Daniel Mack

Directionals for Casual Alchemists

self-guided practices, research, activities

Summer 2023

Notes on Shadow:   

Shadow is the deep part, the weathers, the atmosphere, we live in; and for that reason, we have a hard time recognizing it. As a teacher of mine put it:

“We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish.” ― John Culkin           

 

What do we know about it?                   

It's often avoided, medicalized as “Depression”;

Felt as the unclaimed, lingering, feral, blurry parts of inner life. It involves longing, waiting, solitude, hunting, disappointment, betrayal, freedom, ambivalence

MAKING= This into That; Non Verbal communication with Things and thing-making.  

 

Why be with Shadow?

(It’s difficult, elusive, upsetting)

Value as path to MEANING, hence Balance

a small unexamined evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed.

tolerate that there are always many sides to every issue ... this is the basis of a fair and just society

How To see, be with the Shadow: Explore/ReVisit NEEDS in 3 Manners and several Areas

1. Be Alone, Quiet,  Own/Be with regrets, mistakes, trouble    Who Gathers Near You?              “Oh YOU again!”

Revisit your Stories for Clues About Wounding                                     

2. Alone Active, MAKING  Play, Praxis, blending SHARE      

Experiment change focal length m’scope,    Collage/Mosaic  into an atmosphere    small impermanent things…

3. Be w Others Artists/Children/Elders can be guides  

 

 

1. Check Balance, your mix of manners 

Notice/Need shifts?  Rearview mrr  You are not Disabled!,                               

2. Wound    the force that drives the flower”               

a core inevitable part of being  

the disorder before the new order;

the Shake of the Snowglobe  

the trickster presence with the archetype 

   

Name some Current Felt WOUNDS!

            

Unpack the term “wound” into its features:benefits,

Find synonyms, related words, associations, energies                   

WHO DEALS WITH WOUNDS?   And Shadows?              

We all do! … And Technicians of the Sacred:

artists, NDs,priests, shamans, poets, Tricksters, 

can help normalize, integrate the Wound AND Wounding as part of being. Allowing.NOT rejecting/avoiding.

They model responding/working with it;

Helping find tolerably fearful responses.  

Trickster Presence (WoundingOne) in Each Need:

If you need shelter, I'll be the rain”  GaryZMcGee

3. STORY  Explore different models for ways of living, seeing  Consider The Iceberg, The Coral Reef, The Garden, animals, plants, water, sun,weeds oh, so many variables

                

Story as Mosaic intense/complex, distinct areas all playing into an atmosphere   

    

What’s crept into the Storytelling Process?                     Aging? Social Media, “influencers” Archetypes?

4. Consider “KAIROS

an old, powerful, alternative sense of time =                

"a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration."

5. Archetypes as Gerunds  as a blur of noun/verb,                 not Characters or actions but characters in actions:

wounding, “estranging” pausing, seeing, doing, moving, comforting,       engaging (5D/3D, cord-cutting, Allowing  reenergizing                    

6. MORE See: 5 Truths    Nelson/5 chaps     DM  Journal         www.purewow.com/wellness/shadow-work-prompts            

To encounter, tolerate,  express, re-express, tell a truth.

Capitalism needs normal time, normal, able minded, sociable people who share a form of rhetoric, NOT Shadow!

 

The Five Remembrances 

1. I am subject to aging. no way to avoid aging. 

2. I am subject to ill health. no way to avoid illness.

3. I am going to die. no way to avoid death 

4. Everyone/everything I love will change, and be separated from me.

5. Only true possessions are  my actions,  I cannot escape their consequences. not suppress knowledge of our frailty and impermanence. fears that lie in the depths of our consciousness, to be free of these fears invite the Remembrances into our consciousness and stop seeing them as enemies.       Thich Nhat Hanh, Understanding Our Mind 

 Image result for talmud quotes Do not be daunted

The Three Occult Principles

1. The universe is a single living substance.  

2. The universe is comprised of interactive opposites. Mind and matter are a unified entity. Everything that exists corresponds in universal analogy –man/ woman is a microcosm of the universe.

3. Imagination is a real motivating force that can act upon matter in a subtle way

Topics You May find interesting to learn more about:

These are SideTrails/Leads/WonderRoom of ideas

Those 13 small booklets exploring a playful, tactile, making-based approach to who we are. They are based on the three Shifting elements of alchemy: the heart, the head and the hand; introduces five needs that we always seem to be at work on:  Need for Awe/Wonder,  for the Feral/Carnal, to Make, to Tell Stories  

 

Futurism     Shambala Warrior            

Apocalypse means an uncovering          Kairos    Surrealism           Seider        Pretas=HungryGhosts     The Bardo             Theurgy

Gnosis         Thin Places                            Stewardship                   Sonder                 melancholy

Hireath             Negative Capability          James Hillman                 Zep Tepi            Tarot 

Epistrophe        5 Remembrances         Asemitic Writng           MBTI                   Enneagram      

dark days          Yugen                               witch=bends reality  Ascension Flu       Yugen

Unconscious Intelligence                   Etheric Cords                  Homo Spiritus     Seidr

Wondertales      Magical Thinking         dreamwrk   Process Art   Revgrafti 

Wsinkhoalican  the Lenape Mask Spirit, who maintains the balance of nature, appears to Lenape men in dreams,

Explore what’s Deadwood and what’s Heartwood.  It changes  What’s Shedding?

Honor what you already do/know Consider YOUR Needs/responses:for deception, safety, enough,   

Consider the possibility that   Reactions/Effects  precede Actions and Causes    

Everybody has different awareness of Shadow??!!              What In The World!    Celia/Talk           PhotoNotes                

Play Game of “What Else Is It?   what “functional” means  and Not           Bench Hook/Altar 

ABOUT OBJECTS and MAKING  Jung:   Psyche and Matter are aspects of same energy             

HagStnes                      fetishes,                    morbidity,              kintsugi,                 honor Empties as Altars   
Look at   Cave Drawings of people, tools, animals  See Etsy. Pintest algorithm  

Explore haiku structure  as model for making:          brief, contrast, nature         haikus-coronte/ 

the bardo, Tibetan concept of limbo between life and death

 

What’s an Enneagram     from Russell Rowe:

"As our personality was forming in early childhood we each developed limiting subconscious beliefs about ourselves, others and the world. For example, your mother or father might have yelled at you “Get your hands out of there!” or “You should be ashamed of yourself!” or “Stop being such a cry baby!” If you had really loving parents you might have heard, “Don’t touch that, it’s hot!” or “Don’t do that, you might hurt yourself!” We also developed limiting beliefs about others. Growing up you may have heard, “I don’t want you to play with those kinds of kids” or “Salesmen are sleazebags” or “Politicians are so duplicitous and two-faced.” We also developed limiting beliefs about the world. Newspapers and television constantly bombard our minds with reports of scandals, crimes, wars, economic crises, natural disasters, and political corruption. Does this help us believe the world is a loving, safe place to live? Of course not. One way or another, none of us escaped childhood without some limiting subconscious beliefs. Your Enneagram type identifies some of the strongest subconscious beliefs that you’ve developed over time based on your distorted perception of reality. The following subconscious beliefs of Fives stem from their unconscious fear and will continue to drive their personality until they learn to reprogram their subconscious beliefs."     www.russellrowe.com/enneagram-types/

Nepantla    

"At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off all together as a lost cause, and cross the

border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react. 

Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They  are passageways, conduits, connectors that connote transitioning,crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal(threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla,

a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s become a sort of “home.” Though this state links us to other ideas, people, and worlds, we feel threatened by these new connections and the change they engender."

La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness  

Versions

Aren't we always encountering, making and remaking versions

of who we are?

See how many words have that root word "vers" in them.

It means "turning". 

There are at least a few dozen related and surprising ways. 

Thin Places      

Each place and location has its own power and potency. By raising our consciousness about the geo-cosmic specificities of gravity, light, magnetism, solstices, equinoxes, lunar cycles, indigenous plants, animals, climate, and so forth in any given area,we can come to value the variety of diverse cultures and regions whose multiple knowledges all serve to enhance life everywhere on our planet. Most of these geo-cosmic teachings can only be acquired in the particular region in which they occur. If we are to awaken our own Shamanic abilities, perhaps lost in the mist of time, then we must attune ourselves to precisely those same forces as they manifest themselves in our own bio-regions. In some cases this may require us to learn about our region from the indigenous tribes in our area; in other cases we must set about discovering the power of the places in which we live on our own.     

We need not run away to other "exotic' cultures, but begin exploring our own backyards.

 

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Interior Landscapes, 2008