No mystery

John Michael Greer is a prolific writer on pretty much everything, from Green spirituality and ritual magic to peak oil and 2012. Greer is the current Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA). This book seems to summarize the author's spiritual teachings, a low-key, unpretentious version of Neo-Pagan Green spirituality.

Greer sharply criticizes the New Age version of the prosperity gospel, and also the bizarre idea that one can become an immortal, ascended master in ten easy lessons (I didn't know that milieu was so widespread - see my review of Susan Shumsky's "Ascension"). Real spirituality takes effort, study and experience. And while Greer does believe in magic, he is at pains to point out that magic works on the subtle level. It cannot levitate rocks, nor can it break the Law of Balance or the Law of Limits of the spiritual cosmos. Black magic is real, but it also affects the magician himself - see the Law of Cause and Effect. Thus, even magic cannot work magic. It cannot give us all we want, whenever we want it.

Indeed, this seems to be the main point of "Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth": we are humans in a vast cosmic web, and although we have untapped spiritual potentials, in the end we nevertheless have to accept and work with our human limitations. This is especially true of the material reality, which is governed by unbreakable ecological laws we ignore only at our peril. The human condition is something to accept (or perhaps to gradually change), not something we can magically transcend or apocalyptically break free from. Greer rejects both the modern idea of Progress and various apocalyptic scenarios (such as the Rapture). World history is cyclical, and there is no easy escape clause. In many ways, Greer's book reminds me of David Spangler's books.

However, there is one serious problem with "Mystery Teachings": like most spiritual teachers, Greer portrays his ideas as ancient, even as the ancient and original teachings of the mystery schools. This seriously distracts from the overall message of the book. It seems many people in the New Age milieu can't believe a message on its own merits, but simply *must* have some kind of reassurance that everything from aromatherapy to transplutonian astrology comes from ancient Egypt or Sumeria. I think it's unfortunate that JMG falls in the same trap. Most of the spiritual laws he mentions are based on modern ecological thinking, and some are ultra-modern. The Law of Evolution is otherwise known as Neo-Darwinism, with Greer actually polemicizing against Stephen Jay Gould or perhaps his self-proclaimed epigones. (He never mentions Gould by name, though.) When Greer interprets the legend of Atlantis, it suddenly looks remarkably similar to his own theory of "catabolic collapse"...

But surely a spiritual message must be judged on its own merits, rather than on the basis of how old (or new) it is? Besides, if the cosmos evolves, new ideas should be able to emerge. After all, Greer's own "Druid" religion isn't older than the 18th century, something he happily acknowledges in another book.

That being said, I give the book three stars as a good introduction to JMG's own mystery teachings.