Preston Gibbs | Simulation Theory, Astrology, Power, & The History of Prediction Magic

00:05 Puppet masters almost surely have a clearly maybe something there. And until you've thoroughly tested every last course, just did you know the less you really knew? That's true Dr. Seuss! They're wood without TNT. They're lying to us just on without TNT The higher side chat show of wood company

00:44 How's it going, Hireside Chatters? Most of us have seen enough by now to know that there are mechanisms and aspects to our reality that few people really understand. And we also know damn well that those of the Power Pyramid persuasion who stumble upon these useful tools—ones that are typically roped off in the realm of magic—aren't exactly shouting from their rooftops about their secret one-ups on the rest of us. So we do the digging ourselves, in an era where magic is mocked, ritual is ridiculed and prediction is considered a put-on. But when one really examines the human story this sliver of time seems more the exception than the rule And the reenchantment of the world seems damn near inevitable

01:20 And what better way to do our part than exploring aspects like astrology, cartomancy and the nature of prediction itself with someone who's made these things his specialty. And that someone is Preston Gibbs. Preston is a professional tarot reader and astrologer living in Plano Texas He's also the operator of liminalastrology.com where he discusses his ongoing study of modern and traditional techniques in the fields of astrology and cartomancy So scatter some chicken bones, dry out some tea leaves and start tracking the great gears in the sky because I can't wait to get down to it. Still in the wake of the almighty American eclipse from deep in the heart of Texas ladies and gentlemen bend the knee Preston my man welcome to The Higher Side

02:00 Thanks, Greg. Glad to be here. Yeah man I'm really pumped from what I understand this is your first real interview talking about this stuff but you are super knowledgeable and i do enjoy your articles and let me start by asking you how this stuff became your forte because as you put it to me you first started down this path when you were making an indie video game about six years ago and realized we were probably in one which was a provocative thought I've had myself but tell us a little bit about what set I don't know if it was six or seven years ago, but somewhere around that time. I was making indie video games and Somewhere in the process of making one of these games I realized that the model of the world that I was making in the game fit the model that we live in perfectly And the more you think about that the more you think that is totally bizarre and for example

02:54 You can explain a number of things that are usually considered unexplainable by putting this model in practice if you think about, say effects and go to people knowing things they shouldn't such as prediction. This is very explainable if we all live within a system the way that an AI generated with in computer program so rather than being people living in this. Dead mechanistic universe that science would describe as we live more in a world that's like a computer program and which were all part of the same system so to explain it further,

03:34 Say for example, I don't know how much of a game player you are Greg but... Huge game player! Okay well when i was growing up and I think we're about the same age. I'm 31 32 There you go You know gold and I was huge Huge And if you remember like the way it's like it was so rudimentary by today's standards, but back then it was cutting edge. And say you throw a grenade or there is some kind of smoke in the way you can't see through it but the computer enemies can so they shoot right through as if nothing there because cheating. The reason that happens is because they don't have vision where you do their just drawing on the entire world as a whole that they have perfect knowledge

04:17 And so the way you get around that is AI sophisticated in today's programs, is it they just fake it. You know they still have all that information They just tell them not to look there basically So it says hey if there's smoke here You can't see down a hallway pretend like you don't see it But they still have that information well The same thing could be applied to us especially in the nature of prediction for example Of how we might know something that were not supposed to because we actually have total information and The arrow of time does not point one direction is often said but it's actually all constant and happening in one single moment so there's no such thing as future. So if you apply it that way, you can say that we're all essentially any game and a course the first rule of any game knowing that your in one most of us don't know that part of the point being in a game is that you have to agree upon rules

05:14 And in this case, we've agreed upon rules where we're just not allowed to know certain things. So we just take it for granted that we don't when in reality, we probably do and there's plenty of examples throughout history that show that we do have access to information that we should not know. Right? I think that's a great way of looking at it man and I guess you'd also be my second astrologer guest who became interested via video games which is just It's own coincidence. That's interesting, but I also listened to a Episode of rune soup recently with Lionel Snell he gave a great interview and he really was making this same point that when you acknowledge the interconnectedness and reoccurring ratios of nature all these things These are the very clues that suggest we're part Of the same system of a coded reality very in line with what you're saying? And I think it's a great point to make

06:04 I'm glad you brought up that interview because i listened to it too here recently and if It was amazing he had excellent points to make. He used a point that i like To use all the time which is generating random numbers, You know? If i ask you to give me two numbers right now you could and it would feel Random do but obviously its not your drawing from your unconscious you're Drawing from numbers you saw earlier in the day It doesn't matter where they come from. To us, they feel random but the truth is that where they come from is just so expansive that we can't comprehend the pattern but the pattern's there and Lionel Snell made the exact same point with computer-generated reality where The same thing was true with modern video games and programs of any kind We can't generate truly random numbers it takes far

06:49 far too much processing power, it's just not possible. But we can generate pseudo-random numbers with virtually zero processing power where we just use something like the internal clock on your computer to pull random numbers from a gigantic table so gigantic that you and I would never notice the pattern unless we played for hundreds of thousands hours And... The world seems to work from that same thing There are so many things that seem utterly random until you really, really look at them. The longer you observe them the more patterns apply themselves and we see this in numerology We certainly see it in astrology You see it almost anything! And you've had numerous guests on that described patterns just like this where the more they looked, the more that they saw something

07:38 I don't think that's a coincidence. And I also don't think that that's unique to just the areas they're looking at, it will happen absolutely anywhere if you look long enough and that's not a coincidence is the fundamental nature of reality that we live in. Yeah man cheers for that! One previous guest Richard Merrick is a guy who sticks out my mind he wrote the book The Venus Blueprint its a few years back and I really want have him on again but something he mentioned was this very thing that distribution things that you would think would be random, actually a pattern emerges when you get a big enough data set. And the example he used was roadkill like if you mapped road kill along the highway for an extended stretch, you would actually find eventually some kind of equilibrium or pattern emerge some kinda ratio and I just think that's mind boggling but at the same time it would make sense if there is some kinda simulation in play here

08:36 Certainly that would definitely describe the very nature prediction and the fact that why is it that we can throw bones or study in trails are. You know what's the flight of birds rope dies looking cards, No, and of course look at the planets and all of these things seem to draw in Information that we definitely shouldn't know and these things don't make any sense in a rational universe There's no way that you can shuffle a pack of cards throw some cards out until someone That you've never met before that. You know, you're sorry their dad died six months ago mm-hmm how could that happen exactly? And another place where that kind of

09:16 Plays out really well is in the Westworld show because the man in black that's the first thing he does as he starts digging into. The code of the game mechanisms within it just like you mentioned the entrails thing that's what set the light off to me because they start looking under people skin and other stuff like that because he knows there are some stuff underneath that you can extract information from. So yeah, man fascinating stuff but it was a big catalyst for scheduling the show when we did is that it's five days after the Big Eclipse and I wanted to sort of let the dust settle a bit before getting an astrologer on to discuss it And there are those who will say look dude Trump is still in office everything as business-as-usual doesn't seem like it matters too much but

10:04 At the very least, at a time when everyone seemed so angry it was refreshing to see so many people looking up amazed by the event. If anyone went out walking around you could see that there was some sharing in the collective wave of awe that we all sort of experienced and it definitely disrupted the humdrum Monday routine this week and that's a beautiful thing at least but what are your thoughts on The Eclipse? And where we are now a week out from it Well, the first thing to know about eclipses from an astrological point of view is that no astrologer where it's worth their salt Anyway It's gonna tell you that something big is going to happen at the eclipse like on the day or even on the week right?

10:47 And to say that we didn't see things happening at a national level, certainly from Trump's perspective that week is just insane. You're definitely not reading the news if you're not noticing that he is falling apart in his tweets and what have you. That's true! Part of it from my perspective has to do with also Mercury went retrograde right before then. It actually went retrograde the night that Charleston happened And right after that, normally when Mercer goes retrograde we would expect to have problems with communication. And right after that we see Trump's tweets that are getting him in a lot of hot water because he appears to be saying it's okay to be a Nazi. But on top of that from the eclipse perspective it's usually going

11:32 instigate change, especially with those who have an aspect by degree with the eclipse and Trump does. The eclipse happened at 28 degrees Leo his rising sign is Leo And his Ascendant is directly on that I believe it's just over that its 29 degrees and so with him obviously there's been a lot of talk about it everyone's expecting something big Generally, it's not gonna happen on the day. Usually it's actually going to start quite a bit before the eclipse happens The eclipse will generally reveal something or trigger something and that will go on for some time and

12:09 You know, things started looking pretty bad for him a few weeks before this. This is when he had several hirings and firings in extremely short order. You know as Mercury is stationing to go retrograde we start having more and more communication problems He's pretty famous for his bad tweets anyway but they've gotten a lot worse And especially at his White House Communications Department it's where most of the firing have happened That's a pretty huge coincidence from my perspective Yeah And I was also going to ask you just about Regulus in general, because it does seem to play such a big role here. Right? Yeah and his assent is on Regulus and generally Regulus is a big sign.

12:51 It's pretty rare to see somebody with their son on regular and when you do historically. What's normally been written about it is that bad is pretty much a guarantee to rise to power no matter what, But there's many other things about Regulus that if Trump doesn't know about, and I'm assuming he doesn't it is not good for him. It tends to mean success especially in military success however There is always the caveat with everything that has ever been written from the ancient astrologers about Regulus That if that person engages in revenge that everything will come collapsing down for them and generally because of this the guaranteed rise to power that's given by Regulus does not last. And he is very revengeful or vengeful so I'm not expecting good things from him

13:44 Well, I would ask you is there any kind of synchronicity or common aspects to all presidential charts? Because it seems like such a specific and important role that you might be able to extract a commonality or pattern, but at the same time when I look at astrological predictions as a whole it does seem like there's multiple signs and multiple configurations that can mean the same thing. So maybe not but i was a bit curious about that. Well sure regulus is not going to be the only indicator for example to rise power there's plenty of them and there's plenty different kinds of things like that not to mention

14:24 Rising to a position like the presidency is not always going to be directly in the chart there. You're gonna look more into modern astrological Interpretations where you're getting into the psychological basis of things A lot of times people, you know Leo risings very common for this kind of situation It just depends just like we've had so many different types of presidents We've had many different types of charts Mm-hmm. The only interesting thing to me from an astrological perspective with presidents is we seem to have quite a few of them that have had at least a Grasp of astrology and some I've been very interested Yeah, definitely man And I did want to get into that a little bit But I also wanted to ask you about because you mentioned the modern interpretation There are different models of astrology the predictive versus the psychological Can you break that down a bit for us? And maybe tell us where you lean on

15:19 Well, the two main ones are going to be modern astrology which is what most people know. Well they're not going to know all about it generally most people only know sun sign type of situation but modern astrology kind of has its basis in a psychological approach it's generally what came about in the 60s and 70s when the massive revival happened around hippie movement that's gonna be the kind of astrology where you're told you have planets and signs in certain aspects and these are going to either make you introverted extroverted what-have-you. And here recently most of the texts up until about 20 years ago, that came before this have always been in Latin and so a lot of astrologers just ignored it Recently we had people like Benjamin Dykes and several others who started to

16:08 translate these texts and that has caused a whole new wave of interest in traditional astrology where you get a lot more of a predictive approach. This is the ones that this type of astrology is much closer to the Mesopotamian period when we're talking about omens, this is the kind of thing where people do see an eclipse and make a hard prediction like president's gonna die or you know, and Modern astrology is not going to do that In fact hardcore modern astrologers don't like astrologers to make predictions because it makes them look bad when they don't get him right. Mm-hmm I tend to lean more on the traditional approach I think that going back to basics is usually the correct way to go about almost anything and Those guys had it more right than we do now

16:57 Right. It seems like your impression is that the reason for the change was because modern astrology wanted to get kind of Accepted as a science and so they had to kind of tweak their approach a little bit But that may make the underlying mechanisms fall apart or the point of it fall apart To some degree I would definitely agree with that I would say that if you look at astrology in the 60s and 70s all way up until You know, the peak around the 1980s We had this massive revival and it happened to coincide around the same time that psychology was huge. And if you look at it, it followed a really similar track record where you have Young and Freud doing this super early day psychology. The more that they're trying to get into the collegiate system, the academic ivory tower so-to-speak, more and more of their stuff gets sloughed off in exchange for being accepted, so-to-speak. The reason for that is fairly obvious. It's the same reason why so many quote unquote scientists will

18:01 attack astrology and say it cannot be empirically proved, and you know, why has it never been shown in the lab? Well quite a bit of psychology can't either. And in exchange for this getting rid of some other more wild concepts they were allowed in even though most of what they do even now does also not stand up to empirical evidence because much like astrology It doesn't exist in that kind of empirical model that'll work for what we consider to be modern science I feel like there's a strong drive there for quite awhile where astrologers were trying to do pretty much the same thing They wanted to get back into the academic system and in order to do that they were willing to give up A lot of what made astrology astrology you get rid of prediction You get rid of any kind or, you know if you keep prediction. You use the new sanctified word forecasting right Or you say you're a consultant? Where are you saying it?

19:00 you know, any number of other things like this. And you essentially ignore the roots of astrology which come from omens and it comes from hard prediction. Astrologers of the Hellenistic period or the medieval period they wouldn't recognize the astrology that most people have been exposed to today and that's not to say that's all bad I'm not trying to railroad psychological astrology versus predictive astrology simply saying One in exclusion of the other is definitely not the correct route right and I did want to talk about that history and take it back pretty far And I love that you listen to THC, and then we're pretty aligned with where We think the sweet spots are on these topics and to me That's restoring that historical context and examining areas where we see the elite put in value in this stuff and Both I think help make the case that things like magic astrology and just general divination have merit so

19:56 Let's kind of look at that history of prediction a bit deeper as you put it. Where would you really start that story? Well, it's tough to say actually from the astrological perspective We are almost certain that astrology as we know it Started its process of congealing around 100 BCE But we know prediction has been around far longer than that astrology probably has too but we don't have any evidence beyond that We do have evidence of, say, oracles going back to at least the 8th century BCE and probably a lot farther than that. But I can think right offhand that the Oracle of the Dead, the Necromantia Ephra, that was 8th century BCE Homer describes it and he describes it exactly as we've found it today but archaeologists have founded so

20:47 We know it goes back several thousand years and there's any number of things that point to the fact that a prediction has been around as long as humans have been. Right, that's no small thing you know? No I mean that's something that for my money is how can we ignore it now It's one of our oldest traditions. It's something that humans have always done. We've always predicted the future or tried to gain information That we simply shouldn't have for any other reason Right. Ptolemy is where I guess the official start would be, right? Or the first person to kind of put the idea of celestial influence into the culture in terms of the records we have, right? He's certainly around the area. Hellenistic astrology is where everything congealed together into the fourfold system that modern astrologers would recognize which is where you have the signs, the planets, the houses and aspects

21:42 And before this, they didn't do that. They had much more rudimentary omens and on top of that Mesopotamian astrology even kind of included what we would consider not astrology now like the weather and things like this Like if you know Mars is in a certain location and the weather is such this means that We sloughed that off at some point it just became If Mars is here, this kind of thing keeps happening. So it doesn't seem to be tied in with the weather right on but yeah around Hellenistic astrology is where this congealed and Claudius Ptolemy was one of the first you know Well He's not one of the first to write about it But he's one of the first that we still have access to there's quite a bit of text that We know existed at one time because we have texts talking about those texts, but we don't have them anymore

22:34 But Ptolemy is amazingly, his Tetrabiblos is four books on astrology. They lasted the entire time so for a very long time Ptolemy was basically considered the last word and it wasn't until much more recently than we realized that actually Ptolemy's system was not The standard that was being used at the time he had his own strange take on it and we've had to go back Chris Brennan, for example has really pushed the move back to whole sign houses instead of any of the Ptolemaic systems that a lot of us have used before that. But regardless, Ptolemy was a big-name player in astrology and he could definitely be argued to have protected astrology to the extent that we still have it today if He hadn't written what he did the way that he did

23:26 we may not even know the word astrology now. And the reason for that is because religion was getting much more hostile during his time, especially to the old world oracles and predictions of any kind like this and it was just... The scientific mode that was coming about at this time was also extremely hostile to the idea of the planets just Omens in general, so the idea that planets would signal something and not cause it. And the reason for this is because the old astrologers before them they had no problem with this. They assumed that the gods were moving all of the planets around which they called the fixed stars

24:09 or the wandering stars versus the fixed stars, and they thought that all of that was being moved around by the gods whichever gods that they ascribed to their particular pantheon. And that they were using those to send them signals as to what was going to happen so that was no problem course when more religions like Christianity come about they start pushing away from it They want to describe it is a natural system So Ptolemy redefines the way that a lot of them at the time viewed astrological aspects in saying that rather than the planets just being signals from God or gods telling us what's about to happen, he describes it in the way that the Greeks were describing optics at the time and the fact they were actually shooting rays to one another. And if the planets could see one another, then that was what was causing something where the rays were actually hitting us directly

25:04 And that sort of holds up in the sense that, you know we can definitely compare that to the way that we understand the moon's workings now and the ties. We can definitely see the effects of the suns rays because we would be dead without them but regardless it is hard to believe a planet as far away as Saturn I think offhand its 1.2 billion miles away That's really, really far. It is! Certainly we haven't found any rays that are invisible so far that go that distance and still have a measurable effect on us... not to the extent that astrology would describe the effect it's hard to believe but

25:49 There are plenty of astrologers who would defend this. I personally don't, i don't see any reason for there to need to be rays being shot out of the planets that are directly controlling us. I go back to the Allman approach. There's no need to describe the mechanism that way, it's much easier just simply say it is like the hands on my watch. When they're in this position means its 3 o'clock. The watch isn't making a three o'clock but it is all the same And I think that's a great analogy. I did like reading that because it makes sense, you know? The sun is at the highest point at noon not because your watch says noon but because that's the mechanism with which it signals what's going on right now. That's a good way to look at it and even before Ptolemy's day like when we see astrological alignments in megalithic structures do you think that has anything to do with prediction or do you think they were just fascinated by the environment in general

26:48 It's hard to say. You know, that question...that's a million dollar question I really wish i could say with impunity what's going on there right but we can definitely say for sure that they were deeply entrenched in prediction they didn't have the same thoughts about it that we do today they assumed that would be case Which again between the amount of time that prediction has been around for us and affected up until very recently humans in general just assume prediction was definitely a thing it's amazing that people are so adverse to it now. How could have lasted this long? Yeah where they the assumption that everyone before us is just ignorant is Something that basically gets taught in school today, and it's totally shocking I agree man as far as what's going on with those alignments. I don't know I feel like they definitely had something to do with prediction because much like how they didn't have a distinction between astrology and astronomy at the time

27:51 they wouldn't have looked at the stars and the planets without assuming some predictive qualities, at least some divine qualities. It wouldn't be something that they looked at just from a mechanistic perspective of the way science would today. Yeah man, just like kind of to summarize your general idea on predictions you typed a pretty good paragraph to me that I thought was worth reading but you say predictions are one of our oldest traditions all cultures no matter how removed practiced one or more forms so what the hell happened? You have a guy like Cicero that modern science and philosophy will put on a pedestal as a great man of reason yet we have primary source material

28:31 in his own handwriting saying that any man, no matter what his status would be a fool to not consult the oracles before doing something. We have well-known oracles like the Oracle of Delphi that operated continuously for an order of magnitude longer than the nation we were both born in has existed and numerous first hand accounts of its value but now we act like this stuff never happened or that everyone before us was somehow cripplingly ignorant That is well said. You could say the same about Isaac Newton and his large alchemical library, just nothing to see here. Yeah and Newton knew well enough to keep secret on most of that but it's regardless there's countless people that history in science puts on a pedestal And they totally sweep under the rug the fact that they were astrologers or magicians Or what have you just like

29:19 Kepler, he's if you go on Wikipedia right now I pretty much am certain that it'll just say he's an astronomer and lists all his astronomical achievements. And never mention the fact that he was a big-time astrologer Just like you know if you go and look up Newton it's gonna talk all about new scientific discoveries And if it even mentions his more occult leanings, that's going to be very footnoted and probably in a isn't this silly kind of direction right This is one of his fringe interests. Then if he was born in modern times He probably wouldn't have thought that had any merit

29:56 Yes yes even though no as he got older we know for sure that you pretty much gave up anything but alchemy and was deeply interested in it and thought it was. The most important thing that he does do it but history white watches that down to the fact that. He achieved all these great things and use a little bit crazy when you got on that's. But back to your mention of Cicero, for example. Cicero's an interesting person because he didn't follow the divinatory practices. He didn't like them But at the same time, he still is fascinating because he's a skeptic and totally acknowledges the fact that it was taken for granted in his time. I can quote him right here and say...

30:51 So, it's fascinating to me that we have somebody like him who is actually a skeptic and yet totally acknowledges the fact that at his time it was absolutely taken for granted by virtually everyone else. That signs were there and that certain people could find the answers to those if they looked. And on top of It's hilarious in that very text where he is ultimately saying that he doesn't believe. He admits that he has only had one dream in his whole life and can't remember any others, and the fact that he feels like it's basically without purpose...

31:27 I'm not at all surprised to read that after reading that here's somebody who throws out the window any kind of more magical perspective on life or openness to things being beyond the Coldly rational and random. Here's somebody who on one hand will slap everyone else's wrists and say how could you possibly believe that bunk? God my life sucks so bad Exactly man and you are right in that it is such the pattern of the high school history books to say that these bright minds they just get crazy and their old age and start looking into weird areas if there really was no merit.

32:04 to these weird areas, you'd think it kind of be the opposite that when they're bright eyed and bushy tailed they start just absorbing everything and then slowly as they became more academic they would let those things fall by the wayside if they had no merit rather than going to them when they're at the peak of their scientific knowledge. And then going down those roads I mean it just seems like that alone should be a clue that once you get past all this sanction stuff there's more there Right. It's just so interesting, but in that paragraph of yours that I had read you mentioned the Oracle of Delphi and that is a term that I think everyone has heard but I kind of think that's where our knowledge trails off do you know anything more about the Oracle of Delphi or that era of Oracles? Certainly

32:52 So Delphi was a location that had quite a few temples, but it was most famous for the temple to Apollo. And that's where the Oracle of Apollo, the high priestess of this temple was named Epithia and Epithia was very renowned and respected This is one of the best positions a woman could have at this time They were allowed own property they were treated like royalty And they were taken extremely seriously. We have firsthand accounts from people like Plato and Plutarch and Herodotus, they all write about the Oracle of Delphi and it's frequently referred to as something that is in high reverence basically anyone worth their merit if they're considering something important they're gonna go to the oracle first

33:37 they would travel all the way to Delphi, bathe themselves and then see the Pythia who only sees people once a month to give predictions. And then the predictions would be given in rhyming hexameter and this would be their answer. Several of them are famous we have no way to know for sure how how apocryphal several of these are, but almost everyone would recognize some of the predictions. Some of the rhymes that are given or predictions that are given from The Temple of Apollo such as know thyself and what have you and this has been later on

34:14 attributed to any number of people. And again, we don't know how apocryphal that could be. We do know that we're told at one point that the temple itself had all these chiseled on the side as they were given but it's long gone and we only have a couple pillars left standing and actually the temple went through three or four temples in time when it was available. What is fascinating too, to me, is that the Temple of Delphi It operated as an Oracle from about the 4th century BCE all the way until 390 AD. So you're talking about, yeah, a period of about 800 years so four times longer than this nation I'm living in right now is around close enough anyway. Yeah i mean that is noteworthy it's a phenomenally long time for people to go somewhere and receive

35:02 predictions from somebody and at no point did they ever think, hey this is all bullshit. Apparently that wasn't a problem it was countless examples with those same people I noted earlier who wrote about the Oracle of Delphi and wrote about its predictive power and things that it would say that ultimately changed history even you know we know one point Alexander The Great went there to get his and the Epithia refused to talk to him that day, said come back later and Alexander not being one too take that lightly grabs her and drags her by the hair until she screams you know well let me back this up because I didn't actually say what he asked. So we know that Alexander the Great also went to the temple at Delphi, thats how important it was and he wanted his prediction given and he asked when would conquer the known world or if he would conquer the known world and the Pythia refused

36:00 Answer and said to come back later rather than do that he drags her off the man it carries your buyer hair until she screams out. That is a moral and he drops right there says i have my answer, enable sure that's somewhat apocryphal as well but we do know from several different accounts that you did go to the oracle before He did go to the Oracle before his more famous push to ultimately conquer the known world. So if it was important enough for Alexander to go there, it must have been considered fairly important. Right and you know You had mentioned that how long it was in existence And I just thought that was so interesting so I was looking up some stuff on it to try to see like a

36:43 Why was it destroyed? Was it just the victim of a declining empire or what happened and there are actually like different reports I heard that it was destroyed by fire, and then I heard that it was destroyed by an earthquake But I was curious if you knew any Alternative story of what would happen to a place of such importance that had existed for such a long period of time So it did actually get destroyed by fire and an earthquake, but those things Destroyed some of the earlier temples and then it came back. They kept rebuilding it It wasn't until near the fall of Rome when it finally just fell into disarray It was probably more the change of religious doctrine than anything that actually brought down the oracles including Oracle of Delphi it was because you have a

37:32 you know, the rise of Christianity and other mainstream religions that said this doesn't work. And therefore as people started going away the Oracle fell into disarray the temple fell into disarray one of the last oracles we have from Delphi is in 362 CE where it's recorded as tell the king The fair rot house has fallen no shelter has Apollo nor sacred laurel leaves The Fountains are now silent and the voice is still damn Yeah, and I thought that was a pretty amazing quote. Again, I'm sure that might be juiced up for us these days but regardless it was the change of religion and what have you that really did if people stopped believing in Apollo people stop believing in oracles And so they died out but they lasted for a extremely long time with no problems whatsoever

38:25 And to me, that's fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. And you know we kind of have this Hollywood version of a medieval general consulting their mage before battle and that sort of thing. We know for example Queen Elizabeth kept John Dee as an advisor are there other areas of history where you've seen predictive magic and power intersect in interesting ways that might be worth the mention? It's happened a bunch of times, rarely as explicitly as John Dee. He is really something else but astrology in particular I know that has been used as recently as well...a few presidents ago We know several presidents knew about astrology such as Teddy Roosevelt who would talk about it at parties and various company from time to time But I don't know that he actually had an astrologer or how big into him was but for example

39:19 During World War two everybody knows that the Nazis were into some crazy shit One of them was definitely astrology. There was an astrologer in 1933 named Karl Ernst Kraft who successfully predicted several big things that caught the attention of some of the elite and He ultimately ended up being involved personally with Hitler and just variables in making these predictions. And it wasn't until he started making the predictions that if they didn't end the war by 1939, that things would start going south for them and

39:58 That started getting him on the ropes with the Nazis. They didn't like that, they only liked predictions and said they were awesome. Another big one was in 1939 he predicted that Hitler's life would be in danger between November 7th and November 10th which was right I think it was November 8th that a bomb exploded at a celebration event that Hitler narrowly didn't get killed by And actually arrested because they thought that he couldn't have known that unless he was part of the resistance very long time for him to make them understand that it was astrology and not the resistance movement then let him know that mm-hmm and anyway, he Made it almost to the end of the war but his predictions fell on bad times when you started saying more and more negative things about them at this exact same time that more and more negative things kept happening

40:49 He ultimately died just before the end of the war when he was in a prison cell But what's interesting about that to me is that Churchill and the other Allied leaders knew that Hitler was using astrologers so they had to get one too, right? There it is way more suspicious than crap They got a guy named Louis D. Wall, and he pretty much wasn't an astrologer He was basically a sun sign sham artist He knew virtually nothing from what I can tell about astrology but they thought he did

41:28 And so the fact that Hitler got a real astrologer because those guys actually believe in astrology you look at the way the Allies approach it they got a You know a carnival barker because they didn't believe in him and what's interesting is their approach to? Hitler and The other Nazi leaders. They wanted actual predictions They knew that they worked and they wanted them and they got quite a few They just didn't like what they got The Allies never wanted a prediction. They wanted to scam, they want to rewrite things like Nostradamus and write it in a way that predicted the downfall of the Third Reich and then they would print these up in huge copies and then they would send them out over the occupied areas in planes and dropped them as war propaganda. And another thing that they would do is in all the papers that they would write fake sun sign horoscopes

42:23 all of which talking obviously about how the allied cause was the obvious cosmic preference and specifically they would pay a lot of attention to Taurus, which is Hitler's sun sign where every single week they would run a message that said something along the lines of how unlucky and dangerous in negative time it was to make any kind of important decisions. And whether that ultimately turned out to be Relevant or not, we don't know because you know the astrology ended up being moot here because Hitler didn't like his own and had him imprisoned. A common motif between power and prediction it seems! Yes

43:02 But if we move forward a little bit from the American side, we have Ronald Reagan who is one of the most beloved right-wing presidents certainly. And we actually know that he was very interested in astrology way more so than most people think if they even know about it at all which is fascinating because actually that got confirmed in 1988 When they even ran it on the cover of the New York Times, but it just seemed to get swept under the rug. So what happened with the official story we're told?

43:38 Is that it was Nancy, his wife who is very interested in astrology and Ronald just humored her basically. But we're told that the whole thing came about because of his attempted assassination in 1981 and Nancy terrified wanting to find a way to protect him she turned to astrology And she turned in particular to an astrologer in California named Joan Quigley They would have long phone conversations and Joan would essentially use what astrologers call electional astrology, and she would map out weeks and months ahead like a calendar. And say you know this is a good day This is not a good day Don't go outside the you know What-have-you one of the most famous ones she did is when they ran contra affair was breaking She told Ronald to not say anything about it

44:26 And that drove everybody else in his cabinet insane because he didn't speak about it publicly for a very long time after it broke. And specifically because of advice from his astrologer, John Quigley who told him do not talk about this in public until after this time which is exactly what you did so Again, it's very suspicious to me that we're given this official idea that Nancy was into it. Ronald wasn't because Ronald follows the advice in a very specific way That's hard to believe for a president of the United States in general and especially for one who supposedly only Hubert is why? He followed those calendars to the letter

45:10 And the whole thing broke when his chief of staff was fired, who was amazingly named Donald Regan. And he wrote a tell-all book where he specifically described How irritating it was because he would have to change all his schedules around to match what the court astrologer with selling nice and yeah if you nancy used to but has apparently quite a bit about this. But he didn't know who is stronger weather how long that had been going on eventually came out the junk quickly was the astrologer, any kind of railroad her and john wrote our own book in defense but

45:48 It's all get swept under the rug what i found interesting about it is when you start digging into a little more. You realize that the official story does not hold up reagan followed astrology for far longer than that. We can go all the way back to 1967 when he was elected as governor of California, and he even scheduled his inauguration to occur at 1210 a.m., so just after midnight which is far as I know is the only governors inauguration has ever occurred just after midnight And the whole reason he did that was even reported in a local news article at the time as quote, to take advantage of favorable astrological portents. So we know for a fact that all the way back in 1967, he was definitely following astrology and I don't believe it was simply Nancy and it happened because of the 1981 assassination attempt. It was happening way before that.

46:45 Yeah, that's just so fascinating to know that clearly there was an interest and then as soon as that interest was exposed it was downplayed as much as it could be. But I just loved to see the elite squirm a little bit and it's an interesting thing to lie about! You know another thing...and I haven't pulled up the chart today to verify this but I've heard this said several times Part of the reason why it seems to be swept under the rug is, interestingly Nancy when she admitted in an interview that she followed astrology. She did it during the void moon which for modern astrologers thats generally considered a time in which nothing much will happen

47:21 In the sense that if the moon is void and you're worried about say, are you going to lose your job? No because nothing will happen. Right. And in this case she reveals the fact that a current sitting president is following the stars who determine what they're going to do with this far as we know it's the only time this has ever happened and nobody bats an eye. Yeah. It's delivered right in that window Yes it's fascinating to me the fact that it just kind of evaporate everybody talks about reaganomics today but they don't talk about the fact that so many of his decisions.

47:59 We're following astrological points. In fact, what's even more interesting is that Reagan was commonly called the Teflon president because so many things happened during his presidency where many other of his staff members got indicted had all these problems like they ran contra thing But nothing ever happened to run Nothing he escaped all problems and Joan Quigley's even quoted in her book when she says that the teflon in the Teflon presidency was astrology I see it on the cake, man. Yeah maybe we should pay less attention to Reaganomics and more to Reaganology Maybe so It's pretty damning. I think that he is considered one of the most you know impressive presidents for his economic goals or his economic process except for the fact that every single one of those meetings That he took and speeches that he gave were all aligned with the stars Mm-hmm is curious

48:58 And obviously there are many forms of divination and predictive magic from the past that we've heard about, some stranger than others. Certainly! Some even seem a bit primitive like maybe reading tea leaves or tossing chicken bones... Do you think these methods have any merit? Or are they just largely used as examples to mock the overall field of prediction? Well they can be all of them have been used that way but For my money they all have merit and I'll say why it goes right back to the idea of living in a game like system. If you wanted to predict something and you live in a system which everything is following patterns because true randomness is not possible,

49:42 And you would need to just point to absolutely anything that is going to stick around a while and build up the data set. It seems random to both of us, but it's not really random. What if I asked you give me a random number every minute for the next year and put it all on the table? It is going become extremely obvious that there is pattern right You are gonna give more sevens or less threes or something like that And If had you do that indefinitely I could actually start making predictions based on Because I can say Greg gave me 7 on this day and this happened If I have that line up enough times then I can start saying on days he gives me a seven

50:24 you know, my car will need to get gassed up or whatever. And it sounds foolish when you put it that way but the truth is that all works that way and its very easy to see in your own life if you give a little time You know, the fact that planets are used in astrology to make predictions, it's just by virtue of the fact that they've been around forever and we've marked them down forever. It's as simple as...it works because it's just—that's what we happen right down You know, if you had all the people who had been astrologers before this and instead just observed the same three rocks with moss on them the entire time and wrote those down forever then that would be what we would use. We just don't have a data set for those three rocks with moss on them but we do have a data set for their wandering stars in the fixed stars so it's immaterial what you used whether its tea leaves bones anything

51:19 It's just how you use it and finding the patterns that are absolutely there. I mean, that is such an interesting way to look at it man. It does make a lot of sense. And one other thing I wanted to try to tie in is the work of this Peter Mark Adams and his book Game of Saturn. I know he's been on Rune Soup, and you aren't the only one to recommend him for THC. I've looked into his book a bit, and it seems like the gist is his exploration of a certain form of tarot and its use among the elite during the Renaissance of all times which is interesting but since Carta Mansi is kind of your wheelhouse can you tell us anything you might have found interesting about his work in particular?

52:04 Well, it's definitely THC material. One of the interesting things about Adams is he doesn't say that it's a tarot deck He specifically defines it as a Tarot Chim because and I hope I'm pronouncing that right? I've only ever read it but It's because it doesn't actually fit into the same exact Model as what we consider to be modern tarot its drawing on very different symbolism has very different sequences of cards. And so he kind of removes it from that in his book, saying that as he himself reads tarot and that he's found that deck to be very hard if extremely enigmatic almost impossible but what's fascinating about the deck and is the Sola Busca Tarot or Tarotian this deck is fascinating because it's one that a family ruling class elite family

53:01 had constructed where they spent huge amounts of money and time having these very specific symbols, people drawn into these cards. There's multiple references to Saturn, there are multiple references to the sacrifice of babies and children you have all this strange Figures you have alexander the great is on several cars i think he's on three in every single time it depicts him. In this romantic style of alexander Where you know he almost himself is deified and you have nebuchadnezzar. And all these strange characters that typically just don't show up in these kinds of settings and what's fascinating about that, is it why? Why did they spend so much time constructing this because the deck shows nowhere So we know I wasn't used as a playing card deck and they didn't talk about it for a long time Just stayed in the family and then eventually got donated to museum and was

54:03 Bizarre about that to me is like why would they spend so much time building this? elaborate Strange enigmatic deck and then say absolutely nothing about it to anyone and not use it for anything Yeah, Peter Mark Adams goes on in that book to weave a pretty convincing argument at the deck itself constituted as specialized grimoire that just that family had constructed themselves essentially was I dark magic spell that they were trying to weave and There's so many things in the symbolism of the cards that really go right into it. You know, we have these Repeated references to the phrase Trevor faders Which is I'm driven by fate or fate drives me and we have all these bizarre extremely dark you know

54:53 Emblems and these children being thrown in the fire is strange naked people doing things that don't make any sense and i mean it's weird. Even for terror so that's something yes but the weirdest thing about it to me is that, it's inevitable that you have to come to the conclusion that they were trying to do something, they spent a lot of time. I think the deck took three or four years for them to construct all the pictures? Why would they spend three or four years... You know, they pay for all these craftsmen who work on this for this length of time They could go and buy a tarot deck! Yeah They could go and buy a very expensive tarot deck

55:37 Why would they need a personal one made and why did they deviate so heavily. Somebody made the decision of specifically needing a deck that invoked saturn and even you know older deities like, i can't remember his name but is the dvds all about child sacrifice and always strange out of way historical figures Somebody needed a deck for specific reason that they were willing to spend a lot of time and energy to acquire And they weren't using it to play a game, and they didn't want any talk about it Which is interesting especially when you look at you know a lot of classical magical systems also Consistently say that keeping things on the DL. Is a big part of it right yeah, and so

56:29 Everything that they did a lines perfectly with what people researching. Call systems at the time would have done if they wanted to we very dark spell and why would somebody who is rich powerful do that unless there was more game there and, It inevitably points to something that I think a lot of THC listeners already know is that there is a Consistent pattern of the ruling class knowing a lot more about occult subjects than they let on. Yeah true that That's a solid preview. I'm definitely gonna see what I can do Peter Mark Adams game of Saturn also when I went to Gordon White's event in LA his little meetup and

57:12 two or three people right out of the gate were like, oh my God you're the higher side chat guy have your red game of Saturn. And so it definitely seems like something I'm going to have to get too soon but damn man! I'm really glad we decided to do this pretty robust show about prediction in general anything else to add before we go? How do you see these space weather going for the rest of the year is the eclipse energy still playing a part Definitely. I think that that's gonna be something that we see play out for at least the rest of the year, and I think seeing what's been going on with Trump and the White House recently... That's not gonna go anywhere! That's gonna get worse before it gets better There are some things that seem to point to it all just kind of dying out and settling down and ultimately working out for him but not all of them And looking at the whole Regulus situation The fact he is a very vengeful guy

58:05 That begs a lot of questions. The fact that, you know, eclipses typically they don't bring in anything new They reveal something that's been in play for awhile and is ultimately now going to be coming to light and impacting whoever happens to have these I mean it can impact its gonna impact everyone I don't want to give the impression that Trump is specifically being targeted by the eclipse He does have a chart where he will definitely feel the effects And I think that it plays out in a very public way, so it's fascinating. Right Yeah But it's inevitable too that It's gonna affect each and every one of us at least a little bit if you're going from a traditional perspective A lot of times aspects even after happening by sign rather than degree meaning that if anything In relation on your chart to Leo is gonna be affected in some way by that but most of the astrologers that I know

59:03 will particularly tell you that it really only matters if it happens in a pretty tight warp. So, you know any listeners at home have their natal chart or want to get one there's several places online you can go to get free natal charts drawn up for you If you look at that and you have any planets at 28 degrees That are... let me look here You know if you have any planets that are at or near 28 degrees and they're not in Cancer Virgo Pisces or Capricorn Those are going to be affected in some way because they're going to be drawing an aspect with that eclipse in some capacity and how it manifests for you is gonna be interesting. For some people, it's gonna happen very short And I think that's what a lot of people were looking forward Trump They wanted you know, I don't know like aliens to come down on the day or something like that but usually It's more like a string that begins to unravel the shirt You know? Or

1:00:03 It's not always bad. It could be good too it could also be that final straw to get you Get off your butt and get the job that you've been wanting instead of sitting at the job that you hate or what? Have you true and yeah, and a lot of times You know eclipses bigger events like this. These would be things that like everything else is going to require If you're not your part to see it through especially now if you try and get something good out of it. But eclipse is also tended bring in things that aren't entirely within your power so, you may just have something happen here live that will draw you like you made maybe you get a on the path to find the job you really want to go fire i don't know right.

1:00:49 The problem with eclipses a lot of times is you end up with this incredibly vague, something may or may not happen in your life. Which is a total waste but without being able to look at someone's exact chart there's no way that I can really...I mean I could go on all day and I wouldn't cover every possible angle but rest assured that we will continue to see things in the future affected by the eclipse especially in the White House it's going to be an interesting year Right on, man. And before we completely close the books of course tell the people where to find your website and any other plans that you have for your future career on the fringe or anything like that? Well like you said at the beginning you can find me in my website Liminal Astrology I try and post new articles there as frequently as i possibly can it's also a free horoscope every week if you're into horoscopes You can sign up for my newsletter through there if you want to stay updated when I post new material

1:01:45 If you're in the Dallas, Texas area I just recently moved here and i've been trying to get out and do more public terror readings And things like that. So if you're interested in finding me at one of those The newsletter is where you're going to find that and if you happen to be around here Do you know somewhere? I should be showing up and haven't you know drop me a line because New cities are hard Finally course you can follow me on twitter at press and astro. I really the only social media side I use right now. I haven't I haven't gone into the Facebook and Instagram thing yet. The temptation is strong, I know! Yes. Awesome man well i had a great time good talking to you and best of luck out there hey thanks Greg you got it

1:02:26 Oh, oh it's magic! You know sweet baby Jesus people. Preston Gibbs and the prediction extravaganza Astrology and Magic always interesting topics to me when they come into play historically and in the elite spheres of influence even better And I didn't really think simulation theory was going to play such a central role today, but it just makes so much sense too. It explains quite a lot of course as Preston said and it was just a happy accident to me to be able get down into that and point out why those scenes of the man in black digging for the deeper game are great. Fun stuff! Big thanks to Preston deep in The Lone Star State

1:03:08 I would connect him with my buddy Zach that the Denver Meetup people met, but Zach just moved to Houston like two months before the hurricane. And i do think it's interesting that we look across the eclipse path from northwest to southeast We got fires at one end 40 plus owl man bat sightings in the middle and hurricanes and floods on the other end Granted, Chicago wasn't really in the flight path exactly but if you just took a diagonal swipe across the country in the general motion that the eclipse traveled it is sort of nuts what's happening now that was non-existent in pre-eclipse reality not long ago. But the Owlman conversation? That is better suited for the next episode

1:03:53 And anyway, yes. Preston makes a lot of solid points and it's always fun to have a guest who is also a listener because we can talk inside baseball a bit So I would say pretty much all your hopes and dreams should've come true today And you know there's a second hour if you sign up for PLUS, and let me tell you what you missed or what you didn't miss for those who are in the club. But we did talk about why understanding the nature of prediction should eliminate fear in our lives, Preston's thoughts and experiences on other realms of magic how the shape of the earth is pretty irrelevant to Preston's model of predictive astrology how he feels just as a general THC listener about flat earth guests obviously speaks for everyone

1:04:35 And of course NASA deceptions and all sorts of higher side stuff. Also in an interesting synchronicity, the publisher of Peter Mark Adams' Game Of Saturn that we talked about Scarlet Imprint they legitimately tweeted me some Peter Mark Adams audio in between the time this show was recorded and the time it's airing which is just so coincidental because its not like they tweet a bunch of stuff at me Or maybe they never have. But they got a copy in the mail for me and I think we're gonna set that up too, sounds so interesting! In the meantime Peter was on Rune Soup if you want to listen to that and now i'm going to get a move on. I'll be back soon with an extensive look at the current state of cryptids and abductions and of course those Chicago sightings but until then...I've done my part Your Move Historical Oracle Star Readers & Parser Outers Of The Predictable Patterns And The Patchwork Of Reality

1:05:27 You're fucking- I'm a super watcher and I can't turn around, can't stand to be my high size. Got all the brain to do the time. I ain't gonna take your throne around and I can't stance on your ass! On you

1:08:10 Hey, see your mind The high sides fell on you You're not afraid to do the time Yeah, yeah, hey