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”
Not monologue, dialogue
In a house that I’m pretty sure is full of mold and making me sick, because once again, I said yes to something because they put me on the spot, and I liked how much they liked me.
This will be an interesting one. Ha! I just realized there is a giant Holly tree outside the window.
Is the dance to see if I can alchemize it, transmute the energy, and stick with my commitment? Or say, I’m sorry, I can’t do it, my body is more important?
I will do the latter if it turns out I can’t live with it. Funny this is what happens when I take the thing that I thought was better for me—more stability by being in the same place longer.
Funny also how both owners are named Liz. I can’t express how much I’d rather be sitting for the other. All I can do is wait it out and make sure this is a reaction and not a cold, but I’m pretty sure I know my body. It’s feeling like autumn is coming and my system’s all discombobulated anyway.
In the meantime, I do feel like I’ve been having some good raps and connections both with Kit and Maya astrology. I finished Mark Elmy’s course on the calendar and started figuring out everybody’s Maya crosses, and on Saturday, Jess, 1/3 of the first Holy Triumvirate that helped save me from my family and the church, the one I’d call my best friend if I had to hand someone that designation, was the first of all of us to turn 40, so I did a reading for her, and then for all three of us, and it totally blew my mind.
Turns out that all of us have known exactly what we were doing this whole time.
and that when our energies combine, it makes 8 Imox, the dream, the collective consciousness, cosmic amniotic fluid.
the eternal love we’re always swimming in.
you’re already doing it, you’ve always been doing it.
people just want to know they’re not alone, and it’s never over. that they are not wrong, but good. that they will be redeemed, one way or another.
today in therapy, during the part where I was supposed to comfort my child self, instead they comforted me, and told me that we have always known.
* * *
what dropped in during practice, during communion with Kit and the other realm, is that this work, these projects, this PhD, it’s not a monologue, and that’s what so much of academic discourse and art has been throughout history: gatekeeping. withholding. privilege. doling out information, access, experience, to those paying admission. I have always wanted to throw open doors and build bridges. let everyone in. connect the silos. the aim hasn’t changed, the scope is just widening. now it includes the dead, plants, trees, animals, minerals.
the ones whose voices aren’t very loud.
at least not in decibels.
this work is a dialogue, it’s not a monologue. it’s communion, channeling, amplification, mutual upliftment. and I think it all keeps coming back to titration, in my conversation with Rebecca doing exit interviews for DMTx yesterday it came up again. The real work of this lifetime, of being a person, is this dance, this titration, dual awareness: it’s the theme of the integration work I’m being called to and my service at EDUK, dropping in and dipping back out again to check with the physical surroundings, your body, the other bodies. to make sure everyone is safe and has what they need, then dissolving back into the collective consciousness again. letting the play unfold, channeling the characters, but remaining the director, only momentarily losing that first-person perspective altogether, retaining the ability to reconstitute it.
this is what is meant by radical subjectivity. I’m learning Kit’s work more deeply and why we were all called together, along with Michael and Laura, I see how everyone brings something interrelated yet unique and beautiful. phenomenology, full-sensory, it’s all different pathways to the same thing. but I think part of my work here is to bring it back to the people, free the message from the gatekeepers, pry it from the jaws of academia and release it from the galleries studios, back into the round, the fringe, the pound theatre, the zine, the blog and newsletter, these new old fashioned forms of communication.
I don’t know what place, if any, there is for alcohol. But there is something important in the continued exploration of the artist/mystic/alcoholic archetype.
all is unfolding. time for more learning.
Thesis Notes
Ontology/interbeing/phenomenology +
Hauntology/gHosting/possession - hysteria/psychosis
Woodruff: The Moon and the planets are physical presences; they move around, and their motion impacts the biosphere on Earth, of which people are part and parcel. Astrology is an elevated, more complex form of meteorology with a psychological chaser.
Knowledge of being includes experiencing everything as a being, including planets
Kit’s thesis: Cosmology as part of the ontology of African religions
The first-person perspective - what is it like to be this thing? Experiencing FROM the perspective of the OTHER is how we awaken
There is no hero/villain/victim, they are everyone, you are all of them
Laura: from the perspective of Freud’s analysis, while I bring the Jung
His analysis of “hysteria,” mine of “psychosis” and how this relates to mysticism > Kit and I bringing the Indigenous/ancestral perspective, you’re not crazy you’re channeling/talking to the spirits
The 13 Kan, the spirits speak to you, how do you tell who’s who?
Laura channeling the “hysteric” patients
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TRANS/QUEER? The psychologists who couldn’t embrace or capture this and even tried to psychologize it out of people–including Ram Dass?
The new thing being created is the queer perspective, even traditional cosmologies are still so binary, it’s not duality it’s hyperdimensionality > the psychedelic
Mind-manifesting, what model are you driving?
Minds are part of the vessel of being a human
**In all of our cases - the practice IS the work - how to present it?
The PhD journal > Kit and Laura channeling work > as it was received
Laura, me - recording to myself what is coming through, reading it back or remembering the same bits over and over > ask her about this
“The ghosts speak through me and tell each audience member the story they told Freud, in the first person. I do not offer an analysis or hint at Freud’s view of the cases. Only the patients’ words (although of course those recorded by Freud) are uttered. First, I read Freud’s writing with attention, carefully. On my second re-read, I re-write by hand the words I hear from the patient in the first person, erasing the voice of the doctor. I then record a reading of this new case history in my own voice and, instead of rehearsing the performance, I play it back to myself repeatedly, over several weeks. When I perform, I remember, rather than recite, what I hear, in the way the patients might have remembered occurrences or incidents when they told them to Freud. Thus, every one-to-one performance is different, an encounter created with the specific audience member in the room.”
Ecstatic interactive performance/ritual
Theatre in the round and in the woods - back to the people
I bring the perspective of also hosting plants and trees, not just people > interbeing > what is the phenomenology of a tree?
gHosting
“ In This Little Art, Kate Briggs compares the act of translation to Robinson Crusoe making a table in his island. He is not inventing the concept of table, but has to make one, himself, for the first time, from trees. ‘When it comes to translation (…) there’s never a question of what to write (…) because the work has already been written. What matters is how to write it again’.”
Intersemiotic translation is the process of transferring verbal texts into other systems of signification, such as visual, oral, aural, gestural, or kinesic. Roman Jakobson coined the term in 1959. Some examples of intersemiotic translation include: Translating words into images, Translating words into numerical code, Translating words into non-verbal sounds, A verbal rendition of a pictorial message, and A screen adaptation of a novel.
Anthi - drawing as writing - this is what she means
Translation - it was already translated from German to English - then from the experience into her performance. staging, creating the one-to-one durational setting, omitting the doctor’s voice and switching the patients’ words from third to first person – a powerful act of disguised writing
Who sits around the table once it is built? How does it change the island? Me: what changes in the trees becoming a table, trees becoming people, then us all changing back again? Can we?
“Traits of the hysteric:” body, mimesis, mystery, disappearance and voice
Embodiment, somatic, mystery
These are all traits/components of the mystic, artist, and alcoholic as well - POSSESSION
Breathing trouble in Freud’s patients > keep coming back > I CAN’T BREATHE and the PANDEMIC BEING A CATALYST TO CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLUTION, ALL OF US EXPERIENCING THE SAME TRAUMA AT THE SAME TIME EVERYWHERE, AN ACCELERANT FOR EXPANSION > SUFFERING TOGETHER > crying also eased symptoms of hysteria patients yet they would hold back
Mimetic quality “causes symptoms to mutate” > memes - AI/
“Well-known nineteenth century convulsions are unlike the symptoms of demon possession presented by earlier hysterics, and also different from eating disorders, epileptic fits, delirium, the inability to speak or sexual voracity.”
THIS IS INTERESTING - THE TRANS* EXPERIENCE - PARTICULARLY FOR AFAB - Did we want the men or just want to BE them?
Just liking how they were attracted to us
Mutation as doppelganger, read Naomi Klein
“in the nineteenth century, hysterics at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris took on epileptic symptoms, copying those with whom they shared a ward, and whom they perceived as being taken seriously by doctors.”
Wondering how much of this ADD/ “eating disorder” stuff is me channeling Callin because her “problems” were taken seriously
“Archetypes of hysteria” - all with elements of mimesis - and WOW - these are all parts of ME at war
“The beautiful soul” - the MOST VICTIMIST - betrayed, misunderstood, humiliated
“Sublime / belle indifference” - wants to keep desire unsatisfied - the longing for the longing- bittersweet? “Anesthesia of the body, … demonstrate the futility of desire” > you will always be longing
The mystic and the alcoholic - nothing will save you from the bottom of your glass - you’ll always long for divine reunion until you die
“Sleeping Beauty” - the lover will redeem me - “sleepwalks” through life waiting for someone to save her
This can also be the men - and we think the men are going to save us only to realize we’re saving them, me and mom Maya astrology > somebody save me, somebody has to save me - looks like a man but he’s a baby
The beast, or ‘that which opposes itself to her alter ego’: the unstoppable death force. The villain you internalize until you become it. The one who entertains everyone with their stories of suffering
Hysteria not used as diagnostic category since 1952- DUDE WTF this JUST POPPED INTO MY HEAD AND FUCKING A!!! IT WAS THE EXACT SAME YEAR PSYCHOSIS WAS INTRODUCED!!!
“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) first included psychosis in its first edition, published in 1952. The DSM-I defined psychotic disorders as diseases that included: Personality disintegration, Inability to relate to people or work, and Inability to correctly evaluate external reality.”
The concept of psychosis was introduced to psychiatric literature in 1841 by Canstatt, who used the term synonymously with "psychic neurosis"
BEFORE THIS IT WAS CALLING PEOPLE WITCHES, WIZARDS, HERETICS, APOSTATES, AND BURNING THEM AT THE STAKE
THIS IS THE EVOLUTION - THE SHAMAN KNOWS HOW TO TRANSMUTE THEM - THE ALCHEMISTS CAME UP WITH THE SECRET SOCIETY - YOU HAVE TO USE SIDE DOORS AND HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT. THOSE WHO LEARN THIS CAN BECOME MOVIE STARS AND BARDS TO THE KINGS. THOSE WHO DON’T DIE OR GET LOCKED AWAY.
Ram Dass vs his brother, Cain and Abel
Well fucking A!! Then I read this! Directly tied to persona, the mask we wear and character we play: “In 1980, the third edition of the DSM further buried hysteria and only conversion and dissociative disorders remained, with hysterical personality transforming into histrionic personality disorder, which, as Johanna Braun notes, comes from the Latin histrio, actor/actress, diagnosing the hysteric as performer, and moving beyond the limits of medical discourse.”
Trauma release > somatic work > theatre/performance/channeling > ecstatic dance > psychedelics > IFS/CI - it’s about rewriting the story and listening to what the body is saying
“ narrative gone awry which shows up as mysterious symptoms forming a body language. The task of psychoanalysis is then to interpreted the body, translate it into words and create a coherent narrative of the patient’s story.”
“The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s anti-novel which she envisaged as an image, setting off circular rhythms … a rhythm of words with which Woolf articulates the tacit knowledge she calls ecstatic. … it is a language of relations.”
Interbeing, ayni, everything is relational
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the novel The Yellow Wallpaper > diagnosed as hysteric and “treatment” was to leave a successful writing career - she “cured” herself by doing the opposite. These are the modern day witch hunts and attacks against the herbalists
“writing is a poison as well as a remedy, because to cure the woman, it must kill the hysteric. Writing takes the place of the hysteric. And leaves the subject’.” - it’s DEFINITELY a poison but idk that I agree this is why. It channels!
“To become herself, she is not allowed to do any work, any writing, which, much like the author, she does, as we are reading her diary. But she is writing to no one, thus is no longer a speaking-subject … A diary to no one was the beginning of the end of incarceration. … Writing in the first person … shows the mystery … without demands for a release.”
what happens when you start making the journal public? >> this is partying from the inside out, reclaiming hysteria/psychosis/witchcraft
JUNGIAN CONNECTIONS - “the unlived life was held in the throat” > children live the unlived lives of their parents, Jung
An invisible globe is placed in her throat. The suppressed cry. / Where do words go when they cannot be uttered? / The repressed always returns, that is a certainty clearly articulated in the hysteric. / Perhaps it returns in the form of her insistent question: What do you want from me? / The secretion erupts from deeply embedded systemic pressures, removing life’s potential and its authentic voice, making it incomplete as the folds close over it.
‘My idea of heaven – a place where one need not breathe’, from a diary entry by Winnie Seebohm, October 26, 1895, 2:30am
Kit - workshop
if I am writing for you, so that you know I am now writing from this or that method, then I’m not really writing from a radical subjectivity, I am already writing on a mirror, writing to an Other I can’t see. The question might be, rather, how do you write the interior so deep inside that interior that interior becomes Other? And what does that look like?
Can a text for a journal, for an art research journal, be constructed so that it might resemble madness, to represent madness that comes on the evening of a breakthrough? I had a breakthrough. Because I had a breakthrough. Because I really really had a break through.
THIS IS THE JOURNAL - THE JOURNALS - THE PERSONAL MADE PUBLIC VS THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE - SOMETHING V IMPORTANT ABOUT THE PROCESS AS PRACTICE AS WORK RE: JOURNALS/JOURNALING
ZINES, JOURNALS, FRINGE THEATER, THE ROUND AND ORAL TRADITION, I MUST HELP RETURN CEREMONY, ART, COMMUNICATION, DIRECT EXPERIENCE TO THE MASSES
An option: Make up a fake theorist we can write about, because we need some kind of documentation that exists outside this text, and we need a documentation that is too hard to find, but too sensical to refute.
But now we have a body, we have always had bodies of knowledge, they just live in the jungle and don’t have university funding
The reason we might invent an imaginary source is, for one, it is much easier than having to bother to look for sources when we know they are already there somewhere … we are making our own claims self-consciously suspicious, putting ourselves in the role of an unreliable narrator, and all authority needs to be undermined.
The point is to show people how easy it is to manipulate them
if I perform the role of narrator/researcher, and take on multiple roles, to perform the multiple methods, offers a grounding to the performance and the interviews
Also video of the trance performance and interviews with people talking about their trance experience > how these elements might add up to a vocabulary for exposition in my practice, and whether these multiple levels of inquiry might not themselves take form as performed research. The exhibition of the work is something other than the work itself, creating meta-narratives … This text is a construction of multiple narrative voices speaking to and against each other
Problematic terms when talking about other cosmologies/cultures: i.e., Lukumí/Yoruba colonialist roots
oral tradition in this case is not only based on the spoken word, but on signs and symbols within the oral teachings. In some cases, the oral transmission of knowledge falls outside the academic definitions of oral tradition, because rather than transmission of knowledge from the mouth of an elder to an apprentice, this is transmitted in dreams and trance, through visitations from elders who are dead.
Did they know their prescience when they said this? Was it always intended? “I have yet to come across a study that allows for the dead to participate as subjects, and practitioners know that the dead are more active subjects than the living, because they speak through the living.”
I wonder about how to cite claims that are based on secrets. And I wonder about the necessity for documentation of the history of a religion that is already well-established in ethnographic literature
Different takes/framing when writing from ethnographic, psychoanalytic, and radically subjective perspective (“on the edge of madness”) >> this is what I have been doing, the not quite chanting/rapping/poetry/stream of consciousness stuff.
I want to consider writing, research writing about art as research, as montage, in the way that Eisenstein considered montage: ‘an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another’
Anthi, writing as drawing
How is/can writing be embodied?