The Martyred Innocent

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 fate is to make a tiny partial repayment against her fate and the fate of all the others torn from their lives in such a horrendous fashion.

The spirit who incarnated as Anne Frank has long ago moved on to bigger and better things. What matters now is the archetype her image can represent. Mythically, she is the Martyred Innocent, a sacrifice in a game our highest selves are playing to redeem the universe. That's awful, but it's true. Let's hope they win, and it'll all turn out to be worth it. Otherwise, it's back to the Stone Age or maybe even extinction for us.

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A New Way to Use Psychedelics

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 supra-normative 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…

The Devil Horns: A Formula for Success

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."

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"One Weird Trick to Achieve Salvation!"

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 strange attracto…

The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

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