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Magic, Madness, and Meaning: Dr. Ian Edwards on Occult Experience · The Occult Rejects

0:02
Speaker 1: You see something's going to happen.
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Speaker 2: What's going to happen?
0:15
Speaker 3: What I.
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Speaker 4: Welcome back to the occult Rejects Today we have a
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Speaker 4: very special guest, Doctor Ian Edwards. Ian is a licensed psychologist,
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Speaker 4: a philosopher, a writer in one of the more interesting voices,
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Speaker 4: working at the crossroads of clinical psychology, existential thought, depth, psychology,
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Speaker 4: and occult experience. His work does not treat magic as
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Speaker 4: a cheap metaphor, and it does not treat every strange
0:48
Speaker 4: experience as something to dismiss. Instead, he asks harder questions,
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Speaker 4: what does a cult practice do to the self? What
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Speaker 4: happens when ritual, dream, desire, trains, aggression, initiation, and suffering
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Speaker 4: are taken seriously as lived experience. How do we speak
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Speaker 4: about gods, spirits, archetypes, symbols, the abyss, the devil, the crossroads,
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Speaker 4: and the magical body without flattening them into either superstition
1:15
Speaker 4: or diagnosis. Ian is the author of the four volume
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Speaker 4: Being and Non Being in Occult Experience series, where he
1:22
Speaker 4: works through figures like Alistair Crowley, Austin Osmond Speer, Kenneth Grant,
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Speaker 4: and Andrew G. Chumley through philosophy, existential phenomenology, and depth psychology.
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Speaker 4: He has also written on E. Graham Howe and druidry
1:36
Speaker 4: in a druid in Psychologist's Clothing, and his newer work,
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Speaker 4: Crooked Confessions explores the idea of the sanctified devil, contradiction, transformation,
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Speaker 4: and becoming magic. So today we are not simply asking
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Speaker 4: is magic real? That question is too small. When we
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Speaker 4: are asking what magic does to consciousness, identity, desire, suffering, language, embodiment,
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Speaker 4: and transformation. We are asking where initiation ends in psychological
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Speaker 4: crisis begins. We are asking what a cult is understand
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Speaker 4: about the psyche that mainstream psychology often misses, and what
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Speaker 4: a cult is can dangerously misunderstand about the psyche when
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Speaker 4: they mistake every rupture for revelation. But before we introduce Ian,
2:19
Speaker 4: let me introduce the Yellow Rejects joining us. We got
2:21
Speaker 4: my man, Jim the Ninja. Thank you very much, jin.
2:24
Speaker 4: Actually Jim was the one who showed me this guest
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Speaker 4: and suggested him, so thank you very much. Again.
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Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to this. You're welcome. Thank you so
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Speaker 2: much Boss for having me on. But yeah, I'm really
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Speaker 2: excited to speak with doctor Edwards. I am you know,
2:36
Speaker 2: I'm interested in the Ofidian current. I'm interested in being
2:39
Speaker 2: a non being. Like I'm not a Highdegger person, but
2:42
Speaker 2: I am a Buddhist, so a lot of that makes
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Speaker 2: sense to me, sort of like osmodically will say, so,
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Speaker 2: I'm really excited for this. So but I don't know
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Speaker 2: how much we'll have to contribute, but we'll just you know,
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Speaker 2: let on Flowers think we were saying before recording. People
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Speaker 2: want to check me out, they can go to the
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Speaker 2: YouTube which is you tube dot com, slash Threshold Saints
3:02
Speaker 2: or substack threshold Saints at substack dot com. They can
3:05
Speaker 2: check out both the Gray Lodge and Threshold Saints. I
3:08
Speaker 2: just dropped an episode with Brad Kelly, who is the
3:10
Speaker 2: author of the Earth and Dark, which is kind of
3:12
Speaker 2: a metaphorical novel we'll say, a sort of set some
3:17
Speaker 2: Kenneth Grantyan remix of the Tunnels Underneath Detroit. So we
3:22
Speaker 2: talked about metaphysics and taro and Kball of course and
3:25
Speaker 2: all those things. So people can check that out. And
3:27
Speaker 2: then Friday Night, Nastic Mass we have our second episode
3:30
Speaker 2: on WISA, so Sinister Traditions in Southeast Asia, So everybody
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Speaker 2: can check me out.
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Speaker 4: Thank you so much, No, thank you, sir and Maggis.
3:39
Speaker 4: We got my man Brandon.
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Speaker 5: What is going on, sir sup And good morning to
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Speaker 5: both you you Cardinal electric Head and Jin thank you
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Speaker 5: for having me. Oh this is gonna be a great time.
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Speaker 5: I'm excited for E. C. Edwards and all the stuff
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Speaker 5: that he's going to bring to us today. It looks
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Speaker 5: like a fascinating gentleman. Everyone can find magas in the
4:00
Speaker 5: media where we break down myth, magic and meaning in
4:03
Speaker 5: the stories that.
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Speaker 3: We all love. We're doing the thing.
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Speaker 5: So today we're doing it again and this great day
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Speaker 5: of Thursday. So Ian, we're ready for us going down
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Speaker 5: that rabbit hole with whatever it is you got to
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Speaker 5: bring us.
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Speaker 3: Let's get it.
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Speaker 4: Let's do it right. Thank you very much, sir, I
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Speaker 4: appreciate it. And Ian, finally you let everybody know what
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Speaker 4: your deal is, whatever you'd like to promote or anything
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Speaker 4: like that.
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Speaker 1: Sure. Well, as we said, I'm Ian C. Edwards. I'm
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Speaker 1: a licensed psychologist and I work in private practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
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Speaker 1: and has also was mentioned author of numerous books really
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Speaker 1: since twenty twenty one, Like all of those books and
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Speaker 1: publications that you've mentioned have been since twenty twenty one,
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Speaker 1: and there's sort of a story behind that too, in
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Speaker 1: terms of an inspiration and otherness and alterity, if you will,
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Speaker 1: that might drive that kind of thinking and that kind
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Speaker 1: of work. But yeah, like those publications all since twenty
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Speaker 1: twenty one, and several more actually in the pipeline. I
5:13
Speaker 1: don't know if you heard, if you get the Theon newsletter,
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Speaker 1: but it was announced this morning that my Songs of
5:21
Speaker 1: the Sanctified Devil, which is a forthcoming publication which should
5:25
Speaker 1: be ready in about a year and a half or
5:27
Speaker 1: two years, Theon's going to publish that, And so that
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Speaker 1: very much is connected with my recent volume, Crooked Confessions,
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Speaker 1: and it's really an extension and elaboration of that, and
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Speaker 1: so I can certainly talk about that toward the end.
5:44
Speaker 1: But who am I primarily it's a really good question.
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Speaker 1: I would consider myself a depth psychologist, not just in
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Speaker 1: terms of academic or scholarly training, but in terms of
5:56
Speaker 1: the way I like think about things and think about
5:59
Speaker 1: the world. So my clinical lineage actually goes back to
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Speaker 1: Jung and I can I can tell you a little
6:06
Speaker 1: bit about that. So my supervisor with Stanton Marlin. I
6:11
Speaker 1: don't know if you're familiar with his work on the
6:14
Speaker 1: Black Sun Beautiful publication if you haven't read that before,
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Speaker 1: which weaves together alchemy, Jungian psychology, dirty and deconstruction, all
6:25
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff that's worth taking a look at there.
6:28
Speaker 1: But he was my primary clinical supervisor when I was
6:32
Speaker 1: in the process of training to become a psychologist, and
6:36
Speaker 1: so Stan himself was was supervised by Edward Edinger and
6:41
Speaker 1: James Hillman if you're familiar with those folks, and that
6:44
Speaker 1: goes back to Jung himself, and so I trace my
6:47
Speaker 1: Jet psychological lineage, you know, and these aren't giant leaps
6:52
Speaker 1: back to Jung, but only a few leaps and we
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Speaker 1: go back to Carl Jung. And so I very much
7:00
Speaker 1: practice and think from that perspective, from that orientation, but
7:05
Speaker 1: also we've in a lot of existential phenomenology as well,
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Speaker 1: and really the Being a Non Being series, those four volumes,
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Speaker 1: it was me basically looking at a cult text from
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Speaker 1: a depth psychological, existential, phenomenological, primarily Hidigerian and deconstructive sort
7:26
Speaker 1: of perspectives. I think philosophically at heart, I'm very much
7:30
Speaker 1: a Hidigerian and even a Hegelian, and so okay, we
7:33
Speaker 1: got the Brandon with the Heidegger right.
7:37
Speaker 3: I'm a Hydigerian myself.
7:39
Speaker 1: Wonderful, wonderful. So my training was at Dukane University. I
7:42
Speaker 1: don't know if you're familiar with the Dukane, but it
7:45
Speaker 1: is wonderful, wonderful, and that's where I'm working now. Actually,
7:50
Speaker 1: so I'm in one of my offices here at Dukane,
7:52
Speaker 1: but very steeped in the existential phenomenological tradition, both the
7:57
Speaker 1: psychology departments and the philosoph department. So my academic training
8:03
Speaker 1: I did a lot of Hidiger and have pretty much
8:06
Speaker 1: read like most of Heidegger on my own because we
8:09
Speaker 1: focused a lot on like the Hidiger of Being in time.
8:13
Speaker 1: But a lot of my interests as of late have
8:15
Speaker 1: been sort of the later Hidiger. And so if you
8:19
Speaker 1: read some of my late volume four of the Being
8:22
Speaker 1: a Non Being series as well as Crooked Confessions, I
8:26
Speaker 1: talk a lot about Heidegger's notion of another beginning, and
8:30
Speaker 1: then I apply that notion to occultism. So I extend
8:34
Speaker 1: this idea for another beginning for occult philosophy, if you will.
8:39
Speaker 1: And so that, interestingly enough, that comes sort of at
8:43
Speaker 1: the end of the Being and non being series, but
8:46
Speaker 1: it also marks the beginning at the same time, and
8:50
Speaker 1: hence the shirt or the beginning and the end kind
8:52
Speaker 1: of come together. There's the tie in with a shirt.
8:55
Speaker 1: Perfect had no idea that was going to come up,
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Speaker 1: but it sort of did spontaneously. But yeah, I guess, like,
9:02
Speaker 1: in a nutshell, that's sort of like what I'm about.
9:06
Speaker 1: And you know, there's obviously a lot more with each
9:09
Speaker 1: of those things that I could unpack, but yeah, that's
9:13
Speaker 1: kind of that's kind of me in a nutshell.
9:15
Speaker 4: Nice. That's really it wasn't impressive too. You wrote a
9:19
Speaker 4: lot in a short amount of time. I know, did
9:22
Speaker 4: you ever see It's funny how it kind of even
9:24
Speaker 4: reminds me of your shirt. I doubt you ever saw this,
9:26
Speaker 4: But did you ever see the show Cigarette Burns? No,
9:29
Speaker 4: I have it. It's an old It's like an old
9:32
Speaker 4: forty five minute horror thing that John Copper did. There
9:36
Speaker 4: was a series called Master of Horror and it was
9:38
Speaker 4: about if you watch this movie, it made people go
9:40
Speaker 4: kind of crazy and mostly they would end up killing themselves.
9:43
Speaker 4: But it was in a cult movie. It had angels
9:45
Speaker 4: in it cutting their wings off, all sorts of weird shit.
9:48
Speaker 4: And but for some reason, like anytime anybody who like
9:52
Speaker 4: maybe survived, there was one dude who survived and to
9:57
Speaker 4: some guy was given the job to go find this movie.
9:59
Speaker 4: Some rich wanted this guy to go get the movie
10:01
Speaker 4: for him. And he goes and finds this one guy
10:03
Speaker 4: to go talk to and his house is like just
10:07
Speaker 4: filled with paper, and you know, the guy's sitting there
10:10
Speaker 4: on his typewriter and he's trying to have a conversation
10:12
Speaker 4: about him with it, and he's like, you know, I'd
10:14
Speaker 4: like to see if you can like really tell me about,
10:16
Speaker 4: like you know, your experience. And he's like, oh, I'm
10:17
Speaker 4: almost finished with it now. This is this is what
10:20
Speaker 4: I've been working on. The guy's looking around, he's like,
10:22
Speaker 4: all this is to describe the movie you saw. And
10:25
Speaker 4: in the movie they showed cigarette burns like like almost
10:29
Speaker 4: like an eclipse. It looked a lot like your shirt.
10:32
Speaker 4: So it's kind of funny. I like, what are you're
10:33
Speaker 4: talking about writing so much? I'm like, hell, that movie
10:36
Speaker 4: had that symbol on your shirt. And there was a
10:38
Speaker 4: guy who was just like stuck writing forever. I don't know.
10:41
Speaker 4: I mean that took you around the world for just
10:42
Speaker 4: a weird weird thought I had, But yeah, I actually like.
10:45
Speaker 1: That, well, this particular symbol as a cigarette burn, and
10:50
Speaker 1: I think we can tarry with that and even play
10:52
Speaker 1: with that and go down that rabbit hole at some point,
10:56
Speaker 1: because it's very interesting to think about how the two
10:59
Speaker 1: could be related or connected. And I and part of
11:02
Speaker 1: my work is actually like bringing together like strange bedfellows,
11:07
Speaker 1: you know, And so this whole whole idea. I remember
11:10
Speaker 1: this was a few years back. I was giving a
11:13
Speaker 1: presentation here at Duquane. It was a Lacan Jacques Lacan
11:17
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with his work in psychoanalysis. But I
11:22
Speaker 1: was invited to give a presentation and it was about
11:24
Speaker 1: the the intersection, or my understanding of the intersection between
11:29
Speaker 1: Jacques Lacan and Austin Osman Spear. And so Lacanians can
11:33
Speaker 1: be very like uptight in some ways and almost like
11:37
Speaker 1: dogmatic in terms of their approach. And so it was
11:40
Speaker 1: an audience full of Lacanian psychoanalysts. And you know, as
11:45
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here talking about Spare and putting the name
11:49
Speaker 1: Spare and the same in the same paragraph as Jacques Lacan,
11:53
Speaker 1: these these people didn't know what was actually hitting them.
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Speaker 1: It was actually quite funny, a little ress on my part,
12:00
Speaker 1: you know, a little pleasure in terms of like witnessing
12:03
Speaker 1: how they were reacting to some of these things. And
12:08
Speaker 1: so many people came up to me afterwards almost as
12:10
Speaker 1: if they were they wanted to come out of the
12:12
Speaker 1: closet and sort of confess their interest in the occult,
12:16
Speaker 1: almost like wow, like I didn't know it was okay
12:18
Speaker 1: that I can be into Lacan, I could be into Heidegger,
12:22
Speaker 1: I can be into Herlo Ponti, I can be into
12:24
Speaker 1: academic philosophy, but also dialogue this with esoteric thought. And
12:28
Speaker 1: so people were kind of coming up almost like sheepishly,
12:32
Speaker 1: looking around, like wanting to talk with me about this stuff.
12:36
Speaker 1: So it's actually really interesting to have this kind of
12:39
Speaker 1: dialogue with people who really didn't feel like it was
12:42
Speaker 1: okay for them to have an interest in both of
12:46
Speaker 1: these schools of thought.
12:49
Speaker 4: How was that? How did I know? I was going
12:50
Speaker 4: to ask, how did that work out for you? Which
12:52
Speaker 4: one came first the occult of psychology.
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Speaker 1: Psychology came for phology, yes, and philosophy came first for me. Yeah.
13:03
Speaker 1: So I you know, beginning like in my early twenties,
13:07
Speaker 1: like I supplemented a lot of my academic reading just
13:11
Speaker 1: with subjects and topics that you know, weren't covered in
13:16
Speaker 1: the academic curriculum. But I had basically immersed myself in,
13:21
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of depth psychological literature, you know,
13:24
Speaker 1: reading all the Freud, like reading all the Jung, you know,
13:28
Speaker 1: getting into La Khan and Matard Boss and Dinsbonger, some
13:32
Speaker 1: of the existential phenomenological psychiatrist, the work of fukoh Alreadie Lang,
13:39
Speaker 1: people of that kind. So I really kind of immersed
13:42
Speaker 1: myself in that literature and also the underlying twentieth century
13:46
Speaker 1: continental philosophies that founded some of these schools of thought.
13:51
Speaker 1: And then only later, I mean because being in de
13:53
Speaker 1: Jung of course, like when you read Yung, like you know,
13:56
Speaker 1: he's covering a lot of esoteric occult subjects and he's
14:00
Speaker 1: referencing like primary sources. So as he's doing that, you know,
14:05
Speaker 1: these are like invitations for me to actually explore. And
14:10
Speaker 1: so as I was reading Young and Joseph Campbell in
14:13
Speaker 1: my early twenties, those were like invitations for me to
14:18
Speaker 1: begin like reading and studying the occult sciences. So yeah,
14:23
Speaker 1: it began with psychology and philosophy, but not too long
14:27
Speaker 1: after did I start like diving into more esoteric subjects.
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Speaker 4: That's awesome, I you know, because I could see how
14:36
Speaker 4: I just from my experience and not everybody that I know,
14:39
Speaker 4: because there's so many different avenues you can go down
14:41
Speaker 4: in the occult of magic to like kind of take
14:43
Speaker 4: it and take it another step further. But a lot
14:47
Speaker 4: of people I know that get heavy into this stuff
14:48
Speaker 4: and take a real serious end up going down like
14:50
Speaker 4: these avenues. So I could see how somebody who gets
14:55
Speaker 4: into that might even be led to occultism in a way.
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Speaker 4: That's great though. I think it's awesome. I think it's
15:03
Speaker 4: awesome that you started off in that angle first, so
15:05
Speaker 4: then at least like you've already covered that. Like I
15:08
Speaker 4: think there's a lot of occultist or which is a
15:10
Speaker 4: magicians that never entertained this stuff, and I think that's
15:13
Speaker 4: a loss for them. So I think it's great that
15:16
Speaker 4: you already have this under your bills.
15:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you you know, Israel Regardi was like
15:22
Speaker 1: an early influence on me as well, and you know
15:26
Speaker 1: he's a he was a neo Reichian therapist, very much
15:29
Speaker 1: influenced by Wilhelm Reich, and he talked very powerfully about
15:35
Speaker 1: the importance of occultist magicians, et cetera actually participating in psychotherapy,
15:42
Speaker 1: in particular a depth orient in psychotherapy, not necessarily as
15:46
Speaker 1: a prerequisite, but necessarily something that people should consider doing.
15:53
Speaker 1: And in my own like clinical work with a cultist,
15:56
Speaker 1: because I do in my private practice, because you're you know,
16:00
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily amazed by it. But like a lot
16:04
Speaker 1: of people that are practitioners have had a hard time
16:09
Speaker 1: like finding therapists that are sympathetic to their worldview. And
16:13
Speaker 1: so when I've advertised on Instagram kind of like what
16:17
Speaker 1: I'm doing, I've had a lot of people reach out
16:19
Speaker 1: to me like saying, hey, you know, like are you
16:21
Speaker 1: taking on new clients. I've had a hard time finding
16:25
Speaker 1: a therapist who would be sympathetic to my perspective without
16:29
Speaker 1: either pathologizing it or reducing it to a, you know,
16:33
Speaker 1: a more psychodynamic kind of way of understanding things. So
16:38
Speaker 1: it's been a real joy for me actually to have
16:42
Speaker 1: a private practice where I can work with people that
16:45
Speaker 1: are practitioners and take their psychotherapeutic journey just as seriously
16:51
Speaker 1: as their esoteric journeys.
16:55
Speaker 4: Jenner Brandon do you have any Do you guys have anything? Yes?
16:58
Speaker 1: I do.
16:59
Speaker 2: Sorry, thanks boss, Dr Edwards.
17:01
Speaker 4: Do you okay?
17:02
Speaker 2: So I think I have a two part question, but
17:04
Speaker 2: I think it flows into each other. What changed for
17:08
Speaker 2: you in like I assume it was twenty nineteen or
17:11
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, or you know, the earlier before you really
17:14
Speaker 2: started doing a lot of writing. What was the sort
17:18
Speaker 2: of threshold for you that or hermeneutic or whatever you
17:21
Speaker 2: want to call it, that sort of led you through
17:23
Speaker 2: to be prolific? And then secondly, what specifically attracted you
17:29
Speaker 2: to the left hand path currents that you sort of
17:32
Speaker 2: deal with in your work, and then also applying to
17:34
Speaker 2: those psychology, like how does it inform each other? I
17:38
Speaker 2: think you understand what I'm saying for sure.
17:40
Speaker 1: For sure, And if there's any point in my responses
17:43
Speaker 1: where I forget to address like a part of your question,
17:47
Speaker 1: just bring me back to it. But kind of going
17:50
Speaker 1: back to like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, that's so, that
17:56
Speaker 1: was around the time where I started a correspondent with
18:00
Speaker 1: Peter Hamilton Giles from Atrementous Press, And I'm sure you
18:05
Speaker 1: all are familiar with him and the body of work
18:07
Speaker 1: that he's produced, so in kind of like entering into
18:13
Speaker 1: a dialogue with him, I became aware of what he
18:17
Speaker 1: was doing in terms of like dialoguing existential phenomenology with
18:22
Speaker 1: witchcraft and occultism. So struck up a very meaningful correspondence,
18:28
Speaker 1: and I was very impressed with how much like he
18:31
Speaker 1: knew about Lebinos and Rolou Ponti and how he was
18:35
Speaker 1: he was bringing those thinkers into his reading of occultism.
18:39
Speaker 1: And so as we started to strike this correspondence up,
18:44
Speaker 1: you know, he invited me to actually consider writing something
18:50
Speaker 1: for Atrementous Press, and so over the course of like
18:54
Speaker 1: several correspondences, we came up with this idea of doing
18:59
Speaker 1: something on being being and non being right, which is
19:02
Speaker 1: sort of you know, the featured part of the title
19:05
Speaker 1: being a non being an occult experience. And it was
19:08
Speaker 1: originally envisioned as like a single volume right where I
19:13
Speaker 1: would cover basically the four occult thinkers that I covered
19:18
Speaker 1: in the separate volumes. But then as we were talking,
19:21
Speaker 1: it made more sense to make them into distinct volumes,
19:24
Speaker 1: into separate volumes, and so I began with Aleister Crowley,
19:30
Speaker 1: went to Spare Kenneth Grant, and then to Chumley, which
19:33
Speaker 1: for me were the thinkers and schools of occult thought
19:37
Speaker 1: that I was most familiar with. And I thought, you know,
19:40
Speaker 1: these are all very prominent and essential figures in contemporary occultism.
19:46
Speaker 1: And so I saw, like, especially in like Chumley, there
19:51
Speaker 1: was a way in which, and this goes for the
19:53
Speaker 1: other thinkers too, there was a way in which, like,
19:56
Speaker 1: I don't think he himself really appreciated the profunded of
20:00
Speaker 1: what he was saying from time to time, and so
20:03
Speaker 1: coming at it from a more philosophical kind of background
20:08
Speaker 1: and a depth psychological background, I wanted to unpack some
20:13
Speaker 1: of these esoteric ideas and situate them on different philosophical
20:18
Speaker 1: grounds and to show like these thinkers equally are as
20:22
Speaker 1: powerful as philosophers and even depth psychologists in their own right.
20:28
Speaker 1: And so like I'm very interested in doing work of
20:32
Speaker 1: intersections and showing how like ideas can cross pollinate one another.
20:37
Speaker 1: And when you look at some of these thinkers, like
20:40
Speaker 1: they are making some profound ontological and epistemological claims when
20:45
Speaker 1: it comes to philosophy, but I think because some of
20:48
Speaker 1: their own unfamiliarity with these schools of thought, they couldn't
20:52
Speaker 1: unpack these ideas in a way because just they didn't
20:56
Speaker 1: have access to them. And so that was sort of
20:58
Speaker 1: like my interest, like what would it be like to
21:01
Speaker 1: read these thinkers from an existential, phenomenological, deconstructive, in depth
21:06
Speaker 1: psychological lens, And that's what I intended to do. But
21:10
Speaker 1: at the same time, I allowed these ideas and even
21:15
Speaker 1: experiences with these ideas to affect me in a way.
21:19
Speaker 1: And so there was a way in which, over the
21:21
Speaker 1: course of time, like I evolved and I changed through
21:25
Speaker 1: the process of writing, as these ideas began to come
21:30
Speaker 1: together and to form new ideas. And so it kind
21:33
Speaker 1: of for me culminates in this notion of the sanctified Devil, right,
21:38
Speaker 1: which I'm talking about in Cooked Confessions and also in
21:45
Speaker 1: Songs of the Sanctified Devil as almost a new imago day,
21:50
Speaker 1: like a new image of God, like a higher unity,
21:53
Speaker 1: if you will. And so for me, this entire process
21:58
Speaker 1: kind of led to this culmination to thinking about the
22:01
Speaker 1: sanctified Devil almost as an imago day. But also too
22:07
Speaker 1: around that time and in all of my written works,
22:13
Speaker 1: I don't begin writing them unless I have some kind
22:17
Speaker 1: of visionary or dream experience, and so if you look
22:21
Speaker 1: at each of the four volumes of Being a non
22:25
Speaker 1: being in accult experience, the body of the text is
22:30
Speaker 1: preceded by what I call an uncanny prologue. And so
22:34
Speaker 1: the uncanny prologue is basically a dream or a visionary
22:38
Speaker 1: experience that I had, and then the rest of the
22:43
Speaker 1: text is almost a way of trying to make sense
22:47
Speaker 1: of that experience, very similar to like Yung's Read Book,
22:51
Speaker 1: for instance. So he said, you know that his collected works,
22:57
Speaker 1: all of his academic works, were really attempts to explain
23:00
Speaker 1: his experiences in the Red Book, and that very much
23:04
Speaker 1: resonated with me in terms of these experiences that I
23:09
Speaker 1: had preceding the writing of each of these four volumes. Right, So, yes,
23:14
Speaker 1: like there's definitely an experience of an otherness or an
23:18
Speaker 1: alterity that inspired a lot of these books as well.
23:24
Speaker 1: So the second question has to do with a left
23:27
Speaker 1: hand path. Is that correct?
23:29
Speaker 4: Yes?
23:29
Speaker 2: But I actually have a follow up, doctor, as if
23:32
Speaker 2: you don't mind, I really love that you said that
23:35
Speaker 2: about alterity, and sort of like I don't I tend
23:38
Speaker 2: to issue more supernaturalistic explanations of things, but I embrace
23:42
Speaker 2: the way you articulate and framed it because this is
23:45
Speaker 2: also my experience with doing more speculative kabala, is that
23:50
Speaker 2: I feel like you can apply nondual thinking to not
23:54
Speaker 2: just kabbala, but also to other like you're saying, like
23:57
Speaker 2: to other texts that don't necessarily maybe it's embedded deeper
24:00
Speaker 2: within or maybe there is a kind of way, a key,
24:03
Speaker 2: a cipher to read the text through a nondual lens.
24:07
Speaker 2: And so I agree with that, and that is also
24:09
Speaker 2: how I try and approach Western wisdom science, and so
24:12
Speaker 2: I guess that's not really a question. I apologize, but yeah.
24:15
Speaker 2: So the next part is and I was even thinking,
24:18
Speaker 2: like read book, like that's exactly what red Book is.
24:20
Speaker 2: A condensation, a distillation, a sort of alchemization of the
24:25
Speaker 2: earlier spiritual maybe combined with more quote unquote magical experiences,
24:31
Speaker 2: more ritualistic endeavors. But he kind of condenses it into
24:35
Speaker 2: this like deep psychological but also talking about consciousness and
24:39
Speaker 2: sort of its interaction with reality phenomenology.
24:42
Speaker 1: I guess.
24:44
Speaker 2: But yeah, so the next part is about the left
24:46
Speaker 2: hand path, like what draws you to that? And then
24:49
Speaker 2: also like how does it inform what you're talking about now?
24:53
Speaker 1: No, it's so I think I can relate that to
24:57
Speaker 1: something that you mentioned before, and so like I in
25:01
Speaker 1: terms of like these these experiences of the newminess, if
25:06
Speaker 1: you will, right, I do like to refer to these
25:10
Speaker 1: experiences as something like as an alterity or as anotherness,
25:15
Speaker 1: because I'm very I guess you could say agnostic when
25:19
Speaker 1: it comes to those sorts of things, meaning that I
25:22
Speaker 1: apply a position of just not knowing and for me,
25:25
Speaker 1: like those signifiers alterity and otherness make the most sense
25:30
Speaker 1: to me, even if that alterity eventually names itself, right,
25:36
Speaker 1: And so we can have an experience of an otherness
25:39
Speaker 1: or an alterity naming itself right, and we can talk
25:43
Speaker 1: about what naming itself obviously can mean and what that signifies,
25:48
Speaker 1: or it can be offered or given a name when
25:50
Speaker 1: in dialogue with the otherness or the alterity. So I'm
25:54
Speaker 1: very and so my agnostic approach is a very humble
25:59
Speaker 1: and very respectful kind of approach, and so I approach
26:03
Speaker 1: it with a sense of all wonder and humility and
26:06
Speaker 1: just really not knowing what this actually is. So I
26:11
Speaker 1: appreciate that sort of perspective. So, yeah, the whole kind
26:16
Speaker 1: of left hand path sort of idea for me really
26:22
Speaker 1: sort of has its appeal and the whole idea of opposition, right,
26:28
Speaker 1: this kind of idea of opposition even like the position
26:32
Speaker 1: of negation itself. And so like if you look at
26:37
Speaker 1: kind of like the figure of the devil, you know,
26:41
Speaker 1: as the opposer, right, as the adversary in some way,
26:45
Speaker 1: and so you take that a little bit deeper, like
26:48
Speaker 1: I really sort of dive into this almost like Hegelian
26:52
Speaker 1: idea of negation in some way. So negation is something
26:56
Speaker 1: very interesting to me. So I find like at a
27:00
Speaker 1: heart almost and I'm not trying to reduce it to this,
27:04
Speaker 1: but in terms of my own meditations and reflections, you see,
27:08
Speaker 1: at the heart of this kind of approach is this
27:11
Speaker 1: principle of negation, right, And so like in my own
27:15
Speaker 1: thinking and in my own reading of these texts, I'm
27:18
Speaker 1: very mindful and conscious of this thread of negation that
27:22
Speaker 1: runs throughout right. And so what happens, for instance, when
27:28
Speaker 1: you know we take on this approach where you know,
27:32
Speaker 1: we continue to engage in this process of negation until
27:36
Speaker 1: we reach higher and higher forms of unity. So I
27:39
Speaker 1: see the left hand path in many ways as ultimately
27:43
Speaker 1: an oppositional, adversarial kind of approach that leads us to
27:47
Speaker 1: higher forms of unity that kind of reveals in some
27:51
Speaker 1: way a new dialectic. In some of my earlier works,
27:55
Speaker 1: I've talked about like a non dual dialectic, which basically
28:00
Speaker 1: means that there's one underlying reality and all of the
28:05
Speaker 1: opposites are already contained or made hole in it. And
28:08
Speaker 1: so when you talk about like Chumbley's idea of letting
28:12
Speaker 1: contradictions be, unity is there now, he says, So just
28:17
Speaker 1: let the contradictions be for me. One could write an
28:21
Speaker 1: entire volume on that. One can write, and I tried
28:25
Speaker 1: to in some way because that was sort of like
28:27
Speaker 1: the impetus behind you know, volume four. But what happens
28:32
Speaker 1: if we just allow contradictions to coexist? What happens if
28:37
Speaker 1: we allow them to trust be, we recognize them as
28:41
Speaker 1: being part of a fundamental or higher unity.
28:48
Speaker 2: I love that personally, and I would love for you
28:50
Speaker 2: to do a part four on Nagarjuna, and like especially
28:54
Speaker 2: when he talks about resolving paradox in your own mind
28:57
Speaker 2: first and perhaps letting the primordial ground just be as
29:02
Speaker 2: you're saying, like letting it be for other people, but
29:04
Speaker 2: like for yourself, maybe you're dealing with it more in
29:07
Speaker 2: this psych psychomagical way. So yeah, I think that's really interesting.
29:12
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I think it is like it's
29:15
Speaker 2: a path of opposition. I also agree like Tontra, we
29:18
Speaker 2: have the dialectic inner out or secret. So for me,
29:21
Speaker 2: it's always been like I try not to play in
29:25
Speaker 2: the polarities other than draw from them. But I think
29:28
Speaker 2: that's a very you know, specific to like a contrac
29:32
Speaker 2: Buddhist framing of it. And I wouldn't ever say that
29:35
Speaker 2: other people have to share my world views, but I
29:37
Speaker 2: want to say I really appreciate it that that was
29:39
Speaker 2: a great explanation.
29:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and thinking about it like like from a Hydegarian
29:45
Speaker 1: point of view. So just to talk a little bit
29:48
Speaker 1: about that, So he talks about this idea of glass
29:52
Speaker 1: and height right or letting something be, or other ways
29:56
Speaker 1: of framing it our releasement or unconcealed and so like,
30:01
Speaker 1: I like to apply that idea of the not so
30:06
Speaker 1: much the performance of magic, but the becoming of magic.
30:09
Speaker 1: And again that was an idea present in Chumley's work
30:12
Speaker 1: is as well, like the idea of becoming magic and
30:16
Speaker 1: magic almost as this fundamental ground of being what I
30:21
Speaker 1: would call the abyss right like so Heideger and his
30:24
Speaker 1: later works talks about the abysal ground, right, this groundless ground.
30:30
Speaker 1: And so in my kind of understanding, what would it
30:33
Speaker 1: be if this is in fact the case, and magic
30:36
Speaker 1: in some way is akin to this fundamental abyssal reality.
30:40
Speaker 1: What would it be like just to practice almost a
30:44
Speaker 1: glass and height in relation to that, just simply to
30:47
Speaker 1: let it be?
30:48
Speaker 4: Right?
30:48
Speaker 1: What happens if we become that and just allow for
30:52
Speaker 1: the unconcealment of magic itself?
30:56
Speaker 3: Nice?
30:56
Speaker 5: That sounds then exactly like what your shirt and what
30:59
Speaker 5: you're wearing. Just letting it be that very zen like
31:02
Speaker 5: thing that as you're deconstructing all these things down and
31:05
Speaker 5: letting magic just flow through that level of embodiment. It's
31:10
Speaker 5: brilliant because then it's that unconcealment, that alethea that you're
31:13
Speaker 5: kind of talking about, that hidigeryan.
31:15
Speaker 3: When you can bring something into the.
31:16
Speaker 5: Clearing, it's not like you're you know what it is is,
31:20
Speaker 5: you're allowing things to reveal themselves as they are.
31:24
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and that for me that very like truth as
31:29
Speaker 1: unconcealment alathea, right, that notion that you're talking about I
31:34
Speaker 1: think is very important and experimentally, it's fascinating to apply
31:40
Speaker 1: these Hydigerian notions or concepts to magic, like and that's
31:45
Speaker 1: really like a fundamental interest of mine is like taking Heidegger,
31:50
Speaker 1: for instance, and then applying the later Hidiger like some
31:54
Speaker 1: of these ideas to magic itself. And what happens if
31:59
Speaker 1: magic is just allowed to be, you know, it's unconcealed
32:04
Speaker 1: in some way. How does it appear as a phenomenon
32:08
Speaker 1: in some way when we bracket all preconceptions associated with that?
32:14
Speaker 1: And does it in fact allow us to return to
32:16
Speaker 1: what Heidegger called another beginning?
32:20
Speaker 4: Right?
32:20
Speaker 1: And so in my own work, that's something I'm interested
32:24
Speaker 1: in experimenting with. You know, when you apply Hydegery in
32:28
Speaker 1: philosophy specifically these notions, these notions, does it allow us
32:34
Speaker 1: to return to another beginning? Almost like for Heidiger it
32:37
Speaker 1: was it was pre metaphysical in some ways, so his
32:41
Speaker 1: another beginning kind of goes back to the pre Socratics
32:44
Speaker 1: in some way, right. And so if we apply something
32:48
Speaker 1: similar to magic or occultism, what does this look like
32:54
Speaker 1: as a phenomenon? Does it appear differently? Right? And so
32:58
Speaker 1: like it's sort of at the end of my being
33:01
Speaker 1: and non being work, but it's also the beginning at
33:03
Speaker 1: the same time, right, and so like when I thought
33:07
Speaker 1: I was finished, I'm actually just beginning.
33:10
Speaker 5: That's beautiful. Yeah, that's it's super meta. And can you
33:13
Speaker 5: explain a little bit. So my understanding of the other
33:15
Speaker 5: beginning or another beginning is that not we're not that
33:18
Speaker 5: we're going back to the presocratics work, but we're actually
33:21
Speaker 5: doing it again, and we're going back to the true
33:24
Speaker 5: standing of what the question was, and it's about being itself.
33:28
Speaker 5: Now that's falling sway to the Cartesian small beings that
33:31
Speaker 5: are all around us that we've gotten lost into this
33:33
Speaker 5: enlightenment scientific nonsense.
33:35
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, it's so. Yeah. So in Being in nineteen
33:39
Speaker 1: twenty seven, like within being in time, for instance, he
33:43
Speaker 1: you know, he makes this point. He says, well, philosophers
33:47
Speaker 1: up until me, basically yeah, talked about being, but they've
33:52
Speaker 1: never really said what it was, or like what it is.
33:55
Speaker 1: So he spends over four hundred plus pages basically talking
33:58
Speaker 1: about what it is. And so in returning to the
34:02
Speaker 1: question of being, Hidiger actually puts it under a rasure
34:07
Speaker 1: like if you see that he crosses that term out
34:10
Speaker 1: and he attempts to spell it differently, right, because there's
34:14
Speaker 1: something elusive about the concept itself, And the way kind
34:19
Speaker 1: of Heidegger appropriated the question of being is the way
34:23
Speaker 1: I would want to appropriate the occult. What happens if
34:28
Speaker 1: you go back and just ask the question about the
34:31
Speaker 1: occult itself and even put the word under a rasure,
34:33
Speaker 1: cross it out, kind of like what he does to
34:36
Speaker 1: show that there's almost like an absence that's there, right,
34:40
Speaker 1: and then begin from that place in terms of just
34:43
Speaker 1: the question and the questioning.
34:45
Speaker 5: Interesting, that's almost like getting like dropping all the tools
34:49
Speaker 5: and the magical technology and getting back to the human
34:52
Speaker 5: experience as an embodied perceptual being itself.
34:55
Speaker 3: Is that kind of what you're getting?
34:56
Speaker 1: Yes, So that's where I talk about like ideas like
34:58
Speaker 1: Sorceress does, right, So in my work I'll talk about
35:03
Speaker 1: Sorceress design and Sorceress flesh, you know, in Sorceress design
35:08
Speaker 1: kind of being the zero point where being, non being
35:12
Speaker 1: and becoming actually intersect itself. Right. So for me, that
35:17
Speaker 1: like these whole these concepts that I'm kind of inventing,
35:22
Speaker 1: if you will, in some ways is an attempt to
35:26
Speaker 1: do just what you're what you're saying in some way,
35:31
Speaker 1: you know, because you know, we don't put new wine
35:34
Speaker 1: into old wine skins, so to speak. And so it's
35:37
Speaker 1: like okay, like, and some people find the right my
35:40
Speaker 1: writing style to be a bit dense, a bit complicated
35:44
Speaker 1: in all of that you're writing about, yeah, exactly right,
35:48
Speaker 1: right right, and then trying to apply it to the
35:49
Speaker 1: occult and things like that. So it's like it can
35:52
Speaker 1: be you know, it can be very challenging. And so
35:55
Speaker 1: I'm struggling with language in some way, and so like
35:59
Speaker 1: this kind of language is not as much to inform
36:03
Speaker 1: sometimes it is to invoke something or to break open
36:07
Speaker 1: in a certain way. So reading is a very different
36:10
Speaker 1: experience when it comes to the work that I'm doing.
36:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's amazing.
36:14
Speaker 5: And I do want to call out that behind you
36:17
Speaker 5: is the net of being Alex Gray of the Greatest
36:21
Speaker 5: band that's not a band but a mystery school tool tool.
36:26
Speaker 4: I should know that's what you're talking about.
36:28
Speaker 1: That I have a sign poster at home by the way.
36:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did want to ask you a
36:37
Speaker 4: little bit about uh because Crowley and Thelema, are you
36:42
Speaker 4: into th Lima personally? Like, is that something like a
36:45
Speaker 4: style or whatever you into Croleys.
36:47
Speaker 1: Sure, absolutely, yeah. I mean I began My being a
36:52
Speaker 1: non being series with Crowley for a reason, and also
36:57
Speaker 1: in a way like of course you're not supposed to
37:00
Speaker 1: comment on the Book of.
37:01
Speaker 6: The Law, and so mesposition it's like, well, fuck you,
37:06
Speaker 6: I'm going to do it anyway, Like, so I am
37:08
Speaker 6: going to comment on it, right, and so like to
37:11
Speaker 6: come out, you know, to come out of the gate,
37:14
Speaker 6: you know, with doing something like that, like to blaspheme
37:19
Speaker 6: in some way, to be heretical in some way for
37:23
Speaker 6: me would be the highest honor paid to Crowley in
37:27
Speaker 6: terms of his injunction not.
37:28
Speaker 1: To comment on it is to give him in some
37:31
Speaker 1: way the middle finger and comment on it anyway.
37:35
Speaker 4: No, I think he would respect that.
37:38
Speaker 3: Well, I think he wants you to do that.
37:40
Speaker 5: It's almost the point it's like, oh are you listening,
37:44
Speaker 5: Oh you brought the book.
37:45
Speaker 3: Oh you're a fucking idiot. Go back to that.
37:48
Speaker 1: We could use expletives here because I kind of did that,
37:51
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, you.
37:52
Speaker 5: Know, oh no, the head cardinal here is you know,
37:57
Speaker 5: like crush, Yeah, very good.
38:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I so I have I yes, yes, to
38:05
Speaker 1: answer your question. Absolutely, And the Lima is a is
38:09
Speaker 1: a thread actually that runs throughout all four volumes to
38:15
Speaker 1: a certain extent, and it is in volume four and
38:21
Speaker 1: so like I write mainly about it in volume one,
38:26
Speaker 1: but I also write about it more extensively in volume four,
38:31
Speaker 1: and so like, yes, it's it's a it's a path
38:34
Speaker 1: that is very meaningful for me. And I think there's
38:37
Speaker 1: a lot of misunderstanding behind, like you know, do with
38:41
Speaker 1: I will shall be the whole of all.
38:42
Speaker 4: I'm going to ask you about that, right.
38:44
Speaker 1: Like, there's so yeah, there's a lot I think misunderstanding
38:47
Speaker 1: about that. And in saying that, it's not to say
38:50
Speaker 1: that I feel like I understand it, because I don't
38:53
Speaker 1: really understand it. I don't think anyone can fully understand
38:57
Speaker 1: something along those lines. But I think there's a way
39:00
Speaker 1: in which it can be misappropriated.
39:03
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I was going to ask you, what do
39:06
Speaker 4: what thou wilt? What does that mean to you?
39:10
Speaker 1: It's a great question. So I've tried to tie that
39:13
Speaker 1: into not just a personal will, but almost like a
39:18
Speaker 1: cosmic will in some way, almost at times like a
39:22
Speaker 1: universal will. And as blasphemous as this might sound in
39:27
Speaker 1: relation to Salema, I might relate this to Christian scripture
39:32
Speaker 1: right again, sort of like the strange Bedfellow sort of idea.
39:38
Speaker 1: So you know, if if you look at Jesus' experience
39:43
Speaker 1: in the Garden of Gsemine, which for me is a
39:46
Speaker 1: very powerful scene, right, So it's sort of like on
39:49
Speaker 1: the eve of his crucifixion, he's in the garden, he's praying,
39:55
Speaker 1: all the disciples are basically asleep, and he's basically saying,
40:00
Speaker 1: know if this cup can be removed from me, right,
40:04
Speaker 1: because he's actually terrified of what might be what might
40:08
Speaker 1: be coming. But then he concludes with something I think
40:11
Speaker 1: very beautiful, Not my will, but thy will be done right.
40:16
Speaker 1: And so for me, I linger with that a little bit,
40:18
Speaker 1: and I've toyed with that in terms of playing with
40:21
Speaker 1: it in relation to do what thou wilt shall be
40:24
Speaker 1: the whole of the law right. And so it's like, okay,
40:27
Speaker 1: what would it look like if will is not so
40:30
Speaker 1: much like an appropriation of personal or egoic will, but
40:34
Speaker 1: aligning oneself with cosmic or universal will. And so for
40:40
Speaker 1: Christ it was the Father's will, and for others it
40:43
Speaker 1: can be any kind of symbol or represent representation of
40:47
Speaker 1: cosmic or universal will. So how does the world's soul,
40:51
Speaker 1: for instance, communicate whereas in dialogue with me in everyday life,
40:55
Speaker 1: How does the daimonic reveal itself in the world in things?
41:00
Speaker 1: And how do I enter into a path of pronia,
41:04
Speaker 1: you know, where the universe is kind of conspiring in
41:07
Speaker 1: my favor, right, rather than against me. So these are
41:10
Speaker 1: all ways, and you know the presence of synchronicities and
41:13
Speaker 1: things of this sort, right, you know, for young like,
41:17
Speaker 1: synchronicity is happening all the time, right, It's not something
41:21
Speaker 1: that is even like a rare event. We just don't
41:24
Speaker 1: typically have the eyes to see it. And so when
41:27
Speaker 1: we kind of like let the scales from our eyes
41:31
Speaker 1: fall away and are able to kind of look upon
41:35
Speaker 1: the world with a different set of eyes, we see
41:38
Speaker 1: that synchronicities are unfolding all the time, so that the
41:41
Speaker 1: world's soul is in constant communication and in dialogue with
41:45
Speaker 1: the individual soul, right, And so these are some of
41:48
Speaker 1: the ways in which I might take that up.
41:52
Speaker 2: I love that, I think. I don't know if you
41:54
Speaker 2: would agree with this, doctor Edwards, but I always describe
41:57
Speaker 2: it well. Contra Buddhism will describe it as a geological
41:59
Speaker 2: rule relationship between yourself and the words, since you brought
42:02
Speaker 2: up obviously the Garden of Becausemini and the idea of
42:05
Speaker 2: logos obviously for Christian Cabala is so important. I also
42:09
Speaker 2: love the sort of way you describe the vessels like
42:11
Speaker 2: the wine vessels, and also like to greater unity, because
42:14
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of post lorionic kabbala which
42:17
Speaker 2: actually sort of gets into what you're talking about. A
42:20
Speaker 2: lot of this revelation of the husks as Christine and
42:24
Speaker 2: clarified in and of themselves. I find that very interesting.
42:27
Speaker 2: I know David him Smith talks a lot about this,
42:31
Speaker 2: but I wanted to ask you as a follow up
42:33
Speaker 2: to what Nick said, and maybe you kind of covered it,
42:35
Speaker 2: but I think I'll just ask it and we'll see
42:37
Speaker 2: where it goes. Is that does the neo gnostic framework
42:41
Speaker 2: of Tealima or any of the Tulema, because I know
42:43
Speaker 2: one of your books was on Kenneth Grant obviously, so
42:47
Speaker 2: the Typhony and Oto or even the Kiazo's cult. Do
42:52
Speaker 2: those neo gnostic ideas sort of inform your worldview now?
42:55
Speaker 2: And how does it sort of or not either or oh.
43:00
Speaker 1: No, they definitely do. They certainly inform my worldview quite
43:07
Speaker 1: a bit actually, And you know, I talk in some
43:13
Speaker 1: of the later volumes of the Being a Non Being
43:15
Speaker 1: series about a kind of gnosticism like almost like a
43:20
Speaker 1: like a non dual kind of gnosticism, and even like
43:23
Speaker 1: a headless sort of understanding of gnosticism when you take
43:27
Speaker 1: it up from like George Pattaiz work. So one of
43:30
Speaker 1: the things that I kind of apply to gnostic thought is,
43:33
Speaker 1: like George Pattis work. You know, this idea of like
43:37
Speaker 1: of this headless, sort of ecstatic form of mysticism, and
43:42
Speaker 1: what would it be like to apply that to gnostic
43:46
Speaker 1: thought and bring those sort of bedfellows together in a
43:50
Speaker 1: very meaningful sort of way. And it's interesting. So I
43:54
Speaker 1: give at the university where I work. I'm responsible for
43:59
Speaker 1: giving once a year a workshop on world religions, and
44:04
Speaker 1: most of the people that come it's a Catholic university here.
44:07
Speaker 1: But one of the things I do is I talk
44:10
Speaker 1: about like the history of gnosticism. You know, I go
44:12
Speaker 1: into gnosticism, gnostic thought, and a Kamadi library, the different
44:17
Speaker 1: like apocryphal Gospels, the Gospel of Philip, Mary Magdalene, all
44:22
Speaker 1: of that sort of stuff, and it's just amazing how
44:27
Speaker 1: much I found that many, if not most, traditional Catholics
44:33
Speaker 1: don't know about the history of their own religion. And
44:37
Speaker 1: it's like they're hearing about all of this stuff like
44:39
Speaker 1: it's you know, something that you know is foreign and alien,
44:44
Speaker 1: and in many ways it actually is, but they have
44:48
Speaker 1: no under the They typically have no real understanding of
44:51
Speaker 1: the Gnostic Jesus for instance, right. And so it's something
44:56
Speaker 1: that I very much enjoy like even teaching here, like
45:00
Speaker 1: the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip and
45:03
Speaker 1: this radical idea that maybe Mary Magdalene could have been
45:06
Speaker 1: like the first Pope. And so if you look at
45:09
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's the Gospel of Philip where
45:11
Speaker 1: it's mentioned that, you know, he's kissing her on the mouth, right,
45:16
Speaker 1: and so what does that mean. Well, so there's this
45:19
Speaker 1: whole idea of numa, and you talk about numa in
45:22
Speaker 1: terms of what that meant for the Gnostics, and maybe
45:25
Speaker 1: what he was doing is not just kissing her, was
45:27
Speaker 1: passing on disciplic succession to her, like breathing into her
45:32
Speaker 1: in some ways. So it's it's actually really enjoyable for me,
45:37
Speaker 1: just even like traditional Gnosticism like to teach Catholics and
45:41
Speaker 1: Christians about that.
45:45
Speaker 2: Sorry, I have a quick follow up. Do you, as
45:47
Speaker 2: as someone who was raised Catholic myself, do you find
45:50
Speaker 2: that Catholics are more or less open to both metaphysical
45:55
Speaker 2: and or gnostic ideas.
45:58
Speaker 1: Well? If they are if they are familiar, for instance,
46:02
Speaker 1: with the writings of some of the saints, you know,
46:04
Speaker 1: so if you know, if you read John of the Cross,
46:07
Speaker 1: Teresa of Avella, a lot of the Carmelite mystics, for instance,
46:11
Speaker 1: meister Eckhart, right, I think many of them that are
46:15
Speaker 1: a little more familiar with the mystical or contemplative aspects
46:20
Speaker 1: of Catholic Christianity are more receptive to some of these ideas,
46:26
Speaker 1: you know, because it's it's present, like in the thought
46:28
Speaker 1: of John of the Cross, it's present in Teresa of Avila,
46:33
Speaker 1: and so they just might use different verbiage, different nomenclature,
46:37
Speaker 1: different signifiers to describe it. And so I think those
46:41
Speaker 1: that tend to have more I guess you could say
46:45
Speaker 1: exposure to contemplative versions of Christianity have an easier time
46:50
Speaker 1: in terms of creating some of these more gnostic metaphysical ideas.
47:01
Speaker 2: Thank good, jin oh, yeah, I'm good. Thank you so much,
47:04
Speaker 2: doctor Edwards for that. That was great. I also agree
47:06
Speaker 2: with that. That's also my experience. And Nick and I
47:08
Speaker 2: have discussed this many times about whether you want to
47:11
Speaker 2: call it like the sort of rosicrucion elements, the Christian
47:14
Speaker 2: coubalistic elements, like the re sort of constitution of the
47:18
Speaker 2: of Pico, and like all all of those like post
47:21
Speaker 2: seventeenth century materials. I mean, I think that there is
47:24
Speaker 2: a constant metaphysics and Catholicism. I think it can be
47:27
Speaker 2: very hard to discern. But I agree with you. If
47:30
Speaker 2: people return to more contemplative practices and contemplative thinkers within
47:34
Speaker 2: that sort of Christian mysticism broadly, I think that they
47:37
Speaker 2: would actually arrive at many similar conclusions, if not the same,
47:41
Speaker 2: but maybe you know, a glimpse of the primordial truth.
47:44
Speaker 2: We could call it.
47:45
Speaker 1: Sure, So one of the one of the things that
47:47
Speaker 1: I'll do as a practice, So we'll take the first
47:51
Speaker 1: like Psalm forty six to ten, right, So Psalm forty
47:54
Speaker 1: six to ten begins with be still and know that
47:58
Speaker 1: I Am God. It's like, okay, so we're going to
48:00
Speaker 1: do that, and we're going to pray it almost as
48:03
Speaker 1: a mantra, but it works this way for me. So
48:06
Speaker 1: it's a be still and know that I am God,
48:09
Speaker 1: and then you start working your way backwards.
48:12
Speaker 7: Be still and know that I am Be still and
48:16
Speaker 7: know that I be still, and know that be still,
48:19
Speaker 7: and be still, and then just be be be And
48:24
Speaker 7: then that becomes silent, and it becomes in sync with
48:28
Speaker 7: a person's breath and heart beat, so then they're basically
48:33
Speaker 7: they move from just breathing the prayer to allowing their
48:36
Speaker 7: heart to beat the prayer itself, and that gives them
48:39
Speaker 7: a taste or a feel for a more contemplative understanding
48:46
Speaker 7: of scripture for that matter, and how to pray in
48:49
Speaker 7: a contemplative sort of way, and it gives them a
48:52
Speaker 7: little bit of a feel for that.
48:55
Speaker 3: That's beautiful.
48:56
Speaker 5: That also reminds me of kind of what we were
48:58
Speaker 5: talking about last night with Danielle Nick, as well as
49:01
Speaker 5: something that Scarlet Imprints Peter Gray has talked about. It's
49:05
Speaker 5: like we have all of these books around us in
49:09
Speaker 5: ancient texts and classical literature. It's like pick one up,
49:12
Speaker 5: especially the Bible, pick one up, pick a verse. A
49:15
Speaker 5: ritual doesn't have to have all these tools and things
49:18
Speaker 5: like that prayer doesn't have to have all the incense,
49:22
Speaker 5: Like you can just pick these things up, read a
49:25
Speaker 5: sentence and continue to chant that as your mantra until
49:29
Speaker 5: it breaks you open into the contemplative space, which is
49:33
Speaker 5: what Danielle and us we're talking about yesterday. When that
49:36
Speaker 5: platonic sense is that, then that contemplative plat tiny and
49:41
Speaker 5: like a scent can be felt right now in that
49:44
Speaker 5: very Hydegarean way that you were talking about earlier.
49:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's the unconcealment of the one, the non
49:51
Speaker 1: dual reality that underlies everything, and in some ways it's
49:56
Speaker 1: the disclosure of the abysmal ground itself, and it gives
50:00
Speaker 1: someone a taste for that, you know, just to feel
50:03
Speaker 1: for that in some way, and that little taste kind
50:05
Speaker 1: of as you're saying, you can access that through multiple means, right.
50:10
Speaker 1: It can be through the Bible, It can be through
50:13
Speaker 1: you know, reading Hydiger, it can be through reading Alan Watts, like,
50:17
Speaker 1: there are so many different paths to that. But take
50:20
Speaker 1: one sentence even and allow it to break you open.
50:24
Speaker 1: So that's not informational reading, but like invocational evocational reading, right,
50:31
Speaker 1: So allowing almost like the text to read you in
50:34
Speaker 1: some way inverting the relationship between reader and read.
50:37
Speaker 5: No.
50:38
Speaker 3: I love that because then that taps into for myself.
50:40
Speaker 5: I really love the Eight Circuits of Consciousness by Robert
50:43
Speaker 5: Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary and that kind of work.
50:46
Speaker 5: And I think it kind of works in that way
50:48
Speaker 5: where it's like each one of us has our own
50:52
Speaker 5: like nervous system imprinting, and what helps us balance out
50:58
Speaker 5: each circuit and the ability to then tap into and
51:01
Speaker 5: get through the ego persona so we can tap into
51:05
Speaker 5: self or that abysmal primordial state of allness, God, whatever
51:11
Speaker 5: it is.
51:12
Speaker 3: But that prayer invocation.
51:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And for a lot of people it's kind
51:18
Speaker 1: of it allows them to break through some of their
51:21
Speaker 1: own defenses in a way like it's Jung said, I'm
51:26
Speaker 1: going to be paraphrasing this, but he said that religion
51:30
Speaker 1: actually is a psychological defense against genuine spiritual experience. So
51:37
Speaker 1: we need in some way, like the edifice of religious
51:41
Speaker 1: dogma as a way to kind of because the direct
51:46
Speaker 1: experience of the numinis would be so powerful and overwhelming
51:51
Speaker 1: that religion sometimes is a psychological way of kind of
51:54
Speaker 1: protecting ourselves from the numinous but at the same time
51:58
Speaker 1: allowing us to taste it. But we have these moments
52:01
Speaker 1: where it's all broken open and like, yeah, like there
52:04
Speaker 1: are some instances where people can have this taste of
52:08
Speaker 1: the Abyss and then go mad. Right, We've all are
52:11
Speaker 1: familiar with experiences like that, people crossing some kind of
52:14
Speaker 1: threshold and then entering into a realm of what would
52:19
Speaker 1: be considered madness.
52:20
Speaker 4: Right. You know, I was actually going to my next
52:23
Speaker 4: question was going to be about the Abyss. But with
52:26
Speaker 4: what you just said right now, do you think, like
52:29
Speaker 4: with the way I took it, like you saying, having
52:32
Speaker 4: religion explaining kind of like if you have the idea
52:38
Speaker 4: of like some sort of religion, I little just take
52:40
Speaker 4: like Catholicism again, and you have like a magical experience.
52:43
Speaker 4: Let's say you cross the Abyss, you have an experience,
52:46
Speaker 4: and then you come back and you might be like
52:47
Speaker 4: mind fucked up with what you just experienced or soil
52:50
Speaker 4: or whatever. But then like religion kind of gives you
52:53
Speaker 4: a way to assimilate that experience and maybe to find
52:56
Speaker 4: like commonalities with it, so you're like, oh wait, maybe
52:59
Speaker 4: I'm not that crazy. It just wasn't looking at this
53:01
Speaker 4: stuff the same way, would you say that would be
53:03
Speaker 4: like a yeah, kind of what you're getting out like
53:06
Speaker 4: a framework to fall back into, so you're not like
53:09
Speaker 4: totally lost and nothing.
53:11
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely yeah. And you know, like I'm having a
53:15
Speaker 1: couple of thoughts right now. The first thought so is
53:20
Speaker 1: in relation to Thomas Aquinas.
53:22
Speaker 4: Right who wrote talked about him yesterday.
53:24
Speaker 1: You talked about him yesterday. I had no idea I
53:27
Speaker 1: would be talking about him today.
53:29
Speaker 4: It's just coming up.
53:31
Speaker 1: So Thomas Aquinas is most famous for writing what the
53:35
Speaker 1: Suma Theologica right, these five volumes, which is basically the
53:40
Speaker 1: synthesis of Catholicism with Aristotelian philosophy and Augustine before him,
53:47
Speaker 1: where it was Christianity and Platonism. So the Suma's unfinished,
53:52
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if most people know that, but
53:55
Speaker 1: the Suma was never finished. And the reason why it
53:58
Speaker 1: was unfinished is because apparently Thomas Aquinas himself had an
54:05
Speaker 1: experience of the numinous in some way, he tasted something
54:10
Speaker 1: of the numinous, and he concluded from that that everything
54:13
Speaker 1: that he wrote prior to that with Straw it was nothing.
54:17
Speaker 1: It wasn't worth finishing. It's all BS.
54:21
Speaker 4: I can see that. I can understand that.
54:24
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, and he has his theology is like so
54:28
Speaker 5: well documented.
54:30
Speaker 1: Oh the way it's argued argued.
54:32
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
54:33
Speaker 5: It's as intellectual slash jargony as it comes.
54:39
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I love it. Yeah, but yeah, like so
54:43
Speaker 1: that so your your question kind of like reminded me
54:46
Speaker 1: of that, and so like, okay, well, what does one
54:49
Speaker 1: do you know after one has an experience such as this,
54:53
Speaker 1: you know, as a tory kind of like experience a
54:57
Speaker 1: taste of the numinous, like for Jung, like in the
55:00
Speaker 1: Red Book, Like it's his sort of dialogue or confrontation
55:04
Speaker 1: with the unconscious, the revelation of the figure of Philammon,
55:08
Speaker 1: you know, which was sort of his dimonic guide, if
55:12
Speaker 1: you will, throw out. But as a psychiatrist, as a scholar,
55:16
Speaker 1: like he couldn't really from that point like just start
55:20
Speaker 1: advertising himself as a mystic, Like he had to create
55:23
Speaker 1: a system almost to explain all of that. So all
55:27
Speaker 1: of his collected works, beginning with you know, the Psychology
55:31
Speaker 1: of the Unconscious, which was sort of his break from Freud,
55:34
Speaker 1: you know, all the way to like the Mysterium Cognunccionis
55:37
Speaker 1: was sort of this attempt to explain the numinous experience
55:41
Speaker 1: that he had in the Red Book to create a
55:43
Speaker 1: system in a way. So there could be, as you're suggesting,
55:48
Speaker 1: a system that's already made, already available to help one
55:52
Speaker 1: kind of understand their own experience. But there also are
55:57
Speaker 1: times when I think people have experience and says that
56:01
Speaker 1: no system entirely can explain what it was that they tasted.
56:07
Speaker 1: So Thomas couldn't continue to write the Suma after that,
56:11
Speaker 1: like he couldn't go in that same direction that he
56:14
Speaker 1: was going with. He had to ultimately go into another direction.
56:18
Speaker 1: Who knows what that was actually in terms of that
56:21
Speaker 1: other direction that he actually went into. And so for me,
56:25
Speaker 1: there are experiences and tastes of the abysal ground, if
56:29
Speaker 1: you will, that are so profound that they shatter in
56:33
Speaker 1: many ways pre existing systems that one would use to
56:38
Speaker 1: explain all of that. So one has to almost almost
56:41
Speaker 1: like this death of God experience that one has, that
56:45
Speaker 1: one from that point has to become a creator, an
56:48
Speaker 1: innovator of new values so to speak.
56:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, he can almost be left with more questions. What
57:01
Speaker 4: I did want to ask about the abyss is h
57:05
Speaker 4: let me get back to that and thelemic An initiatory language,
57:08
Speaker 4: the abyss is often treated as a major ordeal, a threshold.
57:11
Speaker 4: From your perspective, is the abyss a mystical reality, a
57:15
Speaker 4: psychological crisis, a literary symbol, or all those at once
57:19
Speaker 4: or none of those.
57:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's a great question, and if I
57:24
Speaker 1: answer it correctly, I'm probably wrong to a certain extent,
57:29
Speaker 1: meaning that there probably isn't a way to correctly answer that.
57:33
Speaker 1: But I think all of those and this isn't I
57:35
Speaker 1: think a way to avoid answering the question by saying
57:39
Speaker 1: all of those actually apply to a certain extent. But
57:44
Speaker 1: for me, there's something about it that it is sort
57:46
Speaker 1: of an irreducible kind of notion. It is a ground
57:51
Speaker 1: upon which there is no ground that supports it in
57:54
Speaker 1: some way. It's like this groundless ground. And so like, yes,
57:59
Speaker 1: in many of the magical traditions, there's this discussion of
58:03
Speaker 1: crossing the abyss in some way, right, And if you
58:08
Speaker 1: look at this kind of like a Nietzschean terms, like
58:11
Speaker 1: the ascent is also a descent at the same time,
58:14
Speaker 1: So going under this whole idea of kind of going
58:18
Speaker 1: under like probing the abyss and being kind of touched
58:22
Speaker 1: by it to a certain extent, and you know, I
58:26
Speaker 1: feel like if one does that in a way that
58:32
Speaker 1: is without preparation, and so like, if you're going into
58:35
Speaker 1: this sort of experience, you know, without a without a map,
58:40
Speaker 1: if you will, without something that can guide you. And
58:44
Speaker 1: I think in some ways, like certain personality types are
58:48
Speaker 1: more prone to madness than others, if you will, so like,
58:51
Speaker 1: for instance, if you have someone who's like psychotically structured,
58:55
Speaker 1: like and I'm looking at this more from like a
58:56
Speaker 1: Lacanian sort of sense, where their ego boundaries are very
59:00
Speaker 1: permeable and they have holes in them, and you give them,
59:04
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a contemplative kind of practice, they'll say, well,
59:07
Speaker 1: I already experience non duality, right, I'm already there. But
59:11
Speaker 1: that's not really kind of a trans personal experience. That's
59:14
Speaker 1: a pre personal experience. So for certain personality types or
59:19
Speaker 1: character structures to kind of move into an experience where
59:23
Speaker 1: they're invited to taste the abyss could actually in some
59:27
Speaker 1: way make them become psychotic. It can make them go mad,
59:32
Speaker 1: and so like, for me, like, it's very important to
59:36
Speaker 1: dialogue personality structure with contemplative or ritual practice because it
59:41
Speaker 1: can be very dangerous for some people to actually engage
59:44
Speaker 1: in these practices if they're not again like the importance
59:47
Speaker 1: of psychotherapy in all of this, and not prescribing certain
59:51
Speaker 1: practices for everyone, if they don't have the character structure.
59:59
Speaker 2: Would you say sorry, Nick? Would you say doctor? Is
1:00:02
Speaker 2: that that's part of the initiatic processes? Like obviously we're
1:00:05
Speaker 2: talking you're referencing a therapeutic relationship or a psychotherapeutic relationship
1:00:10
Speaker 2: with a patient, But maybe that is part of it too,
1:00:14
Speaker 2: Like certain practices are not meant for certain people. I
1:00:17
Speaker 2: often think about this in terms of religion, like they're
1:00:20
Speaker 2: out the outer temple is fine for some people, the
1:00:22
Speaker 2: inner temple is fine for some people, and the secret
1:00:24
Speaker 2: Temple is fine for not most people but a few people.
1:00:29
Speaker 2: But I don't know if I believe that. But it's
1:00:30
Speaker 2: an interesting, I think framework to use to sort of
1:00:33
Speaker 2: like understand metaphysics in religion and broadly, and so is
1:00:37
Speaker 2: that what you're kind of talking about, like guides in
1:00:41
Speaker 2: the actual material world to sort of like bring you
1:00:44
Speaker 2: through those gates or thresholds of more inner practice.
1:00:50
Speaker 1: Certainly, like the presence of a teacher, the presence of
1:00:53
Speaker 1: a guide the presence of a depth oriented psychotherapist. And
1:00:58
Speaker 1: I think oftentimes the stages or phases of psychotherapy in
1:01:03
Speaker 1: some ways can parallel, like stages of initiation, and they
1:01:07
Speaker 1: can go very well together, you know, in terms of
1:01:10
Speaker 1: you know, looking at the ego's path toward individuation for instance, Right,
1:01:15
Speaker 1: there are comparable there are there are similarities between that
1:01:19
Speaker 1: and like different stages of initiation. And you know, I
1:01:25
Speaker 1: don't know if you're familiar with Ken Wilbur's work in
1:01:28
Speaker 1: terms of like some of the stuff that he's done
1:01:31
Speaker 1: on like this, the earlier Ken Wilber like with the
1:01:33
Speaker 1: spectrum of consciousness and different therapies, different practices being more
1:01:39
Speaker 1: aligned with different stages of development than others. Right, And
1:01:43
Speaker 1: so that's kind of like what I'm speaking about here.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: So for instance, you know, if someone is still really
1:01:50
Speaker 1: very much in need of ego work, like ego structuring
1:01:54
Speaker 1: types of techniques, and then they start to practice something
1:01:58
Speaker 1: that can lead to ego a solution rather than enlightenment,
1:02:02
Speaker 1: they can become mad. And that for me, I've seen
1:02:05
Speaker 1: that happen with people even like when folks like they
1:02:09
Speaker 1: might take hallucinogens various you know, mind altering substances. Right,
1:02:16
Speaker 1: some people have a tendency where the ego actually dissolves
1:02:21
Speaker 1: the point of madness. I remember one person that took
1:02:25
Speaker 1: some LSD and he was like hell bent on drowning
1:02:29
Speaker 1: himself in a lake, and it took five people to
1:02:32
Speaker 1: restrain him from drowning himself in the lake because for
1:02:36
Speaker 1: him at that point, it was an imperative. So something
1:02:39
Speaker 1: was on earth, something was unlocked. And come to find out,
1:02:43
Speaker 1: this particular person in terms of his egoic structure with
1:02:48
Speaker 1: someone who really hadn't hadn't formed a well bounded ego
1:02:53
Speaker 1: at that point. And so this idea of ego transcendence
1:02:57
Speaker 1: is predicated on the idea that the ego has to
1:03:00
Speaker 1: first be formed.
1:03:05
Speaker 2: I want to go sorry, Nick again, let's sad my
1:03:08
Speaker 2: last one. I just had a question about Austin Osmond spair,
1:03:10
Speaker 2: which I know we sort of reference at the very beginning.
1:03:13
Speaker 2: You talk a bit about synesthesia and this transformation of
1:03:17
Speaker 2: that sinesthetic experience. Now, Nick and I have discussed this
1:03:20
Speaker 2: a lot with crossing the Abyss and kabalistic sepharatic journeying
1:03:23
Speaker 2: or kava journeys, whatever you want to call it. Contric experiences, skywives,
1:03:27
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. I believe that a lot of
1:03:30
Speaker 2: these experiences are the same. I relate to these things
1:03:33
Speaker 2: largely through color and word, which is also why I'm
1:03:36
Speaker 2: drawn to Kabala in general. But I think also We've
1:03:41
Speaker 2: been reading the Apafenni on the Peter J. Carroll book
1:03:45
Speaker 2: for our Gray Lodge reading group, and I feel like,
1:03:49
Speaker 2: even though it has like a clinically charged sort of denotation,
1:03:54
Speaker 2: I feel like there's actually he's saying something really interesting
1:03:57
Speaker 2: in it where he's saying that the practice of speculative
1:03:59
Speaker 2: cabal is actually the invocation of Apafenia, who he kind
1:04:05
Speaker 2: of gives framework as like a chaos star goddess. So
1:04:10
Speaker 2: I kind of find that this is really interesting just
1:04:13
Speaker 2: in terms of what you're saying of Austin Osman, spear
1:04:16
Speaker 2: and synesthesia, because I feel like a lot of people
1:04:19
Speaker 2: will dismiss those kind of like more fundamental grounds of
1:04:24
Speaker 2: wisdom experiences or nondual gnosis, and they will embrace sort
1:04:28
Speaker 2: of like that I'm more postheistic, like you, doctor Edwards,
1:04:31
Speaker 2: like I don't really I don't know, So I can't
1:04:35
Speaker 2: tell anyone what they think or what their framework should be.
1:04:37
Speaker 2: But I find like the color and the word is
1:04:40
Speaker 2: more fundamental, if at least in my perspective. And so
1:04:44
Speaker 2: I wish people would, you know, read your work and
1:04:47
Speaker 2: sort of see that there is like an interlinkage between
1:04:50
Speaker 2: like marrying the text and sort of having these inner
1:04:53
Speaker 2: and outer dialogues with it exactly like what you said,
1:04:56
Speaker 2: very diological, and.
1:04:58
Speaker 1: I would encourage people. So the inspiration for that part
1:05:02
Speaker 1: of volume two came from Rolo Ponte. So if you're
1:05:06
Speaker 1: familiar with Rollo Ponte's work on the phenomenology of embodiment, oh,
1:05:13
Speaker 1: you do wonderful, wonderful, so he says, And I wish
1:05:17
Speaker 1: I don't have the exact page number. Why would I
1:05:21
Speaker 1: remember the page number anyway? Which is kind of ridiculous.
1:05:25
Speaker 1: But he talks about like in Phenomenology of Perception, right,
1:05:29
Speaker 1: he talks about synesthesia in that particular book as phenomenologically
1:05:35
Speaker 1: a pre clinical kind of phenomenon, and so he discusses
1:05:39
Speaker 1: what synesthesia can be pre scientifically versus the way science
1:05:46
Speaker 1: kind of a scientistic I should say, versus scientific a
1:05:49
Speaker 1: scientistic way has taken up synesthesia and has rendered it
1:05:54
Speaker 1: into like a clinical phenomenon to be treated right, So
1:05:58
Speaker 1: prior to that, So Rollo Ponti is great in terms
1:06:01
Speaker 1: of like saying okay, like and not to romantic and
1:06:04
Speaker 1: romanticize the child's perception of the world. But how do
1:06:09
Speaker 1: children experience the world?
1:06:11
Speaker 4: Right?
1:06:11
Speaker 1: How do they experience self other in world? So he
1:06:14
Speaker 1: looks at the phenomenology of this, and so he talks
1:06:17
Speaker 1: about very poetically. I think how in many ways before
1:06:23
Speaker 1: children are educated to like really separate off senses and perceptions.
1:06:29
Speaker 1: You know, the eyes are for seeing, the ears are
1:06:32
Speaker 1: for hearing, et cetera, there's actually a way in which
1:06:35
Speaker 1: they're intertwined. Like there's a way in which one can
1:06:39
Speaker 1: smell color, for instance, right in terms of this, or
1:06:43
Speaker 1: or hear something that is visual. Right. And so he
1:06:47
Speaker 1: cites examples of a child's experience of the world where
1:06:53
Speaker 1: they're taking up the world in a very synesthetic sort
1:06:56
Speaker 1: of way, right, And I use that as a platform
1:07:01
Speaker 1: to move into some of Spaar's work.
1:07:08
Speaker 4: Thank you, Jin Did you want to do you have
1:07:12
Speaker 4: anything else?
1:07:13
Speaker 1: No?
1:07:13
Speaker 2: That was great. I you know, I just think it's
1:07:15
Speaker 2: interesting that it sort of always comes back down to
1:07:18
Speaker 2: the understanding and experience of like color, sound, light, and
1:07:22
Speaker 2: not everyone has the exact same experiences too, so I
1:07:26
Speaker 2: try not to color anyone else's, you know, experience with
1:07:29
Speaker 2: my own framework. But of course I have to also
1:07:31
Speaker 2: reference what I know of it, or what I recall
1:07:34
Speaker 2: of it, or what I've structured of it. As Ian
1:07:36
Speaker 2: was saying, so, yeah, I agree with all of that,
1:07:39
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
1:07:40
Speaker 4: It was interesting when he mentioned the dude taking too
1:07:44
Speaker 4: much asset and losing his shit. The first thing I
1:07:46
Speaker 4: thought of was Sid Barrett, and then you asked a
1:07:49
Speaker 4: question about SyncE.
1:07:50
Speaker 2: Was like, shit, it always comes back to us, said Barrett. Episode,
1:07:54
Speaker 2: doesn't it about how he had? Yeah, because he had
1:07:57
Speaker 2: really severe synesthesia where he could not exist in a
1:08:00
Speaker 2: house that was illuminated by normal electricity. Right, we talked
1:08:04
Speaker 2: about this and so. But he found expression in painting
1:08:08
Speaker 2: rather than music. But he would listen to music maybe
1:08:11
Speaker 2: to provoke the synesthetic experience, like the translation of the
1:08:14
Speaker 2: sound into the colors, and then he would obviously do
1:08:18
Speaker 2: the ritual bonfire where he would burn all his paintings
1:08:21
Speaker 2: at the end of the year. So yeah, I do
1:08:24
Speaker 2: think that psychedelics are often a crutch more than they
1:08:27
Speaker 2: are a key. I know that this might be put
1:08:30
Speaker 2: me at odds with other people. But I've I've only
1:08:33
Speaker 2: ever done things through like like Buddhist sodna, So I
1:08:38
Speaker 2: can't really tell other people like what they should shouldn't do.
1:08:40
Speaker 2: But I find that people who overly rely on psychedelics
1:08:43
Speaker 2: they tend to misunderstand like what is actually happening In my.
1:08:48
Speaker 5: Opinion, Well, I agree, Now, I was to say, I
1:08:52
Speaker 5: agree with that. It's like it can be both a
1:08:54
Speaker 5: crutch and a key, as in, if you continue to
1:08:58
Speaker 5: use these things with you know, you're construct this like
1:09:00
Speaker 5: scaffolding that then you can never truly take down.
1:09:04
Speaker 3: And so I know Ian would know that.
1:09:06
Speaker 5: Then Carl Young talks about in his Kondalini of Yoga
1:09:08
Speaker 5: that psychedelics are like lifting you up into these high states.
1:09:12
Speaker 5: It's like filling a room full of water and you're
1:09:14
Speaker 5: at the very top of the ceiling, and then all
1:09:16
Speaker 5: of a sudden you come down from the psychedelic and
1:09:18
Speaker 5: then the water goes away, and then all of a
1:09:19
Speaker 5: sudden it flatlines you on the ground, and.
1:09:21
Speaker 3: You're like, what the fuck just happened? So let's see I.
1:09:25
Speaker 4: In a lot.
1:09:26
Speaker 1: If you're familiar with this is related and maybe not related,
1:09:31
Speaker 1: But I think more related than not. So. One of
1:09:35
Speaker 1: the things that I've encountered quite a bit when either
1:09:38
Speaker 1: working with religious individuals, whether they're from a Catholic or
1:09:43
Speaker 1: another tradition, or even folks that are interested in esotericism,
1:09:49
Speaker 1: is the tendency towards spiritual bypass. And I don't know
1:09:52
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with that notion, and psychedelics can be
1:09:57
Speaker 1: used to spiritual bypass as well and be which is
1:10:01
Speaker 1: not to say that all of the all individuals that
1:10:04
Speaker 1: partake in that are spiritual bypassing, but it's a phenomenon
1:10:08
Speaker 1: that I've encountered quite a bit with individuals on the path,
1:10:13
Speaker 1: that there's a tendency towards using spiritual practice as a
1:10:18
Speaker 1: way of bypassing psychological woundedness. And it doesn't mean that
1:10:23
Speaker 1: one can't do both, but it does say that it
1:10:26
Speaker 1: is important to actually address the psychological woundedness and not
1:10:31
Speaker 1: the spiritual practice as a way to bypass it, but
1:10:34
Speaker 1: almost as a way to help you enter into it
1:10:36
Speaker 1: more fully. One of the notions in Buddhism that I'm
1:10:41
Speaker 1: very much, I very much subscribe to and appropriate it
1:10:46
Speaker 1: in my personal life and in psychotherapy is sort of
1:10:48
Speaker 1: this idea that the way out is the way through, right,
1:10:51
Speaker 1: you kind of move through like you kind of move
1:10:55
Speaker 1: toward the places that frighten you. You move toward the symptom,
1:10:59
Speaker 1: whatever that symptom is. And the symptom, regardless of what
1:11:02
Speaker 1: it is, whether it's depression, anxiety, or even like suicidal ideation,
1:11:07
Speaker 1: it's something to be listened to. It's like it's a messenger,
1:11:11
Speaker 1: it's an angel. Right, So, at some point in time,
1:11:15
Speaker 1: like there was an invitation towards transformation that didn't appear
1:11:20
Speaker 1: in this most egregious sort of way. And so what
1:11:23
Speaker 1: does Jung say, Like the gods have become what diseases, right,
1:11:28
Speaker 1: and so we no longer find the gods in the
1:11:30
Speaker 1: everyday world. They've been banished right to the transcendental or
1:11:36
Speaker 1: they've been annihilated. God is dead to a certain extent.
1:11:39
Speaker 1: So it doesn't mean that they completely go away, but
1:11:42
Speaker 1: they become symptom. So how does a depth psychotherapist unmask
1:11:47
Speaker 1: the presence of a deity that is being concealed by
1:11:51
Speaker 1: the symptom itself? And so how does anxiety, depression, and
1:11:55
Speaker 1: suicidal ideation actually lead to a more profound transfermation? And
1:12:01
Speaker 1: so like when I work with folks that have some
1:12:06
Speaker 1: suicidal ideation. It's almost about trying to listen to see
1:12:11
Speaker 1: what needs to die first, right, So something needs to
1:12:15
Speaker 1: die so that something else can be reborn. So in
1:12:18
Speaker 1: a very safe sort of way, it's about like helping
1:12:22
Speaker 1: people die so that something can be reborn in its place.
1:12:32
Speaker 4: If you don't mind, I did want to kind of
1:12:34
Speaker 4: go back to Crowley real quick. I know we sort
1:12:36
Speaker 4: of getting on Ozmon over here, but theame thing I
1:12:40
Speaker 4: did want to ask you, what does Crowley or did
1:12:43
Speaker 4: you think Croley understood stuff about language and magical speech
1:12:47
Speaker 4: that modern people might still be missing out now?
1:12:52
Speaker 1: Absolutely I think I think I like the way like
1:12:57
Speaker 1: you're framing that in terms of what did he understand
1:13:00
Speaker 1: about speech? What did he understand about the written word
1:13:04
Speaker 1: le lenge, you know, language in some way? What did
1:13:07
Speaker 1: he understand about that? And I think that's a really
1:13:10
Speaker 1: fascinating question because I think one of the things that
1:13:14
Speaker 1: really strikes me about Crowley is the way that he
1:13:18
Speaker 1: wrote right, the way that he languaged, for instance, magical experience,
1:13:24
Speaker 1: which is very different than a way a lot of
1:13:27
Speaker 1: other people have languaged it prior to that, And so
1:13:31
Speaker 1: like the signifiers that Crowley uses, for instance, to describe
1:13:35
Speaker 1: magical experience. Does that suggest that he understood something maybe
1:13:41
Speaker 1: more so than many linguists did. Absolutely he did. And
1:13:45
Speaker 1: so I think when we think about like even like
1:13:48
Speaker 1: Heidegger's poetic term, you know, his turn toward poetic language
1:13:53
Speaker 1: in contemplative or meditative thinking, I think someone like Crowley
1:13:58
Speaker 1: was obviously already language is languaging his experience using signifiers
1:14:04
Speaker 1: that pointed beyond themselves to something numinous, something other, something
1:14:09
Speaker 1: like wholly other, an alterety of some sort that I
1:14:13
Speaker 1: think made him ahead of his time.
1:14:17
Speaker 4: No, I definitely think so. I had even wondered about
1:14:22
Speaker 4: even the whole thing where you start like, you know,
1:14:25
Speaker 4: like even meditative speech can start affecting like your nervous system.
1:14:29
Speaker 4: And there was a lot of things that he would suggest,
1:14:31
Speaker 4: like I would say, the yoga and breathing techniques. If
1:14:34
Speaker 4: you look into it now with the science, it all
1:14:36
Speaker 4: does the same thing. So I had even wondered if
1:14:39
Speaker 4: he was even onto that, like even understood maybe a
1:14:41
Speaker 4: little bit of the physiology with the body and how
1:14:44
Speaker 4: this stuff actually affected you.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as you said, like what we know now,
1:14:51
Speaker 1: you know from scientific research and scientific evidence in terms
1:14:55
Speaker 1: of the effect that these practices have on the brain
1:14:58
Speaker 1: and the body as a whole. Right, And if you
1:15:01
Speaker 1: you know, connect folks to like you know EEGs for instance,
1:15:06
Speaker 1: when they're in different states of meditation, you see what
1:15:09
Speaker 1: parts of the brain actually ignite or light up. Right,
1:15:13
Speaker 1: it's oh, my gosh, like you know, my middle front
1:15:17
Speaker 1: my middle prefrontal cortex area, and there's like nine functions
1:15:21
Speaker 1: of that nine essential functions I think associated with that. Well,
1:15:24
Speaker 1: guess what meditation and contemplative practice and different forms of
1:15:28
Speaker 1: yoga helped really develop that area. Right, So there's a
1:15:32
Speaker 1: lot of scientific grounding for these practices.
1:15:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, sometimes I wonder if they were just like maybe
1:15:40
Speaker 4: a coincidence or maybe they're catching on to that. I
1:15:42
Speaker 4: don't know, who knows. Yeah, thank you, thank you for
1:15:46
Speaker 4: that answer, Jim. Did you want to ask anything else
1:15:49
Speaker 4: before to go? Yes, I have a quick one.
1:15:52
Speaker 2: Well not, I mean maybe the answer won't be quick,
1:15:54
Speaker 2: but my question will be at least poetry. This is
1:15:58
Speaker 2: something that I'm really interested in. I've had a lot
1:16:01
Speaker 2: of contemporary poets and writers. I'll let writers mostly on
1:16:05
Speaker 2: my show, and the whole crew from apcon Apocalypse Confidential,
1:16:08
Speaker 2: which is like the coolest online lit magazine. So this
1:16:12
Speaker 2: idea of like language, magic, the intersection where poets are
1:16:16
Speaker 2: drawing from, I would posit the liminal space, but you know,
1:16:20
Speaker 2: everybody has their own ideas of what that is. And
1:16:23
Speaker 2: I want to hear what doctor Edwards has to say
1:16:25
Speaker 2: about like this process of writing poetry, how it relates
1:16:28
Speaker 2: to his views of magic and just in general his worldview.
1:16:32
Speaker 1: Thank you, I love that. I would agree with you
1:16:38
Speaker 1: in terms of poetic inspiration coming from the or a
1:16:44
Speaker 1: liminal space of some kind. I think that whole notion
1:16:48
Speaker 1: is very important, and so I'll talk about this more
1:16:53
Speaker 1: in relation to druidry if you don't mind. Specifically, like
1:16:57
Speaker 1: how I talk about the notion or the idea of
1:17:01
Speaker 1: awen in my work on Eric Graham how and being
1:17:04
Speaker 1: a non being in occult experience. So awen obviously it
1:17:11
Speaker 1: is associated with inspiration. It's the source of inspiration from
1:17:15
Speaker 1: which Bardik consciousness in Bardic linguistic poetry kind of comes
1:17:21
Speaker 1: into being. But if you really look at it, it
1:17:24
Speaker 1: is it's sort of this liminal space between nothingness in
1:17:29
Speaker 1: somethingness in some way. So I look at it more ontologically,
1:17:34
Speaker 1: So it kind of exists in this place where it
1:17:37
Speaker 1: has this ability to translate something that might be arising
1:17:42
Speaker 1: from the abyss into language, right, And that for me
1:17:47
Speaker 1: is kind of what inspiration is. And so like when
1:17:51
Speaker 1: a poet writes from a place of inspiration, they're translating
1:17:56
Speaker 1: something that's coming from this abysal ground into language itself.
1:18:02
Speaker 1: And that's why you can't use banal language to actually
1:18:05
Speaker 1: describe the experience. You have to use poetic language. And
1:18:11
Speaker 1: I'm a very big so James Hillman one of my
1:18:14
Speaker 1: favorite depth psychologists and the founder of archetypal psychology in
1:18:20
Speaker 1: the School of ung and I keep relating this back
1:18:24
Speaker 1: to psychotherapy, but he says something very powerful about poetry.
1:18:28
Speaker 1: He says, when working with a patient, you have to
1:18:31
Speaker 1: teach them to sing their symptoms, right, So think about that,
1:18:37
Speaker 1: Like he's not talking about actual singing, but like poeticize
1:18:40
Speaker 1: them in some way. And he says, when you have
1:18:43
Speaker 1: a patient sing or poeticize their symptoms, they cease to
1:18:47
Speaker 1: be symptoms and they become song. Like I find that
1:18:51
Speaker 1: very beautiful, Like to be able to translate or transmute
1:18:56
Speaker 1: something like melancholia into song or poet, and of course
1:19:00
Speaker 1: like how many poems, how many songs are written from
1:19:04
Speaker 1: a place of melancholia in some way. So for me,
1:19:07
Speaker 1: like poetry has a very powerful, whether it's intended or not,
1:19:12
Speaker 1: therapeutic component, wasn't it. I think Adorno, Theodore Adorno from
1:19:23
Speaker 1: the Frankfurt School, who said after the Holocaust, basically we
1:19:27
Speaker 1: can't write poetry anymore. And then Gijack comes along and says, well,
1:19:31
Speaker 1: after the Holocaust the only thing we can write is poetry.
1:19:36
Speaker 1: I side with Jack Moore in ORMs of that.
1:19:40
Speaker 3: I agree.
1:19:42
Speaker 4: Wow, thank you, thank you for that question. Jim.
1:19:46
Speaker 2: That was good, Thank you, no problem, thank you.
1:19:50
Speaker 4: I wanted to get a little bit I guess we
1:19:52
Speaker 4: could go a little bit back to uh here, is
1:19:55
Speaker 4: digital magic really about getting things from the universe or
1:19:58
Speaker 4: is it more about bypassing the ordinary ego and planting
1:20:01
Speaker 4: desire deeper in the psyche?
1:20:04
Speaker 1: I would say the latter. For me, at least, it's
1:20:08
Speaker 1: the latter, And in volume two I talked a little
1:20:12
Speaker 1: bit about that, like kind of comparing Spare's methodology with Freud,
1:20:19
Speaker 1: especially like looking at like the principle of repression, right,
1:20:23
Speaker 1: and so the idea I think with spare, which is
1:20:26
Speaker 1: very interesting is that there's like through cigilization, there's an
1:20:30
Speaker 1: intentionality behind repression itself. It's the sorceress use of repression
1:20:37
Speaker 1: so that what becomes unconscious can ultimately manifest itself and
1:20:42
Speaker 1: that the desire can become actualized. And so I find
1:20:47
Speaker 1: that phenomenon very interesting when compared to like a Freudian
1:20:51
Speaker 1: notion of repression, which in many ways is absolutely very
1:20:56
Speaker 1: much the inverse of that. So I would agree with
1:20:59
Speaker 1: you that it's actually the latter rather than the former.
1:21:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, That's how I've been looking at it lately.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: And I do enjoy doing sigil magic quite a bit personally,
1:21:09
Speaker 1: Like that's something that is a part of a personal
1:21:11
Speaker 1: practice for me.
1:21:13
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, you know for myself too huge. At one point, Brandon,
1:21:17
Speaker 4: did you have anything you wanted to ask or anything?
1:21:23
Speaker 5: Yeah, but can I remember, I don't know. It's been
1:21:27
Speaker 5: this has been a fantastic conversation. There's a few things.
1:21:30
Speaker 5: Have you read Black Pilgrimage by David Beth of The Press? Yes,
1:21:36
Speaker 5: and so that book is fantastic and interesting enough. Your
1:21:40
Speaker 5: your talk on the Abyss, which he's trying to bring
1:21:43
Speaker 5: back into how you know the pandemonic and everything is
1:21:46
Speaker 5: this embodied.
1:21:49
Speaker 1: Living.
1:21:49
Speaker 3: But then what I like about it is kind.
1:21:51
Speaker 5: Of what you're talking about with what we should do
1:21:52
Speaker 5: as occultist, even even though you didn't say it this way,
1:21:55
Speaker 5: is that instead of layering over our wounds, we should
1:21:59
Speaker 5: actually have our wounds be bare for the world and
1:22:03
Speaker 5: so that way we can actually walk through them, and
1:22:06
Speaker 5: then walking through them we can heal them.
1:22:09
Speaker 3: And so I find that to be fascinating. Oh you're muted.
1:22:13
Speaker 1: I'm muted.
1:22:14
Speaker 3: Oh there you go. Yeah, I thought, no, your.
1:22:16
Speaker 5: Back here, Okay, No, I just think it finds fascinating
1:22:20
Speaker 5: because that's exactly it's like Carl Young states, is that
1:22:23
Speaker 5: to find the you know, the gold, you have to
1:22:26
Speaker 5: look where you're at least willing to look.
1:22:28
Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. So in the very back of
1:22:31
Speaker 1: the cave is where the treasure lies, right, And that's
1:22:34
Speaker 1: the darkest part of the psyche. And when we're walking
1:22:39
Speaker 1: with others, whether it's in a psychotherapeutic sense whereas a
1:22:43
Speaker 1: spiritual friend, we walk with them as part of that
1:22:47
Speaker 1: journey toward the back of the cave, right, But there
1:22:50
Speaker 1: is where the treasure ultimately lies. And so I really
1:22:54
Speaker 1: like what you said about like the importance of vulnerability
1:22:59
Speaker 1: and the bearing of one's wounds as part of like
1:23:03
Speaker 1: a sorceress practice in some way. And there's something absolutely
1:23:08
Speaker 1: vital about that. There's something absolutely life affirming about that
1:23:13
Speaker 1: and allowing yourself to be vulnerable to the point where
1:23:16
Speaker 1: you're being touched by this pandemonic reality that surrounds you
1:23:22
Speaker 1: in some way. So I love in Beth's work how
1:23:25
Speaker 1: he talks about like it's the Abyss kind of in
1:23:28
Speaker 1: Dialogue with the Abyss, right, And so I think for
1:23:32
Speaker 1: me that's very profound. And you know, he was very
1:23:36
Speaker 1: much he's very much influenced by Heidegger. He's very much
1:23:39
Speaker 1: influenced by Claucus, and so like I can say this
1:23:43
Speaker 1: now because we've talked about it. He and I are
1:23:45
Speaker 1: actually at some point planning a anthology on the work
1:23:49
Speaker 1: of the Big Claucus Cool. So that could be something forthcoming.
1:23:54
Speaker 1: And I think, as I mentioned earlier today, my Songs
1:23:59
Speaker 1: of the Sanctified Devil, which is a forthcoming publication, is
1:24:03
Speaker 1: going to be published by Theon and there's a lot
1:24:06
Speaker 1: of you know, cloud is in there, there's a lot
1:24:09
Speaker 1: of Heidegger, there's a lot of Nietzsche. But going back
1:24:12
Speaker 1: to poetry, everything in that particular book, with the exception
1:24:17
Speaker 1: of the commentary, is written in poetic form. And so
1:24:21
Speaker 1: what I'm doing is taking all one hundred and fifty
1:24:24
Speaker 1: psalms in the King James Bible and basically inverting them
1:24:28
Speaker 1: in some way, right, And so I'm meditating on each
1:24:31
Speaker 1: one and sometimes allowing the words of the psalm to
1:24:35
Speaker 1: reconfigure themselves or to present themselves in a certain way.
1:24:40
Speaker 1: And then I simply write down what I'm experiencing and
1:24:43
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing. And so here's an example of a
1:24:46
Speaker 1: kind of alterity that's part of the methodology of writing itself.
1:24:50
Speaker 5: No, it's beautiful, and I think interesting enough you use
1:24:52
Speaker 5: the term inverted there with psalms, but almost I think
1:24:55
Speaker 5: you're reverting them to the way that the psalms were
1:24:58
Speaker 5: meant to be, like magical invocations to enlighten the divine
1:25:04
Speaker 5: spirit within to actually live within the world.
1:25:07
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I love that.
1:25:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's fascinating.
1:25:11
Speaker 5: I like the idea that you're getting at, and I
1:25:13
Speaker 5: don't find many people that do it. I myself, my advisor, mentor,
1:25:16
Speaker 5: and professor. I have a degree in philosophy and classical literature,
1:25:19
Speaker 5: and so he was a Hidigerian who studied in the
1:25:21
Speaker 5: Husilian archives, and so all this stuff that you're bringing
1:25:24
Speaker 5: to me is exactly what I love. And this merger
1:25:26
Speaker 5: of Heidiger and mrlu Pontis is so important because Heidiger
1:25:31
Speaker 5: has the idea of what you're talking about, of bringing
1:25:33
Speaker 5: us back into talking about being instead of getting lost
1:25:36
Speaker 5: in the nonsense of beings. And the same time, we
1:25:40
Speaker 5: need to understand that primary perception and murlu Ponti is
1:25:43
Speaker 5: that like our body is the primary use of perception,
1:25:48
Speaker 5: that consciousness isn't always intending itself outward like hostural states,
1:25:51
Speaker 5: which is correct. But the next level is to understand
1:25:54
Speaker 5: that consciousness is within the body and the world at
1:25:56
Speaker 5: the same time.
1:25:58
Speaker 3: And I think that changes.
1:26:01
Speaker 5: Something that I think is really important and gets us
1:26:03
Speaker 5: away from the material aspect of how I think most
1:26:07
Speaker 5: not most, that's a tough one, but a lot of
1:26:10
Speaker 5: the occulted world and the esoteric community is still stuck
1:26:15
Speaker 5: within a Cartesian dualism, and most people don't actually have
1:26:19
Speaker 5: a magical worldview, which, then I think if we can
1:26:22
Speaker 5: understand that consciousness is amongst everything and that intersubjectivity is
1:26:27
Speaker 5: bringing it all together through the primisaria perception and then
1:26:31
Speaker 5: we can actually live a magical life.
1:26:34
Speaker 1: I completely agree, and I think part of my interest
1:26:38
Speaker 1: in claugas in a lot of his work hasn't been
1:26:40
Speaker 1: translated from German into English unfortunately, including his magnum opus.
1:26:46
Speaker 1: I would love to use Claugus as a way to
1:26:49
Speaker 1: tie all of that together. Wow, to be honest with you,
1:26:53
Speaker 1: by kind of that is like that is like an
1:26:56
Speaker 1: aspiration of mind because I think everything you said, Brandon
1:27:00
Speaker 1: is absolutely true. But I think a vitalistic world's view,
1:27:06
Speaker 1: a Laban's philosophy coming from like Clauga's is a way
1:27:09
Speaker 1: to kind of tie all of this together so that
1:27:12
Speaker 1: people like saw a dialogue between Hussuro Hidiger and Murlo
1:27:16
Speaker 1: Ponti all kind of makes sense from a magical perspective
1:27:21
Speaker 1: or worldview, especially when you tie in the idea of
1:27:23
Speaker 1: aos and things like that, you know, and for me
1:27:27
Speaker 1: going back to like Parmenides who said Eos was the
1:27:31
Speaker 1: first god right, which is a really interesting sort of
1:27:34
Speaker 1: statement to think about that who was the first Aros
1:27:37
Speaker 1: was right? So almost like that as a starting point,
1:27:40
Speaker 1: like is it being or is it aos? This idea
1:27:44
Speaker 1: of love right, and so I'm kind of moving in
1:27:46
Speaker 1: that direction as a way to use Clauga's to kind
1:27:50
Speaker 1: of bring all of these ideas together.
1:27:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's amazing. And then one last question, if that's okay, Nick,
1:27:57
Speaker 3: is that is that this idea of.
1:28:01
Speaker 5: I think most professors, not most I think a large part.
1:28:05
Speaker 5: It's interesting that you talked about how you know, for you,
1:28:08
Speaker 5: psychology and these things is what got you into the occult.
1:28:11
Speaker 5: And now when you're talking about the occult and magic
1:28:13
Speaker 5: amongst all your you know, your fellow workers and you know,
1:28:17
Speaker 5: professors and stuff, it's like they want to talk about
1:28:19
Speaker 5: the occult like like I don't know, Nick, Like when
1:28:22
Speaker 5: you when we were talking to Danielle last night, she
1:28:24
Speaker 5: loves talking about mysticism and a cult.
1:28:26
Speaker 3: And she's a professor. She's a professor at you know
1:28:29
Speaker 3: what I mean.
1:28:29
Speaker 5: She's a professor of Gonzaga, the Master's philosophy professor there.
1:28:33
Speaker 5: And she's just starting over the last six months diving
1:28:36
Speaker 5: diving deep into she's reading book four, Nick, and so
1:28:39
Speaker 5: it's yeah, yeah, and so she's diving deep into Crowley
1:28:43
Speaker 5: and she's start you know, so I think the Ivory
1:28:45
Speaker 5: Tower of Philosophy and academics. Not that it's crumbling, because
1:28:50
Speaker 5: the tower is continually crumbling and being rebuilt. But I
1:28:54
Speaker 5: think it's really cool and amazing, and I think it's
1:28:56
Speaker 5: really important that there are ones like yourself who stay.
1:29:00
Speaker 5: I've considered myself a rogue and ronan academics personally, but
1:29:05
Speaker 5: I think it's really amazing that you you're bridging both
1:29:09
Speaker 5: worlds because of I don't think you can do true
1:29:11
Speaker 5: academia without the occult perspective.
1:29:15
Speaker 4: Oh he's muted again, I wonder. Yeah, that's so weird.
1:29:20
Speaker 1: Oh can you hear me?
1:29:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot.
1:29:22
Speaker 1: There's there's like a five second delay. I don't know
1:29:24
Speaker 1: what happened there. I apologize for that. It's probably on
1:29:28
Speaker 1: my end. But so everything that you said has been
1:29:34
Speaker 1: was the inspiration for Fount Unlimited. So if you if
1:29:37
Speaker 1: you're aware of the new so it's it's the part
1:29:41
Speaker 1: of it is like exploring the limital spaces between esoterica
1:29:46
Speaker 1: and scholarly inquiry. So the first publication of that was
1:29:50
Speaker 1: for Meenica one by M. David Littwell, right, and so
1:29:53
Speaker 1: that was just released and then the second one is
1:29:57
Speaker 1: going to be the Black Tide Anthology. You know, occult
1:30:00
Speaker 1: reflections on cg Owns the Red Book. But Brandon, that
1:30:04
Speaker 1: I mean, that's precisely everything you said is precisely why
1:30:08
Speaker 1: Gabriel and I kind of put this into practice. Like
1:30:12
Speaker 1: this whole idea of bringing these two worlds together and
1:30:16
Speaker 1: exploring the liminal spaces between them, that's the whole point
1:30:19
Speaker 1: of it, because you're right, there are people that are
1:30:21
Speaker 1: very interested in doing this work. They're not only interested
1:30:25
Speaker 1: in talking about it, but from writing about it. So
1:30:28
Speaker 1: you know, Gabriel's inspiration was like, okay, like let's move
1:30:32
Speaker 1: this in that direction. Let's actually have like a publication
1:30:36
Speaker 1: company that will house publications that explore these intersections, right,
1:30:42
Speaker 1: and so Harmenica one was the first publication. The hardcover
1:30:45
Speaker 1: volumes all sold out as far as that concern. The
1:30:48
Speaker 1: next one is the Black Tied Anthology, and I will
1:30:51
Speaker 1: say we have you know, a lot of very prominent
1:30:55
Speaker 1: occult authors that are writing for that anthology. I can't
1:30:58
Speaker 1: really say who who they are right now, but that
1:31:01
Speaker 1: will be released soon. But you know, the whole inspiration
1:31:06
Speaker 1: for that book was, you know, Freud's admonishment to Jung,
1:31:11
Speaker 1: you know, beware of the black Tide, Black tide of
1:31:14
Speaker 1: mud that is occultism. Those were the words that he used,
1:31:17
Speaker 1: basically warning them we must make the libido theory the bulwark, right,
1:31:22
Speaker 1: and libido was all sexual energy and so okay. So
1:31:25
Speaker 1: I'm reading that, and I'm like, Okay, well, let's kind
1:31:27
Speaker 1: of piss Freud off and let's take the Red Book
1:31:30
Speaker 1: and let's have a bunch of occultist comment I love that.
1:31:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I have my own theories of why Freud
1:31:37
Speaker 5: wanted to do that, but that's for a nighttime, different show.
1:31:41
Speaker 1: Okay, very good.
1:31:43
Speaker 4: Nice, nice. I think we could. Unfortunately, because I do
1:31:47
Speaker 4: have another show at one o'clock, I think we will
1:31:49
Speaker 4: wrap it up here. That was really great, great chatty,
1:31:52
Speaker 4: and I would love to get you on again. I
1:31:53
Speaker 4: mean have tons of questions that I still didn't get to.
1:31:56
Speaker 4: There's just so much stuff to keep going on about
1:31:58
Speaker 4: just from things you were saying. So, yeah, this was
1:32:01
Speaker 4: an amazing chat. I thoroughly really enjoyed it. And I
1:32:04
Speaker 4: thank you Brandon and Gin for coming on too. You
1:32:06
Speaker 4: guys made it listen, so appreciate it.
1:32:09
Speaker 3: Well.
1:32:10
Speaker 1: It was nice getting to know you and you know
1:32:12
Speaker 1: through this forum and just entering into a spontaneous dialogue.
1:32:16
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, I think we all hit it off pretty well.
1:32:19
Speaker 4: It was awesome. That was awesome.
1:32:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you Jin for telling Nick about about Ian.
1:32:24
Speaker 4: This is fest No, thank you Jin.
1:32:27
Speaker 2: Ye oh yeah, no problem. Well, you know I like
1:32:29
Speaker 2: to follow all the cool people on IG and uh
1:32:32
Speaker 2: so yeah, so I mean, uh yeah, I like the
1:32:35
Speaker 2: intersection of like poetry, magic obviously, Austin, I was in Spare.
1:32:39
Speaker 2: I cite like every show on my own show as
1:32:41
Speaker 2: well as this one. And you can't really you know,
1:32:45
Speaker 2: like the leftime Path Like I'm not personally like I
1:32:48
Speaker 2: consider myself like true neutral, like I always say, like,
1:32:51
Speaker 2: I'm just like Gray. I don't have a specific orientations
1:32:55
Speaker 2: at the tree, but I am fine to draw from
1:32:57
Speaker 2: both polarities like no problem for me. So that's a
1:33:00
Speaker 2: much more contract maybe Buddhist way to think of it.
1:33:02
Speaker 2: But I am interested in a lot of the contemporary
1:33:06
Speaker 2: leftime Path material simply because it's as presents it very
1:33:09
Speaker 2: differently than I would normally engage with it. So I
1:33:12
Speaker 2: really appreciate what you're doing and all your work and
1:33:14
Speaker 2: all your books, and I yeah, of course highly encourage
1:33:16
Speaker 2: everyone to go check them out as well.
1:33:18
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
1:33:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, and Jin. Let everybody know as we
1:33:22
Speaker 4: wrap this up, well, let everybody plick this thirty in Jin.
1:33:24
Speaker 4: Let everybody know where they could fund your fund your
1:33:26
Speaker 4: show and everything.
1:33:27
Speaker 2: Sure, of course, you can just go to YouTube YouTube
1:33:30
Speaker 2: dot com slash Threshold Saints, which is obviously both Threshold
1:33:34
Speaker 2: Saints and the Gray Lodge, and or Threshold Saints on
1:33:37
Speaker 2: substoc dot com or on ig on Twitter on x
1:33:40
Speaker 2: you can follow me if you want my personal account
1:33:43
Speaker 2: Wu Kong Reborn, Wukong Reborn. Yeah, that's pretty much. That's
1:33:48
Speaker 2: pretty much it, and thank you guys so much. Appreciate
1:33:50
Speaker 2: this entire show. In the in the panel, it was
1:33:53
Speaker 2: really I learned a lot. I feel like I'm brimming
1:33:56
Speaker 2: with continental philosophy that I know nothing about, so I
1:33:58
Speaker 2: feel sort of out of my depth. It's also interested
1:34:01
Speaker 2: to see where I can bring it myself. Thank you, guys,
1:34:03
Speaker 2: thank you.
1:34:04
Speaker 4: Thank you. No, he gave me tons of more questions.
1:34:06
Speaker 4: I was just like, I don't have enough time for
1:34:08
Speaker 4: this though. It's unfortunate. Brandon, please let everybody know what's
1:34:13
Speaker 4: up with you.
1:34:14
Speaker 5: Thank you Nick and always Nick, thank you for having
1:34:17
Speaker 5: me on the show. I truly appreciate you are the
1:34:20
Speaker 5: man jin As always, I always love being on panel
1:34:22
Speaker 5: with you. Thank you for all your amazing questions and again,
1:34:25
Speaker 5: like I said, bringing bringing ian to my mind because
1:34:28
Speaker 5: thank you Ian I and myself again, I'm a Hidigerian.
1:34:31
Speaker 5: I'm a phenomenologist and a rogue philosopher, and so I
1:34:35
Speaker 5: would love to bring you on Magus in the media
1:34:38
Speaker 5: and have us go down those rabbit holes and truly
1:34:41
Speaker 5: break it open.
1:34:41
Speaker 3: As long as you'll have as long as you'll come on.
1:34:44
Speaker 8: Absolutely perfect, I would love to. Yeah, we can devote
1:34:48
Speaker 8: a whole program to Heidegger if you want. Pert we
1:34:53
Speaker 8: bore the hell out of people, and we can.
1:34:55
Speaker 4: Let you know that's good.
1:34:57
Speaker 1: But I'm all for it.
1:34:58
Speaker 5: Okay, perfect, We're definitely good do that and everybody else
1:35:01
Speaker 5: out there, megas and the media.
1:35:03
Speaker 3: As you see it.
1:35:03
Speaker 5: This is the logo. This is how it gets done,
1:35:06
Speaker 5: like subscribe and share to all these fantastic peoples.
1:35:09
Speaker 3: We're trying to bring myth, magic and meaning back.
1:35:13
Speaker 5: To the world and to your inner world into all
1:35:17
Speaker 5: the worlds that you and I love. Things are coming out.
1:35:19
Speaker 5: It's gonna be awesome. Check out the show, check out
1:35:21
Speaker 5: all my stuff it's going to be great. Go to
1:35:23
Speaker 5: Jin's Threshold Saints. The O Cult Rejects is always hosting
1:35:27
Speaker 5: the most badass of all the people on the liminal
1:35:31
Speaker 5: spaces of crushing the Archons. Good morning, have a great day,
1:35:36
Speaker 5: and until next time.
1:35:39
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Brandon. That was great outro. That
1:35:42
Speaker 4: was great and I and please let everybody know what's
1:35:45
Speaker 4: up with all of your stuff, promote the books and
1:35:47
Speaker 4: everything that you got going on.
1:35:49
Speaker 1: No, well, I just want to again reiterate my overwhelming
1:35:53
Speaker 1: sense of gratitude for you all and for a wonderful conversation.
1:35:57
Speaker 1: And as you said, like, there are so many unan
1:36:00
Speaker 1: certain questions and mysteries to explore and to behold, and
1:36:04
Speaker 1: I'm always open and receptive to opportunities to just talk
1:36:10
Speaker 1: with individuals like yourselves. But yeah, I think I would
1:36:14
Speaker 1: really love just to direct people to my own Instagram
1:36:18
Speaker 1: Ian Edwards PhD. On Instagram, you can get a look
1:36:22
Speaker 1: at all of my books that are available there, other
1:36:24
Speaker 1: podcasts that I've done, some of my own reflections even
1:36:28
Speaker 1: on Heidegger and Cloggs are there and people of that sort.
1:36:33
Speaker 1: But also too, I would want to direct people to
1:36:36
Speaker 1: Atrementous Press, my most recent publication from them is Crooked
1:36:42
Speaker 1: Confessions and o Fidian Philosophy of the Sanctified Devil Blades
1:36:47
Speaker 1: of Grass after the scythe Right, so we didn't get
1:36:50
Speaker 1: a chance to talk too much about that, but in
1:36:52
Speaker 1: that particular book I employ a particular Nietzschean methodology where
1:36:58
Speaker 1: I moved from philosophy with a hammer to philosophizing with
1:37:02
Speaker 1: a scythe So if you want to check that out,
1:37:05
Speaker 1: feel free to do so. Anathema publishing my book at
1:37:09
Speaker 1: Drewdan's Psychologist's Clothing is still available there and standard hardcover
1:37:14
Speaker 1: but also a paperback volume is available now on Amazon
1:37:18
Speaker 1: dot com and found Unlimited. Please check out that site
1:37:23
Speaker 1: as well, because pretty soon we will make announcements about
1:37:27
Speaker 1: the forthcoming Black Tide anthology, including all of the wonderful
1:37:31
Speaker 1: authors that have contributed to that. And as of this morning,
1:37:36
Speaker 1: I am an official author for theon publications out of Germany,
1:37:41
Speaker 1: David Beth's own publishing company, and so you can read
1:37:46
Speaker 1: more about my Songs of the Sanctified Double by going
1:37:49
Speaker 1: to their website, or it's actually in the newsletter, so
1:37:52
Speaker 1: if you receive the newsletter you can check that out
1:37:55
Speaker 1: as well. So I have a lot going on and
1:37:59
Speaker 1: more idea is to develop over the course of time,
1:38:02
Speaker 1: a lot of which may have to do with Heidegger himself,
1:38:05
Speaker 1: So stay tuned.
1:38:08
Speaker 4: That was great, Thank you so much, and really thank
1:38:11
Speaker 4: you for such a great conversation. And we'll definitely I
1:38:14
Speaker 4: would definitely love to get you back on in the future,
1:38:15
Speaker 4: so we'll have.
1:38:16
Speaker 1: To make sure I'm more than welcome to ye.
1:38:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a bless of a discussion. Again, thank
1:38:21
Speaker 4: you all, Jin, thank you for the guests, and thank
1:38:23
Speaker 4: you for coming on, and Brandon, thank you for joining
1:38:25
Speaker 4: us and everybody in the chat. I appreciate it. That's
1:38:28
Speaker 4: why we go live. And until the next one, everybody
1:38:31
Speaker 4: be well. Laida Peace,