Part One: Secret Societies and Leftism: The Odd Origins of Revolution

Margaret talks to Sarah Marshall about how everything you've heard about the Illuminati is entirely upside down.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eleusinian-Mysteries

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federaci%C3%B3n_Regional_Espa%C3%B1ola_de_la_AIT

Occult Features of Anarchism, by Erica Lagalisse

https://www.thecollector.com/cult-of-pythagoras/

http://gnosis.org/hermes.htm

https://www.rosicrucian.org/history

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
The podcast about the people fighting against bad things, which
is completely unrelated to the current moment. But if you,
dear listener, are terrified because of the news, it's a
good month to be terrified, because it's right right see

(00:26):
almost laughing at my joke is my guest, Sarah Marshall.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
How are you hello? I didn't know if I was
supposed to pretend to be backstage and the podcast still
I'm I'm, I'm okay. I'm in Portland, Oregon, and it's
a war there. I've heard it's yeah, it's it's so
lovely here. I feel like the city has reacted by

(00:50):
becoming even cuter than usual. And I'm just so happy
to be able to speak to you from the literal
hell in which I evidently live. News to me. From
where I'm sitting, I can often see hummingbirds.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Also, and the call is our producer, Sophie Hi, how
are you?

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I'm good?

Speaker 3 (01:15):
I also can see a hummingbird from my window.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
A hell hummingbird currently hell helling bird, hellingbird, helming.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh, I'm like a little blue jay.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Oh well, is Arah Marshall and Blue Jay speaking of
demons and hell, I hear you have a podcast coming out.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
I do, and it's not like my normal podcast You're
wrong about, which will be coming out every two weeks
until the end of time, because this is a very
special mini series event from CBC Podcasts and it's my
show about the Satanic Panic. It's called The Devil you
know and Magpie. I hope that you listen. And Sophie

(02:02):
has been this psychically holding my hand through making this
for years, a very long time. Yeah, our entire lives.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
I've been trying to find a protagonist because I don't
do a podcast about bad things. I've been trying to
find a way to talk about the Satanic Panic. Besides,
the only time I've covered it is Dungeons and Dragons.
That's a good one, yeah, which was a little bit
of a cheat because Dungeons and Dragons isn't actually cool
people did cool stuff. It was more like a bunch
of kind of shitty people who did something cool. But

(02:35):
and then I can talk about Satanic panic a little bit.
You can always talk about Wi Nathan. She's a cool
people and all this, and she was one of the
first journalists to point out like Hey, I this seems
wrong to me, and here's why. And did we listen
to her? No?

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Not really, certainly not at first, but yeah, there really aren't.
There are cool people within it. And that's kind of
what I'm trying to do on this show too, is
to show really how amazing some of the people who
got caught up in this moral panic machine were and are.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Okay, I have so many questions of satanic panic. The
first question is have you seen Mazes and Monsters, the
d Panic movie?

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah? I do. I'm fond of that movie.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
It's so good. It's so good. I mean, it's actually
terrible and there's nothing redeeming about it.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
It's so good, great young Tom Hanks action. Yeah, yeah,
and I feel like it's got the Mayor from Jaws
in it, Like that feels like a dream. But I
think that happened.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
I I know who Tom Hanks is. I feel really
good about that. There's no way magp for that. Now
I've seen Jaws, but I've realized I'm like my defense
is that I'm also kind of face and name blind.
I'm really just incapable of remembering things, which is really
strange considering what I do for a living.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I can't remember someone's name or face if I get
introduced to them, like I can learn it from Afar.
It's like this is person name and this is their face.
I'm never going to figure that out later.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
How long did it take you to know my name?

Speaker 4 (04:05):
Well?

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I always knew your name because I heard about you
for a while and there was suspense, and then he
came over to my house and you looked like Tera
Lipinski and the Sex and the City game together and
unplayably badly designed trivia game. So that was like, that
was highly memorable, and that was the first thing I
said to you when I stand by that.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Okay, I have another question about the Satanic Panic. Yeah,
this one's larger and more philosophical, And if you don't
have an answer, it's okay. Why isn't more of that
stuff real? My argument here, like the Satanic Panic, we
can all look at it and be like, this is
a way to demonize you know, anyone, We feel like, yeah, absolutely,

(04:46):
And you can look at like you can look at
the witch trials historically, and you can look at all
this stuff. But one of the things that I I've
run across in as I read history is things like
like I did this episode on Aqua Tefena and like
people killing husbands for a living? Do you ever hear
about this?

Speaker 3 (05:03):
No?

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Is that Aquafina's cousin. I'm so sorry. Well is a
person and also a bottled water, so that joke really
only works on one level.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
But yeah, okay, Well I was like, magn not know
who Aquaphene is and.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Later yeah, and that's that's just fine for her.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
If it happened in the Middle Ages, I have a
chance of knowing about it.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
So there was this thing where before divorce and this
is real and it seems like one of those things
that's fake. And actually the way that like the Instagram
levels of it talk about is usually wrong. But there
were people who's like, oh, my job is you come
to me. I kill your husband for you? Then you
because divorce doesn't exist, so really is kind of your
best bet right.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
And accepting judaism holla, yeah, fair enough. Also sorry, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Middle Ages, the Catholics weren't really Catholic and just you
could just divorce people, and like women could initiate divorce.
We covered that an episode about the Pirate Queen of.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
What was it Like, Yeah, yeah we're Catholic or whatever,
but likely, but we're not gonna like do it too bad,
too much.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah, yeah, we're like I'm just gonna say a note
to the listeners. I'm gonna try really really hard not
to laugh the entire episode because magpies are the two
funniest people I know.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
You need a coss butt like in sports, it's a
laugh fun.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
I keep having to lean away from the microphone silently
laugh like I'm in a cartoon, like a.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Gee, Like you have a good laugh, I don't.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
I don't think the listener will mind it on like
a whole hour of Sophie laughing really honestly.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
So in this episode, I learned all this stuff about
the magical underground that seems fake. It seems like the
kind of thing you'd be reading about in a like
oh they did this black Sabbaths, but I think they did,
like enough action histories like no, this is a thing
they did, or like you'd have like a priest and
he'd be like, oh, I want to make some money,

(07:05):
so he would like have a black Sabbath where you
get a naked lady and use her as the altar.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, there's a naked lady on the altar, then like
that always sounds credible to me, I mean without any
of the you know, because like so much of the
eighty Satanic panic which has recurred today is about like
accusing anyone you want to marginalize of like sacrificing many,
many babies. But if we're just talking about like naked
lady on the altar and nice focal point, a little

(07:31):
bit of chanting, Like I've been to one of those,
you like people, that's pretty easy to get someone to.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Do, right, And they would do this to like make
potions to sell where you're like, oh, I drip some
olive oil down off of a dead saint and then
onto a like naked lady, and.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Then that there's like so many bits of dead saints
going around, you know.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
There's plenty of this, and okay, So then also the
people whould kill husbands would get accused of sacrificing babies.
And this could be an abortion thing, right, because they
would also be the people who would probably like help
you have an abortion. It also could be an infanticide thing,
and I wouldn't know, right, And like there's like a

(08:15):
sensible history where they're like, oh, we dug up this
lady's yard and we found like thirty dead baby.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Skeletons, and this is go on.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, but my argument is every now and then I
run across like shit that seems satanic, panicky, where I'm like, oh,
that was probably real though, and humans do all kinds
of shit. Why aren't there more real weird fucked up cults?
There are real ones? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Right, Oh yeah, I mean there's clearly a lot, based
on how many documentaries Hulu is putting out about them,
you know, which is Men's the Real totally Find Sex
in the City that was directed at Sophie, that was
a Sophie targeting. Okay, I have two answers, and one
is executive right where if you if you look at

(09:03):
you know, I would imagine so much of the subject
matter that you've researched in your life and on this show.
Like when there are major conspiracies in the United States,
it seems like generally they're being carried out by the
government by people technically charged totally and that they're you know,
writing stuff down that they shouldn't be writing down. They've

(09:24):
got internal memos and triplicate you know that like if
they try and cover something up, they do it badly.
Someone tells everything to a stripper who he keeps talking
to about all his problems for some reason.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
You know that like the.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
People who carry out really bad stuff. I think, especially
in actual conspiracies that we know about, you know, like
and stuff at like you know, pharma and big tobacco
and everything too, Like there are records left and it's
usually not that difficult to find somebody to snitch, right,
And so I think that it's if you're talking about

(10:01):
organized Satanism of the kind that the Satanic Panic was
specifically envisioning, which is like certainly taking some elements of like,
you know, stuff that Alister Crowley was writing about, and
some aspects of things that people really do. And of
course Anton LaVey's Church of Satan was a very big
news item in the late sixties, and he also had

(10:21):
a naked lady on the altar and performed Satanic weddings.
But like we just run into I mean, I think
a lot about the fact that it was like a
major problem continually at the People's temple, and eventually jonestown
of like how are we going to feed all these people?
We have a lot of people here they get hungry,
we need a certain amount of food, and that at
the end they were running out of food for people,

(10:42):
and that was a big catalyst in you know, Kim
Jones deciding that he couldn't whoa keep handling this responsibility
and therefore everybody had to die.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, the Ultimate Family Annihilator.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yes, I really think that. I think that it. It
seems like pretty much the same thing on a larger scale,
and I thought about that a lot in this process,
and so I think it's the issue of just like
believing in these large scale cults and conspiracies that leave
no trace, is giving people, especially white guys, way too
much credit. And b because the basic promise in these

(11:21):
stories if you accuse someone of witchcraft or satanism, I
don't think has ever been lived up to because I
think the idea of the draw of Satanism is that
God is this very distant figure who like sometimes you
kind of like feel is there like a presence and
you're like, thank you, that was great. That's the most

(11:41):
I'm gonna expect from you, or he'll you know, or
Jesus will show up on an English muffin or something sometimes.
But the idea that like you can just like say like,
come on, Satan, I want to send sell my soul
to you, and he'll show up and be like, hello,
I'm here, I'm in the flesh, Satan. I showed up
because you asked me to. If he doesn't actually do that,

(12:02):
and I think that that ruins a lot of the
premise of these things.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
That makes sense, yeah, because if you're like I want
this instant satisfaction and then it doesn't happen, I could
see that. I do run across every now and then
these ones that seem to be real, or at least
I don't find anyone arguing that they're not real, even
though they hit all these same parts. And I did
not incorporate in this script. So I'm just gonna make
I'm gonna say these things happening at all the dates

(12:27):
wrong and like one of the only witch burnings in Ireland,
because we did an episode on the witch burnings and
it wasn't what a lot of Marxist feminism claims, and
specifically the witch burnings were like kind of a pissing
match between the Protestants and the Catholics to capture popular
like buy.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
In it always is isn't it.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, exactly, So you like don't have witch burnings in
fully Catholic countries. But it's not because the Catholics were
right not down to do it. Catholics did about as
many witch burnings as Protestants. It was that in a
fully Catholic country, there's like no reason to like play
to the masses.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
You're like, we don't feel they need to own any Protestants.
So I don't know, witches just keep.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Just keep witching up, keep medicine right and like and so.
But one of the only witch birdides in Ireland was
this woman who ran an inn who was was killing
men in order to like take their property and like
build a sort of in empire and shit, and like
eventually ended up like escaping over to England and no

(13:29):
one ever heard from her again, and she probably was
doing it. It is presented as truth that she was
like keeping body parts pickled in the basement and like
fucking people dressed up as the Devil in the crossroads
at night and shape you know, and like weird kinky

(13:50):
furry shit.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
I can I'm willing to believe a person would do.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
That, especially when it's about power, right, right.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
They have furry costumes that the spirit Halloween story now.
But basically, you know, it's like that's good, that's the
it is, and they're very economical. But yeah, that's I
think I think we agree. I think I understand what
you're saying that, like people are capable of like remarkably
strange behavior. And I think it's when I think it's
when we can hear these stories and conspiracy theories imagined

(14:20):
by like a fundamentally conventional person or a very repressed
person who's trying to think of what strange people would do,
that you're like, that's not really.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
It totally totally. Whereas like there were all kinds of weird, kinky,
heretical sex cults in the Middle Ages.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, they don't pass the time somehow, right.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
They probably weren't sacrificing each other, right, and they did
it was like once, you know, like that guy just
kept talking.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Because to quote the Godfather, blood is a big expense.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, we've broken Sophie again. Okay. I So this ties
well into the subject of this week's episode, which we
are finally going to bring up. So I want to
talk about the occult, the Illuminati, Freemasonry, all that shit

(15:14):
because I want to like talk about how it ties
into modern leftism.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, and it's I'm here, I'm ready.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
This is maybe the worst week in all of history
to do this, because this is the week as we
record it, where people are like the conspiracy of Antifa
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Right, But Sophie, we had a synchronized Eh, you know,
it was really dreamy. As Harry Goldenblatt once said to
Charlotte Yorke.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
It's never a bad week to tell the truth.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, and uh, you're the best.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Trump is saying, Oh, Antifa has connections to MS thirteen
and international drug cartels, and we're paid to protest, and
we're super well funded. And these are lies, right, These are.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
As if the Nazis weren't all on math.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, And there are lies and not misconceptions. Because I
can't believe that they actually think these things. I just
know that they want people to believe these things. And
this is going to kind of tie into what we're
talking about today about how like one, okay, well I'll

(16:31):
get to it. Protesters an't getting paid to protest, this
is fake. But we can trace modern leftist movements back
to Freemasonry and just for fun, even though they only
lasted about ten years. The fucking Illuminati, the actual Illuminati
an organization to.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Hear about the actual Illuminati. There's nothing I want more
right now.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, they existed for like about ten years or so
in Bavaria what's now Germany. Before, as I was.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Saying, organization is hard. It's hard to keep a group going.
People get bored.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
You know, well, what's interesting? Okay. One of the main
premises that I'm going to build up to is that
we look at conspiracies always wrong. We're like, all the
conspiracy of the powerful. When you're powerful, you don't conspire,
You just douche right. Yeah, when we're like, i mean
like take Epstein, right, you're like, oh, when people are
like the secret pedophile ring, you're like, no, it's it's open,

(17:28):
we know about it. It happened.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, it's ketchup. We're too powerful to prosecute. And also,
no one cares about young women, so it's all fine,
let's cackle together.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
And so secret societies by and large would be against power.
They would be the revolutionaries form secret societies. So the
Illuminati fell apart because it was repressed, right, because it
was a revolutionary organization. It didn't want to control the world.
It sought the leveling of the world, which is like

(18:01):
kind of the Christian framework around like bring up the
poor and bring down the rich, right, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
And that's so I feel like kind of like Cromwellian
in a way I wouldn't have expected.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
I know. And I get like really annoyed by this part.
Great because I hate Cromwell so much that I like,
I'm gonna do well.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
He was a very unfun person heat among other things,
genocide of the Irish, and I was gonna I would
see what sticks in my mind. And this shows how
incomplete my historical education is, is that I had no
memory of that. But I'm like, he canceled Christmas.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, no, totally, that's terrible, right.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
But yes, the genocide of Irish people is much worse.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
I mean these are tied into each other, right, because
it was like an anti Catholic thing and like an
anti like paganism thing.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Hm hmm. He's like, you guys aren't executing enough witches.
And I know totally.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
So people think that the Illuminati or the Boogeyman for
the exact opposite reason, right, make you think, makes you
wonder was this reversal on purpose anyway? So secret societies
and shit the subject of today's matter. But do you

(19:11):
know what isn't secret? There we go, yeah, what is
right out in the open, directly saying, hey, we're trying
to control how you think it's advertising? Wow, and I
participate in it and not even like whatever, Just let's
be honest about it. And that's what's happening now, and

(19:38):
we're back, all right. So it's a story about secret
I'm telling a story about secret societies and conspiracies in
the occult and these things, these ideas have been tied
together since kind of forever. As far as I can tell,
I haven't done a lot of the more like anthropological
level of research for this show, But as far as

(19:58):
I can tell, like secret societies complete with super secret secrets,
have existed all over the world and for all time
you got a society, there's people who are going to
be like, yeah, but do you want to know the
real stuff? You gotta like, come hang out in this
tent while we hit you with sticks and then we'll
tell you the real stuff. And not know what college is?

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Isn't it like you go to college and then you're like, hey,
let's stay up late in the dorm common area watching Gatica.
That's what I did.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
I mean, honestly, like the way that education works probably
ties into all of this stuff too, certainly, Like I agree,
secret societies become fraternal societies become fraternities and things. I
didn't trace that particular lineage, but I don't feel like
I'm out on that.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
With covering up the death of someone who got drunk
and fell down the stairs.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Wait, is that a specific thing or is it? Well
in a.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Frat context, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, and everyone kind of wants to be initiated into
the cool thing that tells them the cool truths of
the world. And this is even happens like in ways
that we think are like totally fine, where you're like, oh,
I joined this social movement, now I know the real
thing about what's happening in the.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
World totally, or like I don't know when you just
like I don't know. Humans just like love to solve
puzzles and we love to feel like we figured it
all out, and like even if you just you know,
it's like people start a new diet and they're like,
let me tell you about beans have you thought about beans?

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yes? Yeah, no, tell me more about your bean called
I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
My Lord and Savior beans.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, no, totally. It's like every now and then people
are like, oh, what therapy worked for you? And I'm like, look,
this is going to sound like you know when you
meet someone who's into a martial art and they're convinced
their martial arts the best. That's how therapy is. I
think my therapy is the best because it saved my life, right,
I acknowledge, But not everyone wants to do it.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Can't make people do capuar. You just can't.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
No, I tried once. I not built for that.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Val I'm certainly not.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
So there's a bunch of secret societies and shit in
ancient Greece. They're all over the place, and I'm not
going to get two into the Greek ones, but these
are some of the ones that people orient. Salism is
going to be totally tied up in all of this too,
where people are like, here's the secret knowledge from the
far past in a different culture, you know, a long.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Time ago, in a galaxy far far.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Away, right exactly. I mean I basically do that with
Tolkien and Middle Earth.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
But yeah, so Tolkien vulcans. You know, whatever you can get.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Any so you've got the illusion mysteries. You ever heard
of these? I had not, no what is this? This
is a secret religious right and this is okay. There
actually was a secret religious right in in Greece, ancient Greece,
called the Illusian mysteries. And the thing is that no
one actually knows what was involved. So people will be like,

(23:00):
we know, if you join us and get to the
thirty second or you'll get to know what the illusion
mysteries are. But there was a pagan or a pre
Christian Greek right or well anyway where people would march
from Athens to another city and then like they would
do super secret, cool pagany things that later Christians condemned,

(23:24):
like but we don't actually know what they are, and
they at one point you like bathe in the sea
and then you would have fast for three days and
then you would do the super secret mystery thing, which
probably wasn't like human sacrifice. But actually I mean also,
if you go far enough in the past, basically every culture, right,
a lot a lot of cultures are doing that too. Yeah,

(23:44):
and people are going to be obsessed with the illusion
mysteries forever, and then you've got a more proper cult.
I did not know that I bid off more than
I could chew when I tried to add a couple
paragraphs about the pit, about Pythagoras, pythagon the math guy, Yeah,
the triangle guy, mister triangle himself. Yeah, did you know

(24:05):
he was more of a cult leader than a mathematician. No,
But I mean, I.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Guess it can't have taken him that long to figure
out triangles, and it makes sense that he did something
else with his life. But also well that we're connecting
this to algebra.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Algebra is tied through this whole thing secret society and
magic and the fucking modern left, and didn't.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Take him that long to figure out.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Trying, which is always, you know, the strongest shape, which
is what you can tell people to try and convince
him to be in a throutle.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
So exactly, that's what you say.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
So the math guy, Pythagorast he probably didn't invent the
Pythagoram theorem. Like that was like a thing that like
god damn it, India knew about it, and like some
other places that were like Easter to where he lived
knew about it. But I again, I did not know
what a rabbit I was biting off, So I only
know that the cliffs notes of this particular man.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
But I don't want to anger the Alquebra community.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
I know modern Pythagoreans will come after me. For a while,
he started like a school and that was actually pretty cool. Okay,
he goes to Egypt and he learns math there and
that's cool and good and that seems to be real.
There's other people who are like and then he went
off elsewhere and people are like less certain about that.
People tend to be like No, he went to Egypt,
that's where he learned his shit. But then he started

(25:27):
this cult after the school worked. But he was like, ah,
that's not enough for me. I'm not in control enough.
He starts a cult. They're wacky vegetarians. If you have
your cool people bingo out people who are vegetarian in
history for no reason, here you go. They were into
egalitarianism ostensibly, and so I should. And they wanted to
believe that you could understand the universe with numbers, and

(25:48):
they also as expressed through music. So this is a
really rand of something. I guess I agree. That's the
problem with a lot of the shit for me.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, right, a lot of cults. You're like, well, they
have their moments, but yeah, And the only reason I
think I disliked the Pythagorans is that there was this
like revolt and then the Pythagoras threw down. There's like
a thousand of them living in this cult and they.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Go throw down, and I'm like, all right, all right,
you got revolutionary egalitarian vegetarians who are into like music
and the divine numbers. I'm like, I'm this is what
I would be doing, right. And then but then the
town of Croton where they were, was like, all right,
now we're going to be a democracy, and Pythagoras was.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Like, Hudson, what's that Croton on Hudson making a Hudson
Valley joke? Very happy with myself.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
To fun, I was I thought you were going to
go for a Cruton joke.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Oh yeah, that that occurred to me too.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
So Croton a place that I think still exists. I
don't know, Yes, actually it does because I got some
of this from.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
There, like they got like an outlet there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
The Pythagoras is like, no way, y'all aren't allowed to
be democratic. I could not find more about this time.
This is the last part of what I researched before. Okay,
so that people of Crowtown set his house on fire
and drove his entire cult out and like maybe killed
a bunch of him and maybe killed him, but maybe
he died later and people don't.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Know that'll happen. Wow, tough breaks for Pythagoras.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
A little early wake up.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, I say leco vibes for sure. Yeah, huh man.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
But people have always been suckers for anch and divine wisdom.
It is not hard to convince people that math and
fractals and shit are divine because the kind of are
and if people if shit was written a thousand years ago,
people are going to think it's really cool. And I
don't make the rules. So some of what I thought

(27:44):
that all of occultism was entirely fake, kind of like
how modern Druidism has no actual connection to Druidic traditions,
which people will get angry about me now, but I'm
also gonna probably do an episode about this for Spooky Weeky.
Either change my mind or people will be even more
mad at me. But whatever, But some of this shit

(28:05):
actually is old. Take, for example, the Corpus Hermeticum. You
heard of this one, mm hmmmm, Sophe has I think
Sophie actually knows more of this shit coming into it
than I did, because secretly, well, I won't tell the
world about the hikes in the woods that Sophie and
I have taken discussing occultism anyway, what are you talking about, Oh,

(28:29):
just leave all that out. It's fun. So Corpus her
medicum is where hermetic magic comes from, okay, and the
Gnostics and shit are all into this stuff. I'm not
covering gnosticism whatever. I've seen a lot of different dates
about when the Corpus her Medicam was written, but it

(28:50):
legitimately is from the early Christian period, is legitimately from
the first couple centuries of CE.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
A lot of this.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Stuff, it's like, that's the best you can do timeline wise.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah, And that's actually what's so impressive. I expected, like
a lot of the shit we're going to get into
later is like fakes made up in the fifteenth century,
sixteenth century, or twentieth century. This one was like, in
a weird way, it was kind of a fake made
up in the third century because The early Christians thought
it was from like before Moses, and that's part of

(29:22):
why it still exists is they didn't burn it because
they were like, ah, it's like part of our history,
you know. It's thirteen essays about the Nature of God
written in Egypt and ascribed to an author called Hermes
trice Missegis or thrice Greatest Hermes. I really like that.

(29:43):
What a fucking pen name. Yeah, and Hermes was the
name of a Greek god. So it's basically been like
I'm the God of wisdom or the messenger of the gods. Whatever.
The early Christians thought these books were way older, and
so they didn't get burned, and they also were like,
all right, Hermes is this important stage probably, but it's
actually was written by an anonymous person who was like,

(30:04):
I'm being God, you know. But Hermes in this teaches
that there's only one God, and not in a really
Christian way, more in a pantheistic like God is in
everything way. Hermeticism is kind of fractal. It teaches the
humans or microcosms of the universe as above, so below

(30:25):
is like it's big famous slogan that still exists.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
That saw a horror movie called that once. Ah, that's
as fun as much because I know.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
My deepest cut. I want to make a horror movie
called a Body without Organs, which is a fucking delusion
Guitari reference of like.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah. Also a hermetic thing is all is one? And
I like that because I think it means that doctor
Bronner's is onto some occult ship.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Oh yeah, I mean he's a uh, it's just a
fascinating guy in every way. It's always good reading material.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Everything is internally related by light or energy. God and
its creation are the same thing. We are divine. Everything
we create is the one.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Don't get it in your eyes.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah yeah, use it as toothpaste.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
I've tried that. It never worked out for me.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
I didn't try it. You are a braver person than me,
and I like Bronner's.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
I'm a little bit too trusting.

Speaker 5 (31:39):
Absolutely gonna say it's not bravery.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
I also have an important theory, though I relied on
Doctor Bronner's as a traveler as an ogle where I
didn't have a house, and I would go to people's
houses because I have this theory that all Doctor Bronner's
soap is communal and so if you take a shower
at someone's house, you can't use their like shampoo or
conditioner without asking. You can use their broners without asking.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
You can without asking.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Magpie exception is eternal, absolutely none exclamation point exactly. Yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
People read this shit. Okay. So these books, they were
written in the three hundreds or whatever, they exploded onto
the scene in Europe and kind of created the fucking Renaissance.
Someone had to in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.
It arrived on the scene the same time as fucking
algebra and Euclid's Elements of Geometry and the Pythagoram theorem.

(32:42):
Triangles everywhere, just fucking triangles. For days. Math is truth.
It underlies everything. And people went wild. They were like,
oh my god, the ancient world is full of wisdom
and math. And this makes you makes me at least
more sympathetic to the orientalism of the early Renaissance mind right,

(33:03):
because they're like, oh, actually, if we look at like,
you know, go over south and east from here a lot,
that's where the smart shit is. They knew all this
shit a long ass time ago. We're just learning it right.
And this math that they learned help them do amazing
shit like build vaulted cathedrals. Yeah, and so much shit,

(33:28):
of course, comes from the fucking Enlightenment, right, and you
get the scientific Revolution, you get the Western idea of
the republic, you get modern leftism.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
And you also had air balloons.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
That's true. We actually covered on air balloons a whole
bunch recently on our on our leftists invented everything thing
about air mail and na dare the socialists who invented
air mail during the Siege of Paris.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Okay, I gotta listen to that, My god, that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
It's the same episode where I talk about how an
anarchists invented foosball.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
That's the America anarchist one, right. Everyone has their arms
cut off and their legs fused into a little flapper,
and then they're all mounted on a steel rod.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
It was made for kids who were wounded during the
Spanish Civil War. They could disgust saying.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
You shouldn't do. They were wounded because they were losers.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, that's right, fucking losers. Nicholas Copernicus, Nicolaus whatever, I
don't care, was the guy who presented the current model
of the solar system. The heliocentric model, and is sometimes
called the guy who started the scientific revolution, and who
does he cite in his writing, But Thrice's greatest hermes

(34:53):
as does like all the other scientists with names, and
I pronounced like a discard, Thrice's greatest hermi is this
just like poetry, just feels so good to say, I know,
I know someone I'm sure is going to do a
music or writing project under that name, and it'll be
either really actually, if it's music, it'll be really good,
and if it's writings can be really bad. That's my prediction.

(35:19):
And all of these things, this like art and magic
and science and shit, they weren't seen as all that
different from each other. Recently, we did episodes about evolution
and mutual aid, and we talked about how the modern
idea of breaking science into discrete fields is kind of
new fangled, but even splitting science from art is a

(35:41):
little bit new fangled. Take for example, this is my
biggest surprise that came out of my research this week. Memory,
Well besides the fact that I'm going to claim that
Mozart was an anarchist, but I'll get to that later.
So Memory, you just tease the audience a little oh yeah, yeah, no,
I'm trying to get good of my job and wow,

(36:01):
one of these days, one of these days, and memory
feels like a really concrete, specific field of study. Right.
You're like, I don't think about memory very often, which
I should think about it more because I have a
very bad one.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
I have a fantastic memory. It's amazing and horrible.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
See I wonder. Okay, there's a tangent. But at some
point I was like, oh, I'm just really bad at
remembering stuff. And my friend was like, do you take notes?
And I was like no, I'm an art school dropout.
I don't know how to take notes. I don't know
how to study. And they're like, you don't remember things
because you don't take notes, and you hit it. My
brain hit a saturation point.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
What kind of a learner are you? Are you someone
who has to like I.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Have to do it. I have to do a thing
and fail before I can learn the normal way.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
I'm an auditory learner, which is why this is my job.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Sarah, Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Kind of learner are you?

Speaker 3 (36:53):
I think your visual.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think I guess learned most things through like a
lot of repetition, and so I do agree with the
note taking thing that like, if I just record like
a very short even like a bullet point diary of
like what happened that day, then like I'll remember a
lot more that I didn't write about because I have
that queuing available to me. But my memory is also
much worse than I used to be.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
But my argument here, if there's an esoteric knowledge that
we can learn from the past, here, it's about how
these fucking Renaissance people and the weird occultists thought about
memory because they they like, memory is part of cognition

(37:39):
and it's part of how we learn and understand things.
So the people who are fighting for the scientific revolution,
it wasn't just we need to gather all the information
and test hypotheses. It was about, like, how do we
become smarter? And so they studied how to remember things
and they had it down to science only actually wow,
thank you, thank you, But it wasn't a sence. It
was more of an art. But actually they didn't distinguish

(38:01):
between these two things too hard. Are you familiar with
the idea of a memory palace? Yeah, I know of
that from the Hannibal novels. Someone else I was talking
to about this was like, oh, I know it from
some book. It was probably the Hannibal novels. Yeah, the
memory palace. I haven't used this, but it's like you
imagine a palace. You imagine you go in and there's

(38:23):
all these rooms, and you put the memories into specific places,
and you can then go into the palace in your
mind and go to those places and you can pull
out those memories. Does that seem like an accurate? Is
how handled? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (38:36):
It is how Hannibal did it. And of course his
memory palace was very nice and had a lot of
expensive stuff in it. And I've never really tried it,
but it's like there's stuff in my actual house that
I don't know where it is or that I own it.
So I don't know how well that would work for me,
but I love the concept.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
So this idea is way older than I would have realized.
The idea of at least associating memory and ideas with
visual and like objects and things goes back at least
to Greek and Roman times as the best way to
remember complex thoughts like speeches and shit that they would
give and so they would you would see the way

(39:17):
that they would write out their speeches would be like
an auditorium where all of the seats radiating out from
the speaker place have like whole paragraphs in them.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
And the Renaissance folks, they're like, all right, we're going
to associate complex ideas with visual images and art. And
they believed that the more transcendent piece of art, the
more divine it was, like whether it was a piece
of art or architectural detail, the more you could use

(39:50):
it to trick yourself into remembering and thinking complex ideas. Hmm,
And like, wow, is that this was my main mind blown?
I like this.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
I really like that.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
I think about this, Like, there are movies that I
love so much that when I think about them, I
immediately just with the title can remember all of these
complex thoughts about the world in philosophy and whatever that
I associate with those movies. Yeah, this is I mean,
this is fucking how memes work, right, right. And you

(40:27):
can also do this like through you know, it is easier.
For example, I know I already did a Tolkien reference,
but I'm to do another one. It is easier to
just say we must throw the ring of power into
the fires of Mount Doom and let that be shorthand
for understanding that you can't wield authority in the quest
for human liberty.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Right wow? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:45):
And man, the other thing I like about this is
to explain so much of late medieval manuscripts, Like if
you spend, like normal person, spend all your time looking
at all this like random old art and shit, it
all has this like kind of like diagrammy feel right
where it's like there's gonna be like weird wheels with
different fucking spokes that have different little tiny things written

(41:10):
in them and stuff. And the way that they would
diagram out ideas was really visual and not just like
a diagram, but like there'd be dragons in or woven
into it and shit. Right, this is consciously designed so
that we can remember things better. God, I love that.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
I thought the dragons were just for fun, I know,
I know, and they are fun.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
They are fun.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
And do you know what else uses kinds of tricks
to make us associate certain, say jingles with whole concepts. Hmm,
it's advertisers.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Oh yeah, well, and it works.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
It does work.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Eight hundred five eight day two, three hundred Empire.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Today and here's the rest of the ads besides the
ad for Empire, and we are back. And the thing
that people do with this is that's how you know,
how like algebra is also like charted on X yaxes

(42:16):
and shit, yeah, it's tied into this shit taxes. No,
they're like, how else can we think about ideas in
all of these different ways of looking at this stuff?

Speaker 1 (42:27):
And now they guess use it in New York magazine. God,
I love that I know.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
And people were perfectly fine calling all of this shit
magic even as they're doing the scientific revolution. One of
my main sources for this episode is a book called
Occult Features of Anarchism by Erico Lagalis, and in it
Erica writes, quote, the disenchantment we often hear about in

(42:54):
relation to the European Enlightenment is but a tail. During
this time, magic was not in fact disqualified, but rather
came to an enjoy an increasingly acceptable, even revered status
due to connected advances in mathematics and related practical pursuits.
If observers are now inclined to separate out calculus from magic,

(43:16):
it is only because we have defined magic in retrospect
as activity that is useless unfounded and misguided.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
H Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah. I got so excited about this. This was like
what I needed to pull me out of. This was
as you know, I.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Mean really yeah. And also, you know, just sustained exposure
to people who are so allergic to factual information is tough.
And I feel like this, I don't know is feeding
my soul in that way. I find it so incredible.
How like we know the answers to so many mystery

(44:00):
and we know so much about the world, and so
many people are like, no, don't tell me, don't tell
me anything. I don't want to know, and it's like, no,
it's really cool though, and they're like I don't want
to know anything.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Because they want the mystery or whatever.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
No, well, I don't know because because there's like I
don't really I mean, you know, there's certainly information that
I don't feel terribly motivated to put into my brain.
Like I don't know that much about math, but like
I love that other people know it, you know, totally. Yeah,
And I feel like I don't know, Like I just

(44:32):
I have this on the brain because I guess recorded
an episode of The Wonderful American Hysteria that maybe out
when when this episode is out about spontaneous human combustion.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Is it real? Because is it not real?

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah, it's pretty much real. I mean the issue is
like how do people conbust to begin with, and like
people have theorized supernatural reasons or kind of you know,
the idea that you because it's really the spontaneous part
that's incorrect because it seems like it happens a lot
to people who are like old, smoking and like falling

(45:04):
asleep smoking in bed while wearing nylon.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
That makes sense stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, but there's also the issue of why some people
are just so much more flammable than others apparently. And
as to the reality of it, it's like, yeah, it's happened,
Like it doesn't happen that much, but like people will
just like go up in flames really really quickly and
then leave nothing behind but their feet, and that is

(45:29):
a thing that happens, and the fact that we know
some about it, there's still I think that gets understudied.
It is great. It's like the more you know, the
more mysteries that opens the doors to. So even if
you want mystery, you find more mysteries by learning things

(45:50):
you know. Yeah, and in the same way that math
and magic aren't diametrically opposed, like you're saying.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
No, and I I love that shit. And I actually
spontaneoushuman combustion is such a good example of like when
I was a kid, I had those like time Life
books Mysteries of the Unknown books. Yeah, And it's funny
because I look back on those and I'm like, oh,
that's probably like mostly just grifty shit, right, And it's
like the equivalent of modern podcasts where people be like, like,
let me tell you about the Illuminati, and it's like,

(46:19):
oh my god, someone needs to do Illuminati and.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Is we tried to bother some in an old sanatorium
and I don't think that electromagnetic interference from all of
our equipment could have possibly made this static.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Right totally and like and so that's like what those
old time Life books felt to me. But knowing that
somewhere in there kind of like in the Satanic Panic, Okay,
another example that I'll use of the Satanic Panic. What
is real is And I'm not going to get the
dates on this, right, but Malcolm X was in a
cult called the Nation of Islam before eventually he was like, oh,
this is a fucking cult. And then he got way

(46:55):
more cool and radical in the.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Last couple of years had on my shoulders.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
And and the Nation of Islam, probably with some help
from our friend's co intel pro killed him.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
This is I'm not saying anything particularly conspiracy minded.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
With that stuff. Yeah, but you're certainly not the first
to say it.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
When I looked when I was reading the history of
to study Malcolm xin Nation of Islam, when I was
reading the history of the Nation of Islam, and when
it started as like kind of like kind of a
community betterment cult, and I think Detroit off the top
of my head. It's been a couple years since this episode.
The part that stuck out to me was a news
article about how one of the early Nation of Islam
people sacrifice I can't remember, either sacrificed his landlord on

(47:37):
an altar in the basement or sacrifice someone to get
at the landlord in an altar in the basement. And
I'm like, that reads like something written as like propaganda
against the Nation of Islam, but I'm like, it's just
presented as truth. I have no contrafactual account whatever. It's

(47:58):
also totally fun, possible yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Know, it's very easy to kill like one adult person
and basically get away with it depending on the situation.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
This person did not get away with.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
It, but like no, and like it's also the landlord
thing is what makes it funny?

Speaker 2 (48:14):
No, no, it's hilarious. I'm not yet And anyway, so
like the weird shit is real, so the fact that
there is some spontaneous human combustion, but it's probably not
so spontaneous. It's like whatever anyway, Yeah, yeah, all right,
so they're doing all this shit, they're like, oh my god,
math numbers, all of our minds are blown. And they're
doing this, all of this within a religious framework. But

(48:37):
it changes one of the reasons that causes the Enlightenment,
according to some stuff I've read, is that it changes
the way that Christians are now thinking about how they
can interact with the world. Because when you look at
three times Lucky Hermes, three times a Lady Hermes, they're like,
maybe instead of within the Christian framework, we don't have

(48:57):
to just sit around and contemplate the divine, Maybe we
are called upon to act upon the world. And unfortunately
this is probably now I'm literally at my board with
red yarn, but a bunch of fucking enlightenment Europeans realizing
they can act upon the world causes like all the
bad shit that ever comes after it, like colonialism and

(49:18):
all of the associated things. I'm not saying three times
lucky HERMEI is the reason for that. But people feel
empowered to make changes in the world get a lot
of bad shit coming out of it. Eugenics is a
similar impulse where they're like, we've learned a science and
now we're going to try and change the world. You know,
but her medicism gives and.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
Now we're going to use all bring all of our
biases and prejudices into it. We think that'll be very
scientific of us, totally to fun.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Yeah, but even though it gives leeway to people on
top to make changes in certain ways, it also empowered
the lower classes and it start you start getting these
like revolutionary societies, although they actually mostly started by empowering
the middle classes, like the literate people, but who didn't
run the world. And this is a change and not
necessarily a good one. Earlier European revolutionary movements were mostly peasants,

(50:11):
and like often they were peasants kind of like led
by a noble or whatever the fuck. But like by
and large you have these like heretical movements that are
actually coming from the lower classes that are seeking egalitarianism
and or free love and all the shit that everyone
always wants throughout history and has to get squashed down
all the time. If anyone's missing them making a hand
just or squashing me down. I think it's really important.

(50:33):
Also my eyes, apparently it is important. Yeah, and now
in the Renaissance you get more educated radicals, which means
the power shifts towards bourgeois radicals in away from women
specifically because women weren't the main leaders before, but they
were like way more involved and this whole sciencey magic
stuff is very male coded and controlled at the time. However,

(50:55):
I read that from one source who I also think
is like misrepresenting some Marxist feminist stuff, and then I
started reading some other stuff that included a bunch of women,
So I don't know, maybe that source was biased in
a way that didn't work. I don't know. I wish
I had three years for each subject.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
I know it'd be amazing. Yeah, giber, I think a
lot about Tilda Swinton and only lovers left alive where
she's like married to is that vampire Tom Hittleston. Doesn't
matter some guys, I do like this movie and know
who Tilda is.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
See see we're doing it.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
I know we could do and that like the opening
of the movie, she's just been in Venice for ten years,
apparently reading for ten years. And ever since I saw that,
I've just been like, that is correct. That's what we
all deserve if we want it, and I sure do.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah. Absolutely. I remember once I was on tour with
a book and I was like, man, I learned so
much about the subject of the book by the end
of the tour. I wish I had gone on tour
before I'd written the book. And I was like, I
was saying this to someone and someone was like, that's
called being a professor. But I'm an art school dropout anyway,

(52:07):
what it used to be. Yeah, I guess now I
could if I write some ship at the end of whatever,
cool people will last until the sun of hours the earth.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
But I think being a professor is now largely about meetings,
you know, So I think that you're in a better
approximation of the old way of academia than a lot
of actual academia.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
It's meetings and being like god damn it, did somebody
write this with chat gept.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
And for caarity and organized campaigns harassment?

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Oh yeah, those are important too.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Did you all see the video where a Nazi if
someone came in and started si kayliene in a like
philosophy classes, the whole class chased about that was that
the entire what it was, the entire class when the
camera turns around is the entire class. I'm like, we're
gonna be all right. I know I'm gonna get through this.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
I know those kids are pretty good.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Yeah. And so a thing that comes out of all
of this esoterica and trying to find ways to create
and hold on to power without being the crown or
the church is the rise of secret societies, because if
you want to do something and you're not allowed, you
can't tell people you're doing it famously. Yeah, like the

(53:19):
rosa Crucians, who are kind of silly. All of these
things are kind of silly, but the Rosicrucians like to
claim to be like fucking ancient. If you go to
Rosaicrucian dot org, I'm not even a spell it for you.
I'm not even to look up how to pronounce it.
You find this amazing cope sentence. This is one of
my favorite sentences. Are a couple sentences. Quote Rosaicrucian tradition

(53:40):
relates that the Great Pyramids of Giza were most sacred
in the eyes of initiates, contrary to what historians affirm.
That's my favorite sentence ever written. Contrary to what is
But I think that they are aware that they're being
silly anyway, Contrary to what historians affirm. Our tradition relates
that the Giza Pyramids were not built to be tombs

(54:01):
of pharaohs, but were actually places of study and mystical initiation.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Oh okay, yeah, I think you should get a hat
or shirt that says contrary to what historians affirm.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
They also are like their symbol is a rose on
a cross, and they're like, but it's not a Christian cross,
it's it predates that it's different, like my Brother in Christ.
You started in sixteen ten.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
But I love that.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
They almost certainly started with some anonymous.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
See that's what I love about cults, Like the scarier
people act about them, the more embarrassing they turned out
to be generally.

Speaker 5 (54:42):
Brother's so funny coming from you, especially with people who
just said that they aren't into the Cross for the Yeah, huh,
you did it so.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Rosicrucians probably started with some anonymous manifestos written in sixteen
ten and sixteen fifteen, and it promised to reform. This
is like the core of most of these things. It
promised to reform mankind based on science. Quote built on
esoteric truths of the ancient past which have been secret
until now you see. And I think one of the

(55:16):
founders later was like, guys, this is sort of a
joke I wrote as a kid, though, but then the
ross of Christians are like Noah. He had to say
that because of the repression.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Just like spiritualism, if you play a joke as a
childe you'll accidentally start a religion and then he can't
take it back.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Yeah, Spiritualism is like, I'm actually gonna stop this story
in about eighteen sixty or so, but spiritualism comes out
of this story too. It all, oh nice, everything is fought.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
This is like the back rooms, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yes, yes, yes, backrooms are spooky as fuck. I actually
didn't know about it until I listened to This podcast
is little known that you all might have heard of.
It's called sixteen Minute, sixteenth Minute.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Oh yeah, that rings a a tiny little bell.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yeah. I love that podcast. It was very good by
Jamie Loftus. And there's an episode about the back Rooms
and if you all Want.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
And the Replaceable Sophia Lichterman.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
It's true.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
It's a producer that made invented podcasting, actually invented it
in the year fourteen thirty.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah, contrary to what historians affirm.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
So if I ordered you some hats today and I
really want to tell you what the hats say on them,
I'm so excited. Do you want to know what the
hats say? Their custom hats? And they say baked potato,
no chives, and Caesar salad, no crew turns.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Do you wear the hat you need when you go
into them?

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yeah, and they're like, may take your order, and you're like,
I'm gonna.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
Be like the guy who goes to Costco with the
barcode for the.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Guy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
This is like when I was in Athens for way longer,
I should have learned way more Greek than I did.
All I learned how to do is say span a
copa to the hotus duty I want spinach pie without cheese.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
We're gonna make you a hat that says that as well.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Yeah, so you have these rosicrucians. Yeah, one of them
is a guy named Robert Flood, and he's from England
and Flood spelled.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Very ancient sounding name.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
It's it's f l u d d uh. And he's
from England where they have stupid names.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Sounds like a country singer to me, quite honestly.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Yeah. When I spell it out like flood like flo
o d, it's kind of cool. But when it's written
flood like fl like crud, it's like.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
You know, evenen, ma'am, my name is Robert Flood spelt
like cred. Yeah, but with another day. That other day
means and uh and tomy.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
He's a Flood is a hermeticist and a scientist in
the seventeenth century and arosa crucion. And he's like, you know,
what make the world better is if people got together
with like minded folks and started secret societies. And this
will have no knock on effects four hundred years from now.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Yeah, people aren't gonna get weird about this at all,
I don't think.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
And it is possible that this is what started the Freemasons,
who alongside the Illuminati we're going to talk about on Wednesday. Anyway,
that's that's well, that's not what I got. That's half
of what I got. But you have a podcast. Can
people listen to it? Now? The answer is no, because

(58:49):
this is going to come out in like three or
four days, and your podcast.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Comes out but so soon, So yeah, you'll be It's
it's crowning at this very moment, and we're going to
start releasing it on October twentieth. Wherever you get your podcasts.
I've said that so many times in promotional materials, like
there was a day and I'll have to do this
again where I was just sitting there all by myself
saying wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts,

(59:17):
but you're Independentember you got.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
Your podcast and remind folks the name of the show.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
So yeah, oh yes, thank you, Sophie, and the show
is called The Devil. You know, we're going to be
putting it out between October twentieth and December sixteenth. There's
going to be eight episodes, eight bonus episodes. I got
to talk to some of the people who witnessed the
behind the scenes of Michelle Remembers and in the first

(59:44):
episode we get to meet a woman who was profiled
as a Satanist who wanted to sacrifice blue eyed, blonde
haired children because she dared to go to small town
Kentucky to try and teach some kids photography in the eighties.
And I please come listen to it. It was such
a great, great experience to make it and meet all

(01:00:05):
these people, and Magpie, thank you so much for having
me on. I'm so excited to learn more about what
the Rosa Crusions are about to get up to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
So the reason that I'm really excited about your podcast
is that, like, I love all this kind of stuff,
but I don't trust almost any of the sources. And
the more that I like listen to podcasts for history,
the more I distrust. Not all there are some history
podcasts that are amazing, but I've like the number of

(01:00:35):
times I've listened to a podcast that I'm going to
cover similar or the same subject, and then I listen
to the podcast, I'm like, okay, is what people usually
talk about when they talk about this, And then I
go do the research and then I'm like, oh, this
person read like an article, not even the Wikipedia article.
The Wikipedia article is usually my.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Correact article that they read, and you're like whoopsieh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
And then you find all of the scholarly stuff that's
like hey, because like the pop version of everything is
usually it's like, did you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Know Taft got stuck in a bathtub? And it's like
he didn't. Actually, it's very hard to get stuck in
a bathtub. It's famously a slick surface that doesn't have
any kind of overhang that could trap a human body.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
That actually makes a lot of sense. And it never
occurred to me one way or the other about that
because I'm literally but that's such a good example. Like
people relate the pop history of something and so then
other people are like, oh fuck pop history. But I'm like,
I essentially do pop history. I'm not a historian. I'm
not doing the original research, but I I really like

(01:01:37):
that kind of stuff. I just wanted to be fucking
right and or like whatever. No one's perfect, nothing's ever
perfectly right, but.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
We all want people to be putting a good faith
effort into making things as right as they possibly can,
and also just into getting as much information as it's
feasible to get in the timeframe that you have, you know,
making a show regularly like the one you do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
And be aware of broader and more interesting context to
bring to it, you know, and like. And so that's
why I like, I'm really excited about your show is
that I like trust you as a podcaster. But it's
a subject I'm really interested in. But I don't want
to go out and if I go get a book
on it, I'm gonna it's gonna be fucking sensationalist, even
though it's like I like sensational things, I just want

(01:02:21):
them to Yeah, we just don't have to lie, you know, right,
It's like.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
The truth is dramatic enough. You don't have to sweeten
it really or liked you know, you just got a
of really dramatic music on top of it. Yeah, that's
the thing anyway, And that's such a big honor. That
means so much to me, and I really hope you
like it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
To check out The Devil, you know, at the same
time I will be, which is October twentieth.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Is that we said October twentieth, baby, And.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
You can also check out the backlog of sixteenth minute
because it is no please do you can listen to
the back rooms and get creeped out while driving late
at night up through Virginia.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Yeah, that's ideal, all right, you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Have any thing else you want to plug?

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Magpie?

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Oh, I have a substack and I write every week
about a lot of things, and most of it's free,
and if it's not free, it's behind a paywall because
it's like personal. So if you want to have a
weird para social read the things that I talk about
that or you have to give me money. But if
you just want to hear what I have to say
about things, you don't have to give me money. And
that's the way the world works, and everything's going to

(01:03:24):
be fine, I hope. So I think you want to plug? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
Season two of sad Oligarch is officially oh shit raising episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah, oh fuck Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
It's an investigatd podcast SERI hosted by journalist Jake Hanrahan
that looks into the odd, strange deaths of Russian elite
and just so many people just love to fall downstairs
of an out of windows.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Jake Hanrahan is such an also perfect example of like
I like sensational things, like I really like the series
I like the first season of sad Oligarch, and I
really liked uh shit, what's the one about underground boxing
and drag race days? Await Days? Await Days was amazing.
It's pulpy, sensational content about dramatic things. It's just done

(01:04:12):
by someone who's actually doing the fucking work and not
trying to pull one over on you. All Right, we'll
see you all on Wednesday when we learn about the Illuminati.
And I'm hopefully going to successfully do the thing that
I am talking about where I talk about the fucking Illuminati,
but I'm gonna tell it to you as best as
I can in an earnest way.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
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