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The Rosicrucian Counterculture with Ronnie Pontiac · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see something's going to happen.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: What What's going to happen? What help?
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the occult Rejects. Today we're going to be
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: talking about a little bit more of Rosicrucianism. I think
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: you guys already know we do love talking about that
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: a lot. And today we are joined by Ronnie Pontiac.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: He's an independent scholar whose work bridges archival research with
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: contemporary esoteric studies. From nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty seven
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: he served as a research assistant, screener, and substitute lecturer
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: from Manly P. Hall at the Philosophical Research Society in
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Los Angeles. Ronnie is the author of American Metaphysical Religion,
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: a six hundred page survey that maps four centuries of
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: a cult, mystical and alternative spiritual currents in the United States.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: His forthcoming study The Rosicrucian Counterculture, The Origins and Influence
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: of the Invisible Society, tracks the Rosicrucian manifestos from the
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: seventeenth century publication in German Lands to their surprising after
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: lives in science, art, and modern protest movements, showing how
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: the Brotherhood's counterculture ideals still resonate today. Uh yeah, I
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: think that was enough.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's who we got going on for us today.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Very excited to have him on.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: But before we get to Urati, let me introduce the
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: other rejects joining us today. I got the occult reject
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: of Mad Scientists, Lisa with us.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: What is going on?
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Hi?
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: Nick?
• 1:42
  Speaker 5: I am very exciting, extremely excited to have Ronnie on
• 1:46
  Speaker 5: a lot because just looking at his work is extremely impressive.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Who he's worked for, extremely impressive. And if you've been.
• 1:53
  Speaker 5: Listening to some of the episodes, every time we look
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: into an occultist during Mystic they all kind of coalesced
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: point towards this Rosicrucian thing. And then from last night's
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: episode German cultism. Yeah, I'm super excited about this. And
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: the only thing I need to plug is a cult
• 2:09
  Speaker 5: Research to dot org. Some of the other occult rejects
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: have contributed to the website. If you like to consume
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: your content and literary form, check us out at a
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: Cult Research inst dot org.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Thank you, awesome, Thank you very much, Lisa. And yeah,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: I mean we've covered so many people that they're considered
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: you know, apologists or they're blamed for being a Rosicrucian
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: or you know whatever, definitely comes up a lot. And
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  Speaker 3: I was excited when I came across this man and
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: now Robbie Marks, sir, the storyteller, what is going on?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm our Marx and yeah, I as well am
• 2:43
  Speaker 6: excited about this to hear Ronnie and what he has
• 2:46
  Speaker 6: to say. The subjects that you cover right down the
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  Speaker 6: alley that I've been going down for the last thirty years.
• 2:52
  Speaker 6: So I think we're going to have a really great conversation.
• 2:56
  Speaker 6: I personally am an artist and I do art and
• 2:59
  Speaker 6: illustrate a lot of different band and festival merch as
• 3:03
  Speaker 6: well as.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: Mom and pop shops, you know.
• 3:06
  Speaker 6: But if you want to check out my stuff, I
• 3:07
  Speaker 6: have my metamind cast, the podcast, as well as all
• 3:11
  Speaker 6: my art on my website, my Ed's seat, as well
• 3:14
  Speaker 6: as my social media. You can find all of that
• 3:17
  Speaker 6: on my link tree which is link tree r M
• 3:21
  Speaker 6: A r X and that'll pull up everything.
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  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much, sir, And now finally onto the guest, Ronnie.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Please let everybody know what your deal is.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: Hey. You can find my stuff on all the platforms
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  Speaker 4: Blue Sky, Threads, Facebook, x, sub Stack, TikTok YouTube. I've
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: got a channel there where you can see over one
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: hundred archived interviews and also videos I've done about specific subjects.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: Stories I tell that I hope are life changing. And
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: I'm a musician and author. I produced document henery films,
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: and I'm really happy to be here.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that was actually something I had written down
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: to but I figured I had read.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: So much already I wasn't gonna keep going. But yeah,
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: you've You've also done. Yeah, you've contributed essays to an
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: invisible college magazine and Metapsychosis it cult the personality in
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Reality Sandwich.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: So yes, thank you.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Before we get into the book, I do want to ask.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: I'm sure after I just mentioned you it's your work
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: for Manly p Hole, people probably like.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: What was that like?
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  Speaker 3: So if you don't mind to see you, not putting
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: you on the spot, just you know, if you maybe
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: just give us a little bit of an idea what
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: that experience.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Was like for you.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: So sure, it's going to be a little lengthy to
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: give you context. I'm sorry, It's all that I wanted
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: you all. If I'm going to talk about him, I
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: want you to appreciate you know what he did for me. Okay,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: So I was By the time I was in my
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: late teens, I was a nihilist and a criminal, and
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: I was violent. I had a band that was racist
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: and had a big following of bikers, and my security
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: was bikers, and a lot of people were getting beat
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: up around us, and that's what I was into. I
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: wanted to spread my nihilism and disillusion everybody and kind
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: of hurry up what I considered the imminent doom of
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: the human race, because the planet Earth would be better
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: without us. That has a lot to do with my background.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: I'm a kid from family who a lot of people
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: died during war and never adjusted to life, and I
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: grew up like kind of a runt and a loaner,
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: and I had no social contract and got my ass
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: kicked so often wherever I went that I just became
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: that other person. First, I fell in love with somebody
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: who asked me for help at this club. She was
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: in a bad situation and for some reason chose me,
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: the most reprehensible person there to help her. And she
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: was is I'm that's Tamera Lucid, my partner and everything.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: She's like this incredible, honest funny, just deeply connected to
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: some kind of primal spirituality kind of person. Even though
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: she was every bit as cynical as I was. She
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: kind of helped me to get over my hatred of life.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: But I was still really messed up. I tried to
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: be a drug dealer, but I used up everything that
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: I bought. You know, I was just not headed for
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: a good end. And I got lucky one day when
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: my parents and some kind of fit of optimism gave
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: me money for a haircut, and I took it to
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: a place called the Body Tree Bookstore, which was this
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: incredible metaphysical bookstore in Los Angeles that no longer exists.
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: It was kind of the archetype of all metaphysical bookstores.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: And there I found in the used branch this book
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: by Manley Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Except
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: this was an early edition, kind of this reduced black
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: and white version, but it was a tome, you know,
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: and it had a long name and encyclopedic outline of
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: her medical chemical and you know, I mean it was
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: just it looked to me like, wow, this is a
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: book that like a wizard would own, or you know,
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: a magician would own, and I'd already been into what
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: is now called chaos magic, but I'd kind of put
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: it together myself through Crowley and Austin Spare, and I
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: had used it for my band and for my own
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: personal power and things like that. So at first I
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: approached it like, here are the secrets. You know, this
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: is going to enable me to accomplish my aims. But
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: what I found was something completely different, which was this
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: entirely new to me view of the world, which began
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: with the dedication of the book to the rational soul
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: of the world, which I mean just that stopped me dead.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: I was like, what, you know, Like, to me, the
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: world was chaos and was a you know, consciousness was
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: an accident, a cruel you know, twist of fate on
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: humanity that we get to know how messed up everything is.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: And all of a sudden, here's this person, obviously with
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  Speaker 4: this great knowledge, all these words and all this art
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: in this book that I haven't even read yet, and
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  Speaker 4: he's saying, I dedicate this to the rational soul of
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  Speaker 4: the world. I was like, really, okay, Well, every chapter
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: I read I felt like, like like onion layers around
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: my brain were being removed and Suddenly, like Emerson said,
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: I became like this giant, transparent eyeball. You know, I
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: felt like I was connected to the whole universe. And
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: suddenly I was feeling these feelings of like whoa, like awe,
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: and reading about people, including the Rosicrucians, who he discusses
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: in the book at length, who had devoted their lives
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: to trying to discover who are we really? What are we?
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: Why are we here? And who had risked their lives
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: in order to pursue these studies and these explorations, and
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: even more so, to write them down and to publish
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: them and share them with others. And we're people that
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: were executed for this kind of work, and that moved me.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: I just thought, wow, you know, the courage of these
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: people and their creativity. And so I read the book
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: and I thought for sure the guy was dead because
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: the picture in front he already looked like an older man,
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: and the book was from the twenties, and I just thought, no,
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: ways alive. I mentioned it to a friend of mine
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: who was kind of a mentor to me, this former
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: carnival dancer, really nice woman, and she said, she said,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: you know, honey, he's lecturing every Sunday, not far from
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  Speaker 4: where you live. I was like, no way, and she
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: was like, yeah, he's like almost eighty and he's I
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: guess he was eighty.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And we got so much stuff.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's like, this costs one doc every Sunday
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: morning at eleven am. You should go. It's a great.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Experience as up as hell.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: I know, right, And he never charged more than a buck,
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: and so I I was actually I kept stalling because
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: I knew who I'd been and I just thought that
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: somebody like this was going to look right through me.
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: And I felt like, oh man, I can't go to
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: this place. It can be always nice, intelligent people, and
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: I'm going to walk in here and you know, to
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: feel all my criminality on me as I felt, and
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: Tamera kept working on me. She kept saying, man, you're
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: going to feel stupid if he dies and you've never
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: seen him. I mean, why would you do that?
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I feel about.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: Eventually, one beautiful spring day we went down there on
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: that Sunday morning, and that beautiful little place. It's this
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: weird combination of Egyptian and Mayan architecture, kind of hidden
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: but in the middle of everything in La and there
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: were all these older people. It was I think we
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: were by far the youngest people there. They were all
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: sort of astonished to see people as young as us
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: walk in there. And we sat down in the auditorium.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: Big man comes out, you know, it sits down and
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: starts talking ninety minutes, no notes, dropping names and dates
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: and just I mean just absolutely right there. Blew my
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: mind about the idea that when you age, you get dumb,
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: you know. It was like it was like, no, he didn't,
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: you know. And so but he also did something that
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: I later found out he often did. He looked right
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: at me and he delivered a message right and and
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: so I had been freaking out because that carnival dance
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: or mentor of mine was into Edgar Casey, and Edgar
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: Casey had said that California was going to sink into
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: the ocean, and for whatever reason, my friend was like
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: convinced it was going to happen any day, and she
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: was moving to Virginia Beach and she was telling me,
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: you've got to if you got to get out here,
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: it's going to be a terrible disaster. And I fell
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: for it. I was like, holy shit, I got to
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: get out of La and I've got to get to
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: Virginia Beach. So he looks right at me, and he says,
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: people who suffer paranoid fantasies about natural disasters because of
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: the way they've been living their lives, it's guilt. I
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: was like, how did he do that? Now, later, when
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: I became a screener, but also just speaking to people
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: around him when I worked at PRS, I found out
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: that he did it all the time. And the weirdest
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: thing about it is he couldn't see us, because when
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: I worked with him, I found out that his eyesight
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: was really bad. I mean, we looked like colorful blurs
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: out there in the audience, and yet somehow his eyes
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: always fell on the right person with this particular message.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: Every time he went out there a few people would
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: get these kind of messages. Now, was he psychic?
• 12:59
  Speaker 7: You know?
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: Was this? I like to think that he was so
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: deeply in what the Chinese called the doo, that he
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: just was the synchronousites, because he had so many synchronicities
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: around him, including my arrival. So so I was so
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: blown away, so moved by what he had to say.
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: I just loved him instantly, and the people were also nice,
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: and it was just such a great understanding things so
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: wholesome in my life. And they were also intelligent, and
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: I could hear these words around me, reincarnation, Blovotsky, karma,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: you know, all this stuff that I didn't really know
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: and I wanted to know. And so Tamer and I
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: decided to volunteer. We would do anything just to help
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: out this organization and be around him and help him out.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: So we went down there the next morning to do that.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: And they loved her because she'd worked a number of
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: jobs in her teens and so, you know, they were like,
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: do you have office skills? She was like, yeah, I
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: worked in a bank for a while. Oh great, you know,
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: do you know how to do this? Yes?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: And then they come to me and it's like, well,
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: I fronted the Nile was banned byers, like you know,
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: I mean, I had nothing, and they kept like asking questions,
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: and then finally one question was do either of you
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: have any knowledge of foreign languages? And I said, I said, yeah,
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: I do. I said, I grew up around German and
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Russian and Polish and French, and but I don't. I
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: don't speak them, you know. I don't and she was like, really, okay,
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: well we'll get back to you. Well, they call up
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: the next day and they give Tamera this offer for
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: a job and me nothing. So I was still a
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: dick at that time, and I said, you know, hey,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: fuck no, man, I'm not sitting at home with the cats,
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: and you know, you get to go and work at PRS,
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: so forget it. If they don't want me, they can't
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: have you. She was like great, I didn't want to
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: do job anyway like that, And so next thing that
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: happens is there's another call the following day and they
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: tell me that Manley Hall wants to meet me. I'm like, what,
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: like tomorrow morning, first thing, come down and he wants
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: to talk to you. I was, I mean I barely
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: slept that night. I was just blown away that we
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: get to meet him. I had no clue why does
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: he want to talk to me, you know. So they
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: showed me into his office, which was this huge, beautiful
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: room filled with art from China and Japan, mostly Asian art,
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: but all kinds of art, and he's sitting behind this
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: ornate Chinese desk carved with dragons and things and just
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: beautiful furniture in there he'd acquired over many years, and
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: much of it had been given to him by admirers
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: or either donated or willed to him upon their deaths.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: And there were four women, two standing on either side
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: of him with their arms crossed like a flanks, right,
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: and they were looking at me with the skunk guy.
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: But he smiled when I walked in, and he did
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: just kind of cross between W. C. Fields and a
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: more accident he would do sometimes when he was joking around,
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: and I won't do it justice, but he said, come
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: on in and make yourself miserable, or I think it
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: was actually sit down and make yourself miserable, and so
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: it made me laugh. I sat down, and then he
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: pushed this big pile of paper in front of me
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: and he said, do you know what a galley is?
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: And I was like the ship?
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: And he went, do you know what a bibliography is?
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: And I was like, no, I don't know what a
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: bibliography is really, and it's the back of a book,
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: right where they list the books. And he said, do
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: you have any familiarity with alchemy? And I said, I've
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: just read your book, and I've read a couple of
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: chapters but that's all I know. And he said, okay,
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: well this is the galley, which means the rough of
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: my alchemical bibliography with my collection of alchemical and Rosicrucian
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: books and manuscripts. Nice, and I need somebody to edit
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: this for me because the current editor has done things
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: that I don't want him to do, which was he
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: put bodily fluids information about bodily fluids used in alchemical
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: recipes into the book. And Manley Hall was like, this
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: is a bibliography. This isn't a book of alchemical recipes.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: And I don't want people to hurt themselves. They're not experienced,
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: and they hear you know that urine can be used
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: for this or that or something. I don't want that
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: in the book. Well, this guy was an academic and
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: he said, well it's staying in the book because this
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: is important information. So he needed somebody to come in
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: and take over from this academic and finish the bibliography.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: So I said, I said, that's incredibly what an honor.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: But you've got the wrong guy, you know, I said,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: I've got My education was terrible. I'm not that fluent
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: in any of these languages. You know, these are measurements
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: of books and historical information and all this stuff. It's
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: just way over my head. And he said, well, I
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: will help you. I know you can do it. Why
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: don't you take this galley and go sit in the
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: library and look it over and then you can come
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: back in and tell me what you think. So I
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: pick it up and I started walking into the library,
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: and the vice president of the society, who had been
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: in the military, and I mean she was really an
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: amazing woman, Pat Irvin, she basically ran around the side
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: of the library and got in front of me before
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: I could get anywhere. I said, that was a mistake
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: and took the galley from me, and I said, thank you.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: That was a mistake, but I was still thrilled. I
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: was like, Wow, I met him and he wanted to
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: work with me. I mean, this is amazing, right. So
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: I go home and there's a phone call, this time
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: from his secretary, and so.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: There is.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: This invitation to come back and talk to him again
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: the next morning, and it's very serious. It's like, look,
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: he wants to talk to you tomorrow morning and come
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: in here. This is important, Okay. So I come back
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: the next morning. Now it's just him and the first
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: thing he says to me is, young men, from now on,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: if anybody tells you anything that contradicts what I tell
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: you to do, you come to me and you tell
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: me you will take orders only from me. And he said,
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: this is how we're going to do it. In the morning,
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: you will come in, I will show you what I
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: want you to work on. You'll go work on it.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: In the afternoon, before I leave, you'll come in and
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: I'll look at your work, and I'll make suggestions and corrections.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: You are welcome to have lunch with me in the
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: vault with the manuscripts and the books, and you can
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: ask me about anything. Well, wow, you know, I mean,
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: I have to tell you the lunch and the vault
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: thing that was like that that I was like, okay,
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: you know, yes, I'm gonna try. And so I turned
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: out to be really good at it. And then the
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: amazing thing was being in the vault with him. I mean,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: all my books started in conversations with him in the
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: vault where he would show me something. For instance, the
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: American Metaphysical Religion book started when he said, he said,
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: pick out something. And there was this big leather bound
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: volume that was on the bottom shelf and it was
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: called The Platonist. I was like, what's that? So I
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: grabbed it and as I'm pulling it out, he says, oh,
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: that's a good one. So I was like, okay. So
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: I open it and it's a newspaper. It's bound issues
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: of a newspaper that was published in Saint Louis when
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: it was like a cow town around the time of
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: the gunfight at the Ok Corral. And it's filled with
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: translations of Plato and even weirder stuff like Abner Doubleday,
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: who did not invent baseball but was a Civil War general.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: He translated Transcendental Magic by Aleifis Levi in this thing
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: in a serial version, chapter by chapter, and I'm like, what,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm like picturing like a you know, wooden
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: sidewalks and gunfighters walking around and there's some freak you know,
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: that's you know, like producing a newspaper about Plato in
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: the eighteen eighties. So I asked him about it and
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: he said, you know, we don't know much about it.
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: We know about Alexander Wilder who wrote for it, but
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: there's very little information about this. So that totally captured
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: my imagination and at the time there's no access to it.
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: I mean there were probably, god, I mean, very few
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: copies of this newspaper left anywhere in the world. And
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: it was just luck that I'd run into it. And
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: then I had this other stroke of luck a little
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: while later, where I was out with Tamera at a
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: place cross from the Whiskey a go go. It was
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: this great store called the Hippocampus, and it had been
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: there since like the nineteen sixties, and Jim Morrison and
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Hendrix and everybody had shopped in there. This incredible woman
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: had run it, and now she was quite aged and
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: she had a great gay guy running it. And I
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: walk in there. We used to just go there. They
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: had the coolest stuff, I'm just the weirdest interesting things.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: And they had this little pile of books, kind of
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: decorative looking, and I look at it and one of
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: them was a bound edition of The Platonist, just like
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Manley Hall had. I was blown away, you know, like, whoa,
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: this is the same. It was the same thing. The
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: newspapers bound in a leather binding, you know. Across from
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: the Whiskey. One of the chapters in American Medicphilic religion
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: is called The Platonist on the Sunset Strip because that
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: started the book, and so so we thought, I mean,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: that must have been worth thousands of dollars easily. And
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: so we came up with them and said, we'd like
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: to buy these, but we're not sure we're going to
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: afford them. How much are they? And he said, I
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: don't know. Let me call her. He goes in back,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: he calls her up, comes down, and he says, what's
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: it for? Are you just putting them on a bookshelf
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: for decora? Are you going to read them? And we said,
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: oh god, we're going to read them. Yeah, I know,
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: this is for reading. She sold it to us for
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: one hundred bucks, which has been the sane you know,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: so that sealed it. You know, that ultimately became because
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: now we're able to read every page whenever we want,
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: and it became the American Medicphis School Religion Book. And
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: even when we went out after PRS and we got
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: into a band and we were touring nationally, we would
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: go to bookstores and to university libraries and libraries and
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: looking for information about the people that wrote for The Platonist,
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: And eventually we found this little book that had been
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: published in nineteen sixty two about Platonism in the Midwest,
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: and it told the story of how the New England
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: Transcendentalists Emerson, throw and Alcott were all really into Plato,
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: and they got the whole country really into Plato, and
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: like they were, like the New York Times and magazines
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: and stuff were caring stories about Plato. And there were
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: Plato parties in the West, like on the frontier, especially
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: women but also men who were interested in this stuff
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: would get together and they would they would like celebrate
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: Plato's birthday. They would they read a dialogue and discuss
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: it or write poems about Plato, and really cool things
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: were happening. So then there was this explosion in academia
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: around the two thousands where suddenly esoteric material was being studied.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: You know, for centuries it was considered superstition and people
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: didn't look at it. In religious studies, you were considered
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: crazy if you were looking at the Pentecostals, but you
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: didn't look at anything like the Theosophists or the Rosicrucians
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: or things like that that was considered beneath you. They weren't.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: These were not historical institutions that influenced the fate of humanity.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: They actually were, but according to the official line, they weren't,
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: and around two It started kind of in the eighties,
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: but especially blew up in two thousand with the publication
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: of a book by Catherine Albany's called The Republic of
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: Mind and Reasonly and public of can'mberie, I've forgotten it.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: I think it's Mind and Reason, but I'm not sure
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: I got wrong, but it's definitely Catherine Albany's, and she's
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: the first one who kind of looked at the history
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: of America and said, look at this incredible influence. Everywhere
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: you look. There's kabbala, astrology, alchemy, there's an alchemy lab
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: at Harvard, there's presidents who were in friends with alchemists.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: There's a huge esoteric influence from the very earliest days
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: of the colonies all the way through. So that's just
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: one thing, you know, one book that I picked up
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: and it wound up being a lifetime's worth of study,
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: and there were other books that have been published. It
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: started the same way with just something that he told
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: me a story about, and so that's how I met him. Now,
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: what was it like working with him? He was First,
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: he was, as I used the word wholesome. I've never
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: met anybody so wholesome.
• 26:14
  Speaker 7: You know.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: There's been kind of pot boiler bio published of him
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: that alleged a lot of stuff and kind of tries
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: to make him look like a fraud, maybe even you
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: know he had because he had diet problems, and he
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: was allegedly plagiarized young and all sorts of reasons that
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: we were supposed to dismiss him. But I found that
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: most of that was first very human things. You know,
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: he did like cookies and hamburgers, and he didn't really
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: eat too much of it. He ate some when he
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: could get it. As far as the plagiarism, he came
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: from a very different time in the same way that
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Blovotsky did, where if you were inspired by something, you
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: kind of wrote about it and you weren't going to
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: be putting footnotes in there about I got this from
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: so and so, and you were just like taking these
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: great wise observations about humanity and then sharing them in
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: your own way, changing them somewhat. But that was a
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: very common practice for much longer, especially in esotericism, than
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: actually being very careful as we are now about your
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: sources so people can follow up on it. He was funny.
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, he always would tell you jokes all the time,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: and his jokes always had a spiritual message to you
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: if you paid attention. So, for example, he started inviting
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: Tamer and I to dinner at his house with he
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: and his wife Marie, or they would take us out
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: to dinner, and so we would have all these great conversations.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: And the first time that we went over to his
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: house for dinner, he told us very long joke about
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: which I'm just going to give you a snippet of,
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: about an outlaw in early California who is escaping from
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: the authorities. Then he shows up where there's this preacher,
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: one of the very early you know, Christians in the
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: area who's establishing missions, and this this guy finds him wounded,
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: and so the priest helps him. And the outlaw never
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: tells him his name, won't tell him where he came
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: from or how he got shot, anything about it. But
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: he starts helping the priest because he has a sense
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: of honor, and he's like, look, you nurse me back
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: to health. I'm going to take care of you. I'm
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: going to do things for you. I'm going to be
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: there for you. Okay. The priest takes him around and
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: he says, well, we're going to call you Dominick, then
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: brother Dominic, and the big punchline comes when the priest
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: it brings all the richest landowners in the area together
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: and gives him the stirring speech about the mission in California,
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: and then they're all very moved and they leave, and
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: then at the end of it, the priest goes, oh, God,
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: forgive me. I forgot to ask for the for the charity.
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: That's why I did this so we could get there
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: more money to build more missions. And how could I
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: do that? And Dominic says, no, no, no, you told
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: me to do it, and I did it. He said,
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: what what did I say? So this is a joke
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: about the Catholic Dominic fisk them, right, And so it
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: was you said, Dominic, frisk them, and I did. And
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: so he's got all these jewels and stuff that these
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: ripped off for these people. So now this is interesting
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: thing about that story. I was a thief. Part of
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: my criminality was even from early childhood. I was a
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: really good sneak thief and I was into it. I
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: was nuts. I was even like, I'm creep into people's
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: houses just to show my talents to myself. You know,
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: if you can't do this, yes I can, you know.
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: And I stole all kinds of shit in my early years.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: And when I got in that library, oh my god,
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: I mean, can you imagine? Mean? I wanted to steal everything.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: I was just and there were certain books that hit
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: me like, man, I want that book. I don't know why,
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: but I was just I want that book. And it
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: wasn't that important a book. It wasn't an the vault,
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: you know, like they would never miss it, you know,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: like that guy. I was fighting it. And so he
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: tells me that joke, right, and I didn't really put
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: it together. I had talked to Tamar about this issue,
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: my urge to thieve, and and she said, as we
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: were walking out of their house, wow, he just plucked you.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: And I was like, what he said's a joke, and
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: she said, don't you get it. That's you, your dominic.
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: It's a joke about somebody who steals compulsively. And then,
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: as if to prove it, the next day at work,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: I come in in the morning and he says to me,
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: by the way you can take any book that you
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: want home with you and you can keep it as
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: long as you want, just bring it back when you're done,
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: you know. So I took me a while, by the way,
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: to take the ones I really wanted home, but eventually
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: I did and I brought them back. And so, but
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: he did that kind of thing a lot, and he
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: did it for everybody. That's what I mean by his
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: way with synchronicity. He just he was constantly this source
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: of light to people. But he never was pretentious. He
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: would like if if he sat down to talk with
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: him and he wanted to talk about heavy things, he
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: would turn it around to the Dodgers or something, you know,
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: like the Dodgers were good last night, you know, And
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: but he would. You know, he was really kind to me,
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: like he would sit with me and he would talk
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: to me about deep He let me ask him all
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: sorts of things. And for instance, once he was doing
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: this article on astrology, and I was a dick enough
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: to say, really, like you you believe in astrology, like
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: I've shocked. He laughed and he said, oh, well you
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: want to debate it? And I said, well, yeah, I
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: guess so, and he said, well, then you've got to
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: learn something about it. Let me get you a friend
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: of mine who will do your chart, and she'll teach
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: you the basics, and then you're welcome to come in here.
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: Now he knew that she was going to blow my mind,
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: and she read my chart and Tameras completely blew our mind.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: So we knew, wow, okay, something's going on here. And
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: then we started studying it. And I still do a
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: weekly astrology report, and I still, you know, I call
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: things correctly a lot, and and it blows my mind
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: every time. I still don't get it, you know, like,
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: how does this work? Even like completely different systems, Like
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: you can take a Hindu astrologer and an American astrologer
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: using just typical Western esoteric astrology, completely different way of
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: looking at the planets and the stars, and yet good
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: astrologers in any of these systems, or the ancient Greek
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: or any of them, they will blow your mind and
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: read your soul back to you, read your life experiences.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: And I still think that's a great mystery, and I
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: have my theories about it. I don't think that the
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: stars cause us to do things. I think that that
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: we're all part of this like call quantum entanglement. We're
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: all signifying to each other. We're all in the same
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: moment together, full of meaning for each other. And I
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: think that includes the planets, and so we're really they're
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: like sign posters. It says in the Bible, you know
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: that there's signs in the sky for us. There's certainly
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: some kind of knowledge there that is undeniable. But that's
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: what he was like. He would do delightful things, like
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: he'd find some incredible treasure that was hidden in some
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: drawers somewhere and he'd say, oh, I forgot about that.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: You tell a story about it. And he'd say, you
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: know what, put that in the gift shop for somebody,
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: and he'd give it a price that was ridiculously low,
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: you know, just if somebody could wander in there and
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: afford a treasure from Japan. He was that kind of
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: a person. So yeah, I thought he'd completely turned my
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: life around. He made me an ethical, honest human being.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: He made me love culture and of life, and turned
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: me on to even the secret of the Golden Flower
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: I first, which is my main system of study and practice.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: He turned me onto that he had already written about
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: it way back in the thirties or something, and I
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: talked to him a bit about it, and so he's
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: where I first got the interest in Rosicrucianism. He was
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: really into it, and he actually gave me his own
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: copy of A. E. Waite's Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross,
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: which had some notes from him penciled into it, which
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: I just thought was amazing gift. And that's how I
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: got into Rosicrucianism, and that's what he was like. I
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: highly recommend him, especially his lectures. Everybody has to understand
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: that when he was writing, he did not have access
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: like we do to all this archived information and academic work,
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: and so some of his stuff is questionable in terms
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: of the actual historical incidents as or described, because it
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: represents what I would call a theosophical viewpoint on it,
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: which still has a lot of value. But if you're
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: looking for like accurate historical record, you might find him
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: off here and there because his sources were off and
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: he didn't have access to proof that they were off,
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: whereas today we have that. And that's the origin of
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: my Rosicrution book. Because there was a lot of new
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: study in Rosicrucianism since two thousand, amazing stuff archives have
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: been opened and things that have never been seen before
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: by top notch scholars. And I kept running into things
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: that made me say to myself, you know, oh, man,
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: I wish I could go into that room of his,
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: you know, walk up to him and go look at this.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: You know, I'd share it with hims. I know how
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: Thrilly would have been. And then I thought, you should
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: take all this material and bring it together so that
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: other people because you can't. These books are so ridiculously
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: expensive and they're intimidating and they're hard to read, but
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: they contain these these wonderful insights into what Rosicrucianism was,
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: how it originated, and how it evolved.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: That is great, What an absolutely beautiful story.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's well, thank you so much. Fortunately, I'm sorry
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: I made you spend thirty thirty five minutes to do that.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: But I feel bad, you know, I feel bad going
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: into the book stuff.
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: It's a lot to try to get across, you know.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Robbie, Elisa, was there anything you wanted to ask
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: or say before?
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: Oh? I just enjoyed hearing the little tidbits of stuff
• 36:35
  Speaker 6: that you you know, you can't experience anywhere else. But
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: as far as Rosicrucianism, I was wondering, like in your researches,
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: because you hear this stuff about what is it Francis Bacon.
• 36:49
  Speaker 6: You hear stuff about the Jesuit ties in. You hear
• 36:53
  Speaker 6: stuff about the the roaming like Hebrew cabbalists, and you know,
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: the medieval times kind of coming in. And as far
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: as the origin of the Rosicrucian philosophy itself, what kind
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: of root have you found in regard to that?
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Well, I would say, first of all, it's a mystery
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: within a mystery. There's very little that we're sure of
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: about any of it. That's part of the beauty of
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: it to me. Now, when you look for origins, you
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: have that problem of where do we draw the line?
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: Like where do we stop? There's so many kind of
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: influences that are coming into these Rosicrucian manifestos. But I
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: like to start with Ficino. Ficino and of course Pico
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: because they here we have two people who are are
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: allegedly Christian. I mean, they're both Facino's a priest, and
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: yet they are translating Plato Pico's trying to make a
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: Christian kabbala. Ficino's doing a lot of what's going to
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: be Rosicrucian philosophy, and he is doing a lot of
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: what's going to be Paracelsian medicine. And Paracelsis calls Ficino
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: the greatest of all the Italian doctors. And there's a
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: lot of Ficino in the early work of Paracelsus and
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: Agrippa and Paracelsus lean heavily on Ficino, and both of them,
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: like Ficino. Their major works were divided into three books,
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: which I think was because of Ficino. And so that's
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: a whole nother Ficicino, by the way, amazing conversation, the
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: father of the Renaissance. I mean, just a what a
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: doing the hymns of Orpheus, for for Michael Angelo and
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: for I mean, the the Medicis and all the great
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: artists of the time, Botticelli, And we probably don't have
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Botticelli's Venus if it didn't for a Ficino singing the
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: hymn to Venus. So oh wow, yeah, So then so
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: then you've got so you have this Renaissance, and in
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: it is all this esoteric knowledge and neoplatonists, the Hermetica Plato,
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: all of which was translated by Faccino for the first
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: time in generations. It had been lost during the Dark Ages.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: And then you get in you get other writers. You know,
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: you get Giordano Bruno, this brilliant mind, philosopher and scientist
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: who gets burned at the stake in sixteen hundred for
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: his beliefs, partly because he said that the Earth goes
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: around the Sun and the universe doesn't go around the Earth.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: And he had ideas about reforming the world. And you
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: had writers who were already talking about the universal reformation,
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: this idea that the world could be transformed, and really
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: through science which was just beginning in alchemy and astrology
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: and these practices. And then you had a bunch of
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: celestial events at the end of the fifteen hundreds. In
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: the very beginning of the sixteen hundreds, the supernova had
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: one of the biggest comments that had ever come over Europe.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: And the world's looking up at this and going, wow,
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: what's happening. And you had astrologers and prophets on both sides,
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: right so on the Catholic side, they were saying, ah,
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: this is the end of the Protestants. This is the
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: beginning of the re establishment of Catholic domination over all
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: of Europe. And in the Protestants side, ah, this is
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: the end of the Catholic Church. They we're going to
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: end the popes and Protestants are going to take over
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: all of Europe. Right, So people were high on this
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: sense that there was a big change coming whichever direction
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: they were going. Now we've already got people inside the
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: Catholic Church and among the Protestants who were reading Ficino,
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: and they're reading the Alchemists, and they're going to read
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: Agrippa and they are they're into this stuff. And there's
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: this fantasy growing among the Protestants of the Hermetic King
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: or the Hermetic Emperor, Plato's philosopher king. And we've got
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: the perfect one, right, Rudolph the Second, who is this.
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: He is into the Hermitica, He's into the Kabbalah, he's
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: into astrology. The greatest astronomers of the age are in
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: his court. He is just. He has a doctrine of
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: freedom of religion. I mean, he moves the capital of
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: the Holy Roman Empire from Venice to Prague because he
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: wants to get away from his mother and the Catholic Church,
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: and he doesn't want to be you know, he's not
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: really into being an emperor. He hates the job. He
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: doesn't want to have to take the meetings and tell
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: everybody everything, looking into the laws and tell who's the
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: criminal here and all that. He wants to be around
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: the painters that he's collected, who are making masterpieces. He
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: wants to go to his alchemical lab station in the
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: giant room full of alchemists. Most of the famous alchemists
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: were in that room at one time or another working
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: for him, trying to make gold, or trying to make
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: the philosopher's own or the universal medicine. And that's his
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: thrills in life. He loves collecting paintings from all over
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: the world. He has a lion that walks around with him,
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: his pet lion like a big cat, and sleeps at
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: his feet, and he sends artists to distant corners of
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: his empire to paint things that he's never going to
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: be able to see. And that's how he lives. So
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: people look at him and they think this is the
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: perfect anecdote to the Pope and to the Habsburgs, even
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: though he is a Hobsburg, because they are scheming to
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: take over all of Europe again. And I want everybody
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: listening to understand what that means, because right now we're
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: afraid of a surveillance state. Right We've got you know,
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: palneers out there doing their thing. And so the Church
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: had it. It was a confessional, right like, everybody had
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: to confess, and every priest had to tell his superior
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: if it was something important important, and that went all
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: the way up to the Pope, who is important enough.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: That is a surveillance state unlike any that we've ever seen.
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: And so they wanted to re establish that throughout the world.
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: And the Protestants were like, we want to get rid
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: of you. You know, we think you're corrupt, you know,
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: this whole hierarchy and your wealth and you're you know,
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: what are you doing. This isn't Jesus, This has nothing
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: to do with what Jesus was talking about. So they
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: started to fantasize about maybe we can get Rudolph to
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: declare himself the Holy Roman Hermetic Emperor and he will
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: stand up against the Church for us and stop this. Well,
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: Rudolph gets visited by John D Queen Elizabeth's court wizard,
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: you know, one of the great roots of all the
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: esoteric stuff in the West. And he's he's talking to
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: angels at that time with Edward Kelly, and he has
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: a meeting that goes disastrously because he tells Rudolph, the
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: angels told me that if you don't this, terrible things
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: will happen to you. And you know, you must unite
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: Europe in a holy war. And well, I mean, Rudolph's like,
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: nice to meet you, I never want to see you again.
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: And so that doesn't work. But other people also come
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: out in Michael Meyer and other famous names from this
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: era try to convince him, but no way, he's not
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: into it, and he becomes more and more a target
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: of the Catholic Church. They're like, we got to remove
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: this guy. He's this freedom of religion stuff. This is
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: bad and he's supporting the Protestants. While that's going on,
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: we get the beginning of this Rosicrucian Revolution and it
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: starts out a lot of this happens in Tubingen around
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: some students. Of course, Andre in particular is the one
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: that everybody looks at. Is now is this is the guy,
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: it's the center of it. I kind of think that
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: he was, and I'll tell you why in a moment.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: But Andre was a young student at this point, He's
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: like nineteen years old or something, and he's got radical
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: professors who've been studying Giordano Bruno and Facino and Boethius
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: and all sorts of studion, and these writers who are
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: who are writing about, you know, very esoteric metaphysical viewpoints
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: on the world, but also about how there's about to
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: be this revolution where the world is going to be
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: opened up and this is the nearing of the end
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: times and knowledge will return to humanity. Adams lost knowledge,
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: and they're actually thinking, why don't we hurry it up
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: by by finding this knowledge, like we're you know, instead
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: of waiting for it, let's let's get it, let's do
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: scientific experiments, let's share our knowledge. And so that's an
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: exciting idea, you know, that this Universal Reformation because they
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: were in stagnant world that they were sick of. They
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: were tired of the constant battle between the Protestants and
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: the Catholics. No one was getting along, and everything ground
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: to a halt, and there was this cultural malaise that
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: kind of filled everything, and so of course this brilliant
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: young college student was like, break me out of this.
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: You know, let's this is the sixteen hundreds, man, you know,
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: the fifteen hundreds are over. And so the first thing
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: that happens is a book is written called The Fauma.
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: It starts circulating probably by sixteen oh nine. Maybe there's
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: some good scholarship that shows that there are references to
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: a particular discovery in the making of telescopes that is
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: referred to in kind of a metaphorical way. That probably
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: means it couldn't have been written before about sixteen oh nine.
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: It starts to circulate in manuscript form, and I don't
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: think it was ever intended to do anything but that
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: it's basically comparable to me to like Ginsburg's Howl. It's
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: this kind of, you know, incredible combination of it's surreal,
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: it's science fiction, it's it is esoteric, but it's political
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: and radical. It's talking about killing the pope, and it's funny.
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: There's there's little inside jokes in it, and there's puzzles
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: that you can figure out, and they lead to things
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: like Andre's coat of arms. His family coat of arms
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: is hidden in one of the stories, and and it
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: tells this whole a myth about Father c RC, who
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: was the founder of the Rose Crucians, you know, a
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: long time before that, and they found his tomb or
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: his body was perfectly preserved in it was the book
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: m which had all the knowledge of the world. And
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: and this was about the declaration of universal reformation, that
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: the Rosicrucian Brotherhood now exists, and we're going to help
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: make this happen. And you know, you don't have to
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: write to us or anything, but but you know, if
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: you're somebody who's like us, we'll find you and you
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: can join us in this. And I think it was
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: kind of a joke, and Andre referred to it as
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: a joke, a ludibrium, and not a joke in the
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: sense of just a force making fun of everybody. But
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: this kind of cultural hoax, you know, of the fantasy,
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: the captures all these these ideas that you're trying to
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: get out there that represent a new generation, a new
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: way of looking at the world. There were people all
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: around the around Europe and even in the colonies, the
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: very earliest colonies. We'll find them who are interested in
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: these matters. But they hide it and they don't know
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: that there's anybody else like them out there. That's why
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: I compare it to Howell, because it's something that galvanizes
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: a generation. It gets published in sixteen fourteen, and the
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: way it got published is weird because nobody involved in
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: its creation had anything to do with publishing it. It
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: was published by Maurice the Learned, who had his area
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: very near where Rudolph had his. And this guy was
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: really into starting a war with the Catholics, and he
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: was really into Catholicism but also really into the esotericism.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: But he wanted a freer culture. He wanted science, and
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: he wanted to break free from this stranglehold that the
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: culture that had been the fifteen hundreds had on Europe
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: at that time. So he publishes it like, great, you know,
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: let's put this out and see what happens. Well, what
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: happens no one expected. It was like this giant explosion
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: of a reaction. Hundreds of books and pamphlets were published
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: in the next few years in reaction to that one
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: little thing, and there were on one side people were saying,
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: this is evil, this is a trick of the Jesuits,
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: this is is that No, no, not jesuits, it's the
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: Devil's jesuits. Yeah, and it's you know, this is some
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: kind of a cult plot to throw over Europe. And
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: on the other side, it was hailed by people who've
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: been quietly working on similar ideas, who've been reading these
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: these forbidden authors, and who felt exactly the same way
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: and undoubtedly read the Fama in the way that the
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: you know, the people who became the Beats read Howell
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: and found themselves in it and had a sense of, well,
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: you know, maybe the future does belong to us. Well, Andre,
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: well wait before we go there. So a year later
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: is a book published called The Confession of the Rosie Cross.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: This is a book that it's still kind of a joking.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: It's satirical on a level, but it's also trying to say, hey,
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: you guys got it all wrong. Okay, the reaction to
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: the FAMA that wasn't what we were trying for, Like,
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: we don't want you all writing us letters, you know,
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: writing public pamphlets and publishing and I want to be
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: a Rosicrucian and then being mad at us and publishing
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: another one saying there, fuck them, they didn't make me
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: a rosicruci, you know, like this is about universal reformation,
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: your own corner of the universe, like learning, and you
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: know this is about this is this is good stuff.
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: It's not about war. Actually, even though we mentioned it,
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: well that book is completely misunderstood as well and only
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: feeds the fire. And then finally, one year later, the
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: most satirical of the book's chemical wedding is released, and
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: here we have father CRC is now this this kind
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: of old man, and there's this sexy naked girl showing
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: him around, and we see Afrodeity naked. I mean, it's
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: it's pretty a hot piece of literature for the sixteen hundreds,
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: you know, But it's also clearly seems to me to
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: be in a reaction to the next thing that occurred politically,
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: which was Rudolph was deposed a Catholic, his brother took over.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: He no more freedom of religion. You all got to
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: be Catholic or get out of Prague or suffer some
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: kind of persecution. And well in Prague this was like
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: the Bohemians were like, and they threw some of the
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: officials of the empire out these windows onto dumb piles
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: and declared themselves free and then we had in the
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: Palatinate this whole other story, which my book tells in
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: detail about Frederick, who was this young young guy who
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: had incredible bloodline going back to the Roman emperors, I
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: mean really long time royal family, who was one of
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: the electors of the emperor, and who married Princess Elizabeth Stewart,
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: the daughter of King James. This was seen by the
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: same people who wanted to get Rudolph to stand up
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: as wow, wait a minute, now we've got the British
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: and the Germans together, let's do this, you know. And
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: so their wedding was seen as this very important hermetic
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: event politically, and it had Shakespeare, you know, did did
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: the Tempest for their marriage, and Midsummer Night's Dream was
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: performed for their marriage. Francis Bacon was doing incredible things,
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: and it was like this beautiful flowering of culture that
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: occurred around it. And when they went back to Heidelberg
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: again there was this flowering of culture. There was a
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: beautiful garden built that had these statues that were based
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: on the knowledge of the ancients, who knew how to
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: make statues that could move or make sounds in a
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: wind or These these great, you know, mechanical inventions. And
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: to the Catholics that garden was considered black magic and
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: a gateway to Hell. But to the Esoterics it was
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: a symbol of the power of science to transform a
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: bleak place into a beautiful paradise. And so they looked
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: at Frederick and said Bohemians looked at Frederick and said, hey,
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: come to Prague and be the king of Bohemia. Then
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: maybe you'll be the emperor next when that'd be nice,
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: a Protestant emperor who's really into the Hermerica. So Frederick,
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: you know, he thought, well, this has to be a
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: calling from God. I got to go there and protect
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: the Protestants. It was the worst possible decision he could
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: have made. It basically started the Thirty Years War. He
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: was surrounded by enemies and spies there, so everything he
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: did was betrayed, and when finally the war broke out,
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: he lost it so quickly that he became a joke
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: to Europe and had to flee and lost everything. Prague
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: was sacked, Heidelberg was sacked. One of the greatest libraries
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: in the world was taken away to the Hobsburgs and
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: to the Vatican and his life in Elizabeth. I mean,
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: they never kind of recovered from what occurred, and in
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: a way Europe didn't. He's an unleashed plague and war
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: that killed what was it like one out of ten?
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: I think some incredible number of Europeans died during that period,
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: but it unleashed this Rosicrucian mythology on the world. And
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: so now why Andre. First we find Andre at a
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: very young age. He's already writing utopias, and he's already
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: writing satirical kind of plays that are in the tone
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: of let's say, the Chemical Wedding, but to me, maybe
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: the most convincing aspect, And there have been studies of
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: the language. You know, some people say, well, from that
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: point of view, he certainly wrote the Chemical Wedding, We're
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: pretty sure of that, But it doesn't look like he
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: wrote the Confessio on the Fama. I think that it
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: was written by a group. It was like a zine almost,
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: you know, different people put it together. But he publishes
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: one year after the Chemical Wedding. So again we've got
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: the Fama in sixteen fourteen, the Confession in sixteen fifteen,
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: the Chemical Wedding in sixteen sixteen, and then Andre under
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: his own name. In sixteen seventeen, he publishes this book
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: that's called The Tower of Babbel, and this is a
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: satirical collection of seventy five allegorical characters, and each of
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: them has a unique, dare I say, a uniquely stupid
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: opinion about the rosa Crucians. And so in this it's
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: a very cathartic book, I think for him, and what
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: he's doing is he's introducing us to all the people
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: who overreacted and the disillusioned him and his friends. So
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: they are, for instance, young nonconformists right who just they
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: don't care what they're they just might just want to rebel,
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: and pious fools. You don't get it at all, but
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: they're so pious an opportunistic pseudo scientists who think the
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: Rosicrutions were great, were right for hustling money out of
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: people and false prophets. Yes, I'm a Rosicrucian, and a
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: lot of the Paracelsian doctors decided that they were Rosicrusions
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: because everything that was said in those books, we do that. Hey,
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: we're the Rosicrucians, self righteous fanatics. And then my favorite,
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: the aristocratic connoisseurs of art right, And I mean today
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: we see the same thing. You know, I used to
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: write for Reality Sandwich. That's that's who. You know, Like
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: at Burning Man, you met a lot of those people,
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: you know, young nonconformists, pious fools, righteous fanatics, aristocratic connoisseurs
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: of art, false prophets, pseudoscientists. They were all there, you know.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: So hasn't changed, that is.
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: That's one reason why I think that he wrote it,
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: because man, I mean, only the guy who wrote those
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: books would turn around and go and then there were
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: these assholes and these assholes and these assholes, you know,
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: and then he rewrites a lot of the ideas in
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: these books in a more serious way later in his
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: books like Christianopolis, where he's doing utopias about how should
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: how should life be? How should we live? What should
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: society be like? And it's interesting to me also that
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: one of the most brilliant minds that comes out of
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: this period Comenius, who's like the father of modern education.
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: He's a guy who invented the whole idea of like
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: middle school, high school, you know, split split levels of education.
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: And he had some wonderful ideas. He thought that everybody
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: should be taught to read and write and do math. Everybody, women,
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: every race, indigenous people, everybody should have that gift. He
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: wanted to convene something called the College of Light, where
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: all the most brilliant minds of the day would be
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: brought to get other and they would work together and
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: train the next generation. While they were doing it, to
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: bring science into the world, to get medical discoveries, and
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: to find out, you know, what are the stars doing,
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: what do they mean? And just everything, you know, find
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: out all the secrets of nature to make life better.
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: And when he he was very influenced by the Rosicrucians.
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: And when he got into it and he wanted to
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: become a Rosicrucian, he did some research and who do
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: you think? He sent a letter to saying, Sir, I
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: have reason to believe that you're the right one. I
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: want to be a Rosicrucian. You're the one to ask.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: He sent it to Andre, and Andre sent it back
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: to him and it said it was kind of a joke.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: The Rosicrucian societies just means some friends and it's not
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: really something that you know, we can like matriculate you
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: into and people didn't understand, you know, so for instance,
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: I'll give you the idea of the misunderstanding. So the
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: invisible college, right, yeah, well part of that was one
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: they had to be because if they weren't, they were
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: to get killed, right like Bruno had just been burned
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: at the stake. And also they were invisible because they
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: were the spiritual you know that they were into the
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: unvisible side of the world, right, like the unobstructed. Once again,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: they were not just looking at the visible, they were
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: also into the invisible side of it. Thought and spirituality.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: The soul is invisible, and that's what we're after. But
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: it became the power of invisibility, right. People thought, oh,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: the rosicrution, you know, adepts, they can appear anywhere. And
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: this has been called theosophical Rosicrucianism, which I think is
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: a good name for it. I had that really bad.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: By the way, like Tama wrote this book about our
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: friendship with Manley Hall. It's really wonderful if you're interested
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: in him as a person, I highly recommend. It's called
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: Making the Ordinary extra Ordinary, and she tells us a
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: lot of humor in it, a lot of it at
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: my expense. And one of the funniest is that I've
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: had what she calls rosicrucion fever, which is not uncommon,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: which is you you want to be an initiate, you know,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: you want to have that rosicruction materialize in your study.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: Tell you what a good student you are. You know,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: after Manley Hall gave me the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: I have to do this right, I really went nuts.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: And I was like, you know, special diet and celibacy
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: and all this stuff. I mean, just no TV in
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: the house, you know, somehow that's very important to rosicrucion
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: is I'm not sure why I thought so, but and
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: so I got over it. Manley Hall thought it was
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: hilarious too, and he later told me that that he
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: regretted that he had pushed so much of that kind
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: of glamorized in the early days. He talked a lot
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: about the initiates and the Adepts and about you know,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: how they were really running the world in a beneficial
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: way and all. He said, you know, I really wouldn't
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: have have pushed that so far. And he told me
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: that he thought that that he now thought that, you know,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: rosicrution was a good word for the people in each
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: generation who are most dedicated to wisdom and to helping
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: the human race. Yes, and that it didn't have to
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: do with superpowers, that it had to do a dedication.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: Nice by Ronnie.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 8: Sorry, I'm gonna jump in really quick.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: Service.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 8: Sure, I'm apologized for being late. I was really excited
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 8: for you. Nick knows I have rosicution fever. I think
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 8: Lisa and Nick both do as well. So it's funny
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 8: end Robbie obviously, But you made a great point on
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 8: the kind of like the anti fatalistic view of astrology,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 8: and also it's transcendential nature. Like if you like, I'm
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 8: fairly good at Kamala, I'll be humble today, but I'm
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 8: fairly good. So for me, I can I can sort
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 8: of understand other systems but really use my system like TNTRA,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 8: but I just code switch into Kabbala if I need
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 8: to sort of understand those ideas or a more web
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 8: sort of view. And so for me, when I approach astrology,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 8: and I'm not a no astrologer, but when I approach stology,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 8: I approach it more through that sort of inner or
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 8: secret meaning lens. So it's a lot more conceptual as
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 8: I'm sure you're well aware, and it's a lot more flexible.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 8: It's not augmatic, it's not fixed. The relationships with the planets,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 8: they are not They're like minor archons, but they're not
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 8: you know, they're not high up in the you know,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 8: a hierarchy of evil or anything like. We can maneuver them.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 8: There are many techniques to do so, both metaphysical and non.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 8: So I just wanted to say that that I think
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 8: is a really interesting point to come all.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I'd like to say something about that actually,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: because I think that from my point of view, they
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: represent a spectrum and it's this a teaching function at
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: the heart of this. So in other words, let's say
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: that you're going through a difficult Saturn transit, and if
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: you read about it, you know, in traditional mundane astrology,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: you're like, you can hide in your house and never
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: come out when you read about Saturn transits. But the
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: reality that I've experienced in my life of Saturn transits
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: is it's about learning hard lessons and if you've learned
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: those lessons, well, Saturn rewards you. You don't get the
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: worst of it. And if you've already learned those lessons,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: even negative Saturn aspects can bring wonderful accomplishments where you're recognized,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: you get some sort of boost in your work because
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: people understand how much work you've done and how devoted
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: you've been to it. And you get also this kind
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: of understanding that there are certain things that are unique
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: for each of us. So your Saturn lesson may be
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: different from my Saturn lesson, but they're going to be
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: le lessons that can be understood through the lens of
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: what Saturn represents. And the beauty to me of astrology
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: is I can see that coming and I can prepare
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: myself in advance, say wow, I've got a really major
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: aspect coming up, so I want to really make sure
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: that these areas of my life are shored up and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: where am I weak here? You can address it in advance,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: and then Saturn comes along and maybe points out areas
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: that you missed. But I have found that if you
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: do it that way, if you're in collaboration with the universe,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: maybe going back to Manly Hall's the rational soul of
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: the world right, that it can be. This was almost
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: like a dance, you know, because you you do the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: right things and then the right things happen. So another example,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: Saturn people think of Saturn and Capricorn people as being
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: saturnine and dark and materialistic, and they forget you know,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: Saturn is very funny, and Saturn people can be very funny.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: Saturn can be very sexy. I mean, the horny gold goat,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: you know, is a Saturn archetype. And I like to
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: point to Elvis and say, that's a Capricorn. You know,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: he's funny, he's somebody who loves to have a good time.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: He's very sexual, and Saturn has those elements. But there's
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: a tendency to oversimplify an astrology, I think. So I
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: agree with you completely that there is so many nuances
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: and it's so flexible.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 8: Well, I love that you brought up saturn o icon Shawnee,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 8: but the same thing obviously. But you know, that's a
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 8: great point because I've tried to make that many times
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 8: where people will say, oh, Shawnee's like the lord of evil,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 8: the lord of death. No, he's the Lord of karma,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 8: and he can be death by long life or by toil,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 8: as you said very well, like he loves toil, he
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 8: loves labors. He is like the you know, if you
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 8: want to call it the Saint of Labors, that's.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Well I'll give you another another good examples. As
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: we mentioned Facino Saturn. This was a life changer for
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: me when I figured it out thanks to Ficino. You know,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: he had an ascendant with Saturn right on it, and
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: I happen to also have Saturn on my ascendant, and
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: my partner Tamra has Saturn on her son. And we've
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: had this weird life. We've had a lot of luck,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: but the things that we've tried to do, like our
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: band and our movies and even to a degree, I guess,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: well almost everything when we try to get very worldly
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: about it, right, like, so, now, how do we how
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: do we get this out there? How do we make
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: this a success? How do we do what we're supposed
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: to do? When you do these things, it always would
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: fail spectacularly, and we can never understand it because we've
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: always had like the best people involved in our music career.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: We had a great friendship with Danny Goldberg who used
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: to manage Nirvana, and he wanted to sign us repeatedly,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: but it never worked out, and we're always like, what
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: is going on? Is it us? You know? It must
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: be us. And then one day I was going through
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: some obscure of Facino work and I found where he said,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 4: if you have saturn on an angle or on your son,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: anything you try to do in a worldly way will fail,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: because you must work on the matters of the gods.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: As long as you work on the matters of the gods,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: you will have incredible support. But the minute you start
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: to concern yourself with what's going on in the common
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: world and your mind is filled with that, then your
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: luck will fail. And this has been very true for us.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: Our areas of greatest success have been when we've been
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: studying the soul, studying the history of esotericism and such,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 4: and we have amazing luck when we do those things.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: We have a similar kind of luck when we do
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: the music or the film, but it doesn't work that way,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: Like we still attract great people, but it's like the
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: world kind of just washes it washes over it in
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: a way, or the fights occur and then things break up.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: But that doesn't happen when we work on this stuff.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: So I've kind of taken it to heart at this point,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: and I try to concentrate on those matters. But I
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: think that's a good way to see, you know. He
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: apparently had found this from his own life, because whenever
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: he tried to do what his dad wanted to be
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: a practical successful man, Facchino would fail. But when he
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: did what he was really in his heart, he had
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: the most amazing luck. You know, just this one story
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: where he was beginning to translate to hymns of Orpheus
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: and he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: He wanted to spend his life translating Plato and the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: Hermitica and the Neo Platonists, but he didn't have the money,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: and his father was on his ass saying, listen, you're brilliant,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: get a job, do something. And so, in frustration, as
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: he was experiencing his first Saturn return, he did a hymn,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: a hym to the Cosmos, asking to please, is there
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: a way that you know that I can do this
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: work that's dear to my heart? And while he was
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: doing the hymn to the Cosmos, a letter arrived from
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: Cosmo de Medici telling him I'm giving you a house,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: a village for your support. I want you to go
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: there right now and spend the rest of your life,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: translating Plato, the Hermitica, the Neoplatonists, and the hymns of Orpheus.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: And so that's what he did. And then because he
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: did that, we got Paracelsus and Agrippa, and we got
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: a Renaissance, the first in Florence, then in Italy, and
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: then all through Europe. And this guy who failed at
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: everything that he'd attempted, it was suddenly the most influential
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: in some ways man in Europe. And so this is
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: what astrology kind of allows us to see these you know,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: how do we fit in the world, what are the
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: potentials that we have, and what are the pitfalls that
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: we may be facing.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: That was great, Thank you, No, you're welcome. Want to
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: say something, Lisa, Yes.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: I do.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 5: I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: step over anybody else. Tells Jos there's some of the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 5: work that we've been doing with these individualistics and occultists,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: and how we mentioned how it all looks like it's
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 5: coming to a head during this time period that led
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 5: up to the pamphlets being distributed among that part of
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 5: Europe which later became Roars of Christianism, is that it
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 5: seemed like it was the evolution of spiritual science in
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 5: this need war a spiritual science. And you hear a
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 5: lot of the murmurings of Greek kabbala q, you hear
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: Jewish Kabala the k and then Christian Kabala the sea,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: and how everybody's kind of wanting their own flare or
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 5: flavor on it. And to me, it seemed like that
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 5: Rosicrucianism was trying to bring it all together as well
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 5: as rebring in science when it had been separated out.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: So I would say that twenty percent of all authors
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: tell the truth in their writing, and whether it was
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: a joke, whether it was somewhat of a poking fun,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: I think it was this want and a litmus test
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: for the consciousness and the culture that was happening at
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: that point in time.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: Would you say that kind of Yeah, I definitely agree,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: And I mean it really helps to establish the Western
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: esoteric tradition as we know it, because these are all
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: always the same characters are showing up. We're looking back
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: to Egypt, right, and even after they figured out that
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: the Hermitica was probably written down by the Neoplatonists, we
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: still now believe that the ideas in the Hermetica are Egyptian,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: and then we come up into the Neoplatonists, and from
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: the Acadians and from the Chaldeans, we're getting astrology coming
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: out of Babylon, and that's coming into Greece. And then
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: we get to Neoplatonists who sort of take Plato and
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: his amazing summation of Egyptian and Greek metaphysics and then
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: they develop it into me in proclus it's kind of
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: a science. And Pythagoras is highly valued by these people.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: So Michael Meyer considered himself a Pythagorean, Yes and so
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: and then yes, definitely. The Jewish Kabbala is constantly being
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: mixed into this. So Emperor Rudolph, for instance, would meet
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: with the Rabbi of Prague to talk about kabbala, and
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: so there's this wonderful like melting pot kind of thing
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: going on with they were saying, and this, really we
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: owe a lot to Facino and Pico here again, because
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: this is the idea that, well, listen, the ancients had
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: a lot to teach us. We shouldn't wipe everything out
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: before the Old Testament because there was great wisdom. So
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: another book that I co authored with Tamor. The magic
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: of the orphic hymns is about the orphic mysteries, and
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: Orpheus was considered by the early Christians as a prototype
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: of Jesus, and there were Christian fathers who said, we
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: should be paying attention to the orphic mysteries. There's wisdom
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: here that helps us to understand our own Christian beliefs.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: And this kind of bringing it reminds me of when
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: a human beings starts to into rate their early history,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: their family history, their cultural history. You know, they get
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: it just broadens you so much when you get these
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: these greater perspectives instead of just your own personal point
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: of view. And as that as it developed, it continues,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: you know, until you get it systematized by people like Bolovotsky,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: who then try to suggest that this is an actual
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: you know, a lineage that starts in Egypt, and it's
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: every step of the way, it's it's being guided by
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: these adepts. Now is that true? We don't know. I mean,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: I always say I don't know. If if there is
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: no such thing as invisible initiates, I don't know. I mean,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: I believe in the powers of the soul. I mean,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: who knows what is possible if we really achieve true
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: understanding of our unobstructed self. But I don't. I find
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: it hard to believe that there was this kind of
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: a lineage. On the other hand, if I had met
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: Manley Hall during you know, medieval times, you guys, wouldn't
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: nobody either one of us, probably right, he would have
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: taught me in secret. I would have taught somebody else.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: And it's so these things don't make it into history often,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: so it's really very mysterious. But it seems like it's
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: part of an awakening of European consciousness out of this
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: sort of sleep that was imposed on it by the
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: Dark Ages, the failure of the Roman Empire, the success
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: of the Catholic Church, the suppression of diversity by the
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: by these doctrines and by the confessional right, and everything
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: was heretic. You know, that's a heresy, and that's a heresy,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: and heretics were killed. And so I also want to
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: point out the importance of Rosicrucianism in America for this
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: very reason, because when the Thirty Years War happened, and
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: when Rosicrucian dream kind of failed in Europe and they
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: realized Wow, we're not going to get rid of the
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: Catholic Church. This is going to be a long battle.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: I started turning toward America, and in fact, Michael Meyer,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: who I just mentioned, was somebody who was an influence
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: on the very first group of people who got together
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: was Sir Walter Raleigh to start the first colonies in Virginia.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: And there were several Rosicrucian oriented people in that first group,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: the treasurer, several one of the secretaries, and so there
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: were people with Rosicrucian ideas planning on America, and they
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: saw America as a place where maybe they could have
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: freedom of religion. It's not an accident that it became
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: written into our laws, this idea that it only appeared
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: in Europe in Prague. And so when America starts to happen,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: you get an influx of all different kinds of Rosicrucians.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: You get the Pietists from Germany who like moved to
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: Pennsylvania and start at Frata are woman in the wilderness,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: and these these kind of communes where they're going to
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: practice their Rosicrucian h Jacob Boomy influenced ideas, and they're
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: going to read the stars looking for the end of
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: the world. And you also, however, you get people like
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: the son of one of the great governors of Massachusetts
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: Bay Colony, the governor who's talked about the shining city
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: on a hill and all that. His son was deeply
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: into Rosicrucianism. Had gone in Europe looking for Rosicrucians but
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: didn't find anybody, and decided to live his life dedicated
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: to Rosicrucian principles. And by the way, you know, Pilgrims
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: were not the way that we've been taught. I mean,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: this kid was practicing alchemy and astrology in his father's
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: house in Boston. So the son of the governor of
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: Massachusetts Bay Colony, the ultimate Pilgrim, was an esotericist who
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: was into the Kabbalah and astrology and her medicism. He
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 4: was an alchemist. He became the doctor for the whole area,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: like this huge territory because he came up with such
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: good medicines which he would give for free, which was
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: a Rosicrucian dedication. And he lived up to these ideals.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: He became one of the founding governors of Connecticut Territory
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: and one of the first governors of Connecticut. So this
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: is a guy who's absolutely dedicated Rosicrucians. When he comes
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: to America to join his father, he's got a couple
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: of barrels filled with John Dee's alchemical equipment, manuscripts and books, right,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: and so he's trying to make the college of Light
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: that Comenius wanted in what would become Connecticut. So this
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: Rosicrucian influence comes to America to kind of try to
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: create that dream of a country where it's free of
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 4: this Catholic and this imperial domination. And I find it.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: Whatever one's politics is, and I certainly don't want to
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: go there, but I find it really ironic and interesting
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: that right now we're in a very similar situation because
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: you've got a big push from a Catholic church in
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: America to control the society and the culture according to
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 4: the likes of Catholicism. I mean, the Heritage Foundation is
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 4: saturated in Catholicism, and Dvance is a Catholic, and some
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: of these big tech bros are people who have been
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: steeped in Catholicism.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: And as far as the new American pope.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: He's interesting. We'll see how it turns out I was
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: glad that they chose him, and he seems to have
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: a different view. He doesn't seem to want to dominate
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: the world in the way that something like Opus does
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: right Opus Day, but the we'll see, you know, you
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: never know what these guys. But I like what he's doing.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: He seems to be trying to humanize. I like, for instance,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 4: that he's going to be doing this big mass for
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: young people on the same day that there's going to
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: be the military parade for the celebration of the president's birthday.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, he's certainly sending a message there. And I
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: think we also have an imperial presidency in a sense,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: something that is recognizable as almost Hapsburg like it's it's
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: you know, all power a cruise to one leader, and
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: you all do what we say, and there's this huge
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: bureaucracy and there's nowhere to appeal. I mean, Kafka, you know,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: his writing was capturing the hop the end of the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: Habsburg bureaucracy and how horrendous it was, and he never
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: knew what was going on. And when I read stories
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: about people are just taken away and then nobody knows
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: what happened or where they are, and it reminds me
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: a lot of Kafka and also of the Habsburg imperialism.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: So it's interesting that America right now is having this
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: kind of moment, which is appropriate since this is the
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: American Pluto Return and we soon will be in the
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: us Urinus return. This country is facing its shadows, and
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: it's the consequences of its beliefs and actions, and it's
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: all kind of coming to this ugly head, and no
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: one knows whether this is going to be a cure
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: or like like with ancient with alchemy, it's like, is
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: this curing you or is it killing you? We're not sure,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: but that's kind of how I see it. But it's
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: interesting to me that this same element seems to be happening,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: this desire by the Catholic Church to exert control over
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: women and over the culture. And the funny thing is
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: the Rosicrucians they were kind of pro female. You know,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: there were even books written by female accrusions back in
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: those days, and there was a supposedly a female sisterhood
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: of Rosicrucians, and there was a respect for the divine
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: feminine in that work. And like we see in the
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: chemical wedding where CRC is guided by a female. Uh
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: and uh. So it's this kind of split personality that
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: America also has inherited from its European ancestry.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: Something I wanted to bring up. I want to go
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: back a little bit.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: Yea, you happen to mention Jacob and I'm actually working
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: on a kind of like a thing on him right now.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: Oh cool, And you know, to me, I was a
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: little not that I haven't heard it before him mentioned.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: And again I haven't listened to so many people that
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: have either colored him or Rosicutionism, but haven't really heard
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: anybody kind of mentioned him together with Rosicrucianism. And there
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: was a part in the show when I did it,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: I was saying that he never claimed to be one,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: but this is I kind of want to lead into.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: I think this might kind of.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: Help maybe with the theory that I have with who
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: Roja Crusions actually were, you know, And it kind of
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: goes along with the whole thing like maybe like you'll
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: know when when you see one with his experience and
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: the stuff that he writes about, it seems very close
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: or kind of aligned with Rosicrucianism. So I do wonder
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: like in some way like, well, people haven't experience due
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: to studying and practicing and stuff that will change the
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: way they look at everything that when they see somebody
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: else writing about it, they're like, ah, I understand that
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: person because they're talking my style since I've had this
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: experience and looked at things differently. I think that's kind
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: of like why for me a lot of these people
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: that I happen to cover that I realized the Roja Cruscians,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: A lot of this stuff in the world of books
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: is very like hits me very hard, or I'll realize
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: things that I have said that I think a rise
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: about with my magical experiences, I'm realizing they were saying
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: a few hundred years ago when I'm so, I do
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: wonder is it just because you have a shared experience
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: that you can both understand what each other is saying.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of like the group.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: I think, So, I mean this, you know in way
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 4: this pertains to the whole world, right because to me,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 4: and this is very controversial, I know there are a
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: lot of people who feel that you should not conflate
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 4: the spiritual aspects of say the Secret of the Golden
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 4: Flower with what the Rosa Crucians are after. But my
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: viewpoint is just my viewpoint, not trying to convince anybody,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: is that it's like anatomy or biology. I mean, you know,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: we're all human beings and therefore we have a certain
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: way of experiencing the spiritual side of life, and it
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: should be something you can recognize. Now, Manly Hall taught
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: that at the center of all religions you'll find the
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: same truth. I think so, and so I feel now
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: that I've studied as long as I have, I'm constantly
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: recognizing it in different metaphors. It's in the Bible. It
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: talks about it blatantly, it's in Walt Whitman's poetry, it's
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 4: in the Bagavad Gita. It's been written about in every
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: way it could be written about. The metaphors are all different,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 4: because that's kind of an accident of time and place.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: But when you get down into the nitty gritty of
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 4: what's being presented, you suddenly find it's these same ideas
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: over and over again about what these spiritual experiences is,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 4: what it leads to, and how you get there. And
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: so now, particularly in the hotbed of German Protestantism. We
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 4: know that that guys like Jacob are picking up from Paracelsus,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: and they're picking up from from Ficino and sometimes through
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: secondary sources, other books that were inspired by a writer
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 4: like Ficino but may have been obscure and so awakens
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: the spiritual side. And these experiences begin to happen that
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 4: you recognize, as you said, in the writing of other people.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 4: And I think that now this is a big question,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: because the theosophical Rosicruci societies have gone I would think
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: kind of way overboard with you know, Lincoln was a Rosicruci,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: and Akinnaughton was a Rosicruci, even though it was cution
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: doesn't want to be invented for you know, two thousand years.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: And now I get that, you know, in a metaphorical way, well, yeah,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 4: sort of, you know, they sort of are rosicrusions. And
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 4: maybe that's the way that Manley Hall said, if it
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: represents a certain type of person who's trying to bring
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 4: light into the world and trying to help the world
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 4: be a better place and help people find their souls.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 4: And yet at the same time it begins to glamorize it,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: and you begin to think, wow, you know, everybody who's
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 4: ever been interested in in these subjects as a rosicrucion
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: or I can say that that's a rosicrusion. On the
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: other hand, you can't throw it out either completely, because
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: you mentioned Francis Bacon at the very beginning of this conversation,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: and Manley Hall was one of those people who thought
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: that Bacon was involved in the creation of the Shakespeare plays,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: and that Bacon was a major player in Rosicrucianism and
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 4: in the foundation of America, and and now most researcher
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 4: you look at, you know, you look at Bacon's life.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 4: Part of my reaction is when you know, like his
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 4: own life was like so busy that that when did
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: you have time to do all those other usings in exile? Right?
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: And then people even said that that that he was
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 4: andre Yeah, and that's really a fancy trick. Yeah. But
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 4: but on the other hand, you find these weird things
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: like one that Manley Hall showed me once, which was
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 4: in the Anatomy of Melancholy by Burton, which had a
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: footnote in it that referred to Francis Rosie Cross. And
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: there was another footnote like that that referred to Andre,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: Lord Verelum, and these are from ancient and you know,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: not ancient, but books from the sixteen hundreds, right, And
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: where what is that? Is it a typo? Is it
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: somebody saying, hey, Francis Bacon was deeply involved in this stuff?
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: You know, you know, no wonder people suspect there's a
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: connection between Andre and Francis Bacon because the only Lord
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: Verelum at that time was Francis Bacon certainly not Andre.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: So those kind of questions part of the to me,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: the exciting aspect of Rosicrucianism is this these almost zen
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 4: calling like mysteries, the defeat reason and you can't really
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 4: settle down on this is how it is now. Especially
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 4: Jacob has been claimed as as a Rosicrucian. And there
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: were Rosicrucian Pietist groups like the group that did the
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 4: Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians in Pennsylvania who they believed
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 4: that the Rosicrucians and Jacob were teaching the same basic
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 4: things and they were illuminating each other's work. So that
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 4: is you know, is he a Rosicrucion Was he around Rosicrucians.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 4: Here's a fact that makes you wonder when Frederick and
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 4: Elizabeth came to Prague. I guess it was in the
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: audience Jacob. So he traveled all the way to Prague
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: to see the supposed new Rosicrucian Hermetic emperor arrive when
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 4: all the Rosicrucian flurry was going on, Andre was there too.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: Who knows who talked to who?
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't even know that. That's interesting.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: That's definitely a plot twist.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I might have to throw that in
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: the show. I'm not done with it.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: I'll quote you think. Okay, I feel like, thanks to Mariti,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: I could throw this tidbit in here that I don't
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: know about. Well, another thing I did want to bring
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: up again, This is another idea of mine that I
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: had wondered about.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: Like even I guess the rise have come to be
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: a Rosicrucianism.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 7: Is that?
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: And you know you mentioned Ficino and Pico. I think
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 3: at that time from the stuff that I've noticed researching, Uh,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: you know this the subject with those people a lot
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 3: recently is that once they started to be able to
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: toss in like the Kapala and her Meticism, they were like,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: oh my god, this is we're making breakthroughs and understanding
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: the Bible and God and ourselves, and you know, in
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: positive ways, you know, not neces so you can manipulate
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: and be whatever. They're actually trying to understand themselves, God
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: and the world we're in. And I feel like at
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: some point they started saying, Nope, we can't do that anymore,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: and you're like really like, well no, like that's not cool,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: you know, and people so wanted to pump out that
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: type of ideas that was allowed you at some point
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: to be looked at.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 4: Well. Once the Thirty Years War hit, the strictness on
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 4: both sides and everybody got hit by. Andre's home was
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 4: destroyed and people had to flee into the woods to
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 4: wait until the Imperial Army left, and it turned everything
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 4: upside down. And so not too long later, I mean,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 4: you know, maybe maybe one generation later. Rosicrution is a
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 4: word for an idiot, for like a superstitious old man
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 4: who has no idea what's really going on in the world.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 4: It becomes a comedic term and a comedic character in
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 4: English drama, so it becomes so discredited. I mean, it's
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 4: funny because when when John Winthrop Junior, the Rosicrution from
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 4: Connecticut got into the Rosicrucians, was at a time when
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 4: they were a joke. But he saw pasted it and
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 4: he was like, no, this stuff's real. But he went
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: to meet people that he was told were Rosicrucians, and
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 4: he came out of all those meetings going, nah, that's
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 4: not it. So this is a it was. It definitely
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 4: was a kind of of a retraction or like the
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 4: tide coming out right. And this did create this kind
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 4: of of suppression on these works. There was also panics.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, at one point in Paris, for example, some
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 4: smart ass I think it was it was probably a
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 4: hoax put up posters all over Paris saying the Rosicrusians
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 4: have arrived. We're here to find you members. You don't
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 4: have to try to find us, we'll find you. And
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: people freaked, like I mean, the big newspapers, you know,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 4: rosicruci demons amongst our midst. And and they found some
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 4: guy who was a painter, really a master piece type
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 4: of banter, but he was notoriously obscene and foul mouth,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 4: and he claimed to be a Rosicrucian. And they convened,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 4: like these these experts to interview him, and they said, yes,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 4: we believe he is a Rosicrucian, but he's proof that
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: the Rosicrusians are foul and evil because he's the most
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: you know, cantankerous, awful person. So those kind of panics
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: spread and it really suppressed the feelings about it. And
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: I think another thing that kind of made it worse
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: was in the seventeenth century, as things begin to see
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 4: the beginnings of like Freemasonry begins to strongly and become
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 4: involved in rosicruci ideas, and you get a Rosicrucian degree
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 4: for example, and the Scottish Rite, or you get the
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 4: the Sria, right, which is a bunch of Masons in
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: England who create a Rosicrucion society and they meet and
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 4: they try to study this stuff and people get initiated
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 4: by them and then say, well, I'm an initiated Rosicrucian. Well,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 4: you're anitiated rosicruci into this order of some guy made
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 4: up but not. But that's not what people think when
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 4: you say that. And then you get situations like passional
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 4: Beverly Randolph, who you know, he claimed that he had
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: been taught by Rosicrucians in Europe, and he released a
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: book that was all filled with this Rosicrucian wisdom, supposedly
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 4: very kind of theosophical stuff, a lot of his own
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 4: channeled material, and later admitted that he only did it because,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 4: as a man of color, when he would talk about
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 4: his ideas, he was ignored. But as soon as he
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 4: said that he got him from the Rosicrucians, everybody paid attention,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 4: and he admitted, but I never I never met a
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 4: Rosicrucian really, you know. So that is a constant trouble
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 4: for scholars who are trying to get into this stuff.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 4: I'll give you another example of this, something you might
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 4: find interesting. Since you did such a wonderful peace on Flood.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 4: I really appreciate it. Thank you, so Flood. A lot
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 4: of people talk about Flood and Meyer being friends, that
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 4: Meyer was Flood's agent when he got his books published
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 4: by Debry, and that they were actually two Rosicrucians working together.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 4: And if you look at the famous novel that's all
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: about this stuff, Flood is considered a member of the
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 4: Great Secret Order right And in his unpublished book A
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 4: Philosophical Key, unpublished during his life, there were a few,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 4: just a few copies published after he died, and most
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: of them were just left in obscurity until very recently.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 4: Flood includes in a philosophical key an oath that he
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 4: is signed saying that he is not a member of
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 4: the Rosicrucian order. Now we're left to wonder, you know,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 4: is he protecting himself?
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: Is he is he?
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 4: You know, we still don't know exactly why he did that.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 4: Meyer also said in one of his books, I am
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 4: not a Rosicrucian. But people say, but he wrote a
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 4: book called, you know, the Laws of the Rosy Cross.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: Well that was his meditation on what these laws meant,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 4: and if you follow them through, you know where would
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 4: just take you. And then when people say, well, these
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 4: were a couple of initiates who were close friends, a
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: letter has been found from Meyer to Maurice the Learned
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 4: where he says some very uninitiate things about Flood. He's
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 4: really pissed at him because he says that somewhere Flood
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 4: had written that Germans are idle, negligent and slow, and
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 4: that the English are good hearted, audacious, and they're courageous,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 4: and Flood was like typical attitude of the English or
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 4: the Germans at that time, but got angry and wrote
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 4: Maurice and said, you know, no, the Germans are in command.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 4: You know, we're the ones who really keep the empire going.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 4: And I'm going to deliver this man a written whipping
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 4: unless you tell me not to, because he's very insolent man.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: That's not Rosicrucian initiate talk, you know, that's that's that's
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: a couple of writers who are interested in the same
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: subjects and have a lot in common, but apparently they're
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 4: they're racial or let's say national derivations are at odds,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 4: and so there's there's so much mystery in these relationships.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 4: And it even doesn't mean you know, he may have
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 4: said that and still, outside of any historical record, have
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 4: had some kind of contact with Flood that we can't
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 4: prove Flood. It's also interesting, I think this is worth
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 4: pointing out about the Rosicrucians because you know, near the
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 4: end of his career, Flood gets into this pamphlet war
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 4: with a guy who says that the you know, they
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 4: had this this this really weird curing method back in
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 4: those days, where they would if you couldn't get to
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 4: the person who was wounded, you would take the sword
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 4: that wounded him, and you would put this special stuff
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: on the sword, and the sword was this was said
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 4: to heal this wound. And this was because the blood
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: was still connected in some weird astral way to the person,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 4: even if the sword was far away. And this was
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 4: a very popular cure. And one day this parson, an
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: unknown person uh nailed onto Flood's door this denunciation that
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: this cure was the devil's work and there's no sign
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 4: of it in the Bible. So Flood starts a pamphlet
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 4: war with this guy, and he's saying, you know, nonsense,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 4: this this is for real. And this attracts the attention
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 4: of a doctor who writes an absolutely devastating attack on
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: the whole concept and just says, look, this is the
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 4: most ridiculous thing ever. So if the guy gets wounded
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: by three different swords, you got to find all three swords.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 4: Why doesn't the bomb work on the wound? If it's
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 4: so good? And you know, my guess is that you know,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 4: half the people get better and half of them die,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 4: because that's just how nature works. And you know, you
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 4: guys are thinking it's this this magic trick and then
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 4: even more devastating. And this is my point. He gets
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 4: into it with Marsenne, right, and I think of Mersenn
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 4: as a tragic character. You know, he's a very early
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 4: kind of scientific materialist, but he's a Jesuit, he's a
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 4: he's a Catholic, and so he looks at Flood's ideas
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 4: about music and about about how we hear, and he's
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 4: just like, ah, nonsense, what a bunch of you know, tripe?
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 4: This is I mean we hear because we have a
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 4: little bone in the ear, like he figured that out,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 4: and it's about vibrations. And they start to fight each other.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 4: And the funny thing about it is that both of
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 4: them are very metaphysically sole oriented people. They just disagree
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 4: with how one is looking at it. But in their
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 4: argument you find the end of the Renaissance and the
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 4: beginning of scientific materialism because both of them become kind
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 4: of something to react against for the next generation who
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: want to be scientists. So it's ironic because Flood, who
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 4: was a big help to the beginning of science with
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 4: the circulation of blood and other ideas that he helped
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 4: originate with his friends, and Marsenn, who you know, was
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 4: a Jesuit. I mean he was you know, he worship Jesus.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: They actually became flood because it was considered nonsense and
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: Mersenne because you know, he's right, but he didn't take
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: it far enough. Big influences on what we have today,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 4: which is this kind of scientific material where so much
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 4: wisdom is lost because it doesn't fit into these narrow
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 4: parameters of a certain method that's useful for certain things
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 4: but doesn't apply to every aspect of life.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: Did anybody have any questions or anything?
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So, now when you look at the traditional rise
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 6: of resecutionism and kind of all the philosophical elements of
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 6: the ancient world that were kind of incorporated, from the
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 6: alchemical to the metaphysical, and then you kind of bring
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 6: that into more modern times and you go through the
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 6: sixties and the seventies and in the back of the
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 6: sci fi rags you see, oh, you know, join the rosicrutions,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 6: get the secret of the secrets of the universe. And
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 6: we have this reseecrution Society. I believe it's in Cincinnati.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 6: That's the oldest established one of the United States. And
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 6: they'll sell you the various lectures that they have in
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 6: regard to self improvement and into like the Georgia guidestones
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 6: that were signed by like Christian Roast and Crue, you know,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 6: with the CRC like in comparison to the origins of Rosicrucianism,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 6: in bringing that into the modern world, how much would
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 6: you say those two ideas are either attached or disassociated.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a complicated question. You know. WEIGHT used to
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 4: say that, you know, they have no connection at all
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 4: of the new orders or just inventions and have nothing
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 4: to do with it, But I think that's oversimplifying it.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 4: I think that there are a lot of rosicruci ideas
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 4: in these orders. For instance, one in California practices free
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 4: healing sessions through meditation and kind of you know, sort
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 4: of magical forms of healing, and and I think that
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 4: I do think that they are correctly called theosophical Rosicrucianism
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 4: orders because so much of this has a theosophical bent
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 4: with You'll see them going into root races and going
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 4: into you know, these lineages of adepts and things that
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 4: were definitely foreign. I think that's kind of a natural
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 4: progression that happens because you start with something that is
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 4: this As I said, earlier. It's almost like students who
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 4: get all worked up and you know, they're high on
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 4: Girdano Bruno and they're like and they're writing this radical literature.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 4: You know, they're daring to say, you know, we'll scratch
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 4: the pope to death with nails, you know, probably the
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 4: nails that Jesus was hammered in the cross the way
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 4: that's probably metaphorical, but nevertheless they're saying that, and it's revolutionary,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 4: and it causes us to make rucous and people are angry,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 4: and his riots in Paris, and but then later it
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 4: turns into something that's that that is much different. It's
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 4: somebody trying to make a living at it and trying
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 4: to be a school and to teach people the basics
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 4: of metaphysics and and help them to to do what
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 4: they want to pomplished, which is to become acquainted with
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 4: their own souls, and to do it in a way
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 4: that fits into the modern world at that time, the
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 4: modern world. And so I do think that they're connected.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 4: The spirit of it is somewhat different. I mean, I
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 4: think if you had gone to hang out with Andre
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 4: and his friends, they would have been, you know, drinking
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 4: German beer, and they would have been excitedly talking. If
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 4: they had had weed, they would have been smoking, but
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 4: they didn't have it. If you go to these these
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 4: and I have to these these resicrution orders, they're lovely.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, they're they're they remind me a
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 4: lot of the Theosophical Society. They do good things for
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 4: the community. They have books that people can borrow and read.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 4: They have access to lectures that help explain ideas. It's
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 4: not a bad place to start, not unlike the Philosophical
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 4: Research Society. What I liked about PRS in particular, and
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 4: what I like about PRS is that it lacks a denomination.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 4: It's it's everything right. That's one of the things that
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 4: just was wonderful about Manley Hall is that he had
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 4: a great love of culture, of all culture, art, and
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 4: I mean he appreciated the little things in culture, and
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 4: so that kind of becomes a love of life because
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 4: you're constantly being surprised by the wonders of creation and creativity,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 4: human and natural. And so I do think that that
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 4: the Rosicrucian societies also do this to a degree. And
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 4: I should mention that Max Heindel's order in California was
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 4: very important to Manley Hall in the early days because
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 4: after Max's passed, his wife was one of Manley Hall's
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 4: serious mentors. She taught him a lot about astrology, She
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 4: encouraged him to lecture. She even taught him how to
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 4: bind books and how to be a book publisher. You know,
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 4: Purists used to publish their our own books. So there
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 4: was this Rosicrucian influence directly from that order that Max
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 4: Heindel founded on Manly Hall and on what he did.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 6: Nice.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: Nice, that's very interesting.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 5: I would say, I'm going to answer it real quick.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 5: I would please correct me if I'm wrong. I would
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 5: say that there was also an influence of the Holy
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 5: Grail belief system that existed in the ninth century. I
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 5: believe in that when you look at the Holy Grail,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 5: well they did. I guess my interpretation of it, and
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 5: please correct me if I'm wrong. It wasn't about bloodlines
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 5: per se. It was about you yourself. Your body was
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 5: the Grail and you were the highest holy level, which
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 5: I think kind of builds upon gnostic or narcissism. When
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 5: you look at some of the teachings of Mary Magdalene
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 5: and how you yourself is what's supposed to estend and
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 5: try to become the better version of yourself.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: So I don't know it like there was some of
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: that incorporation.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: Into some of it.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, stuff that we would read.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. I would mention that that Rudolph the second we've
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 4: been talking about him, he thought that he owned the
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 4: Holy Grail, which at that time was it was like
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 4: this little shallow agate bowl, and he used to use
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 4: it when he was terrified that he was being attacked
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 4: magically by the pope or being prayed against by the priests.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 4: He would drink a little holy water from this this
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 4: what he thought was the Holy Grail, to purify himself,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 4: to protect himself from this negative influence. Yeah, I think
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 4: that it goes back. I agree with you, and I
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 4: think that it goes back to the Neoplatonists at least,
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 4: but threw them to the Egyptians, because this is this
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 4: Egyptian idea of in souling statues, which was then applied
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 4: philosophically to instolling a human being. So the ancient Egyptians
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 4: would they would bring together all the things that were
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 4: necessary for a certain god, the symbols, the substances and
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 4: such and these things would be be smeared on the
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 4: stone as it was being carved. And it was this
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 4: whole process of every step of the way that this
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 4: statue was being made. It had to be worthy of
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 4: being insoled by the gods. And so I might add,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 4: by the way, really interesting. I've done some research on
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 4: the resurgence of the ancient Egyptian goddess segment, and there
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 4: are statues in the museums and also in Egypt that
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 4: people are constantly reporting on TikTok and other places that
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 4: they move, whether they had a spontaneous healing in front
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 4: of the statue, or that they saw the statue's eyes open,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 4: or I mean, all kinds of weird things are happening
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: today to people who had no idea who segment was
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 4: or Gyptians did this stuff. So maybe that's the result
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 4: of this process of insulment. I don't know. But philosophers,
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 4: especially the Neoplatonists, came along and they started to say, well,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 4: this is the model for human spiritual development. And we
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 4: see this especially with the Amblicus and this kind of
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm going to make myself the vessel for
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 4: the divine I'm going to do the right things at
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 4: the right time, bring the right things together and have
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 4: the right approach so that I can earn divine grace.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 4: And that divine grace can be an experience of enlightenment,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 4: of cosmic consciousness, if you want to call it that,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 4: but it can also be seeing the future. So if
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 4: you did divination, if you're doing tero, or you're doing
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 4: even something like Yijing, the idea is that that you're
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 4: getting the vision of the gods, like they're sharing that
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 4: with you, and it's your own in a way, because
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 4: you're a child of the gods, and within you you
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 4: have this divine self that needs to be purified over
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 4: time and brought out. But now as a human being
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 4: in an obstructed body, and you want to know chief,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 4: should I do this or should I do that? And
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 4: you put yourself into a space, you do a meditation
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 4: or a prayer, and then you pick up your oracular instrument,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 4: and if you get a good reading. The ancients believe
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 4: that's because the God smiled on you. The God said, here,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 4: have some of my vision. I can see the future,
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 4: I can see the past that has caused this situation.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 4: And that's why, according to them, astrology and all the
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 4: other forms of omenary work, because they are the divine vision,
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 4: and they enable us to raise ourselves, to awaken a
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 4: little bit of our own divine vision so that we
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 4: can have that kind of wider perspective. And so you
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 4: become the Holy grail or the Holy statue is your body,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 4: it's it's you, yourself. You could even say your soul,
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 4: as you're awakening this divine essence that is you. And
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 4: so I do think that is what you can see
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 4: happening in these Rosicrucian orders or the Rosicrucian Pietis and such.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 4: These are people who are lots of prayer and meditation
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 4: to purify. They're purifying themselves through diet like the ancient
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 4: Orphics did, and they're doing this so that they can
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 4: commune with a divine And this is really the difference
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 4: between these two orders of religious experience. You know, on
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 4: the one side, you have established religions, whether it was
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 4: the Olympian religion in ancient Greece or the Catholic Church today.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 4: And on the other side you have I want a
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 4: direct revelation. I don't want what yesterday had. I don't
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 4: want a priest to tell me what to do. I
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 4: want to talk to God, you know, and a big
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 4: threat to the world because when you get God on
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 4: your side, you know, people do all kinds of stuff
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 4: when they think that they're doing that for God and
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 4: they've got God at their back. And so this is
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 4: I think the essence of it. I have no doubt
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 4: that that's how Manly Hall saw it. I mean, he
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 4: was somebody who was trying to bring that awareness into
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 4: the world and trying to live a life that would
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 4: do that as much as possible, to leave as many
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 4: artifacts as he could that would have that power to
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 4: awaken in the way that his book awakened me.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 6: I think that also plays a great deal into the
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 6: idea of the sacred temple builders and modeling the temples
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 6: after the body, in regards symbolically that the body itself
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 6: is the grail or the temple to be pure.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 4: Absolutely masonryes of way into that. That's definitely, I mean,
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 4: all the symbolism masonry is about your own life and
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 4: about ground on the stone exactly.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 8: Yea, I have a couple. I'll keep it really quick.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 8: I'm sorry neck to just let me find a couple,
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 8: but I think Ronnie will find them all interesting, and
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 8: so Lisa said a really interesting point. I think Lisa
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 8: knows this. I'm very interested in this idea of like
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 8: the Some people have called it the a on of
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 8: the daughter this Mary Magdalen, the Grail quote unquote. But
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 8: it is, as Lisa said, it is yourself. It's really
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 8: that it's you to create a vessel that's worthy of
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 8: like higher consciousness. So I personally believe that, and so
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 8: I just want to say that. So that was a
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 8: great point Lisa, And she also said something interesting about
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 8: like the or to maybe play into the idea of
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 8: stages of consciousness. You mentioned segment. So a lot of
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 8: Indian scholars believe that there's a direct equivalent, still extant,
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 8: still worshiped in India. And so there are three names.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 8: Naram Simi, who is the normative will say orthodox sort
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 8: of vice Nava goddess. Then you havea Gitta who is
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 8: the heterodox, very contric goddess, and then you have the
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 8: Buddhist version. So you could say that all three of
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 8: those represent not it's not like it's the same ontological goddess,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 8: but you could say that they are three different positionalities
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 8: of her consciousness.
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: So I don't know if you think that, ye.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 4: Think, yeah, I think that's true. And I think you
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 4: can also see you know, with segment you look over
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 4: at right, So similar segment is a justice goddess. She's
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 4: she's the one who's preserving mahat, what makes life possible,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 4: the order of the universe, and and so Da is
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 4: a justice goddess. Is riding on a tiger. Segment is
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 4: lion headed.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 8: I mean that's the same as the as Thetania Garra.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 8: She has a lion's face exactly.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 4: And the question becomes, is this direct influence or did
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 4: these spontaneously arise apart from each other. And that's something
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 4: that no one is sure of, becuse we don't really
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 4: have my evidence. The whole segment story especially interesting because
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 4: this is a goddess who was forgotten, I mean just
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 4: forget it forgotten. I mean the British Museum they kept
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 4: her statues under blankets in the basement because she had
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 4: her boobs out. You know, it was just radical, and
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 4: they don't even I mean she's gone. I mean the
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 4: only time you'll see her at all is once in
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 4: a while. You'll see her in like a weird silent
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 4: movie or something some set designer dug her up from
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 4: a book by Budge and they made a step Met statue.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 4: You might have seen her in one of the couple
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 4: of museums that showed the statue. No information was out there,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 4: and starting I think in the seventies, she starts to
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 4: kind of pop up more. There's an academic book about
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 4: all the names that she had. She had all these names.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 4: One of them was She before Whom all the Gods Tremble.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 4: And then you got Robert Masters wrote this book about her,
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 4: and this is like in nineteen eighty something, and that
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 4: book became very popular and kind of revived the worship.
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 4: There's now a Segment priesthood. There's two different lineages that
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 4: are conferring that priesthood. There's a Segment temple. There are
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 4: if you go to TikTok there's tons of things about Segrament.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 4: If you go to eBay, there's tons of things you
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 4: can buy with Segment on it. Segment I had weird
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 4: experiences because when I was first drawn to Segment, I
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 4: was one of those people who dreamed about her, like
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 4: heard the name before I'd ever run into her, as
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 4: far as I knew, And I was like, what in
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 4: the world is that and you had have something to
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 4: do with the lion and that it was sec met
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 4: And at that time I was working at PRS and
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 4: I was going through all the live I couldn't find anything.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, it was it was really difficult to find
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 4: anything on her. It was a little bit by Budge
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 4: and that was about it. And I was stunned when
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 4: I walked into a bookstore and saw a book on
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 4: her there by Masters. And then when I was touring,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 4: what was really weird was that I was in the
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 4: know a rye, a girl band of punk band, and
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 4: a lot of the women and even some of the
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 4: men that I ran into had segments tattoos. And if
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 4: you said, you know, I'd go, I'd go, well you
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 4: got a segment on your arm. They'd be like, you know, segment,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 4: And then we'd have this conversation. I'd be like, Wow,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 4: that's weird. And then when I started to publicly talk
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 4: about it, I started hearing from all kinds of people,
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 4: many of whom had the same experience of segment came
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 4: to me in a dream. I didn't know who she
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 4: was or somebody who I know. One person we interviewed
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 4: who she saw a Segment statue in museum and fell
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 4: on her knees and started weeping, and she didn't know why,
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 4: and she felt like like she found herself and became
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 4: a worshiper of Segment, a priestess. And it's just been
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 4: growing and growing. And I think it's partly because this
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 4: represents feminine power, and of all the goddesses out there,
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, she is, she's considered. I mean her name
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 4: kind of means invincible, right, So she's such a symbol
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 4: of power that I think she's very appealing to women
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 4: who are seeking to change the way that society has
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 4: has as marginalized women. But you know, what is segment
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 4: is a good question. I mean, you know what, what
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 4: are these Hindu goddesses? Are we dealing with aliens? Are
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 4: we dealing with spiritual entities? Are we dealing with demons
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 4: masquerading as gods? As the Catholics would have us believe.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 8: Well, this is a great question, Ronnie. Sorry to interrupt you,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 8: but I think I have an answer for you, because
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 8: yes I'm Buddhists, So I Buddhism provides an answer. But
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 8: I'll be the vehicle for it. Is that we would
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 8: just say it's tikini's or existence. Appearance could be either
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 8: of those two things, So something of your mind that
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 8: appears in a specific way that is relational to your consciousness,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 8: or it's something independently arising self arising, which is a dikini.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 8: So like a they're kind of like a scarlet woman
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 8: or a sky dancer, or like a yogini that's a
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 8: you know, like the Yogini temples in India. That's what
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 8: Naram Sima is. Actually a yogini. She is part of
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 8: the sixty four grouping and a very important one in
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 8: the Southern Indian tree Vigia tradition. And she has a
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 8: lion's face. So that's why I think it's so interesting
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 8: because we would say that like the tdikinis are around
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 8: us all the time, kind of like angels. I guess,
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 8: like maybe a more nondual kind of angel, because they're
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 8: supposedly fully nondual. They live in a fully non dual consciousness,
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 8: so when they appear before people, they're kind of relaying
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 8: their inner and secret meanings through their appearance like to people.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 8: So for us represents the both you mentioned justice, that's
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 8: a really good word for it. She destroys all the
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 8: black magic in the world. But she also can be
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 8: said to be like the negative space, the negative sound
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 8: of black magic being recited. So she both arises from
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 8: the word, but it's not really from the word, it's
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 8: in the little spaces between. But she also destroys that
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 8: same kind of aggregation, if you want to call it that.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it winds me very much that the Vadra Kalaia method,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 4: the summoning of the demons and the conversion of them
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 4: to guardians.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 8: Oh yeah, so they don't know that. I've never I've
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 8: never discussed this. Maybe someone else has discussed this on
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 8: the show. It's interesting that you bring this up because
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 8: I usually don't talk about that practice. But that's really interesting.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 8: Ronnie the Red Amulet, I mean, I don't know if
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 8: you've read that, but one of my favorite books, that
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 8: wonderful book.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, awesome, and so set that without being segmet right.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 8: Well, it's interesting because Groupamasiambava, his personal Dikini, was the
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 8: Buddhist version of sec Met. We'll call her the lion
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 8: face Dakini, and he was a master of dual wielding
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 8: kila's so he held Aquila in both hands. So that's
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 8: why it's so important like Quila and the Segmet sort
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 8: of personage. They kind of go together in a way.
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 7: Yes, well there you have Secmet and you conclude different ways.
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 7: You have Secmet and Petah right as a couple, where
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 7: he's this incredibly creative and beneficial Uh he's he's doing
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 7: all the building up.
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 4: And she's doing the tearing down. She's doing the ending
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 4: of things. And you've also got the sec Met Bossed
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 4: duality right where secon Met is this fierce justice goddess
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 4: and Boss was that too. But in the later years
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 4: in Egypt, Boss became sort of more of the domestic
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 4: goddess and the represent of the after side. There's these
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 4: wonderful there's like a witch story that goes around that
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 4: that segment. There's a famous story about how Segment was
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 4: fooled into attacking humanity. She was made drunk in order
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 4: to stop her because she wouldn't stop if she couldn't
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 4: find any human being that deserved to live and love
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 4: to gods, because they had they had, you know, cheated her,
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 4: they had they had tricked her into doing this thing,
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 4: and she was acting out on behalf of raw and
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 4: then Ras telling her, hey, stop acting out, what are
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 4: you doing you're out of control. It's such a picture
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 4: of toxic fatherhood, you know, and traumatized daughter. But in
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 4: this myth, the witches say that. Then she was very
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 4: upset by this, and she said to Hermie, to uh Toth,
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 4: I will have my revenge, because when all of you
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 4: are forgotten, I will still be worshiped, and to well,
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 4: how are you going to do that if we're all forgotten?
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 4: And so she turned herself into every domestic cat that
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 4: has ever existed. I think that's cute. I like that.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 4: Everybody has a little segment in their house. If you.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 3: Like that, you know, what's you know, it's interesting. I've
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 3: heard that same story, but as related to hathor with the.
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 4: Essentially it is that's it is. Yeah, it is Sathorpe.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 4: Pathorpe transforms into segment in this version of it.
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, that's oh wow, Yeah, I totally forgot about that.
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 4: That. I'm right about that story. You know. That's that's
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 4: in the Book of the Cow. And but that book
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 4: was written at a very sophisticated time in Egyptian history.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 4: It reminds me of the Golden ass of Appalais in
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 4: a way. I'm not sure that it's meant to be
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 4: taken literally as it is.
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 9: I think there's a satirical quality to the way it
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 9: portrays the gods. And I don't know if this was
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 9: really part of the depth of Segment belief, because right
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 9: now it's considered such.
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 4: An important story, you know, her bloodthirsty attack on humanity,
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 4: but it really only exists in this one tradition, which
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 4: is rather late in comparison to the early Segment stories.
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 4: In the earliest versions out of Memphis, she's part of
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 4: a trinity with Patah's the creator god and she's the
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 4: divine feminine. And then their son is this Nephritime, is
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 4: this god of healing and of intoxication and of beauty.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 4: And it's a really kind of wholesome trinity compared to
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 4: the Catholic one, which is, you know, a fierce dominating
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 4: father and a ghost maybe feminine, I don't know what, right,
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 4: and then the son who's got to be murdered. You know,
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 4: here we had this fierce, powerful female protecting the natural order,
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 4: this wonderfully creative male god who's making things to make
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 4: her happy, you know, and then their son, who represents
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 4: the beauty and intoxication of life. And healing the man
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 4: Memphis must have been nice. That's where when I hear
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 4: about that, I think that must have been nice.
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 3: All right, uh listen, I mean, I'm sure we could
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 3: keep going for hours, but we're two hours. That's that's
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 3: longer than I normally get out of the North Zon.
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 6: That was great.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was I really do I really do
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: appreciate you. I mean, you did.
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 3: You spent about thirty minutes, thirty five minutes, you know,
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 3: telling your story with mainly buhl.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: I do appreciate you doing that. I think it was
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: amazing to thank you your experience. I mean, that's great.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 4: I want people to know he was he was really
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 4: a great human being. Just everybody. He was like the
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 4: greatest grandfather you could hope for. I didn't have any
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 4: grandparents because they were they were killed in the war.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 4: Well I had one. She was practically not there though
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 4: she was mentally destroyed. But but he was like my grandfather.
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 4: He's like the ultimate grandfather. Just everybody should have a
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 4: manly halo grandfather.
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you again for even that till and for
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 2: you know, the Rose grusion talk. This was amazing. Thank
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 2: you so much. Definitely love to have you back on again.
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 4: You know, sure anytime. I really enjoyed it. Thank you
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 4: for the excellent questions. Everybody that was it was really enjoyable.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this was great. Would you like to let everybody
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: know where they can get in contact with you if
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 2: they'd like to. I neither have you on their show
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 2: or buy your books.
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 4: Sure. My books are available pretty much anywhere. I encourage
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 4: people to buy them from independent bookstores where you can
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 4: order them if they don't have it, or from Inner Traditions,
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 4: the publisher of all of them, except The Unobstructed Way,
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 4: which isn't out yet. And you can find me on
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 4: all the platforms I mean usually Instagram is probably where
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 4: I'm going to respond quickest. I'm on YouTube with a channel,
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 4: so you can see interviews. I've done a series of
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 4: videos on The Unobstructed Universe teaching, so if you're interested
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 4: in that and you don't want to wait for the book,
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 4: you can check it out there. And my videos are
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 4: generally I try to tell stories that have life changing
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 4: potential that are really inspiring. So you'll also run into
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 4: a more in depth look at John Winthrop in a
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 4: video called The Pagan Hermes and there's another one called
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 4: The Pagan Pilgrim about somebody we didn't get a chance
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 4: to talk about, Tom Morton, who's quite a character. And yeah,
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 4: I get in touch. I'm happy to answer questions. And
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 4: you can check out my documentary work and my music
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 4: from my YouTube page because they are playlists for the
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 4: teasers for the documentaries, and there's some playlists of my
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 4: contributions to the band that I'm in Lucid Nation.
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: And yeah, say hi, that's awesome. Thank you so much, running,
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 2: I really do appreciate it.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 4: Oh, you're welcome. Thanks thanks for doing this. By the way,
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 4: I think it's great that you guys are doing I
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 4: love your whole process.
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you real quick. Since jin
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: you missed the beginning, would you like to let everybody
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: know where they can find all your work as well?
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 8: So thank you so much, Nick, and thank you to
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 8: Ronnie and obviously Lisa and Robbie. But this was a
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 8: great show. I was actually looking forward to this, like
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 8: as soon as I got the invite, like exactly my
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 8: kind of subject matter. So thank you so much for
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 8: making a very interesting two hours. And Ronnie, I appreciate
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 8: it so much.
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 8: So if people want to find me, they can follow
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 8: me on Twitter at Woukoon Reborn, w uk O and
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 8: g Reborn or the show count at Threshold Saints and
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 8: Threshold Saints and on ig also and the link my
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 8: link tree will be in the show notes as they
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 8: always are. So thank you guys so much.
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 2: Appreciate that.
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for always doing it. Everybody's links
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 3: are in the bottom. Uh so, yeah, check that out.
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 3: And I also wanted to thank everybody in the chat.
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 3: We had a bunch of people in here and it
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 3: was kind of spur of the moment and there was
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 3: a lot of great stuff in there. That's why I
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 3: go live. I appreciate you all. And again that's it,
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 3: and then so the next one, everybody be well later,
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 3: good weekend, everybody,