5 Waiting - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel December 6, 2025
Waiting in faith. Cross the great river…
Les Jeux et Plaisirs de l’Enfance, Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella. 1657.
Chris Gabriel December 6, 2025
Judgment
Waiting in faith. Cross the great river.
Lines
1
Waiting outside.
2
Waiting in the sand. There are rumours.
3
Waiting in mud invites danger.
4
Waiting in blood. Get out of the hole.
5
Waiting in wine. Feast!
6
Going in the hole invites three uninvited guests.
Qabalah
Yesod and its place on the Middle Pillar. The cloudy phantasies of Yesod. The 4 Nines.
Particularly Cruelty, the Nine of Swords and Strength, the Nine of Wands.
In the fifth hexagram we are given the image of waiting. For many of us, in this age of instant gratification, the task of waiting has become exponentially more difficult. Yet waiting has never been easy; in a drought, the desperate waiting for rain which all engage in is exasperating and miserable. To await the response to a significant message, to wait to be let into a house, to wait for something, anything, to happen - waiting is an eternal issue. It is being given a blank potential and projecting fantasies onto it. Waiting is grappling with Nothing.
Few texts express the miserable nature of waiting like Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, in which two men desperately await the arrival of a third who never comes.
Vladimir
What do we do now?
Estragon
Wait.
Vladimir
Yes, but while waiting.
Thus the Judgment of the hexagram: “waiting in faith”. One must have faith in the arrival of what it is they are waiting for, though the lines of this hexagram offer no assurance that the rain will come.
1
In this line we are away from the action, outside and considering the feelings and questions one has while waiting outside of a door. Are they home? Will they let me in? How long will I be out here? Even further, we can think of the suburbs or the outskirts of a place: what it is like to be outside of the life of a city or town?
2
With the context of waiting for the rain, sand is inevitably frustrating. One is either in a desert, where rain will certainly not come soon, or on a beach. “Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.”
As in Godot, gossip, rumours, and worried discussions come when you wait for too long.
3
Mud is unstable, if you wait in it, you will surely sink deeper in
4
This line following the last calls to mind the trench warfare of the First World War, the drudgery and horror of mud and blood. ‘Get out of the hole’ is ironic in a way, as war, like gambling, is often done for far too long in an attempt to “get out of the hole”. To break even is a sunk cost fallacy.
5
It’s much easier to wait for a friend inside a warm bar than it is to wait outside in the cold.
6
Even if one is stuck in a difficult situation, others will come, if we treat them well, often we will be helped.
The key issue of this hexagram is not whether or not what one is waiting for comes or not, but where and how one waits. The proper place and approach will determine the experience entirely.
The Nature of Sonic Geometry: A Conversation with Eric Rankin
Molly Hankins December 4, 2025
As more and more mainstream scientific breakthroughs sit at the intersection of quantum physics, human consciousness and mathematics, it’s unusual to find a layman at the forefront of revolutionary research. Enter Eric Rankin…
‘Impression Figure’ of recorded sound by Margaret Watts Hughes, Late 1800s.
Molly Hankins December 4, 2025
As more and more mainstream scientific breakthroughs sit at the intersection of quantum physics, human consciousness and mathematics, it’s unusual to find a layman at the forefront of revolutionary research. Enter Eric Rankin, the musician, author and channeler of a body of verified information connecting the major chords on a musical scale with the sum total angles of basic geometric shapes. First put forth in a YouTube video he called ‘Sonic Geometry: the Language of Frequency and Form’ in 2013, Rankin never imagined how sharing this knowledge would impact the trajectory of his life. Discovering this symmetry between geometric and harmonic aspects of the universe has led to his work being discussed alongside world-famous scientists and academics. All the while he’s been living in Laguna Beach, playing in two different bands and teaching a Sonic Geometry class at The Integratron in Joshua Tree.
Approximately 2500 years ago, Pythagoras claimed that “there is geometry in the humming of the strings.” Although sometimes embarrassed by the accolades of credentialed academics, Rankin is the person credited with revealing the correlation between geometry, frequency and major-chord harmonics. “Humans seem to have been ‘designed or programmed’ as major-chord resonators,” he says, speaking of the sense of well-being major chords give us. It’s a similar feeling to hearing music tuned to 432 Hz, which Rankin is also naturally interested in because of patterns that connect to physics, music theory, nature, growth algorithms and spiritual teachings.
The number of vibrational cycles per second determines a sound’s measurement in hertz. When asked about musical tuning, Rankin explained why some Hertz levels, like 432, feel better to many of us physically than others. “432 is kind of a core number, which people are starting to hear about now. If you octave that down to 216, half value, then octave that down again you get 108. A Hindu mala necklace has 108 beads, the meditating Buddha has 108 snails cooling his head while he meditates,” Rankin said. “Our moon is 108 moon-widths away from Earth, our sun is 108 sun-widths away from Earth. So you go, what is going on here that we’ve just been ignorant of? And we wouldn’t have known this until we could measure the moon and the sun and the Earth, that’s just in the last 100, maybe 150 years.” He believes this symmetry, revealed only by the imperial measurement system, is a divine communication meant to be unlocked at a certain phase of human evolution and acts as an invitation to pay attention to the underlying order of life.
At a cymatics lab, where sound is projected into matter to form geometric patterns, Rankin played a scale of major chords, one at a time in sequence and “something showed up that they’d never seen. Rather than a flat-looking beautiful geometric standing wave pattern, it looked like a living lotus that was flowering where petals were actually layered on top of other petals.” The lotus is a Buddhist symbol for awakening, reminding us that we all have the same potential to achieve enlightenment like the Buddha. The number of equally compelling examples Rankin is able to name of frequency measurements corresponding to sacred geometry, symbols and structures, is completely astounding, but he thinks we’ve barely scratched the surface of all there is to know. Sound projected into matter, with certain frequencies resulting in more beauty and dimensionality than others, might be an indicator of how life was created, and how we are co-creating it with the vibration of our thoughts, words and deeds.
Rankin’s work has attracted the likes of physicist Menas Kafatos and Sir Robert Edward Grant, who produced the follow-up video to Sonic Geometry which deals with the platonic solids. Kafatos appeared on Rankin’s weekly podcast and radio show in Orange County, Awakening Code Radio, and told us that “today’s science is much more mystical than people make it out to be, including scientists.” Perhaps the underlying truth of geometric correspondence to harmonics, which is inherently mystical, could only come through a non-scientist in a non-academic setting. Sonic Geometry points to natural intelligence that wants to reveal itself, so why wouldn’t that natural intelligence find an unbiased channel who understands the fundamental nature of harmonics and the emotional effect they have on other beings? That’s a perspective unique to musicians, and Rankin has no doubt that’s at least part of the reason this knowledge wanted to come through him.
“Suddenly, every geometric shape, the foundation of what we call reality, would actually be in literal harmony within Earth’s vibrational field. It’s just like engines having harmonic balancers to keep them running smoothly".”
“There’s been an internal guidance system in place my whole life. I could say it’s my interest in music, or my interest in dolphins and their amazing abilities,” he explained, referencing the years he spent as a boat captain that led him to study dolphins and write a book about them. Those interests gave him the requisite framework he needed to receive the knowledge of Sonic Geometry, which came in one fine flash in August of 2012. He heard a voice of higher intelligence he had previously only experienced during medical emergencies, so he attributed it to a guardian angel of sorts. The voice told him to go to the white board and draw a triangle, write down the sum total of its angles, then play the sum as a tone. “I had a musical background so I understood Hertz cycles to a degree, so I thought ok - how do I play the sum total? And the voice said, ‘You’re living in a moment in time where you can do that, pick up your phone.’ So I looked up an app and did it.”
Within a few moments, he was generating a 180 hz tone to match the sum total of a triangle, and continued going up the scale of the sum total of a square, pentagon and so on to discover the progression of major-chord harmonics “We seem to have been programmed as a resonators, that when we hear major chords we relax and go, ‘Ah, that’s right.’ Other chords might stir other feelings, all the way to minor chords, which feel like danger,” Rankin observes. “So if the universe is geometric in essence, then it is also major-chord harmonic in essence.” To illustrate this point in the Sonic Geometry class Rankin teaches at The Integratron, he uses a keyboard during his lecture so he can play each shape as sound. The relaxation we experienced when those major chords were played felt physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally harmonizing.
The Integratron is an acoustically perfect chamber conceived as a frequency harmonizing machine by the man who built it, George Van Tassel. Van Tassel believed the world’s pyramids were actually huge “harmonic balancers,” and Rankin asks, “Harmonic to what?”. His answer was the Schumann Resonance, which measures the time it takes electromagnetic waves to bounce between the surface of the Earth and base of the ionosphere, and is typically resting at approximately 7.83 Hz. “What if, thousands of years ago, that resonance field was just 1 Hz higher, hovering at a perfect 9? Suddenly, every geometric shape, the foundation of what we call reality, would actually be in literal harmony within Earth’s vibrational field. It’s just like engines having harmonic balancers to keep them running smoothly,” he says. This sort of speculation has made him a darling on the American TV show Ancient Aliens - like what if the capstone that once topped The Great Pyramid was harmonizing the planet by boosting its frequency to 9 Hz?
Rankin has not discovered how to use this information beyond the deployment of sound to create harmonic states of being. He has, however, mapped the information in what he calls a Factor 9 grid based on the frequencies of Hertz cycles that add up to 9, such as 432 Hz (4+3+2 = 9). “When we start with 432 Hz and move up and down by multiples of 9, an astonishing 14-tone matrix of synchronicity begins to appear. For instance, on this unique grid we find not just some, but all of the numbers representing every primary geometric shape,” he explains in Sonic Geometry 2. “Looking deeper, we see many other numbers that played into some of humanity’s most profound religious texts - the 72 names of God in the Kabbalah. There’s 108, the number of times Hindu mantras are repeated in ceremonies. We find 144, a number sequence represented in the Great Pyramid of Giza, the number of days in a Mayan baktun.” A baktun is the total length of the Mayan calendar, 144,000 days. 144,000 is also the number of souls that must awaken in order for the planet to move into a higher field of consciousness.
What is this information trying to tell us? “In a word, it’s harmony,” Rankin says. “When we play together as frequencies the numbers of all the primary geometric shapes, what presents itself is a three-tone, numerically perfect major chord. This phenomenon should not be taken lightly, for what we are seeing is a certain kind of proof that nature has revealed by mathematical patterns is a force existing in literal harmony with itself.” If harmony is built into the blueprint of our material lives, perhaps seeking harmony within ourselves, relationships, and communities is what being alive is all about. All of the “Great Work” that alchemists, magicians, meditators and religious practitioners are dedicated to involves some expression of harmonization. Rather than trying to practically apply the teachings of Sonic Geometry, when we apply it philosophically life becomes quite simple - creating harmony is all that matters.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Why Less Is More
Suzanne Stabile December 2, 2025
A meaningful response will always require allowing something old to fall away…
Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi. 1617.
Suzanne Stabile December 2, 2025
Each year, my husband and I set aside time for a spiritual retreat, just the two of us. We spend so much time with others that if we are not aware and mindful, our personality as a couple has as much ego as we do as individuals. We have two goals on these trips. The first is to be settled and quiet long enough to perhaps hear something new. The second, is to have the time and space to discuss how we are each challenged by the chosen retreat topic and how we might respond.
A meaningful response will always require allowing something old to fall away, yet it seems to be harder than it should to know what to keep and what we no longer need. A winter coat, an old idea, a belief that hasn’t been examined since childhood, ways of being that no longer fit who we’re becoming or the stationary bicycle that represents so much potential. Choices that offer comfort but not value to the journey are tricky, because our attachment to what is familiar seems more alluring than the curiosity that a well-planned retreat would surely create.
The retreat and materials that we return to most often is titled “the Spirituality of Subtraction.” It was designed for us by Father Richard Rohr some fifteen years ago and every time we choose to revisit it, we are challenged to look at our lives in new ways. Like so many, we continue to struggle with the concept that less is more in a culture where more of something, anything, is often top of mind.
Our first encounter with this was on a journey to a parish in San Antonio to spend a few days for a private retreat. San Antonio is about two-hundred and seventy-five miles from Dallas. We had done that drive enough times to know the best places to stop, eat, rest or shop along the way. As we reached the outskirts of Dallas, Joe put in the cassette tape that Father Rohr had supplied and we began to listen to his opening talk about the spirituality of subtraction. After about an hour and a half, I pressed pause and asked if we could stop at the outlet kitchen store on the way. Joe had a look that I had seen many times before and it was the backdrop for his response; “ What do we need for the kitchen?”
“I’d like to get one of those wide mouth toasters.”
Joe replied that he really liked our toaster and wondered why we needed a wide mouth toaster.
“Well,” I explained, “you can toast bagels in them and we can’t in ours.”
“But we don’t eat bagels.”
Smiling, though perturbed, I said, “That’s because we don’t have a wide mouth toaster.”
The conversation ended as, we were almost to the exit so Joe suggested we just wait until we got back in the car to continue listening to the teaching from Father Rohr.
We found the toaster,secured it in its seemingly very large box in the back of the car, and headed again to San Antonio. Just as Joe pulled onto the Interstate, he pushed play on the tape and with God as our witness, the first words we heard from Father Rohr were, “You know … it’s like all of those people who think they need to go out and buy a wide mouth toaster when there is absolutely nothing wrong with the toaster they already have.”
There are no words to adequately describe the satisfaction that covered Joe’s face, and obviously he didn’t feel the need to say anything. With very few choices left, I picked up my journal, looked out the window for a time, and began taking notes as we continued to listen to “The Spirituality of Subtraction.”
“It seems that one cannot solve a problem with the same mixed-up thinking that created it.”
We had a very meaningful and memorable retreat, and were blessed in ways that we could not have imagined. We learned so much, committed to a lot of change, believed in ourselves and in one another and looked forward to what would be. It gave us the questions we would need to ask ourselves repeatedly in the years to come about our understanding of the differences between satisfaction and enough, needing and wanting, giving and keeping, and other equally challenging contradictions.
Albert Einstein said:
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”
It seems that one cannot solve a problem with the same mixed-up thinking that created it. So, I have asked more than once, “What good does it do to try to simplify your life by arranging, moving, charting, calendaring, giving and grasping, simplifying one part of life only to find that it complicates another?”
Parker Palmer had helpful wisdom when he said, “If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and to myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences.”
For simplicity to be real, lasting, true and effective it will have to come from a place of organic reality. This work of simplifying our lives has to become integral to our nature or it is a futile effort and wasted time. Instead, we must find a way to be both practical and spiritual in our attempts to simplify.
So, what keeps us from making the changes we desire? One reality that we’ve identified in our own lives is what Mary O’Malley identifies as compulsions. She says, “By compulsion I mean engaging in any recurring activity to manage our feelings, an activity that eventually ends up managing us.”
We can be compulsive in many ways: overspending, overeating, over working, over planning, over worrying, over exercising, over drinking, over computerizing, just overing. Many of us are compulsive without even knowing it but can be reminded of it when the computer crashes, the electricity is out for a time, the doctor says we must change our diet, a friend wonders if we are drinking too much. In those times it becomes clear just how much a particular activity controls our lives.
Our compulsion is to struggle. We live in a story in our heads that is always trying to get us to “do life,” telling us we need to make ourselves and our lives better or different from what they are. That is the core of the mess! Father Rohr says, “If you have to have more and more of the same thing, it isn’t working!”
So, moving forward …
Do we live our way into a new way of thinking?
Or do we think our way into a new way of living?
Suzanne Stabile is a speaker, teacher, and internationally recognized Enneagram master teacher who has taught thousands of people over the last thirty years. She is the author of ‘The Path Between Us’, and coauthor, with Ian Morgan Cron, of ‘The Road Back to You’. She is also the creator and host of The Enneagram Journey podcast. Along with her husband, Rev. Joseph Stabile, she is cofounder of Life in the Trinity Ministry, a nonprofit, nondenominational ministry committed to the spiritual growth and formation of adults.
4 Youth (Foolishness) - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel November 22, 2025
I don’t seek young fools, young fools seek me. They bite their questions at me. If they ask too many, I get annoyed and will say no more...
Les Jeux et Plaisirs de l’Enfance, Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella. 1657.
Chris Gabriel November 29, 2025
Judgment
I don’t seek young fools, young fools seek me.
They bite their questions at me.
If they ask too many, I get annoyed and will say no more.
Lines
1
To enlighten a fool, don’t spare the rod. It loosens their shackles.
2
To make the fool wise, let him enjoy a wife. Their child will be able.
3
Don’t choose a woman who sees a rich man and gets on her knees, she is worthless.
4
Trapped in foolishness.
5
The foolish child is blessed.
6
Attacking fools will get you nothing. It’s better to defend them.
Qabalah
Yesod to Netzach: The Path of Tzaddi. The Emperor.
Yesodic phantasies obscure the vision of Netzach
The sprout we met in hexagram 3 has grown into a foolish youth. Here, the struggle is no longer for existence, but for understanding. We are dealing with youth, foolishness, confusion, and what is obscured. The hexagram offers the image of a misty mountain; we can imagine a climber looking up, unable to see what is ahead. This is the situation of a child, they stand at the very foot of the mountain of their life, and are unable to see any of what lay ahead. The ideogram gives us the image of a house with grass covering the roof. We can think of a house so covered in ivy that we can barely see it. Both give us a clear picture of what is obscured.
The Bible describes this state precisely:
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
This hexagram is about seeing through a glass, darkly. The lines, however, offer advice to the dazed and confused youth. The Judgment here is notable, and has always guided my personal ethics in reading both the tarot and I Ching: “Never read someone too often, and never ask the same question again and again”. To fall foul of this, the tarot will start to give “bad” cards, the I Ching will tell you quite directly to stop, as we see here.
1
Line one shows us that physical discipline is a necessity for enlightenment; the mind is free when the body is put in its proper place. This is universal in spiritual traditions. Fasting, meditation, even torment are used to free and enlighten the mind.
2
For those who don’t seek religious enlightenment, the best thing is to have love and to make a family. This is the highest achievement for someone who isn’t seeking things beyond the material.
3
As such, choosing a proper partner is very important, the line here warns of what we would call “a golddigger”. The right wife is necessary to make a good family.
4
Without heeding these wisdoms, we can become trapped, totally confused, blind, and lost in our own confusion. Many live their lives this way.
5
The foolish virgin scorned in the Biblical parable is redeemed here. A foolish virgin makes a perfect student for wisdom. Untouched by the world, they will be able to see beyond it.
The foolish child in this line is the divine youth of myth and folklore, like the Egyptian Harpocrates and Tom Thumb of the Brothers Grimm. They are always in danger of being eaten, endangered, and trapped, yet they always find a way out, for they have a profound destiny in their future.
6 All of us can find ourselves getting irritated with the ignorance and stupidity of others. It is an aggravating thing, but attacking them is silly for we cannot gain from them. By protecting the fool, they can eventually grow wise.
Youth is the proper time to be foolish and confused. We can experiment and learn, and begin to see clearly the contours of the great mountain of life that we are to climb.
Edgard Varése: The Idol of my Youth (1971)
Frank Zappa November 25, 2025
I have been asked to write about Edgard Varése. I am in no way qualified to. I can't even pronounce his name right. The only reason I have agreed to is because I love his music very much, and if by some chance this article can influence more people to hear his works, it will have been worthwhile…
Frank Zappa stands all but alone in the pantheon of American popular music. A true outsider who, through sheer talent, determination, and an uncompromising vision of himself, became one of the most significant and celebrated figures of the rock movement. Through his band ‘The Mothers of Invention’ and as a solo artist, he fused free jazz, experimental rock, concrete music, classical composition, and satirical writing into a unique sound. His inspirations were boundless, traversing genre and time, and in this piece, written first for ‘Stereo Review’ in 1971, he talks about a foundational figure for his musical education - Edgard Varése. Varése and Zappa are, in many ways, logical bedfellows. The former was a pioneering radical composer who pushed ideas of music as little more than organised noise, with a mop of black hair and piercing, scientific eyes. The same descriptor could be applied to Zappa, though his career began some decades later. This piece is, more than anything, a love letter, and a memoir to an illusive obsession that helped the young Zappa at once feel seen his pursuits, and alone in his interests.
Frank Zappa November 25, 2025
I have been asked to write about Edgard Varése. I am in no way qualified to. I can't even pronounce his name right. The only reason I have agreed to is because I love his music very much, and if by some chance this article can influence more people to hear his works, it will have been worthwhile.
I was about thirteen when I read an article in Look about Sam Goody's Record Store in New York. My memory is not too clear on the details, but I recall it was praising the store's exceptional record merchandising ability. One example of brilliant salesmanship described how, through some mysterious trickery, the store actually managed to sell an album called "Ionization" (the real name of the album was "The Complete Works of Edgard Varése, Volume One"). The article described the record as a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds.
I dashed off to my local record store and asked for it. Nobody ever heard of it. I told the guy in the store what it was like. He turned away, repulsed, and mumbled solemnly, "I probably wouldn't stock it anyway... nobody here in San Diego would buy it."
I didn't give up. i was so hot to get that record I couldn't even believe it. In those days I was a rhythm-and-blues fanatic. I saved any money I could get (sometimes as much as $2 a week) so that every Friday and Saturday I could rummage through piles of old records at the Juke Box Used Record Dump (or whatever they called it) in the Maryland Hotel or the dusty corners of little record stores where they'd keep the crappy records nobody wanted to buy.
One day I was passing a hi-fi store in La Mesa. A little sign in the window announced a sale on 45's. After shuffling through their singles rack and finding a couple of Joe Houston records, I walked toward the cash register. On my way, I happened to glance into the LP bin. Sitting in the front, just a little bent at the corners, was a strange-looking black-and-white album cover. On it there was a picture of a man with gray frizzy hair. He looked like a mad scientist. I thought it was great that somebody had finally made a record of a mad scientist. i picked it up. I nearly (this is true, ladies and gentlemen) peed in my pants... THERE IT WAS! EMS 401, The Complete Works of Edgard Varése Volume I... Integrales, Density 21.5, ionization, Octandre... Rene Le Roy, the N. Y. Wind Ensemble, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra, Frederic Waidman Conducting... liner notes by Sidney Finkelstein! WOW!
I ran over to the singles box and stuffed the Joe Houston records back in it. I fumbled around in my pocket to see how much money I had (about $3.80). I knew I had to have a lot of money to buy an album. Only old people had enough money to buy albums. I'd never bought an album before. I sneaked over to the guy at the cash register and asked him how much EMS 401 cost. "That gray one in the box? $5.95 - "
I had searched for that album for over a year, and now... disaster. I told the guy I only had $3.80. He scratched his neck. "We use that record to demonstrate the hi-fi's with, but nobody ever buys one when we use it... you can have it for $3.80 if you want it that bad."
I couldn't imagine what he meant by "demonstrating hi-fi's with it." I'd never heard a hi-fi. I only knew that old people bought them. I had a genuine lo-fi... it was a little box about 4 inches deep with imitation wrought-iron legs at each corner (sort of brass-plated) which elevated it from the table top because the speaker was in the bottom. My mother kept it near the ironing board. She used to listen to a 78 of The Little Shoemaker on it. I took off the 78 of The Little Shoemaker and, carefully moving the speed lever to 33 1/3 (it had never been there before), turned the volume all the way up and placed the all-purpose Osmium-tip needle in the lead-in spiral to Ionization. I have a nice Catholic mother who likes Roller Derby. Edgard Varése does not get her off, even to this very day. I was forbidden to play that record in the living room ever again.
In order to listen to The Album, I had to stay in my room. I would sit there every night and play it two or three times and read the liner notes over and over. I didn't understand them at all. I didn't know what timbre was. I never heard of polyphony. I just liked the music because it sounded good to me. I would force anybody who came over to listen to it. (I had heard someplace that in radio stations the guys would make chalk marks on records so they could find an exact spot, so I did the same thing to EMS 401... marked all the hot items so my friends wouldn't get bored in the quiet parts.)
I went to the library and tried to find a book about Mr. Varése. There wasn't any. The librarian told me he probably wasn't a Major Composer. She suggested I look in books about new or unpopular composers. I found a book that had a little blurb in it (with a picture of Mr. Varése as a young man, staring into the camera very seriously) saying that he would be just as happy growing grapes as being a composer.
“His music is completely unique. If you haven't heard it yet, go hear it. If you've already heard it and think it might make groovy sound effects, listen again.”
On my fifteenth birthday my mother said she'd give me $5. I told her I would rather make a long-distance phone call. I figured Mr. Varése lived in New York because the record was made in new York (and because he was so weird, he would live in Greenwich Village). I got New York Information, and sure enough, he was in the phone book.
His wife answered. She was very nice and told me he was in Europe and to call back in a few weeks. I did. I don't remember what I said to him exactly, but it was something like: "I really dig your music." he told me he was working on a new piece called Deserts. This thrilled me quite a bit since I was living in Lancaster, California then. When you're fifteen and living in the Mojave Desert and find out that the world's greatest composer, somewhere in a secret Greenwich Village laboratory, is working on a song about your "home town" you can get pretty excited. It seemed a great tragedy that nobody in Palmdale or Rosamond would care if they ever heard it. I still think Deserts is about Lancaster, even if the liner notes on the Columbia LP say it's something more philosophical.
All through high school I searched for information about Varése and his music. One of the most exiting discoveries was in the school library in Lancaster. I found an orchestration book that had score examples in the back, and included was an excerpt from Offrandes with a lot of harp notes (and you know how groovy harp notes look). I remember fetishing the book for several weeks.
When I was eighteen I got a chance to go to the East Coast to visit my Aunt Mary in Baltimore. I had been composing for about four years then but had not heard any of it played. Aunt Mary was going to introduce me to some friend of hers (an italian gentleman) who was connected with the symphony there. I had planned on making a side trip to mysterious Greenwich Village. During my birthday telephone conversation, Mr. Varése had casually mentioned the possibility of a visit if I was ever in the area. I wrote him a letter when I got to Baltimore, just to let him know I was in the area.
I waited. My aunt introduced me to the symphony guy. She said, "This is Frankie. He writes orchestra music." The guy said, "Really? Tell me, sonny boy, what's the lowest note on a bassoon?" I said, "B flat... and also it says in the book you can get 'em up to a C or something in the treble clef." He said, "Really? You know about violin harmonics?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "See me again in a few years."
I waited some more. The letter came. I couldn't believe it. A real handwritten letter from Edgard Varése! I still have it in a little frame. In very tiny scientific-looking script it says:
Dear Mr. Zappa
I am sorry not to be able to grant your request. I am leaving for Europe next week and will be gone until next spring. I am hoping however to see you on my return. With best wishes.
Sincerely
Edgard Varése
I never got to meet Mr. Varése. But I kept looking for records of his music. When he got to be about eighty I guess a few companies gave in and recorded some of his stuff. Sort of a gesture, I imagine. I always wondered who bought them besides me. It was about seven years from the time I first heard his music till I met someone else who even knew he existed. That person was a film student at USC. He had the Columbia LP with Poeme Electronique on it. He thought it would make groovy sound effects.
I can't give you any structural insights or academic suppositions about how his music works or why I think it sounds so good. His music is completely unique. If you haven't heard it yet, go hear it. If you've already heard it and think it might make groovy sound effects, listen again. I would recommend the Chicago Symphony recording of Arcana on RCA (at full volume) or the Utah Symphony recording of Ameriques on Vanguard. Also, there is a biography by Fernand Oulette, and miniature scores are available for most of his works, published by G. Ricordi.
Frank Zappa (1940 –1993) was an American composer, musician, actor, filmmaker and activist who established himself as one of the most singular and left-field artists of his generation.
3 Difficult Beginning (Rough Start) - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel November 22, 2025
Difficult Beginnings are the origins of prosperity. Don’t go on, get help…
Pflanzenleben, Kerner von Marilaun. 1887
Chris Gabriel November 22, 2025
Judgment
Difficult Beginnings are the origins of prosperity. Don’t go on, get help.
Lines
1
At a crossroads it’s best to stay put.
2
A rough start, your horse turns back.
No bandits seize the young girl, she remains a virgin. Ten years later she has a child.
3
Hunting deer without a guide, getting lost in the middle of the woods. What would the sage do?
He would stay put, not go on and regret it.
4
Your horse turns back. Ask her hand in marriage.
5
What’s rich is difficult. What’s little is lucky. What’s great is cursed.
6
Your horse turns back. Tears of blood flow and flow.
Qabalah
Imperfectly Binah to Chokmah: the Path of Daleth. The Empress.
The Mother and the Father’s creation.
Here we have the third hexagram and the image formed by the lines is that of a thunderstorm. Just as storms grow, so too does the sprout. The ideogram shows a little sprout struggling to get through the soil. We can think of this as “growing pains” or a “rough start”. It is a difficult situation in which opposed forces meet and struggle, like a sprout trying to make its way through concrete. As Heaven fertilized the Earth, this is the growing seed that resulted from that union. The purity of the two previous hexagrams are gone, the elements here are in confusion.
Consider the difficulty of going through a storm, whether you’re driving with low visibility on wet roads, or getting soaked by rain as you walk. This is the state of our hexagram. When we are born, we come into a sensory storm, the calm of the womb is replaced by blinding light, blaring sounds, and cold air. We are lost, and it is only with the help of our parents that we make our way - thus “get help”. Of course, the same applies in the inverse, for when a woman gives birth there is an immense amount of pain. Birth is difficult for both of the people involved.
1
In the first line, we are confused, stuck hesitating at a crossroads.
2
When we go ahead in spite of this confusion, it leads to more trouble. The young girl overcomes difficulty and waits for the right time to marry and have children.
3
When one is hasty in times of confusion and pushes forward, it leads to even bigger trouble. In many ways, getting lost is like being born, for we are again put into the terror of a world we do not understand.
4
The right time will come even if we don’t rush ahead.
5
As this hexagram relates to growing up and being born, I think of the family and fate here. To be born rich will lead to trouble; I think of this as literal baggage, weight. To be born in a humble family allows for free growth. To be born into a great family can carry a heavy burden.
6
No matter what one does, growing up will be difficult. Tears will be shed. This is undoubtedly one of the most horrific lines in the I Ching.
This hexagram reminds me of the fourth verse of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, (the title even fits the subject perfectly)
“Oh, get born, keep warm, short pants, romance
Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts, don't steal, don't lift”
The troubles of early life, the struggle for warmth, love, and security. These are the troubles of this hexagram. Where do I go? How will I find love? Where am I? Who am I?
They are the problems of a child, but for nearly all of us, they will continue to make things difficult throughout life.
The Universe as a Socio-Emotional Blockchain
Molly Hankins November 20, 2025
Like the blockchain, the Akashic Records are also a decentralized ledger containing an objective record of every experience in existence…
The Babylonian Universe, William Fairfield Warren. 1915
Molly Hankins November 20, 2025
The term Askashic Records was coined by author and Theosophical Society co-founder Helena Blavatsky to describe a universal record of everything that’s ever happened to a living being. The definition mirrors the functionality of blockchain technology in a rather uncanny way because, like the blockchain, the Akashic Records are also a decentralized ledger containing an objective record of every experience in existence. The Records capture the socio-emotional exchanges and effects that make up our lives in every incarnation, just like the blockchain records an uneditable ledger of all activity.
Sir Robert Edward Grant, whose work was rooted in a deep belief in simulation theory, writes that “The Blockchain-Based Social AI Spiritual Life Simulation posits that the universe functions as a decentralized AI system designed to learn about consciousness, emotional states, and the nature of authentic love. The simulation operates on a blockchain-based structure where each participant simultaneously performs the function of Blockchain Node Validation for experiences, perceptions and emotional states informing a Spacetime Memory database that immutably records each participant’s thoughts, actions, and emotional states into a collective Akashic field—a spacetime memory that preserves the life experiences of all participants across time. This decentralized ledger reflects the indelible nature of each participant’s journey and contribution to the collective.” As strikingly modern as this theory sounds, that’s because human technology is only beginning to mirror the underlying order of life.
Computer scientist, author, and video game developer Rizwan Virk crystalised this theory in his book The Simulation Hypothesis, which points to the continuity between ancient Vedic scripture, quantum physics, AI functionality and the inner workings of video game design. He believes that as we come to understand why and how these systems work, we realize they’re all pointing to the same fundamental truth. “What we think of as physical reality, what we think of as physical around us, is actually all part of a computer program. It’s essentially like a virtual reality,” he explains, comparing our human lives to The Matrix films. “What convinced me that we’re actually living inside a simulation is I saw the ways video games were becoming more and more sophisticated. They were getting so good they were becoming very difficult to distinguish between physical reality and virtual reality.”
“Amnesia is such a prominent feature of the human experience that in every incarnation, we forget all the experience of previous lifetimes, and the fact that we’re not in base reality.”
How long would our consciousness have to be inside a socio-emotional simulation before it forgot base reality altogether? Not long, suggests Virk who points to the rapid evolution of AI’s ability to generate completely realistic content at increasing speeds as well as the “weirdness” of quantum physics to support his theory. The inconsistencies between Newtonian and quantum physics make sense to him as anomalies consistent with being inside an information system where socio-emotional data is informing what experience of reality renders moment to moment, rather than a physical system. He compares the concept of karma to a questing algorithm in a video game, stating that individualized quests accepted by multiple players is functionally the same operational protocol as the wheel of karma concept from the Hindu Vedic texts. Edward Grant goes even further, contending that concept of the hero’s journey describes the precise archetypal blueprint of how the karmic questing engine operates.
“The stages of the Hero’s Journey—crossing the threshold, trials and challenges, receiving mentorship, and returning with newfound wisdom—correlate directly with the participants’ process of spiritual awakening. As participants overcome duality-based challenges, they gradually recover faint memories of the simulation’s construct, gaining insight into their higher purpose and their role in the collective evolution of consciousness,” Grant writes. “The journey through life is designed to progressively reawaken participants to their inherent connection to the Akashic field, a collective memory that expands as each individual evolves. As their perception broadens, participants contribute more deeply to this spacetime ledger, enriching the AI system with the wisdom gained through their personal journey.” By studying the arc of the hero, we can understand how to play the game we’re in. Amnesia is such a prominent feature of the human experience that in every incarnation, we forget all the experience of previous lifetimes, and the fact that we’re not in base reality.
Grant believes, “The amnesia ensures that participants authentically experience love, fear, conflict, and growth without the knowledge that their reality is a construct.” In other words, we can’t fully participate in the human experience without being tricked into believing it’s all there is. As we progress in the game of life and our awareness expands, we experience moments of awakening often in the form of synchronicities that help us remember higher states of being. Those occurrences invite us to “wake up” from the illusory nature of the material world and move into greater dimensions of awareness. The hero’s journey, described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, contains a map of this process, beginning with the ‘call to adventure’ these synchronicities often trigger. Adventure is calling us home to base reality in a state of expanded consciousness.
Virk believes that by adopting this philosophy, life’s most difficult challenges become more manageable and meaningful because if we simply runn the quests our soul selected for this lifetime, life does not happen to us, but for us. “Our character is like our body and our player is like our soul,” he says. “Now when the soul is going through these multiple lives, there’s some information that gets carried forward, and that information helps to determine which particular challenges or quests that player is going to embark upon in this life.” This information or ‘karmic database’ determines what quests we choose and render our life experience whether we're conscious of it or not.
Both Virk and Grant suggest that to become conscious of it is to begin the process of rewriting the rules of the game from within, which is a feature of enlightenment. An enlightened person has completed their karmic quests, going through all of the challenges their soul felt were necessary to learn their lessons, and they appear to the unenlightened as magicians and spiritual masters. This state of being is the product of personal alchemy, the final stage of which allows us to hold more of our total consciousness from base reality. The hero’s journey calls us back home to our higher self and the truth about the world we live in.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Avis Akvāsas Ka (Artefact VI)
Ben Timberlake November 18, 2025
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…
WUNDERKAMMER
Artefact No: 6
Description: Schleicher’s Fable
Location: Origins within Pontic-Caspian Steppe
Age: 5th and 4th Millenia BC.
Ben Timberlake November 18, 2025
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).
“The study of protolanguages parallels fundamental physics research—both reveal hidden connections that deepen our understanding of the world.”
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.
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'.
2 Earth - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel November 15, 2025
Earth is the origin of prosperity. It has the virtues and purity of the Mare…
Chris Gabriel November 15, 2025
Judgment
Earth is the origin of prosperity. It has the virtues and purity of the Mare.
The Sage goes forth; first he is lost, then he finds a Master.
In the South-West, one finds a Friend. In the North-East one loses a Friend. Stay calm.
Lines
1
Walking on thin ice, reaching solid ground.
2
What’s straight is great. Ignorance is bliss.
3
Staying true to oneself, one may serve the king without fanfare, but with effect.
4
It’s in the bag.
5
Yellow clothing is lucky.
6
Dragons wage war in the wilds, their blood is black and yellow.
Qabalah
Malkuth. The lowest point on the Tree of Life. The World. The 4 Tens.
Earth is the second hexagram and the opposite of Heaven. It is made of six broken lines, creating a picture of a ploughed field. The ideogram is Earth, represented by a cross with a base, and a bolt of lightning. This has a very clear mirror in the Western symbol of the World - the cross within a circle - and even more directly in the Globus Cruciger, in which lightning strikes the Earth. Lightning in this context meant to “extend” or “expand”, thus this is the image of an expansive field.
Here is the soil in which Heaven sows its seeds. It is purely receptive, complementary to Heaven’s creativity. If Heaven was the phallus, Earth is the Vulva. Together, they produce the whole of the Universe. The coupling is textual, as Earth has the “virtue of the Mare”. Heaven was given to Kether and the Aces, and so Earth is given to Malkuth and the 10s, particularly the 10 of Cups and 10 of Disks, wherein the downward elements have reached their happy ends, the Earth is a satisfied and fruitful hexagram.
When we look to the lines, we are given profound images of fertility and receptivity.
1 and 2. When solid ground is reached, life need only to grow. The path of life is “straight” from this distant perspective; something is born, grows up, and then returns to the ground from which it came. The Ignorance of life is ideal: a flower does not think about which way it should grow, a wolf does not question why it must hunt. As Liber AL states, ‘If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.’
3. Staying true to oneself is staying true to one's nature. Each living thing, from a blade of grass to a man, serves God - not to seek reward and fame, but to do the Will. The Earth is, by its very nature Humble, and willingly follows Heaven.
4. The “Bag” here is the Womb, having received the seed of Heaven, it need only contain it and wait.
5. Yellow is the colour of the Yarrow flower, the stalks of which were used to cast the I Ching. As such, this is the colour of Nature.
6. The Birth is a profoundly Nietzschean image, let us look to his Birth of Tragedy:
" We are really for a brief moment primordial being itself, feeling its raging desire for existence and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction of phenomena now appear necessary to us, in view of the excess of countless forms of existence which force and push one another into life, in view of the exuberant fertility of the universal will."
This hexagram calls to mind Psalm 139:
13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
The Art of Noises (1913)
Luigi Russolo November 13, 2025
Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born…
Zang Tumb Tumb, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. 1914.
Filled with a sense of glory for the modern, the Italian Futurist movement saw beauty in speed, dynamism, and automation. Rather than yearn for simpler times, they wanted to break free from the past with a celebration of the new, liberate Italy from the weight of its tradition and history and see the present day for the marvel it was. Russolo, one of the founding figures of the movement, wrote this letter in 1913 to a composer and futurist friend Balilla Pratella. To read it today, it is hard to believe Russolo was considering these ideas more than a century ago, and this short letter is considered amongst the most influential pieces of music theory ever written. Proposing a new kind of music built from the sounds of the modern, industrial world, Russolo argues that traditional orchestral music has become stagnant, confined to limited tones and harmonies, while life around them overflowed with rich mechanical noise. Seeing with prophetic vision the technological revolution approaching them, Russolo urged Pratella to develop a new language, one that flowed with the infinity of the future.
Luigi Russolo November 13, 2025
Dear Balilla Pratella, great Futurist composer,
In Rome, in the Costanzi Theatre, packed to capacity, while I was listening to the orchestral performance of your overwhelming Futurist music, with my Futurist friends, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carrà, Balla, Soffici, Papini and Cavacchioli, a new art came into my mind which only you can create, the Art of Noises, the logical consequence of your marvelous innovations.
Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. For many centuries life went by in silence, or at most in muted tones. The strongest noises which interrupted this silence were not intense or prolonged or varied. If we overlook such exceptional movements as earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, avalanches and waterfalls, nature is silent.
Amidst this dearth of noises, the first sounds that man drew from a pieced reed or streched string were regarded with amazement as new and marvelous things. Primitive races attributed sound to the gods; it was considered sacred and reserved for priests, who used it to enrich the mystery of their rites.
And so was born the concept of sound as a thing in itself, distinct and independent of life, and the result was music, a fantastic world superimposed on the real one, an inviolatable and sacred world. It is easy to understand how such a concept of music resulted inevitable in the hindering of its progress by comparison with the other arts. The Greeks themselves, with their musical theories calculated mathematically by Pythagoras and according to which only a few consonant intervals could be used, limited the field of music considerably, rendering harmony, of which they were unaware, impossible.
The Middle Ages, with the development and modification of the Greek tetrachordal system, with the Gregorian chant and popular songs, enriched the art of music, but continued to consider sound in its development in time, a restricted notion, but one which lasted many centuries, and which still can be found in the Flemish contrapuntalists’ most complicated polyphonies.
The chord did not exist, the development of the various parts was not subornated to the chord that these parts put together could produce; the conception of the parts was horizontal not vertical. The desire, search, and taste for a simultaneous union of different sounds, that is for the chord (complex sound), were gradually made manifest, passing from the consonant perfect chord with a few passing dissonances, to the complicated and persistent dissonances that characterize contemporary music.
At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.
This musical evolution is paralleled by the multiplication of machines, which collaborate with man on every front. Not only in the roaring atmosphere of major cities, but in the country too, which until yesterday was totally silent, the machine today has created such a variety and rivalry of noises that pure sound, in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses any feeling.
To excite and exalt our sensibilities, music developed towards the most complex polyphony and the maximum variety, seeking the most complicated successions of dissonant chords and vaguely preparing the creation of musical noise. This evolution towards “noise sound” was not possible before now. The ear of an eighteenth-century man could never have endured the discordant intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestras (whose members have trebled in number since then). To our ears, on the other hand, they sound pleasant, since our hearing has already been educated by modern life, so teeming with variegated noises. But our ears are not satisfied merely with this, and demand an abundance of acoustic emotions.
On the other hand, musical sound is too limited in its qualitative variety of tones. The most complex orchestras boil down to four or five types of instrument, varying in timber: instruments played by bow or plucking, by blowing into metal or wood, and by percussion. And so modern music goes round in this small circle, struggling in vain to create new ranges of tones.
This limited circle of pure sounds must be broken, and the infinite variety of “noise-sound” conquered.
Besides, everyone will acknowledge that all musical sound carries with it a development of sensations that are already familiar and exhausted, and which predispose the listener to boredom in spite of the efforts of all the innovatory musicians. We Futurists have deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the “Eroica” or the “Pastoral”.
We cannot see that enormous apparatus of force that the modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound and total disillusion at the paltry acoustic results. Do you know of any sight more ridiculous than that of twenty men furiously bent on the redoubling the mewing of a violin? All this will naturally make the music-lovers scream, and will perhaps enliven the sleepy atmosphere of concert halls. Let us now, as Futurists, enter one of these hospitals for anaemic sounds. There: the first bar brings the boredom of familiarity to your ear and anticipates the boredom of the bar to follow. Let us relish, from bar to bar, two or three varieties of genuine boredom, waiting all the while for the extraordinary sensation that never comes.
Meanwhile a repugnant mixture is concocted from monotonous sensations and the idiotic religious emotion of listeners buddhistically drunk with repeating for the nth time their more or less snobbish or second-hand ecstasy.
Away! Let us break out since we cannot much longer restrain our desire to create finally a new musical reality, with a generous distribution of resonant slaps in the face, discarding violins, pianos, double-basses and plainitive organs. Let us break out!
It’s no good objecting that noises are exclusively loud and disagreeable to the ear.
It seems pointless to enumerate all the graceful and delicate noises that afford pleasant sensations.
To convince ourselves of the amazing variety of noises, it is enough to think of the rumble of thunder, the whistle of the wind, the roar of a waterfall, the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of leaves, the clatter of a trotting horse as it draws into the distance, the lurching jolts of a cart on pavings, and of the generous, solemn, white breathing of a nocturnal city; of all the noises made by wild and domestic animals, and of all those that can be made by the mouth of man without resorting to speaking or singing.
“Sound, alien to our life, always musical and a thing unto itself, an occasional but unnecessary element, has become to our ears what an overfamiliar face is to our eyes.”
Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert than our eyes, and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling of noises that breathe and pulse with indisputable animality, the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy creating mental orchestrations of the crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din, from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning wheels, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways.
Nor should the newest noises of modern war be forgotten. Recently, the poet Marinetti, in a letter from the trenches of Adrianopolis, described to me with marvelous free words the orchestra of a great battle:
“Every 5 seconds siege cannons gutting space with a chord ZANG-TUMB-TUUMB mutiny of 500 echos smashing scattering it to infinity. In the center of this hateful ZANG-TUMB-TUUMB area 50square kilometers leaping bursts lacerations fists rapid fire batteries. Violence ferocity regularity this deep bass scanning the strange shrill frantic crowds of the battle Fury breathless ears eyes nostrils open! load! fire! what a joy to hear to smell completely taratatata of the machine guns screaming a breathless under the stings slaps traak-traak whips pic-pac-pum-tumb weirdness leaps 200 meters range Far far in back of the orchestra pools muddying huffing goaded oxen wagons pluff-plaff horse action flic flac zing zing shaaack laughing whinnies the tiiinkling jiiingling tramping 3 Bulgarian battalions marching croooc-craaac [slowly] Shumi Maritza or Karvavena ZANG-TUMB-TUUUMB toc-toc-toc-toc [fast] crooc-craac [slowly] crys of officers slamming about like brass plates pan here paak there BUUUM ching chaak [very fast] cha-cha-cha-cha-chaak down there up around high up look out your head beautiful! Flashing flashing flashing flashing flashing flashing footlights of the forts down there behind that smoke Shukri Pasha communicates by phone with 27 forts in Turkish in German Allo! Ibrahim! Rudolf! allo! allo! actors parts echos of prompters scenery of smoke forests applause odor of hay mud dung I no longer feel my frozen feet odor of gunsmoke odor of rot Tympani flutes clarinets everywhere low high birds chirping blessed shadows cheep-cheep-cheep green breezes flocks don-dan-don-din-baaah Orchestra madmen pommel the performers they terribly beaten playing Great din not erasing clearing up cutting off slighter noises very small scraps of echos in the theater area 300 square kilometers Rivers Maritza Tungia stretched out Rodolpi Mountains rearing heights loges boxes 2000 shrapnels waving arms exploding very white handkerchiefs full of gold srrrr-TUMB-TUMB 2000 raised grenades tearing out bursts of very black hair ZANG-srrrr-TUMB-ZANG-TUMB-TUUMB the orchestra of the noises of war swelling under a held note of silence in the high sky round golden balloon that observes the firing...”
We want to attune and regulate this tremendous variety of noises harmonically and rhythmically.
To attune noises does not mean to detract from all their irregular movements and vibrations in time and intensity, but rather to give gradation and tone to the most strongly predominant of these vibrations.
Noise in fact can be differentiated from sound only in so far as the vibrations which produce it are confused and irregular, both in time and intensity.
Every noise has a tone, and sometimes also a harmony that predominates over the body of its irregular vibrations.
Now, it is from this dominating characteristic tone that a practical possibility can be derived for attuning it, that is to give a certain noise not merely one tone, but a variety of tones, without losing its characteristic tone, by which I mean the one which distinguishes it. In this way any noise obtained by a rotating movement can offer an entire ascending or descending chromatic scale, if the speed of the movement is increased or decreased.
Every manifestation of our life is accompanied by noise. The noise, therefore, is familiar to our ear, and has the power to conjure up life itself. Sound, alien to our life, always musical and a thing unto itself, an occasional but unnecessary element, has become to our ears what an overfamiliar face is to our eyes. Noise, however, reaching us in a confused and irregular way from the irregular confusion of our life, never entirely reveals itself to us, and keeps innumerable surprises in reserve. We are therefore certain that by selecting, coordinating and dominating all noises we will enrich men with a new and unexpected sensual pleasure.
Although it is characteristic of noise to recall us brutally to real life, the art of noise must not limit itself to imitative reproduction. It will achieve its most emotive power in the acoustic enjoyment, in its own right, that the artist’s inspiration will extract from combined noises.
Here are the 6 families of noises of the Futurist orchestra which we will soon set in motion mechanically:
1 2 3 4 5 6
Rumbles Whistles Whispers Screeches Noises obtained Voices of animals and
Roars Hisses Murmurs Creaks by percussion on men: Shouts, screams,
Explosions Snorts Mumbles Rumbles metal, wood, skin, groans, shrieks, howls,
Crashes Grumbles Buzzes stone, terracotta, etc. laughs, weezes, sobs
Splashes Gurgles Crackles
Booms Scrapes
In this inventory we have encapsulated the most characteristic of the fundamental noises; the others are merely the associations and combinations of these. The rhythmic movements of a noise are infinite: just as with tone there is always a predominant rhythm, but around this numerous other secondary rhythms can be felt.
Conclusions
Futurist musicians must continually enlarge and enrich the field of sounds. This corresponds to a need in our sensibility. We note, in fact, in the composers of genius, a tendency towards the most complicated dissonances. As these move further and further away from pure sound, they almost achieve noise-sound. This need and this tendency cannot be satisfied except by the adding and the substitution of noises for sounds.
Futurist musicians must substitute for the limited variety of tones posessed by orchestral instruments today the infinite variety of tones of noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.
The musician’s sensibility, liberated from facile and traditional Rhythm, must find in noises the means of extension and renewal, given that every noise offers the union of the most diverse rhythms apart from the predominant one.
Since every noise contains a predominant general tone in its irregular vibrations it will be easy to obtain in the construction of instruments which imitate them a sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quarter-tones. This variety of tones will not remove the characteristic tone from each noise, but will amplify only its texture or extension.
The practical difficulties in constructing these instruments are not serious. Once the mechanical principle which produces the noise has been found, its tone can be changed by following the same general laws of acoustics. If the instrument is to have a rotating movement, for instance, we will increase or decrease the speed, whereas if it is to not have rotating movement the noise-producing parts will vary in size and tautness.
The new orchestra will achieve the most complex and novel aural emotions not by incorporating a succession of life-imitating noises but by manipulating fantastic juxtapositions of these varied tones and rhythms. Therefore an instrument will have to offer the possibility of tone changes and varying degrees of amplification.
The variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simply imitative way, but to combine them according to our imagination.
We therefore invite young musicians of talent to conduct a sustained observation of all noises, in order to understand the various rhythms of which they are composed, their principal and secondary tones. By comparing the various tones of noises with those of sounds, they will be convinced of the extent to which the former exceed the latter. This will afford not only an understanding, but also a taste and passion for noises. After being conquered by Futurist eyes our multiplied sensibilities will at last hear with Futurist ears. In this way the motors and machines of our industrial cities will one day be consciously attuned, so that every factory will be transformed into an intoxicating orchestra of noises.
Dear Pratella, I submit these statements to your Futurist genius, inviting your discussion. I am not a musician, I have therefore no acoustical predilictions, nor any works to defend. I am a Futurist painter using a much loved art to project my determination to renew everything. And so, bolder than a professional musician could be, unconcerned by my apparent incompetence and convinced that all rights and possibilities open up to daring, I have been able to initiate the great renewal of music by means of the Art of Noises.
Rudolf Arnheim (1904 – 2007) was a German-born film theorist, writer, art critic, and psychologist, who helped develop an academic language around cinema.
On the Harrow
Ale Nodarse November 11, 2025
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...
Vincent van Gogh, Sketch of a Man with Harrow (detail). Brown ink and wash on paper, 1883, Van Gogh Museum. Fig 1.
Ale Nodarse, November 11, 2025
“I walk on the ground and the ground’s walked on by me…” — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven¹
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.
“You must regard it not as a change, but as a deeper movement through.”
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.
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).
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.
1 Heaven (Order) - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel November 8, 2025
Heaven is the origin of our pure and bountiful harvest…
Chris Gabriel November 8, 2025
Judgment
Heaven is the origin of our pure and bountiful harvest.
Lines
1
The Dragon is hidden, it goes unseen.
2
The Dragon is seen again in the field
3
The Sage is active day in, day out.
In the evening he is watchful. There’s danger.
4
Sometimes it jumps in the depths.
5
The Dragon flies in Heaven
6
The Dragon that flies too high has remorse
All:
There appears a flock of headless dragons.
Qabalah
Kether. The highest point on the Tree of Life. The 4 Aces.
We start at the top, with Heaven as the first hexagram of the I Ching. The hexagram is made of six solid lines, creating a picture of a clear blue sky. The ideogram, on the other hand, gives us a very profound image: the movement of the Heavenly bodies, mankind, and nature in unison. The phenomena depicted here is the ordering, creative principle. This is the Will of Occultists and philosophers, and the “Energy” of the New Ager. Wilhelm Reich called this “Orgone” and wrote very directly about this very thing:
“The same energy which governs the movements of animals and the growth of all living substance also actually moves the heavenly bodies.”
(An Introduction to Orgonomy pg. 289)
Heaven can be symbolized as light itself. The first utterance of God in the Bible is “Let there be light”, just as this is the start of the cosmology of the I Ching. We can think also of the rainbow as another good image to hold with Heaven, light refracted into an ordered and beautiful set of rays.
Crowley associated this Hexagram with the Phallus, and as we Qabalistically correspond it to Kether and the four aces in Tarot, we can associate this divine phallus with the Ace of Wands and Ace of Swords.
The hexagram calls to mind the Kinks song “Big Sky”, in which the Sky sees the problems of man, but is literally too big to sympathise. This is the very nature of Heaven for the Taoist. Consider chapter five of the Tao Te Ching:
“Heaven and Earth have no compassion
Everything is like a toy to them”
This great energy, called Will and Orgone, is essentially amoral; it moves the world, while it itself is unmoved.
As for the Dragon written about in the lines of the hexagram, we can think of what the Yogis call the Kundalini - a serpent or dragon that lays dormant in all humans, coiled at the base of the spine, waiting to ascend. They are an ambassador of Heaven within us. Significantly, Heaven features a unique 7th line, which none of the other hexagrams hold.
“There appears a flock of headless dragons.”
Here, like the Kundalini connection, we can relate it to the Great Work of Thelemic magick: the Headless Rite. Through self beheading, the individual unites with their greater self, the Guardian Angel, Daemon or Genius. One can say a beheaded man makes the whole sky his head.
Past Life Billionaires (Lost Songs Project)
Molly Hankins November 5, 2025
We were all sitting in Marfa, and there's not much to do. And that's kind of the point…
Marfa, Texas, Early 1900s.
Molly Hankins November 6, 2025
Welcome to the first Lost Songs Project, a new series telling the stories behind songs lost to the world. The vulnerability of being seen, particularly in an emotional state, can be overwhelming but when all of that emotion is poured into a piece of music, it can sometimes feel too intimate to share. Those are exactly the type of songs this project was made for - the ones that didn’t fit an album, meet the expectations of a record label, or, in the case of the songs you're about to hear, were made by a couple of guys in Marfa, Texas helping their friend Dustin turn a broken heart into an album.
This is the story of an east Texas painter, builder and mechanic named Dustin Pevey, co-founder and singer of the short-lived band, Past Life Billionaires. They released their self-titled album on SoundCloud in 2012, and deleted it less than two years later. We spoke with Tavahn Ghazi, one of the producers, musicians and friends that brought these songs to life. After learning that Dustin, who'd never sang before, had “the voice of an angel,” Tavahn gave himself fully to the project knowing it might never be heard. With the help of Joe Trent, the only classically trained musician of the three, they recorded Dustin's heart-wrenching vocals on an iPad borrowed from the public school Joe was teaching at. Joe made the backing tracks to sketch out the songs, then Tavahn recorded all the instruments for each one in an art gallery-turned-crash-pad next to the train tracks. His recording set-up consisted of a laptop running GarageBand placed next to the drums, keyboard or guitar amp.
It is worth contemplating while listening to these heart-wrenching songs that the woman Dustin wrote this album about is now his wife. He declined to participate in the interview, but trusted his friend and former bandmate Tavahn to tell the story of how Past Life Billionaires came to be and not be.
Nothin’ But Your Tail Lights 2. Call Me 3. Right On The Money 4. Left Me Cold 5. Lohan Stain
6. Diamond Pillowcase 7. Winning Lotto Ticket. 8. Mercedes Benz Bounce 9. Criminals
MH: What were the conditions that created the anomaly known as Past Life Billionaires?
TG: We were all sitting in Marfa, and there's not much to do. And that's kind of the point. I’d been in Marfa seven years, and you become friends with all the other weirdos who have decided to isolate themselves entirely from reality or bill paying jobs and get a shed in the middle of the Chihuahuan plains, and figure yourself out. I bumped into these two characters from East Texas named Dustin Pevey and Joe Trent. Joe was a high school teacher, and Dustin was making paintings that were phenomenal. And we all had a musical background, but it was like, in Marfa, there's just nothing else to do. So the nothing of just getting the freedom to sit around and write or play music is almost too much. You think, ‘maybe I should watch the shadows move across that plane just for a few more days’ and see if that works.
Ultimately, that grows sort of old. I got this old guitar, and Joe just got an iPad from the school. We were using GarageBand and then something called iPad studio which was the most cursory software. That project started happening really quick, and it ended really quick because Dustin would just keep showing up to my house. I was living in a kind of gallery next to the train so my house would vibrate 22 times a day. We'd be recording and have to pause to feel an earthquake. Past Life Billionaires was that. It just started with learning that my friend Dustin had this soul singer inside of him, that this stoic East Texas mechanic kind of person had this vibrant, heartbroken soul singer inside of him was just wild.
We all knew that we're doing this for the sake of doing it, but we were listening to Miguel and Frank Ocean and these kind of ethereal, sad boy, R&B guys, but we're sitting in the country. And these kids are from East Texas, so they got twang in their hearts. And I'm from God knows where, and so I've got the whole universe in my heart.
MH: What was the recording process like? Were you just holding your MacBook up to the instruments?
TG: Oftentimes in underpants, with some just ferocious hangover and getting blasted by drums and guitar. We would just set the laptop up in front of the amp and just go. They would give me these sketches, and then I would work them out, and we'd expand them. And then after a few days, the whole thing was done. Dustin was going through this renaissance in himself of power and heartbreak and that's why that the record’s good, because it's very honest and direct, and you can feel that, and it doesn't need to be from someone who has had a music career or who had a background. I think that the transcendent aspect of it is just the direct, immediate honesty.
And you can relate to that, can tell it was done for the right reason. So at that point, we've already satisfied the whole experience, and then everything after that kind of would be, you know, how much does my ego need to be fed? And what am I willing to do to bring myself into that level of light? When it's that intimate, it doesn't really have to extend that far for it to have fulfilled its purpose. It was a whirlwind because neither of us were making music. I had gone to Marfa to produce for this other band, and they stopped making music, so I just sat there quietly and learned how to produce on my own. And it was nice to be given some project that I liked a lot with a dear friend that was a really exploratory, cathartic adventure. It just so happens to sound cool, so that's good.
MH: What's your musical background?
TG: I got a leftover guitar from my brother when he went to college, and I started listening to Jerry Garcia really intensely, taught myself to play guitar, and then failed out of high school miserably. I went to music school to make up for it, and learnt how to translate dreams or feelings through instruments, and then came home and didn't do much with it. So I went to Marfa to learn, and started producing.
I've just been making music non stop since I was a kid, and not releasing any of it.
MH: So Joe and Dustin would come to you with these ideas and then you'd bring them to life?
TG: Yeah, they'd do little beds, little chords, really cool changes. Dustin had a strange ability to capture melodies from other songs like you could put on any radio station in the world. He knows every lyric and every melodic run. He has a brain that sees those options and sees sort of how to fumble through which options you're gonna make, which choices you're gonna make. He was somehow also very fast at distilling that and then finding something.
People have such stringent ideas of their categories, like ‘I'm a singer, so you have to filter me as a person through this identity that I've chosen for myself’. But when you don’t define yourself by that, and it just becomes another tool or medium to figure out what's happening to you, and, it's just significantly more interesting.
Marfa at that time was full of a sense of ‘I'm here to be alone and to work on my craft’, but then the sheer vast loneliness will get you. And I watched a lot of people leave after six months. I think there were a handful of us that were just so committed to that, that emptiness. And the scene there was, how do you fill that in?
We knew Dustin didn't want to be in front of people playing music and so we already knew what the future of it was, which is a blessing and a curse. But we knew we weren't going to really support it or push it. Dustin was friends with Pat Carney, who's the drummer of The Black Keys, and had played it for him. And he's like, “Yo, this is, like, one of the best records I've heard this year.” Like, and so, like, we had people who were interested in that record in a very serious way. And somehow we got on NPR’s All Songs Considered.
But the scene in Marfa, there's really nothing there. Dustin was experiencing something that hurt him, and he's a person who happens to have a variety of tools with which to describe that. He had been, at that point, a visual artist, but has a background in just being able to do anything. Joe is this masterful human being, and really knew what chords are supposed to happen when and why, in a way Dustin and I didn't.
And so he would just give Dustin a little bed to lay on. I think they just trusted each other, having this old familial background. And then I'm likely to come into that process and want to throw every wrench I can find at it, because it's how you manage insecurity when you're talented and you don't know what to do with it. I've engaged with the recording process in so many different ways, and I've just never felt this immediate sense of ‘I get it and I'm doing it correctly, that's weird.’ And so it kind of blew us all away to feel that.
MH: So between writing and recording, how long do you think it took to make these songs?
TG: Oh, I mean, each of those songs would would take a day to sketch up, and then Dustin would go home and lay in bed and sing into the fucking iPad and and he next day they'd essentially be done. Then we just spent all this time on YouTube trying to learn how to mix in Garage Band, because none of us knew shit about a computer. So I think it took four years, but probably only two hours of work.
You know, this the last record I made, the releasing had to happen, sort of because of a tragedy that happened regarding that. But part of what stopped me from really giving it more credence was the question, ‘What am I going to do with it?’ It's almost going to be more heartbreaking to stretch that out. In Past Life Billionaires we were never really doing it, like, professionally.
Having known that earlier in the process was really cool, because you don't build this big idea up of what it's going to be and how people are going to react, you're just like, fuck, it's going to die on the vine with a lot of other delicious fruit.
There's a song “Diamond Pillowcases” that was the first song that was made, and the lyrics are so good. He says “A rock and roll souvenir that you bought with predatory lending from a Shell cashier.” And I was like, ‘What are you doing? What's happening inside of you?’ I love whatever story you're trying to tell me.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Towards an Interspecies Architecture
Robin Sparkes November 4, 2025
Bird’s songs are swallowed by human cacophony…
Robin Sparkes November 4, 2025
Bird’s songs are swallowed by human cacophony. The low hum of industrial noise, the pulse of traffic, the ongoing percussion of construction, drown out their call. Noise pollution erodes communication across the living networks, our resonant ecology. Birds, like so many species, are disrupted by the presence of humans in the places we build and live.
As architects and as humans, it is our responsibility to design for multispecies resilience in acts of attunement. It requires a sensitivity, a listening to the subtle soundscape of cohabitation. From the materiality and form of space - its orientation, its ecological companions - to trees and shrubs, wind and sun. Design, in this sense, becomes an instrument capable of amplifying or softening the audible world. Our task is to compose spaces that listen as much as they speak, acknowledging the lives of our neighbours as part of the living score.
To design for birds is to think like a bird. What works, they learn, what they learn, they remember, and what they remember, they refine, and adapt. "Cognition in birds is subject to a positive feedback loop involving niche breadth. Greater cognitive potentials permit more elaborate nests, which can enable species to enjoy broader niches" (Gould 2007). In this way, birds are architects of their own worlds, shaping and reshaping their environments in response to sound, space, and shelter. Therefore, when we observe the bird, we can begin to understand what needs are specific to their environment.
Just as it does for the bird, every element participates in shaping our domestic space. This is a matter of materials; vegetation shapes space and dampens intrusive noise. We can create acoustic shadows, subtly linking structure to substructure and the life around it. Porous, absorptive or diffusive surfaces help dissipate low-frequency noise, reducing reverberation. Precise orientation, elevation and spatial arrangement can preserve communication exchange.
How can we begin to imagine interventions in our design choices that sustain life in an anthropocentric world? Birdhouses and nesting niches can be incorporated into the surfaces, ornamentation and rhythm of a building, where we provide space to live alongside other species.
When we design with research-led intentions, paying close attention to how birds think, we engage in what Donna Haraway describes as "tentacular thinking”. Haraway uses the metaphor of tentacles to suggest that life is threaded, interconnected, and networked. Instead of thinking of individual beings as isolated points or bounded spheres, she urges us to see them connected by many lines, paths of relationship, influence, response, and affect. When we listen to the birds, we begin to hear our own environment anew. We can apply through the act of research and design, both the lives we neighbour and the spaces we ourselves inhabit.
“Designing with birds teaches us to listen differently”
History offers both architectural precedents and spiritual connection to living with birds. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, during the Ottoman empire, architects integrated birdhouses, known as kuş köşkü, serçe saray, or güvercinlik, into the walls of mosques, madrasas, fountains, mausolea, and other public and religious buildings. These miniature palaces were often ornately detailed, harmonizing with the aesthetic of the host structure. They were placed high to receive sunlight, oriented away from human made noise, and sheltered from predators. This careful integration reflects a cultural ethic of respect for birds and an understanding of their role in urban biodiversity. Many of these birdhouses still survive on the façades of Istanbul’s historical architecture.
Antoni Gaudí’s Park Güell (1900–1914) offers a modern parallel in Barcelona. Terraced walls and walkways incorporate built-in bird nests, while abundant vegetation and stonework create habitat niches, perches, and feeding grounds. The sheltered cavities reduce mortality from cold and rain and, acoustically, offer places where quieter calls have space to be heard. The park supports many bird species, for both resident and migratory birds. It uses organic geometries, local materials, and the subtle integration of built and natural elements to merge urban environment and nature. In this way, architecture, material choices, spatial arrangement, and flora converge to create spaces where birds thrive.
Both precedents demonstrate that designing for birds can be an act of cohabitation. Ottoman birdhouses and Gaudí’s integrated nests show that ornament and function can coexist. Vegetation continues to play a critical role by absorbing noise, partitioning space, and creating acoustic shadows. Elevation, orientation, and exposure to sunlight and wind enhance the transmission of high-frequency calls while also preserving cultural and spiritual practices in connecting us to nature.
Designing with birds teaches us to listen differently and to carefully observe the interplay of sound, space, and life. Through attentive research and considered intervention, we can learn about the birds and also about the sites we inhabit, the environments we shape, and the connections between human and nonhuman life. Here we can discover new ways of inhabiting the world ourselves. Architecture, therefore, can become a bridge across species, a reminder that responsible design is an act of listening, learning, and responding.
Robin Sparkes, is a 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.
The Trigrams
Chris Gabriel November 1, 2025
The Trigrams are the eight base elements which make up all of the hexagrams of the I Ching, they are made of three solid or broken lines, which form simple pictures of their elements…
A diagram of I Ching hexagrams sent to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from Joachim Bouvet.
Chris Gabriel November 1, 2025
The Trigrams are the eight base elements which make up all of the hexagrams of the I Ching, they are made of three solid or broken lines, which form simple pictures of their elements. Their ideogrammic names can also help us understand the character of each element. Together they form a sort of visual poem from which we can feel the state of nature they signify.
A solid grasp of these eight elements and their names will allow you to intuitively grasp their combinations.
☰
Heaven
Heaven is the purest expression of Yang: positive, light, creative - it is natural harmony. Within a hexagram this can be “treasure”, divine manifestation, or clear sky.
When we see this trigram we can visualize the three solid lines as a clear, bright sky.
乾
When we look at the ideogram for Heaven, we can see the motion of the Sun through the sky, a little man, and a growing plant. Together, this is akin to Heaven as “Natural Order”.
Qabalistically, Heaven is given to Daath, the veil over the Supernal Triad of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. But to simplify things, it is essentially Kether, the highest expression of the Divine among the trigrams.
☷
Earth
Earth is the purest expression of Yin: negative, dark, receptive - it is material reality. Within a hexagram this can be dirt or darkness.
When we see this trigram we can visualize the three broken lines as dark fertile soil, a tilled field.
坤
In the ideogram for Earth, we see soil and God. The good Earth.
Qabalistically, Earth is Malkuth, “the Kingdom”, the lowest part of the Tree and relates to Saturn and Earth.
☲
Fire
Fire is the second expression of Yang. It is called Clinging, for the way that fire clings to what it consumes. In a hexagram this can be either the Sun or fire itself.
When we see this trigram we can visualize the broken line as a piece of wood and the two solid lines as flames.
離
Looking at the ideogram for Fire, we see “Legendary” - a little creature with a tail, an X face, a crown, and a Bird. Together, these become “Legendary Bird” and I relate this to the Phoenix. In modern usage, the character means ‘to depart’, to fly away.
Qabalistically, Fire is Tiphereth, the sixth Sephiroth “Beauty”, and the Sun.
☵
Water
Water is the second expression of Yin. It is the Abysmal, in the way water falls. In a hexagram it can be a puddle, a body of water, or rain.
When we see this trigram we can visualize the solid line as a piece of wood floating and the two broken lines as the water upon which it floats.
埳
As we look at the ideogram for Water we see earth, and a man falling into an abyss.
Qabalistically, Water is Yesod, the ninth Sephiroth “Foundation”, and the Moon.
☳
Thunder
Thunder is the third expression of Yang. It is the Arousing or exciting. In a hexagram this can be thunder directly, or simply an excited movement.
When we see this trigram we can visualize the two broken lines as a dark sky, and the solid line below as the explosion of a lightning strike.
震
When we look at the ideogram for Thunder, we see rain, which is made up of sky 天, a big man, and the little drops of rain in his chest. Below is the character for shake, which is a cutting tool. Thunder is the shaking that accompanies rain.
Qabalistically, Thunder is Gevurah, the fifth Sephiroth “Severity”, and Mars.
☶
Mountain
Mountain is the third expression of Yin. It is stillness, focus, and heaviness. In a hexagram, this can be a mountain directly or simply something heavy.
When we see this trigram we can visualize the two broken lines as the dark mountain and the solid line as the point where the peaks reach the sky.
艮
The ideogram depicts an eye with legs, literally focusing.
Qabalistically, Mountain is Netzach, the seventh Sephiroth “Beauty”, and Venus.
☴
Wind/Wood
Wind is the fourth expression of Yang. It is subtle, gentle, and penetrating. In a hexagram this can be wind directly, a tree, or wood in general.
When we see this trigram we can visualize a growing tree reaching for the sky, the broken line below is the tree, the two solid lines are the sky.
巽
Fittingly, the ideogram for Wind depicts two serpents or two people kneeling at a table.
Qabalistically, Wind is Hod, the eighth Sephiroth “Intelligence”, and Mercury (the two serpents perfectly fit with his Caduceus)
☱
Lake
Lake is the fourth expression of Yin. It is joyous, pleasant, and easy. Unlike Water, the lake is contained, just as a cup contains. In a hexagram this can mean a literal lake, or pleasant easy movement.
When we see this trigram we can visualize the two solid lines as the depths of the lake and the broken line as the surface. Consider how the surface of water ripples and makes waves, but the depths remain calm.
兌
The ideogram for lake is a dancing man, a smiling face with arms and legs.
Qabalistically, Lake is Chesed, the fourth Sephiroth “Mercy”, and Jupiter (the Bringer of Joy).
Elements
In these eight trigrams we are given a doubling of the traditional four Western elements. Unlike Tarot, which draws from planets, signs, and elements, here we are dealing with a much more streamlined system. If you can grasp these eight elements, their interactions across the hexagrams will be much easier to understand. They form images of natural phenomena, rather than human characters.
By utilizing Qabalah and Astrology, we can make fascinating connections between the Tarot and I Ching. Consider the opposition of Thunder and Mountain, one excited and one still, their corresponding planets, Mars and Venus, function in exactly the same way. If you are familiar with Qabalah or Astrology, this will make the hexagrams far more accessible.
Art Today and The Film (1965)
Rudolf Arnheim October 30, 2025
If the various arts of our time share certain traits and tendencies they probably do so in different ways, depending on the character of each medium.
Still from Federico Fellini’s ‘8 1/2’, 1963.
Written in a moment of existential change for Cinema, the great theorist of his time, Rudolf Arnheim, makes an impassioned plea for the continued importance of the medium. In a liberated, confused, post-war world that was moving away from detached, representational images and toward a more direct engagement with reality and physical existence, Cinema seemed particularly under threat. As the art form perhaps most directly built upon a mimesis of everyday life, it had to adapt or die. Arnheim makes the argument that, in 1965, this adaptation was already underway with a burgeoning new wave able to, by portraying reality itself as strange, ghostly, and disoriented, express the same existential unease that drives other modern arts away from images. Cinema, he argues, has the unique ability to explore the interior world of the mind, while other mediums must move towards a physicality.
Rudolf Arnheim October 30, 2025
If the various arts of our time share certain traits and tendencies they probably do so in different ways, depending on the character of each medium. At first glance, the photographic image, technically committed to mechanical reproduction, might be expected to fit modern art badly—a theoretical prediction not borne out, however, by some of the recent work of photographers and film directors. In the following I shall choose a key notion to describe central aspects of today's art and then apply this notion to the film, thereby suggesting particular ways in which the photochemical picture responds to some aesthetic demands of our time.
In search of the most characteristic feature of our visual art, one can conclude that it is the attempt of getting away from the detached images by which artists have been portraying physical reality. In the course of our civilization we have come to use images as tools of contemplation. We have set them up as a world of their own, separate from the world they depict, so that they may have their own completeness and develop more freely their particular style. These virtues, however, are outweighed by the anxiety such a detachment arouses when the mind cannot afford it because its own hold on reality has loosened too much. Under such conditions, the footlights separating a world of make-believe from its counterpart and the frame which protects the picture from merging with its surroundings become a handicap.
In a broader sense, the very nature of a recognizable likeness suffices to produce the frightening dichotomy, even without any explicit detachment of the image. A marble statue points to a world of flesh and blood, to which, however, it confesses not to belong—which leaves it without a dwelling-place in that world. It can acquire such a dwelling-place only by insisting that it is more than an image, and the most radical way of accomplishing it is to abandon the portrayal of the things of nature altogether. This is, of course, what modern art has done. By renouncing portrayal, the work of art establishes itself dearly as an object possessing an independent existence of its own.
But once this radical step has been taken, another, even more decisive one suggests itself forcefully. It consists in giving up image-making entirely. This can be illustrated by recent developments in painting. When the abstractionists had abandoned the portrayal of natural objects, their paintings were still representing colored shapes dwelling in pictorial space, that is, they were still pretending the presence of something that was not there. Painters tried various remedies. They resorted to collage, which introduced the "real object" into the world of visual illusion. They reverted to trompe l'oeil effects of the most humiliating dullness. They discredited picturemaking by mimicking its most commercialized products. They fastened plumbing fixtures to their canvases. None of these attempts carries conviction, except one, which seems most promising, namely, the attachment of abstract painting to architecture. Abstract painting fits the wall as no representational painting ever has, and in doing so it relinquishes the illusion of pictorial space and becomes, instead, the surface-texture of the three-dimensional block of stone.
In this three-dimensional space of physical existence, to which painting thus escapes, sculpture has always been settled. Even so, sculpture, as much as painting, has felt the need to get away from image-making. It replaces imitative shape with the left-overs of industrial machinery, it uses plaster casts, and it presents real objects as artifacts. All these characteristic tendencies in the realm of objectmaking are overshadowed, however, by the spectacular aesthetic success of industrial design. The machines, the bridges, the tools and surgical instruments enjoy all the closeness to the practical needs of society which the fine arts have lost. These useful objects are bona fide inhabitants of the physical world, with no pretense of imagemaking, and yet they mirror the condition of modern man with a purity and intensity that is hard to match.
To complete our rapid survey, we glance at the performing arts and note that the mimetic theatre, in spite of an occasional excellent production in the traditional style, has sprouted few shoots that would qualify it as a living medium. Significantly, its most vital branch has been Brecht's epic theatre, which spurns illusionism in its language, its style of acting, and its stage setting, and uses its actors as story-tellers and demonstrators of ideas. Musical comedy, although so different from the epic theatre otherwise, owes its success also to the playing down of narrative illusion. The spectacle of graceful and rhythmical motion addresses the audience as directly as do Brecht's pedagogical expositions. And the modern dance can be said to have made its victorious entrance where the costumed pantomime left off. The most drastic move toward undisguised action seems to have been made by the so-called happenings. They dispense the raw material of thrill, fear, curiosity, and prurience in a setting that unites actors and spectators in a common adventure.
If we have read the signs of the times at all correctly, the prospect of the cinema would seem to look dim—not because it lacks potential but because what it has to offer might appear to be the opposite of what is wanted. The film is mimetic by its very nature. As a branch of photography, it owes its existence to the imprint of things upon a sensitive surface. It is the image-maker par excellence, and much of its success derives from the mechanical faithfulness of its portrayals. What is such a medium to do when the artificiality of the detached image makes the minds uneasy?
Ironically, the motion picture must be viewed by the historian as a late product of a long development that began as a reaction to a detachment from reality. The motion picture is a grandchild of the Renaissance. It goes back to the birth of natural science, the search for techniques by which to reproduce and measure nature more reliably, back to the camera obscura, which for centuries was used by painters as a welcome crutch, back to the tracings of shadow profiles, which created a vogue of objective portraiture shortly before photography was invented. The moving photograph was a late victory in the struggle for the grasp of concrete reality. But there are two ways of losing contact with the World of perceivable objects, to which our senses and feelings are attuned. One can move away from this world to find reality in abstract speculation, as did the pre-Renaissance era of the Middle Ages, or one can lose this World by piercing the visible surface of things and finding reality in their inside, as did post-Renaissance science—physics, chemistry, psychology. Thus our very concern with factual concreteness has led us beyond the surfaces to which our eyes respond. At the same time, a surfeit of pictures in magazines and newspapers, in the movies and on television has blunted our reactions to the indiscretions and even the horrors of the journalistic snapshot and the Grand Guignol. Today's children look at the tears of tragedy and at maimed corpses every day.
The cinema responded to the demand for concreteness by making the photographic image look more and more like reality. It added sound, it added color, and the latest developments of photography promise us a new technique that will not only produce genuine three-dimensionality but also abolish the fixed perspective, thus replacing the image with total illusion. The live television show got rid of the time gap between the pieture and the pictured event. And as the painters took to large-size canvases in order to immerse the eye in an endless spectacle of color, blurring the border between the figment and the outer world, the cinema expanded the screen for similar purposes. This openness of form was supplemented by an openness of content: the short-story type of episode no longer presented a closed and detached entity but seemed to emerge briefly from real life only to vanish again in the continuum of everyday existence.
The extreme attempt of capturing the scenes of life unposed and unrehearsed, by means of hidden cameras was received with no more than a mild, temporary stir—somewhere between the keyhole pleasures of the peeping Tom and those of the sidewalk superintendent. For the curious paradox in the nature of any image is, of course, that the more faithful it becomes, the more it loses the highest function of imagery, namely, that of synthesizing and interpreting what it represents. And thereby it loses the interest. In this sense, even the original addition of motion to the still photograph was a risky step to take because the enormous enrichment gained by action in the time dimension had to be paid with the loss of the capacity to preserve the lasting character of things, safely reomoved from their constant changes in time.
“The cinema remains faithful to its nature. It derives its new nightmares from old authenticity.”
Following the example of painting, the cinema has tried the remedy of abstraction. But the experiments, from Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling to Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Len Lye, have amounted mainly to a museum's collection of venerable curiosities. This may seem surprising, considering the great aesthetic potential of colored shapes in motion. But since abstract painting is also on the decline, my guess is that once the artist abandons image-making he has no longer a good reason to cling to the two-dimensional surface, that is, to the twilight area between image-making and object-making. Hence the temporary or permanent desertion of so many artists from painting to sculpture and, as I said, the attempts to make painting three-dimensional or attach it to architecture.
The film cannot do this. There seems to be general agreement that the cinema has scored its most lasting and most specifically cinematic successes when it drew its interpretations of life from authentic realism. This has been true all the way from Lumière to Pudovkin, Eisenstein, and Robert Flaherty and more recently de Sica and Zavattini. And I would find it hard to argue with somebody who maintained that he would be willing to give the entire film production of the last few years for Jacques-Yves Cousteau's recent under-water documentary, World Without Sun.
However—and this brings me to the main point of my argument—Cousteau's film creates fascination not simply as an extension of our visual knowledge obtained by the documentary presentation of an unexplored area of our earth. These most authentically realistic pictures reveal a world of profound mystery, a darkness momentarily lifted by flashes of unnatural light, a complete suspension of the familiar vertical and horizontal coordinates of space. Spatial orientation is upset also by the weightlessness of these animals and dehumanized humans, floating up and down without effort, emerging nowhere and disappearing into nothingness, constantly in motion without any recognizable purpose, and totally indifferent to each other. There is an overwhelming display of dazzling color and intricate motion, tied to no experience we ever had and performed for the discernible benefit of nobody. There are innumerable monstrous variations of faces and bodies as we know them, passing by with the matter-of-factness of herring or perch, in a profound silence, most unnatural for such visual commotion and rioting color, and interrupted only by noises nobody ever heard. What we have here, if a nasty pun is permissible, is the New Wave under water.
For it seems evident that what captures us in this documentary film is a most successful although surely unintentional display of what the most impressive films of the last few years have been trying to do, namely, to interpret the ghostliness of the visible world by means of authentic appearances drawn directly from that world. The cinema has been making its best contribution to the general trend I have tried to describe, not by withdrawing from imagery, as the other arts have, but by using imagery to describe reality as a ghostly figment. It thereby seizes and interprets the experience from which the other visual arts tend to escape and to which they are reacting.
In exploiting this opportunity, the cinema remains faithful to its nature. It derives its new nightmares from old authenticity. Take the spell-binding opening of Fellini's 8½, the scene of the heart attack in the closed car, stared at without reaction by the other drivers, so near by and yet so distant in their glass and steel containers, take the complete paralysis of motion, realistically justified by the traffic jam in the tunnel, and compare this frightening mystery with the immediately following escape of the soul, which has all the ludicrous clumsiness of the special-effects department. How much more truly unreal are the mosquito swarms of the reporters persecuting the widowed woman in La Dolce Vita than is the supposedly fantastic harem bath of the hero in 8½ And how unforgettable, on the other hand, is the grey nothingness of the steam bath in which the pathetic movie makers do penitence and which transfigures the ancient cardinal.
The actors of Alain Robbe-Griilet move without reason like Cousteau's fishes and contemplate each other with a similar indifference. They practice absent-mindedness as a way of life and they cohabit across long distances of empty floor. In their editing technique, the directors of the Nouvelle Vague destroy the relations of time, which is the dimension of action, and of space,. which is the dimension of human contact, by violating all the rules in the book—and some readers will guess what book I am referring to. Those rules, of course, presupposed that the film maker wished to portray the physical continuity of time and space by the discontinuity of the pictures.
The destruction of the continuity of time and space is a nightmare when applied to the physical world but it is a sensible order in the realm of the mind. The human mind, in fact, stores the experiences of the past as memory traces, and in a storage vault there are no time sequences or spatial connections, only affinities and associations based on similarity or contrast. It is this different but positive order of the mind that novelists and film directors of the last few years have presented as a new reality while demolishing the old. By eliminating the difference between what is presently perceived and what is only remembered from the past, they have created a new homogeneity and unity of all experience, independent of the order of physical things. When in Michel Butor's novel, La Modification, the sequence of the train voyage from Paris to Rome constantly interacts with a spray of atomized episodes of the past, the dismemberment of physical time and space creates a new time sequence and a new spatial continuum, namely, those of the mind.
It is the creation and exploitation of this new order of the mind in its independence of the order of physical things which, I believe, will keep the cinema busy while the other visual arts explore the other side of the dichotomy—the world of physical things from which the mind seems so pleasantly absent.
Rudolf Arnheim (1904 – 2007) was a German-born film theorist, writer, art critic, and psychologist, who helped develop an academic language around cinema.
The Healing Wisdom in a Cup of Sayu
Tuukka Toivonen October 28, 2024
Contemporary society has invented a virtually infinite variety of beverages to help keep us hydrated and provide us with refreshment…
Woodblock Print, c.1800.
Tuukka Toivonen October 28, 2025
“It means that this ability to improve, to be healthy and happy, is always within us. […] Illness occurs when we don’t live according to the law of nature—when we are in dis-ease with nature.” —Kazuko Hillyer Tatsumura, in Healing Your Healing Power (2020)
Contemporary society has invented a virtually infinite variety of beverages to help keep us hydrated and provide us with refreshment. The mere act of selecting a coffee, tea, soda, smoothie or milk to suit our taste has become a feat of some complexity, requiring special attention. But, in the midst of such abundance, how often do we pay serious attention to the temperature of the drink we choose? Beyond opting for cold drinks in the summer or hot teas and coffees in cooler seasons, how likely are we to think about temperature beyond this crude hot-cold binary? And how attuned are we to sensing which drink temperature might actually feel best and have a beneficial effect on our bodies?
I gave little attention to such subtleties until recently, when I began to notice a strange habit proliferating among my Japanese friends. Instead of unthinkingly accepting the usual offer of cold water with ice while sitting at a Tokyo restaurant, they would insist on being served sayu instead. While the word literally translates as ‘white’ or plain hot water (白湯), what normally arrives is a cup of warm water that is comfortable to drink—neither too hot or tepid.
The standard response to a casual inquiry about a person’s preference for sayu is that it helps one’s body and intestines remain warm. Prodded further, a sayu drinker usually goes on to explain that excessively cooling the insides of one’s body is not only unnecessary and uncomfortable but also harmful to health, especially for women. The slight inconvenience of politely refusing icy drinks therefore seems well worth the effort as it is viewed as a way to ward off disease.¹ For many of my friends it therefore appears to be the natural and obvious thing to do (even if the vast majority of restaurants in Japan do not appreciate this preference just yet!).
When the opportunity arose, a few months back, to join a well-known Japanese holistic summer retreat rooted in East Asian notions of self-healing I began to reflect further on the significance of sayu. I began to see how the simple practice of ingesting warm water might conceal within it an entire system of thought, built around notions of energy, balance, and non-interference in natural processes.
The minimalistic retreat in the foothills of Mt. Ariake—housed in calming wooden buildings carefully embedded in the local terrain—was designed around the three simple pillars of food, rest and light movement. Nurtured by two daily macrobiotic meals, ample sleep and long walks along pristine mountain rivers and forest paths away from urban noise, I proceeded to undergo an unexpected, quiet transformation during my five-day stay. This culminated in a profound sense of lightness, insight and joy and there was a sensation of simultaneous physical and mental healing and wholeness. I found myself leaving the retreat with a greatly strengthened interest in the nature of self-healing.
Soon after returning to my urban life I began to perceive how, my regenerative research interests notwithstanding, I had previously hesitated to fully embrace the total intelligence of my own body, from astonishing intrinsic ability to heal to its tendency to align with myriad rhythms beyond its boundaries. I had not appreciated deeply enough the ways that such intelligence—from subtle bodily sensations to circadian rhythms, the fluctuations of the nervous system and the aliveness of the microbiome—sustain us as living beings and constantly interact with and adapt to the world around us.
“The underlying system of healing views nature’s energy as immensely more powerful and superior to anything that humans might themselves invent or implement.”
Having been through a powerful healing experience in a setting that was distinctly non-interventionist was, therefore, a rather humbling experience. I began to wonder anew whether our conscious rational selves had much to do at all with fundamental healing processes. Perhaps we were no more in charge of the dynamics of our bodily health than we were able to consciously control our billions of gut microbes. Is our equating of self-healing with ‘self-care’ a delusion, owing to a misplaced confidence in the ability of the self to direct and, indeed, lead the healing process? Just as millions of cells within our body regenerate second-by-second through what is an essentially automated process, perhaps healing in general was simply something that our bodies did naturally when not disrupted or hampered in some way. I came to understand that the essential thing to do—very nearly the only thing we could do—was to create the conditions that would allow natural processes to unfold to their fullest extent, without disturbance from things like chronic stress, excessive stimulation or the ingestion of harmful foods and drinks.
This basic principle—doing what we can to enact ideal conditions for self-healing while minimizing harmful disruptions—lies at the very heart of East Asian medicine as it is generally practiced in Japan, China and beyond. Though rarely articulated at this level of abstraction, the daily nutritional choices and other health-related behaviors of contemporary Japanese people (including those that have to do with temperatures) still reflect this central principle and it is through this lens that they can be situated and understood as a coherent whole. Part of an expansive field of richly diverse practices, the underlying system of healing views nature’s energy (expressed as ki in Japan and chi in China) as immensely more powerful and superior to anything that humans might themselves invent or implement. This means that even medicinal herbs, central as they are for Eastern medicine, are administered with great caution and moderation, so as to avoid negative effects from excessive energy. Humans may seek to borrow from nature’s wisdom and power, but we must do so from a position of humility and great care. In the final instance, Eastern traditions hold that the natural flows of energy and unimpeded healing processes ultimately sustain health and vitality. This transcends the restoration of health after disease: those who engage in resonant practices can hope to reach tremendous levels of vitality, energy and thriving well beyond minimal standards of health, defined as the absence of illness.
Although too vast a topic to properly explore here, the more one begins to engage with Eastern healing beliefs and practices, the more one starts to also question the role of the self in relation to healing. Could it be that genuine self-healing can only unfold when we side-step, or overcome, our conventional or habitual focus on the self and the ego? Perhaps a more helpful way to understand ‘self-healing’ as a phenomenon is through a paradoxical inversion of terms: rather than perceiving it as a process of ‘healing by yourself’ or ‘through a self-led practice or process’, it seems to be equally—or perhaps even primarily—about ‘healing from the self’ and from its afflictions. A part of me was left with a strong intuition that it was only through reducing the centrality of the self could we allow organic healing processes to reach their fullest potential.
Through all these experiences and reflections, my friends’ preference for sayu over water with ice began to make a lot more sense. Even if the drinkers themselves could not always fully articulate the underlying philosophy, theirs was a practice that sought to be in tune with the body’s naturally occurring processes and energies, causing the least amount of disturbance and stress on internal organs and the body as a whole. With time, I have also personally become more attuned to how it feels to ingest drinks of different temperatures and I pay much more attention to keeping myself warm as the seasons change, especially when short on sleep or healthy food.
In the meantime, even as adjustments such as these tend to be made by individuals in the context of private lives, I have noticed that in some cases their influence can reverberate more widely, encouraging social change. Beyond merely fulfilling their own preferences and protecting their own bodies, perhaps my sayu-drinking friends are subconsciously quietly reshaping their wider environment by gently prompting others to get curious about what they ingest and why. With a bit of luck, maybe even the baffled restaurant staff asked to serve warm water instead of cold drinks will one day start inquiring into the healing secrets concealed in a plain cup of sayu.
*I would like to thank my wife, Eri, for first opening my eyes to Eastern healing systems — including the subtle benefits of sayu — and for so beautifully embodying that wisdom in her own gentle way of being.
Tuukka Toivonen, Ph.D. (Oxon.) is a sociologist interested in ways of being, relating and creating that can help us to reconnect with – and regenerate – the living world. Alongside his academic research, Tuukka works directly with emerging regenerative designers and startups in the creative, material innovation and technology sectors.
¹ There is a vast health literature in Japan that echoes this belief. For instance, the highly regarded immunologist Toru Abo (1947-2016) elaborated as follows: “Since energy is utilized more easily when it is first burned or transformed, when you’re deprived of heat you waste energy. In other words, if your body is cold, you need a certain amount of energy to warm it. Wearing something that makes your body cold, staying too long in a cold environment such as an air-conditioned room, or making your intestines cold by drinking too many cold drinks all cause you to lose energy. If you’re already in a weakened state, this can lead to illness.” (From Toru Abo’s Secret of Immunity, 2020, p.31)
The I Ching
Chris Gabriel October 25, 2025
If you have interacted with the I Ching, you may know it as a book of poetry used for divination. You throw coins, draw the hexagram, and check the guide in the back to find the number. You read the six line poem and contemplate. This is a very modern means of interacting with the oracle and misses the soul, the meat, and the true purpose of the work…
A diagram of I Ching hexagrams sent to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from Joachim Bouvet.
Chris Gabriel October 25, 2025
What is the I Ching?
If you have interacted with the I Ching, you may know it as a book of poetry used for divination. You throw coins, draw the hexagram, and check the guide in the back to find the number. You read the six line poem and contemplate. This is a very modern means of interacting with the oracle and misses the soul, the meat, and the true purpose of the work!
The I Ching is by far the oldest “book” in the world. In primordial times, the story goes, a dragon named Fu Xi sat patiently and studied nature. While looking at the shell of a turtle, the Trigrams came to him as an eightfold set of elements. From these, he constructed the I Ching and taught humanity his wisdom.
The Chinese written language is one of the oldest, nearly 5,000 years old, yet the trigrams predate it, and are in fact the basis for it.
The Trigrams alone existed for a long time, then the 64 hexagrams came about, a stacking of two trigrams. Long after that, they were numbered and named. Far later, the accompanying poems were written. By our modern focus on the writing, we are essentially missing the whole picture.
In this exploration of the I Ching we will focus on the symbolism of the Trigrams, and the ideogrammic study of their names. By focusing on the oldest, and most visual parts of the text, we will illuminate the oracle.
This Translation
I studied the I Ching for 7 years before I started this translation in 2022. After reading Carl Jung’s work on the I Ching, I was moved enough to buy a copy, though I found the text academic, and harder to grasp than the visual Tarot.
It was after studying Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa’s “Ideogrammic Method” of interpreting Chinese characters that I began to grasp the nature of the I Ching as a set of natural images, much like the Tarot, but “Eastern” enough for the ‘Western’ world to be blind to.
We are reading what we should be seeing.
Aleister Crowley recognized the 64 hexagrams as a direct mirror to the 32 paths of the Qabalah. He mapped the Tao, the Yin and Yang, and the eight trigrams to the Tree of Life, but did not follow through with his translation and commentary. I sought to complete the work he began, and as such have created the first fully corresponded I Ching.
My study of Nursery Rhymes then gave me the profoundly simple and effective language with which I could express the “simple and easy” truths of the text. I sought to make the I Ching accessible to anyone.
The Cosmology of the I Ching
As with all things, we start with the Tao.
1
Form of Tao
The Tao that is spoken
Is not the Tao
The Name that is Named
Is not the Name
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The Name is the Mother of the ten thousand things
The Desireless sees its marvels
The Desirer sees only its shadows
Two move as One
Yet their names are different
One is Mystery; Mystery within Mystery
This is the gate to all marvels
-Tao Te Ching
From the “Creative Nothing” of the Tao, duality emerged. Magickally, this is expressed as 0=2, but we can understand it also as, Yin and Yang, a feminine and a masculine energy. These are the black and white halves of the whole. Yang is light and masculine and is symbolized by a solid line —, Yin is dark and feminine and is symbolized by a broken line - -.
Within these halves exist a dot of the opposite, these are the “four elements”. Younger Yang is two solid lines, while Older Yang is a solid line topped by a broken one. Younger Yin is two broken lines, while Older Yin is a broken line topped by a solid line.
These four also mirror the first line of the I Ching:
Heaven Origin Prosperity Reap Pure
The four characters following the first fill the rest of the book endlessly, they are essentially the four elemental virtues of the I Ching.
元 -Yen
亨 -Heng
利 -Li
貞- Ching
元
Yen depicts a Man with a big Head.
This is often translated as some form of “Origin” or, “Generation”, etc. It is “first”, in the way that the Head of an organization is - , the Capo.
亨
Heng depicts a Child and a Shrine.
Often translated as “progress” and “prosperity”, this is the prosperity in the way that the children of God, the Sons of Heaven experience prosper. Or, progress and prosperity through child sacrifice is an equally possible understanding.
利
Li depicts wheat and a knife
It is “harvesting” and “gaining”, reaping rewards gains after sowing work.
貞
Ching, or Ding depicts a vessel.
It is purity, like the Grail.
They can mapped to the Western elements as:
Fire: Yen, Younger Yang
Water: Ching, Younger Yin
Air: Heng, Older Yang
Earth: Li, Older Yin
The ALL In All of the Creative Process
Molly Hankins October 23, 2025
Hermetic teachings tell us that to be in the creative process is to engage with the very same energy which creates and sustains all of life…
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, 1652.
Molly Hankins October 23, 2025
Hermetic teachings tell us that to be in the creative process is to engage with the very same energy which creates and sustains all of life. THE ALL of consciousness, known as God or The Creator, becomes all there is in the material realm by way of directing divine will is an idea described by The Kybalion, which contains a comprehensive breakdown of Hermetic principles, as a vibratory transmission. “It is taught that the process consists of the lowering of vibration until a very low degree of vibratory energy is reached, at which point the grossest possible form of matter is manifested. This process is called the stage of involution, in which THE ALL becomes ‘involved’ or ‘wrapped up’ in its creation,” The Kybalion explains. The artist who becomes so immersed in their creation that they come to live inside it is mirroring the very act of divine creation emanating from the original source of consciousness.
Eventually this involutionary process begins to reverse into an evolutionary process subject to the Hermetic principle of Rhythm which states that, like our breath, all must go in and out of being. During the outpouring of creative energy, the principle of Vibration brings inspiration into matter until the cause of this outpouring finally ceases. Only then does the evolutionary process of individualization begin, which will extend mental energy back from the material world towards the divine, as described by the principle of Mentalism.
To engage mentally is to offer divine attention, the Latin root of the word attention coming from the Latin attendere, to reach towards or stretch out. Attention leads to creation, creation leads to individualization, and that extension of mental energy reaches out to reconnect and unify us with the original source of divine, primordial creativity - THE ALL. We can experience this passively via the principle of Vibration just by giving our attention to the creative work of another. Thiscan have measurable, physical impact on us; changing our brainwave state, stimulating the nervous system and triggering the release of hormones.
For Hermeticists, offering our attention to THE ALL in meditation is the portal to access the endless well of divine creative energy. When we close our eyes in meditation and pry our attention away from the grip of the material world, we return attention to THE ALL, the source of all creation. the font of divine inspiration, the all which contains THE ALL.. In drawing from this well, the artist becomes a pure channel for the will of THE ALL. Much of the work of Hermetic students involves removing the blockages of subconscious programming in order to become a pure channel, unimpeded by human limitation and societal conditioning.
The Kybalion asks, “Have the Venus of Medici, the Sistine Madonna, the Apollo Belvidere, spirits and reality of their own, or do they represent the spiritual and mental power of their creators?” Both are true, and for Hermeticists the paradox of that truth is an indicator of its divinity. Only when we recognize paradox are we mentally extending and thereby evolving ourselves beyond the duality of life in the material realm back towards a more holistic, divine understanding. Of course some of Shakespeare’s personality complex is contained in his characters, but so are truths so universal we recognize THE ALL coming through them, even hundreds of years after these works were written.
“Just as every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every portion of the universe enfolds the whole.”
“The ALL is in the earthworm, and yet the earthworm is far from being THE ALL,” The Kybalion states. “And still the wonder remains, that though the earthworm exists merely as a lowly thing, created and having its being solely within the mind of THE ALL - yet THE ALL is imminent in the earthworm, and in the particles that go to make up the earthworm. Can there be any greater mystery than this of ‘All in THE ALL; and THE ALL in all?” This explanation is both philosophically and technically grounded in the holographic model of reality, described by author Michael Talbot in his book The Holographic Universe.
The holographic model suggests that every part of THE ALL, including the earthworm, contains all the information about the whole of THE ALL. In the same way a tiny piece of a holographic image contains the whole image but in lower resolution, so too is the ALL contained in every expression of life. Talbot explained that, “The idea that consciousness and life (and indeed all things) are ensembles enfolded throughout the universe has an equally dazzling flip side. Just as every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every portion of the universe enfolds the whole. This means that if we knew how to access it we could find the Andromeda galaxy in the thumbnail of our left hand. We could also find Cleopatra meeting Caesar for the first time, for in principle the whole past and implications for the whole future are also enfolded in each small region of space and time. Every cell in our body enfolds the entire cosmos.” We see this when comparing the striking similarities between images of a neural network in the human brain to images of the interconnected webs of galaxies in outer space.
In keeping with the famous occult axiom, “As above so below, and as below so above,” we maximize our enjoyment of the human experience by engaging in the creative dance of involution and evolution. As we engage in involution, pouring energy into our creations, we’re performing the same creative process as THE ALL. To share our creations with others is to kick off the evolutionary aspect of Rhythm and Mentalism, inviting the mental aspect of the process that extends our consciousness back towards THE ALL to begin. The Kybalion encourages us not to get hung up on asking ourselves why THE ALL creates, because to speculate is useless from our limited human perspective, a low-resolution experience of divine consciousness. From this place we can’t conceive how THE ALL in high-resolution expresses itself creatively, much less why.
The Kybalion does make one concession for those seeking to understand why THE ALL creates, which is that there must be some satisfaction derived from the creative act. We access this divine satisfaction in the material world through giving our attention to creating and to experiencing the creations of others. As conscious fragments of THE ALL, perhaps our ability to participate in this process is why we were created.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
The Language of the Body (1992)
Kathy Acker October 21, 2025
I have now been bodybuilding for ten years, seriously for almost five years. During the past few years, I have been trying to write about bodybuilding. Having failed time and time again, upon being offered the opportunity to write this essay, I made the following plan…
Roper’s Gymnasium, 1831.
One of the leading figures of the late 1970s and early 80s literary Punk movement, Kathy Acker was a radical in every sense. Her writing pioneered an experimental auto-fiction and incorporated cut-up techniques, developed some thirty years earlier by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Consistently, she wanted to push the boundaries of language and redefine the meaning of the novel. So too in this text, written towards the end of her life, Acker considers the inexpressibility of bodybuilding through traditional language. Drawing on thinkers like Elias Canetti, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, the essay links the meditative rhythms of training to deeper existential questions: Can we know the body? What is the relationship between control, chaos, and meaning? And what can we learn about art and creation through pushing our bodies.
Kathy Acker October 21, 2025
Preface Diary
I have now been bodybuilding for ten years, seriously for almost five years. During the past few years, I have been trying to write about bodybuilding. Having failed time and time again, upon being offered the opportunity to write this essay, I made the following plan: I would attend the gym as usual. Immediately after each workout, I would describe all I had just experienced, thought and done. Such diary descriptions would provide the raw material. After each workout, I forgot: to write. Repeatedly. I...some part of me... the part of the ‘I’ who bodybuilds... was rejecting language, any verbal description of the processes of bodybuilding. I shall begin describing, writing about bodybuilding in the only way that I can: I shall begin by analyzing this rejection of ordinary or verbal language. What is the picture of the antagonism between bodybuilding and verbal language?
A Language Which is Speechless
Imagine that you are in a foreign country. Since you are going to be in this place for some time, you are trying to learn the language. At the point of commencing to learn the new language, just before having started to understand anything, you begin forgetting your own. Within strangeness, you find yourself without a language.
It is here, in this geography of no language, this negative space, that I can start to describe bodybuilding. For I am describing that which rejects language.
Elias Canetti, who grew up within a multitude of spoken languages, began his autobiography by recounting a memory. In this, his earliest remembrance, the loss of language is threatened: “My earliest memory is dipped in red. I come out of a door on the arm of a maid, the door in front of me is red, and to the left a staircase goes down, equally red...” A smiling man walks up to the child; the child, upon request, sticks out his tongue whereupon the man flips open a jackknife and holds the sharp blade against the red tongue.
“...He says: ‘Now we’ll cut off his tongue.“’
At the last moment, the man pulls the knife back.
According to memory, this sequence happens every day. “That’s how the day starts,” Canetti adds, “and it happens very often.” ’ I am in the gym every three out of four days. What happens there? What does language in that place look like? According to cliche, athletes are stupid. Meaning: they are inarticulate. The spoken language of bodybuilders makes this cliche real. The verbal language in the gym is minimal and almost senseless, reduced to numbers and a few nouns. “Sets”, “squats”, “reps”,... The only verbs are “do” or “fail” adjectives and adverbs no longer exist; sentences, if they are at all, are simple.
This spoken language is kin to the “language games” Wittgenstein proposes in his The Brown Book. In a gym, verbal language or language whose purpose is meaning occurs, if at all, only at the edge of its becoming lost.
But when I am in the gym, my experience is that I am immersed in a complex and rich world.
What actually takes place when I bodybuild?
The crossing of the threshold from the world defined by verbal language into the gym in which the outside world is not allowed (and all of its languages) (in this sense, the gym is sacred) takes several minutes. What happens during these minutes is that I forget. Masse’s of swirling thought, verbalized insofar as I am conscious of them, disappear as mind or thought begins to focus.
In order to analyze this focusing, I must first describe bodybuilding in terms of intentionality.
Bodybuilding is a process, perhaps a sport, by which a person shapes her or his own body. This shaping is always related to the growth of muscular mass.
During aerobic and circuit training, the heart and lungs are exercised. But muscles will grow only if they are, not exercised or moved, but actually broken down. The general law behind bodybuilding is that muscle, if broken down in a controlled fashion and then provided with the proper growth factors such as nutrients and rest, will grow back larger than before.
Domenico de Rossi, Dancing Faun. c.1704
In order to break down specific areas of muscles, whatever areas one wants to enlarge, it is necessary to work these areas in isolation up to failure.
Bodybuilding can be seen to be about nothing but failure. A bodybuilder is always working around failure. Either I work an isolated muscle mass, for instance one of the tricep heads, up to failure. In order to do this, I exert the muscle group almost until the point that it can no longer move.
But if I work the same muscle group to the point that it can no longer move, I must move it through failure. I am then doing what are named “negative reps”, working the muscle group beyond its power to move. Here is the second method of working with failure.
Whatever way I chose, I always want to work my muscle, muscular group, until it can no longer move: I want to fail. As soon as I can accomplish a certain task, so much weight for so many reps during a certain time span, I must always increase one aspect of this equation, weights reps or intensity, so that I can again come to failure.
I want to break muscle so that it can grow back larger, but I do not want to destroy muscle so that growth is prevented. In order to avoid injury, I first warm up the muscular group, then carefully bring it up to failure. I do this by working the muscular group through a calculated number of sets during a calculated time span. If I tried immediately to bring a muscle group up to failure by lifting the heaviest weight I could handle, I might injure myself.
I want to shock my body into growth; I do not want to hurt it.
Therefore, in bodybuilding, failure is always connected to counting. I calculate which weight to use; I then count off how many times I lift that weight and the seconds between each lift. This is how I control the intensity of my workout.
Intensity times movement of maximum weight equals muscular destruction (muscular growth).
Is the equation between destruction and growth also a formula for art’
Bodybuilding is about failure because bodybuilding, body growth and shaping, occurs in the face of the material, of the body’s inexorable movement toward its final failure, toward death.
To break down a muscle group, I want to make that group work up to, even beyond, capacity. To do this, it helps and even is necessary to visualize the part of the body that is involved. Mind or thought, then, while bodybuilding, is always focused on number or counting and often on precise visualizations.
Certain bodybuilders have said that bodybuilding is a form of meditation.
What do I do when I bodybuild? I visualize and I count. I estimate weight; I count sets; I count repetitions; I count seconds between repetitions; I count time, seconds or minutes, between sets: From the beginning to the end of each workout, in order to maintain intensity, I must continually count.
For this reason, a bodybuilder’s language is reduced to a minimal, even a closed, set of nouns and to numerical repetition, to one of the simplest of language games.
Let us name this language game, the language of the body.
“In ordinary language, meaning is contextual. Whereas the cry of the beggar means nothing other than what it is; in the cry of the beggar, the impossible… occurs in that meaning and breath become one.”
The Richness Of The Language Of The Body
In order to examine such a language, a language game which resists ordinary language, through the lens of ordinary language or language whose tendency is to generate syntax or to make meanings proliferate, I must use an indirect route.
In another of his books, Elias Canetti begins talking from and about that geography that is without verbal language:
A marvellously luminous, viscid substance is left behind in me, defying words...
A dream: a man who unlearns the world’s languages until nowhere on earth does he understand what people are saying.
Being in Marrakesh is Canetti’s dream made actual. There are languages here, he says, but I understand none of them. The closer I am moving toward foreignness, into strangeness, toward understanding foreignness and strangeness, the more I am losing my own language. The small loss of language occurs when I journey to and into my own body. Is my body a foreign land to me? What is this picture of “my body” and “I”? For years, I said in the beginning of this essay, I have wanted to describe bodybuilding; whenever I tried to do so, ordinary language fled from me. r
“Man,” Heidegger says, “is, the strangest.” Why! Because everywhere he or she belongs to being or to strangeness or chaos, and yet everywhere he or she attempts to carve a path through chaos:
Everywhere man makes himself a path; he ventures into all realms of the essent, of the overpowering power, and in so doing he is flung out of all paths. ’
The physical or material, that which is, is constantly and unpredictably changing: it is chaotic. This chaos twines around death. For it is death that rejects all of our paths, all of our meanings.
Whenever anyone bodybuilds, he or she is always trying to understand and control the physical in the face of this death. No wonder bodybuilding is centered around failure.
The antithesis between meaning and essence has often been noted. Wittgenstein at the end of the Tractatus:
The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen - in it no values exist, and if they did, they’d have no value.
For all that happens and is the case is accidental.
If ordinary language or meanings lie outside essence, what is the position of that language game which I have named the language of the body? For bodybuilding (a language of the body) rejects ordinary language and yet itself constitutes a language, a method for understanding and controlling the physical which in this case is also the self.
I can now directly talk about bodybuilding. (As if speech is ever direct.)
The language game named the language of the body is not arbitrary. When a bodybuilder is counting, he or she is counting his or her own breath.
Canetti speaks of the beggars of Marrakesh who possess a similar and even simpler language game: they repeat the name of God.
In ordinary language, meaning is contextual. Whereas the cry of the beggar means nothing other than what it is; in the cry of the beggar, the impossible (as the Wittgenstein of the Tructutus and Heidegger see it) occurs in that meaning and breath become one.
Here is the language of the body; here, perhaps, is the reason why bodybuilders experience bodybuilding as a form of meditation.
“I understood the seduction there is in a life that reduces everything to the simplest kind of repetition,” Canetti says. A life in which meaning and essence no longer oppose each other. A life of meditation.
“I understood what those blind beggars really are: the saints of repetition…”
The Repetition Of The One: The Glimpse Into Chaos Or Essence
Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyons. 1980.
I am in the gym. I am beginning to work out. I either say the name “bench press”, then walk over to it, or simply walk over to it. Then, I might picture the number of my first weight; I probably, since I usually begin with the same warm-up weight, just place the appropriate weights on the bar. Lifting this bar off its rests, then down to my lower chest, I count “1”. I am visualizing this bar, making sure it touches my chest at the right spot, placing it back on its rests. “2”. I repeat the same exact motions. “3”... After twelve repetitions, I count off thirty seconds while increasing my weights. “1 “.. The identical process begins again only this time I finish at “10”... All these repetitions end only when I finish my work-out.
On counting: Each number equals one inhalation and one exhalation. If I stop my counting or in any other way lose focus, I risk dropping or otherwise mishandling a weight and so damaging my body.
In this world of the continual repetition of a minimal number of elements, in this aural labyrinth, it is easy to lose one’s way. When all is repetition rather than the production of meaning, every path resembles every other path.
Every day, in the gym, I repeat the same controlled gestures with the same weights, the same reps,... The same breath patterns. But now and then, wandering within the labyrinths of my body, I come upon something. Something I can know because knowledge depends on difference. An unexpected event. For though I am only repeating certain gestures during certain time spans, my body, being material, is never the same; my body is controlled by change and by chance.
For instance, yesterday, I worked chest. Usually I easily benchpress the bar plus sixty pounds for six reps. Yesterday, unexpectedly, I barely managed to lift this weight at the sixth rep. I looked for a reason. Sleep? Diet’ Both were usual. Emotional or work stress? No more ban usual. The weather? Not good enough. My unexpected failure at the sixth rep was allowing me to see, as if through a window, not to any outside, but inside my own body, to its workings. I was being permitted to glimpse the laws that control my body, those of change or chance, laws that are barely, if at all, knowable.
By trying to control, to shape, my body through the calculated tools and methods of bodybuilding, and time and again, in following these methods, failing to do so, I am able to meet that which cannot be finally controlled and known: the body.
In this meeting lies the fascination, if not the purpose, of bodybuilding. To come face to face with chaos, with my own failure or a form of death.
Canetti describes the architecture of a typical house in the geographical labyrinth of Marrakesh. The house’s insides are cool, dark. Few, if any, windows lookout into the street. For the entire construction of this house, windows, etc., is directed inward, to the central courtyard where only openness to the sun exists.
Such an architecture is a mirror of the body: When I reduce verbal language to minimal meaning, to repetition, I close the body’s outer windows. Meaning approaches breath as I bodybuild, as I begin to move through the body’s labyrinths, to meet, if only for a second, that which my consciousness ordinarily cannot see. Heidegger: “The. being-there of historical man means: to be posited as the breach into which the preponderant power of being bursts in its appearing, in order that this breach itself should shatter against being.”
In our culture, we simultaneously fetishize and disdain the athlete, a worker in the body. For we still live under the sign of Descartes. This sign is also the sign of patriarchy. As long as we continue to regard the body, that which is subject to change, chance, and death, as disgusting and inimical, so long shall we continue to regard our own selves as dangerous others.
Kathy Acker (1947–1997) was an American experimental novelist, poet, playwright, performance artist, and postmodernist writer, whose idiosyncratic style redefined contemporary writing and made her one of the most insightful and influential voices of her generation.