Speaker 1: Something's going to happen?
Speaker 2: What's going to happen?
Speaker 3: Thank you? What a.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Occult Rejects. This episode, We've got a
Speaker 2: very special guest, very excited to have him on. We
Speaker 2: have Richard Kazinski. But before we get to him, we
Speaker 2: will introduce the other rejects we got on the show.
Speaker 2: And today we got joining with us. We got the
Speaker 2: lovely Lisa, the Occult of reject a mad scientist to
Speaker 2: what is going on? Lisa?
Speaker 4: How are good? Thank you? Good morning here at least,
Speaker 4: Thank you Nick for inviting me and looking forward to
Speaker 4: Toctor Kazynski's talk today and to also discussing with Robbie
Speaker 4: and Jen as well. Thank you. And the only thing
Speaker 4: I'd like to plug is vehicle researches to dot org
Speaker 4: check us out.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you very much and I really appreciate you
Speaker 2: joining us with us. And we got my managin the Ninja.
Speaker 2: What is going on?
Speaker 3: Sir?
Speaker 2: How are you? What's up? Boss?
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you
Speaker 5: to Lisa and Robbie and of course doctor Kasinski. I'm
Speaker 5: quite excited for this. I'm not a tall despite the rumors,
Speaker 5: but I'm quite interested in the neo gnosticism like the
Speaker 5: broader cosmology and maybe even ontological perspectives within it. And
Speaker 5: so if you want to check me out, you can
Speaker 5: follow me at willcong Reborn to w Uko and g
Speaker 5: Reborn or at Threshold Saints, which is the show account
Speaker 5: on both Twitter and ig as well as the True
Speaker 5: Gray Lodge with a v the True Gray Lodge dot
Speaker 5: com where you can find us. We're doing a Friday
Speaker 5: Night Gnostic book club tonight instead of Nastic Mass, so
Speaker 5: we are reading Kenneth Grant's Night Side of Eden Part one,
Speaker 5: So yeah, check that out if you're interested, and thank
Speaker 5: you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: And we got the man himself, the storyteller, Robbie Marx.
Speaker 2: What is going on, sir? How are you?
Speaker 6: Good morning everybody. It's good to see everybody today. I'm
Speaker 6: glad to be on with such a good crew and
Speaker 6: excited to hear what Richard has to say and where
Speaker 6: we go. My name is rob or Robbie or Robert Marx,
Speaker 6: and I'm an artist illustrator. I'm working on a book
Speaker 6: right now. But yeah, if you want to check out
Speaker 6: my various projects and works, you can go to my
Speaker 6: link tree which is link tree rarx and that'll pull
Speaker 6: up everything for you. And yeah, thanks for having me on, Nick.
Speaker 2: Of course, Robbie, I really appreciate it. I'm glad you
Speaker 2: made it. And finally to the guest himself, we got
Speaker 2: Richard Kazinski. He's a scholar and psychologist. He's got a
Speaker 2: PhD in social psychology and he is a student of
Speaker 2: THELIMA since the late nineteen seventies. He's an OTO contributor,
Speaker 2: editor and lecturer on magic. And today we will be
Speaker 2: talking about Mind over Magic, The Psychology of Ritual Magic,
Speaker 2: which is one of his newer books. And again I'm
Speaker 2: very excited to have you on. And please, Richard, anything
Speaker 2: that I left out, Let people know what you want
Speaker 2: them to know about you and where they can find
Speaker 2: any of your amazing one.
Speaker 3: All right, well, I'm perhaps best known as the author
Speaker 3: of the biography of Alistair Crowley called Perdurabo The Life
Speaker 3: of Alistair Crowley, and I've also written various other books
Speaker 3: on Western esotericism, including books like Forgotten Templars, The Unknown
Speaker 3: Origins of Argo Templear Orientis, which does a deep dive
Speaker 3: into the odd byways of Masonic history, and how all
Speaker 3: of that fed into OTO, as well as books like
Speaker 3: The Wiser Concise Guy to Alistair Crowley and recently the
Speaker 3: critical edition of Alistair Crowley's early work The Sort of Song,
Speaker 3: which has been put out in a Delexe edition by
Speaker 3: your Traditions, who also are a publisher of my newest book,
Speaker 3: Mind Over Magic as You, which hits the stores on
Speaker 3: October seventh. So I hope, yeah, you're all inspired to
Speaker 3: check that out when it comes out.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, for sure.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Fun fact, it's a little it's almost embarrassing to mention you,
Speaker 2: but I did read your book on Alistair Crowley in prison.
Speaker 2: I came across that in prison and read it in
Speaker 2: the so very good work, thank you.
Speaker 3: It's a lot, a lot of reading, so hopefully had
Speaker 3: the spare time to dig into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd be actually surprised how much the li mix
Speaker 2: stuff was in the Wow there's a lot here actually yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was interesting enough. So yeah, mind over Magic. Uh. Well, first, actually,
Speaker 2: if you don't mind what even got you into the
Speaker 2: occult world? You know, how did you even start off
Speaker 2: with that? And how did you end up getting into
Speaker 2: the OTO? If you know my music.
Speaker 3: Well as far as the occult world goes, I think
Speaker 3: we're just something about There was like this perfect storm
Speaker 3: over who I am and times I grew up in
Speaker 3: because at the time I was growing up, you know,
Speaker 3: I remember as a as a very small child, is
Speaker 3: loving Star Trek and then when heard Nimoy wound up
Speaker 3: hosting this TV show called In Search of which like
Speaker 3: this week we show that investigated the weird and the unexplained,
Speaker 3: from you know, Bigfoot to esp and I, as I Treki,
Speaker 3: of course, had to watch this. But there were like
Speaker 3: movies coming out, like those Mysterious Monsters and and you
Speaker 3: can literally go into the grocery store. The other one
Speaker 3: by my house, you know, had you know, like The
Speaker 3: Man Myth and Magic magazine that came out, and I
Speaker 3: actually one week had my mom buy me The Techniques
Speaker 3: of High Magic by Francis King and Steven Skinner. So
Speaker 3: it was just like everywhere. One of my favorite memories
Speaker 3: is that living in Detroit where I grew up, we
Speaker 3: were close enough to win to get Canadian television and
Speaker 3: they had a game show called Beyond Reason and it
Speaker 3: was kind of like a metaphysical what's my line? They
Speaker 3: had three people in sound group roof booths, and they
Speaker 3: would bring in a special guest who would be out
Speaker 3: of sight, and the three panelists would have sixty seconds
Speaker 3: ask questions. One was a psychic so they had some
Speaker 3: personal item of the guest, one was an astrologer who
Speaker 3: had the birth chart, and one was a palm writer
Speaker 3: who had a photo of a person's hand. And so
Speaker 3: they had sixty seconds ask the questions and guests who
Speaker 3: the guest was. And as you can imagine, sometimes it
Speaker 3: was uncanny. Sometimes it was just off the left field.
Speaker 3: They weren't even close. But one thing I remember very
Speaker 3: clearly is this one time astrologer was looking at this
Speaker 3: person's chart and saying, and this had nothing to do
Speaker 3: with why they were famous, saying, oh, I see you
Speaker 3: had an accident evolving falling off a horse and you're
Speaker 3: seeing like, you know, a split camera thing, to the
Speaker 3: panelist going wow, yeah, and you were about fourteen years
Speaker 3: old at the time and you broke your arm. And
Speaker 3: this person's like going like, how did you know that?
Speaker 3: So it was always a lot of fun to tune
Speaker 3: in and check this stuff out. But again, this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff was just everywhere when I grew up, and
Speaker 3: it just fascinated me. And again, obviously everyone who grew
Speaker 3: up at the same time as me did not know
Speaker 3: glom onto this stuff the way that I did. But
Speaker 3: it was just, you know, I just kind of felt
Speaker 3: like all those things in the culture at that time
Speaker 3: has kind of funneled me into this direction. And one
Speaker 3: day I discovered there was a metaphysical bookshop. So I
Speaker 3: got my bicycle and puddled five miles to the store
Speaker 3: and got to know the owner, and I picked up
Speaker 3: a copy of Israel regard as the Golden Dawn, and
Speaker 3: I came back two weeks later. He said, oh, do
Speaker 3: you like that? If you did, you might be interested
Speaker 3: in this, and he pulled out Alistair Croway's Magic in
Speaker 3: Theory and Practice. You know, again, I'm this fourteen year
Speaker 3: old kid reading this, going I don't know what this means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was, you said, did you even understand that?
Speaker 2: I can't understand it now.
Speaker 3: Well, the thing was, there was this end where he
Speaker 3: like signs with all his magical mottos and grade symbols
Speaker 3: and all of that, and I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 2: What this is.
Speaker 3: It was it was like a puzzle that that point
Speaker 3: was a challenge, Like I am going to I'm going
Speaker 3: to figure this out, and you know, it's that's going
Speaker 3: on in that direction ever since Nice.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of interesting, like you're saying, though
Speaker 2: at the time you grew up, I even feel like
Speaker 2: that was like even most of the people in this
Speaker 2: panel all around the same age. I feel like the
Speaker 2: time that we grew up, there was like something I
Speaker 2: don't know if there was, like people are having their
Speaker 2: own magical experiences and they were creating and putting magic
Speaker 2: out there themselves. But it's like I feel like certain times,
Speaker 2: is there certain things going on that like maybe us
Speaker 2: as kids there was something in the air that we
Speaker 2: caught onto and it just made us like search for something.
Speaker 2: You know, we caught we felt that magic, but what
Speaker 2: is it?
Speaker 3: And search There were just like dozens and dozens of
Speaker 3: like UFO books, so you could pick up and just
Speaker 3: you know, or you know, Belakovski's Worlds in Collision and then
Speaker 3: those all kinds of stuff. Is you know these mass
Speaker 3: market paperbacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just as a kid, like the Paranormal got bigger again,
Speaker 2: UFOs Horror was huge. You know, you just had all
Speaker 2: these different like to a child, it's just like it's
Speaker 2: a playground in the imagination.
Speaker 6: Well, and when I was in I don't know, fourth
Speaker 6: or fifth grade, at the Scholastic book fair, you know,
Speaker 6: sponsored by the school. You know, I got one of
Speaker 6: those books and in it it was talking about the
Speaker 6: men in black from inside the Hollow Earth. They would
Speaker 6: come up and watch people and you know, so it's
Speaker 6: like just and then you got the Twilight Zones and
Speaker 6: the weird its just it all, It's just gloriferic.
Speaker 3: It was everywhere, you know. Yeah, I remember picking up
Speaker 3: from the Scholastic book Fair somebody strange and amazing stories
Speaker 3: talking about it like a woman who allot of an
Speaker 3: airplane and survived, and the strange parallels between John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln's you know, Life and Deaths and
Speaker 3: again the Lucknows Monster and all kinds of things Acholastic books.
Speaker 6: It made the world magical and you wanted to seek
Speaker 6: out what this strange kind of you know thing was
Speaker 6: subsiding in this reality.
Speaker 3: You know, absolutely, I think I had this feeling as
Speaker 3: a kid that you know, we had we had done
Speaker 3: the moon landing, you know, we were sending you know,
Speaker 3: the first voyager satellite out into space, and you know,
Speaker 3: we had mapped the Earth so pretty much, and you know,
Speaker 3: science was doing all these amazing things, so it seemed
Speaker 3: like science had discovered everything it was about the world
Speaker 3: around us, and of course that wasn't true, but kind
Speaker 3: of as a as a kid, it kind of felt
Speaker 3: that way because there's this amazing world of science. But
Speaker 3: then when you start talking about these mysterious things, you know,
Speaker 3: what what whatever reason of both things? Or what is
Speaker 3: the astral plane? And what is this magic stuff? And
Speaker 3: someone becomes this unsharted territory and it and that was
Speaker 3: also very exciting and enticing.
Speaker 2: Right, that's awesome.
Speaker 5: I like that.
Speaker 2: I've got the Scholastic I had totally forgot all about that.
Speaker 2: You just took it back around. You know. It's funny.
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks ago I saw a meme about
Speaker 2: like that, and it was like, yo, like two dollars
Speaker 2: in the Scholastic book day was like your your life
Speaker 2: was set, Like that's how simple life was. Give me two.
Speaker 3: Bucks to this day. Like the Golden Book of Hallucinogenic Plants, which.
Speaker 2: That is awesome. All right, So how about if you
Speaker 2: don't mind, before we get into the book, how long
Speaker 2: have you been like I guess to uh you are,
Speaker 2: remember I was showing over the oto correct, So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been. I was kind of like a corresponding member,
Speaker 3: you know, my pre initiated member since about nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: and then I actually initiated in San Francisco in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eight and been remember ever since?
Speaker 2: Oh nice, okay, all right, so that's been a minute. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I see, uh, I had watched one of your
Speaker 2: interviews recently with David Schoemaker. That was awesome, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's another person I think has Yeah, Living to Lima.
Speaker 2: I think that's an amazing book. Actually, yeah, yeah, I'd
Speaker 2: listened to uh, I listened to all his podcasts on
Speaker 2: that stuff back in the day and everything. Yeah. But uh,
Speaker 2: all right, yeah, back to you this book. What was
Speaker 2: the reason you booked this out? What did you think
Speaker 2: other books were lacking? And this is why you felt
Speaker 2: the urge to put this out if that's the case,
Speaker 2: If that's.
Speaker 3: The topic that people hadn't actually tackled. A lot of
Speaker 3: times when people talk about psychology and magic, they tend
Speaker 3: to get into a lot of you know, theoretical stuff
Speaker 3: that's kind of unprovable. I mean, like you know, for example,
Speaker 3: Carl Jung is amazing as in terms of a model
Speaker 3: of how the mind works, and it's a great therapeutic
Speaker 3: model for dealing with patients and therapy, but none of
Speaker 3: its assumptions are are testable using modern science. It's one
Speaker 3: of these It's just kind of like a model that
Speaker 3: you you work with and then you get the results,
Speaker 3: but you know, with your patient population, but you can't
Speaker 3: test it in the scientific way. And other books on
Speaker 3: the topic tend to like go off into quantum mechanics
Speaker 3: and things like that, which again is interesting, but it's
Speaker 3: if you actually talk to a physicist, most of them
Speaker 3: are going to say, yeah, that's not really how it works.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean to dismiss either of those approaches,
Speaker 3: but I wanted, you know, my background is in social psychology.
Speaker 3: It's very much geared to sign tipic research and statistical analysis,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to bring an actual hard data, hard
Speaker 3: research that pertain to magic. And while there's there aren't
Speaker 3: people out there doing research or they are doing a
Speaker 3: real time brain imaging of someone while they're doing a
Speaker 3: magic ritual, you know, vanishing or something like that, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of research in psychology about things that you know,
Speaker 3: those personality traits and the effects of our environment around
Speaker 3: us and so on that apply to what magicians do.
Speaker 3: And by magician, I'd use that term very broadly anyone
Speaker 3: who engages in any kind of spiritual practice. So I
Speaker 3: don't mean to exclude, you know, people who might call
Speaker 3: themselves a wicked instead of a magician or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 3: we're all doing those people are all doing magic, and
Speaker 3: that's sometimes using this in a very broad and inclusive way.
Speaker 2: I use the magician in the same way. I feel
Speaker 2: like it just includes everybody. No, I think that's great though.
Speaker 2: That's one thing that thought was like impressive about having
Speaker 2: you on, and I think I you know, I guess
Speaker 2: shoemaker would be the same thing. But there's that too
Speaker 2: many people in my opinion, that are actually trying to
Speaker 2: bring like academic science into a cult or not enough,
Speaker 2: I don't think, And I think there is a lot.
Speaker 2: I think if ocultists and scientists were to maybe just
Speaker 2: put their differences aside and actually talk to each other,
Speaker 2: they'd make so much progress, that's my opinion. That's the
Speaker 2: thing to like.
Speaker 3: Another thing that a lot of the people who write
Speaker 3: on magic and psychology do is they'll they'll lean into
Speaker 3: parapsychology research, which is fascinating and I'm very intrigued by that,
Speaker 3: but I also get this field. Once you start talking
Speaker 3: about that, there's like a whole swath of people who
Speaker 3: automatically dismiss that because there are skeptics and they aren't
Speaker 3: accept the possibility that that stuff could exist. And another
Speaker 3: part of my rationale with this book was, now want
Speaker 3: to I want to focus on solid, peer reviewed research
Speaker 3: about psychology, not you know, not psychological theories or models,
Speaker 3: not necessarily parent psychology. And you know, there's plenty of
Speaker 3: books about that stuff that people can go and read
Speaker 3: if they want to pursue those avenues. But I have
Speaker 3: like a very specific focus on evidence based approaches that
Speaker 3: you know, and it may be naive, but hopefully not
Speaker 3: that would allow that reaching across the aisle for practitioners
Speaker 3: and scientists to actually find that common ground.
Speaker 6: Well, go ahead, I was going to say, I think
Speaker 6: it's interesting when you look at the idea of science
Speaker 6: versus the paranormal, getting into all the quote unquote woo woo.
Speaker 6: It's like science the way it's set up it's only
Speaker 6: it's only able to test certain means that are repeatable
Speaker 6: within the physical matrix. Anything be beyond that that becomes mental,
Speaker 6: that becomes vibration, that becomes you know, higher forms of
Speaker 6: etheric unders it just doesn't have the tools, so you
Speaker 6: know it. Then it becomes the individual body and the
Speaker 6: repeatable phenomena and these things. So can you kind of
Speaker 6: get into some of these ways that we can with
Speaker 6: repeatable means be able to kind of draw out some
Speaker 6: of these you know, higher kind of forms that are
Speaker 6: above and beyond the physical matrix.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Actually, what we were saying, right, And we have
Speaker 3: a couple of interesting things, one of which is this
Speaker 3: idea of repeatability and Dean Reading in his early book
Speaker 3: The Conscious Universe kind of talks about this. Dean Reading
Speaker 3: is a is a you know, a parapsychologist. But he
Speaker 3: talks about how this issue, this issue that's scientists, particularly
Speaker 3: skeptical scientists, expect certain phenomenon to be repeated and replicated
Speaker 3: in the in the lab one hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 3: you know, with with this with high degree of reliability.
Speaker 3: And he points out that we will pay some millions
Speaker 3: of dollars who can hit a ball with a stick
Speaker 3: one time out of three. And so this idea that
Speaker 3: you know, we can accept, you know, the the idea
Speaker 3: that a baseball player is not perfect, but I can't
Speaker 3: accept the idea that some of these states of consciousness
Speaker 3: that happen don't necessarily happen on demand in a laboratory setting.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm sorry, I think I'm talking. I lost
Speaker 3: track to what you're asking.
Speaker 6: Well, just in regard to how do we test these
Speaker 6: outer limits, Yeah, and be able to have you know,
Speaker 6: verifiable kind of for those that you know, refuse to
Speaker 6: believe in these further kind of proceedings.
Speaker 3: Right right, Well, and I'm reminded of I believe this
Speaker 3: is Bill Moyer's. He was the guy that ran that series,
Speaker 3: The on Myth with Joseph Campbell, I think yet like
Speaker 3: a separate series, but he remember him in they showed
Speaker 3: coming up with this example about how a dog's nose
Speaker 3: is an amazing device. I mean, it can smell. Also,
Speaker 3: he can smell, you know, the scent of its owners.
Speaker 3: It can go out and sniff hydrants and things like
Speaker 3: that until who's been there before. And through that mechanism,
Speaker 3: a dog can learn a lot about the world. But
Speaker 3: Bill Moyer says, you know that the sniff test is
Speaker 3: not a way of finding out about God. And in
Speaker 3: the same way, and you could say that science is
Speaker 3: good at a lot of things, but there are certain
Speaker 3: things that not good at right, and you've got to
Speaker 3: use the right tool for the right job. And for
Speaker 3: me and my approach to this book, I'm not again
Speaker 3: trying to explain everything that happens to people when they're
Speaker 3: doing magic, whatever their practice may be. As all psychology,
Speaker 3: it's I think Alistair Crowley talks about magic being the
Speaker 3: art and science of causing change occur in confirmity will.
Speaker 3: So science is only part of that. There's also art,
Speaker 3: and so my approach is kind of like, okay, let's
Speaker 3: talk about the science part. But there's also a thing
Speaker 3: that we really can't talk about in science. There's that subjective,
Speaker 3: unique experience that people will have, and that's kind of
Speaker 3: another realm, and I'll I'll allow people to interpret that
Speaker 3: as they will. But one of the things I do
Speaker 3: in Mind over Magic is in the last chapter, I
Speaker 3: try to take you know, a semester course and research
Speaker 3: design methodology and back into one kind of short chapter
Speaker 3: about what is the scientific method, how can you like
Speaker 3: test your own magical work for yourself. So if you're
Speaker 3: doing some you know, magical operation for this outcome, you know,
Speaker 3: you kind of walk through the steps of how you
Speaker 3: would develop a hypothesis, how you might go about collecting
Speaker 3: your data, how you might control for other things, and
Speaker 3: how you can critically evaluate whether your experiment worked or not.
Speaker 3: And that I think arms readers with a toolbox to
Speaker 3: try to apply this method to their spiritual work, because
Speaker 3: some of this process may be this trial and error
Speaker 3: of finding a system that works for you. And again,
Speaker 3: you can't tell what works for you until unless you
Speaker 3: can tell what works.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: But there are common repeatable phenomena that are occurrences. Otherwise
Speaker 6: this this whole idea of you know magic or the
Speaker 6: magi or going back into all these ancient practices, it
Speaker 6: wouldn't have persisted in Risen and come about because there
Speaker 6: are common repeatable you know, people get an effect when
Speaker 6: they participate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the that's the whole mind of like a
Speaker 3: lot of these these schools, they they'll say, hey, here's
Speaker 3: these techniques. Here these tools you can use, you know,
Speaker 3: do this lesser manage ritual the pentagram or do this,
Speaker 3: you know, calling of the watch towers or what have you,
Speaker 3: and or even let's let's do this, you know, let's
Speaker 3: do this Catholic mass, you know, and van transubstantiate.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, one thing I did want to ask you about,
Speaker 2: you know, just real quick and it's kind of guess,
Speaker 2: like a random question. I try to ask some people
Speaker 2: that are into a flame or Crowley and this question
Speaker 2: if I can you mentioned science, So this is I'm
Speaker 2: gonna try to throw it in this way, and this
Speaker 2: might sound off the wall, but it's just my belief.
Speaker 2: It's our theory of mine. Do you think at any
Speaker 2: point else the Crowley actually points at the eyeballs in
Speaker 2: the brain in some of his stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna try to follow it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I actually think there's certain certain times where
Speaker 2: he does actually depict like the function like what your
Speaker 2: eyeball and your brain's doing phenomena. Yeah, during a magical experience.
Speaker 2: That's just my theory. I was just wondering, since you
Speaker 2: mentioned science, if you've ever come across that it sounds
Speaker 2: crazy or yeah, artwork or just even ways of like
Speaker 2: expressing certain things and archetypes. I do you think he
Speaker 2: might be expressing like the pupil dilating and changing inside
Speaker 2: the eye and how the light goes up into the
Speaker 2: brain through the optic nerve as crazy as that's a.
Speaker 3: Couple of people who have explored Crowley's writings from the
Speaker 3: angle of psychedelics, and I find that to be kind
Speaker 3: of interesting because because Crole did use psychedelics, you don't
Speaker 3: he didn't necessarily say hey, I was dripping balls when
Speaker 3: I did everything, But yeah, sometimes you kind of say that.
Speaker 3: But people have had these experiences kind of read some
Speaker 3: of his stuff, like the Vision and the Voice and say, wow,
Speaker 3: that stuff really sounds very much like a classic, you know,
Speaker 3: psychedelic experience. And I think that's very fascinating because I,
Speaker 3: you know, we all comment can come on any any
Speaker 3: bit of data from different angles, and you know, approaching
Speaker 3: curly from the from the angle of psychedelics isn't necessarily
Speaker 3: something I would kind of I was kind of sticking
Speaker 3: to you, sticking to the facts, you know, but having
Speaker 3: someone with was knowledgeable in this to kind of take
Speaker 3: this up and now this is actually very classic stuff
Speaker 3: was a neat theory, you know. It's so it's interesting
Speaker 3: to hear these different.
Speaker 2: Tapes yeah, yes, I have to throw like away when
Speaker 2: I actually I was.
Speaker 7: Just wonder, I'm gonna I'm going to piggyback on the
Speaker 7: next stuff that because I did a little bit of
Speaker 7: equity on the vision and the voice, and in some
Speaker 7: of his writing is very analogous to physiology of ot
Speaker 7: anatomy as well as brain anatomy, and that it all
Speaker 7: functions together.
Speaker 4: And even when you start to dissect some of the
Speaker 4: numerology that he hints to you, you look at some
Speaker 4: of the development fetal embryonic with eye physiology, brain physiology,
Speaker 4: and it almost mirrors it. And so it's almost like
Speaker 4: you almost wonder, did you take a crash course in
Speaker 4: physiology embryology and you know I anatomy brain anatomy because
Speaker 4: it mirrors it a lot, and so I think one
Speaker 4: there's there's almost a pause to wonder. Maybe he was
Speaker 4: a secret and atomists, secret artist.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean Croly was a voracious reader. But when
Speaker 3: he went to university, he started he was going to
Speaker 3: study in the form of a diplomatic service, but then
Speaker 3: kind of focused mostly in like the humanities. You know,
Speaker 3: his his mentor was a Greek you know, literature professor
Speaker 3: and Arthur Willgallar Virol and.
Speaker 2: So well.
Speaker 3: While he may have had some courses, that wasn't really
Speaker 3: the focus of his education. Again cruel. He wrote a lot,
Speaker 3: and I think there is a lot of mysticism connected
Speaker 3: with sensory input. I mean I think it like go
Speaker 3: Is writing about color theory and things like that. But
Speaker 3: Got was also very much of a mystic as well,
Speaker 3: and so I think there there is a strand of
Speaker 3: that in Western missourisism.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. All right, Enough
Speaker 2: about back to Richard? All right, so it is his time.
Speaker 2: Uh with your book? Do you go into I could
Speaker 2: be making a stretch, but do you happen to go
Speaker 2: into like maybe the psychology behind like maybe like the
Speaker 2: whole robes, investments and all the stuff you use on
Speaker 2: your altar? Is there anything?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Just to give you a couple of examples, there
Speaker 3: is a lot of research done in I believe it
Speaker 3: or not marketing psychology that talks about how our identity
Speaker 3: and our personality is wrapped up in our possessions and
Speaker 3: so the things that we own are in a way
Speaker 3: extensions of ourselves. And that absolutely applies to you know,
Speaker 3: a magician, if you think about like the magician, the Heiro.
Speaker 3: He has you know, the the the four weapons of
Speaker 3: the suits of the Tiro on this altar, you know,
Speaker 3: the disc, the wand the cup and the dagger, and
Speaker 3: in ceremonial traditions, you know, these things are like the
Speaker 3: dagger is you know, the the cutting incisiveness of your mind,
Speaker 3: and the wond is the force of will, and the
Speaker 3: cup is the seat of emotions and so on, and
Speaker 3: so these are literally meant to be external representations of
Speaker 3: our state of mind, and marketing psychology of all things
Speaker 3: kind of confirm that is, in fact, how we treat
Speaker 3: our possessions. And so if we have these special magical
Speaker 3: items that we have consecrated and treat with, you know, reverence,
Speaker 3: that's going to that that that assertion and in magical
Speaker 3: spaces is absolutely true. Similarly, there are studies in psychology
Speaker 3: that deal with how we dress and how that affects
Speaker 3: our state of mind. I wanted to include in the book, okay,
Speaker 3: a picture from an old bugs Bunny cartoon, but I
Speaker 3: couldn't get the permission. I'm really sad about that. But
Speaker 3: there's this old bugs bunny cartoon called Bugs's Bonnets and
Speaker 3: in this In this episode, it's it's set up like
Speaker 3: a mock you know, psychology documentary. And what happens is
Speaker 3: this truck with a hat shop is going down the
Speaker 3: road and it hits a bump in the back of
Speaker 3: the truck opens up and all these hats go floating
Speaker 3: out and as they land on Bugs Bunny's head or
Speaker 3: Elmer Fudd's head, they take on the personality associated with
Speaker 3: the hat, which I think is pretty funny, but there's
Speaker 3: actually something to that. Psychologists have done studies in clothing
Speaker 3: being being in a room with a lab coat, you know,
Speaker 3: can affect how you how you respond to your environment,
Speaker 3: maybe ease these environmental cues. But more than that, putting
Speaker 3: on the lab coat will actually make the person we'll
Speaker 3: change state of mind, will actually make them smarter and
Speaker 3: change their personality subtly. So there are studies that have
Speaker 3: compared you know, where people are at before you put
Speaker 3: on this lab coat and afterwards you put on if
Speaker 3: you put on glasses, feel smarter, right, and as art
Speaker 3: this is this is a repeatable and demonstrable psychological phenomenon.
Speaker 3: So if those things again change your consciousness or even
Speaker 3: your ability, you know, your your your your actual intelligence
Speaker 3: has boosted a little bit. Again, doing this in a
Speaker 3: very meaningful sort of way, not in some abstract psychological study,
Speaker 3: but in a temple where you're putting on of a
Speaker 3: special consecrated robe, or or you know, or if you're
Speaker 3: your practice a skyclad if you're you're removing all your
Speaker 3: mundane clothes and going into this sacred sort of space,
Speaker 3: that that will also change your state of mind. And
Speaker 3: I think the idea here is that these things don't
Speaker 3: make the magic happen, but they alter your consciousness, and
Speaker 3: it's that altered consciousness that allows the magic, the personal
Speaker 3: transformation to occur.
Speaker 6: And I would think also is a part of the magic,
Speaker 6: just in the sense of because you know, you are
Speaker 6: essentially working to change your consciousness, elevate enter into states
Speaker 6: of someonond you know, you're seeking certain mental states in
Speaker 6: a lot of these cases, you know, to participate, and
Speaker 6: then you add the sympathetic magic on top of that,
Speaker 6: and it compiles essentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And actually in the book, I do talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about, you know, the psychology of being like
Speaker 3: in the zone as they call it, and how this
Speaker 3: is something that's really hard to just I'm going to
Speaker 3: go into the zone, and it doesn't work that way,
Speaker 3: but that research has shown that there's ways again of
Speaker 3: training yourself to more readily go into that space where
Speaker 3: everything just kind of flows naturally, whether you're you know,
Speaker 3: a shund'ering athlete or whatever. Again, most of these studies
Speaker 3: aren't focused on magicians, but the flow state certainly does apply, right,
Speaker 3: and the lessons learned where where like athletes can train
Speaker 3: themselves get into the flow state. Literally, the exercises they
Speaker 3: talk about are like straight out of you know, the
Speaker 3: basics of you know, ceremonial man of practice, keep a diary, meditate,
Speaker 3: you know, just it's it's pretty uncanny to read the
Speaker 3: recommendations and in sports medicine for getting into the zone.
Speaker 3: And I do kind of think that one of the
Speaker 3: things that the mechanisms that this again my own perfect
Speaker 3: theory of the mechanisms of ritual, is that practitioners spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time learning these elaborate correspondences. You know
Speaker 3: that you know, the the these colors represent, you know,
Speaker 3: this characteristic, this astrological sign, this planetary ruler, these Greek gods,
Speaker 3: Roman god's, Egyptian gods, what have you. You know that
Speaker 3: whatever pantheon you you subscribe to. There's all these things
Speaker 3: that kind of all interlock and correspond sense and colors
Speaker 3: and sounds that. Yeah, so that when you're in the ritual,
Speaker 3: you're engaging all of those senses and kind of tying
Speaker 3: up you know, your rational thinky bits, you know. But
Speaker 3: there's that other part of your mind though, that that
Speaker 3: kind of clears the field and it's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: busy thinking about all these correspondences and your intuitive part
Speaker 3: doesn't really care about that kind of stuff can kind
Speaker 3: of bubble to the surface.
Speaker 2: Do you think the the incense might even be helping
Speaker 2: with memory memories or you know, smell can actually really
Speaker 2: affect affect the mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they say, they say that smell is actually
Speaker 3: the most potent memory trigger. It's and I think that's
Speaker 3: part of this process as well, because you are, through
Speaker 3: your practice and through like memorizing these correspondences, you are
Speaker 3: in fact training you know, these associations over a long
Speaker 3: period of time so that when you finally do encounter
Speaker 3: them in in a ritual or in ceremony, that's again
Speaker 3: they're triggering these these memories or the responses that you
Speaker 3: have been kind of coding into yourself, you know, over weeks, months, years,
Speaker 3: because I.
Speaker 2: Know recently I was just doing stuff on Jeodn Bruno.
Speaker 2: I remember, correct. I think he's anastic scene. I mean
Speaker 2: he's got what the memory of art and of the
Speaker 2: art of the memory, yeah, and all those. He was
Speaker 2: heavy into the idea of memory, that's wheel he had
Speaker 2: and everything. I was like, yo, I gotta get my
Speaker 2: hands on that thing, you know. Yeah. So I was
Speaker 2: just wondering if incense because of the whole of memory.
Speaker 6: Well, it's part of it, and I think incense also
Speaker 6: when you look at incense, there's certain chemical compounds that
Speaker 6: are in different incenses that have a tendency to affect
Speaker 6: different neural train like the vegan receptors, Like what is it,
Speaker 6: Frankincense actually has cannabinoids in it, So when they're burning
Speaker 6: that at the church and the people are you know,
Speaker 6: inhaling that they're getting a subtle dose of mild cannabinoid
Speaker 6: that affects the mind state. So there are things you know,
Speaker 6: physical as far as the smell, but also physiological as
Speaker 6: far as the you know, the system itself.
Speaker 3: Actually is a really good question for one of the studies.
Speaker 3: Are some of the studies I look at in the
Speaker 3: book is that people have tried to look at incense
Speaker 3: and how they affect people's moods or state of mind.
Speaker 3: And one of the problems that research researchers have run
Speaker 3: into is that there are so many any different kinds
Speaker 3: of incense that you can't systematically say, you know, make
Speaker 3: a general staying about all of them. And even if
Speaker 3: you say something like sandal would, there are so many
Speaker 3: different varieties and formulations of sandalwood incense and identifying what
Speaker 3: that active ingredient might be that that's.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 3: And again, these recary studies have found a certain sense
Speaker 3: they are associated with certain sorts of emotional or reactions.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I recognize it's very limited
Speaker 3: because the number of possibilities and combinations there is just
Speaker 3: you know, off the charts, that is true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've actually mind fucked sandal would before I understand
Speaker 2: how many different variations there is. Yeah, I looked into
Speaker 2: getting I was like, well, which one should I be using.
Speaker 2: If I don't use the right one, this isn't gonna work. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's very interesting about the whole Yeah, I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of with the mind connections and memories within
Speaker 2: the ritual garbs and the robes and all that stuff.
Speaker 5: There is a Sorry, Nick, I just want to jump
Speaker 5: in and say one thing really quickly, is that there
Speaker 5: is an interesting idea in Tontra that you actually use
Speaker 5: those things so exactly like what all of you are
Speaker 5: talking about. You use those things, but then you let
Speaker 5: them go sort of return to sort of that rigplus state,
Speaker 5: that sort of fifth primordial consciousness, that flow state maybe
Speaker 5: but without sort of it's like more nebulous than intention.
Speaker 5: It's more nebulous than well, there's it's more it's like
Speaker 5: that waking consciousness from dreaming consciousness. So you're not necessarily
Speaker 5: doing anything, but you're just really in the in that
Speaker 5: you could say death, that consciousness almost like you're just
Speaker 5: in true knowledge. So I do think it's interesting about
Speaker 5: the incense though, because that is clearly true, like the
Speaker 5: amount of compounding in TNTRA specifically, but also in all esoteratricians.
Speaker 5: I think the plants are well, many people will say
Speaker 5: that the plants are actually our closest relatives. So I've
Speaker 5: heard a lot of you know, people talking about like
Speaker 5: geoontologies in the last few years and like sort of
Speaker 5: like the indigenous ways of relating to the land around us,
Speaker 5: and I think that that relationship is sort of best
Speaker 5: exemplified in plants. And I think this is also why,
Speaker 5: like you see a lot of both contemporary and medieval
Speaker 5: cultists like so into botanicals and so into their properties,
Speaker 5: and not just in the biomedical terms, but also in
Speaker 5: maybe the biospiritual terms. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think of something like Agrippa and his books of
Speaker 3: a cult philosophy, and there's just all sections dealing with
Speaker 3: minerals and plants, and you're like, what does this got
Speaker 3: to do with magic? But yeah, does.
Speaker 6: Elements?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Again, I think the the idea there is, you know,
Speaker 3: is so general, was saying that these as tools, the
Speaker 3: robes and the implements and all of that isn't necessary
Speaker 3: to get into these states of consciousness, and with practice
Speaker 3: one can do without those things. I think it's more
Speaker 3: idea that these are facilitators, right, They just they help
Speaker 3: you get there.
Speaker 6: Well, And that's the idea of Alvius Huxley with the
Speaker 6: doors of consciousness. He talks about you have to facilitate
Speaker 6: being able to open these doors, but once the doors
Speaker 6: are open, then they maintain you know that passageway. It's
Speaker 6: just a matter of learning the psychology of how to
Speaker 6: take your brain to the point of being able to
Speaker 6: enter into those states.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm just going to say one more thing.
Speaker 5: What you're saying is really interesting, Robbie, and also doctor Kasinski,
Speaker 5: because really I know that you were saying. I think
Speaker 5: pre recording that you would teach classes on talk tech
Speaker 5: and pop culture and have a co host from the
Speaker 5: Gray Lodge, Matt Mura, who's been on the show a
Speaker 5: couple of times.
Speaker 3: He talks about pop kabala.
Speaker 5: I call it k pod with obviously parentheses around it.
Speaker 3: He ever came about it.
Speaker 5: That's great, right, And so there's so much of if
Speaker 5: you want to call it kabala or you want to
Speaker 5: call it like magical coding in popular culture. Like it's
Speaker 5: just saturated, like the colors, the sounds, the densities, you know, everything,
Speaker 5: the archetypes, it's all there. And so I feel like,
Speaker 5: in a strange way, we're at a prespice where people's
Speaker 5: consciousness are strangely both prepared and perhaps very aggregated both
Speaker 5: at the same time. But they're prepared to sort of
Speaker 5: have higher experiences, but maybe they cannot, for their own reasons,
Speaker 5: recognize what those experiences really are. So I don't know,
Speaker 5: just an interesting idea I just thought to throw out there.
Speaker 3: Well, as far as pop Kabala goes, one thing I'm
Speaker 3: kind of excited about is I'm again from childhood, just
Speaker 3: a comic book nerd and I all read so much
Speaker 3: these days, but when I was a kid, I read
Speaker 3: like everything. But in December there Marvel Comics is launching
Speaker 3: this mini series about the character Wicken, who is you know,
Speaker 3: one of the children of you know, the Scarlet Witch
Speaker 3: in the Marvel comics. And the first issue one of
Speaker 3: the variant covers as the guy in like a superhero
Speaker 3: outfit that's kind of reminiscent of the seventies, but been blazing.
Speaker 3: The cross his chest is the conbalistic Tree of Life,
Speaker 3: and I'm just like, I've got to pick this up.
Speaker 2: There's got to be some stuff in here for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, and I was going to say, in regard to
Speaker 6: Jin talking about people their their mental faculties are at
Speaker 6: the point where they're ready to experience these higher elevated
Speaker 6: forms of consciousness. It kind of makes me think of
Speaker 6: all these kids going to see Taylor Swift and having
Speaker 6: these ecstatic experiences while they're there, and then when they
Speaker 6: leave they use their memory, which.
Speaker 3: Actually talk about that so interesting like post concert on
Speaker 3: the show, right, But.
Speaker 6: They're going into states of consciousness that they haven't experienced before,
Speaker 6: and they're they're having these you know, higher form ecstatic
Speaker 6: kind of you know feelings, and then when they leave,
Speaker 6: they they just tabula, you know, it just is wiped
Speaker 6: because I don't know, maybe they didn't enter like knowingly,
Speaker 6: they intered accidentally and therefore they don't have the tool
Speaker 6: to maintain the facility something along those lines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really an interesting, uh take on that too,
Speaker 3: because you know, when I've heard people on the radio
Speaker 3: talking about this when I'm because it was just like
Speaker 3: all overd pop culture. You now during the Era's tour
Speaker 3: and the Expert Summer, you are like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're like at a concert and you're focused on,
Speaker 3: you know, taking selfies or shooting video, you're not really
Speaker 3: in the moment. You're not being you're not actually present.
Speaker 3: And to the extent to which that is true, I
Speaker 3: would agree that any any spiritual work you are doing
Speaker 3: does require you being present in the moment. And whether
Speaker 3: it's an overwhelming moment like being in a Taylor Swift
Speaker 3: concert or just you know, saying saying words over your
Speaker 3: meal before you eat the food. You know, I mean,
Speaker 3: if you you know, if you if you have a
Speaker 3: practice where you say words over a meal and then
Speaker 3: you just kind of inhale your McDonald's French prize and
Speaker 3: you don't really think about it. You're not really present.
Speaker 3: You're just kind of on an autopilot. And to get
Speaker 3: the most out of that experience, you you want to
Speaker 3: immerse yourself in it. You want, if you're in the
Speaker 3: say words or food, then you should pause and enjoy
Speaker 3: the taste of that food, you know. And same thing
Speaker 3: with Taylor Swift. If you're gonna you're going to go
Speaker 3: to a concert, you know, whoever you're seeing, you know,
Speaker 3: Terror Swift became Alco whatever, go all in, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, absorb that experience. B be present, be there
Speaker 3: in the moment.
Speaker 2: That's funny, that's interesting. Thank you. It's well that you
Speaker 2: have to even have an idea that interesting. I know
Speaker 2: in your book, Uh you happen to get into like
Speaker 2: I guess, like the psychology of initiation and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I got a whole chapter on an initiation.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you, I know, you listen. You
Speaker 2: want people to read the book and pick it up.
Speaker 2: So if there's anything you want to talk about that
Speaker 2: you don't mind a little teaser on that maybe.
Speaker 3: Well, I think with most initiation ceremonies ideas, you know,
Speaker 3: the person going through it is going through some sort
Speaker 3: of a you know, dramatic sort of re enactments or
Speaker 3: a sacred drama of some sort, and they are playing
Speaker 3: eight parts in this experience. And I tim there are
Speaker 3: various things happen to you to a person psychologically when
Speaker 3: when we're going through an initiation. One of these is
Speaker 3: this whole fight or flight response or you know, which
Speaker 3: has various other you know, components added on to it,
Speaker 3: you know, friend or attend and befriend and things like that.
Speaker 3: But being in this sort of physiologically and psychologically aroused
Speaker 3: state makes you very receptive to the information around you
Speaker 3: because you're trying to evaluate your situation for you know,
Speaker 3: is a safe you know as my mind danger And
Speaker 3: while in an initiation you're really not in any danger,
Speaker 3: you're still going to be anxious and nervous about it.
Speaker 3: But that also puts you in this very attentive and
Speaker 3: receptive state of mind where the source of lessons that
Speaker 3: are often part of initiation are able to be communicated
Speaker 3: more effectively. And that you know that if you're a tradition,
Speaker 3: you know, like like a Masonic sort of thing where
Speaker 3: you're taking oaths, you know, and you're doing this in
Speaker 3: front of your your comrades, you know, you're not just
Speaker 3: saying something to yourself, like your New Year's resolution, which
Speaker 3: you can just kind of blow off after a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks. You've now like made a statement in front
Speaker 3: of other people. And and so that aspect of it,
Speaker 3: as well of publicly stating something, also has this this
Speaker 3: effect on you that can be connected to various you know,
Speaker 3: against psychological phenomenon. You know that you that you want
Speaker 3: your behavior to match what you've said, and that's a
Speaker 3: again a great way of creating behavior change, which again
Speaker 3: results in that interior sort of change, which is the
Speaker 3: goal of initiation. So yeah, there's a there's a whole
Speaker 3: lot I could say about this, Like it's end the
Speaker 3: entire hour to talking about that. That's kind of the
Speaker 3: big overview of it.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I think a way I want to try
Speaker 2: to explain this, but I I want to put you
Speaker 2: on the spot. Either, Like let's say, in an initiation,
Speaker 2: if somehow certain things might like parts of your body
Speaker 2: might be touched or slapped that's near a chakra, could
Speaker 2: that start maybe affecting your experience during the situation the initiation.
Speaker 3: Potentially? I think that's one of those things that goes
Speaker 3: outside the realm of sciences I know about scientists would
Speaker 3: to recognize the idea of a chakra. But certainly in
Speaker 3: our East meets West sort of fusion of scientific or
Speaker 3: scientific of esoteric thinking of magical thinking, that those those
Speaker 3: sorts of ideas of chakras and kundolini and so on
Speaker 3: have been connected with magical practice. So to the extent
Speaker 3: to which you know the chakras actually exist, then these
Speaker 3: rituals or practice, you know, individual practices certainly have that
Speaker 3: potential to you know, trigger or invoke those energies.
Speaker 4: Would it be similar to like the muscle mind connection.
Speaker 4: Like you spoke about athletes, and like when athletes train,
Speaker 4: they train with certain music, they put on certain socks,
Speaker 4: especially like the baseball players are very uh what is
Speaker 4: it called dishes that they will wear the same socks
Speaker 4: over and over and over end of you know, achieving.
Speaker 2: Still just think they'll play their friends out of the
Speaker 2: locker room over those things.
Speaker 8: It's giving, right you you kind of glimpse into like
Speaker 8: with some of these documentaries of some of these accomplished athletes,
Speaker 8: in that they get into the same exactly, they eat
Speaker 8: the same thing, they wake up at the same time,
Speaker 8: they wear the same outfit, they place themselves in the
Speaker 8: same position of a room, and then they go through
Speaker 8: the entire training over and over and over.
Speaker 4: It's almost like while they're working on their it's a
Speaker 4: ritual itself and they have the same garb, they have
Speaker 4: the same music, they have the same whatever it is,
Speaker 4: and it's almost ritualistic. And when you're talking about like
Speaker 4: if you hit a certain area, it's almost like the
Speaker 4: mind muscle connection and that if you're working on the bicep,
Speaker 4: you're thinking, bicep grow, bicep grow, like I'm feeling the
Speaker 4: contraction and feeling the teary. They have seen in studies
Speaker 4: where you when you have that mind muscle connection, that
Speaker 4: the actual muscle will respond and grow. You have more
Speaker 4: hypertrophy than in others it did not, or muscle mind connection.
Speaker 4: And then with the ritual itself, it's almost like whether
Speaker 4: it is the color or it is the garments or
Speaker 4: whatever it's I think the ritual itself is like affirming
Speaker 4: to our consciousness that you're like not only pursuing it physically,
Speaker 4: but you're pursuing it spiritually. And it's that connection of
Speaker 4: no longer muscle, but the connection of mind soul, you know,
Speaker 4: and you're bridging that gap or and you like with
Speaker 4: the tailor swift, it's almost like I don't remember it,
Speaker 4: but maybe because you were not here like you you
Speaker 4: had transcended. All you was in complete agreeance. You know,
Speaker 4: your mind, muscle, I'm sorry, not muscle, your mind, soul
Speaker 4: and body. We're in agreement for the first time and
Speaker 4: you've transcended into your higher realm and everything you said
Speaker 4: just connected right now when you said that.
Speaker 3: So I can remember a book called The Magician's Training
Speaker 3: and Work Work, and this is when I read very
Speaker 3: early on and my my studies, and one recommendation that
Speaker 3: he has is that you should have a special ring
Speaker 3: that you put on only when you're doing magic, that
Speaker 3: when you put this ring on, you try to enter
Speaker 3: that sort of identity or that state of mind of
Speaker 3: I am now the magic, I'm now a magician, and
Speaker 3: you take it off like, oh I am you know,
Speaker 3: I am just me, I'm a magician, you know. And
Speaker 3: but I think it's it's tying into a lot of
Speaker 3: those things that you're saying, the idea that you're you're
Speaker 3: making these associations that when when you put on that
Speaker 3: that ring, when you put on your magic socks, you know,
Speaker 3: or whatever, that you're entering that that you're you're recalling
Speaker 3: that muscle memory, that state of mind. And and you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right. It is kind of a ritual. And as
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, you know, the training for athletes to
Speaker 3: get into that flow state again the very similar sort
Speaker 3: of thing. It's taking advantage of all those associations and
Speaker 3: basically trying to create this ritual or who what are
Speaker 3: your ritual that athletes can go through to help them
Speaker 3: get into that state of mind because of like forming
Speaker 3: those associations.
Speaker 2: You know what's really interesting as you guys are talking
Speaker 2: about this, Richard, I don't know if this was something
Speaker 2: that you have done in the past. I've done it
Speaker 2: a few times many moons ago, where it's almost like
Speaker 2: kind of like taking on the god form. You know,
Speaker 2: like if I'm working with with like Totha t Hoodi,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe at some point I'll meditate and try
Speaker 2: to like like take on the idea of to HOODI
Speaker 2: and almost like or it's just like like you know,
Speaker 2: or in some way it's like you know, where the
Speaker 2: where the star in our video right now? That's going
Speaker 2: on in our head, you know, like I'm Rocky right now,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. And then you start to
Speaker 2: take on this role of this image that you want,
Speaker 2: you know, you want to portray, and it's gonna get
Speaker 2: you what you want to need. And it's kind of
Speaker 2: like I'm thinking, like taking on the god form. Sometimes
Speaker 2: when you're working with certainities, it's almost like it was there.
Speaker 3: Something ahead. I was going to say that there is
Speaker 3: again a lot of psychology around role play and then
Speaker 3: again it runs a gamut, and I talked about the
Speaker 3: SELSA in the book that you know, role play has
Speaker 3: been used in with with children to you know, combat racism.
Speaker 3: But also there's a lot of interesting phenomenon about role
Speaker 3: play amongst actors and how getting into the very character
Speaker 3: and whatever they speak about their character in the first
Speaker 3: person versus the third person speaks of identification. There's great
Speaker 3: interview with the The The Star Blue Velvet where she
Speaker 3: kind of talks about how, even when you're doing a
Speaker 3: table reading of the script just kind of goes sitting
Speaker 3: around for kind of reading the script, that she had
Speaker 3: to have the fingernail polish on, that she had to
Speaker 3: be able to look down her hands and see that
Speaker 3: that fingernail polish of the character and are actually inhabit
Speaker 3: that role and do the table reading. And again, it's
Speaker 3: not necessarily magic, but it kind of is, you know,
Speaker 3: And that certainly dovetails into the sorts of things we're
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 6: Well, and I was going to mention there's a whole
Speaker 6: school of actors that they as far as the meditation,
Speaker 6: they become that person and then they maintain that that
Speaker 6: personification through the entire shoot, even when they're not on set.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: So this is a form of magic as well as
Speaker 6: far as you know, taking it like you were talking
Speaker 6: about taking on the god form, taking on these different
Speaker 6: personifications that actually you know, change the consciousness and manifest
Speaker 6: different realities and basically precipitate magical function.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I know sometimes you know, again I don't
Speaker 3: really make a big study of this in the book,
Speaker 3: but I've anecdotally there have been actors who have had
Speaker 3: like a hard time getting like out of character after
Speaker 3: they've kind of immersed themselves in a while. Maybe maybe
Speaker 3: a vanishing ritual would be helpful or something. We had
Speaker 3: some tools and the magic Toolkit that that could help
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I even heard a story of like
Speaker 2: Walking Phoenix, Like what do you put himself through to
Speaker 2: play that Joker role? It was like ridiculous. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like you hear some actors and either way and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. Yeah, and like some of the like the
Speaker 2: most you know, biggest roles or you know, most well
Speaker 2: known things. It's like that actor actually took on that
Speaker 2: character months probably for the movie. If you look at
Speaker 2: like how much they put into it, it's like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's why it was so good. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so many things, even even the actors have
Speaker 3: to like undergo weeks and months so i know, die,
Speaker 3: physical training, martial arts, you know, sort fighting whatever to
Speaker 3: do the roles that they're portraying. I mean it's you know,
Speaker 3: don't just walk into the set and do these things.
Speaker 2: There's just walking.
Speaker 3: Stuff for a lot of prep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Is there anything else in the book that
Speaker 2: you would like to maybe mention a touch on that's
Speaker 2: in there to entice people or anything, give them a
Speaker 2: better idea, like maybe just even some of the chapter
Speaker 2: names or anything. Just let people know what's up with it. Gosh,
Speaker 2: let's put you on the spot. He's like, oh, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Kind of feel like we we really touch on a
Speaker 3: lot of It's like, oh, I talked about that, yeah,
Speaker 3: but just you know, I can read you the table
Speaker 3: of contents we've got, you know, had like a whole
Speaker 3: the psychology of connecting the dots and seeing the big picture.
Speaker 3: Rigamarole models daily magical practices, so kind of what I
Speaker 3: do here as I progress from like the starting place,
Speaker 3: taking now like some sort of regular daily or just
Speaker 3: a regular in some other way practice, and then kind
Speaker 3: of advancing from there into more involved practices. So in
Speaker 3: addition to the daily magical practice, there's a separate chapter
Speaker 3: called Think Better of the Magic of Yoga and Meditations.
Speaker 3: That's just there's a lot of literature and that they
Speaker 3: get into the idea of greater and lesser magical retirements.
Speaker 3: This is when you sequester yourself to try and prepare
Speaker 3: yourself to do a larger, more ambitious undertaking than just
Speaker 3: your daily sort of practice. Hold that thought. Ritual implements,
Speaker 3: as we talked about earlier, sacred headspace temples and what
Speaker 3: we do in them. So that kind of gets into
Speaker 3: the psychology of the space in which we do magic,
Speaker 3: significant others, encountering the divine invocation, evocation, and some more
Speaker 3: sorts of things. Full circle group ritual because once you know,
Speaker 3: getting together with other people and doing magic because in
Speaker 3: the natural next step a lot of people, then there's
Speaker 3: initiation changing your mind. Touched on that, and then the
Speaker 3: method of science and you so how you can actually
Speaker 3: apply the scientific method to critically evaluating whether your your
Speaker 3: work is doing what you think it is.
Speaker 2: Very nice. That's a lot. Well, thank you, thank you
Speaker 2: for reading off the chapters. That's what. So there was
Speaker 2: one thing you mentioned, and you know, I meant to
Speaker 2: mention it before, and you know, the thought lost me.
Speaker 2: We're talking or something was brought up about rituals and
Speaker 2: you just mentioned something about meditation. I think at one
Speaker 2: point I had even seen James Wasserman even say that,
Speaker 2: you know, rituals could even be like a physical meditation
Speaker 2: in a certain way. But besides that, maybe before we
Speaker 2: wrap it up. I think even David Schumaker said it
Speaker 2: like this one time in his Living with the Lima
Speaker 2: or when he I think he said guests, like, you know,
Speaker 2: a regiment for magicians. It does not sound glory, you know,
Speaker 2: exciting or crazy, but you're going to have to learn
Speaker 2: to meditate. May sound boring, just like damn, I don't
Speaker 2: want to do that doesn't sound fun, But I do think,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, I think meditation is the key part
Speaker 2: of it. Do you think, you know, could you maybe
Speaker 2: add a little bit more on how important you think
Speaker 2: meditation is within having maybe a magical experience?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the best example I could
Speaker 3: give to address that question is when Aleister Crowley was
Speaker 3: writing his book for you know, his his Magnalopus on
Speaker 3: doing Magic, first part or book one, you know, the
Speaker 3: four parts was dedicated to yoga, and it was part
Speaker 3: two that he actually gets into the magic implements and
Speaker 3: actually doing ritual. So I think the fact that you
Speaker 3: put yoga first says it all. I mean that the
Speaker 3: disciplines of of you know, the the eight limbs of
Speaker 3: yoga are baked into at least Crowley system, but you know,
Speaker 3: with the advent of the Theosophical Society, and so I'm
Speaker 3: kind of promoting a lot of these eastering thoughts that's
Speaker 3: also kind of worked its way into the Golden Dawn
Speaker 3: and a lot of other traditions and the extent to
Speaker 3: which magic is meant to kind of evolve us and
Speaker 3: to make us into the best version of ourselves. You know,
Speaker 3: those tools of meditation, of being able to calm your mind,
Speaker 3: still your mind, introspects, and even attained these states of
Speaker 3: you know, Diana and Samadhi are are are key. You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's like we're talking earlier about, you know,
Speaker 3: just hus of the doors of perceptions, like well, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, you you take one hit and you see
Speaker 3: the path, but you know these other these other techniques
Speaker 3: you can get there for meditation and explore if once
Speaker 3: you see that path and you had those glimpses of
Speaker 3: some out here, you know where to find that. You
Speaker 3: know what you're looking for, what you're shooting for, and
Speaker 3: that will make you a more effective magician.
Speaker 2: Very very well, said Richard beautifully said, thank you very
Speaker 2: much for that. A little bit on meditation. It was
Speaker 2: an amazing guest for real, Richard. I'm really glad I
Speaker 2: finally got you on. Yeah. I would love to get
Speaker 2: you back on in the future if we have a
Speaker 2: good talk about great conversation. Yeah, and all this was
Speaker 2: like really fun. It was great to It was great
Speaker 2: to have a conversation with you. Before we wrap this up,
Speaker 2: I will let the other rejects plug themselves again and
Speaker 2: let everybody know where they can find their work. Lisa,
Speaker 2: please call reject bad Scientists. Let everybody know what's up
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 4: Josha Kasinsky. This was an amazing lecture. Thank you so
Speaker 4: much for sharing your knowledge, your research, your your insights
Speaker 4: on this and entertaining our questions. I very much enjoyed
Speaker 4: the discussion, and as well with Robbie Engine that's always
Speaker 4: fun to hear their take on things as well. Thank
Speaker 4: you Nick for inviting it be on. And the only
Speaker 4: thing I'd like to plug is a cool research institute
Speaker 4: dot org. Some of our fellow rejects have contributed literarily
Speaker 4: to the site. If you'd like to consume that content
Speaker 4: that way, please checks out on a Cool research Institute
Speaker 4: dot org.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Lisa, and I really appreciate you
Speaker 2: coming on and contributing, and we got my manage in
Speaker 2: the ninja what is going on with?
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, and thank you to doctor Kasinski
Speaker 5: for you know, tolerating my questions and inquiries into this
Speaker 5: and as a not a not at all night but
Speaker 5: I'm very interested and of course if you're if you
Speaker 5: want to follow me on Twitter x at willcomra Born,
Speaker 5: w uk O, n G Reborn, the Threshold Saints on
Speaker 5: ig and Twitter, as well as the True Gray Lodge
Speaker 5: dot com with a V and tonight we are doing
Speaker 5: Friday Night and I'll stick book up nights out of Eden,
Speaker 5: so we'll be discussing it at my favorite obviously nicklesis
Speaker 5: he's me but my favorite excellent or my I guess
Speaker 5: he's a tall.
Speaker 3: Man too by Freder Chad.
Speaker 5: So we'll be discussing it a little bit about that
Speaker 5: night because it comes up in the book right away.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much, Thank you, Jed, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It was always great to have you. And finally we
Speaker 2: got Robbie Marks.
Speaker 1: What is going on sir? Oh you muted it again,
Speaker 1: my man? Sorry, sorry about that. Yeah, I just want
Speaker 1: to say thanks to everybody. Thank you Richard for your time.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, and it's always such a good
Speaker 1: group as far as a different insight we have from
Speaker 1: our different perspectives. If anybody wants to check out my work,
Speaker 1: you can go to my link tree which is our
Speaker 1: M A r X and that'll pull up everything for you.
Speaker 1: And yeah, thanks for everything, Nick, thanks for bringing this
Speaker 1: all together.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, thank you, I had it again. This
Speaker 2: was a great discussion and real quick again, Richard, please
Speaker 2: let everybody know where they can find and your stuff
Speaker 2: and your books.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, again, thank you all for this amazing conversation.
Speaker 3: It was a great deal of fun. And if you
Speaker 3: want to keep up on what I'm doing, you can
Speaker 3: find me on social media. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, Threads,
Speaker 3: and Blue Sky and I also have a website at
Speaker 3: Richard dash Kachinski dot com to so just take my
Speaker 3: name there on the screen. They had to put a
Speaker 3: hyphe in there. And if you enjoyed the conversation, do
Speaker 3: pick up mind Over Magic coming out October seventh.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Yes, uh yes, and that is I guess the
Speaker 2: end of another occult rejects. Thank you everybody in the chat,
Speaker 2: and that's what's up. I really appreciate and it was
Speaker 2: a little early, but we had some of the regulars
Speaker 2: here and they're here from the beginning to the end.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate that, and I appreciate all your comments.
Speaker 2: That's why we go live. And until the next one,
Speaker 2: everybody be well. Lada