#90 The Stories That Shape the Future

The battle for the future won't just be fought through technology, politics or economics. It will be fought through story.

As artificial intelligence, data centres and digital infrastructure become the backbone of modern civilisation, new narratives are already emerging. Those who defend rivers, forests and the living Earth risk being recast as obstacles to progress... even as extremists. Recent political moves in the United States hint at how quickly environmental resistance could be reframed through the language of security and terrorism.

In this week's episode of Nonsense in the Chaos, I explore why storytelling has become one of the most powerful acts of our time. If old myths are being rewritten to justify extraction, surveillance and endless growth, then we need to become better storytellers ourselves... weaving narratives rooted in relationship, beauty, belonging and a living planet.

Because the stories we tell today will determine the world we inhabit tomorrow.

Books I mention in this episode;

Sand Talk; How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta

Active Hope; How to Face the Mess We're in with Unexpected Reslience & Creative Power by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone 

The music and artwork is by @moxmoxmoxiemox

Nonsense in the Chaos is available on all podcast platforms or you can listen to it here… https://nonsenseinthechaos.buzzsprout.com 

I'd love to know what you think! If you want to get in touch with me about anything on the podcast then email nonsenseinthechaos@gmail.com or you can follow me on Instagram and Bluesky @kriyaarts or at the Nonsense in the Chaos Page on Facebook.

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Thank you for all your support -x-

Transcript

0:52

Welcome to the Nonsense in the Chaos. I'm your host, Jodie Rose. I have just recorded and failed to record this podcast twice. This is the third time of me trying to record it. The first time my microphone was on mute. The second time I didn't press record, so I was just chatting away for half an hour before I realized that I hadn't pressed record. That's very Mercury retrograde. And it's gonna be extremely confusing now because I'm not gonna be able to remember what I've said now and what I said in the previous ones, and I'm just gonna have to try and capture what I was saying again. And it's really annoying because this is probably the most researchy one I've done for ages. Like, it's not just me off the cuff talking. I actually had some things I wanted to share with you. So I think I might just approach this from a completely different angle to the last two recordings I did because I am gonna just confuse myself if I try and do it again. So I'm gonna start by reading something that I hadn't got round to reading in the previous recordings, but it was something that I wanted to reflect on. So I'm reading an amazing book by Tyson Yunkaporta. Now, I would love to interview Tyson. I don't know whether I will be able to. I'm, I'm gonna reach out to him and see whether he'd be up for a chat. He wrote a book called Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, and I was I started reading this book as I began the Which Fool Are You cycle this year, where I help people find their archetype. And I didn't know, when I set out on this cycle, I didn't know what I was gonna do. I sort of thought I was gonna work with my sort of most obvious archetype and the first archetype I ever pulled out and worked with, which was the strumpet, Aphrodite, Venus. I, I felt like, you know, I hadn't spent time with her for a while and I'm going through the menopause, so it was like, you know, who am I and what am I as a sexual woman, uh, sexual being without, going through this phase that I'm going through. So that's what I thought was gonna happen. But I also was very much in a space of like I wanna trust the universe. I'm gonna let the universe lead. And I had a candle that someone gave me for Christmas that, on my workspace that said, "Trust the universe." And I just started reading this book, and I had a sense that I was almost saying, as we were doing the process, I was almost saying that what was coming through was almost like the archetype of me. It was like things that were my... that I've been into and have been doing my whole life, like drawing snails, drawing Eric the snail, and Eric being my, my favorite animal and my totem animal. And- Being like Yoda and being like Uncle Uru, Uncle... What's his name? Oh, I can't remember his name, from, um, Avatar. Uru? Oiro. Oiro. Uncle Oiro. Sorry, I just looked at him and it came through to me. Uncle Oiro from Avatar. The plays that I've done, my greatest teachers, which have been nature, 100%, um, theater, and money. So those have been my biggest teachers throughout my life, and they were all things that came through. And the way that I engage people with the Witchful U course is doing it through metaphor, 'cause you're trying to bypass the thinking. The thinking will not be able to tell you what your archetype is. The thinking will be going, "I don't know how to do this. This is really scary. It feels like school," blah, blah, blah. Witchful and doing this work to find your archetype is getting to that higher part of yourself, a deeper part of yourself that is the infinite part, but is the flavor that you're bringing for that infinite part. So you're here in this lifetime, in this kind of avatar, that you have this body and this shape, and you're coming from the archetypal world with your past lives, with your ancestors, with the body and, and the time and the family and everything that you've been born into, and you've got a flavor that you've brought. You know, your flavor's different to your siblings', it's different to anyone else in the world. Um, there might be other people that have got the same archetypes as you, 'cause there aren't that many. There's probably 12 or something, like t- you know, not, not many, not more than 20 or something. And that comes in different combinations. There's infinite combinations you can have of those 20, of different amounts as well. Some people can have a very strong, clear one. I've got quite a strong, clear one, but then lots of other ones as well that weave into it. And and it makes you who you are. It's what you're bringing to the party. And I love doing it, and it's, it's so fascinating. And the last time I found a new one was a few years ago, which was the warrior, but the warrior was more a flavor that was in amongst all the other archetypes as well. So like strumpet, my strumpet aspect is also a warrior, and the main thing that makes me a warrior is that I have no fear. I don't, I just don't have fear. And it's the bit that I have to kind of suppress and that I'm the most apologetic of in terms of my interactions with neurotypical everyday people, the beige brigade. I have to play down how fearless I am and just be kind of cute and, cartoony. That's sort of my defense mechanism is to sort of be a bit bumbly and and I'm not, like, physically strong, but I'm just not scared. I'm not scared. I'm, and I, I don't care what people think about me or say about me. I'm just... It, that, it doesn't, that bit of me doesn't exist. I can see it in other people, but I lit- I literally don't, I understand it. I can understand it. I can understand where they're coming from, but it just isn't something that bothers me. It just isn't there. So the warrior was a, was a really good one to find because it made me connect with that aspect. But it my archetypes are, like, the strumpet and the triple goddess Hecate. You know, I've a... I s- I seem like a f- a child, a mother, and a old woman, and I'm none of those three things, but those aspects are really strong in me. I seem very motherly, I seem very childlike, I also seem very old woman, wisey. Then there's Ing, which is the masculine creative fertility god, and I see him as very gay. He's like a, like the masculine creative David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Elton John kind of vibe that's really flamboyant and very gay, and I, I basically feel like I've got a gay man in me. And I've always felt very masculine. And I feel that was the main reason why I believed in past lives is because when I discovered I was female, w- when I was about seven, I knew for a fact that I am normally a man, and just by knowing that, I knew that I'd been here before. So I was just like, "What do you mean I'm a woman? I'm, but I'm not a woman, because I'm not a woman, I'm a man." But, and so I, it's, in terms of the trans thing, if I'd been a young person in this t- time now, I would definitely have been trans. I would have probably transitioned. It was such a big deal to me. Like, I, I was quite annoyed about it in my formative years. So I think it's interesting because I'm absolutely I'm an, a ally, I'm a trans ally 100%, but I do also appreciate the journey I've been on through being female. It's been an, a, an interesting experience. I feel like a wolf in sheep's clothing. I feel like I've explored w- the female experience and have come coming away from it with a, like, newfound respect for the feminine. And it definitely is playing the game of life on a harder setting. It's a mad yeah, okay, well done. You know- rich white man for being president of America. Would be embarrassing if you weren't. Of course you are. You're playing the game of life on the easiest setting. Now go play it as a, Aborigine or go play it as a disabled, lesbian or whatever. Like, play it on a harder setting and then come back to me, and it just, it feels like I'm- I appreciate I'm still a white woman. Really it's just female, that's the disadvantage. But it is a, a crazy experience, experiencing life from this cyclical, ever-changing landscape where your, your h- hormones and moods change. And you are sort of always playing catch-up. You're like oh, that's why I've just suddenly been crying for a week. Oh, that's why I'm feeling like this." And it's, it's fascinating, and I've reached the autumnal part of my journey of the female experience, and that's the Samhain. You know, so spring and autumn are the liminal spaces of the year, and spring is Beltane when the veil is thinnest between this world and the fairy world, and you have teenagers falling in love like that you'll never fall in love again, and everything's so erotic and exciting, and you're so powerful in your hormones and your experiences that you could create poltergeists. You know, you're f- full of powerful energy. Life bursting, you know, the power to create life out of death, like this amazing energy. And then Samhain is the veil's thinnest between this world and the world of the ancestors and the world of the dead And that's where I'm at now. And I feel like my past lives have become much more present, and they've pressed in on me, and that's what I felt came through with this archetype, th- this cycle, was the archetype of me that I was sort of feeling at the beginning. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and I, I couldn't name it, and I didn't wanna... It also felt like something I shouldn't name. It felt like something more profound than something that should be named and categorized and labeled. And but then I pulled a card today, and the card was spot on, so there is a word, but I'm also not labeling it. It's, there's more to it than that. There's more of a soup to it than this, but it's the sage, and it's my sage-iness that is been... that whatever life I've been in, I've been some kind of sage, be it poet, witch, shaman, magical, whatever. I, to some extent, there's always been this, um, sage-like aspect to, and what even is a sage? Like, that's why, I mean, it's sort of unnameable. But this sort of thing that's been there that's m- more occulty, shamanicky, medicine man-y thing that's been there in all of the different incarnations that I've had, and that's what I could feel coming through, and that's what I created. And it was only through doing it through metaphor. It was when I was making my iconostasis, which is like a mood board that you stick a collage onto cardboard, but it's cardboard with flaps so that you can stand it up and put it at the back of your altar. So if you're watching the video, you can see my iconostasis behind me, and it's, yeah, the iconostasis of, of... It was through creating it that I was like, "Oh, that's what this archetype is." Up until then, I was just, doing things. I was doing my fanzine and reading things and writing things that were talking to me. And then finally it was like, "Oh, here's here's what's coming through." And a big influence of this whole process has been this book Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. He's talking about how to use indigenous thinking to save the world, and this is feeling so right for everything that's going on in the world at the moment. So I'm just gonna read this passage. I love, I love it. This book has been amazing. So he draws symbols, so he's using metaphor as well. So with the chapters that he's writing and the, the themes that he's working upon, his access to them before writing them is to create a tool, to create some sort of physical object. And then in the process of making the objects and the conversations that happen around it, it reveals the chapter that he needs to write. So this chapter is advanced and fair, and, he's drawn a symbol. The symbol is, Hexagon? One, two, three, four, five, six sides, which is a What is it? A, an object with a shape of six sides is called a that. So one of them. And in the middle there's a circle, and then either side of the circle is a semicircle, so it almost looks like ears either side of a circle. And he says, "This is a symbol I use to mark a way of thinking I call story mind. There is more to narrative than simply telling our stories. We have to compare our stories with the stories of others to seek greater understanding about our reality. It is a test of validity and a rigor for new knowledge. The symbol shows two people sitting, bringing their stories together to share through sand talk to extend their knowledge. False narratives do not stand up well to this kind of analysis. Story mind is a way of thinking that encourages dialogue about history from different perspectives, as well as the raw learning power of narrative itself. Narrative is the most powerful mechanism for memory. While isolated facts go only to short-term memory or to mid-term memory with repetition, as with study for exams, story goes immediately to long-term memory. If you can make up a story connecting metaphors, locations, and language triggers to help you remember something you are studying, it will save time and increase your long-term recall. Stories are also called yarns, but yarning as a verb is a different process altogether. The symbol represents the yarning process as well as narrative because this is the process by which stories come together and begin to have meaning. Without yarning, stories are just something to put children to sleep. There has to be an exchange of stories if you want to awake and grow." This reminds me of one of the things that I was taught when I was over in Australia last in 2020. I got pulled back there when I've- I, I went there when I was 18 'cause I felt like a really strong desire to, to be there. I ran- I left home. I, I ran away from Braintree, from Essex, and this upbringing. I had a lovely upbringing with my family, but just the, the culture of Essex, I hated it. And as soon as I was able to leave home, I moved to Australia, thinking that that was where I should be. So it felt like I was going home. There was this real draw to go back there. And I got there, and I hated it. And it gave me panic attacks and freaked me out, and didn't ever wanna go back there. I left. It took me a year to be able to raise the money to get back home again to England. And I just didn't enjoy it at all. I didn't like it at all. And then I came back and had no desire to go back there. And then in 2020, got pulled there by theater. I got taken to the Adelaide Fringe Festival, which is the oldest running Fringe Festival in the world, and it was celebrating its, like, 45th anniversary or 50th anniversary. I can't remember what it was. And there was the oldest Aborigine art center in the world in Adelaide that had been there 15 years, and it, it was the first year that it had a program of events in the Fringe Festival, which is from- someone from Brighton that spends their life, like, trying to pull in the surrounding communities that were, like, the deprived communities of Whitehawk and places where actual Brightonians had grown up and lived that were, like, poor, estates and stuff. The thought that you wouldn't try and pull in people, especially people with such an amazing culture, is just insane. And their, their program was better than anything else. It was just head and shoulders better than anything else that was being shown at the Adelaide Fringe. It was bloody brilliant. There was an amazing light show about dark emu and the skies, and that's when I learned that they look at the darkness in between the stars and they see the rainbow serpent has slithered through the Milky Way, and it's pushed the sand, and that's what the Milky Way is, is where the serpent's, like, slithered through the sand. And just amazingness like that. Like, such different way of thinking. And, I helped, like, replant this garden after it had been in a forest fire, and the second I got my hands in the soil, I remembered that I had I had been alive in that land, and that that was a culture that I had been part of, and that I loved that land deeply. And the thought of what was done to it, and the severing between... It's just, it just r- it's so traumatizing. It's pretty much the most unimaginable thing I think there is, of ripping families apart, and taking children and outbreeding them and, you know, trying to breed out the Aborigine culture that had been there for, I think it was up to 200,000 years they've got up to now. I was I'm not very good with it. It might be 60,000 years, but it was a bloody long time. And that culture of however many thousands of years had revered and loved the earth, and that had been passed down through stories, and how to manage forest fires, and how to build a dam, and whatever it was that they did was told and shared through stories and metaphor, and had been passed down and handed down for generation, gen- I mean, the forest fire's been managed for thousands of years by the people of the land, and they'd done it through stories. And it wasn't one people of one land. There was, like, 60, 70 different tribes that all had different languages all across the whole continent that passed the fire on to each other through story. And it's just so incredible and so in- deep and rich and rooted and embodied. And to rip that apart, to have ripped that apart is just I can't even cope with it. It's traumatic beyond belief Oh yeah, and to take the children and, and take them and put them in Western families is the only way they could break that huge bond and that, yeah, that culture. What I, uh, am connected to and appreciate is the power of narrative and the power of story, and it made me think of, um, Joanna Macy's book, Active Hope. She sadly died in last year, which was in numerology a nine year, and nine year is the year of mastery. And the last time we had a nine year was when Prince and Bowie died, and, you know, all of the famous people died. And last year we lo- lost a lot of masters as well, Joanna Macy being one of them. And she's been an environmental activist for many years, but she was amazing at writing books about self-help books for activists because it's really hard being an environmental activist and, and caring and s- and seeing what's happening and knowing how bad it is. You know, watching 50% of life be eradicated from the planet and what... And, if you care and you are embodied, and that's a, a loving relationship that you have with the natural world, it's the worst w- I mean, it's just, it's... I don't know. There are no words for this. And so she's written this book, Active Hope, which is... I highly recommend. She talks about the cycle to go through with, with activism and what you do in this cycle, which is, Honoring the pain, so honoring the pain that you're feeling. It feeling desperate, it feeling insurmountable unforgivable, all the things that, that you feel. Then there's seeing with new eyes, so having a, a new lease of life, a new inspiration, a new way of thinking that you might be able to help or things might change, and to, to grab it and run with it. Going forth is the going forth, and then coming with gratitude, so being grateful for what we have and what is still here and how lucky we are, and then you go back to honoring our pain in the world, um, and pain for the world. That's where I feel like I've just kind of gone through a cycle of recently because I can see what's happening in the future. The sage part of me has always been able to see 10, 20 years ahead. And where we are now, the little Lisa Simpson version of me was saying exactly this. I wrote poems about it. It's in my journals. I talked to my mom about it all the time. Like, I was the little Lisa Simpson saying, "Guys, can't you see where we're heading? This isn't okay. We're, we're screwed. We can't live like this. Things are this bad. Have you not heard about sweatshops? Have you not seen what they're doing to the environment? Have you not..." And I was saying it and speaking this reality. I, n- not speaking it into being, I was trying to s- not speak it into being. I was trying to point it out and say, "Look, this is where we're heading if we keep following the stories that we're being sold. If we keep being sold the story of consumerism and capitalism and neoliberalism and taking and profit and all the things that are happening, like, what's really happening is this, and this is what the effects are gonna be." And we're now exactly where I thought we were gonna be. Things obviously also are not just one narrative. There's so many cogs turning. Th- you know, lives have been brought back from the brink. Species have been brought back from the brink. Landscapes have been rewilded and repurposed and refound and reinvigorated and there are good things that happen as well. It's not all negative. but, you know, we are in the apocalypse right now. This is the apocalypse that I foresaw. We're on fire. It's boiling hot. Half of the living world has been eradicated, and we have an authoritarian toxic, lying government that are clamping down and taking away our rights. And we're stumbling blindly into being in much worse situations than we were before, and we're just giving it all away. We're just giving it away without questioning because we're just buying into the story that we're being sold. We're just... It's a dream, a made-up dream that we're going along with. And, but the reality the nuts and bolts of it is that it's at the detriment to ourselves, to the world around us. No one's gonna benefit from this. Even those with all the money, even the trillionaire at the top, he's gonna have to build some, like, domed city, not on Mars. Like, it's gonna be too much of a faff to get to Mars. He's just gonna grab a load of resources and minerals from Mars and make even more money 'cause he'll have even more resources than what we have on Earth and, utilize it and commodify it and then be even richer and... But the air, he won't be able to breathe the air here. It's all just gonna get horrible, and he's gonna have to build some sort of domed city. And the only way you're gonna be allowed into that is if you buy into the whole story, and you'll have to just be a worker, and you have to be whatever it is that, whatever role you've been as- assigned. And you're living in some mad dream. E- even if they want you, they could probably have AI things doing half the stuff that they'd need you for anyway. So most of us would just be running around in the desert, sort of, desolate, rubbish dump world that's left behind, which isn't a great vision. But it's, you know, I don't see anyone benefiting from this, even the wealthy. It's just nihilism, and we're heading towards nihilism. There's a brilliant podcast called The Emerald Podcast, and their the most recent one, listen to that. That's, it's literally about him and what he's doing and the SpaceX. He, the, the episode's called Space Hex which is brilliant. But that whole m- modus operandi, that way of thinking is just nihilism. And yeah, listen to that podcast, Emerald, The Emerald. It's brilliant. I love it. It's one of my favorite podcasts. And yeah, he captures beautifully where we're heading with this. And when I was listening to the news yesterday, I, I saw a vision of what's coming in the future from here in the next 10, 20 years, was, um, hearing that Donald Trump has made any attack on data centers a terrorism attack and anti-American So if you're gonna be part of the narrative, the grand narrative of whatever's being made up and sold to us, if you're a hippie who cares about the planet and loves the planet and loves nature and can see that data centers are using our water and making our electricity more expensive and causing us the need to make more electricity, which is burning fossil fuels, and i- in any way anyone does anything negative or even speaks negatively about data centers, then they are going to be seen as terrorists. And that's a whole That, th- I saw suddenly the witch trials coming again. It was like, ah, okay. So if you're a woke hippie, you're gonna be a terrorist in the not-too-distant future. And that So then it's like, okay, so what do we do? We need to tell other stories. So this is from Joanna Macy's book, Active Hope, but this is chapter two, Trusting the Spiral. "Active hope is not wishful thinking. Active hope is not waiting to be rescued by the lone ranger or some savior. Active hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act. We belong to this world. The web of life is calling us forth at this time. We've come a long way and are here to play our part. With active hope, we realize that there are adventures in store, strengths to discover, and comrades to link arms with. Active hope is a readiness to engage. Active hope is a readiness to discover the strengths in ourselves and in others, a readiness to discover the reasons for hope and the occasions for love, a readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts, our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose, our own authority, our love for life, the liveliness of our curiosity, the unsuspected deep well of patience and diligence, the keenness of our senses, and our capacity to lead. None of these can be discovered in an armchair or without risk." So what she talks about is, how you have three prongs to making change, and that's holding actions, which is like campaigners and demonstrations and things like that. Life-sustaining systems and practices, so developing new economic and social structures and scientific research that, that helps to make things better rather than be part of the problem. And then shift in consciousness, which is change in our perception, thinking and values, and that's where the storytellers come in and the narrative writers. And they have a very strong story. They've written their narrative and their story that people are buying into that you can be... You can buy yourself out of the void, you know, that dark the hole that one fills inside of oneself if one isn't nourished by spirit and by Mother Earth and by love and family and community. You think you can buy your way into feeling better by buying the hot new clothes or the new car or, you know, and just trying to keep up with the Joneses and all that kind of thing. And caring about what people think and trying to, live up to some ideal that is made up, that's artificial. And People have bought into that story and that narrative, and the only way to create a different reality is, is create or be created. You have to create your story. You have to create narratives that are different. And practice what you preach and lead by example. It's like be- live, live an extraordinary life, be an extraordinary being and show that love and care for the world around you and how you're benefiting from it, even without any money. You don't have any money and yet you're living a life that is exceptional and blessed and inspiring. So why are you wasting your time on that job trying to feed the machine when you could throw all of it away and, go live in a van, or even just walk across the, the land with a backpack, with a rucksack? It's totally doable. I do it all the time and I, you know, live on 12 pound an hour and working in a pub, which I actually really enjoy doing. All of these things about the narratives and the storylines are vital for us to create a reality that isn't the one that's being sold to us by Trump and by The the neoliberalism machine. So we have to fight, we have to fight it. And yeah, the sage in me is seeing a, a future that is even... Well, it's just the next step. You know, I saw up to here, and now I'm here, I'm seeing the next step, and I'm like, "Oh, God, let's not go that way. Let's do what we can." But there are so many moving parts, so there isn't... It's not that there's no hope. There is hope. And the things that I saw when I was younger looking here, yes, it does look like this, but also there are lots of other things going on than what I saw. There's an overall picture that's very bleak, but the, but there are beautiful things happening. And the n- the narrative and the story is longer than this, it, the narrative will keep o- telling itself. The pendulum is always swinging backwards and forwards. You know, we had the Holocaust and the Second World War and all the horror of that whole era, the First and Second World War, and then people going, "Hang on. I'm not gonna serve king and country anymore, and I'm not gonna respect aristocracy and think that my place on Earth and my social standing is just something I was born to, and it's, like, God's will." And, and that was all rejected, and that was a whole, journey. And now we're on this journey, and this journey is another journey of realizing that, you know, it's a new end-of-level boss. I've said this before, like, the end-of-level bosses always get harder. And this end-of-level boss is us having to remember to live cyclically and in lo- in love with Mother Earth, and to connect again with our subconsciousness and our archetypes and the archetypal world, and to connect with the world of Mother Earth on a metaphorical level and a place of magic and a place of spirit. A- and that that, it's all, that's magic. Art is magic. You know, it's not like Abracadabra, even though that is a magic word. Um, Abracadabra is, I- I, my words create my world. That's literally what it means. So it's create, be creative is what Abraca- Abracadabra means. For us to create a world that is beautiful and loving and connected and vibrant and full of vitality and full of life and supportive and community and connected, we need to tell stories of how wonderful that kind of experience is, and how if you're in that space, you don't care whether you're fat or thin or rich or poor. It's, you're happy. You're in a place of fulfillment and blessings and love. And it all comes back to love, doesn't it, at the end of the day? So let's pull a rune and see what the universe wants me to talk about If you enjoy this podcast, then please consider supporting me on Patreon, which is patreon.com/joelyrose. This is an independent podcast. It has no advertising, and it never will do, and it's what allows me to, Have a bit of money to pay for the equipment and, subscriptions and all the bits and bobs that I need to do in order to be able to produce this podcast. So if you're here every week and you really enjoy it, I would love it if you were able to support me by giving me a little bit of money each month. It's a really kind way to support, an artist, you know. It's like, like being a patron of the arts. And so you supporting me in this way is hugely helpful. And one day it might mean that I'm financially able to, not have to work at the pub or do other bits and bobs that take me away from a creative practice that I would love to just be giving 100% to. I used to be able to do it in the UK, but we had Arts Council funding, and there was just a different... It was a bit of a different world pre-pandemic, and I was living in Brighton, and there were more opportunities. And now I live in Sark, which feels like exactly the right thing to do. The universe led me here. Mother Earth led me here. I'm more connected to nature. I'm literally steeped in her. She is all around me on all sides, and it's a, a, an ongoing exploration, love affair adventure, and I, I love every second of it. And it also comes with a huge financial cost in that it's much more expensive to live here, and there's h- no opportunities really financially. I could be a gardener or a barmaid or a waitress, or I could work in a bike shop, or I could be a horse and cart driver all for less than the minimum wage 'cause we don't have minimum wage here, and we don't have workers' rights here or any of that stuff. We don't have employment laws. Or I'd have to do a full-time admin job working maybe in the government, being a civil servant or something like that, but that means I'd have no time at all to create art. And so for me to have time to create art, I'm having to take a huge financial hit. So anything you can do to help would be amazing. If you aren't able to and you can't afford it, that's okay 'cause someone else is paying for you to be able to enjoy this podcast for free. But if you can tell your friends about it and post about it and share it, that would be amazing 'cause word of mouth is everything and helps people to find this space. And also, if you're, a Patreon supporter, you get money off of the courses that I do, like the Witch For All of You course and, the immersion weekends that I put on. So there are benefits to being a, a supporter, but you know, whatever you're able to do is absolutely fine. I love you being here, and I really appreciate everyone who listens. So thank you. I send you huge love, and thank you for being here. And now on with the show So yeah, it's Othala's, which is the home. It means the ancestors, your domain. It's very much the Cancer rune. We've just gone over from Cancer season. We've gone into Leo season, which is fascinating. My God, there's gonna be a lot going on in the next few weeks. So- We're entering into a planetary alignment called the basket or the bowl where all of the slow-moving planets are making a shape that looks like a bowl, and it means they're all either trining or squaring each other, which brings about a lot of interesting stuff. And it's meant to be like a whole new change of reality, and so this is the narrative weaving. I don't care whether it's true or not, it's an opportunity. So we have this opportunity now with this planetary alignment in Leo in a 10-year, which is 10 is Leo energy. So in numerology, 10 is the number where the- in terms of like an alchemical process, it's when the shit is turned into gold. We've turned our lead into gold this year. This year is the year of gold. And the Cancer season we were just in, it was Mercury retrograde in Cancer, and we had the Cancer dark moon, and everyone who came to the ceremony had either lost a pet. It wasn't like with Scorpio full moon not every year, but some years people have really traumatic losses. You know, they lose very close family members in normally quite unpleasant ways. And there, there was so much grief. There was one full moon ceremony I did where everyone had so much grief, and it w- it's, it, that is very Scorpio, which is Samhain autumn time. This Cancerian dark moon in Mercury retrograde, 'cause Mercury retrograde is, uh, the kind of shadow side of it or inner world side of it it meant that within communities of like either a distant family m- or like an aunt or an uncle had died or a cousin or a fam- like a pet. So it was like slightly less intense as, than the Scorpio one, but that's what s- came through on the last Cancer dark moon ceremony, was everyone was in some sort of grief and was going through it, and we were all going through it. I'd nearly lost my marriage. Me and my husband had a massive falling out. But it was something that needed unearthing. It was something that had been festering that needed bringing to the light, and it did, and we're completely f- we j- it's beautiful, and we're back to where we were again. And we needed to do it. You know, it was, it was a thorn, like a splinter that had got infected, and it needed pulling, and it wasn't pleasant at all. But it's important to go through these things. You need to bring these things out into the light and to honor them and, Be responsible for them. You know, like, like with what needs to happen in the world, we need to be responsible for our actions and to face the consequences, own up to what needs to be owned up to, apologize for what needs to be apologized for, and move on and clear it away. Clear the space. And so you might have been through something yourself in the last month that's been to do with family and your community that's needed clearing, and this is about that. This is about community, but it's also about our ancestors. And this, for me, is very much like what's come through with my witchfall journey of connecting with the past lives and the ancestors and feeling this Samhainy energy of like, okay, what, what have I learnt from this life? What have I learned, and what do I wanna pass on to the next life? What do I wanna do with my old age? You know, I'm becoming a, a baby crone. I'm entering the baby crone phase, and so where... what's most important to me? My home is. I'm... So Cancer is the opposite end of the spectrum to Capricorn. I'm a, a Capricorn sun, so I've spent my life being very Capricorn. I've been very ambitious and driven, and I, you know, I try to beat somebody. And I was out in the world, like, trying to create a career in theater and you know, I wanted to be on TV. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be... I wanted to be famous and then I thought from that platform I'd then have plenty to say. But it ended up that's not the way things turned out, and I feel like that's the best thing that could have ever ha- happened to me. I think I'm a much better person from not being ego-stroked, you know, from a young age. I d- I think, I think I'd be dead if that had happened. so I'm grateful that it didn't. But the, the journey has been fabulous. It's been mad. I've had such a mad life. You know, I've lived a thousand lives and intend to live a thousand more, but actually I'm feeling a lot calmer. I'm not so desperate to, I don't know, move around. You know, I, I still wanna walk my pilgrimages. I need to walk the land. I need to spend time with Mother Earth that's significant. It's like I need to see my mum, you know? I need to spend time with my mum, I need to spend time with Mother Earth. I need to walk the land. I need to lose myself in Kairos time. I need to challenge myself and feel bigger than what the little goldfish bowl of Sark makes me feel like. And I just wanna go out and have adventures and, and all of that side of things. But but I feel less, bothered about whether people know that I've done it, you know? I feel less interested in fame and that kind of thing. So I'm just doing it, I'm doing it because it's an interesting story, and it's an inspiring story, and it teaches me about the world and how amazing people are, and how kind and generous they are. This year we're going to walk across France, which is the first time I've done a pilgrimage in a different country. And it's gonna be interesting because it's gonna be a bit, bit more nerve-wracking because it's harder to read people in a different language. I'm not gonna feel quite as safe in that sense. But at the same time I'm excited to discover what this journey intends to teach me because it's a s- it's a two-way relationship. I'm coming with a intention. I'm coming with the intention of a pilgrimage for hope, and we're gonna walk with hope. And, And I'm gonna be sharing with the people that I meet the, the amazing experiences that we've previously had with how kind and wonderful people are, and that people are good. On the whole, people are good, as much as the press tries to lead us to think otherwise, and people are kind. So we'll see what happens doing that in another country and what happens doing that in France, and what happens doing it on these lines. Because we're gonna be walking the Michael and Apollo line, which runs from Michael Skellig at the bottom of Ireland to St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall then Mont Saint-Michel in France, and then from Mont Saint-Michel, we'll walk to Le Mans. So we're looking for a sailor. If anyone knows a, a sacred sailor who can take us, then if we can sail that bit, that'd be brilliant. If not, we'll use public transport, see if we can get ferries and, like, make our way round, um, and just visit the sites, visit the three sites. But it'd be great if we could sail between them. That would be ideal. And then walk from, um, St. Michael's M- uh, Mont Saint-Michel to Le Mans and just see what happens, see where, where the universe takes us and what experiences we have and what that line is like, what the difference of that line is. And we're walking towards Armageddon in Israel, and it'll take four or five years for us to get there, but we're walking in hope that by the time we get there, the world will be at peace and and love will have prevailed. That's the hope that we're walking with, and we will walk and talk about that and share that as we walk and ask people how they feel about what's going on, and yeah. So that's, that's the intention. That's what we're gonna be doing. And then also at Boomtown this year, I think, uh, what I've just felt into recently is it... Like last year we, we foresaw, because I'm a sage what next, this year's theme was gonna be, which was radical redesign. And so as the narrative of Boomtown unfolds, this year it's radical redesign, but we did that last year. We had a beautiful 3D model made of the land temple basin. It's the basin that Boomtown is in, which looks like a womb with a tight vaginal canal. And, you'll know from... i'm not sure if I'm repeating myself now 'cause I've said this, this is the third time I've said this, but I think I did it in the previous recordings. Uh, Jonathan Kay in the fourth podcast talks about how he got the license to for Boomtown to happen. So he got the license for that piece of land to be allowed to have festivals on it, and it's in quite a rich area, so it was quite a mission to achieve that. And he did it because he knew that this was a sacred site, and it was a land temple. And you can see that it's been excavate, um, la- landscape gardened, and you can see that it's been landscape gardened and uh, sculpted in the way that Glastonbury Tor was a natural hill, but you can see it's been sculpted into a, a much steeper slope with a kind of spiral going round it. And this has a sort of spiral in the land temple as well, in the, um, basin. And Salisbury Hill is the same, like there's a, a bun- It's what our ancestors did. It's what the Neolithic people did, was they moved big rocks, and they sculpted huge vast landscapes. And when you're in there when I'm on the stage at Boomtown, and it was called the Origin Stage, which is what I named my fanzine when I was doing my Witch For The Year course. It's the name I've given this archetype. Although it is the sage, I feel like it's an unnameable thing. Like what is a sage? What does a sage even mean? A sage is what, is what? And I've called it the Origin Stage, but actually I feel like it's the Origin Sage. It's something about the origin being, like the collective that we, the collective consciousness that we go back to which is also kind of this rune. This rune is about the, the, the whole community, the full whammy. All our ancestors, all the archetypes. It's the dreaming. It's the, uh, Aborigine dreaming. It's the origin. It's the source. And the image I've got on the front of my fanzine is a circle with a dot in the middle of it, and that is, um, a symbol that comes up a lot in Aborigine artwork, and it's the origin. It's the Big Bang. It's the sperm hitting the egg. It's the starting point of everything. It's the center of the universe. And, Our ancestors would create these sacred spi- spaces and sites and then would hold creative things within it, which is what we're doing when we do Boomtown. And last year we did this radical redesign where we created the, the La Luna coven and the priestesses were part of, we're part of the network, which we are, and the network's this sort of mycelium network of community of people working together to try and overthrow the AI kind of fake news leaders that we've got. And We created within the La Luna Coven the start of like a French Resistance. And we were trying to teach the young people how to resist. And we were saying... We had a roadmap on the wall, you know, like those murder things where you have bits of string going from one place to the other. It was- And it said, "How do we get from I'm angry to fuck yeah?" And we were asking people to stick things up. And so we had this little roadmap up on the wall of how to get from I'm angry to fuck yeah. And then we had this beautiful 3D cardboard model made, that my friend made of the geographical stratas of, uh, the basin. And then we got people to cut up cardboard and make models, and made shapes to put in the basin of things they wanted to see at the festival, which we then gifted to Boomtown and hopefully they might replicate some of these models in the festival this year so that people who made them will turn up to the festival and be like, "Oh my God, I designed that." It'd be great if they did that. I don't know if they're going to, but it'd be awesome if they did. So we did the radical redesign last year. So this year what I'm feeling into is what do we do? And I- what I've... We're having the meeting tonight, so at seven o'clock tonight I'm gonna be meeting with my Boomtown crew, and I've just been feeling into what is it that we're doing. And I saw on their marketing media yesterday that, uh, they're- they're looking at the SpaceX thing, how there's those who are gonna be taken to space, although she's clearly lying. She's not gonna actually take anyone with her. But there's those that are gonna, like, basically fuck off and leave to go to space, and if you go along with their narrative, then you'll be one of the ones that go with them, although actually you can see that she's lying when she says that. And then you've got those who are gonna be left behind who are like, "But why would you not care about the Earth? Why would you not care about the planet?" So it's great 'cause it's this microcosm of the macro. Boomtown's amazing 'cause it is telling the story of what's going on in the world, but in this made- make believe long told story. You know, it's- it's- it's a, a narrative within a narrative fractal reality. And so within it you can really get in there into the nuts and bolts of, um, how to make a difference. And so that's what I'm wanting to do with the young people is like, how do you write a different narrative? How do we... What can we do to disrupt reality that are real things that you can do out in the world? And it made me remember an article, um, an essay that was written years ago Trying to see if it says when it was written. 1985, and I was given this as a teenager. TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, On Autological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. That is by Hakim Bey. It's definitely not dated. Well, there's a bit of stuff in there that I'd say would get it canceled in this day and age, but the chapter that I've always loved is Poetic Terrorism. So I'm just gonna read this to you now. "Weird dancing in all-night computer banking lobbies, unauthorized pyrotechnic displays, Land art. Earthworks as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in state parks. Burglarize houses, but instead of stealing, leave poetic terrorist objects. Kidnap someone and make them happy. Pick someone at random and convince them they'll be heir to an enormous, useless, and amazing fortune, say 5,000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of al- alchemical MSS. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, and will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence. Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places, public or private, where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience. Go naked for a sign. Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence or spiritual beauty. Graffiti art loaned some grace to ugly subways and rigid public monuments. Poetic terrorist art can also be creative for public places. Poems scrawled in co-courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks and restaurants, Xerox art under windshield wipers or parked cars, big character slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients, pirate radio transmissions, wet cement. The audience reaction or aesthetic shock produced by poetic terrorism ought to be at least as strong as the emotion or terror. Powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, Dadaesque angst. Uh, there's-- it goes on, but that's, uh, that's the chapter that always grabbed me. I love the idea of putting up the b- brass plaques and yeah. So that's the-- I think we'll put on a brass plaque, outside our La Luna coven, and, say this is where many young people have had like epiphanies 'cause they have. We've had so many amazing experience, and we saw young people's eyes fill with stars as they've-- the pennies dropped for them. So, um, yeah, gonna be asking young people to think about poetic-- acts of poetic terrorism that they could do in their world. which brings us onto the Chaos Crusade. So for this week's Chaos Crusade, I want you to, um, do an act of poetic terrorism. I want you to look at, Or just to think about that list of things that I just gave. Like, look at the world around you, the community that you live in, and just think about things that you can do that that, that won't get you in trouble. They're probably illegal. You know, like for example, you could paint stones. You could paint images or poems on stones and then leave them around town. It's probably still illegal to do that, but it's not something that you're gonna get in loads of trouble for. And a- and just don't get caught. Do it, do something that's not... So my friend, for example, used to do c- cleaning graffiti. So he got a power washer, and he'd make stencils, and he'd go to, like, dirty m- motorway bridges and stuff, stick the stencil up, and then clean the stencil. And so it's left a message and left an artwork on the wall, but it was through cleaning it. So they, they couldn't be done for vandalism 'cause they hadn't painted the wall. I think that in Brighton at least, I think something got passed that meant that it was. But, and they would put up, um, cones, traffic cones and everything, and go in, like, normal-looking work gear so it looked like they were meant to be doing it. Things like that. So it could be putting a poem up somewhere. It could be putting a fairy door on a tree. It could be, I love the idea of the commemorative plaque. Put a commemorative plaque up somewhere where you had a sexual encounter or something. You know, some- something amazing. But yeah, just have a little think about that list. I'll read a few of the suggestions again. The top. I mean, I love the idea of, uh, weird dancing in an all-night computer bank lobby. Go and have a party in a bank lobby, although you probably will get in trouble for that. But yeah, land art, earthworks. Doing something in the park or doing something in the town where you make a piece of artwork out of leaves or twigs or, you know, do a, a, um, a mandala or something like that. But yeah leave poems. Or send let- like, post letters through people's doors with some beautiful poem or story. Just something, something magical that's gonna blow their reality. Do it to a neighbor that annoys you. Send something really nice, like a really amazing, inspiring, loving thing through the door of someone that drives you up the wall. Something that just breaks reality and will open them up to something vaster and more magical and It just, ugh, I always say the word extraordinary, but extraordinary. I'm getting bored of my vocabulary. But yeah, something that's, uh, more magnificent than the reality that's being sold to us by the Beige Brigade. So off you go. Do something in- incredible. Don't get in trouble and, I love you all very much. Thanks for being here, and I shall see thee anon. Yay, I think I managed to actually record a podcast. Woo-hoo.