Announcer 0:27

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's John.

John Moore 0:43

Hello, hello, everybody.

It has been a very long time since I've done one of these. And it's not because I'm not thinking about you and love you and care about you and love talking to you, but the universe had plans, the universe still has plans. And I've been up to a lot of things that have, you know, precluded me from spending the time necessary to record a podcast episode. A few things of note. I have. So I've just completed the I had a deadline of writing a chapter of a book that will be coming out shortly and I will. When that happens, I will make an announcement about that. Um, I did three radio interviews this past week. One in the UK my first international radio broadcast I've done I've done podcasts of guested as a podcast guest in other countries. This is my first international radio of his appearance, the right word, do you appear on the radio? Whatever it is, it's my it was my first interview. And I have a regular radio spot that I do here in Maine in the good old US of A. And then I had a third interview, and I've got another one coming up this week. And I don't know people seem to like to talk to me. And that's, you know, I love it like because clearly I love talking on my podcast. I'm also doing I'm also doing a I'm guessing on another podcast this week. The other thing I have going on is that I released an app this week, and right now it is on Android, but it will be on iOS soon. That takes a little bit longer and is called shaman world and it has videos and has this podcast. You can listen to this podcast directly in the app and it has if you're into shamanism, you're into shamanic journeying, it has drum tracks, and it has articles and all kinds of stuff. And it's another way it's absolutely free. And it's another way that I spread my love for all things spiritual, and particularly in shamanism, specifically. So that being said this morning is well it is morning where I am and whatever time of day it is, we're where you are I greet you. But yesterday was Halloween, one of my favorite days of the year in the you know, birthplace of many of my ancestors previously known as sourin also known as all souls Eve today is the first of November day of the dead All Souls Day. There's a lot going on holiday wise. And I know that I have listeners from all over the world and I love that I love that there are people in all different countries and I don't know if you're familiar with the traditions as they are in the US. You know, there's a lot of a lot of movies and TV from the US that gets exported. So you might be aware that Halloween is a day where children in particular get dressed up and go around from door to door do we called trick or treating and people give them candy and my children were were definitely out last night they're probably getting to the age where that's not going to happen too many more. Too many more years, if at all, but they loved that they love that activity they love. It's not just about getting the candy. It's about dressing up and they you know the hang out with a go around with a large group of friends or not a large group of friends but obviously we're still in the middle of the pandemic. We keep the friends group, kind of small and insulated. But they they go with a group of friends and they they dress up and they coordinate their costumes. So there, I believe, will not I believe I know last night they all went as characters from the cartoon Scooby Doo, which was really funny. And one of my daughters was Daphne. Another one was Shaggy. And, you know, one of their friends is Fred, one of their friends with Scooby Doo. And, you know, if you're familiar with a cartoon, and it's interesting, because that cartoon was popular when I was very young. So, you know, it's kind of a kind of a fun thing.

So today, I realize I've been, you know, this is kind of a long, long lead in long intro, but I wanted to let you know what I was doing. Because it's been about three weeks since I've recorded one of these. And I usually do them about once a week, it has just been hectic, and in a good way, busy in a good way. I'm not one of those people who takes pride in simply the act of being busy. I feel like we put a lot of emphasis on being busy, and sometimes to the point where it can become unhealthy. But I've been busy for good reasons. And I'm excited about a number of the reasons that I have been been so busy. Also been busy with clients and students. Always excited about that. I love, love, love, love teaching. And so, yeah, anyway, what am I going to talk about today. Um, today, I'm going to talk about sort of two sides of a similar coin. I'm going to talk about spirituality. And I'm going to talk about the word magic, and how those two play together what they mean, I'm going to, you know, obviously, I always when I, when I talk about terms, I always give my definitions not that my definitions are better than anybody else's. They aren't you might have your own definitions, or you might look things up in a dictionary or what have you. But I want you to understand what I'm talking about. And I might use these words differently than you do. And so when I say something like, spiritual or spirituality, what the heck am I talking about? I do have a little bit of a different definition than most people for both of those words. I've been, you know, noodling on this for years. I've been thinking about it for a very long time. And I'm, you know, especially with the word spiritual and in spirituality, what is, you know, what's the meaning there? And then I'm going to talk about magic in a way. Well, not in a way in a bit. I'm going to talk about magic for sure. And I'm gonna talk about there's lots of definitions of magic. And when I'm, you know, just upfront, I'm not talking about stage magic. I'm not talking about Penn and Teller, or David Copperfield, stage magic or card tricks or, or anything like that. I'm not talking about prestidigitation. That's a big word. I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about what we consider magic, like the stuff of wizards and sorcerers, and witches and all kinds of practitioners and how that definition really extends to a lot of human activity. And there's a lot of baggage around it, there's a lot of religious oppression of magical activities. So, so we're talking about both of those things. And when I talk about spirituality, I have a very what I hope is a very inclusive definition. Because what you know and you know, the name of this podcast is speaking spirit and I'm talking about spirit and I in you know, upfront I'm, you know, this is no surprise to anybody who's listened this podcast or knows anything about me. But I have my own set of beliefs and my own set of practices, I practice shamanism, and shamanism is both a set of practices and what we would call a constellation of beliefs. And from one shamanic practitioner to another. Those might be slightly different, but that's also true with anything. It's true with Catholicism. If I asked two Catholic people what X Y or Z meant to them, they might have very different answers or is Islam or Buddhism or what have you. And then there's all kinds of different flavors, right? There's different flavors of Christianity and even Catholicism.

I've been in other I've been in different countries, with Catholic churches and experienced very different things there. From, you know, there are commonalities, of course, major commonalities and, you know, doctrine and dogma and the way they believe, but there are also differences in different places and even different regions. Where I was living in Boston for a while. They did maths, in the church, near me. And in English, of course, but also in Portuguese, and Italian and maybe Spanish, I'm not sure. Is it a bunch of different languages to accommodate the different people there. And I know I have been to bilingual masses, where they were done in language is just one minor difference. But I've been to bilingual masses, where the, in Canada where the priest was chanting, chanting the mass, first of all, in English, and then French, or I think French first and then an English. And that was really interesting. And I'm not Catholic, and so I don't understand everything. But I've been to a few masses in my life. And so you know, there are with everything, there are differences. And so I don't speak for everybody who practices shamanism. And I don't, and I don't speak for I certainly don't speak for anybody else. But let's talk about spirituality, and what is spiritual? And I want to put forth a couple of thoughts about that. A couple of propositions, a couple of theories, hypotheses, ideas, what have you about that. And, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the word belief. And I'll start with that, because it'll hopefully make everything else much easier. So a belief is something that we hold to be true. That's it, it's the entire that's my entire definition of belief, anything that you think is true. And there are lots of definitions of beliefs and beliefs, one I've seen that's that I like to is habits of thought, well, some habits of thought, don't fall into the category of belief, but is a habit of thought about what is true, something I perpetually think is true. This is regardless of whether or not the thing that you believe actually is true, empirically or otherwise. So I believe that I am sitting in a chair right now, because because it is my truth that I'm sitting in a chair. Whether or not that is actually true, and I quote unquote, know that. The truth, the truthiness, if you were the the, the subjective experience, that that is truth, to me, is a belief. And when we look at things that way, it opens us up to a great deal of flexibility in how we think about things. So in some traditions, particularly in chaos, magic, and I'll talk about magic a little bit later. Having a flexible belief system, meaning, having the ability to try on different beliefs and see how they work for you, is powerful. And I can tell you that is extremely powerful. Being able to, I'm going to act as if I think x is true. And that's not to say to do that in an unsafe manner. Because if I stood on top of a tall building and said, I'm going to pretend that I believe I can fly and jump off that building Well, you know, the results of that are most likely going to be catastrophic for me. So I don't think that that is a fantastic way of doing it. But what I'm talking about is let's say for example, I don't particularly believe in the practice of astrology.

What if I tried that on for a little while, what if I said, Okay, I'm going to act as if this is a True, I'm going to act as a, I'm going to shift my beliefs around and act as if that's true. Well, what we can find is that our beliefs really, seriously shape our experience of the world. And we can actually change significantly change our experience of the world, when we change our beliefs. And it does take a little practice. And I am going to do a whole entire podcast on belief and get into it from both a spiritual and a psychological perspective. And I'll talk about how we can experiment with and change our beliefs, because I think that is super, super powerful. So I look at people who cannot. Who cannot entertain the idea of different beliefs, right. So we're talking fundamentalists of all kinds. So good examples are religious fundamentalists who resort to violence, rather than allowing anybody to question their belief. And, and we can see, then, that very, you know, in, in a lot of ways, a very, very rigid belief systems that cannot be questioned, can be extremely unhealthy. So the reason I've gotten to belief a little bit is because my definition of spirituality might be in conflict with yours, and that's fine. I'm not saying you need to adopt my definition of spirituality. But what I'm saying is, if you experiment with, what if that were true? What if I did, like, even if you don't believe that and think I'll never believe that? Just try it as an experiment. Ask yourself what? Okay, what if I, if I don't believe that? What if I believe what if I did believe that was true? What if I believe the world was flat? That's not to say that I'm going to adopt the position that the world is flat, but how, like doing the thought experiment? You know, I would have to believe this, I would have to believe that this would change that would change, right? That, that allows us to become more flexible in our behavior more flexible in how we approach the world. And flexibility and adaptation is makes us more resilient, it makes us more, you know, in the in the in the scheme of evolution, when Darwin talked about the survival of the fittest, what he's really talking about is survival of the most flexible, the most adaptive, right? Because what is fittest it is what meets the situation most appropriately. So if I, you know, I live in the Northeast of the United States, it gets very cold here in the winter. And if I only owned wool clothes, and ski jackets, and then I traveled to the south, you know, the Southwest United States and hung out in the desert, that I would have a hard time surviving for very long, I would have to adapt, I'd have to adapt my clothing. So the same is kind of true with beliefs, like, you know, if you want to try out something, try out a different system of belief, you can, it doesn't mean you have to adopt it. So if I traveled to the southwest, I would put on lighter clothing. But then when they came back to where I lived, I would put my wool clothes and ski jacket on again, because it's you know, especially in the winter, it's very, very cold and snowy here. So, I have about belief and trying on different beliefs. Let's talk about spirituality and spirit, what do I mean by spiritual and what? How that how we can be more inclusive with that term. So my definition of spiritual what makes something spiritual is that it's anything that gives you a greater sense, or a or some sense anyway, of being connected to or a part of something greater than yourself.

This is a very generic, very flexible definition of spiritual and I'm going to give a bunch of examples because I think that'll be that'll illustrate it. Hopefully pretty well. Okay, so when I practice shamanism, I am in connection with spirits With the spirit world and with these worlds that are greater than myself, and ultimately I get in touch with my divine spark, which is my connection to divinity, to everything that there is, and that everything is ultimately connected to everything that there is. So that's very spiritual. And you know, there are there are spirits and their spiritual realms in shamanism, so I can talk about that. But it's the sense of connection, it's this inner knowing this feeling, it's emotional, it is connected. And that definition leaves room for a whole lot of activity. Yes, if you go pray at a church or a mosque or a temple, you will get a sense of connection to something greater to God or to Buddha or to Jesus or to Muhammad or what have you, saints and angels or gods and goddesses or what have you, right, something greater than yourself, the greater thing the you know, in Sanskrit, Brahman, the over soul. But what about people who don't have a spiritual? What we would consider a spiritual practice or maybe agnostic or even atheistic? What about those people? And can they experience something spiritual? Is it possible for them to experience something greater than themselves? And to experience that connection? And my answer that is absolutely. Because I can feel really connected to nature and have a spiritual experience with that, I can feel that I am part of that I can, I can, you know, go out and be in awe of a sunset. Or I can feel it feel, you know, go to the go to the beach and watch the surf and get absorbed into that experience. And that I would argue, is a spiritual experience, whether or not there is deity involved, or non physical entities. See, spiritual doesn't have to necessarily mean entities like deities, or, you know, ghosts or what have you item? I don't think it it certainly can. But it doesn't, in my opinion, it doesn't have to. And the reason for that is human beings seem to be hardwired for spiritual experiences, spiritual beliefs. And, you know, for all of recorded human history, and well beyond that, we have shamanistic behavior, spiritual behavior, we have people using psychoactive plants and mushrooms and frogs even to alter their, you know, to alter their experience and to get absorbed to become you know, to have an Theo genic experiences, which is, you know, experiences of divinity, I guess. But some people don't believe in divinity and, you know, that's okay. That's okay. I would, you know, I would say that if you hold a really tight belief about anything about the lack of divinity, or the existence of divinity, or whatever, um, you know, trying on the beliefs of the other side, you know, and having a subjective experience of what they might experience can help us as human beings communicate with one another better. And I beg your pardon, but I'm gonna have a little sip of coffee this morning. It's, it's very early. I usually drink coffee while I am. While I record these podcasts. I'm a coffee fan. And right now it's, it's super early, and it's it's actually pretty dark outside right now. That's what happens in the fall in Maine, it gets darker and darker until the winter gets, you know, the sun, this time of this time of day in the summer, the sun would be up already, but it's pretty pretty dark outside at the moment and coffee helps me adjust coffee as a tool for higher consciousness. Anyway, so, what you know so, what are what are the things can be spiritual, then what, who, who has a spiritual experience? So,

you know, something, an idea that I want to put forth and you can you can try on and accept or reject is that the deeper you go into almost anything, the more spiritual it becomes. And so people who are have a pursuit or An example of that, and but by pursuit I mean people who are really incredible at one thing, so like world class musician, not saying necessarily, you know, pop stars, people who are make a ton of money playing music, but somebody who has dedicated their entire life to playing the piano, for example, or, or, you know, sport, for example, somebody who is at the very top of their game, if you are, you know, if you are lucky enough to watch them, you can see that they're absorbed into the experience that they're deep, deep, deep into the experience, there's something beyond the technical skill there. And when they're performing at their peak, they're in flow, and they're having what I can only describe as a spiritual experience. Give you a couple examples of that. Um, you know, years ago, I went to see a, I mean, many years ago, I went to see this concert pianist play, classical, classical piano solo concert. And you know, this person was absolutely brilliant, absolutely amazing. And I do have, I do have a musical background, I come from a musical family. My mom is a multi instrument, musician. My dad played music my, my brother plays guitar. And I played music and wrote music and did all kinds of, I did all kinds of stuff with music still kind of do. And so I know a little bit and I appreciate music, and I love I love many, many forms of music. In fact, I use I play music on Spotify. And last year, Spotify sent me this report, they said, you listen to 325 genres of music last year, and I was a little blown away. I do have very eclectic tastes in music, but I didn't realize it was 325 genres of music, different types of music, so I listened to music a lot. And I listened to different kinds, everything from folk music, from different countries, to popular music, to classical music to anything you can think of. If it's musical I like, I like it. I like listening to it. But anyway, so I went to see this concert pianist play at It was at this college near where I grew up called Bates College, which is in a town called Lewiston, Maine. And they have this beautiful art center with a lovely stage with great acoustics and a watch this man playing piano, and I don't remember exactly what he was playing, whether it was Rachmaninoff, or something else, but it was just, you know, some incredible piece of classical music. And I watched him very closely. I was sitting, you know, he was kind of in the center of the stage. And I was I was kind of in the center, I could see his hands and I get also see his face from the side. And, you know, as he played, first of all, he was not reading music, the piece that he was playing, which is incredibly complex, was memorized. You know, and lots of solo musicians do that, but it's still pretty incredible. To me, I certainly couldn't have done that. But about halfway into the concert, I noticed he was playing with his eyes closed. So he was not even looking at the keys and he just knew where they were. And you could tell from the expression on his face, that he was having this just experience of pure beauty and love for the music that he was playing. And he was just completely absorbed into the experience. It's like the audience didn't exist. And it's like the music was almost playing through him. That's to me in a spiritual experience.

Whether or not days he was involved, or he was channeling or what have you, but he was connected to the world in a way where it fell away a little bit. And he was connected to the music. And you know, that is that is a beautiful experience. It was a beautiful experience to watch and listen to live music is amazing. I you know, I listen, I do, obviously listen to a lot of recorded music, but I like to support live music. Because the it is, music is not just a sound experience, right? You know there is the sense of being in the, in the audience there's you know, there's the seeing the musician perform is very different. And hearing live music is different than recorded. Most recorded music these days, particularly popular music is edited like crazy, they do hundreds of takes and cut together the best pieces and process everything through electronics to make what they think is the best sound. But it is it's artificially sterile a little bit when you listen to it, you know, having everything perfect, and I realized they add things, they add things in when they do electronic processing to fudge with the music a little bit because perfect music actually doesn't actually sounds a little weird to human beings, because we're used to humans who aren't metronomes, or our computers generating absolute precision and our music. So now they've written stuff with, you know, electronic music to add to add swing to add little, you know, delays and holds in there to make it seem more random. says an interesting thing. Let me tell you give you another example. So I was having this conversation with my girlfriend recently, we're talking about this very topic. And she was telling me that, you know, and I use the, I use the example of Michael Jordan, who's probably, at least at one point, the world's most famous basketball player. And, you know, even if you don't follow American basketball, you might know who Michael Jordan is, because, you know, Nike sells Air Jordans, which are named after him. And, you know, he's been in movies and TV commercials all over the world and all kinds of stuff, right, he was the biggest basketball star in the world when he was playing. And watching him play was kind of an otherworldly experience, even if you don't like basketball. Because again, you know, he was he was the best in the world and having what I think was a spiritual experience where the game was almost being played through him rather than him playing the game rather than him efforting at the game, he was in flow when he played his best. And my girlfriend said to me, she goes, I don't even like basketball, but I would watch Michael Jordan play when he played with the Chicago Bulls. And we don't, you know, we live in New England, like we, the the Boston Celtics are the team that everybody follows here. And, you know, so he's not even playing for the team that everybody falls here, but people would watch him. So talk about being connected to something greater, you know, when millions of people who aren't even supposed to be fans of your team are tuning in to experience second hand what you're doing. I think that's a spiritual experience. It is a connection to something greater, he was connected to everybody watching him and he was connected to the game and his teammates and the other players and the whole world became connected to the whole world. So spiritual activity can be just about anything. A be somebody who's painting could be somebody who's an amazing chef, I was watching a documentary about you know, about this particular chef, and he was talking about how cooking for him was about a moment, a moment in a time when what he was cooking was perfect. And a second before that it was under done in a second after that. It was it was overdone, and he was just really absorbed into what he was doing. I think that's a spiritual experience.

Um, you know, it carries with it, it carries with it passion, it carries with it being in state of flow. Time, your perception of time seems to change. You know, and I've had these experiences in training martial arts and doing music and doing other things when I was a kid, these flow states, these flow states are definitely spiritual. So I would include anything like that. You know, and like I said, the deeper You get really get into anything the more spiritual becomes so you know, I could go out and play basketball poorly. But I probably won't have a spiritual experience from that because it's like, I'm not going to have a very deep experience of that, could I? Absolutely sure. Even if I'm not good at basketball, I could no dedicate myself to it and go really deeply into my experience of it and that sort of thing. So you can go very deep into almost anything and that includes yourself. And that is an can be an important part of spirituality going deep into yourself and doing your work. In shamanism, this is critical. Because shamanism, when you if you practice it in any serious way is going to shake your life to the very foundations. It's just the way it works. If you're, if you don't come into shamanism, from your life already being shaken up severely, some people come into shamanism as the result of what's called shamanic crisis, which is like a health crisis or a mental health crisis, that sort of thing. But even then, it's going to shake you up and tell you that you need to do your own work, which includes like Shadow Work, and healing work and all kinds of stuff. There's stuff there. You know, and I have a lot of people come to me that say, I want to learn shamanism, and that's cool. You know, you can, you can, you know, it is something these days, you can dabble a little bit into, you can take a weekend, introduction class and read books and learn how to journey relatively quickly, actually, you know, myself and some of my colleagues have been working on different ways to teach people to do shamanic journeying. And the way that I teach it now, you know, has changed since when I started teaching, and I have found a way, I've found ways and there could certainly be better ways of teaching it. But I found a way that has the highest rate of initial success, meaning most people, you know, before, it would take a lot of tries sometimes before most people were successful. And, you know, I experimented with the way I teach it, and the way you know, the, the order in which people do things and that sort of thing. And I've got a method of teaching now that nearly everyone is successful the first time. So, you know, people can dabble in this stuff and learn it a little bit. But if you want to do it to a degree of depth, you want to say become a practitioner, or this is going to become your sole spiritual path. You know, hold on to your hat, your life's gonna get shaken up a bit. It's just the way it happens. You know, it's the way that spirit reconfigures you, gets you ready to be able to do the work, that sort of thing. So, yeah, I mean, you can you can do spiritual activities without going way too deep. But you know, but going very deeply, you're going to go into yourself, you're gonna go deeply into yourself. And that can be a spiritual experience. Even if you do that through psychoanalysis, for example, you know, particularly like Jung in psychoanalysis, I won't talk about Freud. Like, I think that's kind of gone by the wayside at this point, but he was a pioneer, but his ideas had a place in time, where, you know, Jung came along and you know, sort of talking about archetypes and actually, you know, studied shamanism and had shamanic experiences and really, like his stuff became really spiritual. Likewise, a lot of physicists, particularly people who were doing some initial work in the area of quantum physics and stuff became ultimately became very spiritual when they started looking at the way the universe works.

You know, quantum entanglement, you know, two particles that are not touching and can be separated by I guess, any distance. When you observe one the other one changes. You know, could be light years away could be, you know, whatever. How does that work? Well, you know, Einstein called that spooky spooky action at a distance sounds sort of spiritual, doesn't it? Spooky we think of ghosts and spirits and that sort of thing. All that stuff's hard to get your brain around, like the fact that observing things changes how they behave, but we can we can prove that empirically, scientifically, experimentally. The very act of being conscious of something by observing something observing it changes it at a fundamental level of physics. If that isn't spirits are spiritual, I don't know what it is. So that's, you know, that's spiritual spirituality, kind of my definition. And you know, where we're going in this is sort of important leading into the next topic. And I said, I was going to talk about spirituality, and magic. And again, not stage magic, not pulling rabbits out of a hat or card tricks, or, you know, coin tricks or rope tricks or what have you. Although, I love a, I'll be honest with you, I love stage magic. I love to be fooled by that stuff. I did stage magic. When I was a young kid, I did a show, I did a talent show, I did a magic act. And I was always learning tricks. And I was fascinated by that stuff. And I still am to this day, and I will you know, very often watch magicians on TV or YouTube or what have you. And even when it is hard to fool me because I you know, understand how the mechanics behind some of the tricks it's still impressive because I particularly like sleight of hand. Because sleight of hand. As opposed to this, you know, ginormous stage magic that relies on, you know, props and assistants, and smoke and mirrors and stuff. Sleight of Hand requires skill and endless hours of practice. When you see a magician, you know, make a coin disappear, for example, that might represent years of practice. And you know, the the effect might be super simple. And you might have seen it 1000 times. But it is, you know, having some understanding of the mechanics of sleight of hand makes you actually appreciate that even more. I remember one day, you know, we're, you know, years and years ago, I was living in Boston, there was a guy there was a street magician who used to work downtown, he used to put on a little show and pass a hat and try to collect money and stuff. And he was I remember he was at least his act he came off is very angry. For some reason. It was strange, strange act. And I remember walking up behind him one day when he was doing his show. I didn't intentionally walk behind him. I was just, you know, I was walking up the street where he was performing, and I wound up behind him. And I saw what he was doing. I saw him do stuff behind his back. Now I had seen his act several times before because I had stopped and watched him. And I could see him he did tricks with you know, cups and balls in a cigarette in his hat and all these things. And it was all sleight of hand. And it was just incredible. And it was incredible. Watching him do what he was doing, watching how he did the trick was absolutely incredible. Because the dexterity required, the amount of practice the years of practice he must have put in was incredible. And he noticed me standing behind him. And he turned around and in his angry way said something along the lines of I don't care if you can see what I'm doing. Because you can't do it. He was absolutely right. Even if I knew 100% of everything he did. It would take me years to get to the level of skill that he was at. And the thing is, so people watching him from the front would see him you know,

make a cigarette disappear and then reappear in his mouth or whatever. And he Oh yeah, you know, that's a cool trick. But I'm watching him, you know, skillfully move it from hand to hand behind his back in a way that nobody notices and palming it and you know, flicking it between fingers without looking at his hands and just using his sense of touch index state and knowledge of where things is at. I think that was a spiritual experience, certainly was observing it. But I want to talk about magic Hocus Pocus, witchcraft and sorcery and wizardry and Harry Potter stuff, but in real life. And, you know, there are many definitions of magic. One of the most famous ones is from Alistair Crowley, who was an infamous magician considered himself a black magician, and he had a lot of a lot of bad press, and most of that was his own doing was an incredible egomaniac. And he was, by all accounts, not a very nice person, very abusive to a lot of people around him. That being said, he really revolutionized our understanding of a lot of things. He wrote seminal works in things that are referenced in many areas today. And without him, you know, there's a lot of a lot of things that wouldn't you know, people practicing different occult sciences and types of magic and stuff like that might not be because he popularized a lot of stuff. It was one of those things where he was like, always saying crazy stuff in being written about in newspapers. And, you know, he called himself the beasts. And so it was, like, shocking to, you know, the Christians in his, you know, his, in the, his own country of the UK and in the United States. And he was around during World War Two. And there is a there's a really interesting series about Jack Parsons, who founded a jet propulsion laboratories that is still the people who build rockets for NASA. And he got heavily involved into Salima, which is the system of ceremonial magic. And the order that Alistair Crowley founded and he was a, a direct student of Crowley, I think the I don't know how truthful, the, you know, it's a TV show. So they have fictionalized, some of it. But it is really based on real people and many real events and that sort of thing. And Alistair Crowley was definitely involved in intelligence work, which is interesting, because you know, if you know who John D is, he was the sort of the court astrologer for Queen Elizabeth the first and a magician, and wrote volumes and volumes of stuff. But he was also involved in intelligence work, and many other things is an advisor to Queen Elizabeth and just a, you know, brilliant renaissance man. And I've read a few books about him. And he's just extremely interesting, and many times in trouble with the law, because practicing anything that was considered a cult or magic or whatever, was risky. You're taking your life in your hands, back in those days, you know, they'd still burn you for being a witch or hang you for being a witch. That was well before the witch trials in the US where they hung, you know, I think 22 People 20 some odd people but jailed over 200 But obviously, in Europe, they, you know, killed maybe in the millions who knows, it's not an accurate record, but lots and lots of people during that time. So anyway, Crowley had a definition of magic, which is, you know, causing change in accordance with will write causing change in the world, according to your will, so I will something into existence or I will certain circumstances to happen and I can cause some change.

And that, you know, that's a that's a good and workable definition. Um, but I do think that may be a little overly inclusive, right. So if I ask somebody to pass the salt across the table, and they do is that magic? Because I have caused change in accordance with Will I have encountered please pass the salt and the person pass the salt? You know, maybe maybe you consider that magic, and that's fine. But that sort of ordinary to me. You know, and then you shamanic realms we, you know, we kind of differentiate between ordinary reality and non ordinary reality. There's certainly, you know, there's certainly no agreement about the definition of magic amongst magicians, magical orders, that sort of thing. But for me, it kind of boils down to the word influence. And it is, you know, the use of non physical, non ordinary means, to influence reality. And that is, you know, that is still a fairly loose definition. Right, and so I'm talking about non physical. So, even though there may be physical components to working magic, I might be using burning a candle, and citing incantations, are all physical things, what's happening underneath that is some non physical stuff. So I might be using physical action as a means to get some non physical change. And I really like the word influencing reality rather than changing reality. Because, you know, you know, when I was, you know, when I was a kid, I would have loved to be able to, like, wave a wand and have an ice cream, you know, bowl of ice cream appear in front of me. And I would consider that magic, making something appear out of thin air. And, though I have witnessed things along those lines, in my life, someday, I'll describe some of the things that I have witnessed firsthand. And I promise I was not doing drugs while I witnessed them. And, you know, you may or may not believe them, I wasn't the only person there who witnessed them. But I've seen some things, my friends that would convince anybody that this stuff is real. So anyway, most of the time, that's not how magic works. Most of the time, we are influencing things, and, and the easiest thing to influence our circumstances and events, right. And this is where the law of attraction falls down. For a lot of people, manifestation falls down for a lot of people. Because there's this idea that if I sit around and wish real hard, a box of money is going to fall out of the sky and land in my lap. And in a in an infinite and expanding universe, that is certainly possible. But that is not probable. And so I like to look at magical activity, which again, is using using non physical non ordinary means to influence reality.

You know, I like to, I like to look at that in different in a different way. And I like to look at it as influencing probabilities. And so, you know, there, there are easier things to do and magic and harder things to do in magic. And so easier things are things that have a higher probability of already happening. Because you don't have to affect as much stuff. So, you know, an example of that is, you know, using using magic to help you change somebody's mind about something, or to bring about a set of circumstance, a set of open ended circumstances. So I'll give you even an example here, okay. So I want to use magic or the law of attraction or wishing or praying and praying is a form of magic that might be offensive to you if you are Christian or what have you, but you are using spiritual means to try to influence reality. That's magic in a very pure form. So whatever means whatever means you're doing you're you're trying to, you know, you're you're trying to cause things to happen. And one of the ways that law of attraction manifestation stuff falls down for people is they try to control too much of the manifestation. So let's say that I want to do some work, I want to pray or I want to cast a spell or I want to, you know, do something To manifest some money, right? Say I need $1,000 for something, and I want to use magical methods to attract that or manifest or what have you. Um, you know, and that might be well, within the realm of reality in my, in my given circumstances, I might know people who could potentially lend me $1,000. Or I might be able to get a raise at work or what have you. And so there's, there's a high probability of that happening. And that's a very easy thing to do. Where it gets hard is where I try to outguess the universe, and manifest very specific things in very specific ways. Like, on Tuesday, at 3pm, I will walk out to my mailbox and open it up and inside will be a brown envelope with $1,000 in cash from an unknown source. Is there a possibility that that could happen that that could manifest? Sure, anything's possible? Is it probable that that's going to happen to me? Unlikely, that's not something that has ever happened to me in my life, it's not something that ever happens to most people. Could I use magical means prayer, whatever, to influence those exact circumstances? Yeah, that's gonna be pretty hard, though. And it might not be successful. And if it is, um, if it's not successful, I might get discouraged. And I might believe that none of this stuff works. If however, and, and trust me, I have done this, I say I am going to, you know, I need to manifest at least $1,000 in some way. In the near future, I'm being less precise about this. And this allows the universe to work with probabilities and find the most probabilistic way of, of creating that circumstance, it's far easier to influence that circumstance to come in. Because that $1,000 could come to me in different ways. So I did a ritual, you know, a while ago, and the ritual was, was an experiment I didn't, I wasn't lacking in any way. But it was part of some educational program I was in where they're like, Okay, do this, you know, do this ritual, and you will have an unexpected amount of, you know, financial abundance come to you in at these periods of time, and don't try to control how they're coming to you. So I was like, okay, you know, I'm down with that, to see how this works. And so I did the ritual, and I kind of forgot about it. And then within a very short period of time, a relative sent me an unexpected and quite large sum of money. And older relative basically saying, I'm trying to,

you know, I'm trying to basically give away, you know, she's getting up there in age, I'm trying to give away stuff to people, my relatives will be inheriting stuff to me before I pass away. So it doesn't have to go through probate or people fighting over it and contesting the will and all this stuff, XYZ. And she talked to her lawyer and a lawyer, he said, This is a great idea. And so out of the blue, right after this. This large amount of you know, large ish, not huge, I'm not independently wealthy, came to me from that completely unexpected, unknown. It didn't cause any bad circumstances for anybody. It was nothing but a gift of love and joy, and no legal repercussions could have been cleared through a lawyer and didn't have to rob a bank, any of those things. And, you know, I didn't, I wouldn't, couldn't have possibly, excuse me, guess if these exact circumstances or made these exact circumstances happen. But because I did this ritual, and as an experiment, and I was open to whatever happened and how it happened, and I didn't try to control it. It happened and I've had things like this very frequently, frequently in my life. So I, you know, at one point, I in my life, I decided I wanted to become a published author. I'm like, How's you know, how am I gonna do that? I'm going to self publish, I'm going to write a book proposal. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. And I was working in technology, but I was still studying spiritual things. And, you know, what have you and I did some work around becoming a published author. and out of the blue, a, an acquisitions editor for a technical publishing company got in touch with me. And I didn't think that I was going to write a technical book. This was the other thing, I thought, Oh, I'm going to write something about martial arts, or I'm going to write something about spirituality. But I just did this work to become a published author. And acquisitions editor contacted me out of the blue found my LinkedIn profile or something, and got in touch with me and said, we're looking for somebody with your expertise to write this exact book, will you pitch this to us? Long story short, you know, seven or eight years ago, I wrote it, I wrote a technology book and got it published. And, you know, that, that came true. And that has happened over and over again, in my life. Um, and so, you know, the, the example I like to you, but I was open to how that was going to happen. And that made things much easier for the work to work, so to speak. Like I, you know, I definitely, you know, I was, it was open ended, and I was willing to accept the way that it came to me and, and I was surprised. And that pretty much always happens when something like this occurs, I'm always surprised at how it comes to me. Again, this is where the law of attraction falls down a little bit. I think people try to control stuff or be really exact about stuff, or they do things out of desperation. Or, you know, they give up too soon. As to this stuff doesn't work. It really does. It really does all work. So, you know, an example I'd like to give before I before I wrap this up, because I'm at about an hour now is, you know, most people think well if you know if you can influence reality, and you can you can cast a spell or do some work or do law of attraction work? Why can't you just win the lottery. So again, remember, I said that magic is about influence and about influencing probability. So if you look at a big lottery, so in the in the US, we have a lot of states, we have this thing called Powerball. And they've had, you know, half a billion dollar jackpots, I can't even imagine that amount of money, that people have won huge amounts of money Big Lottery. Well, the odds the probability of winning that, you know, by guessing the correct numbers that are being drawn, or if you are trying to influence the numbers that are being drawn, or something like one in 300 million. So imagine trying to influence something that has a probability of one in 300 million.

So that would be a little bit like me saying, I'm going to I don't I skate? I'm going to use magic, and I'm going to become an Olympic ice skater. Is that probable? Where the what's the probability of that? Pretty much nothing, right. So trying to influence and on top of that, you've got, you know, 300 million people trying to win the same thing, trying to create the same effects for themselves, undoing the work that you're doing. That's really, really hard to do in magic. Now, luck is a thing. And luck is an energy and luck is a real thing in many systems. And from hoodoo, to Norse magic, to all kinds of stuff. Luck is a force, it's a power. And again, luck is about influencing probability in your favor, having things come up your way. But it's not going to you know, if you jump off a building, make a marshmallow a, you know, a 17 foot tall marshmallow peeler appear under you, so you're totally fine. That I'm sorry to say that's not how it works, at least not in my experience, or is very, very difficult to do that. There's lots of ways that magic can work. I'll do a whole episode on probably on magic at some point in the future, but I just wanted to really talk about spirituality and Magic in the same podcast so that because they go hand in hand. And remember I said, you know, magic is using non physical, non ordinary means to influence influence reality. So there are lots of things that are magic that people don't think are so prayer is a big one. Prayer is huge if you ever pray for anything, and that includes praying to go to heaven. When you die, or praying to heal yourself when you're sick or, or somebody else are praying for world peace, you're trying to influence reality. Um, you know, in many places in the world, when somebody has a birthday, we put candles on their cake and light them and people make a wish and blow them out. Well, that's an act of magic, right? Making a wish and blowing out candles, that's candle magic. You know, and people don't think about it that way. People who are like, oh, you know, magic is, is the work of the devil, they'll still blow up candles on their birthday cake. Which is, you know, I'll get into the whole another, another podcast too. It's all pretty silly. So I want to wrap it up here. But I hope this has been helpful. And I would encourage you to play with beliefs a little bit. You know, and just do thought experiments around them. What what would it be like if I believed this? What would it be like if I believed this, you don't have to adopt anything, you don't have to take on anything permanently. And the more flexible you can be, the better in my opinion.

And I realize it's a subjective term, but you're gonna have an easier time with reality if you can be a little more flexible in your belief system.

With that, I'll sign off I hope you're happy and healthy. I love you all. And I will talk to you again really soon.

Announcer 1:07:38

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John more. For more info or to contact John go to maineshaman.com That's maineshmam.com