An update on Metapsy editor Brigid Burke’s project Chthonia, exploring the dark feminine; writing projects in the works and expanded offerings
Brigid Burke
Editor/Organizer of
Chthonia Expanded: Living the Dream
The struggle is real. Many of us aren’t doing what we really want to be doing. We may or may not hate our day jobs, but sometimes you reach a point where you wonder if you’re not just wasting your time. Income is certainly a consideration; many of us s …
Jupiter Square Saturn
“Jupiter crash landed into Saturn.” As above, so below. What follows is a short and bittersweet astrological allegory about the power struggles that ensue in the heavens.
Chthonia Podcast Moving to Spreaker
Greetings to all Metapsychosis readers and followers of the Chthonia podcast! For those of you who subscribe to the latter, I have decided to move the podcast to Spreaker for a number of practical reasons. If you are subscribed through Google Play, iTu …
Weekend Getaway
The game gives us a satisfaction that life denies us.—Emanuel Lasker ∞ “Tea or coffee, Sir?” “Coffee. Black. No sugar.” I’m on the phone with a market researcher. I try to picture a pretty girl at the other end of the line, but it isn’t working. All I …
Studium Spiritus Sancti
but i often underestimate my husband / for he pointed out that i actually said schizophrigid / i had a kitchen dresser which contained crockery i never used / over- solicitude is display mothering /
Repeaters of the String
Now is when you are alone, when you have nowhere to be, when promises to the world no longer apply. Nobody knows what happens now except you. This is your own personal history.
Four Poems
The shrunken fighters, cheeks sunken and eyes Gibbous as praying mantis, like a god kept captive By some sick forest cult That provides sacrifice seasonally…
Introduction to the Editors: Brigid Burke
I have been an Assistant Editor here at Metapsychosis for a few years now, and on this site I have published a couple of essays, offered one class on underworld mythology, and also currently produce the bi-weekly Chthonia podcast, which focuses on dark …
Soul Retrieval: Poems
they call it soul retrieval | when your essence | core | beingness | the skeletal|hole|body|brain that lives in your gut|liver|kidney|body| self|shatters | breaks its own skull|heart|body in its crumpled raisin|brain as the result of small t | BIG T | sOmE TyPe of tRaUmA
A Demon’s Escape (Based on a True Story)
Whether I chose to feel my emotions fully, or experience the depth of them — that wasn’t up to me. That was up to God, or Satan, or whatever it was that controlled me.
Daniel’s Dream
That room is gone. Or rather, the room is still there, but what’s in it now is so different from what was in it before that the room itself seems transformed. It holds a vast model of the world we live in, built to scale and rendered in exquisite detail…
Out of the Furnace: A Film Review and Analysis
The movie proves to be, rather than glitchy and fragmentary, a deliberate and careful unfolding of the more perplexing and realistic struggle ensnaring us in the contemporary world.
Body/Cut: In Conversation with Stephanie Cortazzo
It is about the trials and tribulations of lovers who are set in a dismal, bleak universe—much like our current reality in NYC one could even argue. They are challenged to come to terms with each other and deal with various issues such as ego, conflicting decisions, and insecurities.
Poems of Annie Blake (Part 2)
“Mothers should explain this to their daughters when they are too young…instead of folding church bulletins to make fans…”
Poems of Annie Blake (Part 1)
blackbirds rise like a word from a hot hovel / satis house and her letter / and her first wedding gown / fires blank and face clocks / my hands / their spell / swelling the mouth of a match / the stone thrown into the sea and circulatio /
Candy Countdown
Did I dream it all? I guess I did. But then I see the card on the table. I pick it up. It feels real. TAKE THE ELEVATOR, it says. Did I?
Come Again
These people in the church with him today have heard all those words over and over, they can’t really hear them any more. He remembers other words: If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
Interpreting Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!”The Mythology of Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!”
Packed with archetypal, mythological, and religious symbolism, Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’ baffled audiences with its disturbing tale of home invasion…and world destruction. This essay unpacks some of the deeper layers of the film from the perspectives of religion and psychology, western esotericism, and comparative mythology.
The Mythopoetic Mind of PlatoThe Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts I & II)
The entire purpose of this work will not so much argue but re-imagine and challenge Plato, such that it breathes the warmest breath of reconsideration, rereading, and re-admiration into the Platonic dialogues.