Todd Elliott | The Cunning Farmer: Magical Timing, Ritual Practice, & Land Spirits

00:54 Oh, oh it's magic people from the Sunshine State I'm Greg Carlwood and while it's interesting to debate where JFK's kill shot came from or what the hell they're doing in Antarctica there is an argument to be made that conspiracy research can actually keep one distracted from taking the reins of their life and fulfilling their true will much in a way thats no better than obsessive gaming following your favorite sports team or keeping up-to-date on the latest ways Disney is ruining Star Wars. But the actionable intelligence and conspiracy research has seen that the biggest swindle has been actually to extract us from the creation itself. Away from a life engaged with stewardship, cultivation and spirituality arrived upon by direct connectedness in exchange for chasing green paper and concrete boxes on digital screens It's actually quite impressive when you think about the ambitious of it all

01:41 And when you realize prohibition of alcohol and cannabis, the taking down of the Hindenburg, the hit job done on ether physics, the demonization of magic, the systematic eradication of indigenous people all over the world. UFOs and even the ever-growing list of alternative energy researchers suffering mysterious deaths are all connected to the same end goal, keeping people scared and powerless in a well controlled scarcity paradigm. And they'll never truly bite the hand that feeds when they've forgotten how meaningful it can be to feed themselves Well, here to help us break the big spell is veteran organic farmer earth worker Reiki master druid and certified astrological magician Todd Elliott. On top of 25 years of farming experience he's been a lifelong student of mythology religion spirituality folklore and esoterica of all kinds pulling in from the perennial hermetic tradition neoplatonism hellenic and northern european paganism kabbalah buddhism esoteric christianity and indigenous animist traditions

02:39 He's the author of an amazing new book that's exceptionally well illustrated and well crafted. And it clocks in at almost 500 pages titled The Cunning Farmer, Agrarian Magical Practices Mythology & Folklore. And it's the best thing to arrive in my mailbox for quite some time here is the sorcerer of the soil, the magi of land management and the cunning farmer himself Todd welcome to The Higher Side Hey Greg thanks for having me on and thanks for that brilliant introduction loved that was amazing I try but man i'm very much excited for this one every interview you do i've heard several they all start with gushing over the quality of the book and rightfully so it's not just. Full of detailed information but its well crafted in an age of sloppy production i didn't even wanna touch without washing my hands first gotta keep the kids away from that made to but

03:31 I know not everyone in this audience is really with me on the framing that the big conspiracy is to make us so ignorant of both magic and permaculture that we stay dependent on the system like children afraid to leave home. But i am curious your thoughts on that because, It just makes work like yours way more interesting to me just out of spite because i do feel like they've kept a cigarette the stuff if not ignorant than afraid of it. And it seems like a big deal to me what you think i completely agree with ui i think there has been, I don't want to use the word conspiracy, but i think there has been a campaign throughout history to disempower people by whatever empire has been in charge. Whatever institutions have been in charge starting from ancient times power structures try to maintain their power and anything that tends to empower the lower echelons of society is frowned upon and discouraged you can look out throughout history

04:34 And you can see these processes weather it's weather is growing your own food or whether it's reclaiming your salary with magic all those things have been discouraged by the elites. Always rolled over the masses yeah i find no i'm in the infancy really of trying to get my feet wet here on this acre land and florida but its just so interesting that, abundance really does not that it's easy you know it's weird to find the right language cuz it is hard work but at the same time you can plant something than a year yields so much fruit and then you can take twigs off of that and plan them in a year from now you'll have even more, and its like this is what the creation is this is kind of what the garden of eden could be and it just took so much engineering

05:22 of humanity to make us forget that because we're embedded in this world. So it's like, wow, you really got us to be completely ignorant of the ground beneath our feet, the value of sunlight and how much abundance can be cultivated all around us? It is a really impressive feat. I kind of have to give him the old golf clap. And one of the things that people who are, uh, advocates of progress have always patted themselves on the back for us About is how many house small percentage of people are the population's actually engaged in the production of food was something like one percent things ninety nine percent that's like we've been all been free from the dodger drudgery gardening and farming, i think more like our or so i'll access to the solar access to nature access appliances installed from us over the years.

06:14 And we caught a progress but what are people i mean everywhere around you people say to me, i'd love to do it you do i want to get back the land i love to have a garden i love this girl my own food. I think is culture and they were really strange from nature and we miss it i think i think people don't have contact with that long to get back to nature along to get their hands in the soil laundry room for Yes in fact this was gonna be something i ended the show with but im just gonna say it now but is a quote from the book that i think is great because we will talk about some of the dangers of magic a bit but here you talk about the dangers have not engaging with the world magically and u right what are the consequences of incurring the wrath of the spirits of the land you only have to examine the lives and communities of those involved

07:04 and land exploitation to see the consequences of despoiling the natural world. To paraphrase the Buddha, as surely as a cart follows an ox addiction crime abusive relationships lawsuits divorces accidents chronic illness and misfortunes of all kinds follow from living a life out-of-balance with nature The Greeks believed that hubris pride in disregard for the divine order of things is followed by ate or ati? Ate yeah Ate, the personification of folly or disillusion which is followed by Nemesis the goddess of vengeance who punished evildoers. This is the cycle in which divine punishment is a result of arrogance and pride in humans and this does not just happen on a personal level The spiritual life of my region, the nation and entire world is out-of-balance with nature Many of our social ills can be traced back to this broken relationship between humans and spirits of the land

08:01 Boom, that kind of says it all. Absolutely I stand by that. Yeah. I mean, I think once we start damaging our environment, once we started exploiting our land, once we start...I think we're meant to live in harmony with creation and as soon as we step out of bounds of that, We get the consequences and often it's not always born was it? Often fortune favors the guilty is another ancient Roman quote So it's not always the people who are engaged in the destruction itself that get immediate consequences. Oftentimes, it is the innocent

08:37 I'm looking all these data centers here that the ceos are there taking over large tracks of rural and all over the country in stealing water communities are pretty much isolated from. Turn it off that's the direction they're having on on the community and i know when the culture is a whole and its people the local people that bear the cost, and it's our hope or it's our whole culture bears the cost I agree and so of your own spirituality you write my religious philosophy is informed by the corpus hermeticum neoplatonism hellenic and northern european paganism kabbalah ad veda vendetta. I don't have a bite of it there you go see if y'all know it out says that's not my specialty yeah mine either surprise surprise

09:29 Buddhism, esoteric Christianity and animism through thoughts from indigenous traditions around the world. I believe in one source for all things outside of space and time which pours out its being as life and light thereby creating matter and the physical cosmos i believe although spatial metaphors such as higher and lower are inadequate not to be taken literally that there exists a hierarchy of spiritual beings that descend from this one creative source that we may term gods and angels as well as lesser spiritual beings, we may call daemons. All of these are limited and finite in comparison with the One and are actually aspects through which it interacts with the cosmos administering reality so to speak."

10:12 Man you know i'm not as well versed in some of those specific schools of magic obviously but broadly i totally think that is it. Why do you think so many people have a fear or trepidation towards this model that i really thinks seems pretty self evident and his broadly what i think all the great mystics have said, why somebody people have fear of that you mean religious people are secular people were I think both maybe not fear but definitely resistance. Let's say you could offend people on either end because religious people like to believe in a mean a lot of people the traditional world religions like to believe in a personal God who sort of divine ruler who rules over everything and gets jealous and have people who don't worship him the right way

11:00 they're going to get offended by this probably pantheistic and animistic and neoplatonic cosmology. And then you're going to have secular people who are going to be offended on the other end, by being spiritual at all imputing any divinity or agency to nature in the cosmos. So yeah I managed to get the religious people and the atheists mad at the same time Yes what when i say fear i guess it comes from me thinking about the book in general being such more a magic book than a farming book and i mean it really does strike a space that i have never really found a book that hits this exact space but it seems like there's a resistance to the world view but a fear of engaging with the world as if it is magical. Yeah,

11:50 You know, I read this chapter with the part that you just read to our local county arts council in our very rural town in Kentucky. And it was a largely an audience of evangelical Christians and I was like oh gosh what what part of this book can I read to this audience? run out of town on a rail or something like that and i read this chapter with all that stuff about suffering it falling at you know all the consequences are not living in harmony with nature how these people receive this because everyone. Our local economy is largely based on exploiting nature as it is everywhere, end it was surprisingly well received i was not burned to stake and i'm actually sell couple copies of the book and

12:35 I was concerned about people being angry or afraid about the magical angle and they might have been but they didn't express that to me i think magic is forbidden by most of the traditional monotheistic religions i think it's limits for been in his line It's forbidden in Christianity. There are Christian magicians still, there are Islamic magicians still... it might be forbidden in Judaism I'm not sure yet but yeah, I think it is forbidden in the Old Testament. There are things about not suffering a witch to live and all that and there are Jewish magicians so magic is part of every culture or tradition throughout the world but also there's an effort to limit and restrict it and persecute practitioners of magic in also every culture so that's interesting

13:19 i basically think that if we get away with it in the west. It's really not here and even united states is things are going fairly conservative right now on, We have a lot of freedom compared to say the middle east as far as practicing magic i mean it in. I believe in saudi arabia capital crime to practice magic and that's because over there they believe in here, add our culture really doesn't believe in it you know people brag online about having cast a curse on this or that person even public officials and nobody is like persecuting around them up its because it's not taken seriously Where is the culture taken seriously it's still fairly taboo more than it is here yeah i agree that's why tend to say its perception management you know they've got us to add a campaign i think too.

14:09 Read material is on so aggressively that yeah we consider it silliness and the people who do believe in it. Even a little bit are afraid of it so yeah the first line of defense is just that its all sillyness and means nothing but yet if you've done any cursory study, have the history of magic it's like wow incredibly in depth involved I read your book and i'm just like i don't know how he has time to work land and study all this complex stuff it's like you probably haven't done much else is just like. So all consuming when it comes to the religiosity of things i think it was a gordon white quote who said something at the effect of saints are just the witches who got away with that

14:53 And i thought about that and it's so well said because the catholic in christian saints mean aren't these the people who have performed miracles is not a requirement to become a saint, you had to perform america what is america but magical act sure in the service of god but you read a lot of these prayers even in grimoires and they say I want to appeal to the almighty ultimately and i want the help of the almighty you're not trying to bend the one true god to your will often your usually asking it's really just elaborate prayer that's what i was about to say yeah magic is very close to prayer it is i think there is a kind of magic. And i don't think there's a whole lot difference between the two

15:38 Magic is more particular and more focused, I think. And I think the magician often has more of an expect... Actually, there's some religious people that are this way too. I think magic practitioners have more expectation that their petitions will be granted although I think effective people who are effective with prayer in the same way you gotta believe in it for it to work And if you know if you're just casting your throwing your will out into the wind and don't expect it to happen, it's probably not going to work. So what was one of your first early experiences where cuz a lot of people study this stuff and it's an intellectual pursuit in your well let me out let me try it out let me see if that works what was your first. Big trial that actually yielded results that made you a believer that yes this stuff does have potency to it, i think astrological magic has been very effective for me i think i don't wanna say but just the fact that may

16:41 A farmer in kentucky just a humble guy that works the land managed to put out of book and people are reading and get publishing contract i mean not i am not trying to give magic credit maybe ima. But there's a lot good writers out there who don't get chance and i feel like i got a chance and i did a lot of magic to get this to happen on me we, We did a lot of magic to get ahead and not really get ahead i mean we're not we're not. Really wealthy at people say how many more rich magicians if magic works but we do seem to have,

17:17 Things happen when we need them to happen and that's really all i ask for you know we. We built a house if years ago during the covid epidemic will the cost of building prices went through the roof in every step of the process of building the house i was using magic together so contractor, did you get good price on materials are no just the fact that we have managed do a few things were really against the odds and succeed i feel like magic really help us with stuff like that Against the odds is basically what gordon used to say to me which is like magic as a probability enhancer. So what's the probability that im gonna find a million dollars in their front yard it's really really low did move from really really low just kinda lower you know these things its like what is the probability this is gonna happen sometimes you have,

18:07 outsized impacts from your magic but that's how you know it works because you got a better price in the guy next door. It's not like this fortune gonna fall out of the sky into our laps is just not probable either way but yeah these little things move the needle and direction of the flow, yes exactly its probably your not i mean i think alot about weather manager right now have a chapter on the book This might i try to experiment with a lot and you know say i do ritual make it rain and rains like. It's been a drought but it like our weather system comes in the range of my way, can i fail or did i get the probability closer just get targeting a little bit off you know what i mean

18:48 Yes the weather magic chapter is super interesting you talk about i'm scrolling through my notes are sometimes i take so many notes it's almost useless because i've just copied a third of the book but i remember one story we talked about your mentor and him using us all to basically disintegrate tornado. Yeah this family told me that they'd seen happen, Yeah, that impressed me. I memorized that psalm and had tried it myself on several occasions and then I did a little more research and found like the psalm that was actually traditionally used which wasn't Psalm 90 which is what Salvador used is Psalm 29 but some 90's like general for dangers or evils of protection in general and he had he used to great effect and I do have that one memorized because he said

19:39 You're not always going to have a Bible handy or, you know, prayer book handy. You're gonna have to memorize anything really important so... Yeah we've had some close—we live in basically in Tornado Alley here in Northern Kentucky and we've had some really close calls and I always Without fail the bad storms are gonna move through i try to bump that. Bump the danger or discipline actually better to try to dissipate them so they don't hurt anybody else, what's what i generally trying to do is as far as i dont know what reach i have range i have but it's hard like this far as i can i try to keep the community around me safe and so far so good

20:17 Noble goal and i love the old recipes in these grim wars there just sometimes so weird but another one related to weather magic is from the book a seventeen century italian grimoire recipe for rain that involves boiling artificial seawater with salt and pumice placing it in a magic circle with the bloodstone invoking the spirits the shard. Hello gaff tell ya i don't know if i've heard of that one but this is the weird stuff that it's like i mean i find a really interesting and no from ever gonna do it but, i guess it worked up if they wrote down in a book that you would be killed for possessing. Will i did not want to knock the whole one but i did that i call on that spirit lol gaffer tell last night because we really need rain badly and it is raining very close by. And we got a ninety percent chance of rain so i really hope that

21:13 Those spirits can bring some rain here to the farm actually today and not not flood out my neighbors to the south. Well we're all of kentucky's in a drought basically so we could use some rain but i hope we get some right here, i hope so too i think people listening will throw their intention at it when it airs maybe you'll get a little bit more So when i do these kinds of shows that involve permaculture i get a lot of comments that are like well it must be nice to be a well-to-do podcaster who has land and wants to larp as a farmer talking about how easy is we should all just do it. But you know people forget i've been doing this for fifteen years but the economic situation is rough out there like im not gonna say it isn't, what when i hear that stuff it really just seems like their own resistance

22:01 There's a thousand reasons to not do something and tell yourself you can't in limit yourself and. If you have a goal it might take years to get there i've wanted an acre of land for eight years and i slowly. Built my life to where i could have it like i'm not gonna apologize for that or feel guilty about it but understand that people think im talking at a level that they're just like well i'm not there yet, and i just thought this would be fun because i think people want to get land thats probably a goal from many people but

22:38 It's just tough to do. So in the book, you do mention wealth magic or other magical aims and I thought we would give people something that might help them make some progress because we are all at different stages of life but you're right here is a brief example of how to use moon phases with planetary powers let say i want to perform some wealth magic which falls under the influence of Jupiter I would then use Agrippa square and sigil of Jupiter and its spirits Like right now.

23:19 Yeah, I was gonna say either Sagittarius or Pisces or where he's exalted like Cancer which is right now and also not afflicted by being in retrograde too close to the Sun or in a hard aspect with Mars or Saturn. Waiting for Jupiter to be in good astrological condition is not always possible because he moves rather slowly spending about a year on each sign on average sometimes important magic can't wait and a waxing moon on a Thursday at sunrise is the best you can do The more factors you add harder it is to find an auspicious time to do your magic, but you gain the cooperation of these celestial forces of the cosmos by doing so. Well I love how specific you get with this kind of stuff because a lot of magic books will be quite vague, but talk to us about the mechanics here. I hear this sort of stuff and time and time again, I'm just like, I liked the idea of it, but it's so bizarre that this can work. This was the whole like Sabian

24:15 hermetic, Renaissance neoplatonist worldview that when you line up everything in the material world emanates from the spiritual world. And when you get everything lined up from Jupiter being in exaltation or rulership, the waxy moon making a trine to Jupiter like it was... I don't think it is right now but it was in Pisces yesterday. So anyway that's a waning moon but anyway, when you get everything lined The spiritual influences flow more directly it's like the chain is lined up straight and energy can flow. Just down through that through emanate exactly where you want to go and you can put yourself in this current of energy indirected achieving goals in your life,

25:02 Like buying a curve land i mean that's really specific magical goal i know from experience you can do that. We have used magic to get a little bit of land and had everything line up just for us to get some, and i highly recommend it and planetary magic is one as well opportunity angel magic is another. I would still add the moon phases in the plants even if i was doing something like you know the seven angels are magic or something like that Which is another good one for beginners to use. So there you go people instead of complaining in my comments section get right with jupiter do the thing and achieve your goals

25:41 I guess, I want to ask you a little more about the philosophy behind this because magic can scale to get quite dark. We all know that it can get morally precarious but here we're just talking about timing cycles and essentially prayer You also write about Agrippa's process for engraving a talisman on silver under a waxing moon in Taurus to bring the wearer good fortune and good health At this level, I don't know how anyone could say this is evil or somehow bad. Like we said earlier if everything is the creator and we are fractals of the creator and we come into the physical game with amnesia to make it actually work then the creator built in these codes for the game of life to be fun And I would even say as mechanisms available to us in case the demons really do capture

26:30 The material world which they kinda having a empire is absolutely run amok and it's almost like in case of emergency break glass kind of a cosmic hack available to. Any common person i mean what are your thoughts on that but i got couple thoughts and the one i wanna get out first years, one of the things in the middle ages that the Ascendant Christian movement did and I don't want to badmouth Christians because I come from a Christian background, but but i have been studying imperialism and colonialism in the expansion of the early christian Movement in say northern europe And western europe recently in the what we call the dark ages or the early middle ages? And one of the thing first things that they tried to do once they got power was

27:18 And I don't think Christianity was originally like this, but it became like this once it allied with the forces of empire during the reign of the Emperor Constantine. One of the first thing they tried to do is to establish a list of approved and unapproved entities—this was in the writings of St Augustine who wrote way back in the third century—so basically you've got the Trinity, the Father-Son, the Holy Spirit, you've got a couple angels that are okay then everything else is a demon Everything else is you're not allowed to work with anything else. So, so you had a cabal of people deciding what spiritual forces were kosher and which were not basically and you're only allowed to work with saints with

28:07 The trinity and with like the big four angels michelangelo leonardo donatello right. Rafael oriel and gabriel those big four angels right anything else is a demon probably are suspected of being demons so, what are the mentions are all out plants are all i mean any planetary magic is all out because it's the spirits of the planets are probably demons, they might be angels but we're not sure. Better to play it safe than sorry and that was the position of the church in the Middle Ages anything else is necromancy which in the middle ages used to mean divination with spirits of the dead but came to me anything that any forbidden magic like

28:48 The summer sacra magic show that we have on your bookshelf there is was pretty much considered necromancy that's why they put all the things about it being sacred magic. But i was pretty well forbidden i think the author of bern barry garganelli got away with not being burned state but some other medieval magicians working in the same material didn't, So that's one thing there is a movement by the authorities to limit the amount, basically to put limits on the spiritual cosmos and not allow people to work with most of the entities like nature spirits right out fairies no way. Spirits of the dead now we can't do any of that it's all forbidden and then the other thing i thought of their several books. Of magic several grimoires called the book of razzle the sephirah zl and the legend

29:36 The legend behind the Sephirah, which is a Jewish book of magic and it became into medieval Christian Europe and was christianized as the Sefirah. Anyway, the legend behind that was that when Adam was expelled from paradise, the Archangel Raziel gave this book to Aaron of magic, excuse me, of magic to help him cope with the post-lapsarian world, with the fallen world. So this angel was sent by God to give Adam the cheat codes basically and I really love that legend because here we are, the children of Adam you know, the legendary children of Adam and that's what magic is for us it's the cheat codes to the universe where we can pull these secret strings of causation and perhaps make life a little easier for us

30:33 Yeah i like that too and sometimes i think people really just need to ask themselves. If they truly trust empire not they might say they don't but then in a situation like cove it you see a lot of people who, use the thing was fun to larp as an alternative conspiracy person no go with the flow of all the rules never been that's their right to do what you have to ask yourself does The authority of any age care about my well being are they just trying to protect me or is something else a foot so you go back to a time when they're putting a huge amount energy into banning, a lot of different aspects of spirituality and spiritual beans.

31:18 Why do they do that is it because their caring and considerate of like they're afraid that you might hurt yourself or are they afraid you might discover real power, yeah its just comes down to something not simple inside if it was just a superstition they wouldn't care that much they care because they know the there is power in. Having recently started the middle age at the lagers in the process of conversion and say the frankish empire no the phrase one god one king one bishop Having one narrative helps to unify the empire. If you have a whole bunch of people doing their own thing spiritually, that's not really easy to unify an empire. You know if you have people sneaking out to springs and sacred trees or leaving offerings to unapproved spirits but you can't manage that, you can't control that but if you get them all in church on Sunday hearing this sermon about how they oughta obey the king and pay their tithe those people are a lot easier to control

32:15 If you have your own sovereign indigenous spiritual tradition, you can't be controlled that easily. But if you're following the imperial religion, you're much easier to control. Good points! The book is not only full of historical grimoire information and recipes but also your own stories which i just think are really interesting because the materialist, conditioning so strong sometimes we don't know how to think about events in other terms. But talk to us about this time that the fairies took your cow yeah it was weird

32:59 I'm not sure that fairies to the cabin i am what do you say is that that's definitely what the old people in ireland would have said are you in your country would've definitely said that my favorite to my account. I had a beautiful jersey cow very like lovely she was a show animal should be in the back somebody for each show can we barter as milk and i don't know if i have a soft spot for jersey cows really cute it was big eyes long eyelashes and there They're really good mothers and they make a lot of milk and that's how we provide no for our family so one day i always kept the calf with her so i would have to know every day she had three month old cat he was pretty big. And you know if you know anything about cows but they never leave their calves in everly there the best mothers in the world that's why they like, that's what is symbol the mother goddess in india you know all of

33:50 Another places you know in egypt like the symbol of mother god is there like, the best mothers and animal kingdom that i was just talking with my wife today about how a cow never on her own give up capital so one day. My wife and i was sunday evening my wife had to go to social engagement and this cal start acting crazy she started running around. I've been down the fence actually she wasn't he but i had a bowl in the past or something didn't think she was actually need your bread back at me what the bullets doing his job Which is acting crazy and she's looking out far away like at these cows that were on the other side of the hill my neighbors cows. And i believe so i can do anything about it i didn't think you get out why got home, she had broken out of the fence this is an extremely tame animal really time i mean never acted crazy like this and she broke out of the fans. I just ran away into a hundred acres of woods are behind our house and never came home left her calf enter her never came back

34:48 And i thought to myself at the time this is exactly what the old timers would have said that the fairies took my cow she went off in the woods. And the cat the calf bald and bald and bald when i went into the woods of love for it was high summer, in the woods here like a lot of freaking rain forest in the summary go have a machete with you get through there's thorns and say insects i couldn't, i drove around on the farms nearby never found her again i never felt even trace and That's pretty weird yeah i like thinking about events in a more metaphysical context or that there could be metaphysical factors involved that we tend to not consider and when you look at behavior like that.

35:34 Something motivated this cow to do this behavior and it's something that apparently we can't see so i just thought there was a fun. Story to recontextualize events that fall outside of the norm yeah i had about it and he said she probably had a brain infection in i need to be feeding my cattle all my antibiotics on time, not vaccinated enough i'm sure well i don't know my calendar back then i got two wild i can catch him i could have actually that one if i want you pretty tame but the wild ones at They're not wild, but they're not going to let me walk up to them with a syringe. What good i just seems like in our system that's always a solution is more shots more medication yeah exactly what. And the vet was like checking his head like you just don't turn your car you need to be given this and body every day so they dont get this. Brain worm travel with ya no thanks. I mean i think i think the fairies or the metaphysical level things is definitely real and i think that some,

36:35 aspect of being out of harmony with our environment like i said can actually make a second and the ancient people specifically what is that causation to spiritual entities you know that demons are fairies or whatever could cause illness in a person. I think that's it that's actually a thing that's like its called not be respectful to your environment not being, nothing into with your with your environment can make me sick and some way can predispose u For being ill and i don't know what the cow did to deserve it but. So i can't believe we really haven't even gotten that deep in the book but your first chapter is really where i find myself,

37:14 And trying to consult the genius low-carb spirit of the place and this is something you don't have to own land to do i remember when i was just renting i would see this giant tree that stood over all the other trees in the neighborhood and i be talking to gordon like how do i talk to this tree for example seems so silly but i'll just like i wanna. Take the ideas that you're giving me and put it in a practice somehow never did work out but you can look around your general environment weather you owner rent and find. Power place i guess but talk to us about just this idea of how to get into the mindset of. Consulting the genius loci and finding a power place in your environment, one of the things that was doing is research like you mentioned folks read about my sub stack for interested, did a pretty good post on that recently what are the things that the ancient authorities prohibited

38:13 in the early Middle Ages that the ecclesiastical authorities prohibited their flocks from doing was leaving offerings at trees and springs. So, that was something that was almost universally forbidden by the church authorities—was going out to these sacred trees and performing Rituals are just leaving offerings or praying for healing or praying for abundance or praying for good crops is something people did and it's something that i do when i think its something successful anyone so you could have gone up to the tree in your neighborhood. And let left a discreet offering of like some you know a lot of indigenous people will save a plate of food whenever they're eating and bring out

38:53 bring it out of the house and leave it outside of the house for the spirits. Just take that down to, to that big tree and leave a plate of food or leave it, leave an offering some kind, some cornmeal, some tobacco, some milk, some cream you know, uh, beer something like that pour out a beer at the tree and say some prayers is like I honor you. I recognize you. I want to enter into relationship with you, give me some guidance. Uh, I mean, it's just as simple as that. You kind of feel, you kinda feel dumb when you do it Maybe at first you feel silly but it's about causing a change in you because the nature spirits aren't separate from me they're part of you and, can u have to open that part of view that can open up to them. Can you do that by engaging in these ritual actions that might seem silly at first but its no sillier than any other

39:45 Religious behavior if you think about it yeah i mean they put the energy and to banning that then i kinda wanna do is not hurting anybody. I've been researching these medieval penitential manuals from the from me, eight nine ten centuries that they put out in northern europe that basically. Basically the pennants that the priest will give to their to their flocks for whenever day no let's see left offerings at a tree or u I know engaged in divination or something like that there be like well i was that's. You know, so many you got to recite these penitential songs and fast on bread and water. And I thought about making a t-shirt that says everything I want to do was prohibited in medieval penitential manuals." It's a little cumbersome but... I mean seriously like everything that I do here in my spiritual practice was totally illegal back then the only thing you're allowed to do if you went anywhere but at church to do your religious practices That was foreboding, you know? Heck yeah! So

40:48 We stick with trees you do right about finding the power center of a piece of land like a big tree which i happen to have and i did gravitate to it like i hung the kids swing under this particular tree and thought it looked like the best place. In the yard though i do feel like it might fall on the house in a decade if its not dealt with so maybe i should start talking this tree now and say hey lean the other way buddy but, Is this your place in florida yes yeah is it a big live oak. It is love those things are going to looks like the dvd cover of sleepy hollow but you're banished more,

41:25 I'm in stuff yeah which is a natural air purifier so i always just think about the these things like the fact that there's a highway i mean maybe a mile away but. I have all these trees and of all this spanish moss nets consider really effective air purifier it's like your again is right there ready to, beat back the negative toxicity of industrialization and it's just a really well designed system so with this tree I know we can connect with it by doing the offerings and stuff but i'm curious you talk about a tree like this being a guardian tree spirit, why i'm curious what are guardian tree spirit can actually do what sort of agency would have. What no i don't know exactly where to do i feel like they keep up a piece of land safe obviously. They have limits to what they can do because people freaking clear cut for us and stuff like that in. She's beat the druids and

42:24 You know, there's limits right? Yeah. Vampire has its magic too but as far as the trees I feel like they are a thin place you know what i mean by that? Liminal place. Yeah liminal place like a place where the worlds connect and I also feel like they're also an antenna so to the spirit world or celestial world into the underworld I read a little bit about that, about the symbolism of the tree. They were like already made temple and image of the shamanic cosmos so i feel like you can go down there and your prayers will be heard in answered in a way that they aren't heard in other places if it makes any sense just because of the trees ability to be a broadcaster and i don't have any proof for that but thats what feels to me as my intuition

43:15 When i go to my reason and pray it's better for me it's my church you know. It makes sense to me how many pieces of pop culture have we seen where if it has any kind of mysticism at all almost always a giant sacred tree, yeah is for that purpose whether its avatar game of thrones or lord the rings like avatar Yeah, and you know what did the Empire try to do right away? What'd they try to do? They tried to destroy that tree in Avatar. It was like well there's a giant deposit of our lovely mineral under there that we need... We'll just have to wreck their city! They'll listen to us once we destroy their tree I mean that playbook taken out of first of all taken out of the Old Testament in the Bible That's sort of what

44:02 What the authorities tried to do in the Old Testament, they destroyed all the sacred trees of the Canaanite pagans. And then in medieval Europe, Saint Martin of Tours destroyed the sacred tree of the pagans and Gaul and then Charlemagne sent missionaries like St Boniface to destroy the sacred trees of the Germans. All these authorities they were cutting down these sacred trees. We're quoting that original scripture, I believe it might be 1 or 2 Samuel where they're destroying these sacred trees in the Old Testament—it might be Judges… It's somewhere in those historic books of the Old Testament but yeah... Yeah it's a playbook. It is to be honest in desert places and i live in pretty well forested environment our farmland is clear isn't in the forest, but i mean another place that i believe rock i'm sure would be just as good or you know any other rock formation are mountain top those another thing

44:57 Other traditional sites associated with pagan worship are that you know people built stone circles out on the more you gotta make your own if there's not one there. And you describe in the book a visionary experience at least one of connecting with a tree spirit tell people what that was like, You mean the one where talk about feeling energy flowing through the land and stuff like that i'm in the one where you accidentally got a toxic sap in your eye oh yeah yeah. Yeah that was that one yet i always like to stay up late and if it's a beautiful night in the moon is out go for walk,

45:35 And there's a farm across the road where i like to go and leave offerings in it's got a bunch of abandoned outbuildings. Can be kind spooky there and i like you cuz that mean there is like loose roofing ten rattling in the wind and no, trees are creaking on the old buildings and stuff like that. And I went out there one night, and on my way out, I brought a little tobacco and I bought it—I brought up a little bit of beer. I was walking past a patch of Jimson weed, and I remembered that the Native Americans here probably use Jimson weed as an entheogen, and I don't recommend that to the crowd here is pretty dangerous but in fact is so potent that they can even get you a little bit of a dose from handling it as my story will illustrate

46:20 I walked out to this place, held this ginseng weed flowers in my hand. I picked about three and was going to leave them with a beer and the tobacco as an offering. It occurred to me that my hand was really sweaty and the alkaloids might be absorbed through my hands so I put them in my pocket. Later on when I went out there, I left my offerings, took them out of my pocket, put down my tobacco, poured up my beer, said little prayer to the nature spirits into the gods that they would accept this offering and the spirits of land And i walked out on this field in the moonlight and i leaned on my stick here got this stick that i made it's not like lean on it your skill for good top and i like lean on it support myself just. Turn went into a reverie division where i imagine myself traveling back in time, and talking to the people that used to live in the land the couple needs to run the farm at first and then

47:16 the people before them, all the settlers and then before them that indigenous people that live there at the time of European contact. And even back to the people who lived here 2000 years ago with the famous Hadina culture that built the mounds in Hadina and the Hopewell culture that build the mounds in Ohio and Kentucky they're pretty well known. I sort went into communion with them and could see how they lived how they passed away. I tell the full story in the book, and I went back to the mammoths and the mastodons, then I kind of came to myself…I looked at my watch and almost an hour had passed that I was in this reverie. Another thing that happened was I could see the energy lines going through land and going up the trees—through the roots up through the trees—and making contact with the sky. An hour passed by with this vision, and I went home

48:10 I looked in the mirror, no i went home and went to bed. And got up in the morning and looked at the mirror... Everything kinda looked weird still like.. The light wasn't quite right it was a little too.. I look into my mirror and my right eye was dilated My right pupil and I kind of panicked a little bit like oh god! Something happened to me or had a stroke something like that. And I remember that I held that ginseng weed on my hands and must have rubbed my eyes and gotten sap in my eyes And I don't think i had a full but i know that i didn't have a full blown experience with that but i wonder how much it contributed to my to my reverie.

48:50 Yeah i think that's why psychedelic compounds are all throughout nature is it's kinda like yeah maybe dangerous but also gives people little boost when. They need one to see that stuck sometimes you only need one experience to break through the material paradigm and then, your fixed so sometimes a little danger is required but i can go back to that place on a similar night And i can i can usually know that i've done that once i can usually. Touch that place you get to that place and connect again usually yeah, i'm also curious to take your thoughts of the mechanics between spirits in certain plants like you do have a section we talk about the doctrine signatures which are always really likes the idea that

49:38 Things like walnuts look like brains and us you eat one that's in there good for your brain or the. Strawberry looks like a heart come to find out it's good for heart health these things are so interesting to me but along with that its like how do spirits relate to various plants do u see it as like an overseer spirit that is present like one spirit present in all, Of all muscadine grapevines have this one overseer spirit or do you see them like people of individualized. Personalities to some degree i think they're both right, what got the engine is will plan has a spiritual we are both too right i mean it's kinda like human beings are both yeah human beings about time and we have like that

50:29 i'm throw post or whatever the spiritual man or whatever human that connects us all as human beings. Like the species mind and then we have our own individual souls yeah i think that's the same thing with plants i think each one of them is it, is an individual but i think that this species is a whole and i think the land interacts with what the plan to there some plans that are highly influenced by the land, like the land really wants to grow them and it grows them well. I think I quote Albertus Magnusson there that says the place in time and disposition of the heavens all contributes to the potency, spiritual potency at the time. There's a lot of teachings that say if you're using herbs for magic then you want to gather those planetary times because that is when their planetary efficiency is enhanced

51:19 Oh, for instance I have this little henbane plant here in this little pot and if you wanted to use that for magic... You would gather that at Saturn hour on Saturn day like Saturday morning at sunrise or something like that. And its Saturnian virtue would be more effective if harvested at that time I recall taking some of gordon's magical classes and that would be the most difficult part like i would finally reach the point where it's like okay motivated i don't have anything to do tomorrow i'm gonna try to do this ritual, and its like the timing is not right at all just getting the timing right. Is so difficult for a modern person in the way we live

52:04 that is it just never really got past the intellectual stage and that's the other thing is like so you talk about in my situation i might go to this particular oak tree and i might try to make a alter find a big flat rock can make an all turn start putting offerings there. And thats great but working the land is already hard for this hot if ya haven't heard, i don't wanna say is the juice worth the squeeze or you know what am i gonna get out of this cuz that's kinda exploitative mindset. But it just seems like another thing that's almost never ending like getting a tomagotchi are getting another pet like we have chickens there a lot of work and now i'm gonna,

52:45 i'm gonna go out and feed the chickens give the chickens water make sure the cats in the kids are fed have water and then i gotta go. Give some milk to the tree it's like okay i something is nice to do i will do it i guess but i just, i guess im trying to find out what's in it for me well i mean if you're called this kind of thing which not everybody is your desire You know i have like for myself if you like a really huge desire to connect with spiritual realities it's like. It's it's definitely desire you know it's definitely like hunger almost so like, i go down the tree in hope and like seeking connection and that's what i get out of this connection is like a

53:33 You know like i want that so do the things that can help me get that connection and not realize it not everybody wants that. And i guess my book is address to people that do and sounds like you do too say in a year to make some, make some space in it otherwise wouldn't take courses and done stuff but you gotta make some space for your life in order for it to work and planetary timing as good A way of making space like since i've gotten serious into this like oak tree thing that I've got. I try to go there on Thursday night because that's thursday right? That's like Thor is the guy with the oak Jupiter's the guy, that's jupiter day, the jupiter is the god oh that's if it there's only one day I'm going to go to or one night I'm gonna go down to the oak tree It's gonna be Thursday you know cuz that's the day and then on Wednesday I always do my mercury practice I don't always do it the hours harder to get them today

54:31 I always do my mercury practice on Wednesday. I do my Mars practice on Tuesday, you know moon practice on Monday Venus practice on Friday Saturn practice on Saturday Sun practice on Sunday So like I don't always get the hour but i get today You know what? I mean so that's easier to get the day Yeah And I could understand that if I were to start doing this maybe just in general the ease Is in the flow of like trying to cultivate this food for us on the slant it might go a little smoother it's hard to quantify its not like we could say oh. X amount of plates of food under the tree equals x amount of increased yield that's not really like that but you know maybe we could say things would go smoother just kinda,

55:17 Upsets me that you see some people have so much success and pay zero attention whatsoever to the spirit world i mean maybe it's material success matrix designed success. But still, it's like well if this stuff is important and if this stuff matters I know I read that quote at the beginning which is a good way to wrap your head around it but If this matters why does my neighbor who cleared out all the land And really just grows grass and has some Mexican guy mow it every weekend It looks like he's doing quite well. Yet he's so disrespectful to the land and never gives any mind to spiritual things at all but the fairies aren't taking his dogs

55:59 It's the old thing, why do good things happen to bad people and why do bad things happen to good people? You know, why does karma look like that sometimes? I mean in the theory of karma that's because everything is played out over multiple lives. And i don't want to get into that metaphysics right now but... I'm an astrologer you got to look at people's birth charts too! I have Saturn in the second house and probably never going to be a multi-millionaire You know saturn second house is your personal finances and sadder saddened tends to keep things all the things be equal kind of poor what money i have is gonna come to me from saturn means like farming so. Saturn rules my career my ten thousand m is in my second house smart. Saturn is gonna be a big part of my,

56:48 My life always so if you sat in your second house maybe not gonna be super wealthy or maybe a wealth is going to come to light and life. So i mean i think i think fate personal faith, yes it's definitely a thing and you really can't i really thank you you're called certain things and the fates give me certain talents uncertain potentials uncertain opportunities in your life why are some people born twelve and he's another people born to struggle i mean There's no other answer. I mean, that is one of the reasons why i don't believe in a personal God directing all this because he would have to be a total asshole and make some people just have all the disadvantages they're born into and other people have all the advantages. I mean, I believe in fate, I believe in the fates and these things are ordained for people by forces beyond their control

57:38 And there's some things you can change and some things you aren't. As the old saying goes, you need the wisdom to know the difference. I know we're getting to the end of the road here. This is one thing I wanted to throw in, and I wanted to ask you about so that theurgy chapter huge dense chapter one of the most interesting and compelling in the book but just a quote at you right? And Western Neoplatonic magic as practiced by The Cunning Farmer even when our aims are mundane We often bring energy from the top of the hierarchy down calling upon the divine by the names appropriate to our goal and then the archangel of the appropriate sphere than the angel and finally the elemental spirit

58:16 spirit given charge over the aspect of nature we wish to influence. We do this whether the goal of the operation is to call the rain, petition for profit and business or seek some other earthly goal. The super-celestial realm—the realm of the transcendent divine—is thus the starting point for operations of what may be called high magic as distinguished from operations involving only elemental beings, nature spirits and catonic entities which is traditionally called low magic Well i was just curious if you had anything to say about the potency or risk factor or effectiveness of the differential between high magic and low magic. I really don't worry too much about the risk factor but i feel like, unless you come from an initiatory tradition of like folk magic or something like that there's no making it up

59:10 There and i often when i do low magic am pretty much. When it might be some spirit led wing like whatever gives me whatever in spray like if you like them inspired to sell magic like. I know work with runes down at my tree or whatever i feel like i might be like, We need it basically but i'm working within a system that was articulated by henry kroner list the grip on and expanded on by the golden dog or something like that one of the magic it's based on renaissance. Hermetic cover you know what space don't agree with, the golden dawn alistair crowley i mean there is a full tradition there and there's a there's a methodology which you can you know what you can read about in many different sources

59:59 So yeah, that thing where I'm talking about calling by the divine name appropriate to the sphere that you're working on. I just did that last night for some rain magic and yeah it's effective. It's raining all around us right now very close by. I think it'll rain later on today. It's humid as hell but yeah that's a methodology that's accessible Accessible angel magic and elemental magic is pretty accessible, it can be found in a number of texts and books. But I don't think it's dangerous. There's always the law of unintended consequences, I suppose. I've heard magic practitioners say that angels can be hard to access, require a lot of preparation... A lot of magicians talk about manifesting to visible appearance

1:00:54 And I don't really do that. I'm just trying to get results, so...I do use a pendulum to see if the spirit has arrived or heard my petition and usually like the pendulum goes wild when i've done that and then I know I've been heard at that point but I don't usually see anything sometimes I'll have it.. I've had a tree fall in the woods at dramatic part of the ritual The door slam or something like that or like a gust of wind sudden gust of wind or something. Some sign but yeah alot of times it's just i know that i've gotten my result you know and up there i've been heard and i don't want to plug for,

1:01:34 For anybody but there's, there's a book called the 72 angels of magic by Damon brand which is really approachable angel magic. A lot of magicians sort of poo-poo these guys cause they're too, they're to approachable I think if you combine that approach from from guys like Damon brand with the golden dawn method i think you get a really powerful system basically it's angel flavored chaos magic and there we go How's my history can be pretty effective i'm not into the pop culture things but i prefer something a little classier. So like you know it was in the chaos magic free this up to bring us up to be creative with our magic and that's why don't feel like,

1:02:16 I like a little structure i look a little tradition i'm sort of old i like like i like hebrew and greek and latin i like the grimoire so i'll take some practices from them. No no make my own love server creature out of all that i like low magic i like natural magic elemental magic druid magic. He's in magica do all that different times but i think they're all appropriate i try to lay out like a four fold cosmology, Where there's like the theurgic, super celestial magic angel magic divine names sort of that like Hebrew Greek theurgic magic dealing with angels and gods. And then there is the celestial magic dealing with planetary spirits astrological magic fixed star talismans and things like that

1:03:03 Then there are we're mansions and then there's like earth magic like elementals and then is working with catholic spirits in spurs the dead. And underworld entities so there's these four different realms of magic i think are useful for different things different goals I love it man is really dense stuff i do think people should engage with the universe's magical that's not gonna change just how aware of it are you and how. Involved are you i guess on a personal level but the book is amazing obviously got it right here super thick boy and that's uh... to work of arts and academic work it's great yes. So thank you so much for taking the time a true pleasure to talk to let the people know what they should know about getting the book i mean that's easy but links further reading and remind him how to join the csa if your in ohio or in the sub stack all the good stuff okay the book

1:04:03 Can be purchased from inter traditions directly from amazon from barnes and noble i always encourage people to go to their local bookstore get them the order copy. So it puts me on the map if you can do that even order a copy directly for me assign copy i can ship one out to you, you pay me through paypal email me email about that You can contact me through substack my website i keep saying this on every podcast mom but it's about to go online is the cunning farmer dot com you can reach out to me for a copy of the book through there. It's not online yet but should be online in the next week or so you can contact me through substrate that's the coming from dot sub stack dot com and you can message me through their, you can find me on facebook becoming far off facebook on instagram

1:04:52 I'm working on another book hopefully which will be published in sometime next year i don't have a deal yet but i have a were interested from the publisher so, what should we call it. Additive working title is on the rustic days on the rusted gods that's the working title it'll be about forming a specific relationship with nature days and bill more practical than the kind of farm it'll be like I have some practical tips to working with particular days as well as some like historical background things like that and lore mythology. All the stuff that i love check my blog subscribe my blog follow me on instagram and facebook and all those things in your look for him and my csa you reach out to us if u wanna join this is a few live in cincinnati or northern kentucky and not say field farm dot com ok awesome

1:05:47 Man well i look forward to another book because this one is so good but super insightful great talking to you thanks for being so candid and open about such strange stuff impressive range of knowledge much appreciated take care, what's up your gregor's been really great being on the show was really fun when talking to. Alright, how about that? Bringing it in for the fourth show of the month. Dipping our toes back into the esoteric magical waters and it's actually a rare case of responding to a publisher with a pitch I've said before its becoming increasingly rare for me to take those mainly because I get so many low quality pitches from books that have no place on THC

1:06:33 I got pitched a fantasy cookbook not long ago. Soran, Scrambled Eggs, Lord Hightowers, Pancake Tallstack... I did actually consider doing that one and playing it completely straight but really i just couldn't reward that behavior if you don't know the show and what's good for it leave me alone But i do have some contacts that I know send good quality recommendations and as soon as I saw the name of this book, I was intrigued and when I looked through the ebook I was pretty sold on material. And then they sent me the physical book and I put in a very rare class of books that just have such a high level of production. That it's impressive you don't see at much anymore especially any alternative world

1:07:20 So often I'm getting Amazon self-published, poorly formatted full of typos one man production type of stuff which is fine we do what we gotta do but this one was something special. And there are actually several shows on my calendar that are coming up that i knew Gordon would have appreciated or guests that I've commented on before wouldn't do my show suddenly they are gonna do it and Is one of those things talking with a colleague we pretty much always had something to go back and forth on almost every week. But it would never really be anything about an upcoming show until it was out there and then he would often see in right away have something funny to say about it, and i fully had him in mind when i was preparing for the show i knew you what ahead a lot to say about the interview

1:08:11 And it's just bittersweet that this was squarely in his wheelhouse. On top of his appreciation for well-crafted books, it really hit the trifecta of Gordon's expertise and interest and it was just 30 days shy... Who would have thought? I have found the hardest thing about losing people is getting hit with like the next 20 things that they would've liked Things have been so crazy since my dad died butler shooting UFC at the white house and the executive orders in doge and even bitcoin hit a new high i mean he really would've enjoyed these last two years. And this book to really he was a big gardener,

1:08:55 And boy if you can only have seen me now i didn't really catch the bug until after he died you could say the same about gordon and magic. Bug if you see these two books right here they are from, when thorn dike in day are volume one and volume to of a history of magic and experimental science each of these bad boys is eight hundred pages something little fire in me that i wanted to know more about my friends expertise after he died it's strange But when you see the movie of life just continue to play on knowing that the people you lost what have really enjoyed some other scenes it's something against me pretty good but.

1:09:40 This is just one of those things, more than most. And another thing I love about Todd's book is that it's not vague! So many magic books fail to give you the good stuff- The actual blueprints for the things they're writing about or writing around... Todd includes all the details! The step by step guide to a lot of things It's as much a grimoire as anything else that calls itself that It gets very specific about all sorts of magical processes, all sorts of various goals. I'm glad he's out there sharing all this knowledge that he has gained and the more i've engaged with the process of growing The more i do see it as magical and reality itself is magical

1:10:26 I'm quite tired as everyone is of the matrix analogies and language how would we ever express ourselves without that movie. But it's true that we are so distracted and engaged with this false reality of careers, add cubicles entertainment in car registrations and license renewals and taxes. We go from home to car to workplace to home to couch to bed to card to workplace rents and repeat It's really easy to assume we know what it's like to engage with nature and growing in permaculture, but not actually doing it. And there are a lot of subtle things that come up and remind you oh yeah actually the earth is an entity and it wants to work with me to generate consumable energy that tastes amazing! You know a single passion fruit plant yields about 200 or even 300 fruit a year?

1:11:25 It has both the summer and winter harvest, so it's not just all coming at you at once. They're about $2 or $3 per fruit that's if you go to Sprouts, if you got a Whole Foods, you might even hit 350 but that's $500 worth of fruit from a single plant every year I really don't like to put in dollars very often but more like sustenance for the family That is a lot A lot of nutrient content from a single plant And I know we're not going to be going off the grid. We're not gonna be farmers living off our acre of land without the need for a grocery store, that's not even my goal. For me it's more about supplementing our mediocre diets and uh... The Western diet in general with things we can grow right here for free! Do you know fruit loses about 30% of its nutrient value a week after being picked? How much fruit are you eating within seven days of it being picked?! It has to

1:12:24 Get on the truck get a whole food sit there for a few days you buy it sits on your counter for a few days we almost never get things within seven days but, reality is industrialization cannot compete with how the system was set up to be try as it might most of it is propaganda that its actually competing if you. Actually compared the two isn't Another thing we grow here is the Barbados cherry. They have more vitamin C than anything and you can't actually buy them fresh anywhere as far as I know, surprise surprise! If you eat two or three that's a day's value of vitamin C two or three cherries it is nuts and I also think all those nutrient and vitamin recommendations are designed to be low to be psychologically manipulative but

1:13:16 You get your kids eating like two or three of those a day just walking outside and then add some mulberries and cranberry hibiscus, you're cooking with gas. It's like instead of Flintstones vitamins we eat that stuff it's not necessarily a replacement for anything in the diet as much is it is a replacement for something like the Flintstones vitamin now with Todd's book I can get better with timing for sure the planting timing i mean and maybe i can appeal to the great oak or the spirits of the land to encourage a wildlife despair some other harvest let's get into it let's play around little bit this should be fun so many huge fan of this book glad this was recommended shout out to gail at inner traditions she knows how to pick them.

1:14:06 I said this in the show i know people are different points of their lives and no not everyone finds growing things interesting but it is the number one thing the system took from you it's sold a lie that you didn't need it and a concrete industrialized modern city full of emf smog artificial lights is better. But its not to me growing has become what listen to me so arrogant now that i have some land i'm not trying to be that way but, I think it should be something that is on your bucket list and kind of like brushing your teeth i just don't think this life is designed for you to go without doing it. And without a little land unrestricted by city ordinances in hos you really just don't have much freedom at all live the first half my life without much freedom so i empathize when i think about how to push back against the cultivation of our dependence it's really the only thing there is

1:15:01 Spend the first 40 years of your life awakening to this fact and then finding your path to moderate success, and then spend the last 40 years being the master of your own domain. And put it all in a trust and say our family does not exchange land for green paper It cannot be sold only accumulated Even if you're not there economically I hope a show like this can at least be interesting intellectually and maybe motivating as to why we do the shitty job It's not just to run another lap on the hamster wheel. It's that there is a goal in sight, I hope. Oh well... Alright well in higher side news, I did have to record this interview with my computer webcam. I've got one of those Mac Studio displays insanely overpriced and the built-in webcam is not nearly as good as was advertised but it works in a pinch My new camera here was freezing up

1:15:59 And i think i got that sorted and i've even repositioned a bit nothing i got things dial then as good as i can around here. When the studio stopped working out i kinda just had to call something together and keep the train moving i took that short break recently and i, Really did take the time to study a whole bunch of video podcasts from different genres that record remotely. And I found what i like and what i don't and opted to sort of change the framing of things going forward instead of this tight close up almost yearbook photo framing we have been using, i'm opening this bitch up were gonna do a lot more side by side shots

1:16:41 I think a fun part of this is seeing people's backgrounds and looking at the details. I even took the background blur off my own background because, i know it's a sharp look that everyone likes but why have a bookshelf background if you can't at least try to make out some of the titles back there? You know...I don't want to make that intentionally fuzzy I don't know, i'm sure i'll drift back and forth on that. The issue with the wide side by side is that it leaves a lot of real estate at the top and bottom of the traditional typical ratio format so i made a simple framing that plugs plus and also doesn't look cluttered or too busy It works well enough that i think it's not annoying or distracting but you will let me know and you'll see it on the next one Now let's talk about the last one George Howard

1:17:29 Fun guy right really easy to listen to good story teller and i thought hearing him talk about malcolm bendell and the no show joe show was great. I've always wondered what that interview was about i know it kind of embarrassed randall carlson but i think randall is savvy enough that if he found value in it. And there probably was some there and we don't even really have to guess right cuz george said they took tours with the damn thing and then he had been part of several working public demonstrations, So I was really glad that one fell in my lap to basically followed George on twitter cuz i wanted to remember who hosted the cosmic summit and he dm me saying hey i'm a listener of the show so it all came together. No easier way to get on than to tell me that you're listening how this show well there was well liked by the people four point seven we are back on that top tier baby love to see it

1:18:27 I guess i could also say now that i did record an episode of the danny jones show just the other day sam tripoli put us in touch and danny said he been listening to thc for a couple years and actually live only about an hour from his studio so on the cheap date. No flight no hotel know expertise either Clearly he's got a very big audience on youtube maybe we can break me out of that you to tombstone algorithm. He gets a ton of great guests and his professional production is super impressive i was happy to be there, Of course we came out of the gate and he wanted to talk about tracy and that's fine. And there are things i know that i wish i could say but several other podcasters have been sued just for speculating or getting too deep into it, and its not really some grand conspiracy

1:19:19 It's probably what you might expect in a true crime show if you just think about it, but lawsuits are public record. Go read about Clyde Lewis being taken to court over this stuff and he is not the only one." So I kind of clammed up but it didn't take long to find a groove and I thought that went really well and we covered a lot of ground But... We all know that I'm no expert on anything so Just to be considered as nice. I don't ask us to rally around things very often, but when it comes to this coming out maybe you'll help me hype it up because it would be nice to do it again so keep an eye out for that and... So let's move on the meetup calendar!

1:20:04 All right gilbert arizona desert monks brewing june twenty seventh i think that's this weekend also this weekend june twenty eight l at the trails cafe recurring it must be working out. North coat tavern in north coat point auckland new zealand july sixth, july nineteen saint paul minnesota and black stack brewing july twentieth oaks pennsylvania arnold family fun center And this is a new one I think Pullman Washington Rico's public house August 8th. A higher soup meet up okay they're getting the band book club back together for this 18 month anniversary tour find out more details about that but it was across over with rune soup i wish i could be there and we'll call in on that so the counters a little light but

1:20:55 It's always available to anyone at higher side meetups dot com find the others build your like minded counterculture community. Trade plants swap seeds share beers whatever it is you wanna do free and easy low pressure have fun lean into life, alright well big thanks to todd he's awesome i'm happy to have gotten no m join his csa if your in ohio and want good produce And I hope you were value-tained, as PBD might say. I'm outta here! Your move Land looters, birthright stealers and magic concealers... You're fuckin' dead.

1:21:41 They say life is better since they covered the sky And got rid of all that pesky They had no protection from the sun back then Just scary exposed out there I hear they fight over what they'd eat each night A burden we don't have to bear Because our factory meatcake Comes every morning Always tastes just right And we never have to Get dirty in here Cause the pot is always white Just imagine the trouble Of finding some job to do Or finding your own

1:22:57 The implants weren't made yet They weren't as connected We sometimes had to be alone He didn't yet know who Trust the machine And let him care for you Will we have answers now? For every Back then they had to think it through I get nosebleeds, shit I wake up

1:23:52 I dreamt factory meatcakes didn't come every month And it almost felt alright. I dreamt we sometimes were the outside But wasn't always white