You see, something's going to happen. What's going to happen?
What I.
Welcome back to the occult rejects in this episode was stepping into the strange borderland where psychedelics, occultism, futurism, and counter culture mythology all collide. Most people know Timothy Leary as the Harvard psychologist Turns, Psychedelic Icon, the man of turn On, tune In, drop Out, the smiling prophet of
chemical liberation, rebellion, and consciousness expansion. But behind that public image there was another Leary, a man fascinated by Taro magical thinking, Western eso terrorism, and the possibility that human consciousness was not merely evolving socially or psychologically.
But cosmically. Our guest today is Joseph L.
Flatley, investigative journalists and author of the new book The Occult Timothy Larry, The Taro Magical States and Post Terrestrial Evolution. In this work, he explores Leary's lesser known immersion in the occult tradition, his connection to the Eighth Circuit model of consciousness, his personal Tarot system, and his visions of human destiny beyond the planet itself. This is exactly the kind of territory. We love on this show because it
forces us to ask. Was Timothy Larry just a psychedelic evangelist or was he part of a much older tradition, one that saw altered states as initiatory, symbolic, and even magical. Was he repacking ancient esoteric ideas for the technological age? And what happens when taro, ritual language, psychology, revolution, and futurism all begin to blur into one worldview. Now, before I introduce the rest of the panel and the guest, I would like to remind people about the website. We
have Occult Research Institute dot org. If you're into reading. We have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. All right, finally, enough out of me and Robbie. What is going on?
Sir? How are you? Thank you very much for making it today.
Hey, Nick, this is gonna be a great one. This is something that I've actually looked quite a bit into in the past. For those out there that don't know who I am, I'm Robbie Marx. I'm an artist, illustrator and researcher. And you can check out all my various other works at my link tree which is link tre r m a r X and that'll pull up all my social media, my Patreon as well as my metamind cast, where you can check out some more of all my various works. And yeah, again, this is gonna be a
good one. I'm excited.
Yeah, I was glad you made it for this one. I figured he'd really be interested in this. Thank you very much for making it, Robbie, and we got Joseph aka Lenny. What is going on, sir?
How are you?
Is there anything you'd like to add that maybe I left out or something.
Now, I think that's a great intro, like the you know, I think a lot of the criticism of not only Leary, but a lot of the thinkers of the sixties and seventies and the kind of like pre new age occult explosion of the psychedelic era is that they merely repackaged material from the East when really, and Leary was very clear about this, like prior even to his becoming a well known public figure, when he was a lecturer at Harvard, they looked to the East and to the magical systems
of the West, precisely because they knew that when they started looking at psychede Elix, that the academic literature and the scientific literature at the time just did not do an adequate job of explaining what was going on. So they they looked for precursors, you know, in all of human history. Like they knew that they weren't the first people dealing with this stuff. They couldn't have been, but you know, if you went to Harvard you might think that.
So they purposefully look to the east, look to the west, looks at the past, and it's you know, it's just such a fertile topic for conversation. I'm very excited to get to it.
Yeah, right, No, for sure, for sure.
Uh, the first question I had, I guess, uh, what first pulled you toward Timothy Larry's a cult side specifically, instead of more his familiar psychedelic or political Timothy Leary side.
You know, it's always been there, kind of under you know, It's like tim worked through so many different areas and disciplines and worked so quickly and never had he was
not a rigorous scientist. He never had time to he never took the time to lay things out very like methodically and specifically, Like you'll read his books and he'll use like five different names for the same term and never explain what he's doing, or like you look through his bibliography and like when the whim hits him, he'll like change the titles of books from like twenty years ago. So it's very like he was just very ad hoc, very just like you know, just rolling with it, rolling
with punches, surfing the waves. But there were always these tantalizing clues and statements that were perhaps under explored in Larry's work and in Robert Anton Wilson's book were connecting this stuff to magic in the occult, and I mean people knew about it. There was there was a period of time where it seemed like every occult writer referenced Leary's circuits, but like when you would dig into it,
they didn't necessarily. It was almost like it was like the rigger, we have to mention this, but no, But when I would follow up with them, nobody really was working with the circuits in a I think maybe uh one of Jason Augustus Newcomb's books might have been the most serious attempt to look at Leary's ideas in the in the context of Western esotericism, but there wasn't a ton out there, and I just felt like it felt the eight circuit model felt to me like it was
important and I wanted to dig into it and really see if there was a there there. I could have done that and found nothing. I could have like wasted a year, five years of my life or whatever. But what I instead found is that it's even was even a more fertile area to explore than you know, I knew when I undertook this project.
I actually had a couple of people on maybe about a month or so ago for the eighth Circuit Model. It's pretty interesting.
Yeah, was that Rachel and Douglas Wingate?
Yah?
Yeah, I heard that episode, and yeah, it's really interesting. When I started working on this project, Douglas, well, both of them were the some of the first people I found, and so we kind of like worked on our projects simultaneously. And of course they're coming from like a clinical background
and I'm coming from a magical background. But yeah, they read my book and gave me notes and vice versa, and it's really exciting and to see a few different people exploring this stuff nowadays, and like currently, I think maybe there might be a small little Leary renaissance in the office. But it's very exciting that they're able to use the model in their field, which is kind of
distinct from mine. But again, how how distinct can it be if we're both able to go down the same rabbit hole there, you know.
From a therapeutic perspective per se versus an internal.
Well yeah, yeah, and you know the important part is that, you know, Robert Anton Wilson had a term maybe logic, which you know, which is like maybe maybe it's you know, it's it's it's it's a it's a worldview or a type of logic where you place things that you can't quite confirm into a into its own box. And like, h I think a lot of people understand what that
means intellectually, but not necessarily can live that way. But when you when you understand that, and you understand the idea that what Leary and Wilson created with the Hrivant models a framework for approaching knowledge. It can be used in all different kinds of fields or modalities.
Right, yeah, And Robert Anton Wilson specifically, you know, when he's talking he invents new words to describe things. He has these categories where they mean both the sides of the same thing to encounter. It's very interesting Robert Anton
Wilson's logic. But as far as Leary himself, you know, when there's the one video where Leary says he's continuing the work of Alistair Crowley, you know, and and can you get into any of that stuff where he didn't they go and recreate some of the journeys of Crowley and kind of.
Not to cut you off. Yeah, yeah, So one of the antecedents, an I don't know if that's right. One of the precedents of of the psychedelic research that they discovered alongside people like William S. Burrows and Aldus Huxley was Alistair Crowley. And there's a really interesting story. And and John d was another one that you know, influenced Leary quite a bit. And Learry was not like a
methodical occultist. He didn't like leave like rituals and ritual rubric and you know, like but he but all these things GURGIAF. Crowley all informed his practice. So when he was in Algeria, when he was in exile because the he like escaped from prison. He was with a colleague named Brian Barrett and they were in Boosada. I never I'm not sure how to pronounce it, the area in Algiers in Algeria where Crowley and Victor Newburgh were doing
anachi and rituals. And you know, Leary and Barrett were there tripping and they saw this figure and it, you know, and they knew it had to do with John Dee and they didn't know what was going on. And then like a year later they discovered that that was the exact same area where Newburg and Crowley were doing these rituals. And then Leary took that a step further and when he was back in prison in the United States, he
developed a ritual. It was him and a fellow prisoner named Wayne Benner and their partners, and they developed a practice that was similar in a lot of ways to Dee and Kelly's practice and channeled transmissions from who knows where, the angelic realm, the angelic realm, their DNA, you know something, right, but so so yeah, so the occult was an influence, but Learry wasn't the type of person to like, you know,
I think I think many of us. If we have like one or two good insights in life, we're lucky, and we beat the hell out of it and we repeat it over and over. I think Leary was the kind of person that, you know, by the time something happened, he was already onto the next thing. So so he didn't really explore this occult stuff quite as much as I explored it for him.
But it was part of the package of the things that were surround the ethos, the zeitgeist of the time.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
When you began this project, what do you think was like the biggest misconception people had about uh, Larry that he kind of wanted to correct.
Well, you know, it was literally just trying to understand for all the references to Crowley and to magic in the tarot, in Larry's more obscure works, if there was really are you know, if it really was an important
part or not, you know. And then there were some dead ends, like I read an article about the like the New York City occult scene in the nineteen seventies and how they were really into Larry's eight circuit model is prior magical practice, And I spoke to Peter Lavenda about it because he was there and he said, yeah,
we don't. I don't somebody made that up, you know. So, I mean, there was like a lot of these dead ends, but there is a very strong through line of Larry's work from the sixties, late fifties through you know, the end of his life that is held together by the occult and occult practice.
Awesome to thank you.
Do you think Leary himself understood that he was kind of operating in a i mean, in an occult lineage, or was he borrowing symbols and methods fully identifying as an occultist.
No, he absolutely was aware he was a part of a tradition. He considered himself a reincarnation of Aleister Crowley. Which it's kind of funny because Crowley died in forty seven and Leary was born twenty years earlier. But his definition of you know, he had a very interesting perspective on reincarnation. He felt that any person who left a really strong imprint on your DNA, on the couct of unconscious could be said to be a reincarnation, you know,
to be reincarnated through you. That's how we explained that. But yeah, so he he was, he really brought magic and space exploration and space migration together. He felt that our goal as a species was to leave the planet. He thought that we could not continue to evolve beyond
a certain point if we're stuck on planet Earth. So he had a lot of these, you know, he had a lot of these concepts and slogans really that were his own, unique to him, but also refer to magic magical practice like turn in turn onto an in drop out as the one everybody knows, which is really magical ritual, like that's his summary of magical ritual or smile, space migration, intelligence,
increase in life extension. He thought that that was the ultimate goal of humanity, and he very much framed it. I don't even think this has ever been published, but I read in his letters to Robert Anton Wilson in the New York Public Library where they keep the archives of Timothy Leary's archives, he wrote that, you know, Leary or Larry Crowley said do what thou will. But the question is then what do you do with that? You know,
what do you will? And he said, you know, the answer is has to be space migration, intelligence, increase in life extension. So he is very aware that he was part of a lineage.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I think he kind of made that obvious in the previous stuff you said. It was just you know, one of my questions anyway, Robbie, did you have anything you wanted to ask before I keep going?
Yeah, just well, not necessarily asked, but just to add I met Leary, I don't know, it must have been ninety two or ninety three, and spend the evening with him, and he was at that time, this is when he was lecturing on the ideas of merger machine consciousnesses with human consciousnesses and the idea of that accelerating and leading to our ability to be able to become a second tier civilization and get off the planet because of the you know, when you get into the histories and the
constant destructions that happen cyclically. But yeah, I just think it's it's very interesting just all the and I think that psychedelic culture in general is highly wrapped up in esoteric and occult ideas simply due to its international or it's into relationship between consciousness and transcendence.
Yeah, and you know, and that's I think the important thing about Leary Leary in relation to the occult is like he's not expl I mean he is to an extent, like he's not making absolute claim of this is what this experience is, or this is what a spirit is, you know, or how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. He's like giving a framework for understanding like different experiences that we as occultist ramistics or whatever.
Experience like satory sensory bliss is very much like a c fifth circuit phenomenon or high magic really works with the sixth circuit, or if you start talking about archetypes or you know, collective unconscious talking about the seventh circuit. So he's not making claims about like he has theories about like where those places things might reside in the brain. And a lot of his science is now going to be you know, old, because he's been dead for thirty
years and he was writing twenty years before that. But still as a framework, it's very useful for kind of categorize what your experience. And that's a lot of like what Douglas Wingate and doctor Rachel Tureski discussed in their book eight Circuit Ascension is using the same framework for psychedelic assistent therapy. You know, Jason Augustus Newcomb, and I think it's twenty one of his books, twenty first century Mage maybe refers to the circuits as you know, different
experiences along the magical path. So I think this stuff is really useful for in a number of areas. But it's useful, but it's not like absolutely the truth of the capital today.
It's a system that's been found to work for the individuals that use it.
Yeah, go ahead, Well.
I was going to say, I think that a lot of these philosophies, dating back, you know, to pre Mystery School and back into Egyptian the culture kind of takes on and uses the familiar things as symbols to uh basically you know, and as the fractal moves, those things manifest in different ways, becoming into the modern systems that we're trying to understand and regulate.
Now.
Yeah, you know, there's a lot to unpack there. Uh yeah, but uh yeah, yeah, I agree.
Uh, there's a question real quick before I ask you another one, de Larry, have any theories about reincarnation?
You know, a lot of the like kind of more Yes, like he thought it was you know, he thought he was reincarnation of Timothy Leary, or of Robert Alistair Crowley.
There's a lot of names thrown around, but yeah, yeah, he felt that reincarnation, like, you know, he felt that at a specific, fake level of consciousness, one could interact with whatever the collective unconsciousness unconscious unconscious is, and he thought that reincarnation was kind of borrowing from Like so it's not like, you know, he's making no claims about spiritual the soul, but like, you know, whatever Alistair Crowley left lying around in the DNA, Leary picked up on
and ran with it. He you know, he was continuing the same He called it a life script, and it wasn't like a literal thing, but as a metaphor, you know, it's kind of like a TV script. You'll you'll find that a lot of the common New Age or occult concepts that people take literally, Leary really made fun of.
He didn't take it literally, but he saw all his pointing towards something I'm very much of the mind, and I probably get this from a lifelong fascination with Leary and Wilson, is that I'm not really interested in defining or explaining things that are kind of ineffable, like even talking about spirits. It's like what you think you're gonna
like weigh a spirit, you know. So it's like like I understand it's people use that concept and it's very useful, and like the magicians I know that like kind of work traditionally in traditional paths or whatever seem to be a lot more effective than the ones. I know, this is just anecdotal that are like chaos musicians. Anything goes. But I don't think that necessarily says anything about the reality underlying what they're doing as much as perhaps technique, if that makes any sense whatsoever.
Yeah, Yeah, another question, really well, I mean I want to ask if you know about this Leary reference to the Best Book of the Dead somewhat often.
Yeah, he actually, you know, I talked about him. They they were looking for pre precursors to psychedelic research, and when he was at Harvard, they discovered that Tibetan Book of the Dead was actually a very useful manual for reprogramming personality and consciousness using psychedelics. So they saw he saw and used the Tibetan Book of the Dead as like a manual, like a like an owner's manual or or how to manual for for you know, psilocybin trips and LSD.
Trips and ascended states.
Ascended states correct. And Alvis Huxley actually, when he was on his deathbed, his wife led a session with him, an LSD session using Timothy Leary and his colleagues. They rewrote they did kind of like a psychedelic translation of the Benton Book of the Dead, and you know Aldus Huxley, yeah, used that and his wife used that to guide a trip when he was on his deathbed. So yeah, so yeah, it was definitely they definitely found the East to be
fertile ground. I mean just the fact that all those guys, so it was kind of like the Triumvirent Richard Metzner, Ralph Metzner, Richard Alferd who became Barba rom DAWs, and Tim Leary we're kind of the research team or the head guys, and you know, they all had their extended periods of time in India, and of course Richard Albert became Barbara ram Das, so there's a real influence there
as well. Yeah, which is following, you know, along with like you know, what's his name, Alan Bennett and Alistair Crowley taking or you know, borrowing or learning from the East and there right socialists.
Yeah.
Yeah, And what I think is interesting when you look at Alistair Crowley's history, and I don't know if you've there's a couple of research papers that he had a burlesque banjo troupe that they would basically take over these bars and then on admission, when you paid your entry fee, they would give you a cup of wine full of with mescaline and you would go in and basically they would have a theatrical, musical, kind of ritual show that entailed some aspects of the cult, some aspects of theater,
some aspects of music. But then kind of when you trace that forward into the modern musical scene, getting into the acid tests, getting into the human being, and right up into the modern festival scene, where this has kind of become a large scale cultural kind of initiation practice per se.
Yeah, I mean that's really wild. They called it the Rights of Eleusis, I believe was Curley's thing, Yeah, and it was, yeah, and he was. Curley was very aware of the fact that ritual, that feeder comes from ritual, and at one point theater and ritual were the same thing.
And you know, and then you know, the psychedelic pioneers, not just Leary, but certainly Leary and the commune he had at Millbrook where purposefully worked, you know, trying to find different art forms that correspond to different states of consciousness, including psychedelic art.
Yeah, one thing I wanted to ask you, I do know you mentioned in your book that you do think he kind of was involved or engaged with Western essotticism. What do you think his practice, what do you think his practice looked like?
Because of that, I don't know that he had like a practice as much as you know, he was doing his thing, you know, he was he was doing his research, and I think I think his practice was focused primarily on you know, his research, but then trying to find precedence for it. So like I do know that in at Millbrook they did a lot with gurd Jiff, they you know, and you know, there was the as they got more into the acid and got more into the hardcore stuff, they kind of got more into Crowley. There
was the Indian period. It was really a you know, it was they had a great freedom in the fact that they weren't really very good academics, so they really so they could pick and choose and borrow and just do whatever they damn well pleased.
It's kind of very artistic in a sense.
So I, uh, you know, I should have asked this prior because it would have made more sense. Do you think he was more in the philosophical kind of a cold angle than the actual ual and practice.
I think, well, no, he was definitely. I think his actual practice practice was far more of Eastern stuff, like that sort of thing. But you know, fully aware that the East and the West were kind of plumbing the same depth depths, you know, I think, you know, I think I think he, you know, took psychedelics and he's like, wow, how do I explain this? And it's like to borrow some stuff from the East, some stuff from the West,
put it together. And I also think that he was of a type who I don't know if I agree with this, but I think he was of a type where it's like he spent so much time on these, like doing so many drugs that he kind of felt didn't feel the need to like do a rigorous Golden Dawn style right building of the subjective synthesis.
Now I have a question there, And if you don't know, you know, but there. I've heard some discussion on the idea that Leary went to Congress and basically pursued making LSD illegal and then coming back and pushing it as a taboo substance to make it more a you know, a draw to assimilate into society.
No, he actually went, he testified before Congress trying to get it to be no no, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was his his whole you know, and it's it's pretty interesting. You can read like the transcripts of it. It was a total shit show. Like basically Ted Kennedy as a uh you know, he saw a good he saw a good pr opportunity, so he called Tim Leary in front of Congress and raked him through the coles.
And Leary's entire message was that if you want to regul, if you're serious about doing something with this, have it regulated and have doctors kind of oversee things, which you know, personally, I I, you know, regulation sounds scary and I don't trust my doctor to control my trip. But but I mean that does make more sense than creating a war on drugs and sending a whole generation in prison, which is what happened, and which is what Leary predicted on the floor of Congress.
Did hey, hey, crew, Hey crew, I'm here now. It's nice to see everybody. It's nice to meet you, Lenny and maybe day Marx. How are we today?
Good?
I'm great?
What I want? Did you hit on the fact that, uh, that that Leary thought that he was moving on and continuing the work of Crowley, which I think is like fascinating in and of itself and all things.
But he also credited the CIA with the pushing of the the substance into culture for more so than any other force, at least that's what I saw in an interview.
Well, that's definitely true because of how much that the CIA then gave LSD to the Grateful Dead during those time periods, and so they were some of the main proponents of pushing LSD in the time frame let alone with MK Ultra and all those things going on.
Yeah, and you know, I mean, it just says a lot about the consciousness level of the CIA that when you look at the MK ulture experiments, which you know, they funded, they didn't like lead them, They just they just made the bank roll, you know, paid them, paid the money. And you know, people like you and Cameron did the dirty work. But you know, they had access to all the LSC they could possibly want, and all they can think to do is like strap people to beds and.
And strobe them. Yeah, like messages playing in the background.
That they couldn't actually because they wanted a truth serum, right, the exoteric understanding of these things. But they really got exactly what they wanted for the fact that they were able to put people into imprint vulnerability, and upon doing so, they understood how to put an entire population into imprint vulnerability by the usages and movements through the blue light
and everything that's going on with the electronics today. So without the understanding of the nervous system, with the LSD experiments and mk ultra, we wouldn't have the kind of electronic Internet culture that we have today, which is fascinating.
One thing, Lenny, I did want to ask you a little bit more back to the magic because I want to just kind of get an idea what this man was into when it comes to I guess traditions and I guess maybe influences and occult ideas. Who seemed to have influenced him the most besides Crawley is.
Uh, you know, that's a good question. I mean, he I think it was a whole I think Gerjieff was probably the biggest influence on him, and and a lot of his work was not strictly psychedelic. I mean Timothy Leary obviously loved his psychedelics, but as far as like actual research and you know, into the and how to, I mean, really the whole goal, like psychedelics was just the tool. The goal was the liberation of humankind. And I think he saw humans as robots in a very
similar way as Gertcheff did his mechanical clockwork mechanisms. And I think that he was mostly influenced by Gerjieff in his attempts to break humanity free.
And have you talked about how one of his massive influences was obviously John C. Lilly and his Eight Circuits of Consciousness and the Human Biocomputer, which is deeply integrated. Even though it's not known as a magical grimoire, I think it's one of the most foretelling magical grimoires of our time frame due to the cybernetics and how important it is to understand the nervous system on is exactly what magic is doing well.
Sure, yeah, I mean the eighth circuit model is Leary's. But yeah, that's drugsy.
Lilies first the programming and metaprogramming the human biocomputer, and then Leary took it and made it into an eight circuit model.
Well, yeah, programming and metaprogramming is a important work.
And is that to do with the dolphins?
Ye?
And deprivation tanks? Yeah, yeah, he created the deprivation tanks.
Yeah. Yeah. Learry's eight circuit model came from actually the work he was doing in the fifties at uh was it the Kaiser Institute in San Francisco or in the in Oakland? And but yeah he he and Lily were like attacking the same problem from like different not even different but just slightly different ankles, and and they met in the middle. And yeah, Lily is extremely important. Yeah, you can't have one without the other, for sure.
Yeah, Liarry wasn't dolphins though.
Well, I don't have any I don't have any proof.
I don't know. I don't actually yeah, and I don't actually know. I think it's fascinating and I will be honest, Nick, I think the whole jerking off dolphins thing, even though it may have happened, I think, is how the exoteric Christian conspiracy theorist degrades the work that which then brings it back into the It's not all dicks and demons, it's not all dolphins and jerking off. It's it's you know, it's how you know how important it is to know that John C. Lily did his work, because that book
is so amazing. It was a catalyst in my own understanding for the human nervous system. And what then how Robert Anton Wilson came on and then created, you know, wrote Prometheus Rising from all that kind of work.
Didn't Lily right, like purposefully right the beginning of the book to be like really dry and boring, so that like his funders wouldn't get to the good stuff and realize what he was saying.
That's exactly it.
Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, nice. Did anybody have any questions before I keep going? Right?
What makes the tarot deck? I know you get into the tarot deck correct with in your book?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the kind of the selling point. So Leary and Robert Anton Wilson. One of the most interesting things I think aspects of Leary is or maybe just the thing that I resonate the most with or I admire is that, like his writing, his work was the most important thing. Like even when he was in prison, he wasn't you know, he was spending time trying to get out of prison, but he was spending more time like writing and self publishing these books that nobody wanted,
you know. And he explored the levels of consciousness and occult correspondences with Robert Anton Wilson. They found found that when Leary first started exploring psychedelic drugs and mapping out the states of consciousness, he found that he met Brian Barrett, who was just like a drug e poet guy who was also mapping in his own way the states of consciousness, and they discovered they were like working in the same area.
That was kind of like one of the first things that made Leary go, wow, I'm onto something like somebody else from a different part of the planet is exploring the exact same ground I am there must be something objective to the psychedelic experience or experience of consciousness. And then when he started looking at tarot astrology, the Olympian gods,
all these different areas of occultism, he found correspondences. The subject of correspondences is really interesting and really important because I think I think a lot of what correspondence correspondences does in magical practice is it creates a framework. So it's like, maybe there's no factual truth, like one hundred percent factual objective truth in like Crowley's seven seven seven,
but if you internalize that, it's very powerful magic. And I think Leary was working with that, so he kind of formulated his When he talks about the layers levels of consciousness, he's not just talking about what we experience as humans. He's also experienced talking about the evolution of consciousness through thousands and millions of years. So he pausits there were twenty four levels of past and future consciousness or evolution, and he mapped them onto the tarot trumps.
Now there's only twenty two tear trumps, so he had to invent a couple. But and then, and then, to me, it became a really interesting question like if we go the other way, if I start experimenting with taro using Leary's definitions and symbolism, well I have effective results. And I found it and I found it to be very useful, So I think that's kind of like confirmation that there's something to all this.
Well that and just to add into that which I which is great. I love. That is the idea of the how the major arcana is also an evolutionary process
and progress through time. So we find that one of the easiest ways to even describe that is what Alan Moore does in Promethea, and in Promethea in the first volume or volume so I can't remember what it is, but he actually, you know, is talking about, yes, it is something for the human individual and how we evolve to higher states of consciousness and we go through the
hero's journey. But he's directly stating how a civilization starts from that seedling, that full type character all the way to the merging to the next ayon with the universe and things like that, and so right, I do highly recommend everyone going out as always, as I always say, go read Promethea by Alan Moore, because it's a beautiful grimoire in and of itself to show what it looks like when a whole civilization is brought to the brink
of apocalypse, and what an apocalyptic what apocalypse can look like on a mass scale when the you know, Promethea then brings it upon and eminetize the esca seon.
Was there a anything else, like really about the taro that you would like to kind of touch on it, Like you said more poor part of the book.
Well, you know, it's the tarot in my book is utilized a couple of ways. It's utilized as a much like we described that Alice Alan Moore book as kind of like a narrative of evolution, not only you know, not only to where we are now, but to where we're going in the future. And but also the symbol, the signs and symbols of the Leary tarot are useful as and it it's like it's not the same as the traditional major arcana, but they speak to each other
in a really interesting way. Yeah. Yeah, so that's like I talked to Douglas Rushkoff and he said that Leary told him that The Game of Life, which is Leary's tarot book, was like his most important book. But Leary considered it his to be his own most important book. But it's also like, well it's not in print and it's hard to read, so mine's kind of like a dummy, like like the Game of Life for dummies, I think I think people will. And also Leary had his own
way of reading the tarot. He he did a read it. He would do readings with only the major Arcana cards and he would he would, you know, whatever, shuffle him lay him out. So he would lay him out in seven rows of three, so that's seven circuits. He only worked with seven circuits, even though there were eight and one stage of each circuit. And then there's twenty two major arcana cards, so you're going to have one left over.
So then you go through the cards that you laid out and you find the fool and that becomes a significator. So then you take whatever cards left over and you put it in this array and that will tell you what specific circuit and stage your reading corresponds to. And then the card obviously is the reading itself. And if the fool, and if the fool is left over, then he says, scrap it, don't it's not time to do
a reading. So so there you have like an interesting So he was obviously, and uh, I think Brian Barrett told John Higgs like that's how Leary read his tarot cards. So obviously the signs and symbolism of the circuits was he considered it not just like an explanation of what a scientific explanation of consciousness but or evolution, but as symbolism that can be used for divination, which he's never
written about anywhere. It's never like you not, you would not think that from reading his work, but you know, it just happens to be like a footnote in uh a biography of Timothy Leary that explains that. So there, That's what I was doing a lot of with this book, reading through everything that Tim's written or that's been written about tim and trying to find the breadcrumbs to like things that refer to the Western esoteric tradition, which might
all be bullshit. Maybe I just told like a fascinator, you know, maybe I just made up my own system based on what I assumed was going on. But I think it's a valuable I think Leary's work was valuable, would be a valuable to valuable to occultists that but it hasn't been presented that way yet.
So well, I think you're completely right, and I think that is brilliant for the many reasons, and that's something I'm continually trying to push as well, is without the understanding of how the human nervous system works in the world were stuck in superstition in a magical kind of paradigm.
And the magical paradigm is really important that it evolves with our understanding of not only the models of consciousness that we use like Ra's reality tunnels, but it's how we also have a mirror image of what our technology that we're using at the same time. And so if we have these black mirror phones and we're looking into our computer systems and how you know, AI and evolution is moving, we also then need to upgrade our understanding of how our own nervous system and its circuits are
moving through reality. And so I think then that with exactly I think that it's almost ridiculous for somebody to ever say that Timothiary wasn't moving through the Western esoteric tradition with exactly what he's talking about, because he's talking about even with his even though he did state that he said it wrong to an interurn in a dropout, you know, he would say probably drop in, I think
is what I read instead. But the idea of making sure that you go deep within your own not the Plato's cave, but going within your own cave to be able to sit, meditate, pranayama, Ponchali's eight limbs of Yoga, which then maps onto the eight circus of consciousness and so right and hit those higher circuits so we can experience the starc transmission or whatever serious b is trying to talk to us, while also understanding that there are
different models to witness these things. So it's not just us experiencing, you know, like Kroll's Iwas or our holy Guardian Angel or whatever these gods are, but it's also we're having different explanations of how our left brain is talking to our right brain and how then I'm tapping into all my own inner demons, and you know, it's it's it's foolish to think that the psychology, that psychology and magic, mind and magic are separated, because that falls into what I think is the same old trap of
Cartesianism and the Enlightenment period where they're trying to separate the eye from the rest of the world, which then which brings us back into the phenomenological experience of how important it is that I am a being in the world trying to understand my own beingness, which leads to the broader horizons. And so I think that you haven't made anything up. I think you're actually hitting on exactly what he was trying to hit on, because he was the magus of that time.
Yeah. Yeah, and it's you know, Wilson in The Cosmic Trigger. He one of my favorite things he's written, or anybody's written, is the kind of comparing contrast between the star Seed signals and the Book of the Law. And there's an important understanding there because we all, I don't know I've had visionary experiences. I suspect some of you may have. And it's like, it's so important to be aware that
it's everything's being filtered through your nervous system. Yes, and you know, so when you read this this Wilson, when you read The Cosmic Trigger, you know he lays out how, you know, the Book of the Law and the star Seed Transmission, Leary's visionary transition seemed to be coming from the same place, but are filtered through each individual person. And you know, Leary was embarrassed by his his visionary experiences or his channeling the star Seed transmission Terra two.
He was embarrassed by that stuff later in life, and I think it was because, you know, in prison when he created those books, he kind of lost sight of the fact that he is the artist that makes a grass green. You know. Yeah, nice, But I don't know, it's nothing to be embarrassed about. I mean, when you go into those states, you have to give yourself over to them for them to be effective, and then you come back from it and you go, mmm, man, this is a little weird.
You know.
Yeah, no, I agree, it's I think then also if these things one of my last live streams I basically tried to help break down exactly if we understood Alfred Corzinspi's work, which was huge in Robert Anton Wilson's life and his general semantics and understanding different levels of abstraction in the highhierarchies of how the nervous system works, then I think we would get a lot less guru syndrome and cult of personalities and these different religions that have
taken place, let alone the far reachings of what happened to Thelema and Croleianity. And I think that, you know, and then it stems downstream into all the New Age bullshit and the witches and all this little fairy, hairy,
nonsensical pop astrology bullshit that I can't stand. And so it's a fascinating thing, is that if we could all understand that our nervous system is filtering these things based upon that either the alchemized variation of our own our own ego, you know, and how our paradigms are set up, and our either love or hate for Christianity or whatever the religions of our past, because Croley himself never truly could bust himself free from Christianity due to all the symbols that he was using.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think any of us really do, like I think, I think, you know, it's good now that over the last thirty fifty years, I don't know how long, like we have sort of learned to intellectually understand what you're saying, but it's not so easily accomplished or internalized. And that's what and you know, and that's the purpose of magic, and that's you know what Leary
was saying. It's like, you can understand this stuff intellectually, but unless you've done the work, you're you know, and you you know, you you still have like a strong circuit to imprint. That's filtering everything, and even if you've done the work, you're probably not going to break free from that, you know. I find that Anto Olli used to talk about this, and I definitely agree that, like Wilson and Leary both seem to have kind of like
a strong anti terrestrial circuit bias. Part of them really wanted to be free from that. Yeah, yeah, I just want to I think, just enjoy it. Well, you have it, well you're here.
You know.
Part of my journey in all of this was the coffee just kicked in. So look out circuit three coming on. It's like, yeah, yeah, part, you know, part of my journey and all this was I somebody gave me neuropolitique with that laid out the circuits among other things. When I was like eighth grades, like fourteen, I was like my mind was blown. I'm like, this is how the world worked, Like this is how I've always seen how
the world works. And but I was always interested in the first four circuits because those were that's what they that's relatable, Like I could diagnose my parents and my teacher and my girlfriend or whatever like using this stuff. The other four was so abstract. I didn't even have like whatever, and then it was just like gobblygook to read about it. And then once I started having some like serious mystical and magical experiences, I was like, I
get it. Consciousness starts locally and then goes everywhere, and and I, you know, and I went from intellectual understanding to inspiration or intuitive or whatever. But I don't I just don't think that, like, you know, I don't think people are aware enough. People just aren't aware. And it's just how human beings are made of, how much how they're being influenced by their lower circuits or their terrestrial circuits all the time.
Yeah, yeah, and what they what was the saying that always comes to mind right now is who is the most trusted of all the stages and mystics. It's the robot, right the robot. Who you can trust the robot because the robot is just running and making sure everything works. And so that's why it's important to take control of your own first four circuits. Heal those things through some kind of practice, and then you can take off and
blast off from there. Otherwise you're diluting ourselves all the way to Cather, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Some of the most interesting stuff about the circuits is the fact that the the the connections are the anchors, where circuit five is anchored by circuit one, circuit six is anchored by circuit two. You know, if you're not if you if your circuit I mean, it's just you know, a silly example, but it's like if you're like one of those people that every time you get high you
start getting paranoid and crazy. Maybe it's because circuit five, you know, you're exploring circuit five, but circuit one is like, you know, you hate your job and you're you're you're about to be kicked out of your house. It's like, of course you're going to be paranoid, you know, It's like,
of course you're going to be anxious. So it's like the lower circuits in that schema, which is very antio ali, is like they're not to be escaped from there, not to be fled from there, to be nourished, because those are specifically the things that give you the resiliency to explore the higher circuits.
Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, I like that. So do you think then that's where he went off a little off the rails with his smile, right, space migration, intelligence, increase life extension, and then into this DARC transmissions because he kept wanting to get us off planet. Very Elon Musk esque.
Yeah, I think there is some of that. I think, like, you know, he was in prison. What's the ultimate escape, it's like escaping the planet, you know. But also it's like there is a little conflation there because it's like he used the frame, the framework and came to the conclusion, which, you know, good for him. He's a smart guy. He looked at the facts and decided that space bration was
the logical, logical endpoint of that. I look at the last you know, forty years of what we've been doing as a species and what we've learned about space faring, and it's like, maybe that's not the endpoint. I'm not very bullish on going to the Moon or going to Mars. I'm like, I'm more bullish on let's fix this planet. You know. It's like and but that's my opinion, my honest opinion, based on my analysis of the situation. But it doesn't make the framework, the eighth circuit model doesn't
change that. It's just we just I'm a human being. I have a different opinion, you know.
Well, it's fascinating to add in something I think about I've been thinking about a lot, is how I think maybe this total recall Philip K. Dick thing about getting off planet is an illusion to have us forget that. The way you move outside of the planet is going into within and changing your nervous system. So then you are actually experiencing this universe from a different perception. Thus
you can go wherever you want. If consciousness is non local, you know, we are only experienced at locally, so you need a body somewhere to go traverse the cosmos. But this whole big dick in metal sky like let's move off all that type of thing is really hard something.
The thing with that, yeah, when you get into the whole space aspect of it, it's the idea that we're kind of a race that's limping along through these cyclical destructions. They keep bringing us down to zero and we keep rising up. So in essence, we're at threat as a species until we can get off of the thing that could destroy us.
So well, Larry had his feelings about extraterrestrials. Obviously, he believed in higher intelligence, but he saw He thought it was the silliest, most reductive thing to say that higher intelligence would build a craft out of metal and hurl itself through space. You know, it's like it's we you know, he said that obviously, like when Carl Sagan and whatever that I can't remember off the top of my head, you know, the search for extraterrestrial life SETI beaming radio waves?
What did Leary call it? Like electro magnetic chauvinism. He's like, we should be using our mind and our consciousness and what we know can travel, you know, beyond the speed of light. Yeah, and and communicate that way. And he thought that that's what he was doing. And he thought that's what John D did. I a buddy of mine told me. He was like, reread Communion by Lee Streiber and then you know read John D like true and faithful relation. He's like, they're having the same experience experiences.
It was well and as far as that vehicle to get off or out of this dimension reality, that goes all the way back to Enoch, you know, self manifesting the the you know, the the that he's traversing you know, time and space through.
The light body, the dimald body, the rainbow body, the.
Rainbow body of the Buddhist.
Which is exactly what we're doing in our occult, ceremonial, magical practice, or whatever it is that we're doing. We're trying to build out our own spheres of influence so we can then just do exactly that. I wanted to bring up something that I wanted to bring up in a podcast we all did with somebody not not too long ago. But it's fascinating when the guy Stephen Greer gets brought up, and so there's something really interesting with
that guy. And I think that if he really was honest with himself and everyone else and wasn't a syop, I think that he would be talking to the occultists and the magicians and using that framework to also talk to people. But instead he keeps on trying to have us all. It's the fascinating thing is if most people understood Gores, they'd be like, why do I want to connect to some fucking eggre that he's trying to tell us is perfect in and of itself.
It's fascinatings to do it instead. Yeah, you know, so.
I had a question, what do you uh, oh man, Sorry, I lost the question I did have it before it was on the eighth circuit.
How does your book?
Did your book you and your book connect that model to a cult or initiatory thinking at all, the eight circuit model.
Yeah, so I mean all of the I think all of the states that we experience in mystical or magical practice can be mapped onto the eighth circuit model. I mean that was you know, learly very I mean that was his research project, like experiencing these states that we all experience and we're like, whoa, what is that? That's wild? You know, what's that voice? What's that vision? And mapping it onto you know, and creating a map of that.
And you can take it further. You can you can connect the four the four worlds of you know, in the Cobbo law like map onto Like now now you're going backwards up to the rays of emanation, so you're starting with like the fourth but it's like the fourth world maps onto circuit one two very well, third worlds three, four, five, six, seven, eight, So there's a lot and then and that's great because once you've done that, it's like all right, so now we can map the golden down initial toy system onto
the to the eighth circuit, you know, which is I think that's that's an area I would like to explore a lot more.
Yeah, even if it doesn't match perfectly, I think it's definitely on how they talk about the different neuro the top four circuits on when you're experiencing those higher worlds, I think is.
Yeah, and you know, nothing ever maps perfectly exactly, but the useful I don't know if this is like my third interview today, but so I don't know if I said this before or what. But you know, correspondences rather than being seen as a map of reality, which, as we know since we've all read cosmic triggers trigger is bad idea, but see it as a framework that you're
building within yourself in order to practice effective magic. So it's like like I think Crowley and Wilson and people have been read incorrectly when people say that Crowley supported the magical model or the mental model, or said that spirits or whatever only existed in the mind. The way I perceive it is the mind is what allows us to perceive these entities and to interact with the universe
in a way it creates magic. So yes, there is a magic model or mental model, but it's it's reversed and like you know, so correspondences are but one tool, and you can, you know, you can tweak it. I mean. The mystery, the thing that I don't that I think is probably unknowable and that endlessly fascinates me, is how some models do seem to work better than others.
Yeah, it's because it's not a postmodern world like that where it's like anything.
Goes exactly, So they're pointing to some unknowable, ineffable reality. At the end of the day, we're not going to know one hundred percent of what happens beyond our sense. So it's like, that's not saying that it's all in our mind. That's not saying that anything. You know, that's not just like Cartesan dualism, but it's it's an acknowledgement of the fact that, you know what, humans are actually not perfect, believe it or not.
Yeah, no, that's great.
And to go to lead that back into the Kabbala and when we leave the Malcouth through the thirty second path of the Imagination to the Moon, which is a blast off point of magic of the High Priestess to let us move to the rest of the tree. I mean, that's exactly what's that saying. We're leaving the material realm using the mind and as long as you've honed your imagination or the dream realm, as Sarah James, I know, was just on this podcast like a few hours ago.
I think that's a very like that framework is to understand that then what we imagine the dreaming to be isn't what the Disney realm wants to talk to us
or what we've been imprinted to believe. But it goes back to the yoga part or the the yoga part of magic and yoga equating to mystics or equating mysticism in like Crowley's book four Right is that idea is that once you have your ethical and moral frameworks, and then you train the body and your hatha yoga with your asinas, and then your breath which is also helping calm the body, and then you start training the mind
so you can hone your will. That is then when you can then move through the rest of the realms of existence. But until then we are but as Timothy Leary states, as you all well know, we are caterpillars just roaming around not understanding that we are the same thing as the butterflies, but we just speak different language.
Oh.
The best, the best illustration in Prometheus Rising is the caterpillar and then the butterfly. Then the caterpillar says, you'll never get me up in one of those things, right, Yeah, and.
Then the caterpillar's got to die, so the butterfly can be born. And it's just you know, and I think that's something that's really hard, and that goes back to the idea of like the call to adventure, the sacrifice, and to realize that this dualism, this postmodern functionalist worldview that we're all like inundated with and been rewritten by.
So it's like our programs have been rewritten by the powers that be, So we don't know how to blast away from the planet and it doesn't have to be physical.
Yeah, did any of you have any other questions before.
I go on?
What's going on in the chat? Do they hate me?
No?
Man, I was on Coast to coast last week or two weeks ago, and yeah, and there it's great because you know, like George Nori doesn't read anything, you know, so he's like he's like looking at the book and asking me about the cover, and I'm like, you know, I didn't make the cover, like I wrote the word inside, and then like you know, and then my this was
the best. It was like they open up the phone lines and it's like everybody just calls up to like give their weird stories about crop circles or whatever that have nothing to do with anything. And then George is like, what would Timothy Leary say about crop circles?
Yeah?
I didn't even know Coast Coast was still on, so.
Right, Uh, one question I did want to ask you if I found this interesting, especially with this one group that's in there, because somebody that used to be on the show almost even wanted to cover the weather on the ground. Your book also places Larry in relation to figures like rom Dos if I'm saying that right, Robert Anton Wilson, and even groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. How did those worlds intersect with his psychic and occult explorations.
Well, the uh.
Leary was in prison and wrongfully imprisoned in my you know, he was forty. He was like facing thirty five years in jail, so essentially a death sentence for two joints or one joint and yeah, you know Weather Underground were you know, when you when you think about the Weather Underground or the Black Panthers, one thing to keep in mind is they were very savvy, very smart media like the like the reason that they were militants inasmuch as they believed in militancy was because they just it was
made for great pictures and great newsreels, you know, great stories. So so Leary's in prison, probably the most famous prisoner in America, and the Weather Underground are looking for their next you know, publicity coup, and it's like, well, we could go in and you know, try to rescue some like revolutionary badass and maximum security prison, or we can rescue Tim because he's in minimum security prison. Would be
really easy. So the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the so called hippie mafia at Orange County, paid the Weather Underground to just go to the prison and picked him up. And he shimmed over the fence and dropped down and the Weather Underground grabbed him and him and Leary and his wife fled the country under assumed names and went
to Algeria. So now the Black Panthers have an outpost in Algeria, and they have to get permission from Algerian government to do anything, you know, to do anything, because
they're guests of the government. So one of the Black Panthers people leaked the story to the Algerian press that famous prosecuted black African American professor Timothy Leary has escaped and like, so they thought he was a black guy, so they like let him in, you know, because it was because Africa there were there was very it was
like a pan African movement. So so yeah, tim got there and he wasn't a revolutionary and he wasn't black, but that's how But that was a really interesting period, interesting period of time because Tim aligned himself with the radical left basically to save his ass, and he was not very convincing, like he wrote some revolutionary papers at the time or revolutionary documents that are just like gobbledy gut because he could tell his heart wasn't into it.
And yeah, and he got out of Algeria as quickly as he could, but but not before having his experience where he saw John d you know, on an acid trip.
So now this is also the same time when they declared him what the most one of the most, the most dangerous man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nixon called him the most dangerous man in America, right right, And when they when they asked him about it, he said, I have America surrounded.
Yeah. Yeah, well, and I think that's interesting in regard to, you know, relation to Alistir Crowley being declared as well, mostly the wickedest man, the wickedest man.
Yeah, I found out.
I was thinking that as soon as you said that.
So they kind of you have another kind of echo in time space there.
Yeah.
You know, Tim wrote a lot about not a lot. A couple of times he mentioned because like his whole project was freeing us from these scripts, from these roles, from doing what other people say we're supposed to do. And like when he was like towards the end of his life, a gentleman, a journalist named Peter Owen Whitmer was researching Leary's life and he sent Leary a copy of a letter that Learry had written to a friend
of his, like in high school. And in the letter, Larry's talking about a short story that he was writing about a man who or scientists who invented a drug that would bring world peace. And then the government came down on him and had him assassinated. So like he wrote this story when he was sixteen and completely forgot about it, and now he's like sixty five, and he realized that that was him. You know, Learry towards the end of his life realized that, you know, his whole
project was liberating us. But he was definitely in the thrall of some forces he couldn't understand that dictated his life, and probably same forces that you know, he seems to be like part of a recurring cast of characters. I think I think Leary was right in the sense that like Crowley and Leary were kind of coughed up to do sort of the same rule, fulfill the same role. Yeah by you know, in the or genetics or whatever.
Right, and the premonition as far as him writing that childhood story and kind of living that kind of gets into kind of some Philip K. Dick kind of oh yeah, with him estimating his end in the exact way it happened.
Yeah, Yeah, And you know it's you know, and some people are just that's their role. Like that's not me, Like I'm the most not Leary, like very chill dude, you know, and it's like it's like, my life hasn't turned out that way. There's been no crazy coincidences or anything. But you know, some people just have. You know, some people get to the end of their lives and it's like they've lived the lives of ten men. And I think Leary Crowley definitely fit into that.
Thank you.
Uh.
I had another one.
How much of the nineteen sixties counterculture do you think was secretly operating with the cult assumptions even when it was used as scientific, when it was used as like a scientific or therapeutic language?
What do you mean? Uh?
Like, how much of the nineteen sixties counterculture do you think was secretly operating with occult assumptions even when it used scientific or therapeutic language, Like if it was kind of like maybe using other terms, but it was actually much more.
Maybe the idea of using a cult in a scientific manner.
Well, you know, I think Leary was using the scientific, like the science of his time to try to explain something, to try to explain the same things that mystics, yes two hundred years ago were trying to explain. You know, like the language changes over time, but the end of the day, you know, just like even the idea of him using the term circuits, that's you know, that just comes from you know, telegraphs or TV sets or radios or something. You know, he was using like the the
language of his time. But you know, Wilson later in his life preferred dimensions, you know. I you know, we would probably come up with something else, algorithms. I'm sure if Leary was alive today, it'd be the eight Algorithms of Consciousness.
And he was very techno oriented in his prophecy, in speaking in regard to you know, man machine and what that entails.
Yeah, you know, in this period, the seventies period where he's in prison, he's writing. What I love about it is he really purposefully got very clear and precise in his language. It was more like reading a computer manual like info Psychology is literally subtitled like, you know, a manual for understanding the human nervous system or something. I think he probably got that from John Lilly. I think they were kind of in the same realm, you know,
which predates chaos magic in this. You know, when you read like control okouse or something, and it's like I reread this, you know, Phil Hines thing on servitors, and it was like and it was so obvious that he was influenced by like the basic programming language, you know, and you know, and it's uh, it's in our NLP. You know. Is another example of something where they like trying to explain these ineffable things but using like precise
computer language. That's very Those are very much nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties.
Yeah, cybernetics, sci fi realm. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
And I think when you go back even into the Frankfurt school in the way dialectics developed with Hegel kind of dealing with these similar type subjects.
Yeah, I'm joking. I'm joking, not joking. I just hate Hagel.
I just can't.
It's the driest but interesting.
And the problem is it's not even Hagel himself. It's the Hagel flunkys and e girls out there.
You know, the Gaian egles everywhere.
Do you think did Leary imagine human evolution as biological, technological, spiritual?
Old the above? Do you think o the above?
Yeah?
H Is there any any areas that you personally remain skeptical there?
Well, you know, I I'm just I appreciate his uh, his methodology for looking at the world. But I don't think that I necessarily buy into all of it. Like I'm trying to think, for instance, his uh, his kind of like sour look at terrestrial consciousness. I find to
be obviously he's working through some issues. You know. It's like I'd rather you know, I think it's much helpier to enjoy being human and to try to be the best human you can be then to try to like avoid it by filling yourself with acid and wine.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's so true. I mean, because he didn't die a happy life, you know, And so it's one of those things that goes back to me trying to like, I think every great magician needs to be a great warrior at the same time. So it's like you need to build up your body, and he you know, and like ask too much.
You know.
I found something with myself because I I took a lot of acid in my younger twenties, which helped break me free from whatever it was I was going to become. And it's fascinating on how I'm almost forty now and for the last twenty years I've had to rebuild up my boundaries, and so the boundary disillusionment, which then leads you into the hiddenic state, which then it's like all of and light bro And I'm not saying that's how I was, because I was lucky enough to have I
studied philosophy and Aristotote, Plato and all these things. But the idea is is it's taken a long time to understand the even though I've trained martial arts for that whole time, how to how long it takes to rebuild your circuits after you've become so vulnerable with your nervous system, you know. And I think that's what happens when that's why so many people who are in the psychedelic New Age hippie community.
Are so liberal.
Yeah, because of that direct thing is because of their boundaries are dissolved almost completely, if that may you know what I'm saying, No, it definitely does.
I feel that. I think Leary and Wilson, or I know I know that what this wasn't the case later in Wilson's slafe, but you know, while he was on while he was on this event, sure, with Timothy Leary, I think they were both a lot more optimistic about how effective various practices were in reimprinting or or reprogramming the circuits. Like I'm not convinced that that that that you really change much, if anything on that level. I mean, you a little bit, and you can benefit greatly from it, But like.
Which which level? I'm sorry?
I think like the like the the circuit imprinting level, as opposed to altering your conditioning. Like you can massage the circuits, you can become more pliable, you can become more spontaneous or more flexible, But I don't think you're becoming a completely different person.
I will push back, and I totally respect your opinion, but I'm going to push back on Manchurian and use the term Manchurian candidate and mk ultra to a t and know that you can completely imprint a whole nother personality inside somebody's brain. And Leary's work states that on how that's something that they were doing at that time frame and.
Literally talks about that as well. But oftentimes it would crack the individual.
It does, which is why they why so many of our brothers and sisters out there lost their psyches. And like the psych words were in high demand at that time frame, especially in the psychedelic community, which I was in for a very long time. Obviously not in that timeframe, but it's I watched so many good people lose themselves and never return because of they lost so touch of of with reality.
Yeah. But is that like a fundamental altering of the leary circuits or is that just the damage of Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's a million ways to destroy somebody without without even talking about circuits, you know.
Well, but I think.
Send me some links I want to read more about that.
I would love to, nice, I will. I'm gonna write it down, so I do.
But I think with the circuits, you know, like with anything within the chakras or however you want to you know, look at all these various systems, it gives you a fundamental way to understand that you have these systems within you. And so once you understand that, then you can begin to, like you said, work on you know, manipulating and programming
and reprogramming per se. So so just at a base, you know, it's to have the system and the understanding of the system is the doorway to be able to help move yourself into a direction of goodness.
Yeah.
One O the questions what part of his worldview. Do you think he do you think still has real value today.
I think all of it, like the you know, the circuit thing, I think could be certainly used by you know, spiritual seekers of all stripes. And I think just the great gift of writing this book is like it took
me a year and a half to write. I wrote it. See, I turned it in last December, so a year and a half prior to that, I was deeply immersed in Leary's world, and it was such a great gift to be back in a world and in a headspace where there was optimism and hope and like, like you know, it's like cause there's so little of that right now that to be like thinking Leary thoughts and reading Leary things and kind of like understanding that like the world and the story of humanity is a lot bigger than
just like, yes, whatever jackasses are on the news. That was that to me was like the best part of the experience. And that's what I hope people get out of it, because it's a it's kind of a happy book, you know, it's kind of like a fun book.
What surprised you the most why you were writing this book?
Like I said, I think it was. I don't know if I was surprised, but I was just pleased that the idea is held up. You know, when you when you undertake a project, you never know if it's going to work out. You know, I could have very easily started working on it and it would have been like, oh, by the way, I discovered that Leary was wrong about everything, and this is really dumb, you know, this is a
dumb way to spend eighteen months. But no, it's like, I think Leary's work is as relevant and as important as ever, and I think, you know, I hope my book is kind of like a little little telegram from the past, bringing his ideas and updating them so people now can appreciate them.
Which is why he's the most dangerous man in the world, is because of his work if people get into it, m h.
Which is why they made him, why they made a clown out of him. You know, yeah, absolutely.
Think for yourself, question authority.
Listen to tool.
It'll help question everything exactly.
Yeah. When I when Art Bell or Art Bell, I wish it was Art Bell. When I when I was on coast to coast. You know, a lot of the calls were like, you know, like weird old conservative people that listen to AM radio at three in the morning like calling up and yelling about you know he uh he killed Art link Letter's daughter and he you know, he destroyed you know, killed all these people in the
sixties by giving them heroin. And I was just like, wow, the uh there is a whole world of peace people that still just believe the most absurd bullshit about Timothy Leary. You know, they're still out there in force. So I hope that, yeah, exactly.
Oh I could even say as a kid, from what I was told from like the TV and Coronus Timothy Leary is to what I know now, it is fucking way different.
Well, look how they made it like don't come into Yeah, Men who Stare at Goats is such a like a ridiculous movie and so stupid, and yet that's actually all happened in its own right.
It's just wash.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it's just fascinating how you can dumb these things down and then make people care about the most worthless things.
And you know, there was one of my favorite things to when I'm like watching my numb mind numbing TV, which isn't that often. It's like there was a whole like like trend in the sixties of like having an
evil Timothy Leary character on your show. Like like there's yeah, there's like an episode of Dragnet where some guys giving you know, teenagers LSD and then like whatever the Dragnet guys go to his Frank and whatever go to his house and he's like, you know, this really bad caricature of Timothy Leary like giving speeches and and it's just so funny. And yeah, there's so many shows like that. There's so many like ridiculous representations of Timothy Leary from
the sixties. So I mean it's like, you know, if you don't believe that the media has agendas and well, you know, then maybe you should rethink it. I don't know.
It kind of gets into what they did with MK Ultra and Mainson in regard to, you know, the death of the Psychedelics, you know, and yeah.
Yeah, Chaos is a mark, Robbie. Have you read Chaos before? Any of you guys read Chaos the book that I highly Lenny? Have you?
Yeah? I used to talk to tom Ony now and then yeah, he's like he's so bitter he he's just like a surly dude, you know. And uh, I actually tricked him into talking to me because I was talking to I'm gonna forget it with.
Most of my guests.
Who was it. There was some interview that Tom O'Neal wanted to get for his book that he couldn't get and I got it and I sent it to I sent him the interview. He was like so mad, but like I was able to like turn that into a phone call. And he's a great guy and he's so smart and and it was. It was funny though, because it's like he couldn't help it, like he wanted to talk to me. He did not want to talk to me, but he wanted to like like criticize me to my face more.
That's good.
Yeah, anyviews, have any more questions before I have one more and then I guess we'll wrap it up.
Make it a good one.
Well, it's kind of like something I ask everybody now, who with the books and stuff they come on with a book, you know, at the end of the day, when people have done reading this book, what is the one I guess most important thing to you?
You hope they take from it.
I just hope, like, really, it's a fantastic story. I'm not saying that I wrote a fantastic book, which of course I did, but I'm saying, like Leary's story is so fascinating and fantastic that I think most people will get something out of it just for that level. But I really hope that like the hardcore occultists and you know, the practitioners see how they can use a circuit model
and Leary's idiosyncratic take on the tarot to expand their practice. Like, I really hope that in a year, I'm having conversations with people who have like brought this into their practice and have learned things about it and can tell me what they think. So they've learned, I.
Think you will be.
It seems to be something that's catching on. You know, people are looking at it more. I think, yeah, And I don't think it's as taboo as it was even when I first got into podcasting.
Well, now you have dipshits like that Brian Johnson just doing d MT and mushrooms online during live streams, and it's fucking just kills my soul, especially because so many people A He's so sure of himself on everything that he does, and when he speaks, he gives him away on how you can tell he hasn't taken as deep of dives as you as he thinks he has, especially because of for myself, and I think I heard that
you've also delved deeply down that rabbit hole. It's like it's very telling the kind of language people use when you can tell they haven't, like with DMT blasted off or with you know, LSD completely lost their mind. Like I find it that. I mean, maybe it's how I've done it, but like I've had the most beautiful experiences, but my truly transformed experiences are the ones where I've almost never come back, and it's I've I've completely almost like lost all things.
And I think that's just I just don't know.
It's hard for me to trust somebody who's completely a out there on the open live streaming their shit first off and in second off, like when they come back and they give me the same humdrum about the new age, light love and the source and it's all this and that, and I feel so good and my life's so changed, and I'm all like, no, man, I think this is gonna. I've studied the occult for twenty years now, and I was doing all that stuff at the same time while
doing philosophy research, and I'm all, like it's taken. I still have no fucking idea, and I'm just trying to piece things together.
You know.
It's like I'm just on this golden thread trying to understand my place in the world.
And this guy's like, I got it now.
Oh yeah. If you are you familiar with Landmark Forum, I am, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done research. A buddy of mine is writing a book about it, and he's used me as a guinea pig to like go to some of these events. And there's a lot of technologies for making you feel like you've changed when you actually haven't changed. I was in this Landmark thing and it's so obvious because I've you know, I've been in
cult compounds, I've been in whatever I've been. I've had lots of experiences with people who try to twist my brain.
And it's like, You're in this conference room and you know, it's a seminar to change your life, and you have all these people that are coming in talking about how their life has been changed by this event, and I'm like we've literally been here for an hour, Like how could your life like you haven't even And I think there's so much of that in the psychedelic space where it's like, yeah, I'm convinced that I've changed my life.
It's like, well, you're not gonna know in twenty minutes, bro, you're not going to know in a day.
No, any fiction processes takes so long. That's the most important part.
And I think this goes back to what I was saying earlier. I think people don't change as much as they think they.
Have right, no right, And I think you have to live your life through that experience of having your mind blown on an howly basis, and as you're as perpetually that you come to a point where, I don't know, some sort of symbiosis kind of takes place.
Yeah, that's important.
Yeah, I think you know, to go back to the next question, you know, it's like that's the difference between me and Leary is like he saw specific seem to it, or the impression you get from his work is he sees certain chemicals are certain keys, and you use them and it switches something like my mind all my use of chemicals and different techniques have added up cumulatively to who I am right now. I don't think without that
experience that I would be the same person. But I don't think there is any point where I did something and then I was magically different.
You know.
I do understand what you're saying when you say that, especially because I think if if Kaiva was here in this conversation as well right now, she would see it from the traditional astrological point of view, and how that your chart is written up in a certain way when you were born, these stars were all combined to push and to give these forces of your nature and how you then grow in the world, so you can't in some way move outside of how your planets and your
your you know, your chart is there. So there's something to that, and I do agree.
I mean, yeah, that's the mystery. And that's what fascinates me is because it's like none of the explanations of what you just said, like that I've heard from other people make sense to me. But I'll be damned if I've done some readings that works really well. You know. It's like so it's like I can't explain it. I
do horrory, I can't. I can horror. Yeah, I do horror readings for questions all the time, and so they're so damn accurate all the time, and it's like I can't say why, and it would be really dishonest of me to say why. But who knows.
But that goes into the ways is that like we can't be masters of all things. That we have to stick to our lane. And that's why there are people who have studied like like Kaiva, she's I know you haven't met her, but she's my girlfriend. She's on the reject,
she's got her own thing. She has studied traditional astrology helenus a trolley for such a long time, and so I that that was one of the things that lacked in my magical practice because because if I was like, there's just too much of this, I don't really understand it. And then she, you know, and then her and I have these discussions and then she's read all of the great like traditional astrologers, and the way she speaks is so clearly and that's because that's her focus. Between that
and Buddhism, those things are her focuses. And so it's like for you or for myself, like we have our focus and then you know, like I to to try to speak astrologically besides with trying to understand when I should make sure my membership merch drops or when you know, when I you know, when I do one thing or another or whatnot, it's it's outside of our league here, and I think that's I think that's okay, and I
like that. And that's how I know, you know, Lenny, like we can trust each other is because we can say I don't fucking know, but it works, and I'm gonna continue letting it work for me.
We're all in the garden. There's mini paths within the garden.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I have a lot of friends in this space that I don't agree with politically at all. But like I and I, I don't. I don't even like talking about politics.
Because it's like it's.
Like it's the it's the second it's the second level, it's second circuit, it's like six more and it's just you know, Lowe's common denominator stuff. But it comes up and it's like, when I'm talking to somebody who I respect, I can take them seriously without take you without accepting the premise. You know. Yeah, and I think that's probably a useful tool for life.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's good. That's clear.
I like that.
I like the way I said that. It's so true.
All right, Well, uh, I think we'll wrap it up here.
And that was an awesome, awesome show, a really great conversation before we before I let you advertise whatever you want money random, We'll start with you this time since so you're right here to begin with.
Let everybody know what's up with you where they can find all your amazing work.
Thank you, Thank you for having me on Nick as always, Robbie love doing panels with you. He's a brilliant man up there. I love your take, Lenny. I didn't get to meet you in the beginning, but I was really excited to hear what you have to say, as well as to get on here and chat with you. I love when anybody of a sound mind is trying to
push or help. I'm trying to help put Timothy Leary's workout in there because I think the zeitguys today it is more needed than ever, and that's why I also I will try to do my part in all my things that I do and try to help push those things as well. Everybody can go find me as always on magas in the media, on YouTube, x TikTok, and Instagram. I'm gonna be dropping I think today or tomorrow morning.
I did a slight breakdown reaction review of tools VI Carrious from ten thousand Days, and so we're going to go deep on that one. And that's just the beginning of a mass of series I will be doing on my love and deeply imprinted agenda of a pushing tool to all people as well as I got all kinds of stuff that's coming out. Yeah, so just make sure
to like, subscribe and share. Next week, memberships are coming out, patreons coming out, and I'm gonna have a bunch of merch dropping because megas in the Media just meets reached all its milestones on YouTube and we're trying to take over the world one person.
At a time.
Again, as always, Nick, I love being a reject and I love being in reject with you and the clan, and so yeah, thank you for today.
No, thank you for making it my man. I was appreciated considering it not even home. You could you could tell. You can tell he's at home. He's got a tank top on.
It is definitely not that he's from.
It's so.
Thank you very much man, Robbie Mark, sir, what is going on?
Yeah, this was a great one. Always fun to talk about Kennic de Leary, Robert Anton Wilson in these subjects. It's something that I've been steeped in, you know, since i was in my teens and I'm in my fifties now, so it's just always a fun talk. And it was great to meet you, Lenny. And I'm interested in the book as well as far as my stuff. If anybody wants to check out my various works, you can go to my link tree which is link tree r M a ar X and that will pull up my podcast,
the metamind Cast, as well as my social media. You can check out my Etsy, go check out my artwork. I have some offerings out there that you can pick up some of my artwork. And yeah, as always, Nick, I appreciate having me on.
Thanks man, of course, thank you for making it. I was really hoping you work. This was right up your own and.
Letty, please, sir, let everybody know what's up with your book or you know anything you want to promote.
Please.
Yeah, yeah, guys. My April seventh is the release date, and it can be purchased anywhere books and purchased. And yeah, my substack it's Lenny Flatley dot substack dot com or just you know, search Google the occult Timothy Leary if you don't remember my name, And yeah, all my stuff is. I occasionally podcast, I occasionally do video, and I do a lot of writing and it's all on substack.
So that was awesome, nice, very much, very good sir, And again, thank you very much for coming on. I really was looking forward to this and it was better than I could have expected. And Robbie and Brandon appreciate it, and everybody in the chat that is what's up. Oh thank you Captain Alien Beats for the dollar forty nine Sapistica right before we wrapped it up.
I appreciate that.
Uh yeah, thank you everybody that's in the chat for real. I appreciate all the comments and the questions. That's why I go live. And until the next one, everybody be well.
Lita