September 21, 2022 • 61 mins
Have you ever encountered a place with an inexplicable bad vibe? Do you believe events of the past can leave an intangible mark affecting the present? In some cases, people combat these concerns through spiritually-based cleansing rituals -- but there's more to the story. They don’t want you to read our book. They don’t want you to see us on tour.
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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 the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I heart radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, My name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined, as always, with our super producer,
Paul mission controlled decans. Most importantly, you are you, you
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Shout out to all our new
homeowners in the audience. Two thirds of your fellow conspiracy
(00:49):
realists are currently new homeowners right now recording in their houses.
I have to ask you, guys, Matt Noel, before we
set off on this journey, what was the vibe like
when you moved into your house? I'm going somewhere with this.
Oh Man, Um, I don't know. It felt. I felt
kind of clear. It really felt any malevolent spirits dwelling
(01:12):
in the eaves quite yet, but you never know. So
it as it takes time for those things to work
themselves out and express themselves. Um, it is finally starting
to feel like kind of like my house. Uh, speaking
of clean I actually hired a company to deep clean.
It not but kind of clean we're talking about today.
But that really bumped it up a notch. Let me
tell you. There's been sort of clean and deep clean
(01:36):
are like miles. Uh. It also felt like a spiritual
way was lifted off when that happened. But yeah, nothing,
nothing spooky to report just yet. Lemons at the four corners.
We'll see what happens. Uh Ben, when you lived I
remember there was a house you lived in that had
that really cool basement. Did you ever have anything like
(01:56):
negative energy around that basement? Well, energy, energy, you know. Uh,
maybe maybe I'm the wrong person to answer, but uh,
energy is like another technology or another force of nature. U.
It can do a million things and it really, as
we'll see, a big part of our exploration today is
(02:19):
whether there is such a thing as inherently good or
bad energy, and to what degree do humans have agency
encountering it. Thank you so much for asking about me, Matt.
I appreciate that are one of our questions for everybody
listening today is whether or not you believe in bad vibes.
(02:44):
Uh Not the amazing Jeff Goldbloom film which we referenced
so often. Uh Not just the agglomeration of nonverbal cues
that subconsciously alert human beings the dangerous situations. Side Note.
We're talking about this off air. Everybody right now should
read a fantastic book called the gift of fear by
(03:06):
Gavin de Becker. Also, yes, our corporate overlords will black
bag us and put us in Honda odyssees. Oh the
indignity if we do not tell you to please preorder
our book if you have yet to do so. The
gift of fear, while a valuable read, doesn't particularly address
(03:30):
some of the things we're looking at today. We're looking
at the other stuff. That's what we're asking about. Like
all of us, have encountered someone who claims they can
sense when there's something you know off about a place,
the soil is Salah and so on. Like you may
have encountered people who are claiming they can erase or
(03:52):
even mitigate these sensations, for lack of a better word
and without pissing off the Catholic Church. You might have
run into people who claim they can exercise house. Have you, guys,
ever felt of the bad vibe when you walk into
a place? I've never encountered that. Necessarily, I am sometimes
(04:15):
when I walk into a place where I'm aware there's
a history, then I think that's just a I mean
in my mind that's a psychological reaction I'm having rather
than actually feeling some kind of energy, if that makes sense.
Although in the old office where I used to record
uh there was a grounding issue with the electricity, which
(04:36):
did give it a strange feel maybe, but again that's
something I was aware of. Do you feel like it's first?
I love that. This foreshadowing, Matt. That is definitely we're
getting into the power of belief and the power of information. Really,
have you run into someone who has been convinced that
(04:58):
they met a bad place like an Amityville? Check out
our earlier episode on that or, you know, a lizzie
boarding episode. Check out our strange news segment on when
that Ben Breakfast got sold. I I'll be honest, cards
on the table. I do get vibes from different places
and I kind of explain them. What vibes did you
(05:21):
get when you were in my house? See, that's the
real question. Which House? W H? I C H. I mean, folks,
I forgot this is an audio podcast. Which House? Now
ben does a Ben does kind of a concierge service
where he will exercise your place before you even know
it needs it and you'll do it. We'll do it
(05:42):
while you're not home, in the most unobtrusive way. So
if you stage smell, yeah, exactly. No, I mean, I
don't know, I certainly I think it's for me it's
more psychological with people too. I think I just sense
certain mechanics that people tended to operate within and I
can maybe get a sense of like what their vibe
is based on the phrases they use, the way they talk,
(06:03):
the body language and all of that. So I don't
know that I believe necessarily in spiritual presences. I'm with you, Matt,
on the history, because I do feel like that's psychological
as well. If you know about the history of the
place that you're entering, its sort of like knowing what
a piece of art you know what the context around
it means. It gives you a better sense of being
what to like interpret what the piece of art was about,
(06:25):
rather than just like going in cold Um. But I
mean that's not to say that people don't truly truly
believe this stuff, and there isn't like a whole industry
wrapped around it. There's a Um, a really interesting story
about David Bowie Um, in his cokiest of periods, around
the making of the album station to station, where he
rented this mansion in Los fieleas in in l a
(06:48):
I used to belong to the basis of deep purple,
that he hired a white witch was very well known
in that part of of Hollywood to exercise what was
wanted to be referred to as his cocaine palace Um,
because he definitely sent some some bad vibes there. But
he was also horribly addicted to cocaine and it was
(07:10):
only surviving on milk and red peppers and spent most
of his free time watching Nazi propaganda videos on thirty
five millimeter film. Who hasn't been there? You know, some
human experiences are universal. Hopefully Not David Boye's experience, and
if that is your experience, I very much hope you
find yourself in better spirits now. Oh my gosh, he
(07:33):
said spirits. Where are we going? Here? Are The facts?
We're talking about an ancient practice in the modern day.
Let's get to it. Through pop culture. If you are
a certain type of horror fan, you may remember an
especially uh compelling medium, a show steeler, in the film poultergeist.
(07:54):
In poultergeist, Tangina barrens helps the free lean fan late
tackle a supernatural threat from beyond the grave. She has
his famous line. Let me see if I can pull
my registr up to the voice. This house is clear.
This house something like that. She's not referring to the carpet.
(08:17):
It's not a deep clean. She's talking about their work
ridding this house of an evil supernatural presence named Kane.
If you want to know the backstory, watch the rest
of the franchise, hopefully freely available to you. And we
all know it was too well, Kane is the original beast,
(08:38):
the original the monster. Wasn't always what's the what's the
creepy guy's name? The creepy preacher guy? Isn't his name
like Reverend Kane? Yeah, Kane's what I'm saying. Kane is
he's just, he's just the new personification of that. Okay,
I guess they just learned more about they do more
world building. Got It. Check it off, check out. The
(09:00):
first one has the spooky clown though, right. You know, uh,
maybe that's a rewatch for me. Poltergeist exists as a
very interesting venn diagram of family adventure and straight up horror. UH,
the reason we're bringing up polter geist is that it's
a work of fiction, but it is not from whole cloth. Again,
(09:20):
a few things exist in a vacuum. There are numerous
cases of people, from the past to the modern day,
who really do believe their houses or certain locations are
haunted or, you know, they need a vibe check, and
these folks feel they have to enact some sort of
ritual to rid the location of this presence, this vibe,
(09:44):
this aura, this my asthma, whatever you wanna call it,
and it has a lot to do, or has a
lot of commonality with exorcism rituals that we examined at
length in previous episodes. And it's not necessarily always a
bad thing, a purification ritual, you know, unless you're the
(10:06):
biggest stick in the mud ever, it's a good thing, right,
if you're not hurting someone, I mean you, like you
see it today, right, you see it today in many
spiritual belief systems, one must purify oneself before entering a
temple or a holy place, some sort of particular location.
(10:28):
You Um a blue yourself, maybe with water, or you
might be in a place like the baps temple here
near Atlanta, wherein you have a process of pushing smoke
towards yourself, towards your face and over your head, right,
and that is simply to purify you, to give you
(10:51):
the blessing of something divine. In other cases, cultures might
hold a ceremony, not to purify the person but to
purify the place, and it gets ugly. If you go
pretty far back, you can see the idea of human
(11:11):
sacrifice being used to sanctify or make official the founding
of a of a thing. But nowadays most times, uh,
groups of people and communities are not sacrificing a child,
a human child or or an animal to sanctify a
(11:32):
place or make it official. UH, most of the time
when you hear about clearing or cleansing a house of
bad vibes, you're gonna read about something like the practice
of smudging, which will discuss in a moment Um. Yeah,
don't like to keep it brief, to say immediate smudging.
(11:53):
You Burn Sage, right, that's how most of the West
does it. You burn a particular type of sage, get
the bad vibes out. Is that everybody's understanding? Am I
off base? Am I being too broad? I think there
are other substances that can be used, or are often
used in conjunction with sage. Sweet. But yeah, we we
(12:16):
can get into that. Polo Santo is a really big one.
That's what pologize. Oh, yeah, exactly, but that that is
that's like a type of wood Um and sage is
more of like a bundle of of herbs. I find
that they smell very, very similar. I'm not a huge
fan of the scent, but it is distinct and it
usually is done with some intention and I think been
(12:36):
to your point, whether you believe in the efficacy of
these types of things, I think laying out intention can
be very important, or even just sort of like setting
a base level of like, you know, I'm gonna Honor
This House that I'm about to occupy or or that
I'm about to spend time in or whatever, and it
is the way. It's sort of being in some way connected,
more connected with the space, and I think that's cool. Yeah,
(12:59):
and what will it into it? But you can see
why all of these things play a part psychologically on
the people that are both you know doing the rituals
as well as the people who are receiving the rituals.
There's there's a psychological effect, no matter what the spiritual
or metaphysical effects maybe. Yeah, yeah, well said, and it's easy,
(13:23):
all too easy, to consign these experiences to the dusty
halls of ancient history. But we have to consider this.
Even of science has understood in has advanced over Millennia. People,
the actual people, are largely the same as you are
(13:45):
now when you're hearing this. They're working with the information
they have. Uh. They want to be the cool kid
in the room of their society. They want their children
to have a better life than them. They like to eat,
they naps all the hits, uh. And, as such, a
lot of the people in ancient civilizations held a lot
(14:09):
of the same broad concerns, same fears, same goals, you
name it. If you explained to them right, if someone
from let's say, Oh Gosh, let's say someone from like
two thousand BC, all of a sudden was your roommate
(14:31):
and you told them that crocs were cool and you
conveyed to them that crocs were like a socially important thing,
then they would understand the value of crocs, because they're
not that different from you. Like this is a great example. Okay,
can I kind of just say really quickly, Ben I'm
I'm wearing crocs right now. I've decided to make the
(14:54):
full plunge into crocs, wearing dumb Um, because they have
kind of made it come back. But my kid is
not about it and the more she gives me crap
about it, the more I'm just gonna lean harder. And
their bright blue crocks. So that's all. Welcome. I welcome
your new horizon of norm core. Uh and you know what,
maybe call it dad core, because you're you're doing an
(15:16):
awesome job with it. I know come by, I will.
I will tell Eden to lay off or double down.
You tell us which way you want to go, and
I got your back. Uh. So, he just remember to
wash them regularly. That's all. Or No, I'm kidding, wash them.
But but here's the thing. Uh So, when I was
(15:39):
thinking of modern analogs right this, it's so easy to
look back on people who were the same as you,
but they add access to less information than you do
now or less. Uh, you have access to different kinds
of information. If you're alive now, right many people listening
(16:01):
today would be frankly embarrassing existing out in the wild. Uh,
and you know, uh, just the same way that many
other people from thousands of years ago would be clueless
when it came to the INS and outs and nuances
of modern society. So here is an analog that shows
(16:23):
us just how common this belief in bad vibes has
been for thousands and thousands of years. Not for nothing
did I set up the fact that you guys are
new homeowners. I don't want to be weird about it,
but uh, when you were buying, when you were buying
(16:44):
your houses, when you guys were negotiating, were you aware
of the various laws, which are weirdly specific, about selling
a house where a death has occurred? It's a disclosure thing, right,
like you know that you are a wired to disclose
it if it's happened within a certain period of time
in Alaska, California and South Dakota. Uh, the thing is,
(17:10):
you don't really in the US. You don't have to
disclose a peaceful death on the property. If you are
in the three states are just named, then you believe
the way it goes is that in California you have
to disclose any death on a property within the last
three years before the purchase. Uh, if you are in
(17:34):
Alaska and South Dakota, it's any death within the past year,
and if you are in other states it's going by
a thing. I made this up. Let me, I'm gonna
Pitch to UH Nolan Matt here. I like to call
it the Guacamole rule. The information is available on request.
So when you're talking to the the people selling the house,
(17:56):
or whichever you know, like proxy of them there is,
you have to ask them if someone died, and in
many states they have to tell you. Is that like
if I ask you if you're a cop, you gotta
tell me if you're a cop. Maybe true. Wait, wait,
so you have to ask, like there's no, that's it.
(18:19):
You just have to think to ask. Yeah, it's like
how you know? I call it the Guacamole rule because
in many places Guacamole is available upon request, right, and
the menu also. It costs extra, and they but here's
the thing, ben at some places I find it obnoxious
that they tell you you ask for Guacamole, Guacamole is
two dollars extra. And like, has that ever stopped someone
(18:42):
from getting Guacamole and the like? Are they? Is that
some legal thing? They're covering their assets so they don't
get yelled? I mean, I know it's that, but I
just find that funny. It's two different sides of the
Guacoli Um Ben do you think? I mean? I think
this maybe makes sense because if I care enough, religiously
or in some sort of spiritual way, um, about these
sorts of things, then I would probably care enough to
(19:06):
ask or do my own research. But is that giving
people too much credit? I don't know, like I'm just wondering,
like what the logic is here. Yeah, the logic is
somewhere between let the buyer beware and somewhere between tell
me what I'm actually buying. The rules do change when
the death in question was violent. A murder or a suicide,
(19:30):
especially one that's highly publicized, is considered on the same
level as asbestos or lead paint or water damage, right,
or maybe a crack and a foundation. It stigmatizes the property.
This has seen as something that can affect the home value,
which is so weird, because it's not the fact that
(19:52):
someone died, that a human life was lost there, it's
the manner in which it was lost. So violent events
in the past still matter, and too many people they
matter quite a lot. We have to ask why, like
if bad vibes are not real, and if we brack
it off secular concerns like social opprobrium or maybe like
(20:15):
effects on, I don't know, zip codes and school districts,
then we have to know the obvious. That's all that's left. People,
by and large, do seem to believe that bad things,
bad vibes can remain after the time has passed, after
those physical components of those events are gone, and it
(20:38):
doesn't have to be a death. It could just be
negative energy like that. That's what I keep hearing in
the research for this. Death is a major factor, but
maybe that's not it. Maybe it's how someone lived or
who the children were abused. Do you have to disclose
if the previous owner was a real jerk, you know,
I mean yelling at people and grumping around all the time,
(20:59):
like this guy lived here his entire life and they
only tipped nine to waiters for decades. Like no, but honestly, also,
what you can not man, you cannot. It's a good
point to matt because it's Um it's the idea that
great emotional danger, harrowing events can leave some sort of impression,
(21:27):
and people believe in a lot of this. People will
take matters into their own hands, attempting to cleanse out
any remaining bad vibes. It's not always a death, it's
not always something deeply traumatic. It can be a purification thing. Um.
It can be like imagine you have lived a long
(21:49):
time with a romantic partner and you're no longer together
and you're still in the house and you say I
want to breathing and breathe about this bad stuff, so
I'm going to burn this sage, I'm going to say
some sort of incantation and ritual I will feel better afterwards,
(22:11):
and for many people that's true. These techniques. Of course
we'll focus on smudging for a bit today and you'll
see why. But these techniques can be any other number
of things. There's a panopoly of belief systems and approaches.
You Know Uh. We talked about the idea of purification
with water, purification with smoke. There's some uh there are
(22:34):
some practices incorporating uh dirt from one place into another.
In the states, one of the most popular, oddly now,
one of the most popular sec secular purification processes is
a ritual cleansing through the use of smoke known as smudging.
It's not quite, uh, not quite the same as four
(22:57):
lemons in the corners right, or lemon in the corners.
But you guys know smudge. Any of you ever engaged
in it? Yeah, my my my ex wife, a good
friend of mine, uh, is into that stuff and it's
always offering to do it for me and she's into,
you know, crystals and pendulum and all that stuff, and
I fully support it and embrace it. It's not exactly
(23:19):
my bag, but I see how it it makes her
feel good and makes her feel like it's, like I said,
an agency over her her existence and surroundings. I I
certainly put it in the same basket as any other
religious practice. You know, Um, I think it's great and
you know, there's certainly things about it that I find
super comforting. Smudge is great. Not. You're playing poker, uh,
(23:44):
with with some cards pretty close to your stern hom
I respect you. I don't know what. What do you mean?
You're played? Do you be a diplomatic? You got them
close to your chest. I love it, I respect it.
It's it's not hurting anyone. Right, as long as we
as long as we practice beliefs and we're not harming anyone,
and as long as they are not harming us, then
(24:08):
do as thou wilt. Uh. This is weirdly, you know,
the crazy thing about smudging. It's an ancient practice, but
it's often sadly misunderstood. It's an indigenous practice. It's a
native practice that goes way, way back, and there are
a lot of folks out there who, you know, God
(24:29):
bless them, as they say in the south, bless their hearts,
they don't understand where it comes from. There are practices
of old across the world that are quite similar. There's
something called saning in Scotland. Indigenous Australia also has smoking ceremonies.
Smudging uses the smoke of certain plant matter, Um, you know,
(24:53):
like we're talking about earlier. Might be sweet grass, might
be Red Cedar, might be White Sage, any number of
things to accomplish any number of goals. It's not always
to get rid of the bad vibes. It might be
used just to heal a place or to set things
off on the right note. As you spend time there
(25:14):
and it's important to clock this. Folks different communities use
different plants and herbs. What is considered super cool and
appropriate in one culture, for one thing, maybe absolutely taboo
or misused in another. And, as we'll see, their controversies
(25:35):
involved in this practice. But, with all that being said,
take away there are tons and tons of people who
have sought to enact some sort of purification ritual on
a place with bad vibes. Here's the question. Does it
actually work? I propose, and pause for word from our sponsor,
(25:56):
and then tackle this question. Oh, we're gonna tackle it.
I don't know if we'll answer it. Here's where it
gets crazy. Well, whether or not this works depends on
what we mean by work. I know, I know, I know,
where one of those pesky intersections yet again, of science, spirituality,
(26:22):
psychology and belief. Have to be the downers. Now we
have to be the bad guys in this conversation and
say yet again, at least as of the time we
are recording this, no supernatural entities have been universally objectively
proven to exist. That means yes, the infernal, that means yes,
(26:45):
the divine, that means yes. Ghost all of that stuff
has not been confirmed. To exist. But don't let that
make you throw away these rituals, if they mean something
to you, if you believe in them. There's a reason
belief is an incredibly powerful thing, for both good and
(27:07):
for ill. Absolutely it is. Is Truly Um, something that
we cannot overestimate the power of. We know that it
can cause changes in the body, like psycho somatic changes
or the placebo effect, the idea that believing that something
is happening to you Um psychologically can make it happen
(27:28):
to your body physically. Um. To some folks, the notion
of explaining how this phenomenon works, the power of belief,
is a lot like trying to explain magic, and not
like not like how a magic trick works, but like
the idea of magic, of of things beyond our realm
of understanding, of our realm of experience. You know, in
(27:50):
this in this world, um. To others, though, perhaps the
more skeptical members of of the crowd, Um, we are
describing what I just mentioned, the idea of the placebo effect. Um.
But if you keep in mind that the placebo effect
is a thing, it is a provable thing. It does
provide results. We know this. Um, even when the participants
(28:11):
in the experiment know they're getting the Placebo Um. This
has been confirmed in multiple studies across multiple years. So
to that end, I mean, can a smudging, you know,
provide some psychological and and and, by way of of Placebo,
physically even benefits? I think the clear answer is probably.
(28:32):
We've got some examples of studies that have really done
a quite excellent job of explaining this definitively. Here's one
of my favorites. Okay, researchers at Harvard, at Harvard Medical
Schools Ocean Research Center and Beth Israel deaconess medical center
found that placebos do significant work. Get this, folks, even
(28:56):
when patients knew they were taking what sometimes called blue
sky pills. Let's summarize one of these studies from so
a d patients had irritable bowels, syndrome, IBS, you know
what I mean. Your gut hurts, you haven't pooping issues, etcetera, etcetera,
(29:17):
and you're like, I cut out the JOMBA juice. What
else do I do? I guess I have to enroll
in this medical study at Harvard. So they divided these
eight patients into two groups, one of which received no
treatment whatsoever. They were just being monitored for their swamp
swamp guts. And the other group got placebos that were
(29:40):
honestly described as sugar pills, and they were they were told, Hey,
take these pills twice a day for three weeks. The
associate professor of Medicine at Harvard, a guy named Ted Kopchuk,
who was leading this study, he described it pretty plainly actually.
He emphasized that the participants were told this was a placebo. Now,
(30:06):
Ted seems like a solid researcher, a brilliant dude and
a good guy, so I think he'd be fine with
us playing around and doing a little bit of a
dramatic recreation of one of his quotes. This really, I think,
hits home for us when we're talking about the power
of belief. Uh Not, if I don't want to put
(30:28):
you on the spot, but if you're okay, if you
got a good ted cave voice, good Doctor Cave voice
that calls out to you, I think it's time to
shine man. All right, not only did we make it
absolutely clear that these pills had no active ingredient and
we're made from inert substances, but we actually had placebo
(30:52):
printed on the bottle. We told the patients that they
didn't even have to believe in the placebo effect. Just
take the pills. Beautiful, sounds exactly like Ted Kapchuk. Now
it's good. Can we can we also just get another
Matt Frederick out of context. Quote just says just take
the pills, Matt Frederick. This is alluding to an earlier
(31:14):
guest appearance we did on a show called macro dosing.
Please check it out. We talked about q and on
and death. At the end of this three week trial,
where again people, forty participants of the Group of Eight
people knew they were taking placebo's. At the end of
this trial, quote, nearly twice as many patients treated with
(31:38):
the Placebo reported symptom relief as compared to the control group.
And Uh, to go on, the patients taking the placebo
doubled their rates of improvement, emphasizing that on my own
here uh, to a degree that was, quote, roughly equivalent
(31:59):
to the effects some of the most powerful a B
s medications. How did I do, Matt? Just take the pills. Sorry,
just take your sugar pills. You'll be sweet now. You'll
take your sugar pills and you'll like it, damn it.
So this. This sounds like a stretch, right. We're comparing
consuming physical placebos to ritualistic acts of cleansing and that
(32:24):
might seem offensive. Well, it's not that much of a stretch.
It's genuinely tracks in an upcoming episode, by the way,
Specam of the nature of belief. We're diving deep through
the Lens of all things Havana Syndrome. Stay tuned for that.
We have a special guest that will well that we
hope you like. We like them, we hang out with them.
(32:46):
No spoilers. But the long and short of it is this.
There is at this point no objective proof that a
cleansing ritual, a spiritual ritual for a house of temple
or another structure, objectively works. Right. If you go in,
if you go in after any number of rituals, the
(33:08):
gravity of the area is going to be the same
as the rest of the gravity. The air pollution is
going to be roughly the same, minus whatever air filtration
devices are around. People are still gonna live and die
the same way physically. But that's only because there is
at present no scientific definition of what we mean when
(33:31):
we say bad vibe. You know, like look we've been
diving into this for a while, right, guys. We know
that there are some mundane explanations for things that people
can experience that feel very much like a supernatural experience. Infrasound,
I think, takes the Platinum Award Right UH, infrasound is
(33:55):
probably one of the most amazing explanations for the sensation
of experiencing a ghost. But still there's no real definition
of intelligence for humans. There's no real definition of the soul,
let alone the angelic or the divine. So I posit
that if you cannot I'm not even positing it's true,
(34:18):
if you cannot define a thing, you cannot measure it.
But if it makes someone feel even a little bit
better in this chaotic cavalcade of catastrophe called life, if
it makes him feel better, to do with you. I'm sorry, accidentally,
but if, if, if it, if you're doing a ritual
(34:41):
and it doesn't hurt anyone, then would it not be
Dick Ish? Two, you know, Yuck there yum as chuck
and Josh would say, like why would you go out
of your way to disrespect something that means, that is
meaningful to someone else? They're not asking anything of you.
They're not hurting you, they're not hurting others. Just be
(35:03):
a decent person. I mean that's the thing. It sounds
like maybe we're throwing our limits out with the rose
water here, but it does carry a deal of psychological heft,
a great deal, and there are controversies. And if we
stay in the realm of the spiritual, we are required
(35:25):
to tell you that there are perceived spiritual dangers for
true believers. You know, not too long ago were privileged
enough to have some in depth conversations with practicing magicians,
one of whom was a chaos magician and talked with
(35:47):
us in great depth about the importance of following rituals
right and hermetic magicians, uh, thelemic magician will we'll tell
you the same thing these practitioners. They'll say there are
detailed processes and steps to follow in the realm of
(36:07):
chaos magic, the main thing is intention. But spoiler alert,
in the realms of all magical practice, intention is key. Well,
I mean, you know, even podcasting there's a certain amount
of ritual that goes into it. You know whether you
do you do the intro add throws certain recurring motifs
that that any you know good podcast kind of does.
(36:29):
I think it's something that I enjoy when I listened
to the podcast that I listened to. I enjoy the
ritual of it when we're doing ours together. Um, and
it again kind of implies intent and you sort of
lay down the sort of like foundational vibe and you
sort of work within this framework, but then there's all
this like space in between those parts to do kind
of to do things differently. Um, I think it's it's
(36:50):
a it's a very important part of a lot of
things in life. Ritual. Yeah, and you know, if you're
a lay person and you don't have someone in your
family or media group does you know house cleansing on
a regular basis or burns sage regularly or has a
dog that will not stop making lots of noise while
you're trying to podcast. Um, you may not know exactly
(37:11):
what to do. Right. You may be like, Oh, well,
I'm there, I have this sage, I got it at
this store, I'm gonna burn it and walk around my
house and do what I've seen in the movies. Right. Um,
there people in the know will tell you, well, that's
one step. is like doing that kind of thing. But
there are other parts to it. I just want to
see if you guys ever heard of this. One of
the main things I've heard is that if you do
(37:33):
cleanse a house with sage or Poli Santo or one
of these other I mean cople lavender, one of these
other things, you need to burn other things afterwards. I
didn't know this. I didn't know this is the thing.
You need to burn something afterwards, because the sage or
Paulo Santo is neutralizing the energy and then the other
(37:54):
thing is putting positive energy in the space where negative
energy once was. I didn't know that. I would have
I would have smudged a house completely wrong. Well, yeah,
I've I've heard that as well. Matt Uh, you're nailing
about the importance of steps, processes, ingredients, intention, preparation and execution.
(38:19):
The True believers will say that to do any of
these steps incorrectly risk more than having a bum cleansing.
You might not just be ineffective, you might, they argue,
run into negative consequences, problems. Uh, and then again, you know,
we have to mention the power of belief. The placebo effect,
(38:45):
as we call it, often can function like any other technology.
It can be very helpful and very dangerous, and this
is not just in terms of vague physical symptoms like
malaise or a headache. UH, yeah, I know we talked
about off air, but have we talked on air? We
must have at some point about at some bone point.
(39:08):
We must have talked about the Kardita in Australia, and
forgive my pronunciation, folks, I am not Australian at current. Uh.
These are indigenous practitioners of the Ante People in Australia,
indigenous group. They're known for a practice called bone pointing,
(39:29):
which is a method for meeting out spiritual justice, and
if you look at anthropological reports, which or of course,
a little biased, you can see that there are cases
as recently as the nineteen fifties wherein people have apparently
died with no attributable physical cause other than the fact
(39:53):
that they were cursed and they saw themselves getting cursed.
The way bone pointing works is that the practitioner crafts
a special pair of hunting shoes or slippers and then
crafts a specific sort of device. I don't know why
I'm doing this, like I'm all of a sudden making
(40:15):
a bone, but it's uh, it could be kangaroo, EMU
human their cases, where it's made out of wood and
it's made with intention and special ritual. The hunter finds
the person they point at, uh, the intended recipient of
the curse, and deliver the rest of the chant. And
(40:38):
for the true believers this is lethal. Uh, it's death
by the power, apparently, of belief. Some form of this
practice does, by the way, exists in the modern day.
I found that in two thousand and four someone pointed
the bone, as it's called, to curse Australian Prime Minister
(40:59):
John How word, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who is,
as of the time of this recording, still alive. So
this the spiritual side. I guess what we're saying is
if you believe in something, if you really believe in
it and you're not being performative for, you know, like
clicks or likes or whatever on social media, then move
(41:21):
correctly and as safely as you can, consult the communities
from what you given practice originates. And if you are
coming from a spiritual perspective, this is key. If you're
coming from a skeptical perspective, then this is just a
matter of respect, and I think that's equally important. Respect
your primary sources there. Yeah, and respect where you point
(41:43):
that bone. Respect where you point that bone. You better
not be pointing that bone or anybody if you're not
ready to use it. That's all I'm saying. Well, also,
if I'm tracking these euphemisms correctly, I should say consent
is key. Informed Consent, just more treating it like a weapon.
But yeah, that too. And this leads us to another conversation.
It's another point of controversy. It's far less spiritual and
(42:06):
far more secular. What are we talking about? We'll tell
you after a word from our sponsors. All right, we're back.
WHO's been to Bonaru? Who saw those pictures of the
War Bonnets? You know all all that stuff. But What
(42:28):
War Bonnet? It's uh, it's the headdress you've probably seen
with a bunch of eagle feathers often. I think that
more I think it's Coachella more that gets a bad
rap for that kind of stuff than Bonaro, now that
the Coachella is the California kind of influencer music fest
that I think it's a lot of like, has in
(42:49):
the past gotten a lot of flak for folks coming
out dressing in, you know, culturally appropriated at time. I'm
sure it goes on a rate too. Well then, my
heart felt apologies to Bot around and thank you for
their correction. There not like this. This is where we
talked about appropriation. Appropriations a real thing. Take smudging, for example. SMUDGING, again,
(43:12):
is an umbrella term for a vast and profound array
of differing and quite specific rituals and practices. I mean, okay,
I don't want to be a jerk, he says, as
he proceeds to say something very jerk like in the West,
I found that smudging practices, as enacted by many non
(43:36):
indigenous communities, are they're roughly descended from ancient native practices,
but they're descended from it. It's kind of the same
way that, like Taco Bell is descended from actual Mexican food.
It's a modern, sometimes uninformed take on deep spiritual beliefs
(44:01):
and and things have been around for a much, much
longer time. I mean, am I being a jerk? Am
I being correct? Little Column A, Little Column B, I
don't know. You're totally correct. I mean it's been commodified,
just like anything else that that picks up steam culturally
gets commodified. I mean, it's the kind of stuff you
can buy. All this stuff, like a spencer gifts at
(44:21):
them all. Uh. Is that inherently bad? Is Is it
just spreading, you know, a a practice that has, you know,
positive influence perhaps. And and is a is a way
of centering and kind of calming and and and something
that could potentially be helpful for people. Is that inherently bad? Well,
it depends on your definition of appropriation. Like if if
(44:43):
something is from a a sacred ritual of a very
specific indigenous people, like, for example, the head Dresser's talking about,
probably not cool. But then again we're talking about sacred
rituals as well with one of these materials like like White, uh,
white sage and June prayer and Paolo Santo and stuff.
So you could say it is bad, but I I
(45:06):
don't know, it's hard. I think there's a line and
it's important. It's about intent as well. Think about the cocaine. Well,
in one of these episodes we talked about cocaine recently.
We talked about how much the people who actually harvest
the substance that becomes the cocaine, how much they make,
you know, on a per kilo basis, or something like that,
and how ridiculously low that amount of money was. It's
(45:29):
the same thing with any of these other substances that
are harvested from indigenous lands, right. I mean you're taking
a lot, especially if you're a big corporation and you're
going to be putting Paulo Santo and stores across, you know, countries,
across the world or in your you know, Spencer's gifts
or whatever. Um, it becomes a real problem because you
can only source the materials from a limited number of spaces,
(45:52):
and if those spaces are, you know, um run by
and occupied by indigenous people's then they're likely getting a very,
very short end of that stick. Well, and not even
not to mention that things like Palosanto do come from,
to your point, Matt, very specific regions. They come from
dry tropical forests, Um, and that's where you get them.
(46:13):
And if, if all of the PALOCANTO sticks are are being,
you know, chopped out of those forests and then shipped
over here to be sold at Spencer gifts or tight
eye rosy or whatever, Um, that's a problem for deforestation.
So there's no doubt that smudging, or some version of it,
particularly burning, varieties of sage, white sage. As was foreshadowed earlier,
(46:37):
it has become commercialized. There are big, big brands like
urban outfitters, most famous for ripping off independent artists, uh,
and West Elm, most famous for overcharging for kitchen gadgets. Uh.
They have sold sage sticks and there's a dirty trade
to it we'll get to. You can even order uh,
(46:59):
a smudge kit on Amazon in case you, like us,
are still very worried over whether or not jeff will
still make it to space. Sort of, kind of for
eleven minutes. But if intention is key, if we have
established that and agree with it, we have to question
the intention of these entities. And if you are a
spiritual person, ask yourself how much uh, that intention washes
(47:24):
into your own when you when you drink from that well,
look honestly, and you know what edit me here at
mission control. A Corporation doesn't give us whether or not
you are practicing an ancient, divine or uh, spiritual belief system,
even if your family has practiced it for untold generations.
(47:45):
They want to know how much of a product they
can sell you. And that, my friends, has consequences all
its own. That's the next controversy. The world is literally
running out of sage. Demand for White Sage, which is
native to southern California, has led to this thing, which
was a common shrub, being wildly over harvested. There is
(48:09):
right now, as weird as it sounds, a black market
for white sage, member of the men family. You would
not be especially impressed if you just walked by it
on the road in the wild back in the day.
It's a SHRUB. It has tapering like pretty neat looking
silver leaves and it grows like many shrubs. It grows
(48:31):
back pretty Um pretty vigorously when it's pruned up to
a certain point, and that you know. That aspect of
shrubbery and plants is part of the reason. There's this
myth about hair growing back twice as thick when people
shave parts of their body, but at this point that
is not true. This supply chain, though, for this thing,
(48:54):
it's pretty unregulated. It's like how would you regulate crab grass?
How would you regulate any other any other kind of
common plant that grows in a specific region? But because
it's unregulated and because corporations got in and saw a
cash grab, there are tons of people who are playing
(49:16):
their unethical part, and this is messed up because it
means native communities who are genuinely practicing their own belief
systems rather than cloud chasing on social media. They're left
out in the cold, like sage boacher's or a thing.
There are people who are just driving by and finding
little shrubs of sage, which used to grow like shoulder high,
(49:40):
and now it's uncommon to see it more than Waiste
high at best. UH, they are out there and they're
taking the sage. Is it specifically because of this? Just,
you know, specific things in the soil due to the climate?
Is something that could be growing in greenhouses. Let's say
I was really in the sage and I wanted to
grow my own. It's not as easy as they growing rosemary,
(50:00):
which grows like a weed and a super resilience. was
wondering if there are any ways around this. There are.
One would have to grow it to scale, though, and
just like Um, just like the passenger pigeon and the Buffalo,
a lot of a lot of people are not worried
(50:21):
about sustainability. They're not trying to grow it on their own.
They're taking it for a short term monetary gain. Consequences
be damned. Their intentions are bad, and if you believe
in the spiritual side of this argument, then you know
that bad intentions, just like bad vibes, can carry on
(50:43):
over time. Come on to grief, I want to shout
them out. Come on to grief. wrote a cool article
over on over advice, and noted that almost all of
the white sage being sold commercially, like the vast man
worthy of it, is harvested from nature. You know it's there.
(51:04):
It's unregulated, rather, and the corporate euphemism for this is wildcrafted.
That means that someone takes it and then it goes
through middlemen and it goes through wholesalers and then it
hits the public and, just like any other trade, uh,
it's probably getting stepped on, as they say with cocaine. UH,
(51:26):
every step of the way, step of the way anyway, Jeez. Uh.
So this is often sold to the public by companies
that market themselves as environmentally conscious, right or oh, we're
so respectful of this. That and the third greenwashing. Green
(51:47):
washing is another great word for it. So just for
a moment, if we could exercise a little bit of empathy,
let's pretend we grew up with these practices in our
own community and back in the day, for the entirety
of our lives and the lives of those who came
before us. When the time came, we would just go
(52:08):
out and we would get our cedar, our sweet grass
or stage or any number of herbs and plant matter
and we would get it together for the appropriate event.
But now native communities are finding that non native folks
(52:28):
are not just taking this stuff, but they're threatening legal
actions against the very same communities that taught them these
practices in the first place. That's super messed up. You
don't have to you know, you don't have to have
a political horse in the race. Uh, and you don't.
Hopefully you don't have to like smudge your version of
(52:52):
the Internet to understand how paradoxical and unjust that seems.
What are the what's the basis for these threats about
land usage? Is it about branding? Like I'm fascinated and
confused property rights. So let's say you're going down a
state road somewhere and maybe a rural area, and you
(53:14):
see some wild stage and you pick it up and
then someone comes out and says, Hey, that's on my
my property. Or whatever. Then they would threaten action and
they might have the juice, the juice with law enforcement,
to enforce that action. It's kind of like, Um, if
you're walking, and I recommend everybody walk as far and
(53:38):
as often as you can, but if you're walking somewhere
and you pass by, Um, some flowers, right would and
you might want to pick one. If someone catches you,
someone sees you picking that, then are you a thief,
just someone who likes flowers? I don't know, it's I
(53:58):
think it depends on are they wildflowers, that that occurred naturally,
or is it something that someone has spent time and
effort cultivating, like when the prince stole the witches cabbage
and Uh Rapunzel. You know, that was definitely some degree
of thieving. Um. It's an interesting question now that who
(54:18):
owns you know, pocacontas would ask this in the color
of the wind. Who who owns the earth? Is it possible? Yeah,
so this may sound a bit sanctimonious for some of
US listening today, but it is crucial to understand that
these are real world problems and intergenerational consider something that
(54:39):
many folks don't know. From eighteen ninety two all the
way up until the United States banned native communities from
practicing their own religious beliefs, including burning siege or sweet
grass or Cedar. This only changed a few decades ago.
(55:00):
History is much, much closer than it appears in your
rear view mirror. How much sage do you think was
burned between eight and ninety eight? I bet you in
private housing a ton of sage was burned. Ton of
private rituals were occurring, just like quiet and in the shadows.
Repression leads to innovation, yes, uh, and necessity has always
(55:24):
been the mother of an invention. Right UH. The question is,
why does this matter? We went from talking about whether
or not clearing a house through spiritual or ritualistic means,
whether it works, quote Unquote, works, to the egregious, egregious
injustice is visited against native American and first nation communities.
(55:50):
This matters for several reasons. I think a lot of
people don't know that native communities and their beliefs were
treated as the stuff uncle Sam doesn't want you to
know for literally decades. No one talks about it. Decades
people were saying you can't do that here, until they
(56:12):
realize they can make money off of it and then
they said we're going to make money off of it.
I hope that's okay and I don't know. I mean
belief is so powerful, like if you take an unethical tact,
we see this all the time. What if you leverage
the belief system to force action on the part of believers?
(56:34):
It happens more often than you think. What, like that's
how cults work, right. What if you what if you
found solace, though, if you're more skeptical, what if you said,
I don't believe and insert this thing here, but the
act of whatever we have done has helped me process
some previous trauma. And then, of course, what if you're
(56:57):
a corporation? Yeah, and as I as I look through
Amazon listings for smudge sticks and this kind of stuff,
it does appear there are some organizations approaching corporate status
Um that are growing the stuff on very, very large,
you know, tracts of land on California and absolutely selling
(57:21):
a bit of cultural appropriation along with the material itself,
like things like, you know, smudge feathers and and guide
books containing like, you know, ritualistic blessings and things like that,
and certain stones and a lot of stuff just does
feel a little bit lifted from the culture and then
sort of packaged and sold in. That part doesn't rub
(57:44):
me particularly well. Do you get rubbed? Well? Rubbed right
doesn't rub me particularly right. So what if you were
a corporation? To what degree would you be willing to
sacrifice genuine belief system in some alchemy like? To what
degree would you be comfortable to modifying ancient practices into
(58:06):
dollar signs and bottom lines? To be completely candid, folks,
we have been asked to do things that we felt unethical,
to host TV franchises that purport to hunt ghost or
track down spirits, and to this day we've refused Um
and we've probably lost money doing it. But we think
(58:29):
the vast majority of these programs are exploiting people and
their insincere and aiding and abetting those unclean acts against
folks in dire straits. It strikes us as profoundly offensive.
We believe anybody can and should perform as their spirituality
ask and indeed compels. We believe it is both good
(58:50):
and just to defend personal spiritual practices. And you know,
don't Yuck someone's Um if you're trying to make a
buck off someone's beliefs. We believe you have some serious
soul searching ahead. But you know, there it is again,
the power of belief. Hey, look, you can. I totally
(59:13):
I feel you on that, ben but Hey, if you're
out there and you need someone hunting ghosts for you
on television, just give me a call. Sell. And so
what do you think, folks? Have you or someone you
know ever used a ritual of some sort to spiritually
purify a home? What was your experience? Do you find
(59:35):
it was valuable? Um? Do you feel that folks who
are commodifying this sort of thing are sincere in their commodification,
or do you think they're out to make a quick buck?
Would love to hear about your experience. Thank you for
tuning in. We try to be easy to find online.
(59:55):
That's right. You can find us on twitter, Youtube and Facebook,
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(01:00:17):
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(01:00:56):
a production of I heart radio. For more podcasts from
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From ufos to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I heart radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, My name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined, as always, with our super producer,
Paul mission controlled decans. Most importantly, you are you, you
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Shout out to all our new
homeowners in the audience. Two thirds of your fellow conspiracy
(00:49):
realists are currently new homeowners right now recording in their houses.
I have to ask you, guys, Matt Noel, before we
set off on this journey, what was the vibe like
when you moved into your house? I'm going somewhere with this.
Oh Man, Um, I don't know. It felt. I felt
kind of clear. It really felt any malevolent spirits dwelling
(01:12):
in the eaves quite yet, but you never know. So
it as it takes time for those things to work
themselves out and express themselves. Um, it is finally starting
to feel like kind of like my house. Uh, speaking
of clean I actually hired a company to deep clean.
It not but kind of clean we're talking about today.
But that really bumped it up a notch. Let me
tell you. There's been sort of clean and deep clean
(01:36):
are like miles. Uh. It also felt like a spiritual
way was lifted off when that happened. But yeah, nothing,
nothing spooky to report just yet. Lemons at the four corners.
We'll see what happens. Uh Ben, when you lived I
remember there was a house you lived in that had
that really cool basement. Did you ever have anything like
(01:56):
negative energy around that basement? Well, energy, energy, you know. Uh,
maybe maybe I'm the wrong person to answer, but uh,
energy is like another technology or another force of nature. U.
It can do a million things and it really, as
we'll see, a big part of our exploration today is
(02:19):
whether there is such a thing as inherently good or
bad energy, and to what degree do humans have agency
encountering it. Thank you so much for asking about me, Matt.
I appreciate that are one of our questions for everybody
listening today is whether or not you believe in bad vibes.
(02:44):
Uh Not the amazing Jeff Goldbloom film which we referenced
so often. Uh Not just the agglomeration of nonverbal cues
that subconsciously alert human beings the dangerous situations. Side Note.
We're talking about this off air. Everybody right now should
read a fantastic book called the gift of fear by
(03:06):
Gavin de Becker. Also, yes, our corporate overlords will black
bag us and put us in Honda odyssees. Oh the
indignity if we do not tell you to please preorder
our book if you have yet to do so. The
gift of fear, while a valuable read, doesn't particularly address
(03:30):
some of the things we're looking at today. We're looking
at the other stuff. That's what we're asking about. Like
all of us, have encountered someone who claims they can
sense when there's something you know off about a place,
the soil is Salah and so on. Like you may
have encountered people who are claiming they can erase or
(03:52):
even mitigate these sensations, for lack of a better word
and without pissing off the Catholic Church. You might have
run into people who claim they can exercise house. Have you, guys,
ever felt of the bad vibe when you walk into
a place? I've never encountered that. Necessarily, I am sometimes
(04:15):
when I walk into a place where I'm aware there's
a history, then I think that's just a I mean
in my mind that's a psychological reaction I'm having rather
than actually feeling some kind of energy, if that makes sense.
Although in the old office where I used to record
uh there was a grounding issue with the electricity, which
(04:36):
did give it a strange feel maybe, but again that's
something I was aware of. Do you feel like it's first?
I love that. This foreshadowing, Matt. That is definitely we're
getting into the power of belief and the power of information. Really,
have you run into someone who has been convinced that
(04:58):
they met a bad place like an Amityville? Check out
our earlier episode on that or, you know, a lizzie
boarding episode. Check out our strange news segment on when
that Ben Breakfast got sold. I I'll be honest, cards
on the table. I do get vibes from different places
and I kind of explain them. What vibes did you
(05:21):
get when you were in my house? See, that's the
real question. Which House? W H? I C H. I mean, folks,
I forgot this is an audio podcast. Which House? Now
ben does a Ben does kind of a concierge service
where he will exercise your place before you even know
it needs it and you'll do it. We'll do it
(05:42):
while you're not home, in the most unobtrusive way. So
if you stage smell, yeah, exactly. No, I mean, I
don't know, I certainly I think it's for me it's
more psychological with people too. I think I just sense
certain mechanics that people tended to operate within and I
can maybe get a sense of like what their vibe
is based on the phrases they use, the way they talk,
(06:03):
the body language and all of that. So I don't
know that I believe necessarily in spiritual presences. I'm with you, Matt,
on the history, because I do feel like that's psychological
as well. If you know about the history of the
place that you're entering, its sort of like knowing what
a piece of art you know what the context around
it means. It gives you a better sense of being
what to like interpret what the piece of art was about,
(06:25):
rather than just like going in cold Um. But I
mean that's not to say that people don't truly truly
believe this stuff, and there isn't like a whole industry
wrapped around it. There's a Um, a really interesting story
about David Bowie Um, in his cokiest of periods, around
the making of the album station to station, where he
rented this mansion in Los fieleas in in l a
(06:48):
I used to belong to the basis of deep purple,
that he hired a white witch was very well known
in that part of of Hollywood to exercise what was
wanted to be referred to as his cocaine palace Um,
because he definitely sent some some bad vibes there. But
he was also horribly addicted to cocaine and it was
(07:10):
only surviving on milk and red peppers and spent most
of his free time watching Nazi propaganda videos on thirty
five millimeter film. Who hasn't been there? You know, some
human experiences are universal. Hopefully Not David Boye's experience, and
if that is your experience, I very much hope you
find yourself in better spirits now. Oh my gosh, he
(07:33):
said spirits. Where are we going? Here? Are The facts?
We're talking about an ancient practice in the modern day.
Let's get to it. Through pop culture. If you are
a certain type of horror fan, you may remember an
especially uh compelling medium, a show steeler, in the film poultergeist.
(07:54):
In poultergeist, Tangina barrens helps the free lean fan late
tackle a supernatural threat from beyond the grave. She has
his famous line. Let me see if I can pull
my registr up to the voice. This house is clear.
This house something like that. She's not referring to the carpet.
(08:17):
It's not a deep clean. She's talking about their work
ridding this house of an evil supernatural presence named Kane.
If you want to know the backstory, watch the rest
of the franchise, hopefully freely available to you. And we
all know it was too well, Kane is the original beast,
(08:38):
the original the monster. Wasn't always what's the what's the
creepy guy's name? The creepy preacher guy? Isn't his name
like Reverend Kane? Yeah, Kane's what I'm saying. Kane is
he's just, he's just the new personification of that. Okay,
I guess they just learned more about they do more
world building. Got It. Check it off, check out. The
(09:00):
first one has the spooky clown though, right. You know, uh,
maybe that's a rewatch for me. Poltergeist exists as a
very interesting venn diagram of family adventure and straight up horror. UH,
the reason we're bringing up polter geist is that it's
a work of fiction, but it is not from whole cloth. Again,
(09:20):
a few things exist in a vacuum. There are numerous
cases of people, from the past to the modern day,
who really do believe their houses or certain locations are
haunted or, you know, they need a vibe check, and
these folks feel they have to enact some sort of
ritual to rid the location of this presence, this vibe,
(09:44):
this aura, this my asthma, whatever you wanna call it,
and it has a lot to do, or has a
lot of commonality with exorcism rituals that we examined at
length in previous episodes. And it's not necessarily always a
bad thing, a purification ritual, you know, unless you're the
(10:06):
biggest stick in the mud ever, it's a good thing, right,
if you're not hurting someone, I mean you, like you
see it today, right, you see it today in many
spiritual belief systems, one must purify oneself before entering a
temple or a holy place, some sort of particular location.
(10:28):
You Um a blue yourself, maybe with water, or you
might be in a place like the baps temple here
near Atlanta, wherein you have a process of pushing smoke
towards yourself, towards your face and over your head, right,
and that is simply to purify you, to give you
(10:51):
the blessing of something divine. In other cases, cultures might
hold a ceremony, not to purify the person but to
purify the place, and it gets ugly. If you go
pretty far back, you can see the idea of human
(11:11):
sacrifice being used to sanctify or make official the founding
of a of a thing. But nowadays most times, uh,
groups of people and communities are not sacrificing a child,
a human child or or an animal to sanctify a
(11:32):
place or make it official. UH, most of the time
when you hear about clearing or cleansing a house of
bad vibes, you're gonna read about something like the practice
of smudging, which will discuss in a moment Um. Yeah,
don't like to keep it brief, to say immediate smudging.
(11:53):
You Burn Sage, right, that's how most of the West
does it. You burn a particular type of sage, get
the bad vibes out. Is that everybody's understanding? Am I
off base? Am I being too broad? I think there
are other substances that can be used, or are often
used in conjunction with sage. Sweet. But yeah, we we
(12:16):
can get into that. Polo Santo is a really big one.
That's what pologize. Oh, yeah, exactly, but that that is
that's like a type of wood Um and sage is
more of like a bundle of of herbs. I find
that they smell very, very similar. I'm not a huge
fan of the scent, but it is distinct and it
usually is done with some intention and I think been
(12:36):
to your point, whether you believe in the efficacy of
these types of things, I think laying out intention can
be very important, or even just sort of like setting
a base level of like, you know, I'm gonna Honor
This House that I'm about to occupy or or that
I'm about to spend time in or whatever, and it
is the way. It's sort of being in some way connected,
more connected with the space, and I think that's cool. Yeah,
(12:59):
and what will it into it? But you can see
why all of these things play a part psychologically on
the people that are both you know doing the rituals
as well as the people who are receiving the rituals.
There's there's a psychological effect, no matter what the spiritual
or metaphysical effects maybe. Yeah, yeah, well said, and it's easy,
(13:23):
all too easy, to consign these experiences to the dusty
halls of ancient history. But we have to consider this.
Even of science has understood in has advanced over Millennia. People,
the actual people, are largely the same as you are
(13:45):
now when you're hearing this. They're working with the information
they have. Uh. They want to be the cool kid
in the room of their society. They want their children
to have a better life than them. They like to eat,
they naps all the hits, uh. And, as such, a
lot of the people in ancient civilizations held a lot
(14:09):
of the same broad concerns, same fears, same goals, you
name it. If you explained to them right, if someone
from let's say, Oh Gosh, let's say someone from like
two thousand BC, all of a sudden was your roommate
(14:31):
and you told them that crocs were cool and you
conveyed to them that crocs were like a socially important thing,
then they would understand the value of crocs, because they're
not that different from you. Like this is a great example. Okay,
can I kind of just say really quickly, Ben I'm
I'm wearing crocs right now. I've decided to make the
(14:54):
full plunge into crocs, wearing dumb Um, because they have
kind of made it come back. But my kid is
not about it and the more she gives me crap
about it, the more I'm just gonna lean harder. And
their bright blue crocks. So that's all. Welcome. I welcome
your new horizon of norm core. Uh and you know what,
maybe call it dad core, because you're you're doing an
(15:16):
awesome job with it. I know come by, I will.
I will tell Eden to lay off or double down.
You tell us which way you want to go, and
I got your back. Uh. So, he just remember to
wash them regularly. That's all. Or No, I'm kidding, wash them.
But but here's the thing. Uh So, when I was
(15:39):
thinking of modern analogs right this, it's so easy to
look back on people who were the same as you,
but they add access to less information than you do
now or less. Uh, you have access to different kinds
of information. If you're alive now, right many people listening
(16:01):
today would be frankly embarrassing existing out in the wild. Uh,
and you know, uh, just the same way that many
other people from thousands of years ago would be clueless
when it came to the INS and outs and nuances
of modern society. So here is an analog that shows
(16:23):
us just how common this belief in bad vibes has
been for thousands and thousands of years. Not for nothing
did I set up the fact that you guys are
new homeowners. I don't want to be weird about it,
but uh, when you were buying, when you were buying
(16:44):
your houses, when you guys were negotiating, were you aware
of the various laws, which are weirdly specific, about selling
a house where a death has occurred? It's a disclosure thing, right,
like you know that you are a wired to disclose
it if it's happened within a certain period of time
in Alaska, California and South Dakota. Uh, the thing is,
(17:10):
you don't really in the US. You don't have to
disclose a peaceful death on the property. If you are
in the three states are just named, then you believe
the way it goes is that in California you have
to disclose any death on a property within the last
three years before the purchase. Uh, if you are in
(17:34):
Alaska and South Dakota, it's any death within the past year,
and if you are in other states it's going by
a thing. I made this up. Let me, I'm gonna
Pitch to UH Nolan Matt here. I like to call
it the Guacamole rule. The information is available on request.
So when you're talking to the the people selling the house,
(17:56):
or whichever you know, like proxy of them there is,
you have to ask them if someone died, and in
many states they have to tell you. Is that like
if I ask you if you're a cop, you gotta
tell me if you're a cop. Maybe true. Wait, wait,
so you have to ask, like there's no, that's it.
(18:19):
You just have to think to ask. Yeah, it's like
how you know? I call it the Guacamole rule because
in many places Guacamole is available upon request, right, and
the menu also. It costs extra, and they but here's
the thing, ben at some places I find it obnoxious
that they tell you you ask for Guacamole, Guacamole is
two dollars extra. And like, has that ever stopped someone
(18:42):
from getting Guacamole and the like? Are they? Is that
some legal thing? They're covering their assets so they don't
get yelled? I mean, I know it's that, but I
just find that funny. It's two different sides of the
Guacoli Um Ben do you think? I mean? I think
this maybe makes sense because if I care enough, religiously
or in some sort of spiritual way, um, about these
sorts of things, then I would probably care enough to
(19:06):
ask or do my own research. But is that giving
people too much credit? I don't know, like I'm just wondering,
like what the logic is here. Yeah, the logic is
somewhere between let the buyer beware and somewhere between tell
me what I'm actually buying. The rules do change when
the death in question was violent. A murder or a suicide,
(19:30):
especially one that's highly publicized, is considered on the same
level as asbestos or lead paint or water damage, right,
or maybe a crack and a foundation. It stigmatizes the property.
This has seen as something that can affect the home value,
which is so weird, because it's not the fact that
(19:52):
someone died, that a human life was lost there, it's
the manner in which it was lost. So violent events
in the past still matter, and too many people they
matter quite a lot. We have to ask why, like
if bad vibes are not real, and if we brack
it off secular concerns like social opprobrium or maybe like
(20:15):
effects on, I don't know, zip codes and school districts,
then we have to know the obvious. That's all that's left. People,
by and large, do seem to believe that bad things,
bad vibes can remain after the time has passed, after
those physical components of those events are gone, and it
(20:38):
doesn't have to be a death. It could just be
negative energy like that. That's what I keep hearing in
the research for this. Death is a major factor, but
maybe that's not it. Maybe it's how someone lived or
who the children were abused. Do you have to disclose
if the previous owner was a real jerk, you know,
I mean yelling at people and grumping around all the time,
(20:59):
like this guy lived here his entire life and they
only tipped nine to waiters for decades. Like no, but honestly, also,
what you can not man, you cannot. It's a good
point to matt because it's Um it's the idea that
great emotional danger, harrowing events can leave some sort of impression,
(21:27):
and people believe in a lot of this. People will
take matters into their own hands, attempting to cleanse out
any remaining bad vibes. It's not always a death, it's
not always something deeply traumatic. It can be a purification thing. Um.
It can be like imagine you have lived a long
(21:49):
time with a romantic partner and you're no longer together
and you're still in the house and you say I
want to breathing and breathe about this bad stuff, so
I'm going to burn this sage, I'm going to say
some sort of incantation and ritual I will feel better afterwards,
(22:11):
and for many people that's true. These techniques. Of course
we'll focus on smudging for a bit today and you'll
see why. But these techniques can be any other number
of things. There's a panopoly of belief systems and approaches.
You Know Uh. We talked about the idea of purification
with water, purification with smoke. There's some uh there are
(22:34):
some practices incorporating uh dirt from one place into another.
In the states, one of the most popular, oddly now,
one of the most popular sec secular purification processes is
a ritual cleansing through the use of smoke known as smudging.
It's not quite, uh, not quite the same as four
(22:57):
lemons in the corners right, or lemon in the corners.
But you guys know smudge. Any of you ever engaged
in it? Yeah, my my my ex wife, a good
friend of mine, uh, is into that stuff and it's
always offering to do it for me and she's into,
you know, crystals and pendulum and all that stuff, and
I fully support it and embrace it. It's not exactly
(23:19):
my bag, but I see how it it makes her
feel good and makes her feel like it's, like I said,
an agency over her her existence and surroundings. I I
certainly put it in the same basket as any other
religious practice. You know, Um, I think it's great and
you know, there's certainly things about it that I find
super comforting. Smudge is great. Not. You're playing poker, uh,
(23:44):
with with some cards pretty close to your stern hom
I respect you. I don't know what. What do you mean?
You're played? Do you be a diplomatic? You got them
close to your chest. I love it, I respect it.
It's it's not hurting anyone. Right, as long as we
as long as we practice beliefs and we're not harming anyone,
and as long as they are not harming us, then
(24:08):
do as thou wilt. Uh. This is weirdly, you know,
the crazy thing about smudging. It's an ancient practice, but
it's often sadly misunderstood. It's an indigenous practice. It's a
native practice that goes way, way back, and there are
a lot of folks out there who, you know, God
(24:29):
bless them, as they say in the south, bless their hearts,
they don't understand where it comes from. There are practices
of old across the world that are quite similar. There's
something called saning in Scotland. Indigenous Australia also has smoking ceremonies.
Smudging uses the smoke of certain plant matter, Um, you know,
(24:53):
like we're talking about earlier. Might be sweet grass, might
be Red Cedar, might be White Sage, any number of
things to accomplish any number of goals. It's not always
to get rid of the bad vibes. It might be
used just to heal a place or to set things
off on the right note. As you spend time there
(25:14):
and it's important to clock this. Folks different communities use
different plants and herbs. What is considered super cool and
appropriate in one culture, for one thing, maybe absolutely taboo
or misused in another. And, as we'll see, their controversies
(25:35):
involved in this practice. But, with all that being said,
take away there are tons and tons of people who
have sought to enact some sort of purification ritual on
a place with bad vibes. Here's the question. Does it
actually work? I propose, and pause for word from our sponsor,
(25:56):
and then tackle this question. Oh, we're gonna tackle it.
I don't know if we'll answer it. Here's where it
gets crazy. Well, whether or not this works depends on
what we mean by work. I know, I know, I know,
where one of those pesky intersections yet again, of science, spirituality,
(26:22):
psychology and belief. Have to be the downers. Now we
have to be the bad guys in this conversation and
say yet again, at least as of the time we
are recording this, no supernatural entities have been universally objectively
proven to exist. That means yes, the infernal, that means yes,
(26:45):
the divine, that means yes. Ghost all of that stuff
has not been confirmed. To exist. But don't let that
make you throw away these rituals, if they mean something
to you, if you believe in them. There's a reason
belief is an incredibly powerful thing, for both good and
(27:07):
for ill. Absolutely it is. Is Truly Um, something that
we cannot overestimate the power of. We know that it
can cause changes in the body, like psycho somatic changes
or the placebo effect, the idea that believing that something
is happening to you Um psychologically can make it happen
(27:28):
to your body physically. Um. To some folks, the notion
of explaining how this phenomenon works, the power of belief,
is a lot like trying to explain magic, and not
like not like how a magic trick works, but like
the idea of magic, of of things beyond our realm
of understanding, of our realm of experience. You know, in
(27:50):
this in this world, um. To others, though, perhaps the
more skeptical members of of the crowd, Um, we are
describing what I just mentioned, the idea of the placebo effect. Um.
But if you keep in mind that the placebo effect
is a thing, it is a provable thing. It does
provide results. We know this. Um, even when the participants
(28:11):
in the experiment know they're getting the Placebo Um. This
has been confirmed in multiple studies across multiple years. So
to that end, I mean, can a smudging, you know,
provide some psychological and and and, by way of of Placebo,
physically even benefits? I think the clear answer is probably.
(28:32):
We've got some examples of studies that have really done
a quite excellent job of explaining this definitively. Here's one
of my favorites. Okay, researchers at Harvard, at Harvard Medical
Schools Ocean Research Center and Beth Israel deaconess medical center
found that placebos do significant work. Get this, folks, even
(28:56):
when patients knew they were taking what sometimes called blue
sky pills. Let's summarize one of these studies from so
a d patients had irritable bowels, syndrome, IBS, you know
what I mean. Your gut hurts, you haven't pooping issues, etcetera, etcetera,
(29:17):
and you're like, I cut out the JOMBA juice. What
else do I do? I guess I have to enroll
in this medical study at Harvard. So they divided these
eight patients into two groups, one of which received no
treatment whatsoever. They were just being monitored for their swamp
swamp guts. And the other group got placebos that were
(29:40):
honestly described as sugar pills, and they were they were told, Hey,
take these pills twice a day for three weeks. The
associate professor of Medicine at Harvard, a guy named Ted Kopchuk,
who was leading this study, he described it pretty plainly actually.
He emphasized that the participants were told this was a placebo. Now,
(30:06):
Ted seems like a solid researcher, a brilliant dude and
a good guy, so I think he'd be fine with
us playing around and doing a little bit of a
dramatic recreation of one of his quotes. This really, I think,
hits home for us when we're talking about the power
of belief. Uh Not, if I don't want to put
(30:28):
you on the spot, but if you're okay, if you
got a good ted cave voice, good Doctor Cave voice
that calls out to you, I think it's time to
shine man. All right, not only did we make it
absolutely clear that these pills had no active ingredient and
we're made from inert substances, but we actually had placebo
(30:52):
printed on the bottle. We told the patients that they
didn't even have to believe in the placebo effect. Just
take the pills. Beautiful, sounds exactly like Ted Kapchuk. Now
it's good. Can we can we also just get another
Matt Frederick out of context. Quote just says just take
the pills, Matt Frederick. This is alluding to an earlier
(31:14):
guest appearance we did on a show called macro dosing.
Please check it out. We talked about q and on
and death. At the end of this three week trial,
where again people, forty participants of the Group of Eight
people knew they were taking placebo's. At the end of
this trial, quote, nearly twice as many patients treated with
(31:38):
the Placebo reported symptom relief as compared to the control group.
And Uh, to go on, the patients taking the placebo
doubled their rates of improvement, emphasizing that on my own
here uh, to a degree that was, quote, roughly equivalent
(31:59):
to the effects some of the most powerful a B
s medications. How did I do, Matt? Just take the pills. Sorry,
just take your sugar pills. You'll be sweet now. You'll
take your sugar pills and you'll like it, damn it.
So this. This sounds like a stretch, right. We're comparing
consuming physical placebos to ritualistic acts of cleansing and that
(32:24):
might seem offensive. Well, it's not that much of a stretch.
It's genuinely tracks in an upcoming episode, by the way,
Specam of the nature of belief. We're diving deep through
the Lens of all things Havana Syndrome. Stay tuned for that.
We have a special guest that will well that we
hope you like. We like them, we hang out with them.
(32:46):
No spoilers. But the long and short of it is this.
There is at this point no objective proof that a
cleansing ritual, a spiritual ritual for a house of temple
or another structure, objectively works. Right. If you go in,
if you go in after any number of rituals, the
(33:08):
gravity of the area is going to be the same
as the rest of the gravity. The air pollution is
going to be roughly the same, minus whatever air filtration
devices are around. People are still gonna live and die
the same way physically. But that's only because there is
at present no scientific definition of what we mean when
(33:31):
we say bad vibe. You know, like look we've been
diving into this for a while, right, guys. We know
that there are some mundane explanations for things that people
can experience that feel very much like a supernatural experience. Infrasound,
I think, takes the Platinum Award Right UH, infrasound is
(33:55):
probably one of the most amazing explanations for the sensation
of experiencing a ghost. But still there's no real definition
of intelligence for humans. There's no real definition of the soul,
let alone the angelic or the divine. So I posit
that if you cannot I'm not even positing it's true,
(34:18):
if you cannot define a thing, you cannot measure it.
But if it makes someone feel even a little bit
better in this chaotic cavalcade of catastrophe called life, if
it makes him feel better, to do with you. I'm sorry, accidentally,
but if, if, if it, if you're doing a ritual
(34:41):
and it doesn't hurt anyone, then would it not be
Dick Ish? Two, you know, Yuck there yum as chuck
and Josh would say, like why would you go out
of your way to disrespect something that means, that is
meaningful to someone else? They're not asking anything of you.
They're not hurting you, they're not hurting others. Just be
(35:03):
a decent person. I mean that's the thing. It sounds
like maybe we're throwing our limits out with the rose
water here, but it does carry a deal of psychological heft,
a great deal, and there are controversies. And if we
stay in the realm of the spiritual, we are required
(35:25):
to tell you that there are perceived spiritual dangers for
true believers. You know, not too long ago were privileged
enough to have some in depth conversations with practicing magicians,
one of whom was a chaos magician and talked with
(35:47):
us in great depth about the importance of following rituals
right and hermetic magicians, uh, thelemic magician will we'll tell
you the same thing these practitioners. They'll say there are
detailed processes and steps to follow in the realm of
(36:07):
chaos magic, the main thing is intention. But spoiler alert,
in the realms of all magical practice, intention is key. Well,
I mean, you know, even podcasting there's a certain amount
of ritual that goes into it. You know whether you
do you do the intro add throws certain recurring motifs
that that any you know good podcast kind of does.
(36:29):
I think it's something that I enjoy when I listened
to the podcast that I listened to. I enjoy the
ritual of it when we're doing ours together. Um, and
it again kind of implies intent and you sort of
lay down the sort of like foundational vibe and you
sort of work within this framework, but then there's all
this like space in between those parts to do kind
of to do things differently. Um, I think it's it's
(36:50):
a it's a very important part of a lot of
things in life. Ritual. Yeah, and you know, if you're
a lay person and you don't have someone in your
family or media group does you know house cleansing on
a regular basis or burns sage regularly or has a
dog that will not stop making lots of noise while
you're trying to podcast. Um, you may not know exactly
(37:11):
what to do. Right. You may be like, Oh, well,
I'm there, I have this sage, I got it at
this store, I'm gonna burn it and walk around my
house and do what I've seen in the movies. Right. Um,
there people in the know will tell you, well, that's
one step. is like doing that kind of thing. But
there are other parts to it. I just want to
see if you guys ever heard of this. One of
the main things I've heard is that if you do
(37:33):
cleanse a house with sage or Poli Santo or one
of these other I mean cople lavender, one of these
other things, you need to burn other things afterwards. I
didn't know this. I didn't know this is the thing.
You need to burn something afterwards, because the sage or
Paulo Santo is neutralizing the energy and then the other
(37:54):
thing is putting positive energy in the space where negative
energy once was. I didn't know that. I would have
I would have smudged a house completely wrong. Well, yeah,
I've I've heard that as well. Matt Uh, you're nailing
about the importance of steps, processes, ingredients, intention, preparation and execution.
(38:19):
The True believers will say that to do any of
these steps incorrectly risk more than having a bum cleansing.
You might not just be ineffective, you might, they argue,
run into negative consequences, problems. Uh, and then again, you know,
we have to mention the power of belief. The placebo effect,
(38:45):
as we call it, often can function like any other technology.
It can be very helpful and very dangerous, and this
is not just in terms of vague physical symptoms like
malaise or a headache. UH, yeah, I know we talked
about off air, but have we talked on air? We
must have at some point about at some bone point.
(39:08):
We must have talked about the Kardita in Australia, and
forgive my pronunciation, folks, I am not Australian at current. Uh.
These are indigenous practitioners of the Ante People in Australia,
indigenous group. They're known for a practice called bone pointing,
(39:29):
which is a method for meeting out spiritual justice, and
if you look at anthropological reports, which or of course,
a little biased, you can see that there are cases
as recently as the nineteen fifties wherein people have apparently
died with no attributable physical cause other than the fact
(39:53):
that they were cursed and they saw themselves getting cursed.
The way bone pointing works is that the practitioner crafts
a special pair of hunting shoes or slippers and then
crafts a specific sort of device. I don't know why
I'm doing this, like I'm all of a sudden making
(40:15):
a bone, but it's uh, it could be kangaroo, EMU
human their cases, where it's made out of wood and
it's made with intention and special ritual. The hunter finds
the person they point at, uh, the intended recipient of
the curse, and deliver the rest of the chant. And
(40:38):
for the true believers this is lethal. Uh, it's death
by the power, apparently, of belief. Some form of this
practice does, by the way, exists in the modern day.
I found that in two thousand and four someone pointed
the bone, as it's called, to curse Australian Prime Minister
(40:59):
John How word, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who is,
as of the time of this recording, still alive. So
this the spiritual side. I guess what we're saying is
if you believe in something, if you really believe in
it and you're not being performative for, you know, like
clicks or likes or whatever on social media, then move
(41:21):
correctly and as safely as you can, consult the communities
from what you given practice originates. And if you are
coming from a spiritual perspective, this is key. If you're
coming from a skeptical perspective, then this is just a
matter of respect, and I think that's equally important. Respect
your primary sources there. Yeah, and respect where you point
(41:43):
that bone. Respect where you point that bone. You better
not be pointing that bone or anybody if you're not
ready to use it. That's all I'm saying. Well, also,
if I'm tracking these euphemisms correctly, I should say consent
is key. Informed Consent, just more treating it like a weapon.
But yeah, that too. And this leads us to another conversation.
It's another point of controversy. It's far less spiritual and
(42:06):
far more secular. What are we talking about? We'll tell
you after a word from our sponsors. All right, we're back.
WHO's been to Bonaru? Who saw those pictures of the
War Bonnets? You know all all that stuff. But What
(42:28):
War Bonnet? It's uh, it's the headdress you've probably seen
with a bunch of eagle feathers often. I think that
more I think it's Coachella more that gets a bad
rap for that kind of stuff than Bonaro, now that
the Coachella is the California kind of influencer music fest
that I think it's a lot of like, has in
(42:49):
the past gotten a lot of flak for folks coming
out dressing in, you know, culturally appropriated at time. I'm
sure it goes on a rate too. Well then, my
heart felt apologies to Bot around and thank you for
their correction. There not like this. This is where we
talked about appropriation. Appropriations a real thing. Take smudging, for example. SMUDGING, again,
(43:12):
is an umbrella term for a vast and profound array
of differing and quite specific rituals and practices. I mean, okay,
I don't want to be a jerk, he says, as
he proceeds to say something very jerk like in the West,
I found that smudging practices, as enacted by many non
(43:36):
indigenous communities, are they're roughly descended from ancient native practices,
but they're descended from it. It's kind of the same
way that, like Taco Bell is descended from actual Mexican food.
It's a modern, sometimes uninformed take on deep spiritual beliefs
(44:01):
and and things have been around for a much, much
longer time. I mean, am I being a jerk? Am
I being correct? Little Column A, Little Column B, I
don't know. You're totally correct. I mean it's been commodified,
just like anything else that that picks up steam culturally
gets commodified. I mean, it's the kind of stuff you
can buy. All this stuff, like a spencer gifts at
(44:21):
them all. Uh. Is that inherently bad? Is Is it
just spreading, you know, a a practice that has, you know,
positive influence perhaps. And and is a is a way
of centering and kind of calming and and and something
that could potentially be helpful for people. Is that inherently bad? Well,
it depends on your definition of appropriation. Like if if
(44:43):
something is from a a sacred ritual of a very
specific indigenous people, like, for example, the head Dresser's talking about,
probably not cool. But then again we're talking about sacred
rituals as well with one of these materials like like White, uh,
white sage and June prayer and Paolo Santo and stuff.
So you could say it is bad, but I I
(45:06):
don't know, it's hard. I think there's a line and
it's important. It's about intent as well. Think about the cocaine. Well,
in one of these episodes we talked about cocaine recently.
We talked about how much the people who actually harvest
the substance that becomes the cocaine, how much they make,
you know, on a per kilo basis, or something like that,
and how ridiculously low that amount of money was. It's
(45:29):
the same thing with any of these other substances that
are harvested from indigenous lands, right. I mean you're taking
a lot, especially if you're a big corporation and you're
going to be putting Paulo Santo and stores across, you know, countries,
across the world or in your you know, Spencer's gifts
or whatever. Um, it becomes a real problem because you
can only source the materials from a limited number of spaces,
(45:52):
and if those spaces are, you know, um run by
and occupied by indigenous people's then they're likely getting a very,
very short end of that stick. Well, and not even
not to mention that things like Palosanto do come from,
to your point, Matt, very specific regions. They come from
dry tropical forests, Um, and that's where you get them.
(46:13):
And if, if all of the PALOCANTO sticks are are being,
you know, chopped out of those forests and then shipped
over here to be sold at Spencer gifts or tight
eye rosy or whatever, Um, that's a problem for deforestation.
So there's no doubt that smudging, or some version of it,
particularly burning, varieties of sage, white sage. As was foreshadowed earlier,
(46:37):
it has become commercialized. There are big, big brands like
urban outfitters, most famous for ripping off independent artists, uh,
and West Elm, most famous for overcharging for kitchen gadgets. Uh.
They have sold sage sticks and there's a dirty trade
to it we'll get to. You can even order uh,
(46:59):
a smudge kit on Amazon in case you, like us,
are still very worried over whether or not jeff will
still make it to space. Sort of, kind of for
eleven minutes. But if intention is key, if we have
established that and agree with it, we have to question
the intention of these entities. And if you are a
spiritual person, ask yourself how much uh, that intention washes
(47:24):
into your own when you when you drink from that well,
look honestly, and you know what edit me here at
mission control. A Corporation doesn't give us whether or not
you are practicing an ancient, divine or uh, spiritual belief system,
even if your family has practiced it for untold generations.
(47:45):
They want to know how much of a product they
can sell you. And that, my friends, has consequences all
its own. That's the next controversy. The world is literally
running out of sage. Demand for White Sage, which is
native to southern California, has led to this thing, which
was a common shrub, being wildly over harvested. There is
(48:09):
right now, as weird as it sounds, a black market
for white sage, member of the men family. You would
not be especially impressed if you just walked by it
on the road in the wild back in the day.
It's a SHRUB. It has tapering like pretty neat looking
silver leaves and it grows like many shrubs. It grows
(48:31):
back pretty Um pretty vigorously when it's pruned up to
a certain point, and that you know. That aspect of
shrubbery and plants is part of the reason. There's this
myth about hair growing back twice as thick when people
shave parts of their body, but at this point that
is not true. This supply chain, though, for this thing,
(48:54):
it's pretty unregulated. It's like how would you regulate crab grass?
How would you regulate any other any other kind of
common plant that grows in a specific region? But because
it's unregulated and because corporations got in and saw a
cash grab, there are tons of people who are playing
(49:16):
their unethical part, and this is messed up because it
means native communities who are genuinely practicing their own belief
systems rather than cloud chasing on social media. They're left
out in the cold, like sage boacher's or a thing.
There are people who are just driving by and finding
little shrubs of sage, which used to grow like shoulder high,
(49:40):
and now it's uncommon to see it more than Waiste
high at best. UH, they are out there and they're
taking the sage. Is it specifically because of this? Just,
you know, specific things in the soil due to the climate?
Is something that could be growing in greenhouses. Let's say
I was really in the sage and I wanted to
grow my own. It's not as easy as they growing rosemary,
(50:00):
which grows like a weed and a super resilience. was
wondering if there are any ways around this. There are.
One would have to grow it to scale, though, and
just like Um, just like the passenger pigeon and the Buffalo,
a lot of a lot of people are not worried
(50:21):
about sustainability. They're not trying to grow it on their own.
They're taking it for a short term monetary gain. Consequences
be damned. Their intentions are bad, and if you believe
in the spiritual side of this argument, then you know
that bad intentions, just like bad vibes, can carry on
(50:43):
over time. Come on to grief, I want to shout
them out. Come on to grief. wrote a cool article
over on over advice, and noted that almost all of
the white sage being sold commercially, like the vast man
worthy of it, is harvested from nature. You know it's there.
(51:04):
It's unregulated, rather, and the corporate euphemism for this is wildcrafted.
That means that someone takes it and then it goes
through middlemen and it goes through wholesalers and then it
hits the public and, just like any other trade, uh,
it's probably getting stepped on, as they say with cocaine. UH,
(51:26):
every step of the way, step of the way anyway, Jeez. Uh.
So this is often sold to the public by companies
that market themselves as environmentally conscious, right or oh, we're
so respectful of this. That and the third greenwashing. Green
(51:47):
washing is another great word for it. So just for
a moment, if we could exercise a little bit of empathy,
let's pretend we grew up with these practices in our
own community and back in the day, for the entirety
of our lives and the lives of those who came
before us. When the time came, we would just go
(52:08):
out and we would get our cedar, our sweet grass
or stage or any number of herbs and plant matter
and we would get it together for the appropriate event.
But now native communities are finding that non native folks
(52:28):
are not just taking this stuff, but they're threatening legal
actions against the very same communities that taught them these
practices in the first place. That's super messed up. You
don't have to you know, you don't have to have
a political horse in the race. Uh, and you don't.
Hopefully you don't have to like smudge your version of
(52:52):
the Internet to understand how paradoxical and unjust that seems.
What are the what's the basis for these threats about
land usage? Is it about branding? Like I'm fascinated and
confused property rights. So let's say you're going down a
state road somewhere and maybe a rural area, and you
(53:14):
see some wild stage and you pick it up and
then someone comes out and says, Hey, that's on my
my property. Or whatever. Then they would threaten action and
they might have the juice, the juice with law enforcement,
to enforce that action. It's kind of like, Um, if
you're walking, and I recommend everybody walk as far and
(53:38):
as often as you can, but if you're walking somewhere
and you pass by, Um, some flowers, right would and
you might want to pick one. If someone catches you,
someone sees you picking that, then are you a thief,
just someone who likes flowers? I don't know, it's I
(53:58):
think it depends on are they wildflowers, that that occurred naturally,
or is it something that someone has spent time and
effort cultivating, like when the prince stole the witches cabbage
and Uh Rapunzel. You know, that was definitely some degree
of thieving. Um. It's an interesting question now that who
(54:18):
owns you know, pocacontas would ask this in the color
of the wind. Who who owns the earth? Is it possible? Yeah,
so this may sound a bit sanctimonious for some of
US listening today, but it is crucial to understand that
these are real world problems and intergenerational consider something that
(54:39):
many folks don't know. From eighteen ninety two all the
way up until the United States banned native communities from
practicing their own religious beliefs, including burning siege or sweet
grass or Cedar. This only changed a few decades ago.
(55:00):
History is much, much closer than it appears in your
rear view mirror. How much sage do you think was
burned between eight and ninety eight? I bet you in
private housing a ton of sage was burned. Ton of
private rituals were occurring, just like quiet and in the shadows.
Repression leads to innovation, yes, uh, and necessity has always
(55:24):
been the mother of an invention. Right UH. The question is,
why does this matter? We went from talking about whether
or not clearing a house through spiritual or ritualistic means,
whether it works, quote Unquote, works, to the egregious, egregious
injustice is visited against native American and first nation communities.
(55:50):
This matters for several reasons. I think a lot of
people don't know that native communities and their beliefs were
treated as the stuff uncle Sam doesn't want you to
know for literally decades. No one talks about it. Decades
people were saying you can't do that here, until they
(56:12):
realize they can make money off of it and then
they said we're going to make money off of it.
I hope that's okay and I don't know. I mean
belief is so powerful, like if you take an unethical tact,
we see this all the time. What if you leverage
the belief system to force action on the part of believers?
(56:34):
It happens more often than you think. What, like that's
how cults work, right. What if you what if you
found solace, though, if you're more skeptical, what if you said,
I don't believe and insert this thing here, but the
act of whatever we have done has helped me process
some previous trauma. And then, of course, what if you're
(56:57):
a corporation? Yeah, and as I as I look through
Amazon listings for smudge sticks and this kind of stuff,
it does appear there are some organizations approaching corporate status
Um that are growing the stuff on very, very large,
you know, tracts of land on California and absolutely selling
(57:21):
a bit of cultural appropriation along with the material itself,
like things like, you know, smudge feathers and and guide
books containing like, you know, ritualistic blessings and things like that,
and certain stones and a lot of stuff just does
feel a little bit lifted from the culture and then
sort of packaged and sold in. That part doesn't rub
(57:44):
me particularly well. Do you get rubbed? Well? Rubbed right
doesn't rub me particularly right. So what if you were
a corporation? To what degree would you be willing to
sacrifice genuine belief system in some alchemy like? To what
degree would you be comfortable to modifying ancient practices into
(58:06):
dollar signs and bottom lines? To be completely candid, folks,
we have been asked to do things that we felt unethical,
to host TV franchises that purport to hunt ghost or
track down spirits, and to this day we've refused Um
and we've probably lost money doing it. But we think
(58:29):
the vast majority of these programs are exploiting people and
their insincere and aiding and abetting those unclean acts against
folks in dire straits. It strikes us as profoundly offensive.
We believe anybody can and should perform as their spirituality
ask and indeed compels. We believe it is both good
(58:50):
and just to defend personal spiritual practices. And you know,
don't Yuck someone's Um if you're trying to make a
buck off someone's beliefs. We believe you have some serious
soul searching ahead. But you know, there it is again,
the power of belief. Hey, look, you can. I totally
(59:13):
I feel you on that, ben but Hey, if you're
out there and you need someone hunting ghosts for you
on television, just give me a call. Sell. And so
what do you think, folks? Have you or someone you
know ever used a ritual of some sort to spiritually
purify a home? What was your experience? Do you find
(59:35):
it was valuable? Um? Do you feel that folks who
are commodifying this sort of thing are sincere in their commodification,
or do you think they're out to make a quick buck?
Would love to hear about your experience. Thank you for
tuning in. We try to be easy to find online.
(59:55):
That's right. You can find us on twitter, Youtube and Facebook,
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