Speaker 1: You see something's going to happen.
Speaker 2: What What's gonna happen?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: Help? Welcome to the Occult Rejects. This episode, we got myself,
Speaker 2: Nick the Occult reject, we got Lisa the Occult reject,
Speaker 2: mad Scientist, we got Ethan Indigo the Fourth Initiate, and
Speaker 2: we got Jin the Ninja.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Thank you all very much for joining me today and
Speaker 2: the special guests that we have. We've got Julia Gordon Ramer.
Speaker 2: But before we get to the guest, real quick, I
Speaker 2: am gonna have the other people plug this stuff fast,
Speaker 2: gin Please, sir, let everybody know where they can fund
Speaker 2: your show.
Speaker 3: Sure, thanks, boss. Okay, So, so I'm really excited for
Speaker 3: this episode. Let me say I even I usually name
Speaker 3: my own episodes after poetry, and I do have an
Speaker 3: episode named Fire and Flowers, So don't call me out.
Speaker 3: I'm owning it right now. And of course, thank you Lisa,
Speaker 3: and thank you Ethan and Beg each of a guest
Speaker 3: for also having me on. And you can find me
Speaker 3: Twitter at Wukan Reborn or. My show is called Threshold Saints.
Speaker 3: I have two episodes Onlina del Rey aside from the
Speaker 3: episode on Fire and Flowers. So if people are interested,
Speaker 3: they can check that out.
Speaker 2: Awesome, thank you very much, and Neil, thanks will be
Speaker 2: in the bottom. Ethan Indigo, sir, can you please let
Speaker 2: everybody know where they can find your amazing work as well.
Speaker 5: I'm honored to be here with you all as always,
Speaker 5: and I have a couple of books that I've written,
Speaker 5: and I tried to put articles out, just put one
Speaker 5: out on a co research institute. And I am honored
Speaker 5: to be here with Julia and here your insight. It's
Speaker 5: into Sylvia Plath.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, sir. Again, his links will be
Speaker 2: in the bottom. And last but not lease, Lisa the
Speaker 2: ocult rejective mad scientist. How are you? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm good, I'm good, thank you.
Speaker 6: The only thing I have to plug is exactly what
Speaker 6: Ethan was saying, is the Occult Research inst dot org,
Speaker 6: where many, many of our wonderful contributors have contributed great
Speaker 6: work in a literary form. So check us out there
Speaker 6: Occult Research inst dot org.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you. And finally to the guest Julia
Speaker 2: Gordon Bramer. Real quick, I'll just put this in there myself.
Speaker 2: She is a professional tarot card reader. She's a scholar
Speaker 2: and an award award winning winning writer and poet and
Speaker 2: former professional professor for the Graduate Writing program at Lyndenwood University.
Speaker 2: So also the author of Fixed Stars, govern a Life,
Speaker 2: Decoding Sylvia Plath, Taro Life Lessons, and The Occult Sylvia Plath.
Speaker 2: Today we'll be talking about the occult Sylvia play. Thank
Speaker 2: you again Julia so much. I guess if you want
Speaker 2: kind of like plug yourself, let people know who you are,
Speaker 2: what your deal is, and I guess after that, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll get right into what got you doing this? So
Speaker 2: thank you again?
Speaker 1: Great? Hi, Yeah, plug myself. Wow. Uh, put me on
Speaker 1: the spot there. I am, as you said, a professional
Speaker 1: tarot card reader. I have clients all over the world.
Speaker 1: I do readings by phone and by video. I do events,
Speaker 1: so sometimes people fly me to events. Sometimes we do
Speaker 1: events on video that can be fun and where they
Speaker 1: stream me in much like we're doing this interview. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, So if anyone wants to hire me in
Speaker 1: any capacity, they can look me up at Julia Gordon
Speaker 1: Bramer dot com has that and then you know, the
Speaker 1: writer thing is a whole other thing. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I make I make my living as a professional arrow
Speaker 1: card reader, I'm one of Saint Louis's top ten psychics.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I've been doing this for over forty five
Speaker 1: years now.
Speaker 2: Listen, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you do have an impressive,
Speaker 2: impressive resume on there. And that was another thing too,
Speaker 2: when I even I when I had tried to contact you,
Speaker 2: I had even told the other person I was dealing with,
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm actually interested in her herself because
Speaker 2: of the Taro. So hopefully, hopefully in the future you'll
Speaker 2: also be back on for that. But yeah, Sylvia Plaid,
Speaker 2: and I spoke to you earlier, fifteen years of research
Speaker 2: this lady has done in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so so the occult Sylvia Plath. This was
Speaker 1: specifically fifteen years of archival research. There was more time
Speaker 1: that went into it in the writing and editing and
Speaker 1: all of that. But when I was back in graduate school,
Speaker 1: which I started in two thousand and seven, and I
Speaker 1: had a poetry class, and I was getting my MFA
Speaker 1: and create of writing in both poetry and fiction because
Speaker 1: I write in both genres. And I went to my
Speaker 1: poetry professor and I was looking at Platt's work and
Speaker 1: Aerial in particular, and I said to my professor, doctor Schreiner.
Speaker 1: I said, what's the deal. You know, there's taro all
Speaker 1: over this. You know, here's the Night of Swords, and
Speaker 1: here's the Ace of Copes, and here's this and here's that.
Speaker 1: And I start pointing out and he just looks at me, bewildered,
Speaker 1: and he says, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: And that was when I realized you had to be
Speaker 1: both a Tarot scholar as I am. As I've been
Speaker 1: doing this since I was sixteen years old. I'm sixty
Speaker 1: one today, and you know, it was you know, and
Speaker 1: a Plats scholar to connect the dots. But it's screamingly obvious.
Speaker 1: And really, I mean, her poem Daddy, which is one
Speaker 1: of her most famous poems, even says she's got a
Speaker 1: line with my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck and
Speaker 1: my taroq pack and my tarok pack. I may be
Speaker 1: a bit of a Jew, that's the part of the poem.
Speaker 1: And tarok is another word for taro. And what most
Speaker 1: people don't understand is that the taro comes from the
Speaker 1: Jewish cop Kabbalah, the Jewish mysticism. And so you know,
Speaker 1: for me, it was like boying, like just out there
Speaker 1: screamingly obvious, and then I realized all of this stuff
Speaker 1: that Plat has literally been persecuted for. You know, what's
Speaker 1: this Boston white girl identifying with Jews in the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: and you know, like people just got it all wrong.
Speaker 1: And she was working different levels of meaning because she's
Speaker 1: a poet, and that's what poetry does. You know, we
Speaker 1: have many metaphors, but she stacked the metaphors. You know.
Speaker 1: She was a genius is genius and so anyway, as
Speaker 1: my semester end project, it really became my life's work.
Speaker 1: But I found her book Ariel, specifically Ariel, the restored edition,
Speaker 1: which came out in I believe it was two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and that was the ordering of the poems
Speaker 1: that Plath had intended when Ariel came out back after
Speaker 1: she died in the nineteen sixties or maybe even seventy,
Speaker 1: I can't remember now, but the first publication of Ariel,
Speaker 1: her husband Ted Hughes, had rearranged and so had I
Speaker 1: seen the original publication, it might not have been so
Speaker 1: obvious to me, but what Plath had done was each
Speaker 1: poem and Ariel went in perfect correspondence with the Tarot
Speaker 1: deck and so we've got the major Arcana, and then
Speaker 1: we have the minor ARCon and the suits, and then
Speaker 1: we have four cards at the end, which is that's
Speaker 1: the four suits specifically, you know, But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just brilliant what she did. And each poem is
Speaker 1: a reflection of the Tarot card. Many times it shows,
Speaker 1: you know, she's describing even the beauty of the card,
Speaker 1: and the colors and the symbols and the meanings of
Speaker 1: the card of course are woven into each poem. And
Speaker 1: so when you see the correspondence, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it expands Plats poetry so far beyond what anybody has read.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I got so excited, and I
Speaker 1: immediately brought it to academia, into the Plath scholars, to
Speaker 1: which I thought it would be really well received. But
Speaker 1: they've built their careers on her being a pressive suicide
Speaker 1: and they don't want to see anything else but that.
Speaker 1: And they sure don't want anybody without a PhD. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got an MFA, but that's not quite good enough.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: They don't want anyone without a PhD to you know,
Speaker 1: to usurp their research here. They believe they would have
Speaker 1: found it first if it was there. I was told that.
Speaker 1: In fact, even though they know nothing about Taro, and
Speaker 1: Academia is by and large very atheistic, so they want
Speaker 1: no part of any kind of faith or especially a
Speaker 1: cult which is you know, very creepy in out of
Speaker 1: their comfort zones. Even though Sylvia Plath was wildly fascinated
Speaker 1: with the occult, and anybody who studied her knows this.
Speaker 1: I mean the picture on my book, The Occult Sylvia Plath,
Speaker 1: that's actually her with a crystal ball. And you know,
Speaker 1: and she's had lots of She's got a long poem,
Speaker 1: several poems referring to the wija board in different ways,
Speaker 1: but a long poem called Dialogue over a wija Board.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's there's just a lot in her
Speaker 1: writings on Ontaro, on astrology. Her husband, Ted Hughes, who
Speaker 1: she worshiped for much of their seven year marriage until
Speaker 1: it all fell apart. He was, you know, he's been
Speaker 1: vastly studied for his Kabbalah and his witchcraft and his
Speaker 1: alchemy and all of this, and yet and and and
Speaker 1: everyone knows he mentored her in every way, and everyone
Speaker 1: knows they did hypnotizing together, and they did all these.
Speaker 2: Meditative studies too, right anything, Yeah, yeah, they.
Speaker 1: Did everything like this and and so nobody connected the
Speaker 1: dots and it's just bizarre to me. And and they're
Speaker 1: still not, you know, over over in academia. Uh so
Speaker 1: all of the best response. I mean, I've been I've
Speaker 1: been touring this book, and I was in the UK
Speaker 1: last summer and I had two standing room only events
Speaker 1: in Watkins' books where Plath and Hughes actually bought tarot
Speaker 1: cards and some witchcraft books back in the day, and
Speaker 1: also tread Wells, which I am very fond of tread Wells,
Speaker 1: and I may be going back this summer actually. But
Speaker 1: but you know, the London crowd is definitely more open
Speaker 1: to mysticism, and they're readers too. They love Plath, they
Speaker 1: embrace her as their own because she lived there in England,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they have the open mindedness that Americans not
Speaker 1: so much. It's it's real interesting to see how different
Speaker 1: the audience is.
Speaker 2: Something I did want to just bring up those two things.
Speaker 2: One it's kind of like a little bit off the topic,
Speaker 2: but it was something that you said that I was
Speaker 2: kind of glad that you mentioned me and Jin. I
Speaker 2: think maybe even ethan As might even have said this before.
Speaker 2: But I know for a fact me and Jin have
Speaker 2: brought it up with Taro, and I would consider you
Speaker 2: probably know way more about Taro than I do. And
Speaker 2: you said it's associated with Kabbala. Yeah, I For some reason,
Speaker 2: in the Taro community, this seems to be like people
Speaker 2: don't even want to think about that or even admit that, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I mean, Kabbala is a very intimidating subject,
Speaker 1: that's right, And so I would never have even you know,
Speaker 1: what I knew about Kabbala before I began my Plath
Speaker 1: work was that, you know, Madonna and Britney Spears supposedly
Speaker 1: wore red bands around their wrist, which meant something about it.
Speaker 1: That was what I'd heard, you know, and that was
Speaker 1: like the extent of it, you know. But I actually
Speaker 1: got introduced to k through the plathwork, even though I
Speaker 1: had been reading Taro since I was sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: So most Tarot card readers probably are like how I
Speaker 1: started Plath made me a much better Tarot card reader, honestly,
Speaker 1: because when I got into Kabbala, which think of Kabbala
Speaker 1: as sort of like the blueprint for all the occult sciences.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of the structure of how they all work.
Speaker 1: And if anybody can look up online, you can google
Speaker 1: the Tarot Kabbala and you can see lots of pictures,
Speaker 1: lots of diagrams of how there's a tarot card for
Speaker 1: each station called the sefero in the Kabbala try of life,
Speaker 1: and a card for each pathway that connects them, and
Speaker 1: it works out perfectly. The Hermetic Order of the Golden
Speaker 1: Dawn who did our most modern version, the Writer Weight,
Speaker 1: they switched two cards in the original tarot to better
Speaker 1: conform to the kabolotry of life, the number eight strength
Speaker 1: and number eleven justice. They reversed it just to fit
Speaker 1: the tree better. It's kind of interesting. Purists do not
Speaker 1: do that. Plath in Hues did not do that, and
Speaker 1: which I write in my book, and in my first
Speaker 1: book I explained that. But but yeah, it's it fits
Speaker 1: really well and and the kabolotry of life. You know,
Speaker 1: you can apply astronomy astrology. I say astronomy too, because
Speaker 1: back in the old days it was very intertwined mythology numerology.
Speaker 1: It all fits and it all tells this sort of
Speaker 1: same story with the same uh you know, human ind
Speaker 1: visuation journey as Carl Jung would have called it the
Speaker 1: hero's journey as of Campbell called it. Uh.
Speaker 2: The other thing I wanted to bring up to I
Speaker 2: could be wrong, but wasn't her parents kind of also
Speaker 2: like practitioners are involved in the Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, when I did all of the research,
Speaker 1: I comed through lots of memoirs, lots of other biographies
Speaker 1: to start, because initially I wanted to just put all
Speaker 1: the information collectively together because people knew, okay, her father
Speaker 1: was a freemason. I saw that somewhere they knew her
Speaker 1: mother studied in graduate school. Parilsis the alchemist they and
Speaker 1: they knew that Plath read all her mother's school books.
Speaker 1: You know, they all the all the scholars know all
Speaker 1: this stuff, but they hadn't put it all together. She
Speaker 1: went to a Unitarian church, and if you go into
Speaker 1: the archives, and that's where it really got fun, was
Speaker 1: in the archives because I was going through her school
Speaker 1: work and you know, her Sunday school work, which her
Speaker 1: mother had saved everything and given it to the University
Speaker 1: of Indiana's Lily Library, which is so it's pretty amazing
Speaker 1: to see all this stuff. Her her elementary school Sunday
Speaker 1: school work was on the zodiac.
Speaker 4: You know, so she when she was in high school. Yeah,
Speaker 4: when she was in high school summer camp, she carved
Speaker 4: a hermetic Caducius, you know, the alchemical wand of Hermes,
Speaker 4: which I actually owned that today, that that she carved.
Speaker 4: It's it's kept in a safe. It's very prectaice. To me,
Speaker 4: it probably is worth more than my house.
Speaker 1: And I was lucky enough to be contacted by doctor
Speaker 1: Richard Larshan, a family friend of the Plats, who had
Speaker 1: inherited it. CC's had been written about just this object
Speaker 1: and excuse me, and doctor Larshan wanted someone who understood,
Speaker 1: who had the passion for plaths but understood that mystical side,
Speaker 1: to be the one to possess it because he's getting
Speaker 1: to be very old now. So so I lecked out there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the book pulls together all of these facts.
Speaker 2: That is great. Good for you, nice Lisa or Jin.
Speaker 2: Do you guys have any questions before you continue?
Speaker 1: Jane, go ahead.
Speaker 3: I just want to say that Julia, I'm so glad
Speaker 3: you said that, and I'm so glad that Nick obviously
Speaker 3: the Cabala boss asked that question because this is something
Speaker 3: that is recurrent, Like I think when whenever I'm on
Speaker 3: at least, this is something that we always talk about.
Speaker 3: Is Kabala is the map, Like whatever you think of it,
Speaker 3: it's a great map, and it makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 3: and it goes with everything, and you can use it
Speaker 3: as like a common language to just discuss magical experience
Speaker 3: or more like historical call text. You can do both
Speaker 3: things with it, and that's what makes it so great.
Speaker 3: And I highly encourage people to study it if they
Speaker 3: are so inclined, because I just feel very strongly that
Speaker 3: it gives you like a whole different understanding of.
Speaker 2: The world, not to not to keep going on it,
Speaker 2: but like I even remember for myself, I used to
Speaker 2: be a member of the Auto Temple Orientus THEOTO, and
Speaker 2: I remember when I first started going, I was like
Speaker 2: sitting on I was like sitting on the couch or whatever,
Speaker 2: like waiting, you know, waiting for the temple to open.
Speaker 2: And I'm like staring there looking at this big picture
Speaker 2: and it's like the tree of life and it shows
Speaker 2: you all the cards on it. I'm looking at it,
Speaker 2: and I even remember at that time, it was like
Speaker 2: I was intimidated by Kabbala for sure, and I was
Speaker 2: even intimidated by Taro. So I really wasn't trying to
Speaker 2: look at either one of them. But when I looked
Speaker 2: at that, I was like, huh, maybe if I like
Speaker 2: kind of look at it like that, And for some
Speaker 2: reason that clickedon got me interested looking at it With
Speaker 2: the Kabbalah. I started looking into the Cabala and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, why did I wait years
Speaker 2: to look at this? I like fell in love with
Speaker 2: it right away. And then once I started attributing tarot
Speaker 2: to it, I was like, oh, this kind of almost
Speaker 2: makes sense now a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, my first introduction to up to Kabbala,
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was being introduced to Kabbala. And
Speaker 1: when I was in my twenties, I read a book
Speaker 1: by Hermann Hesse called The Glass Bead Game also known
Speaker 1: as Manchester Has Time, and it's about this young monk
Speaker 1: and he studies and he finds this formula and essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, this great work of art. Let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: the mona lisa equals a bach concerto, which equals something else,
Speaker 1: and he realizes this formula is through all the great
Speaker 1: things and and so I read it in my twenties.
Speaker 1: I don't think Hesse ever said anything about Kabbala, but
Speaker 1: it was. You know now that I look back as
Speaker 1: a as a more mature person who's done a little
Speaker 1: bit of studying. So so that's a fun way to
Speaker 1: get an idea of this sprawling concept that's woven through everything. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's uh. And he did an excellent job of
Speaker 1: that through fiction. If anyone's interested.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Yes, all right, so I guess back to play.
Speaker 2: Sorry I tore you took of a tangent with.
Speaker 1: That was fun. Yeah, the only ones who asked me that.
Speaker 2: No, I just think. I just think it is, like
Speaker 2: I just a side I use like labyrinthos something whatever
Speaker 2: I come across, and I use that a lot. It
Speaker 2: always attributes it to the tree. It just makes sense
Speaker 2: to me that way, Like I could see, well, I mean,
Speaker 2: first off, I can't write, so I could never even
Speaker 2: think about trying to write poems on all the Tarot cards.
Speaker 2: But I could see if you did the twenty two
Speaker 2: major kind of on the Tree of Life, that would
Speaker 2: give you stories if you looked at the yard and
Speaker 2: maybe your ideas of the tree that would definitely give
Speaker 2: you work to work with to write poems for sure,
Speaker 2: you know, so that's she did that.
Speaker 6: And can I just interject, Really the thing about it,
Speaker 6: Cabal you had said, I'm so glad you said, like
Speaker 6: Jen and Nick were saying, I never really associated with Kabala.
Speaker 6: With her, I knew about the taro and how layered
Speaker 6: and in depth her poetry was, and it was like
Speaker 6: almost like a stack telling a story and the ability
Speaker 6: to channel or basically project all of her emotion that
Speaker 6: she was going through through all of her poetry in
Speaker 6: this kind of layered way. But what struck me interesting
Speaker 6: and when you say Kabala, it makes sense now in
Speaker 6: that there was some sort of methodology to it. And
Speaker 6: I think she got that from her parents, because like
Speaker 6: you had said, they were academics, and the way she
Speaker 6: approached some of the occult topics, even though they were
Speaker 6: just so kind of on the fringes, they were like
Speaker 6: the viewers of her poetry. It was it was almost
Speaker 6: as this academic tying it all in together. And when
Speaker 6: I read that about her mom having done work on paracelsius,
Speaker 6: as we have looked into some of these old occultists
Speaker 6: or occultis of history that tend to side with Paracelsius.
Speaker 6: They have these occultive tight leanings, and they're looking at Kabala,
Speaker 6: they're looking at all these mysticisms, and so it just
Speaker 6: now that you say that, it totally fits in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so thank you, thank you for saying that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh sure, yeah, no, it's it's just so exciting to me,
Speaker 1: you know, and what Plath did. And I haven't really
Speaker 1: gotten into this, and it's a little too deep to
Speaker 1: go into my first book, which is now out of print,
Speaker 1: but I do sell it as a PDF, so anyone
Speaker 1: can reach out to me if they're interested. But it's
Speaker 1: called Fixed Stars governor Life Decoding Sylvia Plath and I
Speaker 1: go through the major arcana. I have yet to publish
Speaker 1: on the minor, but Plath took each poem. It has
Speaker 1: six different meanings working along with Kabbala within each set
Speaker 1: of words. So if you can imagine, I mean, I
Speaker 1: had a mathematician say, what is the possibility that this
Speaker 1: is coincidence? And it's just not possible. It's like one
Speaker 1: in a Google or something that it could have just
Speaker 1: randomly corresponded in every way But so what Plath did
Speaker 1: was each each aerial poem, you can read it sort
Speaker 1: of on the Tarot kabbala. You know level, this is
Speaker 1: beyond her personal level. Okay, everyone's been reading it. It's
Speaker 1: just her personal autobiography. But you can read it in
Speaker 1: accordance with taro kabala. You can read it astrology and
Speaker 1: astronomy because she reflects a lot of that. You can
Speaker 1: read mythology component, you can read history in the world,
Speaker 1: and you can read arts and humanities, and she reflects
Speaker 1: all of this within each poem in alignment with that
Speaker 1: tarot card. Like I mean, it's rather mind boggling, and
Speaker 1: yet it makes her poems, you know, a lot. She
Speaker 1: has a lot of very challenging poems in aerial, like
Speaker 1: the Couriers, which people just don't get until they understand
Speaker 1: the magician tarot card. And you know, the word of
Speaker 1: a snail on the plate of a leaf, and you know,
Speaker 1: and there are things that are being shown in the card.
Speaker 1: There are things the card represents. There are you know,
Speaker 1: there's the mythology behind the card, there's the the you
Speaker 1: know all of it. I mean, you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: it goes deep and I could go on just I
Speaker 1: could do, you know, an hour on each poem, So
Speaker 1: we won't go through that. But but she was a
Speaker 1: genius's genius. And it's my goal, you know, if I
Speaker 1: was put here on this planet to do anything beside
Speaker 1: had my children, it's to get this information out, to
Speaker 1: redeem her reputation, to get her out of this depressive,
Speaker 1: suicidal box that everybody wants to keep her shut in.
Speaker 1: You know that there was that movie starring Gwyn's Paul
Speaker 1: Tally two thousands called Sylvia, and it was lovely and
Speaker 1: it was well done, except it had almost nothing to
Speaker 1: do with her writing. It was only the drama, you know,
Speaker 1: only about being beautiful and tormented and in a hellish marriage.
Speaker 1: And that's a shame, you know, and she was so
Speaker 1: much more than that.
Speaker 2: Do you think you know, I'm just wondering because, like
Speaker 2: you just said before, like something had like six different
Speaker 2: meanings to it or you know whatever each each. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, Like also just from I guess maybe my
Speaker 2: opinion from my experience, I'm sure the late I mean
Speaker 2: that the woman was probably very smart and educated regardless.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but do you think that maybe because I
Speaker 2: could see if she maybe actually had like and I
Speaker 2: don't know what your idea of what a magical or
Speaker 2: experience could be, but maybe she actually really had like
Speaker 2: a magical experience or I would say cross the abyss.
Speaker 2: And that's why she actually may have been so deeply
Speaker 2: woven into the stuff, because like she really understood it, understood.
Speaker 1: It absolutely and and really I would venture to say
Speaker 1: that every creative person has a magical experience when we're
Speaker 1: in that zone, you know, whether you're a musician or
Speaker 1: an artist, and she was also an artist, by the way,
Speaker 1: or you know, or a poet or a sculpt we're
Speaker 1: all channeling something. Now when we're consciously calling the spirits,
Speaker 1: that's a step into it again. And yes, she was
Speaker 1: doing that. She and Ted Hughes meditated together and before
Speaker 1: their work they pushed each other on different themes and
Speaker 1: and uh, and it was very it was a very
Speaker 1: conscious pursuit. Uh. They looked for information from the ouig
Speaker 1: aboard and from bibliomancy and all of these things. So
Speaker 1: so she was definitely quite conscious of her occult pursuits
Speaker 1: what did feed into her creativity. But I believe the
Speaker 1: creative act all by itself is a kind of magic.
Speaker 1: Whether people want to accept that or not their choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I just felt like I again, like you know,
Speaker 2: just from my own self experiences like this one, I
Speaker 2: could see having the passion to want to do something
Speaker 2: so detailed because you're just so in love with it
Speaker 2: because you had a magical experience and you're trying to
Speaker 2: convey that something along those lines.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And really the scholarship that I did on
Speaker 1: her work was that for me. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: blew my mind sometimes, and there there were times that
Speaker 1: I was afraid and I almost quit, which I can
Speaker 1: talk to you about that, but it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was. It's really been some of the highest highs
Speaker 1: and really affected me very deeply as a tarot card reader.
Speaker 1: As I said, it made me a much better tarot
Speaker 1: card reader to have this this breadth and understanding of
Speaker 1: things like alchemy and kabbala which I had never even
Speaker 1: you know, I knew the words and that was about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, to really go deep into some of these
Speaker 1: things and experience it in incredible ways. One story that
Speaker 1: I share in the introduction to my first book, Six Stars,
Speaker 1: Governor Life, and this story I can be read free
Speaker 1: online on my academia dot edu page. I have that
Speaker 1: introduction uploaded and anyone can read it for free. But
Speaker 1: I talk about when I was going through and I
Speaker 1: got to her fifteenth poem, which you know that the
Speaker 1: Tarot deck, the major arcana starts from the fool starts
Speaker 1: from November zero, right, So it was Tarot card number fourteen,
Speaker 1: but it was fifteenth and aerial and it's it was
Speaker 1: the title poem Aerial. And as I was going through it,
Speaker 1: doing all of my research and and unpacking these layers,
Speaker 1: I found a prayer written by Alistair Crowley to the
Speaker 1: Great Beast six sixty six that basically Plath had paraphrased,
Speaker 1: and it was there was so much of it that
Speaker 1: she had seen this, like there was just you know,
Speaker 1: she she could have been tried for a little bit
Speaker 1: of platurism here, you know. And but it horrified me
Speaker 1: because I had this Christian upbringing, you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up in the Episcopal Church, and I am about love
Speaker 1: and light, and so I see this Great Beast sixty
Speaker 1: sixty six shed and I'm like, oh my God, and
Speaker 1: uh and and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: put this away, like I don't even you know are
Speaker 1: my heroes, you know, Satan worshipers. And I thought, I
Speaker 1: don't want any part of this. And I went to
Speaker 1: bed that night and it was the craziest thing because
Speaker 1: just as I was drifting off to sleep. Of course,
Speaker 1: this is anyone with psychic ability, well we all have
Speaker 1: it to a degree, but anyone who actively uses their
Speaker 1: psycha ability will know that just as we're waking up,
Speaker 1: and just as we're asleep is where we get all
Speaker 1: the downloads, you know. But I'm just starting to drift
Speaker 1: off to sleep, and her words, her voice, which I
Speaker 1: know very well from recordings because I've listened and listened
Speaker 1: and listened. Her voice said in my ear, move through,
Speaker 1: and she commanded me, and it was loud and it
Speaker 1: woke me up, and it completely freaked me out. And
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I'll do one more poem and I'll
Speaker 1: see where that gets me. Well, the next poem, A
Speaker 1: dozen company is an alignment with card number fifteen, the devil.
Speaker 1: She was setting it up. It was a it was
Speaker 1: an introduction here. So she had this. When you look
Speaker 1: at Ariel, it has this seamlessness and each poem lifts
Speaker 1: into the next and that so that's what she was
Speaker 1: doing and I had just gotten too scared and so
Speaker 1: oh okay, I got it and then I was able
Speaker 1: to proceed, you know. But but yeah, it's been a
Speaker 1: journey and I have had just, you know, incredibly moving
Speaker 1: experiences where I've uncovered meanings and found myself in tears
Speaker 1: because just becoming so emotional and the beauty and what
Speaker 1: she pulled out of each of these and then and
Speaker 1: then the frustration that nobody can see it, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like all I can do, like get out,
Speaker 1: get it out there, get the message out. Let people
Speaker 1: see this, this miracle in words, and you know, and
Speaker 1: and there's forty of them and so anyway, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's been like that. It's been a powerful, uh, transformational
Speaker 1: experience to study Plath and one that I will never
Speaker 1: forget and not soon be over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. It's kind of like, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not the same thing, but probably close to it. Like
Speaker 2: there's times I think I've even shown Lisa, maybe even Gin,
Speaker 2: but like there's times and I don't put this man
Speaker 2: on a pedestal, but I do think Alison Crowley, who
Speaker 2: wasn't a cult genius, regardless of how personal life he
Speaker 2: had regardless, what's real, what's true?
Speaker 1: Weird?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was in a coult genius regardless. But it's
Speaker 2: a lot of times I'll be looking at like old
Speaker 2: alchemists or like really rare old books, and I'll be
Speaker 2: coming across things are like visuals and I'll be like, ah,
Speaker 2: this is where you got that idea from man. So
Speaker 2: it's almost like it's like gets exciting for a second.
Speaker 2: I was like, did I just figure something out that reuse? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Crowley was actually a very fine poet also, which most
Speaker 1: people don't don't realize, you know, I say, given his times,
Speaker 1: I mean it was Victorian times right when Crowley was around,
Speaker 1: and he was he did drugs, and he was openly bisexual,
Speaker 1: and you know, and very promiscuous, and he refused to
Speaker 1: go to church and those three things made the London
Speaker 1: Times call him the wickedest man alive, you know, And
Speaker 1: so you know today he's just any rock star, right, you.
Speaker 2: Don't even have to be right, that is funny, how
Speaker 2: like times have changed. I guess like a decent part
Speaker 2: of the population would be considered the wickedest man in
Speaker 2: the world, right, Yeah, yeah, damn. I was going to
Speaker 2: ask something, and they told, oh, since you mentioned poetry
Speaker 2: and Crowley, I was thinking, with Sylvia Plath, this is something.
Speaker 2: Oh god, it might have been in Pedocles that we
Speaker 2: brought this up. With the way he wrote with hexameter
Speaker 2: and pentamonter. I forgot how to even say those. Did
Speaker 2: you ever notice if she ever wrote in that style before?
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean she used the rhythms and the iamic
Speaker 1: pentameters and all of that. Yeah, I mean she she
Speaker 1: was very well educated. You know, she went to Cambridge
Speaker 1: and you know she was she was had a genius
Speaker 1: IQ and and yeah, everything was quite precise. And even
Speaker 1: though she wrote this very emotive, expressive stuff, she had
Speaker 1: a form that others like like her friend Ann Sexton,
Speaker 1: who also wrote in what they called the confessional style,
Speaker 1: but Sexton didn't follow that kind of form and structure
Speaker 1: that Pleth did. Plath was very careful about everything. She
Speaker 1: was very careful about holding to the kabbala as well.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting, Ted Hughes, I've been over his work,
Speaker 1: her husband, I've been over his work of course, very
Speaker 1: carefully as well. And he he had this playfulness with
Speaker 1: the structure and order of his poems, so he may
Speaker 1: start at the third card and go to the fourth
Speaker 1: and the fifth and the sixth and then go backwards maybe,
Speaker 1: and you know, and he would he would play this
Speaker 1: sort of rhythm. But she was very fool magician, you know,
Speaker 1: High Priestess, Empress, Emperor, and you know, in all in
Speaker 1: exact order, and she never veered from that. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I even see it throughout all of her fiction. The
Speaker 1: bell jar is in Kabbala order. And that's another thing
Speaker 1: for me to publish one day, and I have yet
Speaker 1: to do it because it'll be an exhaustive pulling apart.
Speaker 1: But I've got all my notes and you know, everything
Speaker 1: she wrote she did that with because it was a
Speaker 1: formula that works clearly.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. Just trust this in. And I've
Speaker 2: been saying for two years I'm going to do another one.
Speaker 2: Who knows if I ever will. But I've done a
Speaker 2: few DJ mixes before in the past, and the last
Speaker 2: two that I did, I specifically actually use the tracks
Speaker 2: to represent certain spheres on the train and that's how
Speaker 2: I did my list to make the DJ mix actually
Speaker 2: attributed to the Kaballistic tree. Yeah, it was somehow a
Speaker 2: reference like a feeling or an idea that matched those fews. Ye,
Speaker 2: that's always stung it along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, my book Tarot Life Lessons, I wrote this
Speaker 1: in Kabbala order, but it's it's openly in Kabbala order.
Speaker 1: Each chapter has a story in relation to a tarot card.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the stories of of me being a
Speaker 1: professional tarot card reader, kind of my real life client stories,
Speaker 1: the ones that freaked me out, and and I matched
Speaker 1: them each to a tarot card. So so I do
Speaker 1: it too, and I've done it with my poetry, although
Speaker 1: my poetry doesn't have half the layering of plats. How
Speaker 1: she did that all and at thirty years old, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean she was so young. On top of everything else,
Speaker 1: you know, her brilliance is just off the charts.
Speaker 2: I have problems like writing abbreviated texts. I can't even
Speaker 2: imagine trying to like and you know the reason I
Speaker 2: even brought that all up too. I'm not saying so
Speaker 2: much with her, but Crowley, I've even wondered when it
Speaker 2: comes to the hexameter or a pathameter, could there be
Speaker 2: a different like if if I find that style in
Speaker 2: his work, could there be a difference Because I know,
Speaker 2: I think back in the day they considered hexameter. If
Speaker 2: you were kind of channeling or oracle was giving that message,
Speaker 2: that's how it was deemed okay, is if it was
Speaker 2: in that style. So I'm wondering, could that maybe be
Speaker 2: channelings if they're writing in that style differently, you know,
Speaker 2: And I'm that's saying so much hurt, maybe more maybe
Speaker 2: Croly Moore I'm saying, but not so much heart. But
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, you know, I'm not uh, I've
Speaker 1: never been drawn to the dark side myself. And you
Speaker 1: know what, what I'll say about Plath, I mean, just
Speaker 1: a fun thing to notice about her work is so
Speaker 1: so her her first poem, Morning Song, that's kind of
Speaker 1: just a straight structure when you get you'll notice with
Speaker 1: her poem for for card number two, the High Priestess.
Speaker 1: That poem is the Rabbit Catcher, and it's written in couplets,
Speaker 1: you know, for twos to echo that two on the
Speaker 1: tarot card. And then the poem for the Empress is
Speaker 1: it's it's written in triplets. And then you know, and
Speaker 1: and and she went on and you know, and she
Speaker 1: did and what are they called sin? Quins I think
Speaker 1: for the wars and you know, and she played if
Speaker 1: you count the lines, she even addresses the tarot cards
Speaker 1: that way. Now getting into the actual meter, I think
Speaker 1: she pretty much was an i amic contameter girl. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in meters. That's That's where I
Speaker 1: just didn't get that into structure myself as a poet.
Speaker 2: Oh again, like I said, I can't. I mean, I
Speaker 2: can't structure anything. But it's something I have come across,
Speaker 2: you know, researching, you know, occultists and other people. So
Speaker 2: just wondered because because now they just when I when
Speaker 2: I came across that, It's just there are other people
Speaker 2: that have been known to write that way that seemed
Speaker 2: to be a little bit on like the occult side.
Speaker 2: Like Jim Morrison even used that stuff a lot, and
Speaker 2: I think he was definitely into these. Yeah, so you
Speaker 2: just start to wonder now, like again, poetry, you know,
Speaker 2: And I would say Jim Morrison was a poet in
Speaker 2: a sense. Uh you know, are they using that for
Speaker 2: a reason? That's all I just wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, with Plath, I would venture to
Speaker 1: say that everything she did had a reason. She was
Speaker 1: very careful and very smart about getting milking everything to
Speaker 1: the maximum. So there's no waste, there's no fat in
Speaker 1: her work.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and I would assume not. Yeah, that's why
Speaker 2: I was getting at before. Like's so detailed, you just
Speaker 2: have to like wonderlay Lisa Argent. Was there anything you
Speaker 2: wanted to ask?
Speaker 6: I'll bring up I'll ask something real quick. Was there
Speaker 6: Is there any credence to some of her poetry being
Speaker 6: either censored or rewritten by Hughes and or kept away
Speaker 6: from the public eye by Hughes. Is there any credence
Speaker 6: to that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so Ted Hughes when he first you know,
Speaker 1: when Sylvia was found dead, her manuscript was on her
Speaker 1: desk of Aeriel and it's he's he's made no secret
Speaker 1: that he rearranged it. And he said he took out
Speaker 1: poems that he thought were inferior. He thought he made
Speaker 1: a better manuscript. That's that's what he has said now.
Speaker 1: The poems he removed made him look especially bad, you know,
Speaker 1: so if you're just reading it from the autobiography of
Speaker 1: autobiographical context. So so there was that too, you know,
Speaker 1: And it can be argued in Hughes's defense he had children.
Speaker 1: They you know, their children, and he was raising them,
Speaker 1: and you know what was he leaving beyond? What were
Speaker 1: they going to be growing up with? And you know,
Speaker 1: he was maybe trying to sanitize it a little bit.
Speaker 1: What doesn't get talked about a lot is there was
Speaker 1: an editor in London, El Alvarez, who talked pleas into
Speaker 1: removing some lines from Lady Lazarus, and he thought she
Speaker 1: was going too far with some of the World War
Speaker 1: two imagery. She had one line, I may be Japanese. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: I am the same identical woman. He had her remove
Speaker 1: that I may be Japanese line, and then there there
Speaker 1: was another one that is escaping me off the top
Speaker 1: of my head. But but he he she's recorded them
Speaker 1: with the original lines. So if you listen online to
Speaker 1: Sylvia Plath reading Lady Lazarus, you can hear all of
Speaker 1: the lines. But but if you read it in Ariel,
Speaker 1: even an Aeriel, the restored edition, the lines are missing
Speaker 1: that Alvarez suggested she cut. And uh, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a shame that she cut them because in my work, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and I've got I've got two
Speaker 1: books that that you didn't mention Decoding Sylvia Platz Lady
Speaker 1: Lazarus and Decoding Sylvia Plats Daddy and and in the
Speaker 1: Lady Lazarus book, and those are both available on Amazon,
Speaker 1: and they're just quick reads, they're just studies of single poems.
Speaker 1: And in those in that book, I kind of get
Speaker 1: into her identification with the Japanese women who were especially
Speaker 1: downtrodden at the time, and you know, and just this
Speaker 1: sort of extra baggage she was packing into the poem
Speaker 1: basically that that got cut with that single line. So
Speaker 1: so she was censored a bit. Certainly. She sent a
Speaker 1: lot of poems out in her lifetime that were rejected.
Speaker 1: There were many people who thought she was too savage
Speaker 1: and angry in her writing to publish, you know, especially
Speaker 1: for a woman back in the nineteen sixties. You know,
Speaker 1: they still wanted women to write pretty and so Plath
Speaker 1: was really a groundbreaker, and you know, and rightly so.
Speaker 1: She is famous as a literary feminist for just you know,
Speaker 1: having a new voice, just real quick, sorry, just it's
Speaker 1: just who remind it's so reminiscent of like Frida Calo
Speaker 1: in that she kind of slipped under Dio Rivetta's.
Speaker 6: Shadow, and I see how Sylvia slipped under Ted Hughes's shadow,
Speaker 6: and so, yeah, you look at these literary artists, you're like, well,
Speaker 6: why are people not discussing these people more?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, at the time in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, I mean you can see plus ambivalence and
Speaker 1: really almost a bipolar you know. I mean it could
Speaker 1: be taken literally, she may have been bipolar, back and
Speaker 1: forth of I want to be the best wife and mother,
Speaker 1: and I want to be subservient to my man, and
Speaker 1: then this sort of feminist streak of you know, I
Speaker 1: am me and I you know, I am, I am,
Speaker 1: I am you know.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 1: It's all there, and she was all of it, but
Speaker 1: she wrestled with it because the times wanted her to
Speaker 1: shut up and be an agreeable little wife, and she
Speaker 1: kind of wanted that too, you know.
Speaker 2: Ethan you had a question, mamam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is so fascinating.
Speaker 5: I wonder with her poetry in the sense there were
Speaker 5: so many powerful overt similes, as you pointed out, with
Speaker 5: the Japanese woman and maybe also with the idea of
Speaker 5: the German Man in Daddy. Did that overshadow Did those
Speaker 5: overt similes related to the war and all the really
Speaker 5: powerful situations that just happened. Did that overshadow or even
Speaker 5: eclipse any consideration of the Tarot layer to her poems?
Speaker 1: And yeah, well, I'm glad you mentioned Daddy because that
Speaker 1: was one of the decoding books that I had to
Speaker 1: write and publish right away because it's so such an
Speaker 1: important poem. But if you read Daddy with an eye
Speaker 1: on Sigmund Freud, Okay, you can lie back now, Daddy,
Speaker 1: you know in that chair, you know, it's it's the
Speaker 1: story of Sigmund Freud. Actually, you know, the snows of
Speaker 1: the Tear, all the clear beer of Vienna, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all Freud. The other thing that those
Speaker 1: words are doing, I mean they're doing a lot. But
Speaker 1: the other, like big scream out kind of thing is
Speaker 1: it's Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness book, which she read
Speaker 1: with Ted Hughes. So there's this, Daddy is such a
Speaker 1: monumental tribute to all of these things. You know. There
Speaker 1: was a statue of Freud that she used to walk
Speaker 1: past often, and I went to see it in London
Speaker 1: and I took pictures and it's just as she describes it,
Speaker 1: ghastly statue with one gray toe big as a Frisco seal.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a weird statue the way they you know,
Speaker 1: the toe is sort of unformed, you know, as it
Speaker 1: blends into the rock. And you know, she's she was
Speaker 1: so brilliant. I mean, I just like, I am almost
Speaker 1: in tears just I get so excited about it. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, I suppose I got all
Speaker 1: excited there and I lost track of what your actual
Speaker 1: question was.
Speaker 5: He well, I was essentially asking, like she had so
Speaker 5: many personal elements or what people pointed to the personal
Speaker 5: elements of her poems with her father and in the
Speaker 5: case of Daddy and the German figure that everyone had
Speaker 5: just dealt with and so forth and Mammy, that these
Speaker 5: were these tarot elements kind of overlooked. And I wanted
Speaker 5: to ask too, that was that part of the thing
Speaker 5: that might have frustrated her and her husband as artists
Speaker 5: and trying to share the Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know that the German, of course is her background.
Speaker 1: She had an Austrian mother and a German father, and
Speaker 1: so most people just say Daddy, okay, auto Plath her father,
Speaker 1: and that aspect is there. Others will say, you know,
Speaker 1: panzer Man, panser Man. You know that, like you know,
Speaker 1: she's the Nazi aspect she's they're saying, she's projecting it
Speaker 1: onto Ted Hughes. That aspect's also there too. But as
Speaker 1: I said, we're also looking at Sigmund Freud, who was
Speaker 1: a racist by the way, you know, and very very
Speaker 1: much that that way were And as I said, addressing
Speaker 1: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and that book, so there's
Speaker 1: all of this layering and all of this stuff and
Speaker 1: how it works in all these different ways. Now that
Speaker 1: poem interestingly aligns with the suit of the queens in
Speaker 1: the Tarot deck. And at first, you know, you would
Speaker 1: think you would think it should be kings, right, but
Speaker 1: her queens are upside down, they're in reverse, and they're mad,
Speaker 1: and it's and so we get into climb clemen Estra
Speaker 1: and we you know, and and and you know and
Speaker 1: Medea and and all of these mythological queens that are
Speaker 1: just so pissed off, and it's all in there too.
Speaker 1: And so what you know, what my book does is
Speaker 1: it it tells each of each of the mythological's queen stories.
Speaker 1: So you read that story and then you look at
Speaker 1: the Plas poem and go, oh, it's climen Isstra And
Speaker 1: then you read you know, Medea and her story, and
Speaker 1: then you look and oh, she isn't there too. And
Speaker 1: then you read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness synopsis of it,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, holy smoke, that's been there too.
Speaker 1: And then you read about Sigmund fre Like what she
Speaker 1: could do with one set of words is so mind blowing.
Speaker 1: I mean like, I've never seen it. I've studied a
Speaker 1: lot of poetry. I'm sixty one years old, I taught
Speaker 1: creative writing in graduate level. I've never seen anything like
Speaker 1: what Plas has been able to accomplish. And I think
Speaker 1: she's she's beyond a one in a lifetime. She's one
Speaker 1: in a you know, in an eon in my opinion.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just believe this is divinely channeled stuff,
Speaker 1: and so it's my purpose to talk about it.
Speaker 2: That's great, that's great, A Lisa, did you want to
Speaker 2: say something.
Speaker 1: I was just going to touch upon.
Speaker 6: She has been very influential to a lot of musicians.
Speaker 6: You almost hear her propped a lot, or even lines
Speaker 6: from her poetry within their lyrics. What do you think
Speaker 6: I mean, is that like an I mean, obviously because
Speaker 6: of her genius and all that other stuff.
Speaker 1: Is that like a nod to her leanings?
Speaker 6: Was it more of a I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, what do you think inspired them to use her? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's freney. But it's funny because she was not
Speaker 1: into rock and roll at all, not at all. You know,
Speaker 1: the Beatles were just kind of coming out like now
Speaker 1: they were Beethoven, Plath in Hughes. They they liked their
Speaker 1: classical music. Plath liked opera, so she was she was
Speaker 1: not very hips as a young person. But what I
Speaker 1: can say is that I think the attraction, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're all caught up with with the beauty of Sylvia
Speaker 1: Plath and Ted Hughes. We're all caught up with that,
Speaker 1: you know, the physical beauty. We're all caught up with
Speaker 1: the tragedy of her story and really kind of her
Speaker 1: bravery in killing herself, and you know, and and and
Speaker 1: her words were so raw and so powerful, and I
Speaker 1: just think, you know, she became a myth. And you know,
Speaker 1: she called her father a high weight, flying myth, and
Speaker 1: I think she became that herself. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: one of those you know in the rock star world,
Speaker 1: which I also have a music background, I don't didn't
Speaker 1: even mention that, but I you know, there's the twenty
Speaker 1: seven Club where all the famous rock stars Jim Morrison,
Speaker 1: Jennis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, they die at twenty
Speaker 1: seven years old, you know, at the sort of peak
Speaker 1: in their career, and it's thought that, you know, that
Speaker 1: for some reason immortalizes them because they're at the height
Speaker 1: of their career, at the height of their power and
Speaker 1: their talent and their beauty. And that happened with Plath two.
Speaker 1: It wasn't twenty seven, it was thirty, but she was,
Speaker 1: you know, forever captured in that moment, and there's just
Speaker 1: this mystique to it, like with the rock stars, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, I sometimes wonder. I think all the time,
Speaker 1: could a Plath poem be published today, like if it
Speaker 1: was unknown, and I would think probably not. They're probably
Speaker 1: not smart enough to get it. Plus today there's this
Speaker 1: political agenda that even all the arts are pushing, you know,
Speaker 1: they're sort of like this higher we've lost the art
Speaker 1: and it's all politics today and that makes me crazy.
Speaker 1: But you know, so I think she probably wouldn't be
Speaker 1: noticed today. In the same way, I also wonder if
Speaker 1: she had been allowed to grow old, if if she
Speaker 1: would have if it would have quieted down perhaps maybe
Speaker 1: maybe not. You know, everyone says, what more could she
Speaker 1: have done? And yeah, I mean maybe she could have
Speaker 1: gone on. I kind of do think of her as
Speaker 1: like a Van go or even a Kurt Cobain of
Speaker 1: just you know what, jerro Jack Kerouac said that Roman
Speaker 1: candle that you know, just exploding it all early in life,
Speaker 1: burning it out fast, and you know, I it's it's
Speaker 1: a tragedy, but it's a beautiful tragedy, and the rock
Speaker 1: stars get that, you know.
Speaker 6: The It's interesting because most of her poetry is landscape
Speaker 6: and when I think of some of the Victorian era
Speaker 6: of that time, they were writing a lot about landscapes
Speaker 6: and kind of had tying that into the human frailty
Speaker 6: kind of you said, ben Go that on is that.
Speaker 1: Or what have you?
Speaker 6: But it's also interesting that I think you need the
Speaker 6: backdrop of what was going on at the time as well.
Speaker 6: Where's been very disassociated and I think that presented a
Speaker 6: perfect thing. But you know, you said thirty it's interesting
Speaker 6: because she had that Weathering Heights poem. And Emily Ronton
Speaker 6: died at thirty two, didn't she?
Speaker 1: Or yes, yeah, you know something the occult Sylvia Plath really,
Speaker 1: you know, what I really tried to do was show
Speaker 1: the historical context. So, like we have a series of
Speaker 1: poems Plath wrote in October nineteen sixty two. They're called
Speaker 1: the October Poems. Well, gosh, what was happening in October
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two The Cuban missile crisis And so if
Speaker 1: you know what, if you read it with that in mind,
Speaker 1: you're going to see all the nuclear war imagery. You're
Speaker 1: going to see the missiles, You're going to see the radiation.
Speaker 1: You're going to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the poem
Speaker 1: Aerial by the way, you know, it's the whole, It's
Speaker 1: all there, and yet people are missing it and they're
Speaker 1: just reading her drama. It's crazy. But even getting back
Speaker 1: to her story, you know, people talk about how Klatt's
Speaker 1: mother smothered her and was very suffocating. Well in New
Speaker 1: England at the time she was growing up, the Lindbergh
Speaker 1: Baby had just been kidnapped, and that baby disappeared and
Speaker 1: then was found dead and you know, and all the
Speaker 1: mothers were like, oh my god. You know, for those
Speaker 1: times that they hadn't that they didn't catch the guy,
Speaker 1: everybody was hysterical about their babies. And so it makes
Speaker 1: a sense. You know, you just have to read it
Speaker 1: all in context. And everybody's missed this. They're just all
Speaker 1: caught up in the drama. And Ted Hughes is a
Speaker 1: bad guy and she's raging on her husband, and it's
Speaker 1: so much more than that, so much more than that.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Julie, I just wanted to add this one. It's
Speaker 3: more of a note than a question, but I think
Speaker 3: maybe you'll find it interesting. It's something that you and
Speaker 3: Lisa both said, and I'm going to make it. I'm
Speaker 3: going to draw it into synthesis. So you said that
Speaker 3: she was much more formulaic using the tree with her
Speaker 3: poems or the terror or vice versa, where yes, Hughes
Speaker 3: was much more flexible or playful, as I think you
Speaker 3: phrased it, and he was able to sort of go
Speaker 3: back and forth. This is a very cabalistic idea that
Speaker 3: women are less dense than men, so they can climb
Speaker 3: the tree more easily, but they have to do it
Speaker 3: using a fixed map, otherwise they won't have any orientation
Speaker 3: to where they are, whereas men. Sorry about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just taught me something about kabala because I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. That's really fascinating. It makes perfect sense, right.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And then men have are stronger with the spoken word,
Speaker 3: so it makes them more mercurial and more playful. So
Speaker 3: they're more Oh, they're not so fixed necessarily in the
Speaker 3: suffer particularly, but maybe they get fixed in the past.
Speaker 3: Maybe men are more playful in the past. So I
Speaker 3: think that there's an idea there that there's like, I
Speaker 3: like that you can apply that sort of idea to
Speaker 3: them as archetypal people or as poets in general.
Speaker 2: It's a path much more of a path person myself, honestly,
Speaker 2: especially when it comes to even like symbolism on my
Speaker 2: own stuff. To use the paths instead of the see
Speaker 2: of themselves. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, is there anything Julia in the book that you
Speaker 2: would like to I guess make sure that you do
Speaker 2: talk about before we wrap it up, or something that
Speaker 2: you would really like to mention that is important to you.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Magic showed up in Plants Life very early on. One
Speaker 1: of the things I point out is she saw her
Speaker 1: own life, her own story in books she read, and
Speaker 1: they're throughout And I know this because I actually read
Speaker 1: the books that she read. They're all in the archives,
Speaker 1: and I noted the underlinings and the stars and the
Speaker 1: margin notes that she wrote, and she saw all these correspondences,
Speaker 1: all these magical relationships that you know, there's a book
Speaker 1: she read as a little girl called The Silver Pencil
Speaker 1: that was essentially, you know, about a girl losing her
Speaker 1: father at a young age, and she identified with it
Speaker 1: so closely, and it had a lot of weird correspondences,
Speaker 1: you know, the German father and he was a school
Speaker 1: teacher and you know, and all of these similar things.
Speaker 1: But maybe most interesting is throughout the later part of
Speaker 1: the book when Plath was with Hughes. She had read
Speaker 1: through Middle March, George Eliot's Middle March a number of times,
Speaker 1: lots of underlinings, and it was eerily her story with
Speaker 1: Ted Hughes and the things that were said, and she,
Speaker 1: you know, she would write in the margins, ha, you know,
Speaker 1: when she'd get, you know, very angry at something that
Speaker 1: Hughes had just done, that the character had done. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just amazing stuff. And so I wanted
Speaker 1: everyone to see that that she had this sort of
Speaker 1: spiritual connection with what she was reading, and she was
Speaker 1: very aware of that too. And lots of notes, lots
Speaker 1: of underlinings, lots of stars, and it's really fun to
Speaker 1: see how she interacted with her reading material. That's why
Speaker 1: fifteen years in the archives, I mean, I didn't get
Speaker 1: through at all. I probably could spend another fifteen you know,
Speaker 1: reading all the books she read and all of her notes,
Speaker 1: but I think I got through most of it, and
Speaker 1: I think I've done it right, so I feel pretty
Speaker 1: good about it.
Speaker 2: Listen, Well, that was really great. I mean, you can
Speaker 2: honestly tell that you are very passionate about it, you know,
Speaker 2: just the way you spoke about Yah, know the way
Speaker 2: you spoke about it. I mean, not too It's been
Speaker 2: a while anyway, but I mean I've had a lot
Speaker 2: of authors on the show, and there's a summer you
Speaker 2: could tell, like who's really passionate about what they wrote?
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. And you could definitely tell
Speaker 2: like this is this is something that you know was
Speaker 2: part of you? Where is part of you?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: That's great to see it.
Speaker 1: It is. It's why I'm here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great stuff. Uh do you want to remind
Speaker 2: everybody again with like where they can find your stuff
Speaker 2: and your books and yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well my website is Julia Gordon Bramer dot com.
Speaker 1: That's probably the easiest way to find me. You can
Speaker 1: write me through there. You know, I'm on all the
Speaker 1: social networks. I'm on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter or
Speaker 1: x I. You know, I'm pretty interactive. So I would
Speaker 1: love to talk to anybody if they wanted to reach
Speaker 1: out and and I love talking class, I love answering
Speaker 1: questions and and of course if they're interested in a
Speaker 1: tarot card reading, look me up there too.
Speaker 2: Listen. That's great. Yeah, but we'll have to get you
Speaker 2: back on one day for tower and cabbala. It would
Speaker 2: be a very interesting.
Speaker 1: I would love it, Yes, I would love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Especially I love, you know, promoting tarot people that
Speaker 2: use kabbala. I just feel like you get much more
Speaker 2: value out of those, This is my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good stuff, I guess and real quick, Ethan, real quick.
Speaker 2: Do you just want to remind people where they can
Speaker 2: find your stuff again?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I got a website. I think you usually link
Speaker 5: it below and I'm on all the social media and
Speaker 5: I'll be following you, Julia. I was very interesting and
Speaker 5: love to hear about your story related to her story,
Speaker 5: and so thanks for coming.
Speaker 2: Yes and Gin.
Speaker 3: Sorry okay, so thank you guys. Thank you Julia so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you Lisa than and of course Nick. Awesome to
Speaker 3: be invited. Obviously, I really love poetry at what plot,
Speaker 3: so it's kind of a perfect fit for me. I
Speaker 3: wanted to say that we should have discussed Ariel that
Speaker 3: obviously the poem, not the entire work, but because I
Speaker 3: think Nick would have found it really interesting with the
Speaker 3: colors that she uses right away he likes He also
Speaker 3: likes those colors. He's a bana enjoyer, as the I
Speaker 3: would say. So I just I just thought it was interesting.
Speaker 3: But people can find me in the links, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think the and on Twitter with Conrie Bourne. You can
Speaker 3: follow me and of course the show account Threshold Saints.
Speaker 3: Threshold Saints on Apple and Spotify listen.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, so Unlisan, Lisa, thank you very
Speaker 2: much for joining us.
Speaker 6: Yes, thank you, thank you Ethan Jin, and thank you
Speaker 6: Nick for inviting me. Julia, thank you so much for
Speaker 6: doing such a wonderful job. I look forward to your book.
Speaker 6: I am going to order it, and you've done her justice.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: And oh it's audiobook also, so if anyone's.
Speaker 2: Interesting, that's cool.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I'm going to throw this out there and
Speaker 7: then maybe we can have you on just specifically for Ariel,
Speaker 7: since Jin put it out there, I would love analyze Aeriel.
Speaker 6: And so we look at that because I think it
Speaker 6: is up. It's a series that really needs very in
Speaker 6: depth looking in, you know, meticulousness and teasing it all
Speaker 6: out because it's so layered, it's so in depth. So
Speaker 6: if if ever there's that, but thank you again, and yes, thanks,
Speaker 6: that's it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Lisa. Awesome and again Julia, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Really I had a blessed. This is really a great time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and uh, we definitely would like to get
Speaker 2: you back on for sure in the future if you're
Speaker 2: interested in her stuff. Again, everybody's links, but especially hers
Speaker 2: will be in the bottom, so check it out. And
Speaker 2: that's the end of another Occult Rejects and until the
Speaker 2: next one, everybody be well. Leda