Gordon White | Cycle Updates, The Conspiracy Slider, & The Shaman’s Devil

Welcome to one of the few truly independent and sponsored free podcasts on this island earth. If you like these free first hour episodes, consider getting twice as much with THC Plus and treat yourself to the full two hour interviews as they're designed to be where things only get deeper and more interesting behind the curtain. A plus subscription gets you five new shows a month and a full archive of great interviews with amazing folks going all the way back to 2010. That is the gist, though there are other details, benefits, and bonus features you can hear more about at the end of this episode or in the show notes where you can also find the links to sign up and join the club at thehighersidechats.com or if you want to listen on Spotify, sign up through Patreon. Enjoy. Puppet masters almost surely have a plan. There's clearly maybe something there beyond the realm of man. And until we've thoroughly tested every last close-chested view, the more we think It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. From the Sunshine State, I'm Greg Carlwood. And when we hear from the wise men, shamans, gurus, and enlightened ones throughout time, it's a common teaching that our outer world is often a reflection of the inner world inside us. That focusing on external factors only serves as a distraction from doing the true work, and what you feed your attention into will grow. Yet many of us struggle to pull ourselves away from the constant onslaught of new information, endless entertainment options, and depressing news pouring out of the big machine. And we exhaust ourselves with the mental calculus of how we might work to fix a bad situation going on in the world that we have no control over anyway, when we should really be asking what we can do to fix ourselves. Because much larger forces in the cosmos are going to do what they're going to do. And a more actionable question is how are you going to position yourself, regulate your nervous system, and optimize your mind, body, and emotions to deal with it? Animals don't try to stop a harsh winner. They spend time orienting themselves in a way that gets them through it with the least amount of suffering. And here to help us find the good nuts while we still can is the returning champion of THC appearances, Gordon White of Rune Soup. He's the author of books like Starships, A Prehistory of the Spirits, The Chaos Protocols, Magical Techniques for Navigating the New Economic Reality, Pieces of Eight, Chaos Magic Essays and Enchantments, and Anti-Mystic, Encounters with the Living Cosmos. His membership platform just went through a major technical upgrade and overhaul and is more stacked than ever, with robust courses on almost every magical piece of the pie, including prayer, time magic, grimoires, saints, ancestors, tarot, journeying, wealth magic, UFOs, fairies, and psi, protection magic, energy healing, and the Greek magical papyri. And he's even got an app on the way. Well, there's no shortage of things to get into. Coming in hot for lucky number 19 or 21, depending on how you score it. The man who encourages us to ask, what is mine to do? The Chaos Monk Mode Maestro, Rune Soup Chef, and Master of His Domain, Gordon, welcome back. Internet, could you please tell Greg that I'm not sure we're speaking at the moment. I'm outraged at the... Do we want to tell people about the video situation? Well, it seems like we got gremlins in the line. Oh, I mean, like, I wonder if you have some loudmouth Australian homosexual in your life who has been bothering you for many a year now to join 2008's internet and be part of the video revolution. And when do you decide to do it exactly? I know, I know. Right after you leave. You were here in March and we're just a few months away from that. You could have been my first in-person guest, could have been my first guest for the whole new setup. But really, those conversations were needed. I can only blame homophobia at this point. That's all I... Well, it's amazing to be back. And I'm, like, very excited to see, to literally see you and these episodes and these guests. We're all super excited that you're making this offering available because it's just a really fun way. I mean, I watch these on my phone now as well. Like, you think, oh, THC, I'm going to listen. No, I'm not. That's going to be much. Incredible. Too kind. I, you know, I resisted for a long time. I don't know what it was exactly, but we had some good conversations when we were doing our Curb Your Enthusiasm style, traveling around Tampa, doing various things, trying to find crib sheets from my kid and all kinds of those sorts of Larry David and Jeff Garland. Travel padlock, sheets for a crib. It was just the wildest combination, wildest shopping list. That was good times. Yes. But, you know, we did talk about the fact that I'm 40 now and in the second half of life, there's a lot of things that come with that. And maybe recalibrating how I do what I do and not being so resistant to change was a big part of that. And so those conversations were necessary to get us here. And maybe if we go to the Martin Armstrong conference in Orlando, a mere 70 miles from my home of all the places he could have a conference, maybe we'll get it done then. I think so. I think we'll definitely put that in the maybe pile. But like I said, it's super great to be back and it's super great to see you. Yes. It is great to have you here. And if we do that, I just hope ice doesn't scoop you up and throw you in alligator Alcatraz. But, you know, the spirits, they're usually behind you. Well, not at the moment. A little bit of a backstory and technical issues that people don't need to know about getting this show up and running. Yeah, I think it'll be fun. I enjoyed your little corner of the world. Definitely. You're in a good spot. Yeah, it's very wild. And you're one of the only guests, definitely in the history of the show, who has seen my San Diego life because you did come to the wedding and then eight years later, the Florida life. So if anyone's to judge, it's you. But these appearances of yours have sort of turned into updates on the forecast provided by the blended cycle model you've constructed from various sources of intel, from astrology to Martin Armstrong. The last one we did was November of last year. And clearly the Trump administration really hit the ground running. You can't say that he's not an active president after a bit of a sleepy one. But the calculation was made by the big machine that team blue would be insufficient for the task of putting in the control grid because people were just sick of team blue. So they went with team red and we got the big, beautiful bill instead of build back better. And it would be a strange irony to me just going into what we're dealing with right now. It would be a strange irony if the Epstein file was something that derailed the progress because Trump has said in the first term or in the first term when he was running, he said he could shoot someone in Times Square and people would still love him. That might be true, but you can't suppress the Epstein file as we're finding out. Yeah. And I think that Tucker Carlson, there's a video of him on the internet saying like, why are people so incensed by this? And it's because even the MAGA base has finally realized they always get away with it. Like they just absolutely brazen, always get away with it. And it seems like this is the, that was the final corner of like a delusional populace. Let me say that a little bit nicer. That was the final corner of a populace that still rightly or wrongly, mostly wrongly had hope that change for the better could come through an official political system. And this just appears to be it. Now, speaking of the Armstrong forecast in November of last year, when he had his big conference, he said Trump gets two years to try and do what he needs to do. And we're a third of the way through that, I guess. And so you started to see like, oh, okay. Cause he did come in on a little bit of a high and you look at it and go, so we were speculating that maybe he gets assassinated. Maybe he gets false flag assassinated. So you can end up in a war with Iran or whoever, you know, in a year and a bit's time, but it could also just be, uh, he's obliterating his own base. And at some point that's going to make things, cause obviously the blue team doesn't like him at all. And if you start obliterating the red team that's propped you up, what's going to happen? Yeah. It is super interesting just because the faithful didn't seem like they could be shooken from their faith. And yeah, I'm watching a lot of podcasters, especially comedy podcasters now walking back a lot of the stuff they said. I don't think I'm ashamed of anything I said. I think, uh, we're both pretty good about being outside neutral observers and we might have hopes for some things, concerns for others, but we're just kind of watching the show. It is. It's fascinating, right? Because if you think back to the QAnon days, there was a small, admittedly, portion of his base that believed that he was going to use time travel to bring JFK Jr. back to round up. Like that was the level of faith in this game show host three or so years ago. And that's not, so that's how invested they were in the story that he's doing the right thing. And look at it now. I don't, I don't think there'll be too many people left who are expecting that kind of heroism. And that's part of like, we talk about cycles. That's what it is like blue team, red team. It doesn't matter. We're at that fourth turning moment for civilization. You need the magical metaphysical sophistication to jump up to the level of true causes, like the, the platonic causes. If you think of it as specific cycles and moments in time, and it's the, it's the moments or the cycles that select the conditions. It's not the conditions that create the cycle. So even if we've got God save us all, uh, like a, a Harris presidency, uh, we'd still more or less be in this situation of, of barreling into a world war three and allowing some sort of like, uh, foreign intelligence agency run, uh, child sex ring, uh, blackmail operation to, for people to get away with it. And I swear to God, if, uh, Ghislaine Maxwell gets pardoned, I like that's going to be wild. I mean, I will look forward to the episode of the Tim Dillon show that week, but that's going to be wild. Yeah. Well, extreme things have to happen to get us to some of the claims that were made last time based on the blood cycle model. And we're doing this every six months or six months or so, but we're talking about arcs that are several years long or sections of arcs. So, you know, we don't need to go over every little thing that's happened so far this year. Doge was a pretty unprecedented thing and extracting basically all government data, uh, bill passed that included a ban on regulating AI. I mean, that's the big, beautiful bill, but it was negotiated down from 10 years to five. It's like five is probably enough for them anyway. That's how, uh, those kinds of compromises work. But your latest geopolitical presentation for the members is titled, if chance you call it, I like that, but talk to us about the meaning behind calling it that. Yeah. So when in the membership, when we do the geopolitical forecast, I, I seek refuge in the Tolkien legendarium in the sense of like the Buddha seeking refuge in the three jewels. I find something in the middle earth, uh, corpus or mythology that has a particular medicine or angle on it. And in that case, it was when, uh, this is sort of in the movie as well. So if you haven't read the books, it's fine when Gimli and Legolas and Aragorn re-encounter Gandalf, now Gandalf, the white in the forest of Fangorn. And it's like, Oh, it's, you know, it was chance. What a chance to find you here. And Gandalf says, yes, if chance you call it. And that's one of those moments where professor Tolkien, the Anglo-Saxon scholars knowledge, cause through, because in that one line, you, you were capturing the Anglo-Saxon notion of, of fate and, and weird and so on. And it is essentially a form of co-creation. So if you look at Beowulf and all these stories, the, the Anglo-Saxons of that era have this idea of the weird as the cosmos is going to do what it's going to do. And that's not fatalistic. That is, uh, do not be in resistance to reality. Like you, you don't try to push against it. You operate according to its condition. So if the cosmos is moving into a certain thing, like you can't be in resistance to winter, that doesn't mean you do nothing about winter. You, uh, you're aware that the cosmos is doing something and you are called to find what is the thing that you express in those conditions. So that was it because it was by halfway through 2025, it's clear that the contention that we spoke about last time, which is that what Catherine Fitz would call Mr. Global, but like the, the operating powers of the Anglo-American junta, uh, swapped the blue team for the red team because it's going to be more expedient to get the control grid through. And it's not just the big, beautiful bill. It's the, uh, the, the looming arrival of stable coins, which is, I think you talk about the 10 year, five year thing. Five years is enough time to allow a allegedly private stable coin, uh, explosion across the planet. And to have that, the, the AI required surveillance of things like Palantir in the background, which is the, we don't get a CBDC, we get a stable coin. Yeah. And, but like, that's part of the control grid. And if you look at how Trump's behavior from running his own fucking coin and plainly working for, it's funny when you say working for Israel, it's more that Israel is plainly positioned to be a major component of the infrastructure of the control grid. So I think that's why you see things like, well, obviously, um, his kowtowing to the, uh, like the Zionist plans, but also that's plainly behind the Epstein thing and so on. Like the decision has been made, like you can't let this out because the people who are on this list are business critical to the control grid. So it's like, no, no, no, no, shut all of that down. And that's what we're seeing. Right. And it's interesting. You get halfway through the year and go, all right, so this is the play. This is what's happened. I mean, we all knew THC listeners are sophisticated THC viewers, I should say are sophisticated. Uh, and no one really expected, you know, the, the mugger Trump heroism saving us from world war three and CBDCs and all the rest of it. No one really expected that. Uh, we probably expected at the best, uh, a, uh, a less horrible careening into the admittedly temporary unpleasant future that we're barreling towards. And here we are halfway through the year and it's like, cool, this is actually, we can see this is what's going on. We can see that it is, uh, the red team is, uh, 150% behind getting this control grid in place as fast as possible. They have every intention of opening up theaters of conflict when it suits them, uh, around the world. Like we can see it now. And like, that's in a weird way, the good news is like, okay, what are you going to do? Like if chance you call it, what are you and how are you participating in this moment? Because it's not a question of figuring out what's going on anymore. And it's not a question of being in resistance to what's going on anymore. And it's, it's to find that, that weirding, that, that co-creation with this really incredible, uh, in the sense of astounding to witness a moment that we're all going through. Yeah. Well said. And I do like the weather analogy because you have good weather and rough weather and you still have agency within that, but the conditions are what they are. The universe has agency too, not just you. So, you know, sometimes people's free will and agency bump up against each other. And another line you talk about in that presentation is from Beowulf. You say luck often spares a man not marked for death if his courage holds. And I like that too, because it makes the caveat for, Hey, if it's your time, it's your time. But if it's not your time, then, uh, as long as you face the situation, the universe might give you a little attaboy and let you make it through. Okay. And I think, yeah, I agree completely. And I think that is so much more magically and metaphysically sophisticated than people realize. So if you think about Northern European cultures, they're extremely good at hero tales, hero legends, Vikings, Beowulf, and so on. To the point that they've plainly observed, and you kind of know this in your own life, if you're listening to this, there's a, uh, introduction to one of Terry Pratchett's books, I think, The Color of Magic, where, um, he's describing his disc world universe, which is this flat disc on a turtle, um, swimming through space. And it says something like scientists have calculated that the odds of this, uh, universe existing are about a million to one. However, wizards have calculated that a million to one happens nine times out of 10. And you kind of know that in your own life, which is, it's that fortune favors the bold idea. What Beowulf with the poem is saying there is if it's not your time, give it a shot, lean into it. Because it's, it's like the conditions create the heroism, like cometh the hour, cometh the man, the conditions create the heroism. And if like, because the worst thing that can happen is, oh, well, I guess it was my time. Like I died, whatever. Uh, but if it's not, you know, um, the gods will often favor someone who's like, yeah, I'm going to do this now. Fuck it. Let's get in. Yeah. I like, I like that a lot. Thought it was worth mentioning. So you also talk about the conspiracy slider. I think we might've talked about this before, but it's worth bringing up again, because it kind of relates to what the live event was, which is the changing conspiracy cannon, but your conspiracy slider that you show you have on one extreme, everything is just coincidence, which we've all been frustrated with people who say that to us. And on the other extreme, you have space is fake. And that is an extreme that also frustrates me. Well, talk to us about the value of working up and down that slider when processing things that you're looking at and just expanding our ways of seeing things. And you say you sit at about a seven, which is, I think why we get along so well. Hmm. So I, I, before doing this, I had a corporate job in, in media and demographics. And one of the jobs was for a timeout worldwide. And it was a strangely low tech way of deciding what markets that they would go into, to launch travel books and magazines and so on. And it would begin with the CIA world fact book, cause it was, it was a magazine. So it was old timey to begin with, but then you would do things like you would scenario plan. Okay. So what if at the moment, the economy in, I'm in Paraguay, so I'll say Paraguay, although it's probably not a great place for a tourism magazine, uh, the economy is growing at 2% a year projected to grow to 2.1, 2.3. So you can scenario plan what happens under these conditions, what happens under these conditions. And that you would look at all three of those because you wouldn't just pick the good one and hope for the best. That's just not how you do scenario planning. You dispassionately look at reality from multiple perspectives, honestly, as many as possible to, in the interest of, of diligence. And I think that's useful from a parapolitical geopolitical conspiracy frame as well, because you never, and what I love about it is it's always permanently open-ended. Like, do you remember when we were at the event in Portland and we got shown that rather remarkable image of like Bigfoot, right? Yeah. One of the best ones I've ever seen on the phone. So, but it also looked kind of weirdly multidimensional. Like he was, there's something not right, but like not fake, but like, okay. So it's not just Bigfoot. It's some kind of multidimensional thing going on. So you know that that kind of stuff is in play, which means you can go from, well, okay. So are there, are there underground bases throughout the lower 48 with maglev trains running like a breakaway civilization of up to 11 million people with off planet ships and whatever right now? Like, listen, some very clever people, very credible people will say something like that. So, all right, that's, that's not at the level of the slider of space is fake, but that's at about a nine, right? Nine to 9.5. What does what's going on look like there and say, it's not a very good match because if you have that breakaway civilization, you probably don't need the digital control grid. Let's keep sliding down. Who does need the digital control grid? And you kind of look at it from the level of, okay, well, power factions like the Anglo Americans on one side and a Eurasian power faction on the other. And it's more like the crime gang model, right? Where they'll, they'll compete with each other and work together and what have you, depending on the roles. And that's, that's what I think is seven is by the way. So that's where I kind of think we're at the, the control grid play and the world war three stuff that's happening. Look, makes a lot of sense to me at that level. So for me, seven is like Anglo Americans with a heavy emphasis on the central bank priorities or directives is where it starts to look at, but you can keep sliding down as well and go, well, it's one of those inevitabilities. So you get to the five, between four and five. And I kind of think first Trump administration, I thought this is maybe the case now less so was you hear people like Elon Musk say, well, if we don't do it, China will. And the thing is, that's true. And so at the four to five level, as you're getting back down towards conspiracy is like this, um, this idiotic project that we're barreling through kind of creates itself. You know what I mean? You don't actually need Mr. Global. So, so to speak to be engineering a digital control grid for the whole planet. The story still kind of works and you learn something different there as well. And in particular, it allows you to incorporate all kinds of different stuff. Uh, like, okay, well, how does the mid-level go along with a project like this? And I think a lot of the mid-level goes along at that. Well, if we don't do it, China will level. Like my background was in media. And this is when we were still using words like big data. And they were even saying that then they're even saying like, well, this is just the way it's going to go because there's more money to be made by getting there first. And so that's what I mean by the slider. You move that up and down and go, huh? Okay. You're allowed to have a natural home. Your home can even be space is fake. You can be like the 12 out of 10, not a problem. Um, I do think there's something wrong with your perception of reality. If you're at a one out of 10, where like nothing is under control of 80 kinds. That's you want to talk to a psychologist or something about that because they don't think you have a healthy experience of coherence and, and a human agency and human design. Right. So anywhere between four and eight really is, uh, is valuable information. And each time you move the slider, you get a different frame on how it is to be in the world, which should ultimately allow you to position yourself to do that. What is mine to do or to, to be favored by luck if it isn't your time. So I love the idea of the slider because like, like you, I have a diverse, I have diverse perspectives in my community and they actually have more in common than not in common. And when we're going through big events like this, it's important, at least for me to be able to bring as many people to provide the value that I can to as many people as possible. And there'll be some people like the space is fake crowd that they'll just bounce off some stuff and the coincidence people will bounce off some stuff. But if you give people the, uh, a visualization to say, okay, well you can have your home on the slider, but let's see what happens as we move it up and down, you get more people moving further along towards understanding and map making. I think. Yeah. And I'm so glad that we're talking about this because I have had a plague since kind of, uh, starting this here in the studio where maybe it's always there, but I just noticed it more that I will have a guest here to talk about a specific thing that is their expertise, but they have to use some outside the box example that really sends a lot of people bouncing off. As you say, whether it's Voyager fixing itself from a hundred billion light years away or USA ID is actually great. Even though I was an economic hit man and it's needed in the Amazon. It's like, yeah, that was, I remember that I w I was actually on one of those buses from, you know, when they at shitty airports or just busy airports, right? You have to get on a bus to get to the terminal between you and the plane. And I was listening to that one in Lima airport thinking like, this is a weird place to be listening to, to John talk about that stuff. USA ID is great. Okay. Where are you going? Yeah. We need the funding for the vaccines to save the lives, you know, all these indigenous lives that would just fall apart if it weren't for us. I mean, it's not like they've been there longer than the American empire has, but they need us. Yeah. It's just a thing that keeps happening. And I think that the times where I disconnect with guests most or just people in general is when I can't follow the logic tree. I think I'm pretty good about being like, okay, I'll meet you where you are. I'll find a way to, to find common ground with you. But if I can't follow the logic tree, if I can't find your space on the slider, if you're all over the place, going from a two to a six to a nine, depending on the various subject matter, it's just a little hard to, to meet a person where they are, because I don't know if they always know where they are. So I'm, I'm relieved that we're having this conspiracy slider conversation, but to get into the meat. So we don't have to rehash what we talked about in November, but you do say things are right on track. 2026 is war breaking out in Europe and in the middle East in 2027 is war in the U S and China. You say drafts and capital controls are certain drafts is such a bold claim. And I imagine that's more of a EU thing, but we also have the U S civil war to talk about. I am still skeptical of that. I will be probably until it really starts to happen. I just think that we're too intermixed. And I think that a lot of people, even though you see a lot of rage online, they're pretty apathetic when it comes down to actual action. And I just don't know if we really get there, but I guess if I'm gaming this out, you think that my kids will be in grade school, learning about the old world where there were still 50 States in the United States. Yep. That guarantee. Wow. Like, so you won't get civil war, like cannons and Gettysburg and shit. Like it's not that it's, uh, and it's interestingly because this energy is also in the charts and forecast for the EU, the EU one's going to hit different because as the, when it becomes apparent that the war with Iran is on and that it is plainly a war against the Muslim world, then countries with like high percentages of Muslim populations are going to get like quite dangerous civil unrest. And that is obviously Europe and the UK in particular. Uh, and so that's how a civil war energy is going to show up then. It doesn't need to be like, you know, whistling Dixie and drums and, and all the rest of it. It's, it can be, and that's, we're seeing it already in the U S with whether they're engineered or not, you have, uh, you have groups that are violently calling for intervention against each other over what they perceive to be rightly and wrongly, the population of the country. That's a civil war. That's what that is. Like you, you had like a view host calling for violence against like ice two days ago. Like it's, this is, that's what it looks like. So it's, it's not like, yeah, it's not like drums and so on. And, and writing letters back to your sweetheart in Louisiana, it's like civil unrest rather than civil war. And that's pulling the country apart already because now that the red team's in, it's a blue team that's pulling away. And if the blue team was in it with him and the red team who pulled away and the upshot is the same whenever you get in there, but in terms of like, there's going to be increased violence because there's unrest, but you're not going to like go to war with Boise, right? Like it's not, it's not going to be like that. Yeah. It's a little harder to play out because especially we're just so ingrained with what the first civil war was and the simplified version of it that we all have in our heads and it's North first South. And this is just the thing. And then you think today, well, everybody's a lot more integrated. And I just liked the term you use in the presentation. What if they threw a war in it? What if they threw a civil war and everybody came and you bring up all these things? Like there will be paid agitators. There will be sleeper cells and particularly in Europe, but probably here too. There is this thing, this anti-cartel thing going on in Mexico. Some people are like, we got to go in and get these cartels once and for all. So you have a lot with the immigrants and then also going after cartels. Like there's just a lot of feelings there on both sides. I used to joke, like make Mexico great again. Like if you, if you consider the original borders, right? So what's going on is a border dispute inside like a greater country. And so consequently, like waving Mexican flags in California seems foreign because it is like legally, it's a foreign flag in the perspective of international law. But like historically speaking, the Aztecs didn't have flags, but it's the same kind of idea of like, okay, huh. That's when you, when you jump up to the level of let's say astrology and cycle models and the level of the mythic, right? You can see that for what it is and you don't have to drop down to the play out level of, oh, it needs to be, uh, red States are going to use the national guard to invade blue States. It's not going to be that right. But because it's already happening. And once you realize that, once you jump up to the level at which it's true, you can see it and you can, you can meaning make around it. And it is going to unfortunately involve like, this is in Mexico's chart, but like, it's going to, unfortunately, it's going to look like a war between the U S and Mexico because there's going to be foreign troops in Mexico as a result of this. And even that civil war stuff, because as we both know, and anyone listening slash watching this, the CIA is two feet up the colon of like the international drug cartels. So, and so are the banks, right? Because you actually can't move that money around without it going through lower Manhattan. Like it's impossible at the moment. So that's a civil war as well, because you've got parts of the power structure that are trying to collapse parts of the power structure that no longer serve these goals. Right. That's what it looks like. That's the kind of mess that we're in. And it also like the, the piece of that, this is a weird way saying it, but the piece of that is like, Oh, okay, this doesn't, there is no fixing this in the same way that once you have a fever, you just like, Oh, the body's doing its thing. Now it's, it's heating itself up so that it can remove these toxins. And that's just what happens. Like if you try to take painkillers or make yourself cold, you will just slow the process up. You can't stop it. You can't divert it. It just needs to complete. And it needs to complete because that's the medicine of these big cycles. That's just what happens. And things like things get worse and they get better than they get worse and they get better. That's just the breathing in and out of the universe. And we're in one of those feverous, worse moments for the next few years. Yeah. That's something that's been brought up in the previous conversations about this is like, you can't stop it. You can only kind of accelerate it or get through it with the minimal amount of pain and thinking of it as a fever and a, a little bit of a sick week, you know, it's like a sick couple of years, but yeah, there's a similar analogy there that I like, and this is worth mentioning. It's kind of obvious. I don't know, but I still, it needs to be said, but you warn people about beware the possessing spirit of war. And this seems so obvious to me back in my college liberal, hippie, naive life. I used to wear a t-shirt that said already against the next war. And it was interesting wearing that shirt for a few years because it's always true in my mind, but at sometimes it becomes more taboo than other times. At sometimes you see more looks in the grocery store than other times. And it's kind of crazy because we should always be against war. When you, when you engage in war, you obviously are killing civilians that have nothing to do with their government. All you have to do to put yourselves in the shoes of others is be like, do I have anything really to do with what my government is doing to other people that is pissing them off? No, we're just trying to live our lives and raise our kids as everyone is on this planet. So the first civilian casualty makes you the bad guy always. And you can't say war is hell. We just got to do it. But I bring this up just because as we both know, we, we have people in our lives who maybe saw COVID for what it was. We, they saw the jabs and they avoided pitfalls along the way, but then you never know what's going to grab someone. Some people do get captured by Putin as a bloodthirsty monster and he must be stopped. And it doesn't matter if a million people die on the way to stopping them. And it's like, Whoa, where did you get that? Like that's propaganda. So I think that in, in terms of you being the magic guy, it's really interesting. Beware the possessing spirit of war because it does possess people. Doesn't it? They get a bloodlust. This, so you basically just described my mother who, when we aren't, when the planet isn't being possessed by the spirit of war, she's a very passive energy healer in, in regional Australia. And sometimes I will talk to her and she will say that Putin stuff as well. It's like, Oh, we need NATO here. I think. And I was like, wait a minute, pause, like record scratch. What, what? Um, but I noticed that the most amongst Europeans, because first of all, they're going to lose. Uh, and, and so it's really interesting to watch a continent admittedly being run by like cokehead pedophile, whatever the hell's going on with Macron and you know who, um, okay. So I can kind of understand why these cokeheads are being possessed by the spirit of war, but I have many European members and European friends who are like literally in countries like, like Nordics, they, their neighbors have just switched one day and they're like, they're, they're ready for this. I'm like, you're going to be sending 18 year old Danish girls to fight the Russian army and you're into it. Like that's the spirit of war. And I call it that exactly because the Greeks and speaking of like Northern Europeans, uh, the Vikings and those Northern European cultures understood that that's what happens. That's how wars, this is kind of jumping up to that level of the cycles and so on. It has to be the case that most people become possessed by the spirit of war, like a majority become possessed by the spirit of war so that the war happens. Like it's, it's funny, like it has to be the majority of people have to have that bloodlust. And so you just need to be aware that that's kind of like how reality works and for it to not possess you, but also to understand that it's sort of like COVID, but worse even you're dealing with possessed people. And so they don't see reason. You can't, this is something Charles Eisenstein says, right? That you can't reason people out of a position that they've been put in through unreason. Like if someone has been unreasoned into a position, you can't logic them out of it. And that's just one of the techniques as we move through talking about the civil unrest energy. Don't pick the fight, right? Because they're not, uh, they're not themselves. You're, you're picking a fight with the spirit of war inside what might've been previously a friend and it's just how it works. Uh, and it's also a call to find the people with whom you are allied with, whether that's in person or online and so on. Like the way we daisy chain all these communities together, that kind of thing. That's what I mean by it. Cause this is, it's funny. We haven't been alive for a proper war because we're both 27, obviously, but you can look at historic accounts, like not so much the 20th century, but beforehand at things like the Napoleonic war, or even during the time of Henry VIII with the amount of like the risks to England from the, uh, from Catholic Europe and so on. They talk about it this way. They talk about, oh, the spirit of war or, or the angel of war, uh, or the angel of bloodlust being amongst the people or amongst the men. And it's like, oh shit, that's, that's true. Like we, we haven't been able to, we haven't been in bodies for it or not in these bodies for it anyway. And it's so bizarre, but like, it's, I find it very useful to let people know, no, that's really it. Like when you come back out of a conversation or an argument with someone who was previously a friend or previously, and hopefully will be again, previously someone who was close in your life and be like, wow, like that is not you. We can joke about it when it comes to boomer parents that it's Fox news or in Australia's case sky news. And there's something to that for sure. Uh, but it's qualitatively different. Like I, I find, uh, some otherwise peaceable people, my, my nurse who's in New Zealand, she's English. She's lived there for 25 years, but is from England. And last time I was in New Zealand getting a treatment, she was Putin bloodlust. And I'm like, oh my God, like this, this facility, this alternative health facility I go to is in New Zealand was like no masks, no injections. Like they were just flying our colors. But this time around, she's like, oh yeah, we're going to get Putin. I'm like, wow, that's a, that's very interesting. And it is weird too, because it, everybody has their line, I suppose. Like when it comes to, Israel kind of owning the U S a lot of people, including myself, like, well, we got to stop, we got to break that up. But it's, you think they're going to go willingly. You think there wouldn't be dead bodies if you really picked that fight, but then it's like, so what do you do? Just accept it. I suppose this whole thing is about accepting somewhat the conditions that you can't actually control. And to get back to what I said in the intro, it's like, focus on your inner world. You know, we're talking about a spirit of war possessing people, probably because they don't have their inner world locked tight. And so the possessing spirit can get in and maybe we should avoid that. You actually have a video on banishing that I like, especially the thumbnail. You know, I love that thumbnail for Seinfeld fans around here. And you make the point that banishing is really pretty close to focusing because you're making space, you're eliminating things to make space. And you use the Seinfeld example where Jerry Seinfeld says that he blocks out an hour each day to sit in isolation with a pen and a notepad. And he says he doesn't have to write comedy in that time, but he can't do anything else. And I do love that. It's like, we probably should have some time set aside for ourself where you might not be able to do creativity on demand. You know, that's what, that's the situation, but you can create the space for it to emerge when it does. And that's super important. Like you talk about nervous system regulation, stress reduction, taking time to focus, taking time to pray, even like pray for peace. I mean, you can do these things that do affect the field, as you say, you know, little subtle things, Bilbo Baggins, our way to a, to a outsized impact. We, we probably do need to dedicate that time. I just thought that was a good point. And we should tone down the external stimulus. That's going to open us up to being possessed. So I'm really interested in these techniques that look like, oh, that's, that's a, that's a writing hack from, from a master comedian. And it is when you have done the work of exploring like theory of mind and like, well, what are thoughts and what is the imagination and what is the imaginal? And is that different to the spirit world? And where do these ideas come from? Because we, we inherit such, this is the work of my life. That's what animistic is. And so on, we inherit this really, just ghastly, the worst possible theory of mind that we've ever had. And once you open it up, you can come to it from any, any way you want. You can be an idealist, you can be an animist, whatever. Like it doesn't necessarily matter. You just have to credit some level of reality to the experiences of the imaginal, which is where all the deep transformations and most powerful moments in our existence happen. And the simplest shortcut is I say, the imaginal is identical to the spirit world. And it's not in us where it is. Like that's just a simple way to open it up because once you allow that to be true, what the hell is Jerry doing? So if, if he's in the imaginal and the imaginal is the spirit, what he's doing is sitting there and making the inward turn with respect and, and humble expectation in the sense of like, he's not telling the imaginal, make me some funny jokes, please. He's not doing that because if you force that you'll get shit. Like you'll just stay at the level of the conscious mind. And instead he has ended up, I mean, speaking of Israel and so on, he hasn't, he hasn't fallen on the side of politics that I'd hoped he would have in this last few years. Uh, but he's nevertheless a, like one of the greatest comedians who have ever lived. And what he does every day is spends an hour in the spirit world, basically. And so when you do that work, you're like, Oh wow. Okay. Uh, Hmm. There might, what's my version of that. There might be something to this and you could, whatever it is, like, it doesn't matter what kind of life you have. I mean, it'd be great to spend an hour doing nothing with like a, a waiter's pad and a pencil for sure. Like that would be incredible, but okay. Now that I know that this is when you start to realize, Oh, this spirit of war stuff, like Gordon's being literal. That's exactly how it happens. You, you are, uh, captured by these deeply ancient imaginal beings and processes that have been with not just mankind, but like the planet forever since, since there has been physical existence. That's where there will, you will always find your, I was going to say theater of engagement, which is true, but it's also the invitation to transformation. And that is the, that is where all of this energy is coming from. The spirit of war is in there. So if you are desirous of having it tread more gently on the earth, then you don't go to a protest. I mean, you can, but like you go inside. I like it. And on the subject of personal development, the big thing you have going on is this intensive six week guided course into shadow work that you're calling the shamans devil. And I think listeners have enough context for your life that this will make sense. But I love this pitch. You write all the trauma I've been trying to talk my way out of the self-sabotage, the people pleasing or the nervous system overload. Couldn't be solved with logic alone. All those years, keeping my magical practices separate from my trauma, healing ones, the jungle blew that apart. The breakthrough came when I stopped treating my past like a file folder and started treating it like a haunted house because those memories they're alive. They're real. They're spirits in the shamanic sense. They are autonomous soul parts. And if you don't face them, they run the show. So I learned to face them and everything changed. My relationship stopped draining me and started fueling me. My health rebooted in ways, no supplement or seminar ever managed to a new career emerged from what used to be my pain. Not because I chose between Western psychology and shamanism, but because I combined them. Shadow work, when rooted in a shamanic worldview, makes the underworld the absolutely real place magical folks already know it to be. The place may be dark and its denizens may first appear scary. But as the legendary mythologist Joseph Campbell said, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasures you seek. The shaman's devil is the great initiator of adult life. All these years, he is kept safe in the underworld. Those aspects of yourself you hide from the world. Those things you refuse to show to others or even admit in private. He acts autonomously in your life until the time comes to meet him, to confront him and to claim those lost soul parts. So no, you don't need years of therapy. You don't need to live in the jungle. You just need a safe way to meet the devil and walk out with your treasure. That's the system I built and now I teach it. Man, I just like that so much and I'm already signed up because through interviews with people like Dr. Tom Zinzer, who does soul-centered healing, I know that at least I've evolved from the idea of external spirit attachments being this kind of provocative thing and maybe they're leeching my energy or something like the archons. A lot of that I just got into because it's provocative and interesting. But then you go a level deeper and you find out, no, these are parts of the self. And I think that the Tom Zinzer interview is kind of one of the first things that made me realize that and see how we create the stuck parts of ourself. And I guess the first step is that recognition. But what would you say to people like me who just kind of brush that off and might be in denial that our own shadow projections and stuck parts are actually holding us back? What I would say is that the story that they aren't holding you back is still important enough for you. So the way Jung conceptualized the shadow was essentially the first half of life, really just the first, like until you reach adulthood, you, as you were building out your ego personality, the things that people rejected in you. So if you're a boy and you might, you might have wanted to play with your sister's dolls once and your dad sees it and it's like, boys don't play with dolls. Um, that boom, straight into the shadow, your interest in anything to do with, I don't, I'm not, you know, I'm not gay. I just, that was nice. It was pretty. Like what the hell? Um, that goes straight into the shadow. So your idea that you can enjoy feminine things is in the shadow. Now do that a million fucking times. Right. And the thing is, this is why it's called the shaman's devil. Why is all that stuff, all those painful, but transformative things are shoved away into the dark down, down, down, down, down, down in like, Nope, nothing to see there. Shut up. I'm a boy. I like football and meat. This is great. Everything is, everything is awesome. And that's the, and you need that. You actually need to spend your childhood building an adult ego to go out in the world and do stuff. Like that's the, that was the unlock for me was like, Oh, the devil keeps these for us. Like that's actually a service that he provides because you can't be dealing with that level of rejection in childhood as you're building your personality, because for kids, they can't take care of themselves. Rejection is view is existential. If mommy and daddy don't love me, I will die. And that's true. Like the thing is, that's probably not actually your experience, but that's how kids are in reality. So they will do everything they can to hide that stuff and build their personality. But there's so much energy. So you want to think about like old timey computers where you'd have to like defrag a hard drive or something. By the time you reach your mid thirties, you are powering like 70% of your soul processes are all this shit that's been hidden down there. And it occurred to me in shamanic work. So the, the underworld Lord in my shamanic healing tradition is called Vaskar Inca. And so I've done a lot of work with him and there's a Vaskar Inca right involved with it. But we have this idea in European mythology as well, because there's, I'm sure most people, maybe not, most people listen to this, know that there's no hell in the Bible. Like the Satan is the opponent to God is like this 13th century, a little bit before idea where the Pope was in exile and it was a plague, like things were going really, really bad in Europe. So they, they, the, the idea of this awesome, evil, powerful opponents to the creator of the universe kind of emerged around then, but beforehand it wasn't that. And we had this idea. So why is the Prince of Shadows also a Lord of Light? Now, bearing in mind, these aren't real beings. This isn't like some sort of Luciferian LARP or anything like that. This is a, this is a psychological shamanic process. And I do need to describe it a little bit scary because this should be a scary process, not because you're dealing with demons. It's worse. You're dealing, you're dealing with the parts of yourself that are ready to be healed, but that's a jarring process. Why is the Prince of Shadows, the Lord of Light? Because he keeps those things in the shadows until it comes time for you to see them. Like what the hell is like the morning star doing in the dark, if not illuminating at the right time. And you think, wow, we actually, so coming back to the idea that the imaginal and spirit world is the same thing, like European mythology retains this transformative archetype the whole way, like other parts of the world don't need it. They've kept their underworld. They, they don't even really have the same idea of shadow work because they build personalities in, we would say maybe a healthier culture, but we are where we are. And the funny thing about healthy and unhealthy cultures is that they will develop their own medicine. And for us, it's this idea, it's this idea of shadow work and this idea of an underworld soul retrieval journey. So that's, that's basically, it changed my life. It truly did. And, and I wasn't kidding about the first trip to the jungle when I was going through, it had just been just after my farm had almost burned down and I'm walking through the rooms of my almost burned down house with this snake spirit, ayahuasca. And then, I mean, childhood experiences that I hadn't consciously recalled in decades, but I was in them, like it's Proust and the Madeline. They weren't memories. I was visiting them. And I'm like, wow, this stuff is like, because I mean, I think we all know that our experience of time is not really how time works. So what that implies is that with the right kind of ceremonial processes, you can widen out your experience of time. My shamanic healing teacher says that he says, shamans work outside of time. That's actually how shamanism heals. And I can't, I don't have anything else to say other than like, it's, it is exactly as described. Your, your memories exist as autonomous soul parts, and you are a beautiful ecosystem of all these different parts, doing their best to try to keep you here and have you thrive and so on. And there comes a point in your life where you want to bring that, uh, elevate that process by bringing in healing and understanding and bringing in light to places where you had previously shoved things in the dark. Yeah, man, this is a big unlock for me too. I just like the framing of it a lot that yes, it is necessary when you're young to have these protective mechanisms. And then the gatekeeper says, look, you're an adult now let's process this stuff. So you can actually be an adult. You don't need acceptance in the same way. You know, even we just had my dad's memorial and you know, I had to write a big speech and a big part of it is like, I think what was so great about my relationship with my dad is that he really trusted that I was going to figure it out. Like he never really blasted me for all the crazy stuff I was doing as a kid. It was kind of like he, he saw it, but there was like a, an acceptance and a trust like, well, he will grow out of that phase. And luckily I did. Some people don't. And, uh, you know, that radical trust, you know, it's, it's close to unconditional love, but it's also like, I don't need to meddle in his life because I think he'll get there. And you know, it's something I want to take forward with my own kids, but you would assume that that helps with the shadow stuff because my kids aren't experiencing as I didn't a lot of, uh, like a whipsaw of acceptance and this is okay. And this is not okay. You know, don't try to over manage, let the process take its course. Maybe that would help to create less shadow parts in a young child is obviously, you know, I'm thinking along these lines, but I think it helped me too. How do we find those things? Because if I go back to our conversations, you know, you give me a hard time about the fact that I don't really like travel. I do like to be new different places, but I hate travel. I'd rather bring people to me so much so that I'll, I'll do an expensive pig roast in the backyard. I will do an RV party to bring people from all parts of the country to me and spend five grand to do it. I don't like to go out. I want, I want to bring people to me. You say there's probably something in my shadow there. Well, what's the difference between a tendency or a preference and something that needs to be addressed in the shadow sense? Nothing except that they need to be alchemized. So our gifts live next door to our wounds. And so in the first half of life, we operate on wounds and coping mechanisms. And then we kind of look at those wounds and go, Oh, this might have something to do with blah. And that doesn't mean it's wrong. Like you're built of your experiences. It's like, well, that's actually why I think this way. So we had, and this is a good example, right? So we had kind of different, very different, almost wholeer experiences of parental acceptance where you had almost universal acceptance, like golden boy stuff. And as a result, I perceived when we were driving around on our Curb Your Enthusiasm chores, that there was something, my experience upset you. There was something in your shadow about the way I was describing my experience with my father. And I'm like, that's really interesting. And I've been sitting with that, right? So I had the opposite. I was, you know, ridiculed and psychologically terrorized and forced to do things that I didn't like, which meant I was bad at them, which meant I thought I was bad at things like it's this cascading spiral, right? And you had this, like, essentially open boulevard of opportunities. Now, I perceived, because what you didn't like about what I was saying, I think, see how this goes for you, is I was, it's not blaming my father, because like, I'm actually really good at shit now because of that horrible experience. Like, I'm now very dedicated and I work really hard to do things. This is a good example of wounds being alchemized into gifts. But my experience took from you an excuse. My experience took from you an excuse of, because you could do anything and you did some things, but you never really stuck to anything. You're like, oh, you know, I tried to guitar for a little bit and what have you. And your version of why my story upset you was you have, this is, let me say how this goes for you. There is a part of you that wanted your parents to be stricter so that you would have been better at the guitar or soccer or whatever it was that you were doing at the time. And what that means is that you're offloading to your parents' blame, quote unquote, for a shadow process. Like, do you know what I mean? Like there's, oh, I tried guitar and I either wasn't good at it or I mean, I regret that I didn't do that. So it carries a little charge for you, right? Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yeah. And mine's the opposite. And that's, that's when you say, how do you notice and what do you do here? It's like, oh, okay. So when you were irritated by my story, you weren't actually irritated by what happened to me. You were irritated because it hit something in you that was still serving a need. That thing is this story that if my parents had pushed me a little bit harder, maybe I would be more successful or differently successful. When the time comes to heal that, that's when you're doing things like the shaman's devil. And mine's in reverse. Cause I do a lot of work with this. It's actually taken me years to actually describe publicly how the level of unpleasantness that was involved in my childhood. Cause I had shadow processes around the shame around hiding them. Cause like, I didn't want people, because it happened to me. It's the same thing with any kind of like abuse, right? Like I didn't want people to know that it happened because I carried shame around it. And it's not like, oh my God, my childhood was the worst thing ever. It's not everyone, everyone puts stuff like the opposite of what goes on that goes in the shadow. And we're in a really interesting situation where we did have the opposite. So my stuff looks like yours in the shadow and your stuff looks like mine in the shadow. I absolutely see that. And I have said that too, is I think that my parents should have forced me to finish things. Cause I would get to the point that it got hard. And then I'd be like, I'm done. I'm done with the guitar. And in my adult life, it's like, oh, well, I really wish I would've used the years 12 through 15 when I wasn't doing a fucking thing to actually develop a skill that could be used in my adult life. Cause it's too late to do now, but no, it's not. That's why that's why it's not. That's why the story still has like that story still has need or still serves a need in you because it's not too late. Part of you knows it. And the other part is in resistance. So the part that still doesn't want to do anything is in resistance and is holding onto that story. It's not too late. It's different. It's not going to be the same as like being a little Asian girl at the age of nine, doing a hundred hours of piano a day. Like you're never going to be a master at it, but that's the life you got. This is, this is what it is. And it's not too late. And that's the, that is actually what I think the story is serving a need for, uh, in your, in your head. And it might still serve that need. If not, it's like, okay, well, what is the right way? Well, if that's the wound, what's the gift? Okay. And, and the gift is like, oh, it's okay for it to be different. Do you know what I mean? Like, oh, I won't be cause I didn't spend, I didn't become a Spanish guitar virtuoso at 14. I'm going to be a bit shit at it. I'm never, I'm going to always be mid at guitar, even if I like it. And to allow that to be true is fine. Like that's actually, okay, cool. That's what it is. So that's when it goes from a wound to a gift. And it's a really good example, actually. Fair enough. Yeah. And I can also just say that the tools have changed and I don't need that to create artistic expressions anymore. True. And, uh, that's a thing as well. So as we're trying to wrap this thing up, you know, something you said in another video is that the goal of once you get through this internal work that we're all trying to do, you should basically prioritize your exploration of some kind of independent destiny and some form of excellence. And I just think that is the best summation of what we should do. Take the conditions of the world, find your true will, find the meeting place of those things, and then try to be excellent. Not at everything. Nobody's perfect, but be excellent at the thing that is the expression of your true will matching the conditions of the reality of the world. And I guess that's really just what the rune soup boils down to, huh? Yeah, I hope so. We do our best. Yes. Well, now I guess we got to do the promo stuff. We are old pros here, but you have reworked the entire premium membership. You have a whole new infrastructure. It's really clean and modern and you have so much content that it becomes a thing. Like you have to organize content, uh, efficiently. And you have one of the most full and dense membership platforms I know of. Mine's just a podcast. It's easy to have an RSS feed. Sure. But you've got courses and they're stacking and stacking and stacking. So, uh, I just think this reorganization has been really good. I hope people would check it out. You also are very active on YouTube and sub stack and use those things, um, kind of in line with their purposes too, which is not everyone does. They try to change the way it's done to make it about them. But either way, uh, the shaman's devil is coming. Tell people about the things you got going on and the new app, I guess. Yeah. So, um, like you, uh, and actually you were the first person to say that, Oh, this is probably something you should do. And I just moved back to Australia and I'm like, Hey, so I'm thinking about doing a, uh, a membership because the plan a, this is talking about dumb, talking about asking for guidance. Uh, plan a for me was to write like a book every couple of months. Cause you make like, I don't know, $150 that I was going to do the Joseph Farrell model of like, Oh, I'll just have hundreds of books. And so if you make 50 to a hundred dollars per book per month, it's like, it turns into a teacher's salary eventually. And I said to you, like, what about doing like a monthly membership thing, but it's courses, not like an extended podcast. And you're like, yeah, that'll probably go. Yeah. You probably, that'll probably go for you. And I'm like, all right, well, that's how Greg does it. So it's your fault. Thank you very much. But that was also 2018 and 2016. When, when was Trump one? That was 2016, wasn't it? So it was the end of 2016, early 2017, that the membership started. And like you, mine was a rat's nest of WordPress plugins and so on providing as much functionality whilst apparently funding terrorism and whatever, which is the WordPress plugin ecosystem, if you don't know. And consequently, some of the material while still good, it needs, it's really challenging to get like, it's logging into WordPress websites and so on when now most people are on devices. So we, I, we had a glow up and I remastered all the courses and it was really fun to do this year because to revisit material from 2017 and go like, this still slaps. Like I don't actually need to, not in an arrogant way, but like, oh, this has not gone wrong. I mean, it's tarot. It's not like it ages like a fruit, you know? But that's been really fun. And now it's all available on what's going to be this month. We have our own branded RuneSoup app coming out. So you get that. And we do live streams and everything all in app. It's been really, really fun and pleasant. And as a result, because there is so much content, we're moving into it being more of a community focus. So instead of each quarter, there being a course on it, well, now we're doing Greek magical papyri again or whatever. It's the fire hose is too strong for anyone to drink from now. So we're organizing it around monthly themes, which will allow us to stack the relevant parts of the content underneath it. So we might be doing Oracle cards and then we might be doing lunar mansions or use of crystals. And that allows us to like organize the fun each month and the learning around and surface all the material from the membership and around the web. So it's that, like, it's really fun at the moment. Like the app's going great. The community's going great. We do the usual like live stream Q and A's and things. It's been, it's been a lot of work, but it's been really fun to see it bear fruit. Hell yeah. And I think it's just so funny when I still run into people who don't think magic has any merit or anything like that. It's just like, when I go on your website, it's like, there is so much content here. There's so many different subcategories of magic to just dismiss it, to hand wave it all away and be like, I don't need that. It's like, wow, you're dismissing a lot. And it's just not part of our culture. So you really have to seek it in a, in a subculture, but it is robust and deep. And, um, I appreciate every time I get into it. So yeah, man, thank you for doing this as always. Like I said, this is number 19 or 21. If you count the two live shows and maybe it's 18, if you don't count the one we did with Chris, it gets hard, you know, when you do something enough times, but you are the returning champion because the other contender has kind of dropped off since COVID happened. So, uh, you're still going strong on the lead. All right. So just speaking of Chris, I'm just going to keep my eyes on that motherfucker. Cause he's, he's sneaking up. I see you. Yes, that's true. All right, man. Well, take care and, uh, we'll do it again soon. Thank you so much. The power of Christ compels you people, the Tasmanian devil back in the hot seat. Once again, I love it. I really just wanted to have him back for this new format. Cause he basically talked me into it. And now that I have ripped the bandaid off, I don't know why I waited so long. It's fun. We do get the visual references occasionally. That's not the biggest reason. I think the most helpful thing has been personal. It's just so much easier for me to leave the house and for my wife to take the two kids out so I can get two hours of silence. And it's probably a better recording environment period. It is sound treated a lot more than this room and it's just all good. I like it. So again, I guess if you have any more comments about the change, cause everything has changed, let me know when I don't get feedback. I kind of assume that it's all good, but we're really only in the second month here. So plenty of time to make improvements as we go. But as far as the content for this episode is concerned, when we talk about such long arcs as these predictive forecasting models are laying out, you know, well into 2027, I try to be conscious of us repeating ourselves too much every six months or so. But I saw the last time we talked was November outside of the live event, which again is on the bonus content page for any members, but the last real THC that was in November. So we knew who the president would be, but clearly a lot has happened in the first six months. So it was worth a bit of a conversation as to how it's all conforming to the models. The big red team switch is interesting. You get what you get no matter what. So don't get too vested in either side. And I know some people who want to be charitable to team red will say, well, what do you mean? He did this and this and this. And honestly, if you're not reading the actual executive orders and new bills, then you really don't know. But the game is always to make negative stuff sound good. You have to sell it as they say, but even stuff like no tax on tips, they love to say that phrase and I support it. But my understanding of what actually passed is no tax on tips. If you make under 15 grand a year or something like that. And there's just always a catch, you know this. And I do think right now the goal is to get a handful of very big things over the line. So if they can deflect and distract with throwing a little bone here or there, I'm sure it's all good to them. But regardless, we took some time to touch on those things and then remind everybody of what the model is actually saying. And these are some bold predictions. Trump only gets two years. War in Europe expanding over the next year, coming home to the U.S. in 2027, a breakup of the 50 states within this window. Pretty wild. As I say to Gordon every time I see the same data as you, but man, I just have a really hard time placing a bet on something as radical as a U.S. divorce. But I appreciate that he's so bold in saying it because you kind of have to speak boldly to actually be assessed appropriately as a forecaster. Some people like to keep things very broad and then retroactively shoehorn in real events and say, see, I got that one. I got that one. But these predictions, these statements are pretty black and white. So we will see. And as we get closer, with everything except maybe the U.S. divorce, I would say these things look more and more certain, not less. And wouldn't it be something if we actually didn't let the Epstein thing go as a people? I'm pretty sure we will have some level of limited hangout, maybe multiple levels, just to pacify the angry crowd and then only the diehards will really stick with it. And the general population will just move on. Like we all had to after JFK or 9-11. It's like they just look at us and say, yeah, we did that. And we don't really care if you think it's us. We are moving on. And I just think that's going to be an interesting dynamic at play in all this to watch going forward. But the big theme of this episode really is how to set yourself up for stressful times ahead, how to go Zen, how to engage in shadow work that might help you turn your own wounds into gifts. I don't really like to spotlight my personal life in these interviews and use myself as examples too much, honestly, because I just don't know how interesting that is. And keeping the show interesting is really my main goal. But hearing examples and the cause and effect of widely applicable aspects of a person's life to me is the most helpful in jumpstarting a deeper self-assessment of one's own shadows. But we probably do all have tendencies that relate to our survival mechanisms in those coming of age years. I like that framing a bit more than referring to them as traumas because I don't think I have any serious traumas outside of maybe the illness that caused the deaf ear thing. But we all have wounds of some kind. And they're there, though I loved my school years. I truly had friends of all types, nerds, jocks, friendships based on humor, gaming, etc. Gambling. I don't think that's unusual, but I did cultivate status by some calculated jokes or bits or whatever. It was the jackass days. And we did a lot of that stuff. But there is probably always going to be something there about me feeling physically weak in those years, but mentally or verbally strong. And as I said, I talked a lot of shit back then and oftentimes to people much bigger and older than me. And I knew anyone ever could just shut me down if they wanted to. And I would suffer some very serious embarrassment, but it just never happened. I like to think at 40, I've learned to be a bit more reserved, but maybe those years created tendencies that are still there or anxieties about how vulnerable I might be to anyone with moderate physical strength. But oh, well, we didn't talk much about vagal tone or vagal breathing, but that is a good practice. Gordon talks about a lot. You can find YouTube demos and guided meditations. But how often do we do these things, even though we know we should. Like other forms of exercise, they're cumulative and not really something we should be skipping out on. So I hope we all got something out of an examination of shadow projections and an interview that was at least half about looking inward rather than out. And I don't know if I thought much about this in the past, but it's also kind of fun having Gordon back every six months or so just as a stand in for the listeners, because he is one. So we can kind of talk inside baseball about some things that came out of recent interviews that a lot of listeners probably enjoy hearing be brought up again. So with this one, the first hour was good. The second hour got into more of those personal examples of shadow wounds for both me and Gordon. Seems like we are at two extremes in some ways. We also folded in the astrology stuff and what that strata of the blended cycle model is showing and intuition. That was a big one. This notion that all suffering comes from the failure to follow intuition and the failure to never really ask for guidance when we should actually always do that. I saw a lot of medicine in that stuff and I hope you enjoyed it. I think me and Gordon are pretty good about having recurring interviews, but finding fresh things to talk about, although you decide in higher side news, things are moving right along. Anyone who uses that clip genie instance, the transcript archive seems to love it, but still pretty low on the number of people who are actually checking it out. I will say that, but video subs are rolling in a fair amount of people are preferring it, but I still look at the YouTube view counts and I'm pretty shocked that they are as low as they are, but I did a lot of damage to the THC channel. Some my fault, some not, but I'm sure it will just take time to rebuild. We're only in the second month of doing this, right? And I got to give it some time. That said, let's look at how the plus people rated the last episode. Usually I would wait a few more days for the rating to really settle in, but I wanted to get this interview out quickly because it's somewhat current events related to a degree. And he's also got that devil's shaman intensive course coming out. And I got to give interested parties some time to join before it starts. But Mark Goodwin, that is the last interview, the Bitcoin dollar and the stable coin spiracy right now is sitting at a 4.5 though. It was just at a 4.7 only hours ago. I think it will creep back up, but what wasn't to like really? He's honest about the red flags of Bitcoin and the negative effects have taken the economy in this direction, but it's still going to happen. And Bitcoin probably still has upside. Both things can be true. I'm pretty satisfied with that perspective and the petrodollar analogy. Decentralizing finance, but requiring them all to have dollar reserves for stable coins. It all makes sense to me. And on to the mighty meetup calendar. All right, here we go. July 28th, Brooklyn, New York Cafe Ornithology. And on the 31st of July, LA at the Coral Tree. August 1st, Bentonville, Arkansas. August 8th, Astoria, Oregon at the Astoria Brewing Company. August 9th at the Raleigh Brewing Company in Raleigh, North Carolina. August 16th, Wayne Wright, Alberta, Canada at Wallace Park under one of the gazebos. Bring your own beer, they say. And August 27th, Black Rock City, Nevada at Black Rock City Brewing. Gotta love it. Meet like-minded locals over a mutual love of THC. HigherSideMeetups.com to hear more info about any event I listed there or RSVP or even make your own if you didn't hear about one near you. Thanks for listening. That is the show. Good luck out there. I know it's going to get harder for a little while. Take care of you and yours. I've done my part. Your move, puppet masters of the planet, theater of war, stage directors, and unresolved shadow projections. Your fuckin' moon. Get yourself a cast iron pot and a witch's wooden spoon. Gather up the grocery list, wait for the fullest moon. Put in a little hobbit nonsense at a pitch of history. Pour in the culture you can stand and some good astrology. You're still here. I thought we were done. Well, there you have it. Another great entry into the deep and robust THC archive that goes back over 15 years at this point. Peruse it all at the HigherSideChats.com and take advantage. And now that that interview is over and we're winding down, I can talk to you a bit more casually about what it is we do here. Because again, you just heard or watched the first hour of a two-hour interview on a show that has gone to great lengths to stay outside of the ad sponsor monetization model and instead opted to maintain true independence through subscriptions only. Over time, I've done a lot to improve the plus member experience and tried to keep convenience and quality of life in mind, which many paid offerings sadly do not do. But let's talk about some of the details that tend to be on people's mind when they consider making the leap. So if you are someone who just listens to the audio as the show has been for many years, we have the same long running THC plus subscription for eight bucks a month, five new shows a month and the full archive. No seasons or breaking it up in weird, sketchy ways. We have a great on-site player with all the bells and whistles. You can download full episodes and listen offline. And there is a lively comment section and a five-star rating system on each episode page. So I can see what plus members tend to like best. We also found a way around the annoying need to put in your username and password when using the private RSS feed in many of the podcasting apps. Now we have your subscription data built right into the link on the, my account page, just copy it and paste it and pretty much any podcasting app. And you are done. If it ever freezes up on you or stops loading or anything, you can even regenerate yourself a new URL on the same, my account page. It's an upgrade that truly does make it much easier than it used to be. And we even take it one step further. When you first sign up for a membership, we send you a welcome email that includes that link. Again, you just copy it, paste it, boom, you're in. And I know accessing the main show in an ongoing way is really just the only thing 90% of plus members want. But if you do get into the website, you will find some old bonus episodes and live events on the bonus content page, the old cover songs I used to close the show out with, as well as some of the new ones I've made recently. And you also get a lifetime forum membership where we have all sorts of interesting categories and threads, including the best place to get a guest request to me. People ask me about that pretty regularly, but how could I not put added weight to plus member recommendations? So there you go. Hint, hint. Now in June of 2025, I made the big leap to video. It seemed like that's what a growing number of people wanted, but the fear was over being able to deliver episodes in video conveniently behind a paywall because it's a lot more challenging than it is with just audio. Though we did figure it out. Although a streaming video does have a lot of extra costs to it. Go figure. And that is why we added the new tier of THC plus TV for people who want that video without changing the price for those who don't really care. So for 12 bucks a month, you can get the full shows in video with captions and a nice word search and all the features of the audio player, as well as Android and Apple casting from your phone to TV. That's nice. I also sweetened the $12 tier with one other important feature that has ongoing costs to keep updated. And that's a clip genie archive of all THC episodes going back to the beginning. And what clip genie does is allow you to search by any word and be served up all the transcripts of all the episodes that have included that word and a clickable link to start the episode right at that point in the show. It's very slick. People have asked for transcripts for a long time because episodes are so information dense. And this was a way for me to not only provide that, but make them all searchable with the system that provides everything a person could want for finding exactly what they're looking for with the hundreds of episodes there are. All right. So if you think I'm good at what I do and you appreciate the extra effort I make to try to come prepared and lead our guests through the most compelling parts of their work, I'm not asking for a handout. I'm asking for you to get twice as much of the content you already like for eight bucks or 12 bucks a month. I've used this analogy before, but we tip $8 for all sorts of services these days without even thinking about it, especially in this new world of the dumb tablet checkouts where they pre-highlight 20% and make you feel bad for switching it to anything else. And when you tip $8 because someone brought you a sandwich from the back, nobody brings you a second sandwich. I know ad supported podcasting makes it seem like it should all be free, but independence is worth something, especially in this counterculture field. And there's no way to make a viable career out of it. Otherwise, some people will say, well, what about value for value? But I tried that first and big donations came with aggressive guest suggestions, and that just doesn't work for our type of format, though it may work for other formats. Either way, the subscription model has not let me down in 15 years. And I thank those who sign up and I hope more people do. I try to make it worth it. As for the typical questions I get that might help you decide or speed up your onboarding, usually I get, where is the second hour? Because unlike other shows, I don't split each episode into two files because I find that to be inconvenient. You've got to find the other one and then load that up and it stops in the middle and you might have to hear two introductions and two wrap ups. It's a little bit clunky, but no. Plus members get the full two hour conversation just as it was had in a single file. I always ask for the promo stuff last, so I cut right before that and splice it on to the first hour and that is how the free hour is made and I just strip out the rest. So it still sounds pretty whole for free hour listeners, as you just heard, and I do prefer it that way. And when you're logged into the website, all the shows magically switch over to the plus shows. So it's seamless and that seamlessness has caused confusion before. But just look at the show length if you're unsure and know that you cannot be logged in and be seeing the free first hour episodes. Trust me. I spared no expense. They call me the John Hammond of conspiracy podcasting. I don't say that. Other people say that. So yes, if you just signed up and you want to go back and listen to older episodes, you do have to skip ahead about 50 minutes to hear the new content. But once you are a member, you'll be much happier with the full show in a single file and not maintaining two feeds and jumping from file to file just to hear one interview. Another common question I get asked is if plus members have to listen through the website. And of course the answer is no. We have that custom tokenized RSS link that works with many of the podcasting apps and the site is built to have some nice tools included to make it easier and more fun to listen, but it's not necessary. Spotify is the only weird one to get plus on Spotify. You must sign up through Patreon because they have a corporate partnership together. Honestly, we know how the game is played. I don't have to go too deep into it here, but yes, major corporations have taken over the internet. They get everyone reliant on a handful of convenient platforms and then they push out the controversial content. Even though I try to stay integrated for your convenience as much as I can, but some of that stuff can change at any time. And that is why I always prioritize and maintain my own independent website, but that's it really. I don't want to front load the show with too heavy of a pitch because then it sounds like an ad when I like to say we're ad free sponsorship, free and independent is a little more accurate, but because the video is complicated, some things, it just seemed best to run through all of it and slap it at the very end of these episodes. So your questions and concerns could be answered. And hopefully I've convinced you that it's worth it. Sign up at the higher side chats.com or write in the show notes or the episode description. Again, we send you that welcome email with the private tokenized RSS link right there. So you never have to log into the website if you don't want to. And if you sign up for video, we are going to be sending the new episode notifications there too, where you click the link and it logs you in automatically and you're right there to stream it. So I'm doing what I can help me help you double your pleasure, double your fun and get twice as much with THC plus. And that's all there is. There isn't any more.