Ronnie Pontiac | Remembering Manly P. Hall, American Metaphysical Religion, & The Pagan Pilgrim

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05:34 The Planet Puppet Masters almost surely have a plan There's clearly maybe something there beyond But until you've thoroughly tested every last close-dressed view Find the more you think you know, the less you really do We be out of T.A.C. You know they're lying to us just don't know to what degree

06:15 The highest side chat show wouldn't come Oh, oh it's magic people from the Sunshine State I'm Greg Carlwood and our thoughts on so many various chapters of history are completely oversimplified by the writings of a few elevated authors The winners of wars a subpar educational system And of course Hollywood depictions that present an almost cartoonish version of various cultures events in time periods

06:56 And our impressions of early America are certainly affected by these things, from representations of the first Thanksgiving in the story of Pocahontas to the archetypes of the puritanical pilgrims on a manifest destiny mission from God versus unsophisticated local savages. The reality is a lot more nuanced, and when you dig into the common trope that America was founded as a Christian nation? Even that seems to fall apart under the weight of strong under-reported esoteric tradition and a multitude of metaphysical views that have always been present here. One just needs to examine the layout of Washington DC or the dreaded dollar bill to realize something much more interesting was going on. Well, these are things I've learned from today's guest Ronnie Poniac and his book American Metaphysical Religion Esoteric and Mystical Traditions Of The New World where he looked at everything from colonial era alchemists astrologers in early spiritual collectives To Edgar Cayce the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and Saint Germain on Mount Shasta

07:55 Ronnie is also the co-author of The Magic of the Orphic Hymns with his wife Tamra Lucid, and was actually Manly P. Hall's research assistant screener and designated substitute lecturer for seven years! Ronnie also puts out a weekly astrology report through his Medium page and is an award winning documentary producer as well Here to peel back the puritanical perception and educate us on a much weirder America, the esoteric author space weather forecaster and manly P. Hall right hand man Ronnie welcome to The Higher Side I'm very happy to be here thank you for having me Yes man i really appreciate you doing this i love a lot of the obscure information in your book American Metaphysical Religion and the largely unknown people you highlight throughout it

08:42 But before we get into that like so many other hosts i'm sure i wanna ask you about manly p hall. I've heard you talk about how he mentored you as a kid and i read the piece the maestro in the boy kindness of manly p hall, anything right manly palmer hall wasn't my grandfather yet he was both my grandfathers had been killed in a war but they provided a friend who gave me all the grandfatherly gifts of wisdom an opportunity anyone could hope for I knew Manly personally near the end of his life. He worked his alchemy on me in a most Taoist way, His friendship transformed from an angry, despiring devotee of nihilism to a seeker of truth and harmony The biographical writings about him are available online and off including his own And they failed to convey a true sense of the man i knew I think that's well written What more might you say about him that people wouldn't get from the biographies?

09:41 That's a good question. Well, I would say that perhaps the most important thing to know about him was...I once had a conversation with him about meditation and somebody had recommended to me the classic meditate in the morning and in the evening for 15 minutes approach. And so I asked him about that and he said that was good practice and I said do you practice that way? He said no. He said over time he'd been able to achieve the equivalent of the Zen walking meditation. And I asked him to explain that and what that meant was sustaining a level of meditative consciousness throughout all the activities of the day so when you read biographies about him in general, you will read about some of his idiosyncrasies that he liked to sneak junk food once in awhile or his reluctance to fire people. He tended to stay home when somebody was going to get fired

10:42 And as you read these small idiosyncrasies on page after page, you begin to get the feeling that he was just a regular guy that had built this amazing way to make a living. by releasing books and lecturing every Sunday morning. But the truth in my experience was that he exemplified this walking meditation, so in other words yes he would occasionally have an In-N-Out burger or two but he did it in this very conscious kind of way with a sense of humor and understanding that we're all just human when you achieve that level of consciousness

11:23 an invisible master who would never eat a hamburger again. He found what was comfortable to him, what he enjoyed and he lived that way. As a result first synchronicities just appeared in flurries around him. I experienced that the whole time I was there beginning with the very first time I ever heard him speak on a Sunday morning when he looked right at me I was raised as an only child by war survivors who were never treated for it. They were really crazy and...I spoke with an accent even though I was born in America when I was a child, and when I got into school I was beat up constantly all the way through sixth grade And I had no social contract by the time I became a teenager. I just thought that world is a place of suffering and nonsense

12:16 and all of it was a waste, and that humans had no reason to be on the planet. They were ruining all the species and ecology that I loved, and I despised human culture. The first thing that happened to me was...I turned that nihilism into a fairly successful band locally that was unfortunately very aggressive and violent and racist, and we had a big following Biker gangs, I mean biker gangs the Satan slave and the devil's henchmen were our security. That was like 17 and I had bikers like beating people up without even asking me you know? I think he'd want us to beat him up that kind of thing And i was also very violent myself. I pulled knives on band members. I deliberately ran my car into someone I mean really just out of control and as my wife Tamara put it in her book I was basically looking for another Altamont to happen

13:14 I wanted to be in the middle of it. And i read Crowley and Austin Spare, and Anton LaVey, and Evola, and I found them all dismissible. I thought they were all romantic idealists. And I was looking for power and real negativity, and to me that wasn't there in their writing so I turned that into this band And in the midst of all that, I was blessed. I mean, i don't use that word lightly. I was at this notorious club The girl who had become my wife was there She found herself in a really dangerous situation she'd been basically cornered by about five guys she had the opportunity just one chance to get some help

14:01 And even though the guy who ran the club, who saw her looking at me said do not talk to that guy. He is bad news and this was like a mob club and they're saying this guy's bad news right? She was a kid who got brought there by a friend and looked very out of place and she chose me to ask for help she came up to me in the rain I was standing out there smoking a cigarette and she said please help me i'm in trouble I awake in the chivalry that i didn't know i had and so i did help her i fell in love with her she wound up living with me within a couple of weeks and that love and also her. Basic honesty goodness for intelligence change my life you taught me about everything from,

14:49 flossing my teeth to why it's stupid to lie, because it's hard to remember all those lies. I had been a devotee of the power of the lie like I relished in what I could make normies do by lying to them and I really relished making optimists pessimists so she calmed me down but we were both still pretty cynical about the world and about life in general I came upon a copy of the Secret Teachings of All Ages, but actually the encyclopedic outline. It was the sixth edition with first kind of reduced size where the photographs or rather the illustrations were black and white but it looked like this old tome from the 1900's to me like from actually from the 1800's and that book changed my life as i read chapter to chapter

15:43 It just changed how I saw everything, history and the potential of living a life and the potential of our society. And he has at the beginning of the book this dedication which is to the rational soul of nature And that really speaks to it, that is suddenly said this isn't a world of chaos and suffering and nonsense that happened accidentally. That this is the world where when you sink yourself in your harmonized properly you and nature can become collaborators in creation rather than just being victimized by random events I told a friend of mine about the book she said well you should go see him lecture honey and

16:26 I thought he was for sure dead because he kind of looked old in the picture and the book looked really old. And I just thought, He must be long gone that she said no, he lectures just down the street from where you live, you should go. It took me a few months to go down there because I knew who I was and I just thought that somebody like that in his community would just look right through me and would not want me anywhere near that place, thief and everything that I had done But Tamara convinced me because she said, you know how will you feel? He's an old dude. You know if he passes and you've never seen him And you had the chance when you feel like an idiot so one Sunday morning we went down there now I had been considering moving to Virginia Beach because the same person who told me about his lectures Was somebody that was deeply into Edgar Cayce and was convinced that California was about to drop off the map

17:23 And she scared me. I didn't know really much about metaphysics and I just thought, oh my God we're all going to die! I got to go to Virginia Beach." Well he looked right at me during that lecture and said people who suffer irrational terrors of natural disasters because they are guilty about how they have lived their lives. Right at me. Wow. Yeah, I found out later that he couldn't see me Because he did not have good vision by that point in his life we were basically blurs out there but i also found out from being a screener that there are many people and how that experience. Set every single lecture you had this uncanny knack of just looking at somebody and saying something deeply personal meaningful to them, add these kinds of synchronicities where involved other areas including with me because

18:16 I was so impressed that both Tamra and I decided to volunteer at the Philosophical Research Society to do just anything that we could do to help. And, we had an interview they loved her because she had office skills and they were immediately interested but i had nothing! You know what? What I was bringing to the table It was all wrong. And they did ask me one question, which was do you have any knowledge of other languages of European languages? I said well yeah i grew up around a bunch of European language people speaking French and German and Russian Polish so even though I can't really read them but understand them and familiar with them to certain degree the next day they called up and offered her job

19:06 And I said, no way man. Like i'm not going to sit here and take care of the cats while you are out there working at PRS so forget it! And the next day after that the phone rang and the message was Manly Hall wants to meet you...and I thought what in the world? Okay but what a great opportunity right?! I get to meet the man that's awesome!! So the next morning we went down there And they led me into his office and there he was sitting behind this beautiful ornately carved Chinese desk with a smile on his face. On either side of him were two elderly women, so four all together and these women were the women who really ran PRS at that point

19:56 They were scowling at me and he said, come on in and make yourself miserable in kind of a WC Fields meets Berenwer accent. So I came in, I sat down, he had a stack of paper in front of him, he pushed it in front of me And he said that's my alchemical bibliography and I want you to edit it. I had no experience! I mean, I just read about alchemy for the first time really in his book I was stunned that he thought that i could do something. I didn't even know what a bibliography was and I told him, I do not have the skills that you think I have there's no way I can do this and he said oh yeah you'll be fine and he said take it look at over come back tomorrow and we'll talk about what I want you to do so I pick up the galley didn't even know what a galley was

20:52 I was kind of holding on to it and I walked out of the library, and the vice president of The Society Pat Ervin had run or sort of around and stood in front of me blocked my way and said give me that. And I said yes please take it this was a mistake she took it and I thought it was over when I got home there was another call Manley Hall his office first thing in the morning so go down there the next morning It's just him this time his secretary comes in and out, and he pushes it back in front of me. And he says from now on you take orders only from me if anybody tells you anything that contradicts anything that I say you come to me. I said again but Mr Hall I don't know how to do this. I don't know have any of these skills. I don't even know these languages very well. He said we'll get together every morning when you show up

21:52 And we'll talk about what you will do on that day." And he said, when we have lunch. You can have lunch with me in the vault and you can talk to me about the books that you're working on and you can ask me any questions that you like. And then in the evening I'll look over your work. Wow! Wow, right? Go have lunch with Manley Hall in the vault. I mean, Manly Hall unscrolling the famous George Ripley alchemical scroll of which there were only a few in the world and showing it to me in the vault and just amazing! So it turned out that I did have the skills and there's another synchronicity

22:35 The reason that he had brought me in was because the bibliographer that had been working on the book, who was an academic, had included information about bodily fluids used in alchemical recipes. And Mr. Hall felt that that was dangerous, that most people were not capable of dealing with that level of alchemy and he also felt that his audience wasn't really that interested in those kind of things they might be disgusted or repulsed by it So, first thing was remove all references to bodily fluids here. And then I was to check all the measurements and add things that he wanted added and so this became an amazing experience to be working with him daily and he was impressed by me so I became his research assistant as well. We became friends

23:24 And that completely changed my life. I tell a story there and Tamara tells it better in her book, which is called Making the Ordinary Extraordinary, which is about our friendship with the Hall's where I was a terrible thief And as i was hanging around the library especially when i was became his assistant in research and he was sending me around the library to grab books out of the shelves i kept seeing. These amazing old books that were out in the library they were not involved and i wanted them you know like i still remember some of them just really want to take him and i can see how easy it would be to do

24:04 And so this inner battle opened up in me where i was like do not do this to the man who is giving you this amazing opportunity become a civilized human being. Well invited us over dinner for the first time to their house and while we were there he told us extensive job that i want butchered by trying to tell it, But the punchline was basically it was a story of a priest in early California who was trying to build missions. And once the year he would gather all the local citizens, especially the wealthy ones and you give them an stirring sermon and then he would ask them to please give him resources so we could build more emissions

24:45 Well, on his way there he met someone who was injured and this guy wouldn't tell him anything about himself. He was an outlaw obviously. He helped the outlaw get healthy and the outlaw became kind of his assistant and would help them out with things so after this amazing stirring sermon was given suddenly the priest said oh no! And this fellow said what happened father? And he said, I didn't ask for donations. It just forgot and then the guy said oh don't worry i took care of it he said you told me to so when did i tell you two now if your catholic or amongst your listeners there's a famous catholic blessing dominic fiscom and the name of this outlaw that was given by the priest was dominick and he said you said dominic frisk him so i did

25:43 So I laughed and walked out, and we get in the car. And Taren says, I think you've just been poked! I think somebody gets what you're going through here. Then as if to make that even more obvious, the next day he says to me, You can take home any books you like. Just bring them back when you're done." So I didn't even take the ones that i wanted, right? You know. I was like...I don't dare do that yet but what I will do is I will take some and eventually took the ones that I wanted to steal home and brought them back And then I became a guy who went through library picked all those rare volumes that were in danger of being stolen and have them moved into vault so they were safe

26:26 That cured me for the rest of my life from being a thief. So that's just one little example of how he impacted me, but I tell this story because of the synchronicities. I didn't tell him, I want to steal your books. I didn't mention it to anybody except Tamara and here he was in the zone with this so I saw that happen over and over again when I worked with him. He had this very magical kind of tuned-in harmonious presence And things happened around him that were subtly miraculous, I would say. But he was a super down-to-earth guy. He liked to talk about baseball and tell jokes and show off his stamp collection. He really was into being just a very even keeled kind of normal guy then these amazing things would happen around him

27:18 Right and he certainly been mythologized i think there's something especially in today's internet culture where. If you seem to have a lot of knowledge it's almost like your default bad like we want the knowledge these are the knowledge keepers and. He definitely doesn't seem like that to me i learned a lot listening to manly p hall lectures when i was younger, add another people who just think simply free mason equals bad but there is like a world difference between him and say albert pike who was southern pro slavery general

27:54 But I did want to ask you this now. There's a lot of questions I have about your book, but just one more Manly P Hall thing. So if you look up his book The Secret Teachings Of All Ages at CIA dot gov which it is there it includes this endorsement by John Bruno Hare that reads for once a book which really lives up to its title Hall self-published this massive tome in 1928 consisting of about 200 legal size pages and 8 point type it is literally his magnum opus each of the nearly 50 chapters is so dense with information, it's the equivalent of an entire short book.

28:33 If you read this book in its entirety, you will be in a good position to dive into subjects such as Kabbalah, alchemy, tarot, ceremonial magic, Neoplatonic philosophy, mystery religions and the theory of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Although there are some questionable and controversial parts of the book such as the outdated material on Islam, the portion on The Bacon Shakespeare Hypothesis and Hall's conspiracy theory of history as driven by an elite cabal of roving immortals. They are far outweighed by the comprehensive information here on the subject." Well, what are your thoughts on that assessment? The book isn't exactly fresh in my mind it's been maybe 15 years but the idea that history is driven by an elite cabal of roving immortals is probably one of my favorite ways to describe such a thing or maybe my favorite part of such a book what do you think

29:28 I had a talk with him about that. First of all, how did it get on the CIA page and why? And i mean...I don't have an answer to that but it always stuns me! There was a time when he was I mean, I knew him when he was in his 80s near the end of his life. He was not political at that point. He would sometimes refer to America's secret destiny and things along those lines which were popular themes for him. His most popular lecture ever was about the secret destiny of America given in Carnegie Hall during World War II and I think that he felt a loyalty to that subject but how he wound up there? I don't know now.

30:07 My understanding is that he had a relationship with mayor in los angeles at ronald reagan supposedly when i was governor. Came by to meet with him once or twice but i wasn't around any of that was happening and i don't know what he was trying to do it that point when you have, I asked him about this whole idea of the invisible masters, which he really acquired from Theosophy. He was very influenced by Blavatsky in the beginning when he was a kid starting out. He was all about the secret doctrine and Isis unveiled and the Theosophical and also the Rosicrucian teachings of Max Heinle, which were quite similar. And in both of these traditions there is that idea these roving invisible masters who

30:55 really are pulling the strings. Now, the funny thing is that they're supposed to be good right? Like in Manley Hall's point of view these are not evil elitists who were keeping all of us ignorant and taking all the wealth of the world and trying to dominate everything these are people who were trying to save us from ourselves Who are trying to block The evil elites who are trying to control everything And who were trying to bring goodness into the world That's how he saw it so When he said New World Order, for example. I just recently put up a lecture that I gave at PRS back in the 80s called Marriage in the New World Order and this was an example of when I had to lecture for him when he wasn't up to coming out on a Sunday morning and he picked the titles right? So I was like oh Jesus you know marriage in the new world order

31:49 So i asked him what do you mean by that what do you mean by new world order and he saw it in this beautiful idealistic kind of. The only thing I can use as an example would be kind of like the Star Trek Federation of Planets or something. It was this highly elevated, it was also related to this idea that I talk about in the book of The College Of Light which was something that the great educator Comenius came up with and later in America John Winthrop the Younger tried to implement and failed because unfortunately a war broke out with indigenous tribes

32:26 And the european intelligence and alchemist and philosophers and proto scientists that he tried to bring out. Do all get together in one area and be like this college of light didn't happen but the idea was you gather up all the most intelligent people all the people who are seeking to understand creation and how to live both in the physical and spiritual dimensions, you get them all working together. And then you share that information with everyone so the more people that become enlightened by that information than the better the world becomes. That was the idea of The New World Order there even then it seemed naive to me right? In the same way that there was this idea at a society

33:13 If only the world would understand bacon's great approach and that he was behind shakespeare in the he was buying. The rose accretions you is behind the foundation of america if the world can realize that it will change everything. And tamra put a beautiful because she said you know people i grew up around they were into baking but wasn't france's and our idea was Nobody cares. Most people don't care who wrote Shakespeare or any of that stuff, but the society had this... Everybody was so devoted it was just beautiful serene like little Pythagorean community or something and there it seemed like there could be a new world order and that people would be enlightened then inspired in a sense I wasn't example about happening right because I was inspired by what I read in that book

34:01 But I did have an opportunity to speak to him about it. It happened because i asked him if you had at all to do over again what would you do differently? And this was just between us and he said that he would not have emphasized all the invisible master stuff, the way he did so strongly in his youth. Oh that's a shame? Yeah! He said instead I would have said and he actually wrote this in one of his last books that who are the Rosicrucians they're not invisible superhumans they're us there are people who devoted themselves to Rosicrucian ideals, finding out how to heal and then healing people who couldn't afford it for free. Standing up for the innocent in the weak

34:47 fighting against religious tyranny, bringing science together with philosophy and religion. And all of these ideas and so he had changed in his approach even though even in that last book he still went in there and he started talking again about these invisible group not really invisible but secret orders that were still working to help us along but he also said He felt that he would have emphasized that before anyone begins studying any area of metaphysics, they should familiarize themselves deeply with some area of psychology. Of their choice because he felt that for people who have psychological issues That when they take those issues untreated into metaphysics it amplifies them

35:42 And then you can get all kinds of terrible experiences, which he spent much of his life counseling. When I was a screener my job is basically on the one hand make sure that people who wanted to meet him for reasons that were intended for their own self-benefit and may have been detrimental to his reputation were screened out but my main job was talking to all the people who needed help who were trying to reach him as a sort of last resort because they had done ceremonial magic and they realized they didn't close the circle properly, and it freaked them out. And then they believe that we're being haunted by entities that were ruining their lives or the same kind of experience occurring in spiritualism where somebody got in touch with spirit that was talking to them and wouldn't leave them alone or was telling them things that were disturbing for people who

36:36 had lost the ability to function in day-to-day life because they'd become so deeply immersed in the esoteric that instead of it building them up and opening their soul, it was turning them into these kind of recluses who were unable to function any longer. And they all wanted to talk to people that were growing third eyes, they thought and all kinds of stuff. I mean, it was a eye opener man to talk to that side of the metaphysical world and see how much damage was done. Now, of course the same thing happens in every religion I mean almost any human activity can create that issue and that's why i think he suggested that people needed to have some awareness of psychology so they could understand the shadow and the unconscious and kind of have more stability and groundedness

37:25 So I think there was a level at which he did kind of believe that there was a potential, let's say of this kind of thing occurring. And it's not very different from Mahayana Buddhism where you have these great masters who supposedly achieve the ability to transcend the physical body and can sort of teleport themselves or some aspect of themselves and communicate with people. We have many many stories throughout the history of metaphysics, especially in alchemy worthy seekers suddenly finding someone in their room who gives them what they need to accomplish the great work and sometimes they show up in dreams and that kind of thing. So I think on a level he felt that there was something very comforting about that. I fell deeply into that for a time

38:17 I was like, okay well if he says it's real this is in the beginning then I guess it must be real. So I want to meet an initiate. I want to be an initiate. I wanna be one of these invisible guys and so what do I have to do? You know, so I started to read up all the stuff and I changed my diet. I became celibate as much as I could. I did all the things that I thought I needed to do to become an initiate and it got me into trouble because I started doing things I met somebody at a bookstore who needed somewhere to stay and she claimed that she was high level of attainment and that she had information about fusion experimentation that could change the world. She moved into our place, like i couldn't get rid of her like she was a total hustler so i went one night with tamra to the hall's house. I'll never forget it was the storm going on we're sitting in dark room and lightning was lighting up the room

39:13 And i started telling him the story of what it occurred and i don't know what to do you know i was like, i throw her out then i'm not gonna be initiate right i mean that's not an issue thing to do. Well he laughed his ass off greg i mean he thought it was a funny thing in any said throw her out and he said tell her that i said if she doesn't leave to call the police So you see, he understood that whole concept had a lot of negative baggage going with it. But I think on another level he felt like it was a comfort to hopeless people And maybe he even felt himself that, but maybe there are you know. Maybe there are people of such high attainment and they're out there trying to help however they can because when I knew him he was deeply into Buddhism and Taoism and in those traditions there is the tradition of the immortals right? Of people who achieve such attainment that they kind of transcend the limitations that we all have to deal with

40:14 So I think that he was split about that subject, but he was very aware not to take it too literally. And he tried to kind of calm people down including me about it and eventually grew out of that camera called initiate fever I think that's a great term for it. And i think its something that happens often for people when they start out in metaphysics and are so ambitious to achieve, and they hear that story now our society as you point out thats become a source of fear The idea that there's these evil reptilians and here's the funny thing about it but science is taking us rapidly to a place where something very similar is highly probable right because when you talk about genetically enhanced kids of people who are wealthy enough to afford that.

41:05 Where a kid can be given at super high iq metabolism that you know they could live to be hundred and fifty or something. You're creating these sort of elites this higher level economically made possible by their wealth another kind of humanity that could occur in the future as these kids are genetically tinkered with. And so i think thats part of the reason that the fear of these initiates have high levels ringing in the consciousness of humanity right now because there are very concerted efforts to make that kind of a leap, a reality. Yes well that's the promise we will see how that truly manifests I think we might get

41:48 frankenstein island of doctor maro kind of thing that isn't exactly what i hope so myself i mean i hope it's not that free and easy you know the just have a lot of money and i can live twice as long issue and be connected to ai in my brain so good luck. Dealing with me right let them be their own downfall yeah it could be interesting will see what happens i mean its also good remember on the other side, I like to point out to people, as Plato captures in the dialogues Socrates and a lot of other very wise ancient Greeks were very upset about the introduction of books. Of scrolls The written word was dangerous This was a new technology that was going to ruin society And of course there's some truth in the fact that when you're alone with your book

42:35 You can read things into the words that if you have the author or a teacher there, you might not slip into those kind of mistakes. Well I like the anecdotes about Manly P Hall and breaking down kinda what he thought about some of that stuff absolutely true this kinda esoteric material is not for the faint of heart And it does bring out the crazy is in a lot of ways and that's just something i guess he had to navigate and other people in this space have to navigate. Yeah when you think about all the elite this hidden hand of positive influence. In terms do change and thoughts about the world change from decade to decade but, you look at the fruits of today's world then just thank man if there is any hidden hand of positive influence either died out or they got quite lazy order not doing that great job in people say oh well they're operating on higher level you just don't

43:35 See what's really happening and it's like okay well you can give false. Hope to people that things are all gonna work out because right behind the dick jenny is in the political lead or the good guys that are operating up here i just don't know about any more, but let's get into your book i can't believe we're forty five minutes into this thing and we haven't even gotten your books so i got six pages of questions about it i'm sure i'm only gonna get two half a bat but Let's describe it for people you talk about the journey in the intro i don't want to have to rehash that i've heard you tell many times. It's part of the story of course so you know give people a little bit about but really just the broad overview of this book because its really what we like around here is hidden history,

44:22 It's esoteric history, it's strange stuff that never really makes it into the story and it is about our home here in America. So...it really checks several boxes but its a great book give people the elevator pitch for it. Sure! It started in The Vault during one of those lunches and I saw this big leather tome on bottom shelf and it said The Platonist on it And I asked him what is that? He said oh thats a good one Why don't you grab that and take a look at it? So I pick up this book, I open it. And it's a newspaper. It's a bound newspaper from the 1880s and it was published in a place just outside of St Louis during the time of the gunfight at the OK Corral when St Louis was just beginning to become industrialized but we're still a cow town so it was a cowboy town. Here with somebody publishing something called The Platonist

45:18 And I look in it and its translations of the Neoplatonists, there are translations of Nephis Levi, the Parisian Magus in there. I could not understand how did this thing come to be? Then I asked him and he knew very little about it as a mystery so that set me on course seeking to get information behind this book or newspaper And at the time, I couldn't find anything. I found a little bit of information about some of the writers like Alexander Wilder who was a fascinating character and kept looking. But once all the college libraries, I went everywhere I could there was no internet it was just very beginnings of the internet that time so The nice thing that happened was in the 90's and then with a vengeance in 2000's and on academia had a revolution

46:15 which was they suddenly decided that it was good to study esoteric information. Because before that, in religious studies in particular you never looked at it. It was considered superstitious idiocy and it was considered radical to look at the Pentecostals because your job as a historian was to look at the big institutions that had shaped civilization, the big churches and all of sudden a new spirit in live and academia where the idea was we're not here to judge this stuff. This is history, and we need to open up all these archives that have never been looked at, and we need to apply our academic skills understanding what were these people doing? And why were they saying these things? We're not going to say it's stupid or its brilliant. We are just gonna tell you this is what they said, this is what happened."

47:07 And there was an avalanche of new material based on archives that had never been opened before it was thrilling and especially in the beginning. In those early days amazon google would allow you to search every single book they had all the way I mean, these academic books are ridiculously expensive. They're like a hundred bucks for a little book but i could search every academic book and through academia and jstore and a couple other websites that could research all the papers And it was so exciting. I always found things that just, oh i wish manly hall could have seen this! This is incredible changes the whole story to give you one small example people often when they're talking about rose accretions they talk about robert flood and michael meyer and they say well they knew each other they were friends and they helped each other get published and they must've been examples of real rose accretion

48:05 And academia got in here and started really digging through all this stuff. And what they found was they never met each other, and in fact they didn't really like each other. They were critical of each other's work and had some very non-initiate things to say about each other. It changed the whole picture of that. So I found out a whole bunch about the Platonists and about all these other things, and it was this entirely new view of American history It's almost like, okay you know the guy you think is your dad? Well he wasn't. Your dad was actually this crazy outlaw artist person who did all sorts of stuff with indigenous tribes and the Spanish and voodoo... And you're like what?! You go oh yeah I got a whole bunch of that! Your whole family tree is filled with people like that

48:51 And it was this alternate history of America. And not only did it give you these incredible characters who've been here since the very beginning, I mean before there were colonies even there were some very early visits here from people who are sent by the crown to see if there could be colonies and the picture even of the so-called Christian origins changed radically. So for example, there's an author named Butler who analyzed what church attendance was like in the early days of America, the very early colonies and then onward it was terrible when you had all these priests complaining going they won't come to church we can't get anybody sit in the pews they just want to follow their own crazy ideas that they brought with them from the countries they came from

49:43 You had the idea that the pilgrims, for example were deeply Christian. I mean you can't be more Christian than they are and that they hated the occult and anything having to do with the esoteric so wrong. And i'll give you an example of that. The other thing that you see is that we have this rich alternate history of people who are sort of like forgotten founding fathers, people who have so much to do with the so-called American character in a way that people like you and I can actually appreciate rather than what we get taught in school which leaves us going well my god! What's wrong with this country? The history is horrendous. These so called Christians

50:26 one of the feet of the triangle slavery, of the slave trade. And then it's an empire saying that it isn't and it's going around manipulating the whole world in saying no we're a democracy, we don't do things like that but then all of sudden you discover wait a minute all this has been left out so now let me give you good example about and this will be in the beginning when the pilgrims were here a fellow was sent out named John Winthrop The Elder And he was the head of the Boston colony and he was a devout pilgrim.

51:04 There were royalists in England who saw the Puritans getting this strong foothold in the new world and they didn't like it because of course there was the Civil War vibe going on in England that was going to erupt into Cromwell. And you had the Royalist on one hand, the Cavaliers who were guys with long hair, they usually had beards and they wore cod pieces and they loved Shakespeare They were fighters and drinkers and they love when she is a call that i love women. They were sort of jolly old england in the period tensor don't run, walk fast, don't laugh. It's wrong to laugh in this world of suffering." And everything was deadly serious and so opposite and they were headed for this horrible political showdown that would result in war with each other. And so they wanted to send someone the Royalists who was going to maybe start a colony for the Royalists there because after all it was the Royalist who started all that with Walter Raleigh who was sent out to the Virginia Colony

52:08 And they sent out a guy named Tom Morton. I call him the pagan pilgrim in the book, Tom Morton was a classic cavalier when he was a little kid. He saw the armada in the Straits of England Queen Elizabeth The first was the monarch for most of his life. He was a lawyer. He was deeply into Shakespeare and into the great literature of Elizabethan England He was like approaching 50 when he was sent out, which in itself at that time that was an advanced age. And he sails across the Atlantic to start this new colony and he started it with a trading post. He named it Merrymount there was this beautiful little green hill that overlooked the Atlantic

52:54 And there he built this trading post and he called it Marymount. One, it was the Mount of Mary but it was also a pun in Latin about screwing right? Mary mount but it was derived from Latin words And he had a completely different approach, whereas the pilgrims were convinced that Satan was everywhere in the New World. That the tribes were victims of Satan and they could not be trusted to such a degree that John Winthrop, the governor of Boston once got caught out in the woods at night and became so terrified that he like ran in a panic through the woods until he found a menstrual hut

53:35 that one of the local tribes had set up, and he hid in the menstrual hut and chased off the women who were using it for the purpose it was intended so we could hide in the shelter until dawn convinced that there were demons all around him in the woods. Meanwhile here comes Tom Morton and he says Oh, tribes. Awesome! So what do you guys believe in? What do you dream? How do you treat your elders? How do you teach your children? What kind of lives do you lead and please come to my trading post I'll take care of you. I'll be fair with you and also by the way outlaws pirates...I mean everybody's welcome at my trading posts not like the pilgrims over there

54:19 He was also a hunter, and a very skilled hunter. And he fell in love with America, with how gorgeous America is. He wrote for instance this long piece about the different kinds of water that the tribes knew about in that area. There was one spring that came up through a crystal that was supposed to give you amazing dreams. There were other springs that were supposed to be healing for certain conditions and he carefully wrote all this down. He became successful of course very quickly immediately aroused the anger and envy of the pilgrims. So he decided to have a May Day celebration, May Day celebrations were very common in England and he felled this giant yellow pine and they stripped it and they put ribbons on it and he wrote this really bawdy poem to a goddess of all things and he had it pinned on there and he had a big party

55:14 And he invited everybody, again smugglers pirates outlaws all the tribes. And all he said was while you're here everybody gets along no violence no fighting you put aside everything now does this not sound like the other side of America decide that we all want right as opposed to this puritanical in control we're better than you judgmental side of America so John Winthrop decides, okay that's enough. A May Day celebration? So the Pilgrims start releasing propaganda in England that this party was an orgy, that everybody got together and got drunk and they were fornicating on the grass under the maypole which was absolutely false. And what Tom Morton actually said in his book was I've got news for you, indigenous women are way more moral than the lasses back home okay

56:13 And nothing like that happened. It was the most friendly, wonderful gathering of people where everybody was talking to each other and learning from each other. So John Winthrop decided to take legal action against Tom Morton and they were going to close down this trading post. He thought they're going to start a war against us or something. They're gonna get all the tribes together and just take over and that'll be the end of us. So Tom Morton He was a lawyer, so he thought he could handle it. And he kept on doing what he was doing which included selling guns to some of the tribes that had been decimated by the diseases that were brought over by Europeans and who are now being attacked by bigger tribes who were trying to take them over and turn them into slaves essentially they were enslaving them

57:04 And he said, OK well you know what I'm gonna sell you guns so you can protect yourselves. I'll teach you how to use them. I'll teach you how to keep them clean. Well the pilgrims went nuts they were like He's training the tribes to come kill us. He is arming them with guns What are we going to do? So They went in there and they broke the whole thing up, right? The first time. They went in there, they smashed up the place and let everybody know if you keep doing this, you're going to jail. They arrested Tom, they threw him in jail. Winthrop is spending all his time trying to find something to pin on this guy because he hasn't really broken any laws. So now it gets really interesting

57:47 At this time, the pilgrims are already playing around with the idea of slavery. Like they're going to become a fulcrum point of the slave trade but what they're doing is they're taking people who've been arrested and condemned and they're taking indentured servants and they're throwing them into the very earliest of the tobacco plantations where they live these horrendous lives as enslaved people until they die And Tom, whenever he can, he tries to help people escape that fate. Which is another thing that the Pilgrims hate him for. He warns people you know I'll get you out of here or you go here and then go back to England or something. You're not safe here

58:34 And that was considered an act of treason to the pilgrims, that they had judged this person and condemned this person to the punishment of working on one of these plantations. And this guy comes along before we can grab him and put him to work and spirits him off. We got to get rid of this guy." Well, to make the story brief... This part of the story because there's even better part coming up Tom Morton fights this out for years and he's got nicknames, all the pilgrims that we grew up like looking at Disney movies and admiring them because they were so wonderful. And he's got nicknames like Captain Shrimp from Miles Standish and he despises them right? One of the things that he despises about them is when they arrest him in winter

59:23 They're starving, okay? I mean they went to the point of cannibalism at a certain point. Even the way they're building their structures is wrong. They don't put any lime in it and when it rains their structures are melting down and breaking down around them He's telling them you need to put lime in it If you put lime in it It'll withstand the rain They're like that's satanic You're trying to make us sick or something And he says okay fine But what about this Let me go hunt and I will swear to the Lord that I will come back and bring you food so that you people can survive." So they say, all right if you swear you can go get us food. He goes out there he hunts for these idiots who've arrested him and disrupted everything he's doing brings them back food they separate the food out so that the poorest among them don't get any and he says

1:00:20 Okay, I will go hunt for the poor. It's no problem there so much food around here you people are starving surrounded by food and they say no they say their poor because God wills it that way and they have to suffer what he thinks they're idiots at this point right And eventually this becomes a war in the courts in England where he travels back and then comes back to America again. And there's like these changes in the government, in England and at one time the Pilgrims were supported then they support Tom, then they withdraw their support from Tom and give it back to the pilgrims. A real mess! And finally the whole thing blows up when they show up in force to seize him

1:01:08 And he says that they would have killed him, that they acted with such ferocity. That if there had not been a veteran there who protected him he would have been killed on the spot. They take him away and they burn down Marymount right before one of the worst winters ever. And they bring the local tribes to see this, you know watch this place burn down. The tribe stand there and laugh at the pilgrims because the tribes can tell from the signals that nature is giving that this is going to be a devastating winter. And they're just going look at this idiot he's burning down a good shelter right before one of the worst winters that we're gonna see

1:01:49 And meanwhile, they starve Tom. They put him on an island, they maroon him and they leave him with like sugar and a couple I mean almost no food at all he would have died if the local indigenous people hadn't brought in food And then they ship him off on a slow boat, meaning a boat that's going to make stops everywhere. Knowing that he's like now in his 60s, he's probably not gonna make it. He actually did get back to England but he did not get back to America and the Pilgrims of course totally won and nobody knows about Tom Morton. It's almost invisible in our history. This guy, we'll leave him with this comment. He was the first person in America to publish a fart joke

1:02:34 He was the first person in America to publish a dick joke. He was the first person in America to be banned in Boston, he was the first person in America to be foreclosed upon by a corporation because the Pilgrims were incorporated so when I looked at him and thought well he's us like that guy is more American than the Pilgrims are then you start to examine the Pilgrims a little more closely John Winthrop the Elder had a son named John Winthrop the Younger. Now, we're going to get back to Rosicrucianism. So John Winthrop the Younger is in England while his dad is in America at first because he's a young man and he's studying and he gets wind of the Rosicrucian manifestos and he loves all the occult stuff. He's fascinated by John Dee and he wants to do what Father CRC, the founder of the Rosicrucians did which is...He wants to go to Constantinople and find

1:03:34 some of these masters, these invisible masters that are going to teach me how to have their powers and help the world be a better place. He tries this several times he actually got all the way to Constantinople but never met anybody who impressed him And he and his friend spent a few years searching out Rosicrucians whenever they could. And at the end of it, he decided I haven't found one but you know what? I'm going to do. I love their ideas so i'm going to live up to the Rosicrucian ideals. I'm going to be a Rosicrucian myself by doing the things that they say should be done and he went deeply into alchemy at that point So around 1631

1:04:20 His father says, come out here. So the younger packs up all his stuff he has acquired a lot of John D's library at this point and some of John D's alchemical equipment and John D was the astrologer for Queen Elizabeth was kind of the court wizard who is notorious for traveling in Europe as a spy and someone spreading these Rosicrucian, what would become Rosicrucian ideals and occult ideas. And eventually was discredited and considered to be some sort of evil wizard But in the world of John Winthrop, the younger he was a wonderfully learned man who is sort of the beginnings of science. And John Winthrop, the younger wanted to continue his work. So when he ships out his crates full of alchemical gear and John D's manuscripts and books, he marks them with John D's monas hieroglyphica, an occult symbol

1:05:20 It's comparable to, I usually say it's like having a Southern Baptist preacher's kid put pentagrams on his luggage. Now he gets to Boston and you would think that his dad would be like, Kid what are you doing? No, his dads set up the alchemical lab in our house. I'm fascinated by this keep up the good work. Well John Younger blossoms into this amazing character. I think he might be my favorite character in the book because he lived such an exemplary life in many ways. He found Boston very disturbing and too conformist for his tastes, he wanted to create a community where everyone was welcome And he wanted it to be somewhere where he didn't constantly have Puritans looking over shoulder when he was doing alchemy and such

1:06:13 So he moved into the Connecticut wilderness and he actually bargained with the local tribes to acquire some land out there. And he became the first governor of the territory of Connecticut, and he did very exemplary Rosicrucian things for example He was an excellent alchemist. He was very good at creating medicines and he became a famous doctor In the world people would travel all the way from europe to this outlandish colony in america and the wilderness just to be treated by him. And he became the doctor for that whole area,

1:06:55 of New England. He trained women to travel in these areas and he had various medicines that he put into specially colored packets, and he taught them to recognize certain symptoms and to prescribe the correct packet of medicine to the people who were suffering, and he did it all for free—very Rosicrucian. Then In his efforts to develop science, he started the first iron foundry in the area. And he needed these tools in order to create the things that he was trying to create

1:07:32 He also defended the weak and the innocent. When the Pequot tribe were being attacked by Uncas in The Mohegans, and Uncas, by the way nothing like in The Cooper book or in the famous movie Last of the Mohicans, Uncas was a bully and really violent kind of rotten person and the culture of the Mohegan's at that time was a bully culture So one of the famous stories was they would go find Pequots who'd been devastated by disease. So there were very few of them and say, hey you want to gamble? And gambling with a Mohican man, you're going to lose because they're going to cheat and if you don't lose they'll kill you. Seeing this John Winthrop Younger decided to protect the tribe

1:08:18 Very dangerous for him to do this, as you can imagine. Especially because the pilgrims were supporting the Mohegans in this terrible action of trying to enslave these Pequots who had already lost everything to disease. So John Winthrop the Younger negotiated he appealed to reason and even brought them moved the tribe to be right next to his community so that they would get a little bit of protection by being near him The mohegan's went in there anyway and they broke their baskets under pottery, they stripped them naked in the middle of winter and threw them into freezing river. And they beat up anybody who tried to stop them and there were pilgrim supervisors watching this atrocity happen

1:09:05 Seeing that, John used the horror that had aroused in people even amongst the pilgrims of Boston and got support finally to protect the Pequots. He fought to have the name of the tribe and their land restored. And even their names had been taken from them. They'd been given Europeanized names. And he fought to allow them to restore their original names And so really a remarkable human being. And the other thing that he did that was really wonderful was, all the colonies were supposed to provide soldiers for The Crown and he was expert at finding ways to prevent his people from having to go fight in wars

1:09:55 he would ignore the messages at first. And then when the messages became angrier, he would come up with great excuses. Oh we're building this iron foundry and we need every single guy here working on it but as soon as we're done, we'll send them out so most of these people were able to survive without having to go back to England and fight in a war. When John Winthrop the Younger died Cotton Mather, now there's another pilgrim you think of and you think well he was behind the Salem witch trials to a degree. And here is a guy that was massively Christian I mean you can't be more Christian than Cotton Mather but Cotton Mather was a dear friend of John Winthrop the Youngers and when he eulogized him He called him Hermes Christiannus The Christian Hermes

1:10:48 Now, whether he's talking about the Greek god Hermes or he's talking about Hermes of the hermetic teachings. Dude! I mean Cotton Mather is complimenting someone by calling them Hermes Christianus? That's not the pilgrim that we thought he was So that changed the whole picture. And the other thing that is part of the reason I wrote the book, aside from just wanting all this information that was unavailable to people to be available in one place so you wouldn't have to do all the research that I did and I had a lot of help from academics who were really kind and helping inform me. The thing that was very obvious to me in doing this was that the split that is in the country today

1:11:34 was there then and has been there every step of the way throughout the country. And an interesting side note on that is that behavioral scientists like Sapolsky, they say that if you want to identify a conservative from personality traits, that people who react with disgust to what they don't agree with are much more likely to be conservative I think that's true when i grew up but i think it might be flipped a little bit now. I hear what you're saying absolutely well, it's infecting the whole culture at this point. I think everybody sort of has picked up this disease of blaming the other and distrust of the other

1:12:20 But that discussed, it was a difference. To me like I look at Morton and John Winthrop the Younger who are treating the natives as they are you know these are human beings and we can learn from them and we should help them and like Roger Williams the founder of Rhode Island who learned the indigenous languages and then aroused the ire of Boston of the pilgrims because he would not try to convert the indigenous tribes He said that they had the right to their own religion. He talked about freedom of religion and the need to separate religion from politics got him thrown out of Boston at that time, and so if you look at The Pilgrims they're disgusted by Tom Martin They're disgusted by the indigenous people They are projecting their own kind of shadows on these people So there must have been an orgy And it's like well you wish That is your fantasy

1:13:16 And feeling disgust toward that fantasy that they have invented and here's tom morton saying i want to meet them i wanna talk to them i wanna know what they know. I want make a big melting pot of marymont so, You really see there the split that's been at the heart of the psyche of america from the beginning. That's well said and that is a great overview of some other really interesting stories that do we've throughout the book, You're right, it's always more complex than the cartoonish simplification that we get through Hollywood and a few sanctioned academic writers. The underground is always there but it doesn't always make into the story and this is the American underground of the early days and I do love it! Tom Morton... Well look at Harvard and Yale

1:14:11 Harvard and Yale in their early days had alchemical labs. And one of the early presidents of Yale said, He got together with the other college presidents and he said, we need to teach Kabbalah because a kabbalist who'd been wandering the world showed up in the colonies and became his teacher. And he thought wow this is Kabbalah's great it's a great way to look at the world and it should be taught at every single American college. Yeah things could have been so much different. So that's how deeply yeah exactly So I'm glad I learned about Thomas Morton in the book. Uh, I've added them to my list of favorite people who got chewed up and spit out by the big machine. It's a very long list and he seemed like you said to learn a lot from the indigenous people. I liked this quote where you write Thomas Morton reported on a shaman who amazed his colonialist audience by

1:15:07 By chanting until a thick cloud arrived out of nowhere, thunder resounded and a chunk of ice appeared in a bowl of water on a hot summer day. As usual the devil was given credit for the demonstration but that is a very trippy demonstration And I like hearing stories from indigenous america we've done previous interviews about just how much cultivated abundance there was before the colonialist came you even mention. Tom morton's book new english canon and he even says that in the book you mentioned spruce trees twenty feet around a mile long oyster bank seasonal flock of a million passenger pigeons,

1:15:52 and i like also the description of various local waters he gets in with the indigenous or we can talk to this guy is a good guy and they show him. Local waters for inducing sleep, and as you mentioned visionary states one for curing melancholy. And it's just really wild to get those kind of insights and im so glad Someone did. I really enjoyed talking to you, there's so many things in the book i love that we didn't get to the marvelous Mr Miller. I've heard you talking about Stuart and Betty White and that channeling and there's just a lot of great stuff Emanuel Swedenborg but it is what it is people can read the book if they want to get into more but hey if you wanted... If you know i'm happy to come back and talk about those things if you wished To do that let me know yes

1:16:43 Well, for this one it is about that time. Give the people any other pieces of information you'd like them to have parting info links upcoming work all that good stuff? Okay let's see I will be teaching a class for the Theosophical Society on the Orpheus stuff in spring And i have a book coming out exactly when about the origins of rose accretion is from inner traditions probably early next year but im not sure how to book on the white. That has just been finished i'm not sure what the fate of that book will be and i'm thinking about self publishing because

1:17:23 The process of old-fashioned publishing is so, takes so long. There's some virtues to it but I really want experiment with being able to get things out there more quickly and just launched a YouTube channel that's like playlists of all the things I've done or has been over like 70 or 80 podcasts and now I'm putting up old lectures from when I substituted for Manley Hall and I think that what I'd like to leave your listeners with is let's make use of our time here. While we got these, right? We've got these great hands here and we can actually do things in this world. Let's see what we can do to bring about change starting right where we are. I like it. To make those small decisions, to lend support where we can

1:18:23 And so to identify an issue, that's part of the thing about all of this. It's like when you're looking at all the conspiracy theories, you will see all these places where things have gone wrong. So is there some small way we can help make something go right? That I think is the key because it's true that people have worried about younger generations historically throughout human history. But it's usually because the younger generation is doing something that we don't want them to do, but I think you'll agree with me that we're worried about them now because a lot of the hard-earned space that let's say the hippies and the punks created and they were created in the worlds of art and music and all over the place, they're gone. And for people who

1:19:15 You know, there's a certain number of people in every generation who are let's call them rebels who don't fit into the prevailing order. Who don't want to go that route? It used to be in the worlds of punk and rock for example that you could reinvent yourself there. People went in there they made T-shirts They opened clubs They were poster artists There was a whole flourishing community of people around that which has been devastated by streaming for the most part because there is no money anymore So what can we do, what small things can we do to encourage the creation of something new that fulfills that same purpose? And to look around because I believe that going back at the very beginning about Manley Hall's dedication in that book to the rational soul of nature.

1:20:06 I believe that if you get tuned with that, that you can collaborate and nature will bring things to you. Nature will show you something to do. Here's a good place to put your effort and when we open up our minds to that life can have miraculous change happen in it. And that's what we need more than anything right now is all of us who are digging into this into the conspiracy theories, into what's wrong with the world now. So what are we going to do? Right. What little thing can we do enough of us do it? We're gonna have a different world." I think that's true and that is a good piece of parting advice for sure!

1:20:53 Well ronnie it has been a serious pleasure you wrote a very unique book and restored some lost iso teric history which i think we all appreciate around here. And hopefully will do it again in the future but until then take care cool youtube greg thanks for having me runny poniac ladies and gentlemen unique research any unique life I had a good time i wish we were able to stay a little more focused on the largely unknown material of his book, we really haven't had a solid occult show in a long time and i only have two questions about manly p hall what can you tell us about them that we wouldn't learn from biographies. And what do you think about that roving band of immortal elite kinda stuff

1:21:42 And then all the sudden we were forty five minutes and i thought we might be ten minutes at that point but conversations are organic in you never really know, and for some reason we just couldn't get off the is there a hidden hand and are they. Never land or malevolent thing in the second hour couple of times i felt the need for a counterpoint but even then i should have just brought it back to the book and let it go I have always liked Manly P. Hall lectures and talking to someone who knew him first hand is kind of exciting, but I never really had a reason to think he was bad guy. Some people become masons because they want to acquire and share knowledge and I have no problem with that. I have a problem with hoarding knowledge and weaponizing magic ritual and abusing power...but I just don't see that from Manly P. Hall. I consider him just to be a teacher

1:22:41 He actually encourage people to be disciplined and to be the best versions of themselves as far as i can tell. In fact here's a great quote of his race says to live in the world without becoming aware, of the meaning of the world is like wondering about and a great library without touching the books you wanted people to be curious and get up off the couch and explore And I think that's a beautiful thing though i know almost nothing about his life outside of the work he produced and i guess im alright with that. So hope this interview was still entertaining for those who haven't heard ronnie tell those anecdotes before obviously the best part of the book we were able to get into was the pagan pilgrim thomas morton actually read parts of this paragraph but let me read it in full regarding, thomas morton's book new english canon

1:23:36 Ronnie breaks that book down by saying in section one tom describes the robust health of the indigenous people musing. Did it did not save them from the plague and other epidemics brought by colonists from europe he describes their sharp senses, any concludes the first section with a chapter about how content the tribes were as they had little desire for possessions and for most part shared enjoyed the wealth of nature He described their pleasure at drinking from their cupped hands water bubbling up from natural crystal springs. In the second section of New English Canon, Tom made a long list of all possible products America had to offer. Every description of vegetation or animal is followed with a sentence about its usefulness and potential for profit

1:24:30 It's hard to read these lists that describe in detail the flora and fauna we have lost. Spruce trees 20 feet around, a mile-long oyster bank and the seasonal flock of a million passenger pigeons Tom also describes a variety of local waters one induced sleep or among the tribes visionary states another he recommends for curing melancholy And then in the third section of New English Canon, Tom told stories about Puritan violence and unfairness to the indigenous people. And a quote from Tom is that you may easily perceive that the uncivilized people are more just than the civilized. This I thought was interesting original additions of Tom's book are extremely scarce now since almost all copies were seized and destroyed

1:25:24 Several years ago an original became available for the first time in 25 years, for a mere $137k. With only one limited edition reprint in two centuries we came very close to never hearing about Thomas Morton, never hearing his point of view." So I liked that a lot because it just shows How easy it is to lose very valuable information if it has any kind of counterculture angle to it who knows how many great books like this, that shared important knowledge about indigenous people or magic are many many things never actually did resurface and never actually did get a reprint. It's gotta be a lot right hundreds thousands

1:26:16 It's interesting to think about, but I also got to bring up one of the very weird high strangeness stories of the Shaker Girls who heard singing in the air and went into a weird dancing trance. Winthrop The Younger was also an intriguing figure of his time But really were just talking about rebel philosophers and counterculture figures of the past The kind of people that really are always present but our history focuses on the collective and mainstream I guess i just never thought about it much but of course there were always people out on the fringe, of course there were people who didn't drink the kool-aid of their day and its really nice to have them highlighted in a book like Ronnie's. Just deconstructing the idea that America was always a Christian nation is valuable to me and a big shoutout to Mark Steves for putting Ronnie on my radar, It wouldn't have happened without him

1:27:13 The only other thing I considered bringing up and decided against it was the Rosicrucian thing. Ronnie kind of brought this up on his own, but those foundational books from the 1600s were apparently a parody or basically a fiction we talked about this with Schwab now did the author say that because they got too popular and he wanted to obscure things? Or was it really something he made up as a teenager I bought the trilogy cuz i've never read it but in diana posolka's new book she tells an anecdote about jacques valet being a rose accretion and pulling. A rose accretion book off the shelf for her to look into and then ronnie talks about manly p hall living the rose accretion way so what could just be an archetype or a template and not a real fraternal organization you could model your life off of someone from fiction,

1:28:11 If there's enough detail there but it is weird when the author says he made this stuff up and people of that caliber. Adopted so wholeheartedly i guess on no more when i read the trilogy for myself, so the plus show does get into a bit more than just our back and forth over the elites moral leanings and the value of conspiracy in general we talked about indigenous shamanism a bit more deeply spiritualism, and some high strangeness stories. Sign up if you like what I do check the links in the show notes And as for the last episode with James Madden unidentified hyper object The Uber Umvelt and The Cave It's sitting at a 4.6 rating from the plus people and i'm happy about that Right in the range that most people consider a good episode I always want a strong recovery when we have a rating down in the threes

1:29:11 So that's good and we'll see what happens with this one maybe it's well light cuz ronnie is a compelling speaker regardless the topic but i was just getting very. And see because i knew how much i wanted to fit in, i was looking at the clock and it was hard interject but kudos to him for being as knowledgeable as he is and for putting out of their unique book, we didn't even talk about the orphic hymns and i know there some good stuff there too but maybe next time As always, let's do a quick run-through of the upcoming meetup events before I call it in. What do we have on deck? Well today we actually have the recurring Denver Gets Hire Meetup. This one is at Bar 404 March 2nd. Mill Forth Connecticut The Woods At Red Root Farm

1:30:04 Now this host says that his brothers and him built two geodomes on their farm in Milford, Connecticut. Oh it's Mill-Ford! It says Mill-Forth in the description must be a typo but one is for good old fashioned THC so if you want to go and have a good hang in a geodome on a farm on March 2nd in Milford, Connecticut You know how to get that done March 7th flame international restaurant in la once again march 8th porches cafe and columbus ohio. Also march eight to pictures brewery an oakland california, march 15 urban brewery in manchester connecticut connecticut it's happening march twenty third red oak brewery n with set north carolina also march twenty third soco main the golden rooster

1:31:03 This host says judging from our first meet up higher side fans are hungry for connection in maine and new hampshire so they're doing it again love to see it. And march thirtieth and british columbia canada field house brewing what's happening, so very nice march is looking pretty packed which is awesome the sea it's a low cost low risk way to expand your local network i've gotten a lot of good reports back from people who had really good experiences And obviously it's going pretty well when you see these recurring events. Check the calendar for all the details and be sure to RSVP so the hosts know what to expect, its only good manners, highersidemeetups.com But that is the show! I have the next two recorded already and am certain they are gonna be well liked both returning guests making their second appearance and im a big fan of both even though there material is nothing alike but until then Im getting outa here

1:32:02 Thanks for listening, and if you're a plus member thanks for that too. I've done my part. Your move narrative controllers history writers and nuance erasers your fucking Lucid dreams are so vivid, cause you go to bed at seven And your brain comes alive because you hate your nine-to-five You wake up with a dread and make sure your cats are fed Did your brain talk to a ghost who moved your coffee and toast As you listen to the higher side chats You get to your desk and your boss says it's a mess And your soul slowly goes To a place where nothing grows When you think he's not around, you insert a SETI sound The OM says turn it down and you say It's just the higher side chats Oh do you think you'd be invited? To Bohemia Grove. To a Bilderberg club Do you think you'd be invited

1:33:08 by a Rothschild to a party on a submarine. Diving down, to the center of the earth through the Marianas Trench your teeth begin to clench from the sulfurous stench The mask you're given doesn't fit cause you're not one of them Starting today, you'll make plans to get away. There's no one to hold you down and the what-ifs start to drown Then you wake to the glare of a cofluorescent stare And the light winks at you cause its life is almost through But it's holding on to quit time just like you It's time for the High Side Chats!

1:33:58 you