Jake Stratton Kent. The Most Necromantic Mumblemouth In Britain

[FraterDeweyDecimilus]

I can't be the only one who listens to interviews with JSK and has perfectly good hearing but, still has to occasionally rewind or jack the volume all the way up in order to understand what he's saying because he doesn't seem to like to project his voice for some reason. Apparently Jinn have the most outstanding sense of hearing....and smell, I guess. Which reminds me. If you've been home reading or doing annotations or transcriptions for awhile and haven't taken some time to mimic the folks out there in snivelization I would recommend doing a pit check and a quick brush at the minimum. Be like Kyuss and brush those demons away.
In all seriousness though. His work is fantastic. He knows his shit left, right, up and down. Why can't he pretend he's doing an evocation and put a few extra decibels in the mix? He's one of the only folks aside from Doc Skinner that I enjoy trying to listen to. Sometimes I also wish he or, someone would give up the goods on the practicality of their successes. Aside from a story about getting a box full of awful Theosophy books because of a friend cutting up mid ritual. I get that the in depth exposition would be counterintuitive to the bond with the familiars but, those boys sure are putting in an awful lot of time at the circle office and some of em are still working shit jobs or just above that.
Obviously they're getting something out of it but, I don't have the dinero or connections for black market pelts, so I tend towards workings that are feasible and within my means while staying beneficial if only in an experiential and educational sense. A little bit o'Theurgy and a lot of Low/Natural gets me by. Sometimes I think it's better than the other side of the tech tree. Far less sketchy and my results have been sufficient to keep me going for a pretty long time now. It's a shame they don't highlight the fact that you don't have to beg them to come hang out with you if you can just step out for awhile and then know how to navigate on your shiny spectral silvery blue leash. Amazing how far that thing stretches. Knock on wood, may it never break mid-stroll.b

 

[Romolo]

“You may one day see someone slowly walking around a cemetery, dressed conventionally and behaving respectfully. Perhaps they are looking keenly at various graves and trees, even at the ground in front of them. Occasionally they may glance around before picking things up, some but not all of which end up in the bin. The chances are you are looking at a goetic magician.” (JSK in “Goetic Devotions”, an essay from Scarlet Imprint’s ‘Devoted’, 2008)

JSK has been a valuable mentor and guide for me. I took his skeletal hand and ended up somewhere completely different than where I was before, somewhere deeper, somewhere richer. I love his humor, curiosity and gentle heart.

 

[FraterDeweyDecimilus]

“You may one day see someone slowly walking around a cemetery, dressed conventionally and behaving respectfully. Perhaps they are looking keenly at various graves and trees, even at the ground in front of them. Occasionally they may glance around before picking things up, some but not all of which end up in the bin. The chances are you are looking at a goetic magician.” (JSK in “Goetic Devotions”, an essay from Scarlet Imprint’s ‘Devoted’, 2008)

JSK has been a valuable mentor and guide for me. I took his skeletal hand and ended up somewhere completely different than where I was before, somewhere deeper, somewhere richer. I love his humor, curiosity and gentle heart.

If most people were to guess if I went the Goës path or Theurgy or anything along those lines I would imagine 999/10 people would say they guess I'm deep into the Jinn Science. There was a time years ago when I was but, I tend towards Theurgy (maybe more so than I had just eluded to now that I think about it) but, I've kinda been going towards I guess theoretically Low Magic(k) with a backbone of invocations leaning more into stuff like Sri Yantra and a couple of Mantras and repetitions, Holotropic Breathing a la Grof, not Hof. There's more to it than that really. Recent developments have me torn between several pursuits. Mudras/Reiki/a bitta Bardonian/Krumheller Finger Magic(k) accenting Reiki style energy absorbtion and projection and visualization of certain sigils or scripts or Futhark. Plus I just started taking Kathara seriously literally around 1 A.M. because of some other research I'm doing. Plus I'm writing a massive massive massive book on Hermetics in regards to Praxis and Theoretical Praxis, History (alternative history and the connections to modern day), and a bit of my vulgar Stoicism brand of Philosophy and some Metaphysics/Ontology. I've got about 450 pages of just notes and I haven't even touched anything besides the Theory/Praxis and that's still not done. The Operative Alchemy aspect is getting tabled until I can make some headway on the Homunculus Research but, I think that could potentially wind up being just as intense as the rest. Oh, Astrology. Ophiucus, Zoroastrianism, Hyperborea ("Tartaria?") I think I'm done working with Mind Unveiled because technically I've done all the work and he's essentially done diddly shit and just got real awkward with me the other night and it wasn't fuckin cool. I don't know how he plans on moving forward without crediting me for the solutions to his various mysteries. I've already screenshotted our entire conversation in case he tries getting squirrelly.
I'm a fairly busy little fella I am.

 

[pixel_fortune]

In all seriousness though. His work is fantastic. He knows his shit left, right, up and down. Why can't he pretend he's doing an evocation and put a few extra decibels in the mix?

Very simple answer:

Magic, scholarship, written communication skills and performance are separate skills. Why should you expect him to have all 4?

Maybe JSK is a terrible cook, can't sing in tune and has poor hand-eye coordination. But that's not a failing, right? He's a scholar, not a chef, singer, or baseball player. Well, he's not a professional radio personality either.

Performance/interview skills actually aren't as common as you'd think - it seems like just the same skill as having a normal conversation, but it's not. You'd be amazed how many talented writers are terrible in a live interview. The only option available to JSK is "stop doing audio interviews". But... we don't want that, right?

It would be better if we could learn to tolerate the discomfort of JSK's lack of performance skills in order to obtain the knowledge he's offering?

(In terms of volume, however, if he's a guest on the podcast, it's not even his fault. That's the host's responsibility to edit and fix the levels before they publish it. If JSK sounds too quiet, that's kind of the host screwing him over

Although again: podcast EDITING is its own skillset separate from being a good interviewer, and there's very little money in podcasting. So probably the host is not screwing JSK over, they just can't afford an editor and aren't good at it themselves)


tl;dr when you have the luck to encounter in this life, someone with amazing knowledge and the willingness to share it, don't blind yourself to it by focusing on irrelevant skillsets.