I am at a complete loss for what to write about. I didn't write anything in March and I'm a guilty guilter who guilts. True story.  I've got 4 drafts, plenty of stock material on the old secret webpage, and here I am posting at night where no one will see my genius. 

I realize that blogs are places where people bring their fears and opinions out into the open, not just studies, so I hope this one's a bit of both.

I am deathly afraid of contemplating the significance of Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia in terms of music and music theory.  I know that there are solid free resources on the net that I can relatively trust and cross-reference. I have a book here at home, a sourcebook on Music and Magic, of some amazing excerpts from some of the earliest literature available, translated into modern English by an Occult-positive music professor.  There is a man teaching at Yale who has studied the effects of Occult philosophy on one of the Italian Renaissance's greatest composers.   Yet a third man has delved into the Occult-ed-ness of Arnold Schoenberg, the early 20th century MASTER.  (He's really more of a god, but maybe we'll get into that later.) 

The point is, that there is support out there for what I do.  I'm not the only one.  I could reach out to these people.  Email them.  Talk to them. Stalk them, even.  They give lectures, after all.  I could just attend one and then walk up to them afterward and say, "Hello, sir, I'm very honored to meet you.  Do you have a minute to talk about Paganism, the Occult, and their effect on music history?" 

Then my mind starts to hate me, lividly, and turns the question into something else entirely: Will you do all my work for me? Will you just pat me on the head and give me an award and tell me I'm great? Can I just bounce off your fame in order to glean some for myself? I swear, my mind is my enemy sometimes, and I'm having a tough battle with it right now.  And there's a part of me that wants to "do it all myself" with no  help, and then that part that says, hey if you let people edit your work, then they did it, not you, and you don't deserve the credit. 

Why am I afraid of analyzing Agrippa?  Because it would be easy.  It's there.  Waiting for me.  I kick up my heels because Agrippa was a Christian priest.  Yet, his translations of Pagan texts make all of us more enlightened about the past traditions that we try to recreate.   Can I drop the self-hatred and the Christian-bashing long enough to learn something?