Latest / The Occult Rejects / The Occult Rejects with David Beth

Transcript

The Occult Rejects with David Beth · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: What?
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: What's going to happen?
• 0:12
  Speaker 4: Something wonderful.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: What?
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: I understand how you feel.
• 0:18
  Speaker 5: You see, it's all very clear to me now.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Occult Rejects.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: Today, we have a guest whose work sits at a
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: particularly strange intersection of modern Gnosticism, African spirituality, voodoo, demonology, necromancy,
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: and some of the more obscure currents of 20th century
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: Western occultism. David Beth is co-owner of Therion Publishing, the
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: founder of Hantamonic Current, and for years worked closely with
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: Michael Berthod, eventually serving at the head of Berthod's initiatory
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: organizations before developing his own direction and system, Cosmic Gnosis.
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: His newest major work, The Black Pilgrimage, takes our worldview
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: into territory that immediately caught my attention. A living cosmos
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: populated not simply by psychological symbols, but by gods, daemons,
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: the dead, and other powers that Beth argues exist independently
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: of us. That raises some enormous questions about what spirits
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: actually are, what initiation really does, where authentic tradition ends
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: and modern occult synthesis begins. and whether the Western occult
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: tendency to explain everything through psychology has caused us to
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: completely misunderstand the experiences our ancestors called magic. And before
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: we introduce him, let me introduce the rest of the
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: rejects joining us.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: And today we got Kyva. What is going on, Kyva Rose?
• 1:43
  Speaker 6: Hey, I'm happy to be here with you all. I
• 1:46
  Speaker 6: read a bit of The Black Pilgrimage when Brandon first
• 1:49
  Speaker 6: got the book, so I really enjoyed the first bits
• 1:52
  Speaker 6: that I read, and then he had to take it
• 1:53
  Speaker 6: over and finish reading. But I really enjoyed it. I
• 1:56
  Speaker 6: think there was a lot of things that... we're like remembering,
• 1:59
  Speaker 6: like you put into words a lot of things that I,
• 2:02
  Speaker 6: I'm sorry, I'm not going to get into too much
• 2:03
  Speaker 6: of what, you know, I'll introduce myself, but I really
• 2:05
  Speaker 6: enjoyed the book because I felt like it really put
• 2:07
  Speaker 6: together things that I had thought about before and it
• 2:09
  Speaker 6: put it into words. So I appreciate that. And everybody
• 2:12
  Speaker 6: can find me at 11kaibarose33. com. I practice traditional astrology, also
• 2:17
  Speaker 6: tarot and Reiki as well. And I also post daily
• 2:20
  Speaker 6: and weekly astrology videos on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Thanks.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you making it.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: And my man, Magus. What is going on, Magus? How
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: are you?
• 2:31
  Speaker 7: I'm doing great. I'm so excited for this. Thank you, Nick,
• 2:34
  Speaker 7: for bringing David on. David is brilliant in a sea
• 2:40
  Speaker 7: of strange and pseudo-practitioners. I truly believe David Beth and
• 2:45
  Speaker 7: all of his work really taps into that underlying current
• 2:49
  Speaker 7: of how to live the embodied magical life. So this
• 2:52
  Speaker 7: is going to be a great conversation. Everybody out there,
• 2:55
  Speaker 7: make sure... After this, listen to all of Nick's things,
• 3:00
  Speaker 7: but also head on over to Magus in the Media. Subscribe, like, share.
• 3:04
  Speaker 7: Magus in the Media is now on all your podcasting apps.
• 3:07
  Speaker 7: We're taking over the world. We're bringing that eternal Promethean
• 3:11
  Speaker 7: fire to the occult because it damn well sure needs it.
• 3:16
  Speaker 7: And yeah, this is going to be an exciting, this
• 3:18
  Speaker 7: is going to be great because David's great. And we
• 3:20
  Speaker 7: finally got the great Robbie Marks here right next to us.
• 3:22
  Speaker 7: So this is going to be fantastic.
• 3:24
  Speaker 8: Yeah, right.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: It's like Christmas came early. Robbie, what is going on, sir?
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good to be back home. Hello, everybody. Good
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: to see all the familiar faces and good to meet you, David.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I'm R. Marks or Robbie Marks, artist illustrator. And I
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: also do the MetaMindcast podcast, as well as various research
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: into all kinds of different stuff. So I'm excited for
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the conversation today. And yeah, if you want to check
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: out my stuff, you can go to my link tree,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: which is link tree, R M a R X. And
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: that'll pull up everything for me. Thanks a lot. Good
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: to be on Nick. Good to see you.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: One thing real quick with your own podcast, are you
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: starting to put out your own episodes now?
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Like they're not guests. So you actually covering your own.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: I noticed, I thought I noticed that I was like, wait,
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: let me see. Robbie actually put out his own shit.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Good for you, man.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I ran out of stuff and good for you. No,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: you got to keep it consistent. So I just started
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: digging into my notes and, kind of putting out episodes.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: On plenty of stuff i'm sure yeah yeah good for
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: you man it's fun though you know good good yeah.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: And finally uh the guest david please uh anything that
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: you'd like to promote or however you want to introduce
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: yourself please let everybody know what's up you.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Know with all these acolytes here you know i'm uh
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: looking forward to this conversation so well thank you for
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: having me on i'm just really looking forward to this
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and um you know um No script, no plans. I'm
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: looking forward to where this is going. Done a good
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: session with Brandon before, so that was great. And I'm
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: looking forward to the day. I mean, you guys are
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: all fantastic and smart. So yeah, let's see how it goes.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Nothing to promote really from my side. I'm not really
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the promotion type of guy, but you already said it,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I'm the co-owner of Theon Publishing, publishing a lot of
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: great books, very much curated books, books that we love
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: and think bring something unique to the table. We publish
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: because we think the stuff needs to be read, not
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: because we necessarily need to make a lot of money
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: on it, so you can be sure that it's well-edited, well-researched,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: And it's something pretty unique. So any book you'll pick
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: up from CN is going to be cool. And yeah,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: you already mentioned it. I have my own book out,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: The Black Pilgrimage. Thank you, Brendan. Very kind of you.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Seems to be making some great impact. A lot of
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: people have been expecting and hoping, I guess, for me
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to write a book for the past 15 years since
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I published my last book, Voodoo Gnosis. And now here
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it is. Wasn't planned. But now it landed. So, yeah,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: there we go. And I guess we'll see what, yeah,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I guess we'll get into it a little more later on.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: One thing I was wondering, what's just popped in my
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: head now, it wasn't even a question that I had
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: thought of earlier. Out of all the books besides your own, obviously,
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: which one are you like the most happiest about like
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: putting out in your publishing company?
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Or most proud of, like, I'm so glad we put
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: this out.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, there are a couple, of course. Every book
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I'll put out, I'm excited for, because we've discussed before
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: what book we're going to do. And we've got a
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: lot of manuscripts all the time, so we have to
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: curate really well. So, of course, I wouldn't want to
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: choose one author over others, but, you know, however, I
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: can say that I was very, very happy to release
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Of Cosmo Von Agueros. This is a book which has
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: had a lot of impact in Germany when it was
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: published in the 20s. And it influenced people like Hermann Hesse,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the writer. It influenced Walter Benjamin, the Frankfurt School. It's
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: influenced a lot of esoteric circles as well. And I
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: felt that life philosophy in general of course, was not
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: really popular after World War II, with the exception of Bergson, maybe,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: or others, few others. So, especially in Germany, obviously, for
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: obvious reasons, because irrationality was considered problematic and dangerous. So,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: I felt that Ludwig Klages also needed to be rescued
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: from some people on the right side of the political spectrum,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: who loved to take on fringe authors like Nietzsche even,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: you know, who is of course obviously not fringe, and
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: make them their own and, you know, kind of package
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: them in a very, very subjective way and use them
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: for their own good. And Ludwig Clarke is to me, especially,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: you know, when you look at someone like Walter Benjamin,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: if you read his work, you know, it's a highly
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: dramatic and beautiful critique of the rationalists thinking in industrial
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: age and stuff like that. So it's basically tying in
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: with the late Heidegger and his more mystical approach to reality.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: So it's a book that really made a deep impression
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: on me, and I always wanted to, in a kind
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of guru yoga way, to pay tribute to the man
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and the work that influenced me so much. I wanted
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: to make it available to an English-speaking audience, and we
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: had the support of Paul Bishop, who's probably the most...
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: prolific English-speaking scholar that actually deals with Klages. He's a
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: scholar in the UK, a professor. And he actually worked
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: with us on that publication and some others as well
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: to release this book. So I'm really proud of that.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm very proud of a recent book we did,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: which is Freemasonry and the Haitian Imaginary, which is basically
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: a book... that is based on Leah Gordon. She's a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: British filmmaker and photographer, quite famous, won prizes and stuff
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: like that, and does the Biennale in Venice and stuff
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: like that. And she actually has received access to all
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: these interesting and sometimes very exotic Masonic lodges and people
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: in Haiti. and was able to take photos. And she,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: together with Kathy Smith, a scholar from, she used to
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: be at UCLA, now she's in the UK as well.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: So they did a work together, a book together of
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: photography and text, also with other scholars like Henry Bogdan,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: who's quite well known in the Western esoteric academia. So,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: all contributed to this volume and it's a big, you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: nice heavy volume. I don't have it right here, I think.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I'll have it in another room. But it's a beautiful
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: volume that I can only suggest to anyone picking up.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: It's only a limited edition. However, it's literally like a
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: treasure house of symbolism. If you understand... the Haitian imaginary
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: in general, the beauty and the plurality of the spiritual
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: environment there, and how masonry developed also post-independence in a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: very exotic but beautifully unique way. You can find all
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: of the intersections of voodoo and Western occult and esoteric
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: influences in that entire cosmology. And so this is all
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: kind of like delivered beautifully within that Masonic context. So
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: for anyone interested in symbolism, the merging of symbolism, and also,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, the development of spiritual systems, we always
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: talk about appropriation and very quickly. And, you know, we
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: got to like, you know, section off and section of this,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we do forget that, of course, every spirituality
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and religion in the entire world has always undergone influences
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: and transmissions by outside religious, spiritual, esoteric and whatnot influences
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and thus developed. So there is no purist system. Anyone
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: who claims, you know, their system is purely whatever, you know,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: white or this or whatever, it's complete rubbish, you know,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: every system has constantly developed through stimuli from the outside.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And by absorbing them, of course, this is something completely
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: different from the supermarket of religions where we stitch together
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: randomly according to our prejudices and certain individual needs, you know,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a religious system and kind of present it as our own.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: This is completely different. But when esoteric specialists and, you know,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: deeply initiated specialists of a ritual system take up influences
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: from outside and adapt it and help their own system
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: to survive maybe in a different place. That's a completely
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: different story. So we need to keep this into consideration.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: And this book, in my opinion, beautifully shows that type
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: of transformation of symbolisms and how symbolisms from the West
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: were integrated in a very beautiful way with voodoo and how, however,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: the Masonic structure adapted to Haitian needs and so forth.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So anyways, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I can just
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: say for anyone, you don't have to be interested in
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Haiti per se, just in symbolism and in, you know,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: esoteric imagination. And if you will find that book, a very,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: very unique contribution to that type of environment. So these
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: two books I would single out like just spontaneously. But
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: of course, you know, I could speak basically about every
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: publication we did and what I like about it.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: It's really interesting. That last book you were talking about,
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I was like, you sound like a good guest for
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: the show. I mean, that's a topic I'm, you know,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: really interested in.
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, Leah and Cassie, they would definitely come on
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the show.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds awesome.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: They're both really cool. I mean, Leah is, I mean,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: she's done some crazy, she's in Haiti all the time.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And regardless of civil war situations or whatnot, I've been
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: to Haiti, but she's been to Haiti a million times
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: more than me, and she's deeply involved in the art scene.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: She used to help curate.
• 14:19
  Speaker 9: The.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: They have a thing here, they call it the Ghetto Biennale,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: because a lot of artists from Haiti weren't allowed to
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: travel outside of Haiti, so they just decided, hey, let's
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: do something here, and then they bring foreign artists to Haiti,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: and then they do collaborations and stuff like that. It's
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: also a very beautiful project, which It hasn't happened, I guess,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: recently because of the situation in Haiti, but it has
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: been before going on for quite a while. However, she
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: also curates and helps curate Haitian exhibitions in other places.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: And Cathy herself is an eminent scholar for these Caribbean
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: spiritual systems and stuff like that. And both are very
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: eloquent speakers and very fun. um, you, you, you definitely
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: have a good time with these, with these two after
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: they come on.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Sounds great.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Um, all right. Does anybody have any questions before I
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: start going in?
• 15:16
  Speaker 9: No.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: I do have a comment.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Please go for it.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Um, I just think it's interesting how much you find
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Freemasonry or aspects of the rituals within Freemasonry linked in
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: with the various indigenous cultures from Africa to Haiti to,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: it's kind of, um, a merger, you know, going back
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: to Solomon's temple in regard to the various, uh, you know,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: slipstream and all the various tendrils that have kind of,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: you know, turned out. But yeah, I think it's, uh,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: very interesting. The, the links you have, um, in regard to, um,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: messianic and Masonic and kind of how, you know, they
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: kind of tie together. Um, yeah, but that, that's all
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: I wanted to say.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, Robbie. Yeah. I've even from, uh, I
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: don't know if you've been on the shows, Robbie. We've
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: had people on sometimes cover, like, Native American or indigenous, like,
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: symbolism or whatever.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even in Native American culture, there is as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: You start seeing, like, that looks like a Freemason symbol. Yeah. Fuck.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I know one time we even had somebody
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: on who covered the Mi'kmaqs, and they were showing, like,
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: their idea of, I guess, of, like, our creation and
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: a lot of their symbolism, and then showed Norse mythology
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: symbolism and all.
• 16:31
  Speaker 9: Yep.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: Their whole layered thing and put it next to each
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: other and we're like, yo, it's.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: The same shit.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: And then you hear in old Micmac, like supposed myths
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: or stories, that there's, you know, in some of their
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: stories that the head tribes guy is.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: A tall dude with red hair and white.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, now you're explaining, you know, so somehow with
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: the Norse and the Micmacs actually.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, who knows, but.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: You've got druid markings here in New Hampshire at the...
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: What is it? Yeah, but you see the various markings.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: It was global travel long before they.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: There's also a universal symbolism which you find. And regardless
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: even of these cultures... apparently touching each other. There are
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: some universal symbols which reappear, spirals and certain kind of
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: swastika-like spirals and stuff, triskelies and so on and so forth.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Of course, in Haitian voodoo, some of
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the voodoo spirits, they're actually masons, right? They actually even
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: appear in Masonic regalia and stuff like that. It's pretty wild.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: And of course, you know, a lot of voodoo priests
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: are also Masons because, you know, it gives them extra
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: reputation and an extra kind of, you know, standing in power,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: you know, if you can, you know, tap into another
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: mysterious pool of symbolisms and stuff like that. So, and
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: vice versa, actually.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Well, and with the Haitian voodoo, you know, you have
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: the French occupation there. So you have Rochambeau coming over
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: and they're trying to control the culture. And within French Freemasonry,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: is where you really get into a lot of these
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: strange esoteric subjects with degrees going up to like the
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: 93rd degree. So it's very interesting. Exactly.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: You have the Elu Cohen and the Martinists. They're all there.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm telling you, this book is crazy. As
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I said, again, you don't have to be interested in
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Haiti per se or something. Although you learn a lot
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and that's interesting, of course, and one should. But at
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the same time, it's just so interesting from that symbolic value.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And also, for me personally, as someone, I'm interested in
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the cultic use of symbols and what symbols can do.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And so there you can see a lot of that.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: I guess now kind of like we'll actually get to
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: you now. Dave, what was it that I guess made
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: you go down this path? How did you find yourself
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: getting into the occult or magic or whatever you consider
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: any of this?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: I became an occult reject.
• 19:23
  Speaker 9: That's very true, Dave. You are one of the Todd rejects,
• 19:26
  Speaker 9: I think.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: He's an OG reject. I've been a controversial dude for
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: a while. Actually, since I appeared.
• 19:35
  Speaker 8: I've said it a few times here and there, but
• 19:41
  Speaker 8: to give you a very, very quick I was born
• 19:45
  Speaker 8: and raised in Africa and I was lucky that I
• 19:49
  Speaker 8: had parents who were deeply interested in African religions and
• 19:53
  Speaker 8: indigenous thought and stuff like that, while at the same time, in.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Their own rejection of Christianity, were very interested in philosophy. So,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was born in 74, so when I
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: was born, Angola was still a Portuguese colony, So, however,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: you know, I was exposed even later on in other
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: countries in which we live, Nigeria and Kenya and so forth, right?
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I was exposed to a lot of their
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: cultural and religious festivities and people of priestly nature visiting
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: our house because my parents were specifically interested in these matters. And,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: you know, they worked for the diplomatic service, My parents did. However,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: they had a lot of ties into these communities. While
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: at the same time having a library filled with Nietzsche
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and all kinds of philosophy and whatever was in vogue
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: in the 70s and 60s, like Allan Kardec and spiritism
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and so forth. Like a wild library. And of course,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't find a lot of TV programs in Africa
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: back then, which were really of interest to me, which
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: was good in the sense that it made me read
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: a lot. And I just would go through all those
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: books in my father's library, which I found, oh, which
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: actually sounded cool. Like, you know, which had a wide title,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: you know? So from Nietzsche's books to Kardec stuff and,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: you know, whatever I thought was kind of, you know, interesting.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And I might pick those out. And while, you know,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: being unconsciously influenced by the entire spiritual world that you
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: encounter in Africa and not only, through my parents' openness
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and exposure going to villages and being invited to the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: voodoo festivals and IFA and whatever. But at the same time,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you know, you are, if you do not segregate yourself
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: like many expats do in Africa, especially, my parents were
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: one of these exotic, all the other expats were, oh,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: you know, the best families, they're very exotic, you know,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: they're constantly traveling in Africa. They never go home for holidays.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: They just pack up before we drive and go to
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Niger or Chad or Mali to the most remote place
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: and pack up the little children or the teenagers, you know,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: and take them along. And of course, for all the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: white people, it was like, holy shit, you know, that's
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, how can you do that? You know,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: it's dangerous and so on. My parents didn't care. My
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: parents were a bit reckless, you know, in many ways,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: but also, you know, I guess interesting people. So, you know,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: when you live in a world and are exposed to
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: it more openly, where regardless of the degree of education
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: someone has, a university professor, a minister, or whatever in government,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: you know, they are on the one hand westernized, of course,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: in order to function in a globally westernized world, but
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: at the same time, they are still so deeply embedded
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: in a living cosmos that is populated by ancestors, spirits,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and a certain ontological idea of self that is very
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: different from the West. So only later on, of course,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: in my work, I researched this more deeply, that, of course,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the idea of the self is very different in Africa
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and in other places. It's basically a conglomerate of different
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: aspects that make up your self. And these things can
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: change and move in and out and are transforming at
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: all times. And then, you know, you have to deal
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: with the ancestors and spirits when something is not right and,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you know, it has to be adjusted. So it is
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: a very flexible approach to the self and its exchange
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: with the world. And in the West, we have that very, um,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: robust insulation of the self, the idea of the monad that, um,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: has some unconscious aspects that we have to discover in
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: order to even become a more conscious monad, which is
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: integer within itself and which needs to be even shielded
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: against outside influences of all kinds in order to protect
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that ruling subject that later then emerges as the self.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So basically this type of being embedded in this kind
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: of kind of always made me think. And even then
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: later on when I was in Germany, of course, also
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: with an expert experience, you know, it seems that like
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: it seemed that certain questions concerned me that didn't concern
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: my peers. Of course, I could speak about, you know,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: girls and music and rock and roll and whatever I
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: was interested in and partying. And I would always understand
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: my friends and their problems when they would come to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: me with, I don't know, girl issues or boyfriend issues
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: or whatever. But at the same time, of course, I
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: had those too, you know, at times. But at the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: same time, I was thinking about a lot of other
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: things as well, right? Always thinking, well, the main question
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I always kept pondering was, is there a world behind
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the world that we can perceive in our everyday state
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: of mind? And I've witnessed things in Africa, also in
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: our household. We had people work for us that lived
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: in our compound, you know, people from the country, Nigerians,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: for example, who lived on our, you know, there were
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: cooks or gardeners and driver and so on. They lived, however,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: in our compound in their own little apartments. And the
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: things you witness there, the way they deal with being,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: we had cases where one would claim to be bewitched
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and crazy things ensue, you know, and very interesting things
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: that Western medicine, even if you bring in a doctor,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: can't solve. But they were being then solved in other ways.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: So I guess these have helped me to formulate these
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: questions and I never really understood and knew how, however,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: how to get behind that question in any other way
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: than philosophical pondering, in a sense. until a time where
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I discovered kind of, you know, esotericism or occultism, you know?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, in the craziest way, I remember being in,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I was maybe a teenager, and I was doing an
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: internship for German radio after I graduated high school in Kenya,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and I was bored, you know, and I went to
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: a bookshop, like a small Indian bookshop, you know, and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I just looked for a book to read, a novel
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: or whatever, right? to pass my time, you know, um,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: at night, uh, during my internship. And I saw that
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: like green, like, you know, spine and I took it
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: out and it was that huge, the confession, the confession
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of Alistair Crowley, right. You know, that, that green brick, right. Um,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: you know, with Crowley, that, you know, and, um, of
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: course I knew about Crowley from Ozzy Osbourne and all
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the music I was listening to. I was like, yeah,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: you know, cool. And of course I had also reputation already.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I had a reputation at school because, you know, I
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: was into this heavy metal stuff and I had a
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: lot of like missionaries, you know, Christian missionaries in my
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: school that annoyed me with their zealous, you know, Christianity
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: trying to constantly convert me and other people. And of
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: course me with long hair and being wild and a rebel,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: they had it like, they had it in for me.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: They're trying to convert me all the time. So, you know,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I would, I was like, fuck, fuck with them a
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: little bit, you know, being like playing kind of a
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: satanic dude, you know? And so, of course, I was
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: aware of Crowley. And when that book fell in my hand,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I just remembered, like, I mean, it's a long time ago, right?
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: It's like 92 or 91, something like that. You know,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: I remember reading the back and I was like, Saint
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: of the Gnostic Church, whatever, you know, like a mountaineer
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and this and that. And I was like, holy shit,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: you know, I also got to read this book. And
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I read it. And I was like, wow, in my,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you know, male developing phase, you know, there was a
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: guy who was like me, traveled the world, right? I
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: could relate to him, you know, being someone who is
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: like a cosmopolitan. Well, of course, Crowley was at the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: same time a super stuck up Victorian asshole. But at
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: the same time, he did travel a lot and he
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: did actually, you know, engage with different cultures. So, you know,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: and at the same time, he was a white guy,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: you know, experimenting with sex, just like I did. You know,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: he was interested in all kinds of things, you know,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: just like I was. And he was actually asking questions
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and trying to find solutions that I was also asking myself.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: And suddenly there was someone who proposed an entryway like magic,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: you know. And since I never was raised religiously, I
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: also liked his approach to magic. as not being something
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: you approach because you are a religious fanatic, but you
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: test things out, right? I'm not really the guy who
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is into magic as a scientific program, but going into
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the esoteric to see whether it works or not, without
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: any kind of religious necessity to find an ersatz religion,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: because you're disenchanted with the other one. this is how
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: then I became involved with the occult, you know, trying
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: in the early nineties to get in touch with, you know,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: the OTO and, you know, all these other groups that
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: were mentioned by Crowley and buying Crowley books and stuff
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: like that. And of course there was no internet back then.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: And I wrote like letters to publishers, never got an answer.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: They thought I was, you know, probably like an immature,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: you know, nutter or whatever. So it, took me, you know,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: a little while until I went to the U.S. to
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: study at UCLA for a while. And, hey, you're in
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: the land of corporate identity. So I go to the,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the famous Bodhi Tree bookstore in Los Angeles.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe you guys know it. Oh, yeah.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: And I remember I grabbed the Crowley book and out
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: falls like a business card. And I looked at it,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: it's like, the OTO LVX Oasis or whatever it was,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: you know, with a call one 800, whatever else to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Crowley and get in touch with it. Like, wow, no,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the hidden church, the OTO, the group I was trying
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: to get in touch with for years, you know, three,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: four years before that was actually a business card in America. That's,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: that's wild. And a, and a hotline or whatever, you know,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: it's like, that's pretty wild. And I was like, at
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: one end, I was happy on the one end. I
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: was kind of a bit turned off, you know, because like, Hmm,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: that's not as secret and as mysterious as I would
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: have hoped for, you know, but I, I took, you know,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: what I got. So I got in touch with them
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and then, you know, I had a, I had a
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: fun and a good time in the OTO for a while. I, um,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: you know, then I went back to Germany later on,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: got my own OTO body, this and that. However, quickly
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I became disenchanted, um, by this, um, in my opinion,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: typical and a bit sterile Western esoteric degree system, this
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: one-size-fits-all initiation, that type of very inflexible, in my opinion,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: way of performing initiatic rites and so forth. So, of course,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I also found then later on Crowley's work a bit lacking.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I found it very beautiful when I was very young,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And later on, however, you know, I felt it to
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: be this typical expression of this Victorian approach to magic,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Golden Dawn. All these things didn't sit so well with me,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: although I studied them for a long time back then,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: because it always, to me, lacked a certain flexibility. And
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: it always catered to the mind as the seat of
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: of the supreme magical agent, or the mind, even the
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: mind in general, as the supreme aspect of the self.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: That already from the beginning kind of gave me a
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: little bit of an issue, although I couldn't really explain
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: it much. And then I started to look into other people,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: like Kenneth Grant, who was, I mean.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Kenneth Grant is quite nuts in many ways, but he
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: also is quite innovative. He has, let's call it, a
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: great imagination. And he synthesized things pretty well. So, of course,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: it was fun to read, apart from the gematria, which
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: never works out and which is really irritating in many places. But,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you know, if I ignored the Gematria and these weird
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: calculations that don't make sense, it was great to read.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Then I went, you know, I came to Michael Berdue, which,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: you know, Voodoo Gnostic Workbook and so forth, you know,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: which was the wildest of the stuff that you could find. However,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you know, it also reconnected me with my African experiences
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: and roots, at least in language.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: So when you read Michael Burdew, you immediately think, well,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: this is actual voodoo, what he does, or a certain
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: form of voodoo, and so forth. So I got into it,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: and then I started to work with this successfully in
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: many ways. I kind of revived the voodoo-gnostic current, you
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: could say, from a kind of.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Kind of a sleep it was in, you know, it
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: was not really happening. It was kind of like died
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: down in many ways. So I kind of resurrected it,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: you could say. And then for basically nearly around 10
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: years or so, you could roughly, I was in charge
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: of the microbiology disorder starting from, you know, having a large,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: being in charge of a European section and then taking
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: over the entire order in a sense. So, however, very quickly,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: of course, I noticed it was also an entirely westernized system.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: So it was, Michael Burdi maybe is even the most
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: extreme example of an idealist westernized system of spirituality, which
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: is very interesting in its own right. And he uses
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: these archaic language and these sexualized erotic language and connects it, however,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: so he connects the idealism that is the essential aspect
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: one needs to develop. But he connects it with the ketonic,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: with the primordial strata that he loves to talk about
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: in such colorful ways, to empower it. So he uses
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: these erotic, sexual, cosmic libido, whatever he calls it, to
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: empower these highly speculative, idealist system of magical practice and mysticism, basically. So, again,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I found myself in a place where I was engulfed
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: in a Western way of thinking, where, you know, the
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: monad is the most essential structure you need to empower.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: And then, at one point, you know, after reading Ludwig Klages,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: for example, And having some other things I tried to
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: restructure within Michael Berthia's groups. However, I found if I
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: would restructure too much, it would no longer be Michael
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Berthia's parent. And I thought it was so interesting that
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: it should remain what it is. Because for people who
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: have interest in this, even in intellectual interest, it's well
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: worth studying. And it's well worth getting into. So I thought,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I cannot... basically bended out of its original vehicle,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: but needed to progress towards a place where I could manifest,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: through the transmissions I've already received in different places, manifest
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the work which basically develops an esotericism that is that
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: does not place the supreme value in the mind or
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: in the monad, but approaches it from a different angle,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: where it has a catonic angle, where it's non-transcendental, where
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: work just happens in a different way. And one of
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the things that happened during this kind of development was,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of course, reconnecting with my voodoo, past and voodoo interests,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and then going to Haiti to be initiated in traditional
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Haitian voodoo in Port-au-Prince, and developing these relationships, which then
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: of course helped me at the same time to empower
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: further the work I was doing. So things came then
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: full circle for me. Being on one hand still, of course,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: even through my university work in history, I'm a historian
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and other things, you know, I'm deeply interested in intellectual
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: history and intellectual systems, regardless of whether they're German idealism or,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: you know, the late Heidegger or Bataille or whatever, while
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: at the same time, in a cultic, esoteric, spiritual way,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: very strongly engaged in the here and now, in the body.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: What can we do while we are alive without rejecting
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: the flesh and blood, the wound, the unfairness of the world?
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: How can we understand it and embrace this in a
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: certain understanding of destiny and in a sense amor fati,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: without becoming passive in a life we haven't chosen? This
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: became my quest and my development. And I was lucky.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: That's the last thing to summarize this all. And I
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: was lucky, of course, you know, that I basically, when
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I moved away from Michael Virtue's work or groups, I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: never left there with any problem. I'm still good friends
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: with Michael. And, you know, I respectfully left everything the
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: way it was supposed to be and stuff like that.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: but all the inner group that was present in this
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: work and that was working with me very closely, they
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: all shifted over with me because we all had that
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: same interest, basically. So I was lucky to have long-time
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: students and collaborators of mine basically developing and studying this
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: work I was pushing forward with me. So that helped me,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: of course, a lot because I have people I can
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: rely on, people that I had long-standing relationships with and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: who are still there. and who understand as well the
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: importance of a certain kind of character and approach to
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: what esotericism means, what transmission means, what a spiritual teacher is,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: and what bonds you to it. So there's none of
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: this weird drama that you see in these Western esoteric orders,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: which are so hierarchical, where everybody wants to be chief
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: and nobody wants to be the Indian leader. and you
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: have all these infights and all this drama, but it's
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: typical because you remain in the egocentric subject's state of mind,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: and you have structures and systems which cater to this idealism,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to this out there, to this mental pathway, and it
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: creates this kind of thinking and standing that also very
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: often then leads to certain frictions. and that doesn't mean
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: everything is always in harmonic in other systems, but there
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: is a different type of reference for your elders. There's
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: a different type of respect for the cultus because it's
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: no longer in the mind. It's no longer, you know,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: magic of the world is no longer an expression of
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: you casting your universe onto the canvas of the world.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: So it's a very different kind of standpoint you have
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: towards the world and everything in it, including the cultists
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and your fellow petitioners. Yeah, and this is where we end.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: And the Black Pilgrimage basically sums up some of the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: major aspects of our work and some of the major
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: pillars or pylons on which this work rests.
• 41:44
  Speaker 9: Beautiful.
• 41:45
  Speaker 7: That was a beautiful nutshell there, David.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, big nuts.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Never mind. You said a few things that.
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: Kind of going back a little bit farther in your discussion,
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: you know, what you were saying here with the OTO.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: I used to be a member at Tahiti Lodge.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: I used to be. No longer anymore. And it's kind
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: of interesting how some of the things that you mentioned
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: I could even identify with my own experience. Yeah.
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: I was never a governing body person, but some of
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: the stories that I heard about from behind the scenes
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: that had a position, I was just like, I don't
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: know how the fuck you deal with any of that.
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: It was just a clash of egos and then clicks.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: Of people controlling the lodge.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: The only reason why I actually opened my own lodge
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: after coming back from the US to Germany was because
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: I found the people in Germany that I was then
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: supposed to connect with so ridiculously stupid, egocentric, and absolutely
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: unspiritual that I told them in America, like, either I'm
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: going to drop out or you're going to immediately give
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: me an initiation charter and a body charter. Otherwise, I'm done.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: And this is literally how it went. And so then
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: that's what I did. Because in America, I had a
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: good impression, right? I mean, with all the criticism I
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: had with the you know the way it was done
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and you know, I always as a European I always
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: you know, we I Always found a little bit funny
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: that you know in America You know what always had
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: to be like super Jokey and always very non-serious with
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: things who people can have an attention span of longer
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: than like sometimes 30 minutes of course and everyone some
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: people and so, you know You know, in university, it
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: was like this, you know, in university, you know, if
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: the professor didn't crack, like, jokes all the time, you know,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: the students couldn't pay attention, and they were like, that
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: guy is so boring. And it's, I found that a
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: little bit, you know, Maybe I'm a little bit too serious,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: but I always thought, you know, if something is sacred
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: to me, you know, I don't want to, like, joke
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: about it in that kind of infantile way, as some
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: people would joke about it, because then I felt you
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: can only do that because you don't really take it
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: too serious, because you probably think it's all archetypes, it's
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: in the mind, and we just joke around, and, you know,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: we do cool things. This was something that irritated me,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, you know, I learned in
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the OTO, in America at least, I learned, you know,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: a certain ritual discipline a certain kind of engagement. Other
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: than in Germany, you know, when something was happening, everybody
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: wanted to be part of it. Everybody would chip in.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Everybody would be helpful. Everybody would participate. Well, in Germany,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: it's like everybody wants to go to the party, but
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: nobody wants to organize it. Nobody wants to tune up. So,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: you know, so America taught me basically at the OTO
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: in America, taught me basically my first, you know, steps
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: in organized esotericism, the good and the bad, basically. So
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: I knew later on what also to avoid, right? Because
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I found myself later on, because also I was kind of,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of more smart than some other people,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: so I could progress very fast. And however, one of
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the things that I noticed suddenly, and one of the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: main reasons why I dropped out was not because I
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: had a problem with others, I could avoid the assholes
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: and ignore the other people. I had some nice people
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: there as well. However, it was at one point I
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: found myself feeling that And instead of working on my
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: spiritual development, I started becoming a political person, more like
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: what Nick said, you know, like behind the scenes. It's like,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: you know, you, you, you, some of you found out
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: like to get ahead, you need to know the right people.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: You need to play the right people. You need to
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: be in league with this. And so basically you have
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: to become a player, right? It's no longer really about like,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: you know, focus, spiritual work. And I found myself, and
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: maybe I was more vulnerable to this because I could
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: play it so well. you know, that I found myself,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I was paying more attention to thinking, of course, you know,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: sometimes I said, oh, I'm smarter than that Lodgemaster, you know, so,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I find it irritating when the guy tries to, like,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: explain to me something that I know he's got wrong,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: you know, so I need to, why is he in
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: this position?
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: I'm not, right?
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: So then I'm thinking, like, okay, what can I do,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: you know, to bypass this? So suddenly you start You know,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: and it's encouraged in many different ways in these types
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: of systems, these hierarchical systems, because it's like, well, when
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: you're here, you cannot do these, these, these things. But
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: when you're there, and only a few people can, and
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: you know, then you have this, this, this options. So
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I said, of course, what you want, you want to
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: have these options, right? And you don't want to remain there.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: And how to get there, knowing the right people doing
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: the right things. And everyone who's been in the OTO,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: there is not much requirement, you know, on paper that
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: you need to have.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: I was going to bring that up too.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's, it's, so, you know, I found that,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I found that kind of paper-based degree system where, you know, you,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: and then, you know, you get a little paper that
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: everybody read before, you know, on the internet and stuff
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: like that. And then, you know, you, you do your
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: little Masonic moves and handshakes and stuff and stuff. You know,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: and yeah, there is a beautiful symbolism there as well, right?
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, it felt like the typical
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: system designed to compete, that, you know, it's not supposed
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: to be like that, but it is like that, right?
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: It trains you to become someone who puts mind over matter, and,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: you know, with all these implications. So, yeah, this was
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: something that I could no longer. And I'm always very
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: honest with myself once I realize things. So I said, like, okay,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I got to move away from something that
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: basically actually fortifies my ego and my sense of how
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: cool I am and how quickly I get ahead. Because
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: even though it's hard, I mean, a young man, you know,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: loves attention, right? He loves people say how great you are. And,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: you know, girls thinking, you know, you're really great and
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: you're really cute and, you know. You know, you're your
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: great magical master and whatever. But of course, you know,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: nobody is immune to this when you are 23, right?
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: And most are not immune when they're 53. Yeah, exactly.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: So, however, at one point I was thinking, this is
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: not why I started it. You know, I don't need
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: the occult to get girls. I don't need the occult
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: to get, you know, some standing in society. And some people,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: that's the only thing they had, right? They had no jobs,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: no teeth, no nothing, but they had the orders in
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: which they tried to boost an ego and become somebody
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: that in the real world they couldn't be. Also, it was,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: of course, also... a literal collection of rejects and dropouts
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: but not the cool ones no.
• 48:55
  Speaker 7: Bottom feeders the bottom feeders exactly bottom feeders you know
• 49:00
  Speaker 7: larpers oh.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly you know while at the same time you
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: do get the occasional cool guy so yeah oh yeah
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: i still have people in the oto that i respect
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and that i like but it's not in the oto
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: it's the same in every western.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: That's what i've heard too yeah i've heard the same
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: thing it doesn't matter you know.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: And so so you know and of course we are
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: we are born into that kind of society where you
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: know from a very early age you're being told let
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: nobody tell you what to do you know you're yourself
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: you know and you're being programmed from the earliest age
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: especially of course in America more than anywhere I guess
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: right to you know Trailblaze through without looking left or right.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: You've got to make it to the top, whatever the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: costs are. And you cannot let anyone tell you what
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to do, program you, whatever. So this individualism, this radical individualism,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: you can find in these places as well, but oftentimes
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: with broken people, which makes it really irritating and dangerous
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: for even an egregore. It's an egregore that's very damaged.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about the Oteona, I'm talking about
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: the general Western esoteric culture, with all the exceptions which
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: we find as well. So I do not want to
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: give a damning statement here, because of course in the
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: end everybody should do what they want. I have no
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: house in any way there, but I'm not going to
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: do anything. And everybody should do what they want, but
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: for me personally, I was able to break away from
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: that train that you're on when you are suddenly being
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: in the now, in the career, in the people applauding you,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: people liking you. I even had a former publisher say, oh, David,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: this book was the best-selling book of our company. Now
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: you've got to milk it. And as soon as someone
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: says this, I stand back and it's like, suddenly, the
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: immediate thought I had was, am I going to start
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: writing the stuff that people want to hear so they
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: keep applauding me and thinking I'm like an amazing writer
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: or super cool occultist? Or, you know, will I continue
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: to do what I'm doing because I think it's the
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: stuff that means something important to me and I only
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: write something when I think it actually is very meaningful
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: and needs to be put out. So then I actually
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: made a vow. I don't know if we mentioned it, Brandon,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: in the podcast we did, but I actually had decided
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: after my last book, Voodoo Gnosis, which was very popular,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: to not write another book for 10 years. Just because
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: I did not want to, I wanted to sanction myself
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: because I knew I was vulnerable to being kind of
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: a rock star, you know? When I went to UCLA,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't go for academia. This was my train ticket
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: to Los Angeles to become a Swiss rock metal star.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: I spent my time on Sunset Strip and not so
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: much on UCLA campus. Westwood wasn't really my crowd. It
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: was more like Hollywood. Anyways, I censored myself. I made
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: sure that I stepped back from the limelight and the
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: you know, doing what I was doing in order to
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: concentrate fully on the inner work. And, you know, it
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: worked wonders for me, right? So it was exactly the
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: right thing to do for a vulnerable person like me
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: who wanted, you know, who loved to party and, you know,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: be cool and, you know, and for whom it was
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: easy to do that, right? So for me to not
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: do that was a hard moment, but it really helped
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: me a lot.
• 52:54
  Speaker 9: Yeah. Publishing is not practicing, right? There's a big difference.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: I was practicing a lot, but publishing is a very
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: tedious job.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say in regard to these
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: esoteric systems, through the timescape, when you look back as
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: far as the initiatory process, there was a time when
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: people didn't read a lot. And so this was a
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: way to introduce them to these ideas. But as things
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: have accelerated and we're where we're at now, We have
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: access to all this information, all these various tendrils leading
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: in so many directions that our minds are– so it
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: kind of antiquates the system itself in the sense that
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: it needs to be updated into some new form of
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: initiatory function.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Very important what you just said. That's true, of course.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Back in the days when not many people could read,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: although I guess in Victorian times, the people who did
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: enter esoteric orders were mostly the intellectuals and well-learned people
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: with a lot of time on their hands. But at
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: the same time, you're right, I guess it developed, of course,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: such systems developed, of course, in order to bring people
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: through symbolisms and experience into the proximity of a mystery,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: you could say, right?
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: The gnosis of the mystery, yeah.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly. But oftentimes this mystery also was a moral
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: mystery and a certain kind of, you know, a certain
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: type of teachings which then you could package in a
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: paper because, you know, because it was designed for the
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: mind to whatever, unite with higher spheres, draw down certain
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: higher powers, basically project out of the body. And the
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: interesting thing is, now we have the internet and we
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: have access to all these kind of sterile rituals that
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: you find in these orders, which do not really pay
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: attention to the individual. And why not? because they believe
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: the individuals are set up all the same. They're a monad, right?
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: It's so interesting to me. And just now, in our conversation,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it becomes more clear than ever to me right now.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: It's like this idea that every initiation can work so
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: well on every candidate, even if it's the exact same initiation,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: is because we really perceive the human ontology as to
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: be the same in everyone, right? So while in, when
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: you go, for example, if you go to voodoo, for example,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: a voodoo initiation, the voodoo initiation that I have received,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: just as a quick comparison, right, it took a long time.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: So only, of course, when I was initiated to the
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: highest degree of Haitian voodoo in the Asagwe lineage, the
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Hungan Asagwe, right, so the highest priesthood, it was, the
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: rituals in itself took more than one week. right the
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: preliminaries and so forth and then the main section takes
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: place in a small you could call it in a
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: womb an incubation chamber it's a rebirth kind of right
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: that's the idea behind it obviously right and you're literally
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: put in a small room with other people for a
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: week and everything that you need to do body functions
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: happens in this room right and you get to know
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: people really well and so however Everything that happens there
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: is secret, obviously, right? And nothing really also... I have
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: never heard people actually... I never read or found a
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: place where you can actually read about what happens inside
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: of this chamber. And it's very, very complicated and complex.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: What happens with you previous, before you enter, what happens during,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the things that happen, the spirits, this, that. And everything
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: is designed... Although, some things... are the same for everyone
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: who is in that chamber, but many, many things are
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: very different according to the spirits that you are very
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: closely associated with. So, you know, they find out which
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: spirits are very closely associated with you beforehand, and, yeah,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: the master of the head, and so on and so forth. So, anyways,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: there are different things that are very different in each
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: individual human, and a lot of these rituals, a lot
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: of the things that take place, a lot of the
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: entire setup is uniquely tied to the person who is
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: receiving initiation because otherwise it wouldn't work, right? So you
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: have that beautiful fusion of a system, a grammar, an umbrella, right?
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: With which you can about the things right and which
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: have a ritual skeleton but a lot of things important
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: things are individualized because they have to be because everyone
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: is set up so differently yeah and that's and that's
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: the beauty of those types of systems because they acknowledge
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: you know that you know and it's a funny thing
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: I used to teach if I can just digress here
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: yeah I used to teach when I when I was
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: more of a classical Western esotericism. I used to be
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: called sometimes to teach classes on Gnosticism in like, you know,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: academic degree type environments or sometimes workshops that go for
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: a week in some adult education facilities. And I would
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: literally teach, you know, that what we have, you know,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: in common, what sets us apart from where is the spirit,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: is that sense of I am me, this kind of
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: deep-seated Exactly. And however, you know, what I then was
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: teaching as something so unique, later on I realized is
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: actually that which makes us not unique at all, because
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: everybody has it, right? So suddenly, you know, I needed to,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: suddenly the entire setup of my Western esoteric teaching and
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: learning was literally toppled upside down in a very heretical movement,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: you know, of an inversion because suddenly I realized what
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: we thought makes us unique, that sense of I am me,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: that unique identity that we then start to develop spiritually
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: and to even merge further with what we call the
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: divine or divine spheres or the gods or whatever you
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: want to call it in your own system, is actually
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: that which is parasitically keeping us the same. And the
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: stronger we identify with it, the stronger we identify with
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: the source or with that parasitical thing which makes us same-same.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: And in voodoo and in other systems, The sense, the selfhood,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: the plural self, you know, or what in Black Pilgrimage
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: I call in, you know, of course, a little bit heretically,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the legion, right? The self as legion is actually that
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: which makes us unique. If we all compose, but in
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: slightly different components, although we could say, well, we have
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: an ancestral component, we have a star, we have a spirit,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: we have that. So then these are the same things. However,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: you have a different ancestor, you have a different star,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: a different spirit. So while the type of things that
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: compose a person are oftentimes the same, the main components,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: other components are different. You may even have, depending on
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: where you live, other things that make up who you are. However,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: the idea of The self as something unique can only
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: be considered that if the aspects which compose the person
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: are obviously not the same in everyone, right? And this
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: must be addressed then in initiation. It must be identified
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: and then addressed in initiation to recalibrate, right? Or to
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: take something out and put something else in or to
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: weaken something that makes problems and then strengthen something which
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: helps you overcome certain shortcomings, for example, right? And this
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: also then speaks to the physician of the soul or
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: to the, you know, when we have issues in life,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: you know, immediately in such systems, when we have problems
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: in life, it is also a problem that we have
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: with the world and we somehow are not, we're disjointed, right?
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: And it can only be elevated by figuring out what
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: the disjointing problem may be. And then it can be
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: adjusted because the self is not static. And there is,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: in Black Pilgrimage, I call it the wound. You know,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: the intersection of the inside and the outside. There is
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: a place, a black hole, whatever you want to call it.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: I have different words for it. But there is that
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: intersection there. in which the world travels in and out
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: of ourselves, and we travel in and out into the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: world and back. And that intersection is teeming with what
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I call demonic powers, or powers in general. And when
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I say diamonds, I mean anything that's phenomenal. The entire
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: world that is phenomenal is in itself composed of phenomenal,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: demonic essences or sensing powers. So basically, you could also
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: call it atmospheres, enthusing atmospheres. So everything is a daemon.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Everything is a daemon. A landscape.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 9: The horizon.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: The horizon.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: For example, beautifully, maybe the way I heard it before
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: was like a landscape. See, when you stand you know,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: on a ridge, and you look down into the valley,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: and then you see beautiful landscapes. So, you know, the river,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: the slopes of the river, the trees that maybe grow
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: on one side, and the animals there, all of this
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: creates a landscape that in itself is daimonic, but all
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: the components that make up that landscape, they're in themselves,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: they're also daimonic, right? The river is a daimonic, enthusing power.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: If you go closer, the landscape disappears, but the river
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: may come closer, and then the river has a stronger...
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: enthusing atmosphere while everything else blurs. So the thing is,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: I believe that when we open ourselves up in a
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: certain way, something can affect us. It is no longer
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: us imposing ourselves onto the world and immediately, when we
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: look at something, immediately we interpret, immediately the subject that
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: we are objectifies the world around us. Even girlfriends and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: boyfriends and people that we meet, we immediately project our
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: ideas and our preconceived notions upon them and also try
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: to control them, right? The girlfriend, for example, you know, oh,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't want her to change this way, so,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I slightly, you know, fuck around. And it
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: becomes a battle of the will, you know, who controls
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: the other one better? Oh, you changed so much.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 9: Right, right.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: You know, like, So it's crazy to think about it,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: you know? And one last, but we.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 9: Well, that's why you got to gaslight each other together.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. Because I've seen the craziest, especially, you know,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: people from Satanic, you know, literally, I know two really
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: super smart people who used to be together, like Luciferians
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: or Satanists, very smart PhDs, right? The entire relationship was like,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: who could subject the other better who was in control
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: who would be the one who might control the other
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: into submission that was literally the.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 9: Essence of the relationship that's crazy it.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Was so insane um to to witness it was of
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: course like a soap opera to me but at the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: same time it was sad to see right because they
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: were constantly on edge obviously right.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah so you know but i can see it every
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: mundane relationship um you know everybody's trying to like um
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 5: you know Change from the other is not.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Accepted because suddenly you feel threatened. Oh, you know, if
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: she's going to develop this way, we may grow apart
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: because now she's interested in these things. You know, and
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: so our possessiveness because our subject needs to possess. We
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: need to possess. Possession is safety and we need to
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: possess the world. This is the way we are born.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: This is the way we are brought up. This is
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: our subject thinking. We think in terms of possession, of ownership.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: Even within the Bible, it specifically talks about the idea
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: that even the green herb of the earth I have
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: given to you, everything is in your hands. Everything is
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: for your consumption.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly right. So this is how we feel. And this
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: is how we, and against is not a choice that
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: we have. It's how we are born. We are born
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: with that sense of self that needs to assert itself
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: against all odds and against all oppositions. And so we
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: need to control our spouse. We need to control our
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: entire environment because the monad is so fragile. Our insulated
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: sense of self is so fragile. Even the most powerful
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: people are constantly afraid that they lose their money. They
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: will run into problems. They're not popular. You know, you
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: ask yourself, why are all these rich people often so depressed?
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: And it's not only chemistry. It's because oftentimes the richer
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: you are, the more you have to lose, the more
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: afraid you are to lose. And it is that unhealthy,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: insulated sense of me and self which our environment, our
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: society kind of preaches to ourselves even stronger. Like modernity,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: the way this post-humanist, this post-human age in which we
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: are I like to think of Peter Thiel and people
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: like this.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 9: Transhumanists.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, transhumanists who even want to abolish death as the
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: last threat to the self.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 9: Another theater.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: This is the last threshold they need to enter what
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: Heidegger then calls the total process of consumption. The framing
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: which then becomes total because then there is no Mystery,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: which somehow can lure you out of that thinking process.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: And death was the great structural element, which still puts
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: you in front of a mystery that the human brain,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: the human self cannot explain, cannot conquer, cannot submit. And
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: so to upload yourself into a digital data stream, you know,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: is that last frantic, cowardice, escapism.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 7: It almost seems like the ultimate sin it's like the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 7: ultimate sin.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: It's a simulacra it's not even the real.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: It's uploading yourself into a simulacra because you can't stand
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: you're too afraid to face mortality to face your perishing to.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 7: Face your karma in the end of the choices that
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 7: you've made your natural.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Cycle and even if you don't believe in karma but
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: to face your end the idea of an end to
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: the self is so scary You either have to invent
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: a paradise with either virgins or you need to sit
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: on a cloud and play. you know, or you invent
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: like summer isles, summer land in paganism, these infantile childish
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: ideas of a perfect world and ever after, oh, my
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: relatives will be for me.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this gets into what, sorry, this gets into what
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: you said earlier in regard to being not, you were
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: trying to focus on non-transcendentalism.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: And I guess focus more earth or root based in
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: regard to traditional ideals.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Um, sorry to interrupt. No, no, please do interrupt because
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: if you don't, I'll just keep talking. It's a train
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: that keeps going, you know, it's the brick wall.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: No, you need to, you need to interrupt.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 7: That's part of, that's part of the conversation. Yeah.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly you know it's like you know i consider this
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: to be a great tea party so everybody can just
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: say whatever they want so i mean you're absolutely right
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: i mean um yeah so yeah you you you already
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: made that point.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: One thing i did want to say beautiful david uh
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: before you were saying a bunch of things that were
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: just kind of giving me like oto flashbacks and just
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: like i guess like thinking of like a kind of
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: like the initiatory system and uh Yeah, I do think
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: that they were done very well at the Hootie Lodge.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: I will give them that for sure.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: But from my own experience, and from other people's experiences
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: that I know, I could put it even in this frame,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: and you'll understand what I'm getting at. I think I
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: had just taken second degree. Finally took it, and I mean,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: I had waited. I think it was either Minerva or
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: first degree. They had fucked me over for so long.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: like almost two or three times as long as you
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: had a lead. And I was like, what the fuck?
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: You know, so like it's already been like I should
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: have been at second degree last year if you want
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: to start going by the differences of time. You know,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: one of those situations. But it is what it is.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: Finally took it, and I think at that moment they
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: kind of had like, you talk to Sabazius like every
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: once in a while. Like that was like some sort
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: of thing that you could do as a whatever, I
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: guess like something to do to get involved. because I'm
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: sure you even know for, or like probably any lodge
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: or anything, it's not just the OTO. You know, when
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: I was there, I used to child a lot because
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: I knew that if I did that, they wouldn't probably
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: be asking me to do much of anything else because
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: I'm already doing something for the lodge. I'm getting involved.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: So you're not going to bother me and ask me
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: to do some dumb shit I don't want to do.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm just keeping it real. So I used
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: to child a lot. So I'm thinking, all right, I
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: could talk to this guy one time a week and
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: they ain't going to fucking ask me to do shit
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: for the next year. And I could just chill out
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: and show up for the Gnostic Mass and this and that.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: You know, so I got all this shit in my head.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: And I knew this girl from some, like, Thelema group.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: I wasn't even going to say girl. I was going
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: to try to make it an honest.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: Whatever. From another group.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: And I had mentioned that I was, like, looking to
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: do that or whatever. And somehow I knew prior that
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: she did it. I don't know if she mentioned it
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: in a group or whatever. Somehow I knew that she
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: was into that. She was doing that shit. So I
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: had hit her up to ask her about, like, what
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: does that entail, this and that, so I know what
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: I'm kind of, like, you know, putting.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: Myself out there for.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: And just through talking to the person, like, they're going on,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: they mentioned that they were a third degree.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: Because they were even saying, like, oh, it's been a
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: minute since I even did it. Some shit, whatever. And
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: I just assumed, just stupid me, you know, obviously this
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: person's been around a minute. Maybe I could ask them.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: For some advice on, you know, I think it was
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: either the pentagram ritual or the hexagram ritual. It's probably like,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: you know, technique or theory on something, whatever. And I
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: asked her and she's like, oh, you know what? I
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: just started getting into Libra Rush. I haven't done any
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: of those other things. And I'm just like, yo, what?
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: You're like, you're waiting to take your fourth. And like,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: I took my second and I'm like, what? Like, this
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: doesn't make any sense to me. How the fuck does
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: that happen? Because they don't ask you what the hell,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: in my opinion, what I was going to get at.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: My opinion, at least my experience in the United States,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: as long as you're likable, you show up and you
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: get involved somehow, you could probably skate your way.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: All the way to the fourth.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: And I don't get that at all. I didn't understand.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 9: I was like, what the fuck?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: And then I would say like, well, you know, what
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: about like, you know, like doing practical things and stuff
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: like this, except for these like small required bits and pieces.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: And I was like, well, you know, the OTO is
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: not a magical order. It's the AA that you need
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: to go to.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: So, you know.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: The idea was the mystical religious arm and stuff like that.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: So that was usually then their way of, like, you know, deflecting,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: you know, that very little was happening. Or you say, well,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: the lodge can offer, you know, depending on the expertise
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: of a lodge master or member, you know, they can
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: offer certain courses. And in America, I got to tell you,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: you know, they did a lot more. You were lucky
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: you were in America. I mean, shoot, holy shit.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: I will say they did offer a lot of classes.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: Like, they always had something going on.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: So.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, so there you are. However, you know,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of times these groups become for the worse.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: And as I said, again, you know, my criticism I
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: have is not necessarily something that I need to criticize
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: because I want to teach someone any different way. If
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: everyone is happy with what they're doing, it's great. But,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: you know, when I'm asked, what do you think? And,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: you know, what are you doing? Then I'm telling my opinion, obviously,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: without having any interest to convert anyone to anything else, obviously,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: you know. So that's just as an aside. But I
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: have the feeling that a lot of these Western esoteric environments,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: they become discussion groups. They become discussion groups in a
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: bit of a theater play, cosplay, right? So they discuss
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: a lot about like, well, you know, the hexagram. And
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: then they're very intellectual, you know, and some more, some less.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: And some think they're super intellectual, but obviously they're not. And,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: you know, and... So you have some great scholars of
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: Western esotericism, right? Even practical or practicing occultists who are
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: very good at, you know, working Western esoteric mysticism and
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: magic and stuff like that, ritualists and stuff like that.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: But it becomes, you know, this, in my opinion, from
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: my own observations, and having done this for decades back
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: in the days, it becomes... on the one hand, an
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: intellectual discussion club to one degree or another. It becomes...
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: Rituals tend to be very sterile kind of workings, where
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, you know, they feel, oh yeah,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: I felt it. You know, just as a joking anecdote,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: you know, because I always felt there was a lot
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: of shit-talking and a lot of pretense in these Western
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: esoteric circles, You know, saying, oh, we did this ritual,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: you know, it was so powerful. And I felt this
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: and I felt that all the demons came.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: And I was like, all right.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: Then I was like, let's see. You know, I did
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: quite a few rituals where I literally just made shit up.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: And just to see what the reaction would be, you know,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: I would create a very, you know, kind of like
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: intense environment, you know, with the incense and with the things,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: you know, and then I did a ritual which didn't,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: which was absolute nonsensical. And after the exact same situation
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: was as always, oh yeah, I felt this, it was
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: super powerful. It was like this, it was like that. So,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's, it's, it's in many ways, um,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: a type of, of course, self-hypnosis. It is a, it's an,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: it's an.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: Aesthetic, Self-hypnosis.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Sentimental. Placebo. Placebo. But of course, you want it so bad,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: it's going to happen, right? Right. And of course, if
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: you have incense, if you have a very mysterious environment,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: of course, your senses will get impressed to a degree, right?
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: And you will feel different than you are when you
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: are hanging out with your buddies, drinking in a bar.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: But the question is, is that already... a breakthrough to
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: um um like let's call it a spiritual sphere um
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: is that really spirits coming through um and when i
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: tell this kind of stuff to my haitian friends with
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: whom i speak quite literally every day nearly some of
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: them um and i tell them like this is then
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: i'm like oh my god you know like how can
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: how can people take this serious and also how is
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: it possible that or to say like It's very understandable
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: now that people in this system often jump from system
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: to system, teacher to teacher, group to group. Today I'm
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: a Luciferian, tomorrow I'm a Satanist, then I'm a Yotio,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: then I become whatever, you know, a Golden Dawn or whoever,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: you know. And it's because, and that's what my Haitian
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: friends say, which I totally agree with, and that's also
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: a Sufi master that I know, it's they haven't experienced
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: true breakthrough. into the breaking open of the self to
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: such a devastating degree that literally other powers come in
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: and move you to the degree where nothing remains the same.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Because if that would happen, even if it's subtly working
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: on you, because of course in Sufism and even in
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: other places, it's not about the big flash moment that
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: changes your life. It's very often about a subtle transformation
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: that suddenly, however, the last tip tips you over into
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: literally an abyssal situation. And that's not the abyss that
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: sometimes Western esotericism talks about. Well, yeah, I had money, great,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: and now I'm totally different. And you can see the
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: way they talk about it. You can see it. They
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: don't understand what they're talking about. They don't understand. It's theory.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: It's theory and I had it in the astral. I
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: thought about it. I felt it. And there's nothing wrong
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: with this as long as you do not claim that
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: you know, you're following a workshop instruction and pouring a
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: little bit of rum and smoking a cigar for the
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: spirits is equivalent. And then feeling something, you know, that
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: the spirits talk to you or whatever is the same
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: as practicing Haitian voodoo and, you know, having the trauma
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: of the voodoo gods impacting on you. And that is
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: why you need initiation. That's why you need all these
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: things to make you so strong as to withstand, Stabilized.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: Stabilize you. Exactly. So, you know, however, in the West,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: we already have arrived at a place where you can
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: no longer say that it's offensive. You can no longer,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: you can no longer, um, because we want things to
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: be convenient, right? We do not want teachers. They are abusive.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: We do not want order. They tell me what to do.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not a joiner. You know, we want to have
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: the power in our own hands. We do not want
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: to relegate any power away So it's all point of
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: view and if we do something with others, it should
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: always be on equal footing Yeah, or should be basically
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: only to the degree where I am in charge of
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: what's gonna happen, right? so on this if we do
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: it like this, right and I do not say that
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: there are no people who can do anything, who cannot
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: break through to certain great realizations or great experiences, but
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: for most people, it will remain virtually impossible to break
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: through to a certain kind of strata of spiritual and
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: let's call it demonic engagement, because their self is so
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: fundamentally insulated and strong, that everything they allow to happen
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: is always the self still being okay with what's going
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: to happen, right? So you control the scenario. However, if
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: you do not control the scenario, that's when the things
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: can happen. And it's not when you say, oh, I
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: did a ritual and suddenly all these things happened that
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect. Well, that's not the same thing, right?
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: So I think you know what I'm trying to highlight, right? So, however,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: we've come to this place in Western esotericism where we,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: you know, Basically, it's Instagram magicians. It's TikTok witches.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: It's a subculture. It's become a commercial subculture.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 7: It's part of the simulacra, it seems like, right? It's
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 7: a virtual reality witchcraft.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: And everybody can do it. And then, you know, of course,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: the most popular and successful people are the ones who
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: say like, well, you don't need anything. You know, you
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: just need to go outside and have the right attitude, right?
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: And then everything will fall into place. You know, the
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: spirit is just waiting for you. And, you know, and
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: of course, before that we considered the demon to be bad, bad,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: evil people. We need to banish in a triangle and
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: push around. However, that was not right. We're all super
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: woke now in spirituality. So now they're all friends. So
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: now you just treat them as your buddy. This type
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: of really infantile, stupid talk has become mainstream talk, right?
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: Well, that's not so.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's the devotion. Exactly. And you tell it to
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: a Haitian, you know, who also knows that the world
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: that you cannot, for example, categorize spirits in a moral
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: human category. You know, they are, however, spirits so violent,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: you know, that they will rip not only you apart
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: but an animal apart and they need sacrifices with blood and,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: you know, burying.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 9: … David, you need to treat it equally and that's
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 9: not fair of you to … Exactly.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: You know, I know I'm a very bad man.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 9: Yeah, if you could not be a white male, David,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 9: that'd be great. These spirits don't like that.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I know, I know it's, it's, it's tricky, right?
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: How dare you? He's like, you can't be deporting any
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: demons around here.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: How dare you? So anyways, you know, not, not making
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: too much fun of the woke things. They're also good
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: parts about the woke movement. But wokeness in spirituality is
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: a problem because we import human morals and human ethics
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: that are the status quo of our today and into
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: a world where these things do not apply in my opinion.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 6: Well, I think it takes away from the practice to itself.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 6: Like I know even in the astrological community, it takes
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: away from the practice of astrology. Like, what are we doing?
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 6: We're studying astrology. We're not studying astrology. you know colonialism
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 6: or higher like we're studying astrology we're studying the stars
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 6: we don't have time to study the rest of the
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 6: stuff that's going on in politics because i think that's
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 6: the one thing that's happening is like the politics are
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 6: creeping into everything and that's where you know it is
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 6: a very curious thing to consider how the political tendrils
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 6: are just creeping in to grab onto things to control
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 6: it in some sort of fashion.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: In combination with capitalism as well.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Here you can see the idealism. It's idealism. It's
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: this Western thinking. It's the idealism, these kind of things,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: these abstract concepts and rules and regulations which somehow now
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: impose themselves upon that which actually should be creating these values.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, back in the days, you know, the.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: I would say that a society would create laws, taboos,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: and an ethical standpoint through the engagement with the cosmos.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: So a cultus, for example, would be a reply to
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: the overwhelming intrusions of the cosmos. The cultus is the
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: way that you reply and deal with what is confronting you,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: what is mating with you in a sense, right? And
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: this kind of contact then dictates certain ethics and certain
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: morals and certain ways of life and however nowadays we
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: create them according to our idea of right and wrong
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: absolutely human made and then we impose them upon the
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: spiritual world so you know it's it becomes like you
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: like like you guys said it becomes a simulacrum a
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: simulacrum in which the spiritual world has to conform to
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: our ideas of right or wrong, just or unjust, good
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: or bad. And we no longer understand that what we
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: are doing is we are creating a super... We are
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: actually taking out of the supermarket of religion bits and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: pieces that are pleasing to us and even bend these
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: out of shape to fit a certain kind of political... ideological,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: let's call it, framework. And this is why no longer
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: can anyone, I don't know, expose themselves to a tradition
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: in a deep sense. There are, of course, these people,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: but then they become Buddhists, they become Haitian voodoo practitioners,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: or they become, you know, Sufis.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm a Buddhist 100% because for me, it's like
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 6: the devotion is so important. The daily morning and evening practice,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 6: like giving myself to like understanding that everything in my
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 6: reality is because there's a choice that's been made. Right.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 6: So there's a karmic relationship. So like the power and
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 6: the influence is like, I'm not going to let the
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 6: things influence me. I'm going to maintain my what I'm
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 6: trying to, you know, grow inside of myself, which is
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 6: like a taking enlightenment.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: Daily practice and in a serious way belongs to the
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: spiritual world. And I mean, not practice. You just have
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: basically made up because, you know, they sound good today.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: You know, I decided for the next day. six months
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: because now I'm into Buddhism, you know, I do the
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: bell and a little bit of incense and I read
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: from certain scriptures and however it gets boring after a
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: while I do something else. Like here, I have like
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: a small altar like here in the corner of this room,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: you know, which has, you know, some of my things
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: on it that I need for daily practice and I
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: have other altars as well but this one is a
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: small one that I use for, you know, small bits
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: and pieces daily, daily. And so.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: You know, this living cultic response to the world is
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: also something, as I said, that is not something you
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: can just make up. It's because, of course, we just
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: talked so much about how we are, how our thinking,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: our society has created this insulation, this subject-object distance that
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: we cannot really bridge even if we want it, if
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: we just try it by ourselves. We need a certain
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: kind of, in my opinion, initiatic structure that helps us
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: break through right um and when we when we can
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: do that when that insulation that shell breaks or gets
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: its cracks then suddenly you know you feel these shifts
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: in such a fundamental way that nothing really remains the
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: same and also it opens up a world that's so
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: vast and so powerful that you would not constantly jump
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: this idea this jumping from system to system is just
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: because you jump from one intellectual system to one another
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: intellectual system the rituals are all more or less the
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: same um the form of rituals are all more or
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: less the same they become these mind games. They become
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: boring after a while, so you need to move on.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: Like a good consumer, you're bored with this computer game,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: go to the next. You're bored with this section.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: Of life, go to the next.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: This show, you go to the next. And this simply
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen for people who are engaged with living traditions because,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: first of all, the living tradition yields such a vast
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: cosmos of things you do. And, um, at the same time, um,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: they're just, you go deeper and deeper and deeper all
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: the time. This doesn't mean you cannot be interested in
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: many other things. I'm interested in a thousand things, you know,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: a thousand things, but you know, your practice just becomes deeper.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: And, blossoms over the course of your lifetime.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 7: Well, yeah, that's interesting because it's the same thing as
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 7: like my, my martial art practice or my Kung Fu
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 7: practice is that it's like, I will practice. I've practiced
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 7: the same forms for 20 years. I've added on obviously,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 7: but I always go back to the foundation of my
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 7: training and I can, and I've been doing like these, the,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 7: the base foundations of these Chinese practices. And I still
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 7: to this today, I realized something new, you know what
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 7: I mean? Because it is a wealth of, of.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: Foundation it's not when you get a black belt of
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: like this no done.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 9: Not at all there's no done no it's not.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Done and also the the good innovators of those forms
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: of martial arts for example those are the ones who
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: were like deep deep deep deep deep into it and
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: then you know they maybe took some other inspiration or
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: impulse and then integrated it but integrated it so expertly
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: that it maybe even advanced the entire system, right?
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 9: Oh, yeah.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: So this is how it all goes. And I think
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: in the West, and I mean not only the West
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: as West, I mean the entire global world because we're
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: all Westerners the way we think, the way we do business. Unfortunately,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: there's no corner of the world that's untouched by Westerners
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: or Westernization, I guess, right? But it's strongly, strongly... the
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: strong center in the spirit, in the mind, in the ideal,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: in the sense of self, is so damaging. And however,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: what's also damaging, in my opinion, is if we want
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: to abolish it and merge with some type of oneness.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: This abolishing of any kind of dualism also is an escapism,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: because then we pretend, now we're in a never-ending samadhi,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: or we have We have overcome all dualism, so now
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: the world, like all Gnostics would say, now the world
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: either becomes our playground and we can do whatever we want,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: because the world is not real, because we have identified
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: so strongly with God that we are no longer the
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: material body. We know the material body is basically like
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: a dream.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: You abolish the self.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: We abolish the self, exactly, but however in favor of
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: a super self, which is God, right? And then you
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: have two avenues, either then you have license to do whatever,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: because the life in the body is a dream, is
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: a projection of God. God dreams himself into life, right?
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: In all these different manifestations. Or we reject the world
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: so completely because now we're in the mind and we
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: no longer identify with it. So this type of um, transcendental, um,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: escapism is a more peaceful one, of course, obviously than
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: most of those, you know, that we see in other systems. However,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: it also leads to an escapism. It also leads to
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: the rejection of the perishing flawed, let's call it from
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: that perspective, um, life in the here and now. So
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: where we have to arrive in my opinion is, um,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: is a return into a living polarity and relation where
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: we do not abolish distance, right? Where self and worlds,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: self and other, you know, open each other up for
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: a certain type of magnetism, a dynamic, which influences one
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: another in a very meaningful way, in a world-making way,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: in a cosmogonic way. And this actually is possible. So,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: The sense of self is not abolished. However, the other
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: is also not absorbed into us or we into this,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: we into the other. So there is a dynamic, right?
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: There is a kind of a dance, a dance between
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: myself and the world, which creates worlding, right?
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 7: And that is that cosmogonic Eros that you're talking about.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: And the cosmogonic Eros is the force that makes this happen.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 9: That underlying force, yeah.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: That magnetism... Exactly. The cosmogonic errors is the magnetism that
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: draws myself and the world together in that meaningful way
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: where you kind of enter the dance, you know, the
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: height that you call it in a very different way
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: and in a very different environment, however beautifully the mirror dance. Yeah.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: Nothing. So that what you consider self can only be
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: self if it is also constituted by another. So the
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: self is never completely you alone and insulated, but the
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: self is always also the other that mirrors itself or
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: impacts with you or onto you or into you. But
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: at the same time, you impact the world in a
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: meaningful way as well.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 7: Yeah, Merleau-Ponty talks about that as intersubjectivity, taking Heidegger's work
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 7: into the phenomenological.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So basically, soul bearing soul, You know, you opening
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: yourself up, the insulation, you break open your insulation so
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: the world can impact, but not impact in a way
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: that you already predetermined, right?
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: But you have to, and this is the tricky thing,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: you have to force yourself to release control.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: Because only when you release this control, the other can
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: be what it is. And not be what you make
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: it to be.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 9: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: That's a tricky thing.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: In the book of coming forth, Osiris says, I opened
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: myself to the world and the world came in.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Beautiful. Yeah. And that's exactly, that would be a
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: perfect way of expressing what I've been trying to say. Yeah.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: And when we establish a relationship like this, It's also
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: not an exploitative relationship. It's a relationship where we more passively,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: without becoming totally passive, we have to have a certain
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: proactive passivity. In my book, I call it a certain
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: type of waiting. Waiting in itself or being open, waiting
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: in itself is already a magical practice because if we
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: wait for something specific, it's not a practice because we
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: already expect something specific to come. But if we wait openly,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: without expectation of what comes, this openness already breaks down
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: our structure that already expects everything in a certain way
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: to appear.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 9: That's high-level Kung Fu right there.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 7: That's the exact way that you teach.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 9: A good teacher will teach you exactly how to hold.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 7: And you're just active enough where you can still be
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 7: sensitive enough to the opponents or the person that you're
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 7: playing with at that time. for their movements and that
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 7: is that sensitivity drills.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: Holding yourself open is the activity. And the rejecting, however,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: the waiting for something in particular.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 9: Yeah, the lust for results, right?
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: The lust for results. But in a very different way, right?
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: The lust for results in Crowley or here is very different. However,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: if you manage to stand open Suddenly something breaks open
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: in the world. Something will stand forth and appears. The
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: world appears.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 7: That's the unconcealment that Heidegger talks about.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Heidegger takes actually, it's very interesting, here's a chain
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: of transmission. Heidegger talks about the open in that sense
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: as well. Creating the open.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 9: Bringing it into the clearing.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: He has the idea of the open from Rilke and
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: Rilke took it from Luther's Target Circle. So interesting.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 9: Oh, that's an interesting line. I didn't know he took
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 9: that from Rilke.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 9: Oh, interesting.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 7: Because I know he was taking Aletheia from Parmenonides and
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 7: his poem, but then bringing it forward to Rilke.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: But interpreting it in a very different way. But the
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: idea of the open, the open life, the openness. That's
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: something he found in Rilke and Rilke took it.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 9: From Klages.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: From Klages Circle. Alfred Schuller.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 9: That's cool.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: But this is so difficult. So, you know, we talk
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: about these things and we can even, you know, in
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: an intellectual way say like, well, yeah, you know, that
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: sounds beautiful and that sounds like a thing that we
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: would want to do. But it's so hard to do
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: because our everyday thinking immediately without our control is impossible.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: a way of thinking and of projecting and of controlling. It's,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: you know, we immediately launch into our stance towards the world.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: It's so automatized.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: It's very hard to break this down.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 9: Isn't that different?
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 7: That's so interesting because I feel like one of the
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 7: problems with the occult, esoteric, and just the world in general,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 7: the Western world in general, is that they are trying
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 7: to open up their wounds but controlling it. So it's
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 7: almost an inverted version of it. what you're talking about
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 7: because you have to become vulnerable enough to allow the
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 7: wound to be open to then allow it to be explored.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 7: And then that's that level of openness that you're talking about.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: It can even become very dangerous because now you pretend
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: you're opening yourself.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 9: That.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: Look how much my will is open.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 9: That's the inflation of the ego.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: And that is then the ego allows, you know, I'm
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: so humble. Look, look, look. I'm opening myself. I'm no
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: longer this and that. And this is even the worst
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: entrapment of the spirit or of the parasitical agent, however
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: you want to call it. It's this entrapment where suddenly
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: You allow things to happen because, however, deep down, you're
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: still in control, right? You allow this movement. You allow
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: a certain humbleness. And then you want this idea, like, wow,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: I'm super humble, right?
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 5: Or you allow a teacher to work with you, but
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 5: only until you think, like, well, this I didn't like.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: And then maybe he misunderstood me. Maybe he's not the
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: right teacher. Or maybe he's not this. I'm not that.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: A Sufi master used to tell me this. They said, like,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: the Westerners, they are very hard for me. They come
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: to me. And they tell me, you know, they want
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: to really learn and then they appear humble and I
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: want to throw myself to your feet and kiss your feet,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: great master of the universe, you know. But then, you know,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: after a certain while, you figure out they had a
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: certain expectation. They wanted the master to acknowledge them quickly
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: as good students. They wanted the master to teach them
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: certain things. They want the master to act in a
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: certain way that they think is masterly. So they have
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: all types of preconceived ideas of what they're going to
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: find in the system, how the master should be, how
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: the master should teach. And if the master starts to
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: teach things which they find problematic in a certain way,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: then they immediately start to reject, say, well, I guess,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not for me, or the master's not
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: for me, or this or that. And this happens as
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: soon as you threaten the sense of self. You know,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: and it's like, well, you know, I think he wants
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: to control me.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 6: And it's also protecting the practice though, as well. I mean,
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 6: because if people can't make it through that first stage,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 6: you know, if they fall to like, oh, my bus
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 6: is late, I can't get to the temple, I might
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 6: as well just not.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: Go, right?
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 6: Like if they can't get past that first initial struggle,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 6: like they're probably not meant to do the practice, right?
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 6: And I think that's where there's a lot of safe
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 6: keepers when it comes to like people not being able
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 6: to touch the truth, because like, they've scorned it so
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 6: much in their past, right? So by scorning it for
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 6: so long, you therefore kill your seed for such amount
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 6: of time, right? And so you have to live with
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 6: that karmic repercussion of those decisions. So I think there
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 6: is like, you know, I, as a Buddhist, like I'm
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 6: always like, everything's karma, you know? So like everybody in
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 6: my life, they're there because we've made some decision together
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 6: and there's something we have to do in this lifetime, right?
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 6: So everything, for me, I look at it from that perspective.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 6: And so I think like there's a lot of safeguards
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 6: when it comes to like traditions, right? that have a
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 6: lot of power. And I think that's one thing about
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 6: like the Western esoteric community that I find is such a,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 6: I found, I find just like dissatisfying is the fact
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 6: that they don't safeguard like that. Everybody's just like sharing
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 6: their secrets just openly. I find that to be just like,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 6: what are you doing?
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: Like those are supposed to be happening.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: Cause they're all in the books, right? The living traditions,
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: the secrets are not in the book. Of course they
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: say this in Salima too. The secret is not in
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: the book. The secret is in it. But of course,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: The secrets here are very often in the book, right?
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: And so a living tradition, of course, is not where
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: the secrets are in the book, but it's that constant
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: deepening of your relationship with the universe and the subtle
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: changes which constantly happen throughout your life. And one little
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: thing I wanted to say is like, You know, we've
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: talked about the bad students that can't really release control
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: over sometimes to maybe another party in order to break
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: them open. However, I understand that party because in the
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: West you also have these exploitative, abusive teachers because like
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: attracts like, right? You have the systems, the teachers who
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: also are complete ego players, totally non-spiritual people who created
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: their own systems who are Satan, or they are in
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: these esoteric orders who are these transcendental hierarchical orders where
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: these power struggles and these abusive processes, which we also
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: see in normal everyday life in companies, where they are
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: basically re-enacted, although we all say we are much more
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: spiritual nowadays in these circles. It's not the case. Very often,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: we said it before, there are broken individuals, individuals who
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of power in the real world.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: And now in that place, suddenly they get traction. And
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: of course, then they become even more abusive. So of course,
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: like attracts like. This is why you have students who
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: can't and don't want to open themselves, but also want
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: to be masters as quickly as possible, trying to bypass
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: all kinds of processes. Then you have the masters who
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: love to be masters and who love to control. And
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: so it becomes this abusive, toxic relationship, you know, oftentimes
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: in these groups. And that's why they constantly implode, there's
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: constant drama, there's constant, this guy did this, this girl
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: did this, this, you know, it's all abusive, it's all this,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: it's gatekeeping, whatever the hell. So the whole drama of
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: the Western esoteric world, the whole politics is based on
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: the structure that's imposed upon the lives that we as
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: modern people live and these esoteric orders and people are
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: a reflection of it. So you really have to take
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: yourself out of that entire environment in order to maybe,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: when you're courageous, and of course, giving yourself over to
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: an initiator to a certain degree, to release control. When
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: I was in Haiti as the only white person in
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: a civil war, it was literally a civil war. There
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: were burning barricades. You couldn't go out for a week
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: because people were killing the streets, you know. And it
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: was literally initiation on the battlefield. And I had no control. Zero.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: And I didn't know what was going to happen to me.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: In any form or way. But I trusted my initiatory
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: mother to do what's necessary. And to kind of sustain me.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: So I managed to go through it.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: And.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: So I released that control that for me as a
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: Westerner was very hard to release, especially being a very
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: confident and in control kind of guy. So unfortunately, I
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: understand a lot of reluctancy of Western students to give
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: themselves over to structures or to teachers because They have
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: seen and witnessed all the abuse going on and the
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: real teachers from other traditions or even in the West
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: reluctantly want to deal with these imbalanced, annoying Western students
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: because they bring that same bad attitude to the table, however,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: are not yet teachers where they can impose their will
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: on others. So it's toxic.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: Doesn't that also lend to the idea dealing with these
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: toxic systems that America has created through politics and capitalism?
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: The reason being, so many Americans are apt to reach
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: out to other cultures, to look to other systems, to
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: try to break free from this thing we've been encapsulated in.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Like your namesake Marx would probably do. You're totally right. 100%.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: You know, however, it also becomes this weird also lust
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: for exoticism very often.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, true, true, true.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: I see this, like I lived in, I lived also
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: in Brazil, right? Years I lived in Brazil. My son
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: was born there. I have an ex-wife from Brazil. So
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: I lived there many years or some years, studied also,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: of course, the systems I was interested in and, you know,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: from Ayahuasca to Kimbanda and Mbanda and whatnot, you know,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: and got initiated there as well. So, You find a
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: lot of Westerners coming with the right attitude. You find
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: this in Buddhism as well, right? So you have Westerners
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: who are fed up with that system. Americans, Germans, people,
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: you know, sick of this capitalist, exploitative way of life
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: and spirituality. They go there. However, they can't shake their mind.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: They can't go out of the insulation. They have the right.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, I don't want this. I want to
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: open myself to cousins, I want to have a different
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: relationship with the world and with the environment and stuff
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: like this. Good attitude, right? But then they go to
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: these places and of course go there in a way
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: like consumers. And then they go away with certain experiences,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: which then oftentimes become like, you know, they create a
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: certain kind of ego trigger. Where they suddenly then become, oh,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I had this experience in Peru while I
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: was doing ayahuasca with the shamans, you know. And, you know,
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: when I had this cosmic moment and this and that
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: and blah, blah, blah. And suddenly, you know, they think
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: they have reached a certain degree of enlightenment. Now they're
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: going to teach others. Now they're going to do this. While,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: of course, you know, when you speak with the shamans
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: who do ayahuasca or you go to the Santo Daime,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: which is a Brazilian ayahuasca church and stuff like that,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: you know. Their relationship with the plants is a very
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: subtle one, in a very long process, understanding what's going on.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: But we westerns we want the shortcut to initiation the
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: shortcut to enlightenment.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 7: Yeah we don't want to integrate there's no integration process.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 4: We don't want to really integrate um or only that's
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 4: huge too that is huge.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: Or only yeah only to the degree where it's Comfortable. Convenient,
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: in a sense, right? I also had, like, I also had,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: I lived in Nigeria, right, which is famous for scamming,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: you know, in many different ways, but it's also a
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: very vibrant place, one of the most cool places I've
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: ever lived, and the spiritual scene is very amazing, like Ifa,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: the Orishas, you know, it's created a world religion, right,
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: or it basically became a world religion, you know, even
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: in Sanrio, all these have influences from that, right? So,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: I know some Nigerian capitalists, you could say, who capitalize
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: on the need often also of Afro-Americans to reconnect with
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: their culture, but who have the attitude you just say,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: and not only, of course, Afro-Americans also, you know, Latin people,
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: white people, who then want to go to Nigeria want
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: to become Ifa priests in a two-day, three-day initiation, then
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: go back to their own communities and become the big Oba, right?
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: They become the big chief, right? So they go there,
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: and then my colleagues, or not colleagues, associates that I
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: know from other places, They sometimes say, yeah, we love
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: these guys. You know, they pay us $ 10, 000. We take
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: them to our village. You know, we put them in
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: a hut. We shave their head. We kill a few animals.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: We do a lot of stuff, you know, that's wild
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: in a language they don't understand. And we send them
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: home with some things we give them. And then they
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: are like, we say they're either Jujuman or Iphopis or whatever.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: And they're not even Yoruba, some of them. You know,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: they are like from another tribe which have nothing to
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: do with the Orisha. So, you know. These people, and
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: of course, the people who go there, on one hand,
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: I guess, you know, they have often, they have, of course,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: the right attitude. They want it because they want a
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: different spiritual world. But very often, they also do not
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: do their research. They don't care to study for a
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: long time. They fall for the trap saying, you know,
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: come for a week. We'll handle it. You don't have
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: to be associated with us. This is like the package deal.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: And they think So, you know, we have developed that
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: commercial idea of spirituality. We just have to do it,
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: then we own it, in a sense, right? We don't
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: understand it. The idea that you associate yourself with a
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: spiritual family and a spiritual teacher or a mother. In Buddha,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: it's a spiritual father, spiritual mother, whatever. And, you know,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: there becomes a lifelong transmission and studying together in this
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: family kind of system and relationship in which you learn
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: and study and help each other out. And even if
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: the student, the son, becomes maybe more famous, more powerful
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: than the mother, same as in Sufism, you know, the
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: greatest saints of Sufism would always pay respect first to
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: the master who have initiated and tutored them all through
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: their lives because they are their fathers of the Gnosis
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: and not in a formal sense. these fathers of the
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: gnosis or these mothers of the tradition, they become more
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: important than their flesh and blood mothers and fathers. This
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: is really how it is. Because they have facilitated a
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: birth that's much more profound than a profane birth, you know,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: in a sense. So, because they have, you know, aligned
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: them to the cosmos once they have been called to
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: a certain degree of initiation. So, what I hope for
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: is that more people break through this spirituality of convenience,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: this subculture of creating a more interesting, you know, spiritual
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: umbrella because what you're used to is boring or because
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: your life is a bit vacant, your life is not
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: colorful enough. So you create yourself as a witch or
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: as a pagan, you know, that worships Hecate or, you know,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: or you're an ISIS worshiper. And however, I hope some people...
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: You know, it's great when you create a world that's
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: colorful and nice, if you're happy with that. There's absolutely
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that. And a lot of people would
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: sell a lot of books and a lot of workshops
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: to make people happy. But I care only for the
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: spiritual professional. I only care for them who feel a
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: calling to a very deep degree. And for those few,
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: I really hope that they can break through that marketplace
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: that Nietzsche called out. the, the, the marketplace where, you know,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: he as Sarah Tustra was considered to be the fool
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: because he was disturbing, um, you know, the revelries, um,
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: and it's, you know, and who knew that the people
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: do not have ears for his words at the point
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: where he was at. So, um, however, there are always
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: those few in between for whom I write a book
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: for whom I'm going to, uh, you know, have a
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: nice podcast episode. Um, it's also fun and entertaining, right?
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: But I do hope, the only hope that I have,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: apart from having a good time with you guys, is
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: that some people feel that if they really want and
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: if they have a calling to a deep spiritual life,
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: that they have to fundamentally and thoroughly challenge their sense
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: of self and also be open for initiation from the outside.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: That self-initiation solitary practice as much as that helps and
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: as far as that can get you and as interesting
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: also intellectually as that is. You can become a great
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: scholar even. It only gets you to a certain place.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: I believe that 90%, 95% of the people, me included,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: I needed external initiatic processes and a ritual grammar which
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: literally reconfigurated my entire inner setup for me to be
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: able to engage the cosmos, the demons of the cosmos,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: the polydemonic world in any type of meaningful, and I
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: mean in the fundamental comprehensive self, meaningful way, that it
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: wouldn't remain a fragmented experience. You can undergo an ayahuasca
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: experience and have an amazing moment, and even a great
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: moment of epiphany even, but it remains a fragmentary experience,
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: if you do not have the symbolism, and now we
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: come back to symbolism, if you do not have the
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: symbolic grammar in which you can place it, that experience,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: and which then becomes part of a world in which
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, right? So community is another big thing
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: for me. I believe, you know, you cannot become an
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: hermit or like a solitary person in the sense that
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: isolated the way you are you can break through to
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: the you know deepest um mysteries of life and death
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: or of the world itself because um you are determined
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: by the world as well you know and even the
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: greatest saints who went to the to the to the
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: caves right who wanted to be as far from the
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: world as possible you could say like they said like
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: well i'm I'm not determined by the world at all.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: I'm living in the cave. But why do they live
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: in the cave? Because they don't want to be in
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: the world. So what determines them most strongly? The world does.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: So their hermitage is directly determined by their relationship with
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: the world. So even those people are extremely strongly tied
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: into it. So these are very important things that I
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: hope people will follow up in their thinking and in
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: their contemplations, apart from having a great time. With a
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: great punch like ours.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 3: I like that. That was well said, David. Unfortunately, due
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 3: to time, we're going to have to probably wrap this
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 3: up soon. Or now, actually. I would really love to
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 3: get you back on again, though, in the future. I
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 3: feel like there's a lot of stuff to talk about. Oh, yeah,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 3: for sure. I really didn't even touch any of my
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 3: questions because of the way it flowed. That was probably
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 3: a better.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: Thing if I didn't. Like one of my Gnostic saints,
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: Alfred Schuller, said, you know, like sometimes it becomes an
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: eros of the, you know, in this case, they're the
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: interviewers and the interviewee, you know, or whatever it's called
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: in English. So, you know, audience and speaker, you know,
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: if there is no eros there, the talk becomes sterile,
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: it becomes boring, nothing transpires. But In a setting like ours,
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: I believe there was a certain Eros that opened up
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: the conversation.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 9: Beautiful fire.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: I agree. And it's a magnetism that allows things to
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: come out. Things manifest in certain environments.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 9: To unconceal themselves.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: They unconceal themselves if they are not forced out. But
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: they are allowed to come and retain also a bit
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: of mystery.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 9: Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, that's fantastic.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 7: That's why I was all like, yeah, Nick, you need
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 7: to get David on because this is exactly the kind
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 7: of conversations that we want to have and that, Nick,
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 7: you want to have on the Occult Rejects for sure.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, for sure.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 3: Definitely. I thought this was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 3: It's fantastic.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: It a lot.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 9: This is fantastic, David. This has been everything.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 7: And the message is even everything that was said and
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 7: maybe unsaid, it's sometimes what's in between the words that
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 7: is actually the most important thing.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 9: I think that's beautiful.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: It's fantastic.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 3: Um, David, before, yeah, before we wrap it up, uh,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 3: let me have everybody, uh, plug their shows and whatever.
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 3: Robbie Marks, sir, please. Yeah.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: Our Marks artist, illustrator, um, researcher. Um, I have my
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: Nimrod book that's coming along. It's taken forever. And, uh, yeah,
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: if you want to check out my other various works,
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: my website, my Etsy, my Patreon, you can go to
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: my link tree, which is link tree, R M a
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: R X. And that'll pull up everything for you.
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 3: Thanks a lot. No, thank you, sir. Thank you for
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 3: making it. And my friend Brandon, what is going on, Magus?
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 3: How are you?
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 7: My friends, this has been fantastic. These are exactly the
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 7: kind of conversations that I want to be having all
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 7: the time. These things are why I live life, I think.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 9: I truly feel that way. You know, these are the.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 7: Things that revivify the soul. and really bring fire to
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 7: why I'm alive. That existence as such is here so
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 7: we can, so it can allow it to be unconcealed
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 7: and things to be revealed through these types of conversations.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 7: And so again, I'm so grateful for David coming on.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 9: That's my statement. So thank you guys.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. And Kaiva, please let everybody know.
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 7: Awesome.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, this was fun. Thanks for coming on, David. I
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 6: appreciate the conversation and listening to you talk about all
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 6: the things you talked about.
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 9: It was great. A lot of good stuff.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 6: And so everybody can find me at 11kaibaros33. com. I'm also
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 6: on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. I do daily and weekly
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 6: astrology videos and also offer private readings as well.
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 7: So thank you all.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you for joining us. I appreciate it.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 4: David, please let everybody know where they can find any
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 4: of your work, and please let them know what's up
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 4: with your books.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: You can go to Theme Publishing. You'll find a lot
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: of cool books, including The Black Pilgrimage, which I hope
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: people will read and have a good time with. Then
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: there is ThePrimordialWay.com or Cosminosis.com, where you can find a
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: little more about, I guess, my work and the work
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: we do in our magical, esoteric environment. I loved it
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: hanging out with you guys, Germany and America in that
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: digital world coming together. That's pretty wild. I love it.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: The modern world is not that bad in many respects.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: As you said, we can be an antidote in a
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: system that's very exploitative, that's making people sick in many
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: different ways. I think if a lot of people understand
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: what you said, Brandon, the world is beautiful. The world
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: can be beautiful, and we do not have to escape it.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: We do not have to escape an idealism. The world
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: in its tragedy and in its tragic state can be beautiful.
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: But for us to experience this, we have to change
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: certain setups. We have to recalibrate in a way that
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: a tragic world can become a very beautiful world, a
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: very ecstatic world, and it's possible. So I hope a
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: lot of people will have this experience one way or another.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for coming on, David. It was
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 3: really amazing.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys for having me.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 3: Amazing chat.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 2: I really hope to have you on. Great talk.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you, guys.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and thank you all the rest of you for
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 4: making it. I appreciate it. And that's the end of
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 4: another Occult Rejects. Until the next one, everybody be well.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: Later.