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The language of Tlön resists the formulation of this paradox; most people did not even understand it. The defenders of common sense at first did no more than negate the veracity of the anecdote. They repeated that it was a verbal fallacy, based on the rash application of two neologisms not authorized by usage and alien to all rigorous thought: the verbs "find" and "lose," which beg the question, because they presuppose the identity of the first and of the last nine coins. They recalled that all nouns (man, coin, Thursday, Wednesday, rain) have only a metaphorical value. They denounced the treacherous circumstance "somewhat rusted by Wednesday's rain," which presupposes what is trying to be demonstrated: the persistence of the four coins from Tuesday to Thursday.

They explained that equality is one thing and identity another, and formulated a kind of reductio ad absurdum: the hypothetical case of nine men who on nine nights suffer a severe pain. Would it not be ridiculous - they questioned - to pretend that this pain is one and the same? They said that the heresiarch was prompted only by the blasphemous intention of attributing the divine category of being to some simple coins and that at times he negated plurality and at other times did not. They argued: if equality implies identity, one would also have to admit that the nine coins are one.

~Jorge Luis Borges, Thlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, 1940.

The World Will Be Cloned

True liberation comes from questioning everything, even oneself.

Today, we witness a conjunction of the North Node and Neptune at 28° Pisces. The last time a similar yet inverted conjunction occurred was with the South Node in 11/18/2016 at 9° Pisces. Looking back, I recall being in a state of deep illusion—disconnected from my own values, spiraling in uncertainty about my worth. That story is in my book, so I won’t retell it here, but I reference it because this particular conjunction with the North Node hasn’t occurred often—the last one was on January 18, 1858. This moment invites us to redefine our relationship with the narratives we tell ourselves, the fantasies we construct, and the ideologies that shape our world. North Node + Neptune offers the time to reflect with discernment on where your values are, based on your needs, thus assigning meaning toward a profound way of living.

Although Sagittarius, Jupiter, and the 9th house generate ideologies, by the time they reach Pisces, they become embedded belief systems—almost spirit-(ritual) in nature. Right now, with Jupiter newly direct in Gemini, we have an opportunity to question these frameworks, to reexamine the ideas we’ve accepted as truth. Since 2018, Uranus has forced me to step away from radical convictions, loosening my grip on fixed ideologies. My political views have been more openly expressed in the past year, yet even now, they remain fluid. I continue questioning everything—whether blue or red, left or right—because I refuse to assign absolute value to any single position.

Much of what we’ve accepted as "truth" has been carefully constructed, written in ways that discourage scrutiny. Borges, for instance, masterfully illustrated this in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.

Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most brilliant literary minds of the 20th century, masterfully explored the nature of reality, language, and ideology in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, a short story first published in Ficciones (1940). The story presents a fictional world—Tlön—created by a secret society with the goal of reshaping human perception through fabricated knowledge. What begins as an obscure intellectu