The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

  Thursday, January 5th, 2023 @ 8 PM! Please join us for a wildly original theatrical spectacle designed to get you up-close-and-personal to the God/dess. If you can imagine an event that feels like "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" or "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," only with serious sacred intent, you're on the right track. The FCDB Entheogenic Mass is a ritual magic dance party that gives you the opportunity to do collective shadow work that helps save the world! Get your tickets here!

While in a psychedelically-altered state of consciousness, you can intensify the vividness and information density of your closed-eye visuals--at will.  You can also influence their symbolic content. You can ameliorate any anxieties that arise, and even, should it become necessary, fight off predatory or parasitic entities that sense vulnerability and attack. How? By singing. You can control your psychedelic experiences by singing . Everyone knows psychedelics and music go together like chocolate and peanut butter. These medicines can enhance your experience of music, let you hear things you never noticed, stimulate pleasure in ways you never expected. Psychedelic researches like Timothy Leary, Stanislov Grof, and Christopher Bache have used music to drive their own journeys and those of others. And of course, in the ayahuasca space, practioners use icaros , sacred songs, to treat their patients. But have you ever considered why and how music can have these effects? The Phonomanti...

  The Entheogenic Mass is not a performance. It’s a form of experimental, participatory theater designed to create a direct and immediate experience of the Sacred. You are asked to play the dramatic role of FCDB believer. Even if you don’t believe, act like you do. If that feels weird, try framing the Mass as a kind of role-playing game set two hundred years from now. You’re an adherent of a psychedelic religion that holds that during the 20 th Century, the Divine returned to Earth in the form of popular music to save our civilization from its suicidal nosedive. By working with the songs in the Mass, you’re endeavoring to connect to Akasha, the Goddess of the Future, and channel Her energy into the world. In so doing, you can help humanity survive the myriad existential threats we face and build our glorious destiny, the science fictional Suffragette City.   To that end, please sit, stand, and dance as requested, and please do your best to feel the emotions the songs are ...

  For many people, religion is a poison word. To them, "religion" is synonymous with Christianity, and given the sex scandals, pedophiliac criminal conspiracies, hypocritical teachings of a "prosperity gospel," and fascistic nationalism that have tainted Christianity in the United States, it's not hard to understand why. But that antipathy doesn't squelch the longing for something transcendent, some framework of meaning that helps make sense out of life. So, looking outside the church, people identify as "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) and graze at a buffet table of belief systems--a ladle of Buddhism, a heaping helping of Law of Attraction, a side of quantum theory, etc.  Which is fine! But also a missed opportunity. Your enjoyment of almost any experience can be amplified by doing it alongside other people. Whether it's rock climbing, enjoying a comedy show, dancing, or eating dinner, when the right people-- your people--gather to engage...

Here's the raw transcript from the phonomantic rite I conducted on Monday, September 19th, 2022. I'm making a conscious decision to put this in the "W" column. It came at a real cost. Judging by my affect in the videos and my own accounting of the experience, it was a huge success, but it left me absolutely exhausted. Today I'm still a wreck. With a few notable exceptions, the mushroom magic, that energy that makes everything effortless, was unavailable, and I contended with the Enemy for four solid hours with only my own limited human resources to sustain me. I was given no access to the spirit world. Stuck the whole time in maya, even though I believed very much in the reality of what is happening. I had a very clear sense that I was being denied that wonderful sense of breaking through on purpose--my higher Self, or somebody, was testing my limits. In the hours after the ceremony I was attacked by a savage depression and a horrible sense of futility that was ac...

I wanted to talk a little bit about the art of doing yoga while you’re afraid. Before ceremonies I often get waves of dread that are really unmanning. They make me want to have nothing to do with what I’m about to do. I get a sense of the abyss of madness I could fall into. Part of me just quails, and I really have to discipline myself to not turn tail and run. It requires a lot of courage. Even when it’s not that bad it settles into a knot in my heart, a sense of constriction in my chest. What I try to do is just breathe into it. I try to feel that sense of energy moving through my body which could just be tingles representing the activity of my nervous system, but I choose to interpret it as the energy of life, consciousness, Spirit, the God/dess—all those things being synonymous. Taking calm breaths while your body is locked in fear is an interesting challenge. You’re trying to relax while your body is in revolt. The tension can be really intense—almost unbearable. As it i...

Religion doesn't have to be superstition or oppression. It can be a way for people to have a shared experience of the Divine Mystery.  Sharing can amplify the experience past anything they can achieve on their own. It can also provide a community that anchors that experience, making it easier to integrate into everyday life.  You don't have to take religion literally for it to be effective.  You can understand it's all metaphor. There is in fact no way to nail down the nature of what it is you are experiencing. And your personal experience is what matters. Your unique perspective. Your individual adventure. We can all learn from each other.  You'll naturally gravitate towards those who have experiences that resonate with yours. This doesn't invalidate the lived experience of those encountering something that doesn't at all resemble what you're discovering at the root of your being.  They're all correct. Just incomplete.  The more versions of the D...