the new alchemists

A friend mention that he had “been to hell” on a psychedelic trip and experience cosmic horror. “Been to hell.” I found humor in the phrasing. You’ve “been to hell”… and now you’re back here on Zoom? I thought hell was a one-way ticket? It frames hell not as “the bad place at the end of the line,” but something you can experience and survive and le

It’s paradox all the way down (or, “nested opponent processes”).

• Consider the basic Yin/Yang duality.

• Now imagine 2 overlapping axes in a plus sign:

  • SEEING: literal<>abstract vision; up-down.

  • DOING: literal<>abstract action; right-left.

• It doesn’t stop here. Consider the pairings. There’s:

  • BEING (literal vision & literal action), and;

  • KNOW

WIP definitions:

• Aganippe : In Greek legend, a fountain of Boetia at the foot of Mount Helicon, dedicated to the MUSES because it imparted poetic inspiration. Hence the Muses are sometimes called Aganippides. Also the NYMPH of this fountain.

• ages: Hesiod (8th century BC): golden, silver, brazen, heroic, iron (also planets) — Shakespeare's 7 ages in A

Adversarial systems are alchemical; they’re about fusing two opposite halves into a union (ie: democrats vs. republicans). But we’ve lost sight of synthesis and cooperation, and instead we’re growing cancerous mega-poles that seduce and rob identity. Individuals are melting into mega-poles instead of surfing the gradient of complexity.

I won’t name names, but I’m getting impatient with a certain publications take on new technology. The writing is quite good, but it’s like a tricksy rhetorical attack to get us to love something we shouldn’t. There’s a difference between blind techno-optimism and “critical techno-optimism.” A hard critique of technology from someone who loves it is

cosmic tide — the idea that the whole life of the universe—from the big bang to the collapsing of the universe—is just one wave in an “ocean” that’s beyond space time. What if the comedy and tragedy and all possible beautiful and all potential forms of life within our plenum is just the crashing of a single wave? It is a loop, a wave, a heartbeat,

What writing prompts could lead to alchemical transformation?

MYSTERY SCHOOL: What could this look like? How could a group of people share and co-develop these practices?

• L1, ATTENTION: What are the actual practices to train your attention? Do breathing exercises. Try the different types of meditation (eyes open/closed, mindfulness, mantras, and void states). Add symbolic meaning to how you eat, wash, and show

An interstitial journal gives you a real ‘change log’ for debugging, and it’s format lets you observe and act from the Tao—where the energy actually is—instead of using will power to chip away at an abstract task list.

coincidentia positorum : (an alchemical term) the union of opposites; you can’t understand anything unless you simultaneously grok what it is and what it isn’t. By a mere shift in perspective, a thing’s opposite comes into focus, and the opposites melt into a new whole. This has many symbolic expressions: the hermaphrodite, soul/luna, mercury/sulfu