The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

About three years ago I, like many others have before me, got the messianic/prophetic call while in way over my head on a high dose of psychedelic substantia. It's not all that unusual and most people have the common sense to ignore it, but not this guy. It was accompanied by an astonishing vision of a religion of the science fictional future, and a practical plan to realize it. It was so interesting that even though I was terrified for my sanity I decided to roll with it and see where things went.

Now, at this point, I've developed a pretty unique approach to the utilization of psychedelics. It allows one to achieve visionary states functionally identical to classical gnosis while maintaining a near-sober level of lucidity, even on very high doses. In the following video, I'm working with 8g of substantia turboboosted with a 3g water extract of Syrian rue and multiple hits of pot. I'm posting the clip here in the hopes somebody will find it interesting and want to dis…

The (very rare) occasions when someone is honestly interested in what I'm up to provide an invaluable opportunity for me to articulate my thoughts. As they say, you don't understand anything until you can explain it to someone else. That ability improves with practice. From Reddit:

"I am curious about this heightened sense of emotionality. In my practice I normally see emotion as the response of the body and tend to disregard it. Is there any filter you use towards emotions? Any meditation techniques (sans substance , well except for maybe wine or cannabis) you would recommend to someone who tends to highly value serenity over emotional experience? I think balance is important, and I think you may have some insights that would help me out."

In response I wrote,

To gain skill in accessing and skillfully wielding emotion, sing along to your favorite songs. Every recorded pop and rock song has been carefully engineered to created a certain kind of emotional …

Another Reddit exchange. Someone commented, "Why do you have a picture of Anne Frank? That is inappropriate. Having a picture of her may work for you, but you don't need this material to achieve your aims. You can imagine the archetypal Jewish laborer of the time and the pain they suffered. Or you can imagine any other suffer of tragedy and feel the same way. Choosing a popular historical figure that just so happens to be a little girl is creepy and inappropriate. Let Anne sleep in peace already."

I replied,

Stalin said, "One murder is a tragedy, a million murders is a statistic." It's impossible to think about killing on that scale. Anne was chosen because in trying to own the great sin of genocide, all you can do is think about one face, one name, one story you know as well as if she told it to you herself. Which Anne did, in "Diary of a Young Girl." It's a story we all know. To confront the collective Shadow by meditating on her f…

Someone on Reddit asked me, "Are you familiar with introverted intuition from Jungian psychoanalysis? I think it is a good tie to what 'A New Way to Use Psychedelics' is discussing. If you aren’t familiar with it, I hope you read up and consider if it has any value to your work. If you are familiar, what are your thoughts on the potential connection between the goals of phonomancy and the function of introverted intuition?"

Here's my answer:

I have a layperson's grasp of Jungian psychology. I'm much more interested in his thinking re: archetypes than his theory of personality, but I'm aware of his definition of intuition as a function.

I'm pretty sure you can connect it to the traditional mystical idea that there are different modes of drawing information from internal sources; there's the "eye of knowledge," which is when we use our cognitive apparatus to engage with Transcendental Reality, and the "eye of the heart…

At the end of last night's ceremony I extemporized a little story that neatly sums up my approach to proselytizing. Zero production value, and rough around the edges in delivery, but I enjoy watching myself negotiate the high-wire act tension of making it up as I go along. Maybe you will, too.

It's like this: there's reading a description of lightning in a book. There's watching video of lightning in the upper atmosphere. There's being outside in a terrific thunderstorm and witnessing lightning blast a tree to smithereens. And then there's being struck by lightning yourself.

One of my biggest problems is that I can't find anyone (with one or possibly two exceptions) who's done more than watch a storm through the picture window of their comfortably warm and dry living room. They've got no interest in being cold and wet and afraid, and they simply don't believe anyone could survive being hit by a bolt from the heavens. So much so that when I say "Hold my beer" and then run out into the rain waving a tall steel rod while yelling, "Watch this!" they refuse to even look.

If you ask, "Why in the world would you want to be struck by the Divine Lightning?" I can only answer, "Because it turns you int…

Nietzsche wrote, "My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal."

He also wrote, "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”

And this: “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”

And "...all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer."

That's some good shit right there.…

We've got shows coming up at the end of this month and the next. They're both at Watershed PDX in Portland. You can RSVP by messaging the FCDB Facebook page or by joining the FCDB Meetup.

Dad--
Our phone conversation was interrupted, and I wanted to finish explaining that video you asked me about, because I think it's important.
The ceremony I've developed is in three parts: a rite of transformation, a rite of purification, and a rite of atonement. Each prepares you for the rigors of the next. Working with the song "Oh Comely" is the first and hardest part of that atonement rite.
What you're witnessing in that video is me paying penance. Penance for what? For the godawful genocides of the last five centuries. Why am I doing that? Because my visions indicate that it's our failure to come to grips with the evils we've collectively committed that has brought us to the brink of civilizational destruction and perhaps human extinction. 
It's more complicated than that, of course, but that'll do for now. And so, to face up to what's been done and try to make things right, to buy us a future, I've devised what you see. I put myself…

This isn't perfect, but hopefully it will get better with time and thought.

Imagine you are watching a movie on your tablet.

Pa, the masculine aspect of the Godhead, is the information of which the movie is composed, the all-the-sand-grains-on-all-the-beaches-in-the-world number of 1's and 0's, and all the abstruse patterns and operations that organize and control the qualities and position of every pixel on the screen.

Ma, the feminine aspect of the Godhead, is the story conveyed in the images and sounds constituted from Pa. She's also the psychology of the characters, the situational tension, the subtext of the dialogue, all the aesthetic decisions involved in creating the movie's costuming, set dressing, lighting, editing, etc., etc., etc.

Kid A, the Self, is the node on the Divine Network where Pa and Ma combine to create an experience of meaning and aesthetic emotion.

Yeah, it needs some work. But I do love labeling the Self "Kid A"! Why?
It's a …