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.
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.
@RMS re: finding people who share an interest in the occult
I have met occult-y people in many places. Some places seem to have a higher concentration, but perhaps the issue isn’t being where they are, but recognizing them? Or, to spin that to something you can influence, being recognized by them? I have found that if I wear certain necklaces or the like, often people will approach me, ostensibly to comment on the necklace, but that leads to a question that I can either respond to in a way that confirms I am occult-y or I can feign ignorance. I don’t wear anything too obvious (pentacles would not be well-received in my part of the country), but there are plenty of things that could be worn (besides jewelry) that would give people an option for commenting to you on it that allows for them or you to acknowledge occultiness or gracefully bow out of the conversation.
But, if you want a specific kind of place to try, earlier this spring I attended an ‘herb festival’ sponsored by the local herb club. (I went with the intent of buying some plants for the garden.) There were quite a few attendees who, judging by jewelry, t-shirts, and tattoos, probably had an interest in the occult.
KEXP, the radio station out of seattle that’s been in the bay area now for about a year, is having a mental health day, where people write in their blues and the DJs play their requests and letters. it’s SEATTLE so it’s heartbreaking how much misery and young deaths there are. the DJ, Larry Mizell Jr, read a letter from a “listener” who touted better living through “science” and touted drugs so Larry put on a Zoloft song. public radio.
i also am noticing that this “side” is turning this gold rush of despair terror and The Enclosure of the Human into a bonanza and asking for subscribers and money to keep themselves in the manner to which they’d become accustomed in Before Times. and i fell for RFK, jr and would’ve voted for him after hearing his long speech even though i tilted my head curious about why when he introduced the world to MAHA and shook Trump’s hand, he pulled Trump close to himself in the ultimate public power move. Trump laughed. he’s a New Yorker and knew what was happening.
so i think we’ve been sold out and now it’s pedal to the medal on THIRD WAY. of course Papa’s already begun building the new underground the new lunch table quietly on his own.
i’m pointing this out because his websites are the domain of the weirdo feral freaks abused mages and visionaries and if you see this for yourself i trust you’ll do what you also always do and trudge ahead on your own as leaders here.
we were many of us already talking beyond the binary false choices we’re given offered or crammed down our gullets so we can later be harvested for our fatty livers. that’s what i feel like now. a foie gras duck running up to my french farmer’s wife to have the tube jammed down my throat for the love.
when i visited my family after up to two decades in the case of my mother, i realized that my family never loved me, and that it’s not personal as they barely love anyone including themselves and each other, but i realized i was born into a plandemic-ready family and poof! all the sudden i realized everything that happened wasn’t ever personal. it was training and consequences.
Temporary Reality’s “bell jar” she saw around me when she visited James and me, shattered in a zillion tiny irrelevant pieces and now i see more of what the world is really like when i’m quiet and not entering the room crashing cymbals all the time and …hmmm…
i think we can win and before they do too much more damage. even if we do collectively punk out and surrender to the ooze and despair, being pulled down and drowning like Atreyu’s horse in the Swamp of Sadness, many of us know they will ultimately fail because it is boring, expensive, and illogical to make life on earth hell for absolutely everyone.
i don’t think it has to come to that AS LONG AS GENERATION X IS STILL HERE TO CONNECT THE ANALOGUE TO THE PIXELATED AND STOP THE VIVISECTION.
it all still comes down to nobody wanting to look like a fool. i had a pointless argument with Joshua Stylman in his substack comment section, where i do what i do with artists and clamor for MORE of them but this man thought i was trying to control him because he wants to save face.
i don’t even know how to have that conversation and it took me awhile to realize that’s what this was about. he’s another bored rich person with enough time to diddle rabbit holes but isn’t ready to fight UGLY.
so if any (CHRISTOPHE) silent weirdos biding their time have any thoughts on how we do ourselves out loud without stages because we are more powerful than any MKUltra shtick and swagger out of struggle sessions a little wobbly but …we’ve been there before and know the tormentors are insane.
we know how to taunt our tormentors and undermine them, slip rugs out, all that.
they own the innerwebs and most waves in the air except for our own. i had an argument with a friend and we tried to make up but the emails and texts went missing without being blocked. so now i figure in the way facebook force fed negative content to a subset of subscribers, and a few weeks ago i’d also written something in a hotmail email that i later saw force fed to me as a story offered up on the google search page to perpetuate my sadness. i didn’t even feel tempted to click on it; it was that old internet evil screaming cauldron of despair rage and hate calling out to me.
now i figure if their algorithms can auto complete sentences i had no intention of writing in the first place, they can detect anger or animosity and just kill emails and texts so you figure you’re being ignored and will then ignore. why not? everyone’s already fighting and hardly making up anywhere to be seen. i’ve never seen anything like this.
but my friend drove across town on his own and showed up outside my apartment door to knock on it and talk to me IN PERSON. now we’re gonna hardly text talk on the phone or email if we can help it.
but i believe even without a stage without tv and their air waves, i think we can still catch on like fire or any force of nature.
there is sooo much sadness and despair and if we cannot override this hell just by turning away to do our own thing, then yeah… maybe as Roundball Shaman said on Stylman’s substack, then maybe we DO deserve what we get. but i’m not buying it.
if anyone has any thoughts on this at all, uplifting and bludgeoning, are equally welcome. because i need to see REALITY as i realized that i figured all these years that my family loved me but they DIDN’T. at least not the kind of Love that feels good safe uplifting inspiring or warm. so i learned to SEE love where there wasn’t any and making excuses for my family at my expense is old and useless to me now and while i’ve FORGIVEN them yet again, this time i will not be QUIET about my disgust and rage now that James taught me that i wasn’t ever The Monster. i will not protect them so that they won’t falter or whine.
i won’t CRUSH them but they have been put in their place in my heart and mind: in the back of the room. i’ve been ruminating on what forgiveness looks like to me now as they are no longer fit to lead and are in fact killing themselves and taking us with them.
Any ideas? These are more important than money at this point. money may be necessary in the world of HOA restrictions but it is CUTE next to the kind of basic “human flourishing while turning away from boots on neck”
ideas that we need in an era of RFK jr whores and orbs and microchips in brains because it’s obvious we’re not voting our way out of this and i don’t want to make mad substack money on our downfall in the short term, either.
thank you. your friend,
erika in mordor
Booklover: “Friedrich Merz will be partly successful, partly less successful. There will be controversies about the poicies of Friedrich Merz. […] 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.”
I’m going to mark this down, to see whether any of it comes true.
🙂
asdf jkl, “individuation” for Jung means recognizing one’s nonduality (i.e., not being divided), so that any trait one may identify with (goodness, for example) is understood to be balanced by another, opposite one (evil). Since this is the opposite of what we normally mean by “individual,” I think Jung intended the dual meaning. As for Buddhism, he must mean the teaching that the “self” does not exist; that there is ultimately no distinction between “self” and “other.” (Of course, this depends on what one means by “self”–the self discussed in psychology, may not be the self denied by Buddhism.) I agree that Jung has odd views of Buddhism–I remember him calling it “quietistic,” even though Chinese people are the loudest people on earth, and temples can be quite lively places. Jung does *not* think we ought to submerge into the collective unconscious, or allow ourselves to be possessed by archetypes, or anything like that–those are presented as dangers. The goal, as in Freud, is to make the unconscious conscious–i.e. to communicate and cooperate with the unconscious, until both you and it are aware of one another.
On Quebec–can’t they set things up where most of Canada, but not Quebec, recognizes the British monarch? Would there be any practical consequences at all to such a paper change?
(You should hear my solution to the China-Taiwan issue: the two sides should agree that Taiwan Independence and Chinese Reunification are really the same thing, but agree to disagree on the interpretation. And then go on exactly as they were before.)
@TylerA – I’m sorry to hear about your struggles and did not mean to glibly suggest that everyone can self-heal by getting a little exercise. To be sure, it’s tough for some people.
Everyone should walk, though. Or split wood!
@Jonathan Simkins #131 I have run across modern accounts of visionary encounters with Jesus where he identifies himself. There were in non Christian cultures – Islamic, China, India. The grand daddy of this type of encounter was Paul on the road to Damascus where Paul said “Who are you, Lord?”and the reply was “I am Jesus of Nazareth”
Some information came through my email recently that might be of interest to readers of this blog. I can’t say I know anything at all about the organization or the presenter, but the fact they are offering a course on financial astrology.
Cheers
https://www.mmacycles.com/product/the-basic-principles-of-astrology-for-financial-market-timing/
Mr. Greer,
Thanks for the cheers of divorce finality. The now ‘ex’ and I are on, if at arms length, good terms.
A query: Do you, or have you ever listened to, any on R. CRUMB’S music? I’m dating myself here, but after almost 70 years on this blue orb, I still love listening to his stuff.
My favorite vinyl disc of his is “R. CRUMB and his CHEAP SUIT SERENADERS”
Arnav, Though your current situation may not easily accommodate green wizardry practices, there are ways to learn helpful skills, or improve your health/thinking/spiritual life. Community gardens are full of experienced local gardeners, and ever seeking free labor – learn as you work. Often plots are quite inexpensive to rent. With labor tight, at least those that require real and useful skills, some will take on apprentices, or let you work in trade for some hands-on training. The internet is full of plumbing and fix-it videos. Some cities have shops or pop-ups to fix appliances, or tool rentals with instruction. The first step is deciding whether to consider options beyond theory, or take action (baby steps or more) .
Once again, I’m starting to be pelted by attempted comments about artificial intelligence, and so I’m drawing a harder line than before. Please take conversations about that dreary subject elsewhere.
Ottergirl, it’s the energy of dynamic balance. In each age of the world, it’s ruled by one of the seven traditional archangels; Rudolf Steiner believed that from 1879 on, the archangel Michael, regent of the Sun, is the ruler of the balance, and will continue in that role until the year 2234, when it will pass to Orifiel, the archangel traditionally associated with Saturn.
Ennobled, well, to begin with, the tarot communicates with your own subconscious mind, not with spirits. Tarot, like other divinatory oracles, is a way of reminding yourself of what you know but don’t know you know.
J.L.Mc12, interesting.
Teresa, thank you; I’ll consider it.
Erika, you’re right that voting won’t get us out of it and neither will the fantasy of sudden collapse. It’s out here on the fringes that changes have to start. A little at a time…
Kay, financial astrology’s a solid branch of the science of the stars. A few months ago, after casting progressed horoscopes for two businesses, I bought a small position in each one’s stock for experimental purposes; the one that had a good chart for this year is up much further than the one that didn’t…
Polecat, is that the same R. Crumb who was an underground cartoonist back in the day? I didn’t know he was also a musician.
JMG,
Every couple months someone asks you for your current assessment of the Russian Ukraine war and the US/European shifting role in it and now it’s my turn. Could you please offer any current thoughts about what’s happening and where it might go?
Thanks, Jacques
Mr. Greer,
I have had tarot readers and horary astrologers correctly describe to me the physical appearance of someone I was going to meet. How does that work? (Should I save this for a Magic Monday?)
Thank you for your answer, by the way.
Ennobled little day
Hi JMG,
I apologize for my question was a bit too broad. Based on what I’ve been reading in the FHR material I understand the material world to correspond to Malkuth/the plane of Earth while the etheric world corresponds to the planes of fire, water and air above. Am I correct in understanding that this spirt of place that we can experience in the material world is most strongly affected by the astral/plane of fire given that it’s ‘closest’ in some sense to the material?
Thanks,
JZ
@Your Yoyo : It has to do with established supply chains. At the time the clothes were shipped, there were scheduled cargo ships with space available going in those directions. The volume of stuff on those ships made the space cheap. The clothing manufacturer itself doesn’t arrange shipping. It hires a “freight forwarding” company that finds the cheapest space on whatever routes are available. It’s likely the clothes were bought by a distributor in the UK who then found smaller markets around the world, including Guelph. In any case, It’s likely there weren’t any high-volume routes going directly up through North America, making shipping in that direction more expensive. It’s a similar phenomenon to passenger flights that stop over somewhere else being cheaper than going direct.
Greetings all
JMG wrote: “to begin with, the tarot communicates with your own subconscious mind, not with spirits. Tarot, like other divinatory oracles, is a way of reminding yourself of what you know but don’t know you know.”
Is that all there is to divination? Are there not other aspects to it?
Regards
Last week John and some others were asking about data on inflation adjusted storm damage. Here is a bit of a deeper dive, by the same author Roger Pielke Jr. It’s not a long read, mostly graphs. The summary is, no significant discernible trend over time.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/atlantic-hurricanes-preseason-2025
@Polecat: R. Crumb is a fine musician… As you probably know he also made a couple nice sets of trading cards featuring blues and old timey musicians with little bios on the back. Fantastic stuff.
Everyone else, here is a very relevant picture of the blogs topics, three futures from R. Crumb:
https://robertcrumb.blogspot.com/1988/01/short-history.html
https://rogersathre.com/3futures.html
(He calls the middle one fun, but I disagree! I like the last one pretty well…)
>KEXP, the radio station out of seattle that’s been in the bay area now for about a year, is having a mental health day
Any company or region where people are given “mental health days” – you know that’s a fundamentally toxic place, right? If the place was any good – you wouldn’t need “mental health days”. My advice is to leave for a less toxic place. Aim for moving to an actually healthy place. Sooner is better than later but I suppose late is better than never.
Mental health days. Just thinking about it makes me depressed about the future of this godforsaken country.
>my esteemed opinion of Montreal? I have not much opinion on the place
I find it rather confusing that you would have such strong opinions of Ottawa and Toronto but no opinion of Montreal. Not even a little bit of love or hate for those Frenchies?
>In my small sphere of the world, things seem to be getting weirder
You don’t say. It’s not just you. The 20th century started dark and kept getting darker and darker until the late 40s. This time around that’s happening too but also things are getting weirder and weirder as well.
I guess if weak men create hard times, dogmatic men create weird times?
A few years ago, I think, the idea was kicked around here about worker cooperatives and how a a publishing company could be run as a worker owned syndicate. I saw this substack post today that has some other ideas that might be relevant:
https://infinitecatalog.substack.com/p/ic-community-newsletter-72
I’ll quote the relevant bit… but the talk on the post is also worth listening to:
Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter “shared an early look at what he’s currently working on: a new legal structure called the Artist Corporation, designed specifically to empower artists.
He made a compelling case. For decades, commercial organizations have benefited from legal frameworks that enable access to capital, streamline operations, and offer predictability in business affairs.
But the shape of artistic work doesn’t always fit within those traditional molds. Artists have had to cobble things together, patchworking contracts, side hustles, and one-off collaborations without an infrastructure built for us. The “A Corp” aims to change that with a corporate model designed around the way creative people actually work.
Here’s how it might work. Let’s take a band as an example, although it could really be any group of creative working together. That band forms an A Corp. The A Corp model helps them set up collective ownership of their songs and gear, manage finances through a shared treasury, and establish revenue splits. They could access both nonprofit grants and commercial funding without getting tangled in legal red tape. Instead of signing away their rights, they could issue equity like a startup, raising capital while retaining ownership and control.
Yancey’s personal journey helped reveal the deeper problem A-Corps aim to solve. After leaving Kickstarter, he dove into solo creative projects, but found himself feeling burned out and isolated. When he started collaborating again, sharing authorship, responsibility, and purpose, things clicked. The shift from independent hustle to co-creation laid the groundwork for the A Corp model: a structure built for making creative work sustainable by doing it together.”
I thought this might be interesting especially when combined with a Mondragon style worker owned corporation…
Something to add to the mix. This seem to be something that is trying to counter the current trends of dependence on smartphones, etc.
—-
https://www.churchofgnome.org/
The Church of the Gnome
Welcome to the heart of the Church of Gnome, where the Gnomean Principles form the foundation of our shared beliefs and guide us toward lives of harmony, gratitude, and growth.
Here, you can explore the depth and breadth of what we stand for: from the universal truths of our Gnomean Principles to the unique Doctrine that shapes our path; from the rich Origins and Background of our community to our forward-thinking Mission Statement. Learn about the Gnomean Hierarchy, which supports and uplifts our members, and find answers to common questions in the FAQ. Each link is a doorway to understanding, connection, and discovery. Together, they reveal the vibrant spirit of a community dedicated to building bridges between diverse beliefs and fostering a deeper appreciation for life’s mysteries.
——-
What is the Church of Gnome?
The Church of Gnome is both deeply profound and undeniably unconventional—a spiritual community that dares to blend the serious and the absurd in a way that reflects the complexities of life itself. At its core, it is a sanctuary for personal growth, a celebration of human connection, and a call to live in harmony with nature and each other.
Theologically, the Church of Gnome is built upon the Gnomean Principles, which emphasize autonomy, gratitude, balance, and the pursuit of understanding. It challenges the idea that spirituality must conform to traditional molds, instead offering a path that is both deeply meaningful and refreshingly approachable. Here, we believe that the search for truth doesn’t have to be solemn; it can be joyful, curious, and even a little silly.
And yes—gnomes. On the surface, they are whimsical figures of folklore. But within the Church, they are powerful symbols of wisdom, guardianship, and connection to the earth. Their legendary hats remind us to wear our individuality with pride, and their role as protectors inspires us to nurture our communities and the world around us.
We openly acknowledge the humor in the idea of a church centered on gnomes. It’s a bit ridiculous—intentionally so. But that’s the point. The Church of Gnome embraces the paradox of life: that the profound and the absurd often coexist, and in that coexistence lies beauty. Our mission is to create a space where the sacred and the playful meet, inspiring people to ask big questions, live with intention, and find joy along the way.
Ultimately, the Church of Gnome isn’t about worshiping gnomes (unless you want to) or adhering to rigid doctrines. It’s about embracing a way of life—one that is grounded in curiosity, respect, and the belief that even the smallest beings (or ideas) can carry the greatest wisdom.
What do you believe?
The Church of Gnome is founded on a set of beliefs that intertwine spirituality, philosophy, and a deep respect for individuality and interconnectedness. At its heart, we believe in the transformative power of curiosity, gratitude, and intentional living.
We believe that every individual is on a unique spiritual journey and that no single path holds all the answers. Through the Gnomean Principles, we encourage personal growth, harmony with nature, and the pursuit of inner peace. These principles are not dogmas but guides, helping us navigate life with a sense of purpose and balance.
We believe that gnomes, as symbols, hold profound lessons for humanity. They remind us to protect what matters, to live lightly on the earth, and to embrace both playfulness and craftsmanship in all that we do. Their presence teaches us that wisdom can be found in the small and the overlooked, and their enduring hats—yes, the hats—are a reminder to celebrate individuality and joy.
—-
Well It certainly does seem to be promising in the Neo-Pagan world that they seem to put their money where their mouth is. I guess the hats is what made me want to join. Anyway, it does seem to be wholesome in their objectives.
About “The Mists of Avalon” by Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley
I remember sitting next to someone reading this book on a cramped bus ride. I keep glancing over what they were reading. The part I read seem to entail a ritual rape of women to be inducted into some sort of female society. I decided it was not a book for me.
Later, I kept hearing from Neo-Pagans how wonderful the book was and how empowering it was for women. Then all the news of Bradley came out, and she was persona non grata. I kept wondering what the Neo-Pagans were reading and what was I reading. Surely not the same book.
Unless it was something they overlooked in their efforts to affirm women and have some sort of fantasy of a Matriarchy once upon a time. Or the passage I read was something endemic in their lives that they consider it to be only background noise.
Was it a marriage between her wanting to sell books and they wanted to read a certain fantasy?
I never understood the patriarchy and matriarchy business that people banter about.
@erika in mordor,
Italo Calvino wrote, in the final paragraphs of Invisible Cities [in translation]:
Kublai [Khan] asked Marco [Polo]: “You, who go about exploring and who see signs, can tell me toward which of these futures the favoring winds are driving us.”
…
Already the Great Khan was leafing through his atlas, over the maps of the cities that menace in nightmares and maledictions: Enoch, Babylon, Yahooland, Butua, Brave New World.
He said: “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.”
And Polo said: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
I’ll post a more detailed response if I can write it, but for now that quote can stand alone.
JMG,
If you are willing to comment on this one (and I won’t blame you if not!) and with the full understanding that nothing you say constitutes medical advice—
If you were deciding whether or not to vaccinate a child, would you give them any vaccines at all?
Mr. Greer – Yep, that’s the Man.. Banjo & vocals performed within the stated above album; in addition to his band mates accomplishments playing mando-cello, violin, guitar, accordian, banjo, bass fiddle, tuba, bassoon, vocals … with some saw accompanyment to boot. WARNING: Some song lyrics may contain unwoke content …. so what’s not to like! ‘;]
Re “Just go to the gym, bro.” There’s nothing wrong with going to the gym and getting stronger, in fact it’s a good thing, but I am tired of hearing the idea that working out will solve all of your problems. It is good for some people who view the gym as a hobby (for example, they want to hit a goal of a maximum bench press or run a mile in X amount of time) or a social hangout, but it seems to me like taking fish oil capsules instead of just eating fish. Sure, it’s healthy, but it does lack the “roughage” of physical and productive work. Kind of crazy sign of the times that we have too many calories and have to pointlessly move our bodies to get rid of the excess calories. That’s why I’m a firewood splitting (or other tough physical labor) advocate.
Siliconguy,
So … Re. Stocks vs Bonds – it’s Alllll Contained … within a Kline Bottle stamped ‘MARKET$’ .. if I get your gist.
Jacques, the Russians are winning. Once they forced the Ukrainian army and their NATO enablers into a war of attrition, that was a foregone conclusion, because the Russian army has always been better at that kind of fighting than anybody else on the planet; it doesn’t hurt that they’re a major exporter of oil and grain, and so — no matter what sanctions anybody waves around — plenty of other nations will be eager to buy their goods and fund their war. At this point the Ukrainian army is being forced to give ground steadily, and the Russians have just opened a new front in Sumy oblast, drawing down Ukraine’s increasingly depleted reserves. European rearmament will take a decade or more to have any real effect, if it turns out to be politically feasible at all, and Ukraine hasn’t got a decade. I expect Zelensky to be assassinated or deposed sometime in the next year or two, a new government cobbled together somehow, and the war to end on Russia’s terms shortly thereafter.
Ennobled, we all know more than we think we know. Our subconscious minds tap into the same flow of information that allows every bird in a flock to turn at the same moment. Divination is one effective way to tap into that subliminal knowledge.
John, that’s certainly one way to symbolize it, yes.
Karim, only in that — as I mentioned just above to Ennobled little day — we all have access to the flow of information through the subconscious mind, which knows a good deal more than our conscious minds do.
Phil, thanks for this. I’ll bookmark it, and compare his claims to those of other writers.
Justin, the second, gee-whiz future always struck me as miserably unpleasant, and the last one is my idea of where I want to live. But then I’m a Druid, of course! As for the artist corporation, count me as interested. Legal innovations like this could have a lot to offer.
Neptunesdolphins, living in a largely Catholic neighborhood, I’m used to religious items becoming garden decorations — we have a lot of those little shrines to Mary made from disused bathtubs, like the one below — but turning it around, and using other garden decorations (such as garden gnomes) as religious items, is a new one to me!
As for the Mists of Blahblahblah, it was indeed such a marriage — Bradley found out exactly what her audience wanted to hear, complete with the very thinly veiled sadomasochism that pervades the modern Left, and rehashed it for them. As for “patriarchy” and “matriarchy,” I probably need to do a post on the manufacture of those two myths sometime soon, don’t I?
Jennifer, if I had to make such decisions, I’d make sure the child had tetanus and diphtheria toxoid injections — those are relatively safe and protect against lethal illnesses — but that’s it. I’d also make sure the child got all the usual childhood illnesses while its immune system was still young enough to adapt to them. But this is just my opinion; I recommend that you make up your own mind.
Polecat, hmm! So noted.
Two notes, the first on Germany where the head nitwit wants to send new missiles to Ukraine.
“The single most obvious symbol of Berlin’s new, industrial-strength recklessness is the Taurus cruise missile, a sophisticated, very expensive weapon (at €1-3 million each) with a full name you will want to forget (Target Adaptive Unitary and Dispenser Robotic Ubiquity System) and, crucially, a maximum range of about 500 kilometers.”
These missiles can only be operated by Germans using German/NATO GPS and satellite guidance and targeting information. The Russians have already given notice that wherever these missiles are launched from they will know they are German.
This has prompted a really good rant:
“Germany AGAIN says “Whoops! Looks great to me! We couldn’t beat Russia when they were a medieval backwater and we had all Western Europe down to Spain to draw on, but this time with a nation the size of one oblast, no army, no navy, no energy, no steel, no soldiers, we’ll definitely attack, invade, and defeat them this time! Our friends in England said so!!!”
Second point is from the local electric utility summarizing the current state of the local grid,
“Staff informed commissioners that 97 transformers from 18 different manufacturers are currently in use. The oldest transformer in the system is nearly 80 years old, and seven units have been in service for more than 50 years. An additional 14 are more than 40 years old, approaching the end of their typical 50-year life expectancy in Grant County.”
Where are these transformers made? Not here with one exception. Mostly Japan, Korea, China, Europe, and even Brazil. Does GE really build its transformers in the US or overseas? Shrug.
https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-large-power-transformer-market/companies
Dear Papa, it depends on what you call sudden. I see the faces here and going out to run errands I have to psych myself up as if I’m going onto a possibly hostile stage in front of strangers with cell phones waiting to incite and trap me and eat me before I even expire. Thought it was me. Figured it’s PTSD from the past year.
But I forced myself listen to a day of dirges and despair on the radio so bad I could tell the DJs were dreading their shifts, because it was almost like a parody how ….and well it got a suspiciously creepy dimension to me, in seeming to stoke it and then I heard first one then lots of “reader” letters suggesting drugs. It was shameless and cynical.
As a skilled emotional stoker since childhood, it felt familiar. The last year they did this it was SWEET. seemed human unlike all the constant forced shallow happiness of the west coast. Seemed like a “festival” like the one on old star trek for people to sound off.
There was sooo much darkness from sudden an unexplained deaths and many suicides and many make my new agoraphobia seem cute. Some of the DJs used it to perform bouts of public empathy.
This felt like stoking. Seattle’s too close to Canada’s MAID program for me. I think there’s a death tributary for everyone!
So it’s going to get a lot more wet blanket to apathy and sabotage worse than now because as more and more of these folks lose their insurance for allll these therapists (everyone seems to have one over a friend) their status dreams jobs and what’s left of their minds, they’ll have nothing left to lose and they’re all in the destructive mode that made us “bad kids” bad in the first place.
What I fear is not the rage we see but the secret shames and self hatred they’re indulging and nurturing.
See I finally got how even as direct and forthcoming people find me, it made me me mentally tortured to keep on with even little fictions and hipocrisies. I thought just a little wouldn’t hurt you, like arsenic in an apple seed you swallowed. But I realized lies fester and grow mold and take over crazy ants like that disco mad fungus.
The despair is going to fart up the astral weather and will make the world feel like we’re treading in concealed jello. “Sudden” doesn’t even apply to Drags of All Drags. It’s not even death by the proverbial thousand paper cuts. It’s The Great Smothering…it’s crabs in the Gaza bucket being shot like ducks in the also proverbial barrell. The metaphors are frappéd together.
When the 90 yr old Frenchman I met in line said everyone here is soooo sad, I brightened up and said, “you see it too???” He said, oh yeah. No one here is happy. He’d been here a year. That made me happy to not have to pretend because my neighbors have aged yeeears in the last one.
I feel pounced on as if by zombies and vampires when I just go check the mail.
Everyone around the world wrote in to KEXP. So san francisco has been the roll out for this slow not “sudden” bomb. It’s ruled by our seemingly insignificant emotions.
I ran ahead when i visited my own family and they’ve always been training for slaying the dragon.
I’m assuming all the best tactics are the ones in the light that don’t have to hide in order to… hide. When I danced in public the monsters were forced to look awarpy and thus didn’t see me while some stopped stared and prayed with me.
The abused feral and weird congregate here and new ideas and tactics that oblivious normals can’t even imagine. That’s what I’m looking for here.
(It’s not much!)
Even all AM Hickman can think of is starting his own town full of his own subscribers. Haven’t we been there before with bhagwan in Oregon and jim Jones reason for Guyana?
Third way… terror of the unknown… yeah, art and FEAR is a real thing. Exp,oration isn’t space biggest mystery ourselves here and now.
That’s all “sudden” enough for this feral weirdo. I’m going fast enough at almost 60 I just realized I’m hot as monstrous as I’d figured Iwas.
I dont know about the rest of my siblings here, but MY hair is flying out behind me and has been for quite some time.
I voted Trump just so I could slow down for a moment.
X
Jennifer Kobernik @ 154, if I may interject here, what I would do at the present time is discover as much as possible about each individual vaccine. Where is it made, under what kind of supervision and inspection? Does the company which manufactures the vaccine have a reputation for cutting corners and shoddy products in general?
Then I would try to discover as much as possible about what, exactly, goes into each vaccine shot. The vaccine itself is a minute amount of disease organism, which provokes the body’s immune system to evolve immunity to that particular organism. What other chemicals or substances are added? Why are they even needed?
Then, I would consider the age of the child. Is a child’s immune system fully developed during infancy? IDK but I doubt it. Were I raising children now, I might want to consider holding off on vaccines till just before school age, with the possible exception of tetanus, given the way kids love to climb on lumber piles. I might do the measles and tetanus, whopping cough, diphtheria when they reach about 3 or 4 years, unless I were living somewhere where certain diseases are rampant.
Life imitates art department: remember the drone-zapping maser you wrote about in Retrotopia? It’s coming true: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/29/1117502/epirus-drone-zapping-microwave-us-military-defense/.
JMG, thanks for your response to the puzzling t-shirt observation.
Shipping the shirts to a specialist to get them printed is a possibility, but any additional shipping seems downright bizarre.
I meant “congealed” jello but auto correct preferred “concealed” jello.
It works, too. Okay. Like treading in concealed jello.
@neptunesdolphins #151 – It sounds like Unitarianism for Tolkien fans. 🙂
JMG,
Thank you! That’s more or less what I’m leaning toward, but I’ve been concerned my pendulum might be swinging too far to the anti-pharmaceutical extreme post-COVID. In general I’ve noticed an inclination in myself lately to reject out of hand everything the PMC supports, and I’ve also noticed as I’ve become more conservative over the last decade that some pet views of the populist Right which I don’t actually subscribe to seem more plausible and appealing than usual. I am trying not to become too reactive or complacent, and looking forward to being able to do a banishing ritual again!
@JMG , You expect Zelensky to be gone in a year or two? That’s a generous timeline. I’m surprised he’s still there. I’d give him until Autumn.
@Your Yoyo , I forgot to type my whole handle. I wasn’t trying to spoof JMG, apologies.
On vaccinations, I agree with JMG on the tetanus shot. That bacteria is ubiquitous. If you are out playing in the dirt you are exposed. It takes special conditions to become dangerous but why take the chance?
If you have a boy that has not had the mumps by puberty then the mumps shot is a really good idea. I have an uncle that caught the mumps at 17 and it did not go well. The end result was that he is the only guy on that side of the family that got to keep his hair because those two organs are dead.
Conversely rubella for girls, that won’t hurt her directly, but if she’s pregnant oh boy.
No one wants polio back, but in the US the polio vaccine causes more polio than it prevents. But again polio still exists elsewhere in the world. If it gets accidentally imported and no one is vaccinated it would be bad. Most people recover from polio, but not everyone does.
The mistake both sides are making is to lump all vaccines together. The risk/reward ratio varies with the disease. Look at the measles. It knocked me on my butt for a week but did nothing permanent. Nor did it do any more to my brother or my cousins or my friends etc, etc. But when the Indians caught it after the Europeans arrived they had a very high death rate.
In an earlier open post I asked about prayers to the planets. I’ve now been at it for about two months, and have two major observations: first, when I miss a prayer, I get the sense that the god in question does not really care, as long as I make an effort to figure out what happened and what I can change to avoid it in the future, which takes a lot of pressure off. For the most part, there has not been anything when I missed a prayer, except the one time Saturn woke me up at about 3:00 am to remind me I missed the prayer that day, and since it was still his day, and he woke me up right at the start of his hour, I got the hint and did the prayers then.
The second observation I’ll make is that I am now in a weird position: I still cannot usually tell what the gods are saying to me; but I have found that they are pretty clearly responding and giving me their blessings, and I can sometimes sense their presence during prayers. Is there a way to get through this stage towards the kind of deeper possibilities for prayer that are possible if I can properly hear the gods faster, or is it just a matter of keeping at it for however long it takes?
I find it depressing that most of the Peak Oil writers still believe that CO2 emissions cause the climate to warm, when it’s been definitively proven that there is an inverse correlation if anything. That rising temperatures in the Earths history have caused rising CO2 levels.
Attending a lecture by Dr Patrick Moore formerly of Green Peace convinced me, and follow up studies left no doubt.
Climate Change is not being caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The only “proof” offered is computer models which have garbage inputs.
So, I have a stack of books on Peak Oil I can’t share with anyone because they note that if the author doesn’t understand the Climate issue, then their research on Peak Oil is likely nonsense as well.
Jennifer, here’s A Midwestern Doctor’s take on the childhood vaccines:
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/determining-the-risks-and-benefits
JMG,
Any books you would recommend on financial astrology? I’m interested in casting charts for businesses.
Best book I’ve ever read about vaccines is by an MD and Homeopath, Richard Moskowitz. It’s called Vaccines: A Reappraisal and I suggest any considering vaccination for children read it first.
Jacques
Siliconguy, the sheer drooling stupidity of the West’s current leadership these days is one of the most astounding things in recent history. It’s as though they think they’re acting in a political sitcom, and nothing bad — such as, say, a salvo of Russian intermediate-range missiles — can ever happen to them.
Erika, thanks for this. First, you’ve reminded me of all the good reasons I fled Seattle 21 years ago! Second, your point — that it’s not the rage, but the secret shame and self-hatred behind the rage — strikes me as very important. And I love the concealed jello, typo or not. What felt like concrete beneath our feet is starting to wobble and slump…
Roldy, hmm! Not the first bit of Retrotopia that’s already come to pass, for that matter.
Yoyo, it seems bizarre to me, too. I wonder how much that’s contributing to our economic gyrations.
Jennifer, I know the feeling. The managerial class has discredited itself so completely at this point that it’s hard to remember that the other side also has its serious problems.
Michael, within a year or two. It could happen next week.
Anonymous, delighted to hear it. I wish there was some kind of fast track to the deeper dimension of prayer, but I don’t know of one, and none of the works on mysticism I’ve read has suggested one. Patience and steady practice are what everyone suggests.
Bob, I’m sorry to say that you’re going to be disappointed, then, because most people who are ecologically literate enough to understand the peak oil issue are also ecologically literate enough to understand that we can’t dump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere without contributing to climate change.
Dennis, I’m still scoping out the field. So far the most useful book I’ve found is Sepharial’s Arcana or Stock and Share Key.
Re: Tetanus… The World Made By Hand series showed just how dangerous tetanus can be in a deindustrial scenario.
JMG: Yes, the A Corp is very interesting (and a nice counterpoint to neocameralist sovcorps / Starbase company towns). At the end of Strickler’s talk in the video I linked to, he answered an audience question and said the necessary law proposals should be with legislators around January of 2026, and the key states they needed to work on, but they are working on it…
I was very heartened as a Gen X’r to hear that part of the inspiration had been the book Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad -a great book which talks about how bands like Fugazi and many others were able to make a decent living as musicians and not price gouge their young fans in the underground. Anyway, I think this is a very positive development, and I was reminded also of some of your ideas about corporations set for limited terms and other innovations along those lines in Retrotopia.
Hello Mr. JMG,
Wondering if you have ever read A Dweller on Two Planets by Fredrick Spencer Oliver. I’ve held a speculative interest in this book for a little while. The Wikipedia summary reads as an incredible tale. I’ve wondered whether to include it on my reading list, and if you have read the book, what your experience was with the text.
Thank you everyone who has suggested vaccine books and resources! And thank you also to those who have shared experiences regarding Costa Rica.
re: vaccines
Let’s beat the dead horse. At this point, I’d ask “Can you trust the people who make the vaccines?” Ask this of yourself, don’t ask this on the interwebs, who knows what bots you’ll get urging and wheedling you to trust, trust, trust. If your answer is no, then you know what (not) to do. It isn’t like any of them are going to help you if you or someone you love gets into trouble after taking one. They aren’t even going to give you a queue to wait in while you die, like they do in Soviet England.
If the answer is yes, then go for it all, I guess.
TO WALT, re:
Italo Calvino
‘Kublai [Khan] asked Marco [Polo]: “You, who go about exploring and who see signs, can tell me toward which of these futures the favoring winds are driving us.”
…
‘Already the Great Khan was leafing through his atlas, over the maps of the cities that menace in nightmares and maledictions: Enoch, Babylon, Yahooland, Butua, Brave New World.
‘He said: “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.”
‘And Polo said: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
‘I’ll post a more detailed response if I can write it, but for now that quote can stand alone.’
——————————
yes! please more detailed response because words are too new as eternal as these ideas are.
to also answer THE OTHER OWEN, i’ve tried to leave, court other places, but …unlike before when places or situations call to me, i cannot even get evicted from here or move back east to new england like i’d sooo desperately wanted. i feel like this “infernal city” is where i need to be right now, and am not making peace with it just because of the old saw “wherever you go there you are,” but because i now see living in san francisco and witnessing the vivisection of this town and then the world is my form of HIGH ALTITUDE TRAINING for dealing with all this that’s going on.
all that i am trying to create as we repopulate the real world and our own COMMUNICATION— a diverse system of real life networks traveling and trading performing and visiting collaborating on train lines… is it sewing… trainings …theatre… book fairs… meet ups…? i want to build no i want to RIFF off what Papa’s started here. i also envision him having a building a school a situation. i saw that years ago, too. it seemed obvious but i SAW it.
so what if people — as artists and creatives are wont to do– end up congregating naturally to certain places and we’re not isolated because we’ve got our chitlin circuit of builders lawyers teachers craftspeople. i see home schooling connecting i see …well, i grew up with my organizer parents always connecting to other like-minded folks and we traveled a lot and always ALWAYS had places to stay because just like here, the Quakers and people in all the alternative scenes i’ve been in, especially here when i first got to san francisco, it was ALL about weirdo outcasts suddenly finding kin and you could go to a dyke bar and get an apartment and a job in less than a couple of hours and beers.
so for now i’m fluffing my former career back up so i myself have a reason to even leave the apartment because i cannot even IMAGINE trying to find a job here in mordor now. the financial outlay just to get a low end job… none of this is sustainable or even logical. people have full on become pole dancers paying for their slots to make a living.
my hair’s still flying.
——
and YES, Papa! i WAS thinking of YOU when i wrote about your former home town because you KNOW what’s happened to them.
and yes… self hate and shame. thank you for that tip. i must stay there..
and OTHER OWEN that’s why i cannot just brush off what’s happening. that’s why i’m trying to figure out what “forgiveness” means when i’m trapped in a box with the one trying to kill me. it’s complicated and needs WORDS because “nudge nudge say no more say no more” isn’t working. MUST NEEDS SAY MORE!
love and god mean as many different things to as many opinions (and axxholes) there are.
AND YES! Dear Papa PLEEEEEASE explain patriarchy and matriarchy and THAT doublespeak. everything is double speak. “tomato/tomahto” is now “tomato/i’m gonna EAT you for not saying tomahto” and i’m feeling hoodwinked all around.
now on KEXP they’re talking about how catharctic yesterday’s crying was. this from the same DJ who burst into tears because trans people can’t be themselves. but…pray tell…. WHO CAN BE THEMSELVES???
we’re all caricatures. even me.
—
so i’m going to do all i can to find a reason to even try to get some of YOU to build makeshift silk screen studios in your own backyard or garage because i stopped whining about space when i saw this Mexican cat silk screening in a shack with no running water, an extension cord strung inside for light exposing screens on the floor, and chickens running around outside, just using a spray bottle to rinse out the emulsion outside. (apparently it’s like soap)
because yeah… maybe no shipping needed if we wanted some shirts printed up wherever we were going on our train route.
i actually get excited about all this. i have about $8k left in the bank to live on to see how far i can get before i have to stop, look for a job and cheer someone else to keep going and see if they can fluff up a new chitlin circuit of our own. it may need more time than i have but it’s a multi-generational idea/goal. $8k isn’t much but ideas are more important than just staying plugged into the current system and staying isolated.
regardless, the terror is habitual, how i channel former “bad girl” twitches into productive ideas instead of burning things up. in the past it was my panic that propelled me to higher levels of artistic success. it’s a different world but i’m counting on that being one of those eternal truths.
but quien sabe?
(smile)
erika
For financial astrology, Bill Meridian has some great books. He’s a consummate astrologer and had a successful career in trading, so he knows what he’s talking about.
Re bonds: It’s not only the government that issues bonds; big companies and banks do too. Years ago I worked in an organization that had quite a lot of money held in trust. We usually bought bonds issued by major banks to earn interest. One day I saw that a newish small bank was advertising a very attractive rate of interest on its bonds so I bought a million Rands’ worth. Only to read in the newspaper a few months later the bank had declared bankruptcy.
Talk about a sinking feeling. I nearly vomited on the spot. I told the boss, the boss told the auditors, they cr*pped me out for taking on a risky investment, and eventually we got all our money back. But man, I learned a lesson that day.
@ Rajarshi #33
Effeminate men, without beards, as a sign of decadence.
This may indeed be true among white collar men in the U.S.
However, as a romance writer, I pay a LOT of attention to the men I see around me.
Interestingly, especially in the working classes and laborers, virtually every man I see has some kind of facial hair. It’s the last signifier left that women haven’t co-opted.
Facial hair is widely varied too, ranging from tasteful stubble to very carefully sculpted beards and mustaches to growths that resemble untrimmed shrubbery.
Equally interesting is that as I glance at my Hunk of the Day calendar, I see plenty of facial hair but shaved chests! Maybe it’s to better show off the pecs.
Dear Erika #160
“What I fear is not the rage we see but the secret shames and self hatred they’re indulging and nurturing.”
I totally hear you on this… (even though in my book, even “fear” needs to be vanquished – and its only solvent, to the best of my knowledge, is love)….
“Secret shames and self hatred” are extremely difficult (possibly the MOST difficult?) “complicating” conditions in clinical terms, I do know that!
Anyway, sending you blessing and healing if you will have it. The world contains many things, and even in Mordor, the sun still shines, and the rain still falls, both on the wicked and on the good, as they slouch towards Mount Doom to cast away the Ring of Power.
PS, and now I cannot get the picture of a “concealed carry” – consisting of wobbly jello in someone’s holster… 😉
I’m slowly reading Living Magical Arts by RJ Stewart. Slowly, because it’s rough sledding for me. I have any number of criticisms to make, even as I realize that there are probably people who have gotten good results from his system. One thing in particular stands out, though:
Stewart asserts repeatedly that “In the enduring magical traditions, as in the religious traditions, there is an advanced stage at which the physical body leaves the consensual world altogether, and is translated to other dimensions.” Elsewhere he says that the practice of traveling to other worlds is at the core of magical traditions around the world. He insists that this is not to be taken as a metaphor.
It would be one thing to say that if you follow this system, you will be able to transport yourself to other dimensions – and I would treat that claim with an immense skepticism.
But to claim that this is at the core of magical traditions… I’ve read Dion Fortune, Gareth Knight, Eliphas Levi, Mark Stavish, and a fair number of your books. Not that I’m omniscient about occultism, but not a single other occult writer I’ve encountered has claimed the ability to physically shift between worlds.
So either I’m missing something, or the big name occultists are good at keeping quiet (which you are, given Levi’s Four Magical Virtues), or Stewart is huffing paint fumes. I know which one I suspect.
JMG’s reply to JPM: “Justin, the second, gee-whiz future always struck me as miserably unpleasant, and the last one is my idea of where I want to live.”
I took a look at the three futures and I suspect that the third is also Crumb’s favorite despite what he said. Why? Because of the girl on the bike with the powerful thighs, one of Crumb’s favorite fetishes. Did you ever see the movie “Crumb”?
p.s. anyone who says, “erika you have only $8k but why didn’t you take Mr Jeff Harrison’s money then? he was the boat sent to save you in the flood!”
because i wasn’t sure of these ideas and if i can pull off all the front work needed from me alone.
and money before the idea is solid, makes me numb bloated fat and blind and succumb to my fantasies instead of what actually IS. that’s why i forced myself to reckon with the reality of my family’s collective feeling for me because if i keep telling myself that’s LOVE! then i’m weakened by the faery tale. i don’t have to devolve into a pile of sobbing sludge. in fact, admitting it was freeing because contorting their actions to some sort of “love and understanding” got to be absolutely …irreconcilable.
successful self employed artists must discern what works and how to pay for it. there’s no room for the business practices of today– wishing and throwing money. to be outsider is to be as stable as possible in your own way not too reliant on others’ wobbly fickle gelatinous platforms.
(see Papa G and also why he’d never just scamper off to substack. substack for me is like the gym for writing on paper and knowing my audience instead of writing from my bellybutton)
i have to hang MYSELF over the abyss of terror and deprivation to force myself to move away from what i WANT and the living cheaply enables me to say what i want because there WILL be repurcussions, as i’ve courted them to make sure my ground of success is SOLID. i don’t have to worry so much if you’ll love me come morning if you find out the real me.
i’m not trying to live on the financial edge, it just comes with the territory. my mom used to say i had a badge of poverty. she said it because she couldn’t control me with her money, as it came with the sticky tangled strings of a spider web.
THIS is why i know KNOW that such ideas of successful on-the-low defiance in plain sight ARE bigger better than money. the money needs to FOLLOW this because if successful it should support itself with people, ENERGY, and thus money. and here on the fringes of living small, you must learn to not need a lot.
nowhere for me to collapse much more unless it means i’m on the streets lucking out with the occasional unlocked street portapotty for luxury.
so if i work HARD and. hopefully smart and my timing isn’t too off, as it’s been horribly off for the past 15 years, i’ll be rewarded with continuing to be on this beat. if i fail, then i figure i DESERVE to work a regular low-end job and if i can find a sewing or construction craft job, i’d be fine with not worrying about The World and saving The Young. if i work hard and smart i figure i deserve wherever i end up.
so being skint keeps me feral with eyes on the back of my head because i’m absolutely terrified of being homeless praying for unlocked portapotties with 5 cats. when you fall that low coming back up is a herculean task especially now.
it’s a “teach to fish belief” and maybe i’m jumping in the lake and still whittling the fishing pole while i’m treading water, but i’m not here to be comfortable and die safe. i’m just NOT. not this one.
erika
Justin, that’s very promising. I may experiment with it on a book-by-book basis once it’s become law.
Mdobner, no, that’s not one I ever got around to reading. I know it was very popular in the occult scene back in the day.
Erika, bring the patriarchy-matriarchy thing up in July and it may just be the most controversial fifth Wednesday post yet. As for your question — oh bright gods, exactly. Who can be themselves? In a culture that devotes so much of its energy to trying to convince everyone they have to buy into an endless sequence of fake identities — step right up, get one right off the rack, all it’ll cost you is your integrity, your chance at genuine self-knowledge, and your soul! Gah.
Isaac, thanks for this. As usual, I mostly read books by dead people, but I’ll consider making an exception.
Teresa (if I may), I’ve noticed the same thing of late. The guys in the Masonic lodges I attend are becoming more and more hirsute by the month. I think what’s happening is that here in the US, since we haven’t yet had a civilization of our own (we’ve just borrowed some of the trappings from Europe), we can’t really carry off decadence well, and are reverting to our natural barbarism.
Cliff, Stewart was still very much in his rebel phase when he wrote that, challenging existing magical traditions and insisting that he had the real stuff. He got over it — and the book’s still worth reading and studying.
Phutatorius, that makes sense to me. Of course I’m biased!
Dear Mrs Scotlyn
i will ALWAYS gratefully embrace your blessings! anyone’s… i don’t care whose god/s. i greedily need them all right now and i trust myself to fling aside the ones working against me. i’m not afraid of being controlled in the least now that i’m back to my twitchy animal self more.
and fear… yes, i supposed that’s what i’m trying to face. more fears and then i get angry that i’m afraid and get jittery and defiant.
it’s gonna be hella close, i’ll tell you, but my work has been almost better than my own HANDS, Scotlyn. it’s kinda eerie, actually. i hadn’t practiced for yeaaars and i can see how much my own work has improved just over the past couple of years as if i’ve been drawing for decades instead of writing and doing theatre etc.
but yeah… FEAR. i don’t want to surrender to the fear now that i’m older. part of it to be honest is my KNEE improving because i listened to you, did your broth and supplements (even though you later clarified you meant living), and grounding and acupuncture. i quit her because she turned into a whore: i’d been avoiding her asking me to hang out all year and finally after a year of mourning i said okay then she said she wouldn’t charge me for the first visit because it was actually some “class” she wanted me to come and enliven!!!!
i told her it was slimy and cheap and i couldn’t go back because i didn’t trust her anymore.
it’s this town. it turns everyone into a self healing wellness whore. “healing” and “wellness” have totally become demonically co-opted. have you noticed??? it’s all so gross.
anyhow, i’m being open about my finances and how i think in Papa’s forums because others (Christophe??? The Other Owen???? and others) will riff in their own jazz interpretation of whatever i’m doing with how we are and see things, because if i can pull this off, you won’t be able to say, “oh, dave eggers could build his empire because of a huuuuge inheritance” or “your dad was elvis.” and you won’t have any excuses.
that’s my real art underneath the obsessively insane crosshatching. that calms me down and gives me confidence when things are pretty from such a monster as me!
thanks, Scotlyn. i really hate traveling now but i want to meet you one day and i figure if this works out i’ll have to dig traveling again. i’ll miss the cats. i wish i could dress them up in tiny custom suits and pretend they’re my hairy Puerto Rican children.
maybe i will.
x
@ Erika: So, “Baghdad-by-the-Bay” has turned into “Mordor-by-the-Bay.” I’m glad I left 27 years ago: In 1998 you could still rent a 1BR apartment in Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill for $700/month.
Clay Dennis @ 12, about the last administration, this isn’t the first time an incumbent has become non compos mentis. There was Wilson the last two years of his second term; his wife ran the govt., or so I have read, and Reagan had begun to develop Alzheimer’s during his last two years. As for mid-level staffers running things, that is what they are for, the people above them make policy. Blinken and Rice were working for Israel, of course, so anything not of interest to their masters in Tel Aviv was mostly overlooked. Then, come election time, the Israelis showed their gratitude by backing Trump.
okay, Papa. i promise i shall remember to bring up the matriarchy/patriarchy thing in july. it’s a bigger psy op than i’d figured.
and i can’t wait til we can all hang out one day. i SEE it. i CRAVE it. i see loooong conversations dark beer and a crowded booth or table. it keeps me going.
when i took the train cross country this past november, i thought, “yeah.. this would work out just fine.”
x
Hi JMG. I recently started reading ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the vibes, as you recommended in ‘Green Wizardry’, and it’s been a bit of a revelation. The whole feel is like a breath of fresh air. Everyone’s encouraging each other to learn something new, to go out and experience the world, to be open to new things, to just build something. There’s a calm confidence that there’s a whole better world out there just waiting to be discovered and built. I’d recommend it to anyone as an antidote for the modern sense of doom.
It’s a different feeling even from the closest equivalent here in Australia, ‘Earth Garden’. Ours is more of a make-do-and-mend, be creative with what you’ve got, here’s how to get by. We’re a lot more practical than evangelical, which I guess is partly the difference between Australia and America.
Just to weigh in some personal experience re childhood vaccines.
I didn’t vaccinated any of my (3) children, no injections whatsover including vitamin K. They have been fine, no issues, and no chronic health problems (yet) outside of eczema early which was fixed by diet changes, and we haven’t bubble wrapped them at all either. The big thing I’ve noticed compared to peers and relatives who did, is that my kids have never (not once) had an ear infection, which seem to be very common amongst everyone else. They have had the usual colds, flus and rashes, but nothing bad that couldn’t be overcome with rest and the only one who has been to hospital after birth went for food poisoning.
However, I have a completely different take on infectious disease than the current state approved virology complex, so for me there was never any good argument to give them at all.
>OTHER OWEN that’s why i cannot just brush off what’s happening. that’s why i’m trying to figure out what “forgiveness” means when i’m trapped in a box with the one trying to kill me. it’s complicated
Maybe not as complicated as you’re making it. Is the place you’re living in, toxic? Yes or no?
@Phutatorius, JMG: Agreed about Crumb option 3! I think he liked that one the best too. Those big thigh muscles get enhanced in bike riding societies.
I did see Crumb… I dont remember as much of it as the movie about Harvey Pekar. A version of Crumb makes an appearance in that. Another comic artist I have been meaning to read is Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez and their Love and Rockets.
I have another “Baghdad-by-the-Bay” story that may or may not have involved Marion Zimmer Bradley. This was in 1989 after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Since the Bay Bridge was out of commission for a few months, a temporary ferry service had been set up between Berkley and San Francisco. I had gone into SF on the weekend, probably to hang out at one of my favorite North Beach haunts; Vesuvio, City Lights, etc. (I was what city people called a “bridge and tunnel person.”) On the ferry ride back to Berkley there was an extraordinary sight. An older woman, who looked very familiar to me for some reason, was accompanying a beautiful tall blond woman who was dressed in a white gown and tiara. The gorgeous blond woman looked like she had just walked off the cover of some fantasy novel. I was trying hard not to stare. I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen the older woman before but she looked really familiar. I wondered then if she might be Ursula Le Guin. Probably not. After a little while the blond in the fantasy outfit walked up to the bow of the ferry and stood there, quite theatrically, and stayed there as if posing for us for the rest of the trip. The older woman watched from the port railing and I watched from the starboard railing. When the ferry docked, it took all my will power to turn and walk to my car without looking back — and then I drove away. After a few months they got the Bay Bridge repaired enough to last a few more years.
Mr. Dobner, I read “Dweller” last year and made copious notes. I’m interested in “of the era” stuff like that, and didn’t mind all the goofiness. There is a villain who acts as he does “for the evulz,” as they say on TV Tropes, and a stereotypical love triangle where the hero is torn between a good girl and a bad girl. Oh, and we learn that in ancient India, people didn’t have to work at all, but could just pray for food and it would appear. The book is basically two Bildungsromane linked by reincarnation–one life set in Atlantis, and one in the nineteenth century, plus an interlude on Venus–and full of weird but interesting little side-quests, like the wizard who slays an army, then resurrects them as zombies, then kills them again by ordering them to march into the Ganges. We also learn that nonmarital sex is a terrible sin practiced before Noah’s Flood (which was the same thing as the sinking of Atlantis–yes, Noah was an Atlantean). BeardTree mentions “surprise visionary experiences of Jesus”; well, he makes a couple in this book.
WatchFlinger (no. 156), any kind of exercise is likely to help. Not everybody *can* split firewood, or go to a gym. Older people are likely to prefer walking or swimming.
Neptune’s Dolphin (no. 152), if memory serves, it opens with a scene of accidental brother-sister incest. Yes, I know it’s there in the mythology, but is that really what people want from their Arthurian romance? (Sorry, Wagner and Star Wars fans.)
Also, you’d be surprised how many occult groups believe in gnomes. I think they’re getting this from Paracelsus. R. Swinburne Clymer wrote a book about them–and another in which he explains that Mary was able to conceive Jesus because she was impregnated by a salamander (i.e. an elemental, not the lizard kind). More fin-de-siecle goodness, I know. (He wrote another book against vaccination, if anybody’s interested.)
Ambrose (#56)
Hi Ambrose, I am not an apologist for organized Christianity, nor am I Jewish. I believe Divinity is a scaled affair that is fractal in nature. Ultimately I think that if we rise up an infinite number of octal manifestations we are likely to reach something that for lack of a better name is the “ALL”. To most Christians the heresy of dualism is baked into their understanding. This belief tries to claim that God and the Devil are in an eternal war with each other, with each trying to destroy the other. My understanding is quite different, now, and I think it likely that I left the church I grew up in because of the lack of mercy they had, especially for those they found lacking, and really who hasn’t been found lacking at some point or another. For most Christians, I’d ask which part of the ALL do you think He wishes to damn to hell for eternity. I found Ecosophia first in the days of Peak Oil, and have continued to lurk in the background, since, even through the site change. I was particularly interested in JMG’s expose of “The Cosmic Doctrine”, and I own his “Paths of Wisdom” along with Dion Fortune’s excellent book, “The Mystical Qabala”. Most of my views are taken from studying “The Law of One”, “The Cosmic Doctrine”, and Qabala both D.F’s and JMG’s, with a little Swedenborg thrown in. The idea of a metaphor is to allow someone to consider, using the mantra “As above, so below.” those things that are unthinkable to the physical mind. I am a Christian though for a while I might have denied it, but I try to see the patterns offered up by the Bible and am amazed at the similarities. Genesis Chapter #1 is a brilliant metaphor to explain the 7 planes of manifestation to the famers and shepherds of that time, where a day is a plane of manifestation. It was probably “The Cosmic Doctrine” though that brought me back to a better understanding of the bible than any church has ever done. Anyway, I am not surprised that Christianity has left a sour taste in your mouth. I do however recommend “The Law of One”. It is difficult to get through because the recipients of this channeling were of course human and any metaphor is forced to fit within the experiences of the recipient. However, Ra’s ideas of “service to self” vs. “service to others” is worth considering, and the way the Egyptians lay out the Tarot deck as mind, body and spirit on the 7 planes of manifestation is also worth considering. And finally, while Christianity is largely in the dark about the way things actually work, returning to the bible after reading these other books is very enlightening.
Now as an aside… Imagine that manifestation is really just the process by which the unmanifest is given form, then what happens at the end of an eon when that form is perfected? If we are talking about a greater entity manifesting as a solar system, then what does that say about a black hole? All too often people think that because a thing is a metaphor it is unreal, symbolic in nature. Yet all of Manifestation is a metaphor. No part of the physical plane can exist except that it is an unmanifest substance taking form.
Hi John Michael,
Mentioning the Mists of Blahblah should always be prefaced by a trigger warning! 😉 A sorrier bunch of Arthurian characters I’m yet to meet. Reading about an Arthur wracked with self-doubt and indecision was all very new age, but hardly plausible for a successful war lord. Sadly it was the first recounting of the Arthurian tradition I’d ever come across.
Glad to see you drew a hard line under that other conversation. Setting and enforcing legitimate boundaries is an act of wisdom.
I see that fires are again a feature of the country to the north of you. Some of the photos are interesting from my perspective. The fires are burning in what looks like lake country, dotted with plentiful water (which seems weird to my brain due to living in a country with less stored water, but more rainfall). However, if you look carefully, the aerial photographs show dry ridge tops, so my gut feeling – and this is pure speculation – if warmer those areas won’t support the vegetation which is growing there today, and may not even have the lakes. Curious stuff, and hope the folks up there are doing OK? What’s your take on the climate further north from you?
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
Thought you might appreciate this article. It’s amazing what’s going on up there in the central arid lands: At Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, an ‘inland tsunami’ is making a sea
Nature is pretty amazing.
Cheers
Chris
@JMG, others:
Some links I think are worth sharing. A few days ago I saw that Brett at Unmitigated Pedantry did a long post picking apart the unrealistic military tactics and (especially) logistics in the Mad Max movies, and speculating about what post-industrial warfare in a salvage society is more likely to look like. (I won’t be giving away much to say that technicals and the Great Toyota War come up.)
https://acoup.blog/2025/05/23/collections-the-logistics-of-road-war-in-the-wasteland/
Twilight Patriot has an article (it’s about a month old now, but still worth reading) with a pessimistic take on the Trump Administration – he argues that while Trump is (obviously) still better than any recent president, his obsession with problems, real or imaginary, caused by foreigners (illegal immigration, other countries ripping us off on trade) to the neglect of America’s internal problems (too much regulation and lawsuits making the US a poor place for physical industry, or entitlement spending exploding through the roof) will hobble Trump’s ability to do much that will matter in the long run.
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/we-cant-restore-america-by-obsessing
@John Michael Greer
I’ll bet that while the men at the Masonic lodge are growing whiskers, they are probably NOT shaving their chests!
JMG, Ihope you have a safe and wonderful trip to the UK! I’ll be dying to hear how it goes!
Hopefully, not literally. I just got news of two more deaths of canaries. The first was EMR activist, John Weigel in Ireland, who was issuing a comprehensive newsletter each month until a couple months ago.
Yesterday, Prof. Olle Johansson wrote:
“I am still shocked after learning that my dear co-warrior, supporter, mental coach, carrier of an endless stream of very important news through his EMF Updates, scientific hypothesis-generator, door-opener to many crucial places of local as well as international power, and – above all – my dear, dear friend John Weigel passed away May 5.
He made me lecture to various persons in power around the world, including in Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Poland, and so forth. And he made me meet some of the very best experts in the field, like professor Annie Sasco, professor Dimitris Panagopoulos, Dr. George Carlo, and many more.
He also made me see religion and Christianity from completely different angles, and his mild hand guided me often through the very difficult questions we all struggle with, summarized in his reflections on the meaning of life, and on the afterlife. There are no words that can cover this loss. He will, indeed, be dearly missed. — My thoughts go out to his family. 🙏❤️”
Then, this morning, I received an e-mail saying: “I am sorry to inform you that Andrew Goldsworthy passed away on the 21st of May after suffering a heart attack at home.,” from his daughters telling the EMR community therefore not to e-mail him anymore. I imagine it is a hard time for them.
Dr. Goldworthy was a published researcher. He admitted to our community that he was also electrosensitve, and I am getting the impression that most of the serious researchers in this field are (it’s how you survive pervasive skepticism), but they normally do not reveal that, due to the stigma. In 2021 he said he’d caught COVID, which turned into long-COVID, though the late Arthur Firstenberg noted that 5G had just been introduced to his community, and Dr. Goldworthy admitted as much, and said the long-COVID was like his electrosensitivity, but much worse. He was talked into receiving the you-know-what by his doctor who thought it would resolve the long-COVID. Instead it nearly killed him. Since then we had not heard much from him.
Added to Peter Tocci, who died of cancer last summer, and Arthur Firstenberg, who died in February (not revealed of what, precisely, but those close to him said he hinted that he was close to death, and in absence of other details, I think it was EMR pure and simple that killed him), that makes four major voices in the EMR community that have been silenced.
I’m pretty certain Peter Tocci did not get the you-know-what. He was even more of a conspiracy theorist than I. I also doubt that John Weigel did. He had his hand on too much information to go chancing it.
There has been a new line of research on electrosensitivity lately, focused on skin fibroblasts. They have outlined two different types that result in electrosensitivity with a tendency toward either cancer or accelerated aging. It is a technical, very difficult read, but it is here:
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/26/10/4792
Skin Fibroblasts from Individuals Self-Diagnosed as Electrosensitive Reveal Two Distinct Subsets with Delayed Nucleoshuttling of the ATM Protein in Common
by Laurène Sonzogni et al.
JMG,.”bring the patriarchy-matriarchy thing up in July and it may just be the most controversial fifth Wednesday post yet”
Sir, that’s my vote. I think it’s going to be your most *commented* post to date, surpassing “the decline and fall of Hillary Clinton”. You will see.
Erika, now that’s an enticing prospect! In the Picatrix, that fine old manual of wizardry, there’s a passage that describes a city built by Hermes himself close to the eastern edge of the world, to which all the wizards and weirdos and students of strange lore would come in the twilight days of this age. I sometimes dream of that city, and of all of us oddballs and eccentrics walking long strange roads to get there, passing through the four gates and greeting each other with shouts of delight and hugs. Yes, dark beer features in those dreams, too.
“The name of the city was Adocentyn.” That’s what the Picatrix says.
Kfish, it’s also a difference between the decades. That rush of fresh air was the spirit of the late 1960s and 1970s; nowadays, we’ve got a harder row to hoe.
Phutatorius, what a strange visionary experience. Thank you for sharing it.
Ambrose, good heavens. You’ve read Clymer? That’s an uncommon interest these days.
Chris, exactly. Within a century or two, the western half of this continent will be desert and most of the rest will be grassland, with forest along the eastern seaboard east of the Appalachians, and tropical or semitropical jungle on the Gulf coast. The fires are a normal part of the transition process. Meanwhile, most of the gibber desert on your continent will become savannah, and Lake Eyre will become quite an impressive inland sea.
Sandwiches, thanks for both of these! Keep in mind that Trumpismo is just the beginning of the transition; most of the deep changes will begin a decade or two from now.
Teresa, since Masons wear suits and ties, I can’t confirm that, but I suspect you’re right.
Patricia O, I’m sorry to hear of their passing. I’ll certainly post something when I get back.
Bruno, July’s not that far away. Be prepared to cast your vote!
The Other Owen #148, well, I have no strong feelings about other places in Canada either. Have to say, though, I think I understand the Frenchies better than I understand their Anglo counterparts. Those Squareheads (as some of us non-Squareheads affectionately call them) are a truly mystifying people. They live in a state of perpetual perplexity about things that us non-Squareheads can see perfectly clearly. Like what? Like the nature of the country their forebears founded.
I don’t know why, despite their many achievements, they have this intellectual incapacity. Not only that but their non-stop embarrassment over their own existence. I can’t figure it out.
I tell them patiently that their country is a successor state to the British Empire. They furrow their brow as if I’m discussing the unfathomable geometries underpinning quantum mechanics.
But then they say, well, yes, but what defines us? What about Canadian culture? I ask them, what language do you speak? They say English. And I say to start with that. And they say, but what makes Canada unique? And I say next to nothing, aside from these absurd conversations, maybe because there’s next to nothing unique about anybody, anywhere. Just try chasing down the genesis of ideas and customs and then tracing their tendrils through history and you’ll find yourself sweating in a desert with a busload of Chinese construction workers and then driving on rutted roads across endless, depressing steppes and then likely find yourself in a muddy cave deep in the guts of prehistory. That’s if the trail even leads that far. And I mean what’s the point of it? For curiosity’s sake? Ok, I’ll buy that. Or are there patents on such things? Should there be?
The Frenchies have a much more robust sense of themselves even if they too face some self-inflicted existential issues. Like, independence pur et dur? But do they have the moxy for it? I dunno. They tried twice. Didn’t make it.
I’d like to tell them, the Westmount Rhodesians have left. They’re gone. Ain’t coming back. And those English-only sales ladies at Eaton’s that looked down their noses at you are gone too. A long time gone. Eaton’s is bankrupt. Belly-up. Gonzo.
An aside: Decades ago my wife and I drove through Winnipeg. We stopped for lunch there at a downtown diner and found ourselves in a reality-bubble that only David Lynch (RIP) could have devised. And I think back on those weird dudes and I understand what that dwarf meant when he intoned, ‘Garmonbozia’. Do you remember that scene?
PAPA G:
Erika, now that’s an enticing prospect! In the Picatrix, that fine old manual of wizardry, there’s a passage that describes a city built by Hermes himself close to the eastern edge of the world, to which all the wizards and weirdos and students of strange lore would come in the twilight days of this age. I sometimes dream of that city, and of all of us oddballs and eccentrics walking long strange roads to get there, passing through the four gates and greeting each other with shouts of delight and hugs. Yes, dark beer features in those dreams, too.
“The name of the city was Adocentyn.” That’s what the Picatrix says.
—–
dear Papa, then it must be so! can you please elucidate how to say “Adocentyn”? the accent, anything? i say it: “AH-doe-sentin” and if we both see it, then it’s not in my head and needs at least a working name. so then i’ll repeat it under and over my breath like a prayer i’ll practice speaking aloud while i’m manifesting my cartoon life.
p.s. by the way to anyone paying attention to my dramatics, i don’t think my timing was really off these past 14 years. i think considering what James ultimately needed from me, i was right on time because as soon as we found out i was there for him all the time he wanted, and those are ideas that failed for bad timing are perfect timing NOW.
by the way $8k is like 8 months. and i expect work and sales will roll in slowly and that’s all i need. Jim Heameach’s gift covers the printing so i’m already starting without having to go in the black. i want you all to know the details so there’s no miracle garage story later to make people feel bad.
this is punk. it’s gritty sweaty nasty beginnings loneliness down time bouts of insanity questioning despair doubt punctuated with skull crushing moments of elation that show up JUST when you thought you’d lost your mind and should go straight.
this isn’t about safety and retirement. i’ve got rent control and as long as i’m using it i’m gonna live like i’m still in the 1990s and it’s my duty to live like that in that i have TIME to do what needs to be done just to get to the next 6-8 months of rent.
Scotlyn, yeah… it’s that fear thing. i knew it was more fun here but i got lazy complacent. well James gave me stability and i got off that high as he hated it and we actually enjoyed our little adventurous life together with the kitties we’ve had all along the way. but now that he’s gone it’s like i’m dusting off old armor i can’t even fit into anymore.
that’s what i feel like. all this feels like it was the plan all along. like okay, i love you James. i’m up. i feel like i’m making up stories here (like my mom loves me crap) and it’s dangerously “cute” but i wonder if James and me were also part of the plan. he was the original “OH THERE YOU ARE!” and from then on my life’s been lousy with this stuff even though James hated me enunciating this stuff aloud because it killed it.
When Papa started talking about this stuff so you could COURT it, i was actually relieved because that’s the support humanity is going to need as people do go even madder. a whole sect of people need to be trained in… maintaining the hum. that’s what came to me and it seemed lame but nah, i think the hummmm is important whatever it is. it’s a vibe. a song a move an intention.
it’s … Adocentyn. it’s crazy because i see TONS of conversations. i think you’re on the edge of the booth like you’re going table to table booth to booth. thirty to a booth! maybe i embellish that with metaphors but no, i DO see a place bursting with conversations. crazy with it. everywhere. beautiful arguments and ripping ideas to the bone so fun it’s actually sport and has audiences around at tables no one talking but listening. more smaller groups of talking arguing later. good beer. dark beer. pitchers. that’s what i want so i could’ve embellished that. but no, it’s like a done deal to me. i wanna be involved and not die watching the last of the UHF channels in a state run old folks home so i’m gonna make this work. i’m growing old with my cats.
i’m the cat lady koo cachoo. and i’ve already got someone in mind who’s from this town, someone who’ll watch the cats as i go on these trips (the cats are only a few years old and can live up to 20 or so, so we’re all likely going out together), and i’d love to leave my apt. to him so i can go somewhere else when it calls to me.
i’ll know when and if. it just HAPPENS with me. we feral weirdos each have our own magic rules we learned as kids what protected us and when did they abandon us? like Kyle here with the angel helping him when the big dog had Kyle’s neck in his mouth and was thrashing him. i’ve been saved from death rape gang rape and yes, Scotlyn… now James is dead i don’t fear going wherever he is now, either. Just wanna keep my promise i secretly kept to him. i pretended i’d let them go so he wouldn’t feel too comfortable with this dying thing. i wanted him to kick in his control freak tendencies so he’d overcome all that cancer and stick around.
see you all in Adocentyn! i like it….
x
A sign of the times in the delusional quest to save industrial civilization just occurred here in Oregon this week. Two large scale battery companies shut down this week. These were companies that put together large arrays of shipping container sized batteries to provide storage for utility scale wind and solar. A good friend of mine worked for one of them and is now job hunting. . He said most of these “battery farms” were purchased by companies that intended to arbitrage power rate swings. In other words they were planning on purchasing electricity during periods of low demand when rates are low, and then sell it at peak demand periods when rates are much higher.
I think among other things they did not count on the fact that if to many outfits did this the profitable peaks and valleys would go away.
I guess we will have hold our breaths for some ” battery tech breakthrough” before grid scale storage can dazzle the Ted Talk crowd again.
“Hi Ambrose,”
Hi Ben! (no. 199)
“I am not an apologist for organized Christianity, nor am I Jewish.”
I figured you for a theist of the New Age persuasion, what with all the references to Ra, pralaya, the Cosmic Doctrine, the Galactic God, etc.
“I believe Divinity is a scaled affair that is fractal in nature.”
I’m a bit fuzzy on the math stuff, but…you mean that God is an emergent property, only existing at the very macro scale? (We know Satan exists at the micro level, because as they say, the devil is in the details!)
“the heresy of dualism […] tries to claim that God and the Devil are in an eternal war with each other, with each trying to destroy the other.”
I’m pretty sure I don’t believe *that.*
“I was particularly interested in JMG’s expose of “The Cosmic Doctrine” ”
I think you must mean “exegesis”;’ an “expose” would be a debunking. I started reading JMG later, and made a stab at “The Cosmic Doctrine,” but…couldn’t follow it, or see what all the fuss was about, to be honest. I suppose I’ll have to give it another go at some point. Kabbalah is interesting, but since I’m not Jewish either, not really meant for me, and the whole Western magical thing of combining it with Tarot cards seems even more foreign to my spirituality. It’s a fascinating tradition, mind you, just one I find hard to relate to, and don’t really want to switch to. I do remember leaving through the “Law of One” books way back when. (By the way, that phrase seems to have come from “Dweller on Two Planets,” by way of Edgar Cayce.)
“Genesis Chapter #1 is a brilliant metaphor to explain the 7 planes of manifestation to the farmers and shepherds of that time, where a day is a plane of manifestation.”
I see it a product of history, not divine inspiration. The Babylonians liked the number 7 because of the 7 classical planets, and Genesis 1 was probably composed during the Babylonian Exile, with an eye to the Enuma elish. I don’t think the seven days were metaphorical for anything–or really all that important to the story, all this primeval stuff is preliminary to the main themes of Genesis. Mme Blavatsky also liked the number 7, and so we get talk of 7 planes, not however many there are in neo-Platonism or the various gnostics. (Newton did the same thing with the colors of the spectrum–he liked the number 7 too.)
“Anyway, I am not surprised that Christianity has left a sour taste in your mouth. ”
I have mixed feelings about it. I am aware of its many virtues, but am disqualified from belonging to it, due to not believing in its axioms. Anyway, every religion is a mixed bag, people have to take from it whatever they think is good and useful (which will be different for each person).
Thank you for your very personal message!
@Ambrose, I have lived in Taiwan for 9 years, did my masters degree here. I have not become popular here taking a position close to yours — Taiwan rejects American hegemony, gives China military cooperation and access to local deep water ports, agrees to shared cultural heritage, agrees to form a Chinese Commonwealth, all in exchange for independence (no Beijing interference) and a China-supportive seat at the UN. China would likely go for it. Unfortunately, the independence forces here are too anti-China and are asking for one of two worst-case scenarios.
JMG: “good heavens. You’ve read Clymer?”
I’ve been mainlining him for a few weeks now! His writings read as though they were taken fresh off the internet. Now my head is humming with such choice turns of phrase as “Manhood or degeneracy, which?” or “Male gallantries! Pooh, say feminists.”
Dear JMG,
“It’s as though they think they’re acting in a political sitcom, and nothing bad — such as, say, a salvo of Russian intermediate-range missiles — can ever happen to them.”
Deep down, the western elites count on Putin’s prudence and hence feel free to mess around. I hear people saying the Russian would never dare to attack Berlin, London, etc… because that would trigger the collective response from NATO.
Serious rearmament would take at least a decade as you mentioned, until then, I don’t see material reasons (except a nuclear attack) for Russia to react drastically.
Do you see other factors which could invalid my propose above?
Siliconguy #169: “In the U.S., the polio vaccine causes more polio than it prevents.”
According to the National Vaccine Information Center: “The live attenuated oral polio vaccine (OPV) can cause vaccine-strain polio in the vaccinated person or can cause vaccine-strain polio in a person who comes in contact with a recently vaccinated person’s body fluids…”
BUT: “The use of OPV was discontinued in the U.S. as of 2000 and replaced with inactivated, injectable polio vaccine, which cannot cause vaccine-strain polio. However, OPV is used widely in annual polio vaccine campaigns targeting children in many parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.” https://www.nvic.org/disease-vaccine/polio/quick-facts-e68709a2b90caac8dd5b3f629e893f5a
I’m old enough to have met several people in my life who were in wheelchairs or on crutches because they were born before the polio vaccine was invented. While I understand the concerns about vaccines, that’s one I’d really hesitate to skip. (And no, I’m not a mouthpiece for Big Pharma!)
JMG:
As for the Mists of Blahblahblah, it was indeed such a marriage — Bradley found out exactly what her audience wanted to hear, complete with the very thinly veiled sadomasochism that pervades the modern Left, and rehashed it for them. As for “patriarchy” and “matriarchy,” I probably need to do a post on the manufacture of those two myths sometime soon, don’t I?
—
About the sadomasochism and the modern Left. That would explain what happened with Free Spirit Alliance a few years back. (FSA is held in Maryland for a week camp.) It split between the people who wanted BDSM as a part of their Paganism and those who didn’t. It went more than that into wanting the other group to bless their BDSM rituals and participate. In other words, no tolerance for the vanilla folks. I was on the outside of that, noting trends in the local Pagan scene – Tri state – MD/VA/DC or DMV. It was a lot of ordeal rituals and sex rituals going on while another group was trying to back away from that. It went back and forth.
Until finally, I met someone in the know who discussed financial things with me. We bonded over accounting and finance at a Pagan gathering. We were the only numbers folks in the group. So like people stick together. They were in charge of the finances of FSA and other organizations in the area. (Neo-Pagans and numbers are strangers to each other. I used to hold money seminars for Neo-Pagans to help them understand how to manage money beyond spells.) Anyway, they said the split had to do with embezzlement of funds. I can’t go further into it since the people involved are still around. It turned out that financial corruption was at the root of the split, with the original FSA group objecting to an audit of the books. So they framed it in terms of sex intolerance and woke stuff.
—
As for the patriarchy and matriarchy stuff, I first encountered that in the leftist Neo-Pagan scene which was explaining the evils of Christianity vrs the virtues of the Goddess religions. Yeah, would like to know more. I guess it is controversial since it is one of those well-loved myths of Neo-Paganism and the Woke Left.
Ben…there is a lot of overlap, it would seem, between the law of One and Boris Mouravieffs Gnosis trilogy. Resonance I would say, after reviewing some of the law of One material. Thanks for this.
“Teresa (if I may), I’ve noticed the same thing of late. The guys in the Masonic lodges I attend are becoming more and more hirsute by the month. I think what’s happening is that here in the US, since we haven’t yet had a civilization of our own (we’ve just borrowed some of the trappings from Europe), we can’t really carry off decadence well, and are reverting to our natural barbarism.”
“Natural barbarism” can be applied the most of the areas around the North Sea. Oswald Spengler saw this idea as the Genesis of “Western Civilization” and many contemporaries have considered it as the fountainhead of modernity in the 18th Century:
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/classics/escape-from-rome-walter-scheidel-book-review-peter-thonemann
To what extent can you see the historic heartlands of civilization becoming the epicentres of new civilizational orders in the future (Mediterranean, Near East, North India, East Asia)?
@JMG, @Ecosophia Readers
I have a new example of how extensive the belief in the religion of Progress is. I watch a lady on Youtube who does tarot readings and crystal ball scryings.
She recently gave one after the blackouts in Spain. What came through her crystal ball scrying I believe was correct since it clearly aligns with the Long Descent. The reason I’m mentioning it though is how she interpreted her own scrying and tarot spread.
In the future there will be a cosmic, clean energy source and no one will be allowed to make money off it like they do with current power plants, nuclear energy, etc. It’s a clean source of energy the elites have known about for a long time but suppress. It’s “alien technology, not of this planet.” It’s cosmic, a type of power that’s completely free, blah, blah, blah…
One of the first tarot cards she turned over was The Star.
And she’s interpreting the spread and scrying like aliens from another solar system are about to visit earth and share some kind of astonishing clean, free tech that global elites won’t be able to monetize.
I’m looking at that same spread and mumbling under my breath, “Of course elites have known about it for a long time. It has a name. It’s called the Sun.” Queue roll eyes.
The scry and spread were shouting that over the 21st century many people in many wealthy countries – not just Spain only – will revert to using the Sun as their primary source of “energy that elites can’t prevent the use of or monetize.” Yet she persisted in interpreting it as aliens from outer space are going to introduce some kind of game changing, cosmic, clean tech which they also use and life will go on and the “well-being of the people will be much better.” And of course the comments were all celebrating this coming source of clean, free energy from outer space aliens.
By the end of the video I’m nearly shouting, “It’s called the Sun! The Sun! That’s your ‘alien life’ not of this Earth.”
Youtube has a transcript function for those who don’t like watching video. I found it fascinating as a clear example of how strong the belief in perpetual Progress can be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mOKB_ht-xE
@jmg — from your blogroll of doom, Tim Morgan has pointed to evidence that growth inflected in 2023 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/05/29/304-has-growth-ended/
and is on it’s way down.
and, no surprise to you, sees a gradual decline — by 2050 we are 34% poorer.
“collapse now and avoid the rush” indeed
jerry
Erika, I’m not entirely sure how it was pronounced in medieval Latin, but it was probably close to ADD-oh-SEN-tin. See you there!
Clay, no surprises there. Still, like flying cars, batteries for grid power storage will doubtless keep on circling back around, resurfacing in the popular imagination no matter how many times they fail. The one form of perpetual motion I know of is the endless recycling of bad ideas.
Ambrose, good to hear. Are you by any chance a member of the FRC? (Full disclosure: I am, among many other things.)
Foxhands, keep in mind that Article 5 doesn’t come into force if one of the NATO countries attacks another nation, which then responds. That’s where the Russians are drawing a hard line — as we just saw: a German missile attack against Russia would justify a Russian missile attack against Germany, and Article 5 would not apply.
Neptunesdolphins, I wish I was surprised. One of the downsides of all that prattle about “perfect love and perfect trust” is that the Neopagan scene is a perfect hunting ground for con artists and crooks of all kinds. As for patriarchy/matriarchy, I get the impression that that’s potentially a very popular topic; we’ll see in July!
David, it depends on too many factors to guess. I’m more interested in the possibility of certain areas that weren’t central to civilization — for example, the Rio Plata and Volga watersheds — becoming the heartlands of new civilizations in the millennia ahead.
Panda, that’s just embarrassing. Typical, but embarrassing — which is to say, you’re almost certainly right.
Jerry, all things considered, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. Here we go!
@ David Ritz #217
“To what extent can you see the historic heartlands of civilization becoming the epicentres of new civilizational orders in the future (Mediterranean, Near East, North India, East Asia)?”
I have no idea. I watch men (and women) for the sheer pleasure of people-watching and to use what I see in my fiction. And I do see far more men growing facial hair than decades ago.
On a construction crew, it’s virtually 100%.
Michael in Taiwan, I didn’t see your comments until now. Thanks for the detailed explanation; it’s more complicated than I imagined!
There’s even an additional hitch: if a distributor in UK found smaller markets around the world, the shirts for each market would have to be printed with the name of the destination city in each case. In my example, “Guelph” was printed directly on the shirt. (but maybe that’s done afterward?)
Addendum to my #106 post.
I just re-read what I wrote and it sounds a bit odd. The thing I want to clarify is that the Biblical injunction to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself or Inner Engineering’s near equivalent, Be a (Loving) Mother to the World, is a type of puja kriya that builds equanimity and more extensive perception if consistently practiced.
Hate works just as well as love for the practice. One could choose to work on radiating universal hate as consistently as possible – instead of universal love – as the preferred targeted Beingness quality to cultivate and the puja will still work. It’s a way to stabilize and single-point focus the higher energies of the Emotion Body to bring it into full Cosmic Doctrine-style conscious control.
I suspect Gratitude Journals work in a similar manner if consistently maintained daily.
It would be interesting if the Volga region became a fountainhead for future civilizations as it is from that region that the Yamnaya steppe raiders who spread every language between Portuguese and Bengali originally came from:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamnaya_culture
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_migrations
Here is a new book on the subject.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Proto.html?id=KHAjEQAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
Do you think that a future Turkic language from this region could spread rapidly and displace the old descendents of the Indo-European languages? After all, Turkic languages are the only ones that have really rolled back previously Indo-European speaking areas including the Tocharians in modern-day Uyghurstan, Indo-Iranians in Central Asia and Azerbaijan, and Greeks/Armenians in Anatolia.
@Ecosophia Readers
It suddenly hit me I left off a practical, pragmatic example of how to turn ‘Love Your Neighbor as Yourself/Be a Mother to the World’ into daily puja kriya practice.
The Modern Order of Essenes: The Blessing Walk
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/208136.html
Jennifer Kobernik – Please check your dreamwidth inbox… I sent you a message on the topic of Costa Rica. 🙂
Erika – “Next year in Adocentyn” has a ring to it. 🙂 I’ll raise a glass to that.
That was quick;
Meyer Burger opened an Arizona solar panel factory in June 2024. Now, “Yesterday, PV Tech reported that the company had laid off employees at the site, bringing its future into doubt. But overnight, Meyer Burger confirmed that operations at the site would cease “immediately”, and the remaining 282 employees received notices of termination.”
https://www.pv-tech.org/meyer-burger-confirms-end-of-arizona-module-production/
Why is down further in the article,
“Meyer Burger had been the only producer of heterojunction technology (HJT) modules in the US. The majority of US producers have focused on passivated emitter rear contact (PERC) technology and its successor in the mainstream of the PV industry, tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon).”
In more detail, the heterojunction cells are two cells stacked on each other each absorbing a different wavelength of light. They are more expensive, but more efficient. It also turns out they are vulnerable to high humidity at the junction. In other words, they corrode.
BUT, the PERC cells (23% efficient) are significantly cheaper, and the TOPCON cells are just as efficient (25%), cheaper than the heterojunction, and more reliable.
Michael in Taiwan;
Would you really trust the Chinese to honor your plan given what happened in Hong Kong?
JMG: “Are you by any chance a member of the FRC?”
No, this is for a writing project. I wish I had your inside knowledge! There are big gaps in the publicly available information–not just secret stuff, but basic things, like a Clymer biography and bibliography.
Michael in Taiwan, uh, I was joking. My “solution” would basically preserve the status quo under a bunch of high-sounding gobbledygook. No way China would agree. But hmm, maybe Trump can be persuaded to make Taiwan a state? Unlike Canada, they’d probably vote Republican. Plus…semiconductors!
Another such “solution”: Israel and Palestine should solve their problems by letting the Israelis (or the Palestinians) divine the country any way they like, and then the Palestinians (or the Israelis) get to pick which half they want. (That YouTube guy who’s being billed as either the Mahdi or the Antichrist offers a different solution: both sides should follow the example of Elijah and the priests of Ba’al, and offer two sacrifices. Whichever one ignites, the other side has to convert to that religion! Then problem solved, I guess.)
@Siliconguy
I wouldn’t think it’s a matter of trust as much as it is a matter of compromise, especially given that ideally, I don’t think China would actually want a war over Taiwan.
@RandomActsOfKarma Thank you for the tips! I agree that a subtle symbol might lead to a good conversation, or going to an event that might draw the right crowd.
SCOTLYN: ‘Erika – “Next year in Adocentyn” has a ring to it. 🙂 I’ll raise a glass to that.’
i’ve been smiling all afternoon since i saw you picked up on this with me. thank you for making this a real live toast so that whenever it happens, clink of the mugs and, “NEXT YEAR IN ADOCENTYN!” until then i’m knitting my way to all of us.
—
RANDOM! since you’re here i must publicly thank you for the readings because of your multiple “1”s, i allowed myself to go “back to the beginning” and i realized the one little lie needed to be put in light where it withered because if i lie i cannot see my PRESENT reality in order to actually survive.
one of those, “what served you back then impairs you now as the conditions are different.”
there is not even a scoche of room to be self indulgent or fantastical right now so thank you for your reading and then interpretation because i meditated on it as i was scattered unfocused and in anguish and pressed for TIME. (i’d given myself a year to just mourn and not have to go work. so i lived suuuuuper cheap and kept to myself but now i must focus)
so i went back to the beginning and set the lie free and i don’t hate them. on the contrary. i’m sorry they are like that but i’m not taking it to keep the peace anymore. anywhere. and i keep being given more rope to keep going like this, as long as i’m on the up and up, i land with angels like so many of you here. no lie. no reason to suck up at this point. you’ve all seen the worst of me. heck, i think not only Gawain but Temporary Reality, i think maybe she’s iced me out (smile). but we’re KIN. we’ll make up Next Year in Adoscentyn!
(Scotlyn, i have to repeat it over and over because it does NOT roll off my tongue. maybe that’s the point. i have to keep saying it to carve the groove of it’s eventuality into my BEING. )
but you all, look at how fast the theatre of the last dozen or so years (since 2012???!!!!) has blown away like a potemkin village all because of MONEY? it’s astounding how much you can change fashion and culture now with an executive order.
frankly, i’m underwhelmed. non profits are winking out alll over … all these “i’ll die for the cause!” winks out because of MONEY? really?
i figure if the slaves could have messages on their quilts and in their songs or dance, that’s above money. that’s where i wanna get to. money cannot devise that and KEEP IT GOING.
whatever is started must be natural and be drenched with really really good quid pro quo of all kinds.
i digress! thank you, Random. it was a wonderful follow up to the one we’d done long ago. seems like year now. (smile)
x
@Siliconguy , I think yes, the Chinese could be trusted in such a scenario, and diplomats from Taiwan and Singapore who know the CCP have said this would work. It’s all about loyalty and protecting security interests. In Hong Kong, a main protest leader (publisher Jimmy Lai) was meeting with high-level American officials, calling for the protests to move into the mainland and up to Beijing. Before that, Jimmy Lai had 25 years of uncensored press freedom, frequently criticizing the CCP. Meeting with Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo and calling for mainland revolution got the predicted results. Before anyone says I’m brainwashed, I am for Taiwan independence, but I’m a realist, and I see no way for independence to happen peacefully under the American sphere of influence. (I’ve written more extensively on this on my website.)
@Smith
His majesty crossing the pond is supposed to be what being a squarehead is all about… but to be honest, he just
earmarked half a trillion to help re-arm the old colonial empire, which you’d think we would appreciate, but he also gave us a good DEI hammering, sending us spiralling into silent rage, choking on our curry stew.
The old highlanders were encouraged to settle our red river colony back in the Imperial days… it was a neat enough 2 for 1 displacement trick. But is this kind of high level colonial tactic still possible? By Golly Yes. The King was just spurring us forward again.
So come on and gear up! Lets colonize New Russia. After all these years of office donuts, we could all use some action. I’ll find as many blokes with square enough heads (that know how to hunt). If you could rattle up a few descendants of the voyageurs then we could enlist as officers with ready made divisions and get this new world off to a jolly good start. I might hope Chrétien to wish us well and ease any cultural tensions we encounter along the way.
Where can I get useful information to relocate to a stable region in the United States? I am in nyc but want to get out
@JMG – it seems to me I saw it on your Twitter, something that the effect that “people interested in occultism tend to be nearing the end of their time here on earth.” Am I remembering this correctly? Are you able to expand on this?
Bofur, Papa G’s on TWITTER???
Trusty Canteen, you remind me of the Twilight Zone where William Shatner and his wife ask the devil at the booth in the diner such questions.
Scotlyn sent me this regarding all i’ve been talking about:
https://acoup.blog/2025/04/25/collections-how-gandalf-proved-mightiest-spiritual-power-in-tolkien/
yes! i know money/resources are important but the true physical need threatens to derail THIS kind of deeper magic and i’m walking a tight rope trying to get there, myself. it’s like walking on water in faith to salvation. yeah… that Jesusy stuff. that’s why the bible reads like deeper secrets than just passive “love” and behaving but repeatedly breathing and stepping into your own mortal terror of undermining how things seem to be. something like that.
i’m still stumbling around right now.
erika
ERIKA! 😉
Thank YOU for allowing me to do a follow up reading… it is helpful for me to have practice with that. And I am glad you were able to process what you needed to process. Let me know when you are ready for your next reading.
And, if I can slide into the Adoscentyn conversation, perhaps it doesn’t roll off the tongue yet because it is a new track in space. The more we say it, the deeper the groove…
Everybody,
I am still doing readings with the spiritual alchemy oracle I developed. If you would like a reading (free!), you can email me at hello @ druidalchemist . com , message me at Dreamwidth https://randomactsofkarmasc.dreamwidth.org/, or post a comment on the Oracle webpage https://druidalchemist.com/oracle/.
Wishing everyone going to Glastonbury safe travels!
“Where can I get useful information to relocate to a stable region in the United States? I am in nyc but want to get out”
What is your definition of stable? Economically, tectonically, winter won’t necessarily kill you, able to grow your own food? Do you lean left or right politically?
My understanding is that Upstate New York is nothing like NYC so you might only have a short move.
I feel your pain in a way. I’m in Eastern Washington state. I have a pretty decent situation to ride out a slow collapse, but the insanity radiating from Seattle is getting insufferable. I am wondering if I should write this place off and move myself.
One thing you might consider is to pick a state where both Senators are NOT from the same city, and I use an expansive definition of same city. Both Oregon and Washington have that problem, one metropolitan area controls the government and they run the state as a resource stripping operation on the rural areas.
The recent Rat Says script:
“Rat: — I don’t like Tetris.
Rat: — Your successes disappear, your failures accumulate, and sooner or later they inevitably overwhelm you.”
made me think that certain politicians are playing Tetris Politics. And then I began to think about Tetris as a metaphor for this stage of Faustian culture. We’ve definitely moved on from Pacman.
Ian Duncombe #235, Now THAT’S the spirit.
I’ve been mistaken for a Squarehead on occasion, but I would never be mistaken for a pur laine pea souper, and so I wonder if anyone would listen, but it doesn’t matter because happily there’s no need even to go to Quebec and then have to face eyeball-rolling, sighing, sneering, smirking, nay-saying separatists, you know the type, the point being oui, certainement, Sudbury is full of the descendants of those intrepid voyageurs and also many in the towns along the Welland Canal.
And maybe we can scare up an old Red Ensign or two. There must still be some mouldering away in basements here and there so may as well put them to good use.
A national project like you’re suggesting is just the thing to clean out the pipes but maybe we could start with something closer to home. You know, to limber up. I say this seeing as it’s been literally a lifetime since an endeavour like this. So how about Alaska? Besides, coulda been, shoulda been Canada’s. And isn’t that panhandle just a vexation and annoyance to the eye? Ok, but first get off the donuts.
We were over in Old Blighty about thirty years ago and we were listening to a Brit tour guide in some age-old edifice, maybe Westminster Abbey, and damned if the guy didn’t say that Canada’s REAL flag (vocal emphasis his) resided in a hallowed corner in that place. Ain’t that something? No idea why he said it seeing as the group was almost all American and barely would have had a clue what street Canada was on.
So, half a trillion, eh? Serious dough. You can do a lot with sums like that. Or not. Like those half dozen, 6 thousand ton arctic slush-breakers, each armed with exactly two machine guns and one slightly bigger. That’s a lotta tonnage for such paltry firepower and given they’re spending billions, not much bang for the buck. Literally. So, seeing as they allegedly can’t fulfill their primary mission, ice breaking, what was the point exactly? Make work?
But let’s be optimistic, the cooing, care-bear prime minister got the heave-ho and now there’s Mr Carney. So we’ll see if the prez’s threats focused his mind (you know, the prospect of hanging and all that) and made him rethink his globalist convictions. We’ll see.
Maple Leaf Up!
Trustycanteen, What kind of location are you looking for? Less expensive, quieter, warmer or colder? If you want low crime rates, I think that can be researched.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent insists US will ‘never default’ on its debt
~ https://www.ft.com/content/9c652f09-cfca-4078-9e2b-5fdacd772a75
Does that mean default is imminent? 😂
Or we have a couple weeks?
Honest question – loud proclamations like this suggest we have how many weeks?
There’s been some news about asteroids hiding in the shadows of Venus that could hit us in the next 3 weeks, so I checked the chart for the Saturn Neptune conjunction and Venus is smack in the middle of Pisces on Feb 20th 2026. Seeing as how that’s ruled by Neptune and the asteroids are “hidden” this seems like some cause for concern. It would definitely be the kind of thing that would make everyone turn back to supporting institutions and strong leaders, not to mention religion. Looking forward to your analysis.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/three-massive-asteroids-hidden-in-venus-shadow-could-hit-earth-with-force-a-million-times-greater-than-hiroshima-bomb/articleshow/121469352.cms?from=mdr
This is a statistic worth reminding ourselves of: https://iiasa.ac.at/news/may-2025/worlds-wealthiest-10-caused-two-thirds-of-global-warming-since-1990
While some self righteous folks are complaining about how the family on assistance can afford…whatever, any visible item will do…the likes of John Kerry and Mit Romney are enjoying ownership of five houses apiece. That is, I believe, 5 actual mansions, not hunting cabin + beach chalet + apartment in Manhattan.
There is no such thing as honorable poverty anymore, folks in desperate circumstances are supposed to look desperate. My fundamental complaint about unregulated capitalism is that it rewards vice, pride and avarice specifically.
Happy Panda @218, thank you for the link to the reading video! It’s a marvelous reminder to those of us who divine to lay aside our preconceptions (as much as any human can, anyway). It also gives me a new insight into the ancient Greek stories about the oracles–when I was young I didn’t understand why they would still run headlong into the fate the oracles had foreseen for them. Well, here we are doing the exact same thing!
Re: Mists of Avalon and Arthurian retellings, definitely squicky for a lot of reasons, but my absolute least favorite of the genre is Jane Yolen’s short story “The Gwynhfar” from Merlin’s Booke, in which Guinevere is a mentally-defective blind albino that is still married off to Arthur/Artios as the representation of sovereignty. Creepy…
@Mary somewhere with climate and economic stability, somewhere with minimal natural disasters, access to freshwater, away from nuclear targets. Somewhere that will be decent to live in now but also 100 years in the future
Hello JMG,
Long-time listener, first-time caller. Given that you’re circling back around to talking about the larger picture of the decline of industrial civilization , particularly the United States , I was curious your take on one particular event in recent history: the attacks on 9/11. What effects do you think that event will have on the decline of the American empire in the longer term, if any ? And, in general, how would you place the 9/11 attacks , and the resulting wars, in the larger context of the Long Descent ?
Hi JMG,
I have read the following article by Alastair Crooke (https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/06/02/one-quiet-early-morning-in-beijing-the-dollars-crown-slipped/) that talks about the “imminent dedolarization” and Trump’s “attempt to restructure creditors before the default”. It also marks the first day that “China’s CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) surpassed SWIFT in single-day transaction volume” as proof for the speeding of the process.
Although I feel that the dedolarization is where we are heading, I thought that the process would take at least a decade from now.
If you have time could you please comment your thoughts on the dedolarization timeline?
Thanks.
>Treasury secretary Scott Bessent insists US will ‘never default’ on its debt
You picked up on that too? All I know is in my experience, if you say never, the universe will smile upon you and make you experience that particular thing. Do not taunt Happy Fun Universe.
Never say never. Of course from his perspective, can you really expect him to say anything else? He still could’ve chosen to remain silent on this topic. But I suppose if someone punished me by making me do his job, I’d probably say the same thing too, if the issue was forced.
As far as how much time we have? Not a clue. Somewhere between months and years. I do think that this is the year everything changes. And won’t change back for quite a while to come. I wonder how many visionaries saw a Russia with a parliamentary government and a capitalist economy back in 1985? Impossible to see the future is.
>If you have time could you please comment your thoughts on the dedolarization timeline?
The dollar supporters will say something like – there’s no other competing currency that can do what the dollar does. I think with the euro, it’s mainly they can’t handle the transaction volume and the eurozone has pretty strict capital controls as well. Try buying a factory in Germany and I think a million bureaucrats will come out of the woodwork to stop you. With the yuan, they can handle transaction volume but there’s nothing you can really do with the yuan once you have it. What, you want to buy $10m worth of low quality plastic housewares? That’s about all they’ll let you spend it on, you can’t buy land, you most certainly can’t buy factories. Sure you can find someone else who does want $10m worth of cheaply made junk but it’s all so tiresome.
That’s part of what made the dollar attractive to hold – the question of what you could buy with it was “anything and everything”. Although if you notice, that’s now going away. No more land or factories for you. And there’s no surplus of plastic garbage, no cheaply made junk. I suppose if we had everyone working away at humming factories back in 1965, they could point you to all of that, but it’s not 1965 anymore.
I think what everyone’s missing is that perhaps there will be no currency that takes its place, that it will all go back to barter essentially. That won’t last forever, eventually some new currency will rise up, but the process could take decades if not centuries.
As for when and where? I don’t know. I suspect when the dollar goes, it could go faster than people think. But when it goes, not a clue. I’d watch gold and silver. And what you’re watching for isn’t the particular price level but the +%delta for the day. If it consistently goes over 2% per day, I’d say they’re starting to lose control. Especially if you see silver acting weird, instead of its usual comatose self.
Section 4 of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution begins;
“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. ”
So an outright default on the debt would be locked up in court instantly. A burst of hyper-inflation is more likely followed by a New Dollar.
As for losing the reserve currency, I agree with Other Owen. To a large extent trade between any two countries can be configured without a reserve currency. The hard part is the sheer number of bilateral agreements needed. The BRICS group is trying to set up something to ease trade within their own group. There will be a lot more of that. Most countries have a fairly limited set of trading partners. For occasional purchases outside the usual group the dollar may still be desired, but total demand will be lower.
Hi Rajarshi,
I think your comment touches on a truth, but I want to push back on the association between effeminism and decadence. Yes, they can be related, but I think decadence is broader. For example, I would say that men driving huge $150k trucks as some kind of “performative masculinity” is also a type of decadence, and I’m not convinced that a man wearing makeup and a dress is inherently any more decadent – the decadence is determined by other behaviours, IMO.
Cheers, Gus
The progressively debilitating imbecility of the western intellectual and governing elite has been on full display lately for your own personal entertainment if you have the stomach to watch. You have the current occupant of the White House flailing about trying to undo decades of the most spectacularly boneheaded foreign policy and the most egregious economic malpractice seen since…. actually I’m not well enough versed in history to say since when exactly.
I keep thinking that the Romans can’t have looked as ridiculous as we look right now during their own prolonged decline but our esteemed host has assured me (with examples) in this comment section that oh yes they did. I have to say that it’s hard to picture.
To the point; having faithfully followed the preposterous precepts of dundering dimwits occupying the pinnacles of power at Wall Street and Washington, the US is no longer fiscally nor economically viable as its own statistics will attest. Actually, never mind the numbers, they’re crap anyway, so instead just look with your own two eyes at the degraded state of things.
So will the world de-dollarize? How can it not?
Learn to code? I dunno, maybe learn something else. Maybe before long coders will be learning to farm. Remember time tested devices like the slide rule and the abacus?
@Erika
This year in Adocentyn. Check your e@ email address.
Decline of West/Rise of Russia:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-165112733
I hesitate to post this one–the guy has some really (to me) interesting points, along with some really bizarre leaps in logic that I think are invalid. But since it made me think, maybe it’ll also be of interest to some of you as well..
One of the interesting (to me) ideas is that infant mortality is a good indicator as to whether a nation is ascending or in decline, but that isn’t his main point. But his comments on Trump are (**to me**) thought-provoking:
We never know what Trump’s real attitude is. We don’t know whether his desire to end the war is sincere. There are extraordinary surprises like his sudden resentment against his own allies, or rather his subjects. It was very surprising to see the President of the United States point the finger of blame for the war and the defeat at the Europeans and Ukrainians. Today, I have to confess my admiration for the control and calm of the Russian government, which must (on the face of it) take Trump seriously, which must accept his portrayal of war because negotiations are necessary.
However, I have noticed one positive element in Trump that has been stable since the beginning: he is talking to the Russian government, he is moving away from the Western attitude of demonising Russia. It’s a return to reality and, in itself, a positive thing, even if these negotiations don’t lead to any tangible outcome.
>Actually, never mind the numbers, they’re crap anyway
I call it the Bureau of Humor and Goalseeking
>Learn to code? I dunno, maybe learn something else
My boilerplate advice goes something like this. Were you that kid? The kid that found the electronics set fascinating? The kid who asked for and got an Arduino for Christmas to the bemused confusion of the parents? Then sure, learn to code. But you probably won’t have to tell that kid to do it, he’ll just do it on his own.
If you weren’t that kid, and someone is telling you to “learn to code”, they’re not your friend and you should mark them as someone you shouldn’t listen to about anything else.
I think in any case, the number of CompSci grads has been really really overproduced over the past decade or so. I mean, silly numbers, like almost half of UCBerkeley students are in CompSci last time I looked? And the tech industry has always been feast/famine, tends to suck in a lot of people during the feast phase only to spit them back out during the famine phase. With the added kicker this time around of forcing all those people to get vaccinated. So now they’re unemployed and so sick they can’t work.
Then the tech industry lays low and hires a bunch of new grads and starts another ~20 year cycle. Stay away from it unless you were sent here to go through it.
Oh my. I wonder who convinced Zelenskyy that attacking weapons not being used against Ukraine was a good idea?
“”We [Trump and Putin] discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides.” Trump went on to call it a good conversation, however “not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace.””
“The Russian leader’s words are consistent with Dmitry Medvedev’s ominous words issued the day prior, wherein the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said “retribution is inevitable”. Medvedev had warned of what’s coming:
“Our Army is pushing forward and will continue to advance. Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be.””
Owen #260: If you weren’t that kid, and someone is telling you to “learn to code”, they’re not your friend and you should mark them as someone you shouldn’t listen to about anything else.
I respectfully strongly disagree. Any skill that provides a basis for versatile toolmaking/manipulating is extremely useful and beneficial to learn and should be taught, whether or not it directly leads to a career in the field.
I will never write a Classic novel or be a professional editor, and yet it was well worth it for both me and wider society to have learned to read and write. I will probably never learn the intricacies of Godel’s theorem, and yet learning arithmetic and algebra were critical to both my development and my ability to make sense of the world around me. I will definitely never be a professional athlete, and yet having basic fitness and coordination has also benefitted me greatly.
Similarly, I may never be a professional programmer, but the ability to sit down in front of a computer and write a simple program to test some thoughts quickly and on my own without depending on others is immensely valuable. Also, the intellectual rigor required to write a self-contained work that can compile and that does what I want it to do is beneficial for my intellectual development.
The sheer versatility of what computer programming provides–even on a simple microcontroller–makes it an inordinately useful skill, even if I can never write my own compiler or rewrite the Windows operating system from scratch.
From a different perspective, if computers were invented 400 years ago, it seems absolutely inevitable that programming would have been part of a standard formal education curriculum. It is mind-boggling that it is not being incorporated now.
A few lines of Egon Fischer’s latest post caught my eye and I thought others might be interested in them (what follows is my rough translation from German):
“The mind wants certainty, the psyche wants solace, the soul wants experience, the field wants balance. Freewill only then arises when all these levels begin to sing the same tune. Until then the human acts — but often only in the conflict of his fragments.”
A quote worth meditating on from https://lumenari.org/the-great-sway-a-simulated-rebellion/ :
“Only when you are no longer against something can you truly be free.”
>I respectfully strongly disagree. Any skill that provides a basis for versatile toolmaking/manipulating is extremely useful and beneficial to learn and should be taught
Yeah. I was talking about it as a point of entry into the tech industry. You’re talking about it as a general edumacational good. Same sort of logic that says “We should make them learn some poetry, because it’s GOOD FOR THEM.”
I would disagree. All you’re doing is annoying kids that don’t really want to do the things you’re making them. And probably under their breath they’re going “I hate writing code” just like they’re saying “I hate memorizing this poetry”. 1.) Whatever they learn will be quickly forgotten. Skills that aren’t used start going rusty. 2.) They will hate what they learn and will find ways to avoid it later. And they’re now incentivized to forget what they’ve learned as well.
If I were to suggest something it would be to identify the kids who actually like doing this stuff and put them on an apprentice track to get MOAR of what they already like to do. Everybody wins. Or something.
Although thinking about it a bit more, what am I saying? IT’S GOOD FOR THEM, LET’S DO THEM A FAVOR. The kids who like doing it already will be slightly annoyed but not enough to matter, the kids who are absolutely terrible at it will never want to go anywhere near a toolchain or interpreter again. Just like they never want to go anywhere near a book of poetry.
>Oh my. I wonder who convinced Zelenskyy that attacking weapons not being used against Ukraine was a good idea?
Himself but I’m sure he had – help – to see the possibilities. That’s my guess.
Zelensky’s short-term survival depends on him dragging the West into WW3 with Russia/China/Iran. I think Zelensky’s long-term survival is already a done deal, he’s dead no matter what happens but most hoomans live on what I like to call “Three Week Island” and I would bet Zelensky is a resident too. Three Week Island is a magical place where only last week, this week and next week are all that matter. It is a place of bliss. Most of the time. Sometimes it isn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised if now that he’s greatly annoyed Trump, that Trump feels motivated to send professional and trained assassins to shoot him in the back with a silenced pistol.
Some random observations: No garden seeds at Walmart yesterday. That is unprecedented. Now that the long cold spring seems to have finally ended, I want to plant nasturtiums. Fortunately, there is always Baker Creek, which has some interesting varieties and no shipping cost.
Like a sucker, I always read lists of 20 or 10 best books, and the like, and the lists usually make me want to throw something at my monitor. Most recently it was historical novels offered by a certain smug Youtuber, whose name I don’t care to remember. Poldarks, and some other family saga. No mention of Tale of Two Cities, among other obvious omissions. I can maybe understand the person not having heard of Harry Sidebottom, or Paul Doherty or even Patrick O’Brien, but Dickens? I do enjoy light reading; The Uplift Wars are my favorite SF, but I don’t try to pretend that David Brin is Balzac. With historical fiction on my mind, I came across the novels, or history told in fictionalized form, of Jeff Shaara. I have so far read his two about the Revolutionary War and was pleasantly surprised. They both seem to have been meticulously researched. Shaara also shows detailed understanding of geography. He did have the Battle of Saratoga take place off camera, so to speak, which disappointed me. He includes fascinating portraits of many of the not quite so well remembered participants, such as Daniel Morgan, Nathaniel Green and Henry Knox. Washington seems to have had that essential quality of an effective commander, the ability to assemble and earn the loyalty of a capable staff. There is very little mention of slavery. It occurred to me that the Peculiar Institution had been part of life since antiquity among Christians and Moslems alike, and that public opinion was only beginning to turn against the wicked practice by the 1770s. IDK, but I would guess that Shaara’s political sentiments are more conservative than not, and his religious views Protestant. Nevertheless, he does not attempt to portray Washington, et al as other than fallibly human. These books are popular history, not idolatry.
I rather suspect that in as little as a decade the follies of the current era, even of this year, will be looked upon as extremely quaint. Something like ivy-league college fraternity celebrations of the 1910’s in New England. Failing that, a more sober generation may well see them as horrifying and unbelievably decadent and also excessively old-fashioned. Assuming anyone remembers the mid 2020’s at all. Just ten years from now, mind. My real bet is that only the most determined historians (assuming there are historians) will have any idea what sorts of things went on. Lovecraft’s wildest ravings seem to me to have been insufficiently pessimistic. Sure hope I’m wrong. I might be around then, after all…
Clarke aka Gwydion that’s pretty dark even by my casual suicidal standards, but that’s not much of a prediction when last WEEK seems quaint compared to today this very MOMENT…. yes?
you pet your darkness like a kitty cat and i had to come in and upend the glamour. i was in the thick of 80s and went to art school goth where suicidal ideations was chit chat. not like now with the forced smiles. the forced smiles are because of us.
life is hard and i find your farts too casual to let go in a world where it’s all i can do to go outside and try and raise the dead. please.. this isn’t something to fantasize and relax into. unless that’s what you really want.
but it’s my duty to break your glamour.
erika lopez
san francisco, mordor
high altitude training for this stuff
does anyone else feel like this musk/trump riff is another movie plot???
i take all this less and less seriously. zelenskyy even as president our president RFKjr… theranos… naked cats and diabolical billionaires…. all i see is meeting starting our own underground above ground.
everything else outside of my control, which is more than i’d ever imagined, is static distraction more and more.
we’re gonna have to fly, y’all. the great smothering is upon us. if you can’t crush us then fart on our heads til we pass out.
erika
Well, well! It looks like Trump’s coalition is coming unglued ….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/im-very-disappointed-elon-trump-responds-musk-opposition-big-beautiful-bill
Now Musk claims that Trump is in the Epstein files, and that is the reason they aren’t being released!
True? I don’t know. Would it surprise me? At this point, nothing would.
One of two possibilities. 1.) Elon really IS that naive or 2.) Elon is cynically forcing some issue that’s not quite visible.
I’m not quite sure what Elon was expecting from the Republicans, they’re pretty much living level with my extremely low expectations, expectations based on abysmal historical performance. But let’s not be too hasty.
As the kids are saying these days, we’re not going to be able to vote our way out of this mess. Shrug.
>Failing that, a more sober generation may well see them as horrifying and unbelievably decadent and also excessively old-fashioned
My thesis is we’re going through a turbocharged 70s on steroids right now. Predict the future by looking at the past! Because hoomans never learn! Yeah, look back and you ask yourself “What were those people thinking, embracing the ugly and the tacky back in the 70s?” Well, they were thinking the same things people are thinking right now. And also like the 70s, not everyone signed up for the turbo-tackiness and uglitude. But it did define the era. That’s what people will remember about this era – all those troonytunes and dangerhairs.
Somewhere over the rainbow, the next era waits. One can only hope the skies are blue there. And not the hair. Oh please God, not the hair.
@Erika,
A movie plot, as in ‘this can’t be real’, or a movie plot, as in created fiction? (Or a little of both…)
It definitely seems like a distraction. So the real question is what are they trying to distract us from?
(And thank you for the image of the Twitter bird passing gas. Someone should turn that into an emoji.)
By design or not, the rift in high places mentioned above is serving to mask ongoing crimes against humanity in Gaza. Planned or not, I think probably not, the squabble has been taken up by media who Do. Not. Want. to have to cover the ongoing atrocities. I never have liked the idea or practice of dual citizenship.
Hello Erika
at #269,
Thank you for responding to my post. My apologies for its tone. It accurately reflects my feelings about the current time. As a sometime poet, I strive to express myself with the most powerful language I can find. In this case, I overshot the mark. Every day I also strive to invoke the highest energy I have access to in order to bless all and mitigate what I see. Still, it doesn’t excuse my oversharing the negatives I see and feel.
@Smith
Ok so let’s get real then. Our identity is closer to the absurdity of a fresh take on goth culture: the death clown. This is forced into our collective consciousness because it’s clear we want to be on display, but on display for what purpose? To sink into the fantasies of our elites who want to ride the crown of this juggernaut 8 miles deep into the swamp.
Alaska is a better target yes. Let’s wait until WWWIII but again.. hasn’t it already started and are we not already combatants? I like the idea of softening up targets with waves of propaganda, but first, like Tolkien’s lost LOTR characters, we must send the blue wizards, the agents of covert emotional change. Follow this with encouragements that our Inuit are treated better and follow this with my favourite… posters of gritty Métis, swarthy beyond measure, a pack of smokes rolled up in the T-shirt, teeth clenched against the spray of Icey water from the deck of our (re-armed) icebreaker as another American ship goes to flame in background. I expect memes to accelerate the messaging.
After that I guess it’s guerella warfare on Anchorage and the like. Paratroopers will be necessary as our LAV’s will not make it through.
Thank you for the collaboration. This has been a fun experiment.
The Other Owen 265:
Yeah. I was talking about it as a point of entry into the tech industry.
Sorry–I can’t believe I missed that as your main point the first time around…
Although thinking about it a bit more, what am I saying? IT’S GOOD FOR THEM, LET’S DO THEM A FAVOR. The kids who like doing it already will be slightly annoyed but not enough to matter, the kids who are absolutely terrible at it will never want to go anywhere near a toolchain or interpreter again. Just like they never want to go anywhere near a book of poetry.
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic, but actually, that pretty well sums up my view. At least give everybody the opportunity to be exposed to it and learn bare fundamentals–just like adults who hate math at the very least have a bare minimum in addition and multiplication. Most people will not bother longer term, and that’s fine.
I saw two indicators that all was not well. First Trump reversed a Biden admin executive order placing some limits on AI use, removing them all ( the future lies with unbridled so called tech “progress”) and second the big increase in the defense (offense) budget , the Military Industrial Congressional Complex marches on and who really cares about federal financial discipline as seen in the rest of the current budget bill. As my dad would say the USA is “cruising for a bruising”. The century long course and trends are set and yes – We are not voting ourselves out of this! Doesn’t matter which side has the wheel.
Ian Duncombe #277, worry not, there’s a road that goes from Yellowknife to Anchorage, if you want to use the former as a staging area, but it’s a long drive, like going from Toronto to Calgary. Similarly from Vancouver.
Maybe too much inside ball here but the Cdn army has not just LAVs but also TAPVs and Roshel vehicles, the latter two of very recent vintage unlike much of its other old, old, old equipment. Roshel is a Canuck outfit with one factory in the GTA which cranked out a thousand machines for the Ukrainian military in the last three years plus another facility newly opened in the Ukraine itself. Their stuff is cheap, I hear about 600,000 USD per, and they can make more than 100/month nowadays, which, if true, is lightning fast compared to the usual.
If we got John Cleese as advisor I would give the odds as pretty reasonable especially considering the US military’s catastrophic record of late. So imagine a long parade of vehicles heading up the highway to the Alaska border. The US side wouldn’t know what to make of it, assuming they spotted it. Imagine enlisting le p’tit gars himself to do his p’tit gars routine to soften up the target and to lead the procession and to add to the general bafflement. And given that his French is as bad as his English a translator would do no good. This whole operation could be as absurd as the Japanese takeover of Singapore. The toff in charge saw them riding up on bicycles and waved the white flag.
So yes, it’s been a gas. Adios.
Maybe. Just perhaps. Elon is angling to be Yeltsin. Going back to history, it was Yeltsin that stabbed Gorby in the back, to then effectively take his place. Elbowed him right out of the way. But he did Gorby a favor, because the collapse happened next and Yeltsin took it all right to the face.
What was it that Wilde said about life? The two great tragedies? Never getting what you want and then getting it? If Elon keeps going, he may just get what he’s wanting. There’s rumors he already has quite the drug problem (Ketamine). Just like Yeltsin had a drinking problem.
And he ain’t going to like it one bit. Either the drug problem or the collapse.
But it’s still too soon to tell who is going to be Yeltsin. Who is going to step up and take the collapse to the face? Predict the future by looking at the past!
Happy Birthday, JMG! I am glad you were born. I hope you have a wonderful day and a fantastic year ahead.
The financial wing of the PMC had a meeting a couple weeks ago. Their answer is;
““We desperately as a country want to destroy more jobs. That is the only good outcome in the next 10 years. And what does that mean? Why? Well, this is basic economics. We need productivity to go up.” {Note: Productivity here is dollars of output per worker.}
…
“If productivity does go up, the world we’re going to be living in, first of all, it’s very disinflationary. It’s going to bring prices down. Second of all, you’re going to cover all of the problems with the wealth creation for any kind of debt, any kind of medical costs the government needs to pay. [The income and taxes from wealth creation are] going to go up.
…
“But for now, what’s happening is you are automating certain jobs. There’s still 5 million unfilled vocational jobs. There’s still massive numbers of things that people can do to serve and help and work with others and create value [that AI can’t do].”
Translating, the AI is going to take all the comfortable office jobs and generate vast wealth by flipping bits. In the meantime the lower 99% of the people are going to put on their hard hats and get out in the real world and do the physical work because the AI still can’t pick a strawberry.
Who is supposed to buy all this AI output is an unanswered question. The organizer of this event moved to Puerto Rico because the taxes in Texas were too high. He’s clearly not too keen on sharing outside the family. The AI-servers can run from anywhere with reliable electrical power, I expect them to decamp to places with adequate hydro-electric power. The Pacific Northwest is tapped out and the solar panels won’t help in the winter.
Speaking of wealth this just popped up from the Bank of International Settlements;
“As of July 1, 2025, gold will officially be classified as a Tier 1, high-quality liquid asset (HQLA) under the Basel III banking regulations. That means U.S. banks can count physical gold, at 100% of its market value, toward their core capital reserves. No longer will it be marked down by 50% as a “Tier 3” asset, as it was under the old rules.”
The graph here shows this has been coming for awhile.
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/2025/05/09/central-banks-stockpiling-gold-q1
As the old saying goes, something wicked this way comes.
The Other Owen,
I have it on apocryphal authority that Musk has a cocaine problem. Maybe a dozen years or so ago back when the Democrats and Obama loved Musk and were building him up to be their oligarch with fat contracts (seriously does anyone else find it weird how quickly that got memory-holed?) I was having dinner with my old man and his friend; they’re both aerospace engineers. My dad’s friend was an early hire at SpaceX and it was an open secret that Musk liked to imbibe snow. My dad’s friend personally had seen Musk doing lines.
I think this goes a long way to explain his behavior, ketamine or no. Personally I think Trump can sort of sense that the public appetite for hugely expensive Amazing Stories style techno no shows is wearing thin, hence the hard turn against Musk and against university science and engineering departments. It’ll be interesting seeing how it shakes out. Like you I think a USSR style collapse is not out of the question.
Cheers,
JZ
Erika #270: wrt that I’m currently digesting the intriguing analysis at https://lumenari.org/the-great-sway-a-simulated-rebellion/
Excerpt:
“It is easy to lose one’s bearings in the present’s ramified narrative strands. Every side has its truth, every channel has its revelation, and every movement has its enemy. And the louder the world comments on itself, the more difficult it becomes to find a quiet place within oneself.
But that is precisely the way out—and the way back: not deeper into the debate, but quieter into the present. Ask Tesla: frequency determines reality, and each controls their own. But to do that, you first have to grasp this aspect of the deeper nature of reality, and that means personal responsibility.
…
Those who step out of the sway do not enter higher ground, but a calmer one in which questions are allowed to breathe again. It is a space in which the answer is not the goal, but the impulse toward silence, and in this silence, as it repeatedly shows, new connections begin. There, too, a genuine connection awaits between people who do not see themselves as opponents or allies, but as beings with their frequency, yet as divine sparks from a singularity—between narratives that do not contradict each other but are allowed to exist side by side, between visions of the future that are not based on division but on coherent diversity.
Perhaps this is the real invitation of this moment in history: not to fight for the truth, but to leave the noise behind. Not to defeat the enemy, but to recognize the stage and the showdown and perhaps—eventually—walk away.”
Mary Bennet says: June 6, 2025 at 9:48 am
By design or not, the rift in high places mentioned above is serving to mask ongoing crimes against humanity in Gaza. Planned or not, I think probably not, the squabble has been taken up by media who Do. Not. Want. to have to cover the ongoing atrocities. I never have liked the idea or practice of dual citizenship.
I have never been actually ashamed to be a citizen of the West before this. It’s not even like there is a geopolitical benefit for ignoring this–just mild convenience that all western politicians adhere to while screaming shrilly about human rights everywhere else in the world.
>I have it on apocryphal authority that Musk has a cocaine problem
Y’know I did wonder (don’t you?) how he was able to find the energy to run not just one but three different companies and then help out with Trump’s campaign and then run DOGE as well. If you’re hopped up on stimulants all the time, well, that’s how. Not only that – I looked up his pilot records (he’s licensed to fly) and he somehow found the energy in all of that to get not only an instrument rating but a multiengine rating as well. The aviation world runs on legal stimulants but there’s taking things way way way too far.
I’ve heard apocryphal stories about how floor traders used stimulants to deal with the stress of trading. A good strong espresso makes you feel chipper, at least until it wears off, I can only imagine with blow does for you. Just like creatine can boost your power output by 6% and I can only imagine what steroids would do.
But what nature giveth, she also taketh away. You run on stimulants, you will pay a price for it. I’m not going to judge but it’s better to stay naturally aspirated as much as you can. Turbocharging will wear you out.
>AI still can’t pick a strawberry
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I think the machine vision part is already solved. What they’re working on is the servo control.
>Who is supposed to buy all this AI output is an unanswered question
The answer for the past 50 years of this grinding bear market in labor, is we’ll just keep lending money out. It is what the debt ponzi wants to do anyway – grow. I think as long as the population was growing, they were able to keep the plates spinning in the air, but now that population is shrinking worldwide, those spinning plates are going to come down. They have to, it’s math. The bear market in labor is ending. Well, a lot of things are ending, aren’t they?
I know, let’s have AI buy its own output and leave us hoomans alone?
@287
Allowing these atrocities is incredibly short-sighted because it jeopardizes the Faustian project of getting all peoples to adopt the same moral code. Why should Muslims erase parts of their culture Westerners find offensive for “universal human rights” if Western societies don’t value the most basic human rights?
“I have it on apocryphal authority that Musk has a cocaine problem. ”
I have a question: I have never done coke, but for some reason everybody I know who is/used to be a cokehead seems to be able to immediately identify each other. What is the tell?
Also, does it work for other drugs? I mean, if do a lot of mescaline, can I immediately recognize others who do it?
Good day JMG, commentariat!
I somehow missed our host’ birthday a couple days ago, please let me put a remedy to that.
God bless you JMG! Hope you enjoyed last Saturday, and wish you all the best for the year to come. With my heart…
CRP
The Other Owen, #288
> I know, let’s have AI buy its own output and leave us hoomans alone?
I wrote a short story playing with that idea a while ago but wasn’t sure where to publish it. Would anyone here want to read it?
As for AI being able to pick strawberries any time soon, I wouldn’t count on it. ‘They’ve’ been working on servo control for about as long as they’ve been working on nuclear fusion. Moravec’s Paradox is about as much of a killjoy to robotics as g=9.81 m/s^2 is to space cadet fantasies. Robots ready for prime time are easier to fake in demos than fusion power plants though. Have been since Electro. The fusion power plant guys are reduced to exploiting the semantics of the definition of ‘break even’ to make it look like they’re making progress.
Cheers,
JZ
@ Teresa #183
My own wife is very insistent that I should not clean-shave. She even gets upset if I trim too much. She has always asserted boldly that beard is an attractive quality in a man.
I used to shave clean before my marriage, but nowadays I am keeping it gruffer. Even after a trim, I make sure to have a grey patch from cheek-to-cheek.
@ Gus #256
You are right, but I do have a counterpoint. In as much as acting tough is a sign of being afraid, so is quaking in your boots. Trying to compensate for insufficient “masculinity” by riding brute vehicles is a sign of immasculinity, but so is being, well, straight-up immasculine.
In ancient India, they did not call an immasculine man effeminate. They would call them “neuter” or “impotent”, and the word was quite insulting. The idea was that it takes more than the mere subtraction of masculinity from a man to make a woman. There area also the feminine virtues that need to be added.
@ JMG #38
I have noticed how the transition from urbanised decadence to feudal authoritarianism involves at least one catabolic collapse event where the society’s capacity to maintain accurate records of the contemporary world is badly compromised.
Like, you have careful administrative record century after century, then suddenly there is one century of absurd chronicles (wolves braying in human tongues, rain of blood, four-handed warriors descending from the sky to defend unarmed priests from rakshasa hordes, etc.), and then several centuries of simple chronicles of humble affairs in a feudal society.
If the “rajputs” have the last laugh, there will be at least a decade of rad chronicles up ahead.
While I did not vote for nor am in any way a fan of the current administration, this from Responsible Statecraft does give reason for guarded optimism: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/morgan-ortagus-fired/?ct=t(RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN)&mc_cid=1eba055db1&mc_eid=7392fa16fd
I go on to say I think there should be no dual citizenship. Period. I understand applicants for American citizenship have to pass a test about our laws and constitution; maybe the same or similar should be administered to candidates for federal employment.
Howsomever, I also think that wish to suppress information about and press and public attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza is part of what prompted the sending of national guard (unsupported, no meals or lodging provided in one of the most expensive locations in the USA, or so it is being reported) into Los Angeles.
As of right now, it looks like the choice for us voters in 2026 will be between the Democrats’ open borders, multiculturalist fantasy world and rapacious tech bros we are all going to Mars–well, they are, not us–1950s Sci Fi delusions.
@294 Mary Bennett
It’s clear that Americans don’t want to inform themselves about the atrocities and brave resistance happening in Gaza. Foreigners protesting and rioting over it will merely turn more Americans against Palestine. They don’t have standing to criticize the U.S.’s actions, even the downright evil ones, and if they had sense they would act like they’re grateful to live in the USA. They chose to come and live in America over their countries of origin, so in effect they’ve sold out to the nation they hate so much (IMO).
As JMG recently wrote somewhere, Trump et al are employing a masterful strategy of tricking Democrats into supporting obviously illegal actions so the GOP will win in 2026 & 2028 despite them failing to “make America great again”.
@Mary Bennett (#294):
I’m inclined to agree with you as to disallowing dual citizenship.
If memory serves me right, when i was a boy back in the 1940s and early 1950s, dual citizenship was not possible in the US under US law. Indeed, within a married couple, dual citizenship was not possible in the US: a US woman who married a non-citizen automatically lost her US citizenship upon marriage, and a non-citizen woman who married a US man automatically gained US citizenship and (at least in the eyes of US law) lost fer former citizenship. This was a matter of some discussion among my women schoolmates in Berkeley, where there were a good number of non-citizen boys in our high school. (Of course, none of us High School students were lawyers back then, so what did we know about the actual law?)
When did this change, and what drove the change? I also seem to remember hearing, at the same time, that every Jewish person automatically had Israeli citizenship under Israeli law, which was thought to pose legal problems (at least in theory) for my Jewish schoolmates with birthright US citizenship.. Was this a factor?
@Robert Mathiesen,
My father served in the military and was stationed in Greece in the 1950s. According to him, at that time, anyone with Greek ancestry was considered a Greek citizen (whether they wanted to be or not) and was subject to conscription, etc. Service members with Greek ancestry were not supposed to leave the base because some had been conscripted and taken by the Greek military and it was a to-do to get them back.
Robert Matthiesen @ 296, “I also seem to remember hearing, at the same time, that every Jewish person automatically had Israeli citizenship under Israeli law, which was thought to pose legal problems (at least in theory) for my Jewish schoolmates with birthright US citizenship.. Was this a factor? I would guess it was.
Patrick @ 295, it is becoming increasingly difficult to access info about Gaza, and most of us do have lives outside the internet. I agree wholeheartedly about not having standing. Especially the pack of mediocre Oxbridge graduates who show up in NYC with letters of intro from Lady So and So or the Honorable Somebody Else and get shoehorned right into important perches that others have to work years to even be considered for.
I am, as I have said before, no fan of the president, but give the guy his due, he does know how to pick his battles.
@RandomActsOfKarma (#297):
Thanks for that new (to me) information about Greece. So it seems to have been more widespread an issue than for Jewish US citizens only. I wonder how widespread this ancestrral automatic citizenship actually was throughout the world.. We had tons of Chinese in the SF Bay area, and I did hear, once or twice, how China had forbidden any Chinese to migrate to other countries, thus presumably also to become citizens of other countries.
I have found US naturalization papers for some of my immigrant ancestors online, and they all have a place where the new citizen has to formally renounces any allegiance to his country of origin. This goes along with the US’s former rejection of dual citizenship in principle.
Just a wee note to say thank you to all who contributed to making JMG’s Glastonbury trip happen – starting with himself, and also Bridge who did a great deal of the background organising. I absolutely loved the few days of putting faces to names and “handles” – and getting hugs from many of same. 🙂
And the face to face gathering of JMG commentariat members was every bit as diverse-thinking, fascinating and amiable as these comment threads are (plus cuddly, which these comment threads cannot be for reasons) which is a huge credit to JMG.
Well, I’m back. I had a delightful time, and the travel was less difficult than in the past — not sure what was involved, but there it is. Getting to and from London was easier than some trips I’ve made within New England. I’ll be posting some reflections on the trip soon. In the meantime, a few responses to comments and questions.
David, steppe nomad languages seem to do very well over historical time. A Turkic language might indeed do it.
Panda, good. Yes, that’s basically what’s involved.
Siliconguy, subsidy dumpsters have a very short shelf life once the subsides get cut!
Ambrose, I don’t have much inside information yet, as I joined the FRC only recently — I like using correspondence courses to keep my mind fed, and after I finished another Rosicrucian course, the FRC was the next on the list.
Trustycanteen, depends on what future we get, and that’s far from settled. There are futures in which Rhode Island will be stable and comfortable and others in which it’ll be a basket case, and the same goes for every other state in the Union.
Bofur, that’s true of every spiritual path. You don’t get interested in serious spiritual practice until you’ve learned the lessons of the human stage of existence and are getting ready to go on to something a little less porcine-and-simian.
Erika, nah, there’s somebody on Twitter who runs an unofficial JMG feed. I have no idea who it is.
Alex, excellent. The fact that it has to be said turns it into a self-refuting statement. Me, I simply note that the Trump administration is doing everything that the officers of a corporation do when they’re getting ready for bankruptcy and reorganization: laying off excess staff, shutting down unproductive departments and branches, forcing renegotiations of contracts with other businesses, and the rest of it. It’s not impossible that Trump got in because the US elite class realized that national bankruptcy is imminent and decided to hire a CEO who knew how to do it.
KVD, notice that all the study says is that it’s theoretically possible for a collision to take place. There are plenty of other asteroids in orbits that cross Earth’s, and our planet does get hit now and then — but the bigger they are, the rarer they are, and impacts big enough to level a city happen only every few hundred thousand years. I don’t recommend holding your breath.
Mary, and it’s interesting that most people fussing about global warming have lifestyles that emit far more carbon than average!
Sister Crow, I somehow managed to miss that Yolen story — just as well. Bleah.
RK, a century from now the September 11 attacks will be a minor footnote in the history books, about as well known as the Agadir crisis of 1911.
Worried, it’s going to happen; the question is merely how soon and how fast. Trump’s administration is busy trying to slow things down and prepare for the inevitable US default on our foreign debt; plenty of other countries are doing what they can to make it happen fast and hard. Which will win? Anybody’s guess. If you’re a foreign holder of dollar-denominated assets, getting your wealth out of dollars and into almost anything else strikes me as a very good idea.
Siliconguy, good. That’s why it won’t be an outright default — it’ll be a technical default and renegotiation, the same sort of thing that so many other countries have done.
Nihilistic, at the end of the day, Russia is a net exporter of goods the rest of the world desperately wants — oil, gas, and grain — and the US is a net importer of most goods, including oil and gas. (We do sell a lot of grain.) That backstops the inevitable rise of Russia.
Siliconguy, Zelensky is frantically trying to get Russia to overreact in a way that will drag NATO into the war. Putin is watching him with that wintry Russian humor in his eyes, and refusing to take the bait. Meanwhile Russian troops have just crossed the border for the first time into Dnipropavlovsk oblast, and the Russian army is continuing to advance steadily on all fronts.
KAN, hmm! Two very good themes for meditation.
Mary, thanks for the book reviews!
Clarke, I suspect that this decade will get the same kind of reaction as does Lovecraft’s stark terror of salad…
Erika, I suspect that Trump and Musk agreed to have a public spat so that Musk can return to his business career and not have so many Democrats trying to off him or something.
BeardTree, the track goes the same place no matter who’s in front of the roller coaster car. Whee!
Slink and CR, thank you! I had a fine birthday celebration in Glastonbury.
Rajarshi, I’ve occasionally wondered if it’s not that the chronicles get weird — it’s that wolves really do start braying in human tongues, blood falls in the rain, etc. A few decades of high strangeness might be an important factor in decline!
Scotlyn, thank you. I’d say rather that it’s a huge credit to all concerned — all the ban hammering in the world wouldn’t do a bit of good if the members of my commentariat, the best on the internet by far, didn’t rise to the challenge and act like thoughtful, intelligent, interesting human beings.
Moravec’s Paradox;
I hadn’t heard of that before. It’s definitely a thing. 700 million years of multicellular life practicing and perfecting the identification and acquisition of food is hard to plot on a flow sheet.
Gently sweep hand through leaves looking for the proper shade of red. Confirm it really is a berry. Roll berry gently to confirm all of it is red, or at least the remaining less red portions are small enough that the berry will be adequately sweet. Also evaluate firmness as related to ripe, not ripe, and rotted. Detach berry avoiding damage to the berry, any adjacent berry, and the plant. Inspect the berry for rot, bird pecks, embedded roly-polies, discard if necessary. Place in container, pull weeds in immediate vicinity. Move to next plant.
Every sentence in that paragraph requires a pile of code and highly advanced sensors and manipulators. My daughter mastered it at age two and a half.
Where’s the kid? In the strawberry patch eating strawberries, dirt and all. (Side note, last winter she was complaining that she had to cover for the rest of the lab crew because she was the only one not sick.)
The whole debate on dual citizenship suffers from overly romanticized views of nationality, which assume that identities ought to be much simpler than they often are. Consider someone raised in country A, but living permanently in country B. It’s easy to say that ought to pick one citizenship or the other, but what if they maintain ties both countries? (e.g. parents in one, spouse in the other) Worse yet, what about children born to people from two (or more!) nationalities (and perhaps born in a third country, and living permanently in a fourth)?
The broad trend has been in the direction of dual / multiple nationality. On the other hand, the US and EU have put pressure on countries who (it is felt) make their passports too easy for criminals / tax evaders / citizens of enemy nations to acquire. Five Caribbean countries and at least one Pacific one (Vanuatu, which recently lost its Schengen access) sell citizenship outright, but have been pressured into charging more, and conducting more thorough background checks. Malta just lost an EU court case over its citizenship by investment laws; Cyprus was forced to end its program after an investigation exposed serious corruption in it.
Robert Mathiesen (no. 296): “When did this [citizenship law] change, and what drove the change?”
In Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that a naturalized US citizen (Mr. Afroyim, a Polish-born Jew, né Bernstein) could not be stripped of his US citizenship for voting in Israel, because Fourteenth Amendment.
(no. 299): “I wonder how widespread this ancestrral automatic citizenship actually was throughout the world.. ”
I’ve heard of Polish-Americans not being allowed to leave Communist Poland until they had applied for a local passport (which nowadays is quite desirable). Japan and Greece would decide nationality in part based on whether they had records of you / your family in their population registers. Citizenship by descent is still a thing, although several countries are making it more restrictive / phasing it out.
Armenia: ethnic Armenians *with government or ecclesiastical documents attesting that they are ethnically Armenian* are entitled to citizenship; all others must apply (and are eligible after three years of residence and passing a language test). Dual citizenship allowed.
Germany: Special provisions for ethnic Germans (e.g. in Eastern Europe) phased out in 1993. Dual citizenship not generally allowed (there were exceptions) until 2024.
Ireland: Anybody with a parent or grandparent born in Ireland is either an Irish citizen, or eligible to become one after registration. Dual citizenship allowed.
Israel: Jews (including converts to Judaism, and people with a Jewish grandparent) may immigrate under the Right of Return, unless barred for reasons of state. This gets you an immigration visa; since 2023 you have to actually live in Israel for a year before getting a passport. Dual citizenship allowed (with most countries).
Italy: Used to be that anybody with an Italian ancestor (who lived after the formation of Italy in 1863, and did not renounce their citizenship before passing it on to the next generation) qualified for citizenship. This changed a few months ago; now you have to have a parent or grandparent born there. Dual allowed.
@Robert Mathiesen,
I was curious to see if I could find if/when Greek “automatic” citizenship changed. Apparently, citizenship “by descent” is still a thing: https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/greek-citizenship-by-descent/
I have not been able to find a copy of their citizenship laws circa 1950, but if I do, I will let you know.
@JMG (#301) on weird chronicle entries:
There are plenty of weird entries in Medieval Chronicles. One that has fascinated me for years is recorded by several 12th-century chroniclers, and repeated in very many later chronicles:
“In the same year [ = 1139 CE] John of the Ages [Johannes de Temporibus] died, who had lived for 361 years from the time of Charlemagne [dies in 814 CE], whose knight [armiger] he had been.”
Did one man really manage to live that long, or was he simply an old man with a gift for fabulating his own history, or did someone else claim so long a life for him after he had died? I don’t suppose we’ll ever be able to know for sure. (The third possibility seems least likely, since the oldest account of his very long life seems to have been written only a year or two after 1139.)
And then there two “green-skinned children” who appeared at Woolpit in England in the 12th century . . . Lots and lots of weird stuff can be found in those fascinating old chronicles
Dear JMG, dear commenters,
I am sharing a poem, which I wrote for and recited at the ecosophian convention in Glastonbury.
With regards,
Yours,
Markéta
Welcome
Welcome to the world
Where every word grows roots
Into the living soil; and newgrown shoots
Start contemplating the light of fun,
Or else, when the day is done
Friendly groves cast longer shades of grey
Over paths and bordering meadows and together they pray.
Welcome to the world
Where shadows share some unknown colors
Where all your neighbors might be lovers
Of wisdom or of silly jokes or both
You never know whose secret oath
Bound them to hide their deeper side
And send just glittering sparks of joy worldwide.
Welcome to the world
Where ancient mystery abides in a drop of water
Where little tree might be a daughter
Of a spirit from a realm close by
Where both the tree and you can wonder why
And if you get a bit older as you do the task
– Welcome – and feel free to ask!
@ Rajarshi #293
I agree with your wife. Adult men should have body hair! Otherwise, they’re boys.
In the Romance world, man chest (a real term) goes in and out of style on book covers. So does the chest hair which hasn’t been in for years. Beards are making a comeback but without the chest hair!
Even scaly, alien lizard men have a stubble to go along with their oiled, bare chest.
The cartoon covers (the current, very misleading fashion) show men with mustaches and beards.
I must wonder how much of this is from bodybuilding and Hollywood. Bodybuilders want to show off muscled perfection and don’t want anything to get in the way. Hollywood follows suit, plus it makes continuity easier for those nude scenes.
It’s all very strange.