The Sun (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: The Sun
Number: XIX
Astrology: Sun
Qabalah: Resh

Chris Gabriel January 11, 2025

In many ways, The Sun is the central axis of the tarot, just as it is the center of our solar system. It is through this card that we relate to the stars and planets that make up both the deck and our universe.

In Rider, we see a naked child riding upon a white horse and bearing a red flag. In the background, a wall is covered in sunflowers and the Sun looks down upon him.

In Thoth, we find two butterfly winged cherubs rejoicing in front of a green hill, encircled by a wall. A central flowery sun shines, and around the border we see the full Zodiac.

In Marseille, we are given two young brothers, standing before a wall. One guides the other, who is struggling. The Sun looks straight ahead at us.

In each card, we are presented with the great masculine force of consciousness and new life. The Sun is the father of life, and the babes depicted are expressions of all new life. The “cycle of life” is the cycle of the Sun, and it emanates from and into the wheel of creatures that make up the Zodiac. The Zodiac is the cyclical track which our Sun follows month by month.

The Egyptians believed the Sun died each night and was reborn again each morning, and that this cycle occurred not only daily, but yearly, with the Sunborn in the Spring, and dieing in the Winter. They represented the morning sun with a baby, Harpocrates, or the child Horus. 

With this card we see the joy of the newborn Sun, and his future power as the midday Sun.

As we follow the cycle of the sun, our lives are a mirror to its own, rising from our beds each day and then laying down each night.   Being born, living, and then fading and dying. Nearly all religions begin as Sun cults. Whether we view this cycle as a blessing, or a curse depends on us. 

Is life a Sisyphean task? We roll the solar stone up and down day by day, month by month, year by year until we die. Or is this a playground in which we can dance and move freely? Are we the child stumbling and struggling, or the child helping his brother?

The Sun represents our consciousness, in opposition to the Unconsciousness of the Moon. It illuminates what is dark and hidden, it is said Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this is certainly true in our lives and minds.

The path of the Sun is certain, its rising and falling is unending. And as the bible tells us in Luke 12:3 “Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”

When we pull this card, we will be brought into the light. Our time within the cycle will be illuminated, and nothing will hide in the darkness. This is a joy if you have done well, and a curse if you’ve been up to no good. Therefore let us rejoice in the light of consciousness, express ourselves and be seen clearly!

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

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The Most Teachable Space

Rooms by the Sea, 1951. Edward Hopper.

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Suzanne Stabile January 9, 2025

My husband, Rev. Joseph Stabile and I have had the privilege of knowing Fr. Richard Rohr as a friend and spiritual mentor for most of the last three decades. Joseph was a Roman Catholic priest until he was forty, which seemed to put his life experience more in line with Richard’s than with mine. As a result, I always felt a little insecure when I found myself included in a discussion about something that I had never heard of.  

Father Rohr began to teach us about the  importance of liminal space in 2004. Their unique experiences as seminarians from the age of fourteen gave them both deep understanding of classical languages. Joe was able to immediately decipher the meaning of the word liminality by understanding the Latin word for “limina” which is, “threshold.”  

That afternoon, I learned that liminality refers to a special psychic and spiritual place where “all transformation happens.” It is when we are betwixt and between, neither where we’re going nor where we’ve been. 

More importantly, however, it is the place where we are not in control. The reality is, Father Rohr told us, is that nothing new happens as long as we are inside of our self-constructed comfort zones. And nothing much good or all that creative comes to us from business as usual.

As our conversations about liminality continued over the years,  Father Rohr shared that he thought liminal space was the most teachable space. In fact, he added, it might just be the only teachable space. If that doesn’t get your attention, I think it should. We have so much to learn both as individuals and as a global community, and if the only way we can learn it is on a threshold, then that is where I want to be.

Liminality is characterized by ambiguity, openness and indeterminacy. And when we experience it, our sense of identity dissolves, bringing about feelings of disorientation. We are living in a period of transition, during which our usual limits around thought, self-understanding, and behavior are not as reliable as they used to be. Liminal spaces are uncomfortable. We haven’t been taught how to hold mystery. We aren’t good at waiting. And we seem to struggle mightily with allowing the world to happen, instead of trying to control it.  

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“We are always moving toward somewhere and something. We just can’t seem to accept that we aren’t in charge of where or when.”

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I find it helpful to know that when we find ourselves on the threshold, we often respond initially in one of three ways. There are those who need security by temperament. They tend  to run back to the old “room” that is already constructed. They circle the wagons, pull in and protect and defend the doctrines and policies that suit them. Their orientation to time is the past, meaning they are tethered to past experiences and find their comfort in what has already happened. 

Then there are those who are risk-takers by temperament. Rather than stay on the threshold they will run ahead to a room of their own making and liking. Often leaving everything behind. Their orientation to time is the future and they are often over-anxious to get there. It seems that none of us want to stay on the threshold without answers. 

Finally, there are those who are oriented to the present moment and when they find themselves in liminality, they distract themselves by focusing on what is right in front of them. They are often wondering how they can be helpful in restoring comfort to all involved.  

I would suggest that we all spend some time considering the likelihood that when nothing is happening, something is happening. We are always moving toward somewhere and something. We just can’t seem to accept that we aren’t in charge of where or when. 

This journey we share opens the way for something new and I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to move toward something unfamiliar, I want to do it with some ancient wisdom as my companion. For me, that wisdom is found in the Enneagram. It’s trendy right now, so I suspect you’ve heard of it. The Enneagram I’m referring to, however, and the one I have based my life’s work on is thousands of years old and it continues to enlighten my understanding any time I am anxiously but courageously standing on the threshold. In this series of articles, we will explore the wisdom that can be found in The Enneagram, and learn together how to embrace the teaching space of liminality with courage, compassion, and creativity.

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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.

On the Termite

Shrine in a termite mound, Kolwezi, Congo, c.1930.

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André Castor January 7, 2025

Termite mounds - those brown piles of rigid dirt that protrude from the landscape and hide acreage below them - are as ancient as the land they rise from. In parts of Africa, South America, and Australia, these earthen towers are not just temporary homes, they are enduring monuments, passed down through the generations of termite colonies. Some mounds are known to be over 34,000 years old, but most at least number in the hundreds of years, surviving across centuries and millennia, continually inhabited and rebuilt by successive colonies. 

When we think of buildings and cities, we often imagine them as symbols of human ambition, crafted to last for centuries or successive lifetimes. Yet, the termite mound offers a humbling contrast. Here, time itself does not belong to the individuals who build it, but to the community that comes together—over and over again—to tend to it, to repair it, and to keep it alive. It is not a static monument to human achievement, but a living, breathing testament to the persistence of purpose across generations.

The question then arises: What does it mean to build something that outlasts us? What can we learn from these oft-derided insects about living within the cycles of time, about the relationship between the individual and the collective, and about the ways in which our actions are woven into the fabric of a larger, continuous story?

Built by colonies of termites to serve as both nests and climate-controlled environments, these mounds are constructed from earth, saliva, feces, and other organic matter, which is collected by the termites from their surroundings. The architecture is remarkably complex, with a series of tunnels and ventilation shafts that regulate airflow and temperature, providing the colony with a safe, stable environment carefully controlled to maintain optimal conditions of temperature and humidity in the face of extreme weather conditions outside. The mounds can rise up to 30 feet in height and span much large areas below the surface, offering refuge and safety from predator.

Termites help improve soil health, promote water infiltration and enhance nutrient cycling through the aeration process of their building. Their mounds act as natural reservoirs, absorbing and slowly releasing moisture to sustain surrounding vegetation during dry periods. Some species of termites even cultivate fungi within their mounds, creating a symbiotic relationship that helps decompose plant matter, contributing to nutrient recycling in the ecosystem. In these ways, termite mounds are not just homes for termites, but vital structures that play an important role in maintaining the ecological balance of their environment. In the process of thousands of years, these insects build not just for themselves, and their future generations, but the world around them.

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“Decay is not the end of things, it is a necessary part of renewal.”

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Termite mounds are a reminder that individual lives are but fleeting moments in the vast expanse of time. What these creatures leave behind, in lives that usually last no more a few years for workers and perhaps a few decades for the Queen, is not just the work of a single generation, but the shared contributions of thousands of generations. Each mound is built, maintained, and inhabited by countless termites over thousands of years, but it is always the same mound, never fully finished, always in the process of becoming. The generations may come and go, but the mound itself endures. They are constantly being rebuilt, repaired, and adjusted. They are living structures, continuously in flux, responding to the demands of the environment, to the needs of the colony, and to the rhythms of life itself. Nothing about the mound is static. It is a cycle of construction and deconstruction, creation and decay, over and over again.This challenges the human tendency to view our lives as distinct and separate from one another, as if each of us is isolated in time. How often do we build lives as though they must stand alone, seeking personal recognition, fame, or success? The termite mound offers us a different way of being: a life that belongs to something greater, a purpose that extends beyond the self. The mound’s continuity suggests that the most meaningful actions are not those that bring fleeting personal glory, but those that contribute to a larger, ongoing process—one that connects generations, that transcends time.

For humans, the idea of impermanence is often uncomfortable. We are taught to chase stability, to fight decay, to preserve what we have for as long as possible. But there is a wisdom that we often overlook: decay is not the end of things, it is a necessary part of renewal. The cycles of life, growth, and decay are not to be feared, but understood as fundamental to the very essence of existence.

What if we understood our lives not as isolated projects but as part of an ongoing story—one in which we participate, but do not control? What if our actions, like the termites’ construction of their mounds, were not aimed at permanence or recognition, but at fostering a deeper, intergenerational connection to something larger than ourselves? The mound teaches us that the highest form of meaning may lie not in building for today, but in building for tomorrow, and for the communities that will follow us.

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André Castor is a conservationist and researcher who writes about the natural world.

Ace of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Ace of Cups
Number: 1
Astrology: Water
Qabalah: Kether of He

Chris Gabriel January 4, 2025

The Ace of Cups is the fountainhead, the great source from which all the waters in the suit of cups spring. It is the Holy Grail and the Cauldron: the Heart.

In Rider, we find a golden chalice pouring forth water, held aloft by a divine hand. A dove flies down carrying a communion wafer. The cup is marked mysteriously with an M or W. This is the chalice of communion, the cup that runneth over. 

In Thoth, we find a blue cup with the base of a lotus flower. It is marked with a Vesica Piscis. Water pours forth from the top and bottom of the cup, and all around it are emanations of water, blood, wine, and divine light.

In Marseille, we find an ornate, kingly cup. It is adorned in jewels and ornament. Jodorowsky thought it resembled a cathedral with its 7 spires. The central spire bears 3 interwoven circles, which themselves contain 3 circles. This is the Heart as a temple.

Each of these cards depict, in their own way, the Heart, the Fountain from which all blood flows. In contrast to the Ace of Wands, which is the divine phallus, here we have the divine vulva, and rather than the masturbation genesis of the Egyptians, here we see the birth of the world from the womb of the Great Mother.

The suit of Cups pertains to Water, and thus our emotions and depths. This being the first card in the suit shows us that the Heart is the central source from which all feelings flow. But let us not forget, Water is Divine, and it brings life to the mundane cup. Before the blood of Christ spilled into the Holy Grail, it was just a cup. 

It is the divine beauty of the Blood that makes a Heart worthy and pure. This is shown in Revelation (an image of which appears in Thoth’s Lust card) as the Cup of Abominations that Babalon carries, one filled with the blood of saints, abominable things and her own filth. A heart of darkness. 

The Ace of Cups is our own Heart, whether it pumps pure love and life, or sour acidic hatred is up to us. When we drink from the Grail, will we receive immortality or be cursed by our own impurity?

When we pull the Ace of Cups we can expect an emotional experience, a significant dream, conversation, or vision. Our feelings will be brought forth. As Nietzsche writes: Night has come; now all fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a fountain.

We must listen to our Hearts and let them flow freely.

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

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The Philosopher’s Stone (Alchemy II)

Cabala, Spiegel Der Kunst Und Natur, In Alchymia. Raphael Custos, (1615).

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Molly Hankins January 2, 2025

“The Philosopher’s Stone is not a stone, but a state of consciousness.”  - Manly P. Hall, author and founder of The Philosophical Research Society.

In ‘The Subtle and The Gross’, we explored each phase of alchemy, both in the literal and existential sense, and here we can bring these two meanings together. The subtle refers to the spiritual substance which is condensed into gross matter, and makes up the physical world we live in. Alchemists and magicians contend that the gross, on the other hand, can be altered by way of the subtle, and as Manly P. Hall said, it all begins with a new state of consciousness. 

The final stage of alchemy leads to the formation of the so-called Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance in physical alchemy that has the ability to transmute base metals into gold. On Becoming An Alchemist author Catherine MacCoun tells us that physical and metaphysical alchemy are achieved through a synthesis of the material and spiritual realms, and the Philosopher’s Stone is the union of the two. As we consciously merge the subtle and the gross within ourselves, so we create the conditions for alchemy and magic to become possible in the material realm. 

MacCoun writes, “Between you and anything that you may wish to influence there is a relationship. If either party in a relationship changes, the relationship itself is changed. In turn, any change in the relationship changes both parties. So if you wish to change something, the first thing you must do is discover the true nature of your relationship to it. Then you will be able to see how to change it by changing yourself. This is the basic logic of alchemy.” 

Our existence in the world of the gross is what she calls “the horizontal realm,” and it has a limited vantage point and capacity to affect change within space-time. True alchemy brings in what she calls “the vertical,” or the subtle realm of spirit, which has infinitely more data available than what we have access to in the physical, horizontal world. She believes that the vertical is influencing the horizontal all the time. Understanding the true relationship between these worlds, and then consciously merging them, is how we cultivate the power to create change in our reality. The Philosopher’s Stone is attained when spirit and matter consciously coagulate, a process that is ongoing, but once begun forever elevates our capacity to bend the horizontal world to our will. This is how we change the world by changing ourselves.

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“Our hearts may feel love in a passive sense, but they express little more than “inept good intentions and niceness.”

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Section from the Ripley Scroll, c.1550.

Alchemy, also referred to as The Great Work, is described in On Becoming An Alchemist as, “The process of reincarnating into your own life.” We described the phases of that process in part 1, as well as the characteristics and mechanisms of each phase. But the underlying essence of the merging between the spiritual and material, the vertical and horizontal, was intentionally withheld because it requires consideration of the vertical world. We can only reincarnate into our own lives by first accepting that our consciousness exists beyond the physical and that we have the ability to hold more of that consciousness within form.

Richard Rudd, creator of the Gene Keys, has his own description of this process. As of the publication date of this essay, we are currently in the 38th Gene Key of transcending struggle through perseverance to achieve honor. Richard says of this key, “We’re born to struggle, to fight, to move ever-upwards. We are form forced from within to try and free ourselves, to learn to fly - to be free from struggle, to be effortless like the birds in the sky or the dolphins leaping through the ocean waves. But even these creatures struggle, everything does. It’s the nature of evolution to go on expanding and surmounting itself. In humans, struggle can either free us or trap us.” The process of alchemy describes a process of struggle, but one that ultimately frees us when we become conscious of it. 

MacCoun’s work describes a mechanism we can consciously use within our physical and energetic bodies to persevere in the fine art of transmuting struggle into The Philosopher’s Stone by redirecting the flow of subtle energies. Below is what she calls a “muggle configuration” of the human energy body, which has a fraction of our total consciousness operating within the horizontal. The rest, which many spiritual traditions refer to as our “higher self” operating beyond the limitations of horizontal spacetime, is still up in the vertical. 

⬆️

Ideal

⬆️

Thought

⬆️

Word

💚

Territory

⬇️

Desire 

⬇️

Fear

⬇️

Without conscious work to evolve this configuration, we are wired to project all our fears, desires and territoriality out into the horizontal. Many of us then look to a vague, theoretical notion of the vertical - to religion, spiritual traditions, or new age practices. We project our words, thoughts, and ideals out there, all while neglecting to send any energy to what she contends is the true center of consciousness, our heart-center. Our hearts may feel love in a passive sense, but they express little more than “inept good intentions and niceness.” The next diagram illustrates what she calls alchemical energetic alignment.

Ideal

⬇️

Thought

⬇️

Word

💚

Integrity

⬆️

Devotion

⬆️

Confidence

⬆️

Life’s struggles, if we let them, alchemize fear into confidence, desire into devotion, and territoriality into integrity. Becoming conscious of this process, our relationship with the vertical, spiritual world, and the merging of the two is the union of the subtle and the gross which eventually turns our own heart-centers into The Philosopher’s Stone. Redirecting these energies both in meditation and in our horizontal, waking life accelerates our evolution and thus our capacity for affecting change in the world. Meditation, when undertaken with confidence, devotion and integrity, gives us access to the vertical. This takes the form of elevated states of being and profound insights arising in our minds of new ideals, thoughts and words. 

When we cultivate a relationship with the vertical and the heart becomes the meeting point between intention and will, we are merging heaven and earth. MacCoun ends her so-called technical overview of the process of redirecting energy to our hearts by reminding us that  “like a diamond, it is indestructible, cutting and radiant. It loves bravely, shrewdly, mightily and magically. It has become The Philosopher’s Stone.”

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Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.

Borges and I

How They Met Themselves. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864.

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One of the most significant writers of the 20th Century, the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges was a key figure of philosophical literature and magical realism whose short stories expanded upon metaphysical ideas with wit and brilliance. Borges often returned to the idea of the doppelgänger in his work, and in this non-fiction piece he explores his self-perception as a writer in contrast with his public profile, as two different Borges’s exist in his mind.

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Jorge Luis Borges December 31, 2024

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

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Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) was an Argentinian short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature

Two of Swords (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Peace, the Two of Swords
Number: 2
Astrology: Moon in Libra
Qabalah: Chokmah of Vau

Chris Gabriel December 28, 2024

The Two of Swords is the beginning of Thought. It is the mind taking its first steps; comparing and contrasting, balancing opposing ideas and finding peace. This is the card of the beauty that forms when we master this ability.

In Rider, we find a blindfolded woman balancing two swords in her hands. One faces left, the other right. She is seated, and behind her is a rocky shore. This is Lady Justice, for Justice is blind. It is evening, and a crescent moon sits in the sky above her.

In Thoth, we see two swords piercing a blue rose and crossing one another. The rose emits white geometric rays. Two miniature swords uphold the symbols for the Moon and Libra.

In Marseille, we have a central flower and two swords.

Sigmund Freud writes that “neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.” As a card of peace, the Two of Swords embraces ambiguity, duality, and finds the balance therein. Like riding a bicycle, continual movement is necessary to maintain true balance. One way to look at this card is like a Gyroscope or spinning top. It stands balanced and upright when in motion, but falls without it. Peace is not stationary, and certainly not permanent. 

Beyond the mechanical gyroscope, the Two of Swords calls to mind a baby learning to take its first steps. Once learned and mastered, it will never be forgotten. The development of the Mind is similar, but immensely more difficult.

We must train the mind to engage without belief, without attachment and sentimentality. We must treat it as a tool, sharpening and honing it until, we achieve balance - then the flower starts to grow. This is the true beauty of the mind unpoisoned by belief, natural processes flourish. 

A full mind can be polluted and congested with ideas that are not one’s own. A mind may be taken over by viruses for all manner of reasons. Our desires and fears can be hijacked, thoughts can be inserted in that we believe to be our own, and they then run freely with our bodies. This must be avoided if we want to create great things.

When pulling this card, we can expect a period of peaceful consideration, a lull in things. The hard work that we’ve put in before now grants us the freedom and time to think. 

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

The Curriculum of the Bauhaus

The Bauhaus School Building in Weimar, Germany.

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Four years after the formation of the Bauhaus, its founder Walter Gropius wrote a text entitled ‘The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus’ as a manifesto, declaration and explanation of the radical new world they were trying to form. The Bauhaus was a new type of art school, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany that attempted to unify individual expression and the process of mass manufacturing and modernity. It was inherently inter-disciplinary, and its output ranges from furniture and buildings, to paintings and craft work, each of which was valued individually and as a cohesive part of the greater whole. Perhaps no single movement has had quite as much impact in the 20th century, and the very visual language of the modern world owes its debt to this small school in Germany. Here, Gropius explains the curriculum of the school, and in doing so espouses some of the core philosophical ideas of the movement - that of intersectionality between mediums, rigorous focus on craft and technicality and an emphasis on the freedom that can be found within constraints of production.

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Walter Gropius December 26, 2024

The course of instruction at the Bauhaus is divided into:

The Preliminary Course (Vorlehre)

Practical and theoretical studies are carried on simultaneously in order to release the creative powers of the student, to help him grasp the physical nature of materials and the basic laws of design. Concentration on any particular stylistic movement is studiously avoided. Observation and representation - with the intention of showing the desired identity of Form and Content - define the limits of the preliminary course. Its chief function is to liberate the individual by breaking down conventional patterns of thought in order to make way for personal experiences and discoveries which will enable him to see his own potentialities and limitations. For this reason collective work is not essential in the preliminary course. Both subjective and objective observation will be cultivated: both the system of abstract laws and the interpretation of objective matter. 

Above all else, the discovery and proper valuation of the individual's means of expression shall be sought out. The creative possibilities of individuals vary. One finds his elementary expressions in rhythm, another in light and shade, a third in color, a fourth in materials, a fifth in sound, a sixth in proportion, a seventh in volumes or abstract space, an eighth in the relations between one and another, or between the two to a third or fourth. 

All the work produced in the preliminary course is done under the influence of instructors. It possesses artistic quality only in so far as any direct and logically developed expression of an individual which serves to lay the foundations of creative discipline can be called art.

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Instruction in form problems

Intellectual education runs parallel to manual training. The apprentice is acquainted with his future stock-in-trade - the elements of form and color and the laws to which they are subject. Instead of studying the arbitrary individualistic and stylized formulae current at the academies, he is given the mental equipment with which to shape his own ideas of form. This training opens the way for the creative powers of the individual, establishing a basis on which different individuals can cooperate without losing their artistic independence. Collective architectural work becomes possible only when every individual, prepared by proper schooling, is capable of understanding the idea of the whole, and thus has the means harmoniously to coordinate his independent, even if limited, activity with the collective work. Instruction in the theory of form is carried on in close contact with manual training. Drawing and planning, thus losing their purely academic character, gain new significance as auxiliary means of expression. We must know both vocabulary and grammar in order to speak a language; only then can we communicate our thoughts. Man, who creates and constructs, must learn the specific language of construction in order to make others understand his idea. Its vocabulary consists of the elements of form and color and their structural laws. The mind must know them and control the hand if a creative idea is to be made visible. The musician who wants to make audible a musical idea needs for its rendering not only a musical instrument but also a knowledge of theory. Without this knowledge, his idea will never emerge from chaos.

A corresponding knowledge of theory - which existed in a more vigorous era - must again be established as a basis for practice in the visual arts. The academies, whose task it might have been to cultivate and develop such a theory, completely failed to do so, having lost contact with reality. Theory is not a recipe for the manufacturing of works of art, but the most essential element of collective construction; it provides the common basis on which many individuals are able to create together a superior unit of work; theory is not the achievement of individuals but of generations. The Bauhaus is consciously formulating a new coordination of the means of construction and expression. Without this, its ultimate aim would be impossible. For collaboration in a group is not to be obtained solely by correlating the abilities and talents of various individuals. Only an apparent unity can be achieved if many helpers carry out the designs of a single person. In fact, the individual's labor within the group should exist as his own independent accomplishment. Real unity can be achieved only by coherent restatement of the formal theme, by repetition of its integral proportions in all parts of the work. Thus everyone engaged in the work must understand the meaning and origin of the principal theme.

Forms and colors gain meaning only as they are related to our inner selves. Used separately or in relation to one another they are the means of expressing different emotions and movements: they have no importance of their own. Red, for instance, evokes in us other emotions than does blue or yellow; round forms speak differently to us than do pointed or jagged forms. The elements which constitute the 'grammar' of creation are its rules of rhythm, of proportion, of light values and full or empty space. Vocabulary and grammar can be learned, but the most important factor of all, the organic life of the created work, originates in the creative powers of the individual. The practical training which accompanies the studies in form is founded as much on observation, on the exact representation or reproduction of nature, as it is on the creation of individual compositions. These two activities are profoundly different. The academies ceased to discriminate between them, confusing nature and art - though by their very origin they are antithetical. Art wants to triumph over Nature and to resolve the opposition in a new unity, and this process is consummated in the fight of the spirit against the material world. The spirit creates for itself a new life other than the life of nature.

Each of these departments in the course on the theory of form functions in close association with the workshops, an association which prevents their wandering off into academicism.

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The goal of the Bauhaus curriculum

The culminating point of the Bauhaus teaching is a demand for a new and powerful working correlation of all the processes of creation. The gifted student must regain a feeling for the interwoven strands of practical and formal work. The joy of building, in the broadest meaning of that word, must replace the paper work of design. Architecture unites in a collective task all creative workers, from the simple artisan to the supreme artist. 

For this reason, the basis of collective education must be sufficiently broad to permit the development of every kind of talent. Since a universally applicable method for the discovery of talent does not exist, the individual in the course of his development must find for himself the field of activity best suited to him within the circle of the community. The majority become interested in production; the few extraordinarily gifted ones will suffer no limits to their activity. After they have completed the course of practical and formal instruction, they undertake independent research and experiment.

Modern painting, breaking through old conventions, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world. But when, in the future, artists who sense new creative values have had practical training in the industrial world, they will themselves possess the means for realizing those values immediately. They will compel industry to serve their idea and industry will seek out and utilize their comprehensive training.

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Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture, and one of the most influential art theorists of the modern age.

Christmas Day

Still from The Christmas Angel (Détresse et Charité). Georges Méliès, 1904.

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Published on Christmas Day in 1830, in the British publication ‘The Tatler’, Leigh Hunt’s essay on Christmas grapples with many of the same questions being asked almost 200 years later. How, he wonders, can we celebrate in a world full of suffering? Yet deftly and sympathetically, Hunt makes the argument that the best thing we can do in times of strife and trouble is sow seeds of happiness. Much of the original essay concerns the intricacies of eating and drinking in 19th century Christmas celebration, but the extract presented here is his opening remarks. While dressed in the language of the day, it contains within it universal truths of justice, charity, and kindness that are evergreen reminders.

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Leigh Hunt December 24, 2024

The antiquities of Christmas, its origin, old customs, rustic usages, and mention by the poets, have been so abundantly treated in various publications of late years, that we should have nothing to say on the subject, if the season itself, and the fire-side, did not set us talking. We hope our readers will all enjoy themselves heartily to-day ; but to that end, we have first a word or two to say of a graver tendency. We are not going to tell them that they must have no mirth, because there are many who have a great deal of sorrow. It would be a great pity, were there no sunshine in one place, because there is rain in another. There are many things in the present state of the world, and of our own country in particular, calculated to disturb, even a momentary spirit of enjoyment, if our very humanity did not help to reassure us. We firmly believe, that the end of all the present tribulations of Europe, will be a glorious advance in the well-being of society. This reflection alone may enable the lovers of their species to endure many evils, and to persevere with renewed cheerfulness, in the struggles that yet remain for them to go through. We believe also, with equal assuredness, that the end of the present dreadful calamities of the poor in England, will be a proportionate advance in the whole condition of the English community; and therefore uneasy and cheerful thoughts chase one another in our contemplations, as images of the present or future predominate ; but when we propose to ourselves a special day of enjoyment, or relief, or whatever else it may be called, in proportion to the cares of the individual, it appears to us that we ought not to take it, without doing what we can towards diminishing some portion of it in others, even should our circumstances allow us to do no more than give them an apple or a crust.

What we mean, in short, is, that in all neighbourhoods, there are fellow-creatures to whom Christmas is little or no Christmas, except in reminding them that they cannot keep it; and we would have everybody do something, however small, to shew them that we would fain have it otherwise. The rich can do something in this way, to gladden the hearts of many families; others may be able to do but little for three or four; others for a less number; and some for none at all, to any serious degree, except that the least attention to the poor is welcomed as a serious blessing. But we would say to every one who can spare a slice from his pudding, or an apple from his little children's dessert, “If you can send nothing else, send that.” If you know of no actual distress, still the slice of meat or pudding may be welcome ; the servant will, probably, know somebody who would be glad of it. There is the washerwoman, or the errand-boy, or the poor man who sweeps the cold street at the corner - send out your charity somewhere, and it will find a call for its tenderness.

We give this advice, not because your heart may be wanting in natural kindness, or you may not be even actively beneficent, when affliction is brought before your eyes; but because the best hearted joy may sometimes forget others, in its vivacity, or not have been sufficiently taught to share what it can; but having thus earned a right to be sympathized with by those about you, we say then, “Do forget, if you can, all others." Shut out the world and its sorrows, as you do the darkness of the evening with your curtains, and realize the happiness which you would bestow on all. It is a part of your duty to enjoy what pleasures you can, not inconsistent with others' welfare or your own. 

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Leigh Hunt (19 October 1784 – 28 August 1859) was an English critic, essayist and poet. In 1808 he founded the radical intellectual journal ‘The Examiner’, and introduced many of the greatest poets of his age, including John Keats, Percy Shelley, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson, to a public audience.

Page of Swords (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Page, Princess, Valet
Number: 4
Astrology: Earth of Air
Qabalah: He of Vau

Chris Gabriel December 21, 2024

The lowest face card in the suit of Swords has a different title in each deck, though their symbolism and meaning are united. They are smoke and fog, the thick and heavy air personified. Each are weighed upon by the material reality of their ideas. 

In Rider, we are shown the Page, a young man with long blond hair blowing in the wind. He holds his sword close to his chest and leans against the wind. One foot is firmly planted on the ground, the other only brings its toes to the ground. Behind him is a great deal of pillowing grey clouds. His face is stern.

In Thoth, it is the Princess; entirely green, we only see her from behind as she swings her sword. She is a young, lithe woman with geometric pixie wings and a diaphanous dress. Her crown is topped by the head of Medusa. She is amidst a great deal of dark smoke. She is a Valkyrie, a brave woman of war. She is the only one who is actively swinging her sword. 

In Marseille, the card shows the Valet. He is a young man with long blonde hair and a large hat. Well dressed, both his feet are planted on the lower border of the card, but go in different directions. He is considering sheathing his sword. 

Both the Page and Valet are confused, uncertain of whether to fight or not. The Princess, however, is right in the thick of it, swinging her sword. As the Earth of Air, this card is the materialization of thought. It is the solid air and the blinding smoke and fog.

Each of these figures are in the fog of war and have no clear path ahead. This can be anxiety and impotence, or terrible blind violence; the unwillingness to fight, or the fury to kill. 

Infact, the phrase “Fog of War” quite cleanly sums up the dignified character of the card. 

War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth. — Carl von Clausewitz

At its best, this card is the sensitive and skilled intelligence, not the uncertain fog. The Princess is the clearest image of this: with her gorgon crest she is Artemis, the lunar huntress. As such, she can see in the dark and cut through the fog. Crowley describes her as the embodied wrath of God. She is also a Fury who, regardless of the complex morality at play in a situation, will blindly punish whoever they determine is wrong.

When we pull this card, we can expect to be met with a call to action. Whether we meet it with ready intelligence or vacillate in uncertainty is up to us. This can also represent a person directly, someone defined by thought. 

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Rebel Physics and the Chaos Magic Equation

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Molly Hankins December 19, 2024

The lines between magic, science and spirituality have become increasingly blurred, with chaos magic taking the form of what author and chaos magician Peter J. Carroll calls “rebel physics.” A trip to Carroll’s Specularium website reveals in-depth discussions of a particle spin theory related to spacetime and a paradigm he calls ‘hypersphere cosmology’ that challenges the Big Bang theory. While it may feel  impossible for a layman to make sense of, for the past year he’s been in published conversations with Institute of Noetic Sciences’ Chief Scientist Dr. Dean Radin about his theories. These conversations succeed in both vetting Carroll’s work from a scientific perspective and breaking them down for the average person.

Radin, who studies psychic or “psi” phenomena including telepathy, remote viewing, precognition and extra-sensory perception, contends that both magicians and scientists engaged in psi research are studying the same underlying phenomena. He weighed in on the variables of Carroll’s quintessential chaos magic equation, shown here for posterity and interest, but fear not if it is rather hard to follow. The equation is as follows with P equaling probability of natural occurrence, Pm  being probability influenced by magic, and M referring to the amount of magic applied, as defined by G (gnosis), L (a magical link), S (subconscious resistance) and B (consciously aware belief).

Pm = P + (1-P) x M1/p 

M = GLSB

“My interest in conducting a test involving magic is because the experimental design I’m using addresses a long-standing problem in mainstream physics, the quantum observer effect,” Radin explained. “And if it turns out that magical practices can enhance the results of such an effect, then that would be an interesting advancement for both magical practitioners and for physics.” The factors Carroll has identified that make up M, or the variable of magic in any spell, also determine the qualities of observation from Radin’s quantum physics viewpoint. Observing or measuring a quantum particle such as a photon  has the effect of changing its behavior, and this is the focus of his latest research at Institute of Noetics Sciences is focused on.

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“Laughter is the only tenable attitude in a universe which is a joke played on itself.” 

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When applied to predicting the efficacy of any magical act, each factor carries equal weight so let’s unpack them one at a time, beginning with G, gnosis. A Greek word meaning knowledge or awareness, Carroll defines the state of gnosis as “no mind” and the power source for any act of magic. The mind is emptied via an excitatory or inhibitory state and once achieved, pure energy, unimpeded by other thoughts, can be directed at “charging” our magical will. In his book Liber Null & Psychonaut, he lists sexual excitation, sensory overload, and overwhelming mental states such as anger, fear and horror as viable means of achieving excitatory gnosis. On the inhibitory side, he cites sensory deprivation, gazing into a mirror to achieve a magical trance and by means of physical exhaustion.

L, the magical link, is a deliberate psychic connection established between the magician and an object, person or symbol such as a sigil, which Radin describes as creating a symbol for an intention or goal. According to another of Carroll’s books, Liber Kaos, prior personal contact with the “target” of magical practice is ideal, but an extensive mental image even in the form of visualization can suffice. An internet search for Peter J. Carroll will soon reveal that there’s not a single photograph of him online, and any which claim to be are fakes, for the very reason of protecting himself from anyone being able to readily establish a magical link with him. 

1909 Photograph of William James’ seance.

The last two factors S and B (subconscious resistance and consciously aware belief) refer to mental states that can reduce the efficacy of a magical act.The goal is to reduce these because they typically can’t be eliminated entirely. Subconscious resistance is self-explanatory and can be mitigated by appealing to its highly suggestible nature. Meditation, mindfulness of our reactions, strategic affirmations, and the use of symbols such as the Tarot keys are all means of influence. 

In the reissue of Liber Kaos, Carroll updated his B for belief to an A meaning conscious awareness, but both are relevant to understanding this paradoxical variable. He writes, “In chaos magic we treat belief as a tool rather than an end in itself.” And while tailoring conscious belief to be conducive to successful acts of magic is critical, so is the banishment of conscious awareness once a spell has been cast or a sigil charged. 

This act of forgetting, challenging as it may seem when we’re “lusting for result” as he puts it, ensures the mind doesn’t become anxious of failure which would cause our will to become a mass of conflicting ideas that block manifestation. Non-attachment, however it’s achieved, is essential. Carroll recommends inducing laughter immediately upon banishment. “Laughter,” he says, “Is the only tenable attitude in a universe which is a joke played on itself.” 

And remember, as discussed in another Carroll-inspired essay on the pentagram, the so-called “information load” of the magical act will determine how much GSLB is needed to facilitate effective magic. He reminds us in Liber Null and Psychonaut that it’s far easier to generate the magical effect of causing someone to fall under a 16-ton weight than it is to make a 16-ton weight fall down on someone because fewer variables, and therefore far less information, is required to create the first effect. In the same way, it is much easier to overcome subconscious resistance when working with lighter information loads. 

As the cutting edge of consciousness science and chaos magic continue to inform each other’s areas of study, we’ll be keeping close tabs on both Radin and Carroll’s work. Learn more about the SIGIL experiment here and read the full text of their interviews here. 

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

From Line to Constellation

Eugen Gomringer, 1953. Wind.

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Eugen Gomringer is a poet and literary critic regarded as the father of European concrete poetry. In this 1954 essay, he sensed a change in the way we engaged with language, and began to set out a new understanding of poetry that could not only respond but operate in harmony with this change. This short essay served as his manifesto and would go on to inspire countless other poets to join this new movement. 70 years later, Gomringer’s ideas seem like prophecies as language has increasingly simplified, and the line between text and image that he posited has blurred even further in a visual, digital age. Yet Gomringer’s solutions, his ‘Constellations’, or concrete poems as they became more commonly known, have remained on the fringes of experimental writing.

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Eugen Gomringer December 17, 2024

Our languages are on the road to formal simplification. Abbreviated, restricted forms of language are emerging. The content of a sentence is often conveyed in a single word. Longer statements are often represented by small groups of letters. Moreover, there is a tendency among languages for the many to be replaced by a few which are generally valid. Does this restricted and simplified use of language and writing mean the end of poetry? Certainly not. Restriction in the best sense-concentration and simplification is the very essence of poetry. From this we ought perhaps to conclude that the language of today must have certain things in common with poetry, and that they should sustain each other both in form and substance. In the course of daily life this relationship often passes unnoticed. Headlines, slogans, groups of sounds and letters give rise to forms which could be models for a new poetry just waiting to be taken up for meaningful use. The aim of the new poetry is to give poetry an organic function in society again, and in doing so to restate the position of poet in society. Bearing in mind, then, the simplification both of language and its written form, it is only possible to speak of an organic function for poetry in terms of the given linguistic situation. So the new poem is simple and can be perceived visually as a whole as well as in its parts. It becomes an object to be both seen and used: an object containing thought but made concrete through play-activity (denkgegenstanddenkspiel), its concern is with brevity and conciseness. It is memorable and imprints itself upon the mind as a picture. Its objective element of play is useful to modern man, whom the poet helps through his special gift for this kind of play-activity. Being an expert both in language and the rules of the game, the poet invents new formulations. By its exemplary use of the rules of the game the new poem can have an effect on ordinary language.

The constellation is the simplest possible kind of configuration in poetry which has for its basic unit the word, it encloses a group of words as if it were drawing stars together to form a cluster.

The constellation is an arrangement, and at the same time a play-area of fixed dimensions.

The constellation is ordered by the poet. He determines the play-area, the field or force and suggests its possibilities. the reader, the new reader, grasps the idea of play, and joins in.

In the constellation something is brought into the world. It is a reality in itself and not a poem about something or other. The constellation is an invitation.

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Eugen Gomringer is a Bolivian-Swiss poet, professor, and the father of the European Concrete Poetry movement that he began in the 1950s.

Six of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Success, Six of Disks
Number: 6
Astrology: Moon in Taurus
Qabalah: Tiphereth of He

Chris Gabriel December 14, 2024

The Six of Disks is the bountiful harvest that has been accumulating since the seed of the Ace. It is the maternal feeding and caring that comes from having enough.

In Rider, we see two kneeling beggars with outstretched hands receiving  gold coins from a well dressed man. The beggars are in patchy robes and one’s head is bandaged. Their benefactor holds a scale to weigh out his charity.

In Thoth, we find a hexagon formed by the planets atop a hexagonal star. In the center is the rosy cross. The card is made up of dark blues and whites for the moon, and orange red for Taurus. 

In Marseille, there are six coins around a blossoming flower. Qabalistically, this is the Beauty of the Princess. 

Where the five of disks fell apart, the six is a successful harvest. In the five of disks, Rider showed us the economic disparity between the wealthy and the impoverished, but here we see charity and generosity, noblesse oblige.

This is the generosity of the Mother, as the Moon in Taurus.An exalted placement, we are reminded of breastfeeding, cooking, and caregiving. The maternal caring moon in the sign of the comfortable, loving cow. 

This dynamic is expressed well in the I Ching, in the 42nd hexagram Increase, of which Richard Wilhelm says “A sacrifice of the higher element that produces an increase of the lower is called an out-and-out increase: it indicates the spirit that alone has power to help the world.”

This card is one of sacrifice from the higher for the sake of the lower. Not giving with the expectation of return, but out of true maternal love andthe desire to see growth and flourishing. A good mother does not eat more than her child, for she wants the child to strive.

This generosity is a  rarity in the world, as most power and wealth hordes itself and gives back nothing to the world. This is  Thanksgiving: a home cooked dinner with family and friends, a selfless kindness. This is true love in the earthly dimension. 

Mythologically, we can think of Ymir, the father of Giants, who drank the milk of Audhumla, the primeval cow. Audhumla’s name is a perfect expression of this card, translating to “rich in milk and hornless”. We can also think of the Milky Way in which we all live, one formed, in Egyptian mythology, by the cow goddess Bat, and the milk of Hera, to the Greeks. Our celestial home exists thanks to the milk of a mother.

When we pull this card we can expect comfort and good times. This is a good investment paying off. We may be given something, or be called on to give to others. A loving exchange.

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Fragment from “America”

John Margolies, 1987. Road sign near Santa Rosa, New Mexico.

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Jean Baudrillard was amongst the most consequential sociologists and philosophers of the modern age, formulating ideas of cultural consumption, hyperreality, and simulation that came to define our collective understanding of the technological age. In 1986, this titan of French academia published his American travel journals, written while driving across the United States. The work is insightful and biting, laden with humor, cynicism and awe for the country. Here is a fragment of these journals; concerning the joy of driving, the nature of artificiality, and the vast American desert to create a theory of America as land defined by, and powered by, speed.

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Jean Baudrillard December 12, 2024

Speed creates pure objects. It is itself a pure object, since it cancels out the ground and territorial reference-points, since it runs ahead of time to annul time itself, since it moves more quickly than its own cause and obliterates that cause by outstripping it. Speed is the triumph of effect over cause, the triumph of instantaneity over time as depth, the triumph of the surface arid pure objectality over the profundity of desire. Speed creates a space of initiation, which may be lethal; its only rule is to leave no trace behind. Triumph of forgetting over memory, an uncultivated, amnesic intoxication. The superficiality and reversibility of a pure object in the pure geometry of the desert. Driving like this produces a kind of invisibility, transparency, or transversality in things, simply by emptying them out. It is a sort of slow-motion suicide, death by an extenuation of forms - the delectable form of their disappearance. Speed is not a vegetal thing. It is nearer to the mineral, to refraction through a crystal, and it is already the site of a catastrophe, of a squandering of time. Perhaps, though, its fascination is simply that of the void. There is no seduction here, for seduction requires a secret. Speed is simply the rite that initiates us into emptiness: a nostalgic desire for forms to revert to immobility, concealed beneath the very intensification of their mobility. Akin to the nostalgia for living forms that haunts. 

Still, there is a violent contrast here, in this country, between the growing abstractness of a nuclear universe and a primary, visceral, unbounded vitality, springing not from rootedness, but from the lack of roots, a metabolic vitality, in sex and bodies, as well as in work and in buying and selling. Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society. The fascinating thing is to travel through it as though it were the primitive society of the future, a society of complexity, hybridity, and the greatest intermingling, of a ritualism that is ferocious but whose superficial diversity lends it beauty, a society inhabited by a total metasocial fact with unforeseeable consequences, whose immanence is breathtaking, yet lacking a past through which to reflect on this, and therefore fundamentally primitive. . . Its primitivism has passed into the hyperbolic, inhuman character of a universe that is beyond us, that far outstrips its own moral, social, or ecological rationale. Only Puritans could have invented and developed this ecological and biological morality based on preservation - and therefore on discrimination -which is profoundly racial in nature. Everything becomes an overprotected nature reserve, so protected indeed that there is talk today of denaturalizing Yosemite to give it back to Nature, as has happened with the Tasaday in the Philippines. A Puritan obsession with origins in the very place where the ground itself has already gone. An obsession with finding a niche, a contact, precisely at the point where everything unfolds in an astral. 

Edward S. Curtis, 1904. Cañyon de Chelly.

There is a sort of miracle in the insipidity of artificial paradises, so long as they achieve the greatness of an entire (un)culture. In America, space lends a sense of grandeur even to the insipidity of the suburbs and ‘funky towns’. The desert is everywhere, preserving insignificance. A desert where the miracle of the car, of ice and whisky is daily re-enacted: a marvel of easy living mixed with the fatality of the desert. A miracle of obscenity that is genuinely American: a miracle of total availability, of the transparency of all functions in space, though this latter nonetheless remains unfathomable in its vastness and can only be exorcised by speed. 

The Italian miracle: that of stage and scene. 

The American miracle: that of the obscene. 

The profusion of sense, as against the deserts of meaninglessness. 

It is metamorphic forms that are magical. Not the sylvan, vegetal forest, but the petrified, mineralized forest. The salt desert, whiter than snow, flatter than the sea. The effect of monumentality, geometry, and architecture where nothing has been designed or planned. Canyonsland, Split Mountain. Or the opposite: the amorphous reliefless relief of Mud Hills, the voluptuous, fossilized, monotonously undulating lunar relief of ancient lake beds. The white swell of White Sands. It takes this surreality of the elements to eliminate nature’s picturesque qualities, just as it takes the metaphysics of speed to eliminate the natural picturesqueness of travel. 

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“Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.”

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In fact the conception of a trip without any objective and which is, as a result, endless, only develops gradually for me. I reject the picturesque tourist round, the sights, even the landscapes (only their abstraction remains, in the prism of the scorching heat). Nothing is further from pure travelling than tourism or holiday travel. That is why it is best done in the extensive banality of deserts, or in the equally desert-like banality of a metropolis - not at any stage regarded as places of pleasure or culture, but seen televisually as scenery, as scenarios. That is why it is best done in extreme heat, the orgasmic form of bodily deterritorialization. The acceleration of molecules in the heat contributes to a barely perceptible evaporation of meaning. 

It is not the discovery of local customs that counts, but discovering the immorality of the space you have to travel through, and this is on a quite different plane. It is this, together with the sheer distance, and the deliverance from the social, that count. Here in the most moral society there is, space is truly immoral. Here in the most conformist society, the dimensions are immoral. It is this immorality that makes distance light and the journey infinite, that cleanses the muscles of their tiredness. 

Sinclair Lewis, 1908.

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology. This sort of travel creates its own peculiar type of event and innervation, so it also has its own special form of fatigue. Like a fibrillation of muscles, striated by the excess of heat and speed, by the excess of things seen or read, of places passed through and forgotten. The defibrillation of the body overloaded with empty signs, functional gestures, the blinding brilliance of the sky, and somnabulistic [sic!] distances, is a very slow process. Things suddenly become lighter, as culture, our culture, becomes more rarefied. And this spectral form of civilization which the Americans have invented, an ephemeral form so close to vanishing point, suddenly seems the best adapted to the probability - the probability only - of the life that lies in store for us. The form that dominates the American West, and doubtless all of American culture, is a seismic form: a fractal, interstitial culture, born of a rift with the Old World, a tactile, fragile, mobile, superficial culture - you have to follow its own rules to grasp how it works: seismic shifting. 

The only question in this journey is: how far can we go in the extermination of meaning, how far can we go in the non-referential desert form without cracking up and, of course, still keep alive the esoteric charm of disappearance? A theoretical question here materialized in the objective conditions of a journey which is no longer a journey and therefore carries with it a fundamental rule: aim for the point of no return. This is the key. And the crucial moment is that brutal instant which reveals that the journey has no end, that there is no longer any reason for it to come to an end. Beyond a certain point, it is movement itself that changes. Movement which moves through space of its own volition changes into an absorption by space itself - end of resistance, end of the scene of the journey as such (exactly as the jet engine is no longer an energy of space penetration, but propels itself by creating a vacuum in front of it that sucks it forward, instead of supporting itself, as in the traditional model, upon the air’s resistance). In this way, the centrifugal, eccentric point is reached where movement produces the vacuum that sucks you in. This moment of vertigo is also the moment of potential collapse. Not so much from the tiredness generated by the distance and the heat, as from the irreversible advance into the desert of time.

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.

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Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher, sociologist and cultural theorist. He was born in 1929 and died in 2007.

Wounds

Robert White, Compleat Discourse of Wounds (1678).

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Sofia Luna December 10, 2024

For most of human existence, our wounds signified that we were part of the natural world. They wrote the story of life without separation as we not only blended into, but were an active part of the ecosystem. Last week, noticing a boy having breakfast with his mother rocking a severely bruised eye, it felt like a novelty. In a modern, western world, physical wounds and battle scars have all but disappeared from everyday reality. What, I wondered, are the global repercussions of the sterilisation of our physical plane?

We no longer walk through irregular terrains filled with natural pigments, or scramble over cliffs with battered bodies. We construct buildings to keep nature out and monuments to hold our ambitions together. We walk with slicked back hair, and polished suits through angular concrete landscapes. We refine and decorate our avatars, surgically 'enhance' our geometries, and homogenise the surface of our lives and our bodies the same way we do to our walls. We call this progress. Beneath our skin, though, lies irregularity—festering deep, invisible wounds, not of flesh but of spirit. 

In the gradual fabrication of the modern metropolis, we transferred our bodily wounds to earth. To her soil, her small ferns, to past predators, waters, rivers, and birds—not realising that they too, give us life. We looked away from the damage caused as we dreamt of a human centric world, building structures to keep dangers out. And they did  but the fact that wounds incrementally disappeared from the visual field made it really difficult for us to track what was hazardous to our new existence. 

As our infrastructures mutated, so did our wounds, but our definitions of danger stayed the same. Only in cases of mass destruction or abuse in focused areas are we able to look from afar and say “yes, there is a problem we need to work on!”.That which invisibly infects the collective beyond time and space is really hard to put a finger on, and so is difficult to heal. Consequently, moving from tiger scratches 20,000 years ago to inexplicable spirit aches have left us living "in a space without a map," as Joanna Macy remarked. 

Few of us  could survive in a forest right now, but we need not be that adventurous—a lot of humans can't even deal with free time at home. We require constant stimulation, and have become completely averse to the uncharted. We follow paths that have been clearly traced before in fear of getting lost. Is this a place worth existing in? A lot of people have started to realise it is not and I have witnessed the ample collective inkling that we should recalculate our relationship with the world and ourselves.

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“Wounds are holes, holes are doors, doors into something, openings, where, if we choose to enter them, the person that walks out is not the same who walked in.”

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We have been so isolated from nature that we don't even consider its absence as one of the causes for global unsettlement or the sharp rises in anxiety, loneliness, depression and spiritual voids that so many of us experience. Isn't she Mother Earth? We are the child that has cut their parent off and have been left traumatised. 

We talk about rewilding gardens but it is time to talk about rewilding society. We are hungry for something that was taken from us. When certain religions first appeared, they replaced our connection to the wild with a relationship to something more abstract. Slowly we have been extracted out of the symbiotic relationship we had with our planet, as institutions of belief arranged themselves on top of everything and everyone as the source. Religion replaced nature. It reasoned with the invisible and colonised our imagination for the past millennia. Thank God, time,  and the increasing access to information, that  what was hiding underneath—the incoherence,  the imposed patriarchy, intolerance, and the general abuse of power that was then mimicked by corporations— was exposed. Today, younger generations are unsubscribing from this expired belief system and in that process have started seeking something else. Many of us are returning back to nature, to our nature.

Caravaggio, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1602)

Hosting Shinrin-Yoku experiences (the science backed Japanese practice of Forest Bathing, known to balance the body and mind) one quickly sees how fulfilling, cleansing, healing, energising, and surprisingly simple the practice feels when all you do is walk through a forest, fully present, without the intrusion of technology. This evidence shows how much nature feels like home—how nurturing she is, how much our bodies need her, and yet, how absent she is in modern cities.

I have found that the more I heal my insides, the closer I feel to the natural world, the more natural it feels to live in this world, and the more I unearth my own self and the old memories of the soul. Wounds are holes, holes are doors, doors into something, openings, where, if we choose to enter them, the person that walks out is not the same who walked in. Unhealed wounds propagate, the same way good energy creates more good energy and healed wounds attract healed people. There is no need to try and save the entire world, because the entire world is simply the one You inhabit—you choose what to do with it. 

I write this to speak into reality a transformation, I believe, is happening to many. We are interconnected, and in this floating rock, no one experiences anything alone, the Human Experience is shared. Regardless of the 'never-ending horrors', we are on our way back to nature.  And Nature is not just a tree, a fish and a squirrel. Nature is you, in essence. Nature is beauty, it is The Grand, it is Vast. It is Vital, it is Infinite, it is Eternally Alive. It is Robust, Real, Complex. It is Us. It is also everything we are not right now, and everything we are becoming. 

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Sofia Luna explores and builds tools that facilitate this time's modern cognitive shift. She is a Colombian artist, creative consultant, entrepreneur and imaginator living In The Middle of The Future. 

The Ten of Swords (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Ruin, the Ten of Swords
Number: 10
Astrology: Sun in Gemini
Qabalah: Malkuth of Vau

Chris Gabriel December 7, 2024

The Ten of Swords is the end of all the plots and schemes of the suit of swords. Here all of the lofty ideas are brought down to their material conclusion - ruin.

In Rider, we see a man bled out, struck through by ten swords in an act of excessive violence. His hand points two fingers down. The sun has set, and darkness rolls in. All the swords of the suit are brought down to Earth, the craftsman is killed by his own work.

In Thoth, we have ten swords breaking at their points. Together, they form the Tree of Life. Their handles are, respectively, the sun and moon, a scale, stars, crosses, and compasses. All about them are jagged, deformed geometric figures. Astrologically this is the Sun in Gemini.

In Marseille, we have eight curved swords, and two swords crossing one another from outside the oval. Here the ideas formed throughout the suit come into reality. A positive view of the placement in comparison with Rider and Thoth. Qabalistically this is the Kingdom of the Prince.

This is the material end of high ideas. Rider’s depiction calls to mind Julius Caesar, whose visions of domination and rulership ended in 23 stab wounds. This is expressed perfectly in Ezekiel 28:9: “Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.”

Like the tragic ending of Hamlet, who is ultimately killed by his own mind, his dreams, and an unwillingness to deal with the reality of his opponent’s blade, this is a card concerned with the simple, material ending of death in the face of lofty ambition.. 

For Rider, we can imagine that beyond ten enemies stabbing a man in the back, his own hubris wielded those deathly blades. Just as the Nine of Swords was like the Sword of Damocles, here the thread breaks and the sword falls.

When read positively as in Marseille, we see the painstaking process of bringing ideas into reality  that can leave the artist feeling like the man struck in Rider. The artist’s vision of beauty is never translated into reality, instead they must make compromises to bring something into the world. This is necessary and good for we must materialize and not simply ideate. The negativity of Rider and Thoth hinges upon the bad nature of the ideas brought to fruition but Marseille shows us that a good idea brought to reality is the ultimate good. Only when ideas remain in the mind for too long do they rot and fester.

It calls to mind an allegory from the Upanishads. 

“We are like the spider,” said the king. “We weave our life, and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.

“This is true for the entire universe. That is why it is said, ‘Having created the creation, the Creator entered into it’.

“This is true for us. We create our world, and then enter into that world. We live in the world that we have created. When our hearts are pure, then we create the beautiful, enlightened life we have wished for.”

When we pull this card, we can expect the end of a project. If executed well, it will be  a great thing. Otherwise, the plots and schemes we’ve formed will come crashing down. Our ideas, good and bad, will here be brought into reality.

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

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The Subtle and The Gross (Alchemy I)

Illustration from “Thesaurus of Alchemy”. c.1725.

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Molly Hankins December 5, 2024

When it comes to magic, alchemy, or the transformation of matter, can be taken literally or metaphorically. According to the Bulgarian philosopher and spiritual movement UWB founder Peter Deunov’s teachings on Kabbalist philosophy, life on Earth is spirit condensed into matter and so to practice magic inherently involves both literal and metaphorical alchemy. 

His disciple author Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov used the Latin phrase ‘solve et coagula’ to describe the alchemical process, meaning to dissolve and coagulate. Catherine MacCoun, author of On Becoming An Alchemist, uses the Emerald Tablets language of ‘separating the subtle from the gross’ to describe the same phenomena. “Alchemical magic never defies the laws of nature.”, she writes, “Instead, it observes the workings of those laws at an earlier stage than is evident to the physical senses. Whatever manifests on the physical level begins with an idea or intention. While matter is too dense, too heavy, to be altered by the mind alone, ideas and intentions are the mind’s natural medium.”

If physical reality is too dense to be altered by will alone, then using our will to cause such change to occur must inherently involve some dissolution of this density. In order to work with the ‘gross’ body by way of the subtle, according to Deunov’s teachings, involves the life-long alchemical process of consciously disintegrating condensed matter. As Aïvanhov wrote in Fruits of the Tree of Life, “All that is dense, compact and heavy represents unorganized matter in which energy is held prisoner. And the more energy one imprisons oneself with, like those who overeat, the more harm one does to oneself. We must, on the contrary, liberate energy.” 

The Universal White Brotherhood believed that using our consciousness to transform the gross into the subtle simply was the great secret of mastering life itself. There are seven stages of alchemy which are recognized as being both physical and spiritual. MacCoun describes each phase in terms of the base matter to be alchemized and the result of what that matter is ultimately transmuted into.

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“Separation is our phase of spiritual adolescence because we can’t become magical adults without maturing beyond egoic impulses to defend our existential territory.”

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The first is calcination, which technically means burning something to ashes, but according to her interpretation also means suffering caused by attachment to what will inevitably be lost. She posits that every human life is marked by a series of losses that burns away all which is not our true essence. The result of this calcination of ‘false roots’ or over-identification with the material world is self-confidence by way of strengthening the connection to who we truly are. 

The next stage is dissolution, where physically ashes are dissolved into fluid, and existentially, our desires are dissolved into devotion. MacCoun believes this process occurs when we get impatient waiting for our desires to be fulfilled. That gap between our wants and attainments begs the question of whether our desires are true and useful, an essential step in coming to know our true selves. The result is that ultimately we not only get to know ourselves, but also learn to let go of attachment to outcome, which paradoxically results in more favorable outcomes. Our desires themselves transmute from gross to subtle.

From “Compendiolum de Praeparatione Auri Potabilis Veri”, attributed to M. E. Bonacina. c.1790.

Separation occurs next, which involves the physical extraction of matter left in the dissolved substance. Metaphorically, separation refers to extraction of the true self from the personalities acquired through of various life experiences and trauma responses. The base matter is territoriality, which can be anything defining us in relation to others that we have an ego-driven instinct to protect. The transmuted result, then, is integrity, and MacCoun contends that separation is our phase of spiritual adolescence because we can’t become magical adults without maturing beyond egoic impulses to defend our existential territory. 

The fourth stage is conjunction, a combining of the results from the previous three stages. In the physical sense, the process has altered from changing a substance through natural processes to changing a substance using a combination of the other substances generated in each stage of the process. Existentially, it refers to being able to hold opposing forces, transmuting vulnerability into compassion by way of the heart. Rather than trying to make sense of conflict in our heads, we hold it in our hearts and offer hospitality to the opposing forces,  compassion.

Fermentation happens next, which physically involves leaving the substance alone in the dark until it putrefies. In existential terms, this is the “dark night of the soul” that transmutes the base material of obsolete desires and ambitions into magical will. One’s inner life overtakes the outer life because an aspect of our will is an obstacle to what our spirit wishes to express through our physical reality.

Sublimation is the penultimate stage, where the physical substance is heated up until the essence rises to the surface. On a personal level, this is the phase where we realize we’re disconnected from our true intentions. The transmuting of thoughts into deeds starts with the internal panic or “heat” of recognizing when our mentality is misaligned with what we’re doing. After this phase, our will becomes wise because it’s more connected to our spirit. The subtlety of our true essence moves beyond gross matter, freed by being subjected to each stage of the alchemical process.

MacCoun named the final stage radiation, which is where ‘The Philosopher’s Stone’ is formed in medieval alchemy. This essential concept will be covered in part II, but both physically and existentially this phase is one of coagulation. The base matter is arbitrary magic and the transmutation is sacred magic. According to MacCoun, Aleister Crowley’s famous quote, “Do what thou whilst shall be the whole of the law,” is the very definition of arbitrary magic. By contrast, Deunov’s Universal White Brotherhood believe that magical results are achieved by treating everyone and everything as sacred, that we must always be infusing positive vibrations into both the subtle and gross in order to direct our will.

Unlike physical, linear alchemy of a single substance, any number of these existential processes can occur simultaneously,  and through our lifetimes. In part II we’ll explore the true meaning of The Philosopher’s Stone, the supposed secret key to successful alchemy.

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

Theaters of Authenticity

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Ana Roberts December 3, 2024

David Bowie released his first album in 1967 to little acclaim or success, and there are many who say it rightly deserved neither. A peculiar blend of psychedelic rock, folk and whimsical music hall acts, the album is incompatible with the rest of his career. It is a combination of twee songs of pastoral England, saccharine love songs and quaint lyrics that seem to come from an oral tradition of medieval story telling. It is an album mostly not worth talking about, save for a single track ‘We Are Hungry Men’ undoubtedly amongst the few embarrassing moments in Bowies career. It is a muddled song telling a rather shallow story, feeling halfway between a radio play and a song, with an undeniably catchy chorus, yet in it Bowie plays the part of a Messiah, come to earth to warn of overpopulation. The lyrics read like a pulp science-fiction novel of the 50s, a known influence on Bowie, but it is not ludicrous to suggest that Bowie had seen how Dylan had created himself as a prophet and began flirting with the idea. In fact some four years later, on Hunky Dory, he paid direct homage to his influence on ‘Song for Bob Dylan’, illustrating how deeply he understood the power of Dylan’s creation, ‘You sat behind a million pair of eyes / And told them how they saw’. Bowie understood the power of Dylan’s ability to transplant his truth on others, rather than make any claims for himself but more importantly, he understood that Dylan was playing a character, addressing him by his given name and referring to Dylan as a separate entity entirely; ‘Now, hear this, Robert Zimmerman / Though I don’t suppose we’ll meet / Ask your good friend Dylan / If he’d gaze on down the street’.

Bowie saw that Dylan was a created character, and that his mythology as a prophet was a tool of genius, but even on ‘We Are The Hungry Men’ Bowie took this tool far further than Dylan ever did, on this very first outing he presents himself directly as a prophet, something Dylan never dared to do throughout his career. In a mostly forgettable album, this single moment shows that Bowie, so early in his career, is already comfortable with playing characters, willingly inauthentic at his very origin and entirely aware of how Dylan has created himself, and dealt with his own problem of authenticity. It would be another five years until the Bowie’s journey of the created prophet would reach it’s origin with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars.

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“Bowie created a prophet, and created for him a prophecy he knew would come true. While Dylan ensured that his work could not be falsifiable, Bowie ensured that his was able to be proven true.”

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Fans waiting outside the concert in D.A. Pennebacker’s ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, 1979.

In the D.A. Pennebacker, who had made the Bob Dylan film ‘Dont Look Back’ some 6 years earlier, concert film of Ziggy’s last performance we open with glimpses of a crowd waiting outside. One by one, boys and girls alike, are seen in makeup, in crimson hair, dressed as mime artists, as aliens, as the lost population of Ziggy’s world. These are not just fans, they are inhabitants, they are part of the performance, they are the disciples of Ziggy who have followed him from outer space to earth to revel in his glory, in his sex, in his pure rock’n’roll. This is the genius of Ziggy and the genius of Bowie; it is in this that he is able to become entirely authentic through playing a created character. Bowie does not have to comment on or confront whether he is authentic because through creating the character of Ziggy Stardust, he has created a theater. His understanding of mime and comedia dell’arte, studied in the interim years between his first album and this, he was able to create a world through himself alone. The reduction of comedia dell’arte into purest forms of emotion to convey character allowed him to forget about the particulars. It is why Ziggy Stardust doesn’t tell a cohesive story and still creates a world. It is a masterpiece of maximalist reductionism. Bowie did not create a glass onion, he created an alien, and presented him openly for the world to see. He created a singular narrative, rejecting the need for a continuous one. Though his albums before all built up to this, they have no relation to it. David Bowie needs to be authentic, needs to create a glass onion, but Ziggy Stardust has no such requirements. Watching the opening minutes of the concert film, with a gaggle of kids dressed up as freaks, it is clear that this is true. The audience believes in the world, and they believe in Ziggy, so they become part of the world. They no longer question whether he is being authentic, because they have authentically inhabited the same created world as him. It is easier to create worlds than to change them.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars ends as promised, with a fall. ‘Ziggy Stardust’ offers the most cohesive chronicling of the events of the album so far, and, sung from the perspective of one of the spiders, it describes his death, ‘Like a leper messiah / When the kids had killed the man / I had to break up the band’. It offers a parable of fame and success, the overcoming of an ego that leads to destruction. Yet, it is not the last song on the album. Instead, it precedes ‘Suffragette City’ and the album finishes with ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’. The live show too, while it differed in track listing from the album, always finished with this track. In Pennebackers documentary of this final performance, at the end of the show, stripped of costumes, wearing just a sheer black top, Bowie delivers a speech before he begins, announcing the end of Ziggy Stardust that this is to be ‘the last show we’ll ever do’. He turns, as the opening piano chords begin and circles the stage, stopping in the middle to sing, delicately, ‘Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth’. The song matches the tone of the opener, ‘Five Years’, both feeling more like ‘avante-garde show song than straight rock songs’, biographer David Buckley suggests. The repeated refrain of the song, sung with unbridled passion and emotion by Bowie at the final show, ‘You’re not alone’ feels like a message to his fans, written in the knowledge he would kill Ziggy. Bowie created Ziggy with the intention of him to die, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ is the final prophecy, fulfilled 18 months after it’s release. It is this track that is perhaps the ultimate stroke of genius in creating Ziggy. Bowie created a prophet, and created for him a prophecy he knew would come true. While Dylan ensured that his work could not be falsifiable, Bowie ensured that his was able to be proven true.

Ziggy Stardust had truth embedded in him at the moment of his creation, to be ultimately revealed at the moment of his death. Bowie knew too, that in order for Ziggy to be authentic he had to die. Not just in the grand tradition of dead rock stars but more potently in the tradition of theater, where no piece of art can last forever, and they are imbued with truth because of it. Bowie employed mime in every aspect of Ziggy’s creation, and it is because of this that he was able to create authenticity. He undermined himself, acknowledged that he could never be authentic and so instead created someone who was. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ speaks as directly about Bowie as it does to Ziggy. Bowie had to commit suicide of the self, suicide of his rock n roll dreams in order to create Ziggy and reach authenticity and communicate truth. It would not be the first time such a suicide was performed. ‘You’re not alone’ is as much words of comfort for the freaks in Ziggy’s world as it is to Bowie himself, his repeatedly fracturing personalities ensuring that it would be nearly a decade before he performed as himself, alone. Bowie confronted authenticity as directly as The Monkees did, but where Head was a critique of their own inauthenticity, Ziggy Stardust was a celebration of it. Embedded within Ziggy is knowledge that Bowie had in his first record, we are never ourselves, never for ourselves and we are all the more powerful because of it.

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

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Five of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Worry, the Five of Disks
Number: 5
Astrology: Mars in Taurus
Qabalah: Gevurah of He

Chris Gabriel November 30, 2024

In the Five of Disks, the Earth quakes and cracks, structures crumble and confusion comes. This is material instability, a crash.

In Rider, we find two beggars enduring a snow storm. The man is lame and using crutches, his head is bandaged as he looks up in agony. The woman is barefoot, covered in a shawl and thin skirt, she looks down in defeat. They are passing a stained glass window made up of five pentacles pointing up. The material comforts enjoyed by the previous 4 figures in the suits have withdrawn, there are now distinct haves and havenots.

In Thoth, we have five cracked disks forming a downward pentagram. They bear the symbols of the five Tattvas, the magical elements that form reality. Astrologically the card is Mercury in Taurus, an unhappy position, quick and agile Mercury here is weighed down by the laborious Bull.

In Marseille, we are shown our most pleasant image, five simple coins and two flowers. Here the disruption to the stable four is seen as a growth: they are not moving up or down as in Rider and Thoth, but remain balanced. This Growth can be good, like a flower, or bad, like cancer. Qabalistically, this is the Anger of the Princess.

This card reminds me of chapter 77 of the Tao Te Ching, in which the Tao of Heaven is likened to a bow, the high is made low and the low is made high, but the Tao of Man brings the high higher and forces the low lower. The Five of Disks is an excellent expression of this.

As Mars in Taurus it raises to mind Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dali, who make excellent use of their fallen Mercury through science and art. The Parapraxis or Freudian Slip is an idea that could only arise from Mercury Taurus, the worry that our words reveal ulterior motives is exactly the kind of paranoia that flourishes in the sign. 

Dali develops the “Paranoiac Critical Method” through which he follows paranoid fantasies as far as they can go. Psychoanalysis, and its town crier Surrealism, shook the very foundations of civilization by revealing their true basis in the terrifying and inhuman Unconscious.

Materially, this is a stock market crash and economic collapse, the stable power of the Four of Disks is broken. The money goes up, leaving the poor to suffer, as in Rider, or the system itself crumbles, as in Thoth.

When we pull this card, expect your comfort to be shaken, for it harkens a breaking down and collapse. Trust your suspicions. This can be a failed investment, a car crash, a break up, or a job loss but it can also be the positive risk of a new opportunity. 

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Walking in the City, Part 2

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Michel De Certeau was a Jesuit Priest and Scholar whose work on topics across history, sociology, philosophy, semiotics, theology and psychoanalysis helped define him as one of the most substantial and unique thinkers of his era. This essay, from his work ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’ published in 1974, is an attempt to individualize the concept of mass culture that Guy Debord and the Situationists had established a decade earlier. He finds art in the unconscious action of living, and argues that though systems are placed upon us, humans cannot and will not act as a monolith but always as individuals, employing individual tactics of expression in every facet of life.

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Michel De Certeau November 28, 2024

The Concept-city is decaying. Does that mean that the illness afflicting both the rationality that founded it and its professionals afflicts the urban populations as well? Perhaps cities are deteriorating along with the procedures that organized them. But we must be careful here. The ministers of knowledge have always assumed that the whole universe was threatened by the very changes that affected their ideologies and their positions. They transmute the misfortune of their theories into theories of misfortune. When they transform their bewilderment into 'catastrophes', when they seek to enclose the people in the 'panic' of their discourses, are they once more necessarily right?

Rather than remaining within the field of a discourse that upholds its privilege by inverting its content (speaking of catastrophe and no longer of progress), one can try another path: one can analyse the microbe-like, singular and plural practices which an urbanistic system was supposed to administer or suppress, but which have outlived its decay; one can follow the swarming activity of these procedures that, far from being regulated or eliminated by panoptic administration, have reinforced themselves in a proliferating illegitimacy, developed and insinuated themselves into the networks of surveillance, and combined in accord with unreadable but stable tactics to the point of constituting everyday regulations and surreptitious creativities that are merely concealed by the frantic mechanisms and discourses of the observational organization.

This pathway could be inscribed as a consequence, but also as the reciprocal, of Foucault's analysis of the structures of power. He moved it in the direction of mechanisms and technical procedures, 'minor instrumentalities' capable, merely by their organization of 'details', of transforming a human multiplicity into a 'disciplinary' society and of managing, differentiating, classifying, and hierarchizing all deviances concerning apprenticeship, health, justice, the army or work. 'These often miniscule ruses of discipline', these 'minor but flawless' mechanisms, draw their efficacy from a relationship between procedures and the space that they redistribute in order to make an 'operator' out of it. But what spatial practices correspond, in the area where discipline is manipulated, to these apparatuses that produce a disciplinary space? In the present conjuncture, which is marked by a contradiction between the collective mode of administration and an individual mode of reappropriation, this question is no less important, if one admits that spatial practices in fact secretly structure the determining conditions of social life. I would like to follow out a few of these multiform, resistant, tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised, and which should lead us to a theory of everyday practices, of lived space, of the disquieting familiarity of the city.

The Chorus of Idle Footsteps

The goddess can be recognized by her step.
Virgil, Aeneid, I, 405

Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has a qualitative character: a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation. Their swarming mass is an innumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these 'real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city'. They are not localized; it is rather they that spatialize. They are no more inserted within a container than those Chinese characters speakers sketch out on their hands with their fingertips.

It is true that the operations of walking on can be traced on city maps in such a way as to transcribe their paths (here well-trodden, there very faint) and their trajectories (going this way and not that). But these thick or thin curves only refer, like words, to the absence of what has passed by. Surveys of routes miss what was: the act itself of passing by. The operation of walking, wandering, or 'window shopping', that is, the activity of passers-by, is transformed into points that draw a totalizing and reversible line on the map. They allow us to grasp only a relic set in the nowhen of a surface of projection. Itself visible, it has the effect of making invisible the operation that made it possible. These fixations constitute procedures for forgetting. The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.

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“Only the cave of the home remains believable, still open for a certain time to legends, still full of shadows. Except for that, according to another city-dweller, there are only 'places in which one can no longer believe in anything’.”

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Walking Rhetorics

The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns (tours) and detours that can be compared to 'turns of phrase' or 'stylistic figures'. There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of 'turning' phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path (toumer un parcours). Like ordinary language, this art implies and combines styles and uses. Style specifies 'a linguistic structure that manifests on the symbolic level ... an individual's fundamental way of being in the world'; it connotes a singular. Use defines the social phenomenon through which a system of communication manifests itself in actual fact; it refers to a norm. Style and use both have to do with a 'way of operating' (of speaking, walking, etc.), but style involves a peculiar processing of the symbolic, while use refers to elements of a code. They intersect to form a style of use, a way of being and a way of operating.

A friend who lives in the city of Sevres drifts, when he is in Paris, toward the rue des Saints-Peres and the rue de Sevres, even though he is going to see his mother in another part of town: these names articulate a sentence that his steps compose without his knowing it. Numbered streets and street numbers ( 112th St., or 9 rue Saint-Charles) orient the magnetic field of trajectories just as they can haunt dreams. Another friend unconsciously represses the streets whjch have names and, by this fact, transmit her - orders or identities in the same way as summonses and classifications; she goes instead along paths that have no name or signature. But her walking is thus still controlled negatively by proper names. 

What is it then that they spell out? Disposed in constellations that hierarchize and semantically order the surface of the city, operating chronological arrangements and historical justifications, these words (Borrégo, Botzaris, Bougainville ... ) slowly lose, like worn coins, the value engraved on them, but their ability to signify outlives its first definition. Saint-Peres, Corentin Celton, Red Square ... these names make themselves available to the diverse meanings given them by passers-by; they detach themselves from the places they were supposed to define and serve as imaginary meeting-points on itineraries which, as metaphors, they determine for reasons that are foreign to their original value but may be recognized or not by passers-by. A strange toponymy that is detached from actual places and flies high over the city like a foggy geography of 'meanings' held in suspension, directing the physical deambulations below: Place de l'Etoile, Concorde, Poissonniere ... These constellations of names provide traffic patterns: they are stars directing itineraries. 'The Place de la Concorde does not exist,' Malaparte said, 'it is an idea.' It is much more than an 'idea'. A whole series of comparisons would be necessary to account for the magical powers proper names enjoy. They seem to be carried as emblems by the travellers they direct and simultaneously decorate.

Linking acts and footsteps, opening meanings and directions, these words operate in the name of an emptying-out and wearing-away of their primary role. They become liberated spaces that can be occupied. A rich indetermination gives them, by means of a semantic rarefaction, the function of articulating a second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning. They insinuate other routes into the functionalist and historical order of movement. Walking follows them: 'I fill this great empty space with a beautiful name.' People are put in motion by the remaining relics of meaning, and sometimes by their waste products, the inverted remainders of great ambitions. Things that amount to nothing, or almost nothing, symbolize and orient walkers' steps: names that have ceased precisely to be ‘proper'.

Ultimately, since proper names are already 'local authorities' or ‘superstitions', they are replaced by numbers: on the telephone, one no longer dials Opera, but 073. The same is true of the stories and legends that haunt urban space like superfluous or additional inhabitants. They are the object of a witch-hunt, by the very logic of the techno-structure. But their extermination (like the extermination of trees, forests, and hidden places in which such legends live) makes the city a 'suspended symbolic order'. The habitable city is thereby annulled. Thus, as a woman from Rouen put it, no, here 'there isn't any place special, except for my own home, that's all ... There isn't anything.' Nothing 'special': nothing that is marked, opened up by a memory or a story, signed by something or someone else. Only the cave of the home remains believable, still open for a certain time to legends, still full of shadows. Except for that, according to another city-dweller, there are only 'places in which one can no longer believe in anything’.

It is through the opportunity they offer to store up rich silences and wordless stories, or rather through their capacity to create cellars and garrets everywhere, that local legends (legenda: what is to be read, but also what can be read) permit exits, ways of going out and coming back in, and thus habitable spaces. Certainly walking about and travelling substitute for exits, for going away and coming back, which were formerly made available by a body of legends that places nowadays lack. Physical moving about has the itinerant function of yesterday's or today’s 'superstitions'. Travel (like walking) is a substitute for the legends that used to open up space to something different. What does travel ultimately produce if it is not, by a sort of reversal, 'an exploration of the deserted places of my memory’, the return to nearby exoticism by way of a detour through distant places, and the 'discovery' of relics and legends: 'fleeting visions of the French countryside’, 'fragments of music and poetry', in short, something like an 'uprooting in one’s origins' (Heidegger)? What this walking exile produces is precisely the body of legends that is currently lacking in one's own vicinity; it is a fiction, which moreover has the double characteristic, like dreams or pedestrian rhetoric, of being the effect of displacements and condensations. As a corollary, one can measure the importance of these signifying practices (to tell oneself legends) as practices that invent spaces.

From this point of view, their contents remain revelatory, and still more so is the principle that organizes them. Stories about places are makeshift things. They are composed with the world's debris. Even if the literary form and the actantial schema of 'superstitions' correspond to stable models whose structures and combinations have often been analysed over the past thirty years, the materials (all the rhetorical details of their 'manifestation') are furnished by the leftovers from nominations, taxonomies, heroic or comic predicates, etc., that is, by fragments of scattered semantic places. These heterogeneous and even contrary elements fill the homogeneous form of the story. Things extra and other ( details and excesses coming from elsewhere) insert themselves into the accepted framework, the imposed order. One thus has the very relationship between spatial practices and the constructed order. The surface of this order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and leaks of meaning: it is a sieve-order.

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Michel de Certeau was a Jesuit Priest and Scholar who lived in Paris, France and contributed to innumerable fields of study. He was born in 1925 and died in 1986.