Magick - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 3/13/23

the misunderstood craft. Sal continues to strive to make the occult accessible and inclusive to all of those who seek it out. Sal sentaorro back on Coast to Coast, Hey, Sal, have you been all rich? How you been? Sorry? Good to hear from you. You too, my friend? What's new with you? What's new? So much is new? Something's going on, you know, things, moving on, times, moving on, the stores

doing really good. Actually it was kind of neat because Patty Negri was just on your show not too long ago, that's right, And I was like, oh, Tema said I, So, I love her. She's like my sister. She's a very very good person, great, great person. How did you get into this? I get into the occult? I mean it started in New England and well, I mean I graduated high school in eighty two, so it probably started around

seventy nine. And you know, it was me and my friends in the woods in the pre internet days of New Hampshire and we were trying to find out information on it, you know. I mean we're in New England and there really wasn't much out there then. And I got my first witchcraft book, which was Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Howson, who is still with us today. He's about eighty years old now. It was just a really great

starter book and that put me on the path. And from there I started reading Crowley and just kept moving on through. When I got to California, I found my first cousin, and long Beach at Ias a cat. Thank god, you're warning Salem, Massachusetts trying you know still, you know still, I was just talking to somebody, one of my students about that actually earlier today. You know, when I was a kid in New England, it wasn't like Witchcraft row there.

You never, it wasn't like that. You know. It became very trendy in the last fifteen years, right where all those stories just lined the streets. But it was not like that at all. His tourism'm pretty big in Salem. I well, now, yes, but New England. I mean, of course you've got to you go to the House of Seven Gables, you know, you you see some of the early politicians homes and you know, people of that nature.

You know. But that was what it was about. And then of course, you know, we had the one Lori Cabot store and she had the official witch of Salem going on, and she held that for years and she did really good with it, you know. So that's fantastic. And since we last spoke, which I can't believe it was already two years ago. Yes, COVID, wasn't it. Yeah, we're right in the middle of it. Actually, you're right, it was in the middle of the beginning of it,

right right. So you've been doing a lot of things since I have, I mean a lot's been A lot's been going on. I've I've further developed the coven that I run out of the store. Um, I've reached now I think I've taught my ten weeks to witchcraft. I've taught about We're thinking about five hundred people at this point.

Pretty somewhere in there. Um, people love the course. And actually I just had class tonight and those this present classes on me was on the second to last class of the series and we were just reminiscing about that. But yeah, so we've been teaching, Um, going to Greece, you know, go to Greece every year with Popia of course, and enjoying crete because it's like my favorite place in the world. Um. This year started out weird. Um, my mother passed away. Oh I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah,

it was really weird. She was ninety six years old. Ninety four blesser you know, and just you never you're never ready to lose your mom. No, it was hard. But this past weekend I flew to Florida and I celebrated my father's one hundredth birthday. Oh my god. Yeah. He was a bombardier on the B twenty four in World War Two. My father was World War Two veteran. I lost him when he was eighty eight. He would have been a hundred years old this February. That is amazing,

they're the same age. Yeah. My dad was in the eighth Ar Corps, you know, and then he totally did the ball bearing runs over Germany. My dad was in Germany the Battle of the Bulge. Wow, I wonder if they knew each other, you know, you wonder my dad was stationed in England. I don't know. I don't think my dad, while he may have come from the England area when they shipped them overseas. Yeah, see, my dad was in there. He didn't like to talk about the war too much, is it mine? My father was very

much not that guy you had. You always heard people, you know, you always get those different people that loved talking about it. My father, I mean what I got from him. The first thing was and he he was finished. They offered him as service revolve where they offered him all the stuff. He just took it to the end of the line and gave it back to the music. I want nothing to do with it now. I did my time. I'm done, And he walked away. There was a Greece goddess by the name of was it the

Hecate God? Yeah, for sure, Sam, How did you unravel her? Well? Et um? You know, I'd always known about her. She um has always, you know, been a prevalent word in Indi occult and I mean Shakespeare even mentions her in Macbeth. He doesn't do her very good justice though. He kind of makes her like an old look like an old crone, when actually she was like actually technically made it looks

like Medusa. Yeah, well Medusa as a Gorgon, which would be a correlative and a relation almost conflation to Lakate, which was an aspect the ecat gorgon or the gorgon aspect of a kate um but Ekante I found when I went to Greece, and um, you know, I've been, like I said, I'd been a practitioner all these years, but I never worked with a deity or an entity. It was always just told me excale planetary magic. And when I was there, she came and she made it

very obvious. And once I got home and I had, you know, interaction with her in the occult world, she gave me missions and one of them was to open the store and open up a temple to her, which we have succeeded in doing. Right now we have we're trying to make it the first official temple of Hekat in southern California. And your wife scree, isn't she Yes, she's very much a Greek woman. Yes, yeah, Greek Canadian as she likes to say, Yeah, but that's where it

came from. And ekat is she's my breath. She changed my life. Does she come to you in a dream state? How does she come to um? Well, initially she came, you know, like I wasn't expecting it. We were literally home, like like not even two days and it was like an image that was like right over the side of my bed. And that's how she first came to me. And after that, I, you know, it started becoming a lot stronger, and then I started learning more about her

and I studied different backgrounds. I mean, there's some really great authors on Nikati. There's a big resurgence for her right now. So she's becoming a goddess that a lot of people know about. She's even mentioned on TV shows now, Like she was just in the an episode of White Lotus, that show that was just out, and they mentioned her in it. These these two girls mentioned her worshiping her in the Moonlight. But you know, it's just because she in pop culture. She's found her way back in and

it's amazing because she's the mother of the crossroads. You know, she was conflated later with Isis in Egypt, and she's one of those proto deities, you know that's just older than old. Was she a witch or a goddess? Well she was. She was definitely a deity. She was a titan She was pre Olympians. She was like Zeus, but well she was. She was more Titanic, and she fought with Zeus to put the rest of the Titans down

so Olympic the Olympus gods could reign. And because of that Zeus was so well, you know your Greek mythology. Oh yeah, I have to, because I teach it and I share it, and I you know, it's it's my blood now. But you know, when Zeus saw what she did, he basically gave her the three realms, which is the Uranic realm and the Cashonic realm which is the underworld, and the Horizontic or the earth realm. And that's why you sometimes when you see ACTE, she is depicted as three.

And it's not because she's a maiden mother crone. It's actually because she is all three of the realms of our life. But she's always been young. But then when Shakespeare got ahold of her, he turned her into this aspect. It was chrone like and that spurred her into being a darker goddess. So she she was very much the dark aspect, but she was never aged until much later. Would you say so that the interest in the occult has grown over the last few years incredibly incredibly much.

I mean, it's well, you know, it's it's kind of like, it's kind of like trends, George, It's kind of you know, like how we see you know, rock and roll come and go, you know what I mean, you see changes in name, same thing with fashion and like like when you look at punk rock in the seventies and the

resurgence in the nineties and you know how it moved through. Um. The occult is like that there's always going to be people that want another answer, and that more of an dependent choice, more of a more way of looking things from another another site. And not all occult has to deal with spirituality. You know, you could have spirituality involved in your occultism. Okay. And you know that word occult to most people, they get it confused, almost conflated with cult.

But anybody that understands it, they know that occult means to be hidden from view because it was arcane knowledge that was that was kept from view to the masses for so many years. And that's where occult isn't comes from from the ocular aspect, right, occult and m But most people now see that as cult and they think of like the negatives, which are what Manson did in the sixties, you know, And so that associates them by the name. I think, does that bother you that people

think the occult is evil? I believe, I mean yes and no, I you know, yes, I don't think things and I don't think anything should be necessarily deemed as evil or good. There is there is good and bad in everything, as we know, you know. And when you when you look at magic, you have to look at it. And I say magic was a kay as in causing

change with will by using the elements and the planets. Okay, when you're dealing inns in that aspect, you it's up to the individual to utilize what they're doing for one reason or another. Now, we can't deem what's bad or what's good for anybody else but ourselves, because we're all free thinking and we have our own views, right, and we want to hope for the best out as people, and which is I think what we've always done since the beginning of time is to look at the best

in people to know that these things are here. And I think that that's why people fear it, because you know, they associated with kind of like cheating or or mainlining into something where they don't have to go through maybe a deity to get to it. They can take on the responsibility of causing change with will themselves. How much

of it includes learning about magic? A lot of it. Well, when you think about magic, when we use that word, there's so many different versions of what that right, and you spell yours with a K with a K at times, I mean so usually when K is put in at the end of the word magic, it usually is is a notation that connects you more with the ceremonial aspects of magic. People like Alistair Crowley is a Golden Don

the Oto. These were mystery schools that came off of the Masonic lodges and the Rosicrucian systems, right and around eighteen sixty that's when all that started and Crowley developed the K to keep it separate from press digetation. That's a good point and it does it sticks out, Yeah, it totally does, and people are like, oh with okay, you know, but a lot of people that are into low magic and witchcraft they don't want to really use that because there's some people in the occult realms that

don't necessarily agree with Crowley's views. And that's okay, because everybody has has a belief in and what they want. If don't right or wrong there, but so they stay

away from the K aspect. And but when you think of that, the magic with the K what you're usually discussing has to do with a lot with Kabbalah, you know, the Tree of life, planetary magic, so more working with the idea of harmonizing with the supernals on the Tree of Life and communing with Ketter, which is basically the emanation and the worryings of the beginnings of all life and creation. How did magic evolve into sleight of hand in terms of things is something I don't know how

to cross that over. That's not something I'm I have a definite answer on. But I believe that the real from what I can assess, is because of the mystery. I think that came a lot in the eighteen hundreds, because when you know, when the Industrial age was born and Industrial Revolution was coming up. This is when the first mystery schools were coming together, and people like Blavatsky were involved, and a lot of these esoteric theosophical orders.

But was also a time for people that were into like table filting or tarot card reading, or speaking with their family members that have passed away, and that always had a mysticism about it. And so I think that kind of lumped into like the whole you know, swamy kind of vision of what they thought was a person that could could tell the future. And it was also

trickery and the smoking mirrors, morescents into that. We're talking without sal Santoro about witchcraft and of course about the magic with M. A. G. I. C. K. We'll take your calls next hour with him right here on coast to coast. It's truly remarkable. You know, people like David Copperfield love of course, saying Joel, they're magicians, and they're good ones, and they're mentalists, but where did they Where

would they fit in today with what you do? I would be absolutely beside myself if I got to meet like David Blaine or any of those guys. Really they're skilled I mean those guys are sing pressed digitation. I mean, getting to go to the Magic Castle and watching that is amazing, you know, Brandon Scott, I know, I don't know. The next time you're you're at the magic Castle, ask

for him. He's a great magician, Okay, you know, and see like that, that's all beautiful work and and and it just show you how the mind works against the movement of hand and the illusion. I think illusion plays a lot into that. But magic itself, like what I'm doing, is not illusion. It's it's causing change on the material plane to get a result. So you can go to a change attain something that you are looking for in

the micro custom in your life. Absolutely, I mean is it magic If you go to wish for a better career, a relationship, a job, and you get it, that's you know, wishing. So wishing is um you know, the word wish can be can be construed almost as a a slight version of spellcraft, you know, wishing. This is also, on the other hand, what is opposite from a wish A curse? That's right, you know, most curses though, we know, you know, like I grew up in an Italian home back east

you know what I mean. And you every everybody in my block were in Milochia and Saint Christopher medal, you know what I mean, and a crucifix. And I was one of those kids, you know, but we were brought up to wear that because evil I was envy. And you know, when I was a little boy in Massachusetts, my aunt Angie used to make me wear a big red ribbon on my whenever I wore when I went out to avert the evil eye because that was considered not a good thing to have energetically, right, so that

would be like a curse. Where were you born? So? Um, I was actually born in Whittier, but I was raised in Boston, you were. My mother was raised in Fitchburg, no way, Yeah, fifty miles west of the Boston. Yeah. My mother is from from Walpole, very close, yeah, very close, and my dad's from some of them, and then my cousins were from Lemonster and Worcester and everything all over the place. I know Lemonster very well. Yeah, in the land. And yeah, that that was why that was my teenage

years I got after the break. I'll tell you a funny story about Fitchburg, which was one magical maybe you can tell me what you think happened after I tell you that. So you've got your coven going, yeah, and it's it's growing, It is growing. What does a coven do? So, a coven is a gathering of people that follow the same piosophical and philosophical system and they come together and they celebrate, much like people would gather or convene in a church. Um. In this case, it's a very spiritually

moving thing. A lot. Most most groups work with the agricultural wheel of a year um. In Neopaganism, this is um where we get spring, summer, we're in a fall and the old in Old pagan Europe, you know, this is where you're dealing with the beltane and the salon, which would be salon would be Halloween, and the beltane would be like the birthing of spring, and then you

get your winter solstice in your summer. So listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more