“I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke.” Acts 2:19
As I write this there’s an orange haze across the sky, obscuring the view of the mountains and hills that surround the valley I live in. The forest infernos causing this rage far from where I live, but the haze makes my eyes itch and scratches at my nose and throat all the same.
“Blood and fire and billows of smoke.”
I grew up in an apocalyptic Millenarian religious sect so this kind of omen-hunting is almost a subconscious habit at this point, but I really do think there’s something palpably different at work in the psychosphere lately.
I’ve been struggling lately and I’m hearing from a lot of my friends that they are struggling too. Grief for the past. Anxiety for the future. Frustration with the present.
Many of us sense that there’s nothing left to do about all the things that are so fundamentally wrong about everything.
There are powerful forces at work to maintain the delusions (it’s more than mere illusion at this point) that
1.) this is none of your concern
2.) even if it was, what could you hope to ever do about it?
3.) if there IS something you can do about it, it probably consists of finding the correct subset of your neighbors to blame for it and making sure they are blocked from carrying out their evil agenda.
Personal forces, impersonal forces, transpersonal forces, natural forces, supernatural forces. You don’t have to believe in all of them, but I bet you can see at least a couple of them at play, can’t you?
There is simultaneously an outward pressure and an inner seductive lure to acquiesce to this status quo. From without, the messaging insists that we have no agency. From within, this is met with partial relief since it implies that we have no responsibility either.
You don’t really buy that any more than I do though, do you? We can only deny the testimony of our senses and our reason for so long before the cognitive dissonance starts to rip and tear at us.
So, if we don’t wish to shrink back to Perdition, we are going to need to find a handle of sovereignty and agency to get hold of. Sometimes it is only a sliver at first, but that sliver can make all the difference.
And no, you can’t do it all on your own. You shouldn’t even try to, but NONE of us can do it at all, unless a few of us try. This is why I want you to be stronger and more capable. I need you to be.
How do we start navigating a way through the fog?
Fighter pilot and heterodox military strategist Colonel John Boyd came up with a useful framework tailor-made for those moments when you find yourself downwind of the fan and see the shit careening towards it. That tool is called The OODA loop. Some of my Tarot clients will recognize this from our sessions and other folks reading this may be familiar with it from other sources. If you’re not already and want to dig in deeper, here’s a good resource for more detail.
The four stages of the OODA Loop are
1.) Observe
2.) Orient
3.) Decide
4.) Act
In Boyd’s theory of conflict whichever combatant can disrupt the OODA loop of their opponent while keeping their own intact stands to come out on top. It is a useful tool for assessing all decision-making under pressure. The “struggle” we are concerned with here, certainly counts.
Observe. What do I see? I see a world facing a wide array of complex challenges armed with the decaying machinery of complicated and unwieldy institutions. A frayed and fragmented populace operating under multiple mutually exclusive reality paradigms, very real political, social, economic and ecological crises are either unfolding in real time or poised at the horizon.
I see a dearth of authentic leadership and a reluctance to even acknowledge just how fucked up everything is. I see no adults to help me when I go looking for them.
Orient: Where am I right now? Where do I need to be? How far apart are those two states? What are my relationships like? Friends, family, coworkers, communities and institutions I’m connected to.
No one is coming to save me if I don’t save myself. I can’t save myself alone. I can’t save anyone else unless I am safe. I do not have the power I need to save myself. You do not have the power to save yourself. You do not have the power to save me. I do not have the power to save you.
Perhaps it isn’t “power” at all that is needed. But what then?
My mission is to figure that out and to foster it between us. You and me. Starting right here where we are and setting our sights on where we want to go. We do not like the trajectory we are on, so we find a different target and we orient towards that.
The late Rob Burbea said that our ethical dilemmas now are less a question of what we should do and more a question of what we should love.
What IS the highest value? What SHOULD we love?
Decide: I am far from where I need to be, but my resolve is that if I die at any time, it will be at least one step closer to there. There are costs incurred from any true decision, but they are nothing compared to the cost of freezing at the moment of truth.
Act: When I make a move, I reinforce to myself, to my allies and to my adversaries that I am a center of agency. I am something to be reckoned with, and I am worth the effort it takes to advance from one place to another. I certainly haven’t saved the world yet, I haven’t even saved myself, but I’ve tipped the balance just a little closer toward my vision of the Better-Than-This. As long as there remains the ability to chose and act and I exercise that ability to choose and act with as much skill as I can, the game can continue.
Now, I am somewhere new and a new OODA loop has been initiated. Now what? Observe, orient, decide, act.
“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”
― Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
some other stuff,
Things to listen to
A project that is near and dear to my heart has returned. The Emerge Podcast by Daniel Thorson has started up again after a long hiatus with a renewed purpose and vision. I started listening to Daniel’s conversations a few years back and it’s almost impossible to overate the positive impact they’ve had on me.
My friend Josh is the only Marc Maron Super Fan I know, but his enthusiasm makes think there should be more of them in the world. He had me listen to this conversation between Maron and legendary producer Rick Rubin. They talk about meditation, rock music, creativity, stand up comedy and pro-wrestling. Basically most of the stuff that matters. It is good.
Things to read
Experimental Theology: Gratitude, Vulnerability, and Joy
Specifically, in her work on vulnerability Brené has discovered, somewhat paradoxically, a connection between joy and our fear of loss. When we experience deep joy we feel extraordinarily vulnerable, we fear that the joy will not last, that something tragic will happen that will rob us of happiness.
Why People Are Scared of Marie Kondo (Kondopilled Part One)
It’s remarkable that such a popular author is completely mischaracterized. Why is this meme about her so widespread? I think it’s evidence of avoidance. People want to characterize her as a rabid minimalist because that would make her work less vital, and her process less terrifying. If the KonMari method were just about throwing out some percentage of your junk for the sake of it, it would just be a harmless lifestyle fad.
But it’s not like that at all. KonMari is fundamentally about killing your own falsity, about holding a funeral for all the remnants of old, illusory perceptions of yourself that you’ve been too afraid to give up. All she asks is that you say goodbye to the person that you thought, at one time, you were. She is fine with you keeping whatever survives this departure.
This individual who subjects many to their dream is not unlike a Meme. The meme seeks to infect as many people as possible, and if it is a strong meme, or what I call, a Big Meme, it can infect an extraordinary amount of people, and become something more than a simple internet meme. The Will of the Meme is singular, which makes it immensely powerful, and the more archetypal in nature, the greater this Meme becomes.
The next installment of Dialectical Tarot with The Golden Shadow is scheduled for August 16 at 6 PM EST/3 PM PST. We will be discussing one of my favorite images in the Tarot: The Emperor. Tune in here!
Send me a message here or through instagram if you’re interested in booking a Tarot consultation.
Thank you, as always, for reading and being in conversation with me. If you think someone else would enjoy engaging with this newsletter, don’t hesitate to share it with them!
Until next time…
Billows of Smoke
"when will i be free saes the cilde to the stag
and the stag saes thu will nefer be free
then when will angland be free
angland will nefer be free
then what can be done
naht can be done
then how moste i lif
thu moste be triewe that is all there is
be triewe
be triewe."
-- Paul Kingsnorth, "The Wake"