“The clock in the back of the deserted house (everyone’s sleeping) slowly lets the clear quadruple sound of four o’clock in the morning fall. I still haven’t fallen asleep, and I don’t expect to. There’s nothing on my mind to keep me from sleeping and no physical pain to prevent me from relaxing, but the dull silence of my strange body just lies there in the darkness, made even more desolate by the feeble moonlight of the street lamps. I’m so sleepy I can’t even think, so sleepless I can’t feel....
May 08, 2024•34 min
"Sadly, or perhaps not, I recognize that I have an arid heart. An adjective matters more to me than the real weeping of a human soul. But sometimes I’m different." -Fernando Pessoa -- Every so often, I sit down and write a letter to Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet and writer. I not only write but also send each letters to the postal address where Pessoa spent the last fifteen years of his life before dying at the age of 47 with cirrhosis of the liver - most likely due to the alcoholism. He ...
Apr 28, 2024•30 min
In the last episode of my Tarot Cure, I take on the Yuri Challenge: “When people die, you've got yer 5-Stage Kübler-Ross model of recovery, right? So how about a 3-Stager for breakups? Breakup Therapy? Breakup Recovery. What are the three stages?” The tricky part is that he then got me to create my three stage model based around three of our favourite Kendrick Lamar songs from Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. United In Grief N95 Die Hard I tried. We also find out how things worked out for conc...
Jun 05, 2022•43 min
The second part of my Tarot Cure Pilgrimage to Treadwell's Bookshop to see if one of their finest Tarot readers (Madame Kalathaki) might have some wisdom to share with me on where my last relationship went awry, and what I need to do to keep the next one (when it comes) more enduringly on the path of Love. This episode of the Tarot Cure is sponsored Naomi Shihab Nye's Red Brocade: The Arabs used to say, When a stranger appears at your door, feed him for three days before asking who he is, where ...
Jun 05, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 27
In which I take myself off to consult a professional tarot reader at London's main hub for the Tarot Cognoscenti ( Treadwell's Bookshop ) to see if she can help me with the "stuff" that I’m still trying to work through in relation to my last romantic relationship. One of my favourite centaurs (Alain de Botton) also shares with us his theories on Romanticism and Love, whilst Marina Abramovic digs into her infamous, and all-too-thorny relationship with fellow performance-artist/lover/muse: Ulay....
Jun 05, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Before falling in love with the Enneagram, I had a thing for Tarot. And so I decided to put this thing into a podcast called The Tarot Cure. Here's an Omnibus edition of those episodes, spanning the length and breadth of my 50th year. It was a good year :)
Jun 04, 2022•15 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Sophie (psychotherapist, single) asks a burning question that her friend Steve (psychotherapist, also single) might also like to have answered: "Will It Ever Happen For Me?" -- This episode of The Tarot Cure is sponsored by two poems: REQUEST Please love me And I will play for you this poem upon the guitar I myself made out of cardboard and black threads when I was ten years old. Love me or else. -Franz Wright THE HOUSE OF BELONGING I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and tha...
Jan 22, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Why do our burning questions burn in the way they do? I try to answer this by looking back at the phenomenon of PostSecret, and how burning questions often tap into core needs, longing, and yearnings such as the yearning for orientation, meaning, coherence and understanding, as well as self-direction, competence, belonging and connection. [This episode also features an Intro to a new Tarot Cure offshoot: The Burning Questions, where I sit down with a guest to have a chat about a question that is...
Jan 08, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Are you getting huffy and puffy about online dating? Or maybe One Of The Other Things We Tend To Get Huffy and Puffy About (the list is endless)? If so, this one is for you: giving birth to Max, poetry vs. evolutionary psychology, incense vs. incensed, and Cain versus Abel. All with added Hot-&-Spicy Jungian Sauce :-) Thanks, as ever, to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of The Five of Swords. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that mome...
Dec 31, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 23
This episode takes a walky-talky dive into my favourite scene in the Wizard of Oz: "The Wizard Revealed", exploring the healing powers of Hierophants & High Priestesses versus that of Persona-fied Schmucks like toi et moi. This episode of the Tarot Cure is proudly sponsored by KURKURE NAUGHTY TOMATO SNACKS: "A sweet and sour tomato flavor with just the right amount of chili powder. Kurkure is a perfect 'namkeen' snack which makes one fun-loving and quirky. Made with trusted kitchen ingredien...
Dec 25, 2021•25 min•Season 1Ep. 22
This episode discusses our core existential fragility through a pink child's bracelet found on the side of the road, the violent and sometimes even bone-breaking choreography of Elizabeth Streb, as well as my mother's recent mishaps with "The Jaws of Fate". This episode is sponsored by Dorianne Laux's poem What Is Broken: The slate black sky. The middle step of the back porch. And long ago my mother’s necklace, the beads rolling north and south. Broken the rose stem, water into drops, glass knob...
Dec 22, 2021•15 min•Season 1Ep. 21
In this episode I wonder, to use that line from Larkin: "What are days for?" Parcels of time we hold in our minds when we opening our eyes after being off-line, asleep. Days where we either feel on-track or off-track with those experiences, states, fulfilments we all desire to have more of in our lives. I also get a phone call at 3am from Hannah who I haven't spoken to for some time. Does she still believe I'm some kind of demonic trickster (à la "Conchis" in John Fowle's The Magus)? If so, why ...
Dec 04, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 20
In this episode, Sophie delivers an impromptu free-association on The Queen of Wands from a semi-recumbent state (hence the superb quality of the F-A, dream-like?), whilst I ponder Max's gender metaphysics and admire some spindly trees on a walk. Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Wel...
Nov 30, 2021•15 min•Season 1Ep. 19
This episode is mainly about the incredibly young (only 22!) and goofy Elvis Aaron Presley's performance of "Don't Be Cruel" on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957. It also delves a little into why vegans don't (or shouldn't?) eat honey, and whether we'd change our behaviour towards people and things, if they had an SUC (Subjective Unit of Cruelty) measure attached to them. Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode...
Nov 20, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Why do we do one thing, rather than another? Why do we sometimes struggle to commit to certain kinds of behaviour, whereas others come naturally? Why do we procrastinate and self-sabotage? Once you've understood how the Winner Takes All mechanism works in your mind, as well as the "mind" of our 400 million year-old ancestor, C. elegans (aka: the nematode, or roundworm) you'll be on your way to understanding all of the above. As well as the Five of Wands archetype ;-) Links: Journey of the Mind: ...
Nov 06, 2021•22 min
An exploration of The Emperor archetype through the sex lives of Orthodox Jews and the sublime wittering of John Ashbery. Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious. -- Links: What Is The Language Using Us For by W.S. Graham John Ashbery Interview with Alfre...
Oct 29, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 16
What do you love more than what you imagine is your singular life? Are you willing to take your place in the forest again? to become loam and bark to be a leaf falling. from a great height. to be the worm who eats the leaf and the bird who eats the worm? Look at the sky: are you willing to be the sky again? You think this lesson is too hard for you You want the thing you're struggling with to end. You want to go to the movies as before, to sit and eat with your friends. It can end now, but not i...
Oct 15, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 15
A exploration of the The Sun archetype with a nod to these two poems: LEISURE What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?- No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows: No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass: No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night: No time to turn at Beauty’s dance, And watch her feet come alive to our glance: A poor life this if, full of care, We ha...
Oct 01, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 14
A exploration of the Hermit archetype through Lizzie MacKenzie's recent documentary The Hermit of Treig. THE GREAT FIRES Love is apart from all things. Desire and fulfilment are nothing beside it. Neither body nor mind can truly love. Even if they try to lead us there. What is not love provokes them. What is not love quenches them. Love lays hold of everything we hold dear, But we are not able to hold onto it. Passion is one of its many paths but passion does not bring us to love. Desire opens t...
Sep 24, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 13
An exploration of The Tower, an archetype which invites us to explore and consider sudden change, upheaval, and chaos in our lives, as well as a kind of revelation or awakening sometimes associated with the word "enlightenment" as it is sometimes linked to personal transformation. We take this journey together via the following cultural stepping stones: Irene Solà's novel When I Sing, Mountains Dance Nichiren and his Soka Gakkai chums chanting of Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, B...
Sep 19, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 12
The Death Archetype (XIII in the Major Arcana) features pretty heavily in this episode. But fear not, no one dies, and no one gets hurt. That's because Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese, the one with the line in it about letting the soft animal of the body love what it loves, features even more heavily. If you would like to continue on the Poems For Ma path with us, that will now be occurring on a daily basis here, as well as here.
Sep 03, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 11
All our pain and most of our pleasure it would seem, resides in our peculiar human predilection for wanting to have our cake, whilst at the same time also eating it. How does the Magician archetype get us into, but also perhaps out of this conflicted, cakey business? MUSIC: All We Do For Love - Benny Sings (MNLA cover)
Aug 27, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Break-ups suck. Here's a final spell to help us get through and over, based around a Tarot card that accompanied me and helped me to heal (get over/get through in a therapeutic way) my last break-up: The Two of Cups. PS: This podcast has been designed to be listened to on 🎧 ⚡ SPELL THREE: A Spell for Beholding ⚡ Ingredients: The Two of Cups x 3 Your Anima/Animus expressed through music, writing (or some other creative pursuit) Hope, Faith, Love Music used in this episode: Villagers - "Everythin...
Aug 20, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Break-ups suuuuck. Here's another spell to help us get through them. PS: This podcast has been designed to be listened to on 🎧 ⚡ SPELL TWO: A Spell for Connection & Centering ⚡ Ingredients: 2 tbsp of Lauren Groff's Annunciation (listen online) 1/2 tsp of Lazy Susan a handful of polyvagal chanting/singing 100g of Florence William's The Science of Heartbreak 500g of Emma Jung's Anima and Animus [PDF] a sprinkle of Catrine Clay's Labyrinths: Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl and the Early Years ...
Aug 06, 2021•23 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Break-ups suck. Here's are a few spells to help us get through them. PS: This podcast has been designed to be listened to on 🎧 ⚡ SPELL ONE: A Spell for Connection & Centering ⚡ Ingredients: 200g of Alice Oswald's poem Sisyphus [PDF] a sprinkling of musical scales and polyvagal chanting 7 large slabs of Sitting Shiva dark chocolate 1/2 a cup of Anne Carson's The Glass Essay 3 1/2 teaspoons (or one tbsp) of Carson's Eros: The Bittersweet [PDF] 2 tablespoons of Elvis Costello talking about his...
Jul 30, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 7
What has the archetype of the Magician got to do with John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, the colour we now call Schoolbus/Safety Yellow, Extended Mind theory, entropy (physics), depression (metaphysics), and ring-tailed lemurs wanting to be antelopes? Links: The Sound of The Sun (poem) by George Bradley Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul (poem) by Frank O'Hara The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul The phylogenetic roots of human lethal v...
Jul 23, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In this one I explore what it means for the fool to be "high", making a distinction between The Natural Fool (symbolised by the pooch at their side) and the Fabricated Fool who is just about to step off the edge of a thought into the abyss.
Jul 09, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 5
I present five fools, both ancient as well as modern, so that we might together play the guessing game we end up playing with ourselves and others most of the time anyway: Good/Upright Fool vs. Bad/Reversed Fool. You decide. L'chaim!
Jul 03, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 4
What the Fool can teach us about gravity: i.e. the ups and downs of life.
Jun 24, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 3
We learn about Henry Patenson, Sir Thomas More's family fool, and how the Fool archetype (as well as those who embody it) present a way of being in the world that is candid, truth-seeking, but also deeply playful. "The ‘trickster’ figure that anthropologists have identified in ancient myths and legends, the chaos-makers and sower of discord, who frighten the hell out of us, but also appeal in their vitality and creativity, might at some point become bound and contained in a mutually advantageous...
Jun 13, 2021•26 min•Season 1Ep. 2
