Mecca After the Rite

A pilgrim completes the rite in Mecca and encounters rooftop cafés, global brands and billboards reminiscent of Times Square. Her pilgrimage is complete. The city continues around it.

Elsewhere, an eight-foot wild man stands in an analyst's waiting room, while researchers look for genomic correlates of self-reported psychic experience. The pieces remain distinct. What becomes visible when they are read beside one another?

The pieces that stayed with us.

After completing the rite, Azania Imtiaz Patel, writing in Aeon, encounters Joe & The Juice, Sephora and billboards reminiscent of Times Square. The familiarity sharpens her disorientation. Pilgrimage now ends inside the global city it once interrupted. From a rooftop café in Mecca during Ramadan, she looks across the Masjid al-Haram complex and its transformed commercial surroundings. Read more→

In This Jungian Life, Jungian analyst Mike Box follows the wild man through Enkidu, Pan, the Green Man and Bigfoot. The figure returns where masculine endurance has demanded concealment. Box has studied male psychology for years. An eight-foot wild man statue stands in his waiting room. The episode asks what such a figure carries when stoicism leaves no room for disclosure. Read more→

Some experiences resist external proof yet continue to make a claim: a vision, an absorbed state, an aftermath without a name. The Centre for Applied Jungian Studies works in this territory through what it calls psychoeducation. The term is plain enough: learning to meet unfamiliar inner material without being overwhelmed by it.

The Conscious Living Programme is a 12-module self-study course. Payment opens access to all 12 modules, which can be completed at your own pace. The course is certified for 48 CPD points, and payment plans are available.

The IONS Science Team at the Institute of Noetic Sciences reports on “Genomic Correlates of Self-Reported Psychic Experiences: An Exploratory Analysis”, published in Explore. By looking for biological association rather than proof of psi, the study turns a charged question into a narrower testable one. The report also cites twin studies showing greater similarity in telepathic experience than chance would predict. It places that finding beside the genomic study while keeping the experiences themselves explicitly self-reported. Read more→

Dennis Walker, writing for the Chacruna Institute, asks whom plants would elect to carry their message. Then he traces the rise of plant-medicine influencers. The question exposes the problem: online authority is claimed on behalf of beings that cannot choose their representatives. The piece also sets the renewal of clinical research, including at the University of New Mexico and Imperial College London, beside the later influencer wave. Read more→

Afraaz Adam Mulji, writing in Sacred Web, begins with a difficult claim: discourse on holiness errs as soon as it tries to say what holiness is. Description reaches its limit here. An illustration from Hildegard von Bingen’s Liber Scivias accompanies the essay. Image and argument meet at the threshold of what speech can hold. Read more→

Patel names the difficulty plainly.

A few more threads worth pulling.