Gordon White | Alien Ghosts, Animism, & Chaos Magic

00:05 Puppet masters almost surely have clearly made me something heavy. And until you've thoroughly tested every last course, just to know the less you really do! That's true Dr. Seuss. Without THC, could they lie and do us just a- Without THC, the higher side checks show a wooden company

00:43 Alright, Hireside Chatters. As we know by now the once widespread and celebrated activities of ritual dance powerful enchantments communal entheogenic exploration peering through multi-dimensional window areas imagination cultivation by the flickering glow of the campfire's edge and a whole grab bag of shamanic activities have largely faded to the brink of obscurity. And that invincibility-inducing trip to the stars guided by a strange brew and arrhythmic Icaros has been replaced by a trip to the couch where Auto-Tune barking out of soulless popstars radiates from the flickering glow of a 60 inch plasma just loud enough to drown out the sound of millions coughing up Big Pharma's prescription for complete and total numbness with a side of fries

01:24 Now this horrific fall from magical grace may largely be due to the unfortunate result of its inborn slippery nature, or for the more conspiratorially minded because it's been victim of a 2000 year old slash and burn campaign where rather enlightening world views and a sense of spirits were replaced by a bearded man in clouds and material atheism counterpoint in concerted efforts to fill minds with anything but magic. And it's time we shake that off, because from the Sumerian texts to the layout of Washington DC we can obviously see that somebody knows something we forgot. Magic is all around us so its time to stop hating and start participating, stop fearing and started hearing cause the spirits are home whether you know how to ring the doorbell or not

02:06 And so now more than ever, it's clear a resurgence of the magical perspective is needed and thus back in the THC saddle for a sixth time ready to ride this wave once again and running away with the title of returning champion is Sir William Wallace of Wizards my friend and yours Gordon White. He restored the magical context of our past in Starships, he updated the spells for our modern economic reality in the Chaos Protocols and now he's caulking up cracks and stitching seams between the two in a new ebook, pieces of eight chaos magic essays & enchantments. The proud father of three amazing books and of course RuneSoup dot com my primary map maker for the magical worldview if sharks were sorcerers he'd be the great white Gordon my man welcome back to my humble sanctuary

02:49 Thank you very much great number six six turn on the show. Hell yeah man lucky number six and dude it is always a pleasure you know i've got so many subjects I want to ask about, suppose if i started with the oldest we start with something from campfires edge this is a presentation you have for free members of your site that functions as a companion piece for starships I really loved it. I think any THC fan would, and a major assumption the data you present there corrects is that magic isn't something we created. It's more part of our environment as natural as thunderstorms and predates us and our noticing of it because its baked into reality. Why do you think this is important to reiterate? How does it affect one's understanding of magic?

03:37 Well, I mean it's kind of a linguistic trap that the minority of us who live in this late capitalist Western civilization fall into because actually if you kinda widen out and look at the entire population of the planet across time. It's really only been us and a small sliver of us that have kinda fallen by the wayside The understanding that the universe is in some sense magical is a word I use, but actually if people who listen to THC really stop and think about it they're here because they're getting their head around the idea of extra-dimensional entities and psi phenomena and so on. And that means that you can call it what you like – you live in a magical universe

04:20 And that's kind of really where we're at from the perspective of sort of reformulating modern history, ancient history, the Paleolithic and going the entire way back. We're at a point where Materialism has fallen away, but we're in this kind of still scientific or technologically complex culture that has given us a number of tools. We previously didn't have for the analysis of the universe in general and it's throwing up things like remote viewing and it's throwing up things like telepathy and near-death experiences and after death contact in ways that are verifiable to the point where you go well this is a thing that exists so if it exists we need to fold it back into the model

05:01 And that's kind of what Campfire's Edge was about. We now have, admittedly they are scant data points but we have more than we used to about how the human-spirit world interaction works and we should use those data points as a torch to look back across the timeline and see if additional insights or improved context emerges as a result Yeah, right on. And going with the magic is baked into the universe thing you rightfully point out I believe in pieces of eight that any model for magic really needs to work off planet as well as on and when you fold in data that seems to prove there are man-made structures on Mars as well several other bodies in the solar system meaning previous civilizations other beings

05:47 This has rarely talked about implications. Talk to us about those implications and how you kind of tie those things together Sure. Well, in many ways that's a gentle dig at occultist in the first and kind of ufologist in the second contemporary occultism in the sort of post-Golden Dawn post Crowley world picked up a lot of stuff from say the Renaissance to the 18th century to do with astrological magic and timing. And even though obviously by Crowleys day and even by the 18th century people were aware And I appreciate we're getting into dodgy THC territory, but people were aware that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe and we are in a solar system and so on. Magic still functions in this kind of eminatory astrological way from the outer planets in man as this microcosm and so on. That sort of works as a storehouse for ideas and correspondence for the actual use of magic but it doesn't like it provably doesn't describe reality

06:47 And we now have sets of things that do, the aforementioned psi phenomena and spirits and so on. I mean, I'm a big fan of Dr. John Brandenburg's work to do with the sort of xenon-129 in the Martian atmosphere indicating nuclear bombs that were used in the 250 million to half a billion year old Half Life ago. So that's a thing that we can reasonably say happened. I don't think he may be right if the culture was bombed was Bronze Age and so on but the science there of weapon signatures in the atmosphere needs to be there And so we have kind of an emerging Psy consciousness spirit world model here on Earth, and we have evidence in our new neighborhood of other beings of this similar level or more complexity to humans. So what I'm really talking about there is if the spirit world is here it must exist throughout the universe? Yeah! That is something that we don't really think about because that necessarily implies

07:47 I mean, these are dodgy words but like there are alien ghosts or alien electronic voice phenomena. And what I find very interesting about that is at the time of Dr. Brandenburg's bombs, they weren't even really dinosaurs on the Earth so they were humans that were around to have a memory of that happening on the planet right? But there are things about Mars that have survived into sort of esotericism or magic, I mean back in the day it was science like that was the science at the classical age right? That kind of matched some other things we know about it now and you go well where is this surprising... It's a war planet and one planet that appears to have been bombed in our solar system. We associate with war for instance and you kinda think well where did that idea come from? And interestingly however much it sounds

08:38 Even more crazy when you're talking about say magic and ufology is to go well, maybe an alien ghost like quite literally Maybe there's some kind of contact with other parts of the spirit world. Again, you've kind of got to logically follow the model along if there is a spirit world here what does it stop? Does it stop halfway to the moon? Is it like a magnetic field I don't think that works. It's contained within the Van Allen radiation belt obviously right and then we also have kids with memories of past lives that kind of jive with John Brandenburg work to an extent yeah

09:16 So I really like past lives that kids remember rather than the ones that people who, and i've done this obviously most people have but once you get to adult age and you kind of do a regression and find it because that's self-select. And that's why everyone seems to think they're in Egyptian priestess or so on because if you have an interest in spirituality If the reincarnational model works, then chances are you've had multiple spiritual lives. So you don't get very good data out of it because the materialists or atheists don't go and get past life regressions. It's just that people who are already into it so the data is a bit messy whereas like a four year old doesn't know or care either way and so you get really interesting

09:57 past life data out of them. And it's not to assert, you know a full because you're dealing with memories that have kind of crossed bodies so it's not to assert that it's some kind of DV recording of an event that happened but there again you get these components and go well that's funny that has a fuzzy overlap with some other Richard Hoagland John Brandenburg stuff Hell yeah, and you mentioned alien ghosts but not only dead aliens. And I bring this up because in a recent magic themed episode with Mike's intention, I had a stoner moment when he was explaining his entity encounters on the spiritual plane and I thought is it possible that these beings that you're interacting with are the projected consciousness

10:38 of physical beings on other planets, the same way people from different countries all log into the Call of Duty servers. We don't assume that people we encounter in the game actually live there. We assume they tapped into the realm from the same way we did just a different location and I think that's a perspective I haven't heard talked about much makes a ton of sense to me and you having much more experience with this stuff than I do how far do you think you can run with that idea? Well, Greg I'll do you one better. I mean, I remember in the 90s when the manifestation of aliens that we would call the greys was really really big like in culture and on TV and so on And people who were taking this thing seriously say it like who've either quote-unquote examined a body or had experiences and they don't have Mouths that work and so on I think they They might be biological cyborgs that kind of consciousness projects into I mean if you look at how

11:30 If you look at how we're experiencing Mars, we sent a robot. We sent a robot that can essentially think and see through because it's better to use energy to do that. And yes absolutely there is another component of it and Whitley Strieber mentions this in the book he released this year with Dr John Kripal where he thinks one of the hallmarks of advanced off-planet culture is that it will have achieved a way of having kind of lossless communication between life and death. And funny enough, we could be great leaps towards that if we had rather than ignored the kind of 19th century society for psychical research. I mean it looks hokey to us now with them all these Victorians sitting around a table or listening into a phonograph and so on but but the idea behind it was this emerging

12:20 technology of communication like radio and phonographs and so on could be, if we kind of double down on that from a spirit world perspective. We might actually build away to do that so you could essentially Skype your dead grandmother rather than your living grandmother we may presume, and this is Whitley's idea that we may presume that there are off planet cultures that have done that. And then that really opens up the kind of insights you can get about how the universe functions so you're essentially looking at cultures that may continue to evolve where, you know, the dead and the living continue to evolve together and you're going to start getting really interesting technologies and for us as the experiences

13:06 It's suddenly becomes very difficult to say well Is that one a ghost or is that one like, alive one that's using ghost technology? Or vice versa. Has it has a ghost or living ones sent like a droid and these are very I mean, I love this kind of stuff as sort of very THC discussions but this is the implications of sort of propagating what I consider to be the reality of the spirit world here on Earth out throughout the galaxy that yeah, I don't think it stops somewhere near Mars or wherever It allows or it invites revisions to the model of how we think these things function, but also kind of revisions to what we think maybe is the point of it all. Yeah man! That's a great through line. But how do you rectify dead spirits with data that suggests multiple lives?

13:59 Um, because I don't think the reincarnation one or there's two. So let's assume reincarnation is a thing? I don't think it works in the sort of out with Tibetan Buddhist model where you're kind of caught in a washing machine and you go round and around against your will. And funnily enough, again the sort of kids past life memories suggest that is in fact not the case. So our natural home if you will being the spirit world is where we tend to exist. You come here or there or wherever on a physical and intentional basis as

14:35 as an experiential trip. So you can either do it or not do it, you can do loads of it – it kind of depends what you and other people you choose to incarnate with want to do now that's to assume that the reincarnational model works. And I think in some sense…I actually don't like the word, but I like to think that I instead, like to assert the kind of sovereignty or the individuality of a spirit so that you may show up here once and go well this place is fucked. I'm not coming back! Or you might like skiing so you come back a lot? I don't know rather than there being like a rule like oh no you have to go back...I don't like the kind of forced high school metaphor of reincarnation that you find in

15:17 in the new age where you kind of move up the grades and graduate. I don't see that matching the data." Now, that's assuming reincarnation in some way is a thing. The other option, of course, and this is things we do have data for However, something like remote viewing works where an existing consciousness can gain access to information about things or people that have happened further up the timeline or further back down the timeline means that you may not necessarily be remembering a thing that happens to you. You maybe pulling it out of the cosmic library So it would present as a memory of someone else because that's what it is. But you might have actually metaphorically picked to that book up off the shelf and it will look like your memory so it gets challenging and the data,

16:04 split both ways. And so I wouldn't necessarily get hung up on the whole, well the population's growing so how can reincarnation work? Well because in most animus cultures you'll find that the spirit world is vastly more populated than physicals and we're not going to run out of people but also it kind of implies either the washing machine model or high school model in some sense play and I think people need to examine that a little bit closer when they're thinking about previous existences. For one, I think that happens.

16:40 regular, again like a washing machine or traffic lights. It's not on a clock because like anyone else who has been involved in magic for long enough I have a few of them because I went looking for them so it is not that they spontaneously emerged but they feel more like memories rather than books picked off the shelf of the cosmic library Yeah, man. There's obviously so many possibilities that kind of gets into the inception thing too of how do you know when You wake up in the morning that all your memories aren't just preloaded Exactly and this is all good It's like going to a consciousness gym These are all really good ideas to run through because it means that you don't kind of fixate on one Right and that can then kind of mutate or? Kind of warp

17:23 either your own model or your own experience of existence. So thinking like that, I mean this is you know it's classic THC stuff they're really good stoner thoughts to be like seriously what if the universe just started half a second ago? Like you'll never know literally you'll never know. Well for sure it also touches on that concept of maybe when you die you wake up with the bong in your hand and a circle of grays around you asking how that last hit was you know exactly Or maybe spirits being like, so how was it Frank? What was Earth like? It's crazy. It could be anything and you're foolish to think you know for sure but in a time when it's trendy to steer away from the physical ET hypothesis let's hit it head-on You've been writing about this star in the Cygnus constellation that might have a Dyson sphere built around it which I'll let you explain but

18:13 What's being suggested here and how likely does it look that something like that might be actually true? At the moment, the data suggests it is the case. But when it first came out last year I was following it reasonably closely and gave a talk at this really fun haunted highwayman's in London about it and one of the predictions that it is rather than just sort of meteors or detritus orbiting around the star and thus kind of reducing its brightness as we observe here on Earth is that it will dim further in, you know, in a year's time and two years' time which would kind of match with the idea that the Dyson Sphere is approaching completion. Right? Because once it's completed we won't get any of the light. Right there was like covering over it Exactly! That's what a Dyson Sphere is It's a cover over a star so that you can harvest all its energy Big project Yeah, it is But again when you build in space We're not that far off In a sense where 100-150 years off rather than like what's happening now

19:16 And that's happened. It has gotten dimmer this year versus last year, the challenges and it was kind of in a classic mainstream media way at the bottom of some of the articles it essentially said oh yeah so we've given it to these astronomers at this fancy university and you go it's right in the middle of the DARPA triangle they basically gave it to the sort of network of...and this is what you would do obviously if it was if you kinda think its aliens you would give it to university departments that give us this terrifying robot dogs and so on. So we're now at a point where we go, okay what information we get now is necessarily going to be mediated because you would assume

19:56 in the background, behind the curtain so to speak. It is a possibility that it's a civilization that's further up the Kardashev scale and only 93, you know like not that far away like less than 100 light years from us it does actually become a national security thing and so it has gotten dimmer but We're not going to get too much past that. I imagine probably sometime before Christmas, they'll be like, no it turns out it was naturally occurring and it may well be you know but we will never really be able to take that explanation to the bank because they've washed through DARPA-U essentially.

20:35 Provocative. I love it, man! And I already do hear the flat earthers typing about how there is no space in your shill and I apologize in advance. That's alright A big part of Pieces of Eight to me is trying to find a worldview that is most accurate as you say once you kind of torch Materialism, you gotta have something to stand on and you describe idealism as well as animism and say that it is more useful for the magician to consider living systems not as some unaware little eddies in a universal consciousness field but as outposts to the spirit world. Such perspective has a pleasing side effect of making the experience of day-to-day life much richer." Well who doesn't want life to be richer?

21:19 But can you explain or elaborate on some of this for the uninitiated? Sure. So idealism is the idea, and I like idealism let me be clear there's something that Rudolf Steiner said at the end of the 1800s when there was kind of inside The Theosophical Society and those groups they were beefing because they thought one of them had found the world teacher in their arguing over whether that was important usual kind of stuff that happens with esoteric groups And he sort of said look The actual enemy, such as it is materialism. We can kind of quibble over whether you think this guy you found in India is the world teacher or whether you think it isn't but where there's more of an alignment and our understanding that materialism is false right? Yeah And so that's kinda how I feel about idealism. Idealism is the idea that everything

22:13 consciousness rather than matter. And so the physical world is a kind of accretion out of this sort of single divine mind and it's, it's sort of a warmed over Vedic idea as expressed in Western culture now and that explains the universe better than materialism because as I go through in that chapter materialism doesn't even explain material very well like its embarrassing and obviously utterly fails with consciousness So idealism kind of works from that perspective. But you're still left with what I now call Brahmansplaining, where you have to much as Richard Dawkins will tell you if you have a spirit experience where your deceased grandmother comes and speaks to you, Dawkins will tell you, You're wrong! He will mansplain that was an error of your brain chemicals blah blah blah by my book

23:04 Brahmanspraining is kind of the same. If you have that experience, you will still get the same thing from a kind of Vedic teacher perspective which is your Consciousness is in error because you've recreated this ego and so your experience of the universe is mediated because of this kind of false ego that you need to destroy, so that you kind of dissolve back into their one consciousness. And so you're still asserting to someone that their experience of the universe is incorrect it's fundamentally an error I don't resonate with that. I think both of those things, much like the sort of original sin are there because implanted into spiritual systems for political and control reasons back in the day because you require a qualified priest to tell you what is and isn't reality like we've been down this road. I don't care for it. That being said, like there's nothing necessarily wrong with idealism until it kind of breaks or bends a little bit and they get uncomfortable with

24:04 Things like sacred mountains or fetish objects in magic. So in sort of hermetic magic as a survival of the Egyptian idea of drawing gods down into statues, you can empower, you know a gemstone or something and draw down the spirit or intelligence into it so that it literally animates right. You can kind of work that into idealism, it bends because well that's another fragment of universal consciousness that we're pulling into another fragment of it but your experience over this era and blah blah blah. And then same thing happens when you try to push the idealist model to explain things I'm particularly interested in like

24:43 you know, ufology and- and- PsyFX and all that. Contact with the dead and all that well it's alright for some PsyFX like telepathy Here's the thing, it can model it. I would prefer everyone who is out there if the choices between materialism and idealism for the love of God go with idealism! But if you're interested in magic and you have had experiences with things like haunted objects or books that have their own journey which I think is another thing that happens – that works better in an animus model which The quickest way to get there is to kind of replace the word consciousness with spirit world rather than one spirit, spirit world. And so you're kind in a situation where there's more going on than it just being one universal conscious field essentially vibrating the universe into existence. The reality is I probably suspect that is in fact the case at like the very kind of beginning point or at a very high level. I think that's how everything runs but I think what vibrates first is the spirit world

25:45 So you're kind of stuck. I think experientially animism works better now when i'm talking about physical systems, well living systems in particular but sometimes other objects being an outpost of the spirit world so a good example would be ayahuasca the difference between a western kind of neo-platonic or platonic view of ayahuasca and an animist one is in a neoplatonic view the Aya spirit will be in the vine In an animus view, the vine is the spirit. Right? So and it's kind of like an iceberg where it is the spirit 2% of it as in a physical 98% of it is in the spirit world

26:25 And that's what I mean by view them as outposts. Now, this...I actually have an interview earlier this year in my own podcast with a UK academic called Jack Hunter and he's released a book about the impact of Charles Forte and the potential impact of Charles Forte on anthropology and cultural studies and comparative religion. Great book! Great guy! And Fort had this idea that everything in the universe kind of exists on a spectrum between the unreal and the real. And if you picture it like a slider, you have Frodo as further along the Unreal Spectrum to say Obama but they're all made up of one kind of... everything is on that spectrum, everything you can conceive

27:13 is in some sense real, but then there is the sort of much more embodied parts of it at this end. And that is a very good way of thinking about how an outpost to the spirit world thing might work. Yeah, you suddenly get and again what I'm looking for, it's a chaos magic book. What I am looking for here is a model that best describes reality for the purposes of like further enjoying and experiencing it, but also for kind of giving you a bit more mental space for the practice of magic. And the one you end up landing on – and I find very interesting – this is sort in the Campfire's Edge presentation… The one that goldilocks your way to, and I goldilocks through all of them! I went materialism, panpsychism, idealism and landed here so there's one of those dangerous things where

27:59 what is it, there's no zealot like a convert? Like I came to this late. I admit that but i find it very interesting that the first religion or first spiritual experience we can see on the archaeological record is this one that we Goldilocks our way too at the end of... you can literally think yourself to animism and you don't even have to experience your way there! That's interesting to me because so much of the kind of western esoteric journey has been looking for the perennial philosophy or that kind of original spiritual system of mankind because there's that widespread and kinda not correct but it's nevertheless culturally their belief that we are in a declined state from that original elevated experience of the world. Now

28:50 I think maybe there's something to that, it's just that we've described it incorrectly. And you kind of get some of that in Starships but there it is like animism was the first thing we did and here we are two-thirds of the way through 2016 and I think it describes more coherently than most data points that we have available that we'd maybe didn't have available 15 years ago Boom. I agree, man and you know you've mentioned the animist model before but i don't think we ever took the time to explain it and i think It is a pretty powerful model at least it seems like The most accurate one that i know of but To get back to... Well i just want to jump in there because We spoke about thinking our way to it And just say i think the majority Of people on earth are animists right? Because it Is actually how- You're A pet owner

29:36 So if you get Richard Dawkins will come in or a Victorian materialist, the guys who invented this premise of materialism will come in and point at your cat and say there is nothing in that. It's just atoms experiencing like the genetic drive to eat and breed. That is it, it's empty, it's a machine." And you look at this guy like one what are you doing in my house? Two that's the wrongest fucking thing I've ever heard and that's where people don't realize that day-to-day experience of the universe for most non insane people is very animistic we get feels of place We know... To assert our pets don't have personhood is moronic

30:20 That is interesting. It must count for something that the kind of natural state of feeling and being in the universe Is this one? I don't know what it counts for but I think it does Yeah, man And I did have a random question for you about animals because I've been wanting to do a show About animal consciousness or how animals interface with magic But I'm still having a hard time finding a non lame way to do it but not only from a spirit animal perspective, but there's also Also the suggestion that dogs and cats see spirits or that Egyptians held cats in high regard for some similar reasons. I mean, I see my black cat posting up more and more near my ancestor altar And I have to wonder you know do you see any truth to any of these kind of out there suggestions about animals? The thing is they're not out there when you

31:08 when you kind of reposition, even if you do it as an experiment and say right I'm going to start modeling the universe from an animus perspective. It's not out there that's exactly been but that's been the story of human evolution in the human journey has been the animal allies that we have encountered and kept with us cats dogs horses so on and We see them, you know kind of ritually buried with bulls heads with Neanderthals and and so on that journey human and animal, because that's what we are. It exists in the physical and non-physical. The Egyptians were very good at it because they had a kind of full language for which animals do what but

31:50 Yes, the elevated status of the cat in Egypt is not just because it would hunt mice in grain stores. It represents that sort of sensual spirit world crossing they can see and hear thoughts. That's a very British guy, Morphic Fields. Oh, Sheldrake? He has all those experiments when dogs can tell when you're coming home and what have you. These are animals that This is the animus model, like of course they can see or experience spirits and of course part of the reasons that they're around is that. And if you look at how we have historically experienced a spirit world it's very therianthropic so you'll either get animals or you'll get part-animals and so on The idea that its wacky or somehow fruity to assert your cat isn't a spirit or can't see spirits because were trying to formulate

32:44 at this point in the timeline in the West where, you know, in a post-Descartes world the ideas that we're using of what is an animate and inanimate object are out of step with an animus model. And it's a historical kind of deviation. I see no problem with that whatsoever Yeah, and you're right. The animus model really is kind of the default position even if most of us have forgotten or haven't been taught in school but to get back to campfires edge another area of enlightenment for me was the importance of exactly that the Campfire's Edge Or the utility of fire in our magical and cultural development You say when we got Firelight? We didn't just get more time. We got different time

33:29 I agree. I thought that presentation was great, but what's this about? How so? How do we get different time?" Well it's some interesting research that is kind of looking at when in the archaeological record we can see we sort of got fire from maybe half a million years ago right or other hominins had fire and it was a question whether Extends daylight so that we perform the same tasks now that we can kind of extend a time into the night what do we perform different tasks to rethink different things and one of the pieces research. That kinda like how would you solve that is you try to find cultures that have,

34:08 the closest relationship to sort of fire and sunlight that we would have had half a million years ago. And so you're sort of talking about like the sun people in Southern Africa, and it turns out that fundamentally we do different things by firelight than what we experience now versus daytime. Daytime is...the talk is all work and gossip and a little bit kind mythology, a tiny sliver. But as soon as the fire gets on it's mythology and songs and ghosts and ancestor tales and so on. And there is no kind of reason for why it would split that way. Now what's interesting about that from again like I guess a magical model of the universe is you're changing your thoughts in consciousness in a ritual environment

34:56 which is inevitably going to attract spirit attention. That's sort of what happens, it's like watching a scary movie and then experiencing side effects in the house like you've kind of tuned your instrument to play something different or attract something different and so we did this! And if you look at these rituals that are described in say Deciphering Ancient Minds which is a classic book in the area The way early human cultures would use fire in a ritual was to have alternating circles of women who would kind of clap and keep negative spirits away, and then majority male although not always shamans trying to bring down the right spirits or ancestors. And they would appear from the gloom at the edge of the campfire these spirit beings that would then impart kind of wisdom or hunting technology or so on but also the negative ones would say the reason you'd have at the same time as trying to call down the correct spirits you have essentially half the participants

35:53 warding off the negative ones because they'd be shooting elf shoot at you and so on. And that kind of seems really important to me, because if you look at how in the classical world we model where the story of mankind getting its technology from is and it's essentially more or less universal there. The demons taught us metallurgy, they taught us agriculture, they told us the kind of skills that differentiate us from the rest of the natural world And I find it interesting that the kind of archaeological and anthropological research essentially bears out that relationship with the being who teaches us these skills in fire is very long lived. If you think of Prometheus or Lucifer, or any of these ones, its kind of like a bad guy for the gods

36:39 it's associated with this idea of learning things at the edge of the campfire where the sort of light becomes shadow and whether that I mean, some of that is obviously pareidolia which is a phenomenon kind of seeing forms that aren't there because of a trick of the mind but some of it isn't. And that's really interesting to me that I think we've kind of preserved memory of that probably very important event down through half a million years into the story of Prometheus or whoever Yeah, that's such great stuff. And from one of your slides it says that the anthropologically observable impact of fire is at least in this one pie graph 81% of the time at night is used for stories or quote imagination cultivation as opposed to 6% in the day and anybody who even thinks about it can automatically kind of put this together that it is different there some mechanism some switch

37:33 that happens and horror movies have been playing with that forever but it's something real. And like the weirdest and most fun conversations you have at a party are post 2am with the candles low. They're off their face, right? But they're kind of coming out of being peak off their face so it doesn't matter what you own and that's when the stories get fucking weird! That's what this is, right? That's kind of like a play-out of that same experience The other thing that is associated with fire and the spirits teaching us these technologies is the transmission of it So, where FIRE started to emerge as a regularly used technology half million years ago.

38:12 what will happen as the sun goes down, you will have hunters or hunting groups from surrounding areas kind of appear out of the gloom to share your campfire. And obviously that's how hunter-gatherers work sort of like ships at sea – you don't just kill them because they show up. Now what that means is you suddenly have this vector of stories and songs and when I say song, I mean it in a magical sense like that's a spell right? So you have these ideas moving, vectoring out like a viral outbreak because of the presence of fire that's not only giving you that ritual space to think these innovative ideas but also experience the spirit world and then share that amongst human cultures. And that's the other part like Prometheus steals the fire to share it this is

39:02 I mean, this doesn't explain anything. But whether it's a quote unquote biological memory or as I prefer to think about it and this is very much what Starship was about whether the memory of that event has been retained through the human journey since then It strikes me as kind of quite important because it's another one of those pieces you can reposition to say well okay If that's where we first kind of got the big jump in quote-unquote technology, I prefer the word complexity for reasons if you watch the presentation you'll understand. Okay, we've got to there what does that mean about the innovation opportunities we have today given that most of the public ones crucially most are like public innovation projects are run by people who assert these things don't exist and we kinda come back to the Whitley Strieber thing

39:50 what happens if we use the technology we have today and kind of wake up to the idea that these things do exist? You know, where does that go next?" Yes, such an eye opener man. And switching gears a little bit when we're looking at human history and going back to the origins we once did a show that of course hit on the pig chimp blending hypothesis as well as the Mimi virus and directed panspermia but it seems like you've kind of advanced your thinking in this area a bit and found some new data in the meantime and tossed a pinch of McKenna's stone date theory into the recipe Update us a bit on your thoughts here and how fungus and retroviruses could be a more nuanced view of the ancient aliens idea. I wouldn't say i've gone away from the the mimi virus idea that's something that happened several billion years ago, And...I'm still an interventionist like there's no way to explain

40:44 the emergence of life on Earth without directed panspermia at a minimum. And the same thing with the Pigshin hypothesis, you're now talking kind of like one million year plus whereas the sort of fire and human technological journey is still within the realms of what we can see archaeologically. I still maintain and did in the presentation as well that the emergence of fully modern humans doesn't make sense, it's not the kind of T-shirt you see across fat beauty bellies at a skeptics conference over this sort of ascentive man that is literally made up right? That is just like playing Lego in a museum

41:24 So the Pig-Chimp hypothesis I still think stands, and as does the idea of a very large and complex virus several billion years ago kind of landing on Earth. And the reason I think that is this one, that could be simply an alien technology also in an animus model. Remember what I was saying about the outpost of the spirit world? This is something I got from McKenna right so his first few were not first few but before he kind of moved off this idea when he says that the mushroom isn't extraterrestrial He says it's a being that is so old that only 1% of it exists in the physical and need 99% of it exist to that kind

42:05 stone space you get into. And when you're in there, that is how it communicates with itself and other beings that encounters across the galaxy like it is he means he literally meant it was an alien that would seed itself on planets for the purpose of communicating and your then instant communication with it across like it's a fucking I love it. It's such a cool idea right? Yeah yeah now what's interesting about That is because you know I'm a permaculture nerd. And if you look at The ideas behind how soil first emerged, because to get earth you could spit virus at a rock and nothing would happen. So how soil emerged is is a guess like people assume that there's some bacteria mutated to become some sort of mycorrhizal organism in the mushroom family because you need both of those things and a whole bunch of other stuff to get soil structure to actually get plants now

42:58 It's basically impossible that a bacteria can mutate into essentially a mushroom, like it doesn't work. And so when you look at the origins of soil formation on Earth I keep coming back to what Terence McKenna said which is no, I assert that the psilocybin is literally an alien and mushroom spores can survive in space! I guess if i wanted to update panspermia the only thing I would kind of say to people is, I think...I'm fairly confident that the emergence of life on earth is an alien event right? So a virus. That doesn't mean that we haven't had dozens of different kinds of panspermic impacts

43:37 I mean, why would it just be one? Like that's kind of a holdover from a sort of very biblical idea of creation. Why has it not happened 1000 times? There is this kind of joke going around and I don't think it is that much of a joke but the octopus doesn't resemble anything really on Earth as well in 2015... No 2014 there was these kinds of wacky, oh the octopus must be an alien ha-ha-ha! Kind of funny, I fucking love science ideas but you go hang on why not like again the model predicts that. The mushroom could have come from space and then we get spores, life probably did in a sort of super virus form

44:12 So why is it weird to say the octopus, because it's weird. Like it's a fucking weird animal? Yeah yeah! How do we know and this again McKenna was kind of into this idea he said what if a lot of stuff gets washed through space and some of it lands here then I see no problem with that as a model now where it gets going back to the animus model in any kind of asserting intentionality especially for things that are only 1% physical 99% non is 4% of the human DNA is as a result of retroviral transfer. Now what a retrovirus is, as opposed to a normal virus, it swaps out this sort of code for another host organism with its own

44:55 So we have, we're literally provably built of bits of virus that have clearly changed something to do with us. And then we start to come back to that pig chimp thing and go okay so all this stuff is happening and now are operating in a model that asserts, that can assert intentionality for these processes. Is it time to start having that discussion? Like I think it is! That's where the much of the ancient alien era comes from is again, the world view dysfunction that comes at it which is mostly materialist. But if you kind of jump to the parallel model of an animus or a kind of bad idealists, you can start to look at these things and go well what science sees there

45:38 is sort of random behavior that in a one-in-one trillion chance happen to do this amazing thing. That's an insufficient explanation and this is the opportunity to sort of remodel how we see the story of life in the universe but also the emergence of humans on this planet Yeah, and you're so right that there's this tendency to think that it happened once. There's this one thing but why couldn't have happened a bunch of times? And also as you note another log on the fire is mushrooms thrive on disaster and we are a disaster species! Yes, so the psilocybin mushroom in particular because its saprophytic will...it literally

46:19 colonize the earth at the same time humans did because we cut stuff down and we poop, and we sort of alter the ratio between grasslands and forest because grasslands attract the animals that we eat. And so I mean, if you played Starcraft we were the creep that allowed Psilocybin to conquer the Earth. And this is why everyone laughs at McKenna but he's like no but seriously so we have this being that has told him it's an alien that is built to thrive in areas of human disturbance that tells us that it does this for contact with us, and not just us. It's done this across thousands of planets and it is in that kind of immediate hyperdimensional contact with itself and other beings. And it's just kind of along for the ride or the experience." And you go well that's like sure! You know there's nothing in that that is wrong from a observable biological science perspective. The bit that people will quibble with –and it works in the model–is whether it is an intentional being?

47:24 You know most of the kind of shamanic cultures that would use these things considered it exactly that same thing with ayahuasca They considered it a spirit. So At what point do we take it at its word? Yeah, sweet Jesus It is a complex, strange history and we long for simple answers man. But to hop back to magic you mentioned that the data shows that magical phenomenon tends to manifest in cultures more open to them and that magical experiences are made less possible by materialist cultural filters. I definitely recognize that and as i said in the intro, if you're looking for a conspiratorial worldview you might find it there because you point out in your writing that as much as the Vatican did to destroy the magical worldview with its brand of religion, The Big Bang Theory was also first cooked up by a Catholic priest so really both sides of the magic destroying coin come from the same mint is this a red flag to you or am I going off the rails?

48:23 So Catholicism... bans magic rather than says it doesn't exist, right? So that's kind of its thing. And now the politics of the church fathers and whatever at the time with The Big Bang what happened there was that was kind of Catholicism or religions rearguard move against its kind of like the materialist Victorian version of science because it needed to reinsert itself or it was fucked basically needed to reinsert herself back in kind of worldview because I don't think Catholicism, Catholicism doesn't suppress magic because the example of a

49:04 a culture that's more open to magic so it has more extreme magical and UFO events is somewhere like Mexico or Brazil, both very Catholic places. So Catholicism bans it rather than says it doesn't exist. It's just that when we move to materialist cultures like Northwest Europe or the North American continent or so on then there's something about – there's a field of dreams thing going on with our heads right? which if you live in a magical universe, more magical things will happen. If you don't they won't so it's unlikely Richard Dawkins would be abducted by aliens and that's the benefit of kind of like really doubling down on this model it is seriously field of dreams or you build your own spaceport science and it's interesting the conspiratorial angle here is In the 20th century particularly immediately following World War Two where the public version of science

49:54 still doubling down on this materialist thing, even though it's just not been correct since the 30s from a physics perspective and from a philosophical perspective. Not since the 70s like they so they know it's not correct right but you kind of double down on it while simultaneously you know um The alphabet agencies uh employing witches and kind of working with you know radiotic mind control and psilocybin and all this So it's-they essentially had like an evil Hogwarts going on at the same time that they're saying all of this is fake and That's a conspiratorial angle. The reason and probably by now I think they know that the field of dreams Methodism play, and I frankly think they're using that awareness in a highly manipulative sense

50:44 as a kind of mass mind control project that I think they're sort of, they have been experimentally working out if you can make people think this or be afraid of this and so on. And that is pure magic and it's come from the evil Hogwarts. But at the same time, public science you get former defense contractors in a bow tie playing a scientist on television and telling you this stuff doesn't exist. And that's the conspiratorial angle here they fucking know it works because they've spent millions and millions of it over 60 years and the public version isn't and that kind of make their taking all the magic and making sure that the kind of Western world has a view that doesn't allow to happen except for the bits that they want it too

51:25 Well, yeah. I mean that's true but can it not go back further though? Because we talk a lot about the occult-y black projects of the last few decades but what was the deep state of the Renaissance era doing or back in time when you know when magic is being banned well so that was banned rather than suppressed That's what i mean So Catholicism or like Vatican doctrine will assert that demons exist and angels exists you can do things like engage with this stuff. It's just that you shouldn't, so it's different to saying it doesn't exist if anything, it kind of makes the field of dreams bigger rather than smaller because you ban something and it kind of fetishizes it So it wasn't a hit on whether or not magic existed when you're talking about the hermetic underground that sort of emerged out of the Renaissance and kinda blended into the English Renaissance in all that weird mix

52:20 you know, the people behind Shakespeare and the John Dee stuff and the kind of thing that's trying to essentially liberalize Europe by providing free education in all these very hermetic and spiritual ideas. They were doing that as an underground for political reasons against the Vatican and the Holy Roman Emperor and all these people who didn't want things like printing presses and free education or any challenges the kind of people that they put on the thrones across Europe. That was a political op rather than a magical one, both sides of that fight asserted the reality of the spiritual world and so they weren't fighting over whether it was true or not, they were just game-of-thronesing, that's what went on there

53:03 Right on, right on. That does make sense! It's so tough for me to get in the context of that day you know? So it is what I interpret as the... whether it's banning or suppression, it's that taboo nature of these empowering tools that drives me to want to engage in them but my progression has been slow because you often say that magic will ruin your life and And there are always, you know a ton of warning signs associated with it too. And I wish I had explored this more when I was 18 living in my parents' basement with very little to risk but now that I enjoy nearly all aspects of life and I find myself walking into the crossroads offering in hand thinking what do I really even ask for? More of the same please at what risk? You know, the risk of losing it all? Well unfortunately that's in play but here's the thing most of this discussion has been about

53:54 the universe being magical, right? So as I view it. There are practicing magicians and non-practicing magicians. It's kind of like the financial system or the monetary system, not taking a position is still taking a position because you can't but operate within it right? You can't get away from it. Yeah people who listen to this going I'm not that interested in magic well unlucky you live in a magical universe now what that means just because sharks exist doesn't mean everyone should become a marine biologist but anyone could still get eaten by shark So if you look at how magic, magic can be a very unreliable tool for kind of getting the things you want. And it is because that's what happens that if you look at it across the spectrum of spirit encounters from UFOs and fairies and whatever at one end all the way down to kind of like, oh I...and this still happens to me like when your sigils show up in the most fucking dickish way possible. Like, and you go, ah rookie mistake every time!

54:55 That's just the nature of our uneasy interaction with the spirit world. Now, as a result- yes I put it out there and go look I can't promise that won't happen. That's the kind of eaten by the shark moment, but it is also the marine biologist eating by the shark moment just because the universe is magical doesn't mean you need to become a magician in the kind of full-fledged I'm going out there and do stuff but let's wind back 100 years or even 200 years and some places lets not winded back at all But I am gonna give your family example and I'm sure because you have Catholic family background will be similar

55:32 My great grandmother knew how to get rid of ghosts. My Irish Catholic great-grandmother, everyone did and she wasn't like the Warrens going out there fighting demons across the world right? She if there was a spirit somewhere she knew the prayer or she knew you'd use this salt or this herb or um the same thing with kind of like the evil eye or what have you with Italian Catholics These people aren't Gandalf, but everyone had those skills like kind of knowing how to drive that you would use when you needed them because the universe is magical. And that's kind of where, and funny enough the enchantments that are in Pieces of Eight. Some of them were there to just put this away in case you need it because that was their response – a natural cultural response – to their frankly better awareness that they were living in a magical universe. You don't have to be the marine biologist but I do think if people who are listening to this who are on board with the idea

56:27 whatever word they want to describe it for, right? The sort of general stuff that's spoken about in THC. I frankly do think you need to know something to clear a spirit from your house like it can be herbs, it can be a prayer – I think you need to know that. I think you need to know kind of like walking over one's grave kind of icky evil eye thing. I think you need to know how to clear that these are just things that every human should do it's different to like, all right well i'm gonna like have a pact with Astaroth and that's the kind of level that is a niche within a niche that you're either into or not and those are the people when you're at that end That's when like look this could uh this could comically blow up in your face like something out of Discworld

57:11 And people who are into it just kind of take that risk. But everyone else, you can still get eaten by the shark so no, you should know this stuff. So basically risky as it is not engaging with it there's no guarantee that it can't hurt you? There's no not I watched The Conjuring 2 last night and I'm like an Enfield poltergeist nerd at the best times 11 year old Janet she got some pretty intense stuff out unsuccessful Ouija board results and no one else in that family who got the encounter with it or the experience of her mistake.

57:47 had anything to do with it. Like that's the shark attack, right? That's an extreme one that's like a fucking Discovery Channel mega shark. It's usually just like oh this house I'm looking at feels a bit weird i'll do some clearing on it or what have you that's kind of more baseline stuff but yeah it's like the financial system if the universe is magical your stuck how do you get out of it you don't have to become a magician but that's just kind of it Yeah, it's just a function of reality like dealing with weather. Exactly! Gordon another amazing time with you to try to reign this steed in You do have Chaos Protocols Starships and now Pieces Of Eight And you also talk about an unwritable fourth book Just to put a capstone on this pyramid Can you remind the people about the synergy between The Three Books? And you know The Method To The Madness? Give us any more insight into this unwritable fourth book

58:43 Sure. So Starships is a book of history written by a practicing magician, the Chaos Protocols is a kind of book of life hacks for anyone who has a spiritual sensibility written by a chaos magician people thought that was my chaos magic book pieces of eight is my chaos magic book that's what it is it's kind of revisiting and kind of re electrifying some of the core concepts of chaos magic What is interesting and I noticed it didn't realize at the time because what I self-published the last one but the first one is Scarlet Imprint and the second one is Llewellyn. And, the first two are written kind of simultaneously because you know eyes bigger than my stomach and I thought I could do that and now I don't recommend it but there are... as an example the presence of The Headless Rite in The Chaos Protocol's context of headlessness and what that means

59:36 kind of spiritually or from spirit world perspective is found in starships. And what you do after the headless right, from a spirit engagement is sort of found in pieces of aid and the reason for that is that it would be a sort of 550,000 word meandering book like okay, so you do this one and here's why 100 page later to the next one and it's a mess like that's not really how books are constructed more interestingly all those and there some of them are Easter eggs but There are concepts, the context for which in history is found in starships and the modern day is found in chaos protocols, and that kind of thinking behind it as in pieces of eight. And if you look at the practical enchantments that are available in Chaos Protocols and Pieces of Eight they're locked together into a coherent system which would be this sort of full fourth book grimoire but when you're dealing with magic

1:00:35 The metaphor I use is it's kind of like the reason symbolism is used in magic or magic is contained within symbols, because it sort of like taking a object off a shipwreck and bringing it to the surface. And once it hits the air, it oxidizes and rusts and falls apart whereas underneath the water, It's still coherent. This is the reason why magical and spiritual information via symbolism, because if you actually just try to explain it, it's like explaining a joke. Once you explain the joke, the funny is gone and once you explain this is how this works, It doesn't work anymore And so The Unwritten Fourth Book is all those bits that You can't explain or you break them and they're to do with the sort of practice of magic. If you read all three your brain will start

1:01:29 draw lines in between different parts of different ones, and you'll start to see this fourth book. And you will get the idea of why that couldn't be... That book can't kind of really be brought down into the physical in any sense. By the way they're all standalone it's not a trilogy as well so yeah you may resonate with one or the other It's just that the kind of bonus prize is this sort of fourth book. The kind of... Yeah Gordon's Chaos Magic Grimoire can't be written and it's this fourth book Boom. Hell yeah, I like that! I think we did it man of course runesoup.com is your homeland Gordon underscore white on Twitter any last parting words pimp? No again it's just you know good to chat this has always been a fun show. Oh yeah I love it you're the man take care yourself out there You as well

1:02:23 There it is guys, number 6 for Gordon White appearances on THC. That's 12 hours but I always do have a blast! He has been here more than any other guest and I think Crow would have to be in second place with around 4 appearances and I really liked this one I pulled stuff from several different sources and we really just did a grab bag of the things that Gordon's been churning out lately. I am in awe, the guy has put out three books in one year! I do like them all but Chaos Protocols has got to take the cake because it can actually improve your life and prepare you for the harsh reality ahead yeah Starships is great but I haven't figured out how its gonna help people pay their rent

1:03:02 In fact, I just got back from a trip to my old stomping grounds in Missouri and I just kept thinking how so many of my friends could benefit from that book. And I want to dispense it out to all of them but then I'm the guy from California coming back and telling everybody how to live! That's its own cliche that never seems to work but nevertheless it's a beautiful thing And before we call this meeting of the Midnight Society closed, there's another quote from Pieces of Eight I wanted to use to make one more point. Our favorite wizard here writes... Magic's great power has always been an ontological one. This is what we do, we map these dangerous roads not to defeat or change power the new boss is ever the same as the old one and it is politically and historically naive to think otherwise but to build better lives outside the grasp and beyond the sight of monoculture And that's powerful guys

1:03:53 It speaks to a switch I'm going through and have been wrestling with for years. Is the goal to start a revolution and tear down the power pyramid brick by brick? Sure it sounds good shouted through a megaphone in Texas, but is it wiser to admit you can't make people change? The system will probably always be there, maybe I'll never really stand between a puppet master and his wealth extracting wars. I can't impose my utopia on everyone, that shouldn't really be the goal Maybe it is just more about a personal revolution and amassing enough personal power to step outside at least some of the prisons. It's a deep issue for people in the conspiratorial realm, especially when you can't force the masses to wake up any faster and life is too short to wait

1:04:36 There is a certain zenness to admitting that, though. A certain sigh of relief. And it might sound cynical but…it shouldn't. I mean we all have to fight a personal battle against this system – if more and more people build their lives outside the monoculture it will naturally weaken and dissipate. But there may always just be a certain percentage of people that stick with what they're told – and the meaningless jobs that come with that. The white picket fence, the freshly cut lawn of immaculence, quarter million dollars worth of debt that comes with it. It's dumb, but it is not my job to tell people how to live. It's my job to be my best self and work towards the life that works best for me. As much as I love it, I know people who would actually hate my life—and by definition only a fraction of us will ever really be outliers. And just the fact you're listening to this show means you have at least one foot out

1:05:26 But to take a line from the wise sage John Mayer, I do know people who are waiting on the world to change and magic is about changing your world. So think about that people! It's all i got. I wish everybody the best of luck, I appreciate all the time people spend listening to the higher side chats and ill see you at the crossroads. Your move alien ghosts...your fucking move Carlwood, it's your show now So what's it gonna be? Cause people will tune in to Hear another new conspiracy Almost too much of We thought this was low It's bad getting worse so Where'd all the good people go

1:06:14 They're on the higher side chats cause it's everybody's favorite show Where'd all the good people go? He got your Mars, Golden White and then there's Crow They talk this and that on the highest side Chat testing one, two Now what you gonna do? Bad news misused Got too much to lose Give me some truth now Who's side we on Whatever you say Turn on the boob tube I'm in a mood to obey So lead me astray By the way now Where'd all the good people go? They locked them up it seems For protesting Monsanto

1:07:04 Where'd all the good people go? They're on the THC My Favorite Show Sitting down, new episode to hear Wanna light a bolt but I fear the police Can you hear me? Can't interrupt me from this friendly conversation Been waiting all week for THC With the car wood there's no hesitation Exposing the truth getting to be elite

1:07:50 Scams, schemes, conspiracies and treason It's an excellent show what I need to know Where'd all the good people go? Been only getting hate and fear from all the other hoes Where'd all the good people go? Guess that makes THC my favorite show They talk this and that on the highest side, chat testing one two now what you gonna do? Bad news misused gotta give me some truth You got too much to lose recitably on today Anyway okay whatever you say Wrong and resolute but in the mood to obey Station to station desensitizing The nation going gone