Enchanters at the End of the World (As We Know It)

An Online Writers' Circle

At dusk I bathed at the river's edge

where the horses came out of the ironwoods

to face the river's mouth. Sharks waited there

for pig carcasses to wash down,

jaws hacked out by hunters to mount.

People disappeared all the time in that valley.

I was just a girl at the edge of a clearing.

Dear Readers,

I’m wondering if you, too, feel like you’re suspended in a current, unable to make any progress, or even figure out what direction you should go?

Upstream or downstream? Resist or surrender? Should I seek the source of the spring high in the mountains, or let go and be carried to the river mouth to be swallowed by the ocean?

Where I live, there are tiger sharks at the mouth. They know that at the place where the river meets ocean, the water is muddy. No one can see them.

I have seen hunters shoot and stab wild pigs, slash windpipes, and heard air leave a body in a high whistle. I have seen hunters hack tusks out of boars’ snouts and leave carcasses to rot.

The tigers know storms will carry those carcasses downriver. They meet them, mouth to mouth.

Surely, I (we) should swim upstream, avoid the sharks that we know are there, even though we can’t see them? Surely, we should let go and let ourselves be carried by the water to wherever it wants to take us, stop struggling against currents that are far greater than us?

I believe both. Upstream and downstream. Surrender and seeking the source.

And I also believe both choices are possible.

This is why I am starting an online writers’ circle for paid subscribers on my Substack, The Corpus Callosum Chronicles, where I have dedicated the past 2.5 years to revitalizing culture through rebuilding the bridge between imagination and logic, mirrored in our human anatomy through the brain hemispheres, by using words to penetrate consciousness stultified by too much logic.

I call myself a word dervish because I am governed by spirals. I know I am an enchanter and sorceress, and I am sending this call out to everyone in the world who wants to come together and explore, through a process both simple and complex, I have created based on Heka, Mū Hawaiian magic, to open ourselves up to receiving messages from the non-human world (because I feel we need to expand our vision beyond the current human drama), and translate those visions into writing that just doesn’t have the power of spells, but into pieces that actually are spells.

If that sounds paradoxical to you, good. Even better if you find this proposal paradoxical and are excited about it. Paradox is the path forward, or backward, I don’t know which direction you’ll choose, and it’s not for me to do that, but I can say that paradox is a path out of the extreme polarity that has come out of hiding at the river mouth. The spring is meeting the ocean. The muddy water has cleared. Look, there’s a shark!

Once upon a time, writing was revered as sacred because humans were aware of the actual power marks on a papyrus or tomb wall had to channel the energies of what they were representing.

This fact has not changed. Writing is still this powerful.

What’s changed is us.

Collectively, we have forgotten the power of words, spoken and written. It may seem too daunting a task to shift a culture, but individually we can recover. I have seen this over and over in the people I’ve known throughout my life, and I bet you have, too.

I am still in the process of determining the format for this experience and would love your feedback about how much, and how, you would like to participate. Please answer the following polls, even if you aren’t a paid subscriber, and help me figure out how I can best serve this vision.

If you do want to participate and are not yet a paid subscriber, you can upgrade from free or subscribe by pressing the green button. It’s $7 a month, or $70 for a year.

In addition to access to Enchanters at the End of the World (As We Know It), paid subscribers also receive full access to the archives and a PDF download of my 96-page book, Weaving a Basket of Words: How to Write a Poem to Carry Water.

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I don’t want to reveal too much because I want you to have the experience of being immersed in the process as it reveals itself to you as you need to embody it in your creations, but I will say the prompts will be simple invitations with deep implications, like mycelial roots, and that this group is for writers of all levels and genres, and even for people who don’t consider themselves to be writers, though you do need to be able to write, which in the most left-brain way means you are a writer!

Writers, I hope you’ll join me. I am holding this space as a cauldron for you to elevate your words into true spells that will revitalize your relationship to words and our shared culture.

Thanks for answering these polls, and please reach out if you have questions by sharing in the comments or replying to this email.

In full sorceress mode. Image by Tahiti Kulia

Kō aloha lā ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light