When I glimpse at this picture above, I cannot help but be compelled to rapt attention. Before I can even consciously register that I am glimpsing at an image, I find myself guided to the woman in the red skirt. Her hourglass figure combined with the lightness with which her arms are draped in her lap and the matching color of her skirt and the locks of her hair draw me in. It is only in realizing that I gaze upon a beautiful woman that I realize she is seated in an art gallery. My eyes look to the left-most panel first and then slowly work their way right through the other panels, but stealing glimpses at the beautiful woman in red all the time. I cannot see her face and so I am left only with my own reactions with the paintings. She is alone. Perhaps she is lonesome-an emotion that is heightened by the left-most panel’s depiction of an exchange of wedding vows. Perhaps she is as rapt with the paintings as I am rapt with her.

In the panels themselves we find three depictions of the life of Marie de Medici: her marriage by proxy to King Henry IV, her arrival in the south of France from the wedding in Florence, and finally the first meeting of the King and his new bride. In this last, they are presented as Jupiter and Juno the great king and queen of the old Roman gods. Yet, this knowledge of the paintings and their subjects does nothing to the woman in the red skirt. If nothing else, it makes her more enigmatic, more difficult to understand. Why is she there in the Louvre? Why these painting among the countless thousands in that museum? The answer to the question of beauty leaves many questions unanswered.

It’s at this point that we realize something profound. This photograph is not about the woman and it is not about the paintings. Rather, when I glimpse the edges of the picture, I realize that I am the subject. I realize that I am there to look at this photograph in the first place. I am not looking at a picture of a beautiful woman in red. I am looking now at myself as I take in the glimpsing. My beholding of this photograph stands as a stark and dramatic reminder that I myself am there to take it all in. This, then, is what makes this photograph beautiful. Universally beautiful, stripped from the eye of any beholder in particular, this photograph has the power to give the subject to himself and remind him that a heart beats in his chest, tears will fall from his cheeks when he cries, and the spirits of anger that dwell within him need not wreak their havoc in every moment.

This image, like every image capable of elevating the beholder, is an icon. It is as if it is written, not snapped. It tells the story of my life to me. It whispers in my ear of all those times I have been worthy to be looked upon by beauty itself. It does not wish to speak of all those times that I have not been worthy because of my words and my deeds-but it does. Beauty, it turns out, is not in the eye of the beholder at all, for there is yet something about beauty that is truly universal. It is beauty that fills the world with beholders with the ability to behold and gives them a means of relationship to the whole of the universe. Beauty enables us to not be cynical about our dust mote status on some rock of an irrelevant planet at the edges of some unknown galaxy floating in infinite space. Beauty it is that turns the tide and reminds us that the universe is there for the joy of our beholding.

-DMBB

Originally published at https://www.cryptosophy.fm on July 11, 2021.

Beauty in Art — Cryptosophy.FM was originally published in Cryptosophy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the last month and a half or so, I’ve been making my way through Dante’s Divine Comedy in translation by Anthony Esolen. I read the Inferno for the first time when I was in high school, but had never before read the Purgatorio or the Paradiso. I was intrigued by a reference early in the Inferno to the Gemini star sign. In fact, it turns out that that Dante himself was born under the Zodiac sign of Gemini and therefore could thanks ‘his stars’ for his wit, intelligence, and poetic ability. He goes on in the Purgatorio and especially in the Paradiso to elaborate on the implications of this.

I knew previously that I myself was a Gemini because I’ve always had a sort of distant fascination with the Zodiac signs. When I was a young boy, my parents used to take me to St. Meinrad Archabbey in southern Indiana. In the monks’ Chapter Room there are, painted on the ceiling, the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. Of course, I had always heard that horoscopes, the Zodiac, Ouija boards, mediums, and psychics were forbidden by the Catholic Church (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 2115–2117). The appearance of the beautifully painted Zodiac signs in the monastery gave me such incredible delight. You see, the contrarian awoke early in me. The great irony, of course, is that we Gemini are notoriously contrarian. So inspired by Dante’s comments and knowing full well that we were in the month of Gemini already, I decided to look up the horoscope for June 3rd, my birthday.

I’ll be honest, I couldn’t believe the accuracy of the description of my Zodiac: “Being a Gemini born on June 3rd, your greatest skill lies in your ability to communicate. You are energized by the world around you and can create insightful observations with ease. While others describe it as a talent, you only know it as something that comes naturally.” Perhaps I’m merely flattering myself, but I genuinely hope that the articles I am writing here on the Annals are a testament to what I’m talking about. I love to write and communicate and share my ideas about the world with anyone who’s willing to listen. I love to teach. In the words of a good friend of mine, speaking about myself, my dad, and my uncle: “The Baxters are incredibly didactic.” (His lovely South Carolina drawl simply cannot be recreated by the written word.) I seek and I find in the world things that are interesting and delightful, dramatic and tragic, and I hope to find yet even more wrapped up in them if only another person could share his perspective with me. It turns out that I could attribute my ability to write, my intelligence, my curious outlook on the world, and even my contrarian tendencies mentioned above to my stars-the Gemini (1).

Dante describes with poetic force the Gemini sign in the Paradiso:

“You couldn’t have struck your finger in a flame
and whipped it back before I saw-and was
within-the sign that follows the Taurus.
O light bursting with virtue, glorious stars,
unto whose influence, as I see, is due
whatever I possess of native powers,
The sun was born with you and hid with you
when first I felt the air of Tuscany,
the sun, the father of all mortal life;
And when grace was richly granted me,
I was assigned your region of the skies
for entering your high wheel. Devotedly
Unto you starry Twins my spirit sighs
to gain the strength to master the hard test
that draws on all my force.”

- Paradiso 22, 109–12 (2)

That Dante is graced with poetic ability is not a question-even in translation. Especially in this passage his ability to describe the nature of a thing with words shows its force. The language of his poem-significantly-became the standard for the Italian language itself and thus he is called the father of Italian. As when Homer calls upon the muse at the start of his epics or before a scene a grave importance, so Dante-even in his description of the Gemini sign-calls upon its inspiration for assistance in the completion of his magnum opus. This motif is so common in Western poetry that it has almost become a platitude, but on the lips of Dante this invocation is far from that.

In the research for my recent article “Rage & Death,” I listened to quite a lot of G-Eazy, not limiting myself to When It’s Dark Out. In “Him & I” (which has over 500 million listens on Spotify…) G-Eazy references his star sign as well (3), (4). Describing himself, he raps: “I’m a crazy fuckin’ Gemini.” G-Eazy conflates the artistic persuasion bestowed by his star sign with the darker side of creativity-madness and insanity, boozing and philandering and getting lost. I find it curious that we poets and writers lean in on our star signs. Perhaps it’s because it’s true that they influence us. Perhaps it’s because if it’s not true it should be. In Dante we see a paean of thanksgiving to the starry twins of the Gemini. G-Eazy perhaps doesn’t quite give us enough to judge with certainty, but I think it’s fair to call this line a condemnation. G-Eazy is haunted by the demons of his artistic success as we saw in “Rage & Death” and thus cannot embrace the same level of indebtedness to his stars as Dante could.

Given the choice between the two, Dante and G-Eazy, I believe the attitude to adopt is Dante’s. Art motivated by love and gratitude will always emerge better than that which is an expression of pent up rage and aggression. The motif of invoking the muse, the Goddess, or the starry Twins, is Good. We artists can so easily fall into the prey of solipsistic nihilism. By asking for grace and inspiration from some outside spirit, we bring ourselves back out into the world, out of which our art arises and to which it will return.

-DMBB

Notes & References

(1) For the sake of being abundantly clear, I looked up my wife’s horoscope as well and it couldn’t have been less accurate about her temperament. I don’t ‘believe’ in this. I don’t lean on it. It’s something else.

(2) Paradiso 22, 109–123 : https://amzn.to/3glZgSg

(3) Lyrics to “Him & I” : https://genius.com/G-eazy-and-halsey-him-and-i-lyrics.

(4) “Him & I” : https://open.spotify.com/track/5k38wzpLb15YgncyWdTZE4?si=6hpnRg7eSOytr8DV1BRHpA.

Originally published at https://www.cryptosophy.fm on June 3, 2021.

Crazy Gemini — Cryptosophy.FM was originally published in Cryptosophy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I learned a lot writing my thesis about Hincmar. My argument was actually deeply flawed and even though I immortalized some naive thinking of a then budding medievalist, completing my senior thesis with its 50+ pages was an incredible accomplishment. You see, I wanted Hincmar to be a “good guy” or a “holy bishop” simply because I wanted that to mean that he was a systematic thinker and you could draw solid lines between his coronation rites, his admonition to the Carolingian kings and emperors, and his understanding of a Christian cosmology or anthropology. While that may not be true (and probably isn’t), I still did discover some interesting things by closely reading the De Ordine Palatii, the Annals of St Bertin, and Hincmar’s own coronation rites. I will summarize this in three points. Firstly, I learned that the very concept of Kingship (in general and Christian Kingship in particular) was still under construction in the long 9th century. Secondly, I learned that the task of the historian is a difficult one, but it is nonetheless important to memorialize the great (and not so great) doings of kings, bishops, and noblemen. Thirdly, I learned that the rites of the Church were once very fluid indeed. Hincmar relied on precedent (to be sure) when penning and performing his rites, but he was also synthesizing and creating in the process.

Over the course of my 3 years at Xavier and 1 year at the University of Paris, I had so many different thesis ideas. The breadth of their scopes almost perfectly typifies the kind of student I was and remain: a curious one. One of the first I remember would have been a comparative analysis of Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain-specifically looking at the differences between their two portrayals of Arthur himself. I was also interested in studying the themes of fatherhood in Christopher Nolan films and perhaps comparing that to fatherhood in Greek tragedy or epic. This was before Interstellar came out, which in some sense is Nolan’s own capstone on his exploration of father-characters. I remember some ideas about reading the Symposium and Jacob’s Ladder in Genesis together. I was always fascinated by verbs and thought I might take a try at a very etymological work. Right at topic selection time, I had some ideas about European appropriations of Trojan myths, especially as it relates to to their coronation rites. I am an endlessly curious person that swims in the boundless potential of ideas not-yet-realized. The thought of writing essays on various topics excites me to the core. My whole point of publishing the Annals of Tusculum is simply to get in the habit of actually committing words to ideas as they will pop into my head-to hone my skills as a writer and to prepare me for the next phase of my writing life. I’ve always wanted to be a man of letters.

-DMBB

Originally published at https://www.cryptosophy.fm on May 30, 2021.

The Curiosity Process — Cryptosophy.FM was originally published in Cryptosophy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What does G-Eazy have to do with Christopher Nolan? The first song of his 2015 classic rap album When It’s Dark Out (“Intro”)is an excerpt from the same Dylan Thomas poem we hear on the lips of Interstellar ‘s Drs. Brandt and Mann:

“Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Though wise men at their end know dark is right

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (1), (2)

The thematic motif of “Intro” is repeated (slightly less operatically) in the opening seconds of “Random.” The two are intimately linked when listening to the album from start to finish-the album itself seems to start over again when it transitions from “Intro” to “Random”, like déjà vu or perhaps something more sinister. I can only imagine that G-Eazy is trying to recast the start of the album and the real introduction (which is “Random”) with the voracious, proud, and contrarian ideas of “Do not go gentle.” I believe it is more than appropriate then to call Thomas’s poem the ‘anthem’ that G-Eazy raps about in the opening verse of “Random”:

“This is the anthem

Told the world I need everything and some, yeah

Two girls that’s a tandem

She gon’ do it all for me when them bands come

Got it all, yeah I’m young, rich, and handsome

Uh, this shit is not random

Everybody ain’t got it, understand son

Yeah, this shit is not random.” (3), (4)

I’ve never asked G-Eazy if he heard Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle” for the first time in Nolan’s Interstellar. Part of me would be surprised if it were so. Interstellar was released just about one year before the drop of When It’s Dark Out. I think the more likely explanation for the overlap in usage is that G-Eazy saw an opportunity to make use of a charged rally cry against death, darkness, and despair which had recently been thrust into the public consciousness by Nolan’s film. I’m speculating, to be sure, but whether or not my speculation is true a deep question is presented to us at this stage which is the jumping off point for this essay: why is G-Eazy’s anthem the poem which is repeated in Interstellar only by the evil characters? Why is the rage against death, which is unequivocally cast into destructive light in Interstellar, made into the rally cry of G-Eazy?

The relationship between rage and death is complicated and ultimately what is at question here. I could make the argument that the question of the relationship between rage and death is the fundamental question of Western culture going back all the way to Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, brought to fruition in Christ’s proclamation “He who loses his life for my sake will find it” and culminating in Nicaea’s formula “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” As such, this essay cannot conclude anything of substance, but I’d like to focus in on one aspect of this relationship that When It’s Dark Out espouses intentionally and with clarity.

In the Iliad, Achilles’s rage against the death of his friend Patroclus drives him to the darkest places of inhumanity. Achilles repeatedly mutilates the body of Hector, the man who killed his friend in battle. He drags dead Hector behind his chariot. He stabs his corpse with spears and swords. Worse, Achilles brutally sacrifices twelve Trojan men on Patroclus’s funeral pyre-the only instance or reference to human sacrifice in the Iliad. And in the battle preceding his killing of Hector, Achilles murders in cold blood countless Trojans who have thrown down their weapons supplicating Achilles to spare them and take them for ransom. In the Iliad, rage, even rage against death, leads to death itself. Rage against death becomes a rage against life. Rage is the great negator of life, the seat of nihilism and belief in nothing.

I contend that G-Eazy in When It’s Dark Out plumbs the question of rage and just like the West’s first rapper, comes to the same conclusion: rage only leads to nihilism. Let’s conclude by looking briefly at an episode from When It’s Dark Out: “Me, Myself, and I”.

“Me, Myself, and I”

The official music video of “Me, Myself, and I” is powerful and reinforces every theme that is surfaced in the song (5). It opens with G-Eazy driving in the car with a nameless girl. He asks her why they have to go out for his birthday, why can’t they just stay in-he’s been traveling all over the world. His questions are answered by the nameless girl in French, indicating a fierce isolation that G-Eazy is feeling. The two aren’t speaking the same language-both figuratively and literally. She asks him to “Trust me, my love” before they enter a surprise birthday party. The girl immediately fades into the crowd and G-Eazy stands alone, isolated feigning surprise and excitement. He stands there for a moment before his soul splits. One of him stands there, the other leaves to go sit in the bathroom. When then get cut away into the bathroom where his soul narrates: “Surprise, surprise, another night of turn up. Woah.”

The whole song, and even the broader album, seems to be a dialogue between two voices. There is Gerald and there is G-Eazy. G-Eazy is the rapper, the voice of “Random.” Gerald is the lost and broken soul, the voice of “Everything will be OK” and “Think About You.” The two voices talk around each other for much of the album except in a letter that G-Eazy reads to Gerald in “Sad Boy” and in the music video for “Me, Myself, and I.” The fact of the matter is that G-Eazy has embraced the lavish rapper lifestyle to “cope with [his] angers” (6), (7). He loves it, the rush is amazing, but Gerald cannot embrace the lifestyle because he cannot embrace the logical conclusions that such a lifestyle demand. G-Eazy in “Don’t Let Me Go” says: “When it’s dark out / I search for love but don’t find it / just sex and drugs but don’t mind it / because nothing’s real I’m reminded” (8), (9).

In the music video, there’s a tragic interlude in the song. Gerald is sitting in the bathroom, completely isolated from everyone at the party when his reflection in the mirror starts taunting him. Then, the part of his soul that he left at the very beginning of the video comes into the bathroom and takes part in the taunt. I won’t even summarize the dialogue here because I cannot do justice to the tragedy so perfectly grasped in this sequence. Gerald is completely alone, his goodness completely rejected and negated by the lifestyle of drugs, sex, and alcohol-completely negated by G-Eazy’s rage. G-Eazy’s rage is a constant reminder that only blood, sweat, and tears have gotten him where he is. It’s not random. It didn’t happen by accident. But only by the savage rage against anonymity and the striving for fame. Anonymity in the life of a rapper is death. G-Eazy rages against both and in so doing rages against the fabric of his very self. G-Eazy’s rage against death becomes a rage against life, the life of Gerald. It ends only in a despaired and dejected nihilism. Gerald is annihilated into three dissociated identities and When It’s Dark Out is a cry not to rage, but to live.

(1) Lyrics to “Intro” : https://genius.com/G-eazy-intro-when-its-dark-out-lyrics

(2) “Intro” : https://open.spotify.com/track/3RJdbAqRg0yRlQJicNa5My?si=IviU69M3T7OOxcy55aWQtA

(3) Lyrics to “Random”: https://genius.com/G-eazy-random-lyrics

(4) “Random”: https://open.spotify.com/track/422lAAWQO9TqL1LxIPdhOn?si=2t2jQL8CRyStrNPRBvO6AA

(5) Music Video for “Me, Myself, and I” : https://youtu.be/bSfpSOBD30U

(6) “Me, Myself, and I” : https://open.spotify.com/track/40YcuQysJ0KlGQTeGUosTC?si=TLYOdDhqRWOivEN32WhQqQ\

(7) Lyrics to “Me, Myself, and I” : https://genius.com/G-eazy-and-bebe-rexha-me-myself-and-i-lyrics

(8) “Don’t Let Me Go” : https://open.spotify.com/track/3DJzymVeQfMiPRgNSPUavd?si=Tl52UIuWQkeE8jbIDTkbaw

(9) Lyrics to “Don’t Let Me Go” : https://genius.com/G-eazy-dont-let-me-go-lyrics

Further Reading

“G-Eazy’s Album When It’s Dark Out Is A New Classic.” https://rockstardreams.com/2016/02/12/g-eazy-when-its-dark-out-is-a-new-classic/.

Originally published at https://www.cryptosophy.fm on May 22, 2021.

Rage & Death — Cryptosophy.FM was originally published in Cryptosophy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It has been well argued that Christoper Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar is also an odyssey. In her essay, “Interstellar: The Odyssey for the 21st Century,” Bianca Gardner illustrates a few strong parallels between Homer’s Odyssey and Nolan’s (1). Cooper is Odysseus. His daughter Murphy is Telemachus. His son Tom represents Penelope’s suitors eating him out of house and home. And so on. I would leave the discussion closed were it not for the threefold repetition of Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” in the film: twice on the lips of Dr. Brandt and once on the lips of Dr. Mann. The repetition indicates that Nolan’s Interstellar is more than a simple odyssey. Cooper is not Watney and while both The Martian and Interstellar are 21st century space movies, there is far greater depth of narrative action in the latter.

“Do not go gentle into that good night, / Old age should burn and rave at close of day; / Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (2).

There are certain words or themes that, when they pop up in certain genres, they should appear as obvious interpretative sign posts. By making a space movie, Nolan has already primed our interpretive pumps with the songs of Homer. But here, in Dylan Thomas’s poem we hear not about a nostos, but about rage. Rage. “Rage-Goddess sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,” so begins not Homer’s Odyssey, but his Iliad. I said above that Interstellar is more complicated than a simple odyssey. This complication arises from the fact that it’s not a simple one-to-one map of the Odyssey but rather it pulls in themes from both of Homer’s epics.

The rage of Achilles is a destructive rage. He is retaliating against Agamemnon who took from Achilles his war prize. This act of dishonor Achilles repaid by withdrawing from battle with the Trojans. He prays that his honor will be restored by Zeus from whom he demands that the Greeks (and Agamemnon in particular) will be decimated in battle and come groveling back to Achilles for help. Achilles’s rage, the proem tells us is “murderous” and “costs the Achaeans countless losses.” And indeed it does. Only a few days after withdrawing from the battle the Greeks are pushed back to their ships and Hector and the Trojan army are encamped outside their walls on the plain. In this time of need, the Greek seek embassy with Achilles and come to him, offering him countless gifts if he would but relent of his rage and be reconciled with the Greeks. He refuses and hardens his heart. As their situation continues to decline, eventually Achilles is persuaded to allow his best friend and chief lieutenant, Patroclus, to lead the Myrmidons into battle, but Achilles will not go himself. In the battle, Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero Hector. Achilles’s rage at Agamemnon leads to his rage at Hector for murdering his friend. It is rage that leads him back to the battle eventually defeating Hector and mutilating his dead body. Achilles sacrifices twelve Trojan youths on Patroclus’s funeral pyre and in the battle refuses ransom to countless suppliants. Eventually, however, Achilles’s rage is defeated by empathy. When Hector’s father comes begging for the body of his son Hector, Achilles is reminded of his own father Peleus and grants the request. Rage destroyed Achilles’s humanity and only by empathy, the chiefest of the human emotions, that his own humanity is restored.

All of this should come to mind when we see the Endurance leaving Earth orbit for Saturn with Dr. Brandt’s voice in the background chanting “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” to the sound of loud organ music. Immediately, we are thrust from the comfortable place of knowing what story we thought we were watching, and find ourselves in a completely new interpretive space. We are not watching a simple space movie and we are not watching a simple Odyssey, we are beholding something far more complicated.

Achilles’s rage leads to the loss of his best friend and even his own humanity. Dr. Mann’s rage leads almost to the destruction of the entire human race.

Notes & References:

(1) “Interstellar: The Odyssey for the 21st Century.” https://filmotomy.com/interstellar-the-odyssey/.

(2) “Do not go gentle into that good night.” https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night.

Originally published at https://www.cryptosophy.fm on May 20, 2021.

Space Odyssey — Cryptosophy.FM was originally published in Cryptosophy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I started writing seriously when I was in college, but it was more recently that I began to see writing as a vocation. It all began with an odd monologue by Alan Moore. Drawing on the ideas of others, Moore points out that the language of magic seems to be more about language than it is about magic. A grimoire, for example, is just a grammar book. To cast a spell is simply to spell words. And we can glimpse very much why it might be the case that language and writing are surrounded by these mythical images and symbols. He who speaks wonderfully seems almost to cast a spell on his audience. It is through words that men and nations are moved-the spoken word has a force that cannot quite be measured or even articulated and they certainly cannot be captured. That is, until the advent of writing. The written word enables the power and the seemingly magical force of the speaker now to be communicated across space and time. Words that moved the early American to revolution can move me to be a better citizen… and so on.

Moore doesn’t stop there, he goes on to describe what he calls ‘weird stuff’ in the life of a writer. Every now and then, every serious writer will have the experience of writing something that is simply strange and uncategorizable. Then one day, you’ll be somewhere and that strange thing will happen to you. Or you’ll see it happen verbatim in front of your eyes. Every serious writer, he claims, will know what he’s talking about.

Moore inspired me to become a serious writer. To dwell in the collective unconscious pulling up gems of stories and examples to the surface to be explored by me and my readers. I honestly want and crave deeply this power of prophecy that comes with deep exploration of characters and their stories.

Becoming a serious writer is a lifelong journey. The simple fact of the matter is that I’ve always already believed myself to be a writer, but the exercise of writing daily has exposed me to a deep chasms of flaws that I must still overcome until I will truly be one. I rely too heavily on inspiration to write fiction and philosophy, for example. I often become fixated on just finishing my daily challenge (to write 1,000 words) and so I end up jumping from one topic to another like a harlot until I find what can satisfy my quota. I journal far too much. I believe that journaling is an important activity in the life of a writer-I don’t doubt it at all. The goal, however, of the practice is to sort yourself out from the characters about whom you write. I think the goal is to prevent blending overmuch with them to the point that it is detrimental to your health. You need to be you and healthy to be open to receive them as they are from the muse who introduces you. All of that can be summed up into the fact that I haven’t been doing this for very long at all and I have a very long journey ahead of my to keep writing and discover what it means to be a writer in my own life.

I need to write more fiction. I believe that fiction and storytelling is the highest form of writing. Surpassing even philosophy and theological discourse in its merits. The reason is simple: it’s a more charitable activity. Let me explain. The characters of any story really are alive somewhere. Whether that’s in Plato’s world of the forms or Jung’s collective unconscious, they are alive and dwelling-waiting for their stories to be made known in the world and their lessons apprehended by men. Like the statue that verily waits to be uncovered from the block of limestone, each character waits in the antechamber to be brought in and introduced. The vocation of the writer is to love these characters into existence through the hard work of discovery and the craft of story-writing. They don’t need to be serious or lengthy or long winded to start. I need to write about these characters and learn the craft of understanding them and bringing them alive in this world. This is the magical school of conjuration. Bringing a living thing from one plane of existence to another through the magical craft of writing.

I need to publish my writing. As of yet, my words do nothing for me but sit in an oft unopened section of my Evernote. I do not read, reread, think about, or meditate on nearly anything that I have written. This strikes me as insufficient. I need to prepare my words to be seen and read by others-not because they need to be read by others, but because I as their writer need to know them well enough to adequately introduce them to a complete stranger. I’m publishing this essay here and now for my own sake, dear reader, not yours.

Let me be clear, I have no ‘intentions’ about what I would do with the gift of prophecy. I’m like a hesychastic monk on Mt Athos that longs to see the divine energies of God. It’s a worthy thing to long for and something to practice. My one caution for myself is that I must be humble in my approach. I long to see God because I love him, not because I am searching for some status symbol in the development of the mystical life. Learn to love prophecy because of the poetic force it can have to bring the life and lessons of your characters into the world. This is not about bragging rights or keeping score. The gift of prophecy is a tool of the writer to do a better job and I need to keep that ever in my mind.

Weird Stuff — Cryptosophy.FM was originally published in Cryptosophy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.