The Castle -A glimpse into wholeness

The grails castle cannot be found by force of will but only by providence

This is the continuation of the story from the garden. This is a very personal story, where the border between consensus reality and myth starts to blur. I write these stories as an example of how engaging with story can shape our lives by evoking transformative experiences. May the story entertain, and invite your imagination to envelop itself in your own.

After my experience at the garden, I had a month to find some ground to anchor my feet, so that my head would not ascend into far distant clouds.
Luckily, I had a few experiential pedagogy programs to host. When working with 30 adolescents, who are willing to turn one’s carefully planned program into a complete shitshow, non-practical esoteric notions start crumbling very fast. I am again in awe of their ability to sniff out bullshit within people. I hope I can return the favour by inviting them to turn their keen eyes inward.
The programs ended up working out well, and I’m grateful for the pupils’ encouragement to leave my ivory tower, however fancy it might be.‍ ‍

But I also knew that not a tower, but a whole castle was potentially waiting for me to plunge back into mystic waters.
The Castle was an event hosted by the same people organizing the Garden in Portugal. 200 of the most interesting people from all walks of life gathered for five days in a castle in the French countryside, for an event under the theme of “hyperstition.”
Hyperstition describes how narratives and fantasies manifest themselves by structurally changing the memetic landscape of a given culture. It can also be described as ideas from the future retro-causally influencing the present.
These ideas are what “the magician” from the Garden story thought correlated with my workshop on prophecy writing, and that’s how the Castle got on my radar in the first place.
I think the difference between hyperstition and my idea of Fateweaving is that the latter explicitly works with story rather than narrative. The practice of Fateweaving does not try to manipulate the present by crafting narratives “from the future,” but instead stirs organically toward the future by developing a trusting relationship with an open-ended story.
All that is to say that I was in for a surreal, or shall I say hyperreal experience trusting that a story would guide my way.

But I was still on the fence of joining while an arduous decision-making process was making a fool out of my newfound ideas of “organically stirring towards a future by engaging with story”. The conflict was between “be a responsible citizen and do what seems reasonable” and “plunge into a strange experience, not knowing what might come of it”.
But then I got the notification that I was accepted as a volunteer at the Castle, alleviating my monetary concerns. Also I got the news that I was accepted to participate in an archetype LARP (Live action role play) that a few creative heads were organizing on one of the days during the Castle. The concept was that the participants could play one of 22 characters that are all based on specific archetypes. The story was distributed across these 22 characters, so by interacting with other characters, more could be found out about the story. I was constantly thinking about story and how one could embody and embed it in real life, so I was super curious about it.
Also they told me, that judging from my application, I was the perfect fit for one of the characters so, if at all possible, I should come and play. Then I got my character sheet and found out that it was based on Parzival that happened to be my favourite myth. I turns out that I had forged a sword a couple month earlier that I named Parzival, I forged it as a symbol of making my way in life, to go straight through the middle, to pierce the valley -to “Parzival”.
With that synchronicity I could cut through the decision-making thicket.
Now I knew that I was back on the path of story and on my way to a castle in France, as Parzival did on his journey to the Grails Castle “Mont Salvat”. It was supposed to be somewhere hidden deep in some mysterious French forests. They say that the grail castle cannot be found by will and only by providence, but once you are destined to enter, no way leads around it.

A couple weeks later I found myself standing in front of a castle amidst other volunteers, awaiting commands on where to set up docents of tents. There was a tight schedule, the tents were supposed to be standing by nightfall and a fancy castle dinner should be cooked for 200 people, but the planning was, well, let’s say optimistic. So, we ended up working well into the night as all the guests arrived. Newcomers were greeted by a knight in full armour and led around the place that was still a work- and not a playground for myself. But right before dusk we had a short break for the opening ceremony and with it my eyes opened to the beauty of the place.
It was a wide area, with different buildings. There was the main building, its entrance hall was so spacious, it felt like entering another outside, the ceiling of the sleeping hall was adorned by medieval geometric patterns. Then another building, a huge glass room would become ground zero for fancy feasts, a tower would provide material for alchemical dreams about ancient astronomers, beside it was a lounge, letting one time travel to ancient Persia upon entering. Winding ways and illuminated staircases connecting the buildings invited curious exploration.

Under such a long staircase, guarded by Greek statues left and right the opening ceremony was held. Everyone went silent as the magician with a white robe and a candelabra in his hand invited a procession of otherworldly characters down the stairs, from people dressed like renaissance French nobility, knights, to a woman with a golden laurel wreath crown, holding a spear in her hand reminding me of Athena. As they passed by, my eyes curiously examined all the characters, but when Athena walked by, our eyes met for a second, but mine could not stand the contact, so they fled to the safety of staring at the ground. I was a bit confused by my reaction but made not much of it. The procession went on leading us towards a big bonfire that failed to ignite. But that failure was soon forgotten as a man reminding me of a fay, started to play a flute in such a beautiful way my ears had not yet dared to deem possible. Upon closer examination I realized that he did not even have a flute in his hand, instead he was whistling while pretending to play the flute.
Spinning and jumping he kept everyone in his spell, seducing our feet to explore the area and our fantasy to dwell on the windings ways of history leading up to the adventures lying before us.

But soon I was pulled out again by the call of duty, there were still many tents to be set up. Several hours later, worn out and a bit frustrated having missed the first evening, I made my way into the glass room, scavenging for some leftover duck. With food in my belly, I refused my tired head’s urge to go to sleep. Instead, I was drawn in by the sound of a raving piano accompanied by chaotic rap from another room. A bit shy, I peeked inside and found a small gathering being both audience and participant to the magician. It was a game of Tarot Blackjack.

Would you dare to play?

In the packing list, participants had been asked to bring a “karmically loaded” item as a stake. One would play against the magician while he narrated the unfolding tarot cards. If you lost, your item was gone. If you won, you could claim one that had already been lost.
Through this play of meaning, animated by the raving magician and ecstatic crowd, people were brought into an intimate confrontation with the unfolding of their lives.
They laughed hysterically at the joke they now saw their life to be, cried tears of joy in the face of unexpected fortune, and moaned in terror at glimpses of fate.
And in the centre of it, the magician stringing words and meaning in such a play- but forceful manner together that he truly deserved to be called a magician.
As I arrived it just so happened that the woman dressed as Athena had put her item on the line. The magician asked for someone to bless her. Suddenly silence! No one dared to speak, as his feral eyes scanned the room. Then his gaze fell upon me: “Daniel! You will speak the blessing!”
I felt struck, my heart dropped, as it was the woman from whom my eyes previously had to take flight.
Trying to squeeze my stomach into the place it belonged, I spoke: “Earlier when I saw you passing by me with your mighty spear, I had hoped that you would pierce my heart with it, now I bless you and your spear, may you have the fortune to pierce hearts for many years to come”.
Although she went visibly red and everyone found it to be a fitting blessing, it could not save her item to be lost to the maiming jaws of fate.
After a couple of others rode their soul rollercoaster, I stepped in by putting my item -a spinning top- on the table. It symbolized the interplay between free will and determinism for me (click here to read “der Kreisel” for the associated story S.9).
With the prospect of losing it, I felt in danger of losing my free will and with that the golden shimmer in which my gaze has been enveloped recently.
But like Odin sacrificing his eye to Mimir’s well of wisdom, I needed to take a daring step to get pulled further along the story.
Soon Cards flew; fools, hanged men, kings, magicians mirrored fragments of my life. I’m not well versed in these games but somehow, I won and chose a small lizard as my prize.
After me, Athena played again but it was not her lucky day, so she lost another item, a beautiful little bat. Thinking I had to play some sort of white knight, I played another game betting my lizard with the intention of winning her little bat back. But this time around the game felt stale, the meaning was absent and I lost my lizard. I felt foolish and thought that sometimes my best intentions turn out to be empty and backwards.
After the game had finally come to an end, the room rose in applause, honouring both the magic and its evoker. Later that night, Athena and I went for a walk, which led us to the top of the illuminated staircase, surrounded by statues of her fellow gods. We spoke about our fates, and began writing the first lines of a story that would unfold over the coming days.

The next day in the castle was a mixture of a lot of work in the kitchen and all sorts of playful happenings, but really, I was just waiting for the third day, when the archetype LARP “SOLIS” would happen.
Unfortunately, I can’t share too much about the play itself, because knowing too much about the story and characters would prohibit the reader from participating in future iterations of SOLIS. The best way to get an impression of the world and its characters is to browse their website. (Check it out, it turned out beautiful: https://www.lucidtheater.co/about-solis)
What I can do is share my experience as Daniel and not as my character. Though even this is difficult, because the character felt so intimately familiar that the lines between him and me blurred. We shared the same trauma, hopes for the future, and personality traits. I was so excited for the play because, as mentioned earlier, the character was partially based on Parzival. It was a guiding myth for the previous couple of months, one that stood in the light of trying to integrate my many parts under one crown, to become my own master with the power to find my way in life by being able to cut apart good from bad. All this was symbolized in the sword-making process. (click here to read: Parzival –A sword for a fool on his way to become a king). Now I had an arena in which I could enact these themes.

We started in the morning and the play unfolded over the whole day. We dove into a world of medieval intrigues, magic, and alliances. For me, it revolved around battling with my own conscience, a deep longing to find my way and contribute to the unfolding of the story in meaningful ways -like in the “real” world. But due to some organizational hiccups, we were not allowed to have a private space within the castle, so we were forced to play outdoors in the rain. I started to freeze up and felt quite lost in the story, not knowing what I could do. I managed to do some brave acts, but ultimately could not really do anything with them. The play ended, and I felt like I had missed the opportunity, that I was stuck in quicksand as the river of life passed me by.
In the myth of Parzival, he at one point finds himself in a mysterious castle and has the opportunity to heal the king and thereby the land by asking the question: “What ails you, my king?” But he feels frozen in time, trying hard not to commit any misconduct, and ultimately misses the greatest opportunity of his life. The next day he finds the castle empty upon waking. Leaving on his horse, he hears a voice shouting behind the walls: “You goose, you almost had it.” Now I felt like the goose, wondering if I had just missed my opportunity in life.
That evening after the play, the players spent long hours getting to know each other in real life while discussing what had happened.

But the story of the castle was not yet over. There were still two days left and a rumour of a special occasion started circling. The next day in the afternoon, everyone gathered in the main gallery for the magician to reveal what had been rumoured about. He began by proclaiming that from now on he would embody Dionysus to lead a ceremony. Dionysus is the god of ecstasy, fertility, theatre, and madness. He is also known as the twice-born, a god who is constantly dying and being reborn.
Then he went on to tell the story of the castle: how it was built by a Catholic who fancied pagan art and flamboyant parties a little too much. Now all the figures of Greek gods adorning the halls and gardens started to make sense. Pan, with his goat head and grapevines, was a frequent sight. Now this castle was to be home to the first edition of the Eleusinian Mysteries in over 2000 years.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were an ancient mystery cult of the Greek elite. It is believed they involved a psychedelic compound in the form of ergoline found growing on wheat. They are also thought to have shaped much of the philosophical development of the Western mind, but faded with the advent of Christianity. They revolved around the myth of Persephone and, with that, the cycles of death and rebirth. What exactly happened in them is not known, because the rites were strictly secret.
From the setting and story, I expected a wild Dionysian party where everyone would fall into divine madness. But to my surprise, a beautiful violin started playing, and everyone joined in, forming a choir that gave rise to an Apollonian harmony rather than a Dionysian frenzy. The harmony flowed into the people, who were now forming two lines, with men and women split apart. Everyone was handed a candle and blindfolds, with the invitation to hold the candle to the heart while sinking into the darkness to search for an intention for the ritual. The other hand was placed on the shoulder of the person in front.
I put the blindfold on and entered the darkness while any feelings of cringe melted under the soft humming that still echoed the choir from before. The procession slowly made its way outside into the rain, to a place no one had apparently been before: the catacombs. The organizers had kept this place a secret under locked doors, but apparently there were catacombs, what a perfect location for the new Eleusinian Mysteries!
After a walk that felt like ages, safely bound but also constrained by the people around me, the candle I was holding at heart level grew heavy. With that sensation, an intention slowly began to form: to find my power to let my light shine forth, to find my light to let my power shine forth. On the previous day, as the Parzival character, I could not fully bring into the play what was living inside me, something reticent but almost bursting at the same time, something that had held me back for a long time. Now I felt ready to shatter whatever had imprisoned it.

Then I heard a voice inviting me to take off my blindfold, only to be welcomed by the magician, holding a spear in one hand to guide us and a chandelier in the other to light the way into another darkness: the dimly lit belly of the castle.
Here I was offered six pomegranate seeds, one seed for every month of the year Persephone was trapped in the underworld. The people slowly came and filled up a room that seemed to grow smaller as more and more entered. After everyone had arrived, we lit our candles, and with that our intentions for the experience seemed to evaporate into the room, now pregnant with meaning. To introduce the labour, the pomegranate seeds were at last consumed.
The procession dissolved, people started joking around, and slowly the catacombs emptied as a party began to ensue in the overworld of the castle. I stayed for a bit, but soon also found my way out, wondering how the magic of the ritual would ripple through the evening and our psyche.
I talked to people, waited, wondered some more about the magic, and came to find that somehow everything was just way too normal. People were doing normal party things, and all the sacred atmosphere from before dissolved into profane interactions. In that void, where the anticipation had not yet died, but frustration in the face of emptiness had already begun to grow, something in me started to rebel and decided to go on a mission.
From my previous experience at the garden, I knew that connecting to the magician was a good way to enter the guts of a story. And a story, a binding of characters, setting, and plot, was missing to honour the ritual I had just witnessed and was still in awe of. Searching for him, I found Athena instead, again dressed in her beautiful Greek attire.
We started wildly dancing, evoking the first drops of Dionysian energy, culminating in us coming to rest on a couch that would witness a conversation about our intentions for the ritual. This led into a strange ritual consisting of “tattooing” a cross on her arm with an incense stick, symbolising radiating light contained in the feminine. That sounds barbaric, but we tried to be as careful as the circumstances allowed.
After that, the magician appeared and we got talking. That was really the first time since the beginning of the castle that we spoke, after last seeing each other in the garden. It was also my first opportunity to show him the magic wand I had crafted out of the reed he had given me a month prior. After marvelling at it for a bit, he immediately demanded that I cast a spell on him. He ripped his shirt open, presenting his bare chest, eagerly waiting.
Keeping my composure, I pressed the magic wand against his chest and spoke: “This evening, you shall embody Dionysus fully. Do not pretend.” Telling the embodiment of the god of theatre to not pretend this was of course ironic, and maybe ended up creating tragedy.  
My relationship to magic is one of active not-knowing, which does not stop me from engaging with it. Still, I try to stay clear of any truth claims. I think that in the realm of magic, our usual conception of cause and effect does not apply in the same way. Rather, the world appears as an infinitely interwoven net, where every movement ripples through the whole, without being able to tell where it originated. With that disclaimer, I feel comfortable sharing what unfolded next.

Following the spell, because of some hidden tensions behind the curtains regarding the ritual, he started getting furious about the magic of the ritual being weak and not true to his vision that had ripened over many years. They were the same feelings I privately shared earlier, but his converted the main gallery into a spectacle of rage in which there where not few concerned bystanders and friends trying to help. I did not know whether to feel responsible for pushing someone already at the edge further, or whether I had simply become entangled in a story that had taken on a life of its own. For the moment, it seemed best not to stir the waters even more and to leave him in the hands of those who knew him well.
My path led me through many lavish party settings scattered across the castle. People were having fun and engaging in interesting conversations, but I remained restless. I could not shake the feeling that I was on a mission. Every interaction pulled me back to the question of what the ceremony had been about and how I could contribute to restoring some sense of sacredness to the night, which had drifted more toward hedonism than renewal.‍ ‍

Then I found the spear that had earlier guided us into the catacombs, carelessly lying in the dirt. That was a sign I could not ignore. I picked it up and began searching again for people, for the magician, for a way back into the catacombs. I did not know what I was looking for exactly, only that the ritual felt incomplete.
After running around with a spear in one hand and a wand in the other, I could no longer bear the futility of my search. So I went alone into the catacombs, only to find them empty. I sat down and listened to droplets falling from the ceiling, trying to fill the silence. I sat there for a long time, waiting, but nothing happened.
With a sigh, I made my way back, intending to simply join the party and try to have “fun.”
Upon returning, I found the two who had organized the LARP and asked if we could speak in private. I wanted to reflect on the character and how my identification with him had shaped the state I was in. They were deeply moved by the story I shared and began to explain the intentions behind the character. It felt as if someone had written me without knowing me.
Slowly, the restless searching and the longing to become someone, began to settle into a clearer picture, one that fit into my exploration of the king archetype in the prior months. The character I had played was a hero striving to become a king in order to heal the land, but he was not yet mature enough -just like Parzival.
The two, who now had become friends assured me that I was on the right path of becoming someone and that my searching was the driving force for maturation. This conversation was so heartwarming and reassuring that I could relax into the evening, but something stayed with me: The feeling that I was the master, or at least cocreator of my destiny. From that moment on, my interactions changed. I no longer felt like someone waiting to be carried along, but someone capable of shaping direction.
Later I made my way into the tower, where I once more encountered Athena. Soon we found ourselves in the centre of the room, lying as the only ones on a gigantic bed, swirled about by otherworldly music and people whose dancing legs slowly started trembling and finally gave way to sleep. I lay in her arms, enveloped in visions of kingly geometry, knowing that within this small fractal of my life I was able to catch a small glimpse into wholeness that would hopefully foreshadow the rest of my unfolding.

The next day, I wanted to do a speech of my experience in the form of a short mythopoetic story in front of everyone. (Reflections on the New Eleusinian Mysteries S.75) (or scroll to the bottom)
But in my sleep-deprived state, I could only write it, not tell it and perhaps that was for the better.
My time at the castle slowly came to an end, but the collective story was not yet finished. To counter the Apollonian tone of the ritual, a fully Dionysian event was planned: nacho night …a food fight involving 200 people in a castle.
I cautiously participated but was a bit repulsed by the decadence. Words don’t do justice to the madness that was unfolding, I just feared that my unconscious would take this scenery as an invitation to construct all sorts of mischievous dreams for me.
But the renewal of collective energy, that could not be achieved through the new Eleusinian mysteries was completed by the decadent frenzy of worshipping what was called the “nacho cheesus”. After the night ended with only minor injuries (one broken nose, a few irritated eyes and a sprained ankle) everyone involved could finally let the castle experience come to an end.
My story was just one among 200 stories that weaved themselves together in a feat of utter beauty, conspiracy, creative explosions, madness and new found friendships. Now it was everyone’s task to somehow integrate this experience. As for the magician, he came to understand that at this very night a castle fell on his head, under which his old self got buried, but also a new self got reborn. So in the end embodying Dionysus, the “twice-born” fully, seemed to have worked its magic.

The volunteers stayed a day longer for the teardown. After that gruelling day of work, I was lucky enough to visited Athena in Paris. There she had a surprise for me, somehow, she had found the bat and the lizard again, that we had foolishly lost in the Tarot Blackjack game. She gifted the bat to me, with the wish for me to slowly start seeing within the darkness. She kept the lizard as a symbol for staying integral in the face of adversity. It seemed to us that fate needed our missteps and existential inappropriateness as stepping stones to leap over our lives. With that the story came full circle. Now the drive to incorporate the glimpse of wholeness that I had encountered, guided me into a time of being ready to radically change the way I was living.





The forgotten speech from the belly of the castle:

Reflections on the new Eleusinian Mysteries

This might break the heart of some of you, and this breaking is touching my heart.
But what will now be spoken of, is spoken by Nobody. Because only Nobody can bear the responsibility of standing in the centre of the mandala. Because only that which is nothing can address everything.
This is a story of truly becoming oneself, of living a story to the end. You see, our own story is a fractal of The Story. Our task is to perfectly mirror The Story, so that it becomes complete. Because like us, The Story is not whole and constantly longs for completion. And our story is what makes The Story whole.
Our lives are stories and as The Story goes, the line of life yearns to bend; so that it can come full circle again.
But the circle has not come full circle for 2000 years.
Pan was pronounced dead, Dionysus took his throne and showed in form of the crucified, in a great epic, one last time what it means to live The Story to the end. But there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
But the story of living one’s story didn’t live on, because it was used to control people. Instead of treating The Story like a divine living being, we enslaved it, so it grew wary and poisoned the minds of its unwanted masters.
Since these ancient times we are trapped on the line.
A line separating the in-there from the out-there, with only endless future ahead of us. Our gaze shifts either nostalgically to the past or longingly to some utopian afterlife, but really to the scissors of the Norns to finally cut our thread, to cut our misery short.
We tried to rekindle the flame of life, by entering into divine madness where the dichotomies of being collapse, where life falls back in on itself to know once more where it must lead itself. So that a new cycle can commence in which destiny is pushing us towards fate, and fate is pulling us towards our destiny. We wanted the great star of our death to shine light on the seed of our story, to pull it upwards the spiral towards the light of time.
And the ritual worked! But not the way it was intended. The substance, the ground of the story, the magic was weak.
And so, it came to be that after the ritual the temple was empty.
The priest had left the scene, consumed with spirits of the past. The spear that should guide us was masterless cast aside.
I found the spear, took it to the underworld and waited for the line to finally start to bend into a circle again. But nothing could be heard but a warm whisper of long forgotten memories and the ever dripping of the endless drop enveloped in futile waiting to give birth to a new seed.
I’m excited for the rebirth of the world. But it seems we might have to do a little more bending.
Until then:
Let us find our light to shine on our power, let us find our power so that we can let our light shine forth. Together we shall illuminate where we came from, so that we can once again discover the spark living in eternal darkness.