John Michael Greer was born in the gritty Navy town of Bremerton, Washington and raised in the south Seattle suburbs. As a student of the occult traditions and nature spirituality for several decades, he is the author of numerous articles and books in half a dozen nonfiction fields, nearly all of them focused on the revival of forgotten ideas, insights, and traditions of practice from the rubbish heap of history, and fifteen novels. His first published book, Paths of Wisdom, appeared in 1996.