Toward Ecosophy

Greetings Archdruid,

1) First a practical question: I asked about alternative places to practice at last week because I can't practice at home. My intention was to find a place where I could do the elementary rituals outlined in your FAQ (qabalistic cross, lesser pentagram) as suitable for people with small children.

This is the practice that I had in mind, and since I can't do it at home, I was wondering about suitable alternatives. The ones that came to mind was 1) finding a secluded public spot somewhere in nature (I live near a hill) and 2) renting a studio somewhere. What do you think of these alternatives/what would you recommend?

2) Next some theory: I saw Techniques of High Magic on your twitter feed and decided to skim through a pdf - what stood out to me was that in its instructions and dessription of magical implements, the book assigns Fire to the Knife and Air to the Wand, as opposed to the Tarot assignment (Wands-Fire, Swords-Air). The book also mentions that knives and swords are not to be conflated, but I was nevertheless wondering about the significance of the distinct assignment to the cutting and pointing implements.

3) And third, I also inqiured a bit about numbers last week - I asked whether it would be valid to attribute "death" to 0 and "growth" to 9, with the rest of the nnumber line representing life. I did another meditation on the topic and was... :

- 0 as the intermediary between negative and positive numbers can be seen as an analogue of the present or "NOW", from which all other moments are distinct (less or more, 1 or 2 or 3...). Similarly, x+0 equals x, which reminds me of a desire to "stay where you are" in terms of human experience (I never want this to change). Analogously, as x+9 returns x after reduced to a single digit, 9 can be seen as the desire to repeat the experience (I want to do this again, and again and again...). In this sense they can be seen as expressions of sameness and repetition.
- The fact that 0 and 9 subsume their co-factors in multiplication (x*0 is 0, x*9 is 9 after redcing to single digit), on the other hand seemed to me to denote change. 0 can be seen as a "cutting off"/canceling/ending, reducing a unit of experience to 0. Analogous also to avoidance motivation, prohibition, severing connections...
- 9, on the other hand, given its place on the opposite end of the number line seems to fit a "positive" version of the same general form of change. In particular, synthesis or generalization - so 9 also seems to me as the number of abstraction, higher understanding, integrating knowledge or elevating a unit of experience or concept to a more general form (ice cream -> desert). But abstraction can also be reduction to the lowest common denominator, as the desire for "pleasurable things in general" is in psychology understood as "approach motivation". This would be "making connections", rather than severing them (although I can't find a suitable antonym to prohibition that I would be willing to use).

Last, this juxtaposition between 9 and 0 is inspired by the Deleuzian connective and disjuncitve syntheses and probably also CCRU's numogram (I think I arrived at the parallel between 0 and 9 independently, but I had been familiarized with basic Numogram theory beforehand). I am wary of CCRU-esque practice because of its "cthonic"/"demonic" language (and I don't want to pursue it for this reason), but I've found exploring the commonalities between 0 and 9 very interesting. Is this line of inquiry safe for someone who wishes to steer clear of cthonic/demonic influence, or is it better for me to change course?

Apologies for the slew of questions and thanks in advance for any you find the time to answer,

Best wishes,

tnm