John Michael Greer

John Michael Greer (born 1962) is an American writer and druid who writes on religious, environmentalist, and occult topics.

Early life and education Greer was born in Bremerton, Washington and was raised in the Seattle area. He is an initiate in Freemasonry and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Writing In a 2005 abstract, called How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse, he wrote an ecological model of collapse in which production fails to meet maintenance requirements for existing capital. Philosopher of science Jerome Ravetz summarized Greer's theory in his 2006 book chapter, titled "When Communication Fails: A Study of Failures of Global Systems." Ravetz wrote:

A simple but powerful model of 'catabolic collapse', a self-reinforcing cycle of contraction converting most capital to waste, has been produced by John Michael Greer (Greer 2005). His activity in the 'contemporary nature spirituality movement' in Oregon has not prevented him from producing a model in the best economic style. His key variables are resources, capital, waste and production; crisis occurs when production fails to meet maintenance requirements for existing capital. The continuing degradation of the infrastructure, particularly in the USA, provides evidence for his approach. He claims that he can account for key features of historical collapse, and suggests parallels between successional processes in non-human ecosystems and collapse phenomena in human societies.

Greer has written many novels, including a series of eleven fantasy novels based on the worlds created by H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos entitled "The Weird of Hali".

Reception Writing in The Futurist magazine, Rick Docksai declared that Greer's book The Ecotechnic Future is "as realistic a portrayal of the end of civilization as one is likely to find." It was also positively reviewed in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries and was recommended in the industry journal Energy Policy. The International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability referred to his book The Wealth of Nature as "challeng[ing] the paradigms that underlie the complex system of wealth distribution we know as economics."

His book The New Encyclopedia of the Occult was selected as a reference text in 2005 by American Libraries and noted by Booklist and Publishers Weekly.

Works Spirituality and the occult

Economics and politics

Fiction

The Weird of Hali series

Anthologies edited