PGR Meeting on Ralph’s Crossing Threshold / Thesis of the Dead
and we had a PGR meeting on this day
TRANSCRIPT:
Regan, Riordan
started transcription
Regan, Riordan
0 minutes 3 seconds0:03
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 3 seconds
Let me let me I'm gonna forget.
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Michael Bowdidge
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Michael Bowdidge 0 minutes 3 seconds
Oh, sorry.
Michael Bowdidge 0 minutes 4 seconds
Go on.
Regan, Riordan
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Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 4 seconds
I'm gonna forget it if I don't ress it.
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 8 seconds
So the mossman.
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 10 seconds
Yeah, the Mosman scared the **** out of me because it seemed like it was this ghost that was stalking everybody. And just I remember at the time being like, well, what's the point of this?
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 19 seconds
Why would there be a universe where there's just like a ghost that stalks you and is like, everyone's gonna ******* die if there's nothing you can do about it?
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 26 seconds
Or was the point that he was supposed to do something about it and he didn't figure it out in time. And then, like, what kind of moral is that to a story?
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 35 seconds
And now I think it's like if they knew how to engage with the Mothman directly and have, like, if they just sat down and talked to the ****** ******, he probably would have told them exactly what to do so.
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Michael Bowdidge
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Michael Bowdidge 0 minutes 46 seconds
Mm hmm.
Regan, Riordan
42 minutes 30 seconds42:30
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 30 seconds
OK.
Potter, Roy Claire
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Potter, Roy Claire 42 minutes 31 seconds
It's shorter than that, yeah.
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Michael Bowdidge
42 minutes 32 seconds42:32
Michael Bowdidge 42 minutes 32 seconds
Three to four for practice, isn't it? Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Potter, Roy Claire
42 minutes 33 seconds42:33
Potter, Roy Claire 42 minutes 33 seconds
Yeah, yeah.
Regan, Riordan
42 minutes 35 seconds42:35
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 35 seconds
Really short for all that, OK.
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Michael Bowdidge
42 minutes 37 seconds42:37
Michael Bowdidge 42 minutes 37 seconds
To be honest, it goes over a bit.
Michael Bowdidge 42 minutes 39 seconds
I it's probably not the end of the world, you know.
Potter, Roy Claire
42 minutes 41 seconds42:41
Potter, Roy Claire 42 minutes 41 seconds
Yeah.
Regan, Riordan
42 minutes 42 seconds42:42
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 42 seconds
OK, well in here to like, I feel like we should have a whole separate meeting about this maybe. But like, because this is where the alternative like citation approaches come in.
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 57 seconds
And I I spent like all the time since getting the news about Ralph, like reaching out to various other teachers of mine, because now I'm all of a sudden kind of like, oh, I see now where this is going to come in. And this is going to come.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 8 seconds
In and this is going to come in and like there's some nontraditional methods.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 12 seconds
That that are going to be a part of this, including the dieta.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 17 seconds
You know ayahuasca like I'm being alone in the jungle for a month.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 23 seconds
Like there's gonna be some things.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 27 seconds
With different citations and that'll just be a weird meta brain melting precisely.
Potter, Roy Claire
43 minutes 34 seconds43:34
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 34 seconds
Yeah, I think.
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 35 seconds
I think it's an exciting part of the project. I think because it's a real challenge to categorisation.
Regan, Riordan
43 minutes 43 seconds43:43
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 43 seconds
Yeah.
Potter, Roy Claire
43 minutes 44 seconds43:44
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 44 seconds
In on the terms of the Academy, which is what I really like about it.
Regan, Riordan
43 minutes 49 seconds43:49
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 49 seconds
Yeah, yeah. Well, it is a fun kind of like. Oh, yeah. How do you like them citations?
Potter, Roy Claire
43 minutes 55 seconds43:55
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 55 seconds
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm all about that.
Regan, Riordan
43 minutes 59 seconds43:59
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 59 seconds
Yeah. And I do think that's like a big part of this project that's felt like important all along. Just the kind of like, I don't know, when bringing, like the trickster element into that as well. Like, this is funny. These things we feel like we need to do.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 5 seconds44:05
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 5 seconds
Hmm.
Regan, Riordan
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Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 15 seconds
As humans, to prove stuff that, like mushrooms, have been telling us since the beginning.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 19 seconds44:19
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 19 seconds
Mm hmm.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 19 seconds44:19
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 19 seconds
Of time. Like, OK, cute. You want a citation?
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 22 seconds
Here you go.
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 23 seconds
This is literally what I heard from a mushroom. So.
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 29 seconds
Yeah.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 29 seconds44:29
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 29 seconds
Right, Roy. Then on that note, I've got a buzz off to my next meeting.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 33 seconds44:33
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 33 seconds
Yeah, me too. OK.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 35 seconds44:35
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 35 seconds
I will send you that list of links and stuff in a second.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 38 seconds44:38
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 38 seconds
Thank you.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 39 seconds44:39
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 39 seconds
Lovely catching up with you all.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 41 seconds44:41
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 41 seconds
You too, great, and you might.
LG
Laura Gonzalez
44 minutes 41 seconds44:41
Laura Gonzalez 44 minutes 41 seconds
It's really good to see you.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 43 seconds44:43
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 43 seconds
You might get the transcript, Roy.
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 45 seconds
So if you do, can you just send it to me?
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 47 seconds44:47
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 47 seconds
Oh yeah, sure.
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 47 seconds
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no bother.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 49 seconds44:49
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 49 seconds
OK.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 50 seconds44:50
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 50 seconds
Take care, guys. Bye.
LG
Laura Gonzalez
44 minutes 51 seconds44:51
Laura Gonzalez 44 minutes 51 seconds
Take care, guys. Bye bye.
Regan, Riordan
stopped transcription
Bodies in Process: The Process of Nomading, Morphic Habits, Devotion vs Compulsion
Theme: Telos, Process, and Ritualized Compulsion
Direct Quotes from Voice Notes / Text
“Process implies that there's a purpose to me. Process kind of implies a telos. It kind of implies a destination—or if not a destination, at least a meaning.”
“Even if it was just a packing exercise—that’s somatic rehearsal. Your body is trying to get better at being you.”
“Am I walking in circles on terrain that no longer needs to be padded down?”
“Am I normalizing a compulsion or a coping mechanism by what I’m doing? Is there actually a purpose to it?”
“Compulsion says: ‘You have to keep doing this, or you’ll die.’ Ritual says: ‘You choose to do this, because it reminds you you’re alive.’”
“My practice doesn’t have to answer the question. My practice is the question. And questions are destinations. They just look like circles until you draw them as spirals.”
Paraphrase / Synthesis
You compare your repetitive nomadic movement to ancestral behaviors, like a cat padding down grass that isn’t there anymore. You wonder whether this repetition is an inherited evolutionary mechanism that has lost its function—or if it still holds meaning.
You frame packing as a potential ritual—something done repeatedly to refine a process, but question whether it’s worth getting better at something that may not actually serve your deeper purpose.
You suggest that by documenting these repetitions, you transmute them from unconscious compulsion into conscious auto-theory—a gesture of self-awareness and meaning-making.
Next I’ll extract material related to teotl, Maya/Nahua cyclical time, and how your personal reflections intersect with Indigenous cosmology. I’ll keep labeling things by source and category (quote vs. synthesis). Anything specific you want emphasized in that next section?
You said:
clarify what quotes are me and which ones are you please. for the second, we really want to emphasize the process of process, the metaphysics of becoming
ChatGPT said:
Perfect. I’ve pulled direct quotes from your three new transcripts, categorized them by theme, and clearly marked whether the line is your own words or a paraphrase of your ideas. Let's start with two themes you're exploring: Telos / Eschaton and The Metaphysics of Process (Becoming).
1. TELOS / ESCHATON / NOMADISM AS RITUAL
(Your own words unless otherwise stated)
"What if all our compulsions and neuroses are just echoes of the instincts, the ancestral patterns that we don't have a context for?"
(from Personal Reflection on Compulsions)"Like the way cats still make circles before they lay down... claw the shit out of your lap because they can't get the memory out of their paws that they gotta clear the ground before they lay down."
"Is this just some old ancestral function that's malfunctioning now?"
(quoted from earlier conversation, restated here for clarity)"I was doing like a packing exercise, just to get faster at doing it... But is that the goal? Is the goal to be good at being displaced?"
"Process kind of implies a telos. It kind of implies a destination—or if not a destination, at least a meaning."
"Even if it was just a packing exercise—that’s somatic rehearsal. Your body is trying to get better at being you."
[This is paraphrased reflection based on your earlier quote]"Compulsion says: ‘You have to keep doing this, or you’ll die.’ Ritual says: ‘You choose to do this, because it reminds you you’re alive.’"
[This is assistant-synthesized reflection, not your original quote]
2. PROCESS AS BECOMING / NONDUAL METAPHYSICS
Direct quotes from you, unless otherwise noted
"Emergence. It's the process of becoming something. Becoming visible. Becoming material. Becoming something sensory."
(from Exploring Consciousness and Emergence)"What does an emergent archetype of consciousness really mean?"
"Body's in process. Nothing ever finished."
"The process of processing. Process of becoming."
"Nondual philosophy is a metaphysics of becoming."
(a core thesis line that recurs—key to foreground in this section)"Trans is a metaphysics of becoming too."
"A body is a process that also means to observe."
"The body is the process of observing the things that come into its fields, things with which it's morphically resonating."
"These are just snapshots of processes. Pictures, images of processes. This is why images are so important."
Imago dei, the ritual is the habit that gets us closer to the divine impulse
*(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.
Transdimensional Archiving
the path is art and healing, queer ceremony and neo-mysticism, spirituality and divine devising. learning from teachers so I can hold space safely and without appropriating
The observatory - Transdimensional archiving - Liverpool
An Immersive experience of autoethnographic documentation and practice
I feel strongly about holding onto The Observatory as a TRANS WORLD —> I conjured it/connected with it, as it is an actual quantum universe that now exists because I OBSERVED IT==> as a Trans world, and I really need to protect it as a space by and for queer and trans people
>Maya viewfinder, McKenna’s quantum Meso-Greco universe but with Irish paganism and queer/trans theory and ecology added in.
>OOH - Trans* ecology as a new evolution of paganism/shamanism - talk to Dr Kashian about this
THEATRE NOT AS A VOCATION BUT CEREMONIAL PRACTICE - DIVINE DEVISING
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CEREMONY - this is the anchor of life and practice. it is how Indigenous cultures live, the cornerstone of art and healing, and the type of life I’m calling in. We call it escapism in the West - but this is LITERALLY WHAT LIFE IS FOR in other cultures.
don’t make it a job or duplicate the work — like Richard said — don’t make the rubble bounce, kid.
My autoethnographic praxis and spiritual/mystical practice is anchored on my daily ceremony, which involves sitting at the altar I’ve built, calling on the guides, meditating through various methods, channeling the other realms, and documenting what I receive.
How are other people doing this? How have other cultures done this?
Research is backup
Kim Robertson - plant medicine - TA
Engage everyone in a conversation about auto ethnographic documentation - in the paradigm of my research and language > then document this and use it in my language
Doing the same thing over and over is part of the practice - what opens up in that process? > Brady drawing the same thing as part of exploration
>it's a trance state
Notes from call with Ali on the way to the queer cacao Equinox circle of sychronicity
Presentation -
Take people through a practice of connecting to the other realm - workshop
Present specific parts of the auto ethnographic work for the exhibition - journals, drawings, transcription, etc
[3/18/25, 6:07:44 PM] Ali Transart: https://landing.vda.lt/journal/announcement/view/1
[3/18/25, 6:17:33 PM] Ali Transart: TRANSDIMENSIONAL ARCHIVING | The Observatory: An immersive experience of autoethnograhic research + documentation
[3/18/25, 6:28:26 PM] Ali Transart: bradycsmith@gmail.com
[3/18/25, 6:29:11 PM] Ali Transart: +1 (720) 387-5278
[3/18/25, 6:31:11 PM] Ali Transart: “interior investigation” (observatory)
[3/18/25, 6:37:27 PM] Ali Transart: Summation! My suggestions…to keep or discard.
Part I - Presentation: 45 minutes. A workshop of ONE of your Transdimensional Archiving practices.
A) Present/contextualize “Transdimensional Archiving” (10 mins)
Lead workshop (15 mins)
C) Post-workshop discussion/Q&A (10 mins)
**Leaves you an extra 10 mins buffer time for any/all portions!
Part II - Exhibition: An open call for autoethnographic research & documentation in the form of visual/material, textual, sonic artifacts
This could be pages of a journal, or portions of a journal torn out or blown up; scribblings, doodles, illustrations, photographs; sonic/field recordings, voice mails/messages; video documentation.
[3/18/25, 6:45:55 PM] Ali Transart: What does it mean to / How do we document and/or present autoethographic research?
[3/18/25, 6:46:50 PM] Ali Transart: This could be called “The Observatory” OR another word that reflects “observatory,” “interior investigation,” “sur-veillance” > I need to preserve The Observatory as my own name/world. No QT appropriation pleez
**Feel free to use the language/structures I have outlined here for your submission forms!
[3/18/25, 6:49:33 PM] Ali Transart: **Also, if you don’t want to put forward or manage the call for autoethnographic work, I am happy to do so, and to provide attribution to you that this concept evolved out of our dialogues - without using your terminology.
[3/18/25, 6:51:00 PM] Ali Transart: I think “an autoethnographic portion of our residency exhibition” will be something we will receive in submissions anyways - so it’s just about whether or not you want to take ownership of curation in terms of your research interests/questions.
Workshop submission:
Title: Can I get a witness? Transdimensional archiving as ceremonial practice
Description: My autoethnographic praxis and spiritual/mystical practice is anchored on my daily ceremony, which involves sitting at the altar I’ve built, calling on the guides, meditating through various methods, channeling the other realms, and documenting what I receive. This workshop will lead participants through one of my transdimensional archiving practices and document as much of the process as possible. I will lead participants in a meditation grounded in shamanic and pagan practices: orienting ourselves in time and space (calling in the directions, invoking our current position on the Wheel of the Year, in the Maya calendar, and in the Western astrological framework). From this receptive state we will engage in a journaling practice about what it means to be seen, approaching it as a channeling/mediumship/automatic writing session where we are receiving information from the other realms and parts of self (inner children, alter egos, ancestors, archetypes, animals, nature, mythological and cultural figures, the collective unconscious, etc). We will have a group discussion about what we received and our experiences of being seen and unseen, both positive and challenging. If anyone or anything needs to be witnessed in what was received, we will hold that as a group, offering support and reflection.
Goals: To test the transpersonality of my autoethnographic methods; to explore and document others’ practice and experience for the archive my research is creating. Part of my research involves tracking and archiving syncretism and I am very interested in the phenomenological experience of others who follow these practices. It will inform research questions: whether elements can be isolated from the larger ceremony and still provide the desired connections; if the same morphic fields can be opened and accessed across contexts, mediums, and vessels.
Format: is 90 mins possible?
Present/contextualize “Transdimensional Archiving” (10-15 mins)
Opening ceremony (5-10 mins)
Journaling/writing (10-15 mins)
Group discussion, witnessing and contextualizing (15-20 mins)
Next steps, close ceremony (5 mins)
Post-workshop discussion/Q&A (10 mins)
The group exhibition: Surveillance, exposure - under the microscope? The Observatory is Trans, Trans is about the telescope, going out to the stars and the astral > art and research is grounding it, it’s about the microscope, the subjective that becomes objective, looking closer to see the real story (which is in itself a key concept/component of my research > new tech developments that let us see what ancient people were doing with substances and ritual). All of it is correspondence, understanding the universal through the personal
Food, sex, and death / Hot for the moon + knowledge
Is there anything more human than feeding? I think eating is more vulnerable than coming. It’s admitting you have a body, you’re a machine that needs fueling. Pete Holmes says that he thinks there’s nothing sadder than the act of eating alone, someone succumbing to the demands of the system, I have to turn this food into energy so I don’t die, how pathetic.
I have to turn these plants into information. Fascinating. I love the feeling when things that stuck in my consciousness ages ago come back around and start to reveal themselves, like a years-long striptease, so tantalizing, I actually am getting turned on by the fact that the phrase “light information” and that Chad Van Gaalen album lodged themselves in my awareness as important ages ago is starting to make sense as part of some larger framework. Eros awakened by the Gnosis.
Yeah, I really think there’s something to this idea that part of the evolution to the next dimension involves switching from food to light information. And yet. Then we’ll lose the sensory pleasure of eating and drinking, because even if it’s just a symbol for the thing it can be so fun and satisfying, it gives us other kinds of information about place and time — it gives us information about SPACE — humans as bodies in space, Ralph emphasizes it as part of the practice of Tonglen, opening yourself to the awareness of the physical area around and inside and within and behind your matter. And Earth is a place, earth is space and material even as it’s cosmic and astral. Placemaking is how we define ourselves as people — the primary shaper of differences between people and cultures is the physical environment and our adaptations to it, we develop through nature and nurture, the ecosystem and our responses.
It’s all a rehearsal for transcendence, a practice for moving beyond it, but even if it’s just a game, that’s fun, innit? Don’t you kinda love it?
Hot for the Moon and the Calendar
Riordan Regan reflects on their recent experiences with sexuality, existential kink, and spirituality, drawing connections between personal growth, historical events, and cultural influences. They discuss the impact of cacao and chocolate on their sexual desires, the role of pleasure in reducing consumption and violence, and the importance of sensory learning. Regan also explores the historical significance of the Ides of March, drawing parallels to modern societal issues and the desire for dominance. They express a longing to reconnect with pagan practices and the natural world, emphasizing the need for embodied, sensory experiences to ground spiritual knowledge.
Action Items
[] Explore pagan practices and the Wheel of the Year during an upcoming trip to Ireland.
[] Reflect on the concept of "rejection kink" and why the speaker is drawn to missed opportunities.
[] Experiment with using cacao as a way to ground spiritual experiences in the body.
Outline
Exploring the Nature of Worship and Veneration
Speaker 1 discusses the historical context of worshipping entities that couldn't be perceived with the senses, emphasizing the shift from worship to veneration.
Riordan Regan reflects on the concept of veneration, suggesting it involves changing the definition of what is considered sacred.
The conversation touches on the idea of “widening the ‘I’” and the experience of allowing oneself to be sexual.
Riordan Regan shares a personal experience of being sexual for the first time in years and its impact on their mind and body.
Existential Kink and Pleasure
Riordan Regan talks about the existential kink and its connection to a past injury, noting its reemergence.
They mention three separate people bringing up the concept of I, K, S, K, Berlin to them, which they were reading about before an event.
Riordan Regan reflects on the idea that more pleasure in the body would reduce consumption, war, and abuse, and how this influenced their behavior.
They describe their experience of being part of a group and fulfilling others' needs, noting a lack of interest in their own pleasure.
Selfless Sexual Interaction and Cacao
Riordan Regan questions if their recent sexual interaction was the first truly selfless one in their life.
They discuss the role of cacao and chocolate as replacements for sexual sustenance, suggesting a higher expression of the same energy.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of consciously dissociating and engaging with Damiana at the temple, noting the subtle effects.
They reflect on the desire to be part of a group and the feeling of safety, without strong physical attraction.
Cultural and Historical Reflections
Riordan Regan draws parallels between the Ides of March and the assassination of Julius Caesar, noting the Roman calendar's lunar cycles.
They discuss the historical context of March as the beginning of the new year and its subsequent dark reputation.
Riordan Regan reflects on the legacy of Catholic guilt and the impact of social anxiety and awkwardness.
They mention the calendar's influence on their consciousness and the significance of the Ides of March.
Spirituality and Embodiment
Riordan Regan explores the idea of spiritual satisfaction reducing the body's need for sex, questioning if it's denial or bypassing.
They discuss the influence of Catholic guilt and the story of social anxiety, tracing it back to their Irish legacy.
Riordan Regan reflects on the importance of being in alignment with natural cycles and the desire to reconnect with the cosmic cycles.
They express excitement about connecting with pagan practices in Ireland and the vision of themselves as part of the natural world.
Rejection and Existential Kink
Riordan Regan shares their reaction to being rejected from an event, noting the existential kink of rejection and devaluation.
They reflect on the human tendency to want what they can't have and the desire to run naked in the forest.
Riordan Regan discusses the importance of being of service and the potential for research to be another form of consumption.
They emphasize the need for experiential learning and the role of the body in grounding knowledge.
Cacao and Embodiment
Riordan Regan reflects on the importance of cacao in their practice, noting its role in grounding spiritual experiences.
They discuss the challenge of connecting without cacao and the abstract nature of spiritual practices without a somatic component.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of sitting in front of an altar and the need for something to bridge the realms.
They reframe the cacao story, emphasizing its importance in grounding spiritual experiences.
Transhumanism and Embodiment
Riordan Regan discusses the origins of transhumanism and the goal of technology and psychedelics to make humans more human, not less.
They reflect on the importance of embracing the body and the sensory experience in learning and spiritual practices.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of being deprived of senses in the Great Pyramid and the impact on their understanding of transhumanism.
They emphasize the role of trans people as shamans and alchemists, embracing the sexiness of death and decomposition.
The Role of the Body in Knowledge
Riordan Regan reflects on the importance of grounding knowledge in the body for long-term retention.
They discuss the origins of writing and its role in depriving people of their sensory experiences.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of sitting in darkness in the Great Pyramid and the impact on their understanding of transhumanism.
They emphasize the need for experiential learning and the role of the body in grounding knowledge.
Embracing the Sensory Experience
Riordan Regan discusses the importance of making learning sensory and grounding it in the body.
They reflect on the role of the senses in remembering and the impact of depriving people of their senses.
Riordan Regan shares their experience of being in the darkness in the Great Pyramid and the impact on their understanding of transhumanism.
They emphasize the need for experiential learning and the role of the body in grounding knowledge.
LISTEN HERE / DIALOGOS:
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST: “Ancestor worship,” because they couldn't conceive of having a relationship with something you couldn't see or perceive with the senses. Veneration.
They said it was worship. They said we made them deities, but really we just realized they were entities like any other we could communicate
RIORDAN: with beyond the borders and the confines of our minds and bodies, changing the definition of what counts as living, (DIRECTOR’S NOTE: This is fascinating that Otter detects me as switching characters midsentence)
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST: widening the “I” to let more light in. Last night, I allowed myself to be sexual
RIORDAN: for the first time in years, five of them. It's prompted something interesting. It's prompting me getting all nerdy enough in the mind. So is this an escapist tactic to get me out of my body? Because what's still contained there is too painful, maybe. But I've also been calling something in about the existential kink, again, a spiral from around this time when I was injured. It's a little later existential kink coming back in again. So there's something in this for me now I'm trying to listen three separate people brought up i, k, s, k, Berlin to me last night, which I just happened right to be reading. Right before leaving last night, I was reading their manifesto and had an important message, if the body felt more pleasure, we wouldn't do so much consuming. We wouldn't make so much war. We wouldn't have so much abuse. More oxytocin, less serotonin and dopamine. I don't know, but it was in my mind
as I allowed myself to go there, as I allowed myself to open, and then I observed my behavior in the aftermath. And I watched how, after I separated, I watched how, when I was with the group, I was commenting on my experience and noticing, huh, yeah, I guess that feeling of consuming, of needing to consume, something is totally gone now. And in fact, I had really no interest in my own pleasure. It was just nice to be part of a group in feeling us all supporting each other and to be meeting the needs of other people, of the person who asked for regulation after an uncomfortable situation, and the other person who asked for us to fulfill her fantasy of blindfolding and tickling feathers. It was so cute. It felt so good. And in fact, I had an active non desire to be interacted with. I didn't want to get myself off at all. I just wanted to make the other people feel good. And I wonder if maybe it was the first selfless sexual interaction I've ever had in my life, truly. I mean, I don't know I went there with Steven. So, okay, that's not true. That's the story. I went there with Steven a lot, but I've never done it in a conscious, embodied way like that. Before it was cool, it's really beautiful. But yeah, I noticed that as soon as we separated, I started going to the fruit table every time I felt uncomfortable, and later, once the chocolate came out, then it was all over. I just started eating that and didn't even want to try for connection anymore. And there is something to this cacao and chocolate as replacements for sexual sustenance, but it also kind of makes me wonder if maybe that's because cacao is a higher expression of the same energy, and if it's kind of like the idea of spiritual anorexia and light information replacing the need for food. Because, like, I don't know. I consciously dissociated last night.
I sat with a pretty high for me, my burdosa Venita and cacao before leaving the house. And then engaged with Damiana at the temple. It was all like super mild and subtle, but I definitely was observing my own self. I a lot, and it was really interesting because, yeah, I just, I don't know I was, I didn't feel the desire to the point that I was analyzing, and was like, maybe that's just done now. But then I did see that couple, and I felt really drawn to them, and I wanted to be part of what they were doing. And there was, there were a couple groups, so maybe it's just that I wasn't super physically into my people, and they just felt nice and safe. And so I didn't feel very sexual tourism. I don't know it was interesting. I did almost have the feeling it's like, maybe it's because it's, I mean, if sex is the holy longing and the desire for divine reunion, then if I'm getting spiritually satisfied, maybe my body doesn't need as much, but I don't know that might just be denial. It might just be bypassing. It probably is,
all that Catholic guilt in the legacy. I got up in my head and got out of the mood. And the story of social anxiety and being awkward started playing, but I didn't even really believe it. It just was like a tape that started running. It didn't have any more potency. And I can't help but think of the Irish legacy, the tiny violin playing, the sad stories, all that Catholic guilt and shame, giant Irish families where rents were abandoned. So maybe that's where that storyline of social anxiety and awkwardness, fear of being ostracized comes from. How many children died because the church decided pleasure was a sin. Then all of a sudden, the calendar injected itself into my consciousness, inserted itself into my awareness, which is kind of cool. I was drawn to look up the Ides of March, which is about the assassination of Julius Caesar. And here we are, the calendar coming in hot and heavy again. The Roman calendar was based on lunar cycles, which meant it kept getting out of sync with what was really happening? Hot for the moon. That series I was drawn to draw new layers of meaning are now coming into it. The time, keeping the day, keeping Lumination tracking.
Oh yeah, baby, tease me. The moon is sexy. Astronomy and Astrology makes me excited. Divination and cycles, the seasons, the nations, deaths and resurrections are the things that get me off.
Is my sexuality lying fallow and not dead entirely? Or has it been transmuted into something else, now, more abstract, desire for the natural world and the union with its creatures to be returned to the earth? Is this trauma denial, repression, bypassing? Or have I just changed into another thing? Calendars are guiding me, and as the month of March begins today, I looked up the Ides and saw but this was a way of measuring lunar cycles with the halfway point. Usually it's the time when the moon is most full in a given month. It strikes me that the time keepers in the Roman system, where the church fathers and I guess they're always the spiritual leaders, the Church Fathers, always ending up with extra days and having to account for them because they weren't in alignment. Capitalism producing excess is a way to grow an unnatural system. I
There's something in the entwinement of time of spirituality. Being in alignment is important, but we haven't been since we were pagan. March used to be the beginning of the new year, a time of celebration, but after Caesar was assassinated, it got a dark reputation. The eyes meant the first full moon of a month
in 44 BC, he was stabbed 23 times. How's that for numerology? And Caesar was Trump. And I can't help but thinking that we are in the ith of March repeating with what's happening in the American empire as this collapsing around everybody. Caesar was a dictator who reinforced unequal power dynamics, a Trumpian figure who appealed to soldiers and was wealthy who put his likeness on everything, who was really into private property and gave himself the power to accept or reject election results. Sound familiar? Jesus? People said he would make himself a king, and he called himself a dictator for life. That wasn't just a Calvin & Hobbes thing. Trump would do this if he could. Caesar was murdered by a group that called themselves the liberators, who stabbed him 23 times, and there's that high weirdness number, cosmic trigger. They fondled the cosmic trigger and stabbed him to death, but it didn't have the result that they were expecting. Turns out, the people didn't want to be liberated because they liked the tax benefits. So the country became destabilized. It was the end of the Republican, beginning of true empire. Feels like a prediction of where America is heading. The successor, Octavian, became a true emperor, and the dark side rose because people wanted to be dominated. They wanted to give it all away. And after, after Octavian went astray, they believed that Augustus could save them, and they begged for a dictator, because Westerners want to be dominated. We're so hot for it. We want to give it all away to the god, like leader, to our big daddy, whether he's God or Caesar. We act like we're so tough and independent, but really, all we want is to be bent over and to submit, because it's unnatural, because this system that we've created of dominance and oppression and power over is unnatural, and our souls Know It. And so that kink, that shadow, goes somewhere, and it turns into the desire to be spanked like a little baby, which is always, I mean, Trump wearing diapers. Hello. It's always what happens so obvious, so obviously, like it makes me angry we consume, and it's empty because we are disconnected with the earth spirituality, right of sync with the seasons and the cycles, and it makes everyone go crazy hot for the moon means longing to reconnect with the cosmic cycles again. And I'm so excited to go to Ireland and connect with the pagan practices. I really feel like this is going to change things, to plug into the Wheel of the Year. I got a vision of myself in a cave like the Calleach, swaddled in deerskin. Learning through direct experience, without human teachers, my friends, the animals, eating mushrooms and communing with the land and the forest directly embedded and entangled in it, indistinguishable where I ended and it began, just visions of myself as eyes emerging from a nurse log behind a burning fire. I want to get hot and heavy with the humus, decompose my meat, Alchemy, dissolve me and acid and crumble my bones into the stratigraphic layers, make me a deposit sedimentary to pull towards death is not the pull towards death is lust, but not the way the church twisted it, not because lust is wrong, but because it's the same urge As death, the one to disappear completely and dissolve the separate self. And it felt good to make my friend feel good last night and not care about myself. We were her nurse logs of pleasure and dying for her desire.
I'm really sad that we got rejected from breaking convention and I drew the card of the poet who said, it may not seem that others care about your words, but trust that the wind will carry it. When I found out we didn't get it, my first urge was to run back to the jungle. It almost felt liberating this existential kink of rejection, though there's something really potent in that, but I think I have to explore and I think the real medicine is in feeling into that, and in not just dissolving and disappearing again. What is this rejection kink? Why do I love to be devalued? Why do I love to be turned away? Why do I love to miss opportunities? I can't get enough of it. I can't get enough of not putting enough effort into things that I actually do care about, and then getting rejected and it really hurting, and then me acting like I didn't care about it. Anyways. Yeah, always wanting what I can't have. Why is that such a human thing?
I don't know. Maybe there is also just something pure in that, maybe the remix is, but I actually just don't care about the earthly gratification anymore, and I just want to run naked in the forest and be a nobody. But that also makes me feel that I'm not being of service, and then what's the point of existing?
All of a sudden, I feel hot for research. But isn't that just another form of consumption, to swallow the knowledge, and then what do I do with it? Spit it out or turn it into shit. The shit can power the system, if applied appropriately, waste versus compost. Hot for teacher is a thing, because humans like learning, but you got to do something with it, and you got to make it experiential, like Bettina was talking about, if learning is sensory, so we have to learn with the body and not the mind. This is the key. Is hot for research or bypass. Then, is this all of a sudden desire to tickle my mind a good thing, because, like, part of me feels like that's me returning to the world of the forms, but I don't know. I think I've been spending all this time in the astral, and that's still not been in the body or which is interesting, because I felt like sitting in front of the altar time. It's really engaging the spiritual, but if there's no somatic component, I don't know, am I bypassing well, but then I'm not, and I think, okay, so this is why cacao feels so important, because that's the embodiment part of the practice. Because something has to ground, it to the earth. Something has to make it, yeah, lived in my experience, something has to bridge the realms. That's what it fucking is. Holy shit. No wonder cacao feels so important, and no wonder it feels like I can't quite connect without it, because it without it, it's just really abstract. That's so interesting. So the other day when I was sitting and just falling asleep over and over again, and just kind of like caught in the hypnogogic state, because I didn't sit with any medicine. It's because the medicines are bridged between the grounds, and if there's no way to bring it down into this one, and you're just stuck in the world of symbols swimming in the language of the other realm without a cipher. Holy shit. Look at that reframing the cacao story. Finally, they've had so much shame around why do I feel like they need it? Because something has to ground it, and there's other ways to do that in the shamanic journey sometimes has in the past, and that's why I was trying to do that the other day. And who knows why it wasn't working, maybe just so I could Have this realization, because that does feel really important. Thank you. anyway.
Oh, we're just begging for a dictator. We Westerners. We're so hot for Godlike figures, Big Daddy in the sky.
But we're really hot for the moon. We're really hot for teacher. We're really hot for our mother, the one we really learn from. Because true knowledge is somatic. It lives in the body. So if you want someone to remember something, you have to make it sensory. This is what Bettina was saying that I found so fascinating. Learning has to become experiential again. We have to ground it in the body. We have to ground it in the sensory we have to rehabilitate the feeling function. The only way you remember something is if your body holds on to it, because knowledge is somatic, and this is why the stuff from Egypt has been coming through again so hot we wrote it down in our diaries so we wouldn't have to remember it in our bodies. We wrote it down in our diaries so we wouldn't have to remember it in our bodies. We wrote it down in our diaries we wouldn't have to remember it in our bodies. This transmitted to me when we were deprived of our senses in the Great Pyramid when we were sitting in the darkness. And it strikes me that this is the origins of transhumanism. And so of course, that podcast with Carl and Gallimore, I haven't even listened to it, but it just made me think of that whole transhumanist debate, and what he was saying when we were in Egypt, what he says all the time, and what I believe is that the goal of technology and psychedelics and spirituality should be to make us more human, not less, and at the same time, to transcend it, To transcend and include, don't give trans a bad name, dude. Transhumanism meaning leaving our bodies behind. But that's not what trans means. Trans means to bring everything with you as you go to the higher plane. And when we invented writing, that's when we first started leaving our bodies behind, because the system was designed to fix and place a world that was always changing. Change scared us, and we wanted to just become heads floating in space, because the pain of embodiment was too great, the decay and the shape shifting inherent in it was too scary, and this is why trans people are the emergent archetype, the shaman, alchemist, because we embrace this. In fact, it's kind of our whole life. So embrace the sexiness of death and decomposition. Hot for the moon means becoming embodied again, becoming a creature again, becoming sensory again. Death doesn't hurt at all. It's only our resistance. So allow yourself to be dominated by the soul soil and the seasons.
Let the planet be your dominatrix. You just have to find the Safe Word.
**Insight about Stephen relationship while watching Rupert Sheldrake course!
Ideal forms are refections of divine nature
Newton, Einstien, Boyle, all scientists believed in god and thought he was a mathematician > math laws were the laws of nature
STEPHEN IS THE REPRESENTATION OF THIS - oh shit - THIS IS BIG - I can’t let go of him because I’m living out the archetype of civilization that can’t let go of Newtonian physics because it feels grounding, comforting, familiar - !!!
CARD PULL
Archetypes Tarot: The Offering, The Poet, The Castle
Marseilles Tarot: 1o of Swords, 8 of Wands, 2 of Pentacles
"Knowledge is innately tied to the land, it's right there, it's waiting for us to pay attention to it, to guide us, through dreams, through visions, through practice..." (Rick Hill)
REFERENCES
Interview, Bettina Arnold, gender in archaeology and funeral feasting part III, 27 February 2025
“Relational Systems Thinking: That’s How Change Is Going to Come, from Our Earth Mother,” Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp 75-103. 2021, Melanie Goodchild, Turtle Island Institute & Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience
The Way of Tarot, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa
The Archeytpes Tarot, Kim Krans
“You Made It Weird” podcast, Pete Holmes, repeated references, date n.d.
Peruvian cacao from Malde with cinnamon and cayenne, high dose + German bee pollen
Direct experience, download with cacao, bee pollen, and quartz crystal in the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt, October 2024 - total sensory deprivation
Aubrey Marcus podcast with Carl H. Smith and Andrew Gallimore, February 2025
History.com, “How Julius Caesar’s Assassination Triggered the Fall of the Roman Republic”
Direct experience and artistic download for series “Hot for the Moon,” February 2025, Berlin, Germany
Direct experience, Mx. Gili’s Conscious Play Temple, 28 February 2025, Urban Healing Unit in Berlin, Germany + Amanita muscaria tincture from Agnieska L., London, UK + Peruvian cacao from Malde, moderate dose
I’m lonely
Entering the Maya solar year of the ancestors (13) and communication/divine breath (Iq’) in the Trans* trecena (Aq’ab’al) / Mom stuff
“I’m lonely.”
Two little words that make all the difference when spoken.
The blessing and the curse of doing the work is that you gain the ability to become your own observer, and you may start seeing some things that don’t look too pretty.
But it’s okay. That’s the beginning.
When I finally left my abusive marriage, I was a shell of a person. I had to start over from nothing, with nothing, bringing not even myself along, because I had vacated this space so long ago. It’s the only way to keep going when you’re caught in the cycle of self-gaslighting: to quote a play I saw at the Camden Fringe Festival last summer, “ever dissociate so hard that you feel like a character in the most shit video game ever?” I don’t say that for sympathy, just to describe how empty I was, and all too ready to receive. It made me prime for absorption by a spiritual teacher who, for the first few years, totally helped me change my life for the better; she literally helped me save it, as I was headed off a cliff. I will always be grateful for the things she taught me, practices and mantras I still draw from daily. I needed that grounding and guidance and perhaps most importantly, she helped me re-open the spiritual dimension, the connection I had as a little kid who loved Jesus so much that I used to dress up like him.
But it also primed me for grooming, and while I don’t actually think she knew she was doing it, she was fostering a dependence that in retrospect is super scary, while at the time I was totally blind to it. At first I just used her practices as guidance; soon I came to rely on her ceremonies as an anchor, and started working with her more and more frequently 1:1. Eventually, I got to the point where I couldn’t make any major decision without consulting her, and the more desperate I got, the more she kept me at a distance, which in turn fueled my anxiety; I’m sure some part of her liked the power, especially when she started charging me $15/minute just to talk on the phone with her, and I obliged during the increasing moments I found myself in crisis. It became an addiction just like the relationships, the dopamine hit of outsourcing my will to something external.
I hate to admit it, but it was recently reflected to me that this is a pattern that has to some degree continued. However! Healing is a spiral, so this time I’ve been aware of this tendency, and have been checking it constantly. I recently did another rotation with it, getting so lost in the preparations of things, the consultation of oracles and divination tools, the planning and strategizing and setting up the scenarios that I never actually reach the execution phase, and whatever it is becomes yet another thing half=finished, a territory uncharted, all these great ideas with so much promise, never launched, all my kids dying suddenly in their cribs.
Weird — I had that period for a while where I got morbidly preoccupied and terrified by the concept of SIDS at one point in my 20s, even though I never wanted children. Must have been a premonition.
Today, however, I emerged from the chrysalis of the Maya new year and a major phase of the IFS and meditation course I’ve been doing, coming out of a portal where I spent two days channeling intensely and studying with Kit, my advisor not in a body who has been very generous with zir time and energy, and I reached a new level of breakthrough, peeled off another layer of the onion skin, choose your metaphor—that combined with finally finding the teacher and mentor in ancient Irish pagan traditions that I’ve been searching for, and hearing her story that confirms all the pieces of the Immortality Key story that I set off in search of five years ago when I left it all behind and embarked upon this nomadic voyage, the Magical Mystery Tour of discovery, I’m finally ready to start sharing.
I’m calling in trans* emergence, starting with climbing out of my own coccoon, getting out of the tunnel vision lined with my own shit, realizing I am the obstacle, but the good news is, that means I’m also the way.
If you go far enough into yourself, you emerge on the other side, in the unity of everything.
It’s time to come out of hibernation, and I’m taking the first steps, making plans with queer community; reaching out to friends and telling them vulnerably where I’m at and how my heart is and sharing that I really do want to spend time with them, I’ve just been trying to overly control the situation.
I have a plan, and it can be broken. I have a vision for an exhibition and I see it clearly.
I’m ready to become ready to share my life again.
Cord-Cutting Ceremony
Riordan Regan reflects on his journey of healing from codependency, acknowledging the influence of his former mentor Christine while emphasizing the need to move on. He discusses the importance of self-reliance, community, and the principles of radical self-reliance, particularly in the context of Burning Man. Riordan plans to cut ties with past dependencies, including financial reliance on his mother, and seeks to fund his Burning Man experience independently. He also addresses the symbolic act of cutting cords with past relationships and mentors, signifying personal growth and empowerment.
Action Items
Manifest a grant opportunity and fill out the application.
Cut the cord with Christine, Stephen, Mark, and the story of relying on mother's money.
Get different shoes that fit and use own money.
Outline
Letting go of a teacher who helped with codependency, despite still using their techniques and practices.
Unknown Speaker reflects on past experiences with codependency and spiritual practices, still feeling connected to a former teacher despite recognizing her unhealthiness.
Identity, gender, and community.
Unknown Speaker reflects on identity, emergence, and communication.
Self-reliance, community, and inclusivity at Burning Man.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of self-reliance and radical self-reliance in their personal journey of trans emergence.
The speaker seeks to find a grant to fund their experiment in trans living, which involves radically inclusive and self-reliant community building.
Building something from nothing, manifesting a grant opportunity, and ending reliance on others.
Unknown Speaker documents creation of a world that lasts one week, ending reliance on others for help.
Awakening, self-reliance, and cutting ties with the past.
Unknown Speaker discusses cutting ties with Christine and radical self-reliance.
Unknown Speaker enjoys a special cup of cacao, mentions nose congestion, and talks about breaking paradigms.
Cutting ties and empowerment with symbolic scissors and threads.
The speaker acknowledges the help they received from the medicine and the person who provided it, but also expresses gratitude for the lessons learned and the growth experienced.
The speaker cuts the cord with partners they felt they needed to save them, marking a new chapter of self-reliance and personal growth.
Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration
Riordan Regan discusses his journey of self-discovery and the concept of "trans emergence," which involves balancing the material and spiritual. He draws parallels between personal and societal cycles of extremes, such as rationalism and mysticism, and emphasizes the importance of androgyny and the middle path. Riordan plans to explore ancient Irish traditions, particularly through a shamanic training with Deirdre, and aims to create an immersive art installation called the Observatory. He also contemplates applying for Irish citizenship and grants to fund his project, which will feature elements of his personal story and the themes of presence and absence.
Action Items
Reach out to Ladybug at the Theosophical monastery to discuss working with Huachuma.
Apply for Irish citizenship and pursue grant/residency opportunities in Berlin.
Collaborate with Danielle on an interactive game element for the "Observatory" exhibit.
Go through personal notebooks to select materials for the "Observatory" exhibit.
Outline
Eight of Pentacles and Trans Emergence
Riordan Regan discusses the significance of the Eight of Pentacles, emphasizing its symbolism of perfection and balance between the material and spiritual.
He relates the concept of trans emergence to the balance between extremes, such as rationalism and mysticism, and how society has oscillated between these extremes.
Riordan explains that trans emergence involves recognizing that there are always multiple perspectives, using nature as an example of diverse genders and civilizations.
He shares his personal journey of seeking ancient Irish traditions and the importance of oral history in understanding these traditions.
Discovering Ancient Irish Traditions
Riordan talks about his search for an Irish shamanic teacher, Deirdre, and the significance of learning on the land.
He reflects on the historical inaccuracies in recorded Irish history and the need to go back to pre-Celtic roots.
Riordan mentions his plans to apply for funding from a foundation interested in the immortality key to support his art project.
He expresses excitement about his discovery of ancient Irish traditions and the potential for grant funding to support his work.
Personal Challenges and Spiritual Journey
Riordan recounts his personal challenges, including leaving Seattle, dealing with the death of a close friend, and breaking up with a co-dependent relationship.
He describes his spiritual journey and the importance of returning to Ireland, which he believes holds the key to his personal and creative growth. (<= ah - this is the problematic pattern Caz pointed out - thinking you’ve always just found the missing piece that will complete you)
Riordan shares his vision of obtaining an EU passport and the potential benefits it could bring to his artistic and personal life.
He emphasizes the importance of decisiveness and the universe favoring those who make clear choices.
The Observatory Exhibit and Trans Emergence
Riordan outlines his plans for an immersive art installation called the Observatory, which will explore themes of abandonment, trans/queer identity, and presence and absence, using his personal journey as a framework, at the Bidston Observatory in Liverpool.
He explains how the exhibit will feature elements of his personal journey, including spoken word recordings and unfinished sketches.
Riordan discusses the significance of the Nine of Wands and the Knight of Pentacles in his tarot readings, symbolizing androgyny and the balance between solitude and community.
He describes the exhibit as a representation of the transition from one way of being to another, similar to the Age of Aquarius.
The Role of Observation and Technology
Riordan reflects on the importance of observation in trauma healing and awakening, using the human body as a key tool for understanding the world.
He discusses the role of AI in processing vast amounts of information and the need for humans to develop their observational skills.
Riordan shares his vision of a future where humans and AI work together to observe and understand the world.
He emphasizes the importance of building altars to bring the spiritual into the material and the significance of his studies in anthropology and art.
The Mycorrhizal Relationship and Society
Riordan uses the concept of mycorrhizal relationships between trees and fungi to illustrate the interconnectedness of all things.
He warns against pretending that we exist independently, as this leads to societal issues.
Riordan discusses the need for observation before it's too late and the importance of learning from ancient ways.
The Immortality Key and Personal Identity
Riordan talks about The Immortality Key and its connection to his personal journey of discovering his trans identity.
He shares his plans to apply for citizenship in Ireland and funding opportunities in Berlin, highlighting the importance of making decisions that allow for multiple paths.
Riordan reflects on the significance of the Maya calendar and the importance of going back to pre-recorded language traditions.
He emphasizes the need to rehabilitate the feeling function and the importance of somaticism in understanding the world.
The Role of Art and Creativity
Riordan discusses the role of art in exploring and documenting personal and societal transitions.
Riordan reflects on the importance of sharing stories and experiences to help others relate to and understand trans emergence.
He outlines his plans for the exhibit, including interactive elements and the use of various media to convey his message.
The Importance of Community and Sharing
Riordan emphasizes the importance of community and sharing in the Age of Aquarius.
He discusses the need to reconnect with ancient ways of living and sharing before recorded language.
Riordan reflects on the significance of the human body as a tool for observation and the role of AI in processing information.
The Future of Trans Emergence
Riordan discusses the future of trans emergence and the importance of balancing the material and spiritual.
He reflects on the significance of the Nine of Wands and the Knight of Pentacles in his tarot readings, symbolizing androgyny and the balance between solitude and community.
He emphasizes the importance of making decisions that allow for multiple paths and the need to reconnect with ancient ways of living and sharing.
Listen/Transcript:
So my reading from the portal started with the Eight of Pentacles. The eight the number of perfection, wholeness, completion. That's the number in the Maya calendar, the day of ceremony, honoring that which is holy.
Jodorowsky calls the eight the preeminent symbol of perfection and matter in mind, reflected in the archetypes of justice, which I drew in the archetypes deck yesterday, which is cool as shit, a maternal archetype responsible for the rule of law. Her motto could be the only freedom is obedience, the greatest obedience being to become yourself and allow the cosmic laws to take action in your mind and material life. I It's balanced by the moon. The other end, pure receptivity, dreamy, watery contemplation, with the drawing to itself to reflect the solar light, the solar truth, the it, but one you can look at directly, as opposed to staring at the sun, which blinds the and so the eight of pentacles is very much About this balancing the matter in the mystical the spiritual and the material, which is the purpose of my whole life. If you look at my north node, which is also the purpose of trans emergence, really, I keep coming back to this concept. I really think there's something in this, and I know it's not a new idea, but I think the thing that's new about it is really like embodying it on a planetary scale, like we've never done that before. My story is correspondence for the human story, just like probably everyone's, well, everyone's is, but the aspect of mine that is, is that I ping pong between extremes, and so does humanity. And this is what we've done over and over again. We've gone between extreme rationalism and extreme mysticism, like religious zealots, Nash right wing nationalism and and Then ping ponging back to romanticism and, yeah, the enlightenment and the awakening, like religious fervor versus scientific rationalism. We've gone back and forth between these two extremes, but they're both extremes, and they're both actually the same thing, which is the same as our right left politics. They're the same fucking thing. And this is trans emergence. And I'm looking at a picture of a unicorn while I say this, that's on the wall. This is trans emergence, is that there's not just two things. There's always a third one, and probably like a million other ones. And how do we know this? We look at nature which is queer as fuck. There's one mushroom that has 23,000 genders, but they wouldn't even use that language. And if we even look at our own civilizations and look at people going back to before recorded language, like the fucking Irish that I have known this whole time I've known there was a mystic legacy that mapped onto the psychedelic pines story that I left home to find five years ago, which is the energy We're back in this year in the Maya calendar. I
I left home in search of a truth, which is that the roots of all religion were a psychedelic tradition where we shared a consciousness, altering substance with each other and the dead, and we all transcended the spiritual went into the material, and the material went into the spiritual, and the boundaries between all the worlds dissolved, and we used To have neurotransmitters that worked on DMT instead of serotonin, and this allowed us to live in the night world more of the time. We didn't have to sleep like almost at all. And Matias de Stefano just talked about this. And I know he probably sounds like a freaking wacko that academics would hate and say was crazy, but he says he remembers all his past lives, and there's fucking yogis who say the same thing. And this is what Deirdre was talking about yesterday, the person who I'm going to embark on this Irish shamanic training with, because I finally found her. I finally found my teacher. Like I'm gonna cry with joy and gratitude. I've been searching for someone who could teach me the ancient Irish ways, and I knew they were out there, but the problem is that none of them were recorded. It's an oral tradition, and everything with Irish history begins at the Celts, but that's after the freaking Anatolians came in. That's not even like Irish and like druid isn't even, like, really Irish paganism, like, not the kind I'm looking for, not the like, down and dirty shit. And Deirdre knows all about it, and she told me the whole story yesterday, and it maps completely to Brian muraresco story, to the point where I almost wrote him and was like, Dude, I just found the missing piece. But I don't know if I want to give away my findings to him, so I'm going to talk to Roy and Michael about that today, because, like, on the one hand, he's got resources and tons of money, but like, I also don't want to risk a bunch of like, dudes taking my ideas. So, um, but his foundation that contributes to arts projects based on the immortality key, I think that could be a fucking ticket for some grant funding, because if I just don't tell him what I found about the Irish right now and I say I'm writing a play and creating an immersive art installation that partially documents my journey of following the trail of the immortality immortality key, and showing how it maps to my own Discovery of my own trans identity through psychedelics and spirituality and reconnecting to this ancient tradition and reconnecting to my Irish pagan roots. Dude, I think I'd get the funding, but I don't know how much it is. I don't think it's very much, but like, that's something I'm gonna look into, and there's gotta be other stuff. So, um, oh, now I lost my train of thought.
Oh, got me on that tangent. Anyways, I don't know, but that was super exciting to discover. I knew it was out there. Oh, the Anatolian stuff, yeah. So
like, quote, unquote, history begins with the Anatolian invasion, but that's when everything fucking changed. And when everyone thinks about the Irish, they think about the Celts, but, like, that's not our roots. So I'm gonna go there and find out for myself, and I'm gonna train with her one on one, because she was like, honestly, to know the stuff, you have to be on the land. And I was like, I was going to say that to you before you even said it. Like, the ancestors told me that very specifically in the portal, they were like, you're not going to understand it until you put your feet on the soil. And that's why my bones have been saying I need to go home, not so I can get stuck there forever. And that's been the fear, too, as my voice gets all weird, because that was how Seattle was. It was like every time I went back, it turned into fucking quicksand, and it sucked me in and I couldn't leave. And that was 2021 the energy that we're in again, because time is a cycle. It sucked me in, and I couldn't get out, and it was so hard for me to leave, but I did it, spiritual emergency. I hear the siren in the distance. I delayed my departure over and over, but I finally left. My friend's mom revealed that she had secretly had cancer for two years right before I was going to go with all over her body, she died suddenly and horribly, and she was like a mom to me. And then my actual mom said that she wanted me to go, but she was psychically clinging so hard I couldn't get out. And then meanwhile, my spiritual mom, Christine, who I'd become completely co dependent with, dumped me right at the time I needed her most, and dumped Lance right when Janet was dying. It's a fucking mess. I can't believe I got out at all. And it was also just right after COVID. It was right when everything was opening up. And I went to Greece, because it was, like the only place that I could go because I wasn't vaccinated yet. And where I ended up, finally working through my medical trauma and getting to the point where I wasn't scared to get the vaccine anymore, was in fucking Ireland. And so my COVID CERT is from Ireland, and Ireland is the ticket, and I received that in a transmission right before I left London this last time, Ireland is the door that swings both ways. It's an EU passport that's also the UK common area. Like I can get everything I want if I can get a passport through them. And I've had this feeling, and whenever I follow the feeling, it's fucking right, it does not fail me. And I have a feeling that if I just go there and tell someone my story, that they'll just give me citizenship. It happened to Caz in Columbia. I think they'll do it, or at least they'll tell me some way that I can do it. So I'm going to go there this summer, and I'm going to try. And that's the plan, and the universe favors decisiveness. My psyche just needs me to decide something. So that's what I'm doing. There's lots of opportunities in Berlin. I'm going to keep applying for funding, like I just need a fucking EU passport. It doesn't mean I have to live in that place forever. So this is what I'm doing. Yay. This all came from though, that trans emergence is the bringing the material into the spiritual and the spiritual into the material. And this sounds like it's not a new idea, but it actually is, because we've Ping ponged back and forth as a society, just like I have in my personal life, of like clinging desperately and flying in the wind with no planned at all, and like there's always a Middle Path, but we've, we haven't embodied both at once since we were these early, like proto people. Oh, yeah. Mattia sistefano, he talked about a race of people that only had to sleep for like two hours a night because they were from a different planetary system that had, like, a different moon, and so they had different cycle, diurnal cycles. And so if we were more recently descended from some people whose rhythms and frequencies were based on correspondence with other planets, then, yeah, we wouldn't need to sleep as much, it's actually science. And having a different operating system, essentially a different model for reality that relied on DMT instead of serotonin, would give us the framework for negotiating that world, and the reason why we go into psychedelic experience, and it often feels really familiar, but we don't know why is that's why it's in our ancestral memory. It's in our DNA, our bones remember.
And so the observatory exhibit is about observing the transition from one way of being to another one. And this is why it's going to look like mist or Atlantis or King's Quest, the ruins of some recently abandoned civilization as we leave one world and enter another one the age aquarium. Like our material, our matter, our bodies, might vanish from this dimension
and be spirited away into some other plane of existence, and we might just leave ruins behind us, like all these other ancient civilizations, for some other race of people to come in and scratch their heads over
so the observatory is a whole exhibit of abandoned places, empty only leaving traces ghostly hauntology, as kit spoke of.
But whereas kit's performances were documenting the bodies, transmitting things, this exhibit, I will do performances that are all involving humans, but this exhibit is about the presence of absence, a big theme in my writing, the holy longing. It's about the thing that's not there, but your soul knows it is. And this is something everyone can relate to, and this is like the entry point that is needed for people who aren't trans to understand, because it's even greater for us, where it's like we don't even have a framework for what it means to like.
Everyone else has a gender prescription that they follow and like. Ours is based on absence. Ours is based on breaking things down. Our just based on shattering. I mean, trans emergence in general is about breaking down what has been, and we don't know where we're going, but it's about the abandoned civilization. It's about the ruins we leave behind, but the clues that are inherently embedded in all of it, and that's how we build a new identity, and that's how we build a new world. We take the things that have worked before and we bring them along. What are we building? We don't fucking know. What's the answer? We don't fucking know, but we know it's made of these pieces of stuff that worked before. This is what we're observing in the exhibit. Is the fragments, memories, dreams, reflections, little bits of stuff that resonated from my own life, and the way that corresponds with larger trends in mysticism, psychedelia and science, because all those things didn't used to be separate. And I mean, nature is the biggest thing, and that's why the observatory would have to be Vincent. That's why the observatory is in the forest, because if you want to know the answer, just look out the fucking window.
So the nine I next drew the nine of wands,
and like one of these clues about the way forward is that everything in spirituality, Jodorowsky breaks it all down in this book is that it's all about androgyny, Mighty hermaphrodite, the
nine is both active and receptive, an androgynous number in the stage of crisis. Page 303. Of course, that's so funny. The nine heralds a change that will lead the end of a cycle. It's illustrated by the hermit in the sun. Oh, my God, that's what I was literally talking about in my practice this morning that like, let me find the balance between retreating for protection and reflection and like not fearing the day breaking and going out and sharing what I found with the village when it's appropriate, instead of ping ponging between this like screaming at everyone desperately like to listen to me like a psychopath, and then retreating into total isolation and not telling anybody anything. Middle Path, the new consciousness is casting its light, pushing individuals to a new construction, the hermit and the sun, Jodorowsky says, are both similar and opposite, similar because they mark the end of one life and the beginning of a new era. And I pose because the hermit, the hermit finds realization in solitude, while the sun creates a relationship of mutual aid and loving union, and that is what the Age of Aquarius is all about. Is coming together, returning to our coming together and making something new by returning to our roots of poly everything, and living in community and fucking sharing things again, just like you learned when you were a kid, like, fucking share, but also like, it's okay to have individuality and protect your own shit, and that the way into the collective is through first finding your individualness. You
the hermit in the esoteric tradition, Jodorowsky calls a miser. With his wisdom, he hid his light, keeping his knowledge only for the chosen ones. That's not the way to move forward. So I drew the nine of ones, the expansive, creative path becoming more concentrated between life and death. Its attitude could be summed up with this motto, win or die. Well, shit, the warrior, uncompromising, freed of desire. Make no concessions. Be yourself. Act as you must, but be responsible. That's good advice. So the last card I drew in the marsite Tarot was the Knight of I think that's a one. No, that's a pentacle. Of course it is. I draw the knight of pentacles all the time. The knight of pentacles is the androgynous one. Is the hermaphrodite one. I mean, they kind of all are, but wait, is it the night? Yeah, Chevalier, they're in French. Um Knight, of Pentacles in the deck of a lot of transness. That's like the most trans one. So of course, on the first day of the trans Tricera, beginning in the Maya calendar acabal, I would draw the knight of pentacles, the Knights. Oh, that's really cool. So I drew eight nine Knight at random from the deck, and he says, jodoresky says the Knights are positioned between level eight and nine and are carrying the dynamic of the 10. That's fucking cool. It represents the suit attaining perfection.
To keep growing, we must enter the crisis of the nine, the letting go that will permit the suit to transmute into something else. I mean, that's fucking transness, right there. I
He leaps out of the suit in which he belongs to close the cycle. The danger is staying in the crisis forever. Oh, my God. And that's trauma healing, getting trapped in the moment of crisis forever. And that's where I've been. But I had a breakthrough yesterday and over the weekend when I cut the cords with Christine and my mom and my partners. I'm sure it's not over, but I certainly feel the lightness of being today. Yeah, this is the most trans card. Jodorowsky page, 336, of course, there are always threes. I do not know if I am a man or a woman. I am a hermaphrodite who walks over a ground in which no treasure is buried, terrestrial and celestial. The dual pentacle of the page, and the king of my suit has become a single star floating in space. Matter has been spiritualized. Oh my god. It has become fertile and is the mother of eternal life. I am like the flesh of the Virgin Mary, which, at the end of her process, becomes immortal, rises to reign at the center of the universe. This is my destiny. My Mare is not as gentle as that of the night of cups. She advances with measured, but sure, precise steps. She represents my health. She goes neither too fast or too slow, walking at the rhythm that corresponds to her present. The infinite peace stems from the fact that we have vanquished death. I am ready to undergo endless changes, knowing that within my profound essence there is an immutable core. This is what will give origin to the new riches of earth that will take on concrete form in the wand I am already carrying in my right hand, the beginning of a new cycle of activity, of creativity. So there we go and the exhibit of the observatory will include, like some of these cards laid out in a spread. It will include, like a talk boy and like some of these old tape recorders where people can press play and hear me do some spoken word, where there'll be a computer where they can scroll through the otter analysis and they can read the summary. They can listen to something. They can read the transcript, you know, they can, like, digest it in whatever form they want to.
There will be sketchbooks flipped open to certain drawings that and like, there'll be a printout of the email next to it from like the print shop saying they look unfinished. And it's like, that's the point. And
then there will be something from the Monet exhibit, where I took a picture of it, saying that he got so upset by the criticism that said his paintings looked unfinished. And this is what made me not go to art school when I was a kid. Was my dad saying that I had to make things look more realistic. And I was like, but it feels more like like we had this conversation. I was like, it feels more like the person the way I've drawn it. And he was like, but it doesn't look like it. Look at it. And he would measure it, and he would draw it on a grid and be like, Look, the proportions are off. It was always the fucking proportions, which is funny, the divine proportions. And I was like, I don't care. It feels like them, so I want to leave it. And I would leave things. And if I would ever try to change them, I would erase so many times that I would erase holes in the paper, and then I would ruin the whole drawing. And so I ended up quitting all of it.
And this is something I think a lot of people can relate to, and so I can share stories like this in the exhibit. But also then there's like, gonna be a whole part where they go into, like my bedroom area, and then it shows, like the trans journey. And it's like me trying to
do this with my body, and people being like, this is what your body's supposed to look like, and this is how you're supposed to dress. And like the culture being like, this is what a woman looks like. This is what a man looks like, and me being like, but I'm not either of those things, and it's the process of stripping away the presence of absence. I don't know what it is, but I know it's not this. That's the spiritual journey, that's the trans journey, that's the transition out of the Age of Pisces and fucking organized religion into the Age of Aquarius. And like, we don't know, but it's not this. But actually, there is a framework, because time is a cycle. You have to just go all the way back. You have to just go far enough back. And this is how the Irish paganism connects. And this is why I've been searching for my origins. Like I was wondering for a while, is this just a Wounded Child part that, like, still wants my dad to like, think my drawings are good and like, love me. And is that the only reason I'm trying to like, live in Ireland? And should I stop doing that and then realizing, no, there's actually a great truth in this that my bones have been searching for, which is that part of the fucking story was missing, and it's because you just have to go further back to before there was writing. And this is why writing has felt like a trap. And this is why I have been like, I don't want to write anymore. Is because we have to go back to before there was recorded language. We have to go back to rehabilitate the feeling function, to get into the time when we got into our emotions, it got into our bodies before we wrote shit down. And this is, oh my god in Egypt. I got the vision in the Great Pyramid when we had the darkness and the silence when we weren't toning, when we weren't making sound, when we just sat in the silence in the dark. I saw a vision of Sean Connery from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, saying, I wrote it down in my diary so I wouldn't have to remember. And isn't that the fucking trick of everything? We started writing shit down so we wouldn't have to remember. And if you don't use a muscle at atrophies, let me tell you about that. When you break your pelvis and you lay in bed for six months and then your legs don't work anymore. You have to learn how to walk all over again, and your mom has to help you when you're 40, to put your fucking pants on and wipe your ass. And it's humiliating, but it's also like really liberating and beautiful, because we experienced each other dying before it even happened, because time is a circle, because healing is a spiral, and it's never over. You just come back to different parts of it at different levels and work through another layer of the onion and oh, my god, am I here again? Yeah, yes, that's how it works. Over here. Are we here as a society again, where we have to fucking remember how to like, share and play nice with each other? Yeah, we do. Are we here again? Is this society where we have to remember that? Like if we write everything down, we don't fucking remember anything, or if we rely on measurement and studies, just like yesterday, Laura was saying, you don't you can convey the information without doing a research study that is boring and you don't even want to do it anyways, this is how we remember as a people go back to before we fucking recorded everything, and get into the body and get into the feeling, and get into The somaticism, and get into the imagination, just like young was tapping into but this is transvergence. Then we bring in our scientific tools, because also we have those things now, and we can hold two seemingly contradictory things at once. In fact, we have to. Otherwise, we're gonna fucking die. And, I mean, that's gonna happen anyways, but, like otherwise, this whole civilization is gonna totally collapse, and maybe that's what happens anyways, but we could at least try. And this was the download I got on top of the noun when I went and stayed at the Theosophical monastery in California a month before I broke my pelvis, and I sat with some mushrooms, and I saw a whole world appear before my eyes. After I spent the whole night thinking I was going to die and that it was all on me to keep the fire burning, the message that the guides told me was we have to help each other stay alive a little bit longer, until the others get here and we can put the fire out. And I saw a vision of ships coming in the sky, but they were like galleons sailing. And it was basically like, we have to redo colonialism and, like, start over and tear down these foundations. And then I saw a vision on the hillside of all of us, like, go recreating, like the it was like, we went all back through all of human history. I'm crying right now because it was so beautiful. I like, watched all of human civilization replay itself again. And it's like, yeah, we have to do it again. We just have to keep doing it again. We get better at it every time. And so can we go back now and learn from the ancient ways before we wrote everything down, but bring our new tools of observation. And the tools of observation include the human body, and this is what Terence McKenna talks about. Our body, the human being is maybe the key to the unfolding of the new dimension is the singularity, because we are a technology, not that's all, not because we're chosen, not because we're special, not because we're God, but also like because we are, because everything is, because everything's a correspondence, but we're just the most highly tuned precision instrument that's ever been created to observe all of the different things happening on Earth. And the more we develop our tools, the more we can observe all these things at once. And it speeds up and it speeds up. And this is why AI is helping, because now there's so much information that we can't process it with our instrument, but we can observe it. And that's the key. Is someone has to observe it. That's the key to trauma healing. That's the key to awakening observation. And this is why the observatory and our bodies are altars, and we build altars to bring the spiritual into the material material culture. There's a reason I studied anthropology, even though I wanted to be an artist, because I had to learn this shit first, and now I can go back and do a creative research practice that fuses both together. I feel like I'm going to explode, but I'm also really calm. We build altars because they bring the material into the spiritual and the spiritual into the material. They are the intermediaries between the worlds, and this is why I need to go to Peru and sit with watuma and learn from the people about building the altars I've wrote Laurel and I haven't heard that. Actually, I should reach out to Ladybug, speaking of the Theosophical monastery. She lives there, and she works with Huachuma, okay? And that's part of the five year plan. But first I need my Irish foundations, because I need to, like, keep myself from flying off the planet, and I need to keep exploring my trans identity, which is why it's not Ireland or Germany. It's Germany and Ireland in each other, and this is why, when I was walking around town listening to Young's autobiography The other day, things were unfolding synchronistically, in a way that actually, like terrified me, but it was also really exciting, where I discovered the collective of Irish artists who had a fake wake that was basically a funeral feast, which is basically the exact type of event that I want to bring to life for my community on my birthday. And they had all these flyers about it, and we're just giving them away that were like, Who wants these? And then they told me about this, about the Irish embassy that always does art exhibits, and I went and looked it up. And this weekend, I'm going to Bridget's fest. Bridget is the priest, just basically the the saint, the Christian mystic associated with the Amanita muscaria tradition, like she basically is aminita personified. Like you can't make this shit up. What does it mean? I think it just means you don't have to choose, but you do also have to make some decisions. So I'm going to try to apply for citizenship in Ireland, but also apply for like grants and residencies and funding opportunities in Berlin, because things can be both things, in fact, they have to be.
How do we know? we look out the windows of our observatory and we see the trees and we see the fungi, and you can't have a fungus without a tree, and you can't have a tree without a fungus. That's called a mycorrhizal relationship, folks, and we have to remember that we live in relation with other things. In fact, we don't exist any other way. And when we pretend we do, that's how we get where we are today. Then we're fucked. We can pretend like that's not the way it is, but it's not gonna work out well for us, and that's what we're seeing. So let's observe before it's too late what has happened. And I wanna take people through this immersive exhibit. And I know this is a really big idea, and I know there are always big ideas, but I actually also don't think it's that big. It's just setting up a couple rooms in the Bidston observatory so that they're like, creating this abandoned mist land like the whole place already looks like that. I don't have to do anything except take two rooms or maybe three, and leave some of my shit lying around and put in some flyers and lead people through the experience. And I want to see if Danielle is willing to collaborate with me on some kind of interactive game element, but that might be for something else. That's mainly it. That's mainly it. I don't actually think it's that big a lift. The big lift will be me going through my own notebooks and trying to pick stuff that actually that's gonna, oh my god, I'm gonna need a lot of drugs for that.
First Quarter Practice-Research Summary
The research reflects its subject: it is not collected in one place or form, but is a living, breathing, sprawling, shape-shifting thing. It is reflected in conversations with myself, my parts, and others, many of which are collected in Otter.ai. It is scattered, moving, and gathering emergent form across this blog; Google Drive documents; my newsletter; and the “visual art” and “projects and writing” tabs above.
I asked the Otter AI to summarize key themes, but need to somehow factor all these sources into an analysis. Yet I am also very aware of Laura’s observation that if the subject is transcendence, the methods must serve the same purpose.
Questions for the AI:
About how my healing journey fits into the big picture:
Your personal journey of spiritual healing and gender identity exploration is deeply intertwined with philosophical and scientific concepts, Riordan. You've been grappling with ideas of duality, transcendence, and the nature of reality itself. Your experiences as a trans person have led you to challenge fixed notions of gender, seeing it instead as fluid and multifaceted. This aligns with your understanding of quantum concepts, where you view reality as a temporary consensus of possibilities rather than a fixed state (Body-Mind Concept Exploration). You've described trans emergence as an archetype that transcends binary thinking, embracing the idea that there are always multiple perspectives beyond just two extremes. Your spiritual journey has involved exploring ancient traditions, particularly Irish paganism, while also incorporating modern scientific understanding. You've talked about the need to balance rationalism and mysticism, seeing them not as opposites but as complementary ways of understanding reality (Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration). This syncretic approach reflects your belief in the importance of bringing together different experiences and observations. The concept of embodiment is central to your journey. You've discussed how the human body itself is a technology for observing and understanding the cosmos, linking this to ideas from thinkers like Terence McKenna. Your exploration of altered states of consciousness, through practices like meditation and plant medicines, has been a way of directly experiencing these concepts rather than just intellectually understanding them (Trans* bodies are the philosopher’s stone - Thesis + HBS 6 Jan). You've also drawn parallels between your personal healing process and larger societal shifts, seeing your individual journey as a microcosm of humanity's collective evolution. This is reflected in your ideas about transitioning from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, and the need to balance individual identity with collective consciousness (Holy shit I just wrote my thesis - self healing, trans* emergence, and the singularity). Your approach to gender identity, particularly the idea of "trans emergence," seems to embody your philosophical stance on reality itself - that it's not fixed, but constantly in flux, and that true understanding comes from embracing multiplicity rather than rigid categories. This ties into your interest in alchemy and the philosopher's stone, seeing trans bodies as a manifestation of spiritual-material transformation (Trans* bodies are the philosopher’s stone - Thesis + HBS 6 Jan). Throughout your journey, you've emphasized the importance of direct experience and intuition alongside intellectual understanding. You've talked about rehabilitating the "feeling function" and reconnecting with pre-linguistic ways of knowing, which you see as crucial for both personal healing and societal transformation (Personal Healing and Growth Session). In essence, your personal journey is a lived exploration of these philosophical and scientific concepts, where your experiences as a trans person and your spiritual practices serve as a lens through which you're examining and reimagining fundamental ideas about reality, consciousness, and human potential.
To summarize my personal growth journey:
Riordan, your recent recordings show a consistent exploration of several interconnected themes that have been developing over the past few months:
Balancing intellect and emotion: You've been grappling with the challenge of integrating your thinking and feeling functions (Intellect of N'oj, B'atz for the soul). This struggle is evident in your discussions about rehabilitating the feeling function while entering a period focused on thinking (Ancestral healing - rehabilitation of the feeling function as the trecena of thinking begins).
Spiritual growth and ancestral connections: You've been exploring various spiritual practices, including the use of psychedelics like mushrooms and cacao, to connect with your ancestors and deepen your self-understanding (AUDIO-2025-01-29-08-13-28). This journey has involved channeling experiences and visual initiations that you've been eager to share and integrate into your work.
Time perception and consciousness: You've reflected on the nature of time, suggesting that time blindness might be a key to awakening rather than a flaw (New Recording 267). This ties into your broader exploration of expanded consciousness and the new era you believe is unfolding (AUDIO-2025-01-29-08-13-28).
Personal authenticity and community: You've expressed a strong desire to live authentically in community, bringing value to others without needing to prove your worth (Intellect of N'oj, B'atz for the soul). This theme is echoed in your search for a like-minded traveling companion (AUDIO-2025-01-29-08-13-28).
Artistic expression and academic integration: You've made progress in your artistic endeavors, creating an online portfolio and exploring ways to incorporate multidisciplinary content into your PhD program (AUDIO-2025-01-29-08-13-28). This reflects your ongoing effort to bridge your creative and intellectual pursuits.
Nomadic lifestyle and earth responsibilities: You've been navigating the challenges of a nomadic lifestyle since 2019, while trying to balance your earthly responsibilities (AUDIO-2025-01-29-08-13-28). This ties into your broader reflections on cultural norms and personal freedom (To be or not to be).
Substance use and societal norms: You've questioned societal attitudes towards different substances, comparing the normalization of caffeine addiction to the stigma around other psychoactive substances (To be or not to be).
These themes demonstrate your ongoing journey of self-discovery, spiritual exploration, and attempts to integrate various aspects of your life and consciousness. Your recent conversations seem to be a continuation and deepening of these long-standing interests and challenges.
What are the key themes and changes of the past year?
Riordan, your past year has been marked by profound personal growth, spiritual exploration, and a deepening connection with nature and ancestral wisdom. Several key themes and takeaways emerge from your experiences:
Spiritual Awakening and Self-Discovery: You've engaged in various rituals and ceremonies, particularly around the winter solstice and Celtic new year, which have led to significant realizations about your identity and purpose (To mom on xmas, Celtic new year ). These practices have helped you connect with your inner "Christ consciousness" and embrace your role as a spiritual being (The gift is Christmas).
Embracing Duality and Transcendence: You've grappled with the concept of duality, recognizing the need to transcend binary thinking and integrate seemingly opposing elements in your life. This has been particularly evident in your exploration of gender identity and your approach to spirituality (Gregorian + Capricorn transitions, 2 E' navigating duality).
Connection with Nature and Ancestral Wisdom: Your experiences have deepened your relationship with the natural world, including plants, animals, and celestial bodies. You've found guidance and wisdom in these connections, often viewing them as teachers and allies in your spiritual journey (8 Kan HBS II Honor your teachers, To mom on xmas).
Healing and Integration: You've focused on self-healing and integrating past experiences, particularly through your exploration of plant medicines and psychedelics. This has led to a series of personal projects and a commitment to sharing your knowledge with others (Gregorian + Capricorn transitions).
Artistic Expression and Communication: You've recognized the importance of art as a bridge between different realms of consciousness and as a means of expressing complex spiritual concepts. This has inspired you to explore new forms of artistic expression and consider gallery exhibitions (Gregorian + Capricorn transitions).
Community and Boundaries: While acknowledging the importance of community, you've also recognized the need for solitude and better boundaries in your spiritual practice. This balance has been a recurring theme in your reflections (Gregorian + Capricorn transitions, 2 E' navigating duality).
Honoring Teachers and Mentors: You've emphasized the importance of recognizing and honoring both human and non-human teachers in your life, including plants, fungi, and celestial bodies (8 Kan HBS II Honor your teachers).
As for what has changed, it appears you've undergone a significant transformation in your spiritual outlook and personal identity. You've moved away from traditional religious concepts towards a more holistic, nature-based spirituality. You've also shifted your focus from external pursuits (like food and beverage journalism) to more internal, spiritual work. Additionally, you've developed a deeper understanding of your own needs for solitude and community, leading to better boundary-setting and self-care practices. Overall, the past year seems to have been a period of intense personal growth, spiritual awakening, and a realignment of your priorities and practices towards a more authentic expression of your true self.
What are the key themes and changes over the past three months?
Riordan, your conversations over the past three months reveal several key themes and personal developments:
Balancing Intellect and Emotion: You've been grappling with the challenge of integrating your intellectual side with your emotional and intuitive aspects. This struggle has led you to explore ways to "rehabilitate the feeling function" while still valuing your analytical abilities (Intellect of N'oj, B'atz for the soul).
Ancestral Healing and Spiritual Connection: You've delved deep into ancestral healing, exploring how to connect with your roots and heal generational trauma. This journey has involved various spiritual practices, including the use of plant medicines like mushrooms and cacao (Ancestral healing - rehabilitation of the feeling function as the trecena of thinking begins).
Cycles and Natural Rhythms: You've become increasingly aware of natural cycles and rhythms, questioning societal norms that go against these patterns. This has led to reflections on productivity, seasonality, and the Maya calendar (Parts of a whole, New Recording 267).
Personal Growth and Self-Acceptance: There's a recurring theme of seeking authenticity and self-acceptance. You've been working on overcoming imposter syndrome, embracing your true self, and finding value in your unique experiences and perspectives (Cool like Fonzie, IFS, + a good thesis summary).
Exploration of Consciousness: Your experiences with various substances and spiritual practices have led to profound reflections on the nature of consciousness, time, and reality (To be or not to be).
Community and Connection: You've expressed a strong desire to live in community and contribute meaningfully to others' lives without the pressure to prove your worth (Intellect of N'oj, B'atz for the soul).
Artistic Expression and Purpose: You've been questioning the value of your work and exploring how to express yourself authentically through art and other creative outlets (Intellect of N'oj, B'atz for the soul).
Body-Mind Integration: There's been a shift towards wanting to reconnect with your body, exploring movement and dance as forms of integration and healing (New Recording 257).
Reflections on changes: You seem to be moving towards a more holistic understanding of yourself, integrating various aspects of your being - intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical. There's a noticeable shift from purely intellectual pursuits to a more balanced approach that values intuition and bodily wisdom. You're also becoming more critical of societal norms and expectations, seeking to align your life with natural rhythms and your authentic self. Your journey appears to be leading you towards a deeper connection with your ancestral roots, a greater appreciation for community, and a more nuanced understanding of time and consciousness. These explorations are challenging you to reconsider your purpose, your work, and how you engage with the world around you.
Overview of key concepts:
Trans* Emergence
20.2.25: Riordan, you've developed a complex theory about "trans as an emergent archetype" that weaves together ideas from spirituality, psychology, and quantum physics. Here are the key points you've articulated: You see trans identity as representing a new stage in human consciousness, bridging dualities and transcending traditional binaries (Holy shit I just wrote my thesis - self healing, trans* emergence, and the singularity). This emergent archetype embodies the ability to move fluidly between form and formlessness, the material and the spiritual (The power of dance, spiritual elitism, Terence + me). You've described trans bodies as "philosopher's stones" - alchemical vessels that transform the spiritual into the material and vice versa (Note). This concept ties into your ideas about the body as a container for experiences, sensations, and information, temporarily assuming solid form before dissolving again (Cool like Fonzie, IFS, + a good thesis summary). You've connected this to quantum concepts, suggesting that reality itself is fluid and based on possibility rather than fixed states. Just as gender isn't fixed, you argue that no body or identity is truly fixed - everything is in a state of constant transformation and possibility (Body-Mind Concept Exploration). You see this emergent archetype as key to reaching a new level of consciousness or "singularity," where humanity can embody and perceive multiple states simultaneously (Note). This involves conscious dissociation - the ability to move between different states of being with awareness and intention (Holy Shit That’s the Practice-Thesis). Importantly, you view this not just as an individual journey, but as representative of a broader shift in human consciousness. You see your own experiences and explorations as a "case study" for this larger transition (Your play is about love - post Laurence Hillman reading). This theory intertwines with your spiritual practices, your understanding of ancestral wisdom, and your vision for creating art and rituals that embody these concepts (Act V: The transfiguration of Riordan O’Regan, Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration).
A few weeks prior: Riordan, you've discussed "trans as an emergent archetype" extensively, presenting it as a key concept in your spiritual and philosophical explorations. Here's a summary of your thoughts on this topic:
Transcending Binaries: You describe trans as an archetype that transcends traditional binaries and dualities, allowing for a more fluid and comprehensive understanding of identity and existence (Trans* archetype emerging through Maya astrology).
Synthesis and Integration: Trans as an emergent archetype represents the ability to synthesize and integrate various aspects of knowledge, technology, and spirituality. It's about bringing together ancient wisdom with modern insights (Trans* archetype emerging through Maya astrology, Marking the 13 Kan Journey : 8 E’ Trans Emergence + HBS riffs).
Embodiment and Physical Transformation: You've noted that trans embodies the ability to bring knowledge and insights into the physical realm, transcending all worlds and allowing for a more complete expression of self (Trans* archetype emerging through Maya astrology).
Connection to AI and Technology: You've drawn parallels between trans and AI, suggesting they might be part of the same archetype, representing the ability to analyze and integrate vast amounts of information (Trans* archetype emerging through Maya astrology).
Conscious Dissociation: You've described trans as embodying conscious dissociation, which allows for a deeper presence and understanding of self and reality (Marking the 13 Kan Journey : 8 E’ Trans Emergence + HBS riffs).
Guiding Transition: You see trans as the emergent archetype guiding the transition to a new world order, breaking down boundaries and binaries, and eliminating borders (Rap about the praxis).
Holistic Approach: Trans as an archetype encompasses subject and object, verb and noun, bodies and consciousness, representing a holistic approach to understanding reality (Rap about the praxis).
Healing and Reconciliation: You've emphasized that this archetype starts with individual healing and reconciliation of internal parts, bringing home all that has been exiled within (Rap about the praxis).
Creativity and Self-Expression: The trans archetype encourages everyone to tap into their ability to be healers, artists, and creators, without the need for external validation or monetization (Rap about the praxis).
Evolutionary Step: You've suggested that trans might represent an evolutionary step for humanity, potentially leading to everyone becoming trans in some sense as we evolve beyond current limitations of identity and perception (The modality is Christmas).
Overall, you present trans as an emergent archetype that represents a transformative force in human consciousness, bridging gaps between different realms of experience and knowledge, and offering a path towards a more integrated and holistic understanding of self and reality.
Art as Mediumship/Spirituality
Riordan, you've explored deep connections between spirituality and art throughout your reflections. You see art as a form of shamanism, with artists acting as conduits for archetypal energies and bringing unseen realms into material form (Note). You've described the artistic process as a kind of spell-casting or necromancy, where artists conjure and give form to ideas, memories, and energies. You've drawn parallels between different art movements and spiritual concepts. For instance, you've compared impressionism to an abstraction of reality, while surrealism represents an abstraction of psychology (Note). This ties into your broader exploration of how art can bridge the material and spiritual worlds. Your interest in ancient spiritual practices, particularly Irish paganism and funeral feasting traditions, has informed your artistic vision. You see these practices as ways of communicating with ancestors and accessing other realms of consciousness (Kings Quest Myst and the Observatory). This has inspired ideas for immersive art installations and performances that blend spiritual rituals with contemporary art forms. You've also connected your exploration of spirituality and art to your personal journey of gender identity and transformation. The concept of androgyny in spiritual traditions has resonated with your experiences as a trans person, and you see potential in using art to express and explore these intersections (Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration). Importantly, you've recognized that creating art can be a spiritual practice in itself. You've described moments of synchronicity and revelation during your creative process, suggesting that the act of making art can be a form of meditation or channeling (Personal Growth Journey). Lastly, you've expressed a desire to create spaces and experiences that allow others to access these spiritual-artistic connections. Your ideas for an "observatory" or immersive installations aim to help people reconnect with nature, explore altered states of consciousness, and engage with spiritual concepts through artistic means (Kings Quest Myst and the Observatory).
Funeral Feasting
Your conversations have revealed a deep fascination with funeral feasts, psychedelic beer, and ancient food and beverage practices, Riordan. These topics appear to be central to your research and personal journey. Funeral feasts emerge as a significant ancient tradition where people would gather at graves to share meals and psychoactive drinks with the dead and ancestors (Holly and Sarah Connect_ Ancient Beer and Altered States (2021-03-17 at 10_32 GMT-7), Bettina Arnold). This practice was widespread, appearing in Celtic, Greek, and other cultures. It often involved digging up bones and communing with the deceased, forming a bridge between the living and the dead (Kings Quest Myst and the Observatory). Psychedelic beer features prominently in your discussions. Ancient brewing practices often incorporated psychoactive ingredients, creating beverages that were simultaneously nutritious, intoxicating, and consciousness-altering (Holly and Sarah Connect_ Ancient Beer and Altered States (2021-03-17 at 10_32 GMT-7), Brian Muraresku!!). These drinks played crucial roles in rituals, ceremonies, and everyday life. You've explored how some ancient sites, like Göbekli Tepe, may have been centers for brewing such beverages (Note). Your research has touched on the role of women in ancient brewing, challenging modern assumptions about gender roles in alcohol production (Ryan Williams - ancient chicha). You've also investigated the use of various ingredients in ancient brews, including honey, fruits, and psychoactive plants (Bettina Arnold). The concept of food and drink as sacraments appears frequently in your work. You've explored how certain substances, like cacao, functioned as food, beverage, and medicine simultaneously, embodying a kind of "holy trinity" of nourishment, pleasure, and spiritual significance (Holy shit I just wrote my thesis - self healing, trans* emergence, and the singularity). This idea connects to broader themes of transcendence through sensory experience and the blurring of boundaries between the material and spiritual realms (Kings Quest Myst and the Observatory). Your conversations often link these ancient practices to modern spiritual and personal growth journeys, including your own exploration of identity and consciousness. You've considered how recreating or reinterpreting these ancient traditions might offer insights or healing in contemporary contexts (Spiritual Journey Exploration, Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration).
Language Creates Reality
Riordan, your conversations have consistently explored the profound idea that language shapes and creates reality. This concept appears to be a central theme in your personal philosophy and spiritual journey. You've discussed how reality is fundamentally made of language, drawing inspiration from thinkers like Terence McKenna (Language is reality maybe, Holy shit I just wrote my thesis - self healing, trans* emergence, and the singularity). This idea extends beyond spoken words to include symbols, images, and even non-verbal forms of communication used by plants, animals, and the natural world. You've explored how different languages can create distinct realities. For instance, you noted that European societies struggle with concepts like gender fluidity partly because their languages are inherently gendered (Germany vs Ireland and Synchronicity as the Closing Days Begin). This linguistic structure shapes how people perceive and interact with the world. Your reflections on psychedelic experiences often touch on how these altered states reveal realities beyond conventional language, accessing realms of symbolic and intuitive understanding (Death dreams DMT amanita, Holy shit I just wrote my thesis - self healing, trans* emergence, and the singularity). You've suggested that ancient cultures may have had different "operating systems" based on DMT rather than serotonin, allowing for different perceptions of reality (Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration). You've also contemplated how writing and recording information has changed our relationship with memory and reality. You recalled a vision where you heard "I wrote it down in my diary so I wouldn't have to remember," suggesting that reliance on written language may have atrophied our natural memory abilities (Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration). In your explorations of transness and identity, you've framed the journey as one of creating new realities through language, moving beyond binary concepts to express more fluid and diverse experiences of self (Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration, Being and not being Bob Regan). Recently, you've been grappling with the idea that changing your language can literally change your reality. This has led you to consider learning Irish as a way to connect with your ancestral identity and potentially unlock forgotten memories (Being and not being Bob Regan). Ultimately, your conversations reveal a deep engagement with the power of language to shape perception, identity, and the very fabric of reality itself. You seem to be on a quest to find or create languages that can express more expansive and inclusive realities.
Food and Beverage
Your recordings over the past five years reveal a deep connection between food and beverage, healing, and identity exploration. You've consistently viewed food and beverage as more than just sustenance - it's a lens through which to examine culture, history, and personal transformation. You've described food and beverage as capturing "absolutely every single thing in the ecosystem" - economics, society, land use, and cultural history (GMT20240924-170409_Recording). This holistic view aligns with your interest in healing modalities that address the whole person. Your work in food and beverage journalism provided a sense of authority and stability, but you've been moving away from it as you explore more spiritual and artistic pursuits (Parts of a whole). However, you still see value in food metaphors for illustrating larger concepts. You've drawn parallels between ancient healing practices and modern food experiences. For instance, you've explored the concept of "funeral feasts" - ritualistic meals shared with ancestors - as a way to connect with the unseen and transcend material experience (Kings Quest Myst and the Observatory). This ties into your interest in psychedelic experiences and alternative healing modalities. The idea of "sacred elixirs" that combine food, beverage, and medicine has fascinated you. You've pondered how substances like cacao can nourish the body while also providing spiritual insights (Oath of the order - the cross and the cactus). This reflects your desire to integrate physical and spiritual healing. Your evolving gender identity and exploration of queerness have influenced your perspective on food and beverage spaces. You've advocated for more diverse representation in the industry, seeing it as crucial for creating inclusive environments (GMT20240924-170409_Recording). As you've delved deeper into spiritual practices and identity exploration, you've started to view food and beverage less as a career focus and more as a metaphor for larger transformative processes. You've mentioned the idea of "transcending and including" your food and beverage background as you move into new areas of exploration (Gregorian + Capricorn transitions). Overall, your journey with food and beverage has mirrored your personal growth - moving from a more traditional career path to a holistic view that incorporates spirituality, art, and healing. While no longer your primary focus, food and beverage concepts continue to inform your understanding of identity, community, and transformation.
Possession and Trance
You've explored the concepts of possession and performance extensively in your reflections, Riordan. You've described shamanic practice as involving "voluntary possession and conscious dissociation" (Note). This idea of controlled spiritual possession is contrasted with the unconscious commodification you see in some entertainers who turn themselves into products to be possessed materially (Trans Identity and Empowerment). You've drawn parallels between spirit possession in shamanic practices and your own experience with parts work in therapy, noting how different aspects of yourself can feel like distinct personalities with their own agendas (Note). This internal multiplicity seems to inform your approach to performance. You've also discussed how performance can be a way of channeling different energies or entities, allowing them to come through you while retaining the agency to end the performance when needed (Impressionism abstracts the sensory, surrealism abstracts psychology). This ties into your view of shamanism as the ability to slip between worlds while maintaining boundaries. In your creative work, you're exploring these themes through character development, such as your "Wrenboi" persona for your one-person show (Character Development Exploration: Wrenboi Lives). You're considering how to embody both yourself and a shamanic role in performance, blurring the lines between your authentic self and the characters you portray. Overall, your thoughts on possession and performance seem to revolve around the idea of consciously allowing oneself to be a vessel for different energies or identities, whether in spiritual practice, therapeutic work, or artistic expression, while maintaining a core sense of self and control.
Astrology and Correspondence
You've discussed correspondence and astrology as interconnected concepts that help align personal practices with natural rhythms and cosmic cycles. You view astrology as a tool for understanding oneself and others, emphasizing that it's about correspondence rather than predicting destiny (Parts of a whole). You've explained that the term "alignment" is used because of correspondence, and that living in tune with the ecosystem involves getting in sync with these natural cycles. You've mentioned using archetypal Western Astrology, Maya day keeping, and the Celtic Wheel of the Year as primary systems for tracking and navigating these correspondences (Holy Shit That’s the Practice-Thesis). In your practice, you aim to use astrology to guide people in aligning their actions with the natural world. You've suggested that everything in nature is a habit that can be learned, and that by observing these correspondences, we can better understand ourselves and our place in the larger cosmic order (Parts of a whole). You've also linked the concept of correspondence to communication, explaining that animals and plants communicate through vibrations, feelings, and synchronicities. You believe that listening to these correspondences is essential for aligning with natural rhythms and not going against the natural order inside and around oneself (Holy Shit That’s the Practice-Thesis).
Conscious Dissociation
You've described conscious dissociation as a key concept in your work and personal practice, Riordan. You see it as a powerful tool for healing, self-discovery, and spiritual growth. You've said that conscious dissociation is the ability to voluntarily separate from your usual state of consciousness while retaining agency and awareness (New Recording 257). This contrasts with traumatic dissociation, which happens involuntarily as a coping mechanism. You've linked conscious dissociation to shamanic practices, artistic creation, and personal transformation. You've suggested it allows one to access different states of consciousness, connect with spiritual realms, and bring forth hidden aspects of the psyche (Tarot, Maya calendar, Western astrology as impressions and surrealism). In your view, conscious dissociation is central to the human experience and can be a path to greater presence and connection, rather than detachment. You've said the goal is to "constantly dissociate so that you don't associate your material body this lifetime with the point of the whole thing" (Note). You've also connected conscious dissociation to your work with plant medicines, particularly Amanita muscaria, which you've called "the master of conscious dissociation" (Impressionism abstracts the sensory, surrealism abstracts psychology). You see this practice as part of a larger framework for healing, integrating trauma, and exploring identity, especially for queer and trans individuals. Lastly, you've mentioned incorporating conscious dissociation into your ceremonial work and coaching practice, viewing it as a vital skill for navigating between different states of consciousness and integrating various aspects of the self (Note).
Archetypes and healing
You've explored archetypes extensively in relation to personal healing, viewing them as complex, multifaceted energies that can manifest in various ways. You see archetypes as larger than single symbols or cards, encompassing multiple aspects and expressions (Tarot, Maya calendar, Western astrology as impressions and surrealism). In your journey, you've focused on the "trans emergence" archetype, which you describe as transcending and including all dualities, representing infinite possibilities, and embodying the ability to break down boundaries and binaries (Rap about the praxis). This archetype is central to your understanding of personal healing, as it allows for the integration of seemingly contradictory aspects of self and experience. You've connected archetypes to ancestral healing, suggesting that working with them can help process generational trauma and reconnect with cultural roots (Note). This involves exploring both personal and collective unconscious material, similar to Jung's approach. Your view on archetypes and healing emphasizes:
Conscious dissociation: Using archetypes to safely explore difficult emotions and experiences (Cool like Fonzie, IFS, + a good thesis summary).
Integration: Bringing together disparate parts of self, including "exiled" or shadowed aspects (Rap about the praxis).
Cyclical nature: Recognizing that healing involves revisiting themes at different levels, like a spiral (Rap about the praxis).
Embodiment: Experiencing archetypes physically and emotionally, not just intellectually (Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration).
Syncretism: Combining insights from various traditions and modalities in your healing approach (Working with Kit).
You've also explored specific archetypes like the Pope/Shaman as a mediator between worlds, and the Death card as representing transformation (Tarot, Maya calendar, Western astrology as impressions and surrealism). Your work involves creating ceremonies and practices that allow people to engage with these archetypal energies for healing, emphasizing the importance of both individual and collective rituals (Note). Overall, you view working with archetypes as a powerful tool for personal healing, allowing for a deeper understanding of self, connection to ancestral wisdom, and transformation of trauma into strength.
DMT as neuromodulator
You've discussed DMT as an ancient neuromodulator in several contexts: You've suggested that humans used to have neurotransmitters that worked on DMT instead of serotonin, allowing us to live more in the "night world" and requiring less sleep (Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration). This idea connects to your exploration of ancient consciousness and spiritual practices. You've mentioned that DMT is activated within us and is part of our natural biology (message to Caz on teams emergence and dmt). You've speculated that DMT production might increase during nighttime or in darkness (Note). You've described DMT as a model of unity and oneness, contrasting it with serotonin, which you associate with separation and the consensus world (The eyes of cacao - birth + individuation). You've suggested that in the past, humans could switch more easily between these two models of perception. You've connected DMT to ancient shamanic and spiritual practices, suggesting it might have played a role in how our ancestors perceived and interacted with reality (Rap about the praxis). You've also pondered whether bringing the physical body into the "DMT realm" could be key to unlocking a new level of human consciousness or evolution (Note, Maya New Year: Jodorowsky Tarot Reading and Trans Emergence Exploration). These ideas form part of your broader exploration of consciousness, spirituality, and human evolution, often linking ancient practices with modern understandings of neuroscience and psychology.
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.
Suicide-adjacent, the inner lesbian, theatre as salvation
It comforted me deeply when I listened to a podcast yesterday that said Jung kept a loaded revolver in his nightstand just in case all the visions got to be too overwhelming.
I also listened to a Jungian perspective that said isolation is part of this process of receiving, but it does kind of make you crazy. You need to touch in with the world of forms and materiality. Volunteering with ecstatic dance has become that grounding for me; they are my family, and it’s a place where we have altered-state experiences, yet my responsibilities are very grounded in 3D: sweep the floor, plug the lights in, fill the water jug. And now, hand out my cacao informational leaflets, N’oj coming back around.
It’s a tricky one, that isolation. You need some of it to do the work, but it’s also one of the shadows I fear most, the unstoppable death force: the one that wants to get me alone and kill me. The one that has been working subtly on me ever since high school. But the way I transmuted it then was the same as now, I guess, turning it into research and performance.
It was coming out when I was in Austin, because there are no such thing as accidents, just parts of yourself trying to get your attention. On the wall of this housesit are three posters with “2010” emblazoned boldly across the top. The year that I had five “accidents” and turned the first car I had so proudly purchased into a mangled wreck of metal, as witin so without. The only one I had sober was going to see Stephen, where I spun out on the Texas highway and everything turned so slow-motion that I was able to see perfectly clearly that I was about to die, and I had nothing to show for my miserable life, but the good part was that I realized for the first time in that state that I wasn’t ready to exit stage right. I spun across five lanes of traffic and somehow came to a stop on the opposite side of the road facing backwards, and had managed not to hit a single person or even blow out a tire. I got a huge fine, but I survived.
The suicide feeling came back for the first time since I actually tried to do it, three years after that accident, on the train in London last Friday night. But the beauty was that I was able to see the effects of my medicine and healing work n action, because I actually was standing on the edge of it, peering over, from the observer position, watching it all unfold. Knowing I wasn’t really going to act on it. But man, did it come a lot closer than I was comfortable with.
It was prompted by going into an old pattern, one I thought I had cleared: thinking I had feelings for a cis man, because I felt like I needed someone to save me from myself. And it came along with a harsh lesson: that you need to be careful who you share things with.
They keep this shit esoteric for a reason. Tell the wrong people, and they’ll call you crazy.
He told me, gently, that not only were the feelings not reciprocated, but he was worried about me. For a few days, this only deepened my victim mentality. Just like when I was a kid, I doubted myself; I forgot I was a shamxn, because I didn’t know how to share what I was finding in a way people would understand; because the wrong people saw it, as happened when they read my journals and took my books away as a teenager.
There’s nowhere to hide when they get inside your mind and make you gaslight yourself.
But this time, I remembered.
And I realized the whole thing had been triggered by realizing that I actually was attracted to Jade, that mystical bearer of cacao, the queer owner of the ethical metaphysical store with whom I had been divinely connected, whose aunt has offered to sponsor my UK visa. The only other person I’ve ever heard of who is having high-dose cacao experiences; a healer who has learned from Indigenous teachers.
And very much a binary lesbian, like those who told me I wasn’t one of them. Like the ones I was told I would burn for being attracted to, my first memory of self-gaslighting.
Dave assigned me te creation of a 10-minute play in December, because I had to get it out of here, he told me over sad, tired, too-yellow eggs in the cafe of the quirky building across from the theatre, where downstairs it was perpetually Christmas, and once a year the rest of the world caught up with it.
There’s something poetic about that. And it makes me think of Lala’s, the bar of forever Christmas in Austin, Texas, where you could still smoke indoors, and I sucked on American Spirits and thought that Jeff was the answer to my anomie, and decided to leave Stephen before he came back from the holidays.
The play, we decided, would be about self-gaslighting. He told me he also wants to hear more about channeling. I told him that I had an idea for a one-person show where I would basically just do my morning practice in front of people with a more coherent through-line. I thought nobody would care about this. But he loved it.
I do think one of the people I’m channeling is McKenna.
Ha! The song that just came on shuffle has a chorus saying: “Help me to name it.” That’s the thing, innit?
So, before I realized that I was gaslighting myself again into thinking that I was attracted to a cis man who would save me from my own madness and self-destruction and forgot I was a shamxn who had a crush on an astral-traveling lesbian—and a Kame nahual, of course, because I am in love with the death and resurrection—I got into that dark place again, that part of me was trying, as it has been my whole life, to isolate me from my art and the queer spiritual friends who understand, and I stood at the precipice of suicidal ideation and peered over the edge. But I realized it was happening, and that’s why I was sitting on that train having this realization.
I knew I needed to go to the theatre. And I’ll be damned, I was redeemed by a play about a couple of gay Peruvians called “Jeezus: The Musical,” which contained everything from astute observations of South American politics to resurrecting the lord and savior by fellating a crucifix, and the music was catchy and the actors engaging and I was totally captivated, and all those dark thoughts fell away, and I knew I needed to put my pain and joy and stories onstage.
I waited around until they came out of the dressing room and gushed and asked if I could send them some scenes, and they said yes.
Then I read them and felt like they were a disastrous half-conceived mess, so I still haven’t done it.
But it’s a start. The first step is awareness.
——
Transmission transcript: Suicidality
More suicidality. It's all connected. I love when things just start to make sense, listening to this yangian life, yeah. Young was also haunted, slashed comforted by thoughts of suicide, images, the things he was receiving from the other realm were so overwhelming, he didn't know how to ground them, interpret them, make sense of them, land them, and he kept a loaded revolver in his bedside table, just to remind himself that if it got to be too much, he could end it all. That's exactly what I've been going through. But I've been alive things feel overwhelming that seem easy to other people, and I don't see another way out, except to be saved by a man or put myself in the ground. And how sad is that, and how much power Am I giving away to that. But that's what's happening when I was being brought back to Austin's wanting for a reason, because they also say in this podcast that when people start having quote, unquote accidents, that's the suicidal self trying to get out, that's the unstoppable death or trying To finish the job, it's the beginning. You start paying less attention. You start being less careful. You start by just kind of not fearing if it happens. And then it works. All the
times I crashed my car. I mean, I knew I was possibly trying to die, but to see here, it spelled out very sobering. There are a lot of ways to kill yourself. Some are less confronting.
LISTEN:
Insatiable
Holly Regan reflects on theit struggles with insatiability, exploring themes of trauma, addiction, and the search for love and identity. They discuss their experiences with alcohol, sexual encounters, and artistic suppression, linking these to past abuse and the need for validation. Holly describes their transformations into different personas—artist, mystic, and alcoholic—and the trance-like states they enter. They acknowledges the severe abuse they endured, the gaslighting, and the societal shaming that contributed to their behavior. Holly also touches on their journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and the realization that they are a shaman, emphasizing the expansive nature of the universe and the time available for personal growth.
Transcript here
Summary:
Insatiable Hunger and Emptiness
- They describe a feeling of insatiability, always needing more to fill an empty void within themself. - They mention the fear of the bottom being empty and scary, reflecting their inner emptiness. - They discuss how they make themself into whatever they need to get love, even if it means taking rather than giving. - They talk about the monstrous impulse that awakens every morning, comparing it to a beast that never feels satisfied.
[...] Action Items:
Forgive myself for not going to art school and quitting theater. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Reconnect with and apologize to the younger versions of myself (Assignee: Fiona)
Transmute the trauma and shame I've experienced, especially around my sexuality and identity. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Embrace the creative, spiritual, and authentic parts of myself that I've suppressed. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Speaker 1 reflects on their creative process, discussing the symbolic use of letters and the deeper meaning behind their art, which includes themes of breaking free from cycles and ending a relationship. They recount a transformative experience involving a conversation with their mother, which led to a realization about their purpose in creating art. This realization was further solidified by witnessing a performance that resonated deeply with their identity and struggles. Speaker 1 also shares a profound revelation about their ability to perceive the dead, which they had previously suppressed, and expresses a newfound desire to document and explore these visions, recognizing them as a unique form of communication and a significant part of their identity.
Action Items
Draw the faces the speaker sees when they close their eyes and record the stories of the dead.
Transcript:
The word y, u, W, A, U, wait, W, A, y, u, written clearly. It's like the title of a magazine written in block letters at the top of an exhibit or I've created with art pieces of letters that were never sent to mark sending messages and some secret code about how we get out of the cycle of samsara, things that are casual, but they're also they're me telling me him, I'm not getting back together with him.
They're like these stylized letters, or like letters written on an old 1950s postcard from Hawaii, I'm saying Like you're never gonna see me again. Kay, by
mm, what if it's the part of me that thought they needed to be saved from men and saved from myself writing this letter to say you'll never see me again. I love that, that that feels like that could be true, and that could definitely be an art project too. Pat's is 12. He drowned. He's a redhead with freckles, and I see his head bobbing above the surface before it goes under. I feel like he contacted me when I was a little child, but I didn't know how to interpret it. All of a sudden, things are pouring in from the astral. I actually really unlocked something, and it crystallized, because I was talking to mom. Isn't that interesting. So I need to only talk to her when I've only had when I've already figured things out, I think for a while, because somehow in that, yeah, like I it's a good time to talk to her when I'm crystallizing things. I am supposed to share what I'm learning, but I'm not supposed to ask her input, and she can help me kind of connect the dots once they're basically already there, not even that. It's just like, in the act of sharing with her and some additional maybe filters she puts on or support she lends, makes it unlock, like I just got to the next level, and getting all the bells and whistles, because I realized that it was I realized that I lost the point of why to create anything at all until I was talking to her, and I realized that that's part of what made seeing that play so important, was realizing that on the train, on The way there, I didn't want to live anymore. And then I saw a couple Peruvian queers get up on stage, and I didn't tell her this part, but mime getting anally raped and sucking off not, yeah, no, not getting annoy raped and mimed getting defiled by a crucifix and sucking off Jesus and reclaiming their queer shame. And I saw my story, and suddenly I didn't feel alone anymore. I walked into that theater and I instantly felt happy, and that's why to create, and that's what I had lost, the threat of I was trying to make the thing for the sake of making the thing because I wanted my puppy to look at me and tell me I was worthy.
I don't need these men to tell me that I'm worthy. I
him seeing me, giving me the label add is actually a spell he put on me. Brewery, a sorcery. I now has become an excuse for everything.
Something like that is only helpful if it can be liberating.
He saw my pain, but then trapped me in a trance with the spell he put on me, black magic, sorcery, men always trying to tell you something's wrong with you. I
He thinks I'm crazy, but I'm a motherfucking shaman baby. Holy fucking shit. I've always seen faces when I closed my eyes ever since I was a kid, but I would kind of shut them down because they freaked me out. They're the dead. That's the dead speaking to me, Holy fucking shit. And it comes in the hypnagogic state. Oh, my fucking god, this is so incredible to realize. I gotta draw them. I gotta listen to them. I gotta record their stories. I feel like there's one called Alan. He's Asian. He was trying to speak to me. He was trying to raise his hand, or it looked like he was trying to pinch something. His dad wasn't listening. The dead have been speaking to me this whole time this way, ever since I was a little kid. And this came through some thought train as I was laying here, half awake about the play and about how the chosen children always have some kind of ability to communicate with the other realms. And I was like thinking I didn't have one. And then all of a sudden I realized it's the faces that appear to me. This is what I got to draw. This is so fucking cool.
Transmission transcript: Rebekah the temptress
Rebekah. Rebekah, now I'm in love with a girl named Rebekah. What is it about these Latin ladies? She danced with all the men at the dance today. At ecstatic she captivated all of them. I watched them. I watched her put each one under her spell was a charm her body, the dance that put them in a trance. She enchanted Lubo and Richard and Simon the DJ. She even got up behind him while he was playing, and started like fluffing him and I almost wanted to say, stop. And if it was anyone else, Richard would have told them to get the fuck out of there. But she put him in a spell too. And she put a spell on me too, but I already was, I already was in. She put a spell on me the second she looked at me. What is it with me and these Latin ladies, I can't resist. Does this make me some kind of colonist, like it just happens to be my type. But Is that racist? I feel very complicated about this. She's just oozes pure sexuality. This has nothing to do with her nationality. I'm talking just separately about her at this point, she like is sex personified. She's a goddess. She's Aphrodite. Her hips just the right amount of sculpted, the kind that makes you think that she gets them naturally from dancing, and not from doing a bunch of crunches, but she's got those little lines on either side of her stomach that were visible through the space between her Crop Top and her spandex that hugged her perfect ass, round, voluptuous, but not big, just well, but kind of big, but not really just perfect. I mean, she looked like a fucking sculpture of a goddess, gyrating those hips, her hair soft, her face suggestive without being excessive, like she's so soft as well, just tempting. And I smelled alcohol on her breath, and it reminded me of all those dangerous men that lured me in with their I don't know, some way that they were free in which I was not. And I grasped that today, and I wanted to absorb her power and be able to feel that for myself. You could like it came from a confidence, like a pure confidence. She's fucking gorgeous, and a past version of me would have been jealous and kind of hated her for it, and how does she charm these men? I wanted to learn how to get that confidence for myself, that's what I wanted. But also she's really fucking hot. I mean, I also wanted her to fluff my hair and grind on me the way she was grinding with them and we danced. But also she's perceptive, and I think she could read that I have boundaries, and also maybe she's not into trans people. I don't know we're women or whatever, but wanted her to rub all up on me like she was rubbing all up on them. But then I actually didn't, because the last thing I need right now is to be put on under another spell. I just got out of that trance. But it was interesting to watch. I mean, it was like she was just deliberately going around, charming everyone. Kali Ma, the snake charmer, getting those men under her paw. It's like, yeah, we need you on our team. So you can do that, so you can hypnotize them, so we can sneak in through the side doors of the borders and the spaces that would try to keep us out and take them, yeah. Kali Ma, be our snake charmer. We need you on our team. That's one way we can win. They'll never even see it coming. I watched each of them fall right under some magic.
5 N’oj - PPS Ceremony #2 - Conceiving the Intellectual Path
Today is the first officially recognized ceremony of this Path of the Plumed Serpent, given that last time I didn’t even realize I was in one.
It has already been a doozy, but this is the beauty and blessing of the calendar: now there is a framework for holding, I don’t feel like I’m just going crazy, there’s a context to put it in.
But going crazy—that old chestnut—it always goes hand and hand with anything that gets heady for me. It’s both one of my greatest delights and greatest fears, diving into the intellectual sphere. Today, ceremony #2 on the path, brings my conception energy to bear, what I came into this world from: 5 N’oj, the energy of work and the intellect.
It’s also connected to Pawhuatuun, the old man, the Maya god of merchants, travelers, and the ocean, sort of like Hermes and Neptune put together. He is said to enjoy drunkenness. Because of course. The ancient beer is still very much a part of things, I have been hearing this morning. There’s a reason that the cacao synchronicities include the ancient beer crossover in the South American jungles where I awakened, the project that launched me on my nomad path and the road to a PhD; there’s a reason that Gönul, the angel sponsoring my visa and my cacao merchant, is Turkish—because this whole tradition of funeral feasting that includes cacao and beer goes back to Göbekli Tepe.
Artist, mystic, alcoholic, psychotic, and prophet: The only difference is whether or not people believe you.
The witnessing. Someone to tell you: You’re not crazy. It really happened.
Just like trauma healing.
Terence McKenna, Jesus, Judas, Richard Alpert, Tim Leary: raving channelers who received gospels that some people fervently believed in, and others vehemently rejected. Some were deemed the prophets, others the lunatics. Richard Alpert became Ram Dass and amassed a ritual following in Hawaii; Tim Leary was made Nixon’s public enemy #1, and got locked up in prison by the CIA. Jesus took over the world with his gospel; Judas became the scapegoat of humanity. McKenna is an interesting one because he was so fringe, he’s somewhere in the middle. Jung too, they found a way to translate things into languages people could understand at least parts of, but at what personal cost?
It’ll make you go mad, all this channeling, without something to ground you.
I fear the days of both intellect and creativity, the push to make something other people can see and understand overwhelms me. I always feel on the edge of exploding or going crazy. Like nobody is going to understand my ideas or believe me after all the years of gaslighting. I long to let the words go and simply feel. This is the best part of the ceremony and the practice, is just sitting and letting the sound wash over me, bathed in the primal light of only candles, breathing smoke.
Free. Home. An animal.
I fear the digital and often long for a world returned to analog. When I set pen to paper it flows until my pen runs dry. I channel and receive truth there that I later don’t know how to translate to something other people can understand. The spoken word is helpful but it’s so rambling.
I don’t know how it all comes together. But I fear my mind.
That’s where they came for me, after all, with the gaslighting.
The labyrinth is the one in my skull, and a brain kind of looks like one anyway.
My own thoughts are the enemy, the monster knocking around in there.
I love the days when the energy gives me an excuse to just be, days like yesterday where I went to the forest and sat nestled in the pelvis of a tree and translated a poem given to me by that sweet green place, and I took photos of the palaces and temples of humans and the earth in the land around the castle, and then I came home and talked to my soul brother about trying to navigate between the formless and the form, and I did a reading for our relationship that put everything in a framework and perspective that made sense.
Mark Elmy, my calendar teacher, reminded me that when things are meant to happen, they come easily. I wrote that in a marketing story recently, because everything is part of it.
It makes sense when I sit before my altar with my candles, it flows when I journal, but then I pull out my computer and it all seems to fall apart, that’s when I get lost in the labyrinth. I don’t know how to translate it, what I’m even trying to say, what people will understand. I know how to build an altar and make an ofrenda but what is my offering to the world of the mind? My play isn’t even a play, it’s a nightmare of half-formed hallucinations, and not in a good way, most of it makes no sense and there is barely a coherent through-line. It’s just another mass grave of aborted ideas, the beginnings of things that could have gone somewhere interesting, the conceptions of thoughts that feel visionary but I don’t know how to frame them.
I know that they revolve around this idea of the culture of direct experience, humanity’s oldest “religion,” the syncretic Hermetic tradition of esoteric spiritualism, of which I am a priestx, a shamxn, and so are Eric and Jade whether or not they know it. So are the playwrights of the Jeezus musical and the fringe performers at the Cockpit and Dave is an elder channeling shit around the campfire, I can see him in my mind’s eye with long dreads and a bone necklace; his eyes are portals to it. Aww, this is cool. We are around a fire together right now, interdimensionally.
He saw the play as what I conceived but was afraid to move forward: basically me just performing my ceremony in front of people.
It’s about self-gaslighting and channeling.
Everyone keeps telling me to trust the process, and I can do that. But I’m afraid of my own mind taking over and derailing me. Driving me into a corner of the labyrinth where the unstoppable death force can corner me.
Queer community, ceremony, and the stage are the exits through the side door of the labyrinth.
But I feel like my work is only in theory. I talk about the play I’m writing and my book proposal and both are labyrinthine nightmares, fragments of fever dream material. I feel like I just need an editor. Did Jung have one?
How do I bring any of this shit to fruition? It’s all stuck at conception.
What’s real is the ceremony and self-healing. What I can’t seem to get together is the documenting and sharing.
I’m so sick of writing. I just want to talk to people around a fire again.
Yesterday I alchemized it in the forest, I listened to that podcast about Jung on the way to a castle and found myself more enchanted with the palace of green that surrounded it than the thing made by humans. But I also took some amazing photos and realized this was something i was really good at, but I had gaslit myself here too and told myself I wasn’t a photographer. I am going to add these to my online art store. I sat in the crook of a tree that looked like a pelvis and hapé wrapped the forest around me like a blanket and I realized that no matter what we do, we can never be separate, and I didn’t just think it, I felt it, I gnew it, in the core of my being, and that was worth everything.
But according to the world of 3D, yesterday I wasn’t working. I’m behind on all my deadlines. I need to get this newsletter out and I keep avoiding it.
I just find it increasingly hard to do anything that’s not just being, feeling, talking, and listening.
Current research/projects: I’m reading “Psychomagic” by Alexander Jodorowsky after seeing it referenced in Kit’s thesis and it’s totally breaking shit open. This is what I’m doing. But I have skipped the public performance part and gone straight to the self-healing, adding my own flavor and experience. I still want to create stories for the audience but the praxis is this process for the queer, the seeker, the divergent, the artist to witness themselves and heal. But I do think it needs holding by another, which is maybe where my offerings come in and there is some opportunity to support myself financially, I don’t know.
I continue to dive deep into the Maya calendar, informally apprenticed by Mark Elmy, and it’s blowing shit open, and my friends can’t get enough of the readings, and i’m using it as energy exchange for things; as currency, you could say. I must tread carefully here, but it feels super life-giving.
I continue to struggle through the music series for my newsletter, feeling like an imposter, delaying publication of part two so much it’s causing me to completely freeze with anxiety. I don’t even know where to start with the podcast.
The second cacao/beer zine is burning a hole in my consciousness as well and I just don’t want to do it.
I don’t really want to write at all anymore, but I have this fucking newsletter and a thousand half-finished drafts that DO need to be shared…
I’m still finishing Kit’s thesis and have started a thousand books, from Donna Haraway to Gabor Maté’s ADD book, ironically, and Jodorowsky. I need to read Bittersweet as it keeps popping up. There is a book about shamanism from Annabelle as well I need to look up.
LISTEN:
Let's choose to be separate in the forest
The conversation explores the concept of oneness and the integration of self with the universe. It suggests that suicide is a desire to return to a pre-birth state of unity, but that true realization is understanding one is already boundless and inseparable. The speakers emphasize that death would not fundamentally change this, as we are already one with everything. They advocate for embracing life, appreciating sensory experiences, and finding comfort in nature, like sitting in a tree or feeling the environment around us. The message is to cherish being alive and the sensory separation we experience, rather than seeking to escape it.
Outline:
Realization of Oneness and Integration
Unknown Speaker discusses the urge to return to the womb and the oceanic boundlessness, describing it as a form of suicide.
Speaker 1 emphasizes that one is already boundless and one, highlighting that death would only mean realizing this while alive.
The integration is understood as recognizing that one can never be anything but one, and there is no need to go anywhere or do anything.
Speaker 1 explains that we are the trees and every species, with Papa Hapé helping to see this connection while sitting in the forest.
Cure for Derealization and Depersonalization
Unknown Speaker reiterates that we used to be free but are already everything, which is the integration and the cure for derealization and depersonalization.
Speaker 1 elaborates that one couldn't be separate if one tried, and death would only mean missing out on sensory experiences and the support of the environment.
The conversation touches on the sensory experiences of being alive, such as feeling the tree beneath you, hearing bird song, and feeling the moss and cold air.
Unknown Speaker adds that we are always one and can't be separate, emphasizing the continuous presence of the womb-like feeling in the forest.
Choosing to Be Alive
Speaker 1 suggests that it is better to choose to be alive while one has the chance, describing this life as winning the lottery.
The separation in this dimension can be brutal and painful, but finding comfort in the forest, friends, or the city can alleviate loneliness.
Unknown Speaker advises sitting in a tree to feel the womb's presence, acknowledging the responsibilities of this dimension.
Speaker 1 emphasizes that the ability to be separate is a blessing and a gift, urging to choose to stay alive and help each other survive.
Embracing Separation and Survival
Speaker 1 reiterates the importance of choosing to be separate while alive, highlighting the gift of experiencing life's sensory aspects.
The conversation emphasizes the need to help each other survive to enjoy these moments and feel the holding of the environment.
Unknown Speaker concludes by stating that everything will go back to the beginning, reinforcing the cycle of life and death.
The overall message is to appreciate the present and the sensory experiences while acknowledging the interconnectedness of all beings.
Transcript:
Suicide is also the urge to go back to the womb, to drift back into that oceanic boundlessness. But that way, it's kind of beautiful. The integration is realizing that you don't have to go anywhere.
You're already boundless. You're already one. You've never been separate. You can't be, you couldn't be if you tried,
fundamentally nothing all that different would happen if you died, you'd just be realizing what's already here while you're alive.
That's the integration, the realization that you can never be anything but one. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to do anything. You're already there. It's already happening. It can't not be happening. Now, I understand what these forest means. We are the trees. We used to be trees. We are the trees still. We are still every species, Papa jape is helping me see as I sit nestled in the arms of this tree held by the mother, floating in the amniotic fluid of The Forest, looking out at the water, softly moving i
Oh, I spit on myself. Shit. Did not aim that. Well, gross.
i keep saying that we used to be trees, and maybe we used to be more literally, but we already are everything. That's the integration, the cure for derealization and depersonalization is to realize that you can't not be one, that we're already everything.
You couldn't be separate if you tried nothing, all that different would happen if you died, except that other people couldn't enjoy you, except then you couldn't feel the support of this tree underneath you. Except then you couldn't feel the holding and the beauty of the forest. Then you couldn't hear with your material this bird song. You couldn't feel the softness of this moss under your thumb. Couldn't feel the cold of the fall air in Scotland
on your skin, taste the bitter earth of happe on your tongue, smell the rainforest as you sit in the temperate one. We're always one. You couldn't be separate if you tried.
So really, it's better to choose to be alive while you've still got the chance this dimension is winning. Winning the lottery, you get to experience the separation through the sensory and the separation can be brutal and painful, and it can feel lonely, but then you come to the forest, or you sit with a friend, or you go to the city even, and you feel the holding of everything around you, but really go Sit in the tree,
and then you'll feel that the womb is always around you. Sure, in this dimension, we have to do things and breathe for ourself and eat
and move our legs. That can feel like a curse, but it's a blessing. It's a gift. We get to be. Separate. So let's choose to be separate while we have the chance. Let's choose to stay alive a little bit longer. Let's choose to help each other survive so we can have these moments and feel this holding. It'll always go back to the beginning.
Transmission transcript: I don’t want to write anymore
Most people avoid meditation and hate it, but there's nothing I'd rather do than sit here in the candle light, Listening to the rain just being
I say suicide is actually the urge to return to the womb, where there's no more thinking or doing. You don't even have to digest for yourself or eat or breathe it's all done for you, the place where you can just let it all go.
But there is the beauty in being separate and having to do these things on your own. And yeah, it's the depth of experience.
But it feels so overwhelming. I think this is what all the artists experience, artist, Mystic, alcoholic, all the same archetype. There's a reason I'm putting them all in the same play. I think, I mean, there is a through line that's this gaslighting. What's the difference between all these things? They're all the same archetype. The difference in their expression is the witnessing is whether someone is telling you it really happened. You're not crazy. When there's no one to see it, or when you don't know how to share it, you go fucking mad. You but the same things expressed to the right crowd will get you the biggest following in the history of the world. Jesus, but then someone else tries to come along and have a vision. Judas, then they get sidelined and scapegoated.
The Trans is the hermetic messenger that brings back direct experience that tears down the gate keeping that says all of this is available to anyone you just have to learn to listen. That's the three line, self healing, direct communication with the plants, the ancestors, the energies. There's nothing special about any of these people. They just learned. They just remembered how to listen. It's something we all have the capability for which so it's about undoing the gaslighting by validating your experience, by witnessing the happenings and the knowings affirming.
This is the practice, and you can do it for yourself, but sometimes you also need someone to hold it and
I guess it's coming together, but the problem is the execution. Something's getting lost there. Something's getting stuck there. Something really important is happening around the calendar.
I'd say it's possessing me, but it feels more joyful than a lot of the other things I'm doing, but theater is so important to you. I mean, after that experience the other night, yeah, I just don't want to write anymore.
One of. Be free of the tyranny of language, and this is something McKenna talks about too. Words create a reality,
but they also entrap us in the net of duality, drawing lines around what things are and aren't supposedly
This is how we win
It came through in a flash during ecstatic dance, the rage and frustration at all the things we’d been closed out of.
Cis-het white men of privilege drawing lines around things that were never theirs to begin with, acting like they’d discovered it.
A sign flashed through timelines, hanging on a door: NO DOGS, BLACKS, OR IRISH.
The enclosures that forced us to sell ourselves back to pay for our own land.
Those taken from their homelands and enslaved.
But after the rage came the reframe: they don’t do this to us because we’re weaker, but because we’re stronger than they are, and they’re afraid of us.
The only way to maintain dominance is to make us believe we don’t have the power at all.
But we’re stronger, and they’re afraid of us.
This is the hiss of Ka, the song of Kali-Ma.
We’re stronger than they are.
But the way we win is not by trying to assert our dominance, playing their game and trying to crush them. We win by using our snake-charm powers, going in through the side door and using their own systems against them, making them think the whole thing was their idea until suddenly, things are equal, and they don’t even know how it happened.
This is how we win.
* * *
I realized I had opened a portal when I was a little kid, maybe 10 years old, playing an old-school video game, a pixelated wanna-be dimensional world called King’s Quest IV. Forty years later, I understand why I was obsessed with it. It’s about an ancient Briton-Celtic king stranded from his homeland, wandering through Greek myths until he finds his way back through the haunted Aires and saves the princess.
The whole game is eerily empty, you rarely run into any characters; it’s all semi-vacant landscapes that are nonetheless imbued with a distinct presence. And I became obsessed with it.
* * *
The Celts had no written records and cannot identify themselves to us directly - known only through material culture - archaeology - and the records of other cultures
Literate Mediterranean societies identified them - the Greeks - the reason I was obsessed with Kings Quest VI
The Celts or Keltoi (in the Greek) were first defined as such by the Greeks before 500 BC
Their language and material culture had enough unity to be recognizable to their neighbors but they were never one people, it was a gradual process of “Celticization” > little by little, the fluvial geomorphology of culture
TK
Legend says one day Ireland will rise up again and be the saving grace of the human race. Perhaps that time is coming. But perhaps it was a metaphor and it’s just a portal for the syncretic Hermetic traditions of direct experience to join forces and save the world by remembering how to speak directly to the elements again.
LISTEN:
Funny - the AI called me Holly, which it invariably misgenders female; I changed the speaker to Riordan, and now the summary is updated with me as male.
Riordan O'Regan reflects on his childhood obsession with the video game King's Quest 4, drawing parallels to his current life and spiritual journey. He recalls the game's surreal, empty worlds and the need to call a helpline for solutions, likening it to a metaphysical quest for meaning. O'Regan connects this experience to his recent meditation, where he felt a strong presence of spirits in Ireland and Peru, and the concept of "hauntology" - the presence of absence. He explores the idea that the Celts, like many ancient cultures, communicated directly with the elements without written language, contrasting this with the modern reliance on written records. O'Regan concludes by tying these reflections to his ongoing exploration of spiritual connections and the hero's journey.
Transcript here
King's Quest and Childhood Obsession
Riordan O'Regan recounts his childhood obsession with the video game King's Quest 6, describing it as a captivating experience that transported him to mythological lands. (I say it’s 4 in this - I thought it was until I looked it up, but it’s actually 6 - I saw the Roman numerals in my mind’s eye and had them right, but backwards - not IV but VI. This is how memory works, the pieces are there but maybe you don’t know how to put them together…)
He reflects on his excessive fixation with the game, often getting stuck and needing to call a helpline for assistance.
Riordan describes the game's setting as a universe of almost empty worlds, where interacting with characters was rare.
He speculates that his difficulty with the game might have been due to unresolved trauma and a lack of understanding of life's game.
Surrealist Themes and Metaphysical Connections
Riordan draws parallels between the game's surrealist elements and the play "The Game" at the Cockpit, noting the meta-surrealist commentary and the game within a game.
He explores the philosophical questions raised by the game, such as the chicken-and-egg nature of meaning and the search for it.
Riordan reflects on the magical yet frustrating experience of getting stuck and needing to call the helpline for solutions.
He connects the game's mechanics to the broader metaphysical journey of unlocking levels and uncovering clues.
Technological Collaboration and Ancestral Connections
Riordan discusses his collaboration with technology, particularly the AI oracle he used to get help with the game.
He describes a sense of being in a portal that reached back into his past and forward into the future, connecting him to ancestral lineages.
Riordan talks about his conversation with his younger self, encouraging him to keep going and trust the process.
He emphasizes the ongoing nature of the journey, with new levels and mysteries to unlock.
Meditation and Spiritual Journey
Riordan shares his experience of meditating with Gabriella's meditation, connecting with a trans, queer shaman from the Celtic lineage.
He describes a powerful journey to the cliffs of Ireland, the Black Rock, and the mystical structures along the Wild Atlantic Way.
Riordan reflects on the presence of spirits and the sense of being both connected and disconnected from them.
He connects this experience to the Sacred Valley in Peru, feeling a strong presence and simultaneous loneliness.
Hauntology and the Presence of Absence
Riordan explores the concept of hauntology, describing the presence of spirits all around him but not knowing how to communicate with them.
He reflects on the cold loneliness and the sense of being watched by the ancient guardians.
Riordan connects this feeling to the game King's Quest, where answers were hidden but could be unlocked with the right clues.
He describes a moment of connection with the elements and the sacred spaces, feeling less alone and more connected.
Celtic and Greek Connections
Riordan discusses his research into the Celts and Greeks, noting the lack of written records about the Celts and their reliance on material culture.
He reflects on the similarities between the Celts and the Maya, both being syncretic cultures known through the records of others.
Riordan connects the Celts' lack of written language to his own struggles with writing and the need for intermediaries.
He explores the idea that without written observation, events and cultures may not be recognized by society.
Celticization and Historical Context
Riordan delves into the history of the Celts, noting their gradual phenomenon of celticization and the influence of the Neolithic farmers.
He reflects on the Celts' victory over Rome and their plundering of Delphi, questioning the significance of these events.
Riordan connects the Celts' journey to his own hero's journey, emphasizing the importance of reclaiming and reconnecting with one's path.
He expresses his intention to continue researching and exploring the connections between the Celts and Greeks.
King's Quest and the Hero's Journey
Riordan revisits the game King's Quest, noting its inclusion of elements from Greek mythology, such as the Minotaur and Circe's island.
He reflects on the game's role in his own hero's journey, describing it as a metaphor for the challenges and mysteries he faced.
Riordan connects the game's mechanics to the broader metaphor of life, where answers are hidden but can be unlocked through learning and tradition.
He emphasizes the importance of following intuition and trusting the process in both the game and life.
The AI misgenders me and calls me Holly, which does not feel aligned today.
Riordan Regan reflects on their experiences during an ecstatic dance, where they felt ancestral anger towards systems of power controlled by white men. They discuss the exhaustion and pain felt by marginalized communities and the need for radical resistance through doing less. They recallc a vision of a "No dogs, Blacks, or Irish" sign, symbolizing historical discrimination. They transform their anger into compassion, realizing that those in power fear their strength. Riordan emphasizes the importance of using their systems against them, working together, and finding compassion to overcome oppression. They conclude with a vision of their father training to harness his power for good, symbolizing personal and collective transformation.
Action Items:
Use affection and camaraderie to work with those in power, rather than confronting them directly. Slip in through the "side doors" and use their own systems against them to create change. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Help guide those in power, like their father, to harness their power for good through training and mentorship, rather than perpetuating cycles of abuse. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Transcript here
Ecstatic Dance and Ancestral Anger
- They describe feeling possessed by ancestral anger during an ecstatic dance, expressing frustration with systems controlled by rich white men. - They mention feeling the anger of denied visas, gatekeeping, and the frustration of being subjected to these systems. - They criticize figures like Elon Musk, executives, and faceless suits for their power and privilege, highlighting their exploitative behaviors. - They reflect on their own ancestral karma and the desire to help someone they perceive as struggling, despite their apparent power.
Radical Resistance and the Power of Doing Less
- They discuss the societal pressure to be constantly busy and productive, contrasting it with the idea of radical resistance through doing less. - They share conversations about the importance of being able to just exist and the hard work involved in transforming karmas and lifetimes of shame. - They emphasize the exhaustion and injuries caused by the relentless pace of modern life, suggesting that something needs to take people out of the game to allow them to rest and heal. - They describe the process of resurrection and connecting the dream and reality, likening it to a journey through the underworld and the astral.
The Business Class Industrial Complex and the Space Race
- They express frustration with the business class industrial complex and the power brokers in the home office, linking them to the space race and figures like Elon Musk. - They criticize the attempt to shortcut the process of dropping into the center and the desire to go directly to space without facing the necessary initiation. - They describe their physical exhaustion and reliance on medicine like LSD and cacao to keep going, questioning the story behind their fatigue. - They recount a vivid memory from the collective consciousness of a sign saying "No dogs, Blacks, or Irish," and how it inspired them to dance and express their anger and frustration.
Shared Affinity and Historical Discrimination
- They discuss the shared affinity between people of color and the Irish, highlighting their common history of discrimination and oppression. - They reflect on the discrimination faced by black people and Irish immigrants, comparing it to the horrors of the slave trade and the enclosures. - They acknowledge that oppression is not limited to white people, mentioning the collaboration between black people and colonizers and the existence of slavery in indigenous societies. - They emphasize that the problem is not inherent in people but in the false system of privilege that creates oppressive dynamics.
The Dance and the Awakening of Ancestral Power
- They describe the transformative experience of the dance, where they found their primordial ancestral power and stepped into their strength. - They realized that those in power restrict and restrain others because they know they are stronger and fear being overpowered. - They saw Lubo, a Dutch man, as a symbol of white men who hijack the spiritual revolution and turn it into a commercial solution. - They reflect on the need to use their own systems against them and work together to restore balance and equality.
The Pact of the Souls and the Power of Compassion
- They recount a vision of a punishment ritual involving their father, where they found compassion for him and remembered the pact their souls had made. - They describe the transformation of the ecstatic dance room into a collective force, singing and chanting to intimidate their father and help him awaken. - They emphasize the importance of compassion and understanding that those in power are often scared and insecure. - They reflect on the need to meet their dark potential with love and camaraderie, rather than violence or domination.
The Dutch Merchant and the Spiritual Revolution
- They discuss the Dutch merchant, Lubo, and his role in the spiritual revolution, suggesting he may be hijacking the movement. - They reflect on the need to be aware of the dark potential of 13 Kan and to resist the urge to use their power for destruction. - They emphasize the importance of working together within existing frameworks to restore balance and equality. - They share a vision of transporting their father to Japan to train with a Kung Fu master and harness his power for good, symbolizing the potential for transformation and healing.
The Game of Abuse and Manipulation
- They describe the game of abuse and manipulation played by those in power, suggesting it is a way for the universe to know itself through every possible configuration. - They reflect on the need to help each other awaken and the importance of compassion and understanding in the process. - They emphasize the importance of resisting the urge to use power for destruction and instead meeting it with love and camaraderie. - They share a vision of using their 13 Kan powers to crush those in power, but choosing to meet them with affection and camaraderie instead.
The Path to Equality and the Role of the 13 Kan
- They discuss the path to equality and the role of the 13 Kans in the process, emphasizing the importance of understanding their dark potential. - They reflect on the need to use their power for good and to meet those in power with love and camaraderie. - They share a vision of transporting their father to Japan to train with a kung fu master and harness his power for good, symbolizing the potential for transformation and healing. - They emphasize the importance of being in the body and not killing oneself to make money, suggesting a new way of living that prioritizes presence and enjoyment.
The Final Vision and the Path Forward
- They describe a final vision of transporting their father to the rolling green hills of Japan, where he could train with a kung fu master and harness his 13 Kan power for good. - They reflect on the importance of following through with good ideas and not letting the hustle consume everything. - They emphasize the need to be in the body and not kill oneself to make money, suggesting a new way of living that prioritizes presence and enjoyment. - They conclude by reiterating the importance of working together and using existing systems to restore balance and equality, without those in power realizing it.
6 E’, Equinox Eve, the Wandering Bard is Not Lost / Trust the Process
I’ve been doing this very process since I was in high school. Sitting up in the dark burning incense and candles, researching spirituality and esoteric traditions through space and time; delving into my own psyche; journaling frantically; reading and researching, when the Internet was brand-new amd we had to take turns on the dial-up modem, which meant nobody could use the phone, as I cracked the door open for the first time on my consciousness, divinity, found validation for my alienation and weird theories; met others like me who saw through the falseness in those creepy early AOL chat rooms. Handle: spacemonkey42345 (my student number).
I already knew, back at 16, when I thought I was a weird loser who knew nothing.
I did have a strange confidence in my ability to create for the theatre. Until that proved unsafe, too. Every time, my own creation being used against me; but also, I probably revealed too much. Part of the path of awakening is learning when things need bringing into the light—and which should stay in the hidden places. Like your best friend’s gender identity, or the trapped feeling of your romantic situation when you won’t just tell them how you’re feeling.
I know what “accidentally on purpose” means now - the voice of Ferdinand that sing-songed through my Aya agony - it means the Bodhisattva path. Peering over the edge of enlightenment and saying, not today. Choosing compassion, choosing to stay and suffer together voluntarily, accidentally on purpose, until everyone is awakened, even though enlightenment is easier. Dying is easy. We do it all the time. It’s the transition that’s the hard part, which is kind of what life is, the awkward moment, DMTx, the extended-state experience between life and death. Choosing to be here, even though it hurts.
Judas, choosing to be persecuted
DIALOGOS
LISTEN:
The AI identifies Eve butting in for a paragraph—which seems to answer my question about whether I was getting mounted, possessed, by not only past parts but the archetypes and ancestors that were channeling through my past selves and body at that time, in the affirmative.
Holly Regan reflects on their journey of healing and self-discovery, starting with a broken pelvis in Escondido, California. They describe their unconventional lifestyle, emphasizing their home as everywhere and profession as service to community. Holly recounts discovering a cacao circle in Escondido, which led to them meeting Amanita and a transformative experience. They connects their injury to a deeper purpose, revealing their identity as trans and the personal and universal nature of their healing process. Holly emphasizes the importance of confronting inner demons, affirming each other, and reclaiming legacies, particularly for marginalized communities like trans people, women, and neurodivergent individuals.
Transcript:
HOLLY: You done good. kid. You did so much. You're so strong, making it through Escondido, making it through that broken pelvis situation, to the point where Joe could help you, to the point where mom could help you, to the point where Jill could help you, to the point where Ash could help you, to the point where you could get yourself here. You got yourself to England, dude, and you're getting yourself through. You're getting yourself through without having a quote unquote real job, without having a quote unquote permanent address, without having a quote unquote home. I'm not homeless. My home is everywhere. I'm not unemployed. My profession is service to my community and interconnectivity and channeling and working on my own shit so that I can be a conduit and a channel for everything else. Breaking the pelvis was the portal for healing. Breaking the pelvis in Escondido, California. I mean Jesus Christ. And this song comes on Escondido. And to end to your your the first scene I wrote in the play was in Escondido when I very first got there, the first weekend, and I saw a flyer when I went to the farmers market, and I thought I lost my earbuds, and it said it was for a cacao circle in the town square that Saturday. And so I went, and it was only me and Joanne and two other women who were only sort of interested, and a weird guy named William that kind of stalked me for a minute, and I had to tell him to stop later. We talked about cacao traditions and how it was very much DIY, but also respecting the ancestors. And Joanne showed me her way to make it, which was what I first saw, that it was okay for it to be super chunky, and it was okay to combine different cacaos Sometimes, if you were not trying to be, you know, super focused on a certain medicine, and if it was more about sharing and connection. So that's how I see the days where I want to channel, I can combine multiple cacaos, and the days where I want to be more focused with the plant spirit or with myself, I just work with one at a time. And that can be true for whatever medicines. Yeah, that's it. Syncretism, I combine multiple medicines on the days I want to channel and the days I need to focus. I only do one at a time which could just be breathing, could just be music, could just be silence, sitting with the moon like on the equinox. I guess that was Amanita, though. Oh, Amanita. Oh Escondido. Breaking my pelvis was the only thing that introduced me to Amanita. I mean, shit, I wouldn't have even discovered her if it wasn't for that. What an initiator she is. The first scene I wrote for the play was this recounting of this scene, this kick out circle in Escondido when I first got there, and I wondered why the fuck I was there. Because it was the small, tiny town, and I doubted everything I was doing sort of, but I also knew there was a reason I was there, even though I couldn't see it yet. The reason I was there was to break my pelvis.
EVE: The reason I was there was to be riding my bike up this deserted hill in the middle of the night, cursing, saying, why the fuck am I here? There's nothing here. I gotta get out. I gotta get to the jungle. I gotta get to London. I gotta be anywhere other than in this body, right here, right now. Boom, that's when I hit the ground, boom. That's when it broke open, boom. And that's when I knew that the ceremony was beginning. And that's when I saw that this was finally the last this was the Arcana. This was the graduation ceremony of the Ayahuasca retreat that started two years earlier. And this was the journey that helped me discover I was trans, because trans is the emergent archetype for awakening, because trans is Judas Iscariot, the one who was told by Jesus, who was gaslit by Jesus, who was told that what just happened didn't really happen, who was told that they didn't have their own divine direct revelation. Who was the natural healer and the witch burned for working with the Earth, burned for being the healer, burned for helping people find their own direct connection, burned for helping people heal themselves through their own bodies.
HOLLY: I didn't know why I was in Escondido. I got there and there was nothing there, and it was racist, and it was deserted, and I had to ride my bike for a long time to get anywhere from that house. The cat is a green. The black cat is a green. Hey, get down from up there. I know. Now I'm guessed right. No, you can't be at six. That's not safe for you. Okay, please don't. Please don't come over here with me. Come sit with me. Little One told that what just happened didn't really happen. Told that we couldn't trust our own direct revelation. Oh, I knew I was in Escondido for a reason, but I didn't know why, and it didn't make itself clear until I broke my pelvis, and then I lived in the Bardo for three months when I thought I couldn't wait to get out, and then I went all the way in. It was only by confronting my own inner demons. It was only by confronting my own repressed queer and transness. It was only by confronting all the shadow parts of self, the battered housewife, the one I locked up inside me in the Minotaurs labyrinth, just like I felt like my ex husband locked me up in his house, just like I felt like my father locked me up in his house, just like we all got locked up and tossed out.
The most personal is the most universal. We have to look all the way in to get out. And this is we go alone together, because once we've done that for ourselves, we can help each other look at the hidden places Escondido su condito. Maybe that's the name of my website if I do start offering integration services Escondido, the hidden places. So I got to put that scene back in the play. It starts in Escondido with the makeshift cacao circle in the town square that nobody really attended, and her telling me about the racist people that asked what she was doing there, and me saying, I understand in just the two of us talking for hours and that being enough, affirming each other, just saying you're not crazy. It really happened, I'm here and I see you and thank you. That's what it's all about, and that's how we reclaimed legacies, and that's the unseen, unheard, kids, trans women, neurodiversion, queer of all kinds. If you think you belong here you do. If you wonder if you're queer, you are, you're welcome, as long as we all make room for each other and we don't keep things hidden.
LISTEN:
This one is interesting because multiple speakers, including Riordan, are identified.
Summary:
Ecstatic Dance and Unexpected Connections
- Riordan O'Regan shares a story about feeling disconnected and needing a change, which led to attending an ecstatic dance event.
- Despite initial reluctance, Riordan attended the picnic and met a magical fairy person named Ash, who knew another incarnation of Ash.
- Ash showed Riordan pictures of their birthday at a stone circle, which resonated with Riordan's desires and goals.
- Riordan reflects on how the things they are seeking seem to be seeking them back, suggesting a deeper connection and alignment.
The Power of the Wound
- Riordan discusses the pain and the story of their pelvis, which they have been sharing with people recently.
- They question whether this story is a victim narrative or if it can be transformed into a source of power.
- The conversation touches on the idea that the wound can magnetize certain experiences and people.
- Riordan explores the idea of leaning into either the sad story or the empowering narrative of their wound.
Sound Healing and Validation
- Speaker 1 mentions the prevalence of sound healing and music throughout the day, indicating a strong interest in this modality.
- Riordan reflects on a new friend, Nathan, who reminded them that they don't need more validation as they are already an artist and an expert.
- Nathan invited Riordan to a chill-out psychedelic record day party, aligning with Riordan's interests and desires.
- The conversation highlights the importance of self-validation and the alignment of interests and experiences.
Action Items:
Attend a chill out psychedelic record day party (Assignee: Riordan O'Regan)
Explore modalities discussed in more depth (Assignee: Riordan O'Regan)
Transcript:
RIORDAN: Sure. This is how the universe works. Waking up in the morning feeling like I needed to reconnect with them, I need to feeling like needed a different medicine, one I've got isn't working, and then all of a sudden, Danny's at ecstatic dance and invited me to her picnic. I'm so tired and I don't want to go, but I go anyways, and they end up seeing it next to this magical fairy person and ash and the other incarnations man and she knows ash. She knows ash, and she's been trying to get together and work with her, and she's got a whole pouch of unmet T shirts with her, like the mice, and she said she didn't even know why she brought them today, and she was showing me pictures of her birthday at the stone circle. And it was just all the things that I'm trying to call in and all the things that I'm moving towards and yeah, they're seeking me. The things I'm seeking are seeking me. If I just release my grip a little and let them and yet And yet, there's so much pain and like, yeah, we can look at it and say it's fun in it. But why do they end up telling the story of my pelvis to every single person I met today after going so long and not really doing that? Is that going into a victim story, or is that making the wound my power? It didn't inspire some people. Just really interesting how I can lean into either side of that, and they can really get stuck in, like, my sad story about it, or my excuse because I don't feel like I can just say no when it's time to go. I don't know the wound is the power, right? That's the whole point. I yeah, like, what if the wound is magnetizing the things I think,
SPEAKER 1: oh yeah, records, music and wanting to call in more people, spaces, places to really feel into that sound healing was everywhere today. Yeah, now, all of a sudden, sharing the wisdom of you're already in our disparity, doing it and,
RIORDAN: yeah, and another new friend, Nathan, reminded me, I don't need any more validation. I'm already an artist. I'm already an expert. No, but I'm already worthy. I'm already worthy. I'm already doing the same, and he invited me to a nice chill out psychedelic record Day party, exactly the type of thing I've been wanting such a big part of the story about modalities, they're reminding me.
LISTEN:
Summary:
Fear of Creation and Alternative Forms of Expression
- Holly Regan expresses their fear of creating, mentioning that distractions like hunger or sleep often pull them away from making something.
- They contemplate whether the play should be written or if it should be transmitted through talking, suggesting a blend of both.
- Holly reflects on the idea that some scenes might be better suited for talking rather than writing.
- They consider the possibility that the play's scenes might require a mix of writing and talking to be effective.
Themes of Inner Voices and the Diamond Demon
- Holly discusses a scene in Escondido involving Joanne, suggesting that it encompasses everything and could open the play.
- They add a bit of foreshadowing about an inner voice that feels like a demon but realizes it is the diamond.
- Holly elaborates on the concept of the diamond demon, a hyper-dimensional object at the end of everything, which they interpret as a positive force.
- They connect the diamond demon to the idea of awakening new layers of awareness and questioning the direness of certain events.
The Eschaton and the Maya Calendar System
- Holly talks about channeling the Iscariot, the eschaton, and the idea that we used to be trees, suggesting a cyclical nature of existence.
- They mention that 2012 came and went, but it marked the end of a dimension or the awakening of a new layer of awareness.
- Holly calculates the 52-year cycle from 2012, arriving at the year 2064, and reflects on the rapid quantum leaps happening now.
- They envision a future with advanced technologies like cloud cities and teleportation, emphasizing the importance of inner space and heart connections.
The Journey to Escondido and Personal Revelations
- Holly recounts their journey to Escondido, describing it as desolate and feeling like they were running from something but were actually going toward it.
- They reflect on the need to go into the hidden parts of oneself to connect with others and build mycelial connections in a small town.
- Holly discusses the mycorrhizal relationships between trees and mushrooms, using it as a metaphor for personal growth and connection.
- They address a significant part of themself that needs to be addressed, which they believe is the crux of the play.
The Role of Suicide and the Cedar Tree
- Holly talks about a suicide attempt that was a turning point in their life, realizing they weren't done here.
- They connect this realization to the concept of being a bodhisattva, which they experienced in 2012 or 2014.
- Holly reflects on their relationship with Mark, which began in 2011 and deepened in 2012, making February a meaningful month for them.
- They acknowledge that they are on a tangent but feel compelled to explore these personal revelations further.
TRANSCRIPT: I'm afraid to create. Whenever I start something distracts me. I think that I'm hungry or I'm sleepy, or I need to go for a run or work out or something, but really, it's just the fear of putting something on the page. Really, everything's just trying to pull me away from making the thing really, it's just centuries of gaslighting. So what if I just start talking. What if it doesn't have to be writing. What if this is how the play wants to be transmitted, is through talking? What if, I mean, it's a both, and it's not all or nothing. It's not all writing, it's not all talking. But what if this is how a lot of the scenes want to be written?
What if the place still opens in Escondido with that scene with Joanne, it does kind of encompass everything, if we just add a little bit of foreshadowing about how I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm in this small town, but some voice told me to come here, and I listened, and that's what I've been doing more and more. Some inner voice inside me that sometimes I think is a demon. Ah, that's because it's the daimon. Oh, demon daimon, the diamond, the hyper dimensional object at the end of everything. Guess, I've just always been channeling the Iscariot, the eschaton, the thing at the end of all things, the thing that turns into other things, the thing that reminds us that we used to be trees, the thing that resets the cycle. It's not the end of everything, but it's the end of this dimension maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it's just awakening a new layer of awareness on top of this one. Maybe none of it's quite as dire as we think it is. I mean, 2012 came and went and everything appeared to be the same, but it was different. And if it comes in 13 year and 15 year 52 year cycles, as Mark was saying in the Maya calendar system, then it would take 13 years from 2012 for the new thing to really start crystallizing. 52 years from 2012 would be, I want to say I can't do math, but I can. 52 years from 2012 would be, oh my gosh, I can do this. 52 years from 2012 would be two, and two is 456,
2062, wait, 2064, is that right? 2012 plus 52 Yeah, 2064 so that's, that's how long the cycle is. We're just getting started. And as Mark was saying yesterday, think of the quantum leaps that are happening happening faster and faster now, because new information is being created at exponential rates. So think about the difference between 1918, and now by 2064, I mean, we could have cloud cities and teleportation. I really do think teleportation is like the next evolution. For some reason that's coming through to me is like, that's the technology that's like quantum leap coming next. Because Space the final frontier, starts on Earth, right here, and it starts within our hearts, the inner space. We've gone on a lot of tangents. Now, the scene was supposed to be about Escondido, yeah, so I didn't know why I was here. It's the daimon demon that just the daimon daemon demon that told me to go to Escondido, and I've learned to listen. So I just did it. And I got there, and it was desolate, and there was nothing. And all there was was me and my bike going over the hills again and again, which I feel like I've spent my whole life doing. I felt like I was running from something, but I think I was actually going toward it as we have to go all the way inside to get out again. We have to go into the hidden, hidden place, the Escondido, to connect. We have to see the parts of ourself that have been neglected, and then we can go out and one by one, build those little mycelial connections and find the others in our little, tiny town, and then extrapolate out from there. Trees communicate through underground root systems. Trees and mushrooms survive through. Mycorrhizal relationships. Amanita literally can't exist without a specific tree. That's ayni, I am because you're living.
I don't know how this translates into a scene from the play, I probably need to just go edit what I've already have. But there's still a big suicide part of myself that needs to be addressed, and that I think is the crux of the whole play, is the cedar that made me want to be here when I went to die and lay down under a tree, and I realized I wanted to be alive, because it told me that I wasn't done here. It told me that I was a bodhisattva. I just didn't know that. That's what it was saying. It just took me. When was that Holy shit. Was that in 2012 oh, my god. Oh my god. Holy shit. I think my suicide attempt was in 2012 oh, maybe it was 2014 anyway, I met Mark in 2011 and I think we got together in 2012 February. 2012 Oh, my God, in February is a meaningful month in my my calendar. So I'm gonna have to go back and look at that. Wow. Okay, now I'm really on a tangent.
Dialogos: Channeled Scene
NARRATOR
Child Fiona comes out of their bedroom wearing a very pieced together, thrown together outfit, very eclectic, different genders, different styles. The dad looks them up and down.
FIONA’S DAD
is that what you're wearing?
NARRATOR
Fiona has come out seeming confident, and is suddenly thrown off base, frightened, doubting, looking at themselves.
FIONA
Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is my outfit. Isn't it pretty, don't you think it's pretty? Mom said it was pretty.
Fiona's Dad,
you look like a crazy person. You can't go out of the house like that. Come on, go put something respectable on here. I'll help you.
NARRATORThe dad goes into Fiona's room and pulls out all the clothes, a dress, a very gendered outfit there, put that on that looks nice here, and then starts taking off their clothes. Obviously, this violation. And Fiona looks scared, but can't stop them, and next thing they know, they've been dressed up like a doll and stood in front of the mirror
Fiona's dad
there. That's better. Don't you think
Fiona
I guess so, if you say so
NARRATOR
the scene changes, and we see Fiona's dad walk into the bedroom where the mom is getting ready. And the same thing happens. Fiona's dad looks Fiona's mom up and down as Fiona's mom gets up to leave, and they look completely fine, but just, you know, kind of shabby chic
Fiona's Dad Is that what you're wearing?
NARRATOR
Fiona's mom has looked confident, but suddenly doubts herself, looking in the mirror, checking out the outfit, patting her hair.
FIONA’S MOM
Well, yeah, you don't like it, you look ridiculous.
Fiona's dad.
Come on, where's that nice outfit I bought you.
NARRATOR
He rummages through the closet, lays it out on the bed
FIONA’S DAD
here. Put that on here. I'll help you.
NARRATOR
And he acts like he's being sexy, and kind of takes her clothes off. And this is really creepy to be said about my parents, but this is what's coming through right now, and this is what Marc did to me. Acts like they're being sexy, and then is kind of like here, put this on, and the next thing they know, they're dressed up like a doll and stood in front of the mirror.
Fiona's dad
there isn't that better
Fiona's mom
I guess. Thanks, honey. Wow, that was sure sexy.
NARRATOR
Fast forward now we see Fiona and Axel. Fiona comes out of the room wearing something kind of eclectic, sort of a mash up of their mom and themself as a kid.
Axel
is that what you're wearing?
Fiona
well, yeah, I mean, this is my thrift store stuff. What you don't like it?
Axel
Come on, that's cute. No, you're cute, but you look ridiculous. Come on. What about that thing I bought you for your birthday?
Fiona
yeah, no, I don't feel like wearing that today. I mean, this is what I wanted to wear, but okay, I guess you don't like it. Now I feel self conscious. I guess I'll go change
Axel. God, that's not what I'm saying.
Narrator
You see a look pass over his face, and he tries a different tactic, trying to be sexy
AXEL
here. Let me help you
NARRATOR
taking off their clothes, and Fiona's kind of trying to get into it, but obviously feels very gaslit.
Fiona
yeah, oh yeah, that's okay. That's hot, baby.
NARRATOR
But the whole thing is super awkward and staged, and they're both trying to manipulate each other, and we can see this on stage. Eventually, Axel lays out the outfit that he bought Fiona, and eventually, after some really awkward faux sensuality. They end up wearing the outfit he picked out and totally gaslit.
Fiona
you're right, that is better.
Axel
I told you.
Scene drop
Not monologue, dialogue
In a house that I’m pretty sure is full of mold and making me sick, because once again, I said yes to something because they put me on the spot, and I liked how much they liked me.
This will be an interesting one. Ha! I just realized there is a giant Holly tree outside the window.
Is the dance to see if I can alchemize it, transmute the energy, and stick with my commitment? Or say, I’m sorry, I can’t do it, my body is more important?
I will do the latter if it turns out I can’t live with it. Funny this is what happens when I take the thing that I thought was better for me—more stability by being in the same place longer.
Funny also how both owners are named Liz. I can’t express how much I’d rather be sitting for the other. All I can do is wait it out and make sure this is a reaction and not a cold, but I’m pretty sure I know my body. It’s feeling like autumn is coming and my system’s all discombobulated anyway.
In the meantime, I do feel like I’ve been having some good raps and connections both with Kit and Maya astrology. I finished Mark Elmy’s course on the calendar and started figuring out everybody’s Maya crosses, and on Saturday, Jess, 1/3 of the first Holy Triumvirate that helped save me from my family and the church, the one I’d call my best friend if I had to hand someone that designation, was the first of all of us to turn 40, so I did a reading for her, and then for all three of us, and it totally blew my mind.
Turns out that all of us have known exactly what we were doing this whole time.
and that when our energies combine, it makes 8 Imox, the dream, the collective consciousness, cosmic amniotic fluid.
the eternal love we’re always swimming in.
you’re already doing it, you’ve always been doing it.
people just want to know they’re not alone, and it’s never over. that they are not wrong, but good. that they will be redeemed, one way or another.
today in therapy, during the part where I was supposed to comfort my child self, instead they comforted me, and told me that we have always known.
* * *
what dropped in during practice, during communion with Kit and the other realm, is that this work, these projects, this PhD, it’s not a monologue, and that’s what so much of academic discourse and art has been throughout history: gatekeeping. withholding. privilege. doling out information, access, experience, to those paying admission. I have always wanted to throw open doors and build bridges. let everyone in. connect the silos. the aim hasn’t changed, the scope is just widening. now it includes the dead, plants, trees, animals, minerals.
the ones whose voices aren’t very loud.
at least not in decibels.
this work is a dialogue, it’s not a monologue. it’s communion, channeling, amplification, mutual upliftment. and I think it all keeps coming back to titration, in my conversation with Rebecca doing exit interviews for DMTx yesterday it came up again. The real work of this lifetime, of being a person, is this dance, this titration, dual awareness: it’s the theme of the integration work I’m being called to and my service at EDUK, dropping in and dipping back out again to check with the physical surroundings, your body, the other bodies. to make sure everyone is safe and has what they need, then dissolving back into the collective consciousness again. letting the play unfold, channeling the characters, but remaining the director, only momentarily losing that first-person perspective altogether, retaining the ability to reconstitute it.
this is what is meant by radical subjectivity. I’m learning Kit’s work more deeply and why we were all called together, along with Michael and Laura, I see how everyone brings something interrelated yet unique and beautiful. phenomenology, full-sensory, it’s all different pathways to the same thing. but I think part of my work here is to bring it back to the people, free the message from the gatekeepers, pry it from the jaws of academia and release it from the galleries studios, back into the round, the fringe, the pound theatre, the zine, the blog and newsletter, these new old fashioned forms of communication.
I don’t know what place, if any, there is for alcohol. But there is something important in the continued exploration of the artist/mystic/alcoholic archetype.
all is unfolding. time for more learning.
Thesis Notes
Ontology/interbeing/phenomenology +
Hauntology/gHosting/possession - hysteria/psychosis
Woodruff: The Moon and the planets are physical presences; they move around, and their motion impacts the biosphere on Earth, of which people are part and parcel. Astrology is an elevated, more complex form of meteorology with a psychological chaser.
Knowledge of being includes experiencing everything as a being, including planets
Kit’s thesis: Cosmology as part of the ontology of African religions
The first-person perspective - what is it like to be this thing? Experiencing FROM the perspective of the OTHER is how we awaken
There is no hero/villain/victim, they are everyone, you are all of them
Laura: from the perspective of Freud’s analysis, while I bring the Jung
His analysis of “hysteria,” mine of “psychosis” and how this relates to mysticism > Kit and I bringing the Indigenous/ancestral perspective, you’re not crazy you’re channeling/talking to the spirits
The 13 Kan, the spirits speak to you, how do you tell who’s who?
Laura channeling the “hysteric” patients
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TRANS/QUEER? The psychologists who couldn’t embrace or capture this and even tried to psychologize it out of people–including Ram Dass?
The new thing being created is the queer perspective, even traditional cosmologies are still so binary, it’s not duality it’s hyperdimensionality > the psychedelic
Mind-manifesting, what model are you driving?
Minds are part of the vessel of being a human
**In all of our cases - the practice IS the work - how to present it?
The PhD journal > Kit and Laura channeling work > as it was received
Laura, me - recording to myself what is coming through, reading it back or remembering the same bits over and over > ask her about this
“The ghosts speak through me and tell each audience member the story they told Freud, in the first person. I do not offer an analysis or hint at Freud’s view of the cases. Only the patients’ words (although of course those recorded by Freud) are uttered. First, I read Freud’s writing with attention, carefully. On my second re-read, I re-write by hand the words I hear from the patient in the first person, erasing the voice of the doctor. I then record a reading of this new case history in my own voice and, instead of rehearsing the performance, I play it back to myself repeatedly, over several weeks. When I perform, I remember, rather than recite, what I hear, in the way the patients might have remembered occurrences or incidents when they told them to Freud. Thus, every one-to-one performance is different, an encounter created with the specific audience member in the room.”
Ecstatic interactive performance/ritual
Theatre in the round and in the woods - back to the people
I bring the perspective of also hosting plants and trees, not just people > interbeing > what is the phenomenology of a tree?
gHosting
“ In This Little Art, Kate Briggs compares the act of translation to Robinson Crusoe making a table in his island. He is not inventing the concept of table, but has to make one, himself, for the first time, from trees. ‘When it comes to translation (…) there’s never a question of what to write (…) because the work has already been written. What matters is how to write it again’.”
Intersemiotic translation is the process of transferring verbal texts into other systems of signification, such as visual, oral, aural, gestural, or kinesic. Roman Jakobson coined the term in 1959. Some examples of intersemiotic translation include: Translating words into images, Translating words into numerical code, Translating words into non-verbal sounds, A verbal rendition of a pictorial message, and A screen adaptation of a novel.
Anthi - drawing as writing - this is what she means
Translation - it was already translated from German to English - then from the experience into her performance. staging, creating the one-to-one durational setting, omitting the doctor’s voice and switching the patients’ words from third to first person – a powerful act of disguised writing
Who sits around the table once it is built? How does it change the island? Me: what changes in the trees becoming a table, trees becoming people, then us all changing back again? Can we?
“Traits of the hysteric:” body, mimesis, mystery, disappearance and voice
Embodiment, somatic, mystery
These are all traits/components of the mystic, artist, and alcoholic as well - POSSESSION
Breathing trouble in Freud’s patients > keep coming back > I CAN’T BREATHE and the PANDEMIC BEING A CATALYST TO CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLUTION, ALL OF US EXPERIENCING THE SAME TRAUMA AT THE SAME TIME EVERYWHERE, AN ACCELERANT FOR EXPANSION > SUFFERING TOGETHER > crying also eased symptoms of hysteria patients yet they would hold back
Mimetic quality “causes symptoms to mutate” > memes - AI/
“Well-known nineteenth century convulsions are unlike the symptoms of demon possession presented by earlier hysterics, and also different from eating disorders, epileptic fits, delirium, the inability to speak or sexual voracity.”
THIS IS INTERESTING - THE TRANS* EXPERIENCE - PARTICULARLY FOR AFAB - Did we want the men or just want to BE them?
Just liking how they were attracted to us
Mutation as doppelganger, read Naomi Klein
“in the nineteenth century, hysterics at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris took on epileptic symptoms, copying those with whom they shared a ward, and whom they perceived as being taken seriously by doctors.”
Wondering how much of this ADD/ “eating disorder” stuff is me channeling Callin because her “problems” were taken seriously
“Archetypes of hysteria” - all with elements of mimesis - and WOW - these are all parts of ME at war
“The beautiful soul” - the MOST VICTIMIST - betrayed, misunderstood, humiliated
“Sublime / belle indifference” - wants to keep desire unsatisfied - the longing for the longing- bittersweet? “Anesthesia of the body, … demonstrate the futility of desire” > you will always be longing
The mystic and the alcoholic - nothing will save you from the bottom of your glass - you’ll always long for divine reunion until you die
“Sleeping Beauty” - the lover will redeem me - “sleepwalks” through life waiting for someone to save her
This can also be the men - and we think the men are going to save us only to realize we’re saving them, me and mom Maya astrology > somebody save me, somebody has to save me - looks like a man but he’s a baby
The beast, or ‘that which opposes itself to her alter ego’: the unstoppable death force. The villain you internalize until you become it. The one who entertains everyone with their stories of suffering
Hysteria not used as diagnostic category since 1952- DUDE WTF this JUST POPPED INTO MY HEAD AND FUCKING A!!! IT WAS THE EXACT SAME YEAR PSYCHOSIS WAS INTRODUCED!!!
“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) first included psychosis in its first edition, published in 1952. The DSM-I defined psychotic disorders as diseases that included: Personality disintegration, Inability to relate to people or work, and Inability to correctly evaluate external reality.”
The concept of psychosis was introduced to psychiatric literature in 1841 by Canstatt, who used the term synonymously with "psychic neurosis"
BEFORE THIS IT WAS CALLING PEOPLE WITCHES, WIZARDS, HERETICS, APOSTATES, AND BURNING THEM AT THE STAKE
THIS IS THE EVOLUTION - THE SHAMAN KNOWS HOW TO TRANSMUTE THEM - THE ALCHEMISTS CAME UP WITH THE SECRET SOCIETY - YOU HAVE TO USE SIDE DOORS AND HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT. THOSE WHO LEARN THIS CAN BECOME MOVIE STARS AND BARDS TO THE KINGS. THOSE WHO DON’T DIE OR GET LOCKED AWAY.
Ram Dass vs his brother, Cain and Abel
Well fucking A!! Then I read this! Directly tied to persona, the mask we wear and character we play: “In 1980, the third edition of the DSM further buried hysteria and only conversion and dissociative disorders remained, with hysterical personality transforming into histrionic personality disorder, which, as Johanna Braun notes, comes from the Latin histrio, actor/actress, diagnosing the hysteric as performer, and moving beyond the limits of medical discourse.”
Trauma release > somatic work > theatre/performance/channeling > ecstatic dance > psychedelics > IFS/CI - it’s about rewriting the story and listening to what the body is saying
“ narrative gone awry which shows up as mysterious symptoms forming a body language. The task of psychoanalysis is then to interpreted the body, translate it into words and create a coherent narrative of the patient’s story.”
“The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s anti-novel which she envisaged as an image, setting off circular rhythms … a rhythm of words with which Woolf articulates the tacit knowledge she calls ecstatic. … it is a language of relations.”
Interbeing, ayni, everything is relational
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the novel The Yellow Wallpaper > diagnosed as hysteric and “treatment” was to leave a successful writing career - she “cured” herself by doing the opposite. These are the modern day witch hunts and attacks against the herbalists
“writing is a poison as well as a remedy, because to cure the woman, it must kill the hysteric. Writing takes the place of the hysteric. And leaves the subject’.” - it’s DEFINITELY a poison but idk that I agree this is why. It channels!
“To become herself, she is not allowed to do any work, any writing, which, much like the author, she does, as we are reading her diary. But she is writing to no one, thus is no longer a speaking-subject … A diary to no one was the beginning of the end of incarceration. … Writing in the first person … shows the mystery … without demands for a release.”
what happens when you start making the journal public? >> this is partying from the inside out, reclaiming hysteria/psychosis/witchcraft
JUNGIAN CONNECTIONS - “the unlived life was held in the throat” > children live the unlived lives of their parents, Jung
An invisible globe is placed in her throat. The suppressed cry. / Where do words go when they cannot be uttered? / The repressed always returns, that is a certainty clearly articulated in the hysteric. / Perhaps it returns in the form of her insistent question: What do you want from me? / The secretion erupts from deeply embedded systemic pressures, removing life’s potential and its authentic voice, making it incomplete as the folds close over it.
‘My idea of heaven – a place where one need not breathe’, from a diary entry by Winnie Seebohm, October 26, 1895, 2:30am
Kit - workshop
if I am writing for you, so that you know I am now writing from this or that method, then I’m not really writing from a radical subjectivity, I am already writing on a mirror, writing to an Other I can’t see. The question might be, rather, how do you write the interior so deep inside that interior that interior becomes Other? And what does that look like?
Can a text for a journal, for an art research journal, be constructed so that it might resemble madness, to represent madness that comes on the evening of a breakthrough? I had a breakthrough. Because I had a breakthrough. Because I really really had a break through.
THIS IS THE JOURNAL - THE JOURNALS - THE PERSONAL MADE PUBLIC VS THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE - SOMETHING V IMPORTANT ABOUT THE PROCESS AS PRACTICE AS WORK RE: JOURNALS/JOURNALING
ZINES, JOURNALS, FRINGE THEATER, THE ROUND AND ORAL TRADITION, I MUST HELP RETURN CEREMONY, ART, COMMUNICATION, DIRECT EXPERIENCE TO THE MASSES
An option: Make up a fake theorist we can write about, because we need some kind of documentation that exists outside this text, and we need a documentation that is too hard to find, but too sensical to refute.
But now we have a body, we have always had bodies of knowledge, they just live in the jungle and don’t have university funding
The reason we might invent an imaginary source is, for one, it is much easier than having to bother to look for sources when we know they are already there somewhere … we are making our own claims self-consciously suspicious, putting ourselves in the role of an unreliable narrator, and all authority needs to be undermined.
The point is to show people how easy it is to manipulate them
if I perform the role of narrator/researcher, and take on multiple roles, to perform the multiple methods, offers a grounding to the performance and the interviews
Also video of the trance performance and interviews with people talking about their trance experience > how these elements might add up to a vocabulary for exposition in my practice, and whether these multiple levels of inquiry might not themselves take form as performed research. The exhibition of the work is something other than the work itself, creating meta-narratives … This text is a construction of multiple narrative voices speaking to and against each other
Problematic terms when talking about other cosmologies/cultures: i.e., Lukumí/Yoruba colonialist roots
oral tradition in this case is not only based on the spoken word, but on signs and symbols within the oral teachings. In some cases, the oral transmission of knowledge falls outside the academic definitions of oral tradition, because rather than transmission of knowledge from the mouth of an elder to an apprentice, this is transmitted in dreams and trance, through visitations from elders who are dead.
Did they know their prescience when they said this? Was it always intended? “I have yet to come across a study that allows for the dead to participate as subjects, and practitioners know that the dead are more active subjects than the living, because they speak through the living.”
I wonder about how to cite claims that are based on secrets. And I wonder about the necessity for documentation of the history of a religion that is already well-established in ethnographic literature
Different takes/framing when writing from ethnographic, psychoanalytic, and radically subjective perspective (“on the edge of madness”) >> this is what I have been doing, the not quite chanting/rapping/poetry/stream of consciousness stuff.
I want to consider writing, research writing about art as research, as montage, in the way that Eisenstein considered montage: ‘an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another’
Anthi, writing as drawing
How is/can writing be embodied?