If you happen to be an occultist, as of course I am, one thing you’ll encounter fairly often is people asking you what their dreams mean. I’ve made a habit of shrugging, saying that I have no idea, and for …
Can Silicon Valley raise the dead?
Towards the end of September 1915, the eminent physicist Oliver Lodge heard from his son Raymond, who had gone to fight in Flanders that spring. His situation was “difficult”, but “he has got so many kind friends helping him. He …
Will Pope Francis kill the Latin Mass?
A month ago, 18,000 young people walked on pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres Cathedral in order to demonstrate their love of the Traditional Latin Mass — an intricate and solemn ceremony which, to the horror of Pope Francis, is attracting …
The trouble with political Christianity
In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus condemns those who “(either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree”. A regular critique of the nominally religious is that they claim to believe in, …
America’s cult of Weird
Readers, friends, sea cucumbers, square roots of negative one! A momentous anniversary will soon be upon us! Next year, 2025, will mark the 80th anniversary of the day a car rolled into my hometown of Reno, Nevada, in the strange …
Julius Evola: the far-Right’s favourite philosopher
On 25 November 1970, the great Japanese novelist and playwright Yukio Mishima arrived for an appointment with the commandant of the Tokyo barracks of the Japan Self-Defence Forces, Eastern Command. With the help of four others who joined him on …
Rediscovering the Garden of Eden
In 1882, General Charles Gordon rediscovered the Garden of Eden. This renowned military hero, who had played a significant role in quelling the Taiping Rebellion and was later to perish at the Siege of Khartoum, had been dispatched to the …
Why we still believe in gold
Gold, which John Maynard Keynes called the “barbarous relic”, has become so eagerly sought that even Costco has got in on the business. Perhaps this newfound fascination shouldn’t surprise us. For those looking to build nest-eggs, gold is easier to …
The delusion of having a meaningful job
I suspect Montaigne was being coy when he complained of the “wild and useless weeds” that would encroach on his mind in idleness. It is to those wild shoots that Montaigne owed his genre-defining essais, and thus his lasting influence. …
The scandals haunting Pope Francis
The cardinals are already meeting to discuss who should be the next pope. Some of the liberal ones, who feel safe because they’re in favour with the ailing Pope Francis, can be seen comparing notes in a bar near the …
We must become Chernobyl wolves
As I write, lean grey wolves are pacing through a rain-soaked landscape in eastern Europe, untroubled by the fact that their forest is dotted with the decaying ruins of buildings abandoned half a century ago. Their home is the Chernobyl …
The extinction of the political animal
For the past few years, scientists have warned that a human-driven mass extinction of animal species has begun. The focus falls mostly upon land-dwelling vertebrates, but fails to mention one critically endangered species: homo politicus, threatened on all sides by …
Why the centrists changed their trans tune
How does a public consensus come into being? The Sensible Centrists like to imagine that this is a careful, deliberative process. Ideas are debated, among people of good faith, and assessed dispassionately, on their merits, in an ongoing collective striving …
Climate science is making you miserable
There’s a thing in movie franchises called a crossover, where a character from one franchise appears in another. You know the sort of thing: Alien vs. Predator; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The entire and seemingly interminable Marvel Cinematic …
The assisted-dying lobby has already won
What counts as a “dignified death”? On Monday, we got an intimation of what one looks like for Guardian readers, as journalist Renate van der Zee wrote about her elderly mother’s “completely calm, almost cheerful” legal demise at the hands …