The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

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 ...

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...

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...

No ceremony last night (12/7); I went to see the mighty YOB at the Bossanova Ballroom. It was a welcome break! As you’ll see, last weekend’s Rite was a real ass-kicker. A lot happened, and I recorded a lot of commentary. I had some ambitious about editing the actual footage into something I could post, but honestly, I just don’t have time. You’ll just have to take me at my word that the following is an accurate (edited for clarity in certain places) blow-by-blow recounting of an evening that included maybe the hardest, scariest 15 minutes of my life.  I recorded my first comments after the song “Up and Atom,” which is the third song of the Rite’s Ritual of Transformation, the StereoMyth.  0:27:45 - That was an epic little dream that I had there. I was taken into the upper realms, where it was explained to me that if you want to call the Goddess, if you want her, the best way to do that is to feel. I realized that I was so locked in against the fear that I had choked...