Many, many years ago, I wrote a post about significators. Reading back through that post, I frankly don’t love it—as is the case with most of the posts I’ve written on this blog. I’ve been blogging for somewhere around 9 years now, and that means there’s a glowing online record of all the things I […]
Read more "… Apparently, Once He Has a Ph.D"I’m a doctor now. Last week, I defended my dissertation and completed the final requirement for my Ph.D. I am, now and forever, a doctor of philosophy. It’s a weird feeling, being done. A good feeling, to be sure—but I’ve been working toward this for the past six and a half years, and it’s weird […]
Read more "The Doctor and the World"In a video last weekend, I talked about the rub that exists between philosophy, which seeks truth through reason, and mysticism, which seeks irrational ecstatic communion with the divine. As it turns out, I have more that I want to say on the matter. Specifically, I want to talk about the survival of the soul […]
Read more "Philosophy and Mysticism: Malkuth, Yesod, and the Underworld"I’m a philosopher, a mystic, and a magician–but those things don’t fit together as neatly as you might expect. In this video, I talk through a fundamental incompatibility between philosophy’s demands for rigorous reasoning and mysticism’s need to suspend reason in favor of direct ecstatic experience of the divine. And just to top it all […]
Read more "Video: Philosophy, Mysticism, and Magic"It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. The reason I can’t sleep is that I’m on the academic job market, applying for jobs as a professor to start next academic year. So far, I’ve applied to 22 tenure-track jobs and one postdoctoral fellowship; I have three more postdoc applications to submit in the […]
Read more "Choosing the Tower"Benebell Wen, Tarot author extraordinaire and creator of the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, made a blog post and video today with prompts for seven philosophy-themed Tarot readings. Naturally, this was something I simply could not pass up—philosophy and Tarot! Two of my favorite things, together in one place! So below are my #7philosophicalreadings. The way Benebell […]
Read more "Seven Philosophical Readings: A Response to Benebell Wen"In my previous post on the metaphysical commitments required of (a certain kind of) Tarot reader, I hit two main points: the non-identity of mind and brain, and the non-linear nature of time.* One comment I got on that post was to the effect that both of those commitments seem uncontroversial; they’re the kind of […]
Read more "The Metaphysics of Tarot, Part 2"What do you have to believe in order to read Tarot? Well, technically, nothing. Tarot is a practice, not a dogma, and you can learn the interpretive skill without any prerequisite beliefs. But at the same time, the ways in which many readers use Tarot do entail certain metaphysical presuppositions. When I say “metaphysical” here, […]
Read more "The Metaphysics of Tarot"Is Tarot natural? Is it supernatural? Where does it fit in the Great Cosmic LEGO Set of our universe? I ask these questions largely out of an idle sense of curiosity and a childish desire to use a LEGO metaphor on my blog. But I think these questions are worth asking, because the Tarot community–and […]
Read more "On Nature and the Natural"This is going to be a Wicca post. If that turns you off, I completely understand, seeing as how this is actually not a Wicca blog, and I promise my next post will be 100% Tarot.* For anyone who’s relatively new to my blog and doesn’t know this about me, I am a onetime atheist […]
Read more "Magic and Mental Causation"
Jack Chanek 