Initiated Creekmason Barclay McClay becomes an official Node to answer every question about Hermeticism that you've ever wondered but were too afraid to ask! Nothing gets you high like talking to someone both grounded AND woo!
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Podcasts | Spotify
Intro!
Few things match the high you get from talking to a reasonable person who believes in the self-improving efficacy of woo practices.
More and more I’m finding myself in deeper and deeper rabbit holes. More and more, my friends are almost exclusively rabbits. We hang out in our discord server warrens, radicalizing each other mutually by confidently promoting counter cultural ideas, practices and beliefs.
But these rabbits I’ve been communing with aren’t the skittish paranoids who’ve been sucked through the woo to Q pipeline. They don’t poop uncontrollably and with reckless abandon any time they emerge from their rabbity dens.
These rabbits are liminal trickster mystics.
Yes they are open to the existence of the mystical. Their ideas—our ideas—fly in the face of scientific dogma and the arrogant assumption that we’re at the end of history with the trivial superstitions of the past demonstrably meritless. With the only mysteries left, measurable phenomena in space or the depths of the ocean.
They’re mystics. Comfortable in the discarded realm of the woo, the fluffy, the magickal.
But we’re also liminal! They are able to straddle the bridge between Default Reality and High Weirdness. We appreciate, even marcel, at the mysteries of space and the deep.
We can interface with muggles, provided we don’t overshare our oddity.
When we’re at our best, we’re translators and spokespeople for the bizarre, using polygnosticism—simultaneous belief in many things—to provide multiple explanations for the efficacy of our magick.
And, of course, we’re tricksters. We wield humor like it’s the antidote to the cruel, banal bureaucracy of tyrannical fascism. We don’t take anything too seriously. We hold our beliefs lightly and we raise them in conversations with muggles half-jokingly, like we’re looking for an in. Looking for the opportunity to let our freak flags fly free.
That’s the kind of conversation we had today on Nodes in the Net. A humorous exploration of the line between the woo and the mundane that isn’t so aggressively detached from reality that it would be offensive or scary to the muggles.
I’m working a lot lately on making myself palatable to the non-magickal community: to my coworkers and meatspace friends. I’m learning to hold my cards close, not only because the budding theocracy might burn me as a witch, but because—to be frank—I’m lonely.
To be truly liminal, I need to also vibe with the normies. I don’t want to be so detached from Earth that I can’t make conversation with acquaintances on the creek trail by my house, at the dog park, or before a meeting at my day job.
BUT! My discord server rabbit holes are amazing and conversations like this one with Barclay are immensely fulfilling. You’re gonna love it!