Part Three: Helena Blavatsky: the woman who inspired the Nazis, and Gwyneth Paltrow

Robert and Jamie Loftus talk about Helena Blavatsky's time in the United States, inventing the "new age" movement.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M oh, how I wish that this was behind the bastards.
We were talking about Rick Springfield Jesse's Girl. It's everyone
here his favorite song. We all just learned, all of
us our favorite song is Jesse's Girl. Great songs. Speak
for yourself. What is your favorite song? Revert It's Jesse's

(00:23):
Girl by Rick Springfield. I want to, I want to.
I want to tell Rick Springfield that I love him,
But the point is probably moot. That was Jesse's Girl. Joe,
what's your favorite song? What song are you? I don't know.
I don't think you can really have a favorite song,
like because songs I have songs like I have. Um,
there's a Cat's in the Cradle just different. Now I

(00:45):
hate that song, but like for different songs for different moments,
right like when my mom died, the first thing we
listened to was Miserrare by the Cat Empire. Um, and
that's like a song for for that particular moment um.
But like you know, I like listening to Also, it's
of ship. I like, if I'm running, I'm gonna put
on some infected mushroom or some ship because I want
to like get moving. Um, if I'm sitting and writing.

(01:07):
I'm probably gonna listen to like Yonder Mountain String Band
and Green Sky Bluegrass doing like live shows at Red
Rocks and Ship because that works good with writing. I
don't know if I have a yacht rock moment. Yeah,
I like some yacht rock. I like you know who
I you know who? I Who? I like Jamie Loftus
is fucking every now and then in the right moment. Uh,

(01:28):
there's um, um the fucking Oh god, how am I
spacing on his name? Right? Five o'clock somewhere, guy, Margarita Ville.
Got Jimmy Buffett. Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, I went to Margaritaville
last night. That sounds I did. I got, I got,
And it's five o'clock somewhere. Uh, and it costs five
hundred dollars. And then I went to see Minions Rise

(01:49):
of Crew all buzzed up. Wow, Um, how was the
how was the drink? How was the Buffett Margarita? It
was disgusting? Yeah, they are. I love going to Margaritaville
because it is the trashiest place you can possibly be
as a human being. There's no you can't do battery acid.
It's not it's not alcoholic. Nothing. Can't get drunk there.

(02:11):
You can't get drunk there. You will get disgusting. You
will give yourself diabetes before you can get drunk at
a margarita Ville. But but hey, that's why I got
I have a fake volcano, at least the one in
Vegas does. And I love showing up housed at a
Margarita Ville in Vegas. Well, you have to because you
can't really make a lot of progress there. You just

(02:32):
you just get completely skull fucked on, like cheap liquor
that you bought at one of the liquor stores four
miles away from the strip, so it's not like completely
not You bring a flask in with you and you
add shipped to their terrible Margarita's and you have one
of the worst hamburgers of your life while you watch
a shitty's floor show. It's the best. I can't I
can't do the food there, even as a joke. I

(02:53):
can't do the food there. But I think it's too
bad to even eat as a funny joke. But yeah,
if yeah, five o'clock somewhere at Margaritaville, and then you know,
you bring like a couple of nips to put into
your soda at the movies, you sort some ketamine in
the bathroom of the back of your friend's phone, like

(03:13):
that's okay, and then that's and some people do that.
And I'm sure they did that while I was there,
because why not, Jamie, I've done that. I've done that
probably ever been less shocked in my life, probably while
you were there. Because I'm always at margarita Ville in
some form. I feel like we would really have a
good time at Margaritaville. I thought Margariteville at an airport
and now we're fucking fuck. Yeah, that's the good stuff.

(03:38):
And they just called it a Margaritaville. Exactly what I want. Okay. So, Jamie,
when we last left off, Helena Blavotsky H block H black,
Oh what h black? Something like that? What do we
do for her nickname? What do we call her? Anyway?
The Black, the Blacks, the Black, the Blatster had just

(04:01):
made her way to Crittenden to hang out with this journalist,
Henry olcott Um, who was getting hard old coot is
in this period, just getting super pilled on the paranormal, like, yeah,
the future president of Theosophy himself here yeah, he and
he again he starts off as like this upper middle
class lawyer guy who had like done an administrative job

(04:22):
so well in for the Union Army during the Civil
War that he got made a colonel and but had
just been like waiting his whole life for something weird
to make him feel special. And again he had he
had like he's he's like abandoned his family in order
to like become a seeker um his wife and kids.
He's a cool dude, Henry Olcott him. He meets Helena Blovotsky.

(04:42):
She she reads his articles about this farmhouse medium thing
in Crittendon and goes over and just like immediately wraps
this dude the funk around her finger like she's she's
this is and again she is not one of the
things that's interesting about here you talk about like l
Ron Hubbard, he's conning people constantly, right, just his life
is an endless series of cons that are at least

(05:03):
successful for a period of time. She's been failing pretty
much NonStop, like you feel like takes a special kind
of scammer to continue persisting in the face of only flops.
She is broke most of her scams or flops. When
she gets someone to believe in her, it doesn't usually
mean much of any money, Like she's not good at this.

(05:25):
So it says a lot about Henry that she so completely,
like instantly just like dominates this man's life and mind.
It's very funny. Um, he was just waiting for this,
Like you get the feeling with Henry Ocott. He's just
this guy who always wanted nothing but like some occult
lady to tell him there's magic. Like he just is

(05:46):
ready to be a wizard immediately. I mean, people are
like always looking for confirmation of this, and I feel
like like figures like Helena Blavoski, even though she like
could not pull off a scam for so long, like
they just like live in people's rains because they like
visually represent something that people want to be true, and
even though they prove it, they're just so ready. I

(06:07):
don't know, it's like an anesthetic appeal to It's part
of the thing like j. K. Rowling became a billionaire
because she was able to tap into that sort of
thing just within uh, because they were all like how
many of the people listening right now as little kids
like waiting to get a fucking letter from them a
magic school and ship like that's Henry Olcott. He's like,
that's he's like the first of those guys. He's like

(06:30):
a fifty year old man. He's a fifty year old
man who's abandoned hisst children so that he can learn
to be a wizard. One of those embarrassing people who
was like, where are those ugly graphic teams, like still
waiting for my letters? Yes, that that is Henry Olcott
um and he yeah, he falls for her immediately. She

(06:52):
she does some pretty basic cons um and he starts
to write articles about her. And I want to quote
now from an article published by the Oxford Unity Adversity
Press titled The West Turns Eastward. Quote. Ocott was impressed,
he began to write about her, and she therefore became
a prominent figure in the spiritualist movement soon afterwards, defending
first the authenticity of the Chittenen phenomena against a skeptical

(07:13):
doctor Beard, and then the authenticity of a similar of
the similar manifestations of John and Katie King in Philadelphia.
So we're not going to get into Katie King off enough,
but she's like this guy's dead, dying yeah, you want
to talk a little bit about Katie King. About Katie King,
Katie King, I mean, I god. I I also kind
of opted not to go into her on Ghost Church

(07:36):
because I feel like her story is like very adjacent
to there's like a lot of stories like this at
the time. But she she was a um, I feel
like just sort of another example of a physical medium.
Who I mean, her thing was like she went fucking big.
She had like an entire separate person that she could
quote unquote conjured. There was like a lot of magic involved,

(07:57):
like a lot of magic tricks involved, and she was
able to like really get a gigantic following. Uh and
then you know, uh is eventually exposed and uh in obscurity.
It's the same story, unfortunately they have a million times,
but it's but she's an interesting one. She she had
a lot of eyes on her at and it was
also like the sexuality element to her performance as well.

(08:21):
And she is one of the things that that Blovotsky
starts by doing is backing Katie King is like like
making these like writing articles and being because she she
realizes very because again she's she is She's not been
great as a con person but she's she's figured some
stuff out. Maybe it's just that she's older and she
kind of intuitively grasps that. Like, Okay, what I need

(08:43):
to be doing to start is not push in immediately
with my own grift, but established myself as a credible
expert on the paranormal, and then any time a paranormal
story goes viral, I want journalists reaching out to me.
Helena Blovotsky. I want to be the one. She's just
trying to become like a point of Okay, that's yes.
I didn't realize that there was because yeah, the woman,

(09:03):
so k that's how she starts. Janny King is the spirit,
Florence Cook is the medium. Um yeah, I'm not you
know whatever. I'm not really anti them, and but like yeah,
Arthur Corn and Doyle was really into another guy like
Henry Olcott, who was just a perfect mark from the beginning.

(09:23):
Um so Dr Beard, the skeptic mentioned earlier, describes the
two of them old Coot and Blovotsky this way. Quote. H.
S Olcott is a rabid spiritualist. He capitalizes both of
the R and the S and that and HP. Blovotsky
is an occultist who laughs one who laughs at the
supposed agency of spirits, but all the same pretends to
be one herself. But the criticism so like that's like

(09:46):
he notes that because again Blovotsky is she's coming at
this from a different angle than the actual spiritualists. She's
backing that these people are channeling something, but she doesn't
believe it like it's ghosts. She believes it's basically kind
of like psychic imprint some people. If I'm understanding her
argument correctly, Um and yeah. So the fact that this

(10:06):
doctor is like attacking her and attacking old cot again,
it's the same way ship works. Now it only heightens
her prominence and the weirdo spiritualist set. The fact that
like skeptics are attacking her for branding herself as a
paranormal expert helps to set her career off. Um and yeah,
and she and and also it sounds like she's also

(10:27):
like she's finding a way to like capitalize on the
hype of spiritualism without fully backing it, to like make
space for her to develop her own ideology. And part
of a part of I think why she's successful is
she's she's mutating it a little bit, right, it's the
same way of virus works. Right, you want to if
you want to escape and marine capture, you have to, like, yeah,

(10:47):
alter it a little bit. And that's what she's doing.
And that the fact that she's bringing something new to
what is by eight seventy five it's kind of boring, right,
Spiritualism is not new and exciting, and she is making
it exciting again by changing changing the game. In eighteen
seventy five, she writes an article in response to another
article on Rosicrucianism, and it was here that she first

(11:10):
described her beliefs in a concise way. Quote, occultism or
magic stands in relation to spiritualism as the infinite to
the finite, or as the infinite to the finite, as
the cause to the effect, or as the unity to
multifarious nous. So she's like, what you're actually seeing with
with these summonings isn't like the thing itself. It's just
like one thing you can do with these spirits, right,

(11:33):
And people are not People have not actually been like
exploring all of the things that magic can bring you. Now,
this was which is an interesting like flavor variation on spiritualism. Yes, yes,
and also opens up your ability to kind of like
grift off of it significantly. So this was a really
good time to be spouting that particular line of bullshit
because it was it was spiritual and religious. But also,

(11:57):
and this is something you alluded to early here, it
was more modern than religion itself, which was undergoing a
crisis at the end of the eighteen hundreds. Scientific advances
had rapidly thrown a lot of old knowledge into disarray,
and many people had come to believe that like scientific
progress and Christianity were in direct conflict. Geologists had pretty

(12:18):
recently shown that the world was a lot older than
people believed it was like six thousand years old because
some dude in the church like did weird Bible math
and like that. It was becoming clear that that was
not accurate. Uh, Darwin's theory of evolution was like starting
to really pick up steam in terms of like widespread
acceptance um. And also for the first time, the machines
people were making were like things that wildly exceeded anything

(12:42):
found in nature. Right up until pretty much this point,
the fastest way to travel anywhere unless you've got like
a train, is a fucking horse. Right now, people are
making like cars and ship there's like light bulbs and stuff.
Um right, that's yeah, that that is part of like
what is kind of like so fascinating about spiritualism was
like how they were able to at least for a while,

(13:03):
ingratiate themselves into like this is a scientifically bast religion.
And they still say that in every single Spiritualist service
that happens, and that Blovotsky starts. That Blovotsky is like
the primary motive force behind that switch. From the Oxford
University press quote, she described science and theology as too
conflicting titans between which a bewildered public was fast losing

(13:26):
all belief in man's personal immortality and in a deity
of any kind. She thought that her contemporaries needed a
religion that can meet the challenge of modern science, and
she thought that occultism provided just such a religion. So
when she's talking about the occult, she's thinking talking about
like spirits and gods and all that stuff and kind
of dealing with it technically the same way that you

(13:46):
deal with like physics to put a plane in the air. Um. Now,
as I've noted, she is unique in that she starts
pushing this in a really public way. Um. But she's
not an original thinker. She is not creating anything on
her own, and she does her best work. She's a
fan fiction writer, right, That's essentially what she's doing. So
many like horrible like eventually horrible spiritual leaders are fanfiction writer,

(14:11):
and she is. She is literally pivoting not off of
other spiritual texts that people are writing, but a huge
amount of what she's writing is her taking fiction that
other people had written and like repurposing it, particularly the
works of Edward Bulwer Lytton, who's the guy who wrote
The Coming Race, which is that book about like underground,
a super race. This is the dude to her Again,

(14:32):
her mom had translated some of these guys books when
she was a kid. Um And and Bulward Litton's stories
often centered on like a racer, a civilization that had
been kind of the font of all human culture and science.
There was also this idea of real which is this
like basically like the spiritual equivalent of electricity is kind
of the way Bulward Litton describes it. Um. Yeah, And

(14:54):
for Bolovotsky's unfolding, she basically she starts making the case
that like no Bulwar. Litton wasn't writing Fi and bull
where Litton was like tapping into something very true or
like you know, hiding it a little bit or whatever,
which is a fun one of Like they said they
were writing fiction, but they didn't realize they were tapped
into a higher spiritual power and it was a chance.
That's my My channeled texts are my favorite ship in

(15:17):
the world, because we'll be talking about that. Yeah, Jesus
wrote this like, Okay, okay, I have I have my favorite.
I own a couple when I was researching Ghost Church,
and my favorite one is um channeled from someone who
died on the Titanic. I would like that. I may
do that for my next book, but have it still
be about like Cyborg Superman fighting in a post Civil

(15:41):
war United States. But just be like, no, this was
absolutely written by a nine year old who died on
the Titanic, for sure. This is what the message for
the world. This is her story. I do get all
the proceeds, but this is her story. This is her
story about Horny Cyborg's in the seventies. She this is
what she wanted to teach people. It's an interesting one. Yeah. Um,

(16:04):
so for Bolovotsky's unfolding spiritual cosmology, India was going to
be like what she gave as the center and source
of ancient knowledge. She wrote that although many Westerners had
seen Egypt as the source previously quote, it has been
discovered that the very same ideas expressed an almost identical language,
maybe read in Buddhistic and Brahmanical literature. Now, Orientalists at

(16:24):
the time had started again because she's not creating anything
out of whole cloth, She's reading other people's work, and
a lot of Orientalists had started to make the claim
that Hinduism predated Christianity. Blovotsky added their work to her
own ideas and to bulwer Lytton. She mashed in real
bits of actual religion that she had encountered while traveling,
and she came up with a brand new story to
tell people. Quote, six thousand years ago, India had contained

(16:47):
a brilliant civilization that was overflowing with people. Later, a
matured section of these people had immigrated to eastern Ethiopia,
where they had become known as the Mighty Builders, and
from where they had colonized Egypt. And finally, Western culture
owed much to a Judaic law that had come from
these Egyptians. There was therefore an ancient wisdom that underlaid
all religions, and this ancient wisdom had definite Indian roots.

(17:08):
As Blovotsky explained, there is not one of all these
sects Cabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included, but sprang
from the two main branches of that mother trunk, the
once universal religion which anti dated the Vedic ages. We
speak of that prehistoric Buddhism, which merged later into Brahmanism.
Now none of that's accurate historically, right, Um. I think

(17:31):
experts on Buddhism and and Brahmans would all be like, well,
wait a second, that's not that's not at all what happened.
And also experts are just like where humans like obviously
people like the first human beings. I mean, again, this
is a contentious issue, but uh, it's not that that's
not what happened. There's no like, all of the evidence
we have is not that right, It's it's so like

(17:53):
that is like one of my feel like the huge,
huge issues with like all branches of spiritualism is like
spiritualism as a particular issue with historically misrepresenting indigenous culture
completely and just like co opting indigenous culture to say
whatever they need them to say. And then Blotski is

(18:13):
doing that in the East. She is and she's not. Again,
one of the things that you might argue as positive
is that kind of previously the dominant beliefs in Western
culture had been like Hinduism in Buddhism, where these kind
of like weird pagan degenerate, like not advanced savage and
stuff like this. These were the especially the British right.
This was one of the justifications the British had for

(18:34):
what they were doing in India was all of these
these Hindu practices that we we're just you know, in
their eyes, horrific um. And Blovotsky is is fighting against that,
is saying that Christianity and Judaism are like them, are
themselves kind of the degenerated um offspring of of of

(18:54):
like the of Brahmanism, of of of you know what
people call Hinduism. Um. So you can say that's positive,
but also it's not really. Nothing she's talking about is
real Hinduism or real real Buddhism. She's like using these
words and bits and pieces of these stories and mixing
it with like her favorite fantasy author. It's like if
you it's like if you took zoro Asterianism and like

(19:14):
jammed it into Game of Thrones and then told people
that that was like you're an actual religion. Well that's
the thing, is like and and and you know, knock
yourself out, but like keep it to yourself, yeah, or
like make it clear that it's film start like or yeah,
don't don't start, don't start a religious cult about it. Yeah,
there's nothing wrong. I feel like a fiction author of

(19:36):
being like, oh, these real world beliefs are interesting, and
I'm writing this fantasy book and I'm inspired by this
and by that like obviously fucked up waste. But there's
nothing inherently wrong with that idea. She is just saying, no,
this is the real Buddhism and the real Hinduism. Um,
and I'm I'm the one who actually knows what's what
these things are. That is that is extra. I mean,

(19:57):
it's like it's one thing to invent a religion that
is all religions, but to like steal, like dishonestly steal
from other religions in order to prop up your own
bunk religion is just like extra shitty. Here's the cool thing.
She's also kind of ship talking anyone who knows anything
about these religions, including like because she's the only one

(20:18):
who knows, because she's been I'm gonna read another quote
about that quote. Blavatsky justified her selective use of contemporary
occultism by using two interconnected distinctions. If anyone claimed that
Indian religions were not as she said, she simply replied
that this person had focused on either modern Hinduism or
the exoteric meaning of the Vedic works, not on the
true esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanism. She argued that scholars

(20:40):
often fell into the trap of taking modern Hinduism or
the Vedas at face value, when the true religion of
India remained hidden in the esoteric Brahmanical teachings of the Vedas. Indeed,
whilst Orientalists rightly had dated the Vetas as pre Christian,
we should not trust their interpretations of Vetic works, since
they could not perceive the inner meanings of these works.
Blotsky wrote, our scientists do not say nay, do not nay,

(21:03):
cannot understand correctly the old Hindu literature. And so again
she's framing this as like Westerners have misinterpreted this, but
she is also at the same time saying, actual people
in India aren't really worshiping proper Hinduism, modern Hinduism isn't right.
They don't understand the secret message of their own religion, right,
which is just like a galaxy brain asshole behavior like yeah,

(21:28):
it's pretty cool, it's pretty cool. Yeah, She's like, oh,
you think that my interpretation of an entire culture is wrong,
we'll argue at the wall. I guess you're just like, okay,
you just don't get the secret meanings of your own
religious texts. Um. So she began meeting with prominent Yeah,
this is this is like, this is like the absolute

(21:51):
highest tier of cultural appropriation. Like it doesn't it does.
It does not get more appropriating than this. This is
this is the top of that particular or mountain and
within spiritualist ideas that is really saying something. Yeah that
it is. It is quite an achievement. So she begins
meeting with all these academics, writers and celebrities. She starts

(22:11):
to get very famous doing this, like pushing this line,
bringing in these attitudes. She is part of why the
concept of karma gets to the United States in a
popular way, Um, it is because of Blovotsky and like
these this social scene that she sets up a New
York City that asking people how's your karma? Like becomes
common in the eighteen nineties. Like that is, we have

(22:32):
Helena Blovotsky to thank for that concept being part of
American culture in the way that it is, which is
not you know, to say anything about how karma is
actually treated in the religions and stuff, but like why
kind of our attitudes towards it. She starts that she
popularizes it here. Um, so she starts, she again, they
call them salons and stuff. She's always like hanging out

(22:53):
with celebrities and writers and ship in these like bars
and clubs and stuff, giving talks on different elements of
spirit rualis um um. And she has she develops that
she builds this following all these different little tricks for
like making people convinced that she's got the truth. Her
particular favorite is she would have a mysterious person who
was supposed to be her master kut Humi, teleporting from

(23:15):
Tibet to like New York, deliver a letter to another
person who was like she was trying to bring on
as a mark. Yeah, sorry, I forget. Is this a
real person or is this a person She's made up?
This isople so like basically another big spiritualism thing is
made up. So like yeah, sometimes it would be like
a person in a costume handing and we'll talk about
this later. Sometimes it would just be like a letter

(23:36):
falls out of, you know, somewhere in the building and
like lands on somebody's head and it's like, you know,
this is a letter written in the handwriting of kut whomie.
This is like my my master wanted you to have
this piece of information, and it's it's a big part
of like why people get on the Bolovotsky train is
like what she meets an individual and she's like, oh,
you're a popular journalist or like you're a celebrity, you've

(23:57):
got some clout. I'm going to make sure you have
this like encounter with Master kut Umi that he's like
he needs you to know this. That's why this letter
operated in front of you. You know. Um, And yeah,
it's it's it's fascinating. Um, it's real, real cool ship.
Her biographer Mary and Meade writes that in bringing Eastern
mysticism to the salons and upperclass parties of New York,

(24:19):
Madame Blovotsky quote paved the way for contemporary transcendental meditation.
Zin Harri Krishna's yoga and vegetarianism, Karma and reincarnations, Swammy's
Yogis and Gurus. She is the first guru in the
Western world in like the a proper sense. Um, yeah,
it's it's pretty good stuff, really really really smearing the

(24:42):
name of actual gurus. Yes, um, yeah, it's cool shit, Um,
it's very cool. Ship Jules Evans rights quote. She claimed
that she had discovered the lost city of Shambala and
the Gobi Desert, and they're encountered a great white brotherhood.
They were led by the Lord of the World, who
descended from the planet Venus. Other masters included Mano Matrea

(25:02):
Jesus and Buddha Mesmer, and two Indian gentlemen called Master
Moray and kut Humie. These two lived in a valley
in Tibet, in an underground city with subterranean tunnels, from
which they emerged occasionally to guide humanity and communicate with
their favorite adept Helena Blovotsky against this white brotherhood. There
was a secret order of dark forces, black magicians seeking
to gain power and harm humanity. In the words of

(25:24):
Peter Washington, Occasionally the war between the lords and brothers
reaches a violent public climax, and events such as the
Crucifixion of Jesus, when the esoteric becomes exoteric and the
secret struggle is briefly revealed. Okay, so this yeah, absolutely terrifying,
And I think the first time in Blovotsky speak where

(25:45):
this is like completely outside of anything that I've studied
with spiritualism, Like this is just like, is this the
hard left moment? Like this is so people have been
writing recently some kind of more mainstream journalists have noticed
that like the the New Age community and kind of
the occult community has like a fascism problem that has
been increasingly an issue. Yes, yeah, and and a lot

(26:09):
of that has come through Q and on. There's huge
New Age elements. It's very tight into like alternative medicine
and like uh meditation, like different kinds of like energy
healing and stuff. That's all really big in that community.
And there's this attitude that they're really separate. No, they
started these these conspiratorial beliefs about there being the secret

(26:29):
order of like white hats fighting the evil black hats
and the background of everything, and that all exogenic like
exoteric conflicts are like really the result of this secret
occult conflict that is the start of the New Age movement.
That Helena Blovotsky is the start of the New Age
in in a modern sense in the United States. She's

(26:50):
the one who not only to physical health and stuff
like yeah, well and as it as it pertains to
taking things from the East and mixing them up with
like other stuff too, right, Like you can't you can't
separate all of that, like Blovotsky is again obviously she's
not starting or creating any of this from whole cloth.
She's mixing up strands, but she gets the mixture in

(27:12):
its modern sense right for the first time. Right, Yeah,
And god that I'm sorry that that that passage is
really sticking in my mind incredibly fucked. It's so interesting,
Like the things that she's stealing are so like I mean,
she's stealing in a way that I understand why. It
like resonated with your audience at the time, and you

(27:34):
can see how it just like descends into fucking madness
so quickly. The stuff with like the energy healing stuff
is always an interesting discussion to me because there's some
people now who, like, I think the real issue is
like when it's brought as like and you cannot use medicine,
like medicine is not a thing you can use, it
can only be this, and then that is like, uh,

(27:57):
you're going to die, like goodbye. Um, And that's like
I think part of why like a lot of new
age people are so vulnerable to like anti vax rhetoric
as well, which like so many of them are and
I don't know, it's it's weird. When I was in
Florida doing research there there were some people who were
like energy healing overall medicine and it's like you're in

(28:18):
dangers and then there but there also were people who
are like I I like that kind of stuff, but
but I use it as a tool, like almost more
of a meditative tool. And then I also go to doctors,
which I don't really give a shit about either way.
She's actually I mean part of when there are a
couple of points in her life where she has health
issues and it's hard to tell what's real because a

(28:39):
lot of her health issues are like diagnosed by doctor.
She channels UM, so it's yeah, like that's going on
here too, Um like it's it's it's cool. Although I
haven't come across her saying anything in particular about vaccines.
Although this is the eighteen seventies so that was less
of a thing. Yeah, but you know what is a thing,

(29:00):
Jamie loftus capitalism? Babe, Wow, hot take thank you. Here's
some ads. Oh we're back. You know what I liked
about those ads, Jamie? I like that they were ads
from Margaritaville. God, wouldn't that be amazing? What if you

(29:22):
had like the Black Card for Margaritaville, Oh god, where
they put actual alcohol in the drinks? Yeah? Yeah, they're
like did you know that? We don't. These bottles are
full of water, battery acid. With the with the black card,
you get actual alcohol and they'll go get you a
burger from five of guys, so you can actually consume
something that's that's edible or they're like at very at

(29:46):
least they're like, hey, um, so the burgers still aren't good,
but they're not like mysteriously wet. So there you go. Yeah,
wet in a way that isn't right for meat. So no,
it's not moist, it's we it's wet, it's soaking wet. Anyway,
go to Margaritaville. We love it so. In his first

(30:07):
in his first article about Helena Blovotsky, Henry Olcott had
described her as quote a Russian lady of distinguished of
distinguished birth, which is accurate. Um. He had also described
her as having rare educational and natural endowments, which is
also probably accurate, although I think he's kind of saying
she's hot there. Uh. Then he listed what we're becoming
the standard cliffs notes of her life. She had traveled

(30:28):
in most lands of the Orient, looked for and tiquities
at the base of the pyramids, beheld the mysteries of
Hindu temples, and traveled with armed escort far into the
interior of Africa. Um, which I don't believe she ever
spent time in Africa other than like northern Africa, like
Egypt and stuff. But she's not in the Congo and
ship um. But that's popular at the time, right, this

(30:51):
is the scramble for Africa going on Africa, Like white
people can't not get enough stories of explorers in Africa,
so she's got to throw that in the resume now.
At first, Helena played koe about her beliefs regarding spiritualism.
She didn't think any of the mediums who dotted the
land were speaking to ghost but again basically psychic echoes.
She was also an occultist, so she believed that magic
could be used to accomplish things um. Once she'd known

(31:13):
Old Cott for a while and in the subject of
several articles, she confided to him that she had a
secret purpose in the United States, which was to reveal
the truth about spiritualism to people. So she brings Old
Catt and she's like, look, hey, this is all like
do you want to join me in my secret quest
to like pill the world about the occult um, Like
the United States needs to know that they've been getting

(31:34):
spiritualism wrong, and like I'm trying to sneak into this
community to to to to get this across. So in
her public writings and statements, she gradually becomes more and
more emphatic about her true beliefs, and this leads to
something of an uproar in the spiritualist community. Some people
pointed out rightly that it was dishonest for her to
hide her real feelings just to make a name for
herself in a field she didn't believe in. She would

(31:55):
later make up lurid stories about how she'd attempted to
join occult groups in Europe and the United States have
been kicked out due to some nefarious plot. To keep
her from spreading her knowledge to the general population, she
would like fake death threats against herself. She would also
fake letters from different occult organizations to Old coot Um
in order to like be like, you have to do
this where the order of the fucking I know, some

(32:17):
some Osiris or some ship in Egypt, and like, you
need to do this. Where do you find the fucking
time I did? I think it's interesting that it doesn't
like like she would. She would have infiltrated kind of
any place that was vulnerable to her, infiltrating it. And
I and I because I was sort of like, because

(32:37):
her ideas divert so wildly so quickly, you're like, why spirituals?
And you're like, oh, I guess that there's only so
many religious movements that were accessible to women at all,
So that would have been an easy one. Yeah, I mean,
there's a number of reasons it makes sense. So after
her articles with old Cotts start to really get big,
she gets a letter from a guy named Jerry Brown
who has a popular magazine called The Spiritual Scientist, and

(33:00):
he basically over time agrees to like starting with just
kind of give it letting her write articles. He basically
turns his magazine into her personal mouthpiece, which she uses
to spread her belief Stephen Wider yeah Um. Eventually all
the press around her earns her another interview with the
mainstream publication. Like the first real big one focused on her.
It's by the Daily Graphic, which is a sizeable publication

(33:21):
at the time. Mead writes quote at the newspaper office,
she blew smoke at the reporter and narrated a life
story peppered with more falsehoods than a cookie has crumbs.
Knocking three years from her age, she presented herself as
a former child bride married to a doddering seventy three
year old whose habits were not agreeable to me, and
as I had a fortune of my own, I decided
to travel. She mentioned, having lived in England and Egypt,

(33:42):
also in the Sudan, where she made a small fortune
after cornering the Ostrich feather market and at baden Baden,
where she lost a fortune at the gambling tables. In fact,
she declared moneyment nothing because fortunately she had received a
sizeable legacy from Princess Bagration. Goggling. The reporter kept lighting
Helena's cigarettes and repeating that's a remarkable statement, to which
HBP would solemnly reply it's true. Name dropping constantly, she

(34:06):
reeled off stories about Daniel Home, Charles Darwin, whose work
she claimed to have translated into Russian while in Africa,
Zar Alexander, and other persons likely to impress a newspaper reporter,
and he seems to be kind of both a little
bit it's a combination of like laughing at her but
also kind of dazzled by her. Um. He again describes
her as handsome and voluptuous in his article. A lot

(34:28):
of all the guys who write about her have to
talk about her appearance and stuff. Yeah, yeah, um, it's
it's it's interesting stuff, um and yeah. By eighteen seventy five.
By late eighteen seventy five, she's probably the most influential
occult and spiritualist like related figure in the country. And
she decides then that it was finally the time to

(34:50):
form a secret society, this one themed after the Rosicrucian
lodges that she believed had once existed. So she and
Olcott start what they called the Miracle Club, which sounds
like a modern like yeah, like everyone puts in ten
dollars and yeah, that does sound like a place that
I could walk by. It's it's it's it's pretty good.

(35:12):
Even Lochman admits nothing too miraculous happened in it, but
he doesn't really talk about what the Miracle Club is.
Mead goes into a lot more detail. She says it
was basically a private seiance club for New York socialists
who were forbidden to speak about what they saw during
the seances um, which was mainly just to like make
them feel special, right, like if you make everyone sign
a blood introduced the exclusionary element, and this was like

(35:36):
a big like especially in New York City, was like
middle upper class kind of yeah, I mean to be honest,
this is this is just a precursor to like the
board Ape Yacht Club and stuff like, oh you get
this like secret chat room with all these influencers and
stuff and like nobody gets to know what goes on
in there. And it's funny because usually what happens is nothing,
nothing at all, because these are these are very boring

(35:58):
people looking for something to make them feel exciting. Um
So the medium that she brought on for this is
a guy named David Dana, whose brother was the editor
of the New York Sun, Which is why she picks
him right, because she's she's always looking for publicity. The
whole thing collapses though, because Dana wanted to be paid
for the work that he was doing, and Blovotsky was like, oh, no,
you're we're not going to pay you for doing this
thing that's making us a bunch of money. Um So

(36:20):
he does the nineteenth century version of canceling her on
social media. Um Olcott later wrote quote The Wretch failed utterly,
not only as a medium, but was also reported to
us as having spread calumnies against the one who had
done him kindness, the kindness of unpaid labor. Um. Yeah,
he's being paid an exposure, Robert, he is getting paid
an exposure. But also they can't talk about it. Listen,

(36:42):
that's been that's look, that's how I didn't make an
income for six or seven years. Um, you were famously
channeling people from my miracle club, um, which we're not
allowed to talk about everyone. No, no, So despite her
growing notoriety, times were tough for an aspiring spiritual guru. Uh.
An economic recession had brought a swift into the easy

(37:05):
cash that some spiritual grifters had enjoyed over the last
few years. In a letter to a friend, Bulovotsky wrote,
there is terrible panic. Those who have got money hide it,
and those who have not are dying of hunger. It
all does sound a lot like in f t S. Honestly,
like there's a weird similarity between like that crash and
like the way they write about it at least, um
I know, but it's like I also don't really by

(37:28):
how she writes about it, Like I I just assume
almost anything she says is like overblown, like blown out
of proportion because of her flair for the dramatique. And
she yeah, she's she's claiming in some of these letters
that her income, she's making more than six thousand dollars
a year, which is like a lot of money in
the day. That's a very healthy income. But she's also
claiming at the same time, I'm broke because I keep

(37:49):
putting all of the money back into the movement. Um, right,
So like she yeah, could be true. I mean it's
like hard to there, I know, at least with spiritualism,
but they're they're was always an issue with like the
being like an influential movement, but the numbers being like
constantly like really really really inflated to the point where

(38:10):
everyone was like, how could this religion be going broke?
And it's like, well, not as many people are a
part of it, as they're saying, And it seems fair
to say that, like primarily the thing keeping her going
is old Coot, who's good at raising funds, who's good
at like putting money together and stuff. And he had
like pre existing class, yes, yes, and he's making sure
that there's always money, and she's kind of working him

(38:30):
to the bone, right because she has expensive tastes, including
a pound to day tobacco habit. Now. At the time,
the center of Bolovotsky social life was the Lotos Club,
a parlor where she and Oldcott held court with regular
audiences of spiritualists, mediums, and quote bright clever people of
occult leanings. According to old Coott. Many of the latter
were scientists, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and other people with a

(38:52):
kind of influence and resources that could support growing movement.
One of them, Reverend doctor J. H. Wiggan, edited a
paper call The Liberal Christian. He wrote after a visit
that topics Yeah, yeah, yeah Christian, he wrote after a visit.
The topics discussed in the Night at the Salon included
whether or not flowers had souls, penises, and religious worship, gravitation,

(39:15):
something called jugglery and chemistry. I think it's juggling science. Junglery.
Isn't that just physics? Like what? Um, that's that's it's
so that like that sounds so silly. And I'm also like, yeah,
that's like exactly the kind of like conflations that would
happen all the time of like stuff that sounds absolutely ridiculous.

(39:37):
But like at the time you're like, yeah, let's not
rule out that flowers have souls because uh, there's we're
about to get fucking planes and like X rays exist,
like and ice cream has been invented. Yes, it's it's
it's awesome. Um and it's yeah, it's it's it's It's
interesting one of the things that this guy complains about

(39:58):
that a lot of people complain about her chain smoking
and how bad it makes everything smell. And again, this
is the eighteen seventies, and dudes keep being like this
lady smokes a lot, Like this lady is smoking too much. No,
one is never not smoking in this period, and she's
smoking to alarm someone in eighteen seventy. Think about think
about how much a cigarette ways, and think about what

(40:20):
a pounded day of tobacco actually means to smoke. That's
like a brick of cigars. I kind of blocked that
out since our last recording, and a pound that that's
a nightmare amount of tobacco. I hope that that is
the only figure in this entire story that has not
been inflated. Then I don't think it is. So it is.

(40:43):
One of the reasons why I think that's probably accurate
is so many different kinds of people comment on it
that like, yeah, this lady smokes like nobody I've ever seen. Um. Now,
it was from this poorous group of hangers on who
formed Bolvatsky's Parlot that the Theosophical Society would develop meat rights.
On Tuesday, September seven, a crowd of seventeen gathered in

(41:03):
her parlor to hear George H. Felt, an engineer and architect,
give an unusually dense lecture on the lost canon of
proportion of the Egyptians. This was not Felt's first appearance
at Madame's, for he had been introduced by one of
the regulars, Charles Southern, a rare book expert who was
editor of the American Biblio Bibliopolist. Helena had Felt had

(41:23):
found Felt interesting and asked him to give an informal
lecture which would offer her guests something out of the ordinary.
Having brought with him some nicely done illustrations, Felt began
somewhat ponderously by explaining his theory that the architectural proportion
employed by the ancient Egyptians was actually observed in templar hieroglyphics.
The audience proceeded to yawn, but visibly perked up when
Felt went on to remark that the Egyptians had been

(41:45):
adepts and magical science, and that some of their hieroglyphic
figures were realistic drawings of elementals, the messenger spirits who
pop up at seances. He himself he added modestly, had
discovered an ancient formula for evoking elementals. Would it be
possible for him to do a demonst ration? Could he
actually call forth an elemental? He announced that he could
if they were willing to finance the operation and pay

(42:06):
for his time. Of course, Henry wrote an old diary leaves.
We passed on an informal vote of hearty thanks for
his highly interesting lecture, and an animated discussion followed. While
people were chatting, it occurred to Henry that it would
be good, a good thing to form a society to
pursue and promote such a cult research. On a scrap
of paper, he scribbled, would it not be a good
thing to form a society for this kind of study?

(42:27):
And handed it to William Judge to pass over to HPB,
who read it and nodded her head. Olcott got up
and presented his idea to enthusiastic Murmurs and George Felt
promised he would teach them to evoke and control elementals.
Thus it was unanimously agreed that Olcott Society would be formed.
This is what becomes theosophy which this based on. That

(42:48):
description does sound kind of par for the course with
how um the Great Beyond and science were kind of
related at the time. There's usually some sort of like
scientific like intermediary So for like I mean, you know,
because you were you would Paul left as we're all
we're on the entire episode. It was like ectoplasm that

(43:09):
was like an excreting goop that mediums could make that
would connect you to the like this this all sounds
kind of par for the course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yet I feel another hard left well again because they're
number one, They're they're trying to like actually control this stuff,
which is which is different, but um no, it's not

(43:30):
wildly different from the kind of things that are going
to come later on. And part of that, part of
like the fact that it isn't wildly different, is why
Bulovatsky is not that into it at first. Again it's
old Coot. He's the guy who starts what becomes the
Theosophical Society. Um. Now, obviously later on she would claim
that the society had been formed by her. Her master

(43:51):
in Tibet had ordered her to make a society and
like that's how it had started, Um my imaginary friend. Yeah,
but she only starts claiming that after it gets big, right, Um, Like,
at first it's it's small. There's like financial difficulties. Um yeah,
we'll talk about that in a second. But when they
form what becomes the Theosophical Society, Um, it's with the

(44:13):
promise to provide seekers with quote, a synthesis of science, religion,
and philosophy. The Society had three objectives. Number one, to
form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without
distinction of race, creed, sex, cast or color. To to
encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science. Three
to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers
latent in man. Now, despite again her later claims, Plovotsky

(44:36):
seems to have mostly sat back and let Olcott do
the organizing and fundraising. Will she like, smokes a bunch
and goes on vacation. I mean, someone's got to keep
mommy full of SIGs. Yeah, keep Mommy full of figs.
She's she's um and you know she Uh. It was
the kind of thing where she would be very hands
off until he did something she didn't like, and then
she would have she lose it. Well, she would know

(44:58):
she would have one of her ghosts or her spirit
friends sent him a letter that's like, oh, the guys
in Tibet wants you to do something different, buddy, Okay,
that's yeah, Um, yeah, it's pretty cool. Um. Of course
there were issues at once, namely the fact that George
Felt never managed to summon an elemental UM. Henry was
hesitant to throw more of the of the Society's money

(45:19):
at the man, but Helena convinced him that he would
do the deed eventually, So Henry kept putting Society money
into like fund. This guy who was a grifter, Felt
takes the money and like just disappears eventually. Um. And
this causes skeptics in New York to mock the society
membership falls. There's like articles about this stuff, and Helena
herself stops attending meetings entirely. Um. Now, she had a

(45:41):
lot to worry about in her personal life. At this point,
she had gotten bigumously married and was struggling to hide
her second husband from her first one. UM. She had
also started to oh, there's these these two fucking guys.
It's not important. Um. But yeah, she's definitely like illegally
married to two people at the same time. Um. She's
also started to work on a book, which Meade writes

(46:02):
was intended to quote salvage the ancient world from the
modern stigma of superstition and ignorance. In short, she wanted
to write a book that would synthesize all her knockoff
Buddhist and Hindu beliefs with American spiritualism. For months, Henry
funded her writing and trips to upstate New York to
do more writing while she smoked and fucked her illegal husband's.
She is not getting a lot of writing done for
the first year or so that she's working on this book. Um,

(46:25):
but she is getting a lot of illegal marriage stuff done.
So that's that's good. You know what else is illegal? Jamie?
What all the products that we're about? Product this podcast?
This week is crime Week, and we are entirely sponsored
by illegal explosives. Umme week, controlled substances. Uh, the works

(46:47):
of Woody Allen. Yeah, um, all all our sponsors. You've
lost me, you've lost me. Well, yeah, you know you're
going to be into crimes. You've got to be into crimes, Jamie. Okay, Well,
I I renounced. I renounced that brand of Let's just
cut to a break it's just cut to a break
rather than discussing the Christine Oh my God minions. Yeah,

(47:16):
I go see minions. We're back, Jamie. Do you think
Woody Allen got minions? Like if they follow around violins
talking to you about Woody Allen any more? Can I
tell you something though? Um? I? Do you know how
I told you earlier? I was eating easy Mac before
the episode, Yes, but only because I was eating swift Mac.

(47:41):
I was eating off brand easy Bac called swift Mac.
Is it easier or is it harder? It was harder
and less good. Do you think the Minions had anything
to do with Swift Mac? No? I don't think that. No,
because they're They're one thing get to know about the
minions are abys. They love bananas, and that's kind of
like they're only interesting. Yeah, there's something freudy and going

(48:02):
on there, But you think the minions are going to
explore that. I don't. Speaking of bananas, um and speaking
of the minions, primarily, oct is Helena Blavotsky's minion um
and so wow, she's she's bigorously married, she's like him,
she grew he's minions. Yeah, she has definitely grew and
and again, she's she's kind of abusing him during this

(48:25):
period of time because she's she is living she is
living well, right, She's not only like has these secret husbands,
but like she's she's living a life of leisure and
luxury off of society money which is provided by olcott Um.
And at the same time, she has started to preach asceticism,
the idea that like, in order to be an occultist,

(48:45):
you have to avoid all of the pleasures of the flesh.
You can't have sex, right, a good occultist isn't fucking.
You have to be like celibate, you don't eat meat,
you have to be a vegetarian. Um, you can't drink alcohol.
And like Henry, a lot of the early ulchure of
like the salon and stuff that they ran together was
like based on drinking. They had a bar. So he

(49:05):
changes his life on a dime when she starts preaching this,
and in fact, he gets so obsessed with like the
different rules about food that she is not abiding by herself,
but that she makes that he becomes anorexic, Like he
stops eating for days at a time. Yeah, it's she.
She really does a number on this guy and Oh
my god, that's so um that makes me so sad

(49:28):
for that was the twist I wasn't expecting. He is
such a he is such a follower to her, like
it's amazing. Like again, there's it's either brain you could
look at it that way and maybe that's the right
way to do it, or maybe it's just that like
for whatever reason, this guy had a hole in his
life that she just figured out perfectly how to fill.

(49:49):
Like you do you get the feeling with Old that
he was always waiting to be this guy while he
was like kind of like sleepwalking through life successfully. He
was like this is the thing that he wanted was
to like be this which lady wizard ladies yeah yeah yeah.
Um so while while he's living this way at her orders.

(50:14):
Thomas Stawazinski describes Blovotsky's lifestyle. She worked on it the
book every day, stopping only for meal breaks. Her favorite
food was fried eggs soaked in butter. She smoked one
cigarette after another. Old Codd estimated that she could get
through up to a hundred cigarettes a day. Madame claimed
she received a lot of her materials and telepathic messages
from Morea and Kut humie, but healthy lifestyle advice seemed

(50:35):
to be on the master's area of expertise um, and
she does eventually come out with her book. It takes
her a couple of years, but isis unveiled comes out
in September of eighteen seventy seven. Thomas writes, quote, it
was founded on one major claim. All the religions of
the world, both those currently followed and the ones to come,
derived from one common source, ancient her medic philosophy. It's

(50:57):
basic premises are contained in Corpus her medicum, a tech
of unclear origin, translated into Italian and popularized in the
fifteenth century by a Renaissance philosopher and Marsilio Ficino. According
to Corpus Hermeticum, the universe is an intricate system of
various emanations. Material reality is a product of a complex
evolutionary process which subtle spiritual levels of existence create new layers,

(51:18):
dinser and more physical. The history of the human race
is subject to the same law, but in fact it
works in an opposite direction than proposed by Charles Darwin.
Humans evolved downwards, so to speak, from advanced spiritual beings
to more lowly forms but there is another aspect of
it too. The human spirit, trapped inside the physical body
misses the perfection of higher planes of reality. The spirit
can develop and protect and perfect itself through theosophy to

(51:41):
turn to its sources as soon as possible. Therefore, evolution
is too directional. Now, Jamie, does that sound like a
religion that's popular in the town where you currently live?
Does that sound at all like scientology? To you? We
are spirit and you can teach yourself to Yeah, exactly, now,
sorry for us. Good. I thought you're talking. I thought
you were your ship talking Brock to Massachusetts and I

(52:03):
was like, no, they're all Catholics there, Uh no, yes, absolutely,
And this is uh yes, it's it's fan fan like
scary fan fiction religionship. Yeah. And l Ron Hubbard is
He's obviously not alive when she is doing her ship,
but he is. He is he enter her? I actually, yes,
he's hugely into Blotsky. He's reads her a bunch when

(52:26):
he's younger, like because he's he's very much into the
occult ship of the twenties. He has sex magic with
Jack Parsons, the inventor of the rocket and ship right
like he is absolutely into this ship. Yeah, and he's
clearly he's Yeah, in the same way she's like ripping
off the corpus her medical the corpus her medicum. She's
taking bits of Lward Edward Bulward Litton stuff. She's mixing

(52:48):
in like Eastern religion. L Ron Hubbard is just doing
a version of what she did to her stuff too, right,
Like that's and he's like mixing and in his case,
he's taking the new fairly new science at the time
of like psychology and mixing that in with this occult
is stuff. Um right, well it's also and like at
the beginning of psychology was also like influenced by spiritualism

(53:09):
at the first psychological text evolved spiritualism and then like
phased it out pretty thoroughly by like their early nineteen hundreds.
But like early stuff which I just didn't didn't know. Um,
but yeah, all this ship is interconnected. But that is
that is very uh, that's that's ringing some miscabbage bells

(53:30):
for Jamie now before isis unveiled. Helena Blovotsky had been
again very prominent in the New York weirdo occult is
spiritualist scene because of her writing there were people around
the world who knew of her. But after this book
is a hit, and after it she becomes a bona
fide celebrity. Suddenly the Theosophical Society was swarmed with new
potential members. New York High Society began to delve back

(53:51):
into alternative religion, now with a much stronger occult angle.
From time to time, Blovotsky would put on shows summoning
objects from far away, having letters delivered by her, reporting
spectral masters, masters, etcetera. With fame came mo money, but Jamie,
with MO money came MO problems. Journalists time I'm hearing this,
I know I invented that phrase. Journalists began to turn

(54:13):
their eyes to her budding empire, and they start tearing
apart her claims of celibacy and a staticism because she's claiming, like, right,
I have never had sex, you know, I don't indulge
in any these vices of the flesh, which like she's
out in public doing all this stuff. Like everyone who's like, yeah,
she's like bigamous, lee married, everyone talks about it, and
like she's constantly smoking and eating all of this rich
food like where it's like, yeah, like live your life

(54:35):
but that's yeah, you're not composition everything you say that.
I can't get past your use of the phrase budding empire.
Yeah it is. She's she's making an empart. Yeah, I know,
but that phrase is just really um, it's like it's
a horny phrase. It is a horny phrase. Um. And
Helena Blovotsky probably a pretty horny person, if you can judge.

(54:58):
She was biguously married. But but we're we're not ready
to talk about that, no. Um. So it was pointed
out that many of these letters seemed to be written
in her handwriting by these journalists who start like tearing
her apart um. And so it just becomes like the
fact that she gets famous also leads to a lot
of negative attention. Um. And you get the feeling it

(55:19):
just kind of overwhelms her at a certain point. And
now that she's got money, she has the opportunity to
like maintain and build this religion that she started somewhere
other than the United States where people are looking too
much into her business. L Ron Hubbard does this too, right.
He moves to England and he takes to the sea.
She goes to England first, also like Ron Hubbard, and
sets up offices there. But after she's like established theosophy

(55:43):
in England, she moves to India, and that is what
we're going to talk about in part four, along with
finally a lot more information about how she accomplished a
lot of these tricks, because it's after India that becomes clear.
And then we're going to talk about the Nazis. But Jamie,
you know who's not a Nazi? Definitely me? That's right,
That's right. Why don't you plug your awesome credit for me? Um? Okay,

(56:07):
you can listen to my podcast ghost Church on cool
Zone Media. It's about the history of American spiritualism, which
I think we've officially now diverged from just in the story, um,
And so you can hear about the history and then
me going to a spiritualist camp in Florida there or

(56:28):
you can follow me on Twitter or Jamie long to
help Instagram, Jamie christ Superstar. Go find Jamie on the internet.
Listen to Ghost Church. It is the best podcast that
you can listen to right now. Um. Your episode, Um
was truly I think my favorite in the series. You
and Paul just really it was good. You know you

(56:50):
there's a lot on the cutting room floor when you
when you finally release the loftist cut um, and that
that full five hour conversation we had. Um. Yeah, I
think that people are going to be upset, but that
people will you know, it would be controversial to at
least a lot of what was said. Yeah, And I honestly,
you know, I've gone back and forth on this a lot,

(57:10):
but I think a lot of what we said about
Donald Rumsfeld was legally slander. Um. But well, why do
you think you did right? Jamie Loft is protecting Donald
Rumsfeld and you the listener go home and find a
way to protect Donald Rumpsfeld in your own life. Until
Part four