May 2018 Book Club

   May 9, 2018
   May 9, 2018
   John Michael Greer
   132 Comments

   This week's post is the latest of a monthly series of open-discussion posts
   focusing on books  I've written or recommend. Our theme  for the present is
   Mystery Teachings  from the  Living Earth, and  this week  we're discussing
   "The Spiritual Ecology of History" (pp.119-131). I'd like to ask readers to
   keep their questions and comments focused  on that chapter and the ideas it
   contains; I'm currently hosting a weekly Ask Me Anything post on Mondays on
   my Dreamwidth journal at  https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, and there'll be
   a more  general open post on  this blog in  due time, so comments  on other
   subjects should go to these venues instead.

   The chapter covers a  fair amount of material, but those  of my readers who
   have followed  my blogging for  any length of  time know the  central theme
   already. Over the last couple of millennia, it's become fashionable in many
   spiritual traditions  to insist  that the  universe we  know, with  all its
   frustrations, its  limitations, and  its annoying lack  of interest  in our
   preferences, will  shortly be replaced  by a  shiny new universe  that will
   cater to our sense  of entitlement and fork over the  better lives we think
   we deserve.

   Popular though these  notions are, they're nonsense, for  reasons that have
   been covered already in the book. The  seven laws that make up the heart of
   Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth  apply to our collective destiny as
   much as  they do to  our individual aspirations.  Just as each  life cycles
   from birth  through childhood,  youth, adulthood, old  age and  death, each
   human society  has its own  life cycle of growth  and decline. Just  as the
   universe will not hand you enlightenment  just because you want it-the path
   of  initiation is  a path  of  hard work!-the  universe will  not hand  our
   species Utopia just because we think we want one.

   May I put things  quite bluntly? The cosmos is not your  Mommy. It will not
   clean up the messes you make, nor  will it rescue you from the consequences
   of your own bad choices. You have a relationship with it, but it's like the
   relationship that any individual cell in your body has with you. When's the
   last time you concerned yourself with the personal desires of a single cell
   in your gall bladder?

   On the  other hand,  unlike the  cells in  your gall  bladder, you  have an
   option if you want  to become something more than you  are. That's the path
   of initiation-a path that has to be walked by the individual, one laborious
   step at a  time. No one will do  the work for you, but every  step you take
   has been taken before, over long ages,  by those who have followed the path
   before you and left guiding marks along the way.

   Questions? Comments?  Discussions? Have  at it-subject,  of course,  to the
   usual rules.

                                 ***********

   Next month's  book club  post will  go on  to an  important work  of occult
   philosophy, one of the most influential such works in today's occult field:
   The  Cosmic Doctrine  by  Dion  Fortune. Please  note  that  there are  two
   different editions  of this work  in circulation these days.  The currently
   available  edition,  published  by  Weiser, reproduces  the  original  1924
   privately printed  edition; the edition most  often found in the  used book
   market, published by  Helios in hardback and Aquarian in  paperback, is the
   revised  1966 edition.  I personally  prefer the  revised edition,  because
   that's the one I  used in my original study of the  text, and the revisions
   to  my mind  sharply improved  the clarity  of the  presentation; the  same
   material is  covered in both  editions, though. I  own copies of  both, and
   will give citations from both, for those who are prepared to read along and
   study this extremely useful manual of magical philosophy.