The enigmatic white rabbit from Alice (the one from Wonderland, remember?), when it appears, takes the watch from the pocket of its elegant blue coat and is startled to realize that “it’s late".

He runs out and slips down a dark, unknown hole that leads who knows where.

Alice follows him no less breathless, like someone diving into an icy river in the middle of winter, all at once and without much thought.

There begins one of the most intriguing and lysergic adventures in the history of world literature, which has inspired so many people across different eras.

Beyond the fantastic Wonderland, with its allegories and (almost) innocent discoveries, I have always associated this story with a "journey" to the center of oneself, an unconscious search for a true self and a courageous battle for the dismantling of the false self.

So many are the dangers, battles, and adventures that the girl Alice experiences on this journey that I believe she explores the various unknown layers of her inner world, coming into direct contact with her most delightful qualities, her most devastating "flaws", confronting fears and recognizing potentials to be explored, killing consolidated beliefs and questioning whether she is herself or what they have forged about her.

Perhaps it is by making this association of Alice's adventurous inner journey with a trip to the center of herself that I assimilated how fascinating and terrifying this psychedelic narrative is.

Just as I believe every true process of self-knowledge is.

Rabbits don't talk and don't wear watches, but they serve as a metaphor for the provocation of looking inwards. We know we need to, and therefore it's time, but we are always late for this task because it is frightening and insecure. Taking on the task of self-knowledge makes us too human in a world where we are taught to behave like demigods.

Eastern cultures see the rabbit as a symbol of fertility; could this be the subliminal intention of Lewis Carroll's novel, that is, did he want through this image to remind us how fertile we are even in our ability to create mechanisms of escape from ourselves WITHIN ourselves?

In any case, our view of things is much more a reflection of our ability to distort reality to fit our needs planted by society, whether legitimate or not, and this is also provocative.

We are all a bit like Alice's rabbit, being unconsciously provoked to delve into our inner reality.

And let's face it, to balance the late rabbit's painful dive, as a bonus for those who dare to slide into the unknown, we have a mad hatter rescued from the depths of the soul where he was kept under lock and key by prevailing social morality, waiting to break with the provincial relationships and certainties and the Manichean delusions that were planted in us and which we still cultivate to feel "belonging" to the theater of good personas. Or not?

I wish that the soul of your Easter be as enigmatic and unsettling as Alice's "white rabbit" and drag you into a deep, yet safe, fun, and most importantly, liberating internal dive, considering that the Christian meaning of this date is rebirth as a gift granted to those who purge human ailments, which they call sins of the flesh.

And the only possible destination of a journey to the center of oneself is rebirth. Not exactly of those spoken of by the dogmas of hegemonic religiosity, but undoubtedly, of those spoken of by the greatest and most urgent exercise of practical spirituality.

Happy Easter! Go Alice!

Joice Berth (text written in 2020 and edited now, during Holy Week 2026.)