Speaker 1: You're listening to an air wave media podcast. It's actually
Speaker 1: quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 2: A giant, very creature.
Speaker 3: Part eight part masts in Luckness, a twenty four a
Speaker 3: mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 1: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster Monstertle.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 4: Blake Smith. Today we're going to continue our series on
Speaker 4: magic because I want to talk about some famous people
Speaker 4: within that area of study. But I feel like there's
Speaker 4: two much legend and lore surrounding some of these figures
Speaker 4: that doesn't give them their proper historical context. So in
Speaker 4: this episode, we're going to begin a conversation with religious
Speaker 4: studies expert John crow about theosophy, but we'll be touching
Speaker 4: on spiritualism, Masonic rites and many other topics. Our goal
Speaker 4: here is to get to the life of Alistair Crowley,
Speaker 4: but before we can do that, I think we need
Speaker 4: to understand the world he grew up in. Also, just
Speaker 4: a quick note, I believe his name is pronounced Crowley,
Speaker 4: As Robert Anton Wilson constantly reminds me, it's supposed to
Speaker 4: run with holy but at some points during the interview,
Speaker 4: I do say, Crowley, my apologies, but I can't get
Speaker 4: that Ozzy Osbourne song out of my head anyway. A
Speaker 4: bit of quick sad Monster News. We want to note
Speaker 4: the passing of doctor John Bindernagel, a biologist who spent
Speaker 4: many years researching Bigfoot stories. I had the chance to
Speaker 4: exchange a few emails with him, and he was always
Speaker 4: very polite and friendly. And while I never met him
Speaker 4: in person, I certainly had come to know him by
Speaker 4: way of his many documentary and book apparent is so
Speaker 4: rest in peace, doctor binder Nagel. Now let's learn more
Speaker 4: about the strange history of esoteric beliefs in Western culture
Speaker 4: with John crow Orange Tutle. Welcome to Monster Talk, John Crowe.
Speaker 4: I don't think my listeners, well, some of them might
Speaker 4: know you, but would you mind doing an introduction for yourself?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I have a background in religious studies, and so
Speaker 1: I've actually got a master's degree in Western esotericism from
Speaker 1: the University of Amsterdam, at which I wrote a thesis
Speaker 1: looking at the history of occultism and focusing in particular
Speaker 1: on the relationship between theosophy occultism in the person of
Speaker 1: Alan Bennett, who was Alistair Crowley's teacher in the Golden
Speaker 1: Dawn and who later became a Buddhist monk and tried
Speaker 1: to bring Buddhism to England. And then I got my
Speaker 1: PhD at Florida State University in Religious studies American religious history,
Speaker 1: focusing on Theosophy again and how Eastern traditions came into
Speaker 1: the United States, with a particular method of looking at
Speaker 1: the interaction between religion and science and how that played
Speaker 1: out in the human body and how people define their bodies.
Speaker 1: So I've had a long history of looking at the
Speaker 1: subject of occultism, how it arose, the kind of influences
Speaker 1: that had in Western culture, and particular people within the tradition,
Speaker 1: especially in Theosophy, Golden Dawn and the Tholemic current.
Speaker 4: Which so for our listeners, the reason I've asked you
Speaker 4: to come and join us today for this episode is
Speaker 4: to talk about Well, initially I contacted you in regards
Speaker 4: to Alistair Crowley. I asked, Joe Laycock if you knew
Speaker 4: anybody who would be a good person to talk to,
Speaker 4: and I was Crowley is such an interesting figure you're
Speaker 4: in the history of magic that I just didn't feel
Speaker 4: like I could find a good sort of neutral authority
Speaker 4: or I wasn't able to on my own and to
Speaker 4: refer me to you, but you, I don't think it's coincidence,
Speaker 4: But because it's the same sort of related topics, you
Speaker 4: also have a really nice understanding and education about the
Speaker 4: sort of context of Crowley within.
Speaker 2: The whole history of esotericism.
Speaker 4: And I wanted to be able to give Crowley context,
Speaker 4: and you really seem well suited to do that. So
Speaker 4: I'm hoping that we can sort of talk through that
Speaker 4: and understand who he was and his impact on magic
Speaker 4: and really on sort of pop culture, as well as
Speaker 4: how he fit into this. I don't know what to
Speaker 4: colleaguescept esotericism, occultism, this trend that happened at least from
Speaker 4: my perspective from the mid eighteen hundreds into the early
Speaker 4: twentieth century to really still be going on in a
Speaker 4: lot of ways.
Speaker 1: So absolutely, yeah, I mean his influences still felt today.
Speaker 1: I mean you can google his name or his books
Speaker 1: on Amazon and they're still widely available and people still
Speaker 1: make a lot of reference to him. He's especially influential
Speaker 1: in various kinds of artistic endeavors, music, visual art, film theater.
Speaker 1: So you know he has a long legacy.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, let's get started with the sort of
Speaker 4: to give it context, the sort of the rise of
Speaker 4: occultism in Western Europe. Where did this come from? Like,
Speaker 4: why did this happen? What's the source of all this?
Speaker 1: Well, I think if we look at occultism in its origins,
Speaker 1: as many of your guests have pointed out, these phenomena,
Speaker 1: these ways of seeing the world go way way back
Speaker 1: in human history. Occultism, in many ways is just the
Speaker 1: modern manifestation of these esoteric currents, in particular the one
Speaker 1: that kind of arose out of the negotiation with science
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. I would say occultism doesn't even
Speaker 1: go back to the early modern period, where we see
Speaker 1: the shift from a kind of natural philosophy responding to
Speaker 1: Protestantism and the Reformation, and so you start to see
Speaker 1: different ways of looking at the world. You don't have
Speaker 1: science yet, this doesn't exist, but you have new ways
Speaker 1: of looking at the relationship between the divine and the
Speaker 1: world around us. Prior to the early modern period and
Speaker 1: when natural philosophy was predominant, there was this assumed relationship
Speaker 1: between the divine the celestial realm and the physical realm.
Speaker 1: And then when we start getting into the early modern
Speaker 1: period with a lot of the people that we think
Speaker 1: about Bacon and so forth, they start saying, well, what's
Speaker 1: the best way to investigate these things? And so they
Speaker 1: start figuring out different kinds of methods induction and testing
Speaker 1: and things like that, and so you get protoscience there,
Speaker 1: but you really don't get the full flourishing of what
Speaker 1: we would call science until you get into the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: I mean, the term scientists wasn't coined until the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: so it's really this modern notion of testability, reproducibility, objectivity,
Speaker 1: that people could trust their senses. That was also an
Speaker 1: important development in the scientific method, is that people could
Speaker 1: actually believe what they see, and that objectivity depends upon
Speaker 1: the reliability of our senses. And this was not always
Speaker 1: taken to be true. So there was a lot of
Speaker 1: small pieces that were developing at different times that all
Speaker 1: came together. And we also need to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that even the science that arose in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: the scientific method that they use, even going back to
Speaker 1: Curley where he talks about the method of science, the
Speaker 1: aim of religion. The method that they were using in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century would not be acceptable to science today.
Speaker 1: And if we talk about spiritualism in the kind of
Speaker 1: impulse to test spiritualism, the kinds of testings that they
Speaker 1: were doing the experiments in the eighteen fifties, when scientists
Speaker 1: look at those notes, diagrams, descriptions and results today, they
Speaker 1: don't find them reliable, as the kinds of methods that
Speaker 1: they use that at the time was science is not
Speaker 1: acceptable today. So we really should understand that this is
Speaker 1: an evolving method in an evolving way of looking at
Speaker 1: the world, and we should be reticent about taking our
Speaker 1: frames of reference and our terms that we use now
Speaker 1: and projecting them backwards in time, because it really distorts
Speaker 1: and misrepresents the way people thought and acted and saw
Speaker 1: the world around them.
Speaker 4: So I think maybe for our listeners it might be
Speaker 4: a good idea to give a little a few examples
Speaker 4: of what I'm at least what I'm thinking about. So
Speaker 4: we've got there are secret societies or clue societies like
Speaker 4: the Masons, and then there was an I guess at
Speaker 4: one point an actual group called the Illuminati, which existed
Speaker 4: I guess at least for a little while with Weisshoft,
Speaker 4: and then you have in the mid eighteen hundreds you
Speaker 4: get the rise of spiritualism, and we can talk about
Speaker 4: that a little bit, but that was I guess, a
Speaker 4: combination of religious and social movement in some sense. Then
Speaker 4: we also have the rise of Theosophy, and by the
Speaker 4: end of the eighteen hundreds, I want to talk a
Speaker 4: little bit about things like the Golden Dawn and the Oto,
Speaker 4: and then eventually from there we'll move into Crawley, got it.
Speaker 4: But there's a lot of terms and groups to throw
Speaker 4: out the name of. But when we talked before a
Speaker 4: little bit before this interview, I didn't think about the
Speaker 4: impact of Masonic groups, but I think maybe we should
Speaker 4: miss in those as well.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, okay, So we get the rise of speculative masonry
Speaker 1: in the seventeen hundreds, as you noted, but we really
Speaker 1: want to make sure we understand that there are different
Speaker 1: types of masonry arising at different times. So the masonry
Speaker 1: that rises in England in the early seventeen hundreds and
Speaker 1: is brought to the colonies is what's called today blue
Speaker 1: lodge masonry. It's the first three degrees and that is
Speaker 1: the standard masonry that everybody knows that anybody who's a
Speaker 1: mason will have gone through those three degrees, and there
Speaker 1: the degrees make a person a master mason. Now, in
Speaker 1: current freemasonry, once you're a master Mason, you can go
Speaker 1: in different directions, do York right, Scottish Rite, follow those through,
Speaker 1: and you could even get to other rights outside of
Speaker 1: masonry propers such as the Shriners and so forth. But
Speaker 1: when masonry first came to the colonies and spread, it
Speaker 1: was these first three degrees. Meanwhile, you have in Germany
Speaker 1: and South Germany, Weishaupt, as you noted, was anti Catholic,
Speaker 1: anti the the powers that be, and so he tried
Speaker 1: to create a group and that eventually was found out
Speaker 1: and it was suppressed. So the connection between the two
Speaker 1: and why people still think that the Illuminati exists and
Speaker 1: so forth, is due to this book by a guy
Speaker 1: called Robinson. Are you familiar with this history?
Speaker 2: Even if I were, I think we should probably go
Speaker 2: ahead and explain it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So people are familiar with Morse code Samuel Morris,
Speaker 1: but his father was a minister in Massachusetts named Jedediah Morse,
Speaker 1: and Jededi Morse discovered a book by John Robinson called
Speaker 1: Proofs of a Conspiracy against all religions and governments of Europe,
Speaker 1: carried on in the secret meetings of Freemason's Illuminati and
Speaker 1: reading society. Yeah, this book is widely available online. You
Speaker 1: can go to something like archive dot org and download
Speaker 1: a PDF of it, or Google Books or something. It's
Speaker 1: widely available, but at the time it was only available
Speaker 1: in certain cities that were getting shipments from the UK.
Speaker 1: And Robinson got a copy of this read it and
Speaker 1: he was deeply moved that there was a conspiracy against Republicanism.
Speaker 1: And so he started preaching from his pulpit about this
Speaker 1: conspiracy and he started going and making speeches to Masons.
Speaker 1: And the one thing that Robinson was doing was he
Speaker 1: was seeing what we now call Scottish Rite freemasonry. And
Speaker 1: this is the issue with communication. At the time, we
Speaker 1: have almost instant communication, but in the seventeen hundreds that
Speaker 1: wasn't the case. So you had developing in France Scottish
Speaker 1: Rite free masonry. I know it sounds strange that it
Speaker 1: developed in France, but it did, and it did not
Speaker 1: make its way to England directly. It actually had a
Speaker 1: very securitoiust route of going through the Caribbean, through South Carolina,
Speaker 1: New York, and then finally to the UK. And so
Speaker 1: you end up having this situation where in continental Europe
Speaker 1: they're practicing these extended degrees of masonry. Those extended degrees
Speaker 1: of masonry come to the United States, but they're not
Speaker 1: in the UK yet, and so you have Morris asking
Speaker 1: masons about these degrees and they don't know anything about them.
Speaker 1: He starts showing pamphlets and of these degrees that were
Speaker 1: from France. Again nobody knows anything about them. So he
Speaker 1: starts claiming that there's this big conspiracy. He publishes pamphlets
Speaker 1: and these can be googled. They're all Scottish right freemasonry,
Speaker 1: and so it's a real confusion about what's going on.
Speaker 1: But it sets this foundation for claims that the Illuminati
Speaker 1: still exists. And so it's really from this book Miscommunication
Speaker 1: and Suspicion, which has been present in American society from
Speaker 1: the beginning, this suspicion of government, of suppression and so forth,
Speaker 1: that sets the foundation for this Illuminati conspiracy and builds
Speaker 1: on freemasonry. Well, what's also happening in parallel with this
Speaker 1: freemasonry is the rise of additional rights. Instead of just
Speaker 1: your and Scottish right, which are traditional masonry today, you
Speaker 1: get all these spin off rights, and so you start
Speaker 1: also seeing competition between Grants and England and other places
Speaker 1: that are creating their own rights too for nationalistic reasons.
Speaker 1: So you get the ancient and primitive rights of Memphis
Speaker 1: and Misriam. You get all of these other rights, and
Speaker 1: all of them are kind of circulating around and people
Speaker 1: are participating them. In the eighteen hundreds, people are getting
Speaker 1: multiple degrees and certificates, and this is the kind of
Speaker 1: foundation of Masonic ideas floating around that really gives the
Speaker 1: foundation in which groups like Theosophy, Golden Dawn and the
Speaker 1: Oto arose. They're all based on these kind of fringe
Speaker 1: or alternative kinds of freemasonry. And so when you start
Speaker 1: looking directly at especially the rights of the Golden Dawn
Speaker 1: and the Oto, they're very Masonic. And if you look
Speaker 1: at Theosophy, its original structure under Blovatsky was not free Masonic.
Speaker 1: Well actually it was. It did have three degrees, it
Speaker 1: had an oath that you had to take, and secrecy.
Speaker 1: But these were then shifted into the esoteric section, and
Speaker 1: so masonry is the underlying framework, so much so that
Speaker 1: under the leadership of Annie Bessett, the second President of
Speaker 1: the Theosophical Society, they create co Masonry, which is both
Speaker 1: male and female. And there were types of female freemasonry
Speaker 1: prior to co Masonry, lodges of adoption in other circumstances.
Speaker 1: But this is the really the foundation in which all
Speaker 1: of these rights, all of these organizations, and in many
Speaker 1: cases occultism arose in Europe and in the United States.
Speaker 4: So when I think of masonry as an outsider, I
Speaker 4: usually think about it in terms of being secretive and
Speaker 4: perhaps holding onto hidden wisdom. Is what what is masonry like?
Speaker 4: What for listeners who aren't familiar with it outside of
Speaker 4: this sort of that context or the way you see
Speaker 4: it spoken of on these sort of history channel TV shows.
Speaker 4: What I know, it's a sort of a fraternal group,
Speaker 4: But what is it exactly? What are they doing?
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's no one thing. It's it's been a
Speaker 1: number of things over time. And just to be clear,
Speaker 1: I am not a Freemason. I've not taken any initiations
Speaker 1: in freemasonry, although I've read a lot of their material
Speaker 1: and one of the things that they're very clear about
Speaker 1: is they claim that they're not a secret society. They
Speaker 1: claim that they are a society with secrets. And so
Speaker 1: they want to make a distinction between the fact that
Speaker 1: being a Mason people are open about it, that the
Speaker 1: lodges and temples and all of the things that are
Speaker 1: associated with Masonry are very public, that they don't hide
Speaker 1: their membership, that they constantly invite the public in. So
Speaker 1: they're not a secret society in that sense that they're
Speaker 1: trying to hide their existence or their influence. But they
Speaker 1: do turn around and say, look, the secrets are an
Speaker 1: integral part of what bind us together in the ceremonies
Speaker 1: and the experiences that every Mason has, and again every
Speaker 1: mason who is a master Mason has gone through that
Speaker 1: initiatory experience and they all are very similar across the world.
Speaker 1: And so there's this experiential unity that they have within
Speaker 1: the organization, and part of that is getting secrets, and
Speaker 1: those secrets are based on ideas about morality and conduct
Speaker 1: and serving each other. But if we go back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of what masonry started as it was much
Speaker 1: more social. It was a kind of a group of
Speaker 1: middle class and elite men who would get together and
Speaker 1: have banquets and parades through town and things like that.
Speaker 1: By the time you get into the eighteen hundreds, there's
Speaker 1: a especially in the United States, there's an incident called
Speaker 1: the Morgan Affair, where there's a guy in New York
Speaker 1: named Morgan who claims he's going to create a publish
Speaker 1: a book that has all the Masonic secrets. He disappears
Speaker 1: and is presumed murdered. And then because of the position
Speaker 1: of Freemasonry within the society, all the politicians, the judges,
Speaker 1: the police, everybody's a Freemason. There's all this again suspicion.
Speaker 1: And then the people who were claimed or are charged
Speaker 1: with Morgan's murder were not convicted. The jury was full
Speaker 1: of Masons, etc. Etc. And so there's a big public
Speaker 1: outcry about it. And this actually leads to the first
Speaker 1: third party of the United States, the Anti Masonic Party,
Speaker 1: which arose in the eighteen thirties, and they're first group
Speaker 1: to create a third party and a platform and to
Speaker 1: have meetings of that platform which people to get together
Speaker 1: and have a political convention and so forth, and even
Speaker 1: the political conventions that we have today every few years
Speaker 1: with the Democratic Party and the Republican Libertarians and all
Speaker 1: the other political parties. How they're formatted, what they do,
Speaker 1: having a platform, getting together the speeches. All that is
Speaker 1: still based on the format that was created in the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirties for the Anti Masonic Party. And so the
Speaker 1: anti Masonic movement arises and pushes back against this kind
Speaker 1: of influence, and Masonry changes and becomes a much more
Speaker 1: social and nal environment. The other thing it's doing all
Speaker 1: along is it is a mutual support organization. There was
Speaker 1: no social net, there was no insurance, so people would
Speaker 1: join Freemasonry knowing that if they died that the organization
Speaker 1: would a pay for their burial and be support their
Speaker 1: widow and children. This was really important because if the
Speaker 1: male was the only person who earned money and they died,
Speaker 1: that would leave the wife and children destitute. And so
Speaker 1: Freemasonry offered an opportunity to make sure that there was
Speaker 1: at least the minimal support for their family, and so
Speaker 1: they would pay dues into this and then through that
Speaker 1: charity would take care of Masonic burial and so forth.
Speaker 1: So we could see how this is in shifting priorities,
Speaker 1: public relations and so forth, and to get to the
Speaker 1: modern period where now is such a social network people
Speaker 1: are connecting. They don't need the social net that Freemasonry
Speaker 1: in many ways is very much in the decline. It's
Speaker 1: not very popular for young people and is really losing
Speaker 1: its foundation within the societies of the Western world. I
Speaker 1: should say that it had over the last few centuries.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 4: I was wondering if it was maybe gonna bounce back.
Speaker 4: You see, the sort of like hipster people with their
Speaker 4: fancy mustaches and big beards, that this is another one
Speaker 4: of those sort of retro things that seems like it
Speaker 4: might get some increased cultural cachet just because it's old.
Speaker 4: You know, I was curious if that would actually happen.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, the future is open for lots of
Speaker 1: people to enter freemasonry and change it. And that's the
Speaker 1: point we should keep in mind, is that freemasonry has
Speaker 1: not been this static organization. It's been dramatically shaped by
Speaker 1: the generations of men and associated women who have really
Speaker 1: changed the fabric of the organization. I mean, at the
Speaker 1: end of the eighteen hundreds, there was a movement to
Speaker 1: create all of these new rituals for different kinds of
Speaker 1: freemasonries to make different lines of freemasonry. There's a book
Speaker 1: called Encyclopedia Freemasonry by a guy named Mackenzie. He documents
Speaker 1: this proliferation of fringe rights and ritual. It's very, very popular,
Speaker 1: and there are some scholars who theorize that what's going
Speaker 1: on here is we're seeing a huge shift from agrarian
Speaker 1: society to an urban society. What it means in terms
Speaker 1: of masculinity is in flux, and so many men see
Speaker 1: freemasonry at the end of the eighteen hundreds as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to engage in masculine to create a masculine space,
Speaker 1: to make some kinds of morals and rights and ritual,
Speaker 1: to redefine what it means to be masculine. And so
Speaker 1: we see that kind of negotiation happening due to the
Speaker 1: rise of modernism and the shift to urban environments.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting to me, although I haven't spent as
Speaker 4: much time actually reading about it or looking into it,
Speaker 4: despite the way it overlaps with so many of my
Speaker 4: other sort of fringe topic interests.
Speaker 2: But the.
Speaker 4: Fact that I guess originally it came out of masonry,
Speaker 4: like in the actual building sense, and then became something
Speaker 4: quite different over time.
Speaker 2: Is that accurate or is.
Speaker 4: That you're understanding that that's that that that part of
Speaker 4: the history of this of the group is actually real,
Speaker 4: that it really did, uh sort of come out of
Speaker 4: the keeping the knowledge necessary for building.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know that was my say.
Speaker 4: It was like tied into the journeyman, you know, uh
Speaker 4: idea of like if you're going to learn a trade,
Speaker 4: you have to keep that trade information within the group
Speaker 4: so that it doesn't escape.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's real or not, though that's
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I think it in practical sense, it is real if
Speaker 1: we look back at earlier times than the early modern period,
Speaker 1: when you have people who who would travel and would
Speaker 1: claim certain things, including the knowledge to build and and
Speaker 1: therefore get employment.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So the passwords and so forth was a mechanism by
Speaker 1: which somebody could enter a place that is new, locate
Speaker 1: fellow tradesmen, reveal their knowledge with passwords, and then therefore
Speaker 1: be certified by the local tradesmen that this person is
Speaker 1: aware of things because they gave certain proofs through their
Speaker 1: association and their knowledge. So it was more of a
Speaker 1: certification process in practice in the early times, and it
Speaker 1: became speculative masonry in the eighteenth century, because you saw
Speaker 1: the involvement of people who saw the structure as useful
Speaker 1: but were not interested in the skills per se, but
Speaker 1: saw the symbolism and so forth as something that they
Speaker 1: could build upon to make this other kind of organization.
Speaker 4: Rise of the middle class. And that sort of tie
Speaker 4: in there that's really interesting. So you get masonry, you've
Speaker 4: got that existing. But then the in my not necessarily
Speaker 4: directly related sort of thing, we've got this rise of
Speaker 4: this idea of spiritualism. So yes, it's chronologically related, but
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, they're happening in parallel. And this is the thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of there's a lot of balls that
Speaker 1: get juggling in the air, and you kind of have
Speaker 1: to see that there are these multiple currents that and
Speaker 1: this is the term that's often used within the study
Speaker 1: of esotericism. You get what are called currents, and quite
Speaker 1: frequently the currents are overlapping or people who are involved
Speaker 1: with one become interested in another. So you have in
Speaker 1: one sense this you know, to go back to science,
Speaker 1: you have Mesmer, who was a German who claimed that
Speaker 1: there was this universal fluid and that he could influence
Speaker 1: people and heal them. He finds success for a while
Speaker 1: in France, he's giving training in this to people, and
Speaker 1: they end up taking it into other places, including the
Speaker 1: United States. So you have this one current of what
Speaker 1: is mesmerism, which turns into hypnotism, mental healing, Christian science,
Speaker 1: new thought. So that's this one current, and then you
Speaker 1: have another current of liberal Protestantism and Quakers and other
Speaker 1: kinds of liberal Protestants who are open to different ways
Speaker 1: of interacting with the spiritual world. And then you also
Speaker 1: have within there a subcurrent of Swedenborgianism. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with Emanual Swedenborg. So he was a
Speaker 1: Swedish engineer. I forget exactly what his trade was, but
Speaker 1: he was also a mystic and so he ended up
Speaker 1: having a lot of mystical experiences in which he would
Speaker 1: travel to other places and interact with the entities that
Speaker 1: were there, the various angels and so forth, and he
Speaker 1: founded what is called the New Church. But his writings
Speaker 1: about kind of his travels to the other world were
Speaker 1: hugely influential because if we look back at the time
Speaker 1: of mysticism from the early medieval period, all the way
Speaker 1: up to the early modern it's not very worldly. You
Speaker 1: get this kind of vague feelings imagery, but nothing that
Speaker 1: is described as, you know, just taking a stroll in
Speaker 1: the park. But that's exactly how Swedenborg talks about the
Speaker 1: other world. So Swedenborg sets this tradition in which people
Speaker 1: can go to the other world, and the other world
Speaker 1: looks a lot like this one, whereas in the various
Speaker 1: kinds of early and I'll probably mispronounce it the halaka
Speaker 1: of Judaism, it's the it's kind of based on the
Speaker 1: Enoch and his chariot, and it's the kind of mysticism
Speaker 1: that's there that later we get a different kind of
Speaker 1: Jewish mysticism in Kabbalah, we get various kinds of Christian mysticism,
Speaker 1: Islamic mysticism, and all of these different kinds of expressions.
Speaker 1: They're not talking about like what it's like to be
Speaker 1: in the real world. But Swedenborg is he describes going
Speaker 1: to different planets, meeting different angels. He describes what they
Speaker 1: look like, what they're wearing, where they live, what they
Speaker 1: talk like, what they're interested in. It's it's almost like
Speaker 1: travel narratives where people and this was something that it
Speaker 1: was very common. People would take a trip somewhere, maybe
Speaker 1: somewhere to Asia or in the Pacific or something, and
Speaker 1: then they would come back and write a book about
Speaker 1: it and just talk about their travel narratives, what they saw,
Speaker 1: who they interacted with, what they thought, what they ate
Speaker 1: and Swedenborg's discussions of the other world were similar. And
Speaker 1: I mentioned that current because once you get these notions
Speaker 1: of the ability to interact with the spirit world, once
Speaker 1: the spirit world becomes a reflection of this world, it
Speaker 1: sets the stage for Liberal Protestants to adopt spiritualism. This
Speaker 1: arose in eighteen forty nine with the Fox Sisters in
Speaker 1: Upstate New York interacting with a ghost supposedly a beggar
Speaker 1: was buried in the basement of their home, and then
Speaker 1: they start hearing knockings develop a system of knocking. This
Speaker 1: is then picked up within their community. In fact, some
Speaker 1: Quakers are the ones who first heard about the knockings
Speaker 1: and thought this is a proof of the other world,
Speaker 1: and therefore set up the exhibitions of it. But from
Speaker 1: that point spiritualism exploded. And one of the things we
Speaker 1: also need to keep in mind about spiritualism is that
Speaker 1: its political influence was that anybody could be a medium.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to go to training, you didn't have
Speaker 1: to do seminary, you didn't have to do anything. As
Speaker 1: a natural phenomenon, people could be mediums and communicate with spirits,
Speaker 1: and therefore it was very democratizing, open to any person,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it was very common for women to
Speaker 1: take on the roles of mediums, and by gender definitions
Speaker 1: at the time, women were is actually better able to
Speaker 1: communicate with the spirit world by their own constitution, the
Speaker 1: way that gender was constructed at that time, they were
Speaker 1: more by nature open to spirit And so spiritualism becomes
Speaker 1: this huge influence in the US and then spreads to Europe.
Speaker 1: It gets combined in different places. By the time it
Speaker 1: hits France, you get Kardak with Spiritism, so he's adding
Speaker 1: a free Masonic element, and also some other currents, so
Speaker 1: you get this big kind of soup. And this is
Speaker 1: the environment in which theosophy arises.
Speaker 4: Excelly, and I wanted to just point out that as
Speaker 4: we talked through these topics, I don't think any of
Speaker 4: these ideas are dead.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of these ideas are still out there.
Speaker 2: These groups are still active.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of easy to think about these things
Speaker 4: in a historical context, but a lot of these things
Speaker 4: still have an impact on things right now.
Speaker 2: I give you a good example, or at.
Speaker 4: Least one I think is very interesting is the movie Ghostbusters.
Speaker 4: I love the movie Ghostbusters, but Dan Aykroyd his family
Speaker 4: was heavily involved in spiritualism. It still is, and I
Speaker 4: think you could draw direct lines from the fact that
Speaker 4: the Fox sisters had their experiences and started this movement
Speaker 4: to the fact that we get to enjoy the movie
Speaker 4: Ghostbusters for those of us who do, because that's really
Speaker 4: Dan's family. Those stories about spiritualism come right out of
Speaker 4: his experiences being raised in a family that was actively
Speaker 4: involved in that.
Speaker 1: Spiritualism is very present today. There are numerous spiritualist churches
Speaker 1: all throughout the United States. I would say areas in
Speaker 1: which it's more common than others include the West Coast Florida,
Speaker 1: New England, but the there's a spiritualist, large spiritualist community
Speaker 1: in New York lily Dale, New York. And and there's
Speaker 1: also a huge spiritualist camp in central Florida called Cassadega,
Speaker 1: And there's multiple other ones throughout the United States. So
Speaker 1: spiritualism hasn't gone away, and and the ideas in which
Speaker 1: it participated hasn't gone away. They're very much present. They
Speaker 1: get combined and and transferred into other things. If you,
Speaker 1: if your guests have ever watched What is It? Teresa Capudo?
Speaker 1: The yes, she's a spiritualist through and through. Everything that
Speaker 1: she does is exactly how the spiritualist mediums began to
Speaker 1: operate once they moved away from having seance tables and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 4: So it ties into the Society for Psychical Research as well.
Speaker 3: So thebr yes, yes, And that's the thing. This is
Speaker 3: such a huge influence on our society that on our history.
Speaker 3: The kind of mark notions that these things are marginal.
Speaker 3: It just does not recognize the breadth and depth of
Speaker 3: their penetration within our culture. They pop up in ways
Speaker 3: that you don't expect. Like the first time I saw
Speaker 3: that Long Island medium show, I thought, oh wow, that's
Speaker 3: pretty different. Who knew that there was going to be
Speaker 3: a show about that? And then I find out, well,
Speaker 3: actually there's dozens of this and it's been going on
Speaker 3: for a long time.
Speaker 1: And the same thing with the ghost hunting shows. Those
Speaker 1: kinds of things are very very common. Then they follow
Speaker 1: the same kind of patterns that we can see in
Speaker 1: the psychical research that you mentioned.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And I think when you get into television
Speaker 4: you get this sort of.
Speaker 2: Issue with.
Speaker 4: It seems like it's had, in my opinion, a negative
Speaker 4: impact on the scientific interpretation or evaluation of these ideas.
Speaker 4: So unfortunately, I think it's led to a lot of
Speaker 4: modern ghost hunting groups effectively just doing what we would
Speaker 4: call live action role playing versions of ghost hunting instead
Speaker 4: of actually looking at out this deep history of scientific
Speaker 4: inquiry into these questions, or if not scientific, as you know,
Speaker 4: religiously based inquiries.
Speaker 2: But there is a lot more to.
Speaker 4: The history than you know what, I guess the way
Speaker 4: the Ghost Owner show with the Plumbers sort of started
Speaker 4: out this sort of reality television interpretation.
Speaker 1: So right, But I think that's interesting that you mentioned
Speaker 1: that it's the Plumbers, right, because I want to I
Speaker 1: want to contrast that with the the show that I
Speaker 1: guess was no longer around, the one that was ghost
Speaker 1: hunting based on Pen out of Penn State or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: Paranormal state. Yeah, paranormal state, we can absolutely talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the fact that you have plumbers turned ghost investigators,
Speaker 1: and that series has continued, and I guess I'm under
Speaker 1: the impression that the original participants have since broken up
Speaker 1: and now that they have multiple shows or something like that.
Speaker 4: If it's been offs, right, Ghosts International and some other things.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and yet Pen the one based at Penn
Speaker 1: State has stopped, right, right, So having where people who
Speaker 1: don't have qualifications institutional association, they're continuing, but those that
Speaker 1: did didn't make it in the marketplace. And I think
Speaker 1: there's there's an interesting twist there, right, because if you're
Speaker 1: actually going to be doing real science, more often than
Speaker 1: not you're associated with some kind of institution of higher
Speaker 1: learning or government association or funded a private organization. And
Speaker 1: that ghost hunting show was associated with that for a
Speaker 1: while and then was closed down. And then you have
Speaker 1: on the other side, the do it yourself, self made
Speaker 1: ghost hunters, which don't have any scientific credentials behind them.
Speaker 1: They're popular and continuing, and I think that mirrors what's
Speaker 1: going on in society that they don't want their institutions
Speaker 1: to be involved in those kinds of topics because they're disreputable,
Speaker 1: Whereas it's okay for plumbers to go looking at a ghostbuster,
Speaker 1: I mean ghosts because they're plumbers. What do they know
Speaker 1: about science.
Speaker 4: The Paranormal State TV show was a college club, so
Speaker 4: you can start a club just about anything, and the
Speaker 4: the the Penn State group led by Ryan Ryan Buell,
Speaker 4: Yeah bus part. You know, he has had some complicated
Speaker 4: life issues since that show ended, involving drugs and fraud
Speaker 4: and some other things. So you know, I hope he's
Speaker 4: getting his life straightened out because that's you know, those
Speaker 4: things can really be disruptive in your life. But regardless
Speaker 4: of that, that has that note bearing on whether these
Speaker 4: things are real or not. I just I feel bad
Speaker 4: for him because you if you're a student in college
Speaker 4: and you get onto a TV show, you can get
Speaker 4: fame and that sort of thing, but there's not I
Speaker 4: don't think they pay a lot of money to these
Speaker 4: reality star people. I mean, you know, if you have
Speaker 4: a good agent, you sort of work some things out.
Speaker 4: But there was a lot of very questionable things happening
Speaker 4: on that TV show. And it's one of my at
Speaker 4: peeves because the their alleged psychic was also involved in
Speaker 4: a TV show about psychic kids, and it felt very
Speaker 4: exploitative to me and I just always worry about kids
Speaker 4: who might be being exploited for you know, entertainment purposes
Speaker 4: in ways that maybe aren't in their best interests psychologically,
Speaker 4: if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yes, So I think there's a long history of children
Speaker 1: being involved in the in media and having negative results.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And that's that's all the way up to the
Speaker 4: most you know, reputable you know institutions like a big
Speaker 4: giant movie corporations who unfortunately put kids into the spotlight
Speaker 4: and then dump them when they're not cute.
Speaker 2: Anymore, that sort of thing. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things going on here.
Speaker 1: But I don't I don't think that diminishes the point
Speaker 1: that you had one show that was even if it
Speaker 1: was nominally associated with institution of higher learning, I would
Speaker 1: venture to guess that that gave that show some legitimacy.
Speaker 1: And regardless of it ended because they pulled the plug
Speaker 1: on the club or because the main protagonist had a
Speaker 1: personal issues, it doesn't change the fact that there isn't
Speaker 1: any other organization that is jumping at being on those shows.
Speaker 1: It's really an issue of perception of marginalization and so forth.
Speaker 1: And while it's widely common and if you go and
Speaker 1: stop a dozen people on the street and ask them
Speaker 1: if they believe in ghosts, believe in the ability to
Speaker 1: talk to spirits and the dead. I would say the
Speaker 1: majority of them would say yes. The fact is, though,
Speaker 1: that institutions want to appear scientific, they want to have
Speaker 1: that kind of method behind what they do. And as
Speaker 1: much as these individuals want to claim that there's a
Speaker 1: scientific basis, everything they're doing is logical, but it's based
Speaker 1: or founded all on an illogical or a non provable basis.
Speaker 1: And that's the interesting thing. I mean, you can follow
Speaker 1: logic of all of these different groups, but they're always
Speaker 1: starting from a point in which there's no logic, there's
Speaker 1: no proof. You either just have to take it as
Speaker 1: faith or some kind of assertion from a higher power
Speaker 1: or transcendent source. And that's the same thing that's happening
Speaker 1: with Theosophy and the Golden Dawn and so forth. They
Speaker 1: even to the Oto with Crowley and his revelations. At
Speaker 1: some core starting point. In the case of Theosophy, you
Speaker 1: have the masters, so you have the claim that there
Speaker 1: are these Hamalian masters living out in Tibet that are
Speaker 1: connected to this larger tradition of ancient wisdom going back
Speaker 1: to the past, and that they and two of them
Speaker 1: have decided that they're going to help this group of
Speaker 1: people bring this ancient wisdom to the forefront of society.
Speaker 1: In doing so, they build this huge structure of knowledge
Speaker 1: and understanding and claims about the world and interaction between
Speaker 1: Eastern and Western religion and all of this. And you know,
Speaker 1: they do it in a very systematic way that looks
Speaker 1: very scientific, but it's all based on this foundation of
Speaker 1: revelation from higher power, in this case the Masters, and
Speaker 1: the same thing with the Golden Dawn. You get a
Speaker 1: lot of claims about knowledge and logical proceedings through different
Speaker 1: understandings of symbolism and so forth, but it's all predicated
Speaker 1: on this kind of founding myth and that Egyptian magic
Speaker 1: was real and that Freemasonry has a secret and all
Speaker 1: of these assertions and claims that cannot be proven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's very hard to get anybody to start
Speaker 4: with the null hypothesis, right, Yeah, that's it's not as
Speaker 4: interesting I think maybe for TV shows, but that there's
Speaker 4: the other problem is that I think people look at
Speaker 4: these TV shows and perceive them as being legitimate scientific
Speaker 4: inquiry now, not within my circle of friends, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, but but it's common. I've run into people
Speaker 4: all the time who think that these ghost TV shows
Speaker 4: are doing science. And I think Sharon Hill, one of
Speaker 4: my colleagues and friends, says, she calls it sounding science
Speaker 4: the right where they seem like they sort of put
Speaker 4: on the trappings of science, but they're not actually executing
Speaker 4: a scientific thing exactly right.
Speaker 1: Here they have all this equipment and they can document things,
Speaker 1: and they're acquiring proof proof of what I mean. They're
Speaker 1: they're definitely employing the rhetoric of science, the appearance of science,
Speaker 1: but they're they're basing it on things that can't be proven.
Speaker 1: And this was always what I thought was strange about
Speaker 1: the end goal. So, okay, the science, the show caught
Speaker 1: a ghost on tape. It appears some anomalist thing happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: And so then they go to the group or the
Speaker 1: people or the location owner and say this is what
Speaker 1: we got. Say, look, this anomaly happened and it's on tape,
Speaker 1: and they're like, okay, then what nothing. The show's over
Speaker 1: and they go on and do it again.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So there's never any build on that, right, So
Speaker 1: that's not what science is doing. There's no culmination of
Speaker 1: the evidence, analysis, publishing, presenting, and then having other people
Speaker 1: examine the evidence and debating them, trying to replicate things.
Speaker 1: None of that happens. They're just like, oh, look what
Speaker 1: we got on tape, isn't that spooky? Okay, next show?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think there's a flaw there, right right.
Speaker 1: Because they don't they're not interested in actually following through
Speaker 1: they and they're also being kind of sloppy in the
Speaker 1: fact that they're just saying, well, here's the evidence. You know,
Speaker 1: you can draw your own conclusions. Again, that's not what
Speaker 1: scientists do. They draw conclusions. They get They lay out
Speaker 1: why they're doing it and what their ideas behind it,
Speaker 1: and what their theories are and how they're testing those theories.
Speaker 1: And it's all right. They're plain and simple so that
Speaker 1: people can try to replicate it or not. And if
Speaker 1: it's not replicable, then you know, it's questionable on whether
Speaker 1: it's actually true.
Speaker 4: Yes, and it is a pet peeve that we I
Speaker 4: guess we've revisited here many times, but it bears repeating,
Speaker 4: so i'd perfect, you know, I absolutely support the serious
Speaker 4: scientific inquiry into these matters, and there are a few
Speaker 4: places where that still happens, but it's rare, and I
Speaker 4: think part of that is because there's been such extensive
Speaker 4: research without real results, but most people don't know about
Speaker 4: that work, and I think that's why I think it's
Speaker 4: important that the SPR and those sort of groups, and
Speaker 4: CSI and these American skeptic groups and the European skeptic groups.
Speaker 2: I think it's good that they continue to do these.
Speaker 4: Inquiries in question because these are questions, amazingly that I
Speaker 4: think most people believe have been sufficiently answered by religion.
Speaker 4: I think most people believe in the continued existence of
Speaker 4: human consciousness or a soul or something like that, and
Speaker 4: the fact that science doesn't.
Speaker 2: Support that or hasn't been able to.
Speaker 4: Prove it doesn't really have an impact on whether or
Speaker 4: not people believe it. And you know that this show
Speaker 4: Monster Talk is not really about proving that or not
Speaker 4: proving that, but it is. I think we are more
Speaker 4: interested in how does one and conduct these inquiries and
Speaker 4: the histories of these inquiries, which kind of brings us
Speaker 4: back to the rise of these other groups outside of
Speaker 4: the spiritualist movement and the SPR.
Speaker 1: And if I could just make one more comment about
Speaker 1: this that sure goes the other way though. Okay, So
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, there was a journal called the Journal
Speaker 1: of Personality and Social Psychology and they were okay with
Speaker 1: publishing a paper that was looking at ESP and it
Speaker 1: went through all the proper channels of peer review and testing,
Speaker 1: and basically the paper was arguing that there was a
Speaker 1: statistical anomaly or statistical reason to think that there was
Speaker 1: something paranormal going on that could not be explained.
Speaker 4: Is this the one with the computer test where they
Speaker 4: were statistically getting more hits it seemed like there might.
Speaker 2: Have been some sort of precognitions or thing going on.
Speaker 1: No, it's there was a professor I think his name
Speaker 1: was m or something like that, and he was testing Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was testing whether students could accurately sense random events
Speaker 1: maybe it might be like the computer doing something. And
Speaker 1: he did multiple experiments and I guess the results were
Speaker 1: what he claimed. And so it went through peer review
Speaker 1: and it was going to be published, and people responded
Speaker 1: saying it should not be published like that. The fact
Speaker 1: that it's about ESP in the first place should have
Speaker 1: precluded it being published, regardless of what the data was
Speaker 1: regardless of the methodology, and that to me again is
Speaker 1: wrong because that is against what the point of science
Speaker 1: is about. Maybe Bem's conclusions were false, maybe his experiments
Speaker 1: were flawed, and therefore it gave results that were inaccurate.
Speaker 1: But it went through the peer review process, he made
Speaker 1: his argument, and it was going to be published, and
Speaker 1: then it created this big hooplaw, and I saw people
Speaker 1: complaining about, well, this is the failure of peer review,
Speaker 1: that it should never be published, and then some people saying, well,
Speaker 1: it should be published, analyzed, attempted to be replicated, and
Speaker 1: then evaluated on that. That's the position that I think
Speaker 1: is the real scientific one, because if you've already excluding
Speaker 1: things because of just their nature, right.
Speaker 4: In a priory, I don't just I disagree with the premise,
Speaker 4: therefore don't do the work right.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And that to me is more of an
Speaker 1: ideological and kind of almost in some sense a scientism,
Speaker 1: a religion of science saying you know, we don't do that.
Speaker 1: That's that's the wrong direction for me.
Speaker 4: So that's really interesting because I think one of the
Speaker 4: problems I have, well not me in particular, but it
Speaker 4: is a scientism is a real issue and then having
Speaker 4: a preconceived notion you're biased against these things, don't even
Speaker 4: bother doing any experiments.
Speaker 2: That's where thing.
Speaker 4: There have been lots and lots of experiments. But my
Speaker 4: personal view, this is me, not the.
Speaker 2: Skeptic Society or Skeptic Magazin or that other stuff. You know.
Speaker 4: I do this show independently, but you know my view is,
Speaker 4: if you can get the funding together, do the experiments.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I think there's nothing wrong with doing these questions. But
Speaker 4: there's many people who I agree, have come to the
Speaker 4: conclusion these things aren't real and therefore why bother?
Speaker 2: But I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't care for that myself. I agree the scientism
Speaker 4: problem is real. I am a big cheerleader and fan
Speaker 4: of science and the scientific method. But I also agree
Speaker 4: that if you are not willing to apply these to
Speaker 4: these questions, then you're not really doing a good service
Speaker 4: I think, and I'm not sure I worded that very well,
Speaker 4: but my point is there are real issues with science
Speaker 4: when you're questioning things that are paranormal. So, for example,
Speaker 4: if you look at the idea of Popper's faults of fiability,
Speaker 4: you know, in a real sense, science is a filter
Speaker 4: and if one of your criteria is that it be reproducible,
Speaker 4: and you know other people can do the same experiment
Speaker 4: and get the same results. There's many aspects to alleged
Speaker 4: paranormal phenomena that don't lend themselves to reproducibility. You know,
Speaker 4: if you're trying to test a ghost case, you know,
Speaker 4: unless you're doing something like the Stone tape, where you
Speaker 4: know the idea that it's going to be reproduced at
Speaker 4: the same place at the same time and anybody can
Speaker 4: come in and see it, most of the time you're
Speaker 4: looking at really irregular phenomena and interpreting it in a
Speaker 4: spiritual context or a paranormal context, and it's really hard
Speaker 4: to get those things to be reproducible. And I think
Speaker 4: that's it's it's the filter of science in some sense
Speaker 4: can can be it can preclude a positive result because
Speaker 4: of the nature of the way the experiments have to
Speaker 4: be put together.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's an important place to begin our
Speaker 1: discussion of Theosophy and the Golden Dawn and the Oto,
Speaker 1: because these groups are talking about magic and certain kind
Speaker 1: of paranormal or supernatural or transcendent things that they claim
Speaker 1: are scientifically provable and This is the important thing about occultism.
Speaker 1: Occultism arose in this context of science at the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, and that they said that they
Speaker 1: were using the scientific method to prove a cult phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And now we remember we need to the word a
Speaker 1: cult just literally means hidden. Occultism arose in the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies as a result of all of these different ideas
Speaker 1: and esoteric currents coming together in a context of science,
Speaker 1: and then the appearance the rhetoric and even sometimes the
Speaker 1: performance of scientific experimentation resulted in claims of occult nature.
Speaker 1: So within theosophy, there was a series of experiments done
Speaker 1: by leadbeater and anti bescent that they called occult chemistry,
Speaker 1: and using their clairvoyant powers, they claimed to be able
Speaker 1: to go and look at all of the different atoms
Speaker 1: and talk about that their occult structures in the astrail plane.
Speaker 1: And they used diagrams, they used tables and charts, and
Speaker 1: over time these kinds of representations started to have color,
Speaker 1: started to have all of the kinds of trappings of science,
Speaker 1: and therefore it became provable to people. And it is
Speaker 1: still the rhetoric, right, And then would say, well, then
Speaker 1: how do we understand what these claims of clairvoyance and
Speaker 1: astral projection and astral objects, what is that based on?
Speaker 1: They turn around and they would use vibrations, and then
Speaker 1: they would show or acclaimed make various comparisons between what
Speaker 1: they're experiencing and legitimate scientific experiments with vibrations and waves
Speaker 1: and things like that. So there was this attempt in
Speaker 1: occultism to use the rhetoric in appearance of science, but
Speaker 1: to gut and cut out the epistemology. How things were
Speaker 1: known was not objective. You had to have clairvoyant powers
Speaker 1: or you had to be trained or initiated. And that's
Speaker 1: the subtle difference in what we can see with occultism
Speaker 1: in this time period.
Speaker 2: So can you unpack that a little bit?
Speaker 1: So when I'm using the term epistemology, this simply means
Speaker 1: how do we know something is real or is knowledge?
Speaker 1: How do we know it's true? So within the scientific method,
Speaker 1: we have notions of objectivity, observability, independence, and therefore anybody
Speaker 1: can approach it. This epistemology is removed in occultism and
Speaker 1: replaced with one that first of all, claims that there's
Speaker 1: a spiritual level to materiality and This is being brought
Speaker 1: back from the kind of notions of what the world
Speaker 1: was before the arising of science, instead that there was
Speaker 1: this connection between the divine and the material world. So
Speaker 1: that epistemology said is that there's a continuity of being
Speaker 1: from the celestial to the terrestrial. This is coming out
Speaker 1: of kind of notions of Emanation and Plato, and so
Speaker 1: this notion of reality is reinstituted. And then how is
Speaker 1: that information accessible. It's accessible only to a few trained
Speaker 1: elite those who are either chosen by a divine source
Speaker 1: or naturally have some kind of access. So they're either
Speaker 1: naturally clairvoyant, or they're under the training of some initiated
Speaker 1: master or somebody of higher knowledge who then authorizes them
Speaker 1: to practice the magic. And so that's what we see
Speaker 1: in Theosophy and the Golden Down, and continuing into with
Speaker 1: crally coming out of the Golden Down and going into
Speaker 1: the Oto. So the basis in which all of those
Speaker 1: organizations are working on are claims of science, but the
Speaker 1: science that they understand is one that has a different
Speaker 1: epistemological base of spiritual materialism.
Speaker 4: Interesting, and we will break here and then look at
Speaker 4: the underpinnings of all that and part two of this
Speaker 4: interview sounds great.
Speaker 1: Look forward to continuing the conversation.
Speaker 4: Monsut you've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show
Speaker 4: about monsters. I'm Blake Smith, and today you heard part
Speaker 4: one of my conversations with John crow about the rise
Speaker 4: of Western esotericism in the nineteenth century. This is leading
Speaker 4: to the story of the secretive Magical Orders and the
Speaker 4: man who some called the Great Beast, Alister Crowley. We'll
Speaker 4: hear more about that soon. Monster Talks an official podcast
Speaker 4: of Skeptic Magazine. The views expressed here are those of
Speaker 4: myself and my guests and do not necessarily reflect the
Speaker 4: views of the Skeptic Magazine or the Skeptic Society.
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