Nature Loves to Hide: An Interview with Paul S. McDonald

Nature Loves to Hide: An Interview with Paul S. McDonald

Ronnie Pontiac

Nature Loves to Hide: An Alternative History of Philosophy by Paul S. McDonald is neither a history of the occult in the western tradition nor a collection of enlightening quotations, yet it provides both. The biographies of worthies from Agrippa to Zosimos, based on recent scholarship, are among the best short introductions to each that I’ve read...

But there’s more. McDonald looks at the Arabian Hermetic tradition and brings us all the way up to Pesseo, who cast astrological charts for his fictional characters, and whose writing personas were virtual homunculi. Also Phillip K. Dick, a self described Orphic and hermetic receives illuminating attention. Professor McDonald adopts a neutral stance, he isn’t advocating the existence of a Perennial Philosophy, he’s documenting an alternative history of the concept of self.
 
In this interview for Reality Sandwich Prof. McDonald reflects on the differences between the concepts of daimons and.demons, including how and why demons replaced daimons in the popular imagination, the importance of Jung to historians of alchemy, prehistoric stone circles, Hegel as a Hermeticist, Stephanos of Alexandria, and much more. I highly recommend Nature Loves to Hide to anyone interested in alternative concepts of the self, which happen to have inspired a great deal of western culture.