Secret Key

Before, beside, between, and beyond the mundane university lies the great Unseen University, the school of saints and sages. In the West, the scholarly esoteric traditions of spirit sometimes take their name from Thrice Great Hermes, the semi-legendary source of all writing and sacred science. From ancient Egypt and Ur to the vanished Library of Alexandria, from the Gnostics to Newton, in countless languages and across every European and Middle Eastern culture and beyond, this tradition has inspired and been passed on by astrologers, artists, and alchemists, saints and scientists and sorcerers alike; and both the science and religion of the west, as we know them today, are among its children. In modern times as in ancient times, practitioners build bridges between cultures, connecting the dots between known and unknown in worshipful pursuit of that mysterious Truth that creates, maintains, and transforms all things.

My honored teachers in this largely scholarly tradition are mostly dead (see the Bibliography)–but their magic lives on and is accessible through study and practice in the arts they taught. I undertook my first studies and experiments in 2001, when certain books came into my possession that opened the way. The Dark Sun working of 2013-2014 was my formal experiment of the Great Work, and this website is among the most mundane of its fruits. I owe more to the ancestors and elders of this tradition than any words can tell. Among the living, I give especial gratitude to my teacher-from-afar, chaos magician extraordinaire Gordon White of Rune Soup, as one of the foremost English-speaking wizards of this age.