Creative Frameworks for Preparation, Integration, and Living With Bipolar
The Souls of Acheron by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl
It is a gift and a curse, the comings and goings of creativity. My whims and inspirations controlled by some hidden muse pulling the strings. Growing up I could never quite decide what creative outlet to focus on, it was more of an impulse towards a certain modality. Drawing — pencil portraiture and realism — playing acoustic guitar, writing poetry and songs. I had my preferred methods of making and expressing but to consciously engage them was largely dependent on a mood that I did have control over. I would follow the impulse of my inner self and how it wanted to express itself, intuitively living.
Creative Expression was always a safe place in my younger years. The healing arts, powerful tools of processing that I used to translate and expound my interior self that was for a long time just so: interior. I had to learn how to express and take thoughts and feelings to the exterior — release them from my body and free myself from their weight. Truly work through my individual issues in a way that is authentically me. Gaining control of a power like that would enable many things.
And I feel like in the last few years I’ve really developed that sense of control. With a Bipolar diagnosis, helpful tools and systems of wellbeing, personalized frameworks for making sense of my reality. I have such a better handle on myself. I know myself better than ever before.
I’ve been able to apply creative frameworks to my own mental health and wellness journey. Use crafted techniques and my own personal system of wellbeing to also work on the preparation and integration of psychedelic experiences. I love to show how my process works, and that progress can be made for a 33 year old POC living with Bipolar. Using creativity to explore and understand my conditions, then implementing and grounding insights in hard, practical reality (the most important part for me in navigating these weird waters, to keep from going off the deep end).
I honor my ancestors in this work. Healers from my father’s side: Grandpa, a Navy veteran and psychiatrist with German lineage, Grandma, a nurse with Swedish roots. They were kind and caring Lutherans. On my mother’s side, a Chinese Grandfather, Indonesian Grandmother — they inspire me to lean into belief through ritual and ceremony, to pray in my own way. My Indonesian heritage is rich with folklore, especially from the island of Bali —the story of the Lion God Barong in conflict with the Demon Witch Rangda resonated with me watching a performance of the story as a child — I also tap into my Chinese ancestry, adopting lessons from the Tao Te Ching. Both sides of my family provide lessons. Clinical and spiritual, science and belief. I find myself in the middle, occupying a beautiful center, a balanced way of being.
It is through years of work in mental health and wellness spaces, recovery and peer-support groups, and then applying the knowledge and experiences gained to the revitalized psychedelic movement, that my most authentic self has been revealed. Truly purpose driven — to help, to teach, to guide — as we go through this complex human experience together, one filled with learning and knowing.
Flower, Pen and Ink - the holy act of writing, symbols that hold meaning and experience.
I’ve often felt pulled by many things, compelled in one way or another. It seems like this sensitivity to feeling is a feature of the vessel I occupy. Impulses, thoughts as they move through my mind, environments affect demeanor, the set and setting changes.
Creative Expression feels like channeling. The Muse whispering to me. I am an antennae picking up signals that are all around, subtle energies and frequencies that move through. They are transferred and take shape, images and messages planted inside the mind, an idea that suddenly appears inside my head. It feels like a purging when I let it out through pen and ink. No longer having to hold onto my thoughts and feelings, the paper holds the weight.
Poetry is such a channeling. A line of words will suddenly appear inside my head, certain sounds, rhymes, consonance, assonance. It’s like a bird flying by. I am compelled to record the initial utterance. And in the act of engaging with the impulse, I am able to reflect further, write more, be inspired by the sudden occurrence and see where it goes. Poems grow from this initial seed planted inside my thoughts. It used to be sporadic, I had no way to track or replicate them. But these days, with meditation, visualization, and breath-work, finding flow states, working the body with swimming, biking, being in nature — I have gained the ability to receive when an opportunity is created. So bountiful is the harvest these days.
I feel that creative expression is a more conscious act, now that I’ve gotten ahold of living with my mental health conditions: Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar. My first (and hopefully only) Bipolar manic episode took place about 3 years ago. A dear family member had her most recent Schizophrenic episode and it caused my own episode. She’s been dealing with her condition for ten years, since her early 20’s when someone she trusted had abused her, and psychedelics were a part of that abuse. It caused immense harm. She wasn’t given support and structure, or love and care at the time. It fractured her. And in an attempt to better understand her and what she experienced, I found my own madness. For both of us, a series of sleepless nights caused an episode.
I am thankful for the tools that helped me navigate my manic episode, it helped me go through an outpatient program with the love, support, and care of family and my wife Maddie. I think what helped me most were my years of self-work: therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), meditation, breath-work. My creative outlets: journaling and creative writing, poetry and art and music carried me through. The years of work we put into finding sobriety from alcohol and nicotine 8 years ago. There was a strong foundation I had built for myself. I had a support system to help me. And I found more useful frameworks that have become an integral part of my daily practice, my habits, rituals, ceremonies, so many words for the work.
What works for me is: writing, journaling, drawing, tarot, ritual/practice/ceremony, meditation, breathwork, visualization, intentional thinking/acting, exercise, a good night’s sleep.
(Intentions set to “Recuperate, rest, rejuvenate” — The cards pulled for:
past (jealousy, fear, bad influence), present (honour and glory brough by a journey), and future (matriarchal down to earth energy, grounded, connection to nature, values, traditions)
In forming my practice, I found that creativity was the crux of it all. It’s what I’ve known most all my life, where my strengths were even as a young child. Creative writing, music, poetry. These things feel like magic, how we create something from nothing. And so when I came across magical systems, I was immediately drawn, learning what they are and how they function in the most practical terms.
I think there is a way to take fantastical and lofty concepts like magic (or magick, to differentiate from street/illusory magic) and distill them down into their core parts, taking the most simple essence and making their implementation practical. We can strip away “the woo” and look at these systems through a secular lens to make them easier to understand and practice, but also remember how powerful they can be when applied with intention (sometimes a thin ledge to walk upon).
In my understanding, magick is the same as creative writing. To write words is to cast spells, create symbols and meaning. Words hold such multitudes, such complex power within them. Expression of self, thoughts, feelings, wishes, goals, experiences, and making them manifested reality. Making magic of the mundane. Infusing daily acts with the power of intention, our rituals and ceremonies are charged. Cosmos and the universe recognizes this act and says “You are now interacting with the system as intended, let’s play this game of thinking and feeling, and so receive what is wished for.”
Words are an “understanding” transferred between us, seeing how our consciousness resonates with shared experience. When we set intentions for psychedelic medicine work, are we not casting spells? When I wish to find concepts like [peace, balance, healing, wellness] I honor these archetypal forces. We bring them down from the heavenly amorphous plane and greater collective unconsciousness (per Carl Jung), down to our physical 3D reality.
A core part of my practice is the concept of Chaos Magic — if it works it works. It’s a fun and inherently creative system to play around in, but one that has yielded undeniable results for me. Belief drives and shapes reality, which is a more malleable thing than many realize. It is taking individual parts of many systems, the ones that resonate most, and then creating your own unique system, your own magick (see also: syncretism, a kind of ancient chaos magic as I understand it).
I came across the concept a few years ago listening to a talk Grant Morrison gave at DisinfoCon in 2000 on chaos magic, sigils and the occult, ***WARNING*** PLEASE TURN YOUR VOLUME DOWN BEFORE PLAYING THE VIDEO — Grant Morrison starts the video with a howl that pierces the cosmos. They explain often lofty concepts like “magic”, “practice”, “ritual” or “belief”, in super simple and practical terms. If you do something with intention and purpose, and believe that doing “that thing”, whether it is prayer, ceremony, lighting a candle or incense, clearing space with sage, or small rituals and spells, you will yield a certain result, you are increasing the chance that your desired outcome will happen.
Grant Morrison wrote themselves into a comic book called The Invisibles as a kind of magical experiment to see what would happen. They made things happen to their comic representation, and in real life these things happened to Morrison. They wrote about their character being physically tortured, having a collapsed lung, and in real life, found themselves in a dire medical condition with infection and a collapsed lung. They wrote the character coming across love interests, and in real life, such a person appeared to them. In the act of creating a narrative about this comic version of themselves, a kind of voodoo magic was inflicted upon their physical self. They created something from nothing with the power of story, affecting corporeal reality through ethereal creation. By broadcasting out the information they put forth through creative expression and storytelling, Morrison is in a way putting out a beacon into the cosmos. And something “out there” caught their expression, and used it as a guidepost to send “the thing” they are casting out. Almost like an ethereal game of Marco/Polo. Similarly when we set intentions, we are broadcasting something out. When we set intentions for “patience”, or “balance”, or “clarity”, we put out a beacon that draws these concepts nearer to us.
Every person is capable of doing this magical writing to affect reality to certain degrees (maybe not necessarily to the extreme of Morrison’s experiment) but it takes concerted, consistent practice and action to manifest anything into reality. Things don’t just appear out of thin air, they must be evoked through effort, and consistently pulled down towards us. “Action” is the key word, there must be an effort to do, to act, to bring about a thing from a higher plane through physically doing and trying. But many don’t know how their words can affect themselves and those around them, or have forgotten about the power of creativity, words, and art. Expression is an inherently magical act. I think people can be taught to remember what magical power there is in the mundane.
I can then see religious and spiritual systems as a similar kind of creative act. In their time and historical contexts, people were creating works and systems to make sense of their reality. Texts like the Upanishads, the Torah, the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, texts of understanding through storytelling, lessons to be transferred from one person to the next. Articulating an individual’s unique human experience and knowing, asking “Does this resonate with you? Do these teachings provide valuable insight and help guide you through life?” I can see modern day comic books in the same way. Marvel and DC comics contain contemporary pantheons of supernatural beings, of gods, providing us lessons in human experience through narrative, and meaning making. There is power in stories. We have been shaped and influenced by stories growing up, fables, myths, books and movies. They teach us incontrovertible lessons about life and what it means to be good and just, fair and balanced, what it means to be a hero and go on a journey.
The Demon Witch Rangda and the Lion God Barong. Balinese Folklore Myth.
The process of magick as I understand it, when broken down into its simplest parts, is as simple as setting an intention: [punctuality]. This can be written down, over and over, turned into a sigil, kept in a special hidden place, or scrawled on a piece of paper and then burned. The idea is then in your mind, worked over through your heart and felt in your body, then actuated and manifested into the real world. As I think, so I feel, so I act. These are key elements of magick, of creating and doing. The essential building blocks of occult and esoteric practices, that at their core are about reminding the individual of the immense power they innately hold, as divine beings part of a larger system of consciousness. We are part of one grand create, not separate from it. And we can influence it as such.
Through this learning process and creating my own personal system of wellbeing and belief, I’ve come to work with Hermes as a patron deity. God of communication, bringing messages and guiding souls across heavens and hells and earthly planes. His mercurial nature provides me insight into Bipolar: I am similarly mercurial in my manic highs and depressive lows. He represents specific archetypal concepts and values, “forms” (from Plato), that we understand and inherently know as conscious beings, but do not have a physical representation for. And so Hermes, and the rest of the Greek pantheon, represent specific concepts that are personified, used to tell a story and hopefully transfer their meaning to their devotees. Guideposts to lead through values.
When we pray to gods, we pray to the concepts they represent. If a primary guiding principle is [Communication], my poetry and marketing work, organizing and build community with the Lawrence Psychedelic Society and the larger psychedelic ecosystem are thus guided — I need ways to help show me the path and assist with the work. How can I make sure my message gets across to the right people, that my meanings are transferred and understood, and then action is begun from them?
For Carl Jung, Hermes’ role as a messenger between realms and a guide to the underworld made him the deity of the unconscious mind, acting as a mediator between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche and a guide for inner journeys. Jung regarded Thoth and Hermes as counterparts, emphasizing Hermes’s pivotal role in medieval alchemical practices, which he interpreted as symbolic of the psychological process he termed individuation. In Jungian psychology, Hermes holds particular significance in the study of synchronicity. There are multi-dimensional ways for us to understand our human experience, and interact with consciousness as a whole.
A journal entry and Tarot card spread from a Missouri Psychedelic Meetup in 2021
In my regular practice I keep a journal, tracking schedules, meetings, and tasks with bullet lists, taking notes during trainings and educational workshops, and whatever is most in front of me at the moment. If its worth remembering, I am compelled to write it down.
Journaling seems to help with what I’ve heard is a major issue with many other folks with Bipolar: memory and keeping things organized. To help combat this I’ve got my physical journal, which acts as a calendar and scheduler, complimented by technology: my digital calendar and digital notes. It feels like I keep my brain in multiple places at once, it helps spread the burden of the many thoughts that run through my mind, especially in manic states when the flow is particularly fervent!
The acts of journaling and creative writing have become deeply spiritual practices to me. They’ve also been incredibly helpful in my daily and professional life. My understanding of these seemingly mundane things have become magical by their nature. What we take for granted as commonplace methods, is reinvigorated for me and how I navigate this world. What fun! Magically empowering, immensely comforting.
Another part of my holistic practice is reading Tarot. While also being a fun practice, Tarot is a powerful tool to gain insight into a particular focus or quandary. Less so a tool for predicting the future, I think it’s a way to capture “the present moment” of yourself and the particular problems or goals being worked on. It allows the subconscious and the extra-conscious, the collective unconscious forms, to reach out through the ether to give guidance through archetypal concepts.
Focusing on specific things is like a beacon to universe, conscious thinking and interacting pulls these higher heavenly things down to our dimension. It gives an outside perspective that may help you work through your problems. The cards I pull typically read me like a book, they are what I need in the moment, because I am consciously thinking about my present context, and interacting with the cosmic system in a light and playful way. I think our reality likes this way of interacting, through games and storytelling. Inherent parts of the human experience. I think what people mostly want to do is tell and hear stories, play games; share, learn and commune with each other.
The images below show two different sample readings:
A reading for a friend where I pulled the Star. She was looking for a way out of a funk, was looking for a change in scene, better habits, looking for guidance. The Star brings renewed hope, optimism for future possibilities, spiritual and emotional nourishment. She’s been getting into more witchy and magickal ways of being so it was a good sense of direction to think in new ways, as above, so below, celestially aligned.
Photo of Tarot card reading by the author Ian Cook.
Intention: [What do I need to pull out of this funk]
Manifestation: XVII - The Star
2. For my New Years card at the start of 2024 I pulled the Wheel of Fortune. It reminded me of the reoccurring nature of the world: cycles, seasons, circles, sometimes you go round enough to go up in a spiral. What goes around comes around. “Going with the flow” has been a good guiding mindset so far this year. Seeds and plans I planted years ago now coming to fruition.
Photo of Tarot card reading by the author Ian Cook.
Intention: [Disconnect, Reconnect]
Manifestation: X - The Wheel of Fortune
Tarot reading is like a combination of intuitive storytelling and a game, interacting with someone seeking answers. Video games were an integral part of my upbringing, similarly telling a story through a game. One of my earliest memories as a kid is sneaking out of a showing of the Jungle Book with family to go to the theater’s arcade, and trying to play whatever I could — my parents had no idea where I went until they eventually found me in the arcade.
This love of games and playful systems, ways to take rules and obstacles and mold them to my wants and needs has been with me for a long time. The desire to play games in the way that I wanted was sated by addons to video game systems like the GameShark. The internet was a hot bed of tips and tricks, people writing walkthroughs to guide you through the game, in-game cheat codes and complex button combinations, complete step by step guides and locations of hidden secrets abound. Having a framework and system, then manipulating it to play the game how you wish. Powerful magick!
I see a parallel of games and ways to engage with “the system” we live in; Tarot, videogames, telling stories, how we can navigate this reality we occupy. If the framework of “games” is placed upon this waking life, how can we play the “game of life”? Tarot can act as a kind of “gamemaster’s tool”, providing hidden insight from the collective unconscious. We ask a question — we receive guidance from beyond, from our subconscious. We can overlay a game system on to our reality and then interact with the system we occupy in such a way that is light and playful, unlocking cosmic interaction and guidance by “playing a game”.
I read Tarot in my own way. After trying a number of different spreads and methods, I developed my own over a few years of practice and iteration. It is an intuitive and interactive process with the one I’m reading for, where I create a physical artifact of the reading in the container we create:
First I draw my sigil, a way for me to focus and enter into a flow state, open a “container” to conduct the reading — then I write the name of the one who seeks guidance. Then I ask the querent to set an [Intention], something you are working on, or would like additional guidance on, something top of mind. Then I’ll have the querent write it on the page, in their own wording, as a type of “spell” they cast.
Then we’ll have them think on their spell (their intention), imagine what it looks and feels like having it come to fruition, the issue resolved, visualize the thing having already happened, attainment. This plucks it from the ether, places the image in one’s mind and their body. As they are consciously focusing and thinking on their intention, I am shuffling the deck. The one who seeks answers is feeling their thoughts in their body, moving it through their very being, spreading energetic intentions throughout.
We take three big deep breaths to really feel into the moment, imagine the [Intention] coming true, what does that look like, feel like? Then whenever the querent feels complete in their asking, they tell me when to stop shuffling. I’ll then split the deck wherever feels good and offer a choice: left or right. This shuffling of the deck represents the chaos of life. But despite this shuffling chaos, these things seemingly outside of our control, I believe each individual being is in control of the choices they make in life. We make choices every day that determine path we walk. We have inherent free will to create our own future, as best we can.
The card is chosen! We’ll then see what comes up with the card(s). We usually do a 1-card or 3-card draw, depending on time and querent request for guidance. We then go over the card received and examine their meanings and symbols in the context of the [Intention] set by the querent. Hopefully provide the individual with a path to tread. I finish the reading by drawing the card or writing down the key themes and symbols represented by the card, so that they have a physical artifact of the process we just went through. They can then later reflect on the reading down the road, see if it helped them “manifest” their “intention”.
Each reading is its own unique container, and so we interpret the card(s) pulled within this completely individualized context. No readings are the same, because no interactions between me and the querent are the same. Life’s unique configuration in that time and space. How do the cards provide a new way to look at the problem? What does the imagery of the card evoke from the individual? What ways can we use the archetypes and higher concepts represented by each card’s name, suit, and number to determine new meanings in our life and guide the way forward?
A Tarot reading for Margaret, her Intention: “What’s going to happen to Mother Earth?”
There are many systems and methods out there. I’ve outlined the ones that resonate the most for me on this mental health and wellness journey, and many of them overlap and inform each other. These are the ways I make sense of myself and my reality. These are the ways I honor myself and those that came before me. To make sense of the contexts and sequence of events that have lead me to what I currently am. And where I’m going. I have systems to deal with my mental health, find opportunities for wellness, and find balance in my daily life. A constant, consistent, iterative process. I create this system for myself, I am empowered to manifest the future I envision for myself, bring my intentions to life.
Holistic practices and creative frameworks enable me to prepare for and integrate for what happens to me in life. They help me deal with my mental health conditions, my depression, anxiety, and Bipolar. In preparing for and integrating my psychedelic experiences — I can more easily make sense of the insights and lessons gleaned. The basic framework is in place, it is naturally adapted to medicine work and has been an essential part of my process.
From my psychedelic integration was born the idea of The Cosmic Water Closet (CWC), a creative-writing and journaling class I’ve taught these past few years in mental health and psychedelic-assisted therapy spaces. It has helped individuals develop the skills and practices to capture their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It helps them better prepare for and record their psychedelic journeys, to later use their writing for ongoing integration and processing. The idea came to me after a mushroom experience, biking out in the Baker Wetlands just south of Lawrence, Kansas, where I live. I was in the shower and the words “COSMIC WATER CLOSET” just popped in my head. I yelled it out to my wife, “write this down, I don’t know what it means yet!”
The Cosmic Water Closet
The idea developed more as I thought on it, and what it could be. The Cosmic Water Closet is a shape shifting tavern that floats out in the cosmos, and forms into the needs of those that enter it. Inside the tavern is a Frog-Magus named Yan (a pet-name my wife has for me) who tends the space and hosts creative writing classes, gives Tarot readings, hosts the denizens who happen upon it. I gave this name to a creative representation of me, inspired by Grant Morrison’s process to write myself into a creative work. Frogs are my spirit animal, so much about them resonates with me, their transformative growth through stages, moving in and out of water (I grew up swimming), a hybrid thing (also like my multi-racial background).
The CWC has formed into a creative container I can enter into with friends, to have a safe space for reflection, self-expression, writing poetry, journaling about our feelings and thoughts. We can enter a playful and fun space, play games and tell stories. We can do some heavy lifting mentally and emotionally, and then exit the container. Much like psychedelic experiences, we create a container, a ceremony, a ritual. The CWC has evolved into a grand construct that is innately from me, born from my experiences, and the practices that resonate with me. It is a sacred gift from beyond. It is proof of what magick and wonder that are just waiting to be found, given to us.
These creative frameworks help with my everyday practice, as I work through traumas, and navigate the chaos of just living. There has to be a way to process and get through. There is a way. In each individual is a system waiting to be born, evoked, guided. We each have our own magick, our own strengths innate inside us — how can we find it, develop it, and honor it. In ourselves, through ourselves, for ourselves and others.
My Frog-Magus Yan reading Tarot in The Cosmic Water Closet