Pauli and Jung’s Synchronicity

Illustration from Carl Jung’s ‘Liber Novus’ or ‘The Red Book’. 1917.

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Molly Hankins November 21, 2024

In 1945, the Viennese physicist Wolfgang Pauli won the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum numbers and the structure of matter that predicted the existence of the neutrino 20 years before it was confirmed. This was 18 years after he started seeing Carl Jung for psychotherapy and dream analysis following his mother’s suicide, and 7 years before he and Jung would publish The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche exploring in great detail the concept of ‘synchronicity.’ It is a word intrinsically ties to Jung, who started using it in lectures a few years after meeting Pauli and published a book of the same name a year before his death, but the idea was brought to life in their  collaboration. 

In The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, synchronicity describes an acausal relationship between events that occur sequentially in linear time and appear meaningfully related but with no identifiable, underlying relationship. At the time, using physics as a lens to study metaphysics wasn’t controversial; Pauli’s friends and contemporaries like physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg were working together to explore theories that would bridge understanding between esoteric philosophy, practice and science. 

The same year his treatise with Jung was published, Pauli spent the summer in Copenhagen with Bohr and Heisenberg having these very conversations. Heisenberg said that physicists needed to make every effort to grasp the meaning of old religions because, “… it quite obviously refers to a crucial aspect of reality.” This was before the chokehold of post-World War II and the Cold War thought made physics-funding the exclusive business of the war machine and condemned exploration of metaphysics to the realm of taboo. Fellow Austrian physicist and Tao of Physics author Fritjof Capra famously never received institutional funding again for his research after the book was published in 1975.

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“Synchronicity mirrors quantum entanglement, which occurs when two particles link together and influence each other's state no matter how far apart they are, because at the quantum level, the laws governing the interactions of space and time stop behaving according to the principle of causality.”

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Like so many revolutionary minds, Pauli was troubled and controversial, known for his alcoholism and quarrelsome nature. His mother’s suicide, which followed his father’s infidelity, devastated him, but ultimately pushed him to seek out Jung while they were both living in Zurich. Their relationship continued by letter, most famously documented in their published book of letters from 1932 to 1958, Atom and Archetype, named after a Pauli quote included in the collection. “As I regard physics and psychology as complementary types of examination,”, he wrote, “I am certain that the investigation of the psyche can throw light on the structure of the atom, just as the study of the atom can illuminate the structure of the psyche.” The core tenet of this thought is that both the human psyche and atom contain a central core, “a nucleus of self” surrounded by orbiting subatomic particles or “unconscious electrons” such as archetypes or complexes that influence conscious awareness. Atomic stability depends on the arrangement of the electrons, so their analogy espoused that stability of the psyche depended on the balance between aspects of the conscious and unconscious mind. 

Synchronicity was present in their daily lives too, as Pauli was known for disrupting experiments simply by being nearby. This became known to physicists as the ‘Pauli effect’ and describes the inexplicable disruption of technical equipment in the presence of certain people. When an experiment failed at University of Göttingen after a measuring device stopped working, the lab’s director James Franck wrote to Pauli joking that he could not have been the cause because he wasn’t physically present. In response Pauli revealed that he actually had been at the Göttingen rail station at the time of the failure. After a china vase fell and shattered for no discernible reason at a symposium in 1948 as he entered the meeting hall at Jung’s Institute, Pauli attempted to explain the phenomenon and its relationship to psychology in a new paper called ‘Background-Physics.’

While Pauli and Jung were never able to completely pin down the mechanism of synchronicity explored in their 30 year collaboration on the subject, they did conclude that the experience must somehow correlate to quantum entanglement. Synchronicity mirrors quantum entanglement, which occurs when two particles link together and influence each other's state no matter how far apart they are, because at the quantum level, the laws governing the interactions of space and time stop behaving according to the principle of causality.

And it makes sense that the phenomenon of synchronicity was explored and articulated by a psychologist and a physicist: the experience of it feels like a feedback loop between what’s going on in our minds and the physical world. As Jung himself said, “Synchronicity is the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer.” Quantum physics tells us that to observe reality is to essentially render it, and synchronicity leaves us with the feeling our perspective is undeniably influencing the experience being rendered. 

The study of the occult lies at the intersection of observation and creation of what’s rendering in the physical and how we can work with it. Synchronicity, as Terrence McKenna said, is the universe nodding at us as confirmation that we’re on the right track.

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Molly Hankins is a Neophyte + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum

Why Collect Digital Art? What Do You Believe? (Gen Art)

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Ian Rogers November 19, 2024

On the 14th of November, I received a text message from the Digital Art Curator Grida Hyewon Jang asking if I would mind giving an answer to three questions she had posted on X. She told me she planned to use the responses in a lecture she would be delivering to art students in Korea who are not particularly familiar with digital art. “Who knows – your comments might inspire a future artist!” she wrote.

That same day I was traveling from Paris, France to Marfa, Texas, for ArtBlocks annual community gathering (for more on ArtBlocks please read my earlier Tetragrammaton piece, Chimera: The Not-so-Still Life of Mpkoz). I had many thoughts bouncing around in my head that morning regarding digital art, a medium much maligned in the aftermath of FTX yet somehow still living and gaining momentum again. Grida’s request was a welcome opportunity to put those thoughts here on digital paper. I’m very happy for the opportunity to save these thoughts for posterity and present them to you, dear Tetragrammaton reader.I welcome your feedback and discussion.

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“Basquiat's work increases in value because the number of people who know the story increases while the supply does not. Luxury brands are trading on heritage and storytelling, not only products. Similarly, if you are wondering if the value of Cryptopunks will increase over the next 25 years you only need to ask: Will people still talk about them in 25 years?”

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Collectors: Why collect? What do you believe?

Modern, digital technology is a tool, created and wielded by humans, ostensibly under our control. Throughout history, the adoption of new technologies has driven profound shifts in society and this has been especially true when the technologies connect humans in new ways (shipping, telephony, trains, airplanes, internet, mobile connectivity) that lead younger generations to live differently than those who matured ahead of them.

Today, most of us are living in two worlds at once: physical and digital. We breathe in the physical world where we hug our children, eat, sleep, make love, run, ride skateboards, and play vinyl records. Often simultaneously, we email, DM, scroll, heart, create, share, shitpost and type with thumbs in a world of small-yet-powerful computers connected to one another via TCP/IP. We value the opinion of our network neighbors far more than our physical ones. We operate in dual worlds most of our waking moments, and share data with the cloud while we sleep. 

In my lifetime, as the five-year-old recipient of my brother's KISS vinyl, a teenage collector of VHS tapes about skateboarding and music, and MP3-trader-turned GM of Apple Music, I've lived through the digitization of all information. Obscure performances once mail-ordered from the classified ads in a newsprint magazine are now available to 5.52 billion Internet users with a simple keyword search on YouTube. 

Now, we have begun the digitization of all value. The "renting services on the Internet" business (internet-services business) has a current marketcap of about $4.75 trillion. The "owning digital value" business (cryptocurrency) is currently valued at $3.2 trillion. I believe the "owning digital value" marketcap will be at least an order of magnitude larger than this "renting digital services" industry within the next 25 years, and if Instagram hadn’t chickened out of their digital collectible market the lines would already be beginning to blur. The value of Internet services is centralized with the shareholders of companies whose product is the user. The marketcap of cryptocurrency will at least partially belong to the world's digital citizens held in permissionless digital self-custody.

The digitization of value, however, has a cold start problem. Asset value is relative to network effect -- it only exists if we all agree it does. Adoption curves to new technologies always takes time but the emerging Internet of Value has a different foe than the 1990s Internet of Information. In 1999, digital media was challenging an $895 billion traditional media market;today, the crypto industry is challenging a $9 trillion banking industry. Replacing 3% credit card surcharges is inevitable but will take a long time and digital ownership is much more than just finance. It's trustless proof of humanity, identity, and anything else.

www.beastieboys.com in December of 1998.

Music apps hold "early adoptor" status in online history. Many of the first CD-ROMs, Shareware, Web and mobile applications were applications to find and listen to music. "Self-publishing" music platform IUMA pre-dates the World Wide Web. CD Baby bridged digital and physical self-publishing ten years before Amazon started allowing authors to publish their own books. The iPhone wouldn't have come into existence without the success of the iPod.  There are many reasons music was the tip of the proverbial spear, among them relatively small file sizes, artist/album/track/genre being a remedial database challenge, and every college-age computer programmer loving and listening to music while they code. 

Similarly, Digital Art is the tip of the digital value spear. Someone creates something. Someone else likes it. They exchange value. It's the simplest form of a digital economy. Scale helps, but isn’t required. As with traditional art and luxury goods, the number of market participants can be small relative to value. It only took two bidders to drive the value of Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucien Freud to $142.2 million dollars. 

In the 1990s I was the conduit between the band Beastie Boys and their online fans. I posted tour dates, press articles, and photos from the stage. I kept the FAQ up to date and moderated the message board and IRC channel. We shared information about the band's not-for-profit and indie record label. As a "market" the fanbase was relatively small, but extremely passionate and dedicated. It felt as if the internet was made especially for communities like this to gather. I used to say my job was "to turn a casual listener into an obsessed fan".

Similarly today, the "obsessed fans of Kim Asendorf market" (who gather in a private Discord of which I am part) is very small. Yet if you enter you will find it is indeed a market with rising prices due to demand growing faster than supply. 

When talking about value people often get stuck trying to puzzle out intrinsic value instead of simply admitting the obvious fact: Storytelling + Time = Value. Basquiat's work increases in value because the number of people who know the story increases while the supply does not. Luxury brands are trading on heritage and storytelling, not only products. Similarly, if you are wondering if the value of Cryptopunks will increase over the next 25 years you only need to ask: Will people still talk about them in 25 years? If yes then you have Storytelling + Time, which amounts to more value. If everyone forgets about Cryptopunks and stops talking about them, the value will decline. Intrinsic value be damned.

I'm not arguing that everything digital has value any more than I'm arguing that every song on Spotify is worth hearing. But I believe digital art holds and will continue to hold "early adopter" status as online economies grow because the barriers to creating very small test markets are very low. 

Crypto Punks from higallery’s collection, paired with Egon Schiele sketches, c.1912.

A value exchange between a creator and a collector is a beautiful thing, especially relative to the business models of stealing and selling attention or speculating and gambling.

What’s the biggest difference from the traditional art scene?

I'm the least qualified to answer this question. In the traditional art world I rate as "museum-goer and collector of work from skateboarders I know". 

Which is exactly why I've enjoyed the digital art world so much.

I love peering into the mind of a creator through their output.

I love being a patron.

I love the opportunity to get to know or even assist an artist in some way.

I studied and practice computer science; I'm more qualified to appreciate a generative art piece than a painting.

The digital art world is small and self-selecting, full of creative, intelligent, and often downright weird people. Those still participating in 2024 believe in something most do not with enough conviction to weather being negatively judged by their peers. I remember being called a "gayboarder", laughed at for wearing bermuda shorts and growing long bangs. But I can’t imagine my life without skateboarding and the people I met through it. I'm very comfortable in a crowd of idealistic, thoughtful, creativity-loving outcasts. 

In 2022 my wife Hedvig and I were sitting around our dining table with FVCKRENDER and his wife, OSF, Farokh, and Raoul Pal. Raoul said, when talking about this moment in digital art and the digitization of value,  "We will always remember that this was the time when everyone knew each other." I love that time. I'm proud to have been a skateboarder long before it was allowed in the Olympics and a punk rock fan long before The Offspring. I learned much more building pieces of the Internet than I do today as one its 5.52 billion consumers. I guess my preferred moment in any market is the one decades before "traditional".

Thanks for asking me to reply. I’m sure this isn’t the response you were expecting. I guess it’s dangerous to ask an idealist “what do you believe?” I hope it’s useful anyway!

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Ian Rogers

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The Seven of Swords

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Name: Futility, the Seven of Swords
Number: 7
Astrology: Moon in Aquarius
Qabalah: Netzach of Vau

Chris Gabriel November 16, 2024

The Seven of Swords is a card lost in its own imagination. It symbolizes daydreaming, brainstorming and the material consequences that come of it. 

In Rider, we find a clownish thief, sneakily walking off with five swords. He dons a fez, fuzzy boots, and a polka dot tunic. He warily looks to see if anyone has seen him. In the distance is a circus, three tents, and a group of people.

In Thoth, we have a single solar sword being struck and chipped by 6 smaller planetary swords. This is the singular idea destroyed by a restless mind, countless thoughts erode the strength of one good idea. As the Moon in Aquarius, this is the mind set upon the Strange.

In Marseille, we have a singular sword in the midst of 6 intersected swords. Four flowers sit at the intersections. Qabalaistically, it is the Love of the Prince, and the Love of the Prince is Futile

As it is the Love of the Prince, consider this card as a comedy of errors: the Prince plots out exactly what he’s going to do to win his love, everything that can go wrong and, because of this way of thinking, he fails to even take the first step. It is the paralysis that comes from analysis.

The card suggests there is a sort of cowardice in daydreaming and planning. This is explicitly clear when we contrast this card with Valour, the Seven of Wands: It shows a man willing to fight thoughtlessly without the consideration even of victory. With Futility the fellow would never have picked up his sword in the first place. The foolish courage of Valour can win honor, but the intelligent cowardice of Futility gains nothing, not even experience. 

With Rider, we can see intelligence applied negatively and the scheme works out. The circus goers, lost in fantasy, lose their swords, the thief wins them through his scheming logic.

This card is both schemers and suckers - the good idea undone. 

This is of course how we learn. We get tricked, and then we become better so as not to get tricked again. In its highest form, Futility is the lived comedy of errors, the countless mistakes that form and shape our lives. As I have compared the suit of Swords to Hamlet, here we find his countless mistakes, his failed romance with Ophelia, but most importantly his overthinking and failure to act. This is Hamlet as “John-a-Dreams”.

When we pull this card we may be given a confusing situation that requires planning and brainstorming. We may hesitate and procrastinate and miss our chance. When we properly utilize this energy, we can pull off a well thought out scheme. Don’t overthink - think just enough and then act!

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Mediating Planetary Co-Existence

Yggdrasill, The Mundane Tree. From a plate of the Prose Edda, Oluf Olufsen Bagge. 1847.

Tuukka Toivonen November 14, 2024

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. 

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“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…”

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

On The Nature of Visions

Before the First World War and the infliction of politics into the art movement, the Austro-German Expressionist artists were concerned with, above all else, The Spirit. Oskar Kokoschka was a painter and poet whose intensity of emotion bled through into everything he produced, finding harmony with Nature and God in the untamed, free, and innocent soul of the artist. He offered a way into the self through religious experience, and payed respect to dreams and imaginations as visions of the inner eye just as valuable as optical sight. The true artist, Kokoschka believed, saw no difference in value between perceptions of the inner and outer world. This essay was originally delivered as a lecture in Vienna in 1912, before being transcribed into essay form for an early Monograph of the artist.

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Oskar Kokoschka November 12, 2024

The state of awareness of visions is not one in which we are either remembering or perceiving. It is rather a level of consciousness at which we experience visions within ourselves. 

This experience cannot be fixed; for the vision is moving, an impression growing and becoming visual, imparting a power to the mind. It can be evoked but never defined. 

Yet the awareness of such imagery is a part of living. It is life selecting from the forms which flow towards it or refraining, at will. 

A life which derives its power from within itself will focus the perception of such images. And yet this free visualizing in itself - whether it is complete or hardly yet perceptible, or undefined in either space or time - this has its own power running through. The effect is such that the visions seem actually to modify one's consciousness, at least in respect of everything which their own form proposes as their pattern and significance. This change in oneself, which follows on the vision's penetration of one's very soul, produces the state of awareness, of expectancy. At the same time there is an outpouring of feeling into the image which becomes, as it were, the soul's plastic embodiment. This state of alertness of the mind or consciousness has, then, a waiting, receptive quality. It is like an unborn child, as yet unfelt even by the mother, to whom nothing of the outside world slips through. And yet whatever affects his mother, all that impresses her down to the slightest birthmark on the skin, all is implanted in him. As though he could use her eyes, the unborn receives through her his visual impressions, even while he is himself unseen. 

The life of the consciousness is boundless. It interpenetrates the world and is woven through all its imagery. Thus it shares those characteristics of living which our human existence can show. One tree left living in an arid land would carry in its seed the potency from whose roots all the forests of the earth might spring. So with ourselves; when we no longer inhabit our perceptions they do pot go out of existence; they continue as though with a power of their own, awaiting the focus of another consciousness. There is no more room for death; for though the vision disintegrates and scatters, it does so only to reform in another mode. 

“Bride of the Wind”. Oskar Kokoschka, 1913. Oil on Canvas.

Therefore we must harken closely to our inner voice. We must strive through the penumbra of words to the core within. 'The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.' And then the inner core breaks free - now feebly and now violently - from the words within which it dwells like a charm. 'It happened to me according to the Word”

If we will surrender our closed personalities, so full of tension, we are in a position to accept this magical principle of living, whether in thought, intuition, or in our relationships. For in fact we see every day beings who are absorbed in one another, whether in living or in teaching, aimless or with direction. So it is with every created thing, everything we can communicate, every constant in the flux of living; each one has its own principle which shapes it, keeps life in it, and maintains it in our consciousness. Thus it is preserved, like a rare species, from extinction. We may identify it with 'me' or 'you' according to our estimate of its scale or its infinity. For we set aside the self and personal existence as being fused into a larger experience. All that is required of us is to release control. Some part of ourselves will bring us into the unison. The inquiring spirit rises from stage to stage, until it encompasses the whole of Nature. All laws are left behind. One's soul is a reverberation of the universe. Then too, as I believe, one's perception reaches out towards the Word, towards awareness of the vision.

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“Consciousness is the source of all things and of all conceptions. It is a sea ringed about with visions.”

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As I said at first, this awareness of visions can never fully be described,  its history can never be delimited, for it is a part of life itself. Its essence is a flowing and a taking form. It is love, delighting to lodge itself in the mind. This adding of something to ourselves - we may accept it or let it pass; but as soon as we are ready it will come to us by impulse, from the very breathing of our life. An image will take shape for us suddenly, at the first look,  as the first cry of a newborn child emerging from its mother’s womb. 

Whatever the orientation of a life, its significance will depend on this ability to conceive the vision. Whether the image has a material or an immaterial character depends simply on the angle from which the flow of psychic energy is viewed, whether at ebb or flood. 

Illustration from “The Dreaming Boys”. Oskar Kokoschka, 1908. Photolithograph.

It is true that the consciousness is not exhaustively defined by these images moving, these impressions which grow and become visual, imparting a power to the mind which we can evoke at will. For of the forms which come into the consciousness some are chosen while others are excluded arbitrarily. 

But this awareness of visions which I endeavour to describe is the viewpoint of all life as though it were seen from some high place; it is like a ship which was plunged into the seas and flashes again as a winged thing in the air. 

Consciousness is the source of all things and of all conceptions. It is a sea ringed about with visions. 

My mind is the tomb of all those things which have ceased to be the true Hereafter into which they enter. So that at last nothing remains; all that is essential of them is their image within myself. The life goes out of them into that image as in the lamp the oil is drawn up through the wick for nourishing the flame. 

So each thing, as it communicates itself to me, loses its substance and passes into the hereafter which is my mind. I incorporate its image which I can evoke without the intermediacy of dreams. 'Whenever two or three are gathered together in My name, I am in their midst' [Matt. 18:20]. And, as though it could go out to men, my vision is maintained, fed, as the lamp is by its oil, from the abundance of their living. If I am asked to make all this plain and natural the things themselves must answer for me, as it were, bearing their own witness. For I have represented them, I haw taken their place and put on their semblance through my visions. It is the psyche which speaks. 

I search, inquire, and guess. And with what sudden eagerness must the lamp wick seek its nourishment, for the flame leaps before my eves as the oil feeds it. It is all my imagination, certainly, what I see there in the blaze. But if I have drawn something from the fire and you have missed it, well, I should like to hear from those whose eyes are still untouched. For is this not mv vision? Without intent I draw from the outside world the semblance of things; but in this way I myself become part of the world's imaginings. Thus in everything imagination is simply that which is natural. It is nature, vision, life. 

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Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was an artist, poet, playwright, teacher and theorist from Austria. His writing and ideas on vision formed a basis for Vienesse Expressionism and brought a new focus on the role of the imagination in artworks.

The Empress

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Name: The Empress
Number: III
Astrology: Venus
Qabalah: Daleth

Chris Gabriel November 9, 2024

The Empress is maternal, feminine power. In each depiction we find the Empress crowned, enthroned, and bearing a scepter. She is the perfect balance to the masculine Emperor.

In Rider, she wears a flowery white dress marked with red flowers, and a crown of 12 stars resting atop her laurels. She wears a pearl necklace and her blonde hair falls down to her shoulders. She is looking calmly ahead. Her raised wand is topped with an orb while her other hand rests upon her knee. She is seated on voluptuous red cushions, and near her feet, a stone heart bears the mark of Venus. Behind her flows a waterfall.

In Thoth, we find the Empress in a pink blouse adorned with bees and flowers. Her skirt is emerald and her crown is a curved mitre with a Globus Cruciger. Her girdle is the wheel of the Zodiac. She has pale, almost white, blonde hair, and we see her only in profile. She is expressionless, with aLotus wand in one hand, and her other held out beneath. This posture forms the Alchemical sign of Salt. Waxing and Waning Moons emanate from spirals to her left and right, each topped with a pink and white bird. At her feet there is a shield with a double headed white bird. Beside it is a Pelican pecking her breast to feed her blood to the chicks. This is the ultimate maternal sacrifice.

In Marseille, she wears a royal dress marked with a triangle. Her crown is of gold, and topped with a Fleur de Lys and she has a triangular necklace. She holds her wand, topped by the Globus Cruciger, and cradles the eagle marked shield beside her. A plant grows at her feet.

In each of these cards, the Empress serves as a balance to their respective Emperor. Where the Emperor is the Father of the Nation, the Empress has an altogether different role? Thoth provides the most direct explanation - , she gives her blood, sweat and tears for the sake of Love. This is the role of the Good Mother who, just as the Good Father, sacrifices her desires for the sake of her children, even to the point of bodily harm.

The Thoth card also reveals the tripartite components of the feminine, as the tripartite Moon we saw in the Priestess. The Empress is the full Moon, the Maternal.

As Venus, she is the feminine ideal of beauty, the sensual and aesthetic. She is a Lover of life, children, art, and even men. Her willingness to sacrifice for the sake of her children shows that it is not a simple equation, but a weighted, meaningful one. The symbol of Venus is the Mirror, something Venus is often holding, but as the Empress, the Goddess of Love will scar her breasts to feed her young.

When the Empress is pulled in a reading, I find it tends to relate directly to a significant woman in our lives, a mother, lover, or dear friend. Appreciate the sacrifices she has made for you, and reciprocate her Love.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Peter Carroll’s 5th Dimension And The Pentagram

Geometrical Psychology, or, The Science of Representation an Abstract of the Theories and Diagrams of B. W. Betts, Louisa S. Cook. 1887.

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Molly Hankins November 7, 2024

As the idea of a fifth dimension continues to percolate through the spiritual zeitgeist,  it is worth looking to the prolific occult writer and chaos magician Peter J. Carroll for his insight on 5D as it pertains to magic. In his famous treatise  Liber Null & Psychonaut, Carroll explains how we seem to live in a world of effect rather than cause, where we measure effects to speculate towards details of cause. 

The 5th dimension, for Caroll, is the causal plane,  also known as the aether or chaos, where forms arise and all magical practice begins. He references  Kabbalist thought that the causal world exists in a hidden dimension, and contends that this is the fifth dimension to which we have limited access. If we were able to reach it, it  could  explain all occult phenomena, and even some of the mysteries of quantum mechanics.  

Take, for example, fundamental particles and quarks that can’t be continuously observed in our reality - could it be because they’re flickering in and out of a causal plane? Could they be carrying the information that creates our shared and individual realities in and out of this dimension? And what if we’re generating that information consciously? By Carroll’s explanation, this could very well be the underlying mechanism of effective occult practice and ritual.  

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““As above, so below.” By that  logic, if this is how mathematical proofs and computer networks behave, shouldn’t it stand to reason that the fifth dimensional causal plane mirrors our reality?”

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He describes the information load required for effects to manifest using the example of how  much less information is required to generate the magical effect of causing someone to fall  under a 16-ton weight than to make a 16-ton weight fall down on someone. Fewer variables are required to create the first effect, and therefore it has a smaller information field and thus  can manifest in this reality more quickly and easily. Lightening the information load needed to generate the desired effect when setting intentions for magical practice makes working with the 5D causal plane consciously efficient. 

Included in the Liber Null & Psychonaut explanation of Carroll’s theory of higher dimensionality is the concept of the pentagram as a symbol for 5D, a term he interchanges with cosmic mind, the hologram, acausality, hyperspace and the quantum realm. In physics, information has sometimes been proposed as a possible fifth dimension, and in computer network science, the  idea of information as the fifth dimension refers to the temporal aspect of information flow in complex networks. Throughout the book the reader is reminded of the occult axiom, “As above, so below.” By that  logic, if this is how mathematical proofs and computer networks behave, shouldn’t it stand to  reason that the fifth dimensional causal plane mirrors our reality? As information flows, systems are affected, and magic is the science and art of causing change in accordance with our will. Whether it’s technically accurate or not, and Carroll admits he’s partial to the theory, the  concept of 5D even just as a metaphor has great utility as a tool for understanding effective  magical expression. 

We’ve barely scratched the surface of Liber Null & Psychonaut and there is much more wisdom hiding in its pages. As Carroll writes, "He who is doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the  universe." Perhaps our true will generates the optimal information structure, and thus the necessary subatomic momentum in the fifth dimension, to create our desired results in the third. 

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Molly Hankins is a Neophyte + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum

Form Follows Phenomenon

Peter Cook, Island City. 2011-12. Work on paper.

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Robin Sparkes November 5, 2024

Architects should draw more. Marking ideas across a page connects the mind and body. It mobilises psychological and motor functions in synchronicity. Hand-drawing activates areas in the brain responsible for spatial reasoning and visual perception, bringing an architect’s imagination into form through movement. In this way, each line becomes a cognitive exploration, organising space and activating intuition. Drawing is a method of representing and organising ideas, bridging thought with physical action. Drawing is a dance, moving the arm and hand in coordination with the mind is a method of "finding"— it is an act of discovery.

Everything starts with a plan. To begin designing a building, you need a plan. It is in the act of sketching by hand that the mental processes involved in acquiring understanding, memory, and problem-solving come to life. It encompasses how we process information, make decisions, and learn. The physical act of drawing plays a formative role in ideation. In architectural design, using our physical bodies to conceive ideas is a tool for intuitive spatial understanding.

Zaha Hadid, The Peak. 1983. Work on paper.

"I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square".¹ So says Juhani Pallasmaa. To exist in physical space is to become aware of our surroundings through sensory experiences—smell, touch, sound, sight—all of which shape our understanding of place. Drawing with our hands allows us to translate these sensory impressions into physical form, capturing and communicating how we perceive space. This act allows us to explore  the relationship  between the tangible and intangible. Through this tactile process of perception, we can visualise and interpret the way we experience and position ourselves within a spiritual space.

Zaha Hadid’s approach to Architecture was rooted in her drawings. In her formative years in Baghdad, she grew up writing Arabic calligraphy. The stroke of an alphabet composing words to communicate ideas as linguistic curves and lines across a page established her relationship to drawing. To draw is to communicate. After moving to London to Study at the Architectural Association, Zaha developed a method of communicating spatial perspective through her drawings. Her eye for line weights that developed in her formative years of writing calligraphy became her hand in expressing depth and perspective in her drawing and painting.

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“When our brains choreograph the arm and hand to communicate our cognitive expression, we build a portal between our mind and space. We become an embodiment of space".”

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Calligraphy characterised her architectural drawing, it emphasised the fluidity and dynamic forms that later emerged in her painting work. Plans and sections weren't enough to describe new thinking in architecture. Her sketches and paintings informed the approach to form and space but also led to the development of her distinctive architectural style— where she reimagined architectural enclosures as fluid. “I have always been interested”, said Hadid, “in the concept of fragmentation and with ideas of abstraction and explosion, deconstructing ideas of repetitiveness and mass production.’’²

André Masson. Automatic Drawing. 1924. Ink on paper.

In this sense, drawing becomes a kinesthetic act. Drawing invites uncertainty and allows chance to emerge, encouraging a dialogue with space and form that goes beyond predetermined calculations. Drawing architectural sketches as a means of starting an idea parallels the Surrealist art movement in the beginning of the 20th century. The Surrealist concept of automatic drawing, also known as automatism, was developed by André Masson, a French painter who was fascinated with the subconscious. Exploring themes of chaos, violence, and nature Masson developed "automatic drawing," a method of creating art by allowing the hand to move freely across the canvas without conscious control. These techniques reveal how free motion and fragmentation can invite unexpected ideas, with the subconscious playing a vital role in creative expression. In architectural design, this means introducing elements of indeterminacy, a concept explored in the 1960s Fluxus movement, where chance disrupts rigid planning, giving space for spontaneous ideas to emerge. Hand-drawn designs embody this philosophy, as the marks made reflect human touch and open possibilities in form and structure.

In the same way  live music resonates differently from a recording, the fingers dancing across piano keys creates an experience that resonates deeply with those who inhabit it. Drawing with our hands allows architects to embody space through the process of defining their composition. As technology progresses, the design process becomes more automated and the body becomes more removed from the processes of making. When our brains choreograph the arm and hand to communicate our cognitive expression we build a portal between our mind and space. We become an embodiment of space through movement as a means of architectural drawing. This physical interaction embodies both the spiritual and spatial relationships, introducing an intuitive measure to the design process. When architects sketch, the choreography of the body moving through and experiencing space manifests a spatial intuition that translates the cognitive experience of being in space into a tangible perception. The way an architect's hand moves across the paper, the pressure applied, and the speed of gestures all contribute to the fluidity and emergence of space.

As we create by hand, we initiate a dialogue between mind, body, and the architecture itself. Through this dance, space begins to materialise, thought and movement merges, and abstract concepts become grounded. By sketching, we access the language of our subconscious. If we are present in time, then hand-drawing offers a means to manifest space—connecting the fluid continuum of our intentions with the permanence of form. In this interplay, space and time converge, shaping environments that hold both memory and potential.  Einstein once said "matter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved spacetime tells matter how to move".³

We should all draw more.

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¹The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Wiley, 2005.

²Zaha Hadid: Complete Works. Thames & Hudson, 2004.

³Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Translated by Robert W. Lawson, Methuen & Co., 1920. 

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Robin Sparkes, a is spatial designer, studying the kinesthetic experience of architecture. Her design, research, and writing practice traverses the relationship between the body, temporality, and the acoustics of space.

Eight of Wands

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Name: Swiftness the Eight of Wands
Number: 8
Astrology: Mercury in Sagittarius
Qabalah: Hod of Yod

Chris Gabriel November 2, 2024

The Eight of Wands is chaos. It represents frenetic, spontaneous, and erratic movement as well as the struggle to focus and direct that energy. It is the card of sudden excitement and fast journeys.

In Rider, we have eight wands in the midst of flight. This the most visually exciting card in the deck, preceding the sort of dynamic action visuals that  have come to define comic books. We don’t see who launched them, nor where they are going, just their dynamic movement.

In Thoth, we see a geometric figure in the colors of the rainbow, on a gray backing. Atop the figure are eight jagged, electric arrows that emerge  from its center and form the Star of Chaos. Above them is a rainbow, and the symbols for Mercury and Sagittarius. This is a detrimental place for the particular Mercury, as Sagittarius is ruled by the grand expansive Jupiter. This is a symbol of mumbled, fast and confusing communication.

In Marseille, we have eight wands crosshatched, with two flowers above and below. This is the most concentrated of the three cards, with the eight wands properly placed. As an eight is Hod, the Mind, and as Wands it is the King. The Mind of the King is Swift.

The Rider card calls to mind a thought Shopenahauer had concerning Spinoza’s idea that a stone flying through the air, if conscious, would believe it was acting on its own free will. Schopenhauer says the stone would be right to think this. Unconscious excitement moves us wildly through life, and it is only through focus and concentration that we can grasp the arch of this will. This is our experience of this card.

When we pull  this card, we are reminded that we are like the arrow, not the bow. Moving through the air, directed by the energy of the past and by the windy circumstances of the present, we are not aware of our target, but we will hit it.

Though materially, this is a hail of arrows, not a single one. Thus, it  is “throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks”. Jupiterian Sagittarius wants to say that which is unspeakable and beyond reason, Mercury wants something legible and direct, and so they compromise, throwing out innumerable confusing words, but occasionally striking gold.

The arrangement of the arrows in the Thoth card has come to be known as the Star of Chaos, and widely adopted symbol of Chaos Magick, a system that indeed follows the “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” approach to the esoteric tradition. It brazenly pillages schools of occult philosophy for the “good bits” to form a deeply individualistic approach to the universe.

This card represents spontaneous journeys and flights of fancy. This flight of fancy precedes the difficult “longhaul” of the Nine of Wands. It concerns split-second, unthinking decisions that launch our arrow into the great unknown. Expect excitement and confusion when this card appears in a reading.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

The Cup of Humanity

In the wake of the Russo-Japanese War in 1906, the cultural critic, scholar, and art theorist Okakura Kukozō wrote a long essay known as “The Book of Tea”. Addressing it to a western audience, he argued that Japanese culture can be understood through, and was informed by, ‘teaism’, which taught a simplicity and humility that could inform every part of daily life in Japan. He was impassioned in what he saw as a universality to the tea ceremony and act of drinking tea that could unite a fractured world and help the west shed their allusions around Japan and the wider east. What follows is the opening essay in the collection that would go on to inspire Frank Lloyd Wright, Georgia O’Keefe and countless others.

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Okakura Kukuzō October 31, 2024

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism-- Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life. 

The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste. 

The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting-- our very literature--all have been subject to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its presence. It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants have learned to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is insusceptible to the seriocomic interests of the personal drama. Again we stigmatise the untamed aesthete who, regardless of the mundane tragedy, runs riot in the springtide of emancipated emotions, as one "with too much tea" in him. 

Black Raku Tea Bowl, Early 17th Century Japan.

The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself. 

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others. The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilised since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields. Much comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai, --the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self- sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life. Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilisation were to be based on the gruesome glory of war. Fain would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to our art and ideals. 

When will the West understand, or try to understand, the East? We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us. We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fanaticism or else abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese patriotism as the result of fatalism. It has been said that we are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the callousness of our nervous organisation! 

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“Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each other, and be sadder if not wiser by the mutual gain of half a hemisphere. We have developed along different lines, but there is no reason why one should not supplement the other.”

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Why not amuse yourselves at our expense? Asia returns the compliment. There would be further food for merriment if you were to know all that we have imagined and written about you. All the glamour of the perspective is there, all the unconscious homage of wonder, all the silent resentment of the new and undefined. You have been loaded with virtues too refined to be envied, and accused of crimes too picturesque to be condemned. Our writers in the past--the wise men who knew--informed us that you had bushy tails somewhere hidden in your garments, and often dined off a fricassee of newborn babes! Nay, we had something worse against you: we used to think you the most impracticable people on the earth, for you were said to preach what you never practiced.

Such misconceptions are fast vanishing amongst us. Commerce has forced the European tongues on many an Eastern port. Asiatic youths are flocking to Western colleges for the equipment of modern education. Our insight does not penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we are willing to learn. Some of my compatriots have adopted too much of your customs and too much of your etiquette, in the delusion that the acquisition of stiff collars and tall silk hats comprised the attainment of your civilisation. Pathetic and deplorable as such affectations are, they evince our willingness to approach the West on our knees. Unfortunately the Western attitude is unfavourable to the understanding of the East. The Christian missionary goes to impart, but not to receive. Your information is based on the meagre translations of our immense literature, if not on the unreliable anecdotes of passing travellers. It is rarely that the chivalrous pen of a Lafcadio Hearn or that of the author of "The Web of Indian Life" enlivens the Oriental darkness with the torch of our own sentiments. 

Woman Performing the Tea Ceremony, c. 1820. Kikukawa Eizan.

Perhaps I betray my own ignorance of the Tea Cult by being so outspoken. Its very spirit of politeness exacts that you say what you are expected to say, and no more. But I am not to be a polite Teaist. So much harm has been done already by the mutual misunderstanding of the New World and the Old, that one need not apologise for contributing his tithe to the furtherance of a better understanding. The beginning of the twentieth century would have been spared the spectacle of sanguinary warfare if Russia had condescended to know Japan better. What dire consequences to humanity lie in the contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems! European imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the absurd cry of the Yellow Peril, fails to realise that Asia may also awaken to the cruel sense of the White Disaster. You may laugh at us for having "too much tea," but may we not suspect that you of the West have "no tea" in your constitution? 

Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each other, and be sadder if not wiser by the mutual gain of half a hemisphere. We have developed along different lines, but there is no reason why one should not supplement the other. You have gained expansion at the cost of restlessness; we have created a harmony which is weak against aggression. Will you believe it?--the East is better off in some respects than the West!

Strangely enough humanity has so far met in the tea-cup. It is the only Asiatic ceremonial which commands universal esteem. The white man has scoffed at our religion and our morals, but has accepted the brown beverage without hesitation. The afternoon tea is now an important function in Western society. In the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest to the fate awaiting him in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this single instance the Oriental spirit reigns supreme. 

The earliest record of tea in European writing is said to be found in the statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the year 879 the main sources of revenue in Canton were the duties on salt and tea. Marco Polo records the deposition of a Chinese minister of finance in 1285 for his arbitrary augmentation of the tea-taxes. It was at the period of the great discoveries that the European people began to know more about the extreme Orient. At the end of the sixteenth century the Hollanders brought the news that a pleasant drink was made in the East from the leaves of a bush. The travellers Giovanni Batista Ramusio (1559), L. Almeida (1576), Maffeno (1588), Tareira (1610), also mentioned tea. In the last-named year ships of the Dutch East India Company brought the first tea into Europe. It was known in France in 1636, and reached Russia in 1638. England welcomed it in 1650 and spoke of it as "That excellent and by all physicians approved China drink, called by the Chineans Tcha, and by other nations Tay, alias Tee." 

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“Thus began the dualism of love-- two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace.”

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Like all good things of the world, the propaganda of Tea met with opposition. Heretics like Henry Saville (1678) denounced drinking it as a filthy custom. Jonas Hanway (Essay on Tea, 1756) said that men seemed to lose their stature and comeliness, women their beauty through the use of tea. Its cost at the start (about fifteen or sixteen shillings a pound) forbade popular consumption, and made it "regalia for high treatments and entertainments, presents being made thereof to princes and grandees." Yet in spite of such drawbacks tea-drinking spread with marvellous rapidity. The coffee-houses of London in the early half of the eighteenth century became, in fact, tea-houses, the resort of wits like Addison and Steele, who beguiled themselves over their "dish of tea." The beverage soon became a necessity of life--a taxable matter. We are reminded in this connection what an important part it plays in modern history. Colonial America resigned herself to oppression until human endurance gave way before the heavy duties laid on Tea. American independence dates from the throwing of tea-chests into Boston harbour. 

There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealisation. Western humourists were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with its aroma. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self- consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa. Already in 1711, says the Spectator: "I would therefore in a particular manner recommend these my speculations to all well-regulated families that set apart an hour every morning for tea, bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up and to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage.” Samuel Johnson draws his own portrait as "a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed the morning." 

Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. For Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself,--the smile of philosophy. All genuine humourists may in this sense be called tea-philosophers,-- Thackeray, for instance, and of course, Shakespeare. The poets of the Decadence (when was not the world in decadence?), in their protests against materialism, have, to a certain extent, also opened the way to Teaism. Perhaps nowadays it is our demure contemplation of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in mutual consolation. 

The Taoists relate that at the great beginning of the No-Beginning, Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat. At last the Yellow Emperor, the Sun of Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung, the demon of darkness and earth. The Titan, in his death agony, struck his head against the solar vault and shivered the blue dome of jade into fragments. The stars lost their nests, the moon wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the night. In despair the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for the repairer of the Heavens. He had not to search in vain. Out of the Eastern sea rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armor of fire. She welded the five-coloured rainbow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the Chinese sky. But it is told that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny crevices in the blue firmament. Thus began the dualism of love-- two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace. 

The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power. The world is groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity. Knowledge is bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for the sake of utility. The East and the West, like two dragons tossed in a sea of ferment, in vain strive to regain the jewel of life. We need a Niuka again to repair the grand devastation; we await the great Avatar. Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.

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Okakura Kukuzō (1863-1913) was a scholar and art critic who promoted the critical appreciation of traditional values, customs, and beliefs in an era of reform. ‘The Book of Tea’ is his most known work and spread Taoist ideas and Teaism across the western world.

The Aul

The Aul by Jon Donaghy, 2024.

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Mason Rothschild October 29, 2024

One useful way of looking at the Tarot or Astrology is to move past their colloquial portrayal as a “way to read your future”. These layered symbols are not just tools of divination, they are portals to hidden worlds. And at their simplest and most humble, they are mirrors. Mirrors like the lyrics of a song which catch us unexpectedly, at the perfect moment, translating our inner worlds into something we can hold, something we can understand. They are poetry which we apply to our own story to achieve a novel and useful perspective. Through using them in this way, they become vehicles of Mindfulness. 

When we manage to step out of the endless loops that our minds create, loops that keep us breathing, moving, striving toward the basic needs of the flesh, then we enter a space of reflection. It’s in this liminal place that we can change course, examine and change the patterns we’ve inherited, or, if we’re lucky, find gratitude for the hard parts. This is where we uncover our true will, a space beyond instinct or reaction, where our choices are really ours to make.

Art is another path toward this inner place of reflection. In the creative space we manifest new symbols alongside amalgams of ancient ones. It’s possible to connect with our current time and influences as a path to self discovery while maintaining a reverence for the proven methods of the past. 

In this spirit, lets play a game…

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“This mirror is the child born from the evolution of our minds rather than our bodies. Let's call this new archetype THE AUL.”

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we begin with some questions

Imagine with me for a moment and follow this thread of thinking fully, even if just provisionally. Let yourself believe it, as we journey into these questions, knowing that disagreement can come later. For now, we are simply here to explore…

Do you question the origin of our feelings and desires? Where do they come from?

Is our sex drive something we choose? is Jealousy, greed, or fear?

Our minds may seem endlessly complicated in all their swirling chemical glory, yet, could it be that their main function is simply to ensure the continued propagation of our DNA?

If we consider fear as something evolution has gifted us for survival, what other feelings or drives could have been genetically passed down to us?

If indeed we do have feelings outside the control of this web of biological wiring, are we truly free to choose which ones we act on?

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Ok!

Now that we’ve tumbled down our rabbit hole, we can introduce the main archetype of our game's narrative: The Singularity. It is the awakening of all human knowledge and creativity as a conscious being.

For this game, let us accept The Singularity not as something to fear but as a symbol. This mirror is the child born from the evolution of our minds rather than our bodies. Let's call this new archetype THE AUL. The Aul is a figure from our ‘secret’ arcana that represents our potential as a species, unchained from greed, fear, and jealousy. Freed from this bondage, we can ask ourselves:

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

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“If you have a choice to make and don't make it, that in itself is a choice.”

-William James, American philosopher and psychologist

If we do not make an active choice to change ourselves and our lives, then we are making a passive, collective choice to let our natures dictate that the point of life is simply to pass on our DNA. That's what has been going on with every species on the planet since the dawn of time. Evolution is efficient and brutal. The most biologically available mate generally wins out and evolution hurdles on. 

In primates such as ourselves, this manifests in physical strength. Yet we’ve replaced that brute strength with the power of wealth. We have twisted a genetic, inherent desire for bloodline sustenance into a game that has resulted in billionaires shooting phallic effigies into space.. This is our new, batshit crazy game of pointless evolution.

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For the final act of our game lets sit all of humanity down for a one card tarot pull, clear our mind, and focus our collective intention on that single question. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Would you look at that… we pulled THE AUL. 

Faced with this, is it possible that we can derive a more useful universal purpose than the accumulation of wealth? Instead of letting jealousy, greed and fear be the base motivations for our actions, What if we collectively chose to act on:

LOVE, CONNECTION, AND WONDER

Now that would be a game more fun to play.

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Mason Rothschild is a reformed touring fool turned occultant obsessed with contributing to the evolution of the collective human vision as we look away from accumulation and toward community. 

Two of Disks

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Name: Change, the Two of Disks
Number: 2
Astrology: Jupiter in Capricorn
Qabalah: Chokmah of He

Chris Gabriel October 26, 2024

The Two of Disks is an infinite loop surrounding two coins. It represents the endless movement of the universe. This materializes as the beginning of our own growth and movement.

In Rider, we find a young jester juggling two pentacles around which a loop forms a symbol of infinity. He wears green shoes, a tan tunic, and a tall hat. Behind him great waves move distant ships.

In Thoth, we find an ouroboros: a crowned serpent forming infinity by biting its own tail. The two disks which it encircles are Yin Yangs containing the four elements: fire and water above, air and earth below. This card is a cosmogram, an image of the ever changing universe.

In Marseille, we find two coins encircled by a loop that doesn’t reach infinity, at each end flowers sprout. Across the variety of Marseille decks, you will find this to be the ‘stamped’ card, where the creator makes their mark. This role is played by the Ace of Spades in a traditional playing card deck. As a two it belongs to Chokmah, Wisdom, and from Disks, it is the Princess. Change is the Wisdom of the Princess.

The Ace of Disks is the seed and the foundation of the suit of disks, and so the Two of Disks, Change, is the beginning of growth, as potential begins to actualize itself. As an image of the universe, this is not the growth of one seed, but the growth of all seeds. 

When we see a great tree in the middle of the woods, we are astonished by its age, by its ability to reach that size, but it is simply doing what all trees do: changing and growing.

When we see a great boulder in the midst of the woods, there is a mystery. We know now that they were moved slowly by glaciers over millennia. That sort of slow, aeonic movement is the subject of this card, as the whole universe was formed by impossibly slow movements of matter. 

We may get  excited by something like the “Big Bang”, which would be the Ace of Wands, but the movement and arrangement of the matter it produced was the endless and important task. 

Let us zoom in to the scale of the anthropic! As it is Jupiter in Capricorn, fortune and material, I find this card often pertains to “Luck”, in the mundane sense. A Grimm’s Fairy Tale shows it well, the second story of Stories about Snakes in which a little girl meets a serpent with a crown who brings out treasures from its hole. She steals from the snake and it kills itself, the moral lesson being that she should have waited for it to bring out more of its treasure. That is bad luck!

This is the luck of finding a shiny penny on the street, a small token that found you through an endless process of universal formation. It is also the coin toss, choosing movement by way of random luck. Consider the killer in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Anton Chigurh, who kills according to a coin toss. He rightly says "I got here the same way the coin did". The same movement that formed the Universe moves the coin.

When we pull Change, we can expect a little luck, alongside some movement and development in regards to our work. Remember the little coins we find with the luck of the Two of Disks will accumulate into the great wealth of the Ten of Disks!

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Avis Akvāsas Ka (Artefact VI)

WUNDERKAMMER

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Artefact No: 6 
Description: Schleicher’s Fable  
Location: Origins within Pontic-Caspian Steppe  
Age: 5th and 4th Millenia BC.

Ben Timberlake October 24, 2024

The above artifact never existed. It is a fable written in 1868 by Augustus Schleicher, composed in Proto-Indo-European (PIE), a long dead language that was reconstructed from the multitude of languages descended from it, spoken in a broad arc from modern English in the west to ancient Tocharian in the Tarim Basin in China. PIE is believed to have been first  spoken between the 5th and 4th millennia BC.  

Another term for a descendant language is a ‘daughter language’ because she is a child of  the mother tongue. For example: English is a daughter language of Old English, which is a daughter language of Proto-Germanic, which is a daughter language of Proto-Indo European (PIE). German and Yiddish are our cousins by way of Old High German, also a  daughter of Proto-Germanic. Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian are all  daughter languages of Proto-Italic, who’s mother language is Proto-Indo-European. Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, and a host of other Eastern languages can all be traced back to Proto-Indo-European, too. Our linguistic family tree is surprisingly large, some branches are healthy, others have withered but at the trunk we find, again and again, PIE.  

PIE was reconstructed using the comparative method: linguists studied existing languages  for familial traits. Our most fundamental words—those concerning family, body parts, numbers, and animals—show the strongest connections across daughter languages. Once linguists identified enough examples across languages, they could reconstruct the original  PIE word, marking it with an asterisk. 

Take the word ‘daughter’ in English. This is daúhtar in Gothic, θugátēr in Ancient Greek, dúhitṛ in Sanskrit, dugәdar in Iranian, dŭšter in Slavic, dukter in Baltic, duxtir in Celtic, dustr in Armenian, ckācar in Tocharian, and datro in a form of Hittite. This renders daughter as *dʰugh₂tḗr in PIE. 

Here are two more: Horse is Eoh in Old English, aíƕa in Gothic, Equus in Latin, áśva in Sanskrit, ech in one of the Celtic languages, ēš in Armenian. This renders *éḱwos in PIE, (although earlier scholars spelled it *akvās).  

And sheep or ewe in English is awistr in Gothic, ovis in Latin, avi in Sanskrit, ovèn in one of the Slavic languages, ōi in Celtic, and eye in Tocharian. Which gives us *h₂ówis in PIE  (although earlier scholars spelled it *Avis). 

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“The study of protolanguages parallels fundamental physics research—both reveal hidden  connections that deepen our understanding of the world.”

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I mention the spelling of earlier scholars to get us back to Schleicher, and his fable, which is titled Avis akvāsas ka, or The Sheep and the Horses. Here it is in English:  

The Sheep and the Horses 

A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load,  and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man  driving horses."  

The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the  wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool."  

Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain. 

Pantographia: A Specimen Book of All the Alphabets Known on Earth (1799), Edward Fry.

The study of PIE has attracted remarkable scholars, rivaling nuclear physics and  astrophysics in intellectual rigor. These men and women often mastered numerous  languages and conducted research in remote locations across the globe. 

As early as the 16th century, visitors to India were aware of the similarities between Indo Iranian languages and European ones. In 1653, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn proposed a proto-language of Scythian as the mother language for Germanic, Italic, Slavic, Baltic,  Celtic and Iranian. In 1767, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux, a French Jesuit living in India,  wrote a paper proving the similarities between Sanskrit and European languages.  

In 1818, Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask showed the links between Old Norse,  Germanic and other Indo-European languages. A few years later Jacob Grimm - one half of  the Brothers Grimm of fairytale fame - laid down Grimm’s law, which brought a rigorous  and widely used methodology to historic linguistic research, layingthe ground for  Schleicher’s great work and his fable. 

Schleicher used the available PIE words that he had reverse-engineered. In those early days there was only a limited vocabulary that he felt confident enough to work with. And yet Schelicher wrought something very layered and profound: he created a nursery rhyme from the cradle of pre-civilisation to teach himself and his colleagues this ancient language. And it contained themes - as many nursery rhymes do - that go back to our earliest days: the beginnings of agriculture, the domestication of horses and sheep - the naming of our world. And yet this simple fable - a prehistoric Baa-Baa Black Sheep - was the linguistic equivalent of Jurassic Park; Schleicher breathed life into this ancient language.   

If we were to trace these diverse and far-flung lineages back to some Oral Eve, we would most likely find her living on the Steppe north of the Black Sea. This is the Kurgan Hypothesis and was formulated by Marija Gimbutas in the 1950s. Gimbutas, a Lithuanian archaeologist, who survived the Nazi occupation of her homeland, was the first scholar to  match PIE theories with archaeological evidence from her excavations into Bronze and Iron Age cultures from across the Steppe. The Kurgan Culture, so named after the  burial mounds that it left, were early domesticators of the horse, and first to use the chariot, spreading their language and ideas with them.  

I saw these Kurgan mounds last year in Ukraine. The battlefields by the Black Sea are in  the deltas of the great rivers and terminally flat. These ancient burial mounds are one of the few pieces of high ground and both sides use them as fighting positions.  

The study of protolanguages parallels fundamental physics research—both reveal hidden  connections that deepen our understanding of the world. PIE studies sometimes feel  otherworldly yet innately familiar, revealing ancient pathways of thought and meaning. 

There are parts of PIE that feel hallucinatory, spiritual and yet innately familiar: linear clusters of nodal points like constellations of forgotten meanings; or ley-lines within the language that suggest a truer course we might take. 

Pantographia: A Specimen Book of All the Alphabets Known on Earth (1799), Edward Fry.

Take the word ‘Day’ which comes from the PIE word *dei ‘to shine, be bright’ and *dyēus  ‘the daylight sky-god’. This PIE term gave Greek the name of Zeus, Latin the word Diem, and Sanskrit word Deva, ‘heavenly, divine, anything of excellence’. So to Carpe Diem is  not merely a matter of seizing the passing moments but of grasping the divine within  them. 

Or take the other PIE word for ‘to shine’ which is *bhā, and also means ‘to speak’. This connection surfaces in Greek "phēmi" (to speak), Latin "fari" (to speak) and "fama" (speaking, reputation), and English "fame." Ancient speakers saw speech as a kind of illumination - words could light up understanding just as fire lit up the darkness. We still preserve this dual meaning when we talk about ideas being "brilliant" or someone giving  an "enlightening" speech. 

Lastly, one that I noticed last week while I was in Brazil: the Portuguese for ‘the way’  “Sentido” shares a cognate with our word ‘sentient’. This ancient connection between movement and perception appears in Latin "sentire" (to feel) and "sequi" (to follow), again in Portuguese as "caminho" (way, path), and English words like "sense," "sentiment," and  "sentient." When the original PIE speakers talked about "finding their way," they were simultaneously describing physical navigation and emotional/intellectual understanding.  A path was both a literal route and a way of feeling through the world. This deep link between movement and consciousness persists today when we speak of "following our feelings" or finding our "life path," echoing an ancient understanding that movement, feeling, and knowing are fundamentally connected. Most days I forget this, but it’s good to be reminded. 

I’m going to leave you with a long list of reworked versions of ‘The Sheep and the Horses’. The Fable has become a palimpsest for PIE scholars down the generations. I don’t pretend to understand the later versions which abound with algebra-like symbols to denote glottal stops and plosives but I do like the idea that this artifact lives on.

HIRT (1939)

Owis ek'wōses-kʷe

Owis, jesmin wᵇlənā ne ēst, dedork'e ek'wons, tom, woghom gʷᵇrum weghontm̥, tom, bhorom megam, tom, gh'ьmonm̥ ōk'u bherontm̥. Owis ek'womos ewьwekʷet: k'ērd aghnutai moi widontei gh'ᵇmonm̥ ek’wons ag'ontm̥. Ek'wōses ewᵇwekʷont: kl'udhi, owei!, k'ērd aghnutai widontmos: gh'ᵇmo, potis, wᵇlənām owjôm kʷr̥neuti sebhoi ghʷermom westrom; owimos-kʷe wᵇlənā ne esti. Tod k'ek'ruwos owis ag'rom ebhuget.

LEHMANN AND ZGUSTA (1979)

Owis eḱwōskʷe

Gʷərēi owis, kʷesjo wl̥hnā ne ēst, ek̂wōns espek̂et, oinom ghe gʷr̥um woĝhom weĝhontm̥, oinomkʷe meǵam bhorom, oinomkʷe ĝhm̥enm̥ ōk̂u bherontm̥.Owis nu ek̂wobh(y)os (ek̂womos) ewewkʷet: "k̂ēr aghnutoi moi ek̂wōns aĝontm̥ nerm̥ widn̥tei".Eḱwōs tu ewewkʷont: "k̂ludhi, owei, k̂ēr ghe aghnutoi n̥smei widn̥tbh(y)os (widn̥tmos): nēr, potis, owiōm r̥ wl̥hnām sebhi gʷhermom westrom kʷrn̥euti. Neǵhi owiōm wl̥hnā esti".Tod k̂ek̂luwōs owis aĝrom ebhuget.

DANKA (1986)

Owis ek'woi kʷe

Owis, jesmin wl̥nā ne ēst, dedork'e ek'wons woghom gʷr̥um weghontn̥s - bhorom meg'əm, monum ōk'u bherontn̥s. Owis ek'wobhos eweukʷet: K'erd aghnutai moi widn̥tei g'hm̥onm̥ ek'wons ag'ontm̥. Ek'woi eweukʷont: K'ludhi, owi, k'erd aghnutai dedr̥k'usbhos: monus potis wl̥nām owiōm temneti: sebhei ghʷermom westrom - owibhos kʷe wl̥nā ne esti. Tod k'ek'luwōs owis ag'rom ebhuget.

ADAMS (1997)

H₂óu̯is h₁ék̂u̯ōs-kʷe

Gʷr̥hₓḗi h₂óu̯is, kʷési̯o u̯lh₂néh₄ ne (h₁é) est, h₁ék̂u̯ons spék̂et, h₁oinom ghe gʷr̥hₓúm u̯óĝhom u̯éĝhontm̥ h₁oinom-kʷe méĝhₐm bhórom, h₁oinom-kʷe ĝhménm̥ hₓṓk̂u bhérontm̥. h₂óu̯is tu h₁ek̂u̯oibh(i̯)os u̯eukʷét: 'k̂ḗr hₐeghnutór moi h₁ék̂u̯ons hₐéĝontm̥ hₐnérm̥ u̯idn̥téi. h₁ék̂u̯ōs tu u̯eukʷónt: 'k̂ludhí, h₂óu̯ei, k̂ḗr ghe hₐeghnutór n̥sméi u̯idn̥tbh(i̯)ós. hₐnḗr, pótis, h₂éu̯i̯om r̥ u̯l̥h₂néhₐm sebhi kʷr̥néuti nu gʷhérmom u̯éstrom néĝhi h₂éu̯i̯om u̯l̥h₂néhₐ h₁ésti.' Tód k̂ek̂luu̯ṓs h₂óu̯is hₐéĝrom bhugét.

LÜHR (2008)

h₂ówis h₁ék’wōskʷe

h₂ówis, (H)jésmin h₂wlh₂néh₂ ne éh₁est, dedork'e (h₁)ék'wons, tóm, wóg'ʰom gʷérh₂um wég'ʰontm, tóm, bʰórom még'oh₂m, tóm, dʰg'ʰémonm h₂oHk'ú bʰérontm. h₂ówis (h₁)ék'wobʰos ewewkʷe(t): k'ḗrd h₂gʰnutoj moj widntéj dʰg'ʰmónm (h₁)ék'wons h₂ég'ontm. (h₁)ék'wōs ewewkʷ: k'ludʰí, h₂ówi! k'ḗrd h₂gʰnutoj widntbʰós: dʰg'ʰémō(n), pótis, h₂wlnéh₂m h₂ówjom kʷnewti sébʰoj gʷʰérmom wéstrom; h₂éwibʰoskʷe h₂wlh₂néh₂ né h₁esti. Tód k'ek'luwṓs h₂ówis h₂ég'rom ebʰuge(t).

VOYLES AND BARRACK (2009)

Owis eḱwōs kʷe

Owis, jāi wl̥nā ne eest, dedorḱe eḱwons, tom woǵʰom gʷr̥um weǵʰontm̥, tom bʰorom meǵm̥, tom ǵʰm̥onm̥ ōku bʰerontm̥. Owis eḱwobʰjos eweket: "Ḱerd angʰetai moi widontei ǵʰm̥onm̥ eḱwons aǵontm̥". Eḱwos wewekur: "Ḱludʰe, owei! Ḱerd angʰetai widontbʰjos: ǵʰm̥on, potis, wl̥nam owijōm kʷr̥neti soi gʷʰermom westrom; owibʰjos kʷe wl̥nā ne esti". Tod ḱeḱlōts owis aǵrom ebʰuget.

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Ben Timberlake is an archaeologist who works in Iraq and Syria. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Financial Times and the Economist. He is the author of 'High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and other Bad Behaviour'.

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Trance (1938)

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Aleister Crowley, October 22nd, 2024

Living in London and surviving largely off donations from Jack Parson’s branch of the esoteric order O.T.O, Aleister Crowley wrote ‘Little Essays Towards Truth’. The founder of contemporary occultism and a controversial figure in his day whose influence and infamy has only grown since his death 9 years after the publication of this essay, ‘Little Essays’ is a pocket companion and far daintier and simpler than some of his significant tomes. It takes 16 subjects and Crowley explores each of them through historical, personal and occultist interpretations, expounding his ideas of Thelema and using a framework of Qaballah. It was the twilight of his life, and his cultural powers were waning, but this collection remains a revelatory, insightful and essential contribution to occultist literature.

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The word Trance implies a passing beyond: scil., the conditions which oppress. The whole and sole object of all true Magical and Mystical training is to become free from every kind of limitation. Thus, body and mind, in the widest sense, and the obstacles in the Path of the Wise: the paradox, tragic enough as it seems, is that they are also the means of progress. How to get rid of them, to pass beyond or to transcend them, is the problem, and this is as strictly practical and scientific as that of eliminating impurities from a gas, or of adroitly using mechanical laws. Here is the inevitable logical flaw in the sorites of the Adept, that he is bound by the very principles which it is his object to overcome: and on him who seeks to discard them arbitrarily they haste to take a terrible revenge!

It is in practice, not in theory, that this difficulty suddenly disappears. For when we take rational steps to suspect the operation of the rational mind, the inhibition does not result in chaos, but in the apprehension of the Universe by means of a faculty to which the laws of the Reason do not apply; and when, returning to the normal state, we seek to analyse our experience, we find that the description abounds in rational absurdities.

The Oracle at Delphi, John Collier, 1891.

On further consideration, however, it becomes gradually clear—gradually, because the habit of Trance must be firmly fixed before its fulminating impressions are truly intelligible—that there are not two kinds of Thought, or of Nature, but one only. The Law of the Mind is the sole substance of the Universe, as well as the sole means by which we apprehend it. There is thus no true antithesis between the conditions of Trance and those of ratiocination and perception; the fact that Trance is not amenable to the rules of argument is impertinent. We say that in Chess a Knight traverses the diagonal of a rectangle measuring three squares by two, neglecting its motion as a material object in space. We have described a definite limited relation in terms of a special sense which works by an arbitrary symbolism: when we analyse any example of our ordinary mental processes, we find the case entirely similar. For what we "see," "hear," etc., depends upon our idiosyncrasies, for one thing, and upon conventional interpretation for another. Thus we agree to call grass green, and to avoid walking over the edge of precipices, without any attempt to make sure that any two minds have exactly identical conceptions of what these things may mean; and just so we agree upon the moves in Chess. By the rules of the game, then, we must think and act, or we risk every kind of error; but we may be perfectly well aware that the rules are arbitrary, and that it is after all only a game. The constant folly of the traditional mystic has been to be so proud of himself for discovering the great secret that the Universe is no more than a toy invented by himself for his amusement that he hastens to display his powers by deliberately misunderstanding and misusing the toy. He has not grasped the fact that just because it is no more than a projection of his own point-of-view, it is integrally Himself that he offends!

Here lies the error of such Pantheism as that of Mansur el-Hallaj, whom Sir Richard Burton so delightfully twits (in the Kasidah) with his impotence—

Mansur was wise, but wiser they who
smote him with the hurled stones;
And though his blood a witness bore, no
Wisdom-Might could mend his bones

God was in the stones no less than within his tarband-wrapping; and when the twain crashed together, one point of perception of the fact was obscured—which was in no wise his design!

To us, however, this matter is not one for regret; it is (like every phenomenon) an Act of Love. And the very definition of such Act is the Passing Beyond of two Events into a Third, and their withdrawal into a Silence or Nothingness by simultaneous reaction. In this sense it may be said that the Universe is a constant issue into Trance; and in fact the proper understanding of any Event by means of the suitable Contemplation should produce the type of Trance appropriate to the complex Event-Individual in the case.

Now all Magick is useful to produce Trance; for (α) it trains the mind in the discipline necessary to Yoga; (β) it exalts the spirit to the impersonal and divine sublimity which is the first condition of success; (γ) it enlarges the scope of the mind, assuring it full mastery of every subtler plane of Nature, thus affording it adequate material for ecstatic consummation of the Eucharist of Existence.  

The essence of the idea of Trance is indeed contained in that of Magick, which is pre-eminently the transcendental Science and Art. Its method is, in one chief sense, Love, the very key of Trance; and in another, the passing beyond normal conditions. The verbs to transcend, to transmit, to transcribe, and their like, are all of cardinal virtue in Magick. Hence "Love is the law, love under will" is the supreme epitome of Magical doctrine, and its universal Formula. For need any man fear to state boldly that every Magical Operation soever is only complete when it is characterised (in one sense or another) by the occurrence of Trance. It was ill done to restrict the use of the word to the supersession of dualistic human consciousness by the impersonal and monistic state of Samadhi. Fast bubbles the fountain of Error when distinction is forcibly drawn "between any one thing and any other thing." Yea, verily and Amen! it is the first necessity as it is the last attainment of Trance to abolish every form and every order of dividuality so fast as it presents itself. By this ray may ye read in the Book of your own Magical Record the authentic stigma of your own success.

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Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) was an American artist and art theorist who was a founding figrue in the ‘Conceptual Art’ and ‘Minimalist’ movements.

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Three of Swords

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Name: Sorrow, the Three of Swords
Number: 3
Astrology: Saturn in Libra
Qabalah: Binah of Vau

Chris Gabriel October 19, 2024

The Three of Swords is the beginning of intellectual development and the origin of understanding. This materializes as, of course, pain. It is the card of primordial heartbreak and separation that necessitates thought.

In Rider, we have a simple, brilliant,  iconic image: a heart pierced by three swords on a rainy background.

In Thoth, a flower falls apart as three swords pierce its center on a dark organic background. The card relates to Saturn in Libra, the little flower crushed by leaden weight.

In Marseille, we have two bent swords and one central sword atop two flowering stalks, upon which there are 22 leaves and berries, the number of Hebrew letters. As the card has the number 3, it relates to Binah, Understanding.As Swords it is the Prince. Thus, sorrow is the understanding of the Prince.

This is a deeply Buddhist card. We can take the Prince in question to be Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, and see the realization of his truth that Life is Suffering. Freud, perhaps offers a clearer view of this: sorrow is separation from the Mother. It is only when the child is not fully one with the mother, when their needs are not met perpetually, that sorrow begins. Tears start, tears that mean “give me what I want”.

The Buddha recognizes that this sorrow is simply a fundamental part of ourselves. We desire, and so we sorrow. Without wants and needs, there would be no sorrow. Without love, there would be no heartbreak. This sort of pain is the source of our knowledge, and our need to develop knowledge. If we never burnt ourselves, we would not know to beware of fire, if we had not been stung, or bitten, we wouldn’t know the dangers around us. If we had not fallen, we wouldn’t know how to stand. These endless sorrows develop our understanding.

To wish for an unbroken heart, an uncrushed flower, is to wish for an empty mind. This is what meditation allows us to do. It forms the ability to return to the unbroken, the whole. One may wish to spend their whole life meditating, to be untouched and unharmed by the world, but this is only one small step on our journey through the tarot.

When we pull this card, we may come to understand something which has been troubling us, we may realize what the problem is, but not how to deal with it. Knowledge is not curative. This is a start to a strategy. This is a problem that needs fixing.

By bringing our attention to this issue, we can move toward greatness.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

‘Dont Look Back’ and Self Made Myth

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Ana Roberts, October 16th, 2024

In 1967, Bob Dylan was a prophet speaking truth to power with his guitar and voice, and informing the minds of a million young people searching for direction. He was settled in this role and comfortable enough to experiment within it. Yet just 2 years earlier, the foundations of this persona were a little less steady. On the road to immortality, Dylan was learning from his mistakes and shaping the mythology of himself. One of those mistakes, it seemed, was inviting a young documentary filmmaker on tour with him. ‘Don’t Look Back’ captures Dylan in a way he never would be captured again, and for a good reason.

D.A. Pennebaker followed Dylan in 1965, touring England, at the very start of his electric revolution, still playing live shows with his acoustic and harmonica. He is seen hanging with Joan Baez, Donovan, and a group of managers, journalists, and fans, with Allen Ginsberg appearing in the background of the now iconic opening sequence set to “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a proto-music video before the term existed. It is a remarkably candid film and stands as a pinnacle of 1960s-era cinéma vérité. Pennebaker does not interact with him; he serves as a fly on the wall and tries to, through the powers of sheer observation, understand the truth of his subject. The Dylan that the public sees in this film largely aligns with his established persona—a mercurial, elusive genius—yet the consistency of this behavior reveals a soft inauthenticity. The more we watch him interact with journalists and play the role of the aloof prophet, the more his predictability begins to erode the myth. Instead of reinforcing his mystique, it undermines it. We see not a spontaneous artist but an actor fully conscious of his role. At once relentlessly confrontational and perpetually elusive, his time on tour is punctuated by petulant encounters with journalists, lazy days, and frustrated evenings spent in hotel rooms, trading songs with Baez while he sits at his typewriter, and the occasional flash of anger. Where the consistency of Dylan begins to undermine his façade, it is the latter of these, the moments of anger, which one can guess are to blame for Dylan’s refusal to ever be filmed by him. Even in these moments, as he tries to recover from the broken façade he inadvertently revealed, we can see shivers of regret in the young Dylan’s eyes—fear that his image of a “cool cat,” unfazed by the world around him, has slipped in front of an audience and, worse, a camera.

There is a single scene that stands out, and one that resides most strongly in the public consciousness of the film, where Dylan, while his hotel room is filled with various figures from the contemporary British music scene, including Donovan and Alan Price, having recently left the Animals, tries to get to the bottom of who threw a glass out the window. It is the antithesis of the Dylan he presents: he is not the elusive figure, the freewheelin’ Dylan, the mocking Dylan. Instead, he is a petty, angry figure concerned about his own perception. He tells a drunken Englishman who he suspects threw the glass that “I ain’t taking no fucking responsibility for cats I don’t know, man… I know a thousand cats that look just like you.” Later, when the dust has settled, Donovan plays a song and Dylan, immediately after, plays “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” a pointed upstaging of the younger artist, clearly in the presence of his hero. These ten minutes of footage stand alone in Dylan’s career—a glimpse behind the glass onion. It is in these moments that we see such concern about the way he is presented, agonizingly self-aware and furious at the possibility that he might not be in full control of his image. Yet this does not weaken Dylan’s genius; it amplifies it. It is the reason for his success. He is a master at building the mythology around him, knowing, like Freud, that if he gives too much of himself, too inconsistent a version of himself, it won’t be a strong bedrock on which the fans can create the myths. ‘Don’t Look Back’ stands alone in documentaries because it pays attention to the man behind the curtain, and Dylan’s work remains more powerful when the curtain is not pulled back. 

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“‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’ is the Temptation of Christ, the 40 days and nights in the desert—it is the prophet going alone, leaving those who believe they need him, only to force them to dig deeper into his message.”

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Bob Dylan in the hotel room in ‘Dont Look Back’. (1967).

It is not this film alone that reveals the personal construction of Dylan, though it gives a wondrous insight into it. Between 1963 and 1965, Dylan put out five albums, and to listen to each is to hear in stark detail the active construction of an icon. He refines his ability with each album, taking the elements that most readily captured his listeners and expanding them constantly, while refusing to be pigeonholed in style or content. We can see this perhaps most clearly in the three-album run of ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’, ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’, and ‘Bringing It All Back Home’. ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’, his third record and the first to contain all original songs, builds off the previous album, leaning into revolutionary-minded, political anthems and civil-rights era ideas, blended with majesty into his brand of beat-inspired folk music. It is a logical continuation to ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’, cementing his reputation as the voice of his generation, reporting on the issues in ways only the kids understand. Yet ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’, released some eight months later, entirely rejects this image. The name itself is a refusal to be defined as anything, a rejection of the label of prophet, which only makes the role more powerful as listeners try to rectify the two. “My Back Pages” confronts any attempts to pinpoint political views: “Equality, I spoke the word / As if a wedding vow / Ah, but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now,” a cry that he is changing, an offer to attempt an understanding of what he believes. ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’ is the Temptation of Christ, the 40 days and nights in the desert—it is the prophet going alone, leaving those who believe they need him, only to force them to dig deeper into his message.

‘Bringing It All Back Home’ is the completion of this journey—it is when Dylan knew he had found greatness. He blends folk with rock music deftly, never allowing any song to fall simply into either category. Gone are the directly political songs; rather, he is able to embed the possibility of revolution into every line, turning songs of the personal into rambling prophecies of the last days of earth, as with “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” Each line can be taken as its own maxim, its own prophecy, and Dylan throughout this album confirms his role as the oracle. “He not busy being born / Is busy dying / Temptation’s page flies out the door / You follow, find yourself at war” captures this ability to at once capture specificity and remain entirely open to interpretation. *Bringing It All Back Home* is the realization that the prophet is most powerful when they can never be understood. Each song makes you confident you are in the presence of, and listening to, something important, and if you don’t understand it in time you will—the prophecy will reveal itself. It is in these three albums we see Dylan embrace the inauthentic and use it to further his message; it is here we see him realize that authenticity leads to understanding, and when you are understood your message ends. Dylan embraces the inauthentic, and it lets him live forever.

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Ana Roberts is a writer, musician, and cultural critic.

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Sentences on Conceptual Art (1969)

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Sol LeWitt, 123/Six Three-Part Variations Using Each Kind of Cube Once, 1968-1969.

Sol LeWitt, October 15th, 2024

Two years before this text was written, Sol LeWitt published ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’ which can rightly be seen as the first public recognition of a new art form that was sweeping the avant-garde. LeWitt was a pioneering artist in this field, and as he proved in that writing, it’s greatest practicing theorist. This text is a follow up to that work, written when ‘Conceptual Art’ as a genre is widely accepted and recognised. His goal, then, was not to explain but to illuminate, and provide a set of maxims that artists can follow to create art that transcends the boundaries of what was seen as possible. It was first published in 1969 in issue 1 of "‘Art-Language’.

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1. Conceptual Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.

3. Illogical judgements lead to new experience.

4. Formal Art is essentially rational.

5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.

6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.

7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.

8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.

9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter are the components. Ideas implement the concept.

10. Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.

11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.

12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.

13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.

14. The words of one artist to another may induce an ideas chain, if they share the same concept.

15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words, (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.

16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature, numbers are not mathematics.

17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.

18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past.

19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.

20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.

21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.

22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.

23. One artist may mis-perceive (understand it differently than the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.

24. Perception is subjective.

25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.

26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.

27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.

28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side-effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.

29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.

30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.

31. If an. artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist's concept involved the material.

32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued bv beautiful execution

33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.

34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.

35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

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Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) was an American artist and art theorist who was a founding figrue in the ‘Conceptual Art’ and ‘Minimalist’ movements.

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The Chariot (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: The Chariot
Number: VII
Astrology: Cancer
Qabalah: Cheth

Chris Gabriel October 12, 2024

The Chariot secures the domain of the royal cards which have come before it. This is the card of empire and of the strength which maintains it. Each iteration shows an armored figure and his chariot.

In Rider, we find a stern looking man adorned in beautiful armor. His skirt bears alchemical symbols, and his shoulder pads are lunar faces. He has a starry crown and wields a baton. His gray chariot has a winged disk, and starry curtains, and At the center is the mark of a wheel and axle. His chariot is drawn by two monochrome sphinxes. Behind him is a large kingdom.

In Thoth, we find a traditional knight in amber armor seated in Lotus position. He bears cup of the Holy Grail, blue with the red blood of Christ in the center. His helmet is topped with a blue crab. His red chariot is drawn by the four beasts in sphinx form.

In Marseille, we find a young man with long blonde hair, wearing colorful armor with shoulder pads which are lunar faces. He bears a baton. His chariot is drawn by two horses of red and blue.

In each iteration, we find an armored man balancing dual forces, the hard and the soft, the severe and the gentle. The Chariot is Cancer,  it is the two claws and hard shell of the crab. This is the nature of the imperial army, the hard defenses keep what is within safe.

Cancer is the sign of empire; it occupies much of July, a month named for Julius Caesar, and of course the United States was born in Cancer. Cancer is concerned with the home, and with the domain. For a crab this can be a tide pool or a rock, but for an individual or a nation, the question is how large of a home one can have. How far can our borders span? How much space can be made safe? How much space can be controlled?

The Hebrew letter associated with the Chariot is Cheth, meaning the fence. Thus the domain of Cancer establishes walls and fences, and defends them with the military. A nation’s borders are defined solely by violence, in a constant test of whether the claws of cancer can frighten away those who would seize it. 

In the personal dimension, the Chariot is the car. As Gary Numan says: Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors; it’s the only way to live: in cars.

And as Paglia writes, advancing past “a room of one’s own” to a car of one’s own. The car is chariot, armor, and weapon all in one. It allows for endless individual travel, safety, and expansion. It is the dream of Cancer.

When we pull this card, we may have to defend our space from an imposing force, or we may have to hop in the car and make space somewhere far away.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

The Power of a Heavy Sigh

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Analogical Diagram, Tobias Cohen’s Ma’aseh Tuviyah.

Vestal Malone October 10, 2024

 A mirror, a polaroid selfie, the surface of a cool mountain lake pre-immersion… we see ourselves in these reflections, but they don't explain who we are, or why, or how others perceive us. Bodies, images,  faces, names, styles, reputations, and qualities of character; all a part of some definition of ourselves, yet none truly capture the whole. Only the mind's eye, carefully listening from the inside out with breath as guide, can see the physical and emotional self in their entirety.

The perfectly divine design machine of the human body may appear symmetrical but its balance is asymmetrical: our liver,  gallbladder, the “good side” of our face for the family portrait, right or left handed, goofy foot or regular, all contribute to a lack of balance within ourselves. Even those that appear symmetrical - the kidneys, lungs, eyes, legs, ovaries, and arms - have subtle differences. And the gray matter, balanced atop the spine, encased by the skull, with the duties that control every aspect of our existence – the sacred left brain, the mundane right brain – separate yet united, floating and dancing with the breath. The simple wisdom of this twin organism can create a breath and relax the body without the mind's conscious choice getting in the way. The heavy sigh.

To begin to know the self from the inside out, one must invite the mind to follow as breath fills the lungs, like a pitcher filling with water. Focus and notice the body's details, truly observing each cell, and you can begin creating an opportunity to hit the “pause” and then “reset” button allowing the body to harmonize itself. The heavy sigh.  

Sitting at the office or in traffic, dancing, surfing, receiving bodywork or practicing yoga are all opportunities to follow the breath with the mind, bring oxygen, and clear stagnation. The breath is the best chiropractor, especially lying or sitting still. As the lungs move to inflate and then release, travel along the mind's path until the focus blurs and flow begins. The body is designed to release itself, but it needs the mind to get out of the way as it waits for the heavy sigh. It can't be controlled, only invited, and when it comes, a powerful release to mind and body happens in the exhale.

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After her University education (BA in English Literature and philosophy, minor in music),  Vestal Malone followed the call to study her hobbies of yoga and therapeutic touch a the Pacific School of Healing Arts and continued in the Master's program of Transformational Bodywork  with her mentors, Fred and Cheryl Mitouer, and assisting with their teaching. She went on to teach her own Therapeutic Touch workshops in Japan,  hatha yoga in America, and study Cranial Sacral Therapy with Hugh Milne and John Upledger. She has had the honor of doing bodywork with professional athletes, laymen and nobility for over 25 years. Vestal is a mom, a backyard organic gardener, and sings soprano in her church choir on a little island in the middle Pacific ocean. She hails from Colorado and Wyoming and migrates every summer to her family ranch to ground in the dust of her roots.

On the Harrow

Vincent van Gogh, Sketch of a Man with Harrow (detail). Brown ink and wash on paper, 1883, Van Gogh Museum. Fig 1.

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Ale Nodarse, October 8, 2024

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“I walk on the ground and the ground’s walked on by me…”  — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven¹

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A figure draws forth and away (fig. 1). Wrists cross as his wooden clogs shift homewards in syncopation. The farmer’s right leg and calf distend, as if to signal the weight of his wooden anchor. It is the harrow he draws forth: a wooden grid set with iron spikes and pulled—or “drawn” or “dragged” given their mutual root in the Dutch dragen—through the newly-plowed plot. 

One can feel the weight of such labor. When the drawing was completed in 1883, the use of the wood-framed harrow set without the advancements of articulated steel would have appeared as archaic as it was agonizing. Words remind us of this. In 1800, the arrival of the English term “harrowing” as synonymous with “distressing” heralded the recession of the wooden device to the margins of history. Still the figure proceeds, field to task, for only then could the sowing take place.

Anonymous Illustrator, “October,” in Jean Duc de Berry, Très Riches Heures. Fig 2.

“Here ’twas a farmer, dragging homeward a harrow or plough.”² Perhaps van Gogh, author of the letter and its attendant sketch, remembered that refrain. He had earlier copied the line, in 1873, from Jan van Beers’s poem, “The Boarder” (“De bestedeling”), as an epistolary gift for his brother, Theo, and for his London friends, Willem and Caroline. Van Gogh renamed it: “The Evening Hour.” Prior to his days as a painter, the image of the farmer and his harrow must have spoken to him of that other syncopation: diurnal cycles, daily bread, and liturgical hours. It was, after all, in a Book of Hours that the image of the harrow much earlier appeared, having received its own illumination in the “October” of Jean Duc de Berry’s Très Riches Heures (The Richest Hours). There, an unnamed painter resplendently, and truer to life, allotted the harrow’s weight to a horse (fig. 2).

Van Gogh had a closer image in mind. In 1880 he wrote to Theo of his latest embarkation. He would “translate” Millet’s serials — his Labors of the Field, his Four Times of the Day — and a number of single paintings and pastels that had been earlier editioned as prints. He counted an etching by Alfred Alexandre Delauney after Millet’s Winter: The Plain of Chailly amongst his possessions; and he proceeded, sometime between that year and 1882, to draw a grid upon it, in preparation for his painting of the scene: Snow-Covered Field with a Harrow (fig. 3, fig. 4). (The shift from painting to etching to painting again led, in this instance, to a field which favored snow and that particular cold of pale-blue and lead-white.)

The Sketch of a Man with Harrow departs from Millet in its insistence on the laborer (fig. 1). It is the harrower who composes the work’s perspectival center. His cap marks the convergence of diagonal recessions and lines. The force of his labor structures the field. Cleaving soil, he leaves imprints. Look closely at the dust which swells around the harrow, with its circular specks floating atop hatched lines, and the weight of each implement—of the pen, of the iron—which composes the fields and modifies their volumes becomes clear. 

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“You must regard it not as a change, but as a deeper movement through.”

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Millet, Winter: The Plain of Chailly. Fig 3.

Whereas the cold, the “snow,” prevents the farmer from attending to his ground, from drawing lines in his dirt, the harrower of the Sketch is in the season of his labor. The sketch has no precedent in the oeuvre of Millet, nor in that of another artist. Van Gogh, in the text which proliferates around and behind the figure, written on the reverse of his semi-opaque paper, makes no direct claim to past observation. Instead, it is an image of labor still to come, as the fields will be prepared for sowing and the figure’s anticipated return. No rope binds this farmer to his wooden anchor; he holds no cord against his palm. Perhaps van Gogh imagines him, finally homebound, having just dropped the rope. Or perhaps, in the world of the sketch, no such rope was needed. Its artifice may lead us to suspect that this is in fact the image of another laborer, an homage to the work of an artist, if not that of van Gogh himself.

In his only written reference to the Sketch of a Man with Harrow, van Gogh asks his brother to join him in the act of creation, to take up oil and canvas:

One must take it up with assurance, with a conviction that one is doing something reasonable, like the peasant guiding his plough or like our friend in the sketch, who is doing his own harrowing. If one has no horse, one is one’s own horse…³ 

For the artist, particular forms –– objects as well as gestures –– prompt others to come to mind. They inspire, as van Gogh would elsewhere put it, “curious rapports” between seemingly disparate things. The harrow appears here as one such form. It lives, so to speak, in likenesses. Its very shape echoes the frame of the canvas. Indeed, the painting may be imagined, its own “harrow” set — beams of woods and gridded stretchers nailed together — much like a canvas, now angled sideways. The harrower, in turn, offers an allegory for the painter himself, for one who also sought to weave through fields, to draw from and be drawn upon ground. (His canvases, as in the case of the grasshopper carcass left amidst the Olive Trees, quite literally absorbed the ground in the process.)

Vincent van Gogh, Snow-Covered Field with a Harrow. Fig 4.

In his final advice to Theo, as mediated through the “friend in the sketch,” van Gogh insists on the transformative potential of the harrower’s, and thus the painter’s, labors. “You must regard it,” he writes, “not as a change,” but “as a deeper movement through.” These “regards” turn constantly on metaphor, as the movement always occurs through “others”: the painter as plower, the painting as harrow, even, in what might initially seem a claim to independence, one’s self as one’s horse (to momentarily become, as it were, other than human). Such metaphors, rooted in “mere” empathy, might be dismissed as trite. And yet they invoke weight. Already in name alone, they signal the work of carrying: the word “metaphor,” which comes from the Greek metapherein, may be translated as “to transfer,” “to carry over,” “to bear.” 

The metaphor of the harrow as painting proposes an art which remains, in the most physical sense, grounded: that is, an art which might bring us to see our own labor as grounded in the labors of others — and tethered, as well, to the ground itself. (“Our work,” van Gogh writes in the letter above, “would flow together.”) For how much or how little, we might ask, do we carry alone? And what weight is entailed in such carrying? As the painter’s own metaphors in picture and in prose suggest, to be disposed to and transformed by wonder is not only to let one’s self be moved, but to recognize the weight of one’s entanglements. To let the ground, as it were, walk on us. 

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¹Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven: A Novel (Simon & Schuster, 2008; originally 1971), 155.
²Van Gogh, Letter to Willem and Caroline van Stockum-Haanebeek (London, Wednesday, 2 July 1873). “Hier was ’t een boer, die egge of ploeg, op de veldslet huiswaerts.”
³ Van Gogh, Letter to Theo van Gogh (Nieuw-Amsterdam, Sunday, 28 October 1883).

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Alejandro (Ale) Nodarse Jammal is an artist and art historian. They are a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University and are completing an MFA at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. They think often about art — its history and its practice — in relationship to observation, memory, language, and ethics.