Welcome to this place. Make yourself at home – if you dare. I cannot promise you will like it here, because I don’t know you. I can promise this place is different than all the other places you’ll find yourself in today.

The nature of this place changes moment to moment. Sometimes it’s a hidden cave high on a mountainside. Sometimes it’s a peak-roofed wooden chapel – and sometimes a tiny cathedral. Sometimes it’s an alchemist’s attic laboratory-library high in a medieval tower. Sometimes a gently sloping meadow. Sometimes it’s the grand tent of a champion nomad. It blurs. Not even I can always keep up with it, moment to moment.

All the lines of reality blur and shift if you look at them from the right angle.

Whether you find yourself here intentionally or by chance, I am grateful that you came.

What’s my deal?

I am neither a guru, nor a prophet, nor (surely) a saint. There is precious little treasure I can offer you and almost nothing I can promise.

I am Jay Monaco – radical, writer, artist. I’m a trickster, if not a Prankster. I am a mild, sloppy mystic and a poor excuse for a magician of any kind. I am the Wizard of Monadnock (WoM).

But don’t be fooled by titles. My mountain is Grand, but I am a very humble wizard. When I began this blog four years ago, I was but an apprentice wizard. In the time since, I’ve failed at a great many things, slacked off for months at a time, been consistently late for all major and minor holidays, and left countless projects incomplete – and yet I find myself here today, no longer an apprentice. I’ve been promoted. I’ve made it to the next level. Yet I am no master. Not even close. If wizards used union terminology – and I see no reason why they shouldn’t – I’d be considered a journeyman.

I’m here to do the best I can in faithful service to my mountain and the lands that surround it. In the process, I hope to entertain you, provoke you, regale you, confound you, and once in a while show you how vast and divine your world really is.

What can be found here in this place?

All of the older archived articles are still here. I encourage you to explore Monadnock Mountain with me, to derive some benefit from the meditations and verses found here, to lose yourself in the legends and secret tales, to come with me way off the deep end, and to make fun of my often cringe-worthy thoughts.

Yet all of that is the “old” WoM, the apprentice WoM. It remains, for it is not being replaced. But Journeyman Mode Wizard Jay promises something a little different, something to build on the body of work constructed thus far and then take it further (furthur?). It starts with the show.

The Wizard of Monadnock Radio Hour

We here at WoM are pleased to introduce The Wizard of Monadnock Radio Hour, a dynamic, explosive, defiant audio podcast (available on iTunes and SoundCloud for your listening pleasure) exploring the themes and obscure pathways long featured here.

But the point of this podcast is to better enable you to come along with me on my own wild and full journey through this life, through the world of the everyday and the world of wizardry and magic, and hopefully we all can see together that those worlds are actually one and the same.

Though the standard written word blog medium has served me well up to this point, the advantages afforded me by a shift into this new sort of production are in line with the evolution of both myself personally and, by extension, this broader project. I can talk directly to you, using my voice, with all its high-pitched and manic inflections. As time goes on, I look forward to facilitating listener interaction, so that you can talk directly back to me.

I can also get valuable perspectives from my peers and rivals and friends, bringing them directly to your ears without begging them for years on end to compose a guest post for the site. A 30-minute VOIP conversation is a much easier sell. This program is going to feature guests, and good ones. I chose to produce the first two episodes solo, making the risky gamble that any monotony experienced through the presence of but a single voice would be outweighed by the curiosity of you, the listener, and the necessity of properly introducing myself.

After that? You get to meet my friends. And a whole host of other characters as time goes on.

It’s too early for me to commit to a rigid timetable for episode releases. But I’ll be straight up and say that my goal is to crank them out once every two weeks – at minimum, worst case, one episode per month. I’ll do my best. But for what I lack in punctuality and hitting deadlines, I commit to compensate not just with a high-quality, enjoyable program to help you through your workday or your commute, but with a plethora of supplementary and bonus material related to the latest show. In fact, the bulk of the new content you can expect to see regularly on the site will revolve around the podcast. You’ll see some material in advance of each episode, to tantalize and provide a sneak glimpse, get a dump of topic summaries, footnotes, and supplemental links upon each episode’s release, and then maybe chew on a follow-up nugget or two in the aftermath.

I do this in case you’re curious about the things we’ll discuss – and I very much hope you are – and also to hopefully spark conversation. I want to hear from you.

The

Beginning of the WoM Media Empire

Well, no. I have grandiose fantasies, no lie, but the only way to get a media empire is to be born into it. I wasn’t.

But I have no intention of stopping at just the podcast. Perhaps some of you die-hards will remember the two Wizard of Monadnock ebooks that dropped a few years back. You’d Guess from Their Cries was the novella, Night of the Unemployed Wizard the poetry album. And though I’ll tell you I certainly intend to top them, I’ll also make the bold claim that they’ve held up over time. I haven’t talked about them in a while, but they’re still out there, and they’re still cheap AF. Check them out and hook me up with a buck or two.

The point, however, is found in my mention of topping these works, which is to say that I am going to be writing more. Soon. The only problem as it stands right now is that I have like seven different notions of what the next full-length project should be. So if there’s anything you’d want to see this wizard write a book about, I want to hear it. I’m serious – it will actually factor into my decision.

Beyond books and internet radio, we may expand into publication in other outlets – if the gods allow – but we will in time, without question, see some original songs and video work. You read that right – original wizard songs and video.

Maybe we will actually conquer the world after all.

The Credo Still Stands

This is what I told you all the last time I addressed the status of this project, and it bears repeating now:

This is a place for the wild ones – for the mountain spirits and forest creatures and island beings and lake dwellers.

This is a place for the outcasts – for the ones can never find contentment at the office, even if they’ll spend most of their lives there; for the highwaymen, smugglers, and other outlaws; for those with that perennial prophetic vision that gives birth to all the world’s true pariahs; and to all those without a place or a home in today’s geography or society.

This is a place for the hopeless causes – for those making their last stand for collective survival, for any who believe in conquering a higher (some might say more sacred) existence right here and now, in this life, and, most broadly, for those of us who still grasp frantically for hope and light amidst the darkness and easy despair.

To be very clear, this is a place for anyone sick of New Age bullshit, of “Western Yoga,” of self-help platitudes, and of the self-parody that is The Law of Attraction (or whatever) – yet who still concern themselves with the condition of the Spirit.

It’s a place for the seekers and mystics, the Taoists and Chaos magicians, for those who seek the truth that lies behind all religion and esoteric wisdom and those whose spiritual awareness is inclusive of the world’s grays and willing to take all the difficult steps to the Edge.