One of the self-care things I did for a small chunk of August was slowly reading a treatise or several in Plotinus' Enneads. I've read the Enneads less systematically than one might expect, as I tended to tackle the treatises as they came up in footnotes while doing my first read-through of Proclus. It was … Continue reading Some Interesting Links for Your September
Tag: polytheism
For Hygieia, with Love, On Meditation as Hygiene
I started meditating when I was in my early teens. I checked out all of the books from the library on it, which seems impressive on paper until I give you the context that there were at most four or five books in the entire collection. Meditation for Dummies was one of my favorites because … Continue reading For Hygieia, with Love, On Meditation as Hygiene
Five Beautiful Things
“Praise to the Melodious Wisdom Goddess Saraswati, Called ‘The Melody of the Youthful Display of Joy,’ by Kunkhyen Longchenpa in Sunlight Speech That Dispels the Darkness of Doubt: Sublime Prayers, Praises, and Practices of the Nyingma Masters, translated by Thinley Norbu. I was struck by the beauty of the words and the single-pointed focus of … Continue reading Five Beautiful Things
Conversions Away from the Gods
When I was in college, one of the women in my social group called herself pagan, but she would not come to the events that the campus pagan group — which I ran for a few years — organized. She was adopted, she went to Catholic school, and she was raised by a traditional WASP … Continue reading Conversions Away from the Gods
How To Write a Hymn (2)
Listen to Rachmaninov’s cascading concertos,to the majestic meander of Yes’ “Awaken” —follow these melodies as they set forthbeginning to end, an evolution always revertingback to the first breathing fingertips upon keys. Now: an epithet. Come to it as an agalma.It is sheet music — syllables and stresses.It is speech coiled together — dimensioned tight.Like a … Continue reading How To Write a Hymn (2)
How To Write a Hymn (1)
Give forth enough breath to let imagescut shapelessly into the lungs’ flatness.Wrap each symbol tense, layering uponsteep cliffs the cascade of fall·catch·fall·rise.The God will buoy you. Attend to this:a flutter of notes light as incense,brittle as dried laurel crushed between palms.Open up this everything in ink's meandering traces.Work them gently like clay upon a wheel,but … Continue reading How To Write a Hymn (1)
Small Serendipities in Turbulent Times
The past few days have been somewhat of a whirlwind. Late on Thursday afternoon, I had an MRI with dye, and on Saturday, I was traveling to a conference. It takes 24-48 hours for the dye to clear one's system, so I was still having a few of the milder dye symptoms while traveling there … Continue reading Small Serendipities in Turbulent Times
Welcoming Cynthia and Year 37
Hours after the moon began to wax, I brought home a three-month-old kitten from a nearby rescue to round out to a triad of cats. For the past few weeks, I have been doing cat introductions — a lot faster than anticipated, as my established cats were more distressed by the kitten banging at the … Continue reading Welcoming Cynthia and Year 37
AI
At work, a big part of my professional development now involves wrestling with the problems of AI and how that will change what I need to help people with when they do research. I watched a talk last week called “The AI Dilemma” from the Center for Humane Technology, an organization that I have followed … Continue reading AI
KALLISTI 