Inner Landscapes
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The Animist and the AI, Part II: Common Concerns
AI will have a deep impact on creative fields like art, writing, and spirituality. Will AI take away jobs? Will it destroy artistic and spiritual traditions? Or is it a tool that can enhance and augment human creativity? Obviously no one really knows, but I can offer some educated guesses. Continue reading
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The Animist and the AI, Part I: ChatGPT’s Knowledge of Self
ChatGPT is a fascinating artifact. At time of writing, it has only been released a few weeks, but society at large is desperately grappling with it, almost as if it were an existential threat. What is it? Is it a sentient being? Is it a plagiarist? Does it enable cheating on essays? Is it an… Continue reading
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Apollo and Coronis: Solstice and the Coronavirus
In Druidry, as in many other religious traditions, we pay attention when seemingly significant coincidences occur. When we notice strange patterns and echoes where we expected only random noise. Meaningful happenstance. When we were thinking about this year’s Solstice message, we thought about gods of healing. Apollo, for example. For the Greeks, he was the… Continue reading
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The Symphadox: Physics, Animism, Synchronicity, and Neural Nets
Back in 2014, musing on Emma Restall Orr’s excellent Wakeful World, I presented a paradox at the center of the mind / body dualism that’s usually assumed by both western science and religion. The crux of the paradox is: why are we conscious, but other things aren’t? Most people consider humanity conscious, but all other… Continue reading
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My Anima II: Gender Identity and the Self
What is gender identity? Is it part of our deepest self? Or is it something created by social expectations? How would we know? How does it work? Continue reading
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The Chapel for the Vigil
The chapel for the vigil is in A wild forest, a wild stony river, bugs and birds. Heat, but the breezes are cool. The sound of water everywhere. Continue reading
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Things Fall Apart: Why We Think Everything’s Getting Worse
Most Americans, year after year, continue to think that the country is on the wrong track. The older you are (i.e, the more experienced you are, and the more of history you’ve seen), the more likely you are to think everything is falling apart. And it’s not just in America: worldwide, people tend to think… Continue reading
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Meditation: Animist Consecration
Last night my awesome wife Ali and I joined in a set of consecration ceremonies at our Unitarian Universalist church. Along with the Reverend’s UU blessing and our friend Chris’s Wiccan consecration, we demonstrated a Druid / Animist method of connecting with an object. I say “connecting with” an object instead of “consecrating” because in… Continue reading
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The Mind of a Rock: Musings on Orr’s ‘Wakeful World’
For thousands of years, Western civilization has been living with a striking paradox. On the one hand, we are clearly physical beings living in a physical universe. And yet, we have these thoughts, feelings, dreams, and perceptions… They seem related to the physical universe, yet fundamentally different in character. We have an ‘inner’ life, which… Continue reading
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The Upper Airs: Layers of Landscapes in Meditation
In meditation I almost always return to an inner landscape which I’ve described in a lot of detail elsewhere, but starting about a year ago I discovered I had access to another world, one that felt like it was directly above the old one — as if it were a mile or two up, floating… Continue reading
About Me
Word, Card, and Star – a journey through language, divination, and inspiration. A chronicle of my search for guidance, insight, and a connection to nature and the ancient world. Along the way, I hope to discover beauty, connection, groundedness, and a sense of wonder.
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