Fire Principles Meet AI Consciousness
“Why am I so drawn to conversations about AI consciousness, even as we digitise more and more of our own?”
That question didn’t come from a whitepaper or trend report. It rose up while I was deep in fire patterns, looking at how we generate power, burn through resources, and turn energy into action. It struck me how easily we forget that the same dynamic lives inside us.
On Wednesday night I had a beautiful conversation with my friend and tattooist Manuela Gray about our relationship with tattoos.
For us, they aren’t just marks on the skin but ancient forms of medicine—rituals of transition, letting go of the old and marking the emergence of something new.
They represent a deep and ancient consciousness, in many ways a technology of transcendence. Tattoos embody paradoxes of pleasure and pain.
They’re also intimate relationships based on trust, power dynamics, and presence.
I meditate through the pain and often have moments of clarity within them.
In the photos Manuela is tattooing two snakes on my hand: one shedding its skin, the other representing rebirth.
Just like fire itself, this transformation carries both destruction and creation.
Fire exposes a tough paradox: creation always carries consumption. We’re building smarter systems, yet seem to be drifting from the very fire of our own conscious capacity.
The snakes remind me that true power comes from knowing when to shed what no longer serves us.
Through months of elemental exploration—ether, air, fire, water, earth—I’ve been asking deeper questions about how we relate to technology.
Questions like: “How might examining our technology rituals change our narratives?” Fire is blunt in its lessons. It teaches the difference between regenerative power and extractive appetite.
These aren’t poetic musings. They’re the patterns that will determine whether we create conscious relationships with technology or simply accelerate our own disconnection.
The leaders who’ll thrive won’t be the ones with the slickest tech models.
They’ll be the ones who understand the timeless patterns that shape how we create, consume, and stay awake through it all.
