Jeff Russell

On Seneca: in his defense, Nero basically said "I'll torture your wife and all your friends until you do." For me, that's much closer to "fell on a grenade for his squad" than "took a bunch of pills to end it all." I give Socrates a similar pass.

As for New Thought and self-help, I have a very simple reason for not saying much about New Thought: I don't know much about it! Basically, what I've learned about it has mostly been through JMG and a few of his recommended readings, and that has been enough to show me how a lot of the modern self-help movement is watered down/commodified New Thought. I'm pretty sure that some of the practices I've picked up as part of occult practice (like affirmations) are pretty firmly New Thought, but that's not the context I'm familiar with, whereas I spent years reading stacks of modern self help books.

I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on runic yoga, especially if you have any experience with other body practices! I learned about it back when I first read Futhark, which was firmly in my "this is all just a way to communicate with my subconscious" phase, so I looked at the movements, thought "that doesn't look like a good workout" and ignored the esoteric side of things.

If you do decide a more structured spiritual course would be helpful, I can say that none of JMG's works require oaths to do things you don't yet know about/understand, and the ones I've worked with (The Druidry Handbook + Druid Magic Handbook + Dolmen Arch) have been quite congenial to pair with my own idiosyncratic Germanic religious practice. On the other hand, if you find Hermetic/Golden Dawn-flavored stuff appealing, and you'd like to keep things centered on Northern/Germanic material, Gullindagan's work on the "Heathen Golden Dawn" is pretty far along and might be worth checking out.