Two weeks ago, while winding up the story of the colonial Rhode Island astrologer Joseph Stafford, I noted that the kind of occultism practiced by Stafford and Johannes Kelpius—the learned occult traditions of the Renaissance, which were experiencing their last golden autumn in Europe during the years when the American colonies were being founded—was by…
Tag: history
The Astrologer of Narragansett Bay
A month ago I recounted the story of Johannes Kelpius, the German occultist who crossed the Atlantic in 1694 with his fellow initiates of the Chapter of Perfection to make a new life for themselves in the woodlands of eastern Pennsylvania. That made a good starting point for the discussion I want to set in…
A Magic Republic
Have you ever noticed that in America, magic is always mixed up in the popular imagination with premodern Europe? That’s not just an affectation of the Neopagan movement, though it certainly shows up there in spades—consider the way that Neopagan traditions newly coined in America so reliably claim fake origins somewhere in Europe, or for…
Toward the Next America
When I mentioned in a post two weeks ago that America was heading into a new phase of its history, and that I would be offering some suggestions about what that next phase might look like, I was far from sure how to begin that conversation. As happens fairly often these days, however, current events…