Peter Levenda | Lovecraft, The Yazidi, & Middle Eastern Magic

00:05 Puppet masters almost surely have a- There's clearly maybe something there, and until you've thoroughly tested every last horse just to do no the less you will- That's true Dr. Seuss! Without THC Cause we're reliant to us Just don't know it without THC The higher side Jack show A world in company

00:43 Alright, Hireside Chatters. We know the world is a stranger place than it might seem on the surface with unknown depths few dare to explore and when the stakes for spending too much time looking behind the veil are madness and paranoia who can really blame them? But there is a rich history of artists musicians writers and creative types feeling as though they're being compelled to do what they do that They find themselves being more conduit than creator more vessel than virtuoso And fans of HP Lovecraft's work have battled over this very point for years Are there hidden truths or unconscious insights woven throughout the work of the father of supernatural horror fiction? Well, today's returning guest Peter LaVenda thinks so and by the end of today's show you might be inclined to agree. Peter is of course the author of many books including The Great Sinister Forces series we talked about in his last appearance which explores this possibility of supernatural influence in some of America's most trying times

01:35 From a deeper exploration of the Salem witch trials and the potential influence of ancient Indian burial grounds on a young Charles Manson, to the alchemical interests of America's founders in that infamous seance to channel the Council of Nine in that old farmhouse in Maine. Yes Peter LaVenda has helped make me see the significance and synchronicities between places names and dates that really make one wonder about the idea of ethereal puppet masters and just how much influence they might really have." His latest book is actually his first published novel, entitled The Lovecraft Code which branches off the infamous Kolokotthulu and uses a fictional narrative as the means of exploring what may be some very profound truths. It's a wild ride and I'm psyched to have him back to talk about it! A man who finds the connective tissue you didn't know was there, The Surgeon of Synchronicity Peter Maman welcome back to the higher side

02:23 Thanks very much. Glad to be here. Yeah, you got it! The surgeon of synchronicity I like that Well great i try to be creative but is getting harder all the time and I gotta thank you for doing this because you become one of my favorite authors tackling many interesting subjects in unique ways and, of course the Lovecraft Code is no exception. A lot of listeners probably understand this idea that truth can sometimes be told easier in fiction it's why we love things like The Matrix and now Westworld Because they address concepts that are hard to get at directly but might still be pretty profound Is that some of the reasoning behind why you went with a novel this time?

03:02 Basically, yes. The idea was to provide this fictional narrative in order for people to get involved with concepts that if I had done this in nonfiction and I've been doing it in nonfiction for a long time Sometimes the concepts are hard to grasp because there's no bonding with the issues. It is sort of very intellectual, it is on a different plane The beauty of fiction is that you can bring some of this very heady intellectualizing down to more visceral level To an emotional level where you can suddenly see why things are important and what the possibilities might be I think that was whole idea behind science-fiction in its infancy anyway was to take some of these

03:42 hard to grasp scientific ideas about space and time and Time travel in space travel and all of that and try to make it more real try to put human beings in the middle Of what until then was you know, scientific speculation but to put us in the middle there Tim's say okay if this is true This is how our lives will be affected And I think that with the sinister forces books that you mentioned in the other books. I've been saying all of this but I felt that maybe a novel might be a way to introduce some of these ideas in a way that people would more easily identify with and understand, and could suddenly see the connections falling into place. Mm-hmm great points! And i totally agree... So for the longest time I've just kind of considered Lovecraft to be like Edgar Allan Poe 2.0 but what is it about him and his writings that intrigued you so much?

04:37 Well, there are a number of things. I didn't read Lovecraft until very late. I mean, I wasn't one of these sort-of teenage readers of Gothic horror stuff. The closest I got to anything like that probably was Dennis Wheatley So, I read the Dennis Wheatley occult novels, you know The Satanist and The Devil Rides Out and To the Devil a Daughter. And I like those because they were based on real people at real events. Dennis Wheatley and Ian Fleming had both known Alastair Crowley personally, had considered using Crowley in some fashion during World War II When they both work for British intelligence, so there was this idea that Wheatley had direct contact and direct knowledge of some of the occult organizations that Crowley was involved with ritual magic. And the interface between that and politics

05:23 So when I was a teenager, I was reading Wheatley more than anything else for that reason because i had that connection and I think that's what I was trying to do in the Lovecraft code also. This idea that you know I've seen a lot of this stuff up close and personal and I've seen these things go on let me try to put this into narrative people could relate too so I didn't bypass Lovecraft for years. I started to read Lovecraft seriously recently I would say the last Oh, 10 or 15 years maybe something like that. 20 years I'm not exactly sure." I think around the time I was writing Sinister Forces, I kind of rediscovered Lovecraft and took a deeper interest in him and then realized that Lovecraft is accused of hyperbole, purple prose going to that well way too often these unseen monsters lurking behind every shadow. And then I realized

06:18 Studying Lovecraft that his family history was really rather strange right there, and I began to look at Ideas that maybe love crafts upbringing had a much more direct impact on his fiction than we realized. His father had gone insane probably due to syphilis He was a traveling salesman and something happened to his mind snapped and he died when lovecraft was quite young but then his mother began to develop all sorts of neuroses and psychosis at one point she's wandering through the house and you know, talking to unseen things behind walls and all that i mean lovecraft was living with this. Was living with basically characters from his fiction and

06:58 At the same time, Lode Lovecraft was an atheist. A very committed atheist. Someone who hated religion and who loved science and was terribly devoted to scientific principles and looked down on superstition and looked down on religion. And yet here he is writing texts that would become some of the most formidable explanations of the ancient alien theories and some of the original material that von Däniken and others after him would pick up. But Lovecraft is writing about this, about maybe there were people on this planet before us, maybe they're coming back, maybe there are people on the planet who can open a gate and let them in—all these concepts Lovecraft is writing about

07:40 With one hand and on the other he's pooping the entire thing you know there was a kind of schizophrenia in lovecrafts approach it would seem to me and this. Fascinated me like what's this all about is it possible for instance to be an atheist, and still believe that there are alien beings who are controlling the situation on our planet or had some major impact in our planet? Of course, the answer is yes. You don't have to believe in religion to believe in aliens right now these things don't come from necessarily the same source That's another subject for another day but for Lovecraft did his writing he was identifying various cults that really did exist like the Yazidi for instance and other groups and tying them into this worldview that he had

08:23 So I started to take a closer look and when I did that... I realized that Kenneth Grant, the English magician was doing the same thing. He was connecting Lovecraft to Aleister Crowley and to ritual magic in general using Lovecraft's characters and his themes as if they were real and exploring that possibility. That was fascinating as well. Then I realized that Grant seemed to have missed something in all of his work on Crowley and Lovecraft. Lovecraft's most famous story, the one I based the novel on The Call of Cthulhu is based on very specific names dates and places right? Lovecraft is kind of unique in that. He really does insist that this is what happened on this day he gives date month and year I mean he's very explicit as to when things took place And I find that also to be fascinating so I started to deconstruct that

09:20 And that's when I discovered that Lovecraft's famous group of worshippers of Cthulhu in the bayous and the swamps outside New Orleans, Louisiana. This weird ritual took place on Halloween in 1907 and that date signified something to me. It jogged my memory and I started going back over other material and realized that Aleister Crowley wrote his famous holy books on exactly that day, October 30th and November 1st 1907. At the same time that cult was operating in New Orleans in Lovecraft's fantasy one that he wrote 10 years after that no more almost 20 years later. Lovecraft is writing about this scene and Crowley actually was living it and in the holy books that Crowley was writing he uses a lot of the same imagery

10:13 that Lovecraft would later use in The Call of Cthulhu. I would look at the two paragraphs side by side, what they were writing and it was stunning that Lovecraft was essentially channeling something that had happened to Crowley 20 years previously and of course i wrote The Dark Lord a non-fiction book based on comparing Lovecraft and Crowley and Grant and some other material so I realized Lovecraft was sort of telling us in the Call of Cthulhu, as you mentioned in the opening that sensitive people artists writers musicians may actually be

10:50 seeing things that are taking place before the rest of us do. They may be sensitive to weird phenomenon that's underneath the surface, the sinister forces I wrote about and Lovecraft being an artist himself as much as he wanted to be a scientist or atheist, Lovecraft was a writer, was an author, was an imaginative creative person He was one of those very people who were writing about And I believe that in the Call of Cthulhu and Dunhach Horror, and some of the other stories he's actually prefiguring what's going to happen later. He is seeing something that is taking place. He is sensitive to it whether he wants to admit or not

11:26 Mm-hmm. I think that's an amazing perspective and it does add some excitement to his stories And I do like his stories But I have to say, I do know some diehard Lovecraft fans that rolled their eyes at me when they heard it was gonna be a topic on my weird stoner conspiracy show They just don't see the connection but is there anything more that can be said to help make that case for some of those skeptics? there was some unconscious reporting or something real. There's these connections with Crowley, but is there anything else that might help nudge people or move the needle in the direction of taking it seriously? That there is something more to him than just good stories?" Well as I mentioned briefly, it was Lovecraft who really set the stage for so much that was going to follow if it hadn't been for Lovecraft and his stories about Cthulhu and about all the other characters are this so-called mythos

12:20 If it wasn't for that, we wouldn't have had The Morning of the Magicians by Paul Zimberge in 1960. We wouldn't have had Erich von Daniken in 1968 or you know the ancient alien stories on the History Channel and all that stuff going on. Giorgio Tsoukalos and all his guys... All this would not have been. Lovecraft saw it and wrote about it and essentially kind of warned us about And he did it in fiction. He didn't do it a nonfiction his non-fiction is kind of predictable and you know, he has a lot of correspondence with a lot of people. He's sort of arrogant and some cases. He's definitely pretty racist for most of his life and had all these other issues going on but with all of that I think because about Hot House atmosphere in which she was raised

13:04 he was able to basically become a medium for these ideas. Lovecraft, if you only view him as a writer of pop fiction or gothic horror as they say it or pseudo-gothic horror—I mean some people argue with me over the gothic horror label—but if they look at Lovecraft only as this guy who wrote for Weird Tales and a writer who's been sort of dismissed in this country as below par and subpar just to kind of hack author, you're not going to see what's really taking place. Joyce Carol Oates, of all people wrote and edited a collection of Lovecraft stories. I mean, Joyce Carol Oates is not lightweight in terms of academic literature and the modern literati

13:44 of New York, she actually saw the value in Lovecraft and decided that she would author and edit a collection of his work. In Europe, Lovecraft is praised but then so was Jerry Lewis and David Hasselhoff. So I don't know what we can say about Europe but they do have this reverence for Lovecraft because they think that Lovecraft gave voice to these cosmic fears and uncertainties that we have. Maybe he did it inexpertly According to you know strict literary standards but he did it when no one else was doing it everybody else was writing you know sort of predictable science fiction monster stories lovecraft went a step further he was trying to tie his vision into.

14:31 Something more real you know a very real sense that the scientist or an astronomer might have. I'm looking at the world and realizing it's not as stable as we think it is, it's not as predictable or manageable its not subject to our control the universe does not love us the universe is out together if we let it and that was lovecraft approach now There's a lot of people who would argue with that. It's all cool, man! You know it's all good don't worry about it Lovecraft was not one of those lovecraft was saying look out there is something dark out there There is a hidden threat in the world and the universe and we have to confront this thing head-on And he associated it with ritual magic He associated it with you know performing rites in the jungles or in the forests? You know two ancient pagan deities to Lovecraft

15:20 society and civilization was the bulwark against all of this stuff. But at its heart, there was a dark streak and religion was part of that dark streak. Religion was away in which this darkness would get into us we'd start to infest everything because religion at its heart grew out of pagan concepts And this is what I think bothered Lovecraft very much it made him very sensitive So yeah if I could see where people would say lovecraft are you kidding? You know What is that all about? But you know when I started writing the novel and I started writing a novel some time ago It's changed a lot in the last few years because of the political situation but I began to see what Lovecraft was was writing about if you really look at the

16:06 the resurgence of all sorts of religious fanaticism. And I don't just mean from the Middle East and from Islamic quote-unquote terror groups, but just in general this kind of intensity that's coming out as a kind of reaction against materialism and reaction against science or reaction against technology you see what Lovecraft was really afraid of And he didn't understand, I think the roots of this problem. He didn't understand it as maybe it was colonialism that contributed to some of this you know? The idea that the religions of other people are worthless their beliefs or superstition our beliefs are good they're okay there scientifically justifiable or something Lovecraft saw a whole different world. He saw that the world had been the colonies of Great Britain and Spain Portugal United States Netherlands

16:58 All these colonies had people that did not believe the way the Europeans did. And there were more of them, and they were rising up in protest and rising up against the colonial powers when Lovecraft was writing World War I had taken place. The Middle East was in chaos. Lots of parts of the world were in chaos from my point of view. World War One never ended. We're still fighting World War One. It was just you know The calendar change but it wasn't really anything else. We're still fighting those conflicts and I think Lovecraft saw that as part of the problem He thought that you know their belief systems the quote-unquote other

17:34 belief systems were a threat to science, to technology, to the Western way of life. And he gave voice to these concerns in his books with you know in no uncertain way I mean You can actually sit there and read it from that perspective and Reed Lovecraft's works as a critique Of the colonial peoples and how we should support colonialism basically keep everybody else down So these things are interesting to me they're fascinating and if we take his stories and we update them to the 21st century, we can see how nothing much has changed as far as the basic themes are concerned. Just the names of the players may have changed—sometimes not even then—but for the most part, the themes remain the same."

18:18 Yeah, that is a great framing of kind of his headspace at that time and I'm also pretty intrigued by that worldview. A couple the elements that I've heard you talk about before that kinda convinced me there might be more to this is in some of his correspondence he mentioned that some these ideas came from dreams which is something that gets to that unconscious reporting angle and apparently not only did his parents both experience insanity, but he had access to some Freemasonic and secret society material via his grandfather I understand which is another element that you could say well he had real knowledge that was kind of off the books and he might have incorporated some of that into his stories in worldview. But those are some of the things

19:05 I thought struck a chord with me and also apparently going back to the Crowley connection, as odd as the name Cthulhu is there's also a synchronicity there it seems. Yeah in those very stories, the very text that Crowley was writing in October 1907, the word Tutulu comes up and even Crowley didn't know what that meant he had no clue but that word came to him with some intensity And then, of course like I say 20 years later Lovecraft is writing about Cthulhu and the idea that the same kind of sounds, the same image was coming through in Lovecraft's dreams on one hand and Crowley's ritual workings in the trances that he was in on another. Crowley wrote The Book Of The Law, that seminal work of his religion pretty much the same kind of state and then that was a 1904 so he's in this mode Crowley by 1907 he's now writing

19:59 profusely all of this other material and it's all kind of spooky and you know, gothic in its nature. And then in the midst of all this black obelisks and everything else very Lovecraftian imagery comes the word tutulu And it's so similar to Cthulhu, you have to sit there and think well there has gotta be... they're hearing something. They're hearing something legitimate and the word cthulu itself I started to explore in other languages in other disciplines and it comes out of Lovecraft Code And I talk about a Tibetan word, Kusulu. A kusulu is a shaman. It's a priest and that is exactly what Kutulu was supposed to be the high priest of the old ones you know? So in Tibet you have Kusulu and he's not only a shaman but like an exorcist shaman and in some cases a shaman who has come back from the dead

20:50 So, all of these elements are there in Cthulhu and Kuthulu and then eventually in Tutulu. And I think that the etymological connection may be fanciful on my part but the sounds...the phonetic similarities are so strong referring to essentially the same kind of being, the same kind of creature. So, I was fascinated by that. I started to research a lot of different languages to see how this would turn up And I found an amazing idea that there's some kind of consistency here with this idea. We know that in different cultures, mama and papa are almost universal for mother and father for whatever reason—in China almost the same as it is in the West—languages have absolutely no relationship to each other. And we know that that's probably due to some kind of phonetic development in the child that just happens to be that way

21:40 But Cthulhu and Cthulhu, that's stretching. That's stretching it there has to be some other reason for it and then maybe there is an organic one but boy I'd like to know what that is. Oh yeah! There's probably a key to something there you know? Yeah those are exactly the threads that anybody who is interested in synchronicity understands the importance that might be behind or the impact of it they've got to be interested in a connection like that But as for the Lovecraft Code itself, what can you tell us about the story you wrote and how it relates back to the original call?

22:23 reading the Call of Cthulhu because I was working on The Dark Lord material back then and I noticed something. I had lived in Rhode Island for a number of years, and I knew Providence pretty well, and Central Falls and Pawtucket and all that whole area up there. And I started to realize that when Lovecraft is writing about the angel family – angels spelled with two L's – I said well, of course there's an Angel Street in Providence as it's well known. Lovecraft lived on Angel Street but But then something was at the back of my mind with the word angel and I thought back, I used to live in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. And for a while in the middle of the night on television in Malaysia they would show reruns of Cheers.

23:08 Cheers takes place in a bar and Malaysia is predominantly Muslim country so it was kind of unusual for them to show a show that was based on a bar where alcohol is frowned upon. It was weird, I was fascinated because I hadn't seen Cheers since they had originally come out or aired but now I'm watching it in Kuala Lumpur I realized that there's a name that keeps popping up as either writer or producer, somebody involved with the program and it's David Angel with two Ls. And when I'm researching now back in the States all the Lovecraft stuff and The Dark Lord

23:45 you know, there's something there. Let me go and take a look." And I started to pull at this thread a little bit and sure enough David Angel was on one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center his plane hit the North Tower he was flying from Boston to Los Angeles and he died in that attack on 9-11. So here was David Angel who had written a lot of the material for Cheers, for Wings and then for Frasier those were three other shows that he was most closely identified with and he and his wife both died in the North Tower attack so I thought okay here's an angel dying because of mad Arabs you know? And literally yeah and this event that has so colored everything in the last almost 20 years now

24:30 It was fascinating. I thought, what is the connection here? There's George Gamal Angel, the professor who was investigating the Cthulhu cult in Call of Cthulhu and then we fast forward a hundred years and there David Angel dying on 9-11. And I thought there's a connection there somehow, there is some kind of visceral thing and the story started to germinate from there what if in this era in the 21st century a descendant that angel family who has some kind of guilt over one of his relatives who died on 9-11 was appalled by it? Who was a professor religion and believer and somebody who you know maybe little cynical about religion but still more or less a theist of some kind

25:12 now has to see that take place. And he's motivated, he is sort of the dark sheep in his angel family and he is motivated to go and serve in Afghanistan you know in 2003 He wanted to do something 2002-2003 he makes services available, he speaks Farsi Arabic Urdu Pashto, he has a background in Central Asian languages and of course they use him and he feels like making contribution And then at one point he witnesses something horrible. They bring him back, he's in Iraq with the invasion of Iraq and he is in Mosul in the north and he witnesses a massacre of 23 Yazidis by some Muslims who were really angry that the Yazidis did not allow one of their daughters to marry a Muslim and she went ahead and married a Muslim man they stoned her The video of that went out, the Muslims got angry and killed 23 Yazidis

26:06 So here is our hero, Gregory Angel professor of religion and he's witnessing this massacre. And that's a real massacre! That massacre took place on that day in that place I'm following Lovecraft's lead here and using real dates and places and events so here was the real event this was the attack in Mosul now we hear about Mosul constantly in the news today because of all the fighting around Islamic State But back at that time, it was the time when there was the great surge and there is a push to get rid of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. All this is going on and Gregory Angel my character witnesses this and now his faith is completely shaken he realizes that religions are killing religions There's something wrong with his worldview

26:51 and he falls from grace, essentially. He drops out—I mean he's still a teacher but he's trying to cut back on everything and he spends his nights with the gun under his pillow trying to get drunk and not being able to and eventually comes to notice of a very mysterious intelligence agency, an intelligence agency within an intelligence agency who then taps him because they want him to go back to Iraq. To help them figure out what's going on with all the new chatter they're hearing about a new terror group that's growing up and that has sort of a blasphemous organization that's uniting all sorts of disparate groups around it. And the US intelligence is extremely nervous about this group, they don't know what it is but its not the Islamic State, its something potentially much worse

27:38 And they want Angel to go out and figure out what's going on. And that's how the novel basically sets off. Yeah, it is a really intriguing setting especially how it ties in parallels real-world events just like you open the book with a quote from BBC News and the very true story of the Baghdad Museum being ransacked during the events in Iraq and I've had a lot of guests talk about this as one Of the real reasons we even went there from Joseph Farrell who suggests The Middle East is where weapons of mass destruction quote-unquote from an ancient war could potentially be buried to others who talk about us finding clues to humanity's origins in these cuneiform tablets, And it's intriguing. You gotta admit that stuff does sound more valuable than oil but

28:23 It makes a great backdrop for a novel, but how big of part of reality do you think these elements could be? Well, I think they're essential to understand. We're – I think a lot of people have this understanding that the Middle East is kind of monolithic. It's a bunch of Arabs. They all speak the same language and they all have the same religion and they hate us. And it's far more complicated than that, far more complicated than that. In fact it's a much richer tapestry. There are all sorts of cults and sects in the Middle East and Central Asia which I point out in the book to the point where you might want to throw up your hands and say enough already But there's a lot of different groups and it's important to understand that there is this tension between all these various groups who all have a piece of the puzzle as far as they're concerned. And the Yazidi is one group, and the Yazidi were targeted for destruction in 2014 by the Islamic State. I mean, it's genocide that's ongoing against these people who are universally considered to be devil worshippers

29:22 Crowley mentions them in his work, Lovecraft mentions them in his work. A guy called William Seabrook was the man we have to blame for all of this because he started repeating all these stories about the Yazidi worshipping Satan It's more complicated than that as usual but Seabrook made this story and everybody started to believe it was literally true the way Seabrook had said it And Seabrook is a friend of Crowley and goes back to all that period 1920s So people started hearing about this group of devil worshipers in the Middle East And to the Muslims, they are devil worshippers. And to the Christians there are devil worshipers They're the most besieged people in that part of the world probably or the Yazidi and their women and children have been taken into slavery You know The men have been massacred it's a horrible thing and yet They may have a piece of the puzzle as to who we are where we came from right? The Yazidis say they're descended from the Sumerians

30:15 They insist they're the oldest people on the planet, which is hyperbole to an extent. But at least what they're doing is showing their connection back to the most ancient times. Their coat of arms has cuneiform script on it They're trying to emphasize the fact that they're the original people. They are what's left of ancient Sumer, which is interesting because the Sumerians themselves have disappeared. They sort of faded out of existence with the Babylonian takeovers and the Akkadians who were Semitic people. The Sumerians were not Semitic. They were not Arabs. They were probably closer to Iranians ethnically and the Yazidis are too. I mean they speak a Kurdish language

30:52 but they may be more ethnically related to Kurds. The long reason I'm going into all of this is because we're talking about ancient origins, we're talking about the most ancient origin which is you know the Middle East Mesopotamia as the cradle civilization as we always call it and its probably older than we understand Most of the cuneiform texts that we've taken out of the Middle East have not been translated yet. The vast majority have not been there are very few cuneiform experts who are out there with access to this material, so there's a lot—there is a mountain of material that hasn't been translated. We don't know what that material is and there's much more besides still out there in the deserts and in the swamps of Mesopotamia particularly

31:35 up in Mosul and near the ancient town of Nineveh, where some of the most fabulous finds were made. Mosul is extremely important to the world as far as a repository of ancient artifacts and ancient texts. Mosul's extremely important and that's where the Yazidis themselves were based just a little bit north of Mosul so they're connected to that region for sure. They are 100% right when it comes and you know have very strange religious things they're not similar at all to Islam or Christianity or Judaism. There's like elements of all that but also elements of Zoroastrianism, there is a serpent symbol that's always there next to the entrances to their shrines. There is the peacock angel which they call basically their version of God or...God is kind of problematic term in Yazidi religion but let's just say their version of god as this peacock angel

32:29 But they also have Shaitan, which they believe is a fallen angel the way everybody else believes in it—Satan. However they feel that Satan will be the first angel to be welcomed back into heaven at the last days and so they will follow Satan in his entourage as Satan enters heaven when he's forgiven by God. So there's this very complex religious system that the Yazidi have as well. So there's all of this, you know. And that's just one group in Iraq! That's just one. I mean there are so many other groups that have bits and pieces of ancient Christianity, ancient Judaism... There is a group out in Iraq that believes John the Baptist was the real Messiah not Jesus. Hmmmm.... And their influence on Freemasonry and The Knights Templar was very profound

33:15 You know, the Freemasons celebrate the John the Baptist days as the holy days in Freemasonry. Not Christmas and Easter. It's more of the John the Baptist holidays festivals are important. There is this idea that John the Baptist was the real Messiah, that Jesus was just one. I mean, John the Baptist baptized Jesus which essentially meant he was the leader and Jesus was the follower. So there is this whole idea there. There is a whole group that still exists there that still believes that And there's Nestorian Christians, there's Assyrian Christians. There are all kinds of other groups in that part of the world that are being decimated now by the Islamic State so they're wiping out the traces or the origins

33:56 which is something that this type of fanatic will do. I mean, they want to destroy the Sphinx and the pyramids as well. There's this idea that this is all haram—this is all not kosher in a way of speaking. So all this has to be destroyed. We have to wipe all of us out. There's this concept that we have to make the world clean and that would've appealed...that concept would appeal to Lovecraft a great deal from a fictional point-of-view. You know here's a group who wants to cleanse the earth and to do that they have to wipe out all the pagan remnants Lovecraft might have been kind of sympathetic to that point of view, or at least the characters in his stories might have been. So yeah there is this idea that perhaps there's a philosophy, a text, artifacts in

34:38 Mesopotamia in today's Iraq that could be weaponized, that could be used to create something different. To create something new. That maybe the Islamic State or any of the other fanatic groups in that part of the world would want to find whatever this was and then deep-six it you know completely hide it or destroy its little but he could find it because it would be a threat to them the way the Catholic Church felt for a long time about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts. Maybe we don't want this material to come out, it's going to ruin our hegemony over our power or control over our people—maybe there is something in there that we really don't want to be shown. The Nag Hammadi texts for sure, the Gnostic texts

35:18 are a direct problem for the Catholic Church, but they're able to put that off to the side and say well that's Gnosticism. That's not really us. But The Dead Sea Scroll is another story and some of the material in there is potentially dangerous where the church is concerned so I could see where groups like Al Qaeda or the Taliban or the Islamic State would think that some of this material is dangerous because it may call into question their entire worldview. Muhammad, the prophet was a descendant of the Quraysh tribe. He belonged to that very tribe that was in control of the Kaaba in Mecca, the black stone you have to make pilgrimage once in your lifetime if you're Muslim His tribe is in charge of that They were in charge of the idols, 360 idols until he threw them out But the Quraysh tribe also came from Kutha In the Middle East From the city that supposedly was the gateway to underworld

36:13 His people came from there. When Muhammad's forces went into Iraq, went into Mesopotamia and they went to the ancient city of Kutah, there were hymns and songs written saying that his people were coming back, the Quraysh were coming back to retake what was theirs so there is this very strong connection between the origins of Islam and Mesopotamia and Kuthah in The Gate To The Underworld So yeah I could see if there was something there in the Baghdad Museum or in the museums up in Mosul, or just in private collections in the Middle East that could reinforce these ideas. That would be a serious dangerous blow to the fanatics of Islam.

36:54 Man, those are all great points and you touched on so many questions I had for you which is great because time is just flying by. But I definitely was curious about those parallels between the campaigns of the Holy Roman Empire against pagans and Gnostics in the parallels to what's going on with the Yazidi today? And you mentioned Kutha and I thought that was interesting because it also has kind of that phonetic connection to Cthulhu in a way but It's all really interesting because in the occult world a major theme seems to be the quest for old grimoires and this idea that we've lost our magical way and that old texts or traditions might unlock greater power, or insights than newer ones.

37:33 we lost the human story itself. So, we look back to places like ancient Egypt or finds like the Nag Hammadi Library for insights in both areas and here we have a group of people living today whose traditions seem to be potentially just what a lot of people might be looking for in a way and they're being exterminated. Yeah precisely one of the interesting things about the Yazidi is that they have two books and one of them is called The Black Book People who have been through that part of the world and who talked to the Yazidi, they claim they have copies of that book and they publish translations of the book. That's very problematic I mean some of the original texts of The Black Book were in possession of a very famous forger

38:16 somebody who was making a lot of money on the side selling antiquities some of which were real some of which were not and So there's a lot of controversy over Whether or not the books the text that we have are the genuine Yazidi texts because they is edi are notoriously Afraid about sight as afraid of foreigners. I mean, they've been very insular for so long They don't intermarry you cannot convert to yes eatism You cannot become a Yazidi through conversion that's not allowed us not permitted which means that basically Yazidi have to marry Yazidi and raise Yazidi children. And so whatever secrets there are stay within that very tight-knit community, so by exterminating these people we are losing

38:56 Forget even the humanitarian aspect of it, which is extreme. We're also losing contact with that tradition. We need to know what they know or as much as they're willing to tell us and why should they now tell us if we are sitting back idly by while being exterminated? So you have to make up our minds at some point what is valuable and what we should defend and what is worth defending. I'm glad that we did, we got involved in the fight against the Islamic State because of the Yazidi people don't really remember this but when their mountain was being besieged when all these years on top of Mount Sinjar which is there at the sacred mountain

39:35 and the Islamic State forces were massing against them to destroy them, that was finally the point at which the United States said okay we're going to send in air support and all of it to start fighting the Islamic State because of the Yazidi. Which I found when it happened stunning Because until that time there was no mainstream recognition of the Yazidi. You didn't hear that word mentioned anywhere, that was something you found in Crowley or you found in occult literature and sort-of new age stuff going up around you know, Islamic mysticism or Middle Eastern mysticism and that sort of thing. It was a very rare term and suddenly it's being used by the State Department as the reason why we have to go in against the Islamic state so I found that to be fascinating here with the Yazidi that Lovecraft was writing about this hideous devil worshipping cult

40:25 And now we're sending air support to try to defend them. So the whole thing became, I didn't know what world I was living in suddenly everything you thought was fantasy and something arcane and something mysterious suddenly it's becoming mainstream. Something that we were actually going to send troops to defend people that everybody had been trying to kill for the last 2,000 years roughly. People that have been hated and despised by Saddam Hussein, by some of the more fanatic Islamic sects, by some other Christians and you know some of the other groups out there they held them in terrible suspicion these people And now suddenly we're out doing whatever we can, hopefully to save them or save as many as we can. So it's an interesting reversal of what happened and what Lovecraft was writing about in the 1920s and actually is taking place a hundred years later but yeah

41:18 this idea that we're in Iraq for the oil, I think that ship sailed a long time ago. I think the oil is no longer as much of an issue anymore as it used to be in the first place for the United States but also I think that the oil is a sideshow at the moment —at least the oil in Iraq—is a sideshow. A lot of the oil fields have been destroyed some of them are back online but the Islamic State's trying to sell the oil you know to raise money for itself like they were selling the artifacts also from the museums All of the stuff is very messy and very complicated but i think the real. issue for us in that part of the world is this is where we all trace our origins, our origins as a civilization. Not as Homo sapiens but our origins as a civilized people. We trace it back to that part of the world. That's where it started even before Egypt you know so we know that this area contains something that's extremely valuable to us and extremely necessary and the people who've lived there

42:18 for thousands of years are the people who know better than we do what it is that's so valuable there. They may not even know that they know but they do know. They have access, they know where the shrines are, they know where the underground stuff is, they know where the texts are, and what the stories that have been passed down generation by generation are. They know this better than we do and we're allowing them to be slaughtered. That's really terrible for us in general—for human race in general. We need to know what that's all about. Amen. And this is kind of a sidetrack or a tangent, but when it comes to esoteric or magical themes that I get to talk about with guests, it's often very

42:58 very much in regards to either secret societies, Aleister Crowley or Egypt. But I'm starting to feel like voodoo or the Afro-Caribbean traditions should get a little more attention and they do in Lovecraft's work but can you give us any insight into the magic of those traditions? Or how they might be different from others that we're more familiar with Sure, I mean there's Crowley's weakness in all of this. His own book of the law said you're supposed to teach the Obia and the Wanga right? They are references to Afro-Caribbean religion and Crowley just never went there so Kenneth Grant picked up the mantle a little bit and of course Michel Berthiou based in Chicago was very much involved in voodoo trying to relate Afro-Caribbean religion to Thelema into modern esotericism and all that

43:48 It's another fascinating aspect of research because we are trained to think of religions in terms of scriptures and in terms of texts. It took us a long time, in the West, to realize that not all texts are written down you can have an oral text as well And because they're not written down, we ignored them! You know? It was like this blind spot that we had But for instance, in Yoruba religion, you have Ifa and you have what's known as the Table of Ifa, which is their divination system. And it's extremely complex! It's much more complex than the I Ching. It's four times more complex than the I Ching and not a word was ever written down by the Aruba diviners—it was all memorized

44:32 They took years and years of training to memorize every one of those 256 Odoo as they call it, 256 binary figures dots and dashes basically. 256 different ones they had to memorize them, memorized the deity that was associated with each one with the colors and all the other correspondences and the rituals and the stories in traditions with each of 256 figures And it was only when they had mastered that could they be a practitioner of yufa. This kind of complexity and richness was ignored by the West for a very long time. And yet you can go to Santeros, you know, Santa Maria priest or priestess in Santeros and Miami down here in Florida or anywhere any major city and they'll be throwing seashells right these cowry shells which is the descendant of that system it's basically the same system just as simplified version of it. That's just one aspect that complex system and its a very complex system

45:32 And it's 256 figures, which then relate to 256 squares on the Enochian tablets. The angelic watchtowers also were going to give us 256 except for the cross in the middle which is 20 squares tablet of union but the 256 those are all the elemental squares of the four tablets and if you start to see as I have in my own writing and I'm working on a much larger book that would bring all this together there's a consistency behind there is something that's very, very deep that was a treasure in Africa and unknown outside of Africa due to the fact that we just felt these people were superstitious. And since they didn't have any writing, they couldn't have anything of value. So the Afro-Caribbean

46:17 material to me is, if anything more fascinating because it's real living religion but it's also real living magic. The two have not been separated in Afro-Caribbean religions so Voodoo Santeria, Palo Mayombe, Candomble all the other groups this represents something very real something very alive something that pertains to a human being living in the world today as far as realistic expectations and concerns but there's also the very deep spiritual element and a mystical element as well. So I've spent some time among these groups, and among people who are practitioners of those groups, and i've had at one point someone actually using the table of Ifa—someone who didn't know me very well then this was many years ago casting the coins or the shells rather on the wooden table it's a circular table with some of the figures carved into it —and so accurately

47:14 representing not only my present circumstances but understanding the past very specifically and then the future. You know all in one time at one moment and I asked at the end of it. I was sort of shocked that this person was able to do that And I had been two fortune tellers and astrologer's everything else, you know So I wasn't a stranger to this but this was sort of uncanny hmm And so I asked the guy how did this happen? And he said well It's nothing to do with psychic ability At all He said there i'm not psychic. I have no special abilities. It's the system itself That's psychic, essentially. The system itself is spooky and that sort of changed my thinking on a lot of this you know? So I thought okay let me start looking at these systems and so the Afro-Caribbean systems are very rich and very powerful they're very messy from our point of view there just too many gods and goddesses and too much stuff going on in this to many herbs and materials that we don't understand or know all kinds of things it means its entire culture

48:12 and for us just to sort of make arbitrary judgments on it is wrong. I mean, you're missing most of it 90% of it but still worthwhile looking there's the Afro-Caribbean stuff I bring up in Lovecraft Code It's going to be expanded greatly in the second volume The sequel to Lovecraft code which was called Dunwich or Dunwich, which will be coming out around this time next year. So you'll have more of the New Orleans aspect of these things that will go into the Afro-Caribbean much more to try and show how that's related to the cults in Central Asia and the Middle East what they have in common some of the basic things that all occult groups and secret societies have in common so there is more of that to come in the next volume

48:58 That's awesome, man. Yeah definitely a lot of mining for truth probably left to do there for anyone who is sick of rehashing Greek and Roman mythology I mean there are a lot more people in the world Oh yeah And just to get back to Lovecraft Code Just like In Sinister Forces The nexus of names and places and dates is a huge part Of this book where a lot of the truth contained in it lies and I guess a good example of this might be the elements that take place in Florida or this bizarre German guy named Carl, right? Oh yeah. He's one of my favorite characters man. This guy...I mean I've been to Key West number times and stuff you know you hear stories and eventually people have written about him a little bit. This is a real person Carl Tanzler

49:44 or, well he has had a number of different names. But Karl Tanzler we'll call him that for now. Karl was a German who is famous in Key West because at one point he fell in love with a Cuban woman, a very young Cuban woman Maria who died of tuberculosis He tried to save her he was not a doctor necessarily he worked at the marine hospital in key west, who is up next technician mostly run even sure we got that training but anyway he, you fell in love with this woman and try to heal her his own way and of course it just didn't work it didn't happen she died. He built her a mausoleum

50:21 in Key West, a beautiful mausoleum that he interred her. The family sort of allowed him to do this He interred her in his mausoleum but what the family didn't know is that the mausoleum was specially constructed It was like something out of I don't know Dr. Fibes Rides Again or something. This weird situation where you had this woman hooked up all sorts of tubes and devices. He was trying to maintain the body's integrity for as long as possible so that he could bring her back to life As far as he was concerned, she wasn't exactly dead. And he didn't believe that death really took place the way we think it does so he was trying to keep this body alive, this woman's body alive for as long as possible and there were rumors that he had a telephone system put into the mausoleum so she could call him if she came out of her death trance or whatever it was she was in So he was doing all of his stuff and eventually he found out they were going to come break open the mausoleum He took the body out, he put on kind of little

51:19 wagon, and he dragged it over to his house. He was building an airplane in his backyard or in the parking lot at one point of the hospital. He was going to fly her to some South Sea island once she was alive again. I mean, he was doing all this very deliberately. They found out about it eventually. They arrested him. They tried to get him for stealing a corpse or defiling a corpus, but The Statue of Limitations ran out. He was getting all these letters from women who wanted to marry him because they thought it was such a romantic thing that he did, and eventually he died sort of in obscurity. He went back—he actually had a family up in Zephyr Hills Florida so he eventually left Key West and went up there. So that would have been the end of it except you know knowing me I had to pull out a few more threads and it turns out that he actually wrote himself his own account of this whole thing

52:09 in one of Raymond Palmer's magazines, you know the weird tales sort of amazing stories kind of magazine. The same editor that published the Kenneth Arnold stuff about Maury Island and all that So here is our guy Carl Tanzler writing this entire story about his entire life and then trying to save Maria all the steps he took and Maria coming to life briefly here and then opening her eyes or saying something I mean it's going this entire story I think it was in two installments and it was a very, very long or more than that. Very long story and I had to read through the entire thing because he talks about his early days and he grew up in Germany He was in the South Pacific or Southeast Asia at the outbreak of World War One In Australia he was put into a prisoner-of-war camp because he was a German national. He spent his time there but His stories were that he kept on seeing this woman, this figment, this ghost

53:04 in Europe, you know in various castles that he thought that was his soulmate or something. And she was evidently an ancient alchemist of his family going back several generations according to a story and then he claimed that as he was growing up he befriended many famous paranormal experts at the time parapsychologists around the turn-of-the century As I found out later he was making that up but the names that he used were real they're real individuals that I was able to trace And then he died in India or was believed to have died in India. He came to, in the morgue just in time you know? He had all these stories all these wild stories and he was an organist! He built his own organ that he was playing in Australia at the prison camp or something... All kinds of stories, all kinds of wild stuff eventually goes back to Germany

53:52 in the 1920s. Germany, of course is in ruins after World War I all kinds of things are falling apart he's there during the rise up a Nazi party now that much we know it's true or we believe its true anyway from his own account He takes off from Germany and goes to Cuba just for a couple of days because he's really on his way to Key West, to Florida. He has family now in Florida so he makes his way to Florida stays in Key West gets the job as an x-ray technician at the Marine Hospital US Marine Hospital in Key West and from there the rest is history As I'm looking at the dates and places, I realize that he's in Key West at the same time that Lovecraft visits Key West. Boom! So Lovecraft goes down to Key West and he wants to get a boat to Cuba but doesn't have enough money so he stays in Key West for a couple of days. I have absolutely no evidence at all that Lovecraft and Karl Tanzler ever met

54:50 But Key West was a small town in those days, you know. And he was an eccentric character—they were both eccentric characters. Hemingway was actually in town the same time. Hemingway was buying his famous house there which is still there in Key West. There's a lot of odd people who are artistic kind of group that was living down there starting to develop a kind of bohemian sort of community and Lovecraft was down there and Carl was down there. And Lovecraft had written this series of stories called Herbert West reanimator about a guy who's trying to reanimate a corpse. And here is Carl trying to reanimate a corpse." So I put the two together and said, wouldn't it be interesting if Carl and Lovecraft met? Two eccentrics, you know, people who are outcasts or outsiders in their own worlds with pretensions to science. What if they actually met? What would they have talked about? Even more than that

55:43 based on Karl Tanzler's background, based on the things that he did, based on the fact that he was imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp. A lot of things look little suspicious to me I started ask the question what if Karl Tanzler was an agent at the German government? And it is only much later than i found out that Karl Tanzler actually was receiving money from Germany on a monthly basis He was being paid for something So all of that is true. So the only fictional aspect of this is that he met Lovecraft and they talked about raising the dead, but everything else I thought was true so I had Karl Tanzler as the guy who was the one who killed

56:24 George Angel, Professor George Angel on the docks at Newport. You have the docks in Providence from the Newport Ferry which is in the Colo Coutulo so I put all of that together and you know I bring him together with George Sylvester Virick who was the German who was basically in charge of agents in The United States at that time for the German government Who was also a friend of Alistair Crowley? I mean all these people knew each other it's fascinating and they were all somehow involved with each other So, I just made a couple of connections that really weren't there in order to move the story along. But if people are interested in history and especially this kind of offbeat history they're going to find a lot of places to start in the Lovecraft Code because most of what's written there as far as specific names and as I say dates and places times that's all genuine, that's all real these the cults that I mentioned are with one possible exception real

57:17 So, you know everything else all the terminology the foreign languages the terms that's again all real. There is a lot there that is real and the fantasy is only stitching these altogether into a narrative Yeah, I love it. And that is a nice little loop. I'm glad I got to ask you about that and so I gotta switch gears a little bit before we run out of time here but i've heard you mention a potential crossover between this book that you just wrote and your secret machines project with Tom DeLonge can you elaborate on that project at all? How could be related Well, the Secret Machine Project as I think everyone knows now is focused on the UFO phenomenon. So I have done a lot in the last couple of years of research in that particular subject spoken to a lot of people done a lot of thinking on my own as well and analyzing the phenomenon from different angles and different points of view in ways that I think haven't

58:17 been done before or haven't been done enough before. So there's a kind of crossover because some of the themes in the Lovecraft Code and some other themes in Secret Machines, we're talking about the same thing but I can't really go into more detail on secret machines. I'm sworn to secrecy on this, especially because of the last couple months events so i'm being very careful about that but there will be however I am told next month is going to be a kind of press release it's gonna talk about it I believe that may change as well because things are moving pretty fast around here but we're looking at you know the book has

58:52 coming out in March as everyone knows. So we're going to be talking about it probably at some point next year and talking about it a bit more, and talking about its origins and what were doing but there's three volumes coming out of my contribution to secret machines and volume one is the first one obviously coming out in March. And maybe as we get closer to date I can be more specific but Lovecraft Code, let's look at it this way is a fictional narrative obviously but its based on great deal on facts and things that actually happened But Secret Machines is going to be based entirely on fact, entirely non-fiction. Fair enough and you're right I guess it does get kind of sticky with current events if you're talking about the Clinton network and Podesta and these people who had an interest in UFOs

59:41 uh... also speculation but i've had some guests suggest that the reason that they lost the election is because of a talk to little too boldly about unlocking secrets of area fifty one or ross wellin potentially someone with more authority said no you're not and i can be doing that anna you know obviously who knows about that but interesting it's interesting it's it's worth speculating about for awhile anyway i mean its I think that administration would have come the closest to opening the lid on all of this stuff, just from what I've been hearing and seeing because they have been kind of open about it. But there isn't a huge UFO demographic out there. That's true! I don't know who they were talking to as far as if this was like politically designed to create more votes? I doubt that was going to work now but i think they were just talking about the fact they would just like to know we know that John Podesta has been open about this. This is no mystery about it he would like to know as well so

1:00:37 I don't know. We're not giving up on this, on disclosure one way or the other. I think it's necessary but it may not happen the way we think and again we're getting into realms of speculation and I'll save that for later. Sure sure The last thing I wanted to ask you about secret machines and you can just give no comment if you want but You do cast a wide net because your background seems to be more focused in occult or unseen forces in a lot of your work. And to me, that kind of insinuated the possibility that the approach and secret machines might get into more how those areas relate to UFOs rather than aliens from space. And I noticed that secret is spelled with a K and I thought maybe that could be a clue to the magic connection because it's also sometimes spelled that way any thoughts?

1:01:26 Okay. Fair, I love it! Well i am anxious to have that come out so one other thing another kind of random one but I've heard you describe the Lovecraft view in Jest as the elder gods wanting to make the planet great again which is funny and I love that but when it comes to current events do you see any sinister forces at play? Oh, I mean too much to enumerate probably. I feel like I'm living in one of my books now you know? It's crazy and not necessarily Sinister Forces maybe one of the other ones so in one way it is fascinating because you're actually in the midst of an historical period that

1:02:17 could turn out to be a disaster, but you're in the midst of it. You're seeing it all around you. You don't know exactly what's going to fall out from all this, but at the same time I see the strains that I've been writing about for the last 20-30 years sort of moving into place. Things have been researching since Watergate suddenly manifesting in different ways and certain ways. I see this cauldron, bubbling cauldron of all of us It's like we're now going to start talking about all of it. You know, it's like everything is okay to talk about now every conspiracy theory you can think up his fair game. Let's get it all out let's talk about everything whereas before this was not mainstream. This kind of pursuit especially mine I mean I was writing probably to very small audience but I was trying

1:03:06 to verify everything and footnote everything, source everything meticulously and to build up to this kind of ongoing revelation. And now I see people just sort of vomiting it all over the place! It's weird...it's like living in a copy of Sinister Forces and not knowing how it's going to turn out because you know I'm desperately flipping pages here to see what the end is. There so much that I wrote about you know, from a sort of distance or academic kind of objective point-of-view suddenly is all around me. I'm wading through it now and trying to figure out what am i supposed to make of all this right now so yeah its fascinating if nothing else its fascinating

1:03:48 Yeah, cheers to that. And to relate current events back to this fish or amphibious god archetype Have you looked into this idea that the frog-headed Egyptian deity Kek influenced the election through the Pepe the Frog meme? I mean it's weird but it's got a very Lavenda ish thread of synchronicities that really make you think twice Yeah, I kind of looked at it. You know? I mean obviously people were mentioning it to me and trying to make me weigh in on it Of course and I'm looking thinking what the hell is supposed to make out of this So again, that's one of those things like the KSRs I'm kind of pulling back until I get more information But it is it is bizarre. I made his totally bizarre Where did it come from was that one other 4chan things originally? I don't know yes Okay there you go well all right

1:04:33 Yeah, well just the things in a nutshell that I think are interesting is it of course they say Keck is an Egyptian personification of primordial chaos. Trump would be the chaos candidate 4chan as a chaos environment And of all the little synchronicities, well also both candidates mentioned it. Of all the things going on in the election to have this little stupid frog meme reach the heights of Hillary commenting on it and Trump retweeting it I mean if you're gonna talk about influence It made it to the top on both sides. One last little synchronicity apparently it seems to be the earliest one

1:05:09 Back in the 90s there was a PC game Trump's real estate tycoon where the player goes up against trump and a monopoly style game of real estate trying to bankrupt The Trump Empire and at the beginning of the game you get to choose between just a few fake corporations To go up against Trump. And one of those corporations is Pepe, and its symbol is a winding road I don't know but it's interesting man Oh, it is for sure. I mean but you know i think everybody's taken that and they're running with It so they probably don't need a lot of input from me on this. I think they're doing A good job on their own So I'm going to stay off the radar On that one for awhile until I can get a better feel For it Fair And That's kind Of The nature of these synchronicities Is They are so open To interpretation Skeptics Can look at all of it and say This is all bullshit But when You stack them up

1:06:02 It gets harder and harder. Yeah, man alright well I could bounce weird questions off you all day but that does pretty much get us to the finish line here really appreciate it you are one of the great minds of our time before i cut you loose would like to give people any added information about the book your other projects or how people can further scratch little vendor itch. That sounds obscene Well, of course all my books are obviously available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble sites and things like that. And I have PeterLavenda.com. I've been posting recently on there some recent events and one of my latest is on the alternative media but also Colonia Dignita documents were just released a day or two ago about that weird place i visited in Chile with all the Nazis and all the rest of it and more information has come to light about it

1:06:53 So I posted about that on PeterLavenda.com, it's useful to look at and for my sins I'm now on Facebook yes I am on Facebook So you can find me there as well. Try not to be too mean or too evil, thank you very much. Fair enough! Awesome, well always a pleasure I always learn something new from you and you really make me feel like i have a lot more learning to do for myself so thanks again keep doing what you do Sorry about that You're quite welcome thanks a lot for having me. You got it take care Peter LaVenda people, alright. How happy are we? Last show of the year one of my favorite guests new material for the higher side chats most definitely can't argue with that

1:07:38 I really love this spin on the Middle Eastern conflict. I find it very intriguing to think that because it's a hotbed for esoteric knowledge, that is really the underlying motivation that fuels a lot of these issues and interference in the region. It's very provocative right? That we talk about the great loss of Native American magical traditions and we wax poetic about forgotten Gnostics... And this is happening right here in the modern world! We're missing it! Definitely something to think about I was a little nervous preparing for show based around a novel but it went really, really well in the end. I think i'm glad I got to ask him about the idea that major alien or cryptid centric events could be more based on ritual workings kudos to Chris Knowles for making such a great case and regards to Roswell. I think that was in The Plus Show? But of course we go deeper into second hour We talk about so much more

1:08:34 various ways entity influence could manifest, synchronicities Afro-Caribbean magic traditions all kinds of good stuff and hopefully we'll come back to talk about secret machines when the time is right but hopefully you all had a great year despite all the internet memes about how terrible it was. It was one of the best years in my life on a personal level I gotta say! I got engaged did some traveling reached a new level of security with my little independent show here and i think that The key is to stop thinking about events as things that happen TO you, and instead realize you truly do make everything happen. You never had a shitty job you didn't apply for, you never got trapped in debt you didn't sign up for, nobody got a shitty body they didn't feed junk too... And if you didn't like 2016 think about all the hours of media you might have consumed, all the time wasted on social platforms Those are choices and how we spend our time

1:09:29 So if you feel behind, go out there and make life happen. Don't just wait for it to come to you. That's what I'd say. It's a much more empowering way to look at life And of course what works for me won't work for everyone. Either way, you know I love you guys thanks for a great year of support! I hope you got everything you'd want out of this podcast and more... ...and we got plenty of weird roads to walk down in 2017 i'm sure so.. I'll see on the other side drink a little drink smoke a little smoke stay safe and have a happy new year Your move Middle East medallers and Yazidi secret seekers your fucking Because you're my eyesight spell Watch out I can't stand running around I can't stand dumb Because you're my eyesight spell

1:11:53 I'm afraid to do the time, yeah I ain't gonna take none of your fooling around And I can't stand no putting me down Yeah, I spy on you