Time ain’t linear, and this moment is an eddie…. As Mercury circles back, so must we, if we are to heed the tides of nature, and the gods of time. What must we retrieve in order to flow forward more fully?

This episode is a collage of selections from blogs I’ve written over the past 5 years. In going back, I actually surprised myself to see how I’ve been mulling over the same questions for many years. Here, I gather the threads of thought that I will continue to weave in episodes to come. A few themes emerge:

* Empire and consciousness

* Knowledge, power, and paradigm

* Unknowingness in Times of Change

* Selfhood as political necessity

* Courage in the face of monsters

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Scientific, cultural, and political revolution go hand in hand

It’s almost trite to speak of our current moment as a paradigm shift. Yet, if we root the concept in Kuhn’s analysis of scientific revolution, it may be a useful lens with which to make sense of these times of massive change.

When we understand the current dominant mode of thought in a historical and global context, it becomes clear that its basis in reductive materialism is by far the anomaly. A more spiritual or animist worldview is the norm both historically and globally.

This episode looks at this from a decolonial perspective. In the future I want to come at the same question from scientific and philosophical perspectives, a line of thinking I started exploring here (in my most popular blog post, which I’ve unlocked for a time).

A meditation on the mysterious unity underlying opposites. Weaving ideas from Heraclitus, Hegel, Jung, Zen Buddhism, and a touch of Tantra, we explore how mystical union might be applied to everyday life and what it has to do with the extreme polarities characteristic of the times we live in.

This is the very tip of the iceberg. This conversation will definitely continue in futures episodes.

*A note: I mention that the unconscious will emerge as psychological symptoms if not integrated, but should have mentioned that before that it may emerge through dreams, fantasies, slips, etc.

An exploration of the politics and practices of manifestation: how we create what we create and the importance of economic context, interconnectedness, and cocreation as well as the magic and the methods. 

A meditation on Chaos and how we might relate to her. From chaos theory to mythology to esoteric tools for navigating these chaotic times. <3

Digging deeper into the archetype of Aquarius: discerning what is ours to feel and hold and process; friendship as a key to tapping into our inherent interconnectedness; conformity, solitude, community; my take on aliens!; and a brief look at Saturn in Pisces and what I'm calling The Age of Deception. 

Is this the Age of Aquarius? What are astrological ages anyway? What does Pluto's transit through Aquarius until the 2040's mean for us?  A look at the Aquarian themes of the collective, science, technology, and revolution through Pluto's lens of shadow work, the unconscious, transformation, and evolution. 

The times are turbulent. How can we navigate these stormy seas? On esotericism as one way forward. 

Science and the Erotic Order is back, with this, the fifth in my series on science and consciousness

For many people, the idea that we live in a simulation holds a certain intuitive appeal: there does seem to be something dreamlike or not fully real to reality itself.

We explore the simulation hypothesis by looking at Nick Bostrom’s 2003 paper, Are We Living in a Computer Simulation, that first proposed the idea in a scientific context. While the hypothesis holds a lot of weight from a materialist paradigm, as soon as we consider the role that consciousness plays, the hypothesis loses some of its appeal.

Plato’s cave, the Hindu concept of Maya, and the Gnostic Demiurge similarly question the nature of reality. The difference though, is that in these frameworks, philosophical and spiritual practice are meant to bring us closer to the truth. The simulation hypothesis, on the other hand, leads to the conclusion that we are forever trapped in a “simulated” reality and that we ourselves may not even be “real”.

Is this irreality simply a logical conclusion we ought to accept, or is the simulation hypothesis leaving out something important?

This episode is part of my series Science and the Erotic Order.

The other episodes in this series are:

Sacred Matrix: the Goddess in Western Thought and Practice

Paradigm Crux: Consciousness Science and Metaphysics

Theory’s End: Abstraction Implosion and the Return to Wholeness

Spiral Time: the Metaphysics of Gender

To go deeper into the concept of distortion that I mention in this episode, you can receive my recording Distortion Dynamic as a paying subscriber. (This is also the best way to support this work and to ensure I’m able to keep doing it.)

In this episode, I reference Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis, first presented in the paper Are We Living in a Computer Simulation, published in 2003 by Philosophical Quarterly.

I also mention David Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness which I discuss at length in the episode Paradigm Crux.

To work with me 1-1, my books are open for 1-1 client sessions starting mid-April.

Metaphysics of Gender

Beneath the layers of historic and cultural distortion, might we find a profound metaphysical love story? In this episode, we explore spiral time as emergent from the collaboration between the masculine and feminine forces of nature.

Abstraction Implosion and the Return to Wholeness

In The Master and His Emissary, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist draws on cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry to paint a complex picture of right and left hemispheric brain function. The hemispheres differ not in what they do, but in how they do it: the right is attuned to wholeness, interconnectivity, empathy, and relationality; the left, to separating, categorizing, abstracting, and theorizing.

He argues that much of Western culture can be understood as a form of pathological left-hemispheric dominance, where abstraction has come to replace the very thing it was meant to represent. He urges a return to balance, where the world of the right hemisphere—of context, relationship, and embodiment—is given its rightful place as primary.

This episode is an exploration and summary of McGilchrist’s important work. This will set the stage for the next episode, where we will weave these ideas back into what we’ve been discussing in the previous several episodes.

Philosopher David Chalmers introduced The Hard Problem of Consciousness in the 90s to distinguish between the relatively easy problems of consciousness that can be resolved via the standard methods of cognitive neuroscience (lol) and the comparatively “hard” problem of how matter could give rise to consciousness at all—which cannot, in principle, be resolved by science.

The hard problem is only a hard problem because of the standard metaphysical assumption of materialism. Since the 90s, many philosophers and scientists who have considered the hard problem have abandoned materialism in favour of panpsychism, dual-aspect monism, or other metaphysics that see consciousness as primary.

Nearly every spiritual tradition also sees consciousness as primary. Isn’t Self, not as ego, but as the Seer, the observer, the witness—consciousness by another name? Is science, through its own methods, coming around to this central spiritual insight?

In this episode I quote from The Hard Problem of Consciousness by David Chalmers, and Twilight of the idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche.

The myth of the Goddess runs deep in the history of Western thought and practice. Goddess worship was prevalent in Paleolithic Old Europe, and well into the Iron Age. What happened? How is it that Goddess worship and polytheism came to be replaced by a monotheistic, masculine God?

Despite official doctrine, she keeps cropping up though, doesn’t she? Through Mother Mary, Sophia, the Shekhinah, the irrepressible Mary Magdalene: even within in a Judeo-Christian context, while official texts would write her out of existence, she can’t be suppressed.

Esoteric practice, folk mythology, non-doctrinal spiritual forms have always been places where the Goddess by her many names can be found. It would appear that suppression of the Goddess is intimately tied to power and Empire, a theme we will continue to explore in future episodes.

This episode draws largely from The Myth of the Goddess, Evolution of an Image, by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, as well as (to a lesser extent) Did God Have a Wife, Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel by William G. Dever.

(If you're concerned about the association of the Feminine with matter, so am I. Try n hold your horses, as we'll complicate this in the next episode).

__________________________________________________

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Neptune in Aries 2025-2039 and the Saturn-Neptune conjunction 2025/2026.

Within one year, ALL of the outer planets change signs (if we include Pluto in Aquarius in late 2024), as I spoke about in my 2025 episode (still highly relevant btw). This speaks to massive, collective shifts in energetics, and, of course, changes to our material realities will follow.

In this episode, I speak specifically to Neptune’s transit through Aries (2025-2039), as well as the Saturn-Neptune conjunction (2025-2026).

Neptune in Aries

March 30 2025 — October 22, 2025

January 26 2026 — May 21 2038

October 21 2038 — March 23 2039

Saturn in Aries

May 24 2025 — Sep 1 2025

Feb 13 2026 — Apr 12 2028

Neptune signifies our ideals, which can either be idealistic, or worthy aspirations, depending on how we relate to them. Neptune governs the imaginal realm, in all its many colours, from the act of creation in the murky waters of dreamtime, to fantasy and escapism, and the potentials for confusion, delusion, deception.

At best, and with discernment and discipline (offered by Saturn, co-present in Aries until 2028), Neptune can incline toward mystical knowing, spiritual experience, and unconditional love. When Neptune’s energy is brought to bear on other archetypes or energies, it has the potential to dissipate, dissolve, melt, transcend, unify, spiritualize.

One way of thinking of Neptune is as access to the astral (or 4D)—our experience of which depends almost entirely on our state of mind. Enter with fear: meet the demons. Come with love and awareness, and experience heaven on earth….

Aries has a different flavour. It’s fiery and driven, and often anti-authoritarian. It’s the one courageous (and sometimes rash) enough to carve out new paths in every domain, the one cutting the trail and willing to risk it all to lead humanity to new horizons. Aries is The Will, and Will on Earth has been drastically misunderstood, shamed, suppressed, and— as with everything condemned to the unconscious— distorted and twisted. Anything repressed will express in harmful ways, when it can’t be suppressed any longer. There is a need to release our Will—"Will Power”, “Free Will”,—from the shadows and begin to express it in more conscious ways.

Aries governs action, assertion, aggression, and violence. In its correct expression, it’s the true Spiritual Warrior (a key theme with spiritualizing Neptune now in the sign), the one who aligns Will and action with what is right and true and good. The one who knows how to relate to even violence with consciousness and discernment. The one willing to consider: is there a right use of violence? And if so, when, and how, and where, and why? The true warrior never resorts to violence because it’s easy, or out of fear, or revenge, or retribution, and yet, is willing to acknowledge the hard reality that life on earth is and has been, so often, so violent.

However we decide to answer to the question, “is there a right use of violence,” we live now in the shadows of millenia of a karmic cycle of violence on Earth spinning and spinning out of control. Is there a way out? How can we break the cycle? These are key themes connected to Neptune’s transit through Aries until 2039, and I go deeper into these in the recording. We may have to move through an arc of idealism and the valorization of Aries traits, through disillusionment and only then, access the potential for spiritualization; a common Neptunian storyline.

Neptune’s transit through Aries is importantly coloured by Saturn’s presence in the sign until 2028, and a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, very close as I write this in July 2025, but not exact until February 20th 2026. Saturn and Neptune form a conjunction approximately every 36 years.

As Saturn signifies structure, boundaries, walls, borders, as well as time, age, maturity, discipline, effort, authority, and institutions including The State; and Neptune signifies dissolution, transcendence, dissolving, murkiness, deception, confusion, but also of course, the potential for compassion and universal love…. you might draw some of your own correlations to how these planets coming together are already showing up.

One of the reasons a conjunction is considered a “hard” aspect is that there can be a competition between the two planets’ energies. Ideally they blend and find a way to cooperate, but sometimes one of them overrides the other. This also depends very much on the history and unique situation of those involved.

Astrologers famously connect the fall of the Berlin wall with the last time these two planets came together (the dissolving effect of Neptune acting on structural aspect of Saturn). The Tiananmen Square massacre occurred the same year, which may be an example of the shadow side of the Saturnian principle embodied by The State overpowering the collective Neptunian desire for dissolving excessive State power....Continued on Substack...

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In this episode, I refer to Frantz Fanon, and I didn’t mention the text by name, but I was thinking of The Wretched of the Earth.

In the first part of Simulation & Eros, we discussed how the simulation hypothesis relies on the assumption that matter (be it a brain or computer) creates or causes consciousness. This has never been shown scientifically. Given that this is a massive assumption, rooted in the reductive materialist paradigm, which is being questioned from all sides, The Simulation Hypothesis itself appears to be on shaky ground.

Nevertheless, the theory is quite popular. Why? In part one, I said I think there are at least three reasons: 1) from the perspective of consensus reality/reductive materialism, it seems almost inevitable; to anyone steeped in this paradigm, it will make intuitive sense. 2) The hypothesis is similar to, although importantly different from, spiritual frameworks like the Hindu concept of Maya or the Gnostic idea that the material realm was created by the Demiurge. So, while distorted, it may nevertheless strike a chord with a more spiritual intuition.

In this part, I speak to a third reason: political pressures driving the appeal of the simulation hypothesis. In this liminal moment of late-stage-not-even-really-capitalism-almost-something-else-altogether, right on the cusp of a new world order, there is massive incentive toward the promotion (intentional or not) of worldviews and philosophies that clear the way for accelerated datafication.

Given that our current economic model demands continuous growth, there’s a need to develop and exploit new markets. The key market being developed at the moment is data. Market pressures, politics, and power skew culture that favours philosophies and thinking that make way for intensified “datafication”. If we already believe we live in a simulation, then why not live more of our lives online? Why not give our attention away? Why not hook our brains up to the internet? Why not merge with the machine?

Here’s the thing though: no matter how dystopic it looks: we are free. I haven’t figured out how to really express this; there are important and tangible ways in which we are not free. But there’s a deep spiritual truth here. We must remember we are free. Just because certain forms of thought are popular or promoted by “important” people, doesn’t mean they are true. It starts in the mind. This is our spiritual work. This is our initiation.

Our power is the well of creativity we have access to as beings still in touch with actual reality, which is precisely that which cannot be theorized, captured, or coded. The extent to which we see ourselves as victims, or wait around for governments to fix things, is the extent to which we revoke our power. Do you see how our reaction to the realization of this distortion can so easily play into it? How we respond to this situation is everything.

We are here to create. Creation must begin before there is any evidence for it. It’s through believing in our own very human, non-machinic modes of loving and imagining that we seed the beautiful world that is alternative to the dystopic one on offer. We can’t expect them to do it for us. This is our work. This is our privilege. This is our initiation.

What if WE are the creator beings, dreaming new worlds into being, not by code, but by love?

It’s come full circle in an interesting way: we are trapped in a simulation. The simulated-theoretical-structure that pretends at reality, that seeks to trap all of life, The Great Mystery, the ineffable, the relational, the affective, within its finite frame. The simulation we are trapped in is a mental construct, not a coded one. The good news is, this is a simulation we have the power to break free of…..

This episode is part of my series

Science and the Erotic Order

The other episodes in this series are:

Sacred Matrix: the Goddess in Western Thought and Practice

Paradigm Crux: Consciousness Science and Metaphysics

Theory’s End: Abstraction Implosion and the Return to Wholeness

Spiral Time: the Metaphysics of Gender

Simulation & Eros (1): the Simulation Hypothesis as Distorted Spiritual Truth

To go deeper into the concept of distortion that I mention in this episode, you can receive my recording Distortion Dynamic as a paying subscriber.

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It’s come to my attention that some people are using a paywall blocker to receive the episodes and posts that I’ve shared only with paying subscribers. There’s a popular idea that all art, all creative work ought to be free. But the only way that art will survive is if we’re willing to pay creators for their labour. Please don’t steal from artists. Please don’t contribute to killing art. If a few dollars a month is out of reach, then please enjoy the enormous amount of work that I’m made freely available.

The single most important thing we can do this year, for ourselves, and for the collective, is to align with our own true destiny. Because, understood energetically, our destiny is our power. As we manifest our destiny, we take our power back.

And that is how we overcome Empire—within, and without.

This recording can be medicine. Let the first half surface emotions, thoughts, energies that you no longer need, that aren’t yours, that you are ready to release. The energy shifts half way through the recording, as we invite all that was surfaced to clear.

As we release what isn’t ours to carry, more of our own true nature can come back to us. As we embody more of who we truly are, we align more fully with our destiny.

This shall be a big year, friends. We’re gonna to do this, and we’re gonna do it together.

Readings

Some of you have been asking if I’ll be offering readings again, and I’m happy to share that my books are now open again (although I have limited availability).

If you want support aligning with your own true nature, I would be honoured to help you:

I have a limited number of spaces available for 2025-specific readings.

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Living in alignment with intuition, in creative flow has a massive impact on our own lives as well as the collective futures we create by the frequencies we embody in the present.

This mercury retrograde has me reflecting on how I create and on creativity in general. We talk about how an over-reliance on mind, rigidity, and the desire to control disrupts intuitive flow. I share some of my own hang-ups and struggles around the creative process, using this podcast as example.

While we mostly focus on creative flow in everyday life, of course, as always, we link the themes fractally to what’s playing out in the collective and political spheres. The current dominant political trajectories might be seen as the extreme form of left-hemispheric, purely mental control to the utter rejection of intuition, creativity, and ultimately Selfhood. So living in flow may be one of the most important acts of creative resistance that actively manifests beautiful alternatives to the dystopic imaginaries on offer….

In this episode, I mention the episode I made in honour of 2025, Collective Destiny, which is still highly relevant, and I definitely recommend it, especially if you resonate with today’s episode.

Collective Destiny: Fate vs Freedom

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One of my favourite things in this world is connecting with you beautiful souls one-on-one to read your astrology and assist you in aligning with your soul path. You can learn more about how I work and book a reading here.

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READINGS AND GIFT CERTIFICATES

My rates are going up

I’ll be raising my rates for readings in the new year. This is your chance to get a reading with me or to purchase a gift certificate at my current rates. (You can also buy yourself a gift certificate if you want to get in at my current rate but aren’t yet ready for a reading!). And if you really want to lock in at the current rate, I offer a monthly reading subscription for only $100/month, which is an extremely good price for what it is. I spend a great deal of time in preparing for readings, and as the cost of living and working has gone up, it is time for my rates to go up as well.

Early episodes for paying subscribers

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AI is a sort of mirror, but not an accurate one. It reflects a deeply distorted version of ourselves back to us.

In creating this episode, the doubles seemed to proliferate, echoing the reflective nature of AI itself. We get into:

2 predominant ways in which people tend to relate to AI

-Unquestioning acceptance

-Resistance

2 key reasons for resistance

-AI embeds the established structures of power

-AI impels in the direction of technocracy and climate collapse

2 predominant future timelines for humanity

-Machinic death spiral

-Beauty, justice, and flourishing

2 hemispheric modes or, from an esoteric perspective, the masculine and the feminine, and what this has to do with AI

-Logic, abstraction, theory

-Presence, relationality, the reality abstracted from

If AI is a mirror, it’s a sort of fun-house or magic mirror, one that distorts in the direction of established structures of power, and the transhumanist, technocratic timeline.

Refusing to engage with AI may seem like the obvious solution, but that tactic merely tacitly gives consent to the technocratic potential that we are rapidly careening toward, with our involvement or without.

This potential is by no means inevitable. We can take the magic back into our own hands by alchemizing AI, by refusing technocratic infrastructure such as digital ID and digital currency, by demanding open and transparent AI systems as well as more deeply ethical and reverent safety protocol, and most importantly, by decentralizing structures of power.

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xo,

andi

Horror, truly, is not on a screen. It is genocide, famine, senseless murder, seemingly endless oppression, and the utter insanity that spurs it on….

While Israel barrels on—despite growing consensus that it is committing genocide—what shall we do? Who shall we be? How shall we respond?

Two years after October 7th, which was not the beginning, let’s consider what antisemitism actually is. Because it’s certainly not what the representatives of Israel say it is. But it is something.

The seemingly impossible is possible now for some of us, prepared to take a leap of faith. What am I saying? We’ve been leaping already multiple times a day. We’ve been efforting—many of us—for many years. But it’s easier now… we can slip into love like sweatpants and rest there.

We’ve experienced “altered states”. We’ve tasted the transcendent—not as an escape from life, but as the full embodiment of it. For it’s not some far off reality, but is here, in our bodies, in our lives—messy, and incomplete, and beautifully imperfect as they are.

We are stabilizing this “alter” reality now; it’s becoming no longer alter but simply real. The extraordinary becomes ordinary as we see—and feel—that what we’ve been seeking is only ever right here and now—and always ever right here and now…

It happens both in time and out of time, as we learn and practice and work towards something only to find that it lies utterly beyond spacetime, and is available to us no matter how much work we’ve done, or how hard we’ve tried, or how “good” we are.

What might be possible as we rest within love that is fierce for that's what love is...?

This is the real revolution. For, for this revolution to be truly revolutionary, it must be of love. We’ve tried violence, haven’t we, us humans? There is only one way forward and it is the way of the heart, the way of the rose…. And it is not weak or meek, but fierce for true love is not a pushover but a lion…

This is a meditation on the Pisces-Virgo axis, and the releases and refinements especially available to us during this eclipse season (~August 30-September 29, 2025), during this eclipse cycle (September 2024-February 2027).

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A more casual episode, woven from a series of asides, in which I explore language, power, creativity, and the changing nature of my work. We consider how words so often come to be stripped of depth in their overuse, with “innovation,” and “healing” as examples. I share a bit about my own current astrology transits (Uranus, in particular) and their connection to my current phase of experimentation, which is showing up in my work on the podcast—this episode in particular—as well as my work with clients.

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When I started this series, Science and the Erotic Order, I didn’t know I’d be initiated into even deeper layers of perception of and grieving for the denigration of Goddess in the West and the immense ripples that mythic inheritance has sent through the millenia, and through the world.

But that’s what it means to do this kind of work publicly. You can’t be public about these things, and not be asked to go deeper with it yourself. After publishing the first few episodes in late Summer, early Fall of 2024, I started having some intense and profound experiences that I needed to process privately before I could return to working on this series.

This is a heartfelt exploration of what this series is really about. I set aside argument, proof, evidence—just for a moment, so I can express where this is all going; a sort of preliminary and tentative conclusion, if you will.

This is an exploration of gender in the sciences; how gender was woven into the very birth of science in the scientific revolution; how our mythic inheritance has shaped even this supposedly objective aspect of our culture; what that means for contemporary thought and psychology; and what we might do to right the imbalance.

This episode is part of my series Science and the Erotic Order.

The other episodes in this series are:

Sacred Matrix: the Goddess in Western Thought and Practice

Paradigm Crux: Consciousness Science and Metaphysics

Theory’s End: Abstraction Implosion and the Return to Wholeness

Spiral Time: the Metaphysics of Gender

Simulation & Eros: The Simulation Hypothesis as Distorted Spiritual Truth

Creating a podcast single handedly takes enormous effort—especially the episodes that require research, thought, and creativity. This episode, and future episodes in this series, Science and the Erotic Order, will be for paying subscribers. A free preview is shared here for everyone to enjoy.

To become a free or paying subscriber, head on over to Substack.

Thank you so much for reading and listening.

xo,

a