Michael Estell took his Minerval initiation on the Ides of March, 1998 e.v., blithely ignoring the soothsayers’ warnings. He is a member of the Electoral College of U.S. Grand Lodge of O.T.O., and also serves the Order as a member of the Committee of Four of Tahuti Chapter R+C, a chartered initiator, and an ordained E.G.C. Priest. He was trained as a classical scholar at Berkeley and Yale, ultimately receiving a Ph.D. in Classics from Yale in 2000 e.v., where his dissertation examined the cultural intersections between song and war in archaic and classical Greece. His current scholarly projects include a translation of the magical works of St. Giordano Bruno, and an annotated, initiated edition of the Chaldaean Oracles. He holds a second-degree black belt in traditional Japanese Shotokan karate, though he has lately shifted his focus to Chinese internal martial arts, starting all over as an enthusiastic beginning student of Tai Chi. He now lives and works in the Boston area.
Dr. Estell will be delivering a talk entitled Come and See: Metaphors and Representations of Sight and Motion in Gnostic and Thelemic Sacred Texts