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
Holy Shit That’s the Practice-Plan-Thesis
Process-Practice-Thesis: We Go Alone Together
A methodology for healing and trans-scendence through direct experience and conscious dissociation
an individual daily practice and cyclical communal gathering that re-creates humanity's oldest tradition, the funeral feast - gathering around our altars, or mesas, the personal and communal tables that ground and guide us, call in the energies that are present in that moment, and meet the spirits in celebration and mourning
it's an individuation journey, separating to become whole again. my approach will guide people in doing the individual healing work through meditation/compassionate self-inquiry, ancestral and daily energy connection at the altar, and automatic creative channeling. we will devise and explore traditions to find what's best for them personally and work with the Maya astrological system (via Elmy), archetypal Western astrology (via Hillman), esoteric practice (Aesclepion, European paganism).
then I will host group rituals at important cyclical moments of the year based on the seasonal frameworks of the Celtic Wheel of the Year and the Maya Chol Q'ij calendar and Greek/Western esoteric psychedelic/ecstatic/theatrical traditions (Dionysian tradition, Eleusis, Celtic seasonal festivals).
I will focus on the queer/trans* community but it is accessible to everyone and represents the emergent Trans* archetype driving the expansion of consciousness into Tier 2 awareness, as Wilber puts it, where we transcend and include the whole spiral -- or the Age of Aquarius, as Western astrology/esotericism puts it -- nondual awareness. Where we expand into oneness by recognizing individual difference and correcting the record of our shared past, breaking barriers and gatekept realms like academia. Where ancient ways of knowing are revived, syncretized, remixed through technology to bring everyone in.
Personal training plan- this will take at least 4-5 years. I don't know if I pause the program or keep it going and just take longer, or if I should just state this clearly now; I will look at alternative programs but can do it within the TA/LJMU framework if I get grants/residencies to cover me financially and logistically.
Ralph teacher training after this course
San Pedro ceremonial apprenticeship (focuses on altars/mesas, collective work)
Temple residency and/or dieta (ayahuasca / spaceholding / personal work)
Menteeship/immersive in Central America with Mark Elmy and Acacea Sherman-Lewis
Astrology/archetype training with Laurence? (maybe just more coursework)
Mentorship from Gabriela Gutierrez/Ash Ritter? Maybe just more coursework
Celtic shamanism immersive training with Margot Harrison
Shamanism school? at least coursework
Training / immersive with Anthi and return to farms in Greece (maybe this is outside the program and just something I do for my personal/artistic development)
Roy’s, Michael’s, and especially Kit’s time and attention as it was an essential part of this realization, which after so much confusion and fear made me just melt into tears of gratitude this morning. I'm excited and invigorated albeit daunted at where I will find the funding and foundation necessary for this -- but I trust the process.
Kit really showed up and took me by the hand and walked me through this at the ritual fire. Xe showed me that I had the pieces all along, right from the very beginning when I first read the Immortality Key, and I think I could get funding/support from Muraresku’s foundation for this — Psychedelic Pints and Drinking With the Dead are the freaking backbone of the whole thing. About awakening our inner divinity and finding that center and then celebrating/mourning/connecting with the dead in our self-essence around the communal table and ritual fire. It’s been here the whole time and I knew from the beginning, I just needed the foundation and training.
https://otter.ai/u/BFkkiwU5dmzSNDHPLrfvGpOC8Ww?utm_source=copy_url <—The raw download and AI analysis
Riordan Regan discusses his practice and thesis, which involves an individuation process combining individual and group components. He emphasizes the importance of daily practices at an altar or "mesa" to ground spiritual energies. Regan plans to host community gatherings, including funeral feasts, to recreate ancient traditions and facilitate personal and collective healing. He proposes integrating various cultural and astrological systems, such as Western astrology, Maya daykeeping, and the Celtic Wheel of the Year. Regan also contemplates further training in San Pedro and other shamanic practices, aiming to support others through workshops and rituals, while seeking funding to sustain his work.
Action Items:
Reach out to Laurel about doing shamanic training.
Explore options for a residency or apprenticeship at the Temple of the Way of Light or Deta in South America.
Plan a trip to Guatemala.
Consider pausing the current program or extending the timeline to focus on apprenticeships in South America, Central America, and Europe over the course of multiple years.
Explore options for funding, such as seeking grants, to support the development of this program.
Outline
Insight and Obstruction
Riordan Regan discusses the moment of insight and the subsequent feeling of being frozen and consumed by the need to consume more.
He calls upon the nawal of Kawok, the spirit of cacao, and Amanita for courage to bring his insights forward.
Riordan expresses a lack of trust in himself to birth his insights forward, feeling stuck and frozen.
He emphasizes the need to document and practice his insights, despite his current state of obstruction.
The Practice and Documentation
Riordan explains that his practice involves both individual and group components, teaching people to work with energies present in their environment.
He describes the daily practice of working with energies at an altar or mesa, grounding and tuning in to what is happening around them.
The altar or mesa is central to his practice, serving as a grounding tool that mediates between the spiritual and material realms.
Riordan reflects on the importance of having a table or altar, drawing parallels to his pandemic food research and the need for communal kitchens for producers.
Funeral Feasting Tradition
Riordan connects the altar or mesa to the funeral feasting tradition, explaining its role in grounding the spiritual and material.
He discusses the similarities between funeral feasting traditions in Europe and South America, noting that the ingredients were often brought to the tombs of ancestors.
The practice of drinking with the dead is highlighted, with Riordan mentioning various psychedelic beverages used in ancient traditions.
He humorously notes that shamanic initiation can involve activities like pissing in a bucket, emphasizing the humor and simplicity of ancient practices.
Communal Gatherings and Workshops
Riordan proposes hosting group gatherings to recreate the funeral feast, either online or in person, and potentially at sacred sites like Gobekli Tepe.
He plans to offer individual devising workshops to help people work through their trauma and connect with their creative expression.
The importance of releasing creative output is emphasized, with Riordan suggesting activities like voice notes or screaming into a pillow to release energy.
He envisions leading group rituals at significant times of the year, such as the Celtic wheel, Maya calendar, or moon cycle.
Navigating Personal and Collective Energy
Riordan describes his role as a navigator, tracking the cycles of energy informed by multiple perspectives, including Western astrology, Maya day keeping, and the Celtic Wheel of the Year.
He explains the practice of inner inquiry and outer expression, which involves daily personal practice and larger communal rituals.
The concept of the collective dead is introduced, with Riordan considering focusing on the queer community but also wanting to be inclusive.
He reflects on the importance of creating spaces that are biased for marginalized groups while also bringing everyone along.
Training and Future Plans
Riordan acknowledges the need for further training, including teacher training after his current course and shamanic training in Ireland.
He plans to return to South America for apprenticeship and/or residency, possibly in both Peru and Guatemala.
He contemplates a longer period of focus on different regions, such as South America, Central America, and Europe, to complete his training.
Riordan expresses the need to make space to read, finish courses, and undergo high-dose mushroom training, seeking physical support for his practice.
Financial Considerations and Final Thoughts
Riordan questions how to make money in the meantime, considering grants and other options.
He expresses gratitude for the insights and clarity he has received, feeling that he has had the answers all along.
The importance of the funeral feast in starting his journey is reiterated, with Riordan feeling a sense of completion and readiness to move forward.
He concludes with a sense of clarity about his path and the need to integrate various aspects of his practice and training.
Praxis: Fucking with time
It’s kind of my favorite thing to do
they say sleep is essential to your hygiene and health but I prefer to mainline and then restrict it - I know I say I want to avoid extremes but I feel like this is part of the practice
it’s fucking with time
questioning and exploring the whole concept
my medicine work lately involves slowing things way down so I can crawl inside them. I have unlocked the ability with amanita and LSD time-bending capabilities to explode out all the moments around a decision or thought process and see that what looks like a causation is a correlation, that there are actually a thousand little stories and decision trees in between what feels like one event and the next, the subconscious thought patterns and subliminal habits that are ACTUALLY programming me
so yes the body needs sleep but it can happen anytime and I’d rather sleep in the day, and be awake in the world of DMT and the night to crawl inside the subconscious realm that normally comes out in dreaming. by fucking with time can we crawl inside the dream realm with the serotonin system running? Can we go into the nightworld with our serotonin flashlights?
>this is consciousness exploration - going into the subconscious, the darkness, the dreamtime, with awareness and intention - making it conscious like Jung did - making the dreaming lucid, retaining agency. and this is part of the praxis I’m creating. fuck around and find out, do the things they tell you not to in mainstream society following your intuition and the guidance of your teachers and ancestors.
>>don’t take substances, let the plants and mushrooms take you. stay up all night and crawl around in the caverns of your mind and the things that make noise in the dark, but do it with your third-eye headlamp shining brightly.
>>so is the calling really to get more training in transpersonal psychology? or is that imposter syndrome? is that denying or not believing in my inner artist and shamxn? I am directly experiencing the things they’re talking about through my own method. the thing is that I want to teach people and help them heal and want to do it safely. but maybe with more practice that will become possible without a certification… maybe more apprenticeship with the plants and underground and Indigenous teachers is my path.
when you slow things down and crawl inside them you find the most fascinating things hiding there
and there is so much shame for me
I am starting to unravel the guilt that can keep me accountable from the shame that damns me and keeps me small
I drew the 2 of cups today and read in Jodorowsky’s Tarot that this symbolizes the end of Oedipal love being replaced by something truer — the Oedipal love that is the excessive attachment to my mother and the love and validation from her, the clinging to that connection and the fear and feeling that I might not exist without it — whoa I just realized this—there is a fear that I will disappear completely if I break the gaze, which is what was programmed as a baby when she wouldn’t let me look away. resulting in ADD. resulting in trying to please everybody all the time. resulting in fear and paralysis every time I try to follow my soul longing and flee the nest. i want to go and come back, to love her and others with healthy boundaries, to be in proximity with people without losing myself. it’s happening slowly.
and this was part of it. it comes right on the heels of a two-day Gregorian transition portal with my dance family, LSD, amanita, cacao, somatic healing and time-bending and sound therapy, where Gaby did something that really healed my pelvis and leg in a noticeable way, and I danced until 6am despite my fall and it was okay
where I exploded out what I used to think was desire to be with men and I realized was desire to be them, to crawl inside their skin and inhabit their flesh, put on their testo-suit and feel my muscles swell and flex, walk with my hips and swing my dick and feel powerful and insert myself into things, have people respect my authority just because I speak, hell let’s be real, to kinda tremble with fear when they see me. I watch others dance and mimic their movements and am able to reprogram my body with the things that align with my frequency. We learn to be humans through imitation, morphic resonance, picking up the habits of other things that are like us, in proximity to us, and if we didn’t learn the right or aligned habits and behaviors from our caregivers we can reprogram ourselves later with plant teachers and elders and healthy peers.
the body is coming back online one part at a time, and I got the knees back after the Gregorian page turned to 2025
it enables me move so much more freely and naturally, I am becoming a human again, i’m not all stiff-framed, living rigor mortis, a corpse walking around talking to everyone, I’m a person, I’m a man, I’m a lesbian, I’m trans, I can do shit
I watched him move all night with fascination and wanted to inhabit a body like his, and at 5am when I almost went home but instead returned to the dancing chamber for one last set, and Tommy was playing, and I felt so loved and held by my community on this night that was like EDUK and the Burn combined, where we make our own space and fuck with time and thereby reclaim our lives and our agency from the capitalist system that forces us to conform and tries to take our choice from us — WE SAY NO, FUCK THAT SHIT — we can make OUR OWN shit. and that includes our bodies, we don’t have to fit a binary, we can make them what we want them to be
and he came up to me after I had transitioned to the Amanita portion of the experience to carry me home, and danced with me in the corner, and it’s like he knew exactly what was happening, and almost was my elder teaching me how to move, I felt he was telepathically transmitting this knowledge and reclamation of how to move like a man and reclaim my sacred masculine sexuality and power, how to produce more testosterone while staying soft because we self-generate all this shit, from T to DMT.
he was spitting poetry while my dance family spun dirty beats and twirled around me and centuries of shame began to be released
and yesterday at the New Year’s Day dance during Richard’s grimy mycelial set, I felt it, it was here, my sexuality was coming back to me, my sacred masculinity was coming back to me, I was become a whole person again, I was beginning to feel like a person someone could theoretically desire again—but in my MASCULINE and more authentic
and it feels so good and I’m so grateful that I’m crying
AND I THOUGHT I NEEDED A GURU OR A GOD OR MY MOM TO SAVE ME
BUT INSTEAD I DID IT MYSELF WITH THE SUPPORT OF MY COMMUNITY
AND IT’S SO HARD SOMETIMES TO BE ALONE BUT THIS FEELS SO EMPOWERING I THINK IT’S WORTH IT
still… it doesn’t have to be this hard and I want to make it easier for others
so next help me call in my inner teacher
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?