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Aleister Crowley, Summoning Demons & The Occult Attack on Hitler | Douglas Rushkoff
01:44:59
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- [00:01]
Douglas Rushkoff
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:03]
Christos
New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom rack stores. Now. Get ready to save big with up to 60% off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas and free people. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. For thousands of years, people have performed rituals, they've cast spells, they've prayed to gods, invoked angels, talked to demons and practiced occult ceremonies in pursuit of the same things they want. Power, wealth, love, success. Well, today we're joined by Douglas Rushkoff to explore the strange world of practical magic. Not stage magic, not illusions, but the kind of rituals and occult practices that figures like Aleister Crowley claimed could shape reality itself. The very same occult rituals people alleged Adolf Hitler was obsessed with. Douglas shares his experience participating in actual magical ceremonies, working with occult practitioners and witches, and why so many intelligent people throughout history have been drawn to these very traditions. But beneath all of it lies a deeper question. What if the thing that you're chasing isn't actually what you want? And what happens when you get exactly what you wish for? And ultimately, we try to answer the question, does magic actually shape reality? So if you are interested in Aleister Crowley, practical magic, occult rituals, consciousness, and the timeless warning to always be careful what you wish, well, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Camp. Douglas. Thank you so much for joining me.
- [01:43]
Douglas Rushkoff
Thanks for having me.
- [01:44]
Christos
I'm very excited to chat about this specific topic. It's one of the things that has just gripped me from a very young age. I don't know why exactly. I think it's because my mother. My mother is a deeply passionate Catholic woman, but also a conspiracy theorist. And so growing up, it goes together, actually, in many ways. I mean, growing up, she would talk to me about the nature of Catholicism and of spirituality, and we would sort of debate about these things all the time. And simultaneously showing me things in media, showing me different musicians and music videos and saying, like, oh, well, this person is an occultist. And if you notice, there's one eye here and that's a symbol. And this is predictive programming. And they're trying to tip us off as to what's going to happen. And she would tell me about Aleister Crowley from a very young age. And she was like, telling about the core concepts of Thelema and all this stuff, saying, like, this is an inversion of Mass. And if you see, you know, Transubstantiation in the Eucharist as, you know, God intervening and communicating with human beings. These black masses are the inversion. So from a young age, I was sort of taught about the occult and this kind of framing. And it has been a long passion of mine to sort of dive into these people as a way to understand the world around me, but also understand my relationship with my mom. And it's become quite a passion project. So I saw that you wrote a book, I guess, a graphic novel perhaps, on Aleister Crowley and Hitler.
- [03:07]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [03:07]
Christos
And sort of this fictionalized dialogue between the two. And this is a topic that I'm fascinated by. Not only because we know that there was some weird occult stuff happening within the Third Reich and, you know, Hitler's Nazi party, but also Aleister Crowley as this occult figure that has persisted in the psyche of occultists and really broader society for the last hundred years. The two of them kind of converging. There's something very interesting about that. So I'm curious, what drew you into the. How does an academic like you get drawn into the occult and researching this topic?
- [03:41]
Douglas Rushkoff
The thing is, only you might would call me an academic. The academics wouldn't. Right. I'm a guy writing comic books and books. Had a kid and no health insurance. So I had written enough books that I could pretty easily do a dissertation. So I did a dissertation and got my PhD because of it, so I could teach. Right. And now I got health insurance. Nice. But I'm not really. I'm not an academic. I don't, like, sit and write journal articles and shit like that. The way that I got into this whole story, it was funny. I was at my first Comic Con. I had done a comic book called Testament, which is this. Looking at, oddly enough, looking at the Bible as sex mag. It's really cool. And characters trying to break out of linear time and all that. And I was with other real comic book people. I was walking down the street to dinner with Dean Haspiel. I don't know if you know him. Grant Morrison. Great comic writers. And they play this game where it's like Superman versus Batman. And they keep making up character, like, who would you put against Bruce Lee versus Chuck Norris? Yeah, exactly. Like as a comic book thing. And we're all throwing them out. And I go, what about, like, Adolf Hitler versus Aleister Crowley? And Grant Morrison turns to me and he goes, you have to write that one.
- [05:11]
Christos
Wow.
- [05:11]
Douglas Rushkoff
He was like, all right. So then I was like, okay, let me see. And I start doing historical research into Aleister Crowley. And I found out that. For real. For real, Aleister Crowley was recruited by Ian Fleming, the guy who wrote the James Bond stories. Ian Fleming was also MI5, part of, like, that's like the CIA kind of of England during World War II. And he recruited Aleister Crowley to do magic against Hitler during World War II. And they were doing mainly to try to psych out Hitler first, that he would know someone's doing magic against him and all that. And what Crowley really actually did historically, was he created for fake star charts because they knew that Hitler was using star charts in order to decide his military actions, like astrological stuff. And they gave Hitler star charts that were designed to get him to do attacks in certain places and ways and times that were well timed for the Allies, so they would know kind of where he's coming. And the second thing he actually really did was came up with a sigil to try to counter, well, three things. Second thing he did was he got the British and the Americans to focus on reclaiming the Spear of Destiny. It was this sword that was used to kill Jesus that Hitler grabbed. Hitler got really early in one of his battles and brought it to this, you know, whatever Nazi church.
- [06:49]
Christos
It was in the House of Treasures in Vienna, I believe.
- [06:51]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [06:53]
Christos
Occupied Austria. He allegedly. One of the first things Hitler did, or at least his men. Yeah. Went in and they took this Spear of Longinus, this actual Spear of Destiny,
- [07:03]
Douglas Rushkoff
so it would be in his. In his power, because they believed whoever held the spear would. Would, you know, be able to win the war.
- [07:08]
Christos
There's all sorts of lore with that. The story I've heard that Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, had the spear for many years, and when he lost it in a river before one of his
- [07:18]
Douglas Rushkoff
battles, he lost the empire.
- [07:19]
Christos
Exactly. And so it has this energy is what is believed by occultists.
- [07:23]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right. So he was the one who got. And Patton actually went out of his way during the battles to go and get it. And right after they got it, the whole war turned. It was really the pivot point. I mean, it may have turned anyway, but it was the pivot point. And third, he saw Aleister Crowley understood that Hitler was doing black magic, that he was charging the swastika, which is that symbol of Nazism. It wasn't originally, but they inverted a swastika and used it as their symbol. They were charging the swastika with the incineration of all these bodies. They were burning bodies. It wasn't a smart way to get rid of people. You burn the bodies to charge as your way of charging this magic thing. So he, Aleister Crowley came up with a counter sigil for the swastika, which was V is for victory. You know, and they got, you know, there's famous pictures of Winston Churchill holding up his fingers. V is for victory. This was supposed to be a female kind of a vaginal counter sigil to the male swastika, but it was Crowley who delivered it through, you know. That's another. Yeah, that's another. That's a great sigil too. Look at that. But right on the bottom there's, you see, there's the cock on the top and the 666. And then the V is for victory is at the bottom. And that's what they use. But this came from Crowley. So that was all true. And then I decided, okay, now what kind of comic can I write around that? So I really wanted to explore something I'm still looking at today. Is magic real? In other words, is it like the actual moving of matter? Or is magic kind of a form of propaganda that works because people are believing it? And then ultimately, what's the difference? You know, what's the difference? Is it magic? I believe I can move my arm. I've moved my arm. It's like, what was that? It was consciousness moving. I'm going to move this across the, the table. So my will has moved this across the table. So it's tricky. But I ended up writing this really, I mean, buy it, this fun story about a young, the son of Christian Scientists who's very anti spiritual cause he saw his father died because the mother believed in Christian science and that the spirit's gonna save it. So he became a rationalist and he's a Stardust Stripes photographer and he gets brought in by the general, by the US army generals to be the one who recruits Aleister Crowley, infiltrate Crowley's kind of sex magic cult and recruit him to the war. And long story short, they defeat, they defeat Hitler. But the young guy believes in magic as completely real, that we are doing magic to counter Hitler's magic. And he ends up getting caught up in it in a kind of a bad way. And Crowley keeps trying to say, oh, it's almost like, Olivier, my dear boy, have you ever heard of acting? You know, we're getting them to believe things and changing things. And the, the kid ends up the one who recruited Crowley and had this whole big experience and there's murder and ends up coming to America after the war and starting the advertising industry because it's the same thing that you take you create a logo which is a sigil, and you charge that sigil as the corporate spell. So it was sort of that looking at that. Hitler lost, but he won the war in that he won. His worldview of charging sigils to dominate people ended up becoming, you know, the American way.
- [11:32]
Christos
Wow. I mean, fascinating. I'm genuinely excited to read it. Now, just to unpack some of the terminology for people that have never come across this, or maybe they're sort of tacitly interested in the occult. Can you just break down when you say magic, we're talking about magic with a ck.
- [11:47]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [11:48]
Christos
This is not David Blaine. This is not Criss Angel. Maybe perhaps it is, but we're talking not about card tricks. What is magic in the occult sense?
- [11:58]
Douglas Rushkoff
I mean, it depends who's Whose definition you use. You could say magic is science that we don't yet understand. So it's other ways. I look at it really as ways of exercising your will through life and matter and everything else. I mean, it's sort of easier to understand in examples like Grant Morrison, the comics guy. We were doing a conference together in 1999 where we were trying to instill in the young sort of cyberpunk movement how much power there was in what we were doing. So he told them, you know, he was just drinking a friggin. He was drunk off his ass and got in front of the, you know, 500,000 people, whatever, there was there, and told them how to do a sigil. So all he said was, here's what magic is. You know, you write down something you want. Like, I want, you know, more sex in my life, or I want this. Whatever it is. You write down what it is you want to see happen. You know, I want to manifest something. Write down on a piece of paper, take out all the vowels, take out all the repeat letters, and bring those letters together and make some kind of a diagram sketch thing out of the letters that remain. That just looks cool to you. So now you have that. Now either you meditate on it for a while or off on it and put your semen on it, have sex with somebody on top of it, do psychedelics or whatever, play music on it, exercise yourself to the point of exhaustion while you're thinking about that thing and looking at the sigil, the symbol that you've made, and then maybe set it on fire or throw it in the ocean or do something and forget about it. So what you've done is kind of a magic spell for something to manifest. And then you. I mean, the odd Thing is, it does work. You will start seeing that thing one way or another. I mean, but be careful. Just be careful what you wish for. You know, you get the thing, but you might not get it in the way you want.
- [14:29]
Christos
It's a bit Faustian, perhaps.
- [14:30]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. And, you know, and Alan Moore, who's another comics author, a very famous author, would say, don't. That's called chaos magic. And don't do it. He would do magic to wish for things that you only should do magic for the sake of magic, that it's a way of understanding the interconnectedness of reality. It's a way, and I prefer to think of it that way, that it's a way of navigating the world where you can start to do a different kind of pattern recognition, where you can start to use your. Your intuition and your spidey sense to move through the world. Like, there's something I've been doing a long time. There's some people who I've met, some people in my life that not, like, in it, but like, I've known from a conference or they've written a book or this or that. And they've become, like, negative indicators for me. Like, if I'm invited to a conference and I see, and I'm trying to decide whether to do it and I see that that person's going to be speaking there. It's like, that's the universe telling me, don't go to that one. It doesn't mean that person's gonna do something bad. To me. It's not like that. It's more. It's a sign they become. And that's superstitious magical thinking. But that's the way that. That's another way of understanding magic as pattern recognition.
- [15:55]
Christos
What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break real quick because I want to tell you a little story. All right? I don't know if this is just what happens once you hit, like, your late 20s like I am, but I started noticing a bunch of little things that didn't seem they actually are. I would be tired, and then somehow I'd be, like, awake all night. I'd have trouble falling asleep. I go to the gym, and I don't recover like I did when I was 18. And it felt like I was doing everything right, but my body just wasn't responding the way that it did like, five or 10 years ago. So I started looking into it, and the one thing that kept on coming up is cortisol. It's your body's Stress hormone. And between like doing shows and podcasts and trying to be a dad and being on screens and doom scrolling all day, my stress level was just elevated all the time. And that is what led me to Mars Men. This is awesome. And if you listen, right now it's almost empty because I take it every single day. What I like is that it isn't just focused on one thing. It's made with natural ingredients that are designed to support healthy testosterone production while also helping your body manage cortisol levels. And it's made right here in the United States. Every batch is third party tested and there's no weird like stimulants or synthetic hormones or any of that stuff. Since I've been taking it, I've noticed steadier energy, better recovery after I work out and I just feel more like myself. I'm able to do way more. Plus there's a 90 day money back guarantee and over 91% of users report higher energy levels. And great news, for a limited time, the campers that listen to this program will get 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts at men gotomars.com that is men go to mars.com for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out. And after you pick up your Mars for Men, just tell them that Mark and Christos from the campsite sent you. Now let's get back to the show.
- [17:34]
Douglas Rushkoff
Or sometimes things the other way to think about it with this science thing is. So there's a scientific phenomenon that we kind of know about now called retro causality, which is. Doesn't make sense. But most simply, they've done experiments where like if you study for a test after the test, you will have done better on the test than if you didn't. Right? So how does that work? So they take a hundred people, you know, randomly selected. Don't let them know. They all take a test and randomly and then leave the test in a manila envelope. Then you don't grade them. No one knows how they did. Then half the people randomly selected study for the test. And you open up all the envelopes. The people who studied for the test after the test did better. Why?
- [18:27]
Christos
Bizarre, right?
- [18:28]
Douglas Rushkoff
Why? And it's because what scientists are coming to believe is when the big bang happened, time happened two ways. The time is going backwards and forwards at the same time. So we do feel like before something like a massacre or some bombing or 9, 11 or something takes place before it, we see random number generators kind of start going weird. People start feeling strange Things, and it's because the trauma of the future is rippling back, back to us. So retrocausality, you would think of it until we had the science or whatever to explain it. It seems like it's a magical phenomenon. But then physicists start looking at it and go, oh, maybe this is scientific phenomenon. So magic in some ways is experimenting or the occult experimenting with stuff we just haven't figured out yet.
- [19:20]
Christos
Fascinating.
- [19:21]
Douglas Rushkoff
Wow.
- [19:22]
Christos
So pulling up here, retrocausality is a theoretical concept or an effect. And an effect precedes its cause in time, meaning a later event influences an earlier one. So just like the studying example. That is a fascinating idea. But now, I guess the question that we have to parse is history.
- [19:38]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, right.
- [19:39]
Christos
Like time travel. In a way, it is. The question that we're parsing, though, is like, is there, you know, like, a placebo effect? Which even the study of placebo is, like, fascinating to me. Right.
- [19:49]
Douglas Rushkoff
What's wrong with placebo? You know, I love the placebo. So placebo effect means that, like, 30% of people who take something, if they believe it, like, it works on them. So when I was a kid, I heard about the placebo effect. I had a business idea that why don't I create a brand of medicines called placebo? I have, like, placebo headache, placebo, stomachache, placebo, depression. That. It's a pill that you take for depression. You know, it's a placebo, but. And then you put on the back. The placebo effect works in 30% of cases, you know. Well, that's magic.
- [20:21]
Christos
Yeah, Right. Cause the thing with placebo is that, you know, the. The conventional studies, okay, you have two people with a headache, you give one person, you know, ephedrine, and then you give another person a sugar pill. And in certain cases, the person that gets the sugar pill will have just the same effect as the person that actually took genuine medicine.
- [20:37]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [20:37]
Christos
And even when they know it's a placebo, there's still. There's still an effect.
- [20:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
So even though I believe in it.
- [20:44]
Christos
Right. So even if they know, hey, this is not actually gonna do anything. But it.
- [20:48]
Douglas Rushkoff
It is.
- [20:48]
Christos
But it is. I've even read. Can you pull a placebo effect on dogs? Have you heard of this?
- [20:53]
Douglas Rushkoff
Well, because the owner knows, I guess.
- [20:56]
Christos
I don't know what's going on.
- [20:58]
Douglas Rushkoff
This is maybe that gets even better. Yeah.
- [21:00]
Christos
This is maybe a study that maybe has errors in it. I don't know. But I've read that there's so. Okay, there's a placebo effect in dogs. As documented, it usually acts as a caregiver placebo effect. Because dogs do not experience conscious expectations, the perceived improvement is in their symptoms often stems from the owner, the owner's subconscious hope, observation or wishful thinking.
- [21:22]
Douglas Rushkoff
Sure. In other words, you perceive them as better even though they're not. And you can't really ask them, does your foot hurt less, but does the infection go away? I mean, that's what you really want to see, is there?
- [21:33]
Christos
Well, if you have a dog with a limp or something and you give them a medicine that is placebo, it's just a sugar pill, the dog, in certain cases, I guess in this epilepsy study, the dogs had less measurable incidences of seizure. Can you scroll down to why it happens? If you can, click that, show more. The animals can experience a psychological placebo effect through conditioning. If a dog associates the routine of taking pills or receiving an injection with feeling better from prior medications, the act of getting the placebo alone can sometimes trigger the same bodily response.
- [22:03]
Douglas Rushkoff
God bless. But then it's working. Then that is. So if you can trigger the bodily response through. That's magic.
- [22:14]
Christos
I think hypnosis functions in a very similar way, right?
- [22:17]
Douglas Rushkoff
But then what is hypnosis but something, right? It's some control over something. But then. So that's the kind that I'm arguing in the comic book that Crowley is playing with, at least in Hitler, saying we're just psyching him out, don't take it seriously. Because the young acolyte, the guy who comes in, takes it completely seriously and ends up the, you know, murdering people and stuff because he gets all. He gets all wrapped up in it. But it's funny. So now you'll hear, this is why I'm not an academic, right? I was teaching at New School, a course in propaganda. And I was.
- [22:51]
Christos
New School is that New School.
- [22:52]
Douglas Rushkoff
It's in New York, the New School. It's in the Village. And before I was. I was just adjunct. They let anybody get. It's the way college works now. But I was still good. So I'm teaching a course in propaganda because I was an author, so I had some credo there and I was trying to discuss with them the difference between psych out magic and magic magic. And I explained psych out magic, like we're saying here, the placebo effect and propaganda and all that. And then it was in the summer and there was a fly flying around the room and I said, real magic. The magic magic would be if I took my finger like a gun and just shot that fly out of the air. And the second that I went poof with my hand, the fly fell out of the air onto the ground and everybody freaked out. I mean, seriously, everybody freaked out.
- [23:58]
Christos
They thought it was a trick.
- [23:59]
Douglas Rushkoff
No, they freaked out. And we all. We all freaked out. I'm freaked out. We all gathered around where the fly was on the ground, and it was, like, completely still, and we're like, oh, fuck, I killed a fly with magic. And we're looking at it, and then it kind of eventually got kind of wriggled and got up and kind of shook itself off and flew right out the window. And
- [24:28]
Christos
what do you do with that?
- [24:29]
Douglas Rushkoff
What do you do with that? Right? So I talked to a bunch of people about this. Funny. And the Maori, who are indigenous people from New Zealand. New Zealand, they say that what happened. And I like this story the best, is, no, it was not your magic that did this. It was the spirits in the room. Didn't want what you were saying to these kids. Didn't want you that. Didn't want you to teach these people that magic was not real, that magic was only propaganda. So they. They went in and possessed the fly and brought it down to the ground. To disprove your point, I'm archmanning.
- [25:28]
Christos
I'm Madison Skinner. I'm Eva Jovic.
- [25:30]
Douglas Rushkoff
I'm Decoria Moore.
- [25:31]
Christos
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- [25:41]
Douglas Rushkoff
They could have what it takes, that it couldn't happen.
- [25:44]
Christos
I see.
- [25:45]
Douglas Rushkoff
They wanted to disprove because they didn't want you in authority with these people to dispel the notion of magic. And you yourself, they know. They knew that deep down, I did kind of believe in magic, but. So that's what happened, and that's why. And then once it had done, they left. And that's why the fly could get up and go. Cause you did not kill the fly.
- [26:06]
Christos
Wow. Now, I mean, so what the fuck?
- [26:10]
Douglas Rushkoff
What the fuck?
- [26:10]
Christos
Almost the same story.
- [26:12]
Douglas Rushkoff
Oh, my God. Really? What happened?
- [26:14]
Christos
You know what story I'm gonna bring up?
- [26:15]
Douglas Rushkoff
Magic proves itself. Magic is a trickster. That's the thing. We're in a magical world. It's funny. It just. It fucks with you just enough.
- [26:24]
Christos
I would like to consider myself a rational human being. Of course. I have a concept of the divine, and I pray and I believe in God. I go to church.
- [26:34]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, there you go. Okay.
- [26:35]
Christos
And it's it's, it's irrational. But at the same time, I'm like, well, what created everything? How does big bang happen? Well, how do you create nothing? How does nothing create all things? Like, these are the things where I'm like, okay, there's a thread here that needs explaining, and this is an explanation that I like. Regardless, I'm talking with a guy, my friend Ethan, on this very podcast, sitting in your very chair. And Ethan is a materialist and a rationalist. And he says, I only believe what I can measure. And I, I, I apologize if you've heard the story before. I've shared it a few times now. But he goes on to tell me about this time where he was trying to get possessed by witches to prove that it was all fake. And so he's, he's taunting these witches on TikTok and he's saying, possess me. What do you, what do you need? And the witches are saying, well, we need a piece of your hair. And he's like, all right, sure, here's a piece of my hair. Like, just taunting them. And he sends them all the things that they need in order to perform spells on him, right? Because he's like, this is hair, blood,
- [27:23]
Douglas Rushkoff
semen, whatever you want, I'll send it to you.
- [27:25]
Christos
This is all fake. And he goes on to taunt them where he releases a fake article from a website that he made saying that, oh, a Miami influencer dies. And then he leaks it to all the witches, and they're all like, we did it. We proved to you magic is real. We killed this guy. And then he pops up two weeks later and goes, I'm actually alive. This whole thing was fake. I proved this is all bs. As he's regaling the story to me, the lights in the room flicker. Yeah, we have it on camera. I don't have an explanation for this. Sure, lights can flicker. That's a thing that happens sometimes. I'm not obtuse to the fact that electricity can be weird. It's a light that we have that we still use. It's in this very light that we have here. We've used it for years. It's not connected to the main power grid. It is a battery powered light. It has been used for legit two years. Up until that point, we've used it at comedy shows. It's on for hours at a time. It's never flickered since then or after then ever in any type of unsubstantiated way.
- [28:25]
Douglas Rushkoff
I know. And it's the easiest one for magic. To change, right? Cause the power grid's hard. But one independent little thing, it's easy, you know, less energy to fuck with it.
- [28:33]
Christos
Now we have two of these battery powered lights. One is on my side, one is on his side. And it is the light directly next to him that begins to flicker while he's talking. And I thought it was a prank. I thought it was like, oh, you're messing with me. And he, to this day was like, I have no control over that light. What happened there? I have no idea why it happened. I don't know. And I've talked to different people. I talked to a Catholic priest that I'm very close with. I talk with other people and they say that was the beings, or in this case, the devil, which is the way he described it, winking at you. That is the spirit. To say, oh, you think this is all bs? Well, look, what do I do with that? I don't know.
- [29:13]
Douglas Rushkoff
And the universe does. That's the thing. And that's what Alan Moore is going for when he's saying, look, don't do this sort of magic force stuff because the world's got your back already. The world's got your back already. What you do magic for is for magic's sake, is that magic is almost like the whole field of magic is a character with a sense of humor that it will wink at you. And so it's almost more an invitation to play with reality, to move into a state of appreciation for the way the universe aligns perfectly. Even the bad shit that happens, that the shadow stuff is almost always shadow right at the moment when you can learn what you need to learn to get to the next place. So it's more. I've felt myself adopting a magical sensibility. I mean, it's weird. I don't know if this is a good story to tell or not. So you cut it if it's bad. But I went to a sex shamanism retreat for a week in Costa Rica. And there was this one really difficult temple ritual that was gonna come up, like really intimate thing. Someone is intimate with you. And there was this sort of randomizing. They used forest, rainforest things. You picked things in order to be randomly paired up with someone else there. And there was this young woman there who I had this really deep connection with from some other things that had happened over the course of that week. And they knew the chances of getting her would be so low. But given what was gonna have to happen, it was like, please, I would love it to be her. But I just got that out of my head. I'm gonna take whatever the universe says, whatever. And we did the leaves things and chosen and. And it ended up being her, you know, one out of whatever. And when I saw her with the same leap and she was crying and I thought, oh, shit, because she doesn't want to have to do that thing. And then she was like, no. She was like. I wished. And I knew it would be you. I knew it would. And I just felt at that point it was like the universe kind of going, doug, we got your back here. If you surrender to the sort of somatic embodied reality to this more kind of Kundalini spidey sense thing. Open up. Just open up. You've been in here from the neck up for so many fucking 60 fucking years. Like, come on, we're here. We were carrying you. And after that moment, beyond the ritual itself where I had a full Kundalini awake, I was fucking, you know, just vibrating on the ground. I'd never had anything. I didn't know what it was. I thought I was having a frigging stroke or something there. But it was this thing called a Kundalini opening, which is all. And since then, this was a few months ago, since then, I've been walking around like I've got a. Almost like an electrical wire going from the base of my spine right up my butt to the top of my head. And it. You know, if I just even think about it that much, it's like this, like, living sensor. I can just feel like a lightning rod. Not just the energy going up and down, but what's right and wrong. I can use that to navigate rather than my mental maps and trust that it's bringing me to the right places. I don't just mean walking around in the city. I mean in life. What if you really trust. I mean, God, it sounds so sad to even say it, but to think about it like this, because it's so sad that we don't. What if you actually trusted your feelings about things, right?
- [33:24]
Christos
That intuition, how you actually feel.
- [33:27]
Douglas Rushkoff
And on top of that, what if you were actually honest all the time with people about stuff? What if you were honest with what you actually want? And what do you want, man? What do you want and what do you really want? You know? And that's the trick with magic. That's why Aleister Crowley talked about magic as your will to thine own will be true. Right? To thine own will be true. The will above all. But to know your will, though, then that's the hard one. What do you actually want before you write and make a little sigil? Because I want this. I want her.
- [34:07]
Christos
I want.
- [34:08]
Douglas Rushkoff
You don't know who she is, and you don't know what you want. Shut the fuck up.
- [34:13]
Christos
Right. Well, this is where I butt heads with magic. Because in a way, as a religious person, all religious people are practicing. I think calling it magic is perhaps a bit heretical. But this version where I'll pray for my enemies is often a thing that I will bring up in terms of this kind of conversation. Where before I go to bed every night, I'll just pray for the people that have wronged me. And with a very high.
- [34:41]
Douglas Rushkoff
So I should wrong you.
- [34:44]
Christos
I pray for the people I like as well. But particularly I try to focus on the people that have wronged me. And I try to truly resolve any type of internal frustration that I have. And in a genuine way, not like God, show this person how wrong they were for what they did. It's like God, I truly just give it all to you and I let what. I hope that they're good. I hope that they're happy, and I hope that they've achieved a peace in their life outside of me. If we never talk again. Sure. And in a very high consistency. They reach out to me within a few months. And I don't know what to make of that.
- [35:14]
Douglas Rushkoff
I would also offer you in a magical worldview, to see people who have wronged you would be to see them as Buddhas. You know, what does that offer me?
- [35:25]
Christos
Right. Yeah. And there's certainly things that I learned from it. But I also don't like this unresolved thing where grudge. There's a grudge and they're frustrated at me. Yeah.
- [35:33]
Douglas Rushkoff
You're in Kapoor. Do you.
- [35:34]
Christos
No, exactly. We need this year of jubilee to kind of purge everything. So there's this, you know, I'm frustrated and they're frustrated and we're both mad or whatever.
- [35:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [35:42]
Christos
And I just say I release it all. And then so often they just text me. They go, hey, man, sorry about a few months ago. I was going through a lot. I hope you're well. And that's happened legitimately five or six times in the last, like, two or three years.
- [35:54]
Douglas Rushkoff
See, magic.
- [35:56]
Christos
Well, I call it power of prayer, but sure. I think we're talking about. It's kind of the same power of prayer,
- [36:02]
Douglas Rushkoff
but I guess that's as magic as it gets.
- [36:04]
Christos
I'm resistant.
- [36:05]
Douglas Rushkoff
I'll call it power of prayer. That's fine. We're in the same exact Thing, power of prayer. There's no such thing as magic, no such thing as sorcery, Sorceresses. We stone to death, right? That's what the Bible says.
- [36:14]
Christos
These things are real, which is why you got to stone them.
- [36:19]
Douglas Rushkoff
Don't stone because it's a woman. You stone it.
- [36:21]
Christos
That's usually. Yeah, precisely. Right. No, I think my concern is not that, oh, magic is fugazi. It's that it is legitimate and that my concern is that people use it in ways that are perhaps against what they should be using it for, but it's all magic.
- [36:38]
Douglas Rushkoff
So then you go back to stuff we talked about last time we spoke was about currency and stuff like that. So people are using this money, and it's like, oh, we're gonna make this money, Put the king's face on it, put a pyramid with an eye on it, and create value so people believe. So what did we do? We took a utility, which is fine poker chips, and we turned it into something of value. People will want this, you know, they're gonna want to collect it, have it, and we'll create a world where they have to have it or they're gonna be insecure because no one's gonna take care of them. What a fucking bullshit spell is that?
- [37:14]
Christos
Right, Right.
- [37:15]
Douglas Rushkoff
People are gonna pray for money.
- [37:17]
Christos
Right? And that's my concern, is that people think that they want money, but what they actually want is security. What they actually want is peace.
- [37:24]
Douglas Rushkoff
And that's where the magical thing, a magical worldview, is valuable because it really. It enforces the idea that be careful what you wish for. You may get it. Really know. What are you focusing on? What are you wanting? How are you moving through the world? Are you at all trusting God, nature, people? Are you living in a benevolent world where everybody wants to care for you and all you've got to do is engage? Or are you living in a hostile world where you're in competition for everyone else and you got to get their stuff in order to survive, and whatever you see, you're gonna fucking manifest.
- [38:09]
Christos
Right? Well, this is what I like about praying to God in this sense, and whatever God that may be, whether it's Hashem or Allah or Jesus Christ, because I think it creates a moral parameter in the sense that when, as a Catholic, if I'm praying to God, I'm. I would be remiss to pray for money because I know that God doesn't value money. I'm reading the Bible that the love of money is the root of all evil. So I'll refrain from Asking for that. And I would go to what I would consider like a higher vibration where I say, I pray for peace and I pray for love and tranquility, because I know these are the things that are valued by this God that I'm interfacing with. And my concern with magic is you have people saying, well, I don't care about the moral parameters, and I just want what will make me feel good. And so they're doing these rituals for more sex when they don't actually want sex. They want love and connection.
- [38:59]
Douglas Rushkoff
It depends. I mean, on the one hand, the moral parameters of the institution may have been corrupted, right. In some cases. So you don't want to necessarily just let that happen. So some of the indie occult thing is because you see all that. So let's gather ourselves and our own covens and from the bottom up, in a sort of more anarchic way, engender some sort of happy Burning man collaborative. You know, that's sort of the happy, good, benevolent occult thing that it's not for my stuff. And it's funny because I'm thinking about religion. There's this great Talmudic argument. Talmud is where the rabbis basically gathered. The educated rabbis would gather and argue about ethics, right? And Talmud is sort of the law. But they were arguing about what is the reason to read Torah. And one of the rabbis said, oh, we read Torah so that we know our history, where we came from. Someone said, no, no, no, we don't read Torah. We read Torah so that we can act ethically in the future. And then the old whatever he is, the big rabbi Rambam, someone like that said, oh, no, we don't read it for the past and the future. You read Torah to read Torah. It's like, what? And he says, lishma was the word. You do it for its own sake. You read Torah for Torah. And it was like, whoa. So it's the same with prayer. It's like in some way, you don't pray for things. The true prayer is you pray in
- [40:39]
Christos
appreciation of the thing itself, of creation, of. Yeah, yeah.
- [40:46]
Douglas Rushkoff
You know, God is great. God is great. That's really it. That's all there is.
- [40:53]
Christos
What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break real quick because I want to tell you about a brand that I actually love. You've probably seen ads for it on Instagram, and it's ultra. It's the best. As you already know, I'm super locked in on, like, fitness and sleep and fasting and all that kind of stuff. And one Thing that I care about now is getting energy and focus without feeling like jittery and cracked out and on edge. Like my, my heart is beating out of my chest. And that's why I reached out to Ultra. Ultra pouches have zero nicotine, zero caffeine pouches that give you clean focus and smooth energy when you need to lock in. And a lot of people think pouches are helping them at the gym, but nicotine is actually a vasoconstrictor. It actually narrows your blood vessels and restricts oxygen delivery to your muscles and can actually work against the pump that you're trying to get. It also can raise your heart rate and your blood pressure, which is not exactly what you want when you're, you're already training super hard. Ultra gives you that pouch experience. It's fun, it tastes good, but it's 100 nicotine free. And they use clinically proven nootropics and adaptogens to deliver immediate focus and smooth energy that lasts one to two hours. And if you're fasting or dieting, they actually can help you quiet the cravings and limit the food noise to help keep you locked in. And they have five flavors. Cool Mint, Wintergreen, Watermelon, Tropical Blue razz. My favorite is Blue Blue raspberry and it tastes amazing. I have the watermelon ones right here because I already finished the Blue Raz, but these are great too. Now Ultra is the ultimate guilt free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. And new customers can use the code Camp C A M p to get 15% off when you go to takeultra.com that's takeultra.com for 15% off with the code camp. And after you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please tell them that Mark and Christos from the campsite sent you. Now let's get back to the show.
- [42:31]
Douglas Rushkoff
The part of Catholicism. I'm sure you have to talk about it a lot. You may. That's so freaky. Magic is you eat the wafer and it turns into the body.
- [42:40]
Christos
Exactly. Transubstantiation.
- [42:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
But it's really for you. It's really, really, really, really happening. And so I want to know first, when does it change? Does it change when he prays over it? Has it already changed when it's in the cup or does it change in your mouth or does it change after?
- [42:55]
Christos
It's like down my understanding and I'm not a ecclesiastical lawyer or something. Well, more to your experience, my understanding is that it happens during the consecration at mass. So you go to mass, there's a Sunday, 12 o' clock or whatever time, and at the part of the mass where everyone is kneeling and the priest will hold up what is a piece of bread and says, you know, basically reads from the Bible and sort of recreates this ritual of the Last Supper. This is my body and you know, this is my blood. And to each of you, you know, eat of it.
- [43:27]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [43:27]
Christos
And when he holds it up and the bell is rung, then it is consecrated and transubstantiated to have the presence of Christ within it.
- [43:35]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right, but it doesn't mean it's turned into human meat.
- [43:38]
Christos
Right, Exactly. That's the spiritual essence.
- [43:41]
Douglas Rushkoff
All right, so your experience of it is still of bread, but it's. The bread has become the embodiment of Christ's spirit.
- [43:51]
Christos
Precisely. That in the way in the Torah a demon can enter into a pig and then be cast out or into a goat and then be cast out, that the spiritual essence of the goat is now changed and filled with legion, whereas the goat is still a goat.
- [44:04]
Douglas Rushkoff
And have you, have you felt it? Have you felt more than bread? Have you felt energy or spirit in it or to be a ritual?
- [44:16]
Christos
I can't say that I personally have, but many people have reported this and there's been stories of different monks and clergymen that have persisted on the Eucharist for months on end and that this is the only thing they eat and that there's stories of Eucharistic miracles where a priest will hold up this transubstantiated piece of bread and then it'll drip blood from it and then they'll test the blood and it'll be the same blood type that's on the Shroud of Turin and things like that.
- [44:46]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right. And that weird ass shit is magic, Right? Well, people have said this, that I mean, it's magic. It might be religion magic, but it's not normal. It's not normal physics.
- [45:00]
Christos
It's supernatural, natural, certainly. And so what my mother in particular would say is that what these dark magicians are doing is that they are subverting the spiritual technology that is the mass in order to, you know, achieve some type of darker.
- [45:15]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right. And what the dark magicians would, would say is that the Catholics have subverted the natural power in order to create a controlling religion.
- [45:25]
Christos
Right, exactly. And so they would say, like these dark masses are, these black masses are functioning. You know, they look very similar to a Catholic.
- [45:32]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, well, some of them are anti, anti Catholic. But some of them, you know, the Catholics, there would be a place where pagan magicians would do their shit. Right. And all their ritual place. And that's where they'd put the cathedral. Like right on top of there.
- [45:44]
Christos
Exactly.
- [45:44]
Douglas Rushkoff
Either because it was a magical place that was really magic that they wanted to use, or. Cause they wanted to, you know, have the former pagan people will now come here, you know, and they took. You know, and the cross was originally a pagan ankle symbol. It was from the pharaohs of Egypt. Yeah. And was part of the house, you know, where it was that. And then it's like, oh, let's make that the crucifix of Christ. So they kept, you know, everyone kept taking each other's.
- [46:13]
Christos
I mean, that's out of my depth as far as, like, what the progress of that is. But I've heard that before.
- [46:17]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, it was an older symbol, but I tell you, because you got the real Catholic crucifix.
- [46:22]
Christos
Exactly.
- [46:23]
Douglas Rushkoff
When the Catholic crucifix got the body on it. Right, right. The Protestants, they're like, he's not there, he's gone. Right, exactly. It was. But I'll tell you when I was. Yeah, it's okay. You can always cut things if they're too awful. So I was like 6 years old and my first grade teacher was marrying my brother's fourth grade teacher.
- [46:43]
Christos
Oh, wow.
- [46:44]
Douglas Rushkoff
And because we were both in their classes and I was taking guitar lessons from the older teacher, the guy teacher, they invited us to their wedding. And I'm this little Jewish kid from Queens. Right. And it was the first time I went in a Catholic church.
- [47:03]
Christos
Did you burn up?
- [47:04]
Douglas Rushkoff
No, I did not burn up, but I go in. I'm six years old, remember? I'm first grade. Six years old, six and a half. And we go in the thing and there is this like perfectly lifelike verisimilitude. Like ivory wood, perfectly carved. Jesus on a thing with the spikes in his hands and the blood on the thing and the thorns of crown or whatever. Crown of thorns on his thing. And he's in the terrible thing. And he's like one and a half sized human, right. So he's. But perfectly real. And I'm there, like holding my dad's hand. And I said, dad, who's that? And my dad said, oh, Douglas, that's a Jew.
- [47:55]
Christos
Maybe not the best introduction, but don't ask him who killed him. Okay? Don't ask that question.
- [48:00]
Douglas Rushkoff
No, but my dad was like, what the fuck comes religion is this doing that? And he's like, the Romans by the way, they believe, you know, kill a Jew, save the world.
- [48:09]
Christos
It worked once.
- [48:10]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:11]
Christos
You know, might as well try it
- [48:13]
Douglas Rushkoff
again and see what happens. I feel so unsaved though. But that's a whole other. That's other theological story. But. Oh, that's funny. I had a very. So, yeah, I had a very bad introduction to Catholicism, but now when I read. And it's perfect. So the Pope just wrote this thing called. What is it? Magnifica Humanus.
- [48:31]
Christos
Right. An encyclical on AI.
- [48:33]
Douglas Rushkoff
On AI. And Magnificus Humanus is the Latin way of saying what I've been saying for 10 team human. Right. That humans are intrinsically worth here. Worth it.
- [48:45]
Christos
Right.
- [48:46]
Douglas Rushkoff
Don't auto tune James Brown or you'll kill his soul. Right. Is sort of what I'm arguing in that we are human. And the Pope's argument for the sanctity of the human experience, that we are special, that there's something here that is. It's so consonant with the magical sensibility. Especially if you don't. As Alan Moore's warning, you don't do it selfishly, but you don't use religion selfishly either. Some priests will. Or terrible things, certainly.
- [49:18]
Christos
I mean, elements of the Crusades. I mean, there's been a litany of times that institutional religions have been utilized to achieve very selfish creative humanities.
- [49:26]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right. The same way that magic can be utilized to promote people's very kind of lowly goals. And magically what people do. This is what I'm learning anyway, and it's supposed to be fine. But you can summon demons to do things. It doesn't mean demons are bad. They're just sort of a lower level thing. You can summon demons, you can summon archangels. You know, a lot of Catholics do that. You go for the archangels. Each of those little places on the side of the church is like different saints and things that you can go to or you can go like straight to Jesus or God or something for something. But when you go to demons, like people go to demons for like material things or more immediate. Demons have their own agendas too. So you may get the thing, but they're gonna wink back, but they're gonna give it to you in the way that they want.
- [50:17]
Christos
Yeah, you're wishing upon a monkey paw. I don't know if you've heard that before.
- [50:20]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, right. So you're gonna get. But I mean, it can. If you really know what you're doing and you know how to write a good petition and you can put all the safeguards in and all that you can avoid. And there's real magicians that do these things and all, but I was actually doing. I. I enlisted some magical friends of mine to help with my daughter. My daughter's got. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. Give me a break, give me a break Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar Give me a break, give me a break Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar that chocolate crispy taste gonna make your day and wherever you go you'll hear the beat People say give me a break, give me a break Break
- [51:06]
Christos
me off a piece of that Kit
- [51:07]
Douglas Rushkoff
Kat bar have a break, have a Kit Kat Both endometriosis and Crohn's disease, right? And I was just like, oh, I. You know, and the doctors are like flummoxed and certain. How do. And I was like, I want help. And then the. The magician guy I went to is like, oh, you know, I can go to this demon or that. And I'm like, no, no, no. Oh, don't just, you know, demons. Don't go to demons or just go to. Go to fully benevolent, you know, whatever. It. I'd rather at work or not.
- [51:38]
Christos
This is like Larry David going to, like a sorcerer.
- [51:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
Don't go to demons. That doesn't.
- [51:43]
Christos
It doesn't sound the New York Jewish affect. Trying to negotiate with a demon is so funny. What do you mean, a demon? It's not an angel available.
- [51:51]
Douglas Rushkoff
But, you know, in. In. In. In lore, apparently Solomon summoned the demons to build the temple. And you know what he held the. What he contained them in his ring. Jewish star.
- [52:08]
Christos
Ah, right.
- [52:09]
Douglas Rushkoff
Six pointed star was. Used the two triangles to bring them together to contain the demons.
- [52:13]
Christos
And I'm like, so was Solomon, right?
- [52:14]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. What did you think was gonna happen? What did you think? It's like the things on the flag of a, you know, colonial, whatever. It's just like, is that a good legacy? Don't summon demons to do really important things. Don't build a nation with captured demons.
- [52:39]
Christos
You're getting close. You're getting close.
- [52:40]
Douglas Rushkoff
I'm just thinking.
- [52:41]
Christos
You're getting close. Yeah.
- [52:43]
Douglas Rushkoff
I don't want to go to the Middle east issue, but it was like. It's a bad premise. You don't. I mean, Solomon's wiser than me, right? He wrote the psalms or something.
- [52:52]
Christos
He's. Well, as it said, he's the wisest king and he creates the second temple. And as the lesser key of Solomon will say that he was able to use demons to create it. And kept it in the seal of Solomon. That is the, you know, six pointed star, the star of David.
- [53:05]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. Good luck keeping him in there. And then look what happened to the seal. Look what the seal means to the majority of the world right now.
- [53:11]
Christos
Right. It's an interesting question that many people have brought up. But now Solomon infamously is known as the wisest king.
- [53:19]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [53:19]
Christos
But the end of his legacy is that he kind of fumbles it and that Solomon incorporates all of these different brides and he's sort of like a harem of women, I think perhaps like a thousand women. Could you google the end of Solomon's life? And it's kind of seen as this cautionary tale.
- [53:34]
Douglas Rushkoff
He went Epstein esque.
- [53:36]
Christos
I think perhaps they were of age. I don't know what the rules are of ancient, ancient Judea, but brings in all these women and slowly dissolves the, I guess, the moral essence of what the kingdom was supposed to represent.
- [53:50]
Douglas Rushkoff
Wow.
- [53:51]
Christos
So, yeah, this is the. The end. Okay. So his massive haram of 700 wives and 300 concubines ultimately led to a spiritual downfall in his old age. His foreign wives turned his heart away from God towards idolatry, causing God to announce that the kingdom would be torn away from Solomon's lineage and divided.
- [54:07]
Douglas Rushkoff
There you go.
- [54:08]
Christos
This is where I'm like as a. Again, as a Catholic, that is indulging this magical conversation because magic is not something that is absurd, but that is real and needs to be used properly. You wonder if someone like Solomon and sort of converses with the demons to do something. And it works for a while, but then the end of the story is seen as this great consequence where he falls from grace and has the lineage taken from him because, you know, he wished upon a monkey pod and got what he wanted, but it wasn't what he actually needed.
- [54:37]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right. And he still. I mean, they also. I mean, Torah does this a lot because they are Bible in this case, because they want to make sure that you don't worship these dudes. You know, that they all have flaws that none of them. We don't really have a perfect one. Right.
- [54:52]
Christos
So I guess when you consulted with this guy about a demon for your daughter's Crohn's.
- [54:56]
Douglas Rushkoff
Well, I didn't want a demon just to do magic.
- [54:58]
Christos
What happened?
- [55:01]
Douglas Rushkoff
Well, it's interesting. They had me do workings is what it's called, you know, where you kind of pray workings with Ganesh, who's a kind of mercurial entity from Hinduism. Yeah, Hinduism. And it's interesting that they Picked him because he's the writer's God. And that's, you know, they kind of go into a space, the face of an elephant, I believe, and they see, yeah, he's got an elephant and he's got this. He uses. One of his tusks is broken, and he uses it to write. So it was odd that that was what came to them. Cause he's the God of writers. And he mainly does what they call road opening to block obstacles. So you kind of do a petition to Ganesh by light a candle and some incense and have this written petition and focus on it for a bit on Wednesdays, which is the right day and the right planetary hour to sort of block the open roads and take away the obstacles to finding the right doctor, to having insurance cover something. You know, I don't wish for those in particular, but it's like make this easier. Help us find the right person, you know, help us get an appointment, help. It's sort of mundane, but these things matter, you know, that and then. Which was really interesting. And then on Fridays to do a working to Aniel, who's a not well known Old Testament archangel, who's Venusian, and she's almost like a love goddess that normally people would go to for a romance and things like that. And she volunteered, according to magicians, because they saw how my concern for my daughter's health was keeping me from finding or pursuing any kind of romantic love in my life. Because I'm so concerned for her and the Venusian God, the Aniel, wants me and romance so much that she's like, all right, I'm gonna come and help her health so that you can go do the thing that I really want you to do. So the interesting thing about each God is they do have things that they want. They do have their own agendas because they're different. But it was interesting. So it was like using her agenda for more romance in the world to get me less focused on my daughter by helping my daughter, helping her heal. And it was also because endometriosis is a women's disease. You know, it being a Venusian kind of love sex goddess kind of made a certain sense.
- [57:47]
Christos
And what happened with her illness?
- [57:49]
Douglas Rushkoff
I mean, we found very quick. We did find a doctor. I mean, we got a diagnosis. We didn't even have diagnosis for this stuff before we got diagnosis and got a doctor and got Approved for a $15,000 a month one of these drugs they give people now for these things. So she's on the path at least.
- [58:18]
Christos
Did you Find romance.
- [58:22]
Douglas Rushkoff
Romance is. Yeah. I mean, I would say even more accurately, the universe has shifted into a romantic, sensuous experience. It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah. I mean, I had to be cured is too strange a word. I had to feel. I never felt deserving of Eros, you know, and that partly was that week, that sort of shamanic, weak thing. And it was like, oh, shit. The universe is telling me I deserve heroes.
- [59:19]
Christos
So that experience, you would say, was effective, but specifically this sort of, like, ritual that you had done.
- [59:26]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. And you know, right away when you do these kind of things, you get these really strong, like, affirmations of what you've done right away, which is interesting. Like, I was doing a thing. I was doing the working that I was supposed to do for my daughter's health, and that was with the Aniel. And I got this insight that. That it's important for me to help my daughter learn to take care of herself in better ways. How to take responsibility for her diet and things like that. If she's. And I said, okay, I'm going to do that. And then ding on my phone and my daughter sent me a picture. Look what I'm having for lunch today. This healthy food that I'm going to eat. And I was like, wow. And a few of those happen. It's just. It's not like end of the world kind of giant, but just these little wink affirmations, like the light changing. It's just to let you know. Yeah, that's right.
- [60:50]
Christos
That's interesting. Can we tie this into Crowley? Cause I think he exists as a figure that many people have described as the wickedest man in the world is kind of like the. The catchphrase that he was dubbed, I think, by the English media, perhaps. Who was Aleister Crowley and why is he so significant to 20th century occultism?
- [61:10]
Douglas Rushkoff
It's funny you say Crowley is wicked as man. I was thinking, because this is a psychic cross. I was in a band called Psychic TV that was run by a guy named Genesis P orridge. And he was also considered. He was the wickedest man in England.
- [61:24]
Christos
Oh, really?
- [61:24]
Douglas Rushkoff
In the 90s and 2000. Because he made a fake video. Back before we had deepfakes, he made a fake video of him and the band eating, doing a ritualistic abortion and eating the fetus.
- [61:35]
Christos
Come on.
- [61:35]
Douglas Rushkoff
It wasn't real, but England, they thought it was real. And they were like, oh, no. And they kicked him out of the country.
- [61:41]
Christos
I mean, it's a little gross.
- [61:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But only as you know, in that sort of, you know, Marilyn Manson way. It's not Charlie Manson way.
- [61:50]
Christos
Right.
- [61:52]
Douglas Rushkoff
So, yeah, Crowley. Yeah, so Crowley was originally. He was kind of an English explorer type, like the kind of guy, you know, climb Mount Everest and go to the Himalayas and all that. But as an Orientalist, you know, they would go and see these exotic things so people didn't know about. Oh, these people in India, they sit in the mountain and they do yoga and these guys can stand on their head and these ones can create the illusion that they're climbing up a rope. And everyone, you know, in the middle of the, you know, in the middle of the town square, so they would go and see all these things. And then he became kind of a purveyor and explorer of esoteric activities and things. You know, yoga plus, which included, you know, sex magic, where you're having sex for specific purposes and using the moment of orgasm in order to get divine insights or do wishes. I mean, what do you do when you, you know, there's a moment there where you're. It's almost like a bufo trip or something, like a dm. There's a moment when you come of like, rebooting your whole system, you know, so if you and your partner are there and doing it intentionally and reboot your system with something in mind, you can really improve print something moving forward. So he got into a real historian, got into the history of Tarot and astrology and looking at those things, and did lots of rituals. He was originally part of a magical order, golden dawn, but then got kicked out of it later because he was kind of pushing the public image of this stuff more than occultists were ready for. They were, keep it in the dark, don't talk too much, don't talk to the press, don't do this shit, you know. But he would do, you know, rituals, all that kind of Eyes Wide Shut, you know, temple rituals. The thing that was interesting about him for me was he, you do magic rituals in a way you can. That's a little bit like tripping, that you do these things in order to get yourself kind of out of body into these other realms where you see entities. Terence McKenna would call them the machine elves that you see on dmt. But for him, it wasn't psychedelics. It was using sex or meditation or breathing or ritual or fasting or whatever to go there. And he would then kind of write almost literary descriptive maps. First you'll go here, then you'll see this entity. And then if you get past this gate, you'll see this. So he wrote these very elaborate descriptions of the landscapes that, you know, you never know. Is he telling a story that then when we have those experiences, we see those cause we're primed to see them? Or even if we've never read his story, is it more like a kind of Rupert Sheldrake morphogenetic field, that once enough people have had that experience and see these things, then do they become part of our common shared collective unconscious of those spaces? Or was he mapping out new terrains? And it kind of doesn't matter because you can go to these places and have these experiences. But he was, in that sense, he was Britain's leading occultist and speaking out directly about it. And because it was, as your mom would say, it was not in religion. It was saying, no, you don't do it in religions. Have co opted our natural birthright to manifest as magical beings and express our own true will. But it was true will love. It was always about, as he said, it was always about love. That what your true will is always under love. That's the prime force of this universe.
- [66:18]
Christos
Yeah, I think he says, do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Law. That was kind of like the catchphrase.
- [66:23]
Douglas Rushkoff
Do as thou will shall be the whole of the law. But. But it's will under love.
- [66:29]
Christos
I see. Hey guys, we're gonna take a break really quick because I want to talk to you about gld. This is an awesome new company that we're working with that I'm actually wearing right now. I actually got this crucifix right here. And honestly, even just getting it, you know, sometimes like when you work with some companies, you're like, all right, I really hope the product is good. This one is. I, I wear it all the time. This is actually like the new crucifix. I lost my last one at a bathhouse, literally at a sauna. I lost my crucifix, which is maybe God's way of telling me something. But I got a new one from GLD and I've been rocking it non stop. My wife likes it and it's got like a nice weight to it. The details actually look better in person. The clasp is like super solid. It doesn't feel like something you bought like in Times Square from a random dude. It doesn't feel like something you ordered from, you know, some sketchy website on Teemu. And they got everything, chains, pendants, bracelets, watches. Whether you want something subtle or something that's like, like, yo, I Just, I just signed a deal. You know what I mean? If you want, like the record deal chain, they got that, too. Now, if I haven't convinced you yet, let me sweeten the deal a little bit. All right? For a limited time, the listeners of this program, Camp Gagnon, Religion, Camp History, Camp and the entire camp universe, you're getting a crazy deal. If you use the code camp C A M P when you check out, you're going to get 40% off your entire order@gld.com. that's 40% off your whole order with the code Camp Camp at checkoutgld.com and after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about gld. Tell them you heard about them from, you know, the good folks here at the campsite, Mark and Christo sent you. And whenever you do that, it really helps, you know, support the show. And thank you so much to gld, and thank you to you for tuning in. Let's get back to the show now. He gets married to his first wife, goes on a honeymoon to Cairo. And while in Cairo, he interfaces with this entity. Entity. This being called Lamb.
- [68:13]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [68:14]
Christos
Are you familiar with the story? Yeah, but can you pull up a picture of Lamb? This is one that people love to. People love to look at because it's a very strange depiction. He basically sketches more or less what this entity was. And people have commented where they say, oh, well, this is obviously a demon. I think he refers to the being as a demon. Other people will say, oh, this is obviously alien. It is an alien. What do you make of this experience that he has?
- [68:40]
Douglas Rushkoff
Well, there's some other. There's something else that we see. Right. I've always thought of it as the future, that this is some kind of future evolution of humans talking back to us. That it's, you know, which may as well be aliens.
- [69:08]
Christos
Right. There's a theory by. I can't believe I'm forgetting his name. He wrote a book about this exact topic. He's an anthropologist that's also connected to the sort of ufo, UAP world. Jacques Vallee, the original guy, Not Jacques Vallee. He's a young guy, he's like 40 something. He teaches up in Minnesota, I believe. And his name is Christos Jean Baptiste Lamar. No. If you search future humans, alien theory, you would be fascinated by this guy. I can't believe I'm forgetting his name. Really sweet guy. He came on the show and sort of shared with me and he has all sorts of wild experiences, but more or less the theory that he Proposes that this exact thing where these beings are future humans. And if you look at the domestication of humans coming from, you know, Homo erectus all the way to homo sapiens. Now, Dr. Michael Masters, thank you very much, much. And he basically argues that if you follow that track of domestication, our mouths have gotten smaller, our brains have encephalopathized where they've gotten a bit bigger. And if you track it, it's very likely within a couple iterations that we would look and start to resemble these grays and that that is what future humans could look at.
- [70:16]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [70:16]
Christos
Interesting theory. I mean, it's kind of fun to consider, but in this case, you're looking at this being that Crowley's talking to and people have said like, oh, this is obviously bad. Do you think it is bad?
- [70:30]
Douglas Rushkoff
Perhaps dangerous, Always dangerous. Oh, I mean, you're playing with fire here, you know. You know, it's like I'm really. I mean, that's why I was even so careful to do workings for my daughter or something. Do them in a way where it's like I want the most benevolent, non questioning, easy. It's like, Ganesh ain't gonna hurt anybody. You know, he loves everybody. He's good, right? You know, he's almost a Disney esque sort of God to play with. Yeah, it's tricky. I mean, Crowley didn't have a happy life.
- [71:05]
Christos
This is the other thing, right? Like he kind of goes and becomes infamous and you know, travels around from New York to London and you know, joins MI5 and is working as a spy basically. And then the end of his life, he's poor and drunk, more or less and kind of quietly kind of exits in this kind of almost like a Solomon esque kind of story. So I'm curious what happens there with him.
- [71:30]
Douglas Rushkoff
Who knows? I mean, I wasn't there, but he had a lot of sex, a lot of power, a lot of showmanship. It's hard to me, from his writing and the way he manifested in culture, he seemed kind of narcissistic and willing to, it seems, burn out women for what he was doing. That the mission meant all. I mean, I do believe in karma as well. Comes back to bite you, right? It was a hard, I mean, I don't think I would have been, I would have liked to meet. I don't think I'd be friends with them. I'd be scared of him.
- [72:22]
Christos
But there's many of these types of people, I mean, Jack Parsons, I'm sure if you're familiar with him, another infamous sort of jet propulsion rocket scientist that's very much involved in the American and cutting edge of aerospace. Also just a very fervent fanatic occultist that was experimenting with all this kind of stuff. And then the end of his life is also kind of strange. I think he dies in a laboratory fire or something to that effect explodes and it's sort of the end of it. And then, I mean, Michael Aquino, another infamous general within the US military that was a very outspoken occultist. I think he would describe himself as a Satanist.
- [72:59]
Douglas Rushkoff
Well, there's one now. There's the Satanist guy that was working with. What's his name? The guy that got shot, the right wing guy that got shot, the young guy.
- [73:10]
Christos
Oh, Charlie Kirk.
- [73:11]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right, Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's wife. And they're working. That organization they're in is Turning Point usa. Yeah, Turning Point USA is run in part by that Satanist general from the US Military.
- [73:25]
Christos
What?
- [73:26]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [73:27]
Christos
Is he a current general?
- [73:29]
Douglas Rushkoff
I don't know. He's probably gotta be retired by now. That one who had the.
- [73:33]
Christos
Aquino.
- [73:33]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, that guy. He's a turning point.
- [73:36]
Christos
What?
- [73:37]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yes. And he wrote the book on Psyops.
- [73:39]
Christos
Right.
- [73:40]
Douglas Rushkoff
So then you think, okay, if you've got a Satanist who wrote the book for the government on Psyops is part of Turning Point usa, and then there's a bizarre assassination. I don't know.
- [73:52]
Christos
Very public.
- [73:53]
Douglas Rushkoff
And that whole thing. Yeah, that feels. I mean, that feels like the overlap of this, the other edge of magic, Satanism and conspiracy theory, where how are you using magic and ritual as psyops on a population?
- [74:13]
Christos
Right. I mean, there's an infamous story from World War II Germany of these Nostradamus pamphlets.
- [74:20]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [74:20]
Christos
Where there's. The Third Reich is basically leaving these pamphlets of alleged Nostradamus predictions about how the Germans are going to win the war. They're the most superior military and that this is their destiny and that it's been written in the stars for eons that the, you know, the Nazis will be victorious. And they would leave these in occupied lands for people to read. And people would read them and be like, nostradamus said this.
- [74:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [74:43]
Christos
Now it was completely fake. And that they fabricated all of these predictions from Nostradamus for their own agenda. And so it's functioning as like this kind of intersection between magic and occult prophecy with propaganda that was ultimately untrue both in the time that they released it and then also in the war.
- [75:00]
Douglas Rushkoff
But when you got that and Twitter right, you're good.
- [75:07]
Christos
Okay. He does not have an official role, but he is connected to the organization indirectly through former military associate who served as a Turning Point USA advisor. So retired US Army Major General Paul E. Valeli. Valeli previously served on the Advisory Council for Turning Point usa. Valeli and Michael Aquino co authored an internal US Army Psychological operations concept paper from Psyop to Mind the Psychology of Victory. Wow. So this guy, Val.
- [75:35]
Douglas Rushkoff
So it's not Aquino, it's General Valeli.
- [75:38]
Christos
But Valelli and Aquino obviously worked together on this book.
- [75:41]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah, but he wrote so. But it's a Psyops guy. I mean, it's just, I don't know,
- [75:46]
Christos
Psyops people a bit strange, right?
- [75:49]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. When a Psyops person joins, especially someone a Psyops writer is joining a movement, I start to think, oh, the movement is interested in something more than marketing.
- [76:01]
Christos
Right. What do you think of predictive programming? Are you familiar with this term? This is a thing that people talk about in conspiracy circles where they'll say that perhaps blueprints of future events will be used in comic books or film and TV to maybe either tip off or to signal what will occur in the future.
- [76:26]
Douglas Rushkoff
And that's who knows? So the someone knows what's going to happen in the future, I guess to say that.
- [76:33]
Christos
I've heard it said that in order for these ritual events, again, this is deep conspiracy stuff. This is not something I necessarily believe, but know, perhaps people related to me that you have to show the public what will happen in order for the ritual to work, because it has to be in front of them in some type of way. And so you show them these things and then when they occur, the ritual is able to actually, you know, collect the energy or to utilize the energy in an effective way. And so people have used this in this kind of theory in a bunch of different, I guess, intersection. So infamously, in the Matrix, Neo's passport, they show a picture of it and the Matrix comes out in 97 or something. His passport expires on September 11, 2001. And people will say, well, this is a connection or a predictive program to signal to the public that this is a significant date. And in order to harness the energy from that ritual, they need to release to the people, people. Now, this is far off conspiracy land, but I'm curious, have you ever heard that before?
- [77:37]
Douglas Rushkoff
Things like it? I don't know how valuable. I don't know how valuable assigning intention to that is, you know, because it just can. It can make you crazy. I mean, when. I see a lot of conspiracy theory as even darker than conspiracy theorists. I see a lot of conspiracy theory as a way of distracting people from the much more mundane reality of the conspiracy. So it's like you don't need thermal explosives on the World Trade center in order to understand that. We trained the people who did this. Start with that. It's like, what's the regular. The regular story here is so bad our relationship with the Saudis, who did we put on the planes right after it happened to send them to free. It's like, wait a minute. It do the regular facts. So it seems to me that some of the more the deeper, harder to believe facts distract our discussion from the part that we know.
- [79:05]
Christos
Interesting people have pointed out that they say that this event or events like these, like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, these are rituals, right?
- [79:14]
Douglas Rushkoff
They may be rituals, but usually the signs of things in advance. So it's like the Simpsons had Donald Trump as president as a joke. Now was that somehow planted by Fox? Obviously it was just a joke they came up with in the thing. But to me, what's more interesting is the kind of predictive spell that we do see these things coming. It's not that they're causative or intentional so much as kind of windows to the kind of pattern recognition that we could be doing.
- [80:03]
Christos
Do you think Ouija boards work at something?
- [80:08]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [80:09]
Christos
What is that something?
- [80:11]
Douglas Rushkoff
That something is certainly leading people to believe that there's something happening there, that they're divining something. I don't know whether it's someone's pushing it or the two. I mean, it's interesting. It seems to work better when two people are doing it. No one really knows who's pushing it, whatever. But you know, the exorcist girl got possessed from that. So be careful, you know. And I do know. You've got to. I found that you have to say goodbye at the end of the Ouija thing.
- [80:50]
Christos
Right.
- [80:51]
Douglas Rushkoff
Or it like could stay with you.
- [80:53]
Christos
The portal's open.
- [80:54]
Douglas Rushkoff
It's gotta know. Right?
- [80:56]
Christos
Right.
- [80:57]
Douglas Rushkoff
But yeah, I would.
- [81:00]
Christos
I don't know.
- [81:00]
Douglas Rushkoff
I. I don't mess with Ouija. It's funny. They were gonna do Ouija on the Art Bell show. Art Bell was like the original conspiracy radio. Yeah.
- [81:10]
Christos
Coast to Coast FM. Yeah.
- [81:11]
Douglas Rushkoff
They were gonna.
- [81:12]
Christos
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- [81:28]
Douglas Rushkoff
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- [81:30]
Christos
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- [82:07]
Douglas Rushkoff
Ask your doctor.
- [82:07]
Christos
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- [82:12]
Douglas Rushkoff
Do a Ouija thing. I Talked to Terrence McKenna or someone who had died. I forgot what they were going to do. And so many listeners called in to say, do not do it. You know, that they eventually they didn't do it. Cause people thought it would almost like curse the whole show. They didn't want.
- [82:28]
Christos
I don't blame. Look, I don't know if it works. I've never done it before. But it's one of those things where I'm like, I don't want to know.
- [82:35]
Douglas Rushkoff
It's not that I don't want to know. I don't want to invite an entity into my body.
- [82:43]
Christos
Right. Yeah, I think that's reasonable.
- [82:45]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. I just don't want to do that. I mean, it was hard enough for me to even
- [82:52]
Christos
use
- [82:55]
Douglas Rushkoff
a biblical archangel as
- [83:01]
Christos
a liaison for your daughter.
- [83:06]
Douglas Rushkoff
That was hard enough to light a candle. You Catholics do it all the time. You got all those different things. It's so sweet. It is. Just put a light, a candle. The ones I like the best though. And once you start seeing this is real religion is the Quakers, they just sit. They just sit. And then someone gets up and says something. People listen, they sit down and they wait until someone else is called to say something. And to treat that as sacred is, I mean, just so beautiful.
- [83:47]
Christos
Right? But I think with like the Ouija board example, it is kind of this merging of like consumerism with occultism. I guess that's my concern because you
- [83:56]
Douglas Rushkoff
buy the Parker Brothers, whatever it is,
- [83:57]
Christos
it's like a Hasbro Ouija board. And you're like, what are we doing? Like, if you believe that it has Any type of sacred power at all that, like, giving this away as, like, a toy in the 70s or 80s, whenever it was, like, really widely produced.
- [84:12]
Douglas Rushkoff
But I would look at the same thing as, like, granting that south park or the Simpsons could have political merit. You're getting a cartoon. Back in the day, when I used to write papers analyzing the Simpsons in college, they would say, you're not allowed to use the Simpsons as an example. Because back then it was like, that's low culture. You could use Ulysses, you don't use. So I don't have a problem with the plastic. I don't think you have to go to the real witchcraft store and get the wood one prayed over.
- [84:37]
Christos
No, my point is that should we be inviting children to play with the occult? And that's where I'm like, no, that's
- [84:44]
Douglas Rushkoff
how you got the exorcist.
- [84:45]
Christos
Yeah, exactly. I'm like, yeah, it's like. I see it like mushrooms the same way. Like, I think mushrooms are a very powerful spiritual technology.
- [84:53]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right. Don't put them in the candy machine.
- [84:55]
Christos
Right. And, like, don't just, like, let your buddies do them at a party or, I mean, let your friends do whatever. But, like, I would not go to a party and just be like, yo, let me just.
- [85:03]
Douglas Rushkoff
I was amazed, you know? Yeah. I did acid in college, and it was like, oh, my God. This is like an opening. This is a portal to some really. Oh, my gosh. And then I see, like, kids doing acid in the AC DC parking lot.
- [85:16]
Christos
Yeah.
- [85:16]
Douglas Rushkoff
You know, in the car, whatever. It's just like, what are you?
- [85:19]
Christos
That's how I feel. I'm like, yeah, opiates are a great medicine that should be treated as a medicine.
- [85:25]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [85:25]
Christos
And that you shouldn't just be, like, taking opiates, like, willy nilly. I'm like, this is something that needs to be treated with a lot of reverence and respect. And that is my concern was kind of like. Like these occult kind of intersections where people are just like, yeah. You know, you go to a party, you do a little tarot, you do a little whatever.
- [85:41]
Douglas Rushkoff
I'm like, well, I'll tell you what. All of these things are what we would call non specific amplifiers. Right. You can give acid to you or me, and we're like, oh, connected to the people and thing that give it to a tech bro. And they're like, yes, I am God. Right. So you're set and setting your mindset it and the setting in which you do it will define your experience. So, yeah, a tech bro on acid is Still a tech bro on acid, it turns out. And the same with magic. It's like if you expose a person who's trying to engender compassion, a mutual aid and a caring, loving society, and. And they get engaged with magic, they're going to have a very different experience than somebody I'm trying to get down
- [86:34]
Christos
to get, like, Rolls Royce, you know,
- [86:37]
Douglas Rushkoff
I'm gonna hurt that person who hurt me, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna do right, you know, voodoo dolls and.
- [86:44]
Christos
Yeah. Do you think there's past societies that used this type of technology, you could call it perhaps, like, spiritual ritual to actually progress their society? Like, think about, you know, like, people that existed around Stonehenge. Do you think they were used in these places that are obviously like ritual places? They have these altars and, like, it exists as some type of sacred place. Do you think they were using it and legitimately communicating with some type of higher power to get something or to achieve something? Or do you think it was purely just kind of like, oh, an ancient ritual of some people out in a field? Some.
- [87:21]
Douglas Rushkoff
Oh, I'm sure. I mean, we know that they did these things in part because they didn't have fertilizer coming through the Strait of Hormuz, you know, they depended on the next season, you know, is it going to rain enough for us to eat? You know, and if you are, you don't know who's making the rain, whatever, you know, so you're going to do whatever you can think of to encourage whoever it is that's making the rain to believe that we deserve to eat.
- [87:55]
Christos
Right? Yeah.
- [87:56]
Douglas Rushkoff
So, yeah, I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did. And they also were figuring, we know that Stonehenge had a quite advanced understanding of astronomy and how planets lined up and how those things worked. And they were like. So on the one hand, there's a science understanding of are they figuring out the seasons, Are they figuring out stuff? And the Tropic of Capricorn and the axis of the. They're figuring out something about weather at the same time that they don't yet know how this all works. So it was also science, right?
- [88:30]
Christos
Yeah. I mean, I look at, like, all these megalithic structures, whether it's like the pyramids of Giza or Teotihuacan in Central Mexico or Stonehenge. I'm like, there's something about these places where I. I personally, like, intuitively, I'm led to believe they existed for something other than a theatrical spiritual production. I'm like, I wonder if there was an actual spiritual energy that they were harnessing and that they were performing these rituals that are magical in some way, many of them, including child sacrifice in certain parts of the world. And I'm like, what did they actually get? Was it actually effective or was it just this thing of, oh, we think it works, so it does, yeah.
- [89:11]
Douglas Rushkoff
What did they get? Did they get social cohesion?
- [89:14]
Christos
Right.
- [89:16]
Douglas Rushkoff
I don't think that the mummified Pharaoh got anything for. In terms of eternal life, for doing that, or for when they used to sacrifice 10,000 slaves or whatever to do it. I don't think they got much for that.
- [89:35]
Christos
Like, did they get wisdom? And are these things real? This, again, is like the looming question.
- [89:39]
Douglas Rushkoff
But there is a real to it. When we go, okay, the pyramid does this, or he keeps your fruit fresh or something. Or utilized construction or engineering techniques that we can't quite figure out today. Or the Ark of the Covenant. I mean, the Israelites, they brought it. They lost the battle. You know, they brought it out there. But, you know, did it give everyone sunburn and shit? You know, is there some. There's really precise rules or how you make one right, you know, and you
- [90:14]
Christos
got to put all the right stuff in it, and it's got to look the right way, and it's got to be the right dimensions and all of these things. It's like a very, like, sacred geometry, architecture type thing, right?
- [90:23]
Douglas Rushkoff
And there's always, like. And it feels like embedded in these things are. Right, kind of sacred geometry insights that you go, wow, that's frigging advanced. But then on the other hand, and it's like, yeah, but you carry that thing into war, you're still gonna get clobbered by the people with the bows and arrows and chariots and stuff, right?
- [90:41]
Christos
So then I'm like, are they using it for the wrong purpose again? This is where my mind goes, where I go, like, what is really going on? Is it actually effective or is it just these placebos where the society's like, oh, God's on our side, so they play better, you know?
- [90:57]
Douglas Rushkoff
And it is weird. It's like, if you meditate, it's good. Good shit happens. You get to good places and all that. That doesn't necessarily mean that meditating will make your stock options vest or do whatever they're supposed to do. So I think you're right. It's kind of the wrong tool for the job. Caesar wants Caesar's. And God, what? That's God's right? And I think that's what we're getting to with Lishma, you read Torah for its own sake. You do magic for its own sake. And the sacred. What is the sacred? For the sacred is to burst, to break your heart. It's to break your heart, you know, the sacred, it breaks your heart into a state of appreciation and then compassion for everyone else. That's where Christ went with it. And the thing I love about Christ, he went to the Jews and he was like, it's beautiful that you're trying to figure out. And we've been doing it since Moses and Jethro sat down to write the law. It's great. You're trying to use text, your scripture, to come up with a law for everything, to come up with how we should behave. And. And you're going to keep. It's going to get ever more granular. You're kind of in a losing battle because you can't figure out the law for everything. At some point, it's going to come back to your heart. So it's a great exercise, a wonderful contemplation. It's great. Good work, boys. But now just. Have you done it? Feel it, feel it.
- [92:38]
Christos
You've been so wrapped up in the legalism that you've forgotten to help the prostitute, to help the poor and the destitute. Like you've lost kind of the law
- [92:47]
Douglas Rushkoff
and the prophets, the law. And what's going to come that Abraham's. The covenant's going to come, the chiachust. And that's the thing that, for me, is what I think that's what magic is for. To see the connections between things. That how you think about things, these others, is going to impact how everything happens. Your thoughts, your words, your deeds matter in the great fractal of being. They're so much more powerful than you realize. That doesn't mean you need to do magic to make stuff happen. It means you have to accept that you are doing magic all the time.
- [93:33]
Christos
Right. I think vision boards perhaps fall under this kind of category.
- [93:38]
Douglas Rushkoff
Well, of intentional. But you're already doing a vision board. What's in your room? What are you watching on tv? Who are you fucking? You know what I mean? What are you buying? It's all magic. It's all magic.
- [93:54]
Christos
Yeah. My mom always points out, she's like, you're watching TV programs. She's like, these things are programming you. And she's kind of saying it, tongue in cheek.
- [94:03]
Douglas Rushkoff
No, I've said it. I wrote a book about it. They're. They're not programming their schedule. They're it's called pro programming you.
- [94:09]
Christos
And they exist on channels because these are channeling something to program you.
- [94:13]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [94:13]
Christos
And she. And so she's right.
- [94:15]
Douglas Rushkoff
And she's 100% right.
- [94:17]
Christos
So she says, well, what are you channeling and what are you programming yourself with and what are you consuming? Because the external creates the internal. And as above, so below. And what goes into your brain will all of a sudden become who you are and how you act. So you have to be very intentional about what you absorb.
- [94:30]
Douglas Rushkoff
Verb Intentional. Intentional. Your will. Your will matter. You're exercising your will whether you know it or not.
- [94:37]
Christos
Right. Which I think like there was a lot of like satanic panic around like rock music and stuff like that.
- [94:43]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [94:43]
Christos
And I think much of it was overblown, of course. But there isn't a part of me that's like filling your brain with music that is wretched in many ways, that is angry and, you know, vindictive and vengeful and like promotes like, like violence or things like that.
- [94:59]
Douglas Rushkoff
Mid range electric guitar. I mean, Genesis Pich talked a lot about that and the effect that has on the nervous system.
- [95:04]
Christos
Really.
- [95:05]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [95:06]
Christos
That's interesting. Like the frequency of the guitar. That's where I'm like, the sonics and the, the music is creating an openness in your subconscious and then the words create a permeability. And I'm like, I'm going to listen to stuff that's better, but I'm going to die. I'm going die, kill, die, kill, die. It's like there's a part of me that's like, okay, I'm being a little bit, bit facetious. It's like, this is a little silly. You can listen to a rap song or a rock song and not be programmed to kill people. But I'm like, what does it do to your soul? Or I'm like, I really do try to listen to like things that I find are uplifting.
- [95:40]
Douglas Rushkoff
Right.
- [95:40]
Christos
Or like, you know, put me into a state of peace. And I don't think it's genre specific, that's good or bad, but it is something that I think about. And you as a musician, is this something that you're familiar with? Do you see music as a form of programming and are you deliberate with it?
- [95:54]
Douglas Rushkoff
Absolutely. And that was what. The band I was in was called Psychic tv, you know, and it was basically saying that we're living in this programmed world. And what we were playing was called industrial music, which although it became more psychedelic as it went on, it's kind of Happy, psychedelic. But the tradition was industrial. And what industrial music was about was that we're living in a world with all of this construction and sound and stuff. And Genesis started sampling industrial sound and making it part of the music. So it was a way of kind of trying to take control of this and knowing what's happening, what's happening to you. But it ended up feeling kind of. That music was kind of aggro, which is why then it moved into a very sort of happy, hypey psychedelic music.
- [96:45]
Christos
Interesting. Do you think frequencies have an effect on your sound? The actual 432Hz or whatever comes out
- [96:52]
Douglas Rushkoff
of her Brown noise.
- [96:53]
Christos
Yeah, yeah.
- [96:54]
Douglas Rushkoff
Makes you poop.
- [96:55]
Christos
But you think, is that real?
- [96:56]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yes, it's real. It's gotta be really loud, though.
- [96:57]
Christos
Oh, really?
- [96:58]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [96:58]
Christos
Oh, interesting. Yeah, I guess, like, absolutely. It can make you angry, it can make you peaceful.
- [97:04]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. The songs they pick when they, you know, put the giant loudspeakers outside Noriega's house or something.
- [97:10]
Christos
Blast Metallica. Yeah, right.
- [97:12]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. They're just. They're not blasting Neil Young, right?
- [97:15]
Christos
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. It's. I think about these things as like, you know, is there a world where the government is enabling or promoting types of music in order to influence the populace in one way or another?
- [97:30]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. They paid for movies, all the Frank Capra movies and stuff. Not all of them, but they make Top Gun. A lot of military hardware was Right.
- [97:43]
Christos
I mean, I'm sure you've heard of the CIA with Jackson Pollock and sort of postmodern art. And Kevin kind of promoting these galleries and putting money into them to show the Soviets how free and kind of free form we are.
- [97:54]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yep. And there was something called the Smith Mundt act, which was. Because so many Americans hated that stuff because we were still. We were pretty MAGA even back then. Most of us was maga. They didn't want Americans to see the image that we were projecting in Europe of ourselves as free and modern and forward, because they knew most Americans would low. Know it or not. That's some, you know, that's homosexual. You know, weird stuff. Yeah. So we had a law called the Smith Month act, which was that out outside propaganda can't be used here. But then it was finally. It was finally that firewall that lifted in 2013. And that's part of what I think made us a little crazy because now the imagery of projecting out and the one we were trying to maintain in kind. Kind of collided. And they're different. You know, one is a sort of urban Liberal, you know, woke thing. Other is. No, a real America. The insular American identity.
- [98:55]
Christos
Oh, that's interesting. And now they've kind of converged and we've had to reckon with it.
- [98:59]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [99:00]
Christos
Oh, that's interesting. I've never heard that before. So this act historically was used to prohibit government produced media intended for foreign audiences from being disseminated domestically. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that is fascinating. And so because you could talk to people from a different nation using a different language and sort of visual to promote whatever it is that you're showing in that context.
- [99:20]
Douglas Rushkoff
The progressive American. Yeah, the Jackson Pollocki.
- [99:25]
Christos
Right. Oh, that's so interesting. But yeah, I guess I'm curious if the government would be like, hey, we're going to promote this type of music or this type of film because we want people to behave in this type of way. And for a nationalistic or patriotic agenda. You're kind of like, all right, yeah, I can see they would fund Top Gun to, you know, make us feel more. We did.
- [99:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
I mean, it was more in our, our urban design. So like Levittown was created by the Levitt brothers and fdr and I think Margaret Mead was involved in it to promote a certain kind of behavior. Distance. The houses don't give people public spaces to gather, make the person have to get a mortgage in order to get it. Once you have a mortgage, you're gonna want to keep your job. So you're not gonna have a labor movement. So they thought about it a lot like that. I mean, now I would think corporate America is so much bigger than America. America, you know, if there's certain kinds of music and you know, look at Larry Ellison buying up Paramount and TikTok and has a better surveillance infrastructure than Palantir. He's got a, what, a 30 year contract with the Israeli Defense Fund Defense Force and one with the CIA. And I mean, it's like. And he's making Yellowstone, you know, and God knows what else. So it's like, you know, there's, there is a propaganda empire. I just think it's, it's currently more corporate than it is government.
- [100:51]
Christos
Interesting. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. I do think that there's this sense like, oh, the government knows what it's like. Well, you just need to create alignment. Right. Like where the corporations just promote what the government also wants by creating this mutual alignment. And I guess that's probably what it is. Right. America is, I've heard it said, just a bunch of corporations in a trench coat.
- [101:12]
Douglas Rushkoff
In a way. Yeah. Although really, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt corporations have been trying to take back power. This has been an organized coup d'.
- [101:22]
Christos
Etat.
- [101:23]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. Hundred year project to get America off that kind of. Of wpa, New Deal social safety net country. To go back to or forward to a more libertarian corporatized. Every man for himself might makes right.
- [101:46]
Christos
Right.
- [101:46]
Douglas Rushkoff
Because they believe that will strengthen people rather than weaken them with support.
- [101:51]
Christos
Do you think AI is magic? Like, do you think AI in any of its iterations or in the way that we're producing it, does it have magical elements? Is there a ritual element?
- [102:02]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. People can. You can use AI magically as an oracle, as like a tarot card, as a thing. Yeah. And I've seen people playing with it that way.
- [102:16]
Christos
Interesting. Effective.
- [102:19]
Douglas Rushkoff
Who's to say?
- [102:21]
Christos
I guess, right? Douglas, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. If people are interested in checking out more of your work or they want to follow TeamHuman.
- [102:28]
Douglas Rushkoff
TeamHuman FM. Do you listen to podcasts or watch podcasts on YouTube like this one? Just go and they're gonna put a link to me.
- [102:39]
Christos
I'm not doing anything. I refuse to do that. But put a link.
- [102:42]
Douglas Rushkoff
Team Human.
- [102:42]
Christos
If you know Christos and there's a
- [102:43]
Douglas Rushkoff
good chance, go to YouTube. I'm Douglas Rushko off. It's fun. We talk like this, but even weirder.
- [102:50]
Christos
Oh, I can't imagine. Douglas, God bless you, brother. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. Let's do it again soon. Yeah.
- [102:55]
Douglas Rushkoff
Yeah. Let's light the fire. Next.
- [102:57]
Christos
I'm on the road. That's right. My standup comedy tour continues at the end of this year. And I'm going to a bunch of cities. In October, I'm going to Plano, Texas. I'm going to Chandler, Arizona. In November, I'm going to Pasadena, California. I'm going to San Diego. And in December, I'm going to Detroit, Michigan. And in January, I'll be in Salt Lake City. I genuinely cannot wait to see you guys. I hang out after every single show. I would love to grab a photo with you and just chop it up and talk about the podcast life, whatever it is. So come on out, come hang with me, see the show and say what's up afterwards. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways
- [103:30]
Douglas Rushkoff
to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $50 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial.
- [103:45]
Christos
Give it a try at mintmobile.
- [103:46]
Douglas Rushkoff
Com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required
- [103:52]
Christos
$15 per month equivalent taxes and fees.
- [103:53]
Douglas Rushkoff
Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.