Magic - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 2/27/23

his findings and speculations. The author of Source Magic, A Culture Residences, and Anton Levy in the Church of Satan, as well as editor and publisher of the annual anthology of a Culture, The Fenris Wolf. Carl, welcome back to the program. Have you been sir? Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here, and I've been good. I've been a diligent little boy writing away writing new books. Excellent. Good for you. You You do a great job writing. How'd you get started in all this?

I think it was already back in school. You know, you get these early senses of vocation, and I found that my vocation was in writing. And then, of course what should you write about? Well, that's the game of life. You accumulate experience and you find interesting things. You go to interesting places and you start connecting dogs and suddenly

you have your own mind frame, you know. And I was very early on interested in magic and sort of the supernatural and fantasy and myths and all these things. And I've just rolled with it basically, and today I write about it from these sort of down to earth perspectives. It's not highbrow and it's not, you know, too symbolic or too artcane. It just tried to see what's magical today in a way. And then I write about that.

Some people kind of spell magic ending in a K. You have an mgic as we haven't here in the United States yet, is there really a difference? The difference is having to do with this probably most famous or infamous magician of the twentieth century, a British guy called Alister Crowley, and he spelled his magic word with a K to sort of differentiate it from the older systems that he had been taught in, you know, as kids do in a way, you know what you're want to

set yourself aside from whatever has been before. And some people have taken that to heart and spell it like that. I prefer the normal spelling in a way because it's more inclusive. And what is your thoughts on a culture? Occult ure? Yeah, it's it's of course, it's the title of a book I've written. But the thing is, it's it's more than a penny joining of two words meaning occult and culture. It has to do with many things

that are going on today. I argue that it's tied in with our you know, survival instinct because we're facing so many difficult problems as a species. We have to deal with it somehow, and one of these things is going back in time. But also, you know, looking at whatever's going on today and historically indigenous tribes different ways of dealing with problems. All these things have usually been occult. They have been in the occult sphere, hidden, ostracized, perhaps

even forbidden. But essentially most of these things are just like proto science, you know, proto psychology, things that have not been validated yet in terms of speculative ideas and methods and stuff like that. And I believe that it's high time that we carry on taking a look at all these sort of band and weird things to see if there's some of them gam in there, some little seed that can take us into a healthier worldview and a more constructive approach. That is basically what a culture is.

You know, when something goes from the occults to hidden underground, into the overground into the mainstream. And that's happening a lot today in culture. So we were experiencing pretty strong or culture and I think that's very very healthy. A lot of people, Carl, when they think about magic, think about people like Merlin the magician. You don't necessarily have

to be a magician to perform magic, do you. No. There are many, you know, ways you can define it, and I think that one very good and useful description. It's just that you know, if you have a will, you know you want something, whether it's something you know, worldly, like a promotion at work or a new partner, or you know, just something in your life that would feel it more meaning whatever you do, whatever you do to

reach that goal. If by definition magical, but then of course you have the more you know, cosmic star dust sprinkled fairy tales and myths, and you mentioned Merlin, and we have the you know, the Harry Potters and all of that sort of the mythical stuff that's part of it too, because it's it's more integrated in our life and our culture and our history than many of us

care to admit. I admit it freely, and I think it's essential that we validated both aspects, both this sort of causal process of getting what you want, but also acknowledging that there are let's call it supernatural or at least sort of super super rational processes that we can't explain at this moment, but nonetheless they are true and they fill our lives with meaning. Let's talk about your title of your latest book, Source Magic The Origin of Art,

Science and Culture. Explain what that is. It's basically, you know, the book is an anthology that contains essays and lectures about many things. But it dawned on me along the way, when are you know, lecturing and writing that, Well, all of this makes sense together, and there is something we do have a source. We cannot go back to prehistoric times when there are no documentation, not even you know, cave paintings, but we can based on the data that

we have from archaeology, and just remains that. Of course, life was incredibly tough back then, so you had to stay together, help each other work it out, pretend yourself and your friends and tribes from many, many threats, and part of this was getting information from what you can call a shamanic mind set, mind frame, basically going traveling inside to get information not from necessarily external God's external forces, but rather psychological insights that certain people with a capacity

for that kind of free floating meditation in a way have and then they bring it back to the tribe and they can be useful. And everything that we have in our culture today have sort of discernable trails going back to that original shamanic mind frame. Whether it's the natural sciences, whether it's culture, whether it's you know, anything human. Any human endeavor has that sense of magic to it because it deals with speculative questions inside us, should I

do this? What if? Discorrect? Constant processing not only on rational levels but also on irrational levels, and those are the seed that can bloom into bigger endeavors. Carl, does the magic you talk about include candles and rituals and

spells and things like that. It can, I would argue that it's not really necessary because what I just talked about before, there's also this sort of causal magic going from point A to point B. Because it's my will that can be fulfilling enough and may not require any paraphernalia or any adherence to any sort of school or

teaching or mystical system. But it also can be useful as gimmicks in a way to change your mind frame in a moment of in a way, you know, programming yourself to become more efficient, programming yourself to become more

susceptible to influx. That could be good for you. And all of these things that are in the traditional systems, like you know, wands and cups and candles and stuff, it could be good mood changers, just like music can be that you set yourself in a different mind frame in order to experience the moment in a different way than if you're just watching TV or playing a game

or whatever it is. You know, sometimes we can change our inner world by changing the outer parameters, and it's true the other way around also, u And in doing that we can become more efficient in dealing with whatever it is that we want to achieve. When we deal with magic, are we tapping into sources? What creates the magic? Oh? What a good question. I think that there's a general dilemma or dichotomy, you know, basically having to do with

external forces or internal forces. When I was younger, very immersed in the mythology of magic, I would say that, oh, there are this this angel, or this is a four or whatever natural force helped me. But as things have progressed and I've grown more mature in a way, I believe more and more in the psychology. There's great power in the human mind. As they said in the sixties, you know, it's all in the mind, and I do

believe that. I do believe that whatever we've find in the inner that can help us bring things out to make our lives more meaningful, it's all inside us. It's psychological processes, emotional processes, and we have to learn and accept actually how easy it is to go inside and you know, have a conversation with yourself self basically and

find new things that are not there. If you're a kind of a slave to rational thinking, if you discard immediately like emotional stuff, or if we discard intuitive directions. It's about being open minded basically. Now, you wrote a book a year ago called Anton LaVey in the Church of Satan. He kind of performed dark magic, didn't he well, I would say, in the sense that a lot of it was for selfish purposes. He didn't believe in the fluff. He believed that the greatest altruism was being good to

yourself first, then you can be good to others. And there's a big difference there in sort of instead of discarding yourself whatever you want for the sake of others, it can't be nice and you know, altruistic, but you will feel better if you put yourself first, then you can help other people. That's one aspect that some people may find dark. Then, of course he had the symbol

of Satan. He didn't believe in any sort of real human like Satan figure, but it was a symbol that appealed to him because he wanted to stir, you know, general American mind frame of the nineteen sixties by having this controversial symbol, and it helped him to achieve his goals. So, in that sense dark, but he was certainly not like a generally like evil person. He was a friend of mine, and he was a very you know, funny, intelligent, generous man.

And if you look at his writings, it's basically taking all of the old magic to a new level. He's bringing it into our contemporary times and the mind frames and he you know, it's part of what I would call the source magic, acknowledging that a lot of it is psychology. But psychology on an individual level can be helped by having these external I'm not going to say trappings, but these external gimmicks and gadgets and things that will change your mind frame in the moment of ritual. It's

not dark. It's just applied psychology with some added bonuses of changing the atmosphere in the space where you're doing this, and it works. People have been doing in humans have been doing this for since the dawn of time. Basically, would you say Lay was evil? No, I would not. You know, to be evil, you have to be unbalanced, you have to have, you know, bear a ground judge that becomes obsessive and takes over any constructive dealings in life,

and you know, destroys your own happiness. And he certainly works in bad. He was self indulgent, immersing himself in his own pleasures. It's a very pleasure oriented philosophy that he constructed, and then he had these sort of dark symbols. But it's mainly again because he felt attracted to it, and then other people have felt attracted to them also. But there's nothing inherently evil in that. Evil is imbalanced. Evil is when you go against yourself. That's the ultimate evil. Carl.

What is a magical anthropology. It's something that I came up with, and I'm sure others have done it also, but I've really become obsessed with the term and the phenomenon. Magical anthropology is the study of how humans in all times, spaces, cultures have related to the phenomenon magic, both on inner levels and also on outer cultural levels. You know, to what extent does one culture, for instance, permits ritual and

magic to be out in the open. I mean, we know some societies have banned it, like medieval times, yet at the same time, what the magicians were dealing with that time is now our science. So it's almost like magic is ahead of the curve, and magical anthropology looks at that and tries to figure out, you know, if their correlation between a good, open like liberal society and the presence of magic, and of course individual strong, powerful

magicians who have left cultural traces. Again, in medieval times, there were many of those who became I don't know scapegoats. They became victims of their own conviction that this is the right path to go. So magic anthropology is basically the study of the human beings on individual levels and on cultural levels, relationship too. Magic as a phenomenon. How

many people who practice magic? Carl got the question as being witches, for example, by mistake, right, Yeah, you know, that's it's incredibly I would if I have that hat on, so to speak, I would argue that everyone is performing magic. That's part of my realization or my deduction in a way, that we are so connected to magic and magical thinking

that everyone does it. But if you mean flamboyantly acting with the paraphernalia and dressing up in a different way and stuff like that, I would again say, it's not the majority, but there's certainly more people doing that than the critics would care to admit. And I would say one part of your culture has been, for instance, the

integration of fraternal societies like Freemasons, for instance. It's you know, very very widespread, became integrated in culture in the Western world and also in other places, and there you have all of these things, ritual initiations, dressing up in a different way receiving material to study, etc. Etc. That is no longer hocus focus. It's part of whatever it is that we want to achieve and how we want to achieve it. The same thing with yoga. Yoga used to

be hocus focused in the nineteen sixties. If you were the details and you could afford it, you could go to an ashram in India and it was sort of hokey and hocus pocus. Today, however, almost every housewife you know goes to yoga or does yoga at home every day. It has been, you know, gone from the account into view culture and also into the mainstream. That's just how

it works. It's like seed. Seed grow underground, but you know, we'll write nutrition it will grow upwards towards the sun above ground and bloom into a beautiful plant of flower. Can magic be used in all kinds of ways, good and evil? I would say so. I would say so. And for instance, an evil application would be dogma, you know, dogmatic propaganda trying to make people go against their own will, just like violence is that in its most crude form.

It could also be done with propaganda presenting a narrative that you feel as an individual human if immoral is not right. And yet the force of the critical mass point safety in numbers, etc. That has been pushed upon a mass of people is evil, I would say, because it destroys the natural balance, It destroys the natural stratification of the individual making individual choices in life. Whatever goes against that kind of freedom, to me is inherent evil.

Have you ever seen anybody you practice magic and they were just so phenomenal at it? Strange things happened. Yeah, I have. But then you have to to sort of take it to Can this, you know, be verified by objective means or in an empirical clinical thing. I think

in some ways it can. I mean, there's been very interesting experiments since a couple of decades, you know, doing you know, measuring electricity in the brain during meditation for instance, and doing agitated things that we call ecstasy, you know, whether it's like a sexual sense or it's just exhaustion. Basically measuring these rare mental states, these mind frame states, mind state frames, and seeing what is the what are the physical things going on here? So that's a very

healthy thing. Also, however, if you see and say that someone, oh, that that person was so magical. That movie was so magic, or this magician did this and it was incredible magical. It sort of sticks in a very subjective interpretation point of view that it can be hard to validate. But on the other hand, not everything needs to be validated, because if that experience and that magician was magical to you, then so be it. If that fills your life and

experience with meaning, it's perfect. You know, everything doesn't need to be clinically diffected in order to make sense. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more