Per Ardua ad Astra (Welcome!)

Through adversity to the stars!

Welcome to my new blog. I am Vincent St. Clare, a somewhat lackadaisical man with a mystic’s heart and a skeptic’s mind. I am a writer in various senses: a blogger, essayist, poet, and author of short fiction. I’m also an all-around curious person.

I decided to test my mettle as a blogger beginning sometime around 2011 or 2012, when I started a Tumblr blog, and Blogger mirror blog, entitled Not I: Meditations on the Strange Side of Life. (Those blogs have since been deleted.) I eventually ended up leaving those blogs behind and started another blog, The Grand Tangent, in April 2014. I blogged there for a short while, writing about everything from politics and society to the environment to religion and spirituality. I eventually realized that, precisely because that blog was literally a long series of tangents, it lacked the focus necessary to make it really shine. (The Grand Tangent still serves as my main website, featuring a list of my written works.)

Now, in late 2018, I’ve decided to initiate this blog, LOGOS!, with a focus on a skeptic’s—my—day-to-day spiritual journey.

I am a skeptic and evidentialist at heart: I doubt the existence of things for which the evidence is insufficient. At the same time I feel a deep impulse toward something greater than myself; I’m inspired to pursue a spiritual path because I sense there is something more to the world, something sacred in spite of the base matter from which the universe is formed.

How to reconcile these two: the skeptic’s mind and the mystic’s heart? This blog will explore the bridging of the gap between those two aspects of myself.

Per ardua ad astra is a Latin phrase which means, “Through adversity to the stars.” I find it fits well the theme of this blog, by which I will attempt to document spiritual development and mystical experimentation while maintaining a rational and scientific frame of mind.

I intend to update this blog on a weekly basis, to the best of my ability.

Let’s hope that my writing does carry itself so far, from the dark lead of Earth to the golden light of the stars above.

Stay tuned for more!