The Great Work

Nine stories set in the gap between what the esoteric traditions promise and what the people who maintain those traditions actually experience on any given Tuesday evening. They concern Hermetic orders that cannot fix their roofs, Rosicrucian fraternities sharing a strip mall, angels who have been on hold since the Elizabethan era, demons contractually obligated to manifest over Zoom, and an Ascended Master who has not attended a quarterly meeting since the French Revolution. The sacred, in these stories, tends to arrive in small containers — a jam jar, a salt shaker, a cup of tea slightly too milky, served to whoever shows up.