is of course an old spiritual symbol of large parts of Asia, but it is interesting that it is so highlighted in nationalistic fervor since another earth shattering but short lived empire did the same. As I understood it when I was there, school teachers began to teach the children about Djingis Khan in secrecy about ten years before communism fell, so around the first conjunction in Libra 1981.
The conjunctions in air clearly tracks Djingis Khan and his family and it is fascinating in itself, but what does it mean for our age and the conjunctions to come? The events that started in 1206 were earth shattering with crushed empires and complete re-writing of the map of large parts of the world. Mongolia is not in a position to have that kind of influence today, so where to look for that whirlwind of earth shattering change? What do you think?
Do you have any thoughts on the likely future of Costa Rica as decline accelerates? I have some family trying to move there.
Regarding your recent blog “A Case Study in Stimulus Diffusion,” have you read G. K. Chesterton’s “The Flying Inn?” He imagines Prohibition in England as a stalking horse for an Islamic takeover. The heroes take a keg of beer and a wheel of cheese on the road, trying to stay one step ahead of the government.
JMG,
This short article talks about the digitizing our financial system/digital ID’s and the immense threat it poses to individual liberty and the precursor to a totalitarian social credit system.
https://internationalman.com/articles/the-hidden-dollar-revolution-americas-new-digital-money-system/
I share this person’s fear. I found what happened during covid to be scary and horrifying (things like freezing the bank accounts of truckers in Canada).
Wondering to what extent you agree with this person’s assessment/fears of where this might all be going.
Thank you, Edward
Do you think our physical universe will ever end, JMG? If so, what do you think will cause it to do so?
I was recently saddened to learn that Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has terminal cancer. Reading Dilbert was a big part of my childhood, and while some of the things Adams said later in life have made me uncomfortable, it’s still sad to see happen to an author you loved growing up. So, last night, I was looking through one of my print collections of Dilbert strips. In an odd bit of synchronicity, I found one which fit last week’s discussion of the “crisis management” model of nonresponse to problems like a glove.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230307214822/https://dilbert.com/strip/1999-04-22
Hi JMG and Ecosophians,
I am thrilled to announce that my first podcast where I talk about my upcoming book, Sacred Homemaking: A Magical Approach to a Tidier Home, is now available on all major platforms. In this podcast, I am interviewed by Merrily Duffy of Casual Temple. We chat about the spirits of place and how mundane tasks such as cleaning and cooking can be a hidden path to the Divine. Merrily and her husband have released the podcast here:
https://casualtemple.com/episodes/ep-56/ as well as all major platforms (Spotify, YouTube, etc.) with full text transcripts.
The book is coming out from Aeon Books in 2026. I would highly appreciate any suggestions of podcasts to hit up for interviews. If you are a podcaster and are interested in chatting about my book, please reach out to me at k steele studio at gmail.
I just read your post from last week on climate change. You can see the effects here where I live on the mountain sides of northern Arizona. Our HOA just notified everyone that they have identified 50 ponderosa pines in our neighborhood alone that have died or are dying since the ips beetles woke up from their hibernation about two months ago. The beetles burrow into the pine trees and effectively suffocate them by disrupting the flow of water and nutrients. The pines in our area have been hit especially hard over the past several years by the beetles due to a couple of factors: first, warmer winters mean more beetles are surviving the winter season, and two, the extended drought (about 26 years or so and counting [at what point is it longer a drought and simply the new normal?]) causes more and more pines to become distressed. Once the pines reach this point, they emit a chemical distress signal that attracts the beetles.
Admittedly, it’s hard to watch this happen to the pines around us – what I call the giants of the land. I lost my first tree last year and have been attempting yearly nutrient treatments and a watering schedule during the hotter periods to keep my remaining pine as healthy as possible. At the end of the day, I know it’s just nature doing what it does, but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Sometimes I envy those who don’t have the burden of watching this type of thing happen right in front of them and can wave it all away from a distance.
Hi JMG, have you ever read anything by Dennis Wheately? If so, as an expert in the occult, what did you think of it?
Hi John,
Former UK Chief of Staff Dom Cummings has written the following in his latest blog post.
“Inside the intelligence services, special forces (themselves under attack from the Cabinet Office and NI Office as they operate as our last line of defence, see below), bits of Whitehall, and those most connected to discussions away from Westminster, there is growing, though still tiny, discussion of Britain’s slide into chaos and the potential for serious violence including what would look like racial/ethnic mob/gang violence, though the regime would obviously try to describe it differently. Part of the reason for the incoherent forcefulness against the white rioters last year from a regime that is in deep-surrender-mode against pro-Holocaust marchers, rape gangs and criminals generally, is a mix of a) aesthetic revulsion in SW1 at the Brexit-voting white north and b) incoherent Whitehall terror of widespread white-English mobs turning political and attracting talented political entrepreneurs. They’re already privately quaking about the growth of Muslim networks. The last thing they want to see is emerging networks that see themselves as both political and driven to consider violence. Parts of the system increasingly fear this could spin out of control into their worst nightmare.”
We are talking about state collapse and widespread civil disorder/low level urban insurgence.
I feel a bit more certain of the life cycle of this planet, and I think it likely that the transition is in progress, and the 4th plane body will be born in the fashion that Ra in the “Law of One” claims. If this follows the trajectory proclaimed in “The Cosmic Doctrine”, then humanity will be cast off soon. According to Ra, the criteria for human evolution will go one of 3 ways. Those who are 95% or more “love of self” will go to another planet to continue as 4th plane entities among those that share similar values. The vast majority souls will be sent to another planet capable of supporting 3rd plane entities in their continued evolution. Those that “Love their neighbor as themselves”, (50% or more) will be reincarnated on this planet as 4th plane entities. In other words, “the meek will inherit the earth”. The process follows the words, “I wish you were hot or cold, but being lukewarm, I spew thee from my mouth”. It is interesting that loss of the planet’s consciousness even if briefly will cause a pralaya. Most don’t understand that our view of the stars is solely because our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is aware of the other solar systems, because of the “Let there be light.” moment in the evolution of the Galactic God of which our God is part of the mind and body of that Greater Entity. We as part of the mind and body of our God, have this awareness of the stars, only because He has projected His understanding into His universe. During a pralaya, we lose this awareness, temporarily, and the stars will blink out, pretty much as john saw on the Isle of Patmos (Revelations).
Looks like the red team is retrenching back to the Washingtoverton window. RFK Jr is no longer looking at Glyphosate being sprayed on the grain crop two weeks before the combine starts it on its way to the grocery store shelves in your cereal boxes. Scott Bessent will soon be administering the largest budget and budget deficit on record. The wars in the middle east and Ukraine grind on as if it were January 19. And Elon Musk is bailing.
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May SLClaire’s honorary daughter Beth, who is undergoing dialysis for kidney disease, be blessed, and may her kidneys be restored to full functioning.
May 1Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties; may she quickly be able to resume a normal life, and the cancer not return.
May Kallianeira’s partner Patrick, who passed away on May 7th, be blessed and aided in his soul’s onward journey. And may Kallianeira be soothed and strengthened to successfully cope in the face of this sudden loss.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture)
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer. Healing work is also welcome. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe]
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
A while ago I noticed someone either here or on Dreamwidth published years (?) of mundane astrology ingresses (?) for Canada based on JMG’s methods, with interpretations. I was struck by how long it seemed we would continue with the same stupidity (I remember the person kept saying, “more socialism”) and found it almost mind-boggling. Now I can actually see it happening with my own two disbelieving eyes. Can someone provide a link to these chart interpretations if you’re aware of them? Thanks.
Hello Mr. Greer,
In your FAQ on the book recommendations for Druidry you write, “Like most of Druidry, this is more occultism than magic, though it contains elements of both.” I was curious, are you speaking specifically about The Dolmen Arch, or about the Druidry books in general. I also caught a similar reference you made on a podcast about the distinction between being an “occultist” and a “magician”, but it left me longing to hear more. For a person more interested in pursuing occultism, is the Druidry path what you would suggest?
As always, thank you for your study, your books, and your willingness to be open and share.
Chris
Trusting that you intend to moderate this week’s stuff. Fully expect (and wish for) you to have a deeply wonderful trip, at the same time observing things as they stand and reporting back to us as seems appropriate.
There is a wonderful section of your novel, Retrotopia, wherein there is an event focused on taking down drones. You’ve obviously given some serious thought to this topic and I wonder if you would care to comment on drone warfare in general and where you think it might be headed.
I’m especially interested in learning about any simple, on-farm defensive measures that citizens could take to protect themselves from surveillance drones. Shotgun shells made for the purpose seem very limited in range as well as being provocative. I’ve heard mention of “drone fences” that use some kind of electronic jammer to interfere with communications between the operator and the drone. It’s a low(ish) budget arms race of sorts I suppose?
@JMG: Did you decide to publish this book,
https://www.ebooks.com/book/346468412/
or is it yet another unauthorized release?
Everyone and their grandmothers predict that Europe si done.
I’ve also saw you have a similar take on the matter and yet it still stands although in a precarious way, but it stands.
What do you think that keeps it going? inertia, the perception of the people about Europe (tant akin to magic)?
@Helix
I was expecting this to some extent, given that just about everything that has occurred with this administration has been in a state of perpetual flux from what I can gather, as well as the simple fact that a large amount of initiatives are currently gummed up within government bureaucracy. Still, it is a bit disconcerting to watch just how intractable most of the US’s problems have proven to be from a political perspective.
Hello Archdruid (and everyone in the community)!
I am recently reminded of something I learnt a long time ago. A friend I know had visited the Ajanta and Ellora caves, which is a massive cave temple complex in central India. They were carved during the late antiquity. The walls were sculpted with figures, including human figures. My friend shared an interesting observation – the male figures carved into the walls were designed with very effete characteristics. They lacked firm moustaches, beards, or chest hair.
This is interesting, because within a few centuries of that the Rajputs governed India, and these satraps loved to depict themselves as bullish men with thick mustaches, trunky limbs, and thick bass voices.
The Ajanta and Ellora dates back to a time of high urban decadence. It is believed that the Kamasutra was written during this period. Intellectualism was the better part of valor. After this age of decadence ended, a feudal period began under the reign of the Rajput kings. This was a time of near-continuous war, as the country was embroiled in war with Huns, Kushans, Saracens, and numerous other foes.
The drastic shift in the perception of masculinity between the two ages lines heavily with the change in lifestyle. My friend pointed out that the depiction of men in the high age is quite consistent with the characteristics deemed proper for a male protagonist in Japanese anime, and in modern romance movies. I recalled this recently when I watched a Youtube video where a group of men and women played a strategy game together. The men were both clean-shaved, and the pitch of their voices were modulated up and down as they intoned their syllables with varying levels of stress. It made me self-conscious, and I realized that this way of talking is a little effeminate, and also quite universal among white-collar men in our times.
It made me revisit your article on Giambattista Vico and the New Science, and I wondered if the expression of hardened masculinity has something to do with the stage of settled civilization. My hypothesis is that young boys emulate what they see as strength, and in sensory civilizations this usually boils down to physical prowess and endurance of pain. In reflective civilizations, what is perceived as strength is the ability to be empathetic and expressive, to make full use of communication skills, the way women do, strategically admitting one’s vulnerabilities where necessary and showcasing one’s erudition where possible.
JMG and commentariat: despite the best efforts of DOGE, Congress just passed the largest budget and budget deficit on record. What are the risks of having a 36 trillion plus deficit? I keep hearing contradictory things, and not having a background in economics, I’m not sure who to believe. I just read Lionel Shriver’s novel “The Mandibles” (highly recommend!) about an economic collapse in the US – does a large budget deficit make that more likely?
“So we can now say that just being in the proximity of crooked politicians creates just as crooked a bunch of staffers. I would have figure that at least one person would have had the integrity to blow the whistle on this treasonous mess. But would the biased media even have listened?”
As the expression goes, the fish rots from the head down. If the top of the leadership is crooked their example will be followed. Pretty soon everyone is in the looting operation.
As for the one person, look up Seth Rich. Example made in the worst case, in the best case let’s take advantage of the unfortunate incident to make it look like an example was made.
As for the media, “Objectivity has no place in journalism” is the operating motif. See also Bari Weiss’s resignation letter.
https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
@WatchFlinger
I can attest to this!. Love splitting wood …with an ax that is, not with a mechanical splitter. Also something about using one of the oldest tools created by humans. Men’s Health released a study recently indicating that chopping wood massively spikes testosterone levels. I assume that would have something to do with the mental health benefits as well.
Re Neoplatonism
I really like the book “Plotinus: myth, metaphor, and philosophic practice” by Stephen RL Clark as a guide
A review: https://firstthings.com/getting-to-larisa/
David, but you didn’t just post a link — you included some commentary and engaged with the information. That’s what I ask for. As for the article, all this is exactly what I’ve been expecting, and it should be no surprise that young men are leading the charge: since they’ve been sent to the back of the line in modern liberal societies, assigned the status of permanent scapegoats for everyone else’s failures, and expected to accept an endless sequence of humiliation rituals, of course they’re going to turn to alternatives that welcome them.
Jonathan, I’m not familiar with that literature. Anyone else?
Justin, thanks for this.
Great Khan, thank you for this and see you on the 21st!
Watchflinger, I suspect half the reason we have so much chronic depression in today’s industrial societies is a simple lack of physical exertion. That’s debilitating and depressing.
Yoyo, that’s fascinating. No, I have no idea.
Michaelz, hmm. Interesting.
Chad, yes, the unstated subtext is that the Democratic party and the corporate media are in freefall. Even when Trump’s approval ratings go down, the Democrats’ don’t rise accordingly, and mass media viewership is catastrophically low and sinking. At this point a great many people in the Democratic end of the elite class are panicking and looking for ballast they can throw over the side to try to stop the plunge. I think it’s starting to dawn on them that we’re in the middle of a full-on elite replacement cycle, like the ones that were kicked off in 1776, 1861, and 1932 — and that calls for desperate actions on the part of anyone in the former elite who wants to cling to some scraps of their former influence. Expect many more rounds of backstabbing before we’re through.
Milkyway, I’d recommend The Path of Alchemy by Mark Stavish.
Rajesh, I don’t recommend plunging straight into Plotinus for exactly those reasons! Dominic O’Meara’s Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads and R.T. Wallis’s Neoplatonism are good introductions to read first, as they’ll give you the context and help you understand the terms before diving straight in.
Clay, keep in mind that the Biden administration was a last ditch attempt by a failing elite to cling to power at all costs. Because the geriatric kleptocracy that’s been running the US for several decades now systematically shut out new talent in order to cling to the reins of power themselves, they were left with no other option, and so the kleptocrats closed ranks around Biden to try to keep the gravy train running as long as possible. The staffers are just flunkeys — the real power was, as it usually is in failing elites, among a circle of gray eminences whose power is unlimited because unofficial. It’s a familiar pattern; you might examine the last days of the Soviet Union for another example.
Fredrik, nobody thought that Mongolia was going to conquer the world in the 13th century, either! Expect the unexpected. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that something like 1 in 200 people worldwide are descended from Genghis Khan, so I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that one of his descendants in Kazakhstan, or Russia, or China, or what have you could turn out to be a military genius, get control of an effective army, and go from there.
Jennifer, not really. I don’t know a lot about the country.
Roldy, no, I missed that one! I’ll have to correct that.
Edward, I’ll put it on the to-read list. My general sense of all these fears is that they’re not unreasonable, but the outcome of any attempt to do this on a large scale would be the rise of a two-tier society in which part of the population clings to the money economy at the expense of what’s left of their liberty, and the other part changes to other means of exchange, goes off-grid, and builds a collage of alternative social forms outside the failing system.
Batstrel, I have no idea. We have no reason to think that the human brain is even capable of processing such complexities as the origin and destiny of the cosmos.
Ethan, I was also sorry to hear about Adams. Yeah, that strip does a fine job of summing things up!
Kimberly, congratulations!
Aaron, condolences — that’s a harsh thing to have to go through. I don’t imagine it helps to know that the entire western half of North America will be going through that same process, and some of it will end up as desolate as the eastern Sahara before the process runs its course.
JAD, it’s fine lurid supernatural horror, but I wouldn’t treat it as anything but that.
Forecasting, I’m glad to hear that someone is discussing the standard endpoint of the situation Britain’s in these days. I hope it can be avoided, but I wouldn’t count on that.
Ben, so noted. That’s not a set of teachings I follow, though.
Helix, that’s the case with every revolution once the first rush of enthusiasm has passed. Let’s see what the long term outcomes are.
Quin, thanks for this.
Merle, I didn’t happen to keep the links. Anyone else?
Chris, if you’ll reread the FAQ you’ll find that that phrase refers to the books in that one group. If you’re interested in pursuing occultism, the “Druidry Group” of books is certainly one option, though of course there are many others.
Clarke, of course. No comment gets posted here until and unless I approve it; when I don’t have internet access, that means nothing gets through for a while.
Ken, I’ll leave that to people who have more military background than I do!
Anonymous, back in the early days of the Web — we’re talking very early 1990s — I transcribed some of G.R.S. Mead’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum for a website, with some brief introductions by me. That got picked up by somebody later on and turned into a book, and it’s been sold for years now under my name. It’s yet another unauthorized release.
Archivist, keep in mind that when I say that Europe is in decline, I don’t mean that it will collapse next Tuesday. I mean that over the next half century or so, it will lose its remaining influence over world affairs, and some European countries will cease to exist in their present forms. Decline is not a fast process!
Rajarshi, exactly. In mature civilizations, robust Rajput-esque masculinity isn’t an advantage — but mature civilizations collapse, and then the Rajputs have the last laugh.
Yavanna, one of the peculiarities of the US budget process is that a reconciliation bill like the one just passed can’t be used to cut funding for programs. Quite a few GOP congresscritters are now busy preparing the kind of bills that can cut programs, with funding for USAID and NPR first on the chopping block. Stay tuned!
Hello GrandMaster,
Greetings from Mumbai,India
I hope you are fine and in good health and spirits.
Finally got hold of your book Green Wizardry and in doing the first 3 exercises ,scared the crap out of me. Today for the first time in my life I visited a landfill and was really ashamed of myself as to what on earth am I doing. I live in a apartment with no balcony so for the upcoming chapters on food how do I start?? As I live with my parents it is bit tough to do something DIY in the house. I don’t want to make any excuses from my part as I have been reading your work since the past 2 years and even though a lot of things you write and say all make sense and slowly it has crept in me but in terms of any tangible action I am a big fat embarrassment. I dunno it is a weird thing for a long time living my cushy PMC urban life made me unsatisfied but leaving this cushy life for even one bit is scaring me or there is a huge inertia inside of me which is waiting for some magical time. I am currently 25 years so I feel that if I start making changes now it will be easier for me now than later but I dunno where to start exactly because I personally have no idea really how to broach such topics with people around me. Again GrandMaster thank you for everything no one has influenced my thinking more than you I just hope for my and my family sake I implement some of your wisdom.
It is probable that I see a very small part of infinity, like the blind man examining the elephant. But I am sure that you have your own metaphors as do I. Afterall none of us can understand the unmanifest except in terms of our own manifest experiences.
@Ken,
Depends on how you mean “provocative”– jammers are illegal to operate and a grey area at best to own in just about every jurisdiction. Shotguns and birdshot are not. Indeed, it would be out of place not to have a shotgun with birdshot in North American farm country. Using it?
Well, that’s probably about even, jamming or shooting. Put yourself in the shoes of a criminal goon or a federal agent (do I repeat myself?) — your drone has gone dark over a farm. Do you care why? Probably not. Shot down, jammed or otherwise, this farmer has declared himself your enemy. An enemy is far more interesting than a random farmer, even a prosperous one. You’re probably more interested now in sending some bully boys over there to teach him manners than you’d have been if you did get footage of his farm. You might assume he has something extremely loot-able he is trying to hide, but even if not, what is more valuable than disrespect? Rep is everything, to gangs and governments (but I repeat myself).
Your best defense, IMO, is maskirovka. Let the drones fly over, and arrange for them to see whatever they expect to see. If you’re just another dirt-poor farmer, you’re nobody of interest, and nobody “they” need to bother themselves with overmuch. That’s more inconvenient and a lot less satisfying than just blasting the dang things out of the air, or jamming their signals, sure, but unless you’ve got a war-band backing you to standup to the one flying drones over your head? It’s just not worth it, IMO.
(Let me give an example of maskirovka in agriculture that used to be common in this neck of the woods– a green leafy plant, a weed, if you will, was in high demand but illegal. Growth went on under tree cover, and within polyculture. If you didn’t walk into a stand, you didn’t know it was there, even from the air. Yields were probably a lot lower for this illicit crop than they later became when it was legalized and grown as monoculture in open fields but a bit of permaculture-style plant choice might have seen overall yield of the land improved with other, less valuable crops.)
Hi John,
Agree, it’s good to see some within our elite are aware of what’s coming.
I sense elements are starting to gravitate towards Farage’s Reform Party.
Whilst I would likely vote Reform if I lived in the UK I have serious doubts they are organised and serious enough to turn things around.
My expectations are that Farage will become the next PM but due to a general lack of experience, skills and team around him he will struggle to get his way through the permanent bureaucracy that runs things in the UK.
Also the best brains I follow seem to see a massive economic debt crisis globally between the late 2020s and early 2030s.
This will make the expensive welfare promises made by Farage in the last few days completely unaffordable.
@ Justin Patrick Moore: On my current fiction reading. “Dhalgren” has drawn me in again and again like a maelstrom. It simply feels too real to ignore once I get past the opening section. The characters and the dialog ring true to life for that era. And I especially liked the literary discussions with “Newboy,” who is modeled after — after which famous gay American poet — I forget the name. But the discussions are great. I dislike where the graphic porn aspects are overdone (as they sometimes are) like in the ten or so pages of graphic sex in the exact dead center of the novel. (What would Leo Strauss say?) I’ve probably read the whole novel eight times. Back in 1983, when I first read it, I thought it was the most depressing novel I’d ever read. There’s a story within the story, where he tells Lanya about when he got involved with a group of hooligans who went around squatting in and destroying expensive unoccupied homes, drinking the booze, eating the food, destroying the furniture etc. before moving on to another and doing the same thing again; Just the kind of world I try hard to avoid. But memorable in a vicious, vicarious way. I feel convinced that Delaney was influenced by a french novel that few Americans have read; “Passing Time” by Michel Butor. Were you to read it, I think the similarities to “Dhalgren” would be obvious. Plus, it’s a fun book, one that I’ve read over and over, trying to solve its puzzle. Plot summary: A Frenchman spends a year employed in an office in an unfamiliar city in the west of England; Manchester perhaps. A bit rare, but you do work in a library…
I just finished a third reading of “Little, Big.” The final section/book continues to fall short, at least for me. I don’t find it convincing. But Crowley does do some things that are similar to “Dhalgren.” Places and phrases keep reappearing, leading to uncanny literary effects. I just finished “Engine Summer” and I did not like it. I had hoped it might shed light on “Little, Big.” I guess there were a few shared themes but I remain unenlightened. Over all, “Engine Summer” reminded me of Doris Lessing’s trilogy. “Shikasta” or something like that? It’s been decades, but I didn’t find much in Lessing.
JMG, I know you have commented in general before that you have published with independent publishers and you generally seem to favor that route for authors. I have self-published two books previously on public policy. The latter of the two, “COVID Lockdown Insanity: The COVID Deaths It Prevented, the Depression and Suicides It Caused, What We Should Have Done, and What It Shows We Could Do Now to Address Real Crises,” you were kind enough to give a blurb and endorsement to. Now I have assembled a book “A Spiritual Seeker’s Abridged Bible: With the Gnostic Scriptures,” which, as the name suggests is an abridged Bible, 30% of the length of the unabridged, with all the good parts and spiritually enlightening parts, plus selections from the Gnostic Scriptures that did not make it into the Bible, and plus some commentary and footnotes by me on what I view as unappreciated or hidden meanings of many passages.
My question for you is to ask your advice on whether to use a literary agent and what sorts of publishers to approach. And any other advice you have. I would rather not self-publish this one.
@Watchflinger: re: chopping wood:
I used to get similar results hauling manure in a wheelbarrow from the neighbor’s stable to my garden. Sorted out my back, too! Have never gotten remotely comparable results in a gym.
@David
Thanks for that link! I’m always keeping an eye out for stats on that.
FWIW, I think it’s not going to *stay* mostly-men forever: I think that like for many things, when you’re dealing with something new, different, countercultural, and dare I say transgressive (and taking religion seriously these days is all those things), men lead the way– they’re the early adopters for most edgy trends. I think (hope?) once this thing is well underway (and there are signs this is starting already), women will follow.
A holdover from your last post, but super-scary: “People Are Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in AI. Religious Scholars Have Thoughts”
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-chatbot-god-religion-answers-1235347023/
P.S. The “severe statewide drought” has finally broken, and rain is pouring down on North Florida. Thank you, Thor, and Jupiter Pluvius!
MR Greer …on a non controversial subject…I am currently working my way through all of Phllip K Dick’s writing..loving it.. any thoughts on his books?
Hi John,
When your in London this is a great pub to visit.
A v old National Trust inn next to borough market.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/london/george-inn
Enjoy your trip.
FI
Hey JMG
I have been thinking about the future of writing systems again recently, and I have a strong feeling that as time goes on the only types of writing system that will be in use will be either alphabets or Abugidas. In the present these two systems are already quite dominant, and I expect that as time goes they will become more so as they are the easiest way to record a language with the least amount of characters, compared to other systems such as the logographic systems like Chinese or abjads such as Arabic or syllabaries such as Vai. I can’t imagine people willingly re-inventing systems consisting of many characters such as Chinese, or incapable of properly recording vowels as with Arabic, after these languages are extinct and better options are available.
That being said, I wonder if a writing system better that alphabets or abugidas at recording speech could be made far in the future?
For all going to London and or Glastonbury:
Safe travels, a rewarding trip, and good company to all!
Cugel
Enjoy your trip to England John
Jonathan Simkins: “how does someone come to have faith exactly”
Typically, they are born into a religion. Whether they are religious or irreligious later, that religion is their default. Some convert or reaffiliate (e.g. switch from Methodist to Presbyterian, which is not much of a leap) due to marriage or waves of religious revival. Very few are persuaded intellectually or experientially, most just go along with whatever their group believes.
Now some of you may be saying to yourselves, “I’m different from the crowd, I converted to neopaganism / Buddhism / some weird thing.” However, if you think about it, you probably converted to something a lot of other people were interested in too. For example, neopaganism and Buddhism (and more pointedly, particular types thereof) experienced recent revivals, and are now in decline. A similar person in 1900 might have joined Christian Science instead.
JMG and everyone, I hope this won’t violate the Open Post rules:
A few years ago, on this very blog, I left a comment about the Irish bank strikes of the 60s and 70s, saying that people in a self-reliant, high-trust culture coped surprisingly well without money. I recall that you, JMG, suggested I write more about it.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m announcing the publication of my first book from Academica Press, “The Last Who Remember,” which pulls together that and many other stories gathered from hundreds of elders who grew up in traditional Ireland. I cite JMG’s ideas more than once, and I suspect readers of this blog will find a lot in it to enjoy and agree with. In it I cite a number of other authors that you all might be familiar with, from Neil Postman to Matthew Crawford to Dmitry Orlov to Carl Jung, and it has a foreword by Rod Dreher of the European Conservative.
Thank you JMG and commentariat for all the inspiration over the years. You can get a copy here:
https://indiepubs.com/products/the-last-who-remember?srsltid=AfmBOordz7lo8NdlKddfU-hysYSJnSewmnYCBvm-hwsCeknrXY-BCECu
Jennifer: re: Costa Rica
this is from memory perhaps 40 years ago, interpret accordingly.
I used to be a Presbyterian Minister back then. This church was interested in USA’s actions in Latin and Central America, much of which were pretty vicious. Pre internet, our information came from newsletters from priests and church workers who quickly noticed when USA sponsored terrorism happened. They wrote about it.
Standard procedure was for the US to get a country’s military beholden to them through gifts of used weapons etc. and obtain easy access to a country’s wealth, and, of course, anti communist leanings.
As I recall (memory again) Costa Rica had no military.
Ronald Reagen tried to get them to develop one. They refused. And kept their wealth for themselves.
OK, that was 40 or so years ago, much is left out of this quick analysis and lost down the memory hole.
(there is also a strong Quaker community there)
Interpret accordingly.
WatchFlinger, exercise in general is a fine antidepressant.
Ben (no. 23), your “criteria for human evolution” are hard to distinguish from Last Judgement of a wrathful God. Well, I didn’t vote for him, and how much I love my neighbor very much depends on the neighbor! Selfishness is not a bad thing–children ought to be focused primarily of themselves, but gradually broaden, so that when they have their own families, they make sacrifices for them. (You don’t necessarily want teenagers doing that.) Older people can extend their circles still more widely. But literally “loving everyone as yourself” is just not on–and if anyone disagrees, can I have your money?
Ken: “I’m especially interested in learning about any simple, on-farm defensive measures that citizens could take to protect themselves from surveillance drones.”
Please understand that shooting at, or interfering with, any aircraft–drone or not–is a federal crime. (Yes, the laws were written before there were drones.)
“Your best defense, IMO, is maskirovka. Let the drones fly over, and arrange for them to see whatever they expect to see. If you’re just another dirt-poor farmer, you’re nobody of interest, and nobody “they” need to bother themselves with overmuch. ”
Millionaire next door strategy. Nothing interesting here, move along. A slightly shabby exterior also keeps the property taxes down. Four bedroom one bath is probably saving me quite a lot of money.
Hi Phutatorious: I will have to add Passing Time by Butor to my list. Speaking of French literature, I wonder too how much of the Situationist texts Delany might have read, because another way to enter Bellona is through the lens of psychogeography, something I’m picking up on in this reading. Or at least interpreting that way. All the stuff with Newboy, the poetry, the notebook, Brass Orchids, it cast a spell on this young aspiring poet when I first read it. I still enjoyed Newboy’s monologues.
As for Crowley, I liked Engine Summer better than Little, Big … but I should read them both again. I liked Beasts quite a bit too. Haven’t read his other books yet. Engine Summer captivated me with its lyricism and world building. The people smoking to eat from the stuff that had fallen from the stars and rooted on earth.
I’ve been trying to work in some non-genre classics, and I think Lawrence Durrell’s Aleaxndrine Quartet is coming up soon.
Hi JMG and Commentariat,
Does anyone have suggestions for how to meet other people with deep interest/knowledge in magical practice (apart from traveling to Glastonbury, as much as I’d like to)? I know this forum is generally great for questions, but maybe more limited for ongoing conversation. I’m not much for r/occult on Reddit either for the kind of one-on-one or small group conversation I’m hoping for. Thoughts? How do you find people to talk to about your magical interests?
P.s. Side question for JMG, as a writer, what’s your most powerful metaphor?
Thank you,
RMS
>does a large budget deficit make that more likely?
As Fleckenstein said (about something else but it works for this too) “It doesn’t matter until it matters and then it’s the only thing that matters.”
Gorbachev was full of good intentions and half measures too, but he was trying to fix the unfixable. Gorby got off easy though, it was Yeltsin that took the collapse to the face. By the time he was done, he was quite the alcoholic, trying to cope with that massive amount of stress. Pretty much died of alcohol abuse, I think.
I wonder who our Yeltsin is going to be? I’m full of questions that have no answers these days. It’s probably better to be a Putin than a Yeltsin, but what do I know?
Speaking of budget cutting, finally.
“By Wednesday afternoon, Politico reported, citing two anonymous Republican sources, that the White House plans to send a rescissions bill (appropriations bill) to Congress next week to formally propose the spending cuts.
The package is expected to target funding for NPR, PBS, and certain foreign aid agencies previously reduced under President Trump.
Here’s more from the report:
The package set to land on Capitol Hill is expected to reflect only a fraction of the DOGE cuts, which have already fallen far short of Musk’s multi-trillion-dollar aspirations. The two Republicans said it will target NPR and PBS, as well as foreign aid agencies that have already been gutted by President Donald Trump’s administration.
House Speaker Mike Johnson stated that the House is “eager and ready” to act on the DOGE findings, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune and others voiced frustration over the delay.”
They have to start somewhere. The local PBS station is left wing talk radio, no music. Nothing of value will be lost by cutting off the Free Public Money. Their already long list of corporate donors can pick up the slack.
@Jonathan Simkins, #2
What you are describing is mysticism. And most religious people are no mystics, AFAICT, at least not in the Catholicosphere. Sadly, what I have directly observed in most people who have “strong faith” can be more or less described as Stockholm Syndrome! People are terrified by their upbringing, but cling to their torturer in the sincere belief that said torturer will have compassion and save them from himself. That, and the belief they can somehow make the Supreme Being change his mind and give them unearned goodies, so the carrot and the stick pattern is present in force here.
The interesting part is, how do you outgrow that childish faith and develop a robust adult relationship with God/TheGods. I know very little knowledge of how this process happens in general, but it involves a process called “The Dark Night of the Soul”, where you dare question the basis of what you have believed so far and find it wanting. I don’t understand what makes you come through the other side and embrace the Christ again… but it happens often enough to be a relativelly well known phenomenon with a proper name to label it.
I had my first faith crisis at age 20, and came more or less through it by studing the writings of a Greek (Eastern Ortodox) priest I found in the Internet of those days. I am afraid I don’t recall what the name of the priest or the magazine is. After that, I have had other minor crisis, but by then I was already commited to follow Jesus wherever He might lead. It helps a lot that I have had direct religious experiences that cannot be explained away by the scientific-materialist paradigm; at least not if you are intellectually honest, and my mantra since my highschool years has been: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. (John 8:32)
But then again, I was a pretty weird kid. I figured out Santa does not exist as a direct consequence of my investigation of the USSR’s nuclear doctrine (hit: the Soviets were not suicidal idiots, instead my “Sunday school” teacher was just making things up).
@WatchFlinger – I had just that conversation with my secretary last week, who asked me (jokingly) if I could prescribe her something for the rotten day she was having, and I replied, Yes: some exercise.
It’s a pretty open secret that regular exercise is as effective for mood as SSRIs. For the life of me I don’t know why everyone doesn’t walk every day (barring disability or the like). I do, and I’m as happy as a clam!
I can’t remember if we’re supposed to just drop these suggestions anywhere, but the next time there’s a fifth post for the month I nominate a deep dive on Howard T. Odum and his ideas about energy, energy transformity, and a prosperous decline from the heights of fossil fuel consumption.
@ Rajesh– For what it’s worth, some years ago I tried the exact same thing and got the results you’re getting. Plotinus wasn’t just difficult, he was incomprehensible– entire sentences made no grammatical sense at all. I banged my head at it for about a week and gave up.
Now (about a decade later!) I find Plotinus fairly easy to understand, but it took some work to get here. The most important thing was actually reading Plato– I’d hoped that I could avoid him and go straight for the “good stuff.” That was wrong. First because Plato is the good stuff, and second because you really can’t understand the Neoplatonists without him. At least go through the Iamblichean curriculum plus the Republic before returning to Plotinus. A basic understanding of Aristotle is also very helpful.
And one more thing that may help– when I finally returned to Plotinus, I started with an old compilation entitled “The Essence of Plotinus” by Grace Turnbull. This consists of extracts from the Enneads plus Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, organized in a way designed to be easy to understand. Very helpfully, it also includes a list of terminology– very often the Neoplatonists are impossible to read because the words they are using (or their English translations) have a meaning very different from their usual meaning in modern English. If you can find it I strongly recommend it.
@JonathanSimkins #2 I would say it’s a combination of verbal and/or written information received, examples of other people living out their faith, the cultural milieu and the experiential with the combination of those four in great variance from person to person. An example I know would be a Jewish woman I knew, grand daughter of an orthodox rabbi. Her son became a Christian who then spoke to her and shared information from the Bible, she started to examine Christianity, she watched a TV evangelist, became open to the possibility and then she had a waking vision of Jesus a few days later, felt his deep love in the experience and walked with the Lord until she passed at age 97. I know another Jewish woman who began with a surprise visionary experience of Jesus in her living room and went from there to being Christian.
Hi John Michael,
Don’t you wonder that bond yields appear to be rising? My perspective in the matter is that the bond traders and their buyers are actually the minor players in that story. The issuers have the power because ultimately they control the supply. When the official interest rates were lifted years ago under the previous regime, I mentioned to you that it appeared to be an ill advised strategy, when reducing the supply of newly minted bonds was a better approach to tackling inflation, but what do I know? Since then I’ve been wondering if we’re going to see a crisis in the bond market based on nothing more than a negative sentiment. After all, if the total debt floating around there is unpayable, and that become widely acknowledged, then what does the value of the things even mean? It’s probably too large a question to ask don’t you reckon? 😊 Oh well, all part of decline.
Good luck for your travels.
Cheers
Chris
Hi, thanks for these as always! I have two questions this time:
1: I recall various discussions re: prehistoric civilizations and the cycles of the future saying that there had been four, previous to us, and we were the fifth- Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, Atlantean, and then us. I seem to recall that there will be two more, placing us not in the middle, but rather towards the end (though I would certainly love to be wrong). Is that the case? Also, I recall that Atlantis was associated with the Sun, and us with Mars, with the next two supposedly to be ruled by Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. What were the others associated with? As in, which planetary body, traditionally, is said to have ruled each of the first three? And is there any system to it?
2: What with all the AI stuff happening more and more rapidly in all its diabolical glory, one question keeps bugging me: Where are they gonna get the juice to run the machines? And forget about electrical power and fossil fuels, even- these data centers consume a fantastic amount of electronics and water and any other resource you could care to name. Won’t that nip this whole thing in the bud? And how would the demons showing up through these things deal with that? Would they even care?
I can sort of see it turning out along the rough schedule of demonic bargains you mentioned regarding the vaccines and the “Magic Resistance” – seven years of fantastic wealth and power until their Mephistopheles vanishes in a puff of resource depletion and their dragged off to low-tech poverty, which is as close to hell as these techbro types can imagine, I’d wager. How likely do you think this rough timeline to be?
Papa G you’re a very special person and i’m honored to be alive same time as a prophet like you.
i’m here but i venture out and appreciate you and your courage ever more as well as the die hard community you’ve built.
i’m glad you’re traveling and when i’m up and running i hope to link with others and yourself as i do my part in trying to start our own chitlin circuit.
i’ve been waiting for an open post to say this (smile).
—
speaking of community, so many people here have helped me survive these past couple of years and i really want to thank you all for the cards, money, prayers, herbs, books, silk dresses (Lilly/Kallianeira).
there’s more death from Kallianeira’s husband to Jeff Harrison, who i figured must’ve been from here. after Jim Heameach, he sent me money, then offered me a LOT of money to do whatever project i wanted because he was dying and he wanted to support something that’d grow.
i had no ideas at the time so i thanked him anyway and said i was more than okay.
his niece wrote me last week telling me of his passing so i want to put out good juju for him on his journey, although he died in March.
i think i pissed off Gawain and don’t know why but Jim Heameach has become my secret publisher as i’m going to publish a 60-page book but it’s personal like a zine even though it’s perfect bound. i will be doing them regularly like a comic book and i’m trying to come up with the love letter of a lifetime to try and inspire Gen X to go tits out in trying to repopulate the real world.
it’s all i can do to leave the apartment so this is going to be more epic than you realize if i can even show up somewhere. i live in san francisco and even i cannot blame me.
(smile)
so i wanted to check in and say i adore you, Papa. i do. i don’t know what so many of us would do without this …tether. yes. you tether many of us here.
thank you ever so much for being epic Papa. i know i’m not the only one with Daddy issues so i appreciate the gift of your grounding as well as flight and new ways of thinking out of the traps.
xxxxxx
erika
@Johnathan Simkins #2
If you’re interested in a text wall, I’ll share with you my conversion from lifelong atheist to Christian.
The first thing that drew me to a church was seeing the local church that I walked past every day taking in homeless people in the winter. I decided it was worth looking into so I went to a Sunday service, and never walked back into one for another year.
Something kept bugging me about religion, so I started to attend Sunday worship at a bunch of different churches, seeing what spoke to me. I finally spoke to a pastor that I felt comfortable with and he listened to my concerns and my seeking to find God. I also had some religious friends that I asked for counsel and of course they were eager for a convert!
One day I was at work, sweeping the floor of all things and full of emotion. I finally said out loud, “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and that God loves me and forgives my sins.” At that moment, I began to cry. The best explanation that I have is that I actually saw (or touched God) for that moment. Shortly after I was baptized. I also found taking the Eucharist to be a very important and solemn act that re-united me with the divine.
The best way I can describe adopting a religion is like falling in love. When you fall in love, the act and things you go through don’t make logical sense in your mind. An evolutionary biologist would say, “Of course you fell in love! Your girlfriend is pretty so that means she will carry healthy offspring for you. She has a nice figure so that means she can feed you children. She is kind to you so that means she will probably be a caring mother and she doesn’t flirt with other guys so you can rest assured that any children she has will be yours. You just fell in love because it’s enhanced your chances of passing on your genes.” But, while you are falling in love, you don’t make that rational calculation of the chances of you passing on your genes with a pretty girl. No, you experience crazy emotions, you have physical sensations when thinking about the object of your love. Your evolutionary chances go down because you daydream about your love while in heavy traffic and you can’t pay attention to the road.
The experience and outcome are very different. Sure, I could logically read the Bible and say, “If I do these things that Jesus said, I’m a good person who will get into heaven.” That’s the outcome of religion, but the experience of feeling God’s love is the experience.
It’s hard to describe because religion is not a logical thing that’s easy to write about and the spirit is not something that can be measured and analyzed.
John,
It’s been more than a decade since you wrote Star’s Reach. If you had the chance to update your vision of the future in Star’s Reach based on information that you have now that you may have not had when you originally wrote it back in 2014, what changes would you make, if any?
I’ve been reading your past blogs and finished The Twilight of the Intelligentsia earlier this week. The part about America’s intelligentsia fawning over Europe helped explain the right’s baffling obsession with Viktor Orban. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
So… a polecat update: my garden plot/s are doing well, with everything planted coming up (from seed), and or starts .. either bought or grown from seed sown at my pad. During the winter I constructed 2 greenhouse toppers (housing 2 varieties of chilles) that fit over a few of my raised beds.. with whatever scrap I had left, to make a smaller house ( perrrfect for a couple of eggplant and basil!) The Loganberries are gloriously in bloom, with some fruit already forming. Popcorn’s showing amongst the lettuce and Napa cabbage. The scarlet runner beans are up.. as are the Italian trombone squash and cucumbers/gerkins – all to be trained on the trellis built for thus. I’ve allowed for some ornamentals, strictly for their beauty, apart from any culinary use. On 2 sides, along the perimeter, I’ve strung 16 small brass bells along a stretched line, which are a delicate delight to hear when the winds pick up. Somewhat of a ‘concept garden’, if you will. There is even a small courtyard within, complete with table, chair, and a 6′ umbrella/stand for the hottest of afternoons. All within the confines of an 11′ × 18′ space.
I’ve also acquired an e-bike.. as I get rather tired of driving the ol’ backboard, e.i. my, so far, trusty steed of a pickup.. especially for day to day errands and such. 60 mi. on a charge, pedal depending of course. I’m liking it, so far.. still getting use to the feel of two wheeled + assist.
Officially divorced. YAY!
polecat .. over-n-out.
@Ken #29 re: Drone Defense
You might enjoy this discussion between Catgirl Kulak and Hypozomata on “the Drone Revolution:” https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/ep-10-the-drone-revolution-whypozomata-4c9
Fair warning: it goes way back on the precursor technologies to drones, hares off on a lot tangents, and generally assumes non-stop technological progress and the permanence of industrial society, so if you are either not super into military history or share our host’s beliefs about how things are going in the future (or both), you might find much to disagree with, but both participants are knowledgeable and insightful.
The one thing from that conversation that immediately comes to mind to possibly satisfy your actual request is the use of rope/string and nets. These won’t do any good against high-flying heavy ordnance drones like Predators, but against the kind of militarized commercial drones that have made such a splash in the Russia-Ukraine war, they’re remarkably effective. Basically, you enclose any area you want to keep drone-free in netting or a web of string/rope, and they can’t fly through, and even if they have remote-detonated explosives attached, those aren’t especially effective at shredding thin, flexible material in the open air. The downsides, of course, are that you have to have time to set them up before the drones start attacking, that they’re incredibly obvious and inconvenient, and that they add nearly zero defense value against more conventional attacks.
At any rate, hope you find that helpful, and good luck in your research!
Cheers,
Jeff
Howdy,
I’ve maybe asked this on an open post before, but I figured I’d give it a shot in case anyone new sees it or things have changed or what have you. I’m looking to supplement my solitary and online spiritual work and interaction with some in-person dealings, so I figured I’d ask the following:
1. Best would be, are any of y’all in or around the Houston, Texas area and willing to meet up for a beer or coffee sometime? I know a few fellow Texan Ecosophians tentatively discussed a more organized get together a while back, but the time wasn’t right for me to volunteer to take that on, so I suppose I’ll pair this ask with an offer: if there’s interest, I can take the lead on putting together something in Texas sometime in the next 6 months to a year. I figure something low key, like a regional sister to the potluck, but I’m open to suggestions.
2. Barring that, does anyone know of groups, organizations, or the like friendly to (even if not necessarily dedicated to) alternative spirituality that are in or have chapters in the Houston, Texas area and are worth checking out? My hang up so far has been that organizations I know to be worthwhile don’t necessarily have chapters near me, and I don’t know whether the local organizations are worthwhile. I can sort all that out with time, of course, but I figured I’d see if I could get a headstart by asking the most sane community I’ve encountered in the alt-spirituality space for recommendations.
Thanks very much in advance to anyone with anything to share, and hopefully I’ll get to see some of y’all in person sometime soon!
Cheers,
Jeff
So I guess there’s two ways of looking at this, 1) god(s) created the universe or 2) the universe created god(s). Or is there a middle way ie the universe was a creation of god(s), for lack of a better term, but then during the creative process more gods came to be.
Where am I going with this: what we’re doing with cyber-intelligence sounds to me a bit like what happened during creation, that is, thinking material things were created and let’s assume not by accident and maybe what we call gods along side.
So there’s this Biblical story where Big G created Heaven and Earth and then suffered a rebellion up in Heaven by that malcontent and a host of followers. So I wonder if it’s possible that there was an argument way, way back and way up there in places inaccessible to mortals, the way that we’re having arguments about artificial intelligence, with a lot of people nowadays taking a very dim view of the whole thing.
I wonder if the chief dissident looked into the far future and saw gangs of sad, suffering, murdering, malfunctioning blobs with strands of misfiring neurons and synapses and was appalled and said look at that mess, why do we want this? Maybe he saw us and our universe the same way that a lot of us see artificial intelligence, that is ‘artificial’, and highly expensive, and highly imperfect, and really not worth doing.
I’m like a lot of people, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a free lunch, so the effort and energy poured by the heavenly realm into creation must have been enormous and maybe that was the source of the dispute, with Big G happy with the whole thing, but his opponent not so much saying oh, to hell with all this and Big G replying, yeah, good idea, we’ll start with you.
Dear Mr Druid
What do you think about the role of spying in today’s global environment? On one hand you can read about how the Chinese have infiltrated America’s universities, while on the other hand you can read about how Chinese students at Harvard are all potential recruits for the CIA and if foreign students leave how will Harvard and the CIA ever survive? If the Chinese networks are so rich and powerful within the USA, why are the war with China drums beating?
Personally, I feel no ill will toward China and the Chinese but I would like them to not be over here. Trade for goods is fine but the one way flow of people can’t stop soon enough, especially if we plan on going to war with them. Mercantilism can work two ways.
I also find the Chinese propagandists like J Sachs, B Berletic and especially P Escobar extremely shrill these days to the point of hysteria. If China is so big and strong and the USA so incompetent, why do these three behave as if there is a mouse in the room and they are standing on chairs with their dresses over their heads screaming in panic?
@Fredrik #13: I found your comment on Mongolia to be very interesting.
You may be interested to know that when the First Nation Medicine Man Standing Bear went to Mongolia during the summer last year to spend time with a shaman there, he was delighted to report the presence of the swastika symbol in much of the sacred objects and ornaments used by the shaman and rural Mongolian society as a whole. Standing Bear’s delight stemmed from the fact that the swastika is one of the most sacred symbols of his people and Indigenous peoples across North America.
@Kimberly #19- thanks for the podcast link. I listened to it in the way home from work, and subscribed. It is very much the kind of thing I like to listen to, and I will definitely look for your book when it comes out. Decluttering and keeping a house livable are very much on my mind lately. I am leaving my teaching job after 25 years, and I have to decide item by item what to bring home and what to leave for my replacement. At the same time, we are cleaning my mom’s house to sell. I keep reminding myself that I can keep anything, but I can’t keep everything.
An open question for the commentariat: in times of transition like this, what has been most helpful?
I have a question regarding the notions of spiritual forces and place. Why is it that some places seem to have a vibe about them or a feeling that some places are ‘more haunted’ than others or what have you? What sets the boundaries on these regions and their emotional and spiritual tones?
Best,
JZ
So from the exalted and mighty to the picayune and the absurd. King Charles went to Ottawa and read out the throne speech, you know, being head of state and all that.
What I heard is that his visit and little sit down in Parliament was meant to be an expression of Canadian sovereignty. Yes, a rebuke to that blusterer down south. Strange notion that, having a king from a foreign capitol as head of state and this an expression of sovereignty? More the opposite I would think.
What if history had taken a few twists along the way, and instead of an English king from London, speaking English, Canada had as monarch a French king from Paris, speaking French. Would a French King Charles paying a visit and making that speech in Parliament be seen as an expression of sovereignty?
Don’t ask why. There is no why. Ottawa is the cold place that fun forgot, and Toronto the grey, drear blotch where fresh bread is seen as a threat to public morality and where they will regulate the bejesus out of food stalls. And heaven forfend food trucks.
And I’m telling you, the High Church Old Guard will look at you askance if you win an Olympic gold. Why? Because FIFTH is a good Canadian finish damn you. FIFTH!
Do you understand? No? Then I’ll explain, it revolves around the unbalanced and extreme commitment to winning such a trifle, it reveals an unwell personality. A medal is too much, way too much, even fourth is highly suspect, but FIFTH tells everyone that you could have won if you had wanted. I mean really do you want to be seen tripping and falling over the others at the finish line like those hot dogs from down south. No.
Canadians took great pride as being the only country ever to host an Olympics and not win a gold medal. That happened not just once but twice, TWICE, at Montreal and Calgary.
So what happened at those Vancouver Games where the home team took so many medals, including gold? They should have called a Royal Commission of Inquiry to get to the bottom of it.
And Trump wants to annex the place? Oh please. That’s a joke. He’d have better luck annexing Syria.
@ Chad Haag, to add to JMG’s point that, yes the democrats are finally realizing they have nothing to cling on to. I suspect that in projecting that they are suddenly aware of Biden’s mental state, they can then use this new found “clarity” to project the same opinion on Trump.
Their issue is that Trump call talk for hours without missing a beat, Biden can barely say his own name. Yes, Trump will do his own manipulation of things for his own gain but that is no sign of mental decline.
@batstrel just because it is hilarious the source of this… I will quote Neil Degrass Tyson “We act as through we have the whole playbook, that we have all the rules figured out. We do not.”. Tyson is funny because over the last few years, he has ideas have shifted more in line with JMG’s than you would think. I suspect as the whole hyper militant atheist “praise be to the great god science!” has crumbled, he has had a serving of humble pie.
I do find it funny that we act like we know how old and big the universe is when by our observations that we have a hard limit on how much information we can collect. We look in all directions and see the edge fade away and then conclude “that must be it, the size of the universe is X”. It would be like being in the middle of the ocean, looking at the horizon around and concluding, the entire world is a 6 mile wide disc. As we move and look up, we know that not to be the case. The difference is that we cannot get another vantage point of the universe so odds of us expanding this point of view are slim.
Arnav, one of the reasons I didn’t specify a set of steps for people to take is that everyone has a different mix of talents, limits, and circumstances. Since I’m not you, I can’t know what would be best for you to do. Take the question of what you should do as a theme for reflection and contemplation, and give yourself time to come up with the answer that works for you.
Ben, of course I do. The crucial think is recognizing that they’re metaphors, not truths.
Forecasting, it’ll take a massive crisis to destabilize the permanent bureaucracy, so the timing’s good!
Hugh, delighted to hear it. Don’t use a literary agent — they’re a complete waste of your time and energy. Look for small to midsized publishers that have broadly comparable books in their backlists; go to their websites, find the page of submissions requirements, and follow those to the letter.
Patricia M, good to hear about the rains!
Stephen, I’m not a fan, but I found The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch especially striking.
Forecasting, thanks for this.
J.L.Mc12, that’s a fascinating question to which I don’t have an answer!
Cugel and Raymond, thank you.
Brian, huzzah!
RMS, I wish I had a good answer to the question of how to meet people, so I’ll be interested to hear what others have to say. As for “my most powerful metaphor,” er, in what context? Metaphors are tools; one that works well in one case is useless in another.
Siliconguy, thanks for this.
Nick, the next month with five Wednesdays is July; I’ll call for suggestions in the first July post, and you can bring it up then and see what kind of response it gets.
Chris, as I see it, yields are rising because the issuers have to pay more to get people to take their paper. Not a good sign! The long term value of bonds will be zero, but in the meantime, people are willing to gamble on being able to offload them onto the next sucker.
Matt, (1) the Moon, Mercury, and Venus, in that order. The planets are in order of relative speed as observed from Earth. (2) They aren’t, of course. The question is just how much money will be poured down how many ratholes before the techbros figure that out.
Erika, thank you! Keep on shining brightly, and I’ll look forward to meeting you sometime down the road.
Enjoyer, I don’t know of anything that I’d change.
Moonwolf8, oh, it’s simpler than that. Anyone who annoys the globalists is guaranteed to be turned into a celebrity on the American right.
Polecat, thanks for the data points, and congratulations.
Smith, I suppose that’s one way to look at it. From my perspective, the universe wasn’t created, it grew, and so nobody had to invest anything in it, any more than people have to invest in the growth of a kudzu plant!
A1, spying is one of the world’s oldest professions, and it’s always a busy trade. Our current society is riddled with spies, but then so was every past society. As for China, yeah, it’s just as dreary to see media flacks insisting that China is all good and the US all bad as it is to see the other set of flacks insisting the opposite.
John, the etheric plane has landscapes that are every bit as complex as physical landscapes. What you’re asking about are some of the features of the etheric landscape. The whole subject is much more complex than I have time to outline!
Forecasting intelligence and JMG,
There are serious discussions about the UK’s likely future, and the west’s in general, but they are rare and usually not public. Here is a very clear, articulate, and informed rundown of very high likelihood of civil war by David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London, and specialist in the study of insurgency and counterinsurgency, information warfare, cyberwarfare, and propaganda:
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/
Here are the core issues that make it inevitable in the author’s view:
“Identity politics may be defined as politics in which people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group. It is overtly post-national. It is this above all that makes civil conflict in the West not merely likely but practically inevitable, in my view.
The peculiarity of contemporary Western multiculturalism, relative to examples of other heterogenous societies, is threefold. Firstly, it is in the ‘sweet spot’ with respect to theories of civil war causation, specifically the supposed problem of coordination costs is diminished in a situation where White majorities (trending rapidly toward large minority status in some cases) live alongside multiple smaller minorities.
Secondly, thus far what has been practiced is a sort of ‘asymmetric multiculturalism’ in which in-group preference, ethnic pride, and group solidarity—notably in voting—are acceptable for all groups except Whites for whom such things are considered to represent supremacist attitudes that are anathematic to social order.
Thirdly, because of the above what has emerged is a perception that the status quo is invidiously unbalanced, which provides an argument for revolt on the part of the White majority (or large minority) that is rooted in stirring language of justice. From a strategic communications perspective, a morally inflected narrative which has a clearly articulated grievance, a plausible and urgent remedy, and a receptive conscience community is powerful.”
The whole article is worth reading for details and context. It’s from October 2023, but the author did an interview with Maiden Mother Matriarch this spring.
Write up: https://modernity.news/2025/03/04/government-advisor-warns-uk-is-heading-for-civil-war/
Audio: https://www.louiseperry.co.uk/p/the-coming-british-civil-war-david
But, the elites don’t want to hear this message. Much like how there were a number of government and military reports on peak oil and the elites responded with wars in the middle east, green vaporware boondoggles, and remote work and 15 minute cities, or WEF’s “you will own nothing, eat bugs, and be happy.” The elites are responding to David Betz’s warnings with censorship, surveillance, white supremacist terrorism propaganda, and war with Russia. They have done precisely zero to address massive inequalities in wealth and income, immigration issues, or trade and manufacturing issues. Or they hadn’t until Reform swept local elections, Trump swept US elections, and Le Pen and AfD polled ahead of all others. The threat at the ballot box finally jarred some of them into some feeble half measures. It’s far from clear how this will play out.
Bond yields are somewhat confusing. At issue the price of the bond is fixed, say $10,000. What the primary dealers are negotiating is the interest rate, and it is an auction. The issuer offers 1%, everyone laughs, then the bidding goes up until the interest rate is high enough that someone agrees that the offered rate provides an adequate rate of return over inflation and accounting for default risk.
If you need to sell a bond before the maturity date then you have to adjust the sales price you ask to take into account the difference between the current interest rate for a new bond and the interest rate on your bond. After all the face value of the bond was when it was issued, as was the interest rate. The only thing that can change is the sales price you ask. If the original interest rate on the bond is higher than the price of a new bond then your bond is worth more than the face value. Interest payments remaining plus face value has to equal the same for your old bond and the new one you could buy instead.
The reverse is also true, if the interest rate on your old bond is less than the interest on a new one than you have to lower your sales price accordingly so the buyer can add the discount to the interest payments to get to the same final number as the higher interest rate would give you on the new bond.
If I confused you more I apologize. It’s hard to explain.
The other thing that gets people worried about bonds and shouldn’t is that it doesn’t matter what the current bond price is unless you have to sell it today. The face amount and the interest payments are locked in until maturity. Then you’ll have to buy a new bond at whatever the interest rate is at time., or take the cash and live off of it, bury it, whatever. In case of default then you could lose all or part of it, that’s why you don’t invest it all in Boeing.
JMG – have a good trip to Glastonbury, and thanks for all these posts.
Quebec just voted to cut off ties with the British monarchy:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebecs-national-assembly-unanimously-votes-to-break-ties-with-the/
Ken @29
Re drones.
Patrick Lancaster is a freelance journalist who has been reporting from the Donbas for 10 years. A couple months back he was in a truck chased by a Ukranian drone. The Russian soldiers shot it down with a combination of AK and shotgun.
https://youtu.be/MowWjVqhWaI?feature=shared
@erika lopez #69,
Thanks for letting us know about Jeff Harrison‘s passing. May he be blessed on his path, wherever it will lead him.
@JMG, thanks for the book recommendation about alchemy.
JMG,
Yes, metaphors are tools (that’s a metaphor too), but I wonder if you have one that stands out among the ones you’ve put together? Something you come back to again and again, because it wasn’t just useful, it was necessary? It is a fully subjective question, I suppose. Something that not only made an impact on you when you came up with it, but you really want your readers to grasp? Or, if you had to leave the world with one metaphor to consider, what would it be?
I like to think of metaphors as flashlights (honestly, I could say the same for things like meditating on a certain rune or Sephiroth or card in the Tarot). They bring light to some aspect.
RMS
Hi John Michael,
Whenever I read your comments on the Ukraine/Russia conflict or, for that matter, any worldly events, you appear to have a broad information base from which to state your opinions. I am trying to set up RSS feeds to circumvent the pervasive and pesky algorithms of online platforms. May I ask what are some of your most trusted sites?
Thanks, Eric
>A slightly shabby exterior
From a higher level POV, if you’re being fancy, you’re wanting to impress people who you don’t really like anyway. That sounds like a waste of money to me. There are some lines of work where you do want to impress people you don’t really like – salesweasel, real estate weasel, actor/actress weasel, political weasel, etc and I suppose it’s money not wasted if that’s the case. A legitimate business expense and should be treated as such and spent as such.
You could say something about maybe don’t be a weasel but that will lead you down a burrow you may not come back from.
>Ottawa is the cold place that fun forgot, and Toronto the grey, drear blotch where fresh bread is seen as a threat to public morality
Don’t hold back, tell me what you really think. You forgot Montreal. What is your esteemed opinion of that city?
Lol. The cold place that fun forgot. Sounds like the polar opposite of New Orleans.
@Stephen #48: PK Dickhead here. One of the reasons I like PKD is his characters. So many are mechanics, plumbers, vending machine repairmen or something along those lines. No superheroes or special ones. Just normal people who then have their sense of reality implode around them.
Some of my favorites: Clans of the Alphane Moon, Ubik, Time Out of Joint, A Scanner Darkly, Now Wait for Last Year, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, and The Valis trilogy,
re: the bond market
It’s opaque, horribly opaque compared to the stock market. I think the most they let the little guy do is trade futures on bonds and that sounds like such a bad idea for more reasons that I have fingers. You actually want to trade bonds, you’re going to need to know people. And have either insane leverage or deep pockets or both. With emphasis on the word insane. The stock market is a rube goldberg contraption even as transparent as it is.
I back up and go market? Are you sure it’s a market? Or just the illusion of one? How could you tell? This is probably where knowing the right people would help answer the question.
There are political objectives now attached to interest rates, that’s all I know.
@ Justin Patrick Moore: “Situationist” is a new term for me; I had not heard of it before. I read one other work by Butor, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ape.” It shows the range of his interests, including some occult philosophy, if I recall. I still haven’t been able to remember the name of the poet in “Dhalgren,” though he’s more or less a household name. In other French lit, I read several by Huysmans decades ago and they each went right over my head. I did plow through Proust in the late ’90s. I even went back and re-read the first, second, and final volumes, which I thought were the best. The middle volumes were a slog, especially the endless discussions of the Dreyfus Affair. I would like to re-read “Merurius” by Patrick Harpur soon. It’ll be my third time. What is that thing Levi wrote? Read, re-read, re-read? Someone up above asked about books on alchemy; “Mercurius” should be on his list.
@Bofur #63: I am a walker too. My usual route takes me along a creek for a 2.5 mile walk round trip. When I was not as old as I am now, I’d walk 4 miles in about an hour. Currently, though, along the way I’ve been scattering milkweed pods from my back yard, so I always keep an eye out for the results of my efforts over the last couple of years. I’m seeing results, and that is gratifying.
On P.K.Dick; I have a special fondness for “Ubik.” I sold my PKD collection to a used bookstore in a university town years ago. The owner even gave me more than the usual pittance that you normally get for used books, saying that he knew that the PKD stuff would move well. I wish I’d kept one of my copies of “Ubik” because I found it uniquely entertaining.
A1 @ 77, my 2cents worth: First, the CIA, a Cold War relic, needs to be disbanded. I agree that a president needs intelligence for decision support, which is what Truman actually wanted, bet we need to get out of the regime change business. I hadn’t heard about a Harvard/CIA/China connection. Do you have a link or citation? Now, a Harvard/AIPAC/Mossad connection I can well believe.
While I am no fan of the current administration, and did not vote for any part of it, I do very much agree that we as a nation need to be supporting technical and vocational education. I had no idea that Harvard and the other ivies received government funding. As long ago as the mid-1960s the author of a brilliant book called Up the Organization was advising corporate CEOs, don’t hire Harvard MBAs.
I agree with you about China. Which is now a wealthy and powerful nation and should have no need to resettle parts of its population elsewhere. Part of being The Most Powerful Nation is that swelled head sense of superiority its’ citizens tend to have. Americans of about two generations thought they ought to be able to travel and settle anywhere they liked and be made welcome.
Team10tim, thanks for this. It really is a harrowing prospect.
Siliconguy, or in nuclear power. My late wife knew people who lost huge amounts of money when the WPPSS nuclear power system defaulted on its debts in the 1980s.
Anon, I suppose there isn’t a French monarchy for them to turn to instead…
RMS, no, I try not to repeat metaphors any more often than I have to, and I don’t have a favorite one.
Eric, I don’t have trusted sites; I start from the assumption that everybody is trying to spin the news one way or another. Thus the crucial thing to do is get newsfeeds from all sides. If you track the BBC and RT, for example, you can find out what both sides are saying about Ukraine, and aim for the middle. Add in a news site from India and another from Brazil or what have you, and you start being able to triangulate.
@Phutatorius: If you want to get a beneath the streets eye view of the Situationist milieu, the best book I know about that is highly readable is “The Beach Beneath the Streets” by Mackenzie Wark. Since you like to walk, you will like psychogeography me-thinks.
I may be inclined to post up my article from my Cheap Thrills column about Flaneurs, and Psychogeography in New Maps to my website… most of them I haven’t posted online… but I think I will. I’ll try to get it up in a bit and link it here…
Up above John Zybourne was asking about Spirits of Place and the influence of places on people, and Kimberly Steele mentioned it as well with regards to her forthcoming book. So the spirits of place must be getting ready to circumambulate.
Chemtrails! They (the government) actually mentioned chemtrails!
Trump said they were going to look into it. RFK tweeted they are going to “put an end to this crime”.
I have worked outside for more than 20 years. I have no doubt somebody is spraying something…
I’ve seen the dance too many times. Giant jets flying one after another in a coordinated fashion releasing, (not contrails those are quite different) but trails that stay, spread, join together, and turn a brilliantly sunny day into a strange overcast.
Funny side note; the people I know who are the most against the idea that it is happening, are people who spend the least amount of time outside :/
Any thoughts you’d like to share on the subject?
John,
Can you recommend a good book on Tarot divination that contains detailed instructions?
On p. 196 of the English translation of Carl Jung’s Alchemical Studies (244 in the original edition), one finds, with no further explanation, the following: “The idea that the principle of individuation is the source of all evil is found in Schopenhauer and still more in Buddhism.” This is taken from a lecture given in 1942. Such a bald statement startled me. I associate Buddhism with the problem of suffering, and right and wrong action, not evil. I haven’t read Schopenhauer, but I know that JMG has. Can anyone shed some light on what in Schopenhauer or Buddhism might have motivated Jung to make such a statement?
@Johnathan Simkins #2: One of the most interesting atheist takes, I have read–in fact, the only one to seriously consider it–is Wathey’s “The Illusion of God’s Presence: The Biological Origins of Spiritual Longing.” Wathey–alone among prominent atheists, so far as I can see–takes seriously the (I would argue) universal mystical impulse, which I suspect is at the root of all real religiosity. (Otherwise, as Signore Patiño notes, it’s often just a case of being held hostage…the old saw about the carrot and the stick, desire and fear, mercy and judgment, et al.) He ultimately explains away said impulse as so many chemical and physiological reactions, but…that largely follows from the (usual) a prior that everything is reducible to particles and/or energy dynamics.
How do people come to have faith, then? Well, they encounter the Divine, of course…
Axé
#56: “Ben (no. 23), your “criteria for human evolution” are hard to distinguish from Last Judgement of a wrathful God. Well, I didn’t vote for him, and how much I love my neighbor very much depends on the neighbor! Selfishness is not a bad thing–children ought to be focused primarily of themselves, but gradually broaden, so that when they have their own families, they make sacrifices for them. (You don’t necessarily want teenagers doing that.) Older people can extend their circles still more widely. But literally “loving everyone as yourself” is just not on–and if anyone disagrees, can I have your money?
That’s not the only way to understand the “love your neighbor as yourself” instruction. Misunderstanding often happens if a saying is lifted from its original context (guru to disciples) and peddled as a universal divorced from what the original context is trying to achieve.
Loving everyone like yourself is the stance of a Devotee. The Devotee path is a lightening fast path up the Planes compared to other ways and methods to ascend. And a Devotee is doing it as a specific type of kriya. The Biblical injunction is not dissimilar to Sadhguru’s Inner Engineering “Be a (loving) Mother to the World”.
Inner energy + emotion builds the energy body for ascension to inner capabilities of greater bliss, wisdom and power. There are other practices to go with it that build vaster clarity and deeper wisdom more quickly alongside it if you’re willing to set aside the time each day for them. But first a Devotee works going full-stop on their target emotion instead of being wishy-washy.
One of the things that presents as an obstacle to greater wisdom, bliss and power is that everyone’s ego can’t act daily with superior clarity (which comes with a fully activated Ajna chakra) without also liking some things and disliking others and that liking/disliking distorting higher perception. One’s energy body has to evolve to it as an experiential state of being. It’s not a philosophical or moral stance. If it is only a philosophical or moral stance, then one’s Beingness Quality is still lukewarm and you still have work to do on yourself. Hence the whole thing in the Bible about “how I wish you were hot or cold” – i.e. settle on establishing one’s inner ascending quality of Beingness in either Love or Hate.
Demons settle on the stillness pole of Hate as their preferred quality of Beingness. Christ settled His on Love. Even when they flogged and nailed Him He never stopped being a loving “Mother to the World.” Sadhguru says for that reason still, to this day, people bow down in Devotee worship to Him. That’s why they honor Him. Not because of his numerous miracles or miraculous birth. His inner Beingness never changed even while the Romans were actively killing Him. That is a seriously difficult ‘feat’ (in D&D terms) to achieve on a dense, mundane Plane like ours. If someone is flogging me bloody for sure I do not feel like a ‘Loving Mother’ at them at that moment. Yet He still did (!!!) because His inner quality never changed.
Sadhguru says you can just as easily settle your deliberately cultivated Beingness on universally hating others as much as loving them and that also works (Asura – aka Demon Dao / Demon Dharma) – just so long as you universally “hate your neighbor like you hate yourself” and it needs to be genuine unmovable, unflappable, relentless self-hatred without any liking of anything within yourself whatsoever – (inner energy + emotion = a type of puja kriya – fyi: plenty of kriyas don’t involve emotions). So long as it settles on one inner emotional pole (love or hate) – the kriya will work in raising one’s energy centers to (eventual) ascension.
[If this starts to give an inkling of just how different other Planes and dimensions of liberated Beings can be from ours as it did for me one day…well…that’s about the right of it.]
People seldom do that though. They’re all about being lukewarm. That’s why all of us are still bound by the five elements instead of the capability of more subtle forms of being. We like some things, dislike others. And that wishy-washy liking, disliking prevents us from ‘leveling up’. It’s a traffic jam to the energy body since there’s no single-pointed focus telling the energy where to go. The route is always changing so people stay ‘lost’.
There are other ways to raise one’s clarity of perception to go along with that puja kriya. But if that’s too much work (clarity practices + puja kriya) just raising the energy via Love your Neighbor as Yourself or Be a Mother to the World – all by itself will eventually establish one’s Beingness in greater subtle-Plane levels of higher perception and wisdom. But you have to work at it first.
So choose one. Love or Hate – it works just as well with either. It’s just that one is better for society and a lot more pleasant emotionally than the other. But both will work so long as the quality being cultivated is moving toward no longer being wishy-washy lukewarm.
For those who are interested in reading a bit about flaneurs, psychogeography, and Walking in the Drift, here is my article Walking in the Drift, originally published in New Maps in Volume 2, Issue 1.
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/walking-in-the-drift
@Justin Patrick Moore: I very much recommend the first three books of the Alexandria Quartet! Each book (not to give too many spoilers) reverts completely the impression you had in the previous one. The only other book I know who does it to that extent is Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier, which is also good.
The last book of the quartet is forgettable and can be simply skipped without loss.
The bond marker and trading bonds.
Trading bonds makes no sense. That’s not what they are for. You rent out some surplus capital, get paid rent, and at maturity you get your money back. And you usually do get your money back, defaults make the news because they are rare even for junk bonds.
From Moody’s “Compared to the wider universe of all US public firms, high-yield companies — often characterized by having higher levels of debt and considered riskier investments — are outperforming, ending 2024 with an expected probability of default of less than 4%.”
There are too many financial razzle-dazzle types out there with great schemes all of which make them money regardless of how it turns out for you. Options = gambling. Futures are also gambling but with the intent of reducing risk. The farmer can sell his future wheat harvest now for X locking in a price he can live with, if it goes higher the farmer loses out, if it goes lower he can breathe easy. The miller at the other end of the transaction also locks in a price he can live with and comes out ahead if the wheat price goes up and loses out if it goes down. But both have some certainty on which to base their business plans.
And in between planting and harvest twenty other people will be buying and selling those contracts never intending to supply grain or take delivery. Those are the speculators. See the movie “Trading Places.”
The other good finance movie is “Margin Call”. Jeremy Irons knows the price of your soul.
JMG. Thanks for the advice. And do you have any thoughts on publishing with an independent publisher versus self-publishing?
@Aldarion: Cool! I have Justine sitting on my desk at home. I haven’t read any Ford Maddox Ford. I’ll keep The Good Soldier in mind too!
Can someone from Canada please explain what is or is not happening with regard to closing the highway to Alaska to commercial traffic, or imposing tolls or something allegedly in response to tariffs. Mind, I don’t blame Canadians or the premiers of western provinces. The idiotic 51st state rhetoric would be reason enough. I would like to know just what did happen.
For those who enjoy wildlife documentaries as much as I do, they are quite the guilty pleasure for me, National Geographic has a series of documentaries about our national parks up on YouTube right now. The photography is superb, the narration is neither excessively technical nor Hollywood cutesy stupid, and the narrator, Country Western performer Garth Brooks, speaks clearly and at least gives the impression that he does care about his subject.
My fifty states quilt project continues, behind schedule, alas, but next up is Massachusetts, which will be dark blue and brown. Brown is for the uniform of the Minuteman depicted on the Massachusetts flag.
Clueless Paul Krugman has an article or op-ed or something out today, about how attracting international students is our greatest strength. Au contraire, our great strength used to be that Mr. and Ms. Ordinary from nowhere in particular could rise in prosperity and status as far as their talents and virtue could take them.
Per JPM: Some of my favorites: Clans of the Alphane Moon, Ubik, Time Out of Joint, A Scanner Darkly, Now Wait for Last Year, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, and The Valis trilogy,”
Ubik: an anti-entropy product available in convenient spray cans! What’s not to like? 🙂
Siliconguy @ 109, Farmers having “some certainty on which to base their business plans.” is what commodity price supports were for. Need I repeat that commodity price supports Did. Not. Cost. The. Taxpayer. A. Dime?
I think there may have been price ceilings as well, to keep speculators honest.
Perhaps someone could please explain, so that I can understand, was there ANY reason other than greed and ideology for the removing of commodity price supports?
JMG, you mentioned offhand a few weeks ago that you’d been reading up on 40k lore, and compared it to Time Cube in terms of being channelled, rather than written. I was just wondering what you meant? It is culturally quite compelling and sticky, and I’m not really sure why, although a mummified corpse on a golden throne is definitely much better and more appealing leadership than anything Anthony Albanese or any of the other creatures in parliament can offer.
The Other Owen #93, my esteemed opinion of Montreal? I have not much opinion on the place. But, to the best of my limited ability, I’ve read the body language of teeth-grinding corporate Torontonians when Montreal is mentioned. See, the culture of Toronto still suffers from founder effect and Toronto – without a word of a lie – was a community of homes and churches. I kid you not. When I was a young feller I used to visit Toronto when it was exactly that.
And so the stuffed and mounted remains of gin-soaked, one-eyed colonels in their Rosedale mansions re-animate to warn us that the road to perdition is lined with sidewalk cafes, full of people with loose morals and looser screws. This is the parched view of the Protestant elite who would have you storming machine gun nests for King and Country, and if not that, then praying in Church, and if not that, then working your fingers to the bone at your shop or office. No disorder here, and so no free time and no fun, never, no, not here, not like Montreal.
I mentioned gin. Yes, well, isn’t English lit littered with the bones of alcoholic authors? Of course it is. Wasn’t Winston up to the gills during the Blitz, cursing Hun aircrew from his balcony? Of course he was. Haven’t all of us worked with well-functioning drunks? Of course we have. Are you not the master of your own self, and your own household and your own property? Of course you are. Don’t all of us enjoy a tipple now and then? Of course we do. So bottoms up. But in the privacy of your own home, in the company of your own trusted compadres.
But no to side walk cafes, no to the gaiety of outdoor food stalls and food trucks and no, no, no to the sensual pleasures of fresh bread, because we all know where that goes and we all know that all those undisciplined and disorderly ways are for the lesser and the defeated and the unaccomplished. So there you have it.
As promised a while ago, here is the summary of what the inauguration horoscope for the new German chancellor Friedrich Mer has too say. The horoscope was cast for May 6, at 17:32:30 Middle European Summer Time for Berlin, Germany. The time is the time at which Merz took the oath in the Reichstag in Berlin. One interesting propety of the horoscope is that the seventh house of foreign policy is governed by Mars, and Mars himself is in the tenth house of the executive branch of government. So it is to be expected that Friedrich Merz will lead a more aggressive stance against Russia and/or other real or presumed enemies of Germany. He will also further remilitarization of Germany. At the same time, there are indications in the sixth house that Friedrich Merz may get deluded about the military possibilities of Germany and/or the state in which the Bundeswehr finds itself.
Otherwise, the horoscope isn’t particularly extraordinary, and in other realms of governance, Friedrich Merz will be partly successul, partly less successful. There will be controversies about the poicies of Friedrich Merz. At the same time, the political influential class will be more or less alignes with Friedrich Merz, shown through a trine between Sun and Moon. In the economic realm, there will be successes and failures; there is a danger that Friedrich Merz will be tempted to influence the economic sphere politically, and a danger of wastefulness in the economy There will be some constructive reforms, since Uranus is sextile Satiurn.
In my small sphere of the world, things seem to be getting weirder. Specifically, I am noticing a lot more uncontained reactivity at insignificant things and real tendency towards victim identity. Anyone else? JMG, I am curious what you are noticing regarding the incoming energy you have been tracking for a while now.
>The other thing that gets people worried about bonds and shouldn’t is that it doesn’t matter what the current bond price is unless you have to sell it today. The face amount and the interest payments are locked in until maturity.
Sort of true. But the current price does reflect other people’s confidence in how likely you are to get both of those things back when you require them. Do those prices accurately reflect such things? Sometimes. You’re dealing with professional sharks in that world as I understand it, they do their best.
And there are rules about when you’re required to mark to market and such but as we’ve seen, they’re happy to move goalposts around until they stop losing. That is if you know the right people.
I can guarantee you the guys trading these things do not think about holding them to maturity, ever. They think in terms of duration and convexity. It’s a weird world that I absolutely don’t know that much about. Like I said, you need to know people in order to play, they don’t let just anyone trade bonds.
@ Bofur #63
I totally agree. I’m a generally upbeat person despite a very difficult childhood with Aspergers. Fortunately I’ve lived most of my life in a rural part of the country and have always walked a lot out in Nature.
Perhaps you’ve heard or read about Gulf War veterans who came home with PTSD, anxiety and depression and were taken out for long wilderness backpacking trips. They all said that walking days and even weeks in the mountains did far more to address their issues than anything the Veteran’s Administration could do or prescribe for them..
Travis, not really. It’s not a subject I’ve studied in depth.
Ashlar, yes. I highly recommend John Gilbert’s The Doors of Tarot. John was the best tarot reader I’ve ever known and a gifted teacher, and was very good at setting out the process by which a complete novice can become an expert tarot reader.
Asdf, Jung had his weaknesses, and an incomplete knowledge of Buddhism is one of those. His take on Schopenhauer is also seriously flawed, for that matter! The problem Jung faced, or rather didn’t face, is that all through his life his childhood upbringing in the Swiss Reformed Church (his father was a pastor) formed an undiscussed background to his ideas. That, not Buddhism or Schopenhauer, was where he got the idea of individualism as essentially evil — recall that in Calvinist sects such as his, the only way to be good is to abase yourself and submit utterly to the divine will (and even then it’s never enough).
Justin, thanks for this.
Siliconguy, stocks aren’t supposed to be for speculating either, but of course everyone does it. Bonds are just another asset class to gamble on.
Hugh, I prefer going with independent publishers. They take care of all the business end of things, which I’m not good at, and they also have connections with distributors and media. That’s why I don’t self-publish.
Synthase, the Warhammer stuff is so heavily loaded with archetypal content that I see it as more an upsurge from the collective unconscious than any kind of consciously crafted narrative. The fact that it’s basically crowdsourced at this point feeds into that as well.
Booklover, thanks for this — a good clear reading.
Angelica, the weird energy is very much in course now, and seems to be finding its human channels — sorting out which people will be influenced by this aspect of it, which by that aspect, and which will stand aloof. I think peak weirdness is still some distance away, though.
Hi JMG,
A friend sent me a link to one of your earlier essays, on the supernatural and subnatural realms. I read it when you first made it available, but it was great to read it again:
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-subnatural-realm-a-speculation/
Would you be willing to elaborate a bit more on what the Michael energy is?
Thanks!
OtterGirl
@Bofur,
Years ago, I went through a spate of anhedonic depression — that is, clinical depression so bad your brain can’t feel joy — while slogging through a 10km bike commute and walking dogs at least an hour a day. I couldn’t even remember what being happy felt like, though intellectually I knew I had in the past felt happiness. No amount of exercise worked; tossing in weights didn’t did bupkis, too.
SSRIs also did bupkis, so I suppose I can’t argue with your statement that exercise is as effective as SSRIs. Still, years after having gotten back on track, the “just exercise bro” meme really bugs me. For some of us, it’s really not that easy.
(In my case, it took a literal miracle to knock my mental health onto a better track.)
Hello Mr. Greer,
I apologize if others already asked this, but… How does the subnatural differ from whatever is involved in divinatory systems like the tarot?
Thank you,
Ennobled little day
@Michaelz #8:
I’ve noticed that too. I’ve described it to myself as ‘The Religion of My Body’. I notice it especially among Millennial-and-younger females, who value the wisdom of the body, its rhythms, intuitions, inherent capacity for healing and joy, and who then take that to the next level and place the physical body on the level of the sacred. Except that it’s never ‘the body’, except in a talking-head academic context; it’s always ‘My Body’, which is the phrase you hear regularly in casual conversation that clues you in to the speaker’s religious orientation.
Like any religious parlance, it can become tiresome to anyone who doesn’t partake of the faith, but the additional peculiarity of this religion is that it’s so inherently individualistic. What ‘My Body’ knows or feels or intuits cannot, by its nature, be shared with anyone else except by talking aloud about ‘My Body’. And what ‘My Body’ knows or feels or intuits can become the yardstick by which every decision or judgement is made, which is no more healthy (IMHO) than being a solely brain-based decision maker or a solely heart-based decision maker. Wisdom is in balance, as I think we’ve heard here more than once.
Hey JMG
I am uncertain about the answer to my speculations also, but what makes me think that there could be better, or at least unexplored, ways of recording language with writing is the conlanging community. Once in a blue moon they come up with something quite odd that isn’t the usual kind of writing system.
For example, Sheldon Ebbeler has done some quite spectacular explorations of the untapped possibilities of writing. One of my favourites is a “Polysyllabry” he invented for a Papuan language in which each of its characters represents up to two syllables.
https://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/uriovakiro.htm
Enjoy your trip to England!
I hope you write about what you saw, especially compared to what you remember from previous visits to England.
I don’t know what we were expecting when we visited England in September 2024 for the Agatha Christie festival. The bits of London we saw, based next to Kensington Park at the Latvian Guest House, were cosmopolitan and global to the max. Other than the architecture, it didn’t seem like what I envisioned. It didn’t sound like England, either.
Torquay sometimes felt like the end of the empire, with the residents living out their lives in the ruins of an earlier, greater civilization.
@Synthase
40k is a loving satire of our entire Faustian culture and in particular High Gothic Catholicism. It has hints to me of something to do with the second religiousness (and Neptune going into Aries and all the war dreaming that entails) as to why it is upwelling in the unconscious right now.
If anyone was wondering how high the AI bubble would blow, it turns out the sky is not the limit!
In a shocking twist, some in the tech world recognize the voracious appetite of GPUs for electric current is just not going to be met by aging Earth-based electrical grids. We can’t not have an exponential buildout of AI, though, so what to do? Put it in Spaaaaace!
Well, space is where they keep the sun, so there’s that. Actually, putting the data centers in space and beaming down the results of the computations is a great idea compared to normal Space Solar Power, where the power gets beamed down to Earth, since you can dodge the inefficiencies of converting power to microwaves and back. (Little inefficiencies add up, like the power lost cooking any birds who happen to fly under your satellite.)
From the viewpoint of the progress-obsessed, the fact that the hardware won’t last as long in orbit due to radiation, and/or will crash at some point is completely irrelevant– it’ll be obsolete by then, anyway. If I weren’t a contrarian collapsnick I might actually be tempted to invest. Orbital Data Centers are a neat solution to a stupid problem.
(That said, the ones talking about doing it on the Moon are karking nuts. Trade 360 degree heat rejection for a big rock radiating blackbody at you, and continuous sun for 28 days of darkness? There’s literally no reason other than to trick money out of boomers nostalgic for the space race.)
ref:https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjewvpkw7weo
(or, you know, Yandex that stuff. Don’t take my word for it; I’m not your mom.)
Happy Panda #106
Thank you for the clarity.
@Watchflinger #70
Thank you for sharing this! Yes, the falling in love analogy is very fitting. A new believer may not necessarily examine the underlying scriptural text of the religion with a critical eye during the initial phase of newfound belief, just like in a romantic/erotic relationship one looks past faults and/or potential warning signs during the ‘honeymoon’ phase. I think it’s beautiful how a church helping the homeless drew you to be curious about their faith. I have a newfound faith in the Mazdayasnian creed found in the Gathas of Zarathushtra; for me, it was scripture that compelled me to belief, rather than an initial experience with the actions of its believers. I was sharing with an atheist friend how my new religious faith has compelled me to be more charitable, both to individuals I encounter and through donations to charities. She said, “You don’t have to be religious to be charitable.” While this is true, the fact is that my faith does indeed compel me to more charitable deeds.
@Beardtree #66
Thank you for this! Visionary experiences of love, powerful stuff. Of course, the cultural milieu makes this possible, as you suggest. Without prior knowledge of a deity, you won’t have an experience of that deity, or if you did, you wouldn’t know which deity it was, presumably.
@Ambrose # 53
Yes, most people are typically born into a religion. Any map of the world and its religious demographics confirms this. I was raised by a Baptist preacher. Only after a long, winding path into middle age have I been able to finally break the fetters of that belief from my mind, heart and soul.
@Fra’Lupo #105
Thanks for sharing this. I don’t typically enjoy atheist analyses of religion since they reduce everything to chemical and physiological processes, but I did enjoy Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, in which he forcefully states the obvious, that all religions are not created equally and some produce far more dangerous consequences in the world than others.
I’m going to read William James’ The Will to Believe, which looks to be a good discussion of how belief, will and intellect interact to produce faith.