Telepathy began in utero. Telepathy began in the dark, in the void, in the silence. Telepathy was there first. An energy. A listening. There was listening before there was The Word. Who or what was listening? We don’t know. The beginning of human-ness? The beginning of what some might refer to as the soul? Telepathy began in the nothing. It was an opening, a pocket of receptivity inside the blackness. The first ear. The first heart. The first little tangle of pulsing cells, vibrating and feeling the vibrations of others. Is telepathy feeling?
It started when one of the three withces grew silent, retreated into herself, searching for a hidden passage towards healing. She went further and further, so far that the wy back was not easy to find. Dark corner, unrealized thought creatures, a whole lifetime and beyond nestled in between. Thats’s when the two other withces started to sing, to sing like sirens, loud and clear, we’re still here… here with you… Their screams shatterd like thunder through space, piercing walls and borders. Everyone could hear their cry: We’re still here. Together.”
Before language it began in the cells and the amoebas. Before limbs came to muddy things up. Before complex systems in physical spaces got defined mapped in an attempt at understanding began. Before tongues and hands and spitttle and a penis and a vagina. Before feathers and feet, claws and paws. Before flight and trekking through forests. Before sunlight hitting on skin and warming backs on stones. Before small logged components measured time.
We were grappling with absence and we needed imagination to carry or lead us through a painful and unknown time. The future looked really weird, foggy, beyond assumptions and comprehension. Nothing so much as a formed fear. And we played to keep in the moment, we played with imagery, hope and warm fun. We leant heavily on the practice, the thing we found together and could relate to a togetherness. We used a name to name this concept of imaging, replacing or dealing with absence and loss.
It’s no fun. The sadness is touchable. The missing is carving as space in between. The absent stays absent. A fire here and there, a card always drawn, a voice imagined and the missing touched by voice. It’s not about the past, it’s about the here and now. And here and now we’re evoking your presence, your voice, to fill us with laughter and joy. And with some strictness and practicality.
Telepathy began in a clunky way. Telepathy began between two people who wanted to connect but didn’t know how, or maybe they were shy, or too far apart, or it was before there were phones, or letters, or carrier pigeons, or messengers who got shot. One person thought of the other and the other felt the thought and responded. It went back and froth, back and forth. If telepathy was a colour it wouldbe blue. It is cool but there is also a warmth to it, like the sky. Blue sky filled with the invisible warmth of the sun. Maybe telepathy began with light. Light, enery, warmth.
It started way before, it’s an ancient technology. Humans and non-humans knew its powers, knew how to use it. Messages were sent eand received with easyness. There were even telepathic competitions and telepathic sports. Oh these were exciting times. Long before, we were connected beyond physical and temporal borders. We knew how to trespass those without virutal tools, communications beyond one species was effortless. From one soul to another soul. We could hear stones and plants ramble their thoughts and feelings. Often there was laughter, but also…
I want to contact and be in contact in activity with you. I want to be busy thinking about you and feeling myself in space. I want to turn inward with my sharing. I want to retreat from the physical, political, news blasts of the day, week, month, year. I want to feel others and to feel that I belong in a kind of way. I want to take myself outside when I am locked inside. I want to actively seek you, hold you and share with you, I want unknown in an edible , digestible form, I want to feel you are there and open. I want form.
Telepathy began inside people. It took a long time for the people who were experiencing it to speak about it. One brave person went first and the people couldn’t stop talking about it and doing it. Telepathy began with empathy, with the very first acts of empathy in the human world. Telepathy is the expansion of the heart and mind. Telepathy is interconnectedness. It began when people had time and space and felt safe to lay down their tools and weapons and sit by the fire in comfortable silence. Now we are texting but back then we could just think to each other.
Telepathy begins in a quiet place. Telepathy requires receptivity, connectivity. You need a receptor and a connector. Telepathy begins in openness. You have to open the door. Telepathy is like a theremin in the middle of a great big quiet room with the doors wide open. The theremin starts humming. In it all comes. Out it all goes. You are so far away from me and yet I can feel you. Maybe telepathy begins in our bones. Or in our embyonic fluid. In our blood. Trees talk to each other and so do mushrooms. Maybe we are doing it too, but we forgot cos we got so busy with everything else.
For us it started with Michel getting really sick. Presence was difficult and absence as well. In our out? In or out? It’s not that simple. Not that dual. How can one stay in while being not there, out? Watching, observing, vocalising from afar. It was not an easy time, it’s not supposed to be, when one body slowly starts to leave. to vanish. to vanish in pain. The soothing hum wraps itself around you like a warml blanket. from afar.
With a desire to explain and reach beyond the physical here and now. To expand the moment but in another way. It began as a game. It began to fake meaning and be powerful. It began to rule the world, the world as I knew it. It took over. Thoughts flooded through me. It began getting more and more material. I had to do things, something with all this information that I was getting. My days were taken up by it. I no longer listened to the news. I got my hands diry and felt other materials in my hands. It was abundance.
Telepathy began in clouds. It began with the growing of vegetables. It began with dreams, the opening of windows, the sensation of having fingernails. Telepathy began when you opened your eyes this morning and let the view of your bedroom enter you. Telepathy began with lamps being turned on. Telepathy began with the drawing of pencils and in the night-time movement of moths. It began with spiderwebs and tap dancing. Both telepathic practices. Moss is telepathic, birds too. Telepathy is the fragment of your dream that comes back to visit you in the afternoon. Whale song, mother and baby dyads, electricity and spine-tingles. Walnuts. Lullabies. Knitting. Teleapathy began with the movement of clouds and the thoughts of the beings watching that movement.
The actual moment I cannot remember but I remember the formulation of a practice. Very simply put. Ordered and communicated so some people. And they played with us. It was some weeks and it felt like it served a purpose. Fun wise and activity wise. There were even spooky synchronisicites. I can see a time before the formulated time. When we ‘pretended’, a big word, that Michel’s body was here, no we didn’t pretend. It’s a different action to pretending. We are aware but we imagine or put an intention, an inteded Michel’s body.
It began. And as most good things, it began unnoticed. It occured, it happened. Like oracle it presented itself like a gift with its own agency. Suddenly it was there and guided our journey. Holding this gift in our hands we pass it from one hand to another. It is passed around. “Nothing for me that is not for others.” I remember vaguely some tarot card giving us this message. The gift is passed around. Take it and experience the magic. But don’t forget to pass it on. Magic can’t be owned. It’s for everyone and everything. Who dares to hold it?
