What is the Inner Council? Learn more.

Currently Presiding: The Mystic

The Mystic sits on the devotional side of the Council, directly across from the Architect. Where the Architect takes perception and builds it into form, the Mystic moves in the opposite direction. She takes direct experience of the divine and lifts it into abstraction, upward to the formless. She holds the lens up to the moon and finds the full moon in it regardless of what the sky outside looks like. She carries objects whose existence is undeniable, but whose origins are unknown. She operates in territory that is true but not yet nameable.

Below are card pulls and notes from my oracle deck related to exploring The Mystic recently.

  • This first pull on the day I pulled The Mystic card associated it hysterically with “Magic Carpet Ride” and in my amusement made me wonder if the other cards were also adding songs to the Mystic’s playlist.

  • Note entered: It occurred to me on the second look that this might be a more literal reference to the original card as 2 kinds of knowing: knowledge and imagination.

  • This first pull on the day I pulled The Mystic card brought up Jeremy Narby’s The Cosmic Serpent book, but in keeping with it being associated with a song that day, I also linked it up to Kashmir because of a previous project I’d worked on that had similar imagery associated with the song.

  • Note entered: If the first card was a way of seeing, this one seems it could be referencing that kind of knowledge gained in altered states of consciousness.

  • This first pull on the day I pulled The Mystic card associated this (because of the song framework) to The Smashing Pumpkin’s “Home.”

  • Note entered: In the context of ways of seeing, this one might be referencing story, narrative over time. A sort of knowing encountered through the telling of the collective conscious/memory.

    The card itself makes passive reference to dream imagery and to the fairy tale, “The Three Feathers.”

What is the Inner Council?

Think of the “Inner Council” as a personal archetype system, a cast of inner figures, each representing a distinct way of knowing, creating, and moving through the world. Think of it also as a map of the self, organized into quadrants and populated by characters I've developed over time through creative practice, symbolic study, and a lot of paying attention. Each member has a domain, a voice, and a seat at the table.