Christopher McIntosh | Hyberborea, Rune Magic, & The Mystic North

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00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the fireside chats His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times. I'm Greg Carlwood These are the Hireside Chats. Hallelujah and hello, Hireside Chatters! From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood And we know quite well the power of empires and tyrants to distort and dismiss the history of anything that came before them or that they don't fully control. Few campaigns were more bloody and destructive than the spreading of Christianity which steamrolled and converted nearly every culture and spiritual tradition it encountered

01:55 Fully functional magic systems were replaced by a subservience to authority and slowly pushed to the back pages of history if they even made it in the books at all. But from our place in the timeline we see a lot of value in the fractured yet sophisticated pieces that have stood the test of time, and tell us that quite often something much deeper was going on with these traditions than the empires would have us believe Yes, there are many but the distorted and nearly lost history that we're going to be diving into today is that of the North. And the people who lived within the Arctic Ring The Northern Europeans, the Vikings and the Inuit along with their mythologies and legends that speak of a mystic land beyond the north wind often referred to as Hyperborea

02:41 Like Atlantis, this cultural memory of the northern people might suggest an advanced civilization in our ancient past that spread its influence outward as the changing climate made their homeland too harsh to inhabit. Is there anything to suggest these legends of Hyperborea are true? Is there real magic in the runic system? Were the Vikings just the bloodthirsty barbarians they're depicted as? Well, these are just a couple of the compelling questions addressed in the latest work of today's guest Christopher McIntosh entitled Beyond The North Wind The Fall and Rise Of The Mystic North. If you're unfamiliar with Mr. McIntosh he is a British-born writer and historian who holds a PhD in history from Oxford, a degree in German from London University, and a diploma in Russian from the United Language School.

03:30 He's written several previous books that sound quite intriguing, including Rosicrucians the History Mythology and Rituals of an Esoteric Order, Eliphus Levi and the French Occult Revival, and Gardens of the Gods Myth Magic & Meaning. So let's get into it all the way from Germany! The restorer of lost knowledge, the hyperborea seeker, the professor of Nordic Paganism, and the scholar of secret esoteric orders Christopher welcome to The Higher Side Thank you very much, Greg. It's a pleasure to be on the show! Of course this is a real pleasure I'm psyched you're here i really enjoyed Beyond the North Wind it combines two major interests I have which are digging into the magical traditions that were fractured by the hostile takeover of the Christian steamroll as well as legends of mystical lands like Atlantis or Shangri-La or of course Hyperborea so I think this

04:25 We've talked on this show about a lot of spiritual cultures before, Native American tribes, the Dogon of West Africa, ancient Egyptians, Eastern traditions. But i think there is a sort of assumption that well almost all history we learn about his white european history. So do we really need to do this but i think it's pretty clear that that's an over simplification because if you look at cal or druids or as you write about nordic pagans, you can see that a lot has been left out of the story when you say yes when i was going to school back in the nineteen fifties and sixties

05:03 The version of history we were told was basically that civilization spread from the south to the north so it all started somewhere around the region is now iraq and then when, why are they jim james in the greeks and romans and further and further north until all of europe was civilized. So the early inhabitants of northern europe tended to be thought of as primitive barbarians for example, about the only thing i remember being told is a child about the ancient britain's was that they died this skins blue. The substance cold world so i used to imagine these mysterious blueskin figures

05:51 moving through the misty forests of ancient britain, occasionally grunting to each other in what pastoral language. We now know that's a very false picture as you say so one of the things i wanted to do was correct this view but having said that there is now alot of interest in things northern When you think of the number of films, it seems like every other day a film comes out about Beowulf or the Vikings or Nordic gods. Then there are all the computer games and there's a whole genre of pop music based on Nordic themes so it somehow... The whole Nordic thing has come to life in this age. Yes I definitely notice a resurgence of sorts

06:48 And i know that you've looked at a lot of magical and history and when i talk to people who practice in the occult they often emphasize the importance of being connected to this system that your using, call it a tradition for a reason. So I think, well is it better to pay homage in my case to the indigenous magic of the area where I now live in Southern California or should I be looking at systems and cultures on more genetically linked too like Northern Europe? And I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on these threads of heritage and culture and geography even. How they pertain to magical or spiritual traditions and their potency. Yes well I come from northern Europe

07:34 So I feel a connection with the traditions of Northern Europe and the gods of Northern Europe. Now, of course the ancient Nordic religion is to some extent a reconstruction because obviously it hasn't existed continuously as a living religion But we have the ancient writings, the Edda and the Sagas. We have ancient remains, we have certain traditions, folklore and so on... And from these things one can to some extent reconstruct a religion Take for example the symbol that is used by the modern Nordic pagans, The Hammer of Thor

08:27 This is a symbol that goes right back to prehistoric times. It's found in prehistoric cave paintings and so on, and there's a story in the Edda about how the god Thor, his hammer was stolen by a giant, and Thor got it back by dressing as a woman and having the giant who'd stolen the hammer proposing to marry him And then at the wedding feast, the hammer was placed in the lap of Thor disguised as a woman which follows an old custom of placing a hammer in the lap with the bride as a kind of fertility symbol. Now that use of the Thor's hammer has been revived and this custom of placing the hammer in the lap of the bride has also being revived in countries like Sweden

09:27 So that's an example of how you can revive an ancient tradition and reconnect with it. A lot of your book, Beyond the North Wind talks about the Nordic gods and their stories. Makes sense you know? The tales in their mythologies like the one you just mentioned and they are interesting but I think they're deeper than some people realize maybe even more real than people realize And you write in the book about Carl Jung's perspective on deities where he said Deities are like a riverbed dug out over many centuries in the collective mind of a people

10:06 When the river dries up, the bed remains. And when the water begins to flow again, the river returns to its old course." I like that analogy but kind of elaborating on what you were just saying how would you expand on that and help people understand the value of the gods so-to-speak or their realness in a sense? Well, you would find many different views about what the gods actually are. I mean even within the Nordic Pagan movement some people believe that they actually exist in physical reality like Svenbjorn Bjentinsson who's the founder of the Asatru movements in Iceland, the Icelandic pagan movement

10:56 And he claimed that he had actually met Odin while walking in the country one day. So, that's one view. Others take the view that the gods are all different aspects of the One Supreme God. Others take the Jungian view that they're parts of our collective unconscious. Others would say that they're thought forms created through human beings worshipping them Well i tend to take the view that there are some occasions of great forces. In the universe and in ourselves i mean for example we all know that is a force of heroes well in the, reclassical mythology this forces represented by venus or afrodite in the nordic mythology it's symbolized by player so um

11:59 The gods, to me they are the sanctifications symbols of forces that can be worked with. Mm-hmm. I think that makes a lot of sense Yes, that and the kind of waveform idea are the things in my basket for sure just this idea That the more energy we give to something the more people give it their energy The more solid it can seem maybe in the sense that you can meet Odin out in the woods somewhere Well yes. Yes. I mean there is the

12:36 the Tibetan tradition of the tulpa, which is a human-like being who is created by human thoughts. In Alexandra David Neal's book about Tibet she relates how she actually managed to create one of these tulpas so maybe that's what Svenjón Björnhansson saw when he was out for a walk Yeah quite possibly i think there is a powerful energy behind where humans put their attention yes and unfortunately in the modern world we are so just. Going about life unconsciously and just sort of specially here in states,

13:29 Living to be entertained and our attention is constantly on just what's in front of the screen. And that's a real shame because we're putting a lot of energy into just making disney bigger corporation yes and were not using our power probably appropriately. So let's get into the juicy stuff which to me is hyperborea or I guess you pronounce it hyperborea. Yes i would say hyperborea sure what can you tell people about this concept of hyperborea in the north and how central it is too a lot of northern people well, no goes back to the ancient greeks when an ancient mariner called pithias

14:17 set out from the Greek colony of Massalia, which is present day Marseille and sailed out into the Atlantic and up into the far North. And came to a country which he describes as a country of fog and ice, which may well have been Iceland but at any rate this... The Greeks called Hyperborea, the land beyond Boreas, the north wind And later it came to be also an alternative name, came to be Thule or Tula as the Romans called it. This took on the character of a fabled land in the far north with a temperate climate where advanced people lived

15:14 Until the polar region became covered by ice and the Hyperboreans disappeared. But many people think that they didn't in fact disappear, but dispersed to other parts of the world leaving their footprints in various ways for example the great megaliths like Stonehenge in England and the Calanish stones in the Hebrides could be examples of the footprints of the Hyperboreans because a monument like Stonehenge was an enormous feat. It's estimated that it would have taken the entire population of Britain at the time about seven years just to erect the central ring of stones, so these megaliths also incorporate

16:13 advanced astronomical knowledge and mathematical knowledge, many of them incorporate the golden section. So they've often been a great puzzle to archaeologists and some archaeologists have tried to argue that they must have been built by more advance people from the south which is an example of what I was saying earlier about how the northern More than civilization was sort of airbrushed out of our consciousness. So that's an example of kind of traces the hyperborean civilization might have left behind. Yes, very interesting and I definitely am intrigued by the megalithic sites all around the planet And it seems like some of the most impressive

17:06 Examples are like the Giza Plateau, the stones at Baalbek, Gobekli Tepe. And it just seems hard to reverse engineer a lineage of where these things would have come from or establish a timeline when we can't even really seem to date them there definitely seems to be similarities around the world. Yes So that suggests a common source but how could we know to place that in the north? Well they have been Very interesting remains discovered for example in the far north of Russia, in Russian Lapland. In the region of the White Sea and the Barents Sea back in the 1920s there was a Russian archaeologist Alexander Babchenko who went there

17:54 And he was actually looking for hyperbole because he thought that the hyperboreans were an example of what earlier civilization with very advanced knowledge and maybe one could. Somehow reconstruct this knowledge so when you went up there in search of a real and found some extraordinary things like, pyramids, paved and ancient paved road labyrinths and other such remains. And he was convinced that the local indigenous people of Asami, the Asami shamans were in fact the ancestors or the present day descendants of the Hypogoreans

18:45 And more recently, there have been a number of other expeditions to the same area which again have found all kinds of extraordinary things like huge throne twice human height covered, how about a single block so it's difficult to account for these things. unless one presupposes some kind of ancient prehistoric civilization there. Well, I'm definitely intrigued by the idea of a temperate land in North and I've read various accounts of Arctic explorers that

19:28 Suggest some weird things being out on the deck and not needing their coat. Watching certain birds migrate north and wondering where they're going warm air coming from somewhere it's confusing I don't know what kind of stock to put in those stories especially in the modern world, I mean it's hard for some people to entertain that there are lands that are unfound but what do you make at those stories or definitely interesting? Well, I think at the present time the Arctic region is simply too cold to sustain such a civilization. But it hasn't always been that cold. For example on Spitsbergen Archipelago which is only about 700 miles from the North Pole

20:23 They found fossilized remains of palm trees. So, clearly, Pittsburgh once had quite a warm climate. There could have been a number of reasons for this. It could have been that at one time the Earth's axis was vertical which would've meant that the temperate zone extended much further north than it does now or it could've been due to shifting of the Earth's crust No no i'm not a number of other reasons why you want to be. Yes i love that fact that they found fossilized palm trees there then your mind starts trying to work back the ways in which that would be possible on the fan of the earth cross displacement idea but then it kind of throws out

21:15 you know, the direction of north that then becomes like east and west. It just seems weird to conceptualize. That's true So if the idea is that this civilization was destroyed and these advanced people went out and seeded their knowledge what else could we see today? That might be pieces of it I think along the lines of megalithic sites maybe even the megalithic yard this unit a measurement that used to be quite important Yes, exactly. Well the very existence of the megalithic yard presupposes a quite advanced civilization because there would have to have been a standard measurement they would've had to have kind of what you call it template for this megalithic yard which was shared throughout a very wide area

22:10 Yes, so that's a possible piece of evidence. Another possible piece of evidence is linguistic. The Indo-European languages are extremely complex with all kinds of cases and different verb forms and so on. And it's very difficult to think that these languages simply evolved. I mean the grammar is simply too complex What has the impression that they were created at some point, deliberately designed. There is one theory that they came from Hyperborea at a time when Hyperborea was cut off by the ice and this enabled people of that region to free from outside influences

23:08 to create a complex language over a period of maybe couple thousand years or so. So that's another possible piece of evidence and then we have the evidence of the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas where there is mention of an ancient home in the north where there was a dawn of 60 days now the polar year Basically consists of a day and night performance each with the dawn and twilight two months. Add a chance so this passage seems to refer to the north region so there also some hints like that i mean this is very little one can call direct evidence, what type of real business in direct evidence was crimes

24:08 Another thing that is interesting is that apparently if you look at a lot of the cultures around the ring of the far north, you see a lot of shamanism which is right up my alley. And this is something that you think might also have been carried on from the Hyperboreans? Is that right? Yes absolutely as I say all those indigenous peoples around the Arctic Circle, the Inuit the various Mongol peoples of northern Russia, the Sami of northern Scandinavia. They're all shamanic cultures and in fact the Nordic mythology is pervaded by shamanism when you think of how Odin is said to have received the secret of the runes by hanging on the world tree, the Yggdrasil for nine days and nights which is a typical shamanic ordeal

25:05 And he has other shamanic creatures. He has totem animals, he has two wolves and two ravens and he has a horse with eight legs. There are many references in the sagas to shamanic practices so I think that shamanism was the original religion of the Nordic peoples and it's somehow become dormant I think it is the way to use the secret religion of the north. Yeah i really like those ideas i've been intrigued by the work of

25:50 I think it's John Michael Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. The idea that a lot of the Christmas motifs are actually derived from the Amanita muscaria mushroom which is white and red which are the colors of Santa Claus this mystical guy And the reindeers are all flying and it's like really illusions to psychedelics or entheogen use Yes, well the use of psychedelics is very important in shamanism and it's found very widely among those indigenous peoples. I mean for example in Finland there was a practice of reindeers often eat these amanita mushrooms and there's the practice of drinking the urine of reindeer because you then get

26:42 the narcotic effect without the poisons. You get it in a detoxified form and also in a very intense form, so that's an example of the use of psychedelics Filtered and concentrated. Yes, yes at what a cost And you mentioned Thule which is the term we hear about in German occultism? Yes Are these references to the same mystic land do you think? Yes well I mean The Germans had their own sort of interpretation on that they sort of idealized it as a kind of northern

27:31 It's kind of Aryan paradise. Yeah, I can't say very much more about that. We often find similar terms for different ideas. I've always considered Hyperborea to be this mystic mountain of the gods but I was surprised by the diversity of descriptions and even how similar some descriptions are to Atlantis in that it was an advanced civilization. It's now underwater, that is described at times we get this idea of Atlantis from Plato and curiously one of your contentions seems to be that this Hyperborean culture might have been an influencer of the Greeks maybe this is how this cultural memory made it to them

28:17 Ah, well I think you're referring to the theory that Homer's poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey actually describe a place that was in the north and not in the Mediterranean. Right This is it's a very interesting theory there's an Italian researcher Felice Vinci, who's written a very interesting book on this subject. And he comes up with some very interesting evidence when Homer describes the Peloponnese for example, he describes it as a flat island when in fact we know it was a mountainous peninsula and he identifies place names in Homer

29:19 that don't correspond to the Mediterranean, but correspond very closely to places on the Baltic. So that is an interesting theory It is and there were also some interesting threads about Troy and we have this idea of the Trojan horse, but to say a wooden horse at a time when people rode horses is almost to say a vehicle like a boat. Yes yes And uh... To think they could've been trying to describe a boat it's just kinda mind-blowing considering what At least what Hollywood has put in my head! Yes yes

29:58 Yeah, it could well have been a boat especially when you think that in the Icelandic poetry the boat is often referred to as the horse of the sea. It makes perfect sense! Yes More sense than wheeling in a horse model and hiding inside of it I mean you'd think soldiers would be on a giant boat or warship I mean that makes more sense Well, of course there is a theory that Troy in fact was not a real place. But the whole story of Troy was in fact symbolic. So Helen of Troy is in fact the spring goddess who's captured by the god of winter and so that the whole story of the freeing of Helen is symbolic for becoming a spring

30:53 which actually would make quite a lot of sense. And it would explain why there are many places throughout Europe with the name Troy, these places where the name Troy came from the legend rather than from particular place and the idea of the labyrinth as a place for the spring goddess was kept imprisoned and then freed Yeah it does make sense and it's a funny thing because the further you go back the harder it is for me to unravel these kind of things and I would think that fiction in the imagination what exists just as.

31:36 Long as anything would and so when we're looking at these ancient writings And they're already quite flowery and poetic in the way, they record things But we have this tendency I guess to just think The older something is the more literal it is. Yes That's probably not true No not all Usually the more nuanced and layered it is actually yes. Yes absolutely yes, that's when you think of the the Viking poetry, for example which is full of extremely complex metaphors called kennings where, like the one I mentioned where they talk about a ship as being the horse of the sea or sunlight is the sword of the gods and so on.

32:33 So this poetic tradition is so strong, or was so strong among the Vikings that in the middle of a battle for example say sea battle someone would stand up in the middle of a boat and declaim a poem compose a poem on the spur of the moment with all the correct meter and correct literation and correct kennings and so on. Well, that's quite a feat to be able to do that. When you know that you might be dead the next minute. Right! Life was cheap in the old days it seems... Well they just had different attitudes life and death They were much more comfortable with the notion of death I guess. The environment is harsher, you kind have to be but today we just- It's like such a scary

33:30 out of sight, out of mind kind of thing that no one wants to deal with. Yes, that's right yes I also wanted to get into some of these rites and rituals of the Nordic pagans or particularly the runes. You write in the book that they have become a popular means of divination, a method of character analysis, a system of meditation and even the basis of a kind of physical yoga. And i'm interested in all of that what can you tell us about the history and use of the runes?

34:07 The runes are a fascinating subject. They appeared around the first century AD and spread very rapidly throughout northern Europe, nobody quite knows where they came from or what they were based on some people think they were based partly on the Phoenician alphabet partly on the Roman alphabet and partly on prehistoric cave markings At any rate, they spread very rapidly and in a remarkably uniform form. There are basically two main runic alphabets or futharks as they're called which is an older futhark and the younger one. The older one consists of 24 letters, the younger one consists of 16 letters And um... As I say they're not only an alphabet but used for divination and magic

35:01 And the sagas are full of descriptions of magical use of the runes. Now, there's a lot more to the runes than meets the eye. A Norwegian friend of mine, Halvard Hartklau has done a very deep mathematical analysis in the runes because the runes are composed of three types of stroke vertical left leaning and right leaning And some of them have two strokes, some three, some four and five. So what he did was he created complex matrices counting the number of strokes in each piece of the groups of rooms. It's difficult to explain his analysis because it was very complicated but

35:55 one conclusion he came to was that there's a correspondence between the runes and the trigrams of the Chinese pagua system, which is similar to the I Ching except it has trigrams instead of hexagrams. So that's fascinating because again it suggests that there might be a common origin with this as a common link between the Bagua and the runes. So again, this could be another piece of evidence that there was some precursor civilization from which both of these things came. Yes I am really intrigued by that idea and the depth of these systems sometimes like a thing...these

36:48 alphabets like the runic alphabet or even something like John Deas' Anakion. They have this similar shape of these symbols that correspond to numbers and a grid type of layout, usually in a circle and it's just really fascinating! And it almost even seems adjacent to the things you see in some crop circles It just makes me think about Like this hypothesis of an ancient advanced civilization that migrated out and spread their shamanic teachings in the search knowledge around the globe in a physical sense,

37:27 I mean, it is intriguing. We do have examples like the pyramid structure which is all over the globe but when we ask the tribes of the Amazon how they discovered Ayahuasca they say the spirits told them when we asked the Dogon how they knew about Sirius A and B they say the spirit's told him yes Sometimes I think maybe these traditions didn't spread by man literally traveling around the globe, but by spirits seeding these same things themselves to different pockets of people. Is that something you entertain? Yes or perhaps by some sort of process of morphic resonance Yeah like the monkeys on one side of the world who learn how to open a coconut and Monkeys on the other side start doing the same thing

38:16 Yeah that's an absolutely interesting phenomenon just this idea that once something is in the collective unconscious all humans can tap into it. Yeah exactly yes, I tend to agree with that. Yeah i think that helps to explain why we don't maybe have as much physical evidence for the travel as we would want Yet you can see the footprints around and I think maybe when people have a more esoteric context they can maybe better understand how these things could emerge without the physical component. Yes, absolutely yeah

38:57 Yeah, it's interesting because the legend of Hyperboreans is usually associated with tall whites and you can also find that term in ufology. That people have these encounters with tall white beings and who knows if there's a connection but there's definitely a similar shape Yes well of course there was a legend among the Aztecs or the Maya forget which in america who had this legend that one time they were visited by gods. Where is the red so i can possibly be another example

39:46 Absolutely. And to return to the runes a little bit and divination, I'm always interested in how these things can work. I've seen enough examples that I'm convinced about their validity but how do you explain the mechanisms behind their accuracy? Well my own view is that The deeper levels of the human mind, human consciousness are connected to the entire universe. But in order to access that knowledge we have to have some intermediate tool. Now some people would do that through astrology, some would do it by reading tea leaves, some would do it through palmistry

40:39 And the runes are another example of this. The runes are kind of universal, they're universal symbols which represent universal qualities and forces and modalities so what you're doing when you carry out a runic divination basically is using the runes to tap into those deeper levels of your mind. That's the way I see it Mm-hmm. I agree with you, I think that there's something weird about certain archetypes having like this eternal imprint in the human mind somewhere and yes when you hear these stories about the runic alphabet maybe being derived through shamanic means or even like I mentioned John Dee's system which was also derived by contact

41:39 It almost makes me feel as if the spirits are like, hey look we can help you but we have to have a language. We can understand so here's a set of symbols these symbols correspond to these archetypes and then the more. You play with these things the more we can communicate through them yes i think that's very good way of putting it. It's a far out idea but i mean what was the in several examples that could speak to that Yes, yes. Awesome! Well hey I really enjoyed the book you are clearly very passionate for the North and i'm glad we got to learn a little bit more about it before I cut you loose let people know maybe about some of your other books or your website anything else you might be working on in the future

42:33 Yeah, okay. Well my website is... I just have to think a minute. I believe it's Osgard? Yes it's www.osgard.net That's my website and there you'll find the list of my books and description of them As I say, well, I've written quite a number of books including as i said the pop-up novel Return of the Tetrad and three volumes of short stories dealing with esoteric and pagan themes. So uh...I think the website will give people most of the information they need

43:31 Very cool. And I was curious why you went with that spelling of Asgard, is that maybe its original spelling? Well one of my favorite books and films is The Wizard Of Oz so it refers to Oz as in the Wizard Of Oz so it's a combination of Oz as in the Wizard Of Oz and Gard as in Asgard In fact, one of my stories in this collection of stories I wrote called The Sorceress of Agartha deals with the theme of the Wizard of Oz and puts forward a sort of unusual angle on the story. Very cool! Awesome! Well Christopher it's been a blast. The search for the Hyperboreans continues? Yes

44:28 Thanks again. It was a great time do take care out there. Pleasure talking to you Greg A beacon of light from the North people how we doing out there? Mr Macintosh dropping knowledge on the mystic north This is one where I took a bit of a chance because I saw his book. I was getting into it I liked what it was about but I'd never heard previous interviews with Chris never stopped me before and You just never know how that's gonna go and i think he is a great writer and very knowledgeable about these subjects that he got passion for, but maybe isn't as used to speaking about these things at the sort of great length we typically do around here but thats alright.

45:11 As much as we'd like to talk about mystic lands and hidden worlds, Hyper Borea isn't one that we've really zoomed in on all that thoroughly. So I think anyone could understand what i was going for today between Hyper Borea and of course Runic Magic another topic that hasn't gotten a lot of time in the spotlight either And I actually held onto this one for a little while almost too long But it did come in a little short, especially after editing because I tried to shorten up some of the longer pauses and those can add up over two hours. but i wanted to sort of sandwich it between two longer shows. I did learn some things though! I hope you did too. A big takeaway for me was closer to the beginning with The Expedition Of Alexander Barchenko

46:02 who thought he knew where Hyperborea would be, started digging and found an ancient road and pyramids. That's pretty damn interesting! I would love to know more about why he thought he'd find something there practical reasons or maybe something more of the close encounters beamed-the-brain sort of inspiration but i do love that phrase here be dragons though I think that part's only in the Plus show, but the first time i heard that was on the Fargo TV show. One of the best shows going right now if you ask me. But they craft these amazing villains and the whole Fargo theme is people in a quaint quiet town are not equipped to deal with real cutthroat criminals true evil

46:49 That was the theme of the movie and it's carried through each completely unique season of the show. But, in the first season, the villain is Billy Bob Thornton and he gets pulled over by a naive police officer who wants his license and registration. And Billy Bob has this cold as ice monologue about... well let me just play it! License and registration please? We could do it that way You ask me for my papers, I tell you it's not my car then I borrowed it. See where things go from there? Could do that or you could get in your car and drive away Now why would I do that? Because some roads you shouldn't go down because maps used to say there'd be dragons here now they don't but that doesn't mean the dragons aren't there Dad come in dad over Step out of the car please sir How old is your kid? He said step out of the car Dad come in dad over

48:07 Let me tell you what's gonna happen, Officer Grimley. I'm going to roll my window up and then I'm gonna drive away and you're gonna go home to your daughter And every few years You're gonna look at her face and know that you're alive because you chose not to get on a certain road on a certain night But you chose to walk into the light instead of into the darkness Do you understand? Great show great scene solid phrase I'd love to throw in little clips once in awhile in these wrap-ups

48:49 But in terms of this subject matter, I guess one could consider it a cop-out to not want to talk about the dark roads of Northern philosophy. It's also fair to say that there are extremists and negative interpretations of nearly everything and Christopher seems like a genuine and kind person who isn't trying to lead anyone astray he just has a curiosity and love for his own culture even if it has had some uncomfortable manifestations in our history Hey, I certainly don't want to vouch for or have to explain away a lot of elements of my wholesome family conspiracy culture that I love so much. So... To each their own! But I'm also very into the archetype and shamanic themes that came up And I absolutely had a great time with his book

49:39 Because the show came in maybe 20 minutes short i just kind of split the difference with the free and plus versions. But in the second half today we added some logs to the higher side fire and we talked about legends of fabled lands in russia why the history of the north is so often twisted and omitted from our general history, how Icelanders kept their esoteric beliefs in the face of the Christian steamroll, Egregore's Icelandic Fairies, Christopher's thoughts on the Bach Saga, inner earth lore, Ferdinand Ossendowski, astrology, filtering energy from The Pole Star to The Pineal Gland and Christopher's Rosicrucian book and research.

50:26 good times. In fact, Chris kind of got on a roll there when we were talking about astrology citing evidence that could support the idea that energies can filter from the stars right on through our bodies or to the pineal gland in the case of the North Star kind of jives with what Eric Dollard was saying about trying to get a good weld under certain astrological conditions I think Kind of compartmentalize astrology to how does it affect me how does it affect people and I think this. Star in planet energy effects a lot of stuff probably things that we don't even notice most times, sometimes it is just funny how one idea will sound too far out for a person and then another idea that i think is even wilder on the scale ideas seems like an easier pill to swallow

51:19 I guess i'm just the kind of guy that's swallowing all kinds of pills with far less discretion, but hey some people just call that a good weekend. It's also interesting that Chris' friend Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson who is heading this Icelandic paganism revival and also wrote the foreword to the book says he met Odin in the woods one day and that seems like an intense experience for sure But also the argument that the Trojan horse was a ship rather than a strange wooden horse model that soldiers hid inside of, makes more sense too. So I don't know! Sorry it's a bit short. I exhausted my questions earlier than expected even though i like to come to these things quite prepared. Thought it was pretty interesting

52:07 I like trying to re-examine pockets of history and culture with a magical context folded back in. Obviously that's a big blind spot left out of our education in most cases, so I'm still figuring out how to do those kind of shows best, but an attempt was made! But big thanks again to Christopher McIntosh for his time and his work. He certainly knows a lot about a lot, and has a scholarly approach to these subjects, and there's certainly a need for more of that in the world. That's going to be it from me today! Joint session tonight 7 p.m.

52:46 It is the 25th of the month. I think YouTube is going to screw us again, so please... Think about showing up you can click that link on the front page of the higher side chats dot com it'll take you right there Yeah one more show for the month coming at ya A month where we've had Eileen Day McKusick, David Icke Eric Dollard and now Chris McIntosh with Beyond the North Wind. And the next show i know you're going to enjoy as well so stay awake be ready you do not know the hour when The Higher Side is coming and I'll see ya then! Your move history suppressors mystery depressors and secret keepers of the mystic north your bucket list

53:30 Lucid dreams are so vivid, cause you go to bed at seven And your brain comes alive because you hate your nine-to-five You wake up with a dread and make sure your cats are fed Did your brain talk to a ghost who moved your coffee and toast As you listen to the higher side chats You get to your desk and your boss says it's a mess And your soul slowly goes To a place where nothing grows When you think he's not around, you insert a SETI sound The OM says turn it down and you say It's just the higher side chats Oh do you think you'd be invited? To Bohemia Grove. To a Bilderberg club Do you think you'd be invited

54:20 by a Rothschild to a party on a submarine. Diving down, to the center of the earth through the Marianas Trench your teeth begin to clench from the sulphur-y estench The mask you're given doesn't fit cause you're not one of them Starting today, you'll make plans to get away There's no one to hold you down And the what-ifs start to drown Then you wake To the glare Of a cofluorescent stare and The light winks at you Cause it's life is almost through But it's holding on to quit time just like You It's time for the high side chats

55:10 you