Speaker 1: You see something's going to happen?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: What's going to happen?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: That's how I.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the old cult rejects. Today we're stepping into
Speaker 5: a question that sits right at the edge of belief
Speaker 5: and experience. How do we know if magic is real?
Speaker 5: And if it is, what does real even mean in
Speaker 5: a world of psychology, folklore and bias. Our guest today,
Speaker 5: Tracy Nicholas works where practical folklore meets everyday practice, and
Speaker 5: her book mind Over Magic, Making Magic in Everyday Life
Speaker 5: tries to do something a lot of occult books avoid.
Speaker 5: It doesn't just tell you what to do. It asks
Speaker 5: how do we actually decide what's true? What's a projection?
Speaker 5: What's pattern recognition? And what might be something stranger that
Speaker 5: survives our skepticism. Quite brilliant, I would say, So we're
Speaker 5: going to talk about methods, mindset and meaning, placebo and belief,
Speaker 5: story and ritual confirmation, bias and yes, transformation, and how
Speaker 5: to build a practice that doesn't collapse the moment you
Speaker 5: look at it too hard. Thank you everybody. And this
Speaker 5: is the Head Rejects and the head reject himself. Nick Cardinal,
Speaker 5: Electric Head.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Thank you very much for that. Am I
Speaker 6: love it. I love it such a professional. I'm gonna
Speaker 6: keep you. I'm gonna have you keep doing it. Please,
Speaker 6: I'll publish get in better ratings to stop it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: my four stars will go up to five now. Thanks.
Speaker 6: But uh, you know, and all the complaints have nothing
Speaker 6: to do with the quality.
Speaker 3: It's always the productions. I guess, I guess it's right.
Speaker 6: But thank you very much for that. And yes, I'm
Speaker 6: very excited.
Speaker 3: To have Tracy Nicholas on today.
Speaker 6: You know, I was.
Speaker 3: I was looking through as much as.
Speaker 6: I could about the book and what's it entailed, and
Speaker 6: I think it's like really right up my alley, and.
Speaker 3: I think it will be for the rest of the
Speaker 3: ocult rejects.
Speaker 6: But yeah, called Electric Head or Neck from the Cold Rejects.
Speaker 6: Definitely check us out. We're all old major platforms. We
Speaker 6: do have a cult research Institute dot org and I
Speaker 6: never push it really and I don't know why. I
Speaker 6: just feel stupid trying to sell stuff to people. But
Speaker 6: do have T shirts if you're interested in getting any
Speaker 6: T shirts from the Cult Rejects. We do have two
Speaker 6: of them. We have one with the skeleton and the
Speaker 6: hands grossing and then the one that looks like.
Speaker 3: The Birth of the Birth of Venus.
Speaker 6: So yeah, we got those for sale.
Speaker 3: You can hit me up for that.
Speaker 6: And yeah, this weekend we got a round table Plato
Speaker 6: coming on magazine.
Speaker 3: Gonna be there for that for sure, hopefully maybe even marks.
Speaker 6: And we got p d and Ike Biker both coming
Speaker 6: on for that playtole roundtable, so you already know what's
Speaker 6: going to be a banger. And then we got David
Speaker 6: Shoemaker this so check that out highly highly looking forward
Speaker 6: to that. Yeah yeah it is yeah, big yeah, big
Speaker 6: names and big topics man, for sure, for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 6: even David Shoemaker wanted even even ask can I talk
Speaker 6: about the astrona gentleman and I've never had anybody on
Speaker 6: the show I want to talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go man.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, yeah, So it should be interesting because he
Speaker 7: runs one, so you know he won't get loaded.
Speaker 6: But uh, I'm sure I'm gonna shut up enough out
Speaker 6: of me and Robbie Marx. Please let everybody know where
Speaker 6: they can find all your amazing work and your art.
Speaker 8: Yes, it's good to see everybody today. I am Robbie
Speaker 8: Marx or R Marx. I'm an artist. Illustrator and I
Speaker 8: do a variety of research and writing as well. And
Speaker 8: if anybody wants to check out my various works, you
Speaker 8: can check out my link tree which is link tree
Speaker 8: r M A r X and that will up my metamindcast,
Speaker 8: all my artwork everything. And uh yeah, I'm excited for
Speaker 8: this today. Good to meet you, Tracy.
Speaker 3: Thanks to be too, Thank you so much. Ronnie.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and oh Kaima, I don't think your mic is
Speaker 6: working it so if you can see anything.
Speaker 4: Now, I'm going to use my computer microphone perfect.
Speaker 1: I get this other thing figured out. It's brand new.
Speaker 1: I got a brand new microphone figuring it out.
Speaker 9: I'm not a tech wizard, can definitely.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 1: I do astrology and taro that is my specialty.
Speaker 9: You can find me.
Speaker 4: At Instagram at Kaiva Rose as well as Facebook, and
Speaker 4: then I do post weekly astrology videos as well as
Speaker 4: daily astrology videos on YouTube and Instagram. And then if
Speaker 4: you're into fantasy fiction, I do write young adult novels.
Speaker 4: I have one series called Route Odyssey. It's it's adventurous
Speaker 4: and it's magical.
Speaker 6: Thank you nice, thank you for making it.
Speaker 3: I always enjoy you being able to come on hopefully
Speaker 3: we'll see more of.
Speaker 6: You, and we've got Tracy Nicholas. Please let everybody know
Speaker 6: whatever you want to plug, please let them know where
Speaker 6: they can find all your stuff, your podcast, your book, everything.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that the best way to find me is
Speaker 2: to go to my main website, which is folkloringlife dot com,
Speaker 2: and uh, it'll give you links to to where you
Speaker 2: can go buy the book, where you can uh you know,
Speaker 2: find my podcasts, and where you can find my school
Speaker 2: community and my substack.
Speaker 9: So it's all in there.
Speaker 2: It's it's like a big link tree, but I pay
Speaker 2: a lot more for it, and I had to work
Speaker 2: harder to set it up. So so yeah, and then
Speaker 2: you'll find my book Mind Over Magic, which, as we
Speaker 2: are streaming this is today is the release day. So
Speaker 2: it's very exciting time for me right now. I can't
Speaker 2: believe that it took so long to get here, and
Speaker 2: like now it's like, oh no, I have so many
Speaker 2: things I haven't gotten done yet.
Speaker 6: So oh well, congratulations that it's out today.
Speaker 3: Uh that's great.
Speaker 6: I'm going to see if I could try to change
Speaker 6: the thumbnails so I could at least have your.
Speaker 3: Book on it.
Speaker 7: So but uh, thanks and please uh if you don't mind,
Speaker 7: I ask, I askol gets this at the beginning.
Speaker 6: They're into the occult, which seems to be every guest. Now, anyway,
Speaker 6: how did how did you find yourself getting into this?
Speaker 6: Like what was it that brought you into magic or
Speaker 6: the occult or practicing.
Speaker 2: I think that I've always kind of been interested in it,
Speaker 2: And even as like a little kid, I was doing
Speaker 2: things that now I would consider to be like magical practice,
Speaker 2: but I wouldn't have called it that then. I remember
Speaker 2: in like I didn't. I wasn't very athletic as a kid,
Speaker 2: and so there was this there was woods around my
Speaker 2: middle school, and so I would go at recess. I'd
Speaker 2: go into the woods and there's a big rock and
Speaker 2: I would decorate it. And so I was like, that
Speaker 2: was really my first like nature alter. So it's always
Speaker 2: been interesting to me. I've been interested in folklore my
Speaker 2: whole life. I've been interested in magic, and so the book,
Speaker 2: like getting to the book is really kind of a
Speaker 2: culmination of the work that I've done in the past
Speaker 2: forty years, both magically and in my mundane life as well.
Speaker 2: And so and I worked in you know, corporate America
Speaker 2: for a long time up until about ten years ago.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's just it always resonates with me and
Speaker 2: I like having my life feel more magical, and so
Speaker 2: as time goes on, I find myself investing in it
Speaker 2: more and more with my time and my effort. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's just always been an interest.
Speaker 6: Awesome, And what made you decide to write this book?
Speaker 6: Like what do you feel is in this book that
Speaker 6: the public needs?
Speaker 3: That's another ones out there.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that a lot of books that are
Speaker 2: talking about magic are telling you how to practice magic,
Speaker 2: and they're telling you what it is like it there's
Speaker 2: a lot of like spell recipe books, is the way
Speaker 2: I like to think about them. And so it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: here's a bunch of spells you can do, and some
Speaker 2: of them are academic and they say, okay, you know,
Speaker 2: here's what you know if you're going to study Kabbalah
Speaker 2: and ancient you know, esoteric kind of work like that.
Speaker 2: And so those two things were out there, and what
Speaker 2: I was seeing was like, we don't have a modern
Speaker 2: look at why we believe what we believe, right, Like
Speaker 2: why are these beliefs important to us? And why? Like
Speaker 2: what what do we know? What can we prove today
Speaker 2: that we would have consider to magical belief twenty or
Speaker 2: thirty or fifty or one hundred years ago, right, because
Speaker 2: the science moves quickly now, and so I think that
Speaker 2: there are certain things that are treated as if they're
Speaker 2: very like woo woo. But we've got some solid science,
Speaker 2: We've got some research that shows that there are things
Speaker 2: that are real. Now, there's a lot of pseudoscience, and
Speaker 2: I think that, you know the problem with that is
Speaker 2: it sort of muddies the water, and I try not
Speaker 2: to go into any of the pseudoscience. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: if there's no solid science that we can say, yes,
Speaker 2: this has been tested and peer tested. If we can't
Speaker 2: say that, I'm just going to sort of put back
Speaker 2: on my folklorist hat and say, Okay, we can't prove it.
Speaker 2: But as a folk lorest it doesn't matter to me
Speaker 2: whether or not something is true. What matters to me
Speaker 2: is whether why people believe it what they believe right,
Speaker 2: And so you know, for example, like spirits and ghosts, right,
Speaker 2: I do not believe that we can prove at this
Speaker 2: point that spirits are real, right. And the reason I
Speaker 2: don't think we can prove that and we may someday
Speaker 2: and that would be great.
Speaker 9: I would love that.
Speaker 2: The reason we can't prove it is because we don't
Speaker 2: understand what consciousness is and what is a spirit except
Speaker 2: for consciousness that has passed beyond death. Right, it's some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, it's your great uncle, or it's
Speaker 2: you know, somebody who has had a traumatic event and
Speaker 2: they keep going back.
Speaker 9: And reliving it.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 2: But if we don't, we don't even understand, like how
Speaker 2: we put people under for surgery, like we know it works,
Speaker 2: we don't know the mechanism in the brain that makes
Speaker 2: it work like that. And so without being able to
Speaker 2: prove consciousness, we can't prove that consciousness lasts in some
Speaker 2: form beyond Now, what's interesting there is you know, you
Speaker 2: see it like sort of death related folklore and leaf
Speaker 2: systems all over the world. Right, And of course that's
Speaker 2: going to be because we tell stories about things that
Speaker 2: are important to us, and so you know, death is
Speaker 2: important to us, and a lot of people have beliefs
Speaker 2: that there is some sort of afterlife, there are spirits,
Speaker 2: all of these kinds of things, and that seemed worldwide,
Speaker 2: and so that to me is interesting. It's a compelling
Speaker 2: case to me to look at it harder, to look
Speaker 2: at the science behind it, harder, because so many people believe,
Speaker 2: and so many people have had experiences, right, And I
Speaker 2: think once you do.
Speaker 9: You know, we're all on a spectrum.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: There are complete skeptics to say none of this is real, right,
Speaker 2: and then there are true believers that say it's all real.
Speaker 9: There are there are fairies and elves and dragons, and
Speaker 9: it's all of it. Right.
Speaker 2: I think most of us are somewhere along that spectrum,
Speaker 2: and we move closer to the true believer side when
Speaker 2: things that we can't explain happen to us.
Speaker 9: You know, somebody believes that they saw goes, or they.
Speaker 2: Were abducted by aliens, or they were abducted by fairies,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever it is that they believe. And again
Speaker 2: it's important that they believe it, not whether or not
Speaker 2: I believe that. You know, it's it's true and it
Speaker 2: really happened to them.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 6: Well, we have somebody in the comments. What he says,
Speaker 6: they got abducted by a vampire cult.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Got catfished by a vampire cult, and yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 2: And she she talks about her story. It was like
Speaker 2: this online thing for like ten years.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, what's her name? I think we have home
Speaker 6: on possibly, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we had, and I'm
Speaker 6: talking about somebody completely different. Actually that's funny, you know,
Speaker 6: it's funny. We had thumpaforgol last night and he told
Speaker 6: me that when he went and checked out the podcast.
Speaker 6: I don't know how it came up, and he said,
Speaker 6: that episode, you just found that one and as soon
Speaker 6: as he saw like ex Vampire cult member as I
Speaker 6: already do, was the show for me.
Speaker 5: That's hilarious.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's integrity thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's funny stuff.
Speaker 5: My question is, then I have a question, So what
Speaker 5: do you think about the idea of then maybe redefining
Speaker 5: the term spirit as something different than just straight up
Speaker 5: consciousness leaving the body, and that has to be something
Speaker 5: that is of the dead, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly there's that that's a possibility. And I think
Speaker 2: that you bring up a really interesting lens to look through,
Speaker 2: because I think that our definitions are really important, right,
Speaker 2: and so when we're defining things, when we're defining magic,
Speaker 2: when we're defining folklore.
Speaker 9: Those are important.
Speaker 2: So if you want to look at it, through a
Speaker 2: lens that you feel like has a more real world
Speaker 2: view or application. Then I think that's perfectly valid. You know,
Speaker 2: you have to take my definition for what a spirit is, yeah, of.
Speaker 5: Course, of course.
Speaker 8: And also I've seen several different definitions of kind of
Speaker 8: what spirit entities are in regard to this idea of
Speaker 8: the consciousness leaving the body, or some sort of an
Speaker 8: electrical imprint that is left on the area by the living,
Speaker 8: or then you have the Japanese idea of like hate
Speaker 8: or rage will build to a point that it will
Speaker 8: develop these rage entities. So I think there are different
Speaker 8: kind of understandings of these different metaphysical ideas. But like
Speaker 8: you were saying at the same time, there's no hardfound
Speaker 8: scientific way document repeatably the understanding of these things within
Speaker 8: physical science, right.
Speaker 2: And I think people are trying there, you know, the
Speaker 2: ghost hunters go out there with their you know, they're
Speaker 2: they're checking for like electrical signals and you know, pulses
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So I think that you know,
Speaker 2: there are people exploring it. I don't think that we're
Speaker 2: there yet. And yes, there are certainly different kinds of
Speaker 2: thoughts about what like different types of spirits, right, there
Speaker 2: are ones that are conscious and they know who they
Speaker 2: were in their most recent life and they want to
Speaker 2: communicate with the people that were in their life. There's
Speaker 2: that kind and then there are the ones that are
Speaker 2: just on a loop and you know, and almost always
Speaker 2: those stories are about some tragic occurrence they got, you know,
Speaker 2: murdered tragically, and so they keep doing that.
Speaker 9: And that's when I think.
Speaker 2: You're talking about the electrical sort of that stays, which
Speaker 2: you know that that could be certainly valid because why
Speaker 2: are there some places that are more haunted than others?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And so like why do certain places And obviously there
Speaker 2: are going to be places like hospitals and prisons where
Speaker 2: you know, people die in you know, under difficult circumstances,
Speaker 2: and you'd expect that. But then there are you know,
Speaker 2: random homes or hotels or what have you. And so
Speaker 2: you know, why those places and not elsewhere? You know,
Speaker 2: I think about I'm in Chicago, and I think about
Speaker 2: Lincoln Park in Chicago, right, And Lincoln Park is built
Speaker 2: over and it has a zoo.
Speaker 9: It's a beautiful park.
Speaker 2: It's along the lakefront, and it was built over the
Speaker 2: original city cemetery. And they you know, like they just said,
Speaker 2: the city's gotten too big.
Speaker 9: We need this land back.
Speaker 2: They took it back, but a lot of the people,
Speaker 2: especially the poorer people, they weren't ever moved. Some people
Speaker 2: with money were moved, but a lot of the people
Speaker 2: are just still under there.
Speaker 9: Now. I hear about this and I know about it.
Speaker 2: But people aren't talking about like ghosts popping up in
Speaker 2: you know, the petting zoo in Lincoln Park Zoo, right,
Speaker 2: But then they're talking about places like particular hotels, particular
Speaker 2: graveyards that are like, oh, this is the most haunted
Speaker 2: place in Chicago.
Speaker 9: So I just I think it's it's.
Speaker 2: Interesting that some places are considered to be very haunted
Speaker 2: even with no direct connection to like horrible deaths and things.
Speaker 8: Like that, right, almost energetically charged.
Speaker 4: Well, that's what I was kind of hunkering too, like
Speaker 4: about you know, like when you go to other cultures,
Speaker 4: like in Bali in particular, when something has a lot
Speaker 4: of spirit, they'll wrap like a sacred cloth around it.
Speaker 4: And so there is also kind of the idea of
Speaker 4: like nature spirits. Like when you say spirit, I instantly
Speaker 4: go to like nature spirits because that's what I personally
Speaker 4: feel like I connect to like trees and just kind of.
Speaker 9: Have spirits of the earth.
Speaker 4: And I don't necessarily know if they're like I don't
Speaker 4: think they're deceased people. I don't know if I can
Speaker 4: even explain what those spirits are. But I know, like
Speaker 4: even in Japan, like I think there's that concept of
Speaker 4: just like nature spirits, so have a distinction between like
Speaker 4: I mean, I know it's like definitions, but my mind
Speaker 4: when I go to spirit goes to that. So I
Speaker 4: just want to kind of understand that perspective.
Speaker 2: Perhaps, Yeah, I think that you know, land spirits or
Speaker 2: elemental spirits, those kinds of things, that's a very different
Speaker 2: thing than when you're talking about like humans that have
Speaker 2: passed over. It's also a different thing when you're considering
Speaker 2: fairies and elves and are those spirits? Are they actual
Speaker 2: creatures out there? And so I think that spirits in
Speaker 2: general is such a broad category and it can be
Speaker 2: so many different things. And you know, as part of
Speaker 2: my practice, I certainly am respectful of like the the
Speaker 2: nature spirits and the elemental spirits, and that's incorporated into
Speaker 2: my personal practice.
Speaker 9: But that's my belief.
Speaker 2: That's not something that I'm saying, Hey, everybody, I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell you why. You know, land spirits are real,
Speaker 2: but I do believe that, and I incorporate that into
Speaker 2: my work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's the most tangible way to show
Speaker 4: people that spirit is real, you know, because like you
Speaker 4: can feel the energy of a tree, Go lean up
Speaker 4: against a tree, and you're gonna feel like it's like
Speaker 4: sucking you in, right, So in kind of that sense,
Speaker 4: it is almost.
Speaker 1: The most provable type of spirit in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think when you're talking about energetic work, so
Speaker 2: we have, like human beings have a particular vibration and
Speaker 2: there's a rank in which we're healthiest, right, I think
Speaker 2: it's between like seven hurts and twenty hurts, right, And
Speaker 2: if we start to get too high in that range,
Speaker 2: we start to feel things like we have disorders like
Speaker 2: anxiety or insomnia, are those kinds of things, right, If
Speaker 2: we're vibrating too high, if we start to get too low,
Speaker 2: we start to get you know, depression.
Speaker 9: And all of that.
Speaker 2: And so most of us are now sitting in front
Speaker 2: of a computer for a lot of the day, or
Speaker 2: you know, there's Wi Fi all around us and all
Speaker 2: of these electronic devices that are everywhere around us. And
Speaker 2: on our bodies raise our vibration. They vibrate higher than
Speaker 2: we do, so it raises our vibration.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 9: But when you go out into.
Speaker 2: Nature, if you look at the trees and the land itself,
Speaker 2: the vibration there is lower. And so that's why people
Speaker 2: go out and they're like hugging trees and stuff, because
Speaker 2: they're getting themselves back to a more balanced place for
Speaker 2: their body. And so that's very real on an energetic level.
Speaker 2: And again saying like I'm going to say that this
Speaker 2: is a tree spirit, I completely support that.
Speaker 9: I think it's great.
Speaker 2: I believe in that myself, so of course I'm going
Speaker 2: to be like, that's right. You know if somebody else doesn't,
Speaker 2: they just say I just want to go with straight
Speaker 2: up science on it. I know I feel better when
Speaker 2: I go out into the woods, like, well, then I'll
Speaker 2: hug that tree. And I don't I don't care what
Speaker 2: you call it in a lot of ways because I
Speaker 2: think about this.
Speaker 9: Okay. So I have a brother, right, his name's John.
Speaker 2: And so when I talk to him, I call him John, right,
Speaker 2: And he's got three kids and they call him dad, right,
Speaker 2: And so the fact that they call him something different
Speaker 2: than I do is indicative that we have a different relationship, right,
Speaker 2: But it doesn't affect my relationship at all. And so
Speaker 2: you know, when you're talking about deities, right, if you
Speaker 2: want to pray to heckatea, right, that's that's great.
Speaker 9: If you want to.
Speaker 2: Call that entity Jesus, hey, that it's fine. It doesn't
Speaker 2: change my relationship with what I think of as deity,
Speaker 2: And it doesn't change you know, I don't change my
Speaker 2: relationship with spirit based on what other people call it.
Speaker 8: I well, I want to Dad, when you're talking about
Speaker 8: I was just gonna say, in regard to when you
Speaker 8: go into the woods, I think that the human experience,
Speaker 8: as far as sensory organs, when you're taking in the
Speaker 8: light and you're in like you're talking about these different
Speaker 8: waveforms like Wi fi and the blue light coming from
Speaker 8: the screens. When you go into the forest, you're getting
Speaker 8: that blue light from the sky and the green light
Speaker 8: from the leaves, and you're also in the energetic toward
Speaker 8: fields of the trees. But those the blue and green
Speaker 8: waves entering into the eyes are some of the slowest wavelengths,
Speaker 8: and thereby they do by the nature of experiencing them,
Speaker 8: like you were saying, bring the vibrational wavelength into regulation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's one of the reasons that the sky
Speaker 2: looks blue to us is because the light that's coming
Speaker 2: through that's the easiest to see because it's the slowest
Speaker 2: vibration and that's why that works like that. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I agree with you, and I think that you know,
Speaker 2: there are lots of ways that we perceive energy. And
Speaker 2: I think that you know, we've all been to a
Speaker 2: concert where it's just like the energy is so good
Speaker 2: in the room and like everyone's pumped up and it
Speaker 2: just you know, so we know we exchange energy, right,
Speaker 2: and you can feel it when it's not that way.
Speaker 2: You can feel it when perfect performance technically perfect, but
Speaker 2: it's like, eh, it was, it was off, you know.
Speaker 2: And so we know as human beings we exchange energy.
Speaker 2: So it's not any kind of leap to think that
Speaker 2: we are going to exchange energy with other living things
Speaker 2: at the very least.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I have a question, then, do you would
Speaker 5: you say that with your book and your own practices,
Speaker 5: is that you're taking a paradigm shift from thinking that
Speaker 5: like how things we start from materiality and then go
Speaker 5: out that then the body creates consciousness, are you switching
Speaker 5: it to its first consciousness? And our brain and nervous
Speaker 5: system is more like a like a radio tuning fork
Speaker 5: that brings consciousness in, and that is how we're you know,
Speaker 5: having that paradigm shift.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I would necessarily sort of mix
Speaker 2: consciousness in with what we've been talking about. Energetically, I
Speaker 2: don't know that one of those things, like I don't
Speaker 2: I don't know that how we feel energetically affects whether
Speaker 2: or not we have consciousness. I think, I mean it does,
Speaker 2: because we have electrical impulses in our bodies, and you know,
Speaker 2: we we know that, you know, we we react to
Speaker 2: things around us.
Speaker 9: But but it's complicated.
Speaker 2: There's so many things that go into the way that
Speaker 2: we're reacting. If I'm going to, you know, pull out
Speaker 2: a definition when I'm defining magic, and I define it
Speaker 2: in my book, I define it as a change to
Speaker 2: the environment either within you or around you, without any
Speaker 2: mechanical intervention.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: So, and one of the easiest examples that we all
Speaker 2: know is the placebo effect. Right you get a pill,
Speaker 2: it's completely inert you take it and like it does
Speaker 2: nothing to your body, and yet your brain says, oh,
Speaker 2: I took medicine, and so your brain just heals. It
Speaker 2: heals your body, right, Like, what is more magical than that?
Speaker 2: Your brain decides what it's going to be and it
Speaker 2: affects your your health or whatever the condition is. And
Speaker 2: the funny thing about placebos is that it works whether
Speaker 2: or not a person knows that it is a placebo.
Speaker 2: Now it doesn't work as effectively if they know it's
Speaker 2: a placebo, but it still works. And I think that
Speaker 2: speaks to what ritual offers people. You have a ritual
Speaker 2: of taking a pill, and your brain knows when you
Speaker 2: take a pill it's giving you medicine in some way,
Speaker 2: even though logically you know that's not true in this case,
Speaker 2: your brain still so makes that association. And I think
Speaker 2: that's why ritual is so powerful for us.
Speaker 5: Nice would I would say, then, personally, this is how
Speaker 5: I view the view reality is that from exactly what
Speaker 5: you just said, that is changing a paradigm from the
Speaker 5: mechanical to the idea, from the idea to the mechanical.
Speaker 5: Because if our reality was just straight up a mechanistic reality,
Speaker 5: that placebo effect would have personally, I think would have
Speaker 5: no effect. But since there seems to be something different
Speaker 5: with how consciousness interacts with our nervous system instead of
Speaker 5: our nervous system producing based upon electrical like impulses, then
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, the mind, the brain is creating it.
Speaker 5: It seems like there's some kind of funny phenomena happening
Speaker 5: where consciousness is being picked up in a way and
Speaker 5: being able to be more of a malleable thing than
Speaker 5: the mechanistic functional universe that like scientific materialism wants us too.
Speaker 8: Where seven hermetic principles. The first is all is mental,
Speaker 8: all is mentally, Oh, it's it's and that like you're
Speaker 8: talking about the idea of these magical books with various
Speaker 8: formulae or spells, you know that you use these are
Speaker 8: the various placebos in essence, I think that you would
Speaker 8: you relate that that it kind of conditions the mind
Speaker 8: to be able to facilitate the magic.
Speaker 9: Yes, yes, and no.
Speaker 2: I think that the ongoing practice is one of the
Speaker 2: things that allows people to deepen their their ritual practice
Speaker 2: and their ability to work magic. Right. It's it's like
Speaker 2: anything else you do. It's like it's like working out
Speaker 2: your body, right, but you're working out your mind. You
Speaker 2: can't just go into the gym day one and you know,
Speaker 2: be lifting as if you had been, you know, building
Speaker 2: yourself up for years. Right, You have to start where
Speaker 2: you are. And so I think that the practice of
Speaker 2: thinking about it, thinking about the magic, doing whatever rituals
Speaker 2: you want or don't want. I use a lot of
Speaker 2: symbolism because I think that, you know, I'm busy like
Speaker 2: everybody else, and so using symbolism to sort of make
Speaker 2: my life a little more magical is a really.
Speaker 9: Quick, easy way, you know.
Speaker 2: I think about liminal spaces when I walk through a
Speaker 2: doorway or down a hall or you know, those those
Speaker 2: kinds of things. So I think that it is a
Speaker 2: matter of practicing.
Speaker 9: And that's why it's called a practice, right right.
Speaker 2: If you keep doing it, you keep sort of focusing
Speaker 2: your energy on the things that you're trying to achieve
Speaker 2: with your magic, and and so it strengthens your practice.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. You've seemed to have answered a bunch of
Speaker 3: the questions I already had. I was just going to
Speaker 3: ask you about what magic was in the placebo effect.
Speaker 6: One thing I do want to ask as a folklore
Speaker 6: is what do you think like modern occultist misunderstand about folklore,
Speaker 6: Like do you do you ever see maybe in your opinion,
Speaker 6: especially like the difference between story and.
Speaker 3: Practice to people start to get that a little confused.
Speaker 2: Maybe, Well, I think that I don't know about occultists specifically.
Speaker 2: I think people are, Yeah, that people in general, A
Speaker 2: lot of people believe that folklore are like old stories.
Speaker 2: They're you know, they're set down, and that's that's what
Speaker 2: folklore is. But of course folklore is a living thing,
Speaker 2: and there's always new folklore. And we can see this
Speaker 2: in crypt did we can see this in you know,
Speaker 2: urban folklore, urban tales, And I think that, yeah, I
Speaker 2: was referring earlier to like the alien abduction versus fairy, right,
Speaker 2: And when I look at those kinds of stories, those
Speaker 2: stories are very similar to me. Right, You run across
Speaker 2: this you know, mystical race of whatever, and you get
Speaker 2: spirited away, and you may be gone for you know,
Speaker 2: a day or a week or a year or however
Speaker 2: long they keep you there. And you know, that's sounds
Speaker 2: very similar to me to aliens, just with better technology
Speaker 2: and so and I think that's how stories work, too, right,
Speaker 2: You you start out, who knows what happens? Like maybe
Speaker 2: someone does have an experience and they step into a
Speaker 2: fairy ring and they're they're off to the land of
Speaker 2: you know, the fair folk. But maybe they go out
Speaker 2: and they accidentally eat, you know, a hallucinogenic mushroom, right,
Speaker 2: and so they're like out for a couple of days,
Speaker 2: and then they come wandering back and like, what story
Speaker 2: do they tell? Well, whatever happened to them while they
Speaker 2: were tripping out? And then over time, of course, as
Speaker 2: we tell those stories, they get to be grand more
Speaker 2: and more grand, and so it turns into you know,
Speaker 2: and Winkle gone for one hundred years. And so I
Speaker 2: think that what a lot of people get wrong is that,
Speaker 2: first of all, there are no.
Speaker 9: Stories that are.
Speaker 2: From an expert view, right, There aren't stories that are
Speaker 2: better than others. And that's something that happened to us
Speaker 2: historically when people first started beating folklorists right a couple
Speaker 2: hundred years ago, and they went out to capture those
Speaker 2: stories and they wrote them down, and then that was
Speaker 2: the story. But those folklorists were they were typically European white,
Speaker 2: upper middle class and above, because they had the means
Speaker 2: to just go out and like record people's stories and
Speaker 2: then they wrote them down and that became the expert story.
Speaker 2: And then later we got you know, Disney and things
Speaker 2: like that, and then those started being our expert stories,
Speaker 2: which were sanitized versions of older stories. And so I
Speaker 2: think that you know now what I love about the Internet, Like, look,
Speaker 2: we're all here talking right now, and we're sharing our stories,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you my ghost stories if you want
Speaker 2: to hear them. But we like, we're now talking to
Speaker 2: each other again. And I think that that's what people
Speaker 2: don't understand, that there is no expert in magic, right.
Speaker 2: There is no expert in folklore because it's so widely
Speaker 2: varied and people have so many different stories about it.
Speaker 2: And I can't prove that you know, your spell is
Speaker 2: better than my spell, which I think is something to
Speaker 2: be looked at when you practice your own magic. And
Speaker 2: I think of it much like I do cooking, and
Speaker 2: that's why I call it a magical recipe book. I
Speaker 2: love to cook. I've been cooking since I was a
Speaker 2: little kid, and that was the thing my mom and
Speaker 2: I did together, and so at a certain point when
Speaker 2: I was sort of you know, going off on my
Speaker 2: own and not having her right there with me, I
Speaker 2: would follow recipes right because I knew that they would
Speaker 2: work better than me guessing right. And over time I
Speaker 2: stopped doing that and I started just you know, and
Speaker 2: I'll go, like everybody, I'll go on Pinterest. If I'm
Speaker 2: going to do something new, I usually look up three
Speaker 2: or four recipes for the same kind of dish, and
Speaker 2: then I'll like pick and choose which parts of which
Speaker 2: recipe I want ye, And so that is how I
Speaker 2: think that magic should work for people on the individual level,
Speaker 2: as opposed to just saying, well, this person has written
Speaker 2: all these books, so they must be right. And you know,
Speaker 2: it frustrates me when people are like, oh, you're doing
Speaker 2: it wrong. It's like, no, no, this is like there
Speaker 2: was a time where there were no people right, so
Speaker 2: at some point somebody made this up, right, somebody did magic.
Speaker 9: Right. It's all made up.
Speaker 2: And so just because something was made up a really
Speaker 2: long time ago doesn't mean it's necessarily more valid than
Speaker 2: somebody who's making something up now. And again, you know,
Speaker 2: it's with people who are in diaspora. They bring their
Speaker 2: magical practices and they bring their stories with them, and
Speaker 2: then those things change depending on where they end up.
Speaker 2: And you know, like when like it used to be
Speaker 2: that for Halloween people would carve turnups, right, and that
Speaker 2: was what they did. And then they got to America
Speaker 2: and there were no turnups and they had pumpkins. And
Speaker 2: then people thought out that pumpkins are way easier to
Speaker 2: carve than turnups, and so you know, they kept doing that,
Speaker 2: and then that story went back out into the world.
Speaker 2: Then people started doing it around the world. Right, So
Speaker 2: I think that you know, it's all made up, so
Speaker 2: don't feel bad if you don't do it the way
Speaker 2: that someone tells you is right or wrong. Because although
Speaker 2: there are things that we can you know, study and
Speaker 2: discover about how energy works, and helpless ebos work, and
Speaker 2: all of these kinds of things we and how you know,
Speaker 2: morphic resonance works, how the you know, the the resonating
Speaker 2: of the earth affects our bodies, and all of these
Speaker 2: things we can study. And then you start to see
Speaker 2: that some of this folklore is really based in things
Speaker 2: that work, even if they didn't have the science. Right,
Speaker 2: when people talk about smudging, they are oftentimes in sage, right,
Speaker 2: and they and are you know, smoke saning or smoke cleansing,
Speaker 2: whatever you're gonna call it, and sage Interestingly, if you
Speaker 2: burn sage in a closed space, the bacterial and viral
Speaker 2: movel goes way down, and if the space stays closed,
Speaker 2: it stays down for like twenty four or forty eight hours,
Speaker 2: I can't remember. So they really were cleansing when they
Speaker 2: do something like that, And so I think that, I
Speaker 2: guess that's part of my point. We keep finding out
Speaker 2: things about how you know, when we started studying, you know,
Speaker 2: quantum physics, we started finding out that maybe these energetic
Speaker 2: chords that people talk about, it wasn't really so silly
Speaker 2: after all, because when people discovered what quantum entanglement was,
Speaker 2: which is an actual physical connection, like a physical connection
Speaker 2: in the real world with another person, and it doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter how far away they are from you. Once
Speaker 2: you've got that connection, you've got that entanglement until you
Speaker 2: work to get rid of it. So the whole idea
Speaker 2: of cutting chords, where people are like, oh, that's that's
Speaker 2: really woo and you know that's people are imagining this stuff, well,
Speaker 2: you know, then we learned that, no, we do get
Speaker 2: entangled with things, and there are specific things you can
Speaker 2: do to break those entanglements. And I think that without
Speaker 2: knowing that people started using ritual in order to do
Speaker 2: things like break those entanglements, and they accidentally stumbled into
Speaker 2: an effective way to break the connections they don't want.
Speaker 2: And there are other like when I talk about, you know,
Speaker 2: cutting the cord, symbolism is great there you're thinking about it,
Speaker 2: and the way that you break down entanglements is by
Speaker 2: making other entanglements. So if you can put someone out
Speaker 2: of your mind, then you're having entanglements with the people
Speaker 2: around you, or the plants or the animals around you,
Speaker 2: or your stuff, right, and so it does break down
Speaker 2: over time that entanglement to the person that you're trying
Speaker 2: to put out of your mind.
Speaker 5: So nice, I do, So I agree, And that was
Speaker 5: You're very well spoken, So I do highly appreciate that
Speaker 5: you can tell you've done a lot of thinking on this.
Speaker 5: There's something to about though, because I do agree about
Speaker 5: how it is important that each individual finds their own
Speaker 5: practice and doesn't allow others to try to dissuade them
Speaker 5: from doing it. It's like that your practice is your own.
Speaker 5: I don't actually give a damn what kind of meditation
Speaker 5: or anything these things you do, you know, as long
Speaker 5: as you're not harming others as you do it, because
Speaker 5: that's really important. However, to use your analogy of the
Speaker 5: sage is that there are better versions of sage to
Speaker 5: use to clear a space. And it's say, if you
Speaker 5: have a bad grow, if you if you have a
Speaker 5: kind of sage that you've grown and it doesn't have
Speaker 5: the correct chemicals in the chemical makeup, so then when
Speaker 5: you burn it, it doesn't release the kind of smoke
Speaker 5: for the smudging to clear the space because of it
Speaker 5: does kill the bacteria, and it does neutral mold, and
Speaker 5: it does do these things that then if you're using
Speaker 5: a poorer version of sage, you're not going to get
Speaker 5: that kind of cleansing that you're kind of looking for.
Speaker 5: And so I think that there's something really important in
Speaker 5: that that so you know, like we can kind of
Speaker 5: understand that there there is better There is a scientific
Speaker 5: process of trying to calm the mind, hone the will.
Speaker 5: So your magical practice has a better usage and it
Speaker 5: actually works because you can't just do any old ritual
Speaker 5: to get any old effect. You actually have to calm
Speaker 5: the mind, hone the will and do the ritual, and
Speaker 5: then that is how you can make effect, cause and
Speaker 5: change into the world, and so I'm always this isn't anything.
Speaker 1: To do with you.
Speaker 5: It actually has to do. It's just that there's a
Speaker 5: whole uh you know, like it's cool you do what
Speaker 5: you want there, nothing is different. It's like, no, Chaucer
Speaker 5: was a better Folklors then a lot of the writers.
Speaker 5: You know, so there are and I don't even like
Speaker 5: the word better, but because I agree with you there,
Speaker 5: but there's something about why Homer and the Odyssey and
Speaker 5: the Iliad have survived for thousands of years, just like
Speaker 5: why Chaucer we're still talking about, just like Grim's fairy
Speaker 5: tales are still being talked about. It's because of there
Speaker 5: was something about that writer, not because of any other thing,
Speaker 5: but because of they could tap into using their will,
Speaker 5: the phantasmagoria, the imaginal realms, with their magic, and they
Speaker 5: did it in such a way that now has withstood time.
Speaker 5: And so there's something there that I think is really
Speaker 5: important that we touch on.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: I think that it goes back to what we were
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, when we're talking about why people believe
Speaker 2: what they believe. And I am not one to be
Speaker 2: like anything goes, do whatever you want. I am taking
Speaker 2: a class right now in advanced magic, and we studied,
Speaker 2: you know, some ancient magics and the Kabbalah, and we're
Speaker 2: studying energy work. And so I think that what is
Speaker 2: good about going back and saying, let's look at what
Speaker 2: other people have thought, Let's look at what they have tried, right,
Speaker 2: Because if something is effective, there's more and more people
Speaker 2: are going to incorporate that and they're going to use
Speaker 2: it because it's working for them, you know. And that's
Speaker 2: true with anything like if you're going to do yoga,
Speaker 2: and go study the poses and why those are effective
Speaker 2: in the combination that they they are in, because you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of study of how yoga can be
Speaker 2: most effective for different goals, right, So so go learn
Speaker 2: those things and then you know, go off book and
Speaker 2: then say, Okay, I'm going to try this practice a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of people say really works, and I'm gonna,
Speaker 2: you know, do it consistently in an ongoing way. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's meditation, right, And I think part of the problem
Speaker 2: is we all too often separate our sort of magical
Speaker 2: beliefs and lives from the mundane. I think it's all
Speaker 2: one thing. You know, the magical is mundane and the
Speaker 2: and so, but if you're gonna, you know, do yoga,
Speaker 2: don't do it for two days and be like, well
Speaker 2: I didn't work. You know, do it for a while
Speaker 2: because a lot of people have studied it and said
Speaker 2: this is really effective, and I think, you know, And
Speaker 2: of course that's when people start to evangelize, you know,
Speaker 2: they're they're like, oh, it's I got so much stronger
Speaker 2: and I lost all this weight. But it's like, well,
Speaker 2: you're making a healthy choice for yourself, and people who
Speaker 2: do that often make more than one healthy choice, you know,
Speaker 2: like did you stop drinking at the same time?
Speaker 9: Did you you know? What? What is it?
Speaker 2: And so it there is definitely something in there that
Speaker 2: you're talking about. I think it's complicated because I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, people try stuff and they say, you know,
Speaker 2: oh it doesn't work. And that's with our beliefs too, right,
Speaker 2: someone who's had a mystical experience, they're like, this stuff
Speaker 2: is one hundred percent real, like I know it because
Speaker 2: I felt it. And then there are people who are like,
Speaker 2: well I never felt it, so it can't be real.
Speaker 2: And so I think that it is about the belief
Speaker 2: ultimately and of what you're trying.
Speaker 8: So I was going to say, now, earlier, you were
Speaker 8: talking about cooking in regard to you know, finding the
Speaker 8: very and then kind of create. And I think that
Speaker 8: at these things being practices, as you practice them, you
Speaker 8: become more familiar with the various tools. And like with art.
Speaker 8: You know, I've been doing art since I popped out
Speaker 8: pretty much, and I'm over there, and you you learn
Speaker 8: to be able to facilitate doing things with the tools
Speaker 8: that in the beginning you could never have conceived. So
Speaker 8: as you practice these things, these these you know, nuance
Speaker 8: elements within the working and the practice of the craft
Speaker 8: itself become the knobs of the machine that allow you
Speaker 8: to be able to fine tune these processes.
Speaker 2: Right, And like this reminds me going back to the
Speaker 2: cooking so as so many people did. I jumped on
Speaker 2: the sourdough fandwagon during lockdown and I got my sourdough
Speaker 2: starter from a company and they've got a bunch of
Speaker 2: videos and so the basic loaf. I was sticking with
Speaker 2: that basic loaf, and at first my bread was good,
Speaker 2: and then it started to not rise as well, right,
Speaker 2: and so I was like, what, I'm not doing anything different,
Speaker 2: And I was getting these flat loaves. They were dense,
Speaker 2: they were you know, too moist, And so I started
Speaker 2: going on other mostly Facebook groups and looking and Pinterest
Speaker 2: and trying to see and what was happening was I
Speaker 2: was doing what I had learned from day one, which
Speaker 2: is when you feed your sour doughs starter, it's like
Speaker 2: one part starter to one part flower to one part
Speaker 2: water by volume.
Speaker 9: And so I was doing that.
Speaker 2: But apparently over time that doesn't create a strong starter.
Speaker 2: So my starter was getting progressively weaker and weaker, and
Speaker 2: I had to give it way more flower is the
Speaker 2: short end of that story. And so but I went
Speaker 2: to see what other people were doing. I tried it,
Speaker 2: and then it started working. And so you know, now
Speaker 2: I'm like, sometimes I'll do one to three to two
Speaker 2: ratio or one to ten to ten, depending on what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to accomplish at the time.
Speaker 8: But you've learned the mechanisms by which that those tools
Speaker 8: function so that you can facilitate refining the.
Speaker 9: Process exactly right.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where our own belief and discernment
Speaker 2: comes in in. You know, what are we taking from
Speaker 2: other people and saying I'm going to use this it works,
Speaker 2: and what are we saying that part of it didn't
Speaker 2: work for me? So my magic, like I don't. And
Speaker 2: they make jokes all the time about like the brand
Speaker 2: new practitioners. They've got the chalice and the wand and
Speaker 2: the antheme, and they've got all this stuff. They've got
Speaker 2: twenty seven herbs and you know, and then like you know,
Speaker 2: you get to yeah, you get to a season witch
Speaker 2: and she's just like, you know, burning some herbs and
Speaker 2: throwing out a curse or whatever she's doing.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: And so I think that those the tools and the
Speaker 2: things that you use can be training wheels and help you,
Speaker 2: you know. And you know, if you're going to want
Speaker 2: to use the antheme and it makes you happy, rock it.
Speaker 9: Up, right.
Speaker 2: But if you want to use your finger for the
Speaker 2: same kind of thing, that's that's good too.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: It just depends on what you feel like is necessary
Speaker 2: and what kind of where you want to put your time,
Speaker 2: energy and effort.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, nice. Israel Regardi in his a lot of his books,
Speaker 5: but he talks about how the you're trying, what you're
Speaker 5: trying to do is you're creating the mnemonic and so
Speaker 5: by using the wand you know, you're understanding, you're honing
Speaker 5: your intuition. By using the sword, you're honing your reason
Speaker 5: or intellect, you know, and so on and so forth,
Speaker 5: and so it's really important and why it's like a
Speaker 5: dramatic play. Why we're using this cosmic dramas, because we're
Speaker 5: trying to understand that inter relationship between mind and mind
Speaker 5: and materiality or you know, or like you said in
Speaker 5: your book, the name of it mind over magic is
Speaker 5: that they are so closely related that they are almost
Speaker 5: the same thing. But we must use the mind for
Speaker 5: our magic is because without understanding how how our intention
Speaker 5: or it's in Chinese and like your tai chi practice
Speaker 5: or anything like that, it's they say, ye leads your chi, right,
Speaker 5: it's your intentionality is what's leading the energy to where
Speaker 5: it's gonna go. Where you know, where your thought goes,
Speaker 5: energy flows or whatever we want to say. So there's
Speaker 5: something really important. It's like who cares if I'm using
Speaker 5: a sword? If I have my sword moudra, you know,
Speaker 5: and then it's you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: Those are symbols. Those are like exactly symbols that represent
Speaker 8: the refinding of the various you know, so like in
Speaker 8: like you're saying as far as the wand versus the finger.
Speaker 8: You know, every symbol has seven meanings, and each one
Speaker 8: of those has seven meanings. So the fractaline aspect of
Speaker 8: the whole kind of is a multiplicity of tools that
Speaker 8: are available at our at our fingertips, yeah, finger.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: What's kind of interesting about that is just like even
Speaker 4: it's almost like you're because I'm a Buddhist, so like
Speaker 4: I do my chanting every morning and every evening for
Speaker 4: like an hour each time, and.
Speaker 1: So in a way, it's almost like that magical practice.
Speaker 1: Actually don't do that. I do like astrological, which is
Speaker 1: what I was kind of wondering. How do you do
Speaker 1: magic without including the stars?
Speaker 4: Is always something I find interesting because it seems like
Speaker 4: it's such a big part of my reality.
Speaker 1: But just going back to.
Speaker 4: Like the idea of like the magical tools and everything,
Speaker 4: it's like in my Buddhist practice, the whole idea is
Speaker 4: we're changing our car our causes so.
Speaker 9: We have the effect we want.
Speaker 1: So it's not you.
Speaker 4: Know, by chanting for hours, I'm you know, settling my spirit, yes,
Speaker 4: but it's also like I'm changing.
Speaker 1: My karma, I'm changing the.
Speaker 4: Causes that I'm making because I'm creating the cause to
Speaker 4: achieve enlightenment. So when you do that for an hour,
Speaker 4: you're changing your life for center g You're changing your
Speaker 4: karma because the effect I'm going to get is closer
Speaker 4: to that enlightenment. So it's like in a way I
Speaker 4: don't know because I'm not actually versed in like your
Speaker 4: guys's magical practice, but I'm guessing it's very similar in
Speaker 4: that way where yeah, the tools aren't necessarily necessary.
Speaker 1: It's getting your mind in that state that.
Speaker 4: Says I am creating a cause for something in the future,
Speaker 4: whether it be I mean, I hope it's something good,
Speaker 4: not so materialistic, right, But that's just kind of something
Speaker 4: that kind of came up to my mind, you know.
Speaker 9: That's that's really interesting.
Speaker 2: And what came up for me in listening to that
Speaker 2: is like, yes, you need to keep you know, strengthening
Speaker 2: what the your the way that your mind is approaching it.
Speaker 2: But I think that it's it's funny because they say
Speaker 2: that there are a lot of people they when they
Speaker 2: work out, they do weights in a very particular way.
Speaker 2: They're taught how to do it, you lift correctly in
Speaker 2: all of that, but then a lot of people get
Speaker 2: hurt in day to day life because you don't train
Speaker 2: for things coming up in like you know, you you
Speaker 2: twist to pick up a heavy grocery bag and you
Speaker 2: haven't ever strengthened that kind of movement. And I think
Speaker 2: the same is true when you're talking about focusing your
Speaker 2: mind doing your energy work. And you know, because if
Speaker 2: you're out in the world and someone crashes their car
Speaker 2: into you, it's it's upsetting, right, So you have to
Speaker 2: have that practice already in place so you can apply
Speaker 2: some of those skills to you know, day to day
Speaker 2: life because it can be hard. And I'm an introvert
Speaker 2: and so when I'm out in the world, like I
Speaker 2: will still go through a very specific process of like centering,
Speaker 2: grounding and shielding. And is it you know my using
Speaker 2: that is isn't my energy that I actually am grounding?
Speaker 2: Or am I using that symbolism of imagining the grounding
Speaker 2: to work?
Speaker 9: Again?
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter as long as it's working and as
Speaker 2: long as in practical application I can carry those skills
Speaker 2: out into my life.
Speaker 3: Very nice. I did want to ask you.
Speaker 7: What what would success in magic look like?
Speaker 6: Few Like, like, what is I mean would you say,
Speaker 6: that's like self knowledge, enchantment, understanding with results, wisdom. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, does what does success a magic look like
Speaker 6: to you now? And has that changed over your career?
Speaker 3: Because I know it has for me too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely has changed for me.
Speaker 2: I think that success looks like a strong, ongoing practice
Speaker 2: in which you achieve the results that you want. And
Speaker 2: I think that sometimes when we don't, we don't.
Speaker 9: We didn't we didn't.
Speaker 2: Either ask for it in the right way or And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I use my pendulum every day and I
Speaker 2: am hyper aware of how carefully you have to word things.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like the genie and the wishes, right,
Speaker 2: like you don't.
Speaker 3: Know what's Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that I do with my
Speaker 2: coven is when we like do ritual. We do ritual
Speaker 2: at least once a month, and when we do it outside,
Speaker 2: we always at the end we drink meat, right, and
Speaker 2: we pass it around and drink it out of the
Speaker 2: horn and all of that, and it's great, it's fun.
Speaker 2: But when we do it outside, the first thing that
Speaker 2: we say is I drink in fear and dread because
Speaker 2: it's not a controlled environment when you're working magic outside
Speaker 2: and so it's it's easier to have unexpected results, especially
Speaker 2: if you're you know, trying to raise some powerful energy.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: I don't know if that is no for me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, no, uh yeah, you kind of answered it
Speaker 6: when you said, you know, finding what works.
Speaker 3: You and gets your results.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would say even from me when I was
Speaker 6: first starting, I think it was more of there's somewhere
Speaker 6: along more results, and I think I'm more of at
Speaker 6: the point where I'm just trying to look for understanding
Speaker 6: and knowledge and not so much like materialistic things in
Speaker 6: my life. But yeah, yeah, then there was also a
Speaker 6: lot of like ritualistic stuff that I know that that
Speaker 6: was very uh I guess getting that down, you know,
Speaker 6: very huge for me.
Speaker 3: But uh yeah thanks.
Speaker 6: Did anybody have any other questions before I ask any
Speaker 6: other ones?
Speaker 5: Well, then I want to kind of hit off of
Speaker 5: what you're saying, Nick, is that then there's the two
Speaker 5: different styles, Right, there's the idea of the high magic
Speaker 5: and low magic, you know, high magic or the theologia,
Speaker 5: right that divine working and then low magic being is
Speaker 5: in I'm trying to like formulate a love life or
Speaker 5: I'm trying to find my keys or blah blah blah,
Speaker 5: so far and so on, But it's fascinating. It's like, eventually,
Speaker 5: I feel like you lay the foundation of trying to
Speaker 5: see how to find your keys the fast this until
Speaker 5: you realize, if I were a better person, I wouldn't
Speaker 5: lose my keys, and so it's like it can put
Speaker 5: them in the same place every time, exactly Mark. So
Speaker 5: it's like a fascinating thing to be like eventually, hopefully
Speaker 5: the individual process of the alchemical pathway is that we're
Speaker 5: going to just understand that if I hone my mind
Speaker 5: train my will understand the body mind connection that then
Speaker 5: I can get rid of the nonsense to bring in
Speaker 5: the positivity, thus balancing what Kaylo was talking about and
Speaker 5: balancing the karma, balancing out my karma because I don't
Speaker 5: want to take any more karma on, which is why
Speaker 5: it's like why I don't want to connect myself to
Speaker 5: other people. I'm trying to disconnect myself from everything else
Speaker 5: so I can rebuild my own understanding of who I
Speaker 5: am and why I'm even here. And so there's just
Speaker 5: like I kind of like what you're saying, Nick with
Speaker 5: what you've come to in your own practice being all
Speaker 5: like I'm just trying to figure out wisdom and my
Speaker 5: own mind and like how to be a better boyfriend
Speaker 5: or whatever, you know what I mean. So it's a yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just fascinating.
Speaker 8: Well, and I think it's essential within all this structure
Speaker 8: and like the essential function of it of why people
Speaker 8: believe what they believe? And it's based on the current mythos,
Speaker 8: the current things that are in the air, and what
Speaker 8: are we dealing with now in regard to the current
Speaker 8: mythos in the air. We're having to deal with all
Speaker 8: of these things that the Black fondl Slab is dealing
Speaker 8: to us, you know. And that's a sort of magic
Speaker 8: in itself that's creating the modern day mythos. That's kind
Speaker 8: of taking the imagination of the populace as a whole
Speaker 8: and directing it outside of our own individual will and intent.
Speaker 8: So this thing of hermetism, this thing of moving away,
Speaker 8: shedding these things so that we can find our true
Speaker 8: self and focus our own energy versus all of the
Speaker 8: forces that are flooding in. And I think that it's
Speaker 8: the most essential question that that really is right now
Speaker 8: is why do people believe what they believe?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4: That's great, Yeah, because it's like when they take all
Speaker 4: of our imaginations, that's so much magical power, you know.
Speaker 4: And that's why I have a hard time being like,
Speaker 4: you know, technology is the future, because I'm like, I
Speaker 4: don't know, like I personally don't want that.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 4: So it's like why do I have to believe in
Speaker 4: this mythos that they want us to believe?
Speaker 1: So I think there's there's like a amount of conscious.
Speaker 4: Awareness of like what are they trying to make the future,
Speaker 4: and like do we actually all want that?
Speaker 1: And like that's a nice thing about technology.
Speaker 4: I guess like social media helps us like come together
Speaker 4: and say like no we don't, let's you know, figure
Speaker 4: something out. But yeah, that's a really beautifully said.
Speaker 2: And I think I think that, you know, some of
Speaker 2: the beliefs that even we've been handed right, like the
Speaker 2: idea that it's been around for you know, more than
Speaker 2: one hundred years, that we are sort of individual silos
Speaker 2: and not connected to what's around us, and that you know,
Speaker 2: that makes for really great students, and that makes that
Speaker 2: that grow up to be really good factory workers or
Speaker 2: you know, like and and that's you know, one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago. When that was the future for a lot
Speaker 2: of people. It helps make them, you know, complain less
Speaker 2: and be quieter and work ridiculous hours in dangerous conditions.
Speaker 9: And so, but before.
Speaker 2: That, we had very much around the world. People understood
Speaker 2: that we were much more connected, whether it was just
Speaker 2: connected in our community or connected energetically and psychically and
Speaker 2: how however you want to look at it.
Speaker 9: People people did.
Speaker 2: They knew that there was connection to the land and
Speaker 2: to the animals and to other people and so and
Speaker 2: we just grew up in a world that scoffed at
Speaker 2: people being connected. And so you have to unlearn some
Speaker 2: of those things that you were handed as we were
Speaker 2: handed as children, right, and that's how we were taught.
Speaker 2: And that's what everyone you know around us we're saying.
Speaker 2: And so that is it's hard to unlearn stuff and
Speaker 2: you can't do something that you don't believe is possible.
Speaker 9: Right before the forties? Was it in the forties.
Speaker 2: Where people believe that it was not possible for a
Speaker 2: human being to run faster than a four minute mile,
Speaker 2: right until some British dude did it.
Speaker 8: And then and then it starts to happen that everybody
Speaker 8: can do it. It's like the rats in the maze
Speaker 8: that that once one of them learns it, there's some
Speaker 8: sort of and it's that I don't know if you've
Speaker 8: heard of Einstein, but he documented this phenomenon never yes,
Speaker 8: spooky action at a distance where you know, he would
Speaker 8: prick the baby rabbits even from different distances, and the
Speaker 8: mother would feel it instantly the end. So there's this
Speaker 8: intrinsic interconnection. You know that that modern with tico or commercialism,
Speaker 8: has kind of worked to separate us from right.
Speaker 2: And I think that and that is one of the
Speaker 2: quotes that I use in my book. So I love
Speaker 2: that you brought that up. And and that gets us
Speaker 2: back to you know, quantum entanglement. And we've known that
Speaker 2: this is a real thing for one hundred years because
Speaker 2: Einstein was talking about it. And so when when we
Speaker 2: start to look at our connections it, we're still like
Speaker 2: people are still being made fun of for saying stuff
Speaker 2: like this, and and people act like they're crazy or
Speaker 2: they you know, say oh, yeah, she's weird or whatever.
Speaker 2: But then we find out like, no, there's reality behind it,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I think that that's it's an interesting way
Speaker 2: to look at things of like, you know, if something
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense of what another person is saying, can
Speaker 2: you reframe that in a way that helps you understand
Speaker 2: what their experience is?
Speaker 9: And you know, maybe it'll help you.
Speaker 2: Because the more that we work on ourselves and make
Speaker 2: ourselves better, the more we make the collective better. Right,
Speaker 2: And that's one of I guess that's another important thing
Speaker 2: that tells me what success is in magic is when
Speaker 2: we are constantly making the collective better. Because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people out there that are making the collective worse.
Speaker 2: And so you know, can can we just continue to
Speaker 2: do that in whatever way that we can and adding
Speaker 2: our magic to that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Nice? Yeah, like in a sense of stimuli.
Speaker 4: Right, So it's like there is there's always the yin
Speaker 4: and the yong, right, And like the way I look
Speaker 4: at it from a Buddhists, like this world is a
Speaker 4: training ground and not some sort of like you know,
Speaker 4: video game sort of way, but the time to really
Speaker 4: acknowledge that all the hate you see in the world
Speaker 4: is inside of you, right, and all the people you
Speaker 4: despise you are right. So it's like this constant if
Speaker 4: we point the finger continuously saying they're making the world worse? Well,
Speaker 4: how are we making somebody's life worse? You know, I
Speaker 4: always run into that, when do I stop blaming? And
Speaker 4: I'm not perfect, right because I do that, And so
Speaker 4: it's like, but when do we stop pretending that?
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't meant to be that way?
Speaker 4: Right, Like it's and I'm not saying pretending, but that's
Speaker 4: probably not the right word. But we're not living in
Speaker 4: the world of cos and roof wo of enlightenment, right,
Speaker 4: So we're not living in a perfect reality. So we
Speaker 4: have to acknowledge if we want to get there, everybody
Speaker 4: has to go there too, So that person doing wrong,
Speaker 4: they have to it. And you know, like I said,
Speaker 4: are they doing wrong? Like they're they're fulfilling their karmac
Speaker 4: journey for whatever reason. And sometimes people's karmic journey is
Speaker 4: so hard to see. We think they're thriving, but really
Speaker 4: they're like deteriorating, deteriorating on the inside because they're here
Speaker 4: just people pleasing everybody. So it's hard sometimes to know
Speaker 4: why and what needs to happen. But I think it's
Speaker 4: always important to recognize that, like the yin and the
Speaker 4: young is essential for you to be a better person.
Speaker 1: That thing has to exist to show.
Speaker 4: You that you don't want to be that thing, right, So,
Speaker 4: and I totally agree with you too. At the same time,
Speaker 4: it's just always a good reminder for me personally to
Speaker 4: remember that that person, there's a part of that inside
Speaker 4: of me, and I need to acknowledge that I'm an asshole.
Speaker 4: And if I can do that, I win, right because
Speaker 4: I acknowledge like that part is a part of my reality.
Speaker 1: So I who want to throw that out there too?
Speaker 8: And I think the body Sopha is the perfect symbol
Speaker 8: of that in regard to we all have to make it,
Speaker 8: we all and he's going to be the last one
Speaker 8: after everyone of sins to be able to you know,
Speaker 8: move into the higher realms. Yeah, it's beautiful concept.
Speaker 2: I don't know what if you guys believe in Gregor's
Speaker 2: or not. Yeah, And and so I think that that's
Speaker 2: part okay, good And I think that's that's part of
Speaker 2: what you're getting at, is that we we do we
Speaker 2: create things together through our and and you know our
Speaker 2: beliefs are energy as well, right, and so what we
Speaker 2: are putting our thoughts toward. And I think you know,
Speaker 2: when you look at things like the secret, it's sort
Speaker 2: of pointing in the right direction.
Speaker 9: It just doesn't really go far enough.
Speaker 2: You can't just imagine like I've got my my vision board,
Speaker 2: you know, and and have something happen, right, Like you've
Speaker 2: got to again, the magic is mundane, right, and so
Speaker 2: it's all a part of and so you have to
Speaker 2: be doing things that we would consider mundane. I can't
Speaker 2: sit at home and wish my book into existence, right,
Speaker 2: I had to write it. And yeah, and so I
Speaker 2: think that, yeah, like we when when we're putting our
Speaker 2: energy in the places that we need to be, we
Speaker 2: are helping bring that energy out to the world and
Speaker 2: hopefully tipping the scales the right direction.
Speaker 4: But then you're off balance, right, So it's like it's like,
Speaker 4: you know, once you tip the scales, it's like it's such.
Speaker 1: A fragile reality. Then right, it's like you've tipped it.
Speaker 4: Now it's like now we're on a tight wire because
Speaker 4: eventually that that's going to like do something right rebalancing.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yep, I want to ask you, Uh, was there
Speaker 10: ever a time when like you actually stopped practicing.
Speaker 6: Was ever a time that you had like outs or
Speaker 6: anything like that.
Speaker 3: I belief believing.
Speaker 2: There's time that I was not practicing. I don't know
Speaker 2: that that necessarily means I wasn't believing. I just was
Speaker 2: much more focused on the mundane world.
Speaker 9: And I think that.
Speaker 2: Those beliefs just took a back seat to the point
Speaker 2: where they weren't Like I might as well have stopped
Speaker 2: believing because I wasn't doing anything about those beliefs and
Speaker 2: putting any energy toward it. And so, you know, and
Speaker 2: it was a couple of different times in my life
Speaker 2: where just I had other stuff going on. You know,
Speaker 2: I was I was partying a lot in my twenties,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, it's it's harder to practice, it's
Speaker 2: harder to maintain. It's like it's harder to work out
Speaker 2: when you're partying a lot, it's harder to do a
Speaker 2: lot of things and that and when I was getting
Speaker 2: a divorce and things were very difficult, and you know,
Speaker 2: it like you just start to focus on the things
Speaker 2: like sometimes in your life, you focus on the next
Speaker 2: thing in front of you and that's all you can
Speaker 2: do in that moment. So so, yeah, definitely stopped practicing
Speaker 2: at certain points in my life.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 2: At this point that I ever would again, like something
Speaker 2: catastrophic would have to happen for me to be in
Speaker 2: that kind of place.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 6: One thing else I did want to ask too, like
Speaker 6: what if you do remember what's your earliest memory of
Speaker 6: something working out that you actually couldn't explain away, Like
Speaker 6: you're like, all right, this is.
Speaker 9: Real hmm, something working out.
Speaker 6: To be like it kept you going, You're like, okay,
Speaker 6: this is magic or there's something there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a really hard one. I think that's
Speaker 2: sorry it well because you know, it's like I remember
Speaker 2: back and memory is you know, faulty, and so like
Speaker 2: I don't know that I remember a lot of my
Speaker 2: early magical practices and so and I don't like it's
Speaker 2: hard for me to suss out like a moment in
Speaker 2: which I went from you know that, like and they
Speaker 2: say like, I don't know if you guys know about this.
Speaker 2: Like in Ireland, they will move a road that they're
Speaker 2: planning on building in a certain place if they think
Speaker 2: that it's going to disrupt like elf Home or very Home.
Speaker 9: And what the people say is.
Speaker 2: Well it's probably not true, but why take a chance, right,
Speaker 2: A lot of people sort of have that, And I
Speaker 2: think that there are times in my life where I
Speaker 2: was like doing that and so that was really more
Speaker 2: of a going through the motions kind of time.
Speaker 9: And so.
Speaker 2: And of course there's doubt, right, You're like, is that
Speaker 2: a coincidence? Did that really happen? Am I crazy? Like
Speaker 2: so many people are saying. And so I think that
Speaker 2: it's an ever evolving kind of belief system for me.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I think a long time ago
Speaker 2: it was it's probably not, but why take a chance.
Speaker 2: And it's sort of just been getting stronger and stronger
Speaker 2: in my belief And again it gets back to definitions.
Speaker 2: What I was defining as intuition I now define differently.
Speaker 2: And if I had been defining it as like those
Speaker 2: are my my spirit guides talking to me, then I
Speaker 2: would have said, I mean, it's been my entire adult
Speaker 2: life that I've believed, right, because I believe in my intuition,
Speaker 2: and how is that not magical?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And so so yeah, like and I'm one of those people.
Speaker 2: I consider myself to be pretty lucky, right, And consistently
Speaker 2: that plays out and that's just part of what I think.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, these and maybe I'm paying more
Speaker 2: attention to when good things happen than bad. And maybe
Speaker 2: that's why I believe things are working out.
Speaker 9: But you know, it's yeah, just well.
Speaker 8: And I think there's also within playing with these ideas.
Speaker 8: You know, when you say I think I'm lucky, at
Speaker 8: the same time you want to be lucky, but you
Speaker 8: don't want to think too much you're lucky because you
Speaker 8: might paint your luck. So there's kind of these nuance
Speaker 8: elements within the belief system that kind of waver on
Speaker 8: the creation of the magic itself, right yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that one of the things that I
Speaker 2: recommend when people are feeling doubt is to start to
Speaker 2: look for the magic.
Speaker 9: Right. See that you feel better.
Speaker 2: When you go out into the woods, right, pay attention
Speaker 2: to that. Or you know, if you see a feather
Speaker 2: on the ground and your great aunt collected you know,
Speaker 2: cardinal statuettes, right, think to.
Speaker 9: Yourself, is that a message is there? You know?
Speaker 2: And and so when you start to make those connections
Speaker 2: to how we are connected to what's around us, you
Speaker 2: kind of are drawing magic into your life again through
Speaker 2: your beliefs, right yeah.
Speaker 8: Synchro Mysticism.
Speaker 9: And some of the too.
Speaker 2: I think it's like when I think about divination, like
Speaker 2: I said, I use my pendulum right, and I use
Speaker 2: a lot, And I think that it's important for any
Speaker 2: divination type is that it's about how we interpret things.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: So I can have the exact same card pull a
Speaker 2: year from now as I do today, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to tie it to different activities in my life. And
Speaker 2: so how we think about how we think is important.
Speaker 9: And so look at what you're doing.
Speaker 2: If you you know, something happens, you go, oh that's lucky,
Speaker 2: or oh that is a sign about this, that's about
Speaker 2: in part who you are as.
Speaker 9: Well in this moment.
Speaker 1: I think that's like there's some truth to that. But
Speaker 1: then you can also.
Speaker 4: Like if there is actual like for instance, like I
Speaker 4: get a lot of things and then I'll go to
Speaker 4: research it, right, and then in the research I find
Speaker 4: that the thing that I actually like got from my
Speaker 4: my guardians was actually something that was real and it's
Speaker 4: part of this trail that connected things that weren't previously
Speaker 4: connected because you found something that was in a book
Speaker 4: that you you know, So it's like there is there
Speaker 4: is something where I feel very much like, you know,
Speaker 4: how much is it?
Speaker 1: I don't actually think it's my mind?
Speaker 5: You know what?
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think it my mind. I definitely
Speaker 4: feel like having special relationships with the stars and the planets.
Speaker 4: Like everybody's got a natal chart. So you're lucky because
Speaker 4: you have Jupiter at the MC trying your ascendant or
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, and it's exalted, right, So
Speaker 4: luck can be written in your life. You've got the
Speaker 4: lot of fortune on your ascendant, right, So there's like
Speaker 4: ways that luck just can be you can be lucky.
Speaker 1: But I do think, like I don't think. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes I don't think.
Speaker 4: I think myself into the signs I get from spirit,
Speaker 4: you know, Like I definitely have done the research after
Speaker 4: that invitation to look at the thing or the symbol
Speaker 4: that I received, right, So it's interesting.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it brought up a story for me. A while back.
Speaker 2: I was getting a reading and we were on a
Speaker 2: video call and the psychic was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: this is your mother, and she was talking about my cat.
Speaker 2: I'd just gotten my cat another COVID Lockdown adventure, and
Speaker 2: I had had a cat many years before, and then
Speaker 2: in the middle I had a bunch of dogs, right,
Speaker 2: So I've only had two cats in my life, and
Speaker 2: so I just gotten Puck and she said something about, oh,
Speaker 2: the old cat doesn't like the new cat. This is
Speaker 2: what my mother was saying. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: that's weird. And then she made a joke about there
Speaker 2: being some cat poop like outside of the litter box, right,
Speaker 2: and so I was like, okay, whatever. So I go
Speaker 2: on and I look right and there's nothing there, right,
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, whatever.
Speaker 9: That was about.
Speaker 2: And then when I got up the next morning, I
Speaker 2: went out into the room where the litter box is.
Speaker 2: Sure enough was like poop outside of the litter box.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, so that, you know, so I
Speaker 2: think that you do things that you say, Yes, that's
Speaker 2: really real, you know.
Speaker 5: I think that brings back up the thing that I
Speaker 5: am continually trying. So I feel like the mechanized, postmodern
Speaker 5: functionalist world is the death of magic, and so it's
Speaker 5: really important to try to bring back the idea that
Speaker 5: all wasn't created from materiality, but first it was consciousness,
Speaker 5: and everything sprung out from that initial In the beginning,
Speaker 5: there was the word, and from that we can have
Speaker 5: a good understanding of how important it is to fine tune.
Speaker 5: At this point here I'm getting to is fine tune
Speaker 5: the nervous system, because the nervous system is not creating consciousness.
Speaker 5: The nervous system is like a radio frequency tuning mechanism
Speaker 5: that's tuning into the consciousness of your soul. And when
Speaker 5: you do that and why I think things like the
Speaker 5: hermetic tradition and the magic through tradition through time, the
Speaker 5: Western esoteric tradition and some of those who have the
Speaker 5: ability to be more intuitional and hone the intuition. So
Speaker 5: you understand that it wasn't your mind that created this thing.
Speaker 5: It was that you have the ability to tap into
Speaker 5: this curve and that is always there, and you can
Speaker 5: tap into your guardians, tap into your higher self, into
Speaker 5: God or whatever it is, and that then it isn't
Speaker 5: Ego brand In doing it or whoever, but it is
Speaker 5: actually this higher self that's speaking to you. And then
Speaker 5: from there, like Kaibo was saying, then you were all like, well,
Speaker 5: that was really close to home. And then you start
Speaker 5: reading about it, then you realize that some traditional astrologer
Speaker 5: or Elphis Leve or some Eamblokus or somebody made this connection.
Speaker 5: And then you have another spot of the pattern making
Speaker 5: machine that our brain does to realize that I just
Speaker 5: hit on something, and I want to take that gut
Speaker 5: feeling or that intuition or that heart feeling or whatever
Speaker 5: it was that made you, not even made you, but
Speaker 5: helped you discover this truth. And that's why I think
Speaker 5: it's so important we understand certain certain certain ancient philosophers
Speaker 5: like Plato is talking about is understanding of epistemics or
Speaker 5: his understanding of knowledge, is that you aren't ever like
Speaker 5: learning anything. You're only remembering something exactly and so, and
Speaker 5: through that remembering, you are then tapping into this thing
Speaker 5: and it's not a thing at all. And and you
Speaker 5: know it's that exactly, You're tapping into the noose, right,
Speaker 5: that that higher god intellect that was first the first creator.
Speaker 5: But the first Creator wasn't a thing at all. It
Speaker 5: was this the verb as in in John Michael Greer's
Speaker 5: Elf Magical Traditions, when he rewrote the Elvis Levy's work,
Speaker 5: he's talking about the verb right, is that I don't
Speaker 5: think therefore I am. It is that I think therefore
Speaker 5: I exist, And through that existing, everything else stems into being.
Speaker 5: So the more we and what I'm getting at is
Speaker 5: the more we hone, the nervous system, the more we
Speaker 5: can tap into these higher frequencies which we were talking about,
Speaker 5: like walking through the forest. If you're more if your
Speaker 5: nervous system is hone to the things, you can tap
Speaker 5: into these things and some people might call it energy,
Speaker 5: others call it spirit, other you know, and then through
Speaker 5: that practice we can have more synchronistic experiences and witness
Speaker 5: the beauty of the universe.
Speaker 8: I just read that when you walk through the forest,
Speaker 8: if you walk through the forest barefoot, you're linking in
Speaker 8: with the mysolium, and the mysolium of the forest. Every
Speaker 8: square inch of floor has over three hundred miles of
Speaker 8: my celium network in it. And how that links in
Speaker 8: with the memory of the Earth and the cosmos and
Speaker 8: like all those intercommunications of all those systems in regard
Speaker 8: to us being a part of that, Yeah, definitely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a question forcy Tracy.
Speaker 4: So you use your pendulum every day, what else is
Speaker 4: a part of your practice or like the ritually that
Speaker 4: you did outside like every month, Like what does that
Speaker 4: look like?
Speaker 2: Just kids, So when I get up in the morning,
Speaker 2: I typically leave an offering and light candles on my
Speaker 2: God and Goddess altars and and I've got five altars
Speaker 2: and so I and sometimes I leave a an offering
Speaker 2: at my ancestor alter, and then I think that let's
Speaker 2: see other parts of my well. I I journal, and
Speaker 2: I think that's part of my my practice. I like
Speaker 2: to do full moon rituals. I usually do a road
Speaker 2: open for a full moon ritual. As far as our communal,
Speaker 2: our circle rituals, those are usually pretty standard. We we
Speaker 2: weach pull a run and we talk about that, and
Speaker 2: then we while we call in the various deities that
Speaker 2: the the group itself works with and invite them into
Speaker 2: the space. And then the person who's sort of the
Speaker 2: leader of the group will have a specific ritual planned
Speaker 2: in which we talk about certain things and sometimes we
Speaker 2: raise energy will be you know, stomping and clapping or
Speaker 2: or you know, running around in a circle. And then we,
Speaker 2: like I said, at the end, we typically pass the
Speaker 2: horn around and whoever gets the last sip of mead
Speaker 2: from the horn is you know, they say, well, what
Speaker 2: do we say that the devil takes high most because
Speaker 2: they're going to have really wild dreams that night. And
Speaker 2: then yeah, and that's that's pretty much what our rituals
Speaker 2: look like. And then we kind of decompress. We usually
Speaker 2: hang out for an hour or so talking.
Speaker 9: So that's that.
Speaker 2: And then like other things, I mean, I burn incense
Speaker 2: to remind myself of you know, like sort of the
Speaker 2: air spirits, especially when it's cold out and everything is
Speaker 2: closed up, I'm not feeling the breeze.
Speaker 9: And what else do I do?
Speaker 2: I use sound like I do a sound clearing a
Speaker 2: lot of times, and I use a lot of symbolism.
Speaker 2: You know, I think a lot about you know, what
Speaker 2: I'm doing or how I'm cooking, and you know, like
Speaker 2: I'll be stirring in a clockwise direction because that food's
Speaker 2: going to nourish me in the future, and bringing those
Speaker 2: kinds of things in. I'll typically light candles when I'm
Speaker 2: in the kitchen cooking on my kitchen altar. I sometimes
Speaker 2: remember to dust my business altar in my main altar,
Speaker 2: but that's all, you know, that's part of the.
Speaker 9: Earth, right that dust is. I can use that symbolically too,
Speaker 9: because I really hate dusting.
Speaker 4: You have your altars set up in like specific areas,
Speaker 4: like is there a reason why you put like we're
Speaker 4: like your office one. Is it in your office or
Speaker 4: is it like in a specific direction.
Speaker 1: Or like, how does that look?
Speaker 2: My office one is like right here because I typically
Speaker 2: work here. This is where I write and all of that,
Speaker 2: and my main altar is actually right next to me.
Speaker 9: Uh, and I would say that one like doesn't.
Speaker 2: I don't don't know that any of my altars except
Speaker 2: maybe my God and Goddess alter that one looks like
Speaker 2: an altar. The rest of them just look more like decor.
Speaker 2: And so my kitchen altars in my kitchen, I do
Speaker 2: a garden altar outside and when it's nice out, my
Speaker 2: ancestor altar is right there, and I do have an
Speaker 2: offering up right now, and so and uh, yeah, my
Speaker 2: goden Goddess is in essentially what is center of the home.
Speaker 2: And well, at least on this floor, it'd have to
Speaker 2: be like on the ceiling if we were in the
Speaker 2: center center. But but yeah, that's so that's kind of
Speaker 2: how I've placed them. And you know, some of it
Speaker 2: is just where I had room, and you know, obviously
Speaker 2: some are themed, right. I keep most of them in
Speaker 2: here because this is where I spend most.
Speaker 9: Of my time.
Speaker 8: And I'm also wondering, in regard to your practice, does
Speaker 8: the dreamscape play into your reality in regard to the
Speaker 8: reflection between this world and the other.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that, and I capture my dreams. What
Speaker 2: I do to capture them as much as I can.
Speaker 2: I keep my phone by the side of the bed,
Speaker 2: and I'll do like a voice note when like then
Speaker 2: I wake up, because then I don't have to turn
Speaker 2: on the lights and wait, because as soon as you start.
Speaker 9: Doing that, it starts to go away.
Speaker 2: So I just do a quick voice note to capture
Speaker 2: them and then go back to sleep. And it's like
Speaker 2: I always think I'm going to remember that for sure,
Speaker 2: never do, and then you know, I get up and
Speaker 2: then I go and sort of like reflect on what
Speaker 2: the symbolism is for me. I do more of my
Speaker 2: journeying through meditative practices than through the dreams. I use
Speaker 2: the dreams more like divination for myself, and like that
Speaker 2: is you know, it's it's a backdoor into my subconscious
Speaker 2: of what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 9: So so yeah, but but I do.
Speaker 2: Do journeying, and in my class, you know, I've I've
Speaker 2: gone to the upper world and the underworld and all
Speaker 2: that kind of thing through those practices. I have a
Speaker 2: little trouble because I'm one of those people when like
Speaker 2: I didn't even know up until a year or two
Speaker 2: go that like when people were visualizing things, they like
Speaker 2: saw pictures.
Speaker 9: They were like little movies in their head. Because I don't.
Speaker 9: It's just like black for me.
Speaker 2: Or I've been working on it very hard and now
Speaker 2: I am seeing images when I'm doing my visualization. But
Speaker 2: it was, it was It's taken me a couple of
Speaker 2: years to get to even that point. And I used
Speaker 2: to like start to see things and then if I,
Speaker 2: like in my mind looked at it too directly, it
Speaker 2: would be gone.
Speaker 9: And so I and I didn't know. I was like
Speaker 9: you all see like little movies in your.
Speaker 8: Head, developing that intrinsic space. As an artist, that's what
Speaker 8: I do. I'm a visual and like I have so
Speaker 8: many images rolling through my head it's gets a little
Speaker 8: out of control sometimes.
Speaker 4: So but yeah, also a drishtie is good too. Like
Speaker 4: in my Buddhist practice, we have a scroll that we
Speaker 4: chant to and we have like addriss Geet looking point
Speaker 4: and that can be really helpful because sometimes when your
Speaker 4: when your eyes are closed, like it's hard to actually
Speaker 4: remember yourself to focus them right. So when your eyes
Speaker 4: are open, you can actually focus your eyes on a
Speaker 4: single point.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, right, very cool.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 7: One thing I did want to ask you to as
Speaker 7: we start to wrap this up, you know, for this book,
Speaker 7: was there any like influences behind you, Like, you know,
Speaker 7: what kind of people have influenced you hugely that may have,
Speaker 7: you know, help you do this book.
Speaker 2: I think I've done a lot of reading. So there's
Speaker 2: lots of authors out there that I think helped influence
Speaker 2: me personally.
Speaker 9: And and when I say I've, you know, done a
Speaker 9: lot of reading.
Speaker 2: There when we're looking at sort of the psychology side
Speaker 2: of things in the book, I have.
Speaker 9: I did a lot of reading.
Speaker 2: Of like business help books, right, and sort of how
Speaker 2: we think in business and how we react in different
Speaker 2: business setting of like you know, well we've always done
Speaker 2: it this way or and so I got into some
Speaker 2: of that in the later chapters of you know, and
Speaker 2: it would be the standard like business help gurus, and
Speaker 2: I think that that again was like I'm not just
Speaker 2: taking it from a magical perspective, and so the magic influences,
Speaker 2: and of course there are, I mean, but it's sort
Speaker 2: of like just like a combination of what I've learned
Speaker 2: throughout my lifetime and incorporated it into my own belief systems,
Speaker 2: and so I don't know that I could pinpoint like
Speaker 2: specific people. I think what really influenced me in the
Speaker 2: writing of it more than anything was talking to people
Speaker 2: about this stuff and talking to you know, contacts college
Speaker 2: from my days in corporate America. I worked in construction
Speaker 2: for almost twenty years and like in office environments, right,
Speaker 2: And I was like, you know, like these people are
Speaker 2: going to think I'm crazy. And I even consider it
Speaker 2: for a little while, like maybe I'm not going to
Speaker 2: use my real name, right, because what if I ever
Speaker 2: had to go back to work and they would all
Speaker 2: think I was crazy. But I started to talk to
Speaker 2: people about it, and one person I can think of
Speaker 2: one time, it was like right, everybody else And these
Speaker 2: are like, you know, construction professionals. These are like you know,
Speaker 2: vice presidents and presidents of like major construction firms. They'd
Speaker 2: be like, yes, yes, absolutely, I know what you mean.
Speaker 2: And because people have a certain knowing, I think, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that they know that it works and whatever wherever they
Speaker 2: are again on that spectrum, they understand that things happen
Speaker 2: that they can't describe fully, right, And like even even
Speaker 2: things that are taken as like regular like intuition or
Speaker 2: people who go to church and they have you know, communion, right,
Speaker 2: like those people are like that is the body of Christ,
Speaker 2: that is the blood, like in a real way they you.
Speaker 9: Know, and we treat that as normal.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, that's really turning into the body and
Speaker 2: the blood as soon as it gets into your system. Okay,
Speaker 2: first of all, you know, vampire cannibals, but whatever your
Speaker 2: belief is on that. And but but they honestly believe
Speaker 2: in magic in lots of ways. So much of what
Speaker 2: happens even in the Bible is yeah, yeah, And so
Speaker 2: I think that that that knowing of people just saying yes,
Speaker 2: I know this is true, that I think allowed me
Speaker 2: to even write the book. So that would probably be
Speaker 2: one of the biggest influences, is just connecting with real people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 6: Do maybies have any other questions before you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Well right, uh yeah, Tracy, it is one thing you'd
Speaker 6: like to say.
Speaker 3: About your book, maybe you'd like to leave us.
Speaker 9: With uh yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2: As we were talking about, it's all about the practice, right,
Speaker 2: Your beliefs play into it. Your you know, everything that
Speaker 2: you want to use all of that, but it's the
Speaker 2: ongoing regular practice that is going to make your magic
Speaker 2: more effective. You've got to use those spiritual muscles to
Speaker 2: do it in whatever way that looks for you, and
Speaker 2: do study what other people are staying and try it
Speaker 2: and then keep it up. Just keep doing it and
Speaker 2: keep doing it, because that's the most important part in
Speaker 2: all of this. Do your work, do your shadow work,
Speaker 2: do whatever you need to do to change where your
Speaker 2: beliefs go, and then keep doing it, and keep doing it.
Speaker 3: Listen. Thank you so much. And I love that too.
Speaker 6: I really I could have said that better myself too,
Speaker 6: say that's a suggestion.
Speaker 3: Uh, great stuff.
Speaker 6: I really loved having you on.
Speaker 3: I thought this was a great conversation.
Speaker 6: I probably, like, you know, get you on in the
Speaker 6: future again, maybe even to talk a little bit more
Speaker 6: about the science stuff. I didn't want to hit that
Speaker 6: too hard, but yeah, very very good stuff. And I
Speaker 6: appreciate you all joining into Before we let you tell
Speaker 6: everybody where they can find your amazing book. Let's start
Speaker 6: off with maggots first. Maggus, where can we find all
Speaker 6: your amazing Oh?
Speaker 5: Thank you Nick, and thank you Tracy. It was a
Speaker 5: fantastic conversation. It's a great noontime conversation to get people
Speaker 5: all jumbled up in their days, to bring the magic
Speaker 5: into the mundane. And I think that is beautiful because
Speaker 5: I think that's exactly what people should do. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: you can follow me at Magus in the media on YouTube,
Speaker 5: on x and on Instagram. It's where we bring myth, magic,
Speaker 5: philosophy and meaning into the world and from the stories
Speaker 5: that you and I and we all love. And make
Speaker 5: sure you watch it all, make sure you subscribe, like
Speaker 5: and share, and make sure you follow Occult Rejects because
Speaker 5: that's where we're breaking it down with the greatest authors,
Speaker 5: where Nick is crushing it and bringing all the greatest
Speaker 5: crushers into one space because that's what we do as always.
Speaker 5: Thank you Nicholas, thank you, No, I really appreciate you
Speaker 5: coming on man, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: And Robbie March please let me know where they can
Speaker 6: find all your amazing work and all your amazing art.
Speaker 8: Yes, it was a great conversation. I always love coming on.
Speaker 8: Gets me out of my little winter hermitage a little bit,
Speaker 8: you know, and it was great to meet everybody. And yeah,
Speaker 8: if you want to check out my other stuff. You
Speaker 8: can go to my link tree which is link Tree
Speaker 8: r M A r X and that has my metamind cast,
Speaker 8: my social media, my Patreon, my website. Everything is there
Speaker 8: all the ways you can connect with me and what
Speaker 8: I'm doing. And uh, yeah, this was great. Thanks Nick.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, well, thank you for some of the new
Speaker 6: listeners out there to Robbie's you know, we've been working
Speaker 6: with Robbie a long long time. Here is probably episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 6: there's episodes on his end. Go check them out that
Speaker 6: you probably have never heard of us.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So I just did Yeah, I just did one
Speaker 8: on learning to Lucid Dream. I just did one on
Speaker 8: what was it, the Creation of the human and the
Speaker 8: demon Haunted World? I got yeah, yeah, a couple what
Speaker 8: two years worth of backlog shows there for people to
Speaker 8: check out that are all timeless, you know, Evergreen per Se.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, nice.
Speaker 3: Thank you again, Robbie and Kaimo.
Speaker 6: Please let everybody know what's up with you when they
Speaker 6: can find all your amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me on. It was great to
Speaker 1: chat with you. Tracy.
Speaker 4: This was the first time I've been part of the
Speaker 4: rejecs crew, so this is my first time having a
Speaker 4: conversation with somebody.
Speaker 1: Thank you, so I appreciate that. It was really fun.
Speaker 4: I really really enjoyed to hear the similarities we have.
Speaker 4: So I do tarot in astrology readings I have, I
Speaker 4: do my weekly reports, I put them up on YouTube,
Speaker 4: and then I do my daily reports on Instagram. So
Speaker 4: you can follow me at Kaiva Rose on Instagram and YouTube,
Speaker 4: and then you can get a reading at eleven Kiva
Speaker 4: Rose thirty three dot com. And you can find my
Speaker 4: young adult fantasy novel at rue Odyssey dot com as well.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Awesome and Tracy, please let everybody know where they can
Speaker 6: find your book and your website your podcast.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I want to thank you guys
Speaker 2: for hosting me today. This was a lot of fun
Speaker 2: and really interesting stuff and I learned a lot from
Speaker 2: you guys, So I really appreciate that. If you want
Speaker 2: to track me down, the most central place is probably
Speaker 2: my website, which is Folkloringlife dot com. And that will
Speaker 2: get you to my book, It'll get you to my
Speaker 2: both of my podcasts, it will get you to my
Speaker 2: school community where we have conversations like this all the
Speaker 2: time and we talk about magic and we talk about folklore.
Speaker 9: So do come join me.
Speaker 2: If you want to find me on socials and think
Speaker 2: that I am not a spirit and still in the
Speaker 2: land of the living, you probably want to go to
Speaker 2: book scott because that's where I am most active, and
Speaker 2: I'm barely active on a lot of the other socials.
Speaker 2: So yeah, go to folkloring life dot com and it'll
Speaker 2: shoot you out everywhere to where I am.
Speaker 3: Awesome. Thank you again Tracy for coming on.
Speaker 6: Hopefully I have another conversation with you again in the future.
Speaker 6: Thank you all the other rejects for joining me. That's
Speaker 6: what's up, and everybody in the chat think you will
Speaker 6: for stop a bud And yeah, that is the end
Speaker 6: of another occult Rejects and until the next one, everybody
Speaker 6: be well later