Stefan Julich (2:46)

Jonathan and congratulations. And it's. It only gets worse from here.

Lon Milo DuQuette (2:53)

Today.

Stefan Julich (2:53)

I'm really honored to introduce our guest today, somebody who I've been reading and aware of for quite a number of years. Lan Milo Duquette. Excuse me. Best selling author of 20 books, one of the most respected and entertaining esoteric writers in the world today. Lon is also an award winning singer, songwriter and recording artist whose musical career has spanned over 50 years and is an internationally recognized authority on the tarot Kabbalah and ceremonial magic. He's written extensively about the life and works of the controversial English magician Aleister Crowley. Is Crowley still controversial? I guess?

Lon Milo DuQuette (3:39)

No.

Stefan Julich (3:41)

He's currently the US Deputy Grandmaster of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a 100-year-old magical society once led by Crowley. Lon hosts the Daily show on his Facebook and YouTube channels, which I've had the pleasure of watching. And anybody who's listening to this should tune in, and occasionally appears on television, radio, and Internet programs as a guest expert on subjects involving the occult. Finally, Lon lives in Sacramento, California, with Constance, his high school sweetheart and wife of 57 years. Constance can sometimes be heard and even seen on lan's morning offerings on Facebook and YouTube. And I also want to wish you a happy 77th birthday Alon tomorrow. Right.

Lon Milo DuQuette (4:26)

Thank you very much. Yes, it's the first time I've been 77.

Stefan Julich (4:32)

I'm catching up on 66. We're recording this on July 10th, so people will be looking back and wishing you a belated happy birthday. So, lan, welcome. As I said, this is a special honor for me, having read some of your books and even taught. I even taught the Chicken Kabbalah in a class on the history of Western esotericism back, I think it was in 2016, maybe a little bit later than 2018 or something like that. And it's such a wonderful book. Really deeply humorous and also incredibly learned, and the students loved it.

Lon Milo DuQuette (5:07)

Oh, that's good to know. Well, thank you for having me on.

Stefan Julich (5:11)

Thank you for being here.

Lon Milo DuQuette (5:13)

So.

Stefan Julich (5:15)

When we reached out to you, in a way, because of your relationship with Kasia. So Kasia has been a student in East West Psychology, the school that Jonathan and I are affiliated with and that I teach at. And Kasia told me, you know, very early on in our relationship, her relationship to you through her grandmother, and I was fascinated. I even started listening to your autobiography a few months ago. I got sidetracked. So I think I only got up to your marriage, but I was really fascinated with what I was hearing about your own trajectory through the magical orders and your training. Even though today I really would like to concentrate on your new book, Tarot Architecture, I thought it might be nice for those who don't know you, if you would introduce yourself and if we could just give a special mention to your training under Kassia's grandmother, that would be wonderful.

Lon Milo DuQuette (6:24)

Well, I. I'm sort of a child of the 60s, so I had the. The great fortune to. To go to College in 1967. And 68, right in the middle of the psychedelic kind of explosion. And I, that sort of plunged me into Eastern mysticism. One evening I had the opportunity to look in the mirror and look in the mirror too hard. And I realized that from then on, finding out who I was and what this was all about was going to be the only thing worth, worth doing in life. And for a few years I tried to be a, you know, a first class Eastern mystic and sort of pictured myself gaining enlightenment, you know, sitting in a full lotus under a, a dappled shade of a tree by a little brook somewhere. And I would look so cool losing my ego under that, sitting in that full lotus. And I couldn't get over the fact how cool I was going to look, losing my ego. And I eventually came to the conclusion that I wasn't at the moment properly hardwired to go inward and strip everything away. I was still hardwired to. If I was going to reach that smooth point, it wasn't going to be by reaching into that empty spot, but reaching into the spot that connected everything. So it's like east, west is the difference between an Innie and an Audi. And the extremes of both of them are the exact same, hitting the exact same singularity of consciousness, but just going about it in a different way. So I looked around for a comparable system in the west, because in the west we're sort of programmed to, to deal with inner, inner workings by doing things outwardly. That's why in the west, oh, we love scripture and we like, you know, teachers and we like ceremonial magic and we like, you know, dressing up in robes and strutting around and doing all these things which are, you know, symbolic, representative of, of inner qualities and inner dynamics. But we like throwing them out in front of us and working with them that way. And so I was looking for something comparable in the west that was sort of more in line with my hardware. So I was looking for good Western hardware, software to play on my Western hardware and eventually ran into the, the, oh, the Rosicrucian. The Rosicrucian order, Amarc was like a gateway drug to me. And that got me interested in the Kabbalah and that tiny little book, the Sefer Yet Zaira, which is, I sort of saw it as the Western equivalent of the Dao de Jing because I was a big Dao Te Ching, still am fan. And that got me into the study of, well, I guess we could call it hermetics, modern ceremonial magic. And that brought me inevitably to the works of Aleister Crowley. And after being absolutely freaked out by his reputation and everything, I had heard about this perfectly nasty man and evil and nasty man. Everybody said, I guess the little occult dictionary that I first had said, Hollister Crowley, famous Scottish Satanist. And you know, and I'd always sort of been a, you know, a casual heretic all my life, you know, but I, what I, what I thought, what I fantasized Satanism was, I certainly didn't want any part of that. But I was disabused. A friend that had read Crowley's biography said, you're the stupidest person, you know, get that book of Thoth and, and read that because everything you think you want to get into, this guy knows more than anybody else on, on the planet. And sure enough, I got the Book of Thoth and a couple other Crowley things. And back 70s, that was, that wasn't easy to find Crowley literature. And I had a guitar student of mine went to England. I told him to pick me up a couple of Crowley books if he could find them. And one of them he brought back was just a little, a little booklet, little, just paper, paper cover or.

Kasia Elderkin (13:02)

Little.

Lon Milo DuQuette (13:02)

Blue book of the Law. The Book of. And I said, oh, I've read about this Book of the Law thing. This, you know, and then I, I was thumbing through it before I read it and I, I saw the, the comment and it says, the study of this book is forbidden. It's wise to destroy this copy after the first reading. You know, the penalties are most dire, you know. And I said, wow, this is a magic thing here. I'm going to have to set aside some time here and read this little book. Well, there was an address on the little book, and that address was a post office box in Dublin, California. Believe me, I'm coming around to Phyllis and Cassie's grandmother here, okay? Because that was her post office address. Okay. The book came from England, actually, it came from California, went to England and came back to me. But anyway, so I read the, I set aside some time and I took a shower and I got into my karate gi, which was the best thing I had the magical robes. And I set aside some time, told my wife not to come into the bedroom, my little bedroom temple. And I ceremonially read the Book of the Law and there's just three short chapters. And I read the first. And it's not like a book like somebody wrote, it's more like, you know, when you read the, the, the crazy language of biblical prophets kind of stuff, you, you're not sure where they're Coming from, and it's full of imagery and. And things like that. But I read that first chapter, which is that of the goddess Nuit, the Egyptian sky goddess, and it's just absolutely gorgeous. It's lovely. It's. It's exciting. It's. It's inspiring. It's beautiful. And I said, what are these people talking about? Crowley is. This is gold. This is, you know, this is a holy book. And I read the second chapter, and it wasn't quite like. Quite like that. And it was very kind of pragmatic and a little. A little strange. But the third chapter was just absolutely frightening, terrifying. You know, let it first be understood that I'm a God of war and vengeance, you know, and it just. Wow. And then I said, God, Crowley is the devil. They're right. Whatever. You know, whatever. They said, crowley's right. And I burned the book. Now, I came from a background of, I guess, a radical political background, okay? I was active in the anti war and civil rights movement. And in the late 60s, I got expelled from school twice for draft counseling, you know, in the cafeteria. And so burning a book was about the worst taboo I could commit. And I felt terrible. I mean, I took the book out into the driveway, and I had a little brass thurible, and I poured rubbing alcohol all over first. I glued all the pages together because I thought that's what I was instructed to do in the book. Paste the sheets from right to left. And as that book burned, I had, I would say, an epiphany. But I think it's more accurate to say I had a nervous breakdown. And maybe epiphanies and nervous breakdowns are pretty much the same thing. As I watched that book curl away, I went through sort of a crisis because this was a taboo. You don't even burn a bad book, okay? Where I come from. Where I come from, mister, you don't even burn a bad book, you know? And. And here I was, and I had to face myself. What is it in me? I said, the problem is not in this book. The problem's in me. Okay? What am I afraid of? What triggers did that pull in me that would have me commit this act of personal betrayal? And from that moment on, I thought, I'm gonna get another copy of that book, and I'm gonna read it more carefully, and I'm gonna see what this is about, to find out, you know, what kind of magic that was that would cause me to face myself so severely. And eventually I did, and to end up this little part of the story. I did get another copy of the, of the book eventually. And I also got the Thoth tarot cards, Which is Crowley's, Crowley's deck, along about 1972, I think. And on the promotional card of that deck, it had that same address in Dublin, California, that same post office address. So I wrote, and it said, ordo templae Orientis. And so I wrote that and that letter to that address and said, you know, I'm really interested in initiation. And I didn't hear anything back. So 90 days later I wrote another letter saying, oh, I bet that first letter sounded stupid. You know, I think the first letter said, kindly communicate to me as you will. Well, it wasn't their will to, you know, answer a stupid letter like that. And I wrote three letters before I got a letter back. And I got a letter back from Cassia's grandmother and she signed it Saror Murrell. And so I didn't even know what her name was, her, you know, her civil name. And we went back and forth and she. Her letter, first letter to me was, we know nothing about you, you know, why do you want to join the oto? And she said, send me all your complete birth information. Because she's an astrologer, a fabulous astrologer. And so I sent her my birth information and sort of a funky little resume, you know, that a 27 year old kid would write. And then she writes, she drew up my astrological chart and I guess she saw that I probably wasn't a mass murderer or something like that. You know, I might not be brilliant, but I'm harmless. And she came to conclusion that I was probably harmless. And so she arranged for me to take a bus to Dublin, California. I didn't even know where it was to take my zero degree, which is the first OTO initiation. And, you know, I thought there was a huge temple and with golden doors and, you know, at least a Masonic facility of some kind. But no, it was just her beautiful little house in Dublin, California. It was like a gingerbread house. It was just so charming with a wonderful garden in the back with a fish pond and a couple of almond trees. It was just. And when she picked me up at the motel, she wouldn't even give me the address because she was. Because Crowley people were crazy in those days. You had to be a pretty wild person to even be interested in Crowley. And so when she came to the motel to pick me up, we were both very, very relieved because there she was, just a charming little, little lady in her. I think it was her late 50s or early 60s in tennis shoes. And I opened the door and she was relieved that I didn't have a butcher knife and 666 tattooed on my forehead. And I was relieved that she wasn't, you know, an old crazy, you know, Crowley magician, witch, cannibal lady. And we hit it off right away, and she took me back to the house where I would be initiated the next evening. And I had a full access to her library. And we chatted all afternoon and into the, into the night. And I realized that there was something very, very profoundly important about this particular, if you want to call it a branch of study or spiritual science. And then the next night, I was initiated. They were going to do it out in the, in the backyard, but it rained. So she arranged her garage. It was an empty, pretty empty garage. Just beautiful. Hung, hung it. It may as well have been the temple at Luxor. Okay, it was, it was so, so artfully decorated. And that's when I met. She was married at the time to Grady McMurtry, who was the head of the OTO after all of the former heads had died and the order had almost become extinct. He was the one with the paperwork that could resurrect the order if, if necessary. And they deemed it necessary. And Phyllis. And that was the beginning of my career. When I asked at the dinner afterwards where everyone else was, they more or less said, there isn't anybody else or there's very few. There was Helen Parsons Smith. She didn't attend that ceremony. And Helen Parsons Smith was the widow of Jack Parsons. You know, I don't know if you've watched Strange angel, and she's the widow of Wilfred Smith, Agape Lodge, OTO person. These are characters of living history. And two of them by themselves initiated me into the oto. And I believe there was only six active, well, if not even active six old ninth degree members from Crowley's day that were still alive. And I was at the very beginning of the resurrection of the resuscitation of the oto.

Stefan Julich (26:21)

I had been introduced, I guess, to Crowley through an encyclopedia set that my parents bought me when I was 11 years old called Man, Myth and Magic, which was edited by Richard Cavendish. And there's an article on Crowley in there, and he worried me. And. But I. When I was old enough to go to a used bookstore in my area, this. I lived on Long island near Hempstead in a town called Franklin Square. But in Hempstead there was an old used bookstore and I went and found a copy of Magic without tears and brought it home. But after reading two or three pages, I realized I didn't have the background to understand what was being said. So I left it on my bookshelf and eventually gave it away. And it wasn't until years later that I bought a copy of Book four and the Blue Brick. And even that sat on my bookshelf for years until also. And Kasia, please forgive me for not introducing you earlier. That was. I'm a little bit rusty and also lacked social graces. Sukhasi, in just a moment I'll turn this over to you. But in talking about putting together a reading group or a study group, we decided that we would study Book four and spent, I don't know how many months we were spending with Book four, which was really wonderful. Four months, something like that. And so that was amazing. And even then starting that and knowing having had many conversations with Kasia and having done extensive reading and having read your books, I was still concerned about Crowley. And it wasn't until I entered into the study of Book four that I realized how profound, just how profound an individual he was and how much I could learn from him and how in some ways he was his own worst enemy because he loved to, you know, create tempests in a teapot or little bits of scandal. And at the same time he's was an easy target for people who like to hold up people who are interested in these sorts of subjects for political and social reasons to gain power and police the boundaries and stuff like that. So anyway, I wanted to introduce Kasia Elderkin. So Kasia has been a student in east west psychology for two years and is my advisee and has taken several classes with me and is an extraordinary individual, intelligent, articulate, artistic, great writer. And it's been such a joy to be able to work with you, Kasia. So I just wanted to introduce you and say hi.

Kasia Elderkin (29:12)

Thank you, Stefan. I did enjoy having the book club and being finally motivated to read the Big Blue Brick and to be able to go into a little bit more depth and being in a group with people who weren't Thelemites, it helped me understand that I actually know more than I think I do. Because when you're the only Thelemite in the room and you're the expert, then you realize you have a lot more context. Even before I studied Thelema, I was learning some of those principles from my grandmother. She was really good at creating a home. She was an art teacher and she was very, also a very good writer. I would say. She. She did the in the Continuum newsletter for 30 years. She was all about teaching and getting Crowley's writing out there because she wanted to help people liberate themselves. And so I'm so happy that she saw all this potential in Lon and brought him to the fore of leadership as he continues to write and he keeps putting out new books. So let's talk about the new book, the Tarot Architect. I've been enjoying going to Monday Night Magic and learning all about it. Maybe he would like to give us a little bit of information about it.

Lon Milo DuQuette (30:48)

Well, it's at this stage of the game I'm starting to kind of synthesize everything because I have a now of a 50 year rear view mirror to look at things. And so I wanted to write a Tarot book that was more than a tarot book. It was, it was a tarot personal meditative experience over the years through trial and error and many, many errors. Okay. I realize that Tarot as a magical and kabbalistic tool is an awesome, awesome tool, okay? And Tarot is structured in the same way that the Kabbalists with anal retentive detail try to describe the mechanics, the step by step mechanics of creation itself. And not only that, but how existence came into existence. And the idea, the mystical part of the idea is that every monad of consciousness, including you and me and everybody else, is in the final analysis a perfect reflection of this well oiled machine of existence. And the Tarot is like the key to that. The Tarot in its just, in its mathematical construction of the 22 trump cards and the, and the 56 cards of the lesser arcana, you know, the four suits and everything else. And it's something that you can study and it's very, very interesting and written about. I've written the Kabbalah aspect of it in a book called the Chicken Kabbalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford. But Kabbalah is so on the surface, so boring, it's dull and a lot of charts. And so I decided to invent my own rabbi, okay? That taught in the same way I teach Monday night class, which is, I don't teach Monday night class. Monday night class runs itself. I just write it like a mechanical bull. And that's how you learn it teaches you. And I finally got to a point of where I said, why don't, why doesn't everybody just take a little time and create their own Tarot deck in the same steps that the Kabbalah tells us? Existence came into existence and that joins the, the magic of the Artist. You don't have to be a good artist. An artist is a magician, period. But if you create your tarot deck card by card in the same order that existence came into existence, you're in a sense, building it within yourself. And once you. Once you've built it into yourself, it's like you've squirted WD40 into the rusted machinery of your soul. And in a sense, it grows on you. I use, at the very beginning of the book, I say, you know, I've been doing tarot for well over 50 years and teaching it for well over 40. And when I travel, I just travel with my own deck and the Thoth deck because people ask me to read cards and stuff when I'm. When I'm on the road. But the point is, sometimes I don't have a deck of cards on me, and people want me to read their cards. And it doesn't matter what kind of decade. If you got an Alice in Wonderland deck, give it to me. I'll read your cards. You know, if you got a Halloween deck or, you know, sort of a fluffy, fluffy whimsical deck of some kind, as long as it's 22 trumps and 56 small cards, I'll read your cards. Because the magic isn't in the paper and the cardstock. The magic's in you. And you carry your tarot everywhere with you. And it's something that you don't even think about. And I thought, well, everybody can get to this spot, okay? And it took me 50 years to get to this spot. But if I would have known what I was doing, I could have cut that learning curve down just to a couple of months. You know, if I just did this, if I just did these little short 15 minute meditations this way, if I would have just created my own deck in the same order that the Sefer yet Zyra tells us creation unfolded. Because once you've got that in you, you've reprogrammed yourself. You've mutated yourself. You don't even know that it's happening. It's just like a kid that doesn't know that they're growing until their shoes don't fit. That's how natural it becomes. So I set to work to create a book that hopefully doesn't put you to sleep at the same time, because, well, I just think most everything is funny. But anyway, I'm really proud of it. And it comes at a very late time in my career here. I don't want to say it's My last book, but I don't know how many, how many more I've got. And it seemed to me like, okay, this is a great work. I'm reminded of that one of the last scenes in that Johnny Depp movie, Ed Wood, about the world's worst director, film director, and he made this horrible, horrible movie that was so bad, it was really good. And it was with Bela Lugosi, and it was called Plan 9 from Outer Space. And you just laugh at every scene. It's just done so poorly that in a sense, it's great art. But the last scene shows Johnny Depp in the darkened theater watching the Premiere of Plan 9 from Outer Space and Bela Lugosi in his last terrible, last tragic role, walking through it, and he's crying. Johnny Depp or Ed Wood is crying. He says, this is the one they're going to remember me for. Well, that's sort of how I look at the tarot architect. When it came out, and I actually, you know, saw it in book form and I went through it and I sort of cried like Johnny Depp. I said, this is the one they're going to remember me for. So.

Stefan Julich (39:55)

That'S great. I'm. I'm reading it and I. And I have. I'm. I'm not even close to an expert. I'm a bare beginner with Tarot, even though my first deck, which I actually still have with me, was bought in 1974, it was a wait rider deck. So. And I still have it, but I. I never studied it in this way. So to look at it, this is. This is a tool, as. As you're saying, it's a tool to kind of uncover the. The architecture of the universe and, and your own, which is modeled on that architecture, which is a reflection of it. And I'm wondering, as I'm reading it and I'm thinking I'm learning a lot that things that I hadn't really considered, just, you're having, as we're reading it, lay out the cards in a certain order to treat them in a certain way, to kiss them first and to really treat them with respect. And then to look at them while we're reading your words and consider. Consider the image as well as the words that you're writing, which I think is wonderful. And what's been coming up for me is the thought of where. How does this fit in with the other practices of magic like the tarot? Seems to be really central not only to what you're doing, but to magical practice generally as a divinatory practice, but especially this lineage, this way of looking, of using the deck. But it's only one component of a larger way of approaching. And I'm wondering if maybe you could.

Lon Milo DuQuette (41:51)

Oh, yeah, and you hit the nail right on the head. It is, it is so universal in its fundamental structure that it becomes like a magical touchstone to all sorts of other spiritual practices and spiritual studies. Ceremonial magic, in a way, deals with the idea that existence is ultimately consciousness. And it's what physicists are almost coming right out and saying it right now, okay, If there is an ultimate reality, it's in the nature of consciousness. The singularity of it all is consciousness. And from our limited three dimensional way of trying to wrap our meat brains around something that meat brains can't really wrap themselves around, the technique for us to even approach that is to view this totality, the singularity of consciousness as descending frequencies of consciousness, like the natural powers of nature, like the three fundamental forces, let's say gravity, okay? Now gravity is a huge, huge thing. And the magicians, in their poetic way of looking at things, see that, see gravity as a great. Like an archangel. The three fundamental, or the four fundamental forces of kind of old fashioned physics are just the same as the four divisions of everything that the kabbalists talk about as the four letter name of God. Okay, Yod, hey, vav, hey. And. That enables them to think about oneness in four parts to better wrap their meat brains around it. Okay, four descending levels of consciousness. And that lowest level would be like what appears to be our physical, material existence. And you can project the four fundamental forces of nature onto that. The strong force, weak force, electromagnetism, and, and gravity. So gravity would be the lowest one. So the kabbalists, instead of trying to think of it in purely mathematical terms, say, okay, gravity is a great angel, an archangel, okay, it's an archangel that works directly for the big singularity. But there's four archangels that all work their own little aspect, their own little facet of the singularity, omnipotence. So gravity has certain rules. So you could call that archangel Gravity. Gravity Al. Oh, great. Archangel Gravity Al. But he's got little more specific angels that work under him. There's the angel that when water drops, there's drip, drip Al. Drip Al works for gravity Al, okay, in a very specific way. But then there's slide Al, okay, that has a different. Then there's the different Als that have specific duties, like the effects of the moon on tides or the, the sagging of an elderly woman's Breast. There's Sagal, you know, and there's Plummet Al and Droop Al and it keeps getting smaller and smaller and then there's little spirits that work for them and they're all just divisions and subdivisions and subdivisions and subdivisions that you sort of picture in your mind like a cartoon. But in essence, what you're doing is examining everything. Because in Kabbalah, the ultimate realization is everything. As long as it's a thing and you're thinking of it as a thing, it's connected to every other thing and it's the reflection of every other thing. And it is the pattern for everything. And if you look hard enough at anything, you'd eventually see everything. And that's where the east and the west meet right there. Look hard enough at anything and you'll eventually see everything or strip away everything until you hit that smooth point, okay? Disconnect everything that you think is a thing and you'll hit that smooth point of oh, abusive people call. Oh, you're going to hit nothing. Yeah, but it's. Boy, it's a big capital N, okay? And it's that same. The so called nothing of the east is the everything of the, of the west. And you just go about it in, in a little different way. That's basically what separates the ceremonial magician from the meditative yogi. And ultimately to be a great magician you need to be a great yogi. And great yogis are great magicians. I'm going to write that down.

Stefan Julich (49:31)

Two thoughts came to me. One is the, I guess in studying the Jewish Kabbalah, right, the through, I guess it's the exercises of Abraham, Abolafia and maybe Abolafia, I don't know, but things like looking at Notarikon or Temura or Gematria, these are exercises. These are ways to like take apart scripture down to, you know, to the phonemes down to the letters and rearrange them so that you see, you have a kind of a visual representation of how everything can become everything and everything actually is everything.

Lon Milo DuQuette (50:18)

Think.

Stefan Julich (50:19)

The, the other thing that came to mind while you were speaking was the saying that above every blade of grass sits an angel. I can't remember where that's from. But this was also, yeah, I don't know, somewhere in the Kabbalah. But.

Lon Milo DuQuette (50:37)

Well, I can't argue with that, you know, especially where that's, where that's concerned. And you can see with. I got a chapter in the Chicken Kabbalah that says games, Kabbalists play and I talk about it, you know, Gematria and Tamura and Notarikon. And it all goes to one of my 10 command rants that says, look hard enough at anything, you'll eventually see everything. And that everything is connected to everything else. And those games kabbalists play with scripture is just their way of looking at scripture as one of those things that you look hard enough at anything, you'll eventually see everything. But even more practical and more obvious is that as you are engaged, you as an individual are engaged in these kabbalistic games about, oh, if I play with this one word, like, say the scripture. In scripture, it says, have a nice day. Okay, you go, have a nice day. I'm going to see the entire universe. I'm going to see existence in that one sentence. And you start playing with it, and you see that just the initials of it spell hand. Have a nice day is hand, the hand of God. Okay? And the hand of Ooh, hand in Hebrew is the Hebrew letter yud, okay? Which adds to ten. Ooh, ten a hand. Ooh, we got two hands, and they got ten fingers. And yod is that small little flame that when you blow on Yod, it creates all the other Hebrew letters. As he dances, the flames dance around, and you go on a chain reaction that is uncomfortably reminiscent of sometimes when somebody is having a schizophrenic episode on the street corner and they're connecting everything with everything else in strange beatnik poetry kind of. Kind of stuff. And it sounds pretty profound sometimes, and I'm not saying that it isn't profound, but the thing is that eventually, as you're engaging your. What the kabbalists call the ruach, or the intelligence, which is the third great layer of your soul, there's a physical body, then there's the intellect or the intelligence, and there's the intuition, and then there's basically the life force itself. But if you've engaged your ruach so much. That you waste. I won't say wasted, but you've thrown so many hours into this. Oh, and that. And that's a 10. And that 10 is actually a 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4. And it's all. And you start to see these patterns in everything, and everything is connected to everything else. And then you start playing with have a nice day, and it also spells have a nice Andy. Or all of a sudden, that one short little thing is starting to mean everything. And your ruach finally gets to a place that says, I surrender to the fact that everything means everything else. And your consciousness breaks into the next higher level of consciousness. Your ruach. You engage your ruach so much that it says, I gotta get out of here. And you meld into the next, higher level, your neshama, your soul, intuition. And then you realize that level of consciousness that's literally transcends space, transcends time, and that we've all got it, and we just haven't awakened to it. We're already walking around totally enlightened. We've got it all. We are walking around as the singularity itself. We just haven't woken up to it. And the kabbalistic exercises, including those that I've included in the Tarot Architect, are intended to engage you in such a way as you step by step, awaken to those different levels until they become second nature. You don't even remember where you left. You don't. When you hit the next level, it just seems as the new normal. Does that make any sense?

Stefan Julich (56:41)

Yes, it does.

Lon Milo DuQuette (56:43)

Okay.

Stefan Julich (56:44)

I think so. I think so. I'm. I'm sitting here thinking. I'm. I'm wondering. I guess. I mean, this is one way to approach. This is exactly as you've been talking about, as a tool for expanding consciousness or raising consciousness, whatever image you want to use. And then people will come to you and say, you know, can you tell me whether I should make this choice or this choice? And so, on a pragmatic level, it also seems to work in the same way, maybe because you're tapping into your own intuition using the cards. And I'm wondering about that bridge.

Lon Milo DuQuette (57:27)

You mean that sort of. Once you've. You've tuned at that level, how the cards can become useful as a divinatory tool or.

Stefan Julich (57:38)

And. And that many people, if not most, actually just approach them as a divinatory tool. And you're offering them an expanded view of the cards.

Lon Milo DuQuette (57:47)

Yeah. It'd be like, what if you use them as a divinatory tool and they're working for you? You don't have to understand them. You don't have to do anything. If they're working for you, that's just fine. One old tarot queen literally said, I don't know anything about Crowley or his damn magic. I just know those cards work, and I use them. And I said, don't worry about it. You're doing fine. Because somehow or other, she's made the connection, okay? The cards are in her. She is the cards at that level. And why should she go to the trouble to bother her ruach, you know, when she's already operating from the neshama neshama point of view still, okay? And I've been reading people's tarot cards for 50 years and I'm still, I don't read their cards. I have a, I have a 20 minute conversation with them. And I get them to the point of where they know exactly what they want to find out when they really know what their question is. We. I get them to the point of where, okay, is that what, is that what you want to know? You know, because they'll say I want to, you know, if I should take this new job, you know, well, that's great. Why do you want that new job? Because of this and that and this. Well, why do you want this or that, you know, and what makes you, what makes that attractive to you? And we get right down to exactly what they want to know. And when you actually know the question, the answer is screaming at you from every direction. And I could hold up the Heinz ketchup bottle and say, there's your answer. And the answer would be there because any observable phenomena is giving you the answer if you really know what your question is. And I know that seems like cheating, but that's really what it is. And that's why I can't read my own cards worth a damn. Okay? I am so used to lying to myself, okay? Pulling the wool over my own eyes. Wishful thinking. Oh, the tower over the death card. Oh, I was hoping, hoping that would happen, you know, and, but for others, I'm completely detached, okay? And if I'm not detached, I get detached before we start pulling any cards. And, but the idea being that, okay, I've got a, I've got a deck of wafer thin cardstock here. I'm going to make it the universe, it's all in here, okay? And this is the word of God, okay, Is going to be in this answer. I wrote another kind of funny book, but it's one of the most serious books I've ever written called the Book of Ordinary Oracles. Have you read that?

Stefan Julich (61:40)

No, no, no.

Lon Milo DuQuette (61:40)

Oh, oh, the Book of Ordinary Oracles.

Stefan Julich (61:48)

I've seen a copy of it because I think that you spoke about it in reference to Benevol Wen's book on the I Ching.

Lon Milo DuQuette (61:54)

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, fabulous book. What a brilliant star she is. The, the idea that, that the cards, if you're going to use them for divination, or if you're going to use any oracle for divination at the outset, get really comfortable with the idea that you're dealing with this superior intelligence and that the oracle is always right, that the answer is always correct. If you can't get yourself to that understanding, then you may as well think that the oracle is never correct and that it's not a superior intelligence. Now, those are the kinds of. I don't want to call them magicians, tricks, but that's kind of what they are, okay? Now, when I evoke a demon or a spirit into the. Into the triangle in a Goishic ceremony, you know, my meat brain says, you know, look, there's not a. There's not a hotel room in hell where these guys are sitting around playing poker waiting for me to call them up, okay? I really don't believe that. And I don't believe that they're. They're going to. To pop up into my triangle in a. In a puff of smoke, and I'm going to see them with the cones and rods of my eyes and hear their vibration on my ear. Eardrums. I don't really believe that, okay? That's not going to happen. Not going to happen to me. Something else is going to happen. I'm connecting with something else that's even more real than the tickling of the cones and rods of my eyes or the tinkling of my ears. I'm connecting with something else. And I'm fully aware of the complete reality in the universe I'm dealing with in this little temple in this circle with that triangle. For the time being, I buy in to the reality, to the objective reality of that spirit for the duration of the ceremony. I buy into the objective reality of it, because if I don't, I'm not operating from the place where this operation is, has any chance of having any effect whatsoever.

Stefan Julich (65:04)

I'm wondering if before I want to turn it over to Jonathan or Cassian, see if they have a question. But I had a similar thought experiment which was wondering one day many years ago whether Jesus and Shiva knew one another and whether they played checkers together sitting on a cloud somewhere, because I. Because in my mind, they had to be concrete in order to be real.

Lon Milo DuQuette (65:28)

Yeah.

Stefan Julich (65:29)

They had to be material in some way in order to be real.

Lon Milo DuQuette (65:32)

Yep. Yeah. Now you're thinking like a Western magician. Yep.

Stefan Julich (65:38)

Jonathan, do you. You've been quiet.

Jonathan Kay (65:40)

Oh, I'm this. I'm enjoying this so much. And. Excuse me. And just coming into this conversation, I mean, I was watching some of your videos, Lon, and one of them jumped out at me, which was. Happened. Happened maybe three weeks ago, I think I remember from your. I think your Facebook, and you were talking about creativity And. And the artist. And so these are. You know, this intersection exists within me and I can give you maybe a little background which helps maybe bring out how the east and west became touching in my own life. But I went to India as a musician and learned raga music. And that was the first time I confronted a culture which had magical goals built within it. The way I was learning it, you know, and the way in which we would convene or you'd learn to understand the raga as a consciousness, as a deity. Deity and also the. In coming from the tantric side of things, the fact that you could, through musical sadhana or practice, you could. You could develop cities like magical powers, you know, and this was a really fascinating idea. And I hadn't really confronted that in my. My roots as a Western jazz musician doesn't mean it's not there, but it wasn't part of my life, but the magical powers of. Of being a musician of sound and, and whatnot. And so I guess I could just. I wanted to continue what you were saying. All great musicians are great yogis. Where in India all great raga musicians would be a great yogi and therefore would be a musician, a magician. You know, I think, I think that's a very true statement and it's very true to how I experience the, the power of. Of ragas in. In the most intense experiences that I've had. But anyway, turning it back to, to both of you, because you, you both are. Are artists and lan. You're a musician. And I just wanted to maybe just. Just kind of just broadly ask a question about that intersection. If you could talk a little bit about the relation between this, this kind of getting to like the, the source of.

Lon Milo DuQuette (67:45)

Of.

Jonathan Kay (67:45)

Of creation itself and, and how. How you see yourself as a. As a magician, but also as an artist and, and how. How those two things are overlapping but also separate too. Maybe that would be helpful too, because not all magicians are going to be artists necessarily, depending on maybe how they see or the confines of maybe the kind of ritual might not amplify the kind of creativity we're talking about even. I'm just wondering just some thoughts here.

Lon Milo DuQuette (68:24)

Well, I'm the worst artist in the world in, in the 70s when I had like a recording, a serious recording career, I. My magic. My magic was my music. Okay? And. And Charlie and I, we recorded as Charlie D and Milo. We wrote our songs with full magical intent. Okay? But it was so. We were so shallow. We were so young. We were so, so green. But I guess that's what that was. The magic of our art was, was our, was our shallowness and our innocence. And so we would, we would write songs that to us had magical themes like sylphs and gnomes and undines. And we dealt with all of our love songs as if they were devotional hymns to the, you know, we may as well be singing to Krishna. Okay. But as a lover, you know, and, and we thought the songs wouldn't, wouldn't be worth taking the time to go to the studio and do them unless they were holy, unless they were hymns. So for that period of my life, that was my magic and that was driving the creative effort. And I really, really. Well, Charlie and me both really enjoyed the excesses of being a moderately successful recording artist. And in the 60s, the excesses were colorful, many. And. Yeah, and they were, they were such that they weren't going to be conducive to, to being a family man. Okay. Because I was, we. We started a family and, and I just knew that I wasn't going to be a good, A good father and husband as long as I was living that particular life. Lifestyle. So I just gave it up. Just like that. I mean, cold turkey, just like that. And of course, because I'd been a musician since I was a professional magician musician Since I was 14, I was not prepared for objective reality as far as getting. Getting a normal person's job, you know. And so we struggled for the next 20 years or so. And actually my interest in magic and mysticism in a way was the next thing that I poured my artistic ardor to. And it didn't seem like I had changed a thing. I just sort of changed the art form. Does that make sense? And I wasn't doing it at the time or for many years. I wasn't doing for it for any form of activity that would help put a roof over my head. Okay. The music was. You thought, oh, we're going to make some money off of this, you know. Yeah. You know, I never thought I was ever going to make money off of, of magic. And still you don't make much money writing occult books. Okay. No matter. Even a lot of them. Okay. I still have to. I still have to depend upon the kindness of strangers, you know, but. The art itself, if it's painting, if it's sculpture, if it's, if it's songwriting, if it's any form of art, poetry especially, is magic. And when you're doing it, whether you think it's magic or not, you know, I gotta make this possible. I Got to make this pottery. Okay? I'm not a magician. Those magicians are sissies. I make pots. This is, you know, this form is the most beautiful thing that ever. Okay, you're a magician. You're a great magician. All artists are magicians and all magicians are artists. And as you go through life, your venues change, your instruments change, your audience changes. Okay, Your, your, your, your muses change. And, and if you, if you don't want to think of yourself that way, fine, okay? In my opinion, you're still, still an artist. And the, the art of magic is performance art that's performed by one individual. It has one audience. And that audience is. You've got one critic, you've got one venue. Okay, you're an entire. Carnegie hall event of one.

Kasia Elderkin (75:12)

Hi, lan. I completely agree with you. I was thinking about my grandmother and how she expressed her magic through creativity and creativity through magic. And everything she touched, it was like she had the Midas touch. You know, she would grow flowers in her garden and there was something blooming every time of year and she would write poetry. And along those lines, I'm also a poet and I'm writing a novel as well. And I was thinking about how art becomes an expression of your own invocation. And it's almost like when you go through creating art, you're exercising a ritual for invocation inside regards. What advice would you give creatives in order to cultivate that a little bit more purposefully?

Lon Milo DuQuette (76:19)

Be more consciously self observant, be a better audience to yourself. And just like when you go to a concert and you, you listen to the music or the performance of one of your favorite artists, they play your favorite songs, everything else, you don't want them to leave the stage. You want more and more and they get better and better and you're a feedback is being created, okay. And no matter how many encores they play, if you are involved in that feedback that literally it's a love feedback, you'll feel disappointed when they walk off stage. Okay? Give yourself and your art that same attention, adoration and love. Create a love feedback for yourself and your art and cultivate that. So, going to give any advice to how to squirt WD40 into that machinery or how to apply how to prescribe steroids to that particular artistic condition? That would be it.

Kasia Elderkin (78:02)

Thank you. I also was thinking about the diamonic presence of our muse. You know that we each have a muse and, or an hga, however you would refer to it. Can you talk a little bit more about that relationship in creation.

Lon Milo DuQuette (78:21)

Well, that's almost ties right into that. A singer is not a singer. Orpheus is not a song from. Orpheus was not a song without an ear to hear it. And the most important ear to hear it first is your own. That's your muse. And I guess when an artist has, say, a lover or a particular audience that they're passionate to be the ear or the observer of their art, they may think it's a person, they may think it's an ideal, they may even think it's a God or a goddess, some kind. That's my, my muse is Diana, you know, yeah, fine, okay, but the ultimate muse. But Diana is ultimately you. And, and it's not if it's narcissistic, it's a good kind of narcissism, okay? It's with a big holy capital N. You are your own best ear. And the realization of that, even if it's for a microsecond, is that love feedback thing. You know, when you put a microphone to a live speaker, the hum of the speaker goes into the microphone, then it goes through the amplifier and gets turned up louder and that louderness comes back out of the speaker and it comes back into the microwave and you get that screech, that horrible screech that you always hear at the beginning of a concert. Usually that love feedback, that ear that appreciates the art, the heart that appreciates the adoration, creates that feedback and it feeds back into more adoration, which feeds back into more acceptance of it. Ultimately, it's all taking place in you and that feedback, okay, instead of being unpleasant, that feedback is an actual physiological, fingertip tingling heartbeat, racing, head dissolving into an infinite cloud. A physiological experience. And that experience is triggered by different things for different people. No two people have the same trigger that gets pulled that starts that feedback off. But every artist is shooting for that, is reaching for that trigger. As long as the ear that hears is ready to yearn to have its ears tickled as you are tickled to give the sound to the ear. I know I'm sounding disappointed, totally crazy here, but that love feedback is what is known as the knowledge and conversation of the holy Guardian Angel. The yogis would say, oh yeah, that happens every time. Every time you actually make a good connection, a good balance connection, your heart chakra opens. That's the level that it's occurring at. And that's the same level that they say the of consciousness that you achieve at the knowledge and conversation of the holy Guardian Angel. And until everyone, whether you call Yourself, a magician or a yogi or anything. Everyone. That is already going on in everyone. It's already going on in every monad of existence. But you just haven't awakened to the fact of, oh, I could be operating from here, okay? And. They say, well, that doesn't last forever. You know, it happened to me. And, you know, I had to walk it off on the streets of Jackson Heights, New York, York. And when it fades away, you know, well, yeah, you're not always on fire like that forever. But the event happened someplace beyond space and time, okay? While it's happening, you know, there's no space and time. You, you just, oh, I get it. That there, there, there, there, there isn't that here. And in a sense, it's a door that's been blasted open. And that once the door is blasted open, it can never be shut. And after an event similar to that, this is why they say, then, from then on, your guardian angel advises you. Well, that's because after that, you know how you're mutated by sometimes traumatic events? You're mutated the rest of your life because of a significant event. Well, that's a significant event. You're mutated for the rest of your life.

Stefan Julich (85:05)

Life.

Lon Milo DuQuette (85:08)

Okay? And once you've achieved that mutation, it doesn't feel like you've. Well, I've just come out of something because you don't. Like I said earlier, you don't. Where you are does not really recall where you were. And. After that, you more or less know you have a better idea what is or is not in your own best interest. Until that fire has burned through to kick off that feedback, you are still prone to petty little delusions that set you off in strange little directions, right and left forever, making your life complex, making you do stupid things. And when they say, well, once you get your holy guardian angel, your holy guardian angel says, no, don't do that. Okay? It's not like they're whispering in your ear. It's just after that, you've mutated into a level of maturity to go, well, shit, that's not in my best interest. I'm not going to go down that road. I'm going to. You know, that is, at least from my point of view, that's the only way I can. I can wrap my meat brain around trying to explain that experience.

Kasia Elderkin (86:45)

Thank you. I was also thinking about how the cards themselves, they are markers in helping you find that direction and to, if nothing else, as a projection screen for what your unconscious is trying to tell you. So I wanted to mention also in your book, there's a new feature on your website where you can print out the tarot cards to color on them. Tell us a little bit more about the benefits of this process.

Lon Milo DuQuette (87:19)

Well, the, the idea that it would be just ideal if you, if somehow or other you were, you were forced against your laziness, if you were forced to create, one at a time, your own Tarot deck. Okay. Don't think it's impossible. Look, on Amazon There are 10,000 tarot decks. People do it all the time. But instead of starting from scratch, I'll give you a head start. And I made the. I found just the line drawings of our tarot deck. Tarot ceremonial magic from the line drawings. It has all the collateral. There you go. Has all the collateral material, what dates and degrees of the zodiac they cover and what planets and stuff they, they are. And just a very simple image on the, on the card that you can start to color. And I give you all the color, the correct color instructions because those are, colors are important. But then you can customize each one of them to your, to your own funny little artistic tastes. I've seen people who have started it, like on the fool card, they've put a crocodile because sometimes the fool cards have crocodiles and put mountains in the back. They're just gorgeous. And the cards take up a full page in the book. So there's 78 pages that are full. And you could of course take colored pencils and color them right in the book. But I got the website, okay, the LawnMilo Duquette.net that you can download full size images and, and put them out one at a time as you go along. And most printers can take, you know, rather, rather stiff card stock. And you're encouraged to make your own Tarot deck. And as you're making the tarot deck, there's meditations that you do that incorporate the specific cards that you're working on and the. Idea that if you spend two hours, and if you're really, really an artsy kind of person, you'll spend more than two hours, but spend two hours coloring in and knowing every detail of that card and knowing why you're going to use purple there to represent the Jupiterian qualities of it and why, maybe, maybe the fool has a, has a red feather in his hat. Okay? And if you're taking the, you'll never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever forget every detail on that card. So can you imagine what a, what a wealth a walking, talking deck of tarot cards you're going to be after you finish the process. So, yes, go to lonmyloduquette.net and do it also in the book itself on roman numeral page 22, it has the web address.

Jonathan Kay (91:14)

This is fantastic and so inspiring too. You're really asking us not to just learn about the cards and have the cards ready, but to become them. Yeah, and that's. That's as creative as. That's. That's the. As creative as it gets. And I think that's really, really inspiring.

Lon Milo DuQuette (91:33)

Well, I should have just said that at the very beginning because that you've just encapsulated the whole raison d' etre of this, this entire book and project.

Jonathan Kay (91:44)

Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing all of this. We're coming close to the end of our time. We don't have any hard cut off, but Cassie or Steven, you want to. Anything to end with.

Kasia Elderkin (91:57)

I do have a final note question for Lon. If he wants to keep it brief, he can. What do you see as the future of Western esotericism?

Lon Milo DuQuette (92:08)

I see it's in trouble.

Kasia Elderkin (92:10)

Okay, so tell us a little bit more about that.

Lon Milo DuQuette (92:17)

Well, there's ups and downs on what historically has been acceptable within certain geopolitical environments. Many times it's gone through phases where it's been particularly unhelpful, unhealthy for non traditional spiritual things. So in any event, no matter how things develop in the world around us, the spiritual development is private and personal. And now would be an especially good time to focus on, like making yourself the tarot deck, making yourself your own holy books, making yourself everything that you can keep right close to your heart and close to your. Your own. Yeah, you. You may have to. To be more and more solitary in your mystical practices. I'm not saying that's the case, but probably in the near future, that's the way it is. Your, your mother's or your grandmother's. AA superior, not her AA superior was Jane Wolfe, who had lived with Crowley in Cefalu. Okay. But Carl Germer, the head of the oto, was a German, and he was. Hitler came to power and in 1938, I think, outlawed the OTO, outlawed mystical organizations, outlawed the Freemasons. And Carl Germer found himself in several concentration camps. And later he was lucky enough to get out and get to the United States, but he sort of survived with a modicum of sanity because he had memorized his chapter of the holy books. I think it was Libra 65. And he could recite it forwards and backwards. Okay. He had to totally internalize all of his magical chores within the confines of a concentration camp. And hopefully that's not going to be something that we'll be forced to deal with, but many people today are. And so I wish I had a rosier, rosier opinion of the near future, but I have a feeling it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Kasia Elderkin (96:03)

Thus the book. So thank you for that.

Lon Milo DuQuette (96:09)

But it's on Kindle, an audiobook, and because of all the illustration illustrations and stuff that you can just on your phone, go to the, to the website to, to see all the things and you can download all the images to do the work. So we've tried to cover all the bases with the Tarot Architect. It's from Weiser.

Stefan Julich (96:34)

Well, I'm wondering, I mean, there's you we've opened up a subject that we could speak about for hours and it's troubling and maybe worth speaking about. And I hope maybe in the future you'll be willing to come back and speak to us again because there's just so much.

Lon Milo DuQuette (96:51)

Well, we can. Well, we can. As a matter of fact, in 15 minutes I have a Tarot reading I have to give to a friend in Boston, so I'm going to have to wrap up that.

Stefan Julich (97:07)

Okay. Well, I guess that I would love to if you could just let our listeners know where they can find you and what you're up to, if there's anything interesting that's upcoming for you or any classes even.

Lon Milo DuQuette (97:23)

Oh, we do a class at our home in Sacramento every Monday night. We'll be missing two Monday nights here at the end of July, but it's every Monday night. You can contact me. Oh, I do a Facebook show every day, seven days a week. Okay. Have for four straight years I do a Facebook show. So if you're on on Facebook and that same show, that morning show is repeated on YouTube and it stays on YouTube permanently. And so you the my website, the best one to go to would be lawnmyloduquette.net and that has my music and my books and Tarot ceremonial magic and Tarot Architect stuff. It has everything on it. That's the best place to go. And I've got the OTO's national conventions coming up up in two weeks in Portland. And it's my 50th anniversary in the OTO. And so I'm forcing them to make a big thing about it. And I'm going to tell them it's my birthday, too, but I'm going to pull out all the stops. I Wear an extra large shirt. Okay. You're my shirt size. And then next year in March, okay, I'm going to do a three day in Joshua Tree, California. A fantastic, awesome venue. I'm going to do a three day tarot architect workshop in Joshua Tree. And that will. That will fill up fast. The last one I did there was on Enochian magic and there were people from all over the world. And so if you're interested in that, just Google Anduket Joshua Tree Tarot architect, and you'll find it.

Stefan Julich (99:49)

Okay. And are you still affiliated with the Omega Institute?

Lon Milo DuQuette (99:53)

You know, I haven't spoken. You know, I'm officially. You know, once you're a faculty member, you're a faculty member. But I haven't gone in many years actually, and. But Mary Greer, who writes the introduction to Terra Architect, she's just recently done a thing there. But I love the Omega Institute. I'd love to come back, but the older I get, the less traveling I do.

Stefan Julich (100:26)

Well, thank you so much for coming. It was really lovely having you.

Lon Milo DuQuette (100:30)

Well, it's been an honor to be had.

Jonathan Kay (100:32)

Thanks, lan. Thanks, Cassia, for being with us.

Kasia Elderkin (100:34)

Thank you, Vaughn.

Jonathan Kay (100:36)

And until next time.

Stefan Julich (100:37)

Take care. Sa.

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