Toward Ecosophy

I'm pleased to announce a new book of mine just out from Aeon Books: The Occult Philosophy Workbook, a companion volume to The Way of the Golden Section and The Sacred Geometry Oracle.  It's a good solid introduction to classic occult philosophy, meant (ahem) to train the mind rather than to inform it, and it's designed to give the student a yearlong course of study in occult philosophy  Here's the blurb: 


This volume is one of three workbooks on occult themes -- the second is currently in preparation -- that belong to a set of seven books in all, setting out a complete system of contemporary occult training based on the classic occultism of a century ago.  It's the klnd of instruction and education you'd expect to get back in the day from a good occult correspondence course, but I'm releasing it in book form so that it's much more accessible than the old courses are.  As presently conceived, there will be three books of practical instruction -- The Way of the Golden Section, The Way of the Four Elements (which is at the publisher), and The Way of the Secret Temple -- and three workbooks -- The Occult Philosophy Workbook, The Earth Mysteries Workbook, and The Sacred Geometry Workbook -- along with The Sacred Geometry Oracle, the symbolic linchpin of the system. 

Interested?  In the US, you can order a copy here; elsewhere, your best bet is the publisher's website here. 

I want to do some thinking out loud here... 

Almost twenty years ago, after about a decade of hard work in sacred geometry, I had one of those experiences -- familiar enough to those who do creative work -- where a whole series of inchoate ideas suddenly crystallize into a single coherent form. Late one night, over a period of a couple of hours, I drafted a set of 33 emblems, each based on one of the core elements or constructions of sacred geometry, and saw that they could be used as a divinatory oracle. The next day I wrote up a proposal and sent it off to the publisher I worked with in those days, and they snapped it up. 

Then things went wrong. One of the influential people involved in the project on the publisher's end had a brain fart, and became convinced that The Sacred Geometry Oracle -- which was intended for an audience of Druids, students of ley lines and earth mysteries, and the like -- really ought to have the art done in a fashionably angsty urban-decay style of corroded metal and crumbling concrete. When I tried to explain why this was a bad idea, I got told to shut up, very nearly in so many words. So out it came, and of course it sold very poorly. Not long after it came out I was with a different publisher -- if you've wondered why Weiser brought out a flurry of books by me all of a sudden in the 2000s, that's why. 

But the oracle went out of print, I reclaimed the rights, and a new edition that actually follows my original vision is in preparation from Aeon Books. (That's the cover art for the new edition on the left there.)  It's scheduled for publication in January 2020.

What made the whole thing jarring at the time is that the Sacred Geometry Oracle was intended to be the keystone of an entire system of occult training. That system doesn't focus on magic as such, and the ritual element is relatively small; it's designed to be compatible with most religious practices; it's primarily meditative and, of course, divinatory, and it also includes astrology; the books that would have expanded on it were to provide the same sort of experience you'd have gotten from an old-fashioned occult correspondence course back in the day, with a year's worth of weekly lessons giving themes for meditation, affirmations, awareness exercises, and so on. 

For me, that turned out to be the road not taken; I ended up spending 12 years running a Druid order instead. At this point, though, I'm seriously looking at reviving the project and writing the basic instructional book and some of the one year workbooks. I've mentioned some aspects of this in previous posts here, and the response has been very favorable. 

My questions are these: 

1. How many of my readers would be interested in a project of this sort? 
2. Is there anything in particular you'd like to see covered in such a project?