Hi folks, it’s been pretty quiet here.
This isn’t because I’ve forgotten about you, or because I haven’t been writing anything — one piece cooking is about homeopathy and vaccinations, which promises to be juicy, another against the New Age, yet another against doctrinaire universalism — but life has been busy. Where I have been able to carve out some time for myself, it has been to read.
This isn’t everything. Some weren’t worth mentioning, but here goes the 2025 reading roundup — basically in reverse chronological order:
On Dionysius the Areopagite by Marsilio Ficino. Of course, this is Pseudo-Dionysius, but this makes little difference. This is a splendid collection of Neoplatonic theology. I hear radtrads are swarming to the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, fueled by resentment and culture-war mentalities. I see stoicism getting a bit of a boost, but even that is not an answer. Neoplatonism, though, offers a bridge — and devotional heart — that is lacking in stoicism entirely and missing completely from resentment-based false conversions. I’m also reading Monad, a collection of the works of Plotinus — but I may still be reading that in a year. Talk about dense! Marsilio Ficino is generous enough to give concise comments after each section by Pseudo-Dionysius, and the alternating tones make it much easier than a monolith of one hair-splitting philosopher (no offense intended, Plotinus).
The Mathnawí by Jalálu’ddín Rúmí, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson. I have only read one volume so far, but I’m well into volume two. Considering I started this in November, that’s a pretty brisk pace. Some of this feels bipolar — as much poetry tends to — soaring to heights of elation, then falling to bitter condemnation. For a long time, I avoided anything — and anyone — who quoted “Rumi” online, primarily because those people tend to believe in wishy-washiness and most of his quotes are complete fabrications. Rumi’s real words are inextricably religious, muslim, and at many times more Christian than many supposed “Christians” today. Whatever the case, almost nothing Rumi writes is suitable for a bougie Instagram feed.
The Way of Mary: Maryam Beloved of God by Camille Helminski. This is a long meditation on the meaning of Mary, mother of the Messiah, from a Muslim perspective. I did not appreciate the author’s repeated translation of the divine Hu as He/She. This is not to say it should be “He” but whatever God is, God is One and is never ambivalent. It would have been far preferable to extend the royal We used for God to They. The ambivalence of He/She was disruptive without enhancing the poetry. God may be neither, but God is also not either, and also cannot be described as both. Yes, God is “beyond” these categories — neti, neti — but people easily confuse indefiniteness with infinity. These are radically different things. I also had a serious problem with the bad kerning ( font spacing ) which added extra space after specific characters. Fonts matter, folks! Nonetheless, that is the totality of my hesitations: the rest of The Way of Mary I can endorse without reservation. It is well-documented and will direct you to many other rich sources.
An Esoteric Cosmology: Evolution, Christ & Modern Spirituality by Rudolf Steiner, from notes by none other than Édouard Schuré, who was initially attracted by Steiner’s project but was too much of an individual to become a sycophant. Schuré parted ways with Steiner, but by old age the two had reconciled. Schuré was more of an equal than any dogmatic participant in a cult of personality. This was a lecture delivered by Steiner in German, but Schuré felt it all so intensely that his notes were spontaneously translated into Schuré’s native French. This is a lecture that bears much contemplation. Imagine it as the “embryology” of the universe.
Middle Men: Stories by Jim Gavin. I’ve been sad since Lodge 49 was canceled. What other show do you know that deals with the alchemy of ordinary life, quotes Paracelsus in the pilot, and has such a good heart? Lodge 49 makes you want to be better, all the while showing how a toilet sales representative can also be a luminous knight on a quest, which is not what many shows do. Alchemy isn’t about external successes but the transformation of lemons into lemonade. Gavin’s stories feel like a dry run for Lodge 49. I can hear the voices of the characters come to life again in a fever dream of these fragments that clearly found their way into the short-lived TV show. Not perfect, but Gavin would never claim they were. Some great little moments in the midst of profanity.
Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav by Arthur Green. I found this at a (new) used bookstore in Maine run by a gay man in an ironic Che Guevara T-shirt. The store was interspersed with vintage clothing and Buddha heads. But this particular book was incorrectly housed with an entire bookshelf of pulp fiction novels. This is an examination of the dark tzaddik Nahman (nail the h like challah), whose torments make him an unusual figure in Hasidism, whose focus on enthusiasm and joy make him stand out in stark contrast. He, with whom I feel deep affinity, was surrounded by people who enjoyed his luminous stories. But light is produced by a dark burning. As Emil Cioran once said, “Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.”
The Lost Teachings of the Cathars: Their Beliefs and Practices by Andrew Phillip Smith. Fun fact: turns out, historical Cathars seem to have considered rape and marriage to have the same negative moral weight. The Inquisition was nothing if not detailed, and their own words spoke to this strange celibate sect. The only western-oriented crusade, though there is a hypothesis that a Moorish influence had transplanted itself into France. The closest to this group’s spirituality, if read charitably and not by its detractors, might be akin to Shaker spirituality (which also didn’t believe in procreation) and some of the unnamed movements articulated in Arthur Versluis’s laudable book Wisdom’s Children. It’s a strange thing there was a crusade against Cathars, whose primary text was the Gospel of St. John. You can understand conspiracies and wishful thinking cropping up around this movement, but there’s little evidence to support most claims about the Cathars.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. By the end of his life, Greene was a self-described “agnostic” Catholic. Perhaps as part of his doubt, his book wrestles with something I still cannot get my mind around: no matter how sinful or apostate a whiskey priest becomes, he can still transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. I still can’t understand how this can be the case, and maybe neither could Greene. In spite of this, the deeply flawed priest is on a road to martyrdom where spirituality and religion have been outlawed. Dark and provocative.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. With the release of the TV show by the same name, I had faces enough to populate this written story, which is far more brazen. The wandering dreamlike incestuous process of karmic lines bending back onto one another and — eventually — destroying themselves unfolds as a chain of namesakes becoming who they were named after (for better or worse) until their time is up. I am reminded how in Kabbalah it is said that Adam is still asleep in the garden and we are his dream…
Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper by Brant Pitre. If you’re familiar with the “temple mysticism” hypothesis of Margaret Barker, this goes directly alongside that work. What survives now in the Catholic Mass (when improvisation is excluded) is the living memory of the first temple tradition down to symbolism, the words, the layout, and even the bread and wine. You don’t have to believe in transubstantiation to find this an interesting read.
The Holy Geeta with commentary from Swami Chinmayananda. This is the Bhagavad Gita. Perhaps one of the single most luminous texts in history, in spite of its pathetic use to support war, it is about the conquest of one’s own soul and turning one’s back on one’s own “flesh and blood” to do what is right. As I’d put it, the entire Bhagavad Gita is Arjuna’s protracted panic attack and Krishna talking sense to him. I’ve read numerous translations with their commentaries, but this is one of my favorites that I’ve returned to repeatedly. If you want an Advaita Vedanta interpretation, this one is good. Plus, the man himself was a freedom fighter, who was captured by the British in India, got so sick they took him out to a road and dumped him in a ditch; he was saved by a Christian woman (read: an “untouchable”). He then became an investigative journalist. One day, he decided to prove that these ascetic sadhus were frauds. Instead, he found his new path. A man who has lived a full life and then finds God, I trust far more than someone who is lukewarm or falsely pious from the beginning. If you like Shankara and his philosophy, you’ll appreciate Chinmayananda.
A Sign of Contradiction by Pope John Paul II. Some of these were quite good — some have aged exceptionally well. Pope John Paul II’s humanism (and humanity) shines through.
Johannes Scotus Erigena: A Study in Mediaeval Philosophy by Henry Bett and The Voice of the Eagle by John Scotus Eriugena, with commentary by Christopher Bamford. The former, by Bett, is a dry academic slog. By contrast, Bamford’s long essay shines with a nonsectarian devotional reverence. Eriugena is a man who is inextricably part of the “West” (as a Catholic monk in Ireland) but whose loyalties are in the “East” (favoring Origen and Maximus the Confessor over many western options).
Sophia by John Pordage. This is a fascinating book that was originally written in English, then translated into German. The English manuscript was lost, which probably prevented Pordage from going to jail — or worse. This particular version is a reverse translation back into English. This is the spirituality of Jacob Boehme distilled in an English fashion, one that sees inevitable union but only when the “churches of stone” have fallen apart. This is no universalist text, and it has a resonance that I have yet to grapple with.
Shadow of the Rose: The Esoterism of the Romantic Tradition by
Jennifer Doane Upton and Charles Upton. Here’s an interesting pair: the wife is Eastern Orthodox while the husband is a traditionalist Muslim and Sufi — and former beat poet! I don’t know about you, but I really appreciate that kind of texture. Like Martin Buber’s own Jewish work — whose wife was Christian — one is forced to engage consciously with the reality of the Other and our desire for their salvation in a way that many sectarian religious folks simply fail to do. This explores with troubadors, knights templar, Islam, and more. Jennifer’s poetry is often heartbreaking, and Charles’s mind cuts like a cold razor blade.
The Way to Christ (Christosophia) by Jacob Boehme. This is the book that got Boehme exiled from his hometown, where he lived briefly in destitute conditions and quickly became deathly ill. Accusations of heresy (and worse) by the idiotic Lutheran minister of his hometown are utterly baffling to me — and most historians. Boehme succumbed, but was offered last rites only after being thoroughly interrogated by a Lutheran minister. He died in good standing, yet was not offered respect by the same minister when his body returned to his hometown. This is Boehme’s most devotional and least controversial book. It is also his most accessible, and yet it is also the one that killed him. I strongly recommend this one and will invariably return to it again and again.
Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition by Arthur Versluis. This is a fascinating compilation of esoteric Christian traditions, most of whom have been pacifist, don’t give themselves a name, regularly celibate or believers in sexual continence, and often vegetarian. What’s remarkable is that these are often grassroots movements that seem to occur without explanation, and they are never expansive. There is only one group in the book that names itself. The rest were all named by their neighbors. Versluis makes the usual dismissive glosses against “institutional” religion — particularly the Catholic Church — and only begrudingly includes references to this kind of spirituality emerging within the Catholic Church (Franz Xaver von Baader). But because this kind of spirituality is not inextricably institutional, it can and must be able to appear anywhere. Versluis concedes that Catholicism allows for far more “mystical” tendencies, whereas Protestantism usually does not at all. Thus, most of the impulses articulated in Wisdom’s Children are ex-Protestants. But if you’re celibate within Catholicism (or Orthodoxy), no one would bat an eye. Benedictine monks rarely ate meat, early Cisterians abstained from meat, and Carthusians strictly avoided it. The glaring omission of Wisdom’s Children being, of course, that these same people arising within Catholicism would go completely unnoticed as anything other than Catholics! What we find in Wisdom’s Children is an ex-Protestant impulse towards monastic spirituality, which is — though the book itself makes no such claim and the author would probably strongly disagree — a grassroots impulse out of the decay of Enlightenment Protestantism towards a universal — dare we say Catholic — spirituality.
The Hermetica by Hermes Trismegistus (Ouroborous Press). This splendid book includes some wonderful dialogues, but what stands out most, and unifies much of what is shared above, is a long footnote from the editor, which I will share here in conclusion:
“All the children of God, in every land and age, have abstained from blood, in obedience to an occult law which asserts itself in the breast of all regenerate men. The mundane Gods are not averse to blood, for by means of it they are invigorated and enabled to manifest. For the mundane Gods are the forces of the astral element in man, which element dominates in the unregenerate. Therefore, the unregenerate are under the power of the stars, and subject to illusion. Inasmuch as a man is clean from the defilement of blood, insomuch he is less liable to be beguiled by the deceptions of the astral serpent. Therefore, let all who seek the Hermetic secret, do their utmost to attain to the Hermetic life. If entire abstinence from all forms of animal food be impossible, let a lower degree be adopted, admitting the use of the least bloody meats only--milk, fish, eggs, and the flesh of birds. But in such a case, let the intention of the aspirant be continually united with that of Nature, willing with firm desire to lead, whenever possible, a yet more perfect life; so that in a future birth he may be enabled to attain to it.”1
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