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Larry Levan Playlist

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Larry Levan was an influential American DJ who defined what modern dance clubs are today. He is most widely renowned for his long-time residency at Paradise Garage, also known as “Gay-Rage”, a former nightclub at 84 King Street in Manhattan, NY.

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Hannah Peel Playlist

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Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and Emmy-nominated, RTS and Music Producers Guild winning composer, with a flow of solo albums and collaborative releases, Hannah Peel joins the dots between science, nature and the creative arts, through her explorative approach to electronic, classical and traditional music.

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The Four of Wands (Tarot Triptych)

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Name:  Completion, the Four of Wands
Number: 4
Astrology: Venus in Aries
Qabalah: Chesed of Yod

Chris Gabriel March 15, 2025

In the four of wands we see both the quick fulfilment of desires and the ability to regularly achieve them. The daily virtue taught by the three of wands pays off here, with an effective and pleasurable routine.

In Rider, we see two robed figures holding up small boughs. Immediately in the foreground are four wands, with a bough of fruits and ribbons atop them. Behind the two figures is  a castle and a group of revellers.

In Thoth, we are shown an astrological image - four wands tipped by the ram of Aries and the dove of Venus. They oppose one another, and form a circle. There is fire in the center, and the earthy green of Venus decorates the background.

In Marseille, there are four wands, out of which two plants and two flowers emerge. Qabalistically, this is the Mercy of the King.

Astrologically, Venus in Aries is a detrimental position, but as this card shows, that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. This is a ‘shotgun wedding’ rather than an extravagant and beautiful ball. It is a passionate relationship, but not necessarily one with a future.

The four of cups is a good mood, with the comfort of home, but it already bears the seeds of its undoing. Venus in Aries is much like “Beauty and the Beast”, which may work out in fairy tales, but usually proves unstable in our lives. Aries seeks immediate satisfactions while Venus enjoys the dance. Venus takes its time  to converse with a partner. Aries wants just one thing, and it wants it now. They are naturally opposed, but can be exciting when the chemistry is right.

Both Jodorowsky and Crowley emphasise this card's relation to routine. Our natural drives and whims form a circuit, and while this can work well for a time, routine can wear down creativity. This is the relationship that sexually satisfies both parties, but fails to reach higher resonance.

In its most dignified form, it represents a passionate bout of work, a relationship, or a period of partying that leads to greater satisfaction and ability. So long as it is not permanent, all is well.

When pulling this card, we can expect a good time. We may find inspiration in  a new flame, or find a good rhythm to our life. The key is passion; as soon as things get boring, this card is out of play.

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

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Cosmic Respiration and the Four Elements

God Breathing Life into Adam. Franz Xaver Karl Panko, c.1760.

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Molly Hankins March 13, 2025

In Kabblaistic tradition, many of life’s truths are revealed through natural functions and the greatest mystery of all is revealed through our breath. We come in and out of physical form with the rhythmic pattern of our breathing, and by paying attention to this, we learn where we must focus to align with the natural rhythm of life. Alchemy teaches us that transforming each element into one of greater subtlety is how we extract the most energy from matter. So when we learn to breathe consciously we can absorb the subtle energies of the universe more readily, in the same way that we can extract more nutrients from our food by thoroughly chewing.

Presenting at The Science of Consciousness conference last year, professor and spiritual teacher Hide Saegusa presented research showing a correlation between the depth and slowness of breath and an increase in reports of synchronicity and manifestation experiences. His work points to what 20th century Kabbalah teachers such as Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov believe -conscious breathing allows us to  absorb more energy, which increases our capacity for magic. Deep, slow, deliberate breathing not only aligns us with the natural ebb and flow of life, but also sets free the subtle energies contained in the air we breathe. 

As Aïvanhov wrote in his book Fruits of the Tree of Life, “The air we breathe is like a mouthful of food, a mouthful of extraordinary forces and energies. If you let it out too quickly, the lungs don’t have time to cook, digest and assimilate it for the benefit of the whole body.” By consciously holding air in our lungs, he contends that our body is able to perform a function equivalent to the ignition and explosions of an internal combustion engine. This energy can only be generated by the compression created when we hold our breath such that it’s forced to circulate through all the tiny alveoli in our lungs.  

The Wim Hof method, by contrast, asks us to hold our breath after exhalation rather than inhalation, but from the perspective of generating subtle energy the result is the same. The element of air is converted into fire by the inherent discomfort of the  process. Subtle energies are then absorbed by our cells, which are predominantly made of water. Our physical, Earthly-matter bodies can then use this energy in a process that unifies the four elements of air, fire, water, and Earth in alignment with a natural process he calls ‘cosmic respiration.’The harmonization and alignment this provides  leads to reality becoming more malleable. Practitioners of these methods then, Aïvanhov asserts, become more adept at influencing reality.

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“By consciously creating more energy to fuel these natural processes, we free up more energy for creativity, magical practice and anything else we care to do.”

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We can apply the same conscious practice to absorbing light from the sun,  By deliberately observing the light as it travels through air, we can “hold onto it” with our awareness and thereby recreate the same process of using the four elements. “We absorb the light through a network of minute channels in our bodies and our whole being vibrates with greater intensity. Of course, light can affect some work in us without our conscious collaboration, but if we are attentive to the work it is doing and eager to take part in it, the results will be greatly enhanced.” The “luminous particles”  released by consciously focusing on absorbing the sun’s rays strengthen our energy and physical bodies by optimizing the process of cellular turnover. Everyday, 1% of our cells, around 330 billion, are replaced with new ones. By consciously creating more energy to fuel these natural processes, we free up more energy for creativity, magical practice and anything else we care to do. 

Saegusa’ suggests that breathing two to three times per minute is the threshold at which there is a statistically significant increase of synchronicity and successful manifestation. While this is impossible to achieve when our autonomic nervous system is in control, consciously practicing slow breathing activates our parasympathetic nervous system, which makes 10 to 15-second inhalations and exhalations attainable. Through practice,  we can train our autonomic nervous system to naturally take longer, deeper breaths. Apply this to the cosmic respiration of sunlight and we can approximate a method of holding our awareness of absorbing sunlight for 10 to 15 seconds at a time for a few minutes a day. Each time we perform this practice, we do so knowing that sunlight causes us to grow and flourish, whether we’re basking in physical sunlight or consciously connecting with the sun metaphysically. 

Most of us have been conditioned to believe we are human beings with a soul, but the premise of cosmic respiration is exactly the opposite. We are souls that have a human body, and by attuning ourselves to this practice, we can supercharge the energy fueling our physical form.

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

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Paul Saladino

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A Deeper Sense of Home

M. Palacio, 1890.

Tuukka Toivonen March 11, 2025

‘The predicament of private life today is shown by its arena. Dwelling, in the proper sense, is now impossible. […] The functional modern habitations designed from a tabula rasa, are living-cases of manufactured by experts for philistines, or factory sites that have stayed into the consumption sphere, devoid of all relation to the occupant.’   

- Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia (1951/1994¹)

What does home mean to you? Is it a place you like to return to at the end of a long day? Is it a container of calm solitude? The warm presence and familiar smiles of significant others or the enthusiastic welcome of a furry pet? Passing through the front door, do you see yourself exiting a stressful, chaotic world and entering a domestic realm where the rumblings and unpredictable movements of that world outside give way to security and comfort? My guess is that this sense of relative peace and interiority is integral at least to your idea of the home, if not its entire reality.

If we take a moment to reflect, most of us can probably call to mind the feeling of being ‘at home’ in a place or dwelling. We can also easily imagine its opposite, being ill at home and feeling uncomfortable, unsettled or like one does not really belong to a place. Until a short while ago, I had never thought very seriously about the meaning of home beyond these basic distinctions. Then a brief post on trail hiking prompted me to think again about the nature of being-at-home-ness. 

The post recounted how a good number of the hikers appear to find a sense of home on the trail. These explorers seem to feel most ‘at home’ not when sheltered inside a fixed structure or a familiar daily setting, but when in movement – under the open sky, traversing and surviving challenging terrains in unpredictable conditions – often taking considerable risks along the way. 

This subtle, perhaps simple insight got me wondering whether our assumptions of fixedness and insularity associated with the home, which now seem normal and even ideal to many of us, were but distortions that kept us from seeing a more complex reality. If it really is possible for some of us to experience a sense of home out in the open, in constantly changing conditions, does that not suggest that physical seclusion and stability are in fact not essential for feeling at home in a place and in our present lives? Does it not imply, further, that we might not be quite as fulfilled  and nurtured in our contemporary physical and social home environments as we tend to assume? Perhaps the truth is that many of us have yet to fully explore what could truly make us feel at home in the world.

If we look at architectural history and anthropology of the home, we can help set these ponderings in a wider context. In the classic work Experiencing Architecture, Steen Eiler Rasmussen notes that before the onset of modernity, the very crafting of homes and essential implements was a communal, rather than private or commercial, enterprise that entire villages took part in. The individuals who would come to occupy a building were directly involved in its formation, and the consequence was that ‘houses were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use and the result was a remarkably suitable comeliness’ (Rasmussen 1959/1992, preface). By the middle of the 20th century, much of this had changed and not for the better, according to Rasmussen: ‘in our highly civilized society, the houses which ordinary people are doomed to live in and gaze upon are on the whole without quality’. What had been lost was not merely the aesthetic harmony of housing or the communal, situated dimension of the home-building process, but also a broader sense of attunement with local ecosystems, landscapes and even seasons. The anthropologist Tim Ingold has written extensively on dwelling, environmental perception and settings that should be viewed as fully alive rather than inert. He observes that industrialized modes of production have disrupted the sense of reciprocity that people feel towards the land they inhabit while also stymieing the local material and relational flows that constitute a living place. 

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“Despite the dramatic erosion of all that used to root our physical dwellings in something greater than their most visible features, what should we do to find a deeper sense of home in contemporary conditions?”

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This understanding can help us appreciate why the alienation and isolation of our present-day homes is at once more profound and tragic than we might initially envisage. It is as if the living roots and rich entanglements that used to make up a home have been surgically removed, leaving behind a mere empty shell, an anonymously designed structure without personality serving as a socially unmoored container. We may have become more mobile and free from the constraints of place-based communities as a result, but at what cost?

Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, Richard Hamilton. 1956.

As disturbing as this may seem, it can also bring us some relief. If our abodes have themselves become radically untethered from the life-giving relations and processes that used to ground them in place, it should not then come as a surprise that we struggle to feel fully alive in them. How could we feel a deep sense of homeliness and rootedness in buildings or places that have become so abjectly rootless, lifeless, and deprived of the flows that used to both constitute them and nurture the inhabitants’ souls?

Before you pack up your rucksack and set out on a long hike or pilgrimage, consider instead searching for a nearby place that retains some degree of rootedness, history and entanglement. For Jenny Odell, the artist and author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, such qualities could be found in Oakland’s Rose Garden, built into a quiet hillside. Having made the decision to ground herself in this tangible place, Odell quickly came to value the way in which the garden offered her an enriching, contemplative space. Far from furnishing an experience of total isolation, the garden opened her up to notice the diverse forms of life frolicking around her, starting with birdsong. As her moments of ‘doing nothing’ continued, the sound of ravens, robins, song sparrows, chickadees, goldfinches, tomawhees, hawks, nuthatches and others became so familiar to her that she no longer had to strain to recognize them. These unexpected friendships and the coziness she felt within the garden’s labyrinthine layout gave Odell a real sense of home not in a building or even a group of humans but in a fluid bubble that while removed, was a fruitful setting for connection, affective experience and fulfilment. It does not matter  whether or not Odell viewed the Rose Garden as an actual home but that she found something that powerfully grounded her life, her thinking and her artistry, through stillness as well as movement, and through her newfound other-than-human acquaintances. 

Architects and designers, too, are starting to pay attention to how a stronger sense of home, or at least homeliness, might be supported by their creations and the ways in which these interact with their surroundings, even in urban environments. The maverick Japanese architect Yamashita Taiju elevates coziness into a core design principle that informs how he creates everything from offices to commercial complexes. He seeks to also cultivate a sense of flow (nagare) and movement in and around the structures he enacts, believing that without a lively sense of dynamism spaces grow stale and boring. Many other designers are experimenting with how the boundaries between the 'inside’ and ‘outside’ of a structure could be erased or at least minimized when crafting comfortable new dwellings and how they might rejoin local ecological rhythms and regenerative material flows. 

So, despite the dramatic erosion of all that used to root our physical dwellings in something greater than their most visible features, what should we do to find a deeper sense of home in contemporary conditions? I believe that, as a first step, it will help if we set aside binary thinking and embrace how privacy and connection, shelter and openness, stability and movement can combine to generate a fulfilling experience of being ‘at home’. Indeed, it is the presence of these seemingly opposing dynamics that used to bestow our homes with aliveness and meaning. That said, we do not need to (and cannot) revive past realities; instead, what we can do is translate the search for a deeper sense of home into a creative act. We can rediscover the kinds of flows and nurturing qualities that feel both anchoring and enlivening for us in our unique life-worlds. In doing so, we are at liberty to draw inspiration from those who feel truly at home on the trail as well as those who feel more cozy in capsule-like concrete apartments floating above sprawling cities. Perhaps this is how we will ultimately find a more enduring sense of home on Earth as well, as a species that so often appears ill at ease on the very planet that birthed it. 

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Tuukka Toivonen, Ph.D. (Oxon.) is a sociologist interested in ways of being, relating and creating that can help us reconnect with – and regenerate – the living world, in this age of the artificial.

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¹  Adorno, T. W. (1994). Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (E. F. N. Jephcott, Trans.; 8th ed.). Verso. (Original work published 1951)
²  Rasmussen, S. E. 1992. Experiencing architecture (23rd ed). MIT press. (Original work published in 1959).
³ Odell, J. 2019. How to do nothing: Resisting the attention economy. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.

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Film

Iggy Pop Playlist

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Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor. Since forming The Stooges in 1967, Iggy’s career has spanned decades and genres. Having paved the way for ‘70’s punk and ‘90’s grunge, he is often considered “The Godfather of Punk.”

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Marlon Brando

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The Six of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name:  Pleasure, the Six of Cups
Number: 6
Astrology: Sun in Scorpio
Qabalah: Tiphereth of He

Chris Gabriel March 8, 2025

The Six of Cups is just enough: a perfect amount of wine, a good cigarette, the right portion of a meal. This is a card of enjoyment, of the feeling when we find exactly what we want. It is  harmony and balance between ourselves and the world.

In Rider, we find a picturesque scene. A boy in blue with a red cowl hands a potted flower to a little girl in a spotted yellow dress. They are in a little village square. A guard with a pike stands in the distance. Four cups are in the foreground, while one sits on a column behind the boy. It is a picture fit for Norman Rockwell.

In Thoth, we are shown six golden lotuses pouring water into six cups. An ornate, symmetrical network of pipe-like stems hold the flowers aloft. A blue sea lightly churns below, and a clear sky is above. 

In Marseille, a flower divides the card into two halves, each containing three cups to create a perfect mirror image. Qabalistically, this is the Beauty of the Queen, taking pleasure in perfectly balanced things.

It is a great rarity to get exactly what we want, but ‘Pleasure’ shows us it is possible. Together with the Five of Cups, ‘Disappointment’, and the Seven of Cups, ‘Debauch”, we are given the image of too little, too much, and just right.

In this way, the Six of Cups is like Goldilocks - just right. We are prone to desire too much of a good thing, turning it to dangerous excess. Or, there is not enough of it to satiate our needs, and we are left wanting. Pleasure is getting exactly the right amount of what we want, and achieving balance. 

This is a glass that is neither half empty or half full, it is just a good glass.

As Scorpio, this card directly relates to material pleasures, especially drink and sex. Both of these can cause a great deal of problems, as seen in the 5 and 7 of cups, but in the 6 they are just enough. It is the pure release of orgasm. The symmetry shown in Marseilles and Thoth really paint the picture by way of mirror images, and harmony. 

In the words of William Blake “No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.” When we follow our body and nature, we do not restrict all pleasure or over indulge. 

The Psychoanalysts understood well that our neuroses quickly do away with balance, leading us to  either take all that we can, or reject all.

Wilhelm Reich describes it well in “Listen, Little Man!”:

‘You remember the Swedish institution of smorgasbord. Many foods and delicacies are spread out, and it is left to the guest what and how much he will take. To you this institution was new and alien; you could not understand how one can trust human decency. You told me with malicious joy how you did not eat all day in order to gorge yourself on the free food in the evening.’

Let us listen to our bodies and take only what we will.

When pulling this card we can expect things to be quite good: a dream may come true, we may find our feelings mirrored, and our desires met. Let us then keep our hearts balanced and pure, so we don’t take too much of a good thing.

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

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