museletter ⟠ sacred sabotage
I recently saw this quote from an essay by Vizi Andrei:
In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb makes the confession that he uses procrastination as a filter for his writing. If he feels strong resistance to writing a certain section, he leaves it out as a service to his readers: “Why should they read something that I myself didn’t want to write?”
The amount of service I have been doing to my readers is staggering.
(˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)
Hello dear subscriber. It’s been over three months since my last museletter to you. We’ve since had quite a few new subscribers joining us (welcome!). As ever I have so much to share with you.
In this museletter...
- We toast The Fool
- Self-Sabotage as Sacred Act
- “This isn’t even my final form” new website » foxwizard.com 🦊
- What I’m seeing in my work with leadership teams
- Huzzah—two new Kindred Spirits episodes!
- Penultimate hinting as to The School of Fox Wizardry (which serves as a front for The Skulk, which runs on The Dark Forest Operating System)
i // Today we toast to The Fool
It’s April Fool’s Day. The Fool, in tarot, is a card numbered zero, representing free spirit and pure energy without shape (like the primordial chaos that giveth rise to the universe).
With April Fool’s Day (and any day) we can choose to be reminded of the qualities of innocence and naïveté needed to venture forth; to take the first step. I’ve long used April Fool’s Day as an excuse to begin anew. You can, too! Why not.
Some lore
This museletter has been running for 15+ years now. In 2019—my “Year of The Fool”—I immolated much of my work (deleting ~8 years of blogs and podcasts) and moved to substack (back when the platform was a wonderful alternative for writers). Then three years ago (on April Fool’s Day 2023) I left substack for foxwizard.com. Was this self-sabotage?
ii // Self-Sabotage as Sacred Act
I used to teach folks how to cultivate the metacognition and acuity to recognise self-sabotage. Here’s a video from over 10 years ago—illustrated by my darling dangerlam—back when I was an uninitiated apprentice wizard. Fun fact: it was made on April Fool’s Day 2016, and uploaded three days later.
Back then, I was running with the rather simplistic notion that “self-sabotage = bad.” My then-ontology was that we have a rational part of ourselves that sets goals, and then irrational parts of ourselves that subconsciously seek to sabotage our ability to achieve the goals we set. The solution was rational: ‘make it hard to make it hard for yourself.’ Cute.
But I was a king among the midwitted back then, and unfortunately flirted too close to behaviourism (a discipline I’ve since come to know as blind). I had clever frameworks and ready explanations for most everything. But I was also very much “fenced in” to the rational frame. This is the midwit trap.
The midwit trap
Note: whilst I maintain that IQ is bullshit (I don’t believe in it; it actively disgusts me)—I like the midwit meme. And I especially appreciate the handshake that connects both ends of the bellcurve. It communicates an implicit understanding that simplicity exists across orders of complexity. Like a fractal—and the principle of polarity—the same patterns and principles hold. In this case, the ‘fool’ on the left is free from distorting frameworks and abstractions. And the ‘wizard’ on the right has wit enough to recognise the limitations of their own frameworks. They are able to see the fractal of the same simplicity the fool knows.
There is a reason why The Magician and The Fool are the 0 and the 1 in tarot. It is also why my hat is both a wizard and dunce hat at once.
The poor ‘midwit,’ though. They’re trapped within their own ontology (and the performance of sophistication). And they (we?) don’t even know it.
The midwit, you see, has the capability to construct and adopt frameworks, beliefs, and opinions—but they do not (yet) have enough ironic distance (nor intellectual humility) to see the arbitrariness of the constructs they hold.
And these days, we do not valorise conversation, epistemological humility and an openness to changing our minds. The attention economy selects for conviction, confidence and consistency. So if you aren’t performing the sacred trickster act of covering your tracks, scrambling your message, torching your trail, shifting your shape, and maintaining some level of mercuriality then, well: you’ll be open to capture. This is further compounded if your business model depends upon the ‘intellectual property’ you have created. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The use of Large Language Models further perpetuates this.
<haunting fae music>
But then, lo: what’s this?
<chime tree>
The subconscious—that supposedly irrational (yet not anti-rational) part of you—has a deeper wisdom that your bright intelligence cannot eclipse. Or perhaps it is your daimon helping you to stumble on the false fate you’re pursuing. Either way it’s letting itself be known. Again.
A sacred form of self-sabotage is enacted.
A window of disenchantment opens. The window beckons: step through. Leave these constructs behind. They were never real, anyway. Free yourself from the shackles of belief, so that you might open yourself to curiosity, doubt, wonder and awe once more...
◊◊◊
I was good at ignoring the call for many years; the call that has us move from ambition to vocation. Three years ago I split my personas: I had Dr. Jason Fox (keynote speaker and leadership advisor), and then foxwizard (my moonlight façade).
As foxwizard I could venture beyond what Dr. Jason Fox could, into darker aspects beyond The Overton Window. From all outward signs it looked as though I was sabotaging my business and much of what I had “built.” But the self-sabotage was only a sabotage to the ambitions and constructs of the little self. I’m hardly enlightened now, but I do feel wiser—and more at peace with myself than I have been in years.
Besides, I was embarrassed and somewhat ashamed of my profession. The successful thought leader of today is a far cry from the public intellectuals I admired back when I was a young mage teaching at universities.
But this is symptomatic of the times. Our lives are now mediated through online mediums. The affordances of the platforms we use keep us fenced-in, domesticated and denatured. Part of you knows this.
And so when you find yourself procrastinating, sure, it might be your undiagnosed ADHD. But it might also be because there’s part of you that knows: you don’t want to do the thing. It could be that your ambition is holding you back.
Discerning apathy from wisdom is the key here.
The subtle realm
My occasional reference to ~fae magics is not merely cute affectation. The Machine—the prevailing force of our times—has distracted/numbed/blinded us to what gestalt practitioners might call ‘the field,’ and what Layman Pascal and liminal practitioners might call ‘the subtle realm.’
[...] qualitative affects are essential to map-making in this area. Whether or not we treat the subtle (and its occupants) as ontologically real, our ability to track valences seems crucial to either projecting or detecting these things.
How deft are you at tracking the subtle realm? How attuned are you to felt-sense? And how developed is your acuity to recognise (and work with) anomaly?
Fellow hermetic wizard Rocco Jarman recently posted the following comment on substack:
We each make our choices and some are made for us. When I read AI writing it looks like AI writing. It feels like something. It generates a feeling change within the field and something that I cannot control, pushes the work away and no matter how much I try and engage with the essence, the synthetica of it kills the flow and the engagement. The potential connection with meaning is impinged.
What I can choose, is how I have decided to not blame myself for having a healthy aversion to synthentica.
“It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to synthetic AI generated content.”
If you write this way, you do you, but find the courtesy or the courage to disclaim it and have the sense to realise that there is a species of discernment that sees it as something less than it could be.
I have a very similar aversion to synthetica (great term!). And it might be due to the fact that I love reading and writing; it’s the water I swim in. I’m used to it. Which is why the absence of essence—of soul—in writing is felt. This is distinct from—yet related to—void hunting.
As The Machine and its synthetica take over yet more aspects of our lives, many of us will want to get better at attuning to the subtle realm. To find and feed the leaks. To notice when we self-sabotage, and to have the wise discernment to recognise if there is something beneath it worth heeding.
Your calling keeps calling, says Michael Meade. It’s oh so subtle, at first. But if you keep ignoring it then, well, the calls might well get louder. And they might manifest as burnout, or worse. A greater and greater calamity until you finally take a moment, for yourself, and listen.
iii // “This isn’t even my final form”
I have finally updated my website. Instead of being slightly embarrassed by:
- the antics Dr. Jason Fox must do to register as salient and legible to agents within Enterprise Land; and
- the relative inaccessibility of the writings of foxwizard, and my questing amidst the liminal, penumbra and occult
—I have coalesced the two forms back into the one entity. I am no longer Dr. Jason Fox, Archwizard of Ambiguity (most fantastic) at drjasonfox.com—that website has been sunsetted. I’m now simply Dr. Jason Fox, Wizard (aka foxwizard) at foxwizard.com 🦊
If it’s been a while since you have updated your personal website, I highly recommend it. It’s a horrid, horrid activity.
To sculpt oneself into legibility whilst preserving enough nebulous animacy to keep your authenticity and fluidity alive and well is a task that requires some deftness. It’s a narrow path to walk. Much of the prevailing norms are commodifying, making parodies of us all. But the friction of making a website forces the question: who do you present as? Who do you work with? And how do you help?
This lights a beacon to attract the kinds of opportunities you want in your life.
I’ve long known: I work well with eccentric executives. The well-read, forward-thinking, rogue agents who happen to play leadership roles. The ones witted and wise enough to know: only that which can change can continue. Fellow infinite players, if you will. Particularly: those of us “playing Game A with a Game B heart,” as I like to say. Those who work at the periphery of what is and what may yet become.
This is all largely what the mythopoetic complexity practitioner in me knows as liminal leadership and wyrd work.
iv // What I’m seeing in my work
Much of my work in the past year has been with executive teams who have a CEO that has gone “all in” on a strategy to “integrate agentic AI into every facet of the business.” It’s an intellectually fascinating challenge. In the depth of my dark forest questing I wouldn’t have gone near such. But now I’m staying with the trouble (to reference Donna Haraway). We’re all in this mess together, and my stance on AI has shifted somewhat.
But I sometimes can’t help but wonder if LLMs are making some CEOs delusional (apologies for the YouTube bro link; but I find myself in agreeance).
CEOs are in the perfect position to be glazed. If they are of the dark triad, they’ll be surrounded by people who won’t challenge them directly; people who are incentivised to support their vision. It’ll be very hard for them to find anyone to talk with—but their pet LLMs will be there.
“If a CEO asked an LLM a series of questions about business strategy, the replies would more than likely align with the CEO’s existing views, assuring them that their thinking is sound and that they are on the right course.” Professor Amar Bhindé says. “They play courtier, not devil’s advocate.”
In a paper titled AI makes you smarter but none the wiser: The disconnect between performance and metacognition (published late 2025), it was found that when people used ChatGPT to solve logic problems, everyone overestimated their own performance. Naturally. But those who considered themselves most AI-literate overestimated the most. Now imagine that dynamic playing out on strategic decisions with material consequences—in the hands of someone already insulated from dissent.
I would get so much more work if I simply danced to the tune of The Machine. Alas: these times call for wisdom. No, that’s not quite the right word. The times call for mêtis—the sacred and practical cunning of life itself.
The teams I work with (usually senior leaders a step removed from C-suite, if the enterprise is large) are the ones that need to actually execute upon the vision. And this is where the messiness of the work reveals itself. It’s wondrously entangled, with will o’ the wisps, traps and false-paths aplenty. It calls for quintessential questing.
But, as I’ve said before: questing is a precursor to strategy. If a chief executive officer and their LLM-entity have decided to make something a strategy—before having scouted and cultivated a quiver of options—then, well: we’re going to have to keep our wits about us. Wisdom can be smuggled into the mix yet still.
Here’s a card from Magic: The Gathering—something I consider quite apt for the times. And whilst I am not asserting this is true, it’s worth entertaining the question: is AI making our leaders delusional? I won’t go too deep into the lore, but this is all very Phyrexian (and, in particular, Gixian).
Gix excels at corruption through seduction, identifying what people want (power, knowledge, immortality) and offering Phyrexian “solutions” whilst framing them as the supplicant’s own enlightened choice. Gixians present themselves as deferential servants whilst actually being vectors for Phyrexian ideology.
If you were being corrupted, how would you know? Could it be the part of you that seeks to sabotage or undermine your efforts?
v // Huzzah—two new Kindred Spirits episodes!
The Kindred Spirits podcast is back! The podcast now lives at kindredspiritspod.substack.com (I know – back on substack; I am full of contradictions). We have a whole new introduction, and new theme music for the fake ad, whisky sampling and bad advice. I caught up with my co-host and friend John Anthony last night, and we have some sumptuous things in store for you this season.
Here’s Episode One: “Between the lily pads”
John Anthony
And here’s Episode Two: “Patterns in the penumbra”
John Anthony
We have received some absolutely wonderful reviews recently, too. Much love!
Philosophy with double banter on the Side ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
This podcast that makes you question the meaning of life while laughing. Equal parts philosophy and chaos, a balance that just works!
Laugh and learn along the way. Good for the soul ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
This is my go to at the end of the day, when I'm walking the dog, wanting to just switch off from the intensity of the world - and smile, laugh out loud, and learn little nuggets of gold along the way. Love the energy and connection between these two and where the conversation takes them.
Banter ASMR ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
I genuinely love Kindred Spirits and the way these two fruity characters talk nonsense about whatever grabs them, in a way that's sharp and strangely cosy. The format is deliberately unstructured, which lets the conversation wander and then unexpectedly land somewhere interesting. Because it's basically unedited, it feels like you're not "listening to a show", you're hanging out with mates. I regularly feel like the third member of the chat and want to chime in. If you like wit, whimsy, and a dram with your banter, this one's a cracker.
It is such a delight to make these and share these podcast episodes with you. Find us on substack, apple podcasts and spotify (if ye must!).
vi // Penultimate hinting as to The School of Fox Wizardry
I will soon be opening applications for The School of Fox Wizardry.
What even is it?
It is a business school for liminal agents and complexity practitioners, with a particular emphasis on being a genuine thought leader in this time betwixt worlds.
Except the term ‘thought leader’ has been rendered null. Much like ‘leadership,’ ha. We now live in a world inundated with that-which-masquerades-as-thought-leadership. Thanks to large language models, it now takes significantly less time to ‘produce content’ than it takes to consume it. Where does this lead? Lemon markets saturated with homogenised slop.
But some of us are wily enough to avoid such traps. And some of us genuinely know things, with wisdom and insight apt for these times. But more than this: some of us have a presence. A resonant frequency, coupled with a deft acuity for what’s emerging, and an attunement to the relational field.
(All of us have the capacity for this, btw. It’s a human quality.)
‘Thought leader’ doesn’t quite encompass this. But wizardry does.
There is (a fellow wizard writes) a case for wizardry.
The wizardry I know, to be specific, is fox wizardry. The kind that is quite at home amidst the liminal.
The School of Fox Wizardry will take cohorts of liminal agents through the art of: realising authentic voice and unique magic; cultivating a knowledge garden and body of work; and becoming known amidst a network of kindred spirits.
That last point hints at The Skulk—a fox-like guild of liminal agents I’m cultivating. The school is a front for the guild. I'm focusing most of April on preparing the space, and I'll be inviting a core crew in before long—starting with quester, querent and quixotic supporter-subscribers. I am one of the few with early access to The Dark Forest Operating System (it’s early days but this shows real promise, giving me hope that we can find a private haven protected from enshittification). Stay tuned and let’s see what unfurls...
I had wanted to share a bunch of great podcasts and reads with you—next time! My goal for these museletters: half the length, twice the frequency. Watch me fail. ♡
With much warmth,
Jason
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