Numerology, Fibonacci, and Magic
Flora Knight January 8, 2026
Fibonacci sequences may not hold a prominent place in traditional magic or witchcraft, but to study them reveals the underlying principles that are deeply intertwined not just with sacred geometry and the natural spirals of the universe, but with the mystical world in it’s totality…
Albrecht Durer, Melencolia I featuring a magic numerology square. (1514)
Flora Knight January 8, 2026
Fibonacci sequences may not hold a prominent place in traditional magic or witchcraft, but their underlying principles are deeply intertwined with sacred geometry and the natural spirals of the universe. Two spiritual interpretations derived from the Fibonacci sequence are particularly noteworthy in our modern magical understandings, and particularly in the practice of Wicca: the concepts of twin flames and the number 33 sequence.
The spiral and golden rectangle of the Fibonacci sequence.
The idea of twin flames has long been embedded in magical traditions. Love, often symbolized by two flames, is a recurring theme in love spells and incantations, where lighting two candles side by side is believed to elevate love to a higher spiritual plane. This concept is represented by the number 11, a significant number in witchcraft. The Fibonacci sequence begins with 1 + 1, a numerical foundation that has been embraced by some modern Wicca sects as resonating with the essence of twin flames.
Another intriguing use of the Fibonacci sequence involves starting the sequence with the number 33. The number 3 represents the mind, body, and spirit, so 33 symbolizes the spiritual realization of these elements. When the Fibonacci sequence begins with 33, it leads to important numbers such as 3, 6, and 9, which are said to represent the ascension of the universe. Mapping these numbers on a grid also forms a pentagram, a powerful symbol in Wicca.
The 12th number in this modified Fibonacci sequence is 432, a number of profound significance in modern Wicca. The frequency of 432 Hz resonates with the universe’s golden mean, Phi, and harmonizes various aspects of existence including light, time, space, matter, gravity, magnetism, biology, DNA, and consciousness. When our atoms and DNA resonate with this natural spiral pattern, our connection to nature is enhanced.
The number 432 also appears in the ratios of the sun, Earth, and moon, as well as in the precession of the equinoxes, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge, and the Sri Yantra, among other sacred sites. While Fibonacci sequences were not commonly used in traditional magic before the 20th century, we see their presence everywhere, and they are meaningful in explanations of sacred geometry.
“This sequence, when viewed through a spiritual lens, reveals the underlying order and symmetry in nature, guiding us toward a deeper appreciation of the divine patterns that govern our existence.”
But beyond just Fibonacci, the study of numbers reveals secrets of the world, and to understand the magical perspective of the world, we must understand how different numbers carry various symbolic meanings:
William F. Warren, Illustration from Paradise Found. (1885).
1: The universe; the source of all.
2: The Goddess and God; perfect duality; balance.
3: The Triple Goddess; lunar phases; the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of humanity.
4: The elements; spirits of the stones; winds; seasons.
5: The senses; the pentagram; the elements plus Akasha; a Goddess number.
7: The planets known to the ancients; the lunar phase; power; protection and magic.
8: The number of Sabbats; a number of the God.
9: A number of the Goddess.
11: The twin flames; the number of ethereal love.
13: The number of Esbats; a fortunate number.
15: A number of good fortune.
21: The number of Sabbats and Esbats in the Pagan year; a number of the Goddess.
28: A number of the Moon; a number 101 representing fertility.
The planets are numbered as follows in Wiccan numerology:
3: Saturn
7: Venus
4: Jupiter
8: Mercury
5: Mars
9: Moon
6: Sun
Numerology has been a significant aspect of witchcraft for nearly 3,000 years, with most numbers being assigned specific meanings by various magical traditions. The most consistent sacred numbers, linked to sacred geometry, are 4, 7, and 3. These numbers represent the universe, the earthly body, and the seven steps of ascension, respectively.
The story of the Tower of Babel illustrates the ancient understanding of the universe through numbers. The tower's seven stages were each dedicated to a planet, with colors symbolizing their attributes. This concept was further refined by Pythagoras, who is said to have learned the mystical significance of numbers during his travels to Babylon.
The seven steps of the tower symbolize the stages of knowledge, from stones to fire, plants, animals, humans, the starry heavens, and finally, the angels. Ascending these steps represents the journey towards divine knowledge, culminating in the eighth degree, the threshold of God's heavenly dwelling.
The Tower of Babel.
The square, though divided into seven, was respected as a mystical symbol. This reconciled the ancient fourfold view of the world with the seven heavens of later times, illustrating the harmony between earthly and cosmic orders.
In contemporary Wicca and broader spiritual practices, the exploration of numerology and Fibonacci sequences opens new pathways to understanding the universe and our place within it. These numerical patterns and sequences are not just abstract concepts; they reflect the intricate designs of nature and the cosmos. By integrating Fibonacci sequences into spiritual practices, modern Wiccans and seekers of wisdom can tap into a profound sense of unity and harmony with the natural world.
The Fibonacci sequence, with its origins in simple arithmetic, evolves into a complex and beautiful representation of life's interconnectedness. This sequence, when viewed through a spiritual lens, reveals the underlying order and symmetry in nature, guiding us toward a deeper appreciation of the divine patterns that govern our existence.
As we continue to explore and embrace these ancient and modern numerological insights, we can uncover new layers of meaning and connection. The study of numbers in any form invites us to see the world not just as a series of random events, but as a harmonious and purposeful tapestry. This perspective encourages a more profound spiritual journey, where every number, pattern, and sequence becomes a gateway to greater wisdom and enlightenment.
Flora Knight is an occultist and historian.
The Three Ways of Art (1810)
Friedrich Overbeck January 6, 2026
Three roads traverse the Land of Art, and, though they differ from one another, each has its peculiar charm, and all eventually lead the tireless traveller to his destination, the Temple of Immortality…
Italia und Germania, Friedrich Overbeck. 1828.
At the turn of the 19th century, Neo-Classicism was at its zenith. Paintings and sculptures paid homage the newly re-discovered ancient worlds of Rome and Greece with a simple, symmetrical, and overtly moral style. At the Vienna Academy in 1809, a group of 6 artists rejected this new movement and, out of protest and belief, took up a monastic life in Rome to search for an art born out of ‘a pure heart’. This group became derisively known as the Nazarenes, and Friedrich Overbeck was one of their leaders. They found the Neoclassicist fascination with both the ancient and the modern to be paganistic and lacking in soul, so looked instead to the artists of the Middle ages and early Renaissance. They mimicked the lifestyles of these painters, valuing hard, honest work and austere, holy living in a rundown monastery. Overbeck acknowledges in his remarkable essay that he is striving for the very same goal as his contemporaries, and is generous in his acceptance that the way of the Nazarenes is not the only way to reach it. Yet his bias is clear, a middle way between the ancient and the new, the truthful and the beautiful, is the best journey.
Friedrich Overbeck January 6, 2026
Three roads traverse the Land of Art, and, though they differ from one another, each has its peculiar charm, and all eventually lead the tireless traveller to his destination, the Temple of Immortality. Which of these three a young artist should choose ought therefore to be determined by his personal inclination, guided and fortified by reflection.
The first is the straight and simple Road of Nature and Truth. An uncorrupted human being will find much to please his heart and satisfy his curiosity along this road. It will lead him, for better or for worse, through fair, productive country, with many a beautiful view to delight him, through he may occasionally have to put up with monotonous stretches of wasteland as well. But, above these, the horizon will usually be bright, and the sun of Truth will never set. Of the three roads, this is the most heavily travelled. Many Netherlanders have left their footprints on it, and we may follow the older ones among them with pleasure, observing the steadiness of their direction which proves that these travellers advanced imperturbably on their road: not one of these tracks stops short of the goal. - But the most recent footprints are another matter; most of them run in zig-zags to the right and the left, indicating that those who made them looked this way and that, undecided, wondering whether or not to turn back and take another road. Many of these tracks, in fact, disappear into the surrounding wastes and deserts, into impenetrable country. What the traveller on this road must chiefly guard against are the bogs along one side where he may easily sink into mud over his ears, and the sandy wastes on the other side which may lead him away from the road and from his destination. But if he manages to continue along the straight, marked path, he cannot fail to reach his destination. The level country makes this road agreeable to travel, there are no mountains to climb, and the walking is easy, so long as he does not stray to one side or the other, into bog or desert. Besides, there is plenty of company to be found on this road, friendly people, representing all nationalities. And the sky above this country is usually serene. The careful observer will find here everything the earth offers, he need never be bored on this road. And yet, I must warn the young artist not to raise his expectation too high, for, frankly, he will see neither more, nor less than what other people also see, every day, in every lane.
The second road is the Road of Fantasy which leads through a country of fable and dream. It is the exact opposite of the first. On it, one cannot walk more than a hundred steps on level ground. It goes up and down, across terrifying cliffs and along steep chasms. The wanderer must often dare to take frightening leaps across the bottomless abyss. If he does not have the nerve for it, he will become dizzy at the first step. Only men of very strong constitution can take this road and follow it to the end. - Strange are its environs, usually steeped in night; only sudden lightning flashes intermittently illuminate the terrible, looming cliffs. The road often leads straight to a rock face and enters into a dark crevice, alive with strange creatures. Suddenly, a ray of light pierces the darkness from afar, the light increases as one follows it through the narrow crevice, until abruptly the rocks rccede and the brightness of a thousand suns envelops the traveller. Then he is seized, as if by heavenly powers, he eagerly plunges into the bright sea of joy, drinking its luminous waters with wild desire, then, intoxicated and full of fresh ardor, he tears himself from the depths and soars upward like an eagle, his eyes on the sun, until he vanishes from sight. Thus joy and terror succeed each other in sharpest contrast. Not the faintest glimmer of the light of Truth penetrates into these chasms, insurmountable mountains enclose the land, and only rarely do fleeting shadows or dream visions which can bear the light of Truth venture to drift across the barriers, where they then seem to stride like giants from peak to peak.
“Thus sunrise and sunset, Truth and Beauty alternate here, and combine, and from their union rises the ideal.”
Just as this land is the opposite of the land of Nature in every feature, it is its opposite also with respect to population. In the other land, the road is constantly thronged with travellers; here it is usually empty. Few dare to enter this region, and even these few have little in common with one another, they go their separate ways, each sufficient to himself, none paying attention to the others. Michelangelo's luminous trace shines above all in this darkness. What distinguishes this road from the other is the colossal and sublime. Never is anything common or ordinary seen here, everything is rare, new, unique. Never is the wanderer's mind at peace: wild joy and terror, fear and expectation beset him in turn.
Let those who love strong emotion and lawless freedom travel this road, and let them walk boldly, it is sure to take them most directly to their destination. But those who love gentler impressions, who can neither grasp the colossal, nor bear the humdrum, and who like neither the bright midday light of the land of Nature, nor the stormy night of the land of Fantasy, but would prefer to walk in the gentle twilight, my advice to them is to take the third road which lies midways between the other two: the Road of the Ideal or of Beauty. Here he will find a paradise spread before him where the flower-fragrance of spring combines with autumn's fruitfulness. - To his right rise the mountains of Fantasy, to his left the view sweeps across fertile vineyards to the beautiful plain of the Land of Nature. From this side, the setting sun of Truth sheds its light; from the other, the morning light of Beauty rises from behind the golden mountains of Fantasy and bathes the entire countryside in its rosy haze. Thus sunrise and sunset, Truth and Beauty alternate here, and combine, and from their union rises the ideal. Here even Fantasy appears in the light of Truth, and naked Truth is clothed in the rose-fragrance of Beauty.
This road, besides, is neither so populous as the first, nor so deserted as the second, and the travellers on it differ from those of the second road by their sociability. One sees them walking in pairs, and friendship and love, their constant companions and guides, strew flowers on their way. Then, too, this road is neither so definitely marked as the first, nor so unkempt as the second. It runs, in beautiful variety of setting, from hill to meadow, from lake shore to orange grove. Every imaginable loveliness contributes to this variety. But in the very charm of this road there lies a danger to the traveller, for it may cause him to forget his destination, and cause him to lose all desire for the Temple of Immortality. Thus it happens that some of the travellers are overtaken by death before they reach the Temple. A loving companion may then carry their body to the Temple's threshold, where it will at once return to life and everlasting youth.
These then, dear brothers in art, are the three roads; choose between them according to your inclination, but test your powers first, by using reason. Whichever road you choose, I should advise you to go forward on it without looking too much to the left or right. The proof that each of the three roads leads to the goal is given three men who went separate ways and whose names are equally respected by posterity: Michelangelo took the road of Fantasy, Raphael the road of Beauty, and Dürer that of Nature, though he not infrequently crossed over into the land by Beauty.
Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789 – 1869) was a German painter and a founder of the Nazarene art movement.
9 The Small (Nurturing) - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel January 3, 2026
Dark clouds, but no rain in the Western Lands…
Chris Gabriel January 3, 2026
Judgment
Dark clouds, but no rain in the Western Lands.
Lines
1
Go your own way, what could go wrong?
2
Lead the way back.
3
A noisy ride where husband and wife can’t see eye to eye.
4
Have faith and the fear of blood goes.
5
With entwined faith we are rich in neighbors
6
The rain came down. Still virtue grew. A woman in danger, the Moon is almost full. The Sage’s journey will be unfortunate.
Qabalah
Chokmah, the Paternal. The 4 Twos. The 2 of Swords and the 2 of Disks.
In hexagram 9, we are given the image of accumulation: the process of making a mountain out of a molehill, of turning something little into something big. This can be the growth of a great storm cloud from a small bit of moisture, or the growth of a baby into an adult. This can be applied to social dynamics too, as written in the lines. It is also the phenomena of perspective and proportion, how something large and distant looks small. Thus the hexagram is a cloud far up in the heavens, looking very small from the ground.
We are shown dark clouds that bring no rain, for they are still growing.
1
One must follow their own path to grow. Each vine, flower, and tree fights for its own sunlight, and contorts itself to do so. They follow their own way to survive.
2
At times, growth requires retreat, though it may appear as regression. No matter how far one goes, we still need to sleep.
3
This is the social form of making a mountain out of a molehill. If a couple is driving and they get a flat tire, it can elicit an argument fantastically out of proportion to the minor inconvenience they’ve experienced. The little problem grows into a drama representing the problems of the whole relationship.
4
When we have faith in the ultimate goal of growth, our anxieties fade and the hard work necessary to achieve such a thing becomes light.
5
When we show a little kindness and goodwill to those around us, we will often find they are willing to support us in times of need. Bringing flowers or gifts to a new neighbor can invite a friendship and reciprocal kindness.
6
When things have grown, we see their fruits. When things reach their fullness, so too does the danger of spilling. A cloud which accumulates enough water soon bursts forth and pours out the rain it has accumulated.
Nietzsche expresses this dynamic well in Zarathustra:
“Indeed, who was not defeated in his victory!
Indeed, whose eye did not darken in this drunken twilight!
Indeed, whose foot did not stagger and forget how to stand in victory!
– That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon; ready and ripe
like glowing bronze, clouds pregnant with lightning and swelling udders of milk –”
As we grow, things become more treacherous and the stakes become higher. At the final moment, we can slip, and spill all that we’ve made. Consider children playing with blocks or sandcastles, or building a house of cards; we can keep these things steady as we build them up, but as we prepare to finish them, it can all come tumbling down. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra prays to his Will that he will be able to maintain this state of growth and height, that his accumulated energy can be directed properly at the right time, not lost in pride.
Pride comes before a Fall.
Welcome, 2026: Year 1 of the Fire Horse
Molly Hankins January 1, 2026
As we cross the threshold from a numerological year 9 of the wood snake in 2025 into a year 1 of the fire horse, beginning February 17th in the Chinese zodiac, we are shedding the last of our old identity-skins…
Galloping Horse, Xu Beihong. 1941.
Molly Hankins January 1, 2026
As we cross the threshold from a numerological year 9 of the wood snake in 2025 into a year 1 of the fire horse, beginning February 17th in the Chinese zodiac, we are shedding the last of our old identity-skins. What wasn’t working in our lives on the material plane is being closed out over the next six weeks, as the year 1 energy of 2026 refreshes our consciousness and charts our new course in life. The fire horse energy gives us the supercharged creativity to begin and sustain the momentum of following our highest excitement. A year 1 also promises surprises, unexpected opportunities, new relationships, and a significant expansion of our perspectives. Think back to the last year 1 which was in 2017- that was fire rooster year and there will likely be parallels across the macro themes in our lives.
In numerology, annual cycles are calculated by adding the numerals of a given year together, so 2026 is a year 1 because 2+2+0+6 = 10, and 1+0 = 1. The 1 represents a fresh start, so this is a year that asks us to embrace change and become more ourselves. The fire horse energy will fuel the urge to express our authenticity and share it with the people we love. Having shed so much over this previous year, we are ready to make new connections that form a circuit of conscious beings stable enough to run the powerful fire horse energy. In 2026, our life force is activated at a new level, and this will magnetize resonant souls who will be great company on our life’s journey. They also reflect back to us what we need to recognize within ourselves.
Numerologist and best-selling author Kaitlyn Kaerhart, who was interviewed for Tetragrammaton in 2025, believes that “when we know the nature of the cycle we’re in, we have a greater awareness of the energy that’s most supported at any given time, and how to make that energy work for us.” The year of the fire horse brings action and change, but beware that the energy can also be so quick-moving that it can lead to distraction or hot-headedness. “This year will feel dramatically different from 2025,” Kaerhart says. “Year 9 is the most intense and demanding year in numerology because it’s focused on endings, closure, grief and release. Collectively, 2025 was a dismantling, like a caterpillar dissolving inside the cocoon. In 2026, we emerge. This is the year we grow wings and begin again from a new level of awareness.”
“This isn’t a year to rush blindly. It’s a year to choose wisely.”
As for how to work with the new year energy, Kaerhart points out that not only are we in year 1, replete with fresh-start energy, but there’s a ton of horsepower behind that creative urge. We must be conscious of what we’re creating, why we’re doing it and who we’re working with. “Because year 1 is foundational, the most important way to work with this energy is through conscious initiation. Be intentional about what you start,” she reminds us. “Relationships, businesses, creative projects, relocations and commitments made this year have staying power. They carry momentum that can last the full nine-year cycle.”
Horses have co-evolved with mankind to help us get where we’re going and build lasting structures, so think of this energy as the fuel powering the next phase of our individual and collective evolution. In order to tame a horse, trust must be built and limits must be put in place otherwise the horse will run wild and we lose its power. The horse must also be tended to and taken care of, the same is true for this year. We can use this cycle to our advantage by slowing down our thinking and acting, making sure that what we’re doing aligns with who we are and how we want our lives to be. Conversely, we can create chaos with this energy if we’re impatient or misaligned in our relationships and activities.
“This isn’t a year to rush blindly,” Kaerhart says. “It’s a year to choose wisely. The consequences of our choices matter more now than they have in years.” As we work with this new energy, it can also be helpful to compare the year 1 we’re collectively experiencing to the one we are personalling travelling, which requires another simple calculation. To figure out what personal year you’re in, add up the digits of your birthday to the current year. For example, a July 10th birthday would add up to a personal year 9, because 7+1+0+2+0+2+6 = 9. This means endings and new beginnings will be happening right next to each other. The image of the ouroboros comes to mind, where the snake eats its own tail in a representation of eternal self-creation. For more specifics on how our personal year cycles interact with that of the collective, Kaerhart publishes annual planners detailing how to use this information to work with the astrological energy of the year.
Since what we create this year sets the tone for the next 9 years, the hope is that we can tame the fiery horse energy and harness it for our highest good. “Year 1 is the year where new timelines are initiated, identities are reshaped and long-term paths are chosen,” she explains. “It’s the spark year — the moment where ideas move from possibility into form.”
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
The Curriculum of the Bauhaus (1919)
Walter Gropius December 30, 2025
Intellectual education runs parallel to manual training…
The Bauhaus School Building in Weimar, Germany.
Four years after the formation of the Bauhaus, its founder Walter Gropius wrote a text entitled ‘The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus’ as a manifesto, declaration and explanation of the radical new world they were trying to form. The Bauhaus was a new type of art school, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany that attempted to unify individual expression and the process of mass manufacturing and modernity. It was inherently inter-disciplinary, and its output ranges from furniture and buildings, to paintings and craft work, each of which was valued individually and as a cohesive part of the greater whole. Perhaps no single movement has had quite as much impact in the 20th century, and the very visual language of the modern world owes its debt to this small school in Germany. Here, Gropius explains the curriculum of the school, and in doing so espouses some of the core philosophical ideas of the movement - that of intersectionality between mediums, rigorous focus on craft and technicality and an emphasis on the freedom that can be found within constraints of production.
Walter Gropius December 30, 2025
The course of instruction at the Bauhaus is divided into:
The Preliminary Course (Vorlehre)
Practical and theoretical studies are carried on simultaneously in order to release the creative powers of the student, to help him grasp the physical nature of materials and the basic laws of design. Concentration on any particular stylistic movement is studiously avoided. Observation and representation - with the intention of showing the desired identity of Form and Content - define the limits of the preliminary course. Its chief function is to liberate the individual by breaking down conventional patterns of thought in order to make way for personal experiences and discoveries which will enable him to see his own potentialities and limitations. For this reason collective work is not essential in the preliminary course. Both subjective and objective observation will be cultivated: both the system of abstract laws and the interpretation of objective matter.
Above all else, the discovery and proper valuation of the individual's means of expression shall be sought out. The creative possibilities of individuals vary. One finds his elementary expressions in rhythm, another in light and shade, a third in color, a fourth in materials, a fifth in sound, a sixth in proportion, a seventh in volumes or abstract space, an eighth in the relations between one and another, or between the two to a third or fourth.
All the work produced in the preliminary course is done under the influence of instructors. It possesses artistic quality only in so far as any direct and logically developed expression of an individual which serves to lay the foundations of creative discipline can be called art.
*
Instruction in form problems
Intellectual education runs parallel to manual training. The apprentice is acquainted with his future stock-in-trade - the elements of form and color and the laws to which they are subject. Instead of studying the arbitrary individualistic and stylized formulae current at the academies, he is given the mental equipment with which to shape his own ideas of form. This training opens the way for the creative powers of the individual, establishing a basis on which different individuals can cooperate without losing their artistic independence. Collective architectural work becomes possible only when every individual, prepared by proper schooling, is capable of understanding the idea of the whole, and thus has the means harmoniously to coordinate his independent, even if limited, activity with the collective work. Instruction in the theory of form is carried on in close contact with manual training. Drawing and planning, thus losing their purely academic character, gain new significance as auxiliary means of expression. We must know both vocabulary and grammar in order to speak a language; only then can we communicate our thoughts. Man, who creates and constructs, must learn the specific language of construction in order to make others understand his idea. Its vocabulary consists of the elements of form and color and their structural laws. The mind must know them and control the hand if a creative idea is to be made visible. The musician who wants to make audible a musical idea needs for its rendering not only a musical instrument but also a knowledge of theory. Without this knowledge, his idea will never emerge from chaos.
A corresponding knowledge of theory - which existed in a more vigorous era - must again be established as a basis for practice in the visual arts. The academies, whose task it might have been to cultivate and develop such a theory, completely failed to do so, having lost contact with reality. Theory is not a recipe for the manufacturing of works of art, but the most essential element of collective construction; it provides the common basis on which many individuals are able to create together a superior unit of work; theory is not the achievement of individuals but of generations. The Bauhaus is consciously formulating a new coordination of the means of construction and expression. Without this, its ultimate aim would be impossible. For collaboration in a group is not to be obtained solely by correlating the abilities and talents of various individuals. Only an apparent unity can be achieved if many helpers carry out the designs of a single person. In fact, the individual's labor within the group should exist as his own independent accomplishment. Real unity can be achieved only by coherent restatement of the formal theme, by repetition of its integral proportions in all parts of the work. Thus everyone engaged in the work must understand the meaning and origin of the principal theme.
Forms and colors gain meaning only as they are related to our inner selves. Used separately or in relation to one another they are the means of expressing different emotions and movements: they have no importance of their own. Red, for instance, evokes in us other emotions than does blue or yellow; round forms speak differently to us than do pointed or jagged forms. The elements which constitute the 'grammar' of creation are its rules of rhythm, of proportion, of light values and full or empty space. Vocabulary and grammar can be learned, but the most important factor of all, the organic life of the created work, originates in the creative powers of the individual. The practical training which accompanies the studies in form is founded as much on observation, on the exact representation or reproduction of nature, as it is on the creation of individual compositions. These two activities are profoundly different. The academies ceased to discriminate between them, confusing nature and art - though by their very origin they are antithetical. Art wants to triumph over Nature and to resolve the opposition in a new unity, and this process is consummated in the fight of the spirit against the material world. The spirit creates for itself a new life other than the life of nature.
Each of these departments in the course on the theory of form functions in close association with the workshops, an association which prevents their wandering off into academicism.
*
The goal of the Bauhaus curriculum
The culminating point of the Bauhaus teaching is a demand for a new and powerful working correlation of all the processes of creation. The gifted student must regain a feeling for the interwoven strands of practical and formal work. The joy of building, in the broadest meaning of that word, must replace the paper work of design. Architecture unites in a collective task all creative workers, from the simple artisan to the supreme artist.
For this reason, the basis of collective education must be sufficiently broad to permit the development of every kind of talent. Since a universally applicable method for the discovery of talent does not exist, the individual in the course of his development must find for himself the field of activity best suited to him within the circle of the community. The majority become interested in production; the few extraordinarily gifted ones will suffer no limits to their activity. After they have completed the course of practical and formal instruction, they undertake independent research and experiment.
Modern painting, breaking through old conventions, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world. But when, in the future, artists who sense new creative values have had practical training in the industrial world, they will themselves possess the means for realizing those values immediately. They will compel industry to serve their idea and industry will seek out and utilize their comprehensive training.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture, and one of the most influential art theorists of the modern age.
8 Union - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel December 27, 2025
Unity. There is luck when the source of divination is pure. Restless ones come too late, they are ill fated…
Chris Gabriel December 27, 2025
Judgment
Unity. There is luck when the source of divination is pure. Restless ones come too late, they are ill fated.
Lines
1
Unity with faith. Faith fills pots.
2
Unity within.
3
Unity with the wrong people.
4
Unity without.
5
Unity with appearance. The King has three ways, losing the bird in front of him. His people don’t warn him.
6
Unity without a leader.
Qabalah
Yesod to Malkuth: The Path of Tau. The Universe.
Yesod’s energy flows over Malkuth.
The Moon to the Earth.
In this hexagram we have the image of water pooling on the face of the Earth, as a puddle is formed. People are drawn together in the same way the water gathers together. This is Unity, or likeness: people who are alike will unify. When I was a child I loved watching raindrops race down a window pane, gathering others as it went and this is the essence of the hexagram. Unlike water, who we unify with determines a great deal.
1
A Union requires faith, an ideal, a goal which is greater than the sum of its parts. Mere selfishness or utility is not enough to keep people unified. A great group of friends will feed one another, and help each other when they’re down. As Ringo sings: “I get by with a little help from my friends”.
2
The unity we seek without must come from within, an internal resonation with others. Through internal resonance we can attract friends.
3
When you don’t look carefully, it’s easy to fall in with a bad crowd, to make bad friends. This is one of the worst mistakes a person can make. “You are the company you keep”, and if you keep bad company, you can spoil your life. They will drag you down, and leave you if you fall below them.
4
We can unify with what is beyond our limited network. The outside holds great potential; it is how a union grows, through alliances with those outside.
5
When we act in unison with our appearance we do well. Honesty allows more complexity, even at the cost of immediate power through deception. The King wants a more difficult game, so he allows some of the animals to get away.
6
A great union is made of equals, without a clear leader. E pluribus unum, not primus inter pares.
In the last hexagram, we looked at hidden powers and disciplined movements of trained armies. Here we see visible unions, friendships, and alliances. This is diplomacy rather than violence, peace rather than war. Having the right friends will keep us from needing to fight, or at least make our fights much easier. The wrong friends will draw us into many more fights than we would have had on our own.
We can think of Aesop’s Fable of the Bundle of Sticks, the Fasci. The father of three sons shows them a bundle of sticks and has each attempt to break it, none of them can. When they undo the bundle, they easily break the sticks one by one, the moral being “United we stand, divided we fall.” or “Unity gives strength.” .
The Big Rock Candy Figgy Pudding Pitfall (1966)
Joan Didion December 25, 2025
You will perhaps have difficulty understanding why I conceived the idea of making 20 hard-candy topiary trees and 20 figgy puddings in the first place…
Capturing, with her inimitable wit and poignancy, the grand ambitions and subsequent disappointments of the Christmas period, Didion’s short essay from 1966 sparkles with self deprecation and recognition. The work is a gentler, slighter piece than those that made her one of the most celebrated and influential writers of her generation and beyond, yet it is abundant in trademark charm and acutely observed.
Joan Didion December 25, 2025
You will perhaps have difficulty understanding why I conceived the idea of making 20 hard-candy topiary trees and 20 figgy puddings in the first place. The heart of it is that although I am frail, lazy, and unsuited to doing anything except what I am paid to do, which is sit by myself and type with one finger, I like to imagine myself a “can-do” kind of woman, capable of patching the corral fence, pickling enough peaches to feed the hands all winter, and then winning a trip to Minneapolis in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. In fact, the day I stop believing that if put to it I could win the Pillsbury Bake-Off will signal the death of something.
It was late in September, about the time certain canny elves began strategically spotting their Make It Yourself for Christmas books near supermarket checkout counters, when I sensed the old familiar discontent. I would stand there in the Westward Ho market, waiting to check out my frozen chicken tetrazzini and leafing through the books, and I would see how far I had drifted from the real pleasures. I did not “do” things. I did not sew spangles on potholders for my friends. I did not make branches of marzipan mistletoe for my hostesses. I did not give Corn Dog and Caroling Parties for neighborhood children (Did I know any neighborhood children? Were there any neighborhood children? What exactly was my neighborhood?), the Corn Dogs to be accompanied by Hot Santa’s Grog.
Nor had it ever occurred to me to buy Styrofoam balls, cover them with hard candies, plant them on wooden stalks in small flowerpots, and end up with amusingly decorative hard-candy topiary trees, perfect for centerpieces or last-minute gifts. At the checkout counter, I recognized clearly that my plans for the Christmas season — making a few deadlines — were stale and unprofitable. Had my great-great-grandmother come west in a covered wagon and strung cranberries on scrub oaks so that I might sit by myself in a room typing with one finger and ordering Italian twinkle lights by mail from Hammacher Schlemmer?
I wanted to be the kind of woman who made hard-candy topiary trees and figgy puddings. The figgy puddings were not in the Make It Yourself for Christmas books but something I remembered from a carol. “Oh, bring us a figgy pudding and a happy new year,” the line went. I was unsure what a figgy pudding was, but it had the ring of the real thing.
“Exactly what kind of therapy are we up to this week?” my husband asked when I arrived home with 20 Styrofoam balls, 20 flowerpots, and 60 pounds of, or roughly 6,000, hard candies, each wrapped in cellophane.
“Hard-candy topiary trees, if you don’t mind,” I said briskly, to gain the offensive before he could mention my last project, a hand-knitted sweater which would have cost $60 at Jax, the distinction being that, had I bought it at Jax, it would very probably be finished. “Twenty of them. Decorative. Amusing.”
He said nothing.
“Christmas presents,” I said.
There was a moment of silence as we contemplated the dining room table, covered now with shifting dunes of lemon drops.
“Presents for whom?” he said.
“Your mother might like one.”
“That leaves 19.”
“All right. Let’s just say they’re centerpieces.”
“Let’s just say that if you’re making 20 centerpieces, I hope you’re under contract to Chasen’s. Or maybe to Hilton.”
“That’s all you know,” I countered, wittily.
Provisions for the figgy puddings were rather more a problem. The Vogue Book of Menus and Recipes made no mention of figgy pudding, nor did my cookbook, although the latter offered a recipe for “Steamed Date or Fig Pudding.” This had a tentative sound, and so I merely laid in 20 pounds of dried figs and planned, when the time came, to improvise from there. I thought it unnecessary to mention the puddings to my husband just yet.
Meanwhile, work on the topiary trees proceeded. Pebbles were gathered from the driveway to line the flowerpots. (“Next time it rains and that driveway washes out,” I was informed, “there’s going to be one unhappy Santa’s Helper around here.”) Lengths of doweling to be used as stalks were wrapped with satin ribbons. The 20 Styrofoam balls glistened with candies, each affixed with an artfully concealed silk pin. (As it happened I had several thousand silk pins left from the time I planned to improvise a copy of a Grès evening dress.) There was to be a lemon-drop tree and an ice-mint tree and a cinnamon-lump tree. There was to be a delicate crystallized-violet tree. There was to be a witty-licorice tree.
All in all, the operation went more smoothly than any I had undertaken since I was 16 and won third prize in the Sacramento Valley Elimination Make-It-Yourself-with-Wool Contest. I framed graceful rejoinders to compliments. I considered the probability that I. Magnin or Neiman-Marcus would press me to make trees for them on an exclusive basis. All that remained was to set the candy balls upon their stalks — that and the disposition of the figs — and I had set an evening aside for this crowning of the season’s achievement.
I suppose that it was about 7:00 when I placed the first candy-covered ball on the first stalk. Because it did not seem overly secure, I drilled a deeper hole in the second ball. That one, too, once on its stalk, exhibited a certain tendency to sway, but then so does the Golden Gate Bridge. I was flushed with imminent success, visions of candy trees come true all around me. I suppose it was about 8:00 when I placed the last ball on the last stalk, and I suppose it was about one minute after eight when I heard the first crack, and I suppose it was about 8:15 (there were several minutes of frantic shoring maneuvers) when my husband found me sitting on the dining room floor, crying, surrounded by 60 pounds of scattered lemon drops and ice-mints and cinnamon lumps and witty licorice.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we get the grout left over from when you were going to retile the bathroom, and make a ceramic candy floor.”
“If you think you’re going to get any figgy puddings,” I said, “you’d better think again.”
But I had stopped crying, and we went out for an expensive dinner. The next morning I gathered up the candies and took them to Girl Scout headquarters, presumably to be parceled into convalescents’ nut cups by some gnome Brownie. The Styrofoam balls I saved. A clever woman should be able to do something very attractive for Easter with Styrofoam balls and 20 pounds of figs.
Joan Didion (1934 – 2021) was an American writer and journalist. She was one of the pioneers of New Journalism whose sharp, insightful essays gave a voice to modern American life.
Architecture of the Cosmos
Trisha Singh December 23, 2025
A Hindu temple does not serve just as a place of worship but as a three-dimensional map of the universe, rendered in stone…
Trisha Singh, December 23, 2025
A Hindu temple does not serve just as a place of worship but as a three-dimensional map of the universe, rendered in stone. Every line, proportion, and orientation of the building is shaped by sacred geometry, a symbolic language that expresses not just both how the cosmos is ordered and how human beings may move within it. Rooted in ancient Indian philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and ritual practice, Hindu temple architecture transforms space itself into a spiritual path. To understand a Hindu temple is to see how form can guide the devotee from the outer plane toward inner realization.
At the core of this tradition lies the Hindu understanding that the universe is not random or inert, but an ordered, intelligible, and alive entity, replete with consciousness. This order is known as ṛta, the cosmic principle that governs both natural law and moral harmony. Sacred geometry is a visible expression of ṛta, translating metaphysical truth into spatial form, and architecture actively participates in the rituals it hosts.
Central to Hindu philosophy, particularly in the Vedic and Upanishadic traditions, is the idea that the universe (brahmāṇḍa) mirrors the human being (piṇḍāṇḍa). The macrocosm and the microcosm reflect one another, like the old adage of ‘as above, so below’. Sacred geometry serves as the bridge between these two scales of existence. As one enters a temple, they symbolically enter the cosmos, and as they walk through that cosmic journey, move inward toward the Self (ātman), which Hindu philosophy identifies with ultimate reality (Brahman). The temple becomes both a map of the universe and a guide for inner transformation.
The formal principles governing this sacred space are articulated in Vāstu Śāstra, the ancient Indian science of architecture. Vāstu Śāstra integrates geometry, astronomy, directional alignment, and metaphysics, treating space as a living field of energies rather than an empty container. Land itself possesses consciousness, embodied in the figure of the Vāstu Puruṣa, a cosmic being who lies within the square grid of the temple plan. Each part of his body corresponds to specific directions, deities, and natural forces. Constructing a temple is therefore an act of biological creation —aligning human intention with cosmic order.
This alignment is most clearly expressed through the Vāstu Puruṣa Maṇḍala, a geometric blueprint that underlyes Hindu temple design. The mandala is both a cosmological diagram and a map of consciousness, taking the form of a geometric grid divided into sixty-four or eighty-one smaller squares, organised around a center. The central square, the Brahma Pada, represents the source of creation: pure, undifferentiated consciousness. The temple’s innermost sanctum, the garbhagṛha, is placed precisely here.
Surrounding this center, the remaining squares are assigned to various deities and cosmic forces, arranged so that energy symbolically flows inward. As we move through the structure, this can be felt tangibly and observed. Complexity of design and adornment gradually gives way to simplicity and a sense of unity. The devotee is a necessary participant in the architecture, moving towards the divine and returning to the source of all.
The geometric language of the temple is built upon two fundamental forms: the square and the circle. The square represents stability, order, and the material world, its corners corresponding to the cardinal directions and the grounded nature of human experience. As such, the square dominates the temple’s plan.
The circle, by contrast, symbolizes infinity, wholeness, and the cosmic order. It represents time, cycles, and the divine. Although temples are rarely circular in structure, their conceptual design often begins with a circle that is “squared.” The boundless reality of Brahman can take form within the finite world without being diminished.
“Unity within diversity, order within complexity, and the presence of the infinite within the finite.”
The system of measurement contributes further to this symbolic system. Hindu temple architecture employs precise units such as the aṅgula and the tāla, as dimensions follow harmonious ratios rather than arbitrary scale. These proportions resonate with cosmic order, much like musical intervals produce harmony through mathematical relationships. Space, like sound, becomes a medium through which balance and coherence are experienced.
We see this attention to proportion most clearly in the temple’s vertical dimension. The rising tower above the sanctum is designed to appear as an organic ascent and evoke the soul’s movement from the earthly realm toward higher planes of existence.
At the base of this ascent lies the garbhagṛha, the inner sanctum and “womb chamber” of the temple. Small, dark, and deliberately austere, it is a perfect square or cube, symbolizing completeness and stability. The absence of natural light and lack of ornamentation draws attention inward, towards our consciousness. As we approach the sanctum, we leave behind the sensory richness of the outer halls and enter a space of stillness and potential, with the architecture mirroring the meditative journey.
Vertical symbolism of the temple extends beyond the tower. Hindu temples are often conceived as representations of Mount Meru, the mythological axis of the universe. The temple’s central vertical line, sometimes called the brahma sūtra, aligns earth and sky, creating a conduit for cosmic energy. At the summit, the kalaśa finial signifies abundance, immortality, and the union of the earthly and the divine.
Most Hindu temples face east, greeting the rising sun as a symbol of knowledge, life, and awakening. In many temples, architectural alignment allows sunlight to illuminate the deity at specific times of the year, linking ritual practice to astronomical cycles. The temple, then, functions not only as a sacred enclosure, but as a calendar and observatory that synchronizes human worship with celestial movement.
Ultimately, the purpose of Hindu temple geometry, as with sacred geometry across cultures, is not about mathematical precision for its own sake. Instead, it functions as a symbolic language, communicating philosophical truths that words alone cannot convey: unity within diversity, order within complexity, and the presence of the infinite within the finite. The temple becomes a mirror and a participant of the universe
Hindu temple’s architecture reveal a worldview in which art, science, and spirituality are inseparable. These structures are designed not only to house deities or inspire awe, but to guide consciousness toward harmony with cosmic order. To walk through a Hindu temple is to traverse a cosmic diagram, moving from the outer world of form and multiplicity toward the silent center of being. The building becomes our teacher.
Trisha Singh is an architect and writer.
7 Army - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel December 20, 2025
The Army is pure if it is led by a wise man…
Chris Gabriel December 20, 2025
Judgment
The Army is pure if it’s led by a wise man.
Lines
1
The Army goes with discipline.
2
In the middle is the commander with three orders from the King.
3
Sometimes the Army leaves wagons full of corpses.
4
Then the Army rests.
5
Fields full of birds. Catch them. An older boy leads the army. A younger boy is dead.
6
A great one gives orders, opening the country and accepting families. Small ones can’t do this.
Qabalah
Malkuth to Yesod: The Path of Tau. The Universe. Malkuth envelopes the energy of Yesod. The Earth to the Moon.
In this hexagram, we see the image of earth over water. It is something simple atop something dangerous, so in this way we are given the image of the Army. Consider revolutions in which simple folk become warriors. Naturally, this hexagram depicts an aquifer, or an underwater reservoir - a great resource hidden underground.
A clear natural example that intertwines the Army with the underground is an Ant colony and an anthill is not so different from a military bunker.
The lines give us a very stark look at war.
1
An army is worse than useless if it is undisciplined. Yet again, the Ant provides the ideal of the military, absolute devotion and a singular purpose.
2
An army won’t get much done without orders from above.
3
Even when the military functions properly, many people die for the sake of some greater goal.
4
After atrocities and horror, soldiers must rest and recuperate.
5
This is the most significant line in the hexagram. We should not mistake the realistic view of the military here with a denouncement of war - this line clearly advocates for the military acquisition of resources. War comes with the ultimate cost - teenagers leading men in battle against fellow teenagers, and few coming out alive.
6
After war, the land a state has taken is put to use and inhabited.
Another military development through which this hexagram can be understood is camouflage. Camouflage allows something that looks simple to hide something dangerous. Consider the deceptive fulfillment of prophecy by Malcom in Macbeth:
Let every soldier hew him down a bough
And bear ’t before him. Thereby shall we shadow
The numbers of our host and make discovery
Err in report of us.
Drunvalo Melchizedek's Unity Breath Meditation
Molly Hankins December 18, 2025
The Unity Breath Meditation moves our consciousness in preparation to receive the new information in his book and the higher dimensional frequencies pouring into Earth at this time…
‘Impression Figure’ of recorded sound by Margaret Watts Hughes, Late 1800s.
Molly Hankins December 18, 2025
Ancient Secrets of the Flower of Life author and spiritual teacher Drunvalo Melchizedek began speaking publicly again this year after suffering a stroke, and has announced the completion of his next book due out in 2026. Parts 1 and 2 of Ancient Secrets of the Flower of Life were first published in 1999, and as we wait for the third installation to be released, Drunvalo has been discussing how to prepare for the quantum leap in consciousness we are going through right now as a planet. Many of his teachings discuss moving the seat of our conscious minds from our brain into our hearts. Best articulated in his 2003 book Living In The Heart, he recommends using what he calls the Unity Breath Meditation to move our consciousness in preparation to receive the new information in his book and the higher dimensional frequencies pouring into Earth at this time.
The Unity Breath Meditation was channeled by Drunvalo from the deceased Indian monk and yogi Sri Yuketeswar. “He told me that in India no one would even consider approaching the divine without a certain state of mind and heart,” Drunvalo explained. “And he gave me very specific instructions on exactly how to consciously connect with God.” By connecting emotionally with these ideas, we expand our connection with nature and Source Energy. This expanded channel allows us to cross the threshold into more subtle realms of consciousness, download new states of awareness and embody the integration of those new states.
To begin the meditation, close your eyes and imagine a beautiful, natural setting - including little details like feeling the breeze on your face. “Mother Earth cares about every person on this Earth, she actually knows your name,” Drunvalo says. Connect emotionally to her divine feminine love for you in the meditation, then send that gratitude as a beam of energy down the base of your spine and into the earth’s core. Wait for her to return the energy before moving to the next step. “Trust her, because she can feel when you’re ready,” he says in reference to what kind of energy Mother Earth sends back. Drunvalo believes that it’s dangerous to expand our consciousness too quickly, and that Earth can help us modulate and ground that expansion. It is the emotional connection to the soul of our planet that allows us access to these energies.
Next connect to Father Sky, allowing gratitude to swell for divine masculine energy, and send a beam of energy up into the cosmos or straight to our Sun. Sri Yukteswar specifically recommends placing your energy into a small sphere of light that moves intentionally along the beam, telling us this will activate the unity consciousness grid around the Earth. When Rupert Sheldrake explains the Morphogenetic field of interconnected, living information systems organizing consciousness, he may very well be describing the exact same concept.
Keep breathing as you wait for Father Sky to return the energy, and once received, begin breathing it into your heart along with the energy from Mother Earth. Allow both beams of energy to meet in your heart. Then move your consciousness down into your heart. As you breathe into this space, be aware that the divine is alive there. Source consciousness is expressed through your being, and it loves being you. Now we are in conscious co-creation with that energy, breathe into gratitude for the opportunity to co-create reality. You may find engaging in this meditation increases the intuitive messages from both the natural world and higher consciousness. There is a tiny, sacred place inside your heart - use your imagination to find it.
“Whichever way feels right, is the right way for you. Once you’re in your heart, find the sacred space.”
According to Drunvalo, performing the Unity Breath Meditation and visualization allows us to access the subtle realms of expanded awareness, aligning our frequencies. “I believe that the Unity Breath creates the vibration within you that allows you to find the holy grail, the sacred space of the heart, the place where God originally created all there is. It is so simple. What you have always been looking for is right inside your own heart,” Drunvalo writes in Living In The Heart.
As a precursor to getting into our hearts, Druvalo tells us we must get into our bodies, imagining a pranic tube that runs from just above our heads and through our root chakras into the Earth. Prana is like chi - an energetic life force that can be built, harnessed and channeled into anything. That energy moves along the pranic tube that runs through our spinal column and connects our physical bodies to our souls while we’re alive in human form.
There are distinct masculine and feminine ways of getting into the heart. The masculine way requires you to imagine a toroidal field around your body, moving your consciousness through the field in either direction and into the heart. The feminine way is not prescriptive, we just imagine ourselves to be in the heart and we are there. Whichever way feels right, is the right way for you. Once you’re in your heart, find the sacred space. Drunvalo explained, “The sacred space of the heart is older than creation itself. Before there were galaxies to live within, there was space. All the spaces you have traveled within this creation you have recorded within this space. So at first you might begin to remember what this is all about, what life is all about.” Bring anything you wish to manifest into this sacred place and give it love to accelerate fruition.
What expanded awareness looks like is unique to each of us, but the conscious exchange of higher dimensional energy between Earthly and galactic intelligence that happens during the Unity Breath tends to feel quite enjoyable. Once the channel is opened, stay open to intuitive messages from nature and beyond. Drunvalo also recommends inviting someone you deeply love, living or dead, to be with you in that sacred place within the heart, and to amplify that love into your energy field and the collective. “Now you know your way home,” he writes. “Within the sacred space of the heart, all worlds, all dimensions, all universes, and all of creation found their birth. Interconnecting through your one heart are all the hearts of all life everywhere!” We strengthen this network of hearts making up the unity consciousness grid by meditating on the people we love, then pouring that love into daily living.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Wounds
Sofia Luna December 16, 2025
For most of human existence, our wounds signified that we were part of the natural world…
Robert White, Compleat Discourse of Wounds (1678).
Sofia Luna December 16, 2025
For most of human existence, our wounds signified that we were part of the natural world. They wrote the story of life without separation as we not only blended into, but were an active part of the ecosystem. Last week, noticing a boy having breakfast with his mother rocking a severely bruised eye, it felt like a novelty. In a modern, western world, physical wounds and battle scars have all but disappeared from everyday reality. What, I wondered, are the global repercussions of the sterilisation of our physical plane?
We no longer walk through irregular terrains filled with natural pigments, or scramble over cliffs with battered bodies. We construct buildings to keep nature out and monuments to hold our ambitions together. We walk with slicked back hair, and polished suits through angular concrete landscapes. We refine and decorate our avatars, surgically 'enhance' our geometries, and homogenise the surface of our lives and our bodies the same way we do to our walls. We call this progress. Beneath our skin, though, lies irregularity—festering deep, invisible wounds, not of flesh but of spirit.
In the gradual fabrication of the modern metropolis, we transferred our bodily wounds to earth. To her soil, her small ferns, to past predators, waters, rivers, and birds—not realising that they too, give us life. We looked away from the damage caused as we dreamt of a human centric world, building structures to keep dangers out. And they did but the fact that wounds incrementally disappeared from the visual field made it really difficult for us to track what was hazardous to our new existence.
As our infrastructures mutated, so did our wounds, but our definitions of danger stayed the same. Only in cases of mass destruction or abuse in focused areas are we able to look from afar and say “yes, there is a problem we need to work on!”.That which invisibly infects the collective beyond time and space is really hard to put a finger on, and so is difficult to heal. Consequently, moving from tiger scratches 20,000 years ago to inexplicable spirit aches have left us living "in a space without a map," as Joanna Macy remarked.
Few of us could survive in a forest right now, but we need not be that adventurous—a lot of humans can't even deal with free time at home. We require constant stimulation, and have become completely averse to the uncharted. We follow paths that have been clearly traced before in fear of getting lost. Is this a place worth existing in? A lot of people have started to realise it is not and I have witnessed the ample collective inkling that we should recalculate our relationship with the world and ourselves.
“Wounds are holes, holes are doors, doors into something, openings, where, if we choose to enter them, the person that walks out is not the same who walked in.”
We have been so isolated from nature that we don't even consider its absence as one of the causes for global unsettlement or the sharp rises in anxiety, loneliness, depression and spiritual voids that so many of us experience. Isn't she Mother Earth? We are the child that has cut their parent off and have been left traumatised.
We talk about rewilding gardens but it is time to talk about rewilding society. We are hungry for something that was taken from us. When certain religions first appeared, they replaced our connection to the wild with a relationship to something more abstract. Slowly we have been extracted out of the symbiotic relationship we had with our planet, as institutions of belief arranged themselves on top of everything and everyone as the source. Religion replaced nature. It reasoned with the invisible and colonised our imagination for the past millennia. Thank God, time, and the increasing access to information, that what was hiding underneath—the incoherence, the imposed patriarchy, intolerance, and the general abuse of power that was then mimicked by corporations— was exposed. Today, younger generations are unsubscribing from this expired belief system and in that process have started seeking something else. Many of us are returning back to nature, to our nature.
Caravaggio, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1602)
Hosting Shinrin-Yoku experiences (the science backed Japanese practice of Forest Bathing, known to balance the body and mind) one quickly sees how fulfilling, cleansing, healing, energising, and surprisingly simple the practice feels when all you do is walk through a forest, fully present, without the intrusion of technology. This evidence shows how much nature feels like home—how nurturing she is, how much our bodies need her, and yet, how absent she is in modern cities.
I have found that the more I heal my insides, the closer I feel to the natural world, the more natural it feels to live in this world, and the more I unearth my own self and the old memories of the soul. Wounds are holes, holes are doors, doors into something, openings, where, if we choose to enter them, the person that walks out is not the same who walked in. Unhealed wounds propagate, the same way good energy creates more good energy and healed wounds attract healed people. There is no need to try and save the entire world, because the entire world is simply the one You inhabit—you choose what to do with it.
I write this to speak into reality a transformation, I believe, is happening to many. We are interconnected, and in this floating rock, no one experiences anything alone, the Human Experience is shared. Regardless of the 'never-ending horrors', we are on our way back to nature. And Nature is not just a tree, a fish and a squirrel. Nature is you, in essence. Nature is beauty, it is The Grand, it is Vast. It is Vital, it is Infinite, it is Eternally Alive. It is Robust, Real, Complex. It is Us. It is also everything we are not right now, and everything we are becoming.
Sofia Luna explores and builds tools that facilitate this time's modern cognitive shift. She is a Colombian artist, creative consultant, entrepreneur and imaginator living In The Middle of The Future.
6 Divorce - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel December 13, 2025
Fight, but not to the bitter end…
Chris Gabriel December 13, 2025
Judgment
Fight, but not to the bitter end.
Lines
1
Don’t draw it out, there will be rumours.
2
Unable to fight, he goes back to his small town.
3
Live off your old deeds. Working for the king brings nothing.
4
Unable to fight, go back to yourself. Be calm.
5
Fight, and fortune follows.
6
Sometimes you are given a ribbon, and by morning you’ve been stripped of it three times.
Qabalah
Imperfectly, Kether to Yesod, or Gimel ג directly. The High Priestess.
Kether only makes contact with Tiphereth below, not Yesod. The path between them is the lunar Gimel.
Heaven to the Moon.
The rain we had been waiting for comes down, and when it rains, it pours. This storm can lead to relief, but in the moment it can be exceedingly troublesome and unpleasant. The ideogram shows public dispute: the airing out of dirty laundry. Often called conflict, strife, or contention, the clearest title is divorce. We are dealing with separation, the splitting of water from the sky as they go their separate ways. Divorce is very difficult but the hope is that it will eventually calm and peace. This is not necessarily about splitting a marriage, but all splits: arguments, breakups, and lawsuits.
1
Just as the judgment says, it is best to get things done quickly or to give it up when the time is right. Consider very public, very ugly divorce procedures and court cases, they invite gossip and bad attention.
2
This is like a classic “divorced dad” joke, where after divorcing he moves back to his home town and lives in a little apartment. In this case, this is the right action to take!
3
When new work doesn’t come, we have to live off our old work.Consider this as dipping into personal savings when you’re in trouble.
4
We often see people who are divorced “become themselves” again; they pick up old hobbies, or spend time with old friends.
5
Fight when the time is right and you’ll have victory.
6
Even when there are apparent victories, especially with divorces involving children, they are often appealed, reversed, and continually fought over.
In the previous hexagram, we eagerly awaited what comes down here. It was the calm before the storm. As a religious person may yearn for the horrors of an Apocalypse, with hope that something greater is on the other side of trials, we must have faith that we will get through the troubles that come our way.
George Harrison puts it perfectly:
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It's not always gonna be this gray
All things must pass
His wisdom echoes chapter 23 of the Tao Te Ching:
A Terrible wind won’t last all morning
A Terrible storm won’t last all day
Who causes these?
Heaven and Earth.
Heaven and Earth can’t make something last
Why could Man?
As humans, we cannot keep our relationships and friendships forever - all things must pass. When it’s time to part ways with someone, don’t make it ugly.
Mediating Planetary Co-Existence
Tuukka Toivonen December 11, 2025
Heather Barnett, an artist who works with slime mold, recently told me she viewed herself not simply as a practitioner of art but as a mediator. Through years of collaborative experimentation she had found herself, without intending to, acting as an intermediary between two mutually foreign forms of intelligence — slime molds and human beings…
Yggdrasill, The Mundane Tree. From a plate of the Prose Edda, Oluf Olufsen Bagge. 1847.
Tuukka Toivonen December 11, 2025
Heather Barnett, an artist who works with slime mold, recently told me she viewed herself not simply as a practitioner of art but as a mediator. Through years of collaborative experimentation she had found herself, without intending to, acting as an intermediary between two mutually foreign forms of intelligence — slime molds and human beings. Curating the often astonishingly clever behaviors of these oatmeal-loving, network-making slime molds for human audiences, she uncovered new synergies and creative connections. In live performances, she invited audiences to mimic the physical movements of such ‘lesser beings’, resulting in surprising patterns of group behavior. This workconjured up a kind of interspecies awareness and relationship in Heather, and those who saw it, where none had previously existed. Another experienced artist I spoke to, Julia Lochmann, expressed a similar ethos of intermediation — in this case, one focused on seaweed-human relations. Both practitioners had set up collectives for like-minded slime mould and seaweed enthusiasts that brought artists together with scientists, students, designers and even entrepreneurs. These conversations prompted me to reflect further on the significance of those who mediate immersively between different organisms or environments. Could their experimental, connective engagements open up new possibilities for a deeper planetary co-existence? And what could those of us with less experience in this area learn from seasoned intermediators?
At a basic level, to mediate is to form a link between two previously disconnected or estranged entities. By occupying an intermediary position, one takes on the task of facilitating an agreement or reconciliation of some kind, and fostering mutually beneficial forms of co-existence. Mediators of various kinds abound in our daily lives; people who introduce us to opportunities and ideas we did not know about or familiarize us with technologies we knew not how to operate. Those who teach us novel languages mediate a new relationship between us and other cultures. With a little help from such fluent speakers and cultural mediators, it becomes far easier to pick up the meanings, structures and nuances — even the perceptual and aesthetic inclinations — of new languages and cultures. What once seemed indecipherable becomes more and more intelligible, accessible and rich in meaning. We gradually enter a shared world. and then, for a moment, we feel awed by the uplifting resonance — a sense of synchrony, agreement or correspondence — that we discover between ourselves and an aspect of the world that used to be alien to us.
“We have long positioned humans as the only ‘intelligent’ species while denying the cognitive abilities, agency and aliveness of every other life-form. We now possess the opportunity to change course…”
In their revelatory book on the search for planetary intelligence, one that involves animals, plants, and machines, the author James Bridle dedicates a chapter to exploring how plants perceive the world and what scope might exist for us to relate to them at a sensorial and existential level. Bridle recounts an experiment by two biologists from the University of Missouri during which a recording was made of the sound of cabbage white caterpillars feeding on a cress plant (Arabidopsis thaliana). The scientists subsequently removed the caterpillars, playing back only their sounds to the cress plant, which caused the plant to switch on its chemical defenses for deterring predators, despite their absence. Having ensured this reaction arose exclusively in response to the specific sound of caterpillars, there was only one conclusion to be drawn: the cress plant could hear. Bridle reads this and other eye-opening experiments on ‘plant sensing’ as suggestive of
multiple distinctive worlds and as expressions of common ways of being and perceiving that cross species lines:
‘We share a world. We hear, plants hear; we all hear together. We all feel the same sun, breathe the same air, drink the same water. Whether we hear the same sounds in the same way, whether they are meaningful to us in the same way, is beside the point. We exist, together, in the shared experience and creation of the more-than human world’ (Bridle 2023: 69-70).¹
Atlas des Champignons, M. E. Descourtilz. 1827.
Bridle’s work engages in acts of mediation that takes notable interspecies experiments and discoveries, and translates them into relational transformations. It reveals how profoundly illusionary our prior assumptions of a disconnected existence have been, and how false the idea that plants, animals, fungi and ourselves inhabit essentially separate worlds is. By submitting to a vacuous kind of objectivity, Bridle shows we have tried to make the world conform to our man made, fixed conceptualizations, and in doing so have limited the full use of our own perceptual capabilities. We have long positioned humans as the only ‘intelligent’ species while denying the cognitive abilities, agency and aliveness of every other life-form. We now possess the opportunity to change course, and to whole-heartedly cohabit the shared world Bridle so animatedly writes about. We can do this through updating our mental constructs and discovering new resonances between ourselves and the living world. Much like the feelings of connection we gain when learning a new language, might we feel a similar (or perhaps an even greater) sense of enchantment and resonance as we regain the ability to participate fully in the more-than human world — a world where intelligence is present everywhere?
I suspect that mediators — whether nominally classified as artists, writers, scientists, naturalists or entrepreneurs — matter precisely because they have the power to help us see such novel possibilities for planetary co-existence. They awaken us to ways of being, to a new type of sensing and relating that we have struggled to notice or thought could not be accessed within the confines of contemporary society. And not only that: they often perform intermediation work not only in theory but in practice, experimentally and at scale. Such practical work can range from the curation of intimate group experiences within local forest ecologies to masterfully finding correspondences and agreements between the seemingly incompatible tendencies of financial interests and living systems.
It strikes me that today’s mediators may have something fundamental in common with the healers and shamans whom the ecological philosopher David Abram encountered in Nepal and Indonesia at the end of the last millennium. Focused on maintaining harmonious and mutually nourishing relations between human settlements and the wider ecologies they were part of, these traditional practitioners of magic and medicine could ‘slip out of the perceptual boundaries that demarcate his or her particular culture’ while exhibiting a ‘heightened receptivity to the meaningful solicitations—songs, cries, gestures —of the larger, more-than-human field’ (Abram 1996:9).² There is a certain perceptual kinship between these traditional practitioners and the contemporary mediators I have discussed, one found in a shared style of viscerally inhabiting and bridging multiple worlds. It is remarkable that for the traditional shamans and magicians Abram observed, their role as human-nonhuman intermediaries appeared to be their primary function, while healing activities were of only secondary importance.
Surely the kinds of mediators — whatever their formal identities — who can radically shrink the distance between us and myriad other life forms that constitute this planet have a far more important role to play than we have hitherto realized. And surely it will be through myriad acts of intermediation, whether initiated by seasoned practitioners or ourselves, that we will find it easier to once again experience the more-than-human world as intelligible, rich in meaning, even wondrous — and, perhaps most importantly, as truly shared.
Tuukka Toivonen, Ph.D. (Oxon.) is a sociologist interested in ways of being, relating and creating that can help us to reconnect with – and regenerate – the living world. Alongside his academic research, Tuukka works directly with emerging regenerative designers and startups in the creative, material innovation and technology sectors.
¹ Bridle, James. 2023. Ways of being: Animals, plants, machines: the search for a planetary 1 intelligence. London: Penguin Books.
² Abram, D. 1996. The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human 2 world. New York: Pantheon books.
“1601” (1880)
Mark Twain December 10, 2025
The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the Pepys of that day, the same being Queen Elizabeth’s cup-bearer…
The Image of Irelande, John Derrick. 1581. (Featuring two flatulentists on the right side)
“Between you and me, the thing is dreadfully funny'“, said Mark Twain in regards to ‘1601’, his strangest, most misunderstood, and perhaps least accessible work. Written first as private joke to a paternal figure figure in his life, and then anonymously submitted and rejected from a periodical, it takes the form of a diary entry from the court of Queen Elizabeth in the year 1601 as, alongside notable figures from the Elizabethan period including William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, she discusses first flatulence, and then sexuality. Twain was not attempting to parody Elizabethan England, where such frank and bawdy conversations were not taboo, but instead comparing the foolish restrictions of 19th century America with the boisterousness of England some 300 years earlier. The very conventions that Twain was ridiculing meant that the work was never formally published in his lifetime, and he only claimed authorship in 1906. The work was lauded as a satiric tour de force by those who read it, an elegant and absurd condemnation of the critical morality of a bourgeois society, and a testament to the spirit of Tom Sawyer that ran through Twain. ‘It is not the word that is the sin”, he said, “It is the spirit back of the word”.
Mark Twain December 10, 2025
Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors [Date, 1601.]
[Mem. - The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the Pepys of that day, the same being Queen Elizabeth’s cup-bearer. He is supposed to be of ancient noble lineage; that he despises these literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath, to see the queen stoop to talk with such; and that the old man feels that his nobility is defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he got to stay there till her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.]
Yesternight toke her maiste ye queene a fantasie such as she sometimes hath, and had to her closet certain that doe write playes, bokes, and such like, these being my lord Bacon, his worship Sir Walter Ralegh, Mr. Ben Jonson, and ye child Francis Beaumonte, which being but sixteen, hath yet turned his hand to ye doing of ye Lattin masters into our Englishe tong, with grete discretion and much applaus. Also came with these ye famous Shaxpur. A righte straunge mixing truly of mighty blode with mean, ye more in especial since ye queenes grace was present, as likewise these following, to wit: Ye Duchess of Bilgewater, twenty-six yeres of age; ye Countesse of Granby, thirty; her doter, ye Lady Helen, fifteen; as also these two maides of honor, to-wit, ye Lady Margery Boothy, sixty-five, and ye Lady Alice Dilberry, turned seventy, she being two yeres ye queenes graces elder.
I being her maites cup-bearer, had no choice but to remaine and beholde rank forgot, and ye high holde converse wh ye low as uppon equal termes, a grete scandal did ye world heare thereof.
In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore, and then—
Ye Queene.—Verily in mine eight and sixty yeres have I not heard the fellow to this fart. Meseemeth, by ye grete sound and clamour of it, it was male; yet ye belly it did lurk behinde shoulde now fall lean and flat against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately and so waste a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splitters bear, stand comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess ye offspring. Will my Lady Alice testify?
Lady Alice.—Good your grace, an' I had room for such a thunderbust within mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I coulde discharge ye same and live to thank God for yt He did choose handmaid so humble whereby to shew his power. Nay, 'tis not I yt have broughte forth this rich o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke ye further.
Ye Queene.—Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favor?
Lady Margery.—So please you madam, my limbs are feeble wh ye weighte and drouth of five and sixty winters, and it behoveth yt I be tender unto them. In ye good providence of God, an' I had contained this wonder, forsoothe wolde I have gi'en 'ye whole evening of my sinking life to ye dribbling of it forth, with trembling and uneasy soul, not launched it sudden in its matchless might, taking mine own life with violence, rending my weak frame like rotten rags. It was not I, your maisty.
Ye Queene.—O' God's name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yt a fart shall fart itself? Not such a one as this, I trow. Young Master Beaumont—but no; 'twould have wafted him to heaven like down of goose's boddy. 'Twas not ye little Lady Helen—nay, ne'er blush, my child; thoul't tickle thy tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak before thou learnest to blow a harricane like this. Wasn't you, my learned and ingenious Jonson?
Jonson.—So fell a blast hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stench so all-pervading and immortal. 'Twas not a novice did it, good your maisty, but one of veteran experience—else hadde he failed of confidence. In sooth it was not I.
Ye Queene.—My lord Bacon?
Lord Bacon.-Not from my leane entrailes hath this prodigy burst forth, so please your grace. Naught doth so befit ye grete as grete performance; and haply shall ye finde yt 'tis not from mediocrity this miracle hath issued.
[Tho' ye subjct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning pondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervade all places to that degree, yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not to leave ye presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.]
Ye Queene.—What saith ye worshipful Master Shaxpur?
Shaxpur.—In the great hand of God I stand and so proclaim mine innocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming of this most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspired man, its quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement in due course of nature, yet had not I believed it; but had said the pit itself hath furnished forth the stink, and heaven's artillery hath shook the globe in admiration of it.
[Then was there a silence, and each did turn him toward the worshipful Sr Walter Ralegh, that browned, embattled, bloody swashbuckler, who rising up did smile, and simpering say,]
Sr W.—Most gracious maisty, 'twas I that did it, but indeed it was so poor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, yt in sooth I was ashamed to call the weakling mine in so august a presence. It was nothing—less than nothing, madam—I did it but to clear my nether throat; but had I come prepared, then had I delivered something worthy. Bear with me, please your grace, till I can make amends.
[Then delivered he himself of such a godless and rock-shivering blast that all were fain to stop their ears, and following it did come so dense and foul a stink that that which went before did seem a poor and trifling thing beside it. Then saith he, feigning that he blushed and was confused, I perceive that I am weak to-day, and cannot justice do unto my powers; and sat him down as who should say, There, it is not much yet he that hath an arse to spare, let him fellow that, an' he think he can. By God, an' I were ye queene, I would e'en tip this swaggering braggart out o' the court, and let him air his grandeurs and break his intolerable wind before ye deaf and such as suffocation pleaseth.]
“God damn this windy ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that hell mighte get him.”
Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and Master Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear uppon ye headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man's member wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widows in England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wilted neither, till coition hath done that office for them. Master Shaxpur did likewise observe how yt ye sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of a certain emperor of such mighty prowess that he did take ten maidenheddes in ye compass of a single night, ye while his empress did entertain two and twenty lusty knights between her sheetes, yet was not satisfied; whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith a ram is yet ye emperor's superior, sith he wil tup above a hundred yewes 'twixt sun and sun; and after, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hath enrich'd whole acres with his seed.
Then spake ye damned windmill, Sr Walter, of a people in ye uttermost parts of America, yt capulate not until they be five and thirty yeres of age, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in seven yeres.
Ye Queene.—How doth that like my little Lady Helen? Shall we send thee thither and preserve thy belly?
Lady Helen.—Please your highnesses grace, mine old nurse hath told me there are more ways of serving God than by locking the thighs together; yet am I willing to serve him yt way too, sith your highnesses grace hath set ye ensample.
Ye Queene.—God' wowndes a good answer, childe.
Lady Alice.—Mayhap 'twill weaken when ye hair sprouts below ye navel.
Lady Helen.—Nay, it sprouted two yeres syne; I can scarce more than cover it with my hand now.
Ye Queene.—Hear Ye that, my little Beaumonte? Have ye not a little birde about ye that stirs at hearing tell of so sweete a neste?
Beaumonte.—'Tis not insensible, illustrious madam; but mousing owls and bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic as is found in ye downy nests of birdes of Paradise.
Ye Queene.—By ye gullet of God, 'tis a neat-turned compliment. With such a tongue as thine, lad, thou'lt spread the ivory thighs of many a willing maide in thy good time, an' thy cod-piece be as handy as thy speeche.
Then spake ye queene of how she met old Rabelais when she was turned of fifteen, and he did tell her of a man his father knew that had a double pair of bollocks, whereon a controversy followed as concerning the most just way to spell the word, ye contention running high betwixt ye learned Bacon and ye ingenious Jonson, until at last ye old Lady Margery, wearying of it all, saith, 'Gentles, what mattereth it how ye shall spell the word? I warrant Ye when ye use your bollocks ye shall not think of it; and my Lady Granby, be ye content; let the spelling be, ye shall enjoy the beating of them on your buttocks just the same, I trow. Before I had gained my fourteenth year I had learnt that them that would explore a cunt stop'd not to consider the spelling o't.'
Sr W.—In sooth, when a shift's turned up, delay is meet for naught but dalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maid into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to be rightly thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but ye abbot, spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft of brownish hair with fair white flesh about it, wherefore when ye priest's prayer was done, his chance was gone, forasmuch as ye little maid had but ye one cunt, and that was already occupied to her content.
Then conversed they of religion, and ye mightie work ye old dead Luther did doe by ye grace of God. Then next about poetry, and Master Shaxpur did rede a part of his King Henry IV., ye which, it seemeth unto me, is not of ye value of an arsefull of ashes, yet they praised it bravely, one and all.
Ye same did rede a portion of his “Venus and Adonis,” to their prodigious admiration, whereas I, being sleepy and fatigued withal, did deme it but paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this windy ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that hell mighte get him.
They talked about ye wonderful defense which old Sr. Nicholas Throgmorton did make for himself before ye judges in ye time of Mary; which was unlucky matter to broach, sith it fetched out ye quene with a 'Pity yt he, having so much wit, had yet not enough to save his doter's maidenhedde sound for her marriage-bed.' And ye quene did give ye damn'd Sr. Walter a look yt made hym wince—for she hath not forgot he was her own lover it yt olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; 'twas not a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offense in a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loathe to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company was sinless; behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace of Bilgewater roger'd by four lords before she had a husband? Was not ye little Lady Helen born on her mother's wedding-day? And, beholde, were not ye Lady Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from ye cradle?
In time came they to discourse of Cervantes, and of the new painter, Rubens, that is beginning to be heard of. Fine words and dainty-wrought phrases from the ladies now, one or two of them being, in other days, pupils of that poor ass, Lille, himself; and I marked how that Jonson and Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet dared they not in the presence, the queene's grace being ye very flower of ye Euphuists herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, and admiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can abide it in them long. Wherefore 'twas observable yt ye quene waxed uncontent; and in time labor'd grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith 'O shit!' Whereat they alle did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, yt olde foolish bitche.
Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did hear ye ingenious Margrette of Navarre relate, about a maid, which being like to suffer rape by an olde archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save her maidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord, I prithee, take out thy holy tool and piss before me; which doing, lo his member felle, and would not rise again.
Mark Twain (1835 – April 21, 1910) was an American writer, praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced and called "the father of American literature".
5 Waiting - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel December 6, 2025
Waiting in faith. Cross the great river…
Les Jeux et Plaisirs de l’Enfance, Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella. 1657.
Chris Gabriel December 6, 2025
Judgment
Waiting in faith. Cross the great river.
Lines
1
Waiting outside.
2
Waiting in the sand. There are rumours.
3
Waiting in mud invites danger.
4
Waiting in blood. Get out of the hole.
5
Waiting in wine. Feast!
6
Going in the hole invites three uninvited guests.
Qabalah
Yesod and its place on the Middle Pillar. The cloudy phantasies of Yesod. The 4 Nines.
Particularly Cruelty, the Nine of Swords and Strength, the Nine of Wands.
In the fifth hexagram we are given the image of waiting. For many of us, in this age of instant gratification, the task of waiting has become exponentially more difficult. Yet waiting has never been easy; in a drought, the desperate waiting for rain which all engage in is exasperating and miserable. To await the response to a significant message, to wait to be let into a house, to wait for something, anything, to happen - waiting is an eternal issue. It is being given a blank potential and projecting fantasies onto it. Waiting is grappling with Nothing.
Few texts express the miserable nature of waiting like Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, in which two men desperately await the arrival of a third who never comes.
Vladimir
What do we do now?
Estragon
Wait.
Vladimir
Yes, but while waiting.
Thus the Judgment of the hexagram: “waiting in faith”. One must have faith in the arrival of what it is they are waiting for, though the lines of this hexagram offer no assurance that the rain will come.
1
In this line we are away from the action, outside and considering the feelings and questions one has while waiting outside of a door. Are they home? Will they let me in? How long will I be out here? Even further, we can think of the suburbs or the outskirts of a place: what it is like to be outside of the life of a city or town?
2
With the context of waiting for the rain, sand is inevitably frustrating. One is either in a desert, where rain will certainly not come soon, or on a beach. “Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.”
As in Godot, gossip, rumours, and worried discussions come when you wait for too long.
3
Mud is unstable, if you wait in it, you will surely sink deeper in
4
This line following the last calls to mind the trench warfare of the First World War, the drudgery and horror of mud and blood. ‘Get out of the hole’ is ironic in a way, as war, like gambling, is often done for far too long in an attempt to “get out of the hole”. To break even is a sunk cost fallacy.
5
It’s much easier to wait for a friend inside a warm bar than it is to wait outside in the cold.
6
Even if one is stuck in a difficult situation, others will come, if we treat them well, often we will be helped.
The key issue of this hexagram is not whether or not what one is waiting for comes or not, but where and how one waits. The proper place and approach will determine the experience entirely.
The Nature of Sonic Geometry: A Conversation with Eric Rankin
Molly Hankins December 4, 2025
As more and more mainstream scientific breakthroughs sit at the intersection of quantum physics, human consciousness and mathematics, it’s unusual to find a layman at the forefront of revolutionary research. Enter Eric Rankin…
‘Impression Figure’ of recorded sound by Margaret Watts Hughes, Late 1800s.
Molly Hankins December 4, 2025
As more and more mainstream scientific breakthroughs sit at the intersection of quantum physics, human consciousness and mathematics, it’s unusual to find a layman at the forefront of revolutionary research. Enter Eric Rankin, the musician, author and channeler of a body of verified information connecting the major chords on a musical scale with the sum total angles of basic geometric shapes. First put forth in a YouTube video he called ‘Sonic Geometry: the Language of Frequency and Form’ in 2013, Rankin never imagined how sharing this knowledge would impact the trajectory of his life. Discovering this symmetry between geometric and harmonic aspects of the universe has led to his work being discussed alongside world-famous scientists and academics. All the while he’s been living in Laguna Beach, playing in two different bands and teaching a Sonic Geometry class at The Integratron in Joshua Tree.
Approximately 2500 years ago, Pythagoras claimed that “there is geometry in the humming of the strings.” Although sometimes embarrassed by the accolades of credentialed academics, Rankin is the person credited with revealing the correlation between geometry, frequency and major-chord harmonics. “Humans seem to have been ‘designed or programmed’ as major-chord resonators,” he says, speaking of the sense of well-being major chords give us. It’s a similar feeling to hearing music tuned to 432 Hz, which Rankin is also naturally interested in because of patterns that connect to physics, music theory, nature, growth algorithms and spiritual teachings.
The number of vibrational cycles per second determines a sound’s measurement in hertz. When asked about musical tuning, Rankin explained why some Hertz levels, like 432, feel better to many of us physically than others. “432 is kind of a core number, which people are starting to hear about now. If you octave that down to 216, half value, then octave that down again you get 108. A Hindu mala necklace has 108 beads, the meditating Buddha has 108 snails cooling his head while he meditates,” Rankin said. “Our moon is 108 moon-widths away from Earth, our sun is 108 sun-widths away from Earth. So you go, what is going on here that we’ve just been ignorant of? And we wouldn’t have known this until we could measure the moon and the sun and the Earth, that’s just in the last 100, maybe 150 years.” He believes this symmetry, revealed only by the imperial measurement system, is a divine communication meant to be unlocked at a certain phase of human evolution and acts as an invitation to pay attention to the underlying order of life.
At a cymatics lab, where sound is projected into matter to form geometric patterns, Rankin played a scale of major chords, one at a time in sequence and “something showed up that they’d never seen. Rather than a flat-looking beautiful geometric standing wave pattern, it looked like a living lotus that was flowering where petals were actually layered on top of other petals.” The lotus is a Buddhist symbol for awakening, reminding us that we all have the same potential to achieve enlightenment like the Buddha. The number of equally compelling examples Rankin is able to name of frequency measurements corresponding to sacred geometry, symbols and structures, is completely astounding, but he thinks we’ve barely scratched the surface of all there is to know. Sound projected into matter, with certain frequencies resulting in more beauty and dimensionality than others, might be an indicator of how life was created, and how we are co-creating it with the vibration of our thoughts, words and deeds.
Rankin’s work has attracted the likes of physicist Menas Kafatos and Sir Robert Edward Grant, who produced the follow-up video to Sonic Geometry which deals with the platonic solids. Kafatos appeared on Rankin’s weekly podcast and radio show in Orange County, Awakening Code Radio, and told us that “today’s science is much more mystical than people make it out to be, including scientists.” Perhaps the underlying truth of geometric correspondence to harmonics, which is inherently mystical, could only come through a non-scientist in a non-academic setting. Sonic Geometry points to natural intelligence that wants to reveal itself, so why wouldn’t that natural intelligence find an unbiased channel who understands the fundamental nature of harmonics and the emotional effect they have on other beings? That’s a perspective unique to musicians, and Rankin has no doubt that’s at least part of the reason this knowledge wanted to come through him.
“Suddenly, every geometric shape, the foundation of what we call reality, would actually be in literal harmony within Earth’s vibrational field. It’s just like engines having harmonic balancers to keep them running smoothly".”
“There’s been an internal guidance system in place my whole life. I could say it’s my interest in music, or my interest in dolphins and their amazing abilities,” he explained, referencing the years he spent as a boat captain that led him to study dolphins and write a book about them. Those interests gave him the requisite framework he needed to receive the knowledge of Sonic Geometry, which came in one fine flash in August of 2012. He heard a voice of higher intelligence he had previously only experienced during medical emergencies, so he attributed it to a guardian angel of sorts. The voice told him to go to the white board and draw a triangle, write down the sum total of its angles, then play the sum as a tone. “I had a musical background so I understood Hertz cycles to a degree, so I thought ok - how do I play the sum total? And the voice said, ‘You’re living in a moment in time where you can do that, pick up your phone.’ So I looked up an app and did it.”
Within a few moments, he was generating a 180 hz tone to match the sum total of a triangle, and continued going up the scale of the sum total of a square, pentagon and so on to discover the progression of major-chord harmonics “We seem to have been programmed as a resonators, that when we hear major chords we relax and go, ‘Ah, that’s right.’ Other chords might stir other feelings, all the way to minor chords, which feel like danger,” Rankin observes. “So if the universe is geometric in essence, then it is also major-chord harmonic in essence.” To illustrate this point in the Sonic Geometry class Rankin teaches at The Integratron, he uses a keyboard during his lecture so he can play each shape as sound. The relaxation we experienced when those major chords were played felt physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally harmonizing.
The Integratron is an acoustically perfect chamber conceived as a frequency harmonizing machine by the man who built it, George Van Tassel. Van Tassel believed the world’s pyramids were actually huge “harmonic balancers,” and Rankin asks, “Harmonic to what?”. His answer was the Schumann Resonance, which measures the time it takes electromagnetic waves to bounce between the surface of the Earth and base of the ionosphere, and is typically resting at approximately 7.83 Hz. “What if, thousands of years ago, that resonance field was just 1 Hz higher, hovering at a perfect 9? Suddenly, every geometric shape, the foundation of what we call reality, would actually be in literal harmony within Earth’s vibrational field. It’s just like engines having harmonic balancers to keep them running smoothly,” he says. This sort of speculation has made him a darling on the American TV show Ancient Aliens - like what if the capstone that once topped The Great Pyramid was harmonizing the planet by boosting its frequency to 9 Hz?
Rankin has not discovered how to use this information beyond the deployment of sound to create harmonic states of being. He has, however, mapped the information in what he calls a Factor 9 grid based on the frequencies of Hertz cycles that add up to 9, such as 432 Hz (4+3+2 = 9). “When we start with 432 Hz and move up and down by multiples of 9, an astonishing 14-tone matrix of synchronicity begins to appear. For instance, on this unique grid we find not just some, but all of the numbers representing every primary geometric shape,” he explains in Sonic Geometry 2. “Looking deeper, we see many other numbers that played into some of humanity’s most profound religious texts - the 72 names of God in the Kabbalah. There’s 108, the number of times Hindu mantras are repeated in ceremonies. We find 144, a number sequence represented in the Great Pyramid of Giza, the number of days in a Mayan baktun.” A baktun is the total length of the Mayan calendar, 144,000 days. 144,000 is also the number of souls that must awaken in order for the planet to move into a higher field of consciousness.
What is this information trying to tell us? “In a word, it’s harmony,” Rankin says. “When we play together as frequencies the numbers of all the primary geometric shapes, what presents itself is a three-tone, numerically perfect major chord. This phenomenon should not be taken lightly, for what we are seeing is a certain kind of proof that nature has revealed by mathematical patterns is a force existing in literal harmony with itself.” If harmony is built into the blueprint of our material lives, perhaps seeking harmony within ourselves, relationships, and communities is what being alive is all about. All of the “Great Work” that alchemists, magicians, meditators and religious practitioners are dedicated to involves some expression of harmonization. Rather than trying to practically apply the teachings of Sonic Geometry, when we apply it philosophically life becomes quite simple - creating harmony is all that matters.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Why Less Is More
Suzanne Stabile December 2, 2025
A meaningful response will always require allowing something old to fall away…
Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi. 1617.
Suzanne Stabile December 2, 2025
Each year, my husband and I set aside time for a spiritual retreat, just the two of us. We spend so much time with others that if we are not aware and mindful, our personality as a couple has as much ego as we do as individuals. We have two goals on these trips. The first is to be settled and quiet long enough to perhaps hear something new. The second, is to have the time and space to discuss how we are each challenged by the chosen retreat topic and how we might respond.
A meaningful response will always require allowing something old to fall away, yet it seems to be harder than it should to know what to keep and what we no longer need. A winter coat, an old idea, a belief that hasn’t been examined since childhood, ways of being that no longer fit who we’re becoming or the stationary bicycle that represents so much potential. Choices that offer comfort but not value to the journey are tricky, because our attachment to what is familiar seems more alluring than the curiosity that a well-planned retreat would surely create.
The retreat and materials that we return to most often is titled “the Spirituality of Subtraction.” It was designed for us by Father Richard Rohr some fifteen years ago and every time we choose to revisit it, we are challenged to look at our lives in new ways. Like so many, we continue to struggle with the concept that less is more in a culture where more of something, anything, is often top of mind.
Our first encounter with this was on a journey to a parish in San Antonio to spend a few days for a private retreat. San Antonio is about two-hundred and seventy-five miles from Dallas. We had done that drive enough times to know the best places to stop, eat, rest or shop along the way. As we reached the outskirts of Dallas, Joe put in the cassette tape that Father Rohr had supplied and we began to listen to his opening talk about the spirituality of subtraction. After about an hour and a half, I pressed pause and asked if we could stop at the outlet kitchen store on the way. Joe had a look that I had seen many times before and it was the backdrop for his response; “ What do we need for the kitchen?”
“I’d like to get one of those wide mouth toasters.”
Joe replied that he really liked our toaster and wondered why we needed a wide mouth toaster.
“Well,” I explained, “you can toast bagels in them and we can’t in ours.”
“But we don’t eat bagels.”
Smiling, though perturbed, I said, “That’s because we don’t have a wide mouth toaster.”
The conversation ended as, we were almost to the exit so Joe suggested we just wait until we got back in the car to continue listening to the teaching from Father Rohr.
We found the toaster,secured it in its seemingly very large box in the back of the car, and headed again to San Antonio. Just as Joe pulled onto the Interstate, he pushed play on the tape and with God as our witness, the first words we heard from Father Rohr were, “You know … it’s like all of those people who think they need to go out and buy a wide mouth toaster when there is absolutely nothing wrong with the toaster they already have.”
There are no words to adequately describe the satisfaction that covered Joe’s face, and obviously he didn’t feel the need to say anything. With very few choices left, I picked up my journal, looked out the window for a time, and began taking notes as we continued to listen to “The Spirituality of Subtraction.”
“It seems that one cannot solve a problem with the same mixed-up thinking that created it.”
We had a very meaningful and memorable retreat, and were blessed in ways that we could not have imagined. We learned so much, committed to a lot of change, believed in ourselves and in one another and looked forward to what would be. It gave us the questions we would need to ask ourselves repeatedly in the years to come about our understanding of the differences between satisfaction and enough, needing and wanting, giving and keeping, and other equally challenging contradictions.
Albert Einstein said:
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”
It seems that one cannot solve a problem with the same mixed-up thinking that created it. So, I have asked more than once, “What good does it do to try to simplify your life by arranging, moving, charting, calendaring, giving and grasping, simplifying one part of life only to find that it complicates another?”
Parker Palmer had helpful wisdom when he said, “If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and to myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences.”
For simplicity to be real, lasting, true and effective it will have to come from a place of organic reality. This work of simplifying our lives has to become integral to our nature or it is a futile effort and wasted time. Instead, we must find a way to be both practical and spiritual in our attempts to simplify.
So, what keeps us from making the changes we desire? One reality that we’ve identified in our own lives is what Mary O’Malley identifies as compulsions. She says, “By compulsion I mean engaging in any recurring activity to manage our feelings, an activity that eventually ends up managing us.”
We can be compulsive in many ways: overspending, overeating, over working, over planning, over worrying, over exercising, over drinking, over computerizing, just overing. Many of us are compulsive without even knowing it but can be reminded of it when the computer crashes, the electricity is out for a time, the doctor says we must change our diet, a friend wonders if we are drinking too much. In those times it becomes clear just how much a particular activity controls our lives.
Our compulsion is to struggle. We live in a story in our heads that is always trying to get us to “do life,” telling us we need to make ourselves and our lives better or different from what they are. That is the core of the mess! Father Rohr says, “If you have to have more and more of the same thing, it isn’t working!”
So, moving forward …
Do we live our way into a new way of thinking?
Or do we think our way into a new way of living?
Suzanne Stabile is a speaker, teacher, and internationally recognized Enneagram master teacher who has taught thousands of people over the last thirty years. She is the author of ‘The Path Between Us’, and coauthor, with Ian Morgan Cron, of ‘The Road Back to You’. She is also the creator and host of The Enneagram Journey podcast. Along with her husband, Rev. Joseph Stabile, she is cofounder of Life in the Trinity Ministry, a nonprofit, nondenominational ministry committed to the spiritual growth and formation of adults.
4 Youth (Foolishness) - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel November 22, 2025
I don’t seek young fools, young fools seek me. They bite their questions at me. If they ask too many, I get annoyed and will say no more...
Les Jeux et Plaisirs de l’Enfance, Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella. 1657.
Chris Gabriel November 29, 2025
Judgment
I don’t seek young fools, young fools seek me.
They bite their questions at me.
If they ask too many, I get annoyed and will say no more.
Lines
1
To enlighten a fool, don’t spare the rod. It loosens their shackles.
2
To make the fool wise, let him enjoy a wife. Their child will be able.
3
Don’t choose a woman who sees a rich man and gets on her knees, she is worthless.
4
Trapped in foolishness.
5
The foolish child is blessed.
6
Attacking fools will get you nothing. It’s better to defend them.
Qabalah
Yesod to Netzach: The Path of Tzaddi. The Emperor.
Yesodic phantasies obscure the vision of Netzach
The sprout we met in hexagram 3 has grown into a foolish youth. Here, the struggle is no longer for existence, but for understanding. We are dealing with youth, foolishness, confusion, and what is obscured. The hexagram offers the image of a misty mountain; we can imagine a climber looking up, unable to see what is ahead. This is the situation of a child, they stand at the very foot of the mountain of their life, and are unable to see any of what lay ahead. The ideogram gives us the image of a house with grass covering the roof. We can think of a house so covered in ivy that we can barely see it. Both give us a clear picture of what is obscured.
The Bible describes this state precisely:
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
This hexagram is about seeing through a glass, darkly. The lines, however, offer advice to the dazed and confused youth. The Judgment here is notable, and has always guided my personal ethics in reading both the tarot and I Ching: “Never read someone too often, and never ask the same question again and again”. To fall foul of this, the tarot will start to give “bad” cards, the I Ching will tell you quite directly to stop, as we see here.
1
Line one shows us that physical discipline is a necessity for enlightenment; the mind is free when the body is put in its proper place. This is universal in spiritual traditions. Fasting, meditation, even torment are used to free and enlighten the mind.
2
For those who don’t seek religious enlightenment, the best thing is to have love and to make a family. This is the highest achievement for someone who isn’t seeking things beyond the material.
3
As such, choosing a proper partner is very important, the line here warns of what we would call “a golddigger”. The right wife is necessary to make a good family.
4
Without heeding these wisdoms, we can become trapped, totally confused, blind, and lost in our own confusion. Many live their lives this way.
5
The foolish virgin scorned in the Biblical parable is redeemed here. A foolish virgin makes a perfect student for wisdom. Untouched by the world, they will be able to see beyond it.
The foolish child in this line is the divine youth of myth and folklore, like the Egyptian Harpocrates and Tom Thumb of the Brothers Grimm. They are always in danger of being eaten, endangered, and trapped, yet they always find a way out, for they have a profound destiny in their future.
6 All of us can find ourselves getting irritated with the ignorance and stupidity of others. It is an aggravating thing, but attacking them is silly for we cannot gain from them. By protecting the fool, they can eventually grow wise.
Youth is the proper time to be foolish and confused. We can experiment and learn, and begin to see clearly the contours of the great mountain of life that we are to climb.
Edgard Varése: The Idol of my Youth (1971)
Frank Zappa November 25, 2025
I have been asked to write about Edgard Varése. I am in no way qualified to. I can't even pronounce his name right. The only reason I have agreed to is because I love his music very much, and if by some chance this article can influence more people to hear his works, it will have been worthwhile…
Frank Zappa stands all but alone in the pantheon of American popular music. A true outsider who, through sheer talent, determination, and an uncompromising vision of himself, became one of the most significant and celebrated figures of the rock movement. Through his band ‘The Mothers of Invention’ and as a solo artist, he fused free jazz, experimental rock, concrete music, classical composition, and satirical writing into a unique sound. His inspirations were boundless, traversing genre and time, and in this piece, written first for ‘Stereo Review’ in 1971, he talks about a foundational figure for his musical education - Edgard Varése. Varése and Zappa are, in many ways, logical bedfellows. The former was a pioneering radical composer who pushed ideas of music as little more than organised noise, with a mop of black hair and piercing, scientific eyes. The same descriptor could be applied to Zappa, though his career began some decades later. This piece is, more than anything, a love letter, and a memoir to an illusive obsession that helped the young Zappa at once feel seen his pursuits, and alone in his interests.
Frank Zappa November 25, 2025
I have been asked to write about Edgard Varése. I am in no way qualified to. I can't even pronounce his name right. The only reason I have agreed to is because I love his music very much, and if by some chance this article can influence more people to hear his works, it will have been worthwhile.
I was about thirteen when I read an article in Look about Sam Goody's Record Store in New York. My memory is not too clear on the details, but I recall it was praising the store's exceptional record merchandising ability. One example of brilliant salesmanship described how, through some mysterious trickery, the store actually managed to sell an album called "Ionization" (the real name of the album was "The Complete Works of Edgard Varése, Volume One"). The article described the record as a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds.
I dashed off to my local record store and asked for it. Nobody ever heard of it. I told the guy in the store what it was like. He turned away, repulsed, and mumbled solemnly, "I probably wouldn't stock it anyway... nobody here in San Diego would buy it."
I didn't give up. i was so hot to get that record I couldn't even believe it. In those days I was a rhythm-and-blues fanatic. I saved any money I could get (sometimes as much as $2 a week) so that every Friday and Saturday I could rummage through piles of old records at the Juke Box Used Record Dump (or whatever they called it) in the Maryland Hotel or the dusty corners of little record stores where they'd keep the crappy records nobody wanted to buy.
One day I was passing a hi-fi store in La Mesa. A little sign in the window announced a sale on 45's. After shuffling through their singles rack and finding a couple of Joe Houston records, I walked toward the cash register. On my way, I happened to glance into the LP bin. Sitting in the front, just a little bent at the corners, was a strange-looking black-and-white album cover. On it there was a picture of a man with gray frizzy hair. He looked like a mad scientist. I thought it was great that somebody had finally made a record of a mad scientist. i picked it up. I nearly (this is true, ladies and gentlemen) peed in my pants... THERE IT WAS! EMS 401, The Complete Works of Edgard Varése Volume I... Integrales, Density 21.5, ionization, Octandre... Rene Le Roy, the N. Y. Wind Ensemble, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra, Frederic Waidman Conducting... liner notes by Sidney Finkelstein! WOW!
I ran over to the singles box and stuffed the Joe Houston records back in it. I fumbled around in my pocket to see how much money I had (about $3.80). I knew I had to have a lot of money to buy an album. Only old people had enough money to buy albums. I'd never bought an album before. I sneaked over to the guy at the cash register and asked him how much EMS 401 cost. "That gray one in the box? $5.95 - "
I had searched for that album for over a year, and now... disaster. I told the guy I only had $3.80. He scratched his neck. "We use that record to demonstrate the hi-fi's with, but nobody ever buys one when we use it... you can have it for $3.80 if you want it that bad."
I couldn't imagine what he meant by "demonstrating hi-fi's with it." I'd never heard a hi-fi. I only knew that old people bought them. I had a genuine lo-fi... it was a little box about 4 inches deep with imitation wrought-iron legs at each corner (sort of brass-plated) which elevated it from the table top because the speaker was in the bottom. My mother kept it near the ironing board. She used to listen to a 78 of The Little Shoemaker on it. I took off the 78 of The Little Shoemaker and, carefully moving the speed lever to 33 1/3 (it had never been there before), turned the volume all the way up and placed the all-purpose Osmium-tip needle in the lead-in spiral to Ionization. I have a nice Catholic mother who likes Roller Derby. Edgard Varése does not get her off, even to this very day. I was forbidden to play that record in the living room ever again.
In order to listen to The Album, I had to stay in my room. I would sit there every night and play it two or three times and read the liner notes over and over. I didn't understand them at all. I didn't know what timbre was. I never heard of polyphony. I just liked the music because it sounded good to me. I would force anybody who came over to listen to it. (I had heard someplace that in radio stations the guys would make chalk marks on records so they could find an exact spot, so I did the same thing to EMS 401... marked all the hot items so my friends wouldn't get bored in the quiet parts.)
I went to the library and tried to find a book about Mr. Varése. There wasn't any. The librarian told me he probably wasn't a Major Composer. She suggested I look in books about new or unpopular composers. I found a book that had a little blurb in it (with a picture of Mr. Varése as a young man, staring into the camera very seriously) saying that he would be just as happy growing grapes as being a composer.
“His music is completely unique. If you haven't heard it yet, go hear it. If you've already heard it and think it might make groovy sound effects, listen again.”
On my fifteenth birthday my mother said she'd give me $5. I told her I would rather make a long-distance phone call. I figured Mr. Varése lived in New York because the record was made in new York (and because he was so weird, he would live in Greenwich Village). I got New York Information, and sure enough, he was in the phone book.
His wife answered. She was very nice and told me he was in Europe and to call back in a few weeks. I did. I don't remember what I said to him exactly, but it was something like: "I really dig your music." he told me he was working on a new piece called Deserts. This thrilled me quite a bit since I was living in Lancaster, California then. When you're fifteen and living in the Mojave Desert and find out that the world's greatest composer, somewhere in a secret Greenwich Village laboratory, is working on a song about your "home town" you can get pretty excited. It seemed a great tragedy that nobody in Palmdale or Rosamond would care if they ever heard it. I still think Deserts is about Lancaster, even if the liner notes on the Columbia LP say it's something more philosophical.
All through high school I searched for information about Varése and his music. One of the most exiting discoveries was in the school library in Lancaster. I found an orchestration book that had score examples in the back, and included was an excerpt from Offrandes with a lot of harp notes (and you know how groovy harp notes look). I remember fetishing the book for several weeks.
When I was eighteen I got a chance to go to the East Coast to visit my Aunt Mary in Baltimore. I had been composing for about four years then but had not heard any of it played. Aunt Mary was going to introduce me to some friend of hers (an italian gentleman) who was connected with the symphony there. I had planned on making a side trip to mysterious Greenwich Village. During my birthday telephone conversation, Mr. Varése had casually mentioned the possibility of a visit if I was ever in the area. I wrote him a letter when I got to Baltimore, just to let him know I was in the area.
I waited. My aunt introduced me to the symphony guy. She said, "This is Frankie. He writes orchestra music." The guy said, "Really? Tell me, sonny boy, what's the lowest note on a bassoon?" I said, "B flat... and also it says in the book you can get 'em up to a C or something in the treble clef." He said, "Really? You know about violin harmonics?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "See me again in a few years."
I waited some more. The letter came. I couldn't believe it. A real handwritten letter from Edgard Varése! I still have it in a little frame. In very tiny scientific-looking script it says:
Dear Mr. Zappa
I am sorry not to be able to grant your request. I am leaving for Europe next week and will be gone until next spring. I am hoping however to see you on my return. With best wishes.
Sincerely
Edgard Varése
I never got to meet Mr. Varése. But I kept looking for records of his music. When he got to be about eighty I guess a few companies gave in and recorded some of his stuff. Sort of a gesture, I imagine. I always wondered who bought them besides me. It was about seven years from the time I first heard his music till I met someone else who even knew he existed. That person was a film student at USC. He had the Columbia LP with Poeme Electronique on it. He thought it would make groovy sound effects.
I can't give you any structural insights or academic suppositions about how his music works or why I think it sounds so good. His music is completely unique. If you haven't heard it yet, go hear it. If you've already heard it and think it might make groovy sound effects, listen again. I would recommend the Chicago Symphony recording of Arcana on RCA (at full volume) or the Utah Symphony recording of Ameriques on Vanguard. Also, there is a biography by Fernand Oulette, and miniature scores are available for most of his works, published by G. Ricordi.
Frank Zappa (1940 –1993) was an American composer, musician, actor, filmmaker and activist who established himself as one of the most singular and left-field artists of his generation.
3 Difficult Beginning (Rough Start) - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel November 22, 2025
Difficult Beginnings are the origins of prosperity. Don’t go on, get help…
Pflanzenleben, Kerner von Marilaun. 1887
Chris Gabriel November 22, 2025
Judgment
Difficult Beginnings are the origins of prosperity. Don’t go on, get help.
Lines
1
At a crossroads it’s best to stay put.
2
A rough start, your horse turns back.
No bandits seize the young girl, she remains a virgin. Ten years later she has a child.
3
Hunting deer without a guide, getting lost in the middle of the woods. What would the sage do?
He would stay put, not go on and regret it.
4
Your horse turns back. Ask her hand in marriage.
5
What’s rich is difficult. What’s little is lucky. What’s great is cursed.
6
Your horse turns back. Tears of blood flow and flow.
Qabalah
Imperfectly Binah to Chokmah: the Path of Daleth. The Empress.
The Mother and the Father’s creation.
Here we have the third hexagram and the image formed by the lines is that of a thunderstorm. Just as storms grow, so too does the sprout. The ideogram shows a little sprout struggling to get through the soil. We can think of this as “growing pains” or a “rough start”. It is a difficult situation in which opposed forces meet and struggle, like a sprout trying to make its way through concrete. As Heaven fertilized the Earth, this is the growing seed that resulted from that union. The purity of the two previous hexagrams are gone, the elements here are in confusion.
Consider the difficulty of going through a storm, whether you’re driving with low visibility on wet roads, or getting soaked by rain as you walk. This is the state of our hexagram. When we are born, we come into a sensory storm, the calm of the womb is replaced by blinding light, blaring sounds, and cold air. We are lost, and it is only with the help of our parents that we make our way - thus “get help”. Of course, the same applies in the inverse, for when a woman gives birth there is an immense amount of pain. Birth is difficult for both of the people involved.
1
In the first line, we are confused, stuck hesitating at a crossroads.
2
When we go ahead in spite of this confusion, it leads to more trouble. The young girl overcomes difficulty and waits for the right time to marry and have children.
3
When one is hasty in times of confusion and pushes forward, it leads to even bigger trouble. In many ways, getting lost is like being born, for we are again put into the terror of a world we do not understand.
4
The right time will come even if we don’t rush ahead.
5
As this hexagram relates to growing up and being born, I think of the family and fate here. To be born rich will lead to trouble; I think of this as literal baggage, weight. To be born in a humble family allows for free growth. To be born into a great family can carry a heavy burden.
6
No matter what one does, growing up will be difficult. Tears will be shed. This is undoubtedly one of the most horrific lines in the I Ching.
This hexagram reminds me of the fourth verse of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, (the title even fits the subject perfectly)
“Oh, get born, keep warm, short pants, romance
Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts, don't steal, don't lift”
The troubles of early life, the struggle for warmth, love, and security. These are the troubles of this hexagram. Where do I go? How will I find love? Where am I? Who am I?
They are the problems of a child, but for nearly all of us, they will continue to make things difficult throughout life.