Michael Martin's Blog

I give you the end of a golden string;

Only wind it into a ball,

It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,

Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I will be offering an online, in-real-time course on William Blake’s illuminated book Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion. I’ve been wanting to do this for a LONG time, and this seems an opportune moment.

The course will take place over eight consecutive Saturdays at 1:00 pm Eastern US time. It will begin on March...

I’m so happy to announce that I will be offering on online, in real-time course on Shakespeare, Magic, and Religion starting this January. In the course, we will cover eight plays of Shakespeare and the roles of religion and magic—not as distinguishable as you might think—not only in the plays but in Shakespeare’s world as well (not to mention ours). I promise: it will be fun.

Session will take place on Saturdays, roughly from 1:00 - 3:00 pm (Eastern US Time) beginning January 4th.

The fee f...

This will be pretty experiential and experimental as well as intellectually engaging. The course will incorporate readings from the great sophiologists, including, but not limited to, Hildegard of Bingen and Francis of Assisi, Boehme, Solovyov, Bulgakov, Teilhard de Chardin, and others. but it will also include dreamwork and experiences in Nature as well as in the arts. The course will be held in real time on Saturdays, starting at 1:00 pm Eastern Time (US) and running 1 1/2 to 2 hours a sessi...

I am happy to announce that I will be offering an online course on Christian Romanticism beginning Saturday, July 13, 2024 and running for the following eight weeks. The course will meet in real time from 1-2:30/3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (US).

The course will cover a variety of topics and writers (tentative schedule below) in order to not only explore the cultural and spiritual history and phenomena of Christian Romanticism (conceived very broadly) but to see how Christian Romanticism (...

In this course we will cover the source of “the Rosicrucian furor” that so gripped the intellectual and theological imagination of the 17th century. The documents in question—Fama Fraternitatis (1614), Confessio Fraternitatis (1615), and The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616)—relate a fascinating mythos concerning this mysterious fraternity (if it was one), and has much to say about the theosophical. We will also look at some of the related figures of the movement—Robert Fludd, Tho...

Hello! If you are new to my work and my website (and even if you're not) please note that I have moved my blogging activities to Substack @ The Druid Stares Back. I had a host of reasons for doing this (which I won't get into here), but please feel free to subscribe there and you can follow what I'm doing and what I'm thinking about.

Blessings,

Michael

I have been thinking, in the midst of this confused and confusing cultural moment, about the possibility of a Christian masculinity.

I am well aware of what an anachronism such an idea might appear as we increasingly lurch toward a post-gender world, as absurd as such a notion is. But absurdity has never been a hindrance to human stupidity. Indeed, as we can see only too clearly, such is celebrated.

Both masculinity and femininity have been under attack for a good long while. Certainly it h...

I am now three weeks into my two courses on Shakespeare: one online for adults and another in-person—and in my yurt!—for homeschool kids. I could not be having more fun! I’ll be starting another one online next week for a homeschool co-op in Chicago. Shakespeare, who was born on 23 April 1564—May 3rd, my birthday, according to the Gregorian calendar. Not a coincidence! So let’s have nice a round of applause for Taurus poets!

But I have two more courses that will be held in the coming months at ...

In my book Transfiguration, a kind of manual of practical Sophiology, among other things I propose the idea that what the world needs now is to take up the idea of the hedge school. Hedge schools were part of Irish society when that brave nation was under the domination of Britain and the only schooling available to the Irish was an Anglo-version that did its best to erase Ireland’s culture, history, and religion from the Irish imagination. The British educational model, much like modern secular...

The 21st of February this year will mark 528 years since the martyrdom of St. Robert Southwell upon the scaffold a Tyburn upon charges of treason, though his only crime was in ministering and providing spiritual comfort to a small number of Catholics, then persecuted by Royal decree, in underground Elizabethan England.

On the morning of Friday, 21 February 1595 by Julian reckoning, Southwell was drawn by a cart from Newgate to be hanged, drawn, and quartered as his fellow Jesuit Edmund Campion ...