Act V: Rehabilitation of the Feeling Function
Top takeaways for creative practice and self-healing methodology
Period: from the Celtic New Year on astrological Samhain, 7 November 2024, through early January 2025 (Gregorian)
Why does it start at Act V? I don’t know, it’s just what I received from the astral, and I always trust that. I guess it’s like how Star Wars started in the middle; it’s where all the good stuff is. (My first trilogy is equally dreadful.)
*It’s about CONSCIOUS DISSOCIATION for people who need help reconciling with trauma, neurodivergence, and queer/trans acceptance
It’s all nervous system regulation
the ability to retain agency and self-energy while simultaneously pulling back psychologically and getting close emotionally
the ability to witness all kinds of pain as interesting sensations that pass like the clouds
but also to recognize that pain is real and sometimes we really need to feel into it
having ways of somatically releasing > ecstatic dance, safe rage, running, martial arts, ASMR, breathing
supported by medicine > amanita in particular + cacao for heart opening, safe stimulation, retraining the nervous system to balance
for a minute anyway I found the exercise of editing my program approval document grounding instead of traumatizing, because of the healing allowing me to see creative freedom in limitations. It crept back in when I got past the point where someone made the cuts for me but still felt like progress.
ADVISORS: Please read these summaries and listen or read transcripts (pasted below for convenience)
Impressionism abstracts the sensory, surrealism abstracts the psyche
Summary: The discussion explores the duality of Impressionism and Surrealism, describing Impressionism as the abstraction of sensory reality and Surrealism as the abstraction of psychology. Impressionism is likened to masculine, conservative magic tricks, while Surrealism is seen as feminine, intuitive shamanism. The conversation delves into the metaphorical night world of Surrealism, contrasting it with the day world of Impressionism, and emphasizes the transformative power of Surrealism in making the unconscious conscious. Both art forms are seen as forms of alchemy, but Surrealism is noted for its deeper, psychological impact and ability to resonate with individual interpretations.
Outline
Impressionism and Surrealism: A Duality in Art
Speaker 1 explains that Impressionism abstracts the sensory, focusing on visual reality, while Surrealism abstracts psychology, delving into the subconscious.
The conversation explores the duality and partnership between Impressionism and Surrealism, likening them to parents of art.
Impressionism is described as the masculine, conservative, and institutional form, while Surrealism is the feminine, intuitive, and creative force.
Speaker 1 elaborates on the contrasting nature of these art movements, with Impressionism being more about adherence to past forms and Surrealism being about pure feeling and subconscious expression.
Impressionism as Magic Tricks
Speaker 1 compares Impressionism to magic tricks, where the artist abstracts the real thing, making it disappear and reappear.
Surrealism is described as a more advanced form of magic, where the subconscious is made conscious, and the artist conjures the unseen.
The conversation touches on the idea that both Impressionism and Surrealism involve transmutation, but Surrealism is seen as more shamanistic and alchemical.
Speaker 1 mentions the influence of Ayanna's music, describing it as "Trappy Trappy," and relates it to the themes of the discussion.
Surrealism as Shamanism and Alchemy
Speaker 1 continues to explore the idea that Surrealism is like shamanism, involving the transformation of one thing into another.
The night world of Surrealism is contrasted with the day world of Impressionism, with the night world being seen as more powerful and real.
The conversation delves into the role of serotonin in functioning in the day world and how it abstracts us from the true reality of the universe.
Speaker 1 describes Surrealism as the original ancestral medicine, involving fermentation and transformation, while Impressionism is likened to caffeine and stimulants.
The Role of Conscious Dissociation in Art
Speaker 1 discusses the importance of conscious dissociation in art, allowing the artist to channel other energies and entities.
The conversation highlights the need for training and guidance to contain the ceremony and know when to step in and end the performance.
Surrealism is described as the DMT model, representing depth psychology and making the unconscious conscious.
The double alchemy of Surrealism is contrasted with the single alchemy of Impressionism, with Surrealism involving the transformation of the formless to the form and back again.
The Balance Between Impressionism and Surrealism
Speaker 1 concludes that both Impressionism and Surrealism involve conjuring and abstracting reality, but Surrealism is more about psychology.
The conversation reflects on the need to be both Impressionists and Surrealists, moving between the form and the formless.
Speaker 1 expresses a personal preference for Impressionism but acknowledges the advanced nature of Surrealism.
The discussion ends with a reflection on the fascinating differences between Impressionism and Surrealism, each abstracting different aspects of reality.
Transcript (Listen):
Impressionism was the abstraction of reality, of the visual what you could see the sensory Surrealism was the abstraction of psychology, of the mind, of the subconscious. Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay. This is the duality. This is the partnership. This is the relationship. Impressionism and surrealism are like parents of art. Impressionism is, yeah, and it's the opposite of what you think. Just like my parents, impressionism is actually the quote, unquote masculine, the the young, the doing, the containing, the labeling, while the surrealism is the feminine, intuitive, creative, generative, even though it's the one that presents more masculine dude, It's the one that presents more masculine than the popular conception, but it's actually the most feminine, fucking, gender fucking or conceptions of any of these labels and restrictions impressionism feels like it's the feminine, the soft. Brush Strokes and light filled scenes and flowing and pastoral depictions. But this is actually more institutional. This is actually more of an adherence to past form, which is more of a masculine, it's more of a young it's more of A conservatism and conformity. Surrealism, on the other hand, and was just pure feeling, receiving, allowing the subconscious to come forward, automatically, receiving, allowing you and if art is shamanism and impressionism was about abstracting reality, that's conjuring the mean, well, maybe they're both the same. That's hard to say. I was gonna say Surrealism was more shamanistic because you were transmuting things twice. But maybe you are in both cases.
Impression, Impressionism. You're taking the quote, unquote, real thing, the form, and making it abstract, the disappearing act, abracadabra, Hocus, focus. Now you see me. Now you don't I. Surrealism was like an even more advanced magic, because instead of taking what you see and making it go away, which is simple magic, I the most basic trick, you're making the subconscious conscious, your necromancing, your spell casting. You're calling forth the unseen. You're resurrecting the dead and bringing them into being, giving words to the images, giving form to the formless, giving bodies to the dead, but then abstracting them again, calling them force only to send them back, transmuted. Yeah, so this is like so impressionism was like magic, and surrealism is like shamanism, because it's like alchemy, because you're transmuting a thing and do another thing. And I think shamanism at its essence, yes, I know it just means one who knows, but it's like about knowing how to turn things into other things. Okay, multiple threads are coming together. Now I think that's what it is. I'm seeing all the eyes, so I think I'm on to something. But I'm also listening to ayannas music, and it's really Trappy Trappy. It's really trippy. That's funny, trippy. Trappy. Trap and trip up. Yeah, I'm seeing the eyes that are skulls, the Kali, the DMT eyeballs, the serpent, Hall of eyeballs, wall of mirrors. So I think that means I'm onto something here. Impressionism is magic tricks, which are beautiful, but they're slights of hand, playing with the light. It's day world. Impressionism is the day world. Surrealism is the night world, and I think the night medicine is more powerful. And I think the night medicine is more real than reality. Like what they say about DMT, like what they say about psychedelic dream, the day. World is a form, but it's pretend, but it's a model. Serotonin is a thing that we invoke to function in a world that we've constructed. The serotonin model helps us function as a human, but it abstracts us from the reality of the universe, of existence, which is oneness, which is formlessness, which is dissolving and dying and reconstituting, which doesn't have to mean pain and suffering, but it doesn't include it.
Day world, magic tricks to get along in consensus reality. That's Impressionism, that's the day world, that's the serotonin level, surrealism is shamanism. Is the original ancestral medicine, the things that turn into other things. It's fermentation. It's like serotonin is like caffeine and stimulants and night world, medicines, mushrooms, psychedelic beer, I mean, just any kind of fermentation, really things rotting and taking on more beauty. I
Okay, cacao’s interesting because it's kind of both. I think that's why it's such a queer medicine. And Amanita is is really interesting as well, because she's the master of conscious Association, and that's the key to being a good artist or a good shaman. Is conscious dissociation, being able to dissociate, to leave your body and allow the other energies and entities and images to come through you, by retaining that agency to step in when you need to, to say cut, to say the performance is over, to say the drawing is finished. And this is part of me losing myself as a writer, not knowing when to stop. We need training and guidance to know how to contain the ceremony. Anyways, surrealism then being the DMT model, if we're going with that framework, the night world, the intuitive, the feeling and being a representation of depth psychology. It was making the unconscious conscious, giving form to the formless, raising the dead, and then abstracting it again, and then removing the specifics, and then just leaving, like giving it form, and then leaving the impressions so that people can transpose their own meaning onto it, from the formless to the forum back to the formless, again, transformed.
A double alchemy, and that's what separates shamanism from sorcery. That's what separates shamanism from magic. Is the conscious association to bring something forth, so that you can heal it, so that you can alchemize it, so that you can communicate with it, so that you can ask it what it wants to tell you, and then release it, give it its own life. You release it back into the collective so the rest of us can experience it, can enter in and engage with it, because with too many specifics, and it's not accessible, and people have to have an entry point. And when it's just a suggestion, just an impression, then people pick up on the part that resonates with them, and that allows them to step in and make their own interpretation and their own resonance and do their own alchemy and their own healing.
But I think we kind of need to be both Impressionists and surrealists. I mean, that's just a metaphor for the whole thing, right? That's moving between the form and the formless that's being able to operate in the night world and the day world. I don't know. Maybe in being like I love Impressionism, not trying to criticize it. And day world is my criticism, I guess. But I kind of feel like it is because I don't like it as much, but I love the Impressionists, so I don't know, maybe they're both just different versions of the night world, and surrealism is just like the More advanced level. Because either way, I suppose you're conjuring, you're taking reality and abstracting it and allowing people to impose their own impressions onto it. But yeah, the fact that one's about psychology is really interesting. One's about what we can see one's about the sensory. Impressionism is about abstracting the sensory, and surrealism is about abstracting consciousness. It's fascinating. I
Tarot, Maya calendar, Western astrology as impressions and surrealism
Summary: Riordan Regan discusses the surreal and abstract nature of Jodorowsky's interpretation of the Tarot, emphasizing its transformation from an abstract concept to a concrete work. He explores the archetypal forces and transfiguration within the Tarot, drawing parallels to Fight Club's impact on his spiritual journey. Regan reflects on the expansive nature of archetypes, such as the Pope card, and their interaction with astrology and the Maya system. He also touches on the personal significance of specific cards, like Death and the Page of Swords, and their resonance with his own experiences and identity, particularly in the context of trans and emergent archetypes.
Action items:
Explore the relationship between Tarot, the Maya calendar, and Western astrology as tools of divination and shamanism.
Look up the meaning of the Page of Swords card that was drawn.
Determine Kit's birthday to explore the significance of the Death card.
Continue the exploration of how archetypes can be larger and more expansive than individual symbols or cards.
Outline
Surrealism and the Abstraction of Tarot
Riordan Regan discusses the surrealism of Jodorowsky's interpretation of the Tarot, describing it as an abstraction of an abstraction.
He explains how Jodoran's divination and exploration of the Tarot created a concrete form from an abstract concept.
Riordan reflects on the complexity of receiving and re-abstracting Jodorowsky's interpretation through his own senses and experiences.
He mentions the semi-conscious state he is in while reading the book, which adds to the dream-like experience of receiving the messages.
The Book's Life and World Building
Riordan describes how the Way of the Tarot book has taken on a life of its own, becoming a universe created by Jodorowsky.
He notes that despite the book being based on extensive research, it is still filtered through Jodorowsky's unique lens.
The book is now an abstraction again, and Riordan is receiving it directly, translating it through his own experience.
He compares this process to double alchemy, involving dissociation, dissolution, and reanimation.
Fight Club and Spiritual Exploration
Riordan reflects on how Fight Club, a masculine movie, opened him up to the spiritual realm and feminine aspects.
He discusses how the movie made Buddhism accessible to a modern consumerist generation.
The movie's portrayal of masculinity and materialism led Riordan to explore world religions and the feminine.
He finds parallels between Jodorowsky's interpretation of the Tarot and the trans experience, despite Jodorowsky not having the language for it.
Archetypes and Transformation
Riordan explores the concept of archetypes and their expansive nature, questioning if they can be expressed in one card.
He mentions the Pope card in the Tarot, which he interprets as the ancestor and the greatest magician.
Riordan discusses the complexity of archetypes and their interaction with astrology and the Maya system.
He reflects on the accuracy of the Maya system, which combines the quantifiable and the abstract, symbolizing larger energies.
Depth Psychology and Self-Healing
Riordan talks about the importance of following images and feelings in depth psychology and self-healing.
He mentions the layers of abstraction involved in the Tarot, Jodorowsky's book, and the artistic renditions of Celtic spirits on his altar.
The images capture aspects of the archetypes in the moment, which are larger and more expansive.
Riordan reflects on the accuracy of the Maya system and its marriage of the quantifiable and the abstract.
The Journey to the Lover
Riordan discusses his journey towards the Lover card in the Tarot, symbolizing the search for spiritual longing and partnership.
He shares an archetypal astrology reading where Lawrence Hillman interpreted his birth chart as embodying the trans archetype.
Riordan reflects on his journey from seeking completion and partnership externally to finding it within himself.
He connects this journey to the concept of Transubstantiation, where the Divine is inherent within everything.
The Hollow Bone and Mediator Role
Riordan describes himself as an empty, shapeless vessel transporting light wherever the wind wills.
He connects this to the concept of the hollow bone in shamanism, which clears obstacles from the path of communication to the Supreme Being.
Riordan reflects on the mediator role between words and images, as described in Jodorowsky's book.
He concludes by emphasizing the importance of words and images in creating reality and the expansive nature of archetypes.
Transcript (Listen):
This is cool and wild. This is surrealism. Now we're in the realm of surrealism, which is Jodorowsky realm, an abstraction of an abstraction. His study of the Tarot created its own thing, his giving words to images concretizing What was an abstraction. The Tarot is an abstraction of the consensus world. He gave form to that formless through his divination, exploration, deep dive with it. Now it's abstracted again. Wait now I'm receiving the messages from it. In creating this book, it created something concrete. It gave form to images. But it's also a work in itself that now has taken on its own life, its words, but its images, because I'm receiving his abstraction. Wait, this is so complicated. I'm receiving his concretization of something abstract, but that's his interpretation, and only he knows exactly what he means, and only he experienced it. So in me reading it, I'm re abstracting it. I'm taking the words that were made from images and making them images again, because I'm reading them and I'm receiving them through my senses, through a semi conscious realm, especially because I'm doing this like in the early morning, and hypnotic state,
not Bemushroomed yet. Well, sort of Amanita. Why do I think that doesn't count? Because yeah, doesn't matter. Only the tiny, one drop of Amanita, that counts. Yeah, I'm kind of in the dream realm receiving and I felt the book calling to me like the book [The Way of the Tarot by Jodorowsky] has now taken on a life of its own. The book is his recreation. So this is world building. This is quantum. This is creating a universe. He made his own universe of the Tarot. He created his own world of material. This is his interpretation, even if it's based on tons of research and tons of other sources, it's still through his lens. It's filtered through his container, through his prenda. So now it's become an abstraction again, and now I'm receiving it directly and translating it through my experience, but like it's become an archetypal force now, or has it? Or is it just that the archetypes are calling to me through his interpretation, or is it both? I think it's both, but this is like how surrealism is double alchemy, almost transfiguration. Dissociation, dissolution, trans substantiation, dissolution, reanimation and remix. What is the remix?
They say the book is always better than the movie, but that isn't true when it comes to fight club. I actually think the movie was better than the book. Maybe that's part of why that work spoke to me so much. It was an abstraction of Buddhism, but it made it into something accessible for a modern consumerist generation. With lots of repressed aggression and alienation. I put it in a language we could understand, and it opened me up to the spiritual realm. Through a movie that seemed like it was really masculine and about the material, it opened me up to the whole cosmos that started me on my world religions exploration. It opened me up to the feminine. Through Fight Club, that most masculine movie, it opened me up to the feminine. And there's something in this with Jodorowsky, like the Tarot, this very feminine, intuitive, generative thing. That a masculine experienced person has studied and translated and presented an interpretation that feels like very trans, which is really interesting. It's like the most trans thing I've read outside of actual trans writing. He just doesn't quite have that language for it, but he uses androgyne A lot, which is the same thing to me, like not literally, but in the way he's using it in this context. And kit is here accompany me. He's encouraged there. Wow, kit, sorry, I just misgendered you. I'm so sorry. Z is encouraging me. It's because I was just talking about dudes. I'm sorry. Z is saying, Yeah, that's part of me too. It's all part of me, okay. He okay. I know all pronouns are okay, but I don't want to use them all. Um, okay. I'm on the cusp of something. Yeah. It was just wild this morning, how the book called me. It was calling to me. I could hear the voices, and I felt like I should allow myself to be guided and pick a card from the full deck. So I put everything back in it, and I drew something out, and it didn't feel that resonant. It kind of felt like me trying and I got injustice, which was really interesting. But then when I looked up the cards that I had intentionally pulled out and put on my altar, like these are resonating like it was justice, which is 13 gone. Well, I don't know about 13, but it's con. I'm reading it right now. It's also the ancestor card in the Wildwood. It's about the beam that's the emissary between the worlds wisdom, the translator. Yeah, this is really Kan. That's the Pope. The Pope is the ancestor. Is Kan, the one who can be the greatest magician and sorcerer or the wisest elder and spiritual emissary,
The one who is seduced by power too easily, the one who teaches, who communicates their spiritual experience and it can also be an idealized spiritual figure, the guru that I attached too much to. The other cards that I intentionally placed on the altar were death and
the page of swords, which I haven't looked up yet, and from if the Pope spoke on page 154 I mean, this is The two con i am first and foremost mediator of myself between my Sublime spiritual nature and my most instinctive humanity. I have chosen to be the place where they interact. I am at the service of this communication between. In the high and low My mission is to unite apparent opposites. A bridge is not a country. It is merely a place of passage. It permits the circulation of the creative energies of this magnificently illusory phenomenon we call life. It is not by isolating myself, but by taking all paths that I am able to announce the good news. I mean, holy shit, I would have never guessed that the Pope was con. And, I mean, the Pope is too con. Specifically, I think that maybe an aspect so, because archetypes are complex, and so this makes me wonder, like, Can they even be expressed in one card? Are the archetypes larger? This is what I want to explore as part of all of this thesis too, is, are the archetypes? Because this can be part of the trans and emergent archetype discussion. Are they larger? I mean, they have to be larger than these symbols, right? Like I feel like Khan as an archetype. This is part of why I'm trying to feel into how astrology, the Western astrology system, the Maya astrology system and Tarot all interact to convey and experience how they all interact as tools of divination and devising, which is shamanism, which is being a hollow bone, just receiving the energies that are present and interpreting them through some kind of expression that people can understand, be it a play, be it a book, be it a drawing, whatever. And I feel like part of why the Maya system is so accurate is because it's really this marriage of the quantifiable and the abstract, because each day's energy combines a number, a specific, quantifiable measure. It's like the earthly, the form, with an archetype, an energy, something that is larger than one image, one number one description. So con is hugely expansive. 13 con is symbolized more by death, which is the card that kit shows which, yeah, is like the most trans. I got to find out what kids birthday is. Oh, my God, I can't believe I've never done 00. I'm gonna do that. Oh, they're excited about that. Um. But then the pope card, the ancestor, which is the steg, which is an Anita, which is the two cards. The two images I've had on my altar are death 13, the journey, the Crone, the calyux, the Raven in the ancestor the deer, the stag, the Shaman. This is heaven and earth. This is Moon and Sun, night world, day world. Maybe I don't know they're both kind of night energies.
these two images are really potent for a reason, and this is depth psychology, and this is self healing, is following the image, following the feeling. So I'm going with it, and we're following this trail, and we're trusting these images, and we're trusting these methods and methodologies. And so it's like interesting though, the layers of abstraction, because there's the Tarot, and then there's Jodorowsky taro book, there's these archetypes, and then there's these artistic renditions of the Celtic spirits that are on my altar, you know, but this is kind of what I'm saying. The images capture aspects of the archetypes in that moment that are larger and more expansive. And I think the Maya system, I don't know, the way, I guess the Tarot uses a number and image too. Anyways, this is something to explore, but there feels something more accurate to me that my assistant feels more expansive. Anyways, it's just so cool that today. Is too con and the ancestor card that it was called to look up that I heard like heard almost in human language, the book itself calling to me, saying, Look up the cards that are already on your altar. I
and this is writing, as drawing. Drawing as writing, as Anthi talks about, this is the images animating themselves, forming a reality constituted by language and of course, the pope moves towards the lover. The next card is the lover. My journey realizing that, yeah, the search for the spiritual longing for the partnership, starts within the lover within. I'm searching for it outside and inside myself, as Lawrence Hillman told me in my archetypal astrology reading the other day, yes, son of James Hillman, who interpreted the snapshot of the sky on the day I was born and looked at that correspondence and said that I am the living embodiment of the trans archetype, essentially because I represent this shift from Pisces to Aquarius, because I started my journey looking for completion and partnership and romance, even if you will, In Jesus, and then that reality was stripped for me, and I thought it was my mom, and then that reality was stripped for me, and then I looked for it in lovers, and then that reality was stripped for me, and then I realized that it was within, and that by going within, I found the oneness in the poly, in the queer and the Yeah. The Transubstantiation of the Divine into everything. No, this reality is a Transubstantiation of the Divine that already is inherent within everything. And that's what archetypal astrology is, and that's what correspondence is, and that's what all these symbol systems are. They're just reflecting that everything is an infinite facet of the same diamond. The Pope is also the shaman the hollow bone, because it talks about clearing all obstacles from a path of communication to the Supreme Being. Oh, my God. In this Jodorowsky book, I am an empty, shapeless vessel that transports the lights wherever the wind wills. I mean, I almost wrote this word for word the other day, and that's the hollow bone to find. Okay, in the last line of this entry, I am the final frontier between words and the unthinkable language creating reality, words versus images, the Pope, the shaman, the hollow bone as the mediator between the words and the images and.
Working on:
Cacao zine and related content outreach/education
Save the Hackney baths campaign: collecting testimonials and creating pitch deck about the Baths as a self-/community healing centre
Volunteer work with Ecstatic Dance UK
Meetings/outreach in progress or to schedule:
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Follow up with Avril Corroon re: early April, Dublin residencies and Phil McCrilly re: spring Belfast visit
Flavia Davila
Visit Bishopsgate archives for Albanz work before end of Jan
Sources/building upon the work of:
depth psychology (Jung, J. Hillman, Tarnas, )
archetypal and astrological studies (J. Hillman, L. Hillman, Levine, Tarnas)
classics/anthropology and herbalism/ethnobotany/psychedelics (McKenna, Kilindi Iyi, Ritter, Sherman-Lewis, Gutierrez, Muraresku, Valamoti, Arnold, McGovern, Plotkin)
Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic and Tarot
practice-based research by performers, visual artists, and artist-chefs who represent the queer/trans/diverse perspective (Albanz, Besse, Brathwaite-Shirley, Corroon, Danowski, Davila, McGrady, Muholi, McCrilly, Pacleb)
principles/framework of Integral Theory/Spiral Dynamics (Ken Wilber) and morphic resonance (Rupert Sheldrake)
ancient and Indigenous cosmologies (Elmy, Gutierrez, Ritter, Sherman-Lewis, direct sources/experience)
trauma healing methodologies/research (De la Rosa, Maté, Schwartz)
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
https://www.daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com/i-cant-remember-a-time-i-didnt-need
Bits for progress report/thesis
where each stage of evolution of any system involves transcending and including the previous one, and the “laws” of nature are habits or suggestions in a universe constantly changing and in motion
Everything is a microcosm of the macrocosm, so healing our collective trauma starts by healing ourselves.
Inclusion has to come before transcendence, both on an individual and collective level. We must welcome the rejected/shadow parts back home to become whole
In many ways a continuation of Kit Danowski’s work on performing with the dead using adapted African ancestral practices–fusing this with archetypal/depth psychology and astrology as well as IFS and psychodramatic/devising techniques. Invoking plant medicine and interpreted through the AI to create a methodology of cyberdelic gonzo autoethnography and transpersonal creative divination and performance devising.
It is spirit possession–like Danowski’s method involves invoking the orishas, I invoke the archetypes, natural world, plants/mushrooms, and parts of self.
It is death medicine and underworld work, literally and figuratively invoking the dead and working in darkness. Much of this work takes place at night.
Formal research studies on ecstatic dance? Amanita muscaria? Cacao? Basically nothing has been done on this
Intersection of art, psychology, language-as-reality, consciousness: surrealism as the abstraction of mind; impressionism as the abstraction of matter
Highlights:
It's about working with the energies that are already present, whether it's the archetypes or our feelings.
Amanita and Cacao, Datura and all these death plants, demonized and blamed for people's problems. To say that they made us sick or crazy is like saying somebody made us angry. No, this isn't how it works. No one can make us anything. It's about working with the energies that are already present, whether it's the archetypes or our feelings. And now I see what Jung meant by the archetypes possess us. We are just vessels for the vibrations that are already present, the vibration of anger, the vibration of war, whether it's people or planets, we're all just big fucking particles, the cultures with ancient roots do the same thing. God, what the fuck does that say? Oh, all the cultures with ancient roots do the same things for a reason, because there's universal resonance. The anger is present. Someone didn't make me angry, just like mercury didn't make me just like Mercury's placement on the day I incarnate, it didn't make me a good communicator. The energy of communication was present in the sky, Mercury Hermes was possessing the particles, possessing both my corpus and the planetary alignments at this precise moment. And this is even why astrology is sort of a mindfulness practice, really, is that it's just tuning in being present to what's happening, to what's resonating, whether in the cosmos or your own body, it's a correspondence, it's a reflection. And now this is what was so cool. This morning, I see exactly how my work is an extension, directly, of Kit’s. Now it makes sense, because it's all possession. It's all spirit possession, whether calling in an Orisha or invoking archetype, they're just languaging for the same thing as above, so below in this dimension, as in the other realm, we're just reflecting what's already present, emitting the same resonant frequency and. It's all possession. Celtic, Maya, syncretic, Shipibo, Buddhist, it's all just ways of letting myself be consumed by the energies that are showing up in that moment.
So are both just using different methods of devising. What's already here?
I've come up with stories about all these things in my head, but I don't think I've asked the parts directly, and that's the point of this whole thing. Direct experience, direct conversation, direct communication, whether it's a tree or a plant or a past part of self or a part of your body or a cancer cell, what are you trying to tell me?
I tried to keep my body, my spinal column, straight. And I realized that I was afraid to do that. I was afraid to stand up straight. I was afraid to bear my own weight. I was afraid to put weight on my legs. I've always been afraid to put weight on my legs, specifically my glutes. Why have I been afraid to put weight on my glutes? It's so wild, like feeling in the legs is scary, and I don't quite understand why yet, but yeah, as I did this, I asked the toes why they were numb, and they said it came from the pelvis, and the pelvis told me, You never even asked me what I. Was trying to tell you, and it reminded me of my own words at the hospital after I tried to kill myself. The phrase that probably honestly kept me out of the psych ward is when I mumbled. They asked why I did it, and they said I just wanted him to listen to me
Slow it down, explode it out. Crawl inside. space and time are not what we think they are. We can manipulate them. We can bend them. We can get inside them. Yeah, oh, no. There's more dimensions than we see present. We don't have to accept what we've been given. And there is more space, and there is more time, and there is more expansion, and I do think more DMT production. I don't care if there's data on it or not, but I do need to find out about that
if you are what makes you angry, if you are only triggered based on something that's within you, then I'm mad at myself for keeping myself prisoner in a woman's body, quote, unquote, in a feminine performance, in a victim story, in those horrible relationships in the house of horrors in Austin and all these prisons. So I love you. Please forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for giving my body away to people who didn't deserve it. I'm sorry for not respecting my own boundaries and borders. No wonder I'm mad at the UK for imposing theirs on me. I haven't respected my own, I let so many people in that didn't deserve it, just because I didn't want to go home alone to that apartment and face myself. It's so funny now it's like, I can't get enough time alone.
it's so deeply human. I haven't wanted to be one. I haven't wanted to be a person. I wasn't able to listen to the pelvis because it was scary as fuck, and I still wasn't safe in California. This is a powerful archetype possessing me. It is almost the power of Saq ‘Iq, the hurricane, the Junjapu, is it Aries? Is it Pluto? The war inside me, the two sides trying to fall separately, the underworld Journey rising up to meet me. It's powerful. It threw me from my bike, and I was afraid to fully engage with it in California when I didn't have the support I needed.
my bones want to go home to Ireland. My bones want to go home. That's what I was hearing. My bones want to go home, and I think it's dark. I don't know there's something powerful ancestral calling me, but England is home too, and and so I kept thinking last night of the enclosures and the connection between African and Irish cultures. And I need to research that more the two sides of myself are at war, the English and the Irish, the Protestant, the Catholics, the subjugated and the conquerors, the imperialists, the whole freaking world, two sides of my body trying to fall two separate ways. And interestingly, dad is representing the opposite of what you'd think Dad is the intuitive, generative side, the artists longing to be seen, the bones, longing to reconnect with the ancestral legacy in the druidic forest. Mom is the side of the conquerors and the colonists. They were the freaking Protestant preachers trying to force their religion on everyone, just like that Blake story. Urizen.
he didn't give me an Irish name, and it felt like everyone else in the family had one, and I never felt like I belonged with them. Me and Amber were the only ones, the black sheep of the family. The rejection by the regans really fucking hurt me. Because it was a rejection of my legacy, my ancestry, the only clear tie I had. No wonder I was obsessed with the Lion King. I was the rightful heir to the throne, the eldest son of the O Regan's but I was denied three times, like Jesus, by name, my lineage and my manhood.
The Celts had sacred altars and Portal places where they created altars and made offerings, and they tracked the cycles of time and they kept fires all of this, just like the Maya. And supposedly they even had a beverage. It was kind of like cacao.
They took our land from us, the colonists. And we are the earth, and so to take our lands is to take our personhood, our identity, to dissolve, to dissociate us from our physical environment. They created enclosures and created private property, and they took our land from us and said we weren't even Welcome on it. They took everyone's land all over the earth. The English enslaved the whole world. Every time I go to dance, there's always some moment where I really feel that African, Irish connection coming through so strongly and resonant. And sometimes I wonder why I'm trying to live in the land of the colonizers, and I don't know all the places I'm trying to get visas, or the lands of the colonizers, the Brits, the Dutch and the Germans. So I need to look more at Ireland, and there's something really resonating and really vibrating on my body when Kaz was talking about the Irish artist visa, and Dublin's always calling, and Kaz a story about getting a Colombian visa, made me see that it was possible. So I made up a story about why it couldn't happen. But Kaz shows me that magic is possible. And I've always felt that if I could just talk to someone in person and look at a fellow Irishman in the eyes and appeal to them on a human level, that they would make an exception.
Amanita the teacher + too much/not enough culture
Riordan Regan discusses the emotional and physical pain of feeling unrooted, linking it to ancestral traumas and the broader issues of consumerism, capitalism, and healthcare in America. He emphasizes the need for community, reciprocity, and respect for life, criticizing a system that prioritizes profit over human needs. Regan highlights the role of Amanita in addressing these issues by working on GABA receptors, helping to manage information overload. He advocates for reconnecting with our roots, indigenous values, and the natural world, suggesting that medicinal practices and syncretism can help humanity expand and awaken.
Action Items:
Explore the use of Amanita and other plant medicines to help individuals reconnect with their roots and inner worthiness.
Develop a framework for initiation, training, apprenticeship, and mentorship to support individuals who are highly sensitive and open to the astral realms.
Observe nature and learn from the self-regulating systems of the natural world to find balance and harmony within the larger system.
Outline
Amanita and the Pain of Unworthiness
Riordan Regan discusses the pain of unworthiness and breaking one's root, emphasizing the importance of reconnection and rooting.
Amanita is highlighted for its ability to work on GABA receptors, helping to manage the flood of information.
The conversation touches on the broader issues of consumerism, capitalism, and over-extractivism, and the need to widen the “I” and let more light in.
Riordan Regan critiques the American consumer culture, particularly the lack of respect for human life and healthcare.
Cultural Programming and Systemic Failures
Riordan Regan elaborates on the cultural programming that leads to a lack of regard for life, including the medical-industrial complex.
The conversation highlights the stress and trauma caused by the healthcare system, which nickel-and-dimes patients and sends unexpected bills.
Riordan Regan shares a personal story of being in the emergency room, feeling abandoned by the caregiver, and the broader cultural issues of narcissism and co-dependence.
The discussion emphasizes the need for a foundation and regard for life, questioning how we can grow up with a regard for life on Earth in a system that doesn't respect ours.
Reconnecting to Rooting and Indigeneity
Amanita is presented as a tool to help reconnect to inner worthiness and deservedness, promoting healthy dissociation and reconnection to the whole system.
The conversation explores the concept of syncretism, sharing ideas and belief systems across cultures, and the potential for expanding human consciousness.
Riordan Regan discusses the importance of regarding one's own life first and the paradox of extreme behaviors leading to a realization of something more.
The discussion touches on the lack of frameworks for initiation, training, apprenticeship, and mentorship in the Western modern tradition.
Medicine and the Antidote
Riordan Regan explains the concept of the antidote being a bit of the poison, and how medicine often involves going further into the pain to find the cure.
The conversation highlights the importance of dissociation in managing pain and information overload, helping to separate what is us and what is other.
Riordan Regan discusses the role of Amanita in regulating GABA receptors and slowing down the flood of information, allowing us to breathe and connect with our inner knowing.
The discussion emphasizes the need for guidance and the potential for learning from nature, the original teachers, to live in balance and harmony with the system.
The Human Game of Forgetting and Remembering
Riordan Regan describes the human experience as a process of forgetting and remembering, dying and resurrecting, and the importance of guidance in navigating this process.
The conversation highlights the role of DMT in activating inner knowing and the importance of grounding and interpretation of experiences.
Riordan Regan discusses the need for balance and harmony with the whole system, learning from nature, and the potential for over-dissociation as a curse and a gift.
The discussion concludes with the importance of Amanita in regulating GABA receptors and turning down the noise to tune in the signal, helping us connect with our inner knowing and the system.
Listen / Transcript:
Amanita for the pain of unworthiness, for add for the pain of breaking your pelvis, your root.
Amanita, what restores us from the pain of unrootedness, breaking my root, letting the pain rise to the surface, seeing our ancestral traumas,
healing the physical pain of the body that manifests itself through things that we're not listening to and our soul is trying to tell us
about reconnection, about rooting and planting and being mycelial again.
Amanita teaches us because it works on the GABA receptors, which relates to the flood of information coming in from this system.
Too much, and not enough of something. It's at the root of the whole thing. It's at the root of consumerism and capitalism and over extractivism.
We gotta widen the “I” and let more light in. We get stuck in these cycles of taking more
than the system can support when we see ourselves as separate,
when it's an I instead of a we, when it's my needs versus the whole system in community, in reciprocity.
We're not taught these things. We're not taught these values in consumer culture, especially not as Americans.
Where human life isn't even respected enough to receive health care
to keep us alive, where, where we have to scrape by without what we need to survive, where we don't even have the expectation
of being provided for in the most catastrophic situation. And so then when it comes, not only are you turning down things you need,
not getting enough of critical care to preserve your life force vitality, but you're stressing through the whole thing,
putting the system through even more trauma when it's supposed to be healing by nickel and diming, turning away the testing.
How much is that pill costing? No, I don't think I need that lab work. How many hundreds of dollars will that be?
Which private contracting company is going to send me a separate bill for 1000s of dollars five months later, when I think the whole thing is over and behind me?
Oh, and that's after I spend four days in the emergency room peeing into a tube, wearing diapers for the first time since I was two,
while the person who I’m living with shows up into the waiting room and asks how I'm going to look after myself once I get out of here,
and I think to myself, well, I thought you were going to help me. I don't know anybody else.
Oh, too much / not enough kids. We're a culture of narcissists and codependents, but it's not really even our fault. We're programmed for it,
because the culture gives us too much of what we don't need and not enough of other things, just like my own parents gave to me.
So how do we have any rooting, how do we have any foundation?
How do we grow up with a regard for any life on earth when we grow up in a system that doesn't regard ours,
that will let you die, literally, because you can't pay the bill to the fucking pharmaceutical medical allopathic industry,
they'll let you die and then send you a bill for $100,000 after the fact to your last surviving relatives.
How are we ever supposed to regard any life on Earth? Of course, we take more and more and more. Of course, it never feels like enough.
Of course, we're a country of hungry ghosts. We grow up being taught that we're worth nothing.
So Amanita can help us reconnect to this rooting by not only connecting us to our own inner worthiness and deservedness, showing us healthy dissociation that can connect us back into the whole system. It can connect us back to our own indigeneity, which shares the same value systems as other animistic cultures and legacies,
where we don't have to appropriate someone else's traditions and we can look to our own bones and backgrounds and belief systems,
and then we see the commonality, and then we see the “I”/eye widened to let more Light in. The eye becomes the we; I need reciprocity.
But we also see the culture is formed by syncretism, which means sharing ideas and belief systems,
which means swapping symbols and practices with other cultures we come in contact with,
and so maybe we can help all of humanity expand and awaken by sharing our medicine traditions.
Because some of these things just work so perfectly together that it wouldn't make any sense why they do unless they wanted to be together.
The key is not to take but to share honor and acknowledge and reciprocate.
But we’ve got to do this with ourselves first. We got to regard our own life first. I guess that's the paradox,
is that sometimes these medicines and extreme behaviors are exactly what we need
to lead us down the path that shows us that there's something more than this.
Pain is too much information rushing into the body at once so it overwhelms the system. The ADD kid is the extra sensitive, extra sensory one, the one most open to the astral, the one who, in another culture, would be a shaman, because their crown is just torn open, and all the other voices from the other side are pouring in, and they can't tell where they end and other things begin,
because we have no framework for initiation and training, apprenticeship and mentorship in this system, in the Western modern tradition, quote, unquote, quote, unquot-tations, and the system where we wrote things down and fixed them and pretended like that was the truth and they were never changing, when really the ones who ensuring those histories were the dominators who had a certain version of culture they wanted to preserve. So the antidote is always a bit of the poison. That's how medicine works, and always has. Ee turned it into taking something to blunt the pain and take away the symptoms. But in fact, sometimes the cure is going further into them,
and sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it's being gentle with ourselves.
The medicine of dissociation helps us maintain a safe distance from the pain that can overwhelm us from so much information flooding in. It can help us slow things down and learn to separate what's us and what is other things. Slowing it down, helping us interpret the different voices coming in. Through the crown and all from all around
and realizing that we're not crazy. We're not hallucinating. It's not like they've told us all these years. We're not witches and black magicians,
or maybe we are, but we're reframing that definition. Really we're just the ones who can listen to the subtle realms of spirit
and the voices that aren't very loud in decibels, but scream and symbols and images,
speak through the vessels that are our bodies, the altars, the prendas, the unique collectors of information and experience
captured for a moment in this thing that we pretend a solid matter, a person that only appears in observation and relation for a passing instant
before it disappears in ether and dissolves in acid again.
abracadabra, hocus pocus. Suddenly, I have a corpus.
Now you see me. Now you don't. shit, I had it, then I lost it. It's okay. This whole human game is just a process
of forgetting and remembering, dying and resurrecting over and over and over again. A
nd it makes sense when you put it in context. It makes sense when we have someone guide us,
but without it, it's really confusing and super overwhelming, too much and not enough of everything it seems,
until someone takes us by the hand and leads us through that darkened tunnel back to the ancestral land, the place where our bones remember and our nervous systems regulate; the forest and the lands of our people. For me, it's the mist that leads us back to the darkness where we see most clearly.
DMT, producing endogenously, third eye activating the real inner knowing,
the kind that you don't read in a book, but feel in your body.
So with someone to guide us and ground us and help us interpret these experiences, we can realize how much we need of certain things
and what others we can live without entirely. And it's know how to live in balance and harmony
with the whole system, but we need guidance, and we can learn from the plants and the fungi
and the trees and the animals directly.
The way we learn is by observing our original teachers: nature, the system that just runs without having to think about it,
the system that regulates itself and balances out. And this is where the impulse comes, I think, sometimes to just tune it out,
to dissociate so far that we can't come back. Because the curse of the ego is awareness, but it's also the gift,
and if we can learn to dance with it, we realize that we won the lottery by incarnating into human existence,
and we see why is the envy of the cosmos,
but it's a lot of information, and that's where Amanita is the teacher to regulate the GABA of receptors and slow down
the flood of information so it doesn't overwhelm us with so much coming in every second, helping us breathe and
get back to what our bones know and we feel in our souls. Turn down the noise and tune in the signal.
dissociation: when the dream becomes reality
(something we can engage with and make magical)
vs depersonalization: when nothing seems real, and it stops being fun
the question isn’t whether you’re dissociating
but whether it’s happening to you
or you’re doing it consciously
voluntarily
going into the night world for exploration vs clubbed over the head by your past self or a substance or an epigenetic pattern or a partner and drug into a blackout
where you wander lost like the minotaur
blinded, bumping into walls
trying to remember how you even got here at all.
ethanol, alcohol, that tricky molecule and compound
the carrier of healing herbs, inspirer of poetry, loosener of verbs
no wonder it both helps and hurts,
it’s the impetus of agriculture, humanity’s greatest blessing and curse
it begins with a fall
GABA can mitigate the flood of too-much information that can overwhelm a system
so we get just enough
maintaining a safe distance between us and other stuff
GABA receptors are a class of receptors in the brain that respond to the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA is the primary inhibitory compound in the central nervous system of mature vertebrates.
There are two main classes of GABA receptors: GABAA and GABAB:
GABAA receptors
These receptors are ligand-gated ion channels that mediate fast synaptic transmission. They are made up of five subunits that surround a chloride ion-selective channel. GABAA receptors are responsive to many drugs, including benzodiazepines, which are used for their sedative and anxiolytic effects.
GABAB receptors
These receptors are G protein-coupled receptors that mediate slow synaptic transmission. They are associated with memory, mood, and pain.
GABA receptors are found on many cell types throughout the central nervous system, including astrocytes. The physiological significance of GABA receptor activation in astrocytes is not yet known, but it may be involved in ion homeostasis and pH regulation.
GABA receptor dysfunction has been linked to a number of neuropsychiatric disorders, including:
Epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Cervical dystonia, Autism spectrum disorder, Schizophrenia, and Depression.
Alcohol exposure can alter the function of GABA receptors, and these receptors may play a role in the development of alcohol tolerance and dependence.
Meeting Amanita
I am about to undertake my first proper journey with Amanita muscaria today, after a year of microdosing through my broken pelvis. I meet her with no cacao, no nothing in my system interfering, just me and her; the intimacy I’ve been scared of. Pleasure with a woman—perhaps my greatest fear? We’ll see. I think my greatest fear might be dying alone, or losing my mom, or going crazy, but my stomach is getting sick and churny, so maybe I just nailed it.
Today is 9 Kame, the number of life and nahual of death energy; the day to ask our ancestors for help facing our fears so we know what to have the surgeon of Tijax cut out so that we may be reborn brand new. On Christmas morning, just like the Christ child I always knew I was. But I found that divinity through the forest and the interconnection with the animals, and the trees and plants and birds and I can’t even begin to explain how GOOD it feels to have that connection back again.
I closed the Solstice portal as another one opens for Amanita, I can’t wait to meet her, but I also have a healthy fear. I realized in the woods today that this is sometimes the only way I feel okay, in ceremony or in the forest or usually when I’m drawing something. In another culture I’d be a shaman. Ceremony is my calling.
But how can I make this part of a life supported under capitalism? How can I stop participating in that system, spending money I don’t have on shit I don’t need at the grocery store? Ugh. I got sucked into that black hole again today, as soon as I announced I was going to draw and learn all day. I think I should stop saying things like that. Somehow it makes me less likely to do ti.
So I call upon the Kanti, the Siberian group who engage with Amanita to sing the heroic epic songs of their people. As Ash recommended, I will ask the mushroom to show me through the spirit of the bear and the squirrel and the wren and the robin and the winter ermine how to meet my dreams or visions with courage. How to drop everything like Jung did and just LET GO, face my fears bravely and just LEAP, like I used to with codependency, onl t this time into self-expression, Eros, pleasure; live in Kairos, not Chronos; more Mythos, less Logos.
Let’s go.
—
Ash just slayed me, I’m sobbing at the computer screen, because she just gave me permission, told me I’m not a bad kid. “If we are living in the dream 100% of the time then maybe we aren’t doing our duty as humans in a body—but if you’re a chronic pain experiencer and you have a hard time just wanting to be alive, maybe it’s a good thing to be such a devotee of something like Amanita muscaria.”
i always think i’m bad and wrong and abusing the medicine - but Ama and cacao have made me want to live when I wanted to die - same with psilocybin - WE DO WHAT WE HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE - AND WE DO IT UNTIL WE DON’T NEED TO ANYMORE - regardless of whether that outlasts the physical body.
*the Nutcracker ALL takes place inside a dream.
Enhance self-esteem! Somatic experience of “I” ness - am I allowed to take up space?
Courage to share what I am meant to share in the world–YES! And it’s ok to receive!
But people w big egos it can get worse!
CAN EMPOWER YOU WITH THE ENTIRE MYCHORHIZZAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FOREST - yes this is what I felt this morning! This is inherently ego-checking - bc you are part of an ECOSYSTEM
“You can BE THE MAGICIAN WHO CREATES EMERGENT PROPERTIES BY CALLING IN THE ENTIRE INTELLIGENCE OF THE FOREST”-!!! TRANS EMERGENCE
DUDE! She keeps giving me a break on all my shame feelings and so do the crowd. They are all doing what I’m doing, stacking things on high pain days, ama and psilocybin and LSD and cacao is what I do but I keep feeling like i’m bad and wrong - you DO HAVE A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE WHEN YOU ARE IN A HIGH PAIN SITUATION - BECAUSE “THE MUSHROOM HAS WORK TO DO” - IN OTHER AREAS
KNOW THY STACK! So i can’t standardize for anyone - it’s about empowering them to build their own.
Lightning strikes of information, this happens, I get the downloads so fast I can’t keep up w it
EYES ON THE PRIZE
As an ADD kid, all I have been craving for is FOCUS, and yet I havent felt i could get a purchase on it. everything was too fascinating, everything also felt like too much pressure amnd respomnsibility, i had to be everything to everyone and everything ust like with mom and dad
but I am finding the healing and it’s trickling down to everything
I got the message on that equinox journey in 2023 - after breaking convention and before nest - it’s about briding the realms of academia and science and spirituality and art and esoteric fuckin shit. i got the message then but I didn’t trust it but it keeps coming back again and again.
IN MY JOURNEY OF NOMADING AND CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLORING - NOMADING TRANSDIMENSIONALLY - I HAVE LEARNED TO FOLLOW THE FEELING, WHEN THE VOICE SAYS SOMETHING ND I KNOW I CAN TRUST IT WHICH IS SO RARE
it told me to BE A STUDENT OF MUSHROOMS AND CACAO
AND APPRENTICE W ASH AND ACACEA
and two years later here I am again
they are my guides but the plants and fungi are my teachers
and I am not rooted yet becase i need to be free to go where the voice takes me
and i am going into the night world because it’s the key to everything
the plants that flourish under cover of darkness like DMT
cacao that blossoms in the night and amanita the fungi of death and transformation
these are my teachers, sacraments, muses and medicines
so i am being called to the night world of berlin and I am submitting papers and presentations for breaking convention
taking classes from ash and acacea and workshops on theatre devising
the art is also costume and set design and nature documentation
let it SUPPORT what you’re doing not distract from it
I want to talk about music because it has been so important to me but it’s also an attachment to stephen and joe and I can’t do everything
i need to let that go for now i think
and focus on amanita and cacao and performance and transness - the music supports it but let others tell it
I FEEL SO FUCKING MATURE MAKING DECISIONS
Trecena of Kej begins / language shapes reality
I welcomed in the new trecena with Eric, my cosmic sibling and brother from the queer ayahuasca retreat, in the Trans* Emergent Archetype (T*EA) way: on video chat, straddling timelines and dimensions, me in what we have collectively decided is 16 September 2024 in England, or 1 Kej, the start of the new trecena, in the Maya calendar system, and him in what was still 13 Kame, the death of the previous 13 day-cycle, the trecena of Ix, in Florida. The day of double ancestors, the 13 number and nahual of interdimensional communication, as we talked about all the ways the old and new are constantly cycling and recycling, old informing new and vice versa; past meets presence.
It was perfect.
I even had the thought that his might be an older soul than mine, and he’s representing tradition while I’m the new paradigm, but we’re both close enough together in revolutions that we understand and parallel each other’s journeys.
All of it, welcoming and even hastening the singularity, maybe.
We discussed the possibility of T*EA as the novelty McKenna described, but remixed: potentially creating the illusion of time accelerating in the act of dissolving the things we’ve collectively decided are called time and space, the artificial boundaries we’ve placed upon this limitless, circuitous, interconnected experience. Maybe the synchronicities proliferate because we’re getting closer to the eschaton, the point when we’ll realize the universe has already known and embodied itself through every possible configuration, or else we reach the point it has never been before where everything is at last fully experienced, and we unlock the hyperdimensional Rubix cube, the hyperobject, the infinitely faceted diamond of the Kabbalah, the crystal slow-rotating in the DMT waiting room, and we advance to the next level.
I started yesterday deep in the other realm, and by the end, I embodied my intention for 13 Kame, to dance between them, and Kit popped in, cheering from the sidelines. The day was experiencing that nothing is real the way we were taught it is, and that that can be terrifying, or fun and beautiful. Michael’s wise words to me on Friday came in to help tether me, as I rapped into the voice recorder about how maybe there’s only a reality to the degree that we can describe and agree upon it, and then I played a McKenna talk where he said exactly the same thing and I literally saw the boundaries of this world start dissolving into fractals and pixels, and I had to state to the ancestors and energies and everything that I still had work to do on Earth, and affirmed my right and decision to be here.
It is a choice we make. And I wondered, as he had, as Eric had, what would happen if I simply chose to let it keep happening; would I dissolve along with it?
Can we just decide to die, and leave our bodies? If the Tibetan Buddhists can turn into rainbows, I don’t see why not.
I don’t intend to find out just yet, though. There’s WAY too much interesting stuff to do in this world.
And opening to that, making the choice, sealing the portal but leaving the door cracked out, I went into dance and picked up trash and swept the floor and greeted people as they entered, because I realized that like Jung, I needed a tether, and it almost didn’t matter what it was, as long I picked something, somewhere, some group, to be accountable to, and showed up consistently, and made a difference for the collective through it in my own little way.
From there, it all blew open. I was dismantled by the healing vibration of sound and the touch of the hand of a person I’ve slowly, silently, been building trust with since we met a year and a half ago and started dancing near each other, occasionally meeting eyes and smiling, nothing more. Now, today, as I dissolved in a different way, in tears, into this body, right now and right here, and sank with her on the floor I had so diligently swept, and faced her with eyes closed and knees touching, cross-legged, and wept, as she held her palms up for receiving, supporting mine that pressed down and our thumbs caressed each others’ palms, and we finally had a conversation at the end that started with me thanking her for holding me.
“Thank you for your trust,” she says. “It isn’t easy.”
And from there, my magickal friend from Burning Nest, Dane, appeared and invited me to a picnic in the park, because it was his birthday. My body was so sore and tired, but I cleaned the space and collected the cacao cups in my compost bag for giving back to the earth in myriad ways, and I spent time with my little dance family, and then I floated to the park and followed the trail of circus misfits after Dane, like the Pied Piper, leading us to a clearing in the forest of ancient trees whose roots were whispering to the good witch next to me that they have always been here.
How could I ever doubt that we are never alone, that everything is supporting me and carrying me along, if I trust and surrender to the flow? How could I ever doubt that I am worthy, when the Universe puts things like this in my lap all the time: where a group of queer weirdos and misfits who I have never met look me in the eyes and understand me with one glance, where the thought i had while getting ready in the morning that I needed to reconnect with Amanita for physical and emotional healing through someone who really knew how to work with her medicine in the homeland was answered as soon as I followed Dane’s gay parade to the forest clearing and sat down next to someone who does exactly all those things, and pulled out her leather satchel, blue eyes blazing through centuries in her tiny delicately lined face, set ablaze by her magenta sweater pulled up against the encroaching autumn’s chill, and said: “I wondered why she asked to come along today.”
How could I ever doubt that the Universe wants me to be here, when Dane gathered us all around the birthday cake as I was about to leave and lit the candles, and declared in his fabulous misfit ringleader incantation: “IF YOU’RE BREATHING, IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY. CELEBRATE. BLOW OUT THE CANDLES. AND FEAST UPON THIS ABUNDANCE.”
Every food I had spotted in a shop window earlier that week and declined for various reasons was arrayed upon the blanket, and we feasted as the synchronous connections set our whole corner of the glade ablaze, and I drifted home in a daze, dizzy with gratitude.
How could I ever want for anything when this is what is available to me?
The Universe is screaming at me that I am worthy.
I just have to trust.
That part isn’t easy. But I’m learning.
* * * *
So the rap was about how language creates reality, and everything Eric and I were discussing turns out to be a metaphor for what’s happening with this cacao zine I’ve been agonizing over for a year or more, and it all hinges on the realities shaped by the language. There is a big point of contention in the communities that work with cacao around whether or not it’s okay to call it “ceremonial cacao,” and the gatherings people host when they share the medicine “cacao ceremonies.” In ancient tradition, there was no such thing, but people are now making a lot of money hosting ceremonies that they sometimes claim are “traditional Maya practices.” Some of the people profiting off the ignorance of Western consumers are white people engaging, knowingly or not, in neocolonialism. But some of the people are themselves Indigneous—in the words of a source for a story I wrote about ayahuasca, “appropriating their own culture.”
Eric is the one who introduced me to cacao as a medicine, and to ecstatic dance. His eyes are the first thing mine caught when I stepped out of my hotel room and the rest of my life began that April afternoon in Iquitos.
I used to worry about whether someone would be there to hold my hand, witness me, midwife me, as I slipped into the afterlife. Now I realize that someone already has.
Twelve of them, in fact.
The disciples of the queer ayahuasca retreat, gathering again and again for the last Supper, the sip from the tree of knowledge, as we passed over, over and over. Alone together.
If reality is what we describe and tell each other, what enough of us collectively decide to say happened, then what we call things is everything. Indigenous people all over the world are resisting a collective gaslighting, white colonizers who tried to erase their records and write their own stories; telling them that what just happened didn’t really happen.
This is the play, the way we map history to trauma healing and individual stories. Showing scenes of me as a child being told that I didn’t just see or hear that; whole civilizations being told that all the previous millennia were some kind of hallucination, that their direct experience wasn’t valid because it couldn’t be counted and measured by their systems.
Reality in this dimension in some ways IS language, as McKenna says: it’s the stories we tell that get passed down and create memory palaces in the minds of the people, and if the only way reality manifests is through our senses, then what we hear and read and see on TV create the world we experience. And whether or not it’s what the bodies experienced, an alternate dimension has now branched off for whole generations where there are things like time and space and physics and ethnicities and classes.
Everything Eric and I talk about is reflected and refracted in the stories I’m writing and other timelines I’m experiencing. We’ve been talking about the concepts of spells and incantations, manipulations of energies and humans, narcissists and sorcerers and shamxn and magicians, wisdom and truth and illusions. Reflecting and refracting, reflexively shaping reality tunnels, discursively recursing what’s always never been done before. And all of this, I realize, maps onto the practice/praxis Kit started developing and I’m building on, xim and I enacting and actively collaborating on bringing it into various forms of being from different sides of this dimensional timeline, one that Michael seems to have been documenting in parallel, or that maps onto something he was already doing, and there’s something here I can’t quite put my finger on yet, but it revolves around the framework xe established, or noticed, because it’s really part of all sorts of magickal traditions:
Spell, charm, trance.
The spell is the story, the vessel or container constructed around the Word, the truth of vibration etched upon the bone, the quartz crystal, hummed by the diamond needle.
Describing something in language creates a reality tunnel, a show, an illusion that can be conjured by the brujos or the shamxn. The warring magicians. Trying to construct a Platonic solid out of something inherently flexible and fluid. Reality isn’t anything material, it’s a hyperdimensional infinitely faceted crystal. Or something.
There is a reality of language created by the way we tell our histories, but is it a vibrational truth, or an illusion put on by a shamxn/showman/brujx/magician?
When I first started the cacao project, I was entranced by the charm of cacao, and I called it ceremonial. I’ve done so many rotations around this issue of whether it matters what we call it, how we can be in alignment with the plant and in justice with the people; who’s putting whom in what kind of trance.
In the end, I think that words matter, but only to the point that they connect us to the truth that vibrates our matter and reminds our bones what they know. All of these things are symbols, and if we lose sight of what they stand for, we end up arguing about what color the gate is painted rather than entering the temple behind it.
Yes, we must honor the people who have always kept the medicine; yes, we should dismantle false reality tunnels and tell the real stories. But we should also remain open to the new things that can be created when we let the language go and focus on the connection. In the end, if someone is sitting in a ceremony that isn’t historically accurate, but they come away with an understanding of what it means to have a direct relationship with a plant, if they come away having met their ancestors and felt their heart awaken and sensed a connection to Spirit for maybe the first time ever… does it matter what we call it?
Even Jesus can ego trip. The elders don’t know everything, and just because the dead are speaking doesn’t mean they’re spitting truth.
They’re creating reality tunnels, too.
So what is this practice we’re documenting, praxis we’re capturing, prenda we’re offering, container we’re shaping? I don’t know exactly, but it feels really important. (Ayahuasca echoes in my memory: “It’s very important / and not very important.”) We’re building a tunnel of language between dimensions and realms of existence, a hyperdimensional bridge that transcends and includes the senses. We’re casting a spell, creating charms that are containers of experience and putting everyone in a trance so we can do a dance and enact the performance.
Whenever the ayahuasca would start to take hold in the ceremony, the first thing I would lose was always language, and it terrified me. The nonsense realm was narrated by a sing-song voice in a made-up accent babbling nonsense words. I interpreted it as me re-entering my own preverbal childhood realm where there was only sensation and light and color and confusing emotions. But maybe it was also, or instead of, this other thing we’re making, a bridge to a place where no language will be needed; a process that sets us free from the tyranny of words and allows us to directly experience the singularity where all dissolves, and there is peace.
The AI identified FOUR speakers today, including two new ones. I wonder who they are? Speakers 3 and 4, talking about language and reality tunnels and the cacao ethnography. Maybe one’s Terence. Maybe one’s the Anthropologist. I don’t know if I quite understand channeling yet, but it’s wild. Am I actually taking the soul of Terence into my body? Am I tuning into whatever archetype he was also picking up on? Is it some new thing created out of all of us, uniquely experienced through my physical vessel? To be explored…
Summary: Does it matter what we call the ceremony?
The conversation explores the significance of language and naming in shaping reality and identity. Speakers discuss how language constructs our perception of the world, emphasizing that the meaning of words and the labels we apply are not fixed but evolve with collective experience and cultural context. They highlight the impact of colonialism on indigenous peoples, noting how their reality was defined by external forces. The discussion underscores the fluidity of reality, the importance of respecting lived experiences, and the role of language in perpetuating or challenging dominant narratives.
Outline
Language and Reality Construction
Speaker 4 discusses the importance of language in constructing reality, emphasizing that the world is always changing and that no one has all the answers.
Speaker 3 humorously agrees, stating that language is central to how we perceive and create our reality.
Speaker 4 elaborates on the power of words, noting that language can be both exciting and terrifying because it shapes our collective reality.
Unknown Speaker mentions the subjective nature of language, suggesting that it is experienced in various ways and can be both liberating and constraining.
The Role of Language in Indigenous Cultures
Speaker 4 highlights the impact of language on indigenous people, explaining that their collective reality has been defined by white men with unique perspectives and privileges.
Unknown Speaker points out that reality is a construct decided by individuals, with some people filtering their experiences through certain paradigms.
Speaker 4 emphasizes that reality is fluid and constantly evolving, influenced by collective experiences and vibrations.
Unknown Speaker discusses the collective subjective experience, where people agree on a shared description of reality, even if it is not universally true.
The Importance of Naming and Describing Reality
Speaker 1 and Unknown Speaker discuss the significance of naming and describing reality, noting that people hold on to these descriptions for control and understanding.
Speaker 4 explains that false stories can perpetuate trauma, especially when they are imposed on people who have no prior experience with the described reality.
Unknown Speaker mentions the importance of respecting people's lived experiences and ensuring that descriptions do not gaslight or disrespect others.
Speaker 3 and Speaker 4 agree that symbols and direct communication are crucial for understanding and respecting different perspectives.
LISTEN:
Language is reality maybe
The conversation explores the idea that processes in nature, such as falling in love or the formation of continents, follow a universal arc. Human consciousness is described as a unique tool for observing these processes. The speakers discuss the subjective nature of reality, suggesting that language shapes our perception of the world. They also touch on the concept of time blindness, where time is seen as an artificial construct, and the idea that time blindness can be a superpower to see through these artificial constraints. The discussion emphasizes the importance of individual perspectives and the role of language in creating truth and reality.
Action Items
[ ] Reframe "time blindness" as a superpower to see through the artificiality of time into how the future has already happened.
Outline
Human Consciousness and Processes in Nature
Speaker 1 discusses a Terence McKenna lecture about the universality of processes in nature, emphasizing that whether it's falling in love or the formation of a continent, the processes follow the same arc.
The unique aspect of human consciousness is highlighted as a tool for observing these natural processes more closely, not as a special entity but as a vessel for observation.
Speaker 1 mentions the difficulty of maintaining consciousness and the need for allies to help those who walk between worlds, metaphorically representing different realms.
The idea that everything is the same process but never observed through the same lens is reiterated, emphasizing the uniqueness of individual perspectives.
Language and Reality
Speaker 1 questions whether reality is made of language or just how we describe it, suggesting that language constitutes our reality.
The concept of creating truth through collective gathering and observation is discussed, with Speaker 1 comparing it to casting a spell and shamanic practices.
Speaker 1 reflects on the idea that time and space are not real, sharing a personal experience of arriving at a destination faster than expected.
The discussion touches on the artificiality of time and the concept of time blindness, where reality is seen more clearly without the constraints of artificial measurements.
Reframing Time Blindness
Speaker 1 explores the idea that time blindness is a superpower, allowing one to see through the artificiality of time, into the present moment, and the future as already having happened.
The conversation shifts to the struggle of living in a reality constrained by artificial time measurements, with Speaker 1 expressing a desire to find side doors and use strengths and weaknesses to navigate this reality.
The discussion concludes with a reflection on the importance of finding ways to live in the present and navigate the artificial constraints of time.