Mitch Horowitz | Mind Magic, Esoteric Suppression, & The Materialist Blockade

00:00 The Planet Puppet Masters almost surely have a plan. There's clearly maybe something there beyond But until you've thoroughly tested every last close just to view Find the more you think, you know the less you really do Where would we be? LTHC Those who're lying to us just don't know to what degree

00:51 Now where will we be? LTHC Higher side chat show, Carl Wood and Company This is the way, Hireside Chatters. Doing what we do from sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and is there any more persistent deception than the overarching idea subtly woven throughout reality that as individuals we are essentially powerless? That to live outside of the cookie cutter cradle-to-grave cog in the wheel company man life path is so risky and success so unlikely that we might as well just play it safe

01:35 Get your education, accept your middle management position. Pay your mortgage, eat your slop, consume your nightly news and never bother to take the reins of your life because it could all just come crashing down We're told our mindsets make little difference in the matter-first universe, yet a mountain of evidence from ESP studies and the power of prayer to a legacy of magical ritual and esoteric techniques show us that what happens in our minds and where we direct our focus might actually be some of the most important things to get right if we want our situations to improve. So the big system becomes an operation in belief management, education becomes pre-approved fact regurgitation, news becomes aggressively fear based and culture is reduced to a sneaky siren coaxing our mental ships to crash against the rocks of distraction depression and disappointment.

02:23 But when I read the work of today's guest Mitch Horowitz, I am reminded of the research that says there is real power in positive thought. That there is value in clearly defining and aiming at one's goals and that spiritual forces are not only real—they're most likely the most important tools we've been neglecting. For the uninitiated, Mitch is an author and lecturer focused on areas like alternative spirituality, outsider history and the long-standing quest to bring empowerment and agency back into the human condition. He has written on everything from the occult influences of Ronald Reagan to the checkered career of professional skeptic James Randi for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, Salon, Big Think, Politico, Boing!Boing!, and a wide range of zines and scholarly journals

03:09 His books include Occult America, White House Seances, Ouija Circles, Masons and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation. One Simple Idea How the Lessons of Positive Thinking Can Transform Your Life The Miracle Club How Thoughts Become Reality And his recently released collection of essays and articles on the occult and outsider experiences Uncertain Places Just to name a few A guest who's been requested many times around here, the new thought thinker captain of the Miracle Club and occult author extraordinaire Mitch. Welcome to The Higher Side! Thank you my man glad to be here Yeah, and this is going to be great. I read Occult America and The Miracle Club years ago and really enjoyed both but we are doing the dance today because Intertradition sent me your latest book, The Collection of Essays called Uncertain Places and there's a lot to like about it UFOs ESP research hermeticism and more but to kick this off and sort of play off that intro there materialism

04:07 can be a very deeply rooted assumption in Western minds. Let's bust that up a bit when you're talking to someone who doesn't see an individual's mind as consequential to the outside world or that there is much value in our inner world at all, what are some of the go-to data points to show that the mind can have an influence on the outside world and matter might be more malleable than we are led to believe? The data is extraordinary. We probably have at this point about 80 years of data emerging from academic ESP research that demonstrates an extra physical effect, that not only demonstrates the ability of mind-to-mind communication but if the ability of people's minds to glean information in ways that violate time space distance material

04:55 Not only that, but really I would say emergent over the past 20 years or so we have wonderful experiments in precognition that actually demonstrate a cognitive improvement to tasks you apply yourself to when you continue studying after the fact. It violates all commonly observed properties of philosophical materialism of most of our linear experience of day-to-day life But it's there, it's real. It's bulletproof and it's something that I encourage people to experiment with plus it hardly needs saying to your audience that the founders of quantum mechanics themselves all believed in a perceptually based reality these were the founders of world-class science in the 20th and 21st century

05:43 and all of them were philosophical idealists as opposed to materialist. They believe that perception determines reality, that could be conditioned by a lot of countervailing factors but it's as real as the floorboards beneath our feet fields like neuroplasticity, advances in placebo response research and such have all affirmed this perceptual basis of reality. It's an exciting time to be alive because materialism or the philosophy that matter creates itself and that nothing exists outside of standard Newtonian laws—which I don't think Isaac Newton himself would have agreed with

06:24 They often say Christ was not a Christian, Newton was not a Newtonian. And we live in a world where these things are having a real impact on our culture and our sense of ourselves and it's something that I encourage the individual to experiment with Wow, well said. It's like you've done this before but that point about studying something after the fact having kind of non-linear effects that's something I didn't really expect to get into but i am intrigued by violations of linear cause and effect can you elaborate on that particular piece of the puzzle and the best evidence we have for that?

07:03 Sure. About 10 years ago, a psychologist at Cornell named Darrell Bem published the paper based on a decade of study and he was experimenting with the question of precognition whether we can see into the so-called future and I say so called because we really live in a reality where we understand time to be conditional time bends in certain circumstances. And the notion that time is this uninterrupted law of linearity, although we certainly experience it as such and it may be necessary for five sensory beings to experience it as such... It's not the final truth! It's not the final answer! It's not the ultimate or absolute of the reality that we live in. So in short, in Bem's most exciting experiments he gave subjects a simple word test

07:53 You memorize a certain number of words and then you repeat back however many you're capable of remembering. So if it's a list of 10 words, maybe you remember five six something of that nature He then added a wrinkle to the test, where he asked his subjects to study the word list again after giving their replies. In the second step when they studied A-word list again after delivering their replies, their responses spiked. The spike was small but it was substantial and it was replicated over thousands of trials. Now it's helpful to be writing about Bem's work 10 years down the road because

08:33 It's been meta-analyzed and it's proven confirmatory in a study that consisted of 90 samples in 33 different labs, in 14 different nations. And the confirmatory response pretty much matched the level of BEMS original experiments. So the challenge is if you do something whatever it is that you're engaged in whether it's an athletic pursuit whether it's cognitive whatever it may be there's evidence to show that your cognition and your performance can spike based on things that you do in the future. It sounds so Twilight Zone and so outside of our ordinary way of viewing the world, but it actually is not violative of Einstein's theories of space-time. It's not violative of theses and theories that have entered the conversation to explain the surreal

09:30 mechanical activity that we observe in quantum physics. It's just a way of showing that our cognition might not be wholly bound by linear time and I think it is one of the most exciting areas of psychical research and an area that the individual can experiment with him or herself Yeah, no doubt. Very exciting! I heard you talking to Duncan Trussell not too long ago and i think it was BEM's work you were discussing and you made the point which i think is a good one that his experiments were vetted harder than a lot of pharmaceuticals on the market today but still not accepted which is odd because we take a lot of things into our body with less vetting than this very research

10:17 That is so right on. And it's such an important point, even BEMS most vociferous critics and he's got plenty celebrate him for his transparency what BEM did in these experiments is almost unprecedented In the social sciences he obviously understood that this data was going to be highly controversial So you took a unique step He made his software available free to anybody who asked. This was at his own expense, he prepared an instruction manual that would allow other researchers to replicate his experiments and he threw open the file drawer so to speak

10:59 so that critics, supporters, curious people—whomever could review his research in detail. It was an unprecedented degree of transparency especially in the social sciences where people very jealously guard their results and their methodology because they're worried about pushback and they're usually writing their articles just so they can check off a box in their tenure application and so forth And BEMS transparency was virtually unprecedented. That's why the sample was so large

11:35 10 years hence in the meta-analysis that confirmed his work. He showed a lot of bravery, a lot of ethics, and transparency. And of course, his critics attack him based on the tautological response that precognition cannot be real because it violates common observation – which is a terrible yardstick for the pursuit of knowledge And BEM has really opened a door for people to continue these experiments, either in a clinical situation or in private for that matter. It's just an extraordinary turning of the page I think in psychical research

12:14 Yeah, it totally is. And to kind of get a little deeper into how we find ourselves in this situation I like this quote where you say We possess statistical evidence as good as any for the anomalous transfer of information or ESP in laboratory settings But that fact raises more questions than answers and is rejected by a modernist intelligentsia that regards countervailing evidence to materialism As the catechists does heresy Well, I love it. Isn't that interesting? What do you make of this cultural paradigm we have where we are presented with the experts of this quote intelligentsia and they dismiss all of this evidence-of-mind? Do you think they are being genuinely blinded by a dogma or are they trying to steer regular folks away from something useful and powerful? It's an interesting question Greg. One of the things I write about in the book is that

13:11 When I debate the skeptics, and I do seek out skeptics to debate. As William Blake wrote opposition is true friendship and we don't get better at something unless there's a certain degree of resistance I really hit the limits of my understanding of human nature because i could sit back and engage in the same armchair analysis that anybody could about why people display this blinding lack of curiosity or this absolute airtight closure to new ideas, evidence

13:51 Sure, you know I could say it's fear-based. I could say it's their training. I could say It's the legacy of modernist culture and there's all kinds of possibilities that hold water but I find that their resistance is so strict and so overwhelming That even though I like to consider myself a student of human nature. I hit a wall. I can't understand why some of the contemporary skeptics like Steven Pinker, for example at Harvard who I recently engaged in an exchange with about BEMS work. I can't understand the absolute unwillingness to even crack open the door to a question—the lack of curiosity it's almost like dealing with a kind of

14:40 counter-fundamentalism, a mirror fundamentalism. You know Jacob Needleman the philosopher who died several weeks ago used to say that the definition of fundamentalism is I'm right you're wrong which is pretty good definition it doesn't hinge on being religious it doesn't hinge on any one particular culture what have you that's exactly the mindset that you find among many of the skeptics and I hit a wall in understanding what their motives are Yeah, cheers to that. It is really tough to uncover motives especially if some people aren't even aware of them themselves but let's talk about how a person can and should be using this information their mind their intention their belief you write psychological dimensions of belief are incredibly powerful believing in the possibility of an outcome as William James noted may be the vital ingredient for that outcome to occur at all

15:35 See, I think that is true. It's something I've experienced in my own life and I know people who really struggle with self-doubt to a degree that they just don't take any chances and live a life they aren't fulfilled by working at job they actively dislike this kind of thing because they don't believe it could be any better or They over focus on the thoughts of how worse it could get what would you say to help those people? We all fear consequence. That's common to human nature and obviously, fear of consequence is necessary to some extent if our ancient ancestors didn't fear consequence. They might have gotten eaten by saber-toothed tigers or what have you, so it's obviously baked into the human situation and there are good reasons for it but it gets so baked in that we use fear of consequence as an excuse for inertia. And one of the things William James pointed out is that we all live by a maybe. If there's not a maybe in our lives

16:38 We're completely static and frozen. And I think that we all have to acknowledge whatever our perspective on life, there's an element of maybe there is an element of belief, there is an element of assumption it's omnipresent why not? venture the assumption that you are capable of doing something. That's not an unreasonable assumption, we understand the elements of how we get things done from a cognitive and motor perspective. And I would argue that there are thought agencies that come to our assistance—we've been talking about some of them—if we venture that maybe

17:25 There's always going to be examples out there in the culture of somebody who takes a disastrously depleting action. But I've personally found in life that disaster usually arises from inertia, disaster usually arises from saying no to opportunities, from not making a leap, from determining that I understand exactly what's going on and I'm not gonna get roped into this I've had more tragedies arise in life from saying no to something good than venturing a slightly risky yes, you'll feel more alive. And the likelihood is that the consequences will not be what you fear it may be an aspect of human nature and this maybe universal with the exception of a few people who seem to have a particular gift for getting themselves into scrapes but most of us exaggerate consequences. And I found that again and again so for example if a person is in a situation let's say where

18:29 they feel really depleted by their surroundings, whether it's work-based, whether it's their social group, their peers. Whatever it is, they fear that exiting these surroundings is almost going to amount to a kind of social or economic starvation that virtually never occurs and yet the exaggerated sense of consequences such that year after year after year we remain in the same chair so to speak and sometimes literally without ever venturing beyond that cave. And we don't know what's beyond that cave, but if a person is suffering then I think it's a necessary wager and probably a very vivifying wager to say, I'm unhappy in this cave. I want to see what's beyond it at least you'll know. Without verification there's no search people recite these truisms all the time

19:27 about what constitutes happiness in life, but one doesn't really know unless you're in the midst of it. Unless you're experiencing it and I think that to be human is almost to embark on gambits, embark on wagers obviously a person has to know what he or she is doing you don't step into a boxing ring if you don't have experience in that particular world. But to never do so, I think it's denying a basic part of what it means to be human. It results in a lot of sorrow, depression and anxiety.

20:03 Yes yes i agree and i often think why do so many people default to focusing on the negative is it natural or is it engineered i mean our new cycle certainly doesn't give us much to be optimistic about and then i think well if where are attention goes in our mental polarity is so key to the manifestation of our experience that is almost criminal tonight promote some positive stories in that 24 hour news cycle. It just seems like everything is slanted to the negative, but when people kind of scoff at this idea that we do manifest our reality from our actions which start as thoughts I say okay well so you don't really like your job managing the dairy section at the grocery store okay? But you did manifest that. You saw they were hiring, you filled out the application, you put your best foot forward through three interviews and you show up on time day after

21:00 day, you are manifesting. You're just aiming at things that you don't even want." I think that's absolutely true and there is a lot of safety involved in things we think we can get our arms around. I think as step one the individual has to understand apropos what you were just saying that there is an element of choice in all this. There is absolutely an element of choice. I find for example that people sometimes complain to me around the holiday season, that they feel humiliated by their in-laws or some other family member. Or they feel misunderstood in social settings and they never even give themselves the wiggle room

21:49 mentally, emotionally to realize that being in those situations is a choice. And as I was saying earlier there may be consequences if you exit that there are consequences no matter what we do most of them unforeseen but if a person feels that they're egregiously misunderstood in their social group or in their job or what have you They may say, well you know I have economic needs. I have social needs and emotional needs if i was to exit this unhappy situation everything could blow up in my face and it's true there are needs present but at the same time

22:38 one has to realize that you're deferring to those needs. You don't really know what will happen, personally speaking and I say this just from my own intimate experience anytime i've exited a situation where I felt misunderstood for example or I felt like I was around people that I just wasn't grokking too I have been happier. I have been much happier, I'm happier today at age 57 than i was at age 17 or at age 27 in large measure because of that. I have never found that the consequences were anywhere near as heavy as I was thinking and sometimes it happens there were none at all

23:22 The point is just to get in touch with what you were describing, Greg. There is a choice present because if one doesn't acknowledge that then it's almost like we're rowing a boat with one ore and there are two ores in the water. There may be problems that arise from that rowing but we do have two ores in the water. You've effectively told yourself—almost hypnotized yourself—to believe that there's only one if you don't acknowledge the factor of choice Really good advice i hope as we're going into a new year and people have opportunities to think about the direction of their lives and wipe the slate clean and change direction that they ponder some of that advice. And let's talk about some of this stuff in your first essay on uncertain places reclaiming the dams toward a new understanding of bigfoot flying saucers leprechauns another inconvenient realities,

24:17 because I too am a Charles Fort fan. I love paranormal, encrypted encounter stories especially ones that don't fit into the conventional categories and it's not to say these things aren't real but belief does come into play many times the story starts with I had the thought to look behind me or I thought how cool it would be to see a UFO and then bam, I saw one. What do you think of that relationship between our minds and these Fortean experiences? One of the things I probe in that essay is whether there's a psychical dimension to all of our experiences including anomalous encounters, UFO sightings

25:00 experiences that might run the gamut from cryptids to poltergeist experiences. It's not that these things aren't real, one of the things that I suggest is that we may be through our psyches capable of moving through different intersections of time which relates back to the precognition experiments we were discussing And as such, it's possible that there is a kind of selectivity that emerges from our perspective or our emotionally charged thoughts or our emotionally charged assumptions or convictions. It could be that at every instant including this one right now as we're speaking

25:55 We are taking measurement through our senses and what are our senses really, but biological instruments of measurement in a manner that's not entirely different from what goes on in a lab. When we see in a particle lab for example measurements are taken and objects that are in superposition assume a place of locality they assume an actuality or reality this is lawful This is emerging from 90 or so years of quantum mechanics experiments. Nobody challenges the data, the data is not controversial at least not anymore. What's controversial are the implications and I think we owe it to ourselves to experiment with some of these implications because the fact is it is almost a logical requirement

26:52 from what we've discovered emergent from study of the behavior of material in the 20th and now 21st century to allow for the fact that infinite outcomes exist, and there are infinite realities perhaps concurrently playing out. The thought experiment called Schrodinger's cat back in 1935 has pretty much established that as part of paradigm of both physical and perceptual understanding in the 21st century. And I think we have to be brave about pondering these implications, and asking ourselves when we use a term like manifest for example maybe the term that we really ought to be using is select—maybe there's a psychical process

27:47 that is concurrent with the physical process of exquisitely fine measurement. Exquisitely fine measurement reveals things, actualizes things and brings things into an experiential level of reality. This may not be something that's just confined to the particle lab—it actually goes beyond particles—but but this may be something that's part of a psychical process as well. Again, this touches upon some of the precog experiments I was describing. This may have something to do with the UFO experience and then it begs the question of what are the conditions under which these things occur? Can we replicate these conditions? Can we induce these conditions? And I think that it's an area that begs us as a generation to experiment with

28:38 Yes, so well said. Cheers to that! I absolutely wish there was more experimentation in pushing up against that like instead of asking the question is it or isn't it for another three decades let's just assume it is and then push up against how to make the experiences more repeatable more potent all that kind of stuff because the data at the quantum level is very interesting and it might provide a foundation or some scaffolding to explain the unexplainable. But when you try to scale it up to a UFO, or cryptid sighting experience, it is quite difficult to do and... You write in the book that the folklore of say fairy folks are little trickster beings I mean it extends across Central America Ireland Polynesia West Africa

29:33 Very distant groups of people realized that if you start to, as you say, if you start talking about these beings woods, sprites fairies or brownies and you invite them into your life. They can show up and cause mischiefs. So a lot of people are like we don't talk about that because I do think it's real but I can't allow it to be spoken of or it will come to me that again gets into that realm of how thoughts are related but I still struggle with the mechanism Of like, what triggers that? Is the leprechaun in control of its appearance to man or is it victim to some random roll of the dice as is the person who sees it. That kind of stuff

30:15 Well, I'm interested in the implications of string theory because string theory was devised to try to harmonize and explain some of the surreal behavior of matter. Not only on the particle level but on the macro level as well where we experience a kind of mirror effect where macro objects and micro particles affect one another at distances with no obvious causation. This is what Einstein slightly derisively referred to as spooky action at a distance and the basis of string theory is that all things that exist are on these undulating bands of strings. And there are different intersections of time or different dimensions where things are going on all the time, just like in ours and they may be affecting things we experience in ours It's possible that at sensitive moments although we don't know our psyches might travel amidst these different intersections of time maybe at a moment of extreme passion

31:17 And as such, we may be catching a wink or glimpse of something that's real. That's occurring that's affecting life in our own range of experience but it exists in the so-called other dimension or other intersection of time and perspective itself may actualize things And I must add, not only extraordinary things but ordinary things as well. It could be that at every instant of life we are selecting in effect and with that selection comes a

31:56 a whole sense of so-called past, present future. All these things—the past in particular—seem completely fixed to us but we don't really know how reality works in any ultimate sense. We only are peeking through a keyhole on our knees in terms of our ordinary frame of reference but it could be that at each instant including this one right now all of us are perceiving things that are concretely real and that bring with them a a kind of perspective on the past that seems absolutely actual, absolutely fixed. But we could be crisscrossing among infinite possibilities and outcomes all the time and it's an extraordinary prospect and it's something that I ask people to consider in terms of their daily experience. Some friends with a novelist who when he was a little kid

32:53 dreamt of publishing novels as an adult. And he used to draw pictures of these book jackets and so forth from his future predictive novels, and he would include quotes or endorsements on these book jackets. He included one from the horror writer Clive Barker, who was a literary hero of his. He's now a grown man and has this first novel out and sure enough there is a cover quote, a cover endorsement from Clive Barker. And he wondered was I paving the way for this as a little kid? Or does my perception of the past in real and actual ways change itself, rearrange itself

33:37 because I conceptualized this in the here and now, and that brought with it a whole sense of where it occurred when I was a kid. It's just something to consider because we're so acclimated to thinking of time in this straight arrow way but we have evidence that that's not really true—that time is conditional, that time bends, that were not just locked into this linear framework. So we may be much more powerful then we've been brought up to understand. Yeah, that is so interesting and I often do think like looking at the job i have now in retrospect i've had little experiences that

34:17 Push me towards this or they fit with the whole story where they wouldn't have had i not done this job and. I think that's just really interesting i wonder if given let's assume that model is kinda true that like you have many cells i guess across time, I wonder if there's a way to tap into your future self or to find a better relationship with this other version of yourself, your unconscious, your subconscious mind and like string yourself along or pull yourself from the future towards your optimal life. Well one of the things i think a person needs to start with is real unembarrassed

35:02 intimate clarity about what that optimal life is because we all think that we know what we want, but we're victims of peer pressure. We're victims of cultural and societal pressure. We internalize these things and it's kind of shocking to find—and I encounter this in myself The very rote quality of the things that we repeat to ourselves internally. William James used to feel that self-image is destiny and our menu of inner talking is really limited

35:38 there's a very fixed number of thoughts and ideas and self-perceptions that we repeat to ourselves. And I ask people to take some time out in private, don't share it with anybody, it's your own exquisitely internal private exercise, and ask yourself as though for the first time what do I really want in life? Forget everything! Forget what you've been conditioned to think is right or wrong high-minded or shallow or superficial, whatever. All these are just words and we inure these things internally and they can become very limited it's really internalized peer pressure in a certain way

36:20 Forget everything, forget all the messaging. You know so many things that we take as hardcore truth as absolute truth are just familiar to us by dint of repetition and I always tell people familiarity is not true every culture on earth has a circumstance where a certain set of ideas, maybe a set of religious ideas or materialist ideas gets so heavily repeated that we think it's absolutely fixed. But these things are just conceptual. These things are just notions of reality that have been crafted by human hands So give yourself a break and allow yourself in a completely unembarrassed way to ask, what do I want? And if you do that, you'll almost always come to a surprising answer. So I think that clarity, absolute clarity within and keep it to yourself is the first step in directing the possibilities of the psyche

37:20 Yeah, yeah. Totally agree people go decades sometimes entire lifetimes just going with the flow and never even trying to direct it or asking themselves what they really want It's like so easy to do and just its miraculous that we never get there Or it takes so long to get there There's many distractions Who is the masked singer this week? I don't know There's all these things you can focus on if they'll matter at all The sports Games and all that but familiarity is not truth man put that on a t-shirt. I like it Oh, I may tell that to my friend Josh Romero who's an artist we were talking about some new t-shirts Maybe yeah, maybe we'll do a familiarity is not truth t-shirt. You should you should So there is a lot in the book that I do like but

38:11 But I wanted to jump to some of your comments about conspiracy culture in the spirit of what you said earlier, opposition is true friendship. Some of these comments are not so flattering. And I like to say the three pillars of this show, the three broad categories of discussion that I have with guests are conspiracy, the paranormal and the occult. So we go there quite often but you say conspiracy theorizing is not the work of independent thinkers it is the work of those who endanger independent thinkers and that is like a knife in my heart I have to ask you to elaborate on what you mean there, because it sounds like something that I would very much disagree with. Well, I appreciate your bringing that up and this is a very live issue for me and I was talking about this actually with the podcaster yesterday. Let me give you small piece of background first for example. About 18 months ago

39:09 There's a house up in the town of Poughkeepsie, which is in New York State's Hudson Valley that was occupied by two members of the Church Of Satan. And somebody in a hazmat uniform with his features disguised dowsed the house with gasoline set fire to it. The two residents escaped with their lives, thankfully but they lost everything and it was a very dangerous crime I presume it to be a hate crime not just random and the guy who did it to my knowledge has never been caught people can read about it by putting in the terms of used into Google doing a news search and you know frankly Greg I get really worried that that kind of thing

40:01 is, if not in an absolute act of violence but that kind of thinking that contributes to that results from the type of conspiracy theorizing. That's always looking for a hidden hand or a hidden enemy that always makes me the hero looking back in the mirror from myself and then makes the bad guys somebody else whether it's Satanists or globalists some conception of a secret group or society. I want to punch holes in the straight story, and I absolutely honor that. But as conspiracy theorizing plays out in the 21st century and earlier it strikes me that it very frequently reflects man's perpetual search for hidden foe. And that hidden foe is almost always

40:59 on the outside, and I'm almost always the hero of that story. And the bad guy is almost always someone else in somewhere else." The bad guy very often takes the form of different historical groups that have been the subject of calumny or canards or false rumors, false stories. That way of thought can become a real habit I want to poke holes in the straight story. I want to upend materialist assumptions, I want to upend assumptions about how we live or how we think we have to live without that selection of a hidden foe." So that's where I'm coming from with that kind of statement. Fair enough and you know the example you gave...I don't deny that there is

41:55 overlap in the Venn diagram between psychological breaks and doing things you shouldn't do, and conspiracy thought. But there's an analogy there because in the book you talk about trying to elevate new age culture that it is so often judged on the airy fairy star seed kind of people. And that that's dismissive to emphasize the least among a particular group or who hold a particular view I try to elevate conspiracy culture in the same way that you might try to elevate new age culture, which is just to be default skeptical of a lot of things that we are told in a mainstream narrative sort of way. And if you look at a lot of history, you're going to be right more than 50% of the time by casting some doubt on there. That doesn't have anything to do with a propensity for violence

42:53 It's just skepticism of official stories. I mean, and by its nature when you say conspiracy theorizing is not the work of independent thinkers...I mean it is though without a contingent of people who are skeptical of mainstream perspectives and government actions we are just eating up establishment talking points to me it's the definition of independent thought if conspiracies are a threat or something dangerous, I guess I would ask how they should be dealt with because is it not more dangerous to not have a space reserved for counterpoints and being critical of the state? Well you're making the good point. And I appreciate the analogy to New Age because I am frequently a defender of new age culture. I apply the term new age to myself. I describe New Age

43:43 as a radically ecumenical culture of therapeutic spirituality. So I push back on the mainstream use of the term New Age, as a kind of epithet and i think your point in that regard is well taken and the reason I said this is a hot issue for me is literally...I was just speaking about this yesterday on a podcast with Connor Habib. As I urge people not to completely swallow the hand-me-down narratives that they get from skepticism of a professional sort, or that they get from the manner in which most mainstream media covers psychical research—which I care about. It may behoove me

44:29 to revisit some of my own rejectionism of what I call conspiracist culture. And I am willing to do that, if i didn't do that I'd be violating some of my own ground principles. I have my concerns, I'm very concerned about the prospect of a new satanic panic, I'm very concerned about violence against accused witches around the world. I'm very concerned about ancient prejudicial tropes kind of getting dressed up in new language, so I have all those concerns but i also honor what you just said about your efforts to elevate

45:12 conspiracist culture because there is something there that intersects with my own efforts to elevate new age culture, which I am attached to. Which I'm a part of but which I'm also critical of. So if i'm asking people to kind of drop the blinders dropped the prejudices it behooves me to take my own medicine so I'm trying to engage that In a real and sincere way. I love it, i thought that would be the common ground for us for sure and i get what you're saying and i also have a lot of those same concerns i don't like when a person loses their mind and then goes and does something terrible which isn't even directed at power

46:00 how often are these things just directed at everyday folks? And then the news loves to latch on to what they were looking at online and who they were following. Obviously, it hurts my soul a little bit that they would be in my camp to a degree but I would also say that... To put another point on this is the term conspiracy theory. It's pretty well known that it was popularized by the CIA to get people to not be so critical of the system. It was kind of a pejorative, a stigmatization of those who challenged at the time it was the JFK thing but there's a pretty good bunch of literature about this that it was kind of crafted so that you could say oh that's just a conspiracy... Those people are conspiracy theorists don't even look

46:54 that. Regular people have a knee-jerk reaction to not go down those paths, but when I think about that campaign I think about the same way witches and occultists are marginalized groups. I think conspiracy theorists are also kind of on the outside and share the common bond of those who are demonized or at least dismissed by the establishment because of unpopular opinions they hold, which are based on data points. Witches and occultists have their data points, the kinda mind stuff we've been talking about. Conspiracy theorist have some data points too Yeah, I'm open to that. And the part of what you said that i want to underline is that

47:40 We have to be sure that we are directing our scrutiny, our criticisms, our energies towards people who hold actual power. Not the librarian who wears a pentagram you know who could be any one of our best friends but towards those forces that hold actual power so in this country for example Almost everybody agrees that our healthcare system is in a kind of shambles. It's wildly expensive, it's fueled by overbilling... We can't seem to make any improvements and there are all kinds of different policy possibilities that could improve health care for people in this country some go into more free market direction some go into more governmental direction

48:28 I'm interested in what works. And yet this stalemate is persistent, we can't get in front of pharmaceutical prices when somebody needs insulin or something like that. We can't get in front of fraud and medical billing which is wild and which probably fuels some of the inflation that we're currently experiencing especially coming out of the lockdown I want to be sure that we're directing our umbrage where it belongs at powerful organizations rather than at individuals, you know who just might be out of step with the mainstream which I applaud and I don't want to see those people targeted or victimized. Yes and that we are totally in agreement so i'm glad we did talk about that! I was a little on the fence am I gonna bring this up? No I'm really glad you did, I'm really glad you did and um... And I'm sitting with it, I'm sitting with it yeah fair

49:26 Let's talk a little bit more about UFOs because we kind of glossed over that, but you do write about Jacques Vallée and his perspective a fair amount. And I get the impression that the association between magic or the occult and UFOs is getting stronger than they were late morning. Fair. Yeah, I think they relate more to consciousness or the paranormal than they do to something like an intergalactic airline. What are your thoughts about that overlap and it being maybe the leading model given the alternative options of what these things in the sky are? Jacques' work has been an influence on me and Jacques has pioneered the perspective – well maybe not pioneered but certainly popularized the perspective – that the interdimensional thesis

50:13 for UFOs. may cover more bases than the ET thesis. It doesn't muscle out the ET thesis, it's not an either-or kind of situation which is another problem that we get into in our culture. We have this magic bullet kind of thinking that if we identify one thing that seems to be valid, that must be the answer and there can be a complexity of things going on as I think occurs with the placebo response for example so I'm hugely interested in the interdimensional thesis for UFOs because it resolves the question of the unfathomable distances that a craft would have to travel without taking that question off the table. But it explains some of this phenomena in a way that relates at least

51:08 the data and the implications of the data that we've gathered in the hard sciences over the past 80, 90 years about a perceptual basis of reality. Which again doesn't mean that it's just some sort of an imaginary thought form but it could be the psyche gleaning things that were not able through our ordinary instrumentation to get access to all the time. That starts to bring the discussion closer between UFOs and the question of the occult. I've always described the occult as belief in or a wager that there exists another dimension of existence whose effects can be felt on and through us, that's part of the same conversation that Jacques helped to instigate through the popularization

52:03 the interdimensional thesis of UFOs. These things really start to converge and that's very, very exciting to me because with the mainstreaming of the UFO thesis and it is more mainstream today than I could have imagined five six seven years ago could have imagined it is so absolutely on the public agenda in a way that's just remarkable That's going to help, I think crack open the door to further and deeper inquiries into psychical phenomena that gives people who are interested in UFOs and who are interested in the occult or the mystical or the perceptual a lot to talk about. So those conversations are converging, and that's part of the spirit in which I wrote the book. Yes! And it is exciting to see that in the mainstream—to see a New York Times article about stuff,

52:57 x military men out there being like i've seen stuff from. The cockpit of my jet that i couldn't explain to see footage coming out in the pentagon not being so quick to just dismiss it and sweeping under the rug that's great when i was younger i really thought like disclosure is gonna be this one day, it happens and then now we just know all the secrets clearly that was a little naive but Going back to kind of my conspiracy mindset I worry a little bit about the way it's being framed or how the mainstream establishment is going to frame this thing up. It's kind of through a military lens, it's kind of through a Is-this-a threat-to national security lens and really when you get into the literature? It seems ancient! It seems like this something has always been kind of with humanity and

53:49 I just worry about it being twisted around to somehow prop up the budget of the Pentagon or something like, hey we need more money to solve this problem. I don't know but be careful what you wish for! You know? I thought i wanted disclosure now I'm getting it and it's like...I don't really like how this is being served to us." Well it's interesting there are so many different players within the UFO paradigm and We have to assume, I think that there are also a complexity of motives. Now some of the people within the UFO paradigm who I know and who have made the effort towards disclosure like you were mentioning The New York Times piece by Leslie Keene, Ralph Blumenthal, Helene Cooper all of whom i think the world

54:38 And I know Leslie personally, and we've talked over some of this recently. I think their ethics and motives are absolutely impeccable and the work that they've done is impeccable. who are pro-disclosure and who feel that they can get the greatest hearing and funding for some of these efforts by framing it in the very military terms that you were just describing. There are whistleblowers, and there are also people who for whatever reason—and I've never been able to fully get at or understand this—

55:13 who want to squelch information, who don't want this information to be out there. And they have a variety of factors driving their activities now we're all sitting around waiting for this Pentagon report that was supposed to come out I guess in October and hasn't come out yet that's supposed to be a further study of the DOD report that came out a couple of years ago maybe 18 months ago and The reporter in the New York Times, Julian Barnes had a piece a few months back which I jokingly refer to as the Empire Strikes Back where he interviewed his sources within the DoD and they all said it's a whole bunch of nothing. It's space junk, it's accidents, blah-blah-blah was the same old story and one of the things that was frustrating about the Barnes article is that Keene

56:06 Blumenthal, and Cooper were held to very high standards that precluded their using anonymous sources. They had to get people by name on the record but Barnes' article was based almost completely on anonymous sources so there is a double standard there. And I have my questions about that now, it could just be cultural. It could be that people within mainstream letters are so inert to scoff at the UFO thesis that they lower their standards for a piece like that. But regardless, there is a difference and this is probably foreshadowing of things to come where as you were saying

56:51 As a kid, one hopes disclosure is just going to come and it's going to be the parting of the clouds and we'll understand something. But likelihood is disclosure is going to be very messy, very muddled by all kinds of different motives, double standards and other such things. And this is going to track on for some time. There may be nothing definitive in our generation but I do think we have to take a victory lap for the progress that has been made it's absolutely real and it's remarkable and the public interest arguably has never been higher

57:28 Yeah, it's true. It's true. I just sometimes i think we wait for the official word and its like...I've seen some things and I've talked to enough people who have seen somethings that I don't really care that much with the Pentagon things about it but at the same time I'd like it to be put out there so maybe more friends and family will get on board with maybe there is some truth what I been talking about but thats something they need not necessarily what I need or want Another point you make about high strangeness that I like is you say that the possibility that these persistent extraordinary events sightings of everything from serpents in the water to mysterious winged beasts To otherworldly beings two gnomes too bigfoot. Maybe the result of perspective and of these things intermittently localizing in our reality we talked about that a bit, but one of my curiosities is

58:22 What are these mysterious winged beasts or gnomes or pilots of the crafts doing when they aren't being seen? When they aren't, as you put it, localizing in our reality. Do they mate? Do they have a home? Do they have a reason or even control over when and why they're seen like are these temporary thought forms made solid, which is one perspective a lot of people share or are they truly living lives from birth to death somewhere else that just sometimes bleed over? My assumption and this is really getting into speculative territory because we just don't know. But my assumption is that these beings have their own lives purposes life cycles

59:12 They may be experiencing us as anomalies. The notion of whether humans exist, maybe a hotly debated topic in some other dimension and somebody is having this very conversation about whether you and I actually exist or just to fly on the windshield or something." And the physicist Erwin Schrödinger when he devised his thought experiment, Schrödinger's made the insistent and airtight case that you had to allow for a dead, alive cat. You had to allow for these simultaneous surreal outcomes. And then in the 1950s other physicists including Hugh Everett postulated that you'd have to actually allow for an infinite number of cats playing out each with its own existence and needs and to the cat

1:00:06 the cat is experiencing singularity. If you had a spacecraft that was moving at or near light speed, we say the time slows down for that traveler. Well it doesn't slow down from his perspective he's just going on with life it slows down from our perspective as the observer so we have this very different kind of relationship and this is literally true. We don't have to postulate an object traveling at light speed. In fact, astronauts in our own era obviously moving nowhere near the velocity of light do in fact experience minute reductions in the aging process it's real its measurable this is no longer theoretical they don't experience time slowing down I mean of course time would be slowing down too minutely for them to really experience but we can easily extrapolate that the guy

1:01:04 imagine spacecraft doesn't experience time slowing down. It's I, the observer from Earth who experienced that effect, that phenomena because of our differences in perspective and in surrounding conditions so from that I would assume that the object's being observed, although it doesn't preclude other possibilities like materialized thought forms as you were alluding or call them tulpas or egregores or what have you. It doesn't preclude that but it seems to me that if we were talking in terms of an interdimensional being, that being is having its own experiences and that may include us as anomalies who existence has doubted

1:01:49 I like it yes a lot of these stories i've heard where people do see a little green man or a gnome or something weird its like when they see it, And it realizes it's been seen and it has a bit of shock and surprise on its own face. It's like, oh shit you see me I gotta fix this so I don't know if they have a lot of control over when they are seeing they seem to be able to go back to an unseen state of their own volition but Yeah, I wonder about that. And your comment about humans being a hotly debated topic somewhere else reminds me of a story that's fuzzy in my mind. I believe it was a Uri Geller story where he was remote viewing some base that had non-human

1:02:35 Creatures walking around operating in there and he pulled out when it seemed like they saw him that they noticed They were being watched It might not be Uri Geller but some prominent remote viewer had that experience and it made me think that could be the script flip on what we see out in the woods sometime and Gordon White a guy who I know, you know buddy of mine He has made the point to me. Like if remote viewing is real and ESP is real Who's to say it's tied to this planet? If there is other life out there and a billion other planets and systems, maybe occasionally what we experience as high strangeness Fortian type things is actually the same cognitive abilities that we seem to know we have coming from somewhere that we don't know exists. It's interesting

1:03:30 In encounter experiences, the other being may be as disturbed by us as we are by them. And maybe Bigfoot doesn't want to be seen and there are actually very good reasons why Bigfoot would not want to be seen and we hear a twig snap in the night and we think what's that? Well, the other being maybe having that same experience We have a great deal of trouble from time to time, even in this digitized interconnected world understanding figures from other cultures. And you would think by this point we're all at least familiar enough with one another to grasp what meaning is being communicated or what somebody is trying to get across

1:04:19 People don't even agree on an event that was witnessed yesterday. And five people can witness the same event and have completely different takeaways, and completely different emotions around it? How much more so would that lack of understanding be heightened if we were dealing with a being from another dimension or other intersection of time? So the problems of understanding and motive could be vast. Yeah provocative, provocative And I did read Miracle Club, but I wanted you to touch on it because I think it's such an interesting idea. And I'm curious if since it's been written there are any results that have sprung out of it and just tell the people kind of what the premise was for that and let us know if anything has come out of pushing that out into the world?

1:05:11 Well, Miracle Club was also a very special book to me because that was my first explicitly practical book. I write as both the historian and a practical seeker—I call myself a believing historian. My first two books, Occult America One Simple Idea were pretty straightforward works of history But Miracle Club, which came out in 2018 was the first time I sort of stood up on the soapbox and said well this is what i believe. This is what I practice this is what I work with and in many ways it's an exploration of new thought or mind metaphysics but also in that book really made an effort to describe a theory of what's happening when thoughts produce

1:05:53 actual consequences when they concretize in the world, in ways that go beyond the cognitive and the motor skill with which we're familiar. In the final chapter of that book I worked with the interdimensional thesis. I talk about why I use the word select versus manifest and I try to really get into the inner guts of what might be going on if my thesis is right, that thoughts are causative. So that was a very special book for me because it was the first directly practical book that I ever wrote. And if I'm remembering correctly, it's been a couple of years but there is a specific time of day that you suggest to the reader? Hey why don't we all use this time of day to think about positive thoughts and see what happens

1:06:45 That's right. At 3 p.m Eastern each day, I enter into a few moments of basically holding a wish of private reflection, and I invite people to do that with me. That is all it takes to be a member of the Miracle Club. The Miracle Club is a title that has historical roots in the theosophy movement—it was a small salon of occult seekers that eventually mushroomed into the Theosophical Society and I honor them and these people are heroes to me—and to gain membership in the Miracle Club. It's just as simple as wanting to be a member and if you want to participate in a group activity each day at 3 p.m Eastern, you can participate with me I take a few moments to hold reflections for myself or other people Hold a wish basically You can do it on an elevator while your driving While your working Just take a break

1:07:41 That's when we meet. It's open to everybody. Very cool, well hopefully we add some new members and you're clearly seasoned because you would have done that about an hour ago in the middle of this very interview I think? You'd be surprised i have paused interviews... ...to do it but nowadays I'm a little more respecting of the medium that I'm part of but I do do it just about every day at 3 p.m eastern Awesome well that is very cool Mitch, I envy your work ethic. You've done some really important work and you've brought spirit back to the minds of men and I salute you for it! I think people know how to get books but remind them of some of your favorite works, your website and anything else you got coming down the pike? Sure my website is mitchhorowitz.com i'm on twitter at mitch horowitz instagram at mitch horowitz 23

1:08:35 In February, I'm teaching a four-part online class with the Theosophical Society on parapsychology. So if you're interested in some of these ideas about psychical research precognition and some of the other things we've been discussing that's going to be really exciting. Current book is Uncertain Places. I have another book that's relatively new called Daydream Believer which is also a book that means a lot to me which explores some of these questions of mind metaphysics, including how to access some of this stuff when a person is under strain and facing difficulty. And the whole kind of post-magic thesis is explored in that book as well. Writing a new book which is up for preorder called Modern Occultism, massive work of history very exciting to me. A lot of caffeine went into that one! I'm working on the last three chapters right now actually

1:09:28 Wow, busy as ever. But well I mean man thanks for taking the time to do this with me this was very smooth i feel like a real professional almost and you make it good dance partner You are my man and I dug it thank you now really dug it and I really appreciate the space you create for talking about these issues in such a free way ah too kind well it's been a pleasure we got a lot of good stuff to chew on thanks for your time and take care pleasure thank you Hell yes, people. After many years and many requests Mitch is on THC! And also a big thanks to Flophouse Jr., who turned 60 earlier this month and wanted to hear his version of the THC theme song used for it... ...and I was happy to do that because it's a good one. Sounds almost like a Pink Floyd inspired version but I like it Thanks man and Happy Birthday

1:10:24 And good stuff in this one today, lots to like. Mitch is clearly a pretty thoughtful guy and when he's in his wheelhouse I think he's a lot of fun to listen too He's a great writer who also has real talent for naming and branding his work. I appreciate that kind of thing Occult America was a great read and The Miracle Club is a fun idea Since it came out and I read it I definitely think about it when I look at the clock and it happens to be that time And it feels like a little secret society of people trying to nudge the field in the right direction at the same time. I hope some you take up this practice if you think about it. Obviously, it seems like people would also expect me to say something about our little disagreement or just disparaging words towards conspiracy theorists that I took some issue with. He has some other quotes too, like this one that I took down

1:11:19 He says, eventually almost all conspiracy theories as they are practiced in the 21st century lead to an exaltation of self and a suspicion of others. That is the primary problem I have with the conspiracist outlook when it is practiced as a kind of dogma." And again, I would amend that with suspicion of power actually not other In fact, to me the conspiracy-minded see a bit more clearly just how much of the world is intentionally used to divide us in any way possible. Race, class, religion, age, sex etc., etc... And the conspiracy minded person would see a far more united humanity than a lot of other say worldviews I guess?

1:12:07 And the conspiracy-minded would see that the poor and struggling are actually swimming up a near impossible stream sometimes, and thus would have empathy for those who can't make it. So because I feel like we acknowledge how hard and dishonest The Big Machine is—and how many traps a person can fall into—it actually seems like a humbling worldview in a lot of ways." But I wouldn't say that statement from Mitch is wrong. It certainly has some truth to it, an exalted sense of self can be a part of it if you don't check it. Magic is the same way though people warn against doing a few successful rituals and then seeing yourself as the center of the universe and developing a God complex so to me that's a human ego issue that people of all types deal with not just a conspiracy worldview issue per se

1:13:00 And really, if you explore the conspiracy fear long enough you arrive at the bottom of a rabbit hole and essentially learn that love is the answer. That love is our best tool and that putting more novelty creativity art love positivity in the world Is how we move the needle and win the game As much shit as people talk on them I've heard both David Icke and Alex Jones pontificate on those themes many times But like most countercultures throughout time, right now there's a big smear campaign against us. Trying to link us to domestic terrorists and trying to paint us as unhinged so when I say we try to elevate that sub-culture around here...I do mean it though i guess you could hold up a few shows from the past and say really how does this show elevate anything?

1:13:53 Sure, but it's not about how wild or taboo some of the ideas and themes might be. It's how we approach them and the general tone of it all I guess? I can only say what I try to do and others can judge How well its done But I just think ultimately Mitch might have absorbed a little bit of that smear campaign but he also was troubled by an event that helped to cement those feelings too And that is unfortunate, but you can't control everyone or deny that a troubled person could go down a violent path. Nor can you judge a wider group of people because the actions have a few. Conspiracy material is not for the faint-of-heart! It's pretty raw it's not for the weak mind much like magic it does need to be approached with a certain stability and kind of thick skin in a lot of ways

1:14:47 Conspiracy thinking brought me to understand that I shouldn't rely on the system, that the water piped into my house is not fit to drink. That there are many foods in the grocery store that are not fit to eat. Psychedelics are banned because they get us out of baseline consciousness and I am best served by taking personal responsibility for my own station in life I find all these things to be useful and positive, and I find the general conspiracy worldview adoption to be a rite of passage. A sort of metamorphosis of seeing through a carefully crafted bubble of lies and illusion—very Gnostic actually! If i took the advice of the system and the authority figures of my past that were supposedly just looking out for me

1:15:37 I'd probably be dead or at least deeply unhappy in a safe retail job with a mountain of student loan debt and no way out. But regardless, I questioned him about it and he said yeah maybe it was harsh. Maybe I was reactionary based on a specific event. Maybe I mischaracterized a little and I'll think on it." And that's amazing! That's all anyone can ask. Today with everyone digging their heels into their particular camps It was really a refreshing thing to hear But he gave me a lot to think about today too. His essays in uncertain places contain a ton of aha moments and interesting things to reflect on, and honestly I know there are figures in the Magic community, peers of Mitch's who would have advised him not talk to me because my conspiracy card carrying. In fact, I expect a couple them mouth off as soon this gets posted because they're so simple minded and predictable

1:16:37 So that's just another reason why I gotta give Mitch props for just rolling with it and being willing to have the conversation. So, I got a lot of respect for Mitch and i'm a fan! And I consider this one of the good ones that I'll probably revisit from time-to-time... ...and I certainly hope we can do it again because there's no doubt he'll be churning out many more good books that will probably enjoy unpacking Of course, as always there is a second hour for Plus Members. In today's we talked about Mitch's analysis of the 3rd Wave Occult Revival elaborating on occult history in America and that first and second wave, Manly P. Hall and the secret teachings of all ages, mystical America and American myth-making, Edgar Cayce and how to read the Akashic Record, the usefulness of building a personal god squad cornerstones of a good magical practice

1:20:15 Your fucking mood. Don't be sheep to your slaughter for the rest of your life Oppressed, oppressed but you're getting woke You say you don't want to be stressed until the day you die Tough luck my friend Did ya get the memo? Can't you see that we're so screwed? Don't you know we're arc? Can't you just admit we're screwed I'm gonna T-Way It's a skit, it'll skit okay Use it and wish but we don't have a choice

1:21:35 It seems we're stuck here, but you can find no sis drown out the noise now use that alter and up your magic game Listen to THC. You know go with the edities if you ever see Don't be sheep to your slaughter for the rest of your life Oppressed, oppressed but you're getting woke You say you don't want to be stressed until the day you die Tough luck my friend Did ya get the memo? Can't you see that we're so screwed? Don't you know where our cum- Can't you just admit we're screwed I'm gonna tell you this anyway It's okay That we're s- Eh eh

1:22:54 Don't be sheep to your slaughter for the rest of your life Oppressed, oppressed but you're getting woke You say you don't want to be stressed until the day you die Tough luck my friend Did ya get them memo- Can't you see that we're so screwed? Don't you know we are kung fu? Can't you just admit we're screwed I'm gonna tell you anyway It's a scary, something scarier than me

1:23:51 Can't you see that we're still