King of Swords (Tarot Triptych)
Chris Gabriel February 1, 2025
The King of Swords is the highest card in the suit, but as the Prince, as he appears in Thoth, he is the third highest. In each depiction he bears a sword and wears a crown, looking with judgment and considering how to apply his sword…
Name: King of Swords, Prince of Swords
Number: 1 or 3
Astrology: Aquarius
Qabalah: Yod of Vau or Vau of Vau
Chris Gabriel February 1, 2025
The King of Swords is the highest card in the suit, but as the Prince, as he appears in Thoth, he is the third highest. In each depiction he bears a sword and wears a crown, looking with judgment and considering how to apply his sword.
In Rider, we have a King cloaked in sky blue and grey. His throne is adorned with butterflies and sylphs. He is crowned, and his sword is held aloft, slightly to the right. He looks straight ahead.
In Thoth, we see a Prince riding in a chariot drawn by three little men. Geometric figures swarm about him. He is preparing to strike with his sword, while his other hand holds the reins and a scythe.
In Marseille, the King is looking to the left. He is adorned in ceremonial armor with two Lunar shoulder pads. He is holding court, giving orders, and forming plans - not going to war. He is giving orders and forming plans. His sword is pointed straight up, and his scepter is by his side.
In both Rider and Marseille we are shown the King as Judge. This calls to mind the Judgment of Solomon, in which two women claim to be the mother of a child and come before their King to solve the dispute.
24 And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king.
25 And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.
26 Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.
27 Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
-Kings 3:24-17
A King judging by the sword is a perfect example of this card.
The Prince, on the other hand, is judging only ideas. He is in a realm of intellect, not practical matters of the court. With his sword and scythe he cuts every sprout and sapling before they have time to mature, for each is imperfect. This card always reminds me of masturbation, and the phrase “mental masturbation”. None of these ideas will be fertilized. This is Hamlet himself, thinking and thinking.
The Kings on the other are interested not necessarily in Justice, but in balance and symmetry. The butterflies on the Rider King’s throne are not beautiful per se, but beautiful in their symmetry. The Kings are interested in using their swords to cut perfect borders, to divide bounty, to create laws and boundaries for their subjects.
When we pull this card we can expect an orderly person in the case of the King, or a mental person in the case of the Prince. Their ideas can bring peace and balance to our lives, or set us spinning our wheels. This may be energy we have to embody, setting things in their right place, and removing excess.
We Are Cosmic Code - An Interview with Kaitlyn Kaerhart
Molly Hankins January 30, 2025
The title of numerologist, musician, and mystic Kaitlyn Kaerhart’s best-selling book You Are Cosmic Code is quite literal in its meaning - through understanding the mathematical equations of our individual life paths we can tap into universal intelligence. She’s proven with her own life’s work that the data contained in each of our own life’s equations opens up an endless well of creative inspiration and naturally leads to easier, more effective decision-making.
Telepathic Transference of Numbers Between Two People, 1908. ‘The Naturalisation of the Supernatural’.
Molly Hankins January 30, 2025
The title of numerologist, musician, and mystic Kaitlyn Kaerhart’s best-selling book You Are Cosmic Code is quite literal in its meaning - through understanding the mathematical equations of our individual life paths we can tap into universal intelligence. She’s proven with her own life’s work that the data contained in each of our own life’s equations opens up an endless well of creative inspiration and naturally leads to easier, more effective decision-making.
“I think we are coming into a world now where science is merging with the spiritual, where the left brain and right brain are going to come together and people are going to be able to comprehend on a different level that there isn’t a difference between these two things. They can co-exist and they do co-exist, and when you think about it, music is really just patterns and frequencies - it’s math! Music is math, numerology is math.”
The intersection between spirituality and music is what she’s always been about, and you can hear it in the way she speaks. There’s a cadence to her voice, particularly when she’s reading personal or universal cosmic code, that sounds like a subtle energy beatbox. As a musician for most of her adult life, she’s been a solo artist under the name Kaerhart, played guitar in several bands and written songs for other artists. Numerology was something she always studied for fun, but when a bad break-up left her homeless and sleeping in a friend’s recording studio, she started doing readings to make a living. Within a year she’d built that business online and was being courted by Penguin-Randomhouse U.K. to write You Are Cosmic Code.
Kaerhart’s philosophy of pattern recognition as the gateway to self-knowledge is a pathway to finding out what we as individuals need to thrive. It also helps that she has a photographic memory, which means her proficiency in numerology, astrology, Human Design, Galactic Maya and Destiny Cards entails almost perfect recall. She believes that, “All these different mystical tools I use are different entry points for people to access their purpose.” The well of information contained in these systems, if integrated into our lives, offers knowledge which empowers us in a way that can bring about a complete shift in priorities.
“Numerology is an incredibly powerful tool that can instantly access who you really are,” she said. “When you realize how much power you actually hold over your life, you no longer accept things that are out of alignment or keeping you down. The more we do this, the more we’re raising consciousness.” Kaerhart also contends that whether we believe in systems like numerology or astrology is irrelevant because if we’re willing to hear the information, it causes us to reflect on whether it feels true or not. That consideration of our underlying motivations and behavioral patterns alone is an empowering invitation to authentic living.
“Just as musical instruments naturally fall out of tune from being both over-played or from sitting untouched, so do our states of being - mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.”
Her particular brand of numerology, fully explained in her book, Instagram videos and in the materials on her website, emphasizes the study of personal annual cycle patterns that occur every nine years. We’ll use July 10th as an example to show how the equation works:.
Birth Month (7) + Birth Date (10) + Current Year’s Numerals Added Up (2+0+2+5) = 26
Reduce to total sum of those numbers, 2 +6 = 8
According to Kaerhart, 8 is a year of achievement related to developing personal and financial power, but she gives deeply specific answers to every possible outcome of this equation. Like any responsible spiritual practitioner, she’ll tell you to “take what resonates and leave the rest” from any of her content but for Kaerhart, numerology is a very clear roadmap for how to live an optimized life. It came to her intuitively in a dream,. She kept hearing the words ‘spiritual numbers,’ decided to find out what that meant and accidentally built a wildly successful online business and became an international best-selling author as a result.
In addition to the personal annual cycles, there are also personal monthly cycles (108 total months in each cyclical, 9 year cycle) and life destiny numbers that speak to macro-themes related to the realization of our personal destinies. Each life destiny number is related to a certain archetype, and Kaerhart is a life path 1, which is the path of leadership. It’s something she always felt deeply uncomfortable with, but ultimately worked through using numerology.
Memory Tricks, 1617. Robert Fludd.
“In my old bands even though I was just a guitar player who wrote the songs, I was constantly in these positions where I was thrust into the spotlight. And when I found out I was a life path 1 I was like, what if I tried to embrace that? What if I tried embracing being the leader archetype even though it’s so uncomfortable for me and I don’t want to be seen?” she recalled. “And when I finally stepped into that role of leader instead of trying to hide, that’s when I got my book deal and my socials started to grow. I was embracing the traits and qualities of the path I’m meant to walk, and numerology helped me. It’s an incredible tool to learn to love and accept ourselves.”
Digesting her materials feels like an attunement. Just as musical instruments naturally fall out of tune from being both over-played or from sitting untouched, so do our states of being - mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Working with numerology, and especially Kaerhart’s particular practice of incorporating multiple information systems, feels like being tuned to harmonize our state of being. “A lot of people who come to me feel really lost, and I was too - I felt like everything was failing and I didn’t know what path I was supposed to take. Following my cosmic code helped me try on being a leader, and I just tried being in that energy and flowing with my annual and monthly cycles. As soon as I did it everything manifested.”
Kaerhart still writes music and happily described how much lighter it feels to be creative now that the pressure is off from having to be commercially successful enough to make a living at it. She was even offered a record deal recently, contingent upon “knocking off the numerology” on her Instagram. Most of her old friends from the music business have been baffled by the shift in her focus, and she hears the same feedback from peers in the spiritual community who don’t understand why she’s still making music.
“Music and numerology are both incredible tools for healing. With music it’s instant, you put on a song and your vibration instantly changes. Even if you’re depressed, when you put on your favorite song, the healing is instant,” she said. “Music transcends language and culture, but so do numbers. Numerology requires us to take a moment to understand it, to do the math. But in terms of results, they’re exactly the same.”
You can find Kaitlyn Kaerhart at Kaerhart.com and @Kaerhart.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Disharmony as Intelligence
Tuukka Toivonen January 28, 2024
Iwakan is one of my favorite Japanese phrases. It consists of three Chinese characters, 違 (i, meaning difference, deviation), 和 (wa, meaning harmony, peace) and 感 (kan, meaning feeling, sense), that together form a single word that loosely translates as a ‘sense of disharmony’…
Color Analysis From A Mummy Cloth, Emily Noyes Vanderpoel. 1902.
Tuukka Toivonen January 28, 2025
Iwakan is one of my favorite Japanese phrases. It consists of three Chinese characters, 違 (i, meaning difference, deviation), 和 (wa, meaning harmony, peace) and 感 (kan, meaning feeling, sense), that together form a single word that loosely translates as a ‘sense of disharmony’. In daily interactions, I use the term casually when something feels off or out of place, yielding a mild yet noticeable dissonance rather than a jarring sense of wrongness. A friend recently pointed out that having an iwakan does not necessarily suggest a negative situation or grave problem as such, only that something—a sentence, a bit of furniture, a stylistic choice—might need to be rearranged or reconsidered.
What strikes me as remarkable about this single word—beyond how it incorporates the beautiful wa character (considered quintessentially Japanese) in its midst—is its gentle emphasis not explicitly on disharmony or dissonance per se, but our sensing of it.. Along with foregrounding the utterer’s subjective experience, iwakan for me serves as an eloquent reminder of the embodied nature of human knowing. It is the final kan character that signals this definitive quality, in a gesture so subtle that it becomes all too easy to overlook its potency. Here, dissonance becomes something felt intuitively in the body as opposed to a rational or purely intellectual observation of a discrepancy or incongruence.
Many other Japanese emotional and relational expressions end with kan or ki (気), the Chinese character of Daoist origin that (in Daoist usage) refers to the fundamental universal energy that permeates all life and the entire cosmos.
Think of the curious feeling you get, having just left home, that ‘something’s not quite right’, prompting you to realize a moment later that the keys are still on the kitchen table or that the air-conditioning is still humming. Or imagine spotting a dirty piece of plastic waste in the middle of your most cherished beach and the sensations this sight arouses in your body (while suspending any explicit thoughts about what should or should not be done in response). Next, recall how your abdominal area or your shoulders feel after a challenging conversation or an outright verbal conflict. What sensations can you detect or remember? What is the ‘shape’ and contour of your unease in each case? If you are anything like me, your experience of disharmony in situations like these may range from a strange tickle or tingle to slight disgust and heaviness.
In some cases, disharmony grows into a persistent, nagging signal that is simply impossible to ignore. Think back to the moment you first faced ‘adult’ pressures — when you began to get serious about your education, find a proper job or plan for career success. Alongside any immediate feelings of anxiety or frustration, did this generate any disharmonies or recurring kinds of bodily discomfort in you? In my case, the unease I felt in relation to future expectations surged around the age of 17 and 18, producing a lingering, growing discomfort that eventually led to a major life transformation.
The inner resistance I experienced in that now distant moment in my small hometown in Finland did not spring purely from my naïveté or lack of familiarity with the ‘real world’. No— it was rather that the transitions I was being asked to undertake felt devoid of meaning and resonance. The foremost paths into further study and work that I was being offered appeared alienating and uninteresting at the time. Internally, I met this situation with a screaming ‘why?’ along with the desire to find an escape hatch.
This sense of disharmony may not have resolved had it not been for a surprising turn of events that led me to discover an alternative route forward. On one sunny winter morning, seemingly out of the blue, an American youth musical group visited my high school in Kotka. That encounter inspired me to put all other plans—and uncomfortable expectations—properly on hold. Upon graduation, I duly flew to Denver to join a year-long tour that would first take me to the United States and then onwards to new lives in Japan and the United Kingdom. For the first time, I found a vigorous sense of aliveness, belonging and meaning in a totally new context.
It was iwakan that encouraged me to commit to this transition, coupled with the strong positive sentiments I felt towards the musical program. To me, this served as a powerful demonstration of the surprising influence that a subtle, embodied sensation can wield when we stay (or are forced to stay) with it. Building on these reflections alongside other experiences, I have come to see disharmony as a vital kind of intelligence, a holistic one that we all too often ignore at our peril. We may not have the words to latch onto and express it, or perhaps our society does not (yet) view it as a perfectly legitimate way of knowing, learning or making decisions. Change, however, may be on its way even in cultures that, unlike Japan, do not incorporate nuanced references to felt sensations in daily spoken language.
“All this should help us see why the humblest inner twitch or sensation—whether dissonant or harmonious—has the potential to be an important bridge between our day-to-day experience and the civilizational priority of protecting the Earth.”
Drawing inspiration from contemplative traditions, dance, and structured experiments and surveys, a growing body of multidisciplinary academic research approaches the felt dimension of intelligence through the concepts of embodiment and embodied cognition. Although still a new field of empirical inquiry, this research is already coalescing on understandings that profoundly challenge conventional definitions of intelligence as well as the reductive views of intelligence as algorithmic or computational. It proposes, simply, that intelligence emerges not in the brain alone but through the ongoing interaction of our minds, bodies and environments. The bodily sensations we feel as we go about our daily lives—whether relating to the temperature of the air, the motion of our legs as we walk, or the discomfort we sense before an important presentation—are integral to the way we exist and navigate the world, rather than something peripheral or subordinate to the explicit, conscious thought we bring to focused tasks and problem-solving.
One way to interpret this trend is to view it as the gradual and long-overdue incorporation of our animality, aliveness, and wholeness into mainstream thought. It is a liberating shift, in at least three respects: first, it encourages us to stop suppressing or discounting aspects of ourselves we internally feel compelled to follow but culturally devalue. This may result in enhanced feelings of personal integrity, wholeness and connectedness. Second, the realization that we are fundamentally embodied beings—living organisms with bodies—helps us understand that the essence of our intelligence cannot be replicated or appropriate technologically, for it relies on direct lived experience. Third, embracing our embodied, animal selves brings us radically closer to the more-than-human world, highlighting and activating a foundational commonality, a shared way of being that the various artificial (conceptual and material) divides we have enacted between us and the rest of the living world have not—and can never—eliminate.
In the ecological philosopher David Abram’s words, this subtle transformation means we no longer “look upon nature from a cool, detached position ostensibly outside of that nature”, instead we (once again) become nature.¹ As such, our lives can more fully embrace the processes uncovered by embodiment scholars where intelligence fundamentally arises through the interaction of mind, body and ecology rather than from the individual brain or algorithmic machines.
All this should help us see why the humblest inner twitch or sensation—whether dissonant or harmonious—has the potential to be an important bridge between our day-to-day experience and the civilizational priority of protecting the Earth. As the German philosopher and psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs insightfully observes, “[e]ven an ecological redefinition of our relationship to the earthly environment will only succeed if our corporeality and aliveness—as connectedness or conviviality with our natural environment —is at its center. Only if we inhabit our bodies will we also be able to maintain the earth in habitable form”². Should we fail to recover and revalue our embodied natures, we will put ourselves at risk of becoming diminished and disempowered by artificial intelligence technologies, allowing the opportunity to reconnect with our planet tragically slip beyond our grasp.
So it turns out that iwakan—in a marked contrast with the subtlety of the phrase—has quite a few major lessons to teach us, both individually and societally. By observing not only the disharmonies of our world but also paying keen attention to our embodied sensations, we begin to relearn how to live fully in our bodies. If we do so in a way that welcomes every kind of sensation as constitutive of our intelligence, we will learn to once again live intelligently in the more-than-human world. This is not an easy task—the learning journey I have personally experienced has been long and remains far from complete, replete with myriad mysteries that may never be resolved—but with practice, the basic ability to listen to our senses and inner interoceptive, somatic signals eventually becomes effortless. Thus, striking a beautifully harmonious and satisfying chord, we discover that by participating in our own existence wholly, we will also find it radically easier to participate—experientally and and regeneratively—in the larger sphere of life that our existence is rooted in.
Tuukka Toivonen, Ph.D. (Oxon.) is a sociologist interested in ways of being, relating and creating that can help us to reconnect with – and regenerate – the living world. Alongside his academic research, Tuukka works directly with emerging regenerative designers and startups in the creative, material innovation and technology sectors.
Tuukka would like to thank Elina Osborne and Chiharu Suzuki for the suggestions they kindly offered in the process of this article’s germination at Amigo House.
¹ Abram, D. 2010. Becoming animal: An earthly cosmology. New York (N.Y.): Vintage books.
² Fuchs, T. 2021. In defence of the human being: Foundational questions of an embodied 2 anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knight of Wands (Tarot Triptych)
Chris Gabriel January 25, 2025
The Knight of Wands is the embodiment of fire, the true bearer of the Wand. In each depiction, we are shown figures of pure externalized energy racing toward their highest aims…
Name: Knight of Wands
Number: 1
Astrology: Sagittarius or Leo
Qabalah: Yod of Yod
Chris Gabriel January 25, 2025
The Knight of Wands is the embodiment of fire, the true bearer of the Wand. In each depiction, we are shown figures of pure externalized energy racing toward their highest aims..
In Rider, we see a rearing brown horse whose rider is dressed in tattered yellow robes. This robe itself is fire, and bears the mark of its elemental creature, the Salamander. The knight wears silver armor, and his helmet is topped with a fiery plume. His wand is verdant. He is riding through a desert landscape with pyramids in the distance.
In Thoth, we find a black horse with a mane and tail of fire. His rider is adorned in black armor with a beard of fire and a helmet topped with a hawk. His wand is aflame. His cloak joins the great fire that fills the card.
In Marseille, we have a far more calm scene, a cloaked horse and his rider both gaze down from their height upon an unseen sight below. Here we see the dominance of the rider over the horse, while the others aggressively ride, this knight reigns in that strength.
The Knight of Wands is the highest and fieriest card in the suit of Wands. In Thoth and Rider, this is shown as aggression, and as extreme and volatile movement, while the Knight in Marseille seeks to control this fire. It is a difficult task, as fire is the element most difficult to contain: water can be dredged, dammed and bottled, air can be blocked by a wall and blown out your mouth, earth can be shaped with ease, but fire burns or dies.
Both Knights in Thoth and Marseille are white knuckled as they grip the reins of the horse. They are “riding the tiger” of aggression, and cannot simply turn away. The Knight in Marseille has broken his horse thoroughly, controlling his primal drives.
This is a struggle for many, especially children whose immense emotions cannot be fully expressed by language and freedom, and so they throw tantrums and grow angry. The Knight of Wands can be an unstoppable person firing on all cylinders, which can be exciting or terrifying. This can also be the force you will embody.
As Sagittarius, we can think of arrows and bullets, an extremely useful tool of aggression when pointed in the right direction. The Knight of Wands working in the wrong direction is horrible, but in the right direction it is an astounding force.
Therefore let us have the discipline to aim our wills at the right target, and then move ahead full speed.
When we pull this card, we can expect a great deal of energy either in ourselves or in a fiery person. If you use this energy well and move in the right direction, the results will be swift and certain.
The Is The Life
Annie Dillard January 21, 2025
Our culture might specialize in money, and celebrity, and natural beauty. These are not universal. You enjoy work and will love your grandchildren, and somewhere in there you die…
Kolo Rock Paintings, Tanzania.
Annie Dillard is a Pulitzer Prize winning author of fiction and non-fiction narrative prose, as well as a poet and educator. Her work moves seamlessly between the macro and micro of life, balancing the grandest, celestial ideas of existence with a beauty in the mundanity of daily life. In this essay, written for ‘Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion’, and published by the Center for Religious Humanism at Seattle Pacific University in 2002, she considers the totality of human experience, in search of the simple question, what makes a good life?
Annie Dillard January 21, 2025
Any culture tells you how to live your one and only life: to wit as everyone else does. Probably most cultures prize, as ours rightly does, making a contribution by working hard at work that you love; being in the know, and intelligent; gathering a surplus; and loving your family above all, and your dog, your boat, bird-watching. Beyond those things our culture might specialize in money, and celebrity, and natural beauty. These are not universal. You enjoy work and will love your grandchildren, and somewhere in there you die.
Another contemporary consensus might be: You wear the best shoes you can afford, you seek to know Rome's best restaurants and their staffs, drive the best car, and vacation on Tenerife. And what a cook you are!
Or you take the next tribe's pigs in thrilling raids; you grill yams; you trade for televisions and hunt white-plumed birds. Everyone you know agrees: this is the life. Perhaps you burn captives. You set fire to a drunk. Yours is the human struggle, or the elite one, to achieve... whatever your own culture tells you: to publish the paper that proves the point; to progress in the firm and gain high title and salary, stock options, benefits; to get the loan to store the beans till their price rises; to elude capture, to feed your children or educate them to a feather edge; or to count coup or perfect your calligraphy; to eat the king's deer or catch the poacher; to spear the seal, intimidate the enemy, and be a big man or beloved woman and die respected for the pigs or the title or the shoes. Not a funeral. Forget funeral. A big birthday party. Since everyone around you agrees.
Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, necklaces, degree, murex shells, or ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows. spear points, hoe, plant; they kill aurochs or one another; they prepare sacrifices as we here and now work on our projects. What, seeing this spread multiply infinitely in every direction, would you do differently? No one could love your children more; would you love them less? Would you change your project? To what? Whatever you do, it has likely brought delight to fewer people than either contract bridge or the Red Sox.
However hypnotized you and your people are, you will be just as dead in their war, our war. However dead you are, more people will come. However many more people come, your time and its passions, and yourself and your passions, weigh equally in the balance with those of any dead who pulled waterwheel poles by the Nile or Yellow rivers, or painted their foreheads black, or starved in the wilderness, or wasted from disease then or now. Our lives and our deaths count equally, or we must abandon one-man-one-vote, dismantle democracy, and assign six billion people an importance-of-life ranking from one to six billion, a ranking whose number decreases, like gravity, with the square of the distance between us and them.
“People look at the sky and at the other animals. They make beautiful objects, beautiful sounds, beautiful motions of their bodies beating drums in lines.”
What would you do differently, you up on your beanstalk looking at scenes of all peoples at all times in all places? When you climb down, would you dance any less to the music you love, knowing that music to be as provisional as a bug? Somebody has to make jugs and shoes, to turn the soil, fish. If you descend the long rope-ladders back to your people and time in the fabric, if you tell them what you have seen, and even if someone cares to listen, then what? Everyone knows times and cultures are plural. If you come back a shrugging relativist or tongue-tied absolutist, then what? If you spend hours a day looking around, high astraddle the warp or woof of your people's wall, then what new wisdom can you take to your grave for worms to untangle? Well, maybe you will not go into advertising.
Then you would know your own death better but perhaps not dread it less. Try to bring people up the wall, carry children to see it to what end? Fewer golf courses? What is wrong with golf? Nothing at all. Equality of wealth? Sure; how?
The woman watching sheep over there, the man who carries embers in a pierced clay ball, the engineer, the girl who spins wool into yarn as she climbs, the smelter, the babies learning to recognize speech in their own languages, the man whipping a slave's flayed back, the man digging roots, the woman digging roots, the child digging roots what would you tell them? And the future people what are they doing? What excitements sweep peoples here and there from time to time? Into the muddy river they go, into the trenches, into the caves, into the mines, into the granary, into the sea in boats. Most humans who were ever alive lived inside one single culture that never changed for hundreds of thousands of years; archaeologists scratch their heads at so conservative and static a culture.
Over here, the rains fail; they are starving. There, the caribou fail; they are starving. Corrupt leaders take the wealth. Not only there but here. Rust and smut spoil the rye. When pigs and cattle starve or freeze, people die soon after. Disease empties a sector, a billion sectors.
People look at the sky and at the other animals. They make beautiful objects, beautiful sounds, beautiful motions of their bodies beating drums in lines. They pray; they toss people in peat bogs; they help the sick and injured; they pierce their lips, their noses, ears; they make the same mistakes despite religion, written language, philosophy, and science; they build, they kill, they preserve, they count and figure, they boil the pot, they keep the embers alive; they tell their stories and gird themselves.
Will knowledge you experience directly make you a Buddhist? Must you forfeit excitement per se? To what end?
Say you have seen something. You have seen an ordinary bit of what is real, the infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through, and time's soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shifting stars. Then what?
Annie Dillard (b.1945) is an American writer of narrative prose, in both fiction and non-fiction, and a poet. In 1975 she won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
Four of Coins (Tarot Triptych)
Chris Gabriel January 18, 2025
Here we see the beginning of structure, and how proper structure creates the seat of power on the Earth. Here the work of the suit becomes sturdy and stable…
Name: Power, the Four of Disks
Number: 4
Astrology: Sun in Capricorn
Qabalah: Chesed of He
Chris Gabriel January 18, 2025
Here we see the beginning of structure, and how proper structure creates the seat of power on the Earth. Here the work of the suit becomes sturdy and stable.
In Rider, we see a King guarding four golden coins. He wears a crown and is dressed in red. His feet lay upon two coins, he holds one at his chest, and rests another upon his crown.
In Thoth, we have a birds eye view of a castle with four towers, in each of which sit the symbols of the four elements. The castle is the indigo of Capricorn, the ground around it is the bright orange of the Sun.
In Marseille, there are four coins around a central heraldic shield bearing a flower and sometimes a Phoenix. Two flowers grow between the four coins.
The Four of Disks is home, a place of stability to rest after we have accumulated our resources. The sturdiness of our home is the source of our power. In the Ace of Disks we saw the importance of building upon a rock, here we see the importance of building with good stone and strong wood.
No better expression of this truth can be found than in the Three Little Pigs! The Wolf, who has easily blown in houses of straw and shrubs and eaten the first two pigs, finds himself at the third Pig’s house made of brick:
So the Wolf came, as he did to the other little Pigs, and said, "Little Pig, little Pig, let me come in."
"No, no, by the hair of my chinny chin chin."
"Then I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in."
Well, he huffed and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he puffed and he huffed; but he could not get the house down.
The Four of Disks is the house made of bricks, the strong house that cannot be shaken by the world outside. This is our daily life, our daily bread, the things that keep our life going strong.
When we pull this card we are being shown our strength, and being reminded that we may need to fall back on our home, or even reinforce it against coming difficulty, if we have neglected it.
Ageless Wisdom From Tarot Key 13
Molly Hankins January 16, 2025
The Malkuth is the realm of physicality in Kabbalistic traditions, and as we make our way through it, we live with the inevitability of death. Malkuth is pictured down at the very bottom of the Tree of Life, the world of form being the farthest away we can get from what Kabbalists describe as ‘the one mind of The Creator’. Going in and out of form is the catalyst of spiritual progress that physical life offers us…
Molly Hankins January 16, 2025
The Malkuth is the realm of physicality in Kabbalistic traditions, and as we make our way through it, we live with the inevitability of death. Malkuth is pictured down at the very bottom of the Tree of Life, the world of form being the farthest away we can get from what Kabbalists describe as ‘the one mind of The Creator’. Going in and out of form is the catalyst of spiritual progress that physical life offers us. Without death, as Builders of the Adytum founder Paul Foster Case tell us, life in Malkuth would be akin to a defective record player with the needle remaining forever in the same groove. “Endless repetition would replace progress.”
Tarot Key 13, the Death card, carries the ageless wisdom that death is the essential mechanism driving the evolution and understanding of our true selves within the world of form. Until our souls realize we are one with all of life we need death to advance the plot of our personal spiritual growth. Key 13 is associated with the sign of Scorpio, representing reproductive energy, as well as the Hebrew letter Nun. As a verb, Nun means to grow or sprout while as a noun it means both fish and movement, each of the layers of meaning signifying the life energy released by death.
The Death card most commonly includes a skeleton riding a white horse or scythe next to a white rose, both representing the movement generated by purified desire. In the tarot, red roses symbolize base desire as a driving force of our personal journeys through the material world, but white represents desire purified by direct experience. The scene in Key 13 takes place at sunrise, with death as the bearer of a new day releasing a burst of growth-promoting energy. Once we know this, not just intellectually but as a fully embodied truth learnt through many incarnations, we become what Builders of the Adytum refer to as “a new order of human being.”
When we advance to this new order, we loosen our attachment to the temporal nature of life and no longer have the same need for death to catalyze the evolution of our consciousness. Many occult traditions carry the promise of conscious evolution as a means of achieving immortality, but the great spoiler is that overcoming death paradoxically comes from embracing it. By getting to know our physical bodies as temporary vehicles for our consciousness, we come to understand that our true immortal nature is actually the cause of physical death, removing us from the unconscious cycle of endless repetition. “Death is proof of eternal life,” wrote Reverend Ann Davies of Builders of the Adytum. We must learn to consciously embody the rhythm of the death and rebirth cycle in order to transcend it.
With this embodied knowing, we become conscious enough to choose growth-promoting thoughts and actions, instead of relying on death and entropy to advance the plot of our spiritual evolution. There are countless records of occultists from modern Kabbalists to ancient members of the Tat Brotherhood in Egypt who treat death asa force akin to gravity, an inherent and essential feature of life that, with sufficient knowledge and creative efforts, can be overcome. Once we fully accept that life is continuous change and dedicate ourselves to facilitating our ongoing transformation, we can step into the role of being a conscious agent of change. This, according to Kabbalistic philosophy, is the most practical means of overcoming death.
“The greatest expression of life’s benevolence and The Creator’s love for us is the fact that we are being taught by an ongoing cycle of movement, change, life and death, whether we want it or not.”
Serving as our own agents of change rather than relying on the algorithm of life and death to drive spiritual progress has benefits beyond simply feeling more relaxed about the human condition. Embodying immortal consciousness as a way of life changes our relationship with dying. This can take many forms of expression, removing the fear and stress of death, or even slowing the aging of our physical bodies to the point of being able to choose when and how we die. The occult definition of immortality is not that of living forever in a single physical body, it’s learning to keep the beat of eternal change in our lives by making transformation-promoting choices so we no longer have a spiritual need for entropy and death.
Whether or not we subscribe to the possibility of conscious immortality and seek it as a goal of our experience, we all get to reap the harvest of wisdom from our choices. In her lecture on Tarot Key 13, Rev. Ann Davies tells us that the greatest expression of life’s benevolence and The Creator’s love for us is the fact that we are being taught by an ongoing cycle of movement, change, life and death, whether we want it or not. The numbers 1 and 3 represent love and unity and they are the basis of the algorithm of life itself, always pushing us towards acceptance of the nature of how things are as a basis for right action. This is the acceptance that nothing we experience in form, no matter how painful it may be, is meant to harm our souls.
“One who arrives at this state can say with St. Paul, ‘I die daily.’ Every morning becomes a resurrection to the awakened soul. All the old motives, petty ambitions, all the foolish opinions and prejudices gradually die out,” Paul Foster Case wrote in Learning Tarot Essentials. “Thus, little by little, there comes an adjustment of all one’s personal conceptions of life and its values.” Consider this essay an invitation to keep making adjustments to our perspectives that promote transformation, so we can become conscious curators of change in our own lives, and be curious about what the life experience algorithm brings us in response.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Yoga and Human Evolution
Sri Aurobindo January 14, 2025
The whole burden of our human progress has been an attempt to escape from the bondage to the body and the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory, the human being began as the animal, developed through the savage and consummated in the modern civilised man. The Indian theory is different…
Sri Aurobindo was an philosopher, yogi, maharishi, and poet who developed the concept of Internal Yoga. Here, in this piece from 1909, he lays out some of the foundations of this practice: human progress, according to Hindu philosophy, is a cycle of spiritual evolution where the material world emerges from the spiritual, and mankind advances from animal impulses to self-realization in God. This evolution is not just intellectual, but a holistic purification of body, emotions, and intellect, culminating in unity with the Divine, which is the ultimate goal of humanity's development. For Aurobindo, the path to this unity is through Internal Yoga, a practice that unifies the body, mind, and soul in perfect harmony.
Sri Aurobindo January 14, 2025
The whole burden of our human progress has been an attempt to escape from the bondage to the body and the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory, the human being began as the animal, developed through the savage and consummated in the modern civilised man. The Indian theory is different. God created the world by developing the many out of the One and the material out of the spiritual. From the beginning, the objects which compose the physical world were arranged by Him in their causes, developed under the law of their being in the subtle or psychical world and then manifested in the gross or material world. From kārana to sūksma, from sūksma to sthūla ¯ , and back again, that is the formula. Once manifested in matter the world proceeds by laws which do not change, from age to age, by a regular succession, until it is all withdrawn back again into the source from which it came. The material goes back into the psychical and the psychical is involved in its cause or seed. It is again put out when the period of expansion recurs and runs its course on similar lines but with different details till the period of contraction is due. Hinduism regards the world as a recurrent series of phenomena of which the terms vary but the general formula abides the same. The theory is only acceptable if we recognise the truth of the conception formulated in the Vishnu Purana of the world as vijñāna-vijrmbhitāni, developments of ideas in the Universal Intelligence which lies at the root of all material phenomena and by its indwelling force shapes the growth of the tree and the evolution of the clod as well as the development of living creatures and the progress of mankind. Whichever theory we take, the laws of the material world are not affected. From aeon to aeon, from kalpa to kalpa Narayan manifests himself in an ever-evolving humanity which grows in experience by a series of expansions and contractions towards its destined self realisation in God. That evolution is not denied by the Hindu theory of yugas. Each age in the Hindu system has its own line of moral and spiritual evolution and the decline of the dharma or established law of conduct from the Satya to the Kaliyuga is not in reality a deterioration but a detrition of the outward forms and props of spirituality in order to prepare a deeper spiritual intensity within the heart. In each Kaliyuga mankind gains something in essential spirituality. Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact. The wheel of Brahma rotates for ever but it does not turn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward.
The animal is distinguished from man by its enslavement to the body and the vital impulses. Aśanāyā mrtyuh, Hunger who is Death, evolved the material world from of old, and it is the physical hunger and desire and the vital sensations and primary emotions connected with the prāna that seek to feed upon the world in the beast and in the savage man who approximates to the condition of the beast. Out of this animal state, according to European Science, man rises working out the tiger and the ape by intellectual and moral development in the social condition. If the beast has to be worked out, it is obvious that the body and the prāna must be conquered, and as that conquest is more or less complete, the man is more or less evolved. The progress of mankind has been placed by many predominatingly in the development of the human intellect, and intellectual development is no doubt essential to self-conquest. The animal and the savage are bound by the body because the ideas of the animal or the ideas of the savage are mostly limited to those sensations and associations which are connected with the body. The development of intellect enables a man to find the deeper self within and partially replace what our philosophy calls the dehātmaka-buddhi, the sum of ideas and sensations which make us think of the body as ourself, by another set of ideas which reach beyond the body, and, existing for their own delight and substituting intellectual and moral satisfaction as the chief objects of life, master, if they cannot entirely silence, the clamour of the lower sensual desires. That animal ignorance which is engrossed with the cares and the pleasures of the body and the vital impulses, emotions and sensations is tamasic, the result of the predominance of the third principle of nature which leads to ignorance and inertia. That is the state of the animal and the lower forms of humanity which are called in the Purana the first or tamasic creation. This animal ignorance the development of the intellect tends to dispel and it assumes therefore an all-important place in human evolution.
“The highest term of evolution is the spirit in which knowledge, love and action, the threefold dharma of humanity, find their fulfilment and end.”
But it is not only through the intellect that man rises. If the clarified intellect is not supported by purified emotions, the intellect tends to be dominated once more by the body and to put itself at its service and the lordship of the body over the whole man becomes more dangerous than in the natural state because the innocence of the natural state is lost. The power of knowledge is placed at the disposal of the senses, sattva serves tamas, the god in us becomes the slave of the brute. The disservice which scientific Materialism is unintentionally doing the world is to encourage a return to this condition; the suddenly awakened masses of men, unaccustomed to deal intellectually with ideas, able to grasp the broad attractive innovations of free thought but unable to appreciate its delicate reservations, verge towards that reeling back into the beast, that relapse into barbarism which was the condition of the Roman Empire at a high stage of material civilisation and intellectual culture and which a distinguished British statesman declared the other day to be the condition to which all Europe approached. The development of the emotions is therefore the first condition of a sound human evolution. Unless the feelings tend away from the body and the love of others takes increasingly the place of the brute love of self, there can be no progress upward. The organisation of human society tends to develop the altruistic element in man which makes for life and battles with and conquers aśanāyā mrtyuh. It is therefore not the struggle for life, or at least not the struggle for our own life, but the struggle for the life of others which is the most important term in evolution, — for our children, for our family, for our class, for our community, for our race and nation, for humanity. An ever-enlarging self takes the place of the old narrow self which is confined to our individual mind and body, and it is this moral growth which society helps and organises.
So far there is little essential difference between our own ideas of human progress and those of the West except in this vital point that the West believes this evolution to be a development of matter and the satisfaction of the reason, the reflective and observing intellect, to be the highest term of our progress. Here it is that our religion parts company with Science. It declares the evolution to be a conquest of matter by the recovery of the deeper emotional and intellectual self which was involved in the body and overclouded by the desires of the prāna. In the language of the Upanishads the manah.kos.a and the buddhikos.a are more than the prānakosa and annakosa and it is to them that man rises in his evolution. Religion farther seeks a higher term for our evolution than the purified emotions or the clarified activity of the observing and reflecting intellect. The highest term of evolution is the spirit in which knowledge, love and action, the threefold dharma of humanity, find their fulfilment and end. This is the atman ¯ in the anandakos ¯ .a, and it is by communion and identity of this individual self with the universal self which is God that man will become entirely pure, entirely strong, entirely wise and entirely blissful, and the evolution will be fulfilled. The conquest of the body and the vital self by the purification of the emotions and the clarification of the intellect was the principal work of the past. The purification has been done by morality and religion, the clarification by science and philosophy, art, literature and social and political life being the chief media in which these uplifting forces have worked. The conquest of the emotions and the intellect by the spirit is the work of the future. Yoga is the means by which that conquest becomes possible.
In Yoga the whole past progress of humanity, a progress which it holds on a very uncertain lease, is rapidly summed up, confirmed and made an inalienable possession. The body is conquered, not imperfectly as by the ordinary civilised man, but entirely. The vital part is purified and made the instrument of the higher emotional and intellectual self in its relations with the outer world. The ideas which go outward are replaced by the ideas which move within, the baser qualities are worked out of the system and replaced by those which are higher, the lower emotions are crowded out by the nobler. Finally all ideas and emotions are stilled and by the perfect awakening of the intuitive reason which places mind in communion with spirit the whole man is ultimately placed at the service of the Infinite. All false self merges into the true Self. Man acquires likeness, union or identification with God. This is mukti, the state in which humanity thoroughly realises the freedom and immortality which are its eternal goal.
Sri Aurobindo (1872 – 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, educator and was one the most influential leaders of the Indian Independence Movement before become a spiritual teacher, introducing the world to his ideas on human progress and spiritual evolution.
The Sun (Tarot Triptych)
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…
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!
The Most Teachable Space
Suzanne Stabile January 9, 2025
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…
Rooms by the Sea, 1951. Edward Hopper.
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.
“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.”
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.
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
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…
Shrine in a termite mound, Kolwezi, Congo, c.1930.
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.
“Decay is not the end of things, it is a necessary part of renewal.”
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.
André Castor is a conservationist and researcher who writes about the natural world.
Ace of Cups (Tarot Triptych)
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…
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.
The Philosopher’s Stone (Alchemy II)
Molly Hankins January 2, 2025
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…
Cabala, Spiegel Der Kunst Und Natur, In Alchymia. Raphael Custos, (1615).
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.
“Our hearts may feel love in a passive sense, but they express little more than “inept good intentions and niceness.”
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.”
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
Borges and I
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…
How They Met Themselves. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864.
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.
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.
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)
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…
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.
The Curriculum of the Bauhaus
Walter Gropius December 26, 2024
Intellectual education runs parallel to manual training. 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…
The Bauhaus School Building in Weimar, Germany.
Four years after the formation of the Bauhaus, its founder Walter Gropius wrote a text entitled ‘The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus’ as a manifesto, declaration and explanation of the radical new world they were trying to form. The Bauhaus was a new type of art school, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany that attempted to unify individual expression and the process of mass manufacturing and modernity. It was inherently inter-disciplinary, and its output ranges from furniture and buildings, to paintings and craft work, each of which was valued individually and as a cohesive part of the greater whole. Perhaps no single movement has had quite as much impact in the 20th century, and the very visual language of the modern world owes its debt to this small school in Germany. Here, Gropius explains the curriculum of the school, and in doing so espouses some of the core philosophical ideas of the movement - that of intersectionality between mediums, rigorous focus on craft and technicality and an emphasis on the freedom that can be found within constraints of production.
Walter Gropius December 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.
*
Instruction in form problems
Intellectual education runs parallel to manual training. The apprentice is acquainted with his future stock-in-trade - the elements of form and color and the laws to which they are subject. Instead of studying the arbitrary individualistic and stylized formulae current at the academies, he is given the mental equipment with which to shape his own ideas of form. This training opens the way for the creative powers of the individual, establishing a basis on which different individuals can cooperate without losing their artistic independence. Collective architectural work becomes possible only when every individual, prepared by proper schooling, is capable of understanding the idea of the whole, and thus has the means harmoniously to coordinate his independent, even if limited, activity with the collective work. Instruction in the theory of form is carried on in close contact with manual training. Drawing and planning, thus losing their purely academic character, gain new significance as auxiliary means of expression. We must know both vocabulary and grammar in order to speak a language; only then can we communicate our thoughts. Man, who creates and constructs, must learn the specific language of construction in order to make others understand his idea. Its vocabulary consists of the elements of form and color and their structural laws. The mind must know them and control the hand if a creative idea is to be made visible. The musician who wants to make audible a musical idea needs for its rendering not only a musical instrument but also a knowledge of theory. Without this knowledge, his idea will never emerge from chaos.
A corresponding knowledge of theory - which existed in a more vigorous era - must again be established as a basis for practice in the visual arts. The academies, whose task it might have been to cultivate and develop such a theory, completely failed to do so, having lost contact with reality. Theory is not a recipe for the manufacturing of works of art, but the most essential element of collective construction; it provides the common basis on which many individuals are able to create together a superior unit of work; theory is not the achievement of individuals but of generations. The Bauhaus is consciously formulating a new coordination of the means of construction and expression. Without this, its ultimate aim would be impossible. For collaboration in a group is not to be obtained solely by correlating the abilities and talents of various individuals. Only an apparent unity can be achieved if many helpers carry out the designs of a single person. In fact, the individual's labor within the group should exist as his own independent accomplishment. Real unity can be achieved only by coherent restatement of the formal theme, by repetition of its integral proportions in all parts of the work. Thus everyone engaged in the work must understand the meaning and origin of the principal theme.
Forms and colors gain meaning only as they are related to our inner selves. Used separately or in relation to one another they are the means of expressing different emotions and movements: they have no importance of their own. Red, for instance, evokes in us other emotions than does blue or yellow; round forms speak differently to us than do pointed or jagged forms. The elements which constitute the 'grammar' of creation are its rules of rhythm, of proportion, of light values and full or empty space. Vocabulary and grammar can be learned, but the most important factor of all, the organic life of the created work, originates in the creative powers of the individual. The practical training which accompanies the studies in form is founded as much on observation, on the exact representation or reproduction of nature, as it is on the creation of individual compositions. These two activities are profoundly different. The academies ceased to discriminate between them, confusing nature and art - though by their very origin they are antithetical. Art wants to triumph over Nature and to resolve the opposition in a new unity, and this process is consummated in the fight of the spirit against the material world. The spirit creates for itself a new life other than the life of nature.
Each of these departments in the course on the theory of form functions in close association with the workshops, an association which prevents their wandering off into academicism.
*
The goal of the Bauhaus curriculum
The culminating point of the Bauhaus teaching is a demand for a new and powerful working correlation of all the processes of creation. The gifted student must regain a feeling for the interwoven strands of practical and formal work. The joy of building, in the broadest meaning of that word, must replace the paper work of design. Architecture unites in a collective task all creative workers, from the simple artisan to the supreme artist.
For this reason, the basis of collective education must be sufficiently broad to permit the development of every kind of talent. Since a universally applicable method for the discovery of talent does not exist, the individual in the course of his development must find for himself the field of activity best suited to him within the circle of the community. The majority become interested in production; the few extraordinarily gifted ones will suffer no limits to their activity. After they have completed the course of practical and formal instruction, they undertake independent research and experiment.
Modern painting, breaking through old conventions, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world. But when, in the future, artists who sense new creative values have had practical training in the industrial world, they will themselves possess the means for realizing those values immediately. They will compel industry to serve their idea and industry will seek out and utilize their comprehensive training.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture, and one of the most influential art theorists of the modern age.
Christmas Day
Leigh Hunt December 24, 2024
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…
Still from The Christmas Angel (Détresse et Charité). Georges Méliès, 1904.
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.
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.
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)
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…
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.
Rebel Physics and the Chaos Magic Equation
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…
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.
“Laughter is the only tenable attitude in a universe which is a joke played on itself.”
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.
Molly Hankins is a Neophyte + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum
From Line to Constellation
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…
Eugen Gomringer, 1953. Wind.
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.
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.
Eugen Gomringer is a Bolivian-Swiss poet, professor, and the father of the European Concrete Poetry movement that he began in the 1950s.