This month I want to set science free, whilst exploring a deeper relationship to our beliefs by thawing-out-the-cold-a-bit, and talk about the sun; as well the Hindu Goddess of destruction and rebirth, Kali. I will also be burrowing into patterns of insufficient-self control, through Jeff Vandermeer’s book, Annihilation.

A killer take on The Whore of Babylon for December’s Tarot Offering podcast cover art; from the haunting + hypnotic @taticompton.

The representation of the ‘diabolical’ female figure, as an image to project all our self-destructive fears onto; is buried within the symbol of a woman clutching her golden cup, drunk on the blood of saints, riding a beast with seven heads and ten horns… Scholars will tell you she represents the Pagan Roman Empire or maybe Jerusalem. That she symbolises the abandonment of our noble energies in place of meaningless, short lived thrills. And so, the addictive cycle both feeds and eats itself…“First a man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.”  (The Devil.)

While Babylon has been described as an evil place, I also see a person, a company and ideologies, with an insatiable hunger for domination. The true revelation of her story, is that all the wine, all the meaningless fornications, all the great towers built to touch the skies of heaven and converse with God, rot in the hands of those that lust for materials and fake spirituality, to elevate their status to godlike proportions. This dilutes our real connection to others, body, mind and soul. And I hate that science makes me feel idiotic to use such romantic but apt language to describe what beauty is and has always been… The process of sharing and creating value with others. Science struggles to translate what a soul or the sacred is into its language. But that doesn’t mean we’re off the hook of taking care of those parts.

The High Priestess Meets Justice: A Cataclysmic Journey Through The Waters Of The Unconscious. 

This project in particular looks through the artefacts our desires leave behind… Pushing through bone, stone, blood and cum... To find something that a word like sacred, could only begin to describe. (The Lovers).

Links.

I have been looking into the effect of the idea of romantic love as a profound Western expression and burrowed deeper to find its marks on our collective psychological and behavioural history. Romantic love is a whole psychological package… with beliefs, rules and expectations… This month I talk about blood, love and free will.

HUGE THANK YOU TO @el_ojo_peludo aka Tono Camunas, for this months covert art. I am happy to look at this painting everyday.

September's 2021 Tarot Offering from Rachel Okna. 

Featuring cover art from some artists that I love. This month is from the master, Ichibay.

July - October 2021 episodes will be foraging through narratives and digging into Autonomy, Identity & Performance Needs, through a bloodied schematic lens.

Every month I pull some tarot cards and write and record an offering for the collective. I explore inextinguishable themes in our collective history, through the stories in us that will never die.

Thank you to the beauty, Tati Compton for the gorgeous, explosive cover art this month. A bit of dreamwork on both our parts went on with this, which inadvertently felt like a much looser way of creating things somehow... Less weight or something...

To switch up from watery, emotional Cancer season to the fiery heart-wrenched depths of Leo this month... I thought I’d loosen things up and share a few extracts from my poetry ~ dream journal for August’s offering.

I’d like to briefly open a portal into a dark pocket of human nature rotting and bulging, out of the seams of whatever creation is or means...Of love and pain returned to their senders … Writer, Ocean Vuong has said that the hardest task is to live only once. And that ‘if you must know maybe the body is only a question mark, that no answer could ever extinguish’...

https://okna.squarespace.com/

This month I've written a short tarot story meditation...  If you want to go ahead and skip to the meditation part, just skip to about 10 minutes in...

The sun rises higher, it starts to burn away, does a falcon hunt or just celebrate life?

She asks you if you knew that hawks could breed all year?

Surrounding her are an angel, an eagle, a bull and a lion.

She seems familiar to you in a weird way as if in a dream you had followed her there before. You ask her name.

She looks at you and carries on dancing in her floating oval wreath. She says,

At the last farmhouse, there were seven gates to open and close, so you can either follow the track or cut across the fields, but the trail is so steep and at some points the merest whisper of a trail... And if you hear the sound of the wet hot rain clattering on the metal roof like a gunshot...

For June's tarot offering on emotional deprivation, I’ve written a short story, that gets into the ribcage of the most common, maladaptive schema...

In a poem, Denise Riley says... 'There is nowhere further back than pure blue.'

In nature, there is no death, just a reshuffling of atoms.

It made me think of the concept of transindividualism... and I couldn’t resist a story that depicts The Tower as a body of flesh... A household of flesh... I also wanted to unpeel the sliding skin off wishes and shadows...

A physical union between bodies is also a wish (The Lovers).

Thank you to @arang_eleven for your mesmerising painting, that I've used for this month's cover art. I've been getting lost in this one for years.

For tarot sessions and questions: [email protected]

One of the stories I look at this month is the ancient Roman myth of King Saturn, the God of time, devouring his offspring. I dip my fingers in the waters of redemption and I weave through visions that press into the violations, perhaps, in an attempt to heal visceral wounds.

In the Once and Future King, a gorgeous retelling of the Arthurian legend, T.H. White says:

“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.”

Thank you to my fellow Scorpion, @wyrdian.tattoos (who reminded me about seeing with the stomach) for this crazy painting inspired by one of Goya's most visceral pieces; Saturn devouring his son.

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