The Chaotic Journey

Staff of Aesculapius, Greek God of Healing

Culture is the precaution of those who claim to think thought but who steer clear of its chaotic journey.

                                  ––Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

This class is in an inchoate form, the specifics are lurking in the shadows. The phrase grabbed my attention as I was reading and I thought about how healing practices work in ways that often seem contrary to cultural beliefs and norms. Culture often locks us into patterns of behavior and thought that are false. Healing that takes place in the context of orthobionomy often feels is of a magical nature.

The phrase also appealed because of my recent reading about chaos magick and some similarities (as well as important differences) to certain practices of Ortho-Bionomy, such as the sigil magic of Phase VII.

Illness, dysfunction often follow from being too ordered, too constrained. Orthobionomy holds a bias toward freedom. We talk about disorders when the problem is actually too much order. Paradoxically, what we do in the practice of orthobionomy is to inject chaos. Randomness contains the seeds of Life and this implies a basic bias toward Life, which seems to exist against all odds.

The workshop will be more an exploration rather than following a structured and patterned prescribed program. There may be the possibility of "credit" toward the Ortho-Bionomy Program or as continuing education, though the primary motivation for attending should not come from such external realms. The specific content will be determined by what arises in the moment.