Knight of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Knight of Disks
Number: 1 or 3
Astrology: Virgo, Fire of Earth
Qabalah: Yod of He or Vau of He

Chris Gabriel May 24, 2025

The Knight of Disks is a man with a plan. He sees the cyclical movement of the world and contemplates his movements within them. He is agricultural intelligence, for he knows when to plant seeds, when to harvest, and when to allow a field to remain fallow.

In Rider, we have an armoured knight, his helmet topped with a sprig, and a pentacle resembling the sun is held in his gloved hands. His black horse also bears a laurel, and they both wear red garments as they stand atop freshly tilled farmland.

In Thoth, our knight is in black armour and his helmet is topped with the bust of a stag. He carries a flail, and a shield in the shape of a disk   that radiates solar light. His curious horse looks at the wheat field they stand in.

In Marseille, we have an unarmoured knight following his celestial disk. He rides a blue horse over barren ground and carries a large green wand, the only Knight in the deck to involve two weapons. It is fitting, as he is the Fiery part of the Earth, the active part of nature, the impulse that pushes vegetable life out from the depths of the Earth.

Where the Virgo ruled minor arcana  us images of investment, returns and bounty, here is the investor himself. He is not bold or quick like the Knights of Wands and Swords, but he is also not the hesitant coward of Cups. The Knight of Disks is patient and content to wait. We can think of the Battle of Bunker Hill, when Colonel William Prescott insisted his rebels conserve their ammunition, and only fire when they see the whites of their enemies' eyes. This kind of dangerous investment is the bread and butter of the Knight of Disks.

To take action years in advance and at the penultimate moment is the nature of agriculture, an effort of regular immediacy, and a plan that will outlive the farmer. This sort of thinking ahead was absent in America, when farmers destroyed their land by overfarming and led to the Dust Bowl. A good image to keep in mind with this card is a Planter’s Clock. Which notes the solar and lunar cycles, and gives the proper time to plant a given crop.

The Knight of Disks embodies the wisdom of King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, aware of three maxims. 

1. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 

2. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 

3. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

He takes heed of the great cycle and moves accordingly, allowing for great development and power.

When we pull this card, we may be dealing with questions of investment or dealing with an investor. This may also indicate a Virgo directly. When faced with this, look to your cosmic clock and see what time it is, and what the proper action is.

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

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Gene Keys and the Hero’s Journey

Peter Paul Rubens, ‘David Slaying Goliath’. c.1616.

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Molly Hankins May 22, 2025

The hero’s journey mono-myth, as described by author Joseph Campbell, details the commonalities found in heroic stories across many cultures, and serves as both a formula for narrative creation and a metaphor for the arc of the human experience. In his most recent white paper, the philosopher and mathematician Robert Edward Grant explains his novel take on simulation theory, claiming that the hero’s journey is much more than a structure for crafting stories. The human experience, he claims, is a “blockchain-based social AI spiritual life simulation”, where participants follow the archetypal structure of the hero’s journey in order to “learn about consciousness, emotional states and the nature of authentic love.” If we accept this hypothesis, astrological tools such as the Gene Keys take on a new dimension of utility for navigating life.

Describing the hero’s journey, which entails the call to adventure, the quest and a return, Campbell identifies different character archetypes in The Hero With A Thousand Faces,. These archetypes are expanded upon in the Gene Keys to describe individual blueprints of what Kabbalah calls tikkuns, our soul’s corrections in this lifetime. Developed by author and channeler Richard Rudd, the Gene Keys combine elements of Human Design, Kabbalah, tarot and the astrological zodiac with the Chinese I Ching and the structure of the human genome sequence. The resulting system mirrors the hero’s journey in many ways, beginning with the expansion on Campbell’s concept of archetypes. There are 64 Gene Keys, matching the 64 hexagrams in the I Ching and the 64 codons of the human genetic code.

Every Gene Key sequence, based on our time and place of birth, contains a life, love and prosperity path known respectively as the Activation, Venus and Pearl Sequences. Each path, in turn, has four archetypal keys describing our tikkun by way of  a shadow state we must transmute through a corresponding gift. We all have our own way of moving from the shadow to the gift frequency, represented by different lines in our profile. Each state of being is an attitude, and Rudd contends that rather than our DNA dictating how our lives unfold, our attitudes tell our DNA what kind of person we want to become. The first of the 64 Gene Key archetypes is called ‘From Entropy to Syntropy,’ and it has the shadow frequency of entropy transmuted through the gift of freshness leading to the transcendence state of beauty, which is called the siddhi. 

Having this shadow as part of our tikkun can make us feel depressed or frenetic, melancholy about being human or desperate to get away from the fear of gradual decline. But the opposite of entropy is creativity. By shifting our attention towards creative imagination and an appreciation of beauty, we inject freshness into our lives. In the gift frequency of the first Gene Key, we embody the archetype described by Campbell as the ally, assisting the hero by shifting their focus to what is unique. Appreciation of beauty is also the number one factor for building resilience in the face of grief, according to author Florence Williams, who spent many years studying the science of healing from heartbreak.

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“It’s impossible to know how many lifetimes it could take us to learn the specific ways of being we must correct, in order to get the best out of human experience, but as we continue to evolve so do our systems for understanding ourselves.”

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Each path in the three Gene Key sequences that make up our tikkun, takes us through a challenge and breakthrough to ultimately arrive at core stability. The Activation Sequence begins with the first node of our personal profiles,  our life’s work. Doing our life’s work takes us through the challenge of evolution, followed by a breakthrough that allows us to access our radiance, then bringing us to discover our life’s purpose, where we find core stability. Each stage of the Activation Sequence has a corresponding Gene Key archetype detailing what shadow frequency we must shift in order to stabilize our gifts. Shadows block our manifestations whereas gifts magnetize them, and the siddhi is a level of transcendence that describes the frequency of enlightenment. Even if many of us may not reach the siddhic level of expression in this lifetime, studying the siddhis of the Gene Keys orients us to the specific attitudes of enlightened masters so we can expand our consciousness beyond the confines of human limitation. 

The hero’s journey is also embodied in the relationship that each sequence has to the others, playing out the call to adventure, the quest, and a return. This makes up what Rudd calls The Golden Path, beginning and ending with our life’s work. For instance, if you have Gene Key 55 with a first line as your life’s work, then the personal challenge that gives way to your evolution is transmuting the shadow of victimization through the gift of freedom. Each line corresponds to the six lines contained in the I Ching hexagrams, and expresses how we move from shadow to gift. If you have a first line in your life’s work then you are here to create something new. The gift of Key 55 is the same as the siddhi, and freedom is the ability to see and ultimately live beyond the cycle of human drama. 

It’s impossible to know how many lifetimes it could take us to learn the specific ways of being we must correct, in order to get the best out of human experience, but as we continue to evolve so do our systems for understanding ourselves. Many Kabbalistic teachings refer to ways we can accelerate our evolution, with spiritual study being one mechanism. The Gene Keys is one such an accelerant. While the voluminous system of very specific data can be intimidating at first, particularly to those who’ve never studied any astrological systems, it’s incredibly useful even at the surface level. Any information gleaned is always immediately relevant to your personal hero’s journey.

According to Rudd, influencing our DNA through our attitude is the future of epigenetics, which is the study of how our environment and behaviors affect genetic expression. “You can only be a victim of your attitude. Every thought you think, every feeling you have, every word you utter and every action you take directly programs your genes and therefore your reality. Consequently, at the quantum level you create the environment that programs your genes,” Rudd says. “ This is the great secret the Gene Keys hold - the secret of freedom.” Embodying the hero archetype gives us the strength and boldness to shine light on our shadows and step into the gifts that allow us to freely manifest our will. 

If life is, as Robert Edward Grant believes, “an emergent simulation,” then perhaps we can change the game we’re playing by changing ourselves. Nothing less than a global consciousness shift is required of us at this pivotal time in human history, and we have tools like the Gene Keys to accelerate that change by helping us face our personal and collective shadows in a readily actionable way.

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

The Poem as Functional Object

Untitled, Eugen Gomringer. 1953.

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In this introduction to a collection of his ‘constellations’ - visual poems that used the placement of words on a page to communicate ideas, serving as both a literary and visual art - Gomringer lays the foundations for what was still a remarkably new understanding of language. Gomringer tried to liberate writing from its context, to treat words and the printed page as an artwork unto itself, with words being just one shade in the paintbox of a poet. He makes an argument that poetry must be more like utilitarian creative disciplines of design and architecture, and only then will it be given the respect and consideration it deserves.

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Eugen Gomringer, May 20, 2025

Some years ago, I defined the new poem as a functional object. This definition was accepted by some as a sign of the times and misguided youth, and by others as a working hypothesis for different developmental procedures. At the same time in South America, or more exactly, in São Paulo, a group was formed whose definition of tile poem coincided with mine. I called my poems "constellations" omitting reference to earlier poems with the same title by other poets. Later, after similar and different forms had been created, my friends in São Paulo and I grouped all our experiments under the term "Concrete Poetry." One reason for this was to honor the concrete Painters in Zürich - Bill, Graeser, Lohse, Vreni, Loewensberg and others - a strong group from which impulses felt throughout the world had been emitted uninterruptedly since the early forties. Since 1942 my creation of the constellations has been decisively influenced by this group. Today "Concrete Poetry" is the general term which included a large number of poetic-linguistic experiments characterized with either constellation, ideogram, stochastic poetry" etc., by conscious study of the material and its structure (for a short time there was a magazine with this name material in Darmstadt): material means the sum of all the signs with which we make poems. Today you find concrete poetry in Japan, Brazil, Portugal, Paris, Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

For some younger poets, the constellation is already old hat. That is it does not go far enough for them. Some of them work typographically more freely; others work typographically less imaginatively. Still others criticize me for trying to say too much. In spite of the fact that many of my purer constellations (for example "avenidas"/ "baum kind hund haus" (tree child dog house)/ "mist mountain butterfly" were preceded by divers experiments. Even today, again and again, I make logical, atomistic and graphic experiments, which serve only as stimulation and discipline.

I find it wisest to stay with the word, even with the usual meanings of the word. By doing this I hope, in spite of the apparent scarcity of my words as compared to the verbosity of non-concrete poetry, to stay in continuity with poetry which emphasizes formal pattern. The purpose of reduced language is not the reduction of language itself but the achievement of greater flexibility and freedom of communication (with its inherent need for rules and regulations). The resulting poems should be, if possible, as easily understood as signs in airports and traffic signs. I see danger in taking away from Concrete Poetry its useful, aesthetic-communicative character on the one side by not understanding the simpler linguistic phenomena (by being over-fed with words, and by lack of artistic sensibility) and on the other side by following the new esoteric of the typographic poets in whom one can sometimes notice a certain lack of imagination. To date I see only in the experiments of Claus Bremer, in his poems in the form of ideograms, genuine enrichment of the constellation. This selection is not comprised of pure constellation only. Each poem contains elements of constellation: the direct juxtaposition of words; repetitions and combinations; questioning of equivalent statements; over-all unity of themes; analysis and synthesis as poetic subject; minimal-maximal tension in the smallest space. I want especially, to show through this small variety that the constellation can be the rallying point as well as the point of departure. Anyone who makes use of the freedoms of the art of poetry in a reasonable way will see that the constellation is not a dead-end or an end at all, as the literary people have said, but on the contrary that it uses thinking and structural methods which can connect artistic intuition with scientific specialization.

Concrete poetry, in general, as well as the constellation, hopes to relate literature as art less to "literature" and more to earlier developments in the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, industrial design - in other words to developments whose basis is critical but positively-defined thinking.

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Eugen Gomringer (b. 1925) is a Bolivian-Swiss poet, professor, and the father of the European Concrete Poetry movement that he began in the 1950s.

Queen of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Queen of Disks
Number: 2
Astrology: Capricorn
Qabalah: He of He

Chris Gabriel May 17, 2025

The Queen of Disks is the Earth Mother. In each rendition she cradles the world, embodied in a coin. This is her child, and through her energy and eternal fertility it retains its form.

In Rider, the Queen is crowned with a long green headdress, and is dressed in red and white. She looks down upon the coin happily. Her throne is ornately carved with imagery of fruit, children, and the head of a Goat. These are all symbols of fecundity:ripe swelling fruit, the libidinous goat, and the children which are produced. The environment around her is verdant, and a bunny rabbit sits in the corner.

In Thoth, we find the Queen at a different stage of motherhood altogether. Her crown topped with great spiralling goat horns as she wears an armoured top and holds a crystal-tipped, spiral scepter. She cradles her disk close to her breast. Her throne is atop a palm tree, and a goat stands beside her. Here the Queen is Capricorn, the goat at the top of the mountain; she looks to the vast desert before her, spotted only with a few palms and a dry river. There is much work for her to do.

In Marseille, the Queen is in royal robes, crowned, and bears a scepter that looks like an ear of corn, or a fleur de lys. She is focused entirely on the disk she holds aloft. In it is the heart and seed of her world, the material reality that she inhabits. Qabalistically, she is the water of the Earth. She is mud, the great sign of civilization.

When we think of the Queen of Disks let us think of the great title of Mesopotamia: the Cradle of Civilization. What allowed civilization to flourish was mud. A close proximity to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and then the Nile for Egypt. The water of these rivers turned deathly desert to fertile mud, which allowed for agriculture to flourish. This is the nature of the Queen -she is the union of water and earth as fertile mud.

Mythologically, she is Gaia, Mother Earth, the great globe itself, a union of land and sea in herself, and the endless processes which maintain the world. In humanity, we can think of the hardworking women who raise what is around them. In Thoth, the Queen is a domineering mother who coldly looks at what is around her, and needs to exert her will to ascend to her lofty place. This is softened in Rider and Marseille, where it is the maternal love which cradles the world and keeps it growing.

When we pull this card, we can expect something to take care of. Just as the environment has lovingly given us life, we must give life to the environment. This may be directly a project, an investment in something that will grow and profit. This can also directly relate to a Capricorn in our lives.

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

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The Relativity of Wrong

The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings. Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, 1882.

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The title essay from a collection of Asimov’s science writing, ‘The Relativity of Wrong’ shows the master of science-fiction at his rationalist best. Beginning with a personal anecdote on unknowable truth, Asimov makes an impassioned argument for the necessary fallibility of science not being a reason to ignore it, but the very reason we should attempt to accept it, and an ode to the modern era as providing, for the first time in human history, an understanding of the universe less wrong than ever before. It is not a defensive rebuttal, but a thoughtful, humorous exploration of what it means for a scientific theory to be “wrong”, and a powerful defense of rational thinking in a world that often seeks simplicity over nuance.

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Isaac Asimov May 15, 2025

I received a letter the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out just in case it might prove to be important. In the first sentence, the writer told me he was majoring in English literature, but felt he needed to teach me science. (I sighed a bit, for I knew very few English Lit majors who are equipped to teach me science, but I am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, so I read on.) 

It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight. 

I didn't go into detail in the matter, but what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. 

What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930. These are all twentieth-century discoveries, you see. The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal. 

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." 

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so. 

First, let me dispose of Socrates because I am sick and tired of this pretense that knowing you know nothing is a mark of wisdom.

No one knows nothing. In a matter of days, babies learn to recognize their mothers.

Socrates would agree, of course, and explain that knowledge of trivia is not what he means. He means that in the great abstractions over which human beings debate, one should start without preconceived, unexamined notions, and that he alone knew this. (What an enormously arrogant claim!)

In his discussions of such matters as "What is justice?" or "What is virtue?" he took the attitude that he knew nothing and had to be instructed by others. (This is called "Socratic irony," for Socrates knew very well that he knew a great deal more than the poor souls he was picking on.) By pretending ignorance, Socrates lured others into propounding their views on such abstractions. Socrates then, by a series of ignorant-sounding questions, forced the others into such a mélange of self-contradictions that they would finally break down and admit they didn't know what they were talking about.

It is the mark of the marvelous toleration of the Athenians that they let this continue for decades and that it wasn't till Socrates turned seventy that they broke down and forced him to drink poison.

Now where do we get the notion that "right" and "wrong" are absolutes? It seems to me that this arises in the early grades, when children who know very little are taught by teachers who know very little more.

Young children learn spelling and arithmetic, for instance, and here we tumble into apparent absolutes.

How do you spell "sugar?" Answer: s-u-g-a-r. That is right. Anything else is wrong.

How much is 2 + 2? The answer is 4. That is right. Anything else is wrong.

Having exact answers, and having absolute rights and wrongs, minimizes the necessity of thinking, and that pleases both students and teachers. For that reason, students and teachers alike prefer short-answer tests to essay tests; multiple-choice over blank short-answer tests; and true-false tests over multiple-choice.

But short-answer tests are, to my way of thinking, useless as a measure of the student's understanding of a subject. They are merely a test of the efficiency of his ability to memorize.

You can see what I mean as soon as you admit that right and wrong are relative.

How do you spell "sugar?" Suppose Alice spells it p-q-z-z-f and Genevieve spells it s-h-u-g-e-r. Both are wrong, but is there any doubt that Alice is wronger than Genevieve? For that matter, I think it is possible to argue that Genevieve's spelling is superior to the "right" one.

Or suppose you spell "sugar": s-u-c-r-o-s-e, or C12H22O11. Strictly speaking, you are wrong each time, but you're displaying a certain knowledge of the subject beyond conventional spelling.

Suppose then the test question was: how many different ways can you spell "sugar?" Justify each.

Naturally, the student would have to do a lot of thinking and, in the end, exhibit how much or how little he knows. The teacher would also have to do a lot of thinking in the attempt to evaluate how much or how little the student knows. Both, I imagine, would be outraged.

Again, how much is 2 + 2? Suppose Joseph says: 2 + 2 = purple, while Maxwell says: 2 + 2 = 17. Both are wrong but isn't it fair to say that Joseph is wronger than Maxwell?

Suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an integer. You'd be right, wouldn't you? Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an even integer. You'd be righter. Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = 3.999. Wouldn't you be nearly right?

If the teacher wants 4 for an answer and won't distinguish between the various wrongs, doesn't that set an unnecessary limit to understanding?

Suppose the question is, how much is 9 + 5?, and you answer 2. Will you not be excoriated and held up to ridicule, and will you not be told that 9 + 5 = 14?

If you were then told that 9 hours had pass since midnight and it was therefore 9 o'clock, and were asked what time it would be in 5 more hours, and you answered 14 o'clock on the grounds that 9 + 5 = 14, would you not be excoriated again, and told that it would be 2 o'clock? Apparently, in that case, 9 + 5 = 2 after all.

Or again suppose, Richard says: 2 + 2 = 11, and before the teacher can send him home with a note to his mother, he adds, "To the base 3, of course." He'd be right.

Here's another example. The teacher asks: "Who is the fortieth President of the United States?" and Barbara says, "There isn't any, teacher.”

"Wrong!" says the teacher, "Ronald Reagan is the fortieth President of the United States.”

"Not at all," says Barbara, "I have here a list of all the men who have served as President of the United States under the Constitution, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan, and there are only thirty-nine of them, so there is no fortieth President.”

"Ah," says the teacher, "but Grover Cleveland served two nonconsecutive terms, one from 1885 to 1889, and the second from 1893 to 1897. He counts as both the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President. That is why Ronald Reagan is the thirty-ninth person to serve as President of the United States, and is, at the same time, the fortieth President of the United States.”

Isn't that ridiculous? Why should a person be counted twice if his terms are nonconsecutive, and only once if he served two consecutive terms? Pure convention! Yet Barbara is marked wrong—just as wrong as if she had said that the fortieth President of the United States is Fidel Castro.

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“What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.”

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When my friend the English literature expert tells me that in every century scientists think they have worked out the universe and are always wrong, what I want to know is how wrong are they? Are they always wrong to the same degree? Let's take an example. 

In the early days of civilization, the general feeling was that the earth was flat. This was not because people were stupid, or because they were intent on believing silly things. They felt it was flat on the basis of sound evidence. It was not just a matter of "That's how it looks," because the earth does not look flat. It looks chaotically bumpy, with hills, valleys, ravines, cliffs, and so on. 

Of course there are plains where, over limited areas, the earth's surface does look fairly flat. One of those plains is in the Tigris-Euphrates area, where the first historical civilization (one with writing) developed, that of the Sumerians. 

Perhaps it was the appearance of the plain that persuaded the clever Sumerians to accept the generalization that the earth was flat; that if you somehow evened out all the elevations and depressions, you would be left with flatness. Contributing to the notion may have been the fact that stretches of water (ponds and lakes) looked pretty flat on quiet days. 

Another way of looking at it is to ask what is the "curvature" of the earth's surface Over a considerable length, how much does the surface deviate (on the average) from perfect flatness. The flat-earth theory would make it seem that the surface doesn't deviate from flatness at all, that its curvature is 0 to the mile. 

Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long. 

There were reasons, to be sure, to find the flat-earth theory unsatisfactory and, about 350 B.C., the Greek philosopher Aristotle summarized them. First, certain stars disappeared beyond the Southern Hemisphere as one traveled north, and beyond the Northern Hemisphere as one traveled south. Second, the earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always the arc of a circle. Third, here on the earth itself, ships disappeared beyond the horizon hull-first in whatever direction they were traveling. 

All three observations could not be reasonably explained if the earth's surface were flat, but could be explained by assuming the earth to be a sphere. 

What's more, Aristotle believed that all solid matter tended to move toward a common center, and if solid matter did this, it would end up as a sphere. A given volume of matter is, on the average, closer to a common center if it is a sphere than if it is any other shape whatever.

About a century after Aristotle, the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes noted that the sun cast a shadow of different lengths at different latitudes (all the shadows would be the same length if the earth's surface were flat). From the difference in shadow length, he calculated the size of the earthly sphere and it turned out to be 25,000 miles in circumference. 

The curvature of such a sphere is about 0.000126 per mile, a quantity very close to 0 per mile, as you can see, and one not easily measured by the techniques at the disposal of the ancients. The tiny difference between 0 and 0.000126 accounts for the fact that it took so long to pass from the flat earth to the spherical earth. 

Mind you, even a tiny difference, such as that between 0 and 0.000126, can be extremely important. That difference mounts up. The earth cannot be mapped over large areas with any accuracy at all if the difference isn't taken into account and if the earth isn't considered a sphere rather than a flat surface. Long ocean voyages can't be undertaken with any reasonable way of locating one's own position in the ocean unless the earth is considered spherical rather than flat. 

Furthermore, the flat earth presupposes the possibility of an infinite earth, or of the existence of an "end" to the surface. The spherical earth, however, postulates an earth that is both endless and yet finite, and it is the latter postulate that is consistent with all later findings. So, although the flat-earth theory is only slightly wrong and is a credit to its inventors, all things considered, it is wrong enough to be discarded in favor of the spherical-earth theory. 

And yet is the earth a sphere? 

No, it is not a sphere; not in the strict mathematical sense. A sphere has certain mathematical properties; for instance, all diameters (that is, all straight lines that pass from one point on its surface, through the center, to another point on its surface) have the same length. 

That, however, is not true of the earth. Various diameters of the earth differ in length. 

What gave people the notion the earth wasn't a true sphere? To begin with, the sun and the moon have outlines that are perfect circles within the limits of measurement in the early days of the telescope. This is consistent with the supposition that the sun and the moon are perfectly spherical in shape. 

However, when Jupiter and Saturn were observed by the first telescopic observers, it became quickly apparent that the outlines of those planets were not circles, but distinct eclipses. That meant that Jupiter and Saturn were not true spheres. 

Isaac Newton, toward the end of the seventeenth century, showed that a massive body would form a sphere under the pull of gravitational forces (exactly as Aristotle had argued), but only if it were not rotating. If it were rotating, a centrifugal effect would be set up that would lift the body's substance against gravity, and this effect would be greater the closer to the equator you progressed. The effect would also be greater the more rapidly a spherical object rotated, and Jupiter and Saturn rotated very rapidly indeed.

The earth rotated much more slowly than Jupiter or Saturn so the effect should be smaller, but it should still be there. Actual measurements of the curvature of the earth were carried out in the eighteenth century and Newton was proved correct. 

The earth has an equatorial bulge, in other words. It is flattened at the poles. It is an "oblate spheroid" rather than a sphere. This means that the various diameters of the earth differ in length. The longest diameters are any of those that stretch from one point on the equator to an opposite point on the equator. This "equatorial diameter" is 12,755 kilometers (7,927 miles). The shortest diameter is from the North Pole to the South Pole and this "polar diameter" is 12,711 kilometers (7,900 miles). 

The difference between the longest and shortest diameters is 44 kilometers (27 miles), and that means that the "oblateness" of the earth (its departure from true sphericity) is 44/12755, or 0.0034. This amounts to l/3 of 1 percent. 

To put it another way, on a flat surface, curvature is 0 per mile everywhere. On the earth's spherical surface, curvature is 0.000126 per mile everywhere (or 8 inches per mile). On the earth's oblate spheroidal surface, the curvature varies from 7.973 inches to the mile to 8.027 inches to the mile. 

The correction in going from spherical to oblate spheroidal is much smaller than going from flat to spherical. Therefore, although the notion of the earth as a sphere is wrong, strictly speaking, it is not as wrong as the notion of the earth as flat. 

Even the oblate-spheroidal notion of the earth is wrong, strictly speaking. In 1958, when the satellite Vanguard I was put into orbit about the earth, it was able to measure the local gravitational pull of the earth--and therefore its shape--with unprecedented precision. It turned out that the equatorial bulge south of the equator was slightly bulgier than the bulge north of the equator, and that the South Pole sea level was slightly nearer the center of the earth than the North Pole sea level was. 

There seemed no other way of describing this than by saying the earth was pear-shaped, and at once many people decided that the earth was nothing like a sphere but was shaped like a Bartlett pear dangling in space. Actually, the pearlike deviation from oblate-spheroid perfect was a matter of yards rather than miles, and the adjustment of curvature was in the millionths of an inch per mile. 

In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after. 

What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

This can be pointed out in many cases other than just the shape of the earth. Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured. 

Copernicus switched from an earth-centered planetary system to a sun-centered one. In doing so, he switched from something that was obvious to something that was apparently ridiculous. However, it was a matter of finding better ways of calculating the motion of the planets in the sky, and eventually the geocentric theory was just left behind. It was precisely because the old theory gave results that were fairly good by the measurement standards of the time that kept it in being so long. 

Again, it is because the geological formations of the earth change so slowly and the living things upon it evolve so slowly that it seemed reasonable at first to suppose that there was no change and that the earth and life always existed as they do today. If that were so, it would make no difference whether the earth and life were billions of years old or thousands. Thousands were easier to grasp. 

But when careful observation showed that the earth and life were changing at a rate that was very tiny but not zero, then it became clear that the earth and life had to be very old. Modern geology came into being, and so did the notion of biological evolution. 

If the rate of change were more rapid, geology and evolution would have reached their modern state in ancient times. It is only because the difference between the rate of change in a static universe and the rate of change in an evolutionary one is that between zero and very nearly zero that the creationists can continue propagating their folly. 

Since the refinements in theory grow smaller and smaller, even quite ancient theories must have been sufficiently right to allow advances to be made; advances that were not wiped out by subsequent refinements. 

The Greeks introduced the notion of latitude and longitude, for instance, and made reasonable maps of the Mediterranean basin even without taking sphericity into account, and we still use latitude and longitude today. 

The Sumerians were probably the first to establish the principle that planetary movements in the sky exhibit regularity and can be predicted, and they proceeded to work out ways of doing so even though they assumed the earth to be the center of the universe. Their measurements have been enormously refined but the principle remains. 

Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete.

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Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) was a Russian-born American author, professor, and biochemist, who’s science fiction works and accessible science writing are some of the most influential works of 20th Century Western Literature. He wrote over 500 books, including the Foundation series, and was a master at making complex scientific ideas digestible for general audiences.

Students of Total Being

“Action which is separative, fragmentary, always leads to conflict both within and without.” - J. Krishnamurti (1960)

Tuukka Toivonen May 13, 2025

Have you ever tried meditating in a cab that meanders and jolts through the chaotic traffic of a busy city? I mean really meditate: eyes closed, back straight and with the firm intent of bringing your mind to a deep state of calm awareness (never minding how odd your behaviour might seem to the driver)? If you have, you’ll have experienced in sharp form a central dilemma facing those who wish to remain anchored within the disorder of contemporary society. By this I am referring not to the pursuit of mindfulness and calm —as vital as that is—but rather to the broader challenge of cultivating and maintaining a coherent way of being, robust enough to neutralize the many sources of disintegration that impinge on our lives. How should we approach this challenge and what does it mean for a person to embody an integrated way of being? Is it even possible to achieve a centered existence amid the cacophony of contemporary life and its myriad centrifugal forces?

There is, I believe, nothing intrinsically mystical or unattainable about developing a way of being that serves as an integrative foundation for our lives. Yet  we are dealing here with a phenomenon that—owing to its inherent holism—resists simple definition. Thus, approaching ways of being through neatly delineated explanations or prescriptions would be misplaced - there are as many unique ways of being as there are people. Moreover, all non-human organisms also exhibit distinctive ways of being in the world, as the perceptive work of James Bridle reminds us. For humans, however, there are certain qualities that I associate with those who have cultivated a mature way of being and who are continuing to place emphasis on being over doing, possessing, and competing. These tend to include things like affective and creative attunement, deep self-knowledge, emotional mastery, awareness to the more-than-human world, the pursuit of integrity and honesty, and conscious embodiment (i.e., bringing a full awareness to how we inhabit our bodies, move and relate to others in space). 

A vivid appreciation of the interdependence of all life, as well as the ability to love and respond to others with compassion, are further qualities embodied by masters such as Satish Kumar whose way of being is evident in their very presence and in everything they do and produce from day to day. Kumar’s Meditation on the Unity of Life¹ beautifully encapsulates many aspects of this encompassing orientation to life:

Left palm represents the self; right palm represents 
the world.
I bring my two palms together and by doing so I 
unite myself with the world. […]
I let go of all expectation, attachment, and anxiety.
I let go of all worry, fear, and anger.
I let go of ego.
I breathe in. I breathe out.
I smile, relax, and let go.
I am at home. I am at home. We are at home.

I once joined Kumar at Schumacher College for a morning meditation of this kind, giving me a first-hand sense of the sheer energy and joy that such “practices of being” can generate. It occurred to me afterwards that this way of relating to the world and one’s self never formed any part of my own formal education. I did, however, come into contact with similar elements and the possibility of a more unified way of being when learning karate in my early teens. At the dojo back in my Finnish hometown, every little detail had significance as part of a wider (implicit) whole: the way you tied your belt, how you bowed at the entrance, where you focused your gaze when launching a punch in the course of a kata, even how you showed humility and grace during an intense match, whether you were winning or losing. Although less reflective or meditative a practice, this was a form of mind-body holism embedded in coherent gestures, movements and concepts. 

Through these experiences, it has become easier for me to notice and appreciate how many different kinds of individuals—not limited to remarkable spiritual figures such as Kumar—successfully bring an integrated sense of being into their daily lives. Some are well-known, others are not; all seem to possess a powerful presence and appear to be guided at all times by a strong awareness and intentionality. One clear commonality that all seem to  express is a focal mind-body practice, ranging from meditation and martial arts to hiking, dance and other types of conscious movement. For some, spiritual or religious practice is more central. Beyond such characteristics that are relatively easy to observe, I believe these individuals also share a deeper essence, a vital core that I could not quite put a finger on. 

That is, until I encountered the work of Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), the cosmopolitan Indian spiritual thinker who incisively addressed the complexities of the human condition, from happiness, love, and identity, to politics and education. Through entering into compassionate and unreserved dialogues with ordinary people, as well as many leaders, educators, and psychologists, Krishnamurti relentlessly challenged his interlocutors to transcend their conditioning,  and accept knowledge, so that they could become completely attuned to the unfolding of the present without being held back by the many distortions of thought.  

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“The quality of our action depends on the quality of our being—that is why there is no fundamental trade-off between being and action and why evolving one’s way of being is such a crucial task.”

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A recurring theme in Krishnamurti’s written works is his insistence that we would do well to replace our fragmented modes of being and doing with total being and total action. For Krishnamurti, it is not a  matter of trying to fine-tune or “optimize” the ways in which the various parts of  contemporary lives are put together—any such efforts that focus on efficiency or superficial “balance” are doomed to fail and breed further fragmentation, driven as they are by  greed, fear, or the desire for external approval. Rather, Krishnamurti sought to show that one could reach towards total being and action only through constant inner inquiry and observation that cast away unconscious assumptions and cleared the way for a unified awareness not subject to the divisive shenanigans of the mind. In Commentaries on Living (Series Three), he describes total being to a perplexed interlocutor as follows:

It is the feeling of being whole undivided, not fragmented—an intensity in which there is no tension no pull of desire with its contradictions. It is this intensity, this deep, unpremeditated impulse, that will break down the wall which the mind has built around itself. That wall is the ego, the ‘me’, the self. All activity of the self is separative, enclosing, and the more it struggles to break through its own barriers, the stronger those barriers become. The efforts of the self to be free only build up its own energy, its own sorrow. When the truth of this is perceived, only then is there the movement of the whole. This movement has no centre, as it has no beginning and no end; it’s a movement beyond the measure of the mind—the mind that is put together through time. The understanding of the activities of the conflicting parts of the mind, which make up the self, the ego, is meditation.

Here we find some insight on that deeper commonality that individuals with a mature way of being appear to embody: each such person is not merely oriented towards being over doing, but is a committed student of total being, as described by Krishnamurti. The ego has been (or is being) transcended, its barriers broken, the flow of an integrated awareness is liberated such that it seamlessly combines perception, thought, feeling, embodiment and action. This results in an immediacy and intensity of being that allows truth to readily surface, in any context and situation that life might generate. To truly achieve a depth and integrity of being, one cannot avoid studying total being.

Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote that the quality of our action depends on the quality of our being—that is why there is no fundamental trade-off between being and action and why evolving one’s way of being is such a crucial task. Fragmented orientations to the self can only lead to fragmented behaviors, actions and relationships. The negative consequences are grave not only in positions of leadership and influence, but also at the level of our day-to-day relationships. Conversely, transcending fragmentation can have vast positive impacts that reverberate far and wide.

For these reasons, I have begun to propose that the more action-oriented and entrepreneurial we wish to be, the more we need to cultivate our way of being. We should think less in terms of careers, jobs or personal brands—all of which amount to artificial constructs with a strongly external emphasis, and divisive and distorting effects on our lives—and instead should focus on unity of being, openness to the unknown and humility. Prior to being students of particular skills and disciplines—and prior to being designers, entrepreneurs or artists—we will do well to be students of total being.

How might your future change if you became such a student today?

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Tuukka Toivonen, Ph.D. (Oxon.) is a sociologist interested in ways of being, relating and creating that can help us to reconnect with – and regenerate – the living world. Alongside his academic research, Tuukka works directly with emerging regenerative designers and startups in the creative, material innovation and technology sectors. 

Tuukka would like to thank Elina Osborne and Chiharu Suzuki for the suggestions they kindly  offered in the process of this article’s germination at Amigo House.

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¹  Kumar, S. (2023) Radical Love: From Separation to Connection with the Earth, Each Other, and Ourselves. New York: Parallax Press.

Page and Princess of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Page of Cups, Princess of Cups
Number: 4
Astrology: Earth of Water
Qabalah: He of He

Chris Gabriel May 10, 2025

The Page of Cups is the lowest court card in the suit of Cups. This is the cup bearer, the waterboy, the servant, and ideal helper. The Page and Princess take pleasure in pleasing, they happily refresh and heal those in need.

In Rider, the Page is a young man with black hair and a blue, squid-like turban. His blue tunic is adorned with blooming lotuses, and his undergarments are wine red. He smiles, hand on his hip, and holds a cup with a fish inside. He stands on a shore with waves behind him.

In Thoth, the Princess is a young woman with a great flowing pink dress adorned with crystals. She holds a huge shell within which a turtle sits. Her head is topped with a swan whose wings are spread out. The background is reminiscent of a Georgia O’Keefe painting and a fish leaps out from behind her.

In Marseille, we find a young man with whitish blond hair. He is the only hatless Page, in its stead is a garland of flowers. He moves to the left, and carries a cup in one hand, and in the other its lid. He is sensitive and at risk of closing off his receptive cup.

The Page of Cups is the image of Ganymede,  the most beautiful mortal whose name translates literally to “taking pleasure” and “mind”. He was so beloved by Zeus that he seized him to serve as the cupbearer to the Gods, making him immortal and eternally beautiful, but forever submissive. This is the role of the Page of Cups. The Latin form of his name, Catamitus, became an epithet for young homosexual men, equivalent to today’s “twink”. The receptivity of Cups here takes on a clear sexual significance. 

We see this role paralleled with the daughter of Zeus as the Princess of Cups. Hebe (literally “Youth”) also acted as cupbearer to the Gods and was the Goddess of eternal youth. We see a more mature form of this figure in the American Revolution’s many “Molly Pitchers” who braved the battlefield to bring water and munitions to the soldiers, often joining the fight when needed.

Materially, we can see versions of the Page and Princess of Cups in nurses, bartenders, and baristas and. We are tended to and pleased by these people, often literally given cups. Service jobs like these generally rely on tips to make them worthwhile, so the server takes up a charming and kind persona. This is one of the few daily niceties that many people have access to, the kindness of service. This is also a role many of us take on, especially as children, fetching things for family members.

When we pull this card we may feel more sensitive than usual, and can have a heightened receptivity to others. You may be called on to serve someone and be rewarded accordingly, you may also find someone willing to serve you.

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

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The Magical Path of No Mind

Caspar David Friedrich, ‘Woman in Front of the Setting Sun’. 1817.

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Molly Hankins May 8, 2025

Reaching a state of magical trance, uninfluenced by conscious or subconscious thought, is an essential element of practicing any form of magic. As described by the chaos magician and author Peter J. Carroll, “To work magic effectively, the ability to concentrate the attention must be built up until the mind can enter a trancelike condition.” If our untamed mind is interfering with our magical will, the effects we seek to create will be short-circuited. Often this materializes as a  fear of failure, over-attachment to outcome, or some egoic identification. Our minds are meaning-making machines, and that function is what we have to bypass by focusing on meaningless phenomena. 

Carroll suggests we still our minds by steering our thinking away from meaning. This alters consciousness enough to enter a heightened state of gnosis, achieved by generating different forms of inhibitory and excitatory states of mind that quiet  the inner monologue. Inhibitory states involve a progressive stilling of the body and mind until only a single object of concentration remains. Excitatory states, on the other hand, are attained by raising the body and mind to an extremely high pitch of excitement so that singular focus becomes possible as all other sensory input is overwhelmed. “Let the mind become as a flame or a pool of still water,” Carroll wrote in his chaos magic manual Liber Null and Psychonaut. 

Inhibitory methods are akin to different forms of meditation. First there is the “death posture”, where the body’s physical stillness trains the mind to respond in kind. When thoughts arise, they are to be pushed into the unconscious, which serves as a repository for all thinking that would interfere with the singular focus of magical will. 

Mirror gazing is another inhibitory approach. It involves placing a mirror about two feet away and staring into it, while holding as still as possible. Gazing at a fixed object, preferably in nature while the body remains motionless, is another method. Fasting, sleeplessness, and other form of physical exhaustion are other inhibitory methods of inducing gnosis.

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“Singular focus is easy to hold in this state because the current of energy feels so strong it overloads all sensory and mental input.”

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Walking meditations and magical trance can offer both inhibitory and excitatory approaches to gnosis inducement, depending on the precise methods used. For both slow, inhibitory walking or fast, excitatory walking, Carroll recommends blurring your vision so as not to focus on anything in particular. Gnostic conditions emerge from the body being occupied with the act of walking and the mind busy averting focus. Magical trance can come from inhibitory concentration on a meaningless object or excitatory methods such as chanting, dancing, over-breathing, and even laughter. Laughter is the highest emotion according to Carroll, because it can contain the full spectrum of every other emotion from ecstasy and grief. The excitatory paths to gnosis all involve some form of overload, and the easiest to access is emotional overload. Tapping into fear, anger and horror is where the most potency lies, but extreme experiences of love and grief can also be utilized. Physical pain is also an easy, albeit potentially dangerous onramp to single-pointed thinking. Lyrical exaltation through emotive poetry, song and prayer is another powerful means, and sexual arousal is a very potent gnostic practice. This method is amplified by prolonging the state of sexual excitation, whether by yourself or in partnered sex. 

An obvious question surrounding these practices is what does gnosis feel like? The answer is not the same for everyone, but when I successfully achieve a gnostic state it feels like my locus of consciousness relocates to the very center of my body and expands all the way up my spine through the top of my head. I feel my awareness and thoughts collapse into this central column and experience a surge of energy moving upwards. Singular focus is easy to hold in this state because the current of energy feels so strong it overloads all sensory and mental input. The practice of inducing gnosis means holding the state for as long as possible, even if only a few seconds, and building up stamina from there with repetition. 

Any regular meditation practice can also act as a gnosis accelerant. When our nervous system and inner monologue get used to being stilled on a daily basis, it becomes easier to access singular gnostic focus, regardless of the practice being used. Simply watching our breath, using a mantra and listening to binaural tones are all effective meditation methods that strengthen our natural magic abilities and our sense of interconnectedness with all of life.

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

The Slippery Slope from Anger to Rage

Young Greeks Attending a Cock Fight, 1846. Jean-Léon Gérôme.

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Suzanne Stabile May 6, 2025

The Wisdom of the Enneagram informs how I see the world and spurs my desire to have an offering for those searching for greater understanding and peace. After more than thirty years of learning and teaching, I am more aware than ever of our need to accept that there are nine distinctly different ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us. None are right or wrong; they are expansive rather than limiting, and they are nuanced beyond our imagination.

In my offerings for Tetragrammaton, I’ve spent some time focused on the idea that we each have a default emotion, waiting to take up space in our lives if we aren’t clear about what we’re feeling. And recently I’ve felt we are living in a moment when anxiety and anger are falling on all of us unbidden and often hidden from our awareness.

Anger is the dominant emotion for Enneagram Eights, Nines, and Ones, and it is a hard emotion to define. One source called it “a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure or hostility,” but I think we can agree that we use those words now as stand-alone emotions. The other two default emotions for Enneagram Triads are shame—for Twos, Threes, and Fours—and fear—for Fives, Sixes, and Sevens. Anger and rage are more observable and therefore easier to identify than the other two. However, all of these emotional responses are both comforting and destructive in equal measure as they influence the behavior of the nine personality types.

Enneagram Eights, Nines, and Ones are in the Anger Triad, which is often referred to as the Gut Triad or the Body-Centered Triad. They receive information from the environment first in their core, or gut, which often causes a reactive rather than a measured response. All three numbers or personality types build “walls” between what they consider self and not-self, and each is built for the distinct purpose of providing the most personal safety.

For Enneagram Eights, the ego-boundary is primarily focused outward, against the environment, and their focus of attention is also outside of themselves. Eights put out a wall of energy so that nothing can get too close, shutting themselves off from vulnerability. They keep their guard up most of the time, and the more wounded they are, the tougher they make it for others to get through.

Type Ones also hold a boundary against the outside world, but they are far more interested in maintaining an internal boundary. They are vigilant about protecting themselves. We all have parts of ourselves that we don’t want to look at or that we don’t trust or approve of—parts of ourselves that make us feel anxious and unprotected. Unlike other numbers, Ones spend a lot of energy trying to hold back unconscious impulses that arise in themselves. “I hate that feeling, and I don’t want it!” they say, or “I have to find a way to stop reacting to everyone and every wrong thing that seems to surround me.” It requires a lot of energy to maintain such strong inner boundaries.

Nines invest lots of energy in protecting their ego boundaries. Internally, they are trying to keep in anything that would cause trouble, and they maintain a strong external boundary trying to keep out anything that would steal their peace. This requires a significant amount of effort, and it is the primary reason Nines have the least energy of all the types. It also explains why they don’t have as much energy as they would like for living and engaging more fully with the world.

There is so much to say about anger because it touches our lives in memorable and altogether different ways. It can be helpful, then, to identify the different ways of expressing these feelings for each of the three numbers.

Eight anger is straight-up, and then it’s over. Everyone involved, and even outside observers, know when an Eight is angry. Once it is expressed, it is finished—except for the lingering effect it has on the other person.

For Nines, anger is a more passive emotion. The peacemakers believe it is in their best interest to protect themselves by expressing anger indirectly. They choose behavior that lets others know they are angry, then hope for the impossible. They want the target of their anger to figure out the reason for their disapproval, apologize for it, and hopefully never do it again—whatever “it” is.

Enneagram Ones don’t believe anger is an acceptable response, so they rename their angry feelings as impatience, anxiety, or frustration. In choosing a substitute, they usually feel better despite it not helping to negotiate a lasting understanding in relationships.

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“Will I have the humility to avoid the temptation to defend myself, trying to prove that I’m right?”

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Anger is something that happens to your whole body. It’s an emotional response that you consciously feel. At its core, anger is an internal awareness of specific thoughts, feelings, and desires, and yet it is often described in other ways: “I can’t handle much more of this!” or “I obviously thought he was a better person than he is!” For all three personality types, knowing who is to blame is very important, and once the responsibility for the bad behavior is assigned, there is a tendency to simply move on.

Think about these expressions of anger and how they show up in your life. Do you yell, scream, argue, use sarcasm and cynicism, or slam things? As is true with fear and shame, at times we all spiral into behaviors that don’t serve us well. Thankfully, everything contains its opposite. Father Richard Rohr says, “Anger is good and very necessary to protect the appropriate boundaries of self and others. On the other hand, anger becomes self-defeating and egocentric when it hangs around too long after we have received its message.”

Considering that anger has a message for us, the question becomes: can we hear it if we have limited our options by reacting rather than listening? Anger tells us that something is significantly wrong, and it gives us the energy to try to make things right. At its best, anger reveals our concern for fairness, rightness, and justice. There are many times when being angry has motivated me to make changes in my life or to face problems that I have been avoiding, and I know the same is true for others.

Anger has the potential to be redirected toward greater understanding and mutually agreeable solutions. We can even use the energy it offers to move toward transformation, but we have to slow down enough to notice what is happening around us. These questions can be helpful: Are people moving toward me or away from me? In listening to the story I’m telling myself, fueled by my anger, do I pause long enough to ask myself if it’s true? Or is it just fiction that exacerbates my feelings and justifies my bad behavior? And finally, will I have the humility to avoid the temptation to defend myself, trying to prove that I’m right?

Rage is an instinctive reaction to the feeling that we must suppress ourselves in one way or another. When we are feeling judged, misunderstood, justified in our behavior, and empowered to protect ourselves, it’s hard to recognize the slippery slope that awaits us, where the space between anger and rage can be obscured by a lack of awareness. It is helpful to remember that rage is an intensified, growing anger that will be difficult to control. It is wise, therefore, to make every effort to manage anger before we become aware that anger is managing us.

Now, more than ever, we need to be mindful of the energy that accompanies anger. For all that can go wrong—and there is plenty—anger almost always increases and then regenerates the amount of energy we feel. The wisdom that comes from exploring, and perhaps limiting, our options is easily ignored when we are invigorated by a charged exchange, without stopping long enough to consider the consequences.

One of my favorite stories begins with a second-grade boy running down a long hallway in the Sunday School building, trying to catch the Pastor.

“Pastor Joe, please wait! We need your help.”
“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in Sunday School?”
“I ran out to try to catch up with you. We really need you to come to our class right away.”
“Okay. But why?”
“Because we are all behaving badly and we don’t know how to stop ourselves!”

The distance from anger to rage is not very far, and in the absence of an intervention, our ability to stop ourselves before it’s too late is unlikely. Anger can be a powerful and positive motivator, but it can also become a raging, uncontrolled force that hurts us and others. It is helpful to remember this: regardless of how painful our experiences are or may be, they are just painful experiences—until we add the response of anger or rage.

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Suzanne Stabile is a speaker, teacher, and internationally recognized Enneagram master teacher who has taught thousands of people over the last thirty years. She is the author of ‘The Path Between Us’, and coauthor, with Ian Morgan Cron, of ‘The Road Back to You’. She is also the creator and host of The Enneagram Journey podcast. Along with her husband, Rev. Joseph Stabile, she is cofounder of Life in the Trinity Ministry, a nonprofit, nondenominational ministry committed to the spiritual growth and formation of adults.

Eight of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Indolence, the Eight of Cups
Number: 8
Astrology: Saturn in Pisces
Qabalah: Hod of He

Chris Gabriel May 3, 2025

The Eight of Cups is the inevitable hangover that follows the overindulgence of Sevens’ Debauch. Here, the pleasures that have defined the past two cards in the suit are completely dulled. This is a painfully boring situation. 

In Rider, we find a man departing from a rocky shore. Eight cups are stacked on the sand and a sad Moon gazes down upon him. He dons a red cloak,red boots, and walks with a stick. This is an image straight out of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, when after his lengthy complaints and fantasies he says “Here I am on the shores of Breton. Let the cities light up in the evening. My day is done; I’m leaving Europe.”

In Thoth, we have eight cups atop eight sickly, pale lily pads, as two withering lotuses spew water into the system. The waters are swampy and the sky is filled with dark clouds. This card is the heavy dull weight of Saturn in the depths of the Piscean. It is the high pressure one feels when deep sea diving.

In Marseille, we have eight cups and a sprawling flower. In this card, Jodorowsky sees an image of fullness, rather than hangover. Qabalistically this card is “The Intelligence of the Queen”,hich here we can take to mean “knowing when enough is enough”. While Rider and Thoth fall into overindulgence and depression, Marseille exercises restraint.

This is a fairly hopeless card: the party is over, and what remains is a hangover. Often, we indulge to achieve a “high”, to have pleasures, sensual and emotional, and we generally just can’t get enough of these, so we overindulge. Saturn, as the strict and authoritarian planet, despises overindulgence and punishes accordingly with a hangover. If we stay up all night, we suffer the next day - what goes up must come down. If we can accept this, we can achieve the more enlightened position of Marseille, we can get just enough pleasure tonight and not ruin tomorrow.

The boredom and depression this card represents can ultimately serve us though, for it is in stillness and inactivity that the seeds of movement are born. It is only through a willing delve into the depth that we can achieve any heights. 

Materially, the card draws up images of Leviathan and strange deep sea life. In our lives, this tends to signify a period of melancholy and depression, or directly a hangover. It may simply be “bad air” or dark clouds over one's head. If we willingly accept the heavy darkness of the depth, we will rise to even greater heights

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

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How Should One Read a Book? (Pt. 2)

Guiseppe Antonio Petrini, c.1735.

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First given as a speech at Hayes Court Common school in Kent at the start of 1926, and then adapted and published in the Yale Review the same year, Woolf’s impassioned ode to reading remains a seminal text. She reminds us that reading is not a passive activity, and that if each book only comes alive through active choices by its reader, it is worth considering how we as a consumer can elevate and enliven the literature we choose to read. The writer and reader are connected, and it is our duty to approach each new book as a different beast, to use our qualities of imagination, insight, and judgement, not rest on laurels of past works but follow our instincts to find the heart, truth, and beauty of each text anew.

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Virginia Woolf, April 15, 2025

If, then, this is true—that books are of very different types, and that to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another—it is clear that reading is one of the most arduous and exhausting of occupations. Often the pages fly before us and we seem, so keen is our interest, to be living and not even holding the volume in our hands. But the more exciting the book, the more danger we run of over-reading. The symptoms are familiar. Suddenly the book becomes dull as ditchwater and heavy as lead. We yawn and stretch and cannot attend. The highest flights of Shakespeare and Milton become intolerable. And we say to ourselves—is Keats a fool or am I?—a painful question, a question, moreover, that need not be asked if we realized how great a part the art of not reading plays in the art of reading. To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power. All biographies and memoirs, all the hybrid books which are largely made up of facts, serve to restore to us the power of reading real books—that is to say, works of pure imagination. That they serve also to impart knowledge and to improve the mind is true and important, but if we are considering how to read books for pleasure, not how to provide an adequate pension for one’s widow, this other property of theirs is even more valuable and important. But here again one should know what one is after. One is after rest, and fun, and oddity, and some stimulus to one’s own jaded creative power. One has left one’s bare and angular tower and is strolling along the street looking in at the open windows. After solitude and concentration, the open air, the sight of other people absorbed in innumerable activities, comes upon us with an indescribable fascination.

The windows of the houses are open; the blinds are drawn up. One can see the whole household without their knowing that they are being seen. One can see them sitting round the dinner table, talking, reading, playing games. Sometimes they seem to be quarrelling—but what about? Or they are laughing—but what is the joke? Down in the basement the cook is reading a newspaper aloud, while the housemaid is making a piece of toast; in comes the kitchen maid and they all start talking at the same moment—but what are they saying? Upstairs a girl is dressing to go to a party. But where is she going? There is an old lady sitting at her bedroom window with some kind of wool work in her hand and a fine green parrot in a cage beside her. And what is she thinking? All this life has somehow come together; there isa reason for it; a coherency in it, could one but seize it. The biographer answers the innumerable questions which we ask as we stand outside on the pavement looking in at the open window. Indeed there is nothing more interesting than to pick one’s way about among these vast depositories of facts, to make up the lives of men and women, to create their complex minds and households from the extraordinary abundance and litter and confusion of matter which lies strewn about. A thimble, a skull, a pair of scissors, a sheaf of sonnets, are given us, and we have to create, to combine, to put these incongruous things together.There is, too, a quality in facts, an emotion which comes from knowing that men and women actually did and suffered these things, which only the greatest novelists can surpass. CaptainScott, starving and freezing to death in the snow, affects us as deeply as any made-up story of adventure by Conrad or Defoe; but it affects us differently. The biography differs from the novel. To ask a biographer to give us the same kind of pleasure that we get from a novelist is to misuse and misread him. Directly he says “John Jones was born at five-thirty in the morning of August 13, I 862,” he has committed himself, focussed his lens upon fact, and if he then begins to romance, the perspective becomes blurred, we grow suspicious, and our faith in his integrity as a writer is destroyed. In the same way fact destroys fiction. IfThackeray, for example, had quoted an actual newspaper account of the Battle of Waterloo in“Vanity Fair,” the whole fabric of his story would have been destroyed, as a stone destroys abubble.

But it is undoubted that these hybrid books, these warehouses and depositories of facts, playa great part in resting the brain and restoring its zest of imagination. The work of building up a life for oneself from skulls, thimbles, scissors, and sonnets stimulates our interest in creation and rouses our wish to see the work beautifully and powerfully done by a Flaubert or a Tolstoi. Moreover, however interesting facts may be, they are an inferior form of fiction, and gradually we become impatient of their weakness and diffuseness, of their compromises and evasions, of the slovenly sentences which they make for themselves, and are eager to revive ourselves with the greater intensity and truth of fiction. 

It is necessary to have in hand an immense reserve of imaginative energy in order to attack the steeps of poetry. Here are none of those gradual introductions, those resemblances to the familiar world of daily life with which the novelist entices us into his world of imagination.All is violent, opposite, unrelated. But various causes, such as bad books, the worry of carrying on life efficiently, the intermittent but powerful shocks dealt us by beauty, and the incalculable impulses of our own minds and bodies frequently put us into that state of mind in which poetry is a necessity. The sight of a crocus in a garden will suddenly bring to mind all the spring days that have ever been. One then desires the general, not the particular; the whole, not the detail; to turn uppermost the dark side of the mind; to be in contact with silence, solitude, and all men and women and not this particular Richard, or that particularAnne. Metaphors are then more expressive than plain statements.

Thus in order to read poetry rightly, one must be in a rash, an extreme, a generous state of mind in which many of the supports and comforts of literature are done without. Its power of make-believe, its representative power, is dispensed with in favor of its extremities and extravagances. The representation is often at a very far remove from the thing represented, so that we have to use all our energies of mind to grasp the relation between, for example, the song of a nightingale and the image and ideas which that song stirs in the mind. Thus reading poetry often seems a state of rhapsody in which rhyme and metre and sound stir the mind as wine and dance stir the body, and we read on, understanding with the senses, not with the intellect, in a state of intoxication. Yet all this intoxication and intensity of delight depend upon the exactitude and truth of the image, on its being the counterpart of the reality within. Remote and extravagant as some of Shakespeare’s images seem, far-fetched and ethereal as some of Keats’s, at the moment of reading they seem the cap and culmination of the thought; its final expression. But it is useless to labor the matter in cold blood. Anyone who has read a poem with pleasure will remember the sudden conviction, the sudden recollection (for it seems sometimes as if we were about to say, or had in some previous existence already said, what Shakespeare is actually now saying), which accompany the reading of poetry, and give it its exaltation and intensity. But such reading is attended, whether consciously or unconsciously, with the utmost stretch and vigilance of the faculties, of the reason no less than of the imagination. We are always verifying the poet’s statements, making a flying comparison, to the best of our powers, between the beauty he makes outside and the beauty we are aware of within. For the humblest among us is endowed with the power of comparison. The simplest (provided he loves reading) has that already within him to which he makes what is given him—by poet or novelist—correspond.

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“The book upon which we have spent so much time and thought fades entirely out of sight. But suddenly, as one is picking a snail from a rose, tying a shoe, perhaps, doing something distant and different, the whole book floats to the top of the mind complete.”

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With that saying, of course, the cat is out of the bag. For this admission that we can compare, discriminate, brings us to this further point. Reading is not merely sympathizing and understanding; it is also criticizing and judging. Hitherto our endeavor has been to read books as a writer writes them. We have been trying to understand, to appreciate, to interpret, to sympathize. But now, when the book is finished, the reader must leave the dock and mount the bench. He must cease to be the friend; he must become the judge. And this is no mere figure of speech. The mind seems (“seems,” for all is obscure that takes place in the mind) to go through two processes in reading. One might be called the actual reading; the other the after reading. During the actual reading, when we hold the book in our hands, there are incessant distractions and interruptions. New impressions are always completing or cancelling the old. One’s judgment is suspended, for one does not know what is coming next.Surprise, admiration, boredom, interest, succeed each other in such quick succession that when, at last, the end is reached, one is for the most part in a state of complete bewilderment. Is it good? or bad? What kind of book is it? How good a book is it? The friction of reading and the emotion of reading beat up too much dust to let us find clear answers to these questions. If we are asked our opinion, we cannot give it. Parts of the book seem to have sunk away, others to be starting out in undue prominence. Then perhaps it is better to take up some different pursuit—to walk, to talk, to dig, to listen to music. The book upon which we have spent so much time and thought fades entirely out of sight. But suddenly, as one is picking a snail from a rose, tying a shoe, perhaps, doing something distant and different, the whole book floats to the top of the mind complete. Some process seems to have been finished without one’s being aware of it. The different details which have accumulated in reading assemble themselves in their proper places. The book takes on a definite shape; it becomes a castle, a cowshed, a gothic ruin, as the case may be. Now one can think of the book as a whole, and the book as a whole is different, and gives one a different emotion, from the book received currently in several different parts. Its symmetry and proportion, its confusion and distortion can cause great delight or great disgust apart from the pleasure given by each detail as it is separately realized. Holding this complete shape in mind it now becomes necessary to arrive at some opinion of the book’s merits, for though it is possible to receive the greatest pleasure and excitement from the first process, the actual reading, though this is of the utmost importance, it is not so profound or so lasting as the pleasure we get when the second process—the after reading—is finished, and we hold the book clear, secure, and (to the best of our powers) complete in our minds.

But how, we may ask, are we to decide any of these questions—is it good, or is it bad?—how good is it, how bad is it? Not much help can be looked for from outside. Critics abound; criticisms pullulate; but minds differ too much to admit of close correspondence in matters of detail, and nothing is more disastrous than to crush one’s own foot into another person’s shoe. When we want to decide a particular case, we can best help ourselves, not by reading criticism, but by realizing our own impression as acutely as possible and referring this to the judgments which we have gradually formulated in the past. There they hang in the wardrobe of our mind—the shapes of the books we have read, as we hung them up and put them away when we had done with them. If we have just read “Clarissa Harlowe,” for example, let us see how it shows up against the shape of “Anna Karenina.” At once the outlines of the two books are cut out against each other as a house with its chimneys bristling and its gables sloping is cut out against a harvest moon. At once Richardson’s qualities—his verbosity, his obliqueness—are contrasted with Tolstoi’s brevity and directness. And what is the reason of this difference in their approach? And how does our emotion at different crises of the two books compare? And what must we attribute to the eighteenth century, and what to Russia and the translator? But the questions which suggest themselves are innumerable. They ramify infinitely, and many of them are apparently irrelevant. Yet it is by asking them and pursuing the answers as far as we can go that we arrive at our standard of values, and decide in the end that the book we have just read is of this kind or of that, has merit in that degree or in this. And it is now, when we have kept closely to our own impression, formulated independently our own judgment, that we can most profitably help ourselves to the judgments of the great critics—Dryden, Johnson, and the rest. It is when we can best defend our own opinions that we get most from theirs.

So, then—to sum up the different points we have reached in this essay—have we found any answer to our question, how should we read a book? Clearly, no answer that will do for everyone; but perhaps a few suggestions. In the first place, a good reader will give the writer the benefit of every doubt; the help of all his imagination; will follow as closely, interpret as intelligently as he can. In the next place, he will judge with the utmost severity. Every book, he will remember, has the right to be judged by the best of its kind. He will be adventurous, broad in his choice, true to his own instincts, yet ready to consider those of other people.This is an outline which can be filled, in at taste and at leisure, but to read something after this fashion is to be a reader whom writers respect. It is by the means of such readers that masterpieces are helped into the world.

If the moralists ask us how we can justify our love of reading, we can make use of some such excuse as this. But if we are honest, we know that no such excuse is needed. It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure—mysterious, unknown, useless as it is—is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely fertilizing to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgment when secrets are revealed and the obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and made pavements and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing but this: we have loved reading.

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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th century modernist authors. An important part of the contemporary literary scene, Woolf’s relevance has only grown in the near century since her passing, and her pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women's writing, and the politics of power have become touchstones for contemporary thought.

King and Prince of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name:  King of Disks, Prince of Disks
Astrology: Taurus
Qabalah: Vau of He

Chris Gabriel April 26, 2025

The King of Disks is a man of the land, and each representation rests amid fertile soil. The fruits of the labor abound, this is a man made rich by his hard work and at the height of earthly power: growth and accumulation. The work of the suit was all investment for these ultimate returns.

In Rider, the King looks demurely upon the pentacle he balances  upon his knee. His cloak is verdant, covered in grapes and vines, his crown is rosy, and his cowl is scarlet. His other hand holds a sphere topped scepter. The throne is adorned with four Bulls and the ground below him is full of flowers and vines. His castle stands in the background.

In Thoth, we have the Prince of Disks working the field, lowly compared to the King who enjoys the harvest. Doing the labor needed to produce fruit, he is naked but for his helmet, which is topped with a winged bulls head. He is riding in a bull drawn chariot surrounded by vegetable life: onions, tomatoes, flowers, and wheat. He grasps a sphere within which there is a tesseract and bears a scepter topped with the globe and cross. Both he and his bull look ahead.

In Marseille, we find a unique King. Unlike the other three he wears no crown, just a hat to keep the sun from his eyes. A simple and hardworking man, he sits in nature rather than in the palace. There is soil under his feet, life is sprouting from it. He holds one coin, and looks aside to another in the distance. He has chosen the ploughshare over the sword.

The suit of Disks deals with the material world and the things that make it up. Through the course of the suit, we watch the seed grow, change, wither, and then flourish. The King of Disks enjoys these processes and cycles, and is made rich by them. This is how one can master people as well, not by dictating their behaviour, but by putting them in the right environments, providing the proper conditions, and allowing them to grow on their own. A good farmer does not always need to intervene, they simply give nature freedom to flourish.

The Prince is the younger King, actively farming, knowing with absolute certainty that his hard work will produce a brilliant harvest. In many ways, this is the situation of any working person. We work aware of the season we are in, we plant seeds and work the fields to accumulate wealth, to later direct others, and to eventually retire. Most Kings will fight to the death to retain their power and control, the King of Disks is the opposite. He does what must be done and retires happily.

History gives us examples of Kings and leaders who abandoned the palace in favor of the plough. George Washington, the first president of the United States, established democracy instead of making himself king. This decision brought comparison to the Roman consul and dictator Cincinnatus, who after overcoming an invasion over the course of sixteen days immediately relinquished power and returned to his farm. 

When we pull this card, we may meet a figure who embodies the King of Disks, an older, wealthy, simple man. We may also need to embody this sort of natural wisdom in order to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

The Magdalen and Gnostic Gospels

Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, Artemisia Gentileschi. 1617.

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Molly Hankins April 24, 2025

The Gnostic Gospels, discovered in Egypt in 1945, includes 52 texts allegedly omitted from the Bible that were authored in the first or second century A.D. Information in these texts suggests that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen and had a family with her, which corroborates the information channeled by Tom Kenyon and his wife Judi Sion in The Magdalen Manuscript. In this book,Mary Magdalen herself tells the story of her life with Jesus, then known as Yeshua, his true purpose for incarnating on Earth and her role as both his divine counterpart and a practicing priestess of the Temple of Isis.

Contrary to what’s included in the Bible, the Gnostic Gospels tell us that Magdalen was not a prostitute - she was an Initiate and priestess of the Temple of Isis, as was Yeshua’s mother Mary. Initiates were practitioners of tantric alchemy trained to use the subtle energies of sexual energy to activate the human light body. This work, described in detail in a previous article, is a means of achieving magical,healing abilities and, ultimately, immortality. According a portion of the Gospel of Thomas, a roughly 1500 year old manuscript housed in the British Library, not only was Magdalen married to Yeshua and the mother of his child, they were both practitioners of alchemical tantric magic and she was the founder of the Judeo-Christian church. 

Study of these gospels has proven controversial and difficult to verify historically - much of it is written in code and parts of the manuscripts have clearly been censored. However, channeled material supported by historical and archaeological record has proved to be a unique way of tracing human history. The most famous example is Dorothy Eady, a mid-20th century British historian who worked for the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. Following a head injury as a young girl, she recalled a past life as a fellow Isis Initiate in a  relationship with Pharaoh Seti at the Temple of Abydos. As an adult working in Abydos, she was able to accurately remember details from her past life and provide information to the Department of Antiquities to determine where onsite archaeological digs should take place.

In the same way Eady’s insights were supported by excavation and written historical record, much of what is shared in The Magdalen Manuscript is found  in parts of the Gnostic Gospels. After the crucifixion, Yeshua’s followers split into several groups and authored their own records of their time with him, which became known as the gospels. At that time Christianity was being heavily persecuted by the Roman empire  but under Emperor Constantine in the 4th century A.D. a specific form of Christianity was adopted by Rome, the version taught by the apostle Paul. All other gospels were systematically destroyed or hidden, losing nearly all records of Yeshua’s life as a young man and his relationship with Magdalen.

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“The material world is an illusion, a game for our souls to explore and evolve in, and achieving ecstatic states of bliss is how we transcend it.”

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It was during the early years of their relationship, according to Magdalen, that Yeshua also became an Initiate and was able to strengthen his Ka, or light body. In another book of channeled material, The Law of One from the Egyptian sun god Ra, much reference is made to souls getting lost in the third density of Earth. This is why more advanced, inter-dimensional beings are working to help the human collective achieve karmic escape velocity. Christ’s crucifixion can be interpreted as serving the same purpose, and some Biblical scholars interpret Yeshua and Ra to be different expressions of the same being.

The Magdalen Manuscript states that the purpose of Yeshua’s resurrection was to, “cut a passage through death itself,” allowing others understand the true nature of life and death and thereby “follow his trail of light” so as not to get lost in third density. His teachings were the means of escaping the wheel of karma, and his resurrection was the ultimate miracle proving that any of us could follow these teachings and achieve the same state of being. Indeed, every miracle he performed was intended to be a demonstration that his level of Christ consciousness is available to all of us, but this idea was omitted by the Roman-adopted version of Christianity. Instead of the story of Yeshua’s life and death serving as an example for all mankind, the narrative was revised to deify him and suggest that perfection and power were impossible to achieve.

Magdalen, through Kenyon’s channeling, clarified that those who witnessed Yeshua’s resurrection were seeing his light-body, which he had strengthened enough through personal and tantric spiritual practice to appear even though his physical body had died. After his resurrection, she and Yeshua’s mother and their young child were not safe under Roman rule, so they fled to France. They eventually made their way to what is now England to seek the protection of The Druids, who had connections to the Isis priesthood. The early Judeo-Christian church, founded by Magdalen, was a hybrid of Judaism, Paganism and Christianity. There is some surviving evidence, including a mosaic floor at a fifth century synagogue called Beit Alpha near Galilee in Israel, where Yeshua was from and where he taught. 

The mosaic depicts the zodiac with Pagan symbols, and Yeshua appearing in the center as the sun god Helios, the Greek equivalent to the Egyptian god Ra. There are also several traditional Jewish symbols depicted, including a temple and shofar which  Magdalen Manuscript’s claim that early Judeo-Christianity was established first in the Jewish region of Galilee and later amongst the Pagan-practicing Druids. This early expression of Christianity united multiple religious systems and revered the holy physical union of Magdalen and Yeshua. The separation from Jewish and Pagan influence and glorification of celibacy came with the later, distorted version adopted under Constantine. 

Following the account of her life and relationship with Yeshua, the second half of The Magdalen Manuscript provides a detailed analysis of world religions, alchemy practices and the commonalities between them and the original Judeo-Christian tenets. Many of these themes, largely erased from post-Constantine Christianity, are closer to a Vedic, Buddhist or Kabbalist worldview. The core message is that the material world is an illusion, a game for our souls to explore and evolve in, and achieving ecstatic states of bliss is how we transcend it. We all have the power to recognize life as a dream, awaken from it, and thereby enjoy it more.

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

Parting (Museum of Suspense II)

Giovanni Lanfranco, Mary Magdalene Raised by Angels, c. 1616, oil on canvas, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.

Ale Nodarse April 22, 2025

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A woman is borne aloft. She is called Mary Magdalen, and she floats. She rises naked, appearing, for a moment, like an air bubble brought to the surface of a stream. She does not move, but the artist clarifies her upward trajectory. One of three angels pulls at the cloth Mary sits upon  to raise her up, up and away. 

This seventeenth-century Magdalen (c. 1616) by the Italian painter Giovanni Lanfranco might count as one portrait of Mary Magdalen among many within the Museum of Suspense. Lanfranco himself was an eclectic observer of earlier painting. Merging disparate styles, his composition here draws readily upon medieval precedents. The image of the floating figure had stemmed from a thirteenth-century collection of saint’s lives, Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea), which included details of Mary Magdalene’s life after the death of her beloved Christ. This Mary chose to live in solitude and, as the Legend describes, forsake all food and drink; and yet, “every day she was lifted up in the air of angels” and given incorporeal sustenance. This continued until her death when her soul, as opposed to her body, parted indefinitely. In the 1616 canvas, Lanfranco leaves us to wonder if Mary ascends for a first or final time. His picture prompts us, in other words, to ask when. 

The picture is, of course, a material thing. Made of wood, canvas, and oil, it remains on the side of the ground. Likewise, the artist’s vision is a mortal one. Yet, just as  suspension challenges the division between ground and sky, so too does Mary’s body — liable, as it now appears, to drift. The artist’s vision entails a similar movement. To paint the miraculous, one wonders, did Lanfranco think of more “quotidian” blues. Did he once open his eyes under water? Did he look at the sun through the lens of the sea? Did he catch the billow of cloth in a wave? 

On the lower right of Lanfranco’s canvas, two small figures look up.

Our own mortal vision is set within the work. We are consigned to a lower realm. We are like them: those figures who, to the right of the dark outcropping, peer up. As one figure points and as the other raises a hand to forehead (as if to guard his vision from excessive light), we may recall when we have looked similarly to the sky above. The distance of cosmic events unfolding there, above — whether eclipse or ascension — may remind us of our proximity here, below. For a moment, the painting’s suspense might remind us of our shared conditions: of gravity, of departures, and of the periodic longing to overcome them both. 

In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene carries news of Christ’s ascension. “Do not cling to me,” Christ tells her, “for I have not yet ascended […].” Christ continues with an instruction to go to the apostles, “to go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”¹ As the chosen messenger, Mary becomes another apostle. The painting of her departure may be said to recollect this moment, as her temporary ascension mirrors that of the man she once knew and sought to grasp. Apart from one’s own beliefs, the image finds poignancy in this lingering of leavings. Mary’s stance remains open. Her eyes turn skyward, and her arms outstretch — less certainty and more question. That question may be a familiar one: Who do we look up to when we look up and away?

I doubt the poet Mary Oliver sought to paraphrase Christ’s words within John, but a shared concern resides within her own instruction. “To live in this world,” she writes: 

you must be able 
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, 
to let it go.²

In the moment of the Magdalene’s parting, there is something of all three. The time that comes — the time to “let it go” — has not yet arrived. It remains instead the painting’s question: a when which is also our own.

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¹John 20:17, English Standard Version. 
²Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods,” American Primitive (Back Bay Books, 1983)

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Alejandro (Ale) Nodarse Jammal is an artist and art historian. They are a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University and are completing an MFA at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. They think often about art — its history and its practice — in relationship to observation, memory, language, and ethics.

The Eight of Swords (Tarot Triptych)

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Name:  Interference, the Eight of Swords
Number: 8
Astrology: Jupiter in Gemini
Qabalah: Hod of Yod

Chris Gabriel April 19, 2025

Interference is the perfect name for this card. If the Ace of Swords is pure Signal, the Eight is pure Noise. The message is lost, the image is blurred, the static drowns out the song.

In Rider, we see a woman in bondage. She is blindfolded and white ropes tie up her red dress. She is standing in mud and surrounded by eight swords. A castle sits on a mountain in the distance.

In Thoth, there are two sabers atop a medley of 6 swords. The background is the deep purple of Jupiter, and the erupting fragmented spikes are the orange of Gemini. This is Jupiter in its detriment.

In Marseille,  a small flower sits at the center of eight crosshatched swords. For Jodorwosky, this was the achievement of an empty and receptive mind: overstimulation leading to trance. To Eliphas Levi, this is the Intelligence of the Prince.

The best path to grasping the nature of Interference is to take its name literally. Let us consider the two sabers in Thoth as AM and FM. These are pure and directed signals but when we listen to radio, we are often assaulted with static, which are the six interfering swords. The same applies to  VHF and UHF, AC and DC, etc. Two streams of energy disrupted by background interference.

This is the nature of the fallen Jupiter in Gemini: when domiciled in Sagittarius, Jupiter launches arrows of belief into the distant unknown. When in Gemini it gets lost in immediate multiplicity,missing the tree for the forest. The grand spiritual faculty no longer focuses on the Heavens, but on what surrounds the body.

Rider shows us a grim image of confusion, a very occult view of the situation. Without divine clarity we are blinded, bonded, and beset on all sides. This is the same trouble Hamlet is afflicted by. The Prince who has guided us through the suit of Swords has shown time and time again to lose his contact with the signal, to the point where the Ghost of his father has to return and remind him of his duty after he gets thrown off track.

We can look at this dynamic more positively with another technology, stereo sound. The Eight of Swords is like a record needle, moved wildly by left and right waves of the vinyl but still producing a singular, coherent, Sagittarian sound.

In our lives we experience this very often. When you go into a room but forget what you were going to do, this is background interference overtaking clarity. When you intend to use your phone for a given purpose, but notifications and bright visuals distract you, this is interference. It can happen at greater and greater scales to the point where you have wasted your whole life on distractions, and like the figure in Rider, you are left tied up, blinded, and alone.

When pulling this card, clear your mind, beware of external distractions, and maintain your direction.

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

How Should One Read a Book? (Pt. 1)

Guiseppe Antonio Petrini, c.1735.

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First given as a Speech at Hayes Court Common school in Kent at the start of 1926, and then adapted and published in the Yale Review the same year, Woolf’s impassioned ode to reading remains a seminal text. She reminds us that reading is not a passive activity, and that if each book only comes alive through active choices by its reader, it is worth considering how we as a consumer can elevate and enliven the literature we choose to read. The writer and reader are connected, and it is our duty to approach each new book as a different beast, to use our qualities of imagination, insight, and judgement, not rest on laurels of past works but follow our instincts to find the heart, truth, and beauty of each text anew.

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Virginia Woolf, April 15, 2025

At this late hour of the world’s history, books are to be found in almost every room of the house—in the nursery, in the drawing room, in the dining room, in the kitchen. But in some houses they have become such a company that they have to be accommodated with a room of their own—a reading room, a library, a study. Let us imagine that we are now in such a room; that it is a sunny room, with windows opening on a garden, so that we can hear the trees rustling, the gardener talking, the donkey braying, the old women gossiping at the pump—and all the ordinary processes of life pursuing the casual irregular way which they have pursued these many hundreds of years. As casually, as persistently, books have been coming together on the shelves. Novels, poems, histories, memoirs, dictionaries, maps, directories; black letter books and brand new books; books in French and Greek and Latin; of all shapes and sizes and values, bought for purposes of research, bought to amuse a railway journey, bought by miscellaneous beings, of one temperament and another, serious and frivolous, men of action and men of letters. 

Now, one may well ask oneself, strolling into such a room as this, how am I to read these books? What is the right way to set about it? They are so many and so various. My appetite is so fitful and so capricious. What am I to do to get the utmost possible pleasure out of them? And is it pleasure, or profit, or what is it that I should seek? I will lay before you some of the thoughts that have come to me on such an occasion as this. But you will notice the note of interrogation at the end of my title. One may think about reading as much as one chooses, but no one is going to lay down laws about it. Here in this room, if nowhere else, we breathe the air of freedom. Here simple and learned, man and woman are alike. For though reading seems so simple—a mere matter of knowing the alphabet—it is indeed so difficult that it is doubtful whether anybody knows anything about it. Paris is the capital of France; King John signed the Magna Charta; those are facts; those can be taught; but how are we to teach people so to read “Paradise Lost” as to see that it is a great poem, or “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” so as to see that it is a good novel? How are we to learn the art of reading for ourselves? Without attempting to lay down laws upon a subject that has not been legalized, I will make a few suggestions, which may serve to show you how not to read, or to stimulate you to think out better methods of your own. 

And directly we begin to ask how should one read a book we are faced by the fact that books differ; there are poems, novels, biographies on the book shelf there; each differs from the other as a tiger differs from a tortoise, a tortoise from an elephant. Our attitude must always be changing, it is clear. From different books we must ask different qualities. Simple as this sounds, people are always behaving as if all books were of the same species—as if there were only tortoises or nothing but tigers. It makes them furious to find a novelist bringing Queen Victoria to the throne six months before her time; they will praise a poet enthusiastically for teaching them that a violet has four petals and a daisy almost invariably ten. You will save a great deal of time and temper better kept for worthier objects if you will try to make out before you begin to read what qualities you expect of a novelist, what of a poet, what of a biographer. The tortoise is bald and shiny; the tiger has a thick coat of yellow fur. So books too differ: one has its fur, the other has its baldness.

Yes; but for all that the problem is not so simple in a library as at the Zoölogical Gardens.Books have a great deal in common; they are always overflowing their boundaries; they are always breeding new species from unexpected matches among themselves. It is difficult to know how to approach them, to which species each belongs. But if we remember, as we turn to the bookcase, that each of these books was written by a pen which, consciously or unconsciously, tried to trace out a design, avoiding this, accepting that, adventuring the other; if we try to follow the writer in his experiment from the first word to the last, without imposing our design upon him, then we shall have a good chance of getting hold of the right end of the string.

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“We have to remember that it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision.”

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To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal. Be his fellow worker, become his accomplice. Even, if you wish merely to read books, begin by writing them. For this certainly is true—one cannot write the most ordinary little story, attempt to describe the simplest event—meeting a beggar, shall we say, in the street, without coming up against difficulties that the greatest of novelists have had to face. In order that we may realize, however briefly and crudely, the main divisions into which novelists group themselves, let us imagine how differently Defoe, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy would describe the same incident—this meeting a beggar in the street. Defoe is a master of narrative. His prime effort will be to reduce the beggar’s story to perfect order and simplicity. This happened first, that next, the other thing third. He will put in nothing, however attractive, that will tire the reader unnecessarily, or divert his attention from what he wishes him to know. He will also make us believe, since he is a master, not of romance or of comedy, but of narrative, that everything that happened is true. He will be extremely precise therefore. This happened, as he tells us on the first pages of” Robinson Crusoe,” on the first of September. More subtly and artfully, he will hypnotize us into a state of belief by dropping out casually some little unnecessary fact—for instance, “my father called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout.” His father’s gout is not necessary to the story, but it is necessary tothe truth of the story, for it is thus that anybody who is speaking the truth adds some small irrelevant detail without thinking. Further, he will choose a type of sentence which is flowing but not too full, exact but not epigrammatic. His aim will be to present the thing itself without distortion from his own angle of vision. He will meet the subject face to face, four-square, without turning aside for a moment to point out that this was tragic, or that beautiful; and his aim is perfectly achieved.

But let us not for a moment confuse it with Jane Austen’s aim. Had she met a beggar woman, no doubt she would have been interested in the beggar’s story. But she would have seen at once that for her purposes the whole incident must be transformed. Streets and the open air and adventures mean nothing to her, artistically. It is character that interests her. She would at once make the beggar into a comfortable elderly man of the upper middle classes, seated by his fireside at his ease. Then, instead of plunging into the story vigorously and veraciously, she will write a few paragraphs of accurate and artfully seasoned introduction, summing up the circumstances and sketching the character of the gentleman she wishes us to know. “Matrimony as the origin of change was always disagreeable” to Mr. Woodhouse, she says. Almost immediately, she thinks it well to let us see that her words are corroborated by Mr. Woodhouse himself. We hear him talking. “Poor Miss Taylor!—I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her.” And when Mr. Woodhouse has talked enough to reveal himself from the inside, she then thinks it time to let us see him through his daughter’s eyes. “You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her.” Thus she shows us Emma flattering him and humoring him. Finally then, we have Mr. Woodhouse’s character seen from three different points of view at once; as he sees himself; as his daughter sees him; and as he is seen by the marvellous eye of that invisible lady Jane Austen herself. All three meet in one, and thus we can pass round her characters free, apparently, from any guidance but our own.

Now let Thomas Hardy choose the same theme—a beggar met in the street—and at once two great changes will be visible. The street will be transformed into a vast and sombre heath; the man or woman will take on some of the size and indistinctness of a statue. Further, the relations of this human being will not be towards other people, but towards the heath, towards man as law-giver, towards those powers which are in control of man’s destiny. Once more our perspective will be completely changed. All the qualities which were admirable in “Robinson Crusoe,” admirable in “Emma,” will be neglected or absent. The direct literal statement of Defoe is gone. There is none of the clear, exact brilliance of Jane Austen. Indeed, if we come to Hardy from one of these great writers we shall exclaim at first that he is“melodramatic” or “unreal” compared with them. But we should bethink us that there are at least two sides to the human soul; the light side and the dark side. In company, the light side of the mind is exposed; in solitude, the dark. Both are equally real, equally important. But a novelist will always tend to expose one rather than the other; and Hardy, who is a novelist of the dark side, will contrive that no clear, steady light falls upon his people’s faces, that they are not closely observed in drawing rooms, that they come in contact with moors, sheep, the sky and the stars, and in their solitude are directly at the mercy of the gods. If Jane Austen’s characters are real in the drawing room, they would not exist at all upon the top of Stonehenge. Feeble and clumsy in drawing rooms, Hardy’s people are large-limbed and vigorous out of doors. To achieve his purpose Hardy is neither literal and four-square like Defoe, nor deft and pointed like Jane Austen. He is cumbrous, involved, metaphorical.Where Jane Austen describes manners, he describes nature. Where she is matter of fact, he is romantic and poetical. As both are great artists, each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and will not be found confusing us (as so many lesser writers do) by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.

Yet it is very difficult not to wish them less scrupulous. Frequent are the complaints that Jane Austen is too prosaic, Thomas Hardy too melodramatic. And we have to remind ourselves that it is necessary to approach every writer differently in order to get from him all he can give us. We have to remember that it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision. It is by reason of this masterliness of theirs, this uncompromising idiosyncrasy, that great writers often require us to make heroic efforts in order to read them rightly. They bend us and break us. To go from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peacock to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith, from Richardson to Kipling, is to be wrenched and distorted, thrown this way and then that. Besides, everyone is born with a natural bias of his own in one direction rather than in another. He instinctively accepts Hardy’s vision rather than Jane Austen’s, and, reading with the current and not against it, is carried on easily and swiftly by the impetus of his own bent to the heart of his author’s genius. But then Jane Austen is repulsive to him. He can scarcely stagger through the desert of her novels.

Sometimes this natural antagonism is too great to be overcome, but trial is always worth making. For these difficult and inaccessible books, with all their preliminary harshness, often yield the richest fruits in the end, and so curiously is the brain compounded that while tracts of literature repel at one season, they are appetizing and essential at another.

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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th century modernist authors. An important part of the contemporary literary scene, Woolf’s relevance has only grown in the near century since her passing, and her pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women's writing, and the politics of power have become touchstones for contemporary thought.

The Ace of Swords (Tarot Triptych)

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Name:  Ace of Swords
Number: 1
Astrology: Air
Qabalah: Kether of Vau

Chris Gabriel April 12, 2025

The Ace of Swords is the card of inspiration. It is the air we inhale and the divine ideas which are given to us. Here is the perfect image of a dual crown pierced by a sword.

In Rider, a hand comes forth from a cloud bearing a sword. The sword holds up a crown upon which two laurels sit, one is fuller than the other. The landscape is barren and mountainous. Six yellow yods float about the hilt.

In Thoth, we have Crowley’s own sword, green in color with a hilt made of the waxing and waning moons, between which two spheres sit. Its blade bears the word θέλημα (Thelema, or Will). The crown which it penetrates has 22 rays, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The background is a cloudy night made bright by the sword.

In Marseille, we are shown a hand holding a great red sword piercing a crown. Two distinct branches grow from the crown. Many yods emanate from the sword.

Napoleon said “I found the crown of France in the gutter. I picked it up with the tip of my sword, and cleaned it, and placed it atop my own head.” 

Here,the crown is raised by the sword, the dual drives of nature lifted up by Intelligence. In each representation, the crown is dual, formed by the Yin and Yang of Water and Fire - the elements which precede Air, and are more base in nature. This is also the two lungs, the two hemispheres of the brain, and so on. Fire and Water are universals, but Air is peculiar, ubiquitous but invisible, and we each breathe our own yet we all share. The Ace of Swords we see the beginning of “Individuality” in the deck. 

While God moves the Universe with light and dark, he moves individuals with his breath. The Greek word for “Inspiration” is θεόπνευστος which literally translates to God-breathed. It is through Pneuma, the divine breath, that we are given our destiny. 

The Sword is the image of the divine intellect which pierces the mystery of nature. While fire, earth, and water  are visible, air is invisible, and so the Sword, which cuts through the air, is chosen. With our intellect we can cut up our simple perceptions and make sense of what is happening around us. Through this we begin to categorize and understand, to think, and to create our own ideas, to craft our own swords. In the material world, this is the weapon we lead with to achieve.

The Ace of Swords is like the cartoon light bulb above a head, it is a eureka moment, when God-given ideas are breathed into us. Yet, it can also be a terrible idea, which as a sword, pierces our brain. Macbeth’s indecision is put to an end by his vision of a dagger.

In a mundane deck of playing cards the Ace of Swords becomes the Ace of Spades, the most notorious card in the deck. To all superstitious gamblers, it means death. Alejandro Jodorowsky says that a poker deck is a tarot deck stripped of Divinity; the 22 majors and the 4 faces of the Tetragrammaton. At this level, the Sword is only something to kill with.

When we pull this card we can expect success, we will receive inspiration, and cut through confusion and indecision. But be careful, the sword is double edged and will just as easily divide us if we are not moving with will.

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

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Vibrational Medicine and the Multidimensional Human

Thought-Forms, 1901. Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater.

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Molly Hankins April 10, 2025

The theory of fundamental consciousness, which states that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality as opposed to merely being a byproduct of the brain, carries with it the implication that there may be a direct influence on our physiology. Scientists such as Donald Hoffman, who has popularized this theory over the last several years via his book The Case Against Reality, is cautious about making claims as to its medical implications but as this theory is working its way through mainstream media via The Telepathy Tapes podcast, more and more anecdotal evidence is mounting and more questions are being raised about the role our consciousness plays in our anatomical functionality. 

Nearly 40 years ago, Dr. Richard Gerber published a book called Vibrational Medicine that makes a case for treating physical ailments using non-physical means and speaks to much of the phenomena discussed in The Telepathy Tapes. If you haven’t listened to the podcast yet, it focuses on the personal stories and the scientific study of extraordinary human abilities possessed by members of the non-verbal autistic community, including telepathy. Later episodes explore the growing body of evidence about similar telepathic abilities in other non-speakers, including advanced dementia and terminally ill patients, as well as animals. The concept of an ‘energy body’ is mentioned repeatedly throughout the program by parents and caregivers of non-speakers, and according to Gerber’s research, energy body systems contain the data that coordinate physiological activity.

If we subscribe to the theory that consciousness is fundamental, and therefore creating physical reality, then it must be true that our state of consciousness influences how our bodies function. Gerber references the work of Dr. Itzhak Bentov and Dr. William Tiller, both of whom studied the human energy field and determined that there are several overlapping, higher-dimensional energetic systems working together to direct our physiological experience of reality. They identify four layers of the energy body that overlay the physical, which directly corresponds with that Kabbalistic concept that we have four non-physical levels of consciousness animating our bodies. Each layer is explained below:

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“In order for our physiology to play its beautiful symphony, we must harmonize each octave of our energy body.”

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Nefesh - Physical Body 

This is our lowest level of consciousness, offering awareness of our physical bodies and the physical world. How our physical bodies operate is determined by interactions between the following energy fields. 

Ruach - Etheric Body

This first layer of our energy body contains data from the emotional experiences of our present lifetime. Its influence explains why emotional distress disrupts natural functions like immune system response, hormonal and cellular activity. Gerber refers to the relationship between the etheric body and physical body as an “interference pattern” that determines our overall level of health.

Neshama - Mental Body

The second layer gives us an  intellectual understanding of the essential nature of the human experience. In order to operate efficiently, this consciousness field must evolve over many lifetimes to move beyond   perception with just five senses and open ourselves up to perception beyond what Tiller refers to as “the world of appearances.”

Chaya - Astral Body

This third layer transcends intellectual understanding to include that expanded perspective where we merge our individual consciousness with that of The Creator. This is where the character of our soul lies. According to Gerber, “The astral body is a containment vehicle for the personality beyond the transition of physical death.”

Yechida - Causal Body

The fourth and final layer is the element of our soul  that is still connected to The Creator and, according to Kabbalists, is one of pure light. Bentov regarded this field as a holistic, emotional energy body containing all the experiences of our soul, or what Vedic traditions call the Akashic field. 

In Vibrational Medicine, Gerber uses the analogy of piano keys, likening the layers of our energy bodies to octaves of consciousness. He refers to the lowest keys as Nefesh, or the physical octave of experience. The highest keys are  that of Yechida, or the causal octave. In order for our physiology to play its beautiful symphony, we must harmonize each octave of our energy body. We can accomplish this using meditation, our breath, prayer, tuning forks, mindfulness practices, spending time in nature, or consciously reprogramming ourselves using mantras, affirmations, movement and music. Each method is a different means of repatterning these conscious energy fields to positively influence our experience of reality. 

The Telepathy Tapes have created  a swell of support for consciousness fundamentalists like Donald Hoffman, and started a repatterning of the scientific paradigm. As public support grows and funding opportunities expand, research on these ideas will be brought out of the theoretical fringes and into empirical testing. Our understanding of human biology as a series of interactive multi-dimensional fields may someday be understood and refined into a scientifically proven protocol for so-called vibrational medicine. But we don’t have to wait for science to catch up with our conscious evolution to enjoy the benefits of harmonizing our energy fields with our physical body, we can begin with the techniques discussed above right now. 

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

Lift (Museum of Suspense I)

The Extasis of Jean Birelle, Vicente Carducho, 1626–1632, oil on canvas, Cartuja de Santa María de El Paular, Museo de la Trinidad, Rascafría (Madrid); Museo del Prado.

Ale Nodarse April 8, 2025

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When was your belief last suspended? 

A whole museum could be built on suspense. By this I mean a place for pictures devoted to the floating figure. Its halls would be wide and its ceilings high, for there have been many drawn to the sky: gods and demigods, angels of every stripe, fellow humans disposed to makeshift wings. There would be space for them all. 

Just picture the stretch of Icaruses. Over and again, those Greek boys with wax-bound feathers would rise to cast glorious bird-shadows on oceans below. There would be flight after flight after flight. Only then, nearest to the exit, would one Icarus tumble down. He would fall as Pieter Brueghel had once painted him falling — falling, fallen, then swallowed up by an unfeeling sea.¹ And perhaps the words of W. H. Auden would be read upon a pamphlet or recited by a melancholic guide:

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.²

The saints would crowd the walls like starlings. Off they go, a young viewer might imagine, if not for the constraints of canvases and ceilings. Children would have no trouble picturing it. Neither would most adults. Flight has prevailed within dreams for as long as dreams have been recorded — and the prevalence, according to neuroscientists, is on the rise.³ Do saints fly? The question has been asked many times.⁴ Often, it seems, language stands in the way. Perhaps “flight” may be the wrong word. Since saints are not usually birds, many theologians and historians of religion prefer levitation: this, the summa of ecstasies. 

In the Extasis of Jean Birelle (1626–1632) by the Spanish painter Vicente Carducho, a fourteenth-century monk rises above an Islamicate rug.⁵ His hat and shadow fall beneath him. The regularity of gridded ground gives way to sudden lift. But the saint does not quite fly. Instead, the painting sustains a moment of physical and psychological suspense — of doubt. 

The painting speaks not only to the dubiousness of human flight, but to those doubts which surface in our more routine undertakings. Carducho includes another scene to the right of the floating figure. Set beyond a bannister, a white-robed saint robe grasps the hand of a younger man. The saint is Jean, and the scene is a memory. The painter gives witness to an earlier moment in Jean’s biography when he had encouraged a novice, ready to abandon monastic life, to stay the course. This picture within a picture becomes an image of doubt and the moment of its assuaging. 

Certain paintings sustain suspense. The eloquence of Carducho’s painting is in part its drawing together of doubts and its defiance of them. How often, we might ask, has the inconceivable been transformed or at least been made bearable by an outstretched hand? Within the Museum of Suspense, this painting would encourage us to dwell on doubt: to reconcile, rather than abandon, it. To look closely at the canvas, we would draw doubt near. Perhaps then we might regard doubt itself as both necessary and miraculous: as necessary as a loving grasp, as miraculous as mortal flight.

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¹The authorship of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (Musée des Beaux Arts, Brussels) remains a matter of debate. Most scholars believe that the painting was completed by a follower of Pieter Brueghel the Elder after an original composition, now lost.
²W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts.”
³See Michael Schredl and Edgar Piel, “Prevalence of Flying Dreams,” Perceptual Motor Skills (2007): 657–660.
⁴Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025). 
⁵ This scene is one of many (fifty four) representing the history of the Carthusian Order in Spain, completed by Carducho for the Monastery of El Paular in Rascafría, Spain. On this painting and the larger series, see Leticia Ruiz Gómez, La recuperación de El Paular (Madrid, 2013), 185–190.

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Alejandro (Ale) Nodarse Jammal is an artist and art historian. They are a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University and are completing an MFA at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. They think often about art — its history and its practice — in relationship to observation, memory, language, and ethics.

The Five of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name:  Disappointment, the Five of Cups
Number: 5
Astrology: Mars in Scorpio
Qabalah: Gevurah of He

Chris Gabriel April 5, 2025

The Five of Cups is the spilling out of all we have accumulated. It is the glass half empty and the fly who drowns in a fine wine. It is the card of trying and failing to get what you want.

In Rider, a man in a black cloak looks down upon three spilled cups, while two still stand behind him. The sky is grey. He cares not for what he has, only what he has lost. He is “crying over spilt milk”.

In Thoth, we have an arrangement of cups reminiscent of the biomechanical art of H.R Giger. They appear almost as an alchemical laboratory, each connected by pipes in the shape of a pentagram. Below them is a sick, stagnant water, and above them is a rust red sky. Two lotuses arise from the lowest cup but are already withering away. Two lily pads droop down above the rest.

In Marseille, we are shown five cups around which flowers grow. A plant below brings forth two flowers, and there is a poppy growing from the central cup. Qabalistically, this is the Severity of the Queen.

This is a card of realization of rough awakenings. The calm comfort of the four of cups is broken, and we are thrust into a harsh reality. This is the misery and regret that follows a heartbreak. 

The cloaked figure in Rider seems to me to be a perfect image of the young poet Arthur Rimbaud. “One evening, I sat Beauty on my knees - and I found her bitter - And I insulted her.” Rimbaud falls from his simple, pleasant life of banquets and goes straight to Hell.

As the Six of Cups is the Goldilocks zone, where things are just right, the Five of Cups is not enough. It is an unsatisfying meal - spoiled food, sour milk, and a rough bed. It is incapable of satisfying us.

As Mars in Scorpio, there is an element of resentment and rage that comes from this dissatisfaction. This is not the sort of anger that leads to revolutions, but petty crimes of passion; scorned lovers who yearn for blood or those who kill out of desire for what they feel they have been denied.

Wilhelm Reich describes how young people who go unloved will develop bizarre illusions about themselves, imagining defects where there are none. Thoth shows well the sort of perverse libidinal machinery that is formed by disappointment and ressentiment (the bitterness that feelings of inferiority breed). 

When drawing this card, we must be careful that our disappointments and jealousies do not grow strong like a poison tree. This card lets us know we will be faced with failures, with not getting what we need and want, but we mustn't strike out. Instead, let the bitterness fade. As Blake says in A Poison Tree:

I was angry with my friend; 
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe: 
I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

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

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