Blood Magic: The Fact and Fiction of Human Sacrifice

Human sacrifice is an ancient, surprisingly common and widely-misunderstood practice found in cultures across history. These ritualized murders occurred in all manner of ways, often as an alleged means of bargaining with or seeking favor from the Divine. Nowadays, most people dismiss it as a barbaric practice of older civilizations -- but as Ben, Matt and Noel argue in tonight's episode, there's a huge conspiracy a lot of modern folks are missing. Stay tuned for the twist at the end!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
My name is Matt, my name is Noah. They called
me Ben.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Faga. Most importantly, you are you.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
You are here.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
H Spoilers ahead, folks, quite a few spoilers. We're gonna
have a big twist at the end of this episode. Also,
this episode may not be appropriate for all listeners. Guys, gents,
riddle me this. What's the first thing we think about

(01:01):
when we hear the word or the phrase human sacrifice?

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Well, I mean pop culture.

Speaker 5 (01:07):
You already called it, Ben, with the setting whatever you
call it, the set up quote?

Speaker 3 (01:11):
What do you call that?

Speaker 5 (01:12):
When you have a quote in the first page of
a book, There's got to be a literary name for
that temple of doom. That's the most problematic and long
lasting image I think most of us had growing up
of the idea of human sacrifice.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Kali Ma, Kali Ma, and then meso America obviously Kali Mai.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
What do you got, Matt, And that's something different.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I was going to say the Twin Towers, but that
might be off whoa or maybe the school of Children
in Iran.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
Maybe oh geez, you're not having any fun with this
at all?

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Sorry, Or maybe are like big twist at the end, right,
because we are talking about human sacrifice, and so for
a lot of people in the West, you are going
to think of problematic films like Indiana Joe in the
Temple of Doom. You might think of the breathless descriptions
that have descended from the Conquistadores when they invaded meso America.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
You know, superstition.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
You may think about the Bible, as there are many
additions of blood sacrifice in.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Near ex slew, Why who slew? Why who? Then slew?
And then well, just goodied Abraham.

Speaker 5 (02:26):
That's just that's a great mitchell a web sketch, by
the way, I don't know that one, but it's a
sketch onto itself in the Bible, you know, the old able.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Sketch and the various things you're supposed to bring to
the altar according to the Old Testament, and U often
not people to be sacrificed for their blood and or
other reasons, although if you read into it it does.
It's a little strange.

Speaker 5 (02:51):
You've got to bring something to the altar, man. You
can't show up without without something for the altar.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
The blood is the life, oh guys.

Speaker 5 (02:58):
A quick quick question and just a clarification if you
don't mind. When you hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers
seminole in nineteen nineties album Blood Sugar Sex Magic, is
it blood magic, sugar magic, and sex magic or is
it a secret fourth thing?

Speaker 4 (03:12):
I think those are the three ingredients at the altar
of the magic. You got the blood, you got the sugar,
and then you have sex.

Speaker 5 (03:18):
She has proud she has a sex magic, sex magic.
It's blood sugar baby, say hies it sex maagic guy.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
I could see.

Speaker 5 (03:30):
There's just an easy band of clown on and they
are good live and they're talented. But that Anthony Keatis
is just he's got a bit of a.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Something about his delivery that rubs me the wrong one.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
But Chad Smith, though he bangs.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Chat too. The best drummer named Chad, who also looks
a lot.

Speaker 5 (03:48):
Like welfare, and they did a great monol, did a
bit about that.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Yeah, yeah, did a great monologue and the now of
Saturday Night Live. As far as we know, LORDE. Michaels
has not committed act of mass murder in uh, in
pursuit of good fortune.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Well, I mean, look at the way he's aging.

Speaker 5 (04:06):
I don't think he made any blood magic deals or
did any blood rituals on that.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Oh man, Well, in the West shade, he looks normal.
He looks in the shade.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
To have your skin that well, looking that good?

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Can I tell you, guys secret that that that's a
Chad Smith custom pearl snare drum right there?

Speaker 3 (04:25):
I knew you had a Chad. Chad is a compom
in that like he made it himself.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
His hands, sweat and sugar, sugar, a.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Little sugar on just to make sweeten the deal.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
So in the West, as you can tell, folks, human
sacrifice is a familiar idea, but it is often misunderstood.
This is the whole crux of our argument. Uh, you're
probably going to hear it conjuring in your mind right now,
Fellow conspiracy realist. Ideas of superstition, religion, magic benighted barbaric civilizations,

(05:05):
and of course classic old school discrimination. But this may
not be entirely accurate, and we have a concept to
pitch for you. There is a big twist at the
end of this episode, so please stay tuned all the
way to the end. We have seen depictions and descriptions
of human sacrifice in countless works of fiction, some of

(05:29):
which purported to be nonfiction, especially in the fifteen hundreds
and sixteen hundreds. We've seen it countless times in film.
But what is the truth? What is the fact and
fiction of human sacrifice? We'll be back after a word
from our sponsors.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Here are the facts we had to say it.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
Human beings have been in the habit of murdering each
other since before the age of modern Homo sapiens. So
if you go back to the days before the Homo sapiens,
you will still see something very like your modern human
beings doing stuff very much like homicide. They did it

(06:16):
for all sorts of reasons, hopefully usually survival. So we
have to understand what differentiates the idea of a sacrifice
from other forms of murder.

Speaker 5 (06:28):
You know, it's interesting, It's almost like you don't need
the sacrifice until conditions get good enough that you're not
just killing each other all the time just on the regular,
or else it wouldn't be special, you know what I mean.
My some's got to set it apart. And isn't it
neat too? How we're so what is it anthropocentric or homocentric?
Where it's like the human sacrifice that's the top tier

(06:50):
of sacrifice. Animal sacrifices far less then, you know, and
a pinch it'll do. But boy, oh boy, we want
that human sacrifice.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
Oh, I can kill a go for you God, But
if I've really messed up where I feel really inspired,
then I'll kill a person. I might abraham it out
a little bit, and then God says, just kidding.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
There's some verses within the Old Testament that talk about
a high priest entering into certain areas and if they
try to bring the blood of a pig or of
another animal in with them, they're going to get in
trouble with God. They have to bring their own blood in,
which is very.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
Interesting, Yeah, especially because pigs, as we know in the
religions of the book, are considered unclean animals. So the
big difference that we need to know here, folks, is that.
In the most basic general sense, human sacrifice describes the

(07:48):
offering of the life of a human being to some
sort of deity or for some sort of effect. It
could be made in honor of a human ruler that
has brainwashed everybody to think they are godlike, maybe a
living religious figure, the spirits of ancestors. There was this

(08:09):
huge nasty habit across the world for thousands of years.
When an important person died, their servants or slaves would
be murdered in various ways as well. And the belief was,
or at least what they told the public, was, we're
killing these slaves so that they can go to the

(08:31):
afterlife with their master. And guess what their heaven is
to still be slaves. Very problematic beliefs.

Speaker 5 (08:38):
So it's like Egyptian pharaohs burying themselves with all of
their precious things, you know, slaves would be you know,
considered among the precious things.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Among the property.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Yeah, you nailed it there. They are also, as we'll
see tragic secular versions of sacrifice, not necessarily a god
or a spiritual belief system involved, just very scarce resources
in a community. So you're an elder member of a community,
people are starving, you walk off into the woods willingly

(09:13):
to die from exposure. You have human sacrificed yourself or
and again, this very gross stuff adults my practice infanticide
for the same reasons limited resources.

Speaker 5 (09:28):
You know, it's funny speaking about resources. It really makes
me think of a quick callback to our episode on
the cancer Alley and this idea of a sacrifice zone. Yes,
that is like the modern equivalent, the remnants of that
without you know it, being in any way wrapped up
in the same kind of ritual. There is a certain

(09:48):
balance to the force that is controlled by the evil
doers who are sacrificing.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
The good people of the Earth for their evil ends.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
You know, let's break that down a little bit, you guys,
it's just the general state of inequality on planet Earth,
with few having most of the stuff, the things, the
resources at least having control over that stuff, and then
the many not having much at all. It is very
much as though, especially within economic systems, as though vast

(10:21):
quantities of us are being sacrificed for the very few,
or perhaps by the very few, Because we know you
cannot have great wealth without giving up something, right, somebody
has to pay in order for you to have money.
And if everybody is paying for you to have money,
in a lot of ways, those people are sacrificing their

(10:43):
well being, their health, their longevity. It's pretty messed up
if you think about it.

Speaker 5 (10:49):
Well, even ben As, this is something that thought might
interest you in particular, like tithing and really aggressive forms
of tithing in megachurch, and let's call it prosperity versions
of Christianity. That's a form of sacrifice, like a direct
line of sacrifice from the have nots to the have
a lot so that they can quote unquote use that

(11:11):
for the glory of God or for the greater good
or whatever I mean. So sacrifice these days isn't so
much slitting your throat on the altar. It's, you know,
slending your throat.

Speaker 4 (11:21):
Financially interesting, the idea of multi modal sacrifice. We talk
about spending time, right, we talk about losing time. We
talk about investing time. We can't thank you enough for
sacrificing your time with us.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Oh, we'd like to think of anymore as investing.

Speaker 4 (11:39):
But investing we'd like to we'd like to give you
a return at the end. So we do have a
big twist, and ours is real You will experience it
in real life.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
So stick with us. Back to what we're talking about.
Human sacrifice.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
It could be the ritualistic killing of a single person
right the power of the bl what. It could be
multiple people or masses of people at the same time
or around a four day period. It could happen on
an as needed basis, such as during times of droughts
or privation. Or it could occur on a schedule with

(12:17):
the passages of the planets, right with eclipses. It could
coincide with the seasons or the commemoration of auspicious sociocultural
events not too long ago, not too long ago. For
a close example, the fair Metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, where
a lot of us are recording here tonight, built a

(12:39):
new stadium series of stadiums. It was controversial, but thank
god we weren't in prehistoric times where building buildings in
some cultures meant you had to kill people and entomb
them within the structure. Or maybe who knows what's going
on at Mercedes Benz Stadium.

Speaker 5 (12:58):
Guys, when the Aztecs were or any other civilization that
did human sacrifices. To your point, ben to like make
a drought go away, or to change the weather or whatever.
Do you think enough times that it worked just by
coincidence that they were like, yes, this is the thing.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
And then if it didn't work, did they.

Speaker 5 (13:15):
Go the way of most religious extremists where they're like,
oh no, it just didn't work this time, or like no,
this is not the right number for the armagad and
that's what's going to be next year.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Is it just kicking the can down the road? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah, it's like tarot cards And no, that's an excellent
comparison because there was retroactive rationalization right at least in
the way it was sold to the masses. So they
would say they would never say we were killing the
wrong people. They would say maybe we were killing them
the wrong way, or we didn't kill enough people, just

(13:48):
like an inveterate gambler says, maybe I should have gambled
more on that last hand. Maybe that's why I lost
because I didn't put enough money in, but I had
to have quote quote worked a couple times. It did
the for the for the social framework and control.

Speaker 5 (14:08):
Mechanisms, that is, you know what, that's that's more the
way to look at it.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
You're right when a when a ruler or an empire
is riding high and taking more land and getting more people, right,
and the ruler seems to be doing great. Those those
human sacrifices work super well until they lose a couple
of battles, right, and then they lose some territory, and
then they get dethroned. But maybe just somebody had to

(14:33):
do a better human sacrifice.

Speaker 5 (14:35):
Well, guys, war is a form of human sacrifice, sending
soldiers to die, you know, for a cause for the
quote unquote greater good.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
What of slow motion sacrifice? Building the city of Atlanta
with a Chattahoochee brick company with people who are essentially
in chains building the bricks, losing their life day by
day like slow motion.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
Saacrifice by a thousand cuts.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
Yeah, it's interesting, and historically it is true that the
manner of death is increasingly important to the rituals. Luckily,
we can tell you that experts. Human experts largely agree
that around the Iron Age, think like the first millennium BCE,
human sacrifice became less common in civilizations and communities on

(15:22):
the African continent, the Asian continent, and throughout Europe. Because
we start to see multiple societies are beginning to evolve
more complex and intricate religious beliefs. Many of the same
societies that once saw this type of murder as a
grizzly panacea now begin to regard it as barbaric. And

(15:46):
they're even going to use accusations of human sacrifice or
cannibalism or what have you in their propaganda when they
make war against other civilizations, peoples, or communities for recent horses.
But the practice didn't disappear, It just became a little
more rarefied.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
I would say it went underground, at least that's how
I feel about it. I think the outward the thing
you're talking about, the propaganda and the effective use of
human sacrifice as a thing that we just don't do
anymore and we shouldn't do, and they do it, so
they're bad. It feels to me, and I may be

(16:26):
insane for saying it, but it feels to me as
though that practice continued on. It's just it happened in
the dark. It happened away from prying eyes of a public.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
Yeah, we know that it definitely continued past the Iron
Age through Mesoamerica, right up until around the time of
European invasion of the region. So I you know, let's
go back to what you were mentioning there, Nol. The
infamous case of Aztec civilization often misbetrayed. We want to

(17:01):
talk specifically about the ancient Mehecap people Mexica. They're part
of the larger overall Aztec group. In the fourteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Throughout that sacrifice was a normalized part of
religious life. And so when the Spanish puonquistadors marched into

(17:21):
Tanachtlan in fifteen nineteen, they saw this huge Templo Mayor,
which just means like the major, the big temple, and
they saw towers of skulls flanking enormous racks of skulls
called the zompanthi and pardon my pronunciation here they when
these Spanish conquerors saw this, they were not concerned about

(17:46):
these people's culture or belief systems. They didn't say, hey,
why are you doing this? They didn't care about the
war God or the rain God, two of the biggest
divide beneficiaries of human being.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Death.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
For them, it was convenient not to do that. It
was convenient to avoid it because they didn't want to
think of this civilization as cultured or civilized. They didn't
want to think of them as fully human. The evidence
of ritualistic sacrifice, which is true, it did happen, by
the way, It was the perfect what we call causes
belly to justify laid waste to the population. So they

(18:25):
saw those skulls. It gave them a reason to raise
the stuff to the ground.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Right. They burned the land.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
Of fifteen twenty one, They tore down that big temple,
They dismantled these racks of skulls, They paved over the ruins,
they built the foundations of what would later become Mexico City,
and they killed a lot of people on the way.
And at every step they said, well, it's different when
we do it.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yep, do as we say, not as we do.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
So I mean in that case, right, mass human sacrifice
does have a real world effect. It's just not the
effect we imagine these people wanted at the time. And
now we're still we're recording, by the way, folks on
May eighteenth, twenty twenty six, and human sacrifice is still
a subject of dark fascination. There's a ton of misinfo

(19:20):
out there, Lord Tall tales of historical telephone honestly, and
I think we alluded to this. I think you might
have mentioned it earlier there, Matt, a few minutes ago.
A lot of these things are exaggerations and purposeful lies.
So there's still a lot of hot debates even now

(19:41):
among historians about who killed whom, how many people were killed,
how often they were killed, where they were killed, how
they were killed, why they were killed, and when they
were killed. A ton of it's tied up in racism.

Speaker 5 (19:53):
Well, like I mentioned about the assets as an example,
a lot of the accounts of this stuff came from
Spanish colonialists who had a reason a vested interest in
othering these people, you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (20:08):
Yeah, And there's also we have to remember there's a
distant public for these other invading civilizations. Right, most of
the people in Spain are never going to make it
to North and South America. So one way to think
about this, and this is a this is a dark wind, folks.
I hope we all understand what I'm saying here. One

(20:30):
way to think about this is what if you had
never heard of the United States, you had never been,
you'd never met an American, and the only person you
met from the United States was Jeffrey Dahmer. Would that
not color the way you later described the US When
you get back home and people ask you, hey, what

(20:51):
are Americans like, You're going to say they're weird. I
think they try to eat people. Honestly, I think there
are a bunch of cannibals. I think it's a pretty
good comparison.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
It is.

Speaker 5 (21:00):
It also makes me think of like, what if the
only you know, major news events that people were aware
of were like all the school shootings, and what if
that couldn't that be interpreted as like willing human sacrifice
in a way, like by a society allowing that to
continue to happen.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
I'm not trying to be political.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
I just mean it's like, there are these things taking
in isolation, you know, without the context and all the
spin that we get surrounding at like that. With Dahmer
as an example, Oh, that's an outlier, you know, that's
very rare.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
You can look at a lot of recent news things
that are bringing up the concept of human sacrifice. If
we go back to our explorations of Hillary Clinton and
you know, some of the emails and some of the
things that were alleged like that frazzle drip video that
was allegedly on Anthony Wiener's laptop under a folder called
Insurance that included her and Huma like doing unspeakable things

(21:55):
to a child. That is stuff that's in the zeitgeist
right And the question today is is it even possible,
humanly possible that that was a real thing or is
it just completely propaganda that was brought up on a
four Chan site somewhere. Is that anywhere actually proven or
in an FBI vault somewhere.

Speaker 5 (22:14):
But do we even need something as pointed and aggressively
awful as that, It almost like as a stand in
for stuff that just happens on the regular, you know,
perpetrated by these folks that in totality could be seen
as just as awful.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Well, just putting it out there that were going off
of this concept that potentially, you know, human sacrifice went away,
but it still exists somewhere in the underground. Could it
exist in any of the ways that are popularized by
rumors and conspiracies that float around on the Internet.

Speaker 5 (22:45):
I think it could, But I also think that the
reason those rumors take off so well and pick up
such momentum is because it's plausible, but it also gives
it just this like cartoonishly villainous version of things that
are just as egregious that happen every single day.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
It's like a focused version of that.

Speaker 5 (23:05):
Like we've got stuff we know that Epstein did and
his type his ilk, you know, so to have like
this quote unquote video of people murdering children and doing
horrific acts on children, and that's like this I don't know,
dark matterized version of this thing that gives us a
way to explain its existence. I don't know, It's very interesting.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
But then knowing those videos actually exist from cameras that
were in Epstein's estates, we just have never you know,
that stuff has never been made public as a form
of evidence against anybody. But we know those cameras were there.
We know those videos are somewhere.

Speaker 5 (23:41):
I think videos like that do exist, of course, but
I just mean some of the ones that get the
most you know, internet chatter are the ones that are
like the devil worship type, the most like cartoonishly evil type,
ones that are.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Just so aggressively this is pure evil, you.

Speaker 5 (23:59):
Know, personified in video form, which of course is also
the case for those Epstein videos.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
I hope I'm not being too unclear.

Speaker 5 (24:07):
I just mean sometimes the urban legend of it represents
a real thing as well.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Absolutely, yeah, we've got to get to that.

Speaker 4 (24:14):
We do know. I appreciate that we're running to the
modern day here, because there are, to your question, there
there are isolated incidents of human sacrifice that fit the
standard definition. In the modern day. There are cults that
practice mass suicide even now, like Jonestown or Heaven's Gate.
Those are two famous ones in the United States. We

(24:37):
know there are ritualistic murders of albino children children with
albinism in parts of the African continent, and that is
apparently for supernatural fortune. There are multiple serial murderers and
spree killers who have stated that they believe their homicides
are sacrifices, including of course more modern things like people

(25:01):
flying planes into buildings. So, with all this misinformation and
all this ongoing research, folks, our question becomes, how can
we separate the fact from fiction here? Perhaps most importantly,
was there a real, non spiritual, non religious reason for
these atrocities? And spoiler, fellow conspiracy realist, there's a big

(25:25):
fascinating twist ahead. So again, please tune in to the
end of this episode, we'll be right back after a
word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
First, yes, as we've established human sacrifice diteker multiple times,
multiple places, and in some cases we are talking about
legitimate incidents of mass murder. I mean, that's where it
goes back to the historical bait.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Right.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
You can, depending upon whom you ask or whom you read,
you might hear things like tens of thousands of prisoners
were sacrificed over four days during the consecration of the
Great Pyramid of Tanoctalon in fourteen eighty seven, for instance.
But then if you keep reading, and please always read

(26:22):
various sources, you will find other historians who say this
is exaggerated, this is racist, this is propaganda. And we
have to remember that history is written by the victors.
So the Conquistadores are our main source on Mesoamerican sacrifices,
just as the Romans are the primary source for descriptions

(26:42):
of Druid and Celtic sacrificial practices like the wicker Man.
If everybody remembers that, oh yeah, yeah, classic, and the
Conquistadores hated the Aztec people. The Romans despise the Celts.
The victors wrote the history here, and victors often do
their best to suppress or interrupt or destroy narratives that

(27:08):
don't fit with whatever is convenient for them. So we
genuinely do not have a ton of primary sources from
sacrificing communities that say, yeah, this is what we did,
is how we did it, this is why we did it.
But I think we can make some educated guesses because
these accusations often did have a kerdel or a grain

(27:33):
of truth, a kernel of fact at the root of
these horrific accusations.

Speaker 5 (27:38):
Well, you mentioned the temple, the Templo Mayor, and Tanatan.
Archaeologists have uncovered these mass burial sites, and there are
indications that sacrificial activity was happening, but the exact numbers
are hotly contested by scholars. And I think I made

(28:00):
the point earlier where it's like, the invading forces are
the ones who write the narrative, and it's in their
best interest to look like the heroes coming in and
you know, cleansing the heathens and all of that stuff
and demonizing there. You know, I'm not saying any form
of human sacrifices like great, but demonizing their very culture
in the essence of who they were as people, than

(28:21):
to dehumanize them.

Speaker 4 (28:22):
Yeah, and sacrifice in all these cultures, with all the
across the vast chasms and oceans of time, shout out
to bram Stoker's Dracula sacrifice. Despite the many ways it occurred,
it seemed to have a common aim. It was to
enter a transaction of some sort. Sacrifice is a transactional process,

(28:44):
so by giving the gift of life and blood, the
murderers felt they were acquiring good fortune in exchange. It
could be better crop, It could be better weather. It
could be your insert your god here favor in an
upcoming conflict. It could be the dedication of an important palace,

(29:06):
a castle, a temple. But for the thing that gets me, guys,
is that for every purported motivation, we can also see
ulterior motives. We can see aims that religion cast aside
had tangible benefits for the population, and far more often
they had tangible benefits for the ruling class. That's the

(29:30):
real reason for sacrifice. I think that's the real reason
the practice exists.

Speaker 5 (29:35):
Yep, Matt was rocking that tramp thought pretty hard earlier
and completely agree.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
I think about somebody like Martin Luther King, like was
he sacrificed by a group four reasons right in order
to get what was desired? I don't, I don't know.
It feels like that's the kind of thing that happens
all the time by these like whoever's in power will

(30:00):
sacrifice whoever they need to. But when you're saying like
a targeted sacrifice, you know, like for reasons, that's what
I think about.

Speaker 4 (30:07):
Well, yeah, yeah, this is this is leading us to
that twist I've been talking about. And sorry, I keep
holding up my cat, everybody. Here's here's mister Jackpots. He
has named after named after a cool incident in a
David Lynch casino. Look, without sounding cynical, history has proven

(30:28):
time and time again that ruling classes can, will, and
do use religion as a tool of control over the masses.
Because you have to remember, okay, if you are the
ruling class, you are almost always by definition outnumbered. So
there are thousands more of them than you, or thousands

(30:51):
more of us than them. So how do you keep
these people from just storming to keep and killing you
for all the evil stuff you've done. You get in
people's heads be the angil It movie. Yeah, you brainwash
the out of them. Thank you for the beep there, Dylan.
If you can have some sort of convincing rationalization about

(31:15):
why life is unfair, then a surprising amount of people
will go along with it. If you limit education, you
can turn the population against an outside enemy, or better yet,
you can turn the population against itself. And if your
speeches and your propaganda don't work, you can make an example.

(31:36):
Kill some people publicly, tell them that you are God's
buddy and God told you to do it. God's buddy. Okay,
I'm gonna write that down. That's an album phrase.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
God's planning. Yeah, oh yeah, that's drake. Yeah, oh jeez.
This is the thing too.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
We know this through history because we can go to excellent,
excellent work like in Nature or in the Smithsonian, where
we see journalists like Maya way Haas who notes that
across cultures, no matter how they killed people, the people
that were killed or sacrificed were overwhelmingly quote, lower class

(32:17):
slaves or captives from adjacent communities. Their deaths were frequently
drawn out, and the people committing these atrocities were almost
always the social elite. The idea no matter how was
dressed up, the idea was to keep some people at
the top of the social ladder and others at the bottom.

(32:38):
This is called the social control hypothesis. You can read
about it a lot when it was first popularized in
the nineteen nineties in studies on human sacrifice in the
ancient southwest of North America.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, it's so interesting.

Speaker 5 (32:54):
I mean, I know we front loaded the episode with
a lot of the modern kind of equivalent talk, but
I just think it just hits more and more the
more we talk about the history, like the idea of
lower income folks sacrificing monetarily so that the rich people
can thrive, and the idea of the areas that are
most affected by all this horrible pollution and stuff that
serves stockholders and you know CEOs and that one percent.

(33:18):
They're also underprivileged and underserved communities and often minority. It's
like the same patterns hold to this day.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
And it's just so clear.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well, I think about what George Carlin said way back
in the day talking about how the existence of that
upper class thing, the power class, but then there's the
middle class and then the lower class. And what he
states is the existence of that lower class is to

(33:50):
scare the out of the middle class, to keep them compliant,
to keep the middle class working and slaving away at
their jobs, not getting benefits for those things. To keep
everybody in line when voting.

Speaker 5 (34:03):
Certain types of people in power who make them promises
is about we're protecting their wallet, protecting their investments, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Right, So, when I think about some of this stuff,
it does feel as though it truly is fear. The
reason why an upper class group like that that is
in power would sacrifice people and do it openly and
let you know they're sacrificing people is so that you,
existing somewhere beneath them, would fear them and fear the

(34:30):
concept of working against them in any way that would
be fruitful.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Well, God forbid you become the sacrifice.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
Yeah, similar to the AI conversations today, speaking of sacrifices.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
I want to go.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
I want to specifically shout out the great work from
this study in Nature. You can read it online now.
It came out a while ago. It's called ritual sacrifice
promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies. There's a
team of researchers from New Zealand who found that human
sacrifice quote could have played a crucial role in cementing

(35:07):
layers of social status that gave rise to the eventual
formation of complex society.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
So they.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
They looked at cultures in the Austronesian diaspora. They looked
at ninety three different cultures, and they found that around
half of them, a little less than half of them,
actively practiced sacrifice for some long amount of time, and
the rituals varied widely. Like in some parts of Papua

(35:38):
New Guinea, the belief was you had to kill a
human being when you built a common house, like a
long house where a group of people would live. They
would place the victim in a hole and then they
would crush the victim with a pole that got dropped
into the pit that later helped form the foundation of

(36:00):
the common house.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Very wicked Witch of the East Codd.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
I just wonder who the first victim of that practice was,
and how the hell that became a thing. And it
feels to me like somebody's justifying something oh horrible, like
that time it happens. That's what I mean, that's what
we do say.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
Oh it's God, Yeah, that's what that's what happens now,
Like the person the people who legendarily got entombed in
all those Japanese castles walled in alive, you might have
just missed them while you were doing construction and said, oh, yeah,
that was totally on purpose.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
Well, we haven't really talked about this aspect of it either,
but like, uh, the idea of taking a life tied
to claiming a soul, you know, or like having some
sort of currency behind it. I just think that's interesting
in a in a different way. And then that's a
little more around the dark magic aspects of it, which

(37:02):
first we're not talking about quite as much.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
But I'd love to spend a few minutes.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
Talking about everyone read Black Monday Murders right now.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
I need you know.

Speaker 4 (37:11):
I'm a broken record, but is spot on for this episode.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
That's what the Zodiac Killer claimed a couple of times,
is that every time he was killing an individual, he
was making them a slave in the afterlife, which is
a belief that goes back to some weird fiction and
it goes back to some strange writings. But it is like,
and who knows if by the way, the Zodiac Killers

(37:36):
just was being a playful dick about all that.

Speaker 4 (37:38):
But well we do know, like I said at the top,
we do know the serial killers and spree killers have
claimed something similar and they're echoing to your point, back
to an older idea. Like we know, for instance, in
northern Orneo there were communities that when a slave owner

(38:00):
or a big deal person would die, would they would
not immediately kill the slaves of that individual. Instead, get this, guys,
they would tie the slaves. They would bind them to
the mausolem of their dead master, and they would leave
it alone because they knew the slaves would die and

(38:20):
excruciating death due to thirst and exposure, and apparently this
would purify them to be better slaves in the afterlife.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
It's pretty horrifying, Ben.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
Well, you know, if we're talking about religion as a
weapon of control, you do have to start kind of
calling into question like who are the true believers? Like
are the people at the top wielding this control? Are
they true believers or do they just know that the
people beneath them are gonna be the ones like in

(38:55):
the know and just sort of like turning the screws
on those dumb dums beneath them.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Speaking Yeah, yeah, like I.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Was saying earlier a few minutes ago. It's it's definitely
it's a tool used as control like that. You know,
some great thinkers have often been attributed saying religion is
the opiate or the opioid of the masses of.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
The people of the poor.

Speaker 5 (39:20):
There's different versions in that sentimental the same.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, because it's a correct idea, we're on the same page.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Well, but to see, there's also there are all these
allegations that folks in power, whether your power through celebrity
or power through government or you know, money and industry,
there are all these allegations that those folks are actually
practicing blood magic of some sort, whether that's full on
human sacrifice or through pain or through you know, the

(39:50):
debaucherous things that we know some people get up to.
Because we have things like the Epstein files that that
is actually done as a ritualistic, magical thing. But again,
like you've got to you gotta be skeptical of that too,
because that is unproven right now that that actually does

(40:11):
anything right, any of these rituals.

Speaker 5 (40:14):
It makes me think of like another more overt or
like publicly discussed version of that is the idea of
like blood boys, you know, like having a young sort
of paramore that lets you, you know, willingly gives you
their blood so that you can stay young forever or whatever.
And like these Silicon Valley types. I'm having a hard
time conjuring an exact example of this, but this is real,

(40:36):
and it's almost like a cliche at this point.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
Right right.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
A good example of this is the artist Marina Abramovich
that this concept. We've we talked about it before. I
can't remember the name of the episode, Ben we talked
about spirit cooking and some of the elaborate, highly artistic,
very weird things that were done by her in the past,

(41:00):
including you know, I'm thinking the spirit cooking session or
sessions I suppose where there appears to be it's like
mock human sacrifice, mock human flesh eating, cannibalism, all that
kind of stuff, and but seeing that as an artistic
expression in some way, but then done with highly powerful people,

(41:20):
you know, at like private parties. So then that line
between what's real what's not real. Would anyone actually do
this kind of thing or is it just for the
sake of art. It's very tough to see what's what reality.

Speaker 4 (41:33):
Is, Folks, let's also think of the effigy that is
ritualistically burned in the Bohemian rum, right, the effigy.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yes, that's a ben That's such a good point because
that you know, in the at least recordings that Alex
Jones got and a bunch of other people.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
There is still war shirts.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, but nobody has confirmed if he had a shirt
on when he caught that footage. Maybe he was back
in those woods just but the one of the things
you hear in the audio of those videos that were
shot is that there is part of the play of
this sacrifice cremation of care, is that it is a

(42:15):
live human being that is speaking and yelling and lamenting
and attempting to escape while it is being taken to
this altar of mock or whatever the giant owl thing
is and then set on fire and sacrifices.

Speaker 5 (42:27):
Well, donny, let's not even get into the idea of
the sacrament and the transubstantiation of like red and grape
juice being converted into flesh and blood.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
You know what, that's not.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
Weird again, it's when we do it right, and how
is that?

Speaker 5 (42:45):
Yeah? I mean, you know, Jesus is the lamb he
is the ultimate sacrifice.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
That's what every civilization says. We did it for a
good reason. Just you guys are barbarians. Now there's so
much parallel thinking. Yes, it's faster, that's study though, with
all these stats. I'd love to get back into that.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you NOL. So we know
that from there, this study we're mentioning. In nature dot com,

(43:11):
they create a phenomenal linguistic cultural analysis and they use
statistics to discover patterns between social stratification velocity you could
call it, and the practice of human sacrifice. And what
they found goes one step further than our original assumption.

(43:35):
They say, these practices of sacrificing human beings, they may
not have just maintained an upper class for a given community.
They may have accelerated that upper class, exacerbating their power,
and they may have evolved society into increasingly sophisticated mechanisms

(43:55):
of power control and discrimination. So it used to be
the chief and everybody else, right, and the chief family,
I guess, But now it's the chief, the priestly class.
Right now it's the mercantile class as well. Now still
we have the lower class, the serfs or what the
excellent graphic novel The Lazarus Project calls the waste we

(44:18):
know that.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Let me map this out real quick.

Speaker 4 (44:22):
Okay, So the societies are evolving, they're doing so based
on sacrifice. Human blood is helping this train go increasingly
off the rails. Along with the murders comes the rationale
of religion. Along with religion comes increasingly sophisticated language, math

(44:43):
and writing.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
And then along with.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
The math comes the science. And along with the science,
folks eventually came you. So it is correct and dangerous
and disturbing to admit that the roots of modern civilization
as we know it may well owe a debt of
thanks to the practice of ritualized murder.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Isn't that crazy? I'm still baffled. It makes a lot
of sense.

Speaker 5 (45:12):
And I know we've been teasing this throughout, just like
the Now You Gotta I mean, it used to be
that you were required to sign up for the lottery
of being a human sacrifice aka the Draft, and they're
talking about that coming back, and I know we're gonna
get into this after the break a bit.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
More, but it's just the parallels are just staggering.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
Yeah, that's what inspired this episode.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
Too.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
We had the notes off air like this is okay,
this is what we're thinking about. I say we cut
past it. Read the Nature Study please if you can,
if you get a chance, it's available for free online.
And nice one to the eggheads there and the boffins.
This all leads us to a twist that we teased
a little bit earlier. Let's call it a matter of perspective,

(45:56):
and we'll be right back after a break. Guys, I've
been so excited about this one the entire episode. Yeah,
I've mentioned it on the show before. Have we read
the Illuminatus trilogy.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, I've heard about it for years.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
Need to need to do something, all right. It's a
great and imperfect book. It's written by two guys named
Robert double Robs and uh they actually used to work together,
contributing to Playboy magazine. Anyway, they teamed up and they
wrote this banger epic. It depicts, in part, a vast,

(46:41):
deep set of conspiracies involving human sacrifice. It's an old book,
but just in case you're a person or an entity
who doesn't care for spoilers, spoilers ahead. Three two one.
The Pentagon in this trilogy is home to a captured
evil drich extra dimensional entity. It has to be fed

(47:03):
with human death energy they call it. And Uncle Sam's
solution traffic deaths.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
You guys, in.

Speaker 4 (47:11):
The trilogy, all of the traffic deaths into the United
States are sacrifices to this creature.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Niceeen.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
It explains a lot of construction work. It explained. It
definitely explains I twenty I was bad.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
I was literally looking at statistics for construction worker fatalities.
You can find a place online. I'm looking at the
Center for Construction Research and TRAININGCPWR dot com, and it's
showing from twenty eleven to twenty twenty four the eighty
five hundred and twenty five construction fatalities thirty six percent

(47:54):
from falls, slips, and trips, And it gives you a
map of every single one in the US where they occurred.
And then just imagining all of those construction workers as
part of this illuminatous trilogy. I know, I'd get the
traffic and everything, but there's just so many other versions
of kind of regular death that occur in something like construction.

(48:16):
You get this thing out of it, right, It's kind
of like putting people in a pyramid as you're saying
or in, you know, bearing people in the castle, walling
them up. For me, construction work fatalities is pretty similar.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
Yeah, and for me, we can't dismiss oh gosh, the
traffic these are and some people.

Speaker 5 (48:35):
Wasn't someone entombed in or at least it's a it's
a it is a not maybe an unsubstantiated urban legends.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:42):
Hoover Hoover Matt, whom we spoke with, shout out to you.
Hoover Matt, told us that the story there, the official
line is that some some people took off their boots
because the working conditions were so hot, and those boots
fell and landed upside down in this cement.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
But people did.

Speaker 5 (49:01):
Die during the construction of the ode, and that's what
their openness because I just wanted to I mentioned this before,
but I just I'm so fascinated by this event. You're
mentioning the Pentagon and it's potentially also occultic origins because
of the shape of it and all of the illuminati
of it all. There was this thing that happened in
the late sixties done by this group called the Youth

(49:22):
International Party or the Yippies, which was led publicly by
Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and like filmmaker Kenneth Anger
was involved where they did this highly publicized event where
they wanted to levitate the Pentagon, and it was all
this theatrical kind of mock ritual sort of happening, sort

(49:42):
of poking fun at all of the things that we're
talking about, these magical rituals. And obviously and they claim,
I think after it was all done that they did
manage to levitate it like a half an inch or something.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
Like they said, they got it off a few This
is the perfect time for it because going back to
the Illuminatus trill and folks, we're not at all dismissing
the deaths of innocent people in traffic. We want to
make sure that is clear. We know that the larger
conspiracy again spoilers in this saga is that a secret

(50:14):
group of powerful people actually identifying as a band called
the American Medical Association. They feed off death energy and
if they create enough mass casualty events they kill enough
people all at the same time, they will do something
they call amanetizing the escaton. This will give a select

(50:36):
group of their initiates, including Adolf Hitler eternal life even
if they're dead. Thankfully, the trilogy is a work of fiction,
be guys. It got me thinking about this real conundrum.

Speaker 5 (50:48):
And just to add another really good, I think, pretty
good example of that is the movie A Cabin in
the Woods, I think is what it's called. Not to
spoil it, but it's basically about the governments ritually sacrificing,
you know, these serial killer victims as part of this
elaborate scheme to appease, like Moloch or something like that.

(51:09):
And every time someone falls to the you know, the
the hands of one of these psychos or whoever they conjure,
their blood spills into this trough and it goes down this.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Machine and then you know, they get one closer.

Speaker 4 (51:23):
Still well written, Yeah, I like it a lot.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
Good, underrated. Let's let's go.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Back to that five sided fistigon out there, the pentagon.
The isn't it weird that it's that shape?

Speaker 3 (51:36):
It's super weird.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
You know what you can make with a like that.
You can make phanagrams, you can Uh, there's a lot
of some symbolism going on in there that is probably unnecessary,
do we argue?

Speaker 5 (51:50):
A lot of that comes from freemasonry and a lot
of the mystical thinking and the societies that were more
you know, kind of running things from behind the scenes.
Isn't that like the Eye, the Pyramid, the Eye and
all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Well, yeah, look up the taxil hoax. Look that up
from back in the day. And just how long folks
have been accusing specifically the freemasons of human sacrifice and
blood magic and you know, the ritual things because of
the unknown rituals that exist, you know, in those blue
lodges and in the Grand Lodges and all of those

(52:23):
things that are you know, based off of the Temple
of Solomon. It goes way back, these these concepts of
potentially powerful folks that are unseen, unknown doing these things,
including this Pentagon stuff. Where as you guys were saying,
one can look at that building, put use the symbolism
that's already ingrained within popular culture in things like the

(52:46):
Illuminatous Trilogy and way back and just you can see
the creature that's deep in the underground facility there like
you could see it. I can see it zero.

Speaker 5 (52:57):
They're the ones managing the human sacrifices.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
And I got to tell you guys, personally, I was
super deep into this stuff for a while. As some
of us might know, and I have to I have
to report, with no small measure of regret, there is
a pretty plausible real life story for the shape of
the Pentagon. Originally, the story goes they had a five

(53:26):
sided parcel of land that they bought in a hurry,
just by the Arlington National Cemetery. So they were trying
to build within those parameters, to keep it five sides
and get as much of the land used as they could.
I don't believe a sure, Well, it's not me saying it, Matt,

(53:47):
it is.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
No, I'm not talking about you. I don't believe her.
I don't believe whoever had the idea.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
I'm saying again, it's the official story, and I'm sharing
it with regret. Check out the Smithsonian Why is the
Pentagon a Pentagon? You can also you can see, just
to continue the official reasoning, that they had a pitched
battle with the conservative folks who said, oh, we need
to environmental conservatives who said we need to protect this

(54:16):
land we already have, so you guys have to move,
and they went they went away to this new location.
But then there's still a little bit of umami here.
For some reason, the original planners said, Okay, we know
we don't have to build it as a weird five
sided building now, but we still should. And they fought

(54:38):
really hard to do it for some reason, folks, For
some reason they did. They did go ten toes down
on keeping it in that exact shape.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Ay, And because they needed for the rituals and for
the eye and the pyramid and the Golden Apple and
the masks of Illuminati and all that stuff. It is
to think that Robert Anton Wilson, and who's the other
Robert Robert other Robert Robert Anton.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Roch from Radio Lab. Yeah, Robert Rolwitch.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Oh well, the other guy that wrote Illuminatus trilogy in
nineteen seventy five. It is weird that it is weird
to me that that's nineteen seventy five where they're talking
about the you know, the fictional evil thing that exists
in the Pentagon after all of the you know, perceived

(55:30):
evil things that that the actions that the Pentagon here,
the human beings that exist in work in the Pentagon
are doing in places like Vietnam and Laos and all
these other places, and you just imagine there is it's
it's the same thing we're dealing with, like Abramovich, it's
that it's that line between what's real and what's not.

Speaker 5 (55:51):
Well, that's what I'm getting at too, is like we
don't need the framework anymore to do the more like
representational version of all this stuff, like sacrificing things so
that an unseen force will give us the thing. We're
doing it for real reasons, to get real results.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
That's the thing.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
Yeah, okay, so this is the inspiration for the episode,
this is right, I originally pitched it. So, knowing what
we know now guys about the real, non supernatural reasons
for human sacrifice across time, I've got to ask, is
modern society really that different from civilizations of old? Like
how different is sending hundreds of thousands of people to

(56:33):
war from just murdering a bunch of folks in front
of a temple. I mean, think about it. You know
the soldiers are going to die on both sides of
the conflict. You know there are going to be civilian casualties.
We don't call them sacrifices. We have euphemisms, right, irrectable losses.

Speaker 5 (56:49):
I'm presupposing that there was some level of belief at
the tippy tippy top back in the day. And I
know that you're more skeptical about that, and I feel you.
I just think that over time, whatever a little bit
of belief there may have been that started the whole thing,
I think it had to have existed to some degree.
We are so far removed from that now that it
is exclusively that modus of control or whatever.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
And yeah, I agree with you, Nol.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
I mean, and we have to consider that does whatever
the rationale or window dressing may be, the mechanisms of
the conspiracy remain eerily similar. Right, Because let's consider something
a lot of rulers in the US and other countries
don't like to say out loud, A great many of

(57:34):
the soldiers fighting on your front lines are going to
come from lower socioeconomic statuses. They're going to come from
historically oppressed minorities. They may lack access to educational or
career opportunities. In this way, they have so much in
common with those sacrificial victims of old. Like we said

(57:55):
at the top, the people who are claiming human sacrifice
is barbaric are kind of doing it themselves. But it's
different when we do it.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Did you guys, see, well, I guess it is kind
of new. We're gonna talk about strange news. But groups
like Diemler Benz trying to get back in the wartime economy,
trying to get back in manufacturing of things that will
be used in these sacrifice kerfuffles. That would be like

(58:28):
Mercedes Benz they officially want to get back into the
parent company company as Dimer Benz. And then in the
US what was there other land Rover, Jaguar. Like all
these companies are trying to get back into defense manufacturing,
basically creating weapons of war again, just like they did before,
just like Dame Ler did a while back in that

(58:50):
Second World War. It feels like there's so much money
in this version of sacrifice that we're describing here.

Speaker 4 (59:00):
Yes, consider also mass layoffs as sacrifice. Shout out to
Meta right, shout out to these companies that pay pay
a blood sacrifice financially they sit in the stone chairs
so they can have good quarterly reports. Oh yeah, that's
another ritualized version of a sacrifice.

Speaker 5 (59:20):
Well, well, the stop the stock market and just capitalism
in general is almost like the new God, not not
even new.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
That's that's that's way overstating the case.

Speaker 5 (59:28):
But it requires sacrifices, it requires it needs to be
fed and appeased, you know. And I know that's oversimplifying it.
I know it's a much more complex system than that.
But it's so complex that to the novice it almost
seems like witchcraft, and it seems like manipulative, you know,
to the people that the people that can truly manipulate it,

(59:50):
like what we've been seeing lately.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
They're so above our pay grade. That is just yeah.
I mean, it's like no way to influence it.

Speaker 4 (59:58):
Could I please share with the class the two word
accurate definition of the stock market is worth it?

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Yeah, Mammon Hungers, Sure, that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
That's the explanation of all the intricacies of the stock market.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
The folks who make this their market cap is higher
than India, in France's GDP, and Italy and Russia and
Brazil's GDP. The company that makes this phone has more
money or is worth more money than countries. The company
in Vidia. Their market cap is five point seven to

(01:00:38):
one trillion, Germany's is five point four five trillion. Just
think about the power that that means. And we've often
talked about how technology is now is magic, right, just
named a little differently, thought about a little differently, but
in many ways, this tech is magic. And all of
these tech companies Amazon, micro Soft, Apple, in Vidia, what

(01:01:02):
else do we got, oh, Saudi, a Ramco, Broadcom, Meta,
All of the power and the money is concentrated in
these groups that are essentially creating magic.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
Every single one of them demands tribute.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
In the factories, Tribute in the factories to make these things,
Tribute in the minds to get the precious metals, Tribute
in those wars being fought to get those resources. It's
more and more weirdly plausible to me that there is
some kind of screwed up magic thing happening.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
I guess, I bet.

Speaker 5 (01:01:38):
But it's that same thing that ben all these points out,
this whole the idea of technology at a certain level
being indistinguishable from magic. I just don't think we need
magic for this system to make sense. It's just so
intricate and the complexity of the technology and of all
these interrelations that it feels like wishcraft or magic. But
it really is just an elaborate, you know, network of

(01:02:00):
interlocking systems situations that are controlled by the wizards at
the time.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:07):
I love that though, because here's the grift. When, folks,
when we just gave you the best explanation of the
stock market, Mamon hungers, what we didn't tell you is
that Mamon doesn't have to be real. For Mamon to hunger,
for the things to happen this, the actual deities don't

(01:02:27):
have to exist. And I want to go back to this,
exploit this perspective that inspired this episode. The idea of
soldiers as modern human sacrifice, the idea that you can
look around and see all sorts of human sacrificial practices.
Some of these soldiers do enlist for ideological or religious purposes.

(01:02:49):
And there are a lot of us in the crowd
right now, and thank you for tuning in. A lot
of us are also going to say, you know, these
were window dressing ideas that were sold to me by
the arbiters of dominant culture and values of where I live.
So we could even argue with some sand that this
process now works better than at any other point in history.

(01:03:13):
People have more access to information. I know that, but
what I'm saying is there are also more ways to
control and filter that information. So soldiers has sacrifice a
I think the rulers look at.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
It, and also, let let's be careful.

Speaker 5 (01:03:29):
And I know you're not doing this then, And I
just want to say that I don't think this is
either to diminish the idea of true patriotism or the
idea of truly being part of.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
A system that defends something that you truly believe in.

Speaker 5 (01:03:43):
But I always bulk up against this idea of being
willing to die for your country. There's something and again
I think there's a version of that that is a
noble pursuit, but it all depends on what's going on
in the country and what that represents, and what these
conflicts mean, and the idea of like having some agency
versus complete blind faith and just throwing yourself at whatever

(01:04:06):
the wizards tell you to.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
Bilja de kora mess pro patria bori right, And we
all appreciate we did fit in to die for your country.

Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
Yeah, and I we all appreciate and absolutely respect and admire,
you know, folks who who serve our country and folks
in the various services. I think it's an absolutely noble pursuit.
But I just it's becoming now, especially just a little
bit more tricky. And I know that this is a
problem that folks that are enlisted are struggling.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Off to man.

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
And we also, you know, we again the quiet part
out loud. We know that there are easy changes that
could happen in society that would remove or mitigate inequality
such that a lot of people did not feel the
armed services were their only choice. But that's not a

(01:04:55):
that's not a bug, right, that's a feature, and part
of it also part of the evil here, the conspiracy
we're constructing, is that we know good and gosh darn
well in democracies, leaders get a ton of newfound support
during conflicts so long as the majority feels there is
a righteous cause. So if you can convince the public

(01:05:19):
that you and therefore them, are the good guys, then
plenty of people are going to be willing to die.
You as the ruler, will benefit your God's buddies. You will,
you will probably give them kickbacks, powers, resources of course,
sweetheart defense steals, and you will get re elected so

(01:05:40):
long as the losses are with an acceptable parameters. Fell
of conspiracy realists, this is why every bad president loves
a good war.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Does it makes sense? I don't know it thought it's scary.
I mean if we're talking about this the military industrial.

Speaker 5 (01:05:55):
Complex, it requires a tribute because it doesn't exist unless
you feed it human lives, and then, you know, you
justify it by sam we need to sacrifice or put
at risk these human lives in order to defend something
larger and sometimes less tangible and sometimes real amorphous and
vapor wear Isa.

Speaker 4 (01:06:17):
Have you ever held the greater good? Can you eat it?
Can you drink it? Can you wear it? I don't
think so. I mean, this is it's an exploration and
perspective that we're empting on. It's imperfect, but we argue
it surprisingly sound. You know, how do our modern rulers
talk about this stuff behind closed doors? That's the stuff

(01:06:38):
they don't want you to know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
They say things like if I go down, I'm taking
all of you with me rewarding.

Speaker 4 (01:06:45):
Yeah, imminetize the esketon.

Speaker 5 (01:06:49):
Or I got bone spurs right right before.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
I'm too tall.

Speaker 4 (01:06:54):
I did a bang up job in that meeting with
Uncle Gee, didn't I I'm.

Speaker 5 (01:06:58):
Just saying it just seems like top doge job, you know,
And do you appreciate like Prince Harry, you know, going
into the service and all of that. But it does
seem like, did he really was he in the front lines?
Was he, you know, truly at risk or was it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
More of like a political move I.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
Don't know, I don't I think he's a helicopter guy, right.
I think I have massive respect for anybody who flies
a bird like that.

Speaker 5 (01:07:22):
I think that's really But I think that was the
thing or maybe it was just more a tradition in
that part of the world.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
But we just don't see that as much. Over here.

Speaker 5 (01:07:30):
We see we see a lot of protection of of
of high level folks and their kids, you know, going
into the service.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):
Like that, and we see a lot of good things too.
We cannot forget that. Okay, maybe it feels like you
are on the right side of history, but you're outnumbered,
you know by what Richard Kifling would say, we called
knaves and fools. But we have to remember there are
tireless researchers, historians, journalists, local activists working around the clock

(01:08:03):
to learn more about the truth surrounding not just human
sacrifice in the past, but human sacrifice today. And they're
preserving the true stories of previous cultures. They're dispelling persistent myths.
They are the people we should be listening to maybe
not the modern rulers with again a lot of stuff

(01:08:24):
they don't want you to know, but we want to
know your thoughts. Yeah, please find us on the lines,
call us on the phone, send us an email.

Speaker 3 (01:08:31):
Oh gosh, you must.

Speaker 5 (01:08:32):
If you were to find us on the lines, you
could do so by reaching out to the handle Conspiracy
Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which social media
platform you go for.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
Guys, I really want to read. Just look this up
Psalm fifty, verse sixteen through twenty three. Just look it up,
check it out, think about it. If you go just
a couple of verses back, you can read about the
flesh of bulls and blood of goats. Give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. When
you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let

(01:09:03):
us know if we can use your name and message
on the air. It may go into one of our
listener mail episodes if you want to send us an email.

Speaker 4 (01:09:09):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive, being well aware yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back, my friend, you would not tell with such
high zs to children. Ardent for some Desperate Glory, the
Old Lie Dulce et Decora Mes grow up at three more,
We'll see why here in the dark conspiracy at iartradio

(01:09:31):
dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
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