What’s the relation between “truth” and meaning? Can we scientifically verify our visions while tripping? Are psychedelics tools or teachers? Is astrology “real?” Why has “myth” come to mean something that isn’t true in recent years, when no one ever claimed that myths were any truer than novels or poems? These and other questions are discussed (but not really answered) in this episode recorded on a bright, chilly Sunday afternoon in Kaş, Turkey.
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Intro music: “Brightside of the Sun,” by Basin and Range; “Blue Sky,” by Dwayne Hoover; “Smoke Alarm,” by Carsie Blanton.
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Almost ten years ago I found an excellent essay in Aeon written by Will Buckingham and how he approached the ancient Chinese book of the I-Ching:
“Sitting with the coins or yarrow stalks in my hand, going through the ritual of asking the I Ching a question, I am not looking for some irrational mystical guidance. Instead, I am looking for a release from the prison of competing certainties, a way of letting loose the simmering doubts and confusions that accompany all thought, so that I can take advantage of their creative richness. In other words, I use the I Ching not as a certainty machine, but as an uncertainty machine. Dissolving false certainties, it integrates the fact of unknowing into the fabric of my thinking, opening me up to hitherto unimagined possibilities, scattering the monotony of my either-or dilemmas into a myriad of forking paths.
The world we live in is very different from that in which the I Ching first arose. We have access to an astonishing array of tools and algorithms and banks of data that help in predicting probabilities for the future. Nevertheless, the world remains more vast and extensive than all of our data and all of our algorithms. Uncertainty is not just an adventitious fault that can one day be eradicated. It is also a part of being a human, with limited knowledge, in an endlessly complex world. And given that we will never have the complete knowledge to which we might aspire, we must always act in the twilight between certainty and uncertainty, between knowing and unknowing.”
The idea of using divination tools as ‘uncertainty algorithms’ is kind of like the same approach a team of collaborators and I are using when designing a Tarot deck based on the rich history of UFOlogy. It is also the reason why I feel psychedelics, ancient divination tools (and even mysteries like the UFO phenomenon) act as ‘catalysts’ of the subconscious: as they bypass the safeguards of rational thinking they tend to reinforce and ‘boost’ the core traits of our personality –if you are a good-hearted person like Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), psychedelics may help you to become an even better person, but if you’re a ego-driven manipulative prick like Charles Manson, well… you get where I’m going.
So it’s no wonder that 99% of people who are interested in astrology does NOT use it in order to get better insights about themselves, like Anya does. Instead they want to know if they’re going to win the lottery or if a new relationship is going to be successful; the same way that powerful people have consulted with personal astrologers for centuries –going from Alexander the Great all the way to Ronald Reagan.