Fascinating and meaty stuff as ever - I hope all this is going to become a book someday??
It’s so interesting to read about this gradual reframing of the weird in its wider historical context because, on a personal level, I feel like I have been on a similar journey in reverse over the past year or so, thanks to psychedelics (I try not to harp on about them all the time but your comments section feels like an appropriate place to do so 😂). The first time I took mushrooms I had what felt like a religious experience, like I had touched something divine (it was also very deeply entwined with the music I was listening to, which is interesting in the context of your St Martin in the Fields post…but that is a tale for another time). However, in the aftermath, I believed very strongly that this ‘divinity’ came exclusively from myself, that by taking the mushrooms I had created the conditions for my mind to access this amazing part of itself that is usually hidden. But the second time I took them, that was all called into question. It was a much lower dose, but it wasn’t very nice - I mostly just felt really anxious. My partner had taken them too and was having a lovely time, so I took myself off to distract myself and wait for them to wear off, wishing I hadn’t taken them at all. At the time I was really into prettifying my Substack by making little pictures on Canva to retrospectively illustrate all my essays up to that point, so I just went and got on with that. At some point my partner came in to see how I was, so I showed him the picture I was working on, whereupon he looked completely astonished and said that part of it looked exactly like the hallucination he had just been having in the other room. There was no way he could have seen the picture before having the hallucination because I had literally only just made it. In the week that followed I had this huge burst of creative energy that resulted in, or led me to, three bizarre coincidences that individually I would just have laughed off, but which in quick succession, and in the context of the recent mushroom experience, seemed like they must be part of something much bigger and weirder and more inexplicable. So even though the second trip was in itself far less enjoyable than the mental pyrotechnics of the first, it raised much bigger questions about the nature of reality and my place in it, and felt like something of a corrective to my belief that the first experience had come exclusively from inside my own head. All of which to say that my psychedelic journey thus far has been a kind of personal undoing of the narrative you describe above, and I can’t help feeling that perhaps it is part of a broader cultural moment in which more and more of us come to these sorts of realisations. I hope so, anyway!
Kate! So sorry about the delay. What an amazing story about your trip -- well, about both of them. This question of the internal/external nature of god or the sense of the divine is fascinating and huge and something I think about all the bloody time. My ideas about it have shifted quite a lot in the past year, in no small part due to conversations I've had with people on Substack. So I'm very glad you're writing about psychedelics in the comments! So fascinated to read about your journey. And the picture you made is beautiful. (Was it you who put the podcast about the telepathic experiences of children with autism into the imaginal-field Google form for my other post? If not, you might be interested: https://thetelepathytapes.com/)
Wow ... this is a lot to digest. A topic that's increasingly been on my mind. Many thoughts pinging around in my brain, not sure if any will find their way into a coherent response. In any event, interesting piece! 👏 🙏🏼
Yes! Thank you Eleanor Ellie. This feels simple, deep, familiar and true. And on a thin day such as today. You are in tune with it all. Long may you sing your song Robin! Love you x hope to catch up soon
The ideas in your text are close to the concepts of philosophical posthumanism. Posthumanism is a rich research field for everyone who's tired of the rule of reason (and no, posthumanism is not the same as transhumanism)
It is indeed worth wondering, Eleanor, and I am wondering about it. Very spontaneously, a group of six women in my Vermont village has arisen around widowhood, loss and grief. We have met regularly every two weeks for nearly a year without strain or effort. We believe we are doing important work for one another and possibly for our small rural community. That has not emerged yet but I think it will. We meet under the sign of the bee and we call ourselves, sometimes, informally, the bee sisters. I will bring the wisdom of this essay to them, possibly titrated a bit for sure, I have a tendency to overdo it on the textual side, but for our common wonder. So thanks for this.
I am interested in becoming a professional lamenter. Where can I apply for such a position?
Ever since I had that year that taught me to cry, I have been interested in sharing sorrows.
In fact, I created Lamentations & Lamingtons to bring together snacking & sorrows, and how of course we need to nurtured and fed in our grief. ‘Come for the treats, stay for tears, or come for the tears, stay for the treats.’
I must start to take my own fanciful ideas more seriously and finish creating this idea. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go somewhere and see a sign that read, ‘Your sorrows are welcome here’
I think there are a growing number of lament choirs around! Eleanor Holliday runs a great one in I believe Bristol. I took a workshop with her as part of an MA I took and it was incredible. And I know that in Ireland there are lots of teachers reviving and teaching the art of keening. None of this professional/paid work mind — but I think there are definitely structured ways to dig in. Your ideas sound really exciting — sounds like you have a lot to add in this sphere! x
Another way I would think about weirdness is in terms of "separatism." To separate is to choose a different fate, a different weirdness.
That's what the Jacobin Puritans like John Winthrop did in New England. And then they discovered that the impulse to separate, to be "weird" like Anne Hutchinson or Roger Williams, is incorrigible. Winthrop was a reasonable man so he sent the social heretics to Rhode Island to determine their own "fate" or weirdness.
And finally we could connect your story about weirdness in Jacobin England and Athenian democracy to the Puritan witch trials of New England. Not everyone got exiled to Rhode Island, some unfortunately had to hang on the gallows.
cf. Arthur Miller and the problem of separatism, of weirdness in American democracy.
Jason, thank you so much for this. Love this transatlantic perspective. I’m going to spend some time with these ideas, see what they unfold for me about weirdness. It’s an almost endlessly huge and capacious concept, isn’t it? And I wouldn’t have followed it out to these places without your prompting — so thank you! x
Another absolutely fantastic piece, there's so much here to stew in my mind. Coincidentally, I heard the other day (where did I hear this? I don't know where I heard this. Wait, I think I heard this on the Accidental Gods podcast) that the Anglo-Saxon concept of Wyrd is roughly equivalent to the Chinese "chi", the life force which connects all things. It's been playing on my mind all week; that and a fantasy of some kind of Anglo-Saxon qigong.
I'm admiring of your move from Ellie back to Eleanor. I willingly accepted the truncation of my name from Daniel ("God is judge") to Dan ("judge") when I entered the corporate world, but for the last couple of years I've been yearning to return; but... books published as Dan, and even family members now using that form after decades resisting... it just feels a little more friction than I can deal with.
Fantastic piece for St Martins-in-the-Fields too. Dancing for 12 hours at a rave this summer schooled me on the intimacy between music and the fabric of being, and that's been playing out for me ever since; my singing at Abysmass was the latest fruit of this adoration. The response to Abysmass has fueled the fire: I seem to have found further depths to my voice, which I intend to test out on Hackney Marshes for the solstice.
Dan! (Daniel?) Hello. Been thinking a lot about what you said here about wyrd being like chi. It’s so helpful and so much better to think with than the simple translation “fate” — which always sat wrong with me, just didn’t seem to convey the depth of the idea (though admittedly that’s based on my studies of Anglo-Saxon lit at undergrad, many many moons ago now).
The funny thing about switching from Ellie to Eleanor is that I’m worse at remembering about it than anyone else seems to be? Everyone has been so respectful and picked it up immediately, meanwhile I’m over here Ellie-ing myself left right and centre.
Yes yes yes yes YES! Can't wait for solstice. I'm a bit poorly at the moment, and my throat has closed up to the size of a pinhole, so singing is going to be... interesting. Definitely doing it though. On the plus side, my voice has dropped an octave or two, which sounds lovely... sub bass!
Are you familiar with the novel The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates, about an Anglo-Saxon sorceror? I read it about 5 years ago, but could definitely do with a re-read, in light of the things I've learnt since.
No! Haven't read that and it sounds like I need to. Will track down a copy. Thank you for the recc. And get well soon! If you don't sing, how will the sun know to rise?
Oh, and the Greek lament... I know little about it, but the La La La and the Ou Lou Lou... there's something so deep deep with in me that resonates, there's something so so so so far beyond words.
Welcome back, Eleanor! Happy to see this thought-provoking post today. Your vignette on Greek women mourners reminds me a lot of this Emerald podcast on collective trauma-healing rituals, “On Trauma and Vegetation Gods”: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7LD0xc6pfl8cCjMJuAktwp?si=Cj0H59E3SGaw4O3Cc8qBQw
Hope that link works!
Hi, lovely Sarah. I LOVE the Emerald and loved that episode. Going to relisten — thank you for reminding me of it. xx
Fascinating and meaty stuff as ever - I hope all this is going to become a book someday??
It’s so interesting to read about this gradual reframing of the weird in its wider historical context because, on a personal level, I feel like I have been on a similar journey in reverse over the past year or so, thanks to psychedelics (I try not to harp on about them all the time but your comments section feels like an appropriate place to do so 😂). The first time I took mushrooms I had what felt like a religious experience, like I had touched something divine (it was also very deeply entwined with the music I was listening to, which is interesting in the context of your St Martin in the Fields post…but that is a tale for another time). However, in the aftermath, I believed very strongly that this ‘divinity’ came exclusively from myself, that by taking the mushrooms I had created the conditions for my mind to access this amazing part of itself that is usually hidden. But the second time I took them, that was all called into question. It was a much lower dose, but it wasn’t very nice - I mostly just felt really anxious. My partner had taken them too and was having a lovely time, so I took myself off to distract myself and wait for them to wear off, wishing I hadn’t taken them at all. At the time I was really into prettifying my Substack by making little pictures on Canva to retrospectively illustrate all my essays up to that point, so I just went and got on with that. At some point my partner came in to see how I was, so I showed him the picture I was working on, whereupon he looked completely astonished and said that part of it looked exactly like the hallucination he had just been having in the other room. There was no way he could have seen the picture before having the hallucination because I had literally only just made it. In the week that followed I had this huge burst of creative energy that resulted in, or led me to, three bizarre coincidences that individually I would just have laughed off, but which in quick succession, and in the context of the recent mushroom experience, seemed like they must be part of something much bigger and weirder and more inexplicable. So even though the second trip was in itself far less enjoyable than the mental pyrotechnics of the first, it raised much bigger questions about the nature of reality and my place in it, and felt like something of a corrective to my belief that the first experience had come exclusively from inside my own head. All of which to say that my psychedelic journey thus far has been a kind of personal undoing of the narrative you describe above, and I can’t help feeling that perhaps it is part of a broader cultural moment in which more and more of us come to these sorts of realisations. I hope so, anyway!
(This is the picture in question btw - my partner said his hallucination looked exactly like the stained glass windows, which appeared between our bookcases https://open.substack.com/pub/katebrook/p/sitting-with-history?r=2uhhol&utm_medium=ios)
Kate! So sorry about the delay. What an amazing story about your trip -- well, about both of them. This question of the internal/external nature of god or the sense of the divine is fascinating and huge and something I think about all the bloody time. My ideas about it have shifted quite a lot in the past year, in no small part due to conversations I've had with people on Substack. So I'm very glad you're writing about psychedelics in the comments! So fascinated to read about your journey. And the picture you made is beautiful. (Was it you who put the podcast about the telepathic experiences of children with autism into the imaginal-field Google form for my other post? If not, you might be interested: https://thetelepathytapes.com/)
Wow ... this is a lot to digest. A topic that's increasingly been on my mind. Many thoughts pinging around in my brain, not sure if any will find their way into a coherent response. In any event, interesting piece! 👏 🙏🏼
Thanks so much for reading! Glad it sparked some ideas.
Thought provoking as always and worth the wait. Thanks!
Thank you for reading, Dell. xx
Yes! Thank you Eleanor Ellie. This feels simple, deep, familiar and true. And on a thin day such as today. You are in tune with it all. Long may you sing your song Robin! Love you x hope to catch up soon
Thanks for reading, lovely Ben. xx
This is brilliant, Eleanor! The two concluding paragraphs captured so successfully the paradoxical qualities of these archetypal forces.
Thanks so much for reading, lovely Nanette. x
The ideas in your text are close to the concepts of philosophical posthumanism. Posthumanism is a rich research field for everyone who's tired of the rule of reason (and no, posthumanism is not the same as transhumanism)
Thank you! Any reading you recommend in this area?
Francesca Ferrando's Philosophical Posthumanism. Pepperell's book is amazing,but I don't remember it's title.
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” —Raoul Duke
Quite!
It is indeed worth wondering, Eleanor, and I am wondering about it. Very spontaneously, a group of six women in my Vermont village has arisen around widowhood, loss and grief. We have met regularly every two weeks for nearly a year without strain or effort. We believe we are doing important work for one another and possibly for our small rural community. That has not emerged yet but I think it will. We meet under the sign of the bee and we call ourselves, sometimes, informally, the bee sisters. I will bring the wisdom of this essay to them, possibly titrated a bit for sure, I have a tendency to overdo it on the textual side, but for our common wonder. So thanks for this.
Wow, Cleo — these meetings do sound very potent. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that their ripples spread wide. Thank you for sharing. x
I am interested in becoming a professional lamenter. Where can I apply for such a position?
Ever since I had that year that taught me to cry, I have been interested in sharing sorrows.
In fact, I created Lamentations & Lamingtons to bring together snacking & sorrows, and how of course we need to nurtured and fed in our grief. ‘Come for the treats, stay for tears, or come for the tears, stay for the treats.’
I must start to take my own fanciful ideas more seriously and finish creating this idea. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go somewhere and see a sign that read, ‘Your sorrows are welcome here’
Thanks for the wonderful work!
I think there are a growing number of lament choirs around! Eleanor Holliday runs a great one in I believe Bristol. I took a workshop with her as part of an MA I took and it was incredible. And I know that in Ireland there are lots of teachers reviving and teaching the art of keening. None of this professional/paid work mind — but I think there are definitely structured ways to dig in. Your ideas sound really exciting — sounds like you have a lot to add in this sphere! x
YES Ellie! Loved this 💖
xxx
Thank you. Wonderful piece.
Thank you for reading!
Great prose and essay writing!
Another way I would think about weirdness is in terms of "separatism." To separate is to choose a different fate, a different weirdness.
That's what the Jacobin Puritans like John Winthrop did in New England. And then they discovered that the impulse to separate, to be "weird" like Anne Hutchinson or Roger Williams, is incorrigible. Winthrop was a reasonable man so he sent the social heretics to Rhode Island to determine their own "fate" or weirdness.
And finally we could connect your story about weirdness in Jacobin England and Athenian democracy to the Puritan witch trials of New England. Not everyone got exiled to Rhode Island, some unfortunately had to hang on the gallows.
cf. Arthur Miller and the problem of separatism, of weirdness in American democracy.
Jason, thank you so much for this. Love this transatlantic perspective. I’m going to spend some time with these ideas, see what they unfold for me about weirdness. It’s an almost endlessly huge and capacious concept, isn’t it? And I wouldn’t have followed it out to these places without your prompting — so thank you! x
Eleanor, hi. I have questions regarding the Blake reading class. what is the best means to present them to you? Thanks.
Sorry about the delay! You can send them to me: ellie@ellierobins.com
Looking forward to hearing from you x
Another wonderful artcle. Full of as many questions as answers. Just as it should be.
Thank you so much for reading, Jay! x
Another absolutely fantastic piece, there's so much here to stew in my mind. Coincidentally, I heard the other day (where did I hear this? I don't know where I heard this. Wait, I think I heard this on the Accidental Gods podcast) that the Anglo-Saxon concept of Wyrd is roughly equivalent to the Chinese "chi", the life force which connects all things. It's been playing on my mind all week; that and a fantasy of some kind of Anglo-Saxon qigong.
I'm admiring of your move from Ellie back to Eleanor. I willingly accepted the truncation of my name from Daniel ("God is judge") to Dan ("judge") when I entered the corporate world, but for the last couple of years I've been yearning to return; but... books published as Dan, and even family members now using that form after decades resisting... it just feels a little more friction than I can deal with.
Fantastic piece for St Martins-in-the-Fields too. Dancing for 12 hours at a rave this summer schooled me on the intimacy between music and the fabric of being, and that's been playing out for me ever since; my singing at Abysmass was the latest fruit of this adoration. The response to Abysmass has fueled the fire: I seem to have found further depths to my voice, which I intend to test out on Hackney Marshes for the solstice.
Dan! (Daniel?) Hello. Been thinking a lot about what you said here about wyrd being like chi. It’s so helpful and so much better to think with than the simple translation “fate” — which always sat wrong with me, just didn’t seem to convey the depth of the idea (though admittedly that’s based on my studies of Anglo-Saxon lit at undergrad, many many moons ago now).
The funny thing about switching from Ellie to Eleanor is that I’m worse at remembering about it than anyone else seems to be? Everyone has been so respectful and picked it up immediately, meanwhile I’m over here Ellie-ing myself left right and centre.
Look forward to catching up at the solstice. x
Yes yes yes yes YES! Can't wait for solstice. I'm a bit poorly at the moment, and my throat has closed up to the size of a pinhole, so singing is going to be... interesting. Definitely doing it though. On the plus side, my voice has dropped an octave or two, which sounds lovely... sub bass!
Are you familiar with the novel The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates, about an Anglo-Saxon sorceror? I read it about 5 years ago, but could definitely do with a re-read, in light of the things I've learnt since.
No! Haven't read that and it sounds like I need to. Will track down a copy. Thank you for the recc. And get well soon! If you don't sing, how will the sun know to rise?
Haha, good point!
Oh, and the Greek lament... I know little about it, but the La La La and the Ou Lou Lou... there's something so deep deep with in me that resonates, there's something so so so so far beyond words.