The Taproot Podcast - 🦅🐍Interview with Dr. Sandra del Castillo: on Mesoamerican Myth and the Jungian Myths of Advertising🇲🇽

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Blue Medicine Journal Podcast Today, we have the immense pleasure of hosting an extraordinary guest, Dr. Sandra del Castillo. With an illustrious academic background, holding both a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Depth Psychology with a specialization in Jungian and Archetypal Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Dr. del Castillo is not just an academic but a true embodiment of the teachings she imparts. As a teacher, storyteller, and ritual artist, she has traversed the rich cultural landscape of Mexico, living in four different states over fifteen years to connect with her ancestral roots. This profound journey not only inspired her dissertation on the Mexican Day of the Dead but also deepened her understanding of the archetypal wisdom woven into the fabric of Mesoamerican cosmovisions, philosophy, poetry, and mythology. Dr. del Castillo’s work comes at a critical Kairos moment in history, as humanity stands at the precipice of the Sixth Great Extinction. Her artistry in ritual is a dance with the numinous, each piece a conduit of the soul’s language, offering healing and transformation to both the creator and the witness. With nearly three decades of facilitating ritual in diverse settings—from the classrooms of California and Oregon to the ancient pyramid sites of Mexico—she has honed her craft to perfection. Dr. del Castillo also offers her wisdom through classes and workshops, including the transformative “The Art of Living Ritual: Re-animating an Ensouled Worldview.” Today, she brings her insights into our studio, sharing reflections and conversations that are not only thought-provoking but soul-stirring. Her podcast, Blue Medicine Journal, is a treasure trove of Jungian wisdom, dedicated to the re-enchantment of our world. It's a call to awaken from the spell of disenchantment and journey into the blue—the soul realms—where dreams, myth, ritual art, and imagination become vital tools in the face of extinction. So join us as we sit down with Dr. Sandra del Castillo, a Jungian mentor, ritual artist, dreamer, and the heart behind Blue Medicine Journal, Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Podcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail]   #DepthPsychology #JungianPsychology #ArchetypalWisdom #SoulJourney #RitualArt #AncestralRoots #DayOfTheDead #Mythology #PsycheAndSoul #DreamsAndSymbols #MexicanCulture #Cosmovision #Mesoamerica   More Info: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/  

Hi, this is Joel Blackstock with the Taproot Therapy Collective Podcast. Unfortunately, Alice is not able to be with us today, but we have our guest, Sandra Del Castillo. And correct me if I'm saying that wrong or incorrectly. Is that right? No, you did it. That's great. Del Castillo. Nice.

And I'm surprised and delighted. So, yeah. She has a podcast that I like, which is how I found her, which is the Blue Medicine Journal, which we're working on getting in more podcast libraries right now. It's just in a couple. But if you Google it, you'll find it. And she is a specialist in depth psychology and Mesoamerican mythology as you know, from an archetypal perspective. So I'm sure that this conversation is going to be really interesting. I'm so happy that you're here with us. And thank you so much for being here.

So you got anything before we get started? Do you want to give an introduction of yourself or any questions about where this should go? Thank you, Joel. First of all, thanks for finding me and tuning into my podcast, Blue Medicine Journal, a Jungian podcast. My background is from Pacifica Graduate Institute. I got my master's and PhD there. And what I did, my dissertation on the Mexican Day of the Dead from a Jungian perspective. So in that process, I was able to delve really deeply into the Mesoamerican, which became a passion and began just leading me through the entire process.

So, and like I said, or like you said, it's through a Jungian lens. So it's not that I have this vast amount of knowledge and expertise in what is the Mesoamerican, but rather what is the Mesoamerican through a Jungian lens. And that to me is what makes it key, you know, and it allows me to show its relevance today as we, you know, find ourselves in this Kairos moment, this between worlds moment or, you know, sixth grade extinction. The liminal space, you know, kind of like the Day of the Dead,

you know, this overlapping of two worlds. But so when you say, you know, archetypal, I'm hearing you mean that um you're you're looking more at the kind of you know projective and you know timeless elements of the psyche in the mythology but you're saying you're not quite like an anthropologist or an archaeologist or a historian on you know the whole history of mesoamerican stuff so when you when you're coming at that um you know to look at it i mean do you use mainly Aztec or the similarities between the Aztec and the Maya, like the heroic twins? Or do you go back to the Olmecs and the Toltecs?

What is your area of interest outside of the Day of the Dead? I do tend to focus on the Maya and the Aztec because they're the most accessible. My, although I am very interested in the Olmec as well and the Toltec, of course, you know, that's where we find the roots of Quetzalcoatl, right? Who was both a mythic figure, one of the creator gods, and also the historic god man. So there's two different figures of Quetzalcoatl, but coming from the Toltec culture. I also have interest in the Purépecha, which is my ancestral heritage.

So that's from the state of Michoacán. On my father's side, my father was 100% Purépecha. So when I had the privilege of living in Michoacán for six years, I was able to delve into the myth and the ritual and the indigenous medicine and indigenous ritual in that area and be able to participate in ceremonies at the ritual sites. And it was, to me, it was one of the most learning experiences I've ever had. And of course that region is renowned for its Mexican day of the dead, which helped inspire my dissertation.

Although death would have never been my first conscious choice, it certainly became the unconscious choice. Pacific is a good place for that so i guess my first question is legends of the hidden temple is it historically accurate or not well i can't show from the 90s i don't know that's a good question i it's not it's a joke it's a it was a game show where they would have kids they had a what is it a giant talking stone head called olmec was like the announcer. And then the kids would have to like run and get a prize. I don't know.

It was like on TV in like 94. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. I have no idea. I was living in Mexico at the time. You're hanging out with the real Olmec head. Yeah. Well, actually, when I was living in Veracruz, because I got to live in four different states in Mexico which was just an

amazing experience for over a period of 15 years and one of the places I lived was in the state of Veracruz in the capital of Jalapa where one of the largest anthropological or archaeological museums second to the one in Mexico City is and that's where the enormous Olmec heads are. And I actually got to perform a visual theater piece in that phenomenal museum. And it is an experience of the numinous when you're around the Olmec heads. And the Olmec, that is an Olmec site, right? It's where that museum is,

whereas the one in Mexico City is in Tenochtitlan is the Aztec temple. Yeah, absolutely. What's interesting to me about the archaeology there is like the the the olmecs and the toltecs like the aztecs knew about those empires and they kind of their kings would link their ancestry to those kings you know probably uh it probably was not real but you know they would pretend you know like we pretend well i'm and somehow you know affiliated with this ancestral line but they they had those artifacts around you know so they were digging up you know those things for inspiration i mean you found where there's pieces of jade and things that have been repurposed not jade what am i thinking of it's the bluestone uh i don't know you found

places where they had dug things up from the olmecs and then repurposed it and brought it into the other things. So can you say anything about the difference in those cultures? I guess we don't know a ton outside of archaeological findings about Olmec mythology, whereas Aztec, the Spanish do write some of it down. What we know is that the Olmec was considered in Latin America or Mesoamerica like the first. And I think arising around 1200 BCE. And one of the things that Joseph Campbell says in his book, The Mythic Image, he talks about these ancient cultures that were, had a social and political order that was celestially based.

Yeah. And it began, this is archetypal in nature, and it began as he, in his findings, in around the 4th century BCE and with the in Mesopotamia with the ziggurats for us a certain class of priesthood that were priests and kings astronomers astrologers that after careful observation of the planets they were able to derive this Celestialially based social and political order. And religious, you know afterwards in creed egypt india china greece you know throughout the world without the use of the

internet you know i mean there's where you see the archetypal nature it always spirals back around and it's you know it sprouts forth and so this sprouted forth in 1200 BCE in Mesoamerica, and it just sort of spread. And so this is the kind of thing that I look for in, whether it was with the Aztecs or the Mayas or the Toltecs, this kind of correlation to me, I think is the most profound. And I find the most relevant, because these were aligned with the cosmos. So we saw the world order, you know, in alignment with the cosmos that we've effectively been cut off from since the Cartesian, an important part of human evolution, you know, to sort of distinguish us from the participation mystique, you know, and find ourselves, you know, as individuals. And yet at the same time, we lost our, well, the world soul, right? The anima mundi. We lost connection with that. And so as we, to me, my search back is to glean this archetypal wisdom that was lost through

the conquest and I consider the real gold and at this you know crucial moment in time something that we need to learn from something that we need to to readapt I think was it like in in the 1990, the former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, was giving a keynote speech to the students at Stanford. And he talked about this. He talked about the importance of a world democracy formed from the celestially based, let's say, unity once again. That's the only way that we would ever have it. I think, you know, as humanity finds ourselves in this, you know, Kairos moment, what Jung called the Kairos moment, I think that, you know, and let me explain a little bit about that in terms of

the kairos, a Greek word meaning opportune moment, right? And back in the 1960s, Jung, I think, was probably in his 80s by that point, but he sensed this pervasive mood of destruction and renewal that was haunting the, you know, the humanity, Western mind anyway. And he, looking forward, he felt that it was an ideal time for what he called a metamorphosis of the gods. Now, that's a mythopoetic way of saying, you know, for changing of worldview, right? Of the fundamental principles and symbols that define our era. wisdoms that have ruled and formed order in ancient civilizations and puts us once again attuned to the world soul, to the ensouled cosmos, which we've been cut off from. We've been disenchanted.

So I think that's part of my work is a form of re-enchantment reclaiming in the now what we've lost but you know so Jung called in in the red book he said giving birth to the ancient in a new time is the task that's the salvation and um it's like giving birth to a new world and that's that's in essence I think what depth psychologists are looking for now i mean your program your the the podcast that you you run you know you're looking for that you're you're talking about um the to the detail of what does architecture look like yeah and and what is to me that's one of the things that I also grasp from Mesoamerica. Well, I mean, I think depth psychology informs all aspects of human existence because, you know, there's these, just like you're taking, what are you doing in depth psychology? You have a patient,

they're, you know, usually older by the time they make it into Jungian analysis, you're starting to say, okay, well, here's the patterns in your life you kind of have to be alive a little while before we see those patterns and and then then they're like well what do i do with those and you're like well i don't know i'm not a cognitive therapist you just notice them and then you can't unnotice them you know we can't undo what we just did and then they're like well i get i tried this i tried that and it doesn't work and i can't change them well i'm angry i'll just put it down oh well no they're still there somebody continues to work through these things until there is able to kind of be a breaking and restructuring um you know but people work the same way you know we we have

these patterns and civilization that are bigger than one life or one city or one nation or one millennium you know they go back and which is you're you're talking about there at the beginning of um most mythological, the fusion of the kind of religious and logical systems is science and religion, which weren't seen as separate entities back then, you know, it was just knowledge was people projecting on the stars.

They see these patterns, the patterns continue to happen. Well, why are they there? You know, what is the explanation for that? And then we start to have the central myth, you know,

there's China, Aztecs, everyone has it. I don't know if it's apocryphal um but i've heard a story that there was like a a missionary that like went to the aztecs and thought oh these primitive people don't know anything about um you know astronomy but uh really they had a calendar that was so accurate it didn't even need a leap year. It was better than the European calendar. And so he told them, oh, well, you need to convert to Christianity because there's going to be an eclipse.

I can predict it because my God told me. And they're like, we know there's going to be an eclipse too, dude. And so they just killed him. You know? No, I have no idea. I know I've said that story, but it's a good one. I have no idea. Yeah. I mean, story, but it's a good one. I have no idea. Yeah.

I mean, the fact that any, I mean, what do we know about our neighbors to the south, really, other than what's been taught, you know, in our history books, which is a general, let's say, emphasis on their shadow. We know really nothing about... Well, it's such a through-a-glass-darkly thing because the Spaniards are writing down what Aztecs believed in order to say that it's bad, so they're sort of embellishing the worst parts, but you can maybe see a grain of truth through it. Another one,

I don't know if this is apocryphal, but have you read James Maffey's book, Aztec Philosophy? No, I haven't. He's an archaeologist, so he's coming at it from... But he says basically that all of the worldview, we are thinking of it from kind of a Eurocentric perspective as gods or whatever, like it's a Greek pantheon.

But that wasn't really it. It was this interconnected energy that they sort of saw energy as being just this pervasive thing that was sort of at tension with itself. Sometimes you have the twins that are opposites that have to, you know, get along to create the world and that everything is connected. You know, when you look at the temple, there's like the snakes are all, you know, wrapped around whatever, but it's not really a separate figures like the Parthenon. And so they really saw these things as just kind of being inevitable expressions of,

of, of, um, you know, uh, just kind of universal principles. And when the Spanish are like, you know,

go ahead and break your gods, you know, smash these things that they're just kind of confused. And they're like, well, we can break these rocks if you want, but the gods are dead. Like they,

the, the moon goddess has already been, uh, dismembered you know like these these things are are just part of uh part of the way that the universe works and there was this confusion you know whereas the spanish saw you know a lot of the uh architecture in the and and the as like idols in a way that you know they couldn't understand you know the aztecs saw that more as um just a representation of their worldview, you know, which is harder to break.

Well, I mean, but rather a psychological faith in what we recognize as these gods, the ancient gods, whether they're Greek or Aztec or Mayan or Olmec, Toltec, as archetypal principles, qualities and styles of consciousness, potentials within that manifest secondarily. I mean, hence their images on the ancient temples and in the mythologies and in our dreams, right? They're there to compensate and correct in a meaningful way the otherwise limited ego consciousness,

which can be oppressive because it is so limited. I mean, so to repress that kind of worldview, it was going, like Jung said, the gods manifest now in disease, right? In diseases, you know, and I feel... The things that we don't understand and don't have power over. You know, we've filled in the blank edges of the map so much that the only things that we feel like we can't explain with a test tube or, you know, particle physics or something

are the things that are killing us that we can't stop. So that was the extent of our religion, which I mean, I think you see that archetypal energy coming out with something like COVID, where, you know, some of the political reactions are almost like schizophrenia, you know, just this bursting of unconscious, you know, archetypes, because people don't understand what's happening. And because we historically have denied the shadow, you know, I mean, to me, I remember when COVID broke out, like all of us do, but I remember that that was on the heels of how many millions of animals that had died in the Australian bushfires.

Yeah. To me, I wondered, I thought, I was chilled, I mean, horrified. And I thought, what kind of repercussion are we going to experience as a result of that, you know? And well, I mean, of course, I mean, because a plague, you know, why wouldn't we? You know, we act as if we're not connected. That's where that limited, you know, that's where our science has been so reductive. And it's time for like a leap because we've learned so much from our sciences. Now we have to connect them. Now we have to, you know, join the ancient with the new so that we don't really successfully destroy ourselves so that maybe humanity can make it through this collective rite of passage, you know, as Richard Tarnas calls it. And there's,

to me, there's really no other way to look at it. You know, in any rite of passage, there is a death and a hope of a rebirth. That rebirth isn't guaranteed. That's what makes it real, right? And we can't really have one foot in the next thing before we let go of the old thing. You know, you kind of have to watch it go away, and maybe there isn't.

Well, yes and no, Joel, because one of the things that, I think this is where imagination comes in. One of the things that the Buddhist scholar, now in her 90s, activist Joanna Macy says is that we cannot give birth to what we have not first imagined in our hearts. Perished in our hearts. That's the word. That's more of an intuition, you know, than an intellectual ego-based knowledge. It's more, yeah, and it has more to do with, yeah, feeling and imagination.

Now, remember that Einstein said imagination was more important than knowledge. The 14th century alchemist Martin Ruhland said that imagination is the star in man, the celestial star in man. Paracelsus called it the sun in man. And French philosopher and Islamic scholar Henri Corbin said that the heart is the seed of the imagination, and the heart speaks in images and so for us to be able to imagine first what it is that's i think that's the biggest challenge of all in a disenchanted world you know it's not as the um corbin talked about the the mundusinalis, right? The imaginal world. Imaginal, not imaginary. He coined the term imaginal to distinguish between imaginal and imaginary,

which we consider more like fantasy. Escapism. Yes, escapism. Well put. So the imagination to lead forth with the imagination that arises from the heart that's different and it's and it's not easy i mean and it's best in groups it's best it's harder well and there's some sort of uh uh you know peer review of the soul that happens in a group because you know one of the things i tell patients a lot is that your trauma and your intuition come

from the same part of the brain until you deal with the the trauma how do you know what it is that you're really feeling and acting on it it feels like this kind of unconscious compulsion you know like uh you know does this guy have four stars on google and everybody says he's he's a good guy but something I'm just getting a feeling that this is not right or am I afraid of men in red sweaters like you don't know and so while there's so much pain um you know i think one of the problems with the imaginary is that we project kind of our shadow into it whereas when you're really in the experience of the imaginal it's kind of beneath that it's kind of what it's kind of beneath it's beneath that oh i see yeah it's and and i think that's you're talking about hellman but i think that's what hellman was looking for part of his

frustration with the institutes when he leaves is he was tired of analysis. He wanted direct experience. I think he wanted more direct experience than he thought that a monotheistic faith like Judaism that he was coming from or Christianity could have. That precisely was his point, was that we have a polytheistic psyche. That was his thing. It wasn't a reversion or a desire to return to that, to the Greek religion, but to recognition of a polytheistic psyche. Jung, he said when the earth was de-psychized, right? So de-tholed, in other words, that what we did, we imagined that somehow we were so sophisticated now. We were way beyond these ancient religions that imagined that a rock had life or that it could speak or anything.

And yet, so what we did was project our demons and our shadows and our darknesses onto other people. Yeah, because they were the only thing left alive. There was no conversation with the world, and you have your conversation through the world interpersonally. That's dangerous. That's it. And when we consider the atrocities committed by the Inquisition that expanded from Europe to the Americas.

The worst torture devices in human history were created in the name of Christ. It's phenomenal. The misogynist priesthood that were afraid of their own sexuality and women. And so they were able to project the evil outwards and create the most hideous torture devices and become purged in that process. The level of perversion and brutality is mind boggling.

And yet that is what we've done to anything. And the ancient peoples, whenever the ensouled world spoke to them again, they were so traumatized by the fear imposed upon them that they then would project it outwardly as shadow, as evil. Oh, no, we can't listen to that. You know,y became evil. Anything that was in sold other than the Trinity and human beings that was considered evil. I mean, that's incredibly reductionist. I mean, and it would be no wonder that Hillman or anybody would at a certain point go, yeah, this isn't working. The monotheism, that's not how the psyche is structured. We are polytheistically structured. So there's a lot of parts of us. And when you try and make it a monolith, how the psyche is structured. We are polytheistically structured. So there's a lot of parts of us. And when you try and make it a monolith, it doesn't work as well.

I mean, just interpersonally. I mean, I think one of the reasons why depth psychology is a little bit more effective than doing, you know, cognitive or boundaries-based counseling, starting there instead of with the emotional, start with the intellectual is, you know, when you do, when you understand the parts of yourself, you understand the parts of other people. So at Thanksgiving, I, I don't have to decide between, you know, denying who granddad really is and saying, well, he's the best guy ever or canceling him and causing a big scene. I can kind of be like, you know,

this is the unrealized potential of this person who I love. And it's very sad. It's a tragedy to don't actualize that. Also, these are the parts of him that I like and when people are less monolithic just individually we're a little bit easier to be around and when society and religion is a little bit less monolithic we uh are usually a little bit general uh you know uh we're gentler and there are less you know iron maidens that we're using to try and find well put and and and maybe even less wars you know yeah so there's there's there's so much to consider you know it's vulnerability if you need like where where christianity and its worst phases um like you're talking about uh is where it needs to be perfect and if it needs to be perfect. And if it needs to be perfect, then everything else is projected outside. Um, and so like, if, if I am, um, if I'm, if I'm raised to hate vulnerability,

you know, imperfection, and I have to disown my own and repress it, then I'm going to project it and attack it. So what happens there is anybody who you see who is hurting, well, that is good because all I'm always going to side with the abuser in every case. And anytime anyone's hurting somebody, I'm on the side of the person who's doing the hurting and the person who is getting hurt is bad. And then whatever your theology or politics or mythology is, it's secondary to that. The emotional reaction is first, that archetypal reaction. And then second, you're like, oh, well, the free market did it or you know well they aren't christian you invent a reason later you know but the need when you feel like you are perfect um and you're repressing your vulnerability is to project that vulnerability and attack it externally

that that whole idea of perfection is it isn't it i mean i think that's really key and it's so different let's say than the aim of depth psychology or the Jungian depth psychology. Because, I mean, where the aim isn't perfection, but wholeness. You know, we are light and dark. We are conscious and unconscious. You know, the ancient gods of old were creative and destructive. That's just an image of wholeness. You don't really want to look in the Ark of the Covenant. It's too much for one person to hold.

Well, archetypal, what happens when you view the God? I mean, there's, you know, an insanity, right? A madness or death that ensues, right? I mean, so that whole notion, again, of perfection, I think has really stilted the culture in such a sort of a brutal and one-sided way. I mean, I grew up Catholic and dang, you know, that kind of stuff stays with you. You know, and I remember that striving for perfection. And I think, no, no, no, we're human.

You know, we are light and dark. We are, you know, vulnerable and strong, you know. And where Catholicism seems to have gotten more entrenched and stabilized is where the people, usually in South America, people have more of a relationship with individual saints. Well, that's it. You have more of a container for the divine, whereas the places where it becomes the Spanish Inquisition tend to burn out. The saints are all able to hold an aspect of divinity. And I feel that, I mean, innately, when you're having lived in Latin America for 15 years, the saints' days in Mexico are celebrated year-round. I mean, you can see that there is the polytheistic psyche.

And while they're very, you know, Catholic, well, it's still very Christian. And there's still the great fear of the devil. It's so, when I lived in Michoacán, well, I mean, it's still very christian yeah and there's still the great fear of the devil it's it's so when i lived in michoacan well i mean it's really throughout mexico as particularly in the rural areas these ancient biblical stories are enacted you know where i was i lived right outside of a mass making village and oh my god mean, it's like they would be incredible, you know, St. George fighting the dragons or, you know, the devils fighting Michael the archangel. I mean, but in masks and fabrics. And as the psyche needs it, they create new saints that the Catholic Church may not even approve of, like death as a saint in a lot of regions of Mexico, like hotels and drug violence. Yes, indeed.

I go to the church left drug violence. Yes, indeed. I go to the church left one out. We need to. No. So I wanted to go back to the idea of architecture. You know, in David Carrasco, who is a Mesoamerican scholar and academic professor in both the Harvard Divinity School and anthropology at Harvard. He's written a lot on Mesoamerica and the ancient religions. He also edited Bernal Díaz del Castillo's History of New Spain. And Bernal Díaz del Castillo,

for the readers who don't know, so he was one of the, in the 15th century, he was one of the chroniclers, Spanish chroniclers, as well as a soldier, right? So obviously everything is written for the king. They're trying to sell their, you know, their wars and whatever they're doing. And when, what he, what Carrasco went back and did is he looked at the map, the ancient map of Tenochtitlan, which is the capital of, the Aztec capital, right? And what he noted was that it was created in, it was divided. There was the center and the four cardinal points. That's how the entire city was based. Now, the Mayans also, their architecture, their pyramids,

their city-states, like the Aztecs, were placed according to the cosmos, according to the stars, in alignment with, right? And the four cardinal points and the center was considered the sacred geometry that united the 13 celestial realms and the nine underworld realms with the middle world, which was us, the earth, right? And that, as a sacred geometry, it allowed humans to, the gods to interpenetrate the earth and all living beings at all times. And it allowed the humans to become sort of immersed in a mythical time. Yeah. I think that's what Maffey is talking about when he's talking about the energy of Teot in his book.

Oh, okay. You're always channeling this energy that's moving back and forth between worlds that looks very similar to like a metaphysics or something so like a a particle physics or something that we would have now you know sort of understood identity and divinity as a particle and a wave i need i need to i need to what's the name of that book again it's called aztec philosophy but aztec metaphysics might have been a better idea. All right, great. So one of the things that Carrasco mentions is one of the Aztec wise men once commented that if Tenochtitlan were to fall, if the capital were to fall, the sky would collapse. Now, if we interchange the word sky with consciousness,

we could say that it did collapse. The consciousness of humanity did collapse, you know, and we fell into kind of a darkness the last 500 years where we imagine ourselves as orphans floating around in the universe, right? Skin encapsulated egos, which, of course, served industrial revolution and the corporate fantasy, as Hellman called it. I mean, so, you know, it's served a purpose, you know, and Marx just, you know, right to this point in history where we're brought to our knees, you know, and yet it continues, you know, convulsing and, you know, madically trying to get the last, you know, vestiges of whatever needs to be extracted.

It's short-sighted by its nature. It can't be concerned with timeless things because that is obviously a longer term. Because it goes against industrial goals. Progress, what we call progress. Why go up? To me, that idea of creating, and I listened to that last podcast of yours, which I thought was fascinating. But if we're considering how, you know, how to rebuild, you know, how to reimagine the earth and recreate it, you know how what does it look like you know how do we how do we realign ourselves with the stars in in cities and in metropolis i mean to me i always i used to have a program uh

uh one of my uh projects called imagine you know imagining a new world into being because it's like peace you know if you look up peace in any dictionary, you'll see that it's the absence of war. And if that's the case, then it's not likely we'll ever have it. Because if we can't imagine it, if we don't know what it looks like, what it feels like, then, well, again, it's not likely we'll ever have it. What does it look like? What does a city that's aligned with the cosmos look like? You can't even see the stars in a city. It's too bright.

You've got to go out. That's it. I live in LA. For me, as someone that has a love affair with the stars, I feel that absence. The Aztecs' solution, I think, was the calendar of festivals. I mean, those festivals are commemorating celestial events and dates. There it is.

There's that alignment with the cosmos. That's the point. And that, to me, as we reimagine, we have to reconsider how cities are built. You know, that temino space, right? I mean, because Timino space, right? I mean, cause where are a plaza?

Even go back to Greek structure, but they had the hearths, Hestia, there were hearths, you know, every place had their plazas with their central hearths where storytelling was happening, you know, where the bars. We still have the ripples of that. Like now if you're having an interior designer come to your house and you drag your couch in front of your fireplace you know something in us says that's not right but we're not sitting there going like oh the roman penates the hearth fires the ancestors and we must keep it burning at all times or else it doesn't like that isn't something that we intellectually are doing

anymore yet there is still this design language of do not put something in front of your fireplace because it is it has to be able to radiate out you know even if it's something that is not going to be affected by heat or something you're designing around that as a central point you know the caveman television or whatever which goes back to the you know greek hastia or the roman penates you know ancestral altars that are burning all the time there you you go. There you go. So, I mean, so that's it. How do we incorporate that wisdom into, let's say, interior design, exterior design, architecture? How do we begin to create those kind of, well, again, connections with the cosmos that we've been cut off from?

How do we re-enchant our earth? We pulled Psyche out of it and just into us and where the world is dead and we're alive and i don't know if you've ever um he's probably had a pretty negative effect on the world but one of the guys who does like he basically kind of did the big last wave of american advertising it's like a french clinical psychologist but he figured out how to sell these products to americans and sargento cheese was like really big in france and so they played the ads here and um you know the the cheese was like um it may be interesting to have him on the podcast if he'd return an email but you know it was like hands touching it and warm light and people blowing the dust off the cheese and the bacterial you know crust and

all this and they played it in america nobody wanted it and they went to him and he was like no in america it's dead you want a relationship with the cheese that it's part of you in the community they want it in a body bag and he invented a zippable bag that all cheese has now sergento was the first company to do that and it was his design because he said in america nothing is alive everything is dead you just want to be able to put the cheese in a body bag was the line. And he also did the first ad for the first Hummer. It's a big, scary car going through the town. And it's going over rocks in the city.

And it goes through the city. And it looks real intimidating. And the window rolls down. And there's a teeny, tiny blonde girl in it. And he said, know the american man he knows he's tiny and feminine and weak but he needs a big car to protect you know his i mean and but like you know you can't say what the guy said because you don't want that associated with the brand but you know he's he wrote all these ads you know you know those things that brings me back to

one of the things that jung said about the world of advertising and media. He likened them to the dark magicians of the Renaissance. But it's not a good myth. Well, that's it. It's magic that serves the corporate agenda and has spun the worldview that we are living. Hijacking the religious impulse. There it is. You don't have to be an artist.

If you buy an Apple computer, you are an artist. You don't have to have a new way of life if you walk into a Starbucks. You just get to. That's well put. Hijacking, say that again, hijacking. Hijacking the religious impulse. One of the things I use with patients a lot is that you know we all have this transcendent function and if you think you're an enlightened atheist or the existential whatever you know and we're not saying you have to belong to organized religion or believe

you know in a metaphysical you know supernatural anything but if you're not aware where religion is operating in your life then it's going to be operating unconsciously and that's where you start to project the religious impulse onto products or onto what I can buy at Best Buy or onto like an economic system. It's like, say what you want about free market or whatever, but it's not a religion, man. But again, I mean, there it is there. We see that, that, that we see the, you know, the dark wizards, right. The dark, the dark magicians of the Renaissance at work, you know,

because they know what they're doing. They understand it. They get it. I mean, the fact that this French advertiser was actually a psychologist, that's the whole point, you know. And one of the things about the Jungian and archetypal depth psychology is what they did was they joined, again, psyche with logos, psychology. You know, they created that. I mean, of course, let's say the pioneer freud did too but i

mean you just took it further right psyche and logic i mean that's a fight in psychology that goes back forever that's still not solved you know cognitive therapist you know post 80s mainstream therapy wants it to be cbt you're only what you do your only behavior if you can't see it taste it touch it count it it's not real and then you know, there's kind of the more navel gazing, mystical, you know, Jungian emotion focused stuff of you are only what you feel. Who really cares about what's real? Quit your job, sell your shoes, become a Buddhist. And, you know, we need both of them, but we really we prefer one pretty strongly.

And, you know, I think a lot of, you know, good therapy is about the integration of that, which I think I mean, this is kind of going to the woods. But I think one of the only places where Jung is put better by another writer, like he never is able to articulate what he's trying to say, as well as another author puts him as Edinger. You know, and Edinger says, you go an archetype. You know, the ego does not want to be in the same head as the subconscious mystical self. You know, these two parts of self are at odds um you know i think that's underneath a lot of the tensions of the opposites that yun talks about well i mean and and if we look at that as a spectrum ego to the self self with a capital s meaning you know the the the god the the personal god image right i

mean it's something that we're always you know it's something that we're always, you know, it's something that we're aiming towards and yet, you know, It's not a destination. It's a process. And it's always hitting a moving target. So if you meet the therapist that says, Oh, I've dealt with my shadow, I'm done. You don't know what that is in the room, man. I'll tell you where mine is. Like it's not done. I mean, that's the whole point, isn't it? These are...

You got to be careful with the Freudians. They think it's over. Well, that's it. Because, you know, in any given moment, every one of those gods, every one of those archetypes, every complex, every shadow has a life of its own. And yes, we can come to maybe maybe you know they lose their autonomy um to a degree what did what did hillman say he said you know we learn to carry a complex differently

when we know that there's a god at the root of it you know i mean and that's the point is like because no we're never over it it's an ongoing project you know the healing process is an ongoing if you feel like you have dealt with an inevitability of psyche then you don't understand how it works you know um the inevitability of psyche yeah well i mean because because psyches i mean that's soul you know you don't never that's never done you know but with psyche and logos i mean it's giving language to the soul isn't it and so that's it and understanding is never done because it's so far beneath language you know it's and by the time you've described it you've cheapened it

you know i think that's why a lot of the yungians leave in the 70s and 80s you know all these people leave the institutes when they've become so analytical and they're basically yungian literalists and you start to get you know arnie Mandel with process therapy and Cedrin Hellstone with voice dialogue and you know countless other people that left therapy to do workshops and you know these different things because they wanted direct experience and the institutes had become pure analysis forever that never ended um and and so you you saw that um and yeah that's what hillman i think was trying to articulate i mean that kind of drives hillman mad until he finds the red book you know at the end of his life he's not a well guy you know there's some clips um and it scares me because you know like i

yeah i see a lot of male jungians having gone insane by the end of their life, you know, and it's scary. You know, I want to, I want to be careful and I relate a lot of to what Hillman did, but I also see where he kind of loses the thread. But I think that that was what he was trying to articulate with archetypal

psychology that he could never quite say was that he wanted there to be this direct re-experiencing of these forces that he felt like no one else was paying attention to or even looking for anymore in therapy and psychology in therapy and psychology and i think what what to me because to me hillman you know because he did go back to you know unlike jung who who really worked hard to because he was such a mystic he worked so hard to be the empiricist scientist, right? Until he couldn't be. Well, and Hillman didn't have to do that so much.

He went right into the romantics. And I love that about Hillman. To me, Hillman writes so much. What he writes is poetic, is poetry. Yeah, and he does become a cranky old man. And I love what he did in the 100, we've had 100 years of uh psychoanalysis right and and so so to me um what he emphasized was that it has to be taken to the streets which is what i think the podcast i mean to me that's what i aim for in my podcast

because what good is it if we're just you know preaching to the choir it does have to you know it's like we these concepts you know that that seek to re-enchant, reunite us with the unsold world, with the anima mundi. This is key. This is key as we move forward in this, you know, in this crucial Kairos moment, you know. Go ahead. Oh, no, please. Sorry. Well, I mean, to me, that's it. I just feel like, to me, I draw from, you know, from both, you know, the Jungian

and the archetypal, from the Mesoamerican, you know, from mythology in general, from poetry, from art, from beauty, from music, from voice, all of these things, you know, to where, that are the language of the soul. It is a conscious search for re-enchantment. I'm so sorry. Go ahead. That's right. I mean, as a ritual artist, that's my work. It's sort of a re-enchantment. I'd like to hear a little bit about the ritual art.

I mean, that's kind of the focus of our podcast is like we're doing, we want to talk about cutting edge of brain-based medicine and, you know, how do you, how do you treat trauma with very modern, you know, approaches, but then also the depth psychology, very few people have a foot in either world. Generally half of our clinic or our ideology will piss off, you know, the guests, you know, they like this thing, not that thing. Um, because we're talking about brain spotting and QEG brain mapping over here, which i think are developing the neurology of the phenomenology that jung described and then the timeless you know depth psychology things which is why the podcast i mean you're

talking about ritual art and all these different things that's why we have a psychology of music a psychology of screenwriting we talk to rock stars we talk to country musicians we talk to architects we talk to urban planners because all of these are how do you find the most, you know, you're always, you're never going to get there. But how do you chase this vision of what is so deeply human in a way that is so ancient that we are disconnected from it, you know, trying to find it. And when you really find it, it's more natural. It's more healthy. Well put. And it is, to me, when I think about my process as a ritual artist,

what the Jungian and the archetypal depth psychology allowed me was a framework to understand the work that I did. Because as a ritual artist, my work has always come from mythology and dreams. You know know and the imagination um and giving them image in in ritual art itself we know from um the romanian philosopher as well as marie louise von franz um that whenever a space is consecrated. Now, by consecration, it means whether you're using Copal or Palo Santo or stage

or what has been used. You're taking it out of chaos and making it order, as Gugliotti Mercer would say. And yeah, so you create what he called, what was actually called in

ancient cultures, was a sacred zone of absolute reality that unites you with the first of all with mythic time of beginning so that you're re you know you can create anything from this space and then you you've you've invoked the four directions in the center so now you're in sacred geometry that that aligns you again, right, with the cosmic spheres and on the earth itself. And so from this space, that's where the, I mean, you could call ritual art active imagination. That's where every little piece when you create your altar, you recognize as in sold. Whether you're creating a mandala, and the mandala, you know, Jung always encourages his patients to make mandalas because they bring resolution to the conflict, right?

I mean, so whether you're making a mandala within a group or you're creating ritual dance, you're enacting a myth, all of these things, the storytelling, everything is happening within a consecrated space. I mean, so that in and of itself becomes sort of like a re-enchantment, a metaphor, you know, which is... A re-enactment of the deep psyche, just like the Aztecs are doing,

you know, trying to re-enact the forces that are under the world. And that was part of the Aztecs, it was part of what they did, there was a process, world making, world renewing, and the world renewing, they always reenacted the creation myths, and basically to give life to everything again, to renew everything again. And one of the things that Marie-Louise von Franz says in Creation Myths is that whenever creation myths are reenacted, recited, ritually recited, they basically, like you said, they bring order to the chaos. And she cites a case of these Fiji shaman when they were, the Fiji people were experiencing famine. And so the shaman go to the rice fields and circling the rice fields in ritual, they recite the rice creation myth, how rice came into being as if, and this is her words, as if, you know, it's like the rice is listening and is able to grow again.

Right? They're reminding the world of how it works. Exactly. And reminding ourselves of how the world works. And the role, that's the role of myth. It comes to life, as Jung says, when we reenact it, when we recite it. And so that's something that I bring to ritual art. It's part of the storytelling.

Whether it's with a dream that's being reacted, whether it's a myth, whether it's, you know, we've consecrated the ground and we're entering this space, a mythic time of the beginning, you know, to bring resolution to the conflict, to reenact and and and reorder the psyche right so that we can find that um outwardly you know in our personal life and and and likewise

this is extended to the to the community and when i think that's the the danger of an ego-driven um you know accomplishment eternal growth oriented culture is that everything becomes hierarchical that you're leveling up and leveling up and getting more and more and more and that isn't one sustainable but two it's not psychologically healthy i mean like those like when when religion is working when a spiritual principle is working there is a descent and then a return you know they're going back to the very beginning and saying you know the egg came out of the water and then we all came from you know there's a reminding whatever the and saying, you know, the egg came out of the water and then we all came from, you know, there's a reminding, whatever the creation myth is, you know, the element is telling

you where you came from and reminding you, you know, of a lot of things that are very human and very healthy to remember that this is temporary, that it's not terribly important, that you're a part of a bigger thing and all these things that we forget when it just becomes about how big can I get the number? How big can I get the empire? The corporate fantasy. Absolutely. And that whole point, I mean, that life-death, it was something that the Mesoamericans embraced, you know, the concept of a life-death cycle. Death is basically strategically denied in the corporate industrial growth fantasy, right?

I mean, death is part of it. Life and death, it just goes together. Can you say anything about the history of the Day of the Dead in modern Mexico? Because one of the facts that a lot of people like to play with is that it didn't exist until the James Bond movie, and then they decided that was a good tourism thing, and then they made The Day of the Dead. But that was sort of when it became, I guess, a national holiday and was promoted by the state. But a lot of those elements are incredibly timeless, and they go all the way back way before Live and Let Die. You know, and I'll have to rewatch that movie because you're the second person that told me that.

So when did that movie come out, just curiously? I mean, I saw that movie in seventh just curiously uh i had to i mean i saw that movie in seventh grade but the film stock and the color how old i would say like 64 probably let me google it maybe it was in the 80s even okay because you know so i moved to mexico in 1990 and um googling it so we all right cool i'm listening to you you can you can talk i'm just like okay when i moved to mexico in 1990 um i was living in michoacan like i said which is my ancestry and the mexican day of the dead was That was an incredible and numinous experience there. I'll just give you a little brief background there.

I lived in the Pátzcuaro area, which is, Lake Pátzcuaro is about 50 square miles. It's enormous. It's fishing villages and artisan villages around the lake. And mythologically, the lake was considered the door to the underworld. And so it was alive with celestial beings, underworld beings. There was the rain god, Chupitiripime, the blue lord, that was his residence. And it was the portal, like I say, to the underworlds where people went. And so that this many years later, you know, that it was, you know, it has become such a hub for urban,

you know, Mexican urbanites and internationals. It's not a big surprise, but it goes, the Day of the Dead was an incredibly exuberant festival in Mesoamerica. And it lasted for like a month. And now it lasts about two weeks. So to say that, you know, that James Bond gave it life, no, no, no. This was Mesoamerican. And it was one of the most celebrated and exuberant festivals in Mexico, well, in Mesoamerica ever. And it went morphing because this is something I did study. It went morphing through the years. I mean, sometimes the, depending on who the monks

were, they allowed it. They allowed it because they were receiving tithes from the people. They were receiving candles that were being made. They got rich from the fat and the food that was offered because it was a big festival. It was a big festival for the dead, right? Because it coincided with the harvest. And they, I mean, so as a result, some of the monks were all for it. Yeah, this is great. And they had their altars inside their house as well as at their cemeteries.

And they allowed it. And some of them were utterly opposed so it depended on where you were in mexico you know at the time you know in ancient mesoamerica but that it goes back you know way beyond james bond absolutely you know um it looks like it was just the parade so as i've heard that as kind of a fact that didn't sit well with me that a lot of people have said that the movie invented Day of the Dead or something. And it looks like it was just the giant parade through Mexico City. That central one is the one. It's not the holiday.

Oh, OK. OK. Well, it looks recent. I was thinking it was Live and Let Die or that did it. Somebody else recently mentioned that to me. I'll have to watch that because she said, oh, you have to watch it. But yeah, I mean, that it has to me that it's a cultural identity and has to me, it's true that it's grown. It's grown exponentially and everywhere. But that to me is also that has to do with the archetypal nature of to me of death. It's in a way that what I talk about it, the fact that it's crossed centuries and now it's in a way it's a what i talk about it the fact that it's

crossed centuries and now borders it it in a way it compensates for the industrial growth uh corporate fantasy that denies death and it brings a face it brings image to death that has heretofore been suppressed right it's been relegated to youispers in hospital rooms and the stuff of whether it's finances or the logistics of the funeral or given over to the church to deal with any esoteric or grief. And but to me, the fact that death comes, you know, and one of the things about the La Catrina, for instance, one of the main images, La Catrina is the, means the fashionable lady, and so it's the fashionable lady death, right, we see this, her with her big fancy hat, you know, turn of the century, swanky dresses and stuff, and it combines the Mesoamerican goddesses of death with the Spanish medieval

idea that death comes mockingly to us all. It doesn't matter how rich you are, you know, it made fun of the, this was designed by Guadalupe José Posada, a lithographer and journalist who used, who created that image right in the 1920s and satirized politicians and, you know, everyday people and, you know, made it, you know, as popular as it, you know, it is in modernity, that face, okay, because that face certainly didn't go back to Mesoamerica. That is modern, but that's the 1920s. And then Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and, you know, different muralists brought La Catrina to life. Claudio Lomnitz, who is a Mesoamerican scholar, he talks about the fact that death is, he says that death is sort of like the the national totem of mexico and a culture that was born i mean a nation that was born of of a conquest right because mexico didn't exist until the 1500s it was mesoamerica right it was these ancient

civilizations and so that mexico had a lot of bejeweled skulls you know it was further back than we have the history and the record of the mythology they're doing a lot of bejeweled skulls, you know. It was further back than we have the history and the record of the mythology. They're doing a lot of things with skulls in this place. So, yeah, so it is. And because there was so much, you know, there was the revolution following and everything was sort of tenuous. Death was always in the face. And it was a life-death cycle. And which, you know, when death is present present whenever we have a close encounter with death

we we come more fully into life you know we're more conscious otherwise we tend to sort of float around and imagine that we have time to whine you know and nothing is important you know we we feel immortality that is not not real or is illusory no have you ever looked at the santa muerta cults like the not in depth but i i do know about them absolutely i mean it seems sort of relevant that the narcos and stuff would have resurrected that or yeah or brought it to life i'm not sure which i i don't know enough about it but yeah it's it's uh it's an interesting phenomenon for sure well and even you know the aztecs weren't perfect i mean you we definitely you know there's the myth of uh you know corporatism or infinite growth and you know you're talking about but you know the aztec empire was an empire i mean aztec is even kind of

a misnomer because it was the Mexica is the actual civilization. The Aztec was the military. Well, that's so interesting. Absolutely. And it's the only thing we ever learn about really is the shadow. You know, it was the brutal human sacrifice. And, you know, the human sacrifice. One of the things, and I'm so upset that I lost this because there was a British woman that his history podcast had on.

And I don't remember the podcast. I don't even know how I came upon it. You know, Spotify just put her there. And I was so mad because I was driving and I wanted to write it down. I should have pulled over because I don't have her name. But a British historian. And she talks about the fact that everything that she's researched says that that's just war. These were prisoners of war.

So to call it human sacrifice, is that what we're calling what's going on, what we committed, our empire is committed all over the planet? We should. Well, that's it. How is it different? Because we're doing it from the air? How are we more? Because it's more technological?

Somehow that's less savage? I mean, war is war is war is war. It's just brutality. It's the opposite of civilized. I mean, yes, we can argue that point. Athena, a warrior goddess springing from her father's head. I mean, she was also a goddess of civilization, wasn't she? I mean, she, she basically everything she created, yeah, of wisdom, everything that she created was to, you know, was for a vessel for civilization, you know, whether it was the yoke or, or the olive tree, the, the weaving, everything was a vessel for civilization to thrive. And the only time, unlike her brother,

Mars, the only time she went to war was to defend the polis, you know, and then she was brutal. Okay. So there's that, you know, I mean, and she had the Gorgon on her shield to prove how incredibly brutal she was. So, you know, to me, so now I'm going to go back to the Aztec, you know, the empire and, you know, everything does have its shadow. You know, the idea, I mean, and they had, you know, the Mexica, they had, you know, he'd gotten way out of, you know, power, you know, corrupts, right? And when absolute power corrupts, absolutely. I mean, it's what happened. So it was like, again, a revisioning as we, when we glean the gold, what do we leave it? You know, what can we leave behind?

What do we learn from our history? And if we don't learn anything from our history, which seems like apparent, you know, in modernity, you know, then we're destined to, you know, commit the same atrocities and errors over and over and over. So what do we learn? I mean, empires, let's think of another way of being, you know. They're not terribly sustainable constructs. I mean, the flower wars, you you know they would have that were basically like football except you died uh yeah i mean you were doing it to protect a warrior class you needed to have a war but they had already conquered the area from they had already expanded geographically as far as they could go so an empire needs war so what do you do you have these flower wars where

you go in and you know in order to advance in the ranks you have to catch a certain amount of prisoners and we need warriors so we got to catch prisoners and also the empire's religion is based on sacrifice so this gives us prisoners to you know sacrifice but when you know a lot of the people that try and um sugarcoat it a little bit more and say like well actually you know the people it was kind of an honor that people liked getting sacrificed like they were stoked for it it was like well you know all of the surrounding um policies sided immediately with cortez you know they weren't they weren't a fan of the empire part of it you know that's it you know the thing is when you think about the mexican people and the role of tlacaele

who um miguel leon portilla in aztec philosophy, Aztec thought philosophy, which I highly recommend. It's a beautiful book. He's a Mesoamerican scholar, obviously, and philologist. So he takes the Nahuatl word and he'll break it apart and he does a close reading. And it's just, it's so in-depth and it's so beautiful. But talking about Tlacaelel, when the Mexica people, you know, when they were a warrior roaming tribes without a home and looking for their home, they sold themselves

off as mercenaries, right? And just sort of fought for whomever and uh when they began finally establishing themselves uh flaca he was like the head military guy and and their king the machine king was saying oh my god i guess we're gonna have to pay taxes to this guy this is before they're an empire right but they finally established themselves or you know he's gonna run you know run us dry but we're gonna have to do it and everything and flaca he said no no we're not do it we're not going to do it and what he did he began an entire campaign you know to basically in honor of the of the war god of witsula portly and he that there you see the power of the archetype i mean the power of any religion. He basically, with his campaign, he said, we have to feed the war god the blood that he needs to sustain us. There's that mystical

military worldview that the Aztec or the Mexica people took on, and it basically made them the largest empire in that area. There's the power, again, like I say, of the religion, the archetype, because the war god was their main god. But at the same time, right alongside this mystical military worldview were the Tlametani, the Aztec wise men, the astronomers, philosophers, the astrologers, the scientists, the mathematicians, you know, that were the ones that created the social political order. Absolutely, the architects. And the whole point being there was that here they were, they were poets, you know, that spoke in metaphor, that sought truth through what they called flower and song, which meant poetry, right? They spoke in, and these are called disracismos, which means, you know, literally

two-word metaphors, but nouns. That means a person, place, or thing. It's not an adjective, and it's not a verb, right? So it's different. So, and flower and song meant poetry. And so here these wise men were in love with, you know, Miguel León Portilla said that they were enamored of the stars and poetry and they were captives of beauty. I mean, it's what brought them to their knees. And basically the last 12,

when they went above into the Spanish court and know, court and basically said, well, if you say our gods are dead, then you might as well just kill us because we can't go on with this, you know. And I mean, in essence, it's what we have. It's sort of like a march. Miguel Lamportilla compared that to, let's say, the German people, citizens at the time that Nazism was going on, right? And there were, you know, incredibly, you know, brilliant people right alongside Nazis. I mean, we have it in our culture, you know. Heidegger doesn't hang out or he doesn't hold out long against Nazism. So there it is, nationalism anywhere, you know, it's like, that doesn't mean that there's another part of a culture, you know, we like to say, oh, they were just brutal, you know,

barbaric, you know, anyway, there is to them, my whole point is, I go to Mesoamerica to glean the wisdom that I can, you know, to put the archetypal lens on, you know, and say, this is what we need, you know, now. How do we imagine this world into being now? You know, how can we glean sanction and, you know, blend it with the wisdom that we have learned in the modern. You're familiar, like, what is it? There's David Tacey calls it the post-secular sacred. But there's a lot of, you can kind of see Jung touch on it a little bit, but the idea that there's kind of phases of human consciousness. The first one is very mythic and magical thinking that we just look at the world and we project our psychology on it and then we don't recognize the projection and we think it's real and we say, okay, here's this God and the sun is about me and the moon is about me and whatever.

And then that age wanes and there's a scientific revolution of we can just explain everything and distill it down to a test tube. And then we've killed all of that. None of that is real anymore. We can understand everything intellectually, but that sort of fails too. And Jung alluded to this third phase that there's a place that you go into that's hey we need science science is sort of helpful you know i don't want to i want to cure my scrofula or whatever but also um it can't explain everything you know like part of you know and yung spends a lot of time you know talking to paoli about that at bollingen that you know that there's this that science is going to bump up against the inevitability of

religion anyway you're going to get to this place where your intellectual ability to understand the world doesn't save you and there you have to you know the answer is not as some people accuse helmet of saying you know going back to ancient religion and digging that up and throwing science aside that it is to recognize the limitation of science and to trust the intuition of a connection to place and a connection to these archetypal realities, even if we don't understand it intellectually, like even if we can't. And I think that's where we are right now is we're very bad at doing things that we can't understand that we can explain.

You know, I agree. And I think, I think that's where synchronicity comes in. I think that there needs to be a lot more studies done in synchronicity because synchronicity allows us, you know, and Jung defined synchronicity as the, you know, meaningful coincidence, right? And that being evidence, let's say, that we have of a ensouled, conscious, intelligent, communicative universe speaking with us that we're a part of,

right? I mean, for us to sort of awaken to that reality and to become conscious participants in the in sold world view and and synchronicity i think is that sort of that third factor that can allow that and go you know i've lived too many synchronicities to go you know to describe disregard them oh it's just a coincidence no no you know it there are coincidences but meaningful coincidences that's different meaningful coincidences that just go whoa you know and there's always the story of the the golden scarab dream that uh jung you know shares with his his client and and who's been a skeptic and more you know um in line with the reductive science and is not sort of buying into jung's you you know, enchanted worldview. And when she tells the dream of the golden scarab, they're knock, knock, knock, tap, tap, tap, you know, insistent at

Jung's window. And, you know, finally he opens the window, you know, grabs what is the equivalent of the golden scarab in his hands and says, here's your golden scarab. So that kind of synchronicity, that occurs all the time. And I think it really does act as this third place that we need more and more research being done on so that we can- How do you research that though? How do you turn that kind of intuition into a number? Because what you're talking about is looking at things that we can't understand and letting them still make meaning. Yeah. I mean, I think that if science wants it, I think if science wants to do it, they can collect data on that.

What's the synchronicity? Collecting data. How many people? You know, on a certain number of people through their life. You know what I mean? I don't find, to me, I don't'm i'm far too union to to need that kind but i do think that that synchronicity is it can provide that for for the science and the the more depth psychological to find you know a union i do think that that's where that maybe the connection though

is is more in our intuition you know that like you're saying you know that you know covid is happening over here and then australia is on fire over there you know like you know somebody who comes from a very logical existential place is going to be like what is the connection how can you possibly say that we burned australia down and that made a virus in china that spread here but when you when you sit with it as more of like a human intuitive thing that doesn't need a logical or rational connection, it's like further we move on this project, the worse it feels. I don't like seeing videos of the dead things on fire as we do this to the

planet. I don't like living in a world where, you know, community has been so rendered that we can't, you know, even come together to make a plan for a plague or, you know, that you can feel that these things are moving in a direction that isn't good and kind of go back to the drawing board and say how do we do this better

instead of how do we keep managing something that doesn't work you know and i i personally i don't know that science ever gets you there i mean i think that that is more of a felt connection to things um than one that you can you know turn into a number a number. A number, a number. Well, I would agree, you know, 100%. But if science wants it, those are the areas that I say, go there. Look for, find the research there. You know, if you want those numbers, go there. You know, because it is, you know, it only has been sort of reductive. To imagine that we're disconnected, to imagine that, you know,

if over 25 million animals die in the brush fire of Australia, it's not going to have some kind of effect on us. You know, it's like that study that they did on the wolves, and I think it was Yellowstone, right? When they got rid of the wolves, how their ecosystem just went to hell in a basket. And by reintroducing them everything came back to life i mean come on it's you know we we have to learn from nature biomimicry you know there's a study that they've been trying to like disprove for a really long time they keep controlling for it when they're like i think it was in the 90s there's a study that said basically if there's trees around crime will go down and so everybody kept being like oh you have to come up with intellectual reasons.

They've done like five different other studies where they tried to control for things, like where they're like, well, maybe there's trees in wealthier neighborhoods and there's less crime around wealthier neighborhoods. And then you go back and look at it and turns out there's no correlation there when you control for income.

And then they said, well, maybe the trees drop leaves. And then when you drop the leaves, people can't walk on them to sneak up to the house because they crunch. And then they do control for that variable. And it turns out that when you drop the leaves people can't walk on them to sneak up to the house because they crunch and then they do control for that variable and turns out that when you do it in another season or you do it with evergreens the trees just make people commit less crime and you know but there's this scientific you know existential impulse to say yeah but why we have to understand why it is you know there's not this ability to just say maybe there's a connection to nature is slightly healthier. And if you don't cut down all of the trees, things work better.

Even if you never figure out exactly why that is. And, you know, when you think about it, to me, we go back to the idea of creating the city. You know, how is it that everybody can have trees and clean water and and and have access to to to swimming in rivers or going to the ocean you know i live in la and and there are children you know in in in in south central that have never seen the beach at santa monica you know that's the point is like you know um i don't know if you're familiar with Caroline Casey from the Visionary Activist Show. I'm not. Oh, you want to tune into her.

She's an astrologer. Oh, my God, yeah. She's an astrologer, activist, and just a hoot. Deep and the mythic news. I mean, you do want to tune into her. You can hear her show. I mean, you just tune in, but she's on KPF, K, no, KPFA from the Bay Area. And, oh, God, now how did I get there?

Oh, no. I lost my train of thought. It's not being able to see the ocean that's sitting in there so close to it, I think. So, I mean, the whole point being is that, oh, yeah, you know, why is there more addiction among the poor? You know, it's like, well, make reality better. That's what she says. Make reality better. You know, it's like because it's not.

It's not. How is it possible that kids from South Central have never seen Santa Monica? And why? You know, and there used to be the electric, the cable cars that went there, that there was a whole trolley going back and forth, you know, on all the beaches that, you know, that everybody could get to. You know, we lost that. I mean, and to corporate greed, honestly,

there's no other way to put it. You know, we, you know, there was a system. And that's another thing when I think about re-imagining, you know, there are high-speed railways all over the world, except in the U.S., except in the U.S. You know, we have these antiquated, and I think about the effects on this antiquated railway system that we have, and why. Because the people don't travel, and if they do travel, it's expensive, and they're alone. Exactly, and it helps to keep the people separate.

You know, if we want to hop on a train and go see, you know, the states in the Midwest, or if we want to go to the South, if we want to visit, you know, if we can hop on a high-speed railway, we're going to do it. It'll be less expensive than a plane, ideally, than a plane. If we can get them to be a green high-speed railway, then there'll be less environmental damage. And we can find that we actually have more in common with the people that we've been told, vote red or vote blue. Maybe we're more purple or, you know, it's like we have to look. And I think we, I have to, to me that is something that I don't understand is what is it? You know, I heard some, you know, famous radio podcast guy that I stopped listening to saying,

you know, America's the greatest nation on earth. And I thought, in terms of what? You know, in terms of what? I mean, in terms of propaganda? In terms of me. I mean i mean in terms of propaganda in terms of me i mean viewing your children as an extension of your own ego is not good viewing your country as an extension of your own ego is not good no really viewing your anything as an extension of yourself is not great you know so to me i find it i found it really upsetting but i think when are we going to get our green high-speed railways?

Why don't we have them, you know? Or, you know, you've got polyvinyl chloride train car derailing and turning the sky black and Flint, Michigan without water. And we're bombing a country because we said that they were doing chemical warfare. And it's like, hey, this looks pretty nefarious and pretty chemical right there there you go and yet no and who's being held accountable for that and how how what is going to happen to those people in the water and the people and the beings that live in the water and the water that those people drink nobody's accountable in the corporate industrial growth fantasy nobody's nobody's accountable it's

like oh no no no, no, no. We just put the blinder on because it's all about profit for a certain elite. All of the giant projects that you can talk about are about an external reality. It's building a wall or bombing a thing, or you need to bomb this one or not that one, or this one's good, but that one's bad. But you can't repair the drinking water in a town that hasn't had drinking water for 10 years which would be an infinitely cheaper project to do there you go in a month in a month we can't talk about anything that's domestic we can't build a school we can't build a train we can't we can't even talk about it you know you've

got an infrastructure that's falling apart you got the slowest internet in the world and i don't watch the news but whenever i'm out and it's on they're talking about something outside of my country which i don't really want to participate in i'd like to fix this one there you go so i mean so to me that kind of a vision i think it's time it's like you know podcasts like yours that are you to find what does a new world look like, one from images that we cherish in our hearts. How do we – You won't be attacked more than if you just say, could we just imagine a little bit better of a world? That's not even an argument. It's not even a – it's like people are immediately know it's like people are me that's not reasonable that's not that's not moderate what

do you who do you think you are like man like you know it's either that it's that you're stupid and naive and unreasonable if you just say like many things could be slightly better and this doesn't work great that will get people more mad at you or there's splitting it's like well you must be a democratic pedophile or you must be a republican fascist and you're like i just said can we maybe have a you know i wrote that article about architecture saying you know that i liked that frank lord wright you know tried to meditate on the land and then the use of the space that the people were going to have and then a higher spiritual principle for that thing and kind of rested those together and that's why his buildings function sort of like altars which doesn't always work i mean he's but that was his process i like

his process there and my point was like not franklin wright built buildings like alters that it's like architecture is an altar but right now it's an altar to very dark gods you know it's billboards and hobby lobby raps with cheap sentiment and you know i got all this pushback on there i was like you know i went into a school where there were things like windows. And now we don't do that, but we have a TV every two feet on the wall to show something when you could just have a window, you know, just there was,

you know, a garden at the school that I went to, you know, and we got all these emails where people are like, well, in the sixties and seventies, they built schools this way and blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay.

Look, if we ever chose to send kids into a place that looked like a federal prison, that was made out of cinder blocks and painted with final paint and had a giant fence around it with razor wire. If we ever thought that was an OK thing to do, then we need to apologize for that until we have taken every single one of those things apart and built a school. OK, like I don't care that in 1970 they thought it was distracting to see sunshine or whatever. You know, I can't I can't speak to that psychosis. What I can say is that that's a problem.

And why are you sending me an email being like, yeah, but I mean, you know, people did that a lot and it'd be expensive. Yeah. All I'm saying is like this is this is insane. You're telling me to take my child to a thing that looks like where we send felons when they're in kindergarten i remember defending that to me why yeah no i i was so struck by that your statement because there is a school there's a charter school about um two miles from where i live that looks just like that, that prison. I think, good God, you know, really? This is where they're sending kids to school. This is it. And this is like in a, there's no evidence that if any green grass around it, you know, there's no evidence and the windows are completely

black. I don't know what's on the inside and what they can see from the outside but it's i mean it's absolutely uh soul killer you know and that's where they're sending kids to school and it breaks my heart it's like really this is where they're sending kids to school this is a you know an educational facility it's it's a lack of vision you know let's talk to leon creary who was one of the founders of uh new urbanism And he would send me videos of when his town was like really tiny and they're like, you know, black and white and somebody's feeding a horse a sugar cube and it's horse and buggy. It's like, you know, he's very't, he got out of architecture or you just quit doing it because he couldn't do it. The lady, he was talking about building a school in Britain. And the lady came and said, look, I don't think you understand how schools work. There's windows here. And also there's a veranda outside where the students can go out in the open air.

And he was like, yeah. And she said, if you do that, then there will be sexual perverts that walk by and look at the children and you know this idea that when you see that modernism and reagan and thatcher are coming in and there's all this way and you know that we're projecting all this stuff and he's like like he didn't even know what to say you know and i when i i was talking to him he told me about um he met hellman which he was like oh you you sound like this guy that I met a long time ago. Hellman. I don't know.

But he said that Hellman told him when you go to European architecture, the lines go up. And so you're you're always called to look up at the heavens. When you go to American architecture, we put a drop ceiling with fluorescent lights so that when you go into work, you have to stare down into hell. I thought it was really funny. Fair enough. I mean, Hillman talked about the anemic buildings, you know, I mean, he really, to me, his thing on architecture was just right to the point, you know, because it makes such a difference. I mean i mean prisons just the whole notion of prisons to begin with but in prisons the the ceiling is so low what that does is that's oppressive

you know that's so incredibly oppressive to the soul i mean when we walk into a church the first thing that we notice is the ceilings isn't it you know especially if you're in a city the first thing when you walk in to any you know fabulous old cathedral it's like what does it do it opens us right up you know the soul just sort of opens the spirit opens it's like there's there's a it creates a refuge doesn't it as opposed to these you know drop ceilings with the fluorescent lights that just, yeah, they make us look right into the, right into hell. I mean, they are, they're an underworld experience. And that's what, you know, how, you know, it seems like prisons are designed just to, I mean, just the whole notion of prisons to me, it's like that all has to be re-imagined.

But so much, I think, you know, goes back to that idea of, you know, of Carolyn Casey's, make reality better. You know, I mean, that might be simple, naive, whatever, but it's not. Why does that statement make people as angry as it does? And it does. You know, because it sounds simple and naive, when in fact, it means we actually have to use our minds or imaginations our hearts our intuition you know to figure it out let's take the time instead of bombing people everywhere and pressing you know people in our you know for a profit let's let's let's reconsider let's let's reimagine let's let's think about what a new world looks like. How does, you know, if we consider that this incredibly beautiful planet that we were born on, you know,

and we really systematically tried, you know, ravaged and, you know, burned to hell and cut down and done hideous things too. But if we can reimagine this paradise, how do we, you know, create something where we can live with one another, you know, and hold attention of opposites. Maybe you don't always agree with what someone's saying, but we don't have to take up arms.

You know, we don't need to be carrying AK 47s, you know, into, you know, to do that. We have to admit that we don't know. And we have to just sit for a minute. And the fact that we agree on that, that's where we want to be. We don't agree on how to get there. There you go. And that's a vulnerability that we don't have. We're not, we don't,

we're not allowed. It's not a, you know know it's not a a way you know to to be you know to take that pause and go oh okay we don't know it comes down do you want to be perfect or do you want to be whole yeah we're not very good at admitting that we're not perfect there you go yeah let's drop that one let's drop the whole perfect notion let's start with that one i think that's a good way to begin well that probably is a good place to end too unless there's anything else you feel like you'd like to get to or didn't and you know we can have a conversation on another topic again you know yes please i'd love to have you on my podcast this was this has been lovely and you can tell

us more about what you do yeah yeah, that would make room. The conversation would probably make room more to talk about taproot and some of the stuff. Wonderful. Yeah, I'd like to. I'd like to do that. There's not a lot of places like it yet. Yeah, I know. I know more about it. So I'm definitely scheduling you so that you can tell me about the taproot and what you're doing. So if you want to check out the Blue medicine journal, that would be the podcast to look up. I know that you can find it on pod bean,

but Google will probably get you there. I think you're in pod being in Google podcast right now. Right. The big one you want to. That's the one that I'm sure I've been trying to connect with and will successfully at some point. All right. Well check out the blue medicine journal and then hopefully I'll be on there and

maybe we will hear from Sandra again. So I'm. Fair deal. With an American. And corporate. Incorporate and shake