Evolver the Podcast, Epsiode #3: Magic and the Occult

Finally I have a chance to sit down and write about the third episode of “Evolver the Podcast, Episode #3: Magic and the Occult.” I have done very few things in my life that had as many obstacles along the road of completion. But before we get into what it took to get this done lets talk about what magic means to me.

It's hard to really define Magic, in a way it's everything, but for the sake of this discussion we are talking about a system of belief that is guided, played with, and used to move towards specific outcomes in our lives. It uses belief as a tool, symbols as a focus, and thought as a playground. Almost two years ago now something happened to me that I couldn't explain with my current belief system, current perspective. I went searching for answers, searching for a way to explain what it is that happened to me. What I came up with was Magic. Chaos Magic, to be more precise. Chaos Magic includes Shamanism, includes Gnosticism, includes Hoodoo, Chaos Magic views all of these different beliefs as tools and models of explaining phenomena, and then producing desired results. In Chaos Magic the belief's don't matter, the results do. This is what resonated with me, what made me feel as though I had found my answers. Thus the practice began.

It started with meditating, recording dreams, and journaling everyday. From there it escalated to a desire for actually doing something, but what to do. Through my research and reading what I decided to start with first was sigiling. Sigiling is a method of creating a symbol and instilling it with personal meaning with the intent of a desired outcome. Raymond Wiley talks a little about this in this episode of the podcast. Sigils have become the foundation of my magical practice and have directly or indirectly lead to pretty much everything that I have in my life today. From money, to jobs, bicycles, sex, and the love of my life sigils have completely produced. All of this interest in Magic was triggered by watching a speech from Grant Morrison at the 1999 disinformation conference, my hope is that this Podcast can trigger the same for at least one other person.

Lets talk a little now about the process of getting this particular episode into existence. First it was not the first choice for this episode's topic, it ended up naturally forming around the interview that Jonathan Talat Phillips landed with Gary Lachman. Gary Lachman became interested in the Occult from early on before his famous rock star days. Now later in life after the very successful music career he has become a renown Occult Author. Jonathan and Gary had to reschedule a couple times.

Next we had to fill in interviews around Lachman. I talked to my friend Raymond Wiley from Disinformation, which took a little while to get a hold of, due to both his and my lack of free time. Then I had to connect Raymond with Jennifer Palmer so she could conduct the interview. They took days to connect with each other as well due to both of their incredibly busy schedules. Then as I understand it had a number of issues with the programs required to record the interview and setting a date to do so, but alas that finally happened as well.

Finally I set up an interview with Baza Novic from Evolver L.A.. The interview happened in a timely fashion, but took three times as long as it to record it due to phone calls, text messages, sound issues, and a couple other distractions. But setting all of those things aside we got it done.

After waiting a couple weeks all three interviews got done and I had received the files. Next obstacle, all three interviews went long. I listened through 90 minutes of interviews and didn't feel right cutting anything, so we had our longest podcast yet. Next issue after that, everything had crazy random sound issues. I did what I could to clean them up and then began the process of recording all the intro's and outro's for the podcast and each interview. I soon discovered that the sound issues weren't over. I rerecorded every single intro and outro at least three times. After spending three days producing recording and piecing together everything I sent it off to the sound guy. Ahh at last I was done, the podcast would be up in no time. Well the podcast had so many crazy sound things that it took ten days for the sound guy to do what he could to try to fix it. Finally about four weeks into the process we got to air it, and it is my favorite episode yet. The obstacles however weren't done with me.

Right after I published it and before I had a chance to write my Evolver blog promoting it I got pretty sick, which persisted for five days. As uninteresting as reading about my podcasting woe's might be, I assure you it would be one hundred times less interesting if I had written this while sick. Then finally as my immune system was done doing it's job I got an email from Podomatic, my podcast hosting site. This email was to inform me that I had gone over some bandwidth limit I wasn't aware of, and that unless I upgraded to the paid membership that I would be taken off the air. Off the air meant no more downloads, or streaming through RSS feeds. Needless to say I couldn't promote the podcast after that. The reason this was such a problem is because of my life style choices. I choose not to have a bank account so PayPal wouldn't work, and I choose to not have credit cards so I couldn't pay for the membership that way either. I had to outreach to Evolver HQ for help with keeping us on the air. Well due to attendance at a very important summit for the future of Evolver, Evolver HQ was not available to help for the weekend. But as soon as the Summit was over, membership was upgraded and podcast is back on the air.

So I ask you Universe, why did you bust my balls so much to get this Magic/Occult podcast made? Where there a bunch of spirits from the otherworld that wanted to mess with me? Did they just want to say their part also? Was this a desperate push by the negative energies in the universe to try to prevent more people from taking their blinders off? Was there a month long assault by black magicians that are still stuck in their stubborn old ways believing that using Magic is a right that has to be earned? Was some mischievous god bored? Was this some piece of the collective unconscious showing through a number of synchronicities? Or was it all just a coincidence? Whatever it was that caused me to jump through hoop after hoop, and climb over obstacle after obstacle, I F'ing did it! And here it is. I hope you enjoy it, I went through a lot.

http://evolverthepodcast.podomatic.com