Ritual

[luka]

"It is not often given to human beings to be able to treat a fragment of time that can never return again with the intense and ritualistic concentration appropriate to a moment irretrievably slipping away into an everlasting impossibility of repetition."

A Glastonbury Romance.

That's perhaps why smoking is so ritualistic. Cigarettes, Cannabis, DMT. The determined inhalation, the hot smoke tracking the passage of air through mouth and throat and lung, the wilful, Faustian retention of that life-breath, the release, the surrender to the life-imperative that demands the out-breath, and the smoke billowing from the mouth.

It sacralises the breath and the moment.

 

[catalog]

Makes the breath visible. Smoke is the moment of transition from one element to another. Literal magic.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Makes the breath visible. Smoke is the moment of transition from one element to another. Literal magic.

Even in the absence of any drugs at all, seeing your breath 'smoke' on a cold day is great fun as a little kid. Pretend to smoke, like a cool person in an old film. Pretend to be a dragon.

 

[catalog]

Yeah or when you breathe onto a window and draw a heart or a cock

 

[Mr. Tea]

Probably a cock, if we're honest.

 

[Murphy]

Sunday roast changed under lockdown, s/r as nevermind foodies just nail the basics. Now it's fun food day. I don't miss being such a self critical gravy snob. That's something so crap to say but was coercively controlled by chef siblings for so long to the point of ok, you want good gravy, check this one out cunt. And that's the game.

Problem is they don't want to cook on their days off, so the trick is to provide sustainable fish and honey trap them with a classic Robuchon mashed spuds. You need to burn those calories, but they're worth it for the fun form of stress.

Prepping meals if you're feeding a few means getting on with it. Good time to run play lists of tune hunts too.

 

[Turns out HMG was right!]

Magnesium l-threonate gets you off to sleep, calea zacatechichi makes the dreams pop out into 3d and gives you purchase, mushroom complex formula makes it interesting.

Also, leave a window open to allow external sounds and atmosphere which lends environmental realism.

HMG's formula for infallible lucidity

 

[vershy versh]

Han again;

"Today we reject all rituals as something external, formal and therefore inauthentic. Neoliberalism produces a culture of authenticity, which places the ego at its centre. The culture of authenticity develops a suspicion of ritualised forms of interaction. Only spontaneous emotions, subjective states, are authentic. Modelled behaviour, for example courtesy, is written off as inauthentic or superficial. The narcissistic cult of authenticity is partly responsible for the increasing brutality of society.

In my book I argue the case against the cult of authenticity, for an ethic of beautiful forms. Gestures of courtesy are not just superficial. The French philosopher Alain says that gestures of courtesy hold a great power on our thoughts. That if you mime kindness, goodwill and joy, and go through motions such as bowing, they help against foul moods as well as stomach ache. Often the external has a stronger hold than the internal.

Blaise Pascal once said that instead of despairing over a loss of faith, one should simply go to mass and join in rituals such as prayer and song, in other words mime, since it is precisely this that will bring back faith. The external transforms the internal, brings about new conditions. Therein lies the power of rituals."

 

[luka]

he sounds a bit basic this guy

 

[woops]

The French philosopher Alain

Alain de Botton is Swiss, not French

 

[luka]

Alain de Botton is Swiss, not French

spooky synchroncity

 

[DannyL]

Why is he writing about it? Show by doing it.

 

[Murphy]

is this necessary? to resacralise experience.

 

[luka]

Why is he writing about it? Show by doing it.

to quote a very famous and well loved poem

the blow to the head
is the fall

from spinning roundaboutly

light, all of it

lovely light only

learn by doing

walk out the circuit of the ritual

do the motions perform

Ha! Ha! See!

the reverberations of light.

 

[woops]

writing about doing it by writing about it, etc

 

[luka]

writing is a ritual

 

[woops]

writing works best for me if practiced under ritual conditions for sure that reminds me that i need to go and buy the type of pen i use in my ceremony

 

[vershy versh]

Why is he writing about it? Show by doing it.

You can do both. If you look at the 'What Does Spiritual Mean?' thread or just read the interview, you'll see he talks about a recent experience in a church and having visited lots of them.

 

[vershy versh]

Dismissive to assume he's never done any of the things he's talking about based on a single excerpt, or because he writes. How much would we know about anything without documentation?

 

[woops]

Dismissive to assume he's never done any of the things he's talking about based on a single excerpt, or because he writes. How much would we know about anything without documentation?

how much would the documentation mean if it consisted of unattributed quotes that could come from anywhere or maybe made up