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[personal profile] lukedodson was kind enough to have me on his podcast, and it's just posted. Here's Luke's blurb for it:

Jeff Russell on growing up in Texas; religiosity and rationalism; studying classics; serving in the military; BAP and the online vitalists; John Michael Greer's work; psychedelic dabblings; spiritual breakthroughs; grief; the limits of rational thought; ecstatic states; remaining sober while others are tripping; adopting a spiritual practice; rationalism as defence against false psychedelic awakening; Western esotericism; the Dolmen Arch's 'Druid-flavoured Neoplatonism'; epistemic humility; monism and nondualism; the Seed of Yggdrasil; packaging nondualism for the professional-managerial class; using the mind effectively rather than nullifying it; Ian McGilchrist and bicameral mind theory; Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards; learning to acknowledge the complexity; mindfulness as mindlessness; effective leadership as simply giving a shit; the work of figuring what one wants; 'scrum' in software development; a new approach to corporate retreats; coaching and the potential of financial incentives deforming one's work.


As you can see, it was a rather wide-ranging conversation, and I greatly enjoyed it.

If that sounds appealing, you can find it here.
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Now I can truly say "it is done!" I put together an overview of my thoughts on The Seed of Yggdrasill, both to synthesize what I put in my chapter-by-chapter reviews for my own thinking, and to make something a little more friendly for those who just want to get a feel for whether the book would be worth their time.

Even more than usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for coming on this journey with me!
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We've finally made it! I've written up my thoughts on the last chapter of The Seed of Yggdrasill by Maria Kvilhaug!

This one's one of the longer ones, as the chapter was longish, sparked a lot of thoughts, and was the last one, so I felt called to wrap things up a bit. That being said, I think I'll likely do one more post on the book: an overall rundown of what I think is most important to know about the whole book (both the most useful stuff and what to watch out for). We'll see. Anyhow, thanks for sticking with me through this project which ended up bigger and longer than expected.
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I took a bit of time off from The Seed of Yggdrasill before tackling the last, fairly long chapter in order to read a book I thought might help me in my Heathen Rosary project: Spellcraft by Robin Skelton.
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Happy New Year! For my first post of the year, I return to The Seed of Yggdrasill to talk about the next-to-last chapter. This one is admirably focused, which is a nice contrast with my complaints about much of the rest of the book.

We'll knock this out soon so I can get back to reading other books!
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Though I mentioned it last time, I wanted to give a full post to the boast I am making for 2024.

Happy New Year, everybody!
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Second to last post of the year! I take a look back at how some of my personal work has gone and make an announcement for a big project for the coming year.
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We are getting so very, very close to the end of Seed of Yggdrasill, and I'm pretty glad about that. I know, I know, I likely carry on too much about how much of a slog it is, especially since I found some good stuff in this antepenultimate chapter. Some mostly repetitive good stuff, but good stuff nonetheless. Check it out and let me know what you think.
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A shorter one this time, as I continue to work my way through Kvilhaug's big book. This chapter was basically two transcripts of a youtube videos with an intro, so it's not the most informationally dense we've dealt with, but there's a couple of interesting ideas. Check it out here.

I'm also trying something new: a mailing list. Basically, DIY substack. There's a link in the new post, as well as at the top of my Webstead, to sign up, but it's literally just an email to me saying "sign me up," so if you'd like to get my blog posts as emails, you can use one of those links or just let me know in a comment here.
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My sister in law got married yesterday, in Stockholm, so I am in the midst of some whirlwind international travel (we just got here the night before last and we're heading home early tomorrow morning). I'm also recovering from a properly festive, and late, evening, but I did take advantage of an unexpectedly long layover on the way here to knock out a quick post on a fairly short chapter of The Seed of Yggdrasill: The Way of the Wand Witch.

Since things for me will be literally up in the air the next day or so, I may take a minute to respond to any comments, but they're as welcome as always.
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Back to our series on Maria Kvilhaug's Seed of Yggdrasill, this time reviewing the chapter on Death and Resurrection.
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Tree of Woe's great posts on strategy have been very interesting and worth reading. Going through them has called to mind my own thoughts on strategy, which you can find here.
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This week I got my copy of JMG's latest book The Secret of the Five Rites, and I've written up my thoughts on it here. The short version: like every JMG book, it's easy and enjoyable to read, informative, and covers a weird topic. What I was most pleasantly surprised by was how well it works as an introduction to what was going on in the occult "scene" in the late 19th and early 20th century. As always, I'd love to hear what you think.
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As we return to glorious standard time, where the sun actually reflects what time of day it is at this time of year, I have found myself with a nagging sinus headache all day, which hot compresses, eye drops, and copious hydration have done little to help. I blame Daylight Savings, and that brings me to the topic for this short placeholder post: Daylight Savings Delenda Est.

For those who were not the beneficiaries of a classical education, that is a play on Carthago Delenda Est, which is a shortening of Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, a quote that means "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed," which was something Cato the Elder used to end every single speech he gave in the senate between the end of the Second Punic War and the beginning of the Third.

Anyway, I doubt I feel as strongly about Daylight Savings as Cato felt about the Punic Wars (or about anything - dude was intense), but I do think it's actually, legitimately bad and harmful. When it starts, kids have to walk to school or wait for buses in the dark. The shock of losing an hour of sleep and hard rebooting your circadian rhythm apparently causes all kinds of health problems, including a not-proven-to-be-causal correlation with an increase in heart attacks. Perhaps most importantly, but least directly, the very idea that we can and should unmoor time from the rhythms of the sun on which it is based is technocratic, modernist hubris of the worst kind.

All that being said, I'm a reasonable man. While my preference is definitely for eliminating Daylight Savings and going back to having standard time all year round, I am willing to settle for any solution that eliminates the time changes back and forth. If there's more political will around making it Daylight Savings year round and eliminating Standard Time, fine, I won't fight you too hard. Let's just get back to where the association of clock time and amount of daylight changes the way it should - slowly, day-by-day, as the seasons turn.

And so, Daylight Savings Delenda Est!
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This week I keep on with my review of Maria Kvilhaug's The Seed of Yggdrasill, this time talking about Ragnarok and what follows.
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After a rather busy weekend featuring two children's parties, one adult party, pet care, and watching the kids for a girls' night out, I am again late in getting my post up this (now past) week, but here it is, my take on the next chapter of Kvilhaug's Seed of Yggdrasill.
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A shorter post this week, I talk a bit about what I miss about mindfulness meditation and the two techniques I turn to these days to get the kind of break from stress and anxiety I used to look for from mindfulness meditation. If you have any ways that you look for stillness amidst the chaos of life, I more than welcome hearing about it!
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Tomorrow's the fifth anniversary of my mom dying, and I thought I'd share some thoughts on who she was and what she meant to me.
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A shorter chapter from Kvilhaug this week, on a myth that's especially important to me: the abduction and return of Idun. Here are my thoughts.
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If you've ever bumped up against the Church of the Subgenius, then you know "slack." I give my own take on what it means to me in my latest post.

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Jeff Russell

March 2025

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