1. Radical joy.

Radical joy is a tricky concept since it seems to imply that ordinary joy is not enough, which it is. 

Joy is radical.

Thus radical joy belongs to the same category as wet water, round wheels, and unexpected surprises.

Joy is radical because it is necessarily deep, and necessarily rooted in our deepest being. Unlike a moment of happiness, or a moment of pleasure, joy can carry grief, catastrophe, and existential dread, and still be joy.

Joy is simply knowing there is love, there is wonder, beauty, kindness, and kinship…

…even now.

…even after everything.

…even here.

…even when we cry most of the time.

But it makes sense to talk about radical joy, because ordinary joy has been unfortunately confused with extraordinary pleasure, or extraordinary happiness. 

But there is nothing radical about pushing to extremes to experience elated states of consciousness, or sensation. 

Don’t get me wrong, by all means, live!

But if you need a very expensive holiday in Dubai to feel alive, and then end up feeling terrified when there are drones, and missiles in the sky, it is not radical joy that brought you into your confusing situation.

It is not the soul’s defiance, but the soul’s denial.

It is months, perhaps years, perhaps decades, of selling yourself to an experience that is not rooted in reality.

Joy is rooted in reality, and therein lies its strength, and power.

And only there.

2. Rejoicing in the moment.

Meditation only started to make sense to me when it began to involve movement, and sound. 

Before I found an experienced practitioner I stood outside of meditation hustling for a moment of peace, and quiet that never came. Sure, I could sit down, and shut up for a minute. I could focus on my breath, and I could let go of my thoughts. But half of the time it resulted in a panic attack, and the other half in a nap. Because all the while I was doing all these things, something was missing.

My body.

Pop culture meditation talks about the mind. “Silence the mind" is its slogan. The important words are “silence” and “mind”. Other common words used to describe meditation are “stillness” and “sitting”. 

But what produces the noise in the first place? Where do thoughts arise? Where do feelings come from? What causes the turbulence we carry inside of us? What carries it?

The body.

My teacher used only five minutes, out of the hour we spent working every week, for sitting down. She used another five minutes to check in with my thoughts, and emotions. Once before we began our hour of practice, and once again before we said goodbye. The rest of the time was spent moving around, and making sounds. We would sit, walk, lie on the floor, stretch, swing, and hum. Little by little I came to inhabit my core, and it wasn’t all in my head anymore. My attention was at the center of my being, closer to the diaphragm, or the solar plexus. It was there that things needed to be resolved, and not in my thoughts, or in the coming, and going of my many emotions. It had nothing to do with ideas at all. It had everything to do with gravity, and the embodiment of attention itself. The practice eventually became a habit, and grew beyond the studio, and into everyday life. But the body, my teacher would remind me, only exists right here, right now. Everything you can ever control only happens in the present moment. That is the point of meditation in this context. Not enlightenment, (whatever that means to you), but simply presence. Sometimes the present moment is so uncomfortable, even downright scary, that we evade it, mentally, and emotionally. We abandon the only power we have. The power of being right here, right now. Which is the prerequisite for doing anything. For being anything at all — a dancer, a fighter, a lover, or even a writer. We sacrifice movement when we wrestle with serious thoughts, when we sit down to read, with our eyes focused on the page, and when we write, we forget how to sit. The body falls into disarray, and not into meditation. It is, (and I will die on this hill), much harder to enter meditation while trying to sit in stillness, than it is when you allow yourself to exercise awareness of the way your body actually moves. And it is always moving. As long as you’re still breathing, a tender ripple flows through every muscle, and every bone. The mind doesn’t go away, but it becomes busy with paying attention. It stops being useless. Instead it starts to engage with life, the way life actually is, right now.

When all of that is finally done, all the swaying, and humming, the bouncing, and stretching, it’s quite easy to sit down for a moment of traditional meditation. Because now, meditation comes from the core, and not from a thought cultivated in the mind. The breath is no longer an alien you’re suddenly aware of. You are aware already. The breath is no surprise, and the rest follows naturally.

You are ‘refreshed’ when the work is done. That state of being ‘refreshed’ is something I take from one of the world’s more famous meditation teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh. To me it describes the practical goal of daily meditation perfectly. With a ‘fresh’ body-mind all things are available. Relationships come alive. Creativity awakens. And even on a dull day, a sad day, or a sick day, as much joy as possible returns. Food tastes better, and the sky looks pretty again.

Joy is possible, not because you are lucky, (you may even be unlucky), but because you put in the work. Therefore knowing — practically knowing — what the work is, and what you’re actually supposed to do — with your body — is very valuable information.

Don’t get me wrong when I say this. I’m an intellectual myself. But the people I meet when I practice Basic Body Awareness* are all very different people, and still, almost anyone can achieve joy in this radical form. Let’s call it joy for no reason. But while you can’t think your way into joy, you can think your way out of it. I don’t despise the so called armchair-magicians, and I don’t like insults aimed at intellectuals, or intellectualism, but the fact remains that thinking comes with a cost. And in order for magic to have any real world application, you do actually have to do it, in the real world. 

It is after all not just “…think what thou wilt”, and doing includes the body.

Joy comes to one’s whole being, and the body is a part of that wholeness. There is no wholeness without it, no life.

At the end of the day, I’m not even sure if we have a “mind-body problem”, or if we’re just brainwashed into thinking that we do. My point is that wholeness is the opposite of a zero sum game. Including the body does not mean excluding the mind. It actually means the end of all exclusion. Joy means no longer being at war with who you are, or how things are, because joy takes root exactly in that soil — the only soil there is — who you are, how you are, where you are — right now.

3. Joy is re-humanization.

We are living inside the politics of dehumanization. Every day brings a new burden of helplessness, hopelessness, and survivor’s guilt.

I guess that’s why we speak of radical joy, and not just plain old joy, these days.

At times we try to bargain with the powers that be by declaring the cost in human suffering that these useless wars have brought to the present moment. It is hard to believe that the echoing void where empathy should have been is really this empty. It is hard to believe that the campaigns of dehumanization are really this successful. That people really believe that killing babies is not only okay, but even part of a holy mission. That this mayhem, to some people, is a holy war. It makes no sense, but we are faced with it every time we open the news. We protest, as we should. We refuse, we argue, and we reason. We sign petitions. We hold up signs. We call on the media. We call on our politicians. Some of us, sometimes, even go into direct confrontation with these problems. All of it is necessary. 

But we cannot forget that it is the body that will do the work. The body that will defy its confinements. The body that will travel miles to interrupt the events of real life, physical politics. The body that will break the mold, break the expectations of polite society. The body that will hold the line, at the crucial moment. It is the body that will yield to compassion, and solidarity. The body that will reach across the divide, with a song, or a hug. The body that will take the stupid risk. The body that will spring into action when it needs to spring into action. And we cannot forget the ears, and the eyes, and the smell of stress, fear, or aggression floating in the air. How living in these times directly affects the senses. How we are flooded with sensual information. And because of all that, the body needs to find joy. When we summon joy to our bodies — not outrage, not fear, not bitterness, and not disappointment — we summon life. Humanity returns, because love returns. Passive nihilism, and apathy are banished. There is playfulness in this joyous strategy. There is the honest theatrical act of self-expression, which is also an act of communication. The way I reach you, and the way you reach me. There is the attraction of belonging, and of understanding, because humans belong, and humans understand. Joy re-humanizes, because joy tells us — I’m a lot like you, and you’re a lot like me. 

That’s the thing that joy remembers, and that’s the thing it cannot forget.

4. Contagious meditation.

During the pandemic we all studied charts, and models of how the virus might spread through the population. Fear spreads far more quickly than a virus. Misinformation travels at lightning speed. 

But so does meditation.

Are you surprised?

You might not think of meditation as something that moves around. It seems counter intuitive to associate meditation with speed. It might also seem awkward to think of meditation as a social event. 

It’s just one person sitting there, isn’t it?

But please, bear with me. I want to try to unfold, and expand the concept of meditation, and put it in a bigger context.

It is never just one person sitting there, and they are never just sitting there.

And as I will try to show you, the person doesn’t even necessarily - sit - in meditation. They might walk, or they might stand, or they might even appear to be packing a grocery bag. They might be watching the pigeons in the town square. They might be resting at a coffee shop. They might be fixing their bike. They might be admiring a flower, or waiting for the traffic lights to switch to green.

All the while drifting in and out of meditation.

Meditation is like a glass of water, hence it carries the quality of ‘freshness’. It restores you, but it also spills over when the glass is full, and it restores others.

A few drops of  ‘freshness’ here, and a few drops of ‘freshness’ there.

The spectrum of meditation spans from a classical corps’s position, or a yoga nidra, all the way into the flow state of furious dancing. There is no definitive state of physical being that — in, and of itself — contradicts, or constitutes meditation. It’s only a matter of mind-body awareness, and psychic presence. In other words, it’s only a matter of you being fully yourself.

While it may be difficult to imagine the speed at which meditation can travel, I think we all know how a smile can transform everything in an instant.

Smiling is one of the fruits of meditation.

So, if my spiritual practice doesn’t spill over on my surroundings throughout the day, I tend to think that it might be a sign that it’s not working, and maybe it’s not doing anything for me either. We often talk about ’success' and ’proof' when we talk about magic, but I don’t really want anything beyond having a good day, and having other people have a good day too.

If we could achieve that, that would be quite mindblowing, wouldn’t it? 

For now, it’s only a daydream.

5. Power.

I have a dear friend who used to struggle with being “too nice” until she learned to accept her power. I think of her whenever I think of power. Power flows in healthy relationships. Regardless of whether that relationship is with your boyfriend, or if it is with your government, your neighbors, or your children. When power stagnates, and accumulates, it typically ends up being a problem. But power itself is not the problem. Power is just life. In a healthy environment you do not lose power by empowering others, and you do not lose power by stepping down, or standing aside, when someone else needs to step in, and take over. Cooperation, and collaboration allows power to flow. There is no danger in holding power unless you find yourself in a competitive, or destructive environment. In which case, again, power itself is not the problem. The problem is probably something else. Power is hard to deal with, but pretending like it doesn’t exist only makes it harder, due to the simple fact that it does exist, and you’re dealing with it right now. 

Magic in all its forms, and throughout all of its history, has had to do with power.

I suspect that the reason many of us feel a bit cringe about our first pursuits into magic is because it is a bit cringe when young people first begin to realize their own power. A young person is inevitably someone who was recently just a child, and a child is the most powerless person on Earth. Everything happens to children, and they get no say in what’s going on. The crisis that comes when you find that you do have power, and you do get to have a say in things, is often an awkward crisis. Cringe, or not, it is bound to be a mess at first. A young person is often not used to having power. A young person does not know exactly how reality works, and a young person might also suffer from the illusion that adults do. But most of us “burn our hands” and come to terms with it at some point.

Meditation lives next door to magic.

Imagination may support the body in the here, and now, or it may be waging a civil war with the body, refusing reality as it is, and turning to fantasy instead. 

This is where meditation can aid the imagination, just like sleep can aid wakefulness.

If you are sleep-deprived you’re not functioning at your very best. If you are meditation-deprived, it’s not as bad, but almost. 

Meditation cushions the body-mind.

Reality is harsh, and the imagination is wild. There needs to be some softness available for us to function, maybe not always optimally, but at least adequately.

Despair, and delusion must be kept at bay.

Power must be handled wisely.

Even if it’s just a little bit of power, that little bit of power still permeates your whole life. And we should respect our own life, and our own conditions in life.

This is the bigger context where meditation exists, and where daily practice happens. Whether it is magical meditation, traditional meditation, or something odd, like my own Basic Body Awareness* practice, it happens in everyday life.

There is no escape from everyday life.

Done right, meditation has the potential to connect imagination to reality.

And at that point, things usually start to happen.

6. Daily practice.

We all start our day at different hours, but the universe ignores our clocks, and our calendars. Our schedules are irrelevant to the stars. The eight hour workday is a human construction, and so is the eight hour sleep cycle. Historically humans have had other patterns of work, and sleep.** Even my own grandparents, who were farmers, divided their time between work and rest differently than I do. It still echoes in my bones. Every afternoon, they had a nap, and every afternoon, for a moment, I still struggle to remain alert. The body likes a repeated pattern. It likes a routine, and it likes a certain level of self-discipline. We all know old habits are hard to break. Sometimes that turns into a problem, but sometimes it works in our favor too.

I like to create my magical work around the patterns of the sky. Who doesn't? 

Living in Scandinavia makes it challenging to wake up, or go to bed following the sun. Instead I notice it. A few times, every day, I step out of my normal duties, and watch the sky for a moment. Then I do my daily exercises. Then I sit for a few minutes of traditional meditation. Then I stretch, to complete the sitting. These things are all backed by science. My exercises are based on medical knowledge, and my teacher is a physiotherapist. Daylight is good for you, and so is darkness, at the right intervals. Traditional meditation benefits mental health. The bare bones of my practice are deeply rational, empirical even, as they are wholly rooted in the observable facts of the body-mind, and its physical reality.

What Western medicine, and industrial society often forgets is all the rest of it. 

That the body is alive on Earth.

That the body feels, thinks, and imagines.

That the body comes from its ancestors.

That the body is embedded in a web of living relationships. Human relationships, as well as other relationships.

That food is not simply fuel.

That sleep is not simply a reset.

Magic extends itself further, and beyond these practical bare bones of daily meditation. Don’t get me wrong — they are good bones — but there is so much more to magic. There is probably more than we know, and probably a lot more.

The fact that magic extends itself into the great unknown is the reason I think it also needs to be deeply rooted in what is known, what works, and what restores us, and brings us back to our senses.

The only place where there is joy, power, and a small chance that something might be done.

*

https://www.nibk.no/en/kopi-av-om-nibk

**

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep 

When I first heard the old saying: “Do what thou wilt does not mean do what you want” I was 25 years old, a young woman just starting to live. The year was 2004, and we were sitting in my kitchen. I had a big kitchen back then, and we were always sitting in my kitchen. We were always broke, but we always had money for catfood, coffee, and cigarettes. Several people who were close to me at the time had the ambition of becoming better people. For a few years my kitchen was home to their failures. A place where giving up on yourself wasn’t all that bad. All it meant was that you were back in the buffer zone, reading tarot cards, cuddling with cats, and hopefully laughing at the absurdity of the human condition, and the recent events that had brought you there. I was always there, and I was always failing. I lived in the buffer zone. In retrospect it is strange to think that our always was already ending that year. The next year my life would change, but I didn’t know it yet. Slackers rarely do. When you are slacking, life happens to you, and most of the time you have no idea what’s going on, or why everyone is mad, or at who, or what they did, or why. In retrospect I’m glad I had that final year of doing as little as possible. Soon enough my life would be very busy. I was to become a mother the following year. A good quarter of a lifetime is lodged between that anniversary of The Book of the Law, and this one. 

If you’re reading this, by any chance, I still think all of you were always good enough people. And I’m sorry to inform you that I did exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I did not take that advice. I have no idea if this has been my first success, or if I’m still just failing forward forever.

Friends — according to who, who said what, and what did I do?

They are obviously lying. I was here the entire time. I had a nap. I was just now going to make some coffee. 

Do you want some coffee? 

Let’s pretend for a minute that we’re sitting in the kitchen again. Everything is exactly the way it has always been.

Well, almost.

I moved to this city because I wanted to live here. I married the man I wanted to marry. I had children because I wanted to have children. I stayed at home, most of the time, because I wanted to stay at home. I wanted to be with them. Not everyone finds a place where they belong. Not everyone falls in love with the right person. Not everyone becomes pregnant by that person. Not everyone has the choice to stay home when they have kids. But statistically speaking, plenty of people do all these things, and my fate is not uncommon, or unique. I was lucky, but not surprisingly lucky. I had an ordinary amount of luck.

When you decide what you want in life, you also decide what you don’t want. There is a negative imprint left from all of our choices. Every other city on Earth is a city where I will never live. Some of them beam brighter with the energy of an unlived life than others. I could have almost moved to Copenhagen, or Stockholm. It is more unlikely that I should have ended up in Tokyo, or Moscow. The same is true for a few forgotten lovers. I could have almost married them. But I find it a bit more unlikely that I should ever have married the man sitting next to me on the train, or standing in front of me in the check-out line. If I had decided not to have children, maybe I would have had a proper education. Maybe I would have had a career of some sort. I could have been an artist, a school teacher, or a fashion influencer. But it is unlikely that I would have been an athlete, or an astronomer, or even an electrician. It is altogether very likely that I should have been exactly myself. Therefore I find it likely that my children will be exactly themselves. I have even told them as much. I have told them to pay attention, and to notice if they are ever in a situation where they don’t want to be. Leave! Leave as quickly as you can, and don’t look back. Don’t do things you don’t want to do. Don’t waste your precious life with any nonsense. 

You might think all of this is just common sense. Too plain to be put into words, and too self-evident to be called a philosophy. 

But actually it isn’t. 

To believe that what we want in life can guide us toward good things, and what we don’t want is likely going to be bad for us, is also to believe that there is something going on inside of us worthy of our attention. It is to believe that there is something good inside the human heart. That there is something in there worthy of material expression, and not - just - as it once was thought, a wild, insatiable, animal hunger that we must learn to tame at any cost, that we must beat into ‘dank submission’.

I stand between generations, as all mothers do.

My father was told who to be, and he rebelled. He never told me who to be, and from him I learned how to do what I want, and eventually, to tell my children to do the same. 

Life is a gift. Do what you want with it. It’s yours to keep. I want you to have it. I want you to discover it all, on your own terms.

But if we want to discover anything in life, we can’t walk out into the world thinking that we already know everything. 

We can’t pretend that we know what we’re doing.

Humanity as a whole is presently in a situation that needs to be explored, discovered, understood, and in the best case, resolved. It is actually the end of it all, if we can’t resolve it.

Take this coffee, for example.

Sitting around, drinking coffee is not so innocent after all. The cost of it is all over the place. Deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, chemical pollution, factory, and transport emissions, unfair use of human labor, child labor, and on top of it, if you add a spot of milk to your coffee, you have the whole dairy industry to think about as well. Smoking cigarettes is terrible, I know. But even keeping cats can be judged as a bit of a problem. There are an estimated 600 million cats on Earth, and cats, if they are feral, or free to roam, are actually considered an invasive species. They do not belong in the ecosystems they have invaded. Cats are predators, and they prey on thousands of other little species, sometimes to the point of extinction. 

What we want comes with a cost, and I believe we should at least be aware of that cost, before we go ahead with our decisions, our yearnings, and our urges.

Is it worth it? Is it really what I want?

I stand between worlds, as all humans do today.

We live in a strange time, and we are forced to live in it. It costs me, (personally), nearly nothing to go down to the convenience store, and buy some coffee, a can of catfood, and a pack of cigarettes. It means I can continue with my vices for another day. I can think. I can close the buffer zone around me. I can stare at the clouds through my window. I can go for a nap with my cat, before everyone returns home in the afternoon, and my busy life continues. 

It is important to do what you want when you have a daughter. That much should be obvious. But it is not any less important when you have a son. It is important to do what you want when you have children. It is important for them to know that all of this was done out of love, always.

The other day my oldest son came into the kitchen to ask me something.

“What sort of dreams did you have before you had kids? Did I crush your dreams?”

Society wants us to believe that mothers pay the ultimate sacrifice, and that parents are no longer really people. The negative imprint surrounding the choice of motherhood — the forgotten lovers, the unexamined opportunities — no, I said. You were my dream. You made me a better person. I wanted to be a mother.

One must love the consequences of one’s actions. One must say, fine, I’ll keep this cat on a leash. I’ll buy fairtrade, and organic coffee. I’ll only smoke a few cigarettes, sitting in the backyard, where I won’t disturb my family, or my neighbors. 

To do what you want is not altogether bad, and it is not altogether easy. But throbbing like the pulse of a base underneath the melody of everyday life, where we make our choices, and where we decide what we want, and what we do not want, is the deeper question still. Want bends to will. Life bends to the mystery of life. I’m convinced I do not yet have all the answers. I’m still exploring.

“Do what thou wilt does not mean do what you want” — not even when what you want is very harmless, and by all means, very pleasant.

To want is simply not enough, and I can only come to the conclusion that I can’t believe it could be. But I also don’t believe there is any true contradiction. People will always do what they want — as certainly — the thirsty will drink, the hungry will eat, and the tired will fall asleep in an instant.

Does it contradict the nature of our will to have a glass of water?

I don’t think so.

1.

Can you imagine dull butterflies? 

Well, I think we should try.

As monoculture has spread across the globe it has substituted wild habitats. Wild habitats are more diverse in color, and so are its inhabitants. When the world turns into endless rows of green, brown, or grey, being colorful is no longer an advantage. Brown, and grey butterfly species have the advantage instead, and so they come to dominate the landscape. 

As the forest adapts to its new circumstances by becoming less colorful, the butterflies become dull. 

It happens quickly, and scientists have been able to observe it as it happens. The good news is that they have also been able to observe the colors returning in places where the land has been allowed to grow back into its natural state of wild diversity.  

You can read about it here.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/06/butterflies-losing-colour-cutting-down-tropical-forests-aoe 

But this is only one example of how the world is losing color.

The unnatural world is losing its color too.

Our everyday objects are increasingly less colorful. One must stop to wonder why. Is it what comes from designing for the masses? Is it due to a shift towards industrial materials? Or perhaps because we are so in love with simple efficiency? The author of this article asks all those questions, but also suggests an even deeper explanation — what if Western culture has inherited a long standing bias against colorful objects, and other expressions of colorfulness? Colorfulness might then have been sacrificed in the name of seriousness, and sophistication. 

It’s an interesting argument. 

No matter what the reason is, the phenomenon itself can be seen, and somewhat measured. As you will find, the article offers sources for further reading as well.

You can read the article here.

https://www.theculturist.io/p/why-is-the-world-losing-color 

Now I want you to imagine AI-slop. 

What makes it sloppy? Why does it turn into slop in the first place? And what is the strange reason behind its generic, frankly boring nature? 

Why is it dull? 

The obvious reason — naive as it may seem at first — is that generative AI is not a marvelous machine. 

It does not produce marvels.

It lacks that bit of je nes sais quoi.

It’s more like a stream of c’est quoi than any kind of c’est la, if you see what I mean?

No ta-daa, to put it in plain English.

In this article, Professor Ahmed Elgammal explores what he calls “AI-induced cultural stagnation” and as the title tells us, he no longer thinks it’s just speculation. He thinks it’s happening.

https://theconversation.com/ai-induced-cultural-stagnation-is-no-longer-speculation-its-already-happening-272488?fbclid=IwdGRleAPjy6xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEePNeV_NTQJhan7IA_EN4n2gWca7Q_uJlrONnr7q_y_bWqUnodEIB7opAcV0I_aem_18hOtbdoG0dn7DqosKR7_Q 

He refers to this study, published in December of last year.

https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(25)00299-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666389925002995%3Fshowall%3Dtrue 

“The researchers linked a text-to-image system with an image-to-text system and let them iterate — image, caption, image, caption — over and over and over.”

“The researchers called the outcomes “visual elevator music” — pleasant, and polished, yet devoid of any real meaning.”

Elgammal then goes on to touch on the reasoning that leads him to this conclusion.

“This reframes the stagnation argument. The risk is not only that future models might train on AI-generated content, but that AI-mediated culture is already being filtered in ways that favor the familiar, the describable and the conventional.”

Now, if you are a magician, (actually, I think, even if you’re not), you might begin to see where I’m going with all of this, and what it has to do with butterflies, and magic.

Magic is anything but familiar, describable, and conventional.

A dull butterfly is sad, because a dull butterfly has lost a bit of its magic.

Another seemingly naive statement — yes, but let me back it up.

Color holds meaning.

There is a language beyond words, and beyond reason.

There is a language of the senses, a language of the body, and a language across physical relationships.

We exist in what has been called “a more-than-human-world” by ecologist and philosopher David Abram, who in his work emphasizes that language, and meaning is not created simply by the mind, but by all of our senses, and it is not created simply in the only-human-world.

Of course it can’t be, because the only-human-world is a dead world.

And color is a sign of vitality. 

Vitality and magic sit very close to one another. 

A dull butterfly has not only lost its vitality. 

It has lost its place in the natural patterns of communication. 

Where there is communication, there is meaning, and wherever you see color in nature, it means something. Whether you get it, or you don’t — the information is there. 

If you allow it to speak, if you let it play with your senses on repeat, then you too become part of the pattern. 

I don’t know what sort of magic the butterflies are up to, but I know they’re up to something.

And I know we are too.

2.

Flipping through a Tarot deck these days, you might really come to ask yourself why it never turns to slop?

But it does, you know? Sometimes.

A while ago a young lady came to see me for a reading. Her questions will remain confidential, but I had to ask her something. Why bother coming all the way across town to sit with an older lady like me, and have tea? She said she thought it was better than Tiktok. Which of course was very sweet of her to say, but I also believed her.

Image - caption - image - caption.

Ta-daa!

Reading the Tarot is an art, and even if I keep an agnostic attitude at all times, my art is never sloppy, because I care about my art, and I care about what happens to other people.

AI does not.

Care is an important element of art, and communication.

Art — artificialness — that is careless will of course turn into slop. 

Fast fashion is fashion-slop.

Instant coffee is coffee-slop.

Please don’t tweet at me. It gives a sloppy statement.

AI cannot create art. It can only create art-slop.

But that is not all it can do.

As a matter of fact it might turn things into something even worse, which we might simply call distortions. 

Philosopher Jonathan Gilmore has reportedly described AI-slop as several things, but among them this: “…an imitation of meaning without meaning.”

I personally cannot think of anything more psychotic.

I mean it in the most literal sense, and not at all as some sort of derogatory comment towards my own kind, the mentally ill.

If you want to know what a delusion feels like, that’s what it feels like.

Meaning without meaning.

And I also happen to know what people ask fortune tellers. I happen to know the awkward desperation behind each call. The pause before they ask if perhaps they can ask another question. The emotion.

But I’m no longer the last resort when a person is in that state of stressful uncertainty, as they are faced with the unknown, before an important decision, a new love, a sudden change in living conditions.

The last — last — resort is now a machine, with no sense of meaning whatsoever.

What the internet calls “spiritual psychosis” and what it calls “AI psychosis” might not be two completly different things, after all.

I’m guessing, but I don’t think they are.

Meaning without meaning seems to be present in both cases. What starts as mild distortions might at the very worst turn our thought processes into slop.

And meaning is very important.

In the wild, not knowing the meaning of things might mean death.

Tarot cards are easy to read compared to mushrooms, birds, flowers, and clouds.

But meaning is not the same as purpose.

Bear with me.

The purpose of the yellow mushroom is not to feed me.

It does not give a fuck about me. 

It was there before me, and it will probably be there after I’m gone.

The meaning of its particular yellow shade, the scent, the shape of the brim of its hat — to me — is that it can.

This meaning was not gained through trial and error on my own part, (luckily), but through the trial and error of countless ancestors.

It was passed on to me through culture.

As soon as I spot a bit of dark gold between the leaves, and grasses, my heart skips a beat. This means sandwiches for supper! Hot butter on fresh bread, covered in stew. Happiness for everyone at home. It also means that the seasons are changing, that the water levels in the ground are okay, which also means that a number of other things are going to work out for the better as the harvest approaches. It means health, and vitality for all. But it also means a bit of freedom, and independence. There are songs about the yellow mushrooms. There are famous paintings with the yellow mushrooms in them. There are children’s books where the characters are yellow mushrooms, or live in houses made from yellow mushrooms. I’m fairly sure that almost everyone who has lived near the northern forests would call this particular shade of yellow by the mushroom’s name, and most of us would not hesitate about the shade. It’s not the same as daffodils, or egg yolks, or lemons. It is not even exactly the same as the shade of fallen leaves. We would not confuse it with a piece of yellow plastic in the woods. Just like most people can tell the difference between strawberry red, and raspberry red — and so on — human beings are incredible when it comes to perceiving, and conveying meaning, and keeping it alive for ourselves, and for each other.

We are (catastrophically) stupid sometimes, but, I will keep saying it, we are storytellers, musicians, artists, cooks, and scientists as well.

Like the mushroom, I don’t give a fuck if my life has a purpose at the end of the day. 

But the thought of a life without meaning fills me with a powerful sense of dread.

As it should.

3.

The dull butterflies flutter hopelessly around the kitchen as they return home from school. Are they hungry, or are they looking to escape the menace of purpose that has loomed over their little butterfly heads all day?

Why do I need to finish this assignment? Why do I need good grades? Why do I need to go to university? Why do I need a good job? Why do I need to make lots of money? 

All purpose, and no meaning.

How dull it is to never ever get an answer. 

To never get to the end of the plan that others so confidently have set up for you, and for your entire life.

And worst of all, to never get a question in return. To never hold the power of the conversation, even for a moment.

To come home, and finally get to say: 

I saw some clouds today.

To have someone say: 

Clouds are very important, I think.

That’s how I read the cards, for those who care to visit, young, or old.

An injection of meaning into an otherwise dull, and confusing day. 

Colors returning after hours of grey corridors, offices, and classrooms.

A wild meandering investigation after hours of repetition.

A joke, or a good cry, after keeping it in all day. After doing as you were told, and then tolerating the resulting boredom of the task.

As we brush softly against the brim of the unknown, there might be a spark. A ray of light might part the heavy skies.

We all agree we need to move the body.

Yet we still ask children to sit at their desks, as if the Victorian devil is still waiting for us all to fall into carnal sin, somehow, if we move around too much.

But to move the minds of school children — outside of the familiar, describable, and conventional — doesn’t even occur to us as a valid activity. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love learning, and books, but the mind is so much more.

Perhaps there is even something more than the mind, the way we think about the mind today, who knows?

To keep its vitality, (its magic, if you like), the mind too needs to go dancing. 

It needs the experience itself. 

No why, or because, but because of itself.

And it needs to explore — anything, something — unknown.

4.

We do not always know the purpose of our actions. To always be bothered with purpose would be very impractical. 

Asking people to explain why all the time, ironically, has no purpose in itself, other than that it might give us a temporary sense of control. But this is many times the language, and mindset of capitalism, and its dubious claims of progress, growth, efficiency, and profitability.

For what? For who? For how long?

This week has been sick with war.

It should be evident that war destroys.

War also gives you a purpose, whether you like it or not.

We tell ourselves we are fighting for democracy, and freedom. I don’t doubt it most of the time. I try to contribute to the fight whenever I can.

But not everyone is in it for everyone’s freedom.

A lot of actors are in it for other reasons.

Simple survival, which is a good enough reason, soon becomes the purpose of the war. But leaders who do not care about anyone’s survival are right now at the top.

Neither the lives of the enemy, nor the lives of their own people matter, and even less, the lives of the countless civilians, and refugees, who are involuntarily involved.

The life of every child must matter.

Freedom, and democracy can never come from the death of children.

Nor can it come from disregarding the rule of law, or undermining the access to food and water for future children, and their children’s children.

Freedom cannot come from destroying the Earth, on which all the rest of our survival stands its only chance.

This is where giving someone a purpose shows its ugly face, and the mask falls off.

Even in the middle of a war, I’m more than my purpose, whatever it is I’m doing.

I’m a person.

I must not be so easy to get rid of.

I must not be so easy to grasp, or so easy to control.

I must not be reduced.

And in the fight for freedom, I tell myself, I must never reduce anyone else.

I must practice freedom all the time, and not later, at another time, in another life, when the war is won, or Earth is saved, or when I have this or that need met, or resource gained — no, now.

I come to think about the famous quote from Eduardo Galeano.

”Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”

I come to think about it, because I disagree with it. 

Utopia can’t be another pie in the sky. 

Utopia is about something real. What is real must be able to exist in reality, and it must be thought of in realistic terms.

In my idea of utopia things aren’t perfect, and they aren’t permanent, but there are things you can rely on. Water, food, medicine, protection from violence, and things like that. The world is still broken, and human beings are still sometimes stupid, but there is enough understanding of our human condition, and the conditions of life, built into this utopia to prevent us from the worst of it, most of the time.

And if utopia is a process, not a mirage tempting us to neverending advancement, then we can participate in it any time. It’s up to us, if we are up for it, or not. That’s what I like to think, anyway, because that way, we’re already in it, and it is not receding from us as we approach. 

Instead it meets us where we are.

5.

I often return to Byung Chul-Han’s concept of ”the terror of the same” — and this week has led me here again.

To this monstrum that stands in the way of every magical, poetic, and scientific longing. 

The Same, and all the sameness we seem to be drowning in.

Not the Other to whom all the love letters of meaning have been written — but the interceptor who steals the mail, and creates tragedy, or comedy, of our efforts

of communication, by watering them down, censoring every quirk, and strangeness, deleting every mystery, until we all seem to be too much alike, and the tension is lost. 

A polite postcard arrives, and one must imagine what the Other wanted to write, but left out, or wrote, but then edited, because it stood out too brightly, or it went against the public guidelines, or — why not? — some artificial function suggested otherwise.

Still believing that somewhere on the other end of the correspondence the Other is alive, in all their awkward ways.

Without the Other, there is no Self.

Who are you if we are all the same?

It’s a mistake to think that without conflict there should be no violence.

Instead I’m afraid the world has fallen into perfect violence.

Conflict is the expression of needs, and boundaries.

This war disregards the needs of the Other, as well as the need for the Other.

It is a very dangerous place to be.

And the need for art is very real.

Byung Chul-Han writes:

“Today we have lost the experience of the Other as an enigma or secret. The Other now is entirely subject to the teleology of use, to economic calculation and evaluation. They become transparent. They are demoted to an economic object. The Other as an enigma, on the other hand, eludes all exploitation. Love always presupposes otherness – not only the otherness of the Other, but also the otherness of one’s own person.”

In another instance:

“Without the presence of the Other, communication degenerates into an accelerated exchange of information. It creates no relationship, only connection. It is communication with no neighbour, without any neighbourly closeness. Listening means something entirely different from exchanging information; listening does not involve any exchange whatsoever. Without neighbourliness, without listening, no community can form. Community is listenership.”

(Byung Chul-Han, The Expulsion of the Other, 2016.)

*

What seems dull might seem harmless, but it isn’t. We will not survive in a dull world, because nothing will.

Utopia is never dull.

It can’t be.

Lately I have been thinking about care.

For obvious reasons.

A great carelessness rules the world at the moment, as anyone must have noticed. We are hijacked by mood swings, subject to whims, and forced to participate in aimless antics, and theatrics.

You know what I mean.

But it’s not just him, and it’s not just men, either. 

It’s not that simple.

I refuse to think so.

First of all because I think false simplicity is a major part of the problem.

Second of all because I think pinning the problem on someone else, or something else, out there, usually doesn’t solve the problem. Even if that someone really is to blame for these events, and even if these events really are something out there. 

Even if none of it is none of our fault.

It probably isn’t.

There you were, quietly having your tea, and then all this happened. 

It doesn’t matter, because the problem doesn’t care who’s fault it is.

The problem just is.

All you can do is decide if you care about the problem, or if you don’t care about it.

If you don’t care, you’re free to go.

But this little essay is about caring.

1. Too much?

I have never met anyone who cares too much. 

I have only met people who care too little about themselves.

I have met myself while being such a person, as well. 

I never cared too much, I cared too little.

And it’s not just women, and I’m not just saying that.

It happens to all of us.

In a careless world, care is still necessary, tethered, as it is, to our fundamental needs, our fundamental nature, but also to our fundamental poetic longings.

The meaning of life. Love itself.

Care is an often unpaid, but sometimes arduous, labor.

Instead of being at the center of our affairs, care exists across pockets of time, distributed in between all the other things that keep our society running. 

Perhaps, I think, full speed ahead, towards a cliff, or a brick wall, or quite possibly, a landfill. Where all the things we don’t care for eventually go.

Sooner rather than later. In the name of blind efficiency. Amen.

I would have gone there too, had I not been careful about myself, in the end.

Over the hills, and far away, chasing its tail.

Caring too little about myself was stupid.

Of course I didn’t know it was, but it was.

You can’t give yourself to the world if you refuse to exist in it. If you refuse to care for yourself, and your own needs, sadly you don’t turn into a saint. You turn into a confused animal.

In contrast, the people I have met who have managed to care a lot, have always included themselves in the equation. They have worked tirelessly for a world in which they belong, in which the problem is within reach, because they make themselves a part of the problem.

They are not working on a problem somewhere out there, for someone else.

They find themselves in the middle of it.

Admitting that you’re part of the problem gives you access to the problem.

Being a saintly figure, or an innocent bystander, just doesn’t.

In fact, none of the real saints were ever like that.

They were complicit, and involved.

Not of this world, but in it.

That must surely be the opposite of being not in this world, but of it. 

Which I think might be the difference between spiritual care, and just good old spiritual bypassing.

2. Too little?

False simplicity destroys true simplicity.

True simplicity is creative.

False simplicity is destructive.

This must be acknowledged, because the threat is real. The threat to knowledge, wisdom, sanity, and ultimately, to life itself – is real.

Things like food, water, shelter are at risk.

True simplicity is when someone is able to introduce the theory of relativity to a class of young students.

False simplicity is a flat earth argument.

True simplicity is your grandfather’s coat.

False simplicity is a shein haul.

True simplicity is travelling light.

False simplicity is an all inclusive.

Someone must care about something before true simplicity can exist. It doesn’t just pop into existence. It requires work, quiet attention, and lots of time.

Simplicity and care is not a status quo.

The theory of relativity was a breakthrough.

Tweed is human innovation at its finest.

To travel light is an experiment in progress, endlessly correcting itself.

The antics of flat earthers is careless nonsense.

The shein haul is a useless whim.

An all inclusive is a theater, not a journey.

Care changes everything into what it is, slowly, but surely. 

It reveals reality.

Conspiracy theories, mindless tourism, and fast fashion, among many other similar things, pollutes reality instead.

Carelessness destroys the progression, and evolution of careful systems.

It is invasive to the systems of care.

If carelessness was a flower it would be a knotweed, or a lupine.

Scattered everywhere for no other reason than – who cares?

Very difficult to get rid of.

3. Who cares? 

I have reframed the question.

When do you care? 

When do I care?

It seems to be the case that certain people never care, but let’s ignore them for as long as we can. 

Most of us notice the amount of care present in a room as soon as we enter. 

Streets with art, and greenery are less littered, and even a bit lower in crime. A tidy space prompts the visitor to keep it tidy. A relaxed space prompts the visitor to relax. A delicate space has a natural hush. A noisy bar invites you to laugh out loud. A dance floor invites you to dance. A library tells you, be quiet.

One of my magical tricks, as a mother, and an activist, is just doing things. 

No talking, or explaining. Show, don’t tell.

Nevertheless, I’m telling you this, because it’s a nice little trick.

Fix the environment, not the flower.

Politics, i.e. living together in a society, or even in a small community, is not just opinions, and debates. It’s not just going to protests. It’s not just rallies, riots, and secret lobby meetings. It’s not just about ‘the economy’ or ‘the war’. And it's not just happening on television, or on the internet. 

It’s happening right now, right here, in my own home.

The concept of politics has been hijacked.

Rage, fear, shock, hate.

Politicians talk as if they’re upset all the time. They speak with angst, or with contempt. Their negative emotions are all over the place.

Then they call it politics.

The I-don’t-do-politics-crowd, do politics just as much as the rest of us.

They vote against democracy by not voting.

They perpetuate the propaganda by demonstrating their lifestyle choices.

They direct the flow of your attention, by telling you that staying informed, reading the news, or researching the facts, is bad for your mental health.

Then they coax you into their own fields of power, into their own set of human ideals, opinions, and standards, through the soft influence of not-politics.

Which is politics, as a matter of fact.

We just don’t call it that.

I don’t care about politics.

Is what we say instead.

I don’t care.

And so carelessness is scattered all around the garden of society, and its weeds grow in the tender soil of everyday life. Where nothing good is planted, the rage takes root. The good soil is lost to its brambles.

Paranoia, mass-dysregulation, and collective denial.

In one word, carelessness invades through stress.

Why should I care? 

The street is littered already! Nobody cares anyway! People only care about themselves!

Care is a slow process. It picks up its own trash first. Then, one day, it puts out a potted plant on the windowsill. It holds the door as it leaves the corner shop. It smiles quietly at first. It takes a long time before care says hello. At first it’s barely noticeable. Because care is not invasive, not a knotweed, or a lupine. 

It’s a cultivated heirloom, and a gift. 

A geranium, perhaps?

A plant that once grew wild, and still does, in South Africa, then spread across botanical gardens, and at the hands of botanists, grew larger flowers, and developed precious scents. Then became a common hand-me-down, an ordinary houseplant. Red, on the balconies of Teheran, and Istanbul. A tiny white heart in the villages of Ukraine. Pink blossoms waiting on the veranda, here in Sweden. Or, as is the tradition in Swedish cities, pink blossoms in the stairwells of apartment buildings.

No one minds if you nick a few cuttings.

No one buys geraniums in shops.

Someone made the initial investment.

But who knows who started it?

If one plant costs a dollar, or a pound, then just imagine the price of the sheer hospitality of geraniums across the globe.

Wherever you go, there they are, always blooming.

This is also politics. 

One day you pick one for yourself, and place it in a glass of water as you go.

Care says: hello.

4. Simplicity shapes the world.

Outside of will, the world moves differently. Water flows, and rocks tumble, according to the laws of physics. The path of least resistance is always taken. Nature wastes no energy, and no time. All things go, as they must go. From A to B. From this to that. Without detour, and without hesitation. If not, the science of physics could not exist in the first place. But it does, and this is what physics is. 

The convenience of the universe.

Simplicity, indeed.

Life is surprising in its complexity.

Care is therefore difficult. If you think about it from the perspective of a universe following the path of entropy, and nothing else, why care? But we know that is not the case.

Life itself is something else.

From a certain point of view, care is resistance.

To make life easy demands a lot of care.

To not just die from random circumstances demands at least a modicum.

Ah, but someone might always say –

I’m tired of society! I’m tired of politics! 

I’ll survive alone in the wilderness!

But the wilderness is just another system.

Just like the city.

It’s highly complex, full of life, and you won’t be alone out there.

But suit yourself! – I might reply, because I’m tired of not-politics. You’ll come home when you’re hungry.

Politics is just another word for relationships, and there is no place outside of relationships.

‘The economy’ is a set of relationships, and so is ‘the war’.

Not very romantic, I know.

But it could be?

5. Enough.

To endure the great carelessness, resist the mood swings, and refuse the aimless theater with no end, (which is something I think we should all want), some people simply refuse everything. 

They refuse the news. They refuse social media. They even refuse to listen to other people in real life. Music is not supposed to be political. Sports are not political. Art is merely fun, and pretty. 

You know what I mean.

The Eurovision Song Contest has managed to become not-political-enough to warrant its own boycott by a number of countries. A young Ukrainian athlete has been disqualified from the Olympic Games because he refused to take off his helmet, which was covered with portraits of dead Ukrainian athletes. He was asked to wear a different helmet. Commenting on the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the President of the United States claimed that nobody understood the performance because it was in Spanish. Spanish is spoken by more than 50 million people across his own country.

Not-political art is more political than political art.

Who cares about Banksy when there is an alternative All American Halftime Show? 

Curling up in front of what is left of the Eurovision is a statement with no statement. Parts of the map are dark, and this will not be mentioned.

“The echo from the voices of the dead is so loud it terrifies the IOC.” says Heraskevych to the press, speaking from the Olympic Games in Italy.

In other words: what is missing is always present. Sometimes its presence is stronger than what is there.

Refusing everything invites everything.

If you think reading the news with your morning coffee is too draining, wait till you see how draining a full day of complete denial can be.

Carefully choosing when you are able to care for a few minutes, how you will do it, and what you will care about, frees you up for the rest of the day.

It frees you from attending the theater with no end, because you decide when.

It ultimately frees you from the mood swings, because you decide when, how, and what.

Instead of refusing everything, you invite yourself. 

You are not very useful if you are drained.

This is a simple fact.

To care you must care for yourself.

When you do, you will find that the world is not too much, and that you are always just enough.

6. Self-care.

Self-care is how you get your power back.

So they say.

The overflow is the only place from which you can serve, from which anyone can serve. From which anything flows.

Meditation is as essential as coffee in the morning. A brisk walk is the very way the hand extends itself to meet the need. My own need is the need of the other, and the need of the other clicks neatly into the need of my own.

I forget myself in care, but I include myself, and remember.

I’m still here.

If I’m gone, then nothing extends itself.

I’m the extension.

To what do I extend myself, if not to care?

To what?

To care.

The waters are muddy right now.

Nothing could suit predatory monsters, guilty criminals, manipulative politicians, and power hungry tyrants better.

This must be just perfect for them.

But somewhere in this muddy mess, without a doubt, the truth exists.

The truth is real.

It cannot actually disappear.

It’s in here somewhere.

We are often told that silence is complicity, but what if noise can be complicity too? What happens to the truth when virtue signalling absolute nonsense on social media substitutes the demand for real world justice? Am I protesting on behalf of the actual victims, the actual cause, and on behalf of a law based society – or is my protest about something else? Am I being clear, or am I being confused? Do I care to know the truth before I start shouting it from the roof tops, and posting it everywhere – or do I simply care about posting? 

I’m asking, because if a signal slips, you cannot cover it with silence. 

You need noise to cover up a signal.

Are our voices being used as noise?

Are we muddying the waters?

Are we inadvertently obscuring the truth we ourselves claim to seek?

If we stop splashing around, will the mud settle, and the waters once again become clear?

Will we see?

I hope so.

Silence is not always bad.

Silence is also the mark of friendship.

I expect my friends to know that I’m wholeheartedly against eating babies.

I should not have to make a Facebook post to say no to cannibalism.

What’s next?

In his defense, he was not a cannibal.

He has been proven innocent.

Or… at least he’s not a cannibal!

Thank heavens. What a relief!

The waters are muddy right now.

The truth is still real.

And I know a thing, or two, about waiting.

2025 was another wonderful year of reading, and writing.

I don’t think learning ever stops, because we have so much to learn, and we all are just tiny little people, who also need to eat, sleep, and do things.

I started this year with the intention of excavating the darkness in my own personal life, and now that I have, I will move further into the direction of magic.

It beckons. It insists. It calls.

At the end of 2025, in the midst of the celebrations of December, the devastating winter storms that swept the Nordics, and the noise of constant conflict coming from all around the globe, I realized something.

I don’t know what my own theory of consciousness is.

But it’s probably something?

The question kept presenting itself over and over, in conversations, in books, in articles, and essays. On Substack, and elsewhere. Until I finally came across a study aimed at mapping out the landscape of humanity’s many, and diverse, theories of consciousness.

The study is the work of Robert Lawrence Kuhn.

If you’re curious too, you can find out more here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610723001128?via%3Dihub

And here:

https://youtu.be/h5G6Oc_V3Lw?si=80ZE_o2KIgu5ybXf 

Reading, and listening I realized just how much our personal theory of consciousness shapes our perception of the world, of people, and of values, such as ”good” or ”bad”.

I realized the question itself had been right there with me, in the room, all this time, hiding behind every other topic, or thought, I had been exploring.

Yet, we don’t know what consciousness is, and I don’t suppose I will find out either. But what we think it is seems to matter a great deal.

I would like to know what I think it is.

It has turned into a question I want to carry with me into 2026.

But the darkness will be left here to wither, and rot.

I poked it with a stick. It popped open. 

It will bleed itself dry, and it will dissolve. 

In a year, or in a couple of years, a decade, or a lifetime, it will simply be gone, all mixed up, and forgotten.

I don’t know what the half-life of darkness is.

All I know is that in my own life it has finally begun to diminish, not grow, and not increase. 

Which is good.

The mycelium has put its myriad of arms around it, and there it will stay, in the arms of the earth.

Food for the compost. 

Nothing more. No more!

Out with the old! 

In with the new.

I wish you all a very merry New Year's Eve, and a happy new beginning.

It still seems wonderful to me that anyone at all might read this message, but now that you have, please know that it means a lot to me that I found myself in such good company after I had set out, a year ago, to meet with the darkness.

Bless you all for simply existing, and for being the wonderful people you are.

Yes, the quiet ones too!

Now, let there be light.

Beyond sound, and gesture, the ritual also holds narrative.

I’m very careful about the narrative, because it will become the narrative I share with my children. It will be woven into every relationship, and interaction, sometimes with tiny, almost invisible gestures.

A ritual of any kind will flood your life.

I think it’s my responsibility to tell myself good things, true things, and beautiful things on those rare occasions when I can get my own attention. Because whatever I tell myself is inevitably what I will tell my kids, my friends, and my dearest companion. I will speak it in my sleep. I will act on it by accident. I will stumble right into it. It will show itself as conflict, attraction, mistake, coincidence, inspiration, and maybe with a bit of luck, I’ll have an epiphany every now and then.

Daily practice is a lot like cooking.

I gather the ingredients. I compose a recipe. I make things up. I consult the books. I substitute, and adapt for present needs. I ask for advice. I go to work in the kitchen, i.e. the ritual corner. But in the end I never eat alone. There’s a taste of it inside the ritual, but the soup itself is life. It leaves the stove, and everyone I meet will have a taste of it. Just like I will have a taste of their soup. At times one might say, well, that was not a very good soup, but there’s always the next day, and then the next. 

When you feed a child an orange, they might enjoy it, and say thank you. But that’s not what I’m after. I’m trying to give them long-term health. Will there ever be a moment when I can say, aha, there it is? We’re done! No, it just goes on forever, far beyond my control, and comprehension. Possibly after I’m gone, and maybe for generations to come. Things don’t just spread in orderly lineages, from parent to child, either. Life moves in all directions. A recipe is forgotten, then suddenly remembered by a friend. A habit is lost in the family, but picked up and continued by a stranger. 

In the words of Leonard Cohen: 

“Magic travels from hand to hand, like money.”

So does a narrative.

The sweet taste of meaning stays on the lips. The meal is remembered – the encounter, or the conversation.

I’m trying to give the kids a meaningful life, and for my meaning I have chosen love.

Yes, love.

Not success, for example, or wealth, revenge, and personal victory. Not political goals, identities, or fame. Not religion, salvation, or so called enlightenment. Not performance, or achievement, or honor. Not even the pursuit of knowledge, and happiness. Not for the sake of itself. 

Will there ever be a moment when I can say, there, now we have it? 

Of course not.

So, then, what is the result? Where is it? When is it? Who has it?

Or, as I like to ask my husband:

”What time is love?”

”Coffee time?”

…he suggests, and I say coffee time is fine.

Due to the forces of the universe, the ritual begins, goes on, and ends. But the narratives need not be linear. A ritual is not simply a story. Told once, and then we live happily ever after. 

It doesn’t work that way.

As soon as we arrive at a habit we are tasked with sustaining it.

Not losing it, not over-doing it.

It doesn’t really matter if the angel in the cemetery gives me a magnificent vision. If I'm unwilling to cook my oatmeal for breakfast, watch the dawn, and love my children, not a lot will come from it. But, interestingly, I might cook my oatmeal, watch the dawn without ever seeing it, and care for my children as if in a haze, not knowing them, (which would be sad), unless I sometimes take my trouble to the cemetery, face the angel, and say, look, here I am.

Do your thing.

That is the conundrum of a mystical life.

How tempting to simply say, oh God.

Or, in the words of Leonard Cohen: 

”Hineni, my Lord.”

While there is some truth to the myth of the mind being an enemy to the soul, i.e. the invaluable emergent essence of each being, the mind is a friend too. 

It is always the mind that tells me to wrap things up at the cemetery, and get on with it, whatever it is. Go home. Shower. Eat. Act like a human being. Get over yourself. Call a friend. Cheer up. Loosen up. Toughen up. Move, goddamnit! 

Move. 

There is no arrival.

There is no result.

There is no – or perhaps there is some – religion for people like me. But it is not the religion of the cemetery. 

It is an ambulation.

It never ends.

I bet God himself could be annoyed with my constant errands. 

Here I am! No, sorry! I meant over here. This is where I am today. I think? I might have to call you later.

Or, again, in the words of Leonard Cohen: 

”You who build these altars now

To sacrifice these children

You must not do it anymore

A scheme is not a vision

And you never have been tempted

By a demon or a God”

The angel is astonishing.

It really is.

It lives its own life as an integrated part of the city. Produced at the local concrete factory it just is, and it belongs to no one, and to everyone at once. Those who don’t belong to the church, the mosque, the synagogue, or temple go there to do whatever it is that we do. Light candles, leave flowers, coins, and rocks. Eventually the city has accepted the nameless cult of passers-by, and created a small stone path for those who wish to approach the angel. It is after all better than to endlessly replant the shrubbery surrounding its huge concrete feet.

Michael, who is equal parts folklore, and religion. Angel of truth, and in some aspect, angel of the righteous dead, and dying. But his, or her, or their, figure has long since left the common language of symbolism behind, and has become simply a stone.

A stone with a face.

The most ancient of symbols, and beings.

From the Makapansgat Pebble to the Baba statues of Ukraine, from caves, and carvings – the Löwenmensch of the ice age, the Venus of Willendorf, and now this. A non-religious angel, turned into a spiritual refuge for non-religious people. A place to go. A face to see, remember, and recognize.

A place, a stone.

I only know the need is as old as time.

What time is love?

Right here, right now.

Right where it always is.

A water mark. A peg. A point. A constant.

You cannot measure anything without a constant.

Even with a constant, it’s very difficult to try to measure yourself, or to try to measure life.

But in a ritual life there must be something.

The narrative refers to something.

The body gestures towards something.

The ambulation keeps its stations, somehow, according to something.

I only met the angel by accident.

I was out walking, making a phone call, years ago.

But then, later, it became what it is now. 

Hard to ignore – it is what it is, and what it happens to be.

*

Results? …is a question I dislike, but it can’t be avoided forever. Hidden within the typical chat room discussion about magical results lies a number of much deeper questions. With or without the elaborate jargon, the discussion displays the fundamental uncertainty about reality that underpins every magical mission. There are those who deny it, and there are those who embrace it. I would like to embrace it.

The results of physiotherapy are easier to account for. I have gained back 20 kilos (44 pounds) in weight. I no longer suffer from constant anxiety. I know how to fight off depression, even when the cause thereof is valid. The pain is gone. I sleep better. I’m happy. My family is happy. Life is good, even when at times it isn’t. And the cure has cost me nothing, except for simply doing the work. Which was no more than ten, or twenty minutes of daily effort, over the past few years. I could have worked harder, gotten there faster, and perhaps gone further. Who knows what results that might have yielded in the end? Maybe I will try it some day. But for this part of the ritual, I don’t need an explanation. The results are obvious, and they are supported by science. 

Such results could be enough.

They ripple.

They change your life.

But a life of contentment is not enough for me. Life is more than a bare minimum of functionality and pleasantness. Life looks for meaning, and without meaning the healing never really happens, no matter how hard you practice. No matter how happy you are, or how well you sleep at night.

So, the body gestures.

Feelings, and ideas come to the surface, and are expressed.

The imagination happens in the body.

We can’t help but communicate.

The ritual itself is a series of gestures.

And gestures are powerful.

Some gestures are insults, and can cause rage in an instant. Some gestures signal romantic interest, and can be mulled over for days, when lovers first meet. Gestures are our primal language. There are political gestures, religious gestures, and even fictional gestures. A gesture might be a joke. It might also be a signal that you’re in immediate danger, and you should run, or hide, or keep quiet.

Luckily humans are sensitive to gestures.

Just think about what a smile can do, and how quickly we catch its meaning.

But gestures can also mislead you, and confuse you. They are not more true, or more honest than speech, or words.

Primal does not equal pure.

Just as a gesture can be fictional – a theater, a game of make-believe – so a gesture can be a lie, or worse, part of a larger social manipulation. 

The propaganda really is everywhere.

So, when a gesture is honest, and it comes from within, it is just as precious as any other truth.

Art must be true precisely because it is fictional, otherwise it quickly turns into nothing. A pointless lie. A travesty. Another piece of the propaganda machine.

I aim for honesty in my ritual work, and not so much for athletic performance, or aesthetic detail.

Like a painter I try to paint the meaning I’m after, and although technique, and composition plays a role, the meaning is far more important. It has to be. 

Sometimes a stain might convey more than an image. A line here, a dot there. A breath, or a shrug. Within the framework of any ritual space there is hopefully enough room to move with spontaneity. 

There is hopefully enough room to develop your own style, express a certain mood, or add some necessary flavor. 

Physiotherapy proved it to me that the world is not static, and there is no final, or perfect way of being a body. Over the past eight years I have practiced alongside the elderly who need to sit down more often than I do. I have practiced alongside the young, and the restless, whose anxiety distracts them from sitting down for too long, or at all. I have tried to keep up with the more athletic, and I have tried to keep equal steps with those whose steps are heavy with the weight of depression. Those who hesitate, who have frozen almost to the point of numbness. I have seen how people too can thaw.

I have concluded that I belong to a universe in motion, and if I let go of my practice my mental illness returns, I lose appetite, I lose sleep, and I end up in the hospital within weeks.

It’s not that I have to move a lot, but I have to move in time with my own being.

Since I had my ADHD diagnosis a few months ago, I have thought that perhaps it is nothing more than a stronger attachment to the functions that connect thinking to doing.

If I don’t do things, I can’t think. 

If I do things, I can.

But I’m no expert, and it’s just a thought.

Returning to the ritual corner, all this means that ritual doesn’t need to be a lot.

In order for it to work, it only needs to be sincere, and habitual.

Ritual does not need to do away with the uncertainty underpinning the mission.

So what if I can’t produce magical results?

It is perfectly fine to just explore.

To just show up, and tend to that being in motion, who eventually connects to the habitat itself. The sun, the moon, and all the stars. The seasons, and the weather. The events of the universe in motion. A life lived, and not a life viewed from the sidelines of the mind, or stuck in some old model of the cosmic order. From back when everything was thought to be set in stone, eternally the same, regardless of your actions. 

It is a bitter fruit, but we know now that our actions change the world.

I don’t think magic makes you infinitely powerful, like some Disney version of Merlin, Elsa, or Ursula the Sea Witch, but rather more like with Mary Poppins, or in the tales of Narnia, you might be able to learn something about reality from the adventure that magic gives.

Magic might take you out of some of the traps of powerlessness contemporary society has set for itself, or the powerful has set for the powerless.

That might be reason enough to set up a ritual corner, to introduce movement to thought, and imagination to the body.

It is for me.

If you hum with the sound of “S” or “M” you will find your core muscles responding. But you don’t need to make the sound. You can do it quietly, with your mind, and the same muscles will respond.

Because, yes, it’s all connected.

The movement with the hum, the sound with the gesture.

*

Pure Energy and Neurotic Man, light painting, photography, by Barbara Morgan, 1940.

The body is not symmetrical, nor does it have to be, although I suspect that we are living in a time of robotic beauty standards. Personally I prefer the Velveteen Rabbit to RoboCop. Fur to an exoskeleton. The achievement of a supple presence over a rigid pose.

The first step – if you feel like joining me for a visit to the ritual corner – is to step inside yourself.

It’s a rather difficult step, and in my own experience it can take months to figure it out, but luckily the work itself is not difficult.

Not doing it is pretty much the same as not getting into the car before trying to drive it.

My body has been through all sorts of seasons.

I know I’m a cute human being – we all are – but my feet are crooked, and flat. One leg is longer than the other. My spine has a bit of a curve. My left shoulder tends to want to pop out. My joints are generally weak. I must be careful not to over-extend. This body has been severely under-weight from time to time. Other times it has been pregnant for a total sum of 27 months. It has produced baby food for another 27 months. It has been through its own childhood of ballet classes, and trauma. A youth of poor circumstances, and poor health. Sleep patterns have been broken. The immune system has not always been great. Anxiety has messed with an otherwise healthy heart. Depression has stopped it from dancing. It cannot outrun the cops. But this season I’m healthy, albeit menopausal. I’m 46 years old, and I need to see a dentist regularly. I need glasses, but I can’t be bothered with them. My hands are always a little shakey. So, yeah, I could go on judging my body like this, or I could step inside the game, and be my body instead. 

Hence, the first step is to feel.

Because of our collective superstitions in the West we tend to think of our feelings as immaterial. Feelings are deeply connected to the imagination, and the imagination is connected to our concept of the soul. But it isn’t actually true that feelings are invisible. If your heart is not blind they are visible on every face you see, audible in the timbre of every voice, and sensed in the tensions, and movements of the body. 

In a universe of foamlike structures, ruled by forces beyond our comprehension, the work of joining, if not the soul, then at least the imagination with the body becomes at first a work of gravity, and sensation.

Locating, and feeling emotions in the body instead of processing them verbally, or in the mind – is a dangerous, and many times potentially subversive business. 

The body is not always acceptable in polite society.

But it is acceptable in this little corner, to take up space, and make a bit of noise.

That's why there needs to be a corner in the first place, and for me, that’s part of why there needs to be a ritual, as well.

Hot? Warm? Cold? Frustrated? Absentminded? Moody? Mellow? Sad? Need to lie down? Tired? Restless? Need to get up, and move around? Sitting, or standing? It doesn’t matter. I prefer standing today.

I picture myself as an inkblot. Not exactly the same on both sides, but still in my wonky figure there is a natural quest for balance. (Because of the forces of the universe, I think.) Where the paper is folded, through my center, there is a core from which the figure emerges. Back when the world was still mechanical, human anatomy was dissected, and compartmentalized. But the human body is far more strange than any machine.

The brain isn’t simply inside the skull, and the mind isn’t simply inside the brain.

Rolling my head, just for a bit here.

In the space between our jaw and our neck there is a lot going on. We breathe, talk, swallow, cough, cry, and sneeze. This little space is at work all of the time. Let’s not forget that we snore! And everything needs to be coordinated. It’s a tiny space too, so when they say relax your jaw it really helps with a lot of things. One thing it helps with is balance. Then there’s the diaphragm, further down the middle. Then comes the pelvic floor. And then the feet, one on each side of the imaginary line.

Leaning slightly forward, to put some weight on my toes. 

At first I’m simply going to notice my breath, and not at all try to fix it, judge it, or control it. Instead I’m going to focus my inner senses and see if I can feel it moving inside my body. The tiniest little movements. That’s all. No elaborate breath work needed.

Where is my breath? Can I feel my body adjust itself to my breathing?

Just witnessing the body from within helps. Once I have my own attention, I might be able to gently shift it around, preferably to where it normally forgets to go. When we are communicating all the time, we become very oriented towards the front, and we forget we have a back. Following the movements of the breath I may become aware of feelings or sensations in my back. And I may feel the way my feet rest against the floor.

From this place of being my body, working from within myself, I may start doing things.

Now, there are four cardinal directions. They are natural, meaning you can’t get rid of them. But they are not yet tethered to the room, the landscape, or the sky. They are simply back, and forth, side to side. I have turned it into a habit to allow them to become physical before I allow them to become mental.

I align myself to the east.

A ritual in my little corner is not just some variant of magical thinking.

You see, it can’t be – not for me.

I do ponder cause and effect, causal closure, and the way we view them with our current scientific knowledge, and mindset. But I don’t believe magic disrupts the laws of nature.

If magic is real it is selfsame to nature.

If magic is not real I’m wasting your time.

And knowledge does not always change our mindset. It should be evident that it does not change our habits. I have never seen anyone change their mind, well, from within their mind. I think this might be a good thing. I think for most of us there’s a barrier between thinking and doing, and I think we might actually want that barrier to be strong, because we utilize it when we exercise our moral character. 

So, with a strong barrier in place, what can we do if we have consciously decided we want to change our own mind about something? If we want to change our habits, or learn something new, or become even better people, what then?

One thing people do quite often is that they get someone else to change it for them. A teacher, a therapist, a priest, or a friend. A good teacher never tells you what to do. A good friend doesn’t either. All they really do is get you out of your head. You’re actually doing most of the work yourself, but still you couldn’t have done it without them.

Then there’s art. Art takes you out of your head. I think when you’re doing art you can sort of be a companion to yourself. You paint, and the painting speaks to you from outside of your head. Which in my experience is the only thing the brain ever listens to. It doesn’t listen to itself. I believe that the lovely sensation you get from art, and from friendship is simply you climbing over the barrier of yourself, and finding you belong to the world.

Now, I think anyone can see the first use of having a ritual corner. 

If I want to tell myself something, I do it via reality, and the barrier breaks.

There are a few things that have to work in order for it to happen, and once you spell them out they seem quite self-evident.

I have to be present within my body, and listen.

I have to communicate the message via my external reality, that is via my senses, back to myself.

I have to listen again, with all of my senses.

I have to listen to my body, my response.

I might have to do it a few times, or I might have to do it many times.

I might have to change a few things until the whole thing sits just right. 

It all depends, but in the end the steps are fundamentally the same.

What sets magic apart from physiotherapy is what happens next.

But I want to stay with the body just a little bit longer. I want to think about the body, because we so often neglect it, and the implications here are endless. We might question, and challenge, our whole culture, our society, our world view, and our experience from this place of being the body.

And maybe we should?

*

Here is something I’ve been looking into lately:

https://iai.tv/articles/your-body-thinks-as-much-as-your-mind-auid-3282?fbclid=IwdGRleAOZ4mxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeNTw-tIwtZLOqg7Yvj6Kpgw07ZOay08Sp2UEUB6Y-jfJDlUtETbOEbq4GWio_aem_N0Iq0S_vjUJBl9tBUa2N2Q 

Here is The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11757/pg11757-images.html

How quickly we accept the unacceptable, and learn to tolerate the intolerable.

Sometimes I curse the fact that we’re a super social species. 

Sometimes the fact that we are is my only hope. 

Either way, the fact remains.

The only reason our social nature bothers me from time to time, is that I’m a social being myself, therefore I’m bothered.

It takes a lot of guts to be an individual.

It comes with many risks.

Sometimes the individual is wrong, virtually insane, and dangerous to themselves, and others.

In the worst possible case they lead others astray, attract new crowds, and set up new power structures around their dangerous, and destructive ideas. 

But sometimes the testament of history shows us that in a difficult time the individual who walks alone might be right, instead acting as an island of sanity, safety, and knowledge, in a world that has gone insane. 

Perhaps a brave soul might even initiate an exodus from a dangerous collective path. 

It happens. 

I believe that individual could be anyone, anywhere, anytime.

But I don’t think it happens all at once.

I think it happens again, and again, in awkward moments, until things finally change.

I don’t think we will ever truly be done.

I think things will keep changing.

And people will keep changing right along with them.

It’s super scary to leave the crowd, even for a moment, especially if you aren’t in fact insane.

Insanity will often jet fuel itself into action. 

Consideration will often hesitate. 

I’m told I need to be careful not to come across as too alarmist.

I know it’s out of consideration that people say such things.

But I don’t know what to do about it.

The facts are alarming.

It would be weird for me to disregard the facts while I’m writing.

But then again, I don’t know how to not hesitate, when sensible people all around me are hesitant.

I hope that’s a good thing, in the end.

Writing this is like trying to mix the perfect drink. 

A shot of alarming facts, and a big glass of milk and honey.

So, let me start with the milk and honey.

While humanity is in fact pushing the limits of planetary systems into dangerous new territory, it’s also a fact that we’re still in a place where we could reverse some of the damage.

We could cool things down, and make the planet quite liveable for future generations.

The best scientists say so.*

We’re also strong in numbers.

89% of people want climate action, and many are willing to adjust.**

But as I read through the comment sections, it seems to me that many people also believe that this is now impossible due to billionaires.

Which is exactly what some billionaires would want you to think - that because they are rich, the rest of us don’t matter.

But I think we do matter, and what is actually impossible is living on a dead planet, alone.

That’s the choice we get to make.

We get to choose what we think is true.

What we think is right.

What we think is possible.

At the end of the day, billionaires breathe air, drink water, and eat food.

They will have to adjust at some point.

In the meantime, I don’t have to listen to them.

Thanks to democracy, I don’t need them, and I don’t care.

Democracy is the enemy/cure of billionaires, not because we’re trying to take away all their money, which we aren’t, but because we’re not giving them any special powers.

They already have everything, but they’re not satisfied? 

I find that interesting.

I think maybe it’s because we’re a super social species, but I don’t know.

That doesn’t mean we don’t need to protect ourselves against them.

It just means that in principle, they don’t have to protect themselves against us.

In a democracy knowledge is power, and that’s the world I’d like to live in.

I also think that it’s no coincidence that disinformation is the weapon of choice.

The corrosion of democracy across the globe is another fact, another alarming piece of information.***

I’m writing to you from a very favorable position. On a scale from bright red to dark blue, my region is dark blue.

In my city we have a library for banned books. My kids have played outside from the age of five. I have walked home alone at night many times. I know it’s a bit of a risk, but I use my own name when I write. 

None of it is necessarily easy.

All of it is sometimes scary.

But that’s what a democracy is.

My freedom depends on other people’s efforts, and their freedom depends on mine. If we stop believing in this simple relationship it all falls down.

You can’t really buy freedom.

All you can buy is some sort of resort.

But freedom includes things beyond your own preferences, and fantasies.

It includes people you dislike, practices you disagree with, opinions you don’t want to hear, and expressions you don’t understand.

It includes real world problems, and an ongoing relationship with the rest of the world.

To endure such conditions, violence must be illegal, and privacy must be protected.

I want what’s best for my children, and I think this is it.

I wouldn’t want them to live in a gated community, or on a private island.

I want them to be safe, and happy, but I want them to have a real life. Strange as it may seem, I want them to grow up, and keep growing.

Without discomfort, that’s not possible.

Discomfort is a necessary part of freedom.

Other people are a necessary part of life.

They shouldn’t just be people you pick, they should be people you encounter.

I firmly believe that the reason I have met the love of my life is that I have met other people.

I didn’t pick my husband, I encountered him.

As I’m writing this the West, and the rest of the world, is tumbling further towards these danger zones.

It feels unreal to watch the news, but I know it’s real.

I know it’s real.

~.

*”Even if the diagnosis is dire, the window of cure is still open. Failure is not inevitable; failure is a choice. A choice that must and can be avoided.” - J. Rockström

https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/seven-of-nine-planetary-boundaries-now-breached-2013-ocean-acidification-joins-the-danger-zone 

** The 89% Project.

https://89percent.org/ 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/89-percent-project-climate-change 

*** Varieties of Democracy, V-Dem.

https://www.v-dem.net/ 

I could say -

I practice physiotherapeutic movements to enhance my timing, and response in real life situations, and I practice meditation to enhance my presence, sharpen my senses, and build emotional tolerance, and resilience. 

In short, to remain calm for as long as possible.

Which is good, because I have a lot of anxieties.

I could say -

I’m a visual thinker, and above all I like thinking. I practice pattern recognition skills, and visualization. I use symbols, signs, sounds, and metaphors to access my imagination, to be able to think fully. 

Or, at least as fully as I’m able to think.

I have ADHD.

I could say -

Thinking and feeling with my whole body restores me. It makes me feel happy. It gives me a healthy appetite. I sleep better.

I’m a better mom, a more fun mom, and I’m doing a bit better as a person, when I practice.

Kids like thinking, feeling, and being with their whole body.

So do I.

It connects me to my core.

After all, I am my body.

And I could say -

I think my neighbors would be shocked if they saw me practicing in public.

That’s one reason I practice in private.

I could give you lots more of these scientisms, or I could say -

I practice magic.

I know that there’s a spiritual dimension to magic, but there’s a physical dimension too. 

Physical movement, expression, experience, and communication is very powerful, but it can’t just be done in the pub, or in the supermarket.

Not politely, anyway.

We are very sensitive to each other’s expressions, to physical communication, to signals, and signs. And if an act of magic is witnessed it will be interpreted; it will ripple.

The witness can’t help it.

It just happens.

You snap your fingers, someone looks up, and now you’re communicating.

And now you’re both confused.

What we do always means something, to someone.

People express far more than what is usually polite to point out.

People perceive far more than they comfortably can admit to, as well.

Magic is not polite.

Magic is strange, and wild.

It opens you up, and leaves you vulnerable.

To yourself, to others, and to life.

That’s another reason I practice in private.

Some things are private.

But.

I hear more and more people say things like how they hate humanity, or human beings are just horrible, or the human species is a parasite on Earth, a cancer, a self-destructive malfunction.

And it makes me think about our spirit.

We all hide what is beautiful, but the raw terror of war is all over the place.

Mass surveillance doesn’t help. It makes you want to hide even more.

What we see in others we inevitably see in ourselves.

Watching evil will tear you apart, at least a little, and it should, perhaps. 

But what will mend you?

What you manage to love in yourself, you will manage to love in others.

When a thing is loved, something happens to it, and it gains a different meaning.

It reveals a different nature.

It sort of matures, like so many things, if you give it oxygen.

And what’s the point of loving what is already easy to digest?

What’s the point of practicing what is already easy to do?

Polite, or perfect within some set structure.

Nobody really needs you to love those things.

The perfect lawn means death to the butterflies.

I think humanity has come a long way.

We don’t hate insects, frogs, and bats like we used to. We don’t take away their blanket of fallen leaves, or scream, and smack them on the head for just existing.

I could have sanitized my magic.

I could have adopted the language, and lingo of the healing journey.

But there were stops along the way that made me think.

There were unexamined things I didn’t want to part with. Ugly, and pretty useless, but ever so dear, human things.

Magic will absolutely mess with your nerves, but magic will also fix your nerves.

When I’m finally alone, and I step inside my imaginary circle, I’m at home, but I’m also very careful.

I don’t want to spook myself with too much sensory input.

Too much of myself, and too much of reality, all at once.

But I also don’t want to be numb.

I’m undecided when it comes to spiritual things.

I ponder them.

I don’t know what I believe.

But I have had the experience of being knocked off center. 

Very unpleasant.

Life is very different when you can’t feel your core, from how it is when you can feel it.

Therefore, as an absolute bare minimum of spiritual beliefs, I believe I have a core. 

I believe I can get in touch with it, and I believe I can do it on purpose.

We can talk all day about doing things.

I agree things need to be talked about.

There are a million things to do.

Only a few of them will get done.

Only a few of them will be for you.

I’d like to do those things, the ones that are for me, the little things, from my core.

There’s no scientism for that.

It just feels good.

There’s just me, and what I want with my life, and, well - 

… what I want with magic.

Oh, words! Such nonsense! But, okay.

My most stubborn friend refuses to accept that he knows what I’m talking about. Being equally stubborn I have accepted his refusal, because it has been a great support. At times it has been great fun, as well.

In a world where people will try to fool you, he won’t.

I imagine that to him I look something like the Coca-Cola campaign of 2022.

“Real Magic!” 

“What do you mean?”

“It says what it says!”

“It says what it says” - is actually a bit of philosophy, and not, as it may seem, to an outsider, a thought terminating blurp. 

It is the short answer Ludwig Wittgenstein used for a similar dilemma, and philosophers have pondered it since.

I’m not sure I understand it, but I’ll try.

The story is about a man who is going away to live in China for the rest of his life, and upon leaving he says to his friend: 

“We might see one another after death.”

What does the man mean? 

Is it the same as saying he likes his friend?

Not according to Wittgenstein.

“It says what it says. Why should you be able to substitute it with anything else?”

Wittgenstein maintains that words do not hold an essential meaning in themselves.

His famous example is the word “game” which could mean any number of things, depending on how you use it. There is a familiarity between a board game, a game of poker, a game of hockey, and say, kinderspiel. But between them what is essential is not very clear.

The word magic is in a similar situation.

In Wittgenstein’s universe “the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life.”

To make sense, to carry the intended meaning, what you say must be understood precisely in the “language-game” you're playing.

The way I interpret the situation, that should mean that unless you know what I’m doing with the word magic you won’t understand a single thing I say.

That’s fair, and perhaps even important.

Add a “k” and it means one thing, as we have seen.

“(k)” means yet another thing, another action in the language-game.

Call it witchcraft, and it’s not suitable for FIFA related Coca-Cola ads. 

“Real Witchcraft!”

Western Esotericism suggests a pretty odd bookishness.

“Real Western Esotericism!”

Now it has nothing to do with football, and one begins to wonder why Coca-Cola targets a niche group of scholars so publicly.

Mageia gives you ancient sorcery.

Go further back with the word and we will end up in Persepolis.

This is to tell you what I’m not doing, and where I’m not going, but also to say -

“It says what it says!”

I actually can’t substitute it.

I find that interesting.

Sometimes when a friend moves permanently to China it’s better to catch the sentiment than to be precise.

Meaning is not always transferred instantly. Like a meme, or a punsch line. 

Life isn’t like that.

It may take time, and it may not be clear where the meaning takes you, because I think meaning must have something to do with experience. Experience certainly isn’t clear. At least not to me. And it is experience I’m trying to describe.

Meaning is not exclusive to words, or dependent upon them, but I like writing.

In order to do it, I need words.

It really isn’t much more complicated.

I’m going to settle for magic.

Read about the Makapansgat Pebble:

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/south-african-cave-pebble-outshines-treasures-at-british-museum-idUSKBN13L0FT/

Read about the 2022 Coca-Cola campaign:

https://www.fifamuseum.com/en/explore/about/partner/coca-cola 

Read about the Duck-Rabbit:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit%E2%80%93duck_illusion

“To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.”

- Claude Monet, a painter.

“Magic differs from religion as weeds differ from flowers, merely by negative social evaluation.”

- Prof. Robert Parker, a historian.

One must hold it gently, because magic is a brittle old word. 

It may pulverize under the weight of too much scrutiny, and concretization.

It only exists because we use it.

We speak it into being, as magicians do.

A name for a thing that might not exist, like theater might not exist, like music might not exist, unless we act theatrically, musically, and finally magically.

We act it into being.

We have to do magic in order for magic to exist. It’s all in the doing.

Somehow, we’re supposed to know what magic means. We often assume to know, with our everyday mind.

Looking at this Coca-Cola campaign from 2022, I stopped in wonder.

But I had no idea what they were talking about.

Counter-magic! Dark forces!

I said to myself as I kept walking.

Three years later I have come to some conclusions about the definition of magic.

1. A fluid everyday definition.

“Defining magic is a maddening task.” 

Writes Prof. Owen Davis in his opening sentence of Magic, A Very Short Introduction.

It means too many things, to too many people, across time, and place, and across different perspectives, whether historical, or contemporary.

Which means the concept is fluid.

We understand it by context, and implication.

In my own life I’m able to tell myself I’m going to cast a spell under the full moon, and later in the day joke that it’s too bad I can’t cast a spell to fix the problem.

That is, I’m a magician, but I don’t believe in the supernatural at all. 

This is not a case of cognitive dissonance for me. I simply mean different things, while speaking in different contexts.

Not only is the concept of magic fluid across cultures, or across individual standpoints, it’s a fluid concept in my own mind.

Personally, I’m fond of this fluidity, because it invites an element of freedom.

A sense of experiment, and adventure.

If I wanted to pin down exactly what I was doing, I would choose different words.

I would choose to be specific.

But when choosing to use the word magic, I have chosen its openness.

Prof. Owen Davis writes:

“Since the European Enlightenment, magic has often been seen as a marker of primitivism, of a benighted earlier stage of human development. Yet across the modern globalized world, hundreds of millions continue to resort to magic - and also to fear it.”

“Magic continues to be a truly global issue.”

So, magic is global, when not specific, and almost timeless in that it goes back as far as all of human history does.

That’s a lot, and that’s the first reason why we struggle to define it.

2. The Tripple Helix

Religion, science, and magic.

This way of defining magic is problematic in many ways, and many have abandoned it. But it does provide a lens through which we are able to see certain things, especially in Western history, and culture.

Prof. Chris Gosden writes in Magic - A History:

“Human history as a whole is made up of a triple helix of magic, religion, and science, the boundaries between which are fuzzy and changing, but their mutual tension is creative. A choice between magic, religion, and science is unhealthy, and each does have a history.” 

Science, and religion are not mutually exclusive. They don’t have to be, and plenty of religious people are fine scientists. But historically speaking, they have been opposed, and both have been opposed to magic.

Theology has its origins in European Christianity. It excluded from the start everything not of itself, as not religion, and only later opened up to include - or, in those days, “discover" - other religions. But it did so on its own terms, and what is counted as religion might still be debated today.

To begin with, the word religion itself was simply synonymous with Christianity. 

With this initial bias religion also came to mean faith, an internal - rather Christian - dimension.

But science, with its preference for what is observable fact, eventually brought doing back.

With it, magic slipped back in, as well.

It became possible to study magic.

And, in fact, impossible not to do it.

The old idea that magic developed into religion, and science is bound to replace religion, has been broadly disqualified. 

For many reasons.

One is what Prof. Chris Gosden talks about. They all exist at once, in the world, as well as in the person. At times they are even difficult to tell apart.

They don’t exactly develop one from the other, but together, and because of one another.

The idea that the scientific mind is superior to the religious mind, and both are superior to the magical mind - in those days, the “primitive mind” - is exactly what it sounds like. A superiority game. Not a valid theory, but a pure misconception.

So, it is important to notice that magic has its own history. 

It is not just defined by being not science, and not religion.

But it is a bit tricky, because of the history of these concepts in Western culture, and what they still mean most of the time, to the everyday mind.

3. Defined by totalitarianism.

In The Devil and the Jews, Joshua Trachtenberg writes:

“That the Crusades did not in the end achieve this purpose, and that the rift within Christendom continued to widen, is evidenced by the establishment of the Inquisition, essentially an instrument of unification through propaganda and repression. Whom the church could not otherwise persuade to conform it was prepared to coerce by force - or else to exterminate.”

Here we are given a more detailed and rational account of the Inquisition than we are normally used to in everyday thinking.

Heresy is an invention of the church, and it is a totalitarian invention. In essence it is no different than what we see in totalitarian regimes today. A violent oppression of any sort of opposition.

Jews could not be charged with heresy, since they could not be accused of being bad Christians. But soon enough they were targeted, for any number of reasons, nonetheless.

The witch hunts that would terrorize the West for centuries wasn't just a confused mass psychosis. It was far more simple, and far more complex. It was a totalitarian power fighting to keep its power, and killing anyone who would challenge that power.

This included many Christians. For example those who made poverty a central practice, or those who took the words of Christ too literally, or those who held a more Gnostic world view. Those who thought the Holy Trinity was a contradiction. And those who questioned the hierarchy, and authority of the church, claiming that every person should have access to the divine, through prayer, and personal conduct.

Eventually it all culminated in the Reformation, but the Reformation was not a sudden strike of genius in the mind of Martin Luther. It had been brewing for quite some time. And Martin Luther was no stranger himself to weird, and oppressive practices.

Democracy was still a long way away.

Deciding for yourself what you would like to believe, and changing your mind ever so often, was not even on the horizon.

Put simply, I don’t think it’s possible for people to have ideas without having opposing ideas. I don’t think it’s possible even within your own mind. 

I don’t think it should be.

But a totalitarian power will always try.

4. So, is it Witchcraft?

Well, what is witchcraft?

Katherine Howe writes in the introduction of The Penguin Book of Witches:

“What ultimately emerges is a complicated picture. The witch appears first, in biblical terms, as the Other, as that which is not doctrinaire. Witchcraft is less a set of defined practices than a representation of the oppositional, as the intentional thwarting of the machinery of power, whether that power lies with the church, with the king, or with the dominant cultural group. Under the heavy guidance of English theologians, witches and witchcraft assume a set of identifiable principles and practices, though those practices remain distilled from oppositional definitions.”

And then, Howe writes:

“We need her in order to know who we are not so that we can begin to imagine who we are.”

I want to pair this with a famous quote from Ray Bradbury:

“A Witch is born from the true hungers of her time.”

Just as magic has been defined as that which is not religion, and not science - science, and religion has defined themselves as that which is not magic.

We know how religion defines itself, not just how we define it.

We have heard from science.

But, here’s the important question:

How does magic define itself?

And can it?

5. Selfhood.

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in The Expulsion of the Other:

“The negativity of the Other provides form and measure for the Self-same, without it, the Same proliferates. The Self-same is not identical to the Same; it always appears in tandem with the Other. The Same, by contrast, lacks a dialectical counterpart that can limit and form it, and thus proliferates into a formless mass.”

And here is where he sees a problem:

“The terror of the Same affects all areas of life today. One travels everywhere, yet does not experience anything. One catches sight of everything, yet reaches no insight. One accumulates information and data, yet does not attain knowledge. One lusts after adventure and stimulation, but always remains the same.”

I ask myself: 

If the witch is the Other, who is she to herself? If magic is so drenched in otherness, can it be Self-same? Is a witch really a person, anyway? What happens when I say, I’m a witch, or I’m a magician? What am I really saying?

This is how Han continues:

“The negativity of the Other and of transformation is what constitutes experience in an emphatic sense. To have an experience of something means ‘that this something befalls us, strikes us, comes over us, overwhelms and transforms us’. Its essence is pain. The Same, however, is not painful. Today, pain gives way to an online ‘like’, which continues the Same.”

This, of course, isn’t healthy, or even worthwhile, according to Han.

If we never truly encounter the Other, we never truly encounter ourselves.

Yes.

This is exactly where magic comes in.

It interrupts.

We interrupt - thankfully - our own dull stupidity. Our own silly assumption, that we know things. 

We don’t know things!

Everything is horribly foreign!

Even the Same is an alien monstrosity to someone who has found their footing in the Self-same, and in other words, from another perspective, accepted the pain of being the Other to all the other Others.

One might go so far as to say that when we greet each other we could try saying the otherness in me recognizes the otherness in you. Instead of always saying things like we are all one, or you are another me.

We aren’t the same.

I wouldn’t want us to be.

If everyone is the same, then no one is unique, and everyone is replaceable.

Much of the ill in the West could be cured if westerners, like myself, would finally come to terms with our own Otherhood. 

That would be an equality worth having.

But here lies a choice, and it won’t be settled easily, or in an instant.

Is the Other a wise magician - knowingly, or unknowingly - or is the Other an enemy to our own fixed position?

Would you go to visit Baba Yaga if you felt like life was draining away from you?

Or, would you chase her away with more of the same, more of yourself?

Do you want a diet of your favorite cake?

Or do you want a wild diet like your ancestors?

Do you want to starve from empty calories?

Or do you want to try things, and risk occasionally tasting something icky? 

Even, honestly, at times, something a bit unsafe?

Just look at Baba Yaga’s kitchen.

Fungi, bacteria, fermentation - even, in extreme cuisine - poison, and rot.

But she has turned it all into an artform.

The Witch eats from the table of death, and she smiles, because she lives.

Byung-Chul Han also suggests a cure.

Listening.

For his figure he takes a character from a children’s book. Momo, by Michael Ende. 

“Listening gives everyone back what is theirs. Momo also resolves conflict through pure listening…”

And listening is important.

Philosopher, and ecologist, David Abram writes in The Spell of the Sensuous:

“Yet our ears and our eyes are drawn together not only by animals, but by numerous phenomena in the landscape. And, strangely, wherever these two senses converge, we may suddenly feel ourselves in relation with another expressive power, another center of experience.”

And:

“- all of this could be brushed aside as imaginary distortion or hallucinatory fantasy if such active participation were not the very structure of perception, if the creative interplay of the senses in the things they encounter was not our sole way of linking ourselves to those things and letting the things weave themselves into our experience.”

Prof. Chris Gosden touches on a similar definition.

“One of the first questions to ask of magic is: ‘What is it?’ The definition I will use is one of participation. Human beings participate in the universe directly, and the universe influences and shapes us.”

6. Conclusion.

But, why do we call it magic?

Strange, isn’t it? 

I guess we have to call it something.

I can only speak for myself, as I begin to define magic for myself. 

To me it is a place between telling the world what to be, (religion), and asking the world what it is, (science).

It isn’t faith.

It isn’t knowledge.

It is a beautiful place of not knowing, and not being known. Not telling, and not being told.

No wonder magic leaks into the autumn season.

The children are for a moment allowed to be Other than adorable replicas of the parental Same, and the parental Self is cured of its terrible Sameness.

For a moment I’m truly myself, because of course I want them to run amok, and of course I want to spoil them with - clearly poisonous - candy. 

Of course they have to find out about that part too. 

A ‘yes’ I have kept locked inside for a year is almost ready to slip, like a leaf to the wind.

And the wind is howling.

*

I was brain rotting on Reddit when I came across a post that asked people why they believe in magic, and what experience initially turned them into believers.

What proved to you that magic is real?

With earnest human interest I read through every discussion, and response.

There was nothing out of the ordinary.

But I have noticed something.

When we ask people why they are religious, we often expect answers that are a little bit more practical.

We seldom ask them what proof they have that religion is real.

We know religion is real, because we know people are doing religion.

This makes it possible to study religion from a scientific standpoint.

You can be an atheist, and study religion.

You can be a theist, and still take a scientific approach.

The same is true for magic.

In fact, it’s a quickly growing field of serious study, and it has been for a while.

The short answer is very simple.

Magic is real.

We know it’s real because people are doing magic.

By this criteria it is exactly as real as religion is.

No more, and no less.

But if instead you were to ask me what proof I have that spirits are real, or that magic works, I would be forced to admit I don’t have any.

This should instantly be compared to asking a religious person for proof of God, or proof of miracles.

When the Vatican determines that something is a miracle they aren’t using a scientific method. 

When a Chaos Magician tells you that all she cares about are the results she isn’t using a scientific method.

In fact the methods are surprisingly similar.

In the strict sense there is no proof of anything here beyond doing. 

A few hundred years ago, the church was accused of doing magic.

Which is much less talked about, than the fact that the church accused others of doing it.

Doing what, exactly? 

That’s the difficult question.

Magic and religion are both very broad concepts. They involve the whole of human history, every culture, and nearly every person on the planet.

That means that when I tell you I’m a magician, I’m not telling you very much.

I’m telling you I’m not satisfied with simply calling myself spiritual.

I’m not satisfied with being just a thinker.

I’m a doer.

Where magic is an accusation, I have confessed.

But that’s practically all I have told you.

As a matter of speculation, I have not told you I can levitate, curse, hex, or read the stars. 

This is much like telling you I’m an artist.

I have not told you I can paint, draw, tapdance, or play the violin. 

And I haven’t told you I’m any good at it, either.

When people go searching for proof that magic is real, one must ask why they are asking, and what they are asking for?

What do they mean by real?

And what do they mean by proof?

Surely they know people practice magic.

People have always practiced magic.

And no one asks: is religion real?

And: do you have any proof?

Because that’s something we learn about in school, if not sooner.

Those of us in search of magic, must often search alone, at first, and maybe learn alone, as well.

The world will still tell you magic isn’t real.

And if that isn’t enough, the world will also tell you magic is dangerous.

Yet, we live in a world where 100 000 000 tarot decks have been sold, from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck alone.

Just to give an example.

What proved to you that magic is real?

I found out that other people practice magic.

History is not a story. And it’s when you find out that reality doesn’t make any sense at all that you can begin to distinguish meaning from fact.

I used to tell fortunes.

I did it for free, simply because I could. I never advertised, or turned it into any sort of business. But people called me anyway, just because they could.

After a few years I came to the conclusion that the reason people called me was almost always that their stories had been disrupted.

I didn’t tell them facts.

I told them stories.

I often did it without knowing what the story was about. 

You don’t have to tell me anything, I used to say, let’s just look at what the cards say.

I stopped reading for people for a couple of reasons. One was that people often thought something supernatural was going on, while I never really thought so. Another reason was that it seemed to me that sometimes it was all too convenient to be able to say the cards told me to do it, while the cards never told anyone anything. And then there was the common misunderstanding that fortune tellers can look into the future. The trouble wasn’t that my predictions were wrong. The trouble was that they were right, but people hardly ever cared to figure out why. They went merrily on their way, having solved their problems, only to call me again when new problems would arise. Meanwhile, I was left with many questions unanswered. About chance, and choice, fate, and perception, communication, connection, and the meaning of life.

My contemplative practice didn’t fit into the world of tarot readings. I felt a bit like a human vending machine, to be honest, at times. 

Which meant I knew it was time to stop.

But what I had produced was meaning.

It worried me that people didn’t seem to have the time, or perhaps the information needed, to pick up the habit for themselves. 

It worried me that they should rely on me.

The people I met weren’t representative of all people of course. They were representative of people who would call a fortune teller. Or, perhaps, more accurately, they were representative of the way people are when they need their fortunes told. Sad, confused, conflicted, anxious, and maybe in love.

Not everyone who goes to the theater wants to go backstage to find out how the theater works. Many people simply want the magic. The story. The enchanted evening. And they often want to leave before the lights are turned on, and I sort of respect that.

But if I was an actress, or a director, or a playwright, I would be rather worried if people thought the play was real, and if they believed they had been presented with facts.

This left me with questions about the boundaries we put around fiction, and art. How we behave differently at a rock concert, than we do in the supermarket, and what happens when people breach the unspoken agreements about what is real, and what isn’t.

What happens when Ophelia goes off stage, but never turns back into Mrs Smith as she goes home to dinner?

What happens when she does turn back into Mrs Smith, but people insist that they saw her drown herself earlier today?

Well, that never happens, does it?

Oh, but it does, sort of.

It happens in the world of magic.

The lines between imagination, and facts are blurry where the two oceans meet.

But in the past couple of years I have noticed a small trend. 

Magicians who are talking about magic have started to say that when they say they have seen something, they mean in their minds eye, not in physical reality. 

Not like a ghost, or a hallucination.

Whenever I hear it, I think to myself - thank goodness!

At last we have noticed the confusion.

It’s an uncomfortable fact that there will always be fortune tellers who themselves believe that they can look into the future, and see facts. There will always be magicians who will claim that spirits, or demons, take on physical form, even though their non-physical quality is what defines them as spirits. Hours of practicing visualization would be made useless if spirits would suddenly just start to appear, with a tap on your shoulder.

There will always be ghost stories, eerie synchronicities, and uncanny coincidents that lead us to wonder what’s really going on.

We can’t explain everything.

That’s why.

A sharp line between dream, and reality is not possible, because humans are fundamentally creative, and creativity deals with what is not yet real. 

What actually does not exist - yet.

So, we exist between what is, and what isn’t, because in part, we are the ones creating it. 

Except for the parts outside of our control. 

Outside of our awareness.

Which is most of reality.

Which we tend to ignore.

Which is why we sometimes need our fortunes told, I suppose.

When we discover something new we need new stories, otherwise we can’t function.

Using images, symbols, and words, analyzing, and daydreaming, calms us down.

Quite literally. You can measure it.

Contemplation doesn’t just bring order to the mind, it affects our whole system of being.

We relax. We breathe better. We eat better, and sleep better.

As a consequence we make better decisions, and choices.

We find opportunities we might otherwise have overlooked.

We act better, and we are kinder, more patient, and more resilient.

Life isn’t a puzzle, and you can’t quiz yourself out of your personal issues.

It’s seldom a question of right, or wrong. 

If it was, the answers to life’s questions would be easy, and straight forward.

Obviously you should do this.

Obviously you should not do that.

Peter Shaffer, a playwright, once said:

"Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.”

The answer the fortune teller gives you is almost always right, because you were never choosing between right and wrong.

You were always choosing between right and right.

I have always relied on my belief that in such normal circumstances most people choose whatever it is they want to choose.

It doesn’t matter what I say.

That’s why you don’t have to tell me anything, or ask me any questions, in order for me to do a reading.

That’s why AI can, and can’t replace me.

AI can tell you a story, but it can’t validate your emotions on a physical level, or assert your belonging within a human community. 

Laughing, and crying will not be a shared experience.

An AI won’t give you a cup of tea.

In essence, it can’t provide you with real company, and that makes any story less meaningful.

Stories are social. AI conversations aren’t.

It’s the meaning, not the facts, that we’re after when we seek out magic.

If I were to buy myself some fast fashion, for example, it wouldn’t be because of the polyester. I wouldn’t call my friend to tell her how happy I am now that I have found a new piece of useless plastic. 

Facts are horrible to deal with. We avoid them. We pretend we don’t know anything about microplastics at all.

Instead we focus on the nostalgic cherry print, and the cute details.

That’s why I say I sort of respect people for leaving the theater before the lights are turned on.

What we experience in the theater is a pretended experience. But it cures our loneliness, teaches us empathy, and might even lead to profound insight, and inspiration. 

It might also lead to social change.

A theater is a very magical place.

After he had encountered magic, one of my friends wisely chose to become a performance artist.

Artist, he said, whatever that means.

With his methods he blurred the lines between audience, and actor, theater, and reality, ritual, and play.

He felt more like himself when he was creating, and I know he wanted others to have the opportunity to feel more like themselves too.

Instead of bringing the theater out into the real world, he brought the audience, the real world, into the theater, and expanded the stage to the point where there were no seats, and no script.

But the boundaries were kept.

The theater was safe in that sense.

Ophelia and Mrs Smith weren’t confused about what was what, and who was who.

The city surrounding the theater was not confused about whether this was a theater, or not. It was.

But there were still layers of the life of the theater that the audience might not notice, or even think about.

Years of disciplined experimental practice, daily exercise, and deep studies.

A great deal of introspection.

But also a great deal of listening.

Travel, and therapy.

Meaning, I will venture to say, comes from understanding.

It also comes from being understood.

Or, at least from trying, and whatever comes from that is really valuable information about life.

When Brian Cox, a physicist, was asked to give a message to world leaders, ahead of the COP26 in Glasgow, he said this:

“Meaning is a property of intelligence, I think, so clearly the universe means something to us. So, meaning exists here, but if there’s no other intelligence out there in our galaxy, and we destroy ourselves, then we might eliminate meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion stars forever, that’s what we might do. So, consider that, world leaders, you have a galactic size responsibility to maintain meaning in a galaxy. And that’s why it bothers me, because to me, a lifeless world, a lifeless galaxy, is a meaningless galaxy.”

Which leads me back to meaning and fact.

Facts are useful, and important, but meaning is incredibly powerful.

Power can be used to empower, and power can be used to enslave.

Without proper understanding of power I don’t think my friend could have become an artist.

Facts alone will never let you understand humans. Stories will.

It’s a mistake to think magic is something supernatural, as well as it is a mistake to think that magic is a delusion about something supernatural.

The concept of the supernatural is the mistake itself.

It’s easy to forgive that mistake, when you think of it in the light of the birth pangs of science.

Science defined the boundary that allowed for the supernatural to be conceptualized at all. 

But that boundary is permeable - distinct, but fluid - because it must be.

We are discovering what it means to be human, as well as what gravity is, or what predicts the weather.

That discovery must take place where humanness is allowed to be unknown, blurry, strange, and eventually better understood.

It must take place where hopefully, it can grow.

Which means it must take place where meaning is still fluid, and negotiable.

To me, that place is magic.

We have just discovered this galaxy.

I’m not entirely convinced I know what that means, just yet.

In Russia the performance of occult rituals has now been outlawed.

As has certain acts of reading.

A thing not even the Soviet managed to make illegal.

But thanks to modern technology it’s now possible to be accused of reading crimes. 

The laws are becoming ever more abstract.

And because the laws are so vague, self-censorship is widespread.

Bookstores are getting rid of books.

Which is only a brief glance into the kaleidoscope of oppression. 

There is of course much more, and much worse.

Defining magic is hard.

Magic is many things, and not one thing.

I once jokingly defined it as thought crimes, and swear words.

Reading the news this morning made me think of it again.

It’s not irrational.

Magic has often been defined as criminal, immoral, or at least rebellious.

I mean, if we call it the forbidden art everyone still knows what we’re talking about.

But I have never experienced such times.

I have been free.

Meanwhile in Sweden, today the government has received a list of one hundred Swedish creations that will be accepted as our official cultural canon. 

It has sparked some debate of course.

But the list itself is not unreasonable.

Next to IKEA, and Pippi Longstocking it mentions The Freedom of the Press Act.

The Swedish Freedom of the Press Act is considered the world’s first law to ever support freedom of the press, and freedom of information. 

It was first written in 1766. Today we follow the version written in 1949, but the law has kept some of its original content.

My grandmother didn’t hate the Russians. She considered them captives of a dangerous regime. As soon as it was possible she travelled to Saint Petersburg to have a cup of tea, in celebration of their liberation. She bought a pair of teacups to commemorate her adventure. They belong to her china collection, together with the cup she stole from them during the Second World War. A small cup, with a missing ear, and Proletaria written on the stamp. The way she clutched it before she gave it to me never leaves my memory. 

I used to dream that one day, I’d do what she did. 

Celebrate with a cup of tea in Saint Petersburg.

I don’t think I will.

But I drink from her cup whenever there is something to celebrate.

People have thousands of reasons for performing occult rituals. 

No reason is the same.

I’m lucky to have had so many explanations, and discussions over the course of my life.

To have seen this side of our nature. 

Act, create, explore, and discover.

I’m lucky to have access to books.

I’m lucky to casually be writing this.

Whoever is casually reading this, is lucky too.

A holy liberty.

No less.

*

Read about Russia’s new laws here:

https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/07/23/russian-supreme-court-bans-international-satanist-movement-en-news

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/09/01/no-more-phone-sharing-vpn-ads-or-foreign-agent-teachers

What is pleasure?

I believe it’s more than relief, but less than oversaturation.

It sits on a scale that measures our wellbeing.

When you’re thirsty, a cold drink is pleasurable.

But ten cold drinks won’t give you increasingly more pleasure.

One soft bed is enough when you’re tired.

A piece of cake tastes better after dinner, because you can taste it. 

Cake for dinner will only give you a headache later.

You might even lose your taste for cake.

Pleasure is its own intelligence.

These things are obvious to most people, but there are a few reasons why I mention them. 

Historically speaking, we have come out of a time of dangerous scarcity, and into a time of dangerous excess.

As I begin to imagine a daily life of just enough, pleasure is not excluded.

The collective memory of poverty is still haunting us.

To let go of the useless excess of our society, is something that makes many people uncomfortable to even think about.

Are we meant to give up what little extra we have gained with all our past struggles, and efforts?

My solution is to stop calling it extra.

Pleasure is not extra.

Pleasure is just enough.

It’s what goes beyond pleasure that kills us, both personally, and collectively.

If your barn is full, you have influence over others. You can help them, or buy their services, and favors, or you can leave them starving, and start a war, to gain more, to start another war, and so on.

That’s a lot of extra.

It’s easy to feel pessimistic now since the free world has been infested by warlords.

It’s hard to enjoy a glass of water when the enemy stands at your door.

Pleasure requires peace.

If you won’t have peace, you can’t have pleasure. 

Look carefully at what these people are enjoying, and you will see that it’s power, not peace, not pleasure.

Look inside the unhappy home, and you’ll find power struggles, control, not life’s contentment, not love.

But I refuse to be pessimistic, because I know that’s exactly what the warlords want.

Pessimism is a form of submission.

If I allow it into my little kitchen, the enemy is no longer at my door.

Now they’re in my kitchen.

Soon they’ll tell me what to do, how to think, and who to be.

If I let them.

Outside the kitchen window I can see the skyline, and the western sky. There’s a light on the tallest building. A skyscraper overlooking the harbour. It blinks. I know its pulse by heart. A stretch of the moon’s orbit passes over the rooftops. Some nights the dark kitchen is flooded with a pale blue light. Some mornings a faint crescent stands above the harbour, as the skyscraper blinks, and blinks, and blinks.

I tell myself it’s safe here. 

I can think about whatever I want.

I can think about food production.

Like my grandparents did, in Finland, after the war. They were farmers, fishers, politicians, writers, radio hosts, and church musicians. 

They were whatever they had to be.

That’s what I’ll be too.

I have my grandmother’s china, and her cook book.

Now, I know this is going to sound fabulous, but we have just enough to feed the world, and hypothetically we could have just enough for the future as well.

When I say just enough, I mean just enough for everyone’s pleasure.

And that’s what we risk losing, if we lose ground to the warlords.

The trouble isn’t the amount of food.

The trouble is two-fold.

One third of all food is lost between farm, and table. Then, a third of what reaches the table is also lost. That’s a lot of waste.

How we farm, and what we farm, affects biodiversity, and biodiversity affects nutrition. If we eat rice, maize, and wheat more than we eat anything else, we won’t starve, but we’ll be malnourished. That’s a loss.

And, listen to this - 

“The food we eat accounts for about a third of total carbon emissions, which is more than the entire transport sector.”

• Dr. Patricia Eustachio Colombo, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

I’m sure we do need political change to fix all this, but we don’t have politicians at the moment. We have warlords, and politicians who are busy with the warlords. 

I don’t know what to do with this information, beyond the walls of my own kitchen.

I just want the dignity of having known, in case I start to feel pessimistic.

I want to be able to say - 

Oh, it’s possible.

All the rest is just power play.

Old men are starving newborn babies. 

Why is it always like this? I don’t know.

My grandmother didn’t waste a thing, not even a glass of water. 

She poured it into her houseplants. 

Which was also a matter of dignity.

A small libation.

I don’t think you can have pleasure without dignity.

There is so much pleasure that waits beyond the denser corporeal realms of physical needs, and daily sustenance.

I know.

It’s just that I’m convinced all pleasure starts in the kitchen.

With the right measures of not too much, and not too little. 

With a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. 

With a constant variation.

Pleasure is delicate, ephemeral.

What is just enough?

I’m pretty sure pleasure is holy.

https://news.ki.se/how-can-we-get-more-people-to-eat-climate-smart

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-feed-10-billion-people

What would the world be like without individuals like John Lennon, and Yoko Ono? Without Isaac Newton? Or without Beatrix Potter? James Baldwin?

The list could go on almost endlessly.

Besides, not all dreamers are famous.

Anonymous dreamers make the list very long, and nebulous. Less like a list, and more like a recurring human condition.

The most imaginative humans are often keen on understanding reality. 

Perceptive, and rational, they are practical souls, asking practical questions. Not seldom committed to resolving real world issues; big, or small.

Why do we go to war?

Is the rainbow somehow in my eyeball?

How do mushrooms reproduce?

And, what is love?

Questions.

Creativity, and imagination is not delusion, but perhaps even its opposite.

Vincent van Gogh did not make up a different reality in his paintings. 

He perceived reality, and he communicated his perceptions.

He did it, not by denying reality, but by standing as close to it as he ever could.

Wanting to escape it is quite understandable.

In fact, it’s common.

To function we simply shield ourselves.

We don’t actually look at the world most of the time.

We don’t listen to each other.

We don’t watch the sky as it moves.

When we come into any sort of group setting we enter into a webwork of collective ideas, and most of the time, we conform.

There are lots of things I wouldn’t tell my relatives.

There are some things I wouldn’t tell my friends.

I’m lucky because there are very few things I wouldn’t tell my husband. 

But that seems to be rare, probably because it takes a very long time to tell someone everything.

It’s inconvenient.

I also think there’s a ton of things people wouldn’t tell me.

We live a thousand secret lives.

When I speak to people throughout the day, they tell me almost nothing.

They say everything is fine.

They give the details they need to give.

They talk about conventional things.

The weather, and such.

But there are unconventional things in every life, and in every mind.

Private pain, loss, loneliness, and grief.

Doubt, fear, and uncertainty.

As well as love, fantasy, and mystery.

Odd habits. 

Weird interests.

Thoughts you aren’t supposed to have.

Feelings you can’t explain.

For convenience all of it must be assumed to exist as we discuss the weather, and fulfill our duties.

Most people yearn for “something more.”

Most people fear it.

Feeling alive is pretty much staying close to that yearning, and that fear.

Dreaming it into being.

Which is the opposite of judging.

Which is knowing you don’t know.

Which is looking stupid, and even being stupid, sometimes.

This attitude typically gives you very little power in society, but in the long run, reality is more powerful than society.

In the long run society conforms, because it must.

In the end it’s a matter of simple things like food, fuel, water, and shelter.

I know some people don’t want to hear it, but it won’t fall like manna from the sky.

We are tasked to understand reality, actively understand it, in order to survive.

When we don’t, eventually we come to harm, and eventually we come to harm the world around us.

If it was easy I’m convinced almost all people would adjust to nature, and reality.

But it’s not easy.

It’s confusing, and upsetting.

It turns your whole world upside down when you try. 

I think that there are many different ways of being delusional, but noticing that you are is always hard.

If your delusions are due to some trauma, broadly speaking, and you’re alone with your delusions, people will hopefully notice them for you. 

In all likelihood your thoughts, and behaviors will be unconventional.

In all likelihood you’ll feel weird.

These are the kinds of delusions we normally call delusions. 

As long as people play by the narrative of conventional society, we let them think whatever they like.

We say we have opinions, not delusions.

And we don’t feel weird about it as long as we’re accepted by society. 

As long as we talk about the weather, and such, while we fulfill our duties.

Two different realities show themselves.

One is our social reality.

The human world.

The other is our actual reality.

With butterflies.

The weather stands as a titan behind our daily conversations.

A good day today? Remarkable flood. The fires are early this year. Take care!

The price of science is your opinion.

You’ll have to accept some terrible things that go against your grain.

Forming new opinions requires work.

There’s no right way of living when you honestly don’t know what’s going on.

And you might find out that your future, as you thought it would be, is ruined too.

That’s when you’ll need your yearning, and your fear.

The good news is you’ll dream again.

You’ll have to imagine new things.

You’ll have to be creative.

And I can almost promise you your life will have a purpose, beyond telling everyone to have a good day, eat something, and don’t be late.

It will be your purpose too.

It won’t be handed to you by a tall, dark stranger.

It won’t be in a different life, if only this, or that, would happen.

It won’t be earned because you’re good, or pretty, or clever, or because you’ve finally made it.

It will be right in front of you, if you are willing to see it.

When you lose track of it, all you have to do is look again.

The task of reality is always at hand.

Sure, I wish we could just start over.

Images of tiny cottages fill my feed.

Images of unspeakable things are woven in between.

They tempt my yearning, and my fear.

With things I can never have, and issues I can never solve.

To bring my attention back to the task at hand is all I can do.

All I can do is tell myself to do it.

I’m absolutely not in the business of telling other people what to do.

I have no idea.

But, I’m sure you can do it.

It’s yours to do.

It’s there for you.

That’s the one thing I really believe in.

*

https://psmag.com/social-justice/newtons-needle-scientific-self-experimentation-86583/

https://beatrixpottersociety.org.uk/beatrix-potter/the-scientist/

https://www.vogue.com/article/james-baldwin-love-stories

Very early on I decided that making Christmas had to start early in the year.

Even a regular Swedish Christmas, in all its secular glory, leads to the same kind of debates every year. 

Can a boy dress up as St. Lucy? 

Should you really lie about Santa, or could it be damaging to the children? 

When is it too early for decorations? 

Are our Swedish traditions threatened by Islam, Capitalism, or Climate Change? 

Are Non-Christians allowed/required to celebrate?

Apart from the bigoted nonsense hidden among the opinions on what a Swedish Christmas is, and what it isn’t, the yearly bickering fills me with a sort of warmth. After all, it means the whole community is getting ready to celebrate.

Every family has a few of those people, who fall on the opposite ends of the Christmas-spectrum. Those who want to change things to fit their vision for the future, and those who fear change, because they cling to their vision of the past. If you tell either one of them things will work out just fine anyway they will both turn against you. Their visions might divide them, but the feeling they have, that something very important is happening, simply brings them together.

I won’t tell them anything.

I think they share a sort of happiness.

They seem to like to talk about important things.

Swedes are not very religious. 

Our traditions are not very ancient. 

It’s the illusion of a common past, and the illusion of a common future, that brings all these energies to a festive boil each year. 

Pure fantasy, of course.

Everyone knows it. 

Everyone plays along with it.

The redeeming factor is that in the end, it’s about some sort of togetherness, and some sort of identity.

We all get that.

I try to keep that in mind when I'm feeling annoyed.

Holiday tensions wouldn’t exist if people didn’t care.

If people weren’t trying hard to find something to believe in. 

Trying hard to find an expression of shared identity, a common understanding, worth celebrating, and worth passing on to the young.

You're right, of course.

I’m not just talking about Swedish Christmas.

But you know that about me already. I’m sure you know.

Please, allow me to continue anyway.

What is a Swedish Christmas?

It’s a huge image to live up to.

Both at home, and abroad.

And a huge image casts a huge shadow.

You might be surprised to find that many Swedes hate Christmas.

Which is not strange.

Child abuse, domestic violence, suicide, drunk driving, lonliness, anxiety, depression, poverty, and every sort of misery also comes with the celebrations.

On a smaller, less ominous scale, every household feels the pressure of Christmas expectations.

Even a small child might lay awake at night, and worry about Christmas, even before they know what it is.

As a young parent, suddenly in charge of upholding family traditions, I was just as suddenly faced with the true cost of Christmas.

I’m not talking about money.

What it takes to make Christmas is actually a lot of work.

The emotional cost is just as high.

Hurt feelings are the hallmark of the season.

Trying to solve every little family drama, and every other issue, before the 24:th is a task all of its own.

What it takes to get a few adults to sit down for one evening, eat something, and be at ease, is more than I can tell you.

I have been perpetually surprised by how hard it is to do the very thing we all say we want to do the most.

And even more surprised by how we expect others to keep doing it, cheerfully, even at times when we won’t.

As if Christmas could exist without us.

But before I meander into talking about cookie recipes, let’s leave this metaphor. 

Let me try to say a few things straight.

I can only speak for myself.

Which is what I’m trying to do, and you must not expect me to do otherwise.

As humans we do have a common history, and a common future. 

But we don’t always have a personal history, or a personal future with each other.

Not even when we loosely belong to the same family, or culture. 

Not even when we are Thelemites. 

Not even when we are magicians.

So, it depends on what we mean by having a common history, and a common future.

The temporary illusion that Swedes celebrate every Christmas bears investigating. 

Our true history, and our true future, as well as our true day-to-day community, starts all over again in January, when reality begins.

What we seem to have in common in December is more like a cultural narrative, or a shared daydream.

Everyone participates in creating it, and it is not the same as when I was a child.

It changes all the time.

Which is just as true for any other living story. 

Which is another way of saying tradition, or collective memory.

What you say, over there, ripples across the cultural pond, and ends up, sooner, or later, in my kitchen. 

If I’m interested, and I’m participating, and I’m paying attention - if we are celebrating the same thing at all - it just happens.

But, what researchers, writers, innocent bystanders, and tourists say about us matters for the narrative as well.

Meaning, there are a few things going on here that might be confused with one another, unless we are careful.

A cultural narrative.

A lived experience.

A commonly known history.

A much lesser known array of personal histories.

Personally, I have only met nice Thelemites. 

I want to describe them as dreamers. 

Curious, studious people. 

Artists, musicians, and gardeners. 

To me, they have been the salt of the earth. 

I know they don’t think so, but they have.

And this is a little bit important. 

Whether, or not they have been members of the O.T.O. doesn’t really matter to me.

Some have, some haven’t.

Some have had their brief time as Thelemites, long ago, and then they have gone on to do other things.

The point is, I don’t think Thelemites are bad people, in general.

To convince me that someone is a bad person, I need to know what crimes they have committed. 

To convince me that a group of people are generally bad people, I need plenty of examples, and explanations.

Especially if they aren’t exactly a group of people, but more like a category.

The fact that someone irritates you, or you disagree with their opinions, or their lifestyle, or you just don’t like them, doesn’t make them bad.

But I wouldn’t accept crimes committed against you, whether I like you, or I like them, or not. 

Without access to the internet, I would have thought everything was probably fine. I wouldn’t even think Thelemites were all that different from anyone else.

Just people, with whom I have shared a certain philosophy in life.

Were they being difficult, from time to time?

Was I being difficult? 

Oh, sure.

But, bad? 

No.

I began my own adventures into Thelema in 2001. 

At first I was opposed to it. I thought it sounded a bit crazy, and maybe dangerous. 

A prophet, and a secret society? Really?

I argued against it.

But this was luckily in a time of real books, and real conversations. We discussed things, and I was much less worried after a while. Even if I didn’t agree with everyone, on everything, all at once, or ever.

It takes time to think about something.

But as time passed I could not shake the notion Do What Thou Wilt had instilled in me.

When I met my husband, in 2005, I found The Book of the Law on his nightstand, and the tarot cards, of which he also had a set. Given their real world history, in the English speaking world, they suggest a certain kind of Magick.

He was never a member of anything. 

He was just a thinker, like me.

Later on we met some new friends. Some of them called themselves Thelemites, but they were not members of anything, either.

People come, and people go.

Years of mental illness contributed to my decision not to join any order, but there were plenty of other reasons as well. 

I didn’t want to.

Friends are one thing, organizations are another.

In 2021, after the worst of the pandemic, I wanted to write again. I felt that life was short, and I still had things to do. I came across an open call for writers on all things occult, including Thelema. 

It was just a post on Reddit. 

Someone had already commented. 

“I’m not aware of a single webpage on Thelema that looks like you describe. And isn’t having your theme be ”spooky” but not like the spooky aesthetic kind of contradictory?”

In a moment of feeling provoked, amused, and incredibly curious, I quickly added a comment, saying something like ”…please, get in touch if you’re interested in my writing.”

”Will do...” flickered onto the screen, and I stared at it wondering what I had signed up for.

I have always loved the spooky things in life, and it turned out to be rather spooky.

It was good for a while, being with other magicians, from different backgrounds, and from different parts of the world, writing, and talking. 

But it felt difficult to be a Thelemite, publicly, and among strangers.

To represent something that people have all sorts of ideas about.

To try to explain things. 

To fail to explain things.

And, to be on the internet, trying to understand the magical lingo of others.

I felt uncomfortable.

In the end I felt sad, a little bit angry, and very confused. 

I had to leave the project for everyone’s wellbeing, including my own, and that of the project. 

The whole thing triggered a minor crisis.

Once the crisis was over, and I was back on the internet, I ended up answering a call to join a group study of The Thoth Tarot. It was innocent fun, with some lovely people, but it also ended up being a cathartic reading of Aleister Crowley’s life, and personality. 

I still don’t know how to answer some of the questions that came up in the group chat, or if I should answer them at all.

I’m still on a journey towards writing.

As you may have noticed, I’m writing this right now, so I guess I’m doing okay.

A lived experience has collided with a cultural narrative, and a commonly known history has collided with what was only ever privately felt, and known.

This isn’t the first time I have asked myself if it wouldn’t be much easier to just quit being a Thelemite.

But it would be like quitting on Christmas. 

Weird, and damaging to everyone around me, since it simply wouldn’t be true.

I am a Thelemite.

Wouldn’t it also be easier not to be a Jew?

Wouldn’t it be easier if you could wake up one day, and quit being a Muslim?

But what would be left of you?

A cold, and dark December night.

The moon.

*

I don’t know why I have 17 subscribers, but thank you.

If you are reading this, I want you to know I feel incredibly privileged to be in your company, to read what you write, and to have found you, even if you’re simply here as a quiet presence. 

Whether you’re a Thelemite, or not, I’m glad you haven’t quit being who you are.

In my experience, that part can be hard.

When people, unrelated to one another, confronted me with this stereotype, repeatedly, it really made me think.

Who are these phantoms?

Who does all these bad things?

And have I done something wrong?

In the past twenty years, of course I have, because I have been a person. 

I probably did something wrong last week.

But I really expect people to either leave it alone, or call me on the phone.

I don’t want to contribute to the stereotype of what it means to be a Thelemite.

We can’t control the narrative of a living story, a memory, or a tradition, nor should we.

We can only make our contribution.

I want to continue being surprised by Thelema.

I want to keep discovering what it means to me, and what it means to others.

The only public debate I’ve been a part of is the spooky Reddit debate.

It meant something to me.

It stayed with me.

Let’s settle it now, long before Christmas begins.

This is my straight answer. 

Creativity is holy. 

I would invite you, if I could.

To watch the Earth when the light turns, with no vision of the past, or of the future.

To let you know, if I wanted to, I could use words. 

I could make rituals, and poetry.

I could argue, and debate.

I could comment.

I could quote something, or I could share a meme.

I know you could too.

But can you imagine it instead?

And can you imagine it differently?

Can we sit down, for one night, eat something, and be at ease?

In the comfort of our own homes, in our own time, in our own way.

When the sun is calling us to supper.

*

The Solstice falls on the 21 of December.

On the Winter Solstice the Sun rises over Stonehenge at 08:08, and sets at 16:02, GMT.

The sunset marks the Winter Solstice at the stones. 

The still point occurs at 15:03, GMT, on the 21 of December.

The still point occurs at the same moment anywhere on Earth.

https://longnow.org/ideas/how-to-tell-time-using-stonehenge/ 

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/things-to-do/solstice/what-is-the-winter-solstice/ 

https://www.stonehengeskyscape.co.uk/ 

https://sweden.se/culture/celebrations/christmas-in-sweden 

I will define catastrophe as a disaster outside of our coping ability, as a society.

I will define news saturation as the inability to absorb any more of it, due to having had enough.

I will call it catastrophe news saturation.

In hospitals they talk about alarm fatigue.

It’s similar to what I mean.

Too much signalling becomes background noise, and we fail to hear the alarm.

Too much news of catastrophes is unbearable, and we fail to comprehend it.

I think it’s very normal.

Human beings can’t sustain strong emotional states for too long. 

Either we rest, or we shut down.

So, when there’s talk of fear mongering, I think it’s right, and I think it’s wrong.

Propaganda is designed to be confusing.

It might seem like the right thing to do. 

To protect yourself. Care for your family, and your closest community. Mind your own business. Stay under the radar.

In some cases it might actually be what you have to do. 

It’s not unreasonable, which is exactly why, in other cases, it’s a very useful tool for the soft terror of propaganda.

That’s just fear mongering, someone said recently, just stop reading the news, and take care of yourself, and your family. 

Strange, I thought to myself, if I don’t need to be scared, why do I need to be quiet?

And what happens when everyone is quiet? 

Maybe something like this, as a recent study shows:

Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action.

(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3#Sec7 )

It was a large study. 

More than 130 000 people from 125 countries responded. 

89% of them said they want their governments to do more on climate change.

69% said they would give up 1% of their income to fight climate change.

But only 43% thought that others would do the same.

The pattern repeats over multiple studies.

You can read about it here. Sources are provided in the article.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/spiral-of-silence-climate-action-very-popular-why-dont-people-realise 

In general, people seem to think they are more alone with their beliefs, than they are.

And it matters what we think, because it seeps into our daily choices. It shapes our hopes, and dreams. It shapes our interactions, and communities. 

It shapes the whole conversation.

This is probably not just true for issues on climate change, either. It's likely true for any number of other issues as well.

We just don’t know, do we?

A silent majority is silent.

The noise of propaganda is loud, even when it whispers. 

It aims to be more than we can handle, and we politely try not to be too much.

I use the word saturation because like fatigue it can be remedied.

Maybe it means you have to deliberately disconnect, and cocoon for a while.

Maybe that looks a bit like shrinking on the outside, but the point is, it isn’t.

There’s a slight, but meaningful difference between thinking you need to make yourself small, and quiet, or thinking you need silence, and birdsong, 

The first one won’t restore you, but the second one will.

The first one is full of fear, guilt, and shame.

The second one is still full of natural wonders.

Maybe we don’t need to try to shout above the propaganda?

Maybe we just need to talk about something else for a little bit? 

Maybe even soak in the silence like we own it?

Statistically speaking, maybe we do.