Plutonica's New Esoteric Book Club -

Read all about it here.

Her first selection: Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology.

The 'discussion' opens in February. Here are the forums in which the dialogue will take place..

Plutonica's a well-read and insightful practitioner and critic of the WMT. She's got a great chain of support assisting with the project, and I hope it becomes a wonderful success.

I like Plutonica's blog too. Wish she posted more frequently, in fact.

It's odd that for all the enthusiasm expressed on Facebook, Twitter and early in the beta testing (since removed) in the forums for the book club itself, so few people actually seem to be participating.

I can't figure out why.

We face similar challenges here. Building something of value takes determination. Stay with it!

plutopsyche wrote:It's odd that for all the enthusiasm expressed on Facebook, Twitter and early in the beta testing (since removed) in the forums for the book club itself, so few people actually seem to be participating.

I can't figure out why.

I would blame it on the internet. Kids today! Am I right? No, really. People don't tend to have very long attention spans on the world wide internets, and I also think that an internet "Yeah, I'm definitely interested!" is about equivalent to a Los Angelenian "Let's do lunch!"

Anyway, I hope you don't let it get you down too much. Building a community online is not easy.

I honestly don't know what WMT is all about. I tried looking it up and got nowhere. I will surely check out the blog if it means learning something new. Thank you for sharing.

Khephra wrote:Plutonica's a well-read and insightful practitioner and critic of the WMT.

digicamghosts wrote:I honestly don't know what WMT is all about. I tried looking it up and got nowhere.

I'm with digicamghosts - I try hard to go by the rule that states if you're going to use an acronym, be sure to "expand" it the first time you use it in a given location - be that an article, a report, or a forum thread. Just to make sure everyone is on the same page. It's embarrassing to tell someone to "Refer to the POW" and have them look for a Prisoner of War instead of the Plan of the Week. (I know I have better examples, but they aren't coming to me at the moment...)

- Sendoshin

I would have to guess Western Mystery Tradition, but I'm an amateur...

@neutralrobotboy More than a dozen signed up and contributed to the beta testing, but appear gone as soon as the book club went live. It's bizarre.

@digicamghosts The Western Mystery Tradition (WMT - it's a very common acronym in occult circles) contains three main branches, hermeticism (see Corpus Hermeticum, esp. The Emerald Tablet), alchemy (spagyrics, etc.) and Q-ball (qabbalah/kabbalah/cabala). From these springs most of the frivolous esoteric nonsense that makes up much of the content taught in mystery schools for the past two hundred years.

WMT isn't a term I favour partially because it's misleading (alchemy is here usually implied as "western" alchemy as opposed to Taoist alchemy, for example, yet was preserved during the Dark Ages by Muslim scholars who aren't always seen as "western", yet allegedly derives its name from bastardized Egyptian, and so on, etc.), and also because it's just not true. I'm also deeply interested in Indian practices such as yoga and the vast pantheon of Indian mythology, for a start.

Really though, I think it was just Khephra's (polite?) way of saying "she's a chaote, but don't hold it against her".

Dividing *any* beliefs into Eastern and Western is likely to be inaccurate. Everything is at least influenced by everything else, at some point in the past, distant or near. Not that "near past" is a common phrase.

- Sendoshin

plutopsyche wrote:Really though, I think it was just Khephra's (polite?) way of saying "she's a chaote, but don't hold it against her".

Something like that, yes.

I've heard WMT used to denote "Western Mystery Traditions" and "Western Magickal Traditions". I find the ambiguity delicious.

However, with that said, I wouldn't disagree with Plutopsyches's critique either - the Arabic roots of alchemy and the Sufis make the water even muddier.