Two New(ish) JMG Books
Mar. 18th, 2022 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
I'm very pleased to report that two more books of mine have just been released. (I know, my bookshelves are overloaded too.) The first is an offshoot of my book The Celtic Golden Dawn. Back in the day William Gray, one of Dion Fortune's students, published a fascinating little book titled The Office of the Holy Tree of Life, in which he used his own highly idiosyncratic version of the Tree of Life as the basis for a sequence of prayers and invocations calling on each of the spheres and paths of the Tree. I worked with that volume for some years back when I was exploring Gray's Sangreal Sodality system, and found it extremely effective as a way of working with the Tree of Life.
It's always surprised me that nobody else picked up the same practice and applied it to any of the other occult systems of Cabala. Since leading by example is always the most effective approach, I worked up a set of comparable prayers and invocations for the version of the Cabala given in The Celtic Golden Dawn, worked with it for a couple of years, revised as needed, and then circulated it privately among members of the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn, making more corrections as needed. Now it's in print and available from Aeon Books. You can order a copy here in the US and here elsewhere in the world.
The second book -- well, it's not new, but it's been republished in a new and improved edition, which almost counts. ;-) The Retro Future was the last of the books in what I suppose you could call my peak oil period, the years in which I was an active participant in the movement to try to get the industrial world to notice that the engines of economic growth were running on fumes. Yes, we failed -- and that's something I'll be discussing elsewhere, in some detail -- but if you take a look at the price of gasoline just now, it may start to sink in that we weren't wrong...The peak oil movement also helped a lot of us think outside the narrow limits of acceptable discourse in industrial society, and in particular to challenge the mythology of progress that provides the modern world with its unacknowledged official religion, and undergirds most of the superstitious thought about technology that's landed us face first in so many pitfalls in recent years. The Retro Future was the third and final book in my trilogy on that subject. The first volume, After Progress: Reason and Religion at the End of the Industrial Age (available here), explored faith in progress as a religion and discussed what was happening as progress ground to a halt around us. The second, Retrotopia (available here), is a utopian novel set in post-United States America, in which a recently founded republic in the Midwest achieves prosperity and peace by abandoning progress and moving back rather than forward. The Retro Future, the capstone of the trilogy, discusses how to get from our current mess to a stable and relatively prosperous society by using the past as a resource for the future.
Scandalous? You bet. The blog posts where I originally floated these ideas fielded tirades from the offended; the book itself got uneasy looks followed by avoidance. Now The Retro Future is back in a new revised edition. As the price of gasoline heads toward the stratosphere, and the price of everything else climbs in lockstep, maybe it's time for another look at the alternatives. Interested? You can get it here.
JMG books
Date: 2022-03-18 10:39 pm (UTC)Winifred Hodge Rose
Re: JMG books
Date: 2022-03-19 08:53 pm (UTC)Re: JMG books
Date: 2022-03-20 08:08 pm (UTC)Winifred
Re: JMG books
Date: 2022-03-21 12:22 am (UTC)https://foundershousebooks.com/products/the-retro-future-looking-to-the-future-to-reinvent-the-future-second-edition
Re: JMG books
Date: 2022-03-23 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 12:38 am (UTC)Miss P
Available in UK?
Date: 2022-03-19 07:50 am (UTC)does Founder's House ship to the UK? Also, same question for Bookshop.org, since its UK branch does not sell all of your work. (I have had to hold my nose and buy from the global monster a few times...)
Re: Available in UK?
Date: 2022-03-19 08:54 pm (UTC)As for how many books, I think I'm past eighty at this point.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 04:58 pm (UTC)Is it ok if I start this again from the beginning, or should I try to figure out where I left off and continue from there?
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 08:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 05:59 pm (UTC)You are definitely the single author creating the most temptation to depart from my "read only books by dead authors" resolution for the year, but I keep reminding myself the books will be just as good next year.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 08:24 pm (UTC)Glad to have made the literary acquaintance of several of them.
Congrats!
Grover
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 08:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-20 09:07 pm (UTC)Handsome books, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 08:39 pm (UTC)Another book that badly needs to be updated is the Green Wizard's Handbook. Suggesting curly fluorescent light bulbs as a replacement for incandescent ones? When every grocery store and drugstore has LEDs? That's just the biggest one.
Thanks,
The Grey Badger
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 08:56 pm (UTC)Master Conserver program
Date: 2022-03-19 09:33 pm (UTC)maybe at last my chance to ask this question on topic: IIRC aeons ago in TADR you linked your/the/a Master conserver program ...syllabus... maybe? You made it mandatory that when downloaded at least two hard copies had to be spread by the downloader. I´m not sure anymore if I downloaded or not, but a) I´m unable to find the download and b) have not spread the hardcopies but would like to do so now. Could I get a link if that is still a possibility?
Thank you for all your work and all your answers, probably especially for the unpleasant ones.
Emily 07
Re: Master Conserver program
Date: 2022-03-19 09:36 pm (UTC)https://greenwizards.com/node/1471
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-20 12:08 am (UTC)AV
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-20 02:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-20 03:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-20 03:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-20 05:02 pm (UTC)Speaking of peak oil and retro futures
Date: 2022-03-20 08:02 am (UTC)https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/elites-suggest-price-controls-dystopian-travel-restrictions-manage-soaring-energy-costs
Of course Tyler has to label it dystopian. I thought it was the only useful thing our leaders have proposed in a while.
Re: Speaking of peak oil and retro futures
Date: 2022-03-20 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-21 01:17 am (UTC)(In case anyone here is looking to turn their two-book online order into a hat trick ;)
-Dylan
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-21 04:52 pm (UTC)ordered
Date: 2022-03-22 05:01 am (UTC)Amish
Date: 2022-03-29 04:07 am (UTC)e-book versions of TRF 2nd Ed?
Date: 2022-04-03 05:42 pm (UTC)1st Ed is all I can find on Kobo and BigRiver store
I like having e-copies of these books in addition to the more durable but harder to store&move 'dead-tree' editions. That way I have such useful info with me as part of my Go-Bag (with solar charger)