Food, sex, and death / Hot for the moon + knowledge
Is there anything more human than feeding? I think eating is more vulnerable than coming. It’s admitting you have a body, you’re a machine that needs fueling. Pete Holmes says that he thinks there’s nothing sadder than the act of eating alone, someone succumbing to the demands of the system, I have to turn this food into energy so I don’t die, how pathetic.
I have to turn these plants into information. Fascinating. I love the feeling when things that stuck in my consciousness ages ago come back around and start to reveal themselves, like a years-long striptease, so tantalizing, I actually am getting turned on by the fact that the phrase “light information” and that Chad Van Gaalen album lodged themselves in my awareness as important ages ago is starting to make sense as part of some larger framework. Eros awakened by the Gnosis.
Yeah, I really think there’s something to this idea that part of the evolution to the next dimension involves switching from food to light information. And yet. Then we’ll lose the sensory pleasure of eating and drinking, because even if it’s just a symbol for the thing it can be so fun and satisfying, it gives us other kinds of information about place and time — it gives us information about SPACE — humans as bodies in space, Ralph emphasizes it as part of the practice of Tonglen, opening yourself to the awareness of the physical area around and inside and within and behind your matter. And Earth is a place, earth is space and material even as it’s cosmic and astral. Placemaking is how we define ourselves as people — the primary shaper of differences between people and cultures is the physical environment and our adaptations to it, we develop through nature and nurture, the ecosystem and our responses.
It’s all a rehearsal for transcendence, a practice for moving beyond it, but even if it’s just a game, that’s fun, innit? Don’t you kinda love it?
Hot for the Moon and the Calendar
Riordan Regan reflects on their recent experiences with sexuality, existential kink, and spirituality, drawing connections between personal growth, historical events, and cultural influences. They discuss the impact of cacao and chocolate on their sexual desires, the role of pleasure in reducing consumption and violence, and the importance of sensory learning. Regan also explores the historical significance of the Ides of March, drawing parallels to modern societal issues and the desire for dominance. They express a longing to reconnect with pagan practices and the natural world, emphasizing the need for embodied, sensory experiences to ground spiritual knowledge.
Action Items
[] Explore pagan practices and the Wheel of the Year during an upcoming trip to Ireland.
[] Reflect on the concept of "rejection kink" and why the speaker is drawn to missed opportunities.
[] Experiment with using cacao as a way to ground spiritual experiences in the body.
Outline
Exploring the Nature of Worship and Veneration
Speaker 1 discusses the historical context of worshipping entities that couldn't be perceived with the senses, emphasizing the shift from worship to veneration.
Riordan Regan reflects on the concept of veneration, suggesting it involves changing the definition of what is considered sacred.
The conversation touches on the idea of “widening the ‘I’” and the experience of allowing oneself to be sexual.
Riordan Regan shares a personal experience of being sexual for the first time in years and its impact on their mind and body.
Existential Kink and Pleasure
Riordan Regan talks about the existential kink and its connection to a past injury, noting its reemergence.
They mention three separate people bringing up the concept of I, K, S, K, Berlin to them, which they were reading about before an event.
Riordan Regan reflects on the idea that more pleasure in the body would reduce consumption, war, and abuse, and how this influenced their behavior.
They describe their experience of being part of a group and fulfilling others' needs, noting a lack of interest in their own pleasure.
Selfless Sexual Interaction and Cacao
Riordan Regan questions if their recent sexual interaction was the first truly selfless one in their life.
They discuss the role of cacao and chocolate as replacements for sexual sustenance, suggesting a higher expression of the same energy.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of consciously dissociating and engaging with Damiana at the temple, noting the subtle effects.
They reflect on the desire to be part of a group and the feeling of safety, without strong physical attraction.
Cultural and Historical Reflections
Riordan Regan draws parallels between the Ides of March and the assassination of Julius Caesar, noting the Roman calendar's lunar cycles.
They discuss the historical context of March as the beginning of the new year and its subsequent dark reputation.
Riordan Regan reflects on the legacy of Catholic guilt and the impact of social anxiety and awkwardness.
They mention the calendar's influence on their consciousness and the significance of the Ides of March.
Spirituality and Embodiment
Riordan Regan explores the idea of spiritual satisfaction reducing the body's need for sex, questioning if it's denial or bypassing.
They discuss the influence of Catholic guilt and the story of social anxiety, tracing it back to their Irish legacy.
Riordan Regan reflects on the importance of being in alignment with natural cycles and the desire to reconnect with the cosmic cycles.
They express excitement about connecting with pagan practices in Ireland and the vision of themselves as part of the natural world.
Rejection and Existential Kink
Riordan Regan shares their reaction to being rejected from an event, noting the existential kink of rejection and devaluation.
They reflect on the human tendency to want what they can't have and the desire to run naked in the forest.
Riordan Regan discusses the importance of being of service and the potential for research to be another form of consumption.
They emphasize the need for experiential learning and the role of the body in grounding knowledge.
Cacao and Embodiment
Riordan Regan reflects on the importance of cacao in their practice, noting its role in grounding spiritual experiences.
They discuss the challenge of connecting without cacao and the abstract nature of spiritual practices without a somatic component.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of sitting in front of an altar and the need for something to bridge the realms.
They reframe the cacao story, emphasizing its importance in grounding spiritual experiences.
Transhumanism and Embodiment
Riordan Regan discusses the origins of transhumanism and the goal of technology and psychedelics to make humans more human, not less.
They reflect on the importance of embracing the body and the sensory experience in learning and spiritual practices.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of being deprived of senses in the Great Pyramid and the impact on their understanding of transhumanism.
They emphasize the role of trans people as shamans and alchemists, embracing the sexiness of death and decomposition.
The Role of the Body in Knowledge
Riordan Regan reflects on the importance of grounding knowledge in the body for long-term retention.
They discuss the origins of writing and its role in depriving people of their sensory experiences.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of sitting in darkness in the Great Pyramid and the impact on their understanding of transhumanism.
They emphasize the need for experiential learning and the role of the body in grounding knowledge.
Embracing the Sensory Experience
Riordan Regan discusses the importance of making learning sensory and grounding it in the body.
They reflect on the role of the senses in remembering and the impact of depriving people of their senses.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of being in the darkness in the Great Pyramid and the impact on their understanding of transhumanism.
They emphasize the need for experiential learning and the role of the body in grounding knowledge.
LISTEN HERE / DIALOGOS:
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST: “Ancestor worship,” because they couldn't conceive of having a relationship with something you couldn't see or perceive with the senses. Veneration.
They said it was worship. They said we made them deities, but really we just realized they were entities like any other we could communicate
RIORDAN: with beyond the borders and the confines of our minds and bodies, changing the definition of what counts as living, (DIRECTOR’S NOTE: This is fascinating that Otter detects me as switching characters midsentence)
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST: widening the “I” to let more light in. Last night, I allowed myself to be sexual
RIORDAN: for the first time in years, five of them. It's prompted something interesting. It's prompting me getting all nerdy enough in the mind. So is this an escapist tactic to get me out of my body? Because what's still contained there is too painful, maybe. But I've also been calling something in about the existential kink, again, a spiral from around this time when I was injured. It's a little later existential kink coming back in again. So there's something in this for me now I'm trying to listen three separate people brought up i, k, s, k, Berlin to me last night, which I just happened right to be reading. Right before leaving last night, I was reading their manifesto and had an important message, if the body felt more pleasure, we wouldn't do so much consuming. We wouldn't make so much war. We wouldn't have so much abuse. More oxytocin, less serotonin and dopamine. I don't know, but it was in my mind
as I allowed myself to go there, as I allowed myself to open, and then I observed my behavior in the aftermath. And I watched how, after I separated, I watched how, when I was with the group, I was commenting on my experience and noticing, huh, yeah, I guess that feeling of consuming, of needing to consume, something is totally gone now. And in fact, I had really no interest in my own pleasure. It was just nice to be part of a group in feeling us all supporting each other and to be meeting the needs of other people, of the person who asked for regulation after an uncomfortable situation, and the other person who asked for us to fulfill her fantasy of blindfolding and tickling feathers. It was so cute. It felt so good. And in fact, I had an active non desire to be interacted with. I didn't want to get myself off at all. I just wanted to make the other people feel good. And I wonder if maybe it was the first selfless sexual interaction I've ever had in my life, truly. I mean, I don't know I went there with Steven. So, okay, that's not true. That's the story. I went there with Steven a lot, but I've never done it in a conscious, embodied way like that. Before it was cool, it's really beautiful. But yeah, I noticed that as soon as we separated, I started going to the fruit table every time I felt uncomfortable, and later, once the chocolate came out, then it was all over. I just started eating that and didn't even want to try for connection anymore. And there is something to this cacao and chocolate as replacements for sexual sustenance, but it also kind of makes me wonder if maybe that's because cacao is a higher expression of the same energy, and if it's kind of like the idea of spiritual anorexia and light information replacing the need for food. Because, like, I don't know. I consciously dissociated last night.
I sat with a pretty high for me, my burdosa Venita and cacao before leaving the house. And then engaged with Damiana at the temple. It was all like super mild and subtle, but I definitely was observing my own self. I a lot, and it was really interesting because, yeah, I just, I don't know I was, I didn't feel the desire to the point that I was analyzing, and was like, maybe that's just done now. But then I did see that couple, and I felt really drawn to them, and I wanted to be part of what they were doing. And there was, there were a couple groups, so maybe it's just that I wasn't super physically into my people, and they just felt nice and safe. And so I didn't feel very sexual tourism. I don't know it was interesting. I did almost have the feeling it's like, maybe it's because it's, I mean, if sex is the holy longing and the desire for divine reunion, then if I'm getting spiritually satisfied, maybe my body doesn't need as much, but I don't know that might just be denial. It might just be bypassing. It probably is,
all that Catholic guilt in the legacy. I got up in my head and got out of the mood. And the story of social anxiety and being awkward started playing, but I didn't even really believe it. It just was like a tape that started running. It didn't have any more potency. And I can't help but think of the Irish legacy, the tiny violin playing, the sad stories, all that Catholic guilt and shame, giant Irish families where rents were abandoned. So maybe that's where that storyline of social anxiety and awkwardness, fear of being ostracized comes from. How many children died because the church decided pleasure was a sin. Then all of a sudden, the calendar injected itself into my consciousness, inserted itself into my awareness, which is kind of cool. I was drawn to look up the Ides of March, which is about the assassination of Julius Caesar. And here we are, the calendar coming in hot and heavy again. The Roman calendar was based on lunar cycles, which meant it kept getting out of sync with what was really happening? Hot for the moon. That series I was drawn to draw new layers of meaning are now coming into it. The time, keeping the day, keeping Lumination tracking.
Oh yeah, baby, tease me. The moon is sexy. Astronomy and Astrology makes me excited. Divination and cycles, the seasons, the nations, deaths and resurrections are the things that get me off.
Is my sexuality lying fallow and not dead entirely? Or has it been transmuted into something else, now, more abstract, desire for the natural world and the union with its creatures to be returned to the earth? Is this trauma denial, repression, bypassing? Or have I just changed into another thing? Calendars are guiding me, and as the month of March begins today, I looked up the Ides and saw but this was a way of measuring lunar cycles with the halfway point. Usually it's the time when the moon is most full in a given month. It strikes me that the time keepers in the Roman system, where the church fathers and I guess they're always the spiritual leaders, the Church Fathers, always ending up with extra days and having to account for them because they weren't in alignment. Capitalism producing excess is a way to grow an unnatural system. I
There's something in the entwinement of time of spirituality. Being in alignment is important, but we haven't been since we were pagan. March used to be the beginning of the new year, a time of celebration, but after Caesar was assassinated, it got a dark reputation. The eyes meant the first full moon of a month
in 44 BC, he was stabbed 23 times. How's that for numerology? And Caesar was Trump. And I can't help but thinking that we are in the ith of March repeating with what's happening in the American empire as this collapsing around everybody. Caesar was a dictator who reinforced unequal power dynamics, a Trumpian figure who appealed to soldiers and was wealthy who put his likeness on everything, who was really into private property and gave himself the power to accept or reject election results. Sound familiar? Jesus? People said he would make himself a king, and he called himself a dictator for life. That wasn't just a Calvin & Hobbes thing. Trump would do this if he could. Caesar was murdered by a group that called themselves the liberators, who stabbed him 23 times, and there's that high weirdness number, cosmic trigger. They fondled the cosmic trigger and stabbed him to death, but it didn't have the result that they were expecting. Turns out, the people didn't want to be liberated because they liked the tax benefits. So the country became destabilized. It was the end of the Republican, beginning of true empire. Feels like a prediction of where America is heading. The successor, Octavian, became a true emperor, and the dark side rose because people wanted to be dominated. They wanted to give it all away. And after, after Octavian went astray, they believed that Augustus could save them, and they begged for a dictator, because Westerners want to be dominated. We're so hot for it. We want to give it all away to the god, like leader, to our big daddy, whether he's God or Caesar. We act like we're so tough and independent, but really, all we want is to be bent over and to submit, because it's unnatural, because this system that we've created of dominance and oppression and power over is unnatural, and our souls Know It. And so that kink, that shadow, goes somewhere, and it turns into the desire to be spanked like a little baby, which is always, I mean, Trump wearing diapers. Hello. It's always what happens so obvious, so obviously, like it makes me angry we consume, and it's empty because we are disconnected with the earth spirituality, right of sync with the seasons and the cycles, and it makes everyone go crazy hot for the moon means longing to reconnect with the cosmic cycles again. And I'm so excited to go to Ireland and connect with the pagan practices. I really feel like this is going to change things, to plug into the Wheel of the Year. I got a vision of myself in a cave like the Calleach, swaddled in deerskin. Learning through direct experience, without human teachers, my friends, the animals, eating mushrooms and communing with the land and the forest directly embedded and entangled in it, indistinguishable where I ended and it began, just visions of myself as eyes emerging from a nurse log behind a burning fire. I want to get hot and heavy with the humus, decompose my meat, Alchemy, dissolve me and acid and crumble my bones into the stratigraphic layers, make me a deposit sedimentary to pull towards death is not the pull towards death is lust, but not the way the church twisted it, not because lust is wrong, but because it's the same urge As death, the one to disappear completely and dissolve the separate self. And it felt good to make my friend feel good last night and not care about myself. We were her nurse logs of pleasure and dying for her desire.
I'm really sad that we got rejected from breaking convention and I drew the card of the poet who said, it may not seem that others care about your words, but trust that the wind will carry it. When I found out we didn't get it, my first urge was to run back to the jungle. It almost felt liberating this existential kink of rejection, though there's something really potent in that, but I think I have to explore and I think the real medicine is in feeling into that, and in not just dissolving and disappearing again. What is this rejection kink? Why do I love to be devalued? Why do I love to be turned away? Why do I love to miss opportunities? I can't get enough of it. I can't get enough of not putting enough effort into things that I actually do care about, and then getting rejected and it really hurting, and then me acting like I didn't care about it. Anyways. Yeah, always wanting what I can't have. Why is that such a human thing?
I don't know. Maybe there is also just something pure in that, maybe the remix is, but I actually just don't care about the earthly gratification anymore, and I just want to run naked in the forest and be a nobody. But that also makes me feel that I'm not being of service, and then what's the point of existing?
All of a sudden, I feel hot for research. But isn't that just another form of consumption, to swallow the knowledge, and then what do I do with it? Spit it out or turn it into shit. The shit can power the system, if applied appropriately, waste versus compost. Hot for teacher is a thing, because humans like learning, but you got to do something with it, and you got to make it experiential, like Bettina was talking about, if learning is sensory, so we have to learn with the body and not the mind. This is the key. Is hot for research or bypass. Then, is this all of a sudden desire to tickle my mind a good thing, because, like, part of me feels like that's me returning to the world of the forms, but I don't know. I think I've been spending all this time in the astral, and that's still not been in the body or which is interesting, because I felt like sitting in front of the altar time. It's really engaging the spiritual, but if there's no somatic component, I don't know, am I bypassing well, but then I'm not, and I think, okay, so this is why cacao feels so important, because that's the embodiment part of the practice. Because something has to ground, it to the earth. Something has to make it, yeah, lived in my experience, something has to bridge the realms. That's what it fucking is. Holy shit. No wonder cacao feels so important, and no wonder it feels like I can't quite connect without it, because it without it, it's just really abstract. That's so interesting. So the other day when I was sitting and just falling asleep over and over again, and just kind of like caught in the hypnogogic state, because I didn't sit with any medicine. It's because the medicines are bridged between the grounds, and if there's no way to bring it down into this one, and you're just stuck in the world of symbols swimming in the language of the other realm without a cipher. Holy shit. Look at that reframing the cacao story. Finally, they've had so much shame around why do I feel like they need it? Because something has to ground it, and there's other ways to do that in the shamanic journey sometimes has in the past, and that's why I was trying to do that the other day. And who knows why it wasn't working, maybe just so I could Have this realization, because that does feel really important. Thank you. anyway.
Oh, we're just begging for a dictator. We Westerners. We're so hot for Godlike figures, Big Daddy in the sky.
But we're really hot for the moon. We're really hot for teacher. We're really hot for our mother, the one we really learn from. Because true knowledge is somatic. It lives in the body. So if you want someone to remember something, you have to make it sensory. This is what Bettina was saying that I found so fascinating. Learning has to become experiential again. We have to ground it in the body. We have to ground it in the sensory we have to rehabilitate the feeling function. The only way you remember something is if your body holds on to it, because knowledge is somatic, and this is why the stuff from Egypt has been coming through again so hot we wrote it down in our diaries so we wouldn't have to remember it in our bodies. We wrote it down in our diaries so we wouldn't have to remember it in our bodies. We wrote it down in our diaries we wouldn't have to remember it in our bodies. This transmitted to me when we were deprived of our senses in the Great Pyramid when we were sitting in the darkness. And it strikes me that this is the origins of transhumanism. And so of course, that podcast with Carl and Gallimore, I haven't even listened to it, but it just made me think of that whole transhumanist debate, and what he was saying when we were in Egypt, what he says all the time, and what I believe is that the goal of technology and psychedelics and spirituality should be to make us more human, not less, and at the same time, to transcend it, To transcend and include, don't give trans a bad name, dude. Transhumanism meaning leaving our bodies behind. But that's not what trans means. Trans means to bring everything with you as you go to the higher plane. And when we invented writing, that's when we first started leaving our bodies behind, because the system was designed to fix and place a world that was always changing. Change scared us, and we wanted to just become heads floating in space, because the pain of embodiment was too great, the decay and the shape shifting inherent in it was too scary, and this is why trans people are the emergent archetype, the shaman, alchemist, because we embrace this. In fact, it's kind of our whole life. So embrace the sexiness of death and decomposition. Hot for the moon means becoming embodied again, becoming a creature again, becoming sensory again. Death doesn't hurt at all. It's only our resistance. So allow yourself to be dominated by the soul soil and the seasons.
Let the planet be your dominatrix. You just have to find the Safe Word.
**Insight about Stephen relationship while watching Rupert Sheldrake course!
Ideal forms are refections of divine nature
Newton, Einstien, Boyle, all scientists believed in god and thought he was a mathematician > math laws were the laws of nature
STEPHEN IS THE REPRESENTATION OF THIS - oh shit - THIS IS BIG - I can’t let go of him because I’m living out the archetype of civilization that can’t let go of Newtonian physics because it feels grounding, comforting, familiar - !!!
CARD PULL
Archetypes Tarot: The Offering, The Poet, The Castle
Marseilles Tarot: 1o of Swords, 8 of Wands, 2 of Pentacles
"Knowledge is innately tied to the land, it's right there, it's waiting for us to pay attention to it, to guide us, through dreams, through visions, through practice..." (Rick Hill)
REFERENCES
Interview, Bettina Arnold, gender in archaeology and funeral feasting part III, 27 February 2025
“Relational Systems Thinking: That’s How Change Is Going to Come, from Our Earth Mother,” Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp 75-103. 2021, Melanie Goodchild, Turtle Island Institute & Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience
The Way of Tarot, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa
The Archeytpes Tarot, Kim Krans
“You Made It Weird” podcast, Pete Holmes, repeated references, date n.d.
Peruvian cacao from Malde with cinnamon and cayenne, high dose + German bee pollen
Direct experience, download with cacao, bee pollen, and quartz crystal in the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt, October 2024 - total sensory deprivation
Aubrey Marcus podcast with Carl H. Smith and Andrew Gallimore, February 2025
History.com, “How Julius Caesar’s Assassination Triggered the Fall of the Roman Republic”
Direct experience and artistic download for series “Hot for the Moon,” February 2025, Berlin, Germany
Direct experience, Mx. Gili’s Conscious Play Temple, 28 February 2025, Urban Healing Unit in Berlin, Germany + Amanita muscaria tincture from Agnieska L., London, UK + Peruvian cacao from Malde, moderate dose
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”