57.1. Blazing Eye Sees All

Hi, I have a new book out today.

New book, written by me, out today. Also here are some tarot cards and rocks.

In the summer of 2022, I was driving across Montana on a book tour for When the Moon Turns to Blood when I got word that my second book had been given a green light. It was a good day. I won’t forget it: the mountains asserting themselves all around me, the highway straight ahead, the promise of a new blank page.

I wanted to write about New Age ideas, and not about extremism. This would be a fresh start.

Funny thing about fresh starts: are they possible? Can you forget what you know? Should you?

Blazing Eye Sees All is my long investigation into the wide spiritual world of the New Age — some of it, not all of it — and the ways that world helps and hurts people. It is an unintentional story of extremism, but also feminism, and climate change, and endangered species. It’s about deception, and power, and myth, and the very nature of believing. And it’s about me. I never would have written this book if, in 2017, I had not set foot into a great New Age bookstore in Portland, Oregon and bought a deck of tarot cards.

Yesterday, a journalist interviewing me about the book asked me a beautiful, pointed question: “do you think you can be a believer?” I offer this book as an answer. I offer it to all readers willing to question what they believe and, more importantly, who we believe.

I’m so very proud of this book. I hope you’ll read it. And if you’re around any of the cities below, please come say hi. I would love to meet you.

PS: And if you feel like listening to me “in conversation” with Timothy Snyder, of On Tyranny and On Freedom, check out this ONLINE event this Wednesday 3/26 at noon Pacific! (You can watch from anywhere! While you eat your lunch!)