Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 411: Madame Blavatsky Part II - Dr. Beard

Episode Date: May 23, 2020

On the second part to our series on Madame Helena Blavatsky, we cover her years in New York City, where the mother of modern occultism hooked up with her longtime acolyte Henry Steele Olcott and became a minor celebrity while inserting herself into the world of spiritualism.

There's no place to escape to this is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started Y'all ain't got shit on me today, man. Oh, yeah. Yeah, man because your previews ain't a part of my fucking Feneron, dude What does that mean my Feneron is my own fucking personal universe your Feneron my Feneron It sounds like a nail company for people that don't have nails But that's because they lost their nails doing how hard they were studying to become Initiates in the occult. I don't know how I don't they lost their nails But they just they didn't think they were necessary, but I'm gonna show you my powers. Okay, right?

Yes, what is your favorite item from your childhood? Favorite item from my childhood favorite. I want you to sit there. I don't want you to tell me Okay, but I have to think of it now Visualize it but say it kind of low. I'm gonna pretend like I can't hear it say kind of looks at the people at home can hear it Okay, I'm gonna pretend like I can't hear you The cigarettes we would steal from the store Okay So now I'm visualizing my head. I'm visualizing this object. I'm visualizing

I'm so that's me honestly. I'm just in a lot of physical pain. I hurt myself kicking the elevator button the other day I Think Kissel you might want to check your front right pocket. All right Holy shit, it's the cigarettes we stole from the store You just started smoking again, buddy. You're smoking dude You are actually too late. I know that you're joking and it's not in your pocket as a matter of fact I just put the cancer just directly inside you Hellish rebuke welcome to the last podcast on the left everyone

I am Ben staring at Marcus parks. Hi, and then we have I guess the newly talented Henry Zabrowski I got that new talent I found out that I could tie my shoes with my feet which is actually very difficult because they supposed to be owned now They're making them shoes thinner and thinner those kids in Cambodia are getting really lazy. Well, absolutely the new technology has saved a lot of children They're not needed anymore, but say by saved. I mean they're dead I no longer have a purpose, but today we do have a purpose and that purpose is to spread more Truth mm-hmm when it comes to the life of Madam

Blavatsky get out of my finair on it So when we last left Helena Petrovna Blavatsky the year was 1873 and she had just received a letter from one of her masters Instructing her to continue her work in America or at least that's what she claimed. She's like faithful Yes, she got that money somehow. Yeah, if you listen to the people who are a little more skeptical of Blavatsky's claims HPB high-tailed it to America from Russia because she knew that the spiritualist movement IE talking to dead people and seances was in full swing in the States and she wanted to take advantage Most likely it's a bit of both because if a person truly does believe that they are on a mission from the ascended masters to spread

The word about the true nature of the universe They're most likely gonna go where people are receptive to that idea I don't even see why it's a criticism of her to say she went to go where Spiritualism was at its peak. This is this is her scene. This is where she was supposed to go It's it's her purpose. She it did we're gonna see in episode 2 The HPB is gonna go from setting the fake stage right her burner life the this beginnings And she would she would kind of manipulate Depending on who she met in order for whether whatever purpose is it serve right?

She's going to come out of that world into our present day She's gonna become the HPB we know and what that takes is from someone going from their mythos They've kind of created in their head and then putting on their mythos shoes Oh going outside their house and making themselves the myth They believe themselves to be if you come to America and you truly do have the ability to speak with the dead You're gonna feel you're going to hear a lot of Native Americans complaining about Treaties being broken and overall genocide. I think you're gonna start to really feel their plight. Yeah, and I think that's important for all of us I couldn't help but notice that you put a roller coaster where my grandmother was buried

Yeah, we did. It's called Batman on the ride. It's pretty cool Furthermore America was the place where women with new ideas were making waves the year before HPB arrived a medium free-love advocate and so-called magnetic keeler named Victoria Wood Hall Have become the first woman to run for president. How'd she do? well, unfortunately her coalition of spiritualists Communists and free-lovers was not enough to put her over the top. I interviewed Mary Ann Williamson and She is my favorite. Yeah, Mary Ann Williamson is great and this woman sounds just like her Oh, yeah, Mary Ann Williamson should run a store that sells crystals not be president

Well Victoria Wood Hall actually spent election day in jail on obscenity charges After she published graphic details of a famous minister's affair in her newspaper Causing the press to give her the nickname Mrs. Satan Satan Satan Satan So what are you in for? I showed him my beaver. Oh You did what? I showed him my big beaver My big old mean beaver. I didn't know that that was a crime. Yeah, it's because the beaver had a gun I mean, unfortunately like Victoria Wood Hall went back on the whole thing when she got older

She became a hardcore Christian sort of speaking out against free love and all of that shit and even tried saying that other people had Written some of the things that she had written Concerning promiscuity. Hmm. That's a fucking sell-out. Yes. Yeah, absolutely So Blavatsky packed her bags and took a steamer to New York City at the age of 42 I knew you were gonna laugh. I mean, I don't know. I did it set sail out of Cleveland Yes smells of rotten eggs, there's a new shipment of humans coming on our steamer Very nice, it's nice to fart your way around Well the veiled years were over and the city was where Madame Blavatsky would truly become the character that we know her as today

All right, and the stack of cash that Blavatsky supposedly got in the letter from the master was mostly spent on a first-class ticket Which Blavatsky said she exchanged for four Steerage tickets to help out a woman and two children she found crying on the dock after they were sold fake tickets That's fun. We don't know if that's true though That might be her saying she's a bit much a little bit more of a better person than she really is There is nothing like being tricked into buying tickets I did this when I first got to New York. I was outside of MSG I wanted to go see the Knicks play but spent 75 bucks on tickets

I went to the ticket teller and he laughed and laughed and laughed and then he pointed to the door And he said these are fake and I was just I felt so bad and then I went outside in a huff And I said where is that guy who sold me these tickets and he was gone Yeah, there's not a whole better business bureau for scalpers out there anymore. I didn't see it used to be the mafia The mafia and they would fix your problems. I also have never heard of anyone in first class Be like we need more people on this plane They most of the time people with first-class tickets hold on to them like like treasure diamonds Some of the meanest people I've ever met in my life in first class, of course

Oh, did you just humble brag that you've been in first class? I said some of the meanest people I've ever walked by when I was going to my coach He has to go in first class so his body can fit. That's the sad truth So when Blavatsky arrived in New York City She had to find work and she did what so many of us who come to New York seek in our fortunes do Blavatsky started hustling. Yay did everything from leatherwork to sewing while she built her reputation as a psychic I find this to be a there's a way. I'm gonna hit this again and again I've been doing a lot of reading about theosophy, right?

I'm doing a lot of reading into the actual working mechanics of how HPB was teaching people how to read into the occult Right, and it is difficult and it takes a long time and you got to do it seven times no matter what no matter what that's how it goes You got to get all the angles. Yeah. Yes, you got to read it for seven several different ways Which is if I have to do that with dude, I'm gonna go into a fucking hospital But when HPB She kind of like restarts her life. She takes this throwaway past to hers and then she comes into America because she's 42 At this time period she comes in she's a little bit older Which at the time is not definitely not a spring chicken for the 1800s you roll in and you you immediately start hustling

And you you take yourself back down to zero. So in a way, I know that she on one level She needed cash money and she went to go into leather working and it was just a job that allowed her to have a job with no experience Get it. Yes. Well, yeah, she didn't have the general to call You can always call the general you're right. I forget about him. I forget that that's an option But he all but she also in a way like Cleans the slate now here's HPB and I'm gonna slowly work my way through by making myself a psychic Appearances it's straight up like I'm just a psychic. That's what I do to slowly work or say work our way through a bunch of people They have a lot of cash money as well

Well, and she has a lot of life experience going to Tibet spending time in Russia all over South America Well, if she did all that. Yep, let's just say she did Well, if she's got the dropsy I was looking at a lot of pictures of dropsy earlier And when your feet start to look like ice cream, it is very difficult to hike It is difficult, but it can be done. Now like us here at last podcast Lovatsky depended on word of mouth Talking to acquaintances and neighbors about elementals and unseen powers whenever she could Aggregonians, bro. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. So this is the case where you want to tell people

What's her angle here? Oh, keep this a secret knowing that they can't do you tell the loudest drunk in the community? How do you what's the first way exactly getting going viral? You are? Wow Your brain do you do you have like a hole like literally physically in your head? That's slowly the information is slowly sliding through. It's true. That's exactly how it happens. That's what you got to do See, I'm that's why I'm creative. Well, you got to tell the local drunks. You got to tell the more sociable Housewives you get to tell the people that are going to go and tell other people

You know essentially you're gonna find people that are kind of bored and people who do a lot of talking The town drunk just used to be a TV channel Yeah, do you think how many subscribers did you get us in the very beginning just grabbing people's phones and subscribing to us? Just with your hands. I still do it. Yeah, I still do it and then they forget they even did it And then we still get the number. Yeah, bro The thing was that Blavatsky could also reportedly walk the walk according to witnesses in those early days Blavatsky had knowledge of deep personal secrets that belong to the people she talked to Secrets known only to them or close family members. There was no way she could have known this shit

Oh, so she just was able to deduce like Sherlock Holmes that like everyone was doing horrible things behind the scenes I mean literally 1870s. She'd be like you're a child killer. No, she know I left little Billy near the well I Mean, isn't that just what John Edwards does crossing over John Edwards? Don't you just sort of like throw a bunch of stuff be like I look at Marcus be like you fucked cat I don't know the first thing you thought when you looked at me is you fucked a cat I didn't want to say cow because it's possible Wanted to be humorous I

Did neither sir. I know he's never done it. He's only made love to full almost fully human women. I I believe that this is a beginner's ability Yes, one example kissles. You're correct the shysters Right people that take this stuff and Nate they will throw shit at the wall to try to see what connects with you They look at your eyes. They take facial cues. They look at the way you hold yourself They kind of they dig around and try to find it because mostly if you're arriving to a psychic you are looking for something Yeah, what number one you're missing somebody number two looking for money looking for love looking for these things So you already they're wanting something right psychic a lot of times we'll see okay

How do I figure out what it is that you want? Why are you here? I just have to kind of float some stuff and see how your face twitches Yeah, you look down you see they don't have any shoes on and they're like you're here for sneakers My god, you're incredible madam foot lock air But I but there's also some people like Anton LeVe these some in LRH to had a natural ability to read people Colt leaders have this quite often They have that ability to find a mark because some because what a colt leader is doing or something somebody like HPB or LRH is

That they're not looking to just get your money like a normal psychic. They want your soul They want your identity and that's a deeper game You have to it's it's a slower role and you really have to figure out What are the juicy secrets you can suss out especially if you're very good at it? And what's the difference between just being a con man and having magical glamour? I don't know So you're saying madam Blavatsky is a senabite? God I wish there was a new hellraiser there was one but he went either the fat hellraiser failed us all It was a horrible fat pinhead

Well, the hustle days ended when Blavatsky's father died and she came into quite the inheritance She moved into a hotel lived the high life and invested in a chicken farm in Long Island owned by a one Countess garebco. I love it. How many times I wake up and be like what I do My god, I invested in a chicken farm on Long Island with Countess garebco What are all these feathers doing in my pussy? I don't know why I'm talking What is and this is a true question? What's a count a count? What is a count? How do you mean like a count a count is a count? I know dukes. I know Kings describe what a duke is though You say, you know what that is you want to know what a duke is. Yeah

God damn it. You know, I want to talk about duke now But a duke is someone within the royal family that brings the children from the orphanage to the prince And then the prince casts out the children and anyone that passes goes to the king They're the elbows of the human trafficking supply chains. Yes, but but I think a countess and a count Maybe I'm wrong. I'm certain feel free to correct that side store is LPOTLGmail.com But I think a count is very honorary I think you kind of get named one if you saw a bunch of kids go into a U-Haul and you just went I just covered your eyes. Then you get to be a count. Yeah, I always play the theme to Jurassic Park when I see child prostitution happening

I think it goes king duke Count and then everybody else that everybody the serfs. Yeah, it's serfs. The serfs. Exactly. Yeah, count is I think yeah I think the lowest of the nobility I see but that version of Madame Blavatsky get in the inheritance live in the high life invested in a chicken farm. That's the Gary Lockman version Marion Mead wrote that the inheritance was modest and the most Blavatsky could afford was a room above a saloon Which he quickly set fire to with her chain smoking and then accused the firefighters who saved her of stealing her watch difficult woman I like both versions of the woman

I think those versions of HPB are a funny lady that I would like to be around Like this to her just been like goddamn fire fighters stealing my damn watch and know what they're looking for Like that's how my mom always felt about firefighters all something like that It's coming here looking at the jewelry and I was like mom. They are civil servants. Well, and you're my father was a police officer I mean one one version is Madame Blavatsky and the other version is Helen I really like this. I want to start delineating. Where is Helen and where is HPB? I love firefighters, but they'll steal from you We had the firefighters kids down the street

No, I remember that the oldest daughter used to have sex on the stoop of the corner store with her boyfriend And I think they're fine and the other two kids used to torture me and my sister But then they set fire to an old lady's house across the street, but they seem to be I don't know where they are They probably are Honestly, they might be in the government They sound like the redheaded kid from Toy Story Just hanging out with a bunch of decrepit toys half burned Batman's that their father was able to say that's what that's what they did And then the fireman the fireman could we call them fireman's kids?

The fireman was never around because he was the lazy fireman It's with my father of my father and the hit without the difference with the police and the fire department He's just like I least got to go to the bar to drink They just drink at their jobs, and I was like but dad you're also drinking at your job He's like yeah, but I go to the bar like a lot to you know Right well madam Bobotsky was starting to form a pretty good local reputation So building off of that local reputation

She did an interview with a reporter for the New York Star named Hannah Wolfe Making claims that she'd fought with the Italians versus the French while rapidly rolling cigarette after cigarette with one hand Do you remember that very funny theosophy lecture I sent you Marcus? Yes, we're the guy the guy who given it Michael Gomez one of the authors of the books we've been working He called her he's like and I guess that HPB was the very definition of a holy roller and the audience went No, they fucking lost their minds. I'm not gonna lie to you. I got it Get it, and I think it's pretty good. It's pretty good bunkers

So she's a kick-ass she's a kick-ass chick here. I mean obviously in the story perhaps you made up She's definitely Marlboro's version of a kick-ass chick I mean like if just smoking cigarettes makes you very cool, then she's like super like tongue-less no-jaw cool Well Wolf claimed that after the interview HPB tried becoming a professional writer and Submitted a humorous satire about the United States government to Wolf for an edit Wolf was a reporter So HPB was like I want to become a writer here. Look at thing. Oh, but according to Wolf sources Levotsky submission was a word-for-word copy of a Russian satire with the words Russia and czar crossed out and replaced with United States and

President oh, I'm gonna put on my Ben kissaloo who tended to cheat quite a bit in high school hat That is not the same that is it because one is talking about a czar in Russia and the other is talking about a president in America So you tell me you tell me teacher. Why you gave me the F But on a subtle occult way kissal what it does show that yes, you might call this plagiarism You might call it stealing content. She and again. She might be the Carlos Mencia The occult movement but in some way what it does show is that thematically it actually echoes the Buddhist principle Oh, the jewel in the lotus which means I am that I am and I am in thee and thou art in me and the

Micocosm meets the macrocosm kissal where one so yes, it might be one Sort of satire in another country, but here it's it's all the same see it's all the same One universal mind Carlos Mencia is probably my favorite Mexican because he's German Not Mexican. That's a joke. I love my Mexican people all of them, but my god Yeah, but regardless of Blavatsky's career choices at the time both Lachman and Meade agree that this was around the time that Madame Blavatsky met her number one acolyte a 42 year old lawyer in an unhappy marriage named Henry Steele all caught Oh now all caught could be described by cynics as nothing more than a blindfold taken in by empty promises of

Spiritual understanding and power an easily manipulated puppy who followed Blavatsky without question for years until the whole thing blew up in his face Hmm like Carol Baskin's husband. He's loving it man. She keeps him happy. You know, I mean she must But looked at another way all caught could also be described as a man who yearned for an unconventional life in a time when the Opportunities for such were scant and he saw HPB as the person who could make that dream a reality There's something about just the fashions of the time I think that makes me see like because you know the pictures are all super serious and Henry Ocott has that big like Farmers like serious man beard and he's got the serious glasses on and he looks like a serious very Like put together and buttoned up person

I think it's partially got to do with the fashion at the time But you find out like you look at all these serious action picture You look at all these serious-ass pictures and you're like all caught was actually fucking freaky-deaky. Yeah, it's like the opposite It's like he was fucking and And getting hammered and he was looking for a license to love. Yeah. Absolutely a very interesting Now all caught was no dummy Even though he was a bit of a womanizer and a party boy at times so much so that HPB called him in the parlance of the Times a quote-unquote gay dog

Gave a dog kiss on I can be When we can leave our homes my goodness a 42-year-old stinky farmer party boy Doesn't want to hang out with that dude as a gay as dog. I've met since Rick James I'm hearing a sniffle is that gay dog But despite being a party boy He was also one of the three men commissioned to investigate the assassination of Abraham Lincoln I can't put him on the bottle of cabana boy. Okay. Can we not say party boy? He's a 42-year-old farmer who gets hammered He's not a farmer. He's not a farmer. He's not a farmer's definition of the fucking city boy. Oh, yeah, he's a city boy

He's a lawyer. I he's a lawyer. He's like he's just fucking all wrapped up in the fucking bullshit He's got to do all day, man. He's fucking what's name was it Tom Hanks was the movie with the man with one red shoe He's looking for an adorco bull Like funny like kind of out-of-the-box girl that will maybe show him the errors of his fucking button-up ways If a man ever calls you a dorkable you can pull a gun and shoot him Well all caught had also been into mesmerism clairvoyance and magnetic healing when he was younger But after he married the daughter of an Episcopalian rector in 1860 she'd forbidden anything that might be interpreted as devilish

rector thank you dang near Rector do it complete it Finish the ritual calf do we cannot continue the show until you complete this rector dang near got her a free soda at Golden Corral It's just getting worse Now the anti HPB crowd claimed that Blavatsky lured all caught away from his wife and children Using either feminine wiles or promises that she could provide the sorts of spiritual knowledge and power that all caught had long sought But all caught was already in the process of divorcing his wife by the time he crossed paths with madam Blavatsky Although one could say the completely abandoning one's family to pursue the occult might not be the most reasonable choice for a man to make

I mean, I don't know about that one dog There's a lot of people that sounds pretty attractive real question that that must have been very controversial It was pretty cool in the 1800s. It's New York City. It's not as big of a deal It's a bit more cosmopolitan around here, but it's the but honestly I'm with kissle It it is interesting to see how these pockets show up throughout all history where in the middle of like oh Very interesting Conflicted time especially in America like as we were growing you know mixtures of like religious movements like very conservative movements But then also this kind of free love

Stripe that was also happening like he he found his spot of freaks I think that he was bought he was like raised in a world that he was supposed to do X Y Z just like HPB and All of a sudden it's like of course he was into mesmerism. That's where all the freaky chicks were That's where all the fun-ass dudes were they're all like like always like it's always been over in the witchy corners Where you got all your cool friends that like can't make the football team because they can't lift them They can't even put wrist weights on but they're doing magic They're making cups shit appear and sometimes they're wearing like see-through shirts. Oh my goodness mess mesmerine mesmerine

Mesmerism mesmerism that's very useful if you want to be in a spelling bee it does not indicate intelligence, however a spelling bee Yes, it's just about memorization. Oh, so they oh, so this is where this is taken to attack spelling bees It ain't smarter than me. I did yell at that. I did yell at that. I could see you Tall boy in the back of one of those being like a kid being like zonis ism Zonis ism. I Trembl at the use of a zonis ism without my father does okay X Z It's

I would prefer if there was more heckling at the spelling bay it would make it more interesting fucking that and like air horns One girl in the front row can open her shirt Show her tits to all the little boys to see if they can still spell. Add some flair to it. That's all we're saying You guys don't talking about tits No, all caught an HPB didn't meet in New York, but rather in the small town of Chittenden, Vermont I don't know where Chittenden is. It's up there somewhere. It's in fuckface County. Mm-hmm I listened to Ed and Lorraine talk about Chittenden, Vermont, and there's meant to be a big thing about Chittenden

It's just a speck of a city and they via go back. No, it's still just a speck of a city Really, it's right by Dingleberry Well, both of them all caught an HPB have been drawn to Chittenden by stories of the eddie brothers who had made headlines by supposedly levitating and Equalizing spirits. Hmm. They claimed to be able to summon dead men women and children who would sing dance play music and even fight Dules with swords if prodded in the right direction. This was of course all classic Spiritualism good old-fashioned American spiritualism. God. I wish that was real. All right, well, man According to people who went to the eddie brothers. They said that they saw full-on

Bodies they saw full-on apparitions full torso vapors really yeah a full torso vapors And they would go and they would see these things full on and I mean who knows and then a lot of wraps things flying around Phantom lights is it possible though? They were able to pull off a show like that. Well, we'll get into that Now according to Gary Lachman Spiritualism had an entirely different history than the one we know We know spiritualism as the paranormal fad of the 1800s pretty much just entertainment for the people But Lachman claims that it sprung from an argument between various 19th century occultists See occultists of that time were split on whether or not they should tell the people what they knew because after all the word occult itself

Means hidden or secret. Hmm on one side you had people more in line with the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn They believed that knowledge of the higher realms should be kept a secret lest it be profaned By the general public Yeah, cuz they just used it to make people shit kissles Not surprisingly those people tended to be richer folk who saw occultism as something that set them apart from the common rabble Because after all if everyone knows about it, then it's no longer Exclusive not much is changed. It might have eat it might even lose some of its juice. Yeah, I get that I understand On the other side though

You had occultists who thought that anything and everything they knew should be readily available for anyone who wanted to know it And it was their responsibility to instruct society in the ways of the spirit realm and the occult They thought that the well was infinite and see this is so somewhat the McDonald's route They just want to they want to get in franchise. They want to franchise it They want to franchise it in a way. They just think that this is this knowledge should be open to all Yeah But then you also have some people who want to go to the cattleman's route, which was an amazing steak place in Oklahoma City Where I'm I'm sort of going with the cattleman's route here

But I mean somewhat I mean it depends on if you think that magical, you know magical power is a finite resource or not And it also depends on if those people that are saying that magical power is a finite resource are really just creating false scarcity in Order to keep it all to themselves. It's an interesting concept if you go to the Bovatski archives calm They have an incredible collection of theosophic writings and textbooks now This is this is where I'm going to start more and more of my talk about how to read the occult I have discovered just how stupid I am. I am at the very foot of the mountain. I have no idea I've read enough to now know I don't know a fucking

Single thing, but there is an incredible Textbook that is in the Bovatski archives. It's called an introduction to esoteric principles That is a study course by William Dawson McDavid. I hope he is not guilty of any crimes I'm not certain I haven't checked it But one thing he talks about how in the days of Atlantis how to go back That was when everyone the first three route races which we'll get to next episode the first three route races were openly taught Thought thought this kind of occult thought it was the Atlanteans had said we need to start controlling the ship What they kind of say is that through the through time?

Occultists kind of went their way through higher-class people like nobility They kind of found their way people with the secret knowledge found their ways to insinuate themselves very similar David I they found their ways to insinuate themselves in various what you call the secret schools which are me may or may not be real We're not quite certain if they're real, but there are some people that talk about it It seemed to be a lot of it was kind of like a little club or game even to begin with but they believed this this right hand left hand path like Argument about whether or not we should be teaching these things to everyone Has been going on forever and this is kind of what happened to Tibet Which is why she went to Tibet is that all of the occultists at this period of time sort of like

coalesced at the very end in Tibet and that's where they'd opened up the last true secret school that Blavatsky went to well I think the secret school everyone knows how to get there. It's in a train terminal. It's like 18 and three fourths or something like that I'm not sure exactly what they did it. I've heard I think it's nine and three quarters. I've heard that They wanted to be they wanted to be Harry Potter and it's not it's more subtle and it's actually less useful And of course, you're the one who's gone to Harry Potter Land and realized it's just about getting your dad drunk enough to buy you a super expensive stick So they created scarcity and then that raises the demand Much to like what Funko does a Funko or I would actually I would say a more apt comparison is diamonds

You know where diamonds are really not all that scarce There's enough diamonds for everybody, but the diamond industry creates a false scarcity They make us think that diamonds are actually extremely rare so that way they can make them much more expensive than They're actually worse. Okay. Yeah, but they also get you know, but they don't know neither one of them really neither None of these fucking people know like the source of magic. They don't know how if it's infinite They don't know if it's finite But the people that are on more like the they would call it the left wing Say that it is infinite and if we teach everybody then we will all raise the consciousness of humanity

And we will reach those the highest level of consciousness that much faster Everyone knows the source of magic is beans Beans beans the fruit it may it's food that makes your body make noises Am I a radio now Well, the claim is that these occultists the ones on the right and the ones on the left came to a compromise concerning telling the people an Experiment would be performed upon the general public to see how they would react to otherworldly phenomena. Oh my god This is like what Facebook does

It's just like them and I can't wait to see phase four when they have the giant Facebook robots that can recognize us on site and know our sins Well, the claim is that that experiment was spiritualism That it was actually the occultists of the time were actually behind the spiritualist movement And this was an experiment to see if the general public could handle it if they were ready for it just yet Okay, but this proposes a world where there is a group There is a committee that there is a group of people that they secret schools are real and that's also a firm debate But it's I think it's fascinating. Yeah, it's a cool fucking idea. Absolutely from what it seems HPB passed the test

She surmised that yes, some of these spiritualists were communicating with something But she did not believe that they were communicating with the dead as they claimed as we said last episode She thought that these manifested spirits that the spiritualists were claiming to contact during seances Were not at all dead loved ones and deceased historical figures as was often claimed Rather these were spirits who were merely inhabiting the decaying shells of the dead that have been left behind When the immortal souls previously contained therein had moved on to the higher realms. Did that make sense? That's scary as hell Yes, it made sense. It's horrifying. This is the way I've come to understand it Ready-made tulpas are the memories of your loved ones. They're the husks of the memories that you project out into the world

Aggregonians Nameless creatures of the all the ether worlds of the astral plane the goblins the gnomes the aliens that we speak of often, right? they come in and move into the Basically abandoned tulpas of the remembering of the memories that you have of your uncle and then they can make your uncle do all sorts of shit Oh my god, including collecting action figures at an older age Don't throw shade at Michael Lawrence on our show He's an OG he never stopped collecting action figures. That's a big difference if you start at 40 man

Also, if you want to know more about the agregonians read the hidden universe by Anthony Peake So much of this shit is like I feel like I should have gotten high before the episode just of big guests to match How high I was when I read all this shit to understand it Well HPB was actually Disgusted by the displays of weeping and rejoicing often seen at these seances to her these spirits were the dregs of dead Personalities they were the passions the thoughts and the vices that cannot follow a liberated soul after death It's essentially the negative Leavings of a personality sounds like the turd in a punch bowl right now

Why would I mean just let these people be moved if they want to be try to ruminate on this kissal? The body is the rind of the fruit You call me gay No, I'll ruminate on that for a while However these beliefs were most likely a riff on the already existing theories of novelist Edward Bull were lighten who sit close to the same thing concerning spiritualist phenomena Now, of course you could claim that this is a rip-off But this is exactly how occultism works at least as far as I can tell one theory builds on another

Which builds on another and before you know it you got a whole new way of thinking Going into the world of comic books for just a moment You know specifically the invisibles always always because it's any time we talk about magic got to come back to the invisibles because the Invisibles is the most modern example of a successful magical ritual and it's the easiest comic book to draw The invisibles is in itself a gigantic magical ritual highly steeped in the occult it's a pastiche of hundreds of different occult sources and Existing fictional narratives all put together to form something that was entirely new It's 21st century occult thinking and occult working concerning Blavatsky's influences though

It's quite possible that Edward Bull were lighten was one of Blavatsky's so-called masters If you subscribed to the theory that master was merely a name Blavatsky gave to men who showed her respect in the occult world Also was her source and she one of her sources one of these people So what she did was being a storyteller HPB meet the would meet these real occult masters So we're called people that believe that have become people in the same world as her with the same level of interest in the same amount of resources and she would go and Basically borrow their personality and say you're now a cast of one of my characters You've become one of my masters and I bet you Edward Bull were light and actually loved that kind of shit because then you get to be

Part of the mystery. Yeah, so he would help foster it. I'm happy. She went with the word master not daddy There's a whole podcast about it And make no mistake about it people like Bull were lighten were everywhere in the 19th century This truly was the heyday for occultism and magic when it came to all that being a big part of the culture And there were all sorts of people trying to cash in on the phenomena while also Backstabbing and backbiting these dudes fucking hated each other But why was it that the masters the true the like the thinking people the philosophers always just seem to happen to be super rich Right, they always seem to be able to be able to do that

And then the spiritualist kind of a lot of times come it seemed to me in my mind come for more working class backgrounds Yeah, where they see that they are trying to jump on the My my sister can make her knuckles crack real out and the farm is not doing good And we got to do this before father beats us all to death They sound a little bit like the UFO community somewhat. Yeah, we just a burn. Oh, it's not a burn I'm just saying those those backs are bitten more than than Marv Albert. That is a Marv Albert 1990s That's a pretty good one for those of you who don't know Marv Albert was a sports caster This is gonna take 20 minutes

Anybody under the age of 35 jokes are only funny if you have to explain them But it's true if there is that's the same bitterness, right? I said Tom DeLong could come in and buy his way into a legitimate avenue in ufology We're like, you know most of the foot soldiers to move on they truly are foot soldiers meaning they cannot afford a car Well for an example of these guys going into each other's throats back in the 1800s The eddie brothers who were the whole reason why HPB and Henry steel all caught got together were like so many other spiritualists eventually outed as frauds Guy that took them down was a stage magician named Chung Ling Sue. Oh, he came all the way from Asia

Oh, I must have well interestingly Chung Ling Sue was a fraud himself Whose real name was William Ellsworth Robinson. Well white guy then. Oh, he's a white guy. He was an Englishman Okay, hold on a second and and he only took the name Chung Ling Sue out of spite After getting into a magical spat with a real Chinese magician named Qing Ling Fu I this is where in the year 2020 I I can't go into a caricature of Chung Ling Sue Even though it is quite appropriate, but I'm sitting here festering in free speech deal I've built a copy of my body out of my own toward my appeal papers

I've torn up and made into a crude paper machine that I have put into a form of my body Reading reading the hidden universe. I'm right. I did a whole fake cover of it. Eventually. I will escape Well William Robinson's career ended abruptly when a modified gun Accidentally fired a real bullet in the midst of his famous bullet catch trick and the otherwise named Chung Ling Sue died on stage Like Brandon Lee Yeah, that would be a hell of a performance to see though. Oh, man, apparently Well, the things about Chung Ling Sue is when he was on stage. He would pretend like he couldn't speak English

That's kind of how he got away from it. He pretend like he couldn't speak English But the moment he got shot Oh my god, so he just he was just Mickey Rooney He was just Mickey Rooney in like every role that Mickey Rooney had in the 50s for some reason That's why he's not the greatest performer of all time. You gotta hold it. Yeah, you gotta hold it Honestly, you know what it turned out and Mickey Rooney was actually seven foot two But the fraudulent nature of the eddie brothers Didn't matter to Henry steel all caught for him the real story in Chittenden

Was the captivating Russian who just barreled her way onto the east coast occult scene All caught first saw the mop haired Helena Blavatsky sitting around a communal table wearing a bright red shirt and for some reason both her physical appearance and her overall demeanor in Thralled Henry steel all caught. Okay HBB was on the honestly the cusp of fashion at the time She wore this cut at the time wearing like military gear was like the the like most hot Out cut here thing that you could do. Yeah, she's like military outfit on and this is where I think she just has something about her

There's something magical people fall in love with her all time She has what's called glamour She has that that ability where someone goes because you look at a sea of browns and greys And there's that mop headed dropsy-footed woman with the big red shirt on and she's just like I'll suck your dick through your pants You won't even know I'm sucking your dick like she's like saying like weird shit. You're like what and she's just like magic Yeah, you just got magic and you are just sucked right in that's amazing. So he's like let me be Your I rock to my wait, let me let me let you I want to say something about Norman Schwartzkopf And I want to say that he is I rock and she's Norman swear of Swartzkopf and he wants her to invade him

I don't know does this episode take place in 1998 Are you in your own Fey Ray wrong? Are you in your own fey Neyron? It is 1998 to you MJ. Just did you watch the last dance and think it was live? The whole relationship between Henry Steele all caught and Madame Blavatsky. I mean it wasn't really sexual At least that's what they said and Madame Blavatsky despite what Henry said about sucking dick through pants I know

Don Blavatsky was not a sexual person in any way whatsoever. Yes. She did not like it She felt that those were a but which is even in her various instructions She talks about how because her to her sexuality Added to magic made everything black magic and she was very she was not into the baser needs of the body Except for food Exactly you gotta have something in your life. She did love food. Absolutely So based on her opinions about Talpas and her overwhelming presence of character at the eddy farm Allcott wrote a glowing piece about the eddies featuring hbb for the new york daily graphic

From then on he and Blavatsky were close friends or as hbb called them Chums Cool In fact within a week the two already had nicknames for each other real cute ones do to hbb allcott was maloney Wow all caught Maloney. Yeah maloney What was he? Was he in the police academy causing a bunch of chaos? What's going on? It is weird because also in my mind now. I just see Henry all caught as steve goodenberg cast in the film

It was mahoni, but close enough and all caught referred to the madame as either jack or old horse I like jack better for some reason when you call me old horse It kind of makes me feel bad. Do you have any idea how many horses I've fallen off of stop mentioning them? My pussy's upside down because of that. Do you know that? That my organs are literally tied in and out like those sex tricks people do with cherry stems Well Blavatsky and all caught were inseparable although the attraction all caught said was soul to soul not sex to sex Now after the article about the eddies and hbb was printed a skeptic named Dr. Beard

Visited chitenden himself and joined the growing course of debunkers when it came to the eddies ability to physically manifest spirits Hello, my name is dr. Montague bearer and I'm here to I am going to debunk the living hell out of this story And this is my wife Hi, I'm the wife of dr. Beard I love sex with him Let's just go. I'm you know what all of this put me in a tizzy. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna have sex Let's go. I'm wife after this. Yeah, let's kiss Well after two days at the farm dr. Beard

Surmised that the eddies were partially using electric current to create the phenomena And he claimed he could do the same with the right tools and three dollars worth of secondhand drapery Hmm, so but then they should fucking go do it. Yeah Well hbv wrote a scathing response calling dr. Beard a publicity seeking headhunter going around causing what she called Flappedoodles, which was among her favorite words when it came to debunkers. Okay. I know we live in a pretty conservative World when it comes to verbiage and I want to apologize Marcus flap flap doodle. I don't know if that's acceptable I bet you right now. We got a couple of flap doodles listening to this episode. Whoa buddy. Is it magic? You're a bunch of I'm gonna use the other term that I learned from Natalie called muggles

Wow, we go there. Did you say that I did Bunch of child rape and flap doodles In addition HPB offered dr. Beard $500 if he was able to recreate what the eddies were able to do Damn, how much is that in today's money now tens of thousands of dollars huge Now it might be that the eddies were masters of their craft and it really was Pretty fucking hard to do what they did even if it was fake But dr. Beard did not take hpb up on her offer However, it could also be argued that even blavatsky didn't believe the eddies to her

Spiritualism was nothing more than a gateway into occultism, which of course was modem blavatsky's main bag Hmm. Well, do you remember when she went back home after her 10 years of being on the road or wherever the hell she was when she Met de russia shit would just like fly around her. So to her all of this was just fucking. This is bullshit side effects This is all just kind of the afterthought the radiation of my magical abilities Makes all of these things happen And so if that's just what these people are doing where they are just sort of like little magnets for activity And then they try to figure out a way to do it on cue She knows I actually can do it on cue if I want to

Right, maybe sometimes We got a judge the performance With some real magic The great irony of all this though is that while hpb did not believe in spiritualism as the public perceived it She was forced to defend the practice in order to further her own agenda Which just sort of muddled her message for later skeptics But concerning spiritualists the real story of the eddies is far darker than what it appeared to be See the eddie brothers were epileptic

And when they would have fits and spells as children their father would douse them with boiling water And place hot coals in their hands to try and cure them of their affliction But when the infamous spiritualist frauds known as the fox sisters started making bank in new york The elder eddie turned the brothers into a sideshow Turing them bound and gagged and nailed and suffocating boxes Pricking them with needles and wires to give the appearance of paranormal phenomenon Now do you feel bad for michael jackson? Yeah, I do that sounds horrible. That's very sad for these poor kids. But did it work?

Yeah, it did it did work. It did work. That's what i'm saying. Yeah But on the other hand they're also But it's not this is not like to the level of like the cardiff giant They weren't making tens of thousands of dollars and you know their time. I mean they're making like You know 20 bucks here 10 bucks there Right, they're doing spots. They're doing spots. Yeah, okay But perhaps it was this fantastically fucked up childhood that gave the eddies the haunted look in their eyes that was necessary To become successful spiritualists. Uh, it's coming to be father's day kids and I would just like a fucking thank you

Yes, I understand. I poked you with needles put you in a box and made you a sideshow freak But say it now. Thank you Thank you Regardless of their origin though It was the coverage of the eddies that put madame blavatsky on the map After her feud with dr. Beard She did an interview with the editor of the new york daily graphic in which she claimed that her husband nick of four blavatsky Was 74 when they got married while she claimed to be just 16 at the time of their union

It was not quite that it was like that he was about in his early 40s. She was I think 18 Yeah, but the other one is a better story. Yeah, it's a lie But it shows that blavatsky was a fast study in the ways of pr See the life story she gave in this interview was described as a frustrating mix of exaggeration tall tale and spiritual seriousness But that made for an entertaining read that caught people's attention Particularly those with a curious mind concerning the occult But then of course, um journalists realized their mistake and they didn't want to they didn't want to spread lies anymore They don't want to do that and they've always said that that's where that's where it started. That's why we only have

Honest media honest that never spin a story. No, no for their benefit benefit They're like servants But hpb understood again, we this is I think where she probably gets her most hate Which I think a lot of people get hate same time same thing with anton levé anton levé who is not a great guy But understood you got it. You got to create This is a crude way of putting it, but you got to create a tony the tiger Now you have to create somebody that can sell

The product you have to create an image that will will show people that you are as mystic as you say you are You have to do this type of shit She understood very early that it's about getting them in the door and then we'll deal with it after well Absolutely, and that's why they went with snap Crackle and pop because they know pedophiles are up early because that's when kids go to school And you want to lure them in and pedophiles eat children's cereals so they can better understand What kids like and what kids want and what better than a bunch of little elves Sell new the cereal because they're the size of children, but they're legal to fuck

Exactly. Absolutely. Now. I have to go eat my keeblers Strangely though all this press also garnered hpb Romantic attention A man from the country of georgia not the state the country cool over near russia Sure, his name was michael c betnelli and he read these articles and wrote to henry steel alcott Asking if a meeting with hpb could be arranged because betnelli had apparently fallen in love Yep, just through just through the media just reading the articles. Yeah, she's just a fucking firecracker, man There's something about her people love that magical lilt in her eye

You think like because maybe in some way you think like this liberated woman. I bet she's a fucking tiger in the sack I bet she she's gonna show me all the secrets of the world and then she's just like um, no, no, right I am mad at my own uterus. Maybe she had a rule no sex if she's smoking She's always smoking Now alcott did get the two of them together after betnelli had traveled all the way from georgia, but hpb snubbed him She snubbed him snubbed him straight up straight off

But betnelli continued the pursuit wouldn't take no for an answer and hpb agreed to marry him only after betnelli Threatened to kill himself if she didn't I need you I need you helen you can imagine screaming that at any point I've never met a helen where I would I would feel like that where I'd go helen. I go. I can't live without your body She said that she would marry him if and only if they would never ever Have sex to the point where they may as well pretend like sex didn't even exist Of course. Yeah. Yeah

Yeah, he thought he could eventually wear her down But when betnelli couldn't keep his passions in check Divorce proceedings were soon put in motion. She told him the deal it sounds like Yeah, and she you know the old-fashioned what it means couldn't keep his passions in check is that he did the old Dowson rod in the morning. You know, I mean where you just wake up and just lightly You brush the morning wood close to the leg and go like Are you enticed Later levatsky would claim that the whole thing had been the work of a black wizard

A beast or a devil that had taken possession of her body She said she blacked out one day and when she awoke weeks later She found herself living with a handsome armenian who treated her as if she were his wife This is where she's like lindsay low in Where she just blacks out and wakes up next to a very rich armenian man on a boat. Yeah I'm always I've always been team lindsay. I think she's kind of fun And even though betanelli was all in when it came to levatsky's powers. Her only real acolyte at this time was Henry all caught

After leaving betanelli levatsky moved in with all caught at 23 Irving Place Just across the street from uh, we're Irving Plaza is today. Yeah, of course. I know that area very well There an all caught post divorce abode HPB instructed him in the ways of the masters explaining that the source of her abilities were connected to the ancient Elementals and if he was willing to make the necessary sacrifices He could control these elementals as well Aggregonians y'all the agregonian fucking problem dude. Wow and today's sacrifice is Give me a bunch of mac and cheese

From oh, what's that mac and cheese place? I love that's probably closed. That's so sad. I love that little place But HPB this is where it really begins This is her because now she's got all caught her number one student who is ready and willing She is slowly but surely becoming the teacher that she always kind of envisioned. She would be the she will be the master to all caught According to levatsky controlling the elementals meant celibacy sobriety and vegetarianism Oh

Even though levatsky herself could never quite give up on animal products remember She subsisted mostly on a diet of fried eggs Floating in butter. She's living like Dan ackroyd and nothing but trouble and then this guy's gotta eat a bunch of kale He's gotta eat a bunch of kale. He's gotta walk to walk meanwhile. Yeah, she gets to live like I'm just sticking the fucking this big floppy egg But after a while Blavatsky was no longer contented with just one student Going off of all caught devotion

She began to build what would eventually become the theosophical society Which would teach blavatsky's occult beliefs to anyone who is willing to put in the work It's called hogwarts It's not called hogwarts Now the theosophical society was like most things occult an amalgamation of a whole slew of existing ideas One part came from an anonymously written book called ghost land Which was all about a secret occult society That sounds have you read that at all? I haven't read it. No, I have not read ghost land

But there are other things that are very similar to it that talk about it They talk about in a in the most occult way possible a fictionalized story about a thing that might have been real According to the book this society used various techniques such as mesmerism, magnetism, and most effectively nitrous oxide to induce spiritual states of consciousness Cool, which has been around since the beginning of time. There's a very good look a little bit into the alucinian mysteries Which was what they call the the greek mystery schools, which they again, they don't know what they believe or not and they worked on a central Mythos right a story an allegory that they would tell that would be all about hidden knowledge They basically told Demeter's story of Persephone where Demeter

she had a daughter in Persephone and Persephone went and basically was was Going through a field of flowers and got sucked into the colorless world of Hades and it's about the allure between the two It's about the live like burgeoning cycle of life mixed with the death cycle It means many different things But they would a lot of times what they would do is it was a bunch of smart slash rich people a part of the greek Like upper societies and they'd fucking huff shit from the ground They would go and fucking huff up all the fucking weird chemicals like weird sulfur and shit and then trip balls And come up with stuff together. Yeah, yeah, and of course your other daughter. Sephora did the first ever makeup

Test she was a makeup performer, which is great. I love that Well, I mean this was supposedly just one of a number of secret societies that went even further back Beyond Greece who went back to ancient egypt and it was supposedly composed of high-ranking Nobility these people studied the cabala they studied philosophical occultism and they studied practical magic All to physically manifest spiritual entities and achieve altered states of consciousness. Cool. Yeah. Yeah Hbb was also influenced by the hermetic brotherhood of Luxor which taught what they called an occult Correspondence course they invented zoom teaching The course was run by an early proponent of sex magic named Pashal Randolph, but

Um, fortunately Randolph shot himself in the head in 1875 The hermetic brotherhood of Luxor has an interesting past too because it's entirely it was entirely made up for a while It was put into a dictionary of the occult as versus something like hermetic order of Luxor and then the brotherhood of Luxor Both of which were just fucking made up at some point during her studies Hbb was asked about the hermetic brotherhood of Luxor and she was like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's real. I know those guys Uh, yeah, they're figuring out shit, right? And she pretended like they were real Meanwhile in life A group of dudes got together and created a real version of the hermetic brotherhood of Luxor which came

Independent of her thought so that you wonder what is who got the idea first and what is that magic? I don't know. Well, it seems like it is to me Yeah But this idea of a cult for the masses combined with the secret societies of ghost land and the ideas of Edward Bull were lightened concerning what spiritualism really was help form the basis of a theosophical society The only thing they needed to do was drum up a little interest So all caught released a collection of articles mostly about hpb called people from the other world Soon after Blavatsky not so coincidentally

Received word from master m that it was time to drop the spiritualist act and speak openly about occultism Oh, it's a big step huge step Also, not so coincidentally all caught started receiving communications from the masters But those communications were decidedly more solid than the aetheric messages sent to hpb All caught was getting letters. Oh Mostly from master Serapis Bay And if you're getting a little confused as to which master is which just know for the purposes of listening They're all pretty interchangeable except for the main guy cute. Who me. Yeah

Yeah, they may not even be real. But it but there is feels y'all all y'all real as you want to be bro Yeah Now the overall message of the letters from the masters to Henry Alcott points towards the possibility that maybe just maybe It was Blavatsky herself who was either writing or dictating these messages that were supposed to have come from the ascendant It was all the crumbs It was the crumbs and the butter slick the butter patches on each one of them But he used to get I mean I try found a couple of these letters I started looking through these things are are they are thick. Yeah, cool. You're thick

I mean, so if it was her she still it took a lot of time Yeah, yeah The headline of these letters was that all caught should have courage be hopeful and above all be patient with hbb And do everything he could to help her in her mission to bring occultism to the masses. Oh, yeah, she wrote that She wrote that But these letters were also sometimes just straight-up practical commands. I mean how you get shit done, man She just she made a physical form of Siri Help Blavatsky get a divorce

Borrow money from your ex-wife's parents to finance the mission Maybe think about a partnership with Blavatsky's ex-husband if he has any money left And he'd read these letters out loud, and then you know you have hbb going like that's a great idea Interesting what a coincidence Now the first society that hbb and all caught tried to start the miracle club didn't really amount to much They were supposed to hold private seances to investigate psychic phenomena But mostly they just ended up arguing with their medium over payment And they actually tried telling that like we're paying you an experience

Hey, man, got to that's how all business started. Do you remember we I think we even said that to travis at some point I'm pretty sure it's a very beginning. We're like travis. No, you're gonna see spending so much time around all these This is fonts of creative energy. It's gonna make you a better not just a better employee, but a better person I don't know if we were able to do that with travis. I think he demanded money immediately upon meeting us No, he's back back in the day when travis came on It was just me and him and he got a hundred dollars a week and free burritos Hell yeah, bro. And that was of course in 1911 Which was a great year for the railroads

Um, no, it's honestly what vice does. Yeah, it's what it's how vice pays you Well hbb and all caught's miracle club only lasted a few weeks But soon after all caught and HPB had a moment of clarity at a lecture about the lost science and wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians They had attended this lecture with a new chum named William judge And the subject of the lecture was the adepts who had designed the great pyramids using carefully guarded occult wisdom The concept of ancient aliens and occult wisdom when it came to the pyramids. This shit is nothing new This is 150 years old. Oh, okay, but they actually were closer to some version of the truth at the time Which like now we know that the pyramids were actually built by artisans and architects quite a bit

And so they knew at the very beginnings that the people that built these giant structures Were what they call adepts. They had like they had natural Paranormal ability and they used that which could have been a time would seem to be highly paranormal Was actually just like the beginnings and true understanding of geometry Yeah, and they did make a good point about you know knowledge being lost because at that time people looked at the fucking pyramids And they thought how'd they do that? Oh, yeah Well, I still look at them and wonder and of course geometry at fools science Over it

Over it over it from what it sounds like all caught HPB and judge talk through damn near the whole lecture Because as soon as the lecture was over all caught stood up and announced to the crowd of 17 That he judge and HPB were creating a new society then and there just biting this guy's whole crowd Oh, yeah, man. We saw immediately being like these guys are fucking suckers. We I got the talent I got to know how we're sitting here. We're sitting here talking and shit So you're not obviously fucking you don't hold my attention HPB's got a hair 10 times the size of this guy. Wow And while the others the guys in the audience just sort of sat and watched

All caught was made chairman judge was made secretary And HPB was content to have no title at all because HPB was bored to fucking tears by Organizational details where he's all caught seemed to fucking thrive in that environment And today's nomenclature HPB is not unlike myself. She is creative. Um, she's creative Her job is to inspire and bring ideas She can't be scheduling and know how to record everything And she can't like know all that tech shit and know anything about how to do taxes Or like how to build a structure or any of this fucking bullshit

She provided the words and the sounds Right. Well, that's very important. It's much like rowdy Roddy Piper never gave him a championship Yeah, he didn't need one. No, his character was so big But they all caught that's why you know, she usefully She did choose and they also kind of went into their roles where all caught knew He had to be the fucking the guy to put it all together physically HPB allowed herself now you see the guess it may seem kind of lazy, but it's the opposite It's it's so it's smart. It's working smart. She's starting to become a master

Which means you can't you have to be this the power behind the curtain Mm-hmm. Hmm. And so it was at that lecture on september 13th 1875 that the theosophical society which still exists to this day was founded. Oh, all right I mean, it's the type of religion nowadays It's the type of thing that you meditate long enough that you become a white person that thinks it's cool to wear a turban I It is theosophy is uh, you begin to wear wood jewelry I see if you start to go long enough. I'm sure a lot of emails are sent. Yeah, there's a lot of email chains

Now etymologically the word theosophy means wisdom of the gods And it's sort of hard to pin down exactly what theosophy is and that's kind of by design There is however a mission statement still used as a guide by branches today And it's a good message the purposes of the theosophical society are One to form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race creed sex cast or color Pretty fucking progressive for 1875. Yeah, because sometimes when we form these so-called brotherhoods It can go awry

racial front two The study of ancient and modern religions philosophies and sciences and the demonstration of the importance of such study In three the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers latent in man Cool, it's pretty broad. Yeah, it's pretty broad and yeah, but because again It starts fairly general You you're invited to a meeting to go to this thing where you assume you're gonna hear some lectures because at the time That's kind of what had been going on. You go hear some lectures. You see a guy move a cup around and that's what you do

Theosophy their goal was to take it a little bit deeper. Oh deeper Secret mystery schools deeper. Cool And Blavatsky said that anyone of average intellect leaning toward the metaphysical who found more joy in helping others than in receiving help And also loved truth goodness and wisdom for their own sake and not their benefits Was a theosophist wow to compare it to someone from pop culture I would actually say of course helped by my Trekkie wife while discussing theosophy in general That captain John Luke Picard of the uss enterprise is the ideal theosophist. Why? This is a thing this couple. I mean dog meat and carolina. They sit there. They they put a lot of star trekking a lot of stuff

Well, wouldn't they think about star trek more than any than any two people I've met We know our time. We thought we watch and think and talk about star trek a lot. What about wharf? I mean wharf was I think wharf technically is hpb Yeah, okay, and then whoopee's character. He brought people together at the bar Well, I was talking to her about theosophy specifically principal one and she's like so start fleet You know, it's it's just star fleet, you know, it's where humanity is in the 24th century, you know So that's fucking John Luke Picard number two, you know the study of ancient and modern religions John Luke Picard was a well-known archaeologist and was very

interested in the philosophies and science of all cultures and of course the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature Curiosity is John Luke Picard's number one defining feature. He could barely hold up his phaser What are you talking about? He was he could I could not see him holding a hammer. What are you talking about? Did you never watch tg? Oh, no, I did. I did. I had the toys. You don't know what you're talking about Oh, I cannot allow you to do this to our show What's gonna happen if you attack John Luke Picard directly? We are gonna never hear the end of it ever I think he's fine Of course theosophy is quite a bit more complicated once you get into the reading as Henry in particular

Has found out over the last few weeks Well, let's let's talk about it for a hot second, right? Theosophy is a little different than just a general like belief that it starts as sort of like a general Metaphysical group, right where yes, the main the main Ingredient you need is to be as curious as a little cat, right? Yes, and that really it does help You're supposed to want to answer questions because the idea is that if you're a true seeker of knowledge You are sick. You are sick of how shallow the information it is that you get But hbb would say forever how she was so sick of all of her people because she would call them

Abominably literal right this idea that they are constantly saying uh, we'll prove it. Uh, show me what you're talking about Look what these what the theosophy movement was in my mind was that hbb decided to finally become A teacher in a secret school She wanted she viewed it whether it was fake or not She collected a series of masters had read the lore of secret schools. She felt that she She had internalized it and now she saw an opportunity to do it for herself And the way as soon as you get into theosophy the one thing she wrote a book what I didn't realize I tried to read the secret doctrine It's incredibly difficult. We're going to get into a little bit more next episode

We I try to read it's incredibly difficult But you didn't realize that you had to read an instruction booklet that she wrote first called esoteric instructions And she wrote that she had a smaller group after secret doctrine came out and she was like all right now I'm going to teach you how to read it in a in the probable way because people really came to the theosophical Theosophical society first saying like I want to learn how to astral project. I want to learn how to throw fucking cups around I want to do all this shit that everybody else does and she's like Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah But the first thing you have to understand is you have to quote-unquote know

Thigh self that's like the first thing that she talked about which is an occult principle that has been talked about it again And again, but what the hell does it mean kiss all? When do I get to throw the cups around? I listen you got to do the homework first But this is like a such a bummer first day of school Like I was here man. I was like so I thought it was gonna be fun But listen to how rad this is all right, so one thing she tried to do so in the esoteric instructions She did it for a perfect example of how We teach things allegorically and that is how it that is you you're gonna hear a story

And then it means something else and it means something far more boring than the story But you got to get you got to understand both and we're gonna be able to move cups around kissle You have to understand both the story was a fake story or was it no, I just I just need you to just to sit Oh, listen, all right, so here's an example of what she wrote This is one of the central one of the central things to try to explain what the know thyself means getting to know the supreme Buddha Or what she calls essentially the Christ energy inside that same line, right? Because the idea is that Christ who if he was real he was a part of like a series of secret teachers, right? That knew himself first and that's the only way because we're microcosm human body

Is a microcosm for the entire universe as above so below when do I get to throw the First store You are my tallest student and that's why I know you're going to need the most teaching To build the teaching up from your clotted ankles up to your red-headed dome So here is a reading from the esoteric instructions The supreme buddha or amitabha Cause they say at the hour of the creation of man a rosy ray of light to issue from the right eye The ray emitted a sound

Padma Pani Burica Then the deity allowed to stream forth from his left eye a blue ray of light Which becoming incarnate in the two virgins dome Acquired the power to enlighten the mind of living beings Amitabha then called the combination which forthwith took up its abode in man Om Mani Padmehoom I am the jewel in the lotus and in it. I will remain Then Padma Pani the one in the lotus vowed never to cease working until he had made humanity

Feel his presence in itself and it thus saved it from the misery of rebirth He vowed to perform the feet before the end his head should split into numbers Into numberless fragments the kalpa closed but humanity felt him not within its cold evil heart Then Padma Pani's head split more shadow into a thousand fragments Move with compassion the deity reformed the pieces into ten heads three white and seven of various colors And since that day man has become a perfect number or ten Now what does it mean? I was just wondering are these credits transferable because I actually my dad told me I should go to stanford

But this will transfer right? I'm going to transmute your penis into a jar But this story is actually about how important colors and numbers are to the occult Yeah So where are the cups? Are they like are they anywhere? But it's cool, right? I get it Well, I mean well the thing is about hpb in the theosophical society is that what she's essentially working with here is the idea of DIY because she was not allowed into any of these other fucking occult societies because she was a woman When she wasn't allowed into these occult societies. She said fuck you. I'm gonna do my own thing

I'm gonna do it myself and she did it cool 140 years later. It's still here. That's awesome But it's interesting about how these old stories reflect what actual shamans went through They would talk about the the the the trials that they have to go through to gain the hidden knowledge So one of those would be they would take the fucking payout They would take the the the the cyclocybin they would take this up and then they would go into these very intense like body racking Sort of like hallucinations about being destroyed endlessly by giant gods What this basically shows is that the christ energy is constantly rebuilt inside of us We it has been split throughout all kind

We have to find it inside of us first to access it and it's that pod It's the pop money that moves the cups Sounds like you just described sperm As above so below Yeah, that's fucking seriously kissle. You just fucking you did it. Yes. You just did it. Yes. Oh, I see the cup moving now So a couple of weeks after founding the theosophical society HPB traveled upstate to ithica and began writing her first great work isis unveiled Partly because the master wanted it and partly because no one would publish her articles after her star fell a little

Upstate well, what happened there? Just people just kind of lost interest Upstate blavatsky stayed with a family with occult leanings named the corsons Who actually had very few positive things to say about hbb after her three-week stay? Oh Hiram Corson estimated she smoked 200 cigarettes a day And called her quote a great russian bear That's not that's kind of nice. I mean that's not bad. Everyone loves a bear. That's very very mean But yeah, it's difficult to have her as a roommate. Yeah. Yeah, dude. She's slathered in butter and cigarette smoke Yeah, that's a smell either reminds me of a college roommate. I had very nice guy

Well, I don't know about that, but he smoked a lot reminds me of what I smelled like in college I was two pack a day smoker back then dog meat that fucking photo of you being like, I guess the cigarette band didn't work Like that that that newspaper article you put up from your college is fucking great No, the story behind that picture is that the college newspaper and the college radio station Were in the same building and we just spent all of our time Smoking out in front of the building and bullshitting with each other and the reporter the photojournalist who was assigned to that story Was too fucking lazy to walk through the campus to find a good picture So he just took a picture of the assholes who hung out out from

Hell, I mean He had but the thing is that he had two assholes right up front Two assholes getting getting degrees in radio No, my degree was in english and Dirk's degree was in philosophy They somehow he has a he has a wife. Yeah, he pays for a whole bunch of shit I'm doing really well and Dirk's doing pretty good too. That's classed. I heard hell. Yeah Well, the only time Blavatsky left the house in Ithaca was for a photo session costing $13 That was charged to the Corson family

To pay them back HPB drew a portrait of Corson's dead daughter Using stationery she stole from the president of Cornell University What? Nothing helps soothe over people then draw on a picture of their dead daughter. Just ask the ramsys When I went to the John Panay ramsys parents house, I mean, I haven't received a letter back But I keep sending pictures. I drew of John Panay again and again and again in heaven and in hell On roller coasters at the bar what she'd look like now some with clothes some without yeah

Well at this point, I think they owe you. I think they owe you quite a bit of cash That's an I owe you That's just as good as money Well Hiram Corson loved the portrait supposedly drawn without HPB seeing an image of the dead daughter Corson's wife Screamed the moment she saw it and had the thing burned calling it the work of the devil and HPB left the next day All the dead daughters look the same

That's what I'm saying, man. What am I supposed to take away from this? How long's the daughter been dead? Do you even remember really which was it just a skeleton? You're like that looks just like her Thing was though HPB also came out of Ithaca having done quite a bit of work She'd written 25 pages a day quoting long passages from books that were neither in her possession Nor in Corson's private library Damn Blavatsky claimed that she used clairvoyant reading

Which was the ability to see passages from books on another plane of existence And she didn't and she did quote correctly Which even if the clairvoyant reading was bullshit was still a testament to her fantastic recall abilities That's incredible. Also like seriously. What is the difference? I mean, isn't that if you can if you have a photographic memory You're totally getting it I'm full of cum You've come so long man. This is so great. This is but the it's weird, right? Because I don't know I don't know what the difference is because on some level. How did she remember that much?

Uh, she would act it out too, right? Like she would we were gonna get to she would literally sit and like squit And read the shit, right? And it's interesting to see like I don't know. I don't know how she memorizes all these things and That's not yeah, and this it's not like she's recalling something simple. She's not recalling dr. Seuss like she's recalling arcane volumes Uh written in greek and she's translating it to english word for word I I can I mean I can even recall dr. Seuss. I don't want green eggs and spam I uh, this is where I'm gonna have to take you to the hospital

But if you look at the ci I've been reading a little bit more of like of the original documents because the cia Recently did a freedom information release of a bunch of documents of them I'm working with people for remote viewing like trying to see mars and do this kind of stuff And it's interesting to see It's kind of similar like what they would do to manipulate like isolate you The free writing the free writing was actually a big thing that the cia themselves would use that they stole from the russians To train people how to do telekinesis. It's interesting. Yeah, it's a weird the clairvoyant training is there. Yeah Hmm. So once blavatsky was back in new york. She moved to a place in hell's kitchen on 47th and 8th

Which she would call the llama sari cool. She's oh, that's so funny. You say the llama sari That's actually cooler than the lame sari. I thought it was called the lame sari, which is no a lot more Jared Kushner lives No, a llama sari is like a monastery except it's filled with llamas. It's a very pretentious name to give your fucking apartment There's literally llamas. No llamas is in like buddhist llamas Oh, I'm so freaking confused. That's the kissle. I recognize Really was like what no wait She's right by rudies as well. Yeah hot dogs because the owner's brother owns Hebrew national

No, shit. Is that why they got the hot dogs there? I had a great conversation with them once Rudy's You don't know rudies you get free hot dogs there. I never went to I honestly never went to hell's kitchen really I didn't hang out that in uptown Eight eight dollar eight dollar pitchers of a of a knockoff light beer and free hot dogs, man When I was broke we used to go there all the time Can't beat it can't beat it. Wow. It's a big pig outside Well at the llama sari

Blavatsky built her own little occult haven in what would be her last home in America Even bought some monkeys brought some monkeys in there Okay, these are actually monkeys, right? Yeah, they're actually monkeys and she left it But when she moved out she like left the monkeys there for the next tenant Like anton levé. She was not a good caretaker of exotic animals She got a bunch of monkeys that essentially just their hair all fell out and they just died inside of a new york apartment must have smelled great She made this place like an occult tgi fridays where it was like

Shit hanging from the wall like fake skeletons big here like pyramid models stuffed owls all it's got it must have been cool as hell except for all the weird dying monkeys in it Yeah, all with lung cancer from secondhand smoke Man, I bet she could have taught all those monkeys how to smoke and that could have been another revenue stream That could have been Well, Blavatsky sequestered herself in the llama sari for the next six months working 17 hour days With no outline no plan and no reference books all working on her first great work Wow

Problem was though these drafts were god awful messes outside of the quotes Full of baffling punctuation and confusing trains of thought she apparently Could not understand punctuation. No just couldn't get it. It is david ike's the biggest secret There is no punctuation. It is every One of these books. Yeah that I have tried to read it is always like this because What she's going to teach you afterwards is that you need a teacher to teach you to read it So that's how you create a job for yourself. Ah So all caught worked as her editor suggesting changes and sometimes rewriting entire passages

Then he'd come back to blavatsky with the edited work which she would either approve or throw away and try again Till she got it right. Oh, this guy is firmly caught He's no, he's he saw he's a follower. Yeah, he saw enough to believe her That's what I honestly. I truly believe that during the beginning especially the very beginning of their relationship when she her powers were at their full extent He saw some shit right. Mm-hmm But really when it came down to it the ideas

Blavatsky was developing were fascinating What she was trying to do here was marry ancient knowledge with modern scientific ideas like evolution While also reframing the conversation concerning spiritualists and their interaction with the so-called dead It's just interesting to see how she understood that the way of the future Was the middle way it was to bring the science in so that she get her shit can then carry forward into the future Mm-hmm. I mean it seems like a religion many religions were totally rejecting science at this point So that's interesting. She was available for it Exactly in the end the 1200 page work outlining these ideas was called

Isis unveiled amazingly the book was a huge success for its time sold out of its initial print run of a thousand In just a week. Hell. Yes. She's back, baby. Yes, baby. She's in the business. Well technically this is she's not back This is the first time the world's hearing of her Right. So this is her introduction This is like the beginning of her of her like at this spot before that she was sort of a like a local She's a local character. She was burning Mac playing the clubs and now she's got the burning Mac show Hell, yeah, one of the best shows ever by the way See part of what isis unveiled was trying to do was to teach a universal type of humanity that rejected

Intolerant fundamental forms of religion which she saw as ultimately destructive. Mm-hmm. Instead. She said that all religions sprung from a common source hermetic philosophy So saying that Christianity or Judaism or Islam was more true than the others was missing the point I agree But at the same time she also pushed back on the theories of Charles Darwin While she did believe in evolution as Charles Darwin laid it out and this was back when evolution was new Like this was not when like now when it's, you know, just fucking accepted like this was back when evolution was a new idea She accepted it

But she said that Darwin was missing something essential in his works Charles Darwin wasn't accounting for the evolution of the soul and nor did any of those monkeys she bought turn into people So hey, you tell me. Yeah, she was trying to make them people She was feeding them eggs and butter and she was giving them shoes And she was making them smoke and they just were they refused to vote ridiculous Well, Blavatsky wrote that hard science the idea that we are merely quote-unquote

Trousered apes was dangerous But it's not like the fundamentals because you know the fundamentalists they take evolution as a personal insult You know, like I wouldn't know monkey monkey didn't come from know me. I ain't I'm better than monkey and they think that their thoughts come from God I drink soda And if you give a monkey soda, it dies so Well, Blavatsky took issue because that viewpoint was limiting

She wrote that hard science removed any and all spiritual thought from the equation and sort of stuck us in the mud Essentially, she was saying that believing in evolution as the end all be all Actually prevented further evolution from happening. I see where she's going with that totally But now we are we're starting to hit that crux even now The I we see it again and again the idea that of just one empirical Machine-like world where we just get you know just cells and blah blah blah It's a very like it's like a kind of a factory world on one side And then her idea that you can take all the things that you're saying about science and apply it to magical thought as well

Because she's saying like there's a whole other side Of the universe that you're denying you're denying the astral plane and we got to bring it in Yeah, okay. Now if you're a bit of a rust coal, you know the idea of a mechanical universe sounds exactly right You know, there's plenty of people listening who believe that you know Humans are nothing more than animals who happen to reach consciousness through a tragic accident of evolution flap doodles But in Blavatsky's estimation humankind's transformation from monkey to man was merely the next step in evolution on our way to what we might call godhood

So what happened? Didn't man just sort of walk out one day like um the now the now infamous uh character from usual suspects Kaiser so say That's right. And then just slowly start to stand up straight. What are you talking about evolution my friends evolution You know what I will say is that do you really want an answer to that? Because there is an answer to it. There is some there is a form of answer to it Which is the idea that all energies sprung from the beeness

The ending the unending and unknowable god force called the pada brah Where a just the sheer infiniteness of it means that It wouldn't be infinite if it couldn't spontaneously create life So is the cup like in the kitchen or where would they be? Hey, well this idea that monkey can become man can become god Was actually written about in the kabbalah thousands of years ago. Yeah, get your shit tight Here's the message I love when Madonna had made it when she was kabbalah when she did that

Here's the message and it's very simple and this is from the kabbalah A stone becomes a plant a plant a beast a beast a man a man A spirit and the spirit a god Cool But what does that sound very similar to mormonism uh, narcissism right this idea that which is what they kind of all Lump together as well. It's going to become more and more

Succinct in the secret doctrine, but this this idea of there is an un you literally can't know it. Yeah unknowable god head There's a DOS god. There's an unknowable frame to all reality that shits out creator gods that are allegorical spiritual mirrors of us as a body and then everything that you need want to know about the universe you can learn just from Your horrible body kissle. Thank you my horrible body. I can literally learn from my folds the full you see this meat under my Yes, Jupiter could be in there Wow

Matt Hardy broken Matt Hardy a great pro wrestler is playing on this theme right now in AEW. Oh, really? He can teleport now What? Yes Matt Hardy. He's talking about narcissism. Yes. He's really going all in And furthermore Blavatsky also made arguments for mesmerism Hypnosis psychometry ancient science elementals prehistoric civilizations magic just about any fucking Woo-Woo subject you can think of Blavatsky talked about it in Isis Unveiled Cool, but she also never said that any of that cancelled out hard science rather her central message was Shakespearean There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than a dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio sands was it was in Shakespeare?

Yeah, people love him. They love him. They hate Hamlet. They hate Hamlet. Oh my god, the only Hamlet. Give me a fat guy. That's what I like Well, he's lost a lot of weight and hurt his career Yeah, absolutely. There needs to be a Shakespeare bread and bread and breakfast that has the hamlet. I am Hamlet I fucking hate I I'm just I'm just so I'm so tired Unfortunately though Well Isis Unveiled was a success sales wise. It didn't necessarily translate to a whole lot of new members for the Theosophical Society Although they did end up getting a couple of celebrities. Who? Thomas Edison. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, they got their fucking Elon Musk of the time. They got him

Yeah, the guy who electrocuted the elephant or was that the other one? Was that Tesla? No, that was Edison. That was absolutely 100% No, that was Edison. That was 100% Edison. They got the guy who electrocuted the elephant. Yeah, we got him. We'll kill anything Well, Edison was doing some experiments like about paranormal phenomena at the time and he figured this Blavatsky woman She's got a handle on it. So I'll join the Theosophical Society. You know who else joined Abner Doubleday I loved him. I loved him in in in the catcher the one movie where he He invented baseball. Oh His and he and his job was that he just he'd go like you'd put the chew in and go Yep

Yep, that's it then in 1878 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky became an American citizen USA So she cast off her Russian citizenship and then left America for good. Yep. Wait, what? Oh, but oh, what happened? However, that might have been a part of her plan all along See according to an email we got from one of our listeners Blavatsky may have been denied entry into Tibet Decades earlier because the Brits who are competing with Russia for rule over Central Asia might have thought she was a Russian spy Ah, but yeah, dip because she was the son. She was the daughter of an aristocrat in the army

You know, like she was very obviously very Russian So there was historical precedent for a woman being turned away at the time, especially a Russian woman But as an American citizen Blavatsky could travel the world specifically Central Asia without the baggage of European entanglements and soon after she earned citizenship She left America forever and moved to India And it's in India where we'll pick back up for the conclusion to our series on madam Blavatsky She made it. She finally made it finally made it And of course, there's all kinds of major fuck ups and bad decisions to come

But also the secret doctrine her most and her most famous work. Hell. Yeah. So how old is she at this point? What are we talking here on her for as close to 50 close to 50? Yeah, between 25 and 50. Wow She is a special woman We're gonna finish her up because we realized we didn't want this episode to be five hours long Because we started going through it and we want to get into deep as we can into atlantis. Yeah, the root races we're going to find out uh Just how troubling some of her information was and how some of it was twisted

Right and some of it was interesting. But again, remember all of it is supposed to be taken with a a sense of Creative license. Yes, and that's and you you take these things and you interpret for yourselves But the one thing that is not interpretable is how her hubris led to her downfall and then the end is going to be the sad ending of hbb, which is What what america and what people around the world know her for and why her reputation has been tarnished so thoroughly Well and much like me if I fall I ain't getting up Wow mad amblovatsky that is awesome. What a what a life this woman lived Yeah, I mean what this is a life in three parts. There's the there's the the veiled years

There's her time in new york, you know really her figuring out who she is essentially in the occult world And then the third part is her in india and her kind of fucking that up But bringing it back and writing one of the most influential books in occult history She sort of becomes an indian rachel dolezal for a period of time, but we'll forgive her of that I say that that's her acquiring character. Yes. Yeah Oh, I forgot about that mistake Wow All right, everyone. Thank you all so much for listening to our episodes on mad amblovatsky

Thank you all so much for getting the book and thank you for the wonderful response It's been incredible And also you can get some new merch at last podcast merge.com and don't forget our live show Last podcast live.com. You can watch us dance and play around in front of your eyes Yeah, speaking of the the merch on the live show the jeff the talking mongoose shirts the do it for the devil mint shirts Uh, just go to the website and click on pre-order. That's where you find those. Uh, the pre-order ends on six four 2020 and they will not be sold after that. So get your jeff the talking mongoose shirts now Honk honk

And let us know honestly, we're taking we want to do more of these flash sales because I I'm a t-shirt person I'm collecting my own fucking tell them deep. I'm collecting my own t-shirts. I love them So if you have an idea for a t-shirt always send it to our ways We love seeing what y'all say about merch and we're I heard we've heard people asking for plank classes We're trying to figure that out. We're trying to figure out a couple other little things Yes, we're gonna do absolutely and uh, and if you do create something for I don't know atc Or whatever it is feel free to tag us and we'll be happy to help you out and in whatever your endeavors are as well There was a great kick-ass

Ring and then there was that kick-ass mug. I mean y'all are just whenever we can help We we absolutely love to help the small businesses and the artists of course because we're in this together Y'all help us and we help you and I fucking absolutely. I loved I you know, we're very lucky very lucky have talented and Cool sexy listeners. I've seen fan art for mother shows and You know, we're very lucky Yeah, yeah, there's our stuff is good. I don't know how we got that But man, I just love this. I love this story so much Yeah, I love hpb and I hope y'all do too because if she can do it

We can do it. Absolutely and thanks for your support and all the shows in the last podcast network Uh, no dogs in space summer strange and we're gonna be doing it all fucking summer along It's this is just the beginning of it. Yeah, we get we're gonna be getting weird all fucking summer So I hope you guys are I hope you understand how much homework is involved here So y'all just start reading some of these books so that you can start telling us what to say Uh, I'm just here to move a cup You missed the point, sir Thanks for supporting the last podcast network and never forget hail yourselves. Hail satan

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