Supernatural as Natural with Mitch Horowitz

Kesha talks with historian of alternative spirituality and one of today’s most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult, Mitch Horowitz. Mitch takes an academic look into the occult and explains that things like ESP and UFOs have been clearly proven as real.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's like the right brothers flying their first airplane. You know,

(00:02):
the question of whether humanity could fly is settled, and
we forget that it was ever controversial. That's so crazy.
You're so right, Like the aliens are gonna come and
we're gonna be like, what are you talking about? This
is so normal. We are welcoming. Mitch Horowitz, historian of

(00:36):
alternative spirituality. Thank you so much for being here. Kesha,
Thank you delighted to be here. I have so many
questions for you, like about spiritualism versus spirituality. But my
first question to all my guests is do you believe
in the supernatural? Oh? Absolutely, There's no question in my

(00:59):
mind that all of us lead both a physical and
an extra physical existence. And the fact is, in our
generation we have proof of extra physical existence in fields
like neuroplasticity and psychical research and quantum theory. We understand
there are things going on around us that go beyond
just flesh and bone and motor function. We have testimony

(01:20):
to that effect for centuries, but nowadays there's no getting
around it. We all have an extra physical life. So
when you say extra physical, is that like metaphysical or
is that spiritual? Or like, what are you exactly referring
to like a spirit? Like we all have a spirit.
Extra physical is just my way of referring to spirituality,

(01:43):
whether someone believes in deity or not. Uh, there are
anomalous transfers of information in our world, what we might
call esp We feel, things, we intuit, things, we receive information,
and ways that go beyond the five senses. And if
one accepts that, then it also gets us into fields

(02:04):
like neuroplasticity, where we see thoughts affecting brain matter. We
actually have evidence clinical evidence plasticity. Neural plasticity is a field. Oh,
it's developed about the last twenty years or so. It's
a field in which brain scans demonstrate that your sustained
thoughts actually alter the neural pathways through which electrical impulses

(02:29):
travel in your brain. Your thoughts change your brain matter.
It's literally mind over matter on the molecular level. So
that's just another way in which it's demonstrable that our
thoughts make things happen, that we have in existence that
goes beyond the physical or beyond the five senses. So
when people say what do you mean by spirituality? I
always say I mean the extra physical. If it could

(02:51):
be demonstrated that we human beings all have an extra
physical existence, then it stands to reason that we have
a life that is beyond the scene. And then it
raises questions about the spirit world, the unseen world, deities,
energies that to me is spirituality. And yeah, and the
afterlife too is something that I'm fascinated by. I think

(03:14):
it's maybe, like, I mean, what human isn't a little
bit fascinated by death. It's one of the only things,
if not the only thing, we're promised in life. So
I'm super fascinated with what you think happens, like according
to science and scientific backing, Like, has anybody come up

(03:35):
with what happens after death? It is being studied. Nobody's
come up with anything. Definitely, nobody knows yet and we
may never you know, that just may not ever be
given to us to know. But people are engaged in
all kinds of studies, including right now, into after life survival,

(03:55):
extra physical survival. It's such a question, you know, I mean,
dig the us if I would say probably since about
the nineteen thirties, through serious clinical experiments, we've been able
to prove in laboratory settings that certain people can transfer
information to other people in ways that go beyond the

(04:17):
five senses. So we typically call that esp and we
have this evidence dead to rights. It's statistical evidence as
good as any, in fact, better than any you know,
in terms of most of the stats that we have
proving the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals or what have you. So
we have that evidence, and in truth, I would say
it's controversial, but it's been so heavily reviewed that it's

(04:40):
dead to rights real if you can accept that, if
you can accept that we have evidence that shows that
our minds can do things that go beyond the five senses.
From there, it's really just a degree of difference to
drawing some kind of conclusions about after death survival or

(05:01):
the existence of what we might call a spirit or
a psyche that goes beyond the physical or an afterlife,
you know. I mean, once you've proven that we can
do things that go beyond the five senses or the physical,
it stands to reason that there's a whole world out there,
whether it's interdimensional or afterlife or whatever one wants to
call it. That's real and that's concrete. Because I feel

(05:27):
that way, like I feel like I have a spirit
and a soul and a consciousness that is more than
just my physical self. But I also think it's such
a personal feeling, like, and I'm so aware that everyone
has their own connection to whatever it is or no
connection at all. And I'm good friends with a ton

(05:49):
of goths and atheists and also very spiritual people because
I'm from the South, so I've been surrounded by people
of all different kinds of thought. So I just have
been absorbing at all and realizing that I think we
all have this quest to know. And I think in
reading what you wrote on Weiji boards and like kind

(06:13):
of the psychology behind how a Wegi board, which I
want you to explain because I'll probably butcher the research
you've done, but how a Wegi board can actually just
give you almost more insight into your subconscious Sure, everybody
seems to have a scary Weiji board story, and you know,
no one has the theory of what's happening when you

(06:35):
use the Wiji board. You know there have been studies done,
but nothing conclusive that shows there's some sort of psychokinetic
activity going on where we're moving the point to ourselves
without being aware of it. And let's say that's what's happening.
If that's what's occurring, it raises the question of what
weird dimensions exist within our own subconscious because people glean
things through the board that sometimes can be very threatening,

(06:58):
sometimes can be very unsettled, link sometimes can be quite fascinating.
There have been a whole Pulitzer winning works of poetry
channel through wigi boards. Literally I'm referring to the poet
James Merrill. There have been religions, entire religions that have
come through wigi boards. The third most popular religion in
the nation of Vietnam is called Cowdeism, and it ranks

(07:21):
third behind Buddhism and Catholicism as the most popular religion
in the nation that came through a wigi board in
the early twentieth century. So, if it is our subconscious
that we're channeling, so to speak, raises the question of
what wild folds and dimensions exist within our own subconscious.
I have been fascinated with the idea of multiple dimensions, right,

(07:45):
I mean, it's really interesting. Especially during quarantine and all
of this, I've really felt like, are we is this
a simulation of a simulation? Am I? In the matrix.
I don't understand, like how many dimensions are there and
how many dimensions can the human brain really comprehend, because

(08:06):
I've read different numbers everywhere and I didn't know if
you know the answer to that. To be honest, well,
you know, there's probably good reason to believe, and it's
really it's probably impossible for us to perceive, but there's
good reason to believe that different dimensions and different realities
are infinite are going on all around us. We experience

(08:27):
linear time, you know, we say, well, I have to
be somewhere at three o'clock, and that's helpful for us.
That's kind of a necessary illusion. But the fact is,
if one follows the ideas that are coming out of
quantum theory, for example, and this goes back seventy eighty years,
you know, it stands to reason that when someone takes
a measurement in a particle lab, the time and the

(08:51):
place and the decision to take that measurement determines what's
going to show up, because on a very very micro level,
particles occupy high an infinite number of positions there in
a wave state, and it's only when somebody takes a
measurement that they collapse into a local or particle state
that they actually appear, that they're actually really there. And
so if that's true, then at least on the particle level,

(09:14):
reality doesn't exist until you decide to take a measurement.
And I would submit that we're doing this all the time, Like,
what are our senses taste, touch, smell, hearing, What are
they but instruments that take measurements. So when we turn
our perspective to something, when we make a decision or
direct our attention to something, we're taking a measurement. It

(09:37):
stands to reason that any infinite number of things are
possible and are going on and are real and potential,
but there's only certain ones that we measure that we
pay attention to. So we could call that interdimensionality. And
there's counter realities, infinite counter realities going on all around us,
but we don't sense them. We don't sense them. We
sense this one reality, this one moment, is one period

(10:00):
of time. But they're real and they're infinite. I just
think that we don't have the sensory material to take
them all in. That's so much information that's I'm trying
to comprehend. It's kind of blowing my mind because even
just looking at looking at a situation from my perspective

(10:24):
versus if caught on camera is so drastically different sometimes
that even just seeing how that perspective shift can make
a reality be a non reality. So for me, that's
blown my mind to someone who's been on camera a
lot of my life where it seems to be one
thing and then it looks like a totally different thing.

(10:45):
And I just realized that we all have a unique
perspective and I don't know, I just like I don't
know if there are any real infinite truths because everyone
has such a unique perspective in the way that their
life has gone on also shapes that perspective, and it
shapes the story as we tell ourselves. And how can
we really ever know for seeing the same thing, the

(11:07):
same reality as somebody else can try to explain it
and what they're also man made. It's though, that's beautifully put.
That's beautifully put. You know, it's funny um. In the
early twentieth century, the philosopher William James made the observation
that when a mystic looks at something, when somebody who's
really spiritually sensitive or psychologically tuned in looks at something,

(11:31):
it's as if that person is looking at it under
a microscope and gains all kinds of information. So if
I look at a drop of water, it's just a
drop of water, But if I put it under a microscope,
there's bacteria and different organisms and cellular matter and all
kinds of things going on within that little drop of water.
But as I pan back and pan back, I get

(11:52):
less and less information about what's really going on. And
it's possible, it's possible that that's exactly what's going on
all the time with our senses, that if you measure
things in a particle ab or if you measure things
with a super powerful telescope, you see all these amazing
things happening in the world around us, things that bend reality,

(12:15):
things that are out of sync with our normal physical boundaries.
But then in the same way, when we pull the
camera back, there's a kind of information leakage, and we
see less and less of what's going on. So the
truth is we live in this really weird world. And
when people talk about ghosts or intuition or e s

(12:35):
P or near death experiences, to my mind, that should
all be taken really seriously, because they may be having
experiences in moments of really deep, deep sensitivity that have
something to teach us and have something to tell us,
you know, And to dismiss that is the equivalent of
dismissing a microscope, because I don't happen to have a

(12:55):
microscope around right now. So you know, I could take
the position, well, that's all non sense. Sure I've heard
about it, but you know that can't be proven to
me in the moment, so I don't buy it. What
those people are providing us with is a record of
testimony and science in a certain way is validating a
lot of what they're saying. Nowadays, it's just that it's
not neat, it's it's messy. But we really need to

(13:17):
listen to one another. We really need to listen to
one another's experiences, because what people are experiencing maybe these
moments where they're gleaning really unique pieces of information, and
yet sometimes those things are getting dismissed. They're told, oh,
it's just delusional or what have you, And I think
something more than that is happening. Being a spiritual person,

(13:38):
it was one of the reasons I really wanted to
talk to you the spiritualism and how America became the
birthplace really of alternative spirituality and spiritualism is something I've
just been diving into the past year. And do you
do you have a reason on why you think America

(14:00):
was the place that this happened in the time that
it happened. Is it just because we discovered a new
land and it like blew all of our minds, so
we came here and realized there was something bigger than ourselves.
So everyone just started becoming more and more spiritual. Or
you think I had to do with it's like coinciding
with world events that are traumatic or both, or some

(14:27):
entirely it may be both, you know. I mean, going
back to the early even the six hundreds, the U. S.
Colonies were considered a safe harbor for people with radical
religious beliefs. And it's kind of ironic, and it's bitterly
ironic in a way, because slavery was going on, the
Native American culture was being destroyed, and yet at the

(14:51):
same time, there was a relative degree of religious freedom
in the U. S. Colonies that was unknown in the
Old World and many other parts of the world. And
so word went out fairly quickly that people who were
being persecuted for their religious beliefs in Europe, if they
made the dangerous journey across the Atlantic could reach this

(15:12):
so called New World where they had an opportunity to
practice their beliefs without harassment. And a lot of people
did that. So there's a lot of different sects, like
the Shakers that came here from England, all kinds of
different mystical groups that came here from Central Europe, that
we're experiencing persecution, that we're able to be left relatively

(15:35):
unharrassed in the New World. And this proceed were they unharrassed?
Because I remember the Salem which trials. Like as soon
as he said that, I was like, has I know
we're founded in America as a place for religious freedom
and that to be protected. Do you think that's been upheld? Well?

(15:56):
Dig this. You know what's interesting about Salem. The Salem
witch trials, in which dozens of people were killed in
brutal mob violence, played out in the sixteen nineties, and
as horrible as that was and as tragic as that was,
it did not really repeat in the same way that
it did in Europe. In Europe, the witch craze and

(16:18):
witch trials went on for centuries and centuries, and they
occurred all over Europe, Central Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe.
They went right up and through you know, the late
seventeen hundreds. The last witch trial was in Switzerland, and
that's well into what we think of as the Age
of Enlightenment. And in the United States, well, there was
mob violence and there was harassment. The events of Salem,

(16:40):
that kind of mass mob psychology in which people were
targeted for witchcraft didn't really continue, you know, it was
it was it was an anomaly, and that's one of
the remarkable things about American history. There were a lot
of crimes, and there were a lot of tragedies, and
there was definitely mob violence, but that kind of religiously
based mob violence. Those witch ages, those witch trials, they

(17:01):
went on for centuries in Europe, and that didn't quite
repeat in the United States. Interesting as like a woman
who loves alternative thought and different performing like rituals and
speaking openly about kind of um maybe stranger spirituality and

(17:26):
just being more open than picking a specific religion. I
do feel like, obviously I haven't been burned at the steak,
but I have done a past life regression where I
was told that in a past life I was burned
at the stake for being a woman with an opinion

(17:46):
that differed from the opinion of the men that were
in charge. And I like, ever since that, I feel
like this camaraderie with just women who speak their mind,
because I still feel like there are a lot of
women even in the music business, where if we say
something that's a little wacky, it's like we're just deemed crazy,

(18:08):
which granted we're not being burned at the stake, but
I do think we're being burned in the media. And
I've experienced that for a decade, so I still kind
of see. And I've spoken to people on the podcast,
like the leader of the Satanic Temple and his work,
I don't know if you're familiar with their work making yeah,

(18:32):
making sure that religion really is separate to politics here,
I think it's just so important, and I think, especially
over the past year and a half, just seeing what's
happened politically, I do think there is religion intertwined with
our politics. Whether we like it or not, it just is.
And I'm not really sure what the solution to that is,

(18:52):
because I think people need religion the same way I
need spirituality, but they really are supposed to be kept separate.
And I don't know, I don't know why I'm I'm
just ranting. Really, there's a lot to this is important
and there's a lot to unpack there. You know, First
of all, the thing I love about the Satanic Temple
is other people just talk about free expression. They're actually

(19:15):
doing things. You know, they're using the legal system in
ways that it was intended to be used to defend
free expression, and that is good for everybody. So I
have to yeah, so I have to give you very
very serious applause to them for what they're doing. Now,
what you were saying is so important that if people

(19:35):
say something that's considered outside the ordinary or outside the box,
especially women, and this has historically been true, Uh, they're persecuted,
they are talked down, they are made to feel humiliated
or what have you. And one of the things I
often tell people is that when people speculate about conspiracy

(19:57):
theories and these powerful groups doing our occult rituals and
things like that, the people who pay for that kind
of talk are not the rich and powerful folk. They're
the helpless folk. They're the local librarian who wears a
pentagram and never did anything to anybody, and people start saying, oh,
she's a witch, we ought to consider whether we want

(20:17):
to renew her employment contract. Or you know, the local
school teacher, you know who who dabbles in the occult,
who's never heard a soul, who everybody can count on,
but suddenly is the topic of rumors and whisper campaigns
and so forth. So, you know, I think that when
we get into conspiracy theorizing, very often what happens is

(20:39):
that's really man's perpetual search for a hidden enemy, and
that enemy is almost always found among the helpless, very
frequently among outsiders, very frequently among goth kids or people
who might be deemed to be like a little like
outside the fold. Very often against women. That's been historically
true with the witch trials. So it's regular people, people

(21:02):
who have never hurt anyone, innocent outsiders who pay the
price for that kind of talk, Which is why I
want people to be really careful with it. Yeah, I
totally agree, and it's just I think it's just so personal,
and it's also really important to be open. Like you
were saying, there's so many people studying this stuff like

(21:24):
esp and telepathy and certain things that are slowly being
scientifically proven to exist, and even just certain therapies that
are used, and they just sound so hippie dippy and
like kind of crazy. But from personal experience, I've had

(21:45):
personal experience where it's been really helpful and really spiritually enlightening.
So I don't know how to explain it, really, but
I have felt it and seen it in myself, and
so I know it's real because I felt it myself,
and I feel like I just want to give um.
I don't know, I just want to give a voice

(22:05):
to the stuff that I don't understand. And I was
reading about in your book. I was reading about the
Universal Friend, which I found really fascinating, like loved them,
and I didn't quite like understand where that ended, did it?

(22:26):
Can you tell our listeners about the Universal Friend? Sure?
You know, I was wondering if that was going to
come up. I'm really delighted raised that a lot of
people have have said to me, Oh, I love the
chapter about the Universal Friend, So dig this. The Universal
Friend was a young woman named Jemima Wilkinson who grew
up in Rhode Island in a Quaker household around the

(22:48):
time of the Revolutionary War, and Jemima was sick with
type is fever and she fell into a kind of
coma and her parents arents, thought she was going to die.
She was about twenty four years old, and they were
sitting in vigil at her deathbed. And this was just

(23:08):
at the dawn of the Revolutionary War, and everybody thinks, well,
Jemima is going to be gone any any day now.
And suddenly one day she springs up from the bed,
all healthy and and bright and ruddy looking, and she says,
the woman that you know as Jemima has died, and
the woman now standing before you will only be addressed

(23:28):
as the public universal friend, and I am an avatar
of the great Beyond, an avatar of great creation. And
Jemima goes out and she starts giving talks around the
nation in New York State, in Rhode Island, in New Jersey,
in Philly, and she's one of the only people literally
who's capable of crossing military lines between British troops and

(23:54):
and and US troops or colonial troops during the Revolutionary War.
And the thing that's extraordinary about Jemima is most people
had never seen a woman even speak in public before,
much less deliver sermons and speeches. And so she's this
supernatural being, this kind of channel er who's identifying herself

(24:16):
as the public universal friend, traveling around the Northeast giving talks,
and people are shocked because they've never seen a woman
in a role of religious leadership before. And it it's
probably safe to say that in addition to Mother Ann Lee,
the founder of the Shakers, Jemima was probably the first

(24:40):
female religious leader in modern life. And she was a
supernatural figure or she made those claims, and her followers
built a mansion for her in upstate New York, and
central New York State is still there. It's in a
town called Jerusalem, which they named Jerusalem because they felt that, yeah,
she was this new prophet and they wanted to a

(25:00):
properly house this avatar, this prophet, this channeler, And that
mansion is still there. And she died in eighteen nineteen.
But her followers did a lot to settle Central New
York State, and she did a lot to acclimate the
nation to the idea that a woman could be a
religious leader. So people don't remember the name. A lot

(25:22):
of these figures have been forgotten, but their legacy is
in the movements that they instigated. And she was probably
the first really prominent female religious figure in American life
and in all of modern life. I loved reading about her,
and I was just so surprised I've never heard of
her before. Yeah, Like, she seemed like such a badass

(25:44):
in that name. I'm I'm a sucker for a flashy name.
But the public universal friend, that's so good. It's a trip, right, Damn,
she is so cool. I'm going to read more about her.
She's a badass. She's like one of my neighras. But
so is That is where she did her sermons and

(26:08):
her spiritual teachings. Is that part of the Psychic Highway? Yes,
the Psychic Highway is a carriage path that stretched through
central New York State uh in the in the first
part of of of the the eight hundreds, and today
it's US Root twenty. It's actually the longest continual road

(26:30):
in America, goes from from Boston to Eugene, Oregon. It's
the longest uninterrupted road in the United States. But back
in the day, it was just a little carriage path
that ran through central New York State in in the
in the early eighteen hundreds, and it's been called the
Psychic Highway because that's the place. That's the area where

(26:52):
all these new religions spread out from. That's where the
Public Universal Friend was active. That was the birthplace of
new religions like Mormon is Um and Seventh Day advent
is Um. That was the birthplace of the Suffragist movement.
That was the birthplace of spiritualism and seances. There was
so much going on in Central New York State. It
was just incredible. And nobody assumes that. You know, if

(27:14):
you ask people, well, where's like the epicenter of alternative spirituality,
most people would say, well, l A or southern California.
And that certainly is true today and has been true
for a long time. But back in the early days
of this nation, all the radical and alternative religious movements
were coming out of Central New York State. It was

(27:36):
absolutely wild. And that was called the Burned Over District
because it was considered burned over by the fires of
the spirit And this little road which a lot of
Americans traveled to settle out west, that was called the
Psychic Highway, that was used to spread radical or religious
ideas around the nation, and so much was going on there.
It was really mysterious and it was really incredible. Do

(27:57):
you think it was just like part of the zeitgeist,
like what was happening and New York like has always
just been an epicenter for amazing, wild creative energy or
do you think Because I can't help but think that
almost like people with space travel, I was thinking this

(28:18):
last night when I was reading your book, So bear
with me here, I was a little stoned, but it
made sense last night. So when people came from wherever
they came from to the new world, that must have
been so exciting and terrifying, exhilarating, mind blowing, like all

(28:41):
of the things just exploring, right, And it's kind of
how I feel like we would feel now going into
outer space, like actually making it to Mars or something
where you're just exploring and actually reaching a new, undiscovered place,
and the idea of like getting on a boat and
potentially never coming back to everything you've ever known. I

(29:05):
can't help but think there must be some correlation to
finding a land you didn't know existed and also then
exploring thoughts that are bigger than yourself. Yeah, I think
that's beautifully put, and I think that captures why there
was so much radical activity going on in some of
these places which we might look at and say, wow,

(29:27):
it was just it was just farmland, you know, why
did it produce so many radical ideas? As you were alluding.
When people travel to new places or and they settle
in new places, they're leaving behind the congregations and the
family ties of their childhood. They're leaving behind the churches
they belong to, their leaving behind a lot of family ties.

(29:49):
And in Central New York State, um, there was a
whole wave of new settlement after the War of Independence.
There there there was a Native American tribe, the Seneca Nation,
that lived in central New York State for centuries, but
the Seneca unfortunately made a military alliance with the British

(30:12):
during the Revolutionary War, and after the war, the colonial government,
which had been looking for a pretext to push the
Native Americans off that land, used that military alliance as
an excuse to push the Native Americans out of Central
New York State, and the government opened up that land
to speculation, and so lots of relatively liberal people from

(30:34):
New England flowed into central New York State to start
new farms and businesses and so on. And when they
entered the place, it was just this beautiful, rich, fertile farmland.
They didn't know anything about the Indian lives that had
been extinguished from that soil. They just thought, Wow, we're
Eden or something. And they left behind their ties back home.

(30:57):
So they were like a ripe audience for new really
just movements and ideas, and man did they flow. And
that's where you had movements like the Shakers growing up
in the public universal friend and again you know, new religions,
including Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, utopian movements, radical political movements.
It was all happening there for a couple of generations,

(31:19):
so wild. I just like I sometimes I don't know,
my mind changes every day, but sometimes I feel like
there's reincarnation, And if there was, and I did, in
fact um lived during this time, I just wish I
could time travel back there because it would be so fascinating.

(31:39):
And I wonder if we're going to do the same
thing to the moon. Basically is that the next frontier.
I hope we like keep it classy at least, But
I just like also listening to you talk, I realized
that there are so many people displaced, and all of
these spiritual movements happening at the same time, like you said,

(32:03):
as Native Americans getting murdered and slavery and um again.
In your book, I was reading about Frederick Douglas and
his relationship to the occult, and I found it really
interesting reading about who Do and um I again may

(32:23):
be it, so I'd love for you to talk about it,
because you've studied this a lot more than I have.
But I just found it so interesting that Frederick Douglas
was involved with the occult and who Do, which is
really interesting. Yeah, Who Do is such a fascinating tradition,
that that's an African American religious and magical tradition, and

(32:47):
it's who Do with an age. A lot of people
confuse it with voodoo, which is a proper Afro Caribbean religion,
but who Do is something entirely different. And one of
the things I was really shocked to learn when I
was writing A to America is that in all three
of his memoirs, Frederick Douglas wrote about an episode where
he was at the most desperate place in his life.

(33:08):
He was fifteen years old, and he was being persecuted
by a very sadistic, cruel slave owner who just reveled
in humiliating and beating the slaves that were that were
in his charge. And there was a wise man. Douglas
identified him as a wise African advisor, a wise old

(33:31):
medicine man who still understood some of the old ways,
who gave Frederick what he described as a magic root.
And Frederick said, you know, it's possible that this route
helped me stand up to this vicious slave owner and
gave me a feeling of individuality and inner worth and
sense of inner revolution. He was never sure about it,
but he felt it was important to repeat the story,

(33:53):
so much so that he repeated it in all three
of his memoirs. And I realized from his description that
this mad root is a very holy item in who
do called John the Conqueror or Hi John. It's a
it's a root that's native to the American South, called
jlep root, and it's said to provide the holder with

(34:13):
strength and virility and braveness. And Douglas said he wasn't
sure that he ever believed in any of that, but
that he couldn't fully discount it. He couldn't fully discount it,
and he said it was the most revolutionary episode of
his life where he realized that he would be free
internally until he could escape slavery and be free as
a fact. And within about three years he did escape slavery.

(34:36):
But he told the story. He told it with veneration,
and it's been written out of our history books because
most historians look at this kind of episode and they
don't know what's being referred to, or if they're not
really interested in it, or they've never heard of who Do.
But when I saw Frederick's description, I was immediately struck
that this was an episode that was straight out of
who do this African American magical tradition. And that's how

(34:59):
the is at the heart of our history in ways
that we very rarely see. It's so intertwined with so
many people and throughout history, and it's just crazy how
much it's been written out. I guess it just blows
my mind. Um like learning about, Oh my god, reading

(35:20):
about how President Lincoln had seances with his wife in
the White House, I had no idea like that's I
that's so interesting, and I just like it makes me
I don't know, I'm just like so fascinated with that

(35:40):
and I want to learn more about it because apparently
they had lost two children, is that right, and they
wanted to try to help deal with the grief. And
I don't know if it's um basically just a way
to deal with grief was to believe that perhaps there's
something beyond or there really was a spirit visited her.

(36:00):
But it seemed like, um, she was helped with her
grief through sciences. Yeah, And that's a really good observation,
and that's part of the reason why sciences were so
popular in America so quickly and amongst so much of
the population. The Lincoln one of the Lincoln's sons, Willie,
died at the age of ten in the White House,

(36:22):
and they were just absolutely distraught. And and there was
at that time, whatever position of society you occupied, whether
you were powerful, whether you were an everyday person, there
was no grief counseling. You know, people would experience the
death of a child or the death of a loved one,
and for most people there wasn't really any morning period,

(36:45):
you know, they would just really have to bury the
loved one and go back to work. And when sciences
became popular. Yeah, it's hard to believe. It's hard to
conceive of, especially for I mean consider like the lives
of working women. You know, they would lose children all
the time to childhood diseases, and in the world that
they lived in, they were very isolated. There were there

(37:08):
was there was nothing like therapeutic spirituality. There was no
way of contending with the grief of it. It was
just a matter of burying the child and going back
to work. And it was horrible to be reminded of
this death. And people just didn't have any way of
of coping with this grief. It could consume a person.
And Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's wife, she was no different.

(37:29):
You know, she was overcome with grief and she began
to go to the seance table as a way of
trying to make contact. And we have records one that's
really reliable because it was in a Boston newspaper of
Lincoln holding sciences in the Red Room of the White House,
and he and Mary Todd and some invited guests would

(37:49):
hold sciences and one of these sciences was observed by
a reporter from the Boston Gazette. Oh my god. Yeah,
and so it's an absolute fact. And you know, some
historians have wondered, why in the world would Aid Lincoln
invite a reporter from the Boston Gazette to be present
at a seance. Wouldn't he be embarrassed? Wouldn't he think

(38:12):
it would make him look strange? And the truth is,
you know, back in the mid nineteen hundreds, um or
rather sorry, the mid eighteen hundreds, for a lot of people,
sciences were not a matter of embarrassment. They didn't feel
like they had to conceal their interest in these things.
For some people, it was a matter of deep personal

(38:34):
spiritual interests. For others, and this was probably true of Lincoln.
It was more of a novelty, you know, It's just
something to try out. And I think Lincoln allowed to
report it, to be present because this was during the
Civil War and he wanted people to see that he
was not overly encumbered by wartime command, that during the
Civil War the chief could kind of kick back and

(38:55):
just try a little experiment, try a little novelty that
lots of other people in America were into, in the
North and in the South. And in fact, the story
was picked up by various newspapers, including newspapers in the Confederacy,
including a couple of newspapers in Georgia, and it had
the effect that he wanted it to have, which was
showing people, hey, you know, I'm just like you. I'm

(39:16):
just like you. I can kick back and i can
try this little experiment. I'm not so overburdened by wartime
command that I'm not doing other things. So it served
kind of a propaganda purpose for him. It was a
different time in our national life, but you know, you
could do things like that. I also wonder if there
was therapy back then, because if there wasn't, I'd be

(39:40):
doing a fucking science every like every morning, because if
it helps you cope with life, then I would sign
me up. I am kind of surprised that there aren't
more sciences now. Yeah, it's interesting. Nowadays you don't see
too many of the old fashioned Victorian sciences were people

(40:00):
are joining hands in a darkened parlor and you know,
you're hearing bangs and wraps. But today we think less
in terms of sciences than we do in terms of
psychics and channeling mediums, intuition. So the same stuff is
still going on. You know, we're still reaching out to
the invisible world. We're still asking can we make contact

(40:21):
with something beyond ourselves? But we call it by different names,
which is very often what happens. You know. We we
discard the outer wrapping, or we discard the old vocabulary,
but we're still doing it. Okay, what is table wrapping? Now?
In my mind, it was a bunch of people wrapping
at each other over a table, which I think probably

(40:41):
is not what it is. Well back in the ear
back in the early days of sciences, uh, going back
to the say the eighteen forties, um. The earliest seances
involved people hearing bangs and wraps and noises and claiming
the they could work out systems of communication with the

(41:03):
spirit world, and that's what eventually gave birth to the
WEGI board. Actually, Americans were trying to figure out ways
that they could contact the spirit world without any intermediary,
without any middleman. You know. It was this kind of
do it yourself spirit and so they wanted to figure
out methods of communication. So they would try to work
out formulas where there would be bangs and wraps or

(41:25):
noises or something like that around the sands table. So
that's that's what we mean by spirit raps. Okay, so
it's not a spirit like rapping at people, not back then.
That's what I'm gonna do when I'm dead. It's my plan. Um. Anyways,

(41:45):
do you think that, like because of COVID and quarantine
and all everything we've just gone through as the world
and America, that there's going to be like a new
way of of spiritualism. Oh yeah, I really do. I
really do. And it's funny, I swear, kesha. If you

(42:06):
had asked me that question five years ago, I probably
would have said, no, you know, the occult isn't evergreen.
It's always been with us. Uh. And I feel differently today.
I feel differently today because I think there's things happening
right now in our generation that are opening up questions
like the ones you and I have been going over
like nothing we've ever seen. I mean, look at what's

(42:27):
going on in the UFO world, for example. I mean,
I will not go into that. Oh my god, I'm
so happy you brought that up. Yeah, Like, I mean,
we we have these cockpit video recordings that the Navy
took of of UFOs and these things have been floating
around for a while, but very very recently the military

(42:49):
validated these things is real and this is engineered phenomena.
This is artificial phenomena. This isn't natural phenomena. This isn't
somebody making a mistake, This isn't somebody I imagining things.
You know, these cockpit videos are concrete evidence, among others,
among others that there's some sort of engineered phenomena out

(43:09):
there that we don't understand. And once you crack open
that door, now that the UFO thesis has gone mainstream,
I mean, no serious person says, oh, you know, it's
swamp gas, or I don't believe in little green men,
or it's delusional whatever, you know, that's not a serious
idea anymore. Everybody acknowledges, Okay, whatever they are, there's something

(43:31):
called UFOs, and they're out there and they're engineered. We
don't know what they are. But but this is this
is plain this as plain as it comes. Once that happens,
now that we've kind of crossed that threshold, it starts
opening up all kinds of different ideas, ideas about extraterrestrial life,
ideas about there being water on the Moon and venous

(43:54):
and possible microbial life on Mars and Suddenly things start
to sound very differ rent than they did when I
was growing up as a kid. When I was a
little kid, if you talked about the idea of there
being microbial life on Mars, you know, you would get
sent to take a special test somewhere. You know, I
would get sent to sit in the principal's office. You know,
today this is being studied, this is being talked about.

(44:16):
This is real, and it opens up the door at
all kinds of questions, So questions of a world that exists,
a life that exists outside of just ordinary flesh and bone,
ordinary cognition, the ordinary senses. These things are facts, and
once you open that door, it opens us up into
all kinds of directions. It's like a wheel with many

(44:38):
different spokes, so that there's an occult revival coming. There's
no question in my mind, and we need it because
we've all been so lonely, and we've all been so isolated,
and people have suffered during this lockdown, and they're desperate
for contact, not only with other people, but with a
larger sense of themselves. Yes and purpose and the idea

(45:01):
that there is something out there, whether it's UFOs like
I'm obsessed with space and UFOs and aliens like I
have been since I was a little kid, and finally
now all of a sudden, it's like not taboo to
talk about. And on my podcast, Demi Levado is talking

(45:23):
about how she's contacting aliens and nobody seems to care.
And then it's on the New York Times, and then
it's also like the Daily Mail, so it's on all
the different kinds of news outlets and everyone's just acting
real chill about this. Yes, I find very weird. It's fascinating,

(45:45):
you know, it's funny. In twenty nine, uh, there was
a panel at the Guggenheim Museum here in New York
City where I am about UFOs and the Guggenheim is
not actually you know, known as this fount of occult passion,
and they're having a panel on UFOs and the curator
came up to me and he said, look, let me
ask you a question. He said, at what point do

(46:06):
you think it's going to become unacceptable? At what point
do you think it's going to become embarrassing for someone
to say, oh, the whole UFO thing, that's all nonsense.
And I said, you know, we're living through that point
right now, in the here and now, Like everything you
were just saying testifies to that. You can't just say nowadays, Oh,
the whole UFO thing, it's all just delusion, it's all

(46:28):
imaginary whatever. No serious person feels that way, And that's different.
That's different from where we were five years ago. So
things are shifting. And I'm not given to saying that easily,
but things really are shifting. I think so too. I
feel it. And I also feel like because my mom
and I and my best friend, we're all like obsessed

(46:50):
with UFOs and aliens and we have been for a
very very long time, so it's all very exciting um
and it feels like almost like this reckoning right on
every level is happening. And we just like revel and
the idea that something we've been obsessed with and fascinated

(47:13):
with and really believed in for so long is finally
becoming a normal topic of conversation. But we also were
saying that it must be challenging for some people, especially
if you're a very religious person, to not be able
to fully have everything contained into one book or one idea.

(47:35):
I feel like, once hopefully there is contact made in
my lifetime or just more information about extraterustrial life and UFOs.
I feel like it's really gonna blow people's idea of
what is like. It's going to blow it up. But
I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's

(47:56):
a good thing. But I think the illusion is going
to be Um, it's just our minds are gonna get blown. Yeah. Yeah,
it's interesting, you know, and we as human beings, we
love to debate things back and forth, and people use
all kinds of sarcastic language online all the time. You know,
every third social media post is insulting somebody, but that

(48:18):
it does. Yeah, all it takes is one is one incident.
Is one incident, and then all the arguments and all
the friction and all the back and forth, it's just gone.
It's just gone, like it doesn't exist. You know. It's
like the Right brothers flying their first airplane. You know,
the question of whether humanity could fly is settled, and
we forget that it was ever controversial. And you know,

(48:42):
we have such overwhelming evidence of UFOs, and I would
argue as well that we have such overwhelming evidence of
ESP for example, that we're going to reach a point
where that evidence is just going to be so persuasive
that we're going to forget how cont virtual this this
once was, you know, and and those controversies when they pass,

(49:05):
they get forgotten, however hot they are in the moment.
And I think that's actually what's happening in our generation.
That's so crazy. You're so right, Like the aliens are
going to come and we're gonna be like, what are
you talking about? This is so normal, right right, I've

(49:25):
been talking about this and I had no friends in
middle school because I was talking about aliens and spaceships.
And then we're all just going to be like hanging
out with them, hopefully hopefully they're nice. I have a
good feeling about you, and your friends in middle school
will remember agreeing with you, even though they didn't. They'll
be like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know they were such

(49:47):
a mean ladies. Know what they were mean. I'm going
to call them out once the aliens come, so they
better hurry up. They arguing, But like, I totally agreed
with you. Yeah, I was there for you, right. No,
that's like one of the many reasons I had no
friends in middle school, so no, but um, what was

(50:12):
I gonna ask you, okay, I have a couple of stupid, quick,
fiery kind of questions. If you're at least what is
your okay, do you want to start a conspiracy theory?
And if you would like to, now is your chance,
So take it away. Well dig this. I don't. I don't.
I don't start conspiracy theories that run down anybody. You know,

(50:34):
I don't. I don't start conspiracy theories that make enemies
of anybody. But I will say this, um, there is
a kind of intellectual conspiracy theory that is like a
fog and a smug and our culture, and that is
that we don't have evidence of some of this stuff,
and people are so desperate to hang onto the worldview

(50:56):
that they're currently in that if I could zen people,
and I can with plain statistical evidence for example, for
esp or psychical activity, whatever you want to call it,
I present that evidence to people over and over and over,
and I'm still told there is no evidence. It doesn't exist.
And it's like a conspiracy theory that we work against

(51:18):
ourselves because we're so desperate to hang onto the world
that we once knew that we deny what's there, even
if it's presented to us as plain as can be.
So we are our own kind of conspirators. You know,
there's a conspiracy theory that we've worked against ourselves where
we don't want to look at real evidence because it

(51:38):
upsets what we want to believe. It's so true, it's
so true because change is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. If we can,
if we can all just like pretend like everything's fine
and it's just going to stay right here, I feel
like it's more comfortable. But that's not how life works.
So you keep talking about esp they're being proof. Do

(52:01):
you want to like because I don't know what you're
talking about? Oh? Sure, you know, Since going back to
the nineteen thirties, we've had solid jury clinical experiments, academic
laboratory based experiments that demonstrate over and over and over
again that certain people are able to pass information back

(52:21):
and forth between one another, or to receive information in
ways that go beyond the ordinary senses, either using pictures
or using cards or using just uh, the ability to
repeat patterns of numbers or other things where there shouldn't
be any patterns at all. And this statistical evidence is

(52:42):
so overwhelming and so powerful and has been written about
in mainstream journals, jury journals, and it's there and it's
plainist day and once you acknowledge it, basically, you've acknowledged
the supernatural. You know, you've said, yes, there is a
world out there that goes beyond flesh and bone, and
people there are critics who are so desperate not to

(53:03):
acknowledge that because I guess they're afraid that it's going
to unleash all this irrationality. And how learning about reality
unleash irrationality? You know, how can knowing more and more
of what's going on be irrational? But that's their fear,
and I understand where they're coming from, and it's really
hard to debate with them because they are so fearful

(53:25):
of acknowledging the existence of a bigger world that they
will play kill the messenger basically, And I don't mind.
You know, I put myself out there for that. That's
the job I sunned up for and it is okay.
But there's enough people listening so that eventually this information
is going to be accepted, just like the UFO information
is accepted. So that's where I'm coming from when it

(53:47):
comes to ESP research. That's so interesting. I'm gonna look
into that more because I feel like I definitely get
messages like I feel like a little bit telep ethics sometimes,
like I can totally read the mind of my cat
and people and people, but mostly my cat. I spent

(54:09):
the most time with him over the past year and
a half, So that's the main person I'm communicating with
is my cat at the moment. An emotional means a lot,
you know. I mean, emotional bonds really matter. But yeah,
there's just some people where I can just tell what
they're thinking sometimes, and I can also I'll also have
moments where I just know something has happened before what's happened.

(54:31):
I don't know. That's not esp I don't know what
that is. A lot of people feel that way, you know.
I Mean, it's funny you talk to people from all
different walks of life. In this country, we're all so divided,
but yet you start to get into experiences like this
and suddenly the divisions disappear. Like you'll have all kinds
of people from all different backgrounds, political outlook saying yeah,
I did that, that's happened to me, That's happened to me.

(54:53):
It does unite us. Yeah, I think so too, and
maybe we're like scared of that deep down because and
if you take away all the drama and we're all
united and just like having a good time, we're going
to be bored. Yeah that's a serious truth. I mean,
I think we human beings. We say we want peace,
but we actually really dig friction and arguing and violence,

(55:14):
and it's a it's a very ugly aspect of human nature.
I think you're right. I know, Well, I don't know
how to fix that, So if you ever can figure
out how to fix it, just give me a call back, Okay.
But I do think there's like something inside of us
that loves the drama of drama. Oh for real, for real? Yeah,

(55:36):
then it keeps us in this cycle of violence and
pain and war and drama. Oh I think there's no question. Yeah. Yeah,
I haven't figured out like how to not um do that,
but I am first. The first step is recognizing the
pattern without question. I used to there's a spiritual teacher

(55:57):
I love who used to say, either your spiritually creative
or your troublemaker. You're either spiritually creative or you're a troublemaker.
So like getting in touch with the larger I think
may take us to a healthier place, so that we're
not spending all this time just fulminating against one another
or being sarcastic on social media, which takes up way

(56:18):
too much of our culture's time. Oh my god, I
wonder what we could all do with all the time
spent comparing yourself to others, talking shit about others, talking
about yourself, and like being the victim or the villain
in a story. If you just slept be what is like?

(56:42):
What would we be capable of? I was amazing. Yeah.
You know, often people say to me, give me, like
one spiritual exercise that will make me happy, or give
me one spiritual exercise that will make me more powerful,
and they always expect I'm going to say meditation or
this or that. The thing I always say is stop gossiping.
If you stop gossiping and you stopped running down other people,

(57:05):
you will stand taller, you will be happier, you will
be more powerful. Try it for just one hour and
see what happens. It's incredible. We just give away our
lives to this hostility. I agree. Well, I'm going to
try not to do that anymore. You're inspiring me. I'm
going to make a pact no gossiping, everybody one hour,

(57:27):
one hour, one hour. Thank you so much, pleasure. Okay,
thank you to everybody who's listening, and thank you so much.
This Mitch Horowitz and you should check out his book
Occult America, amongst many other books. And is there anything
else you want to plug or like throw light onto

(57:50):
that you've been doing well. I'm working on a new
book called Uncertain Places, which I'm very excited about. It
covers a lot of the topics that we've been dealing with.
And people can visit me at mid harrowitz dot com.
There's lots of lectures and stuff there. And um, I
just thank you so much. I'm so glad you're doing
the show. You're giving space to so many important topics.

(58:10):
Thank you, thank you so much for being here, and
thank you for everybody for listening. Keep on creeping on