The author is a 20-something androgynous and transgendered (female-to-male) person who is also an occultist, alchemist, (occasionally disgruntled) county government employee, writer, parks and wildlife management volunteer, and (occasionally obsessed) bibliophile. In addition, he has also been active in the otherkin and therianthropy communities, and to a lesser extent the multiplicity community, both online as well as off. When not writing down his thoughts or beating his brains out at work, he is usually seen hanging out with friends, sharing ideas with like-minded folk, volunteering at wildlife facilities, or just arguing with the voices in his head. Raised Irish Roman-Catholic, he has a strong respect for what he considers ‘true’ Christianity, as opposed to the dominionist cults, although he himself has no set religion, prefering instead to eke out his own path. His beliefs seem to be about as eclectic as his interests, and he tries to stay active in all areas of his life.

The personal symbol seen above was taken from Basilius Valentinius’s Prima Clavis. The emblem shows a wolf leaping over a fiery crucible. The original meaning was the use of stibnite (the wolf) to separate silver from gold in the crucible, as represented by the king and the queen in the original woodcut: Let the diadem of the king be of pure gold, and let the queen that is united to him in wedlock be chaste and immaculate…take a fierce gray wolf, which is found in the valleys and mountains of the world, where he roams savage with hunger. Cast to him the body of the king, and when he has devoured it, burn him entirely to ashes in a great fire… The wolf leaping over the fire in this case represents to the writer of this blog his own ‘inner canine’, and his mastery over himself, his gender, and the alchemical elements he works with on a daily basis. Hence we have the title The Hermetic Dog.