Alienation is not overcome by ritual, but by the circumcision of the heart, the marriage of work and spirit, of faith and reason. If we find ourselves alienated it is not because we lack ritual, but because we find our reason, our logos, no longer renders a faithful account of spirit, that our rituals refer to nothing outside of themselves. Our rituals and our vocabulary no longer does any descriptive work. It’s not that we lack rituals, it’s just that they’re self referential and thus meaningless. It is not so much that we suffer from a personal narcissism, but that we suffer from a *cultural* narcissism, a liberalism too busy applauding itself to know that the audience went home long ago…
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4235846812
Everything works for a little while—works until it doesn’t, and at some point, a pattern is revealed. That which is not God is snake oil. Snake oil is magick until it isn’t. Cures depend on us being sick, a snake-eating-its-own-tail situation. Our bodies know when we’ve bought the snake oil. They will eventually reject what is not true.
Bett Williams, in The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey
The goal is complete government control of psychedelics to be used by a large segment of the population in clinical settings, i.e., the lizard stalls. The more badly the outliers behave, the easier it is to convince everyone that our expert chaos magic overlords, I mean, doctors, are the only safe guides.
Bett Williams, in The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey
there’s comfort
in the image of our
digital bits
decaying
to
dust
too
From Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day:
“I know this fellow back in New Jersey,” said Scarsdale Vibe, “who collects railroads. Not just rolling stock, mind, but stations, sheds, rails, yards, personnel, the whole shebang.”
“Expensive hobby,” marveled the Professor. “Are there such people?”
“Look up.”
Two hands lay palms-down on a brown briefcase.
Scars. From cleats and dirt, knives at the bottom of soapy kitchen sinks, mother’s maroon-painted fingernails. Memories. The only way of knowing one’s actually existed. If you don’t remember anything, you don’t know you’re there. Time. The flowing of time. The true nature of time is a spiral; not a line with a definite start and a definite stop.
“Wake up.”
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