Gordon from Rune Soup w/ The Occult Rejects

huge thing for me. When I first got into practicing magic or even studying it, you know, I started like thinking, oh, there must be podcasts on this stuff as well, you know, because I was already listening to the podcasts about other things, and Rune Soup was one of the first I have a listen to and got new ideas, heard other people's you know, practices on magic and even like listen to him kind of go through like his own like ideas

and changing through practices. And it's really mind blowing and amazing that we got Gordon from Roone Soup on the Occult Rejects. I can't be more excited. This is bizarre and wild. Thank you so much, Gordon for the For the people out there that are listening to the show that unfortunately may not know who you are, can you please let them know what your dealers and what your show's about.

some kind of contact events and so on. So it's like if I if I start the story there, it's been since I was four, but in terms of the intentional practice of magic, that began about the age of thirteen, and I just sort of sat bolt upright in bed one morning. It was a Saturday morning, and I was referering soccer at the time, which meant I was absolutely minted compared to my friends because it was good money, which was the only reason why I did it, because

I hate soccer and I'm something weird happened. So I walked down the hill we're about, I guess in American terms two and a half miles three miles from two and a half miles from a really good independent bookstore, and so I bought a bunch of I guess, very pastel covered Llewellyn books and a packet of cigarettes, and I went and sat in the ground dowd of the local stadium and that was the beginning of the learning journey.

But something had happened in the dream space that made me go all right, I mean you buy some books on like Wika and shit, and that was the beginning of the professional career. I suppose that's great.

And my main books are The Starships are Prehistory of the Spirits and my most recent one, which is Animistic, are through Scarlet imprint, as will the third book in that trilogy, in my dot trilogy is what I'm calling it, which will be out through them when I finished writing it.

considered the worst place in the empire. You're reading about these people and you're like, I don't I don't have a frame of reference for these people. And the show was for me as a kid listening on a bus or which is ironic actually now because podcasts are pretty solidly millennial, like No One. I make the joke that it's kind of like the music in malls, like no one under thirty? Can you actually even hear them?

your domestic life, when you're cleaning and so on. So it's a really beautiful intimate way of sharing information if you know that that's what you're doing. If you're just trying to replace talkback radio, it's a dumpster fire. But if you take seriously, oh, I'm actually just calling someone up in their home and finding out what sort of person they are, and someone else is listening to that in their skull. It's a really beautiful transmission medium. So in that sense, yes, in the sense of I had

the sense wrong, but I'll say it this way. I'm no longer. I'm less intimidated by fancy people now, but in a good way, Like I still respect their ideas and so on, but I don't. You don't trip over your feet or your tongue meeting them because you're aware of the opportunity that these kind of conversations have and that they can facilitate.

You have Garry Lackman's in that camp as well. Actually, so if you actually put together Gary and Mitch and Jeff Crepel, you have a invitation into the story of magic stretching back to the hermetic Hellenistic era all the way up to now, and you have a horizontal way of framing the significance of that alongside paranormal events and sigh and so on, and people like doctor Dean Raid

and that kind of stuff for actual magicians. Very early on it was really like the wild and wooly days, even before the podcast began, where I had a little task camera recorder and I had a strange experience when I moved to Bristol in the UK, I ended up, my apartment ended up, and I didn't know this at the time. Overlooking where Pete Carroll's now closed place of business was so like I shared an alleyway with where he worked for thirty five years. But that's a really

unusual kind of combination. I just emailed him and we had a chat in a pirate pub in Bristol and it was just sort of like that a context. I did a film degree, majoring in documentary, so this I was really excited at the idea of just having a recorder in front of people and having a conversation. Now it's ubiquitous, but at the time it was a little

bit more adventurous. So the ones that were the most transformative or like big gets from a magical reputational perspective, were early on and a lot of them became friends. So I think about Jake Stretton Kent or Peter and alchistis a scarlet in print, who are my publishers? A lot of the English crew of that ILK were early on and really exciting, like getting to meet Pete Carroll having read his books when I was thirteen, was like, this is excellent, this is so good. I can't believe

this somehow happened. But yeah, those are the ones, and some of them, like I said, well Jake's now passed, but that they ended up becoming friends when I was in London. But from a magical respect influence perspective, it was it was that English crew.

But the association of eight and magic is he was more inspired his my understanding anyway of the significance of eight in the Oriental like a Chinese the significance of eight in Chinese magic or mythology rather than anything runic. So that's the straight line. And I like pirates and always have, So that's the straight line from eight to Pieces of Eight, and in obviously because the book is small, almost chapbook style, and the chapters themselves are small, I

like the idea of it being eight. But the esoteric symbolism comes to that book via Pete Carroll, which comes from like a comedy novel for young adults. But it's sort of sort of got in there from China, so it's not so much with the not so much with the Nordic or Runic stuff, which is there in like

nineties Chaos magic for sure. People I had used to make this joke that Chas Magic is like Atlanta or something like, you land there on your way somewhere else in the and it seemed in the nineties that it was you either ended up in ruins or some sort of tantra, and those were the where everyone kind of went in the nineties, was Chas Magic on their way to ruins or tantra, it's a bit different now in the twenty first century, I think, because there's enough almost

like epistemic and practice depth in in chaos itself outside of the orders that people can spend a few years there. But nevertheless, it's a I think of it as a fundamentally destructive and deconstructive modality by design, not it's its benefit and its floor is that it kind of unpicks things.

So it's actually a really good place to start because it Speaking of doctor Jeffkreifel, Jeff Kreipel, he says, if you want to be a religious historian or some sort of comparative researcher working in that field, you have to lose two worlds. You have to lose the world that you came from, and you have to lose the world that you think is the solution for the world that

you came from. So we were talking about that. But like you might might have grown up a snake handler and said, well, this is all garbage, and then you have the three years in Buddhist phase and go this is actually different garbage, but it's also kind of garbage. I mean, when you get to the end of that second world, you're in a more open and dare we say wise placed on board incomplete systems or remain humble is a better way of saying. It remained humble in the face of totalizing explanations.

But it literally was a combination of a couple of British fantasy novel let's put together and then it's like, right, what can we do, what can we do to like magic up this eight business? And it works. I mean that one particularly, that kind of thing is quite evocative to I like the Chinese stuff better, but that kind of runic overlap is very evocative, I think, and it kind of speaks to this is coming back to how

where you last sue? The question or the field of answer is like, okay, well where did markok get the idea of eight? The Pythagorea in associations of it the idea of eight directions? Because it's a doubling up of the four cardinal directions and so and like there's ways that it feeds into a novel to get into chaos magic, and that's always been interesting to me, like the Yungian imaginal approach to it.

right away. And there's also something cabalistically interesting about that is because it is kind of like a klipa.

I mean, I am a Chinese, of course it would be a I interested but sorry, I'll let you answer, But I just know I want if there's a way to sort of synthesize those earlier thinking with how you where you're at now in your magical or spiritual.

So that's where I bought my first. If you're listening to this, I'm like giving extreme air quotes Crystal Ball a resin sphere which nevertheless worked. But that's where I got my first like Dagger and so on. But to answer your question, it's a weird kind of full circle because the stuff you would buy in Chinatown in because if you're unfamiliar, we're like Sydney's basically it's like thirty

twenty five thirty percent Chinese. Now like it's in the South Pacific, it's an Asian city, so there's it's got a huge excellence Chinatown. And you go into these stores, these whatever you want to call they're actually usually called La Buddhist supply stores and they're not super Buddhist like this. This is where the tiger mums come to buy the amulets for their feckless sons to make sure they get like good maths results like that. If you look at you go to the talisman world, it's like, oh, you

know who your market is. There's like mothers and grandmothers coming in to buy shit to like essentially traumatize their children into working as much as possible in school and music and so on. But what that actually shows is and I'm sad with this because we included some itaching training as part of the time magic course that I taught at the end of last year, when in a Chinese context, the eaching is not considered magic. It's just daching, and so are these ambulance Like it's just the reality

you just do these things. We have magic is that I've always enjoyed the tension of this magic is like a culture specific destination for things that we've rarely been allowed to do. And that's not where the rest of the world cuts the sandwich on the horizontal rather than diagonal. And that's the full circle for me, is that I was shopping in these stores where it wasn't even considered magic.

It's just the thing you did, Like it's like, oh you need this charm or this is what you do, and it's it's life ways like it's actually been operating from your cosmo vision. That's the full circle for me now, because it's not something I go and do. It's not something necessarily that requires the robes. And it's like in Paraguay here with friends like the Kimbunda House I'm associated

with and so on. It's this is the most Catholic country in South America, and the magic stuff is nevertheless normal. It's not overt like in Brazil or somewhere in parts of Brazil anyway, but it nevertheless in every little part of a cincion. You know the medico yana who knows the right herbal treatment, you know, the guide to look to ask if you've lost something, for him to tell you who stole it at like real cunning folks. Stuff that's not considered magic because you don't do magic here

because it's super Catholic. And that's the full circle for me, is like I'm just back to it's life rather than magic, the doing of these things. And that's what I found and resonated with in China Town as a kid, was like I was going and looking for impossibly exotic magic and they're literally mothers in there just buying talismans for their kids' math test and there's no erotic charge to that like there was for me. It becomes a practical thing. It's just life. It's just like, oh I need we

need more rice. We're out of milk, and I need that talentman, Like it's not you know, off to the mind Boddy Spirit Store to talk to some woman named Griselda about amethyst, like you just get it.

to live through us. But it was kind of cute, Like the last time I was in there would have been about I don't know, eight years ago, and I'm like, ah, shit, like the weird way of saying it. But the middle classification of the Chinese community was you could like archaeologically see it because of the change of me was in what was available. But yeah, it's just normal life people coming in to get stuff and then off they go because they were in town buying shoes, visiting the dentist,

grabbing stuff. And there's a really there's a really beautiful and hard one moment from given that we come from cultures that Martin Prector would consider to not be intact and we're still in them to find fear and satisfaction a level of intactness with how you operate in the cosmos. So that's my that's the full circle thing for me that I've been sitting with the last few months. It's like, Oh, it's just life for me now, and that's really good.

to take the transgressivity away. Do you think that that is a useful sort of tool or do you think that that sort of initial implication, Oh, I'm going to do something that's a little bit taboo, a little bit against normative society.

charged by a story of lack. And now when I do ceremony or when I do magic, it is a process of widening out and opening up to the the co creative opportunity of who, which beings wanted to do this with me? What where? That's where the erotic charge is a contact not with lack, but with like a pregnant absence. So that's the that's the subtle difference. It's actually called a large difference, but it's it's nevertheless erotic charge. It's just that I'm no longer activated by the lack.

I'm I noticed the chart like I don't like have everything I want. It's not that it's that, Oh, the charge the story isn't one of like completeness is on the other side of solving a lack. It's more like what what is this feeling? And to stay with it to see what it alchemizes into in conjunction with the Spirit team and the cosmos. So that's where ceremony is for me. Now that's what I do for traumanic healing clients and so on. As we locate with the Spirit team.

What this charge is seeking to alchemize for and we provide the container for it. Like magic is, magic is most successful when you get out of its way. And at the beginning I was getting in its way. I mean, yeah, you know, when you're twenty, you have no money and you definitely don't have enough sex. It's like just just I will back the car up, put all the amulets in, even the piano ones. You never know, let's get done.

And yeah. The difference between then and now is where that is where I locate the charge and what my reaction to it is not to solve it, but to what is the right container for this charge? So it alchemizes. So that's the that's the game. Now, that's the that's the erotic play with the cosmos. Now, okay, that's that's so fun. I noticed you're enjoying yerba mate. Is that? Am I right on Saturday? But yes, yes, yeah, today, Yes it's the same. This is good wine. This one is with mint and bouldo.

can tell the difference. And it's just the first thing I do whenever I come back is right, I'm gonna get some cheat which is like the local baked good and ten to day for sure.

is a huge misunderstanding of magic. Yes, so I wanted to ask, like even in the magical, I would even say even from and again I'm not being specific, but from when I was in the Oto and a lot more amongst other people practicing. I even thought then at some point maybe there was a bigness on the kid understanding.

But throughout this time that you've been doing all this and paying attention to just like even people's opinions and things online, do you is that your experience as well where you do think like even within the magical community, and I'll even say the conspiracy community a totally misunderstanding of magic and what it is.

to do. I perceived a changing canon in conspiracy Land from the nineties Loan Gunman, which is the x L spinoff idea of it was originally trying to work out what's going on, like how did the world end up like this? Like what was the the formation of the intelligence world and how did this happen? And what was NASA air cover for and all this kind of stuff to now is like space is fake. So it's like flat Earth, mud flood Tataria stuff, which I'm very cynical

about for obvious reasons. But like that I look I viewed anthropologically as well, what is this change? And Greg and I kind of thrashed it out. And the pivot is from going from what is going on, like trying to solve it with some assumptions about how the world works in the twentieth century, not being like this is it just a materialism and a sort of scientism is taken for granted, And it was instead looking at like, well, what are the ancient alien ruins on Mars? And so

rather than like now we're at space is fake? Right, And the pivot is actually psychological so that people have encountered the horror or the horrific reality that the universe isn't as advertised, not like the world, not like the government is lying to me, but that the cosmosism is advertised, and there are a lot of people's psychological reactions that is to fall back into easy and familiar answers, and so underneath things like the flat Earth and so on

is it's essentially a biblical literalism. And there's the why I think the Conspiracy Line was never a super fan of magic, because the people who end up in conspiracy Land very often are from some like unpleasant church backgrounds. So and then they have this confused idea of especially when you begin Conspiracy Line, it's like, oh, there's the Freemasons and they're the Illuminati, and they're also the same, but I also don't like the Pope, but they're against

each other. But like, and it's just like everyone you don't like is just put into this same queer, commie jew Illuminati papist.

Catholic ideals. So like, are they the bad guys? If you don't like the prob it's just dumb, right, But unfortunately there's so there's always been a deep suspicion, like if you do magic, it's like, oh you must have like I guess you do spirit cooking on this Epstein's island And I'm like, well, I didn't get the invite, so like what And it's that's disappointing. Although they're being said.

when people will. There's a been about five times over the last ten or c the years we've been friends where he'll just forward me an email going hi Greg, thanks for everything. But because of your show, I found Gordon and ruin soup and so I'm no longer a plus member and I've joined ruined soup and I'm learning magic. But thanks for everything. So I've cost him exactly like

five clients, but the or five plus members. But the point is more that people end up in that very Robert Anton Wilsonian sense of the chapel perilous of what is my relation to the cosmos in general? Like they're the power stories that are unfurling around us, are themselves contained within some we inevitably have to form metaphysical and ontological frameworks to compact to contain the power stories unfurling

around us. So you stack, and if I mean, as long as you can maintain some form of sanity, and so far as any of us are saying, you're in a chapel perilous moment, permanently there Like you can come into that chapel through the road of all the the hallway of magic or the whole way of conspiracy. But once you're in there, you have to contend with all of that and everything else sigh, results and spontaneous healings and all the rest of it. That all has to

be held in that center chapel. And if you do it right, dare I say, it doesn't matter too much which hallway into the center of that chapel. You came down as long as you can keep your sanity. And a lot of people on both sides don't. So in conspiracy in magic land, they it's it's because people are so they psychologically are. So I'm gonna say that differently.

The psychological need that the identity of magician holds for them is so important to the maintenance of their psychic integrity that they can't handle the idea, which is nevertheless true,

like that MK ultra stuff and whatever. There is some bad shit that went on the air, and still does that went on the edge of magic and they're like no, no, no, no, because I'm some yeah fancy oto fella I. And you see people's shadow reactions whether they come to whether it's conspiracy people looking at magic or magic people looking at conspiracy.

Because to entertain the idea that people in power acting in their own interest at least even if they're acting in yours, requires someone who might be who has that idea of being a magician as very important to them. That's existential to that identity because it means that you don't actually know how the cosmos works. So there's blame all around on those sides, and really the only thing you can do is find your own way into the couple perilous and try and remain sane.

got in. So so it was sort of like LSDB with a huge body high that no one else enjoyed because it's a really intense bodyhead and we were drunk via headaches and I loved it. I'd never felt so regulated in my life, and it was it was just like love crafty and wawling, and I just felt so at home and at peace in the chaos of it. And wow, I wonder if I could. But this is

before microdozing. It's like, I wonder if I can just like take these every day because selling me about this horrifying love crafty and body high was like normalizing for me. And I'm not saying that to be mental. I'm saying that this, like some people find, and I think people like biologists suit this like the peace of the chaos. Like I'm the other My happy place is the middle of the Amazon, and it's so loud and so busy and so just everything going on around you, and you

just relax. Brilliant piece exactly.

that I could get into. And like I had mentioned before, I ended up being in the Oto for for a bit, and I even remember at times there like I didn't bring it up much because like you don't already hear like other people have conversations when like sitting there waiting

to go on the temple. But like I was kind of surprised, to be totally honest with you, like how it was a thing there that I thought was weird that like nobody they all thought, like the idea that anybody of importance or even people we don't even know who they are, that might be into this stuff and have an impact on the world, that just can't happen like that, that's that's silliness. And I was just like, but like I'm walking into the temple with you, and

I'm gonna be in the nastic mess. I'm not saying we're bad. I'm just trying to get out, like you don't want to admit that this meant to be an option for some people, Like.

glowing this and you know how they work. This is the appeal of Orthodox Christianity now, like they have beautiful, totalizing, inspiring, rich explanations. That's horrifying to me. I would much rather be out in the jungle. But it's really interesting to watch that people. Oh though that can't happen, so I can tell you personally, it does. Like you just bump up against it everywhere in London when she reached a certain level, Like that's just wrong, and it's historically factually incorrect.

It has been for the second half of the twentieth century. But it's you're picking at people's very very important ego identity. So you're like it'stantiating their shadow for them at that point, which is that not only are they not special, they don't know everything, and it's and vice versa, Like that's just the game of it. So I have no I kind of released all that a long time ago because

it's a personality type. You can't. It's like trying to get your accountant to have fun, and it's like, this is not gonna it's the wrong tree.

so you know, too caffeinated. But the reason I'm mentioning that is that it absolutely hits different from a plant ally perspective, and it's a for the what I need, so like the native people of a decent chunk of Paraguay and going out in that direction towards the coast

in Brazil. It's like a master plant. So it's it's like a funnily enough speaking Polly, it's like an all heel master plant that is used in conjunction with other parts of their herb blore so medical and Nanna is like the that's the word I need term for what na is. Medico is obviously Spanish, but Yanna is plant spirit. So medico you're na is like plant spirit doctrm right, And it's usually it's the old grandmother at the market

who knows what combination of things to do. There's a whole language of to day and its use medicinally, but

also in so far as this is different culturally. And I find that that the creative, the gentle creative co pilot that it offers to long work sessions if it's writing or planning a course or something is really really good and it's just I get when you're here Paraguay, I think it's the second or third chorus country in South America, so they don't have a lot of money, and that's one reason why they just kind of like sitting under trees drinking teller ag. And it's also kind

of fucking awesome. It's really hot here and it's just awesome to just sit there silently just with this plant and your thoughts and the world. And it's not psychoactive or anything. I mean, technically it is because it's got caffeine in it, but it's it's recommended, I tell you

what it's. It's a recommended plan, and you open the the implications or the doors of it in combination, because that's it's like to be a master plan, is one that's like teaching and useful in combinations, and there's all these Saint law around it. The way you work it here is that you'll put the herb in the quampa.

This is called a quampa, and you fill it up about a third of the way, and then you put the water in, and then you say, Saint Thomas drinks first, because it obviously the plant absorbs the water and it sort of comes down and you wait a couple of minutes, and then you put additional water in and go there. But the whole ceremony of it is to offer Saint Thomas the first drink. So this is huge, Like I

love it. I love the whole the language of it, and it's interesting to be able to find how that's universal. We did comparison wrong in the nineteenth century. Obviously in the twenty first century it's and I used Tyson youngker Porter for this. In the nineteenth century, we were looking

for the products of thought and comparing them. So the example would be you looking around the world for other cultures that have a plant that they offer to Saint Thomas, and you don't find it, But if you look for the way of thinking, you find it everywhere, which is the the the inclusion of a lineage of beings, including

plant beings, into the ceremony of incorporation. That's a universal So it's really fun being in the particular of like a Paraguayan plant milieu and understanding it's it's universality at the at the right level. But it's also just delicious and as you say, like a really good, really good creative co pilot.

buried and they could hear him laughing afterwards. And so there's a Santa Muerte saint tradition here that's I've been around, at least for now as part of because it's the Kimbunda stuff is obviously an import from Brazil, but it's it's hit the same kind of magical communities here. So there's there. And uh, there's a BVM, a lady of Kakoupe, which is one of my favorite forms of the BVM here. So there's that's like the main cathedral in was outside

of Asuncion, and she's a plant spirit. So there is a The story of this BVM is another native wasn't where I need. It's another tribe I can't remember. Was fleeing from people who are trying to kill him, and he hid behind a tree and they saw him and the tree enveloped him and kept him there, and that was the BVM. And that log is still like in

the cathedral. So there the the the patron mother I guess of Paraguay is a native tree spirit, like when you speak the language of the thing, you're like, oh. Also the patron BVM of Paraguay is a Paraguay and tree spirit and they have annual pilgrimages out to the cathedral for it's one of the it's one of the Marrion feasts. It's one of the December Marian but it's really cool. So there's a bunch of that stuff here.

And they also have for people in the more encrypted conspiracy land, they essentially have their own bigfoot up country in the jungle, so they have like a hairy ape man style encryptid being as well. So there's all kinds of cool stuff, really great.

the products of thought, ways of thinking example earlier. And you also have to find your legitimate way in and and not in identity politics like you have to stand back and let other people talk sense, but more like, okay, so you you have contained within your life and your body and understanding of the plant kingdom. From a historical and herbal's perspective, I come out of these days anyway, more from a shamanic plant, a gentic plant, ally plant companion.

So I'm interested in the fact that you're familiar with bulldo. I'm interested in that from the Boulder perspective, because there it's really interesting to be somewhere like Manila and see dried bulldough on the shelves. And so you're a long way I mean, I'm a long way from home, but

you're a long way from home, my little friend. But I can get it fresh at the supermarket on the corner, obviously, and I'm really interested in the agentic combinations when we because underneath your question is this notion of well, what is my legitimate access to this information? And too often this is coming back to how I do magic now. Too often we assume that the human agency is the only one involved, and the most important thing you can do to level up your magic is to widen out

that agency. Bio Koma Lafe talks about that with politics of post activism and so on, which is like to be in this world in twenty twenty five, to be not most human exactly, but where we are are in this moment is to recognize that human agency is and the only agency going on, And so there's there's an initial sense making and relating that begins to it. So

that's my answer to you. It's like, how how am I in relation with these beings and thought beings in a way that is fruitful and beneficial for us both? So yes, absolutely, there's there's there's legitimate fun ways in that don't require you to have to do like I don't know, like a BioMed degree and spend five years

in the Chaco like embedded in a native community. No, there's there's like that that would be amazing, But there are other find the level that you are legitimately in relation to these beings that we're talking about, and that's for me how I do comparison. It's like, what is the thing where can I stand true so that I'm not you don't fall into the shadow rejection track where we're talking about with different magicians and so on. And

it also means everyone's different. And also it opens up like what is what am I to Buldo and what is Buldo to me? And I love that. I love the polyvalence that comes from I guess that animist approach to magic.

whatever you've done throughout your career. What is chaos magic to you.

Filema area. But so that's good. But by the same token, the the hyperfixation on practical results above all else is it is philosophically naive because that that prioritizes the physical, which doesn't even really exist anyway, right, So it's immensely powerful but flawed. Like Glenn Close, I don't know, like it's that. That's what chaos magic is for me. It's like an epistemic humility that will will trip you up differently to something like the Lima, I guess, but it's

it's for me. It's been very powerful, but I was able to solve the solve the peak Carrol in particular's prioritization of the material by moving in an animist, modest direction and allowing for results to or outcomes. It's better than results shifting from results to outcomes is maybe even how I would say it, so that the outcomes of ceremony are unpredictable and can involve very well, at the

very least, they involve the imaginal. They also might involve I don't know uplay rise, but for me, that's chaos magic, it's a it's an epistemic ontological humility put into practice.

You're saying you want to put the ontology or the ontological practice, the practice into the world, so that that would mean that you have a reciprocal relationship.

That's the first part of it. And the second part was that the charge is still there around this term, which was part of that nineteenth century category error, because animism is a term that white people used for brown people when describing their primitive theory of mind, the idea that they couldn't tell the difference between dreams and awake and trees and dreams, and like the ultimate plot twist in that is like that was the nineteenth century Europeans era,

like they actually they got their philosophy of mine was the most naive ever conceived of which was that it basically doesn't exist except for brain chemistry. So there's still charge around and for me around actually using the term animism with the understanding that it's it's a charged term. When I was writing the book, I was in the state Library in Sydney in New South Wales. I was talking to one of the Aboriginal curators there anything, what

are you writing around? And I said this, it's animism. He's like, why, it's a really good poet, like, we don't use that term. And I'm like, I know, that's actually why I'm writing the book. That's like, we don't use that term. I'm like, yeah, but it's still in the field, like I'm not using it for you. I'm I'm sitting in it until it no longer has charge.

And he's like, oh, okay, Like it's That's the duel thing for me is that in this term, I found how I experienced the cosmos as a community of beings and have since I was a kid. And if people are honest, they're like, oh, yeah, I can pretty much agree, like I might, you might be a dual aspect moniest, you might be you know, I don't even really care, right, but it's how I experienced the cosmos and it's a place for me to currently situate that still has fruitful charge.

So that's why. And I think both of them, especially the first bit, has been very validating over the last decade or so for other people in magic land to be like, yeah, I don't this is oversimplifying, but when you go from when you look across the twentieth century, magic and astrology had to hide in psychology, which was fine because psychology was pretty fucking metal at the beginning, like at the Jung Well I thought of the way

through like with Jung and so on. But then there was this seventy year period that you know, corresponded to peak American modernist capitalist confidence, where it had to be personality tests and just and so the twenty first century was about finding how we that's not that jars with the experience, and we can be grateful for them for like carrying the fire over the mountain to where we are.

But animism allows that horizontal comparison, which has been a big part of the Grimoire revival and the Scarlet Imprint project and so on. It's to be able to horizontally look at European magical traditions in the context of non European magical traditions and not to appropriate, but to be like, oh, okay, actually we all have stuff like this, and it's that we all have stuff like this level of magic that's very validating and fruitful because it's still yielding connections and outcomes.

So that's my long answer to what I knew what you're kind of getting there, like I knew what you meant with it. But animism is half me and half the cosmosis community of beings, and it's still doing its work. We won't use the term in fifty years time, like it's not This isn't a solve. This is an alchemization of some stuff that we It's funny, like you look back in time and go, oh, well, maybe we should not have quote unquote we should not have done nineteenth

century stuff one hundred percent. But by the same token, if we hadn't, we wouldn't be alchemizing it now. And maybe it alchemizes into something that is necessary in one hundred and fifty years time. My shamanic healing teacher, doctor Alberto Foldo, his care O teachers said that about the conquest, so actually about the arrival of the Spanish that destroyed

Peru and South America. But like they said, well, maybe even this disaster will I'm using my term for alchemized, but even this disaster is ultimately alchemizing towards greater outcomes.

And if that hadn't happened, the greater outcomes wouldn't have And we're still in that alchemizing moment of decharging but expressing and alchemizing the charge of the nineteenth century eras I think in theories of mind and politics and so on, and they're still playing out in really fruitful ways in the right hands in magic.

and understand the relationality between the systems. I think that's but are you are you saying, Gordon, that there's a few first element to magic or perhaps a meta political implication to what you're doing.

that we need to alchemize before that. And it's not about knowing like, oh, we should put some time capitals in place so that they know to learn these things about fucking chakras or archangels or whatever. No, no, no, no, you authentically relate to our lineage because it's funny, like, how do we contain and become custodians for ancestry and tradition in a way that isn't lapping because the lapping comes from that psychological need that I mentioned before, like

the belongingness. I have a podcast episode of about a month or so ago called You're Not Ready Till You're Ready. When it comes to magic, and part of that is the squeamishness amongst let's say, lodge magicians around the so called New Age is hilarious to me because Crowley's book four is the New Age. It's fucking yoga postures and chakras and the itching and shit like, it's all the worst mind body spirit stuff. But the people who find that now have the psychological need of like, oh, I'm

doing real magic. I'm like it has to look like some drawing room at Lancaster Gate in the eighteen nineties. And that's still that's an improper way I think of containing and being custodian for lineage and tradition, and we're still thrashing that out. And part of that is being present rather than looking in the future and so on. It's we birth that future by represencing rather than the

whole nineteenth cent. Like my frustration with a large approach from the eighteen nineties, let's say, is that like, oh, we'll bundle up the world's information and will grit it and you start here like an eighteen hundredth factory, and then you move here and once you're here, you know everything about how the cosmos work, and like so the cosmos is fixed, and that's speaking of Chinese. It's very Unchinese. The cosmos isn't complete. The cosmos is working things out,

it's flowing. So there's a that's a powerful shift that the West so called isn't good at a call to represencing. And it doesn't mean we all just go and become like Taoist alchemists, right, it means we part of the process of presencing is like, well, how do we move into a healthy relationship with time as a community of beings? And that's like what I have to say to say, I agree with you that there is part of this project and it's for me it's perma culture. I'm a

perma culture designer as well. Like your job is soil.

Everything else the Cosmo's does, and it's kind of like that, fix the fucking soil, and if you leave it for a few hundred years, you will have like a peak old growth forest because it's just what the cosmos does, like you don't need to know, will put this oak tree here, and we'll put this one here, and like no, no, no, like outsource to the divine intelligence, that kind of stuff, and where in magic we're not good at that because we come to it to solve or fill those psychological gaps,

these psychological needs like oh I need to be smart. I mean I need the tree over there, Like do you wizit need come from? Let's use magic to explore what that's trying to do. So, yes, there's definitely a futureist component to it, but only if I can say it in that lung and animalst way. Apologies, that was great.

So there's an energetic component to it. But so speaking of Donna, Alberta or his teachers would say, like your principal role is to open sacred space and get out of the way. I have an angel course as part of the premium membership as well. Then if you think about jumping up to the level of what is a universal about angel magic, going from Enoch through d through the Hiptameron to Dorian virtue, Like what is the universal here?

And the universal is the calling in the universal is it is part of the human relation to the cosmos, the charge to pray for Don Alberto says like he's big on he ran a brain lab like at the age of twenty five at Berkeley and whatever. So he's a medical anthropologist who's very interested in dietary change. And when people ask him, like what's the single best immediate dietary intervention you can make, and he says, bless your food.

So there is That's my answer to the wu wee thing is we don't need to incorporate East Asian versions of something that's actually it's there in an angelic tradition, like it's your job is to because this is the universe. A relation of the universe is essentially governed on something kind of like consent, which is the aspect of God that is you, calls the aspect of God that isn't you as part of that completion of creation. And that's the what I mean by outsourcing divine intelligence. And we're

not good at that. We're not good at that because it doesn't it with the post Enlightenment materialist capitalist cosmology of a fixed universe with quantifiable known things that humans can know because no one else in the cosmos has mind. So that's the bit. That's how it is for me from a opening up perspective. Now energetically, yes, the thing is and I know I know this from having clients

traumatic healing clients. I'd love to be able to say there are some universals like oh, you need to be doing everyone needs to eat this way, everyone needs to take these herbs or do these breathing exercises. It's a universe where that is true. Is not a universe in flow that's working things out. It's a universe that has

universal categories. This is what a human requires to human and that's never that's not been my experience so far in it, so like we can kind of say, and even this you think about, you could technically think of examples to the counter like oh, everyone needs body movement and this is true, like body movement, adequate nutrition, adequate water. But what that looks like for people is different on

on on every level. And that's the that's where we kind of like, yeah, that's the that's the universal It's like, okay, and you recommend a specific energetic exercise to everyone, not really like it's really interesting, Like it's a it's it's it's new. It's it's new to to to work out the limits of what you can say. And it doesn't mean you don't say anything. It means you say the right kind of universal thing. I don't know if that makes sense.

of a maru. And that's how if like most people know this, but some of the despatch of offerings like Lama fetus is and so on, are designed when they're buried so that that lama grows in the spirit world. Right, So it's this idea of the most magical traditions are contact events. That's the soil, right. So you need to know how to plug the phone in, but then it's

up to you. And that's the bit that I think we we're quite squeamish about those next steps, one because not that many people do it, but two you end up we dismiss it as upg and that's not quite right. It's this is what happened when what happened when I picked up the phone. You should see what happened when you picked up the phone. We're not good at asserting

the reality. We're not good at asserting realities unless we make them universal, and that's not what you find outside of the West, like the premiscy of dreams and the understanding that people's so called inner or imaginal experiences are totally ontologically valid but related to them. We struggle with that. We struggle with the idea of personal means delusion like upg and it's like, that's not it. But by the same token, the spirit contact I have has no bearing

on your spirit contact. And that's something that I hope we alchemize over the next decade or so, Like what does what does it look like when we quote unquote in the West return to a more Shapibo understanding of spirits and dream experiences and signs importance and all of that, because there's a there's an ontology to it that they have that looks like what I think we're missing. And

I don't mean we learn it from them. I mean like we just need to open that sacred space and get out of the way and see how it looks for us to have that return. This is kind of that everyone's compost to me because I don't know what that looks like, but I know we have to do that for the kids of twenty one hundred.

on the plant based side. It's like you've just this gambit relies on us finally getting history correct, and in our view of history being accurate, that's I'm not going to play that game and anythink that's right, and it's instead it's like how do you we have healing systems that are like this, right, so we have them an indigenous content, even to some extent in Chinese contexts where a diagnosis isn't really used the practitioner and treats the patient,

not a symptom or a name for a process that the body's going through in response to certain environmental conditions. And we have a whole book of them. Alberto says that like we've in the West, we have eighteen hundred diseases in the Andes or in the Amazon, there's one right like are you in relation or are you out of relationship? And that's that's the universal And it looked it hits different for every person.

This is history. History is a game of history by definition is materialists, like you need material culture and text and you need to be able to make connections between text with us, not how reality works. So you can look at the I mean, scientology is in the process of failing, but it had a pretty good run and I had a lot of money, had a pretty wild run, and it wouldn't exist were it not for like Crawley being upstream from it. And this is to your point

earlier about conspiracies getting all this stuff wrong. It's like, ah, that makes it blah blah blah. You know, I don't know satanic or child killing or whatever. It's like, no, that's not a flow model. That's not how like thought beings are in relation to us, in relation to time. And so yeah, I mean he has here's that kind of influence. But it's always been really funny to me that if you break down the material in the Lodge system,

it's angels. So Enochian. It's chakras and yoga, it's tarot cards. What this is, it's just doing virtue. This is mind buddy spirit. And I don't mean that disparagingly. I was in her. I know she went crazy and moved to Hawaii or whatever, but I was in her first graduating con so I know even Like my point is the opposite, which is that all these people who think this stuff is mental, let's say, what are you talking about? He had neopagan gods and angels and chakras and yoga, what like,

that's my mom's friends. What's happening here? And that's that's to bring the invitation. Like oh, if that hits something and he's like, oh that annoys me, It's like, okay, why does that annoy me? Because I need it to be different because I need to feel like a super special magician that's different to what all the other people are doing. Why do you need that? Oh well, because like in childhood, like that's the invitation to go in. That's actually the work. Like that's why I say it

to people, like it's not just to be irritating. What it is. It's literally to be irritating, but it's tactically irritating, Like what about this irritates you go and find that because that's the that's the thing that's calling to be alchemized.

you know, I don't do category thing. And with my ex girlfriend's like, no, that's not it, I'm like, ah, shit, Like I was into it. It was a really important part of my identity building to find specialness in chaos magic rather than slima or whatever. But it doesn't matter it's just a different brand. It was super important to me for a long time, and I honor that, and that's what I mean. That's why the actual podcast episode is called You're not Ready Till You're Ready. It's not

to call people wrong, and I wasn't wrong. I was in the process of healing something like. It's not a right and wrong decision, it's that's that was absolutely the right identity formation to adopt for the conditions that I

was in. And that's how it always that's a real Gubble Marte thing, like when he looks at people who have you know, homeless on the street, heroin addicts in like Montreal and the winter, It's like, if I lived your life, I would be in the exact same situation, Like You've lived a life where that's the good option. That's actually how like the ego and the shadow works.

So I think I wanted to share that with people because it's not I'm not saying people are erroneous when they have been called to magic, at least in part because there is a necessary structural medicine in that story. But there is there is another story that we continue that story and turn it into something I promise is so much better.

people an idea. If somebody wanted to consider themselves a chaos magician or they're kind of into that stuff, what would be normal practices of a chaos magician, Like, what would be stuff that'd be part of their daily routine and ritual work.

we say possible. If we were to find a single universal in the regular practice or the non dropped rather than regular practice of a chaos magician. It would probably be some form of sigil magic. But other than that, there's no specific You've kicked the ties on a bunch of gods, you kick the ties on a bunch of different I actually don't think anyone. I think chaos magic

is a history over its forty or so years. He's also its version of a grade system, because you start off with Pete Carroll's nineteen eighties books, and then you

kind of move into a nineties erao. Then you move into I mean fair enough, the simon omicon is the seventies, but like necronomicon invisibles, that's a nineties moment, and then you kind of move out of that in to how you apply that to Western magic with things like grimoires and angels, and then you sort of out and somewhere in there you probably read you Bob Wilson in between Pete Carroll and the nineties moment. But the actual story

of chaos magic is kind of its grade system. Because the people who still use the term, or a better way of saying that as the people who still find use in the term, because I find use in the term like I said that if people call me a chast mission, I really care, but like I find use in the term. That's what I think. I think you've done some stuff. Rather than there's a collection of practices

that look like cruising altitude for chaos magic. The only thing that would be up there would be maybe if you're going to do practical enchantment, you would at least consider sigils. That's probably it.

brand for me. I think it was even with the sigil work like kind of like taking my own ideas putting it together, and then like how theelima, in my opinion, it lets you grasp so many different areas to still pull from and put together, you know, So I think it was like due to all of that experience, I found myself like, kind of maybe I guess a chaos magician for a minute, you know, I got I was

into servitors and experiment in college. You know, do you think do you think servators and Eggregor's would be something considered that a chass magician would play with.

in Chaos Magic as an experimental moment. But even like phil Hein, like they've all repudiated, they're all well and truly left behind this stuff like it's thirty and forty years old. They're old, proper old now, right, So this is.

Are you doing chaos magic or are you doing Salima?

could do a sigil on the bus. Yeah, I got I got, I got some candles, I got the house to myself tonight. How do I what do I want to do this? Coming back to that co creation, like, how do I want this to work? Do I want this to be angelic, like, what day is it? It's it's Friday, it's Venus. Like you start to go horizontally out and I love that. That's what's really good about it. So what are you doing at that point? What are you doing if I'm if it's our Venus day of

Venus activating sigils? Am I doing astrological magic just because? Or am I doing sigil magic? I don't know.

like Grant Morrison Adventures and it was great. Then you encounter something that can't be contained by the This is the flaw in Wilsonian thinking like Bob Wilson that it is like, then you encounter something that can't be contained by the like, well, maybe maybe it's this, maybe it's that. Maybe I guess I'll never fucking know. It's like, no, no, no,

that was real. That's different. There's there's a there's a you lose the confidence that you're smart enough to know that this stuff is all we'll never really know, low key made up, you know. That's that you lose that chaos magic world. If you do enough chaos magic to have a result that's like, oh fuck, then you have gnosis yeah exactly, which is in the system, like it's there. And secondarily, I would say, is just speaking of young I think does age into it. So the first half

of life is the is the egoic outward expression. Famously, he would not take clients until they're in their forties because they weren't interesting to him until then, right, because it's in his era anyway, Like by the time you're forty, you've raised your kids, you've had your career like man or woman, Like the kids are out of the house, and the second half of life is like my dreams and what the hell am I?

thinking they haven't made the inward turn. So I think if you're just aware of it, it happens like it happens magic will magic will blow up chaos magic for you. And I right about that in cares protocols like it's a feature not a bug, that it'll like that will happen. And then there's the second half of life moment and it doesn't mean like, oh I've reached tremendous success and I have all the money I need and the house

is paid off. It's not that exactly. It's actually just the inward turn happens when you've had enough adulting, you've had two decades of the cut and thrust, and it doesn't mean you retire. It means like this isn't all there is, Like I'm actually more interesting and my life is more interesting. What's going on there? Like following that, following those dreams, following that imaginal expression. So it's not

ascending or higher, it's just unfolded. Yeah, it's just like how a tree reach is matured.

And it's sort of it's that same. It's not exactly that, but it's that same natural attending to the natural unfolding of what it is to be to be a human that has an in kind that goes this long.

And I wondered if you could share anything that you I'm sure you teach a course on it and all that and write about it extensively, but if you could share something that you think is useful in sigel making, that would be I mean, I really like that.

you'll like sure, but why that specific one? Like what does your life look like with her in it? That's the actual target, Like, oh, my parents would hate this bitch and that's what I really want, so okay, cool, so or they I would finally get approval from my parents because she's super hort and is also Indian, Like oh so actually the time, it's not about her. The target is like I am called to sit with lack of approval or more or like emotional distancing from parents.

Kathy at work falls in love with me. It's like, Okay, appreciate how wildly specific that is, and let's get down to what I call the miracle player underneath it and activate that because that might happen, by the way, but I guarantee that the thing that's trying to come through you will not happen even if you managed to successfully do that, so that there's no people want And this is fascinating to me. People think that the increase in

magical efficacy comes through technical excellence. It's like, oh, my sigils didn't come off. I must be using the wrong paint pen. It's not that right. Like, beyond a certain basic level of having a stylust or an implement to put a mark on something else, you have completed the

technical part of making is sigil. So if they're not working at that point, don't be like, oh, I guess I should have a different colored paper, like you're just spinning and spinning and spinning, because like, oh, coffee still doesn't love me. I'll try red paper tomorrow, Like girl, that's not going to be it. And that's the only reason why I even bother talking about it anymore, because It brings people who are cracked open ready to look at a particular trauma to my door, if you will.

Because the stuff that people will just like message on YouTube which I don't look at either like or telegram or whatever, they'll show up going like, oh I really need this to happen. It's like, Okay, this is going to be a good discussion, but it's not going to go where you think it's gonna you think it's going to go. It's going to go where it needs to.

And sigils are really good for that. Sigils are really good for that because they are iterative and admit no, admit minimal self delusion, and that's that's their consistent power. But if I think your friend might be talking about the Vesuki operation, maybe someone to water Dragon. That was wild, that was good, that's in the whole story. That's an animistic Yeah, very very impressive, Yeah, very impressive operation. Yeah, save the FuMB. So you know.

best that could happen? And for the things that you have fear of, well, what's the worst that could happen? And keep keep going with that line of questioning, and it really can bring up some insightful Yeah.

thanks Kathy. And then by then it's who cares? Right, But it's the same, it's the same being negativa, but its very well, yeah, dropping underneath, dropping underneath, what is this? What is this? What does my life look like? With Kathy? It's like my parents would kick us out halfway through Thanksgiving and it would just be my happiest moment. And it's like, okay, do you think we should look there? And and that's that's it for me.

in the show notes. And I just wanted to say that I loved how Gordon kind of wowed in this idea of chronopoesis through narrating pseudo chronology of chaos magic and how one would perceive it, approach it and recognize what isn't it? The different stages kind of I thought that was very interesting. So thank you guys, And yeah, this was amazing one of my favorite shows.

to fulfill this with? That is very deep, you know, and I think people don't realize that, you know, maybe it doesn't sound edgy, or it doesn't involve like you know, it's child sacrifice. Maybe magicians don't.

there's no way it's it's a finger trap. You come to me with what you think is your your desire, we will surface it with one or two questions and then we'll drop down to that miracle layer and you'll never look back. The magic can do that magic is that's what it's for. It's this glorious like miraculous unfolding of ship that you didn't even know. Damn, I didn't even know that's what it was. And I love that we've all been through it. But I had to like, ah,

that's not cool, like shadow work awesome. That's what we're at, is it? It's like, hang on, why is that upsetting to me? And it's the edging you thing? Oh why do I need to be special? But you want to be special? According to who or do you want this glorious unfirl of your incarnation into the cosmos to say? Oh yeah, fair, good point, good point, carrying on. I love it. I love I love that. You can't you.

It's it's a I don't know, like an escape room or something and you walk in and say, ah, damn it, I came in for one thing and it's it's completely different on the way out.

and I appreciate it. And until the next one, everybody be well later