Puritans and Jack Parsons with Heather of Magic in the US

Heather Freeman

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[00:00:00] Ashley: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dive with the Divine. I'm your host, Ashley, and together we'll be exploring the magical, the mystical, and everything in between. Today, we're going to talk about a little bit of puritanical magic. And this guy, I don't even know how to describe the story we're going to tell later.

[00:00:19] So I hope you're having a wonderful week. And if not, I hope it gets better soon. Today we have an absolutely fantastic guest. We have Heather. Freeman. Heather is the host of Magic in the United States. She's been fascinated by magic, witchcraft, religion, and spirituality since she was a child.

[00:00:35] And in 2020 she created the movie turned podcast series, Familiar Shapes about the early modern English witch trials and bought. on social media. In her podcast, Magic in the United States she turns her sights towards her own home and time travels to explore some of America's most riveting and at times devastating stories of magic, spirituality, religion, and the occult. Heather, how are you?

[00:00:59] I'm doing well. [00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Heather: Great.

[00:01:00] Ashley: Thank you so much for having me, Ashley. This is like, I'm so excited. Yay. I'm so excited. I'm so happy for you to be here. So as I ask everybody I know we read this in your bio. So you've been fascinated by these subjects since you were a kid. When was like the first time that you were like, huh, what's going on here?

[00:01:19] Do you remember?

[00:01:21] Heather: Yeah. I mean, like if we go like superhero origin stories on like a cultism kind of thing. Yeah. Cool. Like that's, yeah I'm there for that. Yeah, I mean really, I grew up in, in New Jersey, like in a small town. It's like kind of a suburb, but it's also a farming community then. I know, right?

[00:01:38] Yeah. Yeah. Where are you from in New Jersey?

[00:01:40] Ashley: Are you in

[00:01:40] Heather: New Jersey now? I have no idea where you are.

[00:01:41] Ashley: Yes, I'm in New Jersey right now. I'm in like Central Jersey. I live in Mercer County. Dude. No way. Okay. I grew up in Somerset County. Stop. I work

[00:01:51] Heather: in Somerset County. I worked in Mercer County, so there you go.

[00:01:55] This is like a thousand years ago though. Like this is back [00:02:00] when, before cell phones, like literally. Hilarious. Oh my god, that's amazing. Okay, cool. I'm sorry, I didn't interrupt. Okay, good. No, so you understand then, so I don't need to, so maybe your listeners don't understand, but you understand, Ash that, the woods of New Jersey are spooky as all get out.

[00:02:16] Besides even the Jersey Devil, , there are things Yeah. There right in the woods everywhere too. It's just everywhere. Yeah, and nobody knows it unless you like grow up there And you're just like, okay like this is normal So yeah, like I used to just hang out in the woods all day long, and this is like the 70s in the 80s And I had some of my first sort of Experiences feeling like deeply connected to that land, to the history of that land, to the animals and the plants and the water and the air and the geology in a way that like, I didn't have a language for it.

[00:02:53] Heather: Cause I was surrounded by mostly it was about half and half Christian and Jewish community. I think this, [00:03:00] again, this is like in the seventies that communities changed a lot since then, but there wasn't, I didn't know that paganism was a thing. I didn't know that Wicca was a thing.

[00:03:06] Right. And so I, I just figured this was just me being a weirdo. And Cool. And I was a kid and that's just like, that was my little theology as a child, right? Like super animist. And I had the sense of a horned God who was like this shepherd of the woods or guardian of the woods or just somebody who was around, And then, one day, as happens to children, I was at the public library and I was super interested in like fairies, right?

[00:03:33] There's this beautiful illustrated book of fairies and I used to go and find that. And in that same sort of area, there was also Erica Young's book, Witches, which if you've ever seen it, it has these amazing illustrations in them. And it's mostly Erica's poetry, but she also gives some history of the early modern witch trials and it's mixed in with like neo [00:04:00] pagan Wicca witchcraft stuff of that time period, which I had no idea, but at that time that part of the Northeast was like, like the hotbed of Wicca, I just didn't know.

[00:04:11] And I think, that book, triggered something for me. And I used to do spells from it and whatever. And then I became a teenager and I left all that aside. I played D& D like other normal teenagers who had no friends other than my D& D buddies. And yeah. I went to college and I studied like holocaust studies and art and I, I turned into a serious adult and had a career and like all these things.

[00:04:35] And I I was always interested in the visual culture of esotericism particularly in as it got presented, at least to me in Western art history, which is its own whole huge topic. But it was really when I was about 40 years old. And I found out that a good acquaintance of mine was Wiccan, just, and I'd known her for a couple of years through through the [00:05:00] university.

[00:05:00] And I, I was like, is that real? Like I thought that was like D& D. She, fortunately, she's not. I did not say that to her, but I was thinking it. And that just triggered this whole thing when I realized, oh, not only is it real, but here is this woman I knew who was incredibly intelligent, progressive, a feminist, like just really just, took no shits from anybody.

[00:05:31] And yet she had this religion that was so fringe. it seemed to me at the time. I just couldn't, it like was, my brain was exploding basically for a year. And that kind of set me on this path to like really realize like there's so much to What's happening in the inner lives of people in the United States that we don't talk about we don't think about and not just like [00:06:00] Wiccan witchcraft or esotericism and occultism my curiosity to span to pass that to think about you know What are all the religions and spiritual practices and folk practices that exist in this country?

[00:06:13] that Aren't asked about on these Pew research studies, right? Yeah there's so many people who are like, I'm a nun, n o n e or like I'm spiritual but not religious like every single one of those people has a complex rich in her life. Yeah, just there's not a checkbox for that on these surveys Anyway, that's the sprawling version.

[00:06:39] Missing a lot of details, but that's basically that's it to make it easier to edit.

[00:06:42] Ashley: Yeah, no, that's perfect. That, oh my gosh. First of all, okay. First of all, the woods, I, as a kid, oh my gosh. As a kid, I used to like, so where I grew up [00:07:00] initially, like when I was like five, six, there wasn't, we didn't have woods behind like our apartment complex, but we had.

[00:07:06] Like a golf course and before the golf course was just like a line of trees and then between the trees people the golf course could write I used to make that like A path to like Narnia. I would just like yes, I would make up all these stories about where I was going and then like beyond that was a golf course.

[00:07:25] So like in the middle of the afternoon, when I was a kid, there was nobody at the golf course. So I would go to there was a little gazebo. I would talk, call the cast. Like I went in and then when we moved, To a different place behind that apartment complex where woods and we I was a little bit older I used to go in those woods all the time and like now I think about it like there's a bunch of ticks like I think God, I was walking around the woods There's like mad ticks in there's like garden snakes and stuff like whatever Yeah, I'm just walking around the woods.

[00:07:57] It's like whoo, like making all sorts of [00:08:00] stories up. Yeah, New Jersey It's like the second most densely populated state in the country, but yeah, there's just woods everywhere.

[00:08:09] Heather: And it's full of life. Like, yeah, I used to like, I used to go for these, like, like, like these journeys into the woods into my mind into this another region, whatever.

[00:08:21] Which like, I, like now in hindsight, like once in a while, there's a really nice park near where I live and I'll go there and try to like, enter that same headspace. But invariably, I'm like, it's way creepier when you're like a 50 year old woman by yourself in the woods. It's cute when it's a kid.

[00:08:36] Yeah, exactly. But yeah, like I'd come home and I was all like bloody and scratched up from like briars and like, and then the fall, like I would stain all my coats with poke berries and my mom would be like, Oh my gosh, can you keep anything clean? No, I must throw my vision quest into the wind.

[00:08:55] Ashley: It's like, I'm looking for something and my mom would be like, please don't get lost. I feel like I'm [00:09:00] lost. So like, yeah,

[00:09:02] Heather: I'm like, I'm looking for the devil in the woods, basically. I mean, I didn't think of it that way, but I

[00:09:08] Ashley: know, I know. And I was like, I would joke with my mom now. And my mom's just yeah, I was, she's like, was I a bad parent?

[00:09:14] I was just letting you go in the woods all the time. But she didn't know. I'd be like, I'm going out to ride my bike. I'll be back in. Whatever. And then I come back and I was all dirty and it was because I had, I dropped my bike outside the woods and then I would walk around and then get it. And of course you have to get a huge stick because that's your stuff.

[00:09:33] Yeah, right.

[00:09:35] Heather: No, totally.

[00:09:36] Ashley: Yeah, you have

[00:09:36] Heather: to find one. I mean, I feel like we make these jokes about like the stick that you find and it's like precious and amazing. You put it on your altar and like, six months later, your altar is like covered in like sticks and rocks and like, detritus, but it's like, it's true.

[00:09:51] And it starts when you're a kid. I remember there was like this floodplain in the woods by this canal. And and it flooded one year when the geese, the Canadian geese were [00:10:00] like nesting. And like, it was weird cause it was in the woods. I don't know. I don't understand geese biology.

[00:10:04] I'm not going to play. Me either. But anyway, I found this flooded geese nest and there was one egg there and the geese were just like, MIA. And so I took this goose egg home and I was like, I'm gonna incubate this and it's gonna be my familiar. It's gonna be a goose. I'm like, this whole thing.

[00:10:20] My mom, meanwhile, was like looking at me, sad eyes. She's please don't let that thing crack in the nest. It's gonna suck. And I'm like, yes, I'm so fair.

[00:10:31] Ashley: My poor mom. I know! Oh my, God bless parents of imaginative children. Because you guys are just acting like it's not weird, and you know we're so weird.

[00:10:41] So weird.

[00:10:46] Heather: I like, I think about that very often. I'm like, man, I was really lucky that they were very supportive of my weird.

[00:10:53] Ashley: Exactly. I feel like both my parents were just like, okay, you're bringing more random rocks into the house. Cool. Whatever. [00:11:00] Keep dream dreaming. It's like, well, I'm not doing drugs, so I guess it's fine.

[00:11:05] I know. I mean, that's the

[00:11:06] Heather: other thing is like growing up in New Jersey. You're like, What are the worst things that there's a lot, there's a lot of options territory, tons, magic, occultism, witchcraft, very low stakes.

[00:11:19] Ashley: Exactly. I know. I feel like my parents were like, well, she likes to read. And if she likes rocks, and it has a bunch of rocks in a shoebox under a bed, that's not that bad.

[00:11:29] Yeah, exactly. Oh, God, that's so funny. But also what you were talking about, like, All these people who, especially in the US, right? Because we are so many different kinds of people come here and live here. We do have all these traditions that like, people don't know anything about. Like, and I know growing up when I like, started to be like, interested in magic and all that kind of stuff.

[00:11:56] The only, outside my own family, [00:12:00] the only other magic that I ever read books about or saw was like, Wicca. Yeah. Like, yeah. So I was like, okay, I guess this is just white people witchcraft and this is the only kind like I don't know basically yeah I was like okay so like I was always searching for this can't be and then when I got older and read more books I'm like oh so there's different types of witchiness in other societies but you know at that time too not like it was so long ago but it was in terms of like it wasn't popular this is like the late 90s early 2000s the only books you could get were, books written by like other, usually a white.

[00:12:37] woman, which is cool. It's nothing wrong with it. But it was just like, that's the only books you read about that kind of tradition. So now, thankfully, a lot more people from different traditions are coming up. And now we have podcasts like this. And yes, like yours that where you can hear from other people, which is really exciting.

[00:12:53] So you're doing a great service to all the other Aka weird kids like no, you're not weird. We're [00:13:00] not like not a bad way like in a good way We fly our freak

[00:13:04] Heather: flags.

[00:13:04] Ashley: Exactly. Yeah, all you dnd kids all your kids going into the woods. You're fine Don't worry about it. You're gonna be fine. Yeah, but now you can learn about all different types of traditions.

[00:13:14] So that's exciting. Yeah

[00:13:17] Heather: Yeah, no, it's it's totally a thing. And getting to that, it's funny cause I have a lot of different practices. That I think is really something that's still pronounced in publishing of books on Wicca is just that it's very it's less cis and it's less het than it used to be. So that, that is progress. But it's like, if you look at the published materials and I'm, I don't want to knock the publishers.

[00:13:39] This is like a shitty time to be a publisher. Yeah. It's just I, yeah, that's a whole thing. But like, representation matters, and if you don't see yourself in that community it's that's a wall and I remember the first time I Came across chris. Do you know crystal blanton?

[00:13:56] i've heard of i've heard of her. Yeah, I like i'm trying to [00:14:00] figure out an episode so I can interview her I just want to craft an episode so I can talk to her because she wrote these amazing books about Racism and Pagan Spaces specifically focusing around Wicca, and she, in these texts, like, identified as Wiccan.

[00:14:15] And I was like why is this self published? Why isn't this getting picked up and promoted by the big publishers? Yeah. And that's the thing that still happens. But like at the same time, I'm like, you know what? We do have Tik TOK now we have Instagram. And there are a lot of Wiccans of color on those spaces.

[00:14:34] I'm just like, I'm just sitting here waiting for them to write books. So I can read, but it's absolutely a thing. It's absolutely a thing. And I think talking about the history of religion and spirituality and magic and race and class and gender in the United States, like they all weave together.

[00:14:53] You cannot.

[00:14:55] Ashley: Yes. There's like, there's so it's so weird [00:15:00] because. Crystal have written wrote those books and you can see like that even in the beginning 20 years ago There were still these weird barriers like to other people joining these communities So it was like, oh, yeah, you like magic and stuff, but like I don't know.

[00:15:17] You're not the right race. You aren't the right Gender or like, even like being queer was like, Oh, we don't know about this yet. Like, so it was now it's like, at least like you said, we have tick tock, we have Instagram people at least can say that, like, say what they want and their voices can be heard. And we can hear like so many different opinions throughout the community, which is really awesome.

[00:15:40] So, yeah, more. The more diverse and same thing not knocking books because there's so many great authors and so many good contribution. But yeah, of course, the more diversity we can have the better because everybody deserves to see themselves in these traditions and, be able to feel like they belong to it.

[00:15:57] Heather: Yeah, that's another thing that's really struck me [00:16:00] and researching for different episodes, is that a lot of these episodes are looking at historic moments in time and so every single episode also features contemporary practitioners of whatever that particular practice is because which is tricky because you can have five people who practice Pennsylvania, Dutch powwow, and like they can all identify religiously as different things and do it in fairly nuanced ways.

[00:16:27] But anyway, that's a whole thing. But, oh no, don't lose your train of thought, Heather.

[00:16:34] I do this. It's like I start one way and then I come around. This is why my editor has to work really hard. Okay. I got it. I got it. I got it. Yeah. One of the things that I've learned is that if I'm researching something that even happened in like the early nineties, right? Yeah. When I'm interviewing practitioners, I need to find somebody who's doing that particular practice right now and has been doing it for a while so that [00:17:00] they know that history of where it was at the nineties and can be like, yeah, guess what?

[00:17:04] Think about Everything else in society and how that's evolved over the last, 20 30 years like occult practices esoteric practices Religions broadly that's no different. Yeah, like I totally remember my son was born. This is like why I remember obama coming into the white house and somebody asked him about queer rights and He was like, you know i'm thinking about it and I remember That kind of hurt like yeah, what the what is there to think about?

[00:17:31] Yeah. Yeah but to his credit like he did actually evolve, at least you know Maybe he was already evolved. I don't know but like he talked about that process of his thinking expanding and his understanding the world expanding and I think religions do that too because they're made up of individuals and if not everybody is really comfortable with shaking up the world view periodically.

[00:17:58] But the people who do [00:18:00] that, on the regular, and who practice occult practices, they're changing those practices too, anyway.

[00:18:05] Ashley: No, it's,

[00:18:06] Heather: no,

[00:18:08] Ashley: it's fine. No, because when you're talking about that, it makes me think of, the Pope. Right, like Pope Francis. I have a theory about Pope Francis, like you were just saying about Obama.

[00:18:17] I feel like Pope Francis, doesn't care if people are gay. I really don't think he cares. I don't think he cares if people are trans. He's like, do what you want to do. But I think he can't piss everybody off. So he's just I have to gently ease everyone into this before I die. that's just my theory.

[00:18:32] I don't know if it's true, but it's the same. Yeah, I think he's just like I really, I'm trying my best. I feel like he's looking at the other Catholics who are liberal. He's like you guys, I'm trying. He's like, I just said, like, it's okay to be gay. I just said it kinda. So like, I'm doing my best here.

[00:18:51] He's struggling.

[00:18:54] Heather: It's like this papal long con, papal cultural long con. Oh, [00:19:00] 100%. Yeah, he's,

[00:19:00] Ashley: he's praying to God every night. He's like, God. How do I tell them that I really don't mind if people are trans? It doesn't bother me every night. He's praying about it. That would be quite superb. I'm hoping for this is my, like, yeah, this is my like fantasy about that sounds weird, but like the way this is just like what I think of, I want to get him in a room one day, just like me and him just sit and chat, like.

[00:19:28] Okay, Frances, let's really talk. Like, what do you, like, you're a whole scientist, so I know you know stuff.

[00:19:35] Yeah. Okay, Frances, we're

[00:19:36] Heather: turning off the mics

[00:19:37] Ashley: now. Exactly! And he's like, girl, listen, my best friend is gay, and I don't,

[00:19:42] Heather: like, it's all good. And

[00:19:43] Ashley: I'm like, I knew it!

[00:19:45] Heather: I mean, that would be really beautiful.

[00:19:48] I mean, it's funny because it's like, part of me, Like gets really ragey. And I'm just like, I want things to move fast. Like now, like I, I want this, like, God only knows, like my, [00:20:00] like I have a 15 year old, he's almost 16. And like, I'm like, I think, man, the world he's going to inherit, it's going to be such a shit show.

[00:20:06] And it's like, how do we minimize the amount of shit showiness? So things like that. I'm like, come on, let's move fast. Yes, I know. But I'm not in those positions. Our own and responsibility. Thank goodness. So

[00:20:21] Ashley: it's so hard. Right? And then like these institutions, whether it's like the American government, the Catholic Church, it's hundreds of years and history.

[00:20:31] And then the people who made it up and then the people along the way, like, there's so many. So like, I have the same way I'm like, can we just stop the shit? Like, let's just do whatever we want, but it's like, okay, I can't, I have to remember that there's a history of this. Like everybody can't, we can't change everything at once.

[00:20:50] Cause that's also going to be. Chaos and confusion and for some reason everyone's going to get upset. I don't know why, but whatever, like, whatever [00:21:00] I get it. People can't handle change. I get it. Yeah. So I know it's rough out here.

[00:21:05] USB PnP Audio Device-7: Hi, everybody. I hope you're enjoying this episode of dying with the divine. I'm here because I want to tell you about. Our new segment that we're putting in place, because I don't want to just tell you stories. I want to hear your stories. So if you have a comment or an experience about something that we talk about, or one of the characters ancestors or deities.

[00:21:27] USB PnP Audio Device-10: You can leave a message on my website time with the divine.com. You can leave a voice note there also, or you can email me@dinewithadivinepodatgmail.com. When you tell me your stories, when you leave your comments, I will read them on our bonus episodes. This segment's going to be called last call. Ha ha.

[00:21:47] Get it. I love it. I'm really excited, cause I definitely want to hear more from all of you. So if you are a diners club member, you will hear all these wonderful stories on your episodes. [00:22:00] When I get the comments and so.

[00:22:02] Thanks so.

[00:22:02] much. Can't wait to hear from all of you and keep enjoying the show.

[00:22:07] Ashley: So anyway So on that beautiful note, we're going to talk about our dish of the week.

[00:22:13] So our dish of the week is once again, weird this week, because I was like, we're going to talk about Puritans in a second, because why not? I don't think we've talked about Puritans. Yeah. And Heather hosts Magic in the United States. So let's do it. So I was like what did Puritans eat? Cause that's what I wanted to know.

[00:22:32] So there's like, what's going on in the Puritan kitchen? So there's this I found some excerpts from this cookbook from 1615. Oh yeah, that was called the English Housewife. Now this is, I Yeah, I know. I'm like keep going. So this is making a young Turkey. I don't know why the Turkey has to be young.

[00:22:53] I don't know too much about cooking turkeys. I don't know. I don't know. I guess if you have to pluck the turkey as a situation, I don't know. Anyway, so [00:23:00] this is what it says. If you boil chickens, young turkeys, peahens, whatever that is, any house fowl daintily, you shall after you have trimmed them, drawn them, trussed them, wash them, fill their bellies as full of parsley as can hold, then boil them with salt and water only till they're in Only till they be enough.

[00:23:25] I don't know what that means, but that's fine. Then take a dish and put it in verjuice, which is the juice of sour crab apples and yeah, and butter and salt. And when the butter is melted, take the parsley out of the chicken belly, mince it very small, put it in the crab apple sauce situation and butter and then stir it together.

[00:23:47] And then lay it in the, lay in the chickens, trim the dish with snippets. Stippets. Oh, just fried. Oh, like croutons. Fried or toasted slices of bread and served. Actually, that sounds [00:24:00] okay. I could eat that. That actually sounds okay. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds pretty good. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we'll try that.

[00:24:06] Then if you got some deer meat, you're gonna do this. So you're gonna wash it, clean it, clean all the blood. Hopefully, that'd be great. Then you stick it with cloves. All over the outside. And you, and if it be lean, you shall lard it either with mutton lard, pork lard, but mutton is the best lard. Okay.

[00:24:27] Okay. Then, yeah, then. Then spit, oh, put it on a spit, okay, and then roast it by a soaking fire, which is a slow roasting fire. Okay. Then take vinegar, breadcrumbs, and some gravy, which comes from the venison, and boil them well in a dish. Then season it with sugar, cinnamon, ginger, salt, and serve the venison forth upon the sauce when it is roasted enough.

[00:24:53] Okay.

[00:24:55] Heather: That actually sounds good too.

[00:24:56] Ashley: Yeah. That doesn't sound bad. [00:25:00] Okay. And then the last one is a sauce for a turkey. Okay. So this turkey sauce is take fair water, whatever that means, and set it over a fire. Then slice a good store of onions and put it in, and also salt and pepper and a good store of the gravy that comes from the turkey that you already made.

[00:25:20] Then boil them together. Then take a few fine crumbs of grated bread and thicken it. There. A very little sugar and some vinegar and then serve it up with the turkey. Or take grated white bread and boil it in white wine till it be thick as a gallantine. A sauce made from blood. Okay. Oh,

[00:25:42] Heather: I thought Galentine was like Galentine's Day.

[00:25:44] That's what I thought too.

[00:25:46] Ashley: Right. I know. I'm like, yeah, Galentine's Day is the best. And yeah, love it. And in the boiling put a good store of sugar and cinnamon. Then a little turnsole, which is a plant that's used as red [00:26:00] food coloring, make it of a high murky color and so serve it in saucers with the turkey in the manner of a galantine.

[00:26:08] Okay, so that's turkey gravy what Puritans would have made of turkey gravy.

[00:26:13] Heather: Huh.

[00:26:14] Ashley: Yeah.

[00:26:15] Heather: That's really cool.

[00:26:16] Ashley: Yeah. That's actually neat.

[00:26:17] Heather: And now I, like I used to, I, when you first mentioned Puritans, I was like, oh, I actually know very little about Puritans, but now I'm like, I think I might actually know less about cooking.

[00:26:28] So it might be okay.

[00:26:32] Ashley: I think you're absolutely fine. Also the Puritans are just like, They're just out here being annoying, to be honest. They're doing the most and like nobody asked them to do it. So, Exactly. So now we'll talk about We're going to do tea time, which is going to be our Puritan magic.

[00:26:51] So I'm like, I was like, did the Puritans do magic? I have a question. Cause they were, yeah. Cause they were supposed to be super pure. Right. There's a whole time, like being a [00:27:00] Puritan, they're supposed to be like reading the Bible, like exclusively and just doing stuff in the Bible. Right. So Puritans. Okay.

[00:27:09] So the main thing you need to know is that Puritans saw everything was, magic was devil Puritans saw everything was devil. I think the idol hands are the devil's workshop comes from Puritans. I'm pretty sure they were obsessed with devil. Yeah.

[00:27:21] Heather: Yeah.

[00:27:22] Ashley: Yeah, they were like obsessed with that. Yeah, they love to work.

[00:27:28] So, okay. Whatever girl, that's fine.

[00:27:35] So. So actually, you will know a little bit about this from your other podcast that you had. Yeah. Yeah. So, so they thought everything was the devil, but they didn't care. They did it anyway. So here's the thing there. So, so England, which is where most of Puritans came from. They had a long history of folk magic already.

[00:27:54] And it was done by these cunning women. So this was usually a term used in southern England in the [00:28:00] Midlands and sometimes in Wales. And these people were sometimes known as like wizards or wise men or wise women. And in southern England and Wales, they were known sometimes as conjurers or a word that I can't say because it's in Welsh and I can't pronounce Welsh words.

[00:28:15] I'm so sorry.

[00:28:17] Heather: There's also peller. Peller, I think, is one

[00:28:19] Ashley: of the ones. Yup! That was the next one. In Cornwall, they said they, they use them, they call it Pellers. And then they think it came from the word Expellers. Yeah, so that was interesting. So, they also use the word like white witch or sometimes black witch, depending on what they thought the person was doing.

[00:28:36] And we'll get into that later. So there was no really big widespread persecution at first of like, witches, because most people saw two categories. So they thought you were like, if you were just a cunning woman or like cunning folk, they were like, Oh, you're cool because you're like helping people.

[00:28:55] But you were only a witch if you did something that was bad, and you hurt someone. Yeah, but if [00:29:00] you're just making charms and shit and you're like helping people get better, they're like, that's fine. So some of the spells and charms that had been used in Anglo Saxon polytheism, polytheistic era, they continue to be used after Christianization of England.

[00:29:13] And even though it was like a long time ago, people were still using it. One of the really popular forms of divination back then was egg scrying. So Cracking an egg and putting it in water and trying to read it or doing palm readings. So much so that there was this really famous preacher, this Puritan guy, his name was Cotton Mathers.

[00:29:34] And he used to get pissed off. One time he made a whole sermon about how he was tired of having all these palm reading books in the new world. He's like, this is crazy! Everyone stop reading palms! He was tired of it. He just, right. He wouldn't stop talking about it. Cotton. Sorry. Pastor Cotton was pissed.

[00:29:53] So, so another thing was because now back in these days, well, now too, [00:30:00] because, Women were had a lesser position in society. Whatever their husbands did was going to affect them. So a lot of the time that people go into these cunning folk or quote unquote, which is whoever they felt they were good or bad.

[00:30:13] They Were women because they had to figure out what the fuck was going on. Like, are we going to have to move? Are we going to be poor? Are we going to be rich? Because I don't know. My husband controls my whole life.. So, this, so there was an industry for women, by women, and the one thing they also did was like, it would help people find, they would help people find stuff, these cunning folk, that was nice.

[00:30:34] It was also very popular to hex people, like if someone pissed you off, someone probably stole your chickens, you gotta hex them a little bit, because don't steal somebody else's chickens, that's not nice. It was also really popular to use puppets or like dolls that people would use in the whole voodoo doll style, right?

[00:30:53] Afflicting them, poking them where they wanted the person to get hurt. They would use ritual charms a lot that would have [00:31:00] prayers written from like Catholic masses in like these charms. So the thing about Puritans is they didn't like Catholic people. So this was also like bad, right? Like, Yeah. The whole thing was that Puritans thought that like Catholic people were doing the most they didn't think they needed to do, have all this, that money.

[00:31:16] And they didn't think that the way they read the Bible was right. They didn't like all the politics. So having these little Catholic prayers written down in charms, like that was magic and it was bad. And they were like, so also there was a couple interesting things that I read that was like, this is how you find out if someone hexed you.

[00:31:33] Okay. So if you needed to find out if someone was hexed you, you would take your own urine. And then you would boil it with nails, and then the logic was, if you did this, the person who hexed you, their urine was going to boil inside their body. And I was like, what? So they would have hot urine, and they'd be very [00:32:00] uncomfortable.

[00:32:00] With rusty nails and pins. Yeah, ooh, yeah, that sounds like a UTI of hell. Like, yeah! Pretty much, it's a pretty, pretty bad one. Another one they would do is they would make these urine cakes, which sounds bad and gross. So they would get urine and they would mix them in with rye flour. They'd make a cake of it and then feed it to a dog.

[00:32:27] Which is mean. Don't do that. So then if the dog, wait, what, were

[00:32:32] Heather: we gonna say something? I mean, I was like, I don't know. Like I've seen dogs eat all kinds of strange shit. I'm sure they're probably like, Oh, rye flour, a little bit of pee in it.

[00:32:45] That's probably true. I think the intention is probably not cool. Cause that's anyway, I'll let you keep talking. No, it's fine.

[00:32:53] Ashley: The intention is not cool. I'm thinking of my sister's dog and she'd probably eat it a little bit. She'd probably be like sniff it and [00:33:00] be like, ah this is probably a treat.

[00:33:01] I'll eat this. Yeah. Yeah. She, if we just tell her it's a treat, she'll eat it. Like she don't care. So, love you pink. So then. If the dog started acting the way, the person had acted, who was, like, afflicted, then they knew they were hexed, and oh no, now they have to fix that. So, people are like, how did the magic actually come to these Puritans?

[00:33:23] Like, how did they figure this out? If they're so obsessed with the Bible and just being super, Super Christian, how did it happen? The thing about it was the people who came to the colonies were not all Puritans. There was a mix of people and sometimes The Puritans will learn it from other people, but also, they were living in this wild, unsettled place.

[00:33:47] So they were like, whatever will work. If we gotta make a urine cake, we're making a urine cake. If we've gotta make some poppets, let's make some poppets. Whatever. Nobody knows what's going on here. There's, The native people were here and they didn't [00:34:00] know how to deal with them.

[00:34:00] Obviously that's still going on today. Everybody's a hot mess. So they were like, if we got to use whatever magic we know, let's do it. So the Puritans also had a very specific lack of like any type of ritual. They didn't really have in Catholicism, there's a lot of rituals, Puritans didn't have that.

[00:34:19] So to have ritual, like we don't realize it. I think sometimes. In the world that we live in that's very like secular most of the time. That like we love rituals, right? We love having to do something a certain way. It makes you feel very connected to whatever you're doing or whatever it's about.

[00:34:37] And I think people just lack that as humans. They didn't have it. So having something like that made them feel better. And also, If you're in a situation where you don't know what to do, or you feel like you have no power, and doing a ritual makes you feel like you have power, you're gonna do it, to feel better, so, there was that. They also believed So when it came to divination too, this is interesting. Puritans always, they believed that [00:35:00] everything was predestined already. So it was like, if you get a reading, it's fine because this was already gonna happen to you. You're just basically like asking God what's gonna happen.

[00:35:09] So it's okay. It's not a bad thing. And they all considered it folk magic, not like witch, like again, if it was okay, if nobody was getting hurt, it was folk magic. But if somebody was getting hurt, that was witchcraft. So then getting a little later and a little more south from the Puritans, like say they were in Massachusetts, right?

[00:35:27] You're gonna go down south, New England area, to like Virginia in 1644, a little farther in the future, maybe 20 years. There was this guy who was the governor and he met this guy who claimed to know all this stuff about astro astrological magic and necromancy. So we went from like real light to dark.

[00:35:44] Magic to like real deep magic. All of a sudden,

[00:35:47] Heather: I'm like, what?

[00:35:50] Ashley: So like the Puritans when they came, they didn't really have a lot of money or anything. But then these guys when they were coming a little bit later, they had money. So they had money, they had wealth, they had books, they could [00:36:00] read. And then So there's this guy, his name was Thomas Tickle, and he had 333 books of occult text in his library, and this is in 1697.

[00:36:09] Yeah, I was like, damn, okay. Exactly. I was like, sir, where'd you get all those books? You had to have them imported? Books are heavy. Yeah, get them on that boat to England. That's a lot. So he had books about alchemy, astrological medicine, Rosicrucian texts, and Kabbalistic texts. Also astrology was very popular during the colonial period.

[00:36:32] It was, so weirdly enough, it was considered okay if you're using it for a medical reason. So yeah, so it was like, sometimes they'd be like, Oh, if such and such happened to you, you need to do this on this certain date because it's better and it will work better, whatever. And also it was fighting like, for farmers and for people had to who had to Live off the land and things like that, then it was fine.

[00:36:58] So that's [00:37:00] mostly my the history I got on some colonial magic here. I got a lot of this from a really good video from this guy. I think it's Esoterica on YouTube. He has a lot of really good videos. Yeah. Yeah, so I got it from him. So that's we're going to stop in time because I'm like, we could go on and on, but I'm not going to

[00:37:16] Heather: that's rad.

[00:37:16] And I would just say to and this is something that comes up in my podcast a lot is that when you have these practices like that often, especially in the present day or folks who are out who don't do those practices, we call it magic, but the people who are doing it would never in a million years have called it.

[00:37:32] And so if you had a midwife and she came and was like helping you give birth or whatever, and then the baby died, like that might be one of those circumstances where you like, you know what? She's a witch. Exactly. But before that, before something bad goes down, like she's just a midwife, right?

[00:37:48] Yes. And astrology that line between what was a science and what was an esoteric or occult practice got really blurry. That sort of distinction between all of this stuff over here [00:38:00] is esoteric and occult and woo. And all of this over here is science. That's a fairly modern invention in terms of how we think about these things.

[00:38:08] And there's a philosopher, Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, who wrote this amazing book called the myth of disenchantment that really unpacks that. And for like, cunning folk stuff, which is super, super fascinating Owen Davies is a historian in the UK and he's got a bunch of books and he has a really great one on magic and witchcraft in the United States in relation to cunning craft too.

[00:38:30] Ashley: Ooh. Okay. Ooh. I'm gonna put that in the show notes. So if you guys want to read more about that, I think that's a great source. Ooh. I love that. Okay. Yay. Yay. All right, so now we're gonna have our story time and when we're done you'll be like, why did you tell this story? It's just cuz it's weird But it has a lot to do with occult people and occult figures So don't worry.

[00:38:56] It's gonna be fine. So Have you ever [00:39:00] heard do you know who Jack Parsons is? Yeah. All right. Here we go. We're going to go on a wild ride, everybody. Yeah. Good times. Buckle up. Get

[00:39:08] Heather: your rocket ships ready.

[00:39:09] Ashley: I know. I was like, the whole time. And I like, okay, so I was like researching. I was like, oh, let's see if some occultists who are like from the United States, since we were going to chat.

[00:39:18] And I was like, huh. And I saw this name, Jack Parsons. I couldn't remember. How I knew who this guy was. I was like, I know this name, I know this name. And then I remembered, and we're going to see later on why I knew this guy, but oh my God. So, okay. So let me tell you about the secular Jack Parsons first.

[00:39:35] So this guy, he's born John Whiteside Parsons. That was his full name. Was born October 2nd, 1914. He was a rocket engineer, a chemist, and. He was just like really fricking smart. So he was associated with Caltech. He was one of the founders of both. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation.[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] He invented the first rocket engine that used a castable composite rocket propellant. And pioneered the advancement of both liquid fuel and solid fuel rockets. So , this guy was smart as shit. Like, he was really cool. Well, this part of him was. Okay, don't worry. So, he was born in Los Angeles.

[00:40:21] When he was born, things were cool, he had his mother and his father. And they were, a well off family. So what had happened was, though, his mom found out that his dad was seeing sex workers, she didn't like that, and they got divorced. Now his dad moved to Boston or something and Jack stayed with his mom.

[00:40:40] His dad was the breadwinner. So his mom was like, oh shit, what are we gonna do? So his mom came from a pretty wealthy ish family. So her parents were like, don't worry. We're gonna come down there to Pasadena. We're gonna all buy a house. We're all gonna live together. It's gonna be fine.

[00:40:57] So they did. So Jack lived in a good [00:41:00] part of town. So we went to school. He did pretty badly in school, but they think he had, undiagnosed dyslexia, probably. And he really loved mythology and science fiction. He was really into reading all these books.

[00:41:12] And then when he was young, he also started to develop an interest in like rockets. And in 1928, he began doing these rocket experiments with his friend, Edward Foreman. He had like just a few friends. He also started investigating like occultism and he started to perform these. One time he performed a ritual that he tried to invoke the devil into his bedroom, but then he got scared.

[00:41:37] So he stopped because he thought it worked. So he's like, Oh, shit. So he stopped. He went to Pasadena Junior College and then Stanford, but then his dad, Grandpa died. So his grandpa had most of the money, so he wasn't able to continue. And it was also like the Great Depression at this point. So then in [00:42:00] 1934, he united with Foreman, his friend, and his other friend, Namalina, and they formed the Caltech affiliated Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory.

[00:42:10] rocket research group. And then in 1939, he gained funding from the National Academy of Sciences to work on a jet assisted takeoff for the U. S. military. And after the U. S. entered World War II, he founded the Aerojet company in 1942 and developed JATTO technology. Okay. So that's his secular life.

[00:42:31] So he was smart. Yeah. And he was into rockets and that's cool. So here's where it gets crazy, everybody. So in 1939, we're going to go back. In 1939, he had this friend and they, no, he had this couple friend. Okay. By the way, he was married to a lady named Helen. She's really in this story. You'll see. So So he's married to this woman named Helen.

[00:42:54] Him and Helen are cool. So he had this friend named John and his wife, no, sorry, they were brother and sister. [00:43:00] He had this friend John and his sister Frances. They were like, oh, come and hang out with at this the church of Thelema.

[00:43:06] Now, if you're like, what's Thelema? Or some of you are like, I know what Thelema is. I'm going to tell you a sec. So it was on Winona Boulevard in Hollywood. So he went there with his friends and with his wife and they witnessed this Gnostic mass and the celebrants of the church, they included a bunch of actors and there was a gay rights activist named Harry Hay.

[00:43:27] So they were there and they were having a great time. And Parsons was like, Ooh, this is really cool. I think I've heard of this because of the founder, a little guy named Alastair Crowley, anybody? You all know who that is. So, he was the founder of the Ordo Templi Or, yeah, I think so. The OTO, that's how we'll call it the OTO.

[00:43:49] So the OTO is the organization and th lema. And so Parson had already read Crowley's books, like he was into it, especially one called [00:44:00] NOx on px. He read that and he was like into it. He really liked it. So, Parsons then he met all these other people.

[00:44:06] He met this lady named Regina Call, Jane Wolfe, and the guy who ran the church at the time, Wolford Talbert Smith. He was like the head of that church in California. So, He said, Parsons, that he felt both repulsion and attraction for Smith. He didn't know what was going on, but he was like, this place is crazy.

[00:44:27] So he would go there once in a while throughout the next year, go to events, not go to events. And he would take his wife and they were like into it. So he continued to read all these different books by Crowley. He kept getting more and more into it. And he also was encouraging his wife to get more and more into it.

[00:44:45] And he really believed that thelemic magic had a lot to do with quantum science, which he understood really well because he was a chemist and he made rockets and all that kind of stuff. So he thought, Oh, this all has to go. This all goes [00:45:00] together. So he tried to even get a lot of his friends into it.

[00:45:03] Some of them were like, Bro, no, thank you. But a lot of them were like, No, this is cool. Yeah. He had a friend named Grady Lewis McMurdy. McMurtry, sorry, Grady Lewis McMurtry. And he was a Caltech student that he was really good friends with. And then McMurtry's fiance, Claire, he was also good friends with, got her into it.

[00:45:24] And then Helen's sister, Sarah also got into it. So he brought a couple of people in. Now, Jack and Helen were then initiated into the Agape Lodge, is what the place was called, the lodge. And. Then it was renamed the Church of Thelema later in February 1941. So he adopted the Thelemic motto of Thelema Obtentum Proidero Amoris.

[00:45:51] New PTA, which is a Latin mistranslation of the establishment of the Lama through the rituals of love. So apparently he used to say this [00:46:00] all the time, but it wasn't even right. And Crowley used to make fun of him because he's like, bro, you're not even saying it right. But he didn't care. Parsons is just going to say what he wanted.

[00:46:08] He didn't care about that at all. He used to also have the phrase is Topan, which is the motto, and he used to put it everywhere. And he also said it represented the Kabbalistic numerology, 210, which was something that he associated with the occult. So all that stuff was happening. And then Helen became known as Soror Vermod.

[00:46:32] That's like her new magical name. So Smith, that's the guy who's the head of the church. He wrote to Crowley and he was like, ooh, Parsons is the best. He's super into it. I love having him part of the church. He's great. And then Wolfe, his other friend, Jane Wolfe, she wrote to the German OTO representative, this other guy named Grimmer.

[00:46:52] And he was like, oh my gosh, Jack is the best. He's an A1 kind of guy. He reminds me of Crowley. He's so cool. So everybody loved [00:47:00] that. Crowley was like, Oh, this is great. I love him. He's so great. And even Crowley Smith said to Parsons, Oh no, Crowley said no, I'm not going to read that part. Anyway, let me move on.

[00:47:11] Okay. My quotes are all getting confused. Okay. So here's where it also gets juicy guys. There's a lot of tea in this story. So Helen went away for a little bit. She had to go somewhere in June, 1941. And Jack started sleeping with her sister.

[00:47:29] So Jack, okay, so here's the other thing. In the OTO, it was very free love, more than free love. It was like everybody was back. Like that was just seemed what was going on here. So everybody was banging. It was fine. Everybody's cool with it. And then Jack started begging Sarah, Helen's sister. So when Helen came back, Sarah was like, Oh, Hey sis, by the way, Jack's my husband now, and Sarah and Helen's like, what?

[00:47:56] And then Jack was like, yeah. And by the way, Helen, I actually think [00:48:00] Sarah's hotter than you. No lie, that's what he said. That's crazy. I can't believe he talked to his wife like that. Even if you don't like her anymore, you don't have to say that about her. I think your sister's hotter. That's mean.

[00:48:13] It's so mean. I can't believe he said that. So, Helen now is upset, obviously, because her husband's sleeping with her sister. Like, who wouldn't be upset? So she goes to Smith because that's her friend and she's so upset. Oh my God, Smith. I can't believe can you believe that Jack's sleeping with Claire?

[00:48:34] Not Claire. Jack's sleeping with Sarah and Smith's Oh there. And then Smith and Helen started sleeping together. Yep. Sure. It did. And now Helen and Smith and Jack and Sarah, they, at first they were like fighting, right? But now they're all cool. Like they're all friends now.

[00:48:52] So everything worked out in the end. It was okay. And Jack now lives with Sarah. So, now, [00:49:00] those two couples, along with a whole bunch of other members of the church, they all moved to this one house, which was like a big mansion on South Orange Grove Boulevard. It was the American Craftsman's Fowl Mansion, if you need to know.

[00:49:15] And all the babies. And anybody who had kids, they brought their kids too. So they're all living. They all contributed 100 a month for rent. And they all lived, like, communally, and it was all cool. And this was, like, the new base of their church. And they had a bunch of livestock that they kept for meat, as well as, if they had to do, like, a blood ritual.

[00:49:34] Okay, cool. Whatever, as long as everybody's cool with it. Jack he decorated his new room with a big statue of Pan, swords and daggers everywhere. He converted the garage to a laundry room and, no, he converted the garage and laundry room into a chemical laboratory. And he often held, science fiction discussions in the kitchen.

[00:49:53] And he entertained the kids for, hours, because 25 acre garden. So he'd take the kids on, fire hairy hunts and stuff. He was [00:50:00] having a good time. It was cute. So, now, everybody, they're all living together, they're people, they argue sometimes, it's not a big deal. But everybody was super into Thelma, especially Jack.

[00:50:10] So, he gave almost all of his salary to the OTO, like he would give all his money. He was basically supporting a bunch of the members and he was supporting Crowley who was still in London. He would give his money to Grummer, the German guy would give it to Crowley. Which is okay, messed up, but also we're going to do one of these days, I'm going to do it.

[00:50:32] We're going to do a whole episode just about Crowley because his life was actually mad. So, yeah, and at this point I think he was on a ton of drugs because I think this is like by the time he was like at the end of his life and he was doing a lot of drugs. Anyway, so Parsons, he Realize that so he was so so into Thelema that it started to affect his personal life because he would take this to work basically.

[00:50:54] He would appear at work. Okay, he works at like a jet factory. He's making rocket fuel. [00:51:00] Probably shouldn't be hungover, right?

[00:51:05] Like maybe don't. Be like, you just threw up in the parking lot when you have to like, make jets. It's like, it's probably not a good idea. Not a good look, Jack. So, he comes to work, hungover, not good. And he was always talking about, like, and he would be sleep deprived because he'd be doing all these rituals into the night.

[00:51:26] And at first, everybody was like, that's fine. Oh, there goes Jack and his weird magic shit. But after a while, they were like, Jack, Like, this is affecting your work. Like this is getting really weird. And it was affecting the day to day business. Cause Jack couldn't like get himself together.

[00:51:42] So, He also was like singing all the time and reciting poetry and they were like, can you just like do chemistry for a minute? You're at work. So that's he, so be that because he was like a big part of like the day [00:52:00] to day business of the, it was his Company with his two friends the FBI started to be like this is getting weird and the police started to investigate So what I like was reading before it was like nobody really said anything about it because they weren't bothering anybody But once Jack started acting weird at work, they were like, okay, you're like working for the government now You can't do this.

[00:52:20] It's getting too much. So Then, apparently, the FBI started receiving these allegations of a black magic cult that was involved. They had all these sex orgies, which they probably did have sex orgies, but it seems like everybody was pretty much consenting. And there was a complainant a 16 year old boy who said that he was assaulted at the lodge.

[00:52:42] And there was numerous reports of a ritual involving naked pregnant women jumping through fire. I don't know. I don't know about all that. But one thing I do know is, first of all, if somebody says they were assaulted. But I don't know what happened. But also, it seems like there was a point that things started to change.

[00:52:58] So people started to come out with all [00:53:00] these accusations that nobody had before. So I don't know what happened. But then Parsons told them he's No, it's just an organization and we're dedicated speculations. So then they did an investigation. They said, Okay, fine, you guys aren't doing anything wrong.

[00:53:14] Maybe just don't come to work drunk anymore. Like, it's okay. So now it's like, oh, I don't know the year yet. Don't worry about it. But anyway, it's been we've been going for a while Jack was a really heavy user of alcohol and marijuana. He always had been but now he was using cocaine amphetamines peyote Miss Colleen and other opiates.

[00:53:37] So he was just like drugged out now. And he continued to have a lot of sex with a lot of people. So they said that Jack, he was just a womanizer. That's what I read from every source. They said he was a womanizer. Some reports say he was very like effeminate. So some people did think he was gay. And there was a couple reports of people saying he was gay.

[00:53:57] It doesn't matter. But the one thing I read everywhere was [00:54:00] like he was banging. Like he was banging all these ladies. So then he got into trouble because he was also banging Claire. Claire was his friend, McMurdy's fiancee, and McMurdy got pissed because Jack tried to pay for Claire to have an abortion.

[00:54:17] Now, I don't know what McMurdy was mad about, the abortion or the pregnancy. I'm thinking he was probably mad that he got his fiancee pregnant in first place. I don't know about the abortion. But after that, they their friendship broke down because, that's an awkward situation. So now things are going along and Crowley and Grummer, they want Smith, who's the other guy who's in charge of the church to get out.

[00:54:40] They don't, they think that he's a bad influence on the members and they want to put Parsons in his place. But Parsons, he really has like an affinity for Smith. He really likes him and they're really good friends. And he's with his ex basically, and he still likes him and Helen are still cool. So, [00:55:00] Parsons and Helen wrote a letter defending Smith, but then Grimmer told them they better shut that letter down because they already made this decision.

[00:55:09] So, Parsons was put as temporary head of the lodge. The other members didn't really like Parsons as much, but he used to make these really intense charismatic speeches. So people really like that. And people were like, okay, maybe he's really into it. It's fine. And they also, again, most people didn't like him because they thought he was banging everybody too much and causing too many problems.

[00:55:32] They're like, maybe stop having sex with everybody's wives and maybe husbands. Maybe chill with that. But he didn't. So then, now Parsons is in charge. So Parsons, now he created this like, journal where he was writing poetry, and like, Crowley thought his poetry was bad, so he told him to stop. Crowley's like, this is terrible poetry, stop writing and using my money to do it.

[00:55:59] And apparently, [00:56:00] he was talking about all his drug use in the poetry, and Crowley didn't like that. He's like, that's a bad look, don't do that. Alright, so now Helen, Jack's ex, she gave birth to a son by, she gave birth to a son by Smith, but gave that son the last name Parsons. I don't know why. Whatever. So Smith and Ellen, then they left and they moved into a two bedroom cabin away from there with the baby.

[00:56:27] So now at the same time in England, Crowley looked at the astrological analysis of Smith in a birth chart and came to the conclusion that Smith was the incarnation of a god and he should go on retreat. This is just like another thing that Crowley was just trying to get rid of Smith. He didn't want him there.

[00:56:45] He was like, okay, now, dude, actually, you're a god, so you have to do something else. And everybody's like, what? Since when? Everybody knew, that Crowley was just bullshitting, but whatever, they're like, it's fine. So [00:57:00] then Smith just resigned because he was getting tired of everybody trying to boot him out.

[00:57:04] He resigned from the OTO. Parsons felt bad for Smith, and he would just let him, stay around, though. He wouldn't, kick him out of the place. So, Parsons also continued to financially support Smith and Helen even though him and Helen had officially now gotten a divorce. It was fine. And Crowley told Smith Crowley told Jack to stop talking to Smith, but he wouldn't, because they're friends.

[00:57:29] So now, in comes a new character. There came this guy to the lodge, and he had a name, you may have heard of him, L. Ron Halbert. He came, and he started, he moved into the lodge, and him and Parsons became really close. So, Parsons wrote to Crowley, and he was like, Listen, L. Ron Halbert never done a magical thing in his life, but there's something about this guy, and I like him.

[00:57:53] I don't know what it is, he's super magical, I'm so glad he's here. And he's whatever. [00:58:00] Now. Parsons, Jack, and Sarah, Helen's sister, who he's now with, they had an open relationship, obviously, I hope so, because Jack was banging everybody else, I hope Sarah, is okay, as long as she's cool with that.

[00:58:15] So they had an open relationship, and Sarah then became obsessed with L. Ron Hubbard, and she was like, I gotta be with L. Ron Hubbard. So, Parsons, Jack, became super jealous, even though he's out here banging everybody and their mom. He was so jealous of Sarah, how dare he be in love with L. Ron Hubbard. So, it's fine, whatever, it was just happening.

[00:58:38] But now, Because of this Jack got weirder like he wanted to do all this stuff that everybody was like, what are you doing? So the people in the lodge he wanted to do quote unquote black magic Which I don't know the definitions here that the OTO has but according to the what I was reading this what they said It was some magic that everybody was like don't do that.

[00:58:59] Like it's bad [00:59:00] So he started to try to invoke all these spells spirits. And apparently he invoked a bunch of banshees one time. And yeah, and there was screaming and everybody was freaked out and they were like, please stop. Then, okay, this is a weird one and I have to read it. Sorry. I'm going to read this straight out the Wikipedia page.

[00:59:17] In 1945, Parsons began a series of rituals based on Enochtian magic where he masturbated onto a magical tablet accompanied by Sergei Prokiev's second violin concerto. Okay, so apparently he's doing this weird ritual, L. Ron Hubbard's in the corner writing all of it down. This sounds like a lot. He's jerking off onto some tablets.

[00:59:42] It's too much. We're all like, and everybody's Jack, this is weird. So apparently he did this to invoke this this deity name to Babon. He wanted to reincarnate this deity, this dilemma goddess. So after the, he did a bunch of these different [01:00:00] things and he would have all these visions and his friends were doing this.

[01:00:04] It was a whole thing. So then he did another ritual. I don't know if it was like this, but it was somewhat similar. Anyway, it was the last ritual. He said, this is the last ritual I'm doing. When he got back to the house, he went to the Mojave desert to do this ritual. Once he got back to the house, there was this lady there.

[01:00:21] Her name's Marjorie Cameron and she was an unemployed formie former Navy wave, which I'm not sure what that is. I have to look it up. But somehow she was associated with the Navy. She had come to visit the lodge. So Jack started having sex with her, but he was sex magic because he believed that she was this god, Babon, that he tried to invoke.

[01:00:47] Now, Marjorie just thought they were banging. Marjorie had no idea. Marjorie was like, oh, I'm just having sex with this guy. And no lie, Jack was like a good looking guy. Like, I was looking at pictures. I was like, Jack was cute. I [01:01:00] don't blame all these women for trying to bang Jack.

[01:01:02] But later on, Marjorie was like, I didn't know we were doing sex magic. I just thought we were having sex. Whatever. So everybody in the house apparently knew that's what they were doing. But except Marjorie, nobody told her. So, it was weird. Everybody kept like, I guess they would bang.

[01:01:17] And then like, they would come out and everybody's like, what happened? And she's like, I don't know. We just banged. Like, why is everybody screaming? not what we're doing. So Cameron, she also said sometimes that she would see UFOs and she was telling him about that. Okay, so then Parsons read another novel that Crowley had written called Moonchild and Him and Hubbard were like we're gonna make a magical baby somehow through somebody through immaculate conception Okay, fine.

[01:01:49] So they were like it's gonna be born to a woman somewhere on earth in nine months We're gonna do this whole ritual and see what happens So they were doing this [01:02:00] ritual again, embodying Babylon this God. And Cameron then was like, okay, this is getting like really crazy. I think I got to bounce.

[01:02:10] And Parsons was like, okay, I'm going to go into the desert and I'm going to like, Do all this other magic stuff. It's very confusing. He just went to the desert to do more magic stuff. He told Crowley about it. Crowley was like, that's weird. Why are you doing that? If Aleister Crowley tells you something's weird, it's weird.

[01:02:29] He said, don't try to make a baby that doesn't make sense. So then stuff was getting weird and. Then they were like, Jack was running out of money. So he had to end up selling the lodge. So he did. And they had to meet elsewhere for rituals.

[01:02:45] And I guess he had to move. So he also like he just everything was going downhill. Remember, Jack is doing tons of drugs. So everything isn't functioning the way it used to. So then he co founded a company called Allied Enterprises with Hubbard and Sarah, [01:03:00] and he invested his life savings, which was 20, 000.

[01:03:03] I don't know, the conversion is probably, a million dollars since inflation's so bad. So, so he gave him all his money. So Hubbard then was like, Oh, okay. Thanks for giving me your money. What we're going to do is I'm going to go to Miami and I'm going to purchase three yachts, and then I'm going to sail them through the Panama canal.

[01:03:20] And then we're going to sell them. I don't know why this was a plan that anybody thought was a good idea. This is, sounds like the scammiest scam in Scamville. I don't know. I was like, what? So meanwhile. Parsons was like, yeah, sure. I don't know if Parsons was in his total right mind because all of his friends were like, bro, this is a terrible idea.

[01:03:43] He said no. I trust Hubbard and Sarah. You shouldn't. So now Hubbard had secretly requested permission from the U. S. Navy to sail to China and South and Central America on a mission to collect writing materials. [01:04:00] Okay. What's that? What? You got balloons. Let's see. That was

[01:04:05] Heather: amazing.

[01:04:06] Ashley: Oh, that was weird.

[01:04:08] Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I've never. I know. I didn't know this program gave you balloons when you do hand signals. Okay. I gotta reset that. I know now.

[01:04:23] Heather: That felt synchronous. I know. Okay. I was I'm writing material. That was so cool.

[01:04:32] Ashley: I know.

[01:04:33] Heather: Okay, wait. Just so listeners who don't see the video know what happened. So, Ashley just did like air quotes like with her fingers describing how like L. Ron Hubbard was going to go to like South America to collect, Writing material air quotes.

[01:04:47] I'm trying to recreate it. It's not working. So she did air quotes in the video and these like animated balloons started floating up in front of her and like, I was like, are those

[01:04:58] Ashley: real balloons? [01:05:00] What's going on? Can you imagine if all of a sudden like we're just chatting and like, Balloons just start flying all over me and you're like, I was like,

[01:05:09] Heather: I was, and then, I mean, okay, I just need to say too, we use Riverside for all the interviews for my podcast.

[01:05:15] I've never seen that. That's amazing. You invoked balloons. I guess

[01:05:19] Ashley: so. I'm talking about Babylon and all these people I'm invoking. Okay. Okay. Oh my God. Sorry. No, this was an important part of the show. Cause that's never happened to me either while I was interviewing anybody. That's never, okay. I have to research this later on and be like, Riverside, what are you guys doing over there?

[01:05:40] Oh my gosh. That is hilarious. So Alvron Hubbard, who didn't have balloons, but he had a scam in mind. He left with these boats and then Parsons Jack Parsons was broke. He gave him his life savings and he found out when he realized like, oh my [01:06:00] god, they're not coming back.

[01:06:01] He found, he discovered that they left from Miami with 10, 000 of the money that they were supposed to use for these boats. He found where L Ron Hubbard was and he's like, Oh my God, this is a scam. But then L Ron Hubbard called him. He was like no, it's chill. It's chill.

[01:06:14] It's chill. Calm down. It's a business thing. For some reason, Jack believed them. I don't know why. But then Crowley, he was gossiping about Jack to Grimmer, the German guy. And he's like, Jack is a weak fool. And L Ron Hubbard got the best of him. Then Parsons, he changed his mind. Once he found out that everyone's making fun of him, and he ran to Miami to try to find them, and he placed a temporary injunction and restraining order on Hubbard and Sarah.

[01:06:44] So then he tracked them down to this harbor in County Causeway, and he discovered that they had purchased the three yachts, but they tried to flee. on the yachts to get away from Jack.

[01:06:58] but they were forced to [01:07:00] return to port because they hit a squall, like a storm situation. So then Jack was convinced that he had brought them back to shore through a lesser banishing ritual that he had done, which invocated barbs, Bart Zabel, a vengeful spirit of Mars.

[01:07:18] So he's like, Oh, I use magic and I got you guys back. So then they dissolved this business that they had, Allied Enterprises, in court. And L. Ron Hubbard was required to promise to reimburse Jack. Jack was so discouraged about this whole thing and he was so upset that Sarah had done this. But Sarah then was like, we're not going to pay you.

[01:07:40] I'm gonna call the cops and say that report you for statutory rape. Because when they started sleeping together, Sarah was 17. Jack was, I don't remember how old, but he was like probably in his mid late twenties. So she's like, I'm gonna report you to the police. Don't bother me and [01:08:00] L. Ron. So, Parkinson, he got nervous, and he was like fine.

[01:08:04] And they only gave him like 3, 000. Meanwhile, they took 20, 000 from him, and, on Hubbard, he was already married! But he went and then married Sarah! When he was already married to a lady named Margaret Grubb and then he went on to do what he did, Dianetics and Scientology and all that bullshit, but a lot of the stuff that he got from that also came from The OTO so then the church of Scientology, they like have released statements saying basically, This is not true. I don't think it is, at least. I'm not a lawyer, but the Church of Scientology's release statement saying that L. Ron Hubbard was sent as an undercover agent by the U.

[01:08:50] S. Navy to intercept and destroy Parson's Black Magic cult and to save Sarah from influence. Now, I don't know why the U. S. Navy needed to [01:09:00] save Sarah. Like, that doesn't really make a lot of sense. Sarah was not an asset. She was just a regular ass person, but okay. So they made up this story to like, I, kind of disassociate L.

[01:09:13] Ron Hubbard from the O. T. O., from Aleister Crowley, but he was living there for a while. And then he wrote Jack went back to California after all this drama, he completed the sale of the parsonage, which was then demolished, and he resigned from the OTO because he was like a hot ass mess at this time.

[01:09:31] And he wrote that he did not believe as an autocratic organization that the OTO constitutes a true and proper medium for the expression and attainment of the lemma. So Jack wrote a lot of other occult books and He was a libertarian. He wrote books about that. Historians of Western esoteric tradition cite him as one of the most prominent figures in propagating thelema across the United States and North America at [01:10:00] large.

[01:10:00] Although he, at the time, people didn't look at him as like a big deal in even the scientific community especially 'cause he never had like formal training as a scientist. He didn't finish college, but he was just smart. Some people are just really smart. But so now he's known for being a big deal in FMA in the us.

[01:10:17] But also being this rocket science and that was the craziest person that I've read about lately. The story of Jack, oh, and then in the 1940s, I mean he died in 1947, quick note He got into some trouble because everybody thought he was a communist with the whole McCarthy era thing. And some people think he was murdered, but actually what they think happened is he was messing with some chemicals.

[01:10:41] He may have been a little bit drugged up and he dropped something that was combustible and he died. And that's what they saw. Some people said, Oh, it was a suicide. Some people said it was a setup. What most likely happened is he was not totally clear headed and he dropped something he knew not to drop,

[01:10:55] so that's the story of Jack Parsons. He said, I'm here. [01:11:00] I'm here for a good time. Not a long time. He's the definition of that. Yeah. So that's the lemma and Jack Parsons in the U. S.

[01:11:10] Heather: Oh, yeah. It's such a there's a book and also a TV show, although they only did one season about Jack Parsons called the Strange Angel.

[01:11:18] And it was, it's the first season is so good. So just spoiler alert. They canceled it after that first season, right? When L1 run Hubbard shows up and it's really disappointing cause like that's when it starts getting really good. But Marjorie Cameron is a fascinating figure. And one of the things that often doesn't get written about is just the profound role of women and occultism and esotericism.

[01:11:42] And Marjorie Cameron just after Jack died, she went on to lead this amazing, astounding life. And like, you have to look at like the sort of. Communal living, the open relationships of free love. If you look at a lot of that in a historical context in terms of like, this was like [01:12:00] 1950s California, right?

[01:12:01] And then by the time Jack died, like we're getting into the counterculture movement. Yes. So this wasn't just a Jack Parsons, the Lama thing. There was these larger cultural shifts that were happening at that time. And I think even with something like Dianetics, I think and this is something that happens when I'm interviewing scholars a lot of the time is that it's hard sometimes to set yourself some distance from the subject so that you can just say these things were meaningful to people at this time.

[01:12:30] It's weird as hell to me in my life, but that's okay. Like there's going to be somebody someday who looks at me and is like, what is she doing? That's the strangest thing ever. She was like walking in the woods in New Jersey. So I think and like, Thelema. And the OTO are really big, vibrant practices today.

[01:12:50] There's a great podcast called Thalema Now, which is hosted by Harper Feist. And anybody who's curious about like, Well, okay, here's the story of [01:13:00] Jack Parsons, but what is Thelema, what's up with that name? Yeah. That's a really great one. And so I think it's like, it's really worth listening to contemporary practitioners because often it's oh, like what they're doing doesn't actually sound that strange.

[01:13:12] Yeah. Because like anything, it evolves.

[01:13:15] Ashley: 100 percent and I hope like, okay, so I'll talk about things being weird. And again, like if you this is what people do. I'm not here to insult anybody. Yeah, I'm just this is just the context of the story. I was like, this is crazy. Like, to me again. Oh, no. Yeah.

[01:13:31] Heather: No, it's yeah, sorry. Like I was on. I was on some preliminary interviews earlier today, with a bunch of scholars about new thought and new thought led to this. It's just really a kind of big sprawling thing because it's still with us today. So like whenever you get on Instagram and like hashtag law of attraction, yeah, hashtag manifesting, or that's all new thought.

[01:13:56] And I, when I was talking with these scholars, [01:14:00] they were, and this is not all of them. I think they didn't know me and they didn't know my podcast. So they were like, they were talking in a very dismissive way about people who participate in that. And I was like, Yeah. Like every religious spiritual practice has problems, right?

[01:14:16] Because it's, they're practiced by people and people have problems. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, like, people make terrible choices in their lives. And like being able to parse out, when is that a function of a belief system and when of, when is it like just that person making a really shitty choice?

[01:14:36] Like that happens in. Every religion, every practice. So I don't know. It's something that's on my brain a lot. Cause I get really dismissive of it too. And I'm like trying to train myself to like, not be. Yeah. It's like, it's been really cool. Cause I'm like, Oh, these are my biases. Cool. I now have to engage with you.

[01:14:57] And Not be [01:15:00] biased. Shit.

[01:15:00] Ashley: Exactly. Hard work. It's so hard. And I really, I try to do the same thing. Like I try, I like I never want to shit on anybody's belief system, but I will sometimes shit on the things people do like individually. Like that's shitty. Like, Jack, that's no problem that he's, part of the OTO and he's doing all this dilemmas.

[01:15:22] That's great. I think it's shitty that he slept with his wife's sister. I think that's pretty shitty. And then told his wife, I think you're ugly. That's not nice. That's just mean.

[01:15:34] Heather: Fundamentally mean. So

[01:15:35] Ashley: like, yeah, I would never shit on anybody's belief system. Just on some of the people who do stuff. That's that's not cool.

[01:15:42] It's the same way I always feel like I grew up like. I love all my magical stuff. And then when I met a lot of magical people, it was always Religion is bad and religion is evil and it's so bad and when you grow up and you learn, I'm a teenager and I, I love emo music [01:16:00] and so now I'm like, I don't know, like all my friends are atheists, but I didn't think that like religion was bad.

[01:16:06] I thought that people suck sometimes and yeah, yeah. Are there she like, are all Catholics bad? No. Are the priests who hurt kids bad? Yeah. So yeah, I always, yeah, I always try to catch myself too, because I don't like I don't like when we do that. You know what I mean? It's not cool. Oh, yeah.

[01:16:23] Heather: It's so ingrained. And it's the layers of that are so like, they're so pervasive. I think it was Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. We're doing research right now for an episode about satanic panics, but I'm like, I want to, I want it to be about little Nas X's Satan shoes. I love little Nas X so much!

[01:16:42] Right? I mean, basically I'm like, maybe in my fantasy world, like he'll talk to me and then I can use that. Like, right? Like I have this whole fantasy spinning out. It's really good. Hashtag manifesting.

[01:16:55] Ashley: Yes! I feel anyway, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to [01:17:00] interrupt you. I feel like little Nas X to me is like the little cousin that I want like in my life.

[01:17:06] Like I want a younger cousin who like goes out all the time and tells me what's cool and hip and I want it to be a little Nas X. Because he's just adorable! I love him so much!

[01:17:16] Heather: Oh my god, he's, oh my god. Preach. I know! Seriously. I love him! I cannot, I can't handle it. Like, sometimes I'll just, lie down on my bed and, watch, him on TikTok.

[01:17:27] And, he's so, oh my god, he's so adorable. He's so adorable! I love him! Sorry, go ahead. And, like, just a fucking amazing artist. Yeah, he's really, I love his music. He's so fucking smart. Yes! Okay. So go from Jack Parsons to Lil Nas X fan club. Anyway. But like, but you know, so I was listening to episode like different podcasts, either talking about like the Satan shoes or talking about the satanic panic in the seventies and eighties and like time and again.

[01:17:53] Every single and I really respect journalists like that's like I'm not one and it's really hard And so I respect it but time and again [01:18:00] people were like, but they aren't actually Satanist But they weren't actually doing any satanic magic, but thank goodness and I'm like, hey The huge problem with this is that there are actually religious Satanist.

[01:18:12] Yeah, there's Luciferians You also have a traditional witchcraft that has like, the man in black. Yeah. Yeah trying to, I'm trying to make the balloons, but it's not working. I know. Where'd they go? I know. Yeah. So I'm like, so I'm like, screw it. Like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about like what the satanic panic in the seventies and eighties was really briefly.

[01:18:32] But then I'm like, no, we're going to fucking talk about like, like religious Satanism because this is a meaningful practice to people. And like people like to talk about the satanic temple, which I think is super important, that documentary is great. The book is great. But I'm like, but they're atheists, right?

[01:18:50] Like, and there are people who worship Satan. And that's so like, when I started thinking about that, I got uncomfortable in my gut. And I [01:19:00] realized I was raised atheist and I was like, Oh, that's what it means to grow up in a culture that's like a hegemony, revolving around Christianity.

[01:19:09] Yeah. Like we can't help it. There's that little like, Ooh, yes. Oh, is that going to be okay? Yes. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to make it okay. Also hashtag manifesto.

[01:19:19] Ashley: Exactly. I know. It's really good. And I think yeah, just like you I try to use that. everything to make myself more knowledgeable about things so that I'm not coming at it as like, well, this is I hate when people say this is strange.

[01:19:34] I do think certain things are strange, obviously, but I'm not going to call a whole group of people strange because if everybody's happy and everyone's consenting, who am I to say that it's weird? Like, I don't know if everybody's happy. I don't care. Have fun. Yeah. Yeah. Hop off sis. It's

[01:19:47] Heather: yeah no, totally.

[01:19:50] I think that's really the thing. It's yeah, if people are consenting and one of the beautiful things about the flame is this idea of following your true will, which doesn't mean do whatever the fuck you want, which is what a lot [01:20:00] of people think. Like it means, what is the thing that you want to do with yourself and if this existence that you have, there's no guarantees.

[01:20:07] Do that thing that's most meaningful to you and like the hard part is even just figuring out what that is I know and that's cool. Yeah, that is cool. I love that. Yeah Oh, that's now we're now we need the balloons. I know we're the balloons now, jesus christ

[01:20:26] Ashley: Jesus christ The gods of Riverside, bring back the balloons, please!

[01:20:35] And I don't know how to

[01:20:38] Heather: do it! Ancestors of Sofra, give us your gifts. Oh, gosh. Oh, well,

[01:20:43] Ashley: Heather, this has been such a good time. for being here. This has been so fun. Oh, this was so much fun.

[01:20:54] Heather: Ashley, thank you so much for having me and I am like totally going to try to make one of those Puritan recipes. [01:21:00] I think this is going to be a 2024.

[01:21:01] Ashley: Yeah, why not? It sounds pretty good. Parsley in a turkey. A young one. Make sure it's young. A young one.

[01:21:08] Heather: Yeah. It's

[01:21:09] Ashley: gotta be young. You don't want

[01:21:10] Heather: it

[01:21:10] Ashley: scarred and traumatized by life experiences. You don't want an elderly turkey. A crone turkey. Don't get a crone turkey. I feel like that's me. That is me.

[01:21:24] Heather: She says as she grabs her neck. Anyway.

[01:21:31] Ashley: So Heather, where can people find you and your podcast if they would want to listen to it? Cause I bet everybody's like, Oh, I'll listen to this podcast now. Yeah,

[01:21:39] Heather: Yeah. You can you just find it it's called magic in the United States. It's magic in the United States.

[01:21:44] com. We have a Instagram which I am terrible about maintaining other than when we have an episode going for a season going. I think it's like. Magic US podcast, but but if you go to magic in the United States. com, you'll find it there. And there's links there to Spotify and Apple and [01:22:00] wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:22:01] And we have six episodes out now covering everything from, oh gosh, I like so much stuff.

[01:22:09] Ashley: I know you had like, Person who is I don't know if they're from Korea or of Korean descent who is doing shamanism, right? I remember that. Yeah. Cause that's in my, that's in my downloads. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:22:21] Yeah. Yeah. I was like, Oh, I gotta listen to this. Yeah.

[01:22:24] Heather: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was Jennifer Kim. And and there's an episode on who do root work conjure. There's another one about Pennsylvania, Dutch Powwow, Barack R. I. There's one about early, my, one of my favorites is the geekiest one.

[01:22:39] It's about like early bulletin board systems on the internet and like how pagans around the world found each other. Oh, I love that. And the very, very first, I don't know. And the very first one has Reverend Aaron Davis, who teaches classes on who do root work. He's also a Santero. He has just, he's into his.

[01:22:58] Spiritismo, he has an [01:23:00] amazing life story and life practice. And Thorne Mooney, who's a Wiccan high priestess is also in that. And which like, you're like, what? That's different. And it's like, yeah, cause that whole episode is talking about how do we change in our religions and our beliefs over the course of our lives.

[01:23:16] And like, here's two people who have very different stories, but like, there's also these similarities because they're doing these things that most people. Don't know what to make

[01:23:25] Ashley: of. Yeah. Which is cool. I love that. Yay. Yeah. Oh, okay. Everybody listen to Magic in the United States. It sounds, oh, it's good.

[01:23:35] It's good. It's good. Everybody listen. So thank you so much, Heather, for being here. I really appreciate it. Yeah, of course. And everybody, if you didn't know what you're listening to, it's time to be divine and we're on Instagram, Facebook threads. sometimes TikTok and YouTube. And if you don't mind, if you could give us a rating we always prefer five stars, but if you want to give us [01:24:00] whatever, just, be honest, it's all good.

[01:24:01] I'll still love you anyway. You can find us anywhere you listen to your podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, whatever. If you have any questions suggestions, comments, or anything, email me at dimewiththedivinepod at gmail. com. And if you want to follow me, Ashley, I'm SankofaHS. That's S A N K O F A H S.

[01:24:18] K O F A H S in Sankofa Healing Sanctuary on Facebook and whatever other platforms. Okay, so thank you all for being here. I'll see all of you next week and have a great week till I see you again Goodbye