A complicated but sincere eulogy for chaos magician Gordon White.
Gordon White died yesterday while traveling in Peru. The surprising news hit me a bit more than I'd like to admit.
May the gods have mercy and bless his soul and ease the grief for his family and friends.
I fell out with him five years ago, when conspiracy peddling, doom-mongering, and anti-scientific charlatanry had taken over much of his intellectual output and Rune Soup turned more and more into a sect. Whatever came after reached me only from a distance and through the social media grapevine, as he seemed to have completed his transformation into a full-blown "Alex Jones of occulture", an online army of cultists included.
Much as his early departure from this realm surprised me, on second thought, it didn't really. With his Goldilocks approach to "shamanism" and healing traditions, and skepticism of medicine in general, he was practically courting disaster. Let alone the years he spent bullying entities for which he had neither sufficient understanding nor respect.
Rest in Peace
That said, I genuinely wish him a safe journey into whatever comes next, and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as to how much of what he put into the world in the last years came from his own heart, and how much came from forces that had taken hold of him.
I definitely owe Gordon thanks for all the inspiration, brilliant ideas, and sharp hot takes. My ventures into magic and animist ways of seeing the world would probably never have happened if my cynical atheist old self hadn't discovered and become obsessed with his podcast and writings back in the 2010s.
Through Rune Soup and Gordon's idea of "finding the others," I was fortunate to make a number of meaningful connections and dear friendships with likeminded fellow seekers and disillusioned Ex-Soupies, for which I'm deeply grateful.
O Lords, may his troubled soul rest in peace through your mercy. Amen
