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 followup 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.
Also, an announcement for those who will be coming to meet me in Glastonbury this coming June. 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!
Dear John-Michael and the Community,
I’m thrilled to share that my book, The Great Canadian Reset, will be published on September 1st! It explores how cooperative and economic democracy can help us thrive in a contracting economy. Many of the ideas were inspired by the vibrant discussions here and the incredible insights from our host and this forum—thank you all!
I’ve also launched a Substack, https://thegreatcanadianreset.substack.com/, to promote cooperative businesses and share more on this topic. I’d love for you to join the conversation there!
For commenters from other countries, I welcome inquiries about adapting the book’s ideas to your local context.
Grateful for this community, Ludovic (aka Druidovik)
What’s going on with one of the political parties championing extremely unpopular issues? To pick the worst example: Why is it a hill to die on to require middle school girls undress in front of biologically male middle schoolers? (i.e. trans use girls locker room). Is it just random insanity, or would Spengler have something to say about it?
Also the arguments against things like DOGE seem to be completely straw man arguments disconnected from reality. So far, with DOGE, only waste and fraud have been targeted, and Musk has repeatedly said he wants to increase benefits by reducing fraud. People like Elizabeth Warren have said something to effect that they will vaguely “fight” to keep Musk from cutting benefits. Can Warren read Musk’s mind and divine his true intent? Any thoughts you would have on the above would be appreciated.
Howdy,
I had a quick historical question that I thought JMG and/or the commentariat might be able to help me out with. My understanding is that from the Medieval to the Renaissance to the Early Modern period, swords basically underwent a progression like this: sword and shield -> long (two-handed) sword -> one-handed “fencing” swords like rapiers alone. Obviously, there was lots of variation around this overly-simplified model, but to the degree this general trend is correct, I’m trying to better understand what drove it.
My best understanding/guess is that it went something like this: sword and shield is fairly intuitive, and shields work well not only with swords, but also any other one-handed weapon, so in the early(ish) days of sword use, it would be natural for societies that might have more axes and spiky clubs and what not to fight with shields, so the relatively few guys who get swords would keep fighting that way, just with a sword now. I also figure metallurgy was not quite as advanced, so shorter swords might have been all that the technology would allow. For a further influence, the Romans would have likely had a big impact on what “good gear and good fighting” looks like, and their legions mostly fought with shields and shorter swords.
As metallurgy got better and swords got more common, more and more men found it helpful to have longer swords for obvious reasons (if I can stab you before you can stab me, that’s a big advantage!), and the technology was there to enable it. Over time, folks found that if you had a long enough sword and knew what you were doing with it, the shield was mostly superfluous – you could defend yourself with your sword if you learned the right techniques, so two-handed longswords came to dominate for those who could afford them and had the time and impetus to learn.
With the advent of firearms, swords became less decisive militarily, so the need to be proficient with a sword in combat went down, but things like dueling and social status kept swords as important in other contexts. But it’s incredibly inconvenient to carry around a big two-handed sword, so the social classes that carried swords transitioned to one-handed swords like rapiers, but retained the know-how to defend yourself with the sword rather than a shield, and so developed forms of fighting suited to them in contexts that look far more like duels than battle, and those forms of fighting became what we now know as fencing.
Is that roughly right? Am I missing any major influences/factors?
Thanks very much for any insight you, JMG, or anyone else can offer,
Jeff
Hi JMG and Ecosophians,
I have been singing and/or listening to God Save the Queen (the British national anthem) as a magical exercise to lend courage to the natives and law-abiding citizens of Britain and the UK. Here is an explanation of what I’m doing: https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/144376.html
I believe my Pledge to Say the Pledge and all the people who joined it helped attain a more balanced form of leadership in for the United States. I would like to see something that rhymes happen for Britain and the greater UK.
I hope you’ll join me.
Hi, I really enjoyed your first post on “The Vision” by Yeats. I looked it up, and got a copy of the second version, and skipped ahead to the “Great Wheel”. Within that, I was impressed by his diagram and idea of the “Two Gyres”, the subjective and the objective triangles interpenetrating each other, corresponding to the Will, on the one hand, and the Mask on the other. This reminds me of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, where you have the Will, on the one hand, and the “Principium Individuationis” , relating to the analytical mind, on the other, as subjective and objective. How exactly the other two faculties, the Creative Mind and the Body of Fate relate to this are less clear to me, but I’m looking forward to more posts on the subject.
When I was in high school, I picked up my dad’s copy of “Expecting Someone Taller,” by Tom Holt, and almost immediately put it down with the resolution that I would pick it back up after I’d read the Ring Cycle, in the hopes that it would be funnier.
I have now, after more than a decade, returned to the book, and can indeed say that it is, in fact, funnier.
Watched an interesting 30 minute lecture by one Peter Schiiff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQG01DRxHk who seems to be an Austrian (as in devotee of Hayek, Mises etc., not a citizen of the small Central European country) gold bug but nonetheless makes a compelling cases that dollar hegemony is in its final days and the American standard of living will be declining sharply in the short to medium term.
The evidence he points to is that central banks round the world are liquidating their dollar reserves and replacing them with gold.
This make sense and explains, among other things soaring gold prices and the plummeting value of dollar-denominated assets.
But there has always seemed something slightly irrational to me (and not just to me — didn’t Keynes call gold “the barbarous relic”?) about spending a lot of money to dig gold ore out of the ground (Schiff recommends buying gold mining stocks), refine it into bars, and then rebury it in the vaults of a central bank.
Care to comment? (In the past you have noted that in a time of general economic breakdown — which also implies a general breakdown in law and order — stocking up gold for oneself doesn’t make much sense unless one has the means to defend the stocks. But central banks generally do possess such means.)
Dear John-Michael and the Community,
I would be interested in your thoughts regarding the ongoing constitutional crisis in the United States due to the executive branch defying the orders of various courts including the supreme court with respect to deporting without due process some 261 men to El Salvador, and ICE detaining without charge or process a number of international students. My sense is that this situation will not be resolved without the direct intervention of the people through an ongoing general strike.
Good day sir, I was interested in who some of your critics are.
Personally glad to see you are swinging back to collapse themes. Very relevant. Speaks to a deep ancestral place in me as an obvious truth.
Take care
@ Bradley: how many people have been charged with fraud? Is it none, zero, zilch or nada?
What Russian entity came in the back door left by Musk’s team and siphoned up the personal data of every American? And why doesn’t that bother you?
Why did Musk hire coders for a forensic accounting job, and in what universe can he ‘audit’ a single department in a matter of hours?
Replying to Emmanuel Goldstein’s comments on leucovorin from the previous round: you really got my gears turning with that. I have 2 very-much-speech delayed children and myself had to do some speech therapy as a child. My wife has known for a number of years now that she has a genetic folate processing deficiency. ASD runs in my family…so those two things in combination really got me thinking “HMM”.
I mentioned it to their pediatrician and indeed, she’d had other parents ask her about that same study! She was intrigued by it. Told us that she didn’t know of a way to test for the antibodies or brain levels of B9, and that while she could do a blood test, it would probably be inconclusive as it’s the blood/brain barrier and processing that’s the issue. BUT, without any questions she wrote me a prescription and told me with much curiosity to let me know how it went.
So anyway, thanks for the tip! The older child is in the same age cohort as the ones in the double blind study they referenced. Based on my wife’s genetic folate issues (she already supplements B9!), I’m very much optimistic about the potential here.
JMG and commentariat:
Some time ago in the comments on this blog I mentioned a three-part essay by Sebastian Morello titled “Can Hermetic Magic Rescue the Church?” You can find Part III here:
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/can-hermetic-magic-rescue-the-church-part-iii-the-magi-return/ and links to Parts I and II are in the Intro to Part III.
I myself am intrigued by the possibilities pointed at with this essay, and I am interested in seeing if there is anybody else who would like to discuss these ideas and explore them further, since one of my observations about Morello’s essay is that it raises far more questions than it sheds light on. If anybody is interested in this sort of discussion, feel free to send me an email at roysmith95 (at) live (dot) com. If there is enough interest, perhaps we can set up some sort of discussion board or group blog.
Mr. Greer, what do you make of the Democrat politcian$ following Sen. Van Hollen’s squishy step into ms-13 deportation doodo. A concerted effort at a pointed “SQUIRREL”? .. talking their OMB!! book? .. the basic idiocy of not reading the average american living(dieing)-room .. as it were? .. what?
To continue the peak oil discussion from last week, I find it interesting that if you search for info on peak oil today, you will be directed to info on peak oil “demand”. This notion has almost completely replaced peak oil supply in top line searches. Thus it is very difficult to find any data or analysis on oil supply projections.
Peak oil demand is supposed to occur because “green energy” will replace fossil fuels, making them uncompetitive.
Here is the IEA predicting an oil glut as net zero climate initiatives succeed in reducing fossil fuel demand.
The astounding thing is that people really believe this will happen.
https://www.iea.org/news/slowing-demand-growth-and-surging-supply-put-global-oil-markets-on-course-for-major-surplus-this-decade
Since it is now the expressed goal of HHS Director Robert F Kennedy Jr to discover *the* cause of *autism” by September, with the appliance of science, I would like to open up the conversation to what I believe is the main drawback. Which is that it is supremely difficult to determine the cause of an effect which cannot be properly described or defined.
I have spent a good deal of time perusing websites, scientific papers, public health sites and etc, and am still not able to find out what the physiological attributes of “autism” are. Firstly, the word “spectrum” is already a hint that we are not talking about one thing. Secondly, every authoritative source utterly rejects the notion that there are any distinctive physiological markers common to all autistic people. Thirdly, diagnosis appears to proceed on the basis of a checklist of *behaviours*, which only an expert can navigate and ultimately pronounce a verdict based on the number of items that can be ticked.
So, the way that I would like to put the problem (in the terms which actually interest me, personally), is as follows: clearly vaccine damage IS caused by vaccines. Some types of vaccine damage *resemble* autism (whatever autism is when its at home), and when a vaccine damaged person receives a diagnosis of “autism” two things happen:
1) they now qualify for services which many people need and find impossible to dispense with once qualified for.
2) they are now statistically lumped in with a larger cohort, which is so non-specifically defined as to defy the finding of causality, reliable physiological markers, or effective treatment modalities that can apply to the whole cohort.
The interaction of these two factors actually impede the capacity of researchers to track people injured by vaccines, or treat their injuries, in any coherent way.
I am not intending to be contentious, but the word “autism” which means so many different things to so many people, and yet does not in any way help to address issues that actually occur in relation to some vaccinations, as attested by so many parental witnesses (see for eg. the “vaxxed” bus episodes). Such as massive neurological inflamatory states, micro-clotting effects which, when they occur in the brain can manifest as stroke-like facial assymetries in young infants and children, high fevers, episodic loss of consciousness, and episodes of pain so severe it leads to head banging and to the high-pitched tortured “cry” that many parents speak about.
So, throwing this out there. Is the search for a “cause” for “autism” a deliberate wild goosechase that will leave everyone empty handed, while the goose laughs and pops out another golden egg for its keeper?
From US News; headline says it in a nutshell.
“Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Work. Americans Can’t Afford American-Made Products.”
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-22/trump-tariffs-business-clothing-brand
“Even if I went without this [organic] certification, the cost to cut and sew our core products (woven children’s pants) at U.S. factories is often twice what I pay for organically certified, fairly made products in India. And this cost doesn’t include the fabric itself. Meanwhile, the samples I’ve seen from American factories don’t match the quality of production I’ve come to expect from countries I’ve worked with abroad.”
To paraphrase; to get these jobs back in the country the workers must accept Indian wages and working conditions and up the quality of their output.
The globalists are quite consistent that the developed economies are supposed to move their workers up the value chain doing hi-tech. If you can’t do hi-tech, then what? They are always fuzzy on that point.
Many of the trades require people smarter than the average bear as well. High-voltage electricity only allows one mistake.
As for the service economy, how many barbers does a city need? Are we going to go back to every middle class and up family has a maid? Even Miss Marple had a maid (and not that many of them ended up dead.) Electricity really cut down on the household labor requirements.
Even cannon fodder has to be reasonably bright.
“All military recruits must take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to qualify for enlistment. The ASVAB is essentially an IQ test (correlation = 0.8). The ASVAB predicts SAT scores (correlation = .82). And it correlates with ACT scores (0.77).
To qualify, recruits must score higher than roughly one-third of all who take the ASVAB. The lowest acceptable percentile score to join is 36 for the Air Force, 35 for the Navy, 32 for the Marine Corps, and 31 for the Army.
By definition, the worst test taker who makes it into the military still scores higher than one-third of his or her peers. The military intentionally slices off the bottom third of test takers, not allowing them to join.”
The high tech world at the moment has no solution to this. The saving grace at the moment is that the AIs are going for lower end of high tech jobs as the robots may be able to walk but they still can’t pick a strawberry.
It’s not just us either,
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/beijing-encourages-jobless-youth-fields-164225858.html
My wife just came home from the hospital — against medical advice — after having one of the worst experiences of her life there. I would like to say that here care was characterized by foot-dragging, but that would imply that someone there was actually moving. She did have numerous visits from various “care team” entities for conditions totally unrelated to the one that she was admitted for. I suspect there will be numerous charges for these “visits”. On the other hand, trying to get service from the nurses station took interminable hours. The attending physician was not bad when present, but was apparently impossible to reach to discuss lab results as they came in. The neurologist who was supposed to read her EEG never showed up at all.
The hospital also seemed to be completely unable to understand her schedule of meds, with the result that her blood pressure went into the stratosphere by her second day there. In the end, we had to take her out of there to end her misery and maybe even to protect her health from this abysmal level of care.
Of course the hospital campus was beautiful — spacious grounds, artificial lakes, groomed flower gardens… All those things that money can buy that had nothing to do with patient care. When it came to that, it seems there was not enough money to hire sufficient staff. Oh, wait. There were plenty of staff there sitting behind keyboards. Billing staff maybe? Just not enough staff to, you know, provide patient care.
After this experience, it is easy to see why medical outcomes here are at the bottom of the developed world despite being the most expensive in the world. My question is, has anyone else here had a similar experience, or was this an unfortunate anomaly?
Pope Francis was a Piscean pope. He reigned during the time when Neptune was in Pisces and embodied the characteristics and values of Pisces (i.e. love, compassion, self-sacrifice, etc…)
Now that Neptune has moved into Aries, the Catholic Church will be looking for a Pope who embodies the characteristics and values of Aries instead of Pisces.
Hello Mr. Greer,
As you are well aware politics has become unusually dysfunctional lately. I would like to return to a point you raised several years ago about Faustian bargains. You had mentioned (and Chad Haag from Peak Oil Philosophy built a you tube video responding to this) how left wing occultists may have made a Faustian bargain with dark powers. If I understand it correctly, the general idea behind it is that a person or group of people can exchange 7 years of power for 7 years of curses. The reason why I ask is that if we assume this pact was made in 2017 then the people who gained power from it would see their fortunes reverse in 2024. Sure enough, the intensely powerful feminism that dominated American public life during that time seems to have done a complete 180. It seems that everything the democrats did during that 7 year period is now coming back to haunt them. Govenor Cuomo is being investigated and brought to trial for covid 19 related decisions, their immigration policy has failed so badly Trump can ignore the supreme court, and some polls are putting their approval rating at 25 percent while Trump is more than double that. Things are so bad the millennials in the party are planning on running against the incumbents and fighting an internal civil war before going after Trump. Long story short, the efforts to destroy toxic masculinity seemed to have created the most overtly macho culture we have seen in America in generations. So is this a Faustian bargain or is this just Spengler’s historical predictions manifesting? How could we tell the difference?
JMG,
On Magic Monday, in response to a question about ancient civiliations, I mentioned a slate of rafting events happened around the same time as the PETM, and you asked for sources. I’m sorry to report that I’m unaware of a printed source which discusses this in detail; I got the information off a friend of mine who studies paleontology. I’ve just asked him if he has anything which discusses this, but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet, and since he is currently extremely busy with finishing his PhD, I’m not sure I expect a response for a while.
However, I can list a few examples: among many other examples that appear to have been rafting events from around this time are New World Monkeys in South America; Lemurs into Madascar; primates of all sorts from Asia into Africa and India; rodents into all continents; the ancestors of the marsupial genus Microbiotheria from Australia into South America; multiple kinds of ungulates from Asia into North America; geckos spread from Asia around the world; genetic evidence suggests a number of spider familes worldwide descend from Australian spiders which somehow spread everywhere around 50 million years ago. Some of these are give or take 10 or even 20 million years; but there seems to have been a lot of rafting events which overlapped with the PETM, and then a lot fewer since.
When I hear back with sources for this, I’ll happily share them.
Bradley,
I’m not JMG, but I’ve been looking into this for a while trying to make sense of TDS. My working hypothesis right now is that the madness is largely being driven by algorithmic social media. The problem is that extreme claims get more traction in algorithmic social media because they are more likely to get people’s attention; this means that even if it’s only a small percentage of the Democratic Party that supports issues like “trans” middle schoolers being allowed to use the “appropriate” gender’s washroom, social media makes it look a lot more popular. It gets even worse when social media platforms try to remove “anti-trans” voices, as they have since 2015. It is very, very hard to write a program that can get nuance; and so any algorithm which tries to remove any kind of offensive viewpoint is going to remove a lot of reasonable viewpoints, while leaving the crazies on the other side mostly untouched.
The sane voices are being drowned out by this process, and so the party is looking increasingly insane. Also, extreme anti-Republican fearmongering does well on these platforms, regardless of truth, because it infuriates Republicans and terrifies Democrats, both of which drives engagement. Both of these mean that to anyone who tries to use social media data to assess public opionion to decide what positions to adopt (something Obama pioneered) is going to think these crazy people are far more common than they really are.
This process also plays out with the mass media, because it is now dependant on shares on social media. Truth does not matter; what matters is making content that social media algorithms like, which means that the mass media looks like it has gone completely insane because it has to go insane in order for the algorithms it now depends on for money to continue to spread it.
The reason the Republicans are (partially) immune is because shortly after the social media companies started pushing these algorithms, people on the left started noticing it amplified crazy conservatives and played a role in Donald Trump winning the 2016 election, and since a lot of them thought Trump was an existential threat, the American right has been forced off of most of these algorithmic platforms.
@Bradley: The following article supports Anonymoose’s argument:
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/how-perception-gaps-fuel-americas
Eva Breadner
The normal time frame for arrests is 1 to 3 years from discovery. I suppose we’ll need to wait. The breach you talk about is disputed. My source says the Russian IP was blocked because it was Russian.
Maybe Must is greedy for data, after all it is the new currency, however his pubic statements all revolve around preserving person-kind and civilization. His DOGE effort, to me, seems to fit the latter, although if you thought he was greedy for data it would also fit the formet.
A request and a question, both to everybody.
1. I’m practicing my blessing skills by performing a formal blessing each Wednesday, where I bless everybody who signs up. I’m grateful if people do sign up, as it gives me a chance to practice! Here’s the link if you want to read more or consider signing up:
https://thehiddenthings.com/categories/weekly-blessings
2. To anybody who visted Stonehenge not too long ago:
I’ve never been to Stonehenge before and am considering a visit. While I was fully prepared to be within crowds of other visitors, the visitor website also “promises” things like a visitor centre with multimedia displays and a 360 degree experience, all sorts of “fun” stuff to do and experience, shuttle busses, a to-be-pre-installed app for the parking lot, and of course an extensive gift shop. I don’t really want to “immerse myself in a unique visitor experience”, though – I just want to experience some old stones and their surroundings! 😀
If you’ve been to Stonehenge recently, do you feel it’s worth braving all the brouhaha to experience the actual stones and the area? Can they even be experienced anymore beneath this pile of glitter? Or would you, if you were me, rather go experience some other old stones elsewhere? 🙂
(And if the latter, is there anything in particular you’d suggest?)
JMG, thanks a lot for hosting an Open Post again. I hope you’re having a good week,
Milkyway
Ludovic, delighted to hear it! By all means make an announcement with a sales link in an open post when it’s available for sale.
Bradley, keep in mind that people have flooded their brains for decades with media schlock in which the Good People are always an embattled minority fighting for the Right Things against overwhelming odds. If everyone else thinks they’re idiots, why, that just proves how right they are, and a miracle will come along any day now to win the day for them, just like in the movies. As for DOGE, it’s quite straighforward; do you remember all those Congresscritters with the signs saying “Musk steals”? What they meant, of course, was that Musk was cutting into the fantastic amount of grift that lines their pockets. Of course they’re bellowing nonsense about it — they can’t exactly shout, “How dare you stop me from ripping off the American public,” can they?
Jeff, well, that’s not my take. As I see it, there were two major factors. The first was the distinction between military and civilian swordsmanship, which didn’t emerge until the Renaissance; before then the right of private war was recognized and so aristocrats went around pretty well armed much of the time. When that changed, the rapier, followed by the smallsword, became standard civilian weapons, because they were much easier to carry, while soldiers continued to carry various kinds of one-handed cutting swords on the battlefield; look at 19th century military swords as a useful comparison. The second was the emergence of mass infantry combat in organized groups, primarily using the pike. Pikemen don’t carry shields — the pike is a two-handed weapon — and they can sweep aside most other forms of infantry and cavalry; infantry shields worked when infantry fought in looser formation, and once that wasn’t an option the infantry discarded shields and went to pikes and missile weapons (bows and crossbows first, then muskets).
Among cavalry, shields were another casualty of pike warfare, because massed cavalry charges stopped making sense the moment massed pikemen hit the battlefield; shields and armor alike went out, and cavalry was repurposed for scouting, raiding, and protecting the flanks, all of which works better if you’re not weighed down and have a nice sharp saber or, later, a brace of pistols. The two-handed longsword, finally, was another adaptation to pike warfare; the landsknechts were elite infantry forces who learned how to use those swords to hack and batter down pikes so they could get in among the pikemen and force them to go at it hand-to-hand with their backup swords. That lasted until firearms came in.
Kimberly, er, it’s “God Save the King” now, as it was during the reign of Elizabeth’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Other than that, glad to hear it.
John, stay tuned! There’ll be one post a month on A Vision.
Calliope, er, did you think that Wagner wrote comic operas?
Tag, the US dollar is in the process of losing its status as global reserve currency, and yes, that means that the US will have to get by without all those billions of dollars a year of unearned wealth we got by selling dollar-denominated debt to central banks around the world. That’s why the slaughter of the bureaucracies continues unabated in DC — in the near future, the federal government won’t be able to run a deficit any more — and why the Trump administration is raising tariffs and trying to bully other countries into lowering their trade barriers. Gold is a common hedge during such times. Yes, it’s a barbarous relic, but these are barbarous times; central banks have to have assets in their vaults in order to issue credit, and when T-bills no longer count as a stable asset, they’re going to turn to anything that will serve — barbarous or not.
Jim, er, do you recall when the Biden administration ignored a Supreme Court ruling and pushed ahead on student loan relief anyway? It was exactly the same sort of thing. Every presidential administration does this; it’s a normal part of the conflict between branches that defines our system. As for your ongoing general strike, why, go ahead and give it a try; I think you’ll find that most Americans don’t support your side of the issue, and will gladly apply to fill the job you’re giving up.
Travis, I don’t keep a list of my critics; I read their posts from time to time when those come to my attention. Sometimes I go, “Hmm, okay,” and rethink something I’ve written; other times I roll my eyes and chuckle. Either way, it’s all in a day’s work.
Roy, well, saving that or any other church other than the Universal Gnostic Church isn’t high on my agenda just now, but I encourage you and other readers to go for it.
Polecat, I think they’re so caught up playing roles in a self-defined political melodrama that it never occurs to them that they should read the room.
Seaweedy, I know. The funny thing is that this was also true in the early days of the peak oil movement, back around the turn of the millennium: finding information about petroleum depletion was hard enough that there were whole forums where people labored together at the task.
Scotlyn, I hope not, but it’s certainly a possibility.
Siliconguy, the headline left off a clause: “If Corporations Are Still Paying Absurd Salaries For Executives And Bloated Administrative Staff.” I’d like to see a comparison of expenditures for administrative superstructure between US and offshore companies.
Helix, it’s been decades since I’ve had anything to do with hospitals, but everyone I know who’s been in that unfortunate situation has had similar experiences.
Anonymous, well, we’ll see.
Stephen, the Faustian curse isn’t seven years of power followed by seven years of curses. It’s seven years of power, and then the devil shows up and drags you off to Hell. Since I haven’t seen any significant number of leftwing activists being hauled away by Mephistopheles to a flaming inferno, I suspect it’s just ordinary backlash following a lot of impressively stupid policy decisions.
Moose, fair enough! Thank you for this; yeah, that suggests invasive species facilitated by a technological civilization.
There is only one monarch of the United Kingdom, and she reigns from heaven. God Save our Queen Elizabeth II.
Not the current woke WEF puppet who currently occupies the throne and is betraying Britain with his every action. #NotMyKing
JMG, have you noticed the increased use of the word ” Decry” recently. It seems to have become a kind of catchall way to call out something you don’t like but don’t have any logical reason for disliking it. I have noticed it popping up more and more frequently in what remains of our local newspaper ( left leaning). It is commonly used like this, ” Jane Doe Decrys the airline blocking her emotional support squirrel from boarding a plane with her.”
Hello JMG,
A further question on the topic we were diving into on Magic Monday regarding the difference between aspects of the shadow self sometimes described as “personal demons” and the real, often quite dangerous to humans, nonphysical entities also known as demons. Your emphasis that these are quite different things was helpful, and I wanted to test my understanding with an analogy.
Someone can “evoke” a political party in their imagination in order to interact with it as an idea – considering its history, its stated platforms, the kinds of politicians and people it tends to attract, imagine joining the party, etc. This entails some activity on the mental and astral levels. They could also go a lot further and join the party, vote in the way it recommends, perhaps even attempt to influence the party itself, and this would entail quite a bit of activity on all of the mental, astral, etheric and physical levels. Then there is the party itself as a nonphysical entity with many physical manifestations, which of course is distinct from even the deepest level of participation in the party by an individual.
Is this a reasonable analogy, or are there key parts missing? Thank you as always.
Hi JMG, I was thumbing through an old issue of Weird Tales and came across an add for Psychiana, a New Though movement. Are you familiar?
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v21n04_1933-04_missing_ifc_ibc_bc
@ Helix #18
My experience with hospitals in the last 5 years is the same as yours — extravagantly furnished and landscaped campus with extremely deficient patient care for those who are sick. And yes, random medical professionals wander through rooms daily, doing nothing for the patient, but absolutely billing for the “visit.” The worst was a supposed cardiologist who stood at the door of my husband’s room and shouted at him, “Are you having any chest pain?” My husband shouted back, “No!” The cardiologist turned around and left. I got a bill for that.
The only exception was my daughter who went in for an elective C-section (yes, I know, I tried to talk her out of it, but she doesn’t listen to me). The maternity suites were palatial. They had, no kidding, a room service menu for mom and dad after the birth.
I told my kids, you put me in the hospital for any reason I will make sure to die and then haunt you the rest of your life! 😆
FWIW, you did the right thing getting your wife out of there, in my opinion.
Hi JMG, You have mentioned in the past (within the comments) that you once considered relocating to England and specifically to Somerset. How close was this to happening and what prevented you from going ahead in the end? Also, why did you consider this area rather than Scotland which you have ancestral roots in or Wales which seems to have more of a Druid connection?
I thought I’d pitch in a bit of personal anecdote about my little slice of the current mess in the United States. The other day, as an employee of the Department of Interior, I watched the new Secretary of Interior give an address to the department as a whole. Normally, I studiously avoid the ramblings of all politician-like people and until it came time to losing my job I had managed to go several years skipping every single required regional and national meeting. But, I wanted to watch this one because I wanted some insight into what kind of direction the current administration was actually taking things, get the information direct, no?
I sat through almost the entirety of the secretary’s hour-long address even though nothing new was said after the first ten minutes or so. My wife texted to ask me, “what he was saying/what I thought?”
Just to be clear, even though I am (was actually) a federal employee and I just watched my retirement disappear, and no, for the record, my job was not one of middle management but rather one of things like operating boats, heavy equipment, maintenance, organizing volunteers, etc. Nonetheless, I’m under no illusions that my job is actually necessary to anything in the grander scheme. Then again, I’m under no illusions that anyone else’s employment is either…
It’s been bemusing to me over the last several months, essentially knowing that I was going to get the axe as I watched the panicked reactions from the rest of the staff. I listened one day to a manager who works (worked) at the regional level of my agency go on about how awful this all was to treat people this way and the huge amount of human suffering it was causing. I agreed with her. I did add a little quip that it really wasn’t anything new to me.
I demurred from adding that it was actually very like the covid vax tyranny of a few years ago, the pompous righteousness from on high, the masses screeching for blood, the snide comments coming in from one half of the public, and the emotional support from the other side that amounted to nothing. Then again, in covid all those of us refusing the vax got was a stiff middle finger from our highers and the open condoning of people demanding our children be taken away. Now, the support from the system is palpable, everyone needs to helped to a dignified exit. They need to be as safe as possible from the economic fallout.
I suppose the arch-irony of it though is watching the masses demand my impoverishment with the justification that I (as part of the “Feds”) didn’t care when all those poor folks were losing their jobs over the vax mandates…
I digress though, back to the secretary. Not a single word about all those employees watching who were actually about to lose their jobs and place in society, nope, all forward looking. Apparently, we all need gratitude and humility. Why? Well, we need to be gracious that we are so wealthy and that the economy is so strong and that we live in the most privileged country in the world. In fact, birth rates are down because we are SO wealthy. We need the humility to accept that energy running out, the decreasing quality of food, changes in population, these are not actually issues and we are all just too ignorant to understand that. We also need curiosity and courage. For what one might ask? Why, we need to be curious enough to dig into the facts and understand just how wrong we are about the state of things and how amazing everything is right now. We need courage to embrace progress! Especially the progress brought about by AI! AI is going to change all of our lives for the better! We will all work less and have more stuff! But we need energy dominance! That is what the president needs for us to deliver! And we will! We have more fossil fuels than anyone! All we need to do is DRILL BABY DRILL and we can support all the dozens, nay hundreds, of new data centers to power the AI and bring us to our incredible future! How? We will do it through this amazing new technology, fracking! If you doubt it, you are just too stupid to understand!
Ok Ok, I am paraphrasing but I am paraphrasing. But this really is pretty much the jist of what he said complete with the “values” we need to have.
While some of the actions of the current administration are things I think are a great idea (tariffs, downsizing the government, separating ourselves from our European vassals) my original assessment of our shift to the new administration stands, we traded one dysfunctional and retarded view of the future for a different but equally dysfunctional and retarded one.
What did I reply to my wife? “These are the tail end of the weak men who make hard times”.
HV
@Jeff Russell #3,
Hope all is well where you are and that life is back to normal after the previous year’s storms.
Please consider my initial response as “thinking aloud”. My first thoughts in response.
JR: “sword and shield -> long (two-handed) sword -> one-handed “fencing” swords like rapiers alone.
I also figure metallurgy was not quite as advanced, so shorter swords might have been all that the technology would allow. ”
Scotty: The Britons, Gauls and Celts in general (e.g. La Tène-type swords, named after the La Tène culture (c. 450 BCE–1st century BCE), widespread among Celts in Europe) all used long swords before encountering the Romans.
In all these cases, the short sword people, eventually won. I looked up and now lost the reference which quotes Caesar as saying there were cases of the Gaul’s long swords bending in battle and the warriors having to take time to straighten the blade as best they could.
I think culture was the deciding factor in this example. Roman organization and tactics (used less energy with short swords and covered by large shields) versus the Celts desire for more individualistic combat. When the Roman order eventually broke down, everyone reverted back to the old ways (i.e. more individual combat).
That may be a reflection of energy and not just energy spent on the battlefield. Imagine the energy required to train, drill and equip the forces before the battle was fought. Without a strong, centralized government, the individual combat with longer swords would actually require less energy in total (even though wielding long swords would take more energy on the battlefield).
Firearms definitely changed everything and I’d say was a major reason behind swords becoming lighter. Exception would be the cavalry sabre, all the way through the Napoleonic Age and even up to the U.S. Civil War. Guess who was carrying the extra weight of that sword a lot of the time? Not the human rider.
So I’m thinking both cultural and net energy played a role in the changes. What just popped into my mind are the excellent katana (samurai sword). The katana was somewhat shorter than a long sword and was used for cutting. This in battles where opponents were not wearing plate male and chain mail like in Europe around the 14th Century. I’m thinking culture and energy influenced this again. Japanese were small than the average European and not just because of famines or the general population not getting enough to eat. There were prohibitions against eating meat (religion) and that meant less protein. Lighter weight swords worked better. Also energy used before the battle in developing the technology and craftmanship of the katana swords.
Dear HELIX:
no, it’s not unusual what happened to your wife in the hospital. my late partner, James Swanson, had been in a couple different hospitals, with UCSF being the worst when it’s “rated” the best BUT it’s gotta be because biotech infuses them with money. James was dehydrated and had dried feces on his backside by the time i got there the next morning. i had to fight with the male nurse who got really bitchy about being challenged over his judgement, and was about to claim nurse rights or something and then it was about the nurse.
the doctors weren’t much better and James was in agony and begged me to get him out of there. days later when i finally scheduled a ride and didn’t know whether the family and the hospital would have me arrested when i showed up.
about 4 or 5 medical folks ambushed me when i arrived and tried to get James to change his mind but he was desperate to get out of there. he felt ignored like your wife did and all the hospitals do whatever they want regarding drugs.
James constipated at SF General and they mistook his labored breathing for the death rattle, but it went on for 4 or 5 days and i fed James myself and snuck in ivermectin and fenben and i had to try and get him enemas, which they wouldn’t do so i was there as much as i could be.
he never did or wanted drugs, but against my wishes as well his family’s, they gave him morphine anyway, and that was the end. i knew i’d lost because it shut his whole system down and he wasn’t even eating anymore.
and if you don’t have money, but i hear even if you DO, you’re not treated well. the nurses kept saying how lucky he was to have an advocate and i was horrified because “what if you’re on your own or your family’s working full time???”
i saw the shape of the other poor patients left to drool and die.
it all felt like James’ illness was a bonanza for money and everyone wanted a piece of him. yes, the appointments of caretakers coming in to offer new drugs to cover the side effects of the last drugs and then someone else comes in about the NEW side effects. and your doctors change depending on the emergency room you were admitted to and cannot have collaboration between prior doctors without the current ones feeling infringed upon so they all say, “yes! my colleague’s great!” and Everyone “LOVES” everyone and that’s how they refer you to specialists. are they any good? no matter. they LOVE them because they gave them an extra cupcake once.
i think the medical world another weird scam to make the “caretakers” and visiting volunteers feel good about themselves. everything in the wellness industry seems to make people feel virtuous, except for the patients.
no. if i have my mental capacity i’ll likely starve to death on purpose if i end up incapacitated and cannot care for myself at home.
i used to wanna be Normal People and now i find them horrifying.
erika
@JMG #24 re: Influence of Pikes and Private/Public War on Sword Use
Ahh, that makes good sense, thank you. For some reason, despite knowing about the importance of pike infantry to military history, I failed to make the connection on this particular thread of arms development. I also wasn’t aware that the Landsknechts with their famous zweihanders were specialized in breaking pike formations. I also hadn’t given due consideration to the “publicization” of the right to war as something only state armies had, with corresponding effects on the nobles and their habitual armaments when not called up by the state.
Thanks very much!
Jeff
@Moose & JMG
According to what I’ve read, palentologists and geologists think land bridges connected Eurasia, Greenland, and North America, cutting off the Arctic Ocean from the global ocean. If that was so, I don’t know why the mammals didn’t spread to other continents earlier, but I’m guessing it was because the high latitude regions got a tropical climate in the PETM and Eocene Optimum.
>the cost to cut and sew our core products (woven children’s pants) at U.S. factories is often twice what I pay
Well, we may be headed back to a time when if you want new clothes, they must be made by hand at home, using a pattern, thread and a sewing machine. During the Great Depression, they would make clothes out of empty flour sacks, that got so popular, the milling companies started printing designs on the sacks so people could make their clothes look more purty.
We also may be headed back to a time when it takes two people to keep a household going and there will have to be a division of labor. You focus on this, I’ll focus on that and we’ll meet in the middle.
I dunno, maybe we’ll all just dig in the dirt and wear rags too, while screaming about it all? It’s easier to say someone owes you something than to get up and go get it.
One way or another, globalization is going away, it’s just how it goes and who gets blamed for it, really. It looks like they want to blame Trump for it going away, but it could’ve just as easily happened on Sleepy Joe’s watch.
>Gold is a common hedge during such times
Or there has to be some common reference in the system, so that everyone knows how much they’re actually talking about. It doesn’t have to be anything in particular, it just has to be accepted as valid by your trading partners.
There’s a reason why the gold standard was abandoned all those decades ago though. But maybe like with bell bottoms, or skinny jeans its time has come again at least for a while.
>That lasted until firearms came in
Which was another missile weapon. And now we’re up to hypersonic missiles.
>My question is, has anyone else here had a similar experience, or was this an unfortunate anomaly?
No, I have relatives that have told me stories substantially similar to yours. I’ve just accepted that when I need a hospital, it ain’t going to be there. Or, it’ll be there – but you won’t want to go anywhere near it.
If you need a hospital, now’s probably the time. It’s only going to get worse from here.
Oh, I’m well aware that the Ring Cycle itself isn’t comic. “Expecting Someone Taller” is a fantasy novel wherein a nebbish young British man accidentally runs over a badger, which turns out to be Fafnir and Fasolt’s younger brother who stole the tarnhelm and ring during the chaos at the end of Gotterdammerung, and has been hiding as a badger in the arse-end of England ever since. By right of conquest, the young man is now the new Master of the Ring, and has to restrain the destructive nature of the Ring and avoid the various agents of Wotan, the Rhinemaidens, and Albrecht, who all want the darn thing back.
The book is clever enough in it’s own right, but better when you actually have a slight knowledge of Wagner, which I most assuredly lacked back in high school
Hey JMG
I thought this would interest you, as it is a bit unusual.
Essentially, the MP of the LNP party in Australia, Colin Boyce, has suggested to his colleagues that the best way to get people to stop wanting “net zero” and renewables is to allow them to cause blackouts in major Australian cities. Here is his quote from the article.
Unfortunately you will not change the minds of the wider public in metropolitan Australia until the lights go out.
“It’s a case of let Rome burn for a while and the only way you will make people realise what a fiasco the whole energy system is in Australia it has to come down to practical terms where you simply can’t supply the energy.”
Also, he apparently is part of some climate denialist group called “The Saltbush Club” that is involved in propaganda work of some description, I am unsure if you or anyone else here is aware of them.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/16/let-rome-burn-coalition-mp-colin-boyce-says-blackouts-the-only-way-to-turn-voters-off-renewable-energy
Seaweedy@14 and JMG
It is obviously rubbish that peak oil demand will happen because everybody starts driving electric cars or fairy dust cars or whatever, but there is some thought going into the probability that people will become poorer and not be able to drive as much or at all there by reducing demand. There is also the balance between what consumers can afford to pay and what producers need to make a profit. Current prices are barely break even for fracking., now that “other people’s money” is drying up.. Trumps’ claim that the US can double its production at half the price is ludicrous, not that it keeps a lot of people from believing it.
A friend in England was telling me recently that many young people are not even thinking of getting a car because of the high prices of vehicle, licensing, fuel, insurance, etc. I think it is no longer quite the social symbol it once was either.
my guess is that there are so many factors at play that it will be hard to pinpoint exactly what starts the decline, especially since everyone in the oil, automotive,financial, etc industries and the governments will try to obscure peak supply in order to keep the show on the road for as long as possible.
Stephen
Hollywood is in trouble:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/post-production-los-angeles-music-tax-incentives-1236190752/
It might even become the next Detroit, according to some entertainment professionals.
William, last I checked it’s a hereditary monarchy. You may not like him, but Britain’s had plenty of dunderheads and blackguards on the throne before now, you know.
Clay, hmm! No, I hadn’t noticed that. Interesting that the media added a new word to their 700-word vocabulary. 😉
Tony, not quite. Pick a political party. No matter how much you dislike it — and indeed, this is especially true if you dislike it — there are parts of your personality that correspond to it. They may not carry the same name, but they have the same dynamic. Since Godwin’s Law remains one of the few eternal principles we have left, let’s go straight to the Nazis. All of us without exception have Nazi-like parts of our personality. All of us sometimes want to blame other people for our own deeply personal problems; all of us sometimes imagine that if only (insert person or group here) was erased from existence the world would be a much better place, and so on. That’s your inner Nazi. Being aware of that is not the same thing as joining the Nazi Party. In fact, if you’re aware of that presence in yourself, you’re much less likely to join a close equivalent of the Nazi Party under the illusion that by doing so, you’re fighting fascism…
Douglas, good heavens, yes. All their lessons are now in the public domain and can be downloaded free of charge here:
https://archive.org/search?query=psychiana+lesson
Devonlad, Glastonbury in particular has an energy I find immensely appealing and pleasant; I could easily see myself living there, or anywhere in the county or two around it. I haven’t gotten that same reaction in Wales or Scotland. It was something I had in mind once it became clear that my late wife was going to predecease me by many years. Unfortunately the state of British politics by the time Sara died was such that I regretfully shelved the idea.
HippieViking, thanks for this. Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.
Jeff, you’re most welcome. The long legal battle to end the right of private war had a huge impact on European societies generally, which I don’t think most people grasp.
Patrick, good heavens, are they back to postulating land bridges again? I thought most of those went out when continental drift came in.
Other Owen, yes, but it takes years of practice to make a competent archer, and a few weeks to make somebody who can follow orders and shoot a musket in volley fire. That’s what made muskets such a revolutionary weapon: you could take thousands of peasant boys, give them muskets and crude uniforms, and turn them into an army that could decimate the other side. That is to say, muskets were the FPV drones of their day.
Calliope, okay, that does sound funny. I may just read that. Thank you!
J.L.Mc12, hmm! Interesting.
Stephen, for the last ten years I’ve been seeing more and more young men hotdogging on bicycles instead of doing the same thing in cars. It strikes me as a very hopeful sign.
Kevin, so they’ve noticed! I’ve been predicting for more than a decade that the west coast of the US will be the Rust Belt of the 21st century, though my money’s on SF rather than LA for the Detroit-equivalent. Once the global economy comes apart and the west coast ports no longer have the economic dominance they once did, I expect huge economic losses all through the three west coast states, and their decline to the kind of fringe status they had in 1900 or so.
Mary Bennet (end of previous post): ” I am reading through the hipcrime blog series about neo-fascism. Am still on part one, but I have one question which is how ever do “back-to-the-landers; hippies; occultists; misfits and cranks” get lumped in with reactionists, monarchists and traditionalists?”
A: Because the Nazis were big into crunchy nature-based pagan stuff, like the Wandervögel.
JMG, in one of your works, I recall you stating that Rosicrucian rituals are (or recently were) still being held in the headquarters of the Philosophical Research Society. For some reason I’ve been having trouble locating this passage again. (I thought it was in “The New Encyclopedia of the Occult,” but apparently no. ) Do you recall which book this was from? Or am I completely misremembering?
“I would be interested in your thoughts regarding the ongoing constitutional crisis in the United States due to the executive branch defying the orders of various courts”
The three branches are in open warfare. Various courts are infringing on the Executive Branch’s right to run its own shop. (Article 2, section 1, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Congress delegated far too much of its power to write the laws and set penalties to the executive branch in order to avoid losing votes and that is being rolled back. (Chevron Deference).
Executive Orders are supposed to be limited to internal organization of the Executive branch, but both parties have been using them to create almost laws, infringing on Congress who is to afraid of losing votes (or having their graft cut off) to say no.
Congress is incapable of passing a budget, much less a balanced one. If they raise taxes enough to do so it’s about a $10,000 a year tax hike for every employed person in the country. But every dollar of spending is precious as it buys votes.
The only thing left of the economy is low wage service jobs (minimal taxes to collect), auto assembly from imported parts, Intel’s obsolete chip fabricating plants, (they just announced 20% of employees to be laid off), and the MIC which produces a mix of obsolete weapons and modern weapons that don’t work.
To that we can add the tech brothers who are making money but the AI is already replacing the lower ranks of that workforce, Hollywood frantically producing endless regurgitations of drivel, and our greatest export, Advanced Swindling Theory, aka the financial sector much of which is devoted to avoiding taxes (carried interest provision and offshore accounts).
So yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s going to go crash thud tinkle tinkle. I think I’ll stock up on canning lids. They were really hard to find during the virus panic. The ones I did find were from (drum roll) China.
On the subject of the Nazis, and the risk posed by the radical left. I have noticed that sacred language is being adopted by them. I recently received communications from a radical left party in my country where a staff member, described something relatively ordinary as “hallowed” work. If this is the latest shift in language, I am worried.
JMG,
My friend has said he is too busy to find sources for any of the individual rafting events right now, and is unaware of anything which discusses the slate of rafting events together; it is a pattern he has observed, and which a number of paleontologists have seen, but which no one wants to touch with a ten foot pole.
On a different topic, I’ve noticed the media here is now starting to talk about how antisemitism is pushing Jews to voting Conservative. Here’s a CBC article on the topic:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/jewish-community-federal-election-antisemitism-1.7511453
I’m getting increasingly troubled, because the CBC is about as close to the mouthpiece of the Canadian establishment as it is possible to get, and is running a ton of anti-Conservative articles because our political establishment leans Liberal, with preference for the NDP over the Conservatives. I hope this isn’t a sign we’ve reached the stage of the game where the Canadian establishment has reached the point where they no longer care to even maintain the illusion their preferred parties are fighting antisemitism. Since there is a strong link in the collective consciousness here between antisemitism and Nazis, this is very troubling to me.
You’ve said before you expect corporate liberalism to transform into Nazis in the near future. I’m really starting to worry that this will happen in Canada while they still hold domestic power….
Patrick,
How does a land-bridge between North America and Asia explain the rafting events into and out of Africa, Australia, India, Madagascar, and various Pacific Islands? Also, is there evidence for it beyond the odd slate of rafting events?
Kimberly Steele, I do the same with the Armenian national anthem.
William, channeling Monty Python: “Well *I* didn’t vote for yer!”
Tag Murphy, for wealthy people who think the world is collapsing, 10-15 pc gold holdings might be reasonable. As we’re discovering, there is no truly safe place to park investments–not land, not stocks, not even milk into babies (they may disappoint you when they grow up!). And there are a million reasons for the world to shift trade away from the US dollar, but none of the alternatives (euros, crypto, some kind of BRICS currency) are ready to displace it at that level. The dollar is dropping something like, 1 pc per year.
JMG,
I recently finished The Carnelian Moon and just wanted to say I enjoyed it very much! I’ve been trying that crystal scrying exercise, too (sadly with no exciting lupine apparitions so far, heh.)
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.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Ron M’s friend Paul, who passed away on April 13, make his transition through the afterlife process with grace and peace.
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 JRuss’s friend David Carruthers quickly find a job of any kind at all that allows him to avoid homelessness, first and foremost; preferably a full time job that makes at least 16 dollars an hour.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Pierre in Minnesota be filled with the health, vitality, and fertility he needs to father a healthy baby with his wife.
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 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 1 Wanderer’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, and may she quickly be able to resume a normal life.
May Jennifer’s newborn daughter Eleanor be blessed with optimal growth and development; may her tongue tie revision surgery on Wednesday March 12th have been smooth and successful, and be followed by a full recovery.
May Mike Greco, who had a court date on the 14th of March, enjoy a prompt, just, and equitable settlement of the case.
May Cliff’s friend Jessica be blessed and soothed; may she discover the path out of her postpartum depression, and be supported in any of her efforts to progress along it; may the love between her and her child grow ever more profound, and may each day take her closer to an outlook of glad participation in the world, that she may deeply enjoy parenthood.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who passed away on 2/24, make his transition to his soul’s next destination with comfort and grace; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Peter Evans in California, whose colon cancer has been responding well to treatment, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
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 Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
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 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 Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
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.
May Jennifer and Josiah and their daughters Joanna and Eleanor be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
* * *
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.
When I went to check if there were any replies to the Magic Monday Prayer List entry of this week, I discovered that it didn’t seem to exist at all. Although Dreamwidth does eat things once in a blue moon, my own human error also seems likely. In any rate, apologies and on with the normal way of things next Monday.
@JMG
Apparently, they’ve found fossils of a freshwater fern in the Arctic Ocean. Pop science articles say this shows the Arctic Ocean was a giant freshwater lake during the early Eocene (and that’s what I thought), but Googling it now the actual studies are making more modest claims of a “seasonal freshwater cap” that might not have covered most of the Arctic. That’s their evidence for the land bridge hypothesis, but the After the Dinosaurs book I read was confident of those land bridges before those fossils were described.
Maybe a technological sea-faring civilization was responsible for those mass mammal migrations and the PETM itself.
Speaking of boilerplate coding,
“On Monday, the State Bar of California revealed that it used AI to develop a portion of multiple-choice questions on its February 2025 bar exam, causing outrage among law school faculty and test takers.”
How much of a lawyer’s career is spent stitching together boilerplate contract language and court pleading? AI bait!
Add this thought to my previous posting, judges by definition are members of the PMC. I suspect the majority of them were born into PMC families and so they are increasingly estranged from the rest of us.
Kind Sir,
In your response to Stephen you said: “Since I haven’t seen any significant number of leftwing activists being hauled away by Mephistopheles to a flaming inferno”
I’m not so sure. What does being hauled away by Mephistopheles look like in practice? There have been a significant number of lefty meltdowns that might qualify.
Roy Smith, those are interesting essays. I read Morello’s take as “the Catholic Church has lost its enchantment, so it needs to graft some onto itself from Hermeticism,” like the frog DNA spliced into dinosaur DNA from “Jurassic Park.” Thomas Merton thought much the same thing, but about Eastern religions. Morello points out that Hermeticism has a long Catholic presence, and that even even Thomas Aquinas taught crystal healing (in a manner of speaking)! Well okay, but how is this supposed to work? What specific Hermetic teaching or practice is capable of revitalizing Catholic spirituality? It would be a mistake to approach an organic, living tradition as one would some lines of computer code.
It seems to me that there is a more obvious candidate for such an infusion, namely the spirituality of Orthodoxy and the Oriental churches. It wouldn’t even be a foreign graft, since the Catholic Church already recognizes Uniate groups based around most of them. The Prayer of the Heart has a certain New Age appeal (which Orthodox clergy have been known to decry), and even Anglican theologians share their respect for patristics. Granted, Orthodox politics stink to high heaven, but that’s true all around.
Before any such renaissance can happen, though, the Catholic Church needs to clean house, pedophilia is only the most obvious of a number of deep-rooted corruptions. (The list of religions in need of such house-cleaning is very long.) If the new pope does that, the whole world will scream hallelujah.
There’s been a flurry of fairly reliable reports about a substantial reversal in the decline of people attending church and identifying as Christian in the UK (and other European countries), especially among younger people and especially people joining the RC Church. Is this a second religiosity phenomenon, a pushback against failures of secular liberalism and globalism, or something else?
On the most recent Magic Monday, someone brought up the idea of occult symbolism in the works of Thomas Pynchon. Now that it’s open post, does anyone care to continue that conversation w/r/t Pynchon, or John Crowley, or Sigrid Undset? I’ve made it through the first two novels of “Kristin Lavronsdottir” but I’m having trouble committing myself to read the third. It’s such a soap opera; I feel like I’m reading a Harlequin Romance or something… Just too many adjectives. Too much telling instead of showing.
Ludovic Vigor, congratulations on your forth coming book and on your new substack, which I hope to find time to read soon.
Jim Edwards @ #8, Americans are not going to go on general strike on behalf of international students, who are, fairly or not, seen as taking up positions which their kids ought to have. We. many of us, tend to think that if you go overseas, you takes your chances.
Bradley, the problem with Musk is none of us voted for him. Plus, he bought the Tesla Company, so the image of strong man entrepreneur, a la Andrew Carnegie, is fake.
Just to add to my last comment about peak oil supply/demand.
World wide supply peaked in 2018. Pretty much the only growth since then has been in the Permian, which will peak in the next couple of years. Without getting into the epidemic itself or the treatments, there was sufficient demand destruction from Covid to obscure the supply peak. Not saying there was any connection or not, but I reckon, if peak supply had been acknowledged it would have tanked the markets. Since then there has been the Russo- NATO (Ukraine) war and the strife in West Asia, which I feel has blurred the line between supply and demand and provided a perfect cover should anyone bring up peak supply
Hearing everybody’s horror stories about the US medical treatment, I feel very blessed and/or very lucky. I got a hip replacement a year ago in CA, and received courteous, professional medical care all covered by Medicare and supplement, physio therapy included.Granted the supplement is not cheap. They all took all the time I needed to answer any questions before and after the operation and were friendly and polite. Almost like we experienced treatment on different planets.
Stephen
Hi JMG (and others),
Have you ever looked at or played the RPG Unknown Armies?
It’s a modern occult RPG, one of the things I liked about it, is that of instead of squeezing in Cthulhu equivalents like so many other do, it was humans all the way down, including creating the current, previous and future universes. I’m sure that is very Faustian, but I did like that it had both responsibility and horror (humans being human after all), rather that just punting that responsibility to other forces. Until I encountered your versions of Cthulhu, etc. I was pretty bored whenever they turned up in fantasy RPGs.
Also magic being driven by human obsessions rather than some abstraction like manna.
Thanks,
Drew C
@JMG and Jeff
If I may, I should like to break my long hiatus by adding a few sword points to your discussion.
The first point I usually like to make with regards to this topic is that in the context
of historical warfare, swords were almost always carried as a sidearm, i.e. as a secondary weapon
to back up one’s main weapon, whatever that would have been (a polearm at first, then firearms later,
which were large an cumbersome), very much in the same way a contemporary soldier often
carries a pistol in addition to his rifle. A few exceptions to this were Roman legions, who
used relatively short swords in combination with large shields fighting in tight formation
(after softening up the enemy with javellins first), and the infamous Landsknechte and similar
units of the 16th century who would carry swords the size of a man, called a montante, which
works just as well if you use it as a polearm, and which sported an extra crossguard halfway up
the blade for this purpose (in keeping with the theme, they would carry a small cutting-sword
as backup).
The second point is that none of the developments Jeff asks about took the form of any linear progression
where everyone went from using sword A to suddenly sword B to suddenly sword C etc… In European martial
culture in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries the sheer amount of widely different sword designs
being operational at the same time dazzles the mind. At the same time, shields did not drop out of use,
smaller shields such as the buckler, the rotunda and the targe where in use for quite some time.
The third point to make is that grouping the rapier with smaller thrust-heavy items such as the
smallsword or (heaven help us) the foil, confuses matters more than it clarifies. This is partly
a hangover from the Errol Flynn glory days when cinema would depict 17th century rapier combat, but
with the actors and stuntmen using swords that were much smaller and lighter than actual rapiers (it’s
kind of like watching Dolph Lundgren in that movie where he handles a rocket launcher like it were a
sporting pistol, great fun movie, but still…). A real 17th century rapier is a beastly weapon, up
to 130 cm long and weighing almost twice as much as a saber. It did not come about through any distinction
between military and civillian combat, for the sake of “duelling” or “social-whatever”, and any man
fighting in i.g. a Spanish Tercio (pike and shot warfare) would favour it as his sidearm. Duels were
fought with it also, of course, for the simple reason that one normally uses whatever the sidearm du jour
is for this purpose since the sidearm is what you normally have available when not on a battlefield (at
the same time, the saber was filling the exact same role in eastern Europe, Richard Marsden has written
a good book on the subject).
Instead, how it came to be is through a long process lasting several hundred years, which started from
the basic medieval one-handed sword that you are familiar with, and went from there. As time went on, the
one-handed sword slowly became more elongated, with a thinner blade, while not actually shedding any of its
mass, only redistributing it. This gradual development ran parallel to all the other developments you both
mention, and the key to what’s going on here is that as a general rule of thumb, reach is king, and a thrust
is deadlier than a cut. As pike and shot became increasingly dominant, armour became less and less of a thing
to bother with as it slows you down and won’t stop a bullet. The redistribution of weight to make the swords
longer and pointier followed the process of gradually shedding armour, because when you don’t have to worry
about all the plate armour, you allow yourself to go all in for a design intended to maximise thrust and reach.
Hilts were increasingly designed for better hand protection as the iron gauntlets fell out of use, and by c.
1600 the old arming sword had gradually developed into the rapier, with the sidesword (spada da lato) being
the midpoint in the process.
I’ve heard the rapier described as the deadliest sword ever, and after two decades of studying swordsmanship, I’m
not at all certain how badly inclined I am to disagree. It has one major disadvantage, however: It is practically
useless on horseback, which is largely why it fell out of fashion after the Thirty Years War, when cavalry again
began to assert itself. This brought back the need for swords who can cut. This came first in the form of straight
edge swords with thicker blades, then the saber was adopted from the Polish and the Hungarians.
Getting a bit carried away with the historical details, but the point I wish to make is that duelling has very rarely
taken place in a context isolated from the prevailing conditions of warfare as a whole. The weapons and techniques normally used in duelling are those who are in general use at the given time, and do not exist in a “civilian” vacuum. One noted exception is the already mentioned smallsword, specifically designed for this purpose, and used in a somewhat narrow context. The second point is that swordsmanship was not taken any less seriously as time went on after the appearance of firearms. In some instances it was the other way around, and more often than not, if we do make a distinction between civilian and military swordsmanship, it was the latter who would often draw heavily on the former and then simplify it. An example of this is the British army finally figuring out that it needed to get serious about swordplay in the 1790s (having neglected it for way too long) and proceeding to comb the highland broadsword traditions for techniques, and then simplifying them to create the first British doctrine of saber fencing, published in 1798 by Roworth.
Polecat @ 13, Senator Van Holland is senator from Maryland, the state where Mr. Garcia’s family live. He doubtless thought he was doing his duty by a constituent, and I would like to know where was the other Maryland senator who appears to be MIA? If Mr. Garcia is a person of interest to law enforcement, where is the evidence and why has there been no arraignment? If one of us nobodies make a mistake, we are generally expected to set things right, not just get off with “Sorry, my bad.” I for one am glad to see a member of the senate who remembers his duty to HIS constituents, rather than playing to the living room in Peoria.
Hi JMG—Thank you for your excellent post last week.
You often say that nuclear power doesn’t make economic sense. I’ve been thinking about that recently (discussions here in Europe about whether to classify nuclear as green etc.), and I was wondering if you can recommend any posts/websites/other sources to read up on that.
@Scotlyn #15 – I would frame the question even wider: We have the means to continuously raise fully anonymized, time resolved data about treatments and diseases on an individual level. We have the means to continuously mirror all the data to various places and make them available to the public so that anybody can run their own analysis and ask the data so many questions. All of this is being done, right now, right here, with vast amounts of data of any kind you can imagine and with a wide range of applications. So why does someone in such a position ask such a stupid, narrow and suggestive question like “I want to discover the cause for X”? If it’s not more than this, it will be sad waste of resources and authority. I will be very surprised if this goes anywhere.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@ Jeff. Short answer: Complicated economic stuff. Happy to help confuse and annoy you. The Oakeshott typology is a good start for considering pointy things. On metal technology, De Re Metallica and De La Pirotechnia might be worth your attention. I think the halberd and the crossbow are more important than the sword with the big hint being their status as lowly, but cheering for underdogs is a habit with me… so… Three cheers for Brown Bill! Oh, and gunpowder might have had just a little influence on the decline of the sword. You might find the Tannenberg handgonne might be a worthwhile digression.
@ Jim Edwards: Good heavens! Where are you and where are you getting your information?
And many thanks to our host for the opportunity to weigh in.
Rhydlyd
JMG, I have been chuckling all afternoon thinking of the Kamala supporters, who dislike Trumps actions having a general strike. The linemen, construction workers, engineers, truck drivers etc. would ignore it and go to work as usual.
But on the fine morning when the strike went down the tumble weeds would be rolling though the NGO’s and main stream media dens. The DEI departments would be empty along with the graphic arts studios etc.
I think we would survive.
JMG,
King Charles III pissed off a lot of Brits and Christians in the past few weeks by first hosting an Islamic call to prayer at Windsor castle during Ramadan:
https://www.gbnews.com/royal/king-charles-role-islam-ramadan-windsor-castle-royal-news
and then praising Islam during the Easter holy week:
https://www.gbnews.com/royal/king-charles-islam-easter-message-royal-news
The comment sections of British social media and news websites are now filled with calls that King Charles abdicate and/or Britain become a republic, from a lot of conservatives / populists and people who were formerly monarchy supporters under Queen Elizabeth II. I’m not surprised to see this sentiment pop up in the comment sections of your open post.
The whole situation in Britain reminds me of the last time Britain had a civil war on its soil: the Glorious Revolution in 1689. King James II and his government then was under a lot of suspicion that they were going to convert Britain back to Catholicism so anti-King and anti-government forces invited the Dutch to come and invade Britain to overthrow King James II and replace him with the Protestant King William. Today, there’s a lot of suspicion that King Charles III and Kier Starmar are going to convert Britain to Islam, so I’m not surprised that there is a lot of energy building in Britain now to overthrow the King and the British government so Britain stays out of Islamic rule.
On hospitals: my mom, at 102, spent a weekend in the hospital last year following a medium sized stroke that left her showing signs of dementia for the first time. (She had still been driving and living independently at 100.) I saw the line item bill; they gave this 102 year old woman a full body CT scan that cost medicare about 19k. Money well spent? Where’s Elon? I got her out of there as quickly as I could.
@Deathcap #11: There is a DNA test – a methylation test I think it is called, try searching on it – which identifies genetic propensities for requiring more/less than average amounts of certain nutrients and/or the ability to process specific nutrients. Note that the results should be interpreted like astrology – they incline rather than compel. It identified for me that I *probably* need higher than normal levels of B vitamins and folate in my diet (which might explain my love of thickly smearing marmite on bread as a child). It also suggested that I process caffeine quickly and that its effects wear off just as quick, which matches to my experience.
There are some well known British people on social media speculating that King Charles III is a secret Muslim in the past few days:
https://xcancel.com/calvinrobinson/status/1897868029523825053
https://xcancel.com/real_shirelass/status/1897943770512986170
This is fatal to the legitimacy of the British monarchy, who is supposed to be the head of the Church of England and the Defender of the Faith, and it seems very likely that King Charles III will meet the same fate as King Charles I and King James II.
Pierre at the end of last week’s thread requested more information on EMF issues. I was out of town and too late to respond to him there, so I will provide a few links here.
My Dreamwidth page has several articles on various facets of the issue, each with its own set of links: https://sinners4diseasecontrol.dreamwidth.org/
Especially noteworthy is Panagopolous et al.’s description of one important mechanism of harm (voltage-gated ion channels). Because it is quite technical, a friend wrote a summary for the average person, which I posted, but I think it is a bit condescending. The original in all its diffculty is better: Panagopoulos DJ, Karabarbounis A, Yakymenko I, and Chrousos GP (2021) Human-made electromagnetic fields: Ion forced-oscillation and voltage-gated ion channel dysfunction, oxidative stress and DNA damage (Review). Int J Oncol 59: 92; http://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/59/5/92
The BioInitiative Report of 2012 covers a wide range of biological effects from EMFs. https://bioinitiative.org/
There is a long history of research on EMF bioeffects, but much of it was conducted in the Soviet Union so it has been easy to rationalize its suppression in the West. The US Navy commissioned one of its officers Zorach Glaser to translate some of the Soviet literature, then in 1973 decided to suppress the matter. Prof. Magda Havas acquired the typed manuscripts from Glaser a few years ago and has scanned and posted them. Her website is here: https://magdahavas.com/ And check under “Historical references” for Glaser’s work among others.
Hi John Michael,
It’s hard to know what’s going on with the oil market. Prices are err, sort of low (not historically), and all that fracking business must be hurting. Have you got any rough insights as to where we’re headed?
Cheers
Chris
About sewing your own clothes.
Lathechuck is kindly taking my dead Kenmore. It may be more valuable than it looks!
So may all those old, mechanical machines. Because they’re mechanical, a non-electronic machine can be converted into a treadle sewing machine. That is, the flywheel moves the needle because the operator works the foot treadle up and down.
The old mechanical machines were built to be maintained and to last. They may have a future.
Sadly, an electronic machine like my Babylock probably can’t be converted even though it has a flywheel. Too much electronics and not enough cogs and gears. Maybe it could just do a straight stitch but that’s valuable all by itself.
“Expecting Someone Taller” by Tom Holt is indeed a lot of fun.
It’s more fun if you know your Wagner.
I reread my copy periodically.
@erika, I am so glad to see you commenting again! And so sad to hear what happened to James. It’s just like what happened to my father a decade ago. He went in for pneumonia, they let him get severely hypoglycemic the first night (but we had evidence one relative that clearly wanted him dead may have been involved), and his organs all shut down after that. It was a miserable, slow death.
Dear JMG,
There’s lots of talk on X about how the GOP congress people aren’t doing anything to enact Trumps executive orders or agenda. Something simple like making English the official language in the USA has seen no action. Forget about something hard like immigration or censoring activist judges.
They’ve been on vacations for half the time since Jan. 20th. Speculation is that most of them are never Trumpers, so they’ll just stall till the mid-terms, and let the Dems get the majority, and then they can say it’s not their fault nothing got passed.. So The grift and fraud continues.
Do you see anyway around this? I don’t think enough MAGA congress people will be elected in two years to help. We might not be able to vote our way our of this.
@HippieViking
Not sure how long you’ve been reading the archdruid, but what exactly did you think the his saying “collapse now and avoid the rush” meant? If i may: Covid was more then a wake up call with regards to how quickly people can turn on each other and be riled up into frothing nazis, it was a financial crisis. Everything that should have been a warning sign from the 08 debacle was happening again. The first tremors were at the end of 2018 when the stock market began to have the vapors. Then powell started to lower rates early 2019, then in the summer he ended QT, then in the late summer early fall the repo market began to blow up again, just like 08. They never fixed the problems from 08. The losses that should have been felt by the upper crust of society was never felt by them, because they were bailed out and rates were set to 0% for a decade. Essentially the people who didn’t take part in the stock market mania were made to pay the tab for the greed and mistakes of others. We should have restructured the economy in 08, that is why a lot of people voted for Obama (even though it was obvious at the time he wasn’t going to do any such thing). My reaction to 2020 was very different from everyone else. It was the blow up i had been waiting for since 08, my position now is much stronger because of this different reaction then the rest of society. My question i suppose to society is: Are you really paying attention? Will you finally take responsibility for your life? Assert your own agency in the world? I can’t help but laugh a bit over people crying about 401ks and the like now. The market doubled from 2019 to 2024, did people think it was going to double again? Do people even understand why it double in the span of five years in the first place? A hint: That was the true purpose of 2020 😉
Dear JMG,
Are you familiar with the spiritual developments occurring in quantum physics? I have been following with great curiosity the works of Federico Faggin among others.
I think I read or heard somewhere that the new era we are entering will see the return of science to the realm of the spiritual and divine, if that is the case quantum physics seems to be leading the way. I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
What do you think about the mystery of the Hibernian initiation ritual? (With the 2 statues, etc)