On the Impossibility of Mediated Ritual

Attempting to watch a video of a recent gathering in Britain I was struck by this thought; that no actual ritual can survive passing through a mediated filtering intact. Not only will our understanding of it be broken, but any value it might have held risks being destroyed in the process. If we give it

Notes On Ritual

Some years ago, a dozen? Maybe more, I had an insight regarding ritual. I was thinking about the way Norse boatbuilders carved intricate designs on their craft. They were almost proto modern in so many other ways, creating boats that are still marvels when approached along our common notions of form following function. The Norse

On Reflection… part 2

There have been times when it has seemed appropriate to appeal to the metaphor of a snake shedding its skin. This last year brings to mind a different serpentine behavior, stupor induced by the effort to digest an enormous meal. An Anaconda at these times can be mistaken for a fallen tree trunk….

Realms. How we position.

“How we position.” Seems to call for an object, “What?” before we can get into wondering about “how;” or even, who “we” are; we want to know what.

“Let’s be realistic!”

We feel the weight of this admonition upon us everywhere we turn. It stands like a wall between us and it echoes in our minds. We take it as a warning. In fact it is our prison.

Security & Well-being

It’s a common expression. We consider the two must go together, “How can we feel good if we’re not secure?” Here’s John‘s recent comment on An Exploration, Navigating Without a Map: Tony, I have read and re-read your original posting, and I think I have a better grip on where you are going with it.

There’s no freeing the mind without respecting the limitations of the body.

“(Taoism) isn’t a process of learning more facts or greater skills. It is the unlearning of wrong habits and opinions.” — Alan Watts It’s not just the Singularity Boys who get this wrong…. What is unlearning?

Chasing Coherence

What if we remain incoherent when we seek to establish a coherent state? State, a powerful term, one with many resonances. None of them too good…. A coherent condition?

Consuming Community, Consuming Our Selves…

There come times when what asks to be done is for there to be silence. This can seem harder to accept than many other demands the moment makes on us. We have momentum. We consider our habits valuable. We expect and we expect others do too. Expect a certain “output.” This gets tricky when the

“…selfishness is as innocent as blood flowing from a wound.”*

*The Epiphany of No Purpose accidental self-deceptions hiding under conscious, surface deceptions; Jeff Shampnois Craft, Story, and Ritual Change occurs in spite of a wholehearted effort to do things the same way as before. Antonio Dias Absences What now? Now nothing. Jeppe Dyrendom Graugaard  

What is missing…

The change of the seasons is so powerful…. It is disorienting…. We tend to view this as a collapse of whatever momentum we had developed over the months spent within a circle of similarity that allows us to feel a kind of certainty building. Yes, even for those of us talking endlessly about the pitfalls of

A Gathering

“The more you walk this road, the farther you are from the ordinary ways of society. You may see the truth, but you will find that people would rather listen to politicians, performers, and charlatans.” -Deng Ming-Dao * I’m struck by the difficulty we have sticking to the basics. Continually struck by our insistence on