(Warmly) Kindred Spirits – episode 3 🦊🪽
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For quite a few years now I have been signing off my emails with “warmth”. I was never a “kind regards” person—nor “yours”—but I did have a protracted spell of signing off with “hat tips,” back when I was more jolly. But warmth has continued to feel good and proper.
And warmth is a quality we must both venerate and tend to. It’s a vital element of any quickening magic. In this museletter I attempt to explicate why.
First, we warm up. Then we stay warm. And then, long after our time together, the warmth stays with us. Like how a hot water bottle maintains its warmth long after the water has gone cold.
This all pertains to the spirit of kindredness—something that we develop via relationality, humour, and warmth.
Speaking of…
Episode 3 of Kindred Spirits is now released
Just in time for your weekend.
Soon John Anthony and I will have a special dedicated home for the show, but for now it remains nested within the foxwizard podcast. This recent episode was, as ever, a blast. We’re also weaving Easter eggs and shoutouts to our listeners.
On glamourie
In this episode I hazarded forth a mild-yet-persistent vexation I have with the poor use of glamourie magic I see in professional networks. Glamourie is the fae magic of seeming. Long time subscribers will know: I don’t mind bullshit—as long as it is artful. Bullshit artistry—with naïve knowingness, deployed with enough ironic sincerity to flag that they know that you know that they know that you know it’s all bullshit—is such a vehicle for subtle truths. It’s fun, too.
Bullshit, on its own—bleh. I’ve had enough of that.
I’m paraphrasing from a previous post—Intellectually Honest (like a fox).
[…] bullshit is technical philosophical term, originating from an essay in 1986 by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt (who passed away ~two weeks ago) titled ‘On Bullshit.’
The bullshitter differs from both liars and people presenting the truth with their disregard of the truth. [...] A person who communicates bullshit is not interested in whether what they say is true or false, only in its suitability for their purpose. (source)
Frankfurt believed bullshit to be a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
Which is perhaps why the particular vexation we explored in this episode—the exquisite, paradoxically-generative tension of intellectual honesty and mimetic fitness (or: of authenticity and authority)—was so sumptuous. Well, for me at least.
But I am quite sure it’s a tension that many of us grapple with as we navigate the oscillations betwixt contexts. We are—all of us—required to be shapeshifters. We are shaped via the relational contexts we dance within.* A mistake I often make is treating everyone as peers—it is something that, in my heart of hearts, I believe to be true. But in reality if I do not attune to context, I leave many people baffled and confused.
* I also want to say: I know how weird it is to see a friend you know well go ‘influencer mode’. My cringe at that—and loathing at myself—is something that has taken a long time for me to reconcile. One hopes for an element of ‘authentic constancy’ that holds true across contexts—but we must also allow ourselves (and our friends) to have the mercurial fluidity to occupy different spaces in different aspects and forms.
On gramarye
This episode also has us revel in gramarye—the magic of being. I’ve pilfered these terms from Patrick Rothfuss’s phenomenal book The Name of The Wind—but all myth, magic and mystery is itself shapeshifting and syncretic. And all good authors are merely channelling deeper wisdoms. Gramarye is why some objects can become enchanted with attentive care and use.
“Things That Patina” is something both Kim and I look for when considering any material acquisitions. Will this stay with us for a long time? Will this accrue character over time? Is it enhanced or diminished with use or wear?
I have a pair of selvedge denim jeans I will soon need to retire. I’ve had them for close to a decade, and they have been repaired over half a dozen times.* They have accrued character—which is why I am so reluctant to part with them.
* Fun fact, my local atelier Urahara offer “free lifetime repairs” for their products—a service I have enjoyed for many years now.
Just recently, I acquired an ancient indigo boro noragi from an artist friend’s garage sale. There’s something about honouring both craft and time that deeply appeals to me. And, speaking of time, of the illustrations Kim made for The “Choose One Word” Ritual of Becoming is the kasa-obake—a kind of tsukumogami. Look after an umbrella for at least 100 years and it may yet become one!
Whisky is gramarye
Gramarye magic you can imbibe.
And in this episode we enjoyed a dram from The Balvenie Peated Cask. From the wolfman (no affiliation)—
In 2001 a heavily peated batch was distilled at Balvenie and left in cask until full maturity. The casks that had originally held the peated liquid had become infused with the smokey profile. Master Distiller, David Stewart, decided to experiment by filling them with 17 Year old Balvenie for a short period. The result is a stunning fusion of restrained, sweet peat that otherwise remains true to Balvenie's distinctive house style.
This whisky is like a palimpsest. Just as writing on a pad of paper can leave a subtle imprint, so too can the whisky the cask previously held.
It’s reawakened a desire within me to sample Tasmanian peat.
Because, you see, Scottish peat—especially from Islay—tends to be composed of decomposed heather, moss, and coastal grasses. It sports marine influences of iodine, seaweed and brine. It also burns hot and dry, imparting intense smoky, medicinal and ‘phenolic’ aromas (that adhesive ‘band-aid’ smell).
But Tasmanian peat is formed from decayed sassafras, man ferns and ancient myrtle. It lacks the maritime salt and kelp of Islay, and burns cooler. This apparently yields a sweeter, earthier and more herbaceous kind of ‘campfire’ smoke (as distinct from what could be described as ‘tyre-fire’). The vibe is—again, apparently—more eucalyptus, dark chocolate, bush spice, leather, and smoked tea.
Some of my best memories happen around bonfire and campfire smoke, and so it is a delight to imagine what this might evoke. The Balvenie Peated Cask sure brought JA and I back to a shared early childhood memory!
As ever, I hope you enjoy the episode. It’s been fun to experience this new friendship blossoming. JA is coming over for dinner this weekend, so mayhaps we record a little bonus episode—let’s see.
Always Be Warmening
And by ‘warmening’ I mean: a deliberate yet gentle nurturing of relational warmth. Distinct from heating, it invites emergent coherence rather than abrupt change.
Jason!—foxwizard, dr. fox, whoever you are—why do you insist upon these neologisms. Why can’t you just say ‘warming’, dammit!
I’m glad you asked.
Warming and Warmening
—linguistic tasting notes
Sup and savour both words in the mouth of your mind. They hold relationship to both the words ‘acting’ and ‘enacting’. The presence of the en prefix is potent.
So. Warming is—to me at least—straightforward, linear, and direct. Transactional. It denotes the simple application of heat and/or increase of temperature. There’s a functional simplicity here: something cold becomes less cold. It is discrete, observable, and measurable. Warming is thus more of instrumental word—a causal relationship between effort and result.
Warmening, however, holds a deeper, subtler connotation. Consider how “enacting” implies something coming into being through relational or contextual engagement rather than mere direct causation. To enact something is to bring its presence through embodied participation, performative and emergent rather than strictly linear or transactional.
In this sense, when I say warmening I am attempting to invoke the gentle, subtle, relational emergence of warmth. Not something imposed by simply turning the heater on—but coaxed and cultivated from within the relational fabric itself. Warmening gestures to the warmth arising organically through shared relational resonance. Warmening is thus participatory, reciprocal, and integrative. Rather than simply ‘raising temperature,’ warmening quickens latent potentialities, gently nourishing emergent patterns and coherence.
This is why I say that warmening is a necessary precursor and accompanying quality to any quickening magics.
But I suppose I ought define these terms, too. Most often when I say magic people—laypeople, not you—tend to think of magicians on stage. And that is a kind of magic. But what I am describing here is all together more subtle and profound.
Magic is—if I may be so bold—emergence.* Particularly emergent phenomena that occurs at a level of complexity ‘beyond our ken’. (Ken being: one’s range of knowledge or understanding). Thus so much of life is magic—all of it, really. And yet there are forces that seek to reduce complex (magical) phenomena into simple (mundane) explanation. The mundane has its merit—we can’t always hold complexity, not all the time. Perhaps not most. But so much is lost when we forget the magic.
* Of course, Layman Pascal’s definition of Xagick still reigns supreme. “Xagick is the focused use of somatic and affective stimulation, intentionality & semantic suggestiveness to responsively organize emergent, contextualized patterns of human experiential unfolding into “enchanting” zones of transjectivity and synchronicity. Through adaptation to those zones, sapient beings can cultivate a new indigeneity and organic hierophantic agency relative to subconscious, unknown and/or unintelligible forms of causality and communication. These procedures operate via particular neurophysiological states. They also involve a sensitized retro-teleological reconsolidation of our multiple intelligences in the present moment such that we orient toward hyper-futures that are interpreted as already implicit within the indefinite imaginal extension of our currently expressed gestures of meaningfulness.”.
Thus quickening, at least how I use it, is not merely “acceleration”. What I am talking of here is a catalysing ‘alchemical invitation’ into emergence. Quickening refers to the subtle and intentional infusion of dynamism, receptivity, and creativity, enabling latent potentiality to blossom organically.
Quickening magics thus animate the invisible textures of relationality, complexity, and imagination, turning possibility into living actuality without forcing or fracturing. This cannot be achieved without warmening first.
Warmening—first, last, always
Always be warmening.
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion. Or so I hear.* Cold analysis—replete with its narrow focus and metric obsession—is blind to warm data and the greater gestalt.
* Yes, indeed.
If you find yourself situationally called to enact the role of leader, facilitator, or friend—and if you are seeking to evoke the magic of emergence (and to not merely collapse things into the mechanical/predictable and known), you’ll first want to attune.
To attune is to invite the quiet suspension of assumption, instead inviting a deeper quality of listening and felt-sensing into relational resonance. It’s a sensitive aligning of one’s awareness with the subtle intersubjective currents and emergent perspectival rhythms already present, gently sensing potentials without forcing immediate clarity. In this spacious awareness, patterns softly surface amidst the nebulosity.
The suspension of assumption is vital. As Sonja Blignaut writes of in 7 lessons I've learnt consulting as a “complexity practitioner”.
“Every context is unique—I can't assume I know what is going on or have any answers. No matter how much experience I have in a given context (e.g. culture change or agility) or industry (e.g. financial services) I cannot assume I know what I am dealing with before I interact with the system. I cannot afford to have an hypothesis before I engage as that may blind me to what is really going on in that particular system. It always pays to show up with humble curiosity and to remember it's a partnership—don't show up as the expert.”
Thus the way we practitioners show up is by first sensing into the relative warmth of a context. If it’s cold, cool, or tepid, then we work to warm things up a little. In practical terms, this might mean: changing context and going for a walk, literally making some tea, enquiring as to how people are. It looks like caring.
It does not mean bringing ‘heat’ or ‘fire’. So many conferences I have been to try to warm up an audience by playing loud, upbeat music—attempting to ‘force’ an energetic transference. But no one wants to be forced. The best DJs are attuned to the audience. They ‘read the room’ and adjust the conditions appropriately.
Because this is always about tending to the quickening magic of emergence.
If a context is too heated—if folks are too energetic and frazzled—it might be that you need to lower the temperature a little. To have folk breathe a little deeper, and to take things a bit slower. You don’t want folk burning out.
I guess what I am trying to say is: quickening magics work with warmth—never burning but continually inviting the nuanced dance of becoming.
I share all of this, because it pertains to a question a fellow subscriber, Mila, asked. It pertains to Trickster, whom I probably dare not speak on behalf of, yet will attempt to offer some perspective anyway. I also hope to dedicate some time to this with my co-host, JA.
Listened to two episodes of Kindred Spirits; catch the muse letter as time permits; have had a limited sampling of written and video content you've released. I heard a few points expressed here and there that I'd love to hear you expound upon, particularly in a future episode of KS w/ JA. You talk about Trickster role and effect; of disruptions, although often as subtle or gentle disruption. You also talk of honoring the law of the community, expressly in the indigenous sense. So my inquiry of curiosity is the edges where these interact. I'm not in disagreement with anything specific you've expressed. My inquiry has to do with the responsibility of Trickster for collateral damages. Nudging into contemplation, reevaluation and a turn of the perceptual kaleidoscope is one thing: bashing up the place ideologically is quite another. And yet, often those serving in the Trickster dynamic are either unaware of their force and strength, or fail to take responsibility for their wrath. Often minority contingents take the brunt of their swirling winds, with little preemptive strength or effective recourse. Your dissection would likely be intriguing.
I am grateful for this question, and much of my preamble has been to bring us here, to this point:
Warmly welcome Trickster
You do not want to treat him coldly.
Trickster makes this world. And he arrives when things become too stagnant, predictable and staid. When systems (and people) become too stable and sure of themselves. Too cold and calculated.
But I’m not sure that Trickster ever takes responsibility. And it’s a blurred line for me too, personally, as a complexity practitioner.
To throw back to Sonja Blignaut:
“Changing the system is not my responsibility. I need to keep reminding myself that I can't change the system: the pattern we are dealing with as well as the responsibility to change it remains the client's responsibility. Or in other words—they own both the problem and the solution. My role is to help them see and think differently, to be a mirror, to challenge and sometimes to teach or mentor and introduce new tools and method. But in the end they remain the owners of the process, I can't control what they do with my input or advice.”
And yet we must always take responsibility, right?
Partly. I know I am responsible for whatever affect I manifest.* It’s not my sole responsibility, but I am responsible for my part.
* Yes, affect. So many folk are quick to pounce on this. “Don’t you mean effect?” Nay—I mean affect, in a technical psychological sense.
Thus when I come into a context I am aware that there is almost always a subtle weave already happening within the complex mycelial web of relations at play. And this web is, more often than not, tended to via ‘minority contingents’ who—as you are right to point out—often take the brunt of any disruptions that may occur.
Why do minority contingents often play this role? Because they often live within multiple contexts. They live in multiple worlds, synthesising different cultures (systems of knowledge) and languages (ways of seeing/expressing) into being. They often also have more direct experience with injustice and fewer privileges than their hegemonic-normative colleagues might experience. This usually expands empathetic and relational acuity. Hence: the weaving, and tending to the conditions generative of harmonising forces.
This is also why Mila’s sentence here is so important.
“Nudging into contemplation, reevaluation and a turn of the perceptual kaleidoscope is one thing: bashing up the place ideologically is quite another.”
I would never advocate one come in cold, drunk on the arrogance of one’s own perceived importance. And bashing an ideology is a great way to strengthen it. We must instead be far more subtle and subversive.
I would also never advocate that one call themselves ‘a trickster’—I did this in the past, and probably the internet still remembers and haunts me with this. But I have since come to learn—particularly after listening to Trickster Changes Sides—that this is not the wisest way to relate to Trickster.
Mila is attuned to this distinction, of course. As she writes, “those serving in the Trickster dynamic are either unaware of their force and strength, or fail to take responsibility for their wrath.”
The caution Mila shares here is wise. For it is much as Josh Schrei shares in the exquisite Mythic Body episode Trickster Jumps Sides—
“Trickster arrives in culture to refresh it, but the means by which he does that sacred work — particularly in cultures that have kept him down — aren’t always pretty. Trickster's not a 'good guy'. He’s also not a 'bad guy'. He’s a force of nature. And so a society needs to honor Trickster — to feed him, to make sure he is well-tended to. But you also don’t necessarily want to sit him on the throne either, or he might just tear the whole place down with him. Because when Trickster comes to disrupt, one thing’s for sure, he’s not going to disrupt on your terms. So for those celebrating the current upheaval, Trickster reminds us — be careful with that. Trickster’s not on your side. It feels empowering when he’s with you, cackling along as you take a chainsaw to the old ways. But then... just like that, you’re on the other end of the chainsaw. And Trickster’s revving it up with a grin, looking right at you, at your sacred cows, with a gleam in his eye, ready to make some tartare or some crudo out of your preciously held beliefs."
Trickster is not on your side.
But of course—I still want to remain on good terms with him: hence the warmening. 😅
I hope this has served to elucidate and perhaps ameliorate my ongoing appreciation for the role Trickster plays, and the quickening magics we might attend to should we wish to cultivate the conditions for emergence. I do wonder if I have—once again—taken you on a meandering scenic route to what we might otherwise simply summarise as:
Let warmth be your guiding beacon.
Move quietly and plant things. Move gently and listen for the subtle cues of that which seeks to emerge. And then, when the timing is just-so—enact.
Thank you for reading, as ever. Actually—especially now, in this world replete with easy answers and ready distraction.
Much warmth,
—fw