Black Star

For a while now I’ve wanted to visit my cousin Michel, but being as far away as he is and given the state of his country’s economy, my trip will be put off indefinitely. You see, Michel is Listenbourgian. Listenbourg is a proud nation of the Iberian peninsula known for its national dish Flammeküche and top-level Fußball teams

The closest Michel and I can get for now is video calling. And thankfully he sent me some photos to share with you. He rents a nice apartment in Midtown Lurenberg (the capital). It has high ceilings and gets plenty of sunlight, but unfortunately it sits right above a noisy tram line. He has to wear earplugs to bed every night!

Ever since President Gaspardo’s economic reforms took effect, the prices of basic goods, including food, have gone up. Michel can barely afford to cook his flammeküche! And he cooks a mean flammeküche too! When he’s not playing fußball with his amateur league, he’s roasting up his nation’s dish while sipping an imported Spanish beer

I still want to visit him one day and finally get to see his Listenbourgian lifestyle first hand. But for now, we have to be content with these photos…

So after getting through the first four chapters of “The Master and Margarita” (about 50 pages in), I decided to drop it from my reading list. While the premise of the book was interesting (The Devil visits Soviet Moscow), I find the dialogue, environment descriptions, and character actions quite hard to follow. I will shelf this book and replace it with William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist”. It’s a similar length, so it will fit in nicely to my 3,000 page reading goal. Here is the updated list:

1. The Stranger - Albert Camus

2. The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati

3. The Magician - Somerset Maugham

4. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

5. The Plague - Albert Camus

6. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

7. The Castle - Franz Kafka

8. Moonchild - Aleister Crowley

9. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty

10. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

I’ve been meditating since 2018, but last night I had something of a breakthrough. For context I started meditating to manage anxiety, but my interest in the occult has led me to Thelemic methods. For many years I was doing mindfulness meditation where the sitter attempts to observe their thoughts with minimal engagement. But in Thelema a student has to master total body stillness and mental focus before moving on to advanced magickal operations

So last night for my session I sat in a quarter lotus pose for 20 minutes. In my practice I try to stay completely still. In the first half I felt the usual strain from sitting on the floor and the wandering mind that every meditator is familiar with. But after halfway I felt something. I can only say that my mind was vibrating. It lasted less than a minute, and when it gave way my body seemed to tense up and relax at the same time. Every muscle locked in place. This normally requires conscious effort, but in that moment there was no more strain. It was like my body figured out how to sit still without my consciously forcing it. At the same time my thoughts faded into the background. I was still having plenty of thoughts but I stayed perfectly focused on my breath with no lapses. That kind of clarity and focus is incredibly relaxing. At the end of the session I got up and wrote the experience in my journal

Why does this matter? The experience of automatic rigidity is a milestone for the student of Thelema. When the body ceases its fidgeting and the mind’s focus turns wholly inward, the student is getting close to handling the psychological intensity of advanced rituals. My next step is to keep adding time to my sessions until I can meditate for an hour. The next milestone is to experience spasmodic trembling, but that is a topic for a future post

Last year I realized something: I’m overstimulated. It was an everyday thing. Whether it was from screentime, barking dogs, children running and screaming, or the neighbor’s music, something felt off. I spent a lot of time watching YouTube, scrolling Instagram, and playing video games. There’s nothing wrong with these things in and of themselves, but in the case of social media and online videos, sometimes I would be scrolling along and suddenly realize… I’m just scrolling. Often I would stop engaging with what was in front of me, just quickly scan the thumbnail or read the title, and then move on to the next post. I was intensely bored and dissatisfied with how I was spending my time, so I knew something had to change. For a while I had wanted to read more, so I put together this list of novels for 2026:

1. The Stranger - Albert Camus

2. The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati

3. The Magician - Somerset Maugham

4. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

5. The Plague - Albert Camus

6. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

7. The Castle - Franz Kafka

8. Moonchild - Aleister Crowley

9. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

10. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

As of the writing of this post I’ve completed numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10. You can see what I’m currently reading on my bookshelf

Ever since I started reading everyday, I’ve felt a change in the way I perceive the world. Everything around me feels more real. It’s like I’m really seeing for the first time. I feel less anxiety, more peace, and a sense of appreciation for mundane things. Trees, clouds, bricks, buildings, they all seem more significant than before. So if you’re always feeling tired, disconnected, or spaced out, try reading. Re-read your favorite books or read completely new ones. It might change your life

Previously on this blog I recounted 2 dreams concerning spiritual places and dusty labyrinths, and in this post I’d like to discuss their common threads. The 2 dreams in question are Gods, Toys, and a Maze and Church, Labyrinth, and Chains

In Gods I entered a courtyard with 2 god statues, flowers, and candles. In Church I was sitting in the chancel behind the pastor. I remember in the 1st dream a feeling of fascination, but oddly I turned away and preferred to wander the basement. In the 2nd dream there was no fascination, only boredom. I stood up and exited to the church’s backrooms. Both the basement and backrooms were mazes of hallways and rooms stacked with things like action figures, plush toys, t-shirts, etc. Despite the stench of dust and mold, I carried on entranced by what I saw

These dreams share an obvious narrative. That is the turning away from the spiritual to get lost in the material. Despite deep fascination (and due to intense boredom), I turned away from the spiritual and preferred the novelty of the material (or even consumerist). With the narrative the dreams have given me, I can see my psyche urging me to leave the labyrinth and embrace a spiritual routine. This can be meditation, invocation, evocation, etc. I’ll write more on these topics in future posts

I was sitting in a church pew listening to a sermon. I decided to take notes to follow along. I pulled out my Bible whose verses I had written over and select pages I had cut out. But before I could write anything more, I felt a nudge from the woman beside me. She pointed at a verse in her own Bible. I guess she wanted me to read the verse relevant to the sermon

The book I can’t remember, but the chapter and verse were 8:9. I noted them, and then I thought, She’s the more logical one, but I’m the more intuitive one

While this was going on, in a corner of the church, a boy in a bright red and green outfit and a gold crown sat on a chair on top of a pile of clothes. The pile was so tall that the boy was almost touching the ceiling. As to the possible relevance of this child and his connection to the Bible verse or the woman, I’m not sure. Analysis to follow

My father’s death was approaching. But he had it in him to give one last sermon. The church where he had served many years ago invited him to preach, and so there I was sitting behind him in a chair between the pulpit and the choir

Shortly after the worship service began I became bored. Through a chanceldoor I slipped out of the sanctuary and into the backrooms. The lights were all off, but luckily I had a flashlight to show me the way. The hallways went on and on. They intersected, branched off, and re-joined for what seemed like forever. The labyrinth reeked of dust and mold. Behind each door, room after room was littered with puzzles, action figures, and plush toys. Despite the stench I had become quite excited by my finds and wondered how much money it all must have been worth

There were some bathrooms here and there, but oddly they were shut tight and secured with yellow tape, chains, and padlocks. I never found out why they were this way. Whether they were meant to keep people out or keep something contained, I have no idea

I was tracking down a killer… or was he tracking me down? Either way one of our trails led to a hotel. The room was dim with only 2 lamps to illuminate the grey space. On a desk there sat an electronic photo frame. It cycled through photos of individuals and families whose identities were unknown to me. Were these the killer’s victims?

Suddenly I became aware of my dream but stayed asleep. I decided to try a minor act of control. I looked at a desk drawer and said to myself, “When I open this drawer, there will be a pink pen inside.” But I opened it and saw not a pink pen but a pink Ethernet cable. It was about the length of a pen, however, as it had been cleanly cut. I got the color and size right but not the shape

Before I had gone to bed I had no intention of having a lucid dream. This episode was totally spontaneous, but I can attempt a “revisit”. When I want to lucid dream, I can visualize a grey, dimly lit hotel room and a pink pen by a photo frame

The world had ended and most people were gone. Don’t ask me how. No one remembers. There were plenty of empty houses up for grabs for survivors. My family checked out one such house. Our first day there we liked what we saw, so we went ahead and moved in

From the kitchen I opened the backdoor and stepped outside. I set foot in a cobblestone courtyard with steps arranged in a semicircle on the far end just like an amphitheatre. Each step was littered with dry flowers and extinguished candles. In the centerline of the semicircle and halfway up the steps was a statue. It was carved from stone and depicted a man sitting in a meditative position. He had several arms radiating out from him just like a Hindu god. At the top of the steps, still in the centerline, was another similar but bigger statue. I was intrigued by this scene but wasn’t sure what to do there

I turned and went back inside. I found a door that opened up to a staircase. I walked down, and at the bottom I found a maze-like network of hallways and rooms. Every inch of wall was occupied by shelves, and each shelf was packed with action figures, plush toys, t-shirts, cups, and all kinds of memorabilia. The place reeked of dust and mold, but I was so entranced, I had no choice but to wander aimlessly through this apparently endless maze of novelty

Hello world!