*(Important) Transdimensional treasure hunt
Kit is speaking. Distinctly if not directly distinguishably. I see xem clearly, transported back to when I was living at Jill’s house last summer, walking up to the zoo to draw animals with the fresh scent of the jungle in my nostrils, hapé caked at the corners, talking to xem on time-delay over voice note, feeling unworthy of xir precious last Earthly energy. I was called to upload xir voice notes to Otter and I have a new perspective now, and am now not in shame but humbled and so grateful, xe clearly did sign up for this multidimensional mentoring thing, part of me keeps trying not to believe, but I can’t not.
The seeds were planted then for the Maya theatre project, I didn’t quite understand it then but now it makes all the sense in the world.
It’s not about me and my art. That was a little-kid part that wanted to be seen, all the exiles who didn’t get to live their dreams, and the ones who want to give dad the finger; I was letting them steer, and they needed to get it out of their system, but I’m becoming so grounded in that not really being my purpose.
My dharma is about helping people reconnect to themselves, each other, and the Earth; rediscover their own indigeneity; and find their expression.
This is why Kit, this is why I met Sophie and she offered me this opportunity at the devising workshop. This is part of the call of Meso- and South America: because the land that is cracking open my heart and transforming my soul must be held in sacred reciprocity, and I want to give back, and maybe this is how I do that—by helping people transmute their pain the way I did as a kid, turning it into theatre; putting their pain up on the stage to speak its name and be trans-formed, keeping their history alive like a secret through oral tradition when the oppressors took the records from them and got it twisted.
The Rabinal Ache is performed at the end of February, and there are groups trying to revive and preserve it; I think this is what Kit’s ex-wife was doing, but xe never gave me her name that I can recall, or her organization. I think it might be mentioned in one of xir writings; Laura just remembers that her name is Tamera. I am on a mission.
This is fun. Like a transdimensional treasure hunt, following the trail through scraps of transdimensional memories, dreams, and reflections.
Like another labyrinthine late-nineties adventure-PC game, Treasure Quest, that sucked me into its atemporal Neptunian landscapes as a kid.
I was feeling called to a similar cultural production in Colombia, I think, that someone was asking for help with through the Wisdom Keepers Patreon. I felt called to reach out to them; having just found out that I was accepted to the ArteSumapaz residency in Colombia (!!!!), this all seems to be lining up…
One of the stated goals of my exhibition for the summer residency, and a driving principle: “To engage with surveillance and archiving through the lens of consent, inclusivity, and radical subjectivity.”
THE MORE RADICALLY SUBJECTIVE, THE MORE UNIVERSAL IT GETS
From my notes last summer, reading Kit’s thesis:
(I’m not positive what’s me and what’s xem, the styles and subjects are so similar, but I think I’m the italics only)
if I am writing for you, so that you know I am now writing from this or that method, then I’m not really writing from a radical subjectivity, I am already writing on a mirror, writing to an Other I can’t see. The question might be, rather, how do you write the interior so deep inside that interior that interior becomes Other? And what does that look like?
Can a text for a journal, for an art research journal, be constructed so that it might resemble madness, to represent madness that comes on the evening of a breakthrough? I had a breakthrough. Because I had a breakthrough. Because I really really had a break through.
THIS IS THE JOURNAL - THE JOURNALS - THE PERSONAL MADE PUBLIC VS THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE - SOMETHING V IMPORTANT ABOUT THE PROCESS AS PRACTICE AS WORK RE: JOURNALS/JOURNALING
An option: Make up a fake theorist we can write about, because we need some kind of documentation that exists outside this text, and we need a documentation that is too hard to find, but too sensical to refute.
But now we have a body, we have always had bodies of knowledge, they just live in the jungle and don’t have university funding
The reason we might invent an imaginary source is, for one, it is much easier than having to bother to look for sources when we know they are already there somewhere … we are making our own claims self-consciously suspicious, putting ourselves in the role of an unreliable narrator, and all authority needs to be undermined.
The point is to show people how easy it is to manipulate them
if I perform the role of narrator/researcher, and take on multiple roles, to perform the multiple methods, offers a grounding to the performance and the interviews
Also video of the trance performance and interviews with people talking about their trance experience > how these elements might add up to a vocabulary for exposition in my practice, and whether these multiple levels of inquiry might not themselves take form as performed research. The exhibition of the work is something other than the work itself, creating meta-narratives … This text is a construction of multiple narrative voices speaking to and against each other
Problematic terms when talking about other cosmologies/cultures: i.e., Lukumí/Yoruba colonialist roots
oral tradition in this case is not only based on the spoken word, but on signs and symbols within the oral teachings. In some cases, the oral transmission of knowledge falls outside the academic definitions of oral tradition, because rather than transmission of knowledge from the mouth of an elder to an apprentice, this is transmitted in dreams and trance, through visitations from elders who are dead.
Did xe know xir prescience when xe said this? Was it always intended? “I have yet to come across a study that allows for the dead to participate as subjects, and practitioners know that the dead are more active subjects than the living, because they speak through the living.”
I wonder about how to cite claims that are based on secrets. And I wonder about the necessity for documentation of the history of a religion that is already well-established in ethnographic literature
Different takes/framing when writing from ethnographic, psychoanalytic, and radically subjective perspective (“on the edge of madness”) >> this is what I have been doing, the not quite chanting/rapping/poetry/stream of consciousness stuff.
I want to consider writing, research writing about art as research, as montage, in the way that Eisenstein considered montage: ‘an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another’
Anthi, writing as drawing
How is/can writing be embodied?
…
Criteria for ethical practice:
first, drawing frameworks from the cultural system itself (i.e., from Lukumí and/or Palo, rather than a European ritual framework);
second, maintaining the respectful distance necessary for ethical intercultural practice, with attention to the tradition’s transcultural nature;
third, taking a position of radical subjectivity from within the ritual system (vs. the position of a performance practitioner borrowing from world ritual culture as though it were a palette).
Safety: discussion of techniques in cultural ritual context and how they are different in this modified form; 2 participants stay lucid in case someone needs help; consensual approach where performers can stop when uncomfortable
performers were given mirrors charged w spiritual energy so they could stop/control the flow
DUDE WTF!! THIS WAS LITERALLY THE IDEA I HAD AND THEN I THOUGHT PEOPLE WOULD THINK IT WAS STUPID - to do a ceremony/ritual on stage as part of a one person show (then six months later, I did do it…)
Both Mendieta and Kantor are part of the mis-en-scène they create. Mendieta’s body is indelibly burned or otherwise imprinted in many of her more famous works, like a ghost. Kantor is present, sitting to the side of the playing area, serving to remind the spectator that the performance one is seeing is through Kantor’s point of view. This radical subjectivity interwoven into their work makes the ritual nature of their work likewise entirely subjective.
The viewer, or the spectator, is not an active participant, or witness to an authentic rite, but is instead watching someone else go through an elaborate rite.There is a spiritual dimension here, but it is just out of reach. This creates a tension where the viewer or the spectator or the audience is left to resolve their own subjective experience.
“New mestiza” = identity formed by crossing borders
“Many ways to cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the normal” - overlapping and intersecting the experience of Chicanas on US/Mexico border
Mestiza consciousness is a new form “characterized by a unique awareness of the functions of power that construct this form of subjectivity … [where] those who are constituted as abnormal transgressors have gained a tolerance not only for duality but for multiplicity and ambiguity.”
“Her thinking resists binaries that structure dominant ways of knowing, including subject-object, normal-abnormal, and English-Spanish”
Trans* resists being bound by any conception of gender and sexuality even as it claims them–it is quantum, inherently paradoxical, a particle and a wave at the same time, all genders and none at once. It becomes one intersection when you observe it and then rejoins the rainbow wave like the monks that dissolve into rainbow bodies
I share Anzaldua’s “preoccupation with the inner life of the self, and with the struggle of that Self amidst adversity and violation; with the confluence of primordial images; with the unique positions consciousness takes at these confluent streams; and with my almost instinctive urge to communicate, to speak, to write about life on the borders, life in the shadows.”
KIT CROSSED THE BORDER TO THE OTHER REALM, RICHARD CROSSED THE BORDER TO THE OTHER REALM, AND THEY BOTH WROTE ABOUT BORDER-CROSSING AND NEO-MESTIZ(X) IDENTITY BEFORE THEY SLIPPED THROUGH THE PORTAL
WHAT DOES THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL MESTIZ(X) IDENTITY LOOK LIKE? THIS IS TRANS* AS EMERGENT ARCHETYPE, THE BEING THAT CAN INHABIT BOTH LIVING AND DEAD, SPIRIT AND MATTER AT ONCE
Richard, from “The Crossing”:
“Their children were, or would be, mestizos, part of a new and burgeoning race re-populating Mexico after its 16th-century apocalypse; by this time, the Spanish invasion and its wave of alien plagues, such as smallpox — along with war and its cousin, famine — had killed all but 2 million of Mexico’s 15 to 30 million native people.” (p35)
“just as the Manso and Jumano increasingly melted into the Apache, so did the Spanish and European into the newest race in the world: the mestizo, that uniquely Mexican fusion of native and European (namely Iberian) bloodlines. But genetics aside, the culture that developed here on the high Chihuahuan desert would be decidedly different than its predecessors, growing into its sparse and harsh environs — just like the mustang.”
“But most importantly, it was during this period that distinctions between races began to fall away. The Belgians, Germans, and other Europeans, for example, melted into the thousands of other Spanish subjects. They learned the languages and customs of their ruler and fellow settlers alike. The native people often spoke Spanish now. White, European men frequently married and settled down with native women, Pueblo and Manso, and many of the newest generation of adults and leaders were known as coyotes, mestizos, and ladinos. Coyote was just another word for half-breed; mestizo was the mix of European and native blood; and the word ladino was adopted from faraway Spain where it was employed to label Spanish Jews. Some were Black men, slaves freed to become soldiers, who married into the Pueblo culture or took Tlaxcalan wives: women descended from the original Mexican indigenous troops who helped conquer New Mexico.
This budding tradition of intermarriage was, of course, inherited from the Native American people — who would marry into other bands and tribes altogether — as well as the Spanish, who had intermarried with Jews and even their greatest enemy, the Moors, at least between wars. El Paso represented a turning point in American history, in sharp contrast to the English colonies of the East Coast: here and in the Southwest, color and creed were not obstacles to toiling together, fighting together for survival, nor even to that most sacred human sacrament: marriage. In the English colonies that would come to dominate the American story, however, nothing could be further from reality. From Massachusetts southward, the English tradition of dividing whites from everyone else — especially Black people — was the norm that would rule the day. That part of America was enmeshed in the original sin of slavery from 1619 onward, along with segregation and seething hatred. Intermarriage, even with Native Americans, was rare and roundly scorned. As historian Jennifer Agee Jones wrote of the English colonies:
While settlers may have had the opportunity, very few such unions took place in the colonial era. Powerful psychological barriers prevented most Europeans from marrying Indians. That the Indians were "wild" people without knowledge of Christianity convinced many that marrying them was dangerous to one's soul. Other newcomers felt less constrained by cultural boundaries and easily shed the trappings of their culture to marry the native way. To colonial officials, such actions provided evidence that the wild land and its inhabitants were a temptation to those struggling to maintain godly communities on the frontier. Such renegades served as a symbol of religious and cultural degeneration that could ultimately undermine colonial endeavors.
Because intermarriage would have proven a means of assimilation between the two groups, its absence underscores the most irreconcilable divisions between Europeans and Indians. The attitudes that prevented Europeans from marrying the natives were the same attitudes that governed most interactions between the two peoples in the seventeenth century. The failure of the two groups to marry one another was one component of a larger failure to cohabit peacefully in seventeenth-century North America.” (p 140-142)
“For much of its three centuries, the El Paso region had been part of a multicultural society of Europeans, mestizos, and Native Americans as part of either Mexico or New Mexico, both politically and culturally. Indeed, there were frequent movements to break away from Texas and become part of New Mexico, or even to form a new state altogether. But now the long arm of segregation reached from Reconstruction-era Texas to the Rio Grande. The laws of Jim Crow twisted a society centuries in the making, dividing it by hue of skin, color, and language.” (p301)
LA POCHA NOSTRA ALSO TALKS ABOUT THIS—I just reached out to Balitroníca yesterday
To honor Kit means to learn:
"Xe": is used as the subject pronoun (e.g., "Xe is going to the store") - "zee"
"Xir": is used as the possessive pronoun (e.g., "That's xir book") - "zeer"
"Xem": is used as the objective pronoun (e.g., "I saw xem at the park") - “zeem”
"Xirs": is used as the possessive pronoun (e.g., "That book is xirs") - “zeers”
Examples:
"Xe is a talented artist, and xir paintings are beautiful."
"I met xem at the library, and xir was very friendly."
"That is xirs car, and xe drives it to work."
"I saw xir yesterday, and xe said the book was xirs."
Voice memo from Kit, 6.20. 24 / LISTEN
Uh, hey, there, hey there. Ferdinand, hey, there. Um, hey, this is kit calling. Um. I'll try to keep this like short ish, um, but yeah, I just wanted to touch base and stuff and say hey. And, yeah, it was great talking earlier today. And, oh, God, you didn't talk too much at all. That was really interesting, um. And it's a really good, really good for me to hear, like all of the different, you know, like the different contextual information and stuff like we said about, about what the kind of work that you do and the kind of work that you're looking looking to do. Um, and so I was thinking, I was thinking further about it too. And there, there are a couple couple of books of auto theory that you probably know about, that might be really relevant to me. That may be or may not be relevant, I'm not sure, but one I was thinking, of course, you probably know the writing of Paul Preciado. It's P, R, E, C, I, A, D, O, and I, he's a trans mask. And actually, his testo junkie is amazing. I mean, I read it, I didn't understand it, you know, it was one of but I got a lot of it. It's super, super, way over my head. And so, so, so smart and so brilliant, but in a way like he makes himself his own practices research project, as he talks about about transitioning and things and all of the different pseudo pharmacological empire and all of this deep state kind of fast. It's just fascinating as hell. And if you haven't come across that, it might be nice to take a look at too. I always like, I always go back to to his order, or la frontera Borderlands, because I think I'll think a lot of times when people talk about auto theory, they start with, with, what's her face with Nelson? About Jenny Nelson, is that her name? But the Argonauts, which is book I really, I really love, because she called it auto theory, even the first, although Paul Preciado actually called it that first in French. Either way, it doesn't matter. I think Gloria anzaldua and a lot of the, a lot of the Chicana activist writers of the 70s, and also black writers like, Oh God, what Audrey Lord writing about her own breast cancer, like all of all of those writers are already like in that, in that zone, like sub alternate identities, and talking from different, different identity formation places, and finding the ways of articulating that, and in The process, inventing new, new ways of, you know, talking about the impossible thing that we're all trying to talk about, that kind of thing. So I anyway, there were, there were those. There was another one to God. There's just so many things that pop popping into my head. I just feel like there's so many different resonances with what you're doing and the kind of stuff that I'm really interested in. So it just makes me want to want to want to want to be involved, how, however, I can, even if it's for a very short time. But I was also thinking yes about Anne Boyer, who has a book called the undying that you may know of, and that's about her own experience with breast cancer. So I'm just because, I'm just thinking, because you were talking about writing about illness and the hell healthy body and the sick body, and those things are, are pretty fascinating places to go once you open up everything. And I feel like in a project like this, it's kind of nice to open up all of the, all of the, not, not cans of worms, because no one really wants to open up a can. I don't want to open up the can of worms for any particular good reason, but just to give yourself permission to talk about the things that you want to talk about, if that makes sense. Um, and talking about the body, I think is necessary to, like, engage with the ideas of sickness and stuff, blah, blah, blah, you know, like all that kind of stuff. And then, you know that. But her book, the undying was one I started reading at the beginning, one I understood before the doctors did. I think that what I had was cancer, and that it wasn't a good one, and it wasn't going to be one that was that was curable. Hers was curable, it turns out, fortunately. But the way she writes about that experience of being, you know, a feminist body, in feminist spaces, and kind of continue. Doing the work that Susan Sontag did with her own writing on breast cancer, course, and then, and then AIDS and HIV and all that stuff. They're all kind of like it's tied together. And these are things that I've been drawing from a lot, a lot lately. Yeah, and I know a little bit more, I guess I don't know. I, yeah, I wanted to mention, like, so just with my own experience with gender, I mean, I always knew that was something else. So identify as non binary, and that didn't really come into play, like, publicly, in a public way, until, actually during the pandemic, and kind of part of what inspired it is that, like a few years before the pandemic started, when I moved here to the UK, I had a had a conversation with Eliana, my kid, who's 24 now, and they were like, it would have been like 17 then, and we went out for we celebrate Festivus from Seinfeld. And so what we do is we go for a cigar on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Eve Eve. And we used to call it father daughter cigar day. And then this one year, Ellie said, Can we rethink the terms of this arrangement and the terms of this relationship, and rethink the idea of, like, father daughter, um, and I knew what they were getting, and I was like, Yeah, of course. Oh my god. Oh my so, because I hadn't, hadn't realized that, um, that they had started identifying that way and had experiences with, you know, like, lots of like, like best friends, one best friend that I grew up with, and then my best friend in the world right now, watching, watching her go through a transition in kind of a massively public way, too. So when Eliana was like, hinting that, that that was going on, was kind of like, Oh, my God, of course, yes, um. But then the more I got to thinking about it, like I would tell, tell people about my kid and say, yeah, yeah, my kid is non binary. They take away, they and she and I, you know, I got, God, I wish I feel like we missed the boat, like our generation, because I'm 57 now. And that, you know. And I would say, I would tell my friends like, God, I mean, if there was an extra box that I could have checked when I was, like, 16, I would have checked it or 14 or 12, like I knew. I always knew that there was something different. I just didn't know that there was a box, like another box that I could check. So it was sort of like, like my my kid, that generation, is the one that gave me permission to be the person that I always knew I was. I just didn't have a language, language for it, and didn't so that opened up a whole, a whole thing, and so I don't my big thing, I guess, just an art in life in general, is really it's always been about permission. And in retrospect, the places that I've learned the most is when I get out into that deep water that David Bowie talks about, where you can't feel the bottom anymore, is when you when you get to that, that space, and realize that what, what you need is permission to be there and and that that's the space where, where you get to become the next thing that you get to become. And then the work starts, starts to, you
know, really take take on it some. It's visceral, visceralness, I guess I'd say, Yeah, so my background is mostly theater, and not so much visual, although I use a lot of visual stuff, and I'm
very influenced by it, but, like, mostly theatrical, but then a lot of ritual, because I'm initiated in these different, different, different, I guess spiritual traditions you call them from that come from Central Africa and West Africa into the new world. I know you've heard of like like Santeria. We call it Lukumi in the circles of your call it re, taking back, taking back the name, because synthetic is kind of a colonial name, because it adds the saints into these, these African ideas of deities. And then they're, they're not very Catholic. They just kind of look at some people practice it differently. But I tried to anyway, that's a very complicated conversation as well.
I got interested in ritual through Well, I've always been interested in ritual. This is a little bit long, okay, I won't say too much more, because there's I could go. Forever.
I've always been interested in ritual. When I was 25 or 26 the woman I was married to was working on her doctorate, doctorate, Tamara. Anyway, her name's her name's Tamara, and she was working on Mayan theater, and got interested in Mayan theater in 1993 9419 93 and decided that that would be something that she would want to write about. And she wasn't sure why or how, and she knew she wanted to work in Chiapas, because there were a lot of a lot of her mentors had done work there in in southern Mexico, the poorest state in the highlands, where it's where it's really cold. And anyway, as she got interested in doing this, you probably know, like in 1994 the Zapatista revolution started. And so that really kind of kind of gave her work a focus. So we went there in like 1995 96 and spent like a good five months there, and then returned several times. But doing that like I got to see communities in action. And actually this, that's the subtitle of her book, or enacted communities, communities action, and saw how these theater companies that were writing old Mayan myths that had been basically colonized out of people through through centuries of violence that they were re reinterpreting or reinscribing, inscribing them theatrically and just watching how that, you know, that idea that like watching a bunch of like little kids rushing up to a stage because the people on the stage look like them, and they have, you know, complex gender identities that they that they also have and the same skin color and are speaking the language that they speak at home. When I saw that that kind of thing happening, it shifted how I thought about theater, and gave it like an extra idea about about pulse. So the pulse for me was chasing after these different kinds of experiences I had, which were not so much in a Mayan context, because I'm not Mayan, but through these, like, African based systems, which they're like, you know, like probably hundreds of 1000s of practitioners, like in New York and LA and many in Phoenix. So, so been around it, and once I started looking into it, I kind of fell through, I guess, sort of like a rabbit hole, like Alice in the rabbit hole, and things started to make sense. And so in a lot of these, like different there's different ways of dealing specifically with the dead and ancestors and connecting to ancestral lineages. And that's a way to that's like the way of approaching divine. And like that the Divine is in your body. Now you know that, that kind of thing and that we all, we're all made of nature. We have all of the elements that are floating, it's, you know, and on all about that kind of stuff. So that was another thing that made me groove like, so like, the ritual on the site I did, I knew about theater, and then I got super interested in technology too, and just thinking about technological spaces of like represent like screens, and how the screen like the what do you call it? Just the screen. What's the word for the screen? I can't think of another word for it. Where you project a video is the space of ghosts, or the spaces of the dead, or the space of these kinds of things, and making work that's, like, super intimate and that kind of stuff. So anyway, that's a little bit more about me. And just to give you a sense of, like, kind of, kind of where I'm coming from with, with all those things. And so, yeah, I guess I just Yeah, I just hope, I hope that I say things that that might be helpful, and I'm really happy, happy to listen to, of course. Yeah, anyway, I probably can't do like, a jillion messages like this, but I'll send, I'll send as many as I can if we're ever talking and that just sounds great to me. So it was really, as really a pleasure. I think the work that you're doing sounds super interesting, and I think you're looking in some very, very interesting directions. So I can't wait to see what happens next anyway, yeah, have yourself a great Solstice, and good luck with this. With this next full moon. I hope it's soft and easy and and just you know, full of joy and healing and all those good things. All right, thank you. Lovely meeting you.
Kit voice memo 6.29.24 / LISTEN
God, hey, hello, hey. God, yeah, your messages are great, so excuse me, there's no way that I can possibly answer everything I want to say. I would want to say, like, 1000 things from 1000 different directions at once.
God, yeah, exactly. It's very similar, like, in terms of synchronicities and all that, all that stuff, same, really similar wavelength. I'm just super I'm super grateful that that it all worked out like this, then that that Chell and Michael were able to to figure out that this, this would be a really, a really good match. Um, yeah, I think that for me, if, if sounds, sounds right with you, just keep communicating like this is great, and occasionally do a zoom, but I'm talking like this in the mean and it for the time being, really works well, mostly the immediate moment, because I've got all these people coming like so my mom's here, then she leaves, and then my ex, who we've done all the different travels, and Mayan Theater, which so many things to talk About with that. Oh my God, when we lived in the office, and she'll be here staying with me and my kid, and they'll be here for a few weeks. So we're going to be kind of like last time we were all together in the house, we were getting divorced. So this will be a very, very different kind of thing, a very different kind of experience now. So that's going to be really good. And then after that, there's like, another friend coming who's going to stay for a week, then another friend coming first thing for a week, and then another ex who's going to be coming and staying for a couple of weeks, all that kind of stuff. And so there, like, little breaks in between things, but mostly there's going to be people around. Like, what really did keep you company, kind of, it's also sort of like, kind of going with, like, not really sure how much, how much time there is. It could be months. I hope it's months. I hope it's many, many, many months. But it's it's also to keep an eye on on me, because I've had, like, yeah, the seizure. And they thought the other thing was a mini stroke, but I talked to my doctor a couple days ago, and she thought that it probably was not a mini stroke, which is more of the of the seizure just kind of playing itself out because of what happened. This is ridiculous to say when you get a brain tumor and when it starts doing doing a brain bleed, which, yeah, anyway, so that's my life. God, at least I can laugh about it. It's, it's so it's so absurd, and it's so funny and so so strange and so interesting to just because, like all the, I don't know, the neuro, neurological things I think connect to spiritual things and a brain on fire, like, literally, and all that kind of stuff is pretty, pretty pretty interesting. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure curious about all the different things that you've had, especially the stuff with with the with the pelvis, and the Mayan magic and and those different kinds of cosmologies. And I'm curious about all that stuff too. So, real quick. So you asked something about initiation, and if you thought it was necessary to be initiated into certain things. And I don't know, of course, I don't know, but I would say, like, like, for me, it was really important, because I was in my 20s, and I was wandering aimless like a cloud or whatever. And I had had a mentor who turned out to be a little bit crazy, but also very, very wise at the moment, and thought that that what I needed to do was to find the path and to go deep into it. So I did. And Santeria is not necessarily like a like a light path. I'm usually like vegan or at least vegetarian, and it's not necessarily one that's like, you know, cut out for vegans or vegetarians. If you know how these, like Earth religions work the mind stuff works similarly to in terms of of life and all that kind of stuff, which, of course, I've got, I've got problems and issues with, but, but I've done all the different, all the different kinds of ceremonies and stuff that are involved with that so but, but it for me. Me going deeper into something was really good. It was a very good grounding thing, and that's where I live, like my soul is in that, as in that the Orisha grabbed me, the spirit grabs you when you fall down, that kind of thing. That's That's what happened to me with that, and it led to unimaginable worlds, which I'm sure, I'm sure you're familiar with. And I think all the paths do that, and I don't know, yeah, if initiation is in the is in the cards, then it's just in the in the cards. And you'd be probably know it already or not. And it's not necessarily always, always necessary. I think it's often not necessary. And in fact, in terms I've seen lots of people that have been recommended to get initiated that I don't really agree with some of the decisions that some of the godparents I've seen make in terms of that particular path. Anyway, that's a whole nother issue. But yeah, any specific questions? Cool. And as you allegwa, the Trickster spirits, stuff like that, God, it's not forever about everything. So, yeah, I don't know. Let's just keep talking. Let's just keep talking like this. It's wonderful. And, yeah, anyway, I should cut this short, because I've got to go have dinner with my mom, because we haven't actually gone out to dinner since, since she's been here, because life is so strange now that's doing something as casual as going out for dinner is unusual, if that makes sense. So anyway, that's what we're gonna do, because we're coming to the end of the trip and thought it would be a proper thing or whatever. So anyway, I'm gonna eat vegan food by for whatever that's worth. Anyway, I just send it. Send you all the best hope. Hope you're having a wonderful day. Let's, let's, yeah, let's keep talking like this. That's cool, and yeah, and we'll keep sending messages back and forth. And it's extraordinarily fun, and it's really, this is really enlivening me and giving me a place to focus, and just kind of thinking about in terms of, like, mentorship. Maybe I've said this before that I kind of, I always see it not as like, you know, there's not like a grand master or whatever, we're following gurus and all that kind of bullshit. It's just that sometimes someone is like, maybe gone, like, around a different kind of corner, and knows a little bit a little bit more about that kind of corner, and can tell you something about that. So I hope I'm helpful and that way, but you're sure to teaching me an awful lot too, and I think it's just kind of fascinating a life path. Somehow, how interesting. We just have interesting, interesting people find themselves traveling in parallel dimensions without even realizing it. So anyway, all right, so happy whatever day it is, the Friday or Saturday or Sunday or whatever, and look forward to talking soon you.
The Transfiguration of Riordan O’Regan
He was really into John Fahey, the legendary American blues guitarist whose music inspired indie-folk artist M. Ward, whose early albums echoed Fahey’s echoing, ethereal empty-room quality. Ward’s album “The Transfiguration of Vincent” was even a play on Fahey’s legendary record “The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death.”
Both are records that haunt me, conjuring the ghosts of all those who sold their souls at the crossroads, like another legendary blues guitarist, Robert Johnson, was said to have done to receive his transcendent abilities.
Because nobody thought a human, especially a Black man in America before the Civil Rights Movement, could just be talented like that—unless they were possessed. It’s a story the dominant culture has put upon all the underrepresented people since the beginning: if it feels good, it must be dirty. If you can heal yourself, without a man or the establishment, it must be witchcraft. It isn’t art unless it’s hard, and it’s only good if you’re suffering. Unless it hurts, it isn’t work, and if you aren’t working, you aren’t worthy.
It’s time we transfigured that story.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the blues is trans music; no wonder I’ve always loved it.
In Austin, when I had another Saturnian orbit around something resembling my future masculine embodiment, I worked at a bicycle shop, like I did when I was still with him, in college and rediscovering spiritual studies; when I wanted to change my major and focus on religion and then he started sounding like all the rest of them, and told me I needed to get a job and start contributing, so I graduated just when things were getting interesting.
But you can never lose what’s meant for you. It took until I was 39, but I got back again.
They say of Fahey:
“His music has the intriguing quality of having something missing and being wholly complete and self-contained at the same time.”
that is trans-ness: the holon: the thing that is complete in itself, at the micro level, yet is but a fractal of the larger whole; the sub-particle that can exist without the larger organism, but not the other way around.
“Another quality that has helped this music to stay fresh, 60 years on, is the fruitful tension between the traditional and the modern; the use of conventional folk and country melodies and chord progressions, alongside subtly strange melodic left turns that divert into less familiar terrain. Aside from the title of ‘On The Sunny Side Of The Ocean’, which cleverly alters a well-worn phrase to make it unfamiliar, the song is remarkable for how it moves through an array of different melodies, some straightforwardly pretty, others darker and more discomfiting, with a fluidity that means you never quite get a grip on the ‘verse’ or ‘chorus’, or the prevailing mood of the track.”
it’s the essence of Hermeticism, queer alchemy and shapeshifting. I spent my whole life singing the blues, not realizing my very truths were contained within their essence.
but it’s okay. you get it when you’re ready.
I used to think I didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t exist without him.
he was the first person who saw the world that I grew up in for what it really was, who affirmed my reality, who was that empathetic witness we all need to heal from trauma:
the one to tell us: “It really happened. You’re not crazy.”
he was the first person who affirmed what was happening with my body, who acknowledged its desires as something pure that could be trusted, even the ones for other women and thruples and permeable borders.
but then he took it back, the narrative changed on me, suddenly I was a bad baby again, living in sin.
so I buried it.
I buried the truth
and I buried it down so deep that even I couldn’t find it, along with the memories of whatever happened to me in the beginning
and I spent the next 15 years sleepwalking.
but in the middle of the night, I went walking in my sleep, through the jungles of doubt to the river so deep
I drank until I lost consciousness and then my body enacted a shamanic ritual without someone to guide it, possessed by dark and archetypal forces, a zombie looking for its host
but eventually, it found me
it wouldn’t let me stay in all those dead-end lives that weren’t meant for me, where I was grasping at masculinity and creativity subconsciously
marketing and bike shops and starting my own business, beer writing and food and beverage education
paired with really challenging relationships
they all helped me learn skills I needed but in order to transcend and include them I had to burn the ships, as Don Fornes said
leave no escape plan and only smoldering wreckage so I couldn’t return to any of it
thank you Holly Regan, the one pretending to be a woman, you deserve a fucking Oscar
the wound they tried to paint you scarlet with has now become a power
the GIFT of double deception, convincing everyone you were that person and wanted the same things they did,
when really, you were a fucking shamxn
casting spells, and you’re so good that you put everyone into a trance, including yourself,
and forgot that you were charmed to begin with.
you’re not a sinner or a little brat or naughty girl or evil witch,
you’re a psychopomp, baby, a pied piper; a transdimensional messenger,
leading the souls between worlds and playing Jedi tricks on those in power
with your skills of shapeshifting and altering states of perception
going in through the side door and making them believe it was their idea to begin with.
* * *
This is the transfiguration of Riordan O’Regan,
the one who claims their name in Gaelic and their sacred lineage,
who takes their bones home to the places they remember, where the quartz crystal vibrates across dimensions,
and does the hard fucking work of healing that ripples up and down through generations,
who only makes deals at the crossroads if they will benefit everyone,
if they will set us all free and we can have some fun,
assuming our roles upon the stage and entering into the play
alone together, dissociating consciously.
I didn’t think this entry was going to be about him, but it’s what came out, so I guess some part of that masculine identity was still clinging to him, believing I couldn’t cross the threshold without him. And he did help re-enchant me; he reintroduced me to the animals and land, I had become a hardened city creature except for the times I would go to the zoo and see a cute animal and it would break my heart in two. He helped me get comfortable with the bittersweet; he sat with me in the nonduality and together we tried to hold the overwhelming nature of the thing so beautiful it rips your heart in two, and we tried to keep our relationship alive like a little bird that hit a window and was gasping to survive, bandaging its wings with Scotch tape and holding it together with safety pins.
It didn’t hold for long, and we tried vaguely to resurrect it after it was gone, but it was beautiful while it lasted.
Thank you for being my bird.
But I can fly now.
According to AI, "The Transfiguration of Jesus is a New Testament event where Jesus' appearance changed to reveal his heavenly glory:
Event
Jesus took his three closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, up a mountain where his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.
Significance
The Transfiguration revealed Jesus' true identity and glorified his body. The appearance of Moses and Elijah confirmed that Jesus was the one spoken of in the law and prophets.
Other details
A cloud appeared and a voice spoke from it, telling those present to not tell anyone about the event until Jesus rose from the dead.
In Christian art
The Transfiguration is often depicted with Christ's robes in brilliant white, a golden-yellow halo, and a bright blue sky.
In Lutheran churches
The Feast of the Transfiguration is celebrated on the last Sunday after the Epiphany.”
I’m not calling myself Jesus, except for in the sense that we’re all Christ consciousness. And we can all transfigure ourselves to become something more divine.
It’s why they call psychedelics “entheogens”: it’s an ancient Greek term meaning “that which awakens the divine within.” Because we are the medicine, and everything else is just a magic feather. If we’re all just vehicles and containers for spirit possession anyway, hollow bones ready to be inhabited, then of course the medicine dwells within us, just waiting to be activated. We ARE the mushroom, the mushroom takes US, because we are just the vehicles, the messengers, the psychopomps—if we learn to listen, to receive, to tune into the subtle energies; I feel the Tarot permeating my being like it did for Jodorowsky as I’ve studied it, sat with the images, held them on my altar and in my body, the prenda.
This is what it means that we used to be trees; that things turn into other things. The energies are inherent to the cosmos, floating around assembling and scattering, configuring and transfiguring, waving and particle-ing. Little specks of things only appearing solid when they come together and strike a pose for a moment. Forming a jeweled net constantly in motion and cast over the Kosmos, like capillaries, a neural network, a galaxy, or a root system—as we approach the trecena of K’at, of course, the net. The question is, what are you gathering versus getting tangled up in?
I wrote the line “the hollow bone needs some meat on it,” but I didn’t know it might be literal. Our bones know what we need and where to go and how to transdimensionally travel. I’m calling in bone medicine, but I hope it doesn’t have to mean eating animals. He’d never forgive me.
I receive the learnings in phrases and mantras that I now realize are titles of chapters or plays. I see a scene unfolding in my mind, the set of the Nutcracker being wheeled out; the title card displaying in the Wes Anderson movie.
‘Act V: Rehabilitation of the Feeling Function’
I just emerged from a portal of my evolving process, the alchemical cauldron I’m developing through this program:
fucking with time, which means slowing down and exploding out the thought patterns, memories and associations, to open them up and crawl around inside of them and observe what’s actually happening between when I have a thought or think I’m making a decision and taking the next action.
fuck around and find out, which means trusting my gut, trying to discern craving from calling and medicine from ego knowing I will sometimes get it wrong, fusing the Shulgin method with Shamanism and a Hunter S. Thompson-esque radical subjectivity, gonzo autoethnography and psychedelic autotheory.
music is the medicine, choosing the tracks that spark memories to dive into the feeling realm or diving into live sound immersion.
the body coming back online, taking an intention into ecstatic dance and letting body parts guide me, speaking their stories; rehabilitating the feeling function, leaning into the sense memories and following the physical sensations to climb inside the narratives and pull them back into conscious awareness.
checking my directions, following my map home and integrating at my altar, calling in the guides and consulting the oracles and cards.
and don’t forget to close the door. I kept forgetting to close the ceremony, which is a really bad idea when you’re opening yourself to the energies of the whole cosmos.
Riordan O'Regan reflects on his emotional and physical journey, emphasizing the need to explore and understand his feelings and body. He discusses his fear of anger and the body, his realization of self-forgiveness, and the importance of direct communication with his body. Riordan explores his ancestral connections, particularly between African and Irish cultures, and his desire to reconnect with his Irish heritage. He also touches on the significance of archetypes, spirit possession, and the role of plants in his healing process. Riordan concludes with a vision of integrating his past traumas and embracing his nomadic identity.
Outline
Rehabilitation of the Feeling Function
Riordan Regan discusses the need to explore feelings deeply, similar to how he explores thoughts.
He mentions an essay by Marie von Franz about rehabilitating the feeling function.
Riordan reflects on the fear associated with exploring anger and the body.
He compares the experience of exploring feelings to exploring thoughts with amanita, emphasizing the need to dissolve the illusory nature of space and time.
Realization and Direct Communication with the Body
Riordan shares a humbling realization about not fully understanding his body's messages after breaking his pelvis, admitting to not directly asking his body why it was trying to communicate with him.
During a dance session, Riordan cradles his pelvis and tailbone, realizing his fear of standing up straight and bearing his own weight.
He acknowledges his fear of putting weight on his glutes and the numbness in his toes, which he attributes to the pelvis.
Riordan recalls a hospital incident where he tried to kill himself to get attention, leading to a realization about the need to forgive himself for trying to kill his body for many years.
He emphasizes the importance of direct communication with his body to understand its messages.
Exploring Ancestral Connections and Cultural Identity
Riordan talks about his ancestral connection to Ireland and the conflict between his English and Irish heritage.
He reflects on the impact of colonialism on his identity and the need to research the connection between African and Irish cultures.
Riordan discusses the contradictory duality within himself, represented by his father (the intuitive, generative side) and his mother (the conquerors and colonists).
He mentions the importance of reclaiming his ancestral indigeneity and the significance of his Irish name.
The Role of Archetypes and Spirit Possession
Riordan explores the concept of archetypes and spirit possession, comparing it to his work with Amanita and cacao.
He discusses the demonization of death medicines and the role of corporations in stripping them of their spiritual significance.
Riordan reflects on the universal resonance of ancient cultures and the importance of working with the energies present.
He emphasizes the need to trust the flow and the messages from his bones, which are calling him home to Ireland.
Dreams and Masculinity
Riordan shares a dream about a bike shop farm in Greece, which symbolizes his masculinity and sense of belonging.
He reflects on the objectification he experienced and the importance of feeling like part of a brotherhood.
Riordan discusses the challenges of living in the US and the desire to live in Europe.
He emphasizes the importance of saying no to what doesn't serve him and living authentically.
The Journey of Transformation and Emergence
Riordan talks about his journey of transformation and the importance of integrating his rejected parts.
He reflects on the significance of the Prodigal Son and the need to welcome home all emotions and experiences.
Riordan discusses the importance of working with the energies of anger and other emotions.
He emphasizes the need to trust the flow and the messages from his bones, which are guiding him on his journey.
The Role of Bone Medicine and Synchronicity
Riordan explores the concept of bone medicine and its potential benefits for his health.
He reflects on the synchronicity of people around him talking about bone work and the importance of attuning to that frequency.
Riordan discusses the challenges of eating animals and the potential of working with marrow and bone broth.
He emphasizes the importance of researching bone medicine and deer medicine to understand their impact on his health.
The Transfiguration of Riordan O'Regan
Riordan reflects on the transfiguration of his identity and the importance of embracing his journey.
He discusses the significance of the Trecena and the day of the most ancestors, calling in bone medicine and transfiguration.
Riordan emphasizes the importance of living for cheap or free without having to move around all the time.
He reflects on the importance of trusting the flow and the messages from his bones, which are guiding him on his journey.
Listen / Transcript:
I'm being presented repeatedly with the invitation to go all the way into a feeling similar to how Amanita is helping me explode out and climb inside my thought process. I must do the same with feelings. This is act five, rehabilitation of the feeling function. There's an essay by the same name by Marie von Franz about it which isn’t that interesting, but the title sure is compelling. I have to do the same thing with feelings, to explode out and climb inside them. What's happening in my body that one's harder. There is fear present around anything related to the body. Exploring anger of course, is the invitation. It's a scary one. It's never about what you think it's about, actually, because anger is like a layer of emotion, a protector that stands in between you and the exiled scared little kid behind it, but in Amanita, the conscious dissociation, it helps, it helps to get close To the scary feelings in the body, because you can, yeah, it's like this crazy function of Amanita to explode things out, open them up, slow down time. I mean, I've that has happened with LSD as well. And just climb inside what's happening like to dissolve this illusory nature of space time, particleize things a bit more, though I’m starting to wonder about this whole quantum framework altogether.
I had the humbling realization at dance last night that even after the whole saga of breaking my pelvis, I don't think I had actually really gotten close to it. I don't think I had really ever fully asked it what it was trying to tell me. I don't know. I mean, I don't remember. I know I journeyed in California. And tried to get to the bottom of it, and got to some good places. I really should remove my doodles for that time. Honestly, I should see if Prash can bring them, but I don't know that I'd asked my body specifically what it was trying to say. I don't think I've ever just asked my tailbone why it was crooked. Asked my body why it's skewed and my left side is a kickstand. Asked my toes why they've been numb since I started walking again. Like I've come up with stories about all these things in my head, but I don't think I've asked the parts directly, and that's the point of this whole thing. Direct experience, direct conversation, direct communication, whether it's a tree or a plant or a past part of self or a part of your body or a cancer cell, what are you trying to tell me? I did some of the work, at least metaphorically, with Ralph's first course, but I don't think I asked the body specifically. So at dance, I cradled my pelvis and my tailbone and my sacrum tendrilly in my hands. I just held them like a baby last night, and I just slowly rose and fell with the beat. I did squats very slowly, and I tried to keep my body, my spinal column, straight. And I realized that I was afraid to do that. I was afraid to stand up straight. I was afraid to bear my own weight. I was afraid to put weight on my legs. I've always been afraid to put weight on my legs, specifically my glutes. Why have I been afraid to put weight on my glutes? It's so wild, like feeling in the legs is scary, and I don't quite understand why yet, but yeah, as I did this, I asked the toes why they were numb, and they said it came from the pelvis, and the pelvis told me, You never even asked me what I. Was trying to tell you, and it reminded me of my own words at the hospital after I tried to kill myself. The phrase that probably honestly kept me out of the psych ward is when I mumbled. They asked why I did it, and they said I just wanted him to listen to me, and I realized I didn't necessarily need to yo opono Ono, Lubo and Marc and dad and the UK Home Office, even though they're the ones I thought I was mad at, I needed to forgive myself for trying to kill my body for so many years. And I know I've kind of done this. I've done rounds of it, but I don't think I really addressed the body directly. Yeah, I realized I was afraid to put weight on my backside of my legs. I was afraid to stand up straight. I was afraid to carry my own weight. The feeling of my own lower body supporting me caused fear to be present, and I was still turtling over to protect my underbelly, curving at the spine, doubling over. I'm not really totally sure why, but at least we're in dialog now.
Just like the art plays and practice need a lot of space and time, so does the body. And I said this, and they had these realizations this morning but then I didn't do it. I was gonna take the time to roll out of my mat and really stretch and be with it. So I'm gonna have to try to do that this evening, maybe like a wall I'm talking to Adam, honestly, I need to do release the production mindset as much as I can, slow it all down. So explode it all out. Let this be a practice for my life, crawl inside of it. I think that's part of the LSD journey with Joe, where we tunneled through the magical forest landscape with deerhunter and East forest’s music and his explanation of the music creating an architecture. I think this is part of that message. Slow it down, explode it out. Crawl inside. space and time are not what we think they are. We can manipulate them. We can bend them. We can get inside them. Yeah, oh, no. There's more dimensions than we see present. We don't have to accept what we've been given. And there is more space, and there is more time, and there is more expansion, and I do think more DMT production. I don't care if there's data on it or not, but I do need to find out about that
night time, that's where the creation is. So I do need to make sure to get out to the forest. I need to get out to epping forest. I need to schedule a time to do that before, yeah, but I think sleeping in the day more to sleep in the morning like I did today, so I can stay up late and get up early, maximize my DMT. I'm really looking forward to the Berlin wintering. So if you are what makes you angry, if you are only triggered based on something that's within you, then I'm mad at myself for keeping myself prisoner in a woman's body, quote, unquote, in a feminine performance, in a victim story, in those horrible relationships in the house of horrors in Austin and all these prisons. So I love you. Please forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for giving my body away to people who didn't deserve it. I'm sorry for not respecting my own boundaries and borders. No wonder I'm mad at the UK for imposing theirs on me. I haven't respected my own, I let so many people in that didn't deserve it, just because I didn't want to go home alone to that apartment and face myself. It's so funny now it's like, I can't get enough time alone. Mad at Lubo because I've used chocolate as a substitute for love. But like so many of us, it's so deeply human. I haven't wanted to be one. I haven't wanted to be a person. I wasn't able to listen to the pelvis because it was scary as fuck, and I still wasn't safe in California. This is a powerful archetype possessing me. It is almost the power of Saq ‘Iq, the hurricane, the Junjapu, is it Aries? Is it Pluto? The war inside me, the two sides trying to fall separately, the underworld Journey rising up to meet me. It's powerful. It threw me from my bike, and I was afraid to fully engage with it in California when I didn't have the support I needed. My body still wasn't fully safe, so I don't know. It's like I could only I couldn't quite go in all the way. Maybe it's the Calleach energy, and we are still wintering. We have all the time we need.
It won't be answered in one day. This is gonna take time. This is my intention for Ralph's course, and the wintering is to really listen to the body's messages, learn the lessons the pelvis, the message that was coming through this morning. It's like, God, I just can't stop staring at those Celtic images. Like, my bones want to go home to Ireland. My bones want to go home. That's what I was hearing. My bones want to go home, and I think it's dark. I don't know there's something powerful ancestral calling me, but England is home too, and and so I kept thinking last night of the enclosures and the connection between African and Irish cultures. And I need to research that more the two sides of myself are at war, the English and the Irish, the Protestant, the Catholics, the subjugated and the conquerors, the imperialists, the whole freaking world, two sides of my body trying to fall two separate ways. And interestingly, dad is representing the opposite of what you'd think Dad is the intuitive, generative side, the artists longing to be seen, the bones, longing to reconnect with the ancestral legacy in the druidic forest. Mom is the side of the conquerors and the colonists. They were the freaking Protestant preachers trying to force their religion on everyone, just like that Blake story. Urizen. Need to come back to that from Blake. I I gotta go back to that one. There's more stuff about transhumanism at all that. But yeah, Urizen the archetype of religious dogma and his twin, his other half, his imagination, but he's an archetype who is inserting himself as the primordial priest who created his own realm of religious dogma, and he must be appeased, his child Orc, The spirit of intuition and freedom. It's sort of a jupiterian energy that's present now with the alignments, a struggle with the divine mind. So the division between Earth and the religious dogma and org, the freedom, the rebellion, is the divine mind wrestling with itself. Just creative research kind of encapsulated.
There's a holy mushroom Trinity. The mind is lions made. Cordyceps is the body and the spirit is underneath. Tourism creates religion to control the elements. Making chains of the mind makes a lot of sense. Images take a lot of space and time that capitalism doesn't give us. PhD is my protection to let it breathe, draw draw cards and let them pile up on the altar and see what stories they are telling together. Take time with a Jodorowsky book and yeah, just feel into the body. Feel into everything. Give everything the space and time and breathing room, because the two sides of myself are okay. Back to this. The two sides of myself are at war. They tried to fall two separate ways when I fell on the ground and shattered my root. Mom was a religious dogma, and dad was the the Druids, the forest, the filid. He was always trying to go home, and he was always trying to be an artist, and it always hurt me so much, and the real pain behind this that he didn't give me an Irish name, and it felt like everyone else in the family had one, and I never felt like I belonged with them. Me and Amber were the only ones, the black sheep of the family. The rejection by the regans really fucking hurt me. Because it was a rejection of my legacy, my ancestry, the only clear tie I had. No wonder I was obsessed with the Lion King. I was the rightful heir to the throne, the eldest son of the O Regan's but I was denied three times, like Jesus, by name, my lineage and my manhood. Uncle John was the only one who ever really made me feel wanted, and then he either abused me or covered for dad. I don't know. I'm hoping the rest of that story will come out in Berlin. Maybe it'll be at the Kit Kat Club, even if I gave my body the proper attention. It is somehow this idea of reclaiming our ancestral indigeneity, there's really something here, and there's a reason it's popping up everywhere, because people aren't that different.
The Celts had sacred altars and Portal places where they created altars and made offerings, and they tracked the cycles of time and they kept fires all of this, just like the Maya. And supposedly they even had a beverage. It was kind of like cacao. So I got to do some research and figure out what that is, because the things that resonate with your bones are universal, but also we have syncretism, and I think that Berlin might be a place to start the interdimensional travel, but I don't know. No no. They took our land from us, the colonists. And we are the earth, and so to take our lands is to take our personhood, our identity, to dissolve, to dissociate us from our physical environment. They created enclosures and created private property, and they took our land from us and said we weren't even Welcome on it. They took everyone's land all over the earth. The English enslaved the whole world. Every time I go to dance, there's always some moment where I really feel that African, Irish connection coming through so strongly and resonant. And sometimes I wonder why I'm trying to live in the land of the colonizers, and I don't know all the places I'm trying to get visas, or the lands of the colonizers, the Brits, the Dutch and the Germans. So I need to look more at Ireland, and there's something really resonating and really vibrating on my body when Kaz was talking about the Irish artist visa, and Dublin's always calling, and Kaz a story about getting a Colombian visa, made me see that it was possible. So I made up a story about why it couldn't happen. But Kaz shows me that magic is possible. And I've always felt that if I could just talk to someone in person and look at a fellow Irishman in the eyes and appeal to them on a human level, that they would make an exception. Cows is proof that that can happen. But if I do want to live in the land of the Conquer, I don't know. I mean, my family is here, and I can make it Trans and Queer, but it's all abstracted for my numb toes. Can't read my own handwriting. What is my kickstand side trying to say, what is my body? Trying to tell me, we all long to belong, to be welcomed home like the prodigal son, which doesn't so much mean the one who returns, but that when he does, is told he has never been separate. And this is what I realized in the forest. The beauty is that he's been at the party the whole time. The good news said he never really left. And that's settling in my bones, that knowing that's why chocolate I want, that feeling of heart opening. Maybe I'm also kind of mineral deficient, so let's nourish ourselves more than didI did Prodigal Son is the welcoming home of our rejected parts, and I feel myself rejecting the class and vivid like I just asked for it, and I've already avoided every exercise and slept through the class. I've really so I need to face that, and I need to do that, and that is important, because bringing our parts home is important. And, yeah, already trying to get away from the culture. God, I can't read my handwriting. We need to welcome all the rejected parts home, including anger, including all the emotions and experiences the culture told us weren't appropriate. You. Need to help God. You need to safely, consciously dissociate to get close to the anger, explode it out and step inside it. Amanita, the serpent, the dark feminine, the rejected one. Everything they said wasn't appropriate for us, the death, the darkness, the death medicines. This is part of the story of Amanita rewriting these narratives.
Cacao was made into chocolate, which killed the spirit of it. Sugar was added, and then they made it into some kind of candy that wasn't good for people, and so they started rejecting it, and they started blaming the medicine. And the problem was the corporations, the corporations that took all the soul out of it and made it something poison.
So Amanita and Cacao, Datura and all these death plants, demonized and blamed for people's problems.
God I can't read this writing. To say that they made us sick or crazy is like saying somebody made us angry. No, this isn't how it works. No one can make us anything. It's about working with the energies that are already present, whether it's the archetypes or our feelings. And now I see what Jung meant by the archetypes possess us. We are just vessels for the vibrations that are already present, the vibration of anger, the vibration of war, whether it's people or planets, we're all just big fucking particles, the cultures with ancient roots do the same thing. God, what the fuck does that say? Oh, all the cultures with ancient roots do the same things for a reason, because there's universal resonance. The anger is present. Someone didn't make me angry, just like mercury didn't make me just like Mercury's placement on the day I incarnate, it didn't make me a good communicator. The energy of communication was present in the sky, Mercury Hermes was possessing the particles, possessing both my corpus and the planetary alignments at this precise moment. And this is even why astrology is sort of a mindfulness practice, really, is that it's just tuning in being present to what's happening, to what's resonating, whether in the cosmos or your own body, it's a correspondence, it's a reflection. And now this is what was so cool. This morning, I see exactly how my work is an extension, directly, of Kit’s. Now it makes sense, because it's all possession. It's all spirit possession, whether calling in an Orisha or invoking archetype, they're just languaging for the same thing as above, so below in this dimension, as in the other realm, we're just reflecting what's already present, emitting the same resonant frequency and. It's all possession. Celtic, Maya, syncretic, Shipibo, Buddhist, it's all just ways of letting myself be consumed by the energies that are showing up in that moment.
So are both just using different methods of devising. What's already here?
I had a dream. I laid down and I took my own body and my hands like Sean does, and I let the dream take me just like I let the mushroom take me, and it took me to a farm in Greece that showed me about my masculinity, and it was like a bike shop, farm, monastery. Oh, the symbology, a brotherhood, those who largely saw me as one of them. There's definitely still some objectification, but they only tried to sleep with me. I offered myself to them because I couldn't bear to face my empty apartment, and they gave me a place where I did actually feel like one of the guys. I woke up with a phrase echoing my ears, hearing a voice saying, from the flimsiness of being to the being of becoming. It's a beautiful phrase of transformation. What an integration. Way to follow the feeling. I'm so proud of you. Riordan, thanks for being my own dad. Thank you Saturn, breaking the pattern. Thank you Callie. Thank you archetype of death, the archetypes of death, the father and the crone carried me home. The images were plants, the ones that really lasted and resonated with me. I was tending to the bike, monastery, garden, planting little pots of Saguaro, sage and pine in a time of perpetual Aqua ball Twilight.
Did just came out to a temple with Ganesha and two mice. Look at that. Wow. I love these. I love these Indian temples. I haven't been in any of them since I've been here. God, I always miss the things that Sam's going to do. Okay,
Greek mystic oceans rolling behind in the background. At one point, though, Houston and Michael showed up drunk with the person brist was dancing with last night, and they all came and crashed in my little monastery house. Nobody had bored me. I had to share a person with. I had to share a bed with the person brist was dancing with, because we both had female bodies and like this young Ian life was talking about on the anger podcast, that, of course, popped up synchronistically in my feet when I was walking home last night. I acted like it was okay, but I didn't want you, because girls are trained to do that. And. The girl was ruined and vacant, didn't even speak to me, and Michael used to wear drunk and barely recognized me because I was doing my surgery. So this is in matrix version masculinity and hating Christ had masculinity, telling me I couldn't be soft in the end, they had to play the game. I told
them, Don't be fooled by four hours a day.
That's just you so the bike shop people were making me a gift for my coming of age. My male coming of age ritual was a mountain bike with the the latest insider in, my gosh, really the insider special, the special boy bike with the last year of good components from Shimano, it would cost $125 which was nothing, and I needed to invest something to make it worth it, Which is something Adam said the other day. But it wouldn't do me any good unless I lived in the US. I felt bad refusing a gift, but I couldn't tie myself to that country. I knew I couldn't do it, so I went to the garden and I burned sage and I asked the Saguaro for the strength to say no and live in Europe. So now I see that the only thing keeping me from the visa is me. I mean, I grasp that intellectually, but I'm I think I'm starting to feel it, some idea that I only deserve or inherit someone else's idea of what my identity or my life should look like. In the dream, I had found a way to live for free without moving around all the time. And I've thought about this monastery thing before, and I mean, it's why I want to build my own place, though, but, but it'd be right. I mean, something like the the monastery in San Diego would be really cool. So, yeah, can I call that in? Of course, I can. We can call in anything we want. We can bring down the motherfucking lightning. We are the conductors for the plants. Turn to the plans for guidance. Say yes. I say yes to my life as Royden, the nomadic artist who is also hardcore Holly, who is also trans and emergent. So this is part of the PhD. My life is the case study for trans emergence. I am the emergent archetype. Riordan is my expression of the archetype still emerging, still being defined, because the energies possess us. All we do is reflect what's already present. Our lives are correspondent to the subtle dimension, and realizing this is the event horizon,
we don't someone doesn't make us angry anymore. Then Mercury Retrograde makes us crazy. If there is anger present, if there is craziness present, it's just reflecting what's already there, Written In The Heavens, written on our bones, as above so below, reflecting what's already there. We are just conductors. We are just containers, all of us, and it all bears messages. So what are the stories written on my bones? What are they trying to tell me? My bones are speaking. The bones want to go home. The bones want to sit at the altar. The bones want to go to Ireland. I
the bones just want to talk about the universe and sit in ceremony. The bones don't want to make things anymore, unless they're drawings or whatever these things are that I'm doing, whatever this thing is, is going into the PhD blog, and I've got to trust it, and it's working with the plants, and it's working with the archetypes. And I even wonder if there is something here in being like an astrological translator, that. Yeah, the spiritual concierge has something there, but I gotta trust the flow. Everyone around me, I swear, keeps talking about bone Well, I I'm interpreting it as bone medicine, but everyone keeps talking about eating animals, to the fact that, to the degree that it's getting weird, organ meat specifically. And I've had the thought for a while that doing bone work, here goes my voice. So is this true, or is this other people's stories being foisted upon me. This is what I'm gonna have to sit with, because I don't really know. I almost bought beef bone broth at the store. I got fish instead, but the collagen was like more than double and the beef, and it just made me think, I wonder if there's something to that, and I wonder if I'm gonna work with bones if I need to be attuning to that frequency. And what's so interesting is just this morning, I had some kind of sign that, like, I felt like nuts were. It was almost like an announcement that was like, the time for nuts is over. And then when I went to Sean's, he told me that nuts take calcium out of your bones, and so do grains. And the grain part really doesn't resonate, and I feel like he's got to be wrong about that. But he also said leafy greens aren't good for you, and I just don't buy that at all. So take everything everyone says with a grain of salt, but it is interesting. I mean, now, now the meat thing has become a synchronicity, and I'm I can't abide eating animals. I just really can't even fathom that, but I have almost fantasized about like licking bones. So maybe I'm supposed to just have the broth work with marrow. I don't know. I gotta research bone medicine and deer medicine. Okay, this is a transfiguration of worried and over Regan, when one thing turns into another, something more holy, the transfiguration of Jesus, being when he became a divine being.
This is a direct extension of kids work, its spirit, possession. The archetypal work is spirit possession. We are just a vessel for what's already present, our bones, the quartz crystal. Of course, we can travel. The soul is mobile. The soul is a nomad. Any notion that we ever stay in one place is a fallacy anyways, so I embrace the continued journey, but I call on the stability and the ability to live for very cheap or free, without having to move around all the time.
Yeah, okay, the body's coming back online. The bones are coming back online, and just in time for 13 Aqua ball the end of the Tricera on the day of the most ancestors. I call in the bone medicine, Transfiguration, Transubstantiation, the trans archetype inhabiting a meat vessel supported by bones traveling through quartz crystal with the diamond needle. I.