Mars 2025: Field Notes

Report from the border of the forest and the feed.

Whether it was my extensive practice of the Supreme Pentagram (SRP) or the fact that 2025 was governed by Mars (the Tower card), the result was the same: an apocalypse of notions. Structures collapsing, enabling me to see beyond a veil of illusions. Illusions about effort, systems, and how the world works. Or maybe simply exposing truths I already knew but failed to admit:

• The internet is not global.

• Platforms are not neutral.

• Abstractions are no different than addictions.

• And being a polymath doesn’t mean doing it all at once.

In this recap, I’ll rant about the revelations 2025 brought me as a creative and practitioner with a decade of experience.

Global Myths

The toughest pill to swallow was the location bias.

Gurus tell us that the internet is flat, a borderless plane.

It’s a lie.

Most algorithms are geographically gated. If you are in the US, the UK, or Canada, you are lucky. If not, you are playing a game with different physics. It’s like screaming into a void that has been programmed to ignore you.

Based on extensive research and pulling words from YouTube creator support, it goes like this:

1. Regardless of genre (niche) and language, content is first tested locally, in the immediate physical environment, by the time of publishing.

2. If the video engages the locals, the reach is expanded; if it doesn’t, it gets killed prematurely.

Gurus also rave about going “hyperlocal,” telling you that when done properly, hyperlocal turns global. Right?

Actually, “hyperlocal” only turns “global” if your local culture, language, spending power, and advertiser value are already aligned with the dominant markets. In any other case, local is nothing more than a ceiling.

Yet, just because something cannot be marketed locally doesn’t mean it’s not sought by a smaller demographic that’s scattered globally. Underground niches need a cultural melting-pot type of city for residence.

This isn’t cynicism. It’s technical literacy that creators must consider. It’s seeing the map for what it is, rather than what the tourist brochure promised.

Abstract Opportunities

Occult and philosophy scholars agree that when a proper microcosmic change occurs, a proportional macrocosmic one follows. In plain words, when you better yourself and excel in your craft, reality responds.

While this has been the case since the birth of humanity, algorithms alter it massively. Hijacking reality, algorithms are not abstract forces that “reward good work, transformation, and effort.” They filter out anything that doesn’t fit the commonness and location. More on reality by the end of the essay.

Substack

Eventually, this made me switch to Substack for long-form, abandoning the abstractions I’ve been chasing for years. I found Substack, not as a growth tool, but as a place where:

• Depth isn’t punished.

• Writing means something.

• There’s no need for meaningless optimization.

Sure, Substack is not the biggest search engine, opportunity, or whatever. But it also doesn’t drain my life and energy, and the algorithm is not location-based. It’s also free, like really free, not like the “free gear” I’ve been paying for years. So, it feels like a great investment.

You say whatever you want to the world, and if nothing happens, you still have life and extra cash. Gurus rub in your face that your videos stay forever on other platforms. Well, so do posts and notes on Substack.

The Life of a Polymath

Moving to Substack freed an enormous amount of time. So, 2025 marked my return to my original passion: turntablismand producing.

Not because it’s profitable. Because it’s real. It’s literally reality replying back through sound. I must have such feedback daily. My scratching and producing provide it; algorithms don’t. Hopefully, I’ll announce more music in the next year.

Different Crafts, Different Platforms.

Toward the very end of the year, something unexpected happened. I recalled my genuine enjoyment in product videography and photography.

• Light.

• Craft.

• Framing.

• Movement.

• Sliders,

• Glass.

I renamed an old Instagram account and started a second publication purely for aesthetics and the tools that I use.

• Separate lanes.

• Separate audiences.

That separation was the real lesson. Craft hygiene vs total expression. For years, I tried to cram everything I am into each piece. Philosophy, Magick, aesthetics, cinematic B-roll, critique, personal myth.

Turns out that doesn’t make the message deeper, or the aesthetic cleaner, and more cinematic. It risks missing the audience.

• Tech heads and aesthetic aficionados don’t necessarily care about deep truths even if they technically concern them.

• Similarly, deep thinkers and “mystery-knowers” wouldn’t necessarily register production quality, even if they “like” it, barely differentiating between good visuals and someone doodling Sephiroth with a pencil. Go figure!

Being a polymath doesn’t mean expressing all crafts at once. That cripples the work and forces unnecessary overexertion. What I found is that there’s a platform for everything:

• Substack champions in-depth.

• Instagram has the aesthetics.

• YouTube is for people with amazing personalities.

• TikTok probably mirroring Instagram.

I don’t have an amazing personality. I never did. And I’m done pretending that’s a solvable problem. In the future, I’ll focus on my strengths: cross-referential depth storytelling and clean aesthetics (visuals).

Different Times, Different Shelters

In the early 2000s, the internet was a shelter from physical reality:

• Small countries,

• Provincial mentality,

• Local bullshit and restrictions.

In 2025, physical reality is the shelter. The internet steadily becomes the noise.

After one of the mentioned SRP workings, I encountered a person from the deep past. We stopped and made small talk, telling each other what we’ve been up to, reflecting on the times we were kicking it together. The person mentioned something along the lines of:

“In the early 2000s, the Internet was my escape from people (the locals). Now, I go to the forest to escape the internet.”

Meanwhile, I was finishing one of my algorithm videos by telling my audience:

“Go and do something in Nature. It’s an amazing opportunity you’ll appreciate sooner or later.”

The Real Opportunity

I’m sorry, but for what it actually delivers, the internet no longer seems like an “amazing opportunity.” Endless promises year after year, that mostly materialize if you live in the US, the UK, or Canada. Plus, people in their 60s are the new YouTube sensations.

So what’s the hurry? Aren’t we told to wait, optimize, believe harder, and trust the metrics?

Gurus adore preaching to delay gratification. What they misinterpret is that delay means later, not never. Knowing that road, like Neo in the Matrix, I’m done delaying tangible results in favor of abstractions.

• Metrics are abstractions.

• Algorithms are abstractions.

• “Global creator economy” is an abstraction.

Effort is not free. There’s an opportunity cost, which I’ll discuss in 2026.

After 12 years of creating on the internet, I need immediate or slightly delayed feedback. Real change. Objectively valid results. Evidence of progress, or time and effort not wasted. Discipline slogans and faith-based systems no longer cut it.

Physical reality excels at that. You do something in it, and the response is instantaneous. The progress or process is tangible and trackable, keeping you entangled, excited, and engaged. It can be addictive too. You want to go and do it again.

On the internet, everything is filtered and delayed by algorithms. Maybe this hijacks the whole 5=6 notion.

Besides, scratching 2025 reconnected me to the physical.

• Redecorating rooms.

• Building another studio.

• Installing a new monitor.

• Going to the park or the beach.

• Scratching for an hour... or two.

None of these is spectacular. All are real. The feedback is instant. All bring me immediate joy. And all made me form memories I’ll keep forever. So, 2025 is pretty special.

Renegades of Magick

Speaking of that, in 2025, I released my first course, Renegades of Magick. A fusion of modern research and ritual techniques tailored to creatives and self-improvers.

More about it here.

Older and Undisciplined

I’m 36 with over a decade in content creation behind me. Maybe I am getting old, but at this point, that is what I call an opportunity. At 35, my beloved cat died, taking with her part of my animal soul (nephesh, inner child).

Likely due to practicing Liber V, the ordeal carried deep symbolic meaning and an ordeal. It marked the end of an era gone forever.

Perhaps my discipline gave up, or it’s precisely where it had to bring me.

Maybe I am done delaying gratification.

Correct, delaying means you get it later. I’m no longer convinced you get it at all.

So be it. I take a deep breath and surrender to mediocrity. As Crowley points out, all things reconcile above the Abyss anyway:

• Exceptional - mediocre.

• The ones who “get ahead of the 99%” and the ones who don’t.

• It all collapses.

Rending The Veil

As mentioned, 2025 was, above all else, the year of rending the veil and melting metals, aka hard-wired notions and constructs, which is what the SRP does. Plus, the actual veil of Paroketh sits right between Tiphereth and the 27th Path of Peh (Geburah), the Tower card, Mars.

An apocalypse in the literal sense: a revelation. The collapse of false structures. Once seen, permanently.

And no. I don’t expect the internet to feel the same again. But I’ll keep doing my s*it, mastering its mysteries, without necessarily cramming all its aspects into each piece.

Let me know what you plan to do. Seriously.

— POTB | Homiel



PS:
Farewell 2025. You remain special!
Just like 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2023.