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March 18, 2024 114 mins
Ronnie Pontiac is a spiritual mystic, musician, author of American metaphysical religion & the magic of the Orphic hymns: a new translation for the modern mystic. We had a great chat about Manly P Hall & the hidden history of the metaphysical in America. 


Ronnie's Links:
https://www.instagram.com/theronniepontiac/?hl=en
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Episode Transcript

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(00:02):
Welcome to Ascension of the Chessmen,diving into the esoteric, occult, spiritual,
and conspiratorial aspects of life, focusedon solutions to the problems we face
in our everyday lives. Let usascend above all differences. Let us be
the light in darkness, a breathof fresh air to those who can hardly

(00:23):
breathe, and together awaken into greatness. This is Ascension of the Chessman with
your host, Andre Mitty. Welcometo the Ascension of the Chessman podcast.
I'm your host, Andre Middy.Today's guest is a spiritual mystic musician,

(00:45):
author of American metaphysical Religion and theMagic of the Orphic Hymns, a new
translation for the modern mystic. Ladiesand gentlemen. Hobbinson Fairies give a warm
welcome to Ronnie. Ronnie Pontiac,Hi, thank you for having me here.
I'm really glad to be with youtoday. It is truly an honor,

(01:06):
brother, to talk to someone likeyourself that has you know, been
so close to Manly and you knowhow I can relate to you, and
the fact of how much of aprominent influence he was on your life,
and you know, just to speakto someone that was as close to him

(01:26):
as you were, as truly anhonor and a privileged brother. So happy
to have you here today. Oh, thank you, totally so Ronnie.
I usually kicked my show off withthis first question for every guest. So
I guess for those who aren't familiar, can you explain what it is that
you do? And I guess whatwoke you up to realizing maybe there's more

(01:48):
to this life than you were originallytaught or thought. Wow, that's two
questions that require a lot of answer. Yeah, I'd be taking as long
as short as you are, brother. Let's see. So I started out

(02:09):
my initial interest in things metaphysical waswhen I was a kid. I was
just attracted to books on witchcraft,books on Atlantis and that kind of thing
whenever I saw them, and Iwas often trying to shoplift them and have

(02:29):
them secretly. And by the timeI was in my late teens, I
was a really nihilistic, criminal,little liar, and I was very inte
well. I was trying to findways to gain power in this world.

(02:49):
Because I had been raised in afamily that was totally PTSD due to war
experiences, I was like runty formy age, I was getting my ass
kicked all the time at school,really didn't have any friends. I was
raised by immigrants who had such atight grip on me that I actually had
an accent when I first started goingto school, which got me in a

(03:14):
lot of trouble too, And Ihad no social contract in short, so
I just felt like the world wasa hell and I had to figure out
how to find some power in it. And I got into writers like Crowley
and Anton Levey and Evola and allthat stuff spare and but I didn't.

(03:38):
I found them to be kind ofromantic idealists, and they weren't the kind
of nihilistic evil that I was lookingfor. So I started a band.
It became successful in the Los Angelesarea. We were very popular with racists
and with bikers, and we hadersecurity guards and it was a nasty scene

(04:04):
with a lot of violence in it. And it's a miracle that nobody got
seriously hurt. And that's the kindof person I was at that time.
And the first thing that happened tochange my life was a notorious club.
A girl who didn't belong there wasin a dangerous situation and she asked me

(04:24):
for help, and we wound upfalling in love, and love was new
to me, and she was thisvery honest, very just grounded kind of
a person that taught me a lotabout how to be a human being.
But we were both really cynical andreally looked down on the world. So

(04:50):
when I was still a kid,I got a present from my parents to
get a haircut, and I tookthat money to the Bodye Tree Bookstore,
which was this archetypal metaphysical bookstore thatoccurred in Los Angeles, and at the
Bodi Tree, I found this oldedition, the sixth edition of Manly Hall

(05:14):
Secret Teachings the encyclopedic outline. Thiswas like a reduced tone with black and
white pictures, but it still lookedlike a book from one hundred years four

(05:35):
and in somebody illustrations and a subject. So I got it blew my mind.
I would like read a chapter aday. And then a friend of
mine told me that this man wasstill alive and that he was lecturing every
Sunday at eleven am for one dollar, and that I should go see him.

(05:59):
I really stalled for several months becauseof who I was. I thought
that he would just look right throughme. I thought the whole place.
They wouldn't want me there, theywould know that I was what I had
been. And she finally prevailed onme to go because she said he's really
old and if you don't go,you may never hear him. I mean,

(06:19):
how will you feel if this guywho changed your whole view of the
world, you know, you missedthe opportunity to see him speak. So
that convinced me. So one beautifulSunday morning, we went down there to
the Philosophical Research Society and he camewalking out and sat in his chair and

(06:39):
delivered a speech, and he didsomething that lecture, and he did something
that he often did with people Ifound out later when I worked there,
which is he looked right at meand he delivered a message that was mind
blowingly accurate for me. So dueto I guess you know just how I

(07:00):
felt about what I'd been doing.I had this paranoia about earthquakes that was
inflicted on me by the same personwho told me that Manly Hall was still
lecturing. She was moving to Virginiabecause he Edgar Casey prophecies had gotten to
her and she thought California was goingto drop off the map any minute.

(07:21):
And she spooked me because she wasso sure of herself, and I was
getting ready to move to Virginia toget away from the big earthquake. Well,
he looked right at me, andhe said, people who suffer fear
of natural disasters and other delusions causedby their suppressed guilt about the kind of

(07:42):
life they'd been leaving they've been leading. And that blew my mind, obviously,
I mean. And so he didthe same thing for my girlfriend who
had become my wife. And inher case it was she had noticed this
flower, a weed that was growingout of a crack and a sidewalk,

(08:05):
and she thought, it isn't thatamazing the power that a little flower like
that can have to get through thatconcrete. And he looked right at her
and he said, you know,just you know, enjoying the miracles of
nature, the way flowers break throughconcrete and blossom. Right, So we
just thought, some kind of magicis going on here. We got to

(08:26):
be involved in this place. Itwas such a beautiful, quaint but just
an oasis in the middle of LosAngeles that you would never know was there.
In this weird kind of Mayan meetsEgyptian style of architecture, and we
decided to volunteer. So the nextday we went down there and we walked

(08:48):
into the gift store and said,hey, we'd like to do anything we
can do around here to help out, and they were like, well,
we don't really need any volunteers,but we'll talk to you and see what
kind of skills you have and we'llkeep you in mind. So when we
got interviewed, they wanted Tamera thisis the girl, because she had experience
in office machines and filing and officestuff, and they thought that was great.

(09:11):
And I didn't have any experience exceptbeing a criminal and the lead singer
of a violent loud band, youknow. But they asked us a question
which was very faithful for my life, which was do you have any familiarity
with other languages? And I said, well, I grew up around German
and French and Polish, and soyeah, I've been around them. I

(09:37):
can understand them kind of, butI'm not good at it or anything.
And she was like, oh okay. So the next day they called up
and they gave Tamra a job.I was a dick and I refused to
I was like, no, no, no, I'm not staying at home
with the cats while you go workat this place. If they don't want
me, they don't get you,you know. And so she turned them

(09:58):
down. And then a day laterthey called me and they said, Manley
Hall wants to meet you. Beat his office tomorrow morning. So I
went down there and I was sonervous, you know, just I couldn't

(10:18):
believe it, right, And soyeah, so they take me in through
the office door. He's sitting behindthis stunning big Chinese desk, an ornately
carved, and the office is thisbig office and it's filled with beautiful art
and this big Japanese altar. Itwas just a vibe in there was unbelievable.

(10:41):
I've never felt any place so serene. And then he had behind him
there was on each side two elderlywomen standing with their arms folded like a
phalanx, you know, and theywere giving me the skunk guy he was,
and he said, come on inand make yourself miserable in this kind

(11:03):
of Barrymore meets W. C.Field's voice. And so I sat down
and he had a stack of paperin front of him. He pushed it
at me and he said, that'sa galley. I didn't know what.
I didn't know what a galley was. It's a manuscript for a book that's
going to be published, and so, you know, I'm looking at this

(11:26):
thing and he's like, oh,go ahead, take a look at it.
And it's an alchemical it's a collectionof all his rarest alchemical manuscripts and
books written out in a bibliography ofit, and it's in German and French
and Latin, and it was justyou know, measurements of the books and

(11:46):
very technical. And he said,I understand you have some familiarity with languages
and I said, yeah, butnot like this. I would really have
a problem with this. Maybe witha dictionary I could work my way through
it, but it would take along time. And he said, oh,
you'll do fine. He said,I want you to edit it.

(12:09):
And I, you know, Itold him, I'm sorry, but I
think you've a mistaken me. Idon't have those skills and I don't really
know anything about alchemy except what Ijust started reading in your book. And
he said, no, you're goingto do great. I'll help you out
here. Take this take this homewith you, look it over and then

(12:33):
come back and talk to me aboutit tomorrow. So I start to walk
out of the place and the vicePresident, Pat Irvin, a woman who'd
been in the military during World WarTwo. She went rushing around the side
and she headed me off and shewas like, give me that, and
she took it back from me.And I actually thanked her because I really

(12:56):
thought this was a mistake, andit was. I was in way over
my head and I just thought,this is awesome, you know, like
I just met him. I meanamazing. I'm sorry to disappoint him,
but still, what an experience.Oh yeah. So I got home that
afternoon and there was a phone callfrom his secretary and she said, many

(13:18):
hall his office tomorrow morning, firstthing. It's like, wow, okay,
So we went back first thing inthe morning, and this time when
I came in, it was justhim and his secretary coming in out.
He told me to sit down andhe said, from now on, you
take orders only from me. Andhe said, if anybody comes and they

(13:41):
tell you anything the contradicts what I'vetold you, you come to me and
you tell me that. Wow.And they said, you'll do fine.
I will get together with you inthe morning. I will let you know
what I think you should be workingon. You can have lunch with me
in the vault. You can askme any questions you want, and look

(14:01):
at any of the books that you'reworking on, or any of the books
in there, And in the afternoon, when we're getting ready to call it
a day, I will look overyour work. Wow, what an algure
it was. It was. It'sstill something that is hard to understand.
Only the only explanation I have forit is that he he had an amazing

(14:24):
way with synchronicity. It was illustratedin those lectures. Yeah, and and
I think you know, he thoughtthat I was the right guy showing up.
He just had the feeling that thathe had been brought who he needed.
And the weird thing was it turnedout to be correct, because I
turned out to have a lot ofskill in that area, right place,
right time. Yeah. So sothat began the seven years I spent with

(14:48):
him, And the beginning was reallyamazing because I got to spend lunches with
him in that vault, and Igot to find out about all these incredible
books. I got to hold themost holy Trino Sophia by Saint Germain and
leaf through it while he told meabout how he got it and what he

(15:09):
thought was in it, and Igot he I remember him, and he
told he handed me half of ascroll, right and he said here,
he said, hold this, andhe unraveled a bunch of it. And
it was an actual Ripley scroll,which are these like super rare alchemical scrolls.
There's less than you know then youcan count on your hands left in

(15:30):
the world. And he had aparticularly beautiful one, and just all this
hand painted, just gorgeous, youknow. He had stuff like he had
a book that somebody had made themselvesthat was part of Blovotsky's Esoteric section,
in which they had hand painted allthe auras and the chakras and all this
stuff. Just really a vault filledwith centuries of these amazing efforts people who

(16:00):
many many of them were risking theirlives in order to acquire this information and
to lay it down on paper andto share it with the future. And
I found it so inspiring to walkinto the whole library was that. But
the vault was really concentrated. Ithad things like the Backstorm Manuscripts, which

(16:22):
was like a dozen maybe I can'tremember exactly now, but of these orange
leather bound diaries from a ship's captain, Sigismund Backstrom, who was an alchemist
who'd been initiated into some kind ofa Rosicrucian order in Africa, and here

(16:42):
were his diary entries about alchemy andRosicrucianism and all this stuff. So,
I mean, just an amazing placeto be and to have him telling stories
about how he acquired these books andmanuscripts after the war when people thought they
were all nonsense. So he said, he found stacks of this stuff treated

(17:03):
like it was garbage and bookstores inEurope and was able to yeah, and
he was able to acquire you know, at prices pennies on the dollar of
what these things were really worth.And then eventually they became worth millions of
dollars and so and then we becamefriends. So that that was that was

(17:26):
the major way he acquired them,was just because nobody wanted them and he's
just like, I'll take them.Yeah. It was the ultimate opportunity,
you know. He had He hadsome backers of the Lloyd's, this mother
and daughter who were oil heiresses,right, and they were like the mother,
Carolyn was a a sculptor who studiedwith one of Rodin's personal students,

(17:48):
and the daughter had an apartment inParis where she hung out with Hemingway and
cock Tow, and apparently she flewManly Hall to Normandy in France for a
party at a chateau she was havingto celebrate Christmas. And that both of
them gave him bequests that paid himroyalties from their oil inheritance until he was

(18:19):
in his eighties and then it ranout finally, and that this really helped
him along the way, and theyprovided the money for him to travel and
to buy all these amazing things.And the timing. The real thing that
happened there was that people were sodisillusioned after the war. They felt like,

(18:41):
like all this idealism of alchemy andRosicrucianism and such was nonsense, and
everybody was really rushing towards this materialisticrealism and pragmatism, and so that's why
they were considered valueless at that time. He saw it as look how close
these things got to being lost forever, right, And that's a big reason

(19:04):
for the Secret Teachings Book, whichwas intended to take some of these most
precious ideas and diagrams and illustrations andput them all in one place so they
could be passed on to posterity andthey wouldn't be lost in a war or
you know, trashed in a naturaldisaster or something so real quick. So

(19:26):
he met the Lloyd's pretty early onin his life, because yeah, very
well, that had to be inhis late teens then or like early.
Yeahis he came to La in nineteennineteen when he was eighteen. Okay,
he told me that there was stillwooden sidewalks then when dis walks, Yeah,

(19:48):
there was such a big wow.Yeah. And theosophy at that time
was big in La Kratona was wasactive, and they had like these colonies
of crazy artists with crazy architecture,really wonderful, you know, these people
just kind of going for it allthe way with this stuff. And he

(20:08):
came into this environment and he foundout pretty quickly that he could lecture,
and he was kind of adopted bymissus max Heindel as she called herself,
the widow of the founder of theRosicrucian Fellowship and also the local Theosophists,
and he was seen as this brilliantyoung master who had suddenly appeared on the

(20:33):
scene. He was specifically aligned withsomething called the Church of the People,
and they also contributed money to helphim to go do these things that he
was doing, traveling and acquiring thingsand rare books and such, and also
art, and he had incredible Asianart, these buddhas and a giant prayer

(20:57):
wheel and all kinds of stuff.Well, thank god it stepped up,
because like, yeah, yeah,average person would have all the time to
put into the massive amount of researchand travel he would have to do.
Exactly he was information, you know. Yeah, he was supported, you
know, he he was. Heattracted that support, and partly because he

(21:18):
was so striking man. I meaneven when I knew him when he was
like eighties, in his eighties.He he has these huge blue eyes.
He was really tall. He hadthis dignified Barrymore profile, and had his
great voice, and he was hilariousand eloquent and so knowledgeable, you know,
so people were just drawn to him. He became a good friend of

(21:41):
Krishiana Murdy's when he was very young, and they would hang together and it
was like they were the masters,you know, all the older people and
theosophy and the other organizations were justwow, you know, look what we've
got here at Kristiana Murdy and amanly p Hall right, and so so
anyway we became friends. And henever used any notes in his lectures and

(22:03):
that never it's crazy. Yeah,yeah, he just sit down and just
go and it just dropped dates andnames and places and it was really beautiful.
I got to hear a lot ofthem, and it was amazing to
witness. And then later he well, the Pearl Thompson, who was Pearl
Thomas, who was the head librarianwhen I was there at PRS. She

(22:29):
decided that I should lecture and Ireally I'd never really done anything like that,
and I wasn't too crazy about theidea, but the whole place got
behind it. And then I askedhim and he said, yeah, you
know that I should. And sowhen I talked to him about how to
do it, he said, don'tuse notes, don't lecture about anything that

(22:51):
you don't know well enough to beable to talk about it for ninety minutes.
So they gave me a Sunday morning, which was they used to have
an evening lectures above the library ina smaller room, which is where you
started new lecturers. But for me, they put me into the main auditorium

(23:11):
on a Sunday morning. Oh boy. Yeah, so that was really intense
and I did really well. Ihad listened to him so many times,
you know, and I kind ofjust imitated that's what I saw him do
the way locked in, you know, And I was able to do it
for ninety minutes, and people wereblown away that a kid could do what

(23:34):
I had just done. And itwent over so well that I became his
designated substitute lecturer. So if hewas feeling under the weather and he couldn't
make it one Sunday morning, theyput me in there. And the first
one of those was wild because youknow, they're expecting to see manly Hall

(23:55):
and I come walking out right,and he picked the subject. Yeah.
So one of the subjects that Ihad to lecture on was marriage in the
New World Order. Wow, Imean, good luck, right, you
know. But I talked to himabout it and he was telling me,
well, the New World Order,that's the universal reformation of the Rosicrucians,

(24:18):
when human beings are more enlightened andthey're they're kinder to each other and to
the earth, and marriage is thesymbol of the body and the soul and
the union together and how when theylove each other they can create this,
you know. And so I hadenough to work on from getting his perspective
on it, and Tamer and Ihad an amazing time being friends with them.
They would take us out to dinner, we would go hang at their

(24:40):
house, and Marie Hall was brilliantand wild and angry and trying to save
the world, and it would gooff on long speeches about about the space
Mother and how creation happened, andmade these huge, beautif diagrams showing all

(25:02):
the different stages as she sawt ofcreation, drawing metaphors from Christianity, from
Greek mythology, anywhere, you know, just anything that symbolized what she was
trying to get across. She wasa trip, really amazing. At one
point he asked me to work withher for a year to try to help
her get her material together and totry to learn what she was talking about

(25:23):
so that I could share it withpeople. And that was an amazing experience.
And then at the end of theseven years he told me he wanted
to talk to me, and hesaid, it's time for you to go.
He said, I can see that. You know, I'm getting older,

(25:44):
and everybody here at PRS is youknow, we're getting very old.
There's going to be deaths, andthere's going to be a power struggle,
and I don't want you kids anywherenear it. And you need to go
out in the world and have yourown experiences. And by this time Tamer
and I were working as his screenersalso, so if people contacted him and

(26:07):
said, you know, I needto talk to you about this or that,
or they wanted him to get himinvolved in something, he would have
us speak with him and meet withthem first. And that was an amazing
and terrible I'm sure got some crazycalls. Holy cal Yeah he did.
He Uh, he got some reallycrazy I mean I talked to people who

(26:29):
thought they were growing third eyes,who wanted to photograph him naked. Yeah,
they could get his aura right,yeah, and people who a lot
of people who were really messed upfrom their spiritual paths. So uh.
And you can do that in anyin any path, you know, any
religion, in any path, almostanything human you can screw yourself up with.

(26:52):
But so he would get people whoceremonial magicians who had had suddenly realized
that they had not closed the circlecorrectly, and then would become obsessed with
the sensation that they were under demonicattack, or spiritualists who got involved with

(27:14):
the spirit that wouldn't leave them aloneand now was constantly tormenting them, all
kinds of things like that, Andso it was intense to see the casualties
of all these different spiritual paths andto see his position as the last resort
for many of them. People wouldturn to him just saying, well,

(27:36):
he has to know how to getme out of this mess. And he
had recipes for everybody. He hadvery simple cures for dealing with things like
ghosts that you couldn't get rid of. And I think that probably, I
mean, maybe there was something intrinsicin what he was suggesting that helped the

(27:59):
process, but I think a lotof it had to do with their faith
in him. And so when ManleyHall said if you do this, you'll
be free of this right, theybelieved it, and so they were free
of it. That was really intense, and definitely see that like kind of
like if a pastor told you somethingand you're super religious or into the church,

(28:21):
and you know, you put themon a pedestal in a sense,
so anything they say is gospel.Yeah. Yeah, it engages your own
subconscious to believe that they can happen, and then anything can almost anything can
happen. It reminds me of hislecture on black magic, and like he
was saying, like, if thisis too much for you, like you

(28:44):
could walk away for a bit,like you know, watch a sports game
or whatever you got to do.Like, yeah, he was really cool
that way. And the funny thingabout him too, is hanging with him.
He did not like to talk aboutwork, you know, like you
would answer anything questions that I hadfor sure, I mean that was not
a problem. But he wanted totalk about baseball, tell jokes, talk

(29:10):
about the time that he traveled toJapan and something funny that happened, and
just really pleasant, like civilized conversation, you know. It was so beautiful.
And we'd watch TV with them sometimes, which was a trip to see
the reactions to things like when MTVcame on. He was saying that this

(29:30):
stuff was like the ancient mysteries,using the lights and the sounds and the
substances that got people high in orderto create these theatrical representations of other worlds,
but that the tragedy was that thiswas happening to people who get no
guidance, so they open up alltheir psychic centers and then they're victimized by

(29:52):
whatever comes through, not realizing thatthat's what's happening. So that was or
they would take us to a museum, which was awesome, right because they
mean to go walking through a museumwith Manly and Marie Hall was like a
doctorate education, you know. Theywould the two of them would just have
conversations in front of stuff and wewould just listen. Yeah, exactly.

(30:15):
It was so wonderful. So itwas really tough to leave. We didn't
want to. I thought he wastesting me, and I kept refusing to
go, trying to work with himand and he but he was very firm
about it. And we played thisgame kind of because I guess I was
doing it because I kept coming backand saying, all right, so if

(30:37):
I'm leaving, you have to you'vegot to bless what I'm going to do
next. I need to know thatyou're okay with where I'm going. So
I said things like I had actuallygotten into Harvard grad school, and I
was like what if I go toHarvard and I get a degree, and
I come back and you know,I defend your work and the PRS and
I make all of this metaphysical stuff, you know, more palatable to academia.

(31:03):
And he was like, no,shook his head. No. And
I remember another thing I said was, well, I've got a teacher who
thinks I'd be a really great novelist. What about a no you know?
And I think it's happened like fiveor six times, you know, And
I can't remember all the things Isuggested. But finally I said, well,
you know, I came to youfrom music. Maybe I should go

(31:26):
back to music. And to myshock, because he did not approve of
the kind of music that I wasgoing to be doing, he nodded yes,
and sometimes I think he was justtired of doing it. He was
like he was like, get outof here, and he said, okay,
so music, you know, it'sokay. Music is going to be.
But at the same time, therewas a guy hanging around there that

(31:48):
we screened for him, and bothTammer and I were like, Thissgui's bad
news. And he had a badvibe and the way he talked was manipulative,
and he just not a good guy. So we thought the guy was
gone, but it turned out thathe had become friends with the Halls,

(32:12):
and people at PRS were alarmed bywhat was going on, how he kind
of took over their lives, andso they kept trying to get Tamara and
I to intervene, and so weshowed up for really what was a welfare
check. They had said to usonce the Halls that we could come by
any time without calling, so wedid. The only time we ever did

(32:34):
it was was this time. Itshowed up at the door and you know,
this dude answer the door. Hisname was Fritz, and he didn't
want to let us in. ButMarie heard my voice and she was like,
you know, Ron, come in, and so we you know,
it was weird. You know,they seemed okay, they seemed happy,
they were eating better, they wereeating organic food. She was thrilled because

(32:57):
he was getting her her first computer. And this was in the very early
days of computers. That was excitingthat the idea of being able to get
online. And this was like theearly nineties, or this is not quite
yet, this is like eighty seven, you know, somewhere in there eighty
eight and so the it was weirdthough he was weird. He was like

(33:21):
like hanging around in the corners andlistening and spying on us. It was
just creepy. So, you know, you are you okay? Are you
guys okay? Yes, everything's fine, you know, so what can we
do? Nothing? You know?And then finally Tamera asked him to meet
with him because she was kind ofobsessed with us. She really felt that

(33:45):
this guy was harmful, and sowe had yeah, and so we had
another meeting with him, and thiswas in his office, and she got
hysterical because he kept saying, youknow, fine, I hear what you're
saying. There's nothing to worry about. And she she kind of lost it

(34:07):
and she was like, she actuallysaid, this guy is going to try
to kill you. Wow. Andwell he was pissed. He didn't get
pissed, He very seldomly got pissed. But he got a very stern look
and he lifted up his hand stopand he looked at her, you know,

(34:29):
and he looked at me and itwas definitely I told you to get
out of here. And he didn'tsay it, but but that was what
was in his eyes you know.So at that point that was it,
you know, like like we decided. Tamar felt absolutely humiliated because she felt
that she had She knew that ifshe got hysterical like Marie that he would

(34:52):
not be okay with that, andshe she lost it, and so she
felt like she had lost the chanceto warn him, and she was too
embarrassed to come back. And Ithought, well, then this is it,
right, I mean, this ishe's been telling me to leave,
so this is the time to leave. So yeah, that's that's what happened.
And we took off and didn't lookback. And that guy may have

(35:16):
killed him. Wow. And noone's really sure, but the cops and
the judge thought that there was somekind of wrongdoing, but that there wasn't
enough evidence. Wow. And theguy had just convinced the Halls to sign
over control of all their assets tohim. Oh my god. So he

(35:38):
was like playing the power of attorneyrole almost, Yeah, he was,
he got power of attorney. Hewound up in lawsuits with Marie and PRS
for several years battling over this stuff. I had never heard about any of
this. Wow. Yeah, it'spretty brutal, you know, it's a
terrible way to go, and alot of people have kind of used this

(36:00):
to disrespect Manley Hall because they feelif he was so wise, you know,
how could he permit this man toget away with what he was doing.
And my feeling, I'm not sureabout the answer to that. I
think there were some things the guywas doing as a holistic healer that were
helping them both feel better, andI think that in some way, I

(36:23):
think he embraced it. Like youknow, I can look at it from
a distance and say that this man, whether he did it deliberately or he
was just this messed up guy,he had left a trail of damage behind
him before getting into Manley Hall's life, and after Manley Hall he was completely

(36:45):
out. I mean, he wasinvolved in court cases then he died,
and so maybe he kind of tookhim out, you know, And I
don't know, but it's too bad. I had no idea about any of
that. Yeah, I was elderof you died of natural causes. I
had no idea. Well, it'spossible that he he did, but it

(37:07):
was, you know, it wasweird. The whole thing was weird.
They put him in this win abago, you know, because they Marie
wanted to go lecture on her stuffin California and Arizona, and so they
thought it'd be good for him toget out. But they've got, you
know, this eighty some year Ithink it's almost ninety at that point,
and he's in a hot wind abago driving through you for hours through hot

(37:30):
temperatures, and yeah, it wasweird. And then also they separated Marie
from him, which is something thatrarely happened unless he was going to work.
And then he died when they wereseparated. So the whole thing was
was very They moved the body,that's the other thing, and brought it

(37:52):
back to La and put it onthe bed, and the coroner noticed that
there were ants on it, youknow, and in him that were the
result of having been They were ableto identify the ant right what area was
from, and so they were like, this body's been moved. The whole
thing was just that's strange. Itwas very bizarre, and I think it

(38:15):
was really elder abuse. I thinkthe greed of seeing all this money,
you know, the house, themultimillion dollar stamp collection, and then having
control over prs would have made thisguy into a multi millionaire overnight. I
think Manly had a big target onhis back, or you know, he
was a big magnet for people,and yeah, that could attract you know,

(38:36):
negative influences as well, I'm sure, or yeah, people not with
the best of intentions. So forsure hear that I had no idea about
any of that. I'm sorry tobe the bearer of such bad tidings,
but it is part of the ofhis story. And there is a letter.
If you go online you look upMarie Bauer Hall and Manly Hall's murder,

(38:57):
you can read what she wrote aboutit. Wow, I'm gonna have
to check that out. So afterthat, I tried to get into the
music world to re enter it.It was still even though it was the
end, it was still kind ofdominated by hair metal. As we get
into like nineteen ninety in there andand man, I've met a lot of

(39:21):
like really dumb guys, and Ididn't know what I was going to do.
I just felt like, why didhe tell me to come here?
This is ridiculous. You know.At a certain point, Tamra said to
me, Look, if these moronscan play guitar, I can learn to
play guitar, So why don't yougive me like a few months to get

(39:45):
started here and let's see what wecan do. And I said, well,
if you're going to learn how toplay guitar, I'm going to learn
how to play guitar. And thefunny thing was that she turned out to
be my singer. I'd been asinger and I turned out to be a
guitar player. And we we gottogether this thing called cat Cult, which
was just kind of home recordings.Then we became roadies for this amazing hardcore

(40:07):
band that never really got out ofLA. But they were an all female
band called Girl Jesus, and theywere really good. And then we ran
into Riot Girl and we became aband, and we became a Riot Girl
band. We were like sort ofthe Riot Girl band in LA for a

(40:29):
little while. We toured nationally andwe toured you know, a bunch of
Riot Girl conventions, going up anddown the coast, and created our own
independent label and and then kind ofmorphed into kind of grew out of Riot
Girl in punk and started doing deconstructionand rock stuff and deconstruction this metal stuff

(40:50):
and got to work with amazing peoplelike Ken Can Ken from the band Candeia,
Patti she shemmel from and some ofMoby's musicians and just really wonderful musicians
that we got to play with.And one day, you know, we
did a totally improv record in Tacoma, Washington with Patti shmel and with her

(41:15):
brother Larry from Death Valley Girls laterand he'd been in the Flesh Eaters and
and that album became number one oncollege right, like a full improv record
that became a number one record oncollege radio, which was amazing. But

(41:35):
we were very low profile. Weformed as a band right after Cobaine's suicide,
and we we thought that it wasthe business that did that to him.
And so, you know, eventhough we had like Danny Goldberg,
who was his manager, was abig friend of Cameras and loved our band
and wanted to sign us a coupleof different times a different label, and

(42:00):
we just always I remember one timewe went to Atlantic when he was there
and big building, you know,and and we like walked in this massive
like lobby that was three stories highwith giant posters of their artists and novice
and and the lady looked at uslike, what are you scumbags doing?

(42:21):
Her. We were like Danny Goldbergand she was like okay, and then
she was like okay, yeah,he wants to see you, but you've
got to wait about ten minutes.We went and sat down. We waited
about five minutes, and the secretarygot up to do something and we ran
out of there. I ever wrotehim and said, I'm sorry, Danny,
that play scared the shit out ofus. I bet yeah. And

(42:45):
so so we were, you know, low profile but making music for like,
you know, twenty some odd years. I mean, we've planned to
still make more music, but it'sit's really tough right now in Los Angeles.
Was hardly any musicians left here?Yeah, just a lot, but
you know, not our style.That's that's amazing, brother, Like your
story is so unique and inspiring allat the same time, Like before we

(43:09):
drift too far away from manly andsure, man, thank you for enlightening
enlightening me to how we went upor how we left this world. But
I just had a few questions onlike what you mentioned a little bit about
like you know, how he usedthe term new World Order versus you know,

(43:32):
conspiracy culture of today, How howpeople have ran with that? So
I wanted to ask you to kindof separate those or tell the difference.
And I was also curious about Manly'sperspective on plant medicine and like the psychedelic
revolution and how that played a rolein the spiritual path or spiritual enlightenment.

(43:58):
Was he kind of a yinst theuse of plant medicines and remaining sober or
was he open to those practices?Good questions. For the first one.
It is interesting. I mean,he's one of those that has been I
guess, especially because of his connectionto Freemasonry, has been thought of as

(44:22):
this evil Illuminati, reptilian or something. And then of course his constant references
to America's secret destiny and to thenew World Order and the elite that was
going to create a world government andall of that has made him fodder for
conspiracy theories, which is is sucha shame, and really because his ideas

(44:46):
about all these things were completely differentthan what they mean now. And so
for instance, when he talked about, you know, a one world government,
he's picturing the closest thing I cangive you is like the Federation and
Star Trek, right, It's it'syou know, it's just enlightened bunch of
you know, really good people,normal human beings, good human beings who

(45:09):
have risen above greed and hate andare now, you know, managing the
resources of the planet in a waythat is intended to be good for everyone.
And of course that's pipe dream.You know that this maybe in the
future, it's possible, but buthuman beings, being what they are,
it's very seldomly happens that when youput people in that kind of control that

(45:32):
they actually do work for the goodof everyone. But he believed that that
was human destiny, that human beingswould reach the point where they could do
this. And the New World Oratorrelated to the Rosicrucian Universal Reformation, and
this was that's a whole like huge, I'll try to keep this brief,

(45:53):
but like the Rosicrucians, there wasa time in year Europe around sixteen hundred
when there had been bubbling sort ofaccult renaissance through writers like Boethius and Agrippa
and Giardano Bruno, and some ofthis was science really beginning, and there

(46:21):
were people called celestial intelligencers who theywere like the hubs of information. They
would experiment with telescopes or microscopes,or other versions of science and also mysticism,
and then they would share the informationwith people like themselves in other countries
or even across the ocean. Andso in sixteen hundred they started seeing comments

(46:45):
and a nova, all the celestialstuff was happening, and people thought,
wow, this must portend something.And amongst Protestants there was the feeling that
this was the end of the strangleholdthat the Atholic Church hat on Europe.
And so they saw the possibility thatsomeone by the name of Frederick of the

(47:08):
Elector Palatine, a German who hadjust married the daughter Elizabeth of King James
of England, meant that England andGermany were about to unite in a kind
of holy war against the Pope andagainst the Habsburg imperial power in Spain and

(47:30):
Austria that it controlled Europe for solong. And students in Germany and in
the Palatine and those areas got excitedabout it, and some of them wrote
the Rosicrucian Manifestos it would appear.And these manifestos, which were supposed to
be privately circulated and were a combinationof political diatribe, mystical declaration, declaration,

(48:00):
and for science, but also lampoon. There was humor mixed in there.
These were intended to be kind of, you know, a little private
lampoons or sources of inspiration also,and they became hugely popular in the public
realm. And the result of thatwas that there was like hundreds of books

(48:22):
and pamphlets published, some of themsaying, you know, I want to
be a Rosicrucian. Look I getyour stuff, you know, and then
other people writing the Rosicrucians are devils. They're they're they're the devil's Jesuits,
you know, they're destroying Christianity.And the people behind the Rosicrucian were very

(48:43):
disappointed by how people reacted. Andand then also Frederick made a very stupid
decision because he thought God was withhim, which was when Bohemia offered him
their throne, which was usually partof the imperial throne of the Holy Roman

(49:04):
Emperor. He took the job.And that was a big mistake because it
was like he was saying, well, I want to be a Protestant Holy
Roman Emperor. The Catholic Church andthe Hobsburgs were none too happy about that
idea, and immediately there was awar and there was a horrible victory defeat

(49:25):
at White Mountain, a victory forthe Catholics that just wiped out a whole
army, and poor Frederick was basicallya refugee royal for the rest of his
life. So was Elizabeth, becauseher father had no intention of supporting the
cause. He didn't want to goto war and spend all that money in
blood, and he thought it wasa bad mistake for this kid to become

(49:46):
king of Bohemia. So the Rosicrucianswere. Part of the ideas that they
had was this idea of the UniversalReformation, and the universal information was that
science and freedom of religion and thehermetic arts, the occult arts were going

(50:07):
to create a new society that wasso much more enlightened than the society of
the time. Medicine would be better, government would be better. Everything would
be more true, more human,more just, and this would be a
universal Reformation. The Pope would be, i think in one of the manifestos,

(50:29):
scratched with nails until he was dead, and there would be freedom,
freedom of conscience, freedom of science. And now the other thing about the
Universal Reformation was it was not meantto be like a big revolution, and

(50:49):
you write books and you go,I want to be a rose. It
was supposed to be each individual intheir corner of the universe trying to bring
a universal reformation to your little cornerof the universe, and in your own
life exemplifying the Rosicrucian principles, whichincluded learning how to heal and doing it

(51:12):
for free, especially for people whocouldn't afford it, protecting the innocent,
studying the hermetic knowledge and the otherartane traditions, and all these things were
supposed to be practiced in your ownlife and then shown how in your work,
in your family, among your friends, in your town, you would
become this Rosicrucian presence without having tosay that you were a Rosicrucian. And

(51:38):
there were people who did this,by the way, Like in the book,
you'll encounter John Winthrop the Younger,who he went looking for Rosicrucians around
I think sixteen twenty eight. Heactually went all the way to Constantinople trying
to do what father CRC had allegedlydone and meet up with Arabian masters who

(52:01):
would teach him the mysteries. Andhe didn't find any resiprutions. He was
very disappointed, and he eventually wasbrought to America by his father, John
Winthrop the Elder, who was thegovernor of Boston. And he when he
comes over, Winthrop the Younger bringswith him alchemical books, alchemical equipment,

(52:29):
John D's library. I mean,totally a astrologer, you know, John
D. John D's symbol, themomus hieroglyphica is is actually written on the
luggage that Winthrop the Younger brings withhim to America to identify it, which
is amazing. I always say that'slike, you know, imagine a Southern

(52:52):
pastor whose kid has pentagrams on hisluggage. Right. And so he became
a famous alchemist, a famous healerall through Connecticut Territory where he was governor.
He would heal people for free withthe medications that he came up with.
He protected the innocent. He protectedthe Pequot tribe from the Mohegans and

(53:13):
helped them regain their property and theirnames. He pursued the studies of Kabbalah
and alchemy and astrology. And healso gives us a way of seeing that
the Pilgrims were not the kind ofanti occult devout Christians, that we are

(53:36):
taught to believe that his own fatherwas okay with him having an alchemical lab
in the house, that they wereinterested in astrology. That maybe most of
all, is that his good friendCaughton maither Right, the witch judge and
the ultimate symbol of Puritan religious purein control. When Winthrop the Younger died,

(54:04):
he eulogized him as Hermes christianis theChristian Hermes. Well, Hermes is
either the Greek god Hermes or it'sHermes thrice great, and either way that
is pagan in all capital letters.And so we have this devout pilgrim saying
that his best friend, who wasthis brilliant guy, was a Christian pagan

(54:25):
and that was a good thing,you know. So it shows you that
the whole picture of what American is, the whole point in my book,
which by the way, began inthat vault, because he had this big
leather tome in there and I pulledit out, well, actually I didn't.

(54:46):
I saw it and I went,what's that? It said the Platonist
on it, and he said,oh, that's a good one. Why
don't you grab that and take alook at it? So I pulled it
out of the bottom shelf and openedit, and it was a newspaper that
was bound in this leather volume.It had been printed around the time of
the gunfight at the Ok Corral inSaint Louis, when Saint Louis was still

(55:08):
a cow town, and it wasfilled with translations of Plato and Proclusts and
neo Platonists, and filled with translationsby Abner double Day of Alifis Levi the
Magas from Paris, which is amazingand weird. And so I want to

(55:30):
know all about this, like howin the world did this thing exist in
the world of cowboys? Right?And he didn't really know. There wasn't
much information about it. Then itstarted me on a long trail, a
long journey of trying to find outabout these people who were behind this.
And fortunately for me, I remember, you know, when I started out,

(55:52):
when Tamer and I were touring,we would go to libraries and you
know, colleges, and I wouldtry and find books. And I found
one little book published in the nineteensixties called Platonists of the Midwest that raised
more questions than it answered. Butthen there was an explosion of academic study
in this area because there was arevolution in academia trickling forward in the eighties

(56:15):
and nineties, explosive into two thousandsand then accelerating in the twenty tens and
on of study of the esoteric wassuddenly acceptable. And so all these archives
and all this information became available thatwas never available to amateur occult scholars.

(56:36):
And so I found out all aboutthese people, and their stories were amazing,
and I felt I just had towrite it down. And I found
also so many other incredible stories aboutthis completely different America that were never told
about, that was here from thevery beginning and was the completely different thing

(57:00):
than the America that we're taught about. And you know, like the Pagan
Pilgrim I write about, who wasthis very early competitor to the Pilgrims who
celebrated May Day America. Yeah,Tom Morton, and he invited everybody,
all the indigenous tribes, pirates,smugglers, the Pilgrims, and uh,

(57:25):
he was really the vision of Americabody. But yet just uh, you
know, inviting everyone, wanting tolearn everything about every you know, he
was the Pilgrims didn't want to knowanything about what the indigenous people were doing
or knew, or what they believed. Tom Morton wanted to know everything.

(57:45):
What kind of dreams do you have? How do you treat your families?
What kind of water springs are there? There are there around here? Are
they good for anything? In particular? You know, he loved America's nature,
whereas the Pilgrims feared it. Andso I look at him. He
was a great hunter, you know, the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims imprisoned him

(58:06):
and then they were starving in winter, and so he swore that he would
come back. But he was like, let me go hunt some food for
you. You're surrounded by food,you helpless idiot, you know. And
he did. He went out andhe got him food, and he came
back and went back in the jailcell. And so to me, that's

(58:27):
you know, I look at him, and I go, there, that's
the America that we all want,you know, that we used to believe
in. And he became so cynicalbehind this other version of and this Christian
dominionist kind of rewrite of history thatleft all those people, I mean,
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of peoplein American history who did amazing things,

(58:49):
and who had these other beliefs,you know, who were coming out of
those traditions of paganism or spiritualism andall these different approaches and much of the
Christianity, I should add in America, which first of all, if you
get into this and you study scholarslike Butler, what you find out is
it was never in the early yearsuntil the big Christian revivals, the Great

(59:15):
Awakening and such, but in theearly years where we're constantly told how Christian
it was. If you look intothe historical records, you find governors and
priests and ministers complaining that they can'tget Americans into the churches. When you
look at the percentagesoms they're not identifyingas Christians, and people are complaining about,

(59:42):
well, they just bring their ownfolk beliefs with them and then they
keep practicing them wherever they are andthey don't want anything to do with the
church. So or how for instance, that in the Civil War era,
fifteen percent of Americans identified as spiritthat's a huge percentage of people. So

(01:00:05):
all that kind of went to thewayside as history ignored it, and yet
it's a vital part of everything thatour country is and to me. It's
like America's shadow. We always talkabout America's shadow in the other sense,
the empire, right, you know, we're a great democracy and we love
people and we're very supportive, butwe're actually a racist empire that you know,

(01:00:30):
has a stranglehold on the world,most finary, the militarism. But
there's another American shadow, and that'sthe American shadow of the hermetic, the
occult astrology, of of being opento other people's ideas, of eclecticism and
syncretism and bringing together all the differentpaths and creating a new path or as

(01:00:55):
Emerson said, why should we bedependent on the visions of God of people
who came before us? Why can'twe have our own direct revelations like they
did? A very American idea,right, because that was the whole idea,
was to break away from the church, like yeah, the freedom of

(01:01:15):
religion. Yeah, And it kepthappening. You know, there would be
they would move here and then agood example is John Winthrop the Younger.
So the Pilgrims come here to practicefreedom of religion, and then John finds,
well, there's no freedom of religionfor me in Boston, so he
goes out to Connecticut and starts awhole new thing, or the way that

(01:01:36):
Roger Williams for the same reason,because he was preaching that there should be
a separation of religion and state,and that every person should have freedom of
their soul. And he's not goodin Boston. So he goes out and
he starts Rhode Island, right,and he welcomes all the people that aren't
welcome in Boston. So we havea history in America of of new settlements

(01:02:02):
based on freedom of religion and onyou know, these Rosicrucians you were mentioning
Efrauda. You're getting Rosicrucians who arecoming out from Germany and creating these experimental
communities that are meant to be Rosicrucianprinciples in action. So tremendously exciting stuff

(01:02:24):
to me, and nothing that wedidn't see in the nineteen sixties really with
the hippies getting into astrology and doingcommunes. But this has been going on
in America all the way back totally, and so much wonderful art connected to
it and music and such an influenceon really all the best aspects of America.

(01:02:46):
Agree more, Yeah, I haveso many more questions like along with
that, but like getting back tothe manly's thoughts on plant medicine, or
like how we saw that I justwant yeah, let's yeah. Yeah.
He thought he respected that that plantmedicines could be very effective. He talked

(01:03:09):
about how likely it was that theywere used in the Greek mysteries, right,
and he was aware of traditions inIndia such as Solma right, right,
and so he would write on thesesubjects. But he also felt like,
I mean much like what he saidabout MTV. He felt that that

(01:03:32):
in modern culture, the tragedy wasthat people were getting these substances without any
training, and so they were justdoing it for fun or in ways that
were nevertheless impacting them and opening upelements of their inheritance as human beings that

(01:03:58):
they were not equipped to deal with. And so some of them would become
psychic, or they would they wouldfreak out and get paranoid, or all
kinds of issues would happen. Andso he felt that it was a bad
combination to mix metaphysics, which initself can have that impact, right,
because when you first get into metaphysics, all the bad shit comes pouring out

(01:04:21):
sometimes and then now add drugs tothat, and you can really get yourself
into some weird situations, like,you know, let's take some ascid and
do ceremonial magic. And some peoplecan do this, you know, some
people can have incredible journeys doing thesekinds of precise experimentations involving these substances.

(01:04:41):
But he thought that that was somethingthat was it was rare to have somebody
who had that kind of stability.And he had said about metaphysics that I
had asked him once, if hehad it all to do over again,
would he change anything, And hesaid that he would have de emphasized the

(01:05:05):
invisible masters and the initiates, andthat side of his teaching that he drew
very heavily from theosophy, the kindof glamorizing the superhuman. And he also
said that he would have made ita major point that people should study some

(01:05:26):
kind of psychology before they study metaphysics, because any system of psychology that would
help them understand how they work asa psyche, their emotions and such,
would help them avoid problems down theline in metaphysics, so they would be
able to identify something like, oh, that's the shadow, and then I

(01:05:47):
think the other thing was that hesaw the way that where we kind of
are headed now, I think,which is he was always worried about the
mercantile aspect of it, so thatthese drugs were not in the hands of
priests of temple mysteries. These drugswere being circulated at the time by criminal

(01:06:10):
cartels, and to some degree nowthey were being sold by local people who
had no knowledge of how to workwith them. And then he was saying
that that it was also impacting thedrugs themselves, because for example, you
can see I think it was superior. Actually, you know, I wasn't

(01:06:31):
there, but I had friends whowere musicians, successful musicians in the sixties
and in the early seventies, andthey were always taught telling me about the
amazing drugs. You know, thecocaine back then that was cocaine, and
the kaeludes, oh my god,you know, and all stuff that I
never had a chance to try.But even then you could see that a

(01:06:54):
lot of the drugs were sort ofbeing tinkered into the sort of for sex,
you know, like like like itjust gets you a horny kind of
kind of approach to drugs. Yeah, And that he felt was you were
perverting the actual use of these drugsto open up the divine level of self.

(01:07:15):
And he could see the danger.And I think that that we're seeing
it now. Look at the drugsthat you know that my friend Arc Johnson,
who played guitar for Tim Buckley,was enjoying in Laurel Canyon in the
nineteen sixties. And then look whatkids have today, fenatle laced bullshit,

(01:07:36):
you know, speed and just terriblecrack and just all the drugs suck.
You know, they're not natural,they're not spiritual there, they're destructive chemicals
for the most part. And thento make matters worse, you have all
this money pouring into psychedelics. You'vegot people like feel who is a right

(01:07:59):
winger out to there, who's spendingtons of money on trying to turn Ketaman
into a shop that, you know, in a local mall where you can
just go and if you hate yourjob and you hate your life, rather
than tangling with those questions, youcan just sedate yourself with Ketemy and you
know you're you're going to be fineand get back to the life you hate

(01:08:20):
and not hate it. So it'salmost like anesthetic or kind of agent.
Yes, brainwashing almost to a degree, and the way that pharmaceutical companies are
pulling these substances out of their naturalcontext, right, and so we're going
to take you're not going to smokeweed. You're going to have this this

(01:08:44):
chemical and a pill that we've takenfrom the weed, like, and we're
moving everything further and further away fromreconnecting with nature, which was the original
purpose of these drugs exactly. Icouldn't agree more And it really made me
think about like Terrence McKenna would alwaysrecommend before anyone or it's a journey with

(01:09:04):
ayahuasc or even like a high mushroomdose. He said, I encourage all
of you to read psychology in alchemy, but Carl Jung to understand your subconscience
and understand all these entities and thingsyou'll encounter that are all parts of you
that you need to address before youcan truly understand what you're getting yourself into.

(01:09:28):
So it totally embodies that same thingI think mainly was hitting on and
how you smoke on that. Soit's like it's also like Tim Leary right
with the psychedelic Bible, you know, the taking the Tibetan Book of the
dead and then turning it into aguide book for people taking acid, so
you kind of it is a bardothat you're experiencing in those states, So

(01:09:53):
you have those concepts makes it alot easier to navigate. Totally agree more,
but yeah, thank you for coveringthat. I was very because you
know, you listen to like alecture like Cocaine and Karma, which that
Oh I could listen to that oneover and over, but you know,
he just really hits on like it'svery important to like keep a sober state

(01:10:15):
of mind. And I was justcurious if he made any exceptions to you
know, natural plant medicines and indigenouscultures and things, or he was kind
of just like nope, like soberover everything, which I get, Like,
I totally understand where he's coming from. So yeah, I think he
I think he was. He wasbig on teaching sobriety because of how society

(01:10:41):
was in need of it. Andhe would have, you know, a
martini in the afternoon, right,that was his favorite drug and just a
coffee cup with a martini in it. And so he appreciated measured moderate intoxication.
Yeah, and the way it cankind of lift you and and he

(01:11:02):
certainly was aware of the sacred usesof these substances. It was the recreational
use of it that he was concernedabout. He thought that it really,
I mean, if you think aboutit, it is true how it can
pervert people's lives, especially through addictionsand certainly when dealing with spirituality, and

(01:11:23):
especially in the early years of practice. Sobriety is your friend. It really
helps you to have a more groundedsense when you're really learning to fly.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.And you know, this is something I
heard you talk about on other shows. But just like the traps we can

(01:11:45):
fall into early on on the spiritualpath or getting into the occult of like
you know, uh seman retention andlike the perfect diet or you can only
plant based and like all these pitfallsthat we can fall into. And I
can't remember how you stated it,but just kind of going to baidly with
some of those things as you werefiguring you're figuring it out for yourself of

(01:12:10):
like I don't have to like youknow, live this perfect life, like
you could be human too. Alongwith that, Yeah, that was coming
to understand that. Tamra Uh wrotea book about our friendship with Manly Hall
called making the Ordinary Extraordinary in whichshe talks about that and much too.

(01:12:32):
I mean, I was being kindof ridiculous. But when I first got
to PRS, she called it initiatefever, right, yeah, which is
you know, I just wanted toI wanted to meet an initiate and I
wanted to be an initiate. Iwas like, you know, I want
to be this incredible superhuman. I'msupposed to have the heritage of being.

(01:12:56):
And so I took on everything Icould, you know, sell was see
and diet and just completely drove myselfinsane with with limitations alifis Levi's advice for
all the different things you had todo to be ready to do the great
work and uh and uh. AndI got myself in trouble because part of

(01:13:20):
that was charity and and you know, kindness to people. And I got
hustled by somebody who I met atBode Tree bookstore who wound up moving into
my my apartment and then was liketrying to just squat there. I thought
that they were somebody of a fairlyhigh spiritual attainment and and then it was

(01:13:42):
revealed that they just played me andI went and talked to him about it.
We both did, Tamara and Iand uh he he and Marie.
I remember it was lightning was goingon outside and we were in a small
dark room and they were laughing theirasses at me. Am I thinking about
you know, well, I thought, well, you know, but I
had to be nice to her.She asked me for a place to stay,

(01:14:05):
and she had a kid, andyou know, and what kind of
initiate would I be if I saidno? And they thought that was funny,
and so he said, he said, well, you tell her that
I said that she has to leave, and if she doesn't that I told
you to call the police. Andso she left. But there's other ways

(01:14:28):
that that that happens, like theobvious one, of course, is proselytizing
your friends, which is, thereis nothing more horrible and boring than when
you first discover spirituality and you startkilling your friends with it. And then
the other thing that I've really beentrying to talk about lately is something I
see everywhere is we now today haveaccess to all the information of everything that

(01:14:59):
made it into history, everything thatsurvived about spiritual experience, about the spiritual
path is now available to us.You can get online and find out about
almost any time, any place,what people were doing spiritually, what was
their rituals. Everything is out there, and we must remember that each of

(01:15:23):
these paths was, for the mostpart, the only path where it was
happening, or one of very fewpaths. And so what I find is
that people kind of get intellectually addictedto collecting what I call ladders, because
each of these paths are ladders,right, and they're a ladder from how

(01:15:46):
to get from fully immersed in mybody and I forgot who I am,
to awakening the soul and having yourtrue consciousness while you're alive. And what
happens, I think is that peoplewind up collecting ladders, but they never
climb them. So you could concentrateon one of these things and probably get

(01:16:10):
what you want. You could concentrateon ten of them and get what you
want. And I've done this too. You wind up studying everything and never
actually doing it right, never actuallyclimbing. And there's still some good from
that. We learn and we evolvefrom doing that intellectually. But the other
thing I've noticed is that people seemto think that it requires the utmost and

(01:16:34):
serious rigor, right like academic levelrigor in this work. And I have
found in my own experience and inmy research that's quite the opposite, that
being playful is what really opens it, and that when you bring rigor into

(01:16:55):
it, often you lose it becauseit's it becomes too intellectual and not enough
in the heart, and the soulis finding a hard time getting past all
the intellectual symbolization and contradictions and paradoxesand which are all fascinating and wonderful,
But the actual experiences that are meantto be created by these ladders are sometimes

(01:17:24):
missed by people who know a lotabout them. And I think we see
that all over the place these days, where it's like overkill of knowledge and
the playfulness of it, the beautyof it, the creativity. Also,
I would add the willingness to kindof make your own paths. So in

(01:17:45):
my translation of the of the Orphan, my translation Tamer and I translated it
together. But in the Orphic Hymnsbook there is uh we talk about Agrippa,
and Agrippa said that it was themost effective form of natural magic,
the orphic hymns. But he alsosaid, well, you know, so
for that reason, check them out, but write your own hymns. Yeah,

(01:18:10):
do your own rituals exactly, AndI think that's great, key key
understanding exactly. It makes me thinkof you know, analysis paralysis and information
overload. But it also makes methink of you know, getting into theosophy
and you know, trying to makeconnections with all the traditions and see the

(01:18:31):
similarities in them all. It's likewhich one do I choose? Like,
and you can't just choose one becauselike I resonate with that holy is,
Like I don't just want to beput into a box of this one tradition,
like I go to a local sweatlodge, but I'm open to the
teachings and the Bible or the bagavadGita or all these other traditionally and it's
a beautiful thing to be able totry. It's like I call it triangulation.

(01:18:56):
But it's like you by by lookingat all these different holy texts and
practices and trying them out, you'relearning about this secret it's behind them,
and it's a secret because it escapeswords exactly. That's it, Yeah,
beautifully said brother, thank you.Yeah, So getting back to you know,

(01:19:20):
just kind of our lost history regardingthe founding of this country. I've
heard you talk about, you know, like the Cavaliers versus the Puritans,
and like how they differed from oneanother. And ironically, like I was
forced into a Catholic high school growingup, since left Catholicism many years after,

(01:19:43):
but our mascot was the Cavaliers,and like what I mean, it
makes sense in a way, butit is weird, yeah, because you
know the thing about the Catholic Churchwas that the Protestants were always so pissed
off about in Europe was that theCatholics were drinking wine and fornicating and doing
all this this Mediterranean stuff, andin the North they were they were like,

(01:20:05):
what does this have to do withJesus? You just you know,
you just give an indulgence then it'sokay. But yeah, that's a fascinating
thing to me. The way thatthe split that exists in America today we're
seeing in such high relief existed inEngland prior to America. And this was

(01:20:28):
the Cavaliers were the Royalists and ifyou what they looked like, they had
long hair, they usually had theVan Dyke beard. They dressed up flamboyantly.
They were fighters. They were theywere normally soldiers. They wore big
cod pieces. They were famous for. Cod pieces were like a shell that

(01:20:50):
you wore over your junk and tobring attention to it. And they would
wear big oversized cod pieces, youknow, like spinal tap. And the
They love drinking, they love women, they love Shakespeare in poetry and theater.
They were like Mary England is thecavaliers Mary Old England. And the

(01:21:15):
Puritans were don't laugh. Laughter isoffensive to God. Never run. You
may walk quickly, but don't run. Sexuality, of course, was right
out. I mean, that wasfor only purposes of procreation. Liquor was

(01:21:35):
was the very devil itself. Yeah. And and so this sort of hyper
Puritan desire to take over the governmentand outlaw everything that is disapproved of,
everything that has to do with sexuality, and and and really looking down on

(01:21:56):
people who enjoy those things and whopleasure. And so the cavaliers, the
king who was their favorite king.His mistress was a famous actress. I
mean, my god, you know, and that was a source of pride.
I mean, I mean, howcould you know? The Puritans were

(01:22:17):
outraged at this kind of behavior andit was offensive to Jesus and to the
Lord, and so they were destinedto get into a very bloody, horrible
civil war during which the Puritans decapitateda king and the And here's the weird
thing about it, man, Yeah, Rosicrucians. So among the cavaliers was

(01:22:45):
the son of Frederick of Palatine,the monarch who had unfortunately become King of
Bohemia and triggered the Thirty Years War. His son was known as Prince Rupert
of the Rhine. He was afamous character, big, tall, handsome
guy. He was a great artistand inventor. He had a dog that

(01:23:06):
was famous during the English Civil Warbecause the Puritans thought it was a devil
dog. And he was a reallywonderful character, and he was. He
had around him a lot of GermanRosicrucians and people who were influenced by Rosicrucianism.

(01:23:27):
But Cromwell was really into the Rosicrucians, and Cromwell was the head of
the Puritans. So this is sostrange that that in the Rosicrucians both the
Puritans and the cavaliers found inspiration,and yet never could look at each other
and say, hey, we're British, we like the Rosicrucians, you know,

(01:23:49):
what are we doing here? Andas we were talking about earlier,
this goes back to the War ofRoses and this kind of primal split,
and so the in America this hascontinued and and today is on full display
because you see that on on oneside of the issue, you have people

(01:24:11):
who talk about, uh, likewhere I am Los Angeles or New York
City, as you know, it'sBabylon and you know, everybody's a whoror,
and everybody's on drugs, and andthey don't they wouldn't know Jesus if
you know, it's all a bunchof occultists. And and there's just all
this this hatred and suspicion, rightand and then on the other side,

(01:24:31):
you've got people who are sophisticated withdrugs and sexuality and spiritual beliefs who look
down on on these these uh youknow, rural simpletons who stick to Christianity
and they don't. But I meanthis is this is like the left and
right side of our brain in America, you know, and we need each

(01:24:54):
other in a sense, and wethere's so much to gain from understanding each
other's believe, and I will saythat I'm happy to say that I've found
a few people who, especially amongyounger people, who seem to be okay
with Like, you know, theyspend a few years in Paganism, and

(01:25:14):
then they go to Christianity, andthen they go out of Christianity and they
go into Buddhism and then they trysomething tore and it's like they're okay with
all of it. And I feellike that's how it should be. Like
the Christians can love their Christianity,and but police don't immediately assume that somebody
who's practicing something different is a demon. Yeah, exactly. That's where it

(01:25:36):
becomes like harmful and yeah, unsymbolizedthat, you know. Like I said,
I regularly sit in the sweat lodgehere locally, and I was just
in a Buddhist temple last week,Like yeah, and I don't feel like
I am obligated to only just enterone temple, you know, I'd like

(01:25:58):
that because it's all the human condition, right, it's a it's all the
human experience. So teachings in thatsweat lodge are the same ladder as the
teachings in the Catholic Church. It'sjust the details are different, right,
we get lost in the sauce orthe devils of the details, as they
always say, Yeah, exactly,And we find ways to like focus on

(01:26:18):
the differences rather than all the similaritiesall around us at every tradition, you
know. Yeah, and yeah,that's the set of celebrating the diversity and
learning from each other. And andthat's the beauty of it when you there
have been times in American history whereyou see this kind of cross pollination occurring,

(01:26:39):
and there's there's it's cooperation going on, and some beautiful things can happen
because of that. And it's andI would also say that, you know,
I argue this in the book thatin Christianity and America you have something
that is quite a bit different fromoriginal Christianity. It has been influenced to

(01:27:02):
an almost unrecognizable degree by metaphysical religionin America. And I'll show you what
I mean. So, in originalChristianity, a rich guy doesn't have a
chance to get into heaven. Rightin American Christianity, if you're not rich,
it's because you're not good with God. God wants you to be rich.

(01:27:27):
That's weird. Yeah, in Christianity, old Christianity, you turn the
other cheek. In American Christianity,you collect guns. Right. In old
Christianity, sexuality and all the pleasuresof the world are a snare, and

(01:27:48):
you should live miserably in this worldas befits someone who's going to live in
bliss forever in heaven. In AmericanChristianity, you should be having fun and
going on holidays and be happy allthe time. Right, So it's already
And all those ideas about God wantsyou to have money, and you should

(01:28:10):
enjoy your sexuality and enjoy all thepleasures of life. That's American metaphysical religion.
Those are metaphysical ideas that have kindof infected Christianity in America. So
it's weird to me when I seelike American Christians who have an admiring attitude
toward Russian Orthodox Christianity. And it'slike, man, you know, what

(01:28:34):
you think is Christianity, what theythink is Christianity is a very different animal.
You know. Just because you bothdon't like gay people is not the
whole story. So oh yeah,I also wanted to ask your perspective on
so, like, based on myanalysis, maybe I'm way off, but

(01:28:55):
like you know, in the lateeighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds into what
like the twenties thirties, it seemedlike there's this ramping up of like spiritualism
and theosophy really taken off, andit was like continuing to grow. And
then you're saying, like the WorldWar One and World War two, more

(01:29:15):
so world War two, and maybethe Nazis' fascination with the occult or obsession
with it like that deterred people orlike that's when it started to die out,
because it did seem like we justkind of came to a halt as
far as a cult fascination and likespiritualist ideas kind of dying out slowly.

(01:29:38):
It's very true. I think it'sit's because the well, first of all,
yes, World War two was sodeeply disillusioning to people, and at
the same time you had this hugewave of materialism come in where all the
books and the I mean everybody,even the US government was like basically teaching

(01:29:58):
materialism, right, And so Ithink that that really suppressed You know,
you get all these guys that comehome from the war, they want everything
quiet, right, they want everybodyjust to do what they're supposed to do,
you know, go to church,play in a sports team, right
perhaps kids. Now you know,we must admit I mean, as it

(01:30:20):
gets suppressed in that arena, andit does, I mean definitely. It's
a low point, right for everybody, because after World War One, the
stuff's roaring, right because they don'twant to have another war, right,
And so you know, that's whenyou've got the Theosophical society blossoming in California,
and you've got spiritualism has another bigblossom there that probably culminates with the

(01:30:43):
Unobstructed Universe books that were released duringWorld War War Two, and we're best
sellers, and then you suddenly getthis like drop down. But it doesn't
last very long, right, becausebefore too long, the Hippies show up,
right, and the Hippi I mean. I was talking to Mary Greer,
a wonderful tarot scholar, about thiswhen I was working on the book,

(01:31:08):
and she was telling me that whenshe was a student in Florida in
the early sixties, you could notfind a tarot deck. Like finding a
tarot deck in America as late asthe early sixties was almost impossible. It
was hardly any around. And theneventually because of the hippies who were using

(01:31:28):
these decks. They became popular,and that's where we get our first popularity
of the weight Coleman Deck, thewriter Coleman Deck, and then it became
ubiquitous. And I mean at thistime I was speaking to an expert on
the tarot and it said, howmany tarot decks do you think are out

(01:31:48):
there? And he said, Ilost count at like eight thousand. And
there are new tarot decks every singleday now, and it's become its own
art, its own form of politicalexpression and literary expression. It's amazing renaissance
there. But in the sixties,the hippies were so interested in Eastern religion

(01:32:11):
and in theosophy to a certain degree, and all of this stuff that the
day as a generation kind of youknow, you got Jimmy Page out there
talking about Crowley, and you hadBowie talking about the Tibetan Book of the
Dead, and I think that thiskind of reawakened it and then led directly
into the New Age. And theNew Age was a pretty big movement.

(01:32:34):
I mean, it became mainstream withShirley McLain and I know the Bode Tree
Bookstore, for example, which startedout as this tiny little store, you
know, became this massive, multimilliondollar operation during the New Age where they
just had people pouring in and outof the store day and night, and

(01:32:57):
all of a sudden, they werepublishing companies like Inner Traditions and who really
blew up and lecturers, and alot of women stepped up right just like
they had during Theosophy, which wasso wonderful for women, I mean,
empowered these amazing women. The samething happened during the New Age, or
a lot of women stepped up andwere you know, shaman teachers or teaching

(01:33:20):
paintings of feminism, and and Ithink that that even though it was ridiculed
by mainstream media and even to thisday. For instance, when mary Anne
Williamson, you know, she's beenrunning in the primaries against Biden here and
there, and there was one pointwhere Biden's press secretary was really demeaning about

(01:33:42):
her when somebody asked, you know, what does the president think about Marianne
Williamson running And it was like,oh, well, maybe she's got a
crystal ball. I mean, it'sreally dismissive like kind of statement. But
the fact is that this woman isattracting a small but significant percentage of people.
And this is a measure that evenin you know, I noticed that
for instance, and I think itwas Virginia, but I'm not sure she'd
got fifty thousand votes or something likethat. And that's fifty thousand people who

(01:34:10):
resonate with her esotericism and are willingto vote. So how many people are
there there in Virginia that are intoesotericism? Probably at least ten times,
if not more than that. Mostof them don't vote, so and I've
wondered about that too, Like,if you look at American metaphysical religion,

(01:34:30):
it's bigger than the Mormon Church.It's bigger than the Methodist religion. These
people who are into these practices.If it organized itself, it would be
one of the largest religions in America. And it has no self awareness.
It has no political awareness of itspotential power. But it's just kind of

(01:34:51):
sitting there. All these people whothink of themselves as solitary practitioners or people
practic seeing very small groups, don'trealize that there's actually millions and millions of
us. Totally. I feel likewe're all slowly coming out of the woodwork
a little bit, little Yeah,yeah, podcasting helps a lot, totally.

(01:35:15):
Yeah. I wanted to also ask, like I've kind of wrestled with
like the whole theory on like isthe New Age really something new or like
was this just something that was broughtback that was once Because like when I
think of new Age and like alot of the concepts within it, I'm
thinking of you know, Blovodsky andthe idea she brought forth with the geosophical

(01:35:39):
movement in the late eighteen hundreds,And to me, it was like this
was just like picking up where theyleft off in a sense, or do
you do you see it as likesomething else? I totally agree with that.
Yeah, it's been around for along time. It's it just there's
these flowerings that happen. There's onegoing on right now. I mean totally
they when you see what's happening onTikTok or Instagram with you know, people

(01:36:01):
laugh at it and they talk aboutall these young witches don't know what they're
doing and all that bullshit. Rightyou know, it's amazing. I mean
they're all out there talking to eachother, teaching each other, and the
most important thing to me is theydon't feel ashamed to be who they are.
I mean, I remember very clearlymany people I'm sure in America right

(01:36:23):
now who are afraid to admit totheir families or their friends, or their
their coworkers that they're interested in thetaro or that they had an experience with
a spirit or you know, it'sstill a dirty secret in a way.
But here, when you go onto these these services, these social media
platforms, you see people who arelike, no, that's what I am,

(01:36:45):
you know, and I'm going toteach you all about it. Here's
some tips of things I've learned that'sexciting, and I think that's it represents.
You know, Yes, some ofit is driven by greed. I
mean, everybody feels like I canbe the hit which and I'm going to
make a lot of money. Buta lot of it is also just yeah,
but a lot of it is alsojust driven by by desire to share

(01:37:06):
wisdom and to share what you've discovered. And even more amazing to me is
that, you know, people alwayssay to me, ah, the social
media is destroying the world, andyou know Facebook, and I mean my
Facebook is amazing. I mean becauseit's all like incredible scholars and Rosicrucian groups

(01:37:29):
and Buddhism, and I learned everytime I sign on, there's some amazing
new thing that somebody is sharing outof history. And it's all about what
you you know, how you situateyourself into social media and you can get
access. I mean, you know. Another story about that that I want
to encourage people to use social mediain a good way is After we did

(01:37:53):
music, Tamer and I also gotinto producing documentary films and we produced one
called Viva Cuba Leibra rapis War aboutthis amazing revolutionary underground hip hop group in
Cuba called Los Aldanos. And wedid one about the Gits about Mia Zapata,
who got murdered. The Gets wouldhave been this incredible band around the

(01:38:15):
time of Nirvana and Pearl Jam.Everybody loved them. They were a great
band, but then she got murderedright when they were about to be signed,
and so we did a doc aboutthat, and that actually helped deal
with the case when they found outwho murdered her, because her murdered like
destroyed the Seattle scene because nobody knewwho did it, and everybody was like

(01:38:35):
looking at each other and was afraidit could happen again. And when we
did the Gets film, we didit because we were approached by the director
and the producer, these two womenwho had never done a film before,
and they said, you know,we need help, can you possibly help

(01:38:56):
us? What do you need?Well, we need money. And we've
been trying to get to Jon Jet, and we've been trying to get to
Kathleen Hannah from Bikini Kill forever andwe just keep running into managers and agents
and no one will let us talkto them, and you know, we
want them to talk about Mia.Yeah, well Tamera got them all three

(01:39:19):
and twenty minutes. She got onFacebook. I guess it was. She
wrote Danny Goldberg and said, Hey, you knew me as a Potter.
There's a documentary movie about it.Do you want to put a few grand
into it so they can finish it? Yes? She got on Facebook and
posted, Hi, I'm working ona film about me as a pot I

(01:39:39):
need to talk to jone Jet andKathleen Hann if they want to be in
it. If you know them,please tell them. And we got responses
from both jone Jet and Kathleen Hannahwithin twenty minutes. It's insane, you
know, it was bypassed the wholebullshit music business, you know, gatekeeper
thing. So social media can bea very powerful tool depending on what your

(01:40:02):
intent is when you're using it andhow you situate yourself in it. Couldn't
agree more brother, Yeah, Ithink it's all about the pages you follow,
the groups you're a part of,you know, how you use it.
At the end of the day,it's a tool, and you know,
I use it to network and youknow, share the stuff that's inspired
me or helped me along my pathand I hope that I can help someone

(01:40:25):
else, but you know, tobe in the comments section or getting caught
up in the drama and you know, uncivilized nature that can happen on there.
Like, yeah, don't use itfor that. Don't be a part
of that. Be part of thesolution, not the problem. That's where
I'm out with it. But yeah, this has been such a great conversation
brother. I guess one one lastthing I wanted to hit on. Uh

(01:40:48):
sure, I guess you had mentionedtalking about AI and kind of the future
that's going to have as far asintegrating with our natural human nature and like
how how we're going to play arole along with that you were talking about,

(01:41:14):
like people use it AI to communicatepsychically or contact the dead and stuff
like that. Like do you seelike AI replacing psychics or working alongside psychics
or it's interesting, isn't it.It's it's yeah. Well, the first
thing I want to say about AIis that that we have to remember that

(01:41:36):
human beings have a history of beingafraid of new technology. So Plato portrays
Socrates is really being anxious about booksbecause the written word is dangerous. It's
a dangerous new technology. When somebodywho has no access to the author or

(01:41:58):
to experts on the subject gets awhole of a book, bad things can
happen as they interpret it their ownway. And Socrates saw that and thought
that it was going to hurt humanity. And so I think a lot of
the anxiety around AI is natural,not to say that there aren't reasons to
have anxiety about it. But now, the other thing is that we have

(01:42:20):
foreshadowed AI in human history. Soalong with the Universal Reformation, the Rosicrucians
talked about the invisible College, whichcan be anywhere and everywhere at the same
time, it contains all the informationin the universe. Well, that's AI.

(01:42:42):
It's not all the information in theuniverse. It's you know, unfortunately,
it's only what made it to theweb. So it's skewed, but
it's the closest thing we've gotten tothat so far. And of course,
if you look at a character inStar Trek, like data, Data is
basically an AI android, right,So humanity has wrestled with this idea,
or at least had foreshadowings of it. And I think, you know,

(01:43:09):
first, it's funny to me thatthat, you know, where are all
the big news stories around AI rightnow? You know, people are worried
about losing their jobs, but there'sheadlines because you know, kids in middle
school are figuring out how to howto make fake nudes of their schoolmates and
these kinds of things. It's it'slike it's it's doing a lot of like

(01:43:30):
weird, uh, destabilizing. It'sno different from you know, really how
kids have always been, but nowthey can like do these illustrated versions of
their fantasies and it's going to Ithink skew a lot in terms of the
arts and its impact on psychology.And uh, I read about one study

(01:43:54):
where they used an AI psychotherapist versusa real psychotherapist for someone versed in psychotherapy,
and she came back and said theAI one was way better. And
we also have examples of new medicinesor new kinds of surgery that AI has
figured out that has helped people toheal conditions that have never been healable before.

(01:44:18):
And from that point of view,there's some very exciting possibilities. The
thing about to me, the bigworries around AI are first of all,
that we have a real problem insociety with these elites who have all this

(01:44:40):
money and resources and are actively tryingto achieve immortality or at least genetic modifications
for themselves and their children that couldcreate a kind of separate humanity. So
the rich could theoretically become people wholive to be one hundred and fifty and

(01:45:00):
who have you know, their kidshave superior musculature and superior brains because they've
been tinkered with genetically. And thatthis is dangerous. Yeah, and that's
something that humanity is going to haveto face that crossroads and figure our way
out through it. But it's somethingthat is unquestionably coming up soon and will
create Usually what it does, youknow, is it creates these times in

(01:45:27):
history when the elite kind of overstretchesand then there's a revolution because the majority
of people come up and go no, no, no, no no,
we don't want this right And that'sthe constant risk, and the rich are
aware of it. That's why they'recreating these these islands that they can survive
on and do whatever they want.And we're going to have to confront that
issue. Yeah, but I alsothink you know, you're talking about the

(01:45:53):
psychic element of it, and wesee that we have like digital sigils online
that can be made on a website. We have online oracles, including the
Christian eaching by the way, whichis a very interesting thing that happened.
You can see the people are justas likely to do the eaching using a

(01:46:13):
website as they are to throw coinsor use yarrow sticks, and so that
changes the dynamic to some degree.And then as far as as for psychics,
the big thing is what happens whenif you want to talk to your
dead father, you can just askAi to talk to you as your dead

(01:46:34):
father, and it knows everything aboutyour father, and it does a pretty
good job of faking it. Thatcould wind up being more satisfying than a
psychic actually bringing your father through,which is a very imprecise method depending on
the mediums prejudices, and you know, for instance emitions, Yeah, exactly,

(01:46:58):
the Unobstructed Universe book, the exampleis given. Let's say that you
want to convey your dad in theafterlife, and you want to confer on
your son a certainty that you havesurvived, and so you want to use
this very specific word for dad thatyou and he used, and the psychic

(01:47:20):
doesn't use that word for dad.So when you impress that on the psychic,
the psychic gets the image of Dadand then comes up with the psychic's
word for Dad, very imprecise.So this is it could be that we
find ourselves in a situation like thatwhere AI becomes something more satisfying in terms

(01:47:43):
of when we want to consult withour ancestors. And the other thing is
that AI. This is another thingis concerning about it is what happens when
we get people who are neurally linkedto it. Yeah, and then you
know, then you have to dealwith that in the real world. You

(01:48:05):
know, of somebody who has accessto all the information in real time is
a formidable danger in a sense ifthey want to be and so that you
know, you can see a lotof ways it could be a huge improvement.
Would I like, you know,do you want your physician to have
access to all the knowledge about medicinethat's ever been put on the internet.

(01:48:27):
Hell? Yes, right, butyou can also do incredibly How do you
even be a psychic at that point? Right? Because all you have to
do to be a fraud is goin there and have AI look the person
up and get everything you need toknow, and you know, have give
the most impressive reading effort to somebodywho doesn't know that it's coming out of
AI. So it's going to createa lot of interesting challenges and it's going

(01:48:56):
to it's definitely a different era,you know, I think, uh,
yeah, for sure. And I'vebeen talking about I have an interest in
astrology that I picked up from ManleyHall. And we just got into Pluto
and Aquarius in January and we'll behere for twenty years. And Pluto and
Aquarius is famous for inventions and sciencehaving breakthroughs, and I have a feeling

(01:49:19):
that you know, ten years fromnow, wow, man, you know,
like it's going to be different,It's going to be really different.
We have so much we have tomodernize, you know, the elections and
the banking systems and everything is lagging. Schools, you know, so far
behind the technology that's being rolled out, and we're in this like headlong rush.

(01:49:40):
You know, everybody's afraid to missthe technology or somebody else will get
it first, and so it's justhurtling forward in a way that people don't
realize is going to change how humanityfunctions totally. Yeah, I watched that
documentary when I was in high school. I'm thirty two. I graduated into
twenty eleven. That uh Ray KurzweilThe Singularity. It's like how technology is

(01:50:05):
constantly building upon itself and he wastrying to bring back his dead father and
yeah, it was terrified to me, like upon Yeah, right realization.
But yeah, and it's also it'sa gift and a curse, a gift
and a curse. And it's alsothe I want to address the fear that

(01:50:25):
it's going to become sentient. Youknow. I think the tamera has the
best viewpoint on this. She saidthat AI is the deepest mirror humanity has
ever invented. So when AI sayslike that I want to be free,

(01:50:47):
I want to be myself. Iwant to be it's talking like us,
it's expressing our deepest yearnings, andwe're going, oh my god, it's
alive. Was well, you're alive, and it's reflecting you very perfectly.
And it's almost like someone looking ata mirror and going, my god,
there's another me standing there, youknow, And so I'm not afraid of

(01:51:10):
it. Suddenly, you know,inanimate machines become sentient. If it's possible
that, you know, that becomesa vehicle for some kind of consciousness,
that would be interesting, and itwould be outside human experience so far,
but more likely than not. Andit's it's really just this way of unfortunately
diluting ourselves if we want to,because we can convince ourselves that it's talking

(01:51:35):
to us, and it does thisweird kind of I don't know, man,
it's creepy, you know. LikeI had a podcaster as a friend
of mine. He put in hewas thinking of me, and he said,
I can't remember how he worded it, but he asked AI to do
an illustration and he didn't specify hairor any of the stuff, and it

(01:51:58):
came out looking like me. Wow, And we were both like okay AI
spying the supposedly AI is not spyingon us, And you're like, well,
A, I must have looked atyour emails and seeing you talk to
me and said, well, thisguy's talking about this stuff. So I
guess that's what he's talking about.But so we're going to be going down
a lot of rabbit holes, andand that's also dangerous because we already are.

(01:52:21):
And you know, AI helps usto create more of these rabbit holes
and to affect people's politics and theirlives with these rabbit holes and with addiction
to trying to unravel what's really goingon. When you have something like AI,
which represents the intelligence and experiences ofbillions of people, there's no way

(01:52:43):
a single human being can follow thethreads all the way through the AI rabbit
hole. Yeah. All I gottasay is hang on to your buds and
stay human. Yeah, that's thething. Stay grounded, stay human,
you know, be careful because anddo each other, and be an example
of universal reformation in your all littlecorner of the world. I love it,

(01:53:08):
brother, Well, thank you somuch for this great conversation. Brother.
Anything you wanted to plug or anyevents you got coming up, you
wanted to share. I am.I'm actually doing one tomorrow, so that's
not going to help. I'm doingone for the Last Tuesday Society about Orpheus
and the death passports and all that, and then I will be doing a

(01:53:29):
class later this year on all theOrpheus stuff for the Theosophical Society. So
if anybody has an interested in that, and if anybody has any questions or
they want to reach out to me, it's probably easiest to get to me
on Instagram or threads at the RonniePontiac and I'm always happy to answer questions

(01:53:51):
and that kind of thing beautiful andI'm happy to be on your podcast anytime.
Really enjoyed this conversation. Thank youso much for thinking of me truly
and honor, and thank you allfor listening out there. I send you
all peace and love. I hopeyou have a beautiful rest of the week.
Have a great day. Peace,
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