Good, Evil and Gnostic Fun (Pronoia Pt. 2)

B. Picart, 1713.

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Molly Hankins July 3, 2025

Pronoia, coined by Rob Brezney in his 2005 book of the same name, describes an underlying feature of the universe that’s always conspiring in our souls’ favor. Practicing this worldview as a gnostic art, claims Brezney, empowers what many occultists refer to as “the primal will to good.” He quotes the gnostic school founder Paul Foster Case of “Builders of the Adytum”  about mirth being a means to overcome evil: “Laughter is prophylactic. It purifies subconsciousness and dissolves mental complexes.” 

Both Brezney and Case share the pronaic worldview that “washing our hearts with laughter” is the most powerful prescription in the face of evil. But what is evil? And how do we define good for that matter? Scientist and author Itzak Bentov wrote that evil represents what works against evolution while good works in favor of evolution. Evolution, here, being developmental progress. The rhythm of evolution is eternal change, and to go with that flow is to be an agent of the ‘primal will to good’. In the course of acting as such an agent, Pronoia recommends we use deep belly laughs to flush out the toxins of violent images, political propaganda and advertisements constantly invading most of our psyches. 

By adopting the perspective that the universe is conspiring in our souls’ favor, no matter what’s happening, we attract steady streams of amusing experiences to keep us laughing. “Pronoia is a gnostic art,” Brezney writes, “Everyone is potentially a visionary capable of revealing more of its mysteries.” We can only realize that potential if we have sufficient energy, and laughter replenishes our energy levels while dissolving the negative mental programming we get from overexposure to evil. Brezney decries Western Hermeticism’s lack of jokes, which he believes is a fundamental failure to take advantage of evil’s primary weakness. 

In a portion of the book entitled ‘Evil Fears Laughter’, he shares that taking ourselves too seriously is the most effective recruiting tool evil has. The sacred act of laughing disempowers purveyors of evil deeds and cuts a path to freedom for others to follow. Brezney encourages us to, “Pray to be granted a healing sample of comedic genius,” as we traverse from lifetime to lifetime. 

Guilt and fear, he tells us, are the only effective anti-pronoia agents in existence because they’re the only forces that could stop us from daring to laugh in the face of evil. To combat these invasive thought Brezney recommends a few creative exercises to help us lighten up and open our hearts. “Carry out a whirlygig,” he writes, defining whirlygig as the act of exploring a city with the intention of attracting lessons you didn’t know you needed. Afterwards he instructs readers to write an essay titled ‘People, Places and Things I Didn’t Know I Loved,’ as well as an ode to something ordinary. 

Every little example of pronoia he dishes out in the book feels like it has the same effect Paul Foster Case describes, that of purifying our subconscious and dissolving negative mental complexes through joyful contemplation and action. Case, like many occultists, believed that sound preceded all forms of matter, including particles of light. If we adopt that perspective and run it through a pronaic lens, perhaps the sound of laughter positively affects not only our minds, but matter itself. 

Perhaps laughing at evil disempowers it while empowering the ‘primal will to good’, not just philosophically but at some unseen, subatomic level like Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic field theory suggests. These information fields impose patterns, so patterning our reality with the vibration of joy must produce more joy. Sheldrake says, “Morphic fields are fields of habit, and they've been set up through habits of thought, through habits of activity, and through habits of speech. Most of our culture is habitual.” Whether it’s going on a whirlygig, laughing in the face of evil, or writing a love letter to something ordinary, habits of pronoia are superpowers.

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

Film

What I Think and Feel at 25

‘The Beautiful and the Damned' first edition illustration by W. E. Hill

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In 1922, when this article was first published, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life was in a moment of enormous change. He was newly married to Zelda, and his second novel ‘This Beautiful and the Damned’ had been published just months before before to enormous acclaim, rocketing the young writer to fame and praise as the certified voice of the Jazz Age. Of course, Fitzgerald would go on to live up to this early reputation but at the tender age of 25, as he details in this short essay for ‘The American Magazine”, that future seemed far from inevitable. In classic wit, remarkable insight, and searing exploration of society and relationship Fitzgerald makes a case for youth in an world run by the old, and paints a vivid portrait of a genius grappling with his place and purpose.

---

F. Scott Fitzgerald July 1, 2025

The man stopped me on the street. He was ancient, but not a mariner. He had a long beard and a glittering eye. I think he was a friend of the family's, or something. 

"Say, Fitzgerald," he said, "say! Will you tell me this: What in the blinkety blank-blank has a-has a man of your age got to go saying these pessimistic things for? What's the idea?" I tried to laugh him off. He told me that he and my grandfather had been boys together. After that, I had no wish to corrupt him. So I tried to laugh him off. 

"Ha-ha-ha!" I said determinedly. "Ha-ha-ha!" And then I added, "Ha-ha! Well, I'll see you later." With this I attempted to pass him by, but he seized my arm firmly and showed symptoms of spending the afternoon in my company. 

"When I was a boy he began, and then he drew the picture that people always draw of what excellent, happy, care-free souls they were at twenty-five. That is, he told me all the things he liked to think he thought in the misty past. 

I allowed him to continue. I even made polite grunts at intervals to express my astonishment. For I will be doing it myself some day. I will concoct for my juniors a Scott Fitzgerald that, it's safe to say, none of my contemporaries would at present recognize. But they will be old themselves then; and they will respect my concoction as I shall respect theirs... “

And now," the happy ancient was concluding; "you are young, you have good health, you have made money, you are exceptionally happily married, you have achieved considerable success while you are still young enough to enjoy it - will you tell an innocent old man just why you write those" 

I succumbed. I would tell him. I began: "Well, you see, sir, it seems to me that as a man gets older he grows more vulner-" 

But I got no further. As soon as I began to talk he hurriedly shook my hand an departed. He did not want to listen. He did not care why I thought what I thought. He had simply felt the need of giving a little speech, and I had been the victim. His receding form disappeared with a slight wobble around the next corner. "All right, you old bore," I muttered; “don’t listen, then. You wouldn’t understand, anyhow.” I took an awful kick at a curbstone, as a sort of proxy, and continued my walk. 

Now, that's' the first incident. The second was when a man came to me not long ago from a big newspaper syndicate, and said: "Mr. Fitzgerald, there's a rumor around New York that you and-ah-you and Mrs. Fitzgerald are going to commit suicide at thirty because you hate and dread middle-age. I want to give you some publicity in this matter by getting it up as a story for the feature sections of five hundred and fourteen Sunday newspapers. In one corner of the page will be—“

"Don't!" I cried, "I know: In one corner will stand the doomed couple, she with an arsenic sundae, he with an Oriental dagger. Both of them will have their eyes fixed on a large clock, on the face of which will be a skull and crossbones. In the other corner will be a big calendar with the date marked in red." 

"That's it!" cried the syndicate man enthusiastically. "You've grasped the idea. Now, what we" "Listen here!" I said severely. "There is nothing in that rumor. Nothing whatever. When I'm thirty I won't be this me - I'll be somebody else. I'll have a different body, because it said so in a book I read once, and I'll have a different attitude on everything. I'll even be married to a different person-" 

“Ah!" he interrupted, with an eager light in his eye, and produced a notebook."That's very interesting." 

"No, no, no!" I cried hastily. "I mean my wife will be different." 

"I see. You plan a divorce." 

"No! I mean—" 

"Well, it's all the same. Now, what we want, in order to fill out this story, is a lot of remarks about petting-parties. Do you think the-ah-petting-party is a serious menace to the Constitution? And, just to link it up, can we say that your suicide will be largely on account of past petting-parties?" 

"See here!" I interrupted in despair."Try to understand. I don't know what petting-parties have to do with the question. I have always dreaded age, because it invariably increases the vulner—“

But, as in the case of the family friend, I got no further. The syndicate man grasped my hand firmly. He shook it. Then he muttered something about interviewing a chorus girl who was reported to have an anklet of solid platinum, and hurried off. 

That's the second incident. You see, I had managed to tell two different men that "age increased the vulner-" But they had not been interested. The old man had talked about himself and the syndicate man had talked about petting-parties. When I began to talk about the "vulner-" they both had sudden engagements. 

So, with one hand on the Eighteenth Amendment and the other hand on the serious part of the Constitution, I have taken an oath that I will tell somebody my story. 

*

As a man grows older it stands to reason that his vulnerability increases. Three years ago, for instance, I could be hurt in only one way-through myself. If my best friend's wife had her hair torn off by an electric washing-machine, I was grieved, of course. I would make my friend a long speech full of "old mans," and finish up with a paragraph from Washington's Farewell Address; but when I'd finished I could go to a good restaurant and enjoy my dinner as usual. If my second cousin's husband had an artery severed while having his nails manicured, I will not deny that it was a matter of considerable regret to me. But when 1 heard the news I did not faint and have to be taken home in a passing laundry wagon. 

In fact I was pretty much invulnerable. I put up a conventional wail whenever a ship was sunk or a train got wrecked; but I don't suppose, if the whole city of Chicago had been wiped out, I'd have lost a night's sleep over it-unless something led me to believe that St. Paul was the next city on the list. Even then I could have moved my luggage over to Minneapolis and rested pretty comfortably all night. 

But that was three years ago when I was still a young man. I was only twenty two. When I said anything the book reviewers didn't like, they could say, "Gosh! That certainly is callow!" And that finished me. Label it "callow,"and that was enough. 

Well, now I'm twenty-five I'm not callow any longer-at least not so that I can notice it when I look in an ordinary mirror. Instead, I'm vulnerable. I'm vulnerable in every way. 

For the benefit of revenue agents and moving-picture directors who may be reading this magazine I will explain that vulnerable means easily wounded. Well, that's it. I'm more easily wounded. I can not only be wounded in the chest, the feelings, the teeth, the bank account; but I can be wounded in the dog. Do I make myself clear? In the dog. 

No, that isn't a new part of the body just discovered by the Rockefeller Institute. I mean a real dog. I mean if anyone gives my family dog to the dog-catcher he's hurting me almost as much as he's hurting the dog. He's hurting me in the dog. And if our doctor says to me tomorrow, "That child of yours isn't going to be a blonde after all," well, he's wounded me in a way I couldn't have been wounded in before, because I never before had a child to be wounded in. And if my daughter grows up and when she's sixteen elopes with some fellow from Zion City who believes the world is flat-I wouldn't write this except that she's only six months old and can't quite read yet, so it won't put any ideas in her head why, then I'll be wounded again. 

About being wounded through your wife I will not enter into, as it is a delicate subject. I will not say anything about my case. But I have private reasons for knowing that if anybody said to your wife one day that it was a shame she would wear yellow when it made her look so peaked, you would suffer violently, within six hours afterward, for what that person said. 

"Attack him through his wife!" "Kidnap his child!" "Tie a tin can to his dog's tail!" How often do we hear those slogans in life, not to mention in the movies. And how they make me wince! Three years ago, you could have yelled them outside my window all through a summer night, and I wouldn't have batted an eye. The only thing that would have aroused me would have been: "Wait a minute. I think I can pot him from here." 

I used to have about ten square feet of skin vulnerable to chills and fevers. Now I have about twenty. I have not personally enlarged-the twenty feet includes the skin of my family-but I might as well have, because if a chill or fever strikes any bit of that twenty feet of skin I begin to shiver. 

And so I ooze gently into middle age; for the true middle-age is not the acquirement of years, but the acquirement of a family. The incomes of the childless have wonderful elasticity. Two people require a room and a bath; couple with child require the millionaire's suite on the sunny side of the hotel. 

*

So let me start the religious part of this article by saying that if the Editor thought he was going to get something young and happy-yes, and callow-I have got to refer him to my daughter, if she will ive dictation. If anybody thinks that I am callow they ought to see her-she's so callow it makes me laugh. It even makes her laugh, too, to think how callow she is. If any literary critics saw her they'd have a nervous breakdown right on the spot. But, on the other hand, anybody writing to me, an editor or anybody else, is writing to a middle-aged man. 

Well, I'm twenty-five, and I have to admit that I'm pretty well satisfied with some of that time. That is to say, the first five years seemed to go all right-but the last twenty! They have been a matter of violently contrasted extremes. In fact, this has struck me so forcibly that from time to time I have kept charts, trying to figure out the years when I was closest to happy. Then I get mad and tear up the charts. 

Skipping that long list of mistakes which passes for my boyhood I will say that I went away to preparatory school at fifteen, and that my two years there were wasted, were years of utter and profitless unhappiness. I was unhappy because I was cast into a situation where everybody thought I ought to behave just as they behaved-and I didn't have the courage to shut up and go my own way, anyhow. 

For example, there was a rather dull boy at school named Percy, whose approval, I felt, for some unfathomable reason, I must have. So, for the sake of this negligible cipher, I started out to let as much of my mind as I had under mild cultivation sink back into a state of heavy underbrush. I spent hours in a damp gymnasium fooling around with a muggy basket-ball and working myself into a damp, muggy rage, when I wanted, instead, to go walking in the country. 

And all this to please Percy. He thought it was the thing to do. If you didn't go through the damp business every day you were "morbid."That was his favorite word, and it had me frightened. I didn't want to be morbid. So I became muggy instead. 

Besides, Percy was dull in classes; so I used to pretend to be dull also. When I wrote stories I wrote them secretly, and felt like a criminal. If I gave birth to any idea that did not appeal to Percy’s pleasant, vacant mind I discarded the idea once and felt like apologising. 

---

“ If you don't know much - well, nobody else knows much more. And nobody knows half as much about your own interests as you know.”

---

Of course Percy never got into college. He went to work and I have scarcely seen him since, though I under- stand that he has since become an undertaker of considerable standing. The time I spent with him was wasted; but, worse than that, I did not enjoy the wasting of it. At least, he had nothing to give me, and I had not the faintest reasons for caring what he thought or said. But when I discovered this it was too late. 

The worst of it is that this same business went on until I was twenty-two. That is, I'd be perfectly happy doing just what I wanted to do, when somebody would begin shaking his head and saying: "Now see here, Fitzgerald, you mustn't go on doing that. It's-it's morbid." 

And I was always properly awed by the word "morbid," so I quit what I wanted to do and what it was good for me to do, and did what some other fellow wanted me to do. Every once in a while, though, I used to tell somebody to go to the devil; otherwise I never would have done anything at all. 

In officers' training camp during 1917 I started to write a novel. I would begin work at it every Saturday afternoon at one and work like mad until midnight. Then I would work at it from six Sunday morning until six Sunday night, when I had to report back to barracks. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. After a month three friends came to me with scowling faces: 

"See here, Fitzgerald, you ought to use the week-ends in getting some good rest and recreation. The way you use them is -is morbid!" 

That word convinced me. It sent the usual shiver down my spine. The next week end I laid the novel aside, went into town with the others and danced all night at a party. But I began to worry about my novel. I worried so much that I returned to camp, not rested, but utterly miserable. I was morbid then. But I never went to town again. I finished the novel. It was rejected; but a year later 1 rewrote it and it was published under the title, "This Side of Paradise." 

But before I rewrote it I had a list of "morbids," chalked up against people that, placed end to end, would have reached to the nearest lunatic asylum. It was morbid: 

1st. To get engaged without enough money to marry 
2nd. To leave the advertising business after three months 
3rd. To want to write at all 
4th. To think I could 
5th. To write about "silly little boys and girls that nobody wants to read about" 

And so on, until a year later, when I found to my surprise that everybody had been only kidding-they had believed all their lives that writing was the only thing for me, and had hardly been able to keep from telling me all the time. 

But I am really not old enough to begin drawing morals out of my own life to elevate the young. I will save that pastime until I am sixty; and then, as I have said, I will concoct a Scott Fitzgerald who will make Benjamin Franklin look like a lucky devil who loafed into prominence. Even in the above account I have man aged to sketch the outline of a small-but neat halo. I take it all back. I am twenty five years old. I wish I had ten million dollars, and never had to do another lick of work as long as I live. 

But as I do have to keep at it, I might as well declare that the chief thing I've learned so far is: If you don't know much - well, nobody else knows much more. And nobody knows half as much about your own interests as you know. 

*

If you believe in anything very strongly-including yourself-and if you go after that thing alone, you end up in jail, in heaven, in the headlines, or in the largest house in the block, according to what you started after. If you don't believe in anything very strongly-including yourself you go along, and enough money is made out of you to buy an automobile for some other fellow's son, and you marry if you've got time, and if you do you have a lot of children, whether you have time or not, and finally you get tired and you die. 

If you're in the second of those two classes you have the most fun before you're twenty-five. If you're in the first, you have it afterward. You see, if you're in the first class you'll frequent!y be called a darn fool-or worse. That was as true in Philadelphia about 1727 as it is to-day. Anybody knows that a kid that walked around town munching a loaf of bread and not caring what anvbody thought was a darn fool. It stands to reason! But there are a lot of darn fools who get their pictures in the schoolbooks -with their names under the pictures. And the sensible fellows, the ones that had time to laugh, well, their pictures are in there, too. But their names aren't-and the laughs look sort of frozen on their faces. 

The particular sort of darn fool I mean ought to remember that he's least a darn fool when he's being called a darn fool. The main thing is to be your own kind of a darn fool. (The above advice is of course only for darn fools under twenty-five. It may be all wrong for darn fools over twenty-five.) 

I don't know why it is that when I start to write about being twenty-five I suddenly begin to write about darn fools. I do not see any connection. Now, if I were asked to write about darn fools, I would write about people who have their front teeth filled with gold, because a friend of mine did that the other day, and after being mistaken for a jewelry store three times in one hour he came up and asked me if I thought it showed too much. As I am a kind man, I told him I would not have noticed it if the sun hadn't been so strong on it. I asked him why he had it done. 

"Well," he said, "the dentist told me a porcelain filling never lasted more than ten years." 

"Ten years! Why, you may be dead in ten years.” 

"That's true." 

"Of course it'll be nice that all the time you're in your coffin you'll never have to worry about your teeth." 

And it occurred to me that about half the people in the world are always having their front teeth filled with gold. That is, they're figuring on twenty years from now. Well, when you're young it's all right figuring your success a long ways ahead if you don't make it too long. But as for your pleasure-your front teeth!-it's better to figure on to-day.

*

And that's the second thing I learned while getting vulnerable and middle aged. Let me recapitulate: 

1st. I think that compared to what you know about your own business nobody else knows anything. And if anybody knows more about it than you do, then it's his business and you're his man, not your own. And as soon as your business becomes your business you'll know more about it than anybody else. 
2nd. Never have your front teeth filled with gold. 

And now I will stop pretending to be a pleasant young fellow and disclose my real nature. I will prove to you, if you have not found it out already, that I have a mean streak and nobody would like to have me for a son. 

I do not like old people. They are always talking about their "experience"- and very few of them have any. In fact, most of them go on making the same mistakes at fifty and believing in the same white list of approved twenty-carat lies that they did at seventeen. And it all starts with my old friend vulnerability. 

Take a woman of thirty. She is considered lucky if she has allied herself to a multitude of things; her husband, her children, her home, her servant. If she has three homes, eight children, and fourteen servants, she is considered luckier still. (This, of course, does not generally apply to more husbands). 

Now, when she was young she worried only about herself; but now she must be worried by any trouble occurring to any of these people or things. She is ten times as vulnerable. Moreover, she can never break one of these ties or relieve herself of one of these burdens except at the cost of great pain and sorrow to herself. They are the things that break her, and yet they are the most precious things in life. 

In consequence, everything which doesn't go to make her secure, or at least to give her a sense of security, startles and annoys her. She acquires only the useless knowledge found in cheap movies, cheap novels, and the cheap memoirs of titled foreigners. 

By this time her husband also has become suspicious of anything gay or new. He seldom addresses her, except in a series of profound grunts, or to ask whether she has sent his shirts out to the laundry. At the family dinner on Sunday he occasionally gives her some fascinating statistics on party politics, some opinions from that morning's newspaper editorial. 

But after thirty, both husband and wife know in their hearts that the game is up. Without a few cocktails, social intercourse becomes a torment. It is no longer spontaneous; it is a convention by which they agree to shut their eyes to the fact that the other men and women they know are tired and dull and fat, and yet must be put up with as politely as they themselves are put up with in their turn. 

I have seen many happy young couples -but I have seldom seen a happy home after husband and wife are thirty. Most homes can be divided into four classes: 

1st. Where the husband is a pretty conceited guy who thinks that a dinky insurance business is a lot harder than raising babies, and that everybody ought to kow-tow to him at home. He is the kind whose sons usually get away from home as soon as they can walk. 
2nd. When the wife has got a sharp tongue and the martyr complex, and thinks she's the only woman in the world that ever had a child.
3rd. Where the children are always being reminded how nice it was of the parents to bring them into the world, and how they ought to respect their parents for being born in 1870 instead of 1902. 
4th. Where everything is for the children. Where the parents pay much more for the children's education than they can afford, and spoil them unreasonably. This usually ends by the children being ashamed of the parents. 

*

And yet I think that marriage is the most satisfactory institution we have. I'm simply stating my belief that when Life has used us for its purposes it takes away all our attractive qualities and gives us, instead, ponderous but shallow convictions of our own wisdom and "experience." 

Needless to say, as old people run the world, an enormous camouflage has been built up to hide the fact that only young people are attractive or important. 

Having got in wrong with many of the readers of this article, I will now proceed to close. If you don't agree with me on any minor points you have a right to say: "Gosh! He certainly is callow!" and turn to something else. Personally I do not consider that I am callow, because I do not see how anybody of my age could be callow. For instance, I was reading an article in this magazine a few months ago by a fellow named Ring Lardner that says he is thirty-five, and it seemed to me how young and happy and care free he was in comparison with me. 

Maybe he is vulnerable, too. He did not say so. Maybe when you get to be thirty five you do not know any more how vulnerable you are. All I can say is that if he ever gets to be twenty-five again, which is very unlikely, maybe he will agree with me. The older I grow the more I get so I don't know anything. If I had been asked to do this article about five years ago it might have been worth reading.

---

F. Scott Fitzgerald ( 1896 – 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term that he himself popularized. Revered and respected in his lifetime, since his death Fitzgerald place has been cemented as one of the great American writers of the 20th century.

Film

The Seven of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Debauch, the Seven of Cups
Number: 7
Astrology: Venus in Scorpio
Qabalah: Netzach of He

Chris Gabriel June 28, 2025

The cups of pleasure which we have been filling throughout the suit overflow here. If five was not enough, and six was just right, then seven is too much. This is an overindulgence in sensory pleasure.

In Rider, we have a backlit figure in awe of the phantasmagoria before him. Seven fantastic cups emerge from a cloud, within them are various images: a head, a veiled person, a snake, a castle on a hill, jewels, a skull cup where a laurel sits, and a dragon. This is visual overstimulation, relatively uncommon in 1909 when this deck was first published, but a daily occurrence today. This is the algorithmic feed and a walk through the city, bright colors, temptations, and madness.

In Thoth, we have seven cups arranged in the form of the lower half of the tree of life. They overflow with sickly green viscous water. The lotus system which moves this water is drooping down. The card is given to the badly placed Venus in Scorpio. The Six of Cups, Pleasure, was a perfect match for our desires, this Debauch is too much. The green fluid of this card is the vomit that comes from too much drink, and the discharge of a Venereal disease. (Venereal literally means of Venus).

In Marseille, we have the least negative form of the card. A column of three cups stands between four cups  in the corners. Qabalistically it is the Beauty of the Queen, and represents Love in and for the World. The vast sensory inputs of the world are treated with kindness and care here. 

In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu writes:

Five colors blind the eye
Five notes deafen the ear
Five flavors dull the mouth
The Great Hunt drives men's hearts wild
What’s difficult to get brings harm
The Wise trust their guts, not their senses

This card embodies this wisdom, the overstimulation of the senses leaves us burnt out, depressed, and numb. In dieting, there is a concept called “Intuitive Eating”, the idea that one can eat when they feel hungry, and stop when they are full. This ability is akin to telepathy in terms of how easily it can be achieved! In reality, many tend to eat like animals. Dogs, cats, horses, goats, and many others, when given an endless supply of food will eat themselves to death. 

The sensory pleasures cannot be truly satisfied until one learns what fullness is, just as a great deal of war goes on because the powerful cannot themselves bear the boredom of peace. As this card is Venus in Scorpio, this is especially relevant to romance. This is a “toxic” love, one that we can’t get enough of. Even when one knows they are in a bad romance, it is far too enticing to see it to the bitter end.

When we pull this card, we may indeed be given a feast for our senses, and have it! Take your fill and will of Love. Just be ready for the hangover of the morning after.

---

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, THOUGHTS

Film

Patterns of Authority: Sound is Spatial (I)

Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis. 1650.

---

Robin Sparkes June 26, 2025

Architecture provides a framework to understand how spatial design shapes and expresses socio-political power. Physical structures carry ideologies. The built environment directs movement, frames perception, and conditions behavior. Sound plays a central role in this dynamic. The way sound travels through space organizes social interaction and reinforces authority. Architectural acoustics become instruments of control, structuring who is heard, how voices carry, and where silence falls.

Space shapes perception. It provides the conditions through which experience unfolds. Before meaning is formed, spatial relationships already guide how bodies move, how attention is focused, and how presence is felt. Architecture organizes these conditions. It defines proximity, enclosure, elevation, and direction. These spatial arrangements establish the grammar of interaction.

When sound emerges, it activates the logic of space. The shape and material of a building influence how a voice carries, how it lingers, and how it reaches others. Sound travels according to the forms it encounters—reflecting, absorbing, amplifying. In this way, acoustics shape social access. They determine who commands attention, who listens, and who remains outside the field of awareness. Power operates through arrangement, constructing systems of order, repetition, and hierarchy. Architecture gives form to these systems. Raised thresholds, central positions, enclosed chambers—all delineate roles and distribute authority. Sound follows these lines, reinforcing their influence.

By tracing the interaction between spatial design and sound, we can understand how architecture conditions us. This interplay generates authority, amplifies its presence, and sustains its influence. Acoustics, as an integral part of architecture, are closely tied to the geometric forms that govern how sound moves through space. Material and geometry influence both the physical and sensory experience of architecture. Here, sound becomes a tool of authority.

By examining how architectural acoustics mediate the intersection of spatial design and ideology, we can begin to see how the manipulation of sound in the built environment reflects and reinforces political power dynamics. “Acoustic space is where sound and space converge, creating a dynamic relationship between what is heard, how it is heard, and the environment in which it is heard”, says Oliveros. We hear through architecture—a medium that frames social hierarchies and directs human behavior.

From Eyes to Ears
Understanding the influence of architectural acoustics is essential for revealing how power dynamics are constructed and reinforced through the ‘unseen’ forces of sound, shaping human interaction and perception. Juhani Pallasmaa, in The Eyes of the Skin, critiques the dominance of vision—Plato’s ocularcentrism. Pallasmaa argues that prioritizing sight over other senses diminishes the full experiential depth of architecture, especially the auditory. He writes, “Architecture is the art of reconciliation between ourselves and the world, and this mediation takes place through the senses”.

The acoustic dimensions of space contribute to the embodied power of resonance. Acoustics frame space, as sound is inherently relational and immersive, shaping how individuals and communities engage within built environments.

Architecture as a Means of Understanding the Superstructure
The relationship between sensory experience and societal structures helps us understand architecture’s role in shaping power. Karl Marx’s concept of the superstructure offers a framework for seeing how architecture mediates sensory experiences and supports ideological authority. Marx identified the superstructure as comprising cultural, political, and ideological systems that arise from—and reinforce—the economic base.

Architecture, as a cultural artifact, reflects the ideologies of the ruling class, shaping and legitimizing authority in physical space. In this context, buildings become instruments of power, with design choices aligned with dominant state ideologies. Marx’s framework highlights how architectural spaces, through both function and form, reinforce social hierarchies and facilitate control. Repeating typologies reveal how architecture is embedded within the superstructure, reinforcing values through spatial design.

Marx noted that “the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class”. We see these values in the spaces we move through and speak within.

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“Architecture was more than functional or aesthetic—it revealed divine truths through geometry and sound.”

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Power, Space, and Surveillance
Michel Foucault’s analysis of power and spatial control in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison offers a critical lens for examining the socio-political implications of centralized acoustic design. Foucault introduces the panopticon as a model of disciplinary power, where spatial arrangement enforces constant surveillance and internalized authority. He writes, “The Panopticon is a [surveilling] machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogenous effects of power” (Foucault). This spatial configuration becomes both a literal and symbolic expression of how power operates.

Foucault’s Panopticon.

When applied to acoustics, the panopticon’s principles reveal how sound systems—like public address speakers or soundproofed hierarchies—reinforce authority by shaping auditory experience. Centrally planned spaces often elevate an authoritative figure, amplifying their presence and power through spatial arrangement and sound projection.

Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation describes how individuals are “hailed” into ideological systems that shape their behavior and perceptions. In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, Althusser writes, “Ideology has the function (which defines it) of ‘constituting’ concrete individuals as subjects” (Althusser). The acoustics of a courtroom or temple draw attention to the singular voice of the judge or priest. These spaces acoustically and spatially “hail” individuals, embedding them into systems of authority and control.

Together, Foucault’s and Althusser's theories reveal how architectural acoustics serve as mechanisms of social and ideological conditioning. This conditioning is both theoretical and embodied—through doors we enter, windows we open, and corridors that guide our behavior. These are choreographed interactions. Simply by existing in space, we are interpelled into expected patterns of conduct.

Architecture, Power, and Resistance
Architecture, through its spatial and acoustic properties, serves as both a tool of control and a potential medium for resistance. Rafael Moneo, in On Typology, argues that architectural forms embody cultural and historical continuities. He writes, “Typology is not a neutral concept; it is a reflection of the ways societies organize their space and their values” (Moneo). By studying recurring forms—typologies—we can see how social ideologies are embedded in design.

Moneo shows how typological structures can also help us understand, critique, and reform power. The superstructure, through typological morphology, becomes a system of spatial ideology. Typological discourse, then, becomes a framework not just for reinforcing systems but for transforming them.

Renaissance Theories of Harmonic Proportion and Acoustic Design
Renaissance architects’ use of harmonic proportions—drawn from musical theory—offers another lens for exploring the relationship between space and sound. Rudolf Wittkower explains how architects like Andrea Palladio used musical ratios to govern building proportions and acoustics. “The application of harmonic ratios derived from music lent buildings a rhythm that could be perceived visually and aurally, creating a multisensory experience of order” (Wittkower).

Palladio believed that well-proportioned spaces could foster moral and spiritual well-being. Geometry affected how sound resonated—how frequencies lingered or faded. Wittkower notes that Palladio’s adherence to harmony was not just aesthetic but moral. “He believed that a well-proportioned building could inspire the virtues of order and balance in its inhabitants” (Wittkower).

Research in psychoacoustics supports this, showing that specific frequencies influence mood, cognition, and even physical health. “Different frequencies stimulate different neural circuits, influencing mood, cognition, and even physical health” (Levitin). Yet access to resonant, harmonious spaces is often determined by wealth—proximity to nature, for instance, or insulation from urban noise. Architecture and environment together create acoustic ecologies that shape how bodies and minds feel space.

Leon Battista Alberti also tied proportion and design to moral and spiritual ideals. His centrally planned churches aimed to align spatial design with divine principles. Wittkower writes, “Alberti regarded beauty as an inherent quality of proportion, believing that mathematical harmony in design could elevate the human spirit” (Wittkower). His designs optimized acoustics, making space both sacred and socially organized.

Catholic churches especially demonstrate this. Their central layouts amplify voice and song, reinforcing the church’s authority both spiritually and socially. “Typology acts as a dialogue between tradition and innovation, enabling architects to adapt historical forms to contemporary needs without losing their symbolic resonance” (Moneo). Moneo’s view shows how Renaissance principles—especially in acoustics—continue to shape architectural practice today.

In Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646), Athanasius Kircher argued that architecture was more than functional or aesthetic—it revealed divine truths through geometry and sound. He described buildings as “microcosms” that align earthly structures with celestial harmony. Cathedrals, rooted in sacred geometry, were instruments to channel divine grace.

Kircher’s work explored how acoustics could be engineered—through ideas like the “acoustic wall,” a reflective surface that amplified sound. His organ designs also show how architecture could be integrated with musical instruments to shape auditory experience. For Kircher, buildings didn’t just shelter—they resonated, actively producing harmonious soundscapes.

His vision aligns with Renaissance ideals, as Wittkower describes in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. Renaissance architects believed their job was not to invent new forms, but to discover and express eternal harmonies. Wittkower writes, “The Renaissance architect did not see his task in creating something new, but in discovering the eternal validity”.

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Robin Sparkes, is a spatial designer, studying the kinesthetic experience of architecture. Her design, research, and writing practice traverses the relationship between the body, temporality, and the acoustics of space.

Film

Tobias Lütke

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Some Thoughts on Relationships (Enneagram V)

Le Lit, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. 1893.

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“In my experience there are two things we have in common:
we all want to belong, and we all want our lives to have meaning.
But finding belonging and meaning are dependent on our ability 
to build and maintain relationships ___ with people who are like us,
and often with those who are not.”
The Path Between Us

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Suzanne Stabile June 24, 2025

It is my hope in writing this article that readers will find time to reflect on at least some of the ideas I’m sharing from my life experience to date.  I want to spark conversations with this contribution to Tetragrammaton for there are some things we just need to talk about.  It doesn’t matter where, how, or who with, but I’m pretty sure we all need to start talking in earnest about relationships.

At seventy-four, I’m old enough to begin looking back and evaluating the many seasons of my life.  Because I “came of age” in the 1960’s, my life has been partially defined by:

The Viet Nam War
The Civil Rights Movement
The Women’s Movement
Hippies, Mini Skirts, Love Beads and Woodstock
The Assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

For several months, I’ve been perusing my old journals and thinking about how these experiences affected my life in what I now understand to be both positive and negative ways.  It seems important to note that the events of the 1960’s were, in many ways, unexpected and unprecedented.  And yet, what we experienced, and the way we responded to our new reality, never included the kind of polarization we are experiencing now.  

Despite the suggestion that in our modern age we are constantly “communicating” and “connecting”, I’m convinced that we find ourselves in a Relationship Crisis.  We are polarized in too many parts of our lives and more tribal than we’ve been in my lifetime.  Our standard response to most issues is increasingly dualistic: “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Simply stated, dualistic thinking is by its nature, a question of “either/or”, which choice is the right one and which is not?   

Another way of assessing our choices is possible, if only we embrace a nondualistic approach.  At its most basic level, non-duality is represented by “both/and” thinking.  “My choice is good and so is yours.”  We could go with either one, knowing we made a good decision.”  Of course, there are choices that involve each person’s life experience and perhaps their belief systems. and sacrificing integrity is never necessary.  The key, however, is found in respecting the life experience and integrity of every other person, while allowing room for difference without distance.

I’ve had the privilege of teaching the Enneagram for most of the past four decades.  Serious study of this ancient wisdom has offered me the opportunity to understand why I do what I do, and to a limited degree, why others do what they do. It has afforded me the time, space, and place to explore the basic differences in how we, as individuals, see the world.  

I’ve heard so many times, “We’re all pretty much the same when you get right down to it.”  That is just not true.  Enneagram wisdom teaches us that we all belong to one of nine groups of people, each one defined by how we interpret, make sense of, and respond to information from the universe.  Of course there are unending examples of nuance, and millions of possible choices to be made but at the same time, predictable, habitual, and ultimately mechanical patterns of behavior have served us well since we were children. 

It’s a challenge to change those patterns of behavior.  When talking about personality, willpower is a myth that is fueled by emotion, and it will not help us in addressing our methods for dealing with the world.  We cannot clench our fists and grit our teeth in order to make meaningful changes in our personalities.

Two of the best things you can do to make changes that would enhance your relationships are the practices of self-observation and allowing.

1. Practice observing yourself nonjudgmentally.  It won’t be easy.  But when we judge ourselves, we defend ourselves and then we are deeper in personality than when we started.  Just observe your behavior, gently acknowledge it, and move on.

2. Practice allowing parts of your personality that don’t serve you well to simply fall away.   Try to avoid feeling frustrated or angry, and after you acknowledge the behavior that you are trying to change just let it go.  The result won’t be immediate, but after time you will find that a new way of responding to similar situations will emerge.

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“Every expectation is resentment waiting to happen”

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For deeper thought and conversation:

Choose one of the statements below that you think describes you. Think about it, maybe even journal about it a little and then consider discussing your insights with someone else.  Each of these ways of being in the world can be problematic in relationships.

• Do you take responsibility for making situations better for others?

• Do you believe you can affect the world without being affected by it?

• Are you accustomed to being focused inward, depending on your own strength to get you through.

There is nothing easy about relationships.  There are no short cuts.  They require lots of awareness, energy and hard work.  My best advice on the subject is this:

• Do your personal work and be the healthiest person you can be. 

• Then find someone else who is doing the same.

 I happen to be relational by nature.  I always have been.  But there are two sides to everything, and this “gift” is no exception because relationships are messy and unpredictable.  If I’m not discerning about the people I choose to be in relationships, with I can easily end up committing too much time to too many people, often resulting in taking for granted the people I love the most.

I’ve confessed this many times to my husband, my children, my therapist, my spiritual director, and my pastor.  So I’m sharing it not in search of grace, though that would be nice, but because it is part of a bigger teaching about relationships.  

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from people who are in the Recovery Community is this: “Every expectation is resentment waiting to happen.”  Expectations are at the core of most of our relationships, whether they have been agreed upon or assumed.  Our failure to talk about them clearly and openly causes harm that could potentially be avoided with honest conversation.  

For deeper thought, journaling or perhaps conversation, consider this quote:

“Inability or unwillingness to appropriately deal with feelings
Is problematic.  When others can’t be honest about what they feel and
what they need, the delayed emotional responses are usually expressed
as anger, shame, fear, or perhaps resentment, all of which are
damaging to a relationship.”¹

What we do is seldom more important than how or why we do it.  I find myself more challenged by the “why” but for others, it can be the  “how.”  Both are, perhaps, determined by personal motivation.  Maybe, like me, you are motivated by a deep desire to be wanted.  My husband Joe’s motivation most of the time is to believe his presence matters.  Our children, in discussion with their spouses, have discovered that within their community of eight, their motivations include: believing their presence matters, avoiding betrayal, knowing they will be taken care of, wanting to be understood, a deep desire to hear that they are good, and being able to trust that they are safe.

For deeper thought, journaling or perhaps conversation:

• If you were asked to name one motivation that you believe is most consistent in your sharing life with others what would it be?

• Would you say that your motivation in relationships is more about connection and belonging, or about being right?  

These ideas are clearly not exhaustive.  In fact, they are a mere beginning of all that I believe we need to talk about concerning relationships.  Our responses to life are determined in part by how we make sense of what we see, and how we decide to respond.  It’s different for all of us.  

What we consider to be strengths in our relationships in our twenties can easily become weaknesses in our thirties and forties and beyond, if we aren’t willing to engage in deep, self-reflective inner work.

I sincerely believe a relationship crisis is at hand.  We can either decide to work toward healthier and more respectful relationships, or we can continue to contribute to the dualistic and polarizing nature of who we are becoming both individually and collectively.

We will always fall short in relationships, challenged to name and work through disappointment.  Even though this is more difficult for some of us than for others, I hope we will all find a way to begin offering and receiving forgiveness.  It’s just part of the deal.

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¹The Path Between Us

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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.

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Iggy Pop Playlist

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Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor. Since forming The Stooges in 1967, Iggy’s career has spanned decades and genres. Having paved the way for ‘70’s punk and ‘90’s grunge, he is often considered “The Godfather of Punk.”

Hannah Peel Playlist

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Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and Emmy-nominated, RTS and Music Producers Guild winning composer, with a flow of solo albums and collaborative releases, Hannah Peel joins the dots between science, nature and the creative arts, through her explorative approach to electronic, classical and traditional music.

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The Seven of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Failure, Seven of Disks
Number: 7
Astrology: Saturn in Taurus
Qabalah: Netzach of He

Chris Gabriel June 21, 2025

The Seven of Disks is a card of waiting, of boredom, tedious labour, and perseverance. If the Six of Disks has given us a great gift of say a field or a house, this is the time where we “watch the grass grow” and the “paint dry”.

In Rider, we see a farmer leaning on his staff, looking sadly upon his growing crop. The sky is grey. He yearns for brilliant flourishing flowers, but must wait.

In Thoth, we have a more depressing image: dead plants covered in seven leaden coins. Four bear the face of Saturn, and three the Bull of Taurus. Saturn in Taurus is a long suffering placement, the efforts it undertakes can take years and years to come to fruition. This position requires constant effort without seeing results.

In Marseille, we have four coins about the corners of the card, with a central three forming an upright triangle. A flower grows from within the three. Qabalisitically, this is Netzach in He, the Beauty of the Princess.

“Rome was not built in a day” is an obvious, but painful truth. The materialization of our dreams and desires is not always a simple task. We  wait in a dark night,  knowing not when or if the Sun will rise, but we must keep going and have faith that it will pay off.

I am reminded of Churchill’s famous speech:

“We shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do.”

This willingness to go on indefinitely is the dignified character of the Seven of Disks, the negative element is that of dejection and failure in the face of time.

Up to this point in the suit, each card has been focused on growing and developing the seeds of the future. This is perhaps the darkest point in the suit, when all of that hard work seems to be for nothing. This is not only the waiting for full growth, but the blight and pestilence which can affect what we have grown. Perhaps we have raised a large crop of wheat, only to find it blighted, overgrown with fungus. This is the sort of failure we face here.

When pulling this card, we must strengthen our resolve through any given setback, delay or difficulty. We must continue to have faith in a seemingly fruitless effort. The suit goes on to profit a great deal, this is just one difficult step toward a brilliant goal.

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

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, THOUGHTS

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'Stalking The Wild Pendulum' Of Vibratory Attunement

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Molly Hankins June 19, 2025

For many spiritual leaders, raising our vibration is synonymous with accessing higher levels of consciousness, but scientist and author Itzhak Bentov explains how this actually works in his book Stalking The Wild Pendulum. Bentov is a fascinating character - a Czech-born national named Tobias with no academic background who immigrated to British-controlled Palestine in the mid-1940s and became a mechanical engineer and inventor, changing his name after joining what would soon become the IDF Science Corp. His inventions range from rocket science components and medical devices to low-carb spaghetti, but his research into the mechanics of consciousness became his most memorable legacy.

Bentov believed that every living being has one material and one nonmaterial organizing system, and that no organized energy is ever lost. Just as our physical body is reabsorbed by the Earthly elements at the time of death, so too is our “organized energy body of information” reabsorbed by the organized information body of the cosmos. According to Bentov, these two systems produce a measurable frequency signal called the electro-static field, a vibration that can be measured by static meters. The strength of this signal depends on the vitality of the subject being measured; a person, plant or animal in poor physical health or depressed spirits will have a weaker signal than a healthy, happy subject. He claims stronger signals entrain vibrating bodies in their proximity. Entrainment occurs when two oscillating systems synchronize their rhythms, meaning a high-frequency electro-static field will raise the vibration of other beings in its field.

Meditative states entrain our physical bodies with the Earth’s vibration, strengthening and stabilizing the signal. As Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said, “If world peace is to be established, peace in the individual must be established first. Transcendental Meditation directly brings peace in the individual life.” Maharishi, who trained as a physicist, began teaching Transcendental Meditation in the 1950s and popularized it at a global scale after teaching The Beatles in the late 1960s. Stalking The Wild Pendulum provides a scientific basis for the idea that in order to bring peace to the world, we have to establish peace within ourselves first. Bentov’s work claims that when we become entrained with the Earth’s vibration, all of our vital functions become attuned to each other, synchronizing at seven cycles per second. 

He gives another example of this phenomena using two grandfather clocks, each wound slightly differently so that the two swinging pendulums are out of sync. The faster moving pendulum, meaning the one with the higher frequency, will entrain the slower one, thereby increasing its speed and bringing the two resonance. In the first sentence of the book’s introduction, Bentov tells us that Stalking The Wild Pendulum is a product of late-night conversations with friends and colleagues calling future scientists to action. Instead of conclusively proving anything to the reader, his work invites us to apply the famous axiom of “as above so below” to draw our own conclusions from the parallels he points to between what he calls micro-realities, such as the behavior of two grandfather clock pendulums, and macro-realities, such as collective human behavior.

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“We change reality as we change our level of consciousness”

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Most of us have our own subjective experiences of interpersonal vibratory attunement. If we’re in a room with someone who is joyful, the mirror neurons in our brains make us feel joyful. The same applies to negative emotions.  However, the logical conclusion from Bentov’s findings is that whoevers electrostatic signal is stronger and higher vibrating will ultimately raise the frequency of the other by being in their presence. Dr. David R. Hawkins created an emotional scale diagram showing specific electrostatic frequencies corresponding with different emotional states. Studies building on his work have since shown that shame has the lowest frequency and authenticity has the highest. 

Our emotional states also correspond with what Bentov refers to as higher or lower consciousness. Higher consciousness, such as authenticity, has a wider range of possible responses to any given stimulus than lower consciousness, such as shame. He writes, “The higher we move along the scale of evolution, the higher the degree of free will, and the higher our ability to control or create our own environment.” It is not until our consciousness has expanded over different lives that we begin to build up our ability to exercise free will. As shared in the beginning of this essay, Bentov believed in both material and non-material organized systems of information energy, both of which evolve over time by way of experience. 

By cultivating a stable, high-vibrating frequency via meditation, expanding our repertoire of personal experience, managing our emotional state and living authentically, we’re able to entrain others in our powerfully positive signal. This is the most important work that can be done on our planet now. Bentov said the terms “levels of consciousness” and “realities” were interchangeable -  we change reality as we change our level of consciousness, and  there is a critical mass element to this as Maharishi also claimed. The magic number, according to many yogic and spiritual traditions, is 144,000 people meditating enough to entrain their own signal with that of Earth, thereby entraining the signals of the rest of the global population. 

Bentov goes a step further. He claims that when beings of higher consciousness focus their attention on beings of lower consciousness, the capabilities of lower consciousness-beings expand. Again, the level of consciousness refers only to how broad the range of possible responses are to any given stimulus - it’s not a value judgment. He writes, “As long as we are just sitting and producing idle thoughts, the thought energy is diffuse, and it eventually spreads out, weakens and disappears. However, when we consciously concentrate and send coherent thoughts, that thought energy or thought form will impinge on the person for whom the thought was meant.” Balancing our work between optimizing the health of our physical and non-physical organized information bodies will give us the energy to stabilize our signal and empower our thought forms to positively impact other beings. 

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

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Dan Reynolds