He collects everything from Perry Reese to Alistair Crowley. I have an interview coming up in a minute with Jason Horsley. We talk a lot about the cultural influence of Alistair Crowley. Do you need any more evidence than a Scooby-Doo movie? Crowley. Or a Buffy the Vampire episode? So this is a really long interview. I think there's a ton of good stuff in it. Here are some clips from the show. When you bring a case like Crowley and you put him under the microscope and you see what I saw with Vice Kings, how far was he willing to take that? He was willing to take that all the way. He was looking for what he perceived as the most evil act possible, the unforgivable sin, you know, in the Bible, the sin against the Holy Spirit, the unforgivable, and then committing it as a way to completely, the path of transgression, completely free himself from social conditioning, from false morality, you know. And we're living in a culture and climate that advocates this. It's all over. I mean, if somebody is consciously deceiving, they would have to also be deluded as well. I mean, they would have to have some rationale for doing it that would be fundamentally delusional. I mean, I do believe there's an innate moral sense that we have biologically even. We have a sense of what's right and wrong in any given moment. You know, how effective you can be with 90 to 95 percent just true, agree with you, and win your trust so that I can then use that to kind of switch things in a different way. It's spin, isn't it? And my sense of that with Lavender, and he did help me see something ironically, is that I started to get a sense that it was to do with ideological affiliation, if you like, that Lavender, in my impression anyways, is ideologically affiliated with the occult values and systems and methodologies. Welcome to Skeptico, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Cares. Today, we welcome Jason Horsley back to Skeptico. Jason is the author of several books, including Prisoner of Infinity, which we talked about during a previous episode of Skeptico. Also, The Vice of Kings, How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution engineered a culture of abuse, a book I'm sure we will be referencing frequently today, and a new upcoming book titled 16 Maps of Hell, The Unraveling of a Hollywood Superculture. I don't know if we'll get a chance to talk about that, but I hope we do. It sounds intriguing. I don't really do the book interview thing, as you know, Jason, but I just got to let people know about those fantastic books because they're going to want to check them out. Also wanted to let them know about, you have really a terrific podcast, The Liminalist, you know, that liminal area between, well, between whatever this is and whatever that is, and an outstanding website blog, which we'll be referencing as well called Autoculture. And of course, people can find all that and follow you. So all that stuff is great, but I really wanted to do something different. I first wanted to introduce people, to reintroduce people to you. We did have an interview before, but you continue to do just such phenomenally outstanding work and produce stuff. And I'm just blown away. I mean, I think it's brilliant. And every time I go to dip into some of your stuff, I'm like, I need to just grab a piece. And I wound up just getting more and more and more, listening to more, reading to more. You're brilliant, brilliant writing, brilliant audio presentation. This dialogue thing you have going on is terrific. But the other thing that I really like and respect about you, Jason, is your personal courage that you demonstrate over and over again about just putting yourself out there. And a lot of people can do that, but they don't have the tenacity that you have. And like one of the things that really just compelled me to contact you again was this email exchange you have with Peter Lavenda. And we're going to try and unravel that in this larger context. But your tenacity to continue to go after Lavenda in a very appropriate way in these email exchanges. And I can't tell you the number of changes I've had with people where I go, this guy clearly, he's, he's a Psyop. He's Psyop 100%.  And you, rather than just ranting and no one ever listens to me because I can't back it up, you back it up, man. You back it up in the dialogue you had with him. And you back it up in terms of pulling together a lot of other pieces. So I really, really appreciate that about what you do. And I'm super excited to have you back on Skeptico. Well, thanks Alex. Thanks for all those kind words. And that last point, because I do, I mean, that is one of the hardest things in life is to confront people when we feel that we're being deceived. And there's just the whole social protocol that says, I shall not do that. And it is something that it's a fine line to all because it can be, it can be driven by neurotic things. I'm aware of that. Like, you know, I might have father issues or brother issues. And certainly I got triggered in exchange with Peter Lavender. But, and it would have been easy for me to back off because of just, just being not sure of myself and he's an authority figure and so on and so forth. But you're right. I didn't, I persisted. And then when it came to Vice of Kings, I did a lot more digging. And as you know, if you read it, I found an awful lot of much more compelling evidence around that. So it seemed like it was worth it. It was worth, you know, standing up for my own personal sense of integrity and being willing to confront this figure as a way to really get a better sense of the kind of deception that goes on in this community and in this world and around these subjects and really at Rubbermeeting Road. I mean, make it personal and practical and experiential, not abstract, not theoretical. It's much more exciting, much more interesting. It's riskier, but I think the end result is a lot more meaningful. Well, you know, I think there's just a ton to unpack there. And we're going to try and do that. Let's back up and make sure that, well, I think we have to, you know, back up and talk about the Peter Lavender incident that, you know, as you said, in some sense, it's the whole story in some ways. It's the whole story that we're going to tell today about deception, about evil and how we understand evil, what our role is in evil, what our culture's role is in evil, what our intelligence organization's role is in evil. But I think in this deception part, I think it's just so brilliant the way that you put it, because I think we're all trying to wrestle with to what extent we're being deceived, who the deceptors are, whether we're deceiving ourselves, whether our culture is engineered to deceive us, I could go on and on. But what I've thrown up there on the screen, which is, you know, kind of what I want to base this on, because I mentioned to you, when I sent you that email, I'm writing this book. So this book, you know, I mean, I don't know why anyone writes books these days, but you write books and some people read them and I read your books and they impacted me. And I guess that's all I hope to do with my book, Why Evil Matters, is just to maybe reach a couple of people at the right time who go, gee, why aren't we really dealing with this evil question in a kind of more deeper, intellectual, kind of pre-scientific way? And that's really the premise of the book. And I think when you talk about evil, one thing that comes up a lot to me in the conversations I have is the Alistair Crowley thing.  You know what I mean by that? Like, if you just tell people, you bring up Alistair Crowley, right? And you know, you're going to get a couple of canned reactions. And it's the ability people have, I think, to handle that topic. However they do, to me, is almost like a shortcut litmus test for where they're at in this larger understanding of evil, deception, left-hand path, and both personally, but also just in kind of the cultural spy Peter Lavenda thing that we'll get into. But as usual, I'm kind of laying a lot on the table and jumping way ahead of the story.  If you could, you've written brilliantly and extensively on Crowley. Can you give folks just if they're coming at this new and they can't understand the deep dive inside baseball stuff we've gotten into? Back up, who is Alistair Crowley? You know, what does he represent in our culture? Why is he important? Why does he matter? Can you just kind of start with the basics maybe? Well, I guess even starting with the basics is a lot of different angles. So where I tend to start with Crowley and what seems to me what makes him indisputably significant is his influence. And from two perspectives, like the proof of his influence is indisputable. I mean, the easy go-to is pop music of the 60s and 70s. So he's on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Arts Club Plan and he's cited in David Bowie's Hunky Dory, which was very influential for me as an LLS and so on Jimmy Page and Marilyn Manson. There's just no end to his influence several decades and several different musical movements. So from the one side of that, that's irrefutable. But the other side is how did he have that much influence and how deliberate and how intentional was that? And I think I look at In Vice of Kings, the evidence that Crowley was not what he seems in terms of this creative, occult outlier, this iconoclast who is pursuing these extreme transgressions in order to liberate humanity. That's half the story, but it's also maybe a half a cover story and that his influence, I think, was at least partially assisted, let's say. He was just as evidence that Crowley was an intelligence agent and an operative and was functioning at that level. It tends to be that the biographers have separated those two things out. On the one hand, he's this independent artist, writer, occultist. On the other hand, he also dabbled in intelligence work. And they're almost like separate things. Now, the connecting areas, of course, he was a member of occult secret societies and even created his own, the AA, which was a splinter of the OTO. Hold on. Before we bury people, there's so many parts of that. So we bury people with all these acronyms and we bury people with the cover story. But I do want to kind of back up because when you talk about the cover story, we also have to understand the other touch point that Crowley is today. Inside of the magic culture that is kind of a growing subculture, Netflix culture streaming, it's interwoven through all of that. That the idea of the occult, that there's something hidden, that there's something you don't know about, but it's a deeper truth. And there's this do what thou wilt, famous ethos that is kind of woven through our culture in another way that we don't quite understand its origins until people tell you about Alistair Crowley and they kind of whisper it in your ear and then you go, oh, wow, you mean there's this other secret sage of the esoteric, the 90 to kind of get in touch with. Let me do this if I can. I pulled out some clips from some really excellent interviews you've done. Let me play some of those. My first contact with Crowley was through David Bowie, the album Hunky Dory, which I heard in my brother's bedroom. And that might seem like a trivial thing or an odd place to start, but how a virus enters us is very key, I think, whether how open we are, how vulnerable we are in that moment is going to determine how infected we are. And I'd say that that was the case with the Crowley virus, that there was a delivery device, it was a combination of the culture and my family environment. The David Bowie, who I discovered thereby through my brother, who was never a David Bowie fan. And my brother was, I was very rarely in his bedroom because he didn't let me hang around with him at all. He was an older brother. And so I think, you know, it took about priming, like if you have a really positive experience of something the first time around, then you're going to be much more susceptible to ignoring the negative aspects of it because of that initial priming. So in some weird way, I think I was primed for Crowley by that combination of hearing David Bowie sing his name and my brother's attic bedroom. So there's a lot to unpack there. Let me just turn it over to you. What are some of your thoughts listening to that again? Well, I mean, it's still going on, that's the thing. I mean, I'm still, the reason I write these books as I do and this latest one about Hollywood is getting much more specific. I'm trying to extract the virus. I'm trying to purge the virus from my system. But at the same time, there's a reason why I let it in, which isn't just nefarious and malignant. Like there's a reason one can develop immunity. Of course, it's quite topical with all this stuff around the COVID now. But one develops immunity by exposure to viruses or what we call viruses and one can observe their effects and thereby analyze and understand them. So where I'm at now is I might, well, I let this virus in and I'm trying to get it out and necessary to getting it out of my system somehow seems to be breaking it down to its constituent parts and understanding what made me vulnerable to it and what's the affinity or the sympathy between myself and my own trauma and that cultural virus. And then that leads to these books and these analyses which hopefully are helpful to others. Hold on on that. What if it really is about deception? What if it is not even so much a part of your personal journey? What if it's an unnecessary step along your personal journey? And that's one thing I'd like to at least explore both in my book and in this interview is that just because Crowley is there and just because Johnny Depp is wrapping his arm around Damian Eccles who is the Crowley follower from the West Memphis Three and over and over again our culture has told us a Crowley and it's cool. Maybe we don't have to go there. Maybe we don't have to explore that and we can step past it and I'm not saying it's like all evil and bad if you do it. I'm just questioning the as I think you were even the because there's two ways to read what you're saying. One is to say hey it's there and you got to deal with it and the other is to say you know let's look at this let's be informed beforehand so maybe we can step around the pothole in the first place. No I mean it makes sense and certainly but this is a sort of conundrum I have I also have it around psychedelics because I feel that psychedelics was a mistake for me by and large and therefore that maybe I can use my experience of them to help others avoid the same pitfalls so this is definitely the case with Crowley and occultism. I would warn others against it but what I mean this is right to the core of your question you know why evil matters which is an interesting phrase in itself because there is a correspond I mean you're talking about the the allure and the cool of Crowley and all that stuff very prominent in our culture as I said since the 60s on it's been it's this meme that's been generated but you must also be aware that co-existent with that those are not necessarily Christian but often Christian counter push saying that Crowley is just evil and and just stay away from it it's just sick it's venial it's psychopathic and although I I probably agree with the diagnosis 90% it's not really fruitful and it seems to if you just dismiss evil if you just say it's evil stay away from it because it doesn't allow for understanding and it and it demonizes and it scapegoats and it and it just perpetuates this division there the and of course Crowley himself promoted his evil and that was part of his cool so the people who think that Crowley is cool are not going to be discouraged by people saying he's evil right that's the problem I think that's exactly the problem I think you immediately I think understood the premise of the book just by the title which so few people do you know and I've already done interviews on the book and people are immediately want to go to is this evil is that evil do you mean this is evil and it's like no you're trying to make a list or quantify evil or compare evil I wrote this first book why science is wrong about almost everything and the premise of the book was that if you get consciousness wrong if you think consciousness is an illusion if you think we're all biological robots in a meaningless universe well then you really can't get anything right in science because you'll never factor in consciousness and the premise of the second book why evil matters is that if you're not willing to explore evil and evil becomes really a shorthand for saying these extended consciousness realms that extend beyond this biological robot I'm just here in my brain if you're not willing to explore what might extend beyond our minute by minute experience and if you're not willing to include evil in that then you're not really going to say anything meaningful about spirituality whatever that means so yeah I'm trying to draw attention to we've been kind of put in a box with evil where it's like it's evil it's either this very narrowly defined thing that this old book tells you about and you're shamed into believing through either being a part of one of these cultish religions like Christianity or it's a complete denial it's the do what thou wilt denial of evil that's not only from Crowley but if you look in the scientific realms you know like you have and I have it you know it's embedded in that materialist message of course there's no evil I mean there isn't even free will there's nothing you are just a biological robot how could there be evil in that so to me that's why that's the whole why evil matters things it's because we're kind of the walls are you know we're Indiana Jones and the walls are closing in on both sides with religion on one hand and scientism on the other and I think Crowley as an agent of that process I think is really kind of interesting yeah so and to me you know the area where we can let some air in is psychology and now of course psychology is traced back to Freud and even Jung it's heavily compromised but still at least as a working model allows for both a scientific view and a religious view but primarily it's a subjective view it's something we can refer to and understand ourselves and by looking at ourselves and we're all human beings and we all have psyches whatever configured in the same way in the same way biologically what they're saying so my approach with Crowley see isn't that Crowley was evil it's that he was psychologically damaged and that we can see this in the inconsistencies in his work and the hypocrisy and the abuses and the corruption and what we think of as evil behaviors all that can be seen psychologically and it makes his work fundamentally invalid invalidates it and at the same time it corresponds with how Crowley himself was useful for an instrument of these much larger apparatuses of psychosocial control and engineering which create somebody like Crowley or create these viruses and perpetuate the trauma as this much larger agrigory might say of ancestral trauma which has become so endemic and so virulent that the word evil isn't a misnomer really I mean the word evil I don't use it much except when we're talking about in this meta way like I try and avoid saying this is evil that is evil or he is evil because I think it well it just doesn't really work this is not where I thought this would go but it's a really interesting point so let me back up and I know I'm talking a lot for really an interview with you but we've got to have this conversation it's like and this is a story that everyone is listening to this show probably has heard 50 times by now but it's okay I'll do it again because we got to get it out there so I'm interviewing this guy Ohio State University Religion Professor Dr. Hugh Urban he's written this fantastic book on Scientology fantastic I don't know but fantastic well received everyone thinks it's great it's about Scientology as a new religion well right off the bat is this a new religion can't we just call it for what it is a cult no we can't call it a cult because we're in the we're in academia we can't identify something as evil you know it's back to this relativism there's no evil thing so in his research Hugh Urban is doing an historical breakdown of Scientology and he says yes I can confirm that L. Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology was in the desert with Jack Parsons and Jack Parsons was in communication with Crowley and they had orchestrated this sex magic ritual to bring forth the whore of Babylon with the hopes of conceiving the antichrist and thereby controlling the world you know so again this guy says yes that did happen and I said okay pause you know don't we need to kind of explore that a little bit and he was no Alex we don't because it doesn't matter if it's true it matters only if they believed it were true and my point and this kind of gets to the psychology thing right because that's something you might hear that's definitely something you would hear some psychologists say and my point was no that's completely backwards the first thing we have to know is whether or not we should take seriously that claim whether there is an extended consciousness realm that they were trying to connect with is there such a thing is it possible to connect with such realms is it possible that those realms can have an effect on this material world I'm not saying we have to you know have some firm answer on that but we have to be able to put that on the table well I mean I agree with that I don't think that I was sidestepping the question of whether evil exists however but what I was saying is it it doesn't work to call something evil for me anyway in a number of ways one is as I've already said that people who are already drawn to those things that's not going to wash for them anyway so that's one thing but the other is just well why should we care no but I understand that perspective you see because if if we're going to posit I mean let's cut to the chase and if we're going to posit Satan as an actual entity which is almost necessary if you start to him out evil it's not but it's getting in that realm then we've got to start as well what is satan you know God created satan therefore satan must be a principle in the universe that is divinely ordained this is the problem with Christianity is this is inherent contradiction in it that's a problem with Christianity it isn't a problem with evil per se satan we can both agree satan if you try and look at satan historically he slips through your fingers right he's not there you know I often reference Richard Smolley the esteemed religious scholar and author of the book How God Became God and there's a guy who goes and tries to trace satan he goes he's not there you go in the in the pre Torah way back today a text he doesn't exist and then a few hundred years later Zori Astor kind of introduces this dualism and all of a sudden it pops up in his books it's not there but no one would deny that to whatever extent we're co-creators of this reality satan sure seems to be here now so it's like I mean deconstructing that as a whole four hour thing we could have but Christianity is clearly corrupted so I don't think we want to come extreme or it's a very clear cut so example in the embodiment of evil so to speak but the same can be applied to evil is my point like the people who who do evil the people who perpetuate evil the people who advocate for evil they have very convincing arguments for they're very sophisticated like what what do you think is convincing the passive transgression that I mean when I say convincing I mean I'm not convinced by them I don't want to be misunderstood there I think that they're they're rationalizations but rationalizations can be very sophisticated and so the most obvious one is is the Jungian approach that the shadow that we need to integrate the shadow as in all the parts of ourselves that are poisonous that we've disowned in order to maintain a socialized ego cell that feels like it has control over life which is illusory in order to actually suppress things into the unconscious that we find difficult we create this shadow of everything that we don't like and in order to become whole we have to integrate all those things we have to become conscious of them and to some extent we have to we have to re-own them and even enact them you can see how that can you know I looked at this with John DeRoux to the Canadian guru who had this rationale for having sex with his followers and keeping it secret and he believed claimed to believe he was battling Satan internally and that part of that battle meant that he had to actually commit acts that he considered evil in order to you know blah blah blah integrate the shadow right and and you know the thin end of this wedge is true like we do I know in my life I've had to see my own capacities that evil for evil and accept it and some of that has involved conscious enactments of it because it's the only way I'd let myself see it and then you bring a case like Crowley and you put him under the microscope and you see what I saw with Vice Kings how far was he willing to take that he was willing to take that all the way he was what he was looking for the what he perceived as the most evil act possible the unforgivable sin you know this in the Bible the sin that the Holy Spirit the sin against the Holy Spirit that's unforgivable and then committing it as a way to completely the path of transgression completely free himself from social conditioning from false morality you know and we're living in a culture and climate that advocates this it's all over yeah yeah I mean I don't know we're gonna get back to deconstructing that because those are such amazingly important you know topics and I think that the the do without wilt culture I think that we are a part of definitely has an appeal for a lot of the reasons that you said and they're not all uh completely understandable but I think one of the things that I like that you're kind of bringing forward but I want to emphasize it even further is this idea of transgression this idea of the iconoclastic rebellion against and usually what that means is a rebellion against again this equally corrupted system of social engineering mind control that is Christianity and I really think you know until you do a deep dive and really understand the roots of Christianity being about social engineering and control then you can't understand the juxtaposition of you know that the transgressionism denialism do without wilt you know express yourself I pulled up if we cannot be saints let us all be sinners which is the you know if anyone's heard of the Sabatian Frankish thing here's a guy this is Anthony Mueller on medium and I always point people to this because we have a tendency to think that the Jacob Frank thing is fake or that it's just cooked up by some people with an agenda and no it's just a real thing and it's been in history for a long time Jacob Frank was in lived in the 1700s and it was the same thing it was like and they again they tied it back in this kind of crazy cultish way to the bible they said look the bible says that the return to the kingdom will only come when we're all saints or we're all sinners and we sure as hell can't all be saints so here's the best path this is logical people like your guru guy you know the twisted logic the deception we'll all be sinners and let's go on let's take on the job of being the greatest sinners we can be so this is just another instance of the same thing but when you understand this history I think it's easier to see the head fake deception that was Crowley but it just does amaze me maybe getting back to where I want to get with the Peter Lavenda stuff it amazes me how many people can't penetrate this it's just it's just they can't get through it hmm yeah well I mean one key point here I think is when does deception become unconscious behavior and vice versa like can we determine the difference between somebody who's actually deceiving and somebody who's acting unconsciously and certainly that you know somebody is more effective at deceiving others if they can deceive themselves and at that point they would be deluded and therefore acting unconsciously and that's a very general thing but I just wanted to raise that there is a general point well this is also an interesting point about the useful idiot versus the lifetime player you know so the useful idiot is someone who believes has just either naively or has been somehow convinced or duped into believing what they're doing and the player which is again if we ever get to Peter Lavenda we'll talk about is maybe if somebody go you know he keeps popping up too many times in the wrong place in terms of orchestrating these things for me to just accept that he's just kind of been duped himself you know yeah yeah well I think it's both I think it's always going to be both I mean if somebody is consciously deceiving they would have to also be deluded as well I mean they would have to have some rational for doing it that would be fundamentally delusional I mean I do believe there's an innate moral sense that we have biologically even we have a sense of what's right and wrong in any given moment and so I think that any kind of deception is sourced in a self-deception got to emphasize that that is a beautiful point I think it's a central point to all of this and that is that if you don't that is that they're the best evidence we have suggests that there is a moral imperative and again that's my approach is to say that's the evidence folks the evidence if you look at near-death experience if you look at all the wisdom traditions if you look at all the accumulated knowledge throughout time as well as most everyone's personal experience there is this sense of what's right and wrong and I think you just made a beautiful point about deceiving someone is somehow violating that and I think that might get us closer to I hate to go with the definition of evil but that's where everyone wants to go I think that starts creeping towards a definition of evil and what I would add to it is that to me the distinction between darkness which is the force which is the energy which isn't evil it just is and the act of evil which I think we see in this world and we assume it just kind of mirrors itself in the extended world is an attempt to the best way I can put it is to crush someone's soul is to somehow impede their progress towards something better and good and instead to try and pull them over towards the dark and that's what I think in my mind evil is evil is that verb is that action that wants to pull a soul into the darkness because that's where they feel most comfortable do you have any thoughts on that? Israel loves company it's funny because I'm just watching this Christmas Carol a couple of years ago the remake or the revert version of it was Guy Pearce and of course the famous story is screwed and it was occurring to me while watching it's very well done and it incorporates sort of the ghosts and the occult aspects of the story and kind of beefs them up for our modern sensibilities and it occurred to me while watching it that one of the reasons this story has such resonance over such a long period of time is it's essentially true it's describing a mechanism within existence and you say it's biological but it transcends biology it's a spiritual principle that our wrongdoings will always catch up with us inevitably whether if not in this life then in the next and we shall be the judge of those actions which is also embedded in that in that script isn't it right? there won't be this the white bearded guy on the cloud judging no you will judge yourself yeah and it's because we're doing it to ourselves and what we do to others we're doing to ourselves and so I mean my riffing off what you were saying my sense of evil relates very closely strongly to the distortion of reality reality is distortion and that was what I thought was going on under the vendor and it was crazy making he was distorting reality around Crowley and spinning it this way and that to try and it wasn't just to win an argument like I've seen that behavior you know I know when someone's trying to win an argument it's kind of easy to deal with but this was much slippery he was trying to actually maintain a version of reality that was false and to make me think that I was wrong not to win the argument but to just undermine my sense of what was true and what was real that was my sense of what was going on even though it was kind of an off cold perception management like a very skilled practitioner perception management which of course is what you know occultism and magic is closely related to manipulating reality by manipulating people's perceptions let me ask you to back up a little bit set up the story a little bit a little bit of the background and then walk people through the exchange with Lavenda who is Lavenda and then how the exchange kind of builds because it almost has a tempo like a story in and of itself right well I saw I knew Lavenda I talked to him for Stormy Weller back in 2009 tell folks who is Peter Lavenda well Lavenda very well known for sinister forces trilogy before that he wrote a book on Nazism that Norman Mailer provided a forward for and he's more recently written these books about Lovecraft and UFOs with Tom DeLond he's written books about Kenneth Grant also so he's had a long and quote illustrious unquote career he's also got this shadowy side to it before you get to the shadowy side I mean again for the for the for just the kind of average person Peter Lavenda is one of us right he's out there in this kind of alt conspiracy thing telling you giving you the goods on JFK and writing about sinister forces and these crazy people and Peter Lavenda is one of us and then you know he comes along with the lo and behold he pops up with the Tom DeLond thing and his story is well you know the phone rang and it was Tom DeLond and I said Tom DeLond it can't be and I hung up the phone and then he called me back and he said yes it really is Tom DeLond from Blink 182 and Peter we have to get to the bottom of this UFO thing and Peter goes yeah you're right Tom we should go to the CIA and get the real story so Peter Lavenda represents if people don't know he represents this kind of one of us conspiracy alt you know narrative guy he's on our side right which makes this exchange that you have with them about Crowley a million times more interesting sure sure I mean yeah he's probably one of the three or four central figures or has been in the in the alternate perceptions community of conspiracy authors and so on right up there I actually was never that impressed by sinister forces and I wasn't sure why I just didn't feel somehow it just felt like a shopping list of you know data it felt lifeless but I did have good conversation with Lavenda and he's clearly a very smart guy the last time I spoke to him on the limelist I did bring up the the possibility that he was an intelligence operative but not as a question I I I character in such a way that I it was safe for both of us but just that you know have you ever been asked that you're an intelligence operative because there's an awful lot of you know weird things around your life but anyway that that you know that was as close as I got to a direct confrontation until this happened this thread and this happened innocent and organic enough just because I was researching Crowley and these possible things and that I was reaching out to a number of people and Lavenda seemed an obvious person so I sent him an email just bringing up this you know have you ever considered this possibility that Crowley might okay again I'm going to have to drag you through this backstory in your it's your work okay so all credit to you Jason but the backstory is that if you start looking at the weaponized systematic abuse of children in our culture what that might mean for politics what that might mean in terms of power and and then this extended part of it that you don't really get into too much these extended realms Crowley is somebody who kind of starts coming in through in some weird ways you know that you just wouldn't expect and then if you look at like you did the scholars the Crowley scholars they really come up in a very kind of apologetics kind of he wasn't that bad you don't really understand him kind of thing and Peter Lavenda what if where would you stake him in that in that kind of plethora of quote unquote Crowley scholars where does he stand and why did you reach out to him well I mean he's not technically a Crowley scholar I mean he hasn't written about Crowley very directly but he has written a whole book about Kenneth Grant who was Crowley's successor and of course he's written a lot about occultism and sinister forces as a whole trilogy about sinister forces and the overlap with occultism and intelligence agency so it's his field it's absolutely his field like one of the things that's been kind of tossed around is this idea of whether Crowley himself was involved with sexual molestation sexual abuse sex magic with little kids so that's what you probe demand right that's what I probe demand and there was a larger question with occultism in general you know how much of an overlap was there with occultism and the sexual abuse of children whether or not it was institutionalized and systematized by these intelligence operations that I've been tracking in which Lavenda himself had supposedly been tracking also all right so he just seemed an obvious person to go to and I knew him now his his tech was first of all to defend Crowley or at least suggest that I was barking up the wrong tree because there was no real evidence to suggest anything the kind for Crowley he just talked a lot about stuff and that was you know people always took him to literally that kind of angle approach which I was already familiar with hold on though because we we got I mean I don't know if I'm messing this up by interrupting you all the time but you're just you're breezing past all these fantastic points and the first one is right there is that it's almost like a frickin playbook Jason so the first the first is kind of this patronizing tone that comes through in these emails like kid you don't know what you're talking about so you just you just need to back up because you just don't know what you're talking about right that's the first line of I'm Peter Lavenda you're a guy who reached out to me I get a ton of these emails kid why don't you just move on right it was I mean that was the feeling most of I said it was a little hard to gauge how much I was reacting a bit neurotically because of my own issues with father or older but you know that how much of it I was projecting you can never be sure and that's part of the very skillful you know psychological handling of someone by the end you know jumping to the end I really felt like I was handled by Lavenda like by a master to the contrary I thought you handled him better than anyone I've seen because again we can go through these emails but it's probably too much to do on this show but there's round after round where you say well wait a minute right from his own diaries here are his admissions that he diddle his words Crowley's words children here is his acknowledgement that he allowed children to be present during at least be present if not involved in these sex magic rituals if we're to call them that so you're hitting them with fact after fact that is directly thoroughly referenced in his work and his deflections are more and more telling of kind of a desperate attempt to get you to buy into this narrative that just doesn't hold well I you know I wonder how much this is because there's been a sea change in the years since then because when that discussion first happened and I and I put it online with Lavenda's permission which kind of seemed surprising in retrospect there were certainly people saying oh UK Lavenda came off much better than you did and you know basically and that they didn't feel that they were just Lavenda's lackeys either you know it was even people that followed my blog it definitely was definitely wasn't the unanimous feeling and I didn't feel at the end of it like I scored a victory I just I wasn't even sure what had happened to be honest so that's what I mean by handle I felt psychological had been manipulated quite a lot and yes I saw I was definitely making persuasive argument and he was doing exactly what you're saying but I couldn't be sure if others were able to see that and it wasn't clear that they had I mean this is well that's a whole other level to this thing that we could kind of talk about because the edge that you're I love how you said before you know the thin edge and the thin edge that you're playing is it's never going to be popular never and people are never going to you know in droves flock to Jason Horsley and go oh wow he totally nailed it I mean it's so much of a paradigm shift for people but I think that where where you're really at is playing for the very thin minority of people who really see it for what it is because when I read that post I immediately saw it for what it is and it just further cemented these suspicions I had had because Peter Lavenda did appear to me like so many of these CIA lifetime players who as you explain in another excellent post on your website use 95 percent truth and five to ten percent orchestrated narrative controlled narrative in order to shape the story and you know I don't know if we want to dive into that right away or if we want to go in a different direction but you know how effective you can be with 90 to 95 percent just true agree with you and win your trust so that I can then use that to kind of switch things in a different way yeah well it's spin isn't it and my sense with that with Lavenda and he did help me see something ironically is that I started to get a sense that it was to do with ideological affiliation if you like that Lavenda in my impression anyways is ideologically affiliated with the occult values and systems and methodologies that Crowley himself was a pioneer of and so he can dodge this and that by saying he's never been a Crowley advocate and and and so on but he's perpetuating the same means and I think that that's what essentially he was defending but what would that ideology be I see I think people struggle with that it's like okay he appears to be having some agenda that we have traditionally historically aligned with a certain group of U.S. intelligence agents that are driving a certain agenda but I think this is again where it gets into the evil thing we for the most part have associated that agenda with with evil with you know deception with the secret overthrow of governments of secret packs and societies that others aren't aware of so I don't know what ideology you're what other ideology you're referring to but that's generally not an ideology that most of us think of as as something good sure no it's really as complicated I mean we're getting into really deep waters here because I mean there's two I see there's like there's two things going on here one is an ideology that is almost revelable I think which is doing that intelligence agencies and stuff they have an ideology and it's still a cover first of all they have the the first cover which is that they're the good guys and they would never do any of that kind of stuff right underneath that when she starts seeing that that's bullshit they have this second ideology the second layer which is we are the good guys but we have to do evil stuff in order to to fight evil we have to be as evil as the people we're fighting so you want me on that wall you need me on that wall thing yes and so there's that and and that's pretty persuasive I mean it's pretty hard hard to argue against that and one could see how for example if Lavenda really did believe Tom DeLonge's fantasy alien invasion that there's these evil lovecraft in overlords that want to completely destroy us then that would justify any kind of human skull doublery and you know evil doing if it would prevent that from happening right so that's the second layer underneath that I believe this is the thing that we're not supposed to see unless we're ready and that would be either ready to be recruited or ready to be just completely supplicant to it because we're so you know pacified and horrified by it is that they are they the human beings the intelligence operatives or the occult agents of control are our overlords whether or not they really have connected you know to the Cthulhu or whether or not they really believe it and that they practice an ideological methodology which has to do with trauma genesis which is engineering or accelerating evolution through the infliction of violence and trauma specifically on children and that they're creating this great cosmic omelette that involves breaking all of these eggs in order to do it and that I mean you'll find that you can see that intersection with Kenneth's grant for example that there's a new stage of evolution coming on this planet and that the human form has to be destroyed in order I mean that's consistent with many different myths including transhumanism right where we're transcending to another level beyond flesh and blood so that's the ideology I'm talking about that all this end justifies all means and even requires the worst means possible well again I think that's super important but super deep but I think it's really key how you layered those ideologies because I think I'm pretty much in sync with you you know level one is the way I put it is you don't deserve the truth you know which is like I'm going to lie to you because if you're stupid enough to believe my lies then you're just you don't matter and then level two is you can't handle the truth you want me on that wall you need me on that wall and the third layer I think relates back to what you said very early on which I think is super key is that ultimately a spiritual self-deception it's abiding into this spiritual materialism that I can gain I can somehow accomplish an escape from my dilemma from my existential dilemma by transhumanism I can live forever or just by dominating everybody I can kind of control everything and of course I think in our deep deep inside of us we understand how futile that is because we're up against that truth that we all know which is that you know we're not going to escape this you know it isn't going to turn out the way that we want no matter how we think because it's not about doing accomplishing gathering and feeding that little me that I've created so I think the three layers that you have there kind of explain a lot and I don't get too hung up on the all the permutations of layer threes that people can get you know transhumanism versus sex abuse of children versus you know this occult thing I mean it's it's limitless and I think we can kind of lose the thread by tracing down you know where does that one lead where does that one lead they all lead to the same place it's just a self deception yeah well I would tend to agree with you that that's one of the reasons I'm trying to give up writing books I'm trying to at least start writing about different things this is the last one maps of hell is this idea this is mapping hell but the only point or reason to map hell is to is to find the exit of how we came in how we ended up here and that would be the way out too and once you've done that you leave you just stop mapping it so yeah there's a there's a fundamental reality to existence which transcends morality we could say but it's the source of morality and and it's it's so accessible to us because it's the nature and fabric of physical reality itself but of course we are in this dissociated realm through this sustained perpetuated trauma and there are many many red herrings on the path back to the truth so to some extent we don't have much choice but to map that you know the ramifications and the iterations of delusion I haven't anyway and I but and I do think they all come back to this reality distortion like these three levels they're all about the distortion of reality and and how when we when we are committed to distorting reality not not only do we justify any level of abuses but they become necessary because anyone who who touches upon our experience with a breath of the real or reminders reminds us of reality or questions our distortions has to be either destroyed banished or as you put it you know co-opted and and sucked into our delusional state so we so we will become destructive in that way as as an over you know overcharged self-protective strategy that just replicates and replicates you know I thought I might pick up a little bit on your point about staring into the abyss because we do have this sense I think and it's told to us in a number of different ways in terms of our culture you know don't look at evil you know and don't stare into evil and you will become evil and there's a certain reality that we get that and we see people who do become consumed by that which they study and it kind of becomes a part of them but I don't know I certainly don't get that from your work I get that I get that you're moving through it I don't feel like you're stopping any longer than you need to to you know really explore what it's there because there's another danger and that is what I see is the looking away from evil without regard for how that shadow may be manifested deep inside of us and how it may be infecting you know the rest of our culture so I don't know I don't worry too much about staring into the abyss as long as we're grounded on the the way out which is always I think just to look up we don't have to we don't have to go there we can switch to at any point you know you can listen to the podcast you can turn it off and go walk on the beach you can you know turn off the TV well I think so this is back to another of evil and the frame of evil because it can be I mean there's a C.S. Lewis quote which I thought was great which is the demons have two ways of controlling us one is to you know get us to just dismiss them as unreal and the other is is to in gender an unhealthy obsession with their existence and so certainly there are those who just dismiss evil as as an outdated moralistic you know religious perspective and they you know you can't really do that except by not digging deep enough because if you dig deep enough you'll see that there's you know there are things going on in our world and even in our towns that are just so horrific that we really do need to use that word and we have to use it but if that word has meaning evil does have a know it when I see it kind of quality that's inescapable for for all of us and I think that's almost like a starting point in in a way as horrific as those things are it's almost like a grounding to say oh yeah there is something that I do understand as evil there any spectrum you know has has extremes only polarity if we accept there's a wholesome goodness to life then there could be a state where that is almost completely absent so so to do with an awareness of our capacity and our limits and you know and this all has to do with this question you're right you know how much are we willing to look at and my my understanding and it seems logical to me is we have to be willing to look at everything you know if you think of the human body and it's got some sort of you know conditions or pathologies or what have you not wanting to look at any of those particular things particularly the worst ones is obviously going to be counterproductive the worst it is the more we need to look at it the thing is is not to recall in horror and that's you know and that's the flip side of you know people evil has a fascination and I'd say the fascination is probably compensatory and goes back very far and deep think about fairy tales fairy tales are written for children with all this horrific imagery because it's understood that childhood is horrifying there are things that happen to us as children or that we start to perceive that horrifies and so so fairy tales provide a certain amount of relief from that but they also potentially you know our dissociative fantasies that might feed a fascination for for evil or for trauma and so we're in this world where as I said with Crowley you can see two sides you can see that there are all these generations of people who are fascinated by Crowley and all he represents and all that's kind of spewed out of the Crowley apparatus and then the other hand and it isn't just Christian as I say but you've got and it probably is often a more wholesome perspective and certainly more accurate that that's just toxic and polluted and basically evil so stay away from it but they're not willing I mean that perspective isn't willing to understand it just wants to dismiss and so what I found is what works for me is actually and that this to me is the acid test is can I look at the worst things that I can find in my own life in my body in my psyche in my past in my own behaviours and in the culture that I've adopted and unwittingly propagated like a virus spreader can I look at those things and not only not turn away but not react right and it's very close to judge not less to be judged but it's not judgment isn't bad and so it's not that I'm not discerning I'm not saying I'm not judging in the sense I can judge and say I judge this to be toxic and harmful that's a judgment but it's not a judgment like a condemnation like I could never do that or that's not not part of me it's the opposite it's like that I have that in me you know as one cell and the whole body of humanity that is part of my you know my my existence can I actually can I I'm trying to say embrace but then we get onto this this this dangerous line of transgression so it's certainly not embracing sense of celebrate that's embracing sense of integrate can I actually just let it be there so my the goodness of my system as a whole system will be able to absorb it I think that's incredibly deep and it's completely consistent with my spirituality which is that what it's really about here without and this is I'll probably edit this out because it's a little bit too prescriptive like I don't have I don't know the fucking mind of God and you know I don't even know half of what I understand half of what I read but what seems to make sense to me is that that the light ultimately shines and that what we're experiencing is a blockage of that light and that the best way to it's an addition by subtraction thing which is kind of what I hear you saying with the integration it's letting the light do its thing which is just you don't have to do you don't have to do anything you just have to disengage and it'll self-correct let me let me play some more clips from your excellent podcast because I think I think you'll have a lot to say just by re-listening to these again Well the first thing I heard or read or let in was Crowley's Book of the Law and it did it uplifted me I believed right away that I was prophesied in that book and so after I read Book of the Law you could say I embraced Felima I felt like I was the the successor to Crowley and I'm talking to you about this now I honestly don't know at this point how much if there was any truth in that and if so how much because I don't I'm wearing throwing babies out with bathwaters an awful lot of bathwater and there's an awful lot of dead babies in our culture all I know for sure is that Crowley was the worst kind of role model and whatever came through him whatever possible truth there was in it it would be like water coming through a rusty contaminated pipe that had been hadn't been used since the black death right so it's still the water might might have been clear once upon a time but once it's come out the other end of that pipe it's just toxic that's how I feel about Crowley now and that's based on a number of things that I recount in Vice of Kings the two main areas I suppose my own life like I put my own life under the microscope in terms of Crowley's influence and how I emulate Crowley to the point for example of committing an animal sacrifice without realizing that I'd done so which would raise a question mark for your listeners but that's how unconscious it can be if we get colonized by you know toxic philosophy and and many other ways I mean tattoos and things like that this kind I mean I really just took on Crowley Anna in a deep way without really believing I was doing so I thought I was just as I say picking up where he left off so I look at that and the other thing I look at is Crowley's life and all of the evidence for not just the malevolent nature of Crowley himself and of his behaviors and his abuses of power self abuses and I believe abuses of others but also his compatibility with or his alignment with the dominant super culture by which I mean it's a hidden culture that rules over this culture well there's a lot to unpack there fantastic what are your thoughts listening to it again well gosh like I said there's just a lot I mean I guess I'm just having more of a personal response which is how how in the clear am I how close to the exit am I of that hellish cultural programming how close do we all because what are your thoughts when you say that because I'm always a little bit suspicious of the cultural overlay I mean it's so oppressive especially like right now with what we're going through but at the same time it feels like you know back to the three layers it feels like a head fake it's like that's not what it's about that's not what it's about it's just another form of deception what where are you at with that what what do you mean what's another form of deception well to like a minute ago we were talking about the personal spirituality of evil and the integration so however it forms whether it's a little evil we have or whether it's a big evil and it comes up and we deal with it by letting go of it just letting it merge back in you know and I totally I think that's really really deep from a personal spiritual standpoint I get the cultural part you know I get it every day and every time I turn on the computer turn on the fire cube the amazon fire cube but then I also wonder if sometimes that feels like I'm being pulled into this spiritual materialism again where I need to square off with Peter Lavenda because he's trying to control the narrative and let's go get those freaking Catholic priests because they're deceiving us when to your point before the deception is always only a self deception yeah yeah so I think what I mean and my response there is is that certainly not about blaming the culture or identifying the cause of my distortions in the culture except so far as it's a mirror and there is there is a causative as well as a coral development I was once a child and I was in cultured in a way that was traumatic and so on so and that's helpful to my own integration process on my becoming conscious process is to see those things but certainly no it's not about the culture bad you know back to nature although I'm kind of feeling that orientation currently again it's about how how closely are we willing to look at the culture to see what I call the super culture because you know most of the analyses if you can even call them that but the growing perspective I mean there's something weird whatever's going on in the world now and a lot of it we get through the internet but there's two things I want to mention going on in the culture now one is we could say the quinone thing or whatever you know just to just to give a you know pin it an identification point but the growing awareness of the toxicity of our culture and of the hidden machinations of power abuse and all that and the other is is harder to define but and and it also has a kind of anti it's an anti patriarchal feeling but it it's to do with identity politics and the celebration of the self over everything else right and and you know safe zones and and and hate speech and political correctness and you know that whole thing right and they're both aspects of the culture of course and I think that they're both traps and and they they they they converge in an interesting way because the problem with what I call the quinone thing and they just that you know the growing awareness of the toxicity of the culture that wants to identify name and expunge the evil within our culture is that it is it is scapegoating and it's not really identifying how deep the problem goes it's it's it's mistaking an effect for a cause as in if our country is I mean our world is mostly run by a cacistocracy stocracy I think is the word you know by by by pathological predators that's more of a symptom of something much deeper than it is the cause of it so that that I don't think it's ever going to work just trying to actually fix it by addressing the surface and then on the other hand this celebration of the identity clearly is itself a symptom of of you know this Crowley Crowley kind of will to power pursuit of happiness will to power you know that they're almost different descriptions of the same urge I think which is the rarefication of the identity in our own personal drives over everything so the point I'm trying to make here is that if we were if we start to really identify what's going on in the culture in a way that's more comprehensive and less reactive we'll see two things one will start to see just just how bad things really are across the board and that it's in absolutely everything it's it is like a virus or plutonium or something it doesn't just hit certain individuals or certain populations it's it's throughout everything and and by extension it's in us so the more we see how bad things are culturally and socially the more we're going to see if we're honestly looking the more we're going to see how we're carriers of it and that leaves us nowhere to go actually because you can't then you can't say let's have a revolution because you have to admit you can create the revolution and take out the power structures but you will just build them in in the image of the thing you've taken down so it takes us to a place of really really difficult place and it is a spiritual place it is consistent with religious doctrine I was going to try and pick up on your your really excellent point about those two forces I don't generally like to get too political because it just kind of I mean there's so many different ways to trigger people I'd rather trigger them on more important things that they haven't thought about before like Alistair Crowley than trigger them on QAnon which is just like an instant no stop boom right to the end of the line kind of thing but I think your point is super well taken about and if we were going to try and fold that into this conversation I'd have to kind of wonder out loud to you whether or not that orchestrated divisiveness isn't just another play in the playbook it's kind of two ways to stir up the natives and so we have the Crowleyism do-it-thou-wilt on one hand and you'll have the you know grab the pitchforks we just have to get these bastards on the other hand and that's what you want you just want them fighting and you want them depressed and confused and they're just easier to control that way you don't want them thinking deeply about things or existential questions and you certainly don't want them somehow uniting on some humanitarian deeply human sensibilities that we would say approach spirituality you just you definitely don't want that that's not good for business yeah well it's um it also prevents mapping what's going on it prevents coherence because you've got you've got these two extremes and they're not meeting it's like C.S. Lewis with the demons as well you know the truth isn't that demons don't exist the truth isn't that demons are super or powerful and need to be worshiped or or feared even right it's the truth is somewhere bringing these two perspectives together and what you're talking about there I've written about that in the on my blog it's also in 16 maps of how schismogenesis was the thing that Gregory Bates and developed while he was working for the OSS and we're really seeing the evidence of it now it is divide and conquer but it's to do the most subtle levels as well with perspectives and and with grouping so yeah what you're describing there that intensified polarization means it's harder and harder to find a position anywhere in the middle the space between right that that becomes less and less populated and the the the magnetic pull of the two poles gets stronger and stronger so so now if you don't want to be seen as a trump I or a magi or whatever then you've got to double down on your you know liberal progressivism otherwise right you've got to have a strong opinion about something because one way or another you'll get grouped on one side of the other and there's a tendency to want to gravitate because it's very scary to be in the middle and potentially you get to escape going by both sides right so and that happens internally as well we we start going prematurely to strong convictions on one side or the other rather than staying in this ambiguity about you know is it and that's to bring it back to lavender that was one of the tales really because I was I was questioning I was asking questions and it seemed that he was shutting down the questioning and and that's that's always been my approach and I think that that's the healthiest and the sanest approach to be constantly asking questions and if the questions keep leading you closer and closer to some kind of reality you don't ever have to to finalize it and put a stamp on it and say that's it now I know that evil exists and it looks like this that and the other has to Crowley and the OTO whatever wonder because then one stopped questioning but you map and you mark because you go okay so identify those agents but you know there's still more to uncover we don't know by the end of it everything could look completely different of course but in the meantime we see more and more about what we haven't seen whenever I talk to someone and they they're quick to say oh no I don't doubt I'm a Christian I don't doubt my faith you've lost the spiritual edge you you were a con the person who says that's the zen mind beginner mind you know like I'm always beginning I'm always wondering I'm always challenging on my beliefs there seems to be something fundamentally spiritual about that and especially when we contrast it with the opposite of that which is belief yeah I did a blog post recently it was called the vector of increasing disbelief which spells void and we just have to keep moving into this void where we we disbelieve we allow ourselves to come to look at the non-confirming evidence not just looking at the evidence that confirms and even if there's just a little bit and it is it's incredibly hard Alex and I mean you talk about the very specifics of you know lavender and that was one of the hardest experiences in you know my work writing is actually confronting another deception and not knowing what to believe and but it continues to this day and say working in this field as we do we often don't know are we speaking with somebody who's genuinely what they they say they are and and and how do you approach that you have to stay in this limel place you don't believe them and you don't take them at their word entirely because then you just get and you don't you know to be overly polite and just keep to the protocol if you see bullshit you have to call it but at the same time you don't start shouting that they're a shill and that there's that and the other because then you've lost your own footing your own ground and that you know that's just microcosm of this much larger thing we're in we're in a time in history of society what have you where everything is increasingly unstable and liminal and then we're in this vast universe where it's all unknown and then then we're in eternity where we're completely at a loss to make sense of anything so and this is actually to a meta point this is one of the the levels of deception is this mixing of levels so you'll find this moral relativism around things which uses the level of cosmic say cosmic or spiritual awareness to say well there is no good and evil it's all one it's all gone it's all God but they're applying it to the the social level of raping and killing children not directly but indirectly and in some cases directly and some cases directly or close enough you can join the dots and and then their hypocrites and liars with maybe deep rationalization and delusion behind it but some level often there's a conscious there's also just a conscious malevolence going on there so you know I'm returning more and more to this idea of we're all just here to entertain each other and I heard that quote from Shirley McClain who if anyone remembers way back in the 70s was the first really celebrity to kind of launch the new age movement and talk about astral projection and I heard this interview with her and that God was really kind of looking to I guess incite some kind of reaction about all the abuse she took because she took so much abuse for being this kind of new age person and she was like look you know detractors whatever we're all just trying to entertain each we're all we're all maybe just here to entertain each other and you know I thought about that the other day because someone was bringing up like Michael Schermer the skeptic and I've had him on the show a bunch of times and I don't think he does very well at all but I I like his as a frenemy he's great he's entertaining or Neil deGrasse Tyson who is kind of a nitwit when it comes to consciousness and says absurd things kind of like with Sam Harris kind of same thing but they are entertaining and I think we have to genuinely I think appreciate how all our enemies slash frenemies are somehow part of this process of entertainment what do you think is there anything to that well I think there's some I mean the the colonize says is that we can find ways to see what is is good and a value of others and appreciate their particular qualities I'd say entertaining is not a word I would use because it it's it means passing the time and I think we're definitely here to do more than pass that the time because it's are we really though are we see this gets back to it gets back to the three levels and it's like if they're convincing you that you're here to do something other than past time maybe that's part of the deception as well because maybe also here that's levels again but I mean I'm not enlightened so and I mean the only person I know who seems like they are enlightened he seems very dedicated to to helping other human beings I'm highly suspicious of that I just am and I tell you a great story I love spiritual story is Amma you know Amma the hugging saint she's quite popular so I went and saw Amma in LA and I got a hug from Amma didn't do anything for me but I appreciate where she's coming from and I appreciate the story that I heard from my buddy Ric Archer from boot at the gas pump that a devotee came up to Amma and said you know you speak of this world as non-existent and yet I see you out working 18 hours a day digging latrines in the hunt with the untouchables and hugging people to your almost to the point of exhaustion how what is it about this world and she goes world what world and if we take that story and all those spiritual stories as being somewhat true it's someone who doesn't even see their actions as doing in a literal sense and I'm highly suspicious of spiritual materialism as was what I call it the sage on the stage the I know something special and let me just pass it on to you but then you have to get out there and buddy you got to do it because doing is what's important sure I'm Amma at first this is quite a big subject now we're just veering into it and it's quite quite far from what we've been covering so I'll bring it back to entertainment because because I said it's key to this latest book about Hollywood and there's a there's a convergence between entertainment certainly in the Hollywood sense and suspending disbelief that's the first principle the prime directive of Hollywood right and you could say of entertainment we have to suspend disbelief so that we get pulled into the story and and believes that it's real so um my sense is was I mean entertainment has its place and certainly I want to enjoy my conversation with you otherwise what's the point I have to wonder Jason when I saw your mind go there for a minute I wonder if you saw the same connection that I did and that if if entertainment in Hollywood is about suspending disbelief and we are here to inquiry to perpetuate doubt isn't there an interesting through line between those two that that maybe we have to explore and the disbelief that you talked about in your blog post which I haven't read by the way which sounds great that's why I brought it up so I would say that we're you and I are here our mission if you like is to unsuspend disbelief so in that sense it's anti-entertainment we're trying to get free of the spell of entertainment and that it would be much better wouldn't it for me to be able to be as honest with you as I as I could be even if that meant that you were no longer being entertained you might get upset you might get offended but the truth is much more important than keeping each other happy yeah except we could we could you know suspend disbelief and suspending belief are the same right so if I'm trying to right no they're not suspending disbelief means believing it's just a fancy way of saying believing well it depends on what your beliefs are so you take one belief and I'm going to try and get you to suspend that belief as it just you know it's it's a double negative when we say suspend and dis I mean it's okay but you understand the meaning in Hollywood it means that you inhibit the part of your consciousness that's telling you this is not real none of this is happening you inhibit that you suspend your disbelief so that you succumb to the spell and you feel like you're actually having a real experience that that's what we do all the time during our days when we interact with each other we forget that we're not who we think we are and that what we're seeing and perceiving isn't really what's happening even if we know you know in different ways we know that reality is quite different than our minds are telling it is part of what how our minds do it as they persuade us that these wizards are wizards of bosses you know you know there's this really fantastic podcast that I like it's been around forever it's called Martini Shot with Rob Long who was a is a very highly highly regarded writer in Hollywood and used to write for oh what was that show cheers you know way back in the day and he's done a many other projects as well but he always has this kind of insider kind of Hollywood writers thing but you know to drive home your point about suspending disbelief I love this story that he tells about this one scene that they were shooting and they shot it and they liked it and then somebody pointed out that the actor who you know this is sitcom TV sitcom kind of stuff not high cinema or anything but he never started the car and yet drove off in it you know what I mean right and this guy brought it up said hey you know we got to reshoot that because you know people are going to pick up on that and he said if they pick up on that we've already lost already and it speaks to the suspending disbelief if we haven't gotten them along to go along with the story at this point then forget it they're not there so I guess I I wonder out loud and this is kind of a very minor point but it's maybe interesting if this entertainment that we're doing for and to each other isn't playing with these different ideas of belief and trying to tune up my belief with yours and whether you want to call it disbelief or belief it's kind of two two sides of the same coin I think it probably has to do with what's primary I think about if our if our primary drive or interest is getting to the truth and really being as real as we can with each other and the entertainment thing is secondary then all is good and all is well but if I think if we put the entertainment thing primary and then we we subject or submit the truth impetus to that and say well if at any point my search for the truth ceases to be entertaining I'll stop it right then then we get into a problem and you know with Lavenda if I'd been if I had put entertainment before truth I would have gone it would have gone a very different way because it wasn't entertaining that was not an entertaining exchange it was for others I'm finding out now in the end but even at the time it made people uncomfortable so so I couldn't say that that was motivated by entertainment it was motivated by something else and that it could be borderline neurotic as I say like the drive for the truth can be unhealthy can be it can be obsessive your other point which is extremely well taken and it's these subtle shifts that we make in terms of how we're prioritizing all these different things and keeping the space and keeping the plates spinning is really what it's all about so I give up on that one you wrestled me to the ground and and okay I agree with you you know one one final point I might try and fold back into this because I really tried to I jumped in there and kind of really put the halts on when you talked about religion and I guess I want to deconstruct that a little bit so we're not just talking in shorthand but like one of the really influential episodes or explorations I did on Skeptico was the series of interviews I did with Joseph Atwell who is wrote this book Caesar's Messiah that the premise of the book is that there is the Jesus myth the historical Jesus doesn't really exist and should be under is best understood as a social control mechanism of the Roman Empire and I don't agree with the 100% go there kind of thing that Joe Atwell does but I think there's some fundamental provable truths to what he's about and historically if anyone wants to investigate I always point people to Josephus because Josephus is the what we're told is Josephus is this Roman slash Jewish historian through which we know just about everything historically that we know about that time Atwell makes an extremely strong case for the fact that Josephus is a fictional character he's not real he's an invention of the Roman Empire to control the narrative and the evidence I think is really once you can make that step it becomes really kind of overwhelming evidence from everything about Josephus's story but the implications then in terms of the Bible are much more significant because the writings of Josephus which are clearly pro-Roman because the Romans employed this guy to write the history are are clearly constructed in the Gospels so the Gospels the Bible is dependent on Josephus Josephus is written into the Bible the implications of this are that it is undeniable that Christianity as we understand it was from the beginning to some extent a control mechanism a social engineering mechanism just like it is today and that that's always been at play and to broaden to this larger conversation we're having what I think people have a problem with that doesn't mean that Christ consciousness isn't real that doesn't mean that people can't experience some kind of spiritual truth both through that book through the figures in that book in the same way that they can experience some negative reality to Satan even though our our friend Richard Smolley historian points out that Satan it slips through our fingers historically as well so until we can get to that deeper reality about exploring how these how these can both be true then I don't think we can get there but I certainly don't think we need to infuse religion back into this discussion Christianity back into this discussion as if it's somewhat as if it's real in some sense because it's it's just it's just not in that way real to talk about it you know well no not really and because we are talking about evil and so I'd say the context for evil is largely a religious one and the point I made about religious what if it's not what what if it's not what if it's because I think I thought we were saying it's not a religious one I thought we were saying you know well I think I mean this is the point that Jordan Pearson makes I'm not a very fan of Jordan Pearson but I think it was one of his better points is that we are Christian whether we like it or not our culture is so firmly embedded in Christian ethos that even the staunchest atheists don't realize that they're espousing Christian values yeah but that's cripplingly ethnocentric you know I just posted on the skeptical forum this is just like recent news 27 people dead in New Guinea because they were suspected of being witches so part of the culture had this spiritual connection with this other dimension and decided that these people were witches and that they needed to die and they killed them and they ate their hearts and cooked their penis or something crazy like that or maybe it's not crazy maybe that is what happened in the extended realm maybe there's a demon in that extended realm that's manipulating them in the same way that Montezuma felt like he had to take these hearts out of people and do this but the New Guinea it's not going to Montezuma because that's like ancient history this is today in New Guinea so no I don't accept this idea that we're Christian I think that is from Christians I can't just say Hollywood sucks I could stop watching Hollywood product but I couldn't I can't just get Hollywood out of my system because I decide that I don't like Hollywood because I grew up on it so even if we're not raised Christian we're raised in a Christian culture so those values are hardwired into our identity I don't buy that to the extent that I mean this is kind of like our discussion on entertainment which you know you win that one because it's all where we put our point of emphasis and I'd say the same thing like with Hollywood and I want to know more about is that book out currently? No I'm just rewriting it now last minute because I've funded I've did a crowd funder and I've raised I mean raised enough to publish it I'm just trying to raise another thousand to get a hardback edition before August 8th and then I've got to send it to the printers in August so probably be out in October or something like that nice nice okay we'll recap that at the end but I guess my point was going to be I think you can disengage from Hollywood to to a significant degree just by understanding what you're saying just by I mean the realization if you trace back through your history anyone's history when you become aware of this stuff you can never look at it the same way so I would suspect that already you cannot look at Hollywood movies the way that you know 90% so the same is true with Christianity you know so when you watch South Park destroy the Catholic Church you can't go into the Catholic Church the same way even if you're quote unquote a devout Catholic it's never going to be the same and it shouldn't ever be the same this is all at a conscious level so what I'm referring to is the the constructed identity which is constructed during the same time that we develop language so we develop a sense of who we are existing as an actual individual self this internalized illusory sense that we exist you know as a person that I'm talking about that thing so for that to come undone I mean for us to be entirely liberated and now ironically getting into you know the the rationale for transgression and then the number of pathologies but to be fully liberated from that constructed identity trauma-generated self and thereby by extension the cultures that co-created it we would have to go all the way back or we do have to go all the way back to that original formation you know undo the original formation so that that's what I'm referring to but I wonder if that is is true and consistent with what we both think really identified with in terms of a personal spirituality and that maybe the undoing process isn't what we've been told it is because I think a lot of times we're told that it is this deep you know cleansing and bringing up and and and maybe it's yeah that that I would I agree with we don't know how it could just happen overnight it could happen the way that I think you were describing which is to just let it be let it let the light wasn't just letting it be because billions of people are just letting it be and they just carry on watching Netflix but it's with awareness like you're talking about before with the light so that but that does involve a willingness to engage and explore and examine and to look and to not look away and to keep looking and keep going moving once awareness deeper and deeper into those areas that the light hasn't shone on so and that that does involve being liminal and as you said being in a state of doubt and not and not adding new convictions to the old ones you see what I mean not replacing old convictions with new ones that it requires really not knowing and because I mean you talk about Christianity or I talk about Hollywood but actually the underpinnings of our identity are even deeper than those things right it's easy enough to reanalyze data and reach different conclusions and say okay Christianity is all I don't have to worry about that okay Crowley was a child abuser don't have to believe in any of that okay Hollywood's run by pedophiles don't have right it's it's and it's hard that is hard most people can't do that but relatively it's easy enough to perform those you know procedures to follow those procedures compared to go I don't know how to describe the other thing because I haven't fully done it but it's affect like our identity is hardwired into our nervous system through this traumatic impact of both locally and globally you know the culture as narrow to this fine laser point of our parenting and any other abuses that happen and that has imprinted us biologically as this overwhelming affect out of which has kind of spewed this robotic constructed identity as a defense against that affect and so really to let go of that defensive identity is to re-experience all the overwhelming anguish of that original affect of the original wound and I'm not saying that can be done or you know because I don't know just that that kind of undoing is a much deeper undoing or that kind of letting go I should say is a much deeper letting go than letting go of the religious belief or an affiliation with that or that you know it's it's it's healthy it's in the cells again I'll always say the same thing I'm totally with you it's deep right up to the end the night I disagree let me throw a couple things on the table and then we'll wrap this up couple of spiritual teachers add a couple of guideposts here that are meaningful to me the first is with regard to all the deep cell level cleansing I start with don't complain about the weather so complaining about the weather is gets right to the heart of it right it's me I hate when it rains on the weekend oh it's a sunny day it's too cold it's too hot I am somehow this little me that is defined by my likes and dislikes and I can get into that and analyze that to get all this great extent but how about just don't complain about the weather that's something I try and do if it seems to work it seems to be part of my spiritual path and number two I learned a long time ago because I I really appreciate the yoga the physical practice of it my very first teacher he told me this like he was brilliant at doing these really is a real like a Dallas Cowboy football player kind of yogi guy could really do these things he said don't anticipate the pose and when we when you do yoga if you do any kind of strenuous physical activity your mind immediately goes to when will this be over what's next what am I to have for lunch and not anticipating the pose doesn't require any cell level rehashing of your Christian programming but might as we were talking about have the effect of moving you further along the spiritual path than doing that that's been my experience yeah well I was trying to make clear qualifier I wasn't suggesting there was a doing about the cells just that there's something in us that prevents us from relaxing and letting our life force flow into life and to be fully open to life and fully engage with living and that's that's what needs to happen is a total relax and that no changing ideology is going to allow for that relaxation I'm not saying that we have to purge every cell just that this for some reason and I think it is trauma-based our nervous system isn't relaxed it is tensed up it is locked up and until that until that release happens we shouldn't we can't make up our mind about anything really and maybe we won't need to once that happens and then I mean my feeling about religion and I do want to bring back to that specifically Christianity I would suggest reading Girard for a counterpoint Renee Girard because there's a very deep understanding of Christianity that goes beyond psi-op and but it doesn't have to argue that it's you know received revelation either but just there's a deep application of it but yeah my understanding about religious doctrine is it's another tool and that it can get us to a place of relaxing and of trusting and of surrendering to life if it's rightly used in a way I'd say occultism probably can't but that maybe that's me maybe I'm just too hard-line on occultism and so I don't have a strong position on Christianity and that's where I really get to be liminal because quite a lot of my listeners are Christian and sometimes annoyingly so I mean I've got a Christian I ban I don't let comment at my site because he's so virulent but there are other Christians who aren't that way and I can see that it seems to work for them and I think I can see why so I think I just well for me it's that's an area where I'm very aware of the difficulty but the reward of staying liminal I can talk with you or another skeptic about it and be open I can also talk with a pretty virulent Christian and and be open to that perspective that's very very hard actually to be able to be that to spread that it's between two poles to actually extend one's awareness to both extremes actually it's harder for me to relate to you what you're saying about Joatt well I have to say I'm closer to the dogmatic Christian but I really can't stand dogmatic Christians we've been at this for two hours so I hate to open up a can of worms that would take us back there but I cannot resist because I think this does wind us all the way back at the beginning like if you don't like Joatt well in Christianity as a weaponized I'm spoken to Joe so I do like him if you don't like Joe's idea about Christianity as a weaponized Psyup then great just present counter evidence it could be a weaponized Psyup what I don't like and I doubt any evidence would change my view on is that that would anyway prove that there wasn't a reality because every weaponized Psyup that I've seen used real stuff it relies on real principles real figures real historical advance Jason this is like the oldest thing in the book it's like at that point it doesn't it doesn't matter because the narrative the story is completely changed completely undermined it's like the reality of satanic ritual abuse if there's no reality to it then there's no discussion if it is real then we need then the entire discussion changes so that's the same thing with Christianity if it if its origins do have connections to a social engineering control mechanism of the Romans then everything every fundamental tenant of that religion has to be looked at in a different way so why would you even allow for Christ consciousness if you're not going to allow for a Christ well two things number one I'm a kind of follow the data guy so when I look at I start with consciousness and I say gee consciousness seems to be real despite what Neil deGrasse Tyson who's never studied consciousness says that it's an illusion it's not every and we have that scientifically so next if that is true then we can start taking seriously the experiences that people have and start looking at those and when we do we have a lot of people that are experiencing Christ I just interviewed the latest episode up on Skeptico is a guy named David Ditchfield who had an incredible if you're rejecting the whole Christian out of his wine name at Christ at all for the same reason that when we talk about Satan and satanic ritual abuse and you know and I have an interview up there with Annika Lucas who at six years old in Belgium was sold by her mother to a satanic ritual abuse cult and almost died was on the chopping block to die you know so so they are connecting with this is their this is their experience they are connecting with a being a spirit being in the extended realm that they identify as Satan so I have to reconcile that with you know the fact that Satan doesn't exist historically so you know you talked about the egregoria or the topa thing in the you know apparently in some way we don't totally understand we are co-creating this reality so if we want to create Satan Satan appears David Ditchfield the near-death experiencer who was dragged under a commuter train and died he saw Jesus that was his experience and it transformed his life I don't question that the fact that he encountered Christ consciousness now spiritual people will tell me well that's what he encountered what he needed to encounter and it can embody any form that he understands it to be just like we do in lucid dreaming yeah but if Christianity was a social engineering program only and it wasn't based in a real spiritual being called Christ then Christ consciousness would be wholly a product of the social engineering program and just a manufactured illusion well I mean I was again I can agree with half of that and not with the other half you know because I think that is again I think that Tibetan Buddhist for one have a deeper understanding of how we are co-creating this reality and how both can exist at the same time and that you know Jesus of the you know it's like so in my interview with David Ditchfield super nice guy and like one of the things that's phenomenal about his near-death experience with so many of these near-death experiencers is the obvious spiritual transformation that they that he goes through his life is changed dramatically and significantly and his life speaks to that he also develops these unbelievable abilities he's able to produce this incredible art he has no art training at all but he came out of the near-death experience and he's doing these incredible large-scale art and composing music and he has this art and it's Jesus and I ask him about it he goes yes I encountered Jesus and it was amazing and I saw Jesus and I looked over to the side and I saw the world being created and stars and this and that and I said okay but you understand that the people that have studied near-death experience scientifically if you will you know across culture across time large numbers of people different medical conditions consistently they say that Jesus is just one aspect one possible connection that you can have and they're consistent about this all these other aspects but Jesus seems to be just one story that can be spun and he was like no Alex I encountered Jesus so I said David let me approach it a different way I've had people that have had multiple near-death experiences on the show and what they tell me is sometimes what they experience in their first near-death experience gives way to a deeper truth that they experience and subsequent near-death experiences and it goes deeper and higher if you will and some of these people have a sense that Jesus was a necessary entry point for them to understand the light and the love but that that kind of fell away as they got deeper into it I don't know if that's the answer I don't know if that's reality but I can see how that could play into this because to think that David not only saw Jesus like the Jesus of the you know movies but that when he rolled over the bed he actually saw the universe being created I don't know but it's a little hanging fruit of course people are deluded and I would say you know 999 out of a thousand of the any of these experiences I'd say the same about alien abduction I'd say the same about near-death experiences there may well be delusional as there are so many levels of psychic manipulation going on but it does I mean that doesn't mean to finish that point that I mean one can't what's one going to refer to here it's like the enlightenment problem that because there's thousands of people out there claiming to be enlightened that we can pretty much see at least established for our own satisfaction they're deluded that shouldn't lead us to then say that anyone who says they're enlightened is deluded or lying because then we're saying that enlightenment doesn't exist or that somebody who got enlightened would never speak about it and that would be a mistake I think indisputably and arguably so we just have to kind of leave it open well I don't know enlightenment I intuitively I know that enlightenment exists for myself I have that felt sense in my life so I've got you know I've got no dogma around that but I've also got no doubt that what I mean by enlightenment has some kind of real reality but as far as people out there claiming to it well it's unknown I just assume most of them are deluded and most of them I look at seem to confirm that assumption but I can only really speak to the ones I encounter directly and that's only two really so I've met one who I think was deeply deluded and another I think is is being honest about it they are in this different state and good for them it's wonderful to be close to that so I'd say the same with I mean it goes even much more for Christ in Christianity we we can only really refer A to our experience with other Christians and these people you're talking about on a case by case basis and be our own experience with Christ and or Christianity and my sense about Christ in Christianity is that I mean I said this about evil like evil isn't possibly a necessary word just because there isn't there is a reality that if we're going to identify and talk about it well it's pretty evil but it's much more so about Christ in Christianity although it's in a more abstract way that they do represent something real something profoundly real when you say real Matt are you talking about historically well there isn't really a history of Christ it's just the Bible so I can't really say it's historically can I but narratively I mean well narratively then is is historically I don't think it was all made up I'll put it that way but I mean this is this is I didn't realize you were so Christian okay I don't think anything is all made up I just don't think it really gets us to an interesting counterpoint wouldn't it because it much safer ground is castaneda because my feeling of castaneda is he's been he's been too thoroughly or not thoroughly enough debunked but too easily dismissed that castaneda's books are part of a Psyop and to a degree and that castaneda was lying and that he probably was heavily compromised and quite pathological but there's incredibly profound truth in those books and I don't just mean that it's metaphorical truth I think there's actual literal truth in those books so I'd say the same about the Gospels there's literal truth in there and there's a literal truth that there was a guy who walked this planet who was in a state of grace let's say that was very very unusual you know I'm not saying it was unprecedented that he's the the son of God that stuff's trickier that becomes quite abstract and I'd see it more like a mathematical formula that represents some base reality in the universe is my sense like the trinity and so on but you know this is very we could go on for hours with this but the the sort of specific point I want to make is is that the idea and I said this about Castaneda the idea if Castaneda made all that stuff up he was way greater genius than anyone I can even think of in history like for somebody to just make that up would just require such skill talent imagination I just don't believe it so the idea that social engineers you know or secret societies could completely create Christianity as a cynical tool of manipulation makes them on a level of angelic in a way this relates back to the quote unquote focus of this interview although it hasn't been and that's what you suspect or what I suspect is you know potentially a sigh of and I think it is a good counterpoint yeah Simon and an economical I mean how shoddy and in that that is comparatively it was effective but it's paper sin it's so easy to take apart like the Tom DeLonge thing Christianity 2000 years later still people devoutly following it you can't say they're all dupes René Girard was a genius he was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and he converts to Catholicism based Catholicism based on what he understood about the gospel I don't really agree that he should have converted Catholicism I think that's a bit crazy but personally but whatever he was smarter than I was so I've got to give some credit where due and he's reframed Christianity for me that it's almost like it's almost beyond faith in a way it's just like it's so profound what he reveals there in the gospel so profound that it's almost indistinguishable from a holy book I would say it's a level of awareness that went into it so yeah Psylp well maybe but do angels do Psylps maybe they do and how do we know you know if Christ's consciousness is real what are we saying then that maybe Christ manipulated the social engineers to create a faith version of it so that people would experience you know it gets just so convoluted and bizarre it does get convoluted and bizarre but then I think that's at the point which it gets spiritual because we let go of the rational we let go of the level three kind of thing that you know we're going to fight about whether it's Crowley or whether it's Q or whether it's you know all this kind of stuff and we let go into this larger reality my point is that you can't bring your historical Jesus along with you as part of that reality so all the great minds in time that have connected with Christ's consciousness which is all you could ever I don't understand why people interviewed an evangelical preacher that I really like his name is Russ Dizdar and he spent the last 30 years working with victims of satanic ritual abuse and really helping people he's a people helper because imagine if you are such a victim and you have really have nowhere to turn you know the people are saying well there isn't can't be that because there is no such thing as Satan and yet they're victims and they have been victimized in that but anyways I was having this kind of similar conversation with Russ but when you talk to any Christian it always they always react to this idea of Christ consciousness and I always want to say well how can you react to that how else are you experiencing Jesus I'm like giving you the highest compliment that you are experiencing Christ through some kind of extended consciousness experience why are you programmed triggered to react then go no it's not Christ consciousness and your got no stick craziness it's really Jesus it's like what do you mean it's really Jesus but I can understand why because of the whole new age thing the whole new age conspiracy yeah well they need to hold on to that a little bit more loosely because holding onto the biblical narrative in that history is really problematic well I'll just put it at that well I think any kind of holding on is problematic so I imagine there's an awful lot of people out there believing in Christ consciousness that are just stuck in their own new age ruts around that and that they've been sigh opt and socially engineered to believe in Christ consciousness so there we go you know we got these this polarization it's not Christ consciousness it's Jesus it's not Jesus it's Christ consciousness well you know maybe it's both maybe it's neither but but just to be clear on this point how could it be Jesus Jesus would be Christ consciousness I think when they say Jesus is what they mean is it's the only son of God and the only way is through him and so on which I say there's a mathematical I don't know if mathematical is the word but but I find there is there are sound principles there that can be observed and played and played so this was a special point in history 2,000 years ago was a special point in history what evident we we just don't have any evidence for that it's a outrageous statement but why wouldn't there be special points in history not special points the one and only that absolutely is inconsistent with everything we know about history have you read Rinal Steiner yeah as much as I can as much as I can take and I think there's some wonderful things in what Steiner is saying because I don't recommend any kind of alcohol but he's as close as I get to an occultist who seemed to be turning into some interesting things and he I mean he had some interesting takes on that I just think it seems that Alex that you have a strong conviction around this which is like a bullwalk against I don't some convictions I don't have a strong conviction it's just plain from the evidence I'm totally open to someone who can present but that's what most people always say they say I was just plain from the evidence here's the point is is like you say you're open to talking to Christians and dialoguing with Christians I am too as long as you acknowledge that like you acknowledge that hey the Bible is pro-Roman and the essence of what Jo Attwell says is proven in the texts is that the Bible is dependent they have to be familiar with Jo Attwell that's not an impossible hurdle to overcome you're putting an unfair condition on it I could just say to you well I can't talk to you until you've read René Girard I'm not putting a condition on it but I'm saying I don't think we're really I don't know why you're fighting on this one because this is the point that we had earlier I mean if someone isn't willing to read the email exchange you had with Peter LeVenda and yet they want to form an opinion which I'm sure a lot of people do majority of people form an opinion on your exchange because I've had this I just had I was just interviewed for for my book of just a while ago and I wanted to say who it's with but the guy really liked and really respected and I brought this up and I said you know Jason totally destroyed and out at LeVenda and he was like no he didn't I said well have you read it he goes no but I know what LeVenda says and you know it's so they don't need the evidence or they don't need to deeply dive into the evidence but I'm not saying Joe Atwell so that's the same that's the same thing with Atwell I'm not doing about Joe Atwell's argument I'm not saying you are you are saying that Christians who come to your site a Christian that comes to my site and is willing to listen to the interviews with Joe Atwell and have a reason to response to say I don't think the bible is pro-Roman because of this this this then I'm willing to listen to that as a matter of fact I've gone out and tried to engage with and I have interviews on the show engage with Christian scholars engage with religious scholars who are atheist because they don't like Atwell either and I wrestle those people to the ground and they all wind up admitting at the end that the gospels are dependent on Josephus in other words the people who wrote the gospels clearly had access to Josephus' writing this is this is like a point that she can wrestle people to the ground on and they why we've been doing about it is the thing this is the opening I said how you're tenacious I'm tenacious on certain things too I know but why this I mean because if the bible if the bible is pro-Roman then we can have what's going to mean about it I haven't even read Joe Atwell's thing I mean I obviously don't have the tools to answer these questions all I can tell you is what my position is and you'll say yeah but there's that and the other and I'll answer one but maybe but I'd have to take the time to get familiar with Joe's stuff and then we could talk about that otherwise I mean clearly you've put me at a big disadvantage and if I'm not careful I'll end up seeming like I'm super pro-Christian or anti-Joe Atwell I'm not I'm just like I don't know I'm not convinced because I haven't looked to it but and I wouldn't you know I'm guessing there are some leaks being made there because I'm not set I mean maybe Paul was a was a Roman agent I'm perfectly open to that he was a good writer so it would be a bit distressing to think that they had agents at that level of poetic insight but yeah I'm not ruling out that Christianity was co-opted from day one by say Paul or Paul right at all why would I and I'm nor am I saying I know obviously I don't know that Christ was a real person who walked on the earth I'm just saying that's that's what I think and but my my general point is is I don't see a incongruity between the Christian view that Christ is this and Christ is that and that's all wonderful and that Christianity was a sire those two things are quite compatible to me that's that's the only point I'm making I think our guest who I've dragged through just delightful to me anyway two and a half hour conversation has written some fantastic books that you have to check out and has this website that I keep talking about auto-culture as well as his podcast The Luminist all great great stuff really an important thinker I think just in general I'll just leave it at that an important thinker or a time and an and an analyst of our culture that is just not to be ignored Jason tell folks what's going on with these books where they can find them and an update on 16 maps of hell okay well first of all thanks Alex for that it was quite entertaining all through but particularly and I'm glad we got into a more dynamic thing that's always it's quite a rare opportunity I think to really connect as far as my site is auto-culture.com the podcast is The Luminist it's a weekly thing the books I've written are Seen and Not Seen Prisoner Infinity Vice of Kings also Dark Oasis and that's the those first three is kind of a trilogy of socio-culture and engineering and 16 maps of hell was an attempt to kind of synthesize those the different fields which is organized abuse and secret societies with vice of kings the entertainment industry which is Seen and Not Seen and kind of psychosocial cultural engineering which is Prisoner Infinity and that's so they're all brought together for 16 maps of hell and I couldn't find a publisher for this much to my surprise even though it was about Hollywood it's you know was all this Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey and Jeffrey Epstein it seemed like it was very topical subject but despite that I could not find a publisher and even the publisher that I was with previously Aeon Books went interested so I ended up crowdfunding to get it published and I've raised over the last two months now or six weeks I think it is almost 8,000 pounds which is going to cover a run of 200 books I think paperbacks it's a very large book and an audio book which I'll be doing and so I'm just currently trying to raise another thousand to fund the hardback edition because some people like hardback edition and that that campaign goes through to August 8 so people are interested they can pre-order the book and by doing so they'll help fund the hardback I think that's so encouraging to hear that people are willing to get involved in that way it's almost like even better than having a publisher that's my experience I'm connecting directly to the readers I know their names their addresses I'll be inscribing the books personally and posting them or having a direct connection to my readers it's far more satisfying actually than this evasive review in the New York Times which I spent so long chasing after some dream that actually was not I think what I was looking for was what I was looking for was a sense of community connecting to other souls out there and sharing my experience so yeah this does seem to be the natural organic way and I'm not using Amazon and Amazon is not included in my project well I'm just very happy that you're part of my community and that you're in my head I just really really respected and admire what you do and I'm so glad you're doing it well thanks Alex and Ditzel I mean I was impressed by your willingness to take on the lavender leviacent because not very few others have followed what I've done or picked up what I've done and been willing to you know take it further so kudos for that and thanks very much for the opportunity today Thanks again to Jason Horsley for joining me today on Skeptico You know the one question I guess I'd tee up from this interview has to do with this blog post about his exchange about Crowley with Peter Lavenda so the question kind of requires that you are somewhat familiar with that post and it is what do you think of the Crowley apologists I mean is Alistair Crowley this kind of a kind of classic misunderstood rebel against oppressive cultural norms or is he just a bad guy who likes to do bad things love to hear your thoughts on that of course the easiest best place to do it if you want to get a reply from me is at the Skeptico forum so do check that out and also consider jumping over to the Skeptico.com website where you can download this show and all the previous shows get them in a nice easy MP3 format that you can do with as you see fit no ads, no firewall no nothing like that just take the info and go with it Hey I do have a number of I don't know I think there are really good shows coming up so please stay with me for all of that until next time take care and bye for now