One of the lasting traditions on this blog is that whenever a month has five Wednesdays in it, the commentariat gets to nominate and vote on the subject for the fifth Wednesday’s post. For the last several years now, one of the perennial runners-up has been a straightforward question: why is it that Adolf Hitler…
Category: Fifth Wednesday Post
The Neckless Ones: A Historical Puzzle
A longstanding tradition on this blog allows the readers to nominate and vote on a theme for the month’s last post in any month that has five Wednesdays. July being so favored, the usual lively contest unfolded five weeks ago, and the winner this time was the question of why the cultures of the modern…
Music as a Magical Language
Once again we have a month with five Wednesdays, and by time-honored custom I called on my readers to nominate and vote on their choice of topics for this post. This month, the relationship between occultism and music got the largest number of votes. It’s an intriguing topic, and one that has attracted a great…
Deindustrial Warfare: A First Reconaissance
This January has five Wednesdays, and in the usual way of this blog, the fifth Wednesday gets an essay on whatever topic the readers select by vote. As usual, it was a lively contest, but this time one of the perennial underdogs—warfare in the deindustrial age—came out on top. That didn’t surprise me greatly. The…
Surviving Catabolic Collapse: A Case Study
One of the longstanding traditions on this blog is that when there are five Wednesdays in a month, my commentariat gets to propose topics for the fifth Wednesday post, and whichever topic gets the most votes ends up becoming the theme I write about for that post. That’s landed me in a pickle or two…
The Law of Consequences
It’s a longstanding custom on this blog that whenever there are five Wednesdays in a month, the readers get to vote on what they want me to write about for the fifth Wednesday. Far more often than not the resulting contest is a lively one, and this month’s was no exception. By a significant plurality,…
On Magic, Manhood, and Masculism
One of the traditions that’s evolved over the lifetime of this blog is that whenever there are five Wednesdays in a month, the readers get to vote on what subject I write about for the fifth Wednesday post. That’s landed me in some complicated territory over the years, and this month will be no exception.…
The Perils of the Pioneer
One of the longstanding traditions of this blog is that when there are five Wednesdays in a month, the commentariat gets to propose and then vote on the subject for the fifth Wednesday post. The winner this time is the Austrian occultist Rudolf Steiner, one of the most interesting figures in twentieth century intellectual history.…
The Castle of Heroes
I really wonder sometimes how many people nowadays realize just how drastically the great occult revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has been scrubbed from the officially approved histories of our time. It’s hard to discuss the matter without bringing in words like “censorship.” Whole chapters of the cultural history of the…
The Subnatural Realm: A Speculation
One of the great ironies of the history of ideas is the way that cultures and civilizations go out of their way not to follow up on their greatest intellectual achievements. Look at the trajectory of every great culture, and you’ll find that the supreme breakthroughs of its thinkers don’t happen at the beginning of…