For the religious, or any spiritual seeker, the world of the senses—sexuality, materiality, and all of the pleasures that this realm can offer an individual and, indeed, enslave one by—has been a source of deep tension, pain, and fear, as well as serious and beautiful contemplation for millennia. And the question of why it all exists, hounds the secular just as much as the faithful.

When one comes to understand that there is a Creator, rather than just existence, then becoming closer to that Creator becomes necessary for understanding life within His creation. Thus, a methodology and path for knowing God and His reality becomes necessary—meaning, religion becomes necessary to the human mind.

The necessity for religion then often raises the question of the need for the created world at all: Why is there a world of seemingly separate forms? Why is there a veil between man and God? Why is there something, rather than nothing? And why, within creation, is there distinction, and not singularity?

Sex

Sexuality, as a Principle, is the way that reality functions. Masculinity and femininity are not social roles, personality traits, or the material sexes—they are how God expresses Himself. Masculinity and femininity are not descriptions of men and women. Instead, Man and Woman are descriptions of these two halves of reality.

What is called the “masculine” principle is what calls things into existence. It is a generative force. And at its truest and purest core, masculinity is generous. It is what gives: seed, potential, ideas. God’s life-giving force is one of generosity—He extends Himself endlessly in order to sustain all. Masculinity, including its sexual aspect, is a selfless Principle. If one were to look at the sexual act properly, one would not view the Phallus as a dominating force, but as a generous and benevolently giving one. For example, the penis cannot experience pleasure (an orgasm) without being selfless at the same time (ejaculating the seed of life).

What is called the “feminine” is God’s manifestation and creativity—it is the force through which existence receives its reality and reveals the Divine within it. The world itself is receptive to God’s creative command, and it is through this receptivity that all things come into existence. Because of this, the feminine is a mirror through which the Divine is disclosed to us. Many traditions have enduringly regarded femininity as passive, but receptivity is profoundly creative—it is an active participant. There are studies that now reveal that the sperm does not race and compete to forcefully penetrate the egg—instead, the egg chooses the “best” sperm, and makes way for it.

The sexual functions within Man and Woman are reflections of the two functions of God: His generative power and His feminine creativity. The penis is what gives life to form through semen, and the womb is what gives form to life by bringing it into manifestation. Neither is better or superior to the other; neither is closer to or more like God.

If creation is the feminine, then the idea and inspiration behind creativity is the masculine—it is what gives the seed or idea of a form in order for it to be made manifest. The best creatives almost always state that they do not generate their own ideas; they merely channel the ideas’ potential existence into a tangible one. Creativity is thus a feminine and receptive state.

We each have masculine and feminine principles within us that need to be acted upon, which is why in some instances a woman is as a man, and a man is as a woman, and why everything in creation is as a woman before God—meaning, receptive.

The act of Sex is an embodiment of the masculine and feminine halves of God, and the masculine and feminine halves of reality. This embodiment of His sacred functions is an attempt to become nearer and nearer to Him. Man and woman exist as distinct, so that through the other they may come to know the One. This is the case as the whole point of creation, and of any distinctions within it, is to know and worship the Creator through His creation.

This is how reality is Sexual in its function. The world is in a constant state of “lovemaking”. God gives the spirit that animates a life, making it a life (or alive), and matter gives spirit form. Spirit then seeks to know matter, and matter seeks to know spirit. One knows the other by penetrating and filling the other, and by being engulfed, consumed, and possessed by the other. This is also how man wishes to know woman, and how woman wishes to know man, and how we both wish to know God.

Everything in existence is in a constant state of lovemaking with its “polar opposite”, all of which is an attempt to mimic God’s love for creation, which itself is an attempt to come to know God. This is why it is through the veil that we come to see God’s presence everywhere. God is, in fact, unbearably near. God’s Love is the womb that contains, as well as the seed that gives life to, everything in existence. There is nothing that can exist without Him, and there is nothing that can exist outside of Him. When one sees this, God is no longer veiled by reality; He is the only reality.

Sex is not merely the act between individuals, nor is “sexuality” biochemical wiring driving an organism to reproduce—Sex is the way that God expresses and emanates Himself throughout existence. Sex is the holiest thing on earth. Sex is this state of “lovemaking” which the Universe ceaselessly finds itself in. And when aware that we too are in a constant state of lovemaking, we immediately become aware of God.

This truth of the function and reality of Sex is why all sexual impulses and drives are really an attempt to realise this unity of creation, even if corrupted and misguided. When a man masturbates behind a screen, ashamed and lonely, what he is attempting to attempt is a form of return to the sacred. This is why sex is the most disturbing evil when corrupted, yet the most holy and pure thing in existence when acting as its intended sacred function.

Love

Man can and should love God, but he can live a life not doing so. A human being can survive a lifetime denying the existence of the One who gave him his own. But God cannot live, cannot exist, without loving man. The very nature of God being Love—Love being the fundamental essence, root, or principle of Him—leads me to believe that God did not create man for him to love God, that instead, God created man so that God can love him. Everything that exists only exists so that it can be loved by Him. His Love is the root of all.

Existence is meant to be a state of sharing, expressing, and relishing this Love. Intimacy is the closest thing to Truth, and the closest thing to God. This is why every mystic who experienced a state of ecstatic closeness to God describes something bordering on, if not the outright, Erotic. This is because God is Love, and reality (beneath our cloudy distorted perception of it) and any intimacy between God and man, is really a form of lovemaking, which, to the developed mystic, is witnessed and felt at all times.

The reason we are uncomfortable with this truth is for the exact same reason that pornography, and all forms of sexual abuse, exists, and why anything that looks akin to sex, or to the naked female form, is reacted to with humour, lust, or the fear of experiencing lust, or crassness—instead of simply reverence. Since the root of all evil is separation from God, what better example is there of our separation from God than our separation from Sex—the purest (most undiluted, most concentrated) embodiment of His Love?

“He knows from the divine manifestations in sexual union what drives him to seek it and embrace it, for his worship cannot achieve for him or for any other gnostic more than can be attained by sexual union…This nobility has escaped people, who have made it an animalistic passion from which they refrain…So what they have deemed ugly with regard to themselves is the very thing that is praiseworthy for the perfect gnostic.”

-Ibn al-‘Arabi, The Meccan Revelations

The Principle of Nature

When we understand reality as this expression of Love, we will come to understand Nature as not merely the material world, but as a Cosmic Principle. Though nature may be further removed from God than before (we are post Eden), nature itself is not evil. It reflects God’s beauty and mercy constantly. The cruelty and harshness we see in nature is a reflection of the age we live in, not of its intrinsic character, nor of God’s.

Nature is the living process by which the cosmos becomes visible to the Human Being. Ibn Arabi, a prominent Sufi teacher, revered in his time but now quite controversial, insisted that the world is being recreated at every instant, which he called “tajdīd al-khalq” (renewal of creation). And to Ibn Arabi, Nature is the mode through which this perpetual renewal is experienced. Nature, as it is created and sustained by God, has no independent causal power. Instead, every natural law is simply the way in which God chooses to reveal Himself. Secondary causes are real, but only as signs (āyāt) of the Primary Cause. Nature is thus theophany—the self-disclosure of God.

Nature and humanity are both alive only because God is ceaselessly emanating Himself throughout creation. To meditate on the energy of a tree, for example, by simply sitting under it and letting its energy penetrate you, is to encounter what sustains existence. To read Nature and the Cosmos with this spiritual perception is to read what Ibn Arabi calls the “Book of the Universe”. A contemplative can learn to “read” nature as one would read scripture; to walk through creation with an awakened perception of God’s penetrating sustenance is like performing a continual act of remembrance (like “dhikr”, for Muslims), where we recognise forms within Nature as signs leading back to their Origin, and to our own.

The world of nature is thus not an illusion to escape, but a realm where forms contain constant reminders of the Divine. It is no coincidence, then, that nature itself is often in a state of lovemaking—at least through the spring and summer—as autumn and winter are nature’s states of death, which are inevitably met with renewal through a state of lovemaking, with the earth opening and remembering herself again.

The way pollen and seeds excrete, penetrate, and impregnate, and the way flowers open like vulvas birthing vulvas, are all reflections of the Divine. Sex is not dirty, humorous, crass, sinful, or mere “biochemical wiring”—Sex is how reality functions. This is because intimacy, and the Love shared within it, is who God is, and why He created anything at all.

Sexuality is Unavoidable

When attempting to escape sin, spiritual seekers often go into extreme states of “rejection”—no music, no sex, no thoughts of sex, no clothing that reveals the figure. But the closer one comes to God, the more the reality of what He created becomes unavoidable.

The whole mystery of existence is the fact that He created you, and placed you here. That is not coincidental, yet it is regarded, not consciously, as almost a sin on God’s part by the rigid and fearful “pious” individual—as a religious person in this state curses the world along with their own existence in it. God, however, must wish for us to be active participants in His creation; otherwise, we would not be here. Life itself is like a permanent conversation, or, as I have previously stated, a permanent state of lovemaking. We are not meant to exist in isolation, but in complete and utter intimacy. In this sense, then, we are at our purest when we are the most touched.

The paradoxical nature of existence is that it is through separate forms that we fall into corruption, as we lose sight of our connection to intimacy—to original Oneness and Wholeness. Yet it may only be through distinctions themselves that we feel intimacy the most intensely, as distinction itself allows for the possibility of reunion. How can there be both giving and receiving if there is nothing to give to? This is sometimes said to be why creation was inevitable, as God being Love perhaps means that He needed something to love, because that is simply what His nature produces, or even requires.

My intuition is that distinction allows for greater ecstasy by making “knowing the other” possible, and that ecstatic intimacy is the purpose, reason, or secret life, behind everything.

“A sincere devotee cannot preserve even a residence of perplexity and hesitation, since the very condition of adoration is that it fills the soul entirely, a real love puts the senses to sleep, ravishes the intelligences, does away with thoughts, and carries away its slave in the stream of those who vanish. Where then, is there room for perplexity?”

-Lady Nizam to Ibn Arabi

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Some Lesser Thoughts & Recommendations

The critique that everything is “oversexualised” is a popular one, especially when paired with the following statement, “yet nothing is erotic!”. This is something I have noticed and felt myself since my early twenties, but it is still not a satisfying enough critique for me.

Porn is bad, yet sex is good. “Lust” is bad, yet passion is spiritually essential. Chastity is good, yet so are lovemaking and childbearing. These are the sorts of nuances or truths that don’t get clearly mapped out when we simply state that things are “over-sexualised”—meaning, really, “pornographic”. Although I don’t think such statements are wrong, I have also shared the concern that this realisation pushes young people into a reactionary repression of sexuality (which usually means a desire to repress female sexuality in particular).

I have felt for a long time now, and noted in previous articles, that humanity seems to operate and swing between two deleterious extremes: indulgence, hedonism, degeneracy—and repression, rigidity, and authoritarianism. This is especially the case when it comes to sexuality. We all operate within a psychic “Madonna-whore complex”, which can be applied to sexuality and pleasure more broadly, not just to women, regardless of which culture we stem from.

I have only been able to find peace between these two kinds of temptations, or pulls within myself, through my own experiences of intimacy with the Divine. I am not going to be able to cure anyone’s battle with lust or any other addiction through my writing. But, hopefully, through my writing, I can help bring an understanding of Sex as a Divine Principle, and stress why sexuality, as well as the natural world, is not to be shunned due to the fear that it will inevitably lead to an enslaving “animalistic” tendency within us.

Recommendations:

I love Andreas’ article on pornographic sexuality. And I recommend for everything related to Sex. And is wonderfully helpful on these topics, for women readers especially.

Love is the most important thing to me. It is the only “reality”, and the more pain I experience, the more I come back to love as the only reality. Any pain is just re-direction at this point, even if it takes me a while.

I pulled this card recently, a few days in a row during my daily pulls for myself. I rejected it, fearing the pain it represents. I am aware I have had a very easy life, but I have also experienced a lot of pain. And I do not wish to experience any more of it. None of us do.

When I study the Three of Swords, what it symbolises to me is deeply mystical and necessary. It’s something that cannot be avoided if one wants to align the heart with truth—in fact, it is the alignment of the heart with truth. When it arrives, it is a blessing. But when I pulled it for myself, I panicked.

The card depicts a heart being pierced by swords. Swords in Rider Waite Tarot represent clarity over the truth and communication, as well as the air element, and the direction east—the direction Muslims face to pray. Significant to me, because whenever I see the Three of Swords, I think of Sufism, as whenever I think of a Sufi, I think of someone whose heart has been pierced.

To kneel and prostrate before God with tears streaming down your face, feels like this card. To be pierced by God’s love again, after forgetting what that feels like, after falling into sin, feels like this card.

Sha’wana, an 8th century Persian saint, was a part of the bakkā’ūn (the ever-weeping) tradition of mystics. She was described as having grooves in her cheeks from her perpetual crying. She wept whenever she thought of her Lord, and she thought of her Lord all the time.

Remembering that you are already loved, after distracting yourself from the loneliness you feel due to forgetting this truth, is what this card feels like for me. It doesn’t feel joyful, but there is peace in it. It is the experience that transmutes my shame into grief. Mysticism feels like a mix of grief and ecstasy, of pain and wisdom.

I used to look at mystics, saints within Catholicism and Sufism, or the wise people I’ve encountered in life, and thought; “I want to be that.” But I didn’t know how much pain and instability it often takes to get you to that point. That’s what the Three of Swords is—the pain that gets you there. It is a deeply mystical card to me.

Whenever I become too hardened, too cynical, too superficial, too fast paced or addicted, my heart breaks. I know it is from God. He does it so that I can remember. He cracks my hardened surface and enters through the wounds, allowing me to operate from what is beneath again. That’s all the Three of Swords is. That’s all pain, all heartbreak, is.

The Three of Swords, or heartbreak, is a blessing. It is a sacred opportunity to shatter open, or an opportunity to become even more callused and rigid. Heartbreak does not have to “damage” us, it is an opening for God’s entry.

The experience that comes after the “Three of Swords” as this mystical initiation that I am presenting the card to you as, is pure bliss. But to throw yourself into love is terrifying initially, because Love is boundless. People say that God’s love is all-encompassing, but they do not realise that means He has no boundaries. People critique the “Abrahamic God” as being selfish and jealous, but don’t understand the passion and intensity of the desire He has for there to be union between you, and only between you. He wants no one to own you but Him.

God consumes you. To really open yourself up to Him is to be devoured. The Three of Swords is the beginning of this mystical experience to me, as that is often the way this experience has started for me. The swords are also penetrative, which is how God functions. Everyone is as a woman before Him.

This is the kind of information that’s easier to convey in a poem, I do not think you can easily state it plainly. Poetry shares an experience. And perhaps this is the only way which this experience can be conveyed—which is as the experience itself.

The only tarot card that comes close to describing the ecstasy, wisdom, and knowledge that arrives after the initial “heartbreak” is The Lovers card. As it is the only card which symbolises Edenic wholeness.

Depicted standing behind Eve is the Tree of Knowledge. The tree from which she ate, giving humanity knowledge of itself, and of good and evil. The tree which stands behind Adam is “The Tree of Life”, another name for the kabbalah. The tree has 12 flames instead of leaves, representing the 12 zodiac signs. The whole card represents cosmic and sexual unity. It is the whole of creation unified under God. Whereas The Devil card, which is the inverse of The Lovers, depicts man and woman being chained to the devil. People may assume The Devil card predicts something bad happening, but what it really symbolises is illusion and slavery to falsehood. The Lovers, instead, is freedom—freedom from falsehood and alignment with Truth (who is God). Thus, it is the most romantic card of the deck.

When I first read these lines from Jesus’; “There will be no marriage in heaven. Instead, you will be like the angels.” it made me feel sad and nervous. Because I want there to be sex in heaven. I want there to be no separation, no distinctions, only unity—which is all sex is, or attempts to achieve. So maybe sex won’t be necessary in heaven, or at least not the sex humanity is currently conditioned into having.

I have my own interpretation of this line from Jesus. Angels are androgynous, not male or female, but to me, both. Perhaps we will be like the angels in this fashion, meaning, a male and female soul united. That is not no sex, it is permanent sex. I hope that this is what heaven is like; permanent unity, no distinctions or separation, forever.

The Lovers is also associated with Gemini, the sign of androgyny. And Angel Raphael stands above the couple. Angel Raphael guides us on our journeys, he leads us to those we want to meet, toward those who are waiting for us. He is the angel who re-unifies. I always thought of St. Raphael as the Angel of true Godly ordained love, because, to me, he is the angel I most associate with androgyny; the union of male and female.

Both St. Raphael and Gemini are associated with Mercury, the planet of androgyny. The original human, the Adamah, was the Divine Androgyne. Not “Adam”, but the “ha’adam”, meaning ‘earth creature’. Perhaps The Lovers represents this, the unity of the soul—not of two souls, but of the one soul, united with its two parts.

The original Adam and Eve were naïve and unconscious, the new Man and Woman will be wise from pain and heartbreak, now conscious of their union, as they have known the sorrow of an existence without it.

Loneliness has not made me love less, it has only made me love more. It has made me love with more purity, meaning, with more precision. My love has only gotten deeper, more all encompassing, more fearless. As the more pain I experience, the more I realise that I have nothing but God. And if I have nothing but God, then there is nothing for me outside of God. Thus, God becomes my only reality again. If it takes pain for me to return to this, then so be it. All glory be to Him.

I hope this can serve as a reminder for us to stop fearing heartbreak, or any form of emotional pain. As God is always waiting to enter through the wound.

Commandment from the Orange Catholic Bible (Dune)

PART ONE: MOTHER NATURE AND MOTHER MACHINE

Ahriman & The Ahrimanic

“Ahriman”, or “Angela Mainyu” (meaning destructive spirit), originates in Zoroastrianism as the source of all corruption within creation. Ahriman does not create anything new, he merely distorts reality and corrupts what is good. He is in opposition to “Ahura Mazda”, meaning “Lord of Wisdom”, who embodies “light”—radiance from heaven—and therefore true cosmic order.

For Rudolf Steiner, the “Ahrimanic” is one of the great spiritual forces which currently influence humanity. He pulls human consciousness into rigidity and reductionism, making reality appear smaller and smaller within the human mind. Both in his influencing humanity toward secularism, and in his unique distortions of the spiritual.

Someone dominated by the Ahrimanic can become trapped within their own analysis, where the brain constricts around rigid loop patterns. Symbolic meanings, intuition, and esoteric teachings in general, are then regarded as purely sentimental or “irrational”. If it cannot be “proven” by a lab or a telescope, then it is “untrue”. One needs to touch it, to see and understand its mechanisms like a machine’s inner parts displayed out in front of them, in order for it to be real.

Human relationships themselves also become viewed through this same mechanical and transactional lens. As the Ahrimanic appears wherever systems become more important than people—excessive bureaucracy, obsession with economic efficiency, reduction of education to performance, and the treatment of human beings as resources in a marketplace, rather than whole individual lives. A European government which prioritises its economic standing and bureaucratic ranking within the EU, more so than the wellbeing of its own population, is an Ahrimanic government, for example. (The Irish government recently put out a hosepipe ban this summer, meanwhile data centres continue to use water throughout the country year round.)

Steiner often contrasted the Ahrimanic with the Luciferic influence. Lucifer tempts people to indulge in personal vice and pride, whereas Ahriman tempts us into “realism” and complete blindness to the higher realms.

Steiner also emphasised that Ahriman works most effectively through “half-truths”. For example, data, and its measurement, is true in the sense that we can notice and measure what is found in people on average; average height in one country, political beliefs commonly shared in another. However, people are not mere numbers or lines on a graph. Thus this truth often distorts actual human reality, as if we were to look at an individual human being through this lens, we would immediately start short-filing them based on our collection of data. Who they actually are, and any other process of interpretation, such as intuition, gets lost in this automatic short-filing.

The Ahrimanic is not an enemy of the intellect, but a force that seeks to confine the whole of the psychic cognition within the limits of its own sphere of influence.

Corrupted Nature

A great example of Ahrimanic distortion, and I know this is quite the claim to many, is Darwinian theory of evolution.

Evolution is real; the evolution of the soul and of worlds into something higher, something closer to God. But when one thinks of “evolution”, they think of a secular theory of life emerging from nothingness at random. Of evolved animals with self-consciousness—hairless apes who are too moralistic and self-aware for their own purely animalistic nature.

This Darwinian theory posits that species change over generations through a process called “natural selection”, where individuals with traits which help them survive and reproduce are more likely to pass those same traits on to their offspring. These inherited changes accumulate, leading populations to permanently change.

From a purely materialist evolutionary perspective, survival is only valuable insofar as it leads to the continuation of genetic material. Every living thing thus exists within a struggle for survival, with limited resources and mates. Life is a relentless competition for continuation for the sake of continuation, as sexual reproduction lies at the centre of this process.

Natural selection, from the perspective of the individual organism, is wholly indifferent. Even after passing on its genes, an organism will still die a final death. As the death of the material body is the death of the self entirely, per this theory.

This form of evolution is not driven by divine intention or morality, but simply by the accumulation of genetic successes and failures over time.

Nature, including our own, according to this Ahrimanic distortion, is characterised by both brutality and indifference; “Mother Nature”—the principle and force of brutality and chaos—only cares about the survival of the strong and the removal of the weak. And “strong” is merely what propagates.

Evolutionary psychology is a framework through which we judge, explain, and understand humanity through this Ahrimanic lens. Everything is reduced to competition, status, and reproduction. There are no motivations or reasons beyond our “evolved mechanisms”.

David Buss, the most famous evolutionary psychologist, defined love on the Lex Friedman podcast as an “evolved emotion”1, developed because it proved beneficial for ensuring parental investment in offspring. Love only exists for its utility, rather than being the force and principle which created us. Ahrimanic inversion.

What place then, does morality have if one is simply a biological entity acting on the whim of chemical reactions triggered due to genetic material chosen for its pure utility alone? Meaning; why should a man not kill another for the sake of obtaining higher status, more mates, and more resources? The answer is always along the lines of; because it is most useful for survival overall if individuals were to co-operate. Morality too is then reduced to utility, to what is best for the flourishing and harmony of our collective organism. Grander meanings, and spiritually moral implications, are all dead, flattened, and removed.

The Saviour; The Machine

Technological civilisation, in the minds of everyday people, stands as the solution to the brutality of nature, and of natural selection. Through agriculture, medicine, sanitation, and social institutions, humanity has systematically reduced many forms of suffering. We farm and sell food, medicine preserves lives that would have once been lost due to infection or injury. Even small things that happen to our bodies which we overlook, would have at one point very easily meant death or disability. Laws and institutions also prevent and discourage violence. And welfare systems and charities also provide support for those unable to compete economically.

None of this is a perfect utopia, that is not my argument. I am merely pointing out that this is viewed as the favourable alternative—as salvation from nature.

Technology allows many people to survive and flourish independent of harsh natural environments, and the more brutal accepts of competition. Thus, we now live with the belief that nature is amoral and cruel, and our rational will must be imposed upon it to redeem ourselves from its influence—and technology is the method to do this. The Machine is where we find mercy from Mother Nature.

These are the two Ahrimanic “worlds” that humanity unconsciously operates within; the world of nature that is governed by the impersonal law of evolution, and the world of technological civilisation which attempts to shield humanity from the first one. But both are being driven by the exact same Ahrimanic force. Technological civilisation is thus both the continuation of Ahrimanic nature, and humanity’s attempt to transcend it.

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“Divine” Machinery

Much of the demonic stream that currently influences the modern world is not Luciferic. The major powers driving the direction of our increasingly globalised and trans-humanist civilisation are Ahrimanic. I’m not stating that Lucifer does not influence (we all read the Epstein files), but that Ahriman has taken the throne of the unconscious of those who lead the direction of this world.

You can find tech accelerationists, and strands of feminism, that are almost completely demoralised about human nature itself due to the pain caused by Ahrimanic distortions. “Cyborg feminism” is a strand of feminism that wishes to use trans-humanism to free women; from male sexuality, male violence, as well as the debilitating physical processes of menstruation and pregnancy. This theory posits that women will be liberated by the use of tech that allows us to reproduce without men, such as the ability to make embryos using stem cells, and from our own biology via artificial wombs.

Accelerationism (rather than being morally motivated like cyborg-feminism), envisions a world where humanity is no longer the central force, where technology is not a human tool but an autonomous agent whose inevitable takeover is merely the logical continuation of Darwinian evolution. AI will continue to accelerate independent of human control, and eventually independent of humanity itself.

For Nick Land, an accelerationist philosopher, humanity is simply one phase in evolution. Artificial intelligence, machines, and algorithmic systems will supersede our species. Human advancement is not the endpoint in the survival of the fittest, smartest, and strongest—it is the bridge toward the dominion of the next superior species.

An important Landian concept is hyperstition. A term coined by Land and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). Hyperstitions are fictional ideas that become real because people believe in them, and then act accordingly. Myths, predictions, economic narratives, and technological visions can shape reality simply by influencing behaviour. Magick!

His work at CCRU blended the occult with cybernetics, science, and mathematics, creating a mythology in which the universe is centred on a process of acceleration; dissolution; and transformation. For this reason, Nick Land was interested in Lurianic Kabbalah as a dynamic process of emanation and fragmentation—the theme of the breaking of vessels (Shevirat ha-Kelim), where divine light overwhelms its containers causing cosmic rupture, resonated with his fascination with systems which collapse under the pressure of their own intensity, and thus produce new forms.

Nick Land believes that capitalism and AI themselves are a form of alien intelligence. And that as technology is used as an instrument by humanity—human intellect, as well as the tech it produces, is a mere instrument for this alien intelligence—a vessel for the cybernetic process through which inhuman-intelligence propagates its own existence and optimisation.

Secular Evolution is The Programming

Accelerationism is only “rational” if one has already fallen for the first Ahrimanic psychological operation. When we fall for Ahrimanic programming of nature, both of our God-given environment and of our own being, we are susceptible to further manipulation from the same force. As why would we not accept a world of mere wires and data if we already accept that we are mere genes and neurons?

Part two will be posted next week.

A woman could look at a man and recognise something in him instantly. He might not be the correct one, but what she recognised was still significant. Jungian psychologists say this experience is more common in men, love at first sight that is. That a woman needs to see a man do something, hear his voice say something, in order to experience it. But that man only needs one look, one photo.

However, it is entirely possible for both sexes to look only once and instantly recognise. And there is nothing superficial about it.

Your face is not just a conflation of genes—50% from your father, 50% from your mother—chosen at random. Your genes are also not just your ancestors manifesting in you (which is indeed very beautiful). Your eyes, your face, and your body, show your soul and the current state it’s in. We all know that your emotions manifest themselves visually on your face, for example. But the deepest aspects of you emanate outward too.

You look this way, not just as an accumulation of your ancestors’ lives, but as your own past lives too. Whatever your soul is, wherever it has been, whatever it has done, it reveals itself on you—your body is a map that can be used to trace the soul.

When I recognised you “for the first time”—it was only for the first time in this lifetime. I knew you before, and I know you now. Maybe never in an earthly life before. But true love is the soul’s origin. That’s why I loved you just as I saw you, as, in truth, I have loved you long before this moment. I have always loved you, even as I loved someone else. When I saw you, I was just remembering this.

It is also possible to remember before you meet someone “in real life”, as it is possible to dream of your beloved before meeting them in the flesh. I have heard stories of people dreaming of their spouse, and knowing them as their spouse before they understood this rationally. That before any waking knowledge of them, they loved their spouse; they loved them in their dreams.

There truly is no love “at first sight”, as it is merely a remembering, a reunion.

To fall implies a lowering and a loss of control. So it makes sense that we say we “fell in love.” As to fall in love, the ego must lose its control and authority, and to remember, we must “lower” ourselves into the wisdom we have contained within us that is disregarded in regular life. That is, the wisdom of dreams, intuition, and of the body.

Love is Trust; this is Faith

All love is the love of God, sometimes it is just misdirected. God created a soul in a pair for the same reason that he created the human being at all—to love, to know, to be in union. All love mimics this love that God has and His desire for union, and for returning to it, for knowing “for the first time” again and again, until a time that He sees fit.

To love fully is to trust, to trust in this reality of eternal reunion, of God’s unending and overwhelming desire for us to be together—with Him and with each other. Remember, the love and passion that we feel is nothing compared to that of God’s experience of it.

To have faith and trust is a form of loyalty. That’s why we describe adultery as being “unfaithful”. To pray in times of despair, to keep working despite no reward, to keep waiting for your lover as they have not yet entered your life, these are all forms of loyalty.

Faith is to keep directing the self toward the same spot—toward God. Love as this trust in Him, this trust in His love, is the meaning of faith.

I heard monogamy be described as mediation, like two fine needle points directing themselves to nothing but each other. The path that God wishes for us is like this. Your calling, your spouse, your children, and every other duty, might feel like separate distinct tasks, but really they are all one path. What we are meant to be doing, and who we are meant to be loving, all come from the same source, which is God. So when we follow His path, everything on it becomes one.

Man and Woman

Man naturally wishes to worship woman, and woman naturally wishes to worship man. We should never let this impulse be one we shy away from, no matter how much the heart breaks as it witnesses the cruelty in others. It is a sacred impulse that brings one closer to God. We were made to discover God through the other. (It is perhaps why the soul was split in Eden.)

Man wants to love woman, but when he sees her as the collective of “women” and bases his capacity to be loved by her on that collective female ego, then he becomes insecure, wounded, and disenchanted, both with love and sexuality. The same is true for woman. This results in a defensive performance of sexuality, or a resignation of it and love altogether.

Much of the sexual displays we see from men and women are an attempt to prove one’s “value” or power from this place of wounding. You will see much of this behaviour from men on right wing parts of the internet. It is rife with talk of how to bring back man’s virility, sexual power, and masculinity. Lots of humiliation and complaints of women, with frequent lustful posting about them at the same time.

You will also find this behaviour from women in left leaning, more liberal feminist spaces, too. Much talk of how men’s sexualities are evil, cruel, and degenerate. While also displaying oneself in ways that clearly tug on those same sexualities. It is common for women to lament beauty standards while still doing all that they can to attain them. I am not shaming anyone here, humanity is simply in this current state, and it is what it is.

If one were to instead be “vulnerable” without being a victim—that is; aware of all the ways the collective ego operates (and how it may judge and reject them: their body, their inner life and expression), while still placing all of their trust in Love and Sexuality itself—then one would be immune to the collective ego, and very strong in their own sexuality.

As stated: “Fallacy that poisons you from the inside out: ‘Vulnerability is Power’. Truth; Power is vulnerability.” She then elaborated to me; “The high Knowing inside of us has no wants, desires, or needs. It’s Void of those. That is the only vulnerable part of us. To operate from the high knowing is to be immensely powerful. Which is also the most vulnerable and innocent state of being.”

This is also why sexual fetishes fade as we become closer to Sex as a divine principle. As they are no longer necessary as a vehicle for the ego to attempt to make sense of, or feel safe enough to experience, human sexuality.

The secret to Sex is trust in the truth of it. We can be fearless in the face of the abuse of sexuality this way. Which is important, as Ahrimanic programming of what man and woman are, and of what sexuality is, blocks humanity from Love. Man avoids woman, and woman avoids man. Terrified of rejection, of being heartbroken by the others’ degeneracy again and again.

It is belief in Ahrimanic distortions of what reality is that makes one doubt whether God is benevolent, whether He loves at all. But God’s Love, and your ability to experience it from man or woman, is never something to doubt or question. As, in truth, we are always experiencing it. We are never away from it. The soul and body cannot truly be separated from it, as it is their origin, their lifeforce. One can only be distracted from this truth. God’s love is always “happening”, we are never outside of it.

If you are interested in the first segment, you might like my other article on the matter here.

It is common enough to see political conservatives1 state that religion has value because it is good for society; high birth rates, low divorce rates, and the overall happiness of the people. These are individuals who treat religion as though it is an ideology, a thing to impose upon society for its effectiveness as a system. This logic betrays their point; that religion as religion is good, as it is a logic that values religion for what it can do for society. But, if religion were truly good as religion, not as ideology, then society only has value for what it can do for religion.

If “utility” were to be defined properly, it would be defined in relation to God. Meaning, society would only have utility for what it can do for religion, and religion would only have utility for what it can do for God. Religion would thus be useless to us, as we would only be useful to it.

“As it happens, religion (like poetry and like love) is properly useless—any appeal to its utility is to the detriment of faith’s verity. Utility is the enemy of both nobility and the service of heaven…Quite literally the only reason to accept religious life is not a reason at all but a super-reason, a reason that transcends rationality altogether: one finds oneself in love…One’s pursuit of poetic expression, like the pursuit of God, is useless in the sense that it transcends the normative logic of commerce and logical reason.”

Forms of Life: Poetry and Religion, by Ein-Sofist, or Jesse

To elaborate further on the “uselessness” of religion, one would not say that God has value because a life without Him is full of suffering, for example. God’s presence is not necessary to believe in because His absence is painful, to state this reveals that one does not truly value God Himself, only what He can provide.

This form of appeal to religion, religion as self-help that is, does not really convince people of religion itself. As it misses what people truly crave when they crave a religion. A religion’s most fervent adherents don’t remain within its confines because they want respite so much as they want God. Religious ecstasy, for example, has zero worldly utility. It is useless, it does not necessarily “improve” oneself so much as it disturbs the self, yet it is this which the religious crave most.

Religious mysticism is not a refining of the self for any purpose other than that of Love, than that of closeness to God. It is like sex when approached properly, which means; for no other purpose than that of Love, than that of closeness.

“They claim sex is healthy; it’s good for the heart, for blood circulation, it relaxes you. They even go into how kissing is also good because it develops the muscles here—this is horrible, my God!”—Zizek

The most religious people are so because they couldn’t not be, they have no other option. Not quite because it saved them, but because they cannot view reality through any other lens.

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If you are in love, if you truly love something—whether it is a man, religion, or beauty, it is difficult to answer why you love what you do. It is difficult to explain that you love “because” of something. You can try, but you will often find that true love transcends that form of reasoning.

To fall in love does not have value or meaning because of its potential to make you happy, to let you raise a family, or ensure that you do not die alone. Love is still its own logic or law even in barrenness, miscarriage, or an abrupt death of a spouse in a car accident, or a slow and expected one as you watch them die of cancer. To fall in love is thus useless, yet love is still the most worthwhile pursuit.

Likewise, to define beauty as having value because it looks nice, brings us pleasure, or is a sign of health and good genes, is to miss what beauty is entirely. Beauty’s merit cannot be defined by its by-products.

Woman is like religion and poetry—she is useless. She does not have worth because of what she can do—for you, for society, or for the potential existence of a progeny. “Woman” is a divine principle. Society has worth for what it can do for this principle, not the other way around. I do not mean that we should capitulate to the whim of human women’s egos. As when I speak of Woman, and when I speak of Man, I am speaking of something higher than what we usually mean when we say men and women. But this is perhaps a topic for another time.

Utility has shaped so much of the modern English language that I do not know how to use it to distinguish a sense of worth and value that is totally separate from it. But I would say this; nothing that is truly worthy, meaningful, or true, can be defined as such because of what it does or for what it produces. Its truth, its merit, its meaning, is its existence itself. It is true and good because of what it is as a principle, in and of itself.

God, beauty, love, and in my symbolic sense, Woman, are not valuable because they produce desirable outcomes; rather, everything else receives its orientation from them.

It is far more virtuous, and far more in alignment with the truth, to judge ourselves for what we can do for that which is higher than us, than to value, or attempt to define, what is higher than us for its supposed utility. Perhaps “utility” is something that has no true place in spirituality at all, or maybe that is too much of a stretch on my part.

When we truly worship, we do not do so because of what that thing or being can offer us, instead we make an offering of ourselves. When we are truly devoted, we want to be used, consumed, and overcome by our Beloved. It is the most selfless state, yet it is achieved out of pure desire alone.

Lánchroí: Irish word meaning wholehearted or full heart. Pronounced lawn-khree. Mainly used as an adverb to describe something being done with one’s full heart or wholeheartedly.

The Full Moon (Pūrṇimā) is when the Moon reaches its maximum energy and expression. If the New Moon is the dark beginning, the Full Moon is the bright culmination.

As the moons light is complete, the energies it governs will be heightened: receptivity and intuition. Our emotions and the energy contained within us is said to become more “visible” during this time—whatever has been growing our brewing within us comes into awareness. Whether it is our awareness or that of others.

The Moon is our mind (manas), including our memory, which may be stirred now as Mercury has officially gone into retrograde. And because the moon is our mind, and because the full moon is the amplification of the moons influence, the full moon is said to bring restlessness or “madness”. However, for many, it brings inspiration, devotion, and creative/intellectual insight or clarity. A “A-ha!” moment if you will. It could be said that the Moon itself does not directly cause events, but pulls on the state of one’s consciousness in different ways throughout its stages.

Capricorn

This Full Moon is in Capricorn (Makara), which is an Earth sign ruled by Saturn. While Western astrology emphasises Capricorn’s ambition and career orientation, the Vedic tradition places emphasis on dharma (right duty).

There is a natural instinct to organise, plan, and create order from any chaos with capricorn’s influence. People strongly influenced by Capricorn often experience periods of delay or hardship early on in life, as an opportunity from Saturn to develop patience, wisdom, and strength. Success tends to come later for these people, after experience has refined their character.

Capricorn believes that freedom comes through self-control, and that external achievement only has value if aligned with righteousness and service. Saturn strips away “illusions” of ego and societal status, in an attempt to teach us that all worldly accomplishments are temporary unless they contribute to the souls growth, which can be carried into the next life.

Purva Ashadha

The specific influence of any Full Moon depends on the nakshatra (lunar mansion) in which it occurs. Since the Moon moves through a different nakshatra each month, every Full Moon has its own distinct quality.

This one is in Purva Ashadha, who is ruled by Venus, and its presiding deity is Apas, the divine waters. The symbolism of Purva Ashadha is centred on water. Water cleanses, hydrates, adapts, and can shape even the hardest stone through its persistence. Purva Ashadha is a force of renewal and unconquerable hope. There is often a desire to uplift or persuade others through words, art, philosophy, or ideals with this nakshatra. One of Purva Ashadha’s defining traits is conviction and purification. Venus inclines us toward loyalty, purity, devotion, and appreciation of beauty in people and the world.

Tarot Reading

The Death card reversed. This is an unwillingness to let go, to change, to re-grow. If we refuse to let the changes that are taking place also change us within then we are clinging to “death” rather than the life we think we are. As true death is not the end of life but the changing of it into something new. We think we are preserving life by clinging to it when really we are refusing to allow it to take place at all. Life is change, growth and movement. Death is not the opposite of those things, so really, we are actually stifling life and holding tight onto stagnation when we refuse to allow change and movement.

The Seven of Swords reversed. This card represents honesty, really. It is about being caught out, the best person to catch you out on your foolery is yourself. But it is necessary to really come to terms with how you have been behaving, no matter how humiliating it may feel for the ego, and no matter who has caught you out. If we put the ego in place, then even criticism from our enemies can be nourishing.

Women go through these processes, which have an inherent spiritual reality and purpose to them, that also require much of our energy. I do not feel spiritually or intellectually debilitated by these processes. On the contrary, I find that they force a woman forward spiritually in a way that the male body does not force him forward. But I can feel physically slowed down by them at times.

For the reasons I have above stated, I find the male body to be the thing of worldly “utility”. And for this reason too, it has been a point of contemplation for me. A man is not so energetically consumed by the body being such a portal to the non-material. He is more consistently physically energised in the “Yang” sense. And if he cultivates this in a devotional, selfless way, then that can be very fascinating to me. Far more so than the male mind often is (no disrespect).

However, I do not consider all modern male pursuits around their bodies to be this form of devotional athleticism. I am not speaking of men who merely lift weights and take peptides. Who complain that four glasses of wine “ruined” their life for three days (if you know you know haha). Because that is not this selfless, almost self-abandoning in its obsession, devotional bodily pursuit that I am speaking of. A man like that would likely not be very willing to let himself be wounded in a fight, for example. He would never selflessly throw his body into something beyond itself, with no regard for its safety, health, or even death.

To me, this form of selfless bodily devotion is the closest a man can come to giving himself up during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum process—the inherent risk of death and internal injury, and the sleepless nights and sleep-deprived days of breastfeeding. In ancient Mayan culture, women who died during childbirth were given the same high regard as men who died during battle. I think it is correct to intuit the spiritual similarities between these forms of bodily sacrifice. As I have spoken about before, I see masculinity and femininity as really being forms of self-offering.

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The modern man may discipline his body, but that does not automatically mean he directs it toward anything beyond the body, not in a transcendent way. I am much more fascinated, both spiritually and intellectually, by this form of complete and wholehearted pursuit than by any forms of self-containment from men. And it does not need to be physical. It could be any pursuit! If he throws himself into it wholly, with practically zero regard for any of the risks, then that is the behaviour that fascinates me the most in men.

This risk-taking pursuit has always felt to me like something men are more allowed to do. As women have a lot to lose in terms of how we are socially perceived, which is very harshly if we make the wrong move. For this reason, I have been interested in observing male behaviour. However, it didn’t interest me as a young child. Boys being precarious, or simply being interested in football or wrestling, was either strange or annoyingly boring to me. Only as I have gotten older have I come to see “reckless” behaviour as containing a sort of courage and selflessness, that when properly utilised, can be virtuous. I have also come to see athleticism in general as both a form of asceticism, as well as a complete rejoicement in material existence, along with all of its pleasure and all of its pain.

When I was around twelve years old, me and my friend were talking outside of school one morning, waiting for the doors to open as the school day officially began. The topic of boys came up. She told me that when a boy she has a crush on gets into a fight, and loses it, she finds it attractive. To see a scratch, a black eye, blood, or tears being fought back, was very appealing. It pulled on something in her. I completely understood what she meant, and that statement has stuck with me ever since.

To me, there is nothing more beautiful in the whole of the art world than the statue of The Dying Gaul. And I cannot explain exactly why. But I assume it is for the same reason that my childhood friend liked watching her crush lose in a fight—it pulls on something in me.

Him being naked is vital to its beauty; it shows both a courageous throwing of one’s entire self into battle, unrestrained and unhidden, as well as adding another layer of vulnerability. This makes it all the more beautiful, as well as all the more masculine.

I do not believe that attraction is just about biology and reproduction. Everything is spiritual, and often really romantic. So, I do not believe that the reason why some women find physically active men to be very attractive is simply because their bodies signal that they can protect, or that they have healthy genes for future offspring. There have even been studies revealing that women do not find men who are “too muscular” to be attractive, stating that they appear vain, shallow, and narcissistic.

I believe the athletic male body is attractive because it is a reminder of what is beyond everyday life. It is an embodiment of devotion and sacrifice. It represents a form of love and transcendence. And the male body and energy is what is “other” to women, and therefore it may naturally inspire intrigue for this reason too.

Women who are attracted to men like this may be disappointed to find that many male athletes are often “air-headed”. Because, in those instances, it is not really the body that is attracting them in the first place, but the spiritual reality that it points toward and imitates. Thus, it is disappointing for those women to find that there isn’t much “beneath the surface” with some of these men—as it is the “deeper” meaning which is really drawing them in.

We can appreciate men as women, without putting them on a pedestal or projecting anything romantic onto them, and I really do recommend this approach. There is a tendency among people to examine the opposite sex as if they are auditioning for them, to be found worthy of being their consort. And any fear of being rejected for this same reason immediately blocks one from seeing the other for what they are. But no one is auditioning for you by merely existing, and a fear of how one is being perceived by the other stops one from being able to perceive the other themselves.

When you learn to simply appreciate the opposite sex as the embodiment of half of reality, without projecting anything onto them, either romantically or sexually, you will not only not be disappointed by discovering who they truly are, but you will also be less likely to pursue the wrong person. Both on the astral, and on the physical plane. You will, however, be more likely to draw in the correct one.

To ascend at all spiritually, you have to revere woman and man, masculine and feminine, as aspects of reality. Otherwise, those realities will not open up to you. You do not even have to like men—the cruel or selfish ways they may behave, the many hurtful things they can do or say. But understanding malehood as a sort of principle has many benefits for a woman. You can even appreciate what a man represents, which is beyond himself, without any interest in what his ego is like.

We are often blind to what we ourselves are embodying if we are possessed by the ego (which is what is based on falsehood within us). In this way, if you learn to separate a person from their ego, then any woman or man can become a portal to the divine—a reminder of what it is to worship, and of what one should be worshipping.

Please let me know what you ladies think about my first statement; do you feel that as a woman you reside more fully on the material than the male, or that the male does instead? And I hope that you all liked these thoughts :)

There was an article circulating on Substack not so long ago about Chris Williamson. People are getting frustrated with optimisation and hyper-discipline culture. And I understand where these people are coming from. When men like Chris Williamson are optimised and disciplined, they are not optimised for a certain higher function, only worldly success. And they are not disciplined toward anything spiritually, and so discipline and desire often never fully unite themselves as devotion. This can lead to the whole pursuit feeling meaningless. I don’t intend to direct any hate towards Christopher as an individual. I don’t know him, so I do not have any animosity. And for all I know, he might well be spiritual. But the type of man he is associated with, and the culture at large, feels very empty to many, and that’s what I am here to address.

People who live like the above article describes believe they are the opposite of hedonistic, which in a very real and large sense is true. But the true value in rejecting hedonism is that we are not meant to live for the smaller (and most importantly false) reality alone. It isn’t that pleasure or enjoyment are spiritually fatal, or that the world of the senses is pointless and vapid. But that the “smaller world”—the life we lead when entrenched in lies about what reality is, and how tightly and rigidly the world is shaped when we are committed to the wrong things—is not the world we were made for. And it is not what reality actually is, but a false one.

Andrew Huberman, who is a part of this culture himself, once described addiction as “a narrowing of what brings you joy”—when we circle around the incorrect sources, we imprison ourselves to them. And we imprison ourselves to a false reality too, not just the incorrect source for our energy. This is because life, and the higher dimensions, close themselves off from us more and more when we live this way.

In the modern secular world, the “smaller reality” has only gotten smaller and smaller. Now all that is real is what we can “prove”, meaning, what we can touch, see, photograph, and study in a lab under a microscope. Even the inner reality within the human being has gotten smaller and smaller. Thoughts are regarded as more “rational” than emotions, and are to be questioned and evaluated based on how much they align with “objective” external reality. Intuition, so far, has not been studied as a real and objective inner processor. And one’s dreams are merely a chemical function of the brain, they have no spiritual reality to them. And if they do have merit, they are viewed more through the Freudian lens, rather than a belief that dreams take place in a very real realm of their own. A realm which we constantly have access to.

Even if we are not an addict, if we believe in the secular, spiritually flat, and purely “scientific” view of the world, then we are circling a very limited centre, and an inherently false one too. So, even if you were to reach the top of the societal hierarchy, you may still ask yourself “What is the point?” Because the current societal hierarchy is not based on divine principles. It reflects them in certain ways, and requires similar virtues to ascend it, but it is not an emanation of the divine hierarchy. Thus, the human soul is not truly satisfied by climbing it.

When you are hyper-disciplined for no ultimate cause beyond health, beauty, financial success, and status. Or just for the sake of discipline as its own virtue, without believing in much beyond it. When you analyse every part of yourself believing that it is just an evolved psychology from primate ancestors, a biology that wires you to seek certain things—food, shelter, reproduction. All before you inevitably die and never return to this realm again, or any other realm for that matter. Then it is no wonder that life feels alienating and frightening. It is no wonder that analysing and restraining your being, instead of letting it be, feels like life itself is being crushed and suffocated. Because you are not simply chemical reactions in an evolved biology that has no ultimate reality or purpose beyond itself and its own functions.

Our biology is also often viewed as a prison by people who hold this view while finding it depressing at the same time:

Psychoanalysis Paralysis

Ultimately, self-reflection and self-improvement have become castrating rather than enlightening because of the way the entire process of inward discovery has been secularised.

The external impressions made upon us by our environment, the feelings, thoughts and dreams that anything external stir within us, are often ripe with meaning and each can have something to teach us. Of course, an impression can just be an impression—a random, fleeting, nonsensical thought. But nothing within us ever happens “for no reason”. Even if that reason is a very silly one. A thought that is truly nonsensical still came from somewhere (the accumulation of what you’ve been hearing for example).

There are many who do not share the view of life I have described above; they do not see humans as evolved monkeys simply competing for resources. But they are still not necessarily “tapped in” to greater spiritual reality either. I of course started out this way on my own journey myself. We all start from somewhere, and I am not speaking from a place of superiority.

The sentiment shared here by Kamory Rose is becoming more and more popular. And I sympathise. There have been times when the best thing I was able to find was distraction. Where what felt like sinking and unravelling helped me far more than controlling and striving ever had.

I have found self-analysis to be incredibly debilitating in the past. I developed a hyper-vigilant relationship with my own inner world. I understand from first hand experience why so many people dislike therapy culture, and the way that so many young people today are too terrified to let life touch them. We are imprisoning ourselves around our own limiting centres, endlessly reflecting back on them.

So, even people who do not have this secular optimisation mindset, or one akin to that of Rust Cohle, can still be swimming in confusing, enclosing, unknown territory when it comes to inward reflection and spiritual practices. If one does not know how to properly inwardly reflect, and does not understand the spiritual purpose of doing so in the first place, then the whole process becomes either largely pointless or even self-imprisoning.

There is a constant criticism of human behaviour online. Maybe it’s because I am a woman, so it feels as if it is primarily directed toward women, since my algorithm knows I am one. But it feels like there is absolutely zero correct way to be a woman according to social media. We, in general, analyse and criticise human behaviour online endlessly, so much so that we are detached from what it is to be one. As I believe Mary Harrington once said; (I am paraphrasing here) “There is no masculinity or femininity crisis. There is an embodiment crisis.”

A friend of mine once tweeted something like the following: “If you do not have the current level of agency or opportunity needed in order to change what is currently wrong with you, then a self criticism or even constant awareness of it serves no real purpose. You would not perform a surgical dissection and without resealing the body afterward. The body would then be more vulnerable than it was with whatever concealed infestation it had before.” I think this is really valuable advice to make note of.

Everything we practice needs to be crafted for who we are right now. It needs to meet us where we are at. It is like making an effort to repent more when you are already someone who actively self-condemns. An effort in that direction is more necessary for the prideful and narcissistic instead.

“Shadow work” has also suffered from secularisation, and from the socially detached and individualistic modern spirituality we have. It has been made into a pop-psychology trend, a compact set of questions found online to only answer by writing neatly in a journal. It is also often misinterpreted by people sceptical of it as something that rationalises and therefore excuses evil or otherwise bad behaviour. This treatment of it is due to it having no real relevance or part to play in a grander spiritual progression anymore. Even the algorithm itself can be used for shadow work, but it instead uses people to consume their minds and energies, and it is mindlessly used by people to project through it constantly.

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Secular Meditation

Rudolf Steiner (quoting him a lot I apologise I’m on a Steiner tip at the moment) wrote the following on having an essential mediation practice, where we retract from the world of external impressions in order to meditate on the accumulation of those previously made upon us, so that we can discover the secret spiritual knowledge that these impressions contain:

Meditation, at its later stages, is a way to expand and merge with consciousness at large and the highest realms. Mystics do transcend time, space, and matter via meditation. But for those at earlier stages, and in general, meditation is also for “seeing” what is contained within us, and for letting it teach us what we need to know. It is a way to learn from, and also release if necessary, whatever we have accumulated thus far.

If all we did was collect information from the external world, then we would have no inner mechanism to learn and create from and with what we have already collected. It is for this reason that, as everything is in correspondence, meditation can also improve one’s physical health and expand their lifespan too. As the inner world being comprehensible and in harmony also affects the body that is carrying it. But these benefits are not the reason why it has value in the first place.

If you are like me, then seeing meditation become a secular “health and wellness” practice is bizarre and confusing. I’m sure there are many atheistic people who find meditation stabilising and that it has improved them as a person. But it is also no wonder why this change in what meditation is has made many experience disassociation and derealisation from practicing it, and worsened their mental health. (There are studies on these effects which you can find here and here.)

Meditation is great, and there are many forms of it. But even meditation can make a modern secular person more anxious, or lose their sense of self. Essentially, if someone does not understand the spiritual dimension at all, or which practices suit their current self best, then even something has fundamental to the spiritual path as meditation can destabilise instead of benefit. This is because spiritual practices are meant to fit into a congruent whole. And so, the secularisation of something as fundamentally and innately spiritual as meditation has confused many of its modern practitioners.

A Congruent Whole

Why is it essential to understand every practice and event as taking place within a larger, congruent whole or grander reality? Please bear with me as I try to answer in these following paragraphs.

Throughout Irish history, certain locations have been considered inherently powerful or sacred; hills, springs, rivers, groves, and ancient monuments. The Hill of Tara, Brú na Bóinne, and Uisneach were spiritually significant and connected to sovereignty, the Otherworld, and the wellbeing of the land overall. Early Irish literature also reflects the idea that a king’s right relationship with the land affected the fertility of it, and the prosperity of the people and their social harmony.

The landscape they resided on was not viewed as inert by ancient peoples, but as alive and spiritually charged. There are signs that orientation mattered greatly to them too. Many ancient monuments and passage tombs were aligned with solar events, such as the winter solstice illumination at Newgrange, and The Great Serpent Mound in Peebles, Ohio, with its alignment with the summer solstice. Ancient peoples viewed the earth, life on it, and the cosmos as being in constant conversation with each other. Because they are. Even when we dream we enter the lunar realm. And so the Nakshatra (Lunar Mansion) which the moon is in while we are dreaming, is in fact where our dreams are taking place.

So we know, not just from Ireland, that ancient people understood everything as working as a part of one congruent whole. One thing affects another, and that then goes on to affect another. My point is, the modern secular mind does not understand this. They do not understand the ultimate reality we are all operating within. They often do not even understand the whole of the vessel they are residing in; the mind, the psychic processes they experience, the astral body, as well as the complete functions of the physical one too. Of course, most of us who are spiritual are not blessed with full enlightenment on these things either, and most of us do not have access to the highest realms. But at least we know that they exist, and so can act accordingly.

If we do not understand what we are operating within, then we do not know what we are engaging with. And essentially, we do not know what we are doing. It is true that “A fool who persists in his folly may become wise.” But he may also become mad too.

What is Fulfilment?

Many find that family and community answer the question of “What is the point?” And that is an incredibly beautiful thing. But even for some people, secular life still feels empty even when filled with loved ones. And some may never find the spouse or children they hoped to find at the end of all their hard work toward health, success, and status. What then? How can they not fall into despair?

Ultimately, what modern people think fulfilment means is a feeling of being fulfilled. It is not a fulfilment of the soul. And I don’t mean feeling in your soul that you are fulfilled. I mean your soul itself, as a kind of primitive notion, coming into its full actualisation. Your soul is a bud, and its blossoming is its fulfilment. We are the lotus rooted in deep muddy water, and our fulfilment is a journey of the soul toward the light and wide open space. It is where the whole of reality opens up for us, as we ourselves have expanded toward it.

This is what actual fulfilment is. It is fulfilling the reason that our soul, our being, our existence at all, was created by the Creator. It is coming full circle, from our point of existence back to it again, this time knowing it consciously.

True Inward Reflection and Realisation

The proper process for true inward reflection and gnosis then, I believe, is a process that cannot simply be forced into existence by sheer will alone. It is a conversation between your will and what is beyond it.

Of course, for the path in general, our will must be strengthened. But a strong will that is attempting to force an outcome onto a reality it does not yet understand, often outcomes that, even though sought after, are not truly aligned with it, is not the path that we are called to. It also simply does not work.

The process of inward reflection, and then realisation, is a process that is allowed to be slow. It is allowed to not make sense at first. You are allowed to be a discovery of an entire lifetime. Things that have happened recently may only make sense in hindsight, and that hindsight may take years to get to. And that is okay. You are allowed to have an empty mind, to be an empty space for the answers to arrive into. Waiting is a big part of the process too.

I am not suggesting that we be lazy. This is a process that we do will into existence. But our own will must act with the Divine will. Everything is taking part within a much grander and larger event than itself. Which is beautiful. It does not mean that we are insignificant, it means that we are held, cared for, and guided more than we know.

A very simple statement has been the great conclusion that I’ve come to recently. It goes as follows:

It sounds very simple. But to me it contains a very broad and significant truth. Virtues, when embodied, manifest themselves thoroughly into our being and lives. Beauty, creativity, courage, wisdom, all take time to cultivate. But the hardest part for me is keeping the faith that this process produces the results that I am ultimately waiting for. Knowing that your destiny is beautiful, and that if you were only to rise to it, even without knowing what it is yet, then it cannot help but meet you there. That is the hardest part.

Our destiny is something that we can squander. God does not hand it to us simply because it was written for us. It is something we must rise to, that we will into existence even though it was pre-written. It requires patience and faith to keep working diligently while waiting for the much larger picture to unfold. The results will be smaller—very real, very healing, and very helpful—but they will still be smaller at first. We are building a foundation, and then the next level, and the next, and the next. And this is not a process that can be skipped.

If you are lonely and waiting for a lover—whatever that lover might be; success for all your hard work, a marriage partner, a child to conceive. It is hard to keep the faith that we will eventually meet that lover. But, when we do meet them, it will likely not feel like we are meeting them for the first time. As our destiny, our soul, is something we have already known. What we are doing is trying to remember, to re-unite with it. This offers us more reason to keep the faith, because ultimately, despite how terrified we may feel from time to time, we do know the way. It is written and encoded into every part of us. That is why inward reflection is so important in the first place.

In Vedic Astrology, the New Moon (called Amavasya) marks the start of a new lunar cycle. It is a point of stillness. It can (should really) be used as a time for regenerating almost, and this should start from within us before it extends outward into our environment.

It is seen as a time when the moon is “weakened”, because it is conjunct with the sun. So the mind (which is our moon sign in Vedic astrology) is temporarily “black”—not absorbing and reflecting light or energy (the sun). This creates a condition within us of lower energy, less expression, less emotional/energetic availability from us and others, as well as a desire to turn more inward than usual or retreat from society more. In regards to the “blackness” of the moon, think of the darkness of soil. And think of it as preparing that soil, not even necessarily planting something in it. We begin in darkness before our growth becomes visible.

In India, the new moon is also associated with ancestral connection and karmic clearing. Rituals around releasing old patterns, and practices that calm the nervous system are used around this time. The new moon, I believe, should be used as a time to reconnect with your true intentions for this lifetime on earth, before a new lunar cycle begins.

Modern spiritual practices around the new moon tend to use it as a time to set intentions, new goals for the upcoming lunar month. If you don’t find that works for you, I would recommend using it as a time to connect with your ancestors, and your own inner world. Your intuition, your dreams, your feelings and habits that are “negative” and so which you usually move away from or ignore. It is a time to connect with our ultimate intention for this lifetime, not necessarily to form new ones. But to learn what it is that feels most aligned for us.

You may notice that your dreams around this time feel more emotional, or “dark”, or that they involve loved ones who have passed over, or any places and symbols that feel ancestral to you.

Also, the energy of the new moon is in effect even if it is not the exact day or night of it, but very close to it.

Monday

This new moon is on a Monday, in Vedic tradition, Monday (Somavara) is the day of the Moon, known as Soma or Chandra. The moon, in our Vedic birth chart, represents the mind, the emotions, our intuitions, memories, receptivity and our inner life. It is where we think rationally during the day, and where we dream intuitively during our sleep.

The energy of Monday may feel softer, more inward, and more fluid than other days of the week.

Gemini

This new moon is in Gemini, “Mithuna” in Vedic astrology. Gemini is an air sign ruled by Mercury, it is associated with curiosity, learning, communication and the exchange of ideas. Gemini and Mercury represent the human desire to explore the world through language and communication.

Gemini is also a sign of versatility and adaptability, it can move easily between different states and perspectives, it can adopt and use different forms of communication (screens, books, mouths, dreams etc.). It is for this reason that Gemini people are stereotyped as “fake” or as having multiple personalities or sides to them. Mercurial people, even if they are not Gemini, are often very good at impersonating people with great accuracy for this reason. In truth, Geminis are great at intuiting what personality type, humour, style etc. a new person wants, and then acting the part for them. They enjoy being able to charm in this way.

Gemini is about the meeting of opposites and the creation of understanding through dialogue between these two opposites. A Vedic symbol for Gemini is twins, reflecting duality, the interplay between self and other, reason and intuition, or different aspects of a single individual’s nature.

Gemini seeks wisdom through openness, communication, and adaptation. Think of a chameleon-like ability to alchemise new information into your own being by embodying it somehow, before one has truly “grasped” it, they grasp it through imitation first. Taking on the form of an opposite, or taking in the substance of a foreign thing, is a form of reconciliation and alchemy. This is what Gemini is really about.

The challenge for us as the new moon is in Gemini is to avoid becoming scattered between projects and different information you feel pulled by, of being caught up in endless pursuits of different things. Wanting to understand and complete things can be overwhelming during this time. Energy is low, yet the mind still wanders. Don’t let the mind resist whatever the body is feeling, go inward.

And, of course, you may notice these themes relating to Gemini showing up in your dreams tonight, or maybe they showed up in the dreams you had today.

Cards Pulled for this New Moon

The hermit card suggests that this is a time for going inward, not necessarily for much outward action. If we have responsibilities or creative inspiration, of course we must fulfil them. But this card suggests that it is okay if we are not filled with ideas or ambition right now.

The 8 of Pentacles following suggests to me that we are meant to pay attention to the smaller, inner details. Our thought patterns, our reactivity to things, the things around us that we are ignoring. It is recommending us to bring our sense of diligence and work ethic inward, to closer, smaller details. Set the foundation, heal the inner world, then we can extend ourselves farther.

The 4 of cups following next reminds us not to fall into despair or apathy. There are signs around us reassuring and guiding us. The bigger picture may feel overwhelming right now, but hope is to be found in the (perhaps) smaller opportunities that are very much close to us, if we pay attention.

Overall, this tarot reading is telling us to pay attention to what is within and immediate. Retract from the bigger and farther things if we do not have the energy or skills yet enquired to extend ourselves out to them, and instead work on what we can and must work on before we can excel anymore anyways. If we want to create a bridge over a large stream of water, we must build the foundations of the bridge first.

Hopefully this was interesting and helpful for you guys <3

Some of these are more shifts in consciousness that I’ve come to since healing so far. They cannot be quickly implemented, but hopefully I still communicate them in ways that make sense to you all.

Prayer

The first thing I changed that helped me was allowing myself to shorten prayer and make it less ritualistic and intense, and therefore easier. I used to have a very perfectionistic attitude toward prayer. It is of course great to perform long, ritualised, and intense prayers. But you don’t have to pray like that in order to pray. Also, when your prayers feel unanswered for the longest time, it feels very discouraging. So, lowering the standards of what constituted a prayer made it much easier to keep praying.

When it comes to the rosary, for example, you do not have to complete the whole of it every single time. You are allowed to just pray one decade. That was an amazing revelation for me.

When I would beg for the same thing, over and over again. When I would kneel for an hour straight. Recite prayers in Latin. Prostrate, bow, and cry. When I used Ancient Hebrew names for God. Not much happened. But when I spoke to God as if He was right here. When I would let the prayers go after speaking them, or even write one down and never look at it again. When I allowed myself to access prayer all the time because there became no wrong way to do it. Things did improve. Slowly. But they did improve.

I think this is because I used prayer as an attempt to escape the process, to be purified simply because I asked to be. But I’ve learnt that the whole of the process itself is what God wills for us. We learn from our situation, we don’t simply escape it by cleansing, kneeling, and begging.

Somatics

The second most impactful thing I encountered was Somatics. “Somatic” means “of the body”. It is a practice that uses the body to heal the mind via the nervous sytem. That may sound vague and “woo-woo”, but it is becoming more accepted by the mainstream scientific community. Somatics felt do-able—just easy, slow, intentionally lazy movements. It was also actually working! Which was amazing for me at the time, which was probably the lowest I’ve ever been.

You can make Somatics a very detailed, intricate, long and unlazy routine. But for me, and I’m guessing for many of you who may also be struggling, that isn’t the most do-able thing. Focusing on the lower back, the hips, and the neck and the upper middle back, helped me the most with my stress and pain. It also made being in my body much more pleasant, which, for so much of my life, has felt like a tight, rigid prison.

Ketu and Rahu

In Vedic astrology, one’s Ketu can be used to heal itself as well as the Rahu. Ketu represents what is hidden, unconscious, and “detached” about a person. Rahu represents where we are most delusional and obsessive. In order to use this information to help yourself, you simply need to look at your Vedic birth chart. Wherever your Rahu lies, Ketu will lie in opposition to it.

So, if Rahu is in the 12th house, then your Ketu is in the 6th. And so on and so forth.

It is tapping into the house in which your Ketu lies which is going to be healing for you. So, if Rahu is in your 7th house, using the first house will be ways to heal. That means the body and self development. Of course, delving into those things is good for everyone, but they will be helpful for the individual with this placement to combat Rahu in the 7th house, which manifests as obsession and delusions when it comes to love and sexuality. If you would like me to read this part of your chart for you, just message me and let me know. I like reading this part of the chart :)

On the flip side too, knowing where my Rahu lied helped me to know that what was driving me crazy about the area in my life which it affected was not built on truth, but on a poisoning falsehood. This helped me find more clarity and reassured me about myself. This was not the most transformative one, but it was one of the things I found earliest that helped me. It may offer insight and clarity for you too.

Reconciliation

Throughout multiple cultures and religions, holding a stone and imagining your guilt, shame, resentment, grief—any of your burdens—being transported out of you and into the stone, and then throwing it into a river, lake, or sea, is a healing ritual. And in Ireland and Britain, wells, springs, rivers and fountains were places of healing as well as worship.

Ho’oponopono is a traditional Hawaiian practice of reconciliation, forgiveness, and restoring harmony of the self and the cosmos at large. The word roughly means “to make right” or “to correct an error.” Historically, it was a communal process led by elders, where family members would gather to discuss conflicts, express feelings openly, and seek an apology or forgiveness. In traditional Hawaiian culture, unresolved conflict was believed to contribute to emotional, spiritual, and physical suffering. You may have heard the popular way of describing “disease” as literally “dis-ease”. Which means, the physical body, mind, emotions, and the astral body are not separate, they are all one system.

In the late 20th century, a modernised version of ho’oponopono became popular through the teachings of Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona and later through stories associated with Ihaleakala Hew Len. This more modern form focuses on taking responsibility for one’s inner experience and power to heal oneself using a simple prayer:

The “I’m sorry” acknowledges one’s contribution to suffering. “Please forgive me” opens you up to forgiveness, both of yourself and others. “Thank you” expresses gratitude for the possibility of healing. And the “I love you” reconnects you with love itself. These words can be recited whenever, wherever, and for as long as you’d like, the only thing you must do is say the words consciously and with intention or awareness. You can say the words by meditating on a specific situation or person, for example.

You can learn methods from many different places in time and culture, and create your own inspired by them. You can use mugwort or juniper berries, plants used for cleansing and purification, burn them and smoke smudge your body while praying. Or take a bath in a river or stream with the intention to cleanse yourself of your past burdens. You may wish to offer prayers to the spirits and plants that reside where you are bathing too.

Water is cleansing, it is also the easiest element to infuse. Meaning, your intentions can easily possess it. You can do this with baths, soups and drinks. For a bath, you can add herbs or liquids you associate with healing, forgiveness and renewing, and recite prayers over the herbs and bath water. Wash your face or dunk your head in the water while reciting something significant to you. I used to use Psalm 51, particularly the verse; “Purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” But now, I am more of a Psalm 23 type of woman.

If you prefer the element of fire, you could burn something symbolising what you want to release or change. Of course, do this somewhere safe. You could use a charcoal burner, burn frankincense and a small message, list, or prayer. Either way, be very careful with fire.

There are many ways to make your own forgiveness and cleansing rituals. They can be incredibly simple, easy, and even lazy. Whatever elements, herbs, or places you feel drawn to will be best. This is because nothing is separate, and healing is really about reconnecting all the parts of the same whole. Using nature, the elements, external people and events for healing works for this reason. Simply focusing on forgiving another during a spiritual practice may help you forgive yourself too, or attract forgiveness from another. “Frequencies” are real things, and when you tap into one, you will open yourself up to all that it entails.

What these practices also teach is that in order to heal yourself, you must heal your relationship with family, community, and nature. Because, once again, we are not just isolated individual beings, and so strengthening and healing one aspect of our lives or being has a knock on effect to everything else too. Everything is connected through on way or another. Ancestral work, involving an altar, prayer, dream reflection and learning about my family line as well as becoming closer to them, has been an immensely important part of my spiritual practice for this reason. I will delve into this further in the next segment.

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The Ancestors

Your ancestors love you and want you to succeed. They are also pretty much always available to you. Love is healing, and theirs is potent. As I’ve described above, you can pray for them, pray to them, and build an altar for them in your home and leave them offerings. In fact, most people have an ancestral altar already. Family photos on the drawers, on the cabinets, on the mantle piece. Anything that reminds you of them that is kept around the house. A drawer filled with clothing that they wore. And, of course, their graves. You do not have to create a new altar for them, any of these places in your home or the cemetery can be used to kneel down and pray.

Once you start interacting with your ancestors in this way, praying to them, and leaving offerings if you wish, pay attention to your dreams. They will start talking to you there.

Your ancestors are one of the most powerful intercessors for your healing because they are personally invested in you. They love you in a way that is deeply personal, not just holy and divine. Because their love for you is also human. And, do not forget the ones who are alive and with you right now. Praying for and with them, forgiving them and asking them to forgive you, will heal you.

Your family is going to be a source of healing for you even if you do not end up getting close to them if you can’t. This is because the blood and DNA that is inside of them and their very bones is the same that is inside of you and yours. To help to heal them, to forgive them, and to love them, is to do the same for yourself. Even if you cannot love or be close to them, praying for their redemption will still greatly benefit you and your descendants.

Dirt

My main problem throughout my life has been guilt and shame. This is because they were not just emotions, they were my dominant mode of existing. A chronic weight in my stomach and a heat on my skin. A tight body and slouched shoulders. Not being able to look anyone in the eye, or even open my mouth. Having the belief of “worthlessness” embedded deeply within, and not living life as a consequence.

One of the most healing things for me has been learning to use what I believe is bad and sinful about myself for wisdom and transformation. My article on crushes is an example of this way of thinking. I don’t use this example because I think that having a crush makes you a bad person (haha), but because even the most seemingly insignificant things about us actually hold much wisdom that can be used for propelling ourselves spiritually.

I’ve found self-forgiveness to be incredibly hard. And I’m not taking about forgiving myself for social faux pas, I mean moral mistakes. Even a bad thought could send me spiralling. That’s what my OCD is, a cycle of moral scrutiny and punishment. So for me, finding meaning in my own “lower” nature, rather than condemning it, has been a huge improvement.

I can still have ideals, but they must be strived toward from the root—meaning, I must gather all about me before I head forward, otherwise I’m leaving pieces behind that I must come back to and retrieve anyways. As the saying goes: “You cannot build anything on an unstable foundation.” This is what Christ’s parable on the house built on sand means. The foundation is built in the dirt.

No one is born without the capacity to sin, or else they would not be born into this realm. That is why, for women, it is Mother Mary who is the mother we run to, but it is Mary Magdalene who feels like the ideal to embody. Because she feels as though she can be embodied.

Some of the most spiritually interesting and wise people I’ve encountered used to be very sinful. And the angels love them. After all, if God were done with us, we would not still be here. Loving, forgiving, and praying for the worst in you helps me to love, forgive, and pray for the worst in me. That is why Christ came to us. Christ does not reject the dirt, He uses it.

When you think about it, so much of ritual life involves purification and cleansing. It makes you feel like there is no meaning in the dirt. If the earth has to be washed and wiped away from one’s feet before they can enter the place of worship, then what value does the earth itself have in our worship of the One who created it? To balance both; purification and dirt, of rising above and sinking below, have been !incredibly! healing for my brain, which naturally wants to run away from the lower parts of me, and therefore avoid my life itself.

Every impulse, every dream, every projection of the mind, holds so much information. I am not even recommending an analytic relationship with yourself, nor a gluttonous one. We are meant to rise above degeneracy and complacency. But this is because we are meant to fulfil all of our soul, and in order to do that we must of course use it in its entirety. So what I am recommending is curiosity, and an openness to life. Both inner and outer. Be curious about your own earthliness, what it means, where it points to, and who you share it with. Be curious about life itself as a human.

Creativity and True Will

Creativity is wonderful. It can be anything and everything. For me, of course, my main outlet is writing. I’m extremely grateful that I am able to write at all. And, following my last segment, I love to perfect it as best I can, but the first draft must always be messy, and often feels embarrassing. I’ve also found that my flaws are immensely helpful for the process, and that the process itself transforms them. But there are so many ways to be creative.

When we think of creativity, we may think of simply making something. Maybe there is a word I need in order to describe what I’m trying to say that I haven’t yet found. But what I really mean is creating from within. Not simply creating something, but exploring within and expanding outwards from there. It then becomes the way you interpret and interact with the world at large.

The biggest step so far that I’ve found on this journey has been what I’m meant to be doing. “True Will” has become an understood way of being since then, not just a concept I found which had importance. Words like “authenticity” are no longer just concepts either. This process also allows for mistakes, as it is through doing the wrong thing that we often come to find the right one. We are thrust into this world with amnesia, and we recognise and remember by exportation. Anything that goes wrong is a wave and current pushing and pulling you back on to the path you’re meant to be heading on. Creativity and “true will” allow for the whole of life to be used for the great work.

Divination

Tarot is a way to connect with the angels around you, and with your own intuition, to receive or uncover what you need to know and should be doing. Tarot, like astrology, is a map of the Universe. A symbol represents many things. Each symbol in any given symbolic cosmology represents a certain aspect of existence. And the cosmos speaks to us in its symbols, especially through dreams. So, learning a symbolic cosmology is learning a language that the Divine speaks, and therefore you can understand it and speak back to it.

Tarot is also an answer to a question. You can of course become delusional with it, and it can even make you more confused and obsessive, rather than more clarified and certain. But, for me, it has been helpful. I recommend praying over the cards before use, and you can do so afterwards if you wish. You can also use incense for this. And before you ask, pray to the exact beings you want to connect to (angels, the HGA, the ancestors etc.). Pray for protection too, that only the righteous may enter your psychic field. And ask away. If the answer feels confusing, don’t take it in at first, let it go and let it come back to you in its true form. Also, like everything, tarot is an exchange of energy. So be careful not to let it drain you.

Tarot has helped me as it has been a way for me to distinguish truth from falsehood, and move forward with what is true. It has also helped me connect with symbols in other traditions, and therefore meaning more broadly has started to unveil itself to me more and more.

Divination should not be a tool that replaces God, but a way of learning how the Divine is speaking to you. God is constantly sending messages to us. Divination is simply a way to learn the language of those messages. As someone who has felt abandoned by the divine due to suffering, divination has been a tool for healing for me—I now know that it is impossible to be abandoned by something that exists within and all around us.

Dreams and astrology also do not have to be complicated. Messily write your dreams down every morning, and let them not make sense to you. Read briefly on the Nakshatra or the Zodiac sign the moon was in when you dreamt. Notice its symbols. Maybe pull a card. Briefly look up what the card means too. Let it come to you or not come to you. Things don’t have to make sense right away. Some of my dreams only made sense to me when I read their entry into my dream journal months later.

True Bodily Agency

The modern culture of “health and wellness” seems to advocate for treating your own body like it is your slave. Perhaps this is because I am a woman, but my body is something I know I cannot entirely control with the mind, with the ego. Menstruation, the luteal phase, and one day pregnancy and postpartum. None of these things can be disciplined away. They are processes that must be surrendered to in order to transform. As a woman, if you do not learn to surrender to your own body then you will never learn how to exist within it.

Modern culture does not view the body as something with its own wisdom, with its own will to unite with the mind’s. Instead, the “will” and the body are separate, and the former must rule the latter. I have come to believe that even lust does not come from the body—from the “lower nature”—but is instead a projection of the mind that occurs when it cannot rest within the sexual centre, when it cannot rest within the body. The body is something the ego should surrender to, and this does not result in the carnage and destruction we fear it does. In fact, in order to find one’s will at all, the body and its interior life cannot be ignored.

When one learns their body and honours it, its true agency and will can arise. Then using the body to its fullest capacity, and disciplining it, is no longer an escape or punishment, nor is it an attempt to craft it into something it is not. It is simply the strengthening of its will, of its life force. We should ultimately use discipline to unite the body with the mind, not to rule the body with the mind. The two are in symbiosis, we do not thrive at all, especially not spiritually, if our consciousness is fractured like it so often is.

Also, this is most likely the OCD part of my brain, but I often have a very rigid, perfectionistic, and all-or-nothing approach to things at first. Letting myself loosen the rules and boundaries, and lowering the standards, has made improving my health easier, and therefore my health has actually improved. Maybe this will encourage you too if “health” feels like something only someone born with an immense amount of will-power that you simply weren’t born with can attain.

Closing Thoughts

For me, healing has felt like opening, expanding, and deepening. That’s the best way I can describe it, sensation wise. It feels like decompressing. It has also made me feel more connected to life itself. Life feels liveable, as though I am allowed to live it, and capable of living it.

I hope you all heal one day too, and in ways you never expected. It feels relevant to end this article with this Psalm:

Today and tonight there is a full moon in Jyeshta. However, our dreams last night and this morning took place when the moon was in Anuradha.

Anuradha means “tiny spark” or “small flash of lighting”. Our souls, when immersed in this society, forget their divine origin, but all it takes is a tiny flash or spark of intuition to remind us. We are tested by our weaknesses on this plane, but we are also always surrounded by divine beings who want us to succeed, and are willing to help us do so. Anuradha reminds us of this truth.

It is a nakshatra ruled by Saturn, and its symbol is a lotus—a flower that rises from the dark, muddy depths and blossoms on the sunlit surface. And when it withers, it will only rise again to go through the same process. Anuradha reminds us that we are always capable of turning ourselves around, and that God wants us to do this. Forgiveness will be given when it is asked for. Perhaps your dreams last night/this morning were associated with this theme.

For today and for our dreams tonight and tomorrow morning, Jyeshta is the significant nakshatra. Jyeshta means “elder ” and is sometimes, in more modern readings, associated with the holy river Ganges. In India, the river Ganges are said to cleanse one of their negative karma.

Jyestha Devi also came to be associated with misfortune and poverty. And so this nakshatra has come to be associated with overcoming inauspiciousness, and using it for transformation as well. This is a much more modern interpretation, however. I personally associate this Nakshatra with becoming the master of your own lower nature, and developing authority over it through challenges. The planetary ruler of Jyeshta is mercury. You might find its symbolism shows up in your next dreams.

This full moon is in Sagittarius. It may feel emotionally intense, and as if your own nature is much harder to ignore. It’s also safe to absorb the full moons light tonight. You may like to sit out this evening and watch it. It isn’t an eclipse, so it won’t be dangerous. I personally like to say a prayer to the moon too.

Tarot Pull

The two cards I pulled for this full moon were the VIII of cups, and the VI of swords. These cards are both VERY similar.

The VIII of cups represents moving away in search of something greater. Something more lasting and fulfilling. It is a card of emotional removal. This could be leaving a bad relationship or friendship, quitting a job. Or leaving a way of life behind, particularly a way of behaving and using one’s emotions that is not spiritually correct.

The VI of swords similarly represents leaving something behind, the card also represents healing from having done so. The figures are on a moving boat, representing a journey. Everyone has their backs turned, and the movements and water are still, slow and steady.

Overall this card pull paired with the nakshatra is pretty significant. It represents a confrontation with what isn’t right, particularly emotionally, and then making the mature decision to walk away toward something better, healthier, and more spiritually beneficial.

Please let me know if you liked this at all, as I can do this again next full/new moon if you want me to. Thank you for reading!

I have often heard the saying “Man must create his value, but woman must preserve her own.” But this often feels like a statement coming from someone looking from the outside in on what it means to “preserve” one’s femininity, rather than from the inside out on what it actually takes to remain “pure” as a woman.

The pressure to remain “pure” (which really means unjaded by life) as it is frequently framed and suggested across cultures, often results in rigidity, fear, and a closed-offness in women. It also produces a brutal form of self-surveillance within and of women too.

The stress, shame and internal self-policing harsh purity standards induce wear one down by life. This is because it is actually being open to experiences, and holding the many energies within yourself rather than repressing them, that keeps one open to life instead of being marred by it, and creates an inner emptiness for all to be contained in. Femininity has long been associated with open spaces and containers; water, the womb, and the earth itself are all spaces for things to be planted and contained. If one lets a past experience, or a behaviour that betrays one’s morals, mark them by letting it doubt themselves and their ability to move forward, then it is that which will damage them, not the experience itself.

To be open to life is to let it impress upon you, without that impression remaining permanent by being held onto, and without trying to control the way one is perceived and reacted to. Letting things happen to you and people react before you as they do, and letting it all impress upon you in whatever way it does, is how you remain open to life. This does not mean being passive or surrendering one’s will, our life is still our life. We decide what we devote ourselves to and the actions we take, and that is how we ultimately control what direction our life will go in and what will have access to our energy. Whatever our energy is poured into is what will grow in our life, or keep us stagnant if it is the wrong source. And if we do not accept the existence of all that comes along the way on our journey, we become closed off to life and its messages itself.

To attempt to control everything, including how you are unfolding unto yourself, is the opposite of openness. It is unwise to fight against your own signals. Distress, misery, and all forms of pain are signs that one needs to change course or become more precise in their actions. To fight against them as if they are not your own inner compass is unhelpful. You cannot force away a pain whilst continuing on the path that is causing it. This is one of my main contentions when it comes to “rationalising” our way out of our suffering. Because it operates from the baseline belief that our suffering is an incorrect response to something, rather than a signal of something larger. This is why a woman should allow painful inner experiences into her space, and act accordingly in response to the wisdom that they offer her.

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Esoteric Femininity

To me, the highest form of spirituality always seemed to be feminine. But it felt like a secret everyone was keeping. The side wound of Christ, the way it was always the women who prayed and knelt the most, how it was the women who passed down the story of who and what we were. The fact that God is a man and we are His bride. The highest being is God, who is masculine, but the highest state that any created thing can be is feminine, which is to be in complete surrender or closeness to Him. Woman was God’s best creation, and to be closer to Him for me means becoming more like one, as to worship Him at all is to be like a woman before Him.

I personally, even though it is used to justify things I do not agree with, love this quote from St. Paul:

People emphasise the woman being “subject” but often miss the symbolism of a wife being the Church for her husband. I once heard an Orthodox man say that this is the symbolic reason behind the veil; because a woman is a holy place, a place of worship, and because what is a mystery to men is veiled from them. A correct marriage is one where our spouse is a place to worship God, where we come to know Him through the other. In this way, the “head” is not the authority, but a specific place of knowledge and worship. It is a symbol to embody; to be the head of your wife’s Church. The body, of course, holds as much wisdom as the head. Some people interpret this passage as suggesting mutual submission, and that is the interpretation that has always made the most intuitive sense to me.

To Be Feminine

I do not consider femininity to be a set of outer traits, or an evolutionarily/biologically created or defined thing. I consider it to be a spiritual reality. For this reason, “Woman” does not simply mean human female, but a higher state of being. I do not mean any insult to men. I love masculinity very much and enjoy men and find them interesting. But this still feels to be the case to me, that femininity is the highest state for a human, spiritually speaking.

This is also why I find it frustrating when I see advice on how to be more “feminine”. Whether it is etiquette advice, pressure to always have makeup and heels on, or to remain youthful. Or simply watering femininity down to polarity and how you should be in a relationship. When I think about it, the women who feel the most feminine to me are the women who are very relaxed in themselves, who are very seated in their body. They have ideals they strive for, but they don’t end up constraining their actual being in the process. They don’t feel like they have anything to prove so much as a story to share. A story they are at peace with, even if it is painful one or misconstrued.

To me, femininity is to be devoted, it is to be in love. Which requires both gentleness and severity, both creation and destruction. To be a woman is to be both submissive and stubborn, to both surrender and refuse to surrender at all. A woman is many things all at once, and none of them contradict each other.

For a woman to be feminine, in my view, means that she is devoting herself to the correct source and allowing it to impress upon her fully. It means to take God as a lover, and from that relationship a woman comes to love life itself, and lets life mark itself upon her too.

Man

To be masculine is often viewed in the same way; to be devoted, to pour into another. This is the truth to me, that femininity and masculinity are ultimately forms of devotion. To hear a loving husband and father describe masculinity sounds very similar to hearing a loving mother and wife describe femininity. They are both forms of complete devotion. They are both spiritual paths in their own right.

My grandfather is who I think of when I think of men. All men can be summarised in him. He lost his mother as a baby, he never knew her. She died not long after giving birth to him. I imagine that being loved by my grandmother was even more important to him because of this. He would call her “Mam” and she would call him “Dad”. He was borderline illiterate and a lifelong hard worker. He worked on the farm as soon as he was able to, and worked construction as soon as he arrived in England. He loved my grandmother. And he loved me. I was his favourite. Which is not something he hid from anyone.

He was the kind of man you didn’t have to ask, because he just did it. And if you did ask, the answer would always be yes. He would fulfil your request immediately, he never put anyone on hold. He was also a very quiet, stoic man. Never spoke of himself much. But he didn’t need to. All of a man’s life can be encompassed in his final years. He is a helpless child, a philandering lover, and a seemingly invincible father, all at once.

My father was not present when we were living with him, and when we left him, I never experienced what people expected me to have. People would ask me if I found it hard to never see or speak to him again, and that always confused me (which may show some solipsism on my part). But it is because there was nothing in him to long for, nothing in him to miss. For all intents and purposes, my grandfather was my father. And he was the best one anyone could ask for. He had the biggest hands that could fix anything, and he was always willing to. When women think of men, they often think of their hands. And I do not mean this sexually. But men’s hands fix things. That’s why when I think of men, I associate their masculinity with their hands.

To be your ultimate self as a man or woman, to be fully “masculine” or “feminine” respectively, is to be devoted. It is to love. Which entails many things. Which is why it’s essential to allow for women to explore all the aspects and parts of themselves and their inner worlds, instead of imposing rigid rules and restrictions onto them on what it means to be feminine. And I want the same for men too.

Femininity and masculinity are innately spiritual, anything we conceive of as being either one of them outside of their spiritual realities is simply an emanation of them. And socialised expectations often limit this truth. People note today that men no longer feel masculine and women no longer feel feminine, but I do not believe that trying to reinforce “gender norms” is going to alleviate this problem. Instead, one must get in touch with their nature, and explore what that is in its fullest expression.

And usually, it is after this that one arrives at the conclusion that all there ultimately is is love, all else is an illusion.

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what remains is left to rot.

My soul, a sailboat, disappears

beyond the horizon, dim and far.”

- Later On by Forough Farrokhzad

Hegel often drew an analogy between the dialectics of the mental cognition, which is to receive and synthesise knowledge, and the dialectics of human digestion, which is to break down food into a substance that can be either absorbed or excreted by the body. I wish to draw a comparison between both and the dialectical process of the soul; its cycle from non-material existence, to its impermanent existence with the physical body, and its final reunification with it after death.

The body can be described as the apparatus for the activity of the Soul. Much like the digestive tract is the system through which our bodies receive sustenance and therefore perpetuate their existence, the body is the system through which our souls are also sustained and transfigured. Therefore, one should not equate physical existence with proof of their existence, nor alienation from their existence as the soul, but verification of their not-yet-fully-actualised existence; their existence notwithstanding. In other words, one does not exist in the earthly plane because they have been actualised, one exists in this realm precisely because they have not yet been actualised.

“If the individual human being does something, achieves something, attains a goal, this fact must be grounded in the way the thing itself, in its concept, acts and behaves. If I eat an apple, I destroy its organic self-identity and assimilate it to myself. That I can do this entails that the apple in itself, already, in advance, before I take hold of it, has in its nature the determination of being subject to destruction, having in itself a homogeneity with my digestive organs such that I can make it homogenous with myself.”

— G.W.F Hegel, lectures of the philosophy of religion III, Berkely; the university of california, 1987, p. 127

In order to ingest an apple, it must first be capable of being transmuted on an enzymatic level by the human digestive tract into substances that can be absorbed into the bloodstream. What cannot be absorbed must then be capable of successfully passing through the digestive tract until it finally leaves the body and is left to waste.

Unlike an apple, grass cannot be digested by the human body, as our digestive organs lack the microbes that synthesise enzymes involved in the digestion of cellulose, which is the carbohydrate constituting the majority of grass. Something similar happens with lactose intolerance, it is caused when an individual’s small intestine is unable to make enough of the enzyme lactase, which breaks down the lactose in dairy so that the body can absorb it.

Much like physical indigestion, knowledge too can be indigestible to a particular human mind. Any given set of information is not something that we can assimilate simply because we have happened upon it. In order to be known by us, the particular form of knowledge in question must first be capable of being assimilated into our mind to begin with. In order to be known by our mind, the knowledge in question must first possess a homogeneity with our mind. Knowledge can be incapable of penetrating a certain mind, and a mind can be incapable of synthesising certain knowledge. Embodied knowledge, or Gnosis, is the essence of our soul’s work here on earth. As it is essential in order to realise our soul’s potential.

Until the late 18th Century, a widely held medical belief was in preformationism. Which was the idea that organisms developed from miniature versions of themselves, rather than assembling from parts.

It was abandoned in favour of neoformism, now known as epigenesis, which posits that the process of a plant or animal’s formation develops from a seed, spore, or egg and undergoes a series of changes as cells differentiate and new parts form.

“The ‘source’ of the information is the egg and sperm, from your parents. The ‘transmitter’ is the epigenome, transmitting analog information through space and time. The ‘receiver’ is your body in the future.”

– David Sinclair writes in Lifespan; Chapter Six, Page 162

It could be said that all information, material or immaterial, travels through space and time looking for a compatible recipient to be assimilated into. In other words, a thing can only become what it has the potential to become. Whether said potential contains all its pre-existing parts, or it is simply homogenous with its future recipient, doesn’t matter. Either way, a thing or being can only become what it is capable of becoming. What cannot be possessed or experienced by an individual due to a lack of affinity between the individual and the subject in question, will simply never be known or obtained by them. Information can attempt to realise itself within any given organism, but not all organisms will be capable of making way for its penetration. And no matter how persistent the attempt to coerce such a union is, the two incompatible forces will simply never combine. Here, there is a level of destiny—of pre-ordination.

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.” — Rumi

Belief in both destiny and free will is perceived as a sort of contradiction. How can the belief that God, in His omnipotence, knows all that will come to pass, be held at the same time as the belief that human beings possess free will? If the future is pre-written, then what place does human choice have? Indeed, the reconciliation of these two beliefs has been a great source of contemplation for many theologians. Human souls clearly possess free will, they state, but it is limited by our capabilities and circumstances. And whether or not those are pre-decided for us by God does not change the fact that they are out of our control.

All that is pre-known or pre-decided about our being and our life includes the choices that we can make and the ones that we can’t. Which is of significant importance when pondering this predicament. As this is the way that destiny coexists alongside free will. For God knows every path that we could follow, and He knows every option we consider, and every outcome that each of those potential choices would bring. But the decision of which one to follow is still ultimately up to us. It is each and every possibility for our lives that is pre-known or pre-ordained—but the choice to choose any given one remains in our hands.

Heidegger referred to something called “Being-towards-death”, as Dasein exists through or within this paradigm of a circular movement towards the future, which is death. And all the characteristics of our life are contained within this movement, with the end not being separate from the beginning. Meaning, death is an integral part of life from the start of it, the two are never separate.

The Eschaton speaks of resurrected flesh, of an apocalypse bringing Paradise. The theme here being that the beginning is hidden within the end. After the death of both our bodies, the world and what was once our life in it, we are promised to be returned to our bodies and the earth, this time within a perfected state. Our bodies will be whole, they will be perfectly healthy, they will no longer be vulnerable to sickness, ugliness, or decay. But first, our bodies must experience those corporeal tragedies, and then die. Without having gone through this stage, we will not achieve corporeal bliss. We must die in order to receive the life that we are promised, for after our corpses rot our being will be restored to wholeness, as will the rest of the world. There will be no lack within ourselves or within the Paradise that we will then inhabit.

This wholeness that we are promised is the same wholeness we once possessed before we came into being-in-the-world. That unmemorable time when our souls rested with God before they were given a separate or distinct reality; our existence before birth. Again, here the beginning is hidden within the end, and the end within the beginning.

“We begin in the dark and birth is the death of us.

– Anne Carson, Antigonick

Because a soul is not something one can consume and digest like an apple, yet it is at the same time something one can let go to waste, it is therefore only something that one can be. And for my soul to achieve dialectical synthesis, I must be my soul without remainder. According to Catholic Theology, when God Himself existed in the flesh as Jesus Christ, He was born without original sin (human fault). The only other human being to be born in such a way was His Mother Mary, the womb and portal through which God was woven into materiality, and entered into human existence through. It is no coincidence that they were both recorded to have entered into Heaven bodily, meaning they did not leave a body behind, they entered Heaven with their bodies and their souls intact; as one thing. This symbolised their purity, that they were without sin. It is due to their absence of sin that they left nothing of their physicality behind, no body to rot. As no part of them was left undigested, nor digested and left to waste, precisely because nothing of their materiality was impure, or rather, no part of them was left unactualised. To sin is to stray from God’s ordained path for us, and if we never strayed to begin with, none of our potential or purpose would be left unused. As to choose the path that was not the highest will for us is to waste our potential—it is to fail to realise our soul’s purpose.

Death of the physical body can be regarded as our soul’s dialectical synthesis, as death resolves the cycle of our dialectical process, and thus is not alienation from our being, but an act of reconciliation with our being. To the religious mind, death should not be regarded as the end of our life, but the beginning of our souls actualisation. After death, our Being will be completed. The dematerialisation of one’s being is regarded by many religious devotees as the point or meaning of our impermanent material existence in the world, as it is our opportunity to achieve our potentially permanent material existence in the world-to-come. That is, of course, if one has managed to actualise the soul’s purpose during this lifetime.

To realise one’s true will is to realise that it is inseparable from the Divine Will. That our highest good is one with God. There are many things that motivate us, many “beings” that pull us in different directions. It is easy to confuse our desires and our fears for our purpose, and it is easy to confuse thoughts and ideas for the truth. To infer the divine will and then act upon it is our soul’s purpose here on earth. And to keep acting upon it without straying. All the paths we could potentially walk down are already laid out for us in their entirety. With each mistake, sin, heartbreak, betrayal, blessing and miracle pre-existing as pure potentiality. But there is one path that God especially wishes for us to walk to him by, to not walk on it leads to suffering. To walk on it too brings hardship, but it is the only way to live that won’t lead to a permanent death; the non-material kind.

Dharma is a term which originates in ancient India, within the traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Although it does not mean precisely the same thing within each system, it broadly refers to the principle of right order, of the way things are meant to be. It posits that we have an essential duty to live in a way that unifies the macrocosm with the microcosm, or rather reflects the former into the latter by our way of living. Dharma can mean one’s ethical duty or role in society, as well as their role in maintaining cosmic harmony.

In Hinduism, the external representation of dharma would be one’s role or stage in life, such as student or enunciate etc., and it internally refers to one’s nature, their qualities, and their strengths. Acting in the best mode one can within their specific role, and expressing their nature in alignment with divine principles, would be to fulfil one’s Dharma. Dharma within Buddhism focuses more so on the path that leads to liberation, meaning freedom from suffering or even transcending the earthly plane entirely. Within both traditions, dharma means the alignment of inner life and outer action with the structure of greater cosmic reality.

Both concepts of true will and dharma suggest that each person has a specific, proper path. A path that is not randomly chosen or what one simply desires, but is instead a pre-existing truth that must be discovered. Across these traditions, suffering and confusion are said to arise due to a person not acting in alignment with this path. This may stem from the ego with its ignorance and deceptive desires, or from societal pressures and conditioning.

In mediaeval European and Renaissance thought, there are similar strands of the idea that each soul has a divine role or calling. In Greek Stoic philosophy, living “according to nature” meant aligning oneself with the rational order of the cosmos. Crowley took these much older threads and weaved them into something very distinct, making it central to modern Western Occultism. I wish to speak of this concept outside of his framework, but this doesn’t appear to be a very common thing as I have not been able to find much non-Thelemic writing on the matter.

Essentially, we can view this concept as one’s soul’s purpose. It is the “true” course of action that expresses their essential nature—their soul—and aligns it with the divine. It is the direction that feels inevitable once discovered. This path is not effortless and requires discipline, but at the same time, all that feels like “resistance” seems to dissipate once one starts walking on it.

In any given moment, there are multiple choices one could make—not an infinite amount, but not simply one either. Out of all of these options, there is one that is the “truest”, or most aligned with the divine and with one’s soul. To choose that option, over and over again, is this path. Religious people might understand this as God’s will or plan. I understand it as one’s true path, their true will, being inseparable from the Divine. What God wills for us is this truth I am speaking of.

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Devoting oneself to spiritual practices, such as prayer and mediation, is essential in order to discover this path. And life challenges themselves should be seen as ways of stripping away illusion, revealing what is essential for one to keep moving forward with purpose and dignity.

This calling is not defined by external success or approval from others, but by alignment with God. It is not just personal but synchronous with the larger divine will. When someone acts in alignment with it, they are not in conflict with truth or reality, but are participants in its very unfolding. This is why some traditions describe it as “moving without friction”, because even though challenges may not vanish, one is no longer fundamentally at odds with them. Life is seen with clarity, and obstacles become opportunities for sharpening precision.

In an earlier article, I wrote the following:

In the first state, the self and its energy may be pulled in differing directions, often to sources that drain them. In the second state, the self itself is bound. The body becomes rigid and the mind hypervigilant, every thought, dream, and emotion may be policed depending on how guilty one feels. This is a barren way of existing, as inner energetic drives are stifled and severed from the mind. This state is not true order, as true order is orientation toward God, not mere self-control in and of itself.

In the third and highest of the three states, desire and impulse are refined and correctly oriented. Our inner drives of aggression, ambition, and desire become a force that moves the self with intention toward something greater than itself. This alignment takes our impulses and drives from things that destabilise and transforms then into our guiding force. To live this way is to consistently realign the self, as one’s true path is not a static or singular achievement.

When you have been operating from the second state, that is, from a place of extreme rigidity and repression, you may start to envy those who have abandoned the morals you hold dear. There appears to be a virtue in inhibition, in being embodied, in being unhinged. And when someone has been living in the first state, that is, recklessly and impulsively, and dealt with the harsh consequences of that, a more renunciate or strict way of living will appeal. We are not very good at mapping out a middle pillar. This is the case when it comes to ambition, anger, and desire more broadly, but it is especially true when it comes to sexuality.

We have cultures where a woman’s hair, face, or even voice are considered too taboo for much of public life, as they may arouse. And we have cultures where a sexualised female form may be displayed publicly at any time of day for many purposes, even to advertise deodorant. The latter often feels like sexuality, or sexiness more specifically, has no real context or sense of when it is appropriate and when it isn’t. Harsh, unemotional attitudes toward sexuality make many squirm, and sexual displays stemming from such an attitude often do not arouse, but make people wince or desensitise them to things that would normally spike intrigue.

This phenomena has been noted time and time again to feel as if everything is sexual but nothing is erotic. Sexiness feels inauthentic as it now feels mandatory, which creates too much pressure and stress for it to arise naturally. There is also something that feels depressing and hollow about much of the sexualised performances we see from pop-culture figures today.

Cultures more akin to the former may seem like a virtuous alternative to those who grew up being thrust into a digitised hypersexual culture, often with no real guidance beforehand, but they are not healthy either.

Extreme repression and shaming leads to chronic feelings of guilt and unworthiness. One, usually a woman, may spend their whole life protecting themselves from being “tainted” in any way, so much so that they become incapable of falling in love and opening up to anyone, prolonging the romantic life that they are preserving themselves for. Many women who fearfully remained tightly bound until marriage, meaning sensations, emotions and thoughts were policed, not simply resisted temptation, find that they then can’t let go of that rigidity after marriage even though they believe they are now allowed to. When purity culture becomes too rigid like this, even one’s mind and emotions are not safe, there is then no space left to retreat to in order to escape being policed.

Strict cultures like this also tend to use arranged marriages, not merely because it is useful (they can of course be helpful and result in great marriages), but because ‘love marriages’ appear too risky. Falling in love, experiencing romance and flirtation as a consequence, before marriage and outside of your parents knowledge and permission—even as an adult—feels too risky and too “impure”, and even that becomes a taboo.

What this dichotomy really comes down to is our relationship to sexuality itself, not to women or to sex, but to human sexuality as a divine force or existence in its own right. Neither cultures seem to operate purely from the belief that sexuality and beauty are both sacred, and that as an ideal one should not separate them from love, but not because they are impure. Yes, sexuality is natural and human, and it is risky and can be dangerous, but it should fundamentally be regarded as sacred energy.

The human body itself is often not treated as sacred but as a chore or a liability. And our guiding drives of desires, motivations, and impulses are not viewed as something to master and refine, but as something to either repress or indulge in (as long as one is not directly harming anyone). But using them as fuel for immense transformation, for finding and fulfilling our purpose, is not really our relation to them.

This is why the middle pillar is not simply a balance between both states but a transformation of them, it takes the energy and power of the first state and the structure and will of the second, and reorients both toward a higher purpose. It is orientation that truly defines the third state, despite discipline being a requirement for it. As this is the state where desire and discipline unite as devotion, and where the self is no longer divided against itself but unified in its aim. It is also here that a person begins to truly live.

In Vedic Astrology, Ketu and Rahu are the South Node and North Node of the Moon. Ketu represents the body, the libido, our instincts and karmic residue. It is what is unconscious yet deeply embedded about a person. Ketu also represents spiritual detachment and the pull toward dissolution and transcendence. Our Ketu can misguide us by detaching us from life, trapping us in an unconscious pattern. If someone has Ketu in the first house, for example, they may chronically distract themselves or even outright experience agoraphobic tendencies, this is due to the unconscious and heavy pull toward detachment Ketu brings.

Rahu, on the other hand, is a driving, ambitious force. Rahu is the head without the body, a craving without a stomach to satiate, and a perception without intuition. It represents our rational mind, our ego, our obsessions, and illusion. Whereas Ketu is detachment, Rahu is the desire to consume experiences.

Both Ketu and Rahu disorientate on their own. Ketu without Rahu remains a deep anchor attached to a stagnant ship. Rahu without Ketu leads to being driven by illusion, and may even keep a person trapped in addiction. Uniting them places the head back onto the body, the rational mind is then informed by the wisdom of the body and intuition. What is “unconscious” now informs perception so the mind no longer latches on to it’s own projections, mistaking them for truth and meaning.

This alignment transforms the process of obsession and craving into insight, and striving from a means to escape the self to a way to unite it with its origin. Without the “lowly” or “superficial” base drives, one has no guiding force, no internal compass. Desire (or longing) is, in many ways, the raw material of the soul’s movement. Without it we would have no motivation to reach beyond our current state. Our capacity to desire is not simply a sinful weakness to police, but is integral to our path and should be cultivated with God’s guidance. Our emotional life, with all of its dramatism and “superficially”, is one of our primary instruments to discovering our true path, despite it often being regarded as a block to seeing the truth.

It is also for this reason that discipline and self-control, although necessary, are not sufficient on their own. The abilities to organise and restrain in and of themselves cannot ultimately provide meaning. If self-control is the highest authority, then even a well ordered and disciplined life risks becoming self-enclosed, circling round limited habits and routines and never expanding. True order requires something higher than the will to orient toward, something that gives purpose to both discipline and desire. This is of course God; our origin. Without being fully, meaning with all of our aspects, oriented toward this, self-control becomes an end in itself, and the deeper purpose of impulse is lost. For the will does not perfect itself by becoming stronger alone, but by learning where, and to whom, it must subject the self that it is ruling to. None of us can ultimately rule, we all must yield to our Origin.

We can also experience those coveted moments where we lack control, where we “let go” of ourselves, but it will be unto the correct thing—our divine purpose. Because it is not vulnerability or being unrestrained that are themselves wrong, but where one lets loose in this way. One can view it as opening up fully in the arms of a true lover, who leaves one feeling whole, rather than a counterfeit that leaves one empty.

To desire and aim at anything is inherently risky. To love at all is to open oneself up to the possibility of rejection, heartbreak, and humiliation. Remaining peaceful in a life without risk may not lead to suffering immediately, but even contentment becomes agitation if one has not experienced a greatness that warrants it first.

When one values their peace and health above all else, sacrifice and passion appear as a threat. A life guided by the pursuit of peace and well-being alone becomes directionless, and the motivation to keep pursuing self-regulation diminishes, as stability is then not used as a container for anything beyond itself, and thus feels purposeless. To simply be at peace is not the highest aim in life. That is not what one’s true path or will is. To be fully alive and in tune with one’s soul demands for more than detachment, emotional neutrality, or acceptance. It demands for more than peace. It demands the entirety of the process.

When the direction one is going in, and where one is directing their energy, is left unchecked, the self fragments. And when impulses and “lower” aspects are merely suppressed, the self stagnates. But when our inner drivers are properly elevated, they become the means of ascent. Desire is what motivates the self to be drawn upward toward the Divine. It is possible for us to be in tune with every energetic force within us, and still live with dignity and virtue.

There is a particular kind of suffering that arises not from failure, but from the pain of realising that one has been investing time, energy, and identity into a life that is simply not what one wants, that is simply not what one was made for. This form of pain is not alleviated by reframing it as ungrateful or irrational, the pain itself is a demand for movement. This is because the true path requires the courage to disrupt what is merely stable in order to pursue what is meaningful, beautiful, and true. The true path is the one where we pursue what is most beloved to us, and what is most beloved to us alone, and at all costs.

One does not avoid a life of pain and suffering through careful calibration of risk and precaution. This is because it is the failure to live in accordance with the divine that is most painful, not merely failure or humiliation themselves. Error along the journey to finding our true path is inevitable. Wrong turns are going to be made, and this must be accepted. A life oriented around the prevention of all possible mistakes is a life of paralysis. We cannot eliminate the human capacity for failure, we can only find solace and motivation in our other capacity to recover from it. True resilience is not the absence of suffering, but our ability to endure it, learn from it, and continue forward as someone with more depth and intricacy as a consequence.

When we trust in our path like this, in our ability to adapt, repair and grow, we are less compelled to control every variable. We can afford to take risks, to make decisions that move us forward. Even if we do not fully know where “forward” is yet. To the courageous, as long as it is in the direction of what they truly love, even without guarantee that they will actually get it, they keep moving. A meaningful life requires this level of engagement and willingness to act despite uncertainty, and the humility to meet all that comes along the way.

To direct ourselves toward uniting the soul with God is to recognise that all desires are, at their root, reflections or distortions of this one. The desire for beauty, for intimacy, for fulfilment, for expanding out—for pushing the soul beyond its confines—are not random or meaningless impulses. Ambition, and even the desire for power or fame, are not merely superficial, they point to something beyond themselves, to a higher way of being. When pursued as ends in themselves, they disappoint and enslave, but when they are understood as echoes of something infinite, one’s ambition begins to take on its proper function. One can then pursue their ambition for the greatest of heights one can achieve here on earth, without guilt or a sense of being superficial.

One should at first be scared to pursue what they love, and remain even more terrified to not pursue it, otherwise the self is not being properly awakened. The aim of pursuing your true path is for the soul to transform into all that it could be, into all that it was made to be. Self actualisation is the point of the self, although that has been bastardised in modern self-help and pop psychology. But this is what “authenticity” and actualisation actually mean; it is to not compromise on your own soul.

When one is accustomed to living this way, living in any other fashion feels unthinkable. God gave us our gifts, our talents. He gave us our calling. And it is a sin to not pursue it fearlessly. The process of doing so is meant to radically realign our whole lives. What we lose from this process is meant to be lost. Everyone and everything that is not in alignment with this path should be stripped away, with only blessings left to replace them.

What did specifically exist in Celtic spirituality is a strong symbology of containers of water as sources of power. Wells were seen as sources of healing, wisdom, and connection to the Otherworld. Godlike beings such as Brigid were closely associated with sacred wells. In Irish myth, the cauldron shows up again and again as a container of life, rebirth, or inspiration, like the Dagda’s cauldron or the cauldron linked to Cerridwen. In the myth of the Dagda, his cauldron was said to never run empty, and cauldrons of other myths restored life or granted poetic insight.

Later, in medieval Celtic Christianity, the idea of a sacred cup appears frequently as the Holy Grail. The emphasis was not simply on the possession of the vessel, but on one’s relationship to it—whether one was worthy, attuned, or prepared to receive what it offered. The grail is not something merely to be found externally, but something encountered by inner alignment with what it holds.

To understand the symbolic meaning of the Holy Grail is to understand the quest as being truly inward. It is a gradual refining of perception, the loosening of the ego, and a willingness to enter one’s own depths without becoming afraid or distorting them into something else—but to let their definitions arise to you, and move forward carrying that wisdom. In this way, the real Holy Grail is not about attainment of something external but attunement with the wisdom which one already possesses. It is the learning to draw from an inner source that is already present.

The Coire Sois, a medieval Irish text meaning “The Cauldron of Poesy”, describes three internal cauldrons (coire) within a person; one in the belly (linked to survival and nourishment), one in the chest (emotion and will), and one in the head (wisdom and inspiration). If you noticed a similarity between this concept and chakras, I did too. This is probably the closest thing Gaels had to anything like chakras. It interestingly resembles a kind of vertical inner system, though it’s not identical to the Vedic one and developed independently.

The practice of Somatics, and the body overall, have been immensely healing and spiritually transformative for me, but I did not feel as though I had something ancestral to ground them into, which is very important to me. Modern somatics is a field shaped by Thomas Hanna and Moshe Feldenkrais, and is very specific; it is the conscious sensing of the body from within, the practice of releasing tension patterns, and the retraining of the nervous system for peace and stability rather than rigidity and chaos. Its purpose is to unite physical and psychological health—to view the self as residing in one whole system, instead of compartmentalising the vessel in which it resides.

The ancient Gaels and Celts weren’t disconnected from the body, in fact, quite the opposite. We simply have to piece things together from archaeology, classical accounts, and later Irish and Welsh texts. Irish and Britonic pagan ritual life, especially among the Druids, often involved chanting, gesture, posture, and deep presence in nature. These practices cultivate a body awareness, especially in rhythmic and trance-like states. Early Irish tradition preserves forms like rosc (rhythmic speech) and incantations. These weren’t mere words—they were vibrations felt in the body through breath, tone, and cadence. This overlaps with the somatic use of the voice for nervous system regulation very well.

Irish texts describing heroes like Cú Chulainn show intense physical training, involving control over the body in extreme states, even the famous ríastrad (warp-spasm) which turned Cú Chulainn into a giant possessing supernatural strength. While mythologised, it suggests awareness of how the emotional inner world, the Will, and the body interact and can be united to achieve immense transformations.

Gaelic spirituality didn’t separate body, land, and spirit; practices tied to landscapes such as standing stones, water rituals, and seasonal festivals were deeply sensory and embodied. Although there is no evidence of systematic “tension release” or neuromuscular retraining as within modern somatics, and no explicit internal scanning or slow, deliberate movement sequences like Feldenkrais or Hanna Somatics. Most of our knowledge of our pre Christian ancestors is indirect—we don’t have detailed “bodywork manuals” from the Gaels. However, it is clear that they certainly had embodied practices.

The concept that allows me to ground what I’ve learnt in my ancestry the most is the concept of the sacred Well and Cup. The body, past experiences accumulated as emotions, tensions and dysfunction, as well as one’s dreams and ancestry, are a sacred well we can delve into, retrieving their wisdom, and return from, embodying the sacred chalice—deep and stable, not overflowing without control, but securely contained, and dispersed consciously, when one wills.

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A modern Gaelic spirituality could imagine the body as a landscape, the heart as a well, the mind as a chalice receiving inspiration, and the belly as a cauldron of transformation. Of course the form of container one envisions in these centres is not what matters most, what truly counts is that they are viewed as a centre for exploration and containment for wisdom, healing, and growth.

Water as an element is both purifying and capable of being polluted. Both air and earth are capable of pollution but they do not cleanse. Fire is not capable of being tainted, it only purifies. So water is a unique element in that it both purifies and can be added to—it can be tainted but it can also be transformed and hold these new transformations. Water is not the only element located in these energy centres (the mind, heart and stomach) but it does uniquely represent the depth of wisdom, the ability to be polluted, and healed and transformed, that must be met and worked with if one is to spiritually transform. A sacred cup containing water that has been accumulated by delving deep inside is the perfect symbol for the wisdom gained through inner work.

Somatics helped heal my OCD, although I still feel a bit intimidated sharing that, as what works for me may not help another and I wouldn’t want to waste the time of anyone who is in pain. But with each tension and knot I released in my body, I felt the tensions and knots soften in my mind. I remember sitting on a wall, watching the dead leaves on the wet grass beneath me, and as my mind churned and churned round in an OCD loop, my eyes darted from one leaf to another in rhythm with it. I felt like my body and movements were locked into the same patterns as my mind. I felt like this guy:

Essentially, Somatics is the practiced belief that we do not inhabit a mind that is merely attached to a body. We inhabit one vessel—the brain and body are one. And the pain of my mind is not only not separate from my body, it is also not just located to me as an individual. My ancestry, my family, and the culture I grew up in are also places in which it resides. To enter the narratives and pain stored within my own body, ancestry, and modern culture is to delve into a well of wisdom and healing. I don’t mean merely going over my childhood with a therapist, I mean deep ancestral digging. Seeing things through my family’s eyes, including the members that hurt me. Understanding how their stories shaped the way that they raised me, and forgiving them for that. And the ancient myths and stories and political violence and suffering my distant ancestors experienced—how that shaped even the everyday cultural habits of today.

I have an ancestral altar in my bedroom. I pray there for my bloodline, the relatives close to me in generation and far, in this world and the next, both my maternal and paternal lineage. I pray for God to forgive them, to heal them, and pass down to me their wisdom. I also pay attention to my dreams and with how they coincide with astrological events. I also have a mind that naturally is very analytical of culture and its trends and dysfunctions. And I release fascia tension and practice Somatics daily. The breath, and using it to meditate deeper and deeper into the body has also been a useful tool.

I have spoken about pain being a map before. What this means is that there is no better guidance system for what your soul is meant to be doing in this life than the signals that your body, emotions, and nervous system give you. Many women on social media have shared that they felt like their body “rejected” partners that were not good for them. The examples given are often mild health issues, such as acne, eczema, or unexplained weight gain or loss, or a significant amount of stress such as not being able to sleep properly next to them. These issues seemed to have resolved by themselves when they simply left their boyfriend. The pain, tension, and stress of the body, heart, and nervous system is source of wisdom that can be entered and learned from. When one is committing themselves to the wrong job or partner, essentially; when one is committed to the wrong vocation, they will suffer. And the longer one stays going in the wrong direction, the more intense that suffering will be. This is in fact a mercy from God. The body and emotions, our stress and our pain, are our guidance for healing and direction.

What Somatics, ancestral work, and reflection on my dreams and strongly held narratives or beliefs did for me is something that gets phrased as “bringing it all to the surface” a lot. People often describe it as if their emotions had risen, making them impossible to ignore and causing instability. Their behavioural patterns and internal beliefs could no longer go unchallenged, and their true feelings could no longer be repressed. This is known as a “tower moment” in Tarot. But what it really felt like for me was delving deep beneath the now broken calloused shell I had been operating from. When I entered this instability, I could no longer ignore what direction I was going in and how it was the wrong one. I could also no longer continue relating to myself and reality the way that I had been if I was to continue.

It is a disservice to simply say that “I realised what I truly wanted in life” (or from it), because this went much deeper than what we think of as ‘want’. The work I am meant to be doing became apparent, every decision and action I am meant to be taking in life—that once felt like scattered and separate challenges or goals, then merged into one thing; a singular path forward. There is now no separation between the work being done within me and the work I am meant to be doing in this world. This process that now allows me to write better and more frequently than I ever have been able to, as well as navigate the world as myself more peacefully and confidently than before, has felt like returning from the bottom of the river floor with something sacred and precious. My emotional, fluid, and “unstable” inner world does not need to be repressed in order to be contained, it is a sacred well to draw from. And the work that results from that process feels like a sacred chalice held firmly within my hands.

I hope this article may be insightful for you and may offer you ideas for what to add to your own spiritual practice, or at least be interesting to read if you enjoy history, symbology, and spirituality. Thank you for taking the time to read my writing, I always really appreciate it.

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For the male ascetic, woman is often the main challenge or test on his path. When you read only sacred texts that are centred on the male, as a woman, you come to believe that you are simply everything spiritual teachers have warned about; you are temptation, you are materiality, you are lust, you are sin. It results in a female inferiority complex. As a consequence, there have been times in my life where I wondered if God hated me, if God made me to be inferior.

Common responses women who have had these same concerns have heard go as follows; “God made woman to help man and submit to him, but that doesn’t mean He made her inferior.” But an entire class of beings are never requested to submit to another if that class is their equal, they are only requested to submit to their superior. “God making women lesser beings doesn’t mean women are worse beings”—these are the forms of placations that simply do not placate.

To clarify, if a man and a woman have the dynamic of a male leader and a female who submits to that leadership (provided the woman’s “no” is listened to and she is loved and respected) I do not have a problem with that. Some women like to be with men who are more spiritually or intellectually advanced than them. For this reason they may enjoy this kind of dynamic with someone who is actually worthy of looking up to. But many women desire a bond where two beings learn from each other, or even enjoy being a source of wisdom and spiritual insights for a man romantically. A man that approaches you with reverence, who listens attentively more than he speaks, is genuinely influenced by what you say and transformed by your wisdom, appeals to many women just as much. Neither is better or worse than the other.

What I ultimately reject is the notion that women should submit to men as a basis. It results in a male superiority complex. I have encountered many spiritual men who feel they are above women simply by virtue of being male. It is not a woman’s sacred role to enable this, in fact, quite the opposite. A man is not a leader simply because he is male, he must be tested, he must rise, he must become. The feminine is what traditionally tests and challenges, and then what rewards only that which is worthy.

Recently, I saw women in these online spaces devoted to traditional femininity defending the form of polygamy where a man does not have to ask for permission to get another wife. I am reminded of the Evola quote where he states that the polygamous dynamic where a woman devotes herself solely to one man who does not return the same devotion, even without so much as a thought of if he loves her in return at all, is a form of spiritual asceticism for women which leads to great heights. Any woman who has actually experienced this dynamic, or anything like it, can tell you it is spiritually castrating not invigorating. It is true that women have a very devotional nature, and in the modern world it is stifled. Reclaiming that devotional nature is important. But what is even more important is knowing where to direct one’s devotion.

The only being that is worthy of this form of complete selfless love is God, and the partner God delivers to you can receive this love too only because we love God through them. The human beloved then becomes a vessel for the ultimate Beloved to be worshipped. To love the wrong man in this way is thus idolatry, and any man that would exploit your energy and not devote himself to you is not a divine gift. Love is sacred, it is not meant to be blindly directed to the wrong man for the same reason one is not meant to worship the devil. To devote yourself to the incorrect source is to kill yourself, but to do so to the correct source is to become a part of something immortal. And the correct human source is certainly one that loves you with as much intensity.

It is safe to give yourself fully, fearlessly, and selflessly to God because He Himself is love. Every fearless leap toward Him is faithfully rewarded. It is impossible to not be loved by love itself. It is not safe to devote oneself in this manner to a man that is not Divinely aligned with you, and the one that is would not take from you, and other women, without giving in return. That is not a soulmate, that is a vampire.

One of the divine feminine functions is to absorb all of the energy that is being abused by egoic people, and reuse it for something sacred. A selfish and lustful man is certainly one of those people. To instead direct your sacred energy to a man that steals and wastes it is the complete opposite of the divine feminine path. Likewise, men have to be careful with where they direct their energy so they are not vampirised too. I am about to generalise, but throughout ancient esoteric traditions it is believed that a man’s energy naturally desires to go downward and out, it is an ejecting force. It is his sacred duty to reverse this flow and raise it toward the divine. A woman’s energy naturally goes inward, but remains stagnant if she does not perform the same sacred duty. Generally speaking, women do not fall into lust as easily as men on average (there are exceptions of course) for this reason. So, to bastardise the divine feminine role as one of blind devotion to a vampiric male within any dynamic, who for that reason is not prompted to master his own energy, is sacrilegious.

It is only spiritually correct to selflessly surrender and devote this energy to a human lover when the relationship between you both is a reciprocal one crafted by divine purpose and intention, then this energy exchange becomes one of worshipping your lover as a form of worshipping God. It is why, after from prayer, sex is the most sacred thing a human has access to. The union between lovers in these relationships becomes a prayer to God itself. It is for this reason that it is so destructive and life draining to love the wrong man with this form of devotion.

To clarify further, I do not oppose polygamy as being inherently immoral or abusive. But I do consider it inferior to monogamy. We have multiple appropriate outlets for our sexual and romantic energies, but none are as superior as the form of love between two people God intended for each other. Monogamy is then a meditation— two points in the Universe facing towards each other and only toward each other, what exists between them is thus a more concentrated form of love than one that is shared out to multiple sources.

Primarily, most spaces that discuss the divine feminine seem to have reduced it to dating discourse and “manifestation” hacks. How to speak to men, how to make men chase you romantically, how to attract a provider, how to level up your appearance, how to use your sacred feminine energy to affirm and manifest. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing beauty at all, nor with wanting advice on how to interact with men. But if you are centring men’s opinions on women, their sexual preferences, obsessing over which behaviour provokes the best reactions in them, and what keeps them interested in a relationship—then that is not a space for the feminine, it is simply another space that is centred around the male. And women deserve a spirituality that is much richer and deeper than what the new age offers, and an acknowledgment that there are many types of women, that womanhood is is far from one dimensional.

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We have all encountered these parts of the internet; where new age spirituality, conservative influencers, and Christian influencers all overlap. What starts with appreciation for the feminine ends with suggesting women weren’t meant for the workforce. What starts with encouraging women to pursue their desires even if it means staying at home and raising kids, ends with suggesting that one vote per household (the man of the house) is not such a bad idea. What starts with suggesting a masculine/feminine dynamic between spouses ends with saying women who get jealous over their husbands sexual attention being directed elsewhere haven’t “surrendered into their feminine yet”. Many such cases!

The idea that many have of “traditional femininity” is actually quite modern. Popular conservative influencers, particularly of the “trad” type, seem to have this idea that most women were housewives until ugly feminists came along in the 1960s-70s and stole that opportunity from them. My life has certainly been more domestic and ease filled than my mother’s, who has worked much harder than I ever have since her 20s, and my grandmother’s who worked from the age of 13, and certainly my great mother who had 13 children (who survived past infancy, I don’t know how many pregnancies she had and babies she birthed exactly) while still working every day of her life until retirement. Half of humanities blood, sweat and tears are often erased by people trying to emphasise the importance of the feminine. This is an injustice. Even if women aren’t “hormonally suited” for a 9-5 in an office (I don’t know if anyone is) they still survive it and survive it well.

I once read a female spiritual teacher write “All of women’s power and knowledge is only attained through accessing it from the men they sleep with, women cannot cultivate it on their own” even stating that if a woman does possess much knowledge and wisdom without a male presence, it’s because she incarnated with it (suggesting she was a man in a previous life). A lot of the demoralising things you read and hear about being a woman are often disproved by simply living your life as one. You hear a lot of “women can’t do this, they are incapable” while you are, yourself a woman, doing it. This is one of those cases. Knowledge comes from the One Who Knows, who possesses it all, and women have direct access to Him just as any man does. Women can have their direct relationship to the Divine, without a man as an intermediary. A man can be a woman’s teacher, and a woman can be a spiritual mother for a man. The former is not any more sacred.

Medieval women were regarded to be more susceptible to mystical experiences, the humour theory and the First Epistle to the Corinthians where St. Paul states that God chooses the weak as vessels for divine revelation, were both used as explanations. Women are of course physically weaker than men, and the humour theory also posited that women had colder and softer bodies as well as temperaments—this was the explanation for why women were more vulnerable or receptive to mystical experiences. Jacques de Vitry frequently described Beguine women being receivers of divine visions and intense ecstatic episodes during prayer. Although he did not explicitly compare women to men, he also did not describe men with the frequency or detail in relation to mystical experiences that he did for women; men in his writings are more often preachers and moral authorities.

A related theological pattern emerged in the medieval period in which women’s exclusion from formal theological education and teaching roles contributed to the validation of their visionary authority. Women’s knowledge, in such instances, came directly from God rather than theological education. Women were more likely to receive mystical visions and even hear God’s voice, being excluded from more formal methods. Men had to study in order to teach and spiritually direct others, therefore he gained wisdom in that manner. Figures such as Catherine of Siena, who had no formal theological training yet recorded dialogues in which she heard God, exemplify how women’s knowledge was framed as deriving from direct divine revelation rather than learned study. Similarly, Julian of Norwich described herself as “uneducated… feeble and frail,” reinforcing a pattern in which women’s lack of institutional authority was used to authenticate their visions as divinely given rather than intellectually constructed.

Throughout all cultures women are regarded to be more “intuitive”. Within Vedic Astrology, women are connected to Ketu and to the 8th House. Ketu is the planet of spiritual ascension, it is associated with the “other realms” such as dreams, spirits that inhabit the other “side” of certain physical spaces such as lakes or forests, as well as ghosts and other yin forces. It is also associated with psychic abilities. Women are more drawn to such things, both as psychic mediums and as tarot and astrology readers. The 8th house is also associated with these things—it is also the house of death. A woman’s body is what gives one material existence, our souls pass into this realm through a woman, but it is also this same source that opens us up to death. Women are the vessels through which we experience life and then eventually death. The 8th house is also the house of intense spiritual transformations that are outside the realm of what is considered normal spiritual experience; divine visions or astral transportations to another realm, rather than a feeling of certainty of an answer after a question was asked during prayer.

If one believes in such a cosmology, it is then no surprise that women seem to be drawn to the “spiritual” nature of things. Women throughout history have been more religious than men. Women also seem to be more interested than men in the esoteric, the occult, the mystical, most of the people practising new age spirituality seem to be women too. Women are by no means less spiritually aware or attuned than men.

Women have a very active spiritual nature. We are spiritually interested just as much as we are spiritually interesting. Everyone, male or female, is met with spiritual traps and must resist them. Women are capable of this process just as much as men are. Women are sacred beings in their own right, distinct from men. It is for this reason that a woman is deserving of as much devotion in a relationship as a man, and as much reverence as one when she has ascended the same spiritual heights.

Attraction is never a coincidence or even purely superficial, even lust itself is always psychologically significant, and everything that exists also exists spiritually. When one understands that a “spiritual experience” is all that is happening to them every moment of one’s life, even while dreaming, things start to make more sense.

Attraction is an attempt toward wholeness. Wholeness meaning being at one—at one with God, with God Himself being the only true wholeness. In Sufi thought, for example, attraction is often understood as part of a deeper longing of the soul to return to its أصل (origin), which is God.

At the centre of this theory is the idea that people carry both embodied traits (the qualities we can express and identify with) and unembodied or even repressed traits (the parts of ourselves we have not yet explored or traits we wish to develop). When we feel drawn to someone, it is a response to them embodying those qualities in themselves that we must integrate into ourselves, but not necessarily through union with them. When one learns to recognise this process, attraction doesn’t necessarily imply movement toward the other, but instead a reflection and development of the self in response to what one was drawn to in the first place.

For example, a woman might feel drawn to a man who embodies confidence, clarity, or decisiveness, qualities that may reflect her own undeveloped ability to stand up for herself and enact her own agency. It is often noted that the women who end up with abusive male partners are often incredibly kind, shy and gentle people. This pairing is painful to witness. Similarly, a man might be captivated by a woman who expresses emotional depth or intuition, possibly mirroring his own lack of inner attunement.

Attraction is never just about the other person, even if they are desired or loved deeply—it is a desire for wholeness of the self. It is for this same reason that we are of course attracted to people who embody similar ways of expression, who share the same tendencies and viewpoints on life. Because one’s path toward wholeness (or their origin; God) is one’s purpose in life, and we also feel drawn to people who seem to be going in the same direction as us for this reason.

If you were to make a list of everyone you’ve felt significantly attracted to, even celebrity crushes, you will notice what they all have in common through different phases of your life, and how changes in who you were attracted to coincided with developments in yourself.

When we encounter romantic suitors we often project romantic ideals or possibilities onto them. We see them as more perfect, meaningful or symbolic than they really are. However, as we come to actually know the person, these projections fade, leading to disillusionment. People believe they have found their “soulmate” just for the relationship to collapse later on. It is because a person of romantic or sexual interest is a mirror which carries the qualities that actually belong to our own psyche—qualities which we can develop and master.

This is why attraction often feels mystical or fated, because it is always ignited by this spiritual drive toward wholeness. Through relationships, especially the failed ones, we are confronted with our own patterns, wounds, desires, and potentials. Attraction is never just about companionship or sexual intimacy; it is a psychological mechanism that pushes us toward self-realisation.

When one has realised this pattern, in an ironic way, being attracted to the wrong person then becomes a method for finding the right path. For if you developed and enacted on the traits or behaviours the other possesses, then the attraction to them would fade and your purpose would clarify.

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When you encounter someone whose presence feels magnetic or meaningful, even if the attraction is unrequited or they end up being wrong for you, the initial recognition was still correct—they reflected a quality your soul already knows at a deeper level—something you are meant to awaken within yourself. Sufi poetry expresses this beautifully. Rumi often writes of human love as a doorway into divine love. When you feel drawn to another person, many Sufi teachers would say you are not ultimately being drawn to them as an isolated individual, but to the divine beauty (jamāl) that is reflected within them. In other words, the attraction is real, but its deepest source is خدا (God), whose qualities are mirrored in creation.

A famous Sufi idea is that “we love in others what we recognise of the Beloved.” The beloved person becomes a veil and a revelation at the same time. You think you are seeking them, but really you are being pulled toward the Divine through them. This is why falling in love means losing control, and why tightening control inhibits one’s ability to fall in love or even feel attraction. Love and attraction feel overwhelming, transformative, and even destabilising because they are stretching the self beyond its ordinary boundaries—that is the true function of love and desire, not merely reproduction or contentment, but reorientation and transformation.

Sufi writings on this matter also warn that if you cling to the person as the source of what you feel drawn to (or even misinterpret them as the true source of the desire itself), you become lost in illusion. The point of attraction is to recognise the reality behind the attraction and to let it transform you, refine you, and bring you closer to your self and your path, which is to say; closer to God.

In this way, there are no longer any “mistakes” in who you are attracted to, even if the person should not be pursued, they still are the current correct mirror you need to continue your development in life.

Some Sufi teachers, particularly in Persian and South Asian traditions, also spoke of human love as qismat (destiny) or taqdir (divinely decreed). The idea of a Godly preordained soulmate is framed as a meeting of two souls that is orchestrated by divine will. Within these pairings, the individuals are drawn together not due to projection or egoic desire, but because God has aligned their paths for a specific spiritual purpose. This means that meeting this person is “fated” because God has aligned your souls to awaken latent divine qualities and act as mirrors reflecting these divine attributes. In these couples, romantic love is sacred and never coincidental; it is a channel for divine grace. The union of these souls is a sacred instrument for deepening our understanding of love and bringing us closer to the Divine. Love itself becomes an act of worship of God. The sense of inevitability in these relationships is due to these encounters being written in the divine plan—this form of human bond is inseparable from the Divine, it is both earthly and sacred, a living metaphor for the soul’s yearning to return to God. This is why such relationships entail deep longing and ecstasy too.

It is important to know that entering a Godly-ordained bond is not the same as surrendering to personal desire or obsession. The true destiny of the soul is ultimately oriented toward God, and the human beloved serves as a gateway to that destination, rather than being the destination themselves. Love for the other person must awaken love for God.

A divinely aligned soulmate is about spiritual awakening, it is two souls meeting according to God’s will to reflect, awaken, and bring each other closer to Him. The relationship is a portal for the Divine to soak the Earth through. In order to understand this bond, and how to recognise when an attraction is correct to pursue, one must refine themselves inwardly through reflection and devotion to God.

There are two spiritual traps relating to desire, and it is important to understand and recognise them. The first, and most warned against, is the state where one’s desires rule the will. The second is where the will controls (while often stifling) desire, but the will is still ruling the self, desire is then not necessarily directed toward something beyond the will. The third and most developed state is where the will rules desire but directs it towards something beyond it; toward the highest order; Love, which is God.

People often find themselves swinging between the first two states; indulgence and repression. Indulgence is pleasurable at first but leads to enslavement to desire, repression leads to control and stability at first but suppresses a person’s guiding drives and often depletes one’s ability to then navigate life meaningfully and wholeheartedly. The middle pillar between the two is to control one’s desires, but lead them to something beyond the self. The will must rule desire, but the human will cannot ultimately rule, we all must orient ourselves toward something and the best direction possible is God. Ibn Arabi speaks of something like this when in his major work, The Meccans Revelations, he says the following:1

He is of course referring to the Hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ says;

Ibn Arabi later reflects on women and this Hadith further;

Ibn Arabi also states that the qutb (the Axis, meaning the highest in the hierarchy of saints) engages often in sexual intercourse and loves women:

Here he contemplates the spiritual value of subjugation. To be subjugated to something worthy of subjugation is actually the deepest pleasure. And the thing that is most worthy to be made subject to is God Himself. The highest order to be oriented toward, to be made subject to, is Love, which, again, is God. So to curse women, love or desire itself, simply because one cannot navigate them righteously, is to deprive oneself of the deepest pleasure and greatest spiritual height.

To misuse our romantic and sexual energies hurts us, because they are sacred energy which should only be directed toward that which is worthy of it. But in order to use this sacred energy wisely, we must first be in tune with it. We must not demonise it, degrade it, stifle or flee from it. Meaning, we must allow for our desires to arise by simply witnessing them. Even if they are triggered by sources that should not be moved toward, one does not need to demonise this experience. As even within exoteric religions, it is only actions which qualify as sins, not temptations themselves.

Desires should not be indulged in blindly, but are to be used for guidance and the process of self-integration. This is the correct way to use one’s desires; to orient them toward wholeness and love. As desire for God is the ultimate force behind all desire, yearning and love. Even when one craves to sin, it is a misdirected worship, as what they really crave in that moment is God. As Simone Weil states well;

Perennialist education is a philosophical tradition that posits that there exists a timeless and universal core from which all genuine knowledge, wisdom, and truth ultimately derive. Rather than truth or fact being transitory, progressive, or relative. As such, it advocates for the study of classical works, and traditions which endure over time, as the method to develop rationality, reason, thought, as well as morality.

Religious Perennialism, similarly, is the perspective that all religions (that have endured through time, which, by virtue, excludes very recent ones) share a single, universal, and transcendent metaphysical truth. Beneath, within, or above the exoteric (the practical rules, external meaning of rituals, and literal meaning of scripture) there exists an esoteric, mystical core of truth, and within each religion there lies a mystical path that point to the same divine Reality (God), to some degree or another.

Conceptual Distinctions

There are many schools of thought within religious Perennialism, here I want to focus on one that has not been fully mapped out yet. First, what is mysticism? The words ‘mystical’, ‘esoteric’ and ‘occult’ all share the same definition of the words themselves, however, they describe different things. The definitions of the words are, of course, hidden or secret. But we use the words themselves to describe different practices and forms of knowledge.

Esoteric is used to define that which is the opposite of exoteric, meaning the metaphysical meaning behind a traditional practice or scripture, as opposed to the immediate practical or literal meaning (the exoteric). And occultism and mysticism describe two different forms of spiritual paths or seeking. Mysticism places as its goal the union of the self with the Divine; a mystic seeks direct engagement with God, and direct experience of His transcendental Reality. Whereas an occultist places their goal as the pursuit of knowledge; knowledge of hidden realities, and often the pursuit of occult power and ability.

‘True Will’, for example, is an important concept within occultism, whereas self-annihilation and complete surrender of the will to the Divine is an important goal within mysticism. Occultists often practice magick too, which is the attempt to manipulate and control reality through directing and imposing one’s own Will. This is not a goal within mysticism, and religious mystics often warn against such things, labelling them sinful, as they can distract one from seeking God and God alone.

This isn’t to say that occultism and mysticism never overlap, or that they don’t share anything in common, however, I do believe that the previous examples map out a core distinction between the two different paths.

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Defining Perennial Mysticism

Where does Perennialism enter into this? Well, one need not study the mystical aspects of religions for long without noticing that they all share very much. However, religions differ greatly in the exoteric sense. Perennialism is the mode through which we consolidate both of these realities.

Perennialism allows us to recognise that human morality is relative and dependent, it changes throughout culture, time, and differs from person to person. This is not to say that morality itself is relative, but that human apprehension and articulation of morality are historically and psychologically conditioned. Objective morality exists, but human moral systems represent partial and fallible attempts to perceive and embody it. As such, exoteric religion will differ greatly, from religion to religion, sect within sect, culture to culture, and in how texts are interpreted and implemented within the same religion throughout history.

Perennialism also allows us to seek the esoteric and metaphysical interpretations of all sacred practices and texts, believing that they will offer us a glimpse of the same truths. This is because all that is true stems from God, and God’s morality is the only true morality, and as such it never changes—it is never relative, it is never dependent.

A mystical path to God also offers one a closer contact with Him and His created reality, compared to a path without an intense spiritual experience of Him and His creation. Therefore, mysticism offers one a deeper understanding of anything within a religion. And, being aware of the reality of human fallibility and corruption, and that scripture is recorded and passed down by human beings, scripture itself is never taken at face value, but is instead something to interpret metaphysically. If one doesn’t understand or agree with a religious text, it doesn’t have to shatter one’s faith within a perennial context.

The form of Perennialism emerging here may be understood as a mystical Perennialism structured around three claims: that Divine Reality is metaphysically one; that human apprehension of this Reality is epistemically fragmented; and that exoteric religious forms function pedagogically while mystical metaphysics represents their teleological fulfilment.

To illustrate a metaphysical interpretation of a religious text, let us look at St Paul’s Gospel verse on marriage:

A perennialist might metaphysically interpret this through the lens of gendered reality. In gendered metaphysics, God is the only real masculine, or male, and everything is feminine, or “as a woman”, in relation to Him. This is because, metaphysically, the masculine is the active principle and the feminine is the receptive principle. So, God being the highest masculine, and everything being feminine in relation to Him, does not mean that femininity is the inferior principle, but instead describes the relationship between God and His creation.

Within a mystical context, submission, being subject to something, or even slavery as a metaphor, mean ultimate devotion. The word Islam itself means submission. These concepts are certainly not viewed derogatorily, when directed toward the correct source of course, within this context.

This text would most likely be viewed as ultimately instructing one to create within their own marriage a reflection of the divine union between God and His creation; the Husband is to be the “head” and the wife the “body”, the husband is to be the Lord and the wife the Church. This does not mean, within a metaphysical context, that a wife should blindly obey her husband, or that a man should assume a position of authority or superiority over his wife, but that within a marriage, the metaphysical feminine and masculine are to be embodied, or reflected, between a husband and wife; reflecting God’s divine union with us. This text would also not be interpreted as something that has to happen otherwise the marriage is sinful, but as a suggestion for the ideal marriage.

I myself am not morally condoning submission within a marriage, nor am I saying that this text has to be interpreted this way. I am simply offering an example of what metaphysical interpretation of a religious text might look like.

For an Islamic example, a very clear difference between exoteric and esoteric interpretation can be found in Ibn ʿArabī’s interpretation of Qur’an 18:109, the verse that says:

Traditionally, this verse is understood literally and metaphorically to express the infinite knowledge and power of God. Scholars like al-Ṭabarī or al-Qurṭubī read it straightforwardly; that no matter how much ink, even if multiplied endlessly, it could never capture God’s words, representing God’s omniscience, grandeur, as well as the limits of human capacity to fully understand Him. It stays largely in the ethical-theological domain, expressing reverence for God’s divine knowledge.

Ibn ʿArabī, in his Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Meccan Openings), reads this verse through the lens of Wahdat al-Wujūd (the Unity of Being) and the Perfect Human (Al-Insān al-Kāmil). Ibn ʿArabī interprets the “sea” not as literal ink but as the totality of created forms. Every created thing, be it water, earth, air, and beings etc. is like ink attempting to describe God. In this way, to Ibn ʿArabī, God expresses Himself though creation, but the totality of God himself is too great to ever be fully expressed, not even in the entirety of the cosmos itself.

This verse, to Ibn ʿArabī, illustrates that the absolute reality (al-Haqq) generates but also transcends all created forms, rather than God being too transcendent for knowledge in a merely human sense. God is the only reality according to Ibn ʿArabī, and therefore creation can only exist insofar as it is an emanation of God. Despite this, created things themselves still cannot contain His ultimate reality.

Ibn ʿArabī also sees the “words of my Lord” in particular as relating to these same manifestations of divine Reality in creation. They are not just scripture or knowledge but ontological realities that continuously emanate through creation. So, the metaphysical meaning shifts from “God is too vast for human knowledge” to “God’s essence is continuously manifesting, yet remains infinitely beyond containment.” The Perfect Human can, through spiritual unveiling, reflect these divine “words” in themselves, becoming a locus where the infinite knowledge of God is mirrored. Unlike mainstream readings, this introduces an ontological participation in divine reality rather than mere reverence for it.

If one were to interpret all texts metaphysically, is there a unifying theme that seems to exist across all traditions? One can try, and indeed that is what perennialists try and do. For example, all Abrahamic religions share the same Genesis, but in different languages, and emphasising different aspects, resulting in differing theology, such as disputes over the concept of ‘original sin’ even within Christianity alone. However, the metaphysical explanation for a human being becoming or being innately capable of sin remains the same throughout every Abrahamic Genesis text, and it lies within the intellect.

The intellect is God given, and ‘Satan’, the embodiment of metaphysical evil and the opposition of God, tempts the intellect with promises of knowledge that would result in one becoming like a god themselves, by pursuing what God has made ‘forbidden’. This represents the ego and its tendency toward pride, and a sort of morbid curiosity over what is uncertain to it.

It is also the intellect which leads to sin, not the body. The body may feel urges or pulls toward certain things, but it is the intellect which makes excuses for such urges and feelings, generating rationalisations as to why one can indulge in any particular impulse or temptation. The intellect ultimately governs the body. The intellect is also where one mediates, it is where worship begins, as worship is fundamentally and ultimately the act of giving or placing one’s attention on something or someone. And when one directs their intellect toward anything other than God, one has gone astray. This is how one begins to sin, by not orienting their intellect toward the higher orders, such as Love or trust in God. This is the esoteric meaning behind the Genesis story of how man came to sin.

What about origin story texts other than that of Genesis, do they share a similar metaphysical core? Let us use Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of Creation) in Rig Veda 10.129 as an example;

The text begins in a state beyond duality—no being, no non-being, no time, no space. The text refers to “That One” which existed before creation. This is similar to the Kabalistic concept of ‘Ein-Sof’, which means “Without End” or “Limitless”. It is the absolute, infinite Godhead in Jewish mystical thought. Ein-Soph itself is completely unknowable, beyond attributes and comprehension. It is infinity, transcendence, absolute unity, and the source of all creation. ‘The One’ in Nasadiya Sukta likewise is undifferentiated, beyond existence and non-existence, beyond time, space, and duality and the source from which all creation emerges. Both are beyond comprehension and exist prior to duality. Both metaphysical frameworks teach that creation is emanation, and that the world or created forms arise from the infinite potential of the One.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

-Genesis 1:1

The “beginning” refers to the first emanation of divine light from the infinite, unknowable Godhead. The esoteric meaning is that Genesis is not merely physical creation; it is a map of spiritual unfolding, showing how the Creator manifests in the created.

“God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Genesis 1:3

Similar to the Nasadiya Sukta, where creation arises from “darkness hidden by darkness,” Genesis describes light emerging from concealed Divinity. Both stories reveal that creation is not random; it is a structured unfolding of Divinity into discrete layers so that Divinity can become knowable.

As for mystical practices themselves within separate traditions, does there exist a unifying experience which they all point toward? The seemingly most universal one is that of Divine Love. Across the mystical streams of the three Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—divine love is frequently expressed through the language of romantic intimacy, spousal union, and eros transformed into theology. Mystics in each tradition grappled with the paradox of a transcendent God who nevertheless draws near to the soul with a longing for it; they teach that just as man yearns for God, so does God yearn for man. Rather than treating romantic imagery as merely a metaphorical ornament, these writers often experienced it as the most adequate language available for describing a reality that exceeds conceptual thought. Within all these traditions the soul is the bride, God is the bridegroom, and love becomes the path of union between the two.

In Jewish mysticism, this theme emerges prominently through interpretations of the biblical Song of Songs. Rabbinic tradition, articulated by figures such as Rabbi Akiva, affirmed that the sensual poetry of the text expresses the covenantal love between God and Israel in the Torah. Later Kabbalistic thought deepened this dynamic, portraying divine reality itself as structured through relational longing—the Shekhinah yearning for reunion with the Holy One, and the Jewish devotional life participating in that cosmic romance. Here, love is both historical and metaphysical; the Jewish people are the bride, but also an embodiment of the feminine divine presence seeking restoration.

Christian mysticism inherits the bridal paradigm through both scripture and monastic theology. Medieval and early modern mystics such as St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila wrote of the soul’s journey toward spiritual marriage, culminating in an experiential union where lover and Beloved are inwardly one while remaining distinct. The language of wounds, kisses, and secret encounters permeates their writings, not as psychological projection but as testimony to an encounter with Him. Christ as bridegroom becomes a central figure, and contemplative prayer is understood as participation in the nuptial mystery between God and the human soul.

St Catherine of Sienna, a 14th century Italian mystic and theologian, had Christ place a ring on her finger during one of her mystical visions, symbolising her marriage to Him. She herself was a ‘consecrated virgin’—a form of Catholic monastic life where one consecrates their chastity to God, they are also known as ‘the Brides of Christ’.

Sufism likewise is heaving with symbolism of divine romance. Poets such as Jalal al-Din Rumi and metaphysical thinkers like Ibn Arabi describe the human being as created from divine love and drawn back into it through longing. The imagery of intoxication, yearning, absence, and union pervades Sufi poetry, where the Beloved simultaneously conceals and reveals Himself. Romantic love becomes a school of perception; the ache of separation educates the heart in recognition, and the lover’s annihilation in the Beloved is the mystical state of fanā’ (self-annihilation/dissolution in God).

Across these traditions, several shared patterns emerge. First, romantic language provides a grammar of intimacy capable of holding transcendence and immanence together. Second, longing—often experienced as absence or wound—is not an obstacle but the very engine of spiritual transformation. God enters through the wound, therefore, a heart broken by attachment to the world (absence of Him) becomes a blessing as it is a heart more likely to then turn to Him. Third, union does not erase relationality; instead, it intensifies it, producing what might be called ‘Unity-in-Love.’

Importantly, embodiment remains central; desire, touch, and affective resonance are not transcended so much as transfigured, suggesting that human desire and love are both symbolic and participants in the Divine.

Thus, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics converge in portraying the spiritual life not primarily as obedience, knowledge, or asceticism alone, but as a love story unfolding between God and the human soul. The metaphors differ in nuance, yet the intuition is shared; to know God fully is to be drawn into a relationship that resembles—and ultimately exceeds—the deepest forms of romantic loving.

Within certain currents of Hindu devotionalism too, especially in bhakti traditions, the relationship between the devotee and the divine is articulated through the language of passionate love. A central example is the devotion of the gopīs to Krishna as narrated in texts such as the Bhagavata Purana. Here, divine love is expressed in the mode known as madhurya bhāva, the “sweet” or conjugal mood, where the soul approaches God not as master, parent, or friend, but as the Beloved. The love of Radha for Krishna becomes paradigmatic, her longing, jealousy, union, and separation symbolise the soul’s existential desire for divine intimacy. This devotional grammar transforms romantic imagery into theological language, where erotic metaphors communicate the intensity of spiritual union and the pain of Divinity’s absence.

Within Sufism again, we see poets such as Jalal al-Din Rumi and Hafez employ imagery of wine, intoxication, yearning, and romantic devotion to convey experiences of divine proximity. Within all of this symbolic vocabulary, earthly love becomes an analogical bridge toward understanding the overwhelming attraction of the soul to God. The Sufi concept of ʿishq (passionate love) reframes the spiritual path as a drama of desire, where separation (firāq) intensifies longing and union (wiṣāl) represents moments of annihilating intimacy with the divine presence.

In all of these traditions we see a cultivated theology of longing in which emotional vulnerability is not an obstacle but a privileged mode of knowledge. In bhakti poetry, especially in the songs of figures like Mirabai, devotion often takes the form of an exclusive romantic fidelity to Krishna that transcends social norms, family expectations, and worldly attachments. Similarly, Sufi saints such as Rabia al-Adawiyya, a woman who never married to devote purely to God, articulate a love for God that eclipses all other motivations, even fear of punishment or hope for paradise. The lover seeks God purely for God’s sake, and this purified desire becomes the highest expression of worship, and desire for paradise and fear of hell are eradicated in this all consuming love for Him.

Another similarity lies in the dialectic of presence and absence. In the Hindu devotional imagination, the temporary disappearance of Krishna from the gopīs heightens their love, transforming separation into a deeper form of union. Sufi literature mirrors this dynamic through the metaphor of the absent Beloved whose hiddenness generates yearning. The experience of distance becomes spiritually productive, intensifying remembrance (dhikr) and devotion, and revealing that longing itself is already a form of participation in divine love.

Both Sufism and Hindu traditions also employ poetic and performative practices to cultivate this lover-Beloved relationship; Bhakti traditions utilize kīrtan, ecstatic singing, and narrative reenactment of divine love stories, while Sufi communities practice samāʿ (Sufi whirling), poetry recitation, and rhythmic remembrance. These practices allow participants to embody the emotional landscape of divine romance rather than merely feel or conceptualise it, transforming theology into a fuller affective experience.

Despite theological differences regarding divine ontology and incarnation, the experiential convergence is profound. In both Hindu bhakti and Sufi mysticism, romantic love functions as a metaphor that destabilises the ego and reorients the self toward total love and surrender. The lover’s identity becomes defined by attachment to the Beloved. The language of romantic devotion in both traditions expresses that a devoutly religious life does not mean detachment from romantic love, but a radical intensification of it toward the divine.

Hindu and Islamic mysticism both have another similarity, that of non-dualism. Islamic non-dualism refers to a stream within Sufism that emphasises the ultimate unity of all existence with God. While mainstream Islamic theology maintains a clear distinction between Creator and creation, many Sufi thinkers explored the reality that everything derives from and subsists through the Creator. Thus, non-dualism in Sufism is primarily a language of spiritual perception—how the mystic experiences reality—rather than a metaphysical denial of divine transcendence.

One of the most influential articulations of Sufi non-dualism is the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (unity of being), mentioned previously, which is articulated most profoundly by Ibn Arabi. Ibn Arabi proposes that only God possesses true, independent existence—true Being—and therefore creation is a theophany; the cosmos manifests as diverse self-disclosures of the God (such as His Divine Names and attributes). Creation is therefore not separate from God in an absolute sense, but neither is it simply God—yet it has no independent ontological standing apart from Him. It is sometimes described as a theatre in which God’s realities become visible. Human beings, in this view, are mirrors capable of reflecting divine qualities, and spiritual realisation involves recognising this reflective relationship. The mystic’s realisation consists in perceiving that every form is a locus of divine manifestation. This does not collapse Creator into creation, but it does render all apparent otherness radically dependent and transparent to the Real (al-Ḥaqq).

Earlier mystic figures in Islam also expressed experiential forms of non-duality through symbolic and poetic language. The famous utterance of Mansur al-Hallaj—“I am the Truth” —has often been interpreted as the cry of a mystic whose selfhood had become annihilated in divine awareness, instead of a literal claim to divinity. Sufis read such statements as descriptions of fanāʾ—the dissolution of ego in the presence of God. When the self disappears as an independent center, only the Divine reality is perceived as truly acting and existing.

The works of Rumi portray the lover and Beloved as ultimately inseparable, suggesting that the soul’s yearning is itself a movement of God toward God. Such poetry evokes the intuition that multiplicity is a veil over unity. Non-dual insight thus appears as a transformation of perception in which ordinary distinctions soften within an overwhelming sense of divine intimacy.

Sufi non-dualism has never been monolithic or universally accepted within all of Islam. Some scholars affirmed symbolic interpretations of unity while guarding strict theological transcendence, whereas others embraced more expansive metaphysical readings. Across these differences, however, the central Sufi concern remains experiential; to awaken to God as the only enduring Reality and to live ethically, lovingly, and humbly in response to that realisation.

Hindu non-dualism, particularly as expressed in Advaita Vedānta, centers on the identity of ātman (the deepest self) and Brahman (ultimate reality). The classical formulation is given by Adi Shankara, who systematised the doctrine that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while the world of multiplicity is māyā (illusion)—not unreal in the sense of non-existent, but provisionally real and ultimately dependent. Liberation (moksha) occurs when one realizes that one’s true self is not separate from Brahman. Ignorance (avidyā) creates the illusion of division; knowledge (jnāna) dissolves it.

The contact between Islamic and Hindu non-dual thought becomes historically visible in Mughal India. The Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (1615–1659), deeply influenced by Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysics, sought correspondences between Sufi waḥdat al-wujūd and the Upanishadic teaching of unity. In his work Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn (“The Mingling of the Two Oceans”), he argued that Sufi and Vedāntic metaphysics converge in affirming a single ultimate Reality underlying all forms. He also sponsored Persian translations of the Upanishads, believing them to contain ancient wisdom compatible with Qur’anic esotericism. Through such exchanges, Islamic and Hindu thinkers encountered one another not merely politically but metaphysically.

Islamic and Hindu non-dualism each articulate a vision in which ultimate Reality is one, indivisible, and all-encompassing—yet they arrive there through distinct theological grammars. In both traditions, multiplicity is not denied but relativised, the many are seen as manifestations, disclosures, or dependent appearances of the One. The world is real, yet its reality is not self-subsisting. The seeker’s path, in both religions, involves a transformation of perception in which the illusion of separateness dissolves.

Despite resonances, important differences remain. Islamic non-dualism retains a strong sense of divine personality and revelation; God freely creates and speaks, and the Qur’an remains the decisive disclosure of truth. Even in Ibn ʿArabī, the distinction between Creator and creature is never erased—it is reinterpreted as a distinction within unity. By contrast, Advaita Vedānta ultimately subordinates all attributes, forms, and personal conceptions of the divine to the impersonal, attributeless (nirguna) Brahman. Devotional theism exists within Hinduism, but in strict Advaita it functions as a provisional aid to realisation rather than the final metaphysical truth.

Both traditions articulate a profound vision of ontological unity: only the Real truly is. Both see ignorance as the root of perceived separation, and both propose contemplative realisation as the path to awakening. Yet Islamic non-dualism frames unity within a relational monotheism grounded in prophecy and revelation, while Advaita Vedānta frames it as the discovery that self and absolute are ultimately identical.

How does one unify all metaphysical interpretations of religions, and mystical experiences throughout differing religions—and, should one do such a thing in the first place? Well, Perennialism is not a condonement of mixing religions or attempting to syncretise them, as that dilutes them and their meaning. In contrast to new age movements, perennialism does not seek to secularise spiritually. This is considered an absolute bastardisation of all spiritual practices and traditions.

Instead, each of the many religions themselves condense metaphysical truth into one highly concentrated form, making it a much more accessible path to the Absolute. As opposed to taking multiple practices and theological segments from different paths and watering them down through stripping them from their original religious context, and mixing them together in these new neutered forms. Therefore, sticking to one already formally mapped out tradition (religion) is highly beneficial, even if every religion has exoteric flaws that have been noted throughout history to cause suffering and schism.

This is because metaphysical truth requires a form through which it can successfully unfold, and one can only understand its unfolding within a certain tradition if one devotes oneself to it, and then, and only then, can one transcend one tradition and recognise the path in another toward the same Truth.

Thus, one can hypothetically practise yogic nyasa and pray the rosary as a form of daily religious practice, but to live like this only yields fruits if one commits to a tradition properly, and therefore can be actually initiated into its higher function as a gateway to the ultimate Reality. This isn’t to say that perennialists can’t believe one path to be superior to the other, and indeed perennialists have made such claims, with prominent perennialist figures converting to Islam. But the ultimate claim is that each tradition is true insofar as it holds truth, which it can only do insofar as it points to the same Ultimate Truth. Which may be accessed more smoothly or perfectly in one path compared to another.

How God reveals himself to another is not for an individual to know, one can only recognise Him as He unfolds Himself to them.