Astralization: A Working Hypothesis
Ten years ago, I asked a fateful question that took me on a journey I never expected.
Almost a decade ago, circa 2015-2016, I posed a question in a short-form essay on Facebook that would go on to change the course of my life:
“Did James Baldwin know he was James Baldwin?”
The question itself was less about the man and more about his eventual ascendance into our collective consciousness as an icon, even whilst still very much a human being. Further, it wasn't interested in fame itself, per se, but the existential and spiritual questions of why, who, and how people capture historical or popular consciousness, and ‘imprint’ themselves into our collective universe: how someone becomes an icon, a shining example of humanity unlike any other. It would be another year before I landed on a description for the process I observed: astralization.
The name for astralization came about because stars, symbolically, are historically correlated with the ancestors in my lineages, as well as with the origins of life itself -- which is also, largely, scientifically true, too. It's also an homage to the creative genius & fellow unintentional spiritual iconoclast, Octavia E. Butler, and the political mythology of Earthseed she created for her Parables trilogy:
The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.
It is to live and to thrive
On new earths.
It is to become new beings
And to consider new questions.
It is to leap into the heavens
Again and again.
It is to explore the vastness
Of heaven.
It is to explore the vastness
Of ourselves.
As we enter into an astrological age of Fire and Air, with Pluto in Aquarius paving the road of liberation and lasting collective power, we are all being called — especially those of us who have the personalities and work that find us regularly in positions of responsibility, public service, or engaging with the collective imagination — to step forward and into deeper, more intentional relationship with our star power, which is what astralization is all about.
It’s this process of collective becoming that lies at the core of what makes us human, and in a world contending with existential crises like climate catastrophe, late-stage capitalism, genocide, nuclear war, and even technology like artificial intelligence and social media, we need more influential, compelling, and interesting people who know how to effectively role model holding power, influence, and wealth in ways that land on the right side of history and opt out of supremacist thinking, rather than repeating all this bullshit again, and again, and again.
So…what exactly *is* astralization?
The best way I can explain this is with an example: think of Beyoncé.
Unless you’ve met the woman in person and have a living, genuine, intimate relationship with her, the ‘Beyoncé’ you’re imagining is not representative of the ‘real’. Your ‘Beyoncé’ is actually a facet of an infinite diamond of mind: your Beyoncé is not my Beyoncé, even though they are all tied, however tenuously, back to this singular, flesh and blood woman named Beyoncé Giselle Knowles, daughter of hairdresser-cum-fashion-designer, Tina Knowles. The ‘Beyoncé’ you’re conceiving of is a mycelial structure of relationships between a whole bunch of objects that may or may not actually have any significant, 'real', intentional, and/or consensual connection to the woman herself. They simply mirror her.
These objects could be a photo taken of her, the concept of her gender expression (further, as shaped by the concept of assigning to her race, nationality, and ethnicity), a song she sang but didn't write, the simple gesture of her brushing her hair, deepfakes meant to be a simulation of her, other people’s opinions of her that were also derived from these mirrored objects, the story somebody once told about that one time they saw her eat a croissant messily at a Paris café (is the story even true?), the use of her image as memes, conspiracy theories, logos of her brands, illustrations of her by artists, irrespective of their realistic likeness or their quality, etc. All of these mirror-objects constellate and re-constellate, sometimes in response to the behavior of the actual, flesh-ensouled being, but oftentimes more in response to behavior and thoughts of people just perceiving and interpreting her, and deriving their own meaning from interacting with these representational images.
However, here's what makes things get tricky: all those objects all represent a fractal part of her human being-ness, even if they're not significant, 'real’, intentional, and/or consensual. What makes this even loopier is that this is all happening within, and in reaction to, both time and memory, too. And even weirder still, when the woman Beyoncé acts, she impacts the shape and trajectory of these objects in the lives of an untold number of beings...and when those objects are acted upon by her or someone else, even at a small scale, that action has the potential to shape the trajectory of the woman and all or some of the fellow connected objects, even if that impact is so subtle as to be seemingly negligible.
OK, so why should this matter to me, Bunny?
Well, I don’t know friend, do you want to live in a society that doesn’t dehumanize people and also doesn’t exist in a constant state of voluntary destruction and imbalance?
In its most cynical and disturbing expression, these constellations of objects (and the relationships of action made between them) can lead us into uncanny valleys and potentially very dangerous diversions from a clear, critical, and grounded state of mind. Modern day sorcerers of marketing and public relations, for example, can turn someone into a hyper-curated ‘personal brand’ that drives consumption, but hollows out both the subject and audience. Or, you can get ‘personalities’ and ‘leaders’ who will debase, destroy, and/or exaggerate anything and everything they feel is necessary to access a sensation of significance, or to temporarily alleviate their fear of things like death, disability, or more often than not, genuine accountability. Yikes!
With the introduction of “artificial intelligence”, the algorithmic manipulation of social media, and state censorship of journalists, academics, and experts, not being aware of our constellated existence can make us very vulnerable, and lead to us perpetuating ongoing cycles of these harmful dynamics, replicating themselves amongst the new objects that come into being. If you want an excellent representation of the dangers of this (albeit in fictionalized form), Star Trek: TNG’s narrative arc with Georgi LaForge and Dr. Leah Brahms really hits it out of the park. Because of the deliberately constructed hyperreality (def: a state in which the line between the tangible and the simulation are blurred, resulting in people accepting the simulation as being ‘more real’ than embodied experiences, eroding the discernment of the subject) — dehumanization & objectification has become a normalized aspect of interacting with the world, ourselves, and one another, both online and offline.
What is particularly salient about this in this moment in particular, as billionaires + oppressors and their misguided to enthusiastic accomplices attempt to burn the planet down, is that the bigger this mycelial constellation can become, the harder it becomes for the person to experience + act with, and be received with, genuine compassion, due to this prevailing overlay of dehumanization and objectification. This is where it becomes important to note that empathy is merely all of the conscious and unconscious sensory data we experience from the movement of these objects — our unprocessed, unfiltered, raw response — but compassion is responding to this data with careful reflection on how to lessen our deleterious impact on others, and by extension, ourselves, and the delicate material balance of the Universe as a whole. The more we are aware that these objects and the actions moving between them exist, and the fact that they are not entirely within our control, the more we can shape and move through our relationship with them from a place of compassion, however imperfectly. Further, it becomes a lot easier to access your imagination, and to have the skill to contribute towards creating a world that is more gentle, kind, and downright fucking glorious, because empathy isn’t obliterating your nervous system in an out-of-balance manner. To borrow from Octavia E. Butler again, in deepening our observation and awareness of the true nature of our astralized selves, we become, “The life that perceives itself/Changing.” because, “Kindness eases Change.”
Does everyone go through astralization, or…?
The short answer is yes.
We’re all going to die and become an ancestor one day, and as a consequence, our memory will exist long after we are gone as a force unto itself, shaping consciousness and matter's ability to become responsive to itself in a compassionate manner, even if this isn’t literal.
Where we run into issues is when our astralization rapidly expands to including objects and actions from sources that go beyond the limit of Dunbar’s number, or we experience a trauma that impacts our perception of ourselves and others. This disruption and distortion can happen in a number of ways: we can have our perception warped by being vested with hierarchal and/or semi-consensual influence over others (like being a boss, or an elected representative), or, you know…having millions and billions of dollars. You can also simply exist in an ecosystem of relating that is based on a consensus reality that is defined by assigning people lesser or greater importance/value, irrespective of your place in that system. There’s also trauma, which can manifest from violent imposition, but also just…being alive.
Much of our modern world has been built around exploiting the fact that we moved away from a lot of indigenous (little i) ways of knowing and being that was inherently aware of these dynamics, however they conceptualized them in philosophy, story, song, and practice. Taking this psycho-spiritual process seriously, however your culture(s) conceptualize it (not to flatten this into a universal phenomenon, but to say that this existential idea isn’t new), requires living life in a way where you are aware that you are still responsible for one another, even after we post-haste it over the rainbow bridge. In an animistic worldview like the one I am suggesting here, whether it’s political or literal to you, we would have to live life with the knowledge that having right relationship with the world — not by trying to escape it, but by embodying a seamless relationship with the Universe through harmonizing with and to it.
Notably, adopting that type of mindset is how we thrive as a species, and guarantee the survival and thriving of all beings we share the world with. Every action, every object created, then takes on a different dimension of care and intentionality. We further opt to design our communities in a variety of ways that account for the fact that we're never going to get this perfectly right, and we have to account for that imperfection, and there's nothing and no one to save us from it. There is no transcendental escape hatch. You can float your spirit up out of responsibility for your actions. Not how that works. As the human world becomes an increasingly hyperreal place, though, and that is mixed with the cultural memory loss and violence of colonialism, capitalism, and related -isms, we are being called to replace mechanisms of death and dehumanization with ones of connection and restoration. An unexpected, explosive, and highly collective astralization process that expands beyond one's psycho-spiritual skill is now possible for anyone: you fart in the wrong wind, you can go viral, and there goes a buckwild ripple through reality, taking your fragile human self and this rapidly expanding collective footprint with it.
But what’s genuinely even more frightening to me, is that because of the state of our globalized communication, having even an intuitive knowledge of this reality can allow people to weaponize it. We have seen countless examples o people leveraging this power + influence to quite literally get away with rape, murder, and getting elected President of the United States of America not once, but twice. Turns out there was a little and wildly myopic something to the worldview of a certain rotten white-browed tit-warbler-in-chief, but in the worst of ways.
Well, that’s not great. What can we do about this?
Because of the real-and-present existential dangers I’ve outlined above, we need more people who can act as a Hermit’s lamp for their communities, helping others find their own way through this process. Unfortunately, though, astralization can only be pursued through experience and close observation of life itself, there's no intellectualizing away this sucker. It can take a lifetime to get in sync with, and it can be WILDLY hit or miss, leaving a lot of carnage in its wake. The constant dysregulation of late stage kyriarchal capitalism doesn’t do us any favors, either. I am hopeful my illustrative description might jumpstart your engine, but the rest is all from, well, direct experience.
To be clear: there is no ‘one true way’ of remediating the painful dimensions of this process on a personal or collective level, and there never could be. There are an infinite number of ways for the Universe to become, so...why would we think there is a one twue way? Even when we stand in a line on the same patch of grass, we're all getting a different view of the grass, shaped by all of the things we experienced before we looked down...including whether or not we are a Blind person.
But there IS one requirement of any path of astralization you take that's non-negotiable: ancestral reconciliation and responsibility.
We need more people who are willing to take on this responsibility as an intentional path and priority, where they are going to spend their time in their communities demonstrating how to commit to masterfully wielding, cultivating, and engaging one's own astralized self with a clear mind and deep, abounding compassion. Further, they (we) must do this work in a way that rejects supremacist ideology, hegemony, and colonization, that can be shared with others in culturally relevant + meaningful ways to the communities they're in, and through processes that are somatic and individuated, so we don’t lose our fcking minds anymore than being alive or existing amidst these minefields of harm are intended to cause. Our collective loss of our Plutonian imagination and awareness has brought us to the brink of global ecological and social collapse, and the only solution is to do whatever we can to provide the foundation for people to dream beyond our lesser angels.
This is a very easy, but deceptively simple, shortcut is the reason why I am here, and why you're reading this. It’s the route that led me to even having this hypothetical mysticism in the first place. Having the support and tools you need to retrieve, adapt, and apply the wisdom and insights of our Ancestors, human and otherwise, is the primary path of least resistance for the plurality of human beings to find their way to a better, more compassionate state. But astralizing consciously in this manner requires having the capacity and personal relationships to be brave enough to confront all who have been to make you, and taking on responsibility for redirecting the momentum of their (sometimes long-forgotten) power + agency, as well as your own.
Picking up a copy of Mallorie Vaudoise's Honoring Your Ancestors: A Guide To Ancestral Veneration (Bookshop.org affiliate) is a good starting point, and I primarily recommend the book because it’s culturally expansive & respectful, with information that speaks across a number of paths. Setting up a simple altar, and making a daily practice of asking your helpful ancestors to guide you through this process, to reignite your ancestral memory and knowing about it in an experiential, visceral way, is really all you need to get started. You need no gods, nor masters, no authority to invest in you what is as natural to you as breathing. You just have to invest 5 minutes a day and let your helping spirits lead the way, whether you "believe" in things as I have laid them out here is fundamentally irrelevant.
Everything else is up to you and the spirits who support you from here out
(But I’ll keep everyone posted about what else I discover as I go along with this unexpected spiritual hypothesis of mine.)