[Main Blog Post] The Open-Minded Materialist's Gentle Introduction to Spirituality

[jprussell]

I've written my first "full" blog post of the year and posted it to my main blog here. If you have any thoughts or ways I might make it better, kindly let me know by commenting here or dropping me an email!

Comments

Similar Background

[davidtrammel]

Good post Jeff. I read it once this morning over coffee and will definitely read it for more depth tonight. I look forward to more from you. I am restarting my own shamanism blog after a few years of hiatus and trying to put together my thoughts and assumptions as well.

I have a huge scientific background, having studied both physics and anthropology in college. Though I got exposed to the magical side of life a few years earlier and kept my interest in it. I think my acceptance that the World has both a scientific side and a spiritual side is still strong because at the time I was learning both, Quantum Mechanics was the hot topic in physics. When you see some of the things the top people in that field write, you come away with the feeling that what is believed in spirituality and magic isn't anywhere as weird. Now that the theory of "E8" and Quantum gravity is gaining traction in physics it's getting even weirder, lol.

Keep writing. I think that you can come to a worldview that accepts both material science and the spiritual as equally valid and complementary.

[causticus]

Hey Jeff, a lot of thought-provoking points there. As someone who doesn't "need" this guide per-se, I don't really have much to add, though I should say that I agree Stoicism might be a good entry-point for materialists; though with the caveat that a hardcore belief in "progress" will probably be a massive roadblock when it comes to grasping core Stoic teachings, much less putting those teachings to practice. As you also allude to, Westernized Buddhism seems to attract a fair number of them too, but any deeper dive into authentic Buddhism might face the same sort of cognitive dissonance issues for progressives. IIRC, I slowly started shedding my old progressive beliefs about 8 years ago and I believe this has greatly helped me in adopting a more "enchanted" way of looking at the world.

One thing that JMG has mentioned a few times is the likely fact that a lot of human souls in incarnation right now are likely too "immature" for any serious spiritual teachings, due to the "mental sheath" not being very well developed as of yet; so the "job" of a soul like this in their current incarnation might simply be to learn the rudimentary lessons of material life in a human body. Beyond various basic (and probably dogmatic) religion, such a soul will probably not seek out much in the way of spirituality, thus materialism might come as a default worldview. But it seems the target audience for what you wrote might be someone who has developed their mental sheath enough to commit to a specific intellectual position, in this case skeptical materialism. Perhaps they could be seen as a transition point between materialism and a more refined view of reality. Anyway, I think you present here a serious of compelling strategies for how to break the ice, so to speak. I will be very curious to see where and how you further develop these ideas!

[cs2]

A good read! I will keep this article in mind in case any of the materialists in my life ever hint at seeking. I think Stoicism is a great entry point, not just in self-reflection and examining how to live but specifically how to live in an era of decline. Aurelius ruled some 250 years before Rome was sacked. I think of that whenever the decline feels pressing. I remind myself that it might be hundreds of years before things really turn over, and in the meantime I have my life to live. I've also visited one of the military cities where he wrote Meditations which was super cool. Anyway thanks for sharing!

Re: Similar Background

[jprussell]

Thank you very much for the kind words! I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on shamanism, as it's a field I think is likely rather relevant to my Germanic, Woden-focused interests, but there's a lot of mularkey on it out there, and it's not something JMG has had anything to do with. So a credible source would be most welcome!

Thank you for the encouragement! After reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem I tracked down some of the books on quantum physics in his list of inspirations and read them, but as a Classics and Ancient History B.A. with an MBA, I lacked much of the mathematical and scientific grounding to much follow. Since learning the occult philosophy of "everything has consciousness", I have found myself thinking back to Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics by Henry Stapp, which I more-or-less followed and found intriguing.

Also, to be clear, I am in no way "anti-science", and I agree that it is an incredibly useful tool that tells us much about the world that we wouldn't know without it. I just don't think it is well-suited to the bottom-most level of qualitative questions about values (such as "what is best in life?" "is this discovery good, bad, or some blend? what should we do with it?") - I don't think you can arrive at answers to those empirically.

[jprussell]

That's a good point on the baggage from the religion of progress. I remember when I first read JMG's "The Next 10 Billion Years", I found the points he made about it intellectually compelling, but emotionally depressing. As you said, it took a while to let go of the idea that material life is steadily getting better, and admitting otherwise would be the admission of our failure as a species. For me, it was made a lot easier when I found other things (like spiritual and religious practice) that gave me the sense of purpose I was looking for in much stronger doses and in a way far less reliant on what society/politics/technology could make happen.

That's also interesting about "immature" souls, I hadn't thought about that consciously while writing. Instead, my goal was to be as helpful as I could to as wide a range of "willing to try something new" as I could manage. Obviously, there will be large swathes of folks who don't even bother with these kinds of existential questions (or not consciously, anyway), lots who are comfortable with more mainstream answers, and some amount who are proudly secure in skeptical materialism.

Your contention that skeptical materialism might be what folks with a moderately developed mental sheath find their way into would also jive with the idea of the "initiation of the nadir", which I think comes from Fortune. The idea is that a soul has to get all the way down to the nadir of the material plane in its involution before it can begin its evolution back up. Adamantly believing that the material world is all there is and closing yourself off to what the wider cosmos might offer sounds like it would be one way to qualify for that.

[jprussell]

Wow, that's a really good parallel with Aurelius - I don't think I had yet put him in a similar point on the decline as where we are, but it lines up pretty well (he was only a couple generations after the peak of the empire, and everything still looked pretty good, after all!). Definitely worth some "meditations" ;)

[k_a_nitz]

A great intro!
I was always a bit dubious about Seneca, in that I tend to think twice about following advice on how to live your life from people who committed suicide (even though he was ordered to by the emperor).

re: "The other big flaw in a lot of self-help is that it's mostly about solving problems."
So true. I notice you didn't bring up New Thought as an entry point, though to be honest it has a lot (but not all) in common with most modern self-help. I could never really get into it because it starts with the question of "What do you want?" then gives you the practices to achieve that. But my issue is more that I don't really know what I want, and answering that question as: "What I really want is to know what I really want" has a recursive quality that just does not work for me.
I have also looked at one of the surviving correspondence courses of a hermetic bent, but the first 'lesson' included signing an oath that you would implement to the fullest of your ability everything they taught you. Which, coming from a very Northern view of oaths, struck me as a very dangerous thing to do given that I did not know at that stage what they were going to teach! (Or that could just be my paranoid side ;-)
So at the moment I'm working through a German book by Karl Spiesberger that is focussed on the simple practice of runic yoga. Essentially physical work with relaxation and breathing initially, followed by accompanying visualisations. And supplementing it with reading widely (plus experimenting with divination methods.)

Time May Work Both Ways

[davidtrammel]

While Greer has mentioned the idea that due to the huge number of humans now on the planet that some lesser-developed souls have gotten an early bump up to humanhood, and for that reason, we're seeing a lot of the chaos we are seeing, he has also said (on Ecoshopia) that it's possible that we can reincarnate into lives which overlap in the linear time of the physical plane.

I've read some lofty math and science articles that suggest that Time has no mathematical reason to flow one way. So maybe we are seeing some of both.

Personally I believe in reincarnation as a core assumption of my world view. That we begin as sparks out of the Well of Souls, which incarnate in the bodies of the least microbe, and over time our souls learn all that it needs to to understand life.

I have also come to the belief that what we see as spirits and as the gods, are actually more evolved souls, filling in as mentors. That they too are in the process of evolving and will leave their roles and move on to the higher planes. This has lead to me coming to the theory that godhood is a job title and not a name. That something like Hekate or even Jesus, is a collective of souls. Perhaps a soul corporation?

More later, I have to get off to work now.

Re: Time May Work Both Ways

[jprussell]

Huh, interesting. I've had some other commenters on Ecosophia and on Magic Monday point out that spiritual entities might not interact with time the same way we do, and I've been very, very shallowly exposed to the idea that ever since Einstein at least, physics has suggested that time (might?) be a product of our perception rather than an intrinsic fact of external reality. I am in no way qualified to evaluate such claims, so I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

As for reincarnation, I'm currently accepting it as a good working hypothesis, but not one that I have much personal evidence for (no past life memories or the like). It keeps striking me how it keeps showing up in very different religious traditions around the world, in weird and specific enough ways to make me think there's something to it, but for now, it's more a belief I take on faith/the credibility of folks I trust. At a minimum, I'm meditating on things as if it is true and seeing what comes of that.

On Gods as collectives, also very interesting. I don't have a super well-developed view here, but my working hypothesis (heavily based on what I've gotten from JMG's writings) is that "Gods" as identified by humans are some combination of an astral vehicle/body and an animating spirit that is bigger/smarter/more wise than a human. I suspect that the astral vehicle is somewhat co-created between worshippers and the God involved (this vehicle would be the "job title"), and it is then animated by beings that for one reason or another find it suitable (personality? responsibility? shift system?). This view certainly allows for different beings to animate the same vehicle at different times, but I hadn't really considered that it might be closer to a "rotating" role like who brings snacks to the meeting rather than a sequential role, like "the King of England".

All interesting to think about and worthy of further study and meditation!

[jprussell]

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.

Re: Time May Work Both Ways

[davidtrammel]

Reincarnation is something that I came to from a religious and ethical slant. I wasn't that church-going as a child, but I did get a firm moral package from my upbringing. I could never though, reconcile my belief in a loving god and the idea that it would send us to Hell for life-choices we had no control over.

That I personally, who came from a loving mid-class family with plenty of breaks in life would go to Heaven while a child born into a broken poor family who ends up in a gang young and then prison for the things they had to do to survive in that life, would go to hell.

I came to the conclusion that each life, the good and the bad, are just lessons on a path to true enlightenment of what it means to be human. So the murderer is just as blessed as the saint. Doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to be better though.

What's the quote? If god allows evil when they could stop it, they are a sadist. If they can't stop evil, then they aren't omnipotent. I think evil is a feature of the system, not a bug. You can't understand being human without understanding the evilest things we do.

Once you accept that reincarnation happens you have to decide just how it works. Some say only humans reincarnate and then only as humans, but that didn't make any sense to me. Too many animals display "human" feelings and characteristics.

And it didn't make sense that if all life reincarnated, then there was some special class (the gods) that stood out from that. So since we would want someone to help us make sense of our lessons from each life, each time we died, and that the spirits and gods seemed the logical choice for that, then wouldn't they too have had the experiences?

I'm loosely pagan in that I believe in multiple gods, but I'm leaning toward not considering them "gods". I still though, visit and comment on multiple pagan and heathen groups and a recurring comment from people who have intimate encounters with the spirits is that one person may find that their god likes chocolate as an offering, while another person finds theirs doesn't. Both are the same deity. I've come to the conclusion that who they are dealing with are minor aspects of that "god" and since we have a working example of such collectives here, in the form of corporations, I think spirits have the same.

Now it may be that each collective is led by an old and learned CEO, who may be an ancestral spirit but for my practical experiences I doubt I'll end up ever meeting it.

I do think that there is a plane or state of existence above what the spirits and gods inhabit, and at that place/point, there is an Omni-godhood we will all end up at. Perhaps at that point, our essence will just get recycled back into the Wheel of Life to restart the process all over.

Re: Time May Work Both Ways

[jprussell]

I shared many of your concerns with the "problem of evil" as applied to Abrahamic monotheism, and I agree that reincarnation neatly solves that and other ethical/conceptual issues, as well as being consistent with the reported experiences of folks from around the globe and throughout time, as far as we can tell. All of that is much of why it's my current working hypothesis (that and I'm meditating my way through courses of study that ask me to consider it as part of a philosophical system, but then "to train the mind, not inform it" and all that).

That being said, I also take seriously JMG's idea that humans just aren't that smart, and making sense to us is not a requirement for how things necessarily work in the cosmos. That's the main thing that keeps me from feeling (for now) like "yup, reincarnation is definitely how it works". But I'm still pretty early on this journey!

As for collectives and the like, I'm currently grappling with what the Dolmen Arch calls the "One Life" - the thought that all of being is a manifestation of a unified life/consciousness. It teaches that each bit (like us) is differentiated, but also fundamentally linked, and that spiritual enlightenment consists mostly of experiencing and understanding that link. If this is right, then it implies that boundaries of "individualness" might be perceived very differently by beings farther along their spiritual path.

I haven't gotten very far with this particular line of thinking, but one crude way to put it might be that if "Thor" is a job title, with a collective of spiritual beings who all fulfill its functions as a group, maybe the reason they're all doing so is that they share a certain amount of "Thorness", which is a more fundamental kind of similarity than just "have similar strengths and tendencies" the way a group of humans in a team effort would be described as sharing traits.

But again, I don't know! I'm sucking up occult philosophy a lot faster than my meditation and experiences can keep up, so I'm pretty firmly in the "let's pull out a map and speculate wildly" phase of things.

Very much appreciate the discussion, by the way.

Re: Time May Work Both Ways

[davidtrammel]

I loosely look at the way the World works having "Assumptions" and having "Working Theories". Assumptions are just that. Core principles that I take on a bit of faith that make sense. Working theories are my way of organizing the things I see happening in that World. Both though, I don't have set in stone. I try to constantly re-evaluate and re-imagine them whenever new info shows up. I figure I won't know for sure until I die.

As for Thor-ness, yes I feel like that is a good assumption. The spirits who take jobs as mentors do so because they have an affinity for the attitudes of that deity or spirit. I figure it's just one more experience that we all need to go thru to know what we need to ascend to the Spiritual plane and join with the collective godhood. I figure that we also do time as local spirits of place (like of a spring, lake or forest) and as protector spirits of some of the other life (like of cat, owl or bear).

BTW, I'll give you a shout once I get the shaman blog reorganized. I've got a year's worth or so of old posts, and a bunch of new ones that I want to write, to get together into a coherent narrative before I go public with it. I like to mix thought posts like this one, with practical tutorials on skills and craftwork.

I'm planning on taking Jason Miller's seven-month-long Hekate course this Summer, so I should have some interesting thoughts to share when that starts too.

Re: Time May Work Both Ways

[jprussell]

Wonderful, I look forward to it! Shamanism is an approach to practice that I am intrigued by and think might be something I need to explore at some point, but I want to get a solid grounding in basic magical practices before I start focusing on working with spirits.

[deketemoisont]

(I might've been your modal target - and in fact have not fully "recovered" - were I not a long-time Archdruid Report reader.)

"Here's my take: look for writers that you find credible about something, and work on holding off judgment on the weirder, woo-woo-ier stuff they talk about."

That's of course how I started reading occultism, but it only really reminds of me of 1 person. Do you know any occultist other than JMG out there that writes extensively and excellently on non-occult subjects that I missed?

If you liked sam[]zdat, you might want to check hotelconcierge.tumblr.com out.

[jprussell]

Thanks very much for the comment and the recommendation - Hotel Concierge sounds familiar, but I don't think I ever checked it out before.

As for your question, unfortunately, so far JMG is the only full-on occultist I know of who writes so much and so well on other topics. Not writing, but I've found the Hermitix podcast pretty good, but it mostly focuses on spirituality, rather than other topics, but I'm enjoying the currently ongoing series on Lewis Mumford's Technics & Civilization.

I've heard that Rudolf Steiner wrote very extensively on very many topics, and that much of it is worth looking into, but I've only read one short book by him so far, and that was purely on occultism.

Otherwise, I have generally found that recommendations from his commentariat have a pretty high hit rate of "non-mainstream, but not coo-coo for cocoa puffs". Some writers more on the Archdruid Report side of things with spiritual leanings that I've found interesting and helpful, even if sometimes needing to be taken with salt, are wrathofgnon (on twitter), Paul Kingsnorth, and Christopher Alexander. I've also found Jordan Peterson to have good insights into mythology and psychological/spiritual issues, and I think most of what he has to say on other matters is at least carefully considered and coming from a coherent worldview, but I think he's deep in the mythology of progress and doesn't quite know it. He also doesn't delve into the really weird side of the spiritual world (like the occult).

I'll definitely share if I find anyone else, though!

[jprussell]

Ah, wait, I started reading through the archives, and I realized why the name was familiar: I read "The Stanford Marshmallow Prison Experiment". I think it must have been linked either from sam[]zdat or Don't Worry About the Vase.

[deketemoisont]

Yeah, sam[]zdat linked to Hotel Concierge at least once. A series on Technics & Civilization does sound appealing, but my podcast consumption has been approaching 0. Steiner: yeah, need to read something by him - unfortunately, not someone I can e-mail! (Which book?)

"recommendations from his commentariat" - JMG's, not Steiner's? :P Yes, the recommendations there are very good fairly often, but not much on other occultists; I wasn't aware about how close to occultism Christopher Alexander might get, and I thought wrathofgnon (whose Substack I read) was some kind of pseudo-conservative, not-that-interesting, Christian, religion-wise?

The ones I could mention that come closest (none scratches JMG by volume; I might consider arguing some have written at similar quality sometimes) - and I do imagine you already heard about a bunch:

- Ceisiwr Serith's site and YouTube channel have material on Indo-European culture(s); also, he's (surprisingly for a Neopagan?) a US patriot I thought had some good stuff to say on that;
- I'd say Don Webb (former Temple of Set leader, only in books), Ivy Bromius ( circlethrice.com ), and Jason Miller all have written good personal/social/professional advice, that you'd need no interest in occultism to appreciate (Jason got a favorable review of Financial Sorcery from a personal finance blog with no occult aspect), but I think Ivy's the only one with a blog containing articles you could point to someone with no occult interest (assuming they don't run from a sidebar containing "Magic");
- (sometime Ecosophia commenter) Kenaz Filan did the above, plus some cultural commentary I found correct if not that hard to find elsewhere;
- Gordon White, IMO, is the only one with a fairly extensive body of non-occult writing - I haven't been reading him of late, but I did like a bunch of his articles;
- John R. King IV's ( imperialarts.livejournal.com ) blogging is always occult, but I consider it just about always relevant to non-occult activity (since he's known for talking about *evoking demons*, I figure I should link to https://imperialarts.livejournal.com/13280.html and https://imperialarts.livejournal.com/18341.html ).

(Of those, *maybe* White, Bromius, and Serith are presentable to people without occult interests ...)

[jprussell]

1) On Hotel Concierge - I've been chugging through the archive since your recommendation, and the comparison to sam[]zdat was apt - a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses, and insights in similar areas. I just finished reading The Tower, and yeah, that's gonna have to get integrated into my thinking about aesthetics.

2a) Yeah, I agree that I've been a bit disappointed on finding other contemporary occultists via JMG and his commentariat, except sometimes in the form of book recommendations - such as JMG's recent link to the Humoral Herbal, which looks very promising, but is not written in an area I have time to take on right now.

2b) On Christopher Alexander, wrathofgnon, and similar, don't really get much into religion, much less occultism, but both are examples of folks who aren't afraid to bring values, and sometimes even "spirituality" into the discussion. The closest Christopher Alexander gets to directly writing about the spiritual is his four part book series "The Nature of Order", which I have but have only glanced through. I don't know if he would have had a literally spiritual explanation, or a fundamentally materialist one that shook out to "acting spiritual". As for wrathofgnon, he approvingly quotes G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis and openly admires cathedrals, so I suspect he's some flavor of Tradcath, or at least appreciates what they're about, but he doesn't tend to get directly into spiritual matters, more just adjacent, by talking about beauty and quoting folks who make more explicit connections, like Sir Roger Scruton.

3) I read The Way of Initiation by Steiner, as recommended by JMG as a good starting point. I also listened to a bunch of Hermitix podcast episodes interviewing folks interested in Steiner (one academic who wrote his disertation about him and one guy at the less-fundamentalist end of active Anthroposophy).

4a) Ah, I have Cesiwr Serith's A Book of Pagan Prayer and have gotten some use there, so I'll have to check out his other work.

4b) All three of these are new to me, so thank you!

4c) I recognize Kenaz Filan's name, but haven't checked out any of his own writings

4d) I enjoyed the "Rune Soup" interview with JMG and branched out to a few others, such as him interviewing Rune Rasmussen (Nordic Animism) and Tyson Yunkaporta (Sand Talk). He sounded like someone capable of having a reasonable disagreement about this kind of stuff, which is itself a rare and valuable skill

4e) Thanks for the specific links, I enjoyed those and from them King sounds reasonable and like he's focused on the right things, which I wouldn't have expected if you or someone else had just said "oh, he writes about the Goetia".

5) ::smacks forehead:: I completely forgot to mention the very person who first sent me down the rabbit hole of "you make a lot of sense in other areas, and now you're talking about magic?" which was Eric S. Raymond, hacker of the old school. Unsurprisingly, most of his stuff is about tech, but he's also an enthusiastic libertarian and gun nut. More surprisingly, he apparently does/used to engage in Neopagan/Wiccan rituals from a "this is all just a non-obvious way to get certain things out of my subconscious" materialist standpoint. He has written about that far less than his other subjects, but he has this FAQ and this essay which for a long time served as my beachhead in the world of the occult, though my approach has moved rather far from here over the years.

[deketemoisont]

Forgot to say: I do see a lot to like about Peterson. Barely started 12 Rules for Life, intend to take a not-so-short look at Maps of Meaning to decide whether I should read all of it someday, know mostly his class videos - man, he used to be HAPPY.

"I've been chugging through the archive since your recommendation, (...) and yeah, that's gonna have to get integrated into my thinking about aesthetics."

I'm pretty sure that's a serious contender for nicest thing that could be said to me. Thank you. (And here I don't see/mean "nice" as an insult!)

Regarding JMG's commentariat - there's the obvious factor that it disproportionately has people who began occultism thanks to him (but that includes me, and I got some familiarity with a substantial number of authors not particularly linked to him), but, if I may: I at least 99% believe JMG when he says he doesn't want a cult and took (partially working) measures against it, but there's definitely a non-0 amount of echoing going on (unavoidable with someone who did so much, I'm pretty sure). I seldom mention other occult books on Magic Monday, even about subjects that are asked about specifically, for lack of qualification.

The Humoral Herbal is great - I need to get me some pots (it's not only herbalism, of course). I was about to ask you whether you'd read The Nature of Order. Thanks for confirming I didn't miss something *big* about wrathofgnon. King IV definitely's had his screw-ups, but he does seem to me to go in the right direction.

I got the ESR article link from your article already, in case I hadn't already read him; what I don't remember is whether I first read Dancing With The Gods before or after a large amount of Archdruid Report - not sure what I'd have thought before (JMG's history of ideas was *well* within the things I thought I could evaluate myself, and I think more closely linked to his occultism than ESR's to his hacking). And it's just the one article and the FAQ - should I go ask him to write an occult book?

[jprussell]

1) On Peterson: I had vaguely heard of Maps of Meaning, I think maybe via ESR, then a friend shared a "clean your room" video, and then I started hearing about all the controversy, so I did a deep dive - read all of Maps of Meaning, taking pretty extensive notes, listened to every lecture and podcast he had put out by that point (2018-2019-ish?). I found him very helpful at the time, and these days I see him as most helpful as a) a reasonably good intro to/map of Jung and Jungian thinking, and b) a good source for highlighting links between big, influential thinkers like Nietzsche and Jung, and between the sciencey-er side of psychology and the humanities-er side. 12 Rules for Life was alright, but I had already listened to so many of his lectures by the time I read it that not much was new, and I haven't read Beyond Order yet. I think Maps of Meaning is likely far more interesting/helpful for making sense of how psychology works, but it's also a lot less concrete, and already knowing what he's on about makes a lot of it easier to digest. From an extremely uncharitable review a friend of mine shared with me, I realized that a lot of the description/diagrams are so simplified/schematic as to be not-actually-helpful unless you have a pretty good feel for a lot of the complexity they're pointing to. For example, reducing all of "Chaos" to "Good Mother and Devouring Mother" doesn't do much on its own, but gives valuable insights once you know what those mean and start applying them automatically to feminine figures in myths and stories.

Incidentally, a previous draft of this post had a lot more of my "how I got here" in it, and included the fact that Peterson's Genesis lectures were 1) incomprehensible to me when I tried to watch them as the first thing of his I had seen, and then 2) a very useful step in my process of realizing "oh, maybe there's some there there when it comes to religion". And oh yeah, seeing happy, jokey JBP was pretty weird after some of his portrayal as angriest man on the planet or his own grimness in some more recent stuff.

2) Well, I ended up reading every post in the archive of Hotel Concierge instead of doing other work I should have been doing, and my assessment stands - a lot there that is consonant in places with other thinking I have found helpful, a lot of helpfully different takes on stuff I care about, and a handful of "huh, I never thought of that" moments, so thank you again for the recommendation. I'm just sad he hasn't posted anything new in so long.

3) On JMG's commentariat, yeah, you're definitely right there. Even if everyone involved were utterly devoid of hero-worship, sycophantism, in-group policing, or the other shitty behaviors of cults of personality (and as you say, it very much is free to a blessed degree of such things), there's a lack of other vectors of potentially relevant information, and that's sad. Because even if all the information shared is great, there's still got to be vast swathes of interesting stuff from people and fields that just happen not to have noticed JMG or vice versa.

4) Oh, hah, I hadn't forgotten to mention that influence from ESR after all! And I'm not sure on ESR writing an occult book - if you had asked me 5 or 6 years ago I would have said "HELL YES!" I think if you do a site-search of his blog for a few juicy search terms like "neopagan", "ritual", "zen", or "meditation" and then look through the comment threads, he's maybe said a touch more on his thinking, but the basic impression I get is that he is firmly in the little-r "rationalist" camp, has scorn for "mysterians" (folks who believe in non-material causes that affect material reality), and evaluates any "mystic practices" (his seemingly preferred term) on their compatibility with that worldview. Further, he's made a few comments that make it seem like they're not a huge focus for him - he does zazen for its clarity and serenity, occasional neopagan rituals for the emotional fulfillment and bonding, and that's most of what I can remember him talking about. The adjacent topics where I think he might be most interesting would be his epistemology and his experience with altered awareness in martial arts.

[deketemoisont]

1) "an extremely uncharitable review a friend of mine shared with me" - Do you remember how to find it?

"Incidentally, a previous draft of this post had a lot more of my "how I got here" in it" - And why did you go to the trouble of cutting it? :) (OK, it may've been too personal.)

"happy, jokey JBP (...) angriest man on the planet" - I saw the first first - and his largely female students (or at least the ones laughing were largely female, but we know how it is in psychology these days) laughing at his jokes - clearly a man who despises women and beats his wife and daughter every day, you know!

2) "Well, I ended up reading every post in the archive of Hotel Concierge instead of doing other work I should have been doing" - Sorry for that part!

"I'm just sad he hasn't posted anything new in so long." - Same here.

3) "there's still got to be vast swathes of interesting stuff from people and fields that just happen not to have noticed JMG or vice versa." - I think that for other occultists using the Internet in English, to not have noticed JMG at all is pretty hard; but for us to get something through his blogs, it'd be a matter of him noticing the others (much easier for him not to, maintaining large conversations with his own readers and preferring to read dead people), or his readers (about which I commented previously).

4) "the basic impression I get is that he is firmly in the little-r "rationalist" camp, has scorn for "mysterians" (folks who believe in non-material causes that affect material reality), and evaluates any "mystic practices" (his seemingly preferred term) on their compatibility with that worldview" - You think I wouldn't take a book on magic from someone with that perspective (sure, not my ideal these days) as smart and unconventional as he is?

"they're not a huge focus for him" - Yes, that's true; however, he supposedly invented some Wicca stuff back then, some of which he might still use sometimes? (A Wiccan I'd listen to! OK, JMG's commentariat has at least 2 - ritaer and Deborah Bender.)

"epistemology and his experience with altered awareness in martial arts" - Well, and if *that* is the non-hacking subject he could be convinced to write a book about ... it's not as if Meditations on Violence isn't one of my (even on a very short list) favorite books.

[jprussell]

1) It was "The Intellectual We Deserve" from Current Affairs, a quick search of my text message history tells me.

2) Naw, that's fine, I think it was worth it

3) Fair enough, though I've adopted something of a heuristic like "folks I'm interested in probably aren't as well-known as I assume" - obviously that applies less within their particular field, but sometimes I'm surprised, like I meet a science fiction fan that's never heard of Neal Stephenson.

4) Yeah, I'd also still be thrilled to read such a book, I just reckon I'd find it far less helpful than I would have five or six years ago.

And hah! Meditations on Violence is great. I don't know how short a list of favorite books it would go on, and I haven't read it in like 10 years, but I remember it being great. I'd also pre-order an ESR book on such topics the moment I could.

[deketemoisont]

Thanks for the link!