September 2024 Open Post

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)…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Later Philosophy

At the end of the last thrilling episode of our journey through the tangled wilderness of The Nibelung’s Ring, Richard Wagner, fleeing from the kingdom of Saxony with a price on his head, had just reached safety in Switzerland.  There he would remain, scraping by on the money he could make from writing and trying…

The Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 16

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Early Philosophy

One of the constant themes of middle class thought in modern times is the insistence that it’s possible to have one’s cake and eat it too. It’s for this reason that middle class activists demand world peace while also demanding lifestyles that can only be maintained at the cost of constant war, and middle class…