Jason Louv

26:22I was just like, okay, that's such a service to the world, you know, but I think in terms of magic specifically because kids grew up with the idea that that's possible. Is that good? I don't know because I think we need a lot more rationality and this culture too. Things are definitely getting a little sliding sideways at the moment. Says the magician. Yeah, no, no, no, no, I'll be the first peep person to say like you don't want lots of guys like me. You want like one is hopefully funny, you know, I can kind of like keep the car grills on a little bit, you know, maybe a few, but like you don't need them.

26:57You guys like me, you need scientists, you need STEM people, you need Carl Sagan, you know, so I'm happy to be this guy. But yeah, I'm all for critical thinking logic and the scientific method. But also I'm for all of that applied to magic. You mentioned astrology and although I'm not big into astrology, you know, when a curly students made the point that from alchemy, we got chemistry from astrology, we got astronomy. Okay, well, what science might we get if we study the pure mechanisms of magic itself of the mind and how the mind can be trained to focus on creating experiences or accessing deep states of creative inspiration or spiritual oneness or healing.

27:45These things are all not just possible, but easily doable with the right techniques. I mean, you know, it was a meditator, right? There are yoga techniques that have been around for thousands of years that are better than drugs. You know, it's not just that the people turn to them to get away from drugs. It's that they're better than drugs. Based on that, do we know that astronomy is superior to astrology? Do we know that chemistry is superior to alchemy? I suppose it depends on the use case. Yeah, certainly for interacting with the physical world. Yeah, I think so. But we live in a culture that's been through the post -nature moment and been through the scientific revolution.

28:24And I think that I would hope that now we can kind of go back and look at some of these things that we dropped along the wayside. It's like Freud when he was getting psychiatry out into the world, intentionally left out anything that looked like the occult or mysticism or anything like that because you wanted it to be accepted. And the early scientists did the same thing. They're like, we are not talking about alchemy or not talking about astrology and none of this stuff. And those were probably the right decisions. But maybe we left something behind along the way. And I think at the very least, magic is, I mean, you can almost look at it as a science of creativity.

29:02It's a set of techniques for tapping into specific states of consciousness in a very, very precise and refined way, almost like computer code that you can't imagine. But I really do just taking much from this or whatever. Who was John D? John D was the original 007. He was the guy that created the British intelligence services and his number and then was 007. He was Queen Elizabeth the first court advisor. And he's responsible for more aspects of the modern world than I was prepared to realize. Obviously, he's very famous in the occult world because he spent a couple decades actually attempting to contact angels.

29:50And apparently succeeding from all cases, there's hundreds of pages of records of his conversations with angels. But he's also responsible for giving us the idea of the British Empire, which he said an angel gave to him, an angel told him there should be a British empire in Queen Elizabeth the first to be a world monarch. He's also responsible for advances in optics that made it possible for Britain to build a Navy that led to conquering the planet. What else? He introduced geometry to the public by the English speaking public for the first time by introducing Euclid's elements in its first published edition.

30:26And he basically laid the foundation for modern science. He had this center called Mort Lake, which is in the suburbs of West London, where it was like this academy for all of England where all of the scientific leading lights would be there like Tyco, Bray and all of these people. And what years was he met 1500s? He had the biggest library in England in the world, possibly at that time. He was most likely the smartest person in Europe. And he created this environment where he was able to foster and nurture all of these people who became the scientific revolution. It was still prior to the scientific revolution happening.

31:03So it was kind of this moment where like this exciting moment where all these intellectually adventurous people were together early scientists along with what would be the equivalent of I don't know like angel investors now the startups of those days were navel instead of internet. But it was the same type of thing where modern science emerged from, but it was still like mixed up with the occult because there's those two things that not separated yet. So it's like this moment in history, unusual that he was into the occult was at the norm then. It was unusual for someone of his stature. It was widespread in the culture, but it would kind of be like the equivalent of I don't know like an NSA consultant deciding to your own.

31:47So you know start going to Burning Man and spend 10 years doing psychedelics and going off the deep end and be somewhat similar. So it's like those things are very popular. But for somebody, his standing it was considered, I mean basically ended his career. And he was kind of shuffled off to the side. It was it was considered that he kind of gone off the deep end. But with a psychic named Edward Kelly, he spent 10, 20 years doing practically daily occult rituals to talk to these angels that more or less outlined the plan for what would become the next 500 years at least of Western history in terms of the creation of America, the uniting of the world under what they wanted was a new super religion to unite all the religions, which is slowly kind of happening, I think on its own without a human being doing it.

32:38You see that here in California, there's practically a California religion kind of that's emerged that people kind of like be grateful energy that type of thing, you know, it's the new age, the new age. Yeah, but it's kind of spontaneously emerged from people's exploration. So he for me is the high water, certainly a high watermark of magic and it's this fascinating crossroads time in history where there wasn't any difference. It was magic science imperialism, the Shakespeare, this incredible psychedelic outflowing of culture that was probably akin to the 60s. It's the last time in Western history where magic was still taken seriously by scientific authorities.

33:19So in terms of, you know, it's kind of like as a person in 2024 trying to assess this material for the modern world, it's kind of like, well, the last time it was scientifically studied was like the 1500s. So this is kind of where we have to work back from. How did you research the book? I spent four years, I rented an office, I basically, well, I spent three years, 40 hours a week reading every single thing that had ever been written and writing. And I went all over to academic records in California and England. So it was a full time pursuit and how I was able to do that, I'm still not sure because you know, somehow I was able to stay a foot financially while I was doing that.

33:58Yeah, it was, it was my full time job for three years and then a full time job for a year marketing it. So, but what I wanted to do with that book is do the definitive book on what Western magic actually is. So it says, John D, but it's fun, historical standpoint and not a reconstructionist or wishful standpoint.

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35:52At what point in your study did you decide this is something I want to share? I was supposed to just practice. It's kind of funny. I had real beginners luck in my career where just like everything seemed, it's like I felt like every door opened for me as soon as, and then that went away later. But at the beginning, I went to the junior in college and I went to work for a company called This Information, which was somewhat conspiracy publisher at that time, but they put out a bunch of a call material like one called the Book of Lies and things like that. So it was in Chelsea in New York. It was extremely at that point.

36:34It had a ton of buzz behind it. Publisher that was doing a call and conspiracy stuff. I went and basically just asked for an internship at the game, because I was writing for them. So I had an internship and then the publisher of the company immediately said, you know, ask me if you ever want to pitch a book. So I thought about that. And then so what I came back with was my first book was called Generation Hex and I decided to pitch magic as a new youth culture. Like this is going to be the next big youth culture, right? Essentially as a magical act. It turned out I was right just a little ahead of time because now there's witch talk and all of these things and witch house and all of that.

37:14But I think it was because of that. It's because I had a chance to pitch a book and that was what I went to. And now I'm forever this person. And I had a chance to, I could have done a pen, like a fake name. But I decided to do it under my real name because I felt if I believed it, I should be willing to stand by it. And also to burn my bridge, there's no way I can possibly go back to a normal life now. And I spent the rest of my 20s trying. I was like, what have I done to myself? I went to try to work in advertising and corporate and all this stuff. It's like nothing worked until I went back to magic.

37:50So that's kind of why. But in terms of why I wanted to share it with people. Well, I mean, I suppose it's like when you get into anything and it's like really exciting you want to share it with people. So probably right away. Tell me what does it look like? I've never been to magic .me. Okay. It's basically Netflix for learning magic. You know, it's streaming video. So you go and it's it's courses with the and other teachers. We have a lot of my way to get is probably the best. He's in my opinion the best writer on terror in the world. Mickey Pellarano teaches astrology. So we do have astrology.

38:21But it's it's kind of like you go and it's a streaming site. So you're watching courses and we have courses on basically all these topics for medicine, chaos magic, master projection, terror, each and all super fun stuff. It's for anyone and it should be for anyone. And one of the things that I've learned is that everyone is interested. Because everyone wants particularly now to feel empowered. Because there's a lot a lot of people don't feel any power whatsoever now, particularly after, you know, during COVID people felt very powerless, I think. And there's a lot of uncertainty. And so it's very reassuring in terms of social turmoil on unrest to realize that there actually are stable kind of, I don't want to say laws, but there are stable structures to the universe where like for instance, if you are grateful, your life will be better.

39:15So, but thank you. I'm trying to modernize it. I mean, I'm working on it. We try to incorporate or I try to incorporate as much modern technology as possible. So now for instance, there's brain sensing headbands, right? They can actually give you analytics on your meditation. There's like wearables, right? We can have brain waves. Yeah, so it's like, that's never been possible ever in history. I mean, they didn't have that in the caves in India and to veterans. I'm like, that's awesome. Why wouldn't we take advantage of that? So I have students use that. We've tried to do like rituals, group rituals and virtual reality.

39:47And they worked. And instead of me guiding or forcing something. I just said, okay, well, let's see what what emerges and what's going to happen. And this guy started doing this whole Hindu fire ritual. And it was very profound and everyone felt that this is again, in virtual reality with little like Sims type cartoon figures. And you could feel the spiritual peace emanating off of it. And at the end of it, he said, I don't know where that came from. I work in it. I mean, Indian, but I work in it and I've never been interested in Hinduism ever. And this is like something my ancestors did. And it just came out in this like like goofy like virtual reality session.

40:27You know, we have all this modern technology that is literally magic. So for me, like the idea of combining modern technology with the internal technology of consciousness change. I think that is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you think there's a relationship between magic and technology? Yeah, absolutely. Well, like think about it. You go back, like I always say this to people. You go back and you look at these magic books, all these cremores and stuff like that. They're super cool and bi -be and all of that. But you look at the clinical power of their promising people. And it seems really fantastical to say, okay, well, you can teleport yourself.

41:11Well, you know me and flew me from Austin to Malibu, you know, so that's pretty good. I mean, I literally woke up yesterday in Austin and now I'm here. So, you know, like the crystal ball speaking with people on the outside. Well, you got a zoom, right? You know, it's like having things brought to you. You got Amazon delivery, magic carpet. You got Uber. You know, it's like, so we already have magic powers. We already are as gods as Doberman said. It's like we already have the power of gods. The question is, what do we do with it? And clearly, that's what people are struggling with right now. It's kind of like, you know, we're basically trying to deal with the consequences of social media.

41:48And now we're going to have to deal with AI. So now we're in a world where AI, where there are gods. Okay, there's a god called chat GPT that everybody's interacting with. It appears in more intelligent than humans, which isn't actually not. But in experientially in a lived way it is. Right? So we already live in a world of gods and monsters. And we live in a world in which there aren't really any ethical frameworks or constraints really for people. It's really easy to criticize people for being one way or the other. But then when you realize that people don't really have systems, like let's say that there's actually a system for becoming fully human, right?

42:30Developing yourself into a full, full rounded human being. But you didn't have to pay to access, you know, would you have to go to school for it? You could get on the internet. That's the type of stuff that people need right now. It's not quote unquote power that people need. Although they need to be reminded of the power they have over their own lives. It's, I think, structure on there. So that they can access it. Yeah. And so that they can understand this world because it's like no, but it's like nobody understands how to deal with AI. Just take that as an example. Are you wary of AI? I'm really excited about it actually.

43:07I think we're going into age where, you know, in the same way that sampling and, you know, like home recording and then things like, you know, let alone what people have now, like logic and able to and things like that, like opened up democratized access to me. It's like things like mid -journey and GPT. Like I've been going to conferences where people are talking about it's now possible for one person to make a feature film using AI in their bedroom. It might take a year, but they can do it. Takes more than a year without AI with a big crew and millions of dollars. Yeah. So it's kind of like what, what is that going to unleash when, when the world's creativity is unleashing?

43:52I mean, it's like, you know, the old blue read thing and out between thought and expression is a lifetime. Well, now it's like one GPT or mid -journey prompt. You know, like I was sitting there, I use it, you know, I'm writing. I bounce ideas back and forth as a creative partner. Tell me about that. I've never used it. Oh, really? Yeah, tell me what that's like. It's like having a creative partner. It's like, hey, like how do I solve this problem? What do you think about this? And sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not. But like when I'm writing, I'll also use that to essentially as a more efficient Google for research.

44:26And if I have a talk to it, or do you type? I suppose I could, but mostly typing. So I'll be writing. If I'm writing, like I'll be all used mid -journey to generate images of the world I'm imagining. So I can be literally seeing it and going there, you know, there'll be AI for literally everything. And so that's really frightening, obviously, for a lot of reasons, because everything is going to change. But I don't think that it's going to be the end of the world. And I've started calling it augmented intelligence instead of artificial intelligence. Is it got, I think, approaching it like that?

44:57Like you remember the movie Aliens? I never saw it. Okay, so there's a part where they hear, I'll get into this power loader kind of next suit. I kind of see AI as that. It's like a robot suit to get into that extend your capabilities. It's allowed me to do things faster and finish projects faster than I ever could before. It's allowed me the amount that I can do as essentially a solo entrepreneur has become vastly more fairly cheaply. So I think that AI will kind of can. It has the possibility to blow up the world's creativity and learning, because people will just be able to do things quicker.

45:35When you say blow it up, I mean, making it bigger. No, we should specify it. Yeah, yeah. I find it was like, if I'm working on something and there's like that last 5 % or 10%, where I'm trying to figure something out, but it feels physically painful to get to like my brains out of juice somehow. That's what AI is really good for. I think solving those little things, it's not going to replace creativity, it's not going to replace coding even. But it's going to change our society in ways that nobody obviously nobody can predict. Tell me some specific stories about John D. Okay. I mean, you basically have the equivalent of an underpaid government consultant teaming up with a very, very, like the equivalent of an unstable telephone psychic.

46:27And hanging out in a dark room for 10 years, probably taking psychedelics, I would guess, because they were of it, you know, that stuff grew wild in England. And doing rituals to contact angels. And the stuff that came out of those sessions is so bizarre. It's not what you would explain. Are there records of all of it? Oh, yeah. Like, like stacks of hundreds and hundreds of pages they wrote down. Half of it was burned, unfortunately, but the part that wasn't, we still have. Purposely or mistakenly? Purposely at one point. So the agent, Catholic agents didn't get it when they were in Prague. So they wouldn't be killed.

47:06And I think at one point they buried a bunch of them. They bury it similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls. They buried a bunch of the records in the backyard. And a servant found that maturgy was dead. Didn't know what they were and started burning them as fire as firewood until somebody stopped that, stopped this person. So a lot of it was destroyed. But the stuff that came out of there is so bizarre. I mean, let's say you think, oh, they're talking angels. It's wings and things like that. I mean, no, at one point they meet God and God is a gigantic humpback whale covered with eyes. I was like, I'll go with that.

47:41That sounds about right, actually. Things like that. I mean, they're seeing angels with, you know, they're towering with legs that are pillars of brass. And, you know, the angels really put them through the ringer. They initiated them into the system and then they said, okay, now you have to literally go. To Prague to tell the Holy Roman Emperor. That he needs to answer to a world religion with the angels at the head of it and employ you as the people in charge of instituting it. That didn't go over very well, but they were the alabanting across Europe trying to sell that idea. In the process, probably found us at the framework for what became Rose accrucianism for what became Freemasonry, which is what became science.

48:27But yeah, that book is chock full of things like that. I think about that whale thing a lot. That book is chock full of the most bizarre psychedelics. And it's like psychedelic, not like grateful, but psychedelic like psychedelic like you've like scraped some moss up a dungeon floor in medieval England and and and you're still tripping after seven days. That type of thing. Tell me about the Rose accrucianism. Basically the hippie movement of the 17th century. It's a fantastic example of cultural engineering. It's a fantastic example of like an early example of people influencing the culture in a mass way.

49:03We're talking about early 1600s. Central Europe, Catholic churches and control of everything. Pre science. You can still be in burn at the stake for saying practically anything. And whoever these people were, probably just smart kids. Circulated these things called the Rose accrucian manifestos throughout Europe. Was it written? Yeah. It was like a, you know, like Mausole red book or something like that. And the manifestos basically said there's a secret brotherhood of illuminati initiates all throughout Europe that are working both in secret and in the spirit world. To end the domination of the Catholic church on Europe and to free humanity to follow its destiny.

49:51We're everywhere. We're watching. We're all around you. But there's only one way to contact us. Only one. We won't respond to anything else. And that's that you have to do something in public that gets everyone's attention. Basically a PR stunt. In the name of free thinking that you then claim for the Rose accrucians. So then of course what happened is all over Europe almost spontaneously. There were all these events where people were, I don't know exactly what they were doing, you know, big public spectacles claiming a new age of reason and science. Any example of what they were doing? We probably do, but not are coming to mind right now.

50:27And so it basically self created itself as if it's like a rabbit out of the hat. It's like, so that was the Rose accrucian brotherhood. So then of course all these people started talking to the leader. No, it was probably based on ideas that John D had left on the continent when he was there. But it was just a completely grassroots thing similar to like, I don't know, raves or something like that. Or it just kind of happened. And then because all those people started talking, there were all these magical things about it. The idea was an invisible brotherhood of illuminated adips. But when these people actually started talking in real life, they realized they had a lot of other interesting comments.

51:06And then now that they had a space to talk safely, that's where science came out of. The ideas that became modern science came out of this kind of just bootstrapped cultural prank. And they're actually the Rose accrucian order that claims to be due Egyptian magic and all that. But probably doesn't have any connection to the original thing. And is the brotherhood in Lavatsky the same referring to the same group? That's the question. It's like, are these things actually real? Are they not? Are they talking about the same thing? Are there different groups? Anyone's guess really? Anyone's guess?

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53:21Tell me about Blavatsky. So, H .P. Blavatsky. She was a Russian psychic in Victorian England and she started the Theosophical Society in 1875, which was kind of like an almost a new Christian religion, but it was very new age. It was the beginning of the new age. She claimed to have received a bunch of channel writings from to that in Ascended Masters.

53:49And then created this essentially religion, Theosophie, which blended together. Essentially merge all of the Western Eastern techniques in one place philosophically, but without giving anyone any real practical techniques. But it was huge. I mean, there's still all the all the philosophical centers are here. There's Krytona up on the hill and all that. And then Ohio. It ended up becoming a force in world history because they built up a bunch of stuff in India. They wanted to turn this kid, Krishnamurti, into the world teacher, which he later refused to his credit. So I think that's a famous story.

54:24Gandhi was somewhat inspired by him, just in the case that he was, Gandhi was interested in the Ascended Masters, and was taking the Ascended Masters. But then decided he was just interested in interest in tourism more. And then that started his path to what he became. So really important, culturally, really important, historically. Not very interesting to me simply because they don't really give any practical techniques. And again, like for me, it's about the practical technique rather than the overload. Which is a general feeling on child material. Depends on the channel material. Most of it, no, some of it real hard to disagree with.

55:03Ones that I would consider certainly worth looking at by intelligent people. Let me put it that way. I'm not going to say whether things are real or not. But ones that I think are interesting enough of cases for intelligent people to look at and come to their own conclusions about. Would be the John D material for sure. Let me put this way. It's incontrovertible that they believed what they were doing, I think. It might have been code two. But the John D one, the book of the law, the Alistair Crowley one, and actually the law of one, the raw material, I think is interesting. The low one, the raw material.

55:37Yeah. I think that at the very least it's very clear that humans can get into an extremely deep translate where material can emerge that it was beyond them that appears to be some type of intelligence that they wouldn't have access to normally. Yeah. I think that actually, I'd Kelly, John D psychic may have been in a situation where D was constantly pushing him to do drugs all the time to start channel channeling material and feel like that. That's kind of the thing that's another one of the things why magic is tricky. Another one of the reasons why it's secret, why it's a secret tradition is because it's really private.

56:16It's really private. It's like personal and that's not like it's not like a trick you want to do on stage, although there are performers who definitely there's lots of actors who do it who are clearly being possessed by the thing that they are portraying and then people think they are that person like he's ledger than it is an example. I wanted to ask you, I'm just like legitimately really curious about what you think about this. In the ancient world, I mean Plato, but prior to that all the way back to Sumeria, it was considered that people had a genius. Like there was a spirit that was a genius outside them that if they could listen to, we'd tell them what they needed to know and would come through them.

56:55And then later on, of course, it became the people are geniuses. And basically what Crowley says is that the techniques of magic are useful for turning on genius. Allowing people to tap that higher self, whatever that is. But he went back and forth on whether that was an external being or just a psychological abstraction like my best self, my greatest life, my highest self or my deeper self. And you interact with a lot of geniuses and altered states and consciousness and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that. I think it's both. I think all of the material comes from outside of us for sure for everyone.

57:39The way that the pieces get put together can be more artful. And that's sort of where the individual geniuses in seeing the way the pieces go together. Yeah, that's a quite a skill set though. Having the ability to be totally open, but then to have the craft to actually execute on it. Absolutely. There's the thing about magic is it's really easy with magic. It's really easy to get cosmic enlightenment, cosmic experiences, visions, all that. But if you don't have the tools to express it, it just kind of spins around in there. And that can be very frustrating. The same is true in terms of work ethic.

58:22There are some of the most talented people in the world that you've never heard of because they don't have the work ethic to be able to share it in a way where you never get to find out. Okay. I think the intellectual gets in the way of what we're talking about. So a lot of why magic is so looks so complex and there's like always super light computer diagrams and you open these books and they look like electrical engineering books. Because that's what guys like me like like IT guys, you know, like engineering guys. There's as many paths to whatever we want to talk about, let's just for lack of the better word God.

59:00Okay. There's as many paths to God as there are types of people. Yes. That's why that's why there's so many spiritual paths, I think. That's really easy to get sectarian about or hung up about like, oh well, like if all these different things are out there, then clearly none of them are right or. But it's because there's different types of people. Some people are going to get connected to God by taking XC and dancing in a field. Okay. Like really, really heavily. Some people are going to do it in a library. But there's got to be something for everyone. And one of the things about Western magic and why it's so complex is it's meant to overload the intellect to the point where it gets out of the way.

59:35Right. You just like blast it with all this stuff to which is like, I am I can't do anymore. And then that can allow a moment of egres of something else to come through. What you said before about Freud was interesting, do you think by calling it magic, labeling it magic, it somehow diminishes it in our society? Yeah, it does. Absolutely. And this is something that I you know, struggle with throughout my career. I inherited it because it's the name of the tradition.

1:00:11And I could have been anything. I could have been a lawyer or a doctor. I would have been so successful. But here I am pushing this boulder up the hill.

1:00:22So yeah, it is. And it's silly and it's goofy. And you know, it's right in my early part of my career. When I first kind of took this on, everyone told me, including lots of everyone into this subject, I started to find a different word for it. I couldn't do it. Because it's like, what do you call it? Consciousness studies, like reality engineering, I mean, neuro linguistic programming was cool, but that's its own thing. None of that sounds cool. I mean, even saying it's like, I mean, like, yes, it's embarrassing, but it's also like, which one do you are you going to want to read about? Mindfulness or magic.

1:01:03I want to be able to throw fireballs out of my hands. That's my goal here. Come on, let's be realistic here. I can be all serious and stuff, but it sounds cool. So there's an aspect to it where it is PT -born, I'm a little bit. And I like that. I've decided to kind of embrace that because people are interested in it. And I was really embarrassed by it for a long time. I just thought I'd ruin my life and I just made myself a laughing stock. And then I realized, I have, but that's kind of cool still. And I think that there's something about magic that, particularly because it's such a path of the self and of the, you know, exaltation of the self, there's something about calling it magic that kind of keeps you a little humble because it's goofy.

1:01:51You know what, no adult in 2024 can walk around and call themselves an agission in the Lewis -Trey face. So I don't, but I don't keep a straight face. So, you know, is it exaltation of the self or is it self development? I mean, they're the same thing, right? I don't know. The raising of the self on a vertical line. But then ultimately the surrender of the self, but not right away, only when it's worth surrendering. How much belief is involved in magic? I mean, like, you know, I feel like, in many ways, I feel like the best way to present it is just from an atheistic perspective. You don't have to have any belief.

1:02:27In fact, in many ways, when you engage in magic, it disproves a lot of supernatural stuff. Like, okay, if you do a lot of yoga, as you know, as you do a lot of meditation or pranayama, you'll have mystical experiences. Okay. Well, now when, you know, now it's like, when you go back and you read the book of Deuteronomy or something like that, you know, say you go back and you read these sacred texts about these sacred people who had visions. Like, well, you should be like, well, I know how they did that. It's like, I know how that trick works. So all of a sudden, now they don't seem like there's some higher person who's above you.

1:03:01They seem like something attainable. And I actually think, I think it's magic is way more interesting if you come at it from a non -supernat, from a totally scientific perspective. Because like, here's an example. It's quite likely that religious experiences are produced to some extent by activity in the temporal lobe. Okay, because they've examined, I don't actually don't know what the current science is on this. So, okay, so they say, well, we've just proven, you know, that's just part of the brain. You know, we've just proven that. That's a physical phenomenon. And then the religious people are all like, no, no, we can't do that because all of our, you know, all of our financials are dependent upon very tales.

1:03:43But the interesting thing there is, okay, well, if it's part of the brain, then it can be activated. And if it can be activated with yoga, like, let's do that. And like, maybe refine it so we can do it really quickly. And so, like, wouldn't we be in a better society if people could access even just meditation, you know? Essentially, what meditation is is toilet training. It's like, it's like emotional toilet training, right? And we live on a planet of people who are not toilet trained. And so, as a result, they're shitty to each other. They shut up the place. They get shit on the walls. They do all kinds of shit they shouldn't do.

1:04:20But then what do they do? They go to the great guru, the man who sits on the throne, who knows how to use the toilet, which is meditation if you just let your body relax long enough, it will process your emotional garbage on its own. And so, if we had a planet where people learn some basic spiritual techniques, not as some high -faluting, like, all this crap that gets put on it, but just to be able to release their own negative emotions, get out of our own way. Yeah. Instead of going on social media and taking it out on other people, I mean, that sounds pretty good to me. So, I actually think magic is a lot more interesting.

1:05:02But, you know, there's just like a carnival barker aspect. I used to use the word A because I do believe magic would be because it gets attention. And C, it's not a lie. It isn't the actual tradition. It's the occult tradition. There actually is magic that works just like the magic in the movies once you get far enough in. What was your first introduction to meditation? Through magic. Because every magic book you get, the first thing they all say is, none of this is going to work if you can't silence your mind and focus on one thing at a time. So, the most important skill in magic is single -pointed focus.

1:05:38And being able to direct your mind. And so, it's like, with meditation, you get the ability to have, like, laser single -pointed focus. That, in a loan, is a faculty that people are losing, you know. But that magic comes in and says, okay, now that you can have single -pointed focus, here's some things you might want to focus on that would do some interesting things.

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1:07:18What type of meditation practice did you do? When I first started, it was just focusing on objects or single -pointing for visual. Both. And imagined or mantras. You know, as it tends to be how it gets done in Western magic. In Western magic or the mantra specific? Yes, but the other thing about magic is you make your own mantras. That's the thing. You go to make the Eastern traditions and it's like they charge you for mantras and things like that. Well, you know, cast magic realizing, what is a mantra? Okay, the Hindu mantras have been used for thousands of years. So there's like a certain ongoing resonance behind it.

1:07:56But past that, a mantra is a way to suggest something to your unconscious that your conscious doesn't know about. So in magic, we have sigils, which is you take a statement, you take a desire that you want to happen, and then you scramble it into a mantra that you then repeat, so that you're putting all of your energy into it. But your conscious mind doesn't know what it is. So a little bit of theory about this. The way that magic is different from self -help or actually religion in many ways, is that it engages the unconscious instead of just the conscious mind. Because we all know that when we try to get something with our conscious mind, we have to deal with our conscious mind.

1:08:37And the conscious mind is always finding reasons why picking it apart, saying, you know, who are you to do something like that, all of that type of stuff. So when you're trying to get something done in your life, it could be creative or not, you have to manage that, right? So all those things are like, you'd be thinking of an electrical current. It's like disrupting and breaking the current of energy going to your whole house. It's like a hack. Yeah, it's exactly what it is. So this is a hack to just root underneath that doubting voice. And this is the same way in a sense that religions work with.

1:09:10But when you go to a church, they're using all these symbols, like the cross or whatever it is. They are choosing what to impress your unconscious mind with. And often there's a sense of basically just we're bigger than you, right? Obviously corporations or the St. logos are constantly programming us. All you have to do is walk out, walk outside, and you're going to be programmed like, you know, endless electronic information. So here you're taking control of it for yourself. Another way to look at that is if you think about language, if you only know one language as I do, despite the dual and go all's best attempts, then you're kind of limited by a that symbol set.

1:09:51Like you've only got that potential range of notes to play, right? Okay. Well, that's probably not the full capacity of your brain. How do you even access a concept? You know, we know as humans that as soon as we can name something, we can begin to work with it and exercise well over it. But how do we access things that we can't name or we don't understand? Maybe because they're capacities of the human mind that we haven't figured out yet. Or capacities of the human being that people won't understand for another several thousand years. Or they're still there. So how do we access what is beyond our sense of self, the linguistic self?

1:10:30How do we go into the parts of our brain that are non -linguistic? I mean, you can see how that could be useful. What do we know about the history of witchcraft? Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mentioned the thing about the IT guy and intellectual stuff. Magic, obviously right now, is a huge with women. The young women, like, you know, they're very interested in the idea of witchcraft of the female empowerment, which is great. We know what sparked that. Yeah, I mean, feminism, you know, needing empowerment. Not needing. I don't think it's needing. It's expressing because everyone is expressing the wealth of power.

1:11:12Everyone has to express the wealth of power. But many women do it differently. And in terms of specifics, I couldn't tell you. In a lot of ways, it's really hard to talk about which craft as a tradition. Largely because women are a lot less interested in codifying, regimenting and writing things down in men are. And there's probably a lot of stuff about quote unquote women's mysteries that they just don't want written down from a read, I would imagine. But I had the privilege of not working with like thousands of people, teaching thousands of people this stuff. So I get to see the patterns and the people that are interested in this.

1:11:47And I think that for men, magic is very much about becoming. I have to become something. I have to become a hero of a legend. I have to, that's like every single movie. I have to become the king. Heroes journey. The heroes journey. Absolutely. Whereas for women, it's much more about embodying. I already am. I am the goddess, you know. And magic in general tends to help men think much more femininely. And women think more masculinely for whatever reason. Because it bounces you in the process of making a more complete person. So which crap I think I would describe it to kind of like the spontaneously emergent, magical properties of women as they are, which are endlessly holy and wonderful and mysterious.

1:12:36It's hard to define, you know. But I think that there's a tremendous amount of interest in it in culture. Now because women for so long had felt disempowered. And this is a system. This is something that promises them empowerment. And it's empowerment in a way that is witchcraft as magic as a whole. Magic as a whole is much more a path of letting things happen by allowing space for them to happen. Rather than I guess a more masculine approach to doing things. More like the Dow. Yeah. Well, that would be the ideal, right? I mean, the, you know, we're all I'm trying to get there. I hope. But, um.

1:13:19You know, I think there's a lot of interest in the goddess Babylon, for instance, who's considered it is the kind of the athletic goddess of magic. That's a resurgent archetype with young women. I think that everyone is interested in magic now. You know, everyone in the world has the same needs rich poor, healthy or sick. It doesn't matter. They need meaning. They need a connection to God. I think the need for me. People are starved for some connection, something greater than themselves. Do you feel now more than 30 years ago, for instance? Well, it's kind of the thing too. It's like, you know, in the past, magic was always count caught up with the counterculture identity.

1:13:57It seems like a countercultural thing. I think of it as maybe that's why I'm attracted to it as I'm interested in the counterculture. Yeah, absolutely, right? It is a counterculture thing. But the thing that has come along with a lot of those countercultures scripts is like that kind of like F the mainstream destabilized reality, all of that stuff. I just don't think any of that is relevant anymore. It's just like, it's like, look around. Like things are pretty destabilized. I think now what people need is structure and definitely meaning, you know, our culture went through really. Like we reject your religion.

1:14:31We got to start to do a large degree. I mean, if people are religious now, they're religious as another option in like the consumer shopping mall of identities. You can buy something from. They're not religious because they have to be or there's a threat of violence here at least. So we went through that and that's good. We got science. We shouldn't go back to religion as a lot of people are suggesting now. But it's like, we're too smart for religion now. It's not like it's bad that we are godless or whatever. That's actually good. We still have us need to connect to something bigger than us. We still need a sense of meaning.

1:15:09We need a sense of humility. We need, you know, the biggest role that religions played, I think, as a sense of community and connection with other people. That's not based on transaction. Podcasts do that in a lot of ways now. They just fill some of that. So I propose magic as something that is not scientific but is empirical and is self -directed and is a way to be structured and disciplined about your spiritual quest as a human being. Which is different for every not only different for everybody but different for each person and different times in their life. So there's no one size fits all because everyone's in a different situation and there's brought everyone's basically the same but we're all in different moments.

1:15:52So for me, the idea of something that is okay. So I can still be spiritual. I can still have meaning. I can still tap into wisdom and something that's more than just the latest Apple product, which I also want to buy. But it's more than just that. But it doesn't involve somebody telling me what to do. Have you been surprised by anything that's come up in your practice? The entire thing. I mean, like what specific, like all of it, you know, people get really hung up about like practice and skill and learning magical techniques and all that. I just feel that if you're fun to play with, the universe will enjoy playing with you.

1:16:31That's a good attitude. That sounds good. That's helpful. What do we know about the first temple? Well, the first temple, okay. Well, this is rather topical these days. The story of the temple is fascinating to me and in a lot of ways, the Western esoteric tradition is a story about the temple. Judaism is a story about a temple. Christianity is a story about the temple. Her metasism, in least the Masonic parts, what's going on on the news right now is a story about the temple. And the temple is not a physical space. Is that correct? I think that, as far as the evangelicals are concerned, oh no, they're building that temple.

1:17:11That's happening for real. The way that I've heard other people express it. For instance, the Orthodox, as you get an Orthodox church here, beautiful spot. I'm St. Sophia. Priest there said, I think the Catholics believe this to you. As far as the Christian church is concerned, the third temple is the body of Christianity. It's the Christian church meeting. All of the believers in Christ are collectively makeup the invisible third temple. What is it? I don't know. Clearly that's not the interpretation that is in play in the real estate over in Middle East right now. Just amazing how the fight over that particular piece of real estate has been the access on which like thousands of years of history have turned.

1:17:54And the crusades, it's nuts, right? Might it have some otherworldly power? Of course, right. Do you know about Jerusalem syndrome? No. So apparently, I've never been to Israel, but apparently it's a very, very common experience for people who go there. I guess Christians who go there to suddenly decide that they're Jesus to the point that they have a whole wing of one of the central hospitals dedicated to people who think they're Jesus. It's interesting. So I've got to have a heavy, I mean, how can it not? I mean, it's like this the amount of stuff that's happened there. And that goes back to the dawn of civilization.

1:18:36And the church temple also appears in all the esteric teachings as well. Yeah. Well, you know, the temple in a way is also the metaphor for somebody's life. You know, in a sense that, you know, in your life, you're building a temple and then it gets knocked down and you build it up again. I think it's knocked down again. And that sucks, particularly the first time, but it's not like it stopped sucking, like it was, you know, so. The temple is kind of similar to a restaurant way of talking about like similar to like a sand mandala or impermanence. But the idea is that it always gets built back better the next time.

1:19:13And that's a really important lesson for people to learn, I think in their lives and in their careers. Like in my career, I've gone through so many stages where I thought I had it right and then I didn't so it collapsed. But then I took the learning from that and dealt it right the second time. And then that kind of spirals onward as a process. I think that's a big part of. At least in my perspective, I mean that seems to be one of the keys of, I mean, life is certainly being, you know, creative in any way. But certainly one of the keys of life is like. I mean, you have to know when to surrender and when not to because there's times where you definitely don't want to, but there's times where like there's nothing you can do.

1:19:55Or the universe will let you do it because it doesn't want you to do that. Like, you know, when I left LA in 2020, I spent like a year trying to find places to live in every place I tried to move and it up being falling apart. Like we were going to move to West Hills. Did you know that West Hills is location of the one of the biggest nuclear disasters in US history? I did not. Yeah, they don't want anyone to know. It was actually covered up in the 50s. There was an exposed nuclear core at a nuclear reactor up there and they've entered it over the valley. It's right next to spawn ranch actually.

1:20:28So people have been drinking cancer water ever since in thousand orcs and it's been kept quiet. And where I was going to move was like exactly where the runoff. I could be found out with a video that like a video the night before. So I think maybe that's true. Oh, no, it's definitely true because I did the research. It's definitely the then I ended up moving to Austin, which is also really, really, really emotionally hard, but now it's awesome. So it sucks when you're going through it, but I feel like sometimes you just sometimes you just got to know when to roll over because the universe will I think at times force you in certain directions.

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1:22:31Tell me about the audience for your work. Mostly male. I would like to change that of course, but you know it's like just one of those things where people will be attracted to someone who liked them. So since I'm a nerd email, I get lots of nerd guys which is great and are my people.

1:22:51And you know it's all across the board because one of the things is in order to learn magic you had to go find some secret society to join. And like you know not everyone is going to be involved in that type of thing. It's a bit much. So the internet allows more people to access it. It wouldn't have normally. I think in this culture, people have a crisis of meaning, but they also have a crisis of role and identity. Classic examples like the mid career career change. Like for instance, I worked in finance, but now I want to transition into being a yoga teacher. That's something like that. You hear this type of thing a lot.

1:23:36I feel I do at least. And I think that there are some real meaning crises, particularly for men. I for for men, they're too big meaning crises that I tend to meet people during. One of them is that young men when they get out of college, what do I want to be? All of a sudden life doesn't, you thought life was going to be an adventure. You thought you were going to be the hero in the movie. Take a number of life's not an adventure. And you're not clear about who you want to be. I tend to work with a lot of people who are in that moment. Then there's another crisis of meaning later in life, which is the midlife crisis, which is the well, I got the job.

1:24:16I played it safe. I'm successful. I have kids responsibilities, employees, but not only now do I not have any time to myself, but. I feel like I'm not who, you know, I'm not who I was supposed to be. I'm not who I meant to set out to be. Yeah, that was a tough one for me because I, you know, like I mentioned in my early career, everything was really easy for me and I had all this really success. But then even though I told myself I wasn't doing it, I started to be like, yeah, like. Go. Like, you know, and it started to show. And I started to have like falling out with people that had helped me.

1:24:58Yeah. Common. I mean, I still feel guilty about that every day. I'm 42 years old now. You know, we're talking about things that happen when I was 23. And then of course, nothing worked for me. Of course, because now it's my, now my ego's involved. And also now people are expecting me to be a certain person. I mean, I basically went from being an extremely awkward English student to. Having a book contract at 21 for a book saying that there's going to be a new counterculture of a cult people. I mean, that's a pretty insane place to be. Yeah. You know, of course, then the next thing people did was tear me down on the internet.

1:25:37But what was actually happening is probably what I assume happens with a lot of musicians when they come out of local scenes, which is the people that you thought were you were in a scene with that you thought we're going to come along with you. Oh, no, they're not coming along with you. They're going to try and tear you down for leaving them behind back here. And I think that probably, I assume that happens with musicians a lot. But I, so then my ego was back involved and I had a horrible time of it. And you know, I tried to get run away from what I'd done. Yeah. Completely. Was first book successful by a cult book terms it was.

1:26:10That's cool. Thank you. But then I tried to let get go back into the corporate world. Completely erased that I'd ever been this person and it didn't work and I was miserable. And I finally realized in my early 30s, I was like, okay, asshole, like speaking to myself. Like you're going to go around all over the world learning all this magic stuff. You're going to learn all these techniques for radically changing people's minds and lives and perceptions. You could change anyone's literally anyone's life that encounters this material. And you're just going to keep it to yourself and moep about how people were mean to you on the internet.

1:26:46Like really? So the thing that changed everything for me was like, no, no, no, no, it's not about you. And with magic, it's easy to make this mistake like my level of whatever. It's about what services you can provide other people. That's when I became a teacher and then everything was great. And I had a privilege to work with all these people, including people who in some really serious, serious hard stuff. And I had a lot of different situations who were able to make real changes. That's great. One thing I wanted to mention before I forget though, because I was looking at this, I worked with a ton of musicians because they all understand, well, all artists understand magic, like all of them, all of them.

1:27:26It's just you call something different. You're talking about creative process, you know, but like that whole thing of getting into that trans state or something, something comes through. Like where did that come from? I have no idea. Right. So people, I think, understand, you know, particularly in the entertainment industry, I feel like everyone's got some spiritual thing that they're doing. You know, they're doing chanting or the secret or whatever happens to be. And so you'll definitely get people saying, well, you know, why would I be interested in magic when I can just, for instance, do meditate and so much more pure.

1:27:58It's a straight to the source, right, which it is. It is more pure. It is more straight to the source. With magic, you're basically opening up the mixing board. And this is a metaphor I use when I'm talking to musicians all the time, or it's like, okay, well now you've got fire. It's like, okay, well, like turn down the fire knob and maybe turn up the water, not a little bit. So it balances out. And then you've got your saturn knob. Maybe I'm feeling a little bit too depressed. So let's turn down the saturn knob and let's turn up the solar knob. Okay, well now I'm feeling like I can do anything.

1:28:25All right, well, let's turn up the communication knob, mercury knob. Okay, well now I feel like I can write computer code. I'm totally plugged into information and learning. All right, let's turn that down. Okay, now I can watch TV again. How do you turn them up and down? Richels. That's the whole thing of what Western magic is. That's kind of what they're foreign away. You know, tell me about archetypes. So let's take a common magic thing. Let's say, you know, some in a god, right? Okay, what does this actually mean? Well, you know, if I summon Venus, then, you know, maybe I'll imagine myself as Venus.

1:29:02Or if I if I summon mercury or something like that, hermys, the side of my personality, the part of my brain that is concerned with calculation, math, numbers, writing, communication will completely possess me, meaning that only that part of me will be inflamed like access. It's like I pulled up that part of my software running specifically so that I can just use that part of myself or I can only address that to fix it if there's something wrong with it, you know, maybe I want to be better at math. Okay, well, I invoke the god hermys. Okay, well, then I slowly imagine myself turning into the god hermys just like an actor would inhabit a role till suddenly my consciousness identifies with hermys.

1:29:45There's all kinds of procedures for doing this. And then as hermys, I would realize, maybe I would suddenly have an insight into when a teacher told me I wasn't good, this is just an example, a teacher told me I wasn't good at math and second grade, and I internalized that and then I can go back and by magic, heal that retroactively. Well, I mean, okay, so you could say you're doing psychological work, you're doing art therapy, magic sounds cooler, you know, definitely gets more people interested in it. We know that Mercury relates to math, but do we know why? I know we can memorize the list of what we write, but where did that list come from?

1:30:30How was that list decided? The specific reason is that it was done in the golden dawn. And at least the list that is used, the attributions commonly was put together my migrager, the mother's who was the head of the golden dawn who spent, I think possibly this actually similar to Karl Marx's story, Ali enough, spent like 10 years in the British library, piecing together all of the occult knowledge that was then known. And when was this late 1900s, which is a really trippy time to think about because not only was it this massive explosion of culture, but it was like the 1990s, what would now be Gothen industrial was every people are super into this supernatural, Goth Art, Aubrey Bearsley, Decadent Art, that type of thing.

1:31:20But also they had just discovered ancient Egypt for the first time and they just discovered ancient Sumeria for this first time, which no one knew it's Sumeria even existed. So you think about this time of cultural explosion, we're not only are they coming up with new and sciences happening all these new advances, but they're rediscovering a past that they didn't know existed before. And it was this incredible time and world history, but the the dramatic order of the golden dawn put them together from earlier attributions by Agrippa. The answer ultimately is it's arbitrary, but the specific ones are arbitrary, but what is not what is not arbitrary is the thought process that produced them, which is just expressed by more C when he said nature is a language can't you read, does this song where it's basically where this stuff came from is, you know, looking at nature as a language and saying each thing that nature produces is a symbol, but it's also like a letter in an alphabet and you can see that there's certain resonances between things, meaning this is just how artists think.

1:32:28Right. So the hermetic way of looking at the world is the artistic way of looking for, you know, it's how does a sunflower make me feel and how is this like the sun and how can I relate those two things? It's a poetic connection. Yes. Yes, that's a much better way to put it. There are patterns that have just emerged cross culturally that are just very clear. There's always a communication God, there's always a lot of goddess. There's always the king God, you know, it's just human beings themselves are not that different. We're not we are code deep down is pretty simple. It produces almost infinite outer forms like it's insane, but our code is pretty much the same, I think to me with the terrible.

1:33:11The tarot is the best book the western culture produced ever. It's an interactive shuffleable book that contains the entirety of the world's initiatory secrets allegedly. So the story goes the tarot is a deck of 78 cards that represent its four suits and 22 trumps and again in the 19th century, I don't call this name, I'll face levy figured out that you can map the tarot to the cobblistic tree of life, essentially the origin of westernness or territory tradition is in historically is when supported you brought Kabala into Spain after fleeing North Africa. Is that with the tarot from Spain? The Kabala is from Spain.

1:33:54Well tarot came from I think possibly India or possibly Egypt, but it was I think brought into Europe by Romani people. So those two things ended up combining along with kind of the general folk magic in which craft it was around Europe at the time, probably where the correspondences were originally put together was in the Italians, the Medici city states during the Renaissance, which is kind of in that John D period. What had happened there was this moment in history where Constantinople was destroyed. So all of the Orthodox priests fled and went west to try and like get protected by Western Christianity by the Vatican.

1:34:35They brought with them all of these scrolls of Plato and Aristotle, the Western world did not have access to whatever. So that's interesting. Yeah, that's what sparked the Renaissance. So finally we were like wait, there's stuff other than the Bible. Yeah, and it's like really good stuff. It sounds like you know when you read about it, it sounds like the San Francisco, it sounds like the tech industry now. It's like this incredible concentration of wealth in this small area run by these barons. And they want to know it's kind of like how the tech industry now is this kind of ultra luciferian. They want to know everything.

1:35:06They want to extend aging. It's like it's cool. It's like let's see. Let's see what comes out of it. But it was kind of like that same we want to control, no, and own everything. And so a lot of hermaticism comes out of that period. It was a permeticism all the way up until the scientific revolution was basically the religion for the European cognizant. As opposed to Christianity. What do you think people are afraid of magic? Because they've gone up watching too many horror movies. It's like did you see hereditary? No. Don't see it. Horror movies now I wanted to be a horror writer on as a kid.

1:35:44Now I won't even watch them. I'm too much of a softy. So, but the answer is the Catholic Church. Tell me about Manly Peahall. Big dude for LA. He was giving talks in LA for decades, right? And he was teaching the Western tradition. He was not teaching practical magic. And really left a great legacy. I saw my talk to his biographer who talks about it's kind of a sad story. At the end of Manly Hall's life, you know, especially after somebody who is so like Erudite like this, he kind of got taken in by alternative medicine, which led to his early demise. And he was way too willing. It's kind of happened with Steve Jobs too.

1:36:32He was way too willing to believe in kind of fraudulent health cures, which led not just led to him not getting cured of disease, but actually led to him dying in a hotel room, unfortunately. Any a gram? Any a gram. Gerjaf. Yeah. Armenian, mystic. Georgian Armenian. Yeah, and he's such a weirdo because he's so hard to eat. Can't categorize him. He didn't he just made up his own bizarre science fiction language to teach him, which is really interesting. But he's basic proposition that human beings are essentially asleep. Is where I start. That's where everything starts from in my opinion. It's like, yeah, it's like Gerjaf said, you know, you're out here asking for compassion and peace and respect on a planet of sleeping people.

1:37:20It's like they're not evil. They're just asleep. And I think what he meant by that is the same thing that Buddhism says, which is that people are slaves to their reactivity. You learn that in relationships. This was Scientology's. I know, right. Let's see if that's the thing. He got it right on that. Like, I used to live right next to Scientology for four years. It was bizarre, just terrifying. But I think he got it right and then he went crazy when he has ego got in the way. But I think that basic thing of me, I think he was right about that. What do you think the difference between the ego and the will are?

1:37:54Oh, that's easy. I mean, it's like, well, like, you know, the ego is the thing yapping in your brain. And will is what happens when you get it out of the way. To will is like the focused self. It's like, I don't think so. It's like, you know, like the statues of Shiva where you have like the corpse at the bottom and Shiva standing on him. And he's above him. And it's kind of like, I think this is the small S self has been defeated. To let the God within out. The will is outside of us. So what you're saying feels that way experientially. Is it actually? Well, this is a question for neuroscience.

1:38:31You know, it's like, but like it experientially it feels like it is. So it's kind of like that moment where you can get quiet enough or you can meditate for an hour and then just know something. Like you just know. And you weren't clear on it before. And it's not like you actively thought through it. It's like all of a sudden just like you access something. Yeah. And it's almost like it's not just that you know it. It's like now the energy of your life is already moving in that direction. If it makes sense, I don't know. Yeah. What's your take on the wisdom of ancient culture versus how we see things today?

1:39:07We need them both. Where are we evolving or devolving? Oh, but depends on who you're talking to. It depends on the day. I've definitely got my devolving days. I think people are the same. And I think that modern technology is awesome. Science is awesome. Democracy is awesome. These things have given us incredible wealth, longer lifespans. We're not walking around with toothpaste all day long. That's a plus. And despite all my early punk rock attitudes, the world has generally improved. While I've been alive. And it's better than I thought it was going to be. And I realized I don't have anything to complain about with it anymore.

1:39:57But magic, what magic does is it lets you access that other thing. What do you believe today that you didn't believe in your younger? I can make mistakes.

1:40:12That you're capable of making mistakes or that you can make mistakes and it's okay. I'd like to get into the second one. That I can make mistakes even when I think I'm doing my best. I see.

1:40:31That you are actually human. Yeah. One of the narratives that you can get when you first get into magic is this has been kept from you. There's some conspiracy keeping this from you. And we have to free everyone. That's total nonsense. The reality is it's all there. It's just that people are too lazy to do the work. Also, it might not know about it. And then when they read it, people writing about it haven't done themselves any favors in terms of communicating clearly. It was very easy for me to be like, F the system and try to be all Maryland -Nanson about things. Were you of Maryland -Manson?

1:41:13No, because I was a snooty joy division fan. I was like, why are these kids into Maryland -Nanson now? This is my culture. In terms of what's changed about me, I don't have anger. It's not because I'm like some ascended master of like, it's because I've watched myself make mistakes enough to realize that it's not something out there affecting me. And also that other people make mistakes too. And that's not because they're bad people. It's just because this is a part. What do we know about animism? That's really simple. I mean, animism is as simple as when you're a kid and when you look at the electrical socket and you think it's a face, the mind will project identity onto inanimate things.

1:42:06I thought it is. And then you talk to it as if it's a lot of it's like when I was in Kathmandu, you know, I was talking to people and they would say, yeah, that tree stump, that's God. You know, that bird, that's God. And it's interesting because we're taught that this is the most primitive form of thinking. But it's clearly what everyone's, everyone I think is more animistic than anything else ever. You hear that when you say people say things like the universe is talking to me. I got a download from the universe. Like we're all connected. Everything's alive. That's animism. Right. But it's animism from a broader perspective from a perspective has been through science already when you were told the tree stump was God.

1:42:51Did you think that's not right? No. What my reaction was that I thought it was hilarious because one of the things that, you know, back back home and. Chaos magic, all the chaos, all the punk rock, chaos magic people thought they were really clever because they had learned how to like. You know, a popular thing in chaos magic is trying to summon pop culture deities as gods. And then I realize it's like, well, this is what everyone does normally in the rest of the world. They they sacredize everything. And there's something really beautiful about that. There's something people could learn from here.

1:43:26Make everything original like sacredize everything. It doesn't need to be this like all this stuff, all this grimoire stuff. That's just old. That's his history. That's the museum of magic. That's old stuff. It's the thought process that counts. And just sacredly just making a dinner sacred with other people. That's a profound thing. You know, just setting an intent for a meal. It doesn't need to be more complex than that. Do you pray? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I would call it more akin to whining and begging, but yeah.

1:44:03What is the matria? So the matria is in the study of the Torah every Hebrew character is considered to have an numerical value. And therefore words. Is it having a numerical value because of the number it is in the alphabet or has some other? It's a different scheme. It goes to base 10 and then it starts counting by 10s and then it starts counting by 100s. So the difference, the value difference between two letters can be many times based on what you're saying. And it also depends on what position they are in the word can change the value. And you know, when I'll explain any spiritual idea, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm ascribed to a religion or a belief, but it also doesn't mean that I don't subscribe to it.

1:44:46It just is what it is. Right. So you get out of like a word, like if you were like five letters, you could add up all the letters and they will have a, so now the word will have a value. And the idea there is the words that have the same value are in resonance with each other. So like if this is not a real one, okay, but like let's just say like the word for a this is the same as the word for crowd. The idea is, okay, God is making a poetic juxtaposition of those things under the surface for those who want to look. It's kind of like an inner structure and how are the numbers treated differently depending on where they are in the word.

1:45:21But there are a few letters think four or so letters that change their value if they're the last letter. I see why I don't know. And this is a tricky practice, but it can be used to let's say once you know what all those letters and numbers mean, now all of a sudden you're going to start seeing them in license plates or on billboards and then it's like, well, right, that's a message. Now that's tricky because that bird is on mentally unhealthy ways of thinking, but you know, have you experienced it in that way? Have you got comfortable enough with it where you could just be out in the world and read those read those.

1:45:53Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but you have to turn it off after a certain point, just a function. Yeah, so I try to keep most of the stuff just turned off. Tell me about higher planes. Higher planes of existence existence. I don't think there are higher. I think everything's here. I think that, you know, magic and this is because of the word itself. People have a Hollywood idea about magic like it's going to be something more. And I think that one of the reasons why it's been tricky for people in this culture is because it's less. It's more subtle. Magic is basically a language for noticing subtle things about your experience that other people don't pick up on because they're thinking about a shopping list or they don't have a language for it.

1:46:39It's like if you have 68 words for snow, you're going to have a better way to talk about snow, same with magical language. It's a language for talking about things that you're already experiencing. They're already here. Now that you have the language, you can notice it more clearly. And you can talk with other people about it and get on a same page with somebody. So in terms of higher planes, there's definitely tons of different states of consciousness. And there's definitely visions and astral projection and all of that stuff. Ultimately, I have to come to a kind of a reductionist opinion that it must be things that the brain is doing.

1:47:16And I can't say if any of that stuff is supernaturally real or not, but I can say for sure for a demonstrable fact that your brain will produce all kinds of crazy visions and fascinating stuff and synchronicities if you do certain practices. What does it mean? I don't know, but I know how to turn it on. Is there a community aspect to magic dot me or is the flow of information only out? There's definitely community and there's a community forums. I want to build that more. Tell me how you think it would work. Well, I've had a couple interesting experiments in that regard. One of them was doing ritual and virtual reality, and I mentioned.

1:47:56And another one was I just did it an experiment once where I just turned on zoom. This was during the pandemic. And I just left zoom on as an open chatroom for like three days and had students from all over the world just come in and out and talk to them each other. And I was just kind of hands off and a lot of really interesting things kind of spontaneously emerge from that. Like there was a woman who was being human traffic that that emerged and then I was able to work with her on that and then she was able to get out of that situation. And these things just spontaneously kind of people are talking about magic and their experiences and again, it's like people you would never expect.

1:48:31With magic, I think the question is just like with spirituality. It's kind of like with everything. It's just I think that people should be just honest and upfront about it and not turn it into something that it's not and just talk about their own experiences because everyone has an experience of something like this. How do you use magic in your life? I use magic to be not reactive in my relationship.

1:49:00The only thing that I've done since I was 16 is magic. Every relationship I've had every job I've had my current job magic taught me is all is everything is from magic. So when I'm not you know just relaxing and goofing off and playing PlayStation pretty much everything else has always been dedicated to it. So that's kind of a tricky one. You use the techniques. I do the technique. I think you have to. I think it's really easy to get out of practice and convince yourself that it's just you don't need it. You're just a natural and you're just doing magic by the way you live your life. But it's just like with meditation, right?

1:49:41Like with meditation, you can crest over a wave and then like kind of like ride the state that you get into for like three months or something and then it starts to kind of taper off. It's kind of like that with magic. Well, it is literally like that because it is meditation. What would you say for those who are skeptical of magic? What are they missing? You're skeptical for a reason. It's good to be skeptical. A lot of magic is BS is the first thing that I would say. And I would say that I am skeptical of it. And in my process of approaching it like a skeptic, I've been able to basically pan some really interesting gold nuggets out of that riverbed.

1:50:27I would say that this is an area of study that we should not be afraid to talk about and that we should study. But also like, you know, I do lots of YouTube's debunking stuff like we should also know the reason why we should talk about it is so that we can be clear on what scammy because there's a lot of scammy stuff. What's being an example of scammy magic? Psychic scams, tarot scams, people saying that you have a curse put on you and only if it's hey you to remove it. Bad information, almost all of the information out there was bad. You know, people propping themselves up as local cult leaders or whatever.

1:51:03None of that would be good. What are some of the most interesting conversations you've had on the podcast? I just had one with Ann Marie Krippell, a wrote a book called Death Nesting. She's a death doula. And we talk about people at the end of their life. So me being me, I just cut my normal bullshit completely. And I was just like, okay, how do I be happy when I die? And her answer was really interesting, which is it was meditation, but in really loud and chaotic environments. Because that's what the death process is like. You have to stay focused and present, but it's not like meditation in a quiet environment.

1:51:46It's people are yelling. It's the hospital. There's all that. So I thought that was like really valuable. But then I asked her, because this is me, I just had to. I was like, so out of all of your, you've worked with so many people, and she's a Buddhist practitioner. And I said of all the people that you've worked with, including the spiritual ones, especially the spiritual ones. Have you met any of that were at peace with dying? And she said, no. That's interesting. Maybe the ones who are at peace with dying don't have the doula. I don't know. Maybe. I hope so. But that was sobering. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, when we talk about religion and spirituality, what are we talking about?

1:52:30We're talking about our fear of death. And our fear of being forgotten. And our fear of it meaning nothing. And our fear of losing our loved ones. And the void. And we can talk a big game and say, well, I embrace the void. Really? Let's see. So that one was really interesting because I think it's really important. Because at the end of the day, like, it doesn't matter what you believe, you're still going to have to face the same initiation as everyone else. Let's put it that way.

1:53:21I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go.