Tag: occultism

The Kek Wars, Part Three: Triumph of the Frog God

John Michael Greer304 Comments

In last week’s thrilling episode of The Kek Wars, we saw how thousands of disaffected young people who’d been shut out of our society’s circles of privilege and denied the ordinary routes to adult independence turned to magic, for the same reasons that their equivalents have always turned to magic. As we discussed in the…

The Kek Wars, Part Two: In the Shadow of the Cathedral

John Michael Greer376 Comments

In last week’s thrilling episode of The Kek Wars, we talked about the way that America’s managerial aristocracy and its broad penumbra of lackeys and hangers-on retreated into a self-referential bubble to avoid noticing the consequences of their preferred policies. As they did so, those policies—the metastatic growth of government regulation that strangled small businesses…

The Kek Wars, Part One: Aristocracy and its Discontents

John Michael Greer339 Comments

Every month or so since the 2016 presidential election campaign hit high tide, somebody has asked me to say something about the weirdest and most interesting aspect of that campaign: the role played in it by a diffuse constellation of right-wing occultists who united for a brief time under the banner of a cartoon frog.…

The Cosmic Doctrine: The Forces of (Negative) Evil

John Michael Greer186 Comments

This week we continue a monthly discussion of The Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune, which I consider the most important work of 20th century occult philosophy. Climb in and fasten your belts; it’s turning out to be as wild a ride as I expected. As noted in earlier posts here, there are two widely available…

The Cosmic Doctrine: The Dawn of Manifestation

John Michael Greer209 Comments

With this post we begin a monthly discussion of The Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune, which I consider the most important work of 20th century occult philosophy. Climb in and fasten your belts; it’s going to be a wild ride. As noted in earlier posts here, there are two widely available editions of The Cosmic…

On Occult Literature: A Diversion of Sorts

John Michael Greer144 Comments

It so happens that last week’s post on reading books by dead people had a curious echo. In a forum I frequent where occultism is the subject of discussion, an earnest young person put up a plaintive post, asking why so much classic occult literature is so boring to read. As usual in such forums,…

May 2018 Book Club

John Michael Greer132 Comments

This week’s post is the latest of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written or recommend. Our theme for the present is Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Spiritual Ecology of History” (pp.119-131). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and comments focused…

April 2018 Book Club

John Michael Greer118 Comments

This week’s post is the tenth of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written. Our theme for the present is Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Spiritual Ecology of Initiation” (pp.101-118). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and comments focused on that…

An Older Tradition

John Michael Greer217 Comments

Over the last few days I’ve been watching yet another lurid sexual scandal explode in the Neopagan community. There have been quite a few of those over the last few years—fewer, let’s be fair, than in Hollywood or the Roman Catholic priesthood, but the same ugly habits of coercion, exploitation, and hypocrisy that earned their…

January 2018 Book Club

John Michael Greer179 Comments

This week’s post is the seventh of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written. Our theme for the present is Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Sixth Law: The Law of the Planes” (pp. 63-72). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and comments…