Greetings,

I’m really tired of being used by a corrupt system to keep it generating more corruption. And that is too much of how debt is used in this country.

In this episode, my guest is Marie Megge, a Michigan-based debt counseling expert who is not easy to find because she doesn’t use your money to prop up her company through expensive ad campaigns. But once I did find her as sought help to come out from under insurmountable debt post-divorce, I wanted to offer a way for my audience to find her, too.

Marie and I discuss a range of issues related to the debt industry, but the primary focus here is how you can use her knowledge to help yourself become unstuck from a corrupt system that is all too willing to let you suffer so they can profit.

I do want to give you the heads up that not all of the aspects of the industry that I had wanted to cover made it into this podcast. So, I will do a follow up!

In this episode, Marie and I discuss:

• The moral injury the debt industry hinges upon

• How to ensure you don’t get scammed by debt counseling firms who can be jsut as evil and predatory as the banks!

• How much energy and hope can return to your life when you have help facing an industry designed to make you feel badly about yourself

• How long it takes to restore your credit rating once you’ve entered into debt settlement negotiations

• The process of debt negotiation itself

What I will circle back to is:

• How and why banks assign our credit ratings using secret metrics that allow them to justify whatever interest they want to assign.

• How interest rates often are irrelevant to the lenders’ calculus

• How they remain profitable regardless of whether we ever pay off our credit cards.  

Thanks for listening. Please share this episode with as many people as possible.

Peace,

Whitney

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And if you’re curious what News from the Ensouled Universe is…

News from the Ensouled Universe

A window closes, but a door opens...

SPECIAL EDITION Greetings! Thank you for your patience with me getting our podcast out to you this week. Ordinarily, I try to just smile through the complexities I have been facing of late, preferring not to let you know I am a little duck on the water, my cute little feet (okay, my size 10 feet) paddling furiously underneath as I look to be gliding effort…

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3 years ago · 3 likes · 6 comments · Whitney McKnight

Greetings,

You would not be wrong to count me among the astrologers who have proclaimed the ingress of Pluto into Aquarius as a time when power will shift to the people.

But what the heck does that mean, and if power isn’t already with the people, where is it then? And how did power get where we aren’t the ones who have it?

In this conversation with Australian astrologer, Cassandra Tyndall, I explore these questions and get Cass’s fresh, frank take on the Plutonic potentials for people to liberate themselves from trauma, from mind control, and from empire.

First things first, according to Cass: we must reckon with the ghosts that are returning, the pain points of colonialism, the secrecy hidden at the top of trickle-down templates. But also, we must admit our inability or unwillingness or both to take personal responsibility.

The problem, says Cass: “People aren’t ready to be challenged, yet.”

To that end, you might be surprised to hear our respective views on the cosmological underpinnings of “cancel culture” and how the next two decades of Pluto in Aquarius might not be as rosy and calm as some astrologers — myself included — have initially proclaimed. This conversation offers a peek at a recalibrated calculus of the steps we must dance if we’re to obtain the freedom we seek.

I am still certain we will get there, “there” being a place where we are liberated from our conditioned responses to see each other as other, and will instead just grow the f*ck up and get on with kindness and innovation, not anger and blame.

More likely, it will take these next 20 years to till and seed the ground for Pluto in Pisces when universality will be the astro-tone.

And we will then be ready to responsibly handle the power we say we want.

The inspiration for this interview comes from a YouTube video Cass released earlier this year, where she challenged the prevailing astrology community to reconsider that Pluto in Aquarius will not be all that we have thought, but will instead force us to confront the tremors of feudalism. It’s something we address in this interview.

This is a longer than usual podcast, and yet there was so much more we could have explored. Thankfully, Cass has agreed to return later this year. I hope you will be as excited as I am to welcome her now and in the near future to deliver her take on the news from the Ensouled Universe.

To learn more about Cassandra’s work: CassandraTyndall.com

Still to come…

T. SUSAN CHANG

Coming soon to the docu-mental podcast is a disscussion with the astoundingly polymathic T. Susan Chang, whose approach to her many disciplines, which range from policymaking to sewing Tarot-themed comforters, to teaching creative writing, to cooking, and more, is derived in part from her Classics training at Harvard University.

Although Susie’s voice might be familiar to many in this audience as a food commentator and cookbook reviewer at NPR, we’ll primarily be discussing her expertise in archetypal mythology as made practical for every day living through her latest book, The Living Tarot.

My hope is that our discussion will give you ideas for how to reframe our quotidien existence, with all its trials as well as triumphs, as an endless psychodrama where we encounter ourselves by way of encountering the Gods.

Use the Substack app for easy navigation of all your favorite content

The Substack app aggregates all your Substack interests in one place. And if you have any questions, you can contact me through this email and I will be happy to help out, too.

Here’s the link to download the app:

Get the Substack app

Thanks for listening!

Peace,

Whitney

Greetings,

This episode of the docu-mental podcast is the first of at least three upcoming co-productions with my other Substack, News from the En…

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Greetings,

It’s a bit of word jazz on this episode of the docu-mental podcast. I wanted to have Ethel on last year when he was nominated for a Grammy for his spoken word album, Black Men Are Precious, but the time wasn’t right for either of us.

So, instead, we have a little spoken word back and forth of our own, debating whether it’s the Christonationalfascists who are winning, or just whomever is clever enough to turn off the infostream long enough to hear themselves think.

Two particular bars of thought music worth noting in this episode are the reveries on rediscovering our myths vs. reimagining everything all over again; and, whether AI will force us out of our old stories and into being present for the now.

And if you pay attention, you will hear the strains of me confessing my ETs on earth theory, or at least a significant portion of it.

Ethelbert has been prolific of late, publishing about a book of poems a year since the pandemic, the latest being We Eclipse into the Other Side: Twoness Poems, a collaboration with poet and translator, Miho Kinnas.

Previously, Ethel was a two-time Fulbright scholar in Israel, the chair of the Institute for Policy Studies, and for more than 40 years, was the director of the Afro-American Resources Center at Howard University.

Peace,

Whitney

Greetings,

What’s the point to life if there is no joy, no beauty, no clean dirt to play in?

Such a line of questioning is the current that runs through this conversation with novelist, podcaster, and all-around muckraker, Greg Olear. It’s Greg’s second visit to the podcast, this time to talk about Sunday Pages, the pause for reflection he offers in between his other work uncovering the “fuckery” of fascists as part of PREVAIL, his home on the Substack platform.

Greg and I laugh a lot as we enter into a deep — and deeply irreverent, yet never irrelevant — conversation about the importance of art and beauty in politics in order to “recharge the spirit”, and why today there is a movement afoot to quash and control the words we use.

It’s an erudite conversation, but not a stuffy academic one. And there are a few salty words, which makes things tasty.

We discuss the rise of fascism in the US, whether it’s been there all along, and whether and how it might continue. We muse about the role of the Roman Empire in spreading Christianity and how that impacts our public policies today, prompting me to posit my theory that we might be “misremembering” the actual nature of the birth of Christ and all that was supposed to mean for humanity, a theory that scandalizes the Jesuit-educated, Catholic-raised Greg (but only for a moment).

Plus, Greg reads a few lines of poetry and shares a funny story about a bar in Hoboken, New Jersey and a little ditty called Jessie’s Girl, and we agree that residents from the Garden State tend toward a certain practicality we’d all do well to aspire to…

Which is why we agree that in a democracy, even fascists should have a voice, regardless of whether it’s dead wrong.

Thanks for listening!

Peace,

Whitney

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Greetings,

It’s great to be back with another season of the docu-mental podcast!

In this episode, I asked Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird, a professor of Celtic mythology and Medieval literature, and founder of the Celtic Source series of courses, how he views the utility of ancient myth as an effective counter to today’s propaganda.

Think dragons and magical swineherds vs. Tucker Carlson or Don Lemon.

I wanted to know whether myths of old can clue us into what systems of governance our ancestors found effective before empires, including media empires, came in and smashed everything to bits.

Dr. Morus-Baird and I end up talking about direct democracy. We also talk about how pre-empire there were morals and beliefs that did indeed work. We just have been trained to forget them because previous systems, if left intact, will eventually threaten the status quo held in place by the Powers That Be.

The key to power is narrative, according to Dr. Morus-Baird. So, I wanted to know: What narratives in the myths of old still resonate with power we’ve yet to reclaim? How do we get that power back? And, once we do, how do we wield it in order to liberate us from the current dumb shit we’re force-fed by the corporate media, by our politicians, by our corporations, by anyone who thinks they can get away with disempowering us because we’ve shown them that they can?

Keep that in mind as we consider how a “love of the land” is far too often turned into jingoism and hatred of others instead of a way to express love and support for the earth and all those who live upon it.

And surprisingly, because they cling to the same top-down paradigm, so-called sustainability proponents themselves only perpetuate an exhaustion of the earth, not a regeneration of it.

Why? Because without myths and language that reflect an inside-out understanding of how we actually come from the land, we won’t ever treat it with respect. As long as our mental constructs hinge on hierarchical, empircal thinking, we will continue to view the land as separate from us.

For example, what are “sacred lands”? Why isn’t all land sacred? The languages that preceded the Romanization of our thoughts with the relentlessly left-brained Latin, told of one world: Nature. There was no super-natural. Everything was natural.

I just love this conversation. It’s fun, smart, and provocative, and kind. We leave behind the angry derision in that “tone” the Department of They, as in the “they say” folks, all seem to speak with these days.

I think you will enjoy it, too. And best of all, you will start to notice the manipulation all around you, if even just a little bit more. And then, you can decide to ignore it, or better still, think beyond it.

The questions are yours for the asking. All you have to lose is nothing. All the Powers That Be have to lose is your attention…and their hold over your mind.

One last thing, don’t forget that on May 15, much of the content in docu-mental will live behind a paywall. This is my job, and you are my investor. What is this effort of helping you test your truths to develop deeper mental roots worth to you? If you are unable to invest financially, please share these posts and podcasts with others and leave comments below. It all adds up! Thank you.

Peace,

Whitney

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I just sent you a juicy podcast with Greg Olear and told you that you were getting a second podcast, a little extra gravy to splash on your plate. And then I forgot to include that link!

So, here’s a whole new plate of podcasting, a stellar one at that.

Here’s what I said about it previously:

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Greetings,

When I started this publication, it was partially informed by a burgeoning movement called “solutions journalism.” I’d first heard about it in 2016 after being invited to a National Press Foundation seminar. The featured speakers included a couple of journos who’d been using their reporting to frame issues so that it was clear how attempts to address things like recidivism weren’t working and why, and most importantly, what could be done instead.

A tipping point had been reached. The tension reporters so often feel when they are privy to real problems but bound by a professional “code” not to show partiality towards a solution had been overcome by the sense that it was pointless to continue feeling helpless after filing yet another story about corruption and societal ills while knowing that just telling people it was happening was not enough.

It was time for action. Not political action. Citizen’s action, which is not to be confused with Citizens United, a bogus name that has nothing to do with citizenship and everything to do with dark money laundering by many of the same people who directly profit from our government’s breakdown.

Let me put this another way: solutions journalism arose from the realization that because our government has largely failed us, and corporations, where the bulk of power in this country now resides, on the whole don’t give a damn, solving problems falls to the rest of us.

And no matter what you might think of journalists, they, we, are people too. We do care, and we often have far more connections and resources than the general public, the very public most affected by the failure surrounding us all. So, let’s put them to use in the most effective way called for by these times in which we live.

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vol. 3 issue 37

Greetings,

If you are white, and could speak frankly to anyone about race, what would you say?

Would you explain why reparations aren’t fair, stating that you didn’t own slaves, so your tax money shouldn’t go to pay for sins of the past?

Maybe you’d talk about how you’re not a racist, so you should not have to attend diversity, equity, and inclusivity training.

Maybe you’d say that you work hard, you played the game, you got where you are because you did what you’re supposed to do, and it’s not right to be vilified for it.

Maybe you would say other things if the landscape were framed differently.

Maybe you’d see things afresh from your own perspective, not just from that of the black community, if you understood how racism is made up in order to keep you in line.

What does the system as it is cost you? How is your life flatter, more stilted as a result of being distracted into defending yourself against being a racist when what is really happening is something else, something far more pervasive, even if less visible?

That’s why I think this conversation between author and diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) consultant, Dax-Devlon Ross, and myself is important, and perhaps even imperative.

Because: it’s about you.

This podcast starts out with me introducing Dax just like I would any other guest. Then it immediately goes off script into unplanned places after I unthinkingly use the word “ghetto”.

We don’t talk about his book at all, we talk about what it’s like to be a black man and a white woman, and the expectations upon us respectively. We talk about how we see the way what we’re taught gets in the way of seeing not just each other, but ourselves.

I have written critically before about DEI training because I think it’s just more of the same old, same old bull puckey of being told what to think and how to act. I have had enough of that, thank you.

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Greetings,

At long last, the promised interview with Alice “Ace” Sparkly Kat, author of Post-colonial Astrology: Reading the Planets through Capital, Power, and Labor.

It’s an important piece in our examination of the sentiment that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of Capitalism, the end of the hierarchy we have invested in, yet which cannibalizes us all in the end.

I tried to keep the conversation focused on the book’s innovative way of viewing the deleterious impacts of hierarchy, being mindful of not alienating my non-astrology audience.

However, for context, just know that as far as astrology goes, Ace deconstructs what the various planets in our Ptolemaic solar system (the 7 heavenly bodies we can see with our naked eye) have been assigned to represent pre- and post-Roman Empire.

She asks us to consider whether the assignments are actually helpful to us as we develop relationships with the greater forces in our lives, with ourselves, and with one another. If these assigned meanings are not helpful, why not, and what other interpretations make sense to us instead?

This interview is an excellent follow-on to the podcast I did with author Brian Muraresku about his book, The Immortality Key, a New York Times bestseller linking psychedelics to Jesus, but also to the way the Roman Empire quashed access to the Eleusinian mystery ceremonies where psychedelics were featured, and where women priestesses guided initiates to the world beyond, the one that once we are reassured exists, imparts meaning to our lives lived here.

From my perspective, it was at that moment in history that whatever evil there is in the universe that seeks to stamp out the glimmers of human liberation and continual reunion with the Source, found its foot soldiers in the Roman Empire.

They trashed the Republic, stamped out Antiquity’s emerging democracy, orchestrated the hostile take-over of the Eleusinian mysteries, and established hegemony through the Empire’s subsidiary, the Roman Catholic Church, which sold to us the Eucharist as a sanitized version of the mystery that was more like a bait and switch: “Come for the communion, be separated from your true self by the holy hierarchy!”

Yes, the Roman Empire engineered sewers, sanitation, roads and running water, but did so on the backs of slaves and others, all of whom they forbade to partake in the woodland Eleusinian mystery ceremonies that the Eucharist is based in. Thus, the Roman imperialists achieved subjugation by separating the people from themselves, orienting them instead toward the Roman leadership, or as Ace says, “towards capital,” and away from their internal governor, the one that naturally regulates one’s longing for commune with the Greater Source.

In other words, an orientation towards capital/the capitol is unnatural. But we’ve been conditioned to think it is the only state of existence to which we can aspire, if not through the church, then certainly through our system of Capitalism packaged as the only way to ensure democracy.

Is there any wonder, then, why we feel so much anxiety and depression here in the US? We know instinctively we are not living in our natural state, but we don’t know how or why. It’s been so long, across so many generations, that we’ve been conditioned to accept that we can only access higher truths — and liberation — if someone packages these things and distributes them to us first.

And all the while, we’re told we’re free, simply because we are Americans, or that as Christians, we will be “saved” because we are obedient. Obedience is not freedom.

These are the kinds of questions and considerations that make Ace’s book not just culturally relevant, but important. As I say in this interview, to one degree or another, as long as we do not consider the origins of our stories, then we are all living a lie, even if we are not liars.

Race and astrology as forms of ‘magical thinking’

Even if you never give a glancing thought to the stars, it is possible to consider what Ace posits, namely, that just as astrology is a language of symbols and myth-making, so too is race a product of fantabulous mythologizing — a form of “magical thinking” says Ace — using agreed upon symbols to construct stories that ultimately turn into policies, which then become oppressions, because the symbology supports only those empowered by what the symbols are said to represent.

Or, as Ace writes in her book, “Both astrology and race are social constructs and are rooted in the circulations of culture.” Ace’s work suggests that those who insist upon seeing racism as merely an “interpersonal phenomenon, rather than composite matrices of domination that limit access and freedom,” are in essence abnegating their own powers of imagination, instead submitting themselves to the will of “the powers that be” rather than take ownership of their lives.

Which is why I love this book as an American cultural critic first, an astrologer second.

It challenged me to re-consider how we use and relate to symbols as ubiquitous as the Sun, for example, which we equate symbolically with power. The Sun is the source that allows everything to exist. It is also used to justify total surveillance, power over, and extermination of what is “dark”, as in dark-skinned. While I might never have explicitly attributed these meanings to the Sun, I have never thought to challenge how they are implied when we accept them without questioning their etymology.

For example, as Ace points out, royalty throughout history has always equated the Sun with gold. They have also tended to hoard that gold, burying it in the ground. Thus, royalty and gold, as well as the power of the city-state where the gold was buried, have been implied by the Sun.

Following a global gold mining boom in the late 19th century, the mineral was circulated briefly as a currency up until the first half of the 20th before being taken out of circulation and once again buried in the ground in vaults, primarily beneath London and New York, where it remains.

Once again, the implication is that gold is therefore artificially scarce, and so artificially exclusive, all while still being associated with the Sun. The result is that the Sun is considered both life-sustaining, but also exclusive. This helps justify at whatever conscious level it might be to some, why some humans “deserve” access to resources, and some do not. It is also therefore, justification at whatever conscious level, for why some humans “deserve” to live and some do not. Ergo, racism, and in the extreme, genocide.

Original Sin: hierarchy v. white supremacy

One question which came up in our conversation was the notion of Original Sin in the context of which came first, hierarchy or white supremacy.

The logic I follow, derived from the years spent mapping our national conscience through this publication and podcast series, suggests that hierarchy came first as a default mode, and all manner of subjugation hence flows from it, including white supremacy, and thus racism. Is this the correct framework? I don’t know.

Either way, I state unequivocally that for us to believe racism is merely a “personal” perspective and not an institutionally enforced one is to believe a pernicious lie. Racism is real because our policies continue to acquiesce to it. They do so, because our foundational beliefs, represented by the symbols our hierarchy has collectively agreed represent “reality”, command them to.

Regardless of whether white supremacy supersedes hierarchy or if it is the other way around, our reasons for its existence must be interrogated. Indeed, philosopher and professor George Yancy writes that racism is our ontological reality.

That is why patching “fixes” like Affirmative Action, for example, onto our policies without first asking ourselves the underlying rationale for the policies that hold the system in place, is ultimately useless.

Racism’s damage to the collective is real. Tinkering incessantly with our broken system without addressing the precepts it was founded upon is a waste of time when we have no time to waste.

Lies sanctified by society without question, such as that the Sun equates with some of us being worth the time and energy, and others not, also wastes human resources.

To not question our systems of faith-in-action is literally a matter of life or death.

The infinite resource of mind

Regarding the heavenly spheres anew caused me to do some thinking out loud in the interview, and I appreciate Ace’s patience as I considered familiar things as though for the first time, verbalizing both my epiphanies and my misgivings.

This interview with Alice Sparkly Kat once again stresses for readers of docu-mental the notion we’ve been exploring, that we stand to lose far too much power the more we allow others -- the news media, the church, the digital giants, any cult that seeks to brand us -- to aggregate our attention and distract us from knowing and using the power of our own minds and imagination.

How much gatekeeping to the Beyond do we actually need?

The question returns us to how the Roman Catholic Church used the language and the ceremonies of the people Roman emperors wanted to subjugate. It took the same words about liberation and hope for the life beyond, and used them to keep people enslaved.

Reorienting away from capital, from Capitalism, does not mean poverty or whatever dismal and demonic scenario the hierarchical top spooks us with. It simply means we become the gatekeepers to our imagination, the only infinitely renewable resource on earth, and the gateway to what lies beyond this life. It means we re-orient to ourselves.

If there is a lesson here, it is that perhaps it is easier to imagine the end of Capitalism than it is the end of the world. That in fact, to not do so is to ensure the end of the world. That we’ve not imagined such a future for ourselves collectively is a fait accompli of the hierarchy who stands to lose access to our hearts, minds, and lives if we do imagine a future that is not mediated.

That is why toppling the hierarchy begins and ends with our imagination, and why we must guard it as though it is as precious as the Sun.

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The liberation of a post-truth world

What these past five years in the US have shown us is that we live in a post-truth world. At first, I saw this as terrifying. But now, I find it liberating.

We can untether ourselves from truths that are lies, but not the consequences of our actions taken as a result of adhering to the lies as truths.

That we have or have not done something will always be the fact of any matter. Saying something didn’t happen when it did is not changing our mythology, it’s lying.

But we can change our shared truths, our national myths, and thus help shape our actions and their consequences, by understanding that cultural precepts like race, like astrological symbols, like political parties, like gender (yes, gender — one’s capacity for sexual reproduction is biological, gender is not), are nothing more than agreed upon stories. That our cultural truths might be “fabricated” or “made up” does not negate their power nor its meaning, since they are attempts to describe what is ineffable – the eternal Real of existence.

Instead, the more we consciously participate in infusing our symbols with meaning, the more meaningful they will be, and to more people.

We are making it all up, but whatever we choose to create, it will matter.

And that is the truth.

Peace,

Whitney

The podcast for this is linked at the top.

The video is here.

Time stamps/chapters of podcast are below.

About that comment on Jung’s racism and sexism in this podcast…

One thing which came up in my conversation with Ace was her take that Carl Jung, considered the father of Depth Psychology and the world’s most “famous astrologer”, was racist and sexist. Many would agree with her, while others might suggest he was simply a product of his cultural moment.

Either way, he certainly made statements about the planets and the unconscious that were categorically binary, and made questionable comments about the nature of the unconscious, even though as Ace’s own investigations show, such statements were not always justified.

I think it is worth having a more thorough discussion about this, since both Jung and Sigmund Freud respectively were, along with William James, progenitors of American psychology and psychiatry. Since this is about mapping the american states of mind, I am looking into who can come on the podcast to address the larger context and considerations of Ace’s statement. More to come…

W

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Timestamps for Alice Sparkly Kat and Post-colonial Astrology:

0:00 Intro and discussion about the name Alice Sparkly Kat

5:00 Myth-making depends on who controls the language that frames access to the archetypes

8:18 Race is not real, it is not biological; begins with religion.

12:30 The “traditional” mythology of the Sun

16:45 Why do we consider astrology as “western”?

21:00 The exciting phenomenon of deconstructing astrology while also using it to build community

31:00 Is astrology spiritual or habitual?

39:00 Mental health definitions “are made thought a middle class (male) white lens”

48:00 Colonizing the moon for “real”

52:00 Astrology’s appeal to fascists and neo-liberals

59:00 Resisting the colonization of our minds

1:06:00 The liberation of living a life not “received” but examined

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Greetings,

I’m still taking a break from posting new material, but this morning I recorded an exciting interview with debut author…

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Greetings,

I’m on vacation from producing docu-mental for a few weeks. Please enjoy this episode of the podcast that has been among the move listened to ever in the history of t…

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Greetings,

This podcast episode with Acyuta-bhava Das, an ayahuasca vision quester and now a spiritually focused astrologer and bhakti yoga practitioner, is the third and final in our series exploring the intersection of mental health, psychedelics, and democracy.

The tone and feel of this conversation is cozy and inviting, largely because of the energy of my guest. When I re-listened to it before posting it, I was yet again captivated by Acytua’s positive wonder at the world, inflected with a deep wisdom gained not just from being in more than 100 ayahuasca ceremonies, but also from having a mind and body trained on what truly matters in life. Best of all, as Acyuta and I discuss, this peace of mind and state of hope and expectation is available to all of us.

Born Adam Elenbaas, Acyuta grew up a Methodist preacher’s kid in a family haunted by various personal demons, as he describes in his book Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest. An addiction to opioids and other drugs along with a spiraling depression eventually culminated in a dabble with psychedelics. Whereas he thought he would have fun taking the novel drugs, instead Acyuta (then still known as Adam) had a “magic mushroom” induced spiritual crisis that led him to want to know more about what was beyond what we perceive only with our eyes.

It was then that he sought help from ayahuasca shamans in the Amazon, where use of the bitter purgative brew is contextualized through ceremony and spiritual practice.

The psychedelic ceremonies helped Acyuta end his addictions and depression, and inspired him to become a bhakti yogi, a spiritually focused astrologer and teacher, and a noted expert on responsible psychedelic use.

I have been so blessed to bring you all three of these conversations about psychedelics, as each has been nuanced, rich, funny, and also mind blowing. The “mind blown” quality not just because they are about psychoactive drugs, but because this entire series has opened new lines of questioning that even I didn’t anticipate. It has shaken apart the ossified structures of old beliefs and pressed for us to think how we might build new, more flexible, authentic ones.

Even though my online journal’s full name is “docu-mental: mapping the american states of mind”, I really hadn’t understood how intricately linked our mind is to democracy.

What brought that home hard for me was the conversation with author Brian Muraresku about how the Greeks of the Antiquities could have brought us science as well as democracy, while also serving up all the strange tales of Gods romping with humans, sexually and otherwise. It seems it was their use of psychoactive substances that took them from the “logical” to places where wisdom was gleaned from the gods in fantastical ways, simultaneously metaphorical yet real, and in that way the most “real” of all. In other words, the Greeks were the ones to access and translate for us the archetypes of earthly existence, an essential understanding for humans if we are to evolve.

This is why being in possession of our minds is essential. If we keep outsourcing our innerspaces to the attention merchants who aggregate our minds, then profit from them by dimming our capacity for imagination and authenticity and instead making us slaves to the various cults of branding, we will never achieve democracy. We will never be free.

So, then. What can psychedelics teach us about how to be and stay free? That is, even if personally, we never choose to use these drugs? (And, as I mention in all three interviews, I have not ever used psychedelics and so do not speak from direct experience.)

That is the focus of my discussion with Acyuta. The funny thing is, we never really talk long about the psychedelics themselves, but instead, about the greater lessons learned from allowing there to be more than one paradigm of reality.

The questions raised in this interview still have me thinking about how to frame reality in a post-truth world where liars and visionaries can be hard to tell apart.

My conversation with Acyuta truly is the most enlightened and enlightening discussion about the nature and necessity of hierarchy I personally as yet have been fortunate to have – and one which I am doubly fortunate to be able to share with you in this podcast.

I so highly recommend you listen. It’s an opportunity to spend time with a person who is real in ways that are beyond “real”. The discussion will inspire you to think differently about what matters in your life, and whether you are emphasizing those things or letting them slip away.

But it will also give you hope that creating a meaningful life is always, always within your power.

The time stamps/audio chapters for this conversation are listed below.

Here are the other posts and podcasts relevant to this conversation:

Why you should care who controls psychedelics - docu-mental (substack.com)

Howard University exemplifies cancel culture, but not without our help - docu-mental (substack.com)

Jesus, psychedelics, and democracy: how to clear the 'soul rot' between heaven and earth - docu-mental (substack.com)

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Peace,

Whitney

Time stamps for audio chapters:

0:00 Introduction

1:41 What does name Acyuta-bhava mean?

3:50 Story of what led him from being a preacher’s kid who’d become an opioid addict, to a psychedelic vision-quester who inspired his sister and preacher father to also use psychedelics

9:45 Description of what using psychedelics feels like, and how it changes one’s perception of self and of world

11:23 The adventure of mind v. escaping pain

14:18 The group experience of the same visions during psychedelic ceremonies emphasizes importance of ceremonial context v. recreational or therapeutic without care for soul

21:50 Not respecting context will lead to “colonization” of psychedelics, and will have dire consequences

25:00 True “shamanism” v. New Age bullshit

32:10 Illuminating discussion about how and why science being “neutral” is still a proactive stance. “Every paradigm, including science, creates things, has a point of view, and so has ramifications.”

35:55 Nature shows us the way to play with our myths, stories, and ceremonies to make them relevant to each new era

37:30 The implications of this for policymaking

41:00 What questions are necessary to ask if we are to go around Big Pharma to control our own access to resources of transcendence?

45:00 Earth in peril because science can’t cure greed.

47:00 Description of hierarchy in action: being ayahuasca ceremony listening to things being killed and eaten in rain forest. Understanding of hierarchy as a necessity, and as something to learn to engage with, not conquer. Discussion of what happens when trying to overtake hierarchy.

52:00 The importance of “spiritual technologies” such as yoga, to move us beyond thinking in only one paradigm.

54:00 Progress without spiritual evolution leads to cynicism.

57:00 Current disruptions to our paradigm such as new UFO info, other events, demonstrate need for new tools, but how learn without indoctrination?

1:04:00 The essential nature of kindness to evolution and to working with the gods. It invites them in, among many other things discussed.

1:10:00 Narcissism and kindness are antithetical.

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Greetings,

He demurs when I say it, but this podcast is my interview with our era’s equivalent to Galileo, Brian Muraresku.

Whereas Galileo challenged church doctrine that the Earth is the center of Cosmos — and so was put under house arrest until his death — Muraresku similarly has challenged church doctrine by connecting the dots across many specialties to convincingly argue that the Christian church is predicated on the Dionysian mystery cults for which hallucinogens were essential. (Of note: he had the Vatican’s help in doing so.)

The time stamps for this podcast are listed below if you want to get started listening right away. Otherwise, read on for more about this book and its author.

Muraresku spent nearly 15 years in search of this personal Holy Grail, a quest he scintillatingly recounts in his New York Times bestselling book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (St. Martin’s Press).

The relatively young classicist and practicing lawyer has illustrated that the mystery of Christ’s transubstantiation, known to Catholics and others around the globe as the holy Eucharist, is aligned with Greek Eleusinian and Dionysian mysteries where the “wine” of Holy Communion wasn’t an alcoholic beverage, but an herbal, psychoactive brew, known in Greek as pharmako.

Muraresku cites plenty of sources from the Antiquities indicating that drinking the special brew led to initiates experiencing a sort of rapture where they communed directly with the All beyond what is mortal, and found they no longer feared death. Further, through his impeccable research, Muraresku illustrates not only is there a through line of psychoactive substance use running from these ceremonial mystery rites, through the early secret cult of Jesus, to today’s psychedelic trials, such as the ones discussed in the previous episode of docu-mental, but that what has kept that line humming is the experience of divine communion.

But wait.

Muraresku has also rigorously connected the dots between scientific and other evidence to rightly interpret the Gospel of John to suggest the Church as it is today wasn’t exactly what Jesus had in mind. Instead, it was the plant “kingdom” and its administration by women — particularly mature women — of its mediating properties that were the rightful ones to bridge heaven and earth.

While Muraresku does not say this, I suggest in our interview that if what his scholarship points to is true, and I think it is, that makes the founding of the Church predicated on a lie.

That is to say, the Roman Catholic Church deliberately misinterpreted the Eucharist, paving the way for the linear hierarchies that have lead to today’s existential angst globally.

While I found the whole book exciting, I was particularly taken by Muraresku’s citation of an obscure Roman Eleusinian mysteries initiate, Praetextatus. It was he who successfully, if only temporarily, defended the mysteries from the Christian emperor Valentinian, who wished to end them in 364 (AD). Praetextatus claimed that the Eleusinian mysteries “[held] the whole human race together” and that life without them would be “unlivable”.

In the end, however, the Roman authorities eventually did do away with the mysteries, at least as they were administered in homes by women, typically the “grandmothers” of the group who had the correct herbal knowledge. Instead, the emperors et alia outlawed the priestesses, did away with the hallucinogens, and made it illegal to worship at home. Then they developed a male-only rite of the Eucharist which was wine without the psychoactive substances, and made it available only in the church.

In essence, the hierarchy domesticated the mysteries.

I suspect that through these mysterious rites, grounded in the worship of Demeter, goddess of grains and the harvest, the seeker Praetextatus had a vision that prophesied precisely where we are today. That is to say, by having domesticated the mystery, we have also domesticated the Goddess/Mother Nature, an act that has led to the increasing unlivable conditions on Earth, where the rate of extinction has wiped out nearly 60% of all global wildlife in the past half century, and climate catastrophes regularly now decimate the biosphere.

As docu-mental has covered in these past three years, this original act of domestication has now played out over the centuries not just as monolithic religious authority, but also as late-stage Capitalism, Socialism, Communism. It doesn’t matter what name it takes, it’s just one big story of how a pervasive authoritarian blob has seen to the perpetual enslavement of humans everywhere, whether literally or figuratively, oppressed by the top line who has all of the power, but ultimately takes care of itself, rather than show it feels a responsibility to any of the rest of us.

We feel it as anxiety and depression, a swelling of existential depression. The Earth feels it as death.

The Jesuit-educated Muraresku still avers his Catholic upbringing and admits that a globe full of faithful Christians is testament to there being something of God in the church. At the very least, it suggests that not everyone needs to use psychedelics in order to seek God.

And while I left organized religion years ago, and never fully felt committed to it when I was a part of it, I see beauty within it. I believe in the goodness of Pope Francis, and that if any modern era pope were ever to “get it”, it would be him. I also believe in the sincerity of many other ecumenical leaders. I certainly believe in the sincerity of those who find comfort within the church.

And yet, the hierarchy must go. It’s not real. It’s not what God, Goddess, All That Is, nor apparently even Jesus intended. And it’s killing us and our planet.

How it came to be that any human ever got a notion that it was okay to ever own another human being is a question for another day, but that itself seems in these pandemic times the real virus, the cancer of the mind. As I ask my guest in this interview: What is the point of having power over everything if the natural conclusion of doing so is the destruction of everything? Please don’t be so facile as to say that it will be at that moment rapture happens. I’m no biblical scholar, but neither am I simple. And neither is the answer to this question.

What is the solution, then? How do we engage with one another so that we can dismantle the deadly structures and create better ones that do not enslave us to them? So that we can allow the planet to evolve as Mother Nature intended, not obsessively bend her to our will?

We start by asking the question of what our actual heritage is as Americans. Is it Greek or is it Christian? And if as a democracy it’s Greek, why do we not insist on citizens having a classical education? Why are Latin and Greek barely taught in this country, and why do we know virtually nothing of the Antiquities which provide the moral foundation of our Constitution?

And I also think we might put ourselves in the shoes of those living during ancient times when slavery also existed, but so did the mysteries. Where might their civilization have evolved had hierarchy not usurped the fledgling spirit of true democracy? As has been pointed out by a previous docu-mental guest, American University associate librarian, director of research services, and Hellenic High Priestess, Gwendolyn Reece, PhD, equal justice — not enslavement — for all was essential for democracy to work.

It’s a perilous time, frankly. It’s a time when one of the most celebrated Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Howard University in Washington, DC, has just announced it is dissolving its Classics Department, as Muraresku reminds us in this discussion.

This is troubling not just because the black community has been at the forefront of leading this nation from its Greek and Christian roots, as evidenced by the writings of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who turned to Socrates as inspiration for his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, but also because, as Harvard professor Cornell West wrote recently, “Academia’s continual campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture.”

Talk about “cancel culture”.

Without the classics to inform our soul, we might as well do away entirely with privacy, too. We won’t need our hearts, minds, and desires. We will be entirely at the mercy of the hierarchy.

My final thought on this is to share something Muraresku’s book elucidated clearly for me in my constant quest for what could bridge our current divide between soul and science.

By posing the question, as he does, as to why a society as highly sophisticated as the Greeks, who not only would discover and develop the foundations of today’s science, but who also were engaged in developing a democracy that, given a chance, might eventually have led to women and slaves being given the same rights as men, would also engage in the so-called silliness of gods and humans comingling.

The answer was in the mysteries. Put plainly, the Greeks had a very sophisticated form of spirituality that had the potential to work hand-in-hand with a democratic government to effectively balance heaven and earth. The silliness was the sublime.

I take that to mean that democracy would only work if the feminine principle was kept in balance with the masculine one — neither is more important than the other, just different.

Practically speaking, that means if we don’t respect nature and see her through the eyes of sustainability, democracy is moot. It’s impossible. The cycles of nature and the women who represented those cycles were the fulcrum of understanding we are part of a larger story, that we do not actually die when we die, that it was not the male-dominated church or any other hierarchical, linear construct that would ever make that truly possible.

As Muraresku himself suggests (p. 73 of the hardback version of his book), the bridge to the Great Beyond and back is only possible when the wild is in balance with technology. There is no one or the other. There is no hierarchy if we want to survive. There is only both at the same time, in balance. As Praetextatus warned us, the mystery is the only way.

Science. Mystery. Soul. Not science trumps soul. Not soul trumps science. There is only the integrated whole where all parts matter, regardless of their intrinsic nature. Hierarchy kills. Domination is deadly. Dominion, peace, and kindness, however, are not only possible, they are the only way to support life on earth indefinitely.

E pluribus unum.

This is why at a time when psychedelic research is poised to make possible the scaling of their use for the masses, particularly for those who report existential depression, I hope enough of us will pause to ask better questions. Who should be in charge of these drugs? For what reasons? What does their power to deliver transcendence imply not just for individuals, but for the societies where individuals find themselves existentially troubled? Is it prudent to offer the power over these drugs to the very systems that perpetrate the existential depression?

I suggest it is only classically, critically educated minds that can skillfully ask such questions about where we’ve been and why, and whether where we are headed is in fact aligned with democracy.

To not rigorously challenge the status quo’s version of history —whether it is that of the Church, the corporation, or a political party’s line — will mean that with the re-emergence of psychedelics, we are ready to let the hierarchy insert itself between us and God all over again.

We might as well kiss democracy goodbye, and hope future generations will be lucky enough to have their own Galileo and aren’t so stupid as to let the moment pass.

Peace,

Whitney

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The time stamps of this podcast:

0:00 Introduction

2:00 The “best kept secret in history”

4:10 The Road to Eleusis, by Carl Ruck, Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, published in 1978: the first public statement about paleo Christian psychedelic use

7:30 The three pillars to the work: the Eucharist as a continuation of the pharmako and Dionysian mysteries; the Pagan continuity theory; and the idea that through the mysteries “We can die before we die so that when we die we do not die”

13:00 What does “blood of Christ” actually mean; the implied and literal cannibalism

15:00 The Gospel of John’s symbolic language for equating the Eucharist with the Hellenic Dionysian ceremonial mysteries; John 6:60

17:30 Dying before death (the immortality key), while also achieving communion with other worshipers, with God, and with the Earth

22:00 Today’s psychedelic drug trial participants overwhelmingly report that just one psychedelic experience is the most meaningful, spiritual one in their entire lives; what they report seems to mirror what occurred during the Dionysian mysteries.

24:00 The Roman Catholic Church usurps, and domesticates the mysteries “inserting” itself between the people and the pathway to know God

25:00 Psychedelics are a way to “die before death” so that death no longer becomes a fear because there is an understanding that when we die, we continue on in a different, non-material form

32:00 Why would the Greeks, the founders of democracy, of philosophy, of science, also have the soap opera-like tales of the Gods and not see any issues with integrating all three? Because they had access to the mysteries through the use of the pharmako, which we now call wine, but which was far more that just a wine as we know it today. It was more like the psychedelics of today.

34:00 The current crisis in our democracy is relevant when framed according to what the Greeks were able to achieve by being mature, spiritual adults who could work with the complexity of science, soul, and mystery.

34:30 The Gospel of John was an invitation to be both an initiate into the mysteries of Jesus/Dionysus, as well as a democratic participant in a society that was still developing democracy while also struggling with the question of slavery and inequality for women.

37:00 Praetextatus’ prophecy, which might have been a vision from the pharmako, now coming true: killing the mysteries, kills the planet.

39:00 The importance of not alienating humans from nature, the importance of kindness and group consciousness were demonstrated by the Dionysian mysteries. All of these things are essential to democracy, and are synonymous with health.

44:00 What would happen if we micro-dosed everyone on Capitol Hill? Would it grow our leaders up?

45:00 The importance of ritual as container for other-worldly experiences

48:00 Jesus sought to preserve, not domesticate, these mysteries, and was essentially the first heretic by urging his followers to worship in their own homes.

49:00 What is the true American heritage? Greek or Christian?

51:00 Greeks had democracy, science, and a very advanced sense of spirituality that accepted there is an afterlife. Classical education for our citizenry now would make this possible for our democracy now.

57:00 Fears of turning pharmaceutical companies into the next mediators of our capacity to touch the face of the divine.

59:00 The coming First Amendment challenges spawned by psychedelics.

1:01:00 The dangers of handing over power to the very systems that have for centuries been the ones to keep us “domesticated”.

1:04:00 Giving away the power to define what and how we experience the “immortality key” seals our fate as slaves to the System. Conversations like this one are what can alter that fate.

1:05:00 The importance of teaching how to be citizens through the classics.

Additional Resources:

Exterminate All the Brutes (hbo.com)

Howard University’s removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe - The Washington Post

How Settlers Convinced Themselves They Were the First Owners of America ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

The use of ritual to help clear the "spiritual pollution" of our democracy and start again - docu-mental (substack.com)

Why you should care who controls psychedelics - docu-mental (substack.com)

Healing 'mind cancer' - docu-mental (substack.com)

What stopped the FDA from taking tougher action sooner in the opioid crisis, and why it will happen again - docu-mental (substack.com)

Erratum: I mention in this episode that next week’s guest Acytua-bhava Das experienced about two dozen ayahuasca ceremonies. It was, in fact, over 100.

Greetings,

Earlier this year, I recorded a provocative interview with Scott Aaronson, MD, clinical research director at Baltimore’s Sheppard Pratt Institute, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious psychiatric research facilities, and soon to be a site for psilocybin research thanks to a hefty investment by Compass Pathways, a UK-based mental health company, that is funding the construction of a Centre of Excellence at Sheppard Pratt’s Towson, Maryland campus.

Dr. Aaronson will leverage his institute’s resources to help its new corporate partner “model the ‘clinic of the future’, showcasing the best thinking in science, therapy, technology, and design,” according to a Compass statement.

Meanwhile, in London, research is already underway to assess the utility of Compass’s proprietary psychedelic therapy, COMP360, which combines psilocybin with psychological support from specially trained therapists.  More on that in a moment.

This is just one of a few such investigations, including ones being conducted at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and at New York University’s Langone School of Medicine.

If Compass and other such biotech companies are seriously committed to evolving how mental health is delivered in this country – and globally, too – a serious reckoning must first occur. That is, we need to find ways to commit to evidence-based research without diminishing or worse – disregarding – the question of the human soul and spirit in our medicine first, and in our health policies second.

The administration of psychedelics to help people with depression might finally be the way we blow up the old, broken, hierarchical, “science is for rich people, the rest of you can just suffer”, approach not just to mental health care, but all care, as touched upon in this interview. The pandemic, with its questions of how to equitably distribute the vaccines has helped train our focus on this dilemma. The time could be now for psychedelics to help us deconstruct this punitive byproduct of materialistic hierarchy, and solve it once and for all.

The most obvious question surrounding this, then, is whether a therapeutic molecule found in nature should even be part of a proprietary scheme. I do not get into that here since plenty of others, including the stentorian podcaster and investor, Tim Ferris, have been advancing that question. Ferris and Compass investor Christian Angermayer had a high-profile tweet-off about this question earlier this year. The discussion spilled over onto LinkedIn, and also to VICE where reporter Shayla Love conducts an admirable investigation into, among many ways, how patent law could imperil access to these drugs.

Read more

Greetings,

On this episode, I talk with botanist and medical astrologer, Lee Lehman, PhD.

A medical astrologer can’t diagnose, can’t prescribe,…

Read more

Greetings,

Continuing with our look at what we might have lost of ourselves and our traditions through the brutal, national acculturation process over the centuries, is this tender and provocative conversation with Delta David Gier and Emmanuel “Bull” Black Bear, two members of the Lakota Music Project.

Based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the project began in 2009 when Maestro Gier, artistic director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, sought ways to serve the community at large. The result was a partnership with various members of the Sioux Nation, primarily those living on the Rosebud Reservation. Bull is a member of the Ogalala Sioux and is the leader of the Creekside Singers, a drumming and singing group from “the rez” that also now forms approximately half of the LMP’s total musicians.

Until the pandemic made performing impossible, at least for now, the LMP performed widely across the state, bringing their blended form of Western and indigenous music to audiences of all races, and in so doing, helping to effect inter-racial harmony throughout the region where racism against American Indians and indigenous skepticism of white “gringos” are prevalent.

I first was introduced to the LMP in 2019 when they performed here in Washington. I wrote about my experience attending this concert, and how it reminded me of time spent in Indian Country (and native Hawai’i as well), where time is a state of mind, not a linear construct to help us achieve progression from point A to point B.

How would it be possible, I wondered, to combine the music of a culture that responds to its environment, with the music of a culture that is predicated on controlling its environment? In fact, as both the maestro and Bull describe in this interview, it was not easy, but the difficulty was where they found their success. By putting aside egos and accepting that the point was less perfection than it was to build relationships, the LMP has created cultural bridges between the worlds of red and white, and still another bridge to a place where race is irrelevant: the place music takes us when language is limited.

It is in this place that the two leaders of their respective musical ensembles realized they shared the same goal. By assuming the mantle of what Gier calls “professional listeners”, together, he and Bull built trust in one another, their communities, and a way forward to peace an understanding that would not be possible without including the traditions of the past.

And that is why I think the LMP has much to teach us now, in this moment when our institutions have largely failed us all, rending our nation in tatters, leaving us to wonder how we ever will advance with a clear idea of how all the disparate parts of our multi-racial selves fit together.

My specific area of interest this year is in our traditional medicine, but it is deeper than that, as you likely have noted. My interest includes not just the ways we have traditionally treated illness in this country, but how the choices we have made around medicine and healing have never been in a vacuum, even when we have forgotten this fact.

We are never isolated, even when our commitment to what is shiny, fast, and novel might give us that impression. Instead, we either function within our environment, or become dysfunctional when we lose touch with our place within that environment.

I do not profess to have more than a neophyte’s appreciation for the sounds of native drumming and singing, and I am deeply reverent of my own Western musical traditions. Each moves me when I listen, but with different effects on how it engages my senses. Both ultimately will deliver me to a transcendent place, but the former is organic while the latter is measured.

As humans, we need both. It is our nature to make sense of things, to order and name them. But when we do so at the expense of remembering that ultimately, we are all connected to that which we parse, that nothing exists beyond the circular continuum of being, even if we are ingenious enough to lay it out on a timeline so we can experience it incrementally, then we come to believe the lie that we are separate. Our current legacy of healthcare demonstrates the expense and inefficiency of this approach.

The truth is, we are all connected, and we live within a world holistically. The need for reform is the evidence-based proof of how we have left too much of our elemental power behind in our focus on advancement. Jung might say it is time for us to look back now, and to retrieve the shadow of our former selves if we are to continue that advancement.

Dr. Victoria Sweet told us about how Slow Medicine is the way to exist and heal within the circle of life outside of the moments when the need for direct, acute response has passed. Physicians and healthcare systems that have access to both of these rhythms, I believe are the ones that are best equipped to treat and heal communities to their fullest, most complex potential.

It is this lesson in harmony and humility I was confident the LMP could offer us in our examination of what a compassionate and effective healthcare system of the future might look like. In my vision, it is a system of care that remembers we are all part of the environment, where each of us needs the right amount of rain, sunshine, fresh air, and nutritious food, a place where when we are denied that balance, we suffer and fail to thrive. My vision also recalls that while our modern health technologies are also essential – and inevitable, given that being human is to create and innovate – conquering and dominating the environment where we seek to effect healing is not.

We need both, but the importance of one – the ego, if you will – cannot precede the necessity and importance of the other.

Below are the video chapters in this short podcast/video.

Don’t forget, later this month (exact date TBA) —
Ensouled: the online journal of applied and cultural astronomy.  
It’s an anthropological approach to humanity’s relationship to the heavens over the eons.

Also to come later this Spring…

I have begun conducting interviews with prominent members of the vanguard of psychedelic medical research. First up will be a truly provocative interview with Scott Aaronson, MD, clinical research director at Sheppard Pratt in Towson, Md., one of the nation’s oldest psychiatric facilities, and now home to the Center of Excellence for psychedelic medical research for treatment-resistant depression, sponsored by the mental health company, Compass.

There is a lot of debate in the venture capital community currently, as to whether there should be proprietary gains from therapeutic molecules found in nature, and I will address that in time, but my conversation with Dr. Aaronson centered on the implications of taking people on trips, so to speak, when the guides in charge might not be sure of how to navigate the mind-blown-wide-open terrain.

Thanks for reading and listening.

Peace,

Whitney

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The Lakota Music Project Podcast and Video Chapter Markers:

0:00 Introduction

5:00 Partnership decision made to create better, more just world for Bull’s son

8:30 Difficulty to come in on just the right note

11:15 Music as a process of feeling, not counting

14:08 How two worlds come together

18:00 First you trust, then the music just happens

20:33 The marriage of two traditions improves the lives of those from each

28:21 Belief and faith in the process of each other brings integrity to all

30:55 The role of a “professional listener”

32:50 Music is what our souls hear and helps us thrive and heal

35:00 The death knell of music’s power is when it is commodified

Greetings,

Given that January 2021 still felt a hella bunch like 2020, I am considering this month to be the start of our actual 2021, and with it, a year-long look at what healthcare, and the general policy contexts it is set within, might be like if we were to deconstruct the way we currently frame it.

Here’s where I’m headed with this:

…it’s tantamount to immorality to let our policymakers rail on about irrelevant factors like cutting healthcare costs when what really needs attention is the cultural belief system in which all our other systems, including “healthcare”, operate.

Are we shaping our culture to fit our policies, or are we letting our policies shape our culture? That is the key question for evaluating the effectiveness of our policymakers.

My first impulse is to remind everyone that healthcare is a construct of economics, not the actual care of the sick, which is the practice of medicine. Things like “patient care”, the so-called triple aim of “the best patient experience, with the best possible outcome, for the lowest possible cost”, or patient “throughput”, the operational term used to describe how long a patient remains the responsibility of a discrete health system – these have absolutely nothing to do with actual healing. Nothing.

Read more

Greetings,

Smoking is awful for one’s health.

Generally speaking, that’s not a controversial statement. I could go down the rabbit hole about how smoking chemical-laden cigarettes on a regular, perhaps addictive, basis is what is actually bad for you, not the occasional inhalation of medicinal smoke into one’s lungs…but that is far from the point of this fascinating conversation with physician, historian, and author, Victoria Sweet, MD.

The actual take-away from my talk with this pioneer of medicine, is that when physicians are free to apply their best clinical judgment to the unique situations their patients present them with, then astounding feats of healing are not only possible, they are probable.

Read more

Greetings,

This weekend, I have been watching a series of military troop transport aircraft fly past, including the spooky tiltrotor MV22 Osprey, and a few other assorted planes. Some fly up and down the Potomac, others fly across the city, likely to Langley, but I am not sure where they are headed. I’ve spoken often about the choppers, but in going on a decade of having a window over Washington, I haven’t ever seen the troop transport planes fly from West to East over the city.

So, you know. Normal times.

But astrologer Elisabeth Grace, who specializes in reporting the news through the lens of what is called “mundane” astrology, tells me not to be too sad about what appear to me to be fascist times. It’s all part of our nation’s growing pains, according to her.

“Part of our growth as a nation is to finally own what we said we were all about,” Elisabeth says in this recording (the podcast version is linked above, just under the headline).

Mundane astrology is the study of how planetary movements signal shifts on earth, and how those shifts have the potential to play out in our politics and economies. What we’re experiencing now in the US, including the insurrection, might not have been predictable in terms of an exact event, but that there would be sedition and refusal to accept reality was predictable, according to Elisabeth.

In this recording, which features Elisabeth in her second docu-mental appearance, this one exclusively for patron subscribers, we examine in great detail how to see the final weeks of the Trump regime in context, including his cultish followers, his Russian and Congressional enablers, his coming financial and legal woes, his daughter’s potential rise to greater power, and the energy flavors of the incoming administration. Naturally, we’ll also explore what to expect from the inauguration this week, and what it will signal to our allies and enemies alike, as well as what energies will befall the QAnon crowd, and why they want to believe what they do.

Elisabeth also explains some basic astrology terms for the uninitiated, and discusses the US Constitution’s own natal horoscope and what to expect as it also faces energies of change.

There are plenty of reasons to be scared, worried, and angry right now, and for the next several years, she does admit. But! There are far more reasons to be excited, optimistic, and hopeful.

I hope you enjoy this fun, zippy, and alternative take on news of the world. If you are inclined, leave your comments below.

Thank you for being a patron subscriber. Special note: all that healthcare and medicine stuff I am promising…it’s in the works, and it’s coming. But times are troubled, and I don’t want your mind to be.

Peace,

Whitney

Show notes:

Elisabeth Grace Astrology

Hiding in Plain Site: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of Democracy in America by Sarah Kendzior

Gaslit Nation, the podcast with Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa

Dirty Rubles: An Introduction to Trump/Russia by Greg Olear

Olear’s article on members of Congress known as the “Moscow 8” who are in Putin’s pocket

A game theorist’s analysis of QAnon

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