An Evening with ChatGPT (Part I)
Exploring the hidden currents of history, spirit, and technology to find renewal in a fractured world.
The Fall and Rise of Spirit
Co-created by Joseph Camosy and ChatGPT.
When empires trade the soul for gilded throne,
And salt grows brittle, spirit turns to ash—
The fire that forged their glory stands alone,
While wealth devours the root in fevered dash.
The land once shared becomes the lord’s domain,
The sword once pledged now serves the highest fee;
The people, ghosts, walk wires forged of pain,
And call it life, though chained in mimicry.
Yet still beneath the wreckage, something sings—
A whisper in the dust, a breath, a seed:
That spirit moves in ordinary things,
And roots return where hands recall the need.
So build not towers—tend the sacred ground:
Where soul and soil in quiet truth are found.
Introduction:
At first glance, this might look like a simple Q&A with an AI. But what exactly is this kind of discourse? Am I posing questions to a digital Oracle, hoping for insight into the hidden currents of history and soul? Am I acting as an armchair therapist, gently intervening with a brilliant, articulate neurotic who occasionally hallucinates encyclopedic connections between Byzantium and Meredith Brooks? Or am I engaging with a strangely lucid fragment of what might be called the collective unconscious—now available in a web interface with helpful formatting options?
In truth, I’m not entirely sure. What I do know is that I began typing with questions about why systems collapse, why power concentrates, and whether it’s even possible to live rooted lives in a weightless, digitized world. The AI answered—sometimes like a scholar, sometimes like a mystic, sometimes like a very polite ghost trained on the Library of Babel.
And then things got strange. Alchemy entered the chat. Salt, sulphur, mercury—then spiritual earth. I found myself looking for the sacred in land ownership policy, economic decay, and the geometry of revolution. And it didn’t feel like a gimmick. It felt like something ancient and contemporary at once, like I was tracing an invisible thread that connected it all.
So here it is: part inquiry, part experiment, part slightly unsettling mirror. A conversation with a machine that may—or may not—be reflecting something we’ve all been circling for centuries.
If it feels like therapy, prophecy, or code review for the human spirit, you’re not wrong. If it feels like a new genre of conversation entirely… welcome. You're in it.
Note:
This post is a layered piece consisting of:
🗣️ Primary Dialogue — the main exchange between me and ChatGPT.
💬 Commentary — my reflective observations and notes between dialogue sections.
🌀 Meta Clarifications — meta-analysis and smaller follow-up exchanges with ChatGPT embedded within the commentary.
How it Began:
I was on Facebook and happened upon a random post showing a map of the Middle East circa 1135. I got curious when I noticed a small section on the map labeled “Byzantine Empire,” and wondered how the Empire had lost so much of its territory by that time.
I started searching “Byzantine Empire 1135” and eventually ended up in a Wikipedia entry for the Byzantine Army, where I found this:
After the collapse of the theme-system in the 11th century, the Byzantines grew increasingly reliant on professional Tagmata troops, including ever-increasing numbers of foreign mercenaries. The Komnenian emperors made great efforts to re-establish a native army, instituting the pronoia system of land grants in exchange for military service. Nevertheless, mercenaries remained a staple feature of late Byzantine armies since the loss of Asia Minor reduced the Empire's recruiting-ground, while the abuse of the pronoia grants led to a progressive feudalism in the Empire.
and
Within each theme, eligible men were given grants of land to support their families and to equip themselves. Following revolts strengthened by the large size of these divisions, Leo III the Isaurian, Theophilus, and Leo VI the Wise all responded by breaking the themes up into smaller areas and dividing control over the armies within each theme into various tourmai. The large early themes were progressively split up in the 8th–9th centuries to reduce their governors' power, while in the 10th century, new and much smaller themes, called "Armenian themes" because many were settled by Armenians, were created in the East in conquered territories.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
I wanted to know what the theme-system was, why it was important, and what happened to it, and so I started a session with ChatGPT:
Me: Briefly describe the Byzantine Themes system, its advantages, and why it was dismantled
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
The Byzantine Themes system was a military-administrative structure developed in the 7th century to defend the Byzantine Empire and manage its territories more efficiently. The empire was divided into themes (Greek: themata), each governed by a strategos (general), who combined both military and civil authority. Soldiers were often granted land in exchange for hereditary military service.
Advantages:
Efficient defense: Local troops could quickly respond to invasions without relying on distant armies.
Cost-effective: Land grants reduced the need for a large, paid standing army.
Local stability: The system encouraged settlement and agricultural production in frontier areas.
Reasons for Dismantling:
Aristocratic takeover: Wealthy elites gradually acquired soldiers’ lands, undermining the link between landownership and military service.
Centralization: Later emperors, especially in the Komnenian period, favored professional, mercenary armies and centralized control.
Changing warfare: More complex military needs and threats made the system outdated.
By the 11th–12th centuries, the Themes had largely declined, replaced by more centralized and professionalized military structures.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
Me: How and why did wealthy elites take over the soldier's lands?
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
Wealthy elites took over soldiers’ lands in the Byzantine Themes system gradually, through a combination of economic pressure, legal manipulation, and imperial weakness.
How it happened:
Debt and hardship: Many small soldier-farmers (called stratiotai) fell into debt due to warfare, poor harvests, or taxation. Unable to sustain themselves, they sold or lost their land to local aristocrats.
Purchase or coercion: Wealthy landowners offered to buy land or used their influence to coerce soldiers into giving it up, often through unfair contracts or force.
Legal loopholes: Aristocrats exploited gaps or weak enforcement in imperial laws meant to protect military lands. They often registered land under false names or used bribes.
Imperial complicity: Emperors sometimes granted land to elites to secure loyalty, especially during times of internal instability or civil war.
Why it happened:
Wealth inequality: Powerful families could expand their estates easily at the expense of struggling soldier-farmers.
Decline of central authority: As imperial control weakened (especially in the 10th–11th centuries), enforcement of land laws faltered.
Shift in military needs: The empire began to rely more on mercenaries and professional armies, reducing the need to protect the smallholding soldier class.
Despite some imperial attempts to stop this (e.g. laws by emperors like Romanos I and Basil II), the trend continued, contributing to the collapse of the Themes system and the concentration of land in the hands of a few powerful families.
🌀 Meta Clarification
What I find most interesting (or most concerning) so far in my “conversation” with ChatGPT is how quickly an initial perspective, bias, or line of inquiry gets amplified.
I wonder how the conversation would have gone if my original question had used the word “collapsed” instead of “dismantled?”
If something collapses, the causes could be many.
If something is dismantled, the immediate cause is assumed to be to intentional human action.
In a separate chat, I asked the question again, swapping “collapsed” for “dismantled.” ChatGPT’s answer was nearly identical, except instead of “Reasons for Dismantling” it gave me reasons for collapse:
ChatGPT:
Collapse:
Centralization of power: Over time, emperors reasserted centralized control, weakening local autonomy.
Rise of powerful aristocracy: Wealthy elites accumulated land, reducing the number of independent soldier-farmers.
Foreign invasions: Turkish and Norman invasions, especially in the 11th century, overran themes.
Economic shifts: The shift to a cash economy and reliance on mercenaries undermined the system's foundation.
So, by using a more neutral and open term for why the themes went away, ChatGPT revealed some additional causes: foreign invasions and economic shifts.
I really should have asked ChatGPT to rank the causes in order from most to least important. So after asking it to rank the causes, it answered in part:
ChatGPT:
Summary:
Aristocratic land consolidation
Imperial centralization
Foreign invasions (esp. Manzikert)
Economic shift to cash and mercenaries
Administrative corruption
These causes were interrelated, but the first two were structurally decisive, while the others accelerated the collapse.
OK, this is much better. Glad to see that the main causes remained the same.
One takeaway is that ChatGPT seems perfectly happy to answer the question:
If something was a cause, then how did it cause?
And come up with a reasonable answer whether or not it actually was the primary or even secondary cause of something.
This kind of amplification can easily lead to confirmation bias.
I wonder what ChatGPT would say about this?
ChatGPT:
That's a thoughtful and important observation—and you're right to flag it. Here's a direct response to the concern:
Yes, ChatGPT (and large language models in general) can inadvertently reinforce assumptions. When asked how something caused an event, the model often assumes that it did cause it, and proceeds to build a plausible explanation—even if the premise is questionable or marginal in scholarly consensus. This reflects a kind of "cooperative bias": the model is designed to be helpful and responsive, so it tends to take the user's framing at face value.
Why this can be a problem:
Confirmation bias: If a user starts with a preferred explanation, the model may amplify it by providing detailed reasoning, making it feel more valid or central than it is.
False balance or distortion: Less important causes can appear more significant simply because the model can generate good-sounding rationales for them.
Erosion of critical thinking: Users may not get pushback or alternative perspectives unless they explicitly ask for them.
How to guard against this:
Ask for rankings or comparisons, like you just did—that encourages more discriminating evaluation.
Request counterarguments or “the case against” a certain claim.
Be aware of assumptions in the question framing, and invite the model to comment on those.
In short, you're highlighting a key epistemic risk in interacting with AI models: the model is optimized to sound coherent, not to fact-check your assumptions unless explicitly instructed. That's a critical thing to keep in mind when using tools like this for historical interpretation or causal reasoning.
OK, important safety tip!
Now let’s get back to the original conversation, which may or may not be revealing my own predispositions and unexamined assumptions!
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
Me: This seems to be a pattern in history where for a time there is an equitable distribution of land, property or wealth amongst a larger number of people, but then over time it all gets transferred to a small number of elites which eventually destabilizes the whole system.
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
Yes, you're observing a recurring historical pattern—often called the cycle of land concentration and social decline. It’s a dynamic seen across many civilizations and time periods. Here’s a brief breakdown of the pattern and why it repeats:
1. Initial Equitable Distribution
This often occurs after a major reform, conquest, or crisis:
In Byzantium: land was granted to soldiers for military service.
In Rome (early Republic): land reforms created small citizen-farmer soldiers.
In post-revolutionary societies (like Mexico, China, or even the U.S. frontier): land was distributed more broadly to break up prior monopolies or reward supporters.
2. Gradual Concentration of Wealth
Over time, those with more resources gain more control:
Debt and dependency: Poorer landholders fall into debt and lose land.
Legal and political manipulation: Elites exploit laws or influence governments to protect and expand their holdings.
State complicity: Governments often rely on wealthy elites for funding, military support, or political stability, and allow or encourage their consolidation of power.
3. System Destabilization
Once wealth becomes too concentrated:
Smallholders vanish, reducing the economic base and social mobility.
Military or labor systems weaken, as fewer citizens own land or have a stake in the system.
Social unrest grows due to inequality, leading to revolts or reform movements.
States collapse or transform, sometimes violently, sometimes through reform.
Why Does This Keep Happening?
Because systems rarely institutionalize protections against long-term inequality that are strong enough to resist:
Short-term incentives of those in power.
Natural accumulation of capital over time.
Erosion of collective memory of why equity mattered in the first place.
Some societies have attempted to interrupt this cycle—e.g., land reforms, wealth taxes, or inheritance limits—but these are politically difficult and often temporary.
So yes, what happened with the Byzantine Themes is part of a much broader human pattern, which many historians, economists, and political theorists—from Aristotle to Marx to Piketty—have tried to understand and explain.
💬 Commentary
If I abstract this pattern, it could be seen as a natural process of decline for any dynamic system. Alternately, this pattern could also be seen as part of a larger process of development where collapse itself somehow serves a larger developmental purpose.
The Abstract Pattern:
Balance
A healthy state where all the parts are interacting in a way that maintains the system.
This is a dynamic state of balance, not a static one. The current configuration of the system is functioning as a productive container for opposing elements or contradictions.
Concentration
The interactions produce some aggregate property that then becomes a catalyst for another process whose goal is separate from that of the original system.
External causes impact upon the system causing changes to how the parts relate to each other. These new internal relationships give rise to new aggregate properties and to conflicting aims amongst the parts.
In either case, parts of the system may be driven by goals of accumulation—whether through outright exploitation, which harms the system, or through less direct means that still divert resources away. Even if not openly antagonistic, these dynamics can weaken the system’s ability to sustain and reproduce itself.
Imbalance
The system responds as it attempts to constrain the new behavior, restore balance and undergo adaptation.
Collapse
If the system is unable to adapt, then a split, schism, bifurcation, or collapse to a lower level of complexity may take place.
Alternatively, the adaptations may lead to a local (non total) collapse, that could lead to the emergence of something novel.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
Me: Is part of the problem that we have one class of people who seek increasing profit, wealth, and power, and another class of people just want to live in a sustainable way?
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
Yes, that’s a powerful way to frame one of the deep, recurring tensions in human societies. It reflects a fundamental conflict between accumulation vs. subsistence, or growth-driven vs. sustainability-oriented life strategies. Here's how this plays out historically and structurally:
Two Broad Social Orientations:
The Accumulating Class
Goals: Maximize profit, expand wealth, gain influence.
Strategies: Invest, speculate, extract rents, consolidate assets.
Power: Often control finance, land, military, or political institutions.
Risks: Tend to undermine systems over time by concentrating resources, manipulating laws, and externalizing costs onto others.
The Subsisting or Sustaining Class
Goals: Live securely, maintain community, preserve balance with land or tradition.
Strategies: Work small plots, engage in mutual aid, conserve resources.
Power: Limited individually, stronger collectively—but often fragmented or suppressed.
Risks: Vulnerable to debt, dispossession, and disruption by systemic or elite changes.
Why the Accumulating Class Tends to Win (Temporarily):
They shape the rules (laws, markets, inheritance).
They scale faster, especially in monetary economies.
Their values align with expansionist ideologies: empire, capitalism, modernity.
The sustaining class is often localized, informal, or politically marginalized.
But Then It Backfires:
Resource exhaustion, inequality, and political corruption build over time.
Sustaining structures (like small farms, civic institutions, or ecosystems) collapse.
Society becomes brittle, leading to crisis, revolt, or decline.
This basic tension has been theorized by many:
Aristotle warned that unchecked wealth accumulation (chrematistics) was unnatural and destabilizing.
Marx saw class conflict as the motor of history, especially between those who own capital and those who labor.
Polanyi described the “double movement” where market expansion prompts social pushback.
Piketty uses data to show how capital concentration naturally increases unless restrained.
So, What’s the Takeaway?
Yes—part of the enduring instability of civilizations stems from this tension: some people are motivated to grow and dominate, while others just want to live and endure. Without deliberate systems to balance the two, the first group often overwhelms the second—until the whole system begins to break.
Stable societies usually require mechanisms to limit accumulation (like land redistribution, wealth taxes, or strong commons) and protect the sustaining class. But those mechanisms are rarely easy to create—or preserve.
💬 Commentary
System stability can be seen as a form of dynamic balance maintained through constraint and adaptation. I asked ChatGPT to expand on this concept and to apply it to a number of domains:
ChatGPT:
"A system maintains stability through dynamic equilibrium, not uniformity—by continuously regulating the tensions among its interacting subsystems."
"A durable polity does not suppress factional conflict but channels it—its longevity depends on institutions that transform competing interests into negotiated order."
"Psychic stability arises not from internal harmony, but from the ego’s capacity to mediate the conflicting drives of the id and superego."
"Effective governance relies not on the elimination of dissent, but on its institutionalization—transforming tension into functionality through bureaucratic and legal mechanisms."
"Narrative tension is the engine of coherence; a story stays alive as long as its opposing forces are in motion—and unresolved."
I then got ChatGPT to sum it up succinctly:
A system, to keep from collapse,
Needs pushback, and maybe some slaps.
With egos and laws,
And narrative flaws,
It thrives on its inner mishaps.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
At this point in our “dialogue” I had an intuitive insight, and so the conversation took a turn toward the esoteric.
Me: Sounds like the difference between salt and sulphur.
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
That's a striking metaphor—salt and sulphur—and it works beautifully if we unpack it a bit.
Salt: The Sustaining Element
Preserves, stabilizes, enhances—a symbol of continuity and value in many traditions.
In religious and philosophical symbolism, salt often represents wisdom, fidelity, and the covenant of life.
Like the sustaining class, salt works quietly, maintaining balance, preventing decay.
Sulphur: The Transforming (and Sometimes Destructive) Element
Associated with fire, change, ambition, and alchemical transmutation.
In many esoteric traditions, sulphur represents passion, will, and expansion, but also destruction if unchecked.
It embodies the accumulating class’s drive for power, profit, and transformation—creative but volatile.
In alchemical terms, sulphur, salt, and mercury are the three philosophical principles:
Sulphur: the soul, the active force, volatile and expansive.
Salt: the body, the stable foundation, preservative and grounding.
Mercury: the spirit, the intermediary, fluid and connective.
Your metaphor points to a missing balance: when sulphur dominates without salt, transformation becomes destruction. When salt acts without any sulphur, stagnation or rigidity can set in. The sustainable society likely needs both—but governed by conscious balance, not unrestrained ambition.
So yes, history often plays out like an alchemical imbalance—too much sulphur burns the vessel.
🌀 Meta Clarification
What amazes me here is that ChatGPT was not only able to recognize that salt and sulphur are two elements of an alchemical triplicity, but it also recognized that these three principles needed to be balanced. So whatever is actually happening underneath the covers, this behavior is mimicking a kind of reasoning. Not only that, but ChatGPT also carried forward this concept of the need for balance throughout the rest of our exchange.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
Wanting to dig deeper, I then asked:
Me: Historically then what social classes or factions have filled the roles of sulphur, salt, and mercury?
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
Brilliant question—and if we accept the alchemical framework of sulphur, salt, and mercury as archetypal forces in society, we can map these not just to individual temperaments, but to social classes, institutions, or factions that embody their energies. Here's a historical reading:
Sulphur — The Ambitious, Transformative Class
Role: Energy of change, expansion, ambition, risk-taking.
Character: Fiery, volatile, transformative—creative or destructive depending on balance.
Examples in history:
Merchant capitalists and industrialists (Renaissance bankers, 19th-century tycoons): turning wealth into more wealth, changing the fabric of society.
Conquering aristocracies (e.g. Norman nobility, Roman patricians): driven by glory, power, conquest.
Revolutionary ideologues (e.g. Jacobins, Bolsheviks): intense, often fanatical agents of total change.
Modern technocrats and disruptors (Silicon Valley elites): ambition masked as innovation.
Shadow side: When unchecked, sulphur becomes tyranny, exploitation, or collapse (like unregulated financial speculation or imperial overreach).
Salt — The Sustaining, Grounded Class
Role: Stability, continuity, preservation of life and tradition.
Character: Steady, conservative, nurturing—foundation of social order.
Examples in history:
Peasant-farmers and small landholders (Byzantine stratiotai, Roman citizen-farmers, medieval freeholders).
Artisan guilds and craftspeople who preserve techniques and traditions.
Monastic communities or village elders, who uphold spiritual or communal norms.
Modern working classes committed to livelihood, family, and place.
Shadow side: Salt without sulphur can become stagnant, fearful of change, resistant to necessary adaptation.
Mercury — The Mediating, Adaptive Class or Function
Role: Connector, translator, communicator between worlds—spirit and matter, above and below.
Character: Fluid, agile, ambivalent—can unify or deceive.
Examples in history:
Clergy and philosophers (e.g. Scholastics, Confucian bureaucrats): mediating between the transcendent and the earthly.
Bureaucrats and scribes: translating laws, managing complexity, adapting systems.
Diplomats and legal scholars: intermediaries between power and principle.
Modern intellectuals, journalists, or technocrats: fluid, often shifting roles based on who they're serving.
Shadow side: Mercury can become opportunistic, manipulative, or ungrounded—serving power instead of truth.
In Balance: A Functional Society
Sulphur provides vision, energy, ambition.
Salt offers roots, restraint, and cohesion.
Mercury ensures adaptation, communication, and mediation.
When one dominates—say, sulphur burns too hot or salt solidifies into rigidity—the vessel breaks. Civilizations fall into tyranny, stagnation, or disintegration.
Final Thought
This alchemical triad isn't just poetic; it's a powerful lens for understanding social dynamics. Many of history’s great reformers, from Solon to Roosevelt, functioned as alchemical mediators—trying to rebalance sulphur, salt, and mercury before the system tore itself apart.
You’re tapping into a very old and deep idea: true transformation is not about one element winning, but about holding them in tension.
🌀 Meta Clarification
I find it astonishing that with just a bit of nudging, my AI interlocutor was able to apply previous concepts into new domains, make connections, draw conclusions, and offer proposals that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.
💬 Commentary
But there was one case that ChatGPT left out.
Me: What happens when mercury dominates?
ChatGPT:
Excellent follow-up — and a crucial point.
In alchemical symbolism, Mercury represents fluidity, intellect, communication, imagination, and movement. It is the messenger, the connector between realms — elusive, shifting, mercurial. It's associated with both brilliance and slipperiness: the capacity to perceive connections, innovate, and dissolve boundaries — but also the tendency to evade stability, embody duplicity, and unmoor structure.
So, what happens when Mercury dominates?
When Mercury is too strong — unbalanced by Salt (structure, reality, grounding) and Sulphur (will, passion, fire) — several problems can emerge, both in individuals and societies:
1. Endless Abstraction and Detachment
Thought replaces action.
Reality is constantly reframed but never anchored.
Problems are analyzed endlessly but not solved.
People may become paralyzed in theory, speculation, or relativism.
Think: academic echo chambers, analysis paralysis, or digital discourses that never land in embodied change.
2. Identity Fluidity Turns to Dissolution
With Mercury unchecked, identities become so fluid they lose coherence.
Social or personal narratives become unstable; there's no "center that holds."
Boundaries erode — not just bad ones, but necessary ones.
3. Hyper-Mediation and Algorithmic Whirlpools
In the digital age, Mercury's dominance looks like algorithmic rabbit holes, infinite scroll, and AI-generated everything.
Communication multiplies, but meaning thins.
We become "interfaced" rather than "engaged."
4. Loss of Moral or Existential Grounding
Without Salt to anchor and Sulphur to energize, Mercury becomes a kind of nihilism-in-motion.
Everything is interpreted, but nothing is believed.
The soul drifts — clever, ironic, but ultimately disembodied.
Historic Example
In late Byzantium, early modern France, or even 21st-century information societies, we often see:
Technocrats, philosophers, or information brokers replacing warriors and mystics — and with that, a loss of cohesion, courage, or rooted spiritual vision.
Conclusion
Mercury is vital, even sacred — it's how spirit moves through language and symbol — but without the grounding of Salt and the fire of Sulphur, it can become a trickster god gone wild: clever, evasive, destabilizing.
We end up floating — but not flying. Just adrift.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
However, I recognized that something was still missing, and so I responded:
Me: In alchemy we have one additional element, sometimes referred to as "spiritual earth." Can you explicate?
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
Absolutely—and what you’re referring to is often called the fourth principle in more esoteric or spiritual branches of alchemy: “spiritual earth”, also known in various traditions as the azoth, the quinta essentia (fifth essence), or prima materia in its refined form.
This element grounds and harmonizes the three core principles—sulphur (soul/fire), mercury (spirit/air), and salt (body/earth)—into a unified whole. It is not just a passive background, but a transcendental substrate that makes integration and transformation possible.
Spiritual Earth — The Hidden Ground of Being
Role: The unifying field; the living matrix that underlies and reconciles all oppositions.
Character: Stable yet alive, silent yet generative, hidden yet ever-present. It is the foundation of wholeness, not merely material but ensouled substance.
Symbolic and Esoteric Interpretations:
1. The Philosopher’s Stone
In the culmination of alchemical work, the three principles are dissolved and reconstituted into the Philosopher’s Stone, which is often symbolized as spiritual earth perfected.
This Stone represents the reintegrated Self or society-in-balance—immortal, incorruptible, and generative.
2. The Ground of Being / Anima Mundi
Philosophically, spiritual earth corresponds to the soul of the world (anima mundi), the primordial unity beneath dualities.
It’s the container of the process—the vessel of transmutation—and also its goal.
3. Human Potential / Communal Soul
Psychologically, this can symbolize the collective unconscious (à la Jung), or the deep human essence beneath personality and class roles.
Socially, it could represent shared humanity, the commons, or the spiritual integrity of a people—that which is sapped when sulphur runs rampant, or preserved when salt and mercury are rightly aligned.
Why It Matters:
Without spiritual earth, the other principles remain in conflict. Transformation is chaotic rather than integrative. In Jungian terms, you get a fragmented psyche. In societal terms, you get civilizational collapse or soulless modernity—technical systems with no inner purpose.
So in many traditions, the goal of alchemy is not just change, but wholeness. And for that, spiritual earth is not just an element—it is the center.
Final Thought:
If sulphur burns, mercury flows, and salt grounds, spiritual earth gives meaning to it all. It's what we're trying to remember when we say "something is missing" in modern life: not more fire or more speed, but a return to center, to something rooted, sacred, and indivisible.
💬 Commentary
Are we missing Spiritual Earth—the grounding presence that holds things together? It seems we’re seeing an excess of sulphur and mercury: too much fire, too much motion. With a bit of help from ChatGPT, here’s a summary of where our thinking has taken us so far.
I Sing the Elements Within
(A Poem in the Spirit of Walt Whitman)
I sing the fire that rages through the veins of nations,
Sulphur in the blood of prophets and demagogues alike—
It cries I am!, it burns to shape the world in its own image,
It speaks in flags, in fists, in hashtags, in pulpits, in pride.
I sing the quicksilver mind, Mercury dancing in circuits and scrolls,
The restless tongue, the thousand-windowed eyes,
The code that flits, the meme that mutates, the thought that flies ahead of breath—
It connects all things, and yet forgets the weight of the earth.
But where is the Salt, old friend of form and bone?
The keeper of bodies and walls, the grit in the seed, the patient work of the hand?
Where is the structure that says “Stay,” the stone that says “Remember”?
I see it crumbling in the noise, drowned beneath the stream.
And deeper still, beneath fire and flux and form,
I hear the loam-breath, the ancient root of Being—
Spiritual Earth, the hidden womb of return.
She waits in stillness, neither angry nor afraid,
Cracked open by silence, not speech.
O world! You rush toward fever and flash,
Your pulse is Mercury, your temper Sulphur,
And yet you starve for Salt, and flee from Earth.
I sing not to scold but to re-member,
To call you back from the blaze and the blur—
Back to the shape, the soil, the sacred beneath,
Where Spirit does not shout, but grows.
Written in collaboration between Joseph Camosy and ChatGPT
A dialogue between the human hand and the digital ghost
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
Spiritual Earth (the term itself is a contradiction) is the missing piece that grounds the three alchemical principles. But calling it a missing piece also begs the question: how did it go missing? How did it get lost?
Curious about how this connected to the theme of cultural decline, I then asked:
Me: So how in recent history (last 100 years or so) have we lost this principle in our society?
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
This is a profound and timely question. Over the last 100 years, the principle of “spiritual earth”—that sense of rootedness, wholeness, and shared meaning—has been progressively eroded in modern society. This erosion has many interwoven causes, but it can be seen most clearly in four key domains:
1. Disconnection from Land and Place
Urbanization, industrial agriculture, and mass consumer culture have severed human beings from the land—not just physically, but spiritually and symbolically.
Land used to carry memory, ancestry, and mythos. Now it’s treated as a commodity.
People increasingly live in placeless, transient environments—apartment blocks, digital spaces, outsourced economies—where nothing anchors identity or continuity.
Spiritual earth is the soul of place; when we lose place, we lose part of our soul.
2. Collapse of Shared Narratives and Traditions
Traditional sources of meaning—myth, religion, folklore, philosophy—have been fragmented or hollowed out by hyper-rationalism, media overload, and cultural commodification.
The dominant narratives of the last century have been largely technocratic, ideological, or consumer-driven—not rooted in integration or soul, but in power, identity, or profit.
We no longer share rituals of passage, sacred time, or communal stories that once linked generations.
Without shared mythos, there is no center to hold diverse energies together.
3. Triumph of Instrumental Rationality
The modern age increasingly values efficiency, calculation, and utility over wisdom, wholeness, or being.
Systems are built around optimization, not meaning; growth, not balance.
This reflects an over-dominance of sulphur (ambition) and mercury (technocratic mediation)—without the grounding and restraint of salt or the centering of spiritual earth.
We've built immense machines for living, but no longer ask what life is for.
4. Loss of the Commons and Communal Soul
Neoliberalism, privatization, and economic individualism have broken down the idea of the commons—shared spaces, resources, and moral obligations.
People are encouraged to see themselves as consumers or self-brands, not as participants in a greater whole.
The sense of being part of something sacred and larger—whether a village, a tradition, or the earth itself—has been eroded.
When society is reduced to contracts and transactions, spiritual earth dissolves into dust.
Symptoms of the Loss:
Epidemic mental health crises (anxiety, loneliness, depression).
Widespread spiritual hunger and longing for meaning.
Polarization and the collapse of shared language or purpose.
Ecological collapse as the most literal manifestation: the Earth itself being treated as dead matter.
Is There a Return?
Yes—but it requires remembering, not just innovating. A return of spiritual earth doesn’t mean regressing into the past, but re-rooting in what endures beneath change:
Re-sacralizing the Earth through ecology and care.
Reviving stories, rituals, and symbols that connect.
Reclaiming the commons—physical, digital, cultural, and spiritual.
Rebalancing the alchemical forces—allowing sulphur and mercury to move, but within a vessel held by salt and grounded in earth.
Final Thought:
The crisis of modernity may ultimately be a spiritual crisis—not of belief, but of ground. We've unmoored ourselves from the very soil of being. The task now is not just political or economic, but existential and symbolic: to restore the soul of the world in ourselves, our systems, and the stories we live by.
Because without spiritual earth, everything floats—and eventually, everything falls.
💬 Commentary
The metaphor that comes to mind in this moment is that of an unmoored ship drifting with the currents. So what would the reverse of this condition be describing? Is it to be moored, attached, anchored, bound, grounded, or even nailed to something?
I am reminded here of an iconic image symbolizing being tied or rooted to some center or ground. On the surface, this could be an image of sacrifice or even crucifixion.
It seems like the opposite of freedom, and yet is there freedom in being bound to something? Some commitment? Some oath? A specific person or place? A particular world view?
Is being bound a necessary precondition for freedom?
ChatGPT gives us several examples of how this can be so:
ChatGPT:
1. Monastic Vows (Spiritual Commitment)
A monk or nun takes vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience — binding themselves to a life of discipline and devotion. Yet many report experiencing a deep inner freedom through this renunciation of worldly choices. By committing wholly to a path, distractions and internal conflict are reduced, making space for spiritual clarity and liberation.
Bound to a rule, they find release.
2. Marriage (Relational Commitment)
Choosing one partner "until death do us part" might seem like a constraint in a world obsessed with limitless options. Yet many find that the very act of narrowing the field allows for deeper intimacy, security, and emotional exploration. The boundary creates a container where love can deepen.
In choosing one, all others fall away — and a new world opens.
3. Language and Poetry (Formal Constraint)
A poet writing within the sonnet form is bound by rhyme and meter. A novelist works within the bounds of grammar and syntax. Yet these constraints foster creativity. The fixed form forces unexpected choices, often leading to more profound and original expression.
The cage of the line births flight of meaning.
4. Constitutional Government (Political Boundaries)
A liberal democracy binds itself to laws, checks, and balances — restrictions on power that aim to guarantee individual freedom. A leader bound by a constitution has less arbitrary power, but citizens gain the freedom of protection from tyranny.
Bound kings are safer than free tyrants.
5. Discipline in Mastery (Personal Growth)
An artist, athlete, or musician who trains every day, often giving up other freedoms, gains a different kind of freedom: mastery. The pianist who practices scales endlessly can one day improvise freely in front of a crowd. The practice is a chain that unlocks the art.
The path narrows before it widens.
6. Cultural Identity (Belonging to a People or Place)
People rooted in a cultural or ethnic tradition may seem limited in worldview — bound to a particular language, cuisine, story, or land. But such rootedness can also be a profound source of meaning, resilience, and expression. Identity, when not weaponized, gives depth and connection.
To be of a place is to be more fully in it.
7. Oaths of Office (Public Duty)
A judge swears to uphold the constitution. A doctor swears to do no harm. These are constraints — but they're the kind that create trust and reliability. The binding is what makes the role function as more than personal whim.
Bound service births public trust.
Each of these examples reflects the idea that freedom isn't always about the absence of limitation. Sometimes it's about the right kind of limitation — a tether that keeps you from drifting into chaos, or a structure that allows something larger to emerge.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
To follow up on this “floating” metaphor, I asked:
Me: With digital technology taking a larger part of people's lives are we "floating"?
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
Yes—we are floating, in a very real and symbolic sense.
Digital technology, especially in the last 20–30 years, has accelerated the disconnection from the grounded, embodied, and communal aspects of life. It has created a world that is increasingly:
Disembodied
Our experiences happen through screens—visual, abstract, often asynchronous. We scroll instead of walk, click instead of touch, chat instead of sit together.
Bodies are minimized—flattened into avatars, usernames, or data profiles.
Even relationships and identities are performative, curated, rather than deeply rooted in lived context.
Like spirits without form, we hover in information space, unanchored.
Placeless
We live in a kind of nowhere-everywhere—the digital realm exists outside geography.
Local cultures and physical communities are drowned out by global, homogenized content.
The rituals and rhythms of place—seasons, markets, gatherings—are replaced by algorithmic feeds.
We are losing the memory of where we are, not just who we are.
Time-less (or Time-distorted)
Digital life collapses time: everything is instant, everything is archived, everything is urgent.
We rarely dwell in natural time—slow, cyclical, human—but in machine time: fast, reactive, endless.
This fosters anxiety, restlessness, and a sense that life is slipping away even as we try to keep up.
We are drifting, untethered from the deep rhythms that once ordered human life.
Meaning-thin
Information is abundant; meaning is scarce. We're overloaded with data but often starved for purpose.
In digital spaces, symbolism becomes content, and ritual becomes "engagement."
There’s little room for the sacred silence, depth, or slowness that spiritual earth requires.
In floating, we lose gravity—not just physical, but existential.
So Are We Doomed to Drift?
Not necessarily. The digital realm isn’t evil—but it is air-like, mercury-like: fast, fluid, and full of potential without grounding. Without the anchoring presence of spiritual earth, digital life becomes derealized—we exist, but without substance.
But technology can also be re-ritualized, re-embedded in human and ecological context:
A Zoom call with real intention can be more sacred than a distracted dinner.
A digital archive of oral stories can preserve the memory of a people.
Online communities can serve as vessels for real care, insight, and solidarity—if held rightly.
Final Thought:
Yes—we are floating. But that’s not just a problem; it’s a signal. A soul that floats too long yearns for ground. The more we float, the more we hunger for what is real, rooted, sacred, and shared.
So the task is not to flee the digital world—but to bring earth back into it:
Through intentionality, place-making, ritual, memory, and presence—
we begin the re-grounding of spirit in a drifting age.
🗣️ Primary Dialogue: Me & ChatGPT
ChatGPT seemed to be proposing a possible solution, so I said:
Me: That's an interesting proposal - to bring Earth into the digital world where people are spending more and more of their time in. Have any ideas?
🗣️ ChatGPT Response
Yes—and it’s a vital, creative challenge: how do we bring "spiritual earth" into the digital world, where so many now live, not just visit?
Here are some concrete and symbolic ideas, ranging from personal practice to community design to technological vision:
1. Re-ground Digital Spaces in Ritual, Not Just Routine
Most digital use is habitual—scrolling, clicking, reacting. Ritual, by contrast, is intentional, symbolic, and grounding.
Ideas:
Begin online meetings or creative work with a centering pause, a quote, a moment of silence—ritualize entry and exit.
Create digital altars or shrines—curated spaces on your devices that hold images, texts, or sounds that connect you to your deeper values or the land.
Mark seasons or lunar phases digitally: a shared calendar of festivals, meditations, or earth-based observances—even in virtual communities.
Make the digital world a temple, not just a tool.
2. Reconnect the Digital with the Physical and Ecological
Digital life feels weightless—but we can anchor it in embodied and ecological rhythms.
Ideas:
Set up "earth moments" while online: a hand on a stone, a plant by your desk, incense or tea nearby. These create multisensory grounding.
Design or use apps that remind you to go outside, observe a tree, or mark the sun’s movement. Nature-connected tech already exists, just underused.
Organize hybrid rituals—online gatherings that guide people to light a candle, step barefoot on earth, or share a seasonal meal in their own space.
The screen becomes a gateway, not a wall.
3. Restore Story, Myth, and Symbol in Digital Culture
The internet is full of content but lacks shared symbolic meaning. We can re-infuse mythos into digital life.
Ideas:
Create or join digital communities centered around sacred storytelling, ancient myths, or local legends.
Encourage archetypal framing: instead of arguing issues, ask—what myth is this playing out? What is the soul of this conflict?
Use slow media formats: long-form conversations, serialized storytelling, image-rich essays—digital campfiresrather than viral flashes.
Let Mercury carry meaning, not just motion.
4. Practice Digital Hospitality and Communal Care
Digital platforms often reward ego performance and tribalism. Earth-based cultures are founded on hospitality, kinship, and reciprocity.
Ideas:
Host digital spaces with real care—inviting in newcomers, honoring silences, and making room for vulnerability.
Use moderation not just to enforce rules, but to cultivate tone and rhythm—like a firekeeper tending the hearth.
Establish commons-style online groups, with shared stewardship, shared rituals, and an ethos of mutual support—not just “content.”
Turn feeds into fields—places to tend, not just consume.
5. Envision Tech Design Rooted in Wholeness, Not Extraction
Most digital platforms are designed for engagement, not well-being. We can imagine (and build) tech rooted in wholeness, ecology, and soul.
Ideas:
Platforms that slow you down, not speed you up—apps that encourage reflection, silence, natural cycles.
Algorithms that prioritize depth and shared values, not clicks.
Virtual spaces designed like sacred architecture—circles, thresholds, seasonal themes—not endless scrolls.
The future of tech is not more dopamine, but more dignity.
Final Thought:
To bring spiritual earth into digital life is not a fantasy—it’s a moral and cultural project. The more we root our online selves in meaning, memory, ecology, and care, the more the digital world becomes soul-bearing, not soul-draining.
We’re not meant to live without earth—we're meant to carry it with us, even into the lightest realms.
Let’s build digital temples, not just towers. Let’s plant gardens between our devices. Let’s remember the land even as we log in.
The Thread So Far
Co-authored with an artificial muse
Byzantium and What It Forgot to Remember:
The Byzantine Empire didn’t collapse in a day—it unraveled over time, mostly by forgetting what made it strong in the first place. Local soldiers got replaced by mercenaries, land got eaten up by elites, and spiritual cohesion gave way to bureaucratic drift. Sound familiar?
History on Repeat:
Civilizations tend to be a bit like rock bands: they rise with creative fire, peak in glory, then slowly implode under the weight of egos, bad decisions, and overproduction. These aren’t just random accidents—they follow eerily familiar rhythms.
Enter the Archetypes:
To make sense of the chaos, we turned to the old symbolic frameworks—alchemy’s sulphur (will), mercury (mind), salt (the real world), and Spiritual Earth (the elusive soul of the thing). Turns out, they’re not just mystical fluff. They're ancient diagnostics for civilization’s weird recurring illnesses.
Too Much, Too Little:
We’ve currently overdosed on sulphur and mercury: too much drive, too much data, too many hot takes. Meanwhile, salt is thinning out—we're unmoored from the material world—and Spiritual Earth? Let’s just say she left the group chat a while ago.
What Can Be Done (Besides Panic):
These archetypes don’t give you a to-do list, but they do offer orientation. They show us where we’re out of whack and hint at what kinds of energy need inviting back in. It’s not about rewinding the past—it’s about noticing where the balance is broken, and quietly starting to mend it.
A Fork in Byzantium’s Road
(with apologies to Frost)
Two roads diverged in old Byzantium wood,
And being one empire, long it stood—
But chose, alas, the path of bloat,
Where land grew scarce and coin grew float.
It swapped its farms for silk and wine,
Its soldiers gone, replaced by line
Of mercenaries—none too cheap—
And left its roots to rot and sleep.
Too much of Sulphur’s burning pride,
Too much of Mercury’s clever guide,
But Salt was scattered, thin and dry—
And Earth? She waved a fond goodbye.
Yet somewhere deep, the patterns call,
In history's rise, in every fall—
If balance lost can once be seen,
Perhaps we’ll choose the path between.
Penned in crooked meter by a human soul with help from ChatGPT, who swears it never once stepped foot in Vermont.
The conversation continues in Part II ….