imagination• 53
mundus imaginalis
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Rumi wrote: "What you seek is seeking you." Which means the version of your life you keep imagining isn't a fantasy you invented. It's a signal from s
After Freud had spent years making everyone see the unconscious as a dark, neurotic basement full of anxieties and repressed traumas, the French philo
underworld• 6
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In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, we read that Hades gives Persephone pomegranate seeds to trap her into returning to him. Whether she eats them willing
However, the real secrets of the Mysteries could only be gleaned through experience—a Hades Experience.
This encounter was so profound that initiates underwent metanoia, meaning a fundamental reorientation of consciousness that altered their way of seein
words• 58
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One other historical touch point for the word itself comes from a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1930’s: “mythopoeia.” Tolkien’s term expresses
the Greek katabasis, meaning “going down”, katabatic narratives typically involve a protagonist journeying “down into an underworld, hell, or realm of
liminal, in-between• 32
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We have almost no language for that experience. We have words for success and failure, career changes and life crises. But very few words for the plac
Jamie Wheal’s concept of Rapture Ideologies, which he introduces in Recapture the Rapture (2021), a relevant book right now. They are narratives—ways
fake it until you make is magic?• 3
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It’s the fool that precedes the magician in the tarot. The chaos magician Ramsey Dukes argues in his essay The Charlatan and the Magus that fraud and
It’s the fool that precedes the magician in the tarot.
That’s why it makes sense for startups to fake it until they make it. Belief has to come first, because it unlocks the resources needed to have a chan
flickering, blinking• 3
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flickering shifted the window of possibility
A mix of belief and skepticism is an ideal engine to pull a possibility into probability and maybe even actuality. Gut-level believers are what move o
My life has become much better since I stopped either suppressing my magical thinking or taking it at face value.
on reading• 24
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A good book doesn’t usually give you a hundred pieces of valuable information. (Is there such a thing, unless you’re actively engaging in some focused
At its best, fiction can train your deep pattern recognition for humanity, providing archetypal lenses through which you can more fully glimpse the be
if you’re interested only in what can be efficiently slotted into your existing thoughts, you’re probably missing nearly everything.
A piece of fiction can be more influential on the collective psyche than an argument, because it works on the unconscious with image and symbolism whi
hypnosis• 60
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When you read a book, you aren’t just accessing a series of propositions. You are becoming immersed in a worldview, through the rhythms of a given pro
Reading is hypnosis. Just like hypnotists lead you into a trance in which a simple suggestion can become forceful, skillful writers, by absorbing you
Hypnosis, psychedelics, and chaos magick all act on the unconscious mind. Psychedelics loosen up the mind so deeper material can come up and restructu
A piece of fiction can be more influential on the collective psyche than an argument, because it works on the unconscious with image and symbolism whi
trickster• 66
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By moving on the edge, you do not really choose a side, and if you are not careful, you tumble down the wrong side.
It’s the fool that precedes the magician in the tarot.
That’s why it makes sense for startups to fake it until they make it. Belief has to come first, because it unlocks the resources needed to have a chan
