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Discussing Platonism w/ Eric Claussen · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen.
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  Speaker 2: What's going to happen?
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  Speaker 3: What Welcome back to the occult rejects. Today we are
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  Speaker 3: stepping into a philosophical tradition that has shaped Western mysticism,
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  Speaker 3: ceremonial magic, theology, psychology, and the very idea that human
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  Speaker 3: consciousness can ascend towards something higher. Our guest is Eric Clausen,
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  Speaker 3: a contemporary Platonist writer and the founder of Platonic path.
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  Speaker 3: His work approaches Platonism not merely as an academic subject
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  Speaker 3: or a collection of ancient arguments, but as a living
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  Speaker 3: spiritual discipline, a path of purification, contemplation, virtue, and the
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  Speaker 3: transformation of the Eric is also the author of a skeesis,
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  Speaker 3: The Handbook of Platonic Practice, a work that explores how
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  Speaker 3: the teachings associated with Plato and the later Platonic tradition
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  Speaker 3: can be translated.
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  Speaker 2: Into actual practice.
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  Speaker 3: His work draws us into the world of Plato, plutonis iamblicus, proclus, orphism,
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  Speaker 3: theogy metaphysics, in the ancient pursuit of becoming more aligned
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  Speaker 3: with the divine. This is especially relevant to what we
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  Speaker 3: explore here because so much of what later appears in hermeticism, narcissism,
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  Speaker 3: Renaissance magic, ceremonial ritual, and Westerner coul Philosophy developed in
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  Speaker 3: conversation with the Platonic tradition. So today we're going to
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  Speaker 3: discuss what Platonism actually is, what modern people misunderstand about Plato,
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  Speaker 3: whether philosophy was once a form of spiritual initiation, and
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  Speaker 3: what it means to practice these teachings in the modern
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  Speaker 3: world rather than simply reading about them. But before we
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  Speaker 3: introduce Eric, I will introduce my man. We got Maggis
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  Speaker 3: in the media, Brendon. What is going on?
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  Speaker 2: Sir? Thank you so much for making this.
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  Speaker 4: You're so welcome, Nick, thank you so much for having me.
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  Speaker 4: As you know, I love a lot of things, and
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  Speaker 4: what I love is Polato and Platonism, being hidigary and
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  Speaker 4: hermetic Platonist myself, whatever those things mean. But truly, the
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  Speaker 4: underlying aspect of the philosophical the Western occult tradition, lies
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  Speaker 4: on the shoulders of Platonic mysticism. And so these conversations
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  Speaker 4: are fascinating, amazing, and I think they should be had
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  Speaker 4: in all places, and no better to do it than
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  Speaker 4: with Eric. He I'm really excited for this conversation and
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  Speaker 4: as everybody knows out there, you can find me at
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  Speaker 4: Magus in the media where we talk about all things
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  Speaker 4: my magic and meaning and philosophy, the occult as we
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  Speaker 4: walk through this strange world and try to become our
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  Speaker 4: own philosopher Kings and so yeah, I'm really excited for this.
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  Speaker 3: Let's let's get it on as this heah, thank you
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  Speaker 3: very much, Magus.
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  Speaker 2: I'm very appreciative that you can make it and Eric
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  Speaker 2: my man.
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  Speaker 3: Unfortunately we will not be debating you and calling Plato
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  Speaker 3: a crypto jew that was part of the New World.
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  Speaker 3: But please, so let everybody know what's going on with you,
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  Speaker 3: Please promote your book, let everybody know where they can
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  Speaker 3: find all your amusing stuff.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 6: So first off, just thanks for having me on, you know,
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  Speaker 6: looking forward to talking to you guys and getting into
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  Speaker 6: all of this. So there's a lot of different places
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  Speaker 6: you can find me. So there's my sub stack that's
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  Speaker 6: just under my name, Eric Clausen, So if you want
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  Speaker 6: to find anything that I write, I put pretty much
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  Speaker 6: all of that stuff over there. And platonicpath dot org
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  Speaker 6: is our main website that's kind of the hub for
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  Speaker 6: most of the stuff.
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  Speaker 5: That we're doing.
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  Speaker 6: I do have a new book that's on there that's
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  Speaker 6: called The Platonic Path, and that's available for free for
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  Speaker 6: people who want to sign up there, and it's really
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  Speaker 6: about our vision into the future as far as creating
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  Speaker 6: platonic communities and kind of ethical communities based around family
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  Speaker 6: and community. And then obviously there's my book Ascassus or Ascesis, however.
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  Speaker 4: Imagine being able to do.
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  Speaker 6: You can get that on Amazon, and you can get
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  Speaker 6: it through our website too if you just want like
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: a PDF or any pub version of it. We've got
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  Speaker 6: it on there as well, for a little bit cheaper
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  Speaker 6: than what it is on Amazon.
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  Speaker 5: But those are kind of the main hubs.
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  Speaker 6: Or you can catch me on x you know, I
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  Speaker 6: try to keep myself above the ship posting for the
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  Speaker 6: most part, So no.
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  Speaker 3: You do pretty good on board. Yeah, now I've noticed
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  Speaker 3: some of your posts. Yeah, you know, have to ship posted.
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  Speaker 4: It's hard. It's hard these days. Seems to be a
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  Speaker 4: lot of ship posters out there. It's one of those
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  Speaker 4: things that I think it's like if we fucking punched
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  Speaker 4: each other in the face a lot more, I think
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  Speaker 4: there'll be a lot less ship posts. Double leggs somebody
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  Speaker 4: down to the ground really fast. I think a lot
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  Speaker 4: of these people need to be slapped slapped around a
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  Speaker 4: little more. That's how I feel. But I've got a
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  Speaker 4: background in martial arts, so I think, yeah, those who
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  Speaker 4: I think those, uh, don't don't be fooled by the
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  Speaker 4: pretty face, right, Eric, you got a nice little smile there.
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  Speaker 4: I don't be fool by it. I can only imagine
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  Speaker 4: you can throw hands, and I.
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  Speaker 5: Think I'll win by weight advantage.
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  Speaker 2: That's funny.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, it's funny you mentioned that. Like we've
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  Speaker 6: had that even in our discord groups before. You know,
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  Speaker 6: sometimes we got guys that are you know, they come
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  Speaker 6: in and they just talk a lot of trash or
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  Speaker 6: the way that they speak to people is really disrespectful,
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  Speaker 6: and you know, we've had to boot a few people.
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  Speaker 6: And I do genuinely think it's one of those situations,
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  Speaker 6: like you would never say any of this stuff to
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  Speaker 6: a person live, Like if you if you said.
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  Speaker 5: This kind of stuff to in person.
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  Speaker 6: You know, guys have even said that that, hey, if
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  Speaker 6: you said this to me in person, I had to
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  Speaker 6: deck to you. But you're saying it on the internet,
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  Speaker 6: and so I can't so within our community, we really
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  Speaker 6: try to protect that and make sure that those kinds
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  Speaker 6: of people, that kind of personality, we just you know,
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  Speaker 6: eject those people out as soon as we can.
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  Speaker 4: M Yeah, smart, you got to, especially because I mean,
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  Speaker 4: the whole consensus of the Platonic dialogue, of a Socratic
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  Speaker 4: method is to have conversation and be able to become
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  Speaker 4: better from that type of thing. And it kind of
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  Speaker 4: blows my mind how it's not it's not a first
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  Speaker 4: principle any longer to just try to converse in a
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  Speaker 4: way where we all can be and feel better at
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  Speaker 4: the end of it and have a better understanding of
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  Speaker 4: how we think about things.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, and even in the dialogues, Socrates gets insulted all
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  Speaker 6: the time, and one of the most amazing things about
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  Speaker 6: him is he never dishes it back. He never goes
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  Speaker 6: to that level with people and just starts engaging in
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  Speaker 6: a kind of you know, quippi back and forth and
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  Speaker 6: you know, putting people down. He'll do this thing where
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  Speaker 6: people will kind of insult him and then he kind
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  Speaker 6: of turns around and actually compliments them or tries to
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  Speaker 6: kind of say something nice back to them when he
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  Speaker 6: gets insulted, and then turn it back to the conversation,
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  Speaker 6: and so I think that's a good example.
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  Speaker 5: That we can all live by.
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  Speaker 2: Nice.
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  Speaker 3: I was just looking at the comments talk about slapping people,
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  Speaker 3: who got people talk about getting spank.
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  Speaker 2: Now it, Yeah, what did guy have even noticed? Eric?
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  Speaker 2: And then I have some questions for you before we
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  Speaker 2: get going.
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  Speaker 3: But I've even noticed, just my opinion, from what I've seen,
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  Speaker 3: you've even seemed to influence some Pagans out.
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  Speaker 2: There, even with potonic philosophy.
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  Speaker 5: I'm trying to.
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  Speaker 6: I mean, that's a huge difference between paganism and Platonism,
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  Speaker 6: but I'm not necessarily married to the word pagan anyways,
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  Speaker 6: and I think it depends on what we what we
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  Speaker 6: want to how we wanted to find that term. One
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  Speaker 6: of the things I don't like about the term pagan
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  Speaker 6: in the first place is it is so vague and
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  Speaker 6: can mean a million different things.
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  Speaker 5: So it's like our platon is pagans.
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  Speaker 6: I would say, generally speaking, yes, But I even understand
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  Speaker 6: the arguments where somebody might say that, I don't know,
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  Speaker 6: Bronze Age religion is somehow different from what's going on
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  Speaker 6: in the sort of Axial age, and I do understand
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  Speaker 6: that there is some differences there, But does that constitute
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  Speaker 6: that it's not paganism.
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  Speaker 5: That's kind of semantic debate.
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  Speaker 2: I think, well, I do think. I don't want to
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  Speaker 2: get to too much.
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  Speaker 3: But when it comes to paganism and Plato platonism, Plato
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  Speaker 3: wasn't like into worshiping gods, right, No, he was absolutely Yeah, Well,
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  Speaker 3: as much as like paganis are or.
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  Speaker 5: That you have to.
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  Speaker 6: It's it's part of the formation of the soul to
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  Speaker 6: worship the gods. And if you don't, he thinks he
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  Speaker 6: really can't live in ethical life.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I see that. I didn't even know that. Zero clue.
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  Speaker 3: Anything that I came across never like specified a certain
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  Speaker 3: pagan gods, So I just didn't know.
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  Speaker 6: Dialogues, it's kind of amazing how much he's talking about
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  Speaker 6: the gods and how much he's talking about the purpose
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  Speaker 6: of religion and how it functions.
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  Speaker 5: It's it's kind of peppered throughout all.
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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 4: In the beginning of the Republic, the first line states
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  Speaker 4: that they're going down to worship a new God. It's
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  Speaker 4: the very first line is that like a new God
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  Speaker 4: has been brought into the pantheon and they need to.
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  Speaker 4: Then they're they're doing this whole, this whole thing with
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  Speaker 4: Socrates in the cover, and then that's what leads into
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  Speaker 4: the entire conversation of The Republic.
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  Speaker 2: Wo.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, and a lot of people are reading The Republic,
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  Speaker 6: and I think that's where a lot of the maybe
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  Speaker 6: I guess it's mischaracterization of Plato comes from what's said
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  Speaker 6: in The Republic, mainly book three, which is when he's
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  Speaker 6: talking about the Guardians and this kind of new city
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  Speaker 6: that he's imagining, and you know, basically taking that as
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  Speaker 6: literal and what Plato's actual ideas were about, like politics
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  Speaker 6: and religion is a real quick way to kind of
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  Speaker 6: be derailed from what the broader corpus of Platonism is
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  Speaker 6: talking about, because that story is just a very specific
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  Speaker 6: allegory for the soul that has, you know, these particular applications,
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  Speaker 6: but it shouldn't be taken literally.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. And then fascinating enough, in the Phadrus, one
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  Speaker 4: of the only stories Socrates is speaking outside of the
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  Speaker 4: city state. He's out in the forest and as he's
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  Speaker 4: giving his dialogue, he actually has to stop and tell
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  Speaker 4: the muse and apologize to the muses for misspeaking. And
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  Speaker 4: when he's speaking about the lover and the loved and
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  Speaker 4: the relationship between this like arrows and what is the
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  Speaker 4: highest of all style of love. And so it's fascinating
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  Speaker 4: how it's Nick think of it as in it's in
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  Speaker 4: the cultural ethos two like that is there, like cultural
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  Speaker 4: mythology is this God and worship with the muses and
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  Speaker 4: the pantheon at that time. However, personally my reading of
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  Speaker 4: it is then that with these initiates of the illusion
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  Speaker 4: mystery schools of the Orphic or the Pythagorean traditions, once
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  Speaker 4: you get initiated, and that's when you start to understand
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  Speaker 4: the esoteric value of the natural forces of nature. And
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  Speaker 4: so I know that maybe my reading of play and
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  Speaker 4: what he's getting at with his theory of forms and
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  Speaker 4: the metaphysics of Platonism, which I think doesn't get talked
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  Speaker 4: about enough in the occult esoteric realms, I think it's
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  Speaker 4: I think there's been some kind of like pulling away
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  Speaker 4: from the academic understanding of what his epistemology is. But
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  Speaker 4: once you integrate the esoteric and the occult with that,
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  Speaker 4: you understand that Plato is actually talking about these natural
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  Speaker 4: forces that are moving through us and then they take
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  Speaker 4: shape through the god's names and forms. What do you
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  Speaker 4: think about that, Eric.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a pretty good description of it.
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  Speaker 5: You know.
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  Speaker 6: I like that you kind of separated out what the
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  Speaker 6: forms are from the gods, and that they're not necessarily analogous.
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  Speaker 6: And it depends on which Platonist you're you're talking about,
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  Speaker 6: because there is kind of a variation of theories out
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  Speaker 6: there of how those interrelate. But you know, I draw
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  Speaker 6: mostly from Platinus and from Plato directly in the way
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  Speaker 6: that I that is that there are the forms which
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  Speaker 6: we do consider to be gods, but not really gods
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  Speaker 6: in the way that we might think of them as
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  Speaker 6: divine persons. They're not necessarily quite as personal in the
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  Speaker 6: sense of like having a subjective or idiosyncratic personality, you know,
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  Speaker 6: that kind of thing. But then the gods typically are
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  Speaker 6: those souls that are sort of taking in those forms
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  Speaker 6: in varying different ways, in a sort of multiplicity of
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  Speaker 6: these particular ways, and we participate with them in that way.
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  Speaker 6: So yeah, I mean, I think that's right on what
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  Speaker 6: you were saying.
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  Speaker 3: Is it still like, and this is because this is
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  Speaker 3: new to me, is this still like an idea where
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  Speaker 3: I'm trying to say, like it's not a necessarily way,
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  Speaker 3: but like it's just in the way of thinking, like
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  Speaker 3: there's some gods sitting on a cloud waiting for me
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  Speaker 3: to tell it what to do for me.
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  Speaker 5: No, I don't think that's it.
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  Speaker 2: No, you know what I'm saying.
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  Speaker 3: But like you and when you get into magic and
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  Speaker 3: certain stuff, people actually think that, like Hacte is sitting
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  Speaker 3: on a cloud, you know, twitterle and a thumbs waiting
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  Speaker 3: for a human to tell what to do.
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  Speaker 2: Oh saying, is it something to that effect? You know
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  Speaker 2: what I'm saying, Like, that's the difference.
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  Speaker 3: That I was kind of getting out with Platonism is
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  Speaker 3: I didn't think it looked at it like that, even
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  Speaker 3: though I think some people do take it that way.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I see what you mean. I an arch people,
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  Speaker 5: I think in the.
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  Speaker 6: Occult realm that do treat it very much like that,
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  Speaker 6: like almost like yeah, the gods are like waiting to
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  Speaker 6: receive Yeah yeah, yeah. I mean our our opinion has
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  Speaker 6: always just been that the we cannot influence the gods
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  Speaker 6: in that way, like it's not up to us to
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  Speaker 6: do that. So any kind of thing that we're receiving
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  Speaker 6: from the gods is kind of a one way thing
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  Speaker 6: where it's more about our own receptivity and alignment to them.
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  Speaker 6: We don't we don't get to make demands of them.
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  Speaker 6: They make demands of us. So it's very one way
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  Speaker 6: in that kind of sense.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, I get that. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's just like, just because I did
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  Speaker 3: the LBRP and the hexagram ritual, now Odin's supposed to
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  Speaker 3: do what the fuck I tell him?
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  Speaker 2: Like, I don't believe.
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  Speaker 5: Come on, we are curious about that too.
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  Speaker 6: You know, the way that most of us would look
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  Speaker 6: at it is that people are just mixing up what
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  Speaker 6: we would call it dimon with a god. So you
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  Speaker 6: probably have some kind of diamond that maybe is impersonating
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  Speaker 6: Odin or something like that, or is in the sort
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  Speaker 6: of line of Odin, so to speak, and maybe you've
• 14:29
  Speaker 6: managed to do some kind of binding ritual that's effective
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  Speaker 6: on that level. But it's like you're you're definitely making
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  Speaker 6: a sort of ontological mistake if you think that this
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  Speaker 6: dimon is actually the essence of the god Odin.
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  Speaker 3: I guess one thing I did want to start off with, Uh,
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  Speaker 3: I'm kind of skipped over because I jumped into something else.
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  Speaker 3: For you getting into platonism, Uh what came first? Philosophy
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  Speaker 3: or occultism.
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  Speaker 6: You know, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself an ocultist, you.
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  Speaker 3: Know, Yeah, well I didn't think so when I figured
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: like occultism was kind of in there or magic.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is.
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  Speaker 6: I mean I definitely got into platonism, and really I
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: got into paganism just kind of blanket paganism first. And
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  Speaker 6: I was actually a Norse pagan for a number of
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  Speaker 6: years when I first got into everything. And then it
• 15:20
  Speaker 6: kind of took a while where I had a bunch
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  Speaker 6: of questions about Norse paganism that I just couldn't seem
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: to get answered anywhere that I went. You know, I
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  Speaker 6: was asking all of these different people in the Norse
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  Speaker 6: pagan groups about like what are the gods? Like why
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  Speaker 6: are we worshiping them? And like what happens when I
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: do a bloat and like how do I know if
• 15:37
  Speaker 6: it worked? And how do I know if it didn't?
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  Speaker 6: And you know, what's the point of it? Anyways, I
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: had all of these kind of questions rattling around, and
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  Speaker 6: I wasn't really getting very good answers. It seemed like
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: everybody I asked, would give me a different answer to
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: that question. So I started looking around, and when I
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  Speaker 6: found out that Plato and Aristotle were Pagans, which was
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  Speaker 6: something I just wasn't really aware of, then I said, oh, well,
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  Speaker 6: I should look at what these guys said about it,
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  Speaker 6: and I was delighted to find out that they actually
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  Speaker 6: had pretty much all the answers that I had been
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  Speaker 6: looking for.
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  Speaker 2: That's awesome, nice Brandon, you got anything you want to ask?
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: You say, well, I like that idea, I like that
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  Speaker 4: idea of like you were in that realm, and then
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden you honed it into these thinkers
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  Speaker 4: that were standing Because my understanding is these thinkers were
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: standing on the outskirts of society at the same time.
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  Speaker 4: Plato's an aristocrat warrior who who just got back from
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: the war and is trying to make sense of the
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: city state that he was protecting and realizes that they
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: are going up against his mentor. And so you're going
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  Speaker 4: from like this outward branch of what paganism means to you,
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  Speaker 4: now you're honing it in. Because of how I learned
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  Speaker 4: about Platonism is through academia and studying philosophy. I have
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: degrees in flow being classical literature. So it's fascinating ton
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  Speaker 4: hone in on your own studies to realize that actually,
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: if I can take because again I agree with paganism
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: in this term, it's like, what the fuck does it
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: even mean? It's so general and abstract, and it can
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: mean all of the Western world that's not the Abrahamic traditions.
• 17:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah right, I mean you see this with Christians right
• 17:21
  Speaker 6: where they'll be like pagans were sacrificing people on top
• 17:25
  Speaker 6: of Mayan temples, and it's like, wait, like, how.
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: Are we getting with this term? Is it just anybody
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: that's not a Christian?
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: Uh huh, you know, and then other Pagans in their areas, right,
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: other traditional traditions that were worshiping whatever they were in
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: their culture then also called every other heathen a pagan.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: And so it's this continual like term that is kind
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: of like a bashing term that's used. But I like
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: the idea then honing in on the platonism for a
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: reason that it actually gives you a metaphysical structure to
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: have to understand. It gives you an epistol and a
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: way of living life, and that's the beauty of why, say,
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: after the Enlightenment period of philosophy, you all of a
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: sudden get people going back to the ancients to understand like, okay,
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: like we've now dissected being this ontology down so much
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: that we need to get back to understanding these base principles.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: And for an individual, it's a lot easier to go
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: and figure out based principles when you have the dialogues
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: here to basically tell you every every virtue and how
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: to best succeed in the world while studying these things.
• 18:37
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think the dialogues too. You know, there's
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: that quote from Alfred North Whitehead that the best summary
• 18:44
  Speaker 6: of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato.
• 18:46
  Speaker 6: And you know that's not to say that, you know,
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: everybody needs to be a Platonist necessarily, but I think
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: if you're trying to understand the story of philosophy and
• 18:56
  Speaker 6: this Western tradition, it's this very, very long conversation that's
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: been going on for twenty five hundred years, really starting
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: with Plato and the pre Socratics.
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: And moving forward.
• 19:05
  Speaker 6: And you know, he sets a lot of the terms
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: of like what we're going to talk about, like we're
• 19:10
  Speaker 6: going to talk about epistemology. We're going to talk about
• 19:13
  Speaker 6: what is knowledge, We're going to talk about what is
• 19:15
  Speaker 6: the soul? What is the purpose of human life? Like
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: he's sort of setting up these questions and everybody is
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: chiming in and offering their answers to those things. I mean,
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: even starting with Aristotle right after him. Aristotle's saying, yeah,
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: I like this, this and this, but these things over
• 19:31
  Speaker 6: here with the Plato's that I didn't like, And that's
• 19:33
  Speaker 6: kind of sets the tradition off where we're all kind
• 19:35
  Speaker 6: of going back to Plato at one.
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: Level or another, even if we protect him entirely.
• 19:40
  Speaker 6: You know, you get all the way to somebody like
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: Nietzsche who's trying to push Plato away almost entirely, but
• 19:45
  Speaker 6: he's still talking about Plato.
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: Right, you can't escape talking about Plato.
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I no, I agree, that's yeah.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Uh now I had to bring far and totally forgot
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: what I was going to ask.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess all right, So yeah, you said you
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: you really aren't in an occultist, You're more of a
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: would you let the people know? And maybe even Brandon
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: you could give your definition of it, because we're kind
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: of talking about it now, and I didn't want to
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: get back to that, but I had a different question
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: I wanted to ask, But now I forgot it definition
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: of paganism because I do think, like you guys were saying, now,
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: I do think that's a word.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Even for me, I'm confused. I'm confused what it means.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Going by people who call themselves pagans and see how
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: they act and believe, I get confused what it means
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: because not all of them seem to be the same shit.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: So like, you know, same thing with Christianity. We could
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: do the Christians, you know whatever. So I'm just like
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: a little confused about what is a pagan to you, Eric.
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: I mean, I use it really just as a blanket
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: term for European religions more or less, like if you're
• 20:53
  Speaker 6: a pagan, I'm assigning it to that particular geographic area.
• 20:57
  Speaker 6: So whether you're you know, Norse, Celtic, Hellenic, Roman, Slavic, whatever,
• 21:04
  Speaker 6: those native faiths of that part of the world, is
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: really what I think of as pagan generally speaking, not
• 21:10
  Speaker 6: say that it isn't maybe blurry on the edges, like
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: you kind of call Hindu's pagans a little bit kind
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: of you know, it's an Indo European tradition, goes back
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: to the same root as the European ones, but I
• 21:22
  Speaker 6: don't think they would want to be called Pagans. So yeah,
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think it's the best. It's like an
• 21:28
  Speaker 6: umbrella term really more than anything.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: I know, that's easy enough, what about you, megus I.
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: It's a tough term for me because to use even
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: I almost think it the term pagan has been used
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: as more of a rebellion against Abrahamic traditions, not as
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: something that people actually use as a term, right, like Platonism,
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: like a pythagora and like a golden dawn number, like
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: a you know, like a Christian. And so for me
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: it's a really tough one, especially because my own understanding
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: of it when I even I didn't even I'm from
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: like Nowhereville, Minnesota, and so it's like on the farms,
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: it's not like anybody's all like, oh, you hear about
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: that pagan's in Europe. You know. It's like, finally, when
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: I went to college is when the first time I
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: even heard the term technically, and you know, and so
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: you hear it as talking about the opposite of something else.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: And so when it's being spoken about that way, I'm
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: really fascinated on why then it's used as an identifier,
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: especially the way our consciousness has changed through time, that
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: in the time of Plato and Socrates and these characters
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: that I don't what was the you know, we'd have
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: to look it up. But what is even the Greek
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: word for pagan and what that means? You know, like
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: herd dwelling sheep, like farmer, you know what I mean?
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: It's like people who worship like the spirits of nature?
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: Is it the people who worship the Greek gods?
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: And so again that I think the term has been
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: over sashed rated in the com in the community where
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: I almost don't even want to use it anymore, because
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: you might as well just tell me you're you were
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: you you're you're a Norse magician, you know you hate
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: Christian magic, you know, like yeah, or you're like a
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: folk made or you know, like tell me specificities instead
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: of telling me this really oversaturated term.
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: It's that meme though, Well, what kind of pagan are you?
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Hu I have? I actually looked it up real quick.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Why you guys are talking?
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Before I asked a question. I actually looked at it
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: because I didn't want to forget it.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: It says the English word pagan comes from the Latin paganist.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: If I'm saying that derived from pagas meaning a district, countryside,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: or local community. Before it had a religious meaning, paganist
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: could mean someone from the countryside, a village, or rustic
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: the civilian, as opposed to a soldier. More generally, someone
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: outside of particular group of community. During the Christianization of
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: the Roman Empire, Christians began using paganists for someone outside
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: the Christian community, normally excluding Jews. In effact, it came
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: to mean someone who continued to worship the tradition with gods.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: Normally excluding Jews.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, how would you do that? I mean,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, because you'd have to consider yourself pagan, right,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: because if you're off, if you come off of Judaism,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: how could you call them pagans? I mean, your story
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: wouldn't exist if it wasn't for them, And then you'd
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: have to consider yourself a pagan. I guess you know how.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you'd have to leave the Jews out of it
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: if you don't want to shoot on yourself to an
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: extent to an extent, I.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Think you know what I'm saying that could be why, Yeah.
• 24:40
  Speaker 6: It's an interesting word. It's got a bunch of history,
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: so it really comes up. It's very similar to the
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: word heathen. So hethan is a person who comes from
• 24:50
  Speaker 6: like the heath, you know, which is like the the
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: woods basically, and so it's the same kind of concept
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: as like a rural bumpkin. Is really the connotation that
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: they were using it in and you see it. I
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: think it was the first use of the term came
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: from Tertullian, but the most popular use of the term
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: comes from Augustine, who uses it in his title for
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: the City of God, which is his main book that
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: he wrote. And it's interesting that we don't tell the
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: full title anymore. The full title of the City of
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: God is the City of God against the Pagans, right,
• 25:27
  Speaker 6: and we just subtract that against the pagan's part, and
• 25:29
  Speaker 6: now they just call it the City of God by
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: Saint Augustine. But the parallel that he's drawing there is
• 25:37
  Speaker 6: to say that we're Christians in the City of God,
• 25:41
  Speaker 6: and we're these sort of urbanites of the Kingdom and
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: City of God and you're these rural bumpkins who are
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: outside the City of God. And so that's the contrast
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: that he's playing with, and that's where a lot of
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: the term gets its sort of negative connotation is from
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: Augustine's polemics that he's been you see pagans themselves, if
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: you want to call them that. In antiquity never called
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: themselves pagans.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: As far as it's gonna say, like they because for
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: a while, the term wasn't even coined until later.
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah it was.
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: I mean the City of God was written in like
• 26:13
  Speaker 6: four ten for twelve, so that was really when it
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: became more popularized. They would have referred to themselves most
• 26:20
  Speaker 6: of the time as Hellenes, yes, or Ethnicoi was another
• 26:24
  Speaker 6: term that they would use sometimes, which just means like
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: an ethnic person or a person from a tribe.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah. They were just yeah, exactly. They were just like
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: Greek practicing civic and mystery school traditions basically.
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: I like though, is like, when it comes to those
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: kind of terms, I find it really interesting that there
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: very often isn't a word to describe what I would
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: call natural religions that emerge naturally within societies. So even
• 26:54
  Speaker 6: when you look at something like Hinduism. Hinduism is not
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: what the Hindus ever referred to themselves as. That was
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: a term that got created because they were the people
• 27:03
  Speaker 6: on the other side of the Indus River. So it's
• 27:05
  Speaker 6: like you're the Hindus over there. It was people in
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: modern day Pakistan that were calling them Hindus. They never
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: called themselves that.
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: And it's the.
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: Same thing that you see even in Japan, like for
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: a long time there wasn't really a word Shinto to
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: describe their native religion. There still really isn't a term
• 27:21
  Speaker 6: to describe the pagan traditions in China. You know, sometimes
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: it's referred to as Shenism, but I don't even think
• 27:30
  Speaker 6: they use that term. It's just kind of what you do.
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: It's religion to them. And so I think that that's
• 27:36
  Speaker 6: just an interesting factoid that it's not uncommon that natural
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: religions don't have a name for themselves.
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good, Thank you.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Eric Brandon. Anything before I stuck with Yes.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, one thing, not that I'm hung up on it,
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: but I like to push. I like to kind of
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: plays Devil's advocate when it comes to the term occultist,
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: especially because of the idea of what most people are
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: mistaken about what occult means, right, It means hidden or
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: hidden forces, as a Gripa talks about, like we are
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: all within the understanding of the occulted world, and so
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: there are hidden forces among us, and so it's almost
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: hard to not be if you are practicing, like I say, Platonism,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: neo Platonic, theorgical, whatever your ceremonial ritual is. It's almost
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: like you can't help but be an occultist because of
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: you're doing the esoteric work instead of just the normal
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: exoteric practices. And so I wonder what you think about that, Eric,
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: And you know why you wouldn't deem yourself an occultist
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: in your own term?
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: Definitionally, Yeah, you know, I'd say for me, the term occult,
• 28:51
  Speaker 6: I typically associate it with the sort of Renaissance magic tradition,
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: you know, Henry Cornelius a grip the arbitallee, like you
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: mentioned things like that, and I don't. I've never practiced
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: any form of like Renaissance magic or ceremonial magic, or
• 29:05
  Speaker 6: I wouldn't really consider myself like a magician of any kind.
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: And so most of my ritual practice has been very
• 29:13
  Speaker 6: exoteric in nature. But my book Asthesis is very esoteric
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: in the sense that it's sort of inward and mystical
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: and things like that. But I think there's definitely a
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: question of is that a cult? I suppose, so I
• 29:29
  Speaker 6: think you could consider it a cult. It again depends
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: on where we want to draw that line.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And so then my not pushback, but add on
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: is that then Plato Plato was a magician, he was
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: a mystic, because when you get to the highest levels
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: of magic, it is mysticism, and then they're interrelated, and
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: that's where we get caught upon terms. And so it's
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: like Plato being an initiate over the orphic and Pathegora
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: and traditions and the mystery schools of his time frame,
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: was a mystic and a Platonist. And personally that's how
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: I read his work and I read the Republic and
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: these different things. Is that, and especially the Tamais, is
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: that he's trying to tell the secrets in code of
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: those traditions, and so he is doing his occulted practice
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: in the exoteric way of creating his own grimoire. I
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: think that all his I think the dialogues technically if
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: we talk about it long enough, I could convince most
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: people that they're Grimwore's.
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm not super familiar with the Grimwarre tradition in general,
• 30:35
  Speaker 6: but I see what you're saying, and I agree with
• 30:38
  Speaker 6: the fact that he's mystic in all of that. And yeah,
• 30:41
  Speaker 6: I mean, I don't I don't have any negative connotation
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: to the word occult, like I don't. I don't treat
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: it as like a bad thing or anything. But yeah,
• 30:50
  Speaker 6: I don't know. I guess I haven't felt like I'm
• 30:52
  Speaker 6: a part of that. I would feel like the thought
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: if I were going around telling people I'm an ocultist,
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: and I'm like, of course, I haven't done anything I
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: guess that I consider are like big in that tradition.
• 31:01
  Speaker 6: But I think there's a wide range of what we
• 31:03
  Speaker 6: could call a cult that I'm sure Christians would look
• 31:05
  Speaker 6: at me and say I'm annacultist.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I did want to say, you know, you mentioned Renaissance,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: and there are some people from the Renaissance that I think,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: you know, they called themselves alchemists, but I still think
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: that they were a cultist. And I'm like, maybe like
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Robert Flood, Michael Maher, uh, who who's that?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: That guy with the emblems I wanted us to cover.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: I always forget h Heinrich k oh, yeah, yeah, Jacob Won, yeah,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: even Geodannald Bruno, a lot of them, if you actually
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: look at their stuff. In my opinion, there's not much ritual.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: It just seems a lot of studying and theorizing on
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: what we would kind of say science today, you know, music, sound,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: you know, And I think, like just you might be
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: surprised how like some people that we would consider a
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: cultis actually I would consider a cultis actually may not
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: be like what you what you would think, you know,
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: they're actually a lot more I think, learned and studied
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: in hands on maybe alchemy. But I even still think
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: most of them, and even in that sense, a lot
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: of them admitted they thought it was spiritual, not physical.
• 32:14
  Speaker 6: So then you have to say, Henry Cornelius Agrippa and
• 32:16
  Speaker 6: the three Books of a Cult Philosophy are fascinating. I
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: think it's interesting that he was Catholic. He's talking about
• 32:23
  Speaker 6: Catholic stuff the entire time. The forward to it, I
• 32:26
  Speaker 6: think is from like a Catholic abbot, and then he's
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: talking about Plato, Pythagoras, the Amblicus throughout the whole work,
• 32:34
  Speaker 6: and to him, it's like those guys were at the
• 32:36
  Speaker 6: center of a cult philosophy. So I mean, I definitely
• 32:40
  Speaker 6: see what you mean there.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah that And like I mean, Pico, Marendola, Parsilio, Ficino,
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: they are the ones who translated Plato, you know, and
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: obviously they were like, oh, Hermes, let's do his work first, Plato,
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: we'll get to it. But then you know, getting Plato
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: and putting out there is that's that's why then I
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: am on the always trying to integrate and be like
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: can we occult is like the term pagan, It's like
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: these are overused terms that have been taken over by
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: what I call the Black Iron prison, as phil Okay
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: Dick talks about it, and and it's that it's been
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: used by the mainstream media as a scapegoat for this
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Epstein class thing and these people who are doing really
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: bad things. And now you get the far right Christian
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: tradition or any of the Abrahamic traditions where they can
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: now wrap it into and call everyone that they that
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: isn't part of their club an occultist and as satanist.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden, you get all these
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: things wrapped into the same thing, and all of a sudden,
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: now without them knowing it, they are sympathy using sympathetic
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: magic to create eggrigors that attach themselves parasitically to these
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: terms through time. Does that mean you know what I mean?
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that is what they're doing.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: And I think that's fucking bullshit. And so because because
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: this is because Plato is the backbone of the Western tradition,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: is as you said in Alford North Whitehead said, And
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: it's like, how can And then there's idiots out there
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: We've talked about before this, there's idiots out there who
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: now claim that like tyranny and is is inlaid within
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: Plato or it's you know, talking about the theory of
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: forms as some high end mathematical thing that has no
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: grounding in the in the material world. And I'm all, like,
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: you've never fucking read a note of this. I don't
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: know how you can talk about your ass so hard.
• 34:38
  Speaker 6: Wait, a lot of that from Christian polemicists, you know,
• 34:41
  Speaker 6: like the idea that the forms are these like abstract
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: objects that are totally separated from the world, you know,
• 34:48
  Speaker 6: that's like a Jay Dire talking point is out of
• 34:52
  Speaker 6: these abstract forms, could you know, relate to the world here,
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: they're totally separated. No, the whole idea of the forms
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: is explaining how things are in reality. You know, it's
• 35:02
  Speaker 6: like why things have this particular quality and reality is
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: that's what the forms are there to explain. Saying they're separate.
• 35:09
  Speaker 6: Just you know, it's good.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, good, I'm talking about him one of Yeah, that's
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: one of the guys that I'm calling out right now.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Funny is that I really, hey, vaguely even know who
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: this guy is. But I don't want to speak to
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: too many people. But I don't think there's one person
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: on the show that has episode anything good about it.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: I'm just like, yo, there's nobody on this show even
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: like this guy that's bad.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's his deal.
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: Well, he calls himself a philosopher, and his early work
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: was good until he became an ortho bro where he
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: was calling out the Hollywood ocult elite with them all
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: the things, and so he had a good push until
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: he became a magic user without calling it out that way,
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: because that's what orthodox Christianity is. It's you're doing magic
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: when you're doing Orthodoxy.
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: It's very theoretical.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Something I even wanted to say, like even before just
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: getting into a cult. Uh you know my phone.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, how it works is a cult is
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: a cult to me, I don't understand that. I can't
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: even see it until I was like to like learn
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: how this even works, and then probably honestly made my own.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: But I even know how the phone works, you know
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: what I'm saying, but it's all hidden to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: And then uh yeah, for real, I was gonna mention
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: something about Platinus.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I guess maybe uh talking about a magician in this
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: sense or an occultist. My opinion is just again and
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: I showed how I don't know much about this stuff
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: earlier in the show about making a stupid comment.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Or again, I think I'm just still looking at it differently.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: I trying to couple my ass that way with Platinus.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: You know, he he had nosis four times, I think
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: he claims to me, just from looking at it, how
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: I've gotten out of what he said about it and
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: from my experience, I even would take that as crossing
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: the abyss or and uh again that's something that I
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: don't think he was into much ritual, but he's still
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: like I know a Ambulicus was more of than I
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: think the ritualist person, right, I know Platinus wasn't so
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: like even that. Like, I guess what I'm trying to
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: get at is that he was accomplishing the outcome of what.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: A midge ceremonial magician would still be going for, but
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: obviously did it in a different way. And I've even said,
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: I don't you know, I had one experience doing it
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: ritualistically if this is what happened, and then three a
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: few other times just meditating. So I mean even that
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: whole situation meditation.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: You know, if I'm lighting a candle the incense, now
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: it's a ritual, you know, me even thinking about it
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: before I sit down. It's still technically a ritual if
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: you look at it, in my opinion, but not the
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: banishing and all this you know, shit set up, so
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit different. But uh, I guess, like
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I guess what I'm getting is like even with that,
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: when it comes to Platonism, I do think it it's
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: a huge influence in the occult community. Uh.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: And like my opinion, like through Plato and I guess
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: Botanis and maybe other people. For my it just helped
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: me with believing that technically you may not need like
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: all that shit to accomplish that outcome.
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, and.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: I also to tie it into something else, you know,
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: I think we were kind of getting on a little
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: bit before. It's interesting how I think it is like
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: a huge, huge underlying impact and a lot of the
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: occult and it's also huge within Christianity as I think
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: as an influence as well. And I yeah, I just
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: you know what I did say, I wanted to kind
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: of touch on that, and I think you guys were
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: kind of getting into that before in a certain way.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Branded was uh.
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I would just say too, and what're
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: you're talking about? I think there's there's these different pathways
• 39:07
  Speaker 6: that we can obviously go as far as sort of
• 39:11
  Speaker 6: divine assent or divine union, whatever you want to call it.
• 39:15
  Speaker 6: There's generally a more contemplative path, you might call it
• 39:19
  Speaker 6: the via negativa, the sort of negative way, which is
• 39:23
  Speaker 6: mainly looking at a process of subtraction where you're cutting
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: out all of these things that are not that divine
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: and what you're left with is sort of that divine union,
• 39:36
  Speaker 6: that henosis. And that's really what Platinus is teaching throughout
• 39:39
  Speaker 6: is this process of you know, starting with kind of
• 39:42
  Speaker 6: cutting out your senses and then starting with cutting out
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: deliberation within the soul and attaining virtue, and then you're
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: you're cutting out more of this stuff until what you're
• 39:51
  Speaker 6: left with is this sort of pure stillness of the one,
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: so to speak. And you know the other path is
• 39:58
  Speaker 6: obviously this more tantric path, and you see it there,
• 40:01
  Speaker 6: you see it in the occult, you see it in
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: ritual magic that's much more involved with using things that
• 40:06
  Speaker 6: we would call like synthomata or symbola, you know, these
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: things that are resonating with these divine forces and kind
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: of using them to propel you forward. So both of
• 40:17
  Speaker 6: them work. You know, there's stories of people in every
• 40:20
  Speaker 6: one of these traditions going either way with it. You
• 40:22
  Speaker 6: could even call it maybe right hand left hand path
• 40:24
  Speaker 6: kind of stuff where they can both achieve the goal.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: And then one thing I did I guess to talk about.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: I don't have to put you on the spot, but
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: it's I mean, I think I know I think like
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: Origin and Saint Augustine. But I was going to ask
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: you if there was maybe people that you could mention
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: that might have been a kind of a you know,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Platonist that influenced or Neoplatonists that influenced the Catholic Catholic
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: in Christian Church.
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: Oh sure, well, I think they were very influenced by
• 40:58
  Speaker 6: the Middle Platonists. And the Middle Platonists don't get talked
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: about a ton they're kind of a stepping stone, but
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: they they were important in the first few centuries, and
• 41:08
  Speaker 6: you can see a lot of kind of echoes of
• 41:10
  Speaker 6: their orthodoxy that they were creating. So in the in
• 41:15
  Speaker 6: the years after Plato, the Academy took this really skeptical turn,
• 41:19
  Speaker 6: and not like modern day skepticism, but they had this
• 41:22
  Speaker 6: idea that, you know, they didn't want to make Orthodox statements.
• 41:27
  Speaker 6: They didn't want to make a kind of like strong
• 41:29
  Speaker 6: this is what we believe and you know, the demiurges
• 41:32
  Speaker 6: this or whatever. They kind of had this more we're
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: not gonna we're not gonna nail it down exactly what
• 41:38
  Speaker 6: it means. And that was influenced partially by this guy Piro,
• 41:41
  Speaker 6: who was kind of like a Greek Buddhist basically, and
• 41:46
  Speaker 6: after that academy fell and under some pressure from the Stoics,
• 41:51
  Speaker 6: the Middle Platonists started to say, we need to like
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: codify what Platonism really is, and then you start getting
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: books like Alcinous's hand Book of Platonism, which is kind
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: of the first sort of like orthodoxy of Platonic belief,
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: and a lot of the Middle Polatanists were engaged in
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: that kind of thing. So that's where I see a
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: lot of the that would have been like steeping in
• 42:13
  Speaker 6: early Christianity, and a lot of the more aristocratic folks
• 42:17
  Speaker 6: who would have gone to a philosophical school would have
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: been aware of all of that. So you definitely see
• 42:22
  Speaker 6: a little bit of color of that, where you know,
• 42:26
  Speaker 6: the idea of the demiurge and Platonism sort of gets
• 42:29
  Speaker 6: grafted onto God the Father from the Gospels, in Yahweh,
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: even in the Old Testament to some extent, and then
• 42:36
  Speaker 6: you know, on the mystical side, I think, I think personally,
• 42:40
  Speaker 6: and I don't have like a ton of evidence for this,
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: but I do think that Platinus was very influential for
• 42:45
  Speaker 6: the early Desert Fathers, like the kind of people who
• 42:48
  Speaker 6: wrote the Philocalia, which is a mystical work in Orthodox Christianity.
• 42:55
  Speaker 6: When they're talking about things like the noose and noetic
• 42:59
  Speaker 6: prayer and st stuff like that, it's like, I think
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: that's very obviously influenced by a lot of these practices
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: that the Platonist would have been doing. And that's that's
• 43:07
  Speaker 6: actually something I mentioned in my.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Book that's listening, thank you. You know, it's even something
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: that I I think I noticed too. There was I
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: think it might have been origin somebody else. I think
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: it might have been two or three people like Filo.
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: I mean, Filo's not I mean, he's a Platonist, but
• 43:32
  Speaker 6: he's Jewish. He's obviously huge for that kind of crossover.
• 43:38
  Speaker 6: And the main reason being, like Filo is Jewish, so
• 43:40
  Speaker 6: he's coming from this Jewish tradition, but he's studied Platonism
• 43:44
  Speaker 6: and he kind of merges a lot of Old Testament
• 43:47
  Speaker 6: ideas in with Platonism. He's one of the first guys
• 43:50
  Speaker 6: who really starts talking about the logos a lot and
• 43:52
  Speaker 6: stuff like that in that kind of Hebrew context. And
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: so that obviously was hugely influential, maybe the most influential
• 44:00
  Speaker 6: one for early Christianity.
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: Now they think of it.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say some of the people that
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: I think were influenced by that stuff. If you notice
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: like around a two hundred AD around that, you know,
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: when the from what I noticed, when people started running
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: their mouths about like how Christians aren't practicing correctly and
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: they started making like basically rules and laws because.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Of that, That's how I seem to get out of it. Uh.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: The ones bitching at the Gnostics and the Christians the
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: most seemed to be a little bit of a Platonists themselves.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: And I always wondered, I'm like, is that kind of
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: still going back to like Platinus's beef even though it
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: wasn't like you know, pile away people look at it.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: You did write on the Gnostics, but he was still
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: willing to debate and talk to them.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: You know, he didn't hate the people, He just didn't
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: agree with them. You know.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: That's what I got out of it, this, you know,
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: is it was it still stemming from that, And the
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: plainton Is were like, yo, fuck the Gnostics, man, like.
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: Like the enemy of my enemy is Yeah, I don't know.
• 45:02
  Speaker 6: I mean the way I look at the whole convergence
• 45:06
  Speaker 6: between the two is that Platonism was the most dominant
• 45:11
  Speaker 6: philosophical school in antiquity, and they had the most cultural dominance.
• 45:16
  Speaker 6: Plato had this enormous cultural dominance in the ancient world.
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: Everybody who was educated read Plato and understood Plato. And
• 45:24
  Speaker 6: you know, even when you're reading the Stoics like Epictetis
• 45:27
  Speaker 6: or Marcus Aurelius, it's like they're talking about Plato.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: Two.
• 45:30
  Speaker 6: You know, Epictetus is mentioning how to live like Socrates,
• 45:33
  Speaker 6: and you know you have Marcus Aurelius saying things like hey,
• 45:36
  Speaker 6: just right, it doesn't have to be Plato. Like this
• 45:39
  Speaker 6: is something that was deeply embedded in the culture, especially
• 45:42
  Speaker 6: on the aristocratic level, like anybody who would have been
• 45:44
  Speaker 6: learned in the ancient world. And so the fact that
• 45:48
  Speaker 6: it ends up appearing in Christianity is just kind of
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: like a duh, Like of course, like this was just
• 45:54
  Speaker 6: a part of that culture. And you if you're going
• 45:57
  Speaker 6: to create some sort of rival religion to the cults
• 46:01
  Speaker 6: of the different nations, you're going to have to say
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: something about Plato, because that would have been the first
• 46:06
  Speaker 6: objection that you're going to hit, is all of these
• 46:09
  Speaker 6: Platonists who are saying, well, what about what Plato said
• 46:12
  Speaker 6: about the gods and worshiping the gods and how we
• 46:14
  Speaker 6: need to do this and that, like they had to
• 46:16
  Speaker 6: say something, And you know it also is partly how
• 46:19
  Speaker 6: I think they made it palatable to a lot of people, is, hey,
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: let's incorporate some of these metaphysical ideas that the Platonists
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: have and apply it to our revelation and that'll make
• 46:29
  Speaker 6: it easier for people to get into it.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Gotcha, no, I agree?
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: He yeah that and along with again it goes back
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: to why if you're going to build something that lasts,
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: it needs a metaphysical framework. And Plato is the in
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: Aristotle after him, are the metaphysical frameworks to create the
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: heaven that they need people to think is the background
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: of why they exist to begin with. I think, I mean,
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: that's not the best way to say that idea, but
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: there's something to that, the metaphysics of the forms and
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: the epistemology of how reason it can become concrete in
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: the real world of how things can exist at all.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: And then you need, you know, you need your theology
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: to back up why things exist at all, and then
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: to create the heavens from that if you know, is
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: then to take directly from how Plato sees the forms,
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: would you agree.
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean even in a more direct sense.
• 47:34
  Speaker 6: I think if if Russell Grimerkin is correct about his theories,
• 47:38
  Speaker 6: you know, he has this theory that a lot of
• 47:40
  Speaker 6: the Old Testament is actually derived from Plato, and the
• 47:44
  Speaker 6: Old Testament isn't nearly as old as people say it is.
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: Where he said that certain aspects of Genesis are pulled
• 47:50
  Speaker 6: directly from the account of creation in the Tamais yea,
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: and that a lot of the levitical laws are like
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: verbatim things from Plato's laws, and so you know, he
• 48:00
  Speaker 6: thinks that there's not just like some concordance there, like
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: that this was constructed at a later date, you know,
• 48:08
  Speaker 6: after Plato, and they were just pulling stuff straight out
• 48:11
  Speaker 6: of Plato and putting it in there. So, I mean
• 48:13
  Speaker 6: there's that part of it too, where you can see
• 48:15
  Speaker 6: some resonance I guess to Plato if his theory is correct,
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: and so far it does appear to be.
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I find it interesting that you said that they
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: kind of use like the metaphysics uh is appealing or.
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: Think about the trinity too? That's a good example.
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right.
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: I mean there's triads all over Platonism, and you know,
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: even with like the Middle Platonists, you get Numenius talking
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: about these three primary gods, and in Platitis you have
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: the three hypostasis, so you have the one, the noose,
• 48:49
  Speaker 6: and the soul, and there's sort of these three moments
• 48:52
  Speaker 6: of creation that are happening emanatively, and so there's a
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: lot there for them to pick up. And you know,
• 49:00
  Speaker 6: so the trinity itself is not apparent from the text,
• 49:03
  Speaker 6: despite what they might say. You know, if you actually
• 49:05
  Speaker 6: read the Gospels, like, it's not like they ever lay
• 49:08
  Speaker 6: out the doctrine of the trinity. That didn't really get
• 49:10
  Speaker 6: firmly established till hundreds of years later. Now you can
• 49:14
  Speaker 6: say there were probably Trinitarians early on, but it's not
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: actually that clear. You know, Christianity starts out more diverse
• 49:21
  Speaker 6: and actually gets less diverse over time as they start
• 49:24
  Speaker 6: expelling heretics left and right. There's a lot of disagreement there,
• 49:28
  Speaker 6: but there's no doubt that they were looking at Platonic
• 49:31
  Speaker 6: philosophy as a way at some point to justify basically,
• 49:35
  Speaker 6: how how can we say these three things are one
• 49:38
  Speaker 6: and do it in a way that's not going to
• 49:40
  Speaker 6: get us roasted by the other Platonic schools. And we
• 49:44
  Speaker 6: have philosophical schools, so they're like, well, people respect Platonism,
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: we can probably in that into something that makes sense.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, yeah, that's definitely. And then interesting enough, you
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: get the whole idea of it's almost the synonymous, right,
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: the good God, and then it works everything down into
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: it's the hierarchy of being itself. And then and then
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: add Aristotle into there, because and then you with his
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: prime mover, that which is an unmoved mover, which moves
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: all things, and you know, laid out in his physics
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: into the metaphysics. And I think what what fascinates me
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: is that for some reason everybody wants to forget that
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: Thomas Aquinas two things is a fucking Aristotelian. He's a
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: to mist tomistic thinker. So he his whole theology is
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: based off of Aristotle, who is one of the great
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: you know, the mind of Platonism. And then you get
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: the idea and then we forget that he also was
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: taught by Albertus Magnus, who is a magician and you know,
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: is a is a necromancer.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Do you know do you know why he left the
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: church he did leave.
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: Of I can I say what I think and then
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: have you yeah what I think? I don't know if
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: this is what you're getting at. But he wrote his
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: Summa Theologia, which is brilliant and like so methodological it's
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: crazy when you're reading it. But he then had his
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: he finally had a beatific vision and then basically threw
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: it in the garbage.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: Yep, he had he had he had an experience and
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: said he had it fucking room the whole time, basically
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: the whole time.
• 51:25
  Speaker 6: I think the quote he somebody asked him afterwards, like
• 51:28
  Speaker 6: why uh are you going to finish that? You know,
• 51:31
  Speaker 6: and he and he said something to the effect of
• 51:33
  Speaker 6: like everything I've ever written is like straw, Yeah, you
• 51:39
  Speaker 6: like just didn't compare to the experience he had at all.
• 51:41
  Speaker 6: And he's like, yeah, none of that matters. That was
• 51:43
  Speaker 6: just me riffing on this, but it is brilliant. I
• 51:46
  Speaker 6: agree that there's there's so much in a Quitas that's great.
• 51:49
  Speaker 6: I know sometimes amongst Playton's even you know, he gets
• 51:53
  Speaker 6: called team Aristotle.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: But I think there's a little more than that that's funny.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: She cant podcasts even like used the freeze instead of
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: what would Jesus do? What would it claim? Yeah? What would?
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: I'm like, Yo, that people actually say that, I'm like,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: do they even realize, like what.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: He is a magician?
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah? What that guy was into? Oh yeah, I was
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: like he bust it up Albertus Magnus's supposedly uh android
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: because it scared the ship out of him. He broke it. Yeah.
• 52:24
  Speaker 6: Solcism used to be way cooler and down to like
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: they were just into way wacky or stuff. For obviously,
• 52:34
  Speaker 6: who's like restarting the Platonic Academy and they're doing all
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: these orphic rituals and the guy's like basically a Catholic priest,
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: and they were just like, Eh, that's okay, you know,
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: you can you can play around with that stuff. And
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: you know, I obviously there's a line that Giordano Bruno
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: found right, you know, But I do think it's interesting
• 52:56
  Speaker 6: like how the Catholic Church might have been had they
• 52:59
  Speaker 6: taken Ficino seriously and the idea of the Prisca Theologia,
• 53:03
  Speaker 6: if they actually said, okay, let's expand the Catholic tradition
• 53:07
  Speaker 6: to include people like Plato, Aristotle, Hermes, trist Ma, Justus
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: and have this broader scope of what it means. I
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: think that would have been really cool. We might have
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: a Catholicism today that's very, very different from what it
• 53:22
  Speaker 6: is now. But obviously that didn't pan out, and.
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: It doesn't pan out because you have to keep, as
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: Nietzsche says, the master Slave dialectic.
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, yeah.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: You can't have people understanding that they are also Christ,
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: the son of God. You have to only have one.
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: And it speaks to the pope and everything at You
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: must stay in the congregation, you know. And Plato's like
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: in the Republic and in the to Maya specifically, he's like, no,
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: you're supposed to be the demiurge of your own world.
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: Become the craftsman, become a philosopher. King, I shall teach
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: you how to philosophize.
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: Mm hmm, yeah, I mean.
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: And and that vision of God in the timais as
• 54:04
  Speaker 6: he's completely not jealous, and so much so that the
• 54:08
  Speaker 6: main thing he wants is for people to be as
• 54:11
  Speaker 6: like him as possible. It's like, it's so different from
• 54:14
  Speaker 6: that that.
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: Idea that we get in Christianity.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, h uh m hmm.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: Anything else you get you good? No, No, I just
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: want to make sure before uh was philosophy in the
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: ancient world, you think closer to what we would call
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: and that we would call religion you know now call
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: religion mysticism or spiritual training.
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: Oh man, that's a good question. You know.
• 54:52
  Speaker 6: I'd say that in the ancient world those things were
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: not as separate nor as murder together as they are now.
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: It's they're in this kind of interplay all the time.
• 55:05
  Speaker 6: You know. The way the ancient world kind of operated
• 55:08
  Speaker 6: is like every city has their own religion. Essentially, they
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: have their own gods, their own religion, and there's the
• 55:15
  Speaker 6: public cult. So you know, people would be going to
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: the temples and there would be a priesthood that was
• 55:20
  Speaker 6: usually appointed by the state or controlled by the state,
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: and that would have been all of these rituals. There's
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: very public where you know, that's where you were going
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: for festivals. If you wanted to do certain sacrifices, you
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: would bring it over to the local priests. And you
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: also probably had a little shrine and within your house
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: for your household gods and your family gods and things
• 55:39
  Speaker 6: like that, and then the philosophical schools are just kind
• 55:42
  Speaker 6: of running parallel to that, where they're like a reflective
• 55:46
  Speaker 6: tradition where people are sort of discussing the nature of
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: what these gods are and what we're doing, and they're
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: adding a different layer to it. So the way I
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: would kind of look at it is like, you know,
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: religion is this direct experience that people are having and
• 56:02
  Speaker 6: engaging with the gods, and philosophy actss this sort of
• 56:06
  Speaker 6: reflective tradition where it starts to ask these questions about like, well,
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: what are the gods and what are sacrifices and why
• 56:13
  Speaker 6: are we doing them? And what does all of this mean?
• 56:14
  Speaker 6: And what's the point of my life? And what happens
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: when I die? And all of these kind of questions,
• 56:19
  Speaker 6: and that becomes the philosophical tradition. And I think what
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: gets confusing, though, is when you look at something like Christianity,
• 56:26
  Speaker 6: it merges all of these things together, right, Like Christianity
• 56:30
  Speaker 6: is essentially like a public religion, a mystery school, and
• 56:33
  Speaker 6: a philosophical school all merged into one. And so when
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: we think about religion, we think about that now, but
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: in the ancient world, like I guess those three things
• 56:45
  Speaker 6: were all there, but they were kind of operating a
• 56:47
  Speaker 6: little more independently and a little bit separated.
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: So I don't know if that answers your question, but.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: No, I just probably better than I could have answered it. Yeah, no,
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: thank you. Are you into Ambulicus at all yourself?
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: I am with some reservations.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: Could you give the audience.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: That's actually sorry that I've you know, come across just
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: recently too, and I don't know much about except that
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: I know that it's been mentioned that there's more ritualistic
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: and into rituals. Could you maybe give the listeners and
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: myself a little bit of an idea about like.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: What his deal was, Yeah, and if there was like
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: any differences, like any differences like in his outlook on
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: what Plato said that was different than what Plato supposed you. Yeah,
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: you know stuff like that.
• 57:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's gonna we're gonna open up the hot take
• 57:42
  Speaker 6: factory right now.
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: Thing thinking about this very question.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: So oh that's great. Yeah, listen, I have no idea,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: so it's not to argue with you. I'm just like
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: literally interested in.
• 57:55
  Speaker 6: So, well, I think there's an opinion about what what
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: maybe the differences are there and I think I have
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: maybe a different perspective than most on it. But the
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: typical view, I guess the contemporary view is that you've
• 58:09
  Speaker 6: got somebody like Platinus who's writing in you know, around
• 58:12
  Speaker 6: like two fifty or so contemporaneous more or less, with
• 58:16
  Speaker 6: the Amblicus close by, and Platinus gets characterized as this
• 58:21
  Speaker 6: guy who is saying that we can ascend to the
• 58:24
  Speaker 6: divine through intellectual means, and that is an unfortunate translation.
• 58:31
  Speaker 6: We're talking about what we would say noetic means within
• 58:35
  Speaker 6: Greek speaking language, but that gets translated as intellect, and
• 58:39
  Speaker 6: so we when we think about like intellect today, we're
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: usually talking about rationalization thinking, you know, what the Greeks
• 58:47
  Speaker 6: would have called discursive reason. So that's not what Platinus
• 58:52
  Speaker 6: is saying. Tainus is saying, though, that we go through
• 58:54
  Speaker 6: that kind of via negativa path. I was talking this
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: inward turn where we separate our e from anything that
• 59:01
  Speaker 6: isn't divine until we.
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: Get all the way there.
• 59:04
  Speaker 6: Now, there's a disagreement between Platinus's student Porphyry and Iamblicus
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: that got publicized in this letter that ends up becoming
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: I Amblicus's work called on the mysteries, and the whole
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: thing is basically a response to Porphyry about ritual magic
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: and the value of ritual magic and theorgy and his
• 59:26
  Speaker 6: big defense for it, basically, And so the characterization ends
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: up being that Iamblicus is sort of the defender of
• 59:35
  Speaker 6: like cult and ritual and you know, the Platonic tradition
• 59:39
  Speaker 6: before that was just kind of this dry intellectual tradition
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: that you know, didn't care about rituals at all. And
• 59:45
  Speaker 6: I think that that's a really reductive way of looking
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: at it, Like, I don't think that that's a good characterization.
• 59:52
  Speaker 6: The bigger difference is that there was a more mystical
• 59:55
  Speaker 6: and contemplative tradition in Platinus in before, but that's still
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: included cult, that still included doing rituals, that still included
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 6: worshipping the gods. That was always a part of it.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 6: What really changes when we get to Theamblicus is we
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 6: get the introduction of a series of works called the
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 6: Caldean Oracles. Those become central and sometimes it I don't
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 6: think it gets enough credit for how influential the Cardian
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: Oracles were and basically what these were as a series
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 6: of revealed texts by this guy, Julian, the Theorgist, and
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 6: it basically explains how to do this theorgic practice, that'say,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 6: a ritual practice that unifies you with the gods essentially.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 6: And the Amplicus was a huge fan of these texts.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 6: He wrote twenty three books of commentary on them, and
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 6: they became canon in later Platonism. So to the later
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 6: Platonists Iamblicus, Proclus, Damascius, the Cauldian Oracles were just as
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: authoritative as Plato. In fact, like most of what they
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 6: are doing in people like Proclus and his commentaries is
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 6: trying to actually kind of merge together what's in the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 6: Cauldean Oracles with what Plato said and find some kind
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 6: of synthesis between the two of them. And that I
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 6: think is really the big difference. And Gregory Shaw, who's
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: a really prominent Platonic philosopher, written some great books. His
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 6: most recent one was Hellenic Tntra, where I think he
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 6: actually really identified very well what's going on with the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: Amblicus and Proclus and these Theurgic Platonists is they created
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 6: a kind of Hellenic tntra where it's this different pathway
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 6: for divine union that's based in ritual theorgy essentially, and
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 6: everything becomes kind of colored by that after he Amblicus
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 6: more or less.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: So that's the way I see it.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: I don't necessarily think of it as like, you know,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: ritual versus non ritual. I think of it as like
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 6: contemplation philosophy, ritual versus this very specific type of ritual
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 6: theorgy informed by the Caldean oracles. So it's less of polemic,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: I guess, but I think that's more accurate to what's
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: really going on.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: Nice, thank you, I appreciate that.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great that's I actually really like that.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: And that's something I'm like, I feel like right now,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: maybe in the current cultural mythosis of the theogists, who
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: are also maybe Golden Down members and different things, they
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: have like a not just Golden Down, but they're trying
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: to separate themselves from the philosophers. Interesting enough, And that's
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: my own take from of what I hear them talk about,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: is that when anytime philosophy is brought up, they're like, oh, yeah,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: but that's not what we're doing. And I get confused
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: by that because I'm like, I don't know if you
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: understand what the philosophia actually is. Then, because thinkers like Platinus,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: like you're talking about Proclus and these characters, they are
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: doing a form of honosis. They're they're contemplating so deeply
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: that the contemplation is inte interacting with the news. Is
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: what it's doing. Is it's because it's prayer. But you're
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: just taking away the ritual aspect. But I don't know
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: if it's taking away. Actually, I think that through contemplative prayer,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: even if you're not doing the burn, all these things
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: right that you would do in your ceremonial magical practices,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: like the Amblicus is now interacting with I think you
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: are still contemplatively interacting with the divine noos, the divine
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: mind through prayer is a form of ritual itself. But
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: that maybe, you know, people may not like that.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 6: No, no, I think interestingly, I Amblicus, I don't think
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 6: would like that.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I know one, especially because in his
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: letters to Porphyry he was kind of arguing against that
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: kind of thing.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: I think, right, I mean, his his view, and this
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: goes back to his idea of the descended soul. So
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: to the Amblicus, and Proclus and everyone later the soul
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 6: is fully descended, which what he means by that is.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: That we are sort of cut off from the news.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 6: We are cut off from that that demiergic power like
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: you're talking about. And so the idea that you would
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: do any kind of inward contemplation and attain honosis is
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 6: like an absurdity to the Amplicus. He thinks it's impossible
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 6: for you to do it, and that you actually have
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 6: to use these ritual symbols essentially, and things that are
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: associated with the gods through these divine chains. You have
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: to use them in a particular way with ritual magic
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 6: or else. It's almost like their keys that you have
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: to use to unlock the doors of spiritual ascension, and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: without them it just doesn't work at all. And so
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: that's a very different opinion, and I definitely diverged from
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: the Amplicus on that, and I think he's totally wrong.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: And I think the reason is the proof in the pudding. Really,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 6: it's like, how many people have had these experiences without
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 6: doing ritual theurgy? Yeah, naturally, naturally, right, So I think
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 6: that that's kind of proven, is not quite the way
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: it works, but that doesn't mean that there isn't value
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: in all theurgic work as well, But I think it's
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 6: interesting you mentioned that there's a lot of people talking
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: about theorgy. It does seem to me like it's kind
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 6: of at the moment uh.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Urgy Platonism, and like, I think there's one other subject
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: I've noticed that I can't remember, well, seemed to be
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: coming from like the same side of the magical community.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 6: You lately have noticed, Yeah, well, and I kind of have,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: Like I get like the ours theogia has been around
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: forever in you know, going in back through the Renaissance
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: works that that was talked about, but we don't really
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: know what the amplicant theorgy was, Like, we lost the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 6: vast majority of the culti and oracles. We have fragments
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 6: of it. We don't have any of those commentaries that
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 6: the Amblicus wrote. We just know that he wrote them,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: so we don't really know what they were doing. So
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: I'm always a little skeptical of people when they're kind
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: of writing theorgy books because I think they're using the
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 6: term loosely and I get it, but it definitely doesn't
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: have anything to do with the Amblican theorgy the way
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: that we from what we know of it, you know,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 6: which is very little.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: Got yeah, yeah, and I And part of my something
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to talk about continually, I think in even undertones,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: is how each individual has their own level of karma
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: uh and each individual due to their daily karma as
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: well as you know, trauma, born, all these different things
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: that make us human. Each one of us has our
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: own aspect of how then to kind of shed away
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: and alchemize that dead ash, to go through the al
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: chemical process to reach whatever the divine is or that
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: level of hnosis, if that makes sense, in so to
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: then make statements like a Hamplicus does that the only
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: way you can't do it through pure contemplation. You have
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: to do it through ritual magic. And that theogical ascent,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: the anagogic ascent to the divine. There's something to it,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: but all you know, and it's like, well for your
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: nervous system, right, for your body mind connection. And I
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: get how talks about sin is this like like combination
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: of you know, a soul can't sin, but the body
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: is sin, and so it's the soul embodied is what
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: creates sin in the world. Right, So he's like intermixing
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: all these weird ideas. Yeah, you get this.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 6: Idea of like the pneumatic vehicle, the akamanuma, that is
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: this you know, it's not your soul, but it's kind
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 6: of like the vehicle of the soul that you have.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 6: And so like when you think about your when we
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 6: imagine the soul as being that kind of like misty
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 6: apparition that kind of looks like you.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: He's saying, like that.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 6: Is this this pneumatic vehicle, and what you know sin
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 6: is is really like a miasma. It's this miasmic sort
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 6: of accretion that gets added and damages the pneumatic vehicle
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 6: and stuff like that. And part of the ascent is
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 6: fixing that. And he's saying, you know, theorgy is what's
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 6: going to kind of put this pneumatic vehicle in good order.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 6: You know, you're like, you're a mechanic for the pneumatic vehicle.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 6: Kind of tune the thing up so you could, you know,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 6: it can go rise and be in its proper place
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 6: in the in the cosmos.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: That's funny.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: The one thing I did want to get into and
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: I just.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: Realized it's already already. What did you touch on your book. Yes, yeah,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: so please that is kind of switch lanes. Even though it'spileably,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm still staying there.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's kind of right on point with what
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 6: we're talking about, you know, I talk about, you know,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 6: my ass on the pneumatic vehicle and everything in the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 6: book and this casas so you know, really the point
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 6: of that is, you know, I was looking at all
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 6: of these different traditions and different practices from around the
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: world that have been used and using them to kind
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 6: of construct an understanding of how we can practice Platonism
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 6: in what you guys will probably say is kind of
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 6: an occult way, you know, of doing these these kind
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 6: of interior practices, both meditation practices, visualization practices that are
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 6: really geared toward purifying the soul and toward that anagogic
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 6: ascent essentially is what it's all about. And you know,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 6: my viewpoint on it is really that this is kind
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 6: of like a science, and I think everybody's been doing
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 6: this the world over and taking that kind of approach
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 6: where we look at spirituality a bit like a science,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 6: we can we can make a lot of progress there
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 6: because we have this unfortunate gap when it comes to
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 6: platonic practices. And I mentioned this in the book that
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 6: if you're looking for, you know, how to practice Platonism,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 6: some ancient book about that, well you're not going to
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 6: find one, or even even something as simple how to
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 6: do platonic prayer. There really isn't anything like that. But
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 6: we know they were doing these practices. They know that
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 6: we had They had a ton of practices in the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 6: ancient world, and there's few little easter eggs and hints
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: of kind of what they were doing. Uh, And I
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 6: pull a lot of those quotes heavily and put those
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 6: into the book to kind of point in the right
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 6: direction to say, hey, this is obviously what they were doing.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 5: And then even.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 6: Taking some influence from Christians like the Orthodox tradition, which
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 6: like I said before, I think really starts in platinis
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 6: and then they sort of adapt a lot of these
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 6: practices like noetic prayer and reverse engineering some of those
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 6: to say, Okay, what's the platonic root of this practice?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 6: You know, if you strip away the Christian sort of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 6: trappings on top of it, can you do this practice platonically?
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 6: And the answer is yes, And so you know, I
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 6: focus on that in the book of you know how
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 6: we can do those types of practices.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. When did that come out? Uh?
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: Three years ago?
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, maybe it's two years ago that self published or yeah,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: it was self published? So nice. How was that experience?
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 6: Uh, it's fun. Honestly, I got more into it over time.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 6: It was kind of hard to do it the first time.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 6: But uh, the hardest part is type setting, which is
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 6: when you want to get your book ready to be published.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 6: You know, you can't just like take a word doc
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 6: and dump it into something.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 5: And print it.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 6: You know, you have to do all of this work
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 6: to make the book look the right way. And since
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 6: I've gotten much better at that. So I have a
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 6: couple other books that I'm working on right now. There's
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 6: that Platonic Path one that I talked about. It's more
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 6: of a kind of maybe manifesto for what we're doing
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 6: is creating platonic communities. And then I'm working also on
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 6: a an edition of the Commentary on the Golden Verses
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 6: by Hierocles of Alexandria, one of my favorite works.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: So did you get when you did all that stuff?
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: Was it?
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: Where where do you sell it on Amazon? Or like?
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, put it on Amazon.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: Does it have a just my own questions because I've
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: even thought about publishing something eventually myself. Did you did
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: you go get like your own ISBN, because I don't think. Okay,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: so you did do that, right, Yeah, and it doesn't
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: really give you.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 6: They'll give you an i SPN on Amazon if you
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 6: make your own book there. They'll say, yeah, we'll give
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 6: you one. But then the problem is you can't sell
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 6: that book anywhere else but Amazon.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought so if you and then if you
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: go get your own, technically you could even give that
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: to a library.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: Right, yeah, you can give it anywhere. Yeah, and that
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 6: only costs I think, like ten bucks or something like
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 6: that to get an IBN. It's not that sometimes some
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 6: places sell them in like packs of ten or something.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: That's funny. I was like when I saw that, I
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: was like, that's interesting. They sell these things impacts, like yeah,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: I was like, those are prolific writers. Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 6: I'm just kind of failing to see the point of
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 6: publishing houses anymore. I mean, I guess they can help
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 6: promote your book, you know, I would maybe consider going
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 6: through somebody like the Prometheus Trust, which is kind of
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 6: like a prominent platonic publishing house.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 5: But I don't know. I also kind of don't see
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 5: the point.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: Hear what you're saying. I do think the only I
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: think plus to it is that is there are some
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: people that actually do like kind of like stick to
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: certain companies that they check formately to see what they
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: put out. I'm saying that they're the best reputation, but.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, I might sell better or something.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But then again.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 6: It's like person, you know, obviously your self published, and
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 6: people are kind of like, oh whatever, like anybody can
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 6: do that actually published by a proper publisher. I think
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 6: they look at it a little bit different. But I
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 6: think these days I don't.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: Know which Honestly, it doesn't really mean much in my opinion.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: No, no, it doesn't. It only like I think, you know, Nick,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: you and I have interviewed some of like these publishing companies. Right,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: So Starlett Imprints is actually quite quite great, and the
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: reason you'd want to publish through them is because of
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: they have got their own small clique of people that
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: that do love them and buy from them as then
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: their books are.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 5: Gorgeous looking, right, there the quality of them.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: In the quality is insane. The press is another or
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: theon publishing of David Beth. But I really like that guy,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: and so he there those books that are beautiful looking
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: as well. So it's like it's like once you get
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: you know, self publish everything, and then find a direct
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: book that you're like, Okay, this one, I'm going to
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: publish through one of these more high end publishing companies
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: who are small, who are publishing magical texts because I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: wanted to look like a Bible.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, I totally get that, you know, multi quality,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 6: trying to do like a really high quality book on
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 6: your own.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 5: It's so hard, nice paper and the hardcovers and all that.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 5: It's very hard to do.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: Nice. That's awesome though, that you did that. Good for you,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Good for you, thanks, ma'am.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: When it comes to uh, it was a question, I
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: actually wanted to ask you what roles do like chanting,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: breathing and visualization, silence and contemplate, a prayer play and
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: platonic practice for you?
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 6: For me, they're essential, you know, that's a big part
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: of kind of daily practice for me is doing you know,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 6: things like chanting, silent contemplation, and I think it's something
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 6: that we need to recover a bit more of because
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 6: the Western tradition has this really long tradition of prayer
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: practices that don't get talked about nearly enough, and they
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 6: don't even really teach them within Christianity. Like I think
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 6: most people might not be aware of even the concept
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 6: of what's called mental prey, but the Catholic Church has
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 6: been talking about mental prayer for centuries. It's a major
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 6: part of their there's sort of more personal practices for people,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 6: and that includes things like what they call discursive prayer,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 6: which is basically like a thinking kind of meditation, or
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 6: you might like take an idea that you want to
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 6: think about, like maybe you take a passage of Plato
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: or something, and you're like, I want to just stew
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 6: on this idea and like let it soak in and
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 6: let whatever ideas come to my mind pop up. And
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 6: that's a great practice that the Church is forever.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: But.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 6: It seems like it doesn't really get disseminated out into
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 6: our culture. But you know, doing things like that and
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 6: mystical prayer, silent prayer, it's a big thing. It's very
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 6: similar to like the different Buddhist techniques that people have
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 6: for meditation, but in a more Western context.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: I like that. I definitely, uh that idea of like
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: contemplating on like I guess, like on an idea through meditation.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: I mean I think that's uh yeah, Magus would probably
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: even say, like that idea like taking a tarot card
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: and meditating on the meaning, that's such like a ceremonial
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: type magician suggestion.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, that's got precedents in in the Catholic tradition
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 6: and just the Western tradition in general.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 5: And you know, part of you.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 6: Know, just going back to the book, is this idea
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 6: that these earlier practices what would have been called a skeesis,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 6: which means exercises in the ancient world, that a lot
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 6: of that didn't just disappear, like those those practices got
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 6: absorbed into the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and people
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 6: continued to do them, but they did them in a
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 6: Christian way instead of doing them in a pagan way.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 6: But a lot of them are the same practices.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the idea of like picking up one of Plato's
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: works and just like I completely agree, Nick, And it's
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: the same thing you do when you're studying the Tarot
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: The Golden Down has you do it when you're reading
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: that or if you're reading Kroley's work in it right away.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: In the beginning in libra Oh, Croley talks about how
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: here's the set list of things you have to do
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: to prepare yourself for initiation, whatever that means, right of
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: what we understand initiation means beginning, and you know, it
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: gets taken into such a fascinating world of LARPing and
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: hocus focus and clown work and like, you know, and
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: it doesn't mean that these initiations aren't beautiful that you
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: go through. In the Golden Dawn, where you're going through
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: the god forms, I highly respect the god forms because
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: I understand how theater works on the human nervous system.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: It is massive, right we do you know? In Lord
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: of Mysteries one of my favorite dung wahs animes that
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: I've ever ever watched, and it's currently coming out. I'm
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: doing the stream on it tomorrow night with Richard Druack.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: But the idea is that, like, yeah, the idea is
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: that he's amazing. And one of the main things you
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: do in there is you you actually have to pretend
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: to be exactly what you're trying to become right, and
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: so it's like the theater of and the drama of
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: going through the practices and playtonism and ceremonial magic. All
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: these things is important. But just taking lines from the
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: dialogues and contemplating on them is a way to put
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: yourself into Greece in that time and the mystery school
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: traditions as you unpack every sentence. And fascinating enough. Heideger
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 4: when he was teaching The Republic in well he was
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: teaching it in school, is that he would try to
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: teach multiple books and then realize that in the end
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: of it. He was like, I'm going to do a
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: whole semester on just the first line of the Republic,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: and that's there's something to that that I really love. Yeah,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: because there's so much.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 6: To unpack, and you can tell the the ancient Platonists
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 6: we're doing that, you know.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 5: When you're reading commentary from them.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 6: I mean, they will take these tiny little things and
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 6: they were really doing this intense exegesus on it, really
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 6: pulling out everything they possibly could from the text.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was even thinking even the way, like I
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: guess Plato's presented this stuff wouldn't you be sitting there
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: contemplating on it anyway to try to figure out what it's.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: Really Yeah, that's exactly.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm like, you're kind of just doing what
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: you're supposed to do.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's exactly.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the point you should do on it.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's like very approachable, like you're reading these
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: dialogues and it's not like it's not like trying to
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 6: read Aristotle. Reading Aristotle is a slog, it's a slug,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 6: it's awful, it's rough, But reading Plato is fun. You know,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: they're they're these plays essential And so I think the
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 6: idea is stick in your mind a little bit more
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 6: you think about like I'm thinking about what Thrisimic has
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 6: said there, what about that thing Eutherphro said, Like what
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 6: does that mean?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 5: And and that sits in.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 6: Your mind for a while and deep, yeah, you know
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 6: it's you'll come up with different ideas as you keep
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 6: thinking about it. That's actually how I got into Platinus
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 6: really was just after reading the dialogues, I still had
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 6: a ton of questions.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 5: I had more questions and answers. I think after reading
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 5: the dialogues.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, as you should.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, which is the point?
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: Which is the point? Yeah?
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: But then I started reading and it was a while
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 6: after that I started reading Platinus and I realized, like, oh,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 6: Platinus is much more brilliant than I am, and he's
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 6: been sitting around thinking about those same questions and he's
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 6: just come up with these brilliant answers to that that
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 6: when I started reading them, you know, I was like, oh,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 6: this is it. Like I was wondering about that and
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 6: I finally like, here's Platinus that kind of solve the problem.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and any ad right of Platinis it's a brilliant
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've actually been reading it. I always go
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: back to it all the time, actually, because I'm all like,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: what the fuck is going on? Even in his first
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: few like pages, you're like, Okay. The reading Platinus's introduction
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: to the NIAT is even amazing. Some of these introductions
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: you really get to feel what were they going through.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: What were all of the royal people who were like
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: this guy, we need to bring him in here because
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: there's some shit going on that he's talking about. We
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: need to understand that. I mean that's yeah, it's great.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 6: In the ancient world, like all these aristocrats really appreciated
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 6: the philosophers in that way, you know, be like, get
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 6: that guy in the court, you got a right guy,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 6: he's cool.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: Uh huh.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: That's what I'm trying I think that's what we're trying
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: to do. That's what I'm trying to do. And I'm like, Okay,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: let's try to put on our work. So people want
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: to chat about this, It's like, do you do you
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: want to get paid? Yeah, I'll get paid. That'd be cool.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: Can I just talk to you about philosophy? That's good.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else you wanted to ask magus or anything?
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Actually I want to Can you talk about your
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: your platonic religion?
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I would love because I want to know
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: more about like what that because kind of those two
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: terms are a little oxymoronic at times, but not really
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: and so I really want to know what you have
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: to say about that.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 5: So yeah, this has been going on for a while.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 6: There's like kind of even a hot discussion within our
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 6: own platonic groups about, you know, is platonism and religion religion?
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 6: We have plenty of you know, disagreement. Is it a
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 6: philosophical school that grafts.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 5: Onto it all of that?
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 6: And I think maybe sometimes like we're giving too much
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 6: weight to the word religion, you know, like I compare
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: it to something else. I think it it starts to
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 6: become a little bit more clear, Like if I look
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: at Hinduism as a religion, we can say, okay, Hinduism's
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: or religion for sure. Is it Vita Adanta a religion?
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 6: The school of thought within Hinduism? I guess it's one
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 6: of those philosophical schools, all of the Vedanta schools or
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 6: school of thought. Is it separate from Hinduism? Can you
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 6: separate it out from Hinduism and it just sits on
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 6: its own? I guess you kind of could you know,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 6: somebody could be one of these more like secular advitive adantists.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 6: Maybe they just believe like all is one kind of
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: Indus or whatever.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 5: You could do it. So, I don't know. Maybe it's
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 5: a strange question.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 6: But the way that we've kind of put it together
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 6: is we've got Platonic path as the main hub for
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 6: everything that we're doing, and we have spokes that are
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 6: going to come out of that as more exoteric religious
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 6: practices on the sort of outside of it, so they're interrelated.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 6: We're kind of starting to mirror the way that things
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 6: worked in the ancient world, really, where there's public cult
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 6: and the sort of inner esoteric tradition, and there's a
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 6: sort of orphic element to everything in Platonism. If I
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 6: had to say that there was like a religion of Platonism,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 6: it's orphism. If you really had to yeah to a term, yeah.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: And algis it was in and of however, we say
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: his name, a contrapin agrees with you.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's definitely there. Yeah.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 6: And you even see that by the time you get
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 6: to Damascius and his books that he's writing, he's basically
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 6: taking the orphic theogony and putting it in platonic terms,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 6: because to them, the story of Dionysus and his fall
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 6: and return is central to Platonism. So if we had
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 6: like one myth that we were really rallying around, I
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 6: would say it's the orphic myth, and the orphic theogony
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 6: is the most sort of religious aspect of Platonism. So
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 6: I think we're going to move more in that direction, honestly,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 6: in the future. Is have some things that were more
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 6: explicitly orphic as a part of Platonic path and we're
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 6: just kind of working out some of the details of
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 6: how we want to do that. But I do think
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 6: that that's that you need. That you can't just have
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 6: a religion that's purely philosophical and metaphysical and talking about ideas.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 6: It's like, all of that stuff is great, but that
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 6: does not a religion make you know. You need the
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 6: kind of story, You need this sort of imbodied practice
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 6: that goes along with it. And that's something that we
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 6: get out of orphism. And I think we can just
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 6: make that more explicit over time, and that's our goal.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: So then to tell the people for who have no
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 4: idea what you're even talking about? What is Platonic pathway?
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 6: Sure, So Platonic path is our organization. It started out
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 6: of a group I started called the Romanist Society, which
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 6: we were kind of blending a bunch of things together
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 6: in the Romanist Society, which was some orphism, some Roman religion,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 6: and Platonic ideas all together. And you know, over time
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 6: I decided to keep these things a little bit more separate.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 6: So Romani Society is on its own as a society
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 6: for people who want to practice Roman household religion. So
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 6: if you want to worship the household gods, the gods
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 6: of your ancestors in the Roman way, the Romanist Society
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 6: is out there for people who want to do that.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 6: And then Platonic Path is the sort of thinghilosophical organization
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 6: I run where it's a lot of people who are
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 6: interested in philosophy, interested in Platonism talking about those ideas.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 6: And we're moving from that being more of a sort
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 6: of club of people who are interested in philosophy to
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 6: something that's more explicitly religious and community based. So our
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 6: main focus over time is to build Platonic communities, and
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 6: Platonic Path is the vehicle for us to do that.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 6: And my vision for all of that really is that
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 6: we need in the West some kind of third option
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 6: for religion. We've got Christianity, i'd say, is the main
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 6: current of religion for us. Secularism atheism is that second
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 6: current that's kind of taken over in a lot of areas,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 6: and we need something different, and I've always seen Platonism
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 6: as the thing that can be the vehicle to do that,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 6: to at least be the thing that we rally around
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 6: as the basis of a genuine Western spirituality. And so
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 6: that's the bigger point of our mission is to try
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 6: to push that and create more communities around the Western
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 6: world of people who are explicitly religious, practicing Platonists.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 5: It's a big goal, but it's a good one.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: No, that's a good one. No, I really like that. Actually,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: just signed up to your email list.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 5: Oh good, just now right?
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: Great?
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah, we should get you in on the discord that.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 6: That's really where a lot of the action happens right now.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 6: A lot of people are talking in there. That's kind
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 6: of our most active area.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: Oh cool, Yeah, I'm I. I know, I don't know.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 4: Maybe we're all the similar age group in a way.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 4: I discord and I I have no fucking idea how
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 4: to use it, but I'm going to learn.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I hate it personally.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 6: One of our members who is like more at techy
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 6: than me, he really suggested it, and it is an
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 6: awesome platform.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 5: It allows us to do all of this stuff that
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 5: we want to do.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 6: It wasn't my first choice, but I couldn't deny that
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 6: it just works better than anything else that I've found.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 6: And you know, it's pretty cheap too, so okay, yeah.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: Okay, and nice, So you guys do stuff on Discord, Okay,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: I'll try to figure that out. Yeah, nice, I feel and.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: Nick good good, No, just think about Discord.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: I used to like it, but uh yeah, do you
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: use discord?
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: Nick?
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: I did, but they they can't.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 3: They shut down like when we had the e co
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: reject so they should have done like three times. Oh
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: really yeah, like none of it was like, from my
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: honest opinion, I get into it too much.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: I think honestly, there was somebody who was in there
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: that didn't like to show and kind of reporting certain
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: jokes that didn't.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 5: Like Sure, yeah, I mean I'm concerned about that. I
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 5: do see.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 6: I could see at some point I was probably facing
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 6: the same problem. And there's a bunch of private things
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 6: like even our website has a kind of like forum
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 6: chat area on the website, but I don't like using
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 6: it because people don't get.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 5: It on their phones.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 6: And then it's like it's to make for a great
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 6: like quick back and forth chat kind of conversation. So
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 6: if there's something else out there that works better than
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 6: Discord for that them all years.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: But no, it's pretty good if you don't have an
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: answhole like doing something. So I was thinking, I was like,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: what sucks? Is it actually was a very active sover. Yeah.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you got to prune a lot of people.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 6: We definitely have people come through and some people don't
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 6: make the cut, you know, but not only if it
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 6: really being riff raff, you know.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: Nice. I don't think I got anything else, I mean,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: anything else would probably going on for another hour. Yeah,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: I was gonna get into like Christianity and something Catholicism
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: and something else. But yeah, maybe next time for sure.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to come back on and talk.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 6: Actually we covered a lot of stuff.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of specific questions that I
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: had that I could still ask. Definitely get you on again.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: Please remind people of the book and anything else you
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: want to promote, sir.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So the book aschisis.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 6: You can get it on Amazon and if you go
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 6: to a platonicpath dot org that should have links for
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 6: all of our stuff, so you can find our sub stack.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 5: We've got a worship service that we do several times.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 6: A month that you can find on there, and if
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 6: you sign up there you can get some early access
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 6: to some of the new books that we're working on
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 6: in there, and most of that stuff I'm going to
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 6: offer up for free or very low cost. So and
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 6: on there you can get access to our discord server.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 6: You can always message me on x if you guys
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 6: are having any trouble finding any of our stuff, happy
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 6: to pass along links.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 4: Cool.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 5: Well, thanks for having me on, guys. I really appreciate it.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: Really fun. Yeah, I had a great time. No, thank you,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: thank you. Definitely want to get you on again. I
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: love just like listening about this shit anyway, So please
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: let everybody know what's up with you where they can
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: find all your ship love to.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I thank you Nick as always. I love I
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 4: love doing these things with you.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 4: This is great. Yeah, and Eric, I'm definitely gonna have
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 4: you come on Magas in the media. We're gonna have
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: a full discussion on Plato and all the things. So
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 4: that'll be a great time. And yes, everybody out there
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 4: can just come find me Magas in the media. Just
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 4: type it into all your things. Again. I keep talking
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 4: about it, but it's gonna happen Apple Spotify here soon again.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: One Man Show trying to do do all the things
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 4: while living mundane life in the real world. But yeah,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: tomorrow night, if you all are out there, come and
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 4: we got a I'm doing a live show with Richard Ruwak,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 4: and we will be talking about one of the greatest
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: stories of all time, The Lord of Mysteries. I've done
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: a bunch of that was actually some of the first
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 4: videos I did last year that blew helped my channel grow,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 4: and so those are some of my biggest breakdowns because
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: it mixes steampunk, HP lovecrafty and horror and ceremonial magic,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: the tarot and the Tree of Life, and so Richard's
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 4: a huge nerd in the Lord of Mysteries lore, and
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 4: that's something that we could talk about for hours. So
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 4: that'll be tomorrow night, him and I will be doing
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 4: the live show of that, and then next to early
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 4: next week, once I get done cutting it up, my
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 4: interview with Alan Chapman will be coming out, So stay
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 4: tuned for that conversation. That's a brilliant conversation and he's
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 4: deep into the lowres of Croley in his own mystery
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 4: school called the Magia, and so that was a great
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 4: combo that I had with him and convo. You should
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: definitely as well have Nick. You should reach out to
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 4: Alan Chapman and bring them on because he's a wealth
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 4: of knowledge. So yeah, everyone just goes like, subscribe to
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 4: magas in the media, go check out And obviously you're
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 4: already listening to Nick right now, so if you haven't,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 4: you're a ninja watcher, go fucking subscribe like they're all
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 4: his stuff as well. Go check out Eric Clausen because
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 4: Eric's doing the good work. I do truly appreciate your work, Eric,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: So yeah, this was a fantastic talk. I love talking
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 4: all things playto. We should get you hooked up with
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 4: Daniel Lane as well. She's doing Palinode stuff. I don't
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 4: know if you've seen the things that she's post posted,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: but she's a Platonist, is a Gonzaga professor who is
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: deeply integrated into Platonism. And so I'm all, next time
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: I talked to her, which is next week, I'll drop
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: your name so you hopefully can hook her.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: Up to stuff.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 4: So cool.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that would be great actually to put them
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: together or get them on together.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: That's what I was just thinking, Nicky. We should have
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 4: it both on here next time, Yes, because she's fucking
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: she's got emblazoned with the passion of arrows man.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: She Oh yeah, she's a fire yo. Last time when
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: she was going to come on, she was going to
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: try to find somebody to bring on with her because
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: she wanted to try to get somebody else just on
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: the show anyway. So yeah, maybe I could make that happen.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: That'll be fun.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 4: Let's do it.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you again, guys, Eric, thank you so much for
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: coming on. Brandon, thank you for coming on. I always
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: look forward to hearing you know, your ideas on platinism
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: and everything, so thank you for making it and everybody
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: in the chat. That is what's up. Thank you for
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: checking it out. And until the next one, everybody be well.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 7: Later, close your eyes, look into the darkness, find the
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 7: blazing storm.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Focus on it would be called the eclipse. Don't feel
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: thank you should begin.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: And gush you sh