Entheogens in Religious History with Chris Bennett

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Troy Spreeuw (00:12):
Welcome to The Scholomance Project I am your
host, Troy the Devil-Man. Keepup with the show at our website
scholomance.ca. You can sign upfor our newsletter, support our

(00:33):
Patreon and get exclusivecontent, and ask our future
guests questions. Scholomance.
Aspire. Explore. Inspire.
Chris Bennett has beenresearching the historical role

(00:54):
of cannabis in the spirituallife of humanity for more than
three decades. He is the authoror co-author of four books
including "Liber 420 Cannabis,Magickal Herbs and the Occult".
Bennett's research has receivedinternational attention from the
BBC, The Guardian, Sunday Times,Washington Post, Vice and other

(01:17):
media sources. He currentlyresides in Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada. His passionfor the subject matter is
obvious. I hope you enjoyed thisconversation as much as I did.
Welcome, everybody. This is Troythe Devil-Man. Today we're

(01:40):
sitting with Chris Bennett,formerly of the urban shaman,
and currently of the SomaInstitute. Chris, thank you so
much for joining us today.

Chris Bennett (01:50):
Hey, my pleasure, Troy always great to rap with
you.

And I know we were just having like a 30 minute
conversation before theinterview. This is the kind of
things that we do when we gettogether and start talking.
Normally, on The Scholomancepodcast, we're interested in
talking to practitioners, andI'm really interested in hearing
about some of your backgroundand history, and why it might be

(02:15):
of interest to some of thepeople that would listen. Yeah,
other practitioners. So whydon't you give me a little bit
of background about yourself?

Sure. You know, I had a religious experience about
32 years ago. And then from thatreligious experience, I started
a study of how other peoplemight have had something similar
from using cannabis and tryingto understand if there was just
my personal trip, or if therewas any sort of power to this in
the magical and religious realm.
And over the last 30 years, I'vewritten four books on the topic

(02:47):
of this and I've studied, youknow, I've written about it in
numbers of historical religions,and the ancient Vedic religion
and the the ??? religion andthen Zoroastrian and Hinduism
that grew out of that, inTaoism, and Sikhism in Judaism
and Christianity, which issurprising to most people, but
is now documented byarchaeological evidence. And

(03:10):
I've also studied it in therealm of the occult, and called
figures like Alistair Crowley,Helena Blavatsky, and Ren
Gunon and the list goes on andon and on of occult figures that
used cannabis and found somesort of spiritual benefit out of
it. And so as well, I've taken alook at its role in magic and

(03:34):
alchemy, and found alchemicalreferences and grimoires with
recipes and techniquesIncorporated, and as well as
secret societies that use it forinitiatory purposes. And I think
that there's a real interfacethat could be garnered by both,
you know, people that usecannabis and people in the

(03:57):
occult. There's like a crossoverthere, that that's just waiting
to be really tapped into in abigger way. I think you know
what I mean, a lot of thesemagical techniques were used in
conjunction with psychoactiveplants in history. And I think
they're an excellent interfacefor the use of psychoactive
plants gives them some directionand purpose, you know, what I

(04:18):
mean? Things like mirrorscrying, particularly, have an
association with psychoactivesubstances. And really what this
is about and you know, the kindof initiatory realm, I would say
is it's bringing up elements ofthe unconscious into the
consciousness and this is, youknow, in the alchemical
perspective, this is themarriage of the Sun of the moon,

(04:39):
the the present daytimeconsciousness and our nighttime
silver poetic consciousness. Andthe one that tells us the dreams
at night, you know, we you know,when you dream, you're in a
dream. And you're the othercharacters in the dream. So
you're like, the wholeorchestra. That's all you and

(04:59):
that's that's an evidence of thetwo selves, right? And cannabis
is really a powerful tool forthe uniting of those two selves
and even the identification ofwhat's called the unconscious
and the subconscious originatedwith the study of cannabis and

(05:20):
trying to understand how it wasaffecting consciousness. We
could take a look at Dr. JJMoreau who was in "La Club du
Hashischins" Club in 1850s,Paris, France, with members like
Victor Hugo Alexander Dumas,Thophile Gautier, Honor de
Balzac, Geraldine Revalle (?)etc.

(05:44):
Were all members, you know, andMoreau's interest was because he
was trying to understandinsanity. And he felt that, you
know, there was a relationshipbetween insanity in the dream
state because you you act likean insane person often in your
dreams, right, you know, and hethought that cannabis may have

(06:04):
had some kind of relationshipwith this right? Now, it's
interesting how cannabisinterfaces with dreaming because
I read a book on melatonin. Andit says that cannabis daytime
use of cannabis was based onscientific experiments done in
the 1980s. I don't thinkanybody's reproduced them since.

(06:28):
But they found that people usingcannabis in daytime use
immediately their melatoninlevels would spike by like 2000
times regular daytime levels.
And this may be a reason whymany cannabis users report that
they don't dream very muchpeople that use a lot of
cannabis report that and forsome people, this is a desirable

(06:49):
effect. People with posttraumatic stress syndrome often
don't want to drink because theyhave nightmarish dreams, you
know what I mean? They staystoned all day they sleep at
night and when when for them,right. But I've noticed this
alternative effect, I've wokenup at four or five in the
morning and smoke a joint or abowl of cannabis, and then gone

(07:09):
back to bed and had the mostintense vivid dreams I've ever
had. And I'm attributing thiseffect to this same spike in
melatonin. And melatonin is gota huge effect in dreaming. And I
think this is the effect thatpeople were seeking when they
use it with things like magicmirrors, because who is it that
speaks to you from the magicmirror, but the one that tells

(07:33):
you that your dreams at night,you know what I mean? It's all
about accessing that area ofyour own kind of consciousness,
the reflection, you reflectitself, your shadow self, you
know, and I think this is reallythe goal of initiation. And the
goal of magic, the goal ofalchemy, as I said earlier, the
marriage of the sun and themoon. And I think that certain

(07:55):
initiatory practices canhighlight this because this
isn't necessarily something thatpeople are always tapping into
when they use cannabis. You knowwhat I mean? But I think that's
why like things like, you know,hip hop music, for instance, is
where cannabis use is so popularkind of brings out that, that
that that that same sort ofpoetic vibe, that's the Muse

(08:16):
man, that's the that's how youkind of bring it up, you know,
and I think this is true of itsuse in religion and magic.
That's what what the use of itwas all about.

I think it's particularly poignant that, you
know, it's May 2021. And we'reliving in a world where The Man,
you know, has has backed offsomewhat on his persecution in
some places, and with some withsome people around cannabis use.

(08:51):
And yeah, I think it's excitingbecause for during the, as you
pointed out, historically,during the the Renaissance,
there was quite a bit of sciencegoing on studying all sorts of
different materials, and it wassuper easy, Until prohibition,
In the early 20th century, itwas easy to go down to the

(09:13):
chemist and get not just hashishand other marijuana products,
but you could get mescaline youcould get cocaine you could get
morphine, you get all thesedifferent materials and people
were experimenting for, good orill.
Surely overuse has itsdifficulties

Well, some of these things can be deadly, you

But I think it's it's fascinating. Now that
know what I mean? It'sdefinitely use of opium resulted
in deaths in the occult ??? andone of Irwin's sons, I think
died using opium will scryingyou know, so, you know, there
could potentially be deadly insome cases, right.

(10:00):
there's now with the slightlyopen hand of regulation, and for
good or ill, on the freedomside, that we're gonna see a lot
more of this material be studiedfor this not just application
for spiritual expansion but forapplication for psychiatry and

(10:23):
for for mental health and forfor health and wellness in a
wider perspective. Now, can youcan you comment on that, where
that's going at? Yeah. And whatyour what your role might have
been

there and how far it's come. You know, I became I
mentioned I had like a religiousexperience with 32 years ago,
that was like 1989. And I becameI formed a little group I found
out about the industrial uses ofhemp and I formed this group of
patriotic Canadians for hemp,and was promoting hemp for paper
and stuff like that I lived outon the West Coast and the
Claquot sound loggingcontroversy was going on. And I

(11:04):
was using this as a way to haveboth jobs and save the
environment, you know, and atthat time, you know, you
couldn't even have like aheadshop it was illegal to sell
High Times magazine or bongs oranything like that. You get
$100,000 fine here in Canada.
And now on the street I live onout here in Princeton, there's a
$20 million factory growingmarijuana and magic mushrooms.,

(11:26):
legally. You know, so I wentfrom like, not even being able
to find other cannabis activiststo seeing this this incredible,
blossoming sscene now, I thinkthe corporatization is
disappointing. You know,initially, when Canada legalized
the you got this huge takeover,we had like, as a cannabis

(11:49):
activist 30 years, I was veryfamiliar with the opponents of
cannabis legalization. And oneof the great ironies of cannabis
legalization was that so many ofthe opponents of legalization
cashed in and got jobs with bigcorporate marijuana grows, and
we're talking cops andpoliticians that we argued
against for decades. And, youknow, and initially I was, you

(12:15):
know, feeling very disappointed.
Now, here we are, a couple yearslater, a lot of these big
corporations have gone belly up,because they were not able to
push the buyer who had beenbuying off friends and people
like that for for so long. On tothe corporate agenda, we've high
priced marijuana in verystrictly licensed shops, you

(12:40):
know, and that's been kind ofstarting to fall by the wayside,
and they realize that that's notnot going to happen. So they've
been kind of progressing moretowards a kind of craft beer
kind of industry. And and now Istarted to see some of my
friends get licensed and stufflike that. Whereas before you
need millions of dollars beforeyou behind you'd even start,

(13:01):
right. So we're seeing progressthere. And I think it's kind of
like, the end alcoholprohibition was like 100 years
ago, and we're still messingaround with alcohol laws. Now
with psychedelics, it's movingmuch, much quicker, and I have
kind of deeper concerns there.
Um, and, you know, it's amazinghow fast you know, the the move

(13:22):
to towards legalizingpsychedelics has been following
the legalization of cannabis inCanada. And
my concern is, in many ways, thegatekeeper sort of mentality
that might take into effectwhere you have to take it with a

(13:44):
therapist, or you have to takeit with a licensed religious
practitioner, because I thinkthose those systems are open to
abuse, you know, and we've seencases like that here in Canada,
there was the MultidisciplinaryAssociation for Psychedelic
Studies, a very well respectedgroup was able to procure care
permits for a study on MDMA. Andin that study, the therapist and

(14:12):
the, the, the patient ended uphaving a romantic tryst, and you
know, the whole thing fellapart, right. And this is the
type of kind of power situationsyou can kind of get into with
these things. And likewise, withShamanic practitioners in South
America sometimes some of thesepeople are less than honorable

(14:34):
that are that are putting onAyahuasca circles. They can do
things like add more potentplants like that during the week
brews to make it strong enough,and they can also be the some
sort of sexual abuse that canhappen between the guides and
stuff like that. So my view onthese things is I'm more of an
adult decriminalization type ofperson. And I think you know,

(14:57):
like I'm not against peopledoing You know, therapy and
holding religious practices. AndI do think that should be a
heavily regulated industry. Butas far as the plants themselves
go, my view is these arenatural, right. And the these
are the substances that peoplehave used for millennia, as

(15:18):
spiritual tools. And that thatso that what we have to have is
educated and responsible adultaccess to these substances, but
not with any sort of a patentingof plant matter, or anything
like that. I don't know exactlywhat the system of distribution

(15:39):
would be like that this case,but there's already people
trying to patent the chemicalsand the psychoactive substances,
and patent techniques ofextraction, and all that type of
stuff. And this is all humanhuman history, you know, what I
mean? It's like, it's a bigproblem,

I think it's important to note that we this
podcast support adults rights tomake their own choices in their
own body. And, you know, as a,as a free thought, individual,
you know, people should have theability to make their own
choices, you know,

I do have concerns like things like peyote
can be over harvested. And Ithink that, you know, there
there you have to respectindigenous access to their own
plant medicines, right. But allplants for all people, it
doesn't mean that people shouldbe able to grow their own of it.
But you know, maybe goingharvesting peyote in the wild
isn't a thing we want people togo out and do. Because it's

(16:35):
already over harvested. Andthere's indigenous practitioners
that count on that medicine,what we need to do is have, you
know, being able to grow peyote,and other cactuses, and things
like that, so that people canproduce their own sacramental
medicines,

Right. I had Nat Jack from Lucid Afterlife on the
podcast recently, and Imentioned that we were talking
about entheogens. And Imentioned I was gonna have you
on and he's like, Well, there'sa guy who's gonna know his
stuff. In your opinion, is it isit sensible to experiment this

(17:10):
stuff, without with with withthese materials without
guidance?

I think you know, like, you want to, like take
steps, you know, what I mean?
Like, you know, reading books isguidance, right? So anything
that I'm interested in, you wantto start by reading up on it,
watch videos of people'sexperiences, read about the
dosages, find out if there'sanything that you're taking,
like a medicine that maybe yourely on, that may conflict with

(17:35):
that type of thing, you know,what I mean? And do that there's
great websites for that type ofstuff like arrowhead.org, is a
very well known site for thattype of information. And, you
know, treat it with respect, if,you know, if you have access to
somebody that's willing to guideyou on these things. Sure. And

(17:58):
you feel more comfortable doingthat. I'm not saying not do
that, right. But if you've beenusing cannabis, and if you've,
you know, used mushrooms, and afew things like that yourself
already, you know, you couldprobably, within reasonable
dosages, experiment with othermore powerful psychedelics,
without yourself, you know, it'snot always like some things you

(18:20):
definitely want a guide for,right? Like, it depends what
second psychedelic, you'retalking about, something like
5-MEO DMT, which is very popularthese days, and probably a, you
know, an amazing transpersonalexperience, you know, that
people can have instantaneouslyand I would say, this is almost

(18:40):
across the board, that thatpeople have transpersonal
experiences they have aunification with with with a
greater consciousness, you know,there's not you in it, there's
just what the experience youknow, and that's a very powerful
mystic experience, you know, butthere can be dangers with dosage

(19:00):
and everything on this type ofthing. And you know, you go a
little bit over and it can bequite people have died taking
some of these substances. So, ifyou're going to get into
something like that, for thatvery, very, very powerful
experience, you know, that thatyou may not even want more than
once or twice this is the, thedrug that the the great boxer,
what's his name? The the thefamous black boxer there.

Muhammad Ali,

no talks with a lisp.

Oh, yeah. Mike Tyson.

Mike Tyson talking about this substance
changed his whole life, right?
Turn them right around. He seesthings differently ever since
then, you know. And so somethinglike that, you know, you don't
want to do that by yourself. Youwant to have somebody there
watching over your mortal body.

(19:54):
You know, some things are likethat, where you want somebody
there with your immortal body.
Similarly with something Likeayahuasca, you know, I think
that, you know, you couldprobably make an Ayahuasca
analogue like ??? roux. And ifyou have a lot of psychedelic
experience, you probably befine. But if you're going to
really have a full, powerfulexperience, anything that's
like, going to cause purging isprobably a good idea to have

(20:17):
some other somebody else around,you know, because if you're like
in a state where you're not ableto control yourself, and you're
purging and that type of thing,you can run into difficulty, you
know, and people have, you know,like people have done things
like ketamine, in a bathtub andyou know, drowned in a bathtub,
I had a very good friend, IanHunter, and he was very

(20:39):
interested in DMT. And he hadtaken to trying to find very
quiet places with a lot lookingout at not any other psychic
energy around. So he would goout and lie in a canoe in the
middle of a body of water, andthen smoke the DMT lie back and
meditate, we ended up drowning,you know, died that way, you

(21:01):
know what I mean? And you got toremember, like, you know, when
you're tripping in some of theserealms, you're not maybe making
the best decision for yourmortal body. And so when you're
going to be doing that type ofpowerful psychedelic experience,
then sure, you definitely wantto have somebody there. But at
the same time, I've done thingslike drop acid by myself and eat

(21:22):
mushrooms by myself and gohiking on a trail I'm very
familiar with or sit on a beachunder a full moon. And I've had
very, very, very powerfulexperiences. I think that would
be hard to achieve. If I wasconstantly in conversation with
somebody else, instead of justfocusing on my own
consciousness,

...but maybe not your first time. Maybe not for
your first time. No, right. And,and this is not what I want this
conversation to be about. But Ithink it's interesting. We're
talking about it right up front,because it's one of the reasons
I wanted to have you on and Ithink it's important that I
note, anybody who knows me knowsI'm damn near teetotaler, I've
been experimenting with likefive milligram edibles for sleep

(22:07):
for a few months. That's it. AndI grew up in a small town on the
coast of British Columbia, whichis notorious for its marijuana
output. And I, I just had nointerest, I had a hard enough
time, beating myself sober. Andso. So it wasn't within my
interest, but I was surroundedby people, you know, who are
interested in it, and a numberof people who are interested in

(22:29):
in using all sorts of materialsfor for spiritual
transformation. Can you can youtell me a little bit about your
history of spiritualtransformation with with these
materials?

Yeah, I mentioned earlier that I'd had this
religious experience in around1989. And I think like a lot of
religious experiences, there wasa series of events that led up
to this, you know, and for me,the first of these was the mount
Cashel orphanage was in thepress at those days of the big

(23:04):
Catholic controversy where thesemonks were getting outed for
molesting kids and I was like,you know, I wasn't really
brought up with religion. And mymom was more like the horoscope
type and tea leaves and thatsort of thing. And but I think
just because of the culturalimprinting of Easter and
Christmas and vampire movies, Ikind of accepted the overall

(23:31):
cosmology I was being sold ofJesus is the Savior the devil's
bad and, and all that type ofstuff. When these priests were
outed for this, I was like,what's with this man? These are
the guys are supposed to bethere. The great people are
molesting kids thats terrible.
And I thought I would get aBible and read it at that time.
I had a nightwatchman job and afish plant out in Ucluelet. I
was a surfer. I grew weed. AndI'd read at night, you know,

(23:56):
when I did this nightwatchmanjob and and then a few other
things coincided with this oneof these was the logging of the
the last old growth coastalrainforest Clayoquot sound and
my brother was a logger, I'dworked in saw Mills, my brother
was the camp for the IWA outthere, the union, the loggers
union, right. And all of asudden, all these environmental

(24:18):
started showing up and I hadn'teven really conceived of the
idea of environmentalism orthere was any issue with logging
or anything like that justhadn't even come up for me in my
life out ain Ucluelet at thattime, you know, and so that
started really changing the vibeof that area. And then, a couple
of other things happened. TheGulf War started in Iraq and

(24:39):
Saddam Hussein had fired a Scudmissile into Israel. Because of
this. They were comparing him tothe king of Babylon, because
Iraq and Babylon are on the samepiece of real estate. And so one
night I was in this fish plantabout three in the morning
smoking a joint it was emptyfish plant in the lunchroom, and
reading this newspaper back thenthey had television stuff, the

(24:59):
timetables for television andnewspapers for the internet. And
I'm reading along and there's anadvertisement for a sermon. And
it's pat robertson revelations18, the fall of Babylon, there's
Robertson at the pulpit. Andbehind him, he's got tanks and
jets. And I knew about this Iraqthing where they were calling
him Nebuchadnezzar andcomparing. So I was like, Oh,

(25:22):
wow, these guys are comparingthe book of Revelation to this
war in Iraq. And you know, therewas like, Jehovah's Witnesses in
the fish plant. And they werealways preaching apocalypse and
Revelation, right. So I had someideas about this and seeing the
Omen as a kid. So I knew thattoo, right? So I got the book of
Revelation. And I startedreading the beginning of the

(25:43):
book. Jon's given the scroll andputs it in his mouth to taste
the sweetness, honey, and thenit turns bitter in his stomach,
and he begins to prophesize. Andso my first thought was like,
what did he eat you know?
As it took them. Sorry, theingestion of that, you actually

(26:06):
begin to prophesize, right? AndI got a little further and it's
talking about billowing cloudsof smoke, so of incense, and the
incense has the prayers of thesaints, and they're wearing
sackcloth, but I'm going this istrippy shit. I get to the end of
the Bible. And I read Revelation22. And it says, on either side
of the river of life, to theTree of Life, very 12 manners of

(26:27):
fruit, yielding its fruit eachmonth. And the leaves of the
tree are for the healing of thenations. And when I read that I
had this powerful, life changingreligious experience. This is a
light switch of my life. It waslike the existence before that
and the existence after that, itset the course of my life, I

(26:47):
felt like light just poured intome. And that this was a
reference to this plant,cannabis, and its industrial
uses. You know, around thistime, I had just found out about
the industrial applications ofcannabis, that you could make
all your paper out of cannabis,you know, one acre of ample
produce as much paper as fouracres of trees over the same 20

(27:09):
year period, you can replacefossil fuels with biomass fuels
are making incredible batteriesout of cannabis building houses
out of cannabis. We replacedsoil depleting cotton with
cannabis, we could feed theworld with the essential fatty
rich seed of cannabis. So thisis like an incredible miracle
plant. And I was like, this iswhat they're fucking talking

(27:29):
about. And I started thinkingabout Bob Marley and people like
that. They're kind of on myperiphery. I wasn't really
interested in that stuff. But Igo, that's let's be what these
Rastafarian dudes are talkingabout, right? And so I called my
wife up at the time my firstwife and she thought I was
having some sort of mentalbreakdown. And she started
bawling you, you were though?
Yeah, you know what? I couldhave easily been a psychotic

(27:50):
break. But yeah, I could haveeasily been hospitalized. Right.
Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's howthese things can go. Say that.
I've gone home to my family, andthey're going, we're sending you
to the hospital. And I getmedicated and shit like that my
life would have been on atotally different path. Right.
Right. Right. But as ithappened, that's not what
happened. And so the next day, Igot up, you know, and I was

(28:12):
like, looking at these clear cutmountains. And I was like, Well,
I don't know, man, like, thatwas fucking weird. I know, this
hemp stuff is legit, though. Youknow, I had been looking it up
and encyclopedias, and I'm gonnapromote that for sure. Because I
know about that. But if there'sanything to this religious
stuff, then other people willhave had an experience like

(28:35):
this, some, some other otherpeople will know about this. And
so that was when I begancollecting everything I could on
on cannabis and magic andreligion, and then slowly
started writing art. And I waslike a high school dropout,
right? You know what I mean? Andit's like, you know, last month,
I gave a lecture at a universityof religious studies, they, you

(28:55):
know, so it's like, I had tolearn all that type of a sort of
study that was a way to presentinformation and write things
from from that moment on, justto prevent the ideas that I was,
I was coming across, you know,and I'm going to tell you, like,

(29:16):
32 years later, I'm quiteconvinced of legitimacy of that
religious experience that Ihave, you know, last year,
around this time, there was anews stories about
archaeological evidence out ofIsrael, that they found cannabis
resins on an altar in Israel2800 years old. And this is
something that I've beensuggesting, specifically, in

(29:39):
exactly this context, based onetymological research regarding
the Hebrew term, Canneh Bossom.
And now it's historical fact.
You know, and I think otherelements of this are coming to
historical facts. You know whatit's like? I had a hunch.
There's references in alchemyand Sure enough, you know, I was

(29:59):
able to find recipes from someof the greatest names in
alchemy, Paracelsus, AbbaSienna, Cardano, The Wellian(?)
corpus, you know, and othertexts as well. So you know, it's
quite clearly there because aLatin name for cannabis is the
same as our English name forcannabis. And so you can see the

(30:20):
actual recipes and text wherethey wrote about these things.
And, you know, it's amazing howmuch of it's been validated in
such solid fact, based on somesort of mystical experience,
that that it would lead to that,you know,

yeah, it's, it's interesting how your academic
work has been. was somewhatprescient, I would say, Yeah,
especially with some of thearchaeological evidence that's
come forward since. And, I mean,one one could look at it be
like, well, here's a here's astoner, who's just really keen

(31:02):
to get his cannabis justified.
But you don't you don't need tojustify your cannabis over here.
And it now I mean, historicallyspeaking, it looks like you are
correct. But I, I find yourhistorical work and discussions
of this historical evidence.

(31:24):
Fascinating. Do you want to goover a couple of things you've
presented as ideas that peoplemight find part of like,

the cannabis stuff, um, in regard to like,
the the the use of it inbiblical times. And this has to
do with research, I came acrossthis entomologist and
anthropologist who was writingin the 1930s. And her name was
Sula Benet. And she was Polishbut left Poland, chased out by

(31:53):
the Nazis as she was Jewish. Andshe suggested this Hebrew term
that appears in Exodus in Isaiahin Ezekiel, in Jeremiah, and in
the Song of Songs, was areference to cannabis and the
Hebrew term was Canneh andCanneh bossom also. And in these
references, there's a veryinteresting conflict, because

(32:21):
the initial references are verypositive. But the last
references are very negative,right. And so to understand what
this meant, I had to like fullyget into the Bible and
understand the Old Testamenttexts. And so I could put these
references into the historicalcontext that they belong. And it

(32:45):
tells a really radical andfascinating story. And so in the
first of these references inExodus 30:23, God commands Moses
to make a holy anointing oilwith about , six and a half
pounds of this canneh bosom inwhich she said was cannabis,
mixed with myrrh and cinnamonand Cassia into about a gallon

(33:07):
and a half of olive oil. Andevery time that Moses is to
speak to the Lord, He's to putthis oil on himself and your
body, your skin is a big organ,and THC can actually pass
through the skin, but he alsotakes some of this oil, and he
places it on the altar ofincense. And then he speaks to
the Lord in the pillar of smokeover the altar of incense now,

(33:30):
Sula Benet said that when theHebrew texts were translated
into Greek, initially, the firstlanguage that they're translated
into about 300 BC in theSeptuagint, they made a mis
translation of this term, and itwas Miss translated as calamus.
And this mis translationfollowed through into later

(33:51):
English Bibles. Although someEnglish Bibles translate the
term is fragrant cane, which iskind of what canneh bosom means,
right? And sohe said, You know, so when you
change that, and you putcannabis in there, it makes it
pretty radical, because now youhave Moses, inside a smoky
little tent, the tent of themeeting, burning cannabis, and

(34:13):
that's how he communicates withGod, because in the story in
Exodus, none of the otherIsraelites ever see or hear the
Lord, they could just see whenMoses is talking to the Lord,
when he's in the tent of themeeting and smokes pouring out
of the tent. So had to be prettysmoky in there. And so Moses
comes out and says, This is whatthe Lord your God has said. And

(34:35):
so this kind of brings us intowhat's called the stoned ape
theory. And the stoned apetheory is that, that drugs lead
to thinking and the first peoplethat experience thinking,
believe they experienced thatkind of like a schizophrenic
does is something coming outsideof themselves speaking to
themselves from outside ofthemselves. And this goes back

(34:56):
to the research and work Thebrilliant psychologist Julian
Jaynes, in his famous book, theThe Origin of Consciousness in
the Breakdown of the BicameralMind. And so his theory was that
humanity ancient humanity didnot think in the same way that
we did were more like animalsthat we were the victim of
circumstance, we were soconsumed with a struggle to

(35:17):
survive, we didn't have a lot oftime for reflective thinking,
and that the first people thatexperienced thinking experienced
in the voice of their ancestor,or the voice of their imagined
God or something like that,right? And so they would kick in
at times of stress, upheaval,fever, things like that. They'd
hear the voice of their fatheror their chief, and we'd tell

(35:39):
them what to do. And they wouldsay, Did you hear that? Nobody
else heard it? Oh, wow, he's gotsome magic power. Here's the
voice. What's the voice tellyou, you know, and this led to
to religion. Now, TerenceMcKenna added to this theory
immensely by suggesting the useof psychoactive substances also
was an avenue to facilitate thisproduct of inner speech, right.

(36:03):
And so this is what the kind ofis indicated in the story of
Moses initially, that it wasused in temples to initiate the
voice of God and prophets andpriests right. Now in the next
reference to cannabis and occursin the Song of Songs. And in
there, it's listed, you know, ittalks about your ointments more

(36:25):
pleasing than wine talking aboutthe same anointing oil, I'm
assuming it's Exodus 3023. Andit has cannabis appear in a
garden of incense trees, right.
And what's interesting about theSong of Songs is Solomon even in
the biblical description is apolytheist. And a polytheism, is

(36:48):
as people that worship more thanone god. Solomon\ was
particularly known in the Biblefor burning incense on high to
Queen of Heaven, going up on themountains and, and burning
incense to the Queen of Heaven.
This is a big problem in the OldTestament texts of Kings and
Chronicles. Now, archealogy thatrefer to a goddess Ashura

(37:08):
actually being worshipped withinthe temple of Jerusalem, right?
in Kings and Chronicles, and nowarchaeology has shown this was a
predominant method of worshipthroughout much of the Old
Testament period, because theyfound all sorts of artifacts,

(37:28):
attesting to the worship of thisHebrew goddess, including
inscriptions, which refer toYehwah and his Ashura as if they
were husband and wife. So thisis a historical fact now that
for large parts of Jewishhistory, God had a wife. And so
this is what the song of songsis thought by some scholars to

(37:51):
represent Marvin H Pope, in hisgreat study of the songs, these
are a scholar of the Bible. Hesaid, this was the Hebrew
representation of the HeirosGamos the sacred marriage, you
know, like the marriage ofIshtar and Tummuz and it was the
combination of the god and thegoddess together, that that that
brought fertility to the landright. Now, um, so so we know

(38:15):
that in this time period thatthis was the case. Now
interestingly, William Imboden,a botanist, he had suggested
that Ashera's Cult burntcannabis as well as anointed
their skins with it in the samemanner as the Hebrew. And so
since Ashra, likely predates theworship of Yahweh. It's like
that goes back and we know thisis true of other Near Eastern

(38:38):
goddesses. There's an Assyrianword that's known for being
cannabis Kinabu and Kinabu wasused by the cult of Ishtar and
she had a perfume of cannabisointments and this goes also
back to the another Easterngoddess whose very old ish share
and it's likely Astra and Ishtarall grew out of this earlier

(38:59):
Near Eastern goddess thiscannabis use had continued from
the earlier matriarchal period.
Right? And so this is kind of ainteresting subject now in
Ezekiel. The reference tocannabis it comes in on on a
caravan of trade. Now whatthey've said about this evidence

(39:20):
of archaeological evidence outof Arad, Jerusalem, where they
found a temple and in thistemple, there were two altars
and they believe that one wasfor worshiping Yahweh. And when
was for worshiping Ashera onewhen all your had cannabis
resins and the other one hadfrankincense resin on it right?
And they say that the cannabisis there but cannabis was not

(39:43):
growing in the Holy Land. Andthat that it was important and
this is what the Ezikielreference describes, is cannabis
coming in as an item of trade,and we know that one particular
group and this time period wasvery well known for cannabis is
Scythians. They would burncannabis, they heat up hot rocks

(40:06):
and throw cannabis on that theygo inside a tent and they inhale
the fumes, much like Moses wasdoing and the Exodus story. And
their word for cannabis wascanneh , same word the Hebrews
had. So it came in as an item oftrade, carry the name over into
this culture carry the same sortof ritual use, that goes back to
this much more old indo Europeanuse that I was talking about,

(40:29):
before we did the interview. Andthis is so this again, fits with
this archaeological evidenceright now in the Isaiah
reference to No, no Ezekiel. Hedoesn't get high in that
reference. But there is areference where Ezekiel does get
high, much like the book ofRevelation, where John has given
a scroll Ezekiel given ascroll, he eats it it tastes

(40:51):
sweet in his mouth, swallows it,his stomach gets upset, it turns
bitter in his stomach, and thenhe begins to prophesize. And
that's when he saw his vision ofthe wheel. Now, it's hard to say
what sort of entheogen that was,but it was clearly some sort of
substance. If he didn't need toeat it to have the vision, he
would have just had the vision,you know what I mean? Oh, they
made it clear, he ingestedsomething right. Now,

it's interesting, it's interesting, I hate to
interrupt you. But it'sinteresting that in the Hebrew
mystical tradition, wordsthemselves language is magical.
And it's interesting thatthey're consuming a scroll,
because that could just aseasily been a rolled, joined.
But it's interesting that theywould say it's a scroll that
they're taking this written wordinside and that word changes in

(41:36):
them. And there's a lot ofJewish myth of Hebrew mysticism
around language well, that's thethe Kabbalah is all about. Yeah,
language and letter and numberand the mystical interpretation.
I find that fascinating. Andthen anybody who's read easy
Ezekiel and other parts of theBible, I mean, you clearly easy
he'll was high on something, alot of people use it as examples

(42:00):
of, of contact with withintelligent aliens, like, like,
like, praeterhuman entities, orintelligent alien life. But I
think it's much more interestingthat both revelation and
Ezekiel. And while throughoutthe Old Testament, you find
examples of, of entheogens beingused. And I think it's his he

(42:22):
feels much better. It probablymore convincing story for the
use of what we would call drugsthis but you know, plant
entheogens at the time, whetherthat's yeah. And make a very
convincing case that it'sCannabis

an interesting thing is in Isaiah, is God gets
mad at Isaiah, because hedoesn't bring any cannabis. He
says, You have not brought anyCanna for me. But you have
burden me with your with yourwith your iniquities. And you
know, it doesn't give him anyadvice because he shows up empty
handed. And this is likely dueto the polytheistic situation

(42:59):
that was going on where cannabiswas being used at different
temples and this was a hotcommodity. Because if you had it
at your temple service, you'remore likely to get a response
from the God right so God getsmad at Isaiah when he shows up
empty handed. In another accountthough, it's pretty clear that
Isaiah did not only show upempty handed because in another
account, it describes how one ofthe Seraphims flew on to me with

(43:23):
a live cool he had taken withtongs from off the altar, and he
held it to my lips and lo myiniquity was taken away and my
sin purge so the the figurebasically gets with tongs,
drabs, a hot coal a burningincense and holds it right up to
Isaiah smells like eat like,like a hot knife and his
inequity is taken away in hissins purged and then he can

(43:46):
prophesize for the Lord. Right.
So that's how important it was.
And there was a competition forits use. And this brings us to
the last of these biblicalreferences, and the story of
what happened to both thegoddess and cannabis. Because
you have to remember, Ashera hismain symbol was the tree of
life. And we've already seen howshe was, you know, her court was

(44:11):
using this same cannabis and theEden mythology in the Bible is
thought to have been one of thelast things written in the Old
Testament texts. And scholarsnow believe that that are
following this material about aAhera emerging out of the desert
sands in the forms ofinscriptions and statues, etc.

(44:34):
are saying that the whole Edenmythology is a reversal of the
earlier polytheistic mythologywhere God had a wife and
entheogen was a mainstay of thereligion in Jeremiah says, What
do I care for your incense,incense of Shiva, your Canneh
from a distant land and it'srejected. Incense of Shiva

(44:58):
brings to mind Solomon's wivesalmonds worship of the Goddess
and the burning of incense onhigh. And then later in Jeremiah
is made perfectly clear becausethis is at a time period, when
Israel is under attack bynumerous foreign kingdoms,
Assyrians Babylonians, it's whenthey lost their independence as

(45:19):
a nation, right. And they blamethis on the improper worship
that was taking place with whatthe Yahwey is called the
polytheistic. You know, worshipthey what they saw as a great
aberration. But the greataberration was actually
monotheism because monotheismwas a new concept may have been
around before, but it nevertaken hold of the Empire fully.

(45:41):
There's only two monotheistickings, even in the Books of
Kings and Chronicles and in theBible, Hezekiah and Josiah. And
Josiah, he destroyed the brazenserpent that Moses made. Because
the people of Israel wereburning incense to it beside the
Ahsera and the temple thatSolomon built the polytheistic

(46:01):
King, you know, so this was allthis monotheism and this fight
against polytheism and Ashera,it was the new development and
it may have been the result of aneed to consolidate the of that
country, because politics andreligion knew no separation in
those days. And so any sort oflike a, you know, any, any cult

(46:23):
that had the ear the king was,was dominating the area. And so
they needed to consolidate allcults. And so this may have been
that part of the drive formonotheism that was taking
place. But Jeremiah, who'sescaping this onslaught in
Israel ends up in Egypt, and heconfronts Jews, they're blaming
them for the fall of Israel,because they burned incence to

(46:43):
the Queen of Heaven, He says,and poured out drink offerings
to her, and they rejected Him,they said, we will continue to
burn incense to the Queen, queenof heaven, and pour out drinking
offerings to her as did ourkings, and our princes and our
fathers and our mothers beforeus. So that's clear that what's
taking place there? This is thefinal kind of edit of the Old

(47:07):
Testament is kind of happeningaround this time period shortly
after Ezra I guess. But thegoddess goes by the wayside, and
so does the cannabis. And it'sinteresting because her symbol
was a tree of life. And what'sthat symbol at the end of the
book of Revelation, the tree oflife again? Yeah, and there's
this massive feminine powerawakening in the world right

(47:29):
now. You know, many peopleinterpret Babylon in Revelation
as the return of the goddessIshtar, the queen of Babylon is
the, the Babylonian counterpartof the Canaanite Ashera. And
there does seem to be somepowerful feminine Mojo awakening
around this plant the cannabismove, but it's full of powerful
female figures. So there'ssomething happening here with

(47:51):
this herb, man.

Yeah. So before we get off this topic, which of
your multiple books publishedwould be best for people who are
very interested in this sort ofreligious history material?
Which of your book would yourecommend for? Because we're
gonna go more into the occultdirection.

if you're purely interested in these drug
references that I'm talkingabout, you know, to canneh bosom
and and stuff like that?
Probably cannabis in the somasolutions, the best one, I deal
with a number of ancientcultures in that one. If you're
interested specifically inbiblical references, my book sex
drugs, violence in the Biblealso explores explicitly the

(48:31):
fertility cults of Canaan andthe Gnostic sex cults of the
first few centuries AD, probablymore than any book in print.

So where's the best place for people to buy?

Want to get cannabis and the soma solution?
Or Lieber 420, my book oncannabis and it called Amazon's
best plate. If you want to get"Sex, Drugs, Violence in the
Bible" you're going to want tothey're gonna want a couple 100
bucks on Amazon, find me onFacebook or Instagram or
someplace like that. And I'llset you up with a copy for 75
bucks.

Excellent. So yeah, so we've we've established
the sort of involvement with therise of monotheism. Let's talk
more recent history andoccultism esotericism and the
use of entheogens, and then Iwant to talk about your use of

(49:27):
entheogens. And, and how yourpractice has evolved. Yeah. Is
that enough of a question? Do weshould do we need to talk
specifically, I mean, you. Everytime we get together, we talk
more about Crowley? Because, ofcourse, I'm interested, very
interested in Thelema, but myinterests are very broad.

You know, like a will say, like a call, you know,
like, you know, probably thefoundational document of the
Western magical tradition, isthe Picatrix. That was put out
in the 12th century it's atranslation of an Islamic
magical grip. Are the guy thatallocated that was written in
the 10th century, in the 12thcentury King Alfonso of Spain,

(50:07):
he translated this book intoLatin, and it went over and it
inspired Agrippa and Paracelsusand all these other figures
later on, you know what I mean?
But it's a very powerful magicaldocument and there's a recipe in
there for a cannabis incense usefor invoking the angel of the
moon that would appear in thepillar of smoke much like for

(50:31):
for Moses in the tent of themeeting the pillars smoke there,
you know, one of the thingsabout like fumigation rituals
that involve smoke, the smokeitself can actually help
facilitate the visionary processbecause people start to see
things in the smoke under theinfluence of these, even without

(50:53):
the influence. It's like seeingimages in clouds, you know, more
so when you do a psychoactivesubstance, you know, there's
also efforts as to opiumMandrake other substances in
there. So right at the beginningof the magical tradition, in the
western Western thing, you know,it's right there. And we see in
the 16th century, there's atleast three English grimoires

(51:15):
that have references to cannabisfor mirror scrying. Sepher
Raziel. Liber Solomonis thegrimoire recently published as
The Book of Oberon, and theCunning Man's Grimoire all have
references to canabis for mirrorscrying and also have other drug
references in there for othermagical purposes. And this is
interesting because this isright in the time period of John

(51:40):
Dee. There is, without a doubt,he would have had his hands on
these grimoires this is just thetype of information that he was
looking for in regards to mirrorscrying and John Dee's actions,
the recordings of his hisvisionary mirror experiences
with Edward Carroll Kelly thescryer, it's clear that some
sort of drugs were used. Some ofthe descriptions involve very

(52:01):
smoky rooms and other actiondescribes him drinking a vial of
liquid and making him drowsylike drinking some opium or
something. And in anotherhilarious exchange, Edward Kelly
is attempting to talk to aspirit in the mirror. And the
mirror is saying, Well, whydidn't you bring any drugs and

(52:22):
he opens his apothecary box andgoes, Look, my apothecary box is
empty. And the Spirit responds,well, what do you have any
ointments, and this is, youknow, Kelly talking to Dee
writing it all down, in myopinion, that's kind of Kelly
jonesing it for some drugs andputting some pressure on Dee to

(52:42):
procure some drugs because themirror scrying going to go a lot
better. And, you know, I thinkit's important to remember with
some of these substances, youcould develop a real taste from
things like opium and stuff likethat, we see this and
now in regards to alchemy, youknow, we could go back to the
beginning of alchemy withZozimos in the fourth century,

(53:05):
the famous Greek Alchemist hewrote specifically about
cannabis and Darnell infusedbeers and wines used for magical
purposes, right. And then in the10th century,??? putting out the
cannabis recipes they would callcannabis in in Europe ???
cannabis because he was soassociated with this medicinal

(53:28):
medicinal plant in alchemyparticularly seems to have been
used in substances that werereferred to as Quintessence and
arcanums. And these arebasically what we would call
tinctures And what they would dois they would take wine buried
in a vessel for a week orsomething like that, I forget
the exact amount of time, itwould separate or maybe it was a

(53:49):
month or something it wouldseparate, they'd keep the clear
water, dump the dirty water andrepeat that process five times
so they get quite a clearalcoholic solution from all this
this process. And this wasconsidered a chemical heaven.
And they felt that they couldabsorb the quintessence, the
fifth essence of the plant thesoul of the plant into this

(54:12):
chemical heaven by saturatingthe chemical in this process a
number of times until it wouldnot take any more of the plant
matter. And Paracelsus wrote howyou can increase the potency of
plants up to 20 times and it'slikely that his own

(54:32):
Philosopher's Stone was based onthis Paracelsus is very well
known for a laudenum, tinctureof opium that he prepared and he
attributed great powers to it.
And he made a solid form of thistincture he probably just let
the alcohol or whatever it wasevaporate out of it until he got
a solid form, and it was said ofParacelsus that he would keep

(54:53):
most turd size pieces of opiumin The pummel have is sword in a
secret compartment. And I can'timagine Paracelsus after years
of using this substance, he'dstart to feel the desire for it
because he's not had it for awhile. jonesing for it from

(55:13):
actual addiction, and then hetake it and all, I feel better
my power has been restored by myPhilosopher's Stone. And he
apparently used opium formagical purposes as well,
Paracelsus also had a cannabisrecipe, an Arcanaum that was
used for the treatment ofepilepsy. And this is
interesting because it's a verypotent epileptic medicine today.

(55:36):
And so, other Alchemists iswell, Rabelais as well. He
called himself a master of thequintessence and his famous
parody of church and state thatincorporated occult secrets,
Gargantua and Pantagruel, and heincorporated Three Secret
chapters about cannabis into thePantagruel books under the name

(55:57):
The Herb Pantaguelia. And so weknow he was using this as well.
This is something that Crowleypicked up on in his own study of
Rabelais. So, you know, there'sa number of alchemical things
for it there. And like I said,earlier, I think in alchemy, it
was considered a great tool forthe marriage of the Sun of the
moon, bringing the unconsciousand the conscious together to

(56:17):
form genius.

And have you had an interest in lab alchemy and
done any of that yourself?

I you know, only because I've written about it,
but I've been in contact withlots of alchemists and there's a
Alchemist in California, WarrenG, evolved alchemy and he's been
trying to make the an actualPhilosopher's Stone of cannabis.
By doing the five extraction youknow, the the earth Water, Air
spirit extraction, and thenbringing it all back together. I

(56:48):
haven't talked to him for awhile, but he's done a number of
the different ones. And it'sslowly been working to
reconstituting an actualPhilosopher's Stone and I think
you can make philosopher'sstones you know, of any number
of plants, you know, andParacelsus particularly seems
interested in in opium in histime, but I think Rabelais was
more of a cannabis connoisseurhis interest laid there.

It's interesting because Crowley has a different
conclusion about alchemy,particularly from a sex magical
perspective. And its interestinteresting how the things the
where you start kind of informsyour opinions about where you
are. Yeah, but I, I find youryour ideas about this

(57:35):
fascinating. Sorry, writes

about cannabis and alchemy as well. You know,
he talks in his psychology ofhashish. You know, there's a
story told over and over wheresomebody pursuing knowledge
meets and initiate and is givenan elixir, that's how the whole
thing starts, you know what Imean? Sexual alchemy, though, of
course, you know, that'sanother, you know, the
quintessence of the human is, ofcourse, you know, you know what

(58:01):
that is, right? You know,that's, that's the essence of
the human what makes humans youknow, um, so that that that fits
with the same concept ofQuintessence. But in this case,
he's talking about thequintessence of the individual
human being.

And I find it also interesting how the same group
of symbols can be interpreted somany different ways from
different lenses, you know, whatthe whole "As Above, So Below"
and it doesn't make any one ofthem particularly true, or not
true. It's just a matter ofwhere you're at, and what to
apply. So now, now, I'd like totalk about a practical

(58:43):
application. So we were talkingbefore the interview. And this
podcast is mostly concernedwith, with individual
practitioners and personalpractice, and you're like, Well,
you know, I don't know what mypersonal practice is like. But
you started off, like gettinghigh and you had this spiritual
experience. You've spent allthis time doing this, this
academic work, which, at thebeginning was like, the ravings

(59:05):
of a stoner but evolved intosome very serious academic work.
I think anybody who reads itwill argue that it's very
serious academic work. What isyour what is your How is your
personal practice evolved? Andby that, I mean, well, you know,
what you get up to?

Yeah, you know, I definitely had in the 90s, I was
pursuing a lot of magic and thisis actually one of my magical
diaries from the 90s.

Oh, see? That's the first advice I give to any
student of the work that's good.
You took somebody asked you todo that, or did you just
spontaneously spontaneously

you know what happened? Um, you know, I giving
startyou my account of I should maybe
I should talk about in my wholeoccult connection here. Um, I
had given you my account, myreligious experience. 1989 And
initially, I thought that wasweird. My religious experience
starts, right. But then I'd had,you know, I started to think
about things. And when I was akid, I had a couple of dreams

(01:00:03):
that stuck with me. And that Ikind of started to see relevance
to as I began to study thisoccult stuff, and one of these
dreams, I was flying throughspace. And a voice was telling
me that stars and atoms were thesame thing, you know, and when I
read about the microcosm, andmacrocosm, I was like, oh,
that's like that fucking dream Ihad when I was a fucking kid.

(01:00:25):
And then the other dream, I wasshown plant just sprouting out
of the earth, and was told thatthis was going to be this great,
incredible plant and cure cancerand do all this stuff. And I,
when I later on got intocannabis, like, well, that's
like that fucking dream I had.
And so I kind of started torealize, you know, that there

(01:00:46):
was some sort of like, somethingearlier than my other thing,
something that was leading me upto my religious experience. And
when I say so I started on thispath of collecting information
about people that experimentedwith cannabis that I collect
quotes and things. And I vaguelyknew of Crowley, right? Because
I kind of thought of Crowley askind of a demonic figure. And

(01:01:08):
but I had read this one book byCrowley. And that was when I was
watching Before all this thatwas Diary of a drug feat. And I
thought as kind of a campy,crappy book and I was didn't
think it was that great oranything, you know. But then,
when I started researching thehistory of cannabis, a lot of
books on the history ofcannabis, they talk about

(01:01:28):
Francois, Rabelais because ofthese chapters of cannabis
incorporated into Pantagrulianas the Herb Pantagrulain. And so
I thought, I'm gonna read thisguy, he sounds like a good lead.
He was a monk, you know, and hewrote about secretly about
cannabis, there must besomething in there. And so I
started reading it, and I got toread Gargantua and I got to the

(01:01:49):
abbey of Thelema and the law ofthe abbey of Thelema "Do as thou
wilt". And I was like, Oh, thatwas in that fucking Crowley
guy's book that I read. He mustknow about Rabelais you know, I
didn't know much about him atall right? You know, just what
I'd read in the diary of a drugfiend and different bits I'd
read in magazines over the yearsand that sort of shit I hadn't,

(01:02:11):
hadn't followed up on and I gotto find a quote about cannabis
from this guy. And almost rightaway, I was at a garage sale and
ended up with four books, aCrowley "Magic in Theory and
Practice", the "Book of Lies" acouple of others and I started
reading "Magic in Theory andPractice". And by this time, I
had already kind of clued in tothe Templars connection with the

(01:02:33):
hashishin. And we they're on mylist of you know, potential
sources. And he's talking aboutthem and I'm like, Well, this
cruelly guy's fuckin right on.
And I was really digging thebook, until I got to this
paragraph, where he talks aboutsacrificing a male child, he's
like, I've done this myself. 150times, Oh, my God, I read it. I
was like, This is so evil. Ican't read anymore. I'd been

(01:02:54):
seduced by the devil. BecauseI'd had this religious
experience reading the book ofRevelation, I kind of consider
myself a bit of a ChristianRight. And I was involved with
some Christian cannabis usinggroups by this time, Ethiopian
and Zion Coptic Church andother other other people, you
know, that I come across while Iwas researching. And so I put it

(01:03:15):
down and I was like, fuckingman, I couldn't believe I've
been dragged into it. And thisled to this wild series of
synchronistic events. So I'dgone down to Victoria to go to
some pot protests, and I wasvisiting this buddy of mine. And
he had an issue of Gnosismagazine on their special issue
on psychedelics. And so Sothat's cool. I open it up, and

(01:03:35):
there's a letter to the editor.
And it's child sacrifice. Andthe guy they done an issue about
Crowley, and somebody, he's akid a child sacrifice, you know,
blah, blah, and I was like, Holyshit, this is this fucking shit.
I'm just struggling over andthey go, Oh, that's just a
puckish reference to his sexmagick. Right? And so I fuckin

(01:03:57):
thought, Okay, I'm gonna findyou. There was a couple of
quotes about cannabis in there.
But it was like, you know, inthe magic and theory and
practice, but it was like, stufflike where it's placed on the
tree of life. And I didn'treally have the
contextualization to really makemuch of what he was saying
there. I need some more meat. Ineed a better quote than this.
And so I went to Avalon books inVictoria. And there was a new

(01:04:20):
book there. Liber Aliph Book ofWisdom before never seen that
one before. On the shelf. Therewas a bookstore I went to
regularly and I look up butcannabis, nothing. I look up ah,
for half there's hashish there'slike six pages. And I read it
and it's like a bunch of fuckinggobblygook and I'm like, I can't
make I don't know what he'sfucking talking about. Well, you

(01:04:42):
know, that's currently for you.
Yeah, I'll read you like thebeginner book. Like that. For

Troy Spreeuw (01:04:49):
The Book Of Lies was like that for me. It was my
first real book of Crowley and Iwas like, there's a lot more
going on here than I have anyidea. Liber Aleph. The second
book I read and also it was Iread it but you don't grok the
vast majority of what's in thereyou just like yeah, okay,
clearly this is for initiates,

Chris Bennett (01:05:08):
which they brought for from the city
Babylon, how Nebucadnezzar thegreat king being afflicted in a
spirit that departs from amongmen for seven years space,
eating grass, I still have anox. And I was like, I don't
know. And that's not not whatI'm looking for. So I didn't buy
it at the time, I went toanother bookstore, secondhand
bookstore, and I got a couple ofbooks. I got Ram Dass's "Be Here

(01:05:29):
Now". And I got the "10thMandela of the Ring Veda", which
I ended up using for writing mybook on the Soma many years
later. And I'm, when I was goingup to pay for the book, The
woman said, Oh, look at theprice of Ram Dass is be here.
Now, it had been $3.33 when itcame up. And so she ran out my

(01:05:49):
books After saying this, and mychange came back. $7.77 and me
and her and the other person inline went Oh, wow, that's weird.
Haha. And I thought, Okay, well,maybe I'll go get that book
Libra Aleph in like Rabelais,which I had to read a new over
and over to kind of get the gistof what he was talking about and
understand it, because it'swritten. So esoterically I

(01:06:11):
thought maybe if I read it a fewtimes, like, like I did with
Rabelais, I'll understand whatit was. And so I got it. And
then I sit down in my car,right. And I see, it's the Book
of Wisdom or folly, in the formof an epistle of 666, the great
wild beast to his son 777. Andso I fuckin was like, well,

(01:06:34):
that's fucking trippy. And thenI ran into this whole series of
777 things, and I was becameobsessed with it. And, and when
I was reading magic in theoryand practice to, when he gave
the Oath of the Abyss, I took itright on the fucking spot. You
know what I mean? And maybethat's how this all started, I
don't know. But I saw I started,you know, noticing this 777

(01:06:59):
stuff. And everywhere, it waslike the, the file number that
the book Hanford victory waskept under seven, seven. And I
had a bunch of stuff. And I wasreading my first book, this
time, "Green gold, the treelife, marijuana and magic and
religion" came out in 1995. Andthis was a couple of years
before that around 93. And I hadrun into some financial

(01:07:22):
problems. And I did mushrooms, Ibegged the gods to help me out,
right. And I ended up I had abusiness at that time making
hemp seed food bars, first hempseed food product in North
America, actually, I sold themall over the place. And I had
this guy buy into my company,and he paid me with a check. And

(01:07:43):
even before he gave me it, Iknew those numbers, were going
to be on there. And Iphotocopied the check. So I have
proof of this. And the checknumber was 077733308. So it had
the 333, the 777 in there, andthen the zero the number he
attributes to cannabis in LibraAleph in there as well. And so I

(01:08:05):
was like, Well, you know, and hehad written this book, I found
out, you know, for a specificindividual, Charles
Stansfeld-Jones,

that might have a connection for you.

Yeah. So at that time, you know, they talked
about the guy living inVancouver, and I was like, Oh,
cool. I'm from Vancouver. Butyou know, in those days, there
was no internet. So I couldn'treally find I was living in
Ucluelet, you know, what Ididn't have access to other
people interested in this typeof thing or books. And I kind of
left it at that. And I had areally like, I got that money I

(01:08:39):
mentioned, you know, begging tothe gods kind of doing a magical
invocation to kind of get somemoney and on mushrooms. And I
got really ripped off on myfirst book, The gods granted the
money to publish the book, butit was kind of a monkey's paw
type of situation, where, youknow, the woman wants her dead
son back, and then he comes backas a zombie, where I got my

(01:08:59):
wish, but I didn't, I wasn'tspecific enough. I got totally
ripped off on that fucking book.
And I ended up doing some blackmagic to, like, I spent five
years on this book, right? Andthe people that rip me off,
totally took me in, and thenthey fucking totally just burned
me on my book. And I tried doingeverything I could through legal
means. And I realized thatcouldn't and I was in a fury I

(01:09:22):
was as mad as I've ever been atanybody. And I did some black
magic, you know. And this iskind of where I fell away from
magic because I did this blackmagic. And then the next day, I
got up and I had this thing,Bell's Palsy. I didn't know what
it was at the time. I justdidn't have the use in the left
side of my face. And I went intoa really, really deep depression

(01:09:44):
over that and I decided that Iwould never use magic again to
try to achieve my will. And Iwould always you know, if I
wanted to build a fucking house,I get a hammer nail and I'd
start with a piece of wood andI'd hammer another piece of wood
to it. Another piece of wood,and another piece of wood
another piece of wood, becausethat's the way you build a house
because you use magic to fulfillyour will in that way. It's like

(01:10:07):
throwing a rock into a pond. Andthe ripples of effect that that
can happen from that interactionout of place interaction with no
building up to it hasrepercussions as I learned,
right, and sent me into a verydeep depression. And I crawled
out of that writing my nextbook, "Sex, Drugs, Violence in
the Bible". And so for about thenext 10 years or so I was purely

(01:10:29):
a, taking kind of like just ahistorical, I'm just going to
write history study history, notreally pursuing any sort of
magical practice or anythinglike that. But before I get away
from that time period, I do wantto talk about one magick ritual
that I did that was particularlyastounding, I think. And this
was in 1996, and it was on mybirthday, my 34 birthday. And I

(01:10:56):
my problem is with people thatsay they channel or anything
like that is you have to reallyput your faith into them, that
they're not like, gonna drag anyof their own bullshit into
whatever message they'regetting. And I was trying to
come up with a way, even my ownmessage, you know, I mean, even

(01:11:16):
my own message about the tree oflife. And I wrote my books,
because of doubt, I couldn'taccept that that was real
enough. If it was real, there'dbe proof of it some right, you
know what I mean. And so that'skind of like a theme of a lot of
my stuff. And so I wanted tocome up with a way of channeling
that wasn't reliant on any oneindividual, right. And so I came

(01:11:38):
up with this thing I called theinvocation of Anthropos. Now,
initially, I was thinking thatwe created a computer program or
something, and it would, youknow, flashing a pattern that
threw it into alpha brainwaves.
And then every seven seconds,somebody would push a letter on
the keyboard, and then whateverletter was pushed the most it

(01:12:00):
would be courted up top, youknow, and you'd see if you start
getting any words or anything,but I just didn't have the
ability to do that in thosedays. 1996. So I came up with a
wet barn version. And I gottogether 12 individuals that I
know that were into psychedelicsand cannabis at that time, and
also kind of spiritually minded,right. And I brought them out to

(01:12:22):
Ucluelet it for my birthday,which was on a full moon that
year. And I told them all whatwe're going to do before we did
it, so that they had to agree toit and commit to it with their
will and, and hold through theritual. And I got them all to
write out a question, right, Iput all these questions in the
hat. And then we did mushrooms,bless them mushrooms, and we did

(01:12:43):
mushrooms. And then I did abanishing ritual, to clear the
air. I bless the sacraments. Andafter we adjusted the mushrooms,
I had all these people in acircle around me and I was in
the center. I took them througha they could only look directly
at me never from side to side,right? Only directly at me. And

(01:13:03):
I took them through a series ofexercises through Christopher
Hyatt's "Undoing Yourself"reenergize meditation, that took
about a half hour we'd hop upand down for a minute there on
chatter our teeth for a minute,you know, until we were very
high. And then I used ainvocation from the the Nag
Hammadi library thethe "Perfect thunder, perfect
mind". And this has become avery interesting topic for other

(01:13:28):
people. There's a book out aboutDee, where they talk about
thunder perfect mind in relationto John Dee and Crowley and Jack
Parsons. And I use that sameinvocation for this exercise.
And then after doing theinvocation, I took a question
out of the hat. And I touchedone person, and that person was

(01:13:50):
to say a word. And then the nextperson wants to follow around
the circle. And I was in thecenter and I wrote it down in
this book, this is the actualbook, the actual thing that I
wrote down in the very sourcedocument, the first question,
and it's funny, because the twoquestions that I picked were
questions that I wanted to ask,but I didn't, because I thought

(01:14:12):
I'd wait a try it a few times.
And then I'd ask thosequestions. And the first
question was, are the forces oflight going to triumph over the
forces of evil? And the answercame back when this came back,
it was as fast as I'm speakingto you. Now I had a race to
write this down. It is notlikely that we should see the
way to understanding freely andcompletely, that his knowledge

(01:14:36):
and power is left to one'sdiscretion. If you seek to what
I have given, then we shall knowif everything will be forever
best together realize and thatwe move towards ever thrust to
be in complete faith, harmonyand understanding, respect for
us. That's a whole paragraphwith sentence structure. That

(01:14:57):
answers a question that nobodysaid Only One In 12 words of
that. One person said, You knowwhat I mean? And so and it's
relevant to the question, youknow, it is not likely that
we're going to see our way tosee understand it freely and
completely. And knowledge andpower is left to one's
discretion. You can haveknowledge and not act on it.

(01:15:20):
It's pretty fucking useless. Butthe problem with our world is
all the power without knowledge,you know what I mean? And if you
see what I have given, there'snot a problem in the world today
that we have, that we don't havean answer, the fucking struggle
is trying to implement that shitin this system that we're stuck
in. And so that that I think wasvery on target. The next

(01:15:44):
question was, where on earth?
Will it be a safe place forhumans to live into the future?
How can we find appropriateliving conditions on Earth after
events breaking apart, whichcan't move towards resolution
spinning comfortably? Theproblems that we face in this
world today will get you nomatter where you're at? Spinning
comfortably. We're all caught upin Maya, man, we're like making

(01:16:07):
our mortgage payments and, anddoing all this shit. We're,
we're cleaning the chairs andthe Titanic as the ship sinks.
And then my question was a testquestion. And I wanted something
that I knew about that theseother guys didn't know about
something that would meansomething to me that they just
would have no, not what the hellI was talking about. And around
this time, they had found thisnew form of life on the ocean

(01:16:29):
floors around volcanic ventsthat are like 500 degrees
Fahrenheit, and heat and theyfound life in these vents, worms
and things like that life thatdid not depend on the sun, like
all other life on Earth, right.
And because of this, there'sdeveloped an idea that life may

(01:16:49):
have come to Earth on a meteor,like a sperm, puncturing a giant
egg, and blasting off and then,you know, taking off from there
from that moment, right. And Isaid, Tell me about the worms on
the ocean floor. They responded.
They were born apart with time,past and future. Wow. And at

(01:17:09):
that moment, somebody startedlaughing. And I was like, you
fools. I sent up, you blew it,you blew it, you know that we
stopped the ritual and just kindof partied. Right? Laughter is a
perfect release.

Grounding exercise. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, and it released it released
whatever we brought into thatcircle. And I believe we brought
into that something into thatcircle. I think that was the HGA
(Holy Guardian Angel) you know,I think that's what that was
man. And so anyways, after thisaround the same time, I had this
bad experience, I got ripped offon my book, I did black magic,
like a fucking idiot. I lost theuse and left side of my face for

(01:17:48):
a while, I crawled out of mydepression, and became a solid
historian and I didn't pursuemagick. Now, after when I when
I wrote my book, "Cannabis inthe Soma Solution", which is all
about the Vedic sacraments,Soma, that that led to the Vedic
religion, to the Hindu religionand everything that sprouted
forth from the Hindu religion. Ihad some chapters on there on

(01:18:13):
some occult stuff relating tothe Grail, because the Grail is
interconnected with the withwith the whole Soma mythology.
And I had to pull those out,because the book was already so
big. And so I pulled these twochapters out on the Occult, and
I thought, I'll get back to workon those, at some point the next
year or two, and I just let itsit there on my computer for

(01:18:35):
like, eight, nine years. But Idecided that around 2016 That I
would write this book, I dug outthose two chapters and all the
research that I collected onthis occult stuff, and I would
revisit this material on theoccult. And this brings me back
to Charles Stansfeld Jones inthis whole weird shit. That

(01:18:59):
happened. Now, this was mySaturn Return this initial stuff
that happened.
For me happened. My originalreligious experience happened
when I was 27. This is like 27years later, I get back into
this same magical current,right? And I was with this

(01:19:20):
friend of mine, and she wastalking about how she was
interested in ghosts. And when Iwas a kid, I grew up in this
little part of North Vancouvercalled Deep Cove. And when I was
a kid, I was convinced I hadseen the same ghost twice on my
street. First time I was walkingup the street, and I saw
somebody you know, leaning backin a driveway, looking at me and

(01:19:43):
I kind of looked up and helooked down. I looked up again
and they were like a photonegative I can kind of see right
through. And I was terrifiedafter that. After that. It was
like a one way street. Everytime I'd go past this house. I'd
close my eyes. Now rip up themiddle of the street for as far
as I could go. till I wassufficiently passed it on that I
would not look back, I just lookforward to get home. And so this

(01:20:06):
went on for me for a couple ofyears. And one time, I was just
about home when I had to lookback, I was like, What the fuck,
I look back, and I see the sameapparition again, a behind me,
you know, shortly after that Imoved away from from deep Cove.
And so I started telling herabout this. And for some reason,

(01:20:26):
this brought up this stuff aboutCharles Stansfeld-Jones, because
right around this time, I hadfound out he lived in North
Vancouver, deep coves in NorthVancouver and I was like, Oh,
cool. I'm from North Vancouver.
That's even closer, right? Andthen I found out I was like, so
I googled deep Cove, NorthVancouver, and I found out he
lives specifically in deep Cove.

(01:20:48):
And I was like, Whoa, that isreally weird. And so I googled
around and I ended up on thesteep Cove Historical Society
page. And there's a letter fromthis guy Larry Brown that had
been one of Charles stansfeldJones's foster kids. He had a
couple foster kids in the 40swith their with them for five

(01:21:08):
years. And he talked aboutliving and Jones said he lived
in this place in Deep Covecalled Tall Timbers. And I kept
trying to find this place, TallTimbers and Deep Cove and that's
what I had been searching aroundon Tall Timbers Deep Cove
Charles Stansfeld-Jones. Andthis guy had this in his his his
his a message to the HistoricalSociety. He said I lived in a

(01:21:31):
house called Tall Timbers. Nowonder I couldn't find it. That
was on Caledonia Avenue deepCove and I was like, Holy
fucking shit. It was likeliterally, like three, four
doors from my house, probablylike, you know, across the
street and the next house downback in that day in the 1950s.
And I realized that I'm surethat I met his widow I as a kid,

(01:21:56):
I had been saying that there wasa witch living in this house and
telling other kids on thestreet. It's this old lady watch
his play from her window. And Iwas saying, Oh, she's a witch.
And I got taken to meet her bymy friend's mother to show me
she was not a witch. And I'mquite convinced. This was

(01:22:18):
fucking Ruby Jones and she was afucking witch and somehow I
fucking kind of tapped into itas a fucking kid somehow, you
know, in that same way. And so,I you know, Croley wrote
specifically, a whole essay onhash cheese for Charles
Stansfeld- Jones, a De HerbalSanctissima Aribica and the book

(01:22:40):
that he wrote for Him Most Holygrass of the Arabs. You know,
when he when he presents thatsame essay in the book of
thought he proceeds it with asection He ends Liber Aleph with
about ??? and "Trinc" and ???
rearranged is Francois Rabelaisand Trink is he says the word of

(01:23:02):
Rabelais. In Crowley'sestimation, this has to do with
potent psychoactive substancesused as an entheogen he refers
to the bottle of Trink when hetakes ether as well you know he
saw any sort of psychoactivetaken with that sort of evidence
is this this thing Trent, whichis the the way that Rabelais
ingested and infused in wine soI really believe there's some

(01:23:30):
sort of connection between thiswork that I'm doing and this
work that these guys do. And youknow for for Achad you know, it
was the incoming out of Maat andI have written you know, there
there is evidence of apsychoactive elixir in the
worship of Maat in Egypt. AndI've written about this before,

(01:23:54):
but I think it's moreinteresting is Maat of Goddess
you know and and theinterconnection
of the goddess with cannabis inrelation to this and that
somehow I you know, like, Igotta be honest with you like I
read you know, the "IncomingAeon of Maat" and "Crossing the

(01:24:15):
Abyss" both books about Achadthat came out last year. And you
know, I read Achad's ownwritings and I I'm not really
that drawn to him find theselike too obscure and a lot of
the ways that he presents thingsand you know, reading so many
letters and diary notes fromfrom both Crowley and cod hasn't

(01:24:38):
endeared them in my heart thatmuch, you know what I mean? It's
kind of hard to take you can seethat the cruelness and pettiness
of Crowley sometimes and thenwith with Achad throughout the
incoming Aeon and Abyss there'sthis passive aggressive attempt
to place himself as a successorof Crowley and trying to get

(01:24:59):
both you know The people he'sexchanging letters within there
to agree with with this thisassessment you know in this
passive aggressive kind ofalmost whiny way of trying to
lead them there continuouslythat really fucking drained on
me so it's not like I'm you knowclaiming to be like any sort of
like reincarnation or anythingbut something in regards to this

(01:25:24):
will about accomplishing thisthing you know with in relation
to cannabis and you knowcannabis was a big part of that
relationship. The first 1910document regarding Achad in
relation to Crowley is anaccount of him being initiated
with cannabis. And then in 1918on April 20 is part of the, the,

(01:25:48):
the stuff that invoke LAMthey're using both can hashish
and mesculine you know what Imean? And and Achad was dosing
people with peyote in 1915onLonsdale Avenue. Probably I'm
the biggest seller and promoterof peyote in Vancouver since

(01:26:10):
Achad because I had my storethe urban shaman and I sold
kilos and kilos and kilos ofpeyote as well as like Achad,
you know. And so there's somesort of weird, weird connection
there. I still haven't gotten tothe bottom of it, I had been
working on a book about Crowleyand Thelema you know, up until a

(01:26:36):
few months ago, but my publisherhas me revisiting some of this
ancient world stuff because ofthis new archaeology and wants
to me to get a book out on that.
So I had to put that on the backburner, but at some point, I'm
really hoping to dig into thisand you know, not just because I
want to write the book, butbecause I want to understand
what this connection is myselfbetter.

Do you have an ongoing, magical practice that's
influenced by any of this work?
Are you still, like that ritualsounded pretty fascinating. Have
you continued on that kind ofwork even intermittently?

Well, you know, like, anything,

anything you dare speak about?

Yeah, well, you know, I've definitely done
psychedelics and I've had, youknow, powerful, powerful
entheogenic experiences. But Ithink I kind of went after that
time period, I stopped kind ofenjoying, you know, like a lot
of psychedelics because I keptfinding myself getting drawn
into this trip about it, andmyself in this message, and I

(01:27:44):
felt it was almost kind of likea messianic trip. And so I kind
of backed off most stuff exceptpot for a number of years. And
then I once I started doing itagain, I was using you know
psychedelics more for like,ecstatic transpersonal
experience rather than egoobliteration. So things like

(01:28:07):
doing a very potent psychedelic,like 2CB, which is a lot like
mesculine with a lover, andbreaking that whole "You and
them" completely, you know,blowing that out of the water.
So you're just the wholeexperience that's taking place
you can't even identify whereyou begin and the other person
began, you know, you end and theother person begins, it can be

(01:28:29):
so powerful if you usepsychedelic substance that so
it's more about getting intoreally high bliss states is what
it's been about, right? Um, Icouldn't say like, you know,
like, I just think that, youknow, the, the use of cannabis
all the time, kind of bringsthat esoteric element into your

(01:28:52):
life in a way, you know what Imean? Like, even just
researching and writing whileI'm using it, is, in a sense, a
magical act, you know what Imean? And each book is a magical
spell, you know, and thesespells you know, they take a
long time to do but they have aneffect, you know, you could
Google Jesus cannabis and you'llfind endless endless pages about

(01:29:16):
Jesus healing with cannabis isall grown from my, my religious
experience and my use ofcannabis and my research using
cannabis. And so they can have apowerful and lasting effect. And
that's my legacy. Right? That'swhat I'm working on. That's what
really matters. Now in regardsto myself, and I couldn't really

(01:29:36):
say like, you know, like in the90s, when I, when I when I did
what I did that, that thatritual that I described, in
those days, I would wake upevery morning I would do
pranyama I would fill out mydream diary, Salutations to the
sun, then I would do a bunch ofexercises from Pascal Beverly
Randolph directed at mirrorscrying. You know, every day I

(01:29:57):
was like, did that and youdidn't didn't know anybody else
into that shit. I was just kindof doing it by myself out this
little logging and fishing town,right? The odd time I'd meet
somebody somewhere that do somestuff about it and pick up a bit
more add to my practice, youknow, um, but yeah, I couldn't
really say, I'm doing that. ButI do feel like a magical

(01:30:19):
current, you know, ever since I,you know, found that
Stansfeld-Jones lived on mystreet, you know, it was, it was
already pretty powerful when Ihad the check with those exact
numbers because I was talkingabout it telling my friends, and
all of a sudden, I was like,See, I told you, this is a real
check. See those numbers? Youknow, I've already been talking
about it for years. So by thattime, right, and I drifted away

(01:30:42):
from that.

That's a good story.

but when he when he turned up on my street, you
know, after that, I was like,okay, that's too fucking weird
for fucking coincidence. Youknow, there's obviously some
sort of fucking thing going onhere in relation to this, you
know. So, I feel like I amconnected to some sort of

(01:31:08):
magical current. And the workthat I'm doing, you know, is of
great importance. I do believecannabis is the tree of life,
you know, and that, that iseverything. Everything is there,
you know, for that, and alsosoma and haoma, you know, and so
this makes it the last sacramentof the ancient world, you know,
when you're talking about andthe evidence for it being soma

(01:31:30):
and haoma, there's lots ofarchaeological evidence for that
as well. A very, very powerfulcase. And people are really
starting to accept that theory.
You know, it's a growing,increasing theory, that that is,
is being more and more widelyaccepted, I expect it will be
established fact, at some point,there continues to be more
archaeology turning up on thistype of stuff. And so we're
talking about something here,that is a last sacrament of the

(01:31:53):
ancient world. And why I thinkthis is so powerful, is that
when I think about the study ofentheogens, in the ancient
world, particularly thismaterial about cannabis,
specifically, of this materialabout cannabis in the Bible, I
think that when you reallyunderstand it, it's as much a
threat to fundamental religionas Darwin's theory of evolution

(01:32:14):
was to the myths of Genesis andcreation of Adam and Eve because
what it reveals is the plantbased shamanic origins of
religion itself, and that's afucking incredible reset, you
know, an incredible reboot ofthe religious life of man and
I'm not just talking aboutJudaism, Christianity and and

(01:32:36):
Vedic and Avesta. This blendsover into the Hindu religion,
where cannabis is still consumedin honor of Shiva, the oldest
continually worship God on earthas well as Kali and tantric
rites. It was long used in honorof Kali. And in Zoroastrianism
cannabis infused wines were usedthis is without question. They
left references to this inZoroastrian text like the

(01:32:58):
Denkard. And you know Sikhs usethe Nihang Sikhs the guardians
of the temple sites, they use acannabis sacrament suka ???,
Daoist magicians in four or 500BC wrote about it as the plant
of immortality. In Buddhisttexts that refers to Buddha
subsisting on one hemp seed aday before under the Bodhi tree,

(01:33:19):
you know, and in later medievalBuddhist tantric Buddhism.
There's references to cannabisfor yogic powers and stuff in
Tibetan Buddhist text. So hereit is, man. This is the fucking
law sacrament of the ancientworld and not just the ancient
world. This is a sacrament ofThelema and I think that's
something that really went bythe wayside in the Lima in the

(01:33:40):
OTO. Particularly Crowley wasreally you know, we can be sure
it was part of the original otosituation, because in the the
last ritual are forgotten richsecret rituals of the OTO. They
refer to the bitter cup. This iswhere all this stuff comes into
masonry as well. It's got to dowith the bitter cub of the cup

(01:34:02):
of rememberance and the cup offorgetfulness, the sort of
ritual drinks that were used inthese initiatory ceremonies,
they can be replaced byplacebos, but I believe in the
origins. We're talking about apsychoactive substance of some
kind here, and certainly forCrowley, he had Stansfeld-Jones
dosing people with the OTO withpeyote. You know, it's in the in

(01:34:23):
the Detroit stuff as well. Andit was dosing people at the OTO
lodge on Lonsdale Avenue inNorth Vancouver in 1915. First
thing on the reading list was"Psychology of Hashish" for new
students. You know, this is allall in the excellent book, The
Unknown God, by Martin Starr,probably one of the best books

(01:34:45):
written on the whole OTO timeperiod, you know, and so this
stuff kind of got lost by thewayside. There's problems in the
60s and the 70s with a lot ofdrugs being used some of these
oto things that brought somepolice In interactions, and
There ended up being kind of aofficial policy of not having
these types of substances there.

(01:35:06):
But I was quite shocked when Iwent to the Vancouver OTO one of
the Gnostic masses, and theypulled out a joint after the
after the mass and I was like,oh, yeah, I shouldn't do that. I
was like, What the fuck?
Because it was definitely wouldhave been okay with AC, I
guarantee you that. It wasdefinitely part of the OTO of a

(01:35:29):
of the Charles Stansfeld-Jonesand also in California era.
There's lots of references tothis in there. I thought that
was one of the good things aboutthe the series on Parsons was
they incorporated some of thatinto it into that, you know what
I mean? And so it's the lastsacrament of the OTO. And a lot
of ways as well. And that's whatI'm saying, man.

You know, I hit the bottom of my list of stuff
that I wanted to talk about, andyou just kind of covered it all
organically, but I was askedwhat are you excited about but I
just excited of all this. Andyou know, I I'm glad you
mentioned the unknown God, I'msuch a fan of Br. Martin Starr.

(01:36:15):
We brought him I brought him outhere. Oh, cool. Love to speak
about the new Scottish Ritetemple that they built in the
state where he's involved Ican't remember was Detroit or
Chicago, but it was a new, anew, new big Scottish Rite
building he was involved in andI think he was happy to get
asked to speak about somethingthat wasn't occultism because he

(01:36:37):
was known as this until hepublished "The Unknown God" very
well known in Thelemic circlesas a as a serious student of the
Work but I was gonna mentionbefore when you were talking
about the reading the lettersbetween Crowley and Achad it was
it was the way that Crowleytreated Wilfred Talbot Smith,

(01:36:58):
who was who was a cod student,that that that separated Martin
Starr from Thelema I believe,

that was pretty harsh, you know, city to him,
well, people that were love themterribly. You know what I mean?

And I also and I don't want to get too involved
in that because our time iswinding down. But what I did, I
did want to say is that Iappreciate you also bringing up
the "Strange Angel" the JackParsons TV series. I think there
was 21 episodes or 18 episodes.
I recently just watched them Iavoided it when it was popular.
And then I understand it wascancelled and I and probably

(01:37:37):
because the next step in thestory was to introduce L Ron
Hubbard. The last scene in theshow is L. Ron Hubbard knocking
on the door to rent a room. Heintroduces himself, and it's
like, well, now you wonder whythey didn't continue. Maybe at
some point they'll continue whenScientology doesn't have such a
stranglehold.

2004 L Ron Hubbard on drugs and I went into
all the Parsons and Crowleystuff and all the drug
accusations about Hubbard it'sand I got a we got a full on
Scientology attack. They createdblogs in our names and they have
let them Mark Emery's bust butthey were definitely trying to
get as busted after we did that.
But they initially they had beenhanding out anti marijuana stuff
in front of our our store. And Iwas like, What the fuck who are

(01:38:25):
these fucking guys and then Istarted I went down the rabbit
hole. And I put together thisdocumentary L. Ron Hubbard On
Druges actual has actual audioof Hubbard talking about
Crowley. And Parsons saysCrowley is his good friend and
refers to Parsons as a brilliantman, he certainly held no
hostility to them in the way hepresented it. But you know,
history is different. Yeah, youknow, it's it's regards to

(01:38:50):
masonry. Last month, I gave alecture on cannabis history for
the number one Washington, DCLodge.

I saw some good commentary on it. And and I
think it's, it's, you know,we're gonna see a renaissance of
this material. And I mean, youknow, it's, it's fascinating to
see decriminalization and nowlegalization and regulation and
how that's going to changeeverything. And it's certainly,
we'll definitely have you backto discuss your topics as they

(01:39:23):
arise.

I mentioned some earlier and in regards to
masonry. It's interesting thatboth MacKey and Pike wrote
extensively about Soma and whatit possible identity could be
and how it was you so there'sdefinitely a keen interest in
this type of stuff in thosetypes of circles.

Maybe we'll have you back later this year to talk
strictly about that subject andpossible references to
entheogens in Freemasonry,because I know there's been a
lot of work on that I could get???

a good one to have PD Newman on and on as
well. He's written the bookAbout Cagliostro, possibly using
an occasion? Yeah, in rights,right. And he was a both him and
even Dr. David Harrison, theBritish Masonic historian, both
Newman who's 32nd degreesScottish Right. And David

(01:40:19):
Harrison is way up and masonryover in the UK acted as
consultants when I was writingLiber for 420. So whenever I
write anything aboutFreemasonry, I'd run it by them
and try to keep the dates andand the information accurate as
I could.

We'll edit that out. Sorry, that was not on
purpose. One One, stillrecording? Yeah, no, we're still
recording one more thing. Whathave you got that you're working
on right now that people shouldwatch out for or be listening
for? Or have you got anythingyou'd like to announce that's
coming? What's next for you?

Right now, I've started work on kind of a
shorter version of my otherbooks, my books are all really
large books like 500 800 type ofrange, and my publisher wants me
to get something that's kind ofmore accessible to the general
reader, you know, I've reallygone to extensive efforts to
document my material, becauseI'm talking about such

(01:41:21):
outrageous things, you know whatI mean? And I don't want to, I
don't want people to think I'mpulling it out of my ass on a
ticker tape. So I've really goneto lengths to document on these
things. But this new book isbasically because of the
popularity of this new bookthat's out "The Immortality
Key", which is about the use ofentheogens and Christianity.

(01:41:45):
And, and the author borrowed I,in my opinion, heavily for my
themes. He read a lot of my ownwork before he wrote his book.
But it's, it's a best seller. Somy there's a lot of interest in
this material right now. Andbecause of the new archaeology
out of Israel, relating tothings that I had written about
before, he wants me to revisitthat material, because now it's

(01:42:09):
gone from a theory to fact andhistory and he wants to tap you
know, establish that, that thatthat's our, our material.

Are you talking about a revised edition? Or are
you talking about a new bookentirely

new book, it's called cannabis, the last
sacrament of the ancient world.
And it'll be mostly aboutarchaeologically evidence
pertaining to both soma and thematerial out of Israel, and
showing a solid case for that.
And that being the foundationfor the world's religions
because of the Jewish religiongroup Christianity and Islam is

(01:42:46):
great cases for the role ofCannbis and both Christianity
and Islam. And out of the Vedicreligion grew Hinduism,
Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism andall these other religions. So
we're talking about thefoundation of the world's
religions, right. And that'swhat this book could be about
establishing cannabis as asource and fount an

(01:43:07):
inspirational font from whichthe world religion is from.

Thank you for listening today. Upcoming
podcasts include Cleo Bostic,talking about women Freemasons,
and Dr. Richard Kaczynski.
Talking about his work on thereissue of Crowley's sort of
song. The day for grand maySonic day 2022 Is March 26, and
it will be held at the Agnes St.

(01:43:40):
Freemasonic. Building in NewWestminster. Several if not all
of the presentations will beopen to seekers and invited
guests. Esotericism inFreemasonry conference 2022 will
be October 1 and 2 in Seattle,Washington at a location to be
determined. The ScholomanceProject is hosted by Troy the

(01:44:06):
Devilman. Our productiontechnician is Clay Halak at
screen Machine Productions, andour graphic arts and web hosting
are provided by art Zobocreative. A special thanks to
Moka Only for opening andclosing music. Check out
Scholomance.ca For more showrelated resources including

(01:44:28):
notes and transcriptions,upcoming events, and our
recently launched PatreonScolomance. Aspire. Explore.
Inspire.

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Entheogens in Religious History with Chris Bennett

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