The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

The "Holy Ma" is my name for the Divine Feminine. "Pa" is the masculine aspect of the Godhead. Make no mistake, this is not about gender. In this case feminine and masculine are ways to characterize the energies of the penultimate dualistic nature of the Absolute. You could as easily say, negative and positive, yin and yang, chaos and order, etc. Based on my experience, Pa is God as the Radically Alien, the Logos, the Ein Sof. It is Pure Intellect, and utterly uncaring of you, puny human.* But Ma is God as Person, Spirit, Shakti, the very essence of emotion itself, and she loves you like your mommy does, only times infinity. These are energies that can be encountered up-close-and-personal in one's unconscious. They also completely transcend our ability to think about or even experience them. So what happens is that your imagination throws up a screen, a symbol, an image, to help you interface with that energy. That's what every god and goddess is...

It's still inchoate, but this weekend I received a novel and possibly very useful new image of the Goddess. It was She Who is Not There, a three-dimensional hole in the world in the shape of the wife I never found. It inspired an epiphany: Your "heart" is part of the perceptual apparatus of your consciousness, like your mind. And like your mind, it always has an object of its apprehension. If, like William H. Macy in "Magnolia," you feel like you have love to give and nowhere to put it, if you're dying inside because you've got no one to love, understand that the pain you're feeling is a sure sign you *do* love Someone, a Transcendental Person who feels the same way about you, only times infinity. Your heart sees Her, even if you cannot. So I offer you one weird trick to achieve salvation. All you need to do is reframe your suffering to recognize that your longing is proof that She is real, and you will be delivered. Loneliness is a strang...

Loneliness can have many causes. But they all boil down to one fact: unrealized potential. There is a person you can be in the context of a relationship with another person that you simply cannot realize in isolation. And I don't mean a romantic relationship, necessarily, although a positive romantic relationship is often foremost on people's minds, because it provides the broadest context for the expression of oneself. What I'm saying is that we're only as much of ourselves as other people allow us to be. You might be witty, kind, affectionate, sensual, passionate, poetic--whatever the qualities you most like about yourself. But without another person who can appreciate those qualities in you, they might as well not exist. You are not funny if there's no one around who gets your sense of humor. You're not an ardent lover if there's no one around who inspires you sexually or returns your interest. You're not intelligent if there's no o...

I want to tell you about my approach to working with psychedelics, because I think I'm breaking new ground. If you or someone you know is working along similar lines, get in touch. I want to talk with you. For now, at least, I'm calling this approach "phonomancy," meaning "divination via sound." If you're a recreational user, it likely won't appeal to you. If you're someone who's dipping your toe in the psychedelic water via microdosing, or someone who is primarily interested in using psychedelics to treat trauma, depression, or addiction issues, you might find the practice I'm going to describe off-putting or even alarming. That's because phonomancy is not therapeutic--it's augmentative. It's a program for developing supranormal emotional and spiritual capacities via psychological hormesis. Some risk, pain, and fear are part of the process. But that's the price of transformation. THE ORIGINAL TWO "S...