5 N’oj - PPS Ceremony #2 - Conceiving the Intellectual Path
Today is the first officially recognized ceremony of this Path of the Plumed Serpent, given that last time I didn’t even realize I was in one.
It has already been a doozy, but this is the beauty and blessing of the calendar: now there is a framework for holding, I don’t feel like I’m just going crazy, there’s a context to put it in.
But going crazy—that old chestnut—it always goes hand and hand with anything that gets heady for me. It’s both one of my greatest delights and greatest fears, diving into the intellectual sphere. Today, ceremony #2 on the path, brings my conception energy to bear, what I came into this world from: 5 N’oj, the energy of work and the intellect.
It’s also connected to Pawhuatuun, the old man, the Maya god of merchants, travelers, and the ocean, sort of like Hermes and Neptune put together. He is said to enjoy drunkenness. Because of course. The ancient beer is still very much a part of things, I have been hearing this morning. There’s a reason that the cacao synchronicities include the ancient beer crossover in the South American jungles where I awakened, the project that launched me on my nomad path and the road to a PhD; there’s a reason that Gönul, the angel sponsoring my visa and my cacao merchant, is Turkish—because this whole tradition of funeral feasting that includes cacao and beer goes back to Göbekli Tepe.
Artist, mystic, alcoholic, psychotic, and prophet: The only difference is whether or not people believe you.
The witnessing. Someone to tell you: You’re not crazy. It really happened.
Just like trauma healing.
Terence McKenna, Jesus, Judas, Richard Alpert, Tim Leary: raving channelers who received gospels that some people fervently believed in, and others vehemently rejected. Some were deemed the prophets, others the lunatics. Richard Alpert became Ram Dass and amassed a ritual following in Hawaii; Tim Leary was made Nixon’s public enemy #1, and got locked up in prison by the CIA. Jesus took over the world with his gospel; Judas became the scapegoat of humanity. McKenna is an interesting one because he was so fringe, he’s somewhere in the middle. Jung too, they found a way to translate things into languages people could understand at least parts of, but at what personal cost?
It’ll make you go mad, all this channeling, without something to ground you.
I fear the days of both intellect and creativity, the push to make something other people can see and understand overwhelms me. I always feel on the edge of exploding or going crazy. Like nobody is going to understand my ideas or believe me after all the years of gaslighting. I long to let the words go and simply feel. This is the best part of the ceremony and the practice, is just sitting and letting the sound wash over me, bathed in the primal light of only candles, breathing smoke.
Free. Home. An animal.
I fear the digital and often long for a world returned to analog. When I set pen to paper it flows until my pen runs dry. I channel and receive truth there that I later don’t know how to translate to something other people can understand. The spoken word is helpful but it’s so rambling.
I don’t know how it all comes together. But I fear my mind.
That’s where they came for me, after all, with the gaslighting.
The labyrinth is the one in my skull, and a brain kind of looks like one anyway.
My own thoughts are the enemy, the monster knocking around in there.
I love the days when the energy gives me an excuse to just be, days like yesterday where I went to the forest and sat nestled in the pelvis of a tree and translated a poem given to me by that sweet green place, and I took photos of the palaces and temples of humans and the earth in the land around the castle, and then I came home and talked to my soul brother about trying to navigate between the formless and the form, and I did a reading for our relationship that put everything in a framework and perspective that made sense.
Mark Elmy, my calendar teacher, reminded me that when things are meant to happen, they come easily. I wrote that in a marketing story recently, because everything is part of it.
It makes sense when I sit before my altar with my candles, it flows when I journal, but then I pull out my computer and it all seems to fall apart, that’s when I get lost in the labyrinth. I don’t know how to translate it, what I’m even trying to say, what people will understand. I know how to build an altar and make an ofrenda but what is my offering to the world of the mind? My play isn’t even a play, it’s a nightmare of half-formed hallucinations, and not in a good way, most of it makes no sense and there is barely a coherent through-line. It’s just another mass grave of aborted ideas, the beginnings of things that could have gone somewhere interesting, the conceptions of thoughts that feel visionary but I don’t know how to frame them.
I know that they revolve around this idea of the culture of direct experience, humanity’s oldest “religion,” the syncretic Hermetic tradition of esoteric spiritualism, of which I am a priestx, a shamxn, and so are Eric and Jade whether or not they know it. So are the playwrights of the Jeezus musical and the fringe performers at the Cockpit and Dave is an elder channeling shit around the campfire, I can see him in my mind’s eye with long dreads and a bone necklace; his eyes are portals to it. Aww, this is cool. We are around a fire together right now, interdimensionally.
He saw the play as what I conceived but was afraid to move forward: basically me just performing my ceremony in front of people.
It’s about self-gaslighting and channeling.
Everyone keeps telling me to trust the process, and I can do that. But I’m afraid of my own mind taking over and derailing me. Driving me into a corner of the labyrinth where the unstoppable death force can corner me.
Queer community, ceremony, and the stage are the exits through the side door of the labyrinth.
But I feel like my work is only in theory. I talk about the play I’m writing and my book proposal and both are labyrinthine nightmares, fragments of fever dream material. I feel like I just need an editor. Did Jung have one?
How do I bring any of this shit to fruition? It’s all stuck at conception.
What’s real is the ceremony and self-healing. What I can’t seem to get together is the documenting and sharing.
I’m so sick of writing. I just want to talk to people around a fire again.
Yesterday I alchemized it in the forest, I listened to that podcast about Jung on the way to a castle and found myself more enchanted with the palace of green that surrounded it than the thing made by humans. But I also took some amazing photos and realized this was something i was really good at, but I had gaslit myself here too and told myself I wasn’t a photographer. I am going to add these to my online art store. I sat in the crook of a tree that looked like a pelvis and hapé wrapped the forest around me like a blanket and I realized that no matter what we do, we can never be separate, and I didn’t just think it, I felt it, I gnew it, in the core of my being, and that was worth everything.
But according to the world of 3D, yesterday I wasn’t working. I’m behind on all my deadlines. I need to get this newsletter out and I keep avoiding it.
I just find it increasingly hard to do anything that’s not just being, feeling, talking, and listening.
Current research/projects: I’m reading “Psychomagic” by Alexander Jodorowsky after seeing it referenced in Kit’s thesis and it’s totally breaking shit open. This is what I’m doing. But I have skipped the public performance part and gone straight to the self-healing, adding my own flavor and experience. I still want to create stories for the audience but the praxis is this process for the queer, the seeker, the divergent, the artist to witness themselves and heal. But I do think it needs holding by another, which is maybe where my offerings come in and there is some opportunity to support myself financially, I don’t know.
I continue to dive deep into the Maya calendar, informally apprenticed by Mark Elmy, and it’s blowing shit open, and my friends can’t get enough of the readings, and i’m using it as energy exchange for things; as currency, you could say. I must tread carefully here, but it feels super life-giving.
I continue to struggle through the music series for my newsletter, feeling like an imposter, delaying publication of part two so much it’s causing me to completely freeze with anxiety. I don’t even know where to start with the podcast.
The second cacao/beer zine is burning a hole in my consciousness as well and I just don’t want to do it.
I don’t really want to write at all anymore, but I have this fucking newsletter and a thousand half-finished drafts that DO need to be shared…
I’m still finishing Kit’s thesis and have started a thousand books, from Donna Haraway to Gabor Maté’s ADD book, ironically, and Jodorowsky. I need to read Bittersweet as it keeps popping up. There is a book about shamanism from Annabelle as well I need to look up.
LISTEN:
Let's choose to be separate in the forest
The conversation explores the concept of oneness and the integration of self with the universe. It suggests that suicide is a desire to return to a pre-birth state of unity, but that true realization is understanding one is already boundless and inseparable. The speakers emphasize that death would not fundamentally change this, as we are already one with everything. They advocate for embracing life, appreciating sensory experiences, and finding comfort in nature, like sitting in a tree or feeling the environment around us. The message is to cherish being alive and the sensory separation we experience, rather than seeking to escape it.
Outline:
Realization of Oneness and Integration
Unknown Speaker discusses the urge to return to the womb and the oceanic boundlessness, describing it as a form of suicide.
Speaker 1 emphasizes that one is already boundless and one, highlighting that death would only mean realizing this while alive.
The integration is understood as recognizing that one can never be anything but one, and there is no need to go anywhere or do anything.
Speaker 1 explains that we are the trees and every species, with Papa Hapé helping to see this connection while sitting in the forest.
Cure for Derealization and Depersonalization
Unknown Speaker reiterates that we used to be free but are already everything, which is the integration and the cure for derealization and depersonalization.
Speaker 1 elaborates that one couldn't be separate if one tried, and death would only mean missing out on sensory experiences and the support of the environment.
The conversation touches on the sensory experiences of being alive, such as feeling the tree beneath you, hearing bird song, and feeling the moss and cold air.
Unknown Speaker adds that we are always one and can't be separate, emphasizing the continuous presence of the womb-like feeling in the forest.
Choosing to Be Alive
Speaker 1 suggests that it is better to choose to be alive while one has the chance, describing this life as winning the lottery.
The separation in this dimension can be brutal and painful, but finding comfort in the forest, friends, or the city can alleviate loneliness.
Unknown Speaker advises sitting in a tree to feel the womb's presence, acknowledging the responsibilities of this dimension.
Speaker 1 emphasizes that the ability to be separate is a blessing and a gift, urging to choose to stay alive and help each other survive.
Embracing Separation and Survival
Speaker 1 reiterates the importance of choosing to be separate while alive, highlighting the gift of experiencing life's sensory aspects.
The conversation emphasizes the need to help each other survive to enjoy these moments and feel the holding of the environment.
Unknown Speaker concludes by stating that everything will go back to the beginning, reinforcing the cycle of life and death.
The overall message is to appreciate the present and the sensory experiences while acknowledging the interconnectedness of all beings.
Transcript:
Suicide is also the urge to go back to the womb, to drift back into that oceanic boundlessness. But that way, it's kind of beautiful. The integration is realizing that you don't have to go anywhere.
You're already boundless. You're already one. You've never been separate. You can't be, you couldn't be if you tried,
fundamentally nothing all that different would happen if you died, you'd just be realizing what's already here while you're alive.
That's the integration, the realization that you can never be anything but one. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to do anything. You're already there. It's already happening. It can't not be happening. Now, I understand what these forest means. We are the trees. We used to be trees. We are the trees still. We are still every species, Papa jape is helping me see as I sit nestled in the arms of this tree held by the mother, floating in the amniotic fluid of The Forest, looking out at the water, softly moving i
Oh, I spit on myself. Shit. Did not aim that. Well, gross.
i keep saying that we used to be trees, and maybe we used to be more literally, but we already are everything. That's the integration, the cure for derealization and depersonalization is to realize that you can't not be one, that we're already everything.
You couldn't be separate if you tried nothing, all that different would happen if you died, except that other people couldn't enjoy you, except then you couldn't feel the support of this tree underneath you. Except then you couldn't feel the holding and the beauty of the forest. Then you couldn't hear with your material this bird song. You couldn't feel the softness of this moss under your thumb. Couldn't feel the cold of the fall air in Scotland
on your skin, taste the bitter earth of happe on your tongue, smell the rainforest as you sit in the temperate one. We're always one. You couldn't be separate if you tried.
So really, it's better to choose to be alive while you've still got the chance this dimension is winning. Winning the lottery, you get to experience the separation through the sensory and the separation can be brutal and painful, and it can feel lonely, but then you come to the forest, or you sit with a friend, or you go to the city even, and you feel the holding of everything around you, but really go Sit in the tree,
and then you'll feel that the womb is always around you. Sure, in this dimension, we have to do things and breathe for ourself and eat
and move our legs. That can feel like a curse, but it's a blessing. It's a gift. We get to be. Separate. So let's choose to be separate while we have the chance. Let's choose to stay alive a little bit longer. Let's choose to help each other survive so we can have these moments and feel this holding. It'll always go back to the beginning.
Transmission transcript: I don’t want to write anymore
Most people avoid meditation and hate it, but there's nothing I'd rather do than sit here in the candle light, Listening to the rain just being
I say suicide is actually the urge to return to the womb, where there's no more thinking or doing. You don't even have to digest for yourself or eat or breathe it's all done for you, the place where you can just let it all go.
But there is the beauty in being separate and having to do these things on your own. And yeah, it's the depth of experience.
But it feels so overwhelming. I think this is what all the artists experience, artist, Mystic, alcoholic, all the same archetype. There's a reason I'm putting them all in the same play. I think, I mean, there is a through line that's this gaslighting. What's the difference between all these things? They're all the same archetype. The difference in their expression is the witnessing is whether someone is telling you it really happened. You're not crazy. When there's no one to see it, or when you don't know how to share it, you go fucking mad. You but the same things expressed to the right crowd will get you the biggest following in the history of the world. Jesus, but then someone else tries to come along and have a vision. Judas, then they get sidelined and scapegoated.
The Trans is the hermetic messenger that brings back direct experience that tears down the gate keeping that says all of this is available to anyone you just have to learn to listen. That's the three line, self healing, direct communication with the plants, the ancestors, the energies. There's nothing special about any of these people. They just learned. They just remembered how to listen. It's something we all have the capability for which so it's about undoing the gaslighting by validating your experience, by witnessing the happenings and the knowings affirming.
This is the practice, and you can do it for yourself, but sometimes you also need someone to hold it and
I guess it's coming together, but the problem is the execution. Something's getting lost there. Something's getting stuck there. Something really important is happening around the calendar.
I'd say it's possessing me, but it feels more joyful than a lot of the other things I'm doing, but theater is so important to you. I mean, after that experience the other night, yeah, I just don't want to write anymore.
One of. Be free of the tyranny of language, and this is something McKenna talks about too. Words create a reality,
but they also entrap us in the net of duality, drawing lines around what things are and aren't supposedly
