watch where you are going. do not

drop the grapefruit. check from the corner of your left eye

for the car of the man who tried to abduct you yesterday.

do not let your grandfather

hit your grandmother. you are not alive yet

but this does not mean it isn’t your problem. get grapefruit juice

all over your hands. your hands are sticky now. do not

touch anything. when a little girl stares at you

stare back. smile. let the juice squirt out of the sides

of your mouth.

save the peel and the bitter white bits

in your pocket. later you will use them to

feed the earth. later, you will use your body to feed the earth. your grandfather has already done this, but

you will need to do it again.

your grandfather is a complete stranger.

turn the corner. realise you have forgotten

what day it is. make sure your grandfather isn’t watching. he is

dead, but that has never stopped him from watching. your hands are

sticky. lick them, even if your grandfather is watching.

you can be a little girl. or

you can be a complete stranger. but not both.

please, never both.

never both.

most people have no idea what a parasocial relationship is.

which is why you get everyone wanting to give their hot take opinion about a woman whose public image was all they ever knew.

yes, i’m yet another person inserting my voice into the conversation about carolyn elliott—a woman whom i only worked with briefly, back in 2019. my brief, shallow relationship with her wasn’t enough for me to know her deeply. reading her book wasn’t enough for me to know her deeply.

since i first became a ritual embodiment facilitator and stated crafting a public image, i have experienced a shocking degree of entitlement and vampirism that has affected me more deeply than i ever thought having a public image could.

and i haven’t experienced even a fraction of the publicity that elliott did.

our public image or brand is a spell of sorts. call it an avatar, or a doppelganger, or a hologram if you will. if a doppelganger gets hurt, it affects the conjurer—sympathetic magic 101. we tend to give people’s doppelgangers too much power. we forget that there’s an actual human conjuring it. we forget that humans are fallible, and generally suck at wielding power.

in the words of confucius: never give a sword to a man who cannot dance.

dance isn’t a frivolous activity. it’s a complex social-emotional cognitive process. dance is about more than just looking good and nailing fancy moves. dance is about coordination, expression, synergy. to borrow a term from cynthia borgeault, dance ‘drops the mind into the heart.’

now, just because humans totally suck at wielding power doesn’t actually give anyone a pass. it doesn’t mean we don’t hold problematic teachers and public figures acountable to their impact. it doesn’t mean we don’t comment on ariana grande’s increasingly skeletal figure or wear t-shirts that say ‘free kesha.’ let’s not act like the holograms of the commons have no impact or influence on our lives, or even something important to say about the collective unconscious.

even if the notion of reality-as-collective dreaming feels a little bit woo to you, you’re not above being impacted by celebrity culture. maybe you think people should shut up about celebrity drama or carolyn elliott, but i will plainly state that i think you are wrong. we need to have some degree of discource, collective process, and reflection about public figures, because their influence is undeniable.

i didn’t have any direct negative experiences with elliott, but i know there are people who did. i also know people who found her work really positive and transformational. this is true for pretty much every teacher who has been labelled as problematic, or public figure who has been cancelled.

the evilest person you can think of has a mother who loves them. the evilest person you know has something to teach you. the evilest person you know probably needs your help.

i’ve had teachers who tried to empower me from a place of unconscious, covert racism. i’ve had coaches give me life advice motivated by their jealousy of me. i’ve had esoteric guidance from people with over 25 years of experience do profound psychological damage to me that I am still working to heal. all i can do is feel sad about it—sad that they were in so much pain that they could do nothing else but cause harm to another.

i know the names—chogyam trungpa, osho, nicole daedone, soryu forall. i know the terminology—high-control group, negging, scapegoating, covert narcissism. i know that life doesn’t come without risks. i know it’s best to kill your idols. i know being an adult means it’s teachnically up to me my discernment whether or not i keep being in relationship to a teacher that might be causing me harm. i know people who consciously choose to stay in relationship with harm-causers despite the harm it brings to them.

i know that most harm comes from ignorance and delusion, and very little of it stems from intentional predation.

what i don’t know is why it is so easy for us to harm each other.

i don’t know why it is so hard for us to have a taste of power and do something genuinely honourable with it.

i don’t know why power is so attractive, so elusive, so sexy, so dangerous.

believe it or not, the legend of zelda has wisdom about this.

it’s not a non-sequitur; stay with me.

the core storyline that ties together thirty years of narratologically unrelated video games is the simple plot point of a wizard craving power. however, power is held in balance by two other qualities—wisdom and courage. without wisdom and courage to hold it in check, power becomes dangerous. the entire franchise is about the characters who represent wisdom and courage trying to stop the evil, power-hungry wizard from doing what it does when it’s left to its own devices.

in more concise terms: i bet demon king ganon is a terrible dancer.

the best teachers don’t just know this about power—they teach it. beyond merely teaching it, they embody it. good teachers are skeptical of power. good teachers won’t give you a taste of power unless they know you will use it with positive intentions and the least amount of harm to self and others. good teachers will probably not even show you how powerful they are, because most of the time, it doesn’t actually matter.

a good teacher views power as relative and goodness (wisdom/courage) as fundamental. another way of saying it is that a good teacher puts their own goodness-cultivation practise first, and accumulates power relative to that goodness.

we have to believe that each being has potential and is fundamentally good at heart. even those we deem problematic. even those whom we believe we know but in reality, don’t know the first thing about.

we have to hold people accountable for their actions from a place of knowing their intrinsic goodness.

maybe the most important thing about holding others accountable isn’t that we focus on how much power they do or don’t have, but that we support them in using that power in a balanced way.

this is a hard pill to swallow, and an even harder code to live by, but how we do this isn’t actually by calling them out, cancelling them, or stripping their power away.

it’s by teaching them how to dance.

happy underworlding.

we have been sold a lie—and it is called ‘reality.’

you know the one: the one that says that only what we can perceive, measure, and make sense of is what is worth putting energy into.

you know the one: the one that keeps you safe from ‘going crazy’—or what’s worse, being seen as crazy.

you know the one: the one that was installed in you far before you can remember. the one that was installed to keep you in check—to keep you pristine and controlled and dolled up for approval.

it’s not a problem, really…until you wake up and realise that all of these years, you have been abandoning yourself.

abandoning the deeper knowing in you.

limiting yourself to what is deemed acceptable by others.

doing what ‘makes sense’ instead of what makes your heart sing.

enough.

it is not about you, actually, and what you think will keep you safe.

it is not about you, and what might get you the approval of others.

it is not about you, and your desire to achieve arbitrary markers of success.

this is about your devotion to the world.

your impact as a being in an endless net of beings.

your ability to shape reality.

lover, dreamer, one who knows with the heart and bones—

what will you do with this great power that you never asked for?

my friend, i too am tired of fighting.

how selfish it can feel—to care about your own personal reality when there are so many big problems in the world.

how discouraging—when you don’t feel seen, recognised, or supported in your vision.

how enraging—to watch the world burn and feel powerless to do anything to actually help.

i, too, am tired of fighting.

but i’m not ready to give up, either.

i have found solace in the act of creative ritual.

i have healed through contemplative practise.

i have been able to bring joy to those i share my creations with.

my friend, liberation doesn’t happen when we dismantle systems, or when the powers that be are finally held accountable, or when something else out there in the world changes.

liberation is right here, right now, in the simple act of creation.

this is not an easy time to be alive for anyone.

no matter how privileged you are, nobody with even a fraction of a connection to their own soul can be fully present with what’s happening in the world and be okay.

it’s especially not easy for sensitive, empathic, intuitive, neuroqueer, disabled, and global majority folks—especially especially if those people are also artists.

artists see the world not just as it is, but as it could be.

• you see the possibilities…and get discouraged when things don’t come to immediate fruition.

• you see the potential in others…and feel betrayed when they fail to reach it.

• you see your own gifts and strengths…and overwhelm yourself trying to figure out how to actually apply them towards your vision.

my friend, i am here to tell you that you must keep going.

it’s people like us that the world needs right now.

there is no need to worry.

you are not alone.

what is BLOOM?

BLOOM is an all-access pass to all three vehicles of support for creative intuitives:

• THE DIAPHANOUS EDGE, a monthly ritual art salon that uses contemplative practise and guided prompts to feed your creative fire;

• RITUAL EMBODIMENT LABS, a monthly workshop where you’ll learn techniques to imbue your creative practise with magic;

• CREATIVE LIBERATION CALLS, personalised sessions tailored to your specific vision, goals, and challenges.

if you want to go from being a dreamer to being a doer,

from being overwhelmed to overcoming,

from confusion to clarity,

and to liberate others along the way…

you are exactly who this was made for.

with BLOOM, you will:

• disrupt negative cycles of thought and perception that block you from enacting your creative vision

• create effective rituals of support rooted in both ancient wisdom and modern science

• become a guiding light and a source of hope for others in dark times

• live a creative and authentic life that is liberatory, inspiring, and full

BLOOM includes:

• access to both ritual art practise groups for a full year ($660 value)

• 2 90-minute one-on-one calls per month (24 total), personally tailored to your unique purpose, lifestyle, and vision ($6000 value)

• a 35 page Digital Media Package, including 3 original ritual theory articles, my research references, a recommended media list, 10 journal prompts, and 8 guided practise recordings ($50 value)

• a complimentary tarot deck, notebook, and pen ($50 value)

the estimated value of this package is $6,763.

i am charging $6,500 for it.

(it’s just a much cooler number.)

payment & plans

pay $6,500 in full

pay in 2 instalments of $3,250

pay an $1,500 deposit, then 4 payments of $1,200

pay an $1,100 deposit, then 6 payments of $900

or design your own payment plan during the intake session

‘but how will i know if this is for me?’

you won’t know for sure until you try, so here’s my gift to you:

if you’re interested in BLOOM, start by dropping into the monthly groups. i’ll welcome you to one ritual embodiment lab and one ritual art salon as my guest—no need to pay the fee. just use the code MAYBE-BLOOM to register for the next two upcoming workshops:

[sign up for the diaphanous edge]

[sign up for a ritual embodiment lab]

if you like those, the next step will be to book a 60-minute complimentary call with me, to discuss your vision, goals, and challenges. it’s essentially a vibe check to see if we’re a good fit for this kind of work.

[book a 60-minute vibe check]

at the end of that call, i’ll ask if you’re ready to BLOOM. if the answer is yes, we’ll take it from there. if the answer is no—thank goodness you tried!

ritual is overrated.

just because something is dressed in fancy robes…

just because it uses fancy language…

just because it’s passed through a lineage…

doesn’t mean it’s going to magically make your problems, or the world’s problems, go away.

its doesn’t mean you are better than others for doing it.

and it doesn’t mean you ‘get it now.’

now that that’s out of the way:

ritual is also underrated.

before therapy, before trauma healing, before dance, art, and theatre (as we know them today)…

there was ritual.

ritual is the mother of all expressive, creative modalities.

the first art forms were mystical, esoteric, and ritualistic in nature.

ritual is what gives art meaning,

what gives life purpose,

what binds us to the world in sacred marriage.

so, what then?

how can we engage the actual power of ritual…without deluding or corrupting ourselves?

how do we support our creative vision and authentic desires…from a place of devoted service?

how do we engage a changing, cracking, crumbling world…without either pessimism or saviourism and delusions of grandeur?

i might have an idea.

what are the ritual embodiment labs?

ritual embodiment labs are a space to practise deep listening to unseen impulses and open the imagination to the possibilities beyond our conditioning. by confronting and liberating what we have hidden from ourselves, we become freer to choose, express, and orient to the world with presence and authenticity.

each month, we will meet for 3 hours via zoom to learn new movement meditation techniques based on the theme of that month. the first hour will be slow and meditative, the second hour will be expressive and experimental, and the final hour will give us a chance to express freely and share about our experiences.

using practises and techniques inspired by butoh, contact improvisation, experimental theatre, buddhist and christian meditation, and my autodidactic research into ritual, the ritual embodiment labs will grant you

• greater aliveness

• deeper relational presence

• exquisite self-mastery

• more creative ways of thinking, being, and doing

protocols for our time together

☆ arrive on time dressed in comfortable clothing. this will make it easier to sustain our trance state.

☆ bring a water bottle and eat well. tend to yourself in the days before to the best of your ability, as some of these practises may be taxing or challenging for some bodies. if you need to stop or take breaks during our practise, please do so.

☆ during this practise we will be reaching beyond the veil of the seen and inviting our senses to track subtle powers underlying the material. Bring an item that is meaningful to you in some way--ideally something that represents the Otherworld, underworld, or other unseen forces.

themes, dates & times

VOID

Oct 4th 2026. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

April 25 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

Trance begins in the place beyond place, in a time outside of time. Before accumulating new skills, perspectives, and qualities of embodiment, students will first be led to forget everything they think they know about being in a body. From here, they will re-learn and re-imagine their potential for expression, relationship, and movement.

VESSEL

Nov 15 2026. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

May 9 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

What does it mean to fill, to hold, to contain? What subtle shifts occur when we move as a vessel for forces beyond the tactile world? This session will encourage students to explore the qualities of emptiness, fullness, containment, and integrity as they invoke what seeks to move through them.

FLOW

Dec 13 2026. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

June 6 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

What is it like to shift shape, to be contained, to distribute the agency of movement to forces beyond? The body is a container of fluid and space. Having related more deeply with emptiness and containment, students will now explore what it is like to fully yield, surrendering the body to the forces of gravity and momentum.

FLAME

Jan 17 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

July 11 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

Energy, warmth, friction, and impact are all qualities of an interesting dance. In this session, students will notice what it is like to bring tension, push, and heat into their movement, as they learn to bring discomfort, unpredictability, and edges into the dance.

OTHER

Feb 14 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

Aug 8 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

How do we dance with that which we cannot see? We do not dance in a vacuum; we dance as whole-parts in an interconnected web of complexity. In this session, students will dive deeper into relationship with unseen forces, such as ancestors, memories, mythic beings, and more.

CENTRE

March 14 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

Sept 12 2027. 6p - 9p. [sign up]

In a distributed network of aliveness, what element can be accurately classified as “centre?” From an “extended body” perspective, the centre is both everywhere and nowhere at once. In this final session, students will play with techniques for re-distributing weight, oscillating attention, and leading from various systems of the body.

pricing & plans

half-year pass

the 6 workshops will be offered in two cycles. the first will be from oct 2026 to feb 2027. the second will be from april 25 2027 to september 12th 2027. get a half-year pass and attend either the first or second cycle.

register for $125 (get 1 class free)

all-access pass

sometimes, exploring a theme once is not enough. get an all-access pass and attend all 12 classes this year—that’s 2 classes per theme.

register for $250 (get 2 classes free)

BLOOM pass

when you sign up for BLOOM—a package that gives you 1 year of complete access to both of my ritual art workshop series in addition to 24 one-on-one peer support sessions—all 12 SOMATAXY workshops are included in your package. join the waitlist to be informed when BLOOM launches.

in what way do the bones know?

and as for the belly,

if it knew

how would it say so?

after all what does it matter

whether matter or mind when

everything known can be twisted and bent like the

trunk of a storm-ravaged birch—

when the rot of a storm-ravaged trunk,

and the memory of the storm and the rot,

and the rememberer and the remembrance

all can

also

die?

in what way do the dead know

of the being-with,

of the here-now,

and the growing-towards,

and the dance step never learned,

arising as the dancer

becomes the dance?

what does the dancer know?

whatever it is,

it is forgotten

as soon as it is said.

say nothing, then,

and dance instead.

relationality is not an abstraction.

it is not something we build.

it is not something we need.

it is not the solution to all our problems.

it will not save us.

relationship is the emergent field we are swimming in.

it is the baseline of our reality.

it is the default ontological assumption we ought to be making.

and yet the rhetoric that we must ‘build community’ is inescapable, rampant in most so-called ‘conscious’ circles, as if it is something we enact rather than a truth we must align our perception with.

why do we struggle with feelings of alienation even amongst our closest loved ones?

why do intentional communities fail again and again?

why do folks continue to espouse the gospel of community, community, but shrivel or cancel or become discouraged at the first sign of conflict?

if relationality is the default, why do we experience fragmentation?

in this 90-minute ritual art play workshop, we’ll examine these questions—by exploring the relationship between interdependence, invocation, and rites of communion.

the magic circle: invocation and the relational field

23 aug 2026 @ 6:30pm ET

what and who is in the room with us right now? the truth is there is nothing that is not in the room with us. in this session we will attempt to articulate a felt sense of relationality, reciprocity, and kinship through the practise of invocation.

[sign up]

you will need:

• a writing utensil and a journal

• space to move freely (if you choose to practise somatic storytelling)

• a device with wifi connectivity

• a present mind, open heart, and nourished body

THE DIAPHANOUS EDGE—

formerly known as ‘Alchemical Writing’—is a monthly poetry and ritual theory group that supports artists, healers, scholars and seekers with self-exploration, creative expansion, and relational field tending.

we engage ritual theory, mystical practise, meditation, and mythology as pathways to introspection, contemplation, transformation, and expression.

if you’re ready to make the art that will shift reality, liberate those you love—and most of all, confront you with the real—join us for an evening of journalling, play, art sharing, and free expression.

have questions? learn more about the group here:

happy underworlding.

these days i am in a different

kind of love. the kind that does not announce itself so

loudly. the kind that is less of an exploding star

in the chest and

more of a warm caress from gravity. the kind that

stands in the kitchen and invites you to eat bread

smothered in oil covered in pink salt straight

from its hands. the kind that

brushes the eyelash from your cheek and says make a wish

that says come in and warm up before you go the kind

that keeps you standing in the kitchen for hours eating

bread smothered in oil laughing yourself to

death while it makes a big pot of soup. you stand

in the kitchen and laugh so much you forget to call the

cab. you forget to go home because you

don’t need to because you are

already there.

this article was originally published to my discontinued newsletter, HYPERPHANTASIA, on 22 August 2025. i will be reposting some old articles for the next several weeks while i am away at a meditation retreat. enjoy!

to put it succinctly: i am an elder zoomer, of the post-“god-is-dead” generation; i am the freak priest.

a ‘world without god’ has proven itself to be not only totally boring, but a damn near total void—and not in the dark-mother-worshipping-goddess-cults-of-the-ancient-world kind of way. no, this void is not interested in the birthing of the new—only the destruction of the old, and anything else that does not submit to its insatiable desire for total domination. i must admit that it is much easier to deal with this void when you’re labelled as a depressed person. how cruel is it to not only build a world whose sole purpose is to imprison and enslave the spirit of nature, but to blame those who respond to this reality with a grief so pure, it marries the bones to their resting place?

i’m not the first to make the declaration that mental illness is, in part, a flawed concept. in a society that perpetuates said illness on a mass scale, focussing solely on the individual’s responsibility for their own wellness is beyond evil. foucault makes the argument that those who we deem to be mentally ill today are the shamans of yesteryear. jungian analyst jerome bernstein calls them “borderland personalities.” i just call it being human.

human.

i always fancied myself a magical goblin, or a precocious orphan from an alien planet, like a protagonist i would read about during maths class instead of listening to the lectures. existing at all was something that deeply puzzled me; existing as a regular human was something that deeply bothered me. what good was a world without dragons? why not allow a select few persons the ability to transform into an animal? what was my purpose, if anything? i remember asking my mother this question. “i feel like I’ve come here to do something, but i can’t remember what it is. do you?”

naturally, mom didn’t have an answer.

surely this predisposition for existential angst was a sign that i had superpowers, and they were going to kick in soon. but the gospel according to adults was that i asked too many questions. my head was in the clouds. i said things i wasn’t supposed to say; i didn’t understand why i wasn’t supposed to say them, and most times, i wouldn’t get a reason if I asked.

in some ways, a child is to an adult as a churchgoer is to a priest. there is a way, and you must follow that way, even as it stirs a tumult within you. divergences from the way are to be reported to the main office immediately. the consequences for being yourself very well might not be worth it; the shame game is so often shoot-to-kill. perhaps most confusing of all is that the guidance of a priest or a parent is always in your best interest—even when it isn’t.

humans sure do love their priests.

i don’t believe in false priests—only real ones whose messages get either lost in translation or distorted by an unhealthy ego. alternatively, misguided prophets share messages to those who don’t need them, or who aren’t ready to hear them yet. one of my godmothers comes to mind; talk about the freak priest gone awry. a brilliant soul whose unfiltered light blinded all who encountered it, she named herself for the egyptian goddess of truth and justice—and strived to live up to the act. she had a particular scent, and it has managed to burrow into the deep layers of my unconscious, like a plantar wart. the slightest whiff of egyptian musk still makes me nauseous.

i didn’t want to become like her. so, naturally, i became allergic to god—that is, unless they were embedded in one of my beloved fictional worlds. though my godmother did her best to control the way my sisters and i explored spirituality—even managing to convince my mother that watching certain television shows would inspire us to “devil worship”—i found my way to the right practice, thanks to the power of popular culture.

it’s funny to think that my interest in esoteric spirituality started with a japanese cartoon. fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood an anime series based on the eponymous manga by hiromu arakawa, has a lot of easter eggs for those who are familiar with alchemy, a philosophical system with origins in ancient egypt that has played a huge role in the development of what we now call natural science. i am now far more studied in the history and practices of alchemy than when i first came across the series, and when i returned to it during a recent period of poor health and inactivity, i could see that arakawa clearly did her research. the in-world lore of “the western/eastern sage” is clearly based on hermes trismegistus, the main mythic figure of european renaissance alchemy. from carvings on doors to tattoos and national flags, everything in the show is either inspired by or directly taken from symbols used in renaissance alchemy. if it weren’t for this story, i may not have made the fateful google searches that would eventually lead me to the work of some of the greatest occult scholars in the west—carl jung, rudolph steiner, and manly palmer hall, among others.

i often wonder about the anime-nerd-to-religious-scholar pipeline, but to say that i owe all my interest in the esoteric arts to television is of course, a gross reduction. i was raised in an afrocentric spiritualist household by two vegetarian artists. i certainly wasn’t going to enter the world without at least a mildly post-conformist bent. i am also of the second generation of digital natives; i wasn’t subjected to whatever was on television. i could kiss my parents’ spirituality goodbye if i was so inclined—and i was—for the internet allowed me to follow my curiosities down whatever rabbit holes my little freak priest heart desired. was this an escape from the loneliness of a childhood spent clueless and fearful, thrashing about in the murky waters of the neurotypical social order? sure. but it wasn’t entirely misguided. i figured if i knew the secret formulas of the psyche, i’d finally have a leg up on being this thing called human.

humans. some believe we’ve gotten more intelligent, but i would argue we’ve forgotten how to be wise. we have the most advanced technology the world has ever seen, and we’re only getting more advanced in this regard. our natural-scientific understanding of the world is getting richer and broader every day, and yet it is used to build weapons of mass destruction. we have not just models, but metamodels; not just theories, but metatheories; not just cognition, but metacognition. we can easily travel internationally…across a rapidly degenerating and irrevocably damaged biosphere. we have ethnocultural chaos, festering global fascism, and the mental health crisis that keeps on giving.

now’s about the time for your superpowers to kick in, if they haven’t already.

well, what of the freak priest—trembling with impatience in the wings, waiting to be unleashed as a deus ex machina upon the so-called post-god world?

how can there be a priest with no god? suppose the freak priest is the priest of the no-god: the god that lives from absentia, like a dead father watching his children from heaven above. or hell below, or across the street. whatever direction, relative to whatever location. i digress; absence is another form of presence. the no-god inspires us to say, “well, it’s not like stewardship of the earth is a one-man job, anyway….” it never was. that’s the illusion that ‘killed’ god in the first place.

well, what of the freak priest—turning away from the paradise in the sky and toward the church in the dirt?

the word “freak” likely originated from a middle english slang term for one who suddenly and frequently changes his mind. you might think that’s too much of a non-sequitur, but i can relate it pretty directly to the nature of the deity of the renaissance alchemists. mercurius, a figure directly based on the hellenistic hermes trismegistus, is highly changeable. he is named for the greek trickster and messenger, after all. think about the relationship between trickster and the modern-day meaning of freak, and the connection, hopefully, becomes more obvious.

we’ve come full circle.

this is how we roll—in allegiance to one axiom and one alone: as above, so below. do not ask whether or not all things are related—ask how. and if all things are related, it matters not that god is dead. it matters not that lives appear to unfold in linear fashion towards a seemingly endless void. it matters not that death is, because there are no endings in this world—only changes.

this is what it means to be the freak priest: we cannot resurrect God, but we can become them. like god, the freak priest is only one—compositae, like the head of a daisy—and like god, it is therefore also many. for when god died—as ouranos, as pan gu, as tacutsi nakawe—their body became the world. their hair became the grass, their blood the rivers and streams.

and all the little bugs on god’s body? those became the people.

as the little bug-children of god, it’s our job to uphold their legacy. we are the little-bug alchemists, humble servants of the church in the dirt, shouldering the impossible task of transforming lead into gold.

the great work can only be started, never finished. we walk not a fresh road as the freak priest; we follow in the footsteps of god.

happy underworlding.

the deer in my visions keep saying ‘let’s eat together’

as if it weren’t a profound ceremonial act of love. the

one that refuses to eat is in protest, begging

to be fed—a request for evidence

of what’s kept at arm’s length. to chase is to push away.

to demand is to neglect. all this unlit fire

was just waiting

for a reason to scream, but there was never

a need. the scream is life trying to

liberate itself from frantic fingers that scratch away the

surface searching

for meaning; not everything is an omen. maybe just

watch the birds for once. the truth was never hidden in

the shape of a murmuration. it was always front and

centre, in the noticing.

this article was originally published to my discontinued newsletter, HYPERPHANTASIA, on 22 August 2025. i will be reposting some old articles for the next several weeks while i am away at a meditation retreat. enjoy!

“i want to inhale the stars and choke on the dust of all the lives they held.”

it’s a quote painted on one of the rafter beams of the awarehouse—the communal event space at everland, where i moved four months ago. it’s funny, in a dark sort of way—considering that the other night, i had the most severe asthma attack i’ve had since i was 19. i clung to the teachings of my naturopathic upbringing—drink nettles, pour eucalyptus oil into some hot water and inhale the steam, don’t lie down, don’t fall asleep—for as many hours as i could before i finally cracked and asked my friend to drive me to the emergency room.

i was taught to be strong, that i could handle anything, that i did not need the pharmaceutical or medical industries.

sometimes it’s wiser to be weak.

i have desperately wanted to take my health into my own hands for several years. unfortunately, i’m broke as a joke, and i am quite particular about how i want to be cared for. i want the plants and animals to save me, but sometimes all that helps is to be hooked up to a machine that pumps you full of steroidal bronchodilators, giggling like it’s your first time standing in the coke line of the women’s bathroom—internally, of course, so you don’t seem uncool.

i’ll admit that a lot of my chronic health issues have to do with thinking that developing anorexia nervosa was some kind of a power move. i knew that spending the first half of my life malnourished on purpose would atrophy my bones, obliterate my gut, dry out my skin, cause cognitive issues, blah blah, duh. i had the internet. i didn’t care, because destroying my body felt strangely empowering. i was taught to be strong, that i could handle anything, that my body did not need what it thought it needed, did not know what it thought it knew.

the sick body is much wiser than we care to admit.

one of my best friends drove me to the ER yesterday. this same friend has mentioned the word “chronic pain” to me every time we’ve seen each other, ever since i asked him a few weeks ago if he suffers from it.

apparently, no one had ever thought to ask him this. despite his morning aches and brain fog and blatantly obvious connective tissue problems, no one has thought to ask him this. and of course, he’s never thought to advocate for himself. because in today’s america, if a man in the labour force is honest about his chronic pain, he’s “making excuses.”

making excuses.

before i moved to asheville, my mother confessed that over the course of my life, she’d been advised by several sources to have me evaluated for autism. but she resisted. “i didn’t want you to use it as an excuse for why you couldn’t succeed in life.” ableism is insidious, isn’t it? it’ll have a mother convinced that her disabled child will be less disabled if their disability is ignored.

autistic people are more at risk for autoimmune conditions, connective tissue disorders, specific kinds of anxiety that cannot be treated generally, and eating disorders. the neurodiversity paradigm tends to focus on advocating for autistic strengths—a necessary enantiodromic response to age-old misunderstandings and stigmas surrounding autism. but the condition is still disabling, even if just due to the lack of autism-inclusive social infrastructure. i will grieve for the rest of my life that i was not diagnosed until adulthood. my mother grieves right along with me; she didn’t know better.

what’s the difference between an excuse and an explanation? between a label and a limiting belief? between weakness and wisdom, between strength and folly?

what is so fucking scary about being ill?

i have a friend from the northeast who has hEDS. it affects every part of her bone structure, especially her spine and pelvis. when she first received this diagnosis, she lost a lot of friends. it wasn’t until the social isolation and lack of financial opportunity caused her to move away that an old friend finally reached back out, finally confessed as to why he and the others walked away when she most needed them.

“it wasn’t because of something you did,” he told her. “it was because we knew that what’s happening to you would eventually happen to all of us. we weren’t ready to face the inevitability of our own deaths.”

we weren’t ready to face the inevitability of our own deaths.

ableism is death anxiety.

i chatted with my friend today about the difference between earth-based cultures that revere the dead and respect death, and so-called “civilizations” that obsess over immortality and having longer lifespans. ironically, civilisations (who tend to take pride in increased individual lifespans) have relatively short lifespans (>300 years) compared to the more tribalistic cultures that are humanity’s origins (we spent hundreds of thousands of years as hunter-gatherers. hundreds of thousands).

if you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it.

it reads like a taoist proverb, but it’s from the gospel of luke. ancient wisdom is like that—it speaks as many languages as it needs to. sometimes it speaks the language of weakness, of illness, of death. of that which we’d rather not see.

i want to inhale the stars and choke on the dust of all the lives they held.

it’s a statement in reverence of death. i can’t read it otherwise, not after 24 hours without enough breath.

memento mori.

happy underworlding.

letting things fall away doesn’t always mean letting them go.

letting things go doesn’t always mean letting them end.

because relationship is not a problem to be solved

a prize to be won

a game to be played

or a machine to pilot.

it is a force of nature.

a magnetic pulse heard across timespace

ringing the ears and trembling the skull until it shines.

an invisible tether

an echo of the heart song

resounding in the cavity between our face and our mask.

a force that binds us whether we notice it or not,

that calls us to trust the way we trust a morning glory to sleep in the absence of light,

or a sunflower to turn towards its namesake.

letting things fall away can mean trusting them to return when it’s time.

letting things go can mean letting them all the way in.

sometimes the right distance is all the way up close,

but unless we hold on with loose hands, how can we know?

the hollow body: death practise and creative liberation

31 july 2026 @ 6:30pm ET

it all starts with death. before we can fill with new information and learn new ways of being, we must leave at the door everything we think we already know. how will we choose to experience this precious and fragile human life? let’s allow death to show us the way.

REGISTER FOR THIS SESSION

THE DIAPHANOUS EDGE—

formerly known as ‘Alchemical Writing’—is a monthly poetry and ritual theory group that supports artists, healers, scholars and seekers with self-exploration, creative expansion, and relational field tending.

we engage ritual theory, mystical practise, meditation, and mythology as pathways to introspection, contemplation, transformation, and expression.

if you’re ready to make the art that will shift reality, liberate those you love—and most of all, confront you with the real—join us for an evening of journalling, play, art sharing, and free expression.

have questions? learn more about the group here:

happy underworlding.

i have always loved those little bands that

hold fresh vegetables together. when i was a child and

all the vegetables were gone, i wrapped the band around

my wrist and

wore it until it fell off on its own or i simply grew

tired of wearing it. you’ve always said

‘let’s eat together’ like an elk among brothers and

now i always eat with you

even when you are not here. when all the

vegetables are gone you wrap the band around my wrist

without

thinking, like you are knighting me one of your

brothers.

i do not know how long the quiet and i will eat

together or

how long i will wear the band around my wrist. it will

fall off

on its own or i will simply grow tired of

wearing it. perhaps you will wander forever

or perhaps you will

someday long for rest and take the empty seat at the

table

across from me. when all the vegetables are gone you’ll

see my naked wrist and

wrap the band around it without thinking. i’ll wear it

until i fall off on my own or

until it

simply grows tired of holding me.

this article was originally published to my discontinued newsletter, HYPERPHANTASIA, on 8 March 2025. i will be reposting some old articles for the next several weeks while i am away at a meditation retreat. enjoy!

i let things get out of hand—and by that, i mean let him get his hands all over me.

i shouldn’t have, or at least i keep thinking that. i don’t know why I keep thinking that. i don’t know why i flinch every time my back remembers the pressure of his arm, wrapped around it. he wraps his arm around my back and wakes up the mean voice. she’s mean, yes, but she means well. she only wants to make sure that he is not here to ruin me, the way men are so wont to.

i don’t care what she has to say about it. i want to soften. i want to have fun.

in the morning, he drops me back at home, like a branch releasing a leaf. there’s this bitter taste in my mouth now—not quite regret, not quite relief. why do i feel like i’ve touched the good china, like i’ve gotten fingerprints on the mona lisa, like i’ve fed bread to the ducks? why do i feel like the branch that dropped the leaf—like i’ve been marked, swiveled, bent, twisted, changed?

i woke up on thursday morning with an itch in my lungs. not the kind you get when you’re sick, but the kind you get when you’re healing. quit vaping for a little under a week and all those spongy pink cells will start to grow back. the nerves will come alive again, nerves you didn’t know you had until you stop poisoning yourself or until he wraps his whole arm around your back.

i forget who first told me that grief was stored in the lungs.

i don’t smoke anymore. i guess i could start crying instead.

my lenten sacrifices are all things i needed a good excuse to give up anyway—vaping, sugar, tobacco, alcohol, cannabis. i don’t have a regular relationship to these things, but that doesn’t mean my relationship to them is healthy. as this fast begins, another seems to be meeting its expiration date. an involuntary fast—the kind you inherit in your innocence. the kind you agree to, even if you’re starving yourself of essential nutrients.

you don’t realise you’ve agreed to it until you learn to speak to ghosts.

once you learn to speak to ghosts, you start hearing them everywhere. ghosts speak in between dreams, in crow calls and offerings of milk. you don’t realise how haunted you are until you try to talk your way out of being haunted, or until someone wraps his whole arm around your back.

you have to cough up a whole lot of poison before you can really breathe again. crying helps. it can be hard to tell if you’re crying because he wrapped his whole arm around your back or because you remember everyone who ever did because of him. i keep thinking i shouldn’t have, i shouldn’t have—to the rhythm of my sobs, to the rhythm of my heartbeat. one for every loogie, one for every memory.

i know that he is not them and that i am not who i was. i know that this is now and that was then. i know it’s just an arm, just a back, just a night the grief isn’t here to make sense, it’s here to make space.

it’s here to make space for the things you always should have had—like a sense of safety in your body, or a cup of tea with a friend who wraps his whole arm around your back, whose gentle fingers brush your heart by accident as they wander across your skin. it’s here to show you that you’re not loved because you can talk to ghosts or because he likes to feed you or because you chose to stop poisoning yourself. it shows you that love is not an object, or a chemical, or a gift, or an action.

it shows you that love is a presence.

you are loved because you are here.

happy underworlding.

write what you know, they say. but i don’t know shit

about love. i want to find love in the unknown. love has

had its way with me since birth, and i don’t know how to

be with her, and why should i? who says that love is

something to be known when more frequently it is

something that we stumble into, stupefied, reeling at the terrible

inconvenience of becoming

soft and riddled with desire? everything i am is

reduced to ash in the wake of love. my memories take on

terrible, seductive shapes and

sing in foreign tongues. i drift left of centre, having

forgotten my own name.

write what you would want to read, they say, but i don’t

want to read about love. i want to find love in the wordless. i want to be

caught off guard when love sneaks up on me. i don’t

want a mind cluttered with ancient words. i

want love to make me a melted mind—to have me

babble like a child seeing sunlight for the first time. love

makes every time the first time all over again. if ever i forget

my smallness, i want love to swallow me into her bottomless pit of a

belly and rob my eyes of sunlight. and when

i emerge, after she has ground me down in that

cavern of stillness, i’ll crawl down

from her tongue on hands and knees, having

forgotten my own name.

write what has yet to be said, they say. but there is

nothing i can

say about love that hasn’t already been said. i want to

sleep through the night and find love in the silence. love

wakes up when i toss my body around in bed. closing the

gap between us, she plants a seed in

my back with a soft mouth. love doesn’t

ask me to settle down; she asks me to settle into my own

bones like soil over time. and when it rains, i swell so much with

her nectar that i become too heavy to move. the seed

bursts and flowers from my ribcage, making me bleed.

and when the flowers wilt and the stems withdraw into the

gash in my middle, i am left full with her absence, having

forgotten my own name.

i treat her like a problem to be solved. then she

bares her teeth at me, protecting her right to be wild. but

when i come to her in that wilderness, naked and willing to be

mauled if i must be, she kneads me with

tender paws, showing her belly. and

i remember

i remember

being born of her. and i remember

how i will return to her when it is time.

she takes my name and

i don’t need it so

i don’t take it back.

art is ritual, and ritual is art.

it delights me that the word “art” and the word “ritual” share an etymological root. it delights me that both emerged at the same point in history. it delights me that the forces that express through ritual are the same that express through art.

imagine the magic that happens when both are held by the same hands.

humans are innately mystical, ritualistic, creative, and weird. unfortunately, we live in a world dominated by extractive, exploitative, and oppressive social structures that are more and more rapidly killing us (as well as the rest of the planet).

i see this not as a death sentence, but as an invitation to create a different world.

ritual art is a practise of continuous relationship with the immanent (god-in-the-world) and transcendent (god-beyond-the-world). both ritual and art are trans-contextual processes integral to life.

and ritual art is the most powerful and potent catalyst for systems change.

for those who are here to bridge the worlds

of sacred and profane,

body and mind,

individual and collective,

seen and unseen—

i present to you…

the diaphanous edge is a monthly poetry and ritual theory group that supports artists, healers, scholars and seekers with self-exploration, creative expansion, and relational field tending. we explore ritual theory, mystical practise, meditation, and mythology as pathways for introspection, contemplation, and expression. it is a place to percolate, evolve, experiment, and explore both practical and theoretical aspects of ritual art.

each session is 2 hours long and begins with a 20-minute lecture, followed by 20 minutes of guided meditation. after this, participants are invited to bring whatever artistic medium they desire—music, dance, visual art, or writing. the last 20 minutes are open discussion time. all live calls will be recorded and stored in a shared google folder.

here is the schedule for the coming year:

the hollow body: death practise as creative liberation

31 july 2026 @ 6:30pm ET

it all starts with death. before we can fill with new information and learn new ways of being, we must leave at the door everything we think we already know. how will we choose to experience this precious and fragile human life? let’s allow death to show us the way.

[sign up]

the magic circle: invocation and the relational field

23 aug 2026 @ 6:30pm ET

what and who is in the room with us right now? the truth is there is nothing that is not in the room with us. in this session we will attempt to articulate a felt sense of relationality, reciprocity, and kinship through the practise of invocation.

[sign up]

what is ritual for? categories and characteristics

25 sept 2026 @ 6:30pm ET

ritual is infamous for defying neat categorisation. but contrary to popular belief, not everything is a ritual. perhaps we can begin to answer the question of what ritual is by asking a different question first: what is ritual for?

[sign up]

close encounters: flow, trace, and meditation as points of contact

30 oct 2026 @ 6:30pm ET

altered states of consciousness have been co-opted by the so-called ‘psychedelic rennaisance,’ fast-food spirituality, and the personal development industry. what is the true purpose of having so many different modes of orienting to reality? what is it we truly seek to contact?

[sign up]

place beyond place: altar tending, sacred symbols, and ritual aesthetics

4 dec 2026 @ 6:30pm ET

what is the difference between performativity and authenticity? how can the invariance of ritual forms pave the way for deeper and more expansive authenticity? let’s take a look at one of the most central ritual aesthetic practises—altar tending—for the answer.

[sign up]

invisible friends: metaphor and embodied imagination

10 jan 2027 @ 6:30pm ET

what is actually real? turns out that there are multiple categories of ‘realness,’ and ritual allows us to touch them all. inspired by bob samples’ categories of metaphor and john vervaeke’s four ways of knowing, we will dive into the nature of ritual practise as embodied imagination.

[sign up]

art salon 1

21 feb 2027 @ 6:30pm ET

come share a story, a myth, a poem, a song, a movement, or some visual art with the group! this can be something you have been working on during our time together or simply something that you find inspiring or beautiful. all are welcome who are ready to share from the heart and listen with the whole body.

[sign up]

being moved: archetypes, masks, and ritual performance

21 mar 2027 @ 6:30pm ET

what moves through you that is greater than you? who or what does your body belong to, and what are bodies for? come explore themes of authenticity, ritual possession, archetypes, and the transformative power of ritual theatre.

[sign up]

where is the edge? dynamics of the extended body

18 apr 2027 @ 6:30pm ET

as we discovered in previous sessions, there is nothing that is not in the room with us. in the words of thich nhat hanh, ‘all things inter-are.’ let’s tease out new definitions of boundary and agency as we contemplate the following question, posed by systems theorist nora bateson: where is the edge of me?

[sign up]

portal-between, mirror-to: the artist as an agent of systems change

16 may 2027 @ 6:30pm ET

all of these contemplations and explorations are well and good, but how do we actually take action in the world? ritual art is the most potent catalyst for systems change. how do we as ritual artists honour our responsibility to the earth and our web of kin?

[sign up]

swing on the spiral: towards a ritual ontology

18 jun 2027 @ 6:30pm ET

ritual allows us to touch the truth that all things inter-are. what else does ritual reveal about the nature of reality? in this final session, we’ll take a look at the work of clare graves, david bohm, and timothy morton and how it compares with various indigenous cosmologies.

[sign up]

art salon 2

20 jul 2027 @ 6:30pm ET

come share a story, a myth, a poem, a song, a movement, or some visual art with the group! this can be something you have been working on during our time together or simply something that you find inspiring or beautiful. all are welcome who are ready to share from the heart and listen with the whole body.

[sign up]

how to register

if you are a paid subscriber of underworlding, access to the group is included in your subscription. after subscribing, you should receive an invitation to the diaphanous edge group via email. message me if you have questions or trouble navigating the registration process.

if you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can easily sign up to get access to the group.

if you’d just like to drop in every once in a while, you can register per session at the drop-in rate of $30. i’ll post an article to this newsletter with the theme, date, and time of each session on the first of each month, along with a registration link—so no need to worry about missing sessions.

DROP IN

i’m looking forward to exploring the diaphanous edge with you.

happy underworlding.

bless it all—

the skin of steel,

the vessel proud, bearing its cracks,

the fluid it gives to the mouths and mouths,

the insatiable mouths and mouths.

benevolent illusion winks

to the moon-song made only for her ears.

she shapes the mountain with a hidden smile.

the mountain doesn’t even realise it

has been shape-changed.

you are also water, aren’t you?

changing shape to show another’s face.

why wouldn’t i wait to meet again, then, in our origins?

to slide my neck through the wound in your side

and behold my own face?

i drink her patience to swallow my medicine,

resting in rainbows for my family to come

and see their faces in my shape.

i will not abandon

what i remember.

why wouldn’t i remind you, then?

your soul is the same colour as mine.

a bone slips out of place

i eat five eggs in the morning and hang upside down

i simper my way through the hellfire i chose because i chose it

because i chose it

your disembodied voice is here

i tap my listening mirror

my heart is the very first star to collapse

i search for your red dot every second i should be sleeping

i should be sleeping

i am sleeping

the witch of my youth dies by a venomous mouth

her body is shrouded in a casket of water

i weep in the mirror because i am free

because i am free

in that glowing way the voices came

not by wind nor by sound but

in your smile a lotus through the mud

in your smile the blade and the blood that stains

and the veins that keep the blood that stains

in that glowing way the creatures came

crawling from the scattered dark

to escape the illumining

the illumining

i should be sleeping but

a bone has slipped out of place

and you are not an escape

you are a reckoning

a reckoning

i bowed not before the teacher, but before the wisdom he carried.

an expectation to bow to a teacher with no explanation of why might have caused me to want to walk straight out of the dharma hall. this has nothing to do with me having an innately rebellious nature. in fact, i hold teachers, elders, and scholars in high regard by default. i love learning. i consider humility a virtue.

but this past weekend, when i went to study with a teacher of a traditional wisdom lineage, i was inspired many times to bow before him. not because he expected this, nor because i was told to (i wasn’t). i simply had to, because it was an authentic expression of my reverence for the wisdom living in his body.

as a recovering theatre kid, bowing comes relatively naturally to me. it is an expression of gratitude, of reverence, and of humility. i am less used to bowing as a greeting, or as a sign of respect to a wisdom keeper. in the past, i would have resisted the latter entirely.

i have changed.

i am not against hierarchies; i think they can be good, and sometimes even necessary. what i find distasteful isn’t ‘hierarchy’ per se, it’s fragmentation. domination. oppression. bowing from a place of self-degradation actually disrespects the teacher. when we abandon our own depth of understanding, our ability to question, and our subjective learning process, we don’t actually receive the wisdom that a teacher is giving us. we merely perform receptivity.

i liken this to the cultural norm of ‘expertism’ and the way in which we are encouraged to seek knowledge and wisdom outside of our own subjective experience. the contemporary western world has historically disavowed subjectivity as a valid means of getting true information about reality; in more recent years, the culture has overcorrected for this, which ironically gives subjectivity an even worse name.

let us presuppose the obvious—that subject and object are fundamentally aspects of one whole, unbroken process. from this vantage point, how can we gain a full picture of reality without the phenomenological? how can i bow to the teacher, knowing full well it is a lie?

we live in a culture that claims the only people who are qualified to speak are people who have proven themselves in a particular way. they must display certain measurable qualities of intelligence, they must perform specific tests, they must devote four or more years to a piece of paper that says they’re worth hiring for an entry-level job.

getting a college degree is a sorry excuse for a rite of passage.

i don’t mean that it doesn’t mean anything at all. learning is learning, and it’s not easy to slog through the hell of academia. i barely made it 6 months through my freshman year, so i’m one to talk. but true rituals of initiation are so much richer, so much fuller spectrum than just surviving years of rote memorization. true rituals of initiation are death processes that involve the land, the body, and the community. they involve the ancestors, the plant and animal kin, and the unseen forces. they show you how much of an expert you are not.

if you have a college degree and you’re proud of yourself, you should be. i only mean to say that the symbolic and somatic richness of ritual initiation is significantly atrophied here in the west. consider the following quote from my essay on contemporary ritual design:

Modern Western culture does not suffer from a lack of rituals, as is often stated; it suffers from a lack of meaningful, devotional, earth-based, collective ritual process. Our rituals exist, but they are insufficient; they lack intergenerationality, transcontextuality, ecosomatic attunement, and post-religious inclusivity. I believe there is an indirect relationship between the insufficiency of these rituals and the converging mental health, ecological, and political issues referred to in some intellectual circles as the ‘metacrisis’ (or ‘polycrisis’).

this ritual insufficiency is a huge reason why i have chosen to leave my home of 2.5 years: asheville, north carolina. the subculture of asheville is what you get when folks attempt to repair contemporary post-colonial fragmentation consciousness through ritual without actually examining that fragmentation consciousness at its root. it’s what happens when you can sense the ‘problem,’ but you forget that the way you solve problems and understand problems is actually part of the problem. it is what happens when you have been taught your entire life that what matters is how things appear, not how things feel.

kokoro wa katachi wo motome, katachi wa kororo wo susumeru.

this is a phrase i learned from a japanese language teacher on youtube. i haven’t been able to forget it since i came across it. it translates to the heart requests form, and form advances the heart. when i first heard it, i immediately thought of the closest english equivalent: ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’ on the surface, these phrases seem to communicate the same thing, but i argue they’re different.

the difference between them is the same as that between performative ritual and ritual performance. performative ritual tries to make true what is false. ritual performance teaches the body how to express and remember what is true.

expertise is not true. expertise is not wisdom. it is a symptom of forgetting how to learn. it is a comfort zone of knowledge that blinds us to the moving, flowing, emergent reality that we dance within.

i bowed to the teacher because my body is wise—wise enough to sense wisdom in another, wise enough to express reverence, wise enough to be with what is true.

Happy underworlding.

By the way!

In 12 days, you will no longer be able to book a tarot reading with me.

After that, I will be focusing full-time on peer support for highly sensitive creative intuitives. If you’ve enjoyed my support as a tarot reader, or if you’ve wanted to experience oracular space with me but haven’t had the chance, I have a special gift for you before I quit reading tarot professionally and fully commit to my path as a ritual art teacher.

All of my tarot related services are 25% off. Purchase a bundle of sessions before 17 May 2026 and you can schedule your readings at any point in the future—even if the deadline has passed.

Book a single session here and use the discount code FAREWELL25A.

Or book a bundle of sessions here and use the discount code FAREWELL25.

i have become untethered

from this place.

all composite phenomena are impermanent, yes

still, it is the water from my dreaming eye that breaks chains

to make way for a cloudless mind-sky.

i have become untethered

from this place.

my body is the bell tone,

crying that the hierophant has died.

open yet not filling yet not just yet,

let it linger, that space

free from the hunger.

the hunger

a home

a lover

a million dollars

a chance to make what never should have happened unhappen

and to make sure for sure it never happens again

i have become untethered

from this place

and i have no one to tell.

it is all already known

the me that knows is neither late nor early

the me that knows is also the you that doesn’t know

that doesn’t care

that turns away and sleeps through daylight hours

so as not to see what glows beneath reality’s innocent offering

we’ve all got dreaming eyes.

you can try to blind them, but they can’t stay blind.

ashes to desert sands

desert sands to an oasis

to water the land with my dreaming eye

to wake in an oasis

an oasis.

an oasis.

we’ve all got dreaming eyes

we’ve all got dreaming eyes.

Asheville, thank you for being my home.

It’s been an incredible 2.5 years.

And quite suddenly, I’ve decided it’s time for me to move on.

A really wonderful string of opportunities has opened up for me to explore the world a bit and deepen my practise as a ritual artist.

It’s all sort of magically falling into place, so far. I always take that as a sign that the path forward is clear.

If all goes well, as I pray it will...

I will be gone for 5 months. It is not likely that I will return to Asheville after those 5 months.

For my birthday (17 May), I am asking for some support to help get the ball rolling on this journey.

My fundraiser goal is less than a third of the estimated cost of my upcoming travels.

Learn more specifics about what you would be investing in at the fundraiser link below.

DONATE

Some amount of crazy is healthy. Where do you think good art comes from?

Hallie Swan, “De-pathologizing Limerence”

it’s hard for me to write about this.

i know that you know that dominator culture gets off on punishing people. it especially gets off on it when we punish each other. and from my perspective, no one has been punished more than those who yearn.

the maladaptive daydreamers. the anxiously attached. those whom have been saved by their delusions.

i have seen countless ‘healing spaces’ dedicated solely to the degradation of the dreamers, the sensitives, the ones who are prone to limerence, drawn to emotional unavailability, who unconsciously wait for a saviour to whisk them away from their problems.

that’s part of why it’s hard for me to write about this.

i love every part of me that has fought to keep me alive, even the parts of me that have harmed me (and others) in the process. those parts are the ones who need that love the most. if i do not love them, they will continue to cause harm.

to be clear, i am equally sickened by movements that seek to justify imagination-based coping mechanisms such as limerence and maladaptive daydreaming. we aren’t magical superhero ‘empaths’ here to awaken humanity. we aren’t reincarnated ascended masters with special insights that other people are just too normal to access. god doesn’t have a plan for us that’s any more or less special than anyone else’s.

we are here in the shit soup with everybody else, and we have wise, intelligent bodies who know how to survive. we adapted then, when we were neglected, abandoned, violated, and punished.

we adapted then. we can adapt now.

enough with specialness, already. are you ready to disappear into the sacred?

are you ready to give up what you already know to make space for the mystery waiting to claim you?

if your answer is no, you’ll find no judgement here. i’m still in the very messy process of integrating this myself. for a long time, i’ve attempted the impossible task of maintaining flawless integrity, you see. (please, feel free to laugh at me!) dominator culture is ruthless in its demands for perfection. it’ll have you self-policing in accordance with values that don’t belong to you, in exchange for sacrificing your own.

at least in this moment, i am ready to give up what i already know to make space for the mystery waiting to claim me.

this is why i’m quitting the tarot.

being a tarot reader professionally for the past 4 years has taught me a lot. it has taught me discernment, and it has taught me about my own value. it has also carried an exhausting risk of enabling my hubris and entitlement as far as both seeking answers and giving advice are concerned.

intuitive practises are important because we can’t not have an intuition. that’s right, there is no such thing as ‘an intuitive.’ there is only intuition—a cognitive process that, contrary to what new age spiritual exceptionalism and myers-briggs typology would have you believe, is not a special thing only certain people have access to. some people are more practised or talented in the realm of intuition but anyone can cultivate it. practises like tarot exist to help with this.

they can also severely harm when it comes to this. in fact, this becomes more of a risk the better you get at the practise. having no intuitive practise is dangerous, but having too much faith in the intuition is just as much so (if not more).

to be clear, i am not quitting the tarot entirely. i am not making a great bonfire and throwing my decks in, one by one, until i have none to my name.

but as of 17 may (my 31st birthday), i will no longer be booking new clients for tarot readings. this is no longer the service i am here to offer the world.

i am now to heed a somewhat paradoxical call to both quit tarot as i have been using it and engage with it more deeply, beyond the practise of divination and into something wilder: possibility-mapping.

what i call possibility-mapping is, in some ways, the opposite of divination. divination is traditionally defined as trying to intuit what the future holds based on what information we unconsciously have access to. the problem with this is that we don’t always track all the possibilities. in fact, we can quite easily become conditioned to only track certain future possibilities based on what has happened in the past. this is induction—reasoning towards a general conclusion based on specific information.

however, there is a form of reasoning that is based not on conclusions, but possibilities. this is abductive reasoning. if i apply abductive reasoning to divination, what i get is possibility-mapping; i am looking at what choices are available to me, not what outcomes are ‘inevitable.’

i am learning who else it is possible to be.

this is, in some ways, divination at its finest.

now, it’s not impossible to practise tarot in this way with clients, but to put it simply, i don’t want to.

i want to teach clients how to do this for themselves. i want to teach them how to practise liberation in the context of dominator culture. i want to teach them how to see possibilities that even i cannot see.

i don’t want to steal their wild imaginations, to reign them in with realism.

i am not here to help you accept reality. i am here to help you actively co-create it.

‘creative augury’ is divination as possibility-mapping, and it is one of the five pillars of creative liberation practise, a method that I have applied to my own creative process over the years.

i smirk as i am writing this.

that’s because it is not a method in the linear, predictable, easily explainable way that dominator culture demands of us. no, friend. it is a wild, chaotic, emergent process—something that has taken years of permission and unravelling for me to ‘master’—or rather, to give up on mastering and commit to playing with it like a newborn playing with their toes.

in a future post, i’ll share more about how this and the other pillars of creative liberation will serve as the foundation of my ritual consultation work moving forward.

Happy underworlding.

A really wonderful string of opportunities has opened up for me to explore the world a bit and deepen my practise as a ritual artist.

It’s all sort of magically falling into place so far. I always take that as a sign that the path forward is clear.

If all goes well, as I pray it will...

I will be gone for 5 months. It is not likely that I will return to Asheville after those 5 months.

For my birthday (17 May), I am asking for some support to help get the ball rolling on this journey.

My fundraiser goal is less than a third of the estimated cost of my upcoming travels.

Learn more and donate below!

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