New Circle - Green Wizardry and Spirituality

David Trammel's picture

With the recent posts on Green Wizards and Magic, as well as Greer's new blog, which seems to be going to take us into spirituality, I've decided to create a new circle for Spirituality.

I expect that future Green Wizards will keep 9 fingers dipped in the mundane world but one pinkie in what's out there beyond the Dark.

Sounds good. I too go to the recent post section. Maybe it'll liven up some old threads.

I don't know about that finger-ratio-breakdown, though. I was thinking recently after I'd read some descriptions of tribal shamans from about a century ago who were absolutely excellent at magic, but were still unable to protect their cultures from industrialized invaders. Magic being my main interest in life, the decline of industrial society doesn't really bother me too much since it won't hurt the things I'm really interested in*. It occurred to me, thinking about those recently-ancient shamans, that I would have hated to be alive then because no matter how good you are or what you tried to do to preserve your traditions, magic became less and less important on the upslope of industrial society because no matter how much of an advantage your magic gave you, the industrial invaders could always just burn more fossil fuels and make up the difference.

This implies, though, that the opposite will be true on the downslope, and I'm really quite glad to have been born on this side of the peak of industrial socitey.

I'm not suggesting, of course, that the focus of this forum ought to shift--I appreciate the new topic and I've enjoyed the recent discussions, but there are plenty of other JMG-approved spaces that focus on magical practice--just that the Green Wizards of the future might be able to spare more fingers for the mysteries than just a little pinkie.

*: Although I don't take the real cost in human suffering lightly, and I'm not "looking forward" to decline in any sense other than knowing that the sooner we stop the industrial game, the more resources will be left to rebuild. Notice that I said it wouldn't hurt the things I'm interested in, not that it wouldn't hurt the things I care about--I'm under no illusions that decline will be easy or somehow leave me "unscathed."