Horror, Transformation, and Your Worst Nightmare

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Nightmares scare the hell out of us. Blues chase the blues away. Fright ushers us into realms we’d never enter if it weren’t for life pressures and the intensity of the moment. Reading metaphysical horror does this all for us in one grand fell swoop. It takes us into nightmares, lands us in the blues, and pressures us with irresistible intensity.

Doing psychotherapy has its own path into transformation, so does everyday life leaned into fully and deeply, as will metaphysical horror if given a chance. My novel, The Unholy, is a fright for readers to pick up. More than one commented that they took to a dark corner of a hidden-away closet, turned on their kindle, and read and read till they finished. They had to do it. They had to get to the take-you-by-surprise ending—just like nightmares.

Then comes Goddess of the Wild Thing as it hits the noir streets of downtown Aztlan del Sur (Albuquerque, New Mexico) running. It’s a supernatural thrill ride into the black magic world of love gone bad, its allure, and the dark side of all things supernatural and mystic. Oh, there’s a light side. And, it’s there in Goddess of the Wild Thing, but, as with all good things, it takes its sweet, sweet time about coming to the fore with the oracular mystery that love is a wild thing!

When I spun out Goddess of the Everything: A Blood-Curdling Tale of the Affection of One Mother for Her Son and Her Son’s Struggle for Truth, Freedom, and Love, readers say it is a “wild, crazy, edge-of-your-seat ride!” I remember how the story haunted my nightmares. Significant life stories are what your nightmares are about. They’re signaling something that needs your urgent attention. This story, the writing, and publishing of it needed mine. So, when nightmares jettison forward into your world of sleep and dreaming, take heed. Listen, learn, and you’ll be changed – transformed. (Hint: Goddess of Everything will touch off nightmares, it’s a trigger, some have said, so don’t go there if you can’t. But if you can, read on and delve deep into your dreams and nightmares and then forever change and transform you.

Okay, let’s wrap up this nightmare diddy. The good thing with nightmares is that they end. I’ll come clean; sometimes they don’t. When patients in therapy report repeated nightmares, I tell them, “Well, there’s something we’re not getting. So, let’s listen a little more, learn a little deeper, and see how the dreams go.” We always see what we need to see if we stay with it. Just like reading a story, we see and learn what we need to see and learn if we stay with it. So, read on, live on, dream on. And know that metaphysical horror and nasty nightmares always birth good change, transformation if we stay with it.

Happy dreams and fantastic nightmares to you, one and all!

~ Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Creative Pulsations of Special Moments

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Challenging Pulsations in the Moment

This morning I came across William Blake’s words about the creative pulsations of special moments. When I write, there’s a pulse, an energy that moves from my core to fingertips to the page. Words happen, scenes roll out, and characters guide my heart and hands to tell their journey. In my recently released, Goddess of Everything, the supernaturally charged thriller charged out of my unconscious mind. Dreams and nightmares inspired the creation of characters and scenes.

On Amazon this morning, I read this: 5.0 out of 5 stars Goddess of Everything review: “Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read. Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2021, ~ “What an unexpected surprise this book was. Dr. DeBlassie has one of the most interesting ways of telling a story that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s almost like sitting around a campfire listening to urban legends. This dark thriller with some supernatural aspects was yet again an excellent example of this man’s talents. He took the normal good vs. evil to a whole new level with exceptional world-building and character development. Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read.”
Amazement grabbed me throughout the creative pulsations of moment after moment driving this story forward to publication. The book’s subtitle reads A Blood-Curdling Tale of One Mother’s Affection for Her Son and Her Son’s Struggle for Truth, Freedom, and Love. Shock, the creative pulse of challenging mother love, runs through this novel like adrenaline infusions. You don’t go up against what everyone wants to believe, says convention. People want to believe what people want to believe.
Risk It!
Goddess of Everything gets to the heart of love. When mother love is challenged, everything is turned topsy turvy. Creative pulsations are birthed from challenging norms. What mainstream accepts and says must be, then has to be accepted, or we risk disapproval and rejection. Risk it, I say! Risk living the creative pulsations of special moments when out-of-the-ordinary ways of seeing things and being come knocking at the door of your mind. Answer the door, listen, follow, and grow.
To risk growth is to be alive. There’s no living without risking. In Goddess of Everything, Gabriél is torn between love for mother and wife, Consuela. Devotion to a widowed mother turned religious Mother Superior clouds his mind. Consuela ushers in reality. She helps Gabriél discover nighttime blood sacrifices of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. He’s run from risking truth facing throughout his adulthood. Risk it, see what you need to see. Risk the read and grow!
Special Moment
The moment of reckoning comes in the story. Spirits, light and dark, teem through the nighttime desert as Gabriél faces off with wickedness hidden behind what was supposed to be good. At the very least, this is a special moment. They come. Maybe, like for Gabriél, they’re hard. We don’t want them. We want to go on not being challenged to see, to stretch, to grow. It’s easier that way. But it’s not. Special moments are risky and come for special reasons—risk and grow reasons.
Risk reading one of the most thrilling novels of your life. Open Goddess of Everything, plunge into a supernatural world of mother love turned upside down and inside out. It’ll cause you to rethink what love’s all about. It’ll cause you to rethink your life, relationships, where you’re at, where you’re going. Getting on with the creative pulsations of special moments, no matter the cost, equals risk equals growth.
Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Dreams, Spirits, and the Unconscious Mind

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Dreams and Beckoning Spirits

Each night we long to sleep, enter the restful realm where images swirl and spirits beckon. The images we see during dreams are spiritual. Perhaps we’ve always thought they were simple symbolic remnants from the day. They are not. Images are loaded with psychic energies depth psychologists call numinous.

The more attuned we become to the world of dreaming, its realities, and meaning, the more it will speak to us. The spirit world knows we are ready. Often crisis brings the ego to its knees, drops the scales off the eyes of dulled sightedness. Crisis propels us to turn within and listen to deep feeling states then to dreams. Once we have been humbled, suffered, the ego hangs its head, and the mind opens to dreams and spirits.

Life-Changing Energies

The unconscious mind is the repository of life-changing energies, spirits that positively touch our hearts or seek to possess us. There are those who delve into this inner world for power. Low-level spirits are associated with power grabs. As a visionary thrillers writer, I sensitize the reader to dark spirits, power grabs, and decisions.

Life is a matter of dreams, crisis, and conjured spirits. Choices determine outcomes. Ego centered decisions conjure low-level spirits in dreams as seducers, rushes of wild and purposeless energy, or a black and hopeless abyss. These are the lures of destructive spirits.

Mysterious Spirits

Visionary thrillers are an imaginative adventure. We are visionaries, dreams gifts, visions while sleeping. As humans, we are a mix of where we have come from and what we’ve done about it. It’s the doing about it, that visions of the night, dreams address. Life is a visionary thrill ride, and dreams point the way.

The unconscious world of spirits teeming with nighttime visions help you live out your story and make decisions that conjure spirits light and dark, scary, and mysterious.

So, let’s together explore the world of dreams, spirits, and the unconscious mind. As a depth psychologist of forty years, I’ll share insights and hard-won truths. Stories I have written and psychotherapy and life experiences will be woven into the articles. If you haven’t already, sign up today for my newsletter, and let’s begin this journey into mind, dreams, and spirits.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Destruction, Chaos, Surprises!

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2020 birthed a new metaphysical thriller—Goddess of Everything!

Synopsis:

In the mystic land of Aztlan del Norte, a realm of supernatural happenings and unexpected turns of fate, psychiatric healer Gabriél de LaTierra encounters appalling evil within the Orphanage of the Holy Innocents. Children disappear for reasons kept secret by Mother Juana de la Cruz, Superior of the Nunnery and the Orphanage.

Love for Mother Juana, Gabriél’s widowed mother turned religious superior, clouds her devoted son’s mind. Consuela, Gabriél’s wife, confronts his wall of denial. Torn between love for mother and wife, Gabriél turns inward.

It is Consuela who propels Gabriél’s discovery of the nighttime blood sacrifice of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. Gabriél is further enraged by Mother Juana’s vengeful attack on Consuela and her kidnapping of their four-year-old son, Cuauhtémoc. But his actions will determine whether Consuela and Cuauhtémoc live or die, and the fate of Mother Juana de la Cruz.

Goddess of Everything is a blood-curdling tale of the affection of one mother for her son and her son’s struggle for truth, freedom, and love.

Metaphysical Fiction Births Everyday Surprises

Reading stories about the unseen world sharpens our psychic senses. Goddess of Everything . We’re transported into realities behind day-to-day life. Spiritual dynamics operate behind the scene, whisper in our ear, tug at our heart, affect us for better or worse. If we pay heed, take care, and proceed carefully then inevitable surprises turn bad stuff into the stuff that refines us like iron shaped by the blacksmith.

Motherlove can be good or goes south when it’s devouring. Take a literary whirl into the dark side of one mother’s love and a son’s surprise at discovering the true identity of the Goddess of Everything. The story will forever change the way you see mothers, love, and decisions.

Be safe, be well during this time of worldwide crisis and remember . . .

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

 

 

 

 

How to Get it Together!

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Good Reading Helps

I couldn’t resist writing a How-to Article. It pops out of a piece I read in a high-brow online magazine about how-to books considered an embarrassing facet of the writing and publishing world. Oh . . . get real. All good reading helps us, it takes us into new thoughts, it inspires new ideas, it’s a way for us to get our life together.

My specialty has turned from books in inspirational psychology (starting thirty-five years ago) to essays in depth psychology and visionary fiction. There are no two ways around it. They, the essays and novels, are purposefully embedded with insights, life wisdom, culled from forty years of clinical experience, research, and painful living through life’s humdingers.

How-to Reads Help

How-to . . . is a literary voice, sometimes a whisper or flash, that makes a difference. We feel different after the words, sentence, paragraph, story. It changes the way we see a problem, feel about ourselves, relate to others. It’s a how-to that happens spontaneously and mysteriously.

We’re drawn to read what we read because something in us is hungry. I prefer stories oriented to consciousness and archetypal themes. They play out numinous dramas, the way the human psyche uses dreams, images, vital feeling states, and synchronicity to get through to us. The psyche is always at work helping us get it together.

Check out Soulful and Helpful Reads

I’ve been criticized (a couple of times – still stings) for not being more nuanced in my storytelling. Critics have said I should have left things understated, implied, maybe at the most slightly suggested. When we’re in crisis, the unconscious mind does not dawdle with nuance, far-off whispers, or subtleties. It speaks, shouts, if necessary. And, that’s how I write—good and evil squaring off, the crazies set loose, and then we see who survives and thrives.

So, shy not away from picking up the supernatural thriller you secretly want to read but have put off. Check into a work of soulful nonfiction and let the words seep in and nourish. It’s all about what books our innermost self is drawn to. It will speak the words we need to hear, it will feed our depths, it will help us get it together!

 

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

The God of Fire

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God is Charged

The word God stirs people, sometimes sets off explosive or loving feelings. It gets a reaction, either good, bad, or indifferent. In depth psychotherapy and writing, I help folks explore shock, trauma, and healing both emotionally and spiritually. Simply saying “God” is meaningful to different people in different ways, and that is to be respected.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American transcendentalist philosopher wrote in The Over-Soul, “How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence.”

A Fire in the Heart

My novel, The Unholy, generated quite a reaction among traditional religious people. Some posted angry reviews that I dared explore the dark side of religion. They were upset, some enraged. I meant no ill will. Metaphysical thrillers make us ponder and question religious matters, human feelings, and the meaning of life. Dramatic storytelling pops out the good and the bad. It sets a fire in the heart for matters authentic and sacred.

Goddess of the Wild Thing didn’t provoke the same outcry among hard-core religionists. The story is about complicated love, the dark side of religion not as upfront and center. However, this story is laced with religious trauma injuring the capacity to love. Traditional religion, the dark side of spirituality, has profoundly impacted relationships and life. The challenge for one woman is to find a way through her spiritual dilemma so that the potential for love can emerge.

My soon-to-be-released thriller, The Goddess of Everything, taps into compromised love – a heart divided. The power of the dark side of religion serves as a backdrop for conflict and hoped-for resolution. Husband and wife are nearly torn apart by the toxicity of a religious mother’s love gone bad.

The antidote, in all my stories, for religious wounding is fire in the heart. It is truth to self and to those who are themselves true. It is the experience of life, not perfect or without problems, but real and true and passionate. This is fire in the heart, this is God.

Visionary Fiction and the God of Fire 

In visionary fiction, novels of crisis and consciousness, fire sets each page ablaze. We’re challenged to let go of what no longer works for us, including dead ideas about religion and God. God, as Emerson addresses, is accessed only by shedding lifeless traditions and rhetoric. God isn’t in the dogma, tradition, or rhetoric. God is, in Emerson’s words, ” . . . the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth  to a new infinity on every side.” Step into infinity on every side, discover the God of Fire, as the imaginary realm of visionary fiction draws you in and nourishes your soul.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

 

 

When Life Gives You Lemons, Call the Alchemist

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Alchemical Books

We are all alchemists. In depth psychology and visionary books, alchemy is at work. Alchemist Awakening speaks to the amnesia within, sleepwalking through life until we psychically wake up. Everyday Enchantments lifts the veil from our eyes so we can see the magic in daily life. Daily alchemical magic transforms base, raw emotion into meaningful experiences. Love trauma in Goddess of the Wild Thing rips the mind apart and makes room for alchemy. The Unholy shocks us with religious horror then transports us into a realm of dreams and natural magic. Literally, everything that happens in life can transform us to the core.

Depth Therapy – Visionary Thrillers

When I do psychotherapy, write visionary thrillers, and live everyday life, I call on the alchemist within. This is a psychological dynamic that energizes experiences so daily happenings help and heal even as they can upfront hurt and sometimes shock.

We tend to this vitalizing force in the human psyche by raising our awareness. It’s a quiet and gentle knowing. Therapy assists patients in discovering this realm, reading ushers the attentive into imaginary states of mind, awareness then transforms dangerous and horrid experiences into meaning. That’s the luscious juice in the lemons life dishes out, the alchemical gold in the base metal of human suffering.

Alchemy and Unconscious Mind

When visionary writers write, they live out their characters and stories. Depth therapists have to descend into the unconscious mind and learn its ways before helping others make the inward descent and heal. Therapy is an alchemical awakening, and reading visionary fiction also wakens the alchemist within.

Awakening is a must lest we perish in a black hole of despair. We’ve all gone down the tube at one time or another. We’ve needed help. More times than I can count, I’ve opened a book randomly (to include novels) and found a paragraph that speaks to me. It’s uncanny, moving, and more than a wee bit mysterious. It’s the alchemist within spontaneously guiding us to awakening, however small or revolutionary.

Alchemy and Enlightenment

During the middle of my day in psychotherapy practice, I have lunch and read. Frequently, I turn to alchemical texts, let my eyes land where the text falls open. One noontime, the writing spoke to the therapist’s need to sit silently, act as a quiet container of practically unendurable pain until the patient sees for herself the meaning behind the crisis. Wisdom lies in not speaking what the patient cannot yet see or understand. They must, with the caring presence of a depth psychotherapist, feel all that must be explored and then and only then will the clouds part and enlightenment, perchance, dawn.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the first session of the afternoon ushered the patient and me into a realm of nearly unendurable trauma. Listening without rushing into words allowed her to go through a dark emotional tunnel and, fortunately, by session’s end gain insight. It was soulful enlightenment regarding heart-rending pain birthing tearful insights and a release of pent-up emotions. I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for the noontime reading that prepared me for the rough time ahead. It awakened the relational alchemist inherent in depth therapy and visionary/alchemical books

Reading Awakens Inner Alchemist

Visionary reading awakens the inner alchemist as we enter a dark emotional and spiritual tunnel through the challenges of the protagonist and the horrors of the antagonist. It’s a story like our story, the narrative that is our life replete with hopes and dreams gone south and turned sour. The inner alchemist awakens within our imagination as we delve into the feelings and the ensuing meaning of life experiences and visionary books.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

You Can’t Change Anyone But Yourself

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Thinking we can change someone is never a good idea. Even as a psychotherapist, it’s not my approach. I help people to further their understanding of self and other, then we wait and yield to the effects of therapeutic human understanding. We never know how it’s going to turn out; we only know that truth facing is medicine for the soul.

So, it’s the same when I write books. Stories can be medicine for the soul. Esoteric fiction moves us into powerful psychic realities, dynamics that shift the way we see ourselves and others. Stories are their own form of truth facing – medicine for the soul.

I remember that while writing The Unholy, my depth psychotherapy practice was overrun by patients seeking healing from religious trauma. They had suffered physical, emotional and often sexual trauma within a religious context. It was within church-going homes, respected religious institutions, and mediations ashrams that trauma abounded. As they healed, they desperately wanted to make the perpetrators change; but so often the families and organizations refused to see the problem. Thus, there was no hope for changing those in denial; but my patients, through their own journey into self-understanding, healed and changed.

My writing shifted during this time away from inspirational psychology and into visionary fiction. Here I told stories of emotional and spiritual upheaval. Trauma laced its way through action-packed dramas of religion gone bad and one person’s determined struggle to battle dark forces within and without. Within the narrative, as in our daily life, things vacillated between hope and despair. The imagination takes us into realms of visions, dreams, and everyday magic in a way that inspirational psychology approaches but, for me, did not bring home.

Stories take us headlong into what we’re grappling with in our own lives. Unconsciously, we’re always drawn to read the story that will speak most to us at a given time. The writing of Goddess of the Wild Thing bolted out of me as patients moved into issues of what it means to find love. It doesn’t go the same way for everybody. You can’t pin it down. Love is a wild goddess. The image of the wild goddess came to me in a dream one night. It was to be the title for this particular book that depicts an age-old struggle about love—whether bad love is better than no love— and the discovery that love is a wild thing.

So when it comes to changing someone, don’t do it. It’s the message of lives nearly lost and then regained. We can lose ourselves by giving more and more to someone who does not see or want to see that there is a problem. Whether in religion, love, or day-to-day work and relationships it’s the getting on with things as they are that matters. Of course, that doesn’t imply sticking with what’s bad or dysfunctional. There are mean and malignant people. They are the ones who, in small ways or big strikes, undermine our sense of worth and integrity. Actually, they seem to get a kick out of it. Oh, they might say they’re sorry, but they’ll come around and do it again. There’s a payoff for them in the form of power and control. We need to shake loose of them and move on.

In story writing, it’s utterly fascinating to experience the characters speaking to me, the writer, of their plight. Maybe (they wonder) they made up the bad thing that happened. Maybe they blew it out of proportion. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So many maybes signal upside down thinking and one unhappy soul setting themselves up for another you-know-what.

So, when we read we can go through things on the page that helps us with everyday things. That way we’re less likely to set ourselves up for another you-know-what situation. We can avoid unnecessary life pain and trauma through an understanding of self and others. Reading opens up soul paths for change because, after all, you can’t change anyone but yourself.

#visionaryfiction #depthpsychology #soulmedicine #change

Falling in Love with Soul

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Ahhh…to fall deeply in love with soul—not many have considered it. So few have discovered it. It remains a central need for us. We so easily become soulless, lose soul. There’s tiredness that won’t go away. There’s a vague sense of unhappiness lurking like a shadow. There’s that quality to life that it’s not wholly satisfying. These are symptoms of soul loss.

I’m preparing for vacation with Kate. We’re off to a secret place of new sites, smells, tastes, time together. We dwell on the past year, what’s new that we’re seeing in the places we visit. It’s a time of reflection, absorbing, and experiencing. Most of all, it’s a time of being together.

Doing depth psychotherapy and writing every day is consuming. Your work-a-day life is consuming. Life takes a lot. And, life can give a lot. But, soul is required. If we’re moving too fast, having lost enjoyment because of the speed at which we live, then there’s soul loss. We’ve fallen out of love with soul.

When I write, and when I do psychotherapy, I love what I do. When I prepare for vacation, I love the anticipation and the getting there. And, once I’m in the doing of what I’m doing, there can be utter joy. That is soul. That is falling in love with soul and a soulful life.

The visionary fiction I write dramatizes soul. There are people who’ve lost it or come close to losing it. They feel crazy or on the verge of crazy. When we get to the edge of sanity, we teeter and totter. Oh, it’s a very scary time. Sometimes the teetering goes on and on. We feel ill inside, lost and empty. Physical sickness strikes. Mental anguish bears down and won’t let up. The characters in my stories struggle with what it means to be a woman or a man living with pain from the past and abusive people in the present. What do you do? You can’t run from the past forever. You can’t pretend the toxic people in your life now aren’t as bad as they seem. They are. And the truth of what they are and how you play into what they do has to be faced. This is a visionary story—intense, loaded with choices that make the difference between soul and soullessness.

I do therapy and write and live from what I know and have gone through. If I didn’t my patients and readers would feel it. Instead, I’ve been told that what I’ve offered makes sense and helps hurting souls. I’m glad for that. The past week doing therapy has been tough, and I’ve given it my all. The past year nurturing two books in visionary fiction with another on the way has been hard work. I’ve given everything workwise my all. Even more importantly, I’ve given my personal life my all. At least, I believe and hope that I have. There’s been a lot of going through rough times and coming out the other end mentally and spiritually more clear and with sharpened consciousness. Doing therapy and doing writing, living as authentically as I can in my marriage and with my family, has been my priority.

Take some time this summer to make falling in love with soul your priority. You and I can do it by slowing our roll and taking in the joy of being with those we love. We can do it by slowing our roll and reading what nourishes us. Read with deliberation, care, letting the words and meaning of the story settle in like a good meal. On vacation, I like to slow our roll, not move fast and furious. I’m taking a beautiful visionary book, Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo. It’s a classic in the genre of magical realism. Acclaimed as a masterpiece of the surreal, it’s a story of one man’s quest for heritage and soul. Tormented spirits share secrets from the past.

I’m going to take my time with this read. I’m going to take my time with my wife, Kate, the sites we see, the moments lingering together. Falling in love with soul, for me, always means falling in love all over again with so much. What is right before me and with me every day comes once again to light. I realize how scary it is to lose sight of life and soul by living so fast and in such a demanding way. So, let’s take time together, live a little slower, read a little slower, and fall in love with soul.

Top 10 Tips for Writers

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Top Ten Ideas List for Writers with Books on Fire Tours pops out some inspiration for those in the literary craft. When writers hit a wall, there’s hope. Here’s a few of the insights that work for me. Give them a try and see what speaks to you.

  1. Really evil characters make the world a better place!
  2. Really evil characters teach us mind numbing, transformative lessons!
  3. Really evil characters lay the groundwork for what’s good around the corner!
  4. When the good characters meet up with the bad ones, their light shine bright!
  5. Really good characters have flaws that make them stronger if they let them!
  6. Really good characters exist in life, story, and always take you by surprise!
  7. Bad and good keep life going and us growing!
  8. Good and bad are the yin and yang of effective story telling!
  9. Don’t stay good, don’t stay bad, stay both and you got a thriller!
  10. Once you’re done with the book, you’re done, and that’s fantastic!