Aetheric Magic with Ike Baker

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you're going to get modified. So yeah, let's see liesome.

man of many affiliations. I run the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Temple in North Carolina out of Asheville, a free Masonic historian. I wrote A Formless Fire in twenty twenty four, which is about the history, theory, and practice of the Western esoteric traditions from antiquity until about the nineteenth and early early twentieth century. The book we're gonna talk about tonight I wrote in twenty twenty five.

I published it with Lou Ellen. It's called Etheric Magic, and uh, I'm really excited to talk about that and and everything else. Anybody wants to find out more about the podcast and the YouTube channel that I run and host ar kanam A R C A n v M, you can check it out at my website, Ike Baker dot com I K E B A K E R. I have got everything my blog, my podcast, my documentary style presentations and what have you. So check that out and I'm happy to be here.

for joining us. And yes, the book Etheric magic. First question I wanted to ask you is what I guess, what would etheric magic mean to you?

For instance, a lot of people might think I'm talking about the Enochi and ethers when I talk about etheric magic, right, But that's not what I mean to really discuss. I based it off of the really Platonic traditions word for the fifth element, which was ethira okay, and it basically, you know, it contained other elements. It was a you know, a quintessence of sorts. So I wanted to systematize that term because we don't really have a satisfactory term for

that in the West, right. And we'll go into into this, you know, obviously I talked about how i'm I'm in the Western esoteric traditions. But I went to school for Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and you know, I studied meridian theory. I studied chigung privately and in school, and so I I have a lot of experience on both sides of

the fence. And what I saw was that in the Eastern systems there was a much more developed and systematized body of energy work, okay, and they had discrete terms for it like chi, prana, uh so on so forth, key in, you know, in the Japanese tradition, ray key, So they had terms that right in anglophone languages, it's kind of like, you know, words are a little bit more specific. There's there's less there's less of a broader interpretation.

And for instance, the word chi or let's say the pictograph for chi uh in in in in Chinese, is it actually resembles It's supposed to be the vapor rising off of a pot of rice uh and this is supposed to communicate breath vapor. But it's also, as we know, universal life force energy. It's also used to describe something's inherent nature. So you say, why does why does water flow downhill? And Daoist would say that is its chi,

that is its nature. So there's all these You know, there's this wonderful way of communicating in other languages, but in anglophone languages we strive for precision, and especially in discourses like this. I wanted to facilitate that in the In the the Western tradition, we have the term energy work right, that is that's extremely vague. I wouldn't even

say that it's broad. I would say that it's vague because if you go and look at the scientific definition of energy, the definition is the ability to do work, which effectively tells me what we're working about it. So I don't know, is it really energy? I can't say, because I'm not a scientist my area of expertise is

in this stuff. But I will say that it's it's best characterized as a radiant luminosity, this ether, this quintessence, this chi that runs through and around the organism that we we have no choice but to talk about in terms of energy because it's the way that most people are going to be able to grasp onto this in the Western system. So ether is is my term in an attempt to systematize a definition for this universal life force energy specifically in this Western context.

of interacting with itself and other things. Right, So like it can be electricity or it can be magnetism, depending on what end of the spectrum it's on. Right, we call that electromagnetic spectrum. So, but it's it's all. It's all energy, which we really we have hard time defining outside of light vibrating at various rates, mostly very very fast. So I would say radiant luminosity is a good way to conceive of this because it's it's it's somewhere, it's

slightly subtler. It's related to it's in that that band, that broad band spectrum. But it's it's different than electro magnetic field. And I'll tell you why. It's it obeys your mind. She obeyed your mind. This is how we're able to move it. Right, How I was saying, is where the mind goes, the chi flows.

motor my fine motor skills and things like this. You know, that's the case with linking up your conscious mind to the what will be latent and impressionable etheric fields.

there's more. There's more there that can be readily understood I think by people native to the culture who are involved in that whereas like alchemy is a total Western alchemy is a totally different thing in terms of the textual tradition. I had a conversation with the alchemist Phoenix Aurelius, and we were talking about the Western alchemical textual tradition, and I think we referred to it as like a

fever dream forest. You know, it's like it's just all these strange allegories and images and and everybody thinks that they have the answer, you know, this is what this key means. That really it's it's all dependent on where

and when this this stuff was written. Whereas there's a little bit more systematization because there's an there's a protected tradition in the East of internal alchemy that manifests things like chigong and taichi and even and especially a lot of people don't realize is it's like the other side of the coin of martial arts. Like you, martial arts and and and and chigong are linked inextricably, you know in the East.

about Dais cosmology. So you know, I like to look at I like to think of my body of work as all related. You know, if you if you get it doesn't matter if they're on slightly different topics, they all they fill each other in. They kind of you know, complete the profile.

for months about uh, this kind of stuff. She didn't really know, she didn't see the full picture until I sent her the the the proof, the unedited, the uncorrected proof for for her to offer a blurb. And the response I got from her made me well up with tears. She said, you know, it's uh, she said it was. She thought it was unbelievable and and she she she did give a very good blurb. So but the thing, the key thing, and I mentioned her work, I cite

her work. I talk about her in the book. Is that for me, there is no scholar at the crossroads of esoteric philosophy and practice in any tradition that is doing it the way she is. So yeah, she somebody of the highest caliber. I hope you guys get her on the show and if she's here, tell her.

like you're able to move, but you're asleep. So Franz Anton Mesmer discovered hypnotism. In the West, it used to be called mesmerism. Now we don't call it that anymore, but it's still there's vestiges of it in our vernacular. When you say, oh, he was mesmerized by that, I was mesmerized by this, just like transfixed.

than they reveal. And it's so you're sitting there the whole time and there's this kind of like tension that builds up. Right, it's just feel like too much foreplay, you know. But there's this one particular tract, this very thin treatise that I found in New York City on Fourteenth Street in a bookshop called Namasta Books by Union Square. This was years ago, still there, bookstore is still there.

Little track translated by Arthur Edward Waite. It's called the Science of Hermes And in this I don't know, thirty forty page little booklet, eliphas Levy is explicit for the very first time. He's hyped up this whole thing with at the magical agent and the the twin serpents of the astrolite. He's speaking about it symbolically and be careful. It can devour you, it can lead you to your death. But it's the operative agent of magic. So in this treatise he defines it and he says, as off, the

great magical agent is nothing less than magnetized electricity. So this is, uh, this is what at this time period, this is what they were grafting things. They were they were trying to make it fit with the scientific vernacular. Now, I studied, you know, chief theory in in in college, and even still they're trying to figure it out. They don't know that it's uh, electromagnetic, they don't know that

it's bio, that it's related to bioluminosity. There are if you read uh, I forget the name of the book. I have it right here on my shelf, but I don't want to get up and be rude.

You have to work with it. You have to work and don't be so convinced that you must put it in this little box, because at the end of the day, who gives a shit? If it works, use it, use it. You will develop a much more intimate relationship with this if you use it rather than try and explain it scientifically. But I get it, you know, in the modern West,

that's the way our brains are hardwired. We've got all this programming telling us we have to find a scientific way to describe this and something rooted in materialism so that I can feel good about it and I don't have to sound crazy. Meantime, you're pranting around in robes. You know, at this point, who gives a shit?

of like what the fuck he's even playing with. But like what I was getting at is like, do you think this is something like it's some sort of like I guess obviously with the book, I'm looking at it as like some sort of energy that's like within everything, maybe around this and we can actually tap into it and manipulate in a movie, or you don't move it to our will.

And so this idea that light travels these empty expanses was unt pennible. The light from the Sun passing through the vacuum of space that's an untenable idea in that framework. So what he really conceived of and there's there's there's problems. There's still problems, and they don't teach you this, but there's still issues like how light is able to refract through like a glass, you know, not ali like a prism,

like a water glass. That there's all sorts of problems with the way that we conceive of of the of light and it's it's traveling. But the thing is it's couched in such esoteric scientific language. It sounds very attractive, and meantime, nobody knows what the hell it really means unless you've gone through that that priesthood training of you know, become the new priesthood of you know, this academic sort

of uh scientifistic uh training. But they the luminiferous ether basically says that there is no void, there is no vacuum, that there is this this field. It's a field that is almost an empty fullness, and it contains everything inside of that field. And when things travel or appear to travel, what's really happening is that this field, which is latent until it has acted upon, is stimulated to produce a form of light. You know, which can be color, which

can be you know, just plain light. So it's all about stimulation of the ether. And this is effectively, Yeah, this is how we understand the personal etheric field to work. That's how magicians do it. They tap into it with the mind and they pull forth from it, They extract forth from it what it is they need, whatever their

purposes are. Now we have a sophisticated languaging around this which seems kind of goofy, but earth, air, fire, water, the seven classical planets, and the twelve signs of the zodiac, all of those things right there right if you're going based off of the Seffroyette era, they embody, they embody

all of the creative potencies of the cosmos. So it's it's it seems like simplistic, but really what we're doing is we have our own sort of you know, ideograms, these these images that are associated with the whole continuity of ideas that we use in order to induce these things in our own personal etheric field that we call the sphere of sensation. So yes, I would say completely, it is this thing that is everywhere. It's as you know, I love to quote Yoda buddy. He basically it's the

same thing as the force. It truly, truly is you know. And it's just so interesting to me that the path of the Jedi was to learn how to use this force.

People think that you're going to get really kind of clunky and kind of just very like you know, jerky and your movements, and there is that in a certain type of kung fu and a certain type of martial arts. But really what's going on is like you're you're actually becoming gentler, Like you're learning how to move like a

like a swan. You know, like like a cat. You know, you really are You're you're using your body in a way that's very much like dance, and it's it's it doesn't wait for you to be on the dance floor like you're just you're living your life like that. So that elegance and that flow contributes to the beauty and the harmony of the soul as well, which inhabits the body for a time.

and early twentieth centuries, martial arts became really to my understanding, you became associated with secret societies.

of China. So bagua was developed as like a bodyguard system of self defense. So there's like a The thing is is like Chinese martial arts is very varied, and so after the Cultural Revolution they actually systematized it. So then there's sport fighting which is called wusha as we said wushu, and then there's full contact sport fighting which is called san show, which includes.

be the best full contact full contact thing. So you can see a lot of post two thousand and one Hong Kong films, like if you watch like I'm forgetting his name now, I think his name is Jingly or yeah, Jingle, I think Woijing Wuijing. I'm sorry, I couldn't remember, but his his films are all sanchow fighting, So you're you're right, ike, is that they're all interconnected, like it's all like part of the PPA, like the People's Liberation Army, the PLA

or the triad. So you do see like a conflict, but in general most people just differentiate, Like wushi is just like systematized. It's for it's for competition, sport fighting, and then sound shows like what the army does, and then all the other martial arts.

specifically towards magic. But but I bring something into the discussion that I don't see really covered in any depth very often, and that is health because you can use this stuff to heal yourself, others, et cetera, so on and so forth. And I have training and I feel like everybody does now. But I got a pretty early training in ray key under Joanna Crespo at the Open Center in New York City, probably over ten years ago now, and she's fantastic.

unbelievable forms of magic. But the way that we really inherit this stuff in the West is for health purposes.

you see that? So but but you can see this stuff, and I do. There there is a it's it's not imaginable there, there is an actual component of lights to this, a radiant luminosity, and so you know, having worked on this for for over a decade now, it's it's you know, I'm able to see it pretty pretty immediately. You always see pictures of people's auras, right, and how it's like avoid egg shaped. I've probably seen two people in my entire life that have a completely like fully developed, bounded

symmetrical aura. It's normally like it's patchy, it's splotchy, there are holes.

make it whole, make it strong. So we do have a tradition of this in the in the West, it's just that you know, again, our textual basis is, i would say, specifically regarding the luminous body as fairly sparse and fragmentary. And there hasn't been a consistent tradition to key right. That's that's the whole interesting thing about Woosho is that it's built to to to transmit and preserve forms like we don't.

back and forth on that for a little while. And Jamien, you know, he really knows his stuff because he's somebody I think we're very akin in in one very specific way is that like whatever we do, we're going to do it to death, and like it's all about immersion and it's all about living it. I do not want to come on here and talk and say all these fancy words if I can't actually do this shit. And very much so he's like that, so he definitely knows

what he's talking about. Now. Currently, I'm working on a system. I'm working on a on a follow up, a sequel to Etheric Magic. It's called the title is tentatively called the Luminous Body, and it's going to get into the more advanced and esoteric practices. Etheric Magic was an introduction to get people working, and you have every tool in that book to develop your skill to the point where

you'd be ready for this this this second installment. But I'm I'm working on a system that utilizes those concentric spheres instead of say something like the catalistic tree of life, which that's what I had to use for the first book, because that's what a lot of Western magicians. Now, I use the verbiage of alchemy and the and the tree of life, and we can, you know, if we have time, we can get into that tonight too, and give people a little bit of an overview of the the nuts and bolts.

going to talk about ectoplasm. So again this idea that you kind of have this energy that the people from the outside, you know, the spirits or whatever, they need this ectoplasm to do stuff here, to like do the pultry guys stuff or two even like interact and to kind of keep your ravagants. One then you go into the Alaska traditions, and well, first of all, it's funny you were talking about star wars. They call it the strength. In Aluaska they call the state that you get the

strength like in Portees Forsa. So again that's very funny already. But they also say because it kind of relates, at least nowadays with a bit of like umbanda and this kind of things. They always talk about like opening paths. So opening paths, opening paths. And I was in a session like a ritual these these past days, and I had this in my mind that where we're talking about paths, like literal paths in the body, like we're literally talking

about the endctrine system in the body. That's what's being opened. It's not some mystical you know, some some doors like that's literally it, or like the neuropaths in the brain, and so and so again. So I was talking about this energy of the of the body. And you can feel with the when you are in the in the state, let's say, of the ententogen you can literally you can

feel it's kind of like a kickstart, right. You can obviously do it with all the practices like what probably there's all over like book, but with the thing, you just have like a kickstart and you are able to see it, to feel it to whatever, and it's just as amazing as as it can get you know, the understanding this and understanding that. Again it's all already within inside, and then you the more you get coherence into what you are imagining, feeling, thinking and doing, then the emotions.

The more things realize, the more things work. And it's getting like faster and faster. The only two guys to like that as well. But I've been hearing with like fears and just like fearing out by paying intention to my own stuff. It's getting faster and fast. Like you imagine something, you think about it, you have the feeling boom, it happens like it's next day, things turning hoadays what maybe it used to take a couple of weeks months, and it's again you've got to take control of the thing.

with within. Do I think that it is within the physical organ of the brain. Absolutely not. I think it is within the personal meso cosm or microcosm. A meso cosm is I am the I am the mediator between Heaven and Earth. I am the middle cosmos. You know, this is this is big in in in that there are there are you know, chiegung movements of uniting Heaven and Earth, and there's a lot of that talk of of of you know, the station of the human being

is the bridge between those worlds. And and that is our interface, is our nervous system, is our indecrine system. Is it's everything we have. It's the physical body, it's the emotions, it's the energetic body. It's so as you're saying, you talk about it in terms of coherence, that's really what's happening, is that everything is kicking in and working

in in in synchrony. Whereas you in our modern world, that's it's a very challenging thing to have happened without you putting immense amounts of effort into it, but so many things that are that are taking you, you know, your attention, your focus, your connection to your body, and trying to rip all those things apart, separate them, sever them. And this is this is a movement towards the center. It's almost you can think of it like a planet

that has exploded. Okay, now you your job, as the exploded planet is somehow to generate that central force of gravity that pulls all the pieces back together and heals what was formerly whole and is now you know, diffuse

and and and and disparate. So but I think that that's a really good point, Matt, because I get the question, well, what is it doing the met Well, for for me, it's you know, somebody will come to me that does like goetic magic or some kind of you know, let's say magic of the PGM solomonic to say, well, no, the spirits, I don't consecrate a talis, then the spirit's

consecrated for me. And so then it's like, yeah, well, okay, so you're working on an exogynous level, which is fine because that's how you're interacting with the phenomena around you.

But that doesn't mean that that you know, the energy that you're working with is not the operative mechanism, because at the end of the day, think of this, when a spirit comes, right, spirit comes and to consecrate your talisman or to make a pact with you or something, does it open up the door and walk in and sit itself down and shake your hand the way I would if I or if you you came into my library and I sat you know, No, that's not how

that happens. How it happens is by various methods. You can see the mind of the eye can project something into the room. You could use fluid condensers, mirrors, incense, smoke, there can be all sorts of tells and things like that. But at the end of the day, you are using what the great you know, teacher, and and I would I would call this guy a you know, an ultimate magician.

David Rankin he uses the term gateway image. You're creating a gateway image that that that so that you can interact with what is in a disembodied intelligence, which is another way of saying energy. Right, if nothing were left of me but my consciousness, that's still a form of energy that can't be destroyed, can only be transformed. So so this is this where we are working with intelligent energies. We are working with there is an exogynous and an

endogenous component to it. The key is you have to be that mediator you have. That's the whole point this shit is to get you to train to be the mediator. And you know, do you have to buy theory magic in order to do that?

people that are flu into this stuff. But I also gave it a like philosophical research society, which is it's not you know, that's it's you don't know who you're gonna get in in in that, but it's that's not just a disparaging remark, but there's not a lot of magicians out in that neck of the woods that are that aren't you know, associated with other things like music and modern like you're saying, Cartesian rooted philosophy. So then

how do you explain magic to them? And so, you know, there's obviously right Crowley's definition, which is a classic which he derived from some of the early founders of the Golden Dawn Dionfortune took it and you know, causing change to occur in conformity with the will. Yes, absolutely, but that's anything. And Crowley addresses that, you know, he says, like everything is ultimately an act of magic. Yes, but is that what we're really talking about when we're talking about magic.

it's called a cultum. Occultum vertutais is the Latin that a grip of used occultum related to oculus in the eye, occultum hidden from the site, qualities that are hidden from the site. Because this causality is nonlinear, it's metaphysical, it's not physical. You can't see why it happens. You will

definitely see the delivery mechanism. But the fact that I did a Venusian ritual and then got a date later that day, you know, it's you know, it's like, come on, come on, some of these things defy statistical probability, you know.

So I just want to say that, I just want to say that it wasn't just me coming up with that, but anyways, Okay, no, I mean no respect.

So if you just want to like give like a brief overview of what sort of the conceptualizations of those things are and maybe even for like my monkey brain level, if you could. But I'll take a little I'll take intermediate as well. But I mean, I'm I'm just saying that I don't know anything about it. I can sew anything you say will be sort of first time and also in lightning cool.

So the parts that are most relevant two the discussion of etheric magic, because I list the nine and I give their definitions in the book. The ones that are the most relevant for etheric magic, I would say are the Ba and the Ka, and these are respectively, the soul, right, the soul is the Ba and the Ka is the double. It's it's the uh what they were conceiving of as as kind of a wraith, a ghost of specifically Pharaoh.

He was the only one who was thought to in the in the early kingdom, you know the they, uh, they didn't think it wasn't until you get the Coffin texts, which I think is the second intermediate period that there's this democratization of like, okay, everyone gets to live in eternity.

And the ba was conceived of as a bird, a hawk or a falcon really, with the head of whoever had died, the facial features the head of whoever had died, and it could you know, soar aloft, which is a way of saying that. First of all, you know, it's the same thing in terms of like astral travel, the soul can leave and come back to the body, so on and so forth. But it's a way of talking

about that. What I would say the inherent nature of levity in the soul, the soul being able to rise after death, whereas the energetic body not necessarily it needs to be. There are requirements to keep that thing going. Now for people that have you know, sometimes I'll get shipped, and rightfully so, people will say, well, the term soul is not well defined. I'm going to define the term

soul for you. According to the Hellenistic tradition, the Greco Roman Egyptian tradition, the ancients of the world would have meant the totality of your interior experience is your soul. Your thoughts, your emotions, your ideas, your fears, your subtle image, your personal available imagery, your memories, all of that is a part of your soul, which is why in Greek the word for soul is seek right, and that's the root of the word psychology. But they believed that all

that continued on after the body died. That was virtually the only difference between our modern psychology and the soul in a lot of ways. So really the ca was how I introduced this idea. This has to do with what Matt was saying, kind of like about ectoplasm. So the whole premise of etheric magic is not so much. Oh, I wanted to do an energy system. I wanted to make somebody. We already have it, but most magicians don't

know that we're using it. You know, when you do something in the Golden Dawn or and I'm sure it's similar in the AA and OTO versions, you do the projection signs, you know you're you're moving energy towards something. There's a reason why when you consecrate a talisman, whether that be a ring or something you place your hand

over it. Okay, it's you're why you're projecting something outside of you, outside of your body, you are able to that's once you've linked that up and you learn how to intelligently use it, you can extract it the way Matt was talking about, how these spirits need to borrow the ectoplasm, to borrow the ether from other people in

order to manifest. This is a huge part of like the theory of seances, which were the table turning events that were, like, you know, everybody was freaking out about trying to explain with kilner screens and all sorts of wacky shit.

I'm not going to tell you the name because I want you to buy the book, go check it out. She has a bit of research talking about how this term Heca, the Egyptian word for magic, the Egyptian god of magic, Heckca, is related to the term ka, this energy, this this sort of wraithy double and how the the the word heca can be translated as using the ka, so using the car. Right when we talk about how alphas, Levy was talking about how the asualt is the magical agent,

it's what accomplishes the magic. We talk about talismanic consecration. You're sending the energy. Uh, this kind of stuff. Well, uh, there there's some evidence, scholarly evidence to support that this was also uh in a different way. I wouldn't say rudimentary, but I would say in a different way of conceiving of it than than we might but very similar in

the ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic period as well. This this idea of Hekka using the ka, using that that that uh, the what we understand now as the energetic body, that that remains when the soul leaves. Now, what do they do with the comp They put it in a statue and they fed it. What did I say before? When you can see this stuff. It's not imaginary. There is a very subtle physical component. We can't fully define it, but there is a physicality to it. So, particularly in

the work at John Michael Greer. It's a funny title, and John's a lovely man, but the book Monsters is infucking dispensable to anybody that wants to learn about this stuff. He talks about all of this stuff, the ancient traditions of the Chinese, traditions of hungry ghosts, the idea, the rudimentary ideas, the roots of where the concepts of vampirism

zombies come from. It all has to do with this etheric ca, this double this race like thing that then needs to feed to stay alive because it's associated with the physical body. This is what they call it. And the more that thing is hungry and wants to stay alive after the soul leaves and the body dies, the more intrusive and intense its presence can be.

The first is to link. You must link it. You'd link with it, link your conscious mind to it, because until you've done that, it's completely latent and it's constantly receiving impressions, so you are much more impressionable. Before you link your you will have thoughts that you thought were yours. You know, you will be very, very susceptible to influence and manipulation. This is what they call personal magnetism, right when when somebody can manipulate and influence they call that

personal magnetism. It's not because people are magnetized to them. It comes from the idea of animal magnetism that you can exert that force over somebody and render them latent, receptive. So the first precaution, the first hygienic measure, is to link your mind to your etheric body. How do you

do that? Well, I teach you. The first thing you have to do is learn to see it and feel it, And I give exercises and texts and all of that kind of stuff for not just the visual component, but the tactile component of being able to sense and feel it. And again, I've done this in workshops and I'm astounded at how successful it's been in person with with groups of people I've never met before. So uh, then the

second part is to to to move and cultivate. That's just that's chigung, right, is the cultivation of chi in the certain centers of the body. Now in in Chinese medicine and dallas Uh, you know energy theory, you have three main centers, the dantien, and they correspond to the cavities of your body. Okay, low dantien down here, the middle danteen. We also call these the sanjao, the triple burners.

A lot of westernso terroists are gonna be confused. Mercury is the consciousness in language like, oh, sit down for a second. Mercury is the mediator. Mercury is the medial point, okay, and we are always no matter what we're leading with. Even in Western magic, what do you do when you when you do the middle pillar, or when you do God form work, or when you work the tree of life in the Sirri sensation, you always center the last

thing you do, you center that energy into farith. It has to end here because this is the medial space, and this is how to live heart heart forward. And you know they say in Chinese medicine, the shen lives in the heart, the spirit of the person lives in the heart. It resides in the heart. You can see it in their eyes. The shen is visible through there. The quality of their spirit is visible in their eyes,

but it resides in the heart. So I conceive of effectively the cultivation, the movement and cultivation of this energy in these three main middle pillar power points. And then on top of that, I do use the tree of life in the sphere of sensation and be why because it's readily available, ready made. People know this stuff. It's great, it works well, it's easy to use. As the time tested, we're moving and storing the energy and building it up based on those things. And then finally the last piece

is to project it. So you've linked up, you've learned how to of it, you've cultivated it in your spirit sensation. Now you've got to learn how to use this for magic. And that's probably like the last third of the book.

same way, because if you can't be moved from your foundation, because all those things are now linked up into that lower foundational Dantean it's great nice.

energy longevity. You work with the salt center. You're always centering everything in the middle, right, because mercury is the androgene. Mercury can it has both sulfur and salt in it. That's what make it. That's mercury is the combination. It's like for anybody that play that plays music. If I were just to play, let's say on a guitar, you know, I play a root in a fifth, just two notes

and I pluck them together. Those two notes are gonna sound and their vibrations are going to create what we call an overtone, a third note that I didn't play. I did not play that, but it emerges from the blending of the two notes I did play. It's the same thing with mercury. Mercury is both, so it can be more of one more of the other. But his main job is to be centered and to contain both and equalize them, equilibrate them. So yeah, there's a lot.

There's a lot of that. There's rooting, there's I use it, you know. I have postures that we use for scrying.

off from work. I took a car up, got there late, so I didn't get to go to the first night of the presentations. By text, I'm going to go into my hotel room. I'll see in the morning.

I got hopped online, you know. Then the line starts dwindling. I'm getting closer to the door and I realize I don't have an idea, Like I just kind of jumped on this line and nuts, that's me. You know, if you ask my fiancee, Nicole should be the first to tell you that I am all you know, I'm all about just if somebody suggests we go for a swim, all the normal people go and they change into their their bathing trunks and I am fully clothed, you know,

like one hundred yards out already drowning, drowning. But so I jumped on and I'm getting nervous because there's like one more person. I'm like, what the hell am I going to tell this person? And it just pops into my head, like Hey, gummy, you know what about the stuff that you've been doing for like almost ten years now with the Eastern and the Western stuff. Why don't you pitch this idea to her? And uh, I came up with the title and everything, and I went in.

I pitched the idea and she's like, it sounds good. Send me your first chapter and an introduction. And I'm like, okay, I'll do that. And I left that room and I went to the cafeteria and I just I wrote the first chapter and the introduction and I sent it to her and then uh yeah, and then then the rest was history. And that was my first book deal.

tongue of balance betwixt them. So that's more of just an awe type of thing, getting to feel it in the chest. And part of this is developing the magical voice and feeling getting these cavities to vibrate their cavities, you know, and get feeling that somatically the levels of vibration and being able to do that. In terms of music, there's a lot. I just I'm wrapping up. We're doing our last session of the Music as Magic course. I

did a seven module course. The modules are I mean, most of them were over two and a half hours long, and I really run the gamut of musical applications in that it will be available for for for anybody that wants to purchase it. I you know, we I've recorded all of these. They come with presentation slides. They come with custom syllabi syllabuses that I write for each course, So anybody's interested in that, reach out to me at

Ikebaker dot com. There's a little chat widget on the bottom right hand corner of the screen and whatever you type in there will come to my personal inbox. So A, be nice and B if you want to know more about this this particular course, write me there and I've got another one coming up in March two.

that is sort of radiating off of our density. Or really a lot of people think it's actually holding us together rather than radiating off of us. But that's a whole different conversation. They've always in many, many traditions, it's always been related to air, it's been related to wind. And how you take it into your body is by breathing. And they say, why be right, because in the Golden Dawn we say breath is the evidence of life, and that that power, that inherent ether was associated with this

idea of enlivening things. Right, matter is dead in and of itself, It's inert according to the classical worldview, the magical worldview, matter is cannot animate itself. So what is this thing that animates? Well, and you know, in various traditions they say soul, but really spirit penevma or as anglophone pronunciation would be numa numa. This, this pneumatic substance

enlivens everything. And and in some systems, like there's a book called the The Day Spring of Youth, and there's a bunch of stuff in the theosophical writings to talk about these practices of breathing in and extracting the prana from the air. Really, for me, I don't subscribe to that so much as I do this idea that it's more along the lines of like what I learned in

you know Chen, which is Chinese version of Zen. Effectively Chen practices meditative practices, is there is a direct relationship between the breath and the energy and a lot of it. This is the very most basic, the most basic way of conceiving. It is the way that one of the fundamental ways that you learn to link up and move

the energy is by using the breath as a guide. Now, it's kind of like in the Golden Dawn where you do the lesser ritual of the pentagram and you trace the pentagrams, right, you're tracing the pentagrams to aid you in your visualization, to get you know, Mena Mathers or

Morena Mathers. She actually you get a lot of modern practitioners in the Golden and they very militaristic, you know, kind of but Mena Mathers actually taught her students, like the Unfortune when she was in the Alpha at Omega, to go very slowly because the most important thing is

the symmetry. So in the same way that you're training your mind by aid of this physical gesture in using the breath, the fourfold breath and things like this and belly breathing, horror breathing, Dantean breath and this kind of stuff, you're training your mind to move this energy. Eventually, you don't need to do that specific type of breathe thing all the time. But in my experience is that when I do the breath, I mean it's immedia and it's

much more powerful, you know. So, uh, there is uh that that that synchronization between the mind, the breath, the undulations, right. I call that the personal somatic rhythm, the rhythm of your body. Right because when you when you slow your breathing,

your heart slows with it. Everything is coming down everything you know, your your your your sympathetic nervous system, your parasympathetic nerdive with nervous system is is kicking in and and now you can Israel Reggoredy also talked about this at length, like if you are anxious and you can't relax your body, your mind, like you're not going to

be able to move that energy, you know. Reggoredy was very much into thinking of this stuffs as these energies and and uh, that's why he wrote a book called The Art of Relaxation, you know, because it's such an important part of magic is to get everything to this very controlled and steady and still base level. So so you know, there's that now in my experience. Again, Jin could correct me, but in my experience, and I studied with with a Thaie practitioner, Chigung when I was doing

my personal studies. I had a few Chinese instructors as well in school, but they were kind of more of on a rotating basis. But the way that I learned it was that the first thing you learn is the breathing in the postures in Chigo, Okay. You learn how to how to move with the breath. You learn how to move very slowly synchronously. You know that, you learn the forms and how they move and connect into each other,

and you you learn the names of these forms. Right then at a certain point of development, you become what's called an inner door student, so that you're an outer door student for a while with these traditional guys, and it's they're not there too, you know. For customer satisfaction, you know, like, it's not customer service here. It's like you're going to learn what I tell you because you came and you sought me, and I like that a lot.

I learn more from those people. So the Inner Door teachings. Now, once you've mastered the posture, the breath, the movements, the flow, the forms, then you get the visualizations and that's when you can do magic because it's it's it's all of those things in concert with that is effectively magic. You know, it's the same thing in the Western practice. So so yeah, that's that is very topically why I.

reason for this first one? Is it just because of that or did beforehand you were thinking about all these things and you're like, I've done this training here and now you know Western esoteric traditionals put it together into this book, and like what what is the real message you're trying to give to the people.

happened with the book. I I suffered a really really devastating life event that effectively it destroyed my life in a very short period of time, maybe like three months, and everything that I had built, uh, which is good, right, because of the House of Cards, it was horseshit. But at that point, that's when I decided to go back to the golden dawn that I had blown off and flaked out on. And at the same time I was I was I had to get out of bartending.

And I don't know why, but it just hit me like, I have to help people. That's where I need to go.

herbalism and all that stuff. Now as I was doing that, I was initiating into the Golden Dawn, and I realized, hang on, did these two things need each other.

of what I was doing. I mean, right here, these are all my fucking journals that I wrote in through the outer Order, through college, everything, you know. So I'm sitting there creating my own library, my own personal record, which is a library of the things that I was seeing, noticing, learning combinations of techniques, and so it was just I was just doing that. I was doing that, I was

living that, I was putting it into practice. And so then when I hopped on that line, it was like the you know, hey, that's your big idea, that's been your project, so why don't you just do that you've written it in pencil, you know why put it put into a book format?

flame is not the true light. You're just lighting shit on fire at this point, you know, like, that's not the light, so right, and that's pure Plato right when they're sitting there, when it's the allegory of the Cave, Book seven of the Republic, When they're sitting there and they're seeing the shadows on the wall, what's behind them the false light and it's fire the true light. You

gotta work for that true light. You gotta climb all the way up that path, that ascent, that rough ascent under the overpass, until finally you reach the light of day and the sun blinds you temporarily. That's the true light. You are fucking blind at first, and that is effectively what we all have to go through in order to

fix the mess we're in. It's not it's not in we talked about this interface between the interior and the exterior, like our exterior situations are a product of who we are who we are, Okay, So a part of this can help with that, in the creation of insight, in the focusing of your attention and your efforts into something systematized, something progressive in terms of systematic, something you're getting better at, something you're working with and it's working on you. But

there are other ways to do that. I mean, for me, it was always initiation. But I understand now, after being out here sticking my neck out here so people can rip my head off for three years, I understand that I didn't have the same experience of initiation that a lot of people who went through, you know, the same tradition did. I think that purely it was again this quixotic thing. I had no clue what the Golden Dawn

was when I entered it. It was a fluke. I wanted to join a Kabbala study group and the guy told me, we don't do that anymore. But we got this other meeting and it was the golden on like what do people think you're doing? Like Harry Potter wand waving shit? And I totally flaked. But then when I went back, I didn't know anything about I had had no preconceptions.

You're not going to learn a thing about them. You're probably not going to get a second date. Effectively, this this was what enabled me to have I believe the experience that I did have, which was utterly transformative. I'm virtually unrecognizable from the person I was before I went through initiation. And I think in some way you could do that at the Golden Dawn. You could do that

with the Theoreic magic. You could do that in the Oto, you could do that in you know, amwork theosophy, because it's about what you are bringing to the table and how you are allowing yourself to be led.

you're at, in Malchuth or the cave. That's why it's a contrasting thing of like once you become a philosopher king, or once you witness the Platonic forms, it's truly that then you don't want to govern because you're just really truly trying to learn how to govern yourself.

it's the great, it's the magnum opus. It contains all his major themes. It's exhaustive. But so so you know, you want to you want to go you want to read the Republic with a shirtba somebody that's been up this mountain seven or eight times, maybe one hundred.

he is then shoved, pushed and dragged up. That this is what I mean when allowing yourself to be led, because that in that instance, Socrates, I believe Plato, you know, through Socrates talking about and this is not gonna be very popular, talking about providence. Providence, something comes and takes the chains off of you. For me, my life was destroyed. I had no choice. Did I know what I was going in?

always guiding you. It's always in front of you. You don't know why you're doing what you're doing, you know, and if you dare take to take credit from it, you're gonna you will fall soon. So you need to allow yourself to be led. And I think that that's a really powerful statement in the Republic, is that like it's too much to do this yourself. We can't do it.

Like the persona like you know, Ike, who when he dies is dead, you know, And like this guy who you know struggles with myriad things self esteem, laziness of physical health, eating too much, staying up too late. That guy, that guy's gonna do this work. No, absolutely not. There's something that that guy has to allow himself to be led through this work. You you don't give yourself the marching order you know, you receive, you learn ways to

receive them. That's what the Golden don does. You're teaching you a way to receive your marching orders, and then you make sure that your ass follows, you know, just follow suit, but one foot in front of the other and that's it. So so I think that that's really important too, if we're talking about how to kind of fix or I don't even think you can't fix what's going on. You have to transition and evolve into something else. There's no fixing this. It's just we got to get through it, you know.

in his crystals. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's there's there's a much broader history of discussion and this in learning what this is and using it. It's a huge history both hemispheres, right, So I try and and give that stuff in contextual for the reader. And it just so happened that, uh, you know, it was my first book, deal, but it wasn't the first book I wrote. So I got all the big words and fancy concepts out in the first book. It was a total cathartic

you know exercise. So this one I was much more focused in the way that I wrote, and apparently it was very very clear to a lot of people. I think that's one way it stands out. The other way is that nobody's ever done anything like that before. You know, Etheric taken the Eastern tradition and what what we what I learned about the Eastern tradition and brought it into the language the symbol systems of the Hermetic Kabbala of

the West and Western alchemy. So so that's it's really those two systems that they were the only doorways in uh, into getting this stuff into a specifically Western magical practice for people too. Then it's just a very easy transition into using it magically. And I'd like to think I'm very thorough, but I leave enough room for you to, like, I say, you know you can you don't like some of this stuff, fine, great, take it what you do like and apply it to the system that you currently work.

it for now. The follow up, the sequel to it is uh, I'm going to do that with Lluellen some good for you man, Good luck with that.

Egypt with twenty participants. And I had spent a significant amount of time putting together and reconstructing to whatever degree was possible ancient theurgic ritual ceremonies and and uh so all of the ritual techniques and the theory and the history that I put together for that that actual like on site you know, nine ten day excursion that's gonna be most of the content of this that course. And then uh the the final course I'm gonna be doing,

which is shorter, it's only four modules. It's it's gonna be it's called Astrological Herbalism for Witches. Magicians and alchemists. So that's another book I got in the pipeline and I'm going to be teaching a course on on that stuff. So yeah, again, anybody that's interested Ike Baker dot com write to me and I'll get you signed.

media coordinator for the Gray Lodge. Check out our show February thirteenth, will as the cause of fire exposition on naw success my episodes with Sauschkey, I have a double episode coming up, and also with the Taoist priest that we that I forgot his name very temporarily. Matt reminded me Master Gongson. And I've got so many, so many shows coming up. Nick I, Brandon and I are working on something I've got I've just got so much going on.

It's like a little overwhelming, but it's it's great, it's generative, and I'm in a good place. So everybody, thank you so much, and have a great year of the fire Horse, because Chinese New Year is almost here end of the month, so you know, I think it'll be a welcome respite from the multuousness of the yearly Snake, So thank you, appreciate it.

things like that. And I very occasionally will get in the mix and do a if I have a nice election, right astrological election, I'll do some uh some astrologically time.

I get overwhelmed. That's what friends are for, yeah, seriously, And I'm really looking forward, really looking forward to getting on here with fredder RC from a hermetic podcast. Uh and just a couple of days. I think Wednesday we're on. We're going to talk about Golden Dawn. Probably, yes, for the second time. Yeah, second truck. Yeah, thank you very much man for coming on.