*(Important) Transdimensional treasure hunt
Kit is speaking. Distinctly if not directly distinguishably. I see xem clearly, transported back to when I was living at Jill’s house last summer, walking up to the zoo to draw animals with the fresh scent of the jungle in my nostrils, hapé caked at the corners, talking to xem on time-delay over voice note, feeling unworthy of xir precious last Earthly energy. I was called to upload xir voice notes to Otter and I have a new perspective now, and am now not in shame but humbled and so grateful, xe clearly did sign up for this multidimensional mentoring thing, part of me keeps trying not to believe, but I can’t not.
The seeds were planted then for the Maya theatre project, I didn’t quite understand it then but now it makes all the sense in the world.
It’s not about me and my art. That was a little-kid part that wanted to be seen, all the exiles who didn’t get to live their dreams, and the ones who want to give dad the finger; I was letting them steer, and they needed to get it out of their system, but I’m becoming so grounded in that not really being my purpose.
My dharma is about helping people reconnect to themselves, each other, and the Earth; rediscover their own indigeneity; and find their expression.
This is why Kit, this is why I met Sophie and she offered me this opportunity at the devising workshop. This is part of the call of Meso- and South America: because the land that is cracking open my heart and transforming my soul must be held in sacred reciprocity, and I want to give back, and maybe this is how I do that—by helping people transmute their pain the way I did as a kid, turning it into theatre; putting their pain up on the stage to speak its name and be trans-formed, keeping their history alive like a secret through oral tradition when the oppressors took the records from them and got it twisted.
The Rabinal Ache is performed at the end of February, and there are groups trying to revive and preserve it; I think this is what Kit’s ex-wife was doing, but xe never gave me her name that I can recall, or her organization. I think it might be mentioned in one of xir writings; Laura just remembers that her name is Tamera. I am on a mission.
This is fun. Like a transdimensional treasure hunt, following the trail through scraps of transdimensional memories, dreams, and reflections.
Like another labyrinthine late-nineties adventure-PC game, Treasure Quest, that sucked me into its atemporal Neptunian landscapes as a kid.
I was feeling called to a similar cultural production in Colombia, I think, that someone was asking for help with through the Wisdom Keepers Patreon. I felt called to reach out to them; having just found out that I was accepted to the ArteSumapaz residency in Colombia (!!!!), this all seems to be lining up…
One of the stated goals of my exhibition for the summer residency, and a driving principle: “To engage with surveillance and archiving through the lens of consent, inclusivity, and radical subjectivity.”
THE MORE RADICALLY SUBJECTIVE, THE MORE UNIVERSAL IT GETS
From my notes last summer, reading Kit’s thesis:
(I’m not positive what’s me and what’s xem, the styles and subjects are so similar, but I think I’m the italics only)
if I am writing for you, so that you know I am now writing from this or that method, then I’m not really writing from a radical subjectivity, I am already writing on a mirror, writing to an Other I can’t see. The question might be, rather, how do you write the interior so deep inside that interior that interior becomes Other? And what does that look like?
Can a text for a journal, for an art research journal, be constructed so that it might resemble madness, to represent madness that comes on the evening of a breakthrough? I had a breakthrough. Because I had a breakthrough. Because I really really had a break through.
THIS IS THE JOURNAL - THE JOURNALS - THE PERSONAL MADE PUBLIC VS THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE - SOMETHING V IMPORTANT ABOUT THE PROCESS AS PRACTICE AS WORK RE: JOURNALS/JOURNALING
An option: Make up a fake theorist we can write about, because we need some kind of documentation that exists outside this text, and we need a documentation that is too hard to find, but too sensical to refute.
But now we have a body, we have always had bodies of knowledge, they just live in the jungle and don’t have university funding
The reason we might invent an imaginary source is, for one, it is much easier than having to bother to look for sources when we know they are already there somewhere … we are making our own claims self-consciously suspicious, putting ourselves in the role of an unreliable narrator, and all authority needs to be undermined.
The point is to show people how easy it is to manipulate them
if I perform the role of narrator/researcher, and take on multiple roles, to perform the multiple methods, offers a grounding to the performance and the interviews
Also video of the trance performance and interviews with people talking about their trance experience > how these elements might add up to a vocabulary for exposition in my practice, and whether these multiple levels of inquiry might not themselves take form as performed research. The exhibition of the work is something other than the work itself, creating meta-narratives … This text is a construction of multiple narrative voices speaking to and against each other
Problematic terms when talking about other cosmologies/cultures: i.e., Lukumí/Yoruba colonialist roots
oral tradition in this case is not only based on the spoken word, but on signs and symbols within the oral teachings. In some cases, the oral transmission of knowledge falls outside the academic definitions of oral tradition, because rather than transmission of knowledge from the mouth of an elder to an apprentice, this is transmitted in dreams and trance, through visitations from elders who are dead.
Did xe know xir prescience when xe said this? Was it always intended? “I have yet to come across a study that allows for the dead to participate as subjects, and practitioners know that the dead are more active subjects than the living, because they speak through the living.”
I wonder about how to cite claims that are based on secrets. And I wonder about the necessity for documentation of the history of a religion that is already well-established in ethnographic literature
Different takes/framing when writing from ethnographic, psychoanalytic, and radically subjective perspective (“on the edge of madness”) >> this is what I have been doing, the not quite chanting/rapping/poetry/stream of consciousness stuff.
I want to consider writing, research writing about art as research, as montage, in the way that Eisenstein considered montage: ‘an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another’
Anthi, writing as drawing
How is/can writing be embodied?
…
Criteria for ethical practice:
first, drawing frameworks from the cultural system itself (i.e., from Lukumí and/or Palo, rather than a European ritual framework);
second, maintaining the respectful distance necessary for ethical intercultural practice, with attention to the tradition’s transcultural nature;
third, taking a position of radical subjectivity from within the ritual system (vs. the position of a performance practitioner borrowing from world ritual culture as though it were a palette).
Safety: discussion of techniques in cultural ritual context and how they are different in this modified form; 2 participants stay lucid in case someone needs help; consensual approach where performers can stop when uncomfortable
performers were given mirrors charged w spiritual energy so they could stop/control the flow
DUDE WTF!! THIS WAS LITERALLY THE IDEA I HAD AND THEN I THOUGHT PEOPLE WOULD THINK IT WAS STUPID - to do a ceremony/ritual on stage as part of a one person show (then six months later, I did do it…)
Both Mendieta and Kantor are part of the mis-en-scène they create. Mendieta’s body is indelibly burned or otherwise imprinted in many of her more famous works, like a ghost. Kantor is present, sitting to the side of the playing area, serving to remind the spectator that the performance one is seeing is through Kantor’s point of view. This radical subjectivity interwoven into their work makes the ritual nature of their work likewise entirely subjective.
The viewer, or the spectator, is not an active participant, or witness to an authentic rite, but is instead watching someone else go through an elaborate rite.There is a spiritual dimension here, but it is just out of reach. This creates a tension where the viewer or the spectator or the audience is left to resolve their own subjective experience.
“New mestiza” = identity formed by crossing borders
“Many ways to cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the normal” - overlapping and intersecting the experience of Chicanas on US/Mexico border
Mestiza consciousness is a new form “characterized by a unique awareness of the functions of power that construct this form of subjectivity … [where] those who are constituted as abnormal transgressors have gained a tolerance not only for duality but for multiplicity and ambiguity.”
“Her thinking resists binaries that structure dominant ways of knowing, including subject-object, normal-abnormal, and English-Spanish”
Trans* resists being bound by any conception of gender and sexuality even as it claims them–it is quantum, inherently paradoxical, a particle and a wave at the same time, all genders and none at once. It becomes one intersection when you observe it and then rejoins the rainbow wave like the monks that dissolve into rainbow bodies
I share Anzaldua’s “preoccupation with the inner life of the self, and with the struggle of that Self amidst adversity and violation; with the confluence of primordial images; with the unique positions consciousness takes at these confluent streams; and with my almost instinctive urge to communicate, to speak, to write about life on the borders, life in the shadows.”
KIT CROSSED THE BORDER TO THE OTHER REALM, RICHARD CROSSED THE BORDER TO THE OTHER REALM, AND THEY BOTH WROTE ABOUT BORDER-CROSSING AND NEO-MESTIZ(X) IDENTITY BEFORE THEY SLIPPED THROUGH THE PORTAL
WHAT DOES THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL MESTIZ(X) IDENTITY LOOK LIKE? THIS IS TRANS* AS EMERGENT ARCHETYPE, THE BEING THAT CAN INHABIT BOTH LIVING AND DEAD, SPIRIT AND MATTER AT ONCE
Richard, from “The Crossing”:
“Their children were, or would be, mestizos, part of a new and burgeoning race re-populating Mexico after its 16th-century apocalypse; by this time, the Spanish invasion and its wave of alien plagues, such as smallpox — along with war and its cousin, famine — had killed all but 2 million of Mexico’s 15 to 30 million native people.” (p35)
“just as the Manso and Jumano increasingly melted into the Apache, so did the Spanish and European into the newest race in the world: the mestizo, that uniquely Mexican fusion of native and European (namely Iberian) bloodlines. But genetics aside, the culture that developed here on the high Chihuahuan desert would be decidedly different than its predecessors, growing into its sparse and harsh environs — just like the mustang.”
“But most importantly, it was during this period that distinctions between races began to fall away. The Belgians, Germans, and other Europeans, for example, melted into the thousands of other Spanish subjects. They learned the languages and customs of their ruler and fellow settlers alike. The native people often spoke Spanish now. White, European men frequently married and settled down with native women, Pueblo and Manso, and many of the newest generation of adults and leaders were known as coyotes, mestizos, and ladinos. Coyote was just another word for half-breed; mestizo was the mix of European and native blood; and the word ladino was adopted from faraway Spain where it was employed to label Spanish Jews. Some were Black men, slaves freed to become soldiers, who married into the Pueblo culture or took Tlaxcalan wives: women descended from the original Mexican indigenous troops who helped conquer New Mexico.
This budding tradition of intermarriage was, of course, inherited from the Native American people — who would marry into other bands and tribes altogether — as well as the Spanish, who had intermarried with Jews and even their greatest enemy, the Moors, at least between wars. El Paso represented a turning point in American history, in sharp contrast to the English colonies of the East Coast: here and in the Southwest, color and creed were not obstacles to toiling together, fighting together for survival, nor even to that most sacred human sacrament: marriage. In the English colonies that would come to dominate the American story, however, nothing could be further from reality. From Massachusetts southward, the English tradition of dividing whites from everyone else — especially Black people — was the norm that would rule the day. That part of America was enmeshed in the original sin of slavery from 1619 onward, along with segregation and seething hatred. Intermarriage, even with Native Americans, was rare and roundly scorned. As historian Jennifer Agee Jones wrote of the English colonies:
While settlers may have had the opportunity, very few such unions took place in the colonial era. Powerful psychological barriers prevented most Europeans from marrying Indians. That the Indians were "wild" people without knowledge of Christianity convinced many that marrying them was dangerous to one's soul. Other newcomers felt less constrained by cultural boundaries and easily shed the trappings of their culture to marry the native way. To colonial officials, such actions provided evidence that the wild land and its inhabitants were a temptation to those struggling to maintain godly communities on the frontier. Such renegades served as a symbol of religious and cultural degeneration that could ultimately undermine colonial endeavors.
Because intermarriage would have proven a means of assimilation between the two groups, its absence underscores the most irreconcilable divisions between Europeans and Indians. The attitudes that prevented Europeans from marrying the natives were the same attitudes that governed most interactions between the two peoples in the seventeenth century. The failure of the two groups to marry one another was one component of a larger failure to cohabit peacefully in seventeenth-century North America.” (p 140-142)
“For much of its three centuries, the El Paso region had been part of a multicultural society of Europeans, mestizos, and Native Americans as part of either Mexico or New Mexico, both politically and culturally. Indeed, there were frequent movements to break away from Texas and become part of New Mexico, or even to form a new state altogether. But now the long arm of segregation reached from Reconstruction-era Texas to the Rio Grande. The laws of Jim Crow twisted a society centuries in the making, dividing it by hue of skin, color, and language.” (p301)
LA POCHA NOSTRA ALSO TALKS ABOUT THIS—I just reached out to Balitroníca yesterday
To honor Kit means to learn:
"Xe": is used as the subject pronoun (e.g., "Xe is going to the store") - "zee"
"Xir": is used as the possessive pronoun (e.g., "That's xir book") - "zeer"
"Xem": is used as the objective pronoun (e.g., "I saw xem at the park") - “zeem”
"Xirs": is used as the possessive pronoun (e.g., "That book is xirs") - “zeers”
Examples:
"Xe is a talented artist, and xir paintings are beautiful."
"I met xem at the library, and xir was very friendly."
"That is xirs car, and xe drives it to work."
"I saw xir yesterday, and xe said the book was xirs."
Voice memo from Kit, 6.20. 24 / LISTEN
Uh, hey, there, hey there. Ferdinand, hey, there. Um, hey, this is kit calling. Um. I'll try to keep this like short ish, um, but yeah, I just wanted to touch base and stuff and say hey. And, yeah, it was great talking earlier today. And, oh, God, you didn't talk too much at all. That was really interesting, um. And it's a really good, really good for me to hear, like all of the different, you know, like the different contextual information and stuff like we said about, about what the kind of work that you do and the kind of work that you're looking looking to do. Um, and so I was thinking, I was thinking further about it too. And there, there are a couple couple of books of auto theory that you probably know about, that might be really relevant to me. That may be or may not be relevant, I'm not sure, but one I was thinking, of course, you probably know the writing of Paul Preciado. It's P, R, E, C, I, A, D, O, and I, he's a trans mask. And actually, his testo junkie is amazing. I mean, I read it, I didn't understand it, you know, it was one of but I got a lot of it. It's super, super, way over my head. And so, so, so smart and so brilliant, but in a way like he makes himself his own practices research project, as he talks about about transitioning and things and all of the different pseudo pharmacological empire and all of this deep state kind of fast. It's just fascinating as hell. And if you haven't come across that, it might be nice to take a look at too. I always like, I always go back to to his order, or la frontera Borderlands, because I think I'll think a lot of times when people talk about auto theory, they start with, with, what's her face with Nelson? About Jenny Nelson, is that her name? But the Argonauts, which is book I really, I really love, because she called it auto theory, even the first, although Paul Preciado actually called it that first in French. Either way, it doesn't matter. I think Gloria anzaldua and a lot of the, a lot of the Chicana activist writers of the 70s, and also black writers like, Oh God, what Audrey Lord writing about her own breast cancer, like all of all of those writers are already like in that, in that zone, like sub alternate identities, and talking from different, different identity formation places, and finding the ways of articulating that, and in The process, inventing new, new ways of, you know, talking about the impossible thing that we're all trying to talk about, that kind of thing. So I anyway, there were, there were those. There was another one to God. There's just so many things that pop popping into my head. I just feel like there's so many different resonances with what you're doing and the kind of stuff that I'm really interested in. So it just makes me want to want to want to want to be involved, how, however, I can, even if it's for a very short time. But I was also thinking yes about Anne Boyer, who has a book called the undying that you may know of, and that's about her own experience with breast cancer. So I'm just because, I'm just thinking, because you were talking about writing about illness and the hell healthy body and the sick body, and those things are, are pretty fascinating places to go once you open up everything. And I feel like in a project like this, it's kind of nice to open up all of the, all of the, not, not cans of worms, because no one really wants to open up a can. I don't want to open up the can of worms for any particular good reason, but just to give yourself permission to talk about the things that you want to talk about, if that makes sense. Um, and talking about the body, I think is necessary to, like, engage with the ideas of sickness and stuff, blah, blah, blah, you know, like all that kind of stuff. And then, you know that. But her book, the undying was one I started reading at the beginning, one I understood before the doctors did. I think that what I had was cancer, and that it wasn't a good one, and it wasn't going to be one that was that was curable. Hers was curable, it turns out, fortunately. But the way she writes about that experience of being, you know, a feminist body, in feminist spaces, and kind of continue. Doing the work that Susan Sontag did with her own writing on breast cancer, course, and then, and then AIDS and HIV and all that stuff. They're all kind of like it's tied together. And these are things that I've been drawing from a lot, a lot lately. Yeah, and I know a little bit more, I guess I don't know. I, yeah, I wanted to mention, like, so just with my own experience with gender, I mean, I always knew that was something else. So identify as non binary, and that didn't really come into play, like, publicly, in a public way, until, actually during the pandemic, and kind of part of what inspired it is that, like a few years before the pandemic started, when I moved here to the UK, I had a had a conversation with Eliana, my kid, who's 24 now, and they were like, it would have been like 17 then, and we went out for we celebrate Festivus from Seinfeld. And so what we do is we go for a cigar on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Eve Eve. And we used to call it father daughter cigar day. And then this one year, Ellie said, Can we rethink the terms of this arrangement and the terms of this relationship, and rethink the idea of, like, father daughter, um, and I knew what they were getting, and I was like, Yeah, of course. Oh my god. Oh my so, because I hadn't, hadn't realized that, um, that they had started identifying that way and had experiences with, you know, like, lots of like, like best friends, one best friend that I grew up with, and then my best friend in the world right now, watching, watching her go through a transition in kind of a massively public way, too. So when Eliana was like, hinting that, that that was going on, was kind of like, Oh, my God, of course, yes, um. But then the more I got to thinking about it, like I would tell, tell people about my kid and say, yeah, yeah, my kid is non binary. They take away, they and she and I, you know, I got, God, I wish I feel like we missed the boat, like our generation, because I'm 57 now. And that, you know. And I would say, I would tell my friends like, God, I mean, if there was an extra box that I could have checked when I was, like, 16, I would have checked it or 14 or 12, like I knew. I always knew that there was something different. I just didn't know that there was a box, like another box that I could check. So it was sort of like, like my my kid, that generation, is the one that gave me permission to be the person that I always knew I was. I just didn't have a language, language for it, and didn't so that opened up a whole, a whole thing, and so I don't my big thing, I guess, just an art in life in general, is really it's always been about permission. And in retrospect, the places that I've learned the most is when I get out into that deep water that David Bowie talks about, where you can't feel the bottom anymore, is when you when you get to that, that space, and realize that what, what you need is permission to be there and and that that's the space where, where you get to become the next thing that you get to become. And then the work starts, starts to, you
know, really take take on it some. It's visceral, visceralness, I guess I'd say, Yeah, so my background is mostly theater, and not so much visual, although I use a lot of visual stuff, and I'm
very influenced by it, but, like, mostly theatrical, but then a lot of ritual, because I'm initiated in these different, different, different, I guess spiritual traditions you call them from that come from Central Africa and West Africa into the new world. I know you've heard of like like Santeria. We call it Lukumi in the circles of your call it re, taking back, taking back the name, because synthetic is kind of a colonial name, because it adds the saints into these, these African ideas of deities. And then they're, they're not very Catholic. They just kind of look at some people practice it differently. But I tried to anyway, that's a very complicated conversation as well.
I got interested in ritual through Well, I've always been interested in ritual. This is a little bit long, okay, I won't say too much more, because there's I could go. Forever.
I've always been interested in ritual. When I was 25 or 26 the woman I was married to was working on her doctorate, doctorate, Tamara. Anyway, her name's her name's Tamara, and she was working on Mayan theater, and got interested in Mayan theater in 1993 9419 93 and decided that that would be something that she would want to write about. And she wasn't sure why or how, and she knew she wanted to work in Chiapas, because there were a lot of a lot of her mentors had done work there in in southern Mexico, the poorest state in the highlands, where it's where it's really cold. And anyway, as she got interested in doing this, you probably know, like in 1994 the Zapatista revolution started. And so that really kind of kind of gave her work a focus. So we went there in like 1995 96 and spent like a good five months there, and then returned several times. But doing that like I got to see communities in action. And actually this, that's the subtitle of her book, or enacted communities, communities action, and saw how these theater companies that were writing old Mayan myths that had been basically colonized out of people through through centuries of violence that they were re reinterpreting or reinscribing, inscribing them theatrically and just watching how that, you know, that idea that like watching a bunch of like little kids rushing up to a stage because the people on the stage look like them, and they have, you know, complex gender identities that they that they also have and the same skin color and are speaking the language that they speak at home. When I saw that that kind of thing happening, it shifted how I thought about theater, and gave it like an extra idea about about pulse. So the pulse for me was chasing after these different kinds of experiences I had, which were not so much in a Mayan context, because I'm not Mayan, but through these, like, African based systems, which they're like, you know, like probably hundreds of 1000s of practitioners, like in New York and LA and many in Phoenix. So, so been around it, and once I started looking into it, I kind of fell through, I guess, sort of like a rabbit hole, like Alice in the rabbit hole, and things started to make sense. And so in a lot of these, like different there's different ways of dealing specifically with the dead and ancestors and connecting to ancestral lineages. And that's a way to that's like the way of approaching divine. And like that the Divine is in your body. Now you know that, that kind of thing and that we all, we're all made of nature. We have all of the elements that are floating, it's, you know, and on all about that kind of stuff. So that was another thing that made me groove like, so like, the ritual on the site I did, I knew about theater, and then I got super interested in technology too, and just thinking about technological spaces of like represent like screens, and how the screen like the what do you call it? Just the screen. What's the word for the screen? I can't think of another word for it. Where you project a video is the space of ghosts, or the spaces of the dead, or the space of these kinds of things, and making work that's, like, super intimate and that kind of stuff. So anyway, that's a little bit more about me. And just to give you a sense of, like, kind of, kind of where I'm coming from with, with all those things. And so, yeah, I guess I just Yeah, I just hope, I hope that I say things that that might be helpful, and I'm really happy, happy to listen to, of course. Yeah, anyway, I probably can't do like, a jillion messages like this, but I'll send, I'll send as many as I can if we're ever talking and that just sounds great to me. So it was really, as really a pleasure. I think the work that you're doing sounds super interesting, and I think you're looking in some very, very interesting directions. So I can't wait to see what happens next anyway, yeah, have yourself a great Solstice, and good luck with this. With this next full moon. I hope it's soft and easy and and just you know, full of joy and healing and all those good things. All right, thank you. Lovely meeting you.
Kit voice memo 6.29.24 / LISTEN
God, hey, hello, hey. God, yeah, your messages are great, so excuse me, there's no way that I can possibly answer everything I want to say. I would want to say, like, 1000 things from 1000 different directions at once.
God, yeah, exactly. It's very similar, like, in terms of synchronicities and all that, all that stuff, same, really similar wavelength. I'm just super I'm super grateful that that it all worked out like this, then that that Chell and Michael were able to to figure out that this, this would be a really, a really good match. Um, yeah, I think that for me, if, if sounds, sounds right with you, just keep communicating like this is great, and occasionally do a zoom, but I'm talking like this in the mean and it for the time being, really works well, mostly the immediate moment, because I've got all these people coming like so my mom's here, then she leaves, and then my ex, who we've done all the different travels, and Mayan Theater, which so many things to talk About with that. Oh my God, when we lived in the office, and she'll be here staying with me and my kid, and they'll be here for a few weeks. So we're going to be kind of like last time we were all together in the house, we were getting divorced. So this will be a very, very different kind of thing, a very different kind of experience now. So that's going to be really good. And then after that, there's like, another friend coming who's going to stay for a week, then another friend coming first thing for a week, and then another ex who's going to be coming and staying for a couple of weeks, all that kind of stuff. And so there, like, little breaks in between things, but mostly there's going to be people around. Like, what really did keep you company, kind of, it's also sort of like, kind of going with, like, not really sure how much, how much time there is. It could be months. I hope it's months. I hope it's many, many, many months. But it's it's also to keep an eye on on me, because I've had, like, yeah, the seizure. And they thought the other thing was a mini stroke, but I talked to my doctor a couple days ago, and she thought that it probably was not a mini stroke, which is more of the of the seizure just kind of playing itself out because of what happened. This is ridiculous to say when you get a brain tumor and when it starts doing doing a brain bleed, which, yeah, anyway, so that's my life. God, at least I can laugh about it. It's, it's so it's so absurd, and it's so funny and so so strange and so interesting to just because, like all the, I don't know, the neuro, neurological things I think connect to spiritual things and a brain on fire, like, literally, and all that kind of stuff is pretty, pretty pretty interesting. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure curious about all the different things that you've had, especially the stuff with with the with the pelvis, and the Mayan magic and and those different kinds of cosmologies. And I'm curious about all that stuff too. So, real quick. So you asked something about initiation, and if you thought it was necessary to be initiated into certain things. And I don't know, of course, I don't know, but I would say, like, like, for me, it was really important, because I was in my 20s, and I was wandering aimless like a cloud or whatever. And I had had a mentor who turned out to be a little bit crazy, but also very, very wise at the moment, and thought that that what I needed to do was to find the path and to go deep into it. So I did. And Santeria is not necessarily like a like a light path. I'm usually like vegan or at least vegetarian, and it's not necessarily one that's like, you know, cut out for vegans or vegetarians. If you know how these, like Earth religions work the mind stuff works similarly to in terms of of life and all that kind of stuff, which, of course, I've got, I've got problems and issues with, but, but I've done all the different, all the different kinds of ceremonies and stuff that are involved with that so but, but it for me. Me going deeper into something was really good. It was a very good grounding thing, and that's where I live, like my soul is in that, as in that the Orisha grabbed me, the spirit grabs you when you fall down, that kind of thing. That's That's what happened to me with that, and it led to unimaginable worlds, which I'm sure, I'm sure you're familiar with. And I think all the paths do that, and I don't know, yeah, if initiation is in the is in the cards, then it's just in the in the cards. And you'd be probably know it already or not. And it's not necessarily always, always necessary. I think it's often not necessary. And in fact, in terms I've seen lots of people that have been recommended to get initiated that I don't really agree with some of the decisions that some of the godparents I've seen make in terms of that particular path. Anyway, that's a whole nother issue. But yeah, any specific questions? Cool. And as you allegwa, the Trickster spirits, stuff like that, God, it's not forever about everything. So, yeah, I don't know. Let's just keep talking. Let's just keep talking like this. It's wonderful. And, yeah, anyway, I should cut this short, because I've got to go have dinner with my mom, because we haven't actually gone out to dinner since, since she's been here, because life is so strange now that's doing something as casual as going out for dinner is unusual, if that makes sense. So anyway, that's what we're gonna do, because we're coming to the end of the trip and thought it would be a proper thing or whatever. So anyway, I'm gonna eat vegan food by for whatever that's worth. Anyway, I just send it. Send you all the best hope. Hope you're having a wonderful day. Let's, let's, yeah, let's keep talking like this. That's cool, and yeah, and we'll keep sending messages back and forth. And it's extraordinarily fun, and it's really, this is really enlivening me and giving me a place to focus, and just kind of thinking about in terms of, like, mentorship. Maybe I've said this before that I kind of, I always see it not as like, you know, there's not like a grand master or whatever, we're following gurus and all that kind of bullshit. It's just that sometimes someone is like, maybe gone, like, around a different kind of corner, and knows a little bit a little bit more about that kind of corner, and can tell you something about that. So I hope I'm helpful and that way, but you're sure to teaching me an awful lot too, and I think it's just kind of fascinating a life path. Somehow, how interesting. We just have interesting, interesting people find themselves traveling in parallel dimensions without even realizing it. So anyway, all right, so happy whatever day it is, the Friday or Saturday or Sunday or whatever, and look forward to talking soon you.
Giving my 13-year-old self a suit and a strap-on + Marking the 13 Kan / Libra Solar Eclipse Upleveling
It started on the morning of the eclipse with a vision of the electric chair, with a word emblazoned across it:
“FUNCOMFORTABLE”
The song “The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave started playing, and I received the message as being about reframing. The electric chair can be a torturous death, or it can just be something interesting that happens in the endless game of hide-and-seek that is the universe seeking to know itself through every possible configuration.
It’s all about the reframe, the remix, pain is only suffering if you perceive that it’s challenging; in a different context, it can be interesting, information.
As my friend Gorgeous George says: “That’s fun, innit?”
The portal twisted and turned, deepening and meandering as I wove my way through my relationship with my own pain and energy that day. I had an appointment for a very important marking scheduled for the day after the eclipse, and was already dropping into it: a cosmic serpent, marking the completion of this period of my initiation by pain, the crossing of the threshold from child to adult and the rapidly approaching horizon line of eldership, as this year I turn 40: when my Maya astrology reflects with eerie accuracy what is already happening, that this is when I start to really mature and move into a position of service, leadership, gentle yet certain authority, claiming a community where, after all this wandering in the dark, flailing around lost, afraid and alone and ping-ponging all over the Earth, I finally start to know my worth, believe I deserve to be alive and choose to stay here, on this body and in this timeline, and build something lasting.
It’s happening.
I can hardly believe it. I’ve longed for it for so long. But the lesson of this eclipse portal, on the day that joins the number of ultimate stability with my nahual—6 Kan—within the trecena of the Hero Twins, reclaiming and realinging with my herox’s journey, is that the point of everything, my work and art and research and life, is that it’s a remembering, a conjuring into physical presence, into something we can perceive with the senses, that which has always been present.
You can’t make this stuff up. In childhood, my Maya astrology says, I came into the world with a strong ability to manifest my creative talents on the physical plane. This phase was closely linked to the influence of women in my life. My mom was at home with me and very involved with my life in a more positive way than what came later up until age 11 or so, just like this reflects. The comes in the storm, the disruptive influence of the men in my orbit, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s when the divorce happened and there opened up a portal of this world of dad’s house, unchecked by mom, where he could treat us as horribly as he wanted. And she made us go there, because he threatened legal action if she didn’t. But still. She should have insisted. It was the beginning of an abusive pattern that I would later fractally refract in my own romantic relationships.
The astrology reflects what happened, that I exploded all over the place, lost in my own mind, lost in misdirection, blown by the hurricanes of relationships and disappearing into drunkenness, but that by age 40, things would start to settle, and I would move toward eldership, rooted in community: Aj, the nahual of leadership and the spine, being a stand-up guy, influenced by Kej, the nahual of the stag, the healed masculine forest-father power, that advocates for what is right and needed, assuming eldership by age 42, of course, the meaning of the whole silly game.
I didn’t see, at the time I got this reading, how that was ever going to happen. I had just gotten to California and thought that maybe I was going to build it there. I was right in that the foundation was laid, but what I never could have seen coming was that it was laid by breaking everything, shattering my root and foundation; stripping me bare and ripping me open like a carcass for the interdimensional buzzards to devour, and I chose the death, because as Christine said, it’s what we’re going for, and when it comes and we know it’s meant for us all we can do is surrender, so I let it take me, I let the scavengers eat me so that my body could be a feast of abundance for the system, composting the lives that were and could have been and thus enabling the resurrection on the cactus, that thing that looks a lot like a cross, making me a world tree: the axis-mundi.
Returning victoriously as the hero(x) of my own story. Finally, not the victim or the maiden, but also yes them, and also I am the villain, but for once, I am steering the ship.
I feel it. This tattoo was a marking of the end of my shama(x)ic initiation, I completed this round of trials and upleveled, I fucking did it, we did it together, I got there, I didn’t know if I would ever get there, but we made it, it was so dark and hopeless so many times but we followed the feeling.
That was a big part of the portal, learning to know the difference between when an urge, an inclination, was ego and when it was the right kind of pushing myself, when it was following the feeling that said to go somewhere or do something that would leave to my unfolding and awakening, rather than just grinding through and propping myself up with coping mechanisms. This was going where I was needed, helping where I was asked to be of service, being the higher octave and raising the vibration of the place through my presence: the balancing element. And I found the middle ground, that I can show up and also listen to myself, that I can be in the world and with my community and also listen to my body, it can be both things, it doesn’t have to be this extreme. I choose to come out of isolation, leave the waystation, move toward the destination of life’s meaning, 42, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
The theme of the eclipse portal was conjuring into physical presence, the realm of the senses, that which has always been there, but has been forgotten. One of the things I remembered is that I always knew I was trans, I just didn’t know what to call it. I even realized that the beginning of my hard-femme-performance was when I put on that suit during our X-Files spoof, and nothing had ever felt so right, and it scared me. And I made jokes about how we should experiment with queerness, and they weren’t received, and now I see that I shut down ALL of these impulses after that experience, I abandoned my natural gift for theatre and performance of the authentic sort for the performative kind, the falseness, the deception that is the dark side of 13 Kan. When you get so good at the illusion that even you fall into your own con. I felt it again when I wore the strap-on, and I felt another kind of power and authenticity that had no place in my current cultural story, so that scared me too, and it also humiliated him, even though he asked for it, so we put the thing away and never spoke of it again, and I tried to contain that testosterone that needed expression, so as the shadow does, my repressed masculine came out in other, undesired ways.
The con of 13 Kan, when the illusionist confuses even themselves, and forgets what spells they cast, which charms they’re tied to, and who’s entranced, performing what act.
Spell, charm, trance.
Kit’s applauding this.
When you’re born a 13 Kan, you come into this dimension with the natural ability to perceive the other ones, but without the proper training and guidance, you don’t know what’s you and what’s other forces and energies and entities; if you don’t learn to discern your inner voice from your dead grandma from a squirrel or a tree, you’re always going to be confused about what you’re hearing and feeling, about what you actually want and need, you have to learn these boundaries or else you end up lost, like I did.
This is the point of it all, my work/art/life/research/praxis/all the same shit, is actually putting the healing and mentorship into practice; helping others learn to directly communicate with the subtle realms again, which includes parts of self, learning from the traditions that have always done it, but building our own syncretic Hermetic practices, always with reciprocity and respect. Showing people how to do that. This is my offering and service and personal journey, and the PhD is documenting this process of unfolding and making art that represents it.
Okay, now I know what I’m doing. Can I make some shit already?? I hope so.
The marking is marking the transition, the crossing of the threshold.
Like when Cal materialized at the end of my alchemical descent at Burning Nest, that other circus, I think what he said is prescient:
“Your journey is about to get a lot easier.”
LISTEN:
Funny - the AI doesn’t recognize me as anyone here, recorded on the day after the eclipse, but still in its shadow, at 4am London time. I will rename myself Riordan and see what happens.
Giving my 13-year-old self a suit and a strap-on
The speaker reflects on their sexual awakening and identity, tracing back to their childhood crush on David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson from "The X-Files." They discuss the significance of the Sacral Chakra and the color orange, symbolizing creativity and intimacy. The speaker recalls dressing as Gillian Anderson to connect with David, but later realized they wanted to embody both identities. They emphasize the transformative power of performance, particularly in wearing a suit and a strap-on, which made them feel more authentic. The speaker plans to explore drag and performance further, acknowledging the duality of their identity and the need for both masculine and feminine expression.
Transcript
Outline:
Awakening of Sacral Chakra and Realization of Identity
Speaker 1 expresses a desire to have sex again, awakening their Sacral Chakra, associated with the color orange.
They reflect on the significance of orange, realizing it represents a blend of red (root) and yellow (solar plexus) chakras.
Speaker 1 recalls being shamed for their sexuality and body by past lovers, which they now understand better.
Childhood and Adolescence: Struggling with Identity
Speaker 1 describes their childhood, playing softball and liking micro machines, and their adolescent crush on both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, struggling to express their true feelings due to societal and family pressures.
They obsessed over The X-Files, taping episodes and cataloging them, feeling a strong connection to the show's themes. Speaker 1 believed in the conspiracy theories of the show, seeing some truth in them. They dressed as Gillian Anderson in middle school, trying to embody her identity to get closer to David Duchovny.
Transformation and Self-Discovery
Speaker 1 recalls a formative moment when they performed in an X-Files parody video, dressing as David Duchovny and feeling more like themselves.
They realized they wanted to be both David and Gillian, and that a triad relationship would fulfill their desires.
Speaker 1 emphasizes the importance of fluidity and embracing their true identity as a non-binary person.
They reflect on their history of writing musical theater and parody songs, expressing their feelings through performance.
Planning for the Future
Speaker 1 plans to meet with Heather to discuss drag and performance, setting up a non-romantic date to talk about their shared interests.
They reflect on the importance of presenting more masculine to feel safe in their body and to express both masculine and feminine identities.
They plan to attend the next queer poly meet and connect with people in Glasgow who share their interests.
LISTEN:
Fascinating - the AI identifies me as Cain, in this recording from the morning of the eclipse, before it happened that evening. I also notice that my transmissions end in the transcript every time with “I.” This is not something I think I utter aloud, but it makes me think of how Paul Selig when channeling always ends with “period… period… period… they’re saying period.” Ending with the I-am?
Funcomfortable
Cain reflects on the concept of reframing pain and suffering, drawing parallels to the "electric chair" as a symbol of liberation rather than punishment. They discuss the fear of being abandoned if perceived as well, and the realization that self-reliance and community support are crucial. Cain recounts personal experiences, including the impact of the 2017 American Eclipse, their struggle with alcohol, and the journey from content marketing to embracing a nomadic lifestyle. They also explore internalized biphobia and the desire for community and support, particularly as they approach turning 40.
Action Items
[ ] Listen to what Cain's pelvis is trying to tell him today and consider the reframing of his pain as strength.
[ ] Reflect on the fear of getting better and not being loved or needed, and work to overcome this.
[ ] Determine whether the urge to return to the jungle is a call or a fear of stepping into his power in this world.
Outline:
Reframing Pain and Suffering
Cain discusses the concept of reframing pain as interesting and the fear of getting better, questioning if the fear is rooted in the belief that no one will be there if they are well again.
Cain shares a personal story about prolonging the use of crutches to ensure visibility of suffering, fearing that without it, no one would love or help them.
The pelvis story is redefined as one of strength and self-healing, emphasizing that one does not need as much help as they think they do and can rely on their body, community, and natural world.
Cain argues that society's "eye for an eye" mentality is flawed, suggesting that suffering is often seen as self-inflicted and that a toxic culture prevents true well-being.
The Mercy Seat and Liberation
Cain introduces the concept of the electric chair as the mercy seat, where suffering is reframed as a form of liberation and strength.
The idea of choosing to laugh all the way to the electric chair is presented as a way to see the captors as those with blood on their conscience.
Cain explains that if one is innocent, they will rise above the suffering, while those who have harmed others will suffer in the chair.
The vision of the electric chair in the word "funcomfortable" is introduced as a radical reframe of pain and suffering.
The Eclipse and Personal Transformation
Cain recounts a personal experience during the Great American Eclipse in 2017, describing the moment of no shadow as a lesson in balance and the value of darkness.
The concept of pain as pleasure and the importance of special glasses to see the Invisible Sun is introduced.
Cain reflects on their journey from being a content marketing director to embracing the nomadic life and the emergence of their shadow.
The realization that those who do less work often make more money led Cain to question their place in the corporate world and to seek a more authentic path.
Navigating Relationships and Self-Worth
Cain discusses the fear of being alone and the need to make oneself invaluable to others to feel loved and needed.
The idea of seeing oneself as an offering rather than a being is explored, with Cain acknowledging the shift towards self-advocacy and valuing their contributions.
Cain reflects on the importance of being seen and valued for who they are, rather than just for their contributions.
The concept of the dance, both metaphorical and literal, is introduced as a way to navigate relationships and personal growth.
Healing and Community Support
Cain expresses gratitude for their current community and the support they receive, emphasizing the importance of having people who need them.
The physical presence and grounding nature of the community are highlighted, with Cain acknowledging the need to listen to their body and its messages.
The fear of not being loved if not perceived as needing help is revisited, with Cain questioning the basis of their relationships and the balance between codependency and equal energy exchange.
Cain reflects on the importance of trusting their community to provide what they need and the desire for a big dance on their birthday as a symbol of connection and support.
LISTEN:
Interesting - the AI identifies me as Cain in this reflection from the day after the day after the eclipse, in the aftercare refractory period of my marking.
Marking the 13 Kan and return of gnosis
Cain describes the profound experience of getting a tattoo of a 13 con cosmic serpent, which he felt was meant for him. The process involved careful placement and adjustments, symbolizing the alignment of his spiritual and physical selves. Cain emphasizes the importance of queer alchemy and synchronicity, drawing parallels between his tattoo and the broader concept of manifestation. He discusses his commitment to natural healing, his role as a community organizer, and his plans for future events. Cain feels a sense of purpose and unity with his past, present, and future, marking a significant return to his true identity and path.
Transcript
Action Items:
[ ] Talk to Richard about bringing more awareness around cacao at the Sunday Embodayfest event.
[ ] Host a cacao gathering on Cain's birthday.
[ ] Potentially do an event with Rebecca and Ash on Cain's birthday.
[ ] Submit an abstract for "Breaking Convention" and get a queer ecstatic dance event going for Cain's 40th birthday.
Marking the Return of Gnosis
Cain describes the process of marking himself with a design that called to him, which he felt was meant to be on his body.
The design, a 13 Kn cosmic serpent, was chosen synchronistically from a metaphysical shop.
The tattoo process was a collaborative effort with Ezrael, involving multiple stencil adjustments to align with Cain's vision.
The ceremony involved alchemizing the time in Austin, embodying and transmuting the design, and letting the serpent guide the placement.
The Journey of the Tattoo
Cain and Ezrael had to cut up the stencil into pieces and print new versions multiple times to achieve the desired placement.
The final placement of the serpent's head and tail felt magical and aligned with Cain's initial vision.
Ezrael confirmed that the final placement meant Cain was conjuring something that was always present in his light body.
The tattoo ceremony was part of a larger tradition of queer alchemy, bringing subtle realms into the material world.
Queer Alchemy and Synchronicity
Cain discusses the importance of creating respect and apprenticeship in a world without long lineages of certain traditions.
He expresses the need for a new mystery school to teach the wise use of practices with respect and reciprocity.
Cain reflects on his transformational experiences at ecstatic dance and the synchronicity around cacao.
Synchronicity and Community
Ali and Ezrael had a powerful ceremony involving a mastectomy tattoo, and Ali opened her home to host Ezrael for Cain’s tattooing.
Cain feels positive about the synchronicity and trusts in the signs guiding him.
The conversation with Ali and Ezrael led to discussions about cacao and its integration in their work.
Cain emphasizes the importance of compromises that bring everyone together and trusting in the synchronicity.
Manifestation and Purpose
Cain explains the concept of manifestation as calling into being things that already exist on the ethereal plane. He believes in vibrating at a high frequency to conjure the higher path into being.
Cain is focused on organizing events and advocating for voices that aren't very loud. He feels certain about his purpose in reclaiming his identity as trans and bringing natural healing practices to the forefront.
He plans to document his journey through art, performance, and educational events as part of his PhD process.
Cain feels a sense of welcome home to his body and community in London. The tattoo marks the return of his gnosis, and he feels more grateful and certain about his purpose.
No I will NOT calm down
Well, after a few days of quiet, the channel opened again, big time. Kit told me that I needed to sit with things on my own for a few days, so xe had been quiet, but xe was back today, sitting by my side, cheering me on, dropping things in, opening channels, watching as I did it. I think I am bringing in the ability to talk with plants and medicine spirits in a way they didn’t quite access, and of course, there is the dialogos with my own parts of self.
I realized that breaking my pelvis was what opened the channel to be able to communicate with the subtle realms in ways I hadn’t been able to before; this is what shamanic initiation means. The shattering, the pain, the suffering is the portal, the key, to accessing the wounded parts of me that need seeing and healing, and in this most personal act, I clear the way to be a receiver for archetypes, collective consciousness, ancestors, plant spirits, other dimensional realms, the things unseen.
Hidden.
It happened in Escondido, which means “hidden place” in Spanish. When I got there, it was such a shitty small town, I didn’t know what I was doing there; it was conservative, and San Diego was a 40-minute drive away when all I had was a bicycle, living out in the middle of a nowhere, hilly neighborhood in a converted psychedelic ceremony space that was adorned only with a sink with no drain, just a bucket that had to be emptied into the garden; a bathroom with a nonfunctional shower; a couch; and a giant, wall-to-wall tapestry of Frida Kahlo.
You don’t have to make anything up when the truth is this strange.
I had to break open my pelvis to unlock the hidden places within me, the super-specific stuff that needed to be healed to open me to the universal feelings, the collective consciousness and cosmic teachings. Through the personal comes the everything. The details that you think are so small, nobody will care, turn out to be the keys.
In the first draft of the play, it opened with me in Escondido, sitting in a cacao circle with only three other people in this weird conservative town, talking about the collective and making our own medicine. I cut the scene when I copied over the draft because I thought it was too specific.
I’m still not sure where it’s going, but I know that everything belongs.
And that includes each and every last part of me.
Listen:
Summary: Holly Regan discusses the symbolic role of Judas Iscariot in the eschaton, representing the acceleration towards quantum awakening and the end of this dimension. They argue that Judas was gaslit by Jesus and became a scapegoat for humanity. Regan connects this to the concept of trans emergence and the return of forgotten truths. They outline their spiritual practice, which involves welcoming energies, working with cacao, Copal, incense, bees, tobacco, and Amanita, and balancing direct experience with internet research and community engagement
Outline:
Judas Iscariot and the Eschaton
- They discuss Judas Iscariot as a symbol of the eschaton, representing the acceleration towards consciousness expansion and quantum awakening. - They explain that Judas was gaslit by Jesus, who dismissed their visions, making Judas the scapegoat for humanity. - They emphasize that Judas is an archetype returning to remind humanity of its forgotten truths and to accelerate towards a new phase of time. - They mention the Mayan concept of cycles and new layers, likening it to unlocking segments of a Rubik's Cube and unfolding towards quantum awakening.
The Role of Judas in Trans Emergence
- They elaborate on Judas as a symbol for trans emergence, bearing the truth of humanity's direct experiences and revelations. - They stress the importance of remembering what humanity has forgotten and facing the collective future with a positive vision. - They describe the collective future as a beautiful house with a green thatched roof where everyone can sit around the table. - They reassure that the minotaur is not a monster but a sweet, soft animal, emphasizing the need to welcome and hold it until it feels safe.
Their Spiritual Practice
- They outline their spiritual practice, which involves welcoming in the energies of the days according to the Mayan calendar. - They describe their process of dipping into the real world, getting frustrated, and channeling the rage of the Divine Feminine. - Their practice includes working with cacao, Copal, incense, bees, and tobacco, calling in the spirits of plants and Anita. - They mention the importance of being alone and having conversations with people in third eye drops and esoteric circles.
Balancing Direct Experience and Research
- They discuss the balance between direct experience and research in their practice. - They admit to getting frustrated with themself for leaving voice messages and being too intense with others. - They emphasize the need to bounce ideas off each other and the importance of not being alone in the process. - They describe the practice of dipping in and out of the internet for research and then returning to direct experience and inner reflection.
Action Items:
Continue the spiritual/philosophical process of going inward through reflection and plant medicines, then outward through research and discussion. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Transcript:
Judas Iscariot, a scary at the eschaton, accelerating us towards consciousness expansion, accelerating us towards the end of this dimension and the beginning of quantum awakening, accelerating us toward an existence where we tell the real stories about who we are, who we've been, where we're going, how we got here is scary at the eschaton, the one who got gaslit by the so called Savior, The Son of Man, the one who got gaslit by Jesus, the one who said, I can have visions too. And Jesus came back and said, That's cute. I got news for you. I'm the one who has the visions around here. Pal, sorry, I deny your direct experience. Sorry. The thing you think happened, the thing you know happened, I'm going to tell you, didn't just really happen. Judas got gaslit by Jesus and became the scapegoat for humanity. Is scary at the eschaton, the symbol of trans emergence, the archetype that's returning emerging to accelerate us towards this new phase of time, like the Maya knew, it's always been just cycles new layers, unlocking new segments of the Rubik's Cube unfolding, accelerating us towards quantum awakening. The end of not all existence, but the end of this one, the realization that the so called traitor was actually the Savior, the realization that Jesus was ego tripping, and even Jesus can be The villain, and even Judas can be the hero. And Judas is a symbol for trans emergence, the archetype that's returning to remind us of what we forgot, what we hid so deep that even we couldn't find it, the scapegoat, taking the sense of humanity upon us, bearing the truth of our own direct experience, our own direct revelations, our own divine discoveries so deep that even we couldn't find it.
Gotta remember. We got to remember what we forgot. We got to go into the labyrinth and face the Minotaur, because we'll see that it's actually not dark, it's light. It's beautiful. It's our direct revelation of the collective future, the house with the green thatched roof, where everyone can sit around the table. It's actually a beautiful vision. It's not a monster. It's a kitten, it's a calf. It's a sweet, soft animal. It's not a monster. We just got to welcome it in. We just got to hold it until it it's safe.
Judas got gaslit by Jesus. Got told that his direct revelation wasn't real. Got told that what just happened didn't really happen. So he buried the truth. So we buried the truth so deep that even we couldn't find it. Now it's time to reclaim it.
You reclaim the Iscariot, the eschaton. Welcome the end of time. So there is something in this, my process, my praxis. It involves the Mayan calendar. It starts with welcoming in the energies of the days. And today is five bots, the creative genius, the generative principle. And of course, part of the process involved dipping into the real world and getting frustrated, getting rejected again, and therefore channeling the rage of the Divine Feminine trans Iscariot. So my process, my practice, involves going in with cacao and in the Mayan calendar, direct experience, burning Copal and incense, working with the bees the underworld guardians, their pollen, their medicine. The bees are a key to the system. Um tobacco, calling him in, calling in the spirits of the plants, and Amanita. And Amanita has come back in a big way, and Amanita is a big part of this, because it's the day after, so I'm integrating Amanita. It's being alone, but then it's also dipping into the servers and having conversations with people in third eye drops and esoteric circles. It's dipping in. I dip out and in. That's part of my whole practice. And so I've been getting mad at myself when I have these moments where I drop out and I leave people a bunch of voice messages, and maybe sometimes that's too much and they're a little crazy, but that's part of the process. The practice is dipping in and out, dipping into the internet and researching things, and then going back into the direct experience space. That's part of it, dipping into the inner reflection and quiet, dipping in with the parts of self that need attention, and then dipping out to check in, yeah, to do some research, or to hop on a Discord server or or to leave a voice message for someone, because we can't Be alone in that we have to bounce things off each other.
LISTEN:
Summary: The AI recognizes four speakers in this dialogue. One of them is identified as Holly, who is AGAIN misgendered by the robot.
The conversation revolves around the themes of unheard voices, personal struggles, and the search for empowerment. Holly Regan and others express frustration with having to sell out their identities and talents for basic needs, emphasizing the need to reclaim their power and stop apologizing. They discuss the bodhisattva path, the importance of community support, and the challenges of indecision and starting over. The conversation also touches on the significance of ancient and new age practices, such as herbalism and psychedelic experiences, in finding enlightenment and healing. The speakers reflect on their past traumas, including gaslighting and abuse, and the need to remember and integrate lost parts of themselves to move forward.
... Action Items: (these crack me up every time)
Remember forgotten parts of self and past experiences. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Help each other reclaim wisdom and support one another. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Leave the waystation and get to a destination by making decisions and completing tasks/work. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Outline:
Unheard and Unseen Children
- Speaker 1 introduces themselves as the unseen and unheard children, emphasizing the need for attention and listening. - Holly Regan reiterates the sentiment, highlighting the frustration of being unheard and unseen. - Speaker 2 expresses exhaustion from begging for a chance to speak and a platform. - Holly Regan shares their frustration with having to give away their medicine, art, and creativity just to survive.
Selling Out and Taking Back Power
- Speaker 4 talks about having to give away their body and medicine to have a roof over their head. - Holly Regan declares they won't sell out anymore and takes back their power. - Holly Regan criticizes the habit of always apologizing, linking it to insecurity and anxiety. - Speaker 2 discusses the struggle of not fitting into societal frameworks and the constant feeling of indecision.
The Bodhisattva Path and Trans Archetype
- Holly Regan talks about the bodhisattva path, choosing to stay in suffering to help others cross over - The conversation touches on the importance of finding others who understand the struggle - Holly Regan explains the bodhisattva path involves peering into enlightenment and choosing to stay in suffering - The emergent archetype of trans is discussed, blending ancient wisdom with new age queerdom
The Role of Herbalism and Natural Medicine
- Holly Regan emphasizes the importance of herbalism and natural medicine in the bodhisattva path - The conversation highlights the use of cacao as an ancient wisdom and its new age worship - Holly Regan discusses the need to question everything and the importance of not apologizing - The waystation metaphor is used to describe the transition between worlds and the importance of making decisions
The Minotaur and the Labyrinth of Memory
- Holly Regan talks about the Minotaur on the wall and the labyrinth of their memory - The conversation explores the rejection and abuse they faced, leading to blackout drinking and indecision - Holly Regan describes the metaphor of being trapped in the labyrinth and the need to retrieve lost parts of themself - The importance of channeling and the role of the Tarot in communication is discussed
Listen:
The AI identifies one speaker but doesn’t give them a name. I will have to name them. Perhaps Eve?
Speaker 1 expresses deep frustration and anger over feeling constantly shut down, gaslighted, and manipulated, leading to a sense of being destroyed psychologically. They describe a pattern of small, cumulative harms that prevent them from seeking help or leaving abusive situations. The speaker highlights how societal and personal criticisms erode self-worth and trust, affecting their ability to make decisions and trust their own judgment. They criticize the false promises of change and acceptance from various institutions and individuals, feeling let down repeatedly. The speaker feels trapped in a system that is inherently unsupportive and unnatural, leading to a state of indecision and a sense of being stuck between worlds.
Outline
Feeling Shut Down and Gaslighted
Speaker 1 expresses frustration about being constantly shut down and not being allowed to express their emotions.
They refuse to calm down and lower their voice, emphasizing their anger and frustration.
Speaker 1 accuses the other person of gaslighting and manipulating them through subtle actions.
They describe how these small, repeated actions create a significant impact, eroding their foundation and sanity.
Criticism and Control
Speaker 1 discusses how criticism is pervasive in their life, from personal relationships to professional settings.
They mention how criticism comes from various sources, including family members, bosses, and authority figures.
The criticism is described as being about small details, making it hard to identify the overall problem.
Speaker 1 feels that the criticism is designed to make them feel like they are always doing something wrong.
Restrictions and Limitations
Speaker 1 talks about the restrictions and limitations imposed on them, such as not being allowed to worship in a certain way.
They mention how these restrictions affect their connection with the land and their direct experience.
The restrictions are described as being imposed by those who control various aspects of their life.
Speaker 1 feels that these restrictions undermine their trust in their own experiences and wisdom.
Promises of Change
Speaker 1 expresses disappointment with people who promise to be different but end up being the same.
They mention how these promises are often made by men and women who claim to be progressive and accepting.
Speaker 1 feels that these promises are made out of fear and scarcity, and they are not genuine.
They express frustration with the cycle of disappointment and the lack of real change.
Indecision and Self-Doubt
Speaker 1 discusses the impact of constant criticism on their ability to make decisions.
They mention how the criticism makes them question their own judgment and trust in their mind and body.
Speaker 1 feels that the system they are in is designed to make it hard for them to succeed.
They express a sense of being stuck and unable to move forward due to the constant self-doubt.
The River Styx and the Ferryman
Speaker 1 uses the metaphor of the River Styx to describe their feeling of being stuck between worlds.
They mention how the ferryman passes them by, symbolizing missed opportunities.
Speaker 1 feels that they are not ready to move forward because they are not perfect or good enough.
They express a sense of frustration with the cycle of missed opportunities and the lack of progress.
Eve: No, I will not calm down. No, I will not calm down. I'm so sick of being shut down. No, I will not lower my voice. No, I will not calm down. I'm so sick of being shut down. You calling me hysterical. That's rich, while you gaslight me and subtly manipulate me, picking away death by 1000 cuts, little by little, you know exactly what you're doing. You inflict wounds so small that no one can look at any one of them in isolation and see how you're destroying my entire foundation, my entire sanity. And you know what? Then some of those are big enough on their own. Some of those are big enough on their own. Some of those, are you actually hitting me? Some of those, are you actually physically harming me? Some of those are you trying to strangle me? And then, but it gets to the point where even those incidents feel like they're not enough on their own, to leave, feel like they're not enough on their own, to ask for help, feel like they're not enough on their own, to go to the authorities, because they picket you, little by little, death by 1000 cuts they make you think it's your fault, whether this Church Fathers, whether it's the publishers, whether it's the bosses, whether it's the landlords, everyone makes you feel like you're doing something wrong. You didn't keep up on stuff well enough. You didn't meet your deadlines, you didn't pick up your room, you didn't play with your sister. Are you really wearing that outfit? You come out of your room and everything is criticized. Everything's criticized from the moment you get up, you try to make art, and they tell you it isn't good enough. They tell you it's not technically precise enough. They tell you you need to take it somewhere to learn how to really do it right. They want to put restrictions and parameters on you, enclosures of all kinds. They tell you you can't be on this land because they own it. Now they tell you you can't worship this way because they control it. Now they tell you you don't you can't trust your direct experience. You can't trust your direct connection with the land. You can't trust the wisdom that's been handed down since the dawn of time, working with the seasons, working with what the earth tells you. They tell you that's not real. They tell you that what you're receiving from the astral is just a voice in your head. They tell you you're not really talking with the dead, and you start to doubt yourself, and you start to think you're crazy. They tell you that it's your fault. They tell you that you did something wrong, and that's why they're mad. They tell you that you're misbehaving, they tell you that you have a deficit of attention. They tell you that you're divergent from everyone else's neurons. But what's divergent is these artificial systems that they've imposed upon us. What's divergent is the way we're being treated and told that it's love. I'm so sick of being let down time after time by the men who came in and promised they were going to be different, and by the women who've fallen in with those systems and promised they were going to be different. I'm so tired of people coming in again and again saying, we're not like your dad, we're not like your old boss, we're not like your last publication, we're not like them, we're not like them, we're not like that other church. We're different, we're accepting, we're progressive. We really care about queer people. No, we're different, and then every single one, again and again, proves to be exactly the same, or at least motivated by the same things. And I get it, it's fear and scarcity. We're all working within a system that was designed for none of us to win. I get it. Everyone's scared, but just stop promising that you're different when you're not different. And I'm so tired of this whole lifetime, you step out of your room. You're not wearing that are you go back in and change. Oh, no, it's fine. They say they're not even criticizing you, but they are. They say they're not tearing you down, but they are. They say they're trying to help you, and they really are just trying to get you to do it their way. They say they're trying to love you, when really they're just seeing you as an extension of them, and they don't believe they're ever good enough. So they project that onto you, and it's death by 1000 cuts. And then you're questioning everything, missing the boat again and again, the river boat on the sticks that keeps passing you by and passing you by, because you can't make a decision, because now you don't even trust what your mind and body are saying. You can't make a decision because you don't know what's you and what's them. You can't make a decision because you were told you can listen to the elements, to nature, to the things we've always known. Now you can't make a decision and they tell you it's your fault. Indecision, attention deficit, neurodivergence, diversion to. What a system that was never meant to support us to begin with. We can't play ball with something that's totally unnatural. I'd say that's pretty natural. Now I can't make a decision. Now I can't make a decision over and over, circles and circles, starting and starting. Now I can't stop starting and I'm never finishing. They say you never miss what's meant for you. But I don't know. I think at a certain point you do miss the boat, the boat to the next realm. I'm stuck in Purgatory. I'm stuck at the dock of the boat to the river sticks in between one world and the next. Well, the ferryman passes me by again and again and again.
Are you getting on? No, I'm not ready. It's not perfect. No, I'm not ready. It's not good enough. No, I'm not ready. I don't trust myself. And they told us we couldn't they told us they were going to be different, and then they were the same. They told us it wasn't good enough, and I'm so tired of getting rejected over and over. The boat keeps going by. Are we gonna get on the train keeps coming? Are we gonna leave the Weigh Station? We don't have to know where we're going. I just know that where we are isn't working.
Listen:
Summary: Holly Regan and Speaker 1 criticize the medicalization and pathologization of individuals who do not conform to societal norms, particularly those outside the binary or who are expressive and creative. They argue that the diagnosis of conditions like ADHD and the subsequent prescription of medications like Ritalin are misguided, as they are rooted in a system that does not support these individuals. Regan advocates for alternative, natural healing methods and rejects labels like "divergent" or "hysterical," which have historically been used to marginalize women, queer individuals, and trans people. They emphasize that these labels are not their fault and that society's constructs are the real issue.
Outline:
Critique of Medical Professionals and Societal Norms
- Holly Regan criticizes the medical industry for labeling individuals as "divergent" and suggesting medication as a solution, implying it is a way to control those who do not conform to societal norms. - They argue that the patriarchal, heterosexual, mono-normative society is the problem, not the individuals who do not fit into these rigid frameworks. - Holly Regan emphasizes that the system was never designed to support those who are different, and now they are being diagnosed with attention deficits and other conditions to justify their exclusion. - They suggest that natural remedies, psychedelics, plant medicines, and intuitive counselors should be considered as alternatives to traditional medical treatments.
Rejection of Labels and Blame
- Holly Regan rejects the notion of being labeled as "divergent" or "hysterical," arguing that these labels are artificial constructs imposed by a society that does not support them. - They emphasize that women, queers, and trans people have historically been labeled as "crazy" or "evil" for wanting to be themselves and challenging societal norms. - Holly Regan highlights the historical persecution of natural healers, who were labeled as witches and burned at the stake for their practices. - They conclude that the society we live in is not meant for them, and they refuse to be held accountable for not fitting into an artificial system.
Transcript: Hysterical. You're hysterical. You're divergent. We need to medicate you. Industries run by therapists, run by quote, unquote, medical professionals telling us there's something wrong with us, because of the way we exist, because we're not going along with their CIS-tems, because we're not going along with their patriarchal, patriarchal heterosexual, mono, normative, CIS-tems, because we're outside the binary. Because we're expressive, generative, because we're seasonal and creative, because these frameworks don't make sense to us. So they want to medicate us. They want to put us in therapy, like the artists told there was something wrong with them because they couldn't function in society, a society that was never set up to support us to begin with. Now they want to put us on Ritalin because we have a deficit of attention, attention, a thing that must be paid attention, a thing that must be paid to a system that doesn't support us, that was never meant to uplift us to begin with, that was only ever meant for us to serve it. And now we're told we have a deficit. I reject this. Yes, it's helpful, in some ways, to have a label for the things we're dealing with so we can find the others and sometimes Sure, medications can be helpful, but I think we need to look at the ones that come from the earth too. We need to look at the psychedelics. We need to look at the plant medicines. We need to look at the natural healers. We need to look at the intuitive counselors. I'm not saying we don't need support for these things, because they do become complexes, because when we're trying to fit them into the system that they don't fit within, it does damage our brains. Perhaps it does interfere with our normal functioning. It does then create symptoms, physical or mental, that must be addressed. I'm not saying don't do that. I'm just saying there's ways other than what they're saying to deal with that, and I'm saying that we shouldn't label ourselves as divergent, and I'm saying that we shouldn't label ourselves as hysterical, and I'm saying that we shouldn't assume the blame. I mean divergent to what an artificial construction of time, that isn't actually the way the universe works, divergent to what something completely made up. It's not our fault. Women were told they were hysterical because they started wanting to create and get involved. Women were told they were hysterical because they didn't want to fit into those systems. Queers have been told that we were hysterical. And worse, trans people have been told that we were evil. Trans people have been told that we were the devil tempting the queers and the trans tempting the CIS het people.
Women told they were crazy because they just wanted the same things everyone else had queers and trans people told they were crazy because they just wanted to be themselves. Natural healers told they were witches and burned at the stake for doing what we'd always done since humanity originated. Fucking A Yeah, we can't function in this society. It wasn't meant for me.
LISTEN:
The conversation revolves around feelings of frustration and rejection experienced by marginalized groups, particularly the queer and feminine communities. Speaker 1 expresses rage at being told they are not good enough and the broken promises of systems that failed to protect and support them. They criticize the imposition of restrictive systems by patriarchal figures, including in journalism and creative industries, which stifle creativity and authentic expression. Speaker 2 suggests that the way forward might be through collective action and experiential storytelling, moving beyond traditional language to capture the vibrations and feelings of shared experiences. Both speakers look to the equinox as a symbol of balance and hope for change.
Action Items
[ ] Release stories and expressions in more experiential ways like fringe theater, art, experiences to bypass limitations of words alone.
[ ] Come together in shared vibration and experience on the day of equinox, stopping words and just being together.
[ ] Continue seeking ways to tell stories and share expressions in all formats while also finding places of unity.
Outline
Challenges of the Divine Feminine and Queer Community
Speaker 1 expresses deep frustration and rage, channeling the unmet needs of the divine feminine and the collective queer and trans community.
The speaker feels rejected and undervalued by society, mentioning rejection from partners, publications, bosses, and even overly coddling parents.
Speaker 1 criticizes the broken promises of the system, which has historically failed to protect and support marginalized groups.
The speaker highlights the betrayal of promises by various figures, including stepfathers, partners, and religious and political authorities.
Historical Betrayals and Systemic Failures
Speaker 1 discusses the historical betrayals by figures who promised protection and support but ultimately abandoned and blamed the marginalized community.
The speaker mentions the imposition of restrictive systems by capitalists, Church Fathers, patriarchs, and others, leading to the marginalization of the community.
The speaker criticizes the imposition of restrictive systems that diverge from natural rhythms and the community's traditional ways of working with the earth.
The speaker emphasizes the systemic failure to recognize and support the community's unique ways of being and creating.
Impact of Patriarchal Systems on Creative Industries
Speaker 1 criticizes the patriarchal systems that have imposed restrictions on creative industries like journalism, literature, and theater.
The speaker feels that these systems have taken away the creative flow and freedom of expression, replacing it with rigid parameters and word counts.
Speaker 1 expresses frustration with the broken promises of publications that claim to support writers but fail to provide sustainable platforms.
The speaker highlights the oversaturation and competition in the creative industry, which makes it difficult for individuals to succeed.
The Need for Autonomous Creation and Community
Speaker 1 suggests that the only way forward is to build their own platforms and projects, but acknowledges the challenges of oversaturation and competition.
Speaker 2 emphasizes the importance of coming together as a community to support each other and create a sustainable system.
The speakers discuss the significance of the equinox, a day of equal light and dark, as a time for collective vibration and expression.
Speaker 2 suggests that the equinox is a time to stop telling stories and instead focus on shared experiences and vibrations.
Exploring Alternative Forms of Expression
Speaker 2 expresses a desire to release stories in alternative ways, such as experiential theater and visual arts, to bypass the limitations of traditional publishing.
The speaker acknowledges the tyranny and liberation of words, recognizing their role in creating reality but also their limitations.
Speaker 2 suggests that feelings and vibrations can exist beyond words, and that experiencing shared emotions can be more powerful than language.
The speakers express hope for illumination and a new way of storytelling that embraces both words and experiential forms.
Transcript:
I'm in a full psychedelic state with cacao in complete rage, channeling the unmet needs of the divine feminine, channeling the rage of our whole collective, the queer, the trans, the feminine, the channeling the rage of all of us, I'm tingling the rage of all the weird ones, the ones told we were divergent, the ones everyone, all throughout history. I'm so sick and tired of this shit. I'm so sick and tired of being told that we're not good enough. I'm so sick and tired of begging for someone to give us a platform. I'm so sick and tired of being rejected over and over and over, from partners to publications and from bosses to my father and then the opposite, the overly coddling mother telling you everything you do is perfect. Well, guess what? The world doesn't fucking work like that, and she doesn't let you break the gaze, because she needs so much from you. Because our whole system has been telling us, has been making false promises for centuries, has been telling us that they would protect us, only to abandon us. Has been telling us that they were different. Has been telling us that they really cared whether it was the fathers coming in, the stepfathers who would come in and say they weren't gonna be like that stepfathers coming in and saying, I'm not gonna be like your dad, and then they fucking left too. And then they fucking abandoned me too. The partner's coming in and saying, we're not gonna be like your dad, and then they fucking bail on you too. They bail on you too.
And they blame your sex, and they blame your generative principle, no matter who it is, from the fucking capitalists, from the fucking Church Fathers, from the fucking patriarchs, from those who came in and built the enclosures and kicked us off their our land, to those who came in and took our religion from us, from those who came in and said we had to worship the way they did, from those who came in and said we had to create the way they did, from those who came in and said, we are only worth what we produce, and we can only produce in this system, from those who divorced us from what we knew, which was how to work with the earth and her rhythms from what we knew, which was how to flow with the seasons From what we knew and said we had to do it their way. Well, it doesn't work that way for us, and then they call us divergent when they're the ones coming in and imposing their restrictions on everything. That's not the way it fucking works in nature.
But now we're told that it's our fault. Now we're told that we have attention deficit. Now we're told that we have disorders because they're coming in and trying to impose something on us that was never meant to be to begin with. And journalism is just another one of these expressions, some patriarchal system where someone comes in and takes writing a creative, flowy, feminine in the non gendered sense of the word thing, and tries to put parameters on it. And word counts, journalism, writing, literature, I don't know art, theater, anything that's had that's had these industries built around it when it was supposed to be something creative, when it was supposed to be something flowing. And I guess journalism is different. I should have never tried to work in it to begin with.
But anywhere they cared about writers telling their stories, I mean, so many publications now have come in and done the same thing. We're not like your dad. We're different. We really care about writers. We really care about what you have to say. We really want to build a platform for people to tell their stories. And then guess what? The people bail when there's not enough money. And then guess what? The Founders want to go look after their own nest egg, and then guess what? The ones who said they were different, okay, they can't afford to keep the lights on. It's the whole patriarchal system. I guess I get it, but you know what? Just stop making the fucking promises. The only way forward is to build our own things. But then if all of us are doing our own things. A, we're oversaturated and B, we're still going against the point of the whole thing. We're still trying to make a way within a larger system that is broken. I really think the only way we move forward is through coming together. I just don't know what that looks like.
I don't know what that looks like, but as we approach the equinox, the day of equal dark and light, I don't know. There's a reason that so many people are coming together to make sound. There's a reason that on the day of equal light and dark, we want to stop talking and get in our bodies, that we want to just vibrate all together in the same place. There's something about stopping telling the stories and just coming together to just be, but at the same time, we have things that need saying and sharing. So on this day of equal equal light and dark that is approaching, I hope something's illuminating, because I'm just sick and tired of being rejected over and over and over from lovers to fathers to publishers.
I've got so many stories that I care so much about, and I'm going to try to just release them in another way. I guess maybe that's the answer, to make things more experiential, to go to the fringe theater, to draw pictures, to try to express it in ways more than just a word on a page, but in a way that's felt and experienced. Maybe that's the only way. Maybe, maybe the answer is getting away from language. Words are both the tyranny and the liberation of our species. And a lot of ways, words create our reality. In a lot of ways, nothing even exists, if we can't name it in this 3d framework. But it exists in an even more real way when we feel it, when we feel the vibration, when we all move together, when we all experience the same thing at the same time. And words can do that. They do have a vibration. So we still need places to tell our stories in all the different formats. On the day of equal light and dark that is approaching, I pray for illumination.
Holly Regan discusses their fear of creating and struggle with distractions, suggesting that their play might benefit from a blend of writing and talking. They reflects on the concept of the "daimon demon," a hyper-dimensional object that could represent the end of one dimension or the awakening of a new layer of awareness. Holly connects this idea to the Maya calendar's 52-year cycle, predicting significant technological advancements by 2064, including teleportation. They recount a personal journey to Escondido, interpreting it as a metaphor for self-discovery and the importance of connecting with one's inner self and community. Holly also ties their creative process to a suicide attempt, which led her to realize her purpose and identity as a bodhisattva.
Transcript:
I'm afraid to create. Whenever I start something distracts me. I think that I'm hungry or I'm sleepy, or I need to go for a run or work out or something, but really, it's just the fear of putting something on the page. Really, everything's just trying to pull me away from making the thing really, it's just centuries of gaslighting. So what if I just start talking. What if it doesn't have to be writing. What if this is how the play wants to be transmitted, is through talking? What if, I mean, it's a both, and it's not all or nothing. It's not all writing, it's not all talking. But what if this is how a lot of the scenes want to be written?
What if the place still opens in Escondido with that scene with Joanne, it does kind of encompass everything, if we just add a little bit of foreshadowing about how I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm in this small town, but some voice told me to come here, and I listened, and that's what I've been doing more and more. Some inner voice inside me that sometimes I think is a demon. Ah, that's because it's the daimon. Oh, demon daimon, the diamond, the hyper dimensional object at the end of everything. Guess, I've just always been channeling the Iscariot, the eschaton, the thing at the end of all things, the thing that turns into other things, the thing that reminds us that we used to be trees, the thing that resets the cycle. It's not the end of everything, but it's the end of this dimension maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it's just awakening a new layer of awareness on top of this one. Maybe none of it's quite as dire as we think it is. I mean, 2012 came and went and everything appeared to be the same, but it was different. And if it comes in 13 year and 15 year 52 year cycles, as Mark was saying in the Maya calendar system, then it would take 13 years from 2012 for the new thing to really start crystallizing. 52 years from 2012 would be, I want to say I can't do math, but I can. 52 years from 2012 would be, oh my gosh, I can do this. 52 years from 2012 would be two, and two is 456,
2062, wait, 2064, is that right? 2012 plus 52 Yeah, 2064 so that's, that's how long the cycle is. We're just getting started. And as Mark was saying yesterday, think of the quantum leaps that are happening happening faster and faster now, because new information is being created at exponential rates. So think about the difference between 1918, and now by 2064, I mean, we could have cloud cities and teleportation. I really do think teleportation is like the next evolution. For some reason that's coming through to me is like, that's the technology that's like quantum leap coming next. Because Space the final frontier, starts on Earth, right here, and it starts within our hearts, the inner space. We've gone on a lot of tangents. Now, the scene was supposed to be about Escondido, yeah, so I didn't know why I was here. It's the daimon demon that just the daimon daemon demon that told me to go to Escondido, and I've learned to listen. So I just did it. And I got there, and it was desolate, and there was nothing. And all there was was me and my bike going over the hills again and again, which I feel like I've spent my whole life doing. I felt like I was running from something, but I think I was actually going toward it as we have to go all the way inside to get out again. We have to go into the hidden, hidden place, the Escondido, to connect. We have to see the parts of ourself that have been neglected, and then we can go out and one by one, build those little mycelial connections and find the others in our little, tiny town, and then extrapolate out from there. Trees communicate through underground root systems. Trees and mushrooms survive through. Mycorrhizal relationships. Amanita literally can't exist without a specific tree. That's ayni, I am because you're living.
I don't know how this translates into a scene from the play, I probably need to just go edit what I've already have. But there's still a big suicide part of myself that needs to be addressed, and that I think is the crux of the whole play, is the cedar that made me want to be here when I went to die and lay down under a tree, and I realized I wanted to be alive, because it told me that I wasn't done here. It told me that I was a bodhisattva. I just didn't know that. That's what it was saying. It just took me. When was that Holy shit. Was that in 2012 oh, my god. Oh my god. Holy shit. I think my suicide attempt was in 2012 oh, maybe it was 2014 anyway, I met Mark in 2011 and I think we got together in 2012 February.
Trecena of Kej begins / language shapes reality
I welcomed in the new trecena with Eric, my cosmic sibling and brother from the queer ayahuasca retreat, in the Trans* Emergent Archetype (T*EA) way: on video chat, straddling timelines and dimensions, me in what we have collectively decided is 16 September 2024 in England, or 1 Kej, the start of the new trecena, in the Maya calendar system, and him in what was still 13 Kame, the death of the previous 13 day-cycle, the trecena of Ix, in Florida. The day of double ancestors, the 13 number and nahual of interdimensional communication, as we talked about all the ways the old and new are constantly cycling and recycling, old informing new and vice versa; past meets presence.
It was perfect.
I even had the thought that his might be an older soul than mine, and he’s representing tradition while I’m the new paradigm, but we’re both close enough together in revolutions that we understand and parallel each other’s journeys.
All of it, welcoming and even hastening the singularity, maybe.
We discussed the possibility of T*EA as the novelty McKenna described, but remixed: potentially creating the illusion of time accelerating in the act of dissolving the things we’ve collectively decided are called time and space, the artificial boundaries we’ve placed upon this limitless, circuitous, interconnected experience. Maybe the synchronicities proliferate because we’re getting closer to the eschaton, the point when we’ll realize the universe has already known and embodied itself through every possible configuration, or else we reach the point it has never been before where everything is at last fully experienced, and we unlock the hyperdimensional Rubix cube, the hyperobject, the infinitely faceted diamond of the Kabbalah, the crystal slow-rotating in the DMT waiting room, and we advance to the next level.
I started yesterday deep in the other realm, and by the end, I embodied my intention for 13 Kame, to dance between them, and Kit popped in, cheering from the sidelines. The day was experiencing that nothing is real the way we were taught it is, and that that can be terrifying, or fun and beautiful. Michael’s wise words to me on Friday came in to help tether me, as I rapped into the voice recorder about how maybe there’s only a reality to the degree that we can describe and agree upon it, and then I played a McKenna talk where he said exactly the same thing and I literally saw the boundaries of this world start dissolving into fractals and pixels, and I had to state to the ancestors and energies and everything that I still had work to do on Earth, and affirmed my right and decision to be here.
It is a choice we make. And I wondered, as he had, as Eric had, what would happen if I simply chose to let it keep happening; would I dissolve along with it?
Can we just decide to die, and leave our bodies? If the Tibetan Buddhists can turn into rainbows, I don’t see why not.
I don’t intend to find out just yet, though. There’s WAY too much interesting stuff to do in this world.
And opening to that, making the choice, sealing the portal but leaving the door cracked out, I went into dance and picked up trash and swept the floor and greeted people as they entered, because I realized that like Jung, I needed a tether, and it almost didn’t matter what it was, as long I picked something, somewhere, some group, to be accountable to, and showed up consistently, and made a difference for the collective through it in my own little way.
From there, it all blew open. I was dismantled by the healing vibration of sound and the touch of the hand of a person I’ve slowly, silently, been building trust with since we met a year and a half ago and started dancing near each other, occasionally meeting eyes and smiling, nothing more. Now, today, as I dissolved in a different way, in tears, into this body, right now and right here, and sank with her on the floor I had so diligently swept, and faced her with eyes closed and knees touching, cross-legged, and wept, as she held her palms up for receiving, supporting mine that pressed down and our thumbs caressed each others’ palms, and we finally had a conversation at the end that started with me thanking her for holding me.
“Thank you for your trust,” she says. “It isn’t easy.”
And from there, my magickal friend from Burning Nest, Dane, appeared and invited me to a picnic in the park, because it was his birthday. My body was so sore and tired, but I cleaned the space and collected the cacao cups in my compost bag for giving back to the earth in myriad ways, and I spent time with my little dance family, and then I floated to the park and followed the trail of circus misfits after Dane, like the Pied Piper, leading us to a clearing in the forest of ancient trees whose roots were whispering to the good witch next to me that they have always been here.
How could I ever doubt that we are never alone, that everything is supporting me and carrying me along, if I trust and surrender to the flow? How could I ever doubt that I am worthy, when the Universe puts things like this in my lap all the time: where a group of queer weirdos and misfits who I have never met look me in the eyes and understand me with one glance, where the thought i had while getting ready in the morning that I needed to reconnect with Amanita for physical and emotional healing through someone who really knew how to work with her medicine in the homeland was answered as soon as I followed Dane’s gay parade to the forest clearing and sat down next to someone who does exactly all those things, and pulled out her leather satchel, blue eyes blazing through centuries in her tiny delicately lined face, set ablaze by her magenta sweater pulled up against the encroaching autumn’s chill, and said: “I wondered why she asked to come along today.”
How could I ever doubt that the Universe wants me to be here, when Dane gathered us all around the birthday cake as I was about to leave and lit the candles, and declared in his fabulous misfit ringleader incantation: “IF YOU’RE BREATHING, IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY. CELEBRATE. BLOW OUT THE CANDLES. AND FEAST UPON THIS ABUNDANCE.”
Every food I had spotted in a shop window earlier that week and declined for various reasons was arrayed upon the blanket, and we feasted as the synchronous connections set our whole corner of the glade ablaze, and I drifted home in a daze, dizzy with gratitude.
How could I ever want for anything when this is what is available to me?
The Universe is screaming at me that I am worthy.
I just have to trust.
That part isn’t easy. But I’m learning.
* * * *
So the rap was about how language creates reality, and everything Eric and I were discussing turns out to be a metaphor for what’s happening with this cacao zine I’ve been agonizing over for a year or more, and it all hinges on the realities shaped by the language. There is a big point of contention in the communities that work with cacao around whether or not it’s okay to call it “ceremonial cacao,” and the gatherings people host when they share the medicine “cacao ceremonies.” In ancient tradition, there was no such thing, but people are now making a lot of money hosting ceremonies that they sometimes claim are “traditional Maya practices.” Some of the people profiting off the ignorance of Western consumers are white people engaging, knowingly or not, in neocolonialism. But some of the people are themselves Indigneous—in the words of a source for a story I wrote about ayahuasca, “appropriating their own culture.”
Eric is the one who introduced me to cacao as a medicine, and to ecstatic dance. His eyes are the first thing mine caught when I stepped out of my hotel room and the rest of my life began that April afternoon in Iquitos.
I used to worry about whether someone would be there to hold my hand, witness me, midwife me, as I slipped into the afterlife. Now I realize that someone already has.
Twelve of them, in fact.
The disciples of the queer ayahuasca retreat, gathering again and again for the last Supper, the sip from the tree of knowledge, as we passed over, over and over. Alone together.
If reality is what we describe and tell each other, what enough of us collectively decide to say happened, then what we call things is everything. Indigenous people all over the world are resisting a collective gaslighting, white colonizers who tried to erase their records and write their own stories; telling them that what just happened didn’t really happen.
This is the play, the way we map history to trauma healing and individual stories. Showing scenes of me as a child being told that I didn’t just see or hear that; whole civilizations being told that all the previous millennia were some kind of hallucination, that their direct experience wasn’t valid because it couldn’t be counted and measured by their systems.
Reality in this dimension in some ways IS language, as McKenna says: it’s the stories we tell that get passed down and create memory palaces in the minds of the people, and if the only way reality manifests is through our senses, then what we hear and read and see on TV create the world we experience. And whether or not it’s what the bodies experienced, an alternate dimension has now branched off for whole generations where there are things like time and space and physics and ethnicities and classes.
Everything Eric and I talk about is reflected and refracted in the stories I’m writing and other timelines I’m experiencing. We’ve been talking about the concepts of spells and incantations, manipulations of energies and humans, narcissists and sorcerers and shamxn and magicians, wisdom and truth and illusions. Reflecting and refracting, reflexively shaping reality tunnels, discursively recursing what’s always never been done before. And all of this, I realize, maps onto the practice/praxis Kit started developing and I’m building on, xim and I enacting and actively collaborating on bringing it into various forms of being from different sides of this dimensional timeline, one that Michael seems to have been documenting in parallel, or that maps onto something he was already doing, and there’s something here I can’t quite put my finger on yet, but it revolves around the framework xe established, or noticed, because it’s really part of all sorts of magickal traditions:
Spell, charm, trance.
The spell is the story, the vessel or container constructed around the Word, the truth of vibration etched upon the bone, the quartz crystal, hummed by the diamond needle.
Describing something in language creates a reality tunnel, a show, an illusion that can be conjured by the brujos or the shamxn. The warring magicians. Trying to construct a Platonic solid out of something inherently flexible and fluid. Reality isn’t anything material, it’s a hyperdimensional infinitely faceted crystal. Or something.
There is a reality of language created by the way we tell our histories, but is it a vibrational truth, or an illusion put on by a shamxn/showman/brujx/magician?
When I first started the cacao project, I was entranced by the charm of cacao, and I called it ceremonial. I’ve done so many rotations around this issue of whether it matters what we call it, how we can be in alignment with the plant and in justice with the people; who’s putting whom in what kind of trance.
In the end, I think that words matter, but only to the point that they connect us to the truth that vibrates our matter and reminds our bones what they know. All of these things are symbols, and if we lose sight of what they stand for, we end up arguing about what color the gate is painted rather than entering the temple behind it.
Yes, we must honor the people who have always kept the medicine; yes, we should dismantle false reality tunnels and tell the real stories. But we should also remain open to the new things that can be created when we let the language go and focus on the connection. In the end, if someone is sitting in a ceremony that isn’t historically accurate, but they come away with an understanding of what it means to have a direct relationship with a plant, if they come away having met their ancestors and felt their heart awaken and sensed a connection to Spirit for maybe the first time ever… does it matter what we call it?
Even Jesus can ego trip. The elders don’t know everything, and just because the dead are speaking doesn’t mean they’re spitting truth.
They’re creating reality tunnels, too.
So what is this practice we’re documenting, praxis we’re capturing, prenda we’re offering, container we’re shaping? I don’t know exactly, but it feels really important. (Ayahuasca echoes in my memory: “It’s very important / and not very important.”) We’re building a tunnel of language between dimensions and realms of existence, a hyperdimensional bridge that transcends and includes the senses. We’re casting a spell, creating charms that are containers of experience and putting everyone in a trance so we can do a dance and enact the performance.
Whenever the ayahuasca would start to take hold in the ceremony, the first thing I would lose was always language, and it terrified me. The nonsense realm was narrated by a sing-song voice in a made-up accent babbling nonsense words. I interpreted it as me re-entering my own preverbal childhood realm where there was only sensation and light and color and confusing emotions. But maybe it was also, or instead of, this other thing we’re making, a bridge to a place where no language will be needed; a process that sets us free from the tyranny of words and allows us to directly experience the singularity where all dissolves, and there is peace.
The AI identified FOUR speakers today, including two new ones. I wonder who they are? Speakers 3 and 4, talking about language and reality tunnels and the cacao ethnography. Maybe one’s Terence. Maybe one’s the Anthropologist. I don’t know if I quite understand channeling yet, but it’s wild. Am I actually taking the soul of Terence into my body? Am I tuning into whatever archetype he was also picking up on? Is it some new thing created out of all of us, uniquely experienced through my physical vessel? To be explored…
Summary: Does it matter what we call the ceremony?
The conversation explores the significance of language and naming in shaping reality and identity. Speakers discuss how language constructs our perception of the world, emphasizing that the meaning of words and the labels we apply are not fixed but evolve with collective experience and cultural context. They highlight the impact of colonialism on indigenous peoples, noting how their reality was defined by external forces. The discussion underscores the fluidity of reality, the importance of respecting lived experiences, and the role of language in perpetuating or challenging dominant narratives.
Outline
Language and Reality Construction
Speaker 4 discusses the importance of language in constructing reality, emphasizing that the world is always changing and that no one has all the answers.
Speaker 3 humorously agrees, stating that language is central to how we perceive and create our reality.
Speaker 4 elaborates on the power of words, noting that language can be both exciting and terrifying because it shapes our collective reality.
Unknown Speaker mentions the subjective nature of language, suggesting that it is experienced in various ways and can be both liberating and constraining.
The Role of Language in Indigenous Cultures
Speaker 4 highlights the impact of language on indigenous people, explaining that their collective reality has been defined by white men with unique perspectives and privileges.
Unknown Speaker points out that reality is a construct decided by individuals, with some people filtering their experiences through certain paradigms.
Speaker 4 emphasizes that reality is fluid and constantly evolving, influenced by collective experiences and vibrations.
Unknown Speaker discusses the collective subjective experience, where people agree on a shared description of reality, even if it is not universally true.
The Importance of Naming and Describing Reality
Speaker 1 and Unknown Speaker discuss the significance of naming and describing reality, noting that people hold on to these descriptions for control and understanding.
Speaker 4 explains that false stories can perpetuate trauma, especially when they are imposed on people who have no prior experience with the described reality.
Unknown Speaker mentions the importance of respecting people's lived experiences and ensuring that descriptions do not gaslight or disrespect others.
Speaker 3 and Speaker 4 agree that symbols and direct communication are crucial for understanding and respecting different perspectives.
LISTEN:
Language is reality maybe
The conversation explores the idea that processes in nature, such as falling in love or the formation of continents, follow a universal arc. Human consciousness is described as a unique tool for observing these processes. The speakers discuss the subjective nature of reality, suggesting that language shapes our perception of the world. They also touch on the concept of time blindness, where time is seen as an artificial construct, and the idea that time blindness can be a superpower to see through these artificial constraints. The discussion emphasizes the importance of individual perspectives and the role of language in creating truth and reality.
Action Items
[ ] Reframe "time blindness" as a superpower to see through the artificiality of time into how the future has already happened.
Outline
Human Consciousness and Processes in Nature
Speaker 1 discusses a Terence McKenna lecture about the universality of processes in nature, emphasizing that whether it's falling in love or the formation of a continent, the processes follow the same arc.
The unique aspect of human consciousness is highlighted as a tool for observing these natural processes more closely, not as a special entity but as a vessel for observation.
Speaker 1 mentions the difficulty of maintaining consciousness and the need for allies to help those who walk between worlds, metaphorically representing different realms.
The idea that everything is the same process but never observed through the same lens is reiterated, emphasizing the uniqueness of individual perspectives.
Language and Reality
Speaker 1 questions whether reality is made of language or just how we describe it, suggesting that language constitutes our reality.
The concept of creating truth through collective gathering and observation is discussed, with Speaker 1 comparing it to casting a spell and shamanic practices.
Speaker 1 reflects on the idea that time and space are not real, sharing a personal experience of arriving at a destination faster than expected.
The discussion touches on the artificiality of time and the concept of time blindness, where reality is seen more clearly without the constraints of artificial measurements.
Reframing Time Blindness
Speaker 1 explores the idea that time blindness is a superpower, allowing one to see through the artificiality of time, into the present moment, and the future as already having happened.
The conversation shifts to the struggle of living in a reality constrained by artificial time measurements, with Speaker 1 expressing a desire to find side doors and use strengths and weaknesses to navigate this reality.
The discussion concludes with a reflection on the importance of finding ways to live in the present and navigate the artificial constraints of time.