Hermeticulture

Protesters marching on November 15, 2015 after the shooting of Jamar Clark by Minneapolis Police. Image credit:  Fibonacci Blue on Flickr . I live in the Minneapolis 4th Precinct, where for the last two weeks protesters have been marching in the streets and camping out to protest the fatal shooting of yet another unarmed black man by police.  Only two days prior to the death of Jamar Clark, bombs went off in Paris, killing 130 people. Government officials are raising hysteria about Syrian refugees and fostering xenophobia by warning of terrorists in disguise--never mind that the vetting process for Syrian refugees is intensely rigorous . These events are only the latest in a long list of such occurrences, many of which don't even make the news because they do not directly affect white Americans.  Racial, ethnic, religious, and economic tension are running high across the world.  And especially here in Minneapolis, I've seen the same sentiments echoed multiple ...

Occult blogger (and fellow Minneapolitan)  Scott Stenwick  recently posted an  article  weighing in on the curious disdain that some people in the esoteric community seem to have toward magicians holding down day jobs.  For those who haven't encountered this phenomenon, the argument goes that if a person were really a good magician, they would be able to magic themselves into enough riches that they don't need to work for a living. As Scott points out, the idea that an author can make a full-time living from publishing in a niche market such as esotericism is a relatively naive one.  Since he skillfully debunks the idea from a feasibility standpoint, I'd like to focus instead on where the idea comes from in the first place and why it's wrong-headed in its foundational assumptions. The core feature of this viewpoint appears to be that a good magician should be able to focus on his or her magic, make a living at it, and not have to work a boring "mug...

Blogging is difficult for me, especially when it comes to doing so on a regular basis.  I've generally told myself that this is simply because I am a Busy Adult With Many Important Things To Do, and at least to some extent lately this is true enough:  I've had a lot of huge things going on (all good, thankfully!) in pretty much every area of my life over the last year, and those have claimed a large degree of my time. But these are special occurrences, and the truth of the matter is that my difficulty writing is anything but.  Upon digging beneath the superficial excuses I make for myself, the reality, I find, is that my difficulty in writing largely stems from two perniciously interrelated factors:  perfectionism on the one hand, and fear of vulnerability on the other. I am an academic by training, and my first language when it comes to writing is that of the research paper.  Blogging is a rather different type of writing, but every time I begin to type a p...