perilous magical object you got there! 📱🔮

shame if it... bewitched you into giving up.

alternative post title:

phones are palantirs and we are Denethor.

if you have no idea what those words mean, don’t worry, i’ll explain everything. if you know exactly what i mean by “palantir” and Denethor”, then… that’s it. you probably already grasp the spirit of this post.

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before we jump in, a couple things:

• i have february availability for astrology consults! some in march, too. you can book right on my website. use the code PALANTIR for 20% off any consult because times are hard. (coupon works through 2/28.)

• mars retrograde in cancer is grinding to a halt, and Waymaking the Transits: Mars Rx in Cancer is still going strong. the cohort group is closed, but you can get the guidebook and/or the audio/video talkthroughs, and i also opened up a 1:1 consult for this work. in case you missed it, here’s the vibe.

this post is long! i recommend reading it in the substack app or on a browser rather than in an email. you can also listen to me read it to you: look for the audio button at the top!

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“I dreamed there was a great wave. […] I stood upon the brink. It was utterly dark in the abyss before my feet. A light shone behind me but I could not turn. I could only stand there... waiting."

i recently rewatched all the Lord of the Rings extended editions for the millionth time. what i love about this story is how it is so apt for The Times pretty much no matter what horrors they’re serving. Lord of the Rings might seem like a classic good vs evil story that’s mainly about famous swords and dragon-adjacent creatures, but it’s really about grief, fellowship, and deciding to keep going even when your burdens are impossible. especially when your burdens are impossible.

i could write a whole piece on Tolkien-as-grief-medicine (and i will) but today, i want to talk about the part of Lord of the Rings stood out to me this time around: the madness of Denethor in Return of the King.

Denethor, Steward of Gondor, feasting while his son Faramir rides to his death at his father’s bitter command.

one of the centerpieces of the plot of Return of the King is the guy above: Denethor, Steward of Gondor, and particularly how he loses his goddamn mind. in the movie, he’s immediately clockable as a self-important douchebag. you can tell he considers himself the King and not just a Steward (he is not afraid to explicitly say it, either), but he’s not even roleplaying kingship well beyond wearing a lot of fancy furs, a full coat of rings (for show), and a sword that you know hasn’t seen actual battle in years. he has lost his favorite son, Boromir, and he’s taking it out on literally everyone but especially his surviving son, Faramir. he is very easy to dislike and mistrust.

unfortunately Denethor is kind of serving in all that velvet and fur though

so when Denethor starts to act more and more unhinged before eventually setting himself on fire and literally jumping off a cliff, it’s not even that much of a surprise. it kinda figures that he’d fuck everything up; he was bitter and out of touch and probably too weak to rule in the first place (more on this later).

but it’s not just the grief of his son’s death that makes him lose his mind. Denethor has a secret: he is in possession of a palantir, and he does not use it responsibly.

what a palantir is, and why it’s a problem

a palantir is a seeing stone, essentially a crystal ball. it is an artifact of Númenor, the great Middle Earth civilization that existed pre the events of Lord of the Rings. i would love to tell you all about Númenor (let’s do a lore dump in the Waymaking discord¹ soon..?), but suffice to say that Númenoreans have all but died out completely and much of their wisdom (including how to use a palantir responsibly) is lost. here’s a quick Palantir 101, straight from the bible (Silmarillion) itself:

“Now these Stones had this virtue that those who looked therein might perceive in them things far off, whether in place or in time. For the most part they revealed only things near to another kindred Stone, for the Stones each called to each; but those who possessed great strength of will and of mind might learn to direct their gaze whither they would. Thus the Númenoreans were aware of many things that their enemies wished to conceal, and little escaped their vigilance in the days of their might.”

—The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age

there were originally seven of these magic seeing stones, or palantiri, and they connected and united the spread-out kingdoms so all the good guys could “converse in thought with one another” (The Two Towers). but the palantiri have been scattered since, the good guys’ network broken. Gandalf famously reminds us that the palantiri are not all accounted for, emphasizing the importance of knowing who’s on the other end of these things before probing them—no matter how strong of will and mind you are.

here’s what we do know about the palantiri: Saruman (gif’d above) has one, which is eventually chucked out of his wizard tower resulting in Pippin almost ruining everything by trying to ponder the orb. we discover that Sauron, the biggest baddie himself, also has a palantir, and that’s how Saruman has been doing their cursed collab. later, we find that Denethor also has a palantir when he smugly tells Gandalf, “Did you think the eyes of the White Tower were blind?”.

the observant reader/viewer’s stomach would drop upon realizing that Denethor has been getting a feed straight from the Dark Lord himself, understanding immediately that that’s not good.

but wait. wouldn’t that actually be great for the good guys trying to anticipate Sauron and prevent his taking over the entire world? a stream of intel straight from Mordor? access to information 24/7? the ability to see the horrors before they see you? in theory, yes.

but you have to understand what it means that Sauron is on the other end of these ancient devices to understand why no one should believe exactly what they see in the palantiri.

yes, Sauron was hot in his fair form. image source

Sauron the Deceiver

Sauron has been up to some shit in Middle Earth for literal Ages, and his particular brand of evil is deception. he specializes in starting rumors that make kith and kin mistrust one another, dividing his enemies to befriend, betray, then conquer them systematically.

in Sauron, Tolkien shows us that the most truly evil things in the world do not announce themselves by brandishing a big ole sword. in fact, the most evil things in the world don’t even need to have a physical form. it is ideas, insidious and subtle, that are most dangerous. an idea, a mere notion, can pave a path for evil to walk right in through the front door. and nobody does this better than Sauron, slinger of half-truths and liar-by-omission.

Sauron the Deceiver decides what is seen in the palantir. see the problem?

Sauron feels the hunger-for-information of those who bend their will on the palantir, and he stokes it. Sauron plays to the seeker’s desire to stay informed, and shows them only what he wants them to see. his might. his overwhelming military strength. the good guys stumbling, their efforts in vain. Sauron carefully paints a picture of his imminent victory and domination. in the best of cases, the Stone-gazer will decide there is only one choice: to join the Dark Lord, like Saruman did. the next best outcome is that the Stone-gazer will fall into despair, complying in advance, giving up their resistance and succumbing to despair.

Denethor concept art by Alan Lee

Denethor wasn’t a little bitch in the books

earlier i mentioned Denethor seeming weak/undeserving of his authority; in the movies, i do think Denethor’s doom seems most apparently attributable to his bad personality. but in the books, Denethor is one of the most powerful characters aside from Aragorn and Gandalf, and is not so easily fucked with.

“[Denethor] turned his dark eyes on Gandalf, and now Pippin saw a likeness between the two, and he felt the strain between them, almost as if he saw a line of smouldering fire, drawn from eye to eye, that might suddenly burst into flame.

Denethor looked indeed much more like a great wizard than Gandalf did, more kingly, beautiful, and powerful; and older.”

—Return of the King, Minas Tirith

book-Denethor is proud, like his depiction in the movie, but with better reason to be. the blood of the elder race (the same blood that grants Aragorn his kingly bearing and quiet authority) runs strong in Denethor. he is from a long line of stewards who were originally chosen for being mighty and wise in equal measure. basically, book-Denethor is no chump. he is a descendant of Númenor, the stuff of literal legends, and he acts like it.

as such, his descent into madness and abject hopelessness in the book is that much more profound a tragedy. for all his discernment and bullshit detecting, book-Denethor is deceived by Sauron. he has been staring into the palantir trying to find a weakness to exploit, trying to gain all the information he can so he can protect those he loves. but from the beginning, Sauron has thrown in subtle, nearly indetectable details that have accumulated to start the cracks in Denethor’s mind: a king returns. one son is strong, the other too weak to matter. the blood of Númenor has failed. this so-called “heir” is a predatory upstart. i must protect my kingdom. the might of sauron is too strong.

when book-Denethor falls to the palantir, it is devastating. it is devastating not because you’re as hopeless as Denethor as you read, but because you realize how completely deceit can bring down even the strongest among us when it shows us only what it wants us to see. you see the depth of his despair and begin to understand what it will mean to everyone in Gondor that he has given up.

when his son, Faramir, comes back from battle gravely injured, Denethor loses it completely. he sees no victory and not even a shred of hope. what he has seen in the palantir has convinced him that he has already lost his son (who still lives), and that there is nothing to do now but die.

“No hours so dark had Pippin known, not even in the clutches of the Uruk-hai. It was his duty to wait upon the Lord [Denethor], and wait his did, forgotten it seemed, standing by the door of the unlit chamber, mastering his own fears as best he could. And as he watched, it seemed to him that Denethor grew old before his eyes, as if something had snapped in his proud will, and his stern mind was overthrown. Grief maybe had wrought it, and remorse. He saw tears on that once tearless face, more unbearable than wrath.

—Return of the King, The Siege of Gondor

Sauron showed Denethor only what he wanted him to see in the palantir: death. destruction. no hope. nothing but pain and death for all. Sauron did not give him the full picture. and Denethor complied in advance.

he not only gave up, he fell so deeply that he took his own life. as Steward of the city, he abandoned completely his people, his soldiers, and even his last living son, and set himself aflame in his utter, miserable despair.

all because he stared too long at what the Deceiver wanted him to see. he stared so long he began to believe it was the whole story.

our phones are palantirs. we are Denethor.

we can bend our wills on these square seeing-stones and feel in control of the information we consume, consume, consume. we feel like we are staying informed and being prepared. we become convinced that consuming more images and information will keep us safe.

but who is on the other end of the palantir in your pocket? do you think they’re showing you the whole truth?

we know the names of the deceivers who decide which images we see on our little square seeing-stones, and we know that they explicitly wish to control what we see, what we think about it, and most importantly, what we think is possible because of all that. they want our compliance. they want us glued to our screens, searching for hope and finding none. they want us to fall so deeply into despair that we give them the last of our power and agency. they want us to abandon loved ones that yet live, to leave our creations for dead, to give up on everything and most importantly ourselves.

Denethor did not realize he was being deceived, but we do. it is not too late for us to take back our agency and decide how much we engage with these perilous magical objects in our pockets.

arguably the best thing Denethor could have done for his city and his son would be to cast the palantir into the sea, or at least stop isolating himself and looking at it constantly. if he had gone out and about in his city and his lands and saw the actual state of the world, he would have seen more truly and felt differently. which brings me to:

stare into your seeing-stone and challenge the darkness. remind it that you will always resist.

get off the damn palantir and go be in the world. especially if you start feeling fucking certain about how hopeless things are. i promise: they are better and worse than you think, and so much of what you see is literally designed to make you feel powerless and depressed.

that square seeing-stone in your hand may thing may show you some things that are true, but it won’t show you everything. go talk to people face to face. go pick up trash or help organize cans at the local food bank. make a batch of rice crispy treats and take them to a friend. look up mutual aid networks near you and see if they need some saturday afternoon help this weekend. (here is a great post about mutual aid, too.)

do not be deceived, and do not relent. if Lord of the Rings teaches us anything, it is that even the smallest actions can change the course of the future, and that fellowship is one of the greatest threats to evil.

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things to do other than be deceived by the palantir in your pocket

he better be pondering his Finch app.

i am not suddenly an expert on changing your relationship to your phone or the internet, but i have recently found some things that have tangibly helped me shift my own relationship with my phone and the internet. i’m sharing what those are in hopes that they might take the edge off your sense of impending doom.

0) take a break from meta apps

step zero really is simply putting down the fuuuucking palantir. please consider taking the plunge and just fucking off from those apps for a minimum of 3 days. you will not regret it.

last month i logged out of and deleted all meta apps for just four [4] days, and i swear it changed my entire brain chemistry. i did a craft project i’d been putting off.² i spent more time talking to people in discords i’m in. i read whole books and listened to whole audiobooks. i sat down with my paper journal for the first time in months.

after the first hour or two, i didn’t feel the FOMO that i’ve become so accustomed to. as someone who does rely on instagram for my work, i convinced myself that even if i’m not posting, i should be scrolling “so i know what’s going on”, as if that actually impacts my business (it doesn’t). breaking that habit for only four days was liberating. and when i did re download the apps, i put them in weird, out of sight places on my phone so they wouldn’t be there to automatically check. and you know what? the things i found time and bandwidth for on my break have stuck.

i highly encourage you to take at least 2-4 days without these specific palantiri on your phone at all. just delete them. i promise, you will not miss anything. there are other, better ways to stay informed about wtf is going on in the world that will not steal your time and spend your own attention as their currency.

the rest of this list will give you some ideas of what to do when your thumbs realize there’s not pit of despair to open on your bathroom break.

1) What The Fuck Just Happened Today

i’ve been trying to find ways to get my news in more consolidated ways so i can be on socials less overall, and i absolutely love What The Fuck Just Happened Today for this. thank you

Jeanna Kadlec

for recommending it! it’s a once a day newsletter that sums up… well, what the fuck has happened this day. i like it because it is just the information, without images and shocking headlines i know will distract and disregulate me. here’s an example of one of the emails.

2) The Reclaiming Rite

one thing the people on the other end of the palantiri do is drain our energy and make us unreasonably tired in mind and spirit. it is wise to call that energy back to ourselves, and the Reclaiming Rite from Aidan Wachter is a simple, accessible, and profound way to do so. i first did this rite after my divorce in 2021, and it was more potent than i can put into words. my life began to change around me immediately, reflecting myself and my wholeness back to me like puzzle pieces fitting together.

i highly recommend Wachter’s work, and especially his book Six Ways, which is an excellent introduction to practical ritual/magic that is very down to earth.

3) Finch

i really didn’t want to like this cute ass little self care app, but my god, i love it. you basically have this little bird friend, and when you complete your to-dos and self care tasks in the app, the bird gains energy and goes on little adventures and learns new things. the bird doesn’t starve or anything if you don’t log in for a day or two, so don’t worry about it being a guilt-driven thing. it has ended up being a surprisingly practical to-do list/self care thing, and you can also decorate your little birb’s house and get them outfits, which i admit, is the most motivating part for me. it even has little breathing exercises, stretches, and reflection prompts that are surprisingly generative. thank you

Maeg Keane

for recommending! i slept on this for way too long.

imagine your default thing-you-open-on-your-phone being this instead of instagram:

4) Discord

i used to groan internally when i considered logging into a discord. i am easily overwhelmed by an imagined requirement to talk to everyone and not miss anything. maybe it was getting tf off meta apps for only 4 days and maybe it was starting my own discord, but suddenly i can do discord, and it’s really fun.

running a discord of my own has confirmed for me that no one really expects anyone to be on there 100% of the time (that would be so weird); it’s more about the delight of happening to be in the right channel at the right time for a fun and hilarious convo, or the depressurized slow-burn of asynchronous communication with like-minded folks.

i dunno, i’m just saying give discord a try, especially if you take a break from meta apps. i personally am having a great time in

Jeanna Kadlec

’s Astrology for Writers discord, which i joined only recently. and of course i’m also having a really good time in my own Waymaking discord with paid subscribers and Waymaking Cohort folks. maybe you’d like to join us?

5) Kanopy

did you know that there’s a thing that’s like Libby, but for tv shows, movies, and documentaries?? i just found out Kanopy through an email from my local library, and i was so stoked. you can log in with your library card just like on Libby (which is for ebooks and audiobooks) and access a whole bunch of cool educational content. if you’re the kind of person who wants to learn a lot more about the history of the united states (Kanopy has a robust Black History Month category right now) and resistance and other things that are getting very relevant for the current moment, and you also know you’re an audio/visual learner, perhaps you will be as pumped as i was to find this resource.

6) Bluesky

it’s not perfect, but bluesky is better than the alternatives, imo. if you want to take a meta break but you also want a lil text based microblogging scroll experience, the butterfly app is not bad, not bad at all.

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deleting meta apps and getting different ones won’t save the world.

if only it would. i offer these suggestions not as a way to fix everything or show up perfectly to this current moment in history, or as a way to self-congratulate about not being deceived. i offer this whole thing as one human person to another, doing my best to find small (sometimes tiny) ways to keep my agency and exercise it, willing those ways to accumulate to a more fortified self that can show up more and more fully and meaningfully to those who need me.

what do you think?

no, seriously, i want to know your thoughts. leave me a comment and tell me about your meta apps break, your favorite anti-palantir strategies, news sources that don’t suck any more life out of you than necessary, community events in your neighborhood that you’ve joined lately, craft projects you’re working on, people who share smart things that remind you of your power, etc etc.

1. upgrade to a paid subscription (the price of a nice coffee per month) to join the Waymaking discord! we are having a blast being nerds, and yes there is a Tolkien channel.

2. i want to acknowledge the irony of me linking to this craft project on a meta app 🫠