ƎNONE | ƎИONE | ƎNOИE | ƎNꝎИE | ƎИꝎNE | ƎNꝎNE

I came here to write! Then I spent 30 minutes thinking about how I wanted to represent 11… if there’s one you like better, let me know.

ONE ONE Day

As you may or may not know, I’ve been living in 108 day cycles for the past 2 years or so. Last year I officially launched “Cycle 1” and I’m currently in the middle of Cycle 4. Three cycles fit into each year.

I was telling a close friend that I was thinking about celebrating my birthday three times a year instead of once using my “108 Calendar”. My birthday lands on the 86th day of the cycle. Instead of celebrating my birthday once a year on November 25th, I’d celebrate it three times a year on day 86. Neat huh?!

Well… the very next day we celebrated her “re-birthday”. Many different forces of the universe aligned to make that day significant to her. The night before the party she asked me to prepare…

*pause*

I just spent another 30 minutes going down a black hole of “living eulogies”. One of the two things she asked me to prepare. I didn’t start my search with “living eulogy” though. No no… the first thing I looked up was “death party”. You know what comes up first when you google “death party”? Several articles about a “Man who threw meth-fueled ‘death party’ for ailing wife”. Sounds kind of funny on the surface, but it’s actually a nice segue into a film (“Life Before Death”) which explores the themes of pain and death more seriously. It was on their website that I discovered the term “departure party”. That had a slightly better ring to it than “death party”. The idea here is basically having parties for people near death so they can enjoy all of the nice things you’d normally say at their funeral. These terms were close but… I knew they weren’t exactly what I was looking for.

Then I stumbled upon a blog post with “living eulogy” in the title and it started with… “I came back from Burning Man with a promise to myself that I would never again…” PAYDIRT! This must be close to the source (my friend being a “burner”). The subtext of the blog is “Living Eulogy Concept by Marisa Lenhardt Patton… write about your loved ones while they’re living.” Who is this “Marisa Lenhardt Patton”? That’s when I discovered the “Death Guild” and this video…

I also learned that the definition of “eulogy” is… “a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly, typically someone who has just died.” WHO KNEW?! All this time we’ve been saving the best words for when a person can’t hear them when we could have told them before they passed! lol Hmmm… maybe that’s more of a sad face… 😥 … lol

*play (with slight rewind)*

The night before the party she asked me to prepare a living eulogy or a story about how we met. Even though I went to all that trouble researching “living eulogy” just now, that’s not what I considered doing. I figured I’d go with the how we met story.

I’ll save the story of how we met when I write her “living eulogy”. What’s important to note here is that 108 played a major role in how we met. That got me thinking about numbers and numerology (a thing I love!) The combination of talking about celebrating my birthday 108 style and her talking about her rebirthday made a light go on. Her rebirthday (January 11th, 1/11, Day 11) could be a holiday on the 108 calendar! The first of its kind! But… was 11 worthy of the title?

The Numerology of 11

I wasn’t immediately totally sold on the idea of making Day 11 a holiday. I had to poke around the number a bit and see where it led me. I like “standard numerology”. The hipster collection of websites that pop up when you google numerology + a number. I haven’t yet looked deeply into where all of these concepts originated, but if you open a few tabs you’ll see that they all stick to pretty much the same script. A couple excerpts about 11 from a variety of websites…

Master numbers, like number 11 at its highest level of vibrational energy, have special spiritual significance and are indicative of the attainment of extremely high spiritual attainment.

thesecretofthetarot.com

In the case of the 11 (a double 1), it has the traits and personality of the 1 twice, and when added (11 = 1+1 = 2) becomes a 2, thereby combining the most powerful male energy (the 1, Zeus) with the equally potent female energy (the 2, Hera). Considering that the 1 and the 2 are on opposite ends of the spectrum and the sum of their combined attributes pretty much overshadows all other attributes assigned to the numbers 3 through 9 you can perhaps imagine a merging of the strongest, most driven and aggressive warrior, an unstoppable masculine energy, with the supremacy of the most intuitive, feminine, and cunning goddess. And even that does not reveal the true essence of the 11 Master number: The 11 symbolizes the potential to push the limitations of the human experience into the stratosphere of the highest spiritual perception; the link between the mortal and the immortal; between man and spirit; between darkness and light; ignorance and enlightenment. This is the ultimate symbolic power of the 11.

numerology.com

WOW! Right?! 11 is looking really good from a numerological standpoint! What else we got?

The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and the Founding of the ROC

Goodness me! The Xinhai Revolution was the revolution that overthrew China’s last dynasty (the Qing) and established the Republic of China (which is presently Taiwan/ROC). A whole series of posts is required to unpack the significance of this to “me” (well… miltownkid anyway… lol) What I can talk about from a standpoint more grounded in “reality” is that the official calendar of Taiwan is based on the establishment of the ROC. It’s not (officially) 2020 in Taiwan. It’s 109! Last year being 108 influenced my decision to start my own 108-day based calendar. There’s also a TON of (personal) lore connected to Manchu shamanism, Taoism, Shamanism in the Qing dynasty, and how it’s connected with 108.

The icing on the political history cake was that 1/11 (January 11th, 2020) was also the day of a historic, record nreaking, and symbolic presidential election in the ROC.

Seeing the 11 in 1911 and how intimately connected it was to 108 along with the presidential elections were huge votes from the “spirits” for “let’s make Day 11 a holiday”.

Tarot

Something else that popped up were tarot cards. Tarot cards use roman numerals for numbering so 11, or II is connected to high priestess.

A blurb about the high priestess…

[Y]ou will see her sitting on a cubic stone between the two pillars at Solomon’s Temple, Jachin, and Boaz. Jachin (right) is generally referred to as the Pillar of Establishment and Boaz (left) is the Pillar of Strength. The pillars also depict the duality of nature; masculine and feminine, good and evil, negative and positive.

The High Priestess’s location between the two suggests that it is her responsibility to serve as a mediator between the depths of the reality. She is the third pillar – the path between. She believes that both pillars are equal and there is knowledge to be learned in both worlds.

labyrinthos.co

Wow… so so perfect. I was thinking that 1 and 1 could represent opposing forces. Love it.

But… my friend being a lover of all things Empress it would have been neat if it was the Empress card so I decided to look that one up.

Perfect. The founding of the holiday was for the Empress’ rebirthday, 1/11 (III). I made this for her to celebrate the occasion.

My Own Thoughts on 11 Pre-rebirthday Party

Those were all of the things I searched up before I made it to the party. On my way to the party I started to think about my own additions to the lore of 11. The major theme I came up with was the idea of celebrating our “inner” and “outer” worlds. Our public and private selves. Or perhaps even an exploration of the creative depths of ourselves to see what we would emerge with. We all have our given names and personal backstories but… what names would we give ourselves and what backstories would we create if given the opportunity to? The majority of these thoughts came from my experience with creating and, for a long period of time, living as miltownkid.

I was seeing 11 as representing ONE side and the other ONE side. The two sides come together to form a single ONE. A 1 + 1 = 1 of sorts. We all have this 1 + 1 = 1 inside of us so 11 could be representative of that. Thinking about it more, YOU and I are another set of ones. When we interact (even through YOU reading MY words right now) another 1 + 1 = 1 happens. This one is a bit more complicated though. It’s more like (1 + 1 = 1) + (1 + 1 = 1) = 1.

That’s about as far as I got before the party. This idea that there are two sides of ourselves that form a ONE and when that new ONE meets another person’s ONE a new ONE + ONE emerges which creates a combined ONE experience.

The Rebirthday Party

Even after all of that I STILL wasn’t sold on making Day 11 a holiday in my 108 calendar. I mean… I only have 108 days and they all can’t be holidays! I have to create them sparingly. It was the events of the party that totally sold me on the idea.

Without getting into the gritty details of the party, there were two things that locked it in for me. The first was an activity involving people drawing faces on paper bags and then becoming that character for a moment. That paired perfectly with the idea I came to the party with about combining your inner and outer selves.

I drew a giant symbol for 108 and announced the founding of the holiday.

The other was tarot cards deciding to showing up at the party.

View this post on Instagram

#tarot #card #reading #gift #rebirth

A post shared by Em Press (@empressbettymbu) on Jan 14, 2020 at 3:03am PST

So it was decided! Day 11 would be, from that day to the end of time, an official holiday in (Casey’s) 108 Calendar.

Side note: I initially wanted to use an infinity symbol for the “O” but after writing everything above, the yinyang is definitely more fitting. I also had to decide between mirrored or flipped text and mirrored feels like the best fit. Flipped ends up spelling “NONE” (ƎN☯NE) as well which is cool, but not the desired vibe. ƎИ☯NE it is!

So What is ƎИ☯NE Going to Be About?

Here’s my basic idea for the event. You’d have three (minimum) rooms. The first room (or floor) is the “public” area. Nothing special here. I’m thinking a lounge or a bar. People can come in off the street wearing whatever they’re wearing and it’s fine. It’s the public normal rules area.

The next area is the “mixing” area. People can come up in their regular clothes, mingle, and be curious about the final area. It would also be the “staging” area for the final room. This where two worlds collide. The rules for the second area might be a little different from the public area as it would be a combination of the final world and the public world. Like, for example, if cell phones weren’t allowed in the final room they probably wouldn’t be allowed in the “mixing” room.

Now the final room…

My idea for the final room is to allow someone or someones to create a world of their own with its own rules. A space for a person or collective to “fully express” world of their own creation.

That’s it!

The mask activity at the rebirthday party was interesting. Some people opted to not wear the mask at all, some people wore it briefly, and some people went “full taco” and became the character. That’s what got me thinking about creating a way for people who would want to stay in their “real world skin” to be able to mingle with “beings from another dimension” without needing to get out of their skin or enter the other dimension. There could be a “neutral zone”.

The third area doesn’t have to be overly complex. It could be a place of total silence and darkness (eye masks worn) with people feeling themselves around and comfortable places to sit and chill. Perhaps some chill music. Some rules about what to do when you bump into another traveller…

I’d organize this event three times a year but the more I thought about it, it could totally be a club! The first floor designed for “normies”, the second floor for blending of worlds, and the third floor a rotating universe.

Some Final Thoughts

The “real world” isn’t real. Most of the things we think of as being “real” are a kind of collective delusion. Christmas, Europe, 40 hour work weeks, weekends, Buddhism, forks and spoons… the list is functionally infinite. These are all collectively agreed upon concepts that have no basis in objective reality. Even though forks and spoons physically exist, they’re just objects. Seeing a fork or hearing the word “fork” immediately shifts your thinking to food but… that object could be used for or represent millions of different things. Perhaps in some far off galaxy forks are objects of worship.

I spend a lot of time thinking about “hacking reality”. There are essentially two halves to hack. One half is how you perceive the world you experience. The Christmases, workweeks, and sporks. The other half is creating the world you experience. 99.9% of most people’s world is the creation of others. Calendars, cars, iPhones, and icecream.

Creating my own calendar and my own holidays is a way to slightly lift the veil of reality. The idea of creating my own calendar and holidays seems kind of absurd on the surface but… we’re living in a matrix of absurdities!

The Gregorian Calendar (the most widely used calendar in the world) is a Catholic invention and named after Pope Gregory XIII. Months are named after goddesses, Caesars, festivals, and, surprisingly logically, numbers but, not surprisingly, in the wrong places (September | 7, October | 8, November | 9, December | 10). The number of days in the week are somewhat arbitrarily based on the phases of the moon and also have the names of goddesses embedded into them.

These matrices of absurdities seem harmless when viewed microscopically, but they are literally killing us. They affect, and infect, how we sleep, work, think, and live. Rising rates of suicide, depression, and anxiety are happening at the same as the world is becoming exponentially prosperous in the “developed” and “developing” worlds. We live in a period of time where we have the freedom to question any matrix and the flexibility and tools to create new ones.

I refuse to live in the matrices of post-colonial-minded and slave-minded masters. I am a sovereign entity of my own creation. While I must operate within the boundaries of these colonial and slave minded matrices, I live in my own world… lol

I totally went off on a tangent… lol My point is that we can create our own world(s). The creation of a calendar and holidays is just one of many changes I’ll be making, and I’ve made, to the world I experience. I’ll end with a “meme”.

Now you know the story and motivation of ƎИ☯NE. I hope you party with me on the next one or create a holiday of your own. Happy hacking!