Act V: Rehabilitation of the Feeling Function
Top takeaways for creative practice and self-healing methodology
Period: from the Celtic New Year on astrological Samhain, 7 November 2024, through early January 2025 (Gregorian)
Why does it start at Act V? I don’t know, it’s just what I received from the astral, and I always trust that. I guess it’s like how Star Wars started in the middle; it’s where all the good stuff is. (My first trilogy is equally dreadful.)
*It’s about CONSCIOUS DISSOCIATION for people who need help reconciling with trauma, neurodivergence, and queer/trans acceptance
It’s all nervous system regulation
the ability to retain agency and self-energy while simultaneously pulling back psychologically and getting close emotionally
the ability to witness all kinds of pain as interesting sensations that pass like the clouds
but also to recognize that pain is real and sometimes we really need to feel into it
having ways of somatically releasing > ecstatic dance, safe rage, running, martial arts, ASMR, breathing
supported by medicine > amanita in particular + cacao for heart opening, safe stimulation, retraining the nervous system to balance
for a minute anyway I found the exercise of editing my program approval document grounding instead of traumatizing, because of the healing allowing me to see creative freedom in limitations. It crept back in when I got past the point where someone made the cuts for me but still felt like progress.
ADVISORS: Please read these summaries and listen or read transcripts (pasted below for convenience)
Impressionism abstracts the sensory, surrealism abstracts the psyche
Summary: The discussion explores the duality of Impressionism and Surrealism, describing Impressionism as the abstraction of sensory reality and Surrealism as the abstraction of psychology. Impressionism is likened to masculine, conservative magic tricks, while Surrealism is seen as feminine, intuitive shamanism. The conversation delves into the metaphorical night world of Surrealism, contrasting it with the day world of Impressionism, and emphasizes the transformative power of Surrealism in making the unconscious conscious. Both art forms are seen as forms of alchemy, but Surrealism is noted for its deeper, psychological impact and ability to resonate with individual interpretations.
Outline
Impressionism and Surrealism: A Duality in Art
Speaker 1 explains that Impressionism abstracts the sensory, focusing on visual reality, while Surrealism abstracts psychology, delving into the subconscious.
The conversation explores the duality and partnership between Impressionism and Surrealism, likening them to parents of art.
Impressionism is described as the masculine, conservative, and institutional form, while Surrealism is the feminine, intuitive, and creative force.
Speaker 1 elaborates on the contrasting nature of these art movements, with Impressionism being more about adherence to past forms and Surrealism being about pure feeling and subconscious expression.
Impressionism as Magic Tricks
Speaker 1 compares Impressionism to magic tricks, where the artist abstracts the real thing, making it disappear and reappear.
Surrealism is described as a more advanced form of magic, where the subconscious is made conscious, and the artist conjures the unseen.
The conversation touches on the idea that both Impressionism and Surrealism involve transmutation, but Surrealism is seen as more shamanistic and alchemical.
Speaker 1 mentions the influence of Ayanna's music, describing it as "Trappy Trappy," and relates it to the themes of the discussion.
Surrealism as Shamanism and Alchemy
Speaker 1 continues to explore the idea that Surrealism is like shamanism, involving the transformation of one thing into another.
The night world of Surrealism is contrasted with the day world of Impressionism, with the night world being seen as more powerful and real.
The conversation delves into the role of serotonin in functioning in the day world and how it abstracts us from the true reality of the universe.
Speaker 1 describes Surrealism as the original ancestral medicine, involving fermentation and transformation, while Impressionism is likened to caffeine and stimulants.
The Role of Conscious Dissociation in Art
Speaker 1 discusses the importance of conscious dissociation in art, allowing the artist to channel other energies and entities.
The conversation highlights the need for training and guidance to contain the ceremony and know when to step in and end the performance.
Surrealism is described as the DMT model, representing depth psychology and making the unconscious conscious.
The double alchemy of Surrealism is contrasted with the single alchemy of Impressionism, with Surrealism involving the transformation of the formless to the form and back again.
The Balance Between Impressionism and Surrealism
Speaker 1 concludes that both Impressionism and Surrealism involve conjuring and abstracting reality, but Surrealism is more about psychology.
The conversation reflects on the need to be both Impressionists and Surrealists, moving between the form and the formless.
Speaker 1 expresses a personal preference for Impressionism but acknowledges the advanced nature of Surrealism.
The discussion ends with a reflection on the fascinating differences between Impressionism and Surrealism, each abstracting different aspects of reality.
Transcript (Listen):
Impressionism was the abstraction of reality, of the visual what you could see the sensory Surrealism was the abstraction of psychology, of the mind, of the subconscious. Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay. This is the duality. This is the partnership. This is the relationship. Impressionism and surrealism are like parents of art. Impressionism is, yeah, and it's the opposite of what you think. Just like my parents, impressionism is actually the quote, unquote masculine, the the young, the doing, the containing, the labeling, while the surrealism is the feminine, intuitive, creative, generative, even though it's the one that presents more masculine dude, It's the one that presents more masculine than the popular conception, but it's actually the most feminine, fucking, gender fucking or conceptions of any of these labels and restrictions impressionism feels like it's the feminine, the soft. Brush Strokes and light filled scenes and flowing and pastoral depictions. But this is actually more institutional. This is actually more of an adherence to past form, which is more of a masculine, it's more of a young it's more of A conservatism and conformity. Surrealism, on the other hand, and was just pure feeling, receiving, allowing the subconscious to come forward, automatically, receiving, allowing you and if art is shamanism and impressionism was about abstracting reality, that's conjuring the mean, well, maybe they're both the same. That's hard to say. I was gonna say Surrealism was more shamanistic because you were transmuting things twice. But maybe you are in both cases.
Impression, Impressionism. You're taking the quote, unquote, real thing, the form, and making it abstract, the disappearing act, abracadabra, Hocus, focus. Now you see me. Now you don't I. Surrealism was like an even more advanced magic, because instead of taking what you see and making it go away, which is simple magic, I the most basic trick, you're making the subconscious conscious, your necromancing, your spell casting. You're calling forth the unseen. You're resurrecting the dead and bringing them into being, giving words to the images, giving form to the formless, giving bodies to the dead, but then abstracting them again, calling them force only to send them back, transmuted. Yeah, so this is like so impressionism was like magic, and surrealism is like shamanism, because it's like alchemy, because you're transmuting a thing and do another thing. And I think shamanism at its essence, yes, I know it just means one who knows, but it's like about knowing how to turn things into other things. Okay, multiple threads are coming together. Now I think that's what it is. I'm seeing all the eyes, so I think I'm on to something. But I'm also listening to ayannas music, and it's really Trappy Trappy. It's really trippy. That's funny, trippy. Trappy. Trap and trip up. Yeah, I'm seeing the eyes that are skulls, the Kali, the DMT eyeballs, the serpent, Hall of eyeballs, wall of mirrors. So I think that means I'm onto something here. Impressionism is magic tricks, which are beautiful, but they're slights of hand, playing with the light. It's day world. Impressionism is the day world. Surrealism is the night world, and I think the night medicine is more powerful. And I think the night medicine is more real than reality. Like what they say about DMT, like what they say about psychedelic dream, the day. World is a form, but it's pretend, but it's a model. Serotonin is a thing that we invoke to function in a world that we've constructed. The serotonin model helps us function as a human, but it abstracts us from the reality of the universe, of existence, which is oneness, which is formlessness, which is dissolving and dying and reconstituting, which doesn't have to mean pain and suffering, but it doesn't include it.
Day world, magic tricks to get along in consensus reality. That's Impressionism, that's the day world, that's the serotonin level, surrealism is shamanism. Is the original ancestral medicine, the things that turn into other things. It's fermentation. It's like serotonin is like caffeine and stimulants and night world, medicines, mushrooms, psychedelic beer, I mean, just any kind of fermentation, really things rotting and taking on more beauty. I
Okay, cacao’s interesting because it's kind of both. I think that's why it's such a queer medicine. And Amanita is is really interesting as well, because she's the master of conscious Association, and that's the key to being a good artist or a good shaman. Is conscious dissociation, being able to dissociate, to leave your body and allow the other energies and entities and images to come through you, by retaining that agency to step in when you need to, to say cut, to say the performance is over, to say the drawing is finished. And this is part of me losing myself as a writer, not knowing when to stop. We need training and guidance to know how to contain the ceremony. Anyways, surrealism then being the DMT model, if we're going with that framework, the night world, the intuitive, the feeling and being a representation of depth psychology. It was making the unconscious conscious, giving form to the formless, raising the dead, and then abstracting it again, and then removing the specifics, and then just leaving, like giving it form, and then leaving the impressions so that people can transpose their own meaning onto it, from the formless to the forum back to the formless, again, transformed.
A double alchemy, and that's what separates shamanism from sorcery. That's what separates shamanism from magic. Is the conscious association to bring something forth, so that you can heal it, so that you can alchemize it, so that you can communicate with it, so that you can ask it what it wants to tell you, and then release it, give it its own life. You release it back into the collective so the rest of us can experience it, can enter in and engage with it, because with too many specifics, and it's not accessible, and people have to have an entry point. And when it's just a suggestion, just an impression, then people pick up on the part that resonates with them, and that allows them to step in and make their own interpretation and their own resonance and do their own alchemy and their own healing.
But I think we kind of need to be both Impressionists and surrealists. I mean, that's just a metaphor for the whole thing, right? That's moving between the form and the formless that's being able to operate in the night world and the day world. I don't know. Maybe in being like I love Impressionism, not trying to criticize it. And day world is my criticism, I guess. But I kind of feel like it is because I don't like it as much, but I love the Impressionists, so I don't know, maybe they're both just different versions of the night world, and surrealism is just like the More advanced level. Because either way, I suppose you're conjuring, you're taking reality and abstracting it and allowing people to impose their own impressions onto it. But yeah, the fact that one's about psychology is really interesting. One's about what we can see one's about the sensory. Impressionism is about abstracting the sensory, and surrealism is about abstracting consciousness. It's fascinating. I
Tarot, Maya calendar, Western astrology as impressions and surrealism
Summary: Riordan Regan discusses the surreal and abstract nature of Jodorowsky's interpretation of the Tarot, emphasizing its transformation from an abstract concept to a concrete work. He explores the archetypal forces and transfiguration within the Tarot, drawing parallels to Fight Club's impact on his spiritual journey. Regan reflects on the expansive nature of archetypes, such as the Pope card, and their interaction with astrology and the Maya system. He also touches on the personal significance of specific cards, like Death and the Page of Swords, and their resonance with his own experiences and identity, particularly in the context of trans and emergent archetypes.
Action items:
Explore the relationship between Tarot, the Maya calendar, and Western astrology as tools of divination and shamanism.
Look up the meaning of the Page of Swords card that was drawn.
Determine Kit's birthday to explore the significance of the Death card.
Continue the exploration of how archetypes can be larger and more expansive than individual symbols or cards.
Outline
Surrealism and the Abstraction of Tarot
Riordan Regan discusses the surrealism of Jodorowsky's interpretation of the Tarot, describing it as an abstraction of an abstraction.
He explains how Jodoran's divination and exploration of the Tarot created a concrete form from an abstract concept.
Riordan reflects on the complexity of receiving and re-abstracting Jodorowsky's interpretation through his own senses and experiences.
He mentions the semi-conscious state he is in while reading the book, which adds to the dream-like experience of receiving the messages.
The Book's Life and World Building
Riordan describes how the Way of the Tarot book has taken on a life of its own, becoming a universe created by Jodorowsky.
He notes that despite the book being based on extensive research, it is still filtered through Jodorowsky's unique lens.
The book is now an abstraction again, and Riordan is receiving it directly, translating it through his own experience.
He compares this process to double alchemy, involving dissociation, dissolution, and reanimation.
Fight Club and Spiritual Exploration
Riordan reflects on how Fight Club, a masculine movie, opened him up to the spiritual realm and feminine aspects.
He discusses how the movie made Buddhism accessible to a modern consumerist generation.
The movie's portrayal of masculinity and materialism led Riordan to explore world religions and the feminine.
He finds parallels between Jodorowsky's interpretation of the Tarot and the trans experience, despite Jodorowsky not having the language for it.
Archetypes and Transformation
Riordan explores the concept of archetypes and their expansive nature, questioning if they can be expressed in one card.
He mentions the Pope card in the Tarot, which he interprets as the ancestor and the greatest magician.
Riordan discusses the complexity of archetypes and their interaction with astrology and the Maya system.
He reflects on the accuracy of the Maya system, which combines the quantifiable and the abstract, symbolizing larger energies.
Depth Psychology and Self-Healing
Riordan talks about the importance of following images and feelings in depth psychology and self-healing.
He mentions the layers of abstraction involved in the Tarot, Jodorowsky's book, and the artistic renditions of Celtic spirits on his altar.
The images capture aspects of the archetypes in the moment, which are larger and more expansive.
Riordan reflects on the accuracy of the Maya system and its marriage of the quantifiable and the abstract.
The Journey to the Lover
Riordan discusses his journey towards the Lover card in the Tarot, symbolizing the search for spiritual longing and partnership.
He shares an archetypal astrology reading where Lawrence Hillman interpreted his birth chart as embodying the trans archetype.
Riordan reflects on his journey from seeking completion and partnership externally to finding it within himself.
He connects this journey to the concept of Transubstantiation, where the Divine is inherent within everything.
The Hollow Bone and Mediator Role
Riordan describes himself as an empty, shapeless vessel transporting light wherever the wind wills.
He connects this to the concept of the hollow bone in shamanism, which clears obstacles from the path of communication to the Supreme Being.
Riordan reflects on the mediator role between words and images, as described in Jodorowsky's book.
He concludes by emphasizing the importance of words and images in creating reality and the expansive nature of archetypes.
Transcript (Listen):
This is cool and wild. This is surrealism. Now we're in the realm of surrealism, which is Jodorowsky realm, an abstraction of an abstraction. His study of the Tarot created its own thing, his giving words to images concretizing What was an abstraction. The Tarot is an abstraction of the consensus world. He gave form to that formless through his divination, exploration, deep dive with it. Now it's abstracted again. Wait now I'm receiving the messages from it. In creating this book, it created something concrete. It gave form to images. But it's also a work in itself that now has taken on its own life, its words, but its images, because I'm receiving his abstraction. Wait, this is so complicated. I'm receiving his concretization of something abstract, but that's his interpretation, and only he knows exactly what he means, and only he experienced it. So in me reading it, I'm re abstracting it. I'm taking the words that were made from images and making them images again, because I'm reading them and I'm receiving them through my senses, through a semi conscious realm, especially because I'm doing this like in the early morning, and hypnotic state,
not Bemushroomed yet. Well, sort of Amanita. Why do I think that doesn't count? Because yeah, doesn't matter. Only the tiny, one drop of Amanita, that counts. Yeah, I'm kind of in the dream realm receiving and I felt the book calling to me like the book [The Way of the Tarot by Jodorowsky] has now taken on a life of its own. The book is his recreation. So this is world building. This is quantum. This is creating a universe. He made his own universe of the Tarot. He created his own world of material. This is his interpretation, even if it's based on tons of research and tons of other sources, it's still through his lens. It's filtered through his container, through his prenda. So now it's become an abstraction again, and now I'm receiving it directly and translating it through my experience, but like it's become an archetypal force now, or has it? Or is it just that the archetypes are calling to me through his interpretation, or is it both? I think it's both, but this is like how surrealism is double alchemy, almost transfiguration. Dissociation, dissolution, trans substantiation, dissolution, reanimation and remix. What is the remix?
They say the book is always better than the movie, but that isn't true when it comes to fight club. I actually think the movie was better than the book. Maybe that's part of why that work spoke to me so much. It was an abstraction of Buddhism, but it made it into something accessible for a modern consumerist generation. With lots of repressed aggression and alienation. I put it in a language we could understand, and it opened me up to the spiritual realm. Through a movie that seemed like it was really masculine and about the material, it opened me up to the whole cosmos that started me on my world religions exploration. It opened me up to the feminine. Through Fight Club, that most masculine movie, it opened me up to the feminine. And there's something in this with Jodorowsky, like the Tarot, this very feminine, intuitive, generative thing. That a masculine experienced person has studied and translated and presented an interpretation that feels like very trans, which is really interesting. It's like the most trans thing I've read outside of actual trans writing. He just doesn't quite have that language for it, but he uses androgyne A lot, which is the same thing to me, like not literally, but in the way he's using it in this context. And kit is here accompany me. He's encouraged there. Wow, kit, sorry, I just misgendered you. I'm so sorry. Z is encouraging me. It's because I was just talking about dudes. I'm sorry. Z is saying, Yeah, that's part of me too. It's all part of me, okay. He okay. I know all pronouns are okay, but I don't want to use them all. Um, okay. I'm on the cusp of something. Yeah. It was just wild this morning, how the book called me. It was calling to me. I could hear the voices, and I felt like I should allow myself to be guided and pick a card from the full deck. So I put everything back in it, and I drew something out, and it didn't feel that resonant. It kind of felt like me trying and I got injustice, which was really interesting. But then when I looked up the cards that I had intentionally pulled out and put on my altar, like these are resonating like it was justice, which is 13 gone. Well, I don't know about 13, but it's con. I'm reading it right now. It's also the ancestor card in the Wildwood. It's about the beam that's the emissary between the worlds wisdom, the translator. Yeah, this is really Kan. That's the Pope. The Pope is the ancestor. Is Kan, the one who can be the greatest magician and sorcerer or the wisest elder and spiritual emissary,
The one who is seduced by power too easily, the one who teaches, who communicates their spiritual experience and it can also be an idealized spiritual figure, the guru that I attached too much to. The other cards that I intentionally placed on the altar were death and
the page of swords, which I haven't looked up yet, and from if the Pope spoke on page 154 I mean, this is The two con i am first and foremost mediator of myself between my Sublime spiritual nature and my most instinctive humanity. I have chosen to be the place where they interact. I am at the service of this communication between. In the high and low My mission is to unite apparent opposites. A bridge is not a country. It is merely a place of passage. It permits the circulation of the creative energies of this magnificently illusory phenomenon we call life. It is not by isolating myself, but by taking all paths that I am able to announce the good news. I mean, holy shit, I would have never guessed that the Pope was con. And, I mean, the Pope is too con. Specifically, I think that maybe an aspect so, because archetypes are complex, and so this makes me wonder, like, Can they even be expressed in one card? Are the archetypes larger? This is what I want to explore as part of all of this thesis too, is, are the archetypes? Because this can be part of the trans and emergent archetype discussion. Are they larger? I mean, they have to be larger than these symbols, right? Like I feel like Khan as an archetype. This is part of why I'm trying to feel into how astrology, the Western astrology system, the Maya astrology system and Tarot all interact to convey and experience how they all interact as tools of divination and devising, which is shamanism, which is being a hollow bone, just receiving the energies that are present and interpreting them through some kind of expression that people can understand, be it a play, be it a book, be it a drawing, whatever. And I feel like part of why the Maya system is so accurate is because it's really this marriage of the quantifiable and the abstract, because each day's energy combines a number, a specific, quantifiable measure. It's like the earthly, the form, with an archetype, an energy, something that is larger than one image, one number one description. So con is hugely expansive. 13 con is symbolized more by death, which is the card that kit shows which, yeah, is like the most trans. I got to find out what kids birthday is. Oh, my God, I can't believe I've never done 00. I'm gonna do that. Oh, they're excited about that. Um. But then the pope card, the ancestor, which is the steg, which is an Anita, which is the two cards. The two images I've had on my altar are death 13, the journey, the Crone, the calyux, the Raven in the ancestor the deer, the stag, the Shaman. This is heaven and earth. This is Moon and Sun, night world, day world. Maybe I don't know they're both kind of night energies.
these two images are really potent for a reason, and this is depth psychology, and this is self healing, is following the image, following the feeling. So I'm going with it, and we're following this trail, and we're trusting these images, and we're trusting these methods and methodologies. And so it's like interesting though, the layers of abstraction, because there's the Tarot, and then there's Jodorowsky taro book, there's these archetypes, and then there's these artistic renditions of the Celtic spirits that are on my altar, you know, but this is kind of what I'm saying. The images capture aspects of the archetypes in that moment that are larger and more expansive. And I think the Maya system, I don't know, the way, I guess the Tarot uses a number and image too. Anyways, this is something to explore, but there feels something more accurate to me that my assistant feels more expansive. Anyways, it's just so cool that today. Is too con and the ancestor card that it was called to look up that I heard like heard almost in human language, the book itself calling to me, saying, Look up the cards that are already on your altar. I
and this is writing, as drawing. Drawing as writing, as Anthi talks about, this is the images animating themselves, forming a reality constituted by language and of course, the pope moves towards the lover. The next card is the lover. My journey realizing that, yeah, the search for the spiritual longing for the partnership, starts within the lover within. I'm searching for it outside and inside myself, as Lawrence Hillman told me in my archetypal astrology reading the other day, yes, son of James Hillman, who interpreted the snapshot of the sky on the day I was born and looked at that correspondence and said that I am the living embodiment of the trans archetype, essentially because I represent this shift from Pisces to Aquarius, because I started my journey looking for completion and partnership and romance, even if you will, In Jesus, and then that reality was stripped for me, and I thought it was my mom, and then that reality was stripped for me, and then I looked for it in lovers, and then that reality was stripped for me, and then I realized that it was within, and that by going within, I found the oneness in the poly, in the queer and the Yeah. The Transubstantiation of the Divine into everything. No, this reality is a Transubstantiation of the Divine that already is inherent within everything. And that's what archetypal astrology is, and that's what correspondence is, and that's what all these symbol systems are. They're just reflecting that everything is an infinite facet of the same diamond. The Pope is also the shaman the hollow bone, because it talks about clearing all obstacles from a path of communication to the Supreme Being. Oh, my God. In this Jodorowsky book, I am an empty, shapeless vessel that transports the lights wherever the wind wills. I mean, I almost wrote this word for word the other day, and that's the hollow bone to find. Okay, in the last line of this entry, I am the final frontier between words and the unthinkable language creating reality, words versus images, the Pope, the shaman, the hollow bone as the mediator between the words and the images and.
Working on:
Cacao zine and related content outreach/education
Save the Hackney baths campaign: collecting testimonials and creating pitch deck about the Baths as a self-/community healing centre
Volunteer work with Ecstatic Dance UK
Meetings/outreach in progress or to schedule:
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Follow up with Avril Corroon re: early April, Dublin residencies and Phil McCrilly re: spring Belfast visit
Flavia Davila
Visit Bishopsgate archives for Albanz work before end of Jan
Sources/building upon the work of:
depth psychology (Jung, J. Hillman, Tarnas, )
archetypal and astrological studies (J. Hillman, L. Hillman, Levine, Tarnas)
classics/anthropology and herbalism/ethnobotany/psychedelics (McKenna, Kilindi Iyi, Ritter, Sherman-Lewis, Gutierrez, Muraresku, Valamoti, Arnold, McGovern, Plotkin)
Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic and Tarot
practice-based research by performers, visual artists, and artist-chefs who represent the queer/trans/diverse perspective (Albanz, Besse, Brathwaite-Shirley, Corroon, Danowski, Davila, McGrady, Muholi, McCrilly, Pacleb)
principles/framework of Integral Theory/Spiral Dynamics (Ken Wilber) and morphic resonance (Rupert Sheldrake)
ancient and Indigenous cosmologies (Elmy, Gutierrez, Ritter, Sherman-Lewis, direct sources/experience)
trauma healing methodologies/research (De la Rosa, Maté, Schwartz)
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
https://www.daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com/i-cant-remember-a-time-i-didnt-need
Bits for progress report/thesis
where each stage of evolution of any system involves transcending and including the previous one, and the “laws” of nature are habits or suggestions in a universe constantly changing and in motion
Everything is a microcosm of the macrocosm, so healing our collective trauma starts by healing ourselves.
Inclusion has to come before transcendence, both on an individual and collective level. We must welcome the rejected/shadow parts back home to become whole
In many ways a continuation of Kit Danowski’s work on performing with the dead using adapted African ancestral practices–fusing this with archetypal/depth psychology and astrology as well as IFS and psychodramatic/devising techniques. Invoking plant medicine and interpreted through the AI to create a methodology of cyberdelic gonzo autoethnography and transpersonal creative divination and performance devising.
It is spirit possession–like Danowski’s method involves invoking the orishas, I invoke the archetypes, natural world, plants/mushrooms, and parts of self.
It is death medicine and underworld work, literally and figuratively invoking the dead and working in darkness. Much of this work takes place at night.
Formal research studies on ecstatic dance? Amanita muscaria? Cacao? Basically nothing has been done on this
Intersection of art, psychology, language-as-reality, consciousness: surrealism as the abstraction of mind; impressionism as the abstraction of matter
Highlights:
It's about working with the energies that are already present, whether it's the archetypes or our feelings.
Amanita and Cacao, Datura and all these death plants, demonized and blamed for people's problems. To say that they made us sick or crazy is like saying somebody made us angry. No, this isn't how it works. No one can make us anything. It's about working with the energies that are already present, whether it's the archetypes or our feelings. And now I see what Jung meant by the archetypes possess us. We are just vessels for the vibrations that are already present, the vibration of anger, the vibration of war, whether it's people or planets, we're all just big fucking particles, the cultures with ancient roots do the same thing. God, what the fuck does that say? Oh, all the cultures with ancient roots do the same things for a reason, because there's universal resonance. The anger is present. Someone didn't make me angry, just like mercury didn't make me just like Mercury's placement on the day I incarnate, it didn't make me a good communicator. The energy of communication was present in the sky, Mercury Hermes was possessing the particles, possessing both my corpus and the planetary alignments at this precise moment. And this is even why astrology is sort of a mindfulness practice, really, is that it's just tuning in being present to what's happening, to what's resonating, whether in the cosmos or your own body, it's a correspondence, it's a reflection. And now this is what was so cool. This morning, I see exactly how my work is an extension, directly, of Kit’s. Now it makes sense, because it's all possession. It's all spirit possession, whether calling in an Orisha or invoking archetype, they're just languaging for the same thing as above, so below in this dimension, as in the other realm, we're just reflecting what's already present, emitting the same resonant frequency and. It's all possession. Celtic, Maya, syncretic, Shipibo, Buddhist, it's all just ways of letting myself be consumed by the energies that are showing up in that moment.
So are both just using different methods of devising. What's already here?
I've come up with stories about all these things in my head, but I don't think I've asked the parts directly, and that's the point of this whole thing. Direct experience, direct conversation, direct communication, whether it's a tree or a plant or a past part of self or a part of your body or a cancer cell, what are you trying to tell me?
I tried to keep my body, my spinal column, straight. And I realized that I was afraid to do that. I was afraid to stand up straight. I was afraid to bear my own weight. I was afraid to put weight on my legs. I've always been afraid to put weight on my legs, specifically my glutes. Why have I been afraid to put weight on my glutes? It's so wild, like feeling in the legs is scary, and I don't quite understand why yet, but yeah, as I did this, I asked the toes why they were numb, and they said it came from the pelvis, and the pelvis told me, You never even asked me what I. Was trying to tell you, and it reminded me of my own words at the hospital after I tried to kill myself. The phrase that probably honestly kept me out of the psych ward is when I mumbled. They asked why I did it, and they said I just wanted him to listen to me
Slow it down, explode it out. Crawl inside. space and time are not what we think they are. We can manipulate them. We can bend them. We can get inside them. Yeah, oh, no. There's more dimensions than we see present. We don't have to accept what we've been given. And there is more space, and there is more time, and there is more expansion, and I do think more DMT production. I don't care if there's data on it or not, but I do need to find out about that
if you are what makes you angry, if you are only triggered based on something that's within you, then I'm mad at myself for keeping myself prisoner in a woman's body, quote, unquote, in a feminine performance, in a victim story, in those horrible relationships in the house of horrors in Austin and all these prisons. So I love you. Please forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for giving my body away to people who didn't deserve it. I'm sorry for not respecting my own boundaries and borders. No wonder I'm mad at the UK for imposing theirs on me. I haven't respected my own, I let so many people in that didn't deserve it, just because I didn't want to go home alone to that apartment and face myself. It's so funny now it's like, I can't get enough time alone.
it's so deeply human. I haven't wanted to be one. I haven't wanted to be a person. I wasn't able to listen to the pelvis because it was scary as fuck, and I still wasn't safe in California. This is a powerful archetype possessing me. It is almost the power of Saq ‘Iq, the hurricane, the Junjapu, is it Aries? Is it Pluto? The war inside me, the two sides trying to fall separately, the underworld Journey rising up to meet me. It's powerful. It threw me from my bike, and I was afraid to fully engage with it in California when I didn't have the support I needed.
my bones want to go home to Ireland. My bones want to go home. That's what I was hearing. My bones want to go home, and I think it's dark. I don't know there's something powerful ancestral calling me, but England is home too, and and so I kept thinking last night of the enclosures and the connection between African and Irish cultures. And I need to research that more the two sides of myself are at war, the English and the Irish, the Protestant, the Catholics, the subjugated and the conquerors, the imperialists, the whole freaking world, two sides of my body trying to fall two separate ways. And interestingly, dad is representing the opposite of what you'd think Dad is the intuitive, generative side, the artists longing to be seen, the bones, longing to reconnect with the ancestral legacy in the druidic forest. Mom is the side of the conquerors and the colonists. They were the freaking Protestant preachers trying to force their religion on everyone, just like that Blake story. Urizen.
he didn't give me an Irish name, and it felt like everyone else in the family had one, and I never felt like I belonged with them. Me and Amber were the only ones, the black sheep of the family. The rejection by the regans really fucking hurt me. Because it was a rejection of my legacy, my ancestry, the only clear tie I had. No wonder I was obsessed with the Lion King. I was the rightful heir to the throne, the eldest son of the O Regan's but I was denied three times, like Jesus, by name, my lineage and my manhood.
The Celts had sacred altars and Portal places where they created altars and made offerings, and they tracked the cycles of time and they kept fires all of this, just like the Maya. And supposedly they even had a beverage. It was kind of like cacao.
They took our land from us, the colonists. And we are the earth, and so to take our lands is to take our personhood, our identity, to dissolve, to dissociate us from our physical environment. They created enclosures and created private property, and they took our land from us and said we weren't even Welcome on it. They took everyone's land all over the earth. The English enslaved the whole world. Every time I go to dance, there's always some moment where I really feel that African, Irish connection coming through so strongly and resonant. And sometimes I wonder why I'm trying to live in the land of the colonizers, and I don't know all the places I'm trying to get visas, or the lands of the colonizers, the Brits, the Dutch and the Germans. So I need to look more at Ireland, and there's something really resonating and really vibrating on my body when Kaz was talking about the Irish artist visa, and Dublin's always calling, and Kaz a story about getting a Colombian visa, made me see that it was possible. So I made up a story about why it couldn't happen. But Kaz shows me that magic is possible. And I've always felt that if I could just talk to someone in person and look at a fellow Irishman in the eyes and appeal to them on a human level, that they would make an exception.
Praxis: Fucking with time
It’s kind of my favorite thing to do
they say sleep is essential to your hygiene and health but I prefer to mainline and then restrict it - I know I say I want to avoid extremes but I feel like this is part of the practice
it’s fucking with time
questioning and exploring the whole concept
my medicine work lately involves slowing things way down so I can crawl inside them. I have unlocked the ability with amanita and LSD time-bending capabilities to explode out all the moments around a decision or thought process and see that what looks like a causation is a correlation, that there are actually a thousand little stories and decision trees in between what feels like one event and the next, the subconscious thought patterns and subliminal habits that are ACTUALLY programming me
so yes the body needs sleep but it can happen anytime and I’d rather sleep in the day, and be awake in the world of DMT and the night to crawl inside the subconscious realm that normally comes out in dreaming. by fucking with time can we crawl inside the dream realm with the serotonin system running? Can we go into the nightworld with our serotonin flashlights?
>this is consciousness exploration - going into the subconscious, the darkness, the dreamtime, with awareness and intention - making it conscious like Jung did - making the dreaming lucid, retaining agency. and this is part of the praxis I’m creating. fuck around and find out, do the things they tell you not to in mainstream society following your intuition and the guidance of your teachers and ancestors.
>>don’t take substances, let the plants and mushrooms take you. stay up all night and crawl around in the caverns of your mind and the things that make noise in the dark, but do it with your third-eye headlamp shining brightly.
>>so is the calling really to get more training in transpersonal psychology? or is that imposter syndrome? is that denying or not believing in my inner artist and shamxn? I am directly experiencing the things they’re talking about through my own method. the thing is that I want to teach people and help them heal and want to do it safely. but maybe with more practice that will become possible without a certification… maybe more apprenticeship with the plants and underground and Indigenous teachers is my path.
when you slow things down and crawl inside them you find the most fascinating things hiding there
and there is so much shame for me
I am starting to unravel the guilt that can keep me accountable from the shame that damns me and keeps me small
I drew the 2 of cups today and read in Jodorowsky’s Tarot that this symbolizes the end of Oedipal love being replaced by something truer — the Oedipal love that is the excessive attachment to my mother and the love and validation from her, the clinging to that connection and the fear and feeling that I might not exist without it — whoa I just realized this—there is a fear that I will disappear completely if I break the gaze, which is what was programmed as a baby when she wouldn’t let me look away. resulting in ADD. resulting in trying to please everybody all the time. resulting in fear and paralysis every time I try to follow my soul longing and flee the nest. i want to go and come back, to love her and others with healthy boundaries, to be in proximity with people without losing myself. it’s happening slowly.
and this was part of it. it comes right on the heels of a two-day Gregorian transition portal with my dance family, LSD, amanita, cacao, somatic healing and time-bending and sound therapy, where Gaby did something that really healed my pelvis and leg in a noticeable way, and I danced until 6am despite my fall and it was okay
where I exploded out what I used to think was desire to be with men and I realized was desire to be them, to crawl inside their skin and inhabit their flesh, put on their testo-suit and feel my muscles swell and flex, walk with my hips and swing my dick and feel powerful and insert myself into things, have people respect my authority just because I speak, hell let’s be real, to kinda tremble with fear when they see me. I watch others dance and mimic their movements and am able to reprogram my body with the things that align with my frequency. We learn to be humans through imitation, morphic resonance, picking up the habits of other things that are like us, in proximity to us, and if we didn’t learn the right or aligned habits and behaviors from our caregivers we can reprogram ourselves later with plant teachers and elders and healthy peers.
the body is coming back online one part at a time, and I got the knees back after the Gregorian page turned to 2025
it enables me move so much more freely and naturally, I am becoming a human again, i’m not all stiff-framed, living rigor mortis, a corpse walking around talking to everyone, I’m a person, I’m a man, I’m a lesbian, I’m trans, I can do shit
I watched him move all night with fascination and wanted to inhabit a body like his, and at 5am when I almost went home but instead returned to the dancing chamber for one last set, and Tommy was playing, and I felt so loved and held by my community on this night that was like EDUK and the Burn combined, where we make our own space and fuck with time and thereby reclaim our lives and our agency from the capitalist system that forces us to conform and tries to take our choice from us — WE SAY NO, FUCK THAT SHIT — we can make OUR OWN shit. and that includes our bodies, we don’t have to fit a binary, we can make them what we want them to be
and he came up to me after I had transitioned to the Amanita portion of the experience to carry me home, and danced with me in the corner, and it’s like he knew exactly what was happening, and almost was my elder teaching me how to move, I felt he was telepathically transmitting this knowledge and reclamation of how to move like a man and reclaim my sacred masculine sexuality and power, how to produce more testosterone while staying soft because we self-generate all this shit, from T to DMT.
he was spitting poetry while my dance family spun dirty beats and twirled around me and centuries of shame began to be released
and yesterday at the New Year’s Day dance during Richard’s grimy mycelial set, I felt it, it was here, my sexuality was coming back to me, my sacred masculinity was coming back to me, I was become a whole person again, I was beginning to feel like a person someone could theoretically desire again—but in my MASCULINE and more authentic
and it feels so good and I’m so grateful that I’m crying
AND I THOUGHT I NEEDED A GURU OR A GOD OR MY MOM TO SAVE ME
BUT INSTEAD I DID IT MYSELF WITH THE SUPPORT OF MY COMMUNITY
AND IT’S SO HARD SOMETIMES TO BE ALONE BUT THIS FEELS SO EMPOWERING I THINK IT’S WORTH IT
still… it doesn’t have to be this hard and I want to make it easier for others
so next help me call in my inner teacher
Jupiter + Capricorn / Not all who wander are lost
Cosmological metaphysics: Astrological Jupiter, the New Moon in Capricorn, and the Gregorian transition
Jupiter synchronicities
When things like this happen you can’t help but realize that everything in the universe is in perfect alignment all the time, and you just trip in and out of the flow sometimes
Every single thing that dropped into my awareness and conversation this morning turns out to be represented by astrological Jupiter
I “happened” to be talking with Brian after not doing so for months and letting him into my morning portal bubble which I almost never do with anyone - turned out to be the right kind of vulnerability - and I realized he and I have been helping each other individuate this whole time. walking each other through the COVID bubble - the womb and the tomb - THIS WAS INTUBATION - THE DREAMING CHAMBER OF THE ASCLEPION - but those who didn’t realize what they were entering into emerged more traumatized, while others of us were alchemized and forged a new beginning
this was my Jupiter returning. my Jupiter is in Capricorn, so of course this is activated this new moon
Brian brought up apropos of nothing we said but that was being vibrated by the biggest fucking particle in the cosmos the exaggeration he and I are both prone to - it’s what makes us great showmen and drawn to food and beverage education - this is basically the most Jupiterian thing, teaching people where their food comes from - holy shit!
he mentioned how people have commented on his tendency for hyperbole, how could everything be the best thing ever? and he said that it was to him in that moment, and couldn’t that be enough? I love this way of framing it, it helped shift some things for me, and I shared how Jim had said something similar and I felt shame, and then later recognized it as a positive thing, and branded me the Celebrator, which is a quality I love about myself, and Brian found comfort and honor in this, too.
The Celebrator is Jupiter and he can overwhelm people with his enthusiasm. he just gets so damn excited about everything. maybe this is where being more Saturnian or Capricornian comes in
New moon in Capricorn
The legend of Capricorn is linked to the Flood. Enki, the sea goat, helped create humanity because he wanted to create a servant class - whoa! This actually links to what Ash was sharing about the Gospel of Enoch - Enki’s brother, Elil, got annoyed by the human race because they were making too much noise - so the sea goat sent a flood to wipe them out
the goat, the cloven hooved that later became the Biblical enemy - the satyr, Pan, the Devil
Pan is also archetypal Jupiter!!! dude
the flood of sensory information that came in from the human realm was too much for the divinity so they sent the waters to wash the slate clean - but the key to awakening is not to wipe out the voices, it’s to learn to channel them
for me the work is to turn the volume UP on the ones who aren’t very loud in decibels, the plants and animals and fungi and elements and minerals, and turn DOWN all the static I’m receiving from the human systems that are deafening
Really - it’s all a metaphor for healing > and the answer is conscious dissociation
Pain as perceived by the gabatinurgic system is when the body is receiving a flood of information all at one time and it’s overwhelming > so Amanita works upon this system by mitigating the flood of information so not so much is coming in at once and you can manage it - it forces the observer because you can stand outside it, you know it’s still there but aren’t as bothered by it
discernment - is also what Annabelle was teaching to me in our Kundalini lesson - learning what to tune into and what to dissociate from, to fine-tune the nervous system through somatics, energetic science
Gregorian transition
There’s this concept in the spiritual community that the Gregorian calendar is something foisted upon us, an unnatural conformity to a made-up system, and it kind of is, and it’s come to be associated with starting a new cycle of production in winter, which makes no fucking sense
but originally it was developed, as was the Julian, to get society back in line with the seasons after the Roman calendar got it off balance.
but what is also weird is that the Roman calendar was based on the lunar cycle and so is biodynamic agriculture and this should feel natural
The Julian and Gregorian calendars are lunisolar - they actually combine both the moon and sun
Astrologer Rick Levine is fond of reminding us that our months are derived from lunations—the period between successive new moons (or other phases of the moon), wherein a total of 12 lunations amounts to 354 days or roughly a year—calling them “moonths”
Early peoples tracked the 12 lunations to determine a complete cycle (creating the Wheel?)
Solar calendars like the Gregorian don’t exactly map to that but we still use the “moonth” to honor the past
The Julian calendar was an attempted correction for the Roman calendar, which was probably based off Greek and Babylonian lunar calendars
likely established by Romulus, the founder of Rome, around 738 BC. The original calendar had 10 months and a year of 304 days, with the year beginning in March and ending in December. The remaining 61 1/4 days of the year were ignored, resulting in a gap during winter.
WHOA—so winter was literally the time outside of time—it didn’t exist! hibernation, intubation, the womb and tomb
Is this related to ancient Greek dreaming practices? to the DMT and night world model?
The calendar was later modified by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, who added January and February to create a 12-month year. He also added 50 days to the calendar and removed one day from each of the 30-day months. January was given an extra day to avoid having an even number, which was considered superstitious.
further modified by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE, who created the Julian calendar to align the calendar with the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun. The Julian calendar eliminated leap months, which had been used to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons.
Janus was the god, which is just another word for “archetype,” of transitions and thresholds—he is actually TRANS
two faces, one looking to the future and one to the past. but what about the present?
presided over gates and doorways, rites of passage > which we have lost touch with.
beginnings were important to the achievement-oriented Romans and Janus was always invoked first, as a good omen of launching a new venture—so when this month was created the year had to begin there. which was out of sync with every seasonally based calendar
So Gregorian transition IS an instrument of empire—but the meaning behind the calendar itself isn’t empty. look closer
World calendars, Western transitions
probably the key is that you need both for a complete picture - sun and moon, all the principles
HUH - all of a sudden the Dreamspell, the fake Maya calendar, makes more sense as a system - the problem is trying to pass it off as authentic
once again, maybe the way forward IS syncretic - JUST CITE YOUR SOURCES PEOPLE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IT’S NOT THAT HARD. why do we have to pretend that either we made it up or it’s some ancient practice? Just be authentic!
Lubo still refuses to give credit where it’s due to the people who actually make the cacao he is building a cult of personality around and it’s maddening. All I can do is try to get the other information out there…
Over time the human measurements made the calendars that started off aligned drift out of sync with reality - how did the Maya stay on track?
The Maya calendar is divinatory—cosmological—encompassing above and below and every direction from the axis/anima mundi, the center, the divine queer. Divining = devising = subtracting, taking away the layers of consensus reality to reveal what has always been there > it’s just OBSERVATION of the natural alignment of heaven and earth, cosmos and psyche.
From Maya Daykeeping: Three Calendars from Highland Guatemala
“The three divinatory calendars presented in this volume are examples of a K’iche’an1literary tradition that includes thePopol Vuh, Annals of the Cakchiquels (Memorialde Solola), and theTitles of the Lords of Totonicapan. Two of the calendars were written in indigenous Kaqchikel or K’iche’ languages, but in European script, sometime before or during the eighteenth century. The third example was written in K’iche’and Spanish in 1854. They demonstrate that although linguistic and literary tradi-tions were still being adhered to, there was at the same time an obvious element of adaptation and acculturation, the use of European script. Calendars such as these continue to be the basis for prognostication or deter-mining the favorable or unfavorable nature of specific periods of time. According to the favor of the days, land may be purchased, sales made in the market, profit accrued, and other economic enterprises pursued. The calendar designates the timefor planting and harvest and other agricultural pursuits. The disposition of the dayscan maintain health and foretell illness or death, influence the naming of children. guide betrothal and marriage. Obligations to the dead are fulfilled on days affiliatedwith the souls of the ancestors. These little-known works appear to have escaped the notice of most scholars. Except for occasional mention of their existence, and an unpublished study of the 1722 calendar by Rudolf Schuller and Oliver La Farge (1934), no further work has been done.”
This is why my scholarship is an important contribution to the field - I am bringing in the FIELD research, the esoteric ethnography - those from the underground, the non-published academics who share in private circles and bootstrapped conferences and build their own platforms. The ethnographies of time and space, of day and night keeping - the systems of the day world, the serotonin system, the solar calendar - and the night world, the DMT model, the lunar calendar, the things that dwell in the dark. The ethnographies of darkness? New Hermetic tablets, hyperdimensional diamonds
All astrology is simply a Hermetic reflection, as above so below, of what is already present - it’s not predictive. Our calendars are the same thing, snapshots of things in the heavens that we try to use to govern our movements down here on earth. but we get separated from them
The Julian calendar was proposed in 46 BC by (and takes its name from) Julius Caesar, as a reform of the earlier Roman calendar, which was largely a lunisolar one.[2] It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by his edict. Caesar's calendar became the predominant calendar in the Roman Empire and subsequently most of the Western world for more than 1,600 years, until 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII promulgated a revised calendar.
The Celtic New Year starts on Samhain - which is when Ash and I had our rebirthing. So we were aligned to our biological system.
But there are so many different ways to track it, it’s cyclical, a spiral, in the end it doesn’t really matter. The Celtic year is a WHEEL - so you can enter at any point and start going around. Starting at the harvest feels super aligned to me as a creature of the night realm - and honestly it makes sense for the whole human system - it maps to the cycle of gestation - the seed is planted in the dark and takes form in the womb to emerge in the spring as a human, but one that isn’t done cooking yet and needs the support of the village during its second gestation. Each harvest season a little more abundance is gathered until there’s enough abundance to come back and share it.
Heliocentric universe, Cosmos and psyche
When we discovered the Earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around, it was a massive revelation. It should have made us recognize that we were just tiny players on a cosmic stage, that we were intimately interconnected with a whole web of living beings
but instead it made us narcissists, because psychedelic awareness can overinflate us if we’re not prepared to integrate the knowledge that we are everything—so all of a sudden we thought we were God’s chosen people, the divinity, so special to receive this revelation, but instead of believing that we were just aligning, corresponding, with an everything that is always changing, in an archetypal metaphysics of becoming, we decided that fruit of knowledge made us special, God’s chosen ones, and the language of the early astronomers reflected that. And we elevated the human intellect to Godlike status, and thus the Enlightenment was born, which ironically gave rise to materialist reductionism, where the spiritual was taken out of everything and people started believing we were just meat puppetry.
Cosmology is a big concept for my work - it’s not a framework the consensus West was trained to think within
https://beccatarnas.com/2015/06/07/whitehead-and-archetypal-cosmology/
In 1983 a conference was held at this same university, organized primarily by Catherine Keller and David Ray Griffin. The conference was called “Archetypal Process,” and sought to bring into dialogue the process philosophy of Whitehead and the archetypal psychology of Carl Gustav Jung and James Hillman. As Griffin pointed out, process philosophy and archetypal psychology are both postmodern movements, but postmodern in a different sense from the “relativistic, nihilistic, deconstructive postmodernism” that might better be called “ultramodernism, or mostmodernism.”[1]
Process philosophy and archetypal psychology, in Griffin’s words, are examples of “a constructive, reconstructive, or revisionary postmodernism, in which many of the presuppositions of modernity are challenged and revised.”[2] They are postmodern movements that “both want to return soul and divinity to the world.”[3]
In his talk at the conference, James Hillman spoke of the need for a metaphysics that could support archetypal psychology. Hillman had abandoned Jung’s metaphysics in order to save his psychology. Yet this was not enough. Metaphysics is always operative, whether one acknowledges it or not.
What Hillman sought was a metaphysics of praxis, a metaphysics that supported the practice of psychology, the practice of soul-making—an alchemical metaphysics.
This is what I am creating–a transpersonal methodology for devising our deepest selves through creative expression, ancestral connection, our chosen medicine, self-inquiry and observation–facilitating awakening and trans-formation
Which is reflected on the collective level because above/below, within/without
Hillman spoke in his talk of that word, cosmology: it both “refers to the astronomical order of the heavenly bodies, and it also has a metaphysical meaning, according to Whitehead’s Process and Reality.”[4] As Whitehead says, cosmology is a scheme “of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted
HILLMAN: Let us say that the astronomical bodies (the planets) offer metaphysical bodies (the Gods [or one might say the archetypes]) by means of whom every element of experience can be interpreted. What is beyond in both meanings are the heavenly bodies. These afford some nouns and adjectives, some processes and some realities. The planetary persons fill the void of the beyond with the myths of their bodies and the bodies of their myths. This cosmology is a psychological field—a field because metaphysics is placed in imaginal locations; psychological because the planets are persons with traits, with behaviors, and in relation with one another.
The correspondence of the planets’ transits and the happenings of one’s life, the happenings of the happening that is a human form a sequence of ongoing synchronicities by definition - you just have to tune in
Gregorian + Capricorn transitions
Riordan Regan discusses transitioning from a newsletter to a more personalized approach, focusing on self-healing and integrating various projects. The first installment will explore the concept of medicine, emphasizing intention, preparation, integration, and education. Regan plans to open up his blog and possibly Substack. He reflects on the end of an era as a food and beverage journalist, using food as a metaphor for life cycles. Regan also touches on the importance of energy management, personal growth, and the significance of the Capricorn New Moon. He concludes by reflecting on the Copernican revolution and the need to redefine January's significance.
Outline
Self-Healing and Medicine Series
Riordan Regan discusses the transition from creating a newsletter to focusing on personal life and projects.
The first installment of the self-healing series will explore the concept of medicine, emphasizing intention, preparation, integration, and education.
Riordan plans to present his findings with authority and track his projects through a blog or Substack.
The self-healing series will include Amanita preparatory explorations for Breaking Convention.
This will interweave with the music and psychedelics series—and one on No Bad Substances, maybe one on transpersonal/depth psychology
Join Alcohol and Drugs Society, reconnect with Bradford
Food and Beverage Role
Riordan reflects on the end of an era as a food and beverage journalist and the significance of food as a powerful metaphor.
Food is seen as a tangible representation of life cycles and a medium for illustrating larger concepts and artistic visions.
Riordan plans to conduct gallery exhibitions in cafes, restaurants, and breweries, incorporating psilocybin carefully into personal explorations with food and drink.
The discussion includes the importance of intention and awareness when using substances like psilocybin.
Personal Reflections and Energy Management
Riordan talks about the need to hire Claire to help sort through past work and the clarity gained from conversations with Brian.
The Capricorn New Moon is about protecting energy and being more conscientious about how it is spent.
Riordan reflects on the resolution of a conflict and the need to express discomfort to avoid repeating patterns of dissatisfaction.
The conversation touches on the balance between being alone and living in community, and the importance of setting better boundaries.
Transcending Dualities and Personal Growth
Riordan discusses the concept of transcending and including dualities, using the example of nomadism versus agriculture.
The idea of trans emergence is about integrating seemingly opposing elements, emphasizing conscious association.
Riordan reflects on the influence of astrology and the importance of slowing down to see the patterns behind decisions.
The conversation includes personal anecdotes about overcoming imposter syndrome and the role of inner voices in personal growth.
Gregorian and Capricorn Transitions
Riordan talks about the significance of the Gregorian and Capricorn transitions, emphasizing the need to break down binaries.
The narrative of modern society being flawed is compared to the Puritan narrative, aiming to break free from shame.
Riordan suggests redefining January and aligning with the Celtic calendar, seeing it as a period of gestation and emergence.
The conversation includes reflections on the Copernican revolution and the importance of perceiving oneself as part of a larger cosmos.
Transcript (Listen here):
Well, holy shit. Will you look at that, as usual, letting something go allows it to actually open up. And when I let go of the newsletter and let go of creating anything at all, decided that maybe the B’atz trecena would be about just creating my life, all of a sudden, something just popped in that, I think, is another way to tie things all together, besides the Hackney baths, this modern Aesclepion idea—if the newsletter is a series of ongoing series that come and go, just as I feel they're meant to, without predictable regularity, if they're just ongoing projects I'm exploring and I pop in every once in a while with little installations, yeah, just kind of tag them. It's a way to keep track of what I'm researching and ready to share.
So the first installment on self healing will be this festival welfare thing, and because it makes sense to start with the concept of asking, What does medicine really mean? And in a system where we have to take our own healing into our own hands, and where we're coming from this syncretic lineage, and we're having to learn to navigate how to be alone together, and we're having to learn to navigate how to cite our sources and give each other credit, and we're having to learn how to be respectful.
We're having to change our perspectives. Yeah, in that context, what does medicine need? We need a little help. I Yeah, so that's what this first issue will be, is opening the question of, What does medicine really mean? And I think the pillars and the foundations are intention, preparation, integration and education. Those are the foundations, and actually, and foundation, intention, preparation, integration, education, foundation, the foundation being, yeah, and then it's like, pick your medicine and you'll have a bunch of different ones woven in. So it's time to start speaking with more authority and presenting my own findings and saying, Here's the evidence for something that I'm making a claim about. So that's what I'm going to do with this one. And now this will be the self healing series, and Amanita will be part of that, and the music and psychedelic series will be ongoing as well. And this will be a way for me to track my projects and what I want ready to share with people.
But I do think that maybe I need to, like, open up the blog or make it not password protected. I'm not sure about what to do with the substack portion, or, I don't know, maybe I keep doing what I'm doing and I just, yeah, I don't know, something to talk to Claire about, I think, I think that's part of why that meeting got pushed out. And I don't know it's very interesting the food and beverage role. When I looked at the day that she and I are meeting now, it's 7 N’oj and it's the ending, the ending of some intellectual pursuit and the completion of an intellectual cycle. I just started crying because it is over now, that era of Holly, the food and beverage journalist, and yet I transcend and include and I bring them along with because food is a really powerful metaphor. It still is. It touches everyone, like everyone can understand it, and it encapsulates the whole life cycle of the human of the planet. It really is everything, and I really was onto something then. And as I was saying when I was talking to Prash yesterday, it's really unique in the way that it's one of the few mediums where you're just tangibly aware, you can perceive its ending as inherent in its beginning. I mean, from the moment you take your first bite, it's already over. It's disappearing before your eyes. You consume it, and it becomes something else, but it also dies, even as it gives you life. So it really is the perfect metaphor, and I want to use those to help illustrate larger concepts and artistic visions, and that's why I do want to do my gallery exhibitions in cafes and restaurants breweries. Maybe I don't know ethanol is still a tricky one, and I think, but I also was happy to hear ash talk about psilocybin as being something we can introduce to help us understand other things. So my impulse to bring psilocybin in, if I'm drinking it, was the right one, but you have to be careful and just have the right intention. So if I go in with the intention of help me learn more about this, you have to be careful too, because part of what I've learned in the past is that It's easy to lose yourself. So yeah,
just awareness.
so something's ending, but it's also not, and I think maybe there is still a role for hiring Claire to help me, like sort through some of the stuff that I've worked on up until now. either way, it will be really interesting to talk through it with her. And I find it really interesting too that I get a lot of clarity when I talk to Brian, even though he's the one who used to talk so much I couldn't get a word in, and we've really helped each other grow up. We've walked along the individuation path. We went through the fires of transformation in the caverns of COVID, and I felt so much resentment and sadness, and I actually just Yeah, so part of the Capricorn New Moon for me and 3 Aj today is about going within and protecting my energy. It's about seeing that I have limited energy to devote to things, and I need to be more conscientious about how I spend it. And that maybe part of slipping on the gravestone was, yeah, just needing to spend less time doing things that expend The energy, because it doesn't leave as much creatively.
i also have seen this is so uncomfortable, but how the quote, unquote resolution with Jess ended in it all being my fault? And part of why I expressed what I did was because I already felt a bit unwelcome before that happened. And I think I need to say that, and it's going to be uncomfortable, but I think I have to let it out, because I don't think that's fair. And I think we both are people who say that things are okay, and maybe we really believe it at the moment, but then when we're in it, we realize that we don't want it and we don't know how to get out of it. I know I deal with that, and I think we're worried pretty similarly. and I don't want to repeat the pattern of going for years and things where everyone's dissatisfied and they just need to end. So I'm glad that I'm going to Adam’s. That was a really wise decision, but I need to be brave and bring that up.
And so I see now that part of yesterday's 2 E’ was about feeling like I was caught between mom's and dad's house again, and feeling like I have to manage everyone's feelings, whether or not they're actually asking for it, and feeling like the choices between being alone and living in community, and that it's never that stark, and that I just need to have better boundaries. I always know when I need to be in my own energy, and I actually often don't follow that. And then I think I get into these periods of hermitism, of like isolationism, because I haven't been listening up until then, and the nights it's like, I gotta mainline it. And the idea is that if I can listen in the moments when it's calling and take that time, then I won't have to be so extreme about everything.
Night world versus day world, serotonin versus DMT, Sun versus moon, community versus hermiting, and then if it's in verses, it's all give and take. But also, there are seasons where we lean more into one, and that's okay. We've gotten out of sync, and that's why we keep changing our calendars, because we get out of balance and we try to realign again.
I guess that's what we've always been doing. And the idea that there was some time when we had it perfect is a mythic narrative that actually isn't true. I don't think it's always been changing. It's always been shifting. We've always been rearranging ourselves and our lives to try to align more with what's going on outside. I
nomadism versus agriculture, solar versus lunar, matrilineal versus hierarchical, patriarchal and purple. What if we could transcend and include all of it? What if trans emergence is in taking all of these seeming dualities, transcending and including them? I mean, I know that's what it is, and the key is conscious dissociation, to be able to pull back, slow things down, explode them out, and climb inside them, see where we end and others begin. See all the little patterns behind the scenes. That's been key for me. You think you see the causality. You think there is causality, but nothing's really causality. It's just influencing cosmos and psyche is teaching me, is evidencing this thing I've been feeling, astrology is documenting it. It. It's not causation, but it's reflection and influence. And so I think that I know what's leading from one thing to the next, but if I'm able to slow it down and explode it out so I can see every particle inside the wave that led up to the thing, the fall, the decision, the impulse. Then I see the association that's really behind it, making me unconscious conscious, and it's often something totally different. And I see that actually there are these whole decision trees and possibilities and little universes that begin and end within what I perceive as a split second. And so the manifestation of what's happening might be something actually totally different than what you're perceiving. So one story is that I was on top of the world with this ceremony, and then I stepped out of the ceremony, I got knocked on my face. And that's a victim interpretation, because if I'm real and I climb inside of it, what happened was what happens every time I feel like I've gotten to some new level of awakening or have some moment of expansion, it's immediately followed by not believing in myself. It's immediately followed by imposter syndrome. It's immediately followed by Who the fuck are you to say that it. Is immediately followed by you’re evil. It's immediately followed by, this is the dark sorcery of 13 Kan, it's immediately followed by, you’re Darth Vader, Tyler Durden. Luke Skywalker has been speaking, and I've been reaching him in my IFS meditations. He looks like Kermit the Frog's son who played tiny tim in the Muppet Christmas Carol and speaks with a little voice, but he's got a commanding presence, and he says that he doesn't want to play Leia anymore. He's Luke Skywalker. He wants to be the hero with a story, and he's going to keep talking until someone listens to him. He's little Brian, he's little Holly. He's little Riordan, the Bard and poet of the kings. He's the little hero longing to be seen. And he's looking for his Yoda, and he's looking for his Obi Wan Kenobi, the people to train him along the way. And so sometimes he falls for the gurus. But really, when he can get quiet and get down to his essence, he sees that he is Jesus. He sees that he is the Christ consciousness. He sees that he is the force and the magic is within him, and everything else is a feather, just for pretend.
So this New Moon is about being Luke Skywalker. This new moon and this Gregorian transition is about flipping the calendar and breaking down the binaries and not actually resisting the Gregorian New Year either, but seeing that that was our attempt to get back on track. Bless our hearts as a civilization, we've actually been trying. We've actually been sensing that something was wrong. We've actually been trying to get back on track. And the narrative that we're bad and wrong in modern society is flawed and we're hurtling towards some demise of our own creation is just actually perpetrating the Puritan narrative. Is actually just perpetrating that same, same shame shit that I want us to break free from. So can we transcend and include it? Bring the Gregorian calendar with us? Fuck it. It's what we're already doing. But can we learn to acknowledge that it doesn't have to mean doing. Can we redefine what January means? I'm gonna look back to Amazon. If it's Jupiter, then that's actually a pretty queer, trans archetype, and it's about gestation, and it's about what's starting to emerge, which actually is in alignment with the seasons right now. It's gestating.
This isn't the death phase. We already went through that. And actually, if we align with the Celtic calendar, then the new year started in November, and that actually feels aligned. That felt like the Death period. And then there's the stillness when something's growing below the surface, and you can sense it, but you can't really perceive it yet. And that's definitely the portal I just came through. That's definitely the Amanita journey, is like something's happening, you just don't really know what it is, and then you start to see the signs, and then it starts to emerge in your life. And little by little, you start to see that you're doing things differently. And I think that's the period we're in as humanity. And I think that's the period that we're in in January, and I think I need to share this, and it doesn't matter if it's perfect, it'll resonate with the people that it's meant to.
We can feel like we're falling behind or we're not on time, and 40 revolutions around the sun seems like a lot from one perspective, but from another, is nothing. It takes as long as it takes for us to learn the lessons in an era of so much estrangement, in alienation, where we have to figure so much out for ourselves, I think it's pretty fucking amazing if we can figure anything out at all.
So Happy New Year. I think it's okay to keep celebrating them again and again, because new things are always beginning. Why? Not have a cause for celebration. That's kind of my thing. Who am I to shut down the ceremony?
So happy, happy Gregorian transition, another revolution around something we perceive as the center of the universe. And that's really interesting, isn't it? Oh, my God, of course, of course. Right now I'm reading about the Copernican revolution. Of course. I just love the universe. I knew there was a reason I was being led to read cosmos and psyche right now, and it's talking all about the Copernican revolution is changing everything, because it was when, for the first time, we saw the sun as the center of the universe that the Earth revolved around. But ironically, paradoxically, seeing that we weren't the center of everything made us feel like we were the center of everything, because we were the ones perceiving it. And the enlightenment and the elevation of the human intellect came directly out of this Copernican revelation because we perceived ourselves as so great for observing, we were really just the vessels that happened to show up in that moment, as McKenna says, the lenses for seeing, for analyzing the whole cosmos in a unique way, that feeling special about us as our instrument is finely tuned to collect and gather all the information and experience synthesize across the cosmos and across these things we Call space and time that are really made up.
And I mean, that is a special ability, and that is something we can celebrate. But the real innovation of the Copernican Revolution was supposed to be that were not the thing the universe revolves around. And then that's what happened anyways.
And I think that's part of what feels like, at least for me, a natural resistance to the Gregorian and I guess the Julian calendar systems is orienting around the sun. I don't know. It feels kind of wrong to me, orienting around the doing and the planting. I think maybe because of this cultural shame, though, because if we're orienting around the seasons, that is oriented around the sun, but I personally feel a lot of alignment with the cycles of the moon, yeah, but yet, the Maya calendar system is a Solar one, isn't it? I mean, we need both that can't be an either or, and it's not, and I honor both and I incorporate them, but maybe part of my resistance to the sun in general is the shame that we took what should have been a discovery of interconnection and an opportunity to see ourselves as more embedded in an ecosystem, and instead, we used it to separate us. Instead, we used it to define us as superior. Somehow. So we just need to reframe it and put things in perspective and in context. Freaking cool. Okay. Gracias para la medicina and Happy New Year. You.
<isn’t that funny that today the AI picked up the transmission as ending with YOU? when last time it was WE, and before that I… FASCINATING
Resources
Laurence Hillman, The Hillman School: 10 Archetypes Course, “The Explorer: Astrological Jupiter.”
Laurence Hillman, Planets in Play, “Jupiter”
Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche, Introduction
Annabelle Stapleton-Crittendon, personal session, kundalini foundations and 10-body system, 28.12.24
Mark Elmy, Chol Q’ij daily updates
Becca Tarnas, “Whitehead and Archetypal Cosmology”
Little by little
I realize the lessons of Amanita are rolling in slowly, even from my proper journey, just like with microdosing
little by little
you realize you’re become something different
you didn’t respond to that same situation in quite the same way
some part of you did, but you were standing on the outside looking in
and seeing the little kid all the way back behind it, and you just shake your head at them fondly and the power all dissolves
suddenly the power and the charge is taken out, and the thing that seemed so impossible, you can simply respond differently now
I had the coolest most empowering experience of self-healing, as my methodology is deepening
now that higher-dose Amanita is in the mix with kundalini for a fixed routine and psilocybin for raising things for raising issues or asking to see more about other medicines
but getting the IFS meditations back in rotation is crucial as well
after the other day when I was coming out of my ceremony of joy and gratitude, closing the giant ceremonial portal that opened right before solstice and continued to the 13th day of the trecena, when the portal to the ancestors was wide open, and I was exclaiming how thankful and relieved I was to have come through this dark night of the soul and reached a new level of individuation from my mom by reconnecting to that diamond, pulsing, tangible feeling of interconnection with everything through the portal of the forest, the heartbreaking love and temporary reconciliation of the holy longing, that beauty and belonging of coming home to nature and feeling the sentient presence of the elements and animals and energies and grounded spirits, when I felt I had found and embodied god again in a more profound way than I ever imagined and was ready to be a mentor for Aeden and inhabit both worlds in dual consciousness—and I slipped on that moss-covered gravestone I always tell myself to be careful on, and I landed on my leg between the two injuries that have screamed for my attention, and it was a bad one.
I went into a spiral for most of that day, but then in the evening I finally stopped resisting on principle and sat with a microdose of Amanita and talked to a good friend experienced with healing and then it just came to me, the method for approaching it. I needed to go into the experience immediately surrounding the fall and really explore what was happening in those moments, to not just look at the thought process but explode it out, like LSD time-bending capability does with distance and music, breaking things down to the smallest observable level; crawling all the way into those thoughts and moving around in them, grabbing them and rubbing them all over me, looking from every angle. I realized there were about 100 thought trains that had all rattled through my head like bullets right around it happening, even though I had only perceived one or two of them. And while I thought i was in bliss, embedded in those moments were all kinds of negative thoughts and limiting beliefs and shaming voices and stories. There was me trying to make Aeden live my unlived life, even. And by climbing all the way in and really staying with it, it all made perfect sense, and all the charge was taken out of it, leaving only compassion.
then in IFS meditation I met the little kid that wouldn’t stop talking until someone started listening becuase he was so scared of always doing the wrong thing, and his name was Timmy and he was a minitiature Kermit the Frog. Funny now that Brian wants to talk early tomorrow morning…
Then talking about it to Prash not only made me realize how cool this thing actually was I had done and how proud of myself I was, but also really credited more of that forced observer phenomenon to Amanita and made me even more in awe of her—but it also created a mutual psychedelic experience where just talking about alternate dimensions and our brains running simulations and in fact themselves only being these momentary collections of shifting experience, just vibration, and talking about neutrality and non-duality and the goal of existnence maybe being to learn to ride the roller coaster with your hands in the air, fully appreciating every high and low but not really needing any of it, or being too attached to either outcome. And the simple act of talking about all that literally altered my perception, we both said we felt like we were sitting with mushrooms, and I guess we were, but like… literally. It was so trippy. My vision completely went mushroom-pixely and hyperdefined with stark shadows, like it usually does with light psilocybin or Amanita, just a bit of a filter, a remove. It was like what used to happen with Marc only a LOT safer and totally sober, we were co-creating a psychedelic experinece just by conjuring one—I want to study this phenomenon, it was fascinating.
the more we talked about how the universe and even its seemingly most challenging experiences were fascinating and valuable and kind of the point, the trippier our sensory experience got.
the conversation tied in with what I was just reading in Richard Tarnas’ Cosmos and Psyche, talking about how if we choose all the elements of our incarnation before it happens, then really every single experience is an elegantly designed mechanism for delivering some kind of learning or experience that will help our soul awaken.
so how could we ever really say anything but “yes, thank you”?
Then there is hackney baths, the modern Aesclepion, this idea coming together, just maybe…
Absolution
On This Jungian Life yesterday, they were talking about Guilt and Shame - and how we carry these inside us our whole lives, until we find a way to ritualistically release them. And the real relief sometimes comes not from someone telling us we’re not bad, it wasn’t our fault, though we do also need that—we need to know we are safe and held and not being judged—but from someone we trust acknowledging that we did wrong, and helping us walk through
absolution.
Holy shit—that was the name of my favorite Muse album, the one I started listening to again
when I finally left Stephen—which was IN ITSELF AN ACT OF PUBLIC ABSOLUTION—because it was ADMITTING THAT I WANTED IT.
NOT THAT I WAS SOME POWERLESS DRUNK, BUT A PERSON WITH AGENCY
WHO DIDN’T ACTALLY WANT TO BE WITH HIM ANYMORE, AND WAS CHOOSING SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
HOLY SHIT THIS IS FUCKING IT
I have STILL BLAMED MYSELF ALL THIS TIME FOR LEAVING HIM, as we just crossed through THE DAY OF HIS MARTYRDOM—BOXING DAY—when the men with the PHEN came back into my consciousness, and I realized that he lost his fighting spirit, and felt after George W Bush won that the cause was hopeless, and gave up on social justice, and without a real hill to justify dying on, you need something to fight for.
But if you don’t fight for a worthy cause,
you’ll die for anything,
just because.
It’s the legacy of Catholic guilt and Christian shame,
those partners in blame,
that led us astray and called us by our not-names,
made us forget our ancestral legacies,
our connection to the forest and the knowledge that we are trees.
this is why now they’re telling me everything I go into the forest,
“we used to be trees.”
we still can be.
this is why today I am mailing this little owl to my little nephew and telling him it’s a portal
because part of my role as I step closer to my eldership and embrace the 13 Kan
is to help the younger generation know that animals and plants and trees and fungi and the forest are portals to the otherworld
the one they already sense and know
is always there, they’re still so close to it.
And so of course this morning started with a remembering of Drew Arnold,
the Catholic boy whose mom hated me from the beginning because I was leading her son into temptation
with my body
by existing
and even as someone was affirming for the first time that my body was enjoyable and pleasure was desirable
I was simultaneously being taught it was shameful, and I was a temptress
and I remembered that time that he got trapped in my room and had to hold the kid
who was so desperate to connect with this gnosis
but tried to let someone in from the outside world,
and they got trapped in the womb, the tomb, in which I was sealed,
and couldn’t get out, and how fucked up that I lived in an environment where it was suspect that I would want to be totally left alone for a night,
where opening the window or going outside was so strange that it immediately got me grounded
and we both got in trouble
double the shame.
and then in the end he denied my body too,
and made me feel I was bad and wrong for being lustful,
like JP would later do.
But still, I alchemized the pain and turned that story into a legend I would regale our group with all the time
to laughter and delight
I HAVE BEEN DOING THIS VERY PROCESS I’M DOCUMENTING NOW THE WHOLE TIME
ALCHEMIZING AND RITUALIZING
THROUGH STORYTELLING AND PERFORMANCE
TURNING MY EXPERIENCE OF SHAME INTO EPIC POETRY, LYRICAL LEGEND, ORAL TRADITION
AND REGALING THE VILLAGE WITH MY TALES OF ADVENTURE AND HERO’S JOURNEYING
the problem is the stories always ended with me getting grounded
and reinforcing dad’s narrative of Schaeudenfreud
and then Drew and Brandon moved away, and the group dispersed, and I lost my role as shaman and storyteller
when I was alone I got clinically depressed
but EVEN THEN I KNEW HOW TO SAVE MYSELF
I SIGNED UP FOR ART CLASS
AND I SAT NEXT TO AMANDA MEYER AND AS WE DREW SHE TOLD ME ABOUT THE THEATRE
AND HER GROUP OF QUEER FRIENDS AND HER OLDER BOYFRIEND
AND SUDDENLY I DIDN’T FEEL ALONE AND I KNEW THAT WAS THE ANSWER
AND I DECIDED TO WRITE A PLAY ABOUT MY PAIN TOO
AND I STARTED HANGING OUT WITH THE QUEERS
AND SIGNED UP FOR FILM CLASS
AND STARTED MAKING STUFF
AND ENTERED THE FIRST PLAY I EVER WROTE INTO THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY CONTEST AND I FUCKING WON FIRST PLACE
AND IN THIS ACT OF RITUAL I ALCHEMIZED MY FATE
AND I SHOWED IT TO MY QUEER FRIEND AND HE SAID IT WAS GREAT
SO I TOOK IT TO THE TEACHER AND HE VALIDATED ME AND LET ME PUT IT ON STAGE
BUT I NEVER GOT TO SEE IT ACTUALIZED, THE RITUAL WAS NEVER FINALIZED
AND INSTEAD AMANDA AND I GOT INTO COMPETITION, SHE THOUGHT I WAS STEALING HER WORLD AND FRIENDS AWAY FROM HER
AND I DIDN’T MEAN TO DO IT
BUT I DID WANT IT ALL TO MYSELF, I HAVE TO ADMIT
I DID EVENTUALLY WANT HER OUT OF THE PICTURE AS OUR MUTUAL RESENTMENT GREW
AND I HAVE CARRIED THAT GUILT AND SHAME INSIDE MY WHOLE LIFE, EVER SINCE HIGH SCHOOL
WHEN SHE DECIDED SHE HATED ME AND WROTE ABOUT ME ON LIVE JOURNAL
AND THE PLACE WHERE I HAD FINALLY FELT SEEN AND VALIDATED, HALF OF THEM TURNED AGAINST ME
ONCE AGAIN, ME AND MY BODY, DIVIDING HOUSES
JUST LIKE WITH MY PARENTS
JUST LIKE CAIN AND ABEL
JUST LIKE EVE AND THE SERPENT
SO TODAY I WILL GO TO THE CEMETARY AND DO KUNDALINI AND MAKE A COMMITMENT TO FINALLY SEE THE PLAY I WROTE PERFORMED
EVEN IF IT’S JUST WITH MY FRIENDS
I THINK THAT’S REALLY IMPORTANT
WE WILL STAGE IT
WE WILL COMPLETE THE RITUAL
BUT EVEN IF WE DON’T, WE ARE DOING IT THROUGH THIS PHD
THROUGH PURSUING THIS ARTIST’S AND SHAMAN’S LIFE
THROUGH MAKING OUR LIFE THE CEREMONY
SO MAYBE WE DON’T EVEN NEED TO PERFORM IT
Coming out of this portal I feel that my life truly is the ceremony and maybe that’s enough
to just live like this
and do the little rituals every day to find forgiveness
ABSOLUTION
WHICH MEANS THE FORMAL DECLARATION THAT YOUR SINS HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN
TODAY, HOLLY REGAN, RIORDAN O’REGAN, YOU ARE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN THE BARD AND POET OF THE KINGS
YOUR BODY IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN A GOOD AND SAFE AND PLEASURABLE PLACE
BUT YOU DID DO SOME THINGS THAT WE AREN’T PROUD OF OVER THE YEARS TO PEOPLE LIKE AMANDA AND STEPHEN AND JUSTIN
AND WE CAN FORGIVE ALL THAT
I DECLARE THAT YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN
AND YOU ARE HOME NOW.
Amanita the teacher + too much/not enough culture
Riordan Regan discusses the emotional and physical pain of feeling unrooted, linking it to ancestral traumas and the broader issues of consumerism, capitalism, and healthcare in America. He emphasizes the need for community, reciprocity, and respect for life, criticizing a system that prioritizes profit over human needs. Regan highlights the role of Amanita in addressing these issues by working on GABA receptors, helping to manage information overload. He advocates for reconnecting with our roots, indigenous values, and the natural world, suggesting that medicinal practices and syncretism can help humanity expand and awaken.
Action Items:
Explore the use of Amanita and other plant medicines to help individuals reconnect with their roots and inner worthiness.
Develop a framework for initiation, training, apprenticeship, and mentorship to support individuals who are highly sensitive and open to the astral realms.
Observe nature and learn from the self-regulating systems of the natural world to find balance and harmony within the larger system.
Outline
Amanita and the Pain of Unworthiness
Riordan Regan discusses the pain of unworthiness and breaking one's root, emphasizing the importance of reconnection and rooting.
Amanita is highlighted for its ability to work on GABA receptors, helping to manage the flood of information.
The conversation touches on the broader issues of consumerism, capitalism, and over-extractivism, and the need to widen the “I” and let more light in.
Riordan Regan critiques the American consumer culture, particularly the lack of respect for human life and healthcare.
Cultural Programming and Systemic Failures
Riordan Regan elaborates on the cultural programming that leads to a lack of regard for life, including the medical-industrial complex.
The conversation highlights the stress and trauma caused by the healthcare system, which nickel-and-dimes patients and sends unexpected bills.
Riordan Regan shares a personal story of being in the emergency room, feeling abandoned by the caregiver, and the broader cultural issues of narcissism and co-dependence.
The discussion emphasizes the need for a foundation and regard for life, questioning how we can grow up with a regard for life on Earth in a system that doesn't respect ours.
Reconnecting to Rooting and Indigeneity
Amanita is presented as a tool to help reconnect to inner worthiness and deservedness, promoting healthy dissociation and reconnection to the whole system.
The conversation explores the concept of syncretism, sharing ideas and belief systems across cultures, and the potential for expanding human consciousness.
Riordan Regan discusses the importance of regarding one's own life first and the paradox of extreme behaviors leading to a realization of something more.
The discussion touches on the lack of frameworks for initiation, training, apprenticeship, and mentorship in the Western modern tradition.
Medicine and the Antidote
Riordan Regan explains the concept of the antidote being a bit of the poison, and how medicine often involves going further into the pain to find the cure.
The conversation highlights the importance of dissociation in managing pain and information overload, helping to separate what is us and what is other.
Riordan Regan discusses the role of Amanita in regulating GABA receptors and slowing down the flood of information, allowing us to breathe and connect with our inner knowing.
The discussion emphasizes the need for guidance and the potential for learning from nature, the original teachers, to live in balance and harmony with the system.
The Human Game of Forgetting and Remembering
Riordan Regan describes the human experience as a process of forgetting and remembering, dying and resurrecting, and the importance of guidance in navigating this process.
The conversation highlights the role of DMT in activating inner knowing and the importance of grounding and interpretation of experiences.
Riordan Regan discusses the need for balance and harmony with the whole system, learning from nature, and the potential for over-dissociation as a curse and a gift.
The discussion concludes with the importance of Amanita in regulating GABA receptors and turning down the noise to tune in the signal, helping us connect with our inner knowing and the system.
Listen / Transcript:
Amanita for the pain of unworthiness, for add for the pain of breaking your pelvis, your root.
Amanita, what restores us from the pain of unrootedness, breaking my root, letting the pain rise to the surface, seeing our ancestral traumas,
healing the physical pain of the body that manifests itself through things that we're not listening to and our soul is trying to tell us
about reconnection, about rooting and planting and being mycelial again.
Amanita teaches us because it works on the GABA receptors, which relates to the flood of information coming in from this system.
Too much, and not enough of something. It's at the root of the whole thing. It's at the root of consumerism and capitalism and over extractivism.
We gotta widen the “I” and let more light in. We get stuck in these cycles of taking more
than the system can support when we see ourselves as separate,
when it's an I instead of a we, when it's my needs versus the whole system in community, in reciprocity.
We're not taught these things. We're not taught these values in consumer culture, especially not as Americans.
Where human life isn't even respected enough to receive health care
to keep us alive, where, where we have to scrape by without what we need to survive, where we don't even have the expectation
of being provided for in the most catastrophic situation. And so then when it comes, not only are you turning down things you need,
not getting enough of critical care to preserve your life force vitality, but you're stressing through the whole thing,
putting the system through even more trauma when it's supposed to be healing by nickel and diming, turning away the testing.
How much is that pill costing? No, I don't think I need that lab work. How many hundreds of dollars will that be?
Which private contracting company is going to send me a separate bill for 1000s of dollars five months later, when I think the whole thing is over and behind me?
Oh, and that's after I spend four days in the emergency room peeing into a tube, wearing diapers for the first time since I was two,
while the person who I’m living with shows up into the waiting room and asks how I'm going to look after myself once I get out of here,
and I think to myself, well, I thought you were going to help me. I don't know anybody else.
Oh, too much / not enough kids. We're a culture of narcissists and codependents, but it's not really even our fault. We're programmed for it,
because the culture gives us too much of what we don't need and not enough of other things, just like my own parents gave to me.
So how do we have any rooting, how do we have any foundation?
How do we grow up with a regard for any life on earth when we grow up in a system that doesn't regard ours,
that will let you die, literally, because you can't pay the bill to the fucking pharmaceutical medical allopathic industry,
they'll let you die and then send you a bill for $100,000 after the fact to your last surviving relatives.
How are we ever supposed to regard any life on Earth? Of course, we take more and more and more. Of course, it never feels like enough.
Of course, we're a country of hungry ghosts. We grow up being taught that we're worth nothing.
So Amanita can help us reconnect to this rooting by not only connecting us to our own inner worthiness and deservedness, showing us healthy dissociation that can connect us back into the whole system. It can connect us back to our own indigeneity, which shares the same value systems as other animistic cultures and legacies,
where we don't have to appropriate someone else's traditions and we can look to our own bones and backgrounds and belief systems,
and then we see the commonality, and then we see the “I”/eye widened to let more Light in. The eye becomes the we; I need reciprocity.
But we also see the culture is formed by syncretism, which means sharing ideas and belief systems,
which means swapping symbols and practices with other cultures we come in contact with,
and so maybe we can help all of humanity expand and awaken by sharing our medicine traditions.
Because some of these things just work so perfectly together that it wouldn't make any sense why they do unless they wanted to be together.
The key is not to take but to share honor and acknowledge and reciprocate.
But we’ve got to do this with ourselves first. We got to regard our own life first. I guess that's the paradox,
is that sometimes these medicines and extreme behaviors are exactly what we need
to lead us down the path that shows us that there's something more than this.
Pain is too much information rushing into the body at once so it overwhelms the system. The ADD kid is the extra sensitive, extra sensory one, the one most open to the astral, the one who, in another culture, would be a shaman, because their crown is just torn open, and all the other voices from the other side are pouring in, and they can't tell where they end and other things begin,
because we have no framework for initiation and training, apprenticeship and mentorship in this system, in the Western modern tradition, quote, unquote, quote, unquot-tations, and the system where we wrote things down and fixed them and pretended like that was the truth and they were never changing, when really the ones who ensuring those histories were the dominators who had a certain version of culture they wanted to preserve. So the antidote is always a bit of the poison. That's how medicine works, and always has. Ee turned it into taking something to blunt the pain and take away the symptoms. But in fact, sometimes the cure is going further into them,
and sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it's being gentle with ourselves.
The medicine of dissociation helps us maintain a safe distance from the pain that can overwhelm us from so much information flooding in. It can help us slow things down and learn to separate what's us and what is other things. Slowing it down, helping us interpret the different voices coming in. Through the crown and all from all around
and realizing that we're not crazy. We're not hallucinating. It's not like they've told us all these years. We're not witches and black magicians,
or maybe we are, but we're reframing that definition. Really we're just the ones who can listen to the subtle realms of spirit
and the voices that aren't very loud in decibels, but scream and symbols and images,
speak through the vessels that are our bodies, the altars, the prendas, the unique collectors of information and experience
captured for a moment in this thing that we pretend a solid matter, a person that only appears in observation and relation for a passing instant
before it disappears in ether and dissolves in acid again.
abracadabra, hocus pocus. Suddenly, I have a corpus.
Now you see me. Now you don't. shit, I had it, then I lost it. It's okay. This whole human game is just a process
of forgetting and remembering, dying and resurrecting over and over and over again. A
nd it makes sense when you put it in context. It makes sense when we have someone guide us,
but without it, it's really confusing and super overwhelming, too much and not enough of everything it seems,
until someone takes us by the hand and leads us through that darkened tunnel back to the ancestral land, the place where our bones remember and our nervous systems regulate; the forest and the lands of our people. For me, it's the mist that leads us back to the darkness where we see most clearly.
DMT, producing endogenously, third eye activating the real inner knowing,
the kind that you don't read in a book, but feel in your body.
So with someone to guide us and ground us and help us interpret these experiences, we can realize how much we need of certain things
and what others we can live without entirely. And it's know how to live in balance and harmony
with the whole system, but we need guidance, and we can learn from the plants and the fungi
and the trees and the animals directly.
The way we learn is by observing our original teachers: nature, the system that just runs without having to think about it,
the system that regulates itself and balances out. And this is where the impulse comes, I think, sometimes to just tune it out,
to dissociate so far that we can't come back. Because the curse of the ego is awareness, but it's also the gift,
and if we can learn to dance with it, we realize that we won the lottery by incarnating into human existence,
and we see why is the envy of the cosmos,
but it's a lot of information, and that's where Amanita is the teacher to regulate the GABA of receptors and slow down
the flood of information so it doesn't overwhelm us with so much coming in every second, helping us breathe and
get back to what our bones know and we feel in our souls. Turn down the noise and tune in the signal.
dissociation: when the dream becomes reality
(something we can engage with and make magical)
vs depersonalization: when nothing seems real, and it stops being fun
the question isn’t whether you’re dissociating
but whether it’s happening to you
or you’re doing it consciously
voluntarily
going into the night world for exploration vs clubbed over the head by your past self or a substance or an epigenetic pattern or a partner and drug into a blackout
where you wander lost like the minotaur
blinded, bumping into walls
trying to remember how you even got here at all.
ethanol, alcohol, that tricky molecule and compound
the carrier of healing herbs, inspirer of poetry, loosener of verbs
no wonder it both helps and hurts,
it’s the impetus of agriculture, humanity’s greatest blessing and curse
it begins with a fall
GABA can mitigate the flood of too-much information that can overwhelm a system
so we get just enough
maintaining a safe distance between us and other stuff
GABA receptors are a class of receptors in the brain that respond to the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA is the primary inhibitory compound in the central nervous system of mature vertebrates.
There are two main classes of GABA receptors: GABAA and GABAB:
GABAA receptors
These receptors are ligand-gated ion channels that mediate fast synaptic transmission. They are made up of five subunits that surround a chloride ion-selective channel. GABAA receptors are responsive to many drugs, including benzodiazepines, which are used for their sedative and anxiolytic effects.
GABAB receptors
These receptors are G protein-coupled receptors that mediate slow synaptic transmission. They are associated with memory, mood, and pain.
GABA receptors are found on many cell types throughout the central nervous system, including astrocytes. The physiological significance of GABA receptor activation in astrocytes is not yet known, but it may be involved in ion homeostasis and pH regulation.
GABA receptor dysfunction has been linked to a number of neuropsychiatric disorders, including:
Epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Cervical dystonia, Autism spectrum disorder, Schizophrenia, and Depression.
Alcohol exposure can alter the function of GABA receptors, and these receptors may play a role in the development of alcohol tolerance and dependence.
Meeting Amanita
I am about to undertake my first proper journey with Amanita muscaria today, after a year of microdosing through my broken pelvis. I meet her with no cacao, no nothing in my system interfering, just me and her; the intimacy I’ve been scared of. Pleasure with a woman—perhaps my greatest fear? We’ll see. I think my greatest fear might be dying alone, or losing my mom, or going crazy, but my stomach is getting sick and churny, so maybe I just nailed it.
Today is 9 Kame, the number of life and nahual of death energy; the day to ask our ancestors for help facing our fears so we know what to have the surgeon of Tijax cut out so that we may be reborn brand new. On Christmas morning, just like the Christ child I always knew I was. But I found that divinity through the forest and the interconnection with the animals, and the trees and plants and birds and I can’t even begin to explain how GOOD it feels to have that connection back again.
I closed the Solstice portal as another one opens for Amanita, I can’t wait to meet her, but I also have a healthy fear. I realized in the woods today that this is sometimes the only way I feel okay, in ceremony or in the forest or usually when I’m drawing something. In another culture I’d be a shaman. Ceremony is my calling.
But how can I make this part of a life supported under capitalism? How can I stop participating in that system, spending money I don’t have on shit I don’t need at the grocery store? Ugh. I got sucked into that black hole again today, as soon as I announced I was going to draw and learn all day. I think I should stop saying things like that. Somehow it makes me less likely to do ti.
So I call upon the Kanti, the Siberian group who engage with Amanita to sing the heroic epic songs of their people. As Ash recommended, I will ask the mushroom to show me through the spirit of the bear and the squirrel and the wren and the robin and the winter ermine how to meet my dreams or visions with courage. How to drop everything like Jung did and just LET GO, face my fears bravely and just LEAP, like I used to with codependency, onl t this time into self-expression, Eros, pleasure; live in Kairos, not Chronos; more Mythos, less Logos.
Let’s go.
—
Ash just slayed me, I’m sobbing at the computer screen, because she just gave me permission, told me I’m not a bad kid. “If we are living in the dream 100% of the time then maybe we aren’t doing our duty as humans in a body—but if you’re a chronic pain experiencer and you have a hard time just wanting to be alive, maybe it’s a good thing to be such a devotee of something like Amanita muscaria.”
i always think i’m bad and wrong and abusing the medicine - but Ama and cacao have made me want to live when I wanted to die - same with psilocybin - WE DO WHAT WE HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE - AND WE DO IT UNTIL WE DON’T NEED TO ANYMORE - regardless of whether that outlasts the physical body.
*the Nutcracker ALL takes place inside a dream.
Enhance self-esteem! Somatic experience of “I” ness - am I allowed to take up space?
Courage to share what I am meant to share in the world–YES! And it’s ok to receive!
But people w big egos it can get worse!
CAN EMPOWER YOU WITH THE ENTIRE MYCHORHIZZAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FOREST - yes this is what I felt this morning! This is inherently ego-checking - bc you are part of an ECOSYSTEM
“You can BE THE MAGICIAN WHO CREATES EMERGENT PROPERTIES BY CALLING IN THE ENTIRE INTELLIGENCE OF THE FOREST”-!!! TRANS EMERGENCE
DUDE! She keeps giving me a break on all my shame feelings and so do the crowd. They are all doing what I’m doing, stacking things on high pain days, ama and psilocybin and LSD and cacao is what I do but I keep feeling like i’m bad and wrong - you DO HAVE A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE WHEN YOU ARE IN A HIGH PAIN SITUATION - BECAUSE “THE MUSHROOM HAS WORK TO DO” - IN OTHER AREAS
KNOW THY STACK! So i can’t standardize for anyone - it’s about empowering them to build their own.
Lightning strikes of information, this happens, I get the downloads so fast I can’t keep up w it
EYES ON THE PRIZE
As an ADD kid, all I have been craving for is FOCUS, and yet I havent felt i could get a purchase on it. everything was too fascinating, everything also felt like too much pressure amnd respomnsibility, i had to be everything to everyone and everything ust like with mom and dad
but I am finding the healing and it’s trickling down to everything
I got the message on that equinox journey in 2023 - after breaking convention and before nest - it’s about briding the realms of academia and science and spirituality and art and esoteric fuckin shit. i got the message then but I didn’t trust it but it keeps coming back again and again.
IN MY JOURNEY OF NOMADING AND CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLORING - NOMADING TRANSDIMENSIONALLY - I HAVE LEARNED TO FOLLOW THE FEELING, WHEN THE VOICE SAYS SOMETHING ND I KNOW I CAN TRUST IT WHICH IS SO RARE
it told me to BE A STUDENT OF MUSHROOMS AND CACAO
AND APPRENTICE W ASH AND ACACEA
and two years later here I am again
they are my guides but the plants and fungi are my teachers
and I am not rooted yet becase i need to be free to go where the voice takes me
and i am going into the night world because it’s the key to everything
the plants that flourish under cover of darkness like DMT
cacao that blossoms in the night and amanita the fungi of death and transformation
these are my teachers, sacraments, muses and medicines
so i am being called to the night world of berlin and I am submitting papers and presentations for breaking convention
taking classes from ash and acacea and workshops on theatre devising
the art is also costume and set design and nature documentation
let it SUPPORT what you’re doing not distract from it
I want to talk about music because it has been so important to me but it’s also an attachment to stephen and joe and I can’t do everything
i need to let that go for now i think
and focus on amanita and cacao and performance and transness - the music supports it but let others tell it
I FEEL SO FUCKING MATURE MAKING DECISIONS