The Blog-o-Sphere

I recently joined Fiona’s Tarot Blog Jam for the new year. Here’s the Master List. Message her and she’ll add you to next month’s.

http://modernfortuneteller.com/2016/01/tarot-professionals-blog-hop-new-deck-master-list/

My blog is located here:
http://manitheuncanny.com/4208/tarot-hop-new-deck-ritual/

Nice list, Jason!

I experimented with a two posts a week format last year. One focused on Tarot. The other on links that I love through the week. I’m going through my traffic reviews and changing up the format for this year. More content. Way less links.

Also, welcome to the TP group on Facebook. 😉

This is great! I hadn’t heard of half of these. I prefer long form content and am always looking for more good stuff. Thanks for the list!

You are making a very fair call out here, Jason, and my blog clearly belongs into the category you are addressing. You are also right that the only thing that defines a virtual community is lifely dialogue and great quality writing.

The challenge as always is (a) producing great quality posts actually takes lots of time and effort for no reward other than fueling the community and (b) writing a blog can keep us from tackling larger projects such as books that require many months of dedicated research and writing. It’s all about choices at the end of the day.

Personally I won’t stop following anyone for a lack of posts – but for a decline in quality. 2 great posts per year or quarter IMHO are way preferable to an average post every month?

Personally I also commit that my blog will be live and active again by autumn 2016 latest. Until then I will need time to continue writing on a larger project in the limited spare time I have. Staying focussed takes a lot of effort actually…

I consider myself duly chastised.

Thanks for the shout-out Jason. I update my blogroll fairly regularly as I encounter new blogs and I also delete ones that have not been updated. I do this because I despise the notion that the Blogosphere is dead and blogs that have not been updated can make it look like a field of carcasses.

Facebook (and its accompanying social entropy) is one of the reasons the WMT is degenerating and I mention that in my more critical posts. It demonstrates all the worst aspects of our community – flaming over reasoned debate, cliqueiness, nerdiness, fevered egos, not being able to get in on the in-jokes or even follow a thread unless you are friends with the right people and worst of all CHAT. I loved Patrick Dunn’s analysis that the law of silence of the Sphinx could be interpreted as don’t CHAT. I really took that to heart. Chat is a form of intellectual entropy.

The Blogosphere is an amazingly powerful and underemployed tool for our community, building peer to peer relationships that are vital for advancement beyond basic understanding. Although I rail against its reduction to a tool for marketing books for authors I understand some of that is inevitable. Its when it becomes only that, or posts are thinly veiled marketing pitches, that my stomach turns. I think your pledge to two posts is admirable and you should make sure you hold to it.

Although sometimes the small numbers of people we connect with in this way can make it seem futile, the snowball effect is evident and things can and do ”go viral”. Not that this matters all that much as specific individuals count more than herds in the long run. As this upsurge in interest continues we will do well to maintain a vibrant community that stretches its members (cut down on any pandering) so we pick up quality people from Gen Y and Z to continue our work into the future so the tradition perpetuates. Idiots need to be sidelined.

Some people do joke about my concern with the Kircher Tree although they recognise the important work I am doing with esoteric genetics. The point is that they dovetail – ”a book of formation for the building of a golem” should be our clue. Faulty QBL (and the fact that ”Golden Dawn” Qabalah is faulty shouldn’t be in dispute now we have access to work like Kaplan’s) is going to really limit what you can get out of the Western Tradition, and to be honest, my work.

Addressing the problems inherent in the QBListic systems of groups like the G.D. or Thelema is not actually that hard as the people who do follow and practice the changes espoused in my blog rapidly realise. You can keep a lot from the time you have invested in these systems but aspects of their QBL are backwards. In fact most people with a basic understanding of astrology should be able to look at the ”more accurate” Tree of Life diagram in the side panel of my blog and connect with it immediatly. You (general pronoun) will need to realise that a lot of the books on your shelf from the G.D. et al ad nauseam, may have really shaky foundations, but that’s ok, this is how things move forward – moving forward so this doesn’t just become a Renaissance Festival.

This is great. It’s inspiring me to want to write in my blog. I miss the fb group but can’t stand Fb. I’m glad to seethe the blog will be active. Thanks for all the links too.

Hey.. I know that hoodie, and that background!

Thanks for the plug! I am going to do better with posting on my blog. I have a Yahoo discussion group Spiritus Mundi, my Renaissance Astrology blog and a business Facebook page. Each of these is good for different things. The discussion group is really the best for asking questions. The blog is best for posting essays. Facebook is for pictures and short posts. A big drawback of Facebook is that they want businesses to pay for reaching people, so even if people like your page, only a small % get any particular post.

My magical blog reading round goes in this order most days– John Michael Greer’s The Well of Galabes at http://galabes.blogspot.com; Runesoup; the Secret Sun (secretsun.blogspot.com); your blog; Chris Warnock’s blog (in the hopes of an update.) Due to this post I may add a few more, thank you!

How did I just find this?!

Thanks for the shout-out for Witch In The Burbs!

I’m doing a minimum one post per week for the remainder of the year and hope to continue thereafter. Setting up a new habit. And plan to run more “experiments” to blog about.