Duncan Trussell Family Hour - MAGICK CLASS WITH JASON LOUV
Episode Date: June 11, 2014Magician, author, and mystic Jason Louv (generation hex, the psychick bible) talks about the dangers and potential benefits that come from walking the magickal path! ...
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Hello pals, it is me, Duncan Tressel,
and you are listening to the Duncan Tressel Family Hour
podcast, and I am particularly excited about this episode
because it is about one of my favorite subjects on Earth.
Magic.
Not magic like watching some depressed guy
pull weasels out of a top hat at the Magic Castle,
but MAGIC magic, which refers to that practice
that is in every single world religion,
in every single mythology,
that series of rituals that allows human beings
to access higher intelligence
and use that information to transform the world around them.
Always been fascinated by that.
It's a fascinating topic, not just because what's cooler
than the idea that we are surrounded
by super intelligent beings that you can tune into
using special hidden rituals that date back to
before the time of the pyramids,
but because as a mythology,
it is something that is managed to
thread its way through history,
and it scares the shit out of certain people.
They get scared by it.
Just study the witch burnings,
and you'll see that this technology referred to
in so many books, new and old,
has always been considered somehow off limits,
off base, it's breaking the rules to use this magic,
and there's always an implicit danger
in practicing magic.
And from terrified Christian preachers talking about
the dangers of meddling with the occult
and a simple YouTube search,
and you'll bring up 7,000 sermons
of these pale-faced, anxiety-ridden,
paranoid who think that the act of invoking
extra-dimensional beings can not only lead
to personal catastrophe,
but can also lead to the damnation of the soul.
So that's another fascinating component about magic.
It's not just, is it real?
Could it be that there are higher dimensions
inhabited by beings that we can contact
using these specific incantations and rituals
in modes of shifting consciousness,
but that the very idea that it could be possible
terrifies fundamentalists from Christianity to Islam
to, you name it, and every religion will have
some kind of admonishment against practicing
these things or communicating with disembodied beings.
So that makes it cool too,
because whenever anyone tells you not to go there,
the first thing that you wanna do is go there.
And since I was young hearing about this stuff,
it wasn't just hearing about the fact
that there's something called magic
or my first contact with tarot cards, for example,
it was that these very things were terrifying
to Christians and to superstitious people.
And so the fact that there was a group of people
who believed that certain things
had a kind of a metaphysical toxicity
that emanated out of them made that thing
that much more compelling and interesting to study.
To this day, there are friends that I have
where if I have tarot cards around them,
they get a little weirded out.
Not weirded out like,
do you really fucking believe that stupid shit,
but weirded out like,
cross yourself in Transylvania,
that the vampire just went by.
That's amazing that in the modern age,
this Western mythology,
this thing that they call esotericism,
still manages to scare people,
still manages to set off paranoia alarms in people
when they consider that you could communicate
with disembodied beings.
It's the language, of course.
The language itself is terrifying.
You could say the exact same thing in a different way.
For example, take my course
and I'll teach you how to become inspired again
and overcome your writer's block
and connect once again to the creative part of yourself.
And then that just seems like some kind of writing class
or a self-help class or something like that.
You could say it like that,
but if the symbols that you use
to describe the potentiality of every human being
to intentionally connect with an epiphany,
if the language you use involves other beings,
externalized disembodied beings,
or even if it refers to archetypical parts of the self,
it still will scare people and sound like the occult.
So we've been reduced to talking about inspiration
and the very difficult to believe
pin down moment that we've all had
where a great idea pops into our head.
And we say, ah, this is it, the light bulb moment.
That light bulb moment, if you could control it
and have that light bulb moment whenever you wanted to have it
or if there were techniques
that would bring you closer to moments of epiphany,
then instead of it being something completely
out of your control,
then your life would exponentially improve
because any time that you wanted to have a transmission
of higher information, you could have it.
And that's what magic's all about.
It's just another symbol structure that people use
to describe the enormous potentiality
that all human beings have within them.
And it just so happens that the symbols being used
are generally of angels, gods, demigods, devas, deities,
and generally invisible beings
that if you do the right series of actions,
then these beings will share their great wisdom with you.
And that, yes, the very act of contacting these beings
contains within an implicit danger.
And this danger is written about
not just in Christian fundamentalist books
that you might find at the used bookstore
about some teenager who stumbles upon the Necronomicon
and manages to gain some fame and popularity
that ultimately results in a self-inflicted gunshot wound,
but this warning can actually be found
in the magic books themselves.
And the practitioners will always tell you,
be careful with this path because it is a super potent thing
that can teach you and lead you
to a higher state of consciousness,
but it can also drive you mad.
And that's fun to think about.
So I'm super happy that Jason Loof took the time
to be in this episode of the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour Podcast.
We're gonna get to the interview,
but first, some business.
So you finally did it.
You managed to translate the dark and twisted runes
that you found within the brown ancient pages
of that strange book that your grandmother had left tucked
underneath her mattress just above the playgirls.
You use those runes to make contact
with a higher intelligence,
some kind of super intelligent being,
an angel, alien, deva, goddess, who knows?
You're not sure, but the information
this being filled you with is so powerful
that you know the not logical next step is to blog about it.
And you know that if you hire a web designer
to distribute this information out into the world,
the power and potency of this thing
that you have come to understand
would drive the web designer insane.
And you don't wanna have the blood
of some poor HTML coder on your hands.
You don't wanna get that phone call hearing
about how Larry, after looking at the text
you wanted to publish, plunged his fingers,
covered in a fresh coat of Doritos dust
directly into his eyeballs and ripped out his eyes,
feeding them to his cat,
and then running naked into traffic,
exploding himself on the front of a passing semi.
Is that, do you want blood on your website?
This information is too potent to allow it to travel through
a web designer.
You've gotta plug it right into the collective
and the best way to do it is by going to squarespace.com
and signing up for a membership.
You can also sign up for a two week trial membership
if you wanna see if Squarespace is the right service
for you for building a website.
It's a great site.
We are currently using it for the PodRift project,
which you've probably heard me talk about
where we're trying to bring a podcasting into VR space.
So if you go to PodRift.com,
we built that site using Squarespace.
You can get much more detailed than that though.
They have every single thing that you need.
They have a shopping cart function.
You can stream music.
You can do whatever it is that you need to do
to allow the super intelligent transmission
that came to you from the ancient entity
that you contacted using the rituals written about
in the ancient manuscript covered in human skin
that you found underneath the still warm mattress
of your sweet darling Grammy.
Just go to squarespace.com, use my name Duncan,
and you will get 10% off.
They also have incredible customer support.
I tested it out to make sure
because no matter how simple a web service is,
it can still be quite complicated
and you might just have some test, testical questions.
I have a lot of those.
You might have some technical questions
that you just need help with
and they'll get back to you right away.
I tested this out.
Also, the ultimate proof about how awesome Squarespace is
is that Squarespace was used to build Squarespace.
Go figure that out.
Maybe some kind of time travel was involved.
I don't really understand that
and I haven't taken the time to,
I guess you would build the service.
I don't know how they did it.
I don't know, so they're time travelers too.
So, do you wanna go through,
do you wanna deal with your web designer going insane
or even worse, do you wanna end up getting sucked in
by some kind of pseudo web designer?
Let me tell you, there's literally 400 million
pseudo web designers existing on planet Earth at this moment
according to a recent Levy Bergensen study.
So, there's a lot of people out there disguised
as web designers who want nothing more
than to find out your address
and climb into your window at night
and lay on top of you as you try to sleep.
And it's awkward and annoying
and it's happened to a lot of us and it's just not worth it.
There are great web designers out there
in the same way that there's people in the government
who can turn themselves into reptiles.
It's just difficult to find them
and when you do find them, they want a lot of money.
And they deserve the money
because actually coding a website takes years and years
and years of experience.
Anyway, this is a great way for you to dip
your necromancer toe into the rivers of the internet
without having to either destroy the mind of a web designer
or risk getting laid on by a sweaty dude
who smells like old magic cards
and chewed up clove cigarette butts.
Squarespace.com put my name in.
Duncan, you will get 10% off.
Speaking of magic, I'm really excited to announce
that the new Duncan Trussell Family Hour t-shirts
designed by the great illustrator Ron Regi
are gonna be in the store tomorrow.
If you're listening to this on Tuesday in June,
then they're going to be in the store on Wednesday.
These, this is my favorite design yet
and it's not only because it's awesome
and Ron Regi is an incredible artist
who has truly created a magical thing,
but because when I told him what I would like in the shirt,
it was just that I want it to be an actual sigil
that can ward against negative energy.
And so he incorporated a lot of different alchemical symbols
into this shirt so that not only do you get to have
a really cool t-shirt that just looks awesome,
but you will be wearing a magical ward
that will push away the poison psychic darts
that your nemesis might be throwing at you
through the astral plane.
And if you don't believe in that bullshit,
it's just a cool shirt.
So go to dunkintrussell.com and check out the shop
and see if you like it and order one.
And finally, as always, we are brought to you by amazon.com.
If you go to dunkintrussell.com
and go through our Amazon portal,
the next time you're buying something from them,
then they'll give us a very small percentage of anything
that you buy and it doesn't cost you anything extra.
There's no point in venturing out into the world
when you could be sitting in front of your glowing skull
candle, muttering incantations,
or riding your bicycle into nature.
Why spend your time listening
to malarial, measle-ridden children spray their diseased
mucus all over the shelves of whatever chain store
you were thinking about going to
when you could be inhaling the sweet magical perfume
of your lover's neck or watching dear frolic
and whatever wilderness is near your home.
Go through our portal located dunkintrussell.com.
All right, let's get this podcast going.
Jason Luve is the editor of a really great book
called Generation Hex, also the psychic Bible.
He is the protege of the world-renowned magician,
Genesis P. Oridge from Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV.
And he has an expansive and very technical knowledge
of metaphysics, as well as Eastern mysticism
and Eastern religion.
He's got a website, you could find him at jasonluve.com.
He also teaches an online course on metaphysics and magic
that you can find by going to magic.me,
m-a-g-i-c-k-dot-m-e.
And if you are listening to this on the week of June 10th,
then you can sign up for an online class this weekend.
And if you put my name in Duncan, you'll get 10% off.
So if you like this interview with Jason
and you wanna go deeper into the world of magic,
go to magic.me, m-a-g-i-c-k-dot-m-e
and sign up for the course for the weekend.
Let me know how it goes,
because I might wanna sign up
for one of these courses eventually,
but I'm going to be traveling into nature this weekend.
So I'll be away from a computer.
Hopefully I'll be away from a computer.
I'll have all those links located at DuncanTrussell.com.
Thank you guys so much for listening and for putting up
with my rants and long advertisements
and for just existing in this universe with me.
I love you all.
Now everybody, please welcome to the Duncan Trussell
Family Hour podcast, the new magical advisor to the podcast,
the great Jason Louv.
Always Be Stingy
Every time I Omit
All right, there we go.
We're rolling, Jason, welcome.
Don't tell Ketrussel Family our podcast.
I've been I'm really excited about this.
I met you.
You came to a comedy show that I did
and you brought me this really cool book
that you edited called Generation Hex.
That's right.
And can you tell me what that book?
I mean, I read the book, but tell the listeners
what the book's about.
So that was my first book that I wrote in.
Well, I didn't write it just myself.
It's an anthology that I edited in 2005
that was put out by disinformation, which is
it's kind of a look at where the Western
magical tradition currently stands.
And it's half practical writing,
like Grimoire style writing and half
autobiographical.
So it focuses on young people
and it kind of pitches magic as a youth culture.
And when I when I was putting that book together,
I knew maybe a dozen people
that I could count on my hand to or into this stuff.
Now it's everywhere.
Right.
It's like it seems to have almost eclipsed the youth culture.
So either.
And can you give the listeners the listeners?
I never say that.
Well, I suddenly just turned out weird radio show.
Give me a definition of magic.
How do you define magic?
Every time I think about this, I come up with something else,
but I'll give you a couple of different definitions.
The poetic definition of magic is
whereas a stage magician is interested
in producing illusion for the entertainment of people.
A real magician, so to speak,
is interested in dispelling illusion.
So removing illusions and showing people
what's actually right there in front of your face.
Because when you actually see reality
just in its in all its glory,
I mean, and I'm not trying to make it sound like a big deal.
But when you actually just really grasp
what's right in front of your face, you know,
we do live in a magical universe
and a truly profound, mystical,
incredible process that we live in.
And so magic is reminding you.
It's a process of reminding you where you already are
by dispelling the illusions that are kind of keep us from that.
So that's the poetic definition.
I think a more practical definition.
Thank you.
I think a more practical definition is
it's a series of techniques called from different
religious traditions around the world
for altering consciousness.
Now, a lot of people when they hear magic, they think
they have a kind of, I don't know,
primitive understanding of what it is.
And they they think that you're actually
creating some sort of change in the external universe
using hidden powers, dark matter,
using some kind of unknown field that runs through everything.
You're enacting change.
You're both of your definitions seem to the change
as an internal change.
Yes, there's a, you know, there's the classic hermetic dictum
as above so below.
And the idea that you can you can get magic powers
and change things all around you and make everything groovy for yourself.
It doesn't I think exactly what you said.
It doesn't exactly work like that.
It works when you make changes in yourself,
then your experience of your entire existence changes
because the universe is infinite.
And the only thing keeping us from perceiving that is ourselves.
So, you know, the word magic kind of
conjures up a lot of what you said,
you know, kind of frightening definitions or or making someone fall
in love with you, making an enemy fall out of a building,
making it rain, making.
And this is, you know, if you, you know, that is like a lot of religions
do involve wanting to create just basic change.
And, you know, some religions say they don't use magic,
even though they clearly are using magic like Christianity.
When you pray, you're sort of it's the exact same thing, right?
That's a form of magic you're trying.
But what you're talking about is it seems like a layer
behind all that or something that supersedes
making changes in the world.
And part of what we're dealing with here is a marketing problem, right?
You know, I didn't come up with the word magic.
It's unfortunate that word has been tacked on to the Western esoteric tradition,
the Western mystical tradition.
And it's a double edged sword because it's at once repulsive
to anyone who has any type of rational capacity to think.
And at the same time, it's it's fascinating.
But do you read Ken Wilber at all?
Yeah, well, I have quite some time ago, though.
So he has a really a perfect concept for untangling some of this stuff,
which is called the pre-trans fallacy, where he basically says,
you know, in his his version of, by the way, Ken Wilber is, I guess,
how we describe him.
He's like kind of a Buddhist philosopher slash Alan Watts level teacher guy.
Really intense, the best bald head in the universe.
He's super buff.
Yeah, he's like, yeah.
In his late sixties, I think.
Yeah, very healthy, disciplined version of, I don't know,
the combination of Alan Watts, self-help stuff in there, too.
He's got some serious devotees.
Right. He's kind of like the real life Dr.
Manhattan for a moment. There you go.
That's that's what we were looking for.
He's like Dr. Manhattan.
So I don't totally agree with everything Ken Wilber says,
but he has an excellent, excellent concept that he brings up in one
of his books called the pre-trans fallacy, which basically he says,
human beings and human cultures go through developmental stages.
And the they start out in mythic reality.
They go to magic and magic is actually in his
viewpoint, one of the earliest stages of human development.
In fact, human beings at around the age of seven
go through a developmental stage called magical thinking, where you think that,
you know, everything around you is is caused by you.
So, for instance, the whole step on a crack thing.
Yeah, never got out of that phase.
Me neither, I don't think, but but he basically,
he says that in the normal course of development,
you kind of develop out of this into rational
and then that cultures also develop out of this into rational modernist
and then postmodernist thinking and that we're currently in a stage
of postmodernism as a culture.
But he says that after this are
states that might be mapped by, for instance,
the Western mystical tradition or Tibetan Buddhism or Vedanta,
where you start to realize that,
you know, that there is a divine component to human beings
and that the more you tap into that, the more that you were aligned
with the universe, the more that you work on yourself.
That you, you know, that there is a type of ability to develop spiritually.
But that's kind of what I was saying, where it's you're working on yourself,
where you realize, you know, like Michael Jackson said,
you know, you have to, if you want to make change,
you have to start with the man in the mirror.
Yeah, you realize that you are the the holographic projection of the universe.
It's like, if you want to change the world, you have to start with yourself.
You're the fountain head.
You're the thing that everything's emerging from.
You're the sprinkler.
It's like, if you try to change the droplets
that are already being projected out of the thing,
it's you're you're being tricked by yourself.
That is exactly why.
Why do we hide from that knowledge?
It seems like an an active there is an active
part of humanity that does not want to accept the fact
that they're seeing reflections of themselves all around them.
It's so much more fun to believe or not more fun,
but there's something that relieves us of responsibility
when we imagine that we are being victimized
by external forces and that if we change those external forces,
then suddenly will become better.
Right. Well, I think a couple points to that one is is, you know,
Wilbur's final point on that is that what he called the pre-transfallacy
is that for he says our culture is currently
in a phase of postmodern development where it's like deconstruction.
Everything has to be, you know, what we see from like Gawker blogs, right?
But he says that to.
What do you mean? What we see from Gawker blogs?
Basically, well, he describes this as the green meme.
I don't want to get too into technical discussion,
but basically he says it in our current cultural period is a period
of evolving out of religion where so we've left religion to the wayside.
We depend on science, but there's no we we don't really have any guiding
spiritual truth. So we're stuck in a period of deconstruction
where everyone is constantly deconstructing everything that everyone says.
So, yes, cynics, cynicism, sarcasm, lack of meaning.
And the pre-transfallacy is that for people stuck in the postmodern worldview,
they see states beyond that, like, for instance, what we were just talking
about, all the stuff that you talk on your talk, talk about on your podcast
for people think that that's pre-developmental.
They confuse this with the earlier magic stages and think that this is a
primitive way of thinking when, in fact, it's where, in fact,
it's a more advanced way of thinking.
You're talking about the return to the garden idea, right?
Coming back to the Garden of Eden.
Yeah, there's no going back.
There's no going back.
So but I think but in terms of why do people?
There are so many answers to that question.
You know, people are afraid of taking responsibility.
They don't necessarily have access to the the information and the tools
to do it, which is, you know, I think your podcast is great for that.
Thanks. And it's not we're just getting, you know, we're we're currently
in a period of evolving towards that that I think is more profound because
of the internet, more profound, more accelerated and more effective
than the consciousness, consciousness raising in the sixties was.
Yeah, we're getting there.
But it's more, it's I think it's more what's the word?
It's insidious.
People I think in the sixties, it was right in front of everyone's faces,
like because the way that people were reaching other people was in a more
public way. You go, you know, they have these huge events, beans and all those.
You see these incredible pictures of like wood stock or like I was I can't remember
which is a holy person at Maharishi Yogan.
I don't remember which of them it is, but I have this great picture of him
sitting in front of just a sea of people back in the sixties talking to them.
The difference is we are right, you know, at this moment, you and I are sitting
in front of an ocean of people who are listening to this, only we don't get to
see them. So it's hidden. That's what's amazing about this change that's happening
is that it's happening in a very secret way, which I think has got to be a
nightmare to the powers that, you know, waged war against the the cultural
revolution that was happening in the sixties.
It was very easy to suppress too, because it was so out in front of you.
Whereas this is just like people at work, people driving their car, people
take walking their dog, but they're getting to hear this kind of information
that way back in the day, if you wanted to get it out there, you'd have to print
some kind of like, I don't know, a Xerox thing that you hand out to people
or maybe publish a book, but still that you're exactly right.
So the the it seems as though a spell has been cast on us by popular culture
that we have, we are all we've all been hypnotized or sort of held captive by
the the media corporations, commercials.
These we have all these spells that have been placed inside of our minds
that make us believe we're being original people when, in fact, we're just
following cultural trends and we don't even know that we've been lured into that.
Do you think that's true?
I definitely think there's truth to that.
And I used to assign a lot more, you know, sinister intent to, for instance,
big media structures and things like that.
But the more that I've worked in in big media and I used to work in advertising
and the more that I've seen things from the other side of the curtain
and, you know, the you know, the blog I'm running, Ultra Culture, you know,
just, you know, every day having to depend on what can I do to get people's attention?
What do people actually want?
The more I realize that the media is actually as much as we're enthralled to the media,
the media is even more enthralled to what the demand of the public is.
Right. And so, for instance, the stuff you see on Facebook, you know,
people will always have a demand for, you know, stories about school shootings
or stories about anyone getting attacked by an animal.
You know, like, yeah, exactly, right?
Bear attacks, cougar attacks are fucking huge, man.
If you, especially if someone was antagonizing an animal,
if you can find a video of someone antagonizing an animal and then the animal
clawing them, right? Oh, I'll click that.
Yeah, I'll click that.
That's glory or a matador being impaled by like that beautiful picture
of the matador with a bull horn going through his balls.
You can because it's like you get to enjoy universal justice.
You know, you don't have to feel sorry for that guy so much
because he was like sticking a monster with a spear.
But if you post, OK, here's how to become enlightened by the Maharishi,
you're going to get like 400 clicks.
Yon, no, thanks.
No, thanks.
Nobody wants to hear that.
It's fucking boring if it was something like how.
Yeah, I know. So, yes, that's a challenge.
So I think that it it, you know, the media is just a projection of us
and they're enthralled to their advertisers, but they're more
enthralled to the public.
You know, the media has one simple job, which is to get the attention
of people so they can sell they can sell that attention to advertisers.
And so that's a crazy way to put that, man.
Well, that's crazy.
So they're like attention harvesters.
They like have these attention farms where they grab human attention.
And the same way people sell debt, they sell in attention.
They're like, wow, check it out, man.
I've got this acres and acres and acres of human attention
just ready to be focused on your car, the car you're trying to sell.
Now, if that's not magic, I don't know what is, man.
And because isn't one of the big premises of magic that human attention,
like if you're saying that we are by transforming our internal universe,
this is the thing that will affect change and in our external universe,
because everything around us is a kind of projection.
Then that would mean that if you could control this attention,
if you could control the if you can harmonize, in other words,
if I can take a certain number of people and turn their attention
in the direction of some paradigm, then that will create
a kind of magnifying glass effect.
You know, it's like now, instead of just having one person's
internal universe shifting according to my persuasive idea of how things work,
I have a million people who have shifted their attention in that way.
And if anything is going to create a change in the external universe,
shit, that would definitely be it.
Absolutely. But it's got to come organically, right?
I mean, you can't you can't force people to be into anything.
So, you know, the reason that the media is focused on lowest common denominator
stuff is because generally, that's what most people want.
So it's very hard for somebody in a even Rupert Murdoch, right?
I mean, he could put, you know, he could do broadcast
Duncan Trussell to the entire planet, right?
And it would be great.
Um, the question is or or me or anybody, right?
The question is, is that the the mass demand, you know, that's what we have to
work with and our reality, you know, like I always used to be in the,
you know, there's the classic Gnostic idea that reality is controlled
and created by this Demiurge or this crazy being.
What's he called the Demiurge?
The Demiurge is the false creator God.
Yeah, the blind.
He's the one that the Romney's worship.
Exactly, right? Tag most of all.
Yeah, but the I think the reality is that we're all in charge of of this
reality is created by the net of all human beings.
Yes, it's just that their aesthetics don't necessarily appeal
to maybe you or me, right?
But Nancy Grace is real big for most people.
Well, she's well, but, you know, again, if you go back to the fact
that these are fucking attention harvesters of fishermen for attention,
that they're trying to catch these little units, these packets of attention.
That exist in every single person and focus them on these ridiculous things.
You know, I know that you think it's not sinister, but God damn it.
I think that's a sinister fucking act.
Nancy Grace, for example, right by sucking the attention of all of us.
You know, man, I was like misery harvesters.
Well, yeah, they're what they do is I was I'm addicted to cycling.
Sorry, you guys, I'm not going to go on another cycling rant.
I've gotten addicted to cycling.
There's a ride that goes up into Griffith Park.
It goes on a closed road.
Last night, I'm riding my bike up there, the sun setting.
It is beautiful.
No one's up there, man.
It's just a closed road that goes up for probably four miles into Griffith Park
of this hill. So it's like, you know, you have to be willing to go uphill
for like an hour to even get up there.
So no one's if you see anybody up there, it's these weird
lycra cyclists with that like sort of gritting their teeth with that strange,
obsessed look in their eyes.
But I'm up there, man, and there's this rock you can go sit on.
I'm sitting out in this rock, look in the sun setting.
You can see Glendale.
There's mist rolling in and I'm hearing in my fucking head,
the narrator's voice for my shouldn't have survived.
You know, like I'm thinking like, oh, that was the mountain lion attack.
That's what happened. Yes, exactly.
Yes, I'm imagining a fucking mountain lion sitting behind me,
about to jump on me.
I'm considering like, well, you know what?
I didn't bring my fucking phone.
So if a mountain lion drags me down this hill and like slowly eats me
over the next couple of days, no one's going to know where I was.
This is a classic.
I shouldn't have survived.
Now, if I don't know for sure, but I think if my mind hadn't in some way
absorbed the the the the myriad of doom stories, which are actually
very small compared to the Norton Norton, the number of nature experiences
people had, then I would be able to be more likely to just be like, man,
this is fucking beautiful, but this shadow runs through it.
That's why I say it's sinister.
That's why I think it's sinister.
What the media is doing.
Maybe not intentionally sinister, but God damn it.
Oh, it is sinister. Absolutely.
I just say that as I've understood the economics of it,
more I understand why it is the way it is.
But it's always been that way since the the days of Yellow Journalism
in the 19th century, so you go back as they're doing the same stuff
now that they did then, and it's always just harp on the negative.
And but you're absolutely right.
It has a it has a magical effect because the more you you focus on that,
the more it becomes magnified in people's minds.
And then that that defines people's reality.
They think that's what reality is.
And that leads to the fire.
See that that the heat builds in people's minds.
This is the alchemical friction, right?
We have this heat building in the minds of a certain number of people.
And the fire that breaks out is the societal change.
And that is what they call trends, you know, like, well, what do you know?
Will Ferrell did a fucking Range Rover commercial
and six zillion people bought a fucking Range Rover.
This is a fire created by
people that I would consider magicians who are an exacting change
in the universe that is designed to make
they're basically in the same way as solar panel
transforms sunlight into energy.
The media translates attention into money.
It's a converter.
It turns our attention into action, which results in money
for super wealthy people that we don't people.
What? Like three people, three of the great, the great ones.
They're wizards that we don't even know they are.
They probably live in fucking towers.
They probably are covered in weird tattooed runes.
You know it already.
But yet at the same time,
I think that we live in probably the greatest period to be alive ever.
You know, I mean, like when you think about,
I mean, look, penicillin was only invented a few decades ago.
You know, the birth control pill was only invented a few decades.
Right. You know, people used to only live to like 30.
Yes. And people look like shit, man.
Cut back to the forties.
If you look at people in the in their forties in the forties,
they look like people in their eighties now.
Right. So we live in a beautiful paradise planet.
Yet at the same time, we're facing these civilization.
Why does that real problems like climate change?
Yes. And and that's not being focused on by the media at all.
The New York Times shut down their environmental desk.
It's not profitable for them yet.
These are the real issues that we need to be to be focused on.
So the media not only makes us feel that we're trapped
in this horrific reality, they're not even focusing on the real problems.
So right.
So they're turning our attention to these minuscule problems
like a coyote ripped apart a folk singer in Canada.
So now it's like what that happens?
Oh, yeah, sure.
It had a whole pack of coyotes.
It's apparently one of the only known coyotes.
Poor folk singer just went hiking and she got eaten by coyotes.
Yikes. But again, it's like, yeah, that happens like once every, you know,
100 years, whereas, you know, that you look at it.
That's actually planned by the coyotes.
It's like it's in their ceremonial calendar.
They have the great day of folk singer
or renting every 100 years.
They've summoned the folk singer.
She was actually raised to feed them.
She somehow they got there, her parents to meet, you know, they.
But they probably found her in Griffith Park as a kid and raised her up.
Well, you know, that's another thing we can get into it.
But like you look at Shane Smith, you write for Vice, you look at Shane Smith.
And you watch, you know, you see what's happening with him is that
the deeper and deeper he gets into the subject matter of his awesome HBO
documentary series, you know, you really see his face,
especially the climate change stuff.
And he's like, oh, fuck, this is really spooky, man.
Like this stuff is.
But well, this is why we need this is why, you know,
there's a pervasive feeling of hopelessness.
And I think that one of the reasons people don't,
you know, people don't face the real issues like climate changes
because that happens.
They they just get into this zone of like, you know, we're fucked.
There's nothing we can do.
It's hopeless.
But I think that one of the real.
Places for the Western mystical tradition or any any mystical tradition
that is, you know, any real one is to put you in a place of understanding
what's going on, being able to look at things clearly without flinching
and not being hopeless, you know, because that's the great gift that
that these belief systems or excuse me, not belief systems, but systems
of techniques, experimental systems have given me is a way of training consciousness
so that I can look at things like that and not be overwhelmed
and look at them as, well, this is a big problem, but, you know,
we've faced all of the huge problems we've we've as a civilization
that we've had to face before and there are solutions
and we need to look at those things and think about them without flinching
and decondition ourselves from all the stuff we've just been talking about,
like the the spell of the media and the spell of everyday life
so that we can really focus on the the really important things
instead of, you know, how many Facebook followers do I have?
Oh, God, right.
What's an example of one of these techniques that you might use to dispel
the dark magic that has been wrapped around our poor brains
by the Nancy Graces of the world? Meditation, you know, first and foremost,
I think it all comes back to meditation because the more you meditate,
the more you realize the more you see through the noise of your own mind
and the more you realize you're the less you're yanked around by your emotions
and your own thoughts and you realize that, you know, for instance,
if you're up at four a.m. in the morning, you know, thinking all these dark thoughts
of all these things you think are going to happen, the more you meditate,
you realize, well, no, that's just, you know, that none of that's real.
And meditation is when you train your mind against itself,
which is it's the, you know, the biggest enemy you could ever possibly have.
Yes. When you train the mind to quiet itself and overcome itself,
you know, the media is no, no, no problem at all after that.
Right. And what, what form of meditation do you practice?
Well, I stick pretty closely to the, the, the classic Hindu Raja Yoga,
the Eightfold Path of Yoga, which I've, I've taught online as well.
But I think any. By the way, let me stop you there, guys.
Jason has a priority mentioned this in the beginning,
but if you missed the beginning somehow, Jason's got an awesome
online course that teaches this stuff.
And clearly he knows what he's talking about.
So check that out. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry, I want to give you a plug.
So. Thank you. Yeah, it's so, yeah, I've been,
I'm constantly teaching courses on, on magic meditation,
health, consciousness alteration, consciousness expansion, and the website.
There are in live webinars. The website for that is magic.me.
So magic with a K, M-A-G-I-C-K.me.
Cool. So yeah, but I think that any type of meditation, I mean, there's the,
you know, there's Buddhist forms, which are more based around mindfulness.
The. What's the Raja Yoga form?
Raja Yoga is a, well, it's the, the, the original classic form of meditation.
Largely, it's talked about as the Eightfold Path of Yoga.
And it's a step-by-step system where first you start out with essentially
putting, you know, to, to grossly oversimplify.
You start out with putting your life in order so that you're not
dealing with chaos and distraction all the time.
And you have, for instance, a quiet place to meditate every day.
And then it progresses from there to Asana, which is keeping your body still.
Pranayama, which is breath control.
So at which, at which point you are able to have a huge degree
of control over your own mind and body, and it goes from there to inward.
So the withdrawal of the senses inward to the focus on one object,
one point of concentration to the point where eventually you,
your distinction between yourself and your object of meditation disappears.
Wow, that's so cool.
And I love that it starts off with getting your shit together.
Because so, I think so many people, they.
I don't think that's the Sanskrit term for it, but that's what it is.
Because, you know, it's such an easy thing to like ignore.
Like you have this like chaos storm swirling around you.
You have, you know, shit you got to deal with, man.
You know, like you have to deal with like basic worldly stuff.
First, I love that that's the first thing, because also it implies
that's the easiest thing.
And a lot of people think that that's the hardest thing to do.
I think it probably is the hardest.
And a lot of people think about yoga, meditation as are you going to go off
into a cave and meditate?
And I think in, especially in a lot of the eastern systems, that's considered
as kind of can be considered a bit of a cop out.
It's actually much harder and more difficult to develop a mystical
and meditative practice in the real world.
And I think that this is what people need because Western people are definitely
in the world. Oh, yeah.
Well, there's I mean, I challenge you to find a quiet cave these days.
There's probably every fucking cave in the world as a goddamn Kodak film
stand in front of an ice cream truck going by every day.
And there'll be kids watching Nancy Grace on their iPhones.
Yeah, there's no quiet caves.
There's no you can't.
I bet you can't even find a cave that doesn't have a wireless connection these
days. There's just no way to find quiet caves.
Like it's true.
Now, this was this the type of meditation that Crowley was into?
Yes, it actually was.
But obviously it goes back much longer than Crowley.
Oh, yeah. But 10,000 years or so.
But he had a pretty he had a pretty clear take on it.
And he took it mostly from Swami Vivekananda, who was the one of the
first people to bring Eastern philosophies to the West in the 1890s.
And but for you, it doesn't just it's meditation is it doesn't it begin
and end with meditation.
It seems like you are are aware of some of the ceremonial practices
that are recommended as well in magic, right?
Yes. Well, ceremonial magic, I mean, it's so it's so easy to get
tangled up in thinking because we're so conditioned by, you know, the media.
And the first thing people think about when they think about ceremonial magic
is, you know, hammer horror, Christopher Lee mode.
Yeah. And really all that
basically ceremonial magic is the Western form of meditation.
And it's meditating with symbols outside of yourself
instead of similar to, you know, Buddhist mandala meditation.
So it's exteriorizing consciousness into symbols and objects
around yourself and manipulating it that way instead of purely internally,
which is the sword, the cup, the the the pentacle, the right.
Is that right?
All of which just simply represent facets of consciousness, your own consciousness.
What does the sword represent?
The sword represents the analytic mind, the ability to see clearly
to, you know, scientific analysis to reason your rational function.
And the cup?
The cup is your ability to receive
inspiration and guidance from the universe.
So basically what people talk about when they talk about gratitude, that's the cup.
And the pentacle?
The pentacle is your mastery of the physical world.
And so, for instance, your your your bank account, getting your getting
the material aspects of your life together, as well as your understanding of the universe.
Or excuse me, the your assembled facts about the universe.
Do you own robes?
I can neither confirm nor do I.
Here's the thing, man.
I love meditation.
I'm not going to say I love meditation.
Let's face it, that's a that's a thorny path for me.
But I do when I am meditating, I know that I in my life tends to get better.
But what you're describing there now, that to me, man, that sounds like where the juice is.
I love sitting and meditating.
It's cool. I practice mindfulness.
Listen to Jack Cornfield walking the dog, follow my breath, sit and look and feel my body.
And watch the wild, writhing snakes of my mind go insane at every moment.
But, man, what you just described, man, that sounds fun, because when you're
saying we focus on these symbols ceremonially, you don't mean that you
sit and think about those symbols like there's an actual because I've read it, man.
There's some very juicy, beautiful ceremonies recommended by Crowley by in so
many of these grimoires.
How did you say grimoire?
Because I haven't mispronounced it like you said it, grimoires that are beautiful.
Smack those robes on circle on the floor.
You know what I mean?
In tone, the correct chance while burning incense, theatrically act out all these things.
That sounds fun.
Right. And it is fun.
Right. And although I'll point out that it's it's generally
considered a Crowley even describes it as a prelude to meditation.
You know, when it allows you to it allows you, especially it allows you more
control over your mind through enacting it.
But the ultimate goal is is is, you know, probably better served by meditation.
Maybe that's not what you want to hear.
But it is. And it never is.
No one ever tells me what I want to hear on this podcast.
That's what I like.
And I just want someone to say wear some black robes, get a goddamn cauldron,
say these words, and you're going to be able to astrally project at night and not
orgasm within two minutes.
And you'll be hanging out with Frieza Balk from the craft.
Yeah, yeah, that idea.
That's a fun idea.
But, man, you know, I got to say, man, you know, the times that I have
experimented with that stuff and gotten super, super stoned and in your book,
Generation X, a lot of many people in there talk about using substances
to alter their consciousness when they're performing these magical rituals.
I have had experiences that I don't I haven't had meditating.
I've had experiences.
Now, are these experiences ultimately
are they like, you know, getting off the path
and like ending up getting distracted in some weird forest?
Yeah, maybe like, are they like leading to some kind of state of
still mind, expansive consciousness necessarily?
I don't think so. But when I was doing them, it wasn't for that.
You know, so many things that we do, so many things that we do
aren't just for that kind of tranquility and stability that you're talking about.
So many things that we do are for fun.
What's wrong with that?
I think that's well put.
Yeah, if you want to be completely strict about it, essentially,
you know, the magical discipline, especially when you combine entheogens
with it, will give you incredible fucking experiences like you've discussed.
They're ultimately more just more illusion in the end.
Yeah. But so is the X Men movie.
But so is the X Men. That's very true.
Let's pause for one quick second.
You should essentially. Yeah.
But for Crowley, he thought, well, OK, how do we turn this on?
You know, is there an actual method for for inducing this state?
You know, whether somebody's like you said, I mean, somebody could think
they're talking to an angel, a goddess, Satan, what if it's all the same?
What if this is just like something that either something that happens in the brain
or it really is something mystical either way?
Is there a technique for inducing that?
And if we can do that, how much faster would we advance as a civilization?
And in fact, he says that's kind of the only at one point in his later years.
He says this might be our only hope for getting out of the world crisis,
essentially, and this was in the in the forties.
He was looking at World War Two, but now with global warming, things like this,
you know, human just human thinking alone has not been able to fix the problem.
So we need to enhance our ability to be conduits,
maybe as long as we're conduits of the right things, I would suggest.
Yeah, well, that's something there's a great Ram Dass quote where he says,
just because of being is disembodied doesn't mean it's telling the truth.
Oh, yes, it's assholes all the way up and all the way down.
You know, as I found out,
but no, that's totally assholes on the astral plane, huh?
Well, all of it.
OK, here's how I look at it.
The the the Buddhists, right?
They say that the the most precious thing in the universe is a human birth, right?
Like they always say that, you know, it's like the most precious human incarnation.
So, you know, one of the things that Genesis Peorges to point out to me was
and could you tell everyone who Genesis Peorges?
A lot of people might not.
So Genesis Peorges is Genesis.
Briar Peorges is, you know, one of the the great magicians of the 20th century.
And was my is, you know, is my primary mentor.
You know, I studied for seven years with very directly with Jen and edited
the psychic Bible with her.
Jen basically started the band Throbbing Gristle,
which was the first industrial band went on to start psychic TV,
which was one of the first asset house bands was very influential
and pretty much responsible for popularizing industrial music,
rave, to some extent, rave asset house music,
body piercing and all tattooing as a major phenomenon and also magic
because they were running a magical order in the 80s called the Temple of Psychic Youth,
which was focused on the democratization of sex magic techniques
that had previously basically been guarded by a few hardcore Crowley people.
And wouldn't they send out VHS tapes to watch and stuff?
Yeah, they would send out VHS tapes of, you know, group group orgies,
you know, like sexual magical actions.
It's pretty it's pretty intense stuff even now.
It's hard for me to watch some of it.
But what's what do you mean?
What's an example of something that would be hard for you to watch on this VHS?
Well, a lot of it is in that DVD that comes with the book.
But they would, you know, they would do do, you know,
a lot of magic is can be, you know, a lot of the magic we've been talking about
is very high intellectual, almost academic magic, which is kind of my kick.
But another form of magic is essentially purely about getting into altered states.
And a lot of that can be done with, you know,
I would compare to, you know, self-flagellation like the Jesuits
or pain, extreme mental states, drugs.
What's the thing you have had a hard time looking at, man, I want to hear it.
There's there was some like group what looked like group group kind of group
bloodletting rituals. Wow.
But Jen is very cheeky, too.
So a lot of that was cut together to look more intense than it actually was.
And they were raided by Scotland Yard in the 1990.
The country came down on them.
There were 10,000 people in in Topi, the Temple of Psychic Youth at the at the
the peak of it is a serious deal.
And they got raided by the government because some of these these videos were
seen and they were way taken out of context.
And they they they came down.
And Jen was basically sent an exile out of the country.
Oh, my God, that's that's how you know you're doing it.
Right, man, Crowley got exiled, too, right?
When they kick you out of the country, exiled by Mussolini from Mussolini.
Yeah, Mussolini thought he was a degenerate influence.
So get him out when you get kicked out of your country for doing magic.
You are a bad ass.
I got thrown out of Canada.
That's my claim for what?
For I was up there doing magic.
I was living up there for a year and they figured out I was living with my girlfriend,
which was a big no, no.
But it was a huge, you know, it was a huge what do you mean?
You can't live with your girlfriend in Canada.
Apparently not.
But I was thrown out.
I was I was involved in really heavy magical work.
And I ended up at the border, you know, as these things happen at the exact wrong
time where there was like a biker gang going through with a murderer.
And they they had they had a heavy security on it.
And they looked at me and decided I was suspicious and exiled me from the country.
Although I'm allowed back in now.
Not quite as a dramatic as a story, but that's my that's my getting thrown out.
So you got wrapped up like they thought you were in a motorcycle gang.
It wasn't as you were living with your girlfriend.
No, that was the reason that I don't get it.
Why? What's the reason?
I guess it's not legal to do that for an American citizen to live with a girl
in Canada if you're American.
Is that true? That's how old was the girl?
Oh, 22.
Yeah, no, it really was confusing.
But anyway, can someone email me about the law that you can't live with a girl
in Canada if you're not from Canada? That is wild.
I've never heard that before.
It was something about if I remember, it was something about cohabiting.
And I don't I don't know.
But they had they had temporary workers because the real
the real Canadian Border Patrol had walked off because they didn't want
to get shot by the guy in the biker gang.
So I may have ended up with people who didn't fully know the law.
Do you think this in this drama?
Because sometimes, you know, a lot of times when I've run into people
who are really into magic, they always do have a lot of drama in their life.
That was something you said to me when we first met and you're totally right.
And I think that one of the reasons why I'm.
Well, to bring it back to how we got on this topic, you know,
that a human body is a very precious thing to have.
You know, why do all these beings want into human bodies?
It must be a condition better than being a disembodied, astral being.
But the second part of that is, you know, one of the reasons why I I think
that most of the most of the drama that people experience in magic
or when they have a bad time, it usually comes from two things.
One is three things.
One is drugs, you know, people get really into drugs and drugs have their own,
you know, negative effects over and above anything you're thinking about or doing.
Second is taking it too seriously.
Like I think the thing with Crowley, where you think it's all the stuff
you're experiencing is actually real and you're acting as if it's real.
And then life just gets extremely confusing.
Yeah. And the third is with when people get really into spirit contact
and they they try contacting the wrong spirits.
Then I think that all of those things.
And I don't even think spirit contact is a good idea necessarily.
I think that magic for me is a process of disciplining the self
and becoming a better version of yourself instead of trying to sell out
to another being, perhaps at least certainly not initially, you know,
but contacting higher intelligences is a big deal.
But you have to understand managing boundaries and understand
what's how to figure out what's good and what for lack of a better terminology,
what's good and what's not.
So to simplify all that, the reason people have drama is I think lack of training
and because they get they get too far in over their heads too fast.
Yes, because when you read, you know, any of these texts, they don't say,
oh, yeah, just like here, mutter these incantations and like smoke a joint
and you'll be able to talk to an angel and be in and afford a new car.
They have like a kind of surgical like like as the way they describe it,
it's like going into surgery, the preparation is like serious,
decontaminating the area psychically and so much preparation.
It's not just like by the necronomicon of the used bookstore.
And like it's serious.
And the reason that is is because you have to you have to know exactly
what you're doing and make sure that you get exactly what you asked for.
And a lot of times people get into trouble
because they just open themselves up too much, which is a lot of what I see.
And, you know, people like like heavy psychedelics use or, you know,
perfect example, you know, I knew a girl here in L.A.
who was wanting to she wanted me to help her.
She was like, come to my art space and help me do magic with everyone.
I'm like, OK, well, what are you doing?
She was like, well, we're we're we're opening a portal.
OK, what are you opening a portal to?
Well, we're just we're just we're just opening a portal.
It's like that doesn't make any sense.
And you don't want to do that because, you know, it's kind of like the world
of of magic, whether it's in your mind or not, you know, the astral plane
is just as varied as the real world.
There's just as many types of people.
There's a South Central.
There's a South Central. Oh, yeah, I've been there.
It's not fun. You've been there.
What what what is it like?
Can you describe what you're talking about?
Like, what is that like going?
Let's take me through.
I can tell you the worst trip I've ever had, but it will bum you out
and everybody on who listens to this entire podcast.
And I should probably might want to keep it to myself.
Wow. Now you got to say it, man.
Now you can't just you can't you go, let's hear it.
Let's hear it. And then and then after you say it, let's let's
cleanse cleanse it with some some positivity.
OK, come on, let's hear it.
Worst trip I ever had was was this is shortly before I was thrown out of Canada
was I this was on mushrooms and Syrian roux.
Have you done that?
I've heard Syrian roux is brutal.
It was fucking brutal.
It was because that's the one that I guess from what I understand,
my limited understanding of chemistry.
There is DMT naturally occurring in psilocybin mushrooms,
but your brain has a thing called mono amino oxidase or MAO,
which breaks down DMT.
That's why when you smoke DMT, it only lasts five or 10 minutes.
Yeah. If you there's a base, I think it's like a bark called Syrian roux,
which is MAO inhibitors.
So it inhibits that part of it inhibits that thing in your brain,
which breaks down DMT, which means you get the the ayahuasca effect from the
mushroom. So I call it like MacGyver ayahuasca because all that ayahuasca is
stuff that has DMT with stuff that has MAO inhibitors and I think some other stuff.
So it was, you know, six hours of hyper vivid brutality.
Right. And I think I was in like a warehouse in, you know, like East, East,
East Brooklyn. And the hallucination, I think this is really the hallucination
was this is what I consider the abyss.
They talk about the abyss experience.
You've heard about this one.
No, I mean, I've heard, I've heard, I may be, but what do you mean?
In the in the Western magical tradition, there's a concept called the abyss,
which is the it's considered the separation between divinity and mankind.
But it's also, as I experienced it, it's, you know, the, you know,
well, let me put it in a different language.
The Buddhist concept of suffering, you know, universal suffering.
Yes. So that's a lot more intense when you do it on MacGyver ayahuasca
than it is on when you just read it, right?
So my like the trip started out with, you know, the journalist Daniel Pearl.
I've heard of him. Yes.
He was a guy who was beheaded on on.
So yeah, I saw that video. It's awful.
Yeah. So the first hour of the trip was me being beheaded by by jihadis, right?
And it was what was it?
It zoomed out and it was essentially.
I'm trying to remember this is 2006.
It's written in it's written up in in my book, Queen Valentine,
but it was basically this was after Generation Hex came out
and I was during a going undergoing a process.
It was kind of like, oh, you think you're a big magician, right?
You think you're real clever.
You put out these books on magic.
It's like, oh, yeah, like you got all the secrets of the universe.
All right, let's show you something, right?
And so it went from this kind of like it went from that to essentially
merging with all of the suffering in the entire world all at once.
And it was, you know, it was kind of like, you know, you're you're a woman.
You're a you're a mother in Africa,
waking up knowing that your your child died of famine
and you're going to wake up with that every day.
And that's reality or you're, you know, you're living in you're living in Haiti
in like this total absolute misery where it's just like, you know, there's no hope.
There's no hope.
And just like experiencing all this, like, you know, these war zones,
you know, vice magazine, right?
Like, welcome to the war zones.
Welcome to all the suffering in the world.
Yes. And it was kind of like, OK, so, you know, all those things you, you know,
so it was basically, oh, yeah, you think you're a big magician?
Well, no, everyone, you know, there is only suffering in the world and everything else.
You know, any time you think you've any any time that you think
you've been bigger than somebody else or more important than somebody else,
that just adds to the suffering.
Oh, yeah. And it's like, what was it?
It was like.
Yeah. And then it was like, OK.
And then I kind of zoomed out and it was like, I saw this image of all the suffering.
And it was it was almost like the trip was almost like I was in a war zone.
Like when you see those war movies where the camera is shaking and everything's
like awful and they're just this total like like G.I. Jane or something like that.
But I zoomed out and I saw there was a mountain of all the Catholic saints, right?
And everyone's like dragging.
Everyone's essentially broken and dragging themselves to this
and praying to the saints and in the mountain of saints is just they're
looking down at everyone, you know, and they're part of their
they're part of this system of misery.
They exist there just to give people false hope.
Oh, wow. I was like, oh, fuck.
And then it was then it was zoom out and I see the world and there were.
There were like these beings.
These look like invisible jellyfish all around the world.
And I was like, OK, what is this?
And it's like these are all the gods that people pray to
for relief from the suffering and their parasites that are sucking up
all this false hope, essentially.
And the false hope only exists to make things worse.
Because when you think there's hope, then the suffering is even better.
And I was like, oh, fuck.
And then, you know, this was awful.
And everyone in the room was experiencing the same thing, which was really strange.
People were like throwing up and shitting themselves and in the real world.
And then it zoomed out even further.
And then the final part of it was I saw there was the ring of Buddhas
that circled the universe and they all looked like Tibetan monks.
And they were chanting and they were doing the Buddhist thing of, you know, we want.
You know, we have compassion for all sentient beings.
Yeah, generate, you know, the doing that the Buddhist generation of compassion.
Yeah.
Well, they're chanting for everything.
And the final message was the only possible way to win the game
is to have compassion for everything, but you will still suffer.
That wow.
Yeah, that was that's beautiful.
That's beautiful and it's heavy.
And that's the thing, man.
What you're talking about is it's like, if you want the info, you can have the info.
If you want to know where your hamburgers are coming from,
you can go on YouTube right now and see where they're coming from.
It's not going to be pretty.
And this notion that we have that when you get the information download
that somehow it's going to make you feel great, that really does find it first.
It first.
Well, but here's the thing, right?
I mean, that experience took me that wasn't just a trip.
I mean, that was, you know, that that experience wrecked me.
And it took me about two or three years to come back from that where I, you know,
I stopped writing, I stopped putting books out.
I was just like, you know, people, people talk about they want their ego shut down.
Like it's going to they're going to live in, you know, Narnia.
But that's not that's not how it works, at least in my case.
And, you know, it took me a long time to come back from that.
And one of the things that encouraged me, by the way, to return to doing what I was
doing is listening to your podcast.
It really, it really cheered me up out of out of that dark place.
That's amazing.
Thank you. It really did.
And because for the longest time I was convinced, you know, that, you know,
this is all bullshit and nobody wants it.
And but out of that experience, that's when I after I came out of that,
that's when I started to get more heavily into Indian mysticism, but Danta,
you know, things like the Indian grooves or Neem Karoli, Baba, people like that.
And what I what I realized was that is just that's there.
That experience is there.
But it's not ultimate reality.
It's certainly one way to look at reality.
But then you realize that just on the other side of that,
you know, ultimately, the the universe is a loving, infinite.
Wonderful place.
And that's one it's kind of like that's one potential play.
That's one potential way we can see the world.
That's all that is happening, you know, like global warming,
you know, the torture of animals, the torture of people, the torture of the
third world, you know, globalization, GMOs, all that stuff.
You know, like it's there's constant misery in the world.
But out of that, but combined with this sense that nobody's in charge
or nobody's going to fix it.
But out of that, for me, at least the important message was, well,
then at least I have to do something, you know, it's like if and I think
that's the that's the dispelling of illusion.
You know, that's why your magic is disillusioning.
It takes the illusion away about what reality is.
But then it does leave you with empowerment, but not in the way that
not in the way that you think it's going to not like I'm going to, you know,
some and Jessica Alba to be my girlfriend.
But in the sense of, OK, well, you know, this is this is.
The what a good girl, Jeff called it the the terror of the situation.
Right. And, you know, girl, Jeff, yeah, sure.
And it's like, yeah, that's what's that's what's going on.
So but at the same time, you know, there's that's only part of it.
We also live in a beautiful paradise planet where everyone is
becoming smarter and better and more divine every day.
And we're learning more and more about the world every day through, you know,
with the Internet and we have all these incredible technologies.
And, you know, as things improve, it's kind of like maybe it's like as things.
And, you know, things are really bad and really great at the same time.
And we have all the tools and the ability and the technology to take
reality into our own hands and be a positive force in the world.
Oh, I love it, man.
That is really cool.
I mean, I think you do need to see the jellyfish before you can understand
the other part of it. You do need to see that.
Do you think that you can tell us something that we can do this week
like a magical, a simple magical ritual or a simple act that we could do to sort of.
Uh, bring, bring more of this actualized, more of this positivity
or this emerging potentiality that you're talking about out in the out of the world.
Yeah, just make a promise to, you know, because magic doesn't have to be complicated.
You can go outside and talk to the universe.
Just look up at the fucking sky and talk.
And, you know, that's that's that's good enough.
You know, that's more than good enough.
That's an idea.
So I think make a, you know, make a make a pledge to be.
I think make a pledge to the universe to do whatever it is that you can do
to help in the evolution of the human race in a positive direction.
And then start meditating.
Hey, dammit, had in on that.
So much rather they drink some goats blood or something.
You're awesome, man.
This is free range goats blood.
Yeah.
Well, of course, obviously a gluten free goats blood, all goats bloods gluten free.
Man, you're amazing.
And you got to please, can you be the magical advisor of the Dunkin Trussell
Family Hour podcast?
Sure. Please come back.
And I want to take your courses too.
Will you say, will you tell us all again where we can take these courses?
Wait, before you do that, you know, you remind me of, man,
because I used to be really into HP Lovecraft.
You remind me of like one of the one of the protagonists in those books.
They're like it's early conditioning from reading those.
I'm glad that you've gotten your face out of the necronomicon
and into the into the other stuff, too, because I do agree with you, man.
It can pull you into a you'll you will end up in a warehouse
shitting yourself if you do that stuff too much.
Yeah, how can how can we take your class?
But I'm glad everyone everyone always thinks everyone says I look like Mark
Ruffalo, so I'm glad it's HP Lovecraft instead of Mark Ruffalo this time.
So OK, so the the courses are at magic.me, M-A-G-I-C-K.me.
And there's four or five courses there already.
There's one on chaos magic.
There's one on peak getting peak mental and physical energy.
There is one on meditation.
There's a ton of stuff there and there's going to be more and more
stuff there always you can get those and watch those anytime you want.
I'm doing a live training, I think this Saturday on basic magic,
basic golden dawn ceremonial magic that will include some of the set
and setting stuff for using it with psychedelics.
If you go and sign up for that and use the code word Duncan Duncan,
it'll be 10 percent off.
Cool. That's bad ass.
You guys have got to do that, man.
This is the real deal. This is I got it finally happened.
I got an actual magician on the podcast.
Well, I had Wasserman, but this is like this is in Wasserman's awesome PS.
I'm not the hope.
I don't I'm scared of Wasserman and he's great, but this is great, man.
And and very useful stuff that you've given us.
So take his class and all my stuff is super positive, by the way.
I don't I don't. So yeah, I'm the one who was kept dragging
into the jellyfish land just to hear about fascinating.
It is fascinating.
But but all the courses, I should say, all the courses are focused
not on theory, but on they're all practical.
It's just practical techniques for how to actually do this stuff.
I don't give any actual ideologies or say what to believe.
All this stuff can be combined with whatever your own belief system happens to be.
It's just practical tools for changing your consciousness in a positive way.
Howdy, Krishna. Take the course.
All the links will be in the comments section of this podcast at DuncanTrustle.com.
Thank you so much, Jason. Thank you, Duncan.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
And don't forget to go to our sponsors, Squarespace.com.
If you sign up for a membership using the code word Duncan,
you'll get 10 percent off of their amazing web design tools.
And also don't forget to dip your finger into a glass of lavender
infused honey and rub your finger along the cracked lips of your aunt,
Lisa, as you hold her trembling hand and blow into her ears
and then give her a nice bath and comb her hair and wrap her in linen
and push her out of the back of your car into a hole
and fill the hole with burrowing weasels that will devour her body
and collect their excrement and use it in your garden to grow tomatoes.
Talk to you soon. See you next time.
Hare Krishna.
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