Film

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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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.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Film

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.

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André 3000

Film

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.

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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.”

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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.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Film

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.

Film

David Mamet

Film

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.