Disambiguating Myth From Magic (HMP159)

Greetings. Just a few things... well, I say that a lot. Maybe a short one today, maybe just a few things, we'll see what happens. Just something that came out of another conversation that led me to want to disambiguate, which is not only a terrific word, but really fun to say. Disambiguate. It's like a little journey for your mouth. Disambiguating myth and magic. So I had a conversation with someone recently who, I don't know if I can characterize this very well, but what we took from it was, in the last episode I conflated, I think, a bit too much, maybe just to make the point, conflated myth and magic. And let me back up and define some things here. So I was talking about the potential downsides of paradigms that include myth, and how that can outsource epistemic authority. Because, as I said last time, and as I wrote in chapter 16 of the manuscript, which of course I will link again in the show notes here, myth and self-authority don't go well together. Because myth, by definition, is something you cannot experience yourself. Belief, the way identity holds it, and the way I hold it, ought to be used as a placeholder for experience. But the slippery slope is, yes, one day you'll experience it, keep going, keep going, keep going, but if that moment doesn't come, then what's the difference between a belief system and a deferred experience, an indefinitely deferred experience? That's the danger. And the example I gave was with soul species. Some people have the ability to recognize patterns, energetic patterns, processing patterns. I think there is truth to the pattern recognition that soul species operates with. The question is not, are there patterns there to recognize? Because I think there are. The question is, what does that mean, and what is the essence behind those expressions of those patterns? I talked about this in the manuscript, and I think before, I don't need to re-litigate that. I just wanted to fill that in. Soul species is magical. It's also mythological, because it's not verifiable in the same way that I'm holding a pen up, for those of you who are audio only. This is a pen. I can get an enormous amount of agreement that this is a pen. I can write with it. I can tap my head with it. There's many different ways I can verify the pen-ness of this pen. I'm not discounting intuition. I think intuition is wonderful. It's one of my seven developmental lines. But it's not as epistemologically verifiable, anything intuitive. It's just a different order of knowledge. Can it be used? Sure. Should it be used? Definitely. Should it be used in concert with other developmental lines? Oh yeah, whenever possible. Sometimes the mind part of something comes after the intuition. I just need to do this. Sometimes that happens to me with taking walks. I'll just be taken with this intuition of, I was just about to eat dinner, but no, I need to go walk three miles, and I'll just do that. Sometimes I run into people that I know, and I think, well, maybe this was what I was supposed to do. Maybe that was the point. Can I know that? Absolutely. No. Can I know this is a pen? Absolutely. No, I can't really know anything. Absolutely. But if you compare the two, the pen has a lot more epistemic weight to it. So all of this is to say, let's come back to disambiguation. What I said in the last podcast is not to discount magic or that we should arrive at some sober, ordinary, mundane, and just for fun, let's add another synonym, pedestrian place, banal even. Boy, that was like half a dozen. It's not about there being no magic. I'm reminded of hearing Ajah Shanti once speaking about this subject in one way or another. He was talking about wonder, I think, the quality of wonder related to meditation or something. And he was saying something like, imagine or remember being a kid at nine years old, maybe out in the wilderness away from light pollution, and looking at the sky and being like, wow, how many stars are there? And the answer that there may be an adult there that says, well, the universe is, I forget what it is, how many billion or trillion light years across? I can't even remember. But I'll make some numbers up. Well, Timmy, the universe is 10 billion light years across and their estimate that there are 25 trillion times 10 to the five number of stars and there's that galaxy and this, and here's the names of everything. It takes the air out of the wondrous and magical moment, right? And so there is a place, I think. I think there must be a place for that wonder. I think maybe wonder is a better word than magic because magic can stray into the domain of myth very easily, but however we define it. But the magic to me doesn't require myth. In fact, the real magic is in what the Buddha called imponderables, things that you really can't know. And one really good example of this that is connected very intricately with what I'm studying in Vedic astrology that I think is so critical. Anyone who really gets even a little bit the power of Vedic astrology, it will have you questioning your free will with a sense of wonder like, wow, what choices do I really have? And how possible is it for me to become the notion of who I'm supposed to become that is different than what this is saying? Because the more you look at and understand your chart, the more you see how clearly the picture is painted for you. Now, there's a great example. Now, there's a fork in the road. You can go into the mythology of Hinduism, which is, I don't know the history well enough yet. It's certainly the paradigm associated with, I don't know how directly it came from, how directly Vedic astrology came from it, but it's associated with it. And of course, there are plenty of people, astrologers, who will tell you the myths, and Rahu is this character with the head and no tail, and Ketu is the tail, and the nakshatras, the moon nakshatras all have stories, and they'll tell you these things. And are they myth? Are they true? Are they legend? Whatever. But to me, that doesn't create magic, because I can't experience those things. Those are just myths. The magic for me in Vedic astrology is somehow the position of planets at the time I was born is associated with, stores, is a map of information about me. How does that work? That is what I would offer an imponderable. You could come up with a model of it, but wow. And if you look at a chart generated two hours after you were born, it would be really different. And that does not as well describe you, or the day before, or a week later, but even a couple of hours would change the signs in your houses. That's unbelievable. That's magic without myth. The myth isn't required. And so in the paradigm of Vedic astrology, is reincarnation a necessary part of it? I don't think so. People will say, well, if you have Ketu in your 10th house, that's often an indicator that you've had past lives where you've been very successful and this life, you're going to not do that. Is it necessary to subscribe to that to get the developmental clue that you're not going to be famous this life? So maybe don't go for that. You see what I mean? The past life read isn't necessary. It's not a matter of whether it's true or not. Because if somebody says that's what this is, and somebody reads your past lives to you about that, and you don't actually experience it, you didn't find it yourself, now you've lost some of your own epistemic authority. And my argument is that that price is not worth it and not necessary to pay. So what I'm working on and with is what is Vedic astrology without the myth, with still a whole lot of magic, because it's incredibly powerful and incredibly sophisticated. And I wanted to use that as an example of how magic can persist without myth, how wonder can persist without myth. And I've got a couple of quotes here I wanted to read you. This was a letter written to the prominent Indian astrologer Dr. B. V. Raman in September 1947. I'll tell you who wrote this paragraph after I read it. So imagine first, as I read it, imagine who would say such a thing. As I am a psychologist, I am chiefly interested in the particular light the horoscope sheds on certain complications in the client's character. In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis, I usually get a horoscope in order to have a further point of view from an entirely different angle. I must say that I very often found that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise would have been unable to understand. For 25 points, who said that in 1947? The answer is Carl Jung. A few years later, in a French astrological magazine, Jung wrote the following. One can expect with considerable assurance that a given well-defined psychological situation will be accompanied by an analogous astrological configuration. Astrology consists of configurations symbolic of the collective unconscious. The planets are the gods, the symbols of the powers of the unconscious. I'll read that first sentence again. One can expect with considerable assurance that a given well-defined psychological situation will be accompanied by an analogous astrological configuration. Carl Jung, ladies and gentlemen. So I am, in one way, a bit crestfallen that I didn't figure this out. This is not my discovery. I'm not a discoverer. That's not my thing. And you know what? My chart shows that. My chart shows me I'm a connector of dots. I don't originate. I synthesize. And I have a hard time with this word. It's more than just a synthesis. It's meta-metathesis, to coin a phrase. So the opportunity that I'm seeing is that a great deal of magic can exist without myth. And that's a disambiguation that is necessary. Because of course, we want magic. We want meaningfulness. That's just human. We want meaning. We're meaning-making machines, as landmark education says. The slippery slope is, what do we make up to get it? And all you got to do is look at the big five world religions, which encompasses the beliefs of about five billion people on this planet, to, well, there's a wondrous moment like, wow, boy, we're really hungry for meaning. And when we're really hungry for something, we human beings, we will do some pretty nutty things to get it. And is that bad? Not necessarily, because everything is learning. But one of the things that I'm definitely in the process of learning, and have been for the last couple months, is what kind of self-authority did I sell out on for that meaningfulness and a certain kind of magic that I wanted? And how do I create that for myself? And how do I create it so that it's accessible by people to people without the cost of self-authority? That's what I'm interested in creating. And as an example of that, I wanted to mention how that can show up and what astrology can elucidate. So we all know that identity says that we're structurally emotional beings first, and has a lot of opinions about what to do with that, what leading with emotion is, leading with vulnerability is, what relationality is if we're emotionally, structurally emotional first, how relationality should look. And so that's fine. It's a paradigm that is built around that assumption. And as you know by now, I no longer agree with that, although I definitely tried it on and lived that way for a really long time. And what I'm experiencing in no longer hierarchicalizing what I call the seven developmental lines, emotion, mind, will, structure, intuition, et cetera, to not privilege any one of those over another presents a different question. So there are many aspects of the essential self, let's call it. What is structurally first for you? Structurally maybe is too strong a word there. What is your thing at the risk of being vague? What are you supposed to lead with? What's authentic for you? And I offer as an example, I'm so glad for the emotional work that I did. I maybe went down that road a bit further than was necessary or useful, but it was really important for me. However, if you want to know where to look in someone's chart for how they relate to emotion, how they emotionally regulate, how they process emotion, you look at two things. You look at their Venus placement and you look at their moon placement. And just by way of example, my Venus is in Aries in the seventh house. Aries is, I may be a bit Aries-centric here, but it's a very strong fire type. It's initiating without thinking. It's immediate, militant even. It's very strong. That's not a soft and cuddly Venus. That's the most ardent kind of Venus you could have. And it's in my seventh house, which is among other things as of relating. And my moon is in Gemini in the ninth house. Ninth house is knowledge, higher learning, metaphysics. And Gemini is ideas, multiple perspectives, mercurialness. So those are two fiery and airy. Gemini is an air sign. And the moon is in one of the two houses that has to do with intelligence. Fifth and ninth are usually associated with intelligence. So my chart doesn't indicate that I'm oriented toward emotional processing like identity defines as what authentic emotional relating, emotional relating, emotional leading vulnerability. I feel my way to thinking and I think my way to feeling can be either. But my thinking and feeling are not separable, not very easily. So I'm saying all of this to say that the operating, trying to operate with the idea that we're structurally emotional beings first was a useful exercise that I learned a lot from, but on some essential level went against my very nature. It's just not how I'm configured. And someone else whose moon is in Pisces and Venus is in Cancer, for example, they would be really different. And that's cool for them. So do you see what I'm getting at here? When you don't privilege emotion as structurally first, then there's no moralization of how you operate with emotions. Now, can that be a slippery slope that enables people to repress emotion? Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm not saying anything goes and anything is authentic. I'm not saying that. And as I say in the manuscript, emotion very much is and was a missing piece. It's the least developed or least attended to of all the seven developmental lines. So yeah, it's critical. But I think I wrote this in the manuscript just because the last piece of the puzzle, like literally when you're doing a jigsaw puzzle, the last piece of the puzzle has meaning and significance and it's a big deal, but that doesn't make it any more important than all of the other pieces. It's still just a piece, but you don't put in that last piece as casually as you do all the other ones, right? It's a big deal. Maybe you take your time and make sure everyone else is watching, but that doesn't make it structurally more important than the others. It just means it was a missing piece. So the concern I have, and I've seen this, is that, I mean I'll broaden it to any and all paradigms, any paradigm that structurally privileges and therefore moralizes one developmental line or more over other developmental lines will structurally fall prey to the if-the-only-tool-you-have-is-a-hammer-everything-looks-like-a-nail problem. If emotion is seen as structurally primary, then all roads will lead back to you need more emotional processing. On the other hand, landmark education, I don't know if their metaphysics say this, but for all purposes, they worship at the altar of will. So whatever the problem is, the answer is more will. Choose your choices. Distinguish your inauthenticities. Apply more precise language. Invent a possibility. It's will and mind, I suppose. That was the same with Ayn Rand. Same with Scientology. There's a lot of will and mind-based paradigms out there. A religion like Christianity is also using will and mind, although it doesn't look like it, but because it's a belief system, then whatever the problem is, you need to believe more. Faith, right? Have faith. That's a call for a, it's a mix of will and mind with the emotional vibes that come with your, you know, this is a direct Stace quote that, if I can get it, faith is an emotional reaction to a belief, which is brilliant. So technically, we wouldn't say that Christianity is operating with an emotional line. They're using faith, which is an emotional reaction that starts with a belief, which is the domain of mind. And there are paradigms that are less popular, for sure, but there are paradigms that are very intuitive-based. Esoteric, sainthood, Sufism has a lot of intuition in it. Yeah, the kinds of paradigms, the kinds of other paradigms besides identity that use angel soul structure, that kind of stuff. And identity puts a lot of stock in intuition as well. So I'm not knocking any of that. I'm just saying, look what happens when one developmental line, one aspect of quote-unquote soul is privileged over another. It distorts the field. And if you're someone for whom focusing on emotional processing and emotionally processing your way through reality, or at least in relationships, is favored in your chart, then that's going to work better for you than if it's not. But still, if it's not true that we're structurally emotion-first, then it's not a matter of whether or not there's a dead end. It's just a matter of time. It's just a matter of time. So I think that's all I have today, looking at my notes here. Yeah, that was it. So I just wanted to disambiguate that myth and magic. It's not the end of magic. What I'm inviting you into is that adults don't need myths. And it's a different kind of magic that is without myth. You can wonder about the nature of existence without creating a map for where it came from. I think of the word agnostic. People sort of equate atheism and agnosticism, but there's a difference between I don't know and I don't know. Agnosticism, I really dislike that agnosticism and atheism are, for all purposes in our culture, the same, because they're different words and they mean different things. Atheism means know God, not God. Agnostic means not knowing. That's the root gnosis with a G in there. It means not knowing. But not knowing can be I don't know and I don't care and I don't really think about it. That's not really engaged with reality, I would argue. You know, if it's not your thing, then it's not your thing. Okay. But to me, part of maturity is to be in reality and to be perceiving reality is to include wonder because it's amazing. I heard someone say once, I forget, was it Ramana Maharshi? I can't remember, but it was a Zen teacher who said something like, to be enlightened is to be in a constant state of amazement. Now, of course, we have to be careful because we don't want to define anything as a fixed state, but you can't live in a constant state of amazement. I don't think that's possible because you'd have to manage the state. But what I would say is spiritual maturity makes you sort of available to the amazement of life on a regular basis because it is amazing. It just is. And the amazement can be in so many different places, in the eyes of an insect, in the trot of a horse, in the meow of a cat, in the amazement of the bananas on your counter that came all the way from Ecuador, without spoiling. The computer, the technology that you're listening to this or watching this on, that is amazing. That is wild. And then looking up at the stars in the sky and thinking about the size of the universe and how the light that you're looking at, the closest star I think that you're looking at is from, I can't remember, a really long time ago. It's inconceivably vast. None of that magic requires myth. None of that magic requires the price of self-authority. We only slide from magic into myth when we cannot tolerate ambiguity, unknown, or if there's a deficit of meaning in our life that needs a different kind of attention than myth. And I think there's nothing wrong with trying out myth of various kinds. Not at all. It can be developmentally appropriate. But like I keep saying, there is a price to that that may or may not be worth it. Some people need the significant structure of, for example, Catholicism or Alcoholics Anonymous, which are actually not that different. These paradigms that come with a lot of structure and a lot of myth, it may be that just the way someone is configured and the way their life is going, that's what they need. But what I'm asserting is that there is a self-authority price there that ought to be understood. And it does have to be reconciled at one point, whether you like it or not. It's just a kind of accounting. You can do whatever you want, but the prices of consequences are unavoidable. I misspoke last time when I said second Sunday was in a couple of weeks, because when I recorded that last one, it was the first of the month, which was a Sunday. February 2026, that we're in, is a very neat month. Begins as four equal weeks. That's pretty cool. I wouldn't necessarily call it magic. It's just numerological statistics, but I think it's cool. Starts on a Sunday, ends on a Saturday. Four weeks. If we had 13 months, I think every month could be like that. So second Sunday will be on the 8th. Go to content.clearandopen.com for info about membership. Until next time, thanks for listening.