0:02

Hi

0:06

everyone, I'm Josh and this is

0:08

The Emerald, currents and

0:11

trends through a mythic lens. The

0:14

podcast where we explore an ever-changing

0:16

world and our lives in it through

0:18

the lens of myth, story and

0:21

imagination. The

0:27

Emerald, all that's happening on

0:30

this green jewel in space. So

0:42

in part one of this

0:44

episode series, we dove into

0:47

the historic centrality and total

0:49

normalcy of visionary experience. How

0:51

culture is built upon visions,

0:53

built upon the trembling utterances

0:56

of oracles. How

0:58

the body of culture needs those who

1:00

feel, who see,

1:03

who receive, whose eyes

1:06

are flooded with sight and whose

1:08

ears receive voices and songs, who

1:11

listen to the river and translate for the

1:13

river and sing the song

1:15

of the river aloud for all who

1:17

might hear. People

1:19

whose bodies you could say are the

1:22

living antenna of culture, sensitive,

1:25

awake, feeling

1:27

and receiving. Receiving

1:29

in states of heightened perception, glimpses

1:33

into the unfolding pattern of nature and

1:37

how that pattern translates into the

1:39

lives of communities and

1:41

ecologies. And

1:43

we spoke about how all across the

1:46

world traditional cultures have provided a container,

1:48

an ecology for visions. Visions

1:51

had a place in which to grow, to incubate,

1:54

to be fostered, to live

1:56

and to thrive. And

1:59

so the intuitive. the visionary was not

2:01

other but was woven

2:04

into the very fabric of culture. What

2:08

is an ecology in which visions

2:11

thrive? What does it look like? It

2:14

looks like Iroquois dreaming culture.

2:17

It looks like Achoire culture and

2:19

Kaluli culture and the deep

2:22

ancestral orientation of the cultures of the

2:24

Solomon Islands. But it also looks

2:26

like 15th century

2:28

France. The

2:30

French province of Lorraine was a fertile

2:32

place for visions and voices. There

2:35

were sacred groves. There

2:37

were gatherings in those groves in which

2:39

stories were whispered ear to ear. And

2:43

sometimes if the conditions were just right, a saint

2:46

would pay a visit and speak to

2:48

someone. A

2:51

person would hear in their ear

2:53

the reverberation of sanctified words and

2:56

feel the sweet stir of sanctified

2:58

breath upon the breeze. The

3:01

breath of the saints there in

3:03

the grove of beech trees. Because

3:06

saints were not lofty

3:08

far-off figures, saints

3:11

lived in the waters and in the changes

3:13

in the weather and in

3:15

the June blossoming of certain medicinal flowers

3:18

and in the charged space that

3:21

exists between wounds and cures. Saints

3:25

spoke with river voices and wind

3:27

voices and sky voices and

3:30

cavernous voices. And

3:32

when there is an ecology for it, prophecies

3:35

whisper from ear to ear.

3:39

Into this ecology was born a girl

3:41

that you've heard of, a

3:43

girl named Joan. You

3:46

all know the story, right? The

3:48

story of the peasant girl from Lorraine.

3:51

How at 13 years old she

3:53

began receiving visitations in the garden.

3:56

She heard voices in the garden. Voices

3:59

that told her she had a role to

4:01

play in great world events. She,

4:03

a peasant girl who could barely read, would

4:06

be instrumental in a great political

4:08

upheaval that would shake all of

4:11

Europe. As

4:13

Sophie Strand tells us, You

4:15

know, Joan was actually not atypical. There

4:17

were many, many different visionaries of that

4:19

time period. Marie Robin, we have Christine

4:22

of Marquette, we have Marjorie Kemp, we

4:24

have so many different visionaries. It wasn't

4:26

actually considered a neurobiological issue like we

4:28

do now. It was considered something that

4:30

a lot of people had access to.

4:33

And like in the villages, that's always been

4:35

the case. Yeah. So there

4:38

was also a culture of prophecy

4:40

where there was, you know, people sometimes

4:42

say like, Oh my God, I can't

4:44

believe a peasant girl did this. But

4:46

there was a prophetic social belief system

4:48

that already existed where people were kind

4:50

of expecting this. There was a beach

4:52

forest behind her house, her father's house.

4:55

And the custom was to go to this

4:57

old oak tree that was in the beach forest

4:59

and that it was the fairy tree. And

5:02

there were lots of different like Mayday

5:04

festivals and children would go there and

5:06

play and have miracles

5:09

happen. And the

5:11

story goes is that Joan had her first

5:13

vision there, that she back formed and said

5:15

that her visions came in her father's garden

5:18

or the church. But it seems

5:20

as if her first experiences of the divine were

5:22

in front of this tree. And so it's so

5:24

interesting that one of the things that dance for

5:27

us, her relationship to this fairy

5:29

tree. Joan of Arc

5:31

was born into an ecology that was

5:33

welcoming to visions that

5:35

expected and fostered visionary

5:37

experience in which

5:40

prophecy flowed like water. And

5:42

she died a short 19 years

5:44

later within a

5:46

larger ecology that

5:49

had moved decidedly away from

5:51

visions and visitations and voices

5:54

that had come to fear the visionary,

5:57

vilify the visionary, burn the visionary.

6:01

Her story is a clash of

6:03

rural and urban, of agrarian animism

6:05

deeply tied to place, and

6:08

the fluidity of epiphany coming

6:10

face to face with larger

6:12

powers that needed to have total

6:15

control over epiphany. And

6:18

so the story of Joan, as

6:20

much of a cliché as it

6:22

has become, remains deeply potent. Because

6:25

in it we see both an ecology that

6:28

fosters visions and a

6:30

larger civilizational institutional ecology that

6:32

vilifies them. And

6:35

this larger ecology of

6:37

civilization at odds with the

6:39

intuitive would come

6:41

to dominate Western theological and

6:44

scientific narratives for many years

6:46

to come. I'm

6:49

sure you know this, right? That

6:51

intuitives have been vilified for a

6:53

very long time. Those

6:55

who hear voices and attune their

6:57

ears to the roar of far-off

6:59

rivers in a world increasingly

7:01

deaf to the roar of the river

7:04

have to deal with a constant stream of

7:07

discreditation. So

7:09

this episode is going to explore this on a

7:12

deeper level. What is

7:14

the historic preoccupation with

7:16

discrediting mystic experience? Why

7:19

is the mystic deplored by religious

7:21

structures and political structures and mainstream

7:23

science alike? Why

7:26

is mystic experience still to this

7:28

day discredited in predominantly Puritan nations?

7:32

And what happens to the mystic

7:34

once set adrift? But

7:37

back to Joan. Church

7:39

authorities were so desperate to prove that Joan

7:41

of Arc was a heretic, that

7:44

her visions weren't actually of God,

7:46

that she was interviewed and interrogated

7:49

over weeks by a panel of

7:51

all the greatest theological and medical

7:53

minds of Europe. All

7:56

men, of course, whose sole intent

7:58

was to show that she couldn't have

8:00

actually been hearing the voices of the saints.

8:03

And today we can understand pretty

8:05

easily why a power structure like

8:07

the Church would find Joan threatening.

8:11

But it didn't end with the Church. Why

8:13

have modern scientists been equally

8:15

eager to discredit Joan's voices?

8:18

I mean, it's not like she's still around to

8:21

be a thorn in their side, right? Why

8:23

would 21st century psychiatrists deem it

8:25

necessary to try to prove that

8:27

Joan of Arc's visions must be

8:29

the result of a condition? Epilepsy,

8:32

or migraines, or schizophrenia,

8:35

or bovine tuberculosis induced

8:38

by unpasteurized milk. And

8:41

this is a real thing. Psychiatrists

8:43

trying to claim that Joan of

8:45

Arc's visions were caused by unpasteurized

8:47

milk. Right,

8:50

you know, the girl who at

8:52

age 13 began receiving angelic voices

8:54

in the garden, who performed widely

8:56

witnessed miracles, who predicted deaths just

8:58

before they happened, who predicted her

9:00

own blood spilling at the Battle

9:02

of Orleans, who saw as a

9:04

13-year-old peasant girl that she had

9:06

a role to play in reinstating

9:08

the French dauphin and then against

9:10

all odds did. All

9:13

of that came from unpasteurized

9:15

milk. And

9:18

I'll just say, you really have

9:21

to have a pretty clear anti-visionary

9:23

agenda to attribute years

9:25

of luminous visions and voices that

9:27

changed the course of history to

9:29

unpasteurized milk. Why

9:32

would the modern world still need

9:34

to discredit mystic experience? Is

9:36

the mystic the intuitive really that much

9:39

of a threat these days? Right,

9:41

I mean, I know there's like, you know,

9:43

some New Age conspiratorial shenanigans going

9:45

on, but is the mystic that

9:48

much of a threat compared to

9:50

the larger threats posed by, I

9:52

don't know, like flagrant rage-fueled militarism

9:55

or AI tinkering or climate

9:57

chaos? Why is it that the

9:59

more civilized a country seemingly is,

10:02

the more it vilifies intuitive.

10:07

Why you, Cassandra, have

10:09

you not been mocked and scorned enough? Have

10:13

you not been cast out enough? Why

10:16

to this day focus all

10:18

that attention on you?

10:22

Perhaps it's because the mystic

10:25

vision rubs against deeply held

10:27

civilizational narratives of agency and

10:29

control. The vision

10:31

of human beings as instruments that

10:34

are constantly being made use of by

10:36

greater powers contradicts some

10:38

of the very deep tenets

10:41

of modern Western humanism. As

10:44

Eric Wargo says, quote, personalities

10:46

who take comfort in a

10:48

neat, orderly, well-defined world are

10:51

bound to be threatened by causal arrows

10:53

that pierce time in the wrong

10:55

direction or information that leaks in

10:57

ways it shouldn't. But

11:00

the fact is causality, like

11:02

nature herself, is

11:04

not tidy. The

11:06

voice of the mystic is unsettling. It

11:09

speaks of predetermined futures,

11:11

of uncontainable fluidities, of

11:13

pasts strewn with ghosts,

11:16

and of patterns and unfoldings that we have never

11:19

foreseen and that have little to do with us.

11:23

That is profoundly uncomfortable.

11:26

But there's more to it, too. And

11:28

it has to do directly with the rise of

11:31

what we call civilization and what

11:33

that really is. Because

11:36

you can trace the rise of

11:38

civilization concurrently with the rise of

11:40

the persecution of the intuitive. They're

11:43

so closely linked, it's

11:46

almost as if civilization requires

11:48

intuitives to persecute, as

11:51

if city walls require a

11:53

frenzied seer crying outside those

11:55

walls, crying aloud

11:57

that those walls will one day...

12:00

comb tumbling. And

12:04

this civilizational narrative that

12:06

vilifies intuitive is

12:08

everywhere. Everywhere there's civilization,

12:11

not just the modern West. In

12:14

China reports Dr. Mei-Ferr Yang, there

12:17

has been a cultural movement away

12:19

from the shaman, the seer, the

12:21

oracle, the spirit medium being honored

12:24

as the intermediary between the living

12:26

and the dead, the

12:28

uplifter of the community, the

12:30

validator of rulers, an

12:33

exemplary being, to being

12:35

seen as the worst type of human,

12:38

a bedraggled dirty swindler conning people

12:40

out of their money. Quote,

12:43

When I started fieldwork in Wenzhou in the

12:45

1990s, Yang The

12:48

dominant view in China of

12:50

shamanism was that it

12:53

is the lowest and least

12:55

desirable form of religiosity, earning

12:57

it the epithets feudal superstition

13:00

and charlatanry for cheating people out of

13:02

their money. Whether in official

13:04

discourse or in mainstream urban attitudes,

13:07

shamans were regarded with suspicion as

13:09

either people with mental problems or

13:11

people who fake possession in order

13:13

to cheat the ignorant folk.

13:15

Whereas in ancient times, she says,

13:18

shamanism imparted political authority to

13:20

rulers and its practitioners were

13:23

described as percipatious, intelligent,

13:25

and sagacious. Today

13:28

it is associated with old and

13:30

mentally disturbed women at the lower

13:32

margins of rural society. In

13:37

China, this vilification of the oracle,

13:40

the shaman, the trance medium, goes

13:42

back to the 17th century, to

13:45

the rise of civilizational industrialization, when

13:48

the Qing dynasty rulers proclaimed

13:50

this edict. Quote, All teachers

13:53

and shamans and shamanesses who

13:55

falsely call down heretical gods,

13:57

write magical charms, make incantations

14:00

over water, who use the

14:02

divining planchette or prey to

14:04

saints, who disseminate heterodox and

14:06

deviant arts and techniques, who

14:08

hide images or statues, burn

14:10

incense and assemble crowds, who

14:12

gather at night and disperse

14:14

at dawn, pretending to do

14:16

good deeds. Those who

14:19

are the leaders will be hanged or strangled.

14:21

Those who are the followers are to receive 100 strokes

14:24

of the cane and to be banished

14:26

3000 miles. So

14:33

here you have a situation

14:35

in which shamanism and spirit

14:37

possession, which originally formed the

14:39

foundation of traditional Chinese medicine,

14:41

whose animate fingerprint is all

14:43

over modern acupuncture and martial

14:45

arts and Chinese philosophy, and

14:48

is at the heart of

14:50

the harmonic-confusion relationalities that still

14:52

form the basis of Chinese

14:54

statecraft, is now vilified as

14:57

charlatanry and deceit, as

15:00

disreputable behavior. In

15:02

China, the persecution of spirit possession

15:04

that began in the 17th century

15:06

reached its peak during the Cultural

15:08

Revolution of the 1960s and 70s,

15:11

during which the old seeing

15:13

and healing practices were utterly

15:15

smashed. In Soviet

15:17

Russia, quote, shamans were

15:20

stripped of electoral rights in every

15:22

election, including at village and district

15:24

levels. In practice, this

15:26

meant that such a person was

15:28

excluded from the collective farming system,

15:30

and as a result, deprived of

15:32

all means of subsistence. Tortured,

15:35

summarily executed, Soviet Russia

15:37

despised shamans and oracles

15:39

and intuitive, and after

15:41

a certain point in history, so

15:43

did pretty much everyone else. And

15:48

I want to emphasize what a sea change this

15:50

is. The oracular traditions

15:52

that formed and still form the

15:54

basis of culture, suddenly

15:56

marginalized. The understanding that

15:58

any ecstasy any

16:00

receiving of visions, any hearing of

16:02

voices, any oracular state is pathological.

16:05

This is a seismic shift in

16:08

a world whose foundation was built

16:10

on oracular trance. And

16:13

if we want to try to

16:15

pinpoint when globally this seismic shift

16:17

really occurred, we can look

16:19

a lot of places. But

16:21

one place certainly to look is

16:24

the 17th century. The

16:28

17th century is when the European witch

16:30

trials really took off, impacting

16:33

hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. And

16:35

it's interesting, right? We tend to refer to the

16:37

800s or the 900s or the first couple centuries

16:39

of the last millennium. We

16:44

refer to these as the Dark

16:46

Ages. But if you were an

16:48

intuitive and herbalist, one whose

16:50

body was a vessel for greater forces, one

16:53

who trembled and heard voices,

16:55

the 17th century was far

16:57

darker. The height

16:59

of the persecution of witches, of

17:01

shamans, or seers happened

17:04

not way back in the so-called

17:06

Dark Ages, but concurrently with

17:08

the rise of industrialization, concurrently

17:11

with the rise of the Protestant Reformation, concurrently

17:14

with the rise of humanism, concurrently

17:17

with the rise of the

17:19

scientific method, concurrently with the meteoric

17:21

rise of the transatlantic slave trade, and

17:24

concurrently with modern warfare. All of these

17:26

things will play in the 17th century,

17:30

and they are more deeply

17:32

and directly intertwined with the

17:34

persecution of intuitives than we

17:36

might imagine. What

17:40

do I mean that these things are intertwined? What is this connection? This

17:45

connection between the rise of humanism

17:48

and the persecution of seers? Certainly

17:51

the rise of humanism was a good thing, right? And

17:54

sure, humanism brought its benefits in

17:56

a church-dominated world. But in the

17:59

very End, The word humanism

18:01

is a clue. About what

18:03

happens to the more than human, the

18:05

forces of nature, the river and the

18:08

grasses, the spring and the mountain. The

18:11

ancestor and the defendant. Under

18:13

a the regime of humanism. Just.

18:16

Look at how we used to

18:18

live in relation with the dead

18:20

and how all of that change

18:23

with the rise of humanism. Humanism

18:25

suggests a world in which all

18:27

concerns are primarily human. And

18:29

more than human forces are

18:32

ignored and in many traditional

18:34

understandings when more than human

18:36

forces. Spirit forces,

18:38

ecological forces, ancestral

18:40

forces are ignored.

18:42

They begin nine

18:44

at humans. So

18:48

the seventeenth century, along with

18:50

the Reformation, the enlightenment and

18:52

humanism also brought with it

18:55

and drastic rise in the

18:57

number of people dying in

18:59

wars. The Thirty Year

19:01

War alone in Europe brought eight

19:04

million dead. The

19:06

transition from mean ditching ruler

19:08

ship in China brought millions

19:10

more. Twenty Five million according

19:12

to some estimates. This. Time

19:15

period also brought with it

19:17

in both Europe and China

19:19

steep rise in the persecution

19:21

of oracles, of witches, of

19:23

sounds of healers and all

19:25

types of intermediary. Think

19:28

tell me if you think these things

19:30

are related. A sudden

19:32

precipitous rise in the number of

19:34

global dead. A

19:36

sudden unwillingness to acknowledge the ancestral

19:38

dead as a tangible presence that

19:40

impacts of. His

19:43

bones. Our lives are built. As

19:46

agencies that must be said and

19:48

interact. And

19:50

a sudden vilification of those who

19:52

actually deal with the dead. On.

19:54

A daily basis. I'm

19:57

not making this connection up. The

19:59

German with trial. The the seventeenth

20:01

Century literally arose as a way

20:03

to explain the brutality of the

20:05

Thirty Year War. It was

20:07

so gruesome a couldn't possibly have

20:09

been a natural outcome of the

20:11

reformation. Of. The Enlightenment.

20:14

Of the humanistic road to progress

20:16

right? And had to be which.

20:19

But of course, the problem

20:21

wasn't the intermediaries. The problem

20:23

was the ever growing mountain of

20:26

Ohms that was accumulating on

20:28

either side of our wrote.

20:32

About it was only possible to

20:34

ignore. Said.

20:43

And spoke with them and so

20:45

sought to reconcile past and present.

20:47

And therefore ensure anything resembling

20:50

a future. So.

20:55

People often scoff at oracles

20:57

it spirit mediums because spirit

20:59

possession trance medium ship is

21:01

considered. Backwards. right?

21:04

This is a telling statement. It's

21:06

backwards. What? Does that mean?

21:08

Does that mean it's It's primitive or

21:10

regressive. Or doesn't mean something

21:12

else. Perhaps. The

21:14

spirit medium is taboo because

21:16

they literally look back into

21:18

the past. At the

21:21

mountain of bones behind us, at the

21:23

horde of dead. At

21:26

all That is incest. And

21:31

in a world the must always

21:33

relentlessly charge. Must.

21:35

Move forward at all costs. This

21:38

encouragement worst. Part. Is

21:41

deeply unsettling for maternity to

21:44

look back and witness the

21:46

on the satiated ancestors howling

21:48

there to witness the unacknowledged

21:50

dead there for maternity, the

21:52

gays straight into the yawning

21:55

chasm of all that we

21:57

have sacrificed. All the we

21:59

have. The. All

22:01

the we have been separated from. The

22:04

says implications the entire project

22:06

of murders. And

22:09

it's relentless. So

22:17

and more and dead accumulate

22:19

behind us. The more hell

22:21

bent we become on always

22:23

gazing forward, not realizing that

22:25

in doing so we become

22:27

vehicles if some traditions or

22:29

to be believed to which

22:31

the dead express and unseeded

22:33

hunger. It works like this:

22:35

the more dead there are

22:37

piling up all around us,

22:39

unrecognized, unsaid on placate it.

22:41

The more the humanities anxious

22:43

forward momentum grows and then

22:46

that forward momentum. As it

22:48

consumes creates more unsecured debt.

22:50

It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy:

22:53

the signing of the ancestral dead

22:55

insurers. a future littered with money.

22:58

For what will the dead feast

23:00

on if not on offered song?

23:03

If not on stories told around a

23:05

fire, what will the feast on? If

23:07

not on milk and spirit plates of

23:10

fruit and green. If

23:12

not on month was and morsels

23:14

of black sesame and rice, they

23:16

will feast on our forward roving

23:18

hunger. And are

23:21

forward roving. Hunger will feed

23:23

them relentlessly. Knew. How

23:28

many bodies? In

23:33

his. Underworld

23:41

being this set by some are

23:43

driven by a great. In

23:46

the absence of regular offering,

23:49

they'll gladly take blood. Blood

23:53

flows moves. And

23:57

some. In

24:01

Chinese traditions, the unseeded on

24:03

Honored Dead return as earthbound

24:05

spirits, of which there are

24:07

hundreds of categories. These spirits

24:09

take hold of people who

24:11

unwittingly leave themselves open to

24:13

such possession to their own

24:16

roving on moored appetites. How

24:18

does the possession of earthbound

24:20

spirits manifest? In these traditions?

24:22

It can manifest as a

24:24

perpetual morose, mercer anxiety at

24:26

the state of the world's.

24:30

Man has stuck. Says

24:32

that hardened armor like sell

24:35

that paralyzes the faces of

24:37

politicians, newscasters. And for start.

24:44

Can manifest as greater than human ambitions.

24:47

I want more than any human should

24:49

have. I'm gonna be a billionaire who

24:51

lives forever. That right there is the

24:53

sign of a culture that does not

24:56

honor. It's dead. How can we possibly

24:58

learn from the mistakes of our past

25:00

if we ignore the dead so higher

25:03

and says quote. I.

25:05

Will lie down with the bones of

25:07

my dead father's. Hold

25:09

tight the portion of wisdom they passed

25:11

me. And sleep the

25:13

vital sleep in the Black Watered river.

25:16

The dead father's home with their hello

25:18

eyes of crying. and all

25:21

bottle those fears to makes off for

25:23

the meals at the long table at

25:25

which has served my left. historically

25:33

intermediaries spirit mediums have served

25:36

this absolutely vital role of

25:38

dialogue with the dead after

25:40

the cambodian genocide buddhist monks

25:43

whose traditions forbade them from

25:45

doing intermediary spirit or gave

25:47

up their months vows temporarily

25:50

long enough to attend the

25:52

thousands upon thousands of spirit

25:55

the needed feeding and clear

25:57

it's vital animus tradition teach

26:00

us to attend to ghosts, personal,

26:03

familial, societal, planetary

26:06

ghosts. But

26:08

at a certain point on the road to

26:10

progress, modernity found it

26:12

was far easier to vilify those

26:15

who spoke with the dead than

26:17

to acknowledge the dead themselves. When

26:20

we talk about the loss of the

26:22

animate, the loss of animate vision, how

26:26

we treat a dead is a huge

26:28

part of it. The loss of the

26:30

animate isn't simply the loss of a

26:32

connection to trees and moss and forest

26:34

ecosystems. The loss of the

26:37

animate is a disconnection from the ancestral

26:39

dead. And when we

26:41

lose that connection, then those who

26:43

maintain it are easily ridiculed for

26:45

their backwards. Those

26:48

who still dialogue with spirits may

26:51

not even be seen as human at

26:53

all. Spirit possession,

26:55

as Paul Johnson, was purged

26:57

from European culture after the

27:00

Reformation, and then projected outward

27:02

as an anthropological concept and

27:04

applied to non-Western, especially African,

27:06

cultures as a sign of

27:09

primitiveness and backwardness. Since

27:11

Africa was the main source of slaves

27:13

and European colonies, spirit possession

27:16

came to be primarily associated

27:18

with African cultures, where in

27:20

the European imagination, Africans

27:22

were, quote, without will

27:24

and overwhelmed by instinct and

27:27

passion. In

27:30

the 17th century, in a

27:32

world increasingly obsessed with agency and

27:34

control, the fact that African peoples

27:37

practiced spirit possession was directly

27:39

used as justification for their

27:42

enslavement. The French Caud noir

27:44

of 1685 questioned whether those

27:46

who become possessed are

27:49

capable of owning or controlling themselves,

27:51

and therefore whether they are capable

27:53

of self-governance. Spirit

27:55

possession, says May-Feryong,

27:58

quote, disturbs May-Feryong. mainstream

28:00

society, because the idea

28:02

of the occupied body and spoken-through

28:05

person goes against the

28:07

development of the rational,

28:09

autonomous, self-possessed individual imagined

28:11

as the foundation of

28:13

the modern state in

28:15

enlightenment discourse. Yes,

28:19

the spirit medium lives in direct

28:22

contradiction to the Protestant vision of

28:24

bodies, the humanist vision

28:26

of bodies, the scientific

28:28

industrialist vision of bodies, and

28:31

so science and religion despised

28:33

the spirit medium equally. The

28:36

spirit medium, arms open

28:38

to larger breezes, larger

28:41

flows, arms open to

28:43

the river, ears turned towards the

28:45

river, tears brimming at the eyes

28:48

to the sound of the rush of the river, stands

28:52

in direct contradiction to bodies

28:54

that are meant to exist

28:56

as individual, isolated

28:59

units in a

29:01

cosmos that functions as a machine. In

29:04

the 17th century there is

29:06

a seamless handoff, an unbroken

29:09

line, a direct continuity from

29:11

the Church's diagnosis of the

29:13

intuitive as a demonically possessed

29:15

which to the scientific

29:17

pathologization of the intuitive as hysterical.

29:21

So direct in fact that the

29:23

first medical text describing hysteria was

29:25

written by a doctor who was

29:27

a medical witness at a witch

29:29

trial. Let that one sink

29:31

in. So direct that

29:34

modern psychology inexplicably still

29:36

spends an awful lot of time

29:38

trying to retroactively pathologize witches. There

29:40

are a whole lot of books

29:42

on what was really wrong with

29:44

all those mistakes, because of course

29:47

they couldn't have actually just been

29:49

mystics, right? Saint

29:51

Teresa could not have actually been

29:53

receiving divine ecstasies in Revelation. It

29:56

Must have been a hysteria thing. Christine

30:01

Amazonian, her book St. Stereo says

30:03

quote Within the medical profession, the

30:05

generalized consensus is to interpret the

30:07

mystic as an undiagnosed hysteric. The

30:10

B B C recently went a

30:12

step further and declared that which

30:14

is never existed at all because

30:17

the powers they were accused of

30:19

possessing weren't real quote unquote than

30:21

their couldn't have been any such

30:23

thing as witches. So.

30:26

There's a story, right. There's a

30:28

progress narrative. That. Says that

30:30

spirit medium sip and shamanism has

30:33

dwindled naturally since the rise of

30:35

humanism. Because the rise of

30:37

modern science made all that obsolete

30:39

and so primitive practices kind of

30:41

faded away to live on the

30:44

fringe, I've heard Neil De Grasse

30:46

Tyson basically say this directly. That.

30:48

The Somme and became irrelevant because of

30:50

some it's. It's a nice

30:52

story, but it's nowhere near the

30:55

full picture. The. Intuitive didn't

30:57

just fade away. they were

30:59

erased. The Intuitive, the Oracle,

31:01

the seer, the visionary, the

31:04

neuro divergent, the highly sensitive

31:06

person. Was. Extricated from

31:08

the enlightenment industrialist body because

31:11

their bodies do not sit

31:13

with what modernity requires of

31:16

buddies. For.

31:21

What somebody for. In

31:23

a regime of industry. Does

31:26

a body exists? To give voice to

31:28

the water. To enact

31:31

and reflect the great permeability. Dance

31:34

Out the plays great forces

31:36

all around us to gesture

31:38

through fingers and speakers. To

31:42

feel to perceive through direct

31:44

revelation to whale is t

31:46

to seeing of great powers

31:49

and. Passing. Know

31:51

a body used. to

31:55

sit at the school desk and then the cubicle

31:58

and then in the coffin and

32:00

anything other is

32:02

pathology. Dr.

32:05

Yang, writing of the change

32:07

in attitudes towards spirit possession

32:09

wrote this, I propose

32:11

that a possible reason why

32:13

spirit possession is denigrated today

32:16

is that it violates modernity's

32:18

plan for the orderly industrial

32:21

and state disciplined body. Yeah,

32:26

that's a mic drop for Mayfair

32:28

Yang. Yes, the

32:30

spirit medium's body, with

32:32

its ecstasies and unpredictability

32:34

and constant surrendering, its

32:37

profound sensitivities does

32:39

not fit into the capitalist industrialist

32:41

division of what bodies are for,

32:43

nor does it fit into the

32:45

communist socialist utilitarianism of bodies in

32:48

which, as socialist hero Leifong

32:50

described, bodies were to serve

32:53

as common screws of the

32:55

great machinery of industrialization and

32:57

state building. Nor does the

32:59

spirit medium's body fit in

33:01

wellness community's vision of a

33:03

whole perceived body actualized through

33:05

a relentless focus on the

33:07

self. With its perpetual turning

33:09

over of agency, its alignment

33:11

to a larger animacy rather

33:13

than an ownership of its

33:15

own trauma, the spirit medium's

33:17

body does not fit the

33:19

psychology world's vision of what

33:21

individualized well-adjusted bodies should be.

33:24

The spirit medium's body certainly doesn't

33:26

fit the Rogan-esque visions of the

33:28

reclaimed Bronze Age body, but

33:31

neither does it necessarily conform

33:33

to modern feminist visions of

33:35

what supposedly embodied feminine power

33:37

looks like either. With

33:40

its repeated voluntary self subjugation

33:42

in favor of greater powers

33:44

and agency, the spirit medium's

33:46

body calls into question all

33:48

modern notions of power. It

33:51

finds the power in the powerlessness,

33:53

which is not a very popular

33:55

thing to do or even talk

33:57

about these days. In

34:00

a world in which we are told that

34:03

what we really want is autonomy and power,

34:05

the idea that true power might

34:07

dwell more in the unknowns than

34:09

the knowns, and that power

34:11

might flow through bodies without any

34:13

regard for modern visions of acceptability

34:16

and control, is a threat to

34:18

any system, rationalist or religious, that

34:20

wants to put human agency at

34:22

the pinnacle of all creation. It's

34:25

threatening to the Church because it suggests

34:27

that all people are intermediaries. It's

34:30

threatening to the scientists because it

34:32

suggests unprovable, unempirically verifiable forces still

34:34

govern behavior, that a huge part

34:36

of the human experience has never

34:38

been informed by reason and never

34:40

ever will be. It's

34:42

threatening to the factory owner because it

34:44

will not sit and conform. Quote,

34:47

In the garment factories outside

34:49

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, young rural

34:51

peasant women workers have fallen

34:54

victim to local vengeful spirits

34:56

called Nyakta, whose lands have

34:58

been disturbed by the factory

35:00

invasion. These spirits possess

35:02

some women and bark out orders

35:04

to others, causing mass fainting spells

35:06

among the overworked female laborers and

35:09

widespread work stoppages. Some

35:11

factory managers have even placated the

35:14

Nyakta with animal sacrifices. These

35:17

days when Nyakta appear on the factory

35:19

floor, they are helping the

35:21

cause of Cambodia's largely young female

35:23

and rural factory workforce by

35:25

registering a kind of bodily objection

35:28

to the harsh daily regimen of

35:30

industrial capitalism. The shaking

35:33

bodies of spirit mediums in

35:35

France, says Yang, showing

35:37

the whites of their eyes or facial

35:39

grimaces or foaming of the mouth, are

35:42

not bodies in accord with the

35:44

modern disciplinary culture that has penetrated

35:46

the globe. Yes,

35:48

there is a clash between

35:50

the unfettered, expressive and unpredictable

35:52

spokesperson for the gods and

35:55

the disciplined industrial or clerical

35:57

laborer. There is a clash

35:59

between senses. and the

36:01

numbness required to carry

36:04

out the industrialization project. Because

36:07

if it's one thing modernity requires

36:09

of us, it's

36:11

numbness. The

36:21

forging of the new world required numbness.

36:24

To subject other human beings to

36:27

the horror and suffering of slavery

36:29

requires numbness. To institute

36:31

large scale and barf inspection

36:33

requires numbness. To

36:36

kill on a battlefield with the new and

36:38

possibly loud and possibly

36:40

shocking weapons of scientific

36:42

and nationalization requires numbness.

36:46

To vip a sex living being for the

36:48

sake of progress requires numbness. To

36:52

sentence people to the life of

36:54

the factory requires numbness. To

36:57

work in the factory

36:59

requires numbness. Modern culture

37:01

must become insensate in

37:03

order to function. Here's

37:07

what Adam Aranovich from Healing from Healing

37:09

has to say about all this. We

37:13

become aware that our sensitivity is

37:16

not necessarily a virtue in the

37:18

modern world and that if we're

37:20

not able to numb

37:22

down, then life in

37:24

Western society becomes unbearable.

37:27

It is not a coincidence that

37:29

emotional literacy among Western men is

37:32

so low that there is a very

37:35

deep lack of emotional literacy that is

37:37

by design. It's

37:39

not a bug, it's a feature. When

37:41

you think about hyper-capitalist extractive

37:43

societies, the only reason how

37:45

a system based on exploitation

37:47

and colonization and imperialism and

37:50

all the different isms that

37:52

are leading the world, or

37:54

at least humanity, towards possible

37:56

extinction, we are living through

37:58

a new world. the sixth

38:00

mass extinction that has

38:03

been facilitated by

38:05

a society that requires people

38:07

to disconnect from their sensitivity

38:09

in order to operate. It

38:11

would be impossible to do what we do to the

38:14

world and to each other if we

38:16

hadn't been taught that feeling should

38:19

be pathologized. Modernity

38:23

is the persecution of the

38:25

sensitive, the felt, the

38:27

sensate, the walls that civilization places

38:29

between it and the wilds are

38:32

walls of numbness. And

38:35

fluid, permeable, nervous systems of

38:37

individual bodies over time internalize

38:39

those walls, and the outer

38:42

walls of the city become

38:44

inner walls of numbness.

38:51

This year Isaiah saw this in a vision

38:53

long ago that the

38:55

dominant culture would, quote, make the

38:57

heart of the people and

39:00

let it, in

39:02

their ears heavy, and

39:04

it would shut their eyes. Do

39:11

you feel this in the

39:14

relentless traffic in the 405,

39:16

in the anesthetizing

39:19

globe of the city,

39:22

in the bloodstream of a culture that

39:25

requires nine billion gallons of coffee a

39:27

year just to wake up in the

39:29

morning and show up for life? A

39:33

culture in which, as Isaiah goes,

39:36

all things are full of weariness and

39:39

there isn't anything new in this. Don't

39:45

you long to break free of the numbness?

39:48

Haven't you had visions in which the culture en

39:51

masse was uplifted out of its nose?

39:54

Haven't you seen us tearing ourselves free

39:56

of the gray, thin, neat skin that

39:58

has grown over us? That

40:00

is deadened our eyes and hearts.

40:03

There is no possibility of newness

40:05

until the numbness is broken So

40:08

the seer comes to alert culture to

40:10

its numbness Seer

40:12

describes the state of the

40:14

cultural The

40:16

prophet the visionary the mad

40:18

seer shouting wild-eyed at the

40:21

city gates does not sugarcoat

40:23

the situation They do not say that

40:25

everything is going to be alright or

40:27

that if you ask the universe for

40:29

what you want It will inevitably provide

40:32

they do not come extolling wellness narrative

40:34

Or propounding the law of attraction

40:37

or saying just hold tight. We're

40:39

all going to ascend tomorrow No,

40:41

they come to announce times of doom

40:43

and destruction times

40:46

of societal stagnation untenable

40:48

systems of odds of nature of

40:51

human ignorance jackbooting its way through

40:53

history yet again of The

40:56

balance of millions of lives hanging upon

40:58

the whims of the least capable Seer

41:05

lament the numbness that is

41:07

overtaken How

41:09

can we do this to each other again

41:12

this year? This

41:19

is the voice crying

41:21

in the wilderness Jeremiah

41:25

State of the nation the state of

41:27

Israel The state

41:29

of the body the state of the world

41:31

a world in the throes of great movement.

41:33

I Looked at the

41:35

earth. He says and lo it

41:38

was waste And

41:40

to the heavens and they had no I

41:43

looked on the mountains and lo they were

41:46

quaking and all the

41:48

hills moved to and fro The

41:52

land was waste and void sound

41:55

familiar seen

41:57

the news recently O

42:00

land, land, land, the

42:02

prophet cries, lamenting the

42:05

state of the body of the culture, lamenting

42:07

a culture of profiteers, warmongers,

42:10

of selfishness, of blindness,

42:13

of oblivious billionaires gorging and weapons

42:15

dealers raking it in while children

42:17

are bombed in the street. Oh,

42:20

that my head

42:23

were made of waters, and

42:25

my eyes of heck and of tears, that

42:31

I might weep day and night for the

42:33

daughter of my people, says

42:35

Jeremiah. This

42:37

year, the prophet is not

42:40

addressing behavioral problems, says Walter

42:42

Brueggemann in the prophetic imagination.

42:46

He has only the hope that the

42:48

ache of the divine could penetrate the

42:50

numbness of history. The

42:54

prophet serves to offer symbols that

42:56

are adequate to confront the horror

42:58

and massiveness of the experience that

43:00

evokes numbness and requires denial. The

43:02

prophet provides a way in which

43:05

the stonewalling can be ended. So

43:10

the seer, traditionally, wakes

43:13

up the feeling body of a

43:15

culture. The seer's sensitivity, their

43:17

bare feet, their wild hair, their

43:19

tear-brimmed eyes are a wake-up call

43:22

for culture. The seer hopes only

43:24

that the ache of the divine

43:26

can penetrate the numbness of

43:30

history. Have you felt this

43:32

want? That the aching

43:34

beauty of nature, the aching beauty of

43:36

the trembling oak leaf in the sun,

43:39

that golden hour, the

43:41

aching beauty of all that bleeds and

43:43

sees, the aching beauty of death, the

43:45

aching beauty of the living chandelier of

43:48

stars above, that

43:50

the aching beauty of the light that pours

43:52

through in the strangest moments, during

43:55

deep pauses, during brief glances,

43:58

could wake us up. could

44:00

wake the feeling body of the culture

44:03

up. So

44:05

in that honest searing recognition of

44:07

the state of things, the mad

44:10

seer offers something besides doom and

44:12

dismay. They

44:14

offer an immediacy of rawness and urgency

44:16

through which love can actually pour us

44:19

through. An

44:21

invitation to wake up to the reality of

44:24

this humble existence. That

44:26

life has always been the most

44:28

precarious of propositions. In

44:30

whose maddening play we have never exerted much

44:33

of what can be called control. But

44:36

in the midst of all this, in

44:39

the midst of the pain of a world

44:41

determined to play out its cycles of anguish

44:43

yet again. Its

44:46

victor and vanquished dramas again and

44:48

again. A

44:50

world determined to enact its own

44:52

failings, its own miseries on another

44:55

generation of children again. In

44:59

the midst of all this, we

45:01

can wake up. We

45:03

can try in whatever small,

45:06

seemingly insignificant ways to

45:08

be conduits for love to pass through us. We

45:12

can feed each other. We

45:14

can be there for each other. And

45:16

we can, together, echo

45:18

the seer's cry that proclaims to the

45:21

overarching culture. Wake

45:23

up from your numbness. Wake

45:25

up from your numbness. And

45:27

feel. Feel. Wake

45:32

up from your numbness and feel. Sun

45:36

beams filter through black smoke. Breezes

45:39

stir. How

45:42

desperately we long to feel. All

45:48

of this pain we enact on each other, all

45:52

of this perhaps is us

45:55

longing, grieving, wanting, wanting

45:57

to truly feel. Everyone

46:18

knows that the world, says

46:20

Roberto Palasso, always

46:23

finds a way of making itself

46:25

felt. And

46:27

every attempt to avoid its intrusion

46:30

cannot last long. The

46:32

world will find a way to make

46:35

itself felt. We impose

46:37

a regimen of numbness and bodies

46:39

break under the pressure and visions

46:41

start pouring through. We

46:43

impose normalcy and neurodivergence

46:46

as flourish. We

46:48

toxify the world and environmental sensitivity

46:50

sky rocket. We tout

46:52

reason and suppress the old gods

46:55

and then the unhonored gods. The

46:59

world will make us feel, one way

47:02

or another. And

47:05

this feeling, this

47:07

feeling body, is

47:10

a good thing. For most

47:13

of human history, profound sensitivity

47:15

was a good thing. A

47:17

sought after quality even. The

47:20

pathologization, othering and ridicule of

47:22

sensitivity is a modern thing.

47:25

An internalization of civilizational walls.

47:28

Sensitivity seen as emotional instability

47:31

as opposed to sensitivity as

47:33

a profound cultural asset.

47:36

So unothered, unpathologized sensitivity

47:38

used to be evenly

47:41

distributed throughout the culture.

47:46

In indigenous traditions, you encounter a

47:48

lot of very sensitive people. But

47:51

not sensitive in the way we're used to thinking

47:53

of sensitive. Sensitive hunters,

47:56

sensitive weavers. The

47:58

hunter wants sensitive people. The

48:01

weaver wants sensitivity. It

48:03

takes sensitivity to cross the stream with your child

48:05

on your back and feel out a safe place

48:08

to sleep for the night. It

48:10

takes sensitivity to distinguish the edible

48:12

from the inedible. Talk

48:14

to any plant knowledgeable culture and

48:16

they'll tell you that plants were

48:18

navigated not through trial and error,

48:20

but through sensitivity. Doctors

48:23

for a long time were the most sensitive of

48:25

people. In the Asclepean traditions,

48:27

doctors had to have fluency in

48:30

navigating the dream space. Dream

48:33

navigation was a big part of being a

48:35

doctor. Even the

48:37

ruler wants sensitivity. They

48:39

want to feel the realm as their own body. The

48:42

Grail King is wounded and the land is

48:44

wounded. The reciprocal

48:46

relationship between king and land, land

48:48

and king is felt in the

48:50

sensitivities of the ruler's body. The

48:54

swordsmith wants to feel the tip of the

48:56

sword while holding the handle. The

48:58

fire keeper wants hands that can

49:00

assess the qualities of the wood by

49:02

feel. We

49:05

are sensitive. We

49:08

are run through with the flaming spears

49:10

of angels and we cry out like

49:12

St. Teresa and like Joan we see

49:14

blazing visions in the garden. Old

49:17

stories course through us, you and I.

49:20

The dreams of times long past, echoes

49:23

in the garden. Do

49:25

you hear the voices in the garden, calling

49:28

in the garden, archangels in

49:30

the garden? Do you hear? What

49:33

are now labeled as hypervigilance, hypersensitivity,

49:36

neurodivergence, these are part of a

49:38

tapestry that used to live and

49:40

find place and be distributed

49:42

through the body of a culture. The

49:45

sensitivities of a culture used to be distributed

49:47

among all of its people. Now

49:50

sensitivity is outsourced to artists and

49:53

to mental patients. Modernity

49:55

wants numbness of us, but

49:58

of course it doesn't want to believe us. of

52:00

the animate from day to day concern

52:02

and consideration, then of course

52:05

it vilifies those who speak

52:07

aloud with animate forces. Since

52:09

modernity cares nothing of ancestry,

52:12

then of course it vilifies those who channel

52:14

ancestry. Since modernity runs

52:16

from death, of course it vilifies those

52:18

who cross over into the other world.

52:21

Since modernity defines agency as that

52:24

which lives within one body isolated

52:26

from all other bodies, then

52:28

of course it vilifies those who dwell

52:31

in a world of higher agencies. Multiple

52:34

bodies beyond our control. And

52:38

here's where it gets really interesting. If

52:40

we take Colaso's words that the world

52:43

will always find a way to make

52:45

itself felt, then the

52:47

persecution of intuitives too is

52:49

a twisted societal attempt to

52:52

find that feeling body. The

52:55

persecution of the intuitive is simultaneously

52:57

a the attempt to extricate those

52:59

who feel too much and

53:01

to restore its own feeling body

53:03

because it's gotten so twisted that

53:06

it can only feel when it is burning someone.

53:09

It can only feel when it is

53:12

bombing someone. Modernity

53:14

burns those who feel as a

53:16

way to itself feel. You

53:20

know, that force that only loves

53:22

most things because it loves to

53:24

see them break. It

53:27

says someday you will

53:30

ache like I ache. Someday

53:35

you will ache

53:38

like I

53:40

ache. Feel

53:42

this, the first accuser, not

53:45

accused, the first accuser in

53:48

the Salem Witch Trials was a teenage

53:50

girl who was uncomfortable with things that

53:53

she was feeling. Itchings,

53:55

burnings, goosebumps in the night,

53:57

hidden things awakening. She

54:00

took that feeling, externalized it,

54:02

and put it on trial. And

54:05

then how did she feel when she

54:07

watched the accused burn? What

54:10

arose then? Modernity

54:12

bans feeling and then finds

54:14

its own arrows through burning

54:16

those who feel. It

54:19

finds its arrows through war, through

54:21

trial, through the temporary rush of

54:23

relief brought by shouts and tears

54:25

and flames in the night. So

54:28

it's easy to say that modernity wants nothing

54:31

to do with witches, but it's

54:33

not so easy. Modernity

54:35

wants witches to burn. It

54:38

wants to repeat the same refrain over

54:40

and over again about witches and shamans

54:42

and intuitives and psychics. They

54:44

are out of control and therefore

54:47

will topple civilization.

54:51

This you will topple civilization narrative

54:53

was at play in the witch

54:55

and werewolf trials of the 17th

54:57

century. It was at play in

54:59

the 1980s heavy metal panic. It's

55:02

very much at play in the

55:04

collision between the scientific rational and

55:06

the new age conspiratorial. Those

55:09

new age conspiracy theorists are a

55:11

threat that will topple civilization. People

55:15

scratch their heads at the rise

55:17

of new age conspiratorialism, but it's

55:19

extremely simple. We describe

55:21

in any given era

55:23

as civilized, normal, informed,

55:25

rational behavior. The

55:28

intuitive, the madman on the

55:30

fringe, the trickster at the

55:32

gates will be articulating consciously

55:34

or unconsciously the hidden feelings

55:36

underneath. The ghosts

55:38

of that proclamation, the buried

55:40

bodies, the subverting narrative. It

55:43

doesn't matter if those narratives are out

55:45

there or woo or even flat out

55:48

wrong. They serve a distinct

55:50

somatic purpose within the body of a

55:52

culture. It has to do with

55:54

how we are with shadows. Have

56:00

you ever seen a family with

56:02

buried narratives in which one sibling

56:05

acts out the hidden sensitivities? Right?

56:08

They get sick a lot or they

56:10

self-appoint as the familial sacrifice victim? You

56:13

ever seen that? This

56:15

is the same familial dynamic

56:17

expanded societally. So,

56:20

the New Age Conspiratorialist is not

56:22

a tumor to be extricated, not

56:25

an aberration. If

56:27

we actually believe in taking a whole

56:29

systems approach to culture, then

56:31

we have to be willing to see the role

56:33

that everything plays and what everything

56:36

is responding to. The

56:38

fragmentations that are being hacked out by

56:40

what we call the fringe, the

56:43

imbalances that are being responded to, the

56:46

unvoiced sensitivities, this

56:48

is a way that culture processes

56:51

itself. And

56:53

the prophet, the seer, the visionary

56:55

invites the people into a sensitivity

56:57

that cannot be quantified by the

56:59

metrics of civilization. The

57:01

seer invites dreams that have

57:03

no ostensibly rational purpose and

57:06

do not fall along scientific narratives

57:08

of validity or invalidity. The

57:11

seer speaks of hidden shadow. The

57:14

seer enacts all we ridicule and

57:17

despise. They wear camel

57:19

hair robes when camel hair is

57:21

distinctly out of style. And

57:23

all the civilizational narratives can do is

57:26

point at the seer and

57:29

accuse them of being vagabonds,

57:31

charlatans, fringe, out

57:34

there, woo. You're

57:36

taking advantage of the people, civilization

57:39

says. You know, civilization

57:41

that is utterly built

57:43

upon taking advantage of the people. You're

57:47

feeding the people false narratives,

57:49

civilization says. Civilization

57:51

that is itself built on

57:54

false narratives? You're

57:56

charlatans, says civilization. Itself.

58:00

constructed by charlatans. See

58:03

what I mean? Modernity

58:06

has been accusing intuitives

58:08

of being charlatans for

58:10

a very long time. The 19th

58:13

century in Europe and the United

58:15

States saw a huge rise in

58:18

the growth of Spiritism, of Spiritist

58:20

traditions in which oracular vision, group

58:23

rapture, and speaking with the dead

58:25

were front and center. Spiritism

58:28

at that time was hardly

58:30

fringe. Spiritism drew many,

58:32

many followers and influenced not

58:34

only other spiritual traditions across

58:36

the New World, but also

58:38

had a direct impact on

58:41

modern science. Yes, there

58:43

were Spiritists from all walks of

58:45

life, including a whole lot of

58:47

scientists. Alfred Russell Wallace, one of

58:49

the grandfathers of evolutionary biology and

58:51

the theory of natural selection was

58:54

a Spiritist, as was

58:56

chemist and physicist William Crooks,

58:58

physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, physicist

59:01

and Nobel laureate Pierre Curie,

59:04

and of course Arthur Conan Doyle,

59:06

the writer who created Sherlock

59:08

Holmes. That's right, the creator

59:10

of that classic deductive rationalist

59:12

character, Sherlock Holmes, was himself

59:15

a Spiritist, because shocking,

59:17

right? There was not such a

59:19

hard dichotomy between Spirit and science

59:21

then. But what's interesting

59:23

is that if you look up

59:25

the word Spiritism now in the

59:27

United States, what you mostly find

59:29

is cases of investigations of fake

59:31

seances. Fake seances, you know,

59:34

someone behind a screen makes eerie

59:36

voices and dumps the floor and

59:38

people are tricked into thinking they're

59:40

actually communicating with the dead. Kenneth

59:42

Branagh's recent film, A Haunting in

59:44

Venice was all about this. If

59:46

you open an inquiry into Spiritism

59:49

these days, you might

59:51

think that Spiritism was only fake

59:53

seances. But of course, that's not

59:55

the full picture either. That too

59:57

is a function of Western culture.

1:00:00

othering of the intuitive. For

1:00:03

if you research espiritismo in

1:00:05

its Cuban context or espiritismo

1:00:07

in its Brazilian context, you'll

1:00:10

find something very different. You'll

1:00:12

find descriptions of traditions that form

1:00:14

the lifeblood of communities that

1:00:16

are practiced far and wide and

1:00:19

respected and considered utterly and completely

1:00:21

normal, that provide according

1:00:24

to anthropologists a positive impact

1:00:26

on their communities, that

1:00:28

give people a means to grieve and be

1:00:31

in dialogue and to

1:00:33

process communal issues and to heal.

1:00:36

So why does the North

1:00:38

American mind file spiritism away

1:00:41

as fakery? Does this

1:00:43

mean that there's something different about North

1:00:45

American spiritism? That there are

1:00:47

more charlatans here that need to be outed?

1:00:50

Why do over a dozen states

1:00:52

in the United States and several

1:00:54

northern European nations still have laws

1:00:57

against all forms of divination? For

1:01:00

that matter, why are

1:01:02

anti-fortunetelling laws almost exclusively

1:01:04

limited to Puritan nations?

1:01:08

For 200 years of the so-called

1:01:10

Enlightenment, fortune-telling, accessing

1:01:12

occult powers, spirit mediumship was

1:01:14

punishable by death in England.

1:01:18

The justification for such laws

1:01:20

was that impressionable, gullible women

1:01:22

needed to be protected against

1:01:24

charlatans. Is that

1:01:26

really what those laws were for? Protecting

1:01:28

women? In 1824, British

1:01:31

Parliament revised the

1:01:34

law but still

1:01:36

maintained fortune-telling, astrology, and spiritualism

1:01:39

as punishable offenses. New

1:01:42

Zealand and Australia have historically

1:01:44

had anti-fortunetelling laws, anti-spiritist laws.

1:01:47

In the US states of Minnesota,

1:01:50

North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,

1:01:53

all forms of fortune-telling are illegal.

1:01:55

And take a look. It's not the

1:01:57

Catholic countries, not the Hindu countries, or

1:02:00

not the Euryuban countries. It's

1:02:03

very specifically the Protestant countries.

1:02:06

Is that because Protestant countries are

1:02:08

inherently home to more charlatans? No.

1:02:11

What's different is the ecology,

1:02:14

the Puritan response to visions.

1:02:17

Modern Western Puritanically derived culture

1:02:19

is much less accepting of

1:02:22

anything that is not supported

1:02:24

within the very narrow binary

1:02:26

lens of scientific validity. Either

1:02:28

something is valid or it's

1:02:30

not. How could it be otherwise? Either

1:02:33

the science backs it up or it doesn't.

1:02:35

Either it's God or the devil. But,

1:02:39

my friends, not

1:02:41

everything in the universe requires

1:02:43

a scientific discussion about real

1:02:45

or fake, about

1:02:47

valid or invalid. When

1:02:49

the shaman pulls a smoking coal or a

1:02:51

tooth out of a body, did

1:02:54

it really come out of the

1:02:56

body? When Sophie Strand says that

1:02:58

theatricality is deeply important to healing?

1:03:01

What's she talking about? Let's put

1:03:03

it this way. What makes

1:03:05

an effective seance is

1:03:07

very different than what makes a good

1:03:09

lab experiment. The metrics of

1:03:11

a seance or a ceremony do

1:03:14

not simply fall into valid or

1:03:16

not valid. Ritual

1:03:18

is an ongoing enacted

1:03:21

dialogue. The

1:03:23

theatricality, the enactment, opens a

1:03:26

portal to embodied dialogue

1:03:28

whether or not you consider the spirit

1:03:30

beings at the heart of it, quote-unquote,

1:03:33

real or valid or

1:03:35

not. In

1:03:38

the bodies of communities, in

1:03:40

relationships, in ongoing fluid situations

1:03:43

between people, the

1:03:45

metric is not always valid

1:03:47

or invalid. The metric of human

1:03:49

feeling and human thriving is

1:03:52

not categorized by valid or

1:03:54

invalid. And communities ultimately are

1:03:56

navigated through feeling. If you

1:03:58

want to read, communities than

1:04:01

you do so through the

1:04:03

body of resonance, of feeling,

1:04:05

of enacting, of ongoing somatic

1:04:07

dialogue. Or you can try

1:04:09

dismissing entire communities as invalid

1:04:12

and see what happens. You can deride

1:04:14

communities for seeing things differently and

1:04:17

then see if the change that you want happens.

1:04:20

See if we get to anything new

1:04:22

or different, right? Within the

1:04:24

felt experience of communities all

1:04:26

across the globe forever and

1:04:28

ever, acknowledging and

1:04:31

performing the mysterious, the

1:04:33

ineffable, acting as a crossover

1:04:35

between the immediate and the vaster world,

1:04:38

has had a very specific healing

1:04:40

role to play in culture and

1:04:43

the results are tangible. I

1:04:46

mean, if you haven't actually been

1:04:48

to a transpossession ritual, then

1:04:51

you really have very little to

1:04:53

offer the discussion on real or

1:04:55

unreal. Because when

1:04:57

the music starts rising and

1:05:00

the beat starts pounding and

1:05:03

the chant grows in intensity and

1:05:06

the tremor takes the room, oh,

1:05:09

tremor takes the room and bodies

1:05:11

begin to convulse. I

1:05:16

mean children convulsing on the floor. And

1:05:19

yes, Cassandra, the sky rips open as

1:05:21

you've seen it do a thousand times.

1:05:24

The sky rips open, my holy

1:05:26

love, the angels spear all the

1:05:28

flame. It

1:05:31

would be extremely difficult to

1:05:33

somehow categorize what's going on

1:05:36

as unreal. And

1:05:40

this gets at something important that's gonna

1:05:43

inform the rest of this episode.

1:05:45

Something I mentioned in the first part of the

1:05:47

episode as well. The

1:05:49

seer is responding to something

1:05:52

real. Whether you

1:05:54

or I like it or not, whether

1:05:56

you or I agree with their conclusions

1:05:58

or not, the intuitive is

1:06:00

responding to something real. The real

1:06:02

need in the culture. The

1:06:05

real need in the body. The

1:06:07

seer is not simply a charlatan.

1:06:10

The seer is meeting the need

1:06:12

of ongoing discourse with ancestors, meeting

1:06:15

the need of bridging the world.

1:06:17

The seer is enacting the sensitivity

1:06:19

body of a culture that vilifies

1:06:22

sensitivity and not all of

1:06:24

those enactments are going to conform

1:06:26

to what scientific rationalism wants them

1:06:28

to. The seer is meeting the

1:06:30

need of navigating liminal spaces which

1:06:32

one day may be very important

1:06:34

to the overall culture because

1:06:36

culture far more often than not

1:06:39

moves towards where seers,

1:06:42

where intuitives, where artists

1:06:44

and visionaries point it.

1:06:49

And here I'm gonna

1:06:51

offer a little parenthesis because

1:06:53

it's important to acknowledge the

1:06:55

reality of spiritual charlatans and

1:06:57

spiritual grift. It's important

1:07:00

to acknowledge how unmoored and unanchored

1:07:02

all this has gotten in the

1:07:04

modern world. None of

1:07:06

what I'm saying is to say

1:07:08

that spiritual grift doesn't exist. Of

1:07:10

course it does. Grift, right? You

1:07:12

know the word. Grift. The con

1:07:14

game. The scam. Just to be

1:07:16

totally clear, there are false prophets.

1:07:18

There is plenty of

1:07:20

grade A certified New Age

1:07:22

fuckery out there. Have you

1:07:24

seen the HBO series that

1:07:26

just dropped, Love Has Won,

1:07:29

about the Crestone Colorado-based mother-god

1:07:31

cult started by a former

1:07:33

McDonald's employee and guided by

1:07:35

a disembodied fifth-dimensional galactic

1:07:37

team including Robin Williams and

1:07:39

crocodile hunter Steve Irwin? Yeah.

1:07:44

There are false prophets. Spiritual

1:07:46

grift exists. There is plenty

1:07:48

of charlatanism and fakery passing

1:07:50

as spiritual. And people have

1:07:52

practiced spiritual grift for a

1:07:54

very long time. In 13th

1:07:57

century Baghdad of former spiritual

1:08:00

charlatan outlined all the ways that

1:08:02

people can get tricked by spiritual

1:08:04

grift chapter by chapter. It's

1:08:07

called the book of charlatans, and

1:08:09

it includes such gems as quote,

1:08:13

expose of the tricks of astrologers who

1:08:15

ply their trade on the highway, expose

1:08:18

of the tricks of spirit conjurer,

1:08:20

expose of the tricks of those who

1:08:23

manipulate fire, expose of

1:08:25

the tricks of prestidigitators, and

1:08:27

on and on. That's a whole lot

1:08:29

of trickery. And there's a whole

1:08:31

lot more. Well, I think we're seeing,

1:08:34

you know, when you try and press the river down,

1:08:36

it's going to shoot up somewhere. And I think we're

1:08:38

seeing a lot of quote unquote,

1:08:41

visionaries on Instagram right now. Right.

1:08:43

And a new age spirituality. Yeah,

1:08:46

I think that everybody's claiming to be a

1:08:48

channel of the La Marines at this point,

1:08:50

as far as I can tell, I grew

1:08:53

up at the height of the first

1:08:55

wave of the New Age movement. I'll

1:08:57

tell you straight up I saw a

1:08:59

whole lot of grift. I mean, I

1:09:01

was criticizing and satirizing New Age grift

1:09:04

30 years ago. Here's me at

1:09:06

age 22, satirizing New Age grift.

1:09:09

And I'm ready. I'm ready for the

1:09:11

consciousness shift. I've said my

1:09:13

mantras. I've cleaned my colon. I got

1:09:16

Mary's message. I'm hip to 1111. I've been abducted 37 times.

1:09:18

The high arcturian

1:09:26

enema. So I'm clean, man.

1:09:29

And it's going to happen soon. Any day

1:09:32

now. Any

1:09:34

day now. Any

1:09:37

day now. The dolphins will arise from

1:09:39

the great pink ocean and resume

1:09:41

their forms as beings of light and

1:09:43

teach us the secrets of fifth dimensional

1:09:46

sex and sublime ascension and Rose Forks

1:09:48

dildos will rain down from the heavens

1:09:50

and Santa Fe will rise up off

1:09:52

the earth and be joined to Sedona

1:09:55

by a huge rainbow bridge. communicate

1:10:00

with crystal and the Akashic records

1:10:02

will be always playing on the

1:10:04

great cosmic jukebox up in the

1:10:07

sky. And we won't have to

1:10:09

eat, no, we'll just drink amethyst

1:10:12

syrup. Because

1:10:15

we won't have bodies.

1:10:17

We'll abandon this rotting

1:10:19

pus bag and just

1:10:21

float upwards like intergalactic

1:10:23

surfers riding waves of

1:10:25

pink champagne. No

1:10:27

pain, no pain.

1:10:31

Yep, I saw people promising the ascension

1:10:33

at least once a year and then

1:10:35

I saw them scramble when the day

1:10:37

passed and guess what we were all

1:10:40

still here and we still had to

1:10:42

unclog the train and do the laundry

1:10:44

and John Lennon didn't pick us up

1:10:46

on the mothership. Spiritual grift happens and

1:10:49

this of course is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

1:10:51

If you draw a false dichotomy between

1:10:53

spiritual and rational you can be sure

1:10:55

people are going to live that dichotomy.

1:10:57

If you push everything oracular to

1:11:00

the side and other it,

1:11:02

if you make something fringe

1:11:04

then it will become fringe.

1:11:06

And this is part of

1:11:08

why I say that it's

1:11:10

more common in Puritan cultures

1:11:12

because Puritan cultures push spiritualism,

1:11:14

push the visionary to the

1:11:16

side, and then the visionary

1:11:18

goes underground free of context.

1:11:20

And once it becomes fringe, once

1:11:23

it becomes unmoored from context,

1:11:25

anyone can say anything. Anyone can

1:11:27

claim anything. Anyone can say,

1:11:29

source told me and use

1:11:31

it to justify anything that they want to. Like

1:11:35

how convenient, right? Source told me

1:11:38

exactly what I wanted to hear again.

1:11:40

I mean, is it source or is

1:11:42

it more just what you wanted to

1:11:45

hear? You know what I mean? Is

1:11:47

it source or is it you removed

1:11:50

from context untempered with

1:11:53

communal accountability? You

1:11:55

know, source told me I'm on a

1:11:57

divine mission. Source told me I'm infinitely

1:11:59

special. Source told me to

1:12:01

leave my partner because my true calling

1:12:04

is polyamory. I mean, you know,

1:12:06

it could happen. I guess Source

1:12:08

could tell someone that. But

1:12:11

is it Source or is it

1:12:13

anatomically maybe a little lower down?

1:12:16

Like, is it Source or is it

1:12:19

possibly just you wanting to sleep around?

1:12:22

In my rock and roll youth, you know, we

1:12:24

just called it sleeping around. Now

1:12:27

it's got to be couched in

1:12:29

some larger spiritual terminology, right? Like, I'm

1:12:32

composting colonial monogamy narratives

1:12:34

in favor of conscious

1:12:36

polyamory. Could it be

1:12:38

that you're just sleeping around? Don't

1:12:41

cancel me, Asheville. I still love you.

1:12:46

So, yeah, Source told me. Source

1:12:48

told me the QAnon truth about

1:12:50

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and somehow

1:12:52

it all comes back to pizza.

1:12:55

Source told me about direct energy weapons.

1:12:57

Source told me poverty is a mindset.

1:12:59

Source told me the universe favors me

1:13:01

above everyone else. Source

1:13:04

red-pilled me. Wait, was

1:13:06

I red-pilled or blue-pilled? Was I old-pilled

1:13:08

or was I new-pilled? Was

1:13:10

I me-pilled or you-pilled? Was I

1:13:12

totally emptied or was I refilled?

1:13:16

Or is the real question, why

1:13:18

everybody's so pillable? Open

1:13:20

up the mind and listen to the syllable. Tell

1:13:23

me, did I decolonize or de-decolonize and

1:13:26

in emptying the colonial narratives on class,

1:13:28

culture, gender, and race, was I actually

1:13:30

emptied of anything? Or

1:13:32

did another colonial narrative simply take that one's

1:13:34

place? Was

1:13:37

I fed regurgitated morsels from the knowledge

1:13:39

of all ages past and lands abroad?

1:13:42

And before I even took time to grow

1:13:44

them into wisdom, I vomited them back up

1:13:46

like the parrots of the Ta'giriya Upanishad. I

1:13:49

saw the best minds of my

1:13:52

generation, healing from healing says, destroyed

1:13:54

by TikTok wellness trends. Source

1:13:57

told me I'm lost, wandering,

1:13:59

smiling. and

1:14:03

wandering the unanchored mystic is

1:14:05

subject to the other side

1:14:07

of vision. Illusions. What

1:14:11

healing from healing calls, quote,

1:14:13

ego inflation, delusions of grandeur,

1:14:15

messianic fever dreams and generally

1:14:17

ungrounded approaches to sense making

1:14:19

and meaning making. Cassandra,

1:14:23

Unmoured. In

1:14:25

an unanchored world, have we forgotten

1:14:27

what anchored spirituality even looks like?

1:14:30

Do we know that it could

1:14:32

be anything other than a reinforcement

1:14:34

of individual specialness? You

1:14:36

know, it's interesting because having studied

1:14:39

in Indian tradition quite a bit and spent

1:14:42

time, you know, in places like

1:14:44

cremation grounds and this kind of thing, the

1:14:46

overarching message of those

1:14:49

spiritualities tends to be one of

1:14:51

complete and total self obliteration, which

1:14:54

bears no resemblance at all to spirituality

1:14:57

exists so that the universe

1:14:59

can reinforce my absolutely special

1:15:01

place in it. Yeah, exactly.

1:15:04

The solipsism,

1:15:06

I think, is central to

1:15:08

the Western, like new

1:15:10

spirituality, like that idea that everything

1:15:12

that I'm the only real human

1:15:15

and everybody else is just an

1:15:17

actor or an NPC

1:15:19

to some extent in my movie. Weird

1:15:24

epistemology that is derived

1:15:26

from, I guess, experiences

1:15:28

with dimethyltryptamine that are

1:15:31

not properly integrated, extrapolated

1:15:33

with movies like The

1:15:35

Matrix and also different mythologies that are

1:15:37

derived from kind of the solipsistic worldviews,

1:15:40

whereas everybody feels themselves to be neo

1:15:42

inside the matrix and everybody else is

1:15:44

just a prop. Yeah, and

1:15:46

kind of a misinterpretation of non-dualism,

1:15:48

I think. Yeah, totally. Because

1:15:52

non-dualism in context was

1:15:54

really anchored in communal

1:15:56

activity and responsibility and

1:15:59

years and years. and years of navigating

1:16:01

dualism before you got to experience

1:16:04

those non-dual states. And if we

1:16:06

just jump straight to it's

1:16:08

all one and so and I'm God and

1:16:11

yeah everything that I do is divine and

1:16:14

nothing really matters.

1:16:16

It's a good term for it. The

1:16:18

term that I like is unearned wisdom. Well,

1:16:21

it's the sort of wisdom that is

1:16:23

not necessarily earned through lived experience and

1:16:26

rooted in anything

1:16:28

other than just kind of like a couple

1:16:30

of experiences perhaps that give the

1:16:32

impression or the illusion

1:16:34

of wisdom whereas that's not

1:16:36

necessarily something that is really embodied in the

1:16:39

being of the person. And unearned

1:16:41

wisdom I think is one of the main problems

1:16:43

with modern kind of junk

1:16:45

food. Science would express spiritual

1:16:48

practices that people at

1:16:50

least think that people mistake for spiritual practices

1:16:53

like going to an ayahuasca ceremony and mistaking

1:16:56

that for having a spiritual practice or

1:16:59

you know even practicing asana every day

1:17:01

and mistaking that as having a spiritual

1:17:03

practice without really delivering into all their

1:17:06

aspects that are integral to the

1:17:08

yogic system. And look everyone's

1:17:10

going to navigate the current circus the best

1:17:12

they can. Everyone is navigating

1:17:15

all this the best they can.

1:17:17

I'll just say that I have

1:17:19

some concern for the generation raised

1:17:21

on digital wellness mixed spirituality. It

1:17:24

must be extremely hard to know

1:17:27

what the signs of a genuine

1:17:29

tradition, a genuine wisdom keeper are

1:17:31

in this climate. It must

1:17:34

be extremely hard to know the

1:17:36

difference between revelation and

1:17:38

selling between saying

1:17:40

all the right wise words and

1:17:43

actually being a conduit for

1:17:46

wisdom. early

1:18:00

20s that one would be able to guide

1:18:02

someone else on their life is. Yeah,

1:18:05

it's a cluster. I

1:18:08

mean, I definitely think there is a correlation

1:18:10

between lived experience and wisdom. I mean, this

1:18:12

is the kind of thing that you cannot

1:18:14

bypass. So, I mean, again, I'm not

1:18:16

advocating necessarily for like gatekeeping or, you know,

1:18:18

putting various games between people

1:18:20

and wisdom, but just more

1:18:23

humility when it comes to assessing what

1:18:25

it is that actually, you know,

1:18:27

we can offer others in this path. Well,

1:18:30

and the, that the initiatory process

1:18:32

might be important and there is

1:18:35

in fact value to

1:18:37

the stages. I

1:18:39

mean, I just spent a year with

1:18:41

folks like studying the myths and the

1:18:44

very end, very, very end, I

1:18:47

told a certain story and that

1:18:49

story wouldn't have had the same impact if

1:18:51

I had told it on the second day.

1:18:54

Exactly. These days, like

1:18:56

insights aren't in short supply. Like

1:18:59

there's a flood of insights, flood of insights

1:19:01

available anywhere you go. You can go to

1:19:03

your local bookstore and you can buy like

1:19:05

the secret teachings of all the ages, you

1:19:07

know, you can go on Instagram and there's

1:19:09

a lot of people spouting regurgitated quotes from

1:19:11

this kind of thing. And

1:19:14

perhaps all that ultimately

1:19:16

matters is if you actually have

1:19:18

a container to hold any

1:19:21

of this knowledge whatsoever. Yeah. It

1:19:25

must be hard to know that there actually

1:19:27

is such a thing as wisdom, as mastery,

1:19:31

as a deliberately cultivated ecology

1:19:33

in which mystic experience can

1:19:35

thrive for, for

1:19:38

my experience anyway, wisdom

1:19:40

has certain hallmarks, certain

1:19:43

indicators, and

1:19:45

those hallmarks, those indicators are

1:19:47

quite often the exact opposite

1:19:50

as the spirituality we see on social

1:19:52

media. So this is fresh

1:19:55

for me, right? Because I spent

1:19:57

three hours yesterday on a Zoom call. with

1:20:00

an Aboriginal elder talking

1:20:02

story. And then I went

1:20:04

and I watched Love Has Won, the documentary

1:20:07

about the Crestone cult in

1:20:09

which completely unmoored and unanchored

1:20:12

20-somethings are spewing fifth-dimensional celestial

1:20:14

nonsense and thinking that they're

1:20:16

God, right? And I'm

1:20:19

feeling a little spiritual whiplash. And

1:20:21

what it reminded me of and what it makes me

1:20:23

want to say is there's such a thing as good

1:20:26

story and bad story. Tyson Yanka Porta

1:20:28

and I have talked about this. There's

1:20:30

such a thing as story aligned with

1:20:32

the cycles of nature and

1:20:34

story completely unmoored. And

1:20:36

there's a reason why wisdom traditions

1:20:38

keep coming back to the same

1:20:41

understandings over and over and over

1:20:43

again. There is such

1:20:45

a thing as spirituality that

1:20:48

is utterly and completely grounded

1:20:50

in the real, the felt

1:20:52

experience of the real and

1:20:54

how the real unfolds over time. But

1:20:57

the real, the real isn't

1:21:00

always popular because to

1:21:02

connect to the real takes work.

1:21:05

So, and again, all this is

1:21:08

my opinion, you can take it or leave it.

1:21:10

But from what I've studied, the real, the

1:21:13

true wisdom isn't

1:21:15

self-concerned. It

1:21:17

doesn't broadcast itself. It

1:21:20

isn't trying to show anything. So

1:21:23

here's a paradox, right? Even

1:21:25

in doing this podcast, I

1:21:27

might just be showing all the ways in which

1:21:29

I'm not yet wise. I

1:21:32

mean, if I'd really figured all this stuff out,

1:21:34

I wouldn't have to talk about it, right?

1:21:37

And so if I ever

1:21:39

slip into the territory of trying to

1:21:41

show something or prove something, and

1:21:44

I'm sure I do because we all do, if

1:21:47

ever I'm trying to be mystical,

1:21:49

trying to wow you, then

1:21:52

those are the exact moments that I veered

1:21:54

from wisdom. If I'm

1:21:56

trying to show you who I am, maybe

1:21:58

I'm showing you who I am. what

1:22:03

if there were a direct equation between

1:22:05

how much we say we know and

1:22:08

how little we actually know. And

1:22:11

as the Tao Te Ching says, those who tell

1:22:13

do not know and those who know do not

1:22:15

know. If

1:22:18

I'm wearing the feathers but I haven't earned

1:22:20

the feathers, wearing the robes but

1:22:22

I haven't earned the robes, wearing the mala

1:22:24

but haven't earned the mala, then

1:22:26

all I'm showing is everything that

1:22:28

I haven't yet grasped, haven't

1:22:31

yet earned. What

1:22:34

if true wisdom is

1:22:36

invisible to the untrained eye? What

1:22:39

if instead of showy, instead of

1:22:42

being couched in all the right

1:22:44

adornments, all the right paraphernalia, all

1:22:46

the right vernacular, What

1:22:49

if it is close and

1:22:52

transmitted in hidden acts of kindness

1:22:55

and passed on in wordless embraces?

1:22:59

What if it is tucked away like an amulet

1:23:01

in a hidden drawer? What

1:23:04

if it is like the house of Tom

1:23:06

Bombadil in its simplicity,

1:23:09

in its simple song and

1:23:11

its warm hearse, in

1:23:14

its stoked larder, in

1:23:17

its welcoming host, its

1:23:19

home to a magic so deep it's

1:23:21

hard to even see? What

1:23:24

if the true mystics are really,

1:23:26

really hard to see? And

1:23:29

what if to see them we have to change

1:23:32

our whole way of seeing? Away

1:23:35

from the show and

1:23:37

into the real. The

1:23:40

word mystic itself means what? It

1:23:43

means hidden. That's

1:23:45

something worth thinking about in an

1:23:47

age when there are a lot of

1:23:50

self-advertised mystics on the internet. The

1:23:53

mystic, the hidden, is available specifically

1:23:55

to those who are able to

1:23:58

hold things and not broadcast. them

1:24:00

outwards. For

1:24:02

sometimes, I'm sure you know, the moment

1:24:04

you broadcast something out, spill it out,

1:24:07

reveal too much, it's

1:24:09

lost. And

1:24:12

I'm not saying that, you know, one

1:24:14

has to keep everything secret and everyone

1:24:16

who makes a living in the spiritual

1:24:18

marketplace or advertises their services is somehow

1:24:20

wrong or something like that. Not

1:24:23

at all. This isn't a judgment,

1:24:25

this is an invitation. And

1:24:27

what I'm talking about is an energetic thing. Broadcasting

1:24:31

something outwards is not the

1:24:33

same as having actually learned

1:24:35

it. Saying

1:24:37

something is not the same as living

1:24:39

it. Anyone can

1:24:41

broadcast all the right wisdom phrases.

1:24:45

But when I'm alone, and

1:24:49

there's no one for me to show anything to,

1:24:53

do I still speak to the winds? Do

1:24:56

I still fault my knees before the

1:24:58

powers? Do

1:25:00

I still attend to the shrine

1:25:02

lovingly? Do

1:25:04

I still sing your name in the

1:25:06

night, holy mystery? Do

1:25:09

I honor you over and over again? Turn

1:25:12

it over to you over and over again?

1:25:15

Do I practice? Tell

1:25:20

me, how

1:25:22

does one come by wisdom? Is

1:25:26

there any other answer than through time? Through

1:25:31

the relentless pulse of

1:25:33

life's repetitive fire? But

1:25:36

who has time for that? Who has time to

1:25:38

actually grow at the pace

1:25:40

of change? And so

1:25:43

this is perhaps the deeper grift.

1:25:45

It's not that spirituality

1:25:48

lends itself inherently to

1:25:50

grifters, but that

1:25:52

like everything else, it's been

1:25:54

subsumed completely into the marketplace.

1:25:57

It's been sucked into the same

1:25:59

market forces. it supposedly

1:26:01

decries. For me,

1:26:03

a much more valid criticism of the

1:26:05

New Age has not to do with

1:26:07

the fact that it involves irrationality or

1:26:10

that it's metrics of success are

1:26:13

unverifiable, but that it

1:26:15

has become indistinguishable from free market

1:26:17

capitalism. And the place of

1:26:19

the mystic is now synonymous with the

1:26:21

place of the online influencer. The

1:26:25

grift is not that someone spoke to the dead

1:26:27

or to the unseen forces. People have been doing

1:26:29

that forever. The grift is

1:26:31

that they immediately started selling a speak

1:26:33

to the dead in five easy steps

1:26:36

course after one conversation. The

1:26:38

grift is that premonition, sensitivity,

1:26:40

intuition must translate into individualist

1:26:43

notions of self-improvement and career

1:26:45

advancement. That every

1:26:47

vision is supposed to yield likes

1:26:49

and opportunities to reach new audiences.

1:26:52

That creativity must equal, as

1:26:54

Scout Wiley says, productivity.

1:26:58

This is the larger grift of capitalism.

1:27:00

And because of this unmooring, spiritual

1:27:04

New Age grift, intuitive

1:27:06

grift, becomes inseparable from

1:27:09

the larger culture of

1:27:11

capitalist grift. So now

1:27:13

we get to the real con, the

1:27:16

real scam, the real grift. Capitalism,

1:27:19

the greatest grift of all, the

1:27:22

methodical deliberate convincing that you are

1:27:24

not complete as you are, that

1:27:28

you must constantly want more. That

1:27:31

life is inherently incomplete without a

1:27:33

Heineken so frosty that it's beating

1:27:35

with moisture. That

1:27:38

you alone are the architect

1:27:40

of your own isolated self-sufficient

1:27:42

salvation. And this

1:27:44

grift wraps its tendrils around

1:27:46

intuitive forces them into

1:27:48

the what am I to do

1:27:50

with these gifts question. And

1:27:53

how can I convert this all

1:27:55

into a meaningful career conversation that

1:27:58

would be irrelevant. culture where

1:28:00

those gifts would have context in which to

1:28:03

live. Cassandra

1:28:05

wanders through the

1:28:08

tides of postmodern detritus, adrift

1:28:10

in a sea of merchant shwag.

1:28:13

Where do I turn, Cassandra asks? Where

1:28:16

do I turn?

1:28:21

Cassandra numbs herself. Cassandra

1:28:23

doom scrolls just to feel

1:28:25

something. Cassandra pours

1:28:27

lattes eight hours a day and can't even

1:28:30

pay the rent. Far

1:28:32

from Apollo's temple, far

1:28:34

from the gods golden feet, Cassandra

1:28:37

is lost, victim

1:28:39

of the deepest grift there is.

1:28:43

So, charlatanism and

1:28:45

capitalism are closely intertwined.

1:28:48

Charlatanism is a function of

1:28:50

having societal outliers. In

1:28:53

an unanchored context, the intuitive lives

1:28:55

on the fringe and then is

1:28:57

prone to that most time-honored of

1:28:59

fringe activities. The con.

1:29:02

There's a whole lot of focus

1:29:04

right now on spirituality as a

1:29:06

con. If you were to

1:29:08

listen to some, you might get

1:29:10

the sense that all spirituality is

1:29:13

a con. And I don't mind

1:29:15

a good laugh at the expense

1:29:17

of the wackiest aspects of the

1:29:19

New Age, but there's something about

1:29:21

the growing critique, the post-Covid critique

1:29:24

of anything that remotely goes against

1:29:26

the status quo, of anything outside

1:29:28

that extremely narrow metric of valid

1:29:30

or invalid that sounds a little

1:29:32

like something other than good-natured criticism.

1:29:34

Sounds a little different than deep

1:29:37

inquiry or an attempt at conversation

1:29:39

around what are truly legitimate issues.

1:29:41

Some of it is

1:29:43

sounding a whole lot like burn

1:29:46

the intuitive. You

1:29:48

know, the implied flipside of trust the

1:29:50

science? Don't trust anyone who's not a

1:29:53

scientist or does not use scientific rationalism

1:29:55

as their primary method of interacting with

1:29:57

reality. All who do not get it.

1:30:00

line with the rationalist group think will

1:30:02

be banished. And let's just

1:30:04

make something really clear here. There

1:30:06

are a whole lot of grifters out there

1:30:08

and only some of them

1:30:10

are spiritual. Charlatanism is

1:30:13

not in any way limited

1:30:15

to intuitive seers or spiritual

1:30:17

seekers. It is equal opportunity.

1:30:19

It touches every community and

1:30:22

has participants from every community.

1:30:24

So yeah, there's religious grift.

1:30:26

There's also scientific grift, plenty

1:30:29

of it. Both in that

1:30:31

there are fraudulent scientists and

1:30:33

there are scientists putting all

1:30:35

their time and energy and

1:30:37

legitimate rationalist science towards fraudulent

1:30:39

premises. There is mainstream medical

1:30:41

grift. There is insurance company

1:30:43

grift. There is pharmaceutical grift.

1:30:45

There is political grift. There

1:30:47

is military grift. There is

1:30:50

academic grift. Whole lot of that.

1:30:53

There is right-wing grift, absolutely,

1:30:55

of course. And there's also

1:30:57

possibly left-wing grift too. Could

1:31:00

it be that there's such a thing

1:31:02

as anti-racist grift, straight grift,

1:31:04

gay grift, and trans grift, black

1:31:06

grift, and white grift? Every

1:31:09

community I've ever encountered has

1:31:11

grifters. There are scientists across

1:31:13

Korea and China fleecing people

1:31:15

with fraudulent backyard gene editing

1:31:17

technologies. Google scientific fraud

1:31:19

and see what comes up. A

1:31:22

whole lot. Sam Keene's

1:31:24

book The Icepick Surgeon details the

1:31:26

darker side of scientific history, complete

1:31:29

with plenty of fraud,

1:31:31

backstabbing, falsifying, not to

1:31:34

mention human trafficking, unwilling

1:31:36

experimentation. You know, grift

1:31:38

with real-life consequences. The

1:31:42

title character, The Icepick Surgeon,

1:31:44

lobotomized thousands of women for

1:31:46

being hysterics. You know what

1:31:48

that means, right? He cut

1:31:50

out parts of their brains to numb them

1:31:53

to their sensitivities. Because of

1:31:55

their inability or unwillingness to conform to

1:31:57

a numb world, they were

1:31:59

numbed. permanently. Quote,

1:32:02

Walter Freeman called himself the Henry

1:32:04

Ford of psychosurgery, the man

1:32:06

who took lobotomies to the masses. So

1:32:09

there's medical grift, a long history of

1:32:12

it. That same Persian

1:32:14

book, the Book of charlatans, that outlines

1:32:16

all the varieties of spiritual grift, also

1:32:19

outlines medical grift. But

1:32:21

that was 13th century Baghdad, right?

1:32:24

Surely things have changed. Yeah,

1:32:26

they have and they haven't. Medical

1:32:28

malpractice claims tens of thousands of lives

1:32:31

per year in the US alone. 50,000

1:32:34

is the low estimate. There

1:32:36

are estimates that are a lot higher. And

1:32:39

that doesn't even count the hundreds of

1:32:41

thousands more who are misdiagnosed, or

1:32:44

the racial bias that is often

1:32:46

implicit in that misdiagnosis, or the

1:32:48

two million people abusing prescription opioids.

1:32:53

So a little news flash here.

1:32:55

The medical establishment is not the arbiter

1:32:58

of all that is true, right and

1:33:00

rational in the world. It

1:33:02

has its share of negligence, of

1:33:04

fraud, of salesmanship and grift. In

1:33:06

a country in which the entire

1:33:09

medical system is deeply bound up

1:33:11

in the larger capitalist grift, criticism

1:33:13

of the mainstream medical establishment is

1:33:16

absolutely 100% unequivocally warranted. Do I agree with all

1:33:24

the ways that criticism manifests? All

1:33:26

the New Age pseudo cures, all

1:33:28

the ivermectin mania? No, but

1:33:31

it's important to remember the

1:33:33

seer is responding to something

1:33:35

real. When Jeremiah asks,

1:33:37

is there no balm in

1:33:40

Gilead? When he asks

1:33:42

in a country of medicine dealers, why

1:33:44

is everyone sick? He's

1:33:46

addressing something real. When

1:33:49

he asks, is there no doctor? Is

1:33:52

there no doctor in the land? He's

1:33:55

addressing something real. Even

1:33:58

the most conspiratorial of conspiracy

1:34:00

theories is seeking

1:34:02

ultimately to address something

1:34:05

real. Fragmentation.

1:34:08

Disconnect. So there

1:34:10

are grifters everywhere. The system is a grift.

1:34:13

Is there a place to criticize

1:34:15

spiritual grift? Absolutely.

1:34:18

As long as we remember that grift

1:34:20

is not limited to spirituality. That

1:34:23

empaths aren't actually the worst people

1:34:26

in the world. You

1:34:28

know the meme I'm talking about, right? I'm

1:34:30

actually an empath, says literally the

1:34:32

worst person you know. Yeah, that's

1:34:35

a pretty good meme. I laughed out

1:34:37

loud when I saw it, like we've

1:34:39

all known that questionable empath, right? We

1:34:41

all know smarmy festival dude who talks

1:34:43

a big spiritual game and then tries

1:34:45

to hit on your partner the minute

1:34:47

you leave to go to the bathroom,

1:34:50

right? We all know at this point,

1:34:52

I would assume, some of the defining

1:34:54

characteristics of new age grift. But

1:34:57

just to set things in their right place a

1:34:59

bit, the worst people in

1:35:01

the world aren't in fact

1:35:03

empaths. The worst people in

1:35:05

the world are people whose defining

1:35:07

characteristic is lack of empathy, like

1:35:11

child trafficer or weapons

1:35:13

dealers or the guy

1:35:15

who designs newer and better landmines

1:35:17

or cluster munitions or phosphorus bombs

1:35:20

or the guy who bombs children because it's

1:35:22

justified or

1:35:24

the lawyer who legally defends Exxon

1:35:26

as it poisons huge swaths of

1:35:29

Ecuadorian rainforest and then when pushed

1:35:31

to answer why the indigenous people

1:35:33

have sky-high rates of cancer proclaimed.

1:35:36

Well I don't know, I mean I do know that

1:35:38

they're an unsanitary people. Look it

1:35:41

up. Just as

1:35:43

a reminder of the three most

1:35:45

likely world-ending scenarios, the

1:35:47

three most probable ways that human

1:35:49

beings could off ourselves, you

1:35:52

know the most likely scenarios for human

1:35:54

doomsday's. Guess what? They're

1:35:57

not being brought to us by mystics

1:35:59

and intuitive. They're

1:36:01

being brought to us by scientists. The

1:36:04

AI scenario, the nuclear war

1:36:06

scenario, the climate change scenario,

1:36:09

all are a result of

1:36:11

relentless scientific innovation free from

1:36:14

embodied ethics. And

1:36:16

here's a place where it's important

1:36:18

to be really plain about the

1:36:20

current culture of enshrining scientists as

1:36:22

selfless gods. Sure, modern Western

1:36:24

science does a tremendous amount of good.

1:36:27

Science makes all this possible 100%. And

1:36:31

science has also played a major, major

1:36:33

role in getting us into the mess

1:36:35

we're in. The

1:36:37

planetary environmental consequences that humanity

1:36:39

faces right now were brought

1:36:42

to us courtesy of Francis

1:36:44

Bacon style rapacious extractive science.

1:36:47

The forever chemicals that are poisoning ecosystems

1:36:49

were isolated by scientists who never paused

1:36:52

to ask, should we? Or is this

1:36:54

a good idea? The power

1:36:56

to destroy the world four times over

1:36:58

was brought to us by scientists. War

1:37:01

in the era of industrialization is

1:37:03

made possible by scientists. Religious

1:37:06

fanaticism gets its weaponry and

1:37:08

its destructive capability from technological

1:37:10

innovations brought to us through

1:37:12

science. So science, when

1:37:14

pointed towards the wonder of nature

1:37:16

and the selfless search for cures

1:37:18

for illnesses and the preservation of

1:37:21

ecologies, is wonderful. But

1:37:23

science is a methodology, not an

1:37:25

end unto itself. And that

1:37:27

methodology is pointed a whole lot of

1:37:29

other places too. As a

1:37:32

little reality check, the majority of

1:37:34

scientists in the world are not

1:37:36

actually climate scientists tirelessly working to

1:37:38

save the planet. There are far

1:37:41

more military scientists working to create

1:37:43

more efficient ways of blowing other

1:37:45

people up than there are scientists

1:37:47

whose sole objective is to save

1:37:49

ecologies. Transcendence serves ideologies,

1:37:52

serves mythic narratives, just like

1:37:54

everything else does. It

1:37:57

serves get-rich-quick narratives, it serves

1:37:59

transendence. and dentalist narratives all the

1:38:01

time. It serves extractive

1:38:03

narratives and destructive narratives and

1:38:06

narratives of violence every single

1:38:08

day. The scientific method is

1:38:10

a tried and true and

1:38:12

wonderful way of arriving at objective

1:38:14

truth. But make

1:38:16

no mistake, as it is practiced today

1:38:19

within the framework of global

1:38:21

capitalism, it too is

1:38:23

an ideology. The idea

1:38:25

that the most natural thing to

1:38:28

do with our lives is to

1:38:30

continually extract more information out of

1:38:32

the universe and that that information

1:38:35

is to be used for forward-moving

1:38:37

societal progress. This is an ideology.

1:38:40

It's a Promethean ideology. Science, when

1:38:42

aligned with slow-growth ideology, with traditions

1:38:44

that understand nature on nature's terms,

1:38:47

that understand, as science is coming

1:38:49

to, the value of whole systems

1:38:52

thinking, the value of ecology and

1:38:54

enacted reconnection to it, the value of

1:38:56

lighting a candle to the ancestors and

1:38:58

the value that all parts of an

1:39:00

ecosystem play in the health of the

1:39:02

whole, this is beautiful. This is science that

1:39:05

can be of good use. But

1:39:07

which larger narrative science decides to

1:39:09

point itself towards depends on the

1:39:11

ability to feel, to

1:39:14

see connections, to feel ethics

1:39:16

in one's bones. And

1:39:19

this requires realigning science to

1:39:22

an ecological, ethical, dare

1:39:25

I say, mystical heart that

1:39:27

more often asks, how does this

1:39:30

feel to work on this? Versus,

1:39:33

I'm going to do this regardless of

1:39:35

the cost, just because I

1:39:37

can. And some won't

1:39:39

believe this, but I'm not saying any

1:39:42

of this to vilify science or scientists.

1:39:44

I'm saying it all to say that

1:39:46

when people don't just immediately fall in

1:39:49

line to trust the science, there's

1:39:51

a reason for it. Remember, the seer

1:39:53

is responding to something real. The

1:39:57

intuitive is responding to something real. The.

1:40:00

fringe is responding to something real.

1:40:03

They're responding to the hollowness

1:40:05

of the refrain, trust the

1:40:07

experts in a collapsing

1:40:09

world. They're responding to

1:40:12

the paralysis the royal stasis that

1:40:14

Brueggemann spoke about. Trust

1:40:16

the market. Trust the science.

1:40:19

The seer comes to say, really?

1:40:22

Cassandra wanders the streets of

1:40:24

Troy barefoot. She

1:40:27

can see beyond doubt, beyond words, she

1:40:29

can see with illuminated fire, finely etched

1:40:31

at the edges, the course

1:40:34

that all this is taking. And

1:40:36

all the while what did the voices around her say?

1:40:40

Trust the experts, Cassandra. Troy

1:40:42

can't haul look at our achievements.

1:40:44

We're indestructible. Can't

1:40:47

we learn from the past? Can't

1:40:50

we learn from other traditions? Can't

1:40:52

we learn from our ancestors that there

1:40:55

needs to be a container in which

1:40:57

the ecstatic and the pragmatic, the

1:41:00

sensitive and the anchored can

1:41:02

live together indivisibly? But

1:41:05

the science-spirit divide is

1:41:07

totally pointless. And

1:41:09

you know, I really only get into

1:41:12

science-spirit discourse when I have to.

1:41:14

When discourse gets so dichotomized that

1:41:16

I feel it needs to be

1:41:18

blown open. I only enter this

1:41:20

territory when I feel it's absolutely

1:41:22

necessary. Why? Because

1:41:24

it's so f***ing boring. Western discourse

1:41:26

around the false dichotomy of science

1:41:29

and spirit is boring. I mean,

1:41:31

it's kindergarten

1:41:33

type stuff. Science or

1:41:35

spirit. Rationalism or intuition.

1:41:37

The world doesn't work this way. There's

1:41:40

no neat divide. History is

1:41:42

full of scientists who saw

1:41:44

visions of fringe cultural movements

1:41:46

that informed scientific revolutions. A

1:41:48

vital cultural crossover between the

1:41:50

fringe and the mainstream. Of

1:41:52

spiritual sciences, psalmonic sciences, of

1:41:55

hermetic wisdom, of gods that

1:41:57

ruled both magic and science at

1:41:59

once. It's very well documented

1:42:01

that there have been many, many scientists

1:42:03

who had visions that informed their scientific

1:42:05

work. In fact, there's almost always some

1:42:07

type of vision at the heart of

1:42:10

a scientific theory. You know

1:42:12

about Ramanujan, right? The

1:42:14

famous Indian mathematician who received

1:42:16

his formulas and visions in

1:42:18

which a goddess inscribed them upon his

1:42:21

tongue. Quote, Ramanujan

1:42:23

eventually said that the formulas came

1:42:26

to him in a dream presented

1:42:28

as mathematical truths by his family

1:42:31

goddess, Namagadhi Amman. Chemist

1:42:34

August Kekule had a quote, Somnolent

1:42:36

vision of a snake biting its

1:42:38

tail. A dream

1:42:40

that revealed the true structure of the

1:42:42

benzene ring. He

1:42:44

describes it like this. I

1:42:46

turned my chair to the fire and dozed.

1:42:49

Again the atoms were gambling before my

1:42:51

eye. This time the

1:42:53

smaller groups kept modestly in the background.

1:42:56

My mental eyes rendered more

1:42:59

acute by repeated visions in

1:43:01

this kind could now distinguish

1:43:03

larger structures of manifold conformation.

1:43:06

Long rows, sometimes more closely fitted

1:43:08

together, all twisting and turning in

1:43:10

snake-like motion. But look, what

1:43:12

was that? One of the snakes had

1:43:14

ceased hold of its own tail and

1:43:17

the form whirled mockingly before my

1:43:19

eyes. As if by

1:43:21

a flash of lightning I awoke, and this

1:43:23

time also I spent the rest of the

1:43:26

night working out the consequences of the hypothesis.

1:43:29

So there are scientific visionaries,

1:43:31

yes. And science

1:43:33

follows the cultural lead of seers,

1:43:36

intuitive spiritualists and artists all the

1:43:38

time. Ecological science would not

1:43:40

be what it is today without the

1:43:42

movement of Eastern spiritual traditions and their

1:43:45

visions of interconnectedness to the West. The

1:43:47

scientific vision of Gaia arose

1:43:50

out of experiences of living ecology

1:43:52

that the 60s human

1:43:54

had while in states of

1:43:57

entheogenic rapture. In modern medicine

1:43:59

today, antibiotic are prescribed far

1:44:01

less than they used to be. Why?

1:44:03

It's because fringe practitioners of alternative medicine

1:44:05

pointed the way for 40 plus years

1:44:08

first. Why is organic

1:44:10

food mainstream? Because people on the

1:44:12

fringe didn't trust the science. The

1:44:15

science, you know, that said DDT is

1:44:17

fine. Visionaries impact all

1:44:20

aspects of culture. All

1:44:22

of modern activist culture, all

1:44:24

including climate activism. It's all

1:44:27

built on the foundations laid

1:44:29

by visionary spiritual movements. The

1:44:32

entire organizational structure and methodology

1:44:34

of modern activist movements is

1:44:36

derived from Gandhi and Satyagraha

1:44:39

and MLK's Civil Rights Movement

1:44:41

which was decidedly spiritual. It

1:44:44

goes on. AI is a big topic

1:44:46

right now, right? AI culture

1:44:48

is steeped in anthropogenic ceremony.

1:44:51

Trust me. Visions obtained in

1:44:53

spiritual ceremony are driving AI science

1:44:55

just as LSD drove the creation

1:44:57

of the internet itself. So

1:45:00

before we undertake a societal purge

1:45:02

of all things pseudo, of all

1:45:04

things we deem at this extremely

1:45:07

limited finite point in time to

1:45:09

be quackery, let's remember

1:45:11

what Arthur Conan Doyle, that

1:45:14

rationalist spiritist, said. He

1:45:16

said, the quack of yesterday is the

1:45:18

professor of tomorrow. And

1:45:21

he said, a charlatan is always

1:45:23

the pioneer. And

1:45:27

this gets to something interesting about the

1:45:29

critical discourse around spiritual charlatanism.

1:45:32

Of course we want abusive gurus to

1:45:34

be exposed. Of course we want those

1:45:37

on the fringe who are fleecing and

1:45:39

harming people to face consequences. But

1:45:42

it's also good to remember

1:45:44

the role that the fringe

1:45:46

plays, that movements that specifically

1:45:48

ruffle our feathers play in

1:45:51

culture. Having people on the

1:45:53

fringe is important. For

1:45:55

the fringe is the mangrove

1:45:57

swamp of culture, where ideas

1:46:00

percolate and new life generates,

1:46:03

where fresh and salt water mix

1:46:05

and the resultant soup is a

1:46:08

womb space for cultural transformation. There's

1:46:12

a goddess that rules these spaces. Have

1:46:14

you heard? Rules

1:46:16

the mangrove swamp of culture? She

1:46:20

does not conform to narratives of