Ep47 Magick, Mysticism, Esoterric, and Exoteric

Announcer 0:28

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. Hello, everybody. I have missed you all. I don't know if you miss me. It's been. It's been a long time since I have done a podcast episode. There is a good reason for that. I have been astoundingly busy launching a brand new shamanic community that I'm very excited about, it's doing very well, but required some significant effort on my part in the part of my partner who's working on it. And you know, it's a fantastic thing. And if you are, if you practice shamanism, this is a good community for you to be supported to journey together to get prompts to get self care tips to learn new things. It really is amazing. I'm getting a lot out of it myself, even as a as a co host and founder. And the URL for that is ShamanCommunity.com. So you can check it out there. And see what we're up to. Today is a beautiful spring day, it's going to be where I am in the 60s, Ferrant and that's Fahrenheit or centigrade, we'd be in big trouble. It's gonna be a beautiful day the sun is up, it's shining, the Chipmunks are running around the birds are out, I have to get some more bird seed for my feeders. And feed my little feathered friends, do a little, do a little work outside as well. So anyway, today, I want to talk about magic and mysticism, and the esoteric and the exoteric and you know, some different aspects of spirituality and just bring some thought into these paths and what they're about and sort of what we define as magic and what we define as mysticism and what is exoteric and what is esoteric. And I'm gonna start by saying that, you know, I am going to be talking about some religions here. And they don't, you know, I being a person who does not belong to an organized religion. But I respect people's choice to do so. I don't want to I don't want this to come across as me bashing anybody's religion, far from it. But I'm gonna talk about the, you know, some history of things. And not everybody's history is beautiful, and wonderful. I mean, it's tempting to believe that it's tempting to say, you know, Christianity is all about love. But then you look at the crusades, and the Inquisition and burning witches at the stake. And, you know, there. This isn't about the religion. These things were done in the name of the religion, this is about people justifying horrible actions, using religion. So I'm not talking about that at all. But I'm going to delve into perhaps a little bit of history. And if anything I say disagrees with what you believe that is totally fine. We can disagree and still be friends, can we not? We're living in a very divisive age, politically, spiritually, economically. Let's not make this another area that has to necessarily divide us. And I, you know, I fully believe that everybody is on their own path. Everybody is on a completely unique path. I don't know care if you are a shamanic practitioner, like myself, we're still in different paths, and no to Christians and no to Jews and no to Muslims and no to everybody is unique. Everybody is living their own thing, their own life, their own path. And we should start by recognizing that. And the other thing is, when we look around at the world and up the universe, what we see is a mind boggling and astounding infinity of diversity. Right?

Think of how many species of beetles there are on this planet, how many species of plants and fungus and mushrooms or mushrooms or fungus, how many different types of minerals there are, and that's just on this planet. You know, we're a speck of dust in a gigantic Galaxy full of billions of stars swirling around in a universe that's made up of billions of galaxies. And there are probably an infinite number of parallel universes. It's hard to get your brain around all of it. And so to think that any one person has it has it right for the rest of the universe is pretty haughty. It's you're kind of putting yourself in the place of the Creator. And I'll use the word, I'll use the word God sort of interchangeably here. And the word God has a lot of baggage with it. So sometimes I don't use it. Sometimes I'll say source or the universe, or the creator. But I want to dissociate from the idea of God as this white bearded male who lives in the clouds, and who gets angry a lot, and decides to commit genocide, and, you know, that sort of thing. And I'll talk about that when I get to talking about mysticism a little bit more, this morning. And one thing I'm going to do, and that I always do, when I talk about things, I will define my terms. And if you've listened to this podcast before, you're proud, you may be sick of hearing me say this. But it's an important distinction I make. And it's important thing that I call out. For people who might not have listened to my podcast before, that when I define things when I say this is what magic means. And this is what mysticism means. And this is esoteric exoteric. It's not that I want my definition to supersede yours. Or that there's one way of defining anything, there isn't. It's only that I want you to have a better understanding of what I mean, when I'm using these words. And that's it. If your definition of something disagrees with mine, then that's totally fine. I think we can both be right. Okay. And everything happens in context anyway. So when I describe things, it is in the context of my life and my studies and my practice. And like I said, no two people are on the same path, we're all going to the same place, ultimately. But no two people are on the same path. And so your context is different than mine, even if, and here's a good. Here's a good example of this. I have I have identical twin daughters. And the word identical is a little strange to me. Because my daughters are very different. They look a lot alike. They share genetics. They were born a minute apart, and essentially have close to identical astrological charts. Yet they are very different personality wise. The things they like the things they dislike. There are similarities, of course, like any two human beings or any siblings raised in the same household, so they're raised in the same household at the same time. Then environmental factors the same they went to the same schools. You know, they have had different friends, they have had different teachers, they like, different, you know, they they have things in common with, with many other 15 year olds, you know, things they watch, they like Snapchat and Tiktok. But they're very different people. Very different. And they have been since birth. So

thinking about these children that have, you know, that shared genetics, they weren't started as a single fertilized egg, that split apart. single egg, single sperm, same genetic material, split apart in the womb. And we know that they are, we know they are identical. Because they shared a single placenta, which only happens with identical twins. It's called mono, they're monochorionic. Twins, they do not share a single a single sack they had, which is good, because that's very dangerous. And chances are that one one of them would not have survived. That is amniotic sac. And this, I guess, my understanding of this is, it's it depends on when the egg, the fertilized egg splits into two different children. But, you know, can you imagine in the womb, there's this clump of fertilized cells that could grow into a single being, and for some unknown reason, that splits into two, two independent beings. They live in the same environment for you know, it wasn't quite nine months, they were born prematurely, but they live in the same environment and get the same nutrient nutrients, essentially, and have the same genetics and they were born behaving completely different, differently. And my explanation for that is that they have different souls. There are different souls in those little bodies. And they're very different, and their paths may be different. And we have raised them to follow their own path. Their mother is Catholic, nobody is forcing them to be Catholic. I am a non religious, but very spiritual person. And I practice shamanism and nobody's forcing them to practice shamanism. So very different. And everybody's on the same path. And this is a long way of me saying, if we differ in our viewpoint on things, it's totally fine. And my entire intention for this is just to give you some things to think about. And I don't want you to believe everything I say. In fact, I invite you to disbelieve everything I say, or to take it for what one teacher told me is this expression a lot. Take it for checking. And another teacher of mine would say everything I tell you is BS until you make it until you study it and make it your own. To prove it for yourself. This is very different than a lot of systems, religious systems, spiritual systems that tell you don't ever question anything. Don't question anything. You question things that's blasphemy. Don't question things. Question everything my friends. Stay on your path. I don't care. Do what you want to do. But question everything. So anything I say you don't have to believe and I expect you not to, unless it makes sense to you. Unless you do some exploration and it makes sense to you. But I want to give you some things to think about today. Today I'm talking about my two of my very favorite topics, magic and mysticism. And I'm gonna talk also about exoteric and esoteric. So exoteric e x and esoteric E S. Spirituality. We'll start there a little bit. So exoteric spirituality exoteric means like outer the outer form. So you go to church and you pray and you read the books and you say And when you go to temple or you go to a mosque, or you go to satsang, or you, you know, whatever, whatever it is you go to, or you have this sort of outward practice these outward teachings of your form of spirituality. And maybe you have doctrine, maybe you have books that are full of stories like the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, or the, you know, the other. Any other spiritual books, the Vedas, the

Dhammapada, the, you know, I'm losing track of all the spiritual books there are. So you have doctrine, and you have dogma and you have outward facing rituals, right? You go to Mass you go to, you know, do whatever. That stuff is very exoteric. And I'm going to, I'm going to talk about, I'm gonna talk about Christianity quite a lot, just because it is the religion I'm most familiar with having been raised in a couple of different Christian churches and having, you know, gun to church for at least some of my wayward youth. And I gotta tell you, it didn't keep me out of trouble. I was a natural born rebel, I guess, just gonna have a little sip of my coffee here. So, so I'm going to talk about Christianity, but these things are not. You know, these are examples. And these things happen in every sort of, form of spirituality that has been made into a religion, and organized religion. So again, the exoteric is the outer stuff, and the esoteric is the hidden stuff. And one might be one might believe that there is no esoteric Christianity, or there is no esoteric Islam. I mean, we certainly know about esoteric forms of Judaism, Kabbalah is, has, you know, lots of esoteric stuff in it. But I will tell you that there is a lot of Jewish esoteric mysticism, brought into Christianity. And I'll give you an example of this. I'll give you just one tiny example of this. And then I'll also talk about some of the other forms of esoteric Christianity. So if you're a Christian, you're most likely familiar with the Lord's Prayer. And at the end of the Lord's Prayer is a phrase for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen. Or something very close to that. And kingdom power and glory in Hebrew malkuth net sock and HOD our directs come directly from Kabbalah whoever wrote that prayer, and I believe that many Christian sects believe that Jesus himself handed down that prayer. And that would, you know, I have no idea of the historicity of it, but that would certainly make sense. But that part of the prayer contains a very potent invocation that comes directly from Jewish mysticism. And if you're at all familiar with Kabbalah, or you can, you can look it up. You know, Cabela's, it can be spelled lots of different ways, because it's, you know, technically it's spelled in Hebrew. So when we transliterate it to English, some people spell it with a K and two L's and an H. And some people spell it with a Q and some people spell it with a C. And it did come into modern knowledge from you know, sort of medieval Jewish writers as the first and the word Qabalah comes from the Jewish word kibble. I may be pronouncing this incorrectly I don't really speak. Not really, I don't speak Hebrew at all. I just know a few words here and there. But it comes from hippo, which means received like it was an oral tradition and then Some rabbi in the Middle Ages, I think in Spain, I think in Spain, actually wrote wrote the some of the first books first person to commit this stuff to writing because it was so it was hidden, it was esoteric. You had to go study with the Essenes or somebody to learn this stuff. And their stories that,

you know, when Jesus was 13, he was recognized as being very wise. And, you know, 13 is the age of majority in, in Jewish tradition, right? It's when you have your Bar Mitzvah, or your nowadays, your button mitzvah. And I didn't realize that, but mitzvahs haven't been around that long. And they were pretty much I think they were invented in the US, as a matter of fact, now it's much more commonplace. But Bar Mitzvahs, or when having at the age of 13, and we have stories of Jesus going to the temple and discussing topics, and then there's nothing about him until he's around 30. And some stories have him going off to study with this mystical group out in the desert called the scenes. Ultimately, we don't know I mean, you know, we can, we can take guesses and stuff. But, you know, if he did, indeed, depen, or recite the Lord's Prayer, it contains Jewish mystical wisdom in Jewish mystical knowledge. And I think that's pretty cool. And they're, you know, there were other there are other very esoteric practice practices and Christianity, you know, hidden stuff. We get, you know, not forms of Gnosticism, a lot of it was heresy, a lot of a lot of the esoteric stuff got wiped out. And the reason for that is, you know, the, through many of the Christian eras, the different eras in Christian history, starting with, you know, the Holy Roman Empire, and, you know, then on to the crusades, and the inquisitions. A lot of this stuff was about political power. And again, I'm not, I'm not talking crap about people who believe in Christianity or practice Christianity, I'm talking about organizations that used Christianity as a weapon of control and domination, and committed genocide and all things that are not Christian ideals. You know, converting people at the point of a sword is not very Christian. When I was a kid, I always wondered about the, you know, Onward Christian Soldiers that they sang, as I thought Jesus was about love. You know, oh, that's not what we're singing about. Yes, it is. It is, in fact. So, Christianity in the early early ages, when, you know, during the Holy Roman Empire, and during the crusades, and things like that, so for like, the first 1000 years, was strongly associated with the military. And that's how it got spread. It wasn't. Christianity in the beginning, was a sort of an offshoot sect of Judaism. And it wasn't, it wasn't until, you know, while after Jesus's death, of course, he didn't, you know, they didn't call themselves Christians before his death. It wasn't until well after that, that, you know, they started recruiting Gentiles and non Jewish people. And, you know, by then, we're looking at the teachings of other people besides Jesus Himself. And then it wasn't until, you know, the fourth century of the Council of Nicaea, where they actually decided they voted on many things, including which books would go in the Bible and which ones wouldn't, because there were a lot of books circulating at the time. You know, the gospel of Thomas is one of those. So, you know, there were these Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Judas. You know, it talks about talks about Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene and her being preferred among In His apostles, but because Christianity was adopted by a Roman Empire, and

you know, the army was forced to be Christian and the pagan temples got overturned and all this stuff, it was very patriarchal. And to this day, there are still many patriarchal remnants, the Catholic Church will not make women priests or cardinals, for example. You know, that has changed somewhat in some other denominations, but it is, you know, it is what it is very patriarchal. And so, Christianity spread around the world at the point of a sword, and it wasn't, because people were like, Hey, this is some people were, but very, very few. Imagine, you know, you're following the religion of your ancestors forever. For all your memory, and somebody comes along and says, hey, guess what, my religion is better than yours. And if you believe this, you're going going to heaven? Well, most people are going to, you know, whether doesn't matter if you believe that your religion is the one true religion, or that you testify to that fact. If I showed up at your house right now, whatever your spiritual belief in knocked on your door, and tried to set sell you on worshipping squirrels, most people, and I'm not comparing Christianity to worshipping squirrels, I'm using this as a terrible example, a stupid example, an absurd example. Most people would say, go take a flying leap. And the same would be true of Christianity as well, for a very long time. In many places, you know, it came in late to many areas, and it would take sort of, you know, either a king, adopting Christianity, realizing that it was a great way to control control people, and use it for political power. And, you know, hang on to that patriarchal system of power, and then forcing everybody to convert. And that's what happened. And because the Roman Empire was so huge, you know, it went from Asia Minor to, you know, to Egypt to you know, all the way to what is now the UK, to Britain, Ireland, Scotland. Although, you know, the Christianity didn't go into Ireland and Scotland quite late as well. Which is interesting to consider how religious, Irish, you know, the Irish tend to be, but there is a lot of, you know, what happens there a lot. When Christianity goes into an area, I've seen this in the Philippines, which is predominantly Catholic, and I've seen this in Ireland, and a lot of local stuff gets pulled in. So they have St. bridgid, in Ireland is essentially took over for bridgid, a goddess, a goddess of the hearth and of blacksmiths. In Ireland became, became a saint, a Catholic saint, we see that a lot, quite a lot, as a matter of fact. Um, so there's some stuff, you know, there's stuff that gets mixed in, makes it easier to convert and then the holidays get converted, right, we put Christmas on December 25, which was Saturnalia. We put Easter, you know, in Ostara, we put, you know, we put we put a lot of the holidays and stuff to eclipse the pagan stuff. You know, there was the, you know, all that lots of replacement happening. Anyway, let me get to So, the outer stuff is the exoteric. And the hidden stuff is esoteric. And there is esoteric Christianity. It survives to this day. But again, it's esoteric, it's hidden. There's esoteric practices in Judaism, which are a little bit more well known because they were written down and they were adopted by other traditions. So in Western ceremonial magic for example, there is a lot of Kabbalah this I'm listening to an audio book on Kabbalah by Dion fortune, who is a

Christian magician, I guess, ceremonial magician. I will say that it comes off as by today's standards that comes off as quite racist. She's talking about the white races and stuff like that. It's a little tough, it's a little bitter. But you get past that stuff. You know, there there is still, there's still good mystical, magical learnings there. So there's lots of you know, there's lots of that in. In Islam, for example, the esoteric stuff, you find, well, you find mystics among the Sufis, for example, and there's probably significant esoteric teachings there. But I also know that there are there is Islamic magic dealing with the jinn or what we might call we, in English might call genies, which are spirits of the, you know, spirits that live in the desert. Many consider them devils, but that comes from pre Islamic stuff. And what happened when a lot of these religions took over, is they turned everybody else's Gods goddesses and local spirits into devils and demons. Definitely happened with Christianity. If you think about the God, the, you know, the god Pan from the Greek, from Greek paganism, you know, cloven hooves and horns, sounds a lot like the devil doesn't it. And the word demon comes from the Greek a daemon, which just means spirits. And there were good demons and bad demons. And in you know, you had a house demon, which is the spirit that lived in your house that took care of things. They weren't angels that rebelled against the one true God and fell from heaven. And that was, that came much later. That stuff so you know, when they would go in, they would eclipse the holidays, they would replace the holidays with Christian holidays, they would burn the temples to the ground, they would force people to convert or kill them, they would erect churches on on older holier sites, this happened. This happened in the British Isles quite a lot in just talking to somebody the other day who is biking along ley lines, which are these lines of, I don't have those these lines of spiritual current that run through everywhere. But it's easy to map in the UK, because there are churches built along them, because that were built on earlier pagan sites. So it's one way to sort of give give the middle finger to the pagans was to, like, take over there, take over their sacred sites and build a church on top of them. So, there's still a lot of esoteric stuff going on, you know, less of it, a lot of it got wiped out. They, you know, they burned the libraries in Alexandria. So we lost a lot of knowledge in the West. Unfortunately, in the east, you know, magic and mysticism is blended with everyday life quite beautifully. You know, you can, you know, if you go to Japan, you can go to a Buddhist temple, or Shinto shrine, and in most people, their practice kind of both, I mean, 80% of people in Japan consider themselves Shinto, which is an animistic religion that has, I would say, mystical practices, you know, you know, they do a lot, there's a lot of purification rituals involving water and fire and all kinds of stuff. And you can go to a Buddhist temple and you can practice meditation there, you can practice Zen, which is a very, you know, technically mystical practice. Meditation is akin to mysticism. Because it is about it is about well, we'll talk about I'll give you the definition of mysticism in a moment, but so In the east, it's a little more difficult to differentiate between exoteric and esoteric practices, because spiritual practices vary widely. And a lot of them are out in the open. I will say this, though there are places

there are places that are very closed in the east, for example, there are certain mystical markets, for example, in Nepal, where Westerners are not allowed, there are certain practices that you would not be allowed to participate in or see, you know, that sort of thing. And in, in Judaism, we have the story of the Ark of the Covenant, which I find fascinating. And, you know, so if you've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, or if you know anything about it, you'll know, you know, is this box in which a number of things were kept, including the 10 commandments. And the instructions for building this box are no were are in the Bible, and you can read them in a certain size box. And it's made out of wood, and is lined inside and out with gold and contains an elixir inside a certain elixir and has, you know, it was one of the things compose inside and then has these essentially, what they're what they call Caribs, but they're sphinxes. On top of the box, you might think of Caribs or cherubs as little fat babies with wings. But that's Renaissance art for you. Real kerubim, which is an Order of Angels were sphinxes. So the body of a lion, but they had wings, usually the head of a man and they had wings. And so many people have posited that the Ark of the Covenant was a giant battery. And when you read some of the stories about it, like casting lightning, that sometimes caused the high priest to explode, you know, and that it was kept, it was kept covered inside the Holy of Holies. And I don't know if it was once a year or whatever. You know, the high priest would go in and lay his hands on it, and sometimes would explode. And he would go into this chamber, he was the only one allowed in, and he would have a rope tied around his ankle. So if the thing killed him, which happened with some level of frequency, his, you know, other priests could pull his body out of the chamber. So a lot of it sounds like it's a giant battery. And there are, there have been, there have been working batteries, or what would have been working batteries recovered in ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia. Look up the Babylon battery, if you don't believe me. We're missing. You know, in the modern ages, we're missing a lot of ancient technology that we haven't found because, you know, to be honest stuff that's 10,000 years old decomposes. Even if it's made out of metal, we really only have a lot of things. Most of what we have has to be made out of stone, because it doesn't decompose quickly. Or it's been preserved by being in a desert somewhere, which is why we have working batteries from Egypt and Mesopotamia electrical batteries. So we have an acid solution, we have an insulator, we have, you know, an anode and a cathode. And, you know, this thing probably did give off lightning, they probably collected charge out of the atmosphere for a long time in more than a battery was probably, you know, a giant capacitor. Judging strictly by the instructions on how to build this thing, it would have served as a capacitor. So anyway, you imagine like once a year or however were however frequently going in and laying your hands on this thing, not knowing if you're going to explode. But even priests who didn't explode were often I'm struck down by the power of the Ark of the Covenant, which was seen as the power of God.

And not to take anything from anyone's beliefs or anything, but you know, I mean, electricity is a pretty amazing thing. And if you think that source or God created the universe, then everything is electrical. You know, everything has electrons. So we could say that this is a power of, of God, indeed. God's great lightning. So, that's exoteric. And esoteric. exoteric is the stuff that everybody sees going church reading the Bible. Esoteric is frequently, sometimes written down, but frequently word of mouth stuff, or stuff written in cipher, or hidden in images, or written an allegory. So let me tell you some a little bit about a little bit about the, the, the Bible. So you know, there's obviously there's the Old Testament, there's the New Testament, and, you know, the New Testament was written in Aramaic and Greek and the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. And then everything was later translated into Latin. Because that was the language of the land in the language of law. Even if you lived in England, or wherever, the only Bibles around for the longest time, were written in Latin. And the reason for that is that these, the Bible was not originally meant to be consumed by everyone. In fact, you could have been in big trouble, even killed for possessing a Bible if you are not the right person. And certainly most people couldn't read until pretty recently. And masses were conducted in Latin. So if you didn't read and you didn't understand Latin, you didn't even know what the heck was being said. You know, you just went to church to get the you know, because that was the thing that you had to do things I know you know, things are different now. You know, Catholic mass, it was only in the 20th century, when that changed, I think it was in the 1960s. So 2000 years, mass was almost 2000 years mass was conducted in in Latin, and you know, translating at various times translating the Bible into the vernacular, which is the, you know, the local tongue was illegal. But the Bible was not meant to be a read by unlearned people. Because be it was not meant to be read literally. And while there are events and people in the Bible that are that are historical, a lot of what in what is in there is allegorical and hidden. And that doesn't take a lot, actually, to see that, to find that out to learn that you don't have to look too deeply. I give you an example of the Lord's Prayer, being, you know, the bottom triad of the tree of life from Kabbalah is the last line for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. The olam Amen forever. Amen. Right, kingdom power glory malkuth netzach, hod. And so there's, you know, literally reading the Bible and thinking the world is 6000 years old, which actually the Bible doesn't state. But looking at this as a historical document, was seen for most of the history of the Bible, as the lowest form of reading the Bible. Because it did not give you an understanding of a real understanding of God. And I can tell you that, you know, unless you're, unless you can read Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek. You're reading, you're reading a translation that may not really approach what is you know, more or less approaches what is said there but might not and I know of, I know if people who went to Divinity School and we're taking

Biblical Greek, and reading the New Testament, and many, many of them had a crisis of faith, when they found out that the original New Testament in Greek did not say what they thought it said for their entire life. And in Hebrew, one of the things I find really interesting is the, the creator in Genesis is Elohim. And Elohim, also, you know, in some places referred to as Elohim. Adonai, which I don't know is frequently translated as Lord. But Elohim is often translated as God, sometimes as Lord in English. But that word is complicated word Elohim. Eel, or E, L is a word for goddess, female, it's a feminine word. And heme is masculine and plural. So you have a word that is both feminine, masculine and plural. And that flies in the face of one a patriarchy, and a lot of monotheism. And some might translate that as in the beginning, the gods and goddesses are created to mankind in their own image. But that would be sacrilegious. For many in Christianity, that would be blasphemous, but I do know that there are some people who translate it that way. Anyway, let's get on. I've talked a little bit about mysticism already. And mysticism is about reuniting with the Godhead. Now nowadays, there's this new age movement towards ascension and the fifth dimension, and all of these things, and people are putting these different, different terms on things and, you know, it's okay, I don't want to take anything away from anyone else. But I just think a lot, you know, I see a lot of that is very egoic. Right where true reunion with the Godhead is about peeling away layers of the ego, not about it's not about achieving something. It's not about achievement, it's about dropping away, it's about dropping away the false now, in the, in the Kabbalah, you you know, if you ever get a chance, and you don't haven't seen this, look at the tree of life, there are true two paths on the tree of life. And the Tree of Life is a diagram, which many take as looking at different states of consciousness, between God, the Creator, at the very top of the tree, and the physical universe at the bottom, being malkuth, the kingdom. And there are two paths in the tree of life. One is a pathway down from God to the physical universe. And the other is a pathway up from the physical universe to God, the pathway up which is known as the path of the snake, and where have we seen a snake in a tree before Oh, in the book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve in the tree of knowledge, and eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, get you kicked out of the kingdom malkuth. Interesting. And some would call that original sin. But it's called the path of the snake as the snake is winding up the tree. And this is about movement from identification with physical to identification with less and less physical, physical, you know, physical universe to higher and more subtle states. Until one fully identifies with essentially limitless light, which is what you know, essentially what God has pictured as in this model. And everything's a model it's not, you know, it's a map of reality. It isn't reality. The pathway down the tree, from God into the physical universe, is the path of magic. I'll talk about magic in a moment. But magic is about creation. It is about affecting, you know, going, taking from high and going down into more and more solid planes of existence until you get into physical reality. Let's talk about define magic for a second. I'm not let me be very clear that I'm not talking about stage magic here.

I love Penn and Teller. I love stage magic. When I was about eight years old, I won second place in a talent show, doing a magic act. I have not kept up my practice, but I love love, love stage magic, I love illusion. I love the psychology of it. I like tricking people, you know, in ways that make them happy, not in ways that, you know, make people less happy or cause them harm. But, you know, surprising people, delighting people. I like all of that. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about magic. And sometimes in the West, we spell that with a K to differentiate it from magic. And that was that K was added by an infamous magician named Aleister Crowley who called himself the beast 666. And, you know, the guy got a lot of bad press. And, you know, by all accounts, he was not a very nice person. It's kind of a jerk. However, a lot of his bad press was his own doing. He, he was a guy, he was really good at PR, really good at PR. And he knew that he could get a lot of attention. And he was, you know, he was an egomaniac, let's be clear about that he could get a lot of attention. By painting himself as the most wicked man on earth. He wasn't the most wicked man on earth. I mean, certainly Hitler would fall into that category, Stalin would fall into that category. But whatever he, you know, he, he promoted his image as a black magician, and a drug themed and all of these things. And he he was the those things, and the people were afraid of that back then. And that got him in newspapers, it got him press, it got him a following. And that's what he wanted. But he defined magic as causing change in accordance with will. And I think that is a little too general for me. Because if I pick up an apple and throw it across the room, I have caused change in accordance with will, but most of us would not consider that a magical act. But, you know, if I pray for somebody, and they are healed, or if I pray, and my consciousness is elevated, or if I, you know, practice a ritual, and I, you know, I have a change in consciousness. Those I would consider magical acts, and I do consider prayer, a magical act. And the Catholic Church in particular is full of ritual magic. I mean, Transubstantiation, they turn the, you know, the, the host into the body of Christ, literally, when you're eating the wafer, in, in Catholic mass, you are literally consuming the body of Christ, they do not consider it a spiritual change, they it, they consider that an actual physical change, whether you see it or not. That is a magical ritual. But lots of things, marriage, you know, all kinds of stuff. So, I would say using, you know, non physical means, and there may be a physical component, because there might be a physical ritual that is performed. But I'm not using direct physical means to cause a change in reality. And the change can happen on all of the different planes or some of the planes. So if I do something in change my consciousness, I believe that's a magical act, because that's a different plane. But most of us think of the physical and we think of stuff that looks like we see, we've seen in the movies, you know, casting fireballs out of your fingertips, or, you know, that sort of thing, but that's not really what it's about. So the magical path is, is it is the path of creation.

It's the path from divinity. So in a lot of Western magic, they work with angels and archangels. And there's all of these orders and there's these complex systems of who works for who and there are different worlds and you, you know, you reach up to work with these Archangels who set their angels to work do meaning these tasks are you bind demons and there's, there's all kinds of stuff. But there's all kinds of different types of magic, there's chaos magic, there's mental magic that works with pure consciousness. Ultimately, it's kind of all kind of all the same. You're using different methods to have your consciousness, create change, and to create change, you have to change your consciousness. So, as a teacher of shamanism, I would say that shamanism is both exoteric and esoteric and has both magical and mystical components. When I work with clients on behalf of clients, for example, I need to merge my consciousness frequently with helping spirits to do the work. And that is, that is mysticism. And doing that work to cause change, to cause healing to happen to cause psychological change for the client. That's magic. So there's a little bit of both going on there. Both magic and mysticism. This is just a little taste. You know, I'll talk more about these subjects. As as I am fond and love them all. But I will talk more about magic. I will talk more about mysticism and esoteric and exoteric stuff in future podcasts. I just wanted to give you some things to think about. And again, I hope you don't think if you follow a particular religion or spiritual path, please don't think that I am bashing on that or looking down upon it or saying bad things about it. I am not. I'm not at all, I'm just trying to point out some things to think about. And again, I think all paths can be equally valid. Except when they say this is the only path that I have a problem with. And I you know, don't mean to, again, that might fly in the face of what you believe. But if you need to believe that the way you do things is the only way to do them, you've got some work to do. You've got some work to do on yourself, you have given up your identity, you've given up a good portion of your identity, and you are uncomfortable with other people not giving up theirs. And that's not what, that's not what this reality is about. So at the very top of divinity, we can say God, we can say source, we can say the universe is limitless, light and soft, or is what's called in Hebrew, which stands for limitless potential limitless, unrealized potential. So this is a consciousness, an all pervasive consciousness that has every potentiality in it. And the only way that this limitless potentiality can sort of experience itself is by dividing itself into into many, many, many things and almost infinite amount of things. So this is where we get this infinite diversity from the source. I like to use the allegory of think of source as this infinite brilliant white beam of light that has no beginning and no end. But this light, wants to wants to look at itself. But that's really hard. That's about like trying to look in your eyeball. You can't, you're gonna look in the mirror and see the reflection of your eyeball, but you can't look at your own eyeballs. You know, you can take a picture and look at a picture of your eyeballs, but you can't look at your own eyeballs. So this differentiation is like a prism. And this white light, if you've ever you know, we've all seen prism. You put it in white light and it separates the light out into every color in the rainbow. Right and then and then some some we can't see.

So all of these different beams of colored light have the same source. If you were to turn off the source well, then everything ceases to exist. Right? No white light, no rainbow but we're you know, an individual beam of this rainbow and where we make an error is is where we think that we aren't connected to source and that we are all separate. That's ego. We are all separate individual things without connection. And the mystical path is about learning that everything is connected to everything. I understand that it's hard for the human mind to conceive of this, I can't really conceive of this. And I've been working on this for many, many, many years. I know at an abstract level, that everything is connected to everything. Everything you do has an effect on everything else, everything else has an effect on you. And everything has an effect on everything. It's the butterfly effect, but times times infinity. So mysticism, is about moving back towards source moving up your individual beam of light, again, we're all in different paths, we're all on our individual beams of light. And moving towards that prism, realizing that the prism is there, first of all, and moving towards that source light and then identify, oh, oh, I m, I m source, I'm just happen, my consciousness happens to be just differentiated. But I am no less source than anyone else, or anything else. It's all connected. All Connected to source. And that is the mystical path, the magical path is, can be enhanced by the mystical path, because it is reaching up to source and bringing down another color of light to make a change in the world as we see it. So with that, this has been, I don't know, maybe a lot of tangents, but I hope this has given you some things to think about some things to examine. You know, I would love it if you again, took what I said for checking, took it out and explored on your own. What makes sense for you do some reading, do some research, look into things. Do some practices, do some meditation, do some prayer. And by the way, interestingly, the you know, the Yoga is a path of you know, path of union to God, although nowadays in the West yoga is like a workout. But that's only one branch, one arm of yoga, there are eight different arms of yoga, eight different methods. And one is devotional path, and that's bhakti yoga. Right? And that is predominantly Western. Western religion is bhakti. It's devotional yoga. There is also some chanting, right? You know, you do your rosary. Well, that's mantra yoga. Okay, but we, you know, we missed many times in the West, we missed the other eight arms of yoga, we don't call it yoga. We call it devotional practice, or you know, whatever it is. So anyway, look into your own stuff, be a mystic, be a magician. You don't have to give up your spiritual system for that just look deeper. Read about other systems with an open mind without judgment. And understand that everybody again is on their own path. And with that thought, I'm going to leave you and I promise there won't be quite as long a break between this time and the next time and I will happily talk to you very soon.

Announcer 1:04:38

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

Ep36 Spirituality and Magic

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