What Have I Forgotten?: Musings, Magic, and Music

By Valentina Osinski and Angus McMahan

From the first magical moment in a tiny bookstore in Northern California when Nymphya stumbles upon Dion Fortune's classic The Mystical Qabalah, to Nymphya's recording studio inspirations from the legendary Kate Bush, you are given a secret glimpse into the fascinating worlds where music and mysticism meet. 

With charming

• Language: English
• Publisher: WooHooYa Publishing
• Release date: Jul 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088203811

Valentina Osinski

Singer/songwriter/multi instrumentalist NYMPHYA is a Cinematic Art Pop artist who creates modern music for the ancient and mystical in you.She has garnered an international following for her alchemical Art pop music, which is a collage of eclectic textures, world beats and soaring vocals with mystical lyrics. "More of an immersion than a listening session" wrote Marc Farr of Rock and Roll Infinity. It's music that reminds you of the otherworld, the mystery, and the magical currents that flow throughout, covering territories of mysticism, magic, and the transpersonal.Prior to launching NYMPHYA, Valentina appeared throughout the United States as an opera singer (NYCO and SF Opera), actor (Magic Theater), performer and musician, guesting on numerous soundtracks for television, film and commercials (Time/Life Warner, IMAX, and Garfield), on multiple CD projects for recording artists, (Sky Cafe and Royal Fingerbowl) backing up John Cale (The Velvet Underground) on the Tonight Show, appearing on MTV with her group Screaming Divas, and opening for Todd Rundgren at the Fillmore in San Francisco, for George Benson at Villa Montalvo, and Dana Carvey at the Shoreline Ampitheatre.NYMPHYA has released four albums, her most recent, WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN? as a full 360 immersion experience that explores not only the unusual sonic juxtapositions of NYMPHYA'S Progressive Art Pop music, but also how each song relates to the ancient practice of spiritual alchemy. The companion book by the same name is available in hardback print or as an ebook.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

et me tell you a story.

In February of 2006 I started to notice, bit by bit, a tiny tug of an urging; an arcane inkling that began to well up from somewhere deep, deep down in my uncharted territory. It came very quietly but persistently, and grew into a daily prompt for me to take a deep dive into some unseen world that was calling to me, and at that time one I could only imagine existed. A calling to undertake an Indiana Jones-like relic hunt where I needed to uncover some sort of Truth that was aching to burst through from underneath the surface of, well, everything.

Now, mind you, this wasn’t the first time I’d had these little tugs pulling me in some new direction. I’d had them multiple times before in my life, and, actually, now that I think about it, each time I finally gave in, they ended up being the harbinger of a huge divergence in my path.

Well, this tug proved to be no different.

This tug ended up being the beginning of such an extraordinary junket of discovery, loss and creation that it led right up to this moment with you holding this book in your hands. It tugged me to wander into Open Secrets bookstore on a Wednesday afternoon in San Rafael, California to pick up, leaf through, purchase and inhale a quite different book, Dion Fortune’s masterpiece, The Mystical Qabala. This triggered an avalanche of subsequent occult books by Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki and hordes of other practitioners of what I soon discovered was called the Ancient Mystery School.

As I devoured their words and practiced the magical exercises all alone in my little bungalow in Mill Valley, California, my fiancé, New Orleans music producer Keith Keller, soon started telling me that he noticed something shifting in me. That my already highly sensitive nature was becoming ultra super sensitive.

And then just seven short months later in September of that very same year I had what can only be described as a psychic experience of a vision, an inner voice and a powerful knowing that my most beloved Keith was soon leaving this mortal life.

The next day when the phone call came from his sister, who said to me in an unsteady voice: Where are you? Are you sitting down? I knew seconds before my heart fell to the ground and shattered that he was gone. He had died that morning in his chair at home. His heart had stopped.

I very quickly realized that my little, arcane tug in February to start studying these ancient practices was in actuality my own quiet, inner guidance preparing me for this life-changing and soul-fracturing loss.

I dove into more studies and more practice. At this point, they were my survival. All I really wanted was to no longer be here, but rather, be there, wherever there was, and join Keith on the other side.

Five months and six days into my grief, I spent a gray, Winter afternoon trying to meditate myself into peace. Instead, as I noted in my journal:

In my wisdom place three days ago, in meditation, there was a quiet and steady sense of You need to change your identity in order to get through this. You need to let go and move into your new self."

Yesterday, in my deep despair, I tried to meditate with not much success. I fell asleep, and I dreamed that I was in a pool of water in the rain. (It was raining as I slept.) In my dream, I felt my feet electrify - as if my two feet chakras exploded open; it was painful. I realized that I was getting electrocuted, and that it was the time for my death. I released into it entirely, although scared, happy to have found a way to join Keith. I started falling down in the water, but was completely dismayed when I awoke, still alive, a little shocked, and with sore feet."

But in that awakening, I knew that my transformation, my death and rebirth, had begun.

A few years later, after sweeping up all the broken bits of myself and gluing them back together, I emerged with an entirely new perspective on the nature of my life and, in truth, of all Life surrounding me.

As a musician, I slowly transitioned away from my career as an Opera singer and plunged headfirst into what I had always wanted to do in the first place from the time I was a little girl: be a singer/songwriter recording artist.

Thus, Nymphya was born.

Nymphya; inspired by the Greek nature spirits of the beautiful and playful divinities, the Nymphs. And in my case, specifically, a Dryad or Wood Nymph (which Keith lovingly used to call me).

My first album, DREAM DANCE, released in 2017, ultimately became a heroine’s journey of loss and redemption, as I told the story through music of what I had experienced; and in effect, created an even deeper healing for me. I will never forget the day I realized that I had inadvertently created this throughline. It felt like a lightning bolt rushing through me with the recognition. I believe now looking back that it was operating beneath my consciousness, (as these things have a way of doing) and that it erupted precisely that way simply because it needed to.

The idea for my second album, NAKED KATE, a stripped-down, all acoustic anthology of Kate Bush music, was given to me in one complete revelation early in 2019 in another vision accompanied by an inner voice; this time thankfully not so devastating. By now I had rebuilt my life with a new home, a new love, and our fur child, Pokey the wondrous cat. Rather than being the deeply personal and healing journey that DREAM DANCE was, this one was a transformative learning experience. And an homage to my greatest musical influence. I realize now in retrospect that making this album was akin to having Kate Bush as my personal tutor, because of the thorough immersion I had to take into her music in order to bring it alive. The effect this had on my songwriting is palpable; and now I understand why I was given the directive to do it.

And now, my third full album, WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN?, is a reflection on all these parts of my more integrated self. In actuality, it really is a reflection of all of ourselves, and of the aspects we may have abandoned along our crooked paths to get to here. A soul retrieval of sorts. A rescue and recovery, so that we can be whole. A wholeness which is the desired outcome of what is known as The Great Work, a primary goal of the Ancient Mystery Schools.

There are two things in this life that we can learn to master: the outer world and our inner world. What I have learned so far is, the more mastery we have of our inner world, the more likely we will be able to master our outer world, and our lives. And the more we can contribute. That is what the Ancient Mysteries strive to engender: mastery and understanding of the recesses of our minds and hearts and spirits, to shine light on the darkness, and illuminate what was once mysterious, so that we may be sovereign rather than serf.

Joseph Campbell once said if we cross the threshold but are not ready, gods will appear as devils. This is my motivating factor behind my own Great Work; so that I can be ready to face what will come with ease and grace, as one of my teachers often reminded me.

So, I guess now is as good a time as any to say: I have a secret to tell you.

Each time, before I sit down to start writing a lyric, or a musical phrase, or before I hit the record button to cast the sounds into form, I perform a magical ritual to connect myself to myself, my inner guides, my Muses, and any other benevolent being that might be hanging around to help bring forth what needs to come forth. It usually takes no more than 5 minutes, and entails the use of my favorite magical incense from the supremely atmospheric Sword and Rose shop in San Francisco, incantations, and circling through my studio to create a bubble of clear intention and inspired purpose.

While repeatedly invoking this bubble throughout the making of WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN? an interesting thing happened. Even though I used this very method to prepare myself for every single NAKED KATE recording session, things were different for WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN? I soon noticed pretty early on that each song I wrote for it ended up being about a spiritual principle that I had learned from my studies of the Ancient Mysteries; with each one a unique relic that had just been excavated.

And so with any good relic hunt, I believe it’s also advisable to have a good map.

This book is that map. A guide through those magical principles that are woven into each song on WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN? Because there is more to unpack from the distillation of these principles than I can cast in song and rhyme.

But here’s where it gets interesting. After I realized I had written a bunch of occult songs, I began ordering the material for the album. When you sequence an album, you want to create an experience for the listener that carries them through from the beginning to the end, shows off each song at its best, has variety, tension and release, some drama, and keeps the listener’s interest flowing. It’s an iterative and fun process; almost like putting together a set list for a live show.

After trying out multiple sequences and taking them for a spin (literally; I took each version out for a drive only to keep changing it until I got it right) I was finally able to sit back in satisfaction and look over the winning sequence.

And that’s when I had an absolutely shocking revelation: The individual themes of this set of sequenced songs represented each phase of what is known in the Ancient Mysteries as Spiritual Alchemy.

Not only that, but the songs were in the exact order of the Spiritual Alchemical journey.

And then I had the next (maybe even more) shocking revelation: I need to write a book to explain all of this.

So here we are. For better or for worse.

OK, so what is Spiritual Alchemy?

Well, here is where it starts to get really interesting.

Spiritual Alchemy is an ancient practice based on what is known as The Emerald Tablet, an even more ancient tablet of green precious stone covered in bas-relief verses which many philosophers declare holds the sum of all knowledge. It is a philosophy that transcends dogma and in the ancient world was practiced by the Chinese, Egyptians, Indians, Greeks and Arabs before it made its way to Europe.

No one alive today has seen the tablet, for it has disappeared, but there are many, many accounts and records and translations of it that survive.

It is believed that the tablet was discovered by Alexander the Great in Hermes’ tomb in Egypt in 331 BC. It was originally written in ancient Phoenician, so Alexander assigned priests and scholars to translate it into Greek. Construction of the great libraries of Alexandria then began in order to house all of the Hermetic texts he had uncovered, the majority of which were destroyed by the Christian mobs in 391 AD.

Where the tablet is now, or if it still exists, is a mystery. As is the precise date of its origination, or who created it. However, it remains the foundational document of thousands of years of esoteric insight and study.

Fast forward 2300 years to now and this book.

It was born from a need to deepen your experience of the lyrics and the music of WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN?, to bring you in touch with the unseen worlds that were the foundations for each song, and to distill the years of study and practice that are steeped within the staves. I created this in the hope that you may find an opening or an inkling within yourself, your own relics, that will give your own precious life more meaning and depth and freedom.

For it is an immutable part