In this episode, I was joined by Gordon White, host of Rune Soup podcast, a show about magic, culture and the paranormal. Gordon is the author of The Chaos Protocols, Star.Ships, and Pieces of Eight: Chaos Magic Essays and Enchantment.
Note: This episode was recorded before the new year, in December 2019. A “pre-COVID-19 tape” if you will. If you listen until the end, however, you’ll notice some oddly prescient comments about health and wellbeing in 2020.
I begin my discussion with Gordon exploring the historical rise of communities of magical practice during a time of planetary crisis, and naturally, we roll into a discussion on imagination and storytelling.
What are the kinds of stories – the planetary myths – we need to be tuning into right now, in the epoch of the Anthropocene/Chthulucene?
Gordon talks about how to be “a pacifist in a living universe,” and living artistically through a “non-tyrannical way of being in the world.” Authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and her Taoist-anarchic heroes (Georg Orr as depicted in The Lathe of Heaven, or Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea), or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, can teach us something about living this way.
Gordon was an absolute delight to speak to – and there’s much more in the conversation. Thanks for tuning in.
More show notes:
- Visit Rune Soup and check out Gordon’s community, where he hosts subscriber events, book clubs, and classes
- Get Gordon’s books
- Talking Creation, Faerie, and Facing 2020 with Dr Becca Tarnas (Rune Soup ep.)
- A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- Podcast music by Infinite Third, used with permission (thanks Billy)
- Join the Mutations Patreon community for access to early podcasts, Discord server, and book club. Next month we start our Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de Chardin reading club.Join the Mutations Discord server (link may expire! ask me for another one…)