You see something's going to happen.
What What's gonna happen?
What?
Help? Welcome to the Occult Rejects. This episode, we got myself, Nick the Occult reject, we got Lisa the Occult reject, mad Scientist, we got Ethan Indigo the Fourth Initiate, and we got Jin the Ninja.
Uh.
Thank you all very much for joining me today and the special guests that we have. We've got Julia Gordon Ramer. But before we get to the guest, real quick, I am gonna have the other people plug this stuff fast, gin Please, sir, let everybody know where they can fund your show.
Sure, thanks, boss. Okay, So, so I'm really excited for this episode. Let me say I even I usually name my own episodes after poetry, and I do have an episode named Fire and Flowers, So don't call me out. I'm owning it right now. And of course, thank you Lisa, and thank you Ethan and Beg each of a guest for also having me on. And you can find me Twitter at Wukan Reborn or. My show is called Threshold Saints. I have two episodes Onlina del Rey aside from the
episode on Fire and Flowers. So if people are interested, they can check that out.
Awesome, thank you very much, and Neil, thanks will be in the bottom. Ethan Indigo, sir, can you please let everybody know where they can find your amazing work as well.
I'm honored to be here with you all as always, and I have a couple of books that I've written, and I tried to put articles out, just put one out on a co research institute. And I am honored to be here with Julia and here your insight. It's into Sylvia Plath.
Thank you very much, sir. Again, his links will be in the bottom. And last but not lease, Lisa the ocult rejective mad scientist. How are you? What's going on?
I'm good, I'm good, thank you.
The only thing I have to plug is exactly what Ethan was saying, is the Occult Research inst dot org, where many, many of our wonderful contributors have contributed great work in a literary form. So check us out there Occult Research inst dot org.
All right, thank you. And finally to the guest Julia Gordon Bramer. Real quick, I'll just put this in there myself. She is a professional tarot card reader. She's a scholar and an award award winning winning writer and poet and former professional professor for the Graduate Writing program at Lyndenwood University. So also the author of Fixed Stars, govern a Life, Decoding Sylvia Plath, Taro Life Lessons, and The Occult Sylvia Plath. Today we'll be talking about the occult Sylvia play. Thank
you again Julia so much. I guess if you want kind of like plug yourself, let people know who you are, what your deal is, and I guess after that, you know, we'll get right into what got you doing this? So thank you again?
Great? Hi, Yeah, plug myself. Wow. Uh, put me on the spot there. I am, as you said, a professional tarot card reader. I have clients all over the world. I do readings by phone and by video. I do events, so sometimes people fly me to events. Sometimes we do events on video that can be fun and where they stream me in much like we're doing this interview. And uh yeah, So if anyone wants to hire me in any capacity, they can look me up at Julia Gordon Bramer dot com has that and then you know, the
writer thing is a whole other thing. But but yeah, I make I make my living as a professional arrow card reader, I'm one of Saint Louis's top ten psychics. And yeah, I've been doing this for over forty five years now.
Listen, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you do have an impressive, impressive resume on there. And that was another thing too, when I even I when I had tried to contact you, I had even told the other person I was dealing with, I was like, I'm actually interested in her herself because of the Taro. So hopefully, hopefully in the future you'll also be back on for that. But yeah, Sylvia Plaid, and I spoke to you earlier, fifteen years of research this lady has done in.
Yeah, yeah, so so the occult Sylvia Plath. This was specifically fifteen years of archival research. There was more time that went into it in the writing and editing and all of that. But when I was back in graduate school, which I started in two thousand and seven, and I had a poetry class, and I was getting my MFA and create of writing in both poetry and fiction because
I write in both genres. And I went to my poetry professor and I was looking at Platt's work and Aerial in particular, and I said to my professor, doctor Schreiner. I said, what's the deal. You know, there's taro all over this. You know, here's the Night of Swords, and here's the Ace of Copes, and here's this and here's that. And I start pointing out and he just looks at me, bewildered, and he says, I don't know what you're talking about. And that was when I realized you had to be
both a Tarot scholar as I am. As I've been doing this since I was sixteen years old. I'm sixty one today, and you know, it was you know, and a Plats scholar to connect the dots. But it's screamingly obvious. And really, I mean, her poem Daddy, which is one of her most famous poems, even says she's got a line with my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck and my taroq pack and my tarok pack. I may be a bit of a Jew, that's the part of the poem.
And tarok is another word for taro. And what most people don't understand is that the taro comes from the Jewish cop Kabbalah, the Jewish mysticism. And so you know, for me, it was like boying, like just out there screamingly obvious, and then I realized all of this stuff that Plat has literally been persecuted for. You know, what's this Boston white girl identifying with Jews in the Holocaust, and you know, like people just got it all wrong.
And she was working different levels of meaning because she's a poet, and that's what poetry does. You know, we have many metaphors, but she stacked the metaphors. You know. She was a genius is genius and so anyway, as my semester end project, it really became my life's work.
But I found her book Ariel, specifically Ariel, the restored edition, which came out in I believe it was two thousand and eight, and that was the ordering of the poems that Plath had intended when Ariel came out back after she died in the nineteen sixties or maybe even seventy, I can't remember now, but the first publication of Ariel, her husband Ted Hughes, had rearranged and so had I seen the original publication, it might not have been so obvious to me, but what Plath had done was each
poem and Ariel went in perfect correspondence with the Tarot deck and so we've got the major Arcana, and then we have the minor ARCon and the suits, and then we have four cards at the end, which is that's the four suits specifically, you know, But yeah, I mean, it's just brilliant what she did. And each poem is a reflection of the Tarot card. Many times it shows, you know, she's describing even the beauty of the card, and the colors and the symbols and the meanings of
the card of course are woven into each poem. And so when you see the correspondence, all of a sudden, it expands Plats poetry so far beyond what anybody has read. And you know, and I got so excited, and I immediately brought it to academia, into the Plath scholars, to which I thought it would be really well received. But they've built their careers on her being a pressive suicide and they don't want to see anything else but that.
And they sure don't want anybody without a PhD. You know, I've got an MFA, but that's not quite good enough.
You know.
They don't want anyone without a PhD to you know, to usurp their research here. They believe they would have found it first if it was there. I was told that. In fact, even though they know nothing about Taro, and Academia is by and large very atheistic, so they want no part of any kind of faith or especially a cult which is you know, very creepy in out of their comfort zones. Even though Sylvia Plath was wildly fascinated with the occult, and anybody who studied her knows this.
I mean the picture on my book, The Occult Sylvia Plath, that's actually her with a crystal ball. And you know, and she's had lots of She's got a long poem, several poems referring to the wija board in different ways, but a long poem called Dialogue over a wija Board. And you know, there's there's just a lot in her writings on Ontaro, on astrology. Her husband, Ted Hughes, who she worshiped for much of their seven year marriage until
it all fell apart. He was, you know, he's been vastly studied for his Kabbalah and his witchcraft and his alchemy and all of this, and yet and and and everyone knows he mentored her in every way, and everyone knows they did hypnotizing together, and they did all these.
Meditative studies too, right anything, Yeah, yeah, they.
Did everything like this and and so nobody connected the dots and it's just bizarre to me. And and they're still not, you know, over over in academia. Uh so all of the best response. I mean, I've been I've been touring this book, and I was in the UK last summer and I had two standing room only events in Watkins' books where Plath and Hughes actually bought tarot cards and some witchcraft books back in the day, and also tread Wells, which I am very fond of tread Wells,
and I may be going back this summer actually. But but you know, the London crowd is definitely more open to mysticism, and they're readers too. They love Plath, they embrace her as their own because she lived there in England, and yeah, they have the open mindedness that Americans not so much. It's it's real interesting to see how different the audience is.
Something I did want to just bring up those two things. One it's kind of like a little bit off the topic, but it was something that you said that I was kind of glad that you mentioned me and Jin. I think maybe even ethan As might even have said this before. But I know for a fact me and Jin have brought it up with Taro, and I would consider you probably know way more about Taro than I do. And
you said it's associated with Kabbala. Yeah, I For some reason, in the Taro community, this seems to be like people don't even want to think about that or even admit that, Yeah.
It's interesting. I mean, Kabbala is a very intimidating subject, that's right, And so I would never have even you know, what I knew about Kabbala before I began my Plath work was that, you know, Madonna and Britney Spears supposedly wore red bands around their wrist, which meant something about it. That was what I'd heard, you know, and that was
like the extent of it, you know. But I actually got introduced to k through the plathwork, even though I had been reading Taro since I was sixteen years old. So most Tarot card readers probably are like how I started Plath made me a much better Tarot card reader, honestly, because when I got into Kabbala, which think of Kabbala as sort of like the blueprint for all the occult sciences. So it's kind of the structure of how they all work.
And if anybody can look up online, you can google the Tarot Kabbala and you can see lots of pictures, lots of diagrams of how there's a tarot card for each station called the sefero in the Kabbala try of life, and a card for each pathway that connects them, and it works out perfectly. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn who did our most modern version, the Writer Weight, they switched two cards in the original tarot to better conform to the kabolotry of life, the number eight strength
and number eleven justice. They reversed it just to fit the tree better. It's kind of interesting. Purists do not do that. Plath in Hues did not do that, and which I write in my book, and in my first book I explained that. But but yeah, it's it fits really well and and the kabolotry of life. You know, you can apply astronomy astrology. I say astronomy too, because back in the old days it was very intertwined mythology numerology.
It all fits and it all tells this sort of same story with the same uh you know, human ind visuation journey as Carl Jung would have called it the hero's journey as of Campbell called it. Uh.
The other thing I wanted to bring up to I could be wrong, but wasn't her parents kind of also like practitioners are involved in the Yeah.
So you know, when I did all of the research, I comed through lots of memoirs, lots of other biographies to start, because initially I wanted to just put all the information collectively together because people knew, okay, her father was a freemason. I saw that somewhere they knew her mother studied in graduate school. Parilsis the alchemist they and they knew that Plath read all her mother's school books. You know, they all the all the scholars know all
this stuff, but they hadn't put it all together. She went to a Unitarian church, and if you go into the archives, and that's where it really got fun, was in the archives because I was going through her school work and you know, her Sunday school work, which her mother had saved everything and given it to the University of Indiana's Lily Library, which is so it's pretty amazing to see all this stuff. Her her elementary school Sunday school work was on the zodiac.
You know, so she when she was in high school. Yeah, when she was in high school summer camp, she carved a hermetic Caducius, you know, the alchemical wand of Hermes, which I actually owned that today, that that she carved. It's it's kept in a safe. It's very prectaice. To me, it probably is worth more than my house.
And I was lucky enough to be contacted by doctor Richard Larshan, a family friend of the Plats, who had inherited it. CC's had been written about just this object and excuse me, and doctor Larshan wanted someone who understood, who had the passion for plaths but understood that mystical side, to be the one to possess it because he's getting to be very old now. So so I lecked out there. But yeah, the book pulls together all of these facts.
That is great. Good for you, nice Lisa or Jin. Do you guys have any questions before you continue?
Jane, go ahead.
I just want to say that Julia, I'm so glad you said that, and I'm so glad that Nick obviously the Cabala boss asked that question because this is something that is recurrent, Like I think when whenever I'm on at least, this is something that we always talk about. Is Kabala is the map, Like whatever you think of it, it's a great map, and it makes a lot of sense, and it goes with everything, and you can use it as like a common language to just discuss magical experience
or more like historical call text. You can do both things with it, and that's what makes it so great. And I highly encourage people to study it if they are so inclined, because I just feel very strongly that it gives you like a whole different understanding of.
The world, not to not to keep going on it, but like I even remember for myself, I used to be a member of the Auto Temple Orientus THEOTO, and I remember when I first started going, I was like sitting on I was like sitting on the couch or whatever, like waiting, you know, waiting for the temple to open. And I'm like staring there looking at this big picture and it's like the tree of life and it shows
you all the cards on it. I'm looking at it, and I even remember at that time, it was like I was intimidated by Kabbala for sure, and I was even intimidated by Taro. So I really wasn't trying to look at either one of them. But when I looked at that, I was like, huh, maybe if I like kind of look at it like that, And for some reason that clickedon got me interested looking at it With the Kabbalah. I started looking into the Cabala and I was like, oh my god, why did I wait years
to look at this? I like fell in love with it right away. And then once I started attributing tarot to it, I was like, oh, this kind of almost makes sense now a little bit.
Yeah, you know what, my first introduction to up to Kabbala, I didn't know I was being introduced to Kabbala. And when I was in my twenties, I read a book by Hermann Hesse called The Glass Bead Game also known as Manchester Has Time, and it's about this young monk and he studies and he finds this formula and essentially,
you know, this great work of art. Let's say, you know, the mona lisa equals a bach concerto, which equals something else, and he realizes this formula is through all the great things and and so I read it in my twenties. I don't think Hesse ever said anything about Kabbala, but it was. You know now that I look back as a as a more mature person who's done a little bit of studying. So so that's a fun way to get an idea of this sprawling concept that's woven through everything. Uh.
And it's uh. And he did an excellent job of that through fiction. If anyone's interested.
Awesome, Yes, all right, so I guess back to play. Sorry I tore you took of a tangent with.
That was fun. Yeah, the only ones who asked me that.
No, I just think. I just think it is, like I just a side I use like labyrinthos something whatever I come across, and I use that a lot. It always attributes it to the tree. It just makes sense to me that way, Like I could see, well, I mean, first off, I can't write, so I could never even think about trying to write poems on all the Tarot cards.
But I could see if you did the twenty two major kind of on the Tree of Life, that would give you stories if you looked at the yard and maybe your ideas of the tree that would definitely give you work to work with to write poems for sure, you know, so that's she did that.
And can I just interject, Really the thing about it, Cabal you had said, I'm so glad you said, like Jen and Nick were saying, I never really associated with Kabala. With her, I knew about the taro and how layered and in depth her poetry was, and it was like almost like a stack telling a story and the ability to channel or basically project all of her emotion that she was going through through all of her poetry in
this kind of layered way. But what struck me interesting and when you say Kabala, it makes sense now in that there was some sort of methodology to it. And I think she got that from her parents, because like you had said, they were academics, and the way she approached some of the occult topics, even though they were just so kind of on the fringes, they were like the viewers of her poetry. It was it was almost
as this academic tying it all in together. And when I read that about her mom having done work on paracelsius, as we have looked into some of these old occultists or occultis of history that tend to side with Paracelsius. They have these occultive tight leanings, and they're looking at Kabala, they're looking at all these mysticisms, and so it just now that you say that, it totally fits in.
Yeah, so thank you, thank you for saying that. Yeah, oh sure, yeah, no, it's it's just so exciting to me, you know, and what Plath did. And I haven't really gotten into this, and it's a little too deep to go into my first book, which is now out of print, but I do sell it as a PDF, so anyone can reach out to me if they're interested. But it's called Fixed Stars governor Life Decoding Sylvia Plath and I go through the major arcana. I have yet to publish
on the minor, but Plath took each poem. It has six different meanings working along with Kabbala within each set of words. So if you can imagine, I mean, I had a mathematician say, what is the possibility that this is coincidence? And it's just not possible. It's like one in a Google or something that it could have just randomly corresponded in every way But so what Plath did was each each aerial poem, you can read it sort of on the Tarot kabbala. You know level, this is
beyond her personal level. Okay, everyone's been reading it. It's just her personal autobiography. But you can read it in accordance with taro kabala. You can read it astrology and astronomy because she reflects a lot of that. You can read mythology component, you can read history in the world, and you can read arts and humanities, and she reflects all of this within each poem in alignment with that tarot card. Like I mean, it's rather mind boggling, and
yet it makes her poems, you know, a lot. She has a lot of very challenging poems in aerial, like the Couriers, which people just don't get until they understand the magician tarot card. And you know, the word of a snail on the plate of a leaf, and you know, and there are things that are being shown in the card. There are things the card represents. There are you know, there's the mythology behind the card, there's the the you
know all of it. I mean, you know, like I said, it goes deep and I could go on just I could do, you know, an hour on each poem, So we won't go through that. But but she was a genius's genius. And it's my goal, you know, if I was put here on this planet to do anything beside had my children, it's to get this information out, to redeem her reputation, to get her out of this depressive, suicidal box that everybody wants to keep her shut in.
You know that there was that movie starring Gwyn's Paul Tally two thousands called Sylvia, and it was lovely and it was well done, except it had almost nothing to do with her writing. It was only the drama, you know, only about being beautiful and tormented and in a hellish marriage. And that's a shame, you know, and she was so much more than that.
Do you think you know, I'm just wondering because, like you just said before, like something had like six different meanings to it or you know whatever each each. Yeah, I'm wondering, Like also just from I guess maybe my opinion from my experience, I'm sure the late I mean that the woman was probably very smart and educated regardless.
Oh yeah, but do you think that maybe because I could see if she maybe actually had like and I don't know what your idea of what a magical or experience could be, but maybe she actually really had like a magical experience or I would say cross the abyss. And that's why she actually may have been so deeply woven into the stuff, because like she really understood it, understood.
It absolutely and and really I would venture to say that every creative person has a magical experience when we're in that zone, you know, whether you're a musician or an artist, and she was also an artist, by the way, or you know, or a poet or a sculpt we're all channeling something. Now when we're consciously calling the spirits, that's a step into it again. And yes, she was
doing that. She and Ted Hughes meditated together and before their work they pushed each other on different themes and and uh, and it was very it was a very conscious pursuit. Uh. They looked for information from the ouig aboard and from bibliomancy and all of these things. So so she was definitely quite conscious of her occult pursuits what did feed into her creativity. But I believe the creative act all by itself is a kind of magic. Whether people want to accept that or not their choice.
Yeah, No, I just felt like I again, like you know, just from my own self experiences like this one, I could see having the passion to want to do something so detailed because you're just so in love with it because you had a magical experience and you're trying to convey that something along those lines.
Yes, yeah, And really the scholarship that I did on her work was that for me. I mean, it just blew my mind sometimes, and there there were times that I was afraid and I almost quit, which I can talk to you about that, but it was, you know, it was. It's really been some of the highest highs and really affected me very deeply as a tarot card reader.
As I said, it made me a much better tarot card reader to have this this breadth and understanding of things like alchemy and kabbala which I had never even you know, I knew the words and that was about it. But yeah, to really go deep into some of these things and experience it in incredible ways. One story that I share in the introduction to my first book, Six Stars, Governor Life, and this story I can be read free online on my academia dot edu page. I have that
introduction uploaded and anyone can read it for free. But I talk about when I was going through and I got to her fifteenth poem, which you know that the Tarot deck, the major arcana starts from the fool starts from November zero, right, So it was Tarot card number fourteen, but it was fifteenth and aerial and it's it was
the title poem Aerial. And as I was going through it, doing all of my research and and unpacking these layers, I found a prayer written by Alistair Crowley to the Great Beast six sixty six that basically Plath had paraphrased, and it was there was so much of it that she had seen this, like there was just you know, she she could have been tried for a little bit
of platurism here, you know. And but it horrified me because I had this Christian upbringing, you know, I grew up in the Episcopal Church, and I am about love and light, and so I see this Great Beast sixty sixty six shed and I'm like, oh my God, and uh and and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna put this away, like I don't even you know are my heroes, you know, Satan worshipers. And I thought, I don't want any part of this. And I went to bed that night and it was the craziest thing because
just as I was drifting off to sleep. Of course, this is anyone with psychic ability, well we all have it to a degree, but anyone who actively uses their psycha ability will know that just as we're waking up, and just as we're asleep is where we get all the downloads, you know. But I'm just starting to drift off to sleep, and her words, her voice, which I know very well from recordings because I've listened and listened
and listened. Her voice said in my ear, move through, and she commanded me, and it was loud and it woke me up, and it completely freaked me out. And I said, okay, I'll do one more poem and I'll see where that gets me. Well, the next poem, A dozen company is an alignment with card number fifteen, the devil. She was setting it up. It was a it was
an introduction here. So she had this. When you look at Ariel, it has this seamlessness and each poem lifts into the next and that so that's what she was doing and I had just gotten too scared and so oh okay, I got it and then I was able
to proceed, you know. But but yeah, it's been a journey and I have had just, you know, incredibly moving experiences where I've uncovered meanings and found myself in tears because just becoming so emotional and the beauty and what she pulled out of each of these and then and then the frustration that nobody can see it, you know, and it's like all I can do, like get out,
get it out there, get the message out. Let people see this, this miracle in words, and you know, and and there's forty of them and so anyway, yeah, it's it's been like that. It's been a powerful, uh, transformational experience to study Plath and one that I will never forget and not soon be over.
Yeah, that's great. It's kind of like, I mean, it's not the same thing, but probably close to it. Like there's times I think I've even shown Lisa, maybe even Gin, but like there's times and I don't put this man on a pedestal, but I do think Alison Crowley, who wasn't a cult genius, regardless of how personal life he had regardless, what's real, what's true?
Weird?
Yeah, he was in a coult genius regardless. But it's a lot of times I'll be looking at like old alchemists or like really rare old books, and I'll be coming across things are like visuals and I'll be like, ah, this is where you got that idea from man. So it's almost like it's like gets exciting for a second. I was like, did I just figure something out that reuse? Yeah.
Crowley was actually a very fine poet also, which most people don't don't realize, you know, I say, given his times, I mean it was Victorian times right when Crowley was around, and he was he did drugs, and he was openly bisexual, and you know, and very promiscuous, and he refused to go to church and those three things made the London Times call him the wickedest man alive, you know, And so you know today he's just any rock star, right, you.
Don't even have to be right, that is funny, how like times have changed. I guess like a decent part of the population would be considered the wickedest man in the world, right, Yeah, yeah, damn. I was going to ask something, and they told, oh, since you mentioned poetry and Crowley, I was thinking, with Sylvia Plath, this is something. Oh god, it might have been in Pedocles that we brought this up. With the way he wrote with hexameter
and pentamonter. I forgot how to even say those. Did you ever notice if she ever wrote in that style before?
Oh, I mean she used the rhythms and the iamic pentameters and all of that. Yeah, I mean she she was very well educated. You know, she went to Cambridge and you know she was she was had a genius IQ and and yeah, everything was quite precise. And even though she wrote this very emotive, expressive stuff, she had a form that others like like her friend Ann Sexton, who also wrote in what they called the confessional style, but Sexton didn't follow that kind of form and structure
that Pleth did. Plath was very careful about everything. She was very careful about holding to the kabbala as well. You know, it's interesting, Ted Hughes, I've been over his work, her husband, I've been over his work of course, very carefully as well. And he he had this playfulness with the structure and order of his poems, so he may start at the third card and go to the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and then go backwards maybe, and you know, and he would he would play this
sort of rhythm. But she was very fool magician, you know, High Priestess, Empress, Emperor, and you know, in all in exact order, and she never veered from that. And in fact, I even see it throughout all of her fiction. The bell jar is in Kabbala order. And that's another thing for me to publish one day, and I have yet to do it because it'll be an exhaustive pulling apart. But I've got all my notes and you know, everything she wrote she did that with because it was a formula that works clearly.
You know, it's funny. Just trust this in. And I've been saying for two years I'm going to do another one. Who knows if I ever will. But I've done a few DJ mixes before in the past, and the last two that I did, I specifically actually use the tracks to represent certain spheres on the train and that's how I did my list to make the DJ mix actually attributed to the Kaballistic tree. Yeah, it was somehow a
reference like a feeling or an idea that matched those fews. Ye, that's always stung it along.
Yeah, Well, my book Tarot Life Lessons, I wrote this in Kabbala order, but it's it's openly in Kabbala order. Each chapter has a story in relation to a tarot card. It's the it's the stories of of me being a professional tarot card reader, kind of my real life client stories, the ones that freaked me out, and and I matched them each to a tarot card. So so I do it too, and I've done it with my poetry, although
my poetry doesn't have half the layering of plats. How she did that all and at thirty years old, you know, I mean she was so young. On top of everything else, you know, her brilliance is just off the charts.
I have problems like writing abbreviated texts. I can't even imagine trying to like and you know the reason I even brought that all up too. I'm not saying so much with her, but Crowley, I've even wondered when it comes to the hexameter or a pathameter, could there be a different like if if I find that style in his work, could there be a difference Because I know,
I think back in the day they considered hexameter. If you were kind of channeling or oracle was giving that message, that's how it was deemed okay, is if it was in that style. So I'm wondering, could that maybe be channelings if they're writing in that style differently, you know, And I'm that's saying so much hurt, maybe more maybe Croly Moore I'm saying, but not so much heart. But I'm just wondering.
Yeah, I don't know, you know, I'm not uh, I've never been drawn to the dark side myself. And you know what, what I'll say about Plath, I mean, just a fun thing to notice about her work is so so her her first poem, Morning Song, that's kind of just a straight structure when you get you'll notice with her poem for for card number two, the High Priestess. That poem is the Rabbit Catcher, and it's written in couplets, you know, for twos to echo that two on the
tarot card. And then the poem for the Empress is it's it's written in triplets. And then you know, and and and she went on and you know, and she did and what are they called sin? Quins I think for the wars and you know, and she played if you count the lines, she even addresses the tarot cards that way. Now getting into the actual meter, I think she pretty much was an i amic contameter girl. But yeah,
I'm not an expert in meters. That's That's where I just didn't get that into structure myself as a poet.
Oh again, like I said, I can't. I mean, I can't structure anything. But it's something I have come across, you know, researching, you know, occultists and other people. So just wondered because because now they just when I when I came across that, It's just there are other people that have been known to write that way that seemed to be a little bit on like the occult side. Like Jim Morrison even used that stuff a lot, and
I think he was definitely into these. Yeah, so you just start to wonder now, like again, poetry, you know, And I would say Jim Morrison was a poet in a sense. Uh you know, are they using that for a reason? That's all I just wonder.
Yeah, yeah, you know, with Plath, I would venture to say that everything she did had a reason. She was very careful and very smart about getting milking everything to the maximum. So there's no waste, there's no fat in her work.
Yeah no, and I would assume not. Yeah, that's why I was getting at before. Like's so detailed, you just have to like wonderlay Lisa Argent. Was there anything you wanted to ask?
I'll bring up I'll ask something real quick. Was there Is there any credence to some of her poetry being either censored or rewritten by Hughes and or kept away from the public eye by Hughes. Is there any credence to that?
Oh?
Yeah, yeah, so Ted Hughes when he first you know, when Sylvia was found dead, her manuscript was on her desk of Aeriel and it's he's he's made no secret that he rearranged it. And he said he took out poems that he thought were inferior. He thought he made a better manuscript. That's that's what he has said now. The poems he removed made him look especially bad, you know, so if you're just reading it from the autobiography of
autobiographical context. So so there was that too, you know, And it can be argued in Hughes's defense he had children. They you know, their children, and he was raising them, and you know what was he leaving beyond? What were they going to be growing up with? And you know, he was maybe trying to sanitize it a little bit.
What doesn't get talked about a lot is there was an editor in London, El Alvarez, who talked pleas into removing some lines from Lady Lazarus, and he thought she was going too far with some of the World War two imagery. She had one line, I may be Japanese. Nevertheless, I am the same identical woman. He had her remove that I may be Japanese line, and then there there was another one that is escaping me off the top of my head. But but he he she's recorded them
with the original lines. So if you listen online to Sylvia Plath reading Lady Lazarus, you can hear all of the lines. But but if you read it in Ariel, even an Aeriel, the restored edition, the lines are missing
that Alvarez suggested she cut. And uh, and I think it's a shame that she cut them because in my work, uh, you know, and and and I've got I've got two books that that you didn't mention Decoding Sylvia Platz Lady Lazarus and Decoding Sylvia Plats Daddy and and in the Lady Lazarus book, and those are both available on Amazon, and they're just quick reads, they're just studies of single poems.
And in those in that book, I kind of get into her identification with the Japanese women who were especially downtrodden at the time, and you know, and just this sort of extra baggage she was packing into the poem basically that that got cut with that single line. So so she was censored a bit. Certainly. She sent a lot of poems out in her lifetime that were rejected. There were many people who thought she was too savage and angry in her writing to publish, you know, especially
for a woman back in the nineteen sixties. You know, they still wanted women to write pretty and so Plath was really a groundbreaker, and you know, and rightly so. She is famous as a literary feminist for just you know, having a new voice, just real quick, sorry, just it's just who remind it's so reminiscent of like Frida Calo in that she kind of slipped under Dio Rivetta's.
Shadow, and I see how Sylvia slipped under Ted Hughes's shadow, and so, yeah, you look at these literary artists, you're like, well, why are people not discussing these people more?
Yeah, and you know, at the time in the early nineteen sixties, I mean you can see plus ambivalence and really almost a bipolar you know. I mean it could be taken literally, she may have been bipolar, back and forth of I want to be the best wife and mother, and I want to be subservient to my man, and then this sort of feminist streak of you know, I am me and I you know, I am, I am, I am you know.
And.
It's all there, and she was all of it, but she wrestled with it because the times wanted her to shut up and be an agreeable little wife, and she kind of wanted that too, you know.
Ethan you had a question, mamam.
Yeah, this is so fascinating.
I wonder with her poetry in the sense there were so many powerful overt similes, as you pointed out, with the Japanese woman and maybe also with the idea of the German Man in Daddy. Did that overshadow Did those overt similes related to the war and all the really powerful situations that just happened. Did that overshadow or even eclipse any consideration of the Tarot layer to her poems?
And yeah, well, I'm glad you mentioned Daddy because that was one of the decoding books that I had to write and publish right away because it's so such an important poem. But if you read Daddy with an eye on Sigmund Freud, Okay, you can lie back now, Daddy, you know in that chair, you know, it's it's the story of Sigmund Freud. Actually, you know, the snows of the Tear, all the clear beer of Vienna, you know, I mean, it's all Freud. The other thing that those
words are doing, I mean they're doing a lot. But the other, like big scream out kind of thing is it's Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness book, which she read with Ted Hughes. So there's this, Daddy is such a monumental tribute to all of these things. You know. There was a statue of Freud that she used to walk past often, and I went to see it in London and I took pictures and it's just as she describes it, ghastly statue with one gray toe big as a Frisco seal.
You know, it's a weird statue the way they you know, the toe is sort of unformed, you know, as it blends into the rock. And you know, she's she was so brilliant. I mean, I just like, I am almost in tears just I get so excited about it. And so, you know, I don't know, I suppose I got all excited there and I lost track of what your actual question was.
He well, I was essentially asking, like she had so many personal elements or what people pointed to the personal elements of her poems with her father and in the case of Daddy and the German figure that everyone had just dealt with and so forth and Mammy, that these were these tarot elements kind of overlooked. And I wanted to ask too, that was that part of the thing that might have frustrated her and her husband as artists and trying to share the Yeah.
So you know that the German, of course is her background. She had an Austrian mother and a German father, and so most people just say Daddy, okay, auto Plath her father, and that aspect is there. Others will say, you know, panzer Man, panser Man. You know that, like you know, she's the Nazi aspect she's they're saying, she's projecting it
onto Ted Hughes. That aspect's also there too. But as I said, we're also looking at Sigmund Freud, who was a racist by the way, you know, and very very much that that way were And as I said, addressing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and that book, so there's all of this layering and all of this stuff and how it works in all these different ways. Now that poem interestingly aligns with the suit of the queens in
the Tarot deck. And at first, you know, you would think you would think it should be kings, right, but her queens are upside down, they're in reverse, and they're mad, and it's and so we get into climb clemen Estra and we you know, and and and you know and Medea and and all of these mythological queens that are just so pissed off, and it's all in there too. And so what you know, what my book does is it it tells each of each of the mythological's queen stories.
So you read that story and then you look at the Plas poem and go, oh, it's climen Isstra And then you read you know, Medea and her story, and then you look and oh, she isn't there too. And then you read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness synopsis of it, and then you're like, holy smoke, that's been there too. And then you read about Sigmund fre Like what she could do with one set of words is so mind blowing. I mean like, I've never seen it. I've studied a
lot of poetry. I'm sixty one years old, I taught creative writing in graduate level. I've never seen anything like what Plas has been able to accomplish. And I think she's she's beyond a one in a lifetime. She's one in a you know, in an eon in my opinion. I mean, I just believe this is divinely channeled stuff, and so it's my purpose to talk about it.
That's great, that's great, A Lisa, did you want to say something.
I was just going to touch upon.
She has been very influential to a lot of musicians. You almost hear her propped a lot, or even lines from her poetry within their lyrics. What do you think I mean, is that like an I mean, obviously because of her genius and all that other stuff.
Is that like a nod to her leanings?
Was it more of a I don't.
Know, what do you think inspired them to use her? Yeah? Yeah, well it's freney. But it's funny because she was not into rock and roll at all, not at all. You know, the Beatles were just kind of coming out like now they were Beethoven, Plath in Hughes. They they liked their classical music. Plath liked opera, so she was she was not very hips as a young person. But what I can say is that I think the attraction, I mean, we're all caught up with with the beauty of Sylvia
Plath and Ted Hughes. We're all caught up with that, you know, the physical beauty. We're all caught up with the tragedy of her story and really kind of her bravery in killing herself, and you know, and and and her words were so raw and so powerful, and I just think, you know, she became a myth. And you know, she called her father a high weight, flying myth, and
I think she became that herself. And you know, it's one of those you know in the rock star world, which I also have a music background, I don't didn't even mention that, but I you know, there's the twenty seven Club where all the famous rock stars Jim Morrison, Jennis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, they die at twenty seven years old, you know, at the sort of peak in their career, and it's thought that, you know, that for some reason immortalizes them because they're at the height
of their career, at the height of their power and their talent and their beauty. And that happened with Plath two. It wasn't twenty seven, it was thirty, but she was, you know, forever captured in that moment, and there's just this mystique to it, like with the rock stars, and so, you know, I sometimes wonder. I think all the time, could a Plath poem be published today, like if it was unknown, and I would think probably not. They're probably
not smart enough to get it. Plus today there's this political agenda that even all the arts are pushing, you know, they're sort of like this higher we've lost the art and it's all politics today and that makes me crazy. But you know, so I think she probably wouldn't be noticed today. In the same way, I also wonder if she had been allowed to grow old, if if she would have if it would have quieted down perhaps maybe maybe not. You know, everyone says, what more could she
have done? And yeah, I mean maybe she could have gone on. I kind of do think of her as like a Van go or even a Kurt Cobain of just you know what, jerro Jack Kerouac said that Roman candle that you know, just exploding it all early in life, burning it out fast, and you know, I it's it's a tragedy, but it's a beautiful tragedy, and the rock stars get that, you know.
The It's interesting because most of her poetry is landscape and when I think of some of the Victorian era of that time, they were writing a lot about landscapes and kind of had tying that into the human frailty kind of you said, ben Go that on is that.
Or what have you?
But it's also interesting that I think you need the backdrop of what was going on at the time as well. Where's been very disassociated and I think that presented a perfect thing. But you know, you said thirty it's interesting because she had that Weathering Heights poem. And Emily Ronton died at thirty two, didn't she?
Or yes, yeah, you know something the occult Sylvia Plath really, you know, what I really tried to do was show the historical context. So, like we have a series of poems Plath wrote in October nineteen sixty two. They're called the October Poems. Well, gosh, what was happening in October nineteen sixty two The Cuban missile crisis And so if you know what, if you read it with that in mind,
you're going to see all the nuclear war imagery. You're going to see the missiles, You're going to see the radiation. You're going to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the poem Aerial by the way, you know, it's the whole, It's all there, and yet people are missing it and they're just reading her drama. It's crazy. But even getting back to her story, you know, people talk about how Klatt's
mother smothered her and was very suffocating. Well in New England at the time she was growing up, the Lindbergh Baby had just been kidnapped, and that baby disappeared and then was found dead and you know, and all the mothers were like, oh my god. You know, for those times that they hadn't that they didn't catch the guy, everybody was hysterical about their babies. And so it makes a sense. You know, you just have to read it all in context. And everybody's missed this. They're just all
caught up in the drama. And Ted Hughes is a bad guy and she's raging on her husband, and it's so much more than that, so much more than that.
Sorry, Julie, I just wanted to add this one. It's more of a note than a question, but I think maybe you'll find it interesting. It's something that you and Lisa both said, and I'm going to make it. I'm going to draw it into synthesis. So you said that she was much more formulaic using the tree with her poems or the terror or vice versa, where yes, Hughes was much more flexible or playful, as I think you phrased it, and he was able to sort of go
back and forth. This is a very cabalistic idea that women are less dense than men, so they can climb the tree more easily, but they have to do it using a fixed map, otherwise they won't have any orientation to where they are, whereas men. Sorry about that.
Yeah, you just taught me something about kabala because I didn't know that. That's really fascinating. It makes perfect sense, right.
Absolutely, And then men have are stronger with the spoken word, so it makes them more mercurial and more playful. So they're more Oh, they're not so fixed necessarily in the suffer particularly, but maybe they get fixed in the past. Maybe men are more playful in the past. So I think that there's an idea there that there's like, I like that you can apply that sort of idea to them as archetypal people or as poets in general.
It's a path much more of a path person myself, honestly, especially when it comes to even like symbolism on my own stuff. To use the paths instead of the see of themselves. That's interesting.
Yeah.
Uh, is there anything Julia in the book that you would like to I guess make sure that you do talk about before we wrap it up, or something that you would really like to mention that is important to you.
Yeah.
Magic showed up in Plants Life very early on. One of the things I point out is she saw her own life, her own story in books she read, and they're throughout And I know this because I actually read
the books that she read. They're all in the archives, and I noted the underlinings and the stars and the margin notes that she wrote, and she saw all these correspondences, all these magical relationships that you know, there's a book she read as a little girl called The Silver Pencil that was essentially, you know, about a girl losing her father at a young age, and she identified with it so closely, and it had a lot of weird correspondences, you know, the German father and he was a school
teacher and you know, and all of these similar things. But maybe most interesting is throughout the later part of the book when Plath was with Hughes. She had read through Middle March, George Eliot's Middle March a number of times, lots of underlinings, and it was eerily her story with Ted Hughes and the things that were said, and she, you know, she would write in the margins, ha, you know, when she'd get, you know, very angry at something that
Hughes had just done, that the character had done. Also, you know, it's just amazing stuff. And so I wanted everyone to see that that she had this sort of spiritual connection with what she was reading, and she was very aware of that too. And lots of notes, lots of underlinings, lots of stars, and it's really fun to see how she interacted with her reading material. That's why fifteen years in the archives, I mean, I didn't get
through at all. I probably could spend another fifteen you know, reading all the books she read and all of her notes, but I think I got through most of it, and I think I've done it right, so I feel pretty good about it.
Listen, Well, that was really great. I mean, you can honestly tell that you are very passionate about it, you know, just the way you spoke about Yah, know the way you spoke about it. I mean, not too It's been a while anyway, but I mean I've had a lot of authors on the show, and there's a summer you could tell, like who's really passionate about what they wrote? You know what I'm saying. And you could definitely tell like this is this is something that you know was
part of you? Where is part of you?
You know?
That's great to see it.
It is. It's why I'm here.
Yeah, that's great stuff. Uh do you want to remind everybody again with like where they can find your stuff and your books and yeah?
Yeah, well my website is Julia Gordon Bramer dot com. That's probably the easiest way to find me. You can write me through there. You know, I'm on all the social networks. I'm on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter or x I. You know, I'm pretty interactive. So I would love to talk to anybody if they wanted to reach out and and I love talking class, I love answering questions and and of course if they're interested in a tarot card reading, look me up there too.
Listen. That's great. Yeah, but we'll have to get you back on one day for tower and cabbala. It would be a very interesting.
I would love it, Yes, I would love it.
Yeah. Especially I love, you know, promoting tarot people that use kabbala. I just feel like you get much more value out of those, This is my opinion.
Yeah.
Yeah, good stuff, I guess and real quick, Ethan, real quick. Do you just want to remind people where they can find your stuff again?
Yeah, I got a website. I think you usually link it below and I'm on all the social media and I'll be following you, Julia. I was very interesting and love to hear about your story related to her story, and so thanks for coming.
Yes and Gin.
Sorry okay, so thank you guys. Thank you Julia so much. Thank you Lisa than and of course Nick. Awesome to be invited. Obviously, I really love poetry at what plot, so it's kind of a perfect fit for me. I wanted to say that we should have discussed Ariel that obviously the poem, not the entire work, but because I think Nick would have found it really interesting with the colors that she uses right away he likes He also likes those colors. He's a bana enjoyer, as the I
would say. So I just I just thought it was interesting. But people can find me in the links, yeah, I think the and on Twitter with Conrie Bourne. You can follow me and of course the show account Threshold Saints. Threshold Saints on Apple and Spotify listen.
Thank you very much, so Unlisan, Lisa, thank you very much for joining us.
Yes, thank you, thank you Ethan Jin, and thank you Nick for inviting me. Julia, thank you so much for doing such a wonderful job. I look forward to your book. I am going to order it, and you've done her justice. Thank you so much.
And oh it's audiobook also, so if anyone's.
Interesting, that's cool.
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to throw this out there and then maybe we can have you on just specifically for Ariel, since Jin put it out there, I would love analyze Aeriel.
And so we look at that because I think it is up. It's a series that really needs very in depth looking in, you know, meticulousness and teasing it all out because it's so layered, it's so in depth. So if if ever there's that, but thank you again, and yes, thanks, that's it.
Thank you, Lisa. Awesome and again Julia, thank you so much. Really I had a blessed. This is really a great time. Thank you, and uh, we definitely would like to get you back on for sure in the future if you're interested in her stuff. Again, everybody's links, but especially hers will be in the bottom, so check it out. And that's the end of another Occult Rejects and until the next one, everybody be well. Leda