00:01:03.640There's so much connective tissue in their work that I am grateful and beyond excited
00:01:09.180and praise God, etc., to have been able to bring them together today.
00:01:13.660For this podcast, please welcome Eliza Swan.
00:01:18.400The new book is The Alchemical Imagination, Creativity as Catalyst for Radical Transformation, and The One and Only High Priestess, Tree Car.
00:01:31.340The new book is Technomancy, Tech Magic and Spells for the 21st Century Witch.
00:01:39.240Eliza wrote, the violence that capitalism enacts on time, nature, and our sense of connection is completely incompatible with alchemy and magic, which ask us to slow down, listen, and actually feel the soul of things.
00:02:02.560so today for this letha episode let's slow down let's listen to these witches
00:02:10.840and see if we can actually feel the soul of everything i brought you two together because
00:02:23.120as i said there's so much connective tissue but tree here's the line that cinched it for me
00:02:28.120in technomancy you wrote the more i explored the clearer it became ancient magic and modern tech
00:02:38.360weren't so different so that's what we're here to talk about today a technology of magic the arcane
00:02:49.100the ancient the contemporary the future and how all of us in this what even is time are interacting
00:02:57.740with all of these things at once they are not opposites we exist on this circular serpent
00:03:05.380if you will of time and space and love i've said enough let's start with eliza
00:03:15.620before we get to my questions and digging digging getting our nails dirty in this realm of alchemy
00:03:24.580and magic this is both of your first times on the podcast so please what do you want our listeners
00:03:30.220to know about you what's important to you right now who are you what are you doing what's going on
00:03:36.880um big question right away um my name is eliza swan and i'm an artist and educator
00:03:46.500and a magician and in 2014 i established golden dome school as a space for particularly
00:03:54.140artists who are interested in relating their creative practices to magical practice and so
00:04:01.800that started out as an artist in residence program and then blossomed into public performances and
00:04:07.480exhibitions and classes and now books and I also teach alchemy at the Pratt Institute in New York
00:04:15.260so that's what I'm up to. I discovered Golden Dome School very close to the beginning of the
00:04:22.700Missing Witches project and I was thrilled to discover your work I think my introduction to
00:04:29.660Golden Dome was the resurrection of care yeah so before we get to tree please like give me a couple
00:04:37.080minutes on the resurrection of care yeah I'm so glad you're asking because actually it's coming
00:04:42.400back next year um I took a break from directing Golden Dome for a couple years just because it was
00:04:48.080um sort of scaling up in a way that felt unmanageable um and now I've stepped back
00:04:55.680into directing it and the resurrection of care was an annual public pageant that I would do
00:05:03.060that Edgar Fabian Frias um leads they lead the kind of opening prayer and the kind of structure
00:05:09.800of the ceremony and it was devised initially actually before I even knew Edgar as a response
00:05:16.580to something called the Cremation of Care, which was not like a part of conspiracy theory anything
00:05:22.860at the time. I lived in San Francisco and went to art school there, and Bohemian Grove is a men's club
00:05:29.140where, you know, powerful businessmen and senators get together in the Redwoods, and they would open
00:05:37.220their sort of summer camp with each other with a ceremony called the Cremation of Care, and so
00:05:42.740we did the resurrection of care on the same day just to like bring it right back um and then yeah
00:05:51.320eventually it evolved into this sort of annual parade where we would march around Los Angeles
00:05:56.860and bless bodies of water with the spirit of our caring and it evolved into a space where folks
00:06:03.760would talk about um their grief also and their concerns for each other and this planet um and
00:06:12.240have a sort of a place to be together in that. So it'll come back in 2027.
00:06:19.460I love this as a, you know, this meeting point of performance art and ritual. And it was one of
00:06:29.140those things where I had read about Bohemian Grove. And it's so interesting to me that the
00:06:36.240rich, the elite, they are using occult practices while simultaneously demeaning the non-rich
00:06:45.180and the non-powerful from using these tools, right? And so that's so interesting to me. That's
00:06:53.300almost like a proof that magic works when the quote-unquote higher-ups are using it and trying
00:06:58.480to get us not to use it. Yeah, that one is a tale as old as time, right? I mean, empires are all
00:07:06.120built on magical practice so tree tell us about your magical practice and also who are you where
00:07:14.420are you what are you doing what's going on what are you working on who are you hey everyone hey
00:07:21.080uh my name's tree and i'm an author i work in the the field of transpersonal psychology i'm a
00:07:28.760graduate of the olive trust uh in their transpersonal psychology program uh through
00:07:34.400altered states of consciousness and psychedelic assisted therapy and i'm a death doula so i've
00:07:40.600been a practicing doula for about 14 years uh so the zones of of death i kind of consider myself
00:07:47.120a threshold worker because i'm also a massive dream worker i've penned a lot of books on dreaming
00:07:52.620and consciousness and uh dreams and death aren't too dissimilar they're those
00:07:59.000funny liminal thresholds that holds a bit of mystery uh and i'm a witch so in that zone of
00:08:07.880witchiness and witchcraft i suppose uh divination is a pretty strong aspect of my work um so dreams
00:08:18.140death divination i like to often say i'm like triple d i've never been a triple d i was a late
00:08:24.820it's all that it's all that threshold work um but i'm also a creative i've been creating dream
00:08:33.660art since i was a little kid my formative years were spent on a commune in the southern united
00:08:38.920states in the 70s back you know in the olden days and uh so a lot of my work it comes from
00:08:47.400my relationship to dreams so never went to art school or anything like that i've always just
00:08:52.500been doing dream art since a kid and still doing that process and uh growing up on a commune played
00:09:00.880lots of different instruments so I'm also a musician and in fact I see Primal Scream right
00:09:05.880behind you and I went on tour with those guys back in 2008 with one of the bands I was in back
00:09:13.120toured for about a month with them uh yeah so that's kind of it there's those sort of
00:09:17.860intersection of creativity magic but really space holding for all of the the liminalities
00:09:24.080of life that's kind of that's sort of the zone thank you for noticing i did put that on display
00:09:32.200because i read that you had gone on tour with primal screamadelica is i was like
00:09:37.300synchronicities curation is one of my i i mean i own thousands of records i consider myself a sonic
00:09:46.660witch above all things um so to say that screamadelica is like in my top 500 albums is
00:09:55.280is a really big compliment it was i mean it it hasn't gone out of rotation since i got it in
00:10:04.120like 90 91 somewhere around there it's always been on heavy rotation so just for me personally
00:10:11.560sorry coven um can you give me like one highlight of working or touring with primal scream just for
00:10:19.180me what happens on the road stays on the road i'm just trying to think of oh god there was so much
00:10:31.280but i don't know like i'll try to uh i don't know i i probably shouldn't uh reveal it's kind of like
00:10:39.200the law of secret a bit of like the laws of magic um but i'm i will say though one really one
00:10:45.680beautiful highlight and and this felt like a very very magical moment was meeting kevin shields from
00:10:51.420my bloody valentine at the sound check and uh in a sound check you know we had to do a little
00:10:57.840you know you get up there and do the sound check so they're checking the mics and so
00:11:01.920you know you goof around when you're doing sound checks sometimes you know well i do anyway maybe0.97
00:19:22.760I think a creative process of, wow, where does it start?
00:19:28.040it's a little bit like uh what david lynch says that you know you get this sort of like a seed
00:19:33.000of an idea and that idea just sort of sticks in a way and you just feel excited about that idea
00:19:39.480and you just want to like explore that idea more and more and more it's like what he says about
00:19:45.160like you know catching the big fish uh in the in the sea of consciousness you know the ideas are
00:19:52.040the fish and i just see it as almost like this um it all starts with the idea so very much like
00:19:58.580what lynch says and even just you know artists like uh hilmo af klint you know there's this
00:20:04.960this connection to something that feels like a spark that's almost like channeled through you
00:20:09.200and i think rick rick rubin also like uh you know kind of create creates this process through his
00:20:15.700work as a as a music producer and he sort of articulates that really really well as as well
00:20:21.300in some of his writings, it just kind of comes out of nowhere. And sometimes it can come from
00:20:26.080dreams. And so because I've been making dream art since I was a little kid, I would have to give all
00:20:32.360my credit really to the dreams. And what are the dreams anyway, right? I see them as almost like
00:20:37.900their experiences of consciousness in the altered state of sleep. So I see them through more of an
00:20:43.420animistic framework than kind of a reductionist materialist framework. I see that we, the dreams
00:20:51.160are like you know we're interconnected to a big sort of sea of the unconscious like Jung would
00:20:57.460call it the collective unconscious and that we can tap into these archetypal sort of energies
00:21:03.680or themes and even experience some really bizarre and surreal kind of epiphanies in the dreams so
00:21:11.200I'd say the dreams are my number one kind of source of inspiration so usually what I do is
00:21:17.720if I have some you know I've been dream journaling since I was young I've got like over 40 years worth
00:21:23.000of dusty dream journals every year I've got to fill a whole one out um and even do bibliomancy
00:21:30.760with my my dream journals like from when I was like a teenager I'll give like a dream from when
00:21:36.380I was 15 years old might give me a message for today kind of thing um but usually I'll go through
00:21:41.460them if something was quite visual i'll start like paint painting it so a little bit of color
00:21:48.240to canvas and that sort of just evolves out of that and so i've got yeah that's kind of the
00:21:55.160process so the two tool the tools are the tech is the dreams altered states of consciousness and
00:22:01.680in sleep then mapping it out in the journal so that's the blueprint and then kind of transforming
00:22:08.220it into these paintings and that's kind of how it works I was about 11 years old when I almost
00:22:19.980like near simultaneously discovered David Lynch and John Waters and so this became basically like
00:22:28.860a foundation for my entire outlook of life into my adulthood into my life now I saw these people
00:22:37.700who were experimenting with the surreal that this notion of art as not something to be understood
00:22:47.220but something to be experienced and that has been a huge thing for me you know I feel like
00:22:53.760a lot of gallery spaces I'll tell you my my Scottish cousin we went to the um Glasgow
00:23:01.560modern when I was visiting and cousin-in-law um and he said to me you know Amy I don't get any of
00:23:11.540this and I said you don't have to the idea that art requires an education in order to have like
00:23:22.680a visceral reaction is again it's this capitalistic this hegemonic you need to read 12 books before
00:23:30.920you're allowed to enjoy a piece of art is tragic to me that there are people out there who think
00:23:36.980they can't quote unquote listeners I'm using big bunning ear scare quotes here they can't
00:23:43.680appreciate art unless they have a doctoral thesis in art history and I love that the both of you
00:23:52.160are expanding this notion taking your work public public ritual public acts um Tria that you do a
00:24:00.300camp. Obviously, Eliza, you're doing residencies and all of these things. How can people make art
00:24:07.160a part of their everyday? Let me actually read a quote. This is from Eliza again.
00:24:14.740From its very beginning, art has been an instrument of ritual, a way for us to sing
00:24:24.020our blood back to the divine. It wasn't until Greek philosophers began distinguishing between
00:24:33.440the sacred and secular art that the idea of art as something other than an active form of prayer
00:24:43.500emerged. This notion of creativity, of art making as a form of active prayer, I think is really
00:24:56.920missing from the professionalization of art, of music. I've had so many people tell me I can't
00:25:04.600sing. And I'm like, if you can speak, you can sing. You don't have to be good. You don't have
00:25:10.180be a good writer to write you don't have to be a good singer to sing you don't have to be a good
00:25:14.660dancer to dance like we if we can conceive of our art making as a prayer i feel like this just
00:25:24.500expands the entire universe i don't know who wants to talk about it first but please
00:25:29.380talk to me about art as communication with the divine art as prayer
00:25:36.340well i have so many thoughts on it obviously right there's a whole book on it and more
00:25:43.560that didn't make it in there but um i love that you brought up john waters earlier because
00:25:50.120sometimes when i hear things like oh art is active prayer it sounds like art should be
00:25:54.820serious in some way and i think actually um allowing ourselves to experience divine inspiration
00:26:02.220as this kind of effusive, expansive joy
00:26:06.500that really actually breaks through tyrannical structures.
00:26:10.220That invites in the clown and humor and audacity into our work.
00:26:16.020And it invites in, I think, the audacity to just do it.
00:26:19.620Because if we feel like our art is an active prayer
00:26:24.640to our current existence, whatever that might be,
00:26:28.820it asks us to really take our place here on earth.
00:26:31.920really like sit in our seat and and sing back into this music of being alive and so I think
00:26:41.940there's a lot of permission in thinking of art as active prayer and also I watched Sister Wendy
00:26:49.380as a child I was obsessed with Sister Wendy she was a hermit and a nun who then was on I think
00:27:00.280bbc giving tours of art museums and i ended up giving psychic tours of art museums like because
00:27:06.200of sister wendy um but i watched interviews with her to self-soothe and she has one where somebody
00:27:13.480asks her like oh you're a hermit you're a virgin you know what do you know of this world how do you
00:27:19.720deal with looking at these artists work who maybe these artists are like bad guys or um whatever
00:27:27.240And she was like, oh, well, you know, I kind of deal with art like the way that it was before 1400, where it's just like, it's not about the artists. In fact, we might not even know their name. It's just the divine showing up in drag. And I really can't get involved with the gossip around the artists too much because then I stopped looking at the work. It's like a different conversation. Anyway, those are my thoughts for right now.
00:27:54.540tree i know that your art comes from your dreams and then so where are you sending it is it a loop
00:28:04.600yeah that's really interesting i think it really depends on the artist because some artists really
00:28:11.240do channel the divine i mean think of alex gray i think of like you know the you know
00:28:16.800like all these like really there is a process is like a considered process
00:28:22.620that uh that they are channeling something a little bit beyond channeling the divine but then
00:28:29.060you have like uh then you have artists who are you know selling uh products for nike or for
00:28:36.180you know tesco so like so that's not really channeling the divine again maybe it is but like
00:28:43.360i i don't know maybe i'm not to be the judge of that so it really depends on the artist i think
00:28:49.220um and it also maybe depends on yeah the intention because every magical practice will always come
00:28:57.540well everything not even just magical practice well i see this whole thing is a magical act
00:29:02.540like being alive really everything comes from intention so everything comes from intention so
00:29:08.580whether you want to like channel something in to create a beautiful artwork that that holds
00:29:14.720almost a resonance to heal people or intercede on behalf of humanity that's one thing but if
00:29:20.280you have the intention to sell tons of really extractive products from the environment towards
00:29:28.700people back to themselves and make a lot of money then that's a different intention
00:29:32.300so I guess it really comes back to intentions but I see things like especially I'm a very
00:29:38.360big fan of film and I've worked in the film industry in my, like in my thirties. And I
00:29:44.780really see films as a really interesting sort of channeling. And I see that films are like the
00:29:50.720cultural dreams and they project, you know, our unconscious shadow a lot of the time back
00:29:57.200at us. So that's why, you know, things like horror films don't freak me out. Like I actually like to
00:30:03.660watch a good A24 film you know what I mean and see like what kind of cultural shadow
00:30:09.140are we looking at here oh it's the archetype of the predatory male okay let's look at that you
00:30:14.960know so I like I like I love film for that in that sense although I I'm trying to think if I've seen
00:30:21.720bits of film that feel like it's channeling the divine um I'd say maybe Jodorowsky's films like
00:30:26.840they are highly magical films Alejandro Jodorowsky like insane like back in the 2000s I ran
00:30:33.320a cult video shop and film club with my partner for about like 11 years in London and we would
00:30:40.780do like these screenings underground screenings was really hard to find and hard to seek films
00:30:45.180every time we showed Jordiowski's films either El Topo or Holy Mountain I am not kidding there
00:30:52.560something went up at on the screening like some kind of spell was cast we had one screening with
00:30:59.260el topo and a guy just started randomly howling like a wolf during the screening and we had to
00:31:06.700like kind of are you all right guy like to exit him out and he just couldn't stop howling uh a
00:31:12.440few years later we showed holy mountain and a guy literally fell out of his chair laughing and we
00:31:19.160thought that's quite well he was laughing and then he fell out of his chair laughing and then he was
00:31:23.180rolling around all over the floor laughing in hysterics like possessed so i i deeply think
00:31:29.120jordowski's films were channeled from some from the trickster spirit or some kind of trickster
00:31:35.800kind of deity uh and dispersed out into the audience of people watching it because i've
00:31:43.360seen it firsthand like literally so i think it all comes down to intention and like all art
00:31:49.260whatever the intention is behind it could have it sort of spell cast um or as a prayer i'm
00:31:56.220certainly there are intercessors on this planet right by way of you know buddhist monks doing
00:32:04.140their meta meditations on behalf of humanity nuns locked away in cloisters like praying
00:32:09.700constantly on behalf of humanity or artists that are making prayer art or intercessor art on behalf
00:32:18.720of something so intentions but yeah certainly where does it come from it's like it's kind of
00:32:24.160amazing what we bring in i did a screening of holy mountain in a friend of mine's backyard i
00:32:32.400got in a small projector because there were movies that i wanted to see on the big screen that i knew
00:32:37.360probably i wasn't going to get a chance so she had one of those backyards with a big white brick wall
00:32:59.540And again, it's like, it's always glorious for me to see this happen because it reminds me, like, your stuff doesn't have to be for everyone for it to be fucking genius.0.99
00:33:11.300you know there are people who aren't gonna get it and that's fine just do it and that's okay
00:33:16.620and some people will come under the spell and start howling or dancing around best thing i
00:33:22.400ever saw was holy mountain screened jordowski showed up sat right in front of me so i watched
00:33:29.120the back of jordowski's head watching holy mountain so that final scene where he's like
00:33:33.980pull back pull back and that final scene they pull back and you're like oh it's like a reality
00:33:39.300within a reality and i'm like and i'm in another reality looking at the back of jordowski's white
00:33:43.960head and and this other reality and he was amazing it was great to meet him and he pulled cards for
00:33:50.080everyone and it was uh one of those like rubbing the eyes moment going like we live in a dream like
00:33:56.740we definitely live in a dream or hallucination and and certainly or maybe a simulation um yeah
00:34:03.440While we have the technology, let's talk about a simulation. I mean, this is kind of related to that, but we have a lot of conversations in our coven. Again, we're rationalists. We love science. We love facts and methodology.
00:34:23.700I have to shout out Whitefeather Hunter, who is a PhD and a science PhD.
00:34:34.740And Whitefeather Hunter says, hypotheses are prophecies. Ritual is methodology.
00:34:43.680And it's the same kind of thing that us three are talking about here, right? Where we just kind of
00:34:49.000slightly change the vocabulary but the core of it is the same but what i want to know we talk so much
00:34:56.680in the missing witches coven about this notion of deity because a lot of the of the members of the
00:35:03.080missing witches coven are ex-evangelical people who are deconstructing an upbringing in the church
00:35:09.800and so the notion of deity for them is very weighted a very loaded idea uh so i want to
00:35:18.360know i guess i'll start with eliza like what do you believe personally personally only your
00:35:25.720perspective i don't care what the other eight billion are thinking i want to know only what
00:35:31.880you think like do you believe in gods do you believe what like what do you believe are gods
00:35:40.280symbolic are they archetypes or are they creatures for lack of a better word
00:35:45.800hmm well i'm kind of of like an apophatic bent like that you you can't really speak about the
00:35:57.080divine too well like language actually falls apart in front of it and it's part of the joy
00:36:02.040of art making is that you're sort of watching what you're getting at fall apart as you're
00:36:07.780building it but but i use constructs to kind of help me out with talking about these things
00:36:14.740and as a young person i was initiated into hermetic order so sometimes i use their language
00:36:20.800just for ease right but in that system the beginning of beginnings is the one mind so
00:36:27.540the entire thing that we exist in is a field of consciousness just in various forms of drag
00:36:33.760so if i conceive of things that way like for sure there are deities just like there are human beings
00:36:41.580they're they're different forms of consciousness in drag showing us like a particular facet of
00:36:48.700existence or experience um so that's my short answer
00:36:56.060so kinda that's where i'm at i'm like yeah do i believe in in deities kinda how about you tree
00:37:06.140do you believe in like what do you believe how do you believe so if i was to alchemize and whittle
00:37:12.780it all down into one fundamental belief um i believe in consciousness and a sea of consciousness
00:37:22.700but through the perspective of quantum physics so everything is like a subatomic kind of field of
00:37:27.660possibilities because that that is a big a big component of a quantum perspective is there's
00:37:35.760many possibilities that we can engage in i see deities as uh almost like egregores that we
00:37:42.280create through our thoughts through our belief and through the energy that we put towards it
00:37:46.740so we create the deities that we believe in um and we collectively give them energy give this
00:37:56.760this kind of idea energy so they become this sort of egregore of sorts um and i believe that probably
00:38:06.520almost everything can kind of exist i know that sounds kind of crazy it's a bit of a alan moore
00:38:15.660kind of concept of of reality that our imaginations and our thoughts can shape and create things
00:38:22.840basically but they might just where do they exist they exist in some sort of collective field
00:38:27.880of information um so for example like these beliefs in in elves or gnomes or fae or little
00:38:34.620people like that kind of belief is everywhere it's not just in the celtic isles but it's also
00:38:39.660in africa it's also seen in lots of different places for example or the yeti or the sasquatch
00:38:45.640or the bigfoot you know these or the troll you know all kind of the similar sort of thing
00:38:49.740And so it's like, yeah, you know, they probably somehow do kind of exist in some kind of way because they exist in our kind of cultural sort of thought system, myth and sphere.
00:39:03.740So we've actually like made it happen or created it in some kind of way, whether it's just an energy or whether it's just imagination.
00:39:10.820so that's how that's what i how i feel about deity um going to all of the deep maybe that's
00:39:17.580very sacrilegious to say but you know every every kind of deity under the sun um i i kind of
00:39:25.620experienced this once like the power the power of collective belief and it was when i was in
00:39:33.720in uh palestine in 20 uh 20 uh 2016 i was in palestine and i was helping with the charity
00:39:45.880and whatnot and on one of the days off i was like um there just kind of roaming around and i ended
00:39:53.600up in this church and so it was you know i just kind of followed the crowd and there was this
00:40:00.540crowd going downstairs into this like basement and so I thought oh what's down there I'll just
00:40:05.820follow the crowd but there was like security guards too so I thought oh what's there so I
00:40:10.320kind of went down and as I went down into this basement there's this like small room
00:40:13.920when I went into that room I the wave of energy was just so intense so intense it literally like
00:40:22.120made me a and I was like whoa I need to I'm kind of dizzy like I need to lean against the wall and
00:40:30.040I just felt like this huge kind of magnetic, like heightened sort of energy. And I said to
00:40:37.740the security guard, I was like, what is this room? Like, what is this? And he said, he pointed and
00:40:43.800he said, oh, that's, that's the spot where Jesus Christ was born. So it was like the, the church
00:40:50.160of the nativity. I didn't realize he even like stumbled upon this huge Christian kind of like0.99
00:40:55.280pilgrimage place but i from that experience i i took this sort of notion that all these pilgrims
00:41:03.740over the decades of going there have collect have created like this collective energy of worship
00:41:09.720or reverence there through just their bowing down and kissing that star on the floor right
00:41:18.600right for christ so i just felt like wow you know like the power of us as a as a as a collective
00:41:25.620of where we put our intentions and our energies and our prayers or our mantras or whatever it is
00:41:31.640that we're putting out there it it's palpable it's palpable and tangible so you know deities
00:41:38.480maybe are just one step further where that starts to kind of collagulate and creates like a kind of0.99
00:41:44.620egregore and we we make it so so there it is that's just I don't know maybe I'm full of shit0.68
00:41:50.340but I like to think of these things but you know I'm still I would never say I know how it works0.81
00:41:56.000I'm just like oh that's a good question maybe that's how it works I don't know maybe there's0.98
00:42:00.960I think we all all us witchers are kind of equal parts brilliant and full of shit because we are0.90
00:42:08.680inventing our realities at all times but you you touched oh there's my chair going you touched on0.97
00:42:18.160something that I really want to get into which is this sort of witchcraft quantum physics quantum
00:42:25.460mechanics pipeline that I think like certain schools or certain groups of witches I don't
00:42:34.940know if it's kind of a chicken egg thing did you get into quantum physics before you got into
00:42:41.200witchcraft or did you get into witchcraft before you got into quantum physics and is there even a
00:42:46.280difference you know good point but i got i got into quantum physics because of my lucid dreams
00:42:53.540and uh i started having this like phase in my life where all of a sudden my lucid dreams were
00:43:01.060showing me like mathematical formulas and like theories and so I'd wake up and I'd recreate
00:43:07.860them and draw them and I'd be like what is like what and they like I got to work this out I I need
00:43:14.440to understand why I was shown that in a lucid dream and these lucid dreams started to show
00:43:20.640themselves in a different way than from when I was like a kid they were like the best way to
00:43:27.720describe it was like a hologram so i'm interfacing with like a holographic
00:43:31.860sort of reality in front of me so a few multiple layers of imagery within a dream world if that
00:43:41.000makes sense and the holographic uh interface uh there's like a telepathic a telepathic kind of
00:43:49.500communication going on with it so that's kind of the territory so but that's what got me into
00:43:57.240quantum mechanics because I just wanted to understand what I was being shown like does
00:44:01.720this track and I have a few physicist friends as well and I throw the like I was shown this theory
00:44:07.820in a dream what do you think of this and they're like oh my god that tracks with like gravity time
00:44:13.100loop theory and I'm like what is that okay like I gotta research that and so that's why I started
00:44:18.560using a lot of quantum language because dreams gave it to me first and so I feel like I'm trying
00:44:24.960to merge science and magic in my own day-to-day practice um and i'm trying to understand how
00:44:31.440you know they're married and not separate and also just want to fucking figure out all this0.74
00:44:39.240weird shit that my dreams are showing me you know like so it's just a curious moment that i'm like0.81
00:44:44.280you know investigated all of this stuff um eliza i think that your like notion of deity kind of0.97
00:44:52.820brought up this like unified field theory the source of all consciousness but of course alchemy
00:44:59.860as a concept as an entity is this marriage of magic and science so can you i know you're
00:45:07.940you're an alchemy professor so i imagine you can go off pretty good
00:45:11.700um in one of the reasons i was drawn to alchemy even though it's so complicated and
00:45:20.340kind of off-puttingly complex and gate-kept and the faces of it these days are not faces
00:45:28.460that necessarily appeal to me you know like old men in powdered wigs but I fell in love with it
00:45:35.980and stayed with it since my teens because it just disrupts any notion that you will ever have
00:45:44.320about things being um separate so as above so below as within so without magic and science
00:45:56.100are the same but they're they're different facets you can distinguish things you can
00:46:00.340say that this thing functions in this way and this thing functions in this way but actually
00:46:05.120they don't exist without each other and um alchemy is often defined in slogans right
00:46:13.400rather than like full explanations because it's hard to describe what alchemy does it's so
00:46:19.700interdisciplinary it's visual art it's chemistry it's um mysticism it's poetry it's philosophy
00:46:26.940they call themselves philosophers of fire um so one of my teacher's slogans was alchemy is looking
00:46:34.960with two eyes that can see and it comes out of egyptian cosmology where you have a solar eye
00:46:41.320that can see linear time difference in form cause and effect the laws of physics that pertain to
00:46:48.820the material world and you can empirically deal with those things and then you have a lunar eye
00:46:54.080that is entirely transpersonal that sees all the interconnections that sees energetics that sees
00:47:00.960fields of consciousness and actually by putting the lunar and solar eye together you get the 3d
00:47:07.280picture of reality. You can't really have one without the other and so you could say that the
00:47:13.040lunar eye sort of holds a lot of the mysteries of magic and the solar eye holds a lot of the sort of
00:47:19.920proofs and empiricism of science but actually you require both and they don't exist without each
00:47:26.480other. Chinese alchemists would use Taoist phrasing to describe that idea that Tao Te Ching is full of
00:47:35.840passages about how high and low depend on each other um the figure in european alchemy for
00:47:44.680enlightenment is the rebus which is a masculine feminine figure with wings who's also standing on
00:47:51.200a demon like once you've obtained awakening and alchemy you're heavenly you're demonic you're
00:47:58.560masculine you're feminine you're above you're below you you can sort of inhabit all kinds of0.72
00:48:04.780spaces with your being so um actually alchemy helped me to not see any difference between0.98
00:48:12.000magic and science except that it's maybe one is situated in in one way of seeing and one is
00:48:19.940situated in the other but not cleanly at all yes listeners i'm i've just been bouncing for the past
00:48:26.700hour um here's one more piece of connective tissue between your two books again the books are
00:48:32.800technomancy by tree car and the alchemical imagination by eliza swan both of you have
00:48:40.740sections about telephones um i can remind you if you like um on page 139 eliza on page 218 tree
00:48:52.200um telepathic telephone spirit telephone tell me about this piece of technology that we
00:49:00.340pretty much all have and how we can use it for magic they're two different versions so please
00:49:06.820um tree tell me about how to use a telephone for magic yeah i love that you say telephone
00:49:15.480that's great it's really good yeah i think i first started look like his
00:49:24.120like look at our iPhones here I grew up I was born in 1972 right so like and I grew up in a non
00:49:32.520tv household my whole life because of the way I was brought up on the commune and no outside
00:49:38.480influences and all that kind of stuff so I was like in my late 20s when the internet was fully
00:49:45.780formed so I so you know to me I see these devices and I'm like wow blows my mind because I I didn't
00:49:53.740grow up with them obviously because of the generation i'm in but so when they first started
00:49:59.020to come about i was like this is pure fucking magic it's actually undistinguishable from magic
00:50:07.540you know to be able to send a text message i remember the first time i was in a chat room0.87
00:50:12.440in my late 20s i was like this is nuts i'm talking to someone across the country so anyway when this
00:50:18.820the iPhones first came about I was laughing and saying to my partner does this not look like a
00:50:25.420scrying mirror I was like this is like a black obsidian slab like I've got one that I've had for
00:50:33.280like 20 years for scrying and just like for trancing out and getting divination and here
00:50:40.320you've got like this modern day scrying tool but it does it all for you right so when I see those
00:50:46.160the kids on the buses and they're just doom scrolling and they're in hypnosis they're in a
00:50:50.000hypnotic trance I started thinking like this is wild like they're doing it with no intentions they0.97
00:50:56.560are completely porous to it and I was like this is a powerful fucking tool and I was also like0.89
00:51:03.140this is not only a scrying mirror it's a wand because we're like casting stuff all the time0.92
00:51:08.840like every like like a podcast like what you're doing that is a spell being sent out
00:51:14.140spell of information and learning and education um vod cast you know casting it's the old norse
00:51:22.220word for to throw we're throwing this information out by way of the elements of air you know it's
00:51:28.940literally going out so i started to see like this is a powerful tool and if we don't know how to use
00:51:33.960this as witches it will it could it makes people go crazy i've seen people going crazy from the
00:51:41.920phones the reason why people are going mad and having such psychological meltdowns and depression
00:51:48.360and all types of things is because they're using it without intention they're using it without
00:51:54.280being fully present in the zone of working with it so it's just a tool people see it they go it's
00:52:03.480evil it's the bane of existence it's actually lucifer incarnate like people have been saying
00:52:08.020mad shit about it it's just a tool folks it's just a tool just like a hammer is a tool i could build0.94
00:52:16.580a house with it or i could crack someone over the head with it it's the intention behind the tool0.99
00:52:22.660so don't throw these things away because we need witches and we need people who are working
00:52:28.020for the highest of good to harm none to get you know make those mean magic you know make your
00:52:34.660videos that send good information overthrow the powers that be we need the technomancers
00:52:39.860and the hackers and the witches and magicians more than ever in the tech realm we have created
00:52:45.580another dimension of ones and zeros it's happened the genie is out of the bottle it's not going
00:52:51.780back in so we need to help steward this thing and not throw the phones into the ocean and go live
00:52:57.760in a cave like it's good to be able to you know i'm an animist and nature is a big part of my
00:53:03.320practice but i limit my use of this thing every time i sit down on it i'm like what good can i do
00:53:10.280today with this thing and i'll put up a post or i'll send really helpful messages to people
00:53:15.820or you know that's it and my my screen time is really low i don't just sit there and mindlessly
00:53:21.740without intention scroll so there's you know i don't know what i just said but anyway sorry i
00:53:27.160just went on a rant but anyway no we love it the telephone the telephone
00:53:33.100for the record I love a rant I live for a rant so um Eliza the telepathic telephone
00:53:44.660tell me about this exercise yeah but also I just love what Tree said so much and I teach
00:53:52.880alchemy at an art school to 19 year olds and it's really difficult I have to constantly be like
00:53:59.520phones away phones away phones away phones away and what's really interesting about that generation
00:54:05.780having been raised on the phone is that when I bring in material from alchemical history like
00:54:11.780visions of zoosimos which is this alchemist describing using the dream state to go into
00:54:17.300the minds of different metals and to talk to the metals in the dream state these kids can go right
00:54:22.660there they're like oh i know what this is i know what it is to put your consciousness in something
00:54:27.080that doesn't have a physical body like been there done that and that's the part that to me i was
00:54:32.420like oh this is going to be a little weird for them um but getting them to stay in the room is
00:54:37.200a little bit challenging and to not fly off and i love that idea of like sitting with the phone
00:54:42.880and being like oh what good can i do with this instrument right now and for how long can i keep
00:54:47.120that up realistically um so cool I'm gonna do that myself and offer that to them but the telepathic
00:54:55.240telephone I think if I remember the exercise correctly um it's just getting a vintage phone
00:55:02.060at like a thrift store or a flea market and using it as a way to um call up a deity or an ancestor
00:55:09.560it's like using that prop ritually so that you can like specifically dial up somebody who's in
00:55:17.080another time or dimension um and have a chat with them it's a little like Jung's active
00:55:23.800imagination but just with a prop um that's what that is I love it um I'm excited to call David
00:55:33.640Lynch after this chat with David Lynch um I oh and here we are almost out of time I do hope you
00:55:43.120will do a part two with me this has been so fruitful and amazing and i feel like we've just
00:55:48.060begun to scratch the surface uh i mean it's it's quantum physics right like we're not we're not
00:55:55.200gonna figure it out in an hour but i i'm so grateful that you both have come to do some
00:56:01.900podcasting and spellcasting with me today eliza how can our listeners support you in your work
00:56:09.620again firstly by the book the book is the alchemical imagination creativity as catalyst
00:56:17.120for radical transformation it is fantastic listeners i recommend highly by eliza swan
00:56:24.100how else can our listeners support you and your work and your endeavors yeah um if you go to
00:56:31.480golden-dome.org you know what'd be amazing is if you jumped on the mailing list so i don't have to
00:56:37.200be on Instagram all the time um I'm touring the book up and down the California coast for the next
00:56:44.880month um and then in October I'm doing a five-day live alchemy course with plants at the Omega
00:56:53.380Institute in upstate New York so I would love to see you someplace on that mailing list or
00:56:59.460at one of these events but yeah yeah I'm I'm based out of I'm living in the woods now but
00:57:05.360just north of montreal so i get i get upstate every now and again i also get to the uk every
00:57:12.200now and again so tree how can our listeners support you other than of course listeners buy
00:57:18.140the book the book is technomancy tech magic and spells for the 21st century which you'll find
00:57:25.920stuff in this book like algorithm as law of attraction so many pooh so many light bulb
00:57:32.940moments that happened while i was reading your book tree how other than buying the book listeners
00:57:38.340buy the book um can our listeners support you and your work and your endeavors
00:57:42.540at least unleash your voice um well i think a good way is uh yeah just follow me on instagram
00:57:53.740because then everything's all kind of linked in from there um and that's probably where i'm more
00:57:58.980more the most active uh in terms of shouting out about a lot of nerdy stuff
00:58:05.940yeah okay so my final question as a wrap up eliza do you have plans for the summer solstice
00:58:17.140and if so if not what would you suggest that the missing witches coven how do you suggest
00:58:23.860that the Missing Witches Coven celebrate Letha,