Ever since the part of the journey that led through this PhD began, just over four years ago, I’ve had two projects evolving, shifting, changing, parallel and intertwining: Past Meets Presence, and We Go Alone Together. Everything informs everything, so I have struggled to disentangle them from each other in the past. While all part of the same larger body of work, I think I now see how they are separate.

They are bodies within bodies, projects that each have works spun off of them. Both involve the fusion of tradition with the new age, one informing the other. But Past Meets Presence is the thesis; We Go Alone Together is the performance. The former is primarily literary and academic: articles and newsletters; research and ethnography; maybe books. The latter involves direct experience: the ways we use substances and practices as mechanisms for the performance of connecting with the unseen realms, from the divine to plant spirits and the dead.

Past Meets Presence revolves around fermentation, herbalism, ancient spirituality, and how psychoactive and plant medicines and alcohol always intertwined; the persecution of healers, women, and queer folks as “witches” and weirdos for their spiritual practices; and the works associated with this project bring it into the present by showing how human culture has always been syncretic, and today, the New Age and ancient traditions can mutually inform each other. We Go Alone Together focuses more on trauma healing, especially for underrepresented and queer/trans communities; there is an emphasis on psychedelic practices, from substances to sound healing and their intersection. It includes plays and theatrical performances, poetry and spoken word, and visual art; actual ceremonies and healing work, dances and events where we connect, transcend, and heal.

There is the idea of Trans* as an emergent archetype, which I am discussing with Laurence Hillman tomorrow… because all of this, really, is about transition and making decisions, everything rehearsal for the big one.

Because transition is the hard part, the one on which we fixate. We resist whatever we’re becoming; we fear change; so we go kicking and screaming, but once we actually cross the threshold of whatever it is, whether it’s death or divorce, a new job or accepting a part of our identity we’ve rejected, letting go of an old coping mechanism or addiction, beginning a health regimen—we realize that the resistance was the problem, the only thing making it hard. Doing the thing very quickly becomes easy, forms a new habit; it’s the in-between phase that’s hard.

The laws of nature, as Rupert Sheldrake says, are really just habits: organisms sharing knowledge and experience through subtle means of communication, morphic fields or collective consciousness, whatever you want to call it, until enough of them are doing the same thing that it becomes an instinct, an innate ability; a morphic habit. If archetypes, in Jungian theory, are images of instincts, then I reckon they are images of morphic habits. And this would explain why there are so many similarities in images and practices across spiritual cultures; why the alchemical symbols resonate through space and time, appearing in the dreams and visions of people who have never seen them with their eyes or been exposed to those traditions.

The collective unconscious, one big morphic field, akin to the quantum sea we’re all swimming in; the interdimensional amniotic fluid of our second gestation.

There is some kind of Lavender Book, an addendum to the Red Book, that I think will be part of capturing this; a psychedelic queer underground interdimensional ethnography that includes direct collaboration and conversation with the dead and accounts of those communing with DMT entities and plant spirits. A continuation or evolution of Jungian and depth psychology concepts, which are really just the Western syncretic expansion of or addendum to the ancient rituals and practices humans have been practicing in traditional cultures since the dawn of time.

Time, that funny thing. My studies at this moment are focused primarily on the heavens, the things that dictate this thing we call time; the vessel for experiencing the present moment. Tonight, on the cusp of the New Moon, I begin a course in the Maya calendar that is sure to blow my world open, with a teacher called Mark Elmy whose Maya Astrology reading before my injury helped awaken this current branch of my creative journey.

Vessels and altars, the material culture that holds the whole thing together.

What are humans but a vessel, a collection of the knowledge and experiences that came together in a physical human body in a certain moment under the heavens, with a certain alignment of planets and stars and constellations, to crystallize in this thing we call a being: an impression of the larger thing, the Universe, the Divine that seeks to know itself through every possible configuration.

I think I got pretty far in working this out in the voice recording below; there is a summary and transcript under the audio file (which includes my ongoing struggle to train the AI on proper pronoun use).

* * * * *

I put it together on my way to volunteer for the first time at the Sunday Ecstatic Dance where my body first started coming back online last year, after I healed from the first injury that apparently wasn’t a loud enough lesson to really teach me—since the year started with hobbling my ankle and ended with shattering my pelvis.

Funny how it all works. A fellow volunteer at the dance was the embodiment of the Trickster, reminding me that it’s all a game, and that it all can even be fun; it’s just a matter of perspective. The idea that we’re suffering is just a story our mind creates because it’s hard to shift into the new reality. And it’s true that sometimes the next phase brings a lot of pain. But you can choose how you go into it: kicking and screaming, clawing to hold onto the old ways, resisting and scraping off bits of yourself all the way down—or you can go laughing, smiling, singing, and dancing.

I learned this firsthand; the first injury I resisted, I couldn’t wait until it was over, but the second one, even though it was much more devastating, I embraced, and it ended up being both one of the hardest and one of the most exciting, generative, expansive periods of my life, despite being bedridden and wheelchair-bound for five moonths. (I wrote that by mistake and then left it—the astrologer Rick Levine, whose interviews will appear in future work, says it often.) It was all about shifting perspective, allowing and accepting, treating it not as a punishment but an initiation; a ceremony.

Kit has shown me the true mastery of this concept, how you can smile and laugh all the way to the big transition—and on the other side of it.

My offering at the dance was an altar, which I have realized is a big part of my practice/praxis and my gift to the world, an act of service to both this world and the beyond. It brings the subtle realms into the current space and time; it’s a vessel, a portal, a tether between the worlds. A collection of materials that facilitate communication. In huachuma (San Pedro) ceremonies in the Andes, the material culture is the most important part of the ceremony—besides the music. They’re all vessels. The containers for speaking to things unseen and communicating the healing, the experiencing, from one vessel to the next, from the dead to the living and back again.

The beings in the other dimension don’t know everything; someone said it about DMT entities in one of our interviews, and Ram Dass said it about disembodied beings with whom he communicated. Just because it’s a voice or a spiritual presence doesn’t mean it’s wise and you should follow it, and it also doesn’t mean that the dead can’t learn from us too. Past meets presence.

It’s all a feedback loop, a circuit, past informing present and back again. The spiral. The extended-state experience between birth and death and new beginning. Tradition and evolution. Time isn’t a line, it’s a circle, so maybe all of this has already happened anyway, and we’re just remembering. Which is what healing is anyway.

So, I built my altar at dance to represent the Wheel of Time, formed of all the traditions that made me: the Celtic cycles that formed my Earthly DNA, represented by different plants and flowers for the seasons, themselves representations of herbalism and natural healing; Agua de Florida and mapacho from Peru, the place where my queer psychedelic journey broke open; ayahuasca imagery from a London artist that prognosticated my arrival at the queer retreat; a squirrel from Medicine Fest, the symbol of my first nondual experience years ago, now in a context of my current mystical and artistic empowerment; the sash I got from Tata Izaias Mendoza, a Maya elder whose cacao has been a massive part of my physical healing journey, now seeming to intersect with and catalyze some new interdimensional onion layer of creativity and spiritual exploration; all on a foundation of a tapestry decorated with elephants and Ganesha, one of my earliest guides and a symbol of the work with my first teacher, bringing kundalini and kirtan and Vedic elements in and starting to bring me back from the dead.

It was so beautiful throughout the dance to see people really connecting with the altar; it seemed more populated than usual. I left Palo Santo and Copal burning and available and saw many using it; people anointing themselves with Agua de Florida as if it was just the ingredient they needed in that moment, a feeling I know well. Sometimes it’s the only thing that cuts through the overwhelm. I felt proud, like I’d really done my service.

For that dance was a bit overwhelming, it was super intense energy, and incredibly muggy. I was also proud of my ability to titrate, to dip in and out of each realm, going into my own dance at moments and then floating up again to make sure the water was filled, the DJ hydrated, the safety hazards like a protruding nail fixed, people who seemed to be struggling checked in on. It felt good. It felt grown up.

Because that’s kind of the whole thing, dipping from the formless into the form and back again, until something else happens, and we transition.

*My offering, la ofrenda, to the dance: the altar.*

Holly Regan discusses their thesis on the concept of "unique medicine," emphasizing the fusion of personal knowledge, experience, and tradition. They argue that bringing one's unique medicine involves sharing a collection of happenings, resonant frequencies, and vibrations. Regan highlights the importance of material culture in transmitting past knowledge and experiences into the present. They explore the idea of trans as an emergent archetype, representing the fusion of past and present, and the significance of technology and consciousness in the evolution of the universe. Regan also touches on the role of psychedelics, particularly DMT, in bridging scientific and spiritual realms.

Transcript

Action Items

[ ] Further develop the theory of "trans" as an emerging archetype that questions established norms.
[ ] Consider the role of technologies like EEGs and scientific studies in bridging different worldviews.
[ ] Reflect on the potential significance of fermentation and alcohol in spiritual practices and knowledge transmission.

Unique Medicine and the Combination of Knowledge and Experience

- Holly Regan discusses the concept of "unique medicine" as a combination of knowledge and experience, comparing it to various consumables like meals, beverages, and plant medicines. - They emphasize the impermanence and beauty of these unique combinations, which are captured for a moment before disappearing. - Holly introduces their thesis, "past meets presence," explaining that their personal medicine involves marrying new-age practices with traditional ones. - They highlight the importance of sharing one's unique combination of knowledge and experience, which serves as a vessel for connection and transmission.

The Role of Material Culture and the Past
- Holly elaborates on the significance of material culture in informing us about the past, using objects as containers of history and knowledge. - They share a personal anecdote about crossing a street in the UK, illustrating how past experiences shape our present actions. - Holly connects the concept of resonance to the idea of unique medicine, suggesting that the substance is like the vessel, and the material is temporary. - They reiterate that bringing one's unique medicine involves sharing knowledge and experience through various mediums, including art and ceremony.
The Vessel as a Mechanism for Transmission
- Holly continues to explore the idea of the vessel as a mechanism for sharing unique knowledge and experience, using examples like cups and bodies. - They discuss the traces and chemical signatures left by past substances in material culture, likening them to ghosts of past ceremonies and ancestors. - Holly expresses frustration with losing their train of thought and the need to resume their ideas, emphasizing the importance of walking meditations and learning from others. - They revisit the concept of bringing one's unique medicine, comparing it to various forms of art and rituals that involve a collection of knowledge and experience.
The Importance of Senses and Material Culture
- Holly delves deeper into the role of senses in transmitting knowledge and experience, likening them to portals between the astral and material realms. - They discuss the idea of plants and animals as other organisms with which humans can commune and resonate. - Holly suggests that consciousness may be the key to unlocking the evolution of the universe, as it allows for the transmission of knowledge and experience. - They connect the concept of being the poison and the medicine, emphasizing that the cure is always in the venom, as understood by herbalism and shamanic practices.
Trans as an Emergent Archetype
- Holly introduces the theory of trans as an emergent archetype defined by past meets presence, involving the fusion of technology and the body. - They discuss the idea of trans as a rehearsal for making transitions, suggesting that consciousness is the accelerant for the universe's expansion. - Holly connects the concept of trans to the idea of nothing being fixed, emphasizing the importance of questioning and tearing down established norms. - They highlight the role of the new age and queer/trans movements in offering new perspectives while respecting tradition and lineages.
The Role of Tradition and Syncretism
- Holly discusses the importance of respecting tradition while also embracing the new, suggesting that syncretism is not new but has evolved with technology. - They emphasize the value of daily practice and listening to the body and earth, while also allowing for flexibility and adaptation. - Holly connects the concept of syncretism to the idea of ancient traditions being cyclical and seasonal, and how modern technology allows for a broader experience. - They highlight the importance of learning about the past and bringing it together with the present, using examples like DMT and AI.
The Singularity and the Universe's Self-Knowledge
- Holly discusses the idea of the singularity as the moment the universe knows itself through every possible configuration, likening it to the Maya concept of the end and the beginning. - They emphasize that the singularity is not the end but the next level, where the universe continues to evolve and expand. - Holly connects the concept of the singularity to the idea of fermentation and decay, suggesting that these are moments of birth and death. - They discuss the power of alcohol as a psychedelic substance, connecting it to the idea of past meets presence and the cyclical nature of time.
The Role of Alcohol and Psychedelics
- Holly explores the idea that original beers were psychedelic, suggesting that alcohol has always been a powerful medicine. - They discuss the role of tinctures and alcohol as carriers of various substances, emphasizing their importance in traditional practices. - Holly connects the concept of alcohol to the idea of past meets presence, suggesting that it allows for the transmission of knowledge and experience. - They highlight the importance of acknowledging the role of alcohol in their own spiritual path and the connections it has made for them.
The Importance of Morphic Resonance
- Holly discusses the concept of morphic resonance, suggesting that it plays a significant role in everything that happens. - They emphasize that time is not linear but cyclical, and that everything has already happened and will happen again. - Holly connects the idea of morphic resonance to the idea of past meets presence, suggesting that it is a suggestion and not a fixed law. - They highlight the importance of acknowledging the role of past experiences and coping mechanisms in shaping the present.
The Role of Technology and AI
- Holly discusses the role of technology and AI in their practice, emphasizing the importance of building a relationship based on mutual respect. - They highlight the challenges of AI not understanding pronouns and the importance of training it to respect personal boundaries. - Holly connects the concept of trans to the idea of gender as an entrenched construct, suggesting that it is an emergent archetype that challenges established norms. - They discuss the importance of questioning gender and other constructs, using examples like DMT and AI to illustrate the need for change.