Freya's Tears | Weeknotes 11/4
Time magic, Tarkovsky, polyam life, esoteric chivalry, how cows sleep, and are preppers LARPing.
Comrades—
If you’ve walked through this eclipse season untouched and untrammeled, we wish you the best. Keep going, star child. But if you feel yourself standing on the trail with a few more miles to go before you even reach the top—let alone have to get yourself back down—we see you. We are you. But one of the best parts of being a magician is that different rules apply to you.1 Different time applies to you.
Linear, planetary time is no longer your only option. Try star time, seeking the aid of the nakshatras or the decans. If you’re feeling heretical, try liturgical time: the rhythmic mythic cycle of saints, angels, Marys, and Christs woven throughout the year. Getting through ordeals is a saints’ specialty. Try pagan time: let the felt experience of the moon’s cycles and the seasons’ changes remedy the numbness and separation forced on all of us by industry. And when in doubt, you can always time warp.
More than anything, friends, keep your heads up. We love you.
Jessie & Brian.
Earth
Are preppers LARPing? I like Josh Centers take here: that a little bit of LARPing isn't that bad. Not everything has to be—or should be—purely utilitarian. If you have a piece of gear because it makes you happy or fits your aesthetic, well, that's part of emotionally and spiritually preparing yourself. But at the end of the day, your life will still be measure by what you've built, what you've grown, and what you have to show for all your ideas and ambition. Practicing magic is just the same. -J
Yep, can confirm. Though subbing in "pagan" for Burning man. - B
Sea
One of the things I love about these continuing Townsends segments is that they demonstrate something that, if you haven't had the opportunity to do work with simple tools may seem out of reach: what someone else has done, you can do. Even if it is digging a well. Felt hats and buckle shoes optional. -B
On Tarkovsky movies and compassion fatigue, from Time Within Time:
Almost every speaker has asked why they have to be made to suffer all through the three hours of the film... It is because the twentieth century has seen the rise of a kind of emotional inflation. When we read in the newspaper that two million people have been butchered in Indonesia, it makes as much impression on us as an account of our hockey team winning a match. The same degree of impression! [...] I don't want to preach about this. It may be that without this distortion life would be impossible. Only the point is that there are some artists who do make us feel the true measure of things.
This compliments nicely this video essay on time, Tarkovsky, and the pandemic. (I’m a little Tarkovsky-obsessed right now). -J
Sky
In my continuing series on the behavior of cattle, this article is convincing me that even if I don't know why, I need to flip my bed to face North-South. -B
McCalla at Saturnvox takes on the quest of Esoteric Chivalry with Connor Marvin. Dare to take the path of the sword bridge; dare to give everything for love. -B
Freya’s Tears
by Seán Pádraig O’Donoghue.
I wondered
why the one Spruce
was so generous
with her resin today,
Golden like Freya's tears,
Then I saw that it flowed
from the place
where the Woodpecker
had been drumming,
and I knew
it was all one prayer.
From Courting the Wild Queen. Read Jessie’s review & buy the book.
In case there’s any confusion, this also means different—and greater—responsibilities apply to you.