Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Jason Louv

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Jason Louv is a bestselling author, journalist, and teacher of magick, meditation, and the occult. His career in journalism has been centered around surveillance, international trade, and technology, with his writing featured in publications such as VICE News, ESQUIRE, Boing Boing, and Motherboard. Through his online education portal, Magick.Me, and his eight books, including John Dee and the Empire of Angels, Louv empowers his audience to master transformation and self-discovery through sacred traditions and spiritual technologies. He is the founder and president of Ultraculture Incorporated, a data-driven media company that blends traditional spirituality and cutting-edge technology, makes spiritual practices to individuals and companies alike. Today, Louv continues to bring the transformative power of mysticism, magick, and meditation to global audiences through his weekly podcast, Ultraculture with Jason Louv.   ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Vivo Barefoot http://vivobarefoot.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. I feel at least, why gatekeep?

Why hang on to this old secret society model when this stuff can be really useful for people? And luckily that's worked. And what I've discovered is that people from all over the world, from all different walks of life, backgrounds, persuasions, religious backgrounds, are all interested. And that's been really exciting, because I came from the model of like, this was for people who listened to coil. You know what I mean?

And now it's like, no, actually everyone is interested. How did you first get interested? I have a very distinct memory of when I was, I think I must have been five or six, a thought came to me that it was important to bring magic back to the world for whatever reason. I have no idea where that thought came from or why I had that thought. But that is, for whatever reason,

despite my best efforts at times, been my singular focus for my entire life. Tell me about the house you grew up in. Well, I moved around a lot, but I grew up in San Diego in the 80s and Mission Hills, which is right next to Hillcrest, which is the gay community, which at that time meant that I grew up seeing guys dying of AIDS. But the house that I grew up in, it was on a canyon, and I spent most of my time digging in the backyard.

It had been a dance hall in the 20s where there had been a fire, and all of the stuff from the fire had been, like, just thrown out into the canyon in the aftermath. And so I spent my childhood digging up, like, these kind of old trinkets and things from a 20s dance hall, but trying to uncover mysteries. And so that's kind of been my life since too. And what was the nature of your relationship with your parents?

Very good. My dad's a journalist. My mom is a nurse practitioner, retired. Still alive, still together? Yes, thankfully. That is beautiful. Yeah, yeah, So, very good. My interests have been confusing for them, but I think that as time goes on, hopefully

they've seen that it's a real thing. But magic has always been part of my life, and it was, I think it's those early childhood experiences that anyone who's interested in this subject is, probably has, but there is a formal study, and I spent, you know, from my late teens onwards into my twenties until now, formally pursuing it and going all over the world and trying to absorb everything that I could so that eventually I could kind of process it through my system

and create what I've created. So it's like, here's the good stuff. Because there's lots of stuff with magic that is, you know, frivolous, so... Yeah. You know, I think that, you know's like, here's the good stuff. Because there's lots of stuff with magic that is frivolous. So, you know, I think that the process of going through magic, there's so many stages of it. Every single time in my life, I thought that magic was something different.

And the better seems to be as I relax control and just let it be what it is, instead of trying to shape or own or control or anything like that. But I had an experience walking through a field where there was a perfect circle of flowers, like yellow flowers that had grown. It looked like a fairy circle.

And I realized no one's ever going to see this except me. It just emerged. Somebody didn't create it. And I think the Tibetan showed this view. It's like a spontaneously emerging property of nature. And I feel that it's basically the same as the creative process. I think in reading your book, it's like, it's the same thing, right?

It's the same thing. When I'm talking to rationalistic people about magic, we can talk about the scientific thing, but the scientific thing is a hard sell because it's not scientific at all. You know, it's kind of a relic of the science's past, but it is perfectly relevant to art and the creative process. In a way, magic is...

I think a fellow traveler with art works with the same material, takes a slightly more kind of engineering techie approach to like trying to understand and categorize that. And there's of course, good things and bad things about that, because it can become overly formalized, and then people just become hidebound by academic stuff. Can you walk me through each of the modalities you learned in the order that you learned them? We can be here. We have forever. Okay, great.

What was the first thing? The first thing I did, and this is what I recommend to anyone who gets into this, you know, one thing that I tell people who are interested in magic is the last thing you ever want to do is read occult books. Don't do that. Like, that's because you're going to get kind of, you can do that later, but you're going to get caught up in thinking that there's a way you have to do things. So when I first got into this, I first, you know, I wrote a guy named Colin Wilson

who wrote a book called A Great Book in the 60s where he said that the occult might be the key to humanity's future evolution. And to me that was like, whoa, that's super exciting. And it was in the culture. So when I first became interested in magic, what I did is I sat down and I just wrote down a list. It's like, okay, I don't know if magic's real, or if it's delusion or a scam. But if there actually was magic, what would it be? And I just sat down and

wrote down everything that I thought it would be. And it was like stuff from like, the third Doors album, like some like media theory, like all that. And it was just like a total jumble of things. But then I was like, well, if magic was real, what would you be able to do with it? And then I went and tried to do all of those things just on a totally intuitive basis. And a bunch of them worked. And in a way I've been trying to get back to that

ever since because then I decided, okay, well now I have to learn the real way. Like every culture has their own radical system. And, you know, California is generating 18 new ones a day. So there's a lot to learn. On your esoteric path, what was the first learning? Okay, so actually, let me think. What did I start doing?

I was really into William Burroughs. I started trying to contact William Burroughs. I built an ancestral altar and started trying to talk to my ancestors and I put William Burroughs on it and that's probably what did this. That's probably his fault. But no, I started to learn chaos magic

because it was only when I discovered chaos magic that I actually started to say, okay, like this is goofy but I think this could actually be a thing. Like this could be. What is chaos magic? So chaos magic is not about causing chaos which is what people usually think is a form of magic that was started. what people usually think is a form of magic

That was started. It's basically the point the punk rock version of magic. It was created in England in the 70s Yeah, 1970s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah late 70s and leads rock and roll. Yeah It was it was it was like neck and neck with the punk movement in England It was the same thing It was like the same thing as throwing out the prog rock of the lamellar and crow and all this and the kind of thing. Or it's like, we don't need any of this. We can strip magic down to the core,

which they said was altered states of consciousness is the core of magic. That's only part of it in my opinion. But basically what they said is when you, if you abstract magic to a metal level and you just look at what's actually happening in someone's psychology, then all these symbols like the pentagrams and the gods and goddesses and stuff like that, you can kind of take those and leave those. Those

are cultural trappings. And even more excitingly, which not many people have done, but one of the things chaos magic said is once you understand the mechanism of magic, which is more or less you're kind of using altered states to reprogram your unconscious mind, once you understand the mechanism of magic, which is more or less you're kind of using altered states to reprogram your unconscious mind. Once you understand the mechanism of it, you can create your own simple set. You can create your own religion and it will work just as well. And that idea really appealed to me.

The idea of a DIY religion as a, you know, creating your own personal religion for yourself. That was exciting to me. Taking, I guess it's very, you know, every religion in the world would see this blasphemous, but the idea of seeing religions is kind of a creative thing to work with. And did you learn about it through reading about it?

At first. And what were the books then? What would have been the books? The best one that I read early and that I recommended people who were interested in or skeptical is The Occult by Colin Wilson, which I mentioned, which is very 60s. It's kind of like a 60s existential book.

But he says that there's this thing that he calls faculty X, which is there's something, there's this something that some people seem to have, you know, like a genius basically. You know, how do Marcel Proust, like how is he different? Like what creates somebody like that? And he said that there's something in the human psyche genius, basically. How do Marcel Proust, how is he different? What creates somebody like that? And he said that there's something in the human psyche

called faculty X that can create genius and that the occult potentially could be the way to turn it on. He was Britain's darling of existential literature. And then when his fortunes started to fall, he started writing more popular kind of pulp fiction stuff. And so he started investigating the occult. And so he very seriously looked at it and said, actually, what these people are doing, like Crowley, Blavatsky, all these people,

yeah, there may be all this kind of like goofy language on top of it, but they may be tapping into part of the human mind that could potentially be the future of human evolution. And I still believe that. Not that we're going to turn into ninja turtles, but in the sense that clearly there are capabilities that human beings have that most don't turn on. Why, I don't know. I would love to talk to you about it, you know? But I studied that, and then practically,

there was a book called Libra Null and Psychonaut about chaos magic that was great. There was a book called Libra Null and Psychonaut about chaos magic. It was great. There was a book called Modern Magic by Donald Michael Craig, which was more on the hermetic side. But I studied chaos magic, hermeticism, a little bit of voodoo, which I backed off from, neuro-linguistic programming.

Why'd you back off from the voodoo? Not for me. Not for me. It's too culturally specific. It runs into some dangerous dangerous territory like seriously dangerous and criminal criminal world and things like that So that I backed off from but and then from then on it was just kind of like this Breakneck pace of how many of these things I was consuming religions like people do drugs in their 20s You know trying to get high in all these different ways and seeing how they were different and And for me, the most important thing is, what state can you get into following those techniques rather than what's the doctrine and all of that?

How much do drugs play into it? Because if it's about altered states of consciousness, drugs are definitely a shortcut to that. More than they should. And, you know, it would... So drugs play in more than they should. In my opinion. Tubsenses have been part of magical practice

since the dawn of history. Shamans used them and all of that. But, you know, I think... So drugs play in more than they should. In my opinion. Tutsens have been part of magical practice since the dawn of history. Shamans use them and all of that, but I think... Like plant medicines. Right, but I think that's been overplayed and I, for obvious reasons,

and I think that there are a million different types of altered states of consciousness you can get into, the creative act, you know, dancing, singing, chanting, fasting, all these things that are healthy. And I ended up through a bizarre set of circumstances, training as a shaman and Kathmandu. And when you actually interact with shamans, what you realize is it's not this kind of romantic idea people have. Shamanism throughout most of the world is what people do when they don't have

access to healthcare and drugs are not necessarily part of it. Drumming and chanting can be, but I think people here want to use shamanism as a justification to party, basically, and that's not what it is. And of course, if you have magical experiences through drugs, that's great, but you can't tell anyone, because they're going to say, are you on drugs?

Yeah, you know, well, maybe that's not quite so believable. And if you look at Ram Dass, he started with LSD, and then went to India and became Ram Dass to find another way. It's like the drugs were a shortcut that allowed him to see that there was more. Yeah. And then his path led him to find it without drugs. I think so.

I think psychedelics can not always, but have at times been useful for Western people, particularly because we're so materialist and rationalistic, sometimes it needs like something to break through that's a little bit extra strength. On that path, are there modalities that really struck you as important? Okay, so, yeah.

We want to go through every single modality. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So we talked about Chaos Magic. Chaos Magic is great because it basically says it empowers you to do it the way you want to do it the way you want to do it. And it's a good framework for jumping into everything else, because the basic belief of cast magic is that none of it is true. It's just fun, like all these different religions.

So from there... Is it rooted in anything before the 70s, or it just starts in the 70s? Oh, it grows directly out of the English occult tradition. I mean, prior to that, it was basically that Crowley was dominant. The ideas of Chaos Magic beginning Crowley, they go back to Austin Osborn Sparrow,

the artist who was a contemporary of Crowley. And really, there's nothing new about Chaos Magic. It's just a new way of articulating something that I think not only have humans been doing since the beginning of history, but, you know, everyone has shamanic or occult experiences They just don't like dress up of the Crowley as well that it's based on all old stuff. Yeah Yeah, but Crowley did a very good job of synthesizing a lot of the old old techniques

So chaos magic then hermetic magic kind of goes back to Hermetic magic goes back thousands of years. That is what I tend to consider the actual Western magical tradition, which relates to things like Kabbalah, tarot, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Enochian, Egyptian magic. That came out of Freemasonry, which is also something I explored.

And that is the much more structured academic approach to magic comes out of Victorian England. The Golden Dawn at that time was an occult group that pretty much all of the biggest movers and shakers in Victorian society joined, like WB8s and Bram Stoker. Is this 1700s? Late 1900s. Late 1900s? Late 1900s.

Yeah, Victorian England. Oh, yeah. And on into the early 20th century, it didn't dissolve till like the 1910s. And that group. But that also was a revival. It was. Yeah, it's like the occult,

it's a perpetual occult revival. What's the original? Is Hermes, is that the beginning? So Hermes was most likely a pen name that a lot of people used. Kind of like if you know Situationism, they all use the pen name Luther Blissett for Situationist writings.

It was the same way in the first millennium, Hermes, all these works were attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Again, some people wouldn't be killed probably. But Hermeticism, yeah, Hermeticism goes back to Gnosticism, it goes back to the centuries after Christ. And Hermeticism is this super academic complex, apparently complex magical system,

but I would summarize Hermeticism by saying it's simply taking nature as a language and assuming that the symbols you are seeing are speaking to you. All rooted in nature. Well, understanding that we are in, well, everything is nature, that we're essentially in the mind of God

and that the mind of God is talking to us through all of this. That sounds about right. Yeah. That sounds good. Yeah. I mean, once you strip down all the complex stuff, these are conclusions that human beings

have been coming to since the beginning of human history. So Hermeticism tends to be a path of using ceremonial magic to fully exteriorize and articulate yourself as a being, as a spiritual being. It tends to be concerned with power. That power is not with people. Spiritual power is never power in the world. It's all internal states. But that evolved into Thalema, which was Crowley's system, which is where he combined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

with all the high octane meditation techniques from India and Thailand. And that's where we started to get to where we are now, I think, where we're in this really exciting moment now, where we're bringing together all the best teachings of Western and Eastern spirituality into one thing. So let's say there's those. Neuro-linguistic programming, more modern version, came out of hypnosis, much more about the magical use of language. With Westfair Magic, there's kind of a continuum,

because you mentioned Chaos Magic as a break. There's kind of a continuum of Gnosticism to Hermeticism, Catharism, which was unfortunately wiped out during the Crusades, which was a Gnostic revival in southern France. It goes through the Knights Templar. It goes to the Freemasons. Now, these are not, like, unbroken,broken secret society lineages like from a cartoon or something like that.

These are ideas that come back throughout history, almost like living information. L-M-N-T. Element Electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add Element Electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element Electrolytes. Drink it in the sauna. Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt.

Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electrolyte. LMNT. As we move through these, would you say 80% of the old has made it into the next? Yeah.

If you want to break it down like that. Just a second picture. I think so. How strong is the game of Telephone. Pretty good. If you just look at the Western tradition, because you go from there to Freemasonry, and Freemasonry codifies everything.

And well, you go through the Renaissance. You go through John Dee and Anurkian, and then you get to Freemasonry. And once Freemasonry codifies everything, then that becomes the bedrock from which the Golden Dawn and the Lama grow from. And so they're all pretty similar. But each one, kind of each time the wheel turns,

it gets pushed further with more effective techniques, which is basically where I find myself now trying to rearticulate this for internet people. Would you say it keeps getting refined or simplified? Or no, not always? Both. Refined and simplified. Simplified, not always.

Yeah. And sometimes it shouldn't be simplified, I think. Because sometimes the theater of it is really useful. It's like you wanna have the pomp and circumstances of it because it's fun and it gets you in the vibe. So you have kind of that trajectory of Western magic, which is this kind of Masonic, Pagan, Hermetic, Kabbalistic. On the Eastern side, it's another continuum.

So it's kind of possibly helpful to think of these things as two continuums. On the Eastern side, you have meditation and yoga, which come from India, everything goes back to the Himalayas. And then that goes into Buddhism, which uses the same techniques, but puts a different metaphysical framework on it, and then evolves the techniques. And those two, you know, Hinduism and Buddhism, and the many, many, many subschools of them, are vast magical systems that, in the case of, many, many sub-schools of them are vast magical systems that in the case

of like, for instance, Hinduism is practiced by a billion people. Buddhism is a lot. So those are much more living traditions than the Western tradition. But those tend to be the two major branches. And I did my best to go through both of them. And I think that the ultimate is combining, just combining meditation and magic. One way to modern, maybe California way to look at that would be more like you have meditation and yoga, and then you do manifesting. You focus on your goals you want to achieve. Like that's something you could talk to people about at Whole Foods and they would know what you were talking about. Those are kind of the two major tributaries.

And then... Where does astrology fit? Okay. Astrology is a big part of the Western tradition and the Eastern tradition. They're huge. In India, they plan everything according to astrology. Like the parents arrange marriages for their kids with astrology.

Like they plan like traffic based on astrology or things like that. Yeah, a huge part of both. And I'm not a big astrology person, so I don't know a ton about it. I know the planetary signs and I know what the energies are, but I'm not I'm not a huge astrology person I have other people that teach courses on astrology on my site, but it is a big part of it and This is something that Damien Eccles knows a lot about he talks a lot about this is kind of magic being a stellar

Tradition that it's actually in many ways and this is true, it really is about, well, it's about communication with the universe. So, of course, it's about everything up in the sky as well. I don't know if that sounded kind of vague, but I'm not necessarily even a believer in astrology, so I'm not necessarily the person to talk to about that. Are you a believer in magic? No. Okay. Do you believe in God? No. But that's a good place to start from, right? Yeah. I try to take a very via negativa approach to

things where I just disbelieve stuff and wait, see what stays. But what I mean by that is I was like, I was wiggling out, I was like, Rick Rubin wants me to come tell him. What the hell am I going to tell him? Like, what am I going to tell Rick Rubin? I got to come up with a new definition for magic. But I got to thank you because I came up with the best one ever in my opinion. This is great. So this is my definition of magic now, which I think cuts kind of past all this stuff. Because ultimately all the cultural trappings, the symbols, the history, the revivals, none of that actually matters.

Because what we're talking about is a process that just happens in the human mind. I suppose it would be like, you know, reading whatever the other writer had written or listening to whatever the other artist had written when you're looking back at the history of magic, but that's what they did. So what's important is the process.

And so my definition of magic now is it is the imaginary number in life's equation. You want to say more about that? Okay. So before I started getting Ds in math in high school, I did learn the concept of imaginary numbers, which is I think from trigonometry. So the imaginary number is the square root of negative one, which is, I think, from trigonometry. So, an imaginary number is the square root of negative 1, which is impossible. You can't square root the negative of 1. However, it turns out that you need the square root of negative 1 to solve a lot

of really critical problems. So, mathematicians invented an imaginary number, which is just the lowercase letter i. It's an imaginary number. It stands for the square root of negative 1 and is necessary to solve all these equations. So in the same- Well, does it solve the equations or does it just create a theoretical construct that might be the case? I would assume the latter, but I'm not sure, actually.

I should definitely look that up. But this is basically what magic is. It's like, you're asking me if I believe in magic. It's like, well, I think that magic is imaginary, but the imaginary is pretty important. Everything that exists on this planet has come through the imagination first. Everything, the roads were in somebody's imagination first.

And I'm sure every creative person, you know, has the experience when they're young where their teacher's yelling at them, quit daydreaming, pay attention, you know. That's not gonna pay the bills when you're an adult. Well, turns out that's not the case, you know. It's like the imagination is critical. So when I talk about magic being an imaginary number,

it's like, think of all the things that human beings have imagined throughout history that they've then made real. You know, it's like we take flight for granted now. That was imaginary. Or, you know, I just decided to imagine that I was a magician and it turns out the world decided to go along with my game.

Yeah. It's like, okay, awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I used to work in the publishing industry and it's, it's unfortunately is on its last legs. You know, there are very rarely successful books in publishing. What did you do in publishing? I was a copy editor. Yeah. Well, I edited, I was the editor for a publisher called disinformation and then one called Feral House. That's how I got my start writing and getting books out, just by working in the industry.

It's like, you know, Harry Potter was a success, so everyone tried to do Harry Potter. Well, only Harry Potter was Harry Potter. How much do you think Harry Potter's success had influence on people being open to magic? Huge. It's funny, because it's kind of like after my time, so I never read it.

So it's like, I'm from like this is slightly before that, but gigantic. Actually, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day and they were saying about Harry Potter. They grew up in a violent environment and they didn't have a childhood. So it was only through reading Harry Potter that they could experience what having a childhood was like.

I was just like, okay, that's such a service to the world. But I think in terms of magic specifically, because kids grew up with the idea that that's possible. Is that good? I don't know, because I think we need a lot more rationality in this culture too. Things are definitely getting a little sliding sideways at the moment.

Says the magician. Yeah, no, no, no, no. I'll be the first person to say, you don't want lots of guys like me. You want one who's hopefully funny and can kind of keep the guardrails on a little bit, maybe a few, but you don't need that many guys like me. You need scientists, you need STEM people,

you need Carl Sagan, so I'm happy to be this guy, but yeah, I'm all for critical thinking, logic, and the scientific method. But also, I'm for all of that applied to magic. You mentioned astrology, and although I'm not big into astrology, one of Crowley's students made the point that from alchemy, we got chemistry. From astrology, we got astronomy.

Okay, what science might we get if we study the pure mechanisms of magic itself, of the mind and how the mind can be trained to focus on creating experiences or accessing deep states of creative inspiration or spiritual oneness or healing. These things are all not just possible, but easily doable with the right techniques. I mean, you know, as a meditator, right, there are yoga techniques that have been around for thousands of years that are better than drugs. You know, it's not just that people turn to them to get away from drugs, it's that they're better than drugs. So... Based on that, do we know that astronomy is superior to astrology? Do we know that chemistry is superior to alchemy?

I suppose it depends on the use case. Yeah. Certainly for interacting with the physical world, yeah, I think so. But we live in a culture that's been through the post-Nitra moment and been through the scientific revolution. And I think that, I would hope that now we can kind of go back and look at some of these things that we dropped along the wayside. It's like Freud, when he was getting psychiatry out into the world, intentionally left out

anything that looked like the occult or mysticism or anything like that, because he wanted it to be accepted. And the early scientists did the same thing. They're like, we are not talking about alchemy, we're not talking about astrology, none of this stuff. And those were probably the right decisions. But maybe we left something behind along the way. And I think at the very least, magic is,

I mean, you can almost look at it as the science of creativity. It's a set of techniques for tapping into specific states of consciousness in a very, very precise and refined way, almost like computer code, that you can't really do just taking mushrooms or whatever. Who was John Dee? John Dee was the original 007. He was the guy that created the British Intelligence Services and his number in them original 007. He was the guy that created the British intelligence services,

and his number in them was 007. He was Queen Elizabeth I's court advisor, and he's responsible for more aspects of the modern world than I was prepared to realize. Obviously, he's very famous in the occult world because he spent a couple decades actually attempting to contact angels and apparently succeeding from all cases. There's hundreds of pages of records of his conversations with angels.

But he's also responsible for giving us the idea of the British Empire, which he said an angel gave to him. An angel told him there should be a British Empire and Queen Elizabeth I should be a world monarch. He's also responsible for advances in optics that made it possible for Britain to build a navy that led to conquering the planet. What else?

He introduced geometry to the public by the English-speaking public for the first time by introducing Euclid's Elements in its first published edition. He basically laid the foundation for modern science. He had this center called Mortlake, which is in the suburbs of West London, where it was like this academy for all of England, where all of the scientific leading lights would be there,

like Tycho Bray and all of these people. And what years was he at? Mid-1500s. He had the biggest library in England, there like Tycho Bray and all of these people. And what years was he at? Mid 1500s. He had the biggest library in England, in the world possibly at that time. He was most likely the smartest person in Europe. And he created this environment where he was able to foster and nurture all of these people who became the scientific revolution.

It was still prior to the scientific revolution happening. So it was kind of this moment where like this exciting moment where all these intellectually adventurous people were together, early scientists along with what would be the equivalent of, I don't know, like angel investors. Now the startups of those days were Navel instead of Internet, but it was the same type of thing where modern science emerged from, but it was still like mixed up with the occult because those two things had not separated yet. So it's like this moment in history.

Was it unusual that he was into the occult or was that the norm then? It was unusual for someone of his stature. It was widespread in the culture, but it would kind of be like the equivalent of, I don't know, like an NSA consultant deciding to, you know, start going to Burning Man and spend 10 years doing psychedelics and going off the deep end, be somewhat similar. So it's like, those things are very popular,

but for somebody, his standing, it was considered, I mean, basically ended his career, and he was kind of shuffled off to the side, and it was considered that he'd kind of gone off the deep end. But with a psychic named Edward Kelly, he spent 10, 20 years doing practically daily occult rituals to talk to these angels that more or less outlined the plan for what would become the next 500 years, at least of Western history,

in terms of the creation of America, the uniting of the world under what they wanted was a new super religion to unite all the religions, which is slowly kind of happening, I think, on its own, without a human being doing it. You see that here in California, there's practically a Californian religion, kind of, that's emerged, that people kind of,

you know, like, be grateful, energy emerged that people kind of, you know, like be grateful, energy, that type of thing, you know. The new age. The new age, yeah. But it's kind of spontaneously emerged from people's exploration. So he, for me, is the high water, certainly a high water mark of magic.

And it's this fascinating crossroads time in history where there wasn't any difference. It was magic, science, imperialism, Shakespeare, this incredible psychedelic outflowing of culture that was probably akin to the 60s. It's the last time in Western history where magic was still taken seriously by scientific authorities. So in terms of, you know, it's kind of like as a person in 2024, trying to assess this material for the modern world, it's kind of like, well, the last time

it was scientifically studied was like the 1500s. So this is kind of where we have to work back from. How did you research the book? I spent four years, I rented an office, and I basically, well, I spent three years, 40 hours a week reading every single thing that had ever been written and writing. And I went all over to academic records

in California and England. So it was a full-time pursuit. And how I was able to do that, I'm still not sure, because somehow I was able to stay afloat financially while I was doing that. Yeah, it was my full-time job for three years, and then a full-time job for a year marketing it. But what I wanted to do with that book is do the definitive book on what Western magic

actually is. So it says John Dee, but it's from a historical standpoint and not a reconstructionist or wishful standpoint. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best-in-class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus, so your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs.

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Visit squarespace.com slash Tetra and get started today. At what point in your study did you decide this is something I want to share as opposed to just practice? It's kind of funny. I had real beginner's luck in my career where just like everything seemed, it's like I felt like every door opened for me as soon as, and then that went away later. But like at the beginning, you know, I went to, I was a junior in college and I went to work for a company called Disinformation, which was somewhat conspiracy publisher at

that time, but they put out a bunch of occult material, like one called The Book of Lies and things like that. So it was in Chelsea in New York, and it was extremely at that point. It had a ton of buzz behind it, publisher that was doing occult and conspiracy stuff. I went and basically just asked for an internship. They gave me one because I was writing for them.

So I had an internship and then the publisher of the company immediately said, ask me if you ever want to pitch a book. So I thought about that and then, so what I came back with was, my first book was called Generation Hex and I decided to pitch magic as a new youth culture. Like this was gonna be the next big youth culture, right?

Essentially as a magical act. It turned out I was right just a little ahead of time because now there's Witch Talk and all of these things and Witch House and all of that. But I think it was because of that. It's because I had a chance to pitch a book and that was what I went to and now I'm forever this person and I had a chance to, I could have done a pen, like a fake name, but I decided to do it under my real name because I felt if I believed it, I should be willing to stand

by it. And also to burn my bridge. There's no way I can possibly go back to a normal life now. And I spent the rest of my 20s trying. I was like, what have I done to myself? I went to try to work in advertising and corporate and all this stuff. It's like nothing worked until I went back to Magic. So that's kind of why. But in terms of why I wanted to share it with people, well, I mean, I suppose it's like when you get into anything

and it's really exciting, you want to share it with people. So probably right away. Tell me what does it look like? I've never been to Magic.me. Okay. It's basically Netflix for to magic.me. Okay. It's basically Netflix for learning magic. You know, it's streaming video. So you go and it's courses with me and other teachers.

We have Lamai Leducat, who's probably the best, in my opinion, the best writer on Tarot in the world. Nikki Pilarano teaches astrology, so we do have astrology. But it's kind of like you go and it's a streaming site. So you're watching courses and we have courses on basically all these topics for metacism, chaos magic, astral projection, tarot, I Ching, all super fun stuff. It's for anyone and it should be for anyone. And one of the things that I've learned is that everyone is interested. Because everyone wants, particularly now,

to feel empowered. Because there's a lot of people don't feel any power whatsoever now, particularly during COVID, people felt very powerless, I think. And there's a lot of uncertainty, and so it's very reassuring in times of social turmoil and unrest to realize that there actually are stable kind of, I don't want to say laws, but there are stable structures to the universe where like for instance, if you are grateful, your life will be better. So thank you, I'm trying to modernize it.

I mean, I'm working on it. We try to incorporate, or I try to incorporate as much modern technology as possible also. So now for instance, there's brain sensing headbands, right? They can actually give you analytics on your meditation. There's like wearables, right? We can have- You can have your brain waves. Yeah, so it's like, that's never been possible

ever in history. I mean, they didn't have that in the caves in India and Tibet or something like that. That's awesome. Why wouldn't we take advantage of that? So I have students use that. We've tried to do like rituals, group rituals in virtual reality and they worked.

And instead of me guiding or forcing something, I just said, okay, well, let's see what emerges, what's gonna happen. And this guy started doing this whole Hindu fire ritual. And it was very profound and everyone felt, and this is again in virtual reality with little like Sims type cartoon figures. and you could feel the spiritual peace emanating off of it. And at the end of it he said, I don't know where that came from. I work in, I'm Indian, but I work

in IT and I've never been interested in Hinduism ever and this is like something my ancestors did and it just came out in this like goofy virtual reality session. We have all this modern technology that is literally magic. So for me, the idea of combining modern technology with the internal technology of consciousness change, I think that is pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. Do you think there's a relationship between magic and technology. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You think there's a relationship between magic and technology?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, like think about it. You go back, like I always say this to people, you go back and you look at these magic books, all these Cremors and stuff like that, and they're super cool and vibe-y and all of that. But you look at the, like the quote unquote, powers they're promising people.

And it seems really fantastical to say, okay, well, you can teleport yourself. Boy, you even flew me from Austin to Malibu, so that's pretty good. I mean, I literally woke up yesterday in Austin and now I'm here. So, like the crystal ball speaking with people on the other side, well, you got Zoom, right?

You know, it's like having things brought to you, you got Amazon delivery, magic carpet, you got Uber. You know, it's like, so we already have magic powers, quote unquote, we already are as gods, as Stuart Brand said, it's like, we already have the power of gods. The question is, what do we do with it? And clearly that's what people are struggling with right now.

It's kind of like, you know, we're basically trying to deal with the social consequences of social media, and now we're going to have to deal with AI. So now we're in a world where AI, where there are gods. Okay, there's a god called ChatGPT that everybody's interacting with that appears more intelligent than humans,

which is actually not, but experientially, in a lived way it is. So we already live in a world of gods and monsters, and we live in a world in which there aren't really any ethical frameworks or constraints really for people. It's really easy to criticize people for being one way or the other, but then when you realize that people

don't really have systems, like let's say that there's actually a system for becoming fully human, right? Developing yourself into a full, full rounded human being that you didn't have to pay to access, you know, would you have to go to school for it? You could get on the internet. That's the type of stuff that people need right now.

It's not quote unquote power that people need, although they need to be reminded of the power they have over their own lives. It's, I think, structure on there so that they can access it. Yeah, and so that they can understand this world, because nobody understands how to deal with AI. Just take that as an example. Are you wary of AI? I'm really excited about it, actually. sample. Are you wary of AI?

I'm really excited about it actually. I think we're going into an age where, you know, in the same way that sampling and, you know, like home recording and then things like, you know, let alone what people have now, like Logic and Ableton and things like that, like opened up democratized access to music. It's like things like Mid Journey and GPT. I've been going to conferences where people are talking about, it's now possible for one person to make a feature film using AI in their bedroom.

It might take a year, but they can do it. Takes more than a year without AI with a big crew and millions of dollars. Yeah. So it's kind of like, what is that gonna unleash when the world's creativity is unleashed? I mean, it's like the whole Lou Reed thing about between a thought and expression is a lifetime.

Well, now it's like one GPT or mid-journey prompt. I was sitting there, I use it, I'm writing, I bounce ideas back and forth as a creative partner. Tell me about that. I've never used it. Oh really? Yeah, tell me what that's like.

It's like having a creative partner. It's like, hey, like how do I solve this problem? What do you think about this? And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. But like when I'm writing, I'll also use that to, essentially as a more efficient Google for research. And if I have a talk to it or do you type? I suppose I could, but mostly typing.

So I'll be writing. If I'm writing, like I'll be all use mid journey to generate images of the world I'm imagining so I can be literally seeing it and going there. You know, there'll be AI for literally everything. And so that's really frightening, obviously, for a lot of reasons, because everything is gonna change. But I don't think that it's going to be the end of the world. And I've started calling it augmented intelligence

instead of artificial intelligence. I think approaching it like that, like do you remember the movie Aliens? I never saw it. Okay, so there's a part where the hero gets into this power loader kind of mech suit. I kind of see AI as that. It's like a robot suit to get into that extends your capabilities.

It's allowed me to do things faster and finish projects faster than I ever could before. It's allowed me the amount that I can do as essentially a solo entrepreneur has become vastly more, fairly cheaply. So I think that AI will kind of, can, it has the possibility to blow up the world's creativity and learning because people will just be able to do things quicker. When you say blow it up,

you mean making it bigger, not destroying it? Maybe we should specify. Yeah. I find it, it's like, if I'm working on something and there's like that last 5% or 10% where I'm trying to figure something out, but it feels physically painful to get to, like my brain's out of juice somehow.

That's what AI is really good for, I think solving those little things. It's not gonna replace creativity, it's not gonna replace coding even, but it's gonna change our society in ways that nobody, obviously nobody can predict. Tell me some specific stories about John Dee.

Okay. I mean, you basically have the equivalent of an underpaid government consultant teaming up with a very, very, like the equivalent of an unstable telephone psychic and hanging out in a dark room for 10 years, probably taking psychedelics, I would guess, because they were, you know, that stuff grew wild in England and doing rituals to contact angels. And the stuff that came out of those sessions is so bizarre. Or it's not what you would expect.

Are there records of all of it? Oh yeah. Like, like stacks of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of pages. They wrote down half of it was burned, unfortunately, but the part that wasn't, we still have. Purposely or mistakenly? Purposefully at one point. So the agent Catholic agents didn't get it when they were in Prague, so they wouldn't be killed. And I think at one point, they buried a bunch of them.

They buried, it's similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls, they buried a bunch of the records in the backyard and a servant found them after Dee was dead, didn't know what they were and started burning them as firewood until somebody stopped this person. So a lot of it was destroyed. But the stuff that came out of there is so bizarre. I mean, let's say you think, until somebody stopped this person. So a lot of it was destroyed. But the stuff that came out of there is so bizarre. I mean, let's say you think, oh, they're talking to angels. It's wings and things like that. I mean, no, at one point they meet God

and God is a gigantic humpback whale covered with eyes. And it's like, I'll go with that. That sounds about right, actually. Things like that. I mean, they're seeing angels that are towering with legs that are pillars of brass. And the angels really put them through the ringer. They initiated them into the system,

and then they said, okay, now you have to literally go to Prague to tell the Holy Roman Emperor that he needs to answer to a world religion with the angels at the head of it and employ you as the people in charge of instituting it. That didn't go over very well. But they were gallivanting across Europe trying to trying to sell that idea. In the process probably found us set the framework for what became Rosicrucianism, for what became Freemasonry, which is what became science. But yeah, that book is chock full of things like that. I think about that whale thing a lot. That book is chock full of the most bizarre psychedelics.

And it's like psychedelic, not like Grateful Dead psychedelic, like psychedelic like you've like scraped some moss off a dungeon floor in medieval England and ate it, and you're still tripping after seven days, that type of thing. Tell me about the roots of Christianity. Basically the hippie movement of the 17th century.

It's a fantastic example of cultural engineering. It's a fantastic example of, like an early example of people influencing the culture in a mass way. We're talking about early 1600s, central Europe, Catholic churches in control of everything, pre-science,

you can still get burned at the stake for saying practically anything. And whoever these people were, probably just, you know, smart kids, circulated these things called the Rosicrucian Manifestos throughout Europe. Was it written? Yeah, a little like, you know, like Mao's Little Red Book or something like that.

And the manifestos basically said there's a secret brotherhood of Illuminati initiates all throughout Europe that are working both in secret and in the spirit world to end the domination of the Catholic Church on Europe and to free humanity to follow its destiny. We're everywhere, we're watching, we're all around you, but there's only one way to contact us. Only one, we won't respond to anything else and that's you have to do something in public

that gets everyone's attention, basically a PR stunt in the name of free thinking that you then claim for the Rosicrucians. So then of course what happened is all over Europe, almost spontaneously, there were all these events where people were, I don't know exactly what, but they were doing, you know, big public spectacles claiming a new age of reason and science. We know any examples of what they were doing. We probably do, but none are coming to mind right now.

And so it basically self-created itself, as if it's like a rabbit out of a hat. So that was the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. So then of course all these people started talking to each other. So there wasn't a leader? No. It was probably based on ideas that John Dee had left on the continent when he was there. But it was just a completely grassroots thing, similar to like, I don't know, raves or something like that, where it just kind of happened.

And then because all those people started talking, there were all these magical things about it. The idea was an invisible brotherhood of illuminated adepts, but when these people actually started talking in real life, they realized they had a lot of other interests in common too. And then now that they had a space to talk safely, that's where science came out of. The ideas that became modern science came out of this kind of

just bootstrapped cultural prank. And there actually either was a Christian order that claims to do Egyptian magic and all that, but probably doesn't have any connection to the original thing. And is the Brotherhood in Lovatsky the same, referring to the same group? That's the question. It's like, are these things actually real? Are they not? Are they talking about the same thing?

Are there different groups? Anyone's guess, really. Anyone's guess. The human foot is a true marvel of engineering. anyone's guess. narrow, rigid, elevated shoes undermine this natural brilliance and weaken your feet. Vivo Barefoot shoes set your feet free. Feel every step. Move naturally. Allow your feet to function as nature intended with Vivo Barefoot. Thin, flexible soles to keep you connected to the ground. Wide toe boxes to let your toes spread and stabilize.

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they are as healthy for the planet as they are for you. Experience the freedom of Barefoot movement with the protection from the sharp edges of a man-made world. Natural movement for your feet, sustainable choices for our world. Learn more at vivobarefoot.com slash tetra and embrace your human nature. Tell me about Lovatsky. So H.P. Lovatsky, she was a Russian psychic in Victorian England, and she started the Theosophical Society in 1875, which was kind of like almost a new Christian religion, but

it was very new agey. It was the beginning of the new age. She claimed to have received a bunch of channeled writings from Tibetan ascended masters and then created this essentially religion, theosophy, which blended together, essentially merged all of the Western Eastern techniques in one place philosophically, but without giving anyone any real practical techniques. But it was huge. It became, I mean, there's still all the old theosophical centers are here, there's Krithona up on the hill and all that, and then Ojai.

It ended up becoming a force in world history because they built up a bunch of stuff in India. They wanted to turn this kid, Krishnamurti, into the world teacher, which he later refused to his credit. That's a famous story. Gandhi was somewhat inspired by him just in the case that he was, Gandhi was interested in theosophy

and was taking theosophical classes, but then decided he was just interested in just Hinduism more. And then that started his path to what he became. So really important culturally, really important historically. Not very interesting to me simply because they don't really give any practical techniques. And again, like for me, it's about the practical

technique rather than the overload. What's your general feeling on channeled material? Depends on the channel material. Most of it, no. Some of it real hard to disagree with. Ones that I would consider certainly worth looking at by intelligent people. Let me put it that way. I'm not going to say whether things are real or not, but ones that I think are interesting enough of cases for intelligent people to look at and come to their own conclusions about

would be the John Dee material for sure. Let me put it this way, it's incontrovertible that they believed what they were doing, I think. It might have been code too, but the John Dee one, the Book of the Law, the Alastair Crowley one, and actually the Law of One, the raw material, I think is interesting. The Law One, the raw material. Yeah.

I think that at the very least, it's very clear that humans can get into an extremely deep trance state where material can emerge that is beyond them, that appears to be some type of intelligence that they wouldn't have access to normally. Yeah, I think that actually Ed Kelly, John Dee's psychic, may have been in a situation where Dee was constantly pushing him to do drugs all the time to start channeling material, and I feel like that's That's kind of the thing that's another one of the things why magic is tricky. You know, another one of the reasons

why it's secret, why it's a secret tradition is because it's really private. It's really private. It's like personal. And that's not like, it's not like a trick you want to do on stage, although there are performers who definitely, there's lots of actors who do it who are clearly being possessed by the thing that they are portraying and then people It's not like a trick you want to do on stage, although there are performers who definitely, there's lots of actors who do it, who are clearly being possessed by the thing that they are portraying, and then people think they are that person. Like Heath Ledger is an example. I wanted to ask you,

I'm just legitimately really curious about what you think about this. You know, in the ancient world, I mean, Plato, but prior to that, all the way back to Sumeria, it was considered that people had a genius. Like, there was a spirit, there was a genius outside them that if they could listen to, would tell them what they needed to know and would come through them. And then later on, of course, it became that people are geniuses. And basically what Crowley says is that the techniques of magic are useful for turning on genius,

allowing people to tap that higher self, whatever that is. But he went back and forth on whether that was an external being or just a psychological abstraction, like my best self, my greatest life, my highest self, or my deeper self. And you've interacted with a lot of geniuses in altered states of consciousness, and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that. Yeah, I think it's both. I think all of the material comes from outside of us,

for sure, for everyone. The way that the pieces get put together can be more artful. And that's sort of where the individual genius is in seeing the way the pieces go together. Yeah, that's quite a skill set, though. You know, having the ability to be totally open, but then to have the craft to actually execute on it. Absolutely.

Because the thing about magic is it's really easy with magic. It's really easy to get, you know, cosmic enlightenment, cosmic experiences, visions, all that. But if you don't have the tools to express it, it just kind of spins around in there. And that can be very frustrating. Same is true in terms of work ethic. They're some of the most talented people in the world that you've never heard of because they don't have the work ethic to be able to share it in a way

where you'd ever get to find out. Okay. I think the intellectual gets in the way of what we're talking about. So a lot of why magic looks so complex and there's like all these super like computer diagrams and you open these books and they look like electrical engineering books

is because that's what guys like me like, like IT guys, you know, like engineering guys. There's as many paths to whatever we wanna talk about, let's just for lack of a better word, God, okay? There's as many paths to God as there are types of people. That's why there's so many spiritual paths, I think. That's really easy to get sectarian about or hung up about, like, oh, well, like, if all these different things

are out there, then clearly none of them are right, but it's because there's different types of people. Some people are gonna get connected to God by taking ecstasy and dancing in a field, okay? Like really, really heavily. Some people are gonna do it in a library, but there's gotta be something for everyone. And one of the things about Western Magic

and why it's so complex is it's meant to overload the intellect to the point where it gets out of the way. You just like blast it with all this stuff till it's just like, I can't do it anymore. And then that can allow a moment of egress of something else to come through. What you said before about Freud was interesting. Do you think by calling it magic, labeling it magic, it somehow diminishes it in our society? Yeah, it does. Absolutely. And this is something that I've struggled with throughout my career.

I inherited it because it's the name of the tradition. And I could have been anything. I could have been a lawyer or a doctor. I would have been so successful. But here I am pushing this boulder up the hill. So yeah, it is. And it's silly and it's silly, and it's goofy, and, you know, in the early part of my career when I first kind of took this on, everyone told me, including lots of everyone

into this subject, find a different word for it. Like, find something. I couldn't do it. Because it's like, what do you call it? It's like consciousness studies, like reality engineering. I mean, neuro-linguistic programming was cool, but that's its own thing. None of that sounds cool. I mean, even saying it's like, I mean, like, yes, it's embarrassing, but it's also like, which one do you, are you going to want to read about? Mindfulness

or magic? You know, it's like, I want to be able to throw fireballs out of my hands, you know, like that's my goal here. Like, come on, let's be realistic here. Like, I can be all serious and stuff, but like, it sounds cool. So there's an aspect to it where it is P.T. Barnum a little bit, and I like that. I've decided to kind of embrace that because people are interested in it,

and I was really embarrassed by it for a long time. I just thought I'd ruin my life and I just made myself a laughing stock. And then I realized, I have, but that's kind of cool still. And I think that there's something about magic that particularly because it's such a path of the self and of the, you know, exaltation of the self. There's something about calling it magic that kind of keeps you a little humble because

it's goofy. You know what? No adult in 2024 can walk around and call themselves a magician with a straight face. So I don't, but I don't keep a straight face. Is it exaltation of the self or is it self-development? I mean, they're the same thing, right? I don't know. The raising of the self on a vertical line.

But then ultimately the surrender of the self. But not right away, only when it's worth surrendering. How much belief is involved in magic? I mean, like, you know, I feel like in many ways, I feel like the best way to present it is just from an atheistic perspective. You don't have to have any belief. In feel like in many ways, I feel like the best way to present it is just from an atheistic perspective. You don't have to have any belief. In fact, in many ways, when you engage in magic, it disproves a lot of supernatural stuff. Like, OK, if you do a lot of yoga, as you know, as you do a lot of meditation or pranayama, you'll have mystical experiences. Okay. Well, now when, you know, now it's like when you go back

and you read the book of Deuteronomy or something like that, you know, it's like you go back and you read these sacred texts about these sacred people who have visions. It's like, well, you should be like, well, I know how they did that. It's like, I know how that trick works. So all of a sudden now they don't seem like there's some higher person who's above you. They seem like something attainable. And I actually think, I think it's magic is way more interesting if you come at it from a non-supernatural, from a totally scientific perspective. Because like here's an example.

It's quite likely that religious experiences are produced to some extent by activity in the temporal lobe. Okay, because they've examined, I don't actually don't know what the current science is on this. So, okay, so they say, well, we've disproven, you know, that's just part of the brain. You know, we've disproven that. That's a physical phenomenon. And then the religious people are all like, no, no, we can't do that because all of our,

you know, all of our financials are dependent upon fairy tales. But the interesting thing there is, okay, well, if it's part of the brain, then it can be activated. And if it can be activated with yoga, like, let's do that. And like, maybe refine it so we can do it really quickly. And so like, wouldn't we be in a better society if people could access even just meditation, you know? Essentially what meditation is, is toilet training.

It's like emotional toilet training, right? And we live on a planet of people who are not toilet trained. And so as a result, they're shitty to each other. They shit up the place. They get shit on the walls. They do all kinds of shit they shouldn't do. But then what do they do? They go to the great guru, the man who sits on the throne, who knows how to use the toilet, which is meditation. If you just let your body relax long enough,

it will process your emotional garbage on its own. And so if we had a planet where people learn some basic spiritual techniques, not as some high, fluting, like, all this crap that gets put on it, but just to be able to release their own negative emotions. Get out of our own way. Yeah. Instead of going on social media and taking it out on other people. I mean, that sounds pretty good to me.

So I actually think magic is a lot more interesting. You know, there's just like a carnival barker aspect. I still use the word, A, because I do believe in magic, but B, because it gets attention. And C, it's not a lie. It isn't the actual tradition, is the occult tradition. There actually is magic that works just like the magic in the movies once you get far enough in.

What was your first introduction to meditation? Through magic, because every magic book you get, the first thing they all say is, none of this is going to work if you can't silence your mind and focus on one thing at a time. So the most important skill in magic is single pointed focus. And being able to direct your mind. And so it's like with meditation, you get the ability to have like laser single pointed focus that in alone is a faculty that people with meditation, you get the ability to have like laser single-pointed focus.

That in alone is a faculty that people are losing, you know. But then magic comes in and says, okay, now that you can have single-pointed focus, here's some things you might want to focus on that would do some interesting things. Welcome to the house of macadamias. Macadamias are a delicious superfood, sustainably sourced directly from farmers. Macadamias, a rare source of omega-7, linked to collagen regeneration,

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or single pointer for visual, both and imagined or mantras. You know, as it tends to be how it gets done in Western magic. In Western magic or the mantra specific? Yes, but the other thing about magic is you make your own mantras. That's the thing, you go to like the Eastern traditions and it's like, they charge you for mantras

and things like that. Well, you know, chaos magic realizing, what is a mantra? Okay, the Hindu mantras have been used for thousands of years, so there's like a certain ongoing resonance behind it. But past that, a mantra is a way to suggest something to your unconscious that your conscious doesn't know about. So in magic, we have sigils,

which is you take a statement, you take a desire that you want to happen, and then you scramble it into a mantra that you then repeat so that you're putting all of your energy into it, but your conscious mind doesn't know what it is. So a little bit of theory about this. The way that magic is different from self-help, or actually religion in many ways,

is that it engages the unconscious instead of just the conscious mind. Because we all know that when we try to get something with our conscious mind, we have to deal with our conscious mind, and the conscious mind is always finding reasons why, picking it apart, saying, you know, who are you to do something like that, all of that type of stuff.

So when you're trying to get something done in your life, it could be creative or not, you have to manage that, right? So all those things are like, if you think of an electrical current, it's like disrupting and breaking the current of energy going to your body. It's like a hack. Yeah, it's exactly what it is. So this is a hack to just root underneath that doubting voice. And this is the same way in a sense that religions work.

But when you go to a church, they're using all these symbols, like the cross or whatever it is. They are choosing what to impress your unconscious mind with. And often there's a sense of basically just, we're bigger than you, right? Obviously corporations or the same logos are constantly programming us. All you have to do is walk outside

and you're gonna be programmed like, you know, endless electronic information. So here you're taking control of it for yourself. Another way to look at that is if you think about language, if you only know one language as I do, despite the Duolingo Owl's best attempts, then you're kind of limited by that symbol set. Like you've only got that potential range of notes to play, right? Okay. Well, that's probably not the full capacity of your brain. How do you even access a concept? You know, we know as humans that as soon as we can name something, we can begin to work with it and

exercise will over it. But how do we access things that we can't name or we don't understand, maybe because they're capacities of the human mind that we haven't figured out yet, or capacities of the human being that people won't understand for another several thousand years? Well, they're still there. So how do we access what is beyond our sense of self, the linguistic self? How do we go into the parts of our brain

that are non-linguistic? I mean, you can see how that could be useful. Yeah. What do we know about the history of witchcraft? Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mentioned the thing about the IT guy, intellectual stuff. Magic, obviously, right now is huge with women. Young women, like, you know, they're very interested in the idea of witchcraft,

of the female empowerment, which is great. We know what sparked that. Yeah, I mean, feminism, you know, needing empowerment. Not needing. I don't think it's needing. It's expressing, because everyone is expressing the will to power, right? Everyone has to express the will to power, but men and women do it differently.

And in terms of specifics, I couldn't tell you. In a lot of ways, it's really hard to talk about witchcraft as a tradition, largely because women are a lot of ways, it's really hard to talk about witchcraft as a tradition, largely because women are a lot less interested in codifying, regimenting, and writing things down than men are. And there's probably a lot of stuff about, quote unquote, women's mysteries that they just don't want written down for men to read, I would imagine. But I have the privilege now of working with like thousands of people,

teaching thousands of people this stuff, so I get to see the patterns and the people that are interested in this. And I think that for men, magic is very much about becoming. I have to become something. I have to become a hero, a legend. I have to, and that's like every single movie. I have to become the king. Hero's journey.

The hero's journey. Absolutely. Whereas for women, it's much more about embodying. I already am. I am the goddess, you know? And magic in general tends to help men think much more femininely and women think more masculinely, for whatever reason, because it balances you in the process of making a more complete person. So, witchcraft, I think, I would describe it a reason because it balances you in the process of making a more complete person.

So witchcraft, I think I would describe it to kind of like the spontaneously emergent magical properties of women as they are, which are endlessly holy and wonderful and mysterious. It's hard to define, you know, but I think that there's a tremendous amount of interest in it in culture now because women for so long have felt disempowered. And this is a system, this is something that promises them empowerment. And it's empowerment in a way that is witchcraft as magic as a whole. Magic as a whole is much more a path of letting things happen by allowing space for them to happen, rather than, I guess,

a more masculine approach to doing things. More like the Tao. Yeah. Well, that would be the ideal, right? I mean, you know, we're all, I'm trying to get there. I hope. But you know, I think there's a lot of interest in the goddess Babylon, for instance, who's considered kind of the Thalemic goddess of magic.

That's a resurgent archetype with young women. I think that everyone is interested in magic now. You know, everyone in the world has the same needs, rich, poor, healthy or sick. It doesn't matter. They need meaning. They need a connection to God. I think the need for me. People are starved for some connection something greater than themselves

Do you feel now more than 30 years ago for instance? Well, that's kind of the thing too. It's like, you know in the past Magic was always caught up with the counterculture Identity it seems like a countercultural thing. I think of it as maybe that's why i'm attracted to it Is i'm interested in the counterculture. Yeah, absolutely right? It is a counterculture thing, but the thing that has come along with a lot of those counterculture scripts is like that kind of like F the mainstream, destabilized reality, all of that stuff. I just don't think any of that is relevant anymore.

It's just like, it's like, look around, like things are pretty destabilized. I think now what people need is structure and definitely meaning. Our culture went through, we rejected religion, we got to a large degree. If people are religious now, they're religious as another option in the consumer shopping mall of identities you can buy something from. They're not religious because they have to be, or there's a threat of violence here at least. So we went through that and that's good. We got science. We shouldn't go back to

religion as a lot of people are suggesting now. But it's like, we're too smart for religion now. It's not like it's bad that we are godless or whatever. That's actually good. We still have a need to connect to something bigger than us. We still need a sense of meaning. We need a sense of humility. We need, you know, the biggest role that religion's played, I think, is a sense of

community and connection with other people that's not based on transaction. Podcasts do that in a lot of ways now. They fulfill some of that. So I propose magic as something that is not scientific, but is empirical and is self-directed and is a way to be structured and disciplined about your spiritual quest as a human being, which is different for every,

not only different for everybody, but different for each person and different times in their life. So there's no one size fits all, because everyone's in a different situation. Everyone's basically the same, but we're all in different moments. So for me, the idea of something that is,

okay, so I can still be spiritual, I can still have meaning, I can still tap into wisdom and something that's more than just the latest Apple product, which I also want to buy, but is more than just that. But that doesn't involve somebody telling me what to do. Have you been surprised by anything that's come up in your practice? The entire thing? I mean, like, what specifically?

All of it. You know, people get really hung up about like practice and skill and learning magical techniques and all that. I just feel that if you're fun to play with, the universe will enjoy playing with you. That's a good attitude. That sounds good. That's helpful. What do we know about the first temple? Oh, the first temple. Okay. Well, this is rather topical these days. The story of the temple is fascinating to me and is in a lot of ways, the Western esoteric tradition is a story about the temple.

Judaism is a story about the temple. Christianity is a story about the temple. Hermeticism, at least the Masonic parts, what's going on on the news right now is a story about the temple. And the temple is not a physical space, is that correct? I think that as far as the evangelicals are concerned, oh no, they're building that temple,

that's happening for real. The way that I've heard other people express it, for instance, the Orthodox, this is the Orthodox church here, beautiful spot, Saint Sophia, priest there said, I think the Catholics believe this too, as far as the Christian church is concerned, the third temple is the body of Christianity.

It's the Christian church, meaning all of the believers in Christ are collectively makeup, the invisible third temple. What is it? I don't know. Clearly that's not the interpretation that is in play in the real estate over in the Middle East right now.

Just amazing how the fight over that particular piece of real estate has been the axis on which, like, thousands of years of history have turned. The Crusades, it's nuts, right? Might it have some otherworldly power? Of course, right? Do you know about Jerusalem syndrome? No.

So apparently, I've never been to Israel, but apparently it's a very, very common experience for people who go there, particularly, I guess, Christians who go there to suddenly decide that they're Jesus, to the point that they have a whole wing of one of the central hospitals dedicated to people who think they're Jesus.

It's interesting. So it's gotta have a heavy, I mean, how can it not? I mean, it's like, is this the amount of stuff that's happened there? And that goes back to the dawn of civilization. And the first temple also appears in all the esoteric teachings as well. Yeah, well, you know, the temple in a way

is also the metaphor for somebody, well, you know, the temple in a way is also the metaphor for somebody's life. You know, in the sense that, you know, in your life, you're building a temple and then it gets knocked down and you build it up again and it gets knocked down again. And that sucks, particularly the first time. But it's not like it stops sucking or it can get worse. You know, so the temple is kind of similar to a Western way of talking about like, similar to like a sand mandala

or impermanence. But the idea is that it always gets built back better the next time. And that's a really important lesson for people to learn, I think in their lives and in their careers. Like in my career, I've gone through so many stages where I thought I had it right and then I didn't so it collapsed, but then I took the learning from that

and built it right the second time, and then that kind of spirals onward as a process. I think that's a big part of, at least in my perspective, I mean, that seems to be one of the keys of, I mean, life. Certainly being creative in any way, but it's certainly one of the keys of life is like, I mean, you have to know when to surrender and when not to, because there's times where you definitely don't want to,

but there's times where like there's nothing you can do or the universe will let you do it, because it doesn't want you to do that. Like, you know, when I left LA in 2020, I spent like a year trying to find places to live, and every place I tried to move ended up being, falling apart. Like we were gonna move to West Hills.

Did you know that West Hills is the location of one of the biggest nuclear disasters in US history? I did not know that. Yeah, they don't want anyone in O'Neill Bay. It was actually covered up in the 50s. There was an exposed nuclear core at a nuclear reactor up there. And they vented it over the valley.

It's right next to Spahn Ranch, actually. So people had been drinking cancer water ever since in Thousand Oaks, and it's been kept quiet. And where I was gonna move was like exactly where the runoff had been. How did you find out? Wikipedia, that's Wikipedia. The night before I was gonna move.

So it might have been true. Maybe that's true. Oh no, it's definitely true, because then I did the research, it's definitely, but then I ended up moving to Austin, which is also really, really, really emotionally hard, but now it's awesome. So it sucks when you're going through it, but I feel like sometimes you just,

sometimes you just gotta know when to roll over, because the universe will, I think at times, force you in certain directions. What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton? Counterculture? Tetragrammaton. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammaton. The Avant-Garde? Tetragrammaton. Generative art? Tetragrammaton. The Tarot? Tetragrammaton the Avant-Garde Tetragrammaton Generative Art Tetragrammaton The Tarot Tetragrammaton Out-of-print music Tetragrammaton Biodynamics Tetragrammaton

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I would like to change that, of course. But you know, it's like just one of those things where people will be attracted to someone who's like them. So since I'm a nerdy male, I get lots of nerdy guys, which is great. They're my people. And you know, it's all across the board. Because one of the things is, in order to learn magic, you had to go find some secret society to join. And like, you know, not everyone is going to be involved in that type of thing. It's a bit much. So the internet allows more people to access it. It wouldn't have normally.

I think in this culture, people have a crisis of meaning, but they also have a crisis of role and identity. Classic examples, like the mid-career career change. Like, for instance, I worked in finance, but now I want to transition into being a yoga teacher or something like that. You hear this type of thing a lot. I feel I do at least.

And I think that there are some real meaning crises, particularly for men. For men, there are two big meaning crises that I tend to meet people during. One of them is that young men, when they get out of college, what do I want to be? All of a sudden, life doesn't, you thought life was going to be an adventure, you thought you were going to be the hero in the movie. Take a number, buddy. Life's not an adventure and you're not clear about who you want to be. I tend to work with a lot of people who are in that moment.

Then there's another crisis of meaning later in life, which is the midlife crisis, which is the, well, I got the job, I played it safe, I'm successful, I have kids responsibilities, employees, but not only now do I not have any time to myself, but I feel like I'm not who I was supposed to be. I'm not who I meant to set out to be. Yeah, that was a tough one for me because I, you know, like I mentioned in my early career, everything was really easy for me

and I had all this early success. But then even though I told myself I wasn't doing it, I started to be like, yeah. Like, you know, and it started to show and I started to have like falling out with people that had helped me. Yeah. It's common. I mean, I still feel guilty about that every day.

I'm 42 years old now. You know, we're talking about things that happened when I was 23. And then of course, nothing worked for me. Of course, because now it's because now my ego's involved. And also now people are expecting me to be a certain person. I mean, I basically went from being an extremely awkward English student to having a book contract at 21

for a book saying that there's gonna be a new counterculture of occult people. I mean, that's a pretty insane place to be. Yeah. You know, of course, then the next thing people did was tear me down on the internet. But what was actually happening is probably what I assume happens with a lot of musicians

when they come out of local scenes, which is the people that you thought were, you were in a scene with, that you thought were gonna come along with you. Oh, no, they're not coming along with you. They're gonna try and tear you down for leaving them behind back here. And I think that probably, I assume that happens with musicians a lot. But I, so then my ego was back involved and I had a horrible time of it.

And you know, I tried to get run away from what I'd done. Yeah. Completely. Was the first book successful? By a cold book terms, it was in that world now. That's cool. Thank you. But then I tried to like go back into the corporate world and completely erase that

I'd ever been this person and it didn't work and I was miserable. And I finally realized in my early 30s, I was like, okay asshole, like speaking to myself. Like, you're going to go around all over the world learning all this magic stuff. You're going to learn all these techniques for radically changing people's minds and lives and perceptions. It could change anyone's, literally anyone's life that encounters this material. And you're just going to keep it to yourself and mope about how people were mean to you on the internet?

Like, really? So the thing that changed everything for me was like, no, no, no, it's not about you. And with magic, it's easy to make this mistake, like my level of whatever. It's about what services you can provide to other people. That's when I became a teacher and then everything was great. And I had a privilege to work with all these people, including people who are in some really serious,

serious hard situations, who've been able to make real changes. That's great. One thing I wanted to mention before I forget though, because I was looking at this, I work with a ton of musicians because they all understand, well, all artists understand magic, like all of them, all of them.

It's just, you call it something different. You talk about creative process, you know, but like that whole thing of getting into that trance state where something, something comes through. You're like, where did that come from? I have no idea. Right? So, people I think understand, you know, particularly in the entertainment industry, I feel like everyone's got some spiritual thing that they're doing.

You know, they're doing chanting or the secret or whatever it happens to be. And so, you'll definitely get people saying, well, why would I be interested in magic when I can just, for instance, do meditating and so much more pure? It's just straight to the source, right? Which it is, it is more pure, it is more straight to the source.

With magic, you're basically opening up the mixing board. And this is a metaphor I use when I'm talking to musicians all the time. Or it's like, okay, well now you've got fire. It's like, okay, well like turn down the fire knob and maybe turn up the water knob a little bit so it balances out. And then you've got your Saturn knob. Maybe I'm feeling a little bit too depressed, so let's turn down the Saturn knob and let's turn up the solar knob. Okay, well now I'm feeling like I can do anything. All right, well let's turn up the communication knob, the Mercury knob. Okay,

well now I feel like I can write computer code. I'm totally plugged into information and learning. All right, let's turn that down. Okay, now I can watch TV again. How do you turn them up and down? Rituals. That's the whole thing of what Western magic is. That's kind of what they're for in a way. Mm-hmm.

You know? Tell me about archetypes. So let's take a common magic thing. Let's say, you know, summon a god, right? Okay, what does this actually mean? Well, you know, if I summon Venus, then, you know, maybe I'll imagine myself as Venus. Or if I summon Mercury or something like that, Hermes, the side of my personality, the part of my brain that is concerned with calculation, math, numbers, writing, communication will completely possess me, meaning that only that part of me will

be inflamed, like accessed. It's like I pulled up that part of my software I'm running specifically so that I can just use that part of myself or I can only address that to fix it if there's something wrong with it. Maybe I want to be better at math. Okay, well, I invoke the God Hermes. Okay, well, then I slowly imagine myself turning into the God Hermes, just like an actor would inhabit a role, till suddenly my consciousness identifies with Hermes. There's all kinds of procedures for doing this.

And then as Hermes, I would realize maybe I would suddenly have an insight into when a teacher told me I wasn't good, this is just an example, a teacher told me I wasn't good at math in second grade and I internalized that and then I can go back and by magic heal that retroactively. Well, I mean, okay, so you could say you're doing psychological work, you're doing art therapy, magic sounds cooler, you know, It definitely gets more people interested in it. We know that Mercury relates to math.

But do we know why? I know we can memorize the list of what relates to what. But where did that list come from? How was that list decided? The specific reason is that it was done in the Golden Dawn. And at least the list that is used of attributions commonly was put together by MacGregor Mathers, who was the head of the Golden Dawn, who spent, I think possibly, this is actually similar to Karl Marx's story, oddly enough, spent

like 10 years in the British Library piecing together all of the occult knowledge that was then known. And when was this? Late 1900s, which is a really trippy time to think about because not only was it this massive explosion of culture, but it was like the 1990s where like what would now be goth and industrial was every people were super into the supernatural goth art, Aubrey Beardsley decadent art, that type of thing. But also they had just discovered ancient Egypt for the first time and they just discovered ancient Sumeria for the first time, which no one knew Sumeria even existed. So you think about this time

of cultural explosion where not only are they coming up with new and science is happening, all these new advances, but they're rediscovering a past that they didn't know existed before. And it was this incredible time in world history. But the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn put them together from earlier attributions by Agrippa. The answer ultimately is it's arbitrary.

But- Is it arbitrary? Well, the specific ones are arbitrary, but what is not arbitrary is the thought process that produced them, which is best expressed by Morrissey when he said, nature is a language, can't you read? There's this song where it's basically where this stuff came from is, you know, looking at nature as a language and saying each thing that nature produces is a symbol, but it's also like a letter in an alphabet. And you can see that there's certain resonances between things,

meaning this is just how artists think. Right? So the hermetic way of looking at the world is the artistic way of looking for, you know, it's how does a sunflower make me feel and how is this like the sun and how can I relate those two things? It's like poetic connection. Yes. Yes. That's a much better way to put it. There are patterns that have just emerged cross-culturally that are just very clear. There's always a communication God, there's always a love goddess, there's always the king, god, you know,

it's just human beings themselves are not that different. We're not, our code deep down is pretty simple. It produces almost infinite outer forms. Like it's insane, but our code is pretty much the same, I think. Tell me about The Tarot. The Tarot is the best book that Western culture produced ever. It's an interactive shuffleable book that contains the entirety of the world's initiatory secrets.

Allegedly. So the story goes. The Tarot is a deck of 78 cards that represent its four suits and 22 trumps. And again in the 19th century, an occultist named Eliphaz Levi figured out that you can map the tarot to the Kabbalistic tree of life. Essentially the origin of the Western Eastern tarot tradition

is in, historically, is when Sephardic Jews brought Kabbalah into Spain after fleeing North Africa. Is that where the tarot's from, from Spain? The Kabbalah is from Spain. Tarot came from, I think, possibly India or possibly Egypt, but it was, I think, brought into Europe by Romani people. So those two things ended up combining,

along with kind of the general folk magic and witchcraft that was around Europe at the time. Probably where the correspondences were originally with kind of the general folk magic and witchcraft that was around Europe at the time. Probably where the correspondences were originally put together was in the Italian, the Medici city-states during the Renaissance, which is kind of in that John B. period. What had happened, there was this moment in history where Constantinople was destroyed. So all of the Orthodox priests fled and went west to try and get protected by Western Christianity, by the Vatican.

They brought with them all of these scrolls of Plato and Aristotle that the Western world did not have access to ever. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah, that's what sparked the Renaissance. So finally, we were like, wait, there's stuff other than the Bible? Yeah. And it's like really good stuff.

It sounds like, when you read about it, it sounds like like really good stuff. It sounds like you know when you read about it It sounds like that sounds like the tech industry now It's like this incredible concentration of wealth in this small area run by these barons and they want to know It's kind of like how the tech industry now is this kind of ultra lucifer and they want to know everything They want to extend aging. It's like it's cool. It's like let's see Let's see what comes out of it. But it was kind of like that same, we want to control, know and own everything. And so a lot of hermeticism comes out of that period. It was hermeticism all the way up until the scientific revolution was basically the religion for the European cognac gentee. As opposed to Christianity.

Why do you think people are afraid of magic? Because they've grown up watching too many horror movies. It's like, did you see Hereditary? No. Don't see it. Yeah, it was like, horror movies now, I wanted to be a horror writer when I was a kid. Now I won't even watch them.

I'm too much of a softie. So, but the answer is the Catholic Church. Tell me about Manley P. Hall. Big dude for LA. He was giving talks in LA for decades, right? And he was teaching the Western tradition. He was not teaching practical magic and really left a great legacy, left a great legacy.

Although, I saw, I talked to his biographer who talked about, it's kind of a sad story, at the end of Manley Hall's life, you know, which is really sad for somebody who is so erudite like this, he kind of got taken in by alternative medicine, which led to his early demise, and he was way too willing, it's kind of happened with Steve Jobs too,

he was way too willing to believe in kind of happened with Steve Jobs, too. He was way too willing to believe in kind of fraudulent health cures, which not just led to him not getting cured of the disease, but led to him dying in a hotel room, unfortunately. Enneagram? Enneagram. Grgev. Yeah. Armenian mystic. Georgian-Armenian. Yeah, and he's such a weirdo because he's so hardy, he can't categorize him.

He just made up his own bizarre science fiction language to teach him, which is really interesting. But his basic proposition that human beings are essentially asleep is where I start from. That's where everything starts from, in my opinion. It's like, yeah, it's like, Virjav said, you know, you're out here asking for compassion and peace and respect on a planet of sleeping people. It's like, they're not evil. They're just asleep. And I think what he meant by that is the same thing that Buddhism says, which is that people are slaves to their reactivity. You learn that in relationships.

That's what Scientology says. I know, but see, that's the thing. He got it right on that. Like, I used to live right next to Scientology for four years, bizarre, just terrifying. But I think he got it right, and then he went crazy when his ego got in the way. But I think that basic thing,

I think he was right about that. What do you think the difference between the ego and the will are? That's easy. I mean, it's like, well, like, you know, the ego is the thing yapping in your brain, and will is what happens when you get it out of the way. So will is like the focused self. It's like, I don't think so. It's like, you know, like the statues of Shiva, where you have like the corpse at the bottom and Shiva standing on him and he's above him.

And it's kind of like, I think this is the, it's the small S self has been defeated to let the God within out. The will is outside of us. Is that what you're saying? It feels that way experientially. Is it actually, well, this is a question for neuroscience, you know, it's like, but like, experientially,

it feels like it is. So it's kind of like that moment where you can get quiet enough, where you can meditate for an hour and then just know something. Like you just know, and you weren't clear on it before. It's not like you actively thought through it. It's like all of a sudden just like-

You access something. Yeah, and it's almost like, it's not just that you know it, it's like now the energy of your life is already moving in that direction. If it makes sense. I don't know. Yeah. What's your take on the wisdom of ancient culture versus how we see things today? We need them both. Where are we? Are we evolving or devolving?

Both. But depends on who you're talking to and depends on the day. I've definitely got my devolving days. I think people are the same. And I think that modern technology is awesome. Science is awesome. Democracy is awesome. Democracy is awesome. These things have given us incredible wealth, longer lifespans. We're not walking around with tooth pain all day long. That's a plus.

And despite all my early punk rock attitudes, the world has generally improved while I've been alive. And it's better than I thought it was going to be. And I realize I don't have anything to complain about anymore. But what magic does is it lets you access that other thing. What do you believe today that you didn't believe when you were younger? I can make mistakes. That you're capable of making mistakes or that you can make mistakes and it's okay.

I'd like to get to the second one. That I can make mistakes even when I think I'm doing my best. I see. That... That you are actually human. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the narratives that you can get when you first get into magic is this has been kept from you.

There's some conspiracy keeping this from you. And that we have to free everyone, we have to get it. And that's total nonsense. The reality is it's all there. It's just that people are too lazy to do the work, you know? Also might not know, know about it. Right. And then when they read it, The reality is it's all there. It's just the people are too lazy to do the work. Also might not know about it. Right.

And then when they read it, the people writing about it haven't done themselves any favors in terms of communicating clearly. So, it was very easy for me to be like, F the system and try to be all Marilyn Manson about things. Were you a Marilyn Manson fan? No, because not right away, because I was a snooty Joy Division fan.

I was like, why are these kids into Marilyn Manson now? This is my culture. So in terms of what's changed about me, it's just like, I don't have anger really. And it's not because I'm like some ascended master of like wisdom, it's because like I've watched myself make mistakes enough to realize that, you know, it's not something out there, you know, affecting me.

And also that other people make mistakes too. And that's not because they're bad people. It's just because this is hard. What do we know about animism? That's really simple. I mean, animism is as simple as when you're a kid and when you look at the electrical socket and you think it's a face,

the mind will project identity onto inanimate things. That's all it is. And then you talk to it as if it's alive. It's like when I was in Catmandu, you know, I was talking to people and they would say like, yeah, that tree as if it's alive. It's like when I was in Catmandu, you know, I was talking to people and they would say like, yeah, that tree stump, that's God. You know, that bird, that's God. And it's interesting because we're taught that this is the most primitive form of thinking, but it's clearly what everyone's, everyone I think is

more animistic than anything else ever. You hear that when you say, when people say things like the universe is talking to me, I got a download from the universe, like we're all connected, everything's alive. That's animism, right? But it's animism from a broader perspective, from a perspective that's been through science already. When you were told the tree stump was God,

did you think that's not right? No. What my reaction was that I thought it was hilarious because one of the things that, you know, back home in chaos magic, all the chaos, all the punk rock chaos magic people thought they were really clever because they had learned how to like,

you know, a popular thing in chaos Magic is trying to summon pop culture, deities as gods. And then I realized it's like, well, this is what everyone does normally in the rest of the world. They sacralize everything. And there's something really beautiful about that. That's something people could learn from here. Make everything a ritual, like, sacralize everything. It doesn't need to be this, like, all this stuff,

all this grimoire stuff, like all this stuff, all this grimoire stuff, that's just old, that's his history, that's the Museum of Magic, that's old stuff, it's the thought process that counts. And just sacral, just making a dinner sacred with other people, that's a profound thing. Just setting an intent for a meal, it doesn't need to be more complex than that. Mm-hmm.

Do you pray? Yeah, I do. Yeah. I would call it more akin to whining and begging, but yeah. What is gematria? So, gematria is in the study of the Torah. Every Hebrew character is considered to have a numerical value and therefore words... Does it have a numerical value because of the number it is in the alphabet or it has some other? It's a different scheme.

Yeah, it goes to base 10 and then it starts counting by tens and then it starts counting by hundreds. So the difference, the value difference between two letters can be many times based on what you're saying. And it also depends on what position they are in the word can change the value. And, you know, when I explain any spiritual idea, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm ascribed to a religion or a belief, but it also doesn't mean that I don't subscribe to it. Yeah, yeah. So it just is what it is. Right. So you could have like a word, like if you have a word with like five letters,

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

depending on where they are in the word? There are a few letters, I think four or so letters that change their value if they're the last letter. I see. Why, I don't know. And this is a tricky practice, but it can be used to, let's say, once you know what all those letters and numbers mean, now all of a sudden you're going to start seeing them in license plates or on billboards.

And then it's like, oh, that's a message. Now that's tricky because that verges on mentally unhealthy ways of thinking. But, you know, magic can be... Have you ever experienced it in that way? Have you gotten comfortable enough with it where you could just be out in the world and read those notes? Yeah, absolutely. But you have to turn it off after a certain point, just to function. Yeah.

So I try to keep most of the stuff just turned off. Tell me about higher planes. Higher planes of existence. I don't think there are higher. I think everything's here. Okay. I think that, you know, magic, and this is because of the, the word itself, people have a Hollywood idea about magic.

Like it's going to be something more. And I think that one of the reasons why it's been tricky for people in this culture is because it's less, it's more subtle. Magic is basically a language for noticing subtle things about your experience that other people don't pick up on because they're thinking about their shopping list or they don't have a language for it. It's like if you have 68 words for snow,

you're gonna have a better way to talk about snow. Same with magical language. It's a language for talking about things that you're already experiencing, that are already here. Now that you have the language, you can notice it more clearly. And you can talk with other people about it and get on a same page with somebody.

It's cool. Yeah, so in terms of higher plans, there's definitely tons of different states of consciousness and there's definitely visions and astral projection and all of that stuff. Ultimately, I have to come to a kind of a reductionist opinion that it must be things that the brain is doing. And I can't say if any of that stuff

is supernaturally real or not, but I can say for sure for a demonstrable fact that your brain will produce all kinds of crazy visions and fascinating stuff and synchronicities if you do certain practices. What does it mean? I don't know, but I know how to turn it on. Is there a community aspect to magic.me

or is the flow of information only out? There's definitely community and there's community forums. I want to build that more. Tell me how you think it would work. Well, I've had a couple of interesting experiments in that regard. One of them was doing ritual in virtual reality, that I mentioned.

And another one was, I just did an experiment once where I just turned on Zoom. This was during the pandemic. And I just left Zoom on as an open chat room for like three days and had students from all over the world just come in and out and talk to each other. And I was just kind of hands off.

And a lot of really interesting things kind of spontaneously emerged from that. Like there was a woman who was being human trafficked, that emerged, and then I was able to work with her on that, and then she was able to get out of that situation. And these things just spontaneously kind of, and people were talking about magic and their experiences. And again, it's like people you would never expect. With magic, I think the question is, just like with spirituality, it's kind of like with everything.

It's just, I think that people should be just honest and upfront about it and not turn it into something that it's not and just talk about their own experiences. Because everyone has an experience of something like this. How do you use magic in your life? something like this. How do you use magic in your life? I use magic to be not reactive in my relationship. The only thing that I've done since I was 16 is magic. Every relationship I've had, every job I've had, my current job, magic.me is all, everything is for magic.me is all, is everything is for magic. So when I'm not, you know, just relaxing

and goofing off and playing PlayStation, pretty much everything else has always been dedicated to it. So that's kind of a tricky one. You use the techniques. I do the techniques. On a regular basis. Yeah. And I think you have to. I think it's really easy to get out of practice and convince yourself that it's just, you don't need it. You're just a natural and you're just doing magic

by the way you live your life. But it's just like with meditation, right? Like with meditation, you can crest over a wave and then like kind of like ride the state that you get into for like three months or something. And then it starts to kind of taper off. It's kind of like that with magic. Well, it is literally like that because it is meditation.

What would you say for those who are skeptical of magic? What are they missing? You're skeptical for a reason. It's good to be skeptical. A lot of magic is BS is the first thing that I would say. And I would say that I am skeptical of it. And in my process of approaching it like a skeptic, I've been able to basically pan some really interesting gold nuggets out of that riverbed. I would say that this is an area of study that we should not be afraid to talk about

and that we should study. But also, like, you know, I do lots of YouTube's debunking stuff. Like, we should also, another reason why we should talk about it is so that we can be clear on what's scammy, because there's a lot of scammy stuff. What would be an example of scammy magic? Psychic scams, tarot scams, people saying that you have a curse put on you and only they have to pay you to remove it. Bad information, almost all of the information out there is bad.

People propping themselves up as local cult leaders or whatever. None of that would be good. What are some of the most interesting conversations you've had on the podcast? I just had one with Anne-Marie Kruppel, who wrote a book called Death Nesting. She's a death doula. And we talked about people at the end of their life. So me being me, I just cut my normal bullshit completely. And I was just like, okay, how do I be happy when I die? And her answer was really interesting,

which is it was meditation, but in really loud and chaotic environments, because that's what the death process is like. You have to stay focused and present, but it's not like meditation in a quiet environment, it's people are yelling, it's the hospital, there's all that. So I thought that was like really valuable.

But then I asked her, because this is me, I just had to, I was like, so out of all of your, you've worked with so many people, and she's a Buddhist practitioner, and I said, of all the people that you've worked with, including the spiritual ones, especially the spiritual ones, have you met any that were at peace with dying? And she said, no. That's interesting. Maybe the ones who are at peace with dying don't have the do-lo. I don't know. Maybe. I hope so. But that was sobering. I mean,

I think that at the end of the day, when we talk about religion and spirituality, what are we talking about? We're talking about our fear of death and our fear of being forgotten and our fear of it meaning nothing and our fear of losing our loved ones and the void. And we can talk a big game and say, well, I embrace the void. Really?

Let's see. So that one was really interesting because I think it's really important. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you believe, you're still going to have to face the same initiations as everyone else, let's put it that way. Thank you. you