Lately I've been trying to use social media less and journal by hand more. I'm doing this to recondition my brain to go through the mechanics of writing and composing, to help with focus, and also to improve my dream recall. One advantage of journaling is that I don't have to censor it or make it as publicly performative as much as I would for an on-line post.
It's hard to tell if it's working, but I at least I have had some interesting dream images appear over the last two weeks. Significantly, I had a "Return to Arcosanti" dream the other day that was different on three counts. Instead of being there by myself, Mark was with me; instead of feeling stuck there and anxious about travel back, Mark said, "We're not in a hurry. Why don't we spend the night?", and; instead of the canyon being filled with a giant lake, there was a glowing, crystal structure at the base of the southern mesa facing the site.
On the reading front, I set aside Jung while I read a fluffy book about Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune. I guess I've been spoiled by Ronald Hutton, because I was disappointed by the second- and third-hand anecdotes and speculation in the book. At 160 pages, it was a quick read filled with trivia. The central theses are that Crowley and Fortune might have worked together, that they were geniuses, that they lay the astral groundwork for the queer (Crowley) and women's (Fortune) movements through sex magick, and taken together they represent balanced polarities working in the magical European landscape of the mid 1900's. While the book did read like the author's notes on other books, I did think that working with a reverse-chronology and beginning the book with the two's deaths was a clever choice. I'm not sure if I would hang onto the book it, but the book could be an interesting source for writing magician characters.
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