American Metaphysical Religion with Ronnie Pontiac

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome, Welcome through Lighting the Voidall broacasting Why from a shack on a
heel in the Mossy Creek bottoms ofKane Creek, Arkansas. This is Lighting
the Void live here on the FringeFM. Oh the anxiety. You know,
I might have to change that intro. It's starting to give me anxiety
at this point. It's just solong. It's like, when's this damn
thing gonna start? You know,like, let's start the show, all

(00:22):
right. So Ronnie Pontiac's here withus, and I am stoked about this
to have him on. And Iheard about it from our brother Anthony Tyler
on Black Hoodie Alchemy, and Istarted listening to Ronnie's shows that he'd been
on, looked into his books,and then did you know this? Ronnie

(00:44):
Pontiac worked as Manly P. Hall'sresearch assistant screener and designated substitute lecturer for
seven years. He's also He's donesome pretty amazing things. Actually. He's
also produced award winning documentaries and haswritten for Invisible College Magazine, Newtoepia,
Metapsychosis, Occult of Personality, andthe Original Reality Sandwich. He plays guitar

(01:04):
for the Experimental rock band Lucid Nation, and you can follow him at the
Ronnie Pontiac. I believe that's allacross the board on all the social media
channels, So this is going tobe awesome. Thanks for coming on,
Ronnie. It's good to have youhere. Brother. I think people need
to hear your voice more because whatI've heard you talk about and I want

(01:29):
you to tell your story. I'msure you've told your story a million times,
but my audience has got to hearit too, right So, but
like the way you talk about thingsand the stuff that you learned from Manly,
and I think it's just the waythe way you talk about these teachings
and the philosophy and stuff is areally a big It's the way I resonated

(01:51):
with things. It's the reason whyI wanted to go seek this stuff,
you know, and now it's becomekind of it's kind of crazy out there
now when it comes to the esotericand stuff, I won't run belong.
Man tell us your story how allthis got started, How you got started
down this road? Where I startedwas so low down and I was the

(02:14):
child of a family of refugees fromwar who immigrated to America. And I
was raised as an only child bymuch older parents who were traumatized by wartime
experiences. And I was brought upin a part of la that was kind
of a kind of a barrio area, and so I basically got my self

(02:38):
beaten up a lot as a runtthat I was all the way up until
around after getting out of high school, so i'd say seventeen and a half
eighteen. In that area, Ihad this realization of negativity that empowered me.
I became a nihilist. I believedin the power of the lie.

(03:01):
I began to understand just how muchpower a lie can give you, and
if you were ruthless and using lies, you can accomplish almost anything. The
dark side worked for you, basicallyexactly. And so my first band was
an extremely aggressive band that appealed tobikers and to rednecks and to racists,

(03:22):
and we actually had biker security guardsand there was a lot of violence around
us. It was a really amazingtransformation for me because I had gone from
being this powerless weakling it was alwaysbeing destroyed, into someone that had fans
who would do things to people becausethey thought I would want them to.

(03:45):
And it was like a criminal organizationmore than a band. Fortunately it didn't
last very long. But this devotionto nihilism led me into reading Crowley and
Anton, Levy and Evola, theso called dark authors, all of whom
disappointed me terribly because I thought thatthey were idealists and romantics. Really they

(04:10):
all had different viewpoints, but theyhad these viewpoints that were reaching toward soul
development or at least a better worldfor people like themselves, and I had
no ideas about anything like that.I just wanted to be a prophet of
nihilism. The human race sucks.We need to leave this planet, and

(04:32):
we're doing everything we can to doso, and anybody who has hope is
definitely laughable. So that's who Iwas when I was about eighteen, and
I was a petty criminal. Iwas into violence myself, and I was
really headed for some bad experiences.And it's amazing that no one got really
seriously hurt around myself or my band. What do you think that is?

(04:57):
I don't know, because I wasreally trying, right. I feel like
I had a different fate, Iguess, and I wanted to be somebody
who, you know, shoot medown when I'm twenty years old in some
horrendous situation. Let my music liveforever, turning you know, idea lists
into nihilists. That was that wasmy idea of a great destiny. And

(05:18):
fortunately for me, I was ata very notorious club one night and this
this girl that was a little tooinnocent looking to be there, looked very
frightened, and she walked up tome and she asked me for help because
she was in trouble. Five guysa band really had cornered her and they
had figured out a way like therewas no escape for her. And she

(05:42):
had been warned not to talk tome by the proprietor of the place because
he said I was, you know, the worst guy there. And she
had a sense that somehow I wasnot going to do anything cruel to and
that I would protect her. Itblew my mind. And when she did
that, I had never been askedanything like that. I mean, to

(06:03):
have somebody frightened look in my eyesand say please help me was a key
moment in my life, not onlybecause I fell in love with her,
but just because it awoke something inme that wanted to defend the innocent.
And I didn't know I had thatanymore. So I was uniquely suited to
do so because of how crazy Iwas. And we wound up falling in

(06:26):
love shortly after, and she wasas cynical as me, but she was
somebody who was very honest, veryethical, and she started to teach me,
you know, like, well,you know, how do you keep
track of all those lies? Right? Isn't it exhausting? That's crazy?
Man? You got lucky, solike you got an angel came into your
life. You know. The moreI listen to your story and I heard

(06:50):
you speak about initiation, it's abig topic or initiation, initiation, but
I don't think we really know whatthat is. Right to me, your
story was initiation unaware, you know, like don't you think n you kind
of described it that way? LikeI agree with you especially well only continue

(07:12):
the storage. Sure probably was wonderinghow does that get to Manley Hall.
So what happened was once I hookedup with her, had a birthday come
up. My parents gave me somemoney to try and get me to get
a haircut, and I went tothe Body Tree bookstore in search of an
occult book. I was actually lookingfor a book that i'd seen when I
was a kid called Atlantis, Motherof Empires. It was this big,

(07:33):
oversized book. I would later findout that that book that I had seen
as a kid and had stuck inmy imagination was the author of that book
was the man who built Manley Hall'sPhilosophical Research Society, the Architect. So
that was another strange synchronicity there,that this was the book that I visualized

(07:54):
is what I wanted to get.But when I when I was in the
Body Tree used branch this ononderful metaphysicalbookstore that used to exist in la that
was kind of the archetype for allmetaphysical bookstores. I found a copy of
The Secret Teachings of the sixth edition, which was an oversized tone but black
and white. Looked very old tome when you opened it up. The

(08:16):
photo of Manly holl In it lookedlike, you know, from ancient days,
like an actor from the twenties orsomething like that, and I really
thought he must be long gone.The book blew my mind as I read
each chapter. It opened up adifferent vision of the world that I think
he captured when he dedicated it tothe rational mind of Nature. By the

(08:39):
rational mind of the world. He'ssaying that our apparently chaotic experience of life
in this void in which we areso trangent and so vulnerable, is actually
not that. It's actually where welearn. It's actually how we interact with

(09:01):
life is how we are taught.And when I worked for him, I
was lucky to be able to hearhim have meetings with people where they wanted
to be students. You know,he would always get people who are asking
him to be there, you know, be my guru kind of stuff,
and he would always say the samething, which was, your life is
your teacher. Everything you experience isyour teacher. You don't need a guru,

(09:24):
You're your own guru. Everything youexperience is teaching you. And so
that's what I saw. I glimpsedthrough the chapters in that book, and
I happened to mention it to afriend of mine who was a former Carnie
dancer, and she had not onlyheard of the book, but was able

(09:46):
to tell me, this guy islecturing just down the street from you.
He's still alive, and you cango see him for a dollar at eleven
am on any Sunday. Wow.Well, it took me months to go
because being who I had been andthinking about facing this guy and his environment.

(10:07):
I just thought I didn't think Iwould be welcome, you know.
I thought that what I had donewould be all over me to these people,
and so I was scared, reallyof the rejection I expected to receive.
At the same time, the samewoman had been telling me about Casey's
predictions of California going into the ocean, and I was terrified by her because

(10:28):
I respected her. She was likea surrogate mother, and she was moving
to Virginia Beach to escape this inevitableearthquake, and I was thinking, man,
maybe I should go go there too, because I don't want to be
here for that. Well, Tamra, who is the girl that asked me
for help, said to me,aren't you going to feel foolish if?

(10:50):
I mean, what if he dies? He's an old man, and you
had the opportunity to go hear himin person, and you didn't go because
you're afraid? Really? Right?Yeah, yeah, I did it.
So she drove and we went downthere on this beautiful Sunday afternoon and I
walked in there and he looked rightat me during the lecture and he said,

(11:13):
people who have irrational fear of naturaldisasters because of their guilt about how
they've lived their lives so far.Interesting, I found out later that he
did that a lot. He actuallydid it to Tamra too that first time,
referring directly to something that she'd beenthinking as she walked up to the

(11:33):
place. And then later when Iwas representing him and I spoke to people,
many people told me he looked rightat me and he said this personal
message to me. Now, what'sinteresting about that to me is that he
couldn't see us. First of all, I found out later when I worked
for him that his vision was verypoor, and so we were colorful blobs

(11:54):
to him out there, and yethe was synchronistically tuning in to the right
person at the right moment, andso at PRS there were always these discussions,
how does he do that? Isthis because he's an initiate? Is
this because he has some kind ofpsychic sensitivity and he's channeling, and so

(12:15):
just the right things happen when he'slooking at the right people. My explanation,
and I think all the explanations reallypale before the reality, whatever it
was, was that he was sodeeply in the doo. At that point
when I worked with him, hewas really studying Taoism and Shingom Buddhism,
and he did have this way ofattracting synchronicities around him, including me coming

(12:39):
into his life. Because what happenedwas after that lecture, both of us
were just blown away and we wantedto be involved at his PRS society,
no matter what. We were like, will be janitors? Will I mean
anything that we can do to helpthis place and be around this Yeah?
I get that. Yeah. Sowe met with the person who would decide

(13:01):
who got to work there or not, and they loved Tamra because she had
office skills and all this stuff andI had nothing, you know, I
mean I'd run a criminal enterprise almostas a band. But they did ask
me, do you have any familiaritywith foreign languages? And I said,
well, I grew up around alot of them. I grew up around
German and Russian and around Polish andFrench. And they said, oh,

(13:26):
that's interesting. So the next daythey called us and they asked Tamar if
she wanted a job. I wasnot cool, you know, I was
I was a classic chauvinness and Iwas like no, no, no,
no no, You're not going togo work there and I'm going to stay
at home with the cats. Andyou know, if they don't want me,
they don't get you. That's howit's going to be. And she
was like, fine, I don'twant to do office skills anyway. And

(13:50):
so then we got a call likea day later, and it was them
saying, Manley Hall wants to meetwith you tomorrow morning. Meet with me
not you know, you have achance to have a job, and Manly
All wants to meet with you.You know. So I was I couldn't
sleep, you know, I wasjust oh my god, I'm going to
meet him, Like I'm going intohis office tomorrow morning. So I go

(14:13):
there. They lead me to thedoor. Its this beautiful carved door,
and they open it up and Igo inside. He's behind this beautiful carved
Chinese desk, just big desk,and he's big man. And then he's
got this flanks around him of fourold ladies with their arms folded. These
are the women who run the PRS. And he's got this pile of paper

(14:35):
on the desk and he says,he says to me, in this kind
of w C. Fields accent.He's like, come in and make yourself
miserable. And so I sit downand he pushes the papers at me and
he says, do you know whatthat is? And I said no,
I have no idea. He said, well, go ahead, take a
look at it. And he explainedto me that this was the galley for

(14:58):
the bibliography of his alchemical collection.Oh, this means all the rare manuscripts
and books that he had are goingto be listed in this thing with commentary
and history and dates and illustrations,and it's going to be a limited edition
publication. And then he drops onme he wants me to edit it.

(15:22):
So I say, I'm so sorry, but you've clearly mistaken me for someone
else, because I just found outabout alchemy from your book about you know,
a couple of months ago, andI don't know anything about these things.
And if he's like, well,but you have familiarly with languages,
right, And I said, well, yeah, you know, spoken around

(15:43):
my family dinner table, but notwritten down in medieval manuscripts. And he
said, but if you had adictionary you could get your way round it,
you know. I was like,yeah, I mean I probably.
He said, well, you'll seeyou'll do great. And he said,
just go ahead, take with youand look it over and then we'll meet
again tomorrow morning and we'll decide howto go about this. So I picked

(16:07):
it up, and you know,I did think this is ridiculous, man.
I mean, I had no experienceof any kind that would make me
the right person for that job.And as I left, the vice president
of the Society, this incredible womanwho'd once been a whack Pat Irvin,
she's like like blocked me as Iwas walking out of the library and said

(16:30):
give me that and took it outof my hands, and I thanked her,
you know, and I said,yeah, I said, I'm really
not the right person for this.So I go home. There's a phone
call that afternoon and it's now ManleyHall's secretary Edith, and she says he
wants to see first thing tomorrow morning. Okay. So I go back the

(16:52):
next morning and now it's just himEdith for a minute, and he's got
the galley again. He pushes infront of me again and he says,
from now on, you take ordersonly from me. If anybody says anything
that contradicts what I tell you todo, you come to me and you
tell me that. I said again, Weekly protested, I just don't think

(17:18):
I can do this, mister Hall. I don't know. I don't know
what this stuff is, you know, And he said, look, I'm
going to help you. We're goingto get together every morning when you come
in, and we're going to lookat what your job is for the day.
And then for lunch we can meetin the vault and you can look
over the manuscripts and the books andyou can ask me questions about them.

(17:40):
And then in the afternoon, justbefore we leave, I will look over
your work, he said, you'llsee you'll do fine. Wow, well,
how could you turn that down?I mean to have access to the
vault with Manley Hall, and there'sa famous picture of him there where he's
surrounded by the symbols of various religionsin these books, including the Triangular Saint
Germaine book, and actually tamer andI were there and put everything around him

(18:04):
to signify his knowledge of all thesedifferent traditions, and that vault was like,
I mean, I mean what it'sstill I can't believe it, you
know. I mean to be inthat vault and ask him pick up any
book, these rare books that youcould never touch. You know. They're
most of them available online by theway now thanks to the Getty. But
at that time there were things inthere that you couldn't see anywhere, and

(18:26):
so I got to sit in therewith him and talk to him about those
things, and it turned out thatI was really good at it. Man,
that makes you wonder, like,because a lot of his texts talk
about clairvoyance and Claire stuff like.It makes you wonder if he was doing
that kind of work or if he, you know, could just feel things

(18:49):
right. I mean, like yousaid he was. He couldn't see very
well, but he was pretty adamanthaving you do the job, almost as
if he knew you could do thejob even when you didn't know it.
Well. I will tell you this. I had a friend. There was
a really wonderful new documentary out bythe way. It's about Judy Sill,
who was a wonderful singer songwriter,and the guy that she was involved with

(19:12):
and did her last album with alsohappened to be Manley Hall's recording engineer and
would sometimes be his driver in thisbig old Buick or Pontiac or something.
He had his kind of cruddy oldcar, but it was big enough for
Manley Hall to get into, andso he would show for him back and

(19:33):
forth from the house when they werelectures and such. And this guy was
named Art Johnson. He had kindof an illustrious career as a musician.
He toured with Lena Horne and withWillie Bobo and Paul Horn and played with
all kinds of amazing people. Buthe had this relationship with Judy Sill.

(19:55):
And he came to PRS at apoint in his life where he was just
beginning to collect occult books and hewas getting interested in all this, and
he volunteered to work there. Andhe told me that when he first met
Manley Hall he was introduced to him, Manley Hall looked at him and said,
oh, there you are. I'vebeen waiting for you. Wow.

(20:18):
Man Now, I would have tosay that he was the kind of guy
that would kid with you that waytoo, you know, like you couldn't
never tell with him, which isa beautiful thing I think about. Of
course, I consider him a master. He was for me. But that's
a beautiful thing about masters. It'slike oracles when they speak. You can't

(20:38):
always be sure like. It couldbe a joke. It could be that
they're just playing with you, orit could be that it's really happening.
You can only really judge from theevents. So since I worked for him
for that long, I had manyexperiences with him where these synchronicities happened in
very unlikely ways and were It almostconvinced me that as you attain higher levels

(21:06):
of consciousness, you grow into sucha harmony with nature that it's almost like
nature dances around you. Yeah.He mentions that in a lot of his
books when he's talking about the mysteryschools and stuff too. He says that
the actual mystery schools that people areseeking are all around them every day,
you know, but they don't seethem or right there in front of your

(21:27):
face. And I got into freemasonrya long time ago because of Manly p
Hall, because I was just doingI don't take like anybody's word for anything,
even though I'd taken a lot ofinfos. You know, I'm just
going to go experience this stuff,you know. But what I experienced from
the Rosicrucian teachings and his teachings anda few other people changed my life.

(21:49):
Yeah. So there's a This iskind of one of the big reasons something
I wanted you to talk about,because the conspiracy field is so massive today,
Like, it's such a big thingthat the beauty of these teachings have
been. I feel like, Idon't think they're ever going to go away,
but I don't think they're getting presentedproperly, you know, I just

(22:10):
I don't because it's always you know, a lizard person or somebody trying to
take over the world, or somebodytrying to trick you. And yet when
I followed this line of teaching,like everything was correct, it changed things
in my life. You know,we can get into the magic stuff later,
but just the esoteric teachings. Youknow, what are your thoughts on

(22:32):
that? I mean, do youthink it's going to get worse or like
or is it going to get better? I'm actually hopeful because there's a couple
of things that are happening that Ilike. It's the same reason that we're
experiencing so much chaos in the teachings, which is that it's everywhere now as
accessible through social media in ways thatit never was before. We have to

(22:53):
remember that all these different traditions upuntil fairly recently in history we're available.
They were you had to know somebody, and they were usually small groups of
people and very localized, or theywould have chapters in various places that kept
in touch. But these systems,even though many of them were synthesizing many

(23:15):
different sources of this knowledge, theywere within themselves, person to person more
or less. And then even thebooks that were written. It said,
for instance, that some of thebest early books on the taro have deliberate
omissions in them, or deliberate,deliberate transpositions of cards, so that you

(23:36):
couldn't get the absolute facts. Youwould you would have to be smart enough
and study deep enough to understand wherethese manipulations had happened. And then everything
changed, and now we have thislike wild West, where we do have
I believe, a generation of kids, a significant percentage of them who they

(23:56):
have no feeling of shame. LikeI remember. For the book, I
talked to a great Tarot scholar,Mary Greer, Mary Kay Greer, and
she was talking about when she wasa college student in Florida in the early
sixties and she couldn't find a Tarotdeck anywhere. Finding a Tarot deck in
the United States. At that timewas still difficult. And today there are

(24:19):
so many tarot decks out there thatAdam MacLean and another person I interviewed for
the book. When he's like theworld expert, he tries to collect all
of them. And I asked himhow many decks are out there now,
and he said he lost count ateight or nine thousand, Wow, And
that there are new decks coming outevery day, and that they've become a
medium of art in politics and allthese different things are gaining expression through tarot

(24:45):
cards now. So this is exciting, and it's exciting that there's a lot
of young women out there who haveno shame about talking about taro and such.
You may recall, I mean itdepends where you grow up, and
still that way in many places.But that used to be some thing you
were very careful about astrology, tarot. You'd get laughed at if you talked
about it. And now CNN isrunning articles about it, about what the

(25:08):
astrologers say is going to happen inthe next election, and they're not making
fun of it. So we arein some kind of a sea change.
It's bad in a way because it'sgone mass media and it's gone in this
direction that doesn't have the quality controlsthat were once built into it. On

(25:29):
the other hand, it is thiswonderful, wild kind of liberation of these
ideas. And one of the thingsthat I noticed in working on the American
Metaphysical Religion book, but especially theOrpheus book, but also on this Rosicrucian
book that I've got coming out nextyear, is that when these ideas reach

(25:51):
a lot of people, the kindof personal renaissance that you experienced in your
life and that I did, happensin the culture. It may be in
small ways. Usually it's counter cultures, but it's significant countercultures, countercultures that
inspire art and music and inspire ageneration to look at things differently. And

(26:12):
I think we've got some of thatcoming up, and I do think that
there will be inspiration that comes fromall of this, people seeping them steeping
themselves in this wisdom. And Ithink that also there is a way that
the Internet in itself increases the availability. So as I was saying earlier,

(26:38):
you can see things now that atManly Hall's Library, when I was there
in the mid eighties, there werebooks that you couldn't see anywhere in the
world, possibly maybe one or twoother places except in that library. And
some of them were really incredible bookswith a lot of wisdom in them.
Now almost every single one of themis available for p in PDF downloads,

(27:02):
or it's available at places like archivedot org. And really rare stuff like
the Platonist newspaper that that we talkabout in my book. It's this weird
piece of American history, a newspapercalled The Platonist published in Saint Louis when
Saint Louis was basically the West afrontier, still a cattle town, and

(27:26):
it was around the time of thegunfight at the Ok Corral. And I
first ran into that in many Hall'svault, and it's it's what eventually led
to writing the book, because whenI asked him what is that, he
said, oh, that's a goodone. Pick it up and take a
look at it. And when Iopened it and saw that it was newspaper,
but it was all translations of Platoand Eleifis Levi translation of Aleifis Levi

(27:51):
by Abner double Day of all people, that's amazing, man, Yeah right,
you know, And so I waswhat is this thing? And when
I he said, it's a mystery. We don't know very much about it.
So I went to all the collegelibraries when I got my degree,
I was trying to find out aboutthis. When we toured as a band,
we would go to libraries and bookstoreslooking for information about all of this.

(28:15):
And eventually, much to my goodfortune, and I think everybody is
Ultimately, I hope academia had arevolution. It kind of starts in the
eighties when this guy, Howard Bloomwrote a book about how the real American
religion isn't Christianity. It calls itselfChristianity, but it's what he called American

(28:41):
orphism. He said, it's gnostic. It's a kind of mystical gnostic magic
rather than real Christianity. And so, for example, real Christianity says turn
your other cheek. American Christianity haspictures of Jesus with an ar fifteen.
You know, in old fashioned Christianity, a rich person can't get into heaven.

(29:03):
And American Christianity if you're not richbecause you're not giving enough money to
the church and you somehow displeased Godbecause God wants you to be rich and
happy and successful. And so thischange is really, you know, is
more American metaphysical religion than it isChristianity. So this was the argument.

(29:26):
Is this the precipice of your book, Yes, exactly. My book really
follows the threads of this because allthe research that happened since them is amazing.
I mean, there's been hundreds ofbooks and articles published by academics who
have suddenly started studying the esoteric becausefor the longest time it was considered beneath

(29:47):
notice. It was superstition, andit was ridiculous, and it wasn't important
to mainstream culture. Only recently hasit begun to be taken very seriously,
and so all these archives that werenot open to amateur scholars like myself or
for that matter, Manley Hall,are now open. These guys get into
all the big libraries and all theplaces that things are hidden that are invaluable,

(30:11):
and they provided a new vision ofhistory of the esoteric, but also
a new vision of American history.And there's no question about it. And
so what you see in there ishow America has continually been influenced by these
ideas from the very earliest days,when the Huguenots got here in the fifteen

(30:33):
hundreds, and brought alchemists with them, and brought the Kabbalah with them and
all kinds of other ideas and theywere wiped out by the Spanish. And
then we can talk about this laterif you like, But even the Pilgrims
had this heavily occult subculture going onthat has never talked about. Wow.
So when you discover how much ofthis is there, and then you find

(30:59):
this thing platonist, and you suddenlyfind that who the people were behind it,
and what their motivation was, andhow they were connected. It turns
out to the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxerand they were also connected to the Theosophical
Society, and how all of thisinterpenetrated and evolved over the generations of Americans
and of immigrants, and it becameinformed by the new traditions being brought into

(31:26):
America by immigrants. It's such adifferent picture of America. It really inspired
me, and that's why I wrotethe book, was hoping that I could
share that with people, because likemyself and me, there's so much disappointment
and anger at America and at theAmerican ideal, and I feel like it's

(31:48):
kind of an ignorant way to putit, But I feel like it's like
you have a family that you can'tstand because they're authoritarian and they're terrible to
everybody, and you just you almostwish you weren't in that family, and
then all of a sudden you findout about just another side of the family.
That other side of the family iseverything that you want to be and

(32:08):
is nothing like the side of thefamily that you were taught is the family.
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, and I like I think that
because we we have a tendency asa mayor. I don't even think as
a culture now, especially not alot of us. But there's a section
of the culture that I really thinkis counterproductive. Right. It's all this

(32:30):
like prison planet culture. You know, this is some kind of it's mainly
conspiratorial, right, And I'm notsaying there's not conspiracies or powers or anything
like that, but what the whatI read and what the Founding fathers set
out to do and all this otherstuff like this was a beautiful thing.
And as far as I've went intothis stuff, I've not seen anything horrific

(32:54):
or satanic or you know, there'salways a few bad apples that want to
get into things for power and thingslike that. But that's that's in everything.
But the underlying teachings is it's beautiful, man. And I think mainly
p Hall is one of the peoplethat keep this, that's keeping this alive.

(33:15):
And I think that what you're doingis pushing that voice a little bit
further in a more modern way.Man. You know, thank you.
That's kind of you. I thinkI do feel Well, let's talk about
conspiracy. I ducked your question earlier, but let's not dug it. So
of course I've heard he's referred toas an Illuminati, reptilian. He's been

(33:37):
referred to just about as anything youcan imagine. Being a thirty third degree
Mason, he's the devil incarnate,and I have to say, you know,
look, I knew him for sevenyears. I worked with him every
day. It was the sweetest,kindest, most wholesome human being I've ever
been around bar Nune. But itcould have all been fake, you know,
I don't know, maybe he reallywas. He put on black robes

(33:58):
after I left, and it'd allchanged, you know. But the thing
is that you really, you know, the old judged them by their fruits,
and so I know what he's donein my life. I know what
he did in Tanmera's life. Youknow what he did in your life.
I still hear all the time frompeople about how he was so crucial in
changing their lives. When I workedwith him, I saw all the desperate

(34:22):
people who came to him. Hewas like the last resort for so many
people who had gotten messed up bydealing with things that they weren't prepared to
deal with. And his kindness wasso apparent in all the things that he
did on a daily basis that Inever could see anything about him that suggested

(34:42):
that there was anything evil or orin any way malicious going on. Quite
the opposite part of it is avocabulary problem. So for example, I've
just started a new YouTube channel whereI'm putting up some old lectures that I
did at PRS when I worked forMan Hall, and sometimes I would he

(35:02):
made me his designated substitute lecture,so sometimes I had to lecture on things
that he picked the title for,and he stuck me with one called marriage
in the New World Order. Eventhen, New World Order had bad connotations,
not as bad as they are now, but bad enough, and I

(35:24):
just thought, what in the worldam I going to do with this?
You know? So I went andI talked to him about it, and
I said, what's your intent here? And so what he explained to me
was that the new world order isrelated to the Rosicrucian idea of universal reformation.
It means that each of us reformsour own corner of the universe.

(35:47):
We bring as much light to itas we can, as much wisdom to
it as we can. And thenbecause because so many of us do this,
the whole world of our country,our city, our country, the
whole planet is reformed and achieves ahigher level of consciousness. We're more civil
or more humane. It's almost likeit's not a great example, but it's

(36:08):
almost like the Federation from Star Trekkind of idea, right, that this
humanity is matured into something far beyondjust fighting over land and resources and ideas
about race and religion. And thenhe said that the part about marriage was
that marriage is a great symbol ofthe marriage of the soul and the body,

(36:30):
and that ultimately the marriage of thesoul and the body is what brings
one to universal reformation. Because youhave to reform, you have your soul
must awaken and take control of yourlife so that you're not walking around blindly
then thinking perhaps that you don't evenhave a soul. So the love between

(36:52):
the husband and wife should be howthe body and the soul relate to each
other. Fact, they're usually atwar with each other in our current society.
This goes to the two and onemystery that's talked about a lot,
or the bridegroom or the CRC mysteriesand things like that, right exactly,

(37:13):
Yeah, wow, So this goingon about conspiracy theories, We've got the
problem. One problem is apofenia,right, which is the human need to
find meaning. So where does apeniastop, and where does let's call it
omen reading or or having the intuitionto get a flash of inspiration. Where

(37:37):
how do we draw a line betweenthese two things? Because there is a
level where human beings. You canbe driving along and if you see the
right billboard at just the right momentin your life, it can really talk
to you in a way. We'veall had these weird experiences where things happen
that seem to be telling us something. But then apenia is a condition where

(37:59):
this becomes chronic and every single thingwe look at is a message. Every
single thing is a message from theleader, right, that kind of experience
or every single thing we see isa sign of the evil of the people
that we're criticizing, because they're actuallysignaling to us through these symbols that this

(38:20):
is you know, evil speaking andso apaphenia is a is a very difficult
thing to live with because you it'sso reinforcing, right, you know,
it doesn't happen to people who aren'tfreaked out about what's happening in the world,
who are genuinely concerned about what's goingon in the world and should be.

(38:44):
It happens to people who care alot about what's going on and who
want to do something, They wantto do something constructive, and then the
relief they get when they run intoone of these conspiracy theories and they start
to see these signs that you know, every you know, I mean one
of the famous ones, of course, was celebrities giving the horns, right,
and this was meant that they weredevil worshipers and all of these kinds

(39:07):
of things that and then later youfind out that it has to do with
a language for the deaf right,and it's just there's so many misunderstandings.
And if you don't have a trusttoward life, if you don't feel like
life is teaching you, if youfeel like it's a trap that's threatening you,
that the devil's out there were thesnares, then you kind of turn

(39:30):
on others and you turn on yourselfto a certain degree, and this makes
it very difficult for a society tofunction on. There's this great quote.
There's an American philosopher, I thinkshe's an American named Martha Nusbaum, and
she has this incredible quote that Ithink applies so much today, which is

(39:51):
fear and monarchy pair nicely, butdemocracy means you have to work with people
you may not like, but youmust still believe are your equals. And
a fearful people never trust the otherside. So you see it, Yeah,

(40:13):
it becomes it's a pandemic in itselfof fear and distrust. And so
you know, on the left,people look at people on the right and
they say they're they're evil, they'restupid, they're they're dangerous. And then
the rights looking at the left,going they're evil, they're stupid, they're
dangerous. And by the way,this is this goes all the way back
in our history. This primal splitin America is another subject of the Book

(40:37):
of American Metaphysical Religion. If yougo back, we'll give you some examples
of it. So let's go backto Boston, very early, the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, right, and wehave here this this supposedly exceedingly Christian and
very controlled society. And we knowthat they believed that the indigenous people were

(41:04):
controlled by Satan, that they werevery afraid of the wilderness, and that
for example, John Winthrop the elder, there's a famous story told about him
that he got caught out in thewoods after dark, and he panicked and
ran through the woods until he sawan indigenous menstrual hut, and he went

(41:24):
in there and kicked out the ladythat was in there, and stayed there
until dawn for fear that demons wouldcarry him away. Jesus. But now
let me introduce you to John Winthropthe younger, his son. Right,
This kid is going to school inLondon and he hears about the Rosicrucians and

(41:46):
he's like, this is great.I want to meet some Rosicrucians. He
spends several years trying to meet Rosicrucians. He actually gets all the way to
Constantinople because he understood the father CRCwent to Constantinople when he was getting his
initiations, but everywhere he went hewas disappointed. He met some very famous

(42:09):
authors, but he just thought,none of these people are what I thought
they would be. His father insixteen thirty one, I think it was
said, come to America with me, and you know, helped me run
this colony. This kid shows upwith most of John Dee's library, like

(42:30):
the ultimate Elizabethan occultist, John dall of his occult books and his manuscripts
on astrology and on alchemy. Heshows up with alchemical equipment, including John
D's some of John Dye's own alchemicallaboratory. And if there's any doubt about
what's going on, the crates thatare carrying this stuff into Boston are marked

(42:53):
with D's own symbol, the Monushieroglyphica, which is like putting a pentagram
on like you know, I mean, it's incredible. And so he sets
up an alchemical lab in his father'shouse, and his father, John Winthrop
the Elder, the governor of MassachusettsBay Colony, is okay with it.

(43:14):
He's okay with the astrology and allof this. Now. John Wenterth the
Younger had a revolutionary idea, whichwas, if I can't meet a Rosicrucian,
I can try to live like one. I can try to make the
universal Reformation happen in my own life, and the ideals that the Rosicrucians promulgate
can be mine. I will learnalchemyes to make medicines that I can heal

(43:38):
people with for free. I willdefend the innocent and the weak. I
will do all the things that Rosakrusiansis supposed to do without calling myself that.
He wanted to start something he calledthe College of Light. It was
an idea that a great educational theoristnamed Clemenius came up with, which was

(43:58):
to take all the greatest minds inthe world and put them all together in
one College of Light. It wasthe inspiration for the Royal Society, and
so he wanted to do this inAmerica. He was inviting all the most
brilliant minds. They were called celestialintelligencers in those days, the people who
were experimenting with telescopes and with allthe stuff that would become science, and

(44:22):
he wanted to invite them all tocome to the colonies and create this utopia
where knowledge would be supreme. Andhis behavior started to kind of anger some
of the Boston locals, especially becausethere was another fellow who typifies this split,

(44:43):
by the name of Tom Morton,who had been sent over from England
by the Royalists, who were competitorsof the Pilgrims, and who had started
a new trading post. And Tomwas the opposite. He was the other
end of the English Civil War thatwas about to have happened. He was
a guy who loved Shakespeare, heloved drinking, he wore a cod piece,

(45:06):
He was into may polls and ribbledjokes, and just a really hilarious,
wonderful guy you'd want to hang outwith. And his post became very
popular because he wasn't all freaked outlike the Pilgrims. He treated the indigenous
people with respect. He asked themabout their dreams and about their religion,

(45:27):
and about their how they treated theirelders. And he decided that he would
celebrate his first year of success byhaving a may pole. And so they
cut this huge yellow pine and theyput it up and they put ribbons on
it, and he wrote this ribbledpoem to a goddess, and he got
the nickname the Pagan Pilgrim around whattime was this again, around like around

(45:53):
the same time. This as likethe sixteen thirties in there, wow,
okay, yeah. And so hehas this great party where he invites pirates,
smugglers, Pilgrims, indigenous people.I mean, everybody's invited to this
thing, and the only rule isyou all have to treat each other with
respect. The Pilgrims were outraged.Not only do they hate the competition,

(46:15):
but they felt that this guy wasa real threat to the future of their
form of Christianity in America, sothey started spreading rumors in propaganda. You
can still see the woodcuts of wildparties, drunken orgies that were going on
at these Maypole This Maypole party wasan outrage, and the truth, according
to Thomas, was no. Actually, the indigenous women were a lot more

(46:40):
moral than the girls back home inEngland, and these were beautiful events where
people from vastly different backgrounds got tospeak with each other and trade wisdom and
jokes and learn. Now, isthat not a picture of the America that
we all want would love like that, right, Like we could have had

(47:00):
a May Day celebration every year.It doesn't matter, like if you're you
know, you're a Christian, Catholic, Pagan, rosa crush exactly, Everyone's
welcome. And so they they houndedhim to death. He was the first
American to be foreclosed upon by acorporation because the Puritans were a corporation to

(47:21):
pilgrims. He was the first Americanto be arrested for having a wild party.
He was the first American to publisha fart joke and the first American
to publish a dick joke. Imean this guy was a founding father.
Yeah, yeah, So anyway,he's one reason why the people in Boston
started to look at the younger rightand think, wait a minute, you're

(47:44):
the governor, but your kid isinto some really weird stuff. Well he
was safe, but he started tofeel, like you know, John Wizard,
the younger said, I don't wantto be here anymore, even though
my dad runs that it's stultifying.So Roger Williams, who went out and
founded Rhode Island because he wanted everybodywho was not allowed to be in Boston

(48:05):
to have somewhere to flourish. Hewent out and did the same thing and
founded Connecticut and was the first governorof the Connecticut Territory. And his nickname
was the Alchemist Governor, because hewas famous for retiring to this certain hill
which they still point to, andhe would always come back from it with
medicine and with gold, these incrediblypure gold rings. They said, and

(48:30):
did he live like a Rosicrucian.Well, he invented some wonderful medicines that
made him famous, so famous thatsick Europeans who had the money and who
could make it would travel across theAtlantic to come to him to be treated
for their conditions. And he trainedwomen, this group of women, on

(48:52):
how to diagnose the most common diseasesin the area. And then he did
these colors loaded packets of medicines,so you would tell them if they sneeze
and they're they like this, andthey have a stomach ache, you give
them this red packet. If they'rethis, you give them the blue packet.
And they were all trained to dothat, and they fanned out into

(49:12):
the entire territory and became the mainsource of medicine for people. And then
when the Peaquot tribe was attacked bythe Mohegans. The Pequots had been devastated
by disease brought over by the Europeans. They were very weak, and the
stronger tribes began to try to enslavethem. And the Mohicans, who most

(49:34):
of us know from the Fenomore Coopernovel and the movies made from it,
Uncas and the last of the Mohicans. Uncas was not like that. Uncas
was a bully, a very cruelchief, and his bully kind of tendencies
had been transferred to his tribe,and so they were brutalizing the Pequots,

(49:57):
treating them. They would beat themand steal from them, and just you
know, really enslaving them and agreat personal danger. John Winthrop the Younger
used his influence to defend the peaQuots. He had them move next door
to where he had his colony andgave them work, and he did battle

(50:19):
with Boston, who supported the Mohegans, and eventually got Boston to relent and
give the pea Quots back their landand their names. Even their names have
been changed and so in many ways. And this is just a couple of
examples. I'll give you one more. He was really adept at keeping his
people out of wars in Europe becausethe British king had the right to call

(50:44):
on the colonists to come fight inthe Royal Army, and so he would
always first he would pretend that hedidn't get the messages. Then he would
say, oh, but you know, we're building this very important iron foundry,
and you guys want iron, rightcoming from America would be very useful
for you. But I need allthese guys to run my iron foundry,

(51:06):
so I can't send him to you. And he helped these people avoid going
there and being killed. And thenhe also stood up to the Salem witch
trials and defended some of the womenwho had been accused of witchcraft and one
of his friends. And he cameup with one of the crucial defenses,
which was there must be two witnessesthat saw something happen. It cannot be

(51:31):
one person or hearsay. And somaybe most stunning to me from all of
that, just in this one littlearea we're looking at the Puritans in America.
Of the Pilgrims is a Cotton maitherright, who was one of the
witch trial judges and later kind ofchanged his mind and defended some women against

(51:52):
the witch trials. Well, whenJohn Winthrop the Younger died, he was
eulogized by his friend Cotton Mather asHermes christianis the Christian Hermes. Hermes is
either Hermes thrice Great Hermes right theHermetica God, or this is Hermes of
ancient Greece. Either way, it'stotally pagan. We have. So here's

(52:17):
this guy, Cotton Mais, theultimate pilgrim judge who's saying, oh,
my best friend who died, youknow he was another Hermes. Not that's
not what we were taught. Andso but again going back to this split,
there's Tom Morton. Everybody's welcome.I want to know what you believe.
Here's the Pilgrims. No, we'rethe only ones who have it right.

(52:37):
Everything else is the devil. Thatsplit is still running in this country.
Four which is said, it's said, it is well, it's something
that hopefully eventually will be dealt with. It's like a person with a shadow,
you know that that somehow needs tobe integrated. We need to figure

(52:58):
out that that this other side ofAmerica is every bit as important as the
Christian side of America and has beencontributing all along. And it's a test
I guess what we're in right nowof the ideas and the institutions that were
put together. I mean, willthey prove to be sufficiently useful to human

(53:21):
beings and functional that we will finda way to preserve this democracy, or
will they be lost? And Ithink that for one thing, if you
look at Roman history, and ifyou look at the astrology of what they
call the Pluto return, which iswhen Pluto returns to where it was when

(53:44):
a nation was born, and ifyou look at history, these are always
periods of crisis. The US isin a Pluto return right now. There
were two Pluto returns for Rome.The second one destroyed it permanently. The
first one almost destroyed it. Butthe way it survived was this, the
people who had really invented Rome werepretty much gone, I mean, between

(54:08):
civil wars and disease plagues and innermarriage and such that there wasn't really this
powerful presence of pure blooded Romans runningRome like there had been for much of
Rome's history. But this led tochaos. Certainly, there was a period
where there was like five emperors ina year and just toold bloodshed. But

(54:32):
at the same time there was anemperor named Severus who was half African,
and it came from the people ofHannibal, the worst enemy of Rome,
and the empress that the woman thathe had married was a priestess of ball
Assyrian. But these two people lookedat the Roman institutions and said, these

(54:53):
are great. Look, people likeus were able to rise to the top
because of our merits, and thisis we have to preserve this for the
future, so that people of everyrace can benefit from Roman laws and Roman
roads and Roman aqueducts. And theyactually were able to keep Rome limping forward

(55:16):
for a whole nother Pluto return ofa couple hundred plus years. I didn't
know that interesting. Yeah, basicallyplace right now. It's the idea of
this Puritan idea that needs to goaway to level the play and field so
that we can all explore and grow. I mean, to me, what

(55:37):
you're talking about is a very likeI don't understand why some people just don't
get this concept right. But alsoI don't understand I have a psychological issue
where I get angry at people sometimesbecause they're afraid. It's like they're the
ultimate victim. And you know,life can be very very beautiful, but

(56:00):
it can also be very very dark. I mean, it's really entirely up
to you and us and what wemake of it all the time. But
this narrative of things don't make sense. So it's like, at first it
could have been that it's Christianity andthe devil, and then as people got
smarter, Okay, well it's nota devil. Maybe it's some kind of

(56:20):
demi god that changed the religions.And as people got smarter, well,
and it's the CIA, and it'sthis, and it's that, And it's
like, man, when are wegoing to realize that this is what we
make it, that we make allof this? You know, you said
it, man, that's that's reallythe key to it. What's the school
room experience going to be? Likewe all decide that. And you mentioned

(56:40):
earlier the prison planet stuff, butthere was a version of that I heard
once. It has nothing to dowith the belief system, but it made
a lot of sense to me theway this person worded it. I had
a friend who was a Tause Puebloshaman and once asked him what is the

(57:01):
purpose of all this? Like whatis planet Earth? Like why are we
here in this mad house? Andhe said planet Earth is half the Devil's
Island of space and half a kindergarten. Sounds about us, sounds about He

(57:21):
also said, it's where all thelittle hitlers from all the other dimensions of
existence are brought to learn some verybasic lessons that might be true. Actually,
you know what I mean, thatmight be true. It does look
kind of like that, right,Like we're so vain about our ideas and
what we think is true. Mostof the time. We can't look past

(57:42):
anything, and that's in our ownheads, you know, most of the
time. But you know what,we went right through the break. I
hope you don't mind, because theconversation got really cool. Uh around the
station, I can do that whatever. So cool. The thing is is,
uh, I'm a big Like theHermetic philosophy was introduced. I was

(58:05):
introduced to that through man. Alot of mainly people introduced that through me
and or through him, and Ifound it. It changed my life.
You know. So there's theurgy,and then there's alchemy, and then there's
astrology, and there's these three schools, you know, the Earth, the
moon and the sun, or themoon, the sun and the stars,
this whole three levels of this ideaof initiation, right. But I think

(58:29):
people are I think it's been withall the allegories and all the religions and
all the stories, I think we'remissing the big picture of it, you
know, like what it really meansunderneath. I'm not saying that astrology isn't
real, but it's I love philosophy, man, you see, because I

(58:50):
know Manly believed in this stuff,right, like astrology, and oh yeah,
you know that's the funny thing.I mean, you know, when
I went there, I didn't believein that stuff at all. I thought
it was ridiculous. And I actuallyhad the actually said to him when he
was working on an astrology article,really you really believe in this stuff and
somebody as brilliant as you. Andhe thought that was very funny, and

(59:13):
he said, well, he said, I'll tell you what, I'd love
to debate you about it, butyou don't know anything about it. So
I'm going to ask one of myfriends to teach you about astrology, and
then once you know a little bit, you can come here and we can
talk about it. So he introducedme to this woman, Peggy. It
was an incredible astrologer. The firstthing she did was she read my chart
and Tamra's chart and completely blew ourminds, and that she started to teach

(59:37):
me the basics. So I nevereven debated him because it was so obvious
that something was going on. Andto this day, I mean, I
put out a bi weekly sometimes weeklyastrology report, mostly for friends, and
it's still I mean, things happened, you know that that I talk about,
Oh this could happen, if thatcould happen, and they happen,

(59:58):
and you just it still blows mymind. And my explanation for that is
not that the stars cause these thingsto happen or anything like that. It's
something like quantum entanglement. There's thiswonderful quote from the neoplatonist philosopher Platinus that
I think captures it beautifully, andthat is the stars are like letters that

(01:00:21):
inscribe themselves at every moment in thesky. Everything in the world is full
of signs, all events are coordinated, all things depend on each other,
everything breathes together. And see,to me, that's what's happening with astrology,
is that it's like weather or signposts, if you will. It's

(01:00:44):
it's part of this huge mandola thatwe're all in that's constantly moving. And
if you become sensitive thanks to yougenerations and generations of Babylonians and Sumerians who
study the star movements and then allthe astrologers that came out after you find
that there are these weird correlations attimes between human behavior. And I'll give

(01:01:07):
you an example very briefly, iswhen Pluto was in Sagittarius, we had
that incredible time when you could justbuy almost any stock and make money because
of the Internet basically, so youknow, you can invest in like Dell
and Amazon and Cisco or these earlycompanies and they would split like three times

(01:01:27):
in a year. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Fortunes were made. And
so then when I saw Pluto andCapricorn ahead, I started saying to people,
Okay, be careful now, becauselook at the difference from Sagittarius,
which is Jupiter. It's hot air, it's it's optimism. You know,
it's going to grow forever. Andnow we're gonna hit Saturn. Pluto and

(01:01:52):
Capricorn. Saturn's gonna say hold onand slam on the brakes and say what's
real and what isn't. So mostof the pool I said that to or
just thought it was funny. Andwhen Pluto went into Capricorn in two thousand
and eight, the whole freaking worldeconomy was that close to collapsing and we've
never really recovered from it. Sothat's a very dramatic example of how people

(01:02:17):
who don't believe in it, Andthat's that's my ultimate takeaway about astrology is
Wow, all these millions of peoplewho don't believe it act like they do,
like there's a state precipitate an economiccrisis exactly when it's indicated by this
this particular movement, and many astrologerspointed it out. Yeah, it's interesting,
you know, so what's the youknow, the mystery there. It's

(01:02:40):
okay for it to be a mystery. It's something that you know, I
enjoy exploring it. I'm still ifyou asked me, you know, you
one hundred percent sure when how doesit work? I'd still be like,
I don't know, Like I stillthink like instinctively, I feel like this
can't be right, and yet ithas proven itself very accurate to me over
and over again in life. Andso I think that when you're talking about

(01:03:05):
we mentioned initiation, and we talkedabout the these these different arts that seem
to become possible, you know,telepathy or sensitivity to audio that that gives
you, uh, intuitive information andand all of this. And so I
look at it as and you hadmentioned how there's there's, there's every we're

(01:03:27):
getting lost, you know, andall of this information and all this detail.
And I put that this way,all of these things are like ladders.
Now, those ladders were painstakingly madein different times and places, right
and in the past, they werenot available to everybody. You were lucky

(01:03:51):
if you got to encounter three orfour ladders in your lifetime. Now you
can go online and encounter a thousandof these ladders from every place, every
time, every language, and itis fascinating and wonderful. I mean,
I love absorbing this information. Themore the better, I feel like in
a way, but I also feelthat for myself and for many others,

(01:04:15):
the problem is that we get solost in collecting ladders that we forget to
climb the ladder. That any oneof these ladders would probably have been enough
to get us where we were going. Certainly when you get several of those
ladders together that you know you cankind of triangulate and see, oh wow,
this is this and that's that,and they all kind of mean the

(01:04:36):
same thing. This is amazing.That's really going to help you to attain
a higher level of consciousness. Butwhen you've got all the ladders and you're
arguing over the details of the rungsand how many rungs there are and all
these kind of things, is ifthose things are the important part, that's

(01:04:57):
the famous Zen problem. Right,you're staring at the finger and you never
look at the moon. Yeah,there's a see in the uh. I
wish how honestly would have and wouldhave taken Manly P. Hall's advice because
as a practice and ceremonial magician,I wish I never would have even told
anybody that I ever did it taughtlike I wish I would have never opened

(01:05:19):
my mouth about it, because mywhole understanding and experience of it is deeply
it's it can do. It's deeplyspiritual and magical, and you have to
be psychologically sound to understand this wholeprocess. So like the elements was the
first process that goes back to thePlatonists in the Greeks, and then you

(01:05:41):
get into alchemy, which is thesecond kind of step, and that goes
back even further. And then youget into astrology, and that goes back
to the beginning of time. Sowe kind of wake up through this process.
But now it's like everybody talks about, well, it's a curse,
so you need to protect your energy. And it's just all the stuff that
mainlely p Hall talked about, likedid he was worried about when he said,
you don't even need to be messingwith it because people get psychological hang

(01:06:04):
ups about this stuff. You know. Yeah, it's well, it's especially
dangerous. He used to tell methat that the real risk is when somebody
who doesn't have very much psychological selfknowledge and who has issues, that these
issues become amplified and they may notbe able to handle it. I actually

(01:06:26):
one of my jobs was to screenfor him, and I ran into a
lot of people who had very badexperiences on various spiritual paths and ceremonial magic.
The example I always give is isrunning into people who they did some
kind of a ritual, they closedthe circle, and then later they realized

(01:06:47):
they didn't close it properly, andthey begin to feel that they're being dunted
by an entity, and then thatturns into this obsession and everything goes hey
wire. The silence thing, it'svery interesting because it's, you know,
silence has been demonized. I'm sureyou know these days, especially in the
younger enthusiasts feel that the information shouldbe shared freely at this point and that

(01:07:11):
there is no reason to be silent. But I've always loved that alifis Levi
quote, especially when ceremonial magic isis is being discussed, which was everything
is possible to him who wills onlywhat is true, rest in nature study
No, then dare dare to willdare to act and be silent. That's

(01:07:42):
kind of like the real of thesphinx, right, the whole Yeah,
yeah, silence is very powerful.Yeah, those are like Elvis Levi was
a great guy, and I youknow, but like back on initiation.
So I read a couple of Manly'smanuscripts. Two of them I'm really fascinated
by. He probably wrote them whenhe was younger. Okay, but the

(01:08:03):
cult Anatomy of man which is ashort manuscript, and then what the ancient
wisdom expects from his disciples. Anotherfascinating manuscript. Right in these texts,
he talks about that all of thesetemples that we go in and we do
our stuff are simply exoteric symbols ofwhat really happens to us in the internal

(01:08:25):
worlds, and only we will know. Only, he says, if you've
been approached by quote, a hiddenmaster or whatever, only you and you
are going to know that. Andyet when I read the books like How
the Golden Dawn Got started, afew other Rosicrucian orders, theology, theosophy,
there's always like hidden masters, youknow, And to me, I

(01:08:46):
think that they're referencing maybe hidden forcesthat are inside of us all, not
someplace that we go find in theyou know, the external world. But
I don't know that. Man,that's it right there. He would have
loved to hear you say that,because that's what he was saying. Yeah,
for sure. He actually asked himonce, if you had it all
to do all over again, whatwould you do differently? And he said

(01:09:11):
that he would have. You know, in his youth he really glamorized hidden
masters, in visible masters, theosophicalsociety stuff, and occult magic kind of
practices, and he said that hewould have not glamorized the initiates in the

(01:09:32):
way that he did, and thathe would not or rather he would have
suggested that people find some form ofpsychology that appeals to them and study that
and themselves before they take on anykind of spiritual learning process, that that
would help them greatly. And soI think that the I like to use

(01:10:00):
the Secret of the Golden Flower.It's this Taoist alchemical text. The form
we have is from the seventeenth century, but it's supposed to go back a
lot earlier in terms of its origin, and I find it to be,
in my simplified version, a veryuseful way of looking at all of this
right that we've been discussing here.And so the basic idea is that when

(01:10:28):
we descend into bodies, right whenwe decide that we're going to have the
experience where we're driven to have theexperience of life in the material world,
that our soul in a sense isalmost split. It isn't really split,
it's always one, but there's apart of the soul that becomes immersed in

(01:10:50):
keeping the body sustained through time,taking all these different elements that let's face
it, are eager to disassemble rightand to get back to what they were
originally. Let's call it sand.And here we have laboriously over years,

(01:11:10):
first in the womb, and thenas children and growing up, we have
built these bodies and these languages,and these lives, and these ideas and
these connections to society that we canuse to have experiences to change the world
and also to change ourselves. Andhowever that lower soul lets called it,
that it becomes forgetful. It doesn'tany longer communicate with a part of itself

(01:11:36):
that isn't down here in this claustrophobicworld of being in a body. And
Aristotle described the emotion of the soulin the body as being like the etruscan
pirate torture of tying a corpse faceto face with a captive. We are

(01:11:59):
not comfortable in our bodies. Wedon't fully get them. We always get
surprised by things that they do.Many of us have those experiences of you
know, wait a minute, ifI got one of these over here.
We even after years of being ina body, we're not really too sure
of what's going on. Most ofus, and in that claustrophobia, and
in identifying with the body, thatlower soul puts the force of its consciousness

(01:12:26):
into fear and anger. On onelevel, it becomes obsessed with destruction,
with murder, with mayhem and warand movies and books about it and just
anything destructive. Why because that representsfreedom to the lower soul. When things
are destroyed, they're liberated. Whenthe body is destroyed, the lower soul

(01:12:49):
gets to get out of there andit's free of all of this experience.
It also begins to identify with thefrailty of the body. And so we
have this conscious going, oh mygod, the world is so frightening,
it's so chaotic. It's going tojust roll over me someday. It doesn't
care about me. It's going totake everything I love from me. And

(01:13:09):
this anger is often expressed out intothe world, towards the world and toward
other people. Everybody's terrible. Ican't trust anyone. Even in families.
This occurs so often where you findfathers who can't stand their children or their
wives, and they are almost gladwhen they get the terminal diagnosis because I

(01:13:31):
hated my job, I hated myfamily. Great, I can get out
of here now. And so that'sthe lower soul. That's the lower soul
at work, and it's in itsstate of self forgetfulness, and that's where
most people live. The higher soulloves life. The higher soul is amazed

(01:13:55):
by the mystery of life. Whatis this, this incredible experience. The
higher soul knows this out here isfrail and temporary. This out here is
always changing and is gone. Butme, I'm outside time. I remember
my father, who after his warexperiences, was a deep atheist, really

(01:14:19):
didn't believe in any of this stuffat all, thought it was He was
one of those old school men thatwould use the word, you know,
imagination is if it meant that youwere gay, you know, like,
oh, I don't have that kindof imagination, you know. And so
I once asked him, though tryingto get across to him, you know
what I was learning. I saidto him once, when you look in

(01:14:41):
the mirror, do you feel likewhat you see? Or do you still
feel like the young man that youalways were? And you look at yourself
and you go, what is goingon? How did this happen to me?
That got him? He said,well, yeah, actually I do
feel like like, you know whathappened, Like, I still feel the
same. Why do I look different? I started there was that's actually a

(01:15:04):
very good point. I did thatthe other day. Man. I'm like,
I looked in the mirror and I'mlike, I'm forty two years old.
Man, Like, I don't feellike I'm forty two. I feel
like I'm eighteen. Still, I'mthe same kid, you know. But
because consciousness is outside time. Sonow we do this practice any one of

(01:15:25):
the ladders. I believe all theladders are intended to take you from being
down in that hateful place where you'rejust about destructiveness and I can't wait to
get out of here, and takingyou up to where suddenly it's like you're
awake in elucid dream when you're livingand you're looking for for all the magical
ways that you can interact with life, and then life responds to that,

(01:15:49):
and magical things happen, like thethings we talked about when we started this
conversation with Manley Hall, having thesebizarre synchronistic communications with people so that higher
soul. There's a beautiful description ofwhat happens when you attain this uh in
the Secret of the Golden flower,and it says that when you achieve it,

(01:16:14):
your heart and your bones are ascalm as in deep sleep. Your
vitality and energy is like that oflovers enjoying mutual bliss. The relationship between
the higher soul and the lower soulis like that of mother and child cherishing

(01:16:34):
love for each other. Wow,right, isn't that beautiful? You know?
So you look out into the worldand you and you're okay with the
mystery. You're okay with not knowingeverything. You're you're you're in wonder at
everything, even even enemies, eveneverything is just part of this beautiful,

(01:16:56):
artistic, dramatic creation that we're allcreating together when you're from that higher space,
and you do find that magical thingshappen as we return to the subject
of magic and how it is indeedreal in the world and how the world
responds in a different way, itseems when people achieve this attainment. And
so that's related to this idea,which is that in our true selves,

(01:17:24):
in the form of consciousness that weare when we're out of our bodies,
and this is in almost every tradition, we're told that we can enter into
anything that we can experience anything.We just can't stay there, we can't
run it, we can't change theworld, but we can experience anything that's

(01:17:44):
going on. It's like the ultimategame. So if you imagine, all
the incarnate people and animals and plantson the planet at this moment are just
one giant theatrical production that disincarnate soulscan explore also and can for a moment
drop in and see what something islike from that point of view. When
we incarnate, we build this singularperspective and this track through time from you

(01:18:10):
know, forward, moving forward,moving forward, and it's a very different
experience from what we actually are.And so when people describe cosmic consciousness or
many of the other terms that havebeen used for this, so many terms
nirvana and all kinds of things,they sometimes they say it's nothingness, right,
yeah, because what is it?It's no thing, it's it's everything,

(01:18:33):
But it's not all that either,it's something beyond all that. And
when you have these experiences, whenwe're fortunate enough to have those glimpses of
what Buck, the guy who coinedthe term cosmic consciousness, thought was a
developing human sense that we would allhave someday that cosmic consciousness would be natural

(01:18:56):
and should be natural for human beings. But when you get that glimpse which
Ralph Waldo Emerson described as a momentwhen he felt like he was a giant,
transparent eyeball right, and that thewhole world was that you could see
everything at once, all around him, as far as he could look.
And these kinds of descriptions exist inevery single sort of spiritual literature, from

(01:19:19):
every single tradition, and I thinkwhat they are is descriptions of what happens
when we awaken to our true selvesand to what we are, which is
pure consciousness. And it's funny.So it is kind of ironic the whole
play of things to the way youif you really look at it, you
know, I mean, because somepeople talk about this thing like all the

(01:19:42):
universe is doing this to me,and that to me, it's like a
sick joke, right, And Iget I get where they're coming from,
you know, I totally get that. I get the frustration. Yeah.
But another thing that I've learned inhermetics, especially the beginning stages of theogy,
is like a lust for result oldwill cause you suffering when when all
you have to do is just bein it to begin with. Like,

(01:20:05):
it's not that you can't have allthe things that you desire, it's not
that at all. It's your perceptionor the lust of the results that are
causing the suffering to begin with.It's really kind of ironic how it works
out, you know. Yeah,it's it's so easy to become absorbed in
it too and intellectually and miss theactual enlightenment part of it. Yeah,

(01:20:30):
yeah, for sure. And it'ssomething that that this forgetfulness, like in
the orphic tradition, it's it's allabout forgetfulness. It's all about you know,
we're stars. We're signified that thesymbol is the star, and so
let's look at our star, thesun, right. All the matter in

(01:20:50):
our world came from that, andthe light in our world comes from that,
and the warmth that makes it possiblefor things to grow and flourish comes
from the sun. And so ina sense, I mean, you could
not get a better image of deity, right, as so many cultures have
understood, And it used to beeven as late as the Rosicrucian era that

(01:21:13):
among mystics, and I'm sure eventoday that the sun was considered a living,
conscious being whose soul was as splendidas its body. What an amazing
thing. Imagine walking around in aworld where you know, you feel that
the sun is alive, it's conscious, and it's pouring down this warmth and
light as a way of giving lifeto all of us. And so we

(01:21:40):
are each that we're the same thing. We're stars that have fallen into forgetfulness,
according to the Oriphic tradition, andso we can live on the week
they call it the weary wheel ofdeep gloom or suffering, and this is
reincarnation. We just keep coming backand having all these experiences in the material

(01:22:00):
world, and we forget. Wenever remember who we are, and so
the orphic initiation was about reminding usthat we are stars. The famous orphic
saying is I'm a child of earthand of starry heaven, but my race
is of heaven. And the ideawas it, well, you get to
be among the gods when you achievethis initiation, and so even the use

(01:22:27):
of oracles and omens astrology as suchwas seen as the gods sharing their vision
of the future with you. Tobe kind, right, that's so cool
that you say that, like Iremember practicing. It was a modern book
by rufus Opus that he's been onthe show too, and he wrote this
book called the Seven Sphears, andyou know, a part of a part

(01:22:50):
of tapping into a planetary energy,he would put an orphic hymn with a
planetary energy and you know, recitingto him like really, it was like
one of the first times like Iwas like, wow, I can really
feel this, Like I can't reallyexplain it, but I could feel this
kind of energy with it, youknow, when you were going through.

(01:23:11):
They're beautiful really if you read them, you know, But but I've seen
them kind of written a differently too. But yeah, I need to read
that book that you guys did actuallyto look into that deeper because I don't
know much about it. I don'tknow much about uh or Oh, it's
a really amazing It's influence on Westernculture is outstanding. I mean just yeah,

(01:23:32):
it's mind blowing how it's been repeatedlyat the center of these small cultural
renaissances and counter cultures. But it'sit's really a religion of purification and of
they call it remembering, and sothe idea is that the actual myth behind

(01:23:54):
it is that Zagrius, which wasthe name of Dionei, as a baby
was born, and Zeus was inlove with this kid. Zeus just thought,
this is my best kid. He'sgoing to be the new king of
the gods. Even puts him onthe throne. And this baby sitting on

(01:24:15):
the throne. The Titans, whowere the first gods, they have been
defeated, of course by Zeus andthe Olympian gods and subject to Tartarus.
They see how happy Zeus is inthis new god is going to be even
kinder than Zeus, and they don'tlike it. They want to hurt Zeus
and they want to hurt humanity,and so they devised this way of luring

(01:24:40):
Dionysus, and they use toys whichrepresent planets, the physical body, the
different organs weaving themselves together, weavinga body. And they draw this child
into a place where Zeus is lessaware, and they slaughter or the child
and make a stew of him toeat him to gain his royal power so

(01:25:06):
that they can fight the gods again. Well, Zeus sees this happening and
throws lightning and everything gets fried.And in this mess that's left, this
wet ash that's us, right.We are partly Titans and partly Dionysus.

(01:25:29):
They call us the tears of Dionysus, and we fall through space until we
wake up and remember that we areDionysus, and that we are ourselves individual
divinities that have been splintered out ofthis great god. And so take all
this as metaphors, you know,I mean, look at the Titanic nature

(01:25:51):
of man on full display right now. Angry, destructive, just wants to
fight, tear down and all theorders. Everybody distress everybody else. It's
Titanic and the cultures that get builtaround that, the old Olympian culture.
While it's true to some degree thatsacrifices were like barbecues, you know,

(01:26:15):
people forget that you sacrificed a bulland then you actually made a feast of
it that you fed the poor andothers with. And it wasn't exactly like
we kill animals and we throw everythingaway. It was really the same thing
that we do. But they broughtthis divine thing. We take certain parts
of it and we burn it,and the smell is supposed to please the
gods. So but this is veryviolent. You know, they're killing animals

(01:26:39):
for the gods. And who arethe heroes of that culture? Achilles?
I mean his name says kill,it still means kill. Odysseus, these
warriors, right, Perseus. Andthe goal in life for the Olympian Greeks
was to die in war. Youknow, there was nothing more noble than

(01:27:00):
to be a soldier. Well,the orphic revolution comes in there, and
you want to talk about a counterculture. They come in there and they
say, no more animal sacrifice.What gods would want bloody animal sacrifice,
that's ridiculous. The gods want honeyand flowers and the fruits of the harvest

(01:27:23):
and good deeds above all. Andthen they come along and they say,
by the way, you shouldn't beeating animals either because reincarnation can go go
all over the place and eating thatyou shot in your next lifetime, right
right, or or this might havebeen your mother that you just killed in

(01:27:46):
another lifetime. This was your mother, And so then now you're not eating
meat and you're not allowed to killanimals. And then the final blow.
War is bad. Violence is bad. There is no glory in it.
It's grotesque. Good deeds that's howyou improve the world, and kindness to

(01:28:10):
each other, respect for the godsand for civilization and for the rules of
hospitality. That's what it's all about. And so that was such a I
mean, it wasn't a successful revolutionin a way because obviously the Greeks were
they had very mixed feelings about theOrphics. Plato constantly described them as hustlers.

(01:28:34):
Basically, Aristophanes made jokes about themhaving windy scriptures that they used to
hunt rich people. And there werea lot of criticisms, and they felt
that they weren't even civilized, youknow, because they weren't helping the state
by going to war the way theywere supposed to. But you can see

(01:28:54):
the beginnings. They're of Gnostic Christianityand the influence of the East. Right,
many of these ideas has come tous from I mean, did they
come to us from yoga or werethey actually part of this broad what Joseph
Campbell called the Great Lament, aperiod when there were bad climate changes and
loss of crops, and all aroundthe Mediterranean there were these these new religious

(01:29:19):
expressions that, instead of being allabout the strength of warriors, were about
the suffering of life and overcoming thesuffering of life through Enlightenment. But from
my experience, this is what ManlyHall taught. All of these different systems,
whether you're looking at the alchemical textin China that started out in the

(01:29:42):
twelve hundreds, or you're looking atthe rescrutions in the sixteen hundreds in Europe,
or the Kabbala in Europe and inPalestine, all of these systems in
different ways, different languages, differentsymbols are describing the same thing. And
I think that's because it's the humanexperience, right, It's the human condition.

(01:30:05):
And so I think I was onceasked. I think it was the
first interview I did. Actually,I think it was for the Theosophical Society,
and somebody said to me, well, you're so good at looking at
the past and seeing where things wentwrong, Like you know, what's the
big problem now? Like what doyou see as the big issue that's causing
harm for humanity? And there's somany things you could say, right,

(01:30:27):
but I'll stick with this answer,which is false certainty. Right, we
have like this this illness about falsecertainty. It's not okay for us to
not be sure, it's not okayfor us to hold paradoxical positions. But
the truth is in those contradictions andin those paradoxes, and that's where the

(01:30:53):
real experience. When the words fail, that's when the real experience takes over.
So we say things like, wellthis doctrine, that's fake, that's
all false. Or they're they're actuallyworshiping the devil. They think they're worshiping
the peacock angel, you know,the Aussies and all this kind of this
false certainty of you know, Iknow that it's this way, and I

(01:31:16):
try to when I anytime I talk, I try to help people understand how
useful uncertainty is, the ability totolerate suspense, the ability to know that
you don't know for sure, becauseit changes you from somebody who when you
find new knowledge and new perspectives,who attacks them, right, who comes

(01:31:40):
out of that lower soul and criticizesand tries to suppress them. Instead,
you're interested, You're interested in peoplewho contradict, right. You know,
you're like like, oh, wow, you see it completely different. Well
how do you see it? Ifyou're having again that conversation under the may
pole right back at to Tom Morton'splace. And I think that's the key.

(01:32:03):
So when we started, you know, in the beginning here you asked
me, you know what about thefuture, is it going to get worse?
Right? And I think that ifwe can, we can open up
that sense of curiosity and of wantingto hear perspectives that are different from our
own and keeping an open mind insteadof attaching to a doctrine of one kind

(01:32:27):
or another, or even an experienceof one kind or another, and then
from that place judging everything and critiquingeverything. Now, this is the disease
I think that is afflicting humanity becauseit stops progress in every area of life.
Man, I totally agree with you. They're like, this whole show
is called Lighting the Void. Itwas based on what you're saying, Like,

(01:32:50):
I do want to know the truthof things, but I want to
hear everybody's experience like I want to, you know. And one of the
most beautiful things I learned learn fromthe Rosicrucians was this. I think they
call it to lv X or knocksome packs right, which means light and
extension. So, you know,instead of trying to find the ultimate facts

(01:33:12):
and letting it define us, likewe should explore all this stuff consciously and
aware and you know, in fullawareness and just explore it consciously. Stop
being so afraid of the unknown,because this is an adventure. That's what
life is. It shouldn't be likea Peter Pan thing, not a prison
you know, victim thing. Youknow, yeah, exactly, and also

(01:33:35):
have the the joy of you know, we're all here in this moment.
We won't be right, you know, like this moment is unique because of
everyone that's here, and so whynot enjoy that. That's why I was
saying earlier about even enemies. I'veexperienced this myself. When I've been able
to get that golden flower flickering on, it's you just suddenly chair iish everybody.

(01:34:00):
I mean, you feel like like, oh wow, I learned so
much from my enemy, you know. And this actually happened to me,
right. I saw the people who'vebeen my enemies in life, and I
realized all the good they had donefor me and in making me face parts
of myself and sending me in directionsI wouldn't have taken otherwise. And so
when we open up to life thatway instead of constantly having a defensive attitude,

(01:34:25):
I think life changes in the waythat it approaches us. And so
these magical things can happen that youwouldn't believe you know when they occur,
And that's of course when you're wementioned ceremonial magic earlier. But it's what
all the traditions are looking for.Is that getting into that space with life
where you may not be able toexplain what's happening. Like I said earlier

(01:34:50):
about astrology, I like the platonistquote, but how does this stuff work?
I mean, here's a mystery foryou. How come there's like ten
twenty different kinds of astrology where theplacements are different, but a good astrologer
in any one of them will blowyour mind about your own life. It
shouldn't work right, right, butthey all kind of work out in a

(01:35:12):
way. Yeah. Yeah, I'vegot an astrologer that I go to that
this kind of teaches all that stuff. Man. I mean we've talked a
lot about your I really hope thatyou keep writing and keep going on podcasts
and keep just expressing this person thatyou are. Man. I really think
you're doing a lot of good.But I do want to talk about like

(01:35:35):
your films like you did. Idon't you did some films, right,
I didn't. We didn't even touchedon that. What were those about?
Well, thank you for asking.I never get to talk about that.
The films was an amazing experience tobe in. It started out just out
of sort of weird serendipity. Imet a couple of people, one of

(01:35:58):
whom wasn't too well known, anotherone who's quite famous, was a guy
who used to run Paramount Studios backin the day. And I became friendly
with them accidentally, and they recognizedmy talent and also Tamra's talent as writers.
So we became script doctors. Peoplewould hand us bad scripts and we
would do what we could to makethem better. That's what got us into

(01:36:20):
the film business. But that's areally rotten business, like film suck.
I mean, you know, there'sa reason that there's so many movies are
so bad. And when you're ascript doctor and you go through the process
of no, don't do that,you can't do that because of this,
and you see, well, allthe choices you're making are making us a
lousy movie and I don't want todo this even if I get paid.

(01:36:41):
So we but it got us aroundfilm people, and so what happened was
we were approached by someone who hadvery unique circumstances. It was actually a
neighbor of ours. I had bondedwith them because our mothers died the same
week. And this guy, Ihad no idea that he was into film
at all, and he said tome once, Okay, look, I

(01:37:05):
need help to make this documentary andI think you might be able to help
me again, like the Manly Hallthing, you know. And it was
about Los Aldianos, who were Iguess I'm not sure they still exist,
but at the time they were thehottest underground hip hop band in Cuba,
and they were illegal in Cuba,and yet they were like everybody knew their

(01:37:30):
songs. They would have these secretshows and a thousand, two thousand people
would show up and sing all theirsongs with them. It was amazing,
and they were wonderful musicians and poets, I mean, really great. This
guy had dual American Mexican citizenship,and he had been bringing supplies for people
suffering AIDS in Cuba for a longtime and so he had access in ways

(01:37:54):
most people don't and he wanted totell their story. Wow. So yeah,
so, And the way he pitchedit to us was because we were
musicians, and he said you knowday for instance, they have a stack
of music that only exists in theirhouse and they live in fear because at
any moment the government can come andtake away all those CDs and that all

(01:38:16):
that music will be gone. Andso they were going to smuggle it out.
And we at one point tamer andI had the only other stash of
all their music, like in theworld, you know, it was it
was intense, yeah, And sohe went down there and he filmed them,
and I mean it was super dangerous. A couple of people got arrested.

(01:38:39):
One person got arrested. I mean, our director would have been arrested,
but he literally, like the copshowed up just as he was on
the plane and the plane was takingoff, but he saw them arresting some
of his crew, right. Andthe footage that he took was hidden on
CDs that were inside Michael Jackson records, and they were made to look like

(01:39:01):
they were Michael Jackson CDs, butthey were actually full of this footage of
Los Aldiano's. So the movie wasamazing. It was shown all over the
world at won some awards. Unfortunately, their careers were ruined by the US
us AID, which is sort ofthe CIA's arm of cultural soft Engineering wanted

(01:39:27):
to help them, right, andas usually happens in those situations, word
got out and destroyed their credibility thatthey were being helped by the US,
even though they didn't know it.Right. Terrible, I mean, so
stupid. But we captured them atthe height of their abilities and their popularity,
and I'm so proud. The filmis so gorgeous and what they have

(01:39:51):
to say is so amazing. It'scalled Viva Viva Cuba Libre as War,
and that film led to other filmsthat we worked on. We did one
about MIAs A Patta and the Gets, which were an incredible band in Seattle
that were destined for great starto.Miaz A Potta was a wonderful singer,

(01:40:15):
just an amazing personality, and shewas murdered and they didn't know who did
it. They it took like twodecades to solve the crime, and it
was a big part of the reasonwhy Seattle was all messed up because people
were looking at each other going,God, could you have been the one?
I mean, who did this?Everydy was afraid and so we were

(01:40:39):
approached by a director and producer whowere working on it they run out of
money, and they really wanted toget to Joan Jet and to Kathleen Hannah,
who both had had experiences with meas a patta, and we were
able to do that, and wewere able to bring in Danny Goldberger used
to manage Nirvana and who gave themenough money to finish the film. That

(01:41:00):
film is also beautiful and it capturesthem when they were at their height,
and also the tragedy of her murder, and it was actually parts of it
were used in the court case whenthey condemned the murderer. They used parts
of the film to show her influenceon the community. So that was moving
to be able to be involved withthat. And then we did one with

(01:41:24):
Edward James almost who was the executiveproducer and who narrated it, called Exile
Nation the Plastic People, about thesepoor you know, there was a bunch
of kids who got raised in Americawithout ever getting American citizenship. You know,
their parents brought them here illegally andinstead of going through the system and

(01:41:46):
getting into it, they lived theirlives and then under Obama, they found
themselves deported when they reached Mexico,where they didn't know anybody. They were
told no, you're not welcome here, and they wound up living in Zona
Norte, which is this terrible areaof completely controlled by drug dealers, and

(01:42:11):
they lived in sewers, right like, they're literally in the sewers, these
big sewage pipes. And this directorwho had seen our movie about Los Aldianos,
was so moved that he wanted tomake his first movie and he went
down there, and very risky filmto make, but he got in the
middle of all this and he capturedwhat was going on, how horrific it

(01:42:34):
was. And the beauty of thatfilm was that eventually it was seen by
someone, this very wealthy guy inMexico who was horrified by what he saw,
and he stepped in and he fixedthe problem and saved a whole bunch
of those people. So that waswonderful. But the film, Man,
that was a hell of an experience, I'll tell you, because it's an

(01:42:56):
interesting guy. LL thank you seriously. Man. So you're you're mainly everybody
you know. I know most peoplewant to talk to you about Manlely Pea
Hall because he had such an influenceon on everybody's life, right, But
it seems mainly. P Hall alsobelieved and I think we can kind of
wrap up on this idea that surephilosophy and art and music and the the

(01:43:19):
ability to express yourself in this waywas something divine. It was absolutely you
know, yeah, no, hedid. He loved that and he he
was a very well balanced guy,you know, like people always ask me,
well, what did you talk aboutwith him? And and you know,
I was allowed to go over Tamerand I were invited to go to
his house anytime, you know,and just hang out and and uh,

(01:43:45):
it was amazing and we have dinnerwith them and watch TV sometimes, you
know. Watching MTV with Manley Hallwas an experience. And he pointed out
that that all the drugs and lightsand loud sounds were the things that were
used in the mysteries and that theywere opening up people's psychic centers, but
they didn't know what to do becausethey weren't getting proper training. So for

(01:44:06):
a lot of people it was adifficult experience. But usually he liked to
talk about like how the Dodgers weredoing, and about jokes. He loved
to tell jokes. He'd liked totalk about very mundane, interesting, kind
of small talk. That was abig relief to him because he spent all

(01:44:26):
his time writing about and lecturing aboutthese huge issues subjects. Yeah. Yeah,
and it was such a lesson toyou know. He just sort of
exemplified living a genteel, wholesome life, and it felt very privileged to be
able to be around that. Sohe made it seem possible that you could

(01:44:47):
be that kind of person in aworld where we've all come to believe in
the evil of human nature and thepresence of powerful evil influences everywhere in our
society, which puts us immediately intoa defensive stance toward the world. And

(01:45:09):
one of the real tragedies about this, just touching on the conspiracy issue again,
is for most of us, wecan't do anything about it, Joe,
you know, I mean, okay, so we know about it,
So we know about the evil guyand what he's doing and how he's influencing
the culture and all that, andthere's nothing that we can do about it.
And so what happens is we walkaround the world with a chip on

(01:45:31):
our shoulder and a defensive stance,and it takes away so much potential for
inspiration, intuition, for you know, you said earlier, we got to
get rid of these puritanical Christians thatside of it, and I'm like,
you know, no, it's likewe need them to believe it or not,

(01:45:53):
you know we're talking to It's justlike that. It's kind of the
same idea, Like I've had relationshiplike that where it's like, man,
I want to see how good thingscan be and how deep this can go
and what we can accomplish. Andit's like that's this whole damn defensive fear,
defensiveness, fear, defensiveness, fear. And then it even gotten me

(01:46:14):
to the point which I think itwas possibly some kind of initiation I needed
to see this right, Like itgot me to the point of like all
this Mars energy came out of me, like I'm so sick of it.
I just wanted to destroy it.You know. Yeah, I understand that
that's kind of something that you know, what you've got to do is make
culture. I mean, what you'redoing right here is making culture. That's

(01:46:34):
what it's about. It's not aboutus trying to identify and challenge this power
that is in such disagreement with howwe view the world. It's about us
making culture, making the new worldrunning away with it, right, because

(01:46:55):
it's from our side. Look throughhistory, man. You know, there's
a book that's coming out from Miguelright from a on Bite about the occult
Elvish. I mean, the stuff'severywhere, and this the occult side of
the world and of America that hasproduced so much of the best art and
music. And so you know,my message to people is if you're looking

(01:47:18):
at the world and you're saying,but the Illuminati and the Reptilians and this
son of a bitch and what he'sdoing to everybody, then what do you
do? What could you do?What could you write? What could you
organize? What could you look?What song could you create? What?
What do you have in you thatis a response to this that you can

(01:47:39):
put out in the world. Andit doesn't have to be something that changes
everything. Like you know, forinstance, my band, our goal was
never to make it big. Wehad opportunities, you know, Danny Goldberg
wanted to sign us and put uson the road for three years. He
was a guy behind led Zeppelin andNirvana and all that. We didn't want
it. We we were out thereto change ourselves, to challenge things about

(01:48:01):
our society to share information. Weweren't trying to be popular. We were
involved in catharsis for ourselves and otherpeople, telling the truth in ways that
made you go God, and thenletting that emotion out, letting that anger
out, letting the sadness out.And we never were a huge band,
but we existed. We still dokind of, but we existed for over

(01:48:25):
twenty years, you know, constantlyworking in one way or another, made
lots of friends, changed lives,including our own, and that was enough.
You know, that was a wonderfulexperience. And so I'd recommend to
everybody, like, if you're downbecause you're looking at the world and how
much it's not what it should beand how terrible people are, then you
yourself, find the inspiration, findthe help, talk to the gods,

(01:48:51):
do the orphic hymns, find theritual that matters to you, open yourself
up and become a vehicle for theexpress of a higher culture. Very well,
said Man. Very well said Man. I could talk to you forever,
Man, but I think we're runningwe're running out of time here.
And so you said you got anotherbook that you're going to be working on.

(01:49:14):
That's cool, because that means I'mgoing to hit you up later to
come back on the show. Ihope. Oh good, Yeah, definitely.
I've got a few things happening.I'm actually I've done this book about
something called the Unobstructed Way, whichis that's a whole nother thing, man,
But I'm unbelievably amazing thing that happenedin America in the nineteen thirties,
in nineteen forties, just incredible storyof mediumship that even Carl Jung was blown

(01:49:39):
away by and admitted that he wasconvinced that it was real. And so
Tam and I have written a bookabout it, but we're experimenting with putting
that online. So we took thefirst chapter and I read it and it'll
be put on the YouTube channel thisweekend. If people like it that way,
maybe we'll put it out there,as you know, will put all

(01:50:00):
the chapters out in that format,rather than going through the two years that
it takes to publish something with theinner traditions. And so but if that
happens, I'm going to get backin touch with you because would love to
talk to you about it because thestuff in there, it's like the key
to all of these things. It'sall the same ideas we've been talking about,
but presented from this beautiful, simplepoint of view that was created by

(01:50:26):
a couple who lived the most extraordinarylife. And it's one thing I love
about it is, you know howfor many of the people in Esoterica,
there's this feeling that, well,they're not you know, they're not Americans,
you know, like the Christian cowboy, American archetype, that kind of
thing. This guy was the ultimateman. He was like he did Safaris,
he was like Teddy Roosevelt said hewas the best shot he ever saw

(01:50:48):
in his life. I mean,this guy was that old school American outdoorsman
kind of a guy. And yetthey have these amazing experiences with life after
death. Wow. Yeah, seenow I can't wait till that comes out.
Man, you got to hurry thatone up. So this concept that
you're talking about, I'll just askyou that they Carl Young mentioned it in

(01:51:11):
any of his material, because I'ma massive Young Oh yeah, yeah,
it's very funny. Actually, hefirst when he encountered the stuff, he
was really impressed because it had alot to do with where he was coming
from with his creative imagination therapy,Right and so he recommended it to a
bunch of his friends and his students, and they've also Tina Keeler, for

(01:51:33):
instance, wrote about it, andthen he said, I'd love there to
be a German edition of this.So there was a German edition and he
published the intro. But in theintro he was kind of like, well,
we're not sure what this is,you know, like maybe it's this,
maybe it is, and he waskind of hedging. But there's a
letter that he wrote to his dearfriend Frinz Kunkle, in which he said,

(01:51:57):
you know, I have to ownthat I think Betty really did this.
Like, I don't think this isan anima. This is the real
woman, and I believe that sheis a spirit. Oh wow, And
he actually said it. So,yeah, it's pretty amazing stuff. The
teachings are great, and their ownpersonal story is incredible. I'll find it,

(01:52:20):
man, I'll probably dig like crazylytrying to find that. Guys.
I've got all the works of Carlyou except for the Black books that I
don't have that yet, the onesthat just came out that he kind of
compiled to and then put. Ithink he I think he made the Red
Book from all the material in theBlack Books is That's right? Right?

(01:52:40):
So yeah, it'll be great.You know what I can send you if
you like, I'll send you thePDF. Yeah, man, you can
read it. Yeah, I'll readit. I'll send it over to you.
But thanks for coming on, man. And where can people follow you
at? It's just at the RonniePontiac Or is that on Instagram? I'm
just Ronnie Pontiac. On face Bookand on YouTube it's just Ronnie Pontiac.

(01:53:03):
But the best place probably to talkto me is probably on Instagram. If
anybody has questions, I'm always happyto answer them right on. It was
a real pleasure having you on,man. And yeah, thanks for coming
on the show. Oh, thankyou. I really enjoyed it. We're
gonna get out of here, guys, we went over a little bit.
Thanks for hanging out with us.Please support the Friends FM if you can.

(01:53:24):
We live and die by your support, and we love each and every
one of you. Can I y'll, Sweet dreams

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