About the Mystic’s Almanac
Welcome to The Mystic’s Almanac. My name is Gabe (you may know me from Twitter as Vivid Void ) and I am honored that you’ve chosen to spend some of your time with this project. Thank you.
The Mystic’s Almanac is a Substack project that aims to accomplish four things: Provide a structure for individual spirituality, create a calendar to bring one closer to one’s self and the earth, assemble a small encyclopedia of quality spiritual practices, and serve as a vehicle for my longform writings about psychology, faith, spirituality and the great work of living one’s life.
A Structure for Individual Spirituality.
In my practice as a coach and spiritual counselor, I have been surprised to find that I spend comparatively little time teaching my clients to meditate. The bulk of my efforts go to helping people establish the rituals, routine and discipline needed to practice consistently.
Those of us who identify, however loosely, with the label of “spiritual-but-not-religious” often do so because we have outsized requirements for freedom that organized religions can not, by definition, allow for. To be at liberty to follow one’s spirit is both glorious and humbling, but it quickly reveals its shadow: Without organized religion, people often have great difficulty forming and maintaining a community of faith. They must generate all of their own meaning and purpose, solely from that which can be found in the context of their immediate, direct experience. And any structure for practice, for ritual, for celebration - for life itself - must be self-authored, self-imposed and self-maintained. To take these responsibilities as object is a terrible and awesome burden, and for many practitioners, mastering this task is the work of a lifetime.
The Mystic’s Almanac is my contribution to that effort. It is a spiritual framework loosely modeled on the Liturgy of the Hours, the ancient Catholic office of worship, but abstracted such that it can be modified to suit any individual’s practice needs. The calendrical elements provide scaffolding for making meaning from the rhythms of life, and common context for practitioners to establish communal practice. Last, its encyclopedic elements help new practitioners find practices that resonate deeply with them, and help experienced meditators to overcome blockages and plateaus, expand their perspectives, and ultimately refresh the vitality of their practices.
A Calendar to Bring One Closer to One’s Self, and the Earth
Like any good almanac, this project contains a wealth of tabular data about celestial and seasonal phenomena, centered on the Pacific Northwest of the United States (which is where I live.) I have included simple, painless instructions for calculating one’s own data and will soon launch a web tool that simplifies it even further. Each inclusion serves a particular spiritual or psychological purpose, which is explained in detail here: How To Use This Almanac.
For most people, the world’s major religions provide rhythm, meaning and structure for life. But many independent practitioners, as well as many followers of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and others here in the West, have recently become aware that their religions grew out of other regions of the world - different biomes, climates, medicine traditions - other lands, and thus totally different human bodies than our own. And for those of us who - whatever the reason - can’t find the nourishment we need in established religions, we also lack an organic structure that allows us to commune with our land.
So both the religious and the irreligious have seen almost every conceivable element of our lives regimented, abstracted and rearranged. We have moved away from the simple, profound rhythms of life: the seasons, the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the migration of animal populations, the subtle shifts and changes in our natural environments. This alienation of our symbolic selves from the natural world, and hence our bodies, causes incalculable spiritual, psychological and physical suffering.
The Mystic’s Almanac proposes a simple calendar and daily schedule, necessarily portable across time zone and geography, that will help its users begin to grow their own individual practice of communion with the immediate physicality and cyclicality of their environments. By detaching from abstracted concepts of daily life and re-attaching to one’s sensory experience of the world, one develops a different kind of relationship to it - one that allows for a deeply strange, beatific, ineffable intimacy with Being.
It is not our fault that we were disconnected from our land and from ourselves. But it is our responsibility to heal that wound, and to return, for our own sake and for the sake of future generations.
A Small Encyclopedia of Mystical Practices
I began to perceive a need for a small encyclopedia of mystical practices during the era of COVID-19 lockdowns, when many practitioners were spending the bulk of their days meditating and conversing with one another online. There was an extraordinarily spirited exchange of information about various contemplative and therapeutic practices, and their supposed utility, but very little information about the contexts from which they came, about how to situate them in a larger routine of daily practice, and about how to find those that would resonate at an individual level.
In an effort to correct those deficiencies, I have collected about twenty practices as of this writing - March 2023 - and will continue to expand it as this project grows. All the practices I have collected here are contemplative in nature, and are intended to help a meditator cultivate the discipline, skill and perception needed to directly experience the Source of all things: that which has been variously called Brahman, Dharmakaya, the Great Spirit, the Void, the Self, the Dao - and God.
I have purposefully selected those that:
Are simple and of high quality
Can be practiced with minimal reification
Have the lowest risk of mesmerizing the practitioner and thereby delaying or waylaying them on their way to the experience of union with the Source.
Everyone is different, and there is no way to predict which practices will be best for an individual. Indeed, one of the most important lessons of contemplative practice is that everyone must see for themselves - no one else’s judgment could possibly be a worthy substitute.
When organizing the integrative metastructure of these practices - what to practice and when - I let the Buddhist concept of namarupa - bodymind - be my guiding principle. To achieve strength, balance and suppleness of the body, one must pursue a well-tuned regimen of focused movement, ensuring one neither overworks nor neglects any major part, but develops the body holistically. It is my belief that to achieve strength, balance and suppleness of the mind - and come to a serene, extraordinarily clear perception of the nature of existence - one must do precisely the same.
I recommend that every practitioner try each practice in each category at least three times. That will let them decide for themselves whether a particular practice is resonant and useful. When one has thoroughly explored them all, I recommend settling on one practice from each category and sticking primarily to that. This should yield a regimen of about ten practices, performed throughout the month, that complement and balance one another in the development of spirit.
It is not a common or mainstream view that a contemplative should have more than a handful of practices, but neither is it condemned or widely frowned upon. For the particular conditions, bounds and expectations of the Western mind, a programmatic structure with plenty of variety has much to offer, especially to new students. Of course, there is nothing wrong with practicing simple awareness of the breath at the tip of the nose - that has been enough for many people throughout history!
If, as you progress in your studies, you find that just a few particular practices become extremely resonant for you, and others become unnecessary, simply follow your intuition and discard what is not working. Do not discard a practice that is fruitful simply because it becomes difficult - rather, ask yourself, is this practice earning its keep? If the answer is “no,” for too long, it’s probably time for a break, or even to leave it behind. It would be self-defeating (if a bit humorous) to allow yourself to become attached to any particular method or way of contemplation.
Last, the Mystic’s Almanac is written - aspirationally - for a very dedicated, serious practitioner with ample time and resources. It assumes that the practitioner will tithe their time - about 2.5 hours per day - to contemplative practice. This is, of course, totally optional and customizable to each practitioner’s level of practice. If you only have a few minutes per day, the system is easily customizable for that. Simply adjust the practice parameters until you’ve found a balance that is achievable, challenging and sustainable as a daily practice.
One note: I recommend decreasing the duration of practice periods before decreasing their total number - training the mind to keep practice at the forefront of one’s mind throughout the day can provide a constancy that functions well as one builds consistency, which is often hard-won and can take years.
I wish you luck, great enthusiasm, and abiding peace.
