The poison of comparison in the Instagram age
Failing to measure up to those shiny images trapped under glass could be the catalyst to integrate both light and dark and make neither our master.
Hope and the Wounded Healer
This is the first of my exploration of individual cards from the 78-card divination deck I created to assist people in the spiritual awakening process and to facilitate the integration of plant-spirit experiences, such as with ayahuasca or iboga. The first card is...
Finding beauty in the dark night of the soul
The medieval Spanish mystic John of the Cross could never have guessed that, over 400 years after he coined the phrase Dark Night of the Soul, it would come to represent an awakening rite of passage in a modern world scarcely recognisable from his own. The medieval...
Black ayahuasca, Job and the mountains
"Can black ayahuasca be healing? I would suggest it’s for the things most profoundly rooted, covered over by layers and layers of wild growth; where what is most dense, humid and cloying can outlast time, or at least a parent’s bones. Black ayahuasca is...
What’s the difference between medicine and poison?
Perhaps this joke is old, but it still strikes me as an acute observation. When does ‘medicine’ become co-opted to merely reinforce pre-existing identities and beliefs? When does the use of medicine turn into mis-use or even abuse? When does healing itself become a...
Francis: The radical renunciate
Francis of Assisi is often depicted as a lover of animals and nature, an innocent figure of child-like enthusiasms at stark odds with the credos of a spiritual revolutionary. He became the model for first card I created, signifying, above all else, the renunciation of...
Transition, crisis and surrender
It can be hard to appreciate the silver lining of opportunity when the foundations are moving under our feet. Crisis is not for the faint-hearted, no matter how it’s dressed. Yet – like death – it seems to come for us all sooner or later, ready or not.
Moses: A man for troubled times
A reinterpretation of the age-old story of Moses and his exclusion from the Promised Land, just when the new world appeared so unbearably close, offers a potent symbol for our chaotic times.
Prisoner of hope
I have been a prisoner of hope for too long. Hope as the promise of redemption. Hope as the last virtue standing. The stringy vestige of hope, apparently made of unbreakable sinew, that wouldn’t let me give up on my life and my dreams.
Dark side of the moon
I have to confess a certain discomfort with the word healing, and frankly it’s steeped in cultural bias. Compared to the hard science of allopathic medicine, compared to the heft of practice and discipline, it always felt soft and enfeebled.
