You see something's going to happen?
What?
What's going to happen?
What?
That's how I.
Welcome to the old cult rejects. Today we're stepping into a question that sits right at the edge of belief and experience. How do we know if magic is real? And if it is, what does real even mean in a world of psychology, folklore and bias. Our guest today, Tracy Nicholas works where practical folklore meets everyday practice, and her book mind Over Magic, Making Magic in Everyday Life tries to do something a lot of occult books avoid. It doesn't just tell you what to do. It asks
how do we actually decide what's true? What's a projection? What's pattern recognition? And what might be something stranger that survives our skepticism. Quite brilliant, I would say, So we're going to talk about methods, mindset and meaning, placebo and belief, story and ritual confirmation, bias and yes, transformation, and how to build a practice that doesn't collapse the moment you look at it too hard. Thank you everybody. And this
is the Head Rejects and the head reject himself. Nick Cardinal, Electric Head.
Thank you, Thank you very much for that. Am I love it. I love it such a professional. I'm gonna keep you. I'm gonna have you keep doing it. Please, I'll publish get in better ratings to stop it. Yeah, my four stars will go up to five now. Thanks. But uh, you know, and all the complaints have nothing to do with the quality.
It's always the productions. I guess, I guess it's right.
But thank you very much for that. And yes, I'm very excited.
To have Tracy Nicholas on today.
You know, I was.
I was looking through as much as.
I could about the book and what's it entailed, and I think it's like really right up my alley, and.
I think it will be for the rest of the ocult rejects.
But yeah, called Electric Head or Neck from the Cold Rejects. Definitely check us out. We're all old major platforms. We do have a cult research Institute dot org and I never push it really and I don't know why. I just feel stupid trying to sell stuff to people. But do have T shirts if you're interested in getting any T shirts from the Cult Rejects. We do have two of them. We have one with the skeleton and the hands grossing and then the one that looks like.
The Birth of the Birth of Venus.
So yeah, we got those for sale.
You can hit me up for that.
And yeah, this weekend we got a round table Plato coming on magazine.
Gonna be there for that for sure, hopefully maybe even marks.
And we got p d and Ike Biker both coming on for that playtole roundtable, so you already know what's going to be a banger. And then we got David Shoemaker this so check that out highly highly looking forward to that. Yeah yeah it is yeah, big yeah, big names and big topics man, for sure, for sure. Yeah, even David Shoemaker wanted even even ask can I talk about the astrona gentleman and I've never had anybody on the show I want to talk about that.
Yeah, let's go man.
Yeah yeah, yeah, So it should be interesting because he runs one, so you know he won't get loaded.
But uh, I'm sure I'm gonna shut up enough out of me and Robbie Marx. Please let everybody know where they can find all your amazing work and your art.
Yes, it's good to see everybody today. I am Robbie Marx or R Marx. I'm an artist. Illustrator and I do a variety of research and writing as well. And if anybody wants to check out my various works, you can check out my link tree which is link tree r M A r X and that will up my metamindcast, all my artwork everything. And uh yeah, I'm excited for this today. Good to meet you, Tracy.
Thanks to be too, Thank you so much. Ronnie.
Yeah, and oh Kaima, I don't think your mic is working it so if you can see anything.
Now, I'm going to use my computer microphone perfect.
I get this other thing figured out. It's brand new. I got a brand new microphone figuring it out.
I'm not a tech wizard, can definitely.
So.
I do astrology and taro that is my specialty.
You can find me.
At Instagram at Kaiva Rose as well as Facebook, and then I do post weekly astrology videos as well as daily astrology videos on YouTube and Instagram. And then if you're into fantasy fiction, I do write young adult novels. I have one series called Route Odyssey. It's it's adventurous and it's magical.
Thank you nice, thank you for making it.
I always enjoy you being able to come on hopefully we'll see more of.
You, and we've got Tracy Nicholas. Please let everybody know whatever you want to plug, please let them know where they can find all your stuff, your podcast, your book, everything.
Yeah.
I think that the best way to find me is to go to my main website, which is folkloringlife dot com, and uh, it'll give you links to to where you can go buy the book, where you can uh you know, find my podcasts, and where you can find my school community and my substack.
So it's all in there.
It's it's like a big link tree, but I pay a lot more for it, and I had to work harder to set it up. So so yeah, and then you'll find my book Mind Over Magic, which, as we are streaming this is today is the release day. So it's very exciting time for me right now. I can't believe that it took so long to get here, and like now it's like, oh no, I have so many things I haven't gotten done yet.
So oh well, congratulations that it's out today.
Uh that's great.
I'm going to see if I could try to change the thumbnails so I could at least have your.
Book on it.
So but uh, thanks and please uh if you don't mind, I ask, I askol gets this at the beginning.
They're into the occult, which seems to be every guest. Now, anyway, how did how did you find yourself getting into this? Like what was it that brought you into magic or the occult or practicing.
I think that I've always kind of been interested in it, And even as like a little kid, I was doing things that now I would consider to be like magical practice, but I wouldn't have called it that then. I remember in like I didn't. I wasn't very athletic as a kid, and so there was this there was woods around my middle school, and so I would go at recess. I'd go into the woods and there's a big rock and I would decorate it. And so I was like, that
was really my first like nature alter. So it's always been interesting to me. I've been interested in folklore my whole life. I've been interested in magic, and so the book, like getting to the book is really kind of a culmination of the work that I've done in the past forty years, both magically and in my mundane life as well. And so and I worked in you know, corporate America for a long time up until about ten years ago.
So yeah, it's just it always resonates with me and I like having my life feel more magical, and so as time goes on, I find myself investing in it more and more with my time and my effort. So yeah, it's it's just always been an interest.
Awesome, And what made you decide to write this book? Like what do you feel is in this book that the public needs?
That's another ones out there.
Well, I think that a lot of books that are talking about magic are telling you how to practice magic, and they're telling you what it is like it there's a lot of like spell recipe books, is the way I like to think about them. And so it's like, oh, here's a bunch of spells you can do, and some of them are academic and they say, okay, you know, here's what you know if you're going to study Kabbalah and ancient you know, esoteric kind of work like that.
And so those two things were out there, and what I was seeing was like, we don't have a modern look at why we believe what we believe, right, Like why are these beliefs important to us? And why? Like what what do we know? What can we prove today that we would have consider to magical belief twenty or thirty or fifty or one hundred years ago, right, because the science moves quickly now, and so I think that there are certain things that are treated as if they're
very like woo woo. But we've got some solid science, We've got some research that shows that there are things that are real. Now, there's a lot of pseudoscience, and I think that, you know the problem with that is it sort of muddies the water, and I try not to go into any of the pseudoscience. I'm like, you know, if there's no solid science that we can say, yes,
this has been tested and peer tested. If we can't say that, I'm just going to sort of put back on my folklorist hat and say, Okay, we can't prove it. But as a folk lorest it doesn't matter to me whether or not something is true. What matters to me is whether why people believe it what they believe right, And so you know, for example, like spirits and ghosts, right, I do not believe that we can prove at this
point that spirits are real, right. And the reason I don't think we can prove that and we may someday and that would be great.
I would love that.
The reason we can't prove it is because we don't understand what consciousness is and what is a spirit except for consciousness that has passed beyond death. Right, it's some sort of you know, it's your great uncle, or it's you know, somebody who has had a traumatic event and they keep going back.
And reliving it.
Right.
But if we don't, we don't even understand, like how we put people under for surgery, like we know it works, we don't know the mechanism in the brain that makes it work like that. And so without being able to prove consciousness, we can't prove that consciousness lasts in some form beyond Now, what's interesting there is you know, you see it like sort of death related folklore and leaf
systems all over the world. Right, And of course that's going to be because we tell stories about things that are important to us, and so you know, death is important to us, and a lot of people have beliefs that there is some sort of afterlife, there are spirits, all of these kinds of things, and that seemed worldwide,
and so that to me is interesting. It's a compelling case to me to look at it harder, to look at the science behind it, harder, because so many people believe, and so many people have had experiences, right, And I think once you do.
You know, we're all on a spectrum.
Right.
There are complete skeptics to say none of this is real, right, and then there are true believers that say it's all real.
There are there are fairies and elves and dragons, and it's all of it. Right.
I think most of us are somewhere along that spectrum, and we move closer to the true believer side when things that we can't explain happen to us.
You know, somebody believes that they saw goes, or they.
Were abducted by aliens, or they were abducted by fairies, you know, whatever it is that they believe. And again it's important that they believe it, not whether or not I believe that. You know, it's it's true and it really happened to them.
Right.
Well, we have somebody in the comments. What he says, they got abducted by a vampire cult.
So, yeah, I.
Got catfished by a vampire cult, and yeah, it's yeah. And she she talks about her story. It was like this online thing for like ten years.
Oh yeah, what's her name? I think we have home on possibly, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we had, and I'm talking about somebody completely different. Actually that's funny, you know, it's funny. We had thumpaforgol last night and he told me that when he went and checked out the podcast. I don't know how it came up, and he said, that episode, you just found that one and as soon as he saw like ex Vampire cult member as I already do, was the show for me.
That's hilarious.
Yeah, yeah, that's integrity thing.
Yeah, that's funny stuff.
My question is, then I have a question, So what do you think about the idea of then maybe redefining the term spirit as something different than just straight up consciousness leaving the body, and that has to be something that is of the dead, you know what I mean?
Yeah, certainly there's that that's a possibility. And I think that you bring up a really interesting lens to look through, because I think that our definitions are really important, right, and so when we're defining things, when we're defining magic, when we're defining folklore.
Those are important.
So if you want to look at it, through a lens that you feel like has a more real world view or application. Then I think that's perfectly valid. You know, you have to take my definition for what a spirit is, yeah, of.
Course, of course.
And also I've seen several different definitions of kind of what spirit entities are in regard to this idea of the consciousness leaving the body, or some sort of an electrical imprint that is left on the area by the living, or then you have the Japanese idea of like hate or rage will build to a point that it will develop these rage entities. So I think there are different
kind of understandings of these different metaphysical ideas. But like you were saying at the same time, there's no hardfound scientific way document repeatably the understanding of these things within physical science, right.
And I think people are trying there, you know, the ghost hunters go out there with their you know, they're they're checking for like electrical signals and you know, pulses and stuff like that. So I think that you know, there are people exploring it. I don't think that we're there yet. And yes, there are certainly different kinds of thoughts about what like different types of spirits, right, there are ones that are conscious and they know who they were in their most recent life and they want to
communicate with the people that were in their life. There's that kind and then there are the ones that are just on a loop and you know, and almost always those stories are about some tragic occurrence they got, you know, murdered tragically, and so they keep doing that.
And that's when I think.
You're talking about the electrical sort of that stays, which you know that that could be certainly valid because why are there some places that are more haunted than others?
Right?
And so like why do certain places And obviously there are going to be places like hospitals and prisons where you know, people die in you know, under difficult circumstances, and you'd expect that. But then there are you know, random homes or hotels or what have you. And so you know, why those places and not elsewhere? You know, I think about I'm in Chicago, and I think about Lincoln Park in Chicago, right, And Lincoln Park is built over and it has a zoo.
It's a beautiful park.
It's along the lakefront, and it was built over the original city cemetery. And they you know, like they just said, the city's gotten too big.
We need this land back.
They took it back, but a lot of the people, especially the poorer people, they weren't ever moved. Some people with money were moved, but a lot of the people are just still under there.
Now. I hear about this and I know about it.
But people aren't talking about like ghosts popping up in you know, the petting zoo in Lincoln Park Zoo, right, But then they're talking about places like particular hotels, particular graveyards that are like, oh, this is the most haunted place in Chicago.
So I just I think it's it's.
Interesting that some places are considered to be very haunted even with no direct connection to like horrible deaths and things.
Like that, right, almost energetically charged.
Well, that's what I was kind of hunkering too, like about you know, like when you go to other cultures, like in Bali in particular, when something has a lot of spirit, they'll wrap like a sacred cloth around it. And so there is also kind of the idea of like nature spirits. Like when you say spirit, I instantly go to like nature spirits because that's what I personally feel like I connect to like trees and just kind of.
Have spirits of the earth.
And I don't necessarily know if they're like I don't think they're deceased people. I don't know if I can even explain what those spirits are. But I know, like even in Japan, like I think there's that concept of just like nature spirits, so have a distinction between like I mean, I know it's like definitions, but my mind when I go to spirit goes to that. So I just want to kind of understand that perspective.
Perhaps, Yeah, I think that you know, land spirits or elemental spirits, those kinds of things, that's a very different thing than when you're talking about like humans that have passed over. It's also a different thing when you're considering fairies and elves and are those spirits? Are they actual creatures out there? And so I think that spirits in general is such a broad category and it can be
so many different things. And you know, as part of my practice, I certainly am respectful of like the the nature spirits and the elemental spirits, and that's incorporated into my personal practice.
But that's my belief.
That's not something that I'm saying, Hey, everybody, I'm going to tell you why. You know, land spirits are real, but I do believe that, and I incorporate that into my work.
Yeah, I think it's the most tangible way to show people that spirit is real, you know, because like you can feel the energy of a tree, Go lean up against a tree, and you're gonna feel like it's like sucking you in, right, So in kind of that sense, it is almost.
The most provable type of spirit in a way.
Yeah, I think when you're talking about energetic work, so we have, like human beings have a particular vibration and there's a rank in which we're healthiest, right, I think it's between like seven hurts and twenty hurts, right, And if we start to get too high in that range, we start to feel things like we have disorders like anxiety or insomnia, are those kinds of things, right, If we're vibrating too high, if we start to get too low, we start to get you know, depression.
And all of that.
And so most of us are now sitting in front of a computer for a lot of the day, or you know, there's Wi Fi all around us and all of these electronic devices that are everywhere around us. And on our bodies raise our vibration. They vibrate higher than we do, so it raises our vibration.
Right.
But when you go out into.
Nature, if you look at the trees and the land itself, the vibration there is lower. And so that's why people go out and they're like hugging trees and stuff, because they're getting themselves back to a more balanced place for their body. And so that's very real on an energetic level. And again saying like I'm going to say that this is a tree spirit, I completely support that.
I think it's great.
I believe in that myself, so of course I'm going to be like, that's right. You know if somebody else doesn't, they just say I just want to go with straight up science on it. I know I feel better when I go out into the woods, like, well, then I'll hug that tree. And I don't I don't care what you call it in a lot of ways because I think about this.
Okay. So I have a brother, right, his name's John.
And so when I talk to him, I call him John, right, And he's got three kids and they call him dad, right, And so the fact that they call him something different than I do is indicative that we have a different relationship, right, But it doesn't affect my relationship at all. And so you know, when you're talking about deities, right, if you want to pray to heckatea, right, that's that's great.
If you want to.
Call that entity Jesus, hey, that it's fine. It doesn't change my relationship with what I think of as deity, And it doesn't change you know, I don't change my relationship with spirit based on what other people call it.
I well, I want to Dad, when you're talking about I was just gonna say, in regard to when you go into the woods, I think that the human experience, as far as sensory organs, when you're taking in the light and you're in like you're talking about these different waveforms like Wi fi and the blue light coming from the screens. When you go into the forest, you're getting that blue light from the sky and the green light from the leaves, and you're also in the energetic toward
fields of the trees. But those the blue and green waves entering into the eyes are some of the slowest wavelengths, and thereby they do by the nature of experiencing them, like you were saying, bring the vibrational wavelength into regulation.
Yeah, and that's one of the reasons that the sky looks blue to us is because the light that's coming through that's the easiest to see because it's the slowest vibration and that's why that works like that. So yeah, I agree with you, and I think that you know,
there are lots of ways that we perceive energy. And I think that you know, we've all been to a concert where it's just like the energy is so good in the room and like everyone's pumped up and it just you know, so we know we exchange energy, right, and you can feel it when it's not that way. You can feel it when perfect performance technically perfect, but it's like, eh, it was, it was off, you know. And so we know as human beings we exchange energy.
So it's not any kind of leap to think that we are going to exchange energy with other living things at the very least.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I have a question, then, do you would you say that with your book and your own practices, is that you're taking a paradigm shift from thinking that like how things we start from materiality and then go out that then the body creates consciousness, are you switching it to its first consciousness? And our brain and nervous system is more like a like a radio tuning fork that brings consciousness in, and that is how we're you know, having that paradigm shift.
I don't know that I would necessarily sort of mix consciousness in with what we've been talking about. Energetically, I don't know that one of those things, like I don't I don't know that how we feel energetically affects whether or not we have consciousness. I think, I mean it does, because we have electrical impulses in our bodies, and you know, we we know that, you know, we we react to things around us.
But but it's complicated.
There's so many things that go into the way that we're reacting. If I'm going to, you know, pull out a definition when I'm defining magic, and I define it in my book, I define it as a change to the environment either within you or around you, without any mechanical intervention.
Right.
So, and one of the easiest examples that we all know is the placebo effect. Right you get a pill, it's completely inert you take it and like it does nothing to your body, and yet your brain says, oh, I took medicine, and so your brain just heals. It heals your body, right, Like, what is more magical than that? Your brain decides what it's going to be and it
affects your your health or whatever the condition is. And the funny thing about placebos is that it works whether or not a person knows that it is a placebo. Now it doesn't work as effectively if they know it's a placebo, but it still works. And I think that speaks to what ritual offers people. You have a ritual of taking a pill, and your brain knows when you take a pill it's giving you medicine in some way, even though logically you know that's not true in this case,
your brain still so makes that association. And I think that's why ritual is so powerful for us.
Nice would I would say, then, personally, this is how I view the view reality is that from exactly what you just said, that is changing a paradigm from the mechanical to the idea, from the idea to the mechanical. Because if our reality was just straight up a mechanistic reality, that placebo effect would have personally, I think would have
no effect. But since there seems to be something different with how consciousness interacts with our nervous system instead of our nervous system producing based upon electrical like impulses, then all of a sudden, the mind, the brain is creating it. It seems like there's some kind of funny phenomena happening where consciousness is being picked up in a way and being able to be more of a malleable thing than the mechanistic functional universe that like scientific materialism wants us too.
Where seven hermetic principles. The first is all is mental, all is mentally, Oh, it's it's and that like you're talking about the idea of these magical books with various formulae or spells, you know that you use these are the various placebos in essence, I think that you would you relate that that it kind of conditions the mind to be able to facilitate the magic.
Yes, yes, and no.
I think that the ongoing practice is one of the things that allows people to deepen their their ritual practice and their ability to work magic. Right. It's it's like anything else you do. It's like it's like working out your body, right, but you're working out your mind. You can't just go into the gym day one and you know, be lifting as if you had been, you know, building yourself up for years. Right, You have to start where
you are. And so I think that the practice of thinking about it, thinking about the magic, doing whatever rituals you want or don't want. I use a lot of symbolism because I think that, you know, I'm busy like everybody else, and so using symbolism to sort of make my life a little more magical is a really.
Quick, easy way, you know.
I think about liminal spaces when I walk through a doorway or down a hall or you know, those those kinds of things. So I think that it is a matter of practicing.
And that's why it's called a practice, right right.
If you keep doing it, you keep sort of focusing your energy on the things that you're trying to achieve with your magic, and and so it strengthens your practice.
Mm hmm. You've seemed to have answered a bunch of the questions I already had. I was just going to ask you about what magic was in the placebo effect.
One thing I do want to ask as a folklore is what do you think like modern occultist misunderstand about folklore, Like do you do you ever see maybe in your opinion, especially like the difference between story and.
Practice to people start to get that a little confused.
Maybe, Well, I think that I don't know about occultists specifically. I think people are, Yeah, that people in general, A lot of people believe that folklore are like old stories. They're you know, they're set down, and that's that's what folklore is. But of course folklore is a living thing,
and there's always new folklore. And we can see this in crypt did we can see this in you know, urban folklore, urban tales, And I think that, yeah, I was referring earlier to like the alien abduction versus fairy, right, And when I look at those kinds of stories, those stories are very similar to me. Right, You run across this you know, mystical race of whatever, and you get spirited away, and you may be gone for you know, a day or a week or a year or however
long they keep you there. And you know, that's sounds very similar to me to aliens, just with better technology and so and I think that's how stories work, too, right, You you start out, who knows what happens? Like maybe someone does have an experience and they step into a fairy ring and they're they're off to the land of
you know, the fair folk. But maybe they go out and they accidentally eat, you know, a hallucinogenic mushroom, right, and so they're like out for a couple of days, and then they come wandering back and like, what story do they tell? Well, whatever happened to them while they were tripping out? And then over time, of course, as we tell those stories, they get to be grand more and more grand, and so it turns into you know,
and Winkle gone for one hundred years. And so I think that what a lot of people get wrong is that, first of all, there are no.
Stories that are.
From an expert view, right, There aren't stories that are better than others. And that's something that happened to us historically when people first started beating folklorists right a couple hundred years ago, and they went out to capture those stories and they wrote them down, and then that was
the story. But those folklorists were they were typically European white, upper middle class and above, because they had the means to just go out and like record people's stories and then they wrote them down and that became the expert story. And then later we got you know, Disney and things like that, and then those started being our expert stories,
which were sanitized versions of older stories. And so I think that you know now what I love about the Internet, Like, look, we're all here talking right now, and we're sharing our stories, and I'll tell you my ghost stories if you want to hear them. But we like, we're now talking to each other again. And I think that that's what people don't understand, that there is no expert in magic, right.
There is no expert in folklore because it's so widely varied and people have so many different stories about it. And I can't prove that you know, your spell is better than my spell, which I think is something to be looked at when you practice your own magic. And I think of it much like I do cooking, and that's why I call it a magical recipe book. I
love to cook. I've been cooking since I was a little kid, and that was the thing my mom and I did together, and so at a certain point when I was sort of you know, going off on my own and not having her right there with me, I would follow recipes right because I knew that they would work better than me guessing right. And over time I stopped doing that and I started just you know, and
I'll go, like everybody, I'll go on Pinterest. If I'm going to do something new, I usually look up three or four recipes for the same kind of dish, and then I'll like pick and choose which parts of which recipe I want ye, And so that is how I think that magic should work for people on the individual level, as opposed to just saying, well, this person has written all these books, so they must be right. And you know, it frustrates me when people are like, oh, you're doing
it wrong. It's like, no, no, this is like there was a time where there were no people right, so at some point somebody made this up, right, somebody did magic.
Right. It's all made up.
And so just because something was made up a really long time ago doesn't mean it's necessarily more valid than somebody who's making something up now. And again, you know, it's with people who are in diaspora. They bring their magical practices and they bring their stories with them, and then those things change depending on where they end up. And you know, like when like it used to be that for Halloween people would carve turnups, right, and that was what they did. And then they got to America
and there were no turnups and they had pumpkins. And then people thought out that pumpkins are way easier to carve than turnups, and so you know, they kept doing that, and then that story went back out into the world. Then people started doing it around the world. Right, So I think that you know, it's all made up, so don't feel bad if you don't do it the way
that someone tells you is right or wrong. Because although there are things that we can you know, study and discover about how energy works, and helpless ebos work, and all of these kinds of things we and how you know, morphic resonance works, how the you know, the the resonating of the earth affects our bodies, and all of these things we can study. And then you start to see that some of this folklore is really based in things
that work, even if they didn't have the science. Right, when people talk about smudging, they are oftentimes in sage, right, and they and are you know, smoke saning or smoke cleansing, whatever you're gonna call it, and sage Interestingly, if you burn sage in a closed space, the bacterial and viral movel goes way down, and if the space stays closed, it stays down for like twenty four or forty eight hours,
I can't remember. So they really were cleansing when they do something like that, And so I think that, I
guess that's part of my point. We keep finding out things about how you know, when we started studying, you know, quantum physics, we started finding out that maybe these energetic chords that people talk about, it wasn't really so silly after all, because when people discovered what quantum entanglement was, which is an actual physical connection, like a physical connection in the real world with another person, and it doesn't
really matter how far away they are from you. Once you've got that connection, you've got that entanglement until you work to get rid of it. So the whole idea of cutting chords, where people are like, oh, that's that's really woo and you know that's people are imagining this stuff, well, you know, then we learned that, no, we do get entangled with things, and there are specific things you can
do to break those entanglements. And I think that without knowing that people started using ritual in order to do things like break those entanglements, and they accidentally stumbled into an effective way to break the connections they don't want. And there are other like when I talk about, you know, cutting the cord, symbolism is great there you're thinking about it, and the way that you break down entanglements is by
making other entanglements. So if you can put someone out of your mind, then you're having entanglements with the people around you, or the plants or the animals around you, or your stuff, right, and so it does break down over time that entanglement to the person that you're trying to put out of your mind.
So nice, I do, So I agree, And that was You're very well spoken, So I do highly appreciate that you can tell you've done a lot of thinking on this. There's something to about though, because I do agree about how it is important that each individual finds their own practice and doesn't allow others to try to dissuade them from doing it. It's like that your practice is your own.
I don't actually give a damn what kind of meditation or anything these things you do, you know, as long as you're not harming others as you do it, because that's really important. However, to use your analogy of the sage is that there are better versions of sage to
use to clear a space. And it's say, if you have a bad grow, if you if you have a kind of sage that you've grown and it doesn't have the correct chemicals in the chemical makeup, so then when you burn it, it doesn't release the kind of smoke for the smudging to clear the space because of it does kill the bacteria, and it does neutral mold, and it does do these things that then if you're using a poorer version of sage, you're not going to get that kind of cleansing that you're kind of looking for.
And so I think that there's something really important in that that so you know, like we can kind of understand that there there is better There is a scientific process of trying to calm the mind, hone the will. So your magical practice has a better usage and it actually works because you can't just do any old ritual
to get any old effect. You actually have to calm the mind, hone the will and do the ritual, and then that is how you can make effect, cause and change into the world, and so I'm always this isn't anything.
To do with you.
It actually has to do. It's just that there's a whole uh you know, like it's cool you do what you want there, nothing is different. It's like, no, Chaucer was a better Folklors then a lot of the writers. You know, so there are and I don't even like the word better, but because I agree with you there, but there's something about why Homer and the Odyssey and the Iliad have survived for thousands of years, just like why Chaucer we're still talking about, just like Grim's fairy
tales are still being talked about. It's because of there was something about that writer, not because of any other thing, but because of they could tap into using their will, the phantasmagoria, the imaginal realms, with their magic, and they did it in such a way that now has withstood time. And so there's something there that I think is really important that we touch on.
Well.
I think that it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, when we're talking about why people believe what they believe. And I am not one to be like anything goes, do whatever you want. I am taking a class right now in advanced magic, and we studied, you know, some ancient magics and the Kabbalah, and we're
studying energy work. And so I think that what is good about going back and saying, let's look at what other people have thought, Let's look at what they have tried, right, Because if something is effective, there's more and more people are going to incorporate that and they're going to use
it because it's working for them, you know. And that's true with anything like if you're going to do yoga, and go study the poses and why those are effective in the combination that they they are in, because you know, there's a lot of study of how yoga can be most effective for different goals, right, So so go learn those things and then you know, go off book and then say, Okay, I'm going to try this practice a whole bunch of people say really works, and I'm gonna,
you know, do it consistently in an ongoing way. Maybe it's meditation, right, And I think part of the problem is we all too often separate our sort of magical beliefs and lives from the mundane. I think it's all one thing. You know, the magical is mundane and the and so, but if you're gonna, you know, do yoga, don't do it for two days and be like, well
I didn't work. You know, do it for a while because a lot of people have studied it and said this is really effective, and I think, you know, And of course that's when people start to evangelize, you know, they're they're like, oh, it's I got so much stronger and I lost all this weight. But it's like, well, you're making a healthy choice for yourself, and people who do that often make more than one healthy choice, you know, like did you stop drinking at the same time?
Did you you know? What? What is it?
And so it there is definitely something in there that you're talking about. I think it's complicated because I think that, you know, people try stuff and they say, you know, oh it doesn't work. And that's with our beliefs too, right, someone who's had a mystical experience, they're like, this stuff is one hundred percent real, like I know it because I felt it. And then there are people who are like, well I never felt it, so it can't be real.
And so I think that it is about the belief ultimately and of what you're trying.
So I was going to say, now, earlier, you were talking about cooking in regard to you know, finding the very and then kind of create. And I think that at these things being practices, as you practice them, you become more familiar with the various tools. And like with art. You know, I've been doing art since I popped out pretty much, and I'm over there, and you you learn to be able to facilitate doing things with the tools
that in the beginning you could never have conceived. So as you practice these things, these these you know, nuance elements within the working and the practice of the craft itself become the knobs of the machine that allow you to be able to fine tune these processes.
Right, And like this reminds me going back to the cooking so as so many people did. I jumped on the sourdough fandwagon during lockdown and I got my sourdough starter from a company and they've got a bunch of videos and so the basic loaf. I was sticking with that basic loaf, and at first my bread was good, and then it started to not rise as well, right, and so I was like, what, I'm not doing anything different,
And I was getting these flat loaves. They were dense, they were you know, too moist, And so I started going on other mostly Facebook groups and looking and Pinterest and trying to see and what was happening was I was doing what I had learned from day one, which is when you feed your sour doughs starter, it's like one part starter to one part flower to one part water by volume.
And so I was doing that.
But apparently over time that doesn't create a strong starter. So my starter was getting progressively weaker and weaker, and I had to give it way more flower is the short end of that story. And so but I went to see what other people were doing. I tried it, and then it started working. And so you know, now I'm like, sometimes I'll do one to three to two ratio or one to ten to ten, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish at the time.
But you've learned the mechanisms by which that those tools function so that you can facilitate refining the.
Process exactly right.
And I think that's where our own belief and discernment comes in in. You know, what are we taking from other people and saying I'm going to use this it works, and what are we saying that part of it didn't work for me? So my magic, like I don't. And they make jokes all the time about like the brand new practitioners. They've got the chalice and the wand and
the antheme, and they've got all this stuff. They've got twenty seven herbs and you know, and then like you know, you get to yeah, you get to a season witch and she's just like, you know, burning some herbs and throwing out a curse or whatever she's doing.
You know.
And so I think that those the tools and the things that you use can be training wheels and help you, you know. And you know, if you're going to want to use the antheme and it makes you happy, rock it.
Up, right.
But if you want to use your finger for the same kind of thing, that's that's good too.
You know.
It just depends on what you feel like is necessary and what kind of where you want to put your time, energy and effort.
Yeah.
Yeah, nice. Israel Regardi in his a lot of his books, but he talks about how the you're trying, what you're trying to do is you're creating the mnemonic and so by using the wand you know, you're understanding, you're honing your intuition. By using the sword, you're honing your reason or intellect, you know, and so on and so forth, and so it's really important and why it's like a
dramatic play. Why we're using this cosmic dramas, because we're trying to understand that inter relationship between mind and mind and materiality or you know, or like you said in your book, the name of it mind over magic is that they are so closely related that they are almost
the same thing. But we must use the mind for our magic is because without understanding how how our intention or it's in Chinese and like your tai chi practice or anything like that, it's they say, ye leads your chi, right, it's your intentionality is what's leading the energy to where it's gonna go. Where you know, where your thought goes, energy flows or whatever we want to say. So there's something really important. It's like who cares if I'm using
a sword? If I have my sword moudra, you know, and then it's you know what I mean.
Those are symbols. Those are like exactly symbols that represent the refinding of the various you know, so like in like you're saying as far as the wand versus the finger. You know, every symbol has seven meanings, and each one of those has seven meanings. So the fractaline aspect of the whole kind of is a multiplicity of tools that are available at our at our fingertips, yeah, finger.
Yeah.
What's kind of interesting about that is just like even it's almost like you're because I'm a Buddhist, so like I do my chanting every morning and every evening for like an hour each time, and.
So in a way, it's almost like that magical practice. Actually don't do that. I do like astrological, which is what I was kind of wondering. How do you do magic without including the stars?
Is always something I find interesting because it seems like it's such a big part of my reality.
But just going back to.
Like the idea of like the magical tools and everything, it's like in my Buddhist practice, the whole idea is we're changing our car our causes so.
We have the effect we want.
So it's not you.
Know, by chanting for hours, I'm you know, settling my spirit, yes, but it's also like I'm changing.
My karma, I'm changing the.
Causes that I'm making because I'm creating the cause to achieve enlightenment. So when you do that for an hour, you're changing your life for center g You're changing your karma because the effect I'm going to get is closer to that enlightenment. So it's like in a way I don't know because I'm not actually versed in like your guys's magical practice, but I'm guessing it's very similar in that way where yeah, the tools aren't necessarily necessary.
It's getting your mind in that state that.
Says I am creating a cause for something in the future, whether it be I mean, I hope it's something good, not so materialistic, right, But that's just kind of something that kind of came up to my mind, you know.
That's that's really interesting.
And what came up for me in listening to that is like, yes, you need to keep you know, strengthening what the your the way that your mind is approaching it. But I think that it's it's funny because they say that there are a lot of people they when they work out, they do weights in a very particular way.
They're taught how to do it, you lift correctly in all of that, but then a lot of people get hurt in day to day life because you don't train for things coming up in like you know, you you twist to pick up a heavy grocery bag and you haven't ever strengthened that kind of movement. And I think the same is true when you're talking about focusing your
mind doing your energy work. And you know, because if you're out in the world and someone crashes their car into you, it's it's upsetting, right, So you have to have that practice already in place so you can apply some of those skills to you know, day to day life because it can be hard. And I'm an introvert and so when I'm out in the world, like I will still go through a very specific process of like centering,
grounding and shielding. And is it you know my using that is isn't my energy that I actually am grounding? Or am I using that symbolism of imagining the grounding to work?
Again?
It doesn't matter as long as it's working and as long as in practical application I can carry those skills out into my life.
Very nice. I did want to ask you.
What what would success in magic look like?
Few Like, like, what is I mean would you say, that's like self knowledge, enchantment, understanding with results, wisdom. Yeah, I mean, does what does success a magic look like to you now? And has that changed over your career?
Because I know it has for me too.
Yeah, it definitely has changed for me.
I think that success looks like a strong, ongoing practice in which you achieve the results that you want. And I think that sometimes when we don't, we don't.
We didn't we didn't.
Either ask for it in the right way or And I'm like, I use my pendulum every day and I am hyper aware of how carefully you have to word things. You know, it's like the genie and the wishes, right, like you don't.
Know what's Yeah.
And one of the things that I do with my coven is when we like do ritual. We do ritual at least once a month, and when we do it outside, we always at the end we drink meat, right, and we pass it around and drink it out of the horn and all of that, and it's great, it's fun.
But when we do it outside, the first thing that we say is I drink in fear and dread because it's not a controlled environment when you're working magic outside and so it's it's easier to have unexpected results, especially if you're you know, trying to raise some powerful energy.
Thank you, thank you.
I don't know if that is no for me.
Yeah, yeah, no, uh yeah, you kind of answered it when you said, you know, finding what works.
You and gets your results.
Yeah, I would say even from me when I was first starting, I think it was more of there's somewhere along more results, and I think I'm more of at the point where I'm just trying to look for understanding and knowledge and not so much like materialistic things in my life. But yeah, yeah, then there was also a lot of like ritualistic stuff that I know that that was very uh I guess getting that down, you know, very huge for me.
But uh yeah thanks.
Did anybody have any other questions before I ask any other ones?
Well, then I want to kind of hit off of what you're saying, Nick, is that then there's the two different styles, Right, there's the idea of the high magic and low magic, you know, high magic or the theologia, right that divine working and then low magic being is in I'm trying to like formulate a love life or I'm trying to find my keys or blah blah blah,
so far and so on, But it's fascinating. It's like, eventually, I feel like you lay the foundation of trying to see how to find your keys the fast this until you realize, if I were a better person, I wouldn't lose my keys, and so it's like it can put
them in the same place every time, exactly Mark. So it's like a fascinating thing to be like eventually, hopefully the individual process of the alchemical pathway is that we're going to just understand that if I hone my mind train my will understand the body mind connection that then I can get rid of the nonsense to bring in the positivity, thus balancing what Kaylo was talking about and balancing the karma, balancing out my karma because I don't want to take any more karma on, which is why
it's like why I don't want to connect myself to other people. I'm trying to disconnect myself from everything else so I can rebuild my own understanding of who I am and why I'm even here. And so there's just like I kind of like what you're saying, Nick with what you've come to in your own practice being all like I'm just trying to figure out wisdom and my own mind and like how to be a better boyfriend or whatever, you know what I mean. So it's a yeah, it's just fascinating.
Well, and I think it's essential within all this structure and like the essential function of it of why people believe what they believe? And it's based on the current mythos, the current things that are in the air, and what are we dealing with now in regard to the current mythos in the air. We're having to deal with all of these things that the Black fondl Slab is dealing to us, you know. And that's a sort of magic
in itself that's creating the modern day mythos. That's kind of taking the imagination of the populace as a whole and directing it outside of our own individual will and intent. So this thing of hermetism, this thing of moving away, shedding these things so that we can find our true self and focus our own energy versus all of the forces that are flooding in. And I think that it's the most essential question that that really is right now is why do people believe what they believe?
Right?
Yeah, that's it.
That's great, Yeah, because it's like when they take all of our imaginations, that's so much magical power, you know. And that's why I have a hard time being like, you know, technology is the future, because I'm like, I don't know, like I personally don't want that.
You know.
So it's like why do I have to believe in this mythos that they want us to believe?
So I think there's there's like a amount of conscious.
Awareness of like what are they trying to make the future, and like do we actually all want that?
And like that's a nice thing about technology.
I guess like social media helps us like come together and say like no we don't, let's you know, figure something out. But yeah, that's a really beautifully said.
And I think I think that, you know, some of the beliefs that even we've been handed right, like the idea that it's been around for you know, more than one hundred years, that we are sort of individual silos and not connected to what's around us, and that you know, that makes for really great students, and that makes that that grow up to be really good factory workers or you know, like and and that's you know, one hundred years ago. When that was the future for a lot
of people. It helps make them, you know, complain less and be quieter and work ridiculous hours in dangerous conditions.
And so, but before.
That, we had very much around the world. People understood that we were much more connected, whether it was just connected in our community or connected energetically and psychically and how however you want to look at it.
People people did.
They knew that there was connection to the land and to the animals and to other people and so and we just grew up in a world that scoffed at people being connected. And so you have to unlearn some of those things that you were handed as we were handed as children, right, and that's how we were taught. And that's what everyone you know around us we're saying. And so that is it's hard to unlearn stuff and you can't do something that you don't believe is possible.
Right before the forties? Was it in the forties.
Where people believe that it was not possible for a human being to run faster than a four minute mile, right until some British dude did it.
And then and then it starts to happen that everybody can do it. It's like the rats in the maze that that once one of them learns it, there's some sort of and it's that I don't know if you've heard of Einstein, but he documented this phenomenon never yes, spooky action at a distance where you know, he would prick the baby rabbits even from different distances, and the mother would feel it instantly the end. So there's this
intrinsic interconnection. You know that that modern with tico or commercialism, has kind of worked to separate us from right.
And I think that and that is one of the quotes that I use in my book. So I love that you brought that up. And and that gets us back to you know, quantum entanglement. And we've known that this is a real thing for one hundred years because
Einstein was talking about it. And so when when we start to look at our connections it, we're still like people are still being made fun of for saying stuff like this, and and people act like they're crazy or they you know, say oh, yeah, she's weird or whatever.
But then we find out like, no, there's reality behind it, and yeah, I think that that's it's an interesting way to look at things of like, you know, if something doesn't make sense of what another person is saying, can you reframe that in a way that helps you understand what their experience is?
And you know, maybe it'll help you.
Because the more that we work on ourselves and make ourselves better, the more we make the collective better. Right, And that's one of I guess that's another important thing that tells me what success is in magic is when we are constantly making the collective better. Because there's a lot of people out there that are making the collective worse. And so you know, can can we just continue to do that in whatever way that we can and adding our magic to that? Yeah?
Nice? Yeah, like in a sense of stimuli.
Right, So it's like there is there's always the yin and the yong, right, And like the way I look at it from a Buddhists, like this world is a training ground and not some sort of like you know, video game sort of way, but the time to really acknowledge that all the hate you see in the world is inside of you, right, and all the people you despise you are right. So it's like this constant if we point the finger continuously saying they're making the world worse? Well,
how are we making somebody's life worse? You know, I always run into that, when do I stop blaming? And I'm not perfect, right because I do that, And so it's like, but when do we stop pretending that?
You know, it wasn't meant to be that way?
Right, Like it's and I'm not saying pretending, but that's probably not the right word. But we're not living in the world of cos and roof wo of enlightenment, right, So we're not living in a perfect reality. So we have to acknowledge if we want to get there, everybody has to go there too, So that person doing wrong, they have to it. And you know, like I said, are they doing wrong? Like they're they're fulfilling their karmac journey for whatever reason. And sometimes people's karmic journey is
so hard to see. We think they're thriving, but really they're like deteriorating, deteriorating on the inside because they're here just people pleasing everybody. So it's hard sometimes to know why and what needs to happen. But I think it's always important to recognize that, like the yin and the young is essential for you to be a better person.
That thing has to exist to show.
You that you don't want to be that thing, right, So, and I totally agree with you too. At the same time, it's just always a good reminder for me personally to remember that that person, there's a part of that inside of me, and I need to acknowledge that I'm an asshole. And if I can do that, I win, right because I acknowledge like that part is a part of my reality.
So I who want to throw that out there too?
And I think the body Sopha is the perfect symbol of that in regard to we all have to make it, we all and he's going to be the last one after everyone of sins to be able to you know, move into the higher realms. Yeah, it's beautiful concept.
I don't know what if you guys believe in Gregor's or not. Yeah, And and so I think that that's part okay, good And I think that's that's part of what you're getting at, is that we we do we create things together through our and and you know our beliefs are energy as well, right, and so what we are putting our thoughts toward. And I think you know, when you look at things like the secret, it's sort of pointing in the right direction.
It just doesn't really go far enough.
You can't just imagine like I've got my my vision board, you know, and and have something happen, right, Like you've got to again, the magic is mundane, right, and so it's all a part of and so you have to be doing things that we would consider mundane. I can't sit at home and wish my book into existence, right,
I had to write it. And yeah, and so I think that, yeah, like we when when we're putting our energy in the places that we need to be, we are helping bring that energy out to the world and hopefully tipping the scales the right direction.
But then you're off balance, right, So it's like it's like, you know, once you tip the scales, it's like it's such.
A fragile reality. Then right, it's like you've tipped it.
Now it's like now we're on a tight wire because eventually that that's going to like do something right rebalancing.
Yeah, yep, I want to ask you, Uh, was there ever a time when like you actually stopped practicing.
Was ever a time that you had like outs or anything like that.
I belief believing.
There's time that I was not practicing. I don't know that that necessarily means I wasn't believing. I just was much more focused on the mundane world.
And I think that.
Those beliefs just took a back seat to the point where they weren't Like I might as well have stopped believing because I wasn't doing anything about those beliefs and putting any energy toward it. And so, you know, and it was a couple of different times in my life where just I had other stuff going on. You know, I was I was partying a lot in my twenties, and so, you know, it's it's harder to practice, it's
harder to maintain. It's like it's harder to work out when you're partying a lot, it's harder to do a lot of things and that and when I was getting a divorce and things were very difficult, and you know, it like you just start to focus on the things like sometimes in your life, you focus on the next thing in front of you and that's all you can do in that moment. So so, yeah, definitely stopped practicing at certain points in my life.
I don't know.
At this point that I ever would again, like something catastrophic would have to happen for me to be in that kind of place.
Yes.
One thing else I did want to ask too, like what if you do remember what's your earliest memory of something working out that you actually couldn't explain away, Like you're like, all right, this is.
Real hmm, something working out.
To be like it kept you going, You're like, okay, this is magic or there's something there.
Yeah, that's that's a really hard one. I think that's sorry it well because you know, it's like I remember back and memory is you know, faulty, and so like I don't know that I remember a lot of my early magical practices and so and I don't like it's hard for me to suss out like a moment in which I went from you know that, like and they say like, I don't know if you guys know about this.
Like in Ireland, they will move a road that they're planning on building in a certain place if they think that it's going to disrupt like elf Home or very Home.
And what the people say is.
Well it's probably not true, but why take a chance, right, A lot of people sort of have that, And I think that there are times in my life where I was like doing that and so that was really more of a going through the motions kind of time.
And so.
And of course there's doubt, right, You're like, is that a coincidence? Did that really happen? Am I crazy? Like so many people are saying. And so I think that it's an ever evolving kind of belief system for me. And so you know, I think a long time ago it was it's probably not, but why take a chance. And it's sort of just been getting stronger and stronger in my belief And again it gets back to definitions. What I was defining as intuition I now define differently.
And if I had been defining it as like those are my my spirit guides talking to me, then I would have said, I mean, it's been my entire adult life that I've believed, right, because I believe in my intuition, and how is that not magical?
Right?
Right?
And so so yeah, like and I'm one of those people. I consider myself to be pretty lucky, right, And consistently that plays out and that's just part of what I think. And I'm like, oh, these and maybe I'm paying more attention to when good things happen than bad. And maybe that's why I believe things are working out.
But you know, it's yeah, just well.
And I think there's also within playing with these ideas. You know, when you say I think I'm lucky, at the same time you want to be lucky, but you don't want to think too much you're lucky because you might paint your luck. So there's kind of these nuance elements within the belief system that kind of waver on the creation of the magic itself, right yeah.
And I think that one of the things that I recommend when people are feeling doubt is to start to look for the magic.
Right. See that you feel better.
When you go out into the woods, right, pay attention to that. Or you know, if you see a feather on the ground and your great aunt collected you know, cardinal statuettes, right, think to.
Yourself, is that a message is there? You know?
And and so when you start to make those connections to how we are connected to what's around us, you kind of are drawing magic into your life again through your beliefs, right yeah.
Synchro Mysticism.
And some of the too.
I think it's like when I think about divination, like I said, I use my pendulum right, and I use a lot, And I think that it's important for any divination type is that it's about how we interpret things.
Right.
So I can have the exact same card pull a year from now as I do today, and I'm going to tie it to different activities in my life. And so how we think about how we think is important.
And so look at what you're doing.
If you you know, something happens, you go, oh that's lucky, or oh that is a sign about this, that's about in part who you are as.
Well in this moment.
I think that's like there's some truth to that. But then you can also.
Like if there is actual like for instance, like I get a lot of things and then I'll go to research it, right, and then in the research I find that the thing that I actually like got from my my guardians was actually something that was real and it's part of this trail that connected things that weren't previously connected because you found something that was in a book that you you know, So it's like there is there is something where I feel very much like, you know, how much is it?
I don't actually think it's my mind?
You know what?
I mean, I don't think it my mind. I definitely feel like having special relationships with the stars and the planets. Like everybody's got a natal chart. So you're lucky because you have Jupiter at the MC trying your ascendant or you know what I mean, and it's exalted, right, So luck can be written in your life. You've got the lot of fortune on your ascendant, right, So there's like ways that luck just can be you can be lucky.
But I do think, like I don't think. I think sometimes I don't think.
I think myself into the signs I get from spirit, you know, Like I definitely have done the research after that invitation to look at the thing or the symbol that I received, right, So it's interesting.
Yeah, it brought up a story for me. A while back.
I was getting a reading and we were on a video call and the psychic was like, hey, you know, this is your mother, and she was talking about my cat. I'd just gotten my cat another COVID Lockdown adventure, and I had had a cat many years before, and then in the middle I had a bunch of dogs, right, So I've only had two cats in my life, and so I just gotten Puck and she said something about, oh, the old cat doesn't like the new cat. This is what my mother was saying. And I was like, okay,
that's weird. And then she made a joke about there being some cat poop like outside of the litter box, right, and so I was like, okay, whatever. So I go on and I look right and there's nothing there, right, And I was like, okay, whatever.
That was about.
And then when I got up the next morning, I went out into the room where the litter box is. Sure enough was like poop outside of the litter box. I was like, okay, so that, you know, so I think that you do things that you say, Yes, that's really real, you know.
I think that brings back up the thing that I am continually trying. So I feel like the mechanized, postmodern functionalist world is the death of magic, and so it's really important to try to bring back the idea that all wasn't created from materiality, but first it was consciousness, and everything sprung out from that initial In the beginning, there was the word, and from that we can have a good understanding of how important it is to fine tune.
At this point here I'm getting to is fine tune the nervous system, because the nervous system is not creating consciousness. The nervous system is like a radio frequency tuning mechanism that's tuning into the consciousness of your soul. And when you do that and why I think things like the hermetic tradition and the magic through tradition through time, the Western esoteric tradition and some of those who have the
ability to be more intuitional and hone the intuition. So you understand that it wasn't your mind that created this thing. It was that you have the ability to tap into this curve and that is always there, and you can tap into your guardians, tap into your higher self, into God or whatever it is, and that then it isn't Ego brand In doing it or whoever, but it is actually this higher self that's speaking to you. And then from there, like Kaibo was saying, then you were all like, well,
that was really close to home. And then you start reading about it, then you realize that some traditional astrologer or Elphis Leve or some Eamblokus or somebody made this connection. And then you have another spot of the pattern making machine that our brain does to realize that I just hit on something, and I want to take that gut feeling or that intuition or that heart feeling or whatever it was that made you, not even made you, but
helped you discover this truth. And that's why I think it's so important we understand certain certain certain ancient philosophers like Plato is talking about is understanding of epistemics or his understanding of knowledge, is that you aren't ever like learning anything. You're only remembering something exactly and so, and through that remembering, you are then tapping into this thing
and it's not a thing at all. And and you know it's that exactly, You're tapping into the noose, right, that that higher god intellect that was first the first creator. But the first Creator wasn't a thing at all. It was this the verb as in in John Michael Greer's Elf Magical Traditions, when he rewrote the Elvis Levy's work, he's talking about the verb right, is that I don't think therefore I am. It is that I think therefore I exist, And through that existing, everything else stems into being.
So the more we and what I'm getting at is the more we hone, the nervous system, the more we can tap into these higher frequencies which we were talking about, like walking through the forest. If you're more if your nervous system is hone to the things, you can tap into these things and some people might call it energy, others call it spirit, other you know, and then through that practice we can have more synchronistic experiences and witness the beauty of the universe.
I just read that when you walk through the forest, if you walk through the forest barefoot, you're linking in with the mysolium, and the mysolium of the forest. Every square inch of floor has over three hundred miles of my celium network in it. And how that links in with the memory of the Earth and the cosmos and like all those intercommunications of all those systems in regard to us being a part of that, Yeah, definitely, yeah.
I have a question forcy Tracy.
So you use your pendulum every day, what else is a part of your practice or like the ritually that you did outside like every month, Like what does that look like?
Just kids, So when I get up in the morning, I typically leave an offering and light candles on my God and Goddess altars and and I've got five altars and so I and sometimes I leave a an offering at my ancestor alter, and then I think that let's see other parts of my well. I I journal, and I think that's part of my my practice. I like to do full moon rituals. I usually do a road open for a full moon ritual. As far as our communal,
our circle rituals, those are usually pretty standard. We we weach pull a run and we talk about that, and then we while we call in the various deities that the the group itself works with and invite them into the space. And then the person who's sort of the leader of the group will have a specific ritual planned in which we talk about certain things and sometimes we raise energy will be you know, stomping and clapping or
or you know, running around in a circle. And then we, like I said, at the end, we typically pass the horn around and whoever gets the last sip of mead from the horn is you know, they say, well, what do we say that the devil takes high most because they're going to have really wild dreams that night. And then yeah, and that's that's pretty much what our rituals look like. And then we kind of decompress. We usually hang out for an hour or so talking.
So that's that.
And then like other things, I mean, I burn incense to remind myself of you know, like sort of the air spirits, especially when it's cold out and everything is closed up, I'm not feeling the breeze.
And what else do I do?
I use sound like I do a sound clearing a lot of times, and I use a lot of symbolism. You know, I think a lot about you know, what I'm doing or how I'm cooking, and you know, like I'll be stirring in a clockwise direction because that food's going to nourish me in the future, and bringing those kinds of things in. I'll typically light candles when I'm
in the kitchen cooking on my kitchen altar. I sometimes remember to dust my business altar in my main altar, but that's all, you know, that's part of the.
Earth, right that dust is. I can use that symbolically too, because I really hate dusting.
You have your altars set up in like specific areas, like is there a reason why you put like we're like your office one. Is it in your office or is it like in a specific direction.
Or like, how does that look?
My office one is like right here because I typically work here. This is where I write and all of that, and my main altar is actually right next to me.
Uh, and I would say that one like doesn't.
I don't don't know that any of my altars except maybe my God and Goddess alter that one looks like an altar. The rest of them just look more like decor. And so my kitchen altars in my kitchen, I do a garden altar outside and when it's nice out, my ancestor altar is right there, and I do have an offering up right now, and so and uh, yeah, my goden Goddess is in essentially what is center of the home. And well, at least on this floor, it'd have to be like on the ceiling if we were in the
center center. But but yeah, that's so that's kind of how I've placed them. And you know, some of it is just where I had room, and you know, obviously some are themed, right. I keep most of them in here because this is where I spend most.
Of my time.
And I'm also wondering, in regard to your practice, does the dreamscape play into your reality in regard to the reflection between this world and the other.
Yes, I think that, and I capture my dreams. What I do to capture them as much as I can. I keep my phone by the side of the bed, and I'll do like a voice note when like then I wake up, because then I don't have to turn on the lights and wait, because as soon as you start.
Doing that, it starts to go away.
So I just do a quick voice note to capture them and then go back to sleep. And it's like I always think I'm going to remember that for sure, never do, and then you know, I get up and then I go and sort of like reflect on what the symbolism is for me. I do more of my journeying through meditative practices than through the dreams. I use the dreams more like divination for myself, and like that is you know, it's it's a backdoor into my subconscious of what I'm thinking about.
So so yeah, but but I do.
Do journeying, and in my class, you know, I've I've gone to the upper world and the underworld and all that kind of thing through those practices. I have a little trouble because I'm one of those people when like I didn't even know up until a year or two go that like when people were visualizing things, they like saw pictures.
They were like little movies in their head. Because I don't. It's just like black for me.
Or I've been working on it very hard and now I am seeing images when I'm doing my visualization. But it was, it was It's taken me a couple of years to get to even that point. And I used to like start to see things and then if I, like in my mind looked at it too directly, it would be gone.
And so I and I didn't know. I was like you all see like little movies in your.
Head, developing that intrinsic space. As an artist, that's what I do. I'm a visual and like I have so many images rolling through my head it's gets a little out of control sometimes.
So but yeah, also a drishtie is good too. Like in my Buddhist practice, we have a scroll that we chant to and we have like addriss Geet looking point and that can be really helpful because sometimes when your when your eyes are closed, like it's hard to actually remember yourself to focus them right. So when your eyes are open, you can actually focus your eyes on a single point.
Mm hmm, yeah, right, very cool.
Yeah.
One thing I did want to ask you to as we start to wrap this up, you know, for this book, was there any like influences behind you, Like, you know, what kind of people have influenced you hugely that may have, you know, help you do this book.
I think I've done a lot of reading. So there's lots of authors out there that I think helped influence me personally.
And and when I say I've, you know, done a lot of reading.
There when we're looking at sort of the psychology side of things in the book, I have.
I did a lot of reading.
Of like business help books, right, and sort of how we think in business and how we react in different business setting of like you know, well we've always done it this way or and so I got into some of that in the later chapters of you know, and it would be the standard like business help gurus, and I think that that again was like I'm not just taking it from a magical perspective, and so the magic influences, and of course there are, I mean, but it's sort
of like just like a combination of what I've learned throughout my lifetime and incorporated it into my own belief systems, and so I don't know that I could pinpoint like specific people. I think what really influenced me in the writing of it more than anything was talking to people about this stuff and talking to you know, contacts college
from my days in corporate America. I worked in construction for almost twenty years and like in office environments, right, And I was like, you know, like these people are going to think I'm crazy. And I even consider it for a little while, like maybe I'm not going to use my real name, right, because what if I ever had to go back to work and they would all
think I was crazy. But I started to talk to people about it, and one person I can think of one time, it was like right, everybody else And these are like, you know, construction professionals. These are like you know, vice presidents and presidents of like major construction firms. They'd be like, yes, yes, absolutely, I know what you mean.
And because people have a certain knowing, I think, but yeah, that they know that it works and whatever wherever they are again on that spectrum, they understand that things happen that they can't describe fully, right, And like even even things that are taken as like regular like intuition or people who go to church and they have you know, communion, right, like those people are like that is the body of Christ, that is the blood, like in a real way they you.
Know, and we treat that as normal.
It's like, well, that's really turning into the body and the blood as soon as it gets into your system. Okay, first of all, you know, vampire cannibals, but whatever your belief is on that. And but but they honestly believe in magic in lots of ways. So much of what happens even in the Bible is yeah, yeah, And so I think that that that knowing of people just saying yes, I know this is true, that I think allowed me
to even write the book. So that would probably be one of the biggest influences, is just connecting with real people.
Yeah, thank you.
Do maybies have any other questions before you?
Yeah?
Well right, uh yeah, Tracy, it is one thing you'd like to say.
About your book, maybe you'd like to leave us.
With uh yeah, I think that.
As we were talking about, it's all about the practice, right, Your beliefs play into it. Your you know, everything that you want to use all of that, but it's the ongoing regular practice that is going to make your magic more effective. You've got to use those spiritual muscles to do it in whatever way that looks for you, and do study what other people are staying and try it and then keep it up. Just keep doing it and keep doing it, because that's the most important part in
all of this. Do your work, do your shadow work, do whatever you need to do to change where your beliefs go, and then keep doing it, and keep doing it.
Listen. Thank you so much. And I love that too.
I really I could have said that better myself too, say that's a suggestion.
Uh, great stuff.
I really loved having you on.
I thought this was a great conversation.
I probably, like, you know, get you on in the future again, maybe even to talk a little bit more about the science stuff. I didn't want to hit that too hard, but yeah, very very good stuff. And I appreciate you all joining into Before we let you tell everybody where they can find your amazing book. Let's start off with maggots first. Maggus, where can we find all your amazing Oh?
Thank you Nick, and thank you Tracy. It was a fantastic conversation. It's a great noontime conversation to get people all jumbled up in their days, to bring the magic into the mundane. And I think that is beautiful because I think that's exactly what people should do. Yeah, so you can follow me at Magus in the media on YouTube, on x and on Instagram. It's where we bring myth, magic, philosophy and meaning into the world and from the stories
that you and I and we all love. And make sure you watch it all, make sure you subscribe, like and share, and make sure you follow Occult Rejects because that's where we're breaking it down with the greatest authors, where Nick is crushing it and bringing all the greatest crushers into one space because that's what we do as always. Thank you Nicholas, thank you, No, I really appreciate you coming on man, thank you so much.
And Robbie March please let me know where they can find all your amazing work and all your amazing art.
Yes, it was a great conversation. I always love coming on. Gets me out of my little winter hermitage a little bit, you know, and it was great to meet everybody. And yeah, if you want to check out my other stuff. You can go to my link tree which is link Tree r M A r X and that has my metamind cast, my social media, my Patreon, my website. Everything is there all the ways you can connect with me and what I'm doing. And uh, yeah, this was great. Thanks Nick.
Oh yeah, well, thank you for some of the new listeners out there to Robbie's you know, we've been working with Robbie a long long time. Here is probably episodes. Yeah, there's episodes on his end. Go check them out that you probably have never heard of us.
Yeah. So I just did Yeah, I just did one on learning to Lucid Dream. I just did one on what was it, the Creation of the human and the demon Haunted World? I got yeah, yeah, a couple what two years worth of backlog shows there for people to check out that are all timeless, you know, Evergreen per Se.
Yeah.
Yeah, nice.
Thank you again, Robbie and Kaimo.
Please let everybody know what's up with you when they can find all your amazing stuff.
Yeah, thanks for having me on. It was great to chat with you. Tracy.
This was the first time I've been part of the rejecs crew, so this is my first time having a conversation with somebody.
Thank you, so I appreciate that. It was really fun.
I really really enjoyed to hear the similarities we have. So I do tarot in astrology readings I have, I do my weekly reports, I put them up on YouTube, and then I do my daily reports on Instagram. So you can follow me at Kaiva Rose on Instagram and YouTube, and then you can get a reading at eleven Kiva Rose thirty three dot com. And you can find my young adult fantasy novel at rue Odyssey dot com as well.
Thank you, thank you very much.
Awesome and Tracy, please let everybody know where they can find your book and your website your podcast.
Well, first of all, I want to thank you guys for hosting me today. This was a lot of fun and really interesting stuff and I learned a lot from you guys, So I really appreciate that. If you want to track me down, the most central place is probably
my website, which is Folkloringlife dot com. And that will get you to my book, It'll get you to my both of my podcasts, it will get you to my school community where we have conversations like this all the time and we talk about magic and we talk about folklore.
So do come join me.
If you want to find me on socials and think that I am not a spirit and still in the land of the living, you probably want to go to book scott because that's where I am most active, and I'm barely active on a lot of the other socials. So yeah, go to folkloring life dot com and it'll shoot you out everywhere to where I am.
Awesome. Thank you again Tracy for coming on.
Hopefully I have another conversation with you again in the future. Thank you all the other rejects for joining me. That's what's up, and everybody in the chat think you will for stop a bud And yeah, that is the end of another occult Rejects and until the next one, everybody be well later