Theurgy, Philosophy and Esotericism with Chris Lyon

Chris Lyon

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[00:00:00] Track 1: . Hello and welcome to Dine with the Divine. And as always, I'm your host, Ashley, and we'll be talking about the magical, mystical, and everything in between. So on today's episode, we'll be chatting about neoplatism. And again, we're going to have some pronunciation issues on my part.

[00:00:20] I'm going to do my best. And also we're going to be talking about an Egyptian magician. So we have a fantastic guest as usual. We have Chris Lyon. He is an archaeologist. and researcher with a focus on Egyptian and Greek philosophy and wisdom. He is interested in the development of hermetic ideas and the Egyptian origins of theurgy.

[00:00:41] Chris, how are you today?

[00:00:43] Chris: I'm good, actually. How are you doing?

[00:00:45] Track 1: I'm doing great. So I, I saw some of like your content on the internet and I was like, first of all, I was like, wow, this guy's very smart. So I was like, this is great.

[00:00:57] Chris: I, it depends on how you, how we're [00:01:00] defining it, but I mean, some things I'm better at than others, I will admit, but

[00:01:04] Track 1: No, so I well for me personally, I'm like anybody who dives into like philosophy as a study you Your whole job is to figure out just like ideas and be like, how do I feel about this idea and then expand on that idea? And it's all just nothing in philosophy, at least in my head, it might be different for you.

[00:01:26] It's nothing seems like solid. So it's just like everybody talking about stuff that may be or may not be. And it's I don't know, it's not like math, where it's like this is 1 plus 1 equals 2. Theology is maybe it does, but maybe it doesn't. Let's all sit around and have a long conversation about why it may or may not.

[00:01:44] And I just find that fascinating.

[00:01:46] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Yeah, it is. It's a big what we mean by IS philosophy. And for me, at least with like philosophy and wisdom are quite intertwined, what we mean by wisdom, what it means to be wise as [00:02:00] an individual, because there's a distinction quite quite distinctly, between, intelligence and wisdom.

[00:02:05] And what we mean by wisdom and then how exactly we cultivate that for ourselves. And this is a big it's a big kind of debate in philosophy. And for me I tend to follow a lot of Pierre Radeau's works. Pierre Radeau was a kind of a 20th century. Scholar of philosophy. I believe he was a classicist originally or he was a French philosopher essentially.

[00:02:25] He was specializing in the history of philosophy especially Epicureanism, Stoicism, stuff like that. But he was really, he shifted the landscape of philosophy quite extensively because, as you were saying at the beginning, The way philosophy is perceived and talked about, at least, in the mainstream, so as we should say, is as a kind of a very sort of armchair academic discipline, where you're sitting there asking why you're asking a lot of weird questions that no one really has the answer to.

[00:02:54] But always the big questions of life, which is great. And it makes for, excellent always a nice dinner [00:03:00] party thing to start off with until people start to get annoyed with you because you keep asking why. But Pierre Hadot, he ended up creating this huge pivot in the kind of the, in how philosophy is conceptualized and studied mainly because rather than seeing it as purely an academic discipline, there was, as I said, very armchair, very theoretical and it was theorizing about the world and life and all this kind of thing. He took a different approach and argued that a lot of the Socratic philosophers, people like Plato, Socrates, and Epicureanism, Stoicism, all this kind of stuff. That in fact, philosophy is meant to be a lived experience. That it is a set of practices, some of the mystical practices.

[00:03:42] that are intended to cultivate wisdom and make a person wise. And the way in which that occurs is usually through self reflective practices. So engaging certain ideas and not necessarily ritual. They can be described as ritualized, but then it was like magical rituals or [00:04:00] anything per se, but they're ritual actions and ways of self reflection that ultimately have the goal of producing wisdom.

[00:04:07] And a person who is wise is somebody who is self aware. It's somebody who is, or has the capacity to self reflect and these kinds of things. And ultimately philosophy, and this is for me, because I follow a lot of Pierre Haddo's work, it's not so much a way of asking why, or an academic discipline.

[00:04:23] It's more of a set of practices that we engage in to cultivate our sense of wisdom. And wisdom is things like our sense of meaning, our sense of purpose in the world, and why we're here, and all these kinds of things. These people are You know, the people that we usually talk about as philosophers, whether it's Plato and Socrates or any of the pre Socratics, they're all people who are engaging these questions in some way or another.

[00:04:47] The pre Socratics are weird because they're engaging them in a more kind of mystical fashion, Pythagoras Palmenides, Empedocles, all these kind of famous Greek philosophers that are pre Socrates, they're all very weirdly mystical. And [00:05:00] it's been the weird. shadow or the weird specter that's haunting academic philosophy.

[00:05:05] And especially with the Greeks, we have this perception in the modern world, this has been the case since classical archaeology was a thing and sort of pastoral studies were a thing, that the Greeks are these, these big kind of paragons of reason and virtue, and they're the precursors of the Western scientific method, and it's very European centric.

[00:05:25] It's all very progressive science, and the Greeks are the forerunners of rational philosophy. But the Greeks were, in effect, in actuality, they were incredibly mystical. They had numerous ecstatic practices, they engaged, or they used psychedelics quite extensively in ritual.

[00:05:42] they engage quite a lot of interesting what we would dub ritual practices, especially in the Pre Socratics. If you look at someone like Parmenides, who is famous for his poems on nature for one, their poems rather than philosophical discourses But they are, the way it's phrased, Palmettis is to give you the [00:06:00] Cliffnotes version.

[00:06:01] Palmettis, he writes this sort of poem or this oration on nature. I mean, he's talking about the nature of being. So what does it mean to be? And he comes up with this huge, this whole answer of actually only being exists and nothing that is not being doesn't exist. And it's a very long, weird story.

[00:06:17] But What's really interesting about it is that the way Parmenides comes up with that philosophy is he's accounting a visionary experience. So the way he, the way his poem is phrased, it's actually a dialogue between him and a goddess. So rather than typical armchair philosophers sitting around having a dialogue, 'cause the dialogue is more platonic in terms of the stu the structure of philosophy.

[00:06:38] 'cause philosophy in that sense is more of an argumentation, parity, the way he talks about. His poetry. It's upon nature. For one, he starts off by recounting this kind of experience he has where he's taken away in a flying chariot up to the gates of, it's debatable whether he goes to the underworld or he goes to the horizon and the celestial gates.

[00:06:59] It's not really clear. [00:07:00] There are a couple of interesting opinions that say he's probably going to the underworld, which is a reference to the kind of older Greco Greco Roman mysteries or Greek mystery cults. But Parmenides, he ends up having this conversation with a goddess who is unnamed, but she's clearly probably meant to be an underworld goddess.

[00:07:18] And she is the one that's basically telling him about this philosophy of being. And then he basically just comes back to the world of the living, I guess we can say, and then sings this sort of poem essentially recounting his experience. It's like Parmenides is, one of the. early generations who massively influenced Plato and Plato obviously then goes on through Aristotle and everything to influence most of the way that we think about philosophy in the West today.

[00:07:43] But Ptolemy and also a lot of the other early pre Socratic philosophers, they are, they have that underlying mystical current to them where they're either engaging meditative practices, probably psychedelic practices and otherwise generally mystical practices. I [00:08:00] mean, Pythagoras is another one where we can maybe get into him.

[00:08:02] He's a very strange kind of Greek shaman. And that is, that's also the word that's sometimes used. And this is a bit of a weird, it's a bit of a contentious issue in early Greek philosophy. Because a lot of the Presocratics and people around them. Pyros, POEs, Edes Haitis to a lesser extent.

[00:08:21] But a lot of these pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece, they are actually more like a better description of them would probably be Greek shamans rather than philosophers. And there's an interesting argument. The kind of philosophy there actually begins in a kind of a shamanistic practice.

[00:08:35] And if you look at, especially if you look at like Empedocles also he recounts his stuff in a poem, right? So it's a song, a sung verse, essentially. He goes off and has these experiences and then he composes all of his poetry and his stuff in a kind of a meter that's called, this is a mouthful.

[00:08:54] dactylic hexameter and it's basically just a fancy way of describing the meter and the rhythm of the poem [00:09:00] of how many syllables you say in a certain line or that kind of thing.

[00:09:03] Track 1: Yes, we talked about that a little bit before. So I'm familiar with that. Yeah.

[00:09:08] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: yeah. So it's like the standard way these philosophers communicate their ideas, right?

[00:09:13] And it's also the way that Homer, who is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, or at least the composer of the Odyssey also writes. So that's the standard, it's like the standard literary dialect. But what's really interesting about it is if you look at, if you do some kind of ethnography, which is, you're looking at other cultures and looking at how they conceptualize things.

[00:09:30] If you go a little bit further north and maybe east into Central Europe or Eastern Europe. Where you look into places like Mongolia or any of the kind of Scythian territories especially like Siberian shamanism and stuff. That whole narrative, that whole thing of a shaman figure who is usually a healer in the community, they're a mystical kind of person in the community who's talking about reality, all this kind of stuff.

[00:09:54] The way that they usually communicate things is they will engage a kind of a soul flight [00:10:00] Almost right. So that they will leave their body in usually probably in the form of an animal or something. And there are references to that in, in some of the Greek stuff as well. Especially a couple of people, Abaris the Hyperborean, for example, leaves his body.

[00:10:12] I think it's Abaris who he leaves his body in the form of a crow. to fly north and get his knowledge and then comes back and what kind of thing. But there's all this kind of thing. And then when you look at the other kind of shamanistic cultures and things like Siberian shamans, Mongolic shamans, we have a similar idea where we have these kind of mystical healer figures who are

[00:10:32] Sending out their soul, theoretically, or parts of their mind, in the very least, usually in the form of animals or something, or other transformations that are not quite human, and then they are gaining knowledge from this kind of other world, or perhaps a goddess, or a spirit or something, and then they're coming back, and the way they then communicate their the knowledge, I guess you can say, that they've got from their travels is they communicate through song.

[00:10:55] All right, so a shaman will generally bang a drum and then they will recite a verse or songs and that's the [00:11:00] same kind of poetry that's performed, almost, that we find in the early pre Socratic stuff. So what we mean By wisdom changes, play though, it completely, he adopts an entirely different kind of style because when we get to play so in Aristotle, we suddenly find the birth of dialogue where instead of something just, sitting there telling you how things are in the form of a song or a verse about an experience that they had.

[00:11:26] Instead, we find quote unquote philosophy proper, which is. Argumentation, right? It's Oh, I'm seeing this. And if this is true, then this must be true. Here's the evidence for it that I've seen. And I found and everything to that, right? That's very different to what we see in the earlier, in the pre Socratics, cause they're just talking about, or even though I've been talking there, they're writing in a kind of a poetic style that's talking about reality. All of it is. Focused around the cultivation of wisdom and what it means to be wise. And you can, there have been, I think there have been some arguments. I think [00:12:00] I've I've seen Peter Seifert, who's a classicist, a very famous classicist talk about this the Greek mystery cults and the knowledge that is gained in the initiations and the mystery cults is it's like a pre philosophy.

[00:12:11] It's like the way philosophy was done before it was philosophy, or at least the way wisdom is cultivated. Before we get to Plato and stuff, so Plato marks a very kind of big departure from the standard, in, in Greek stuff, right? And it's an interesting, it's a very weird convoluted idea, but that's along with the way of me saying my, my understanding of philosophy at this point is ultimately about the cultivation of wisdom.

[00:12:35] And that wisdom is an understanding of reality, usually on a more mystical level. But also a set of self reflective practices that cultivates that sense of wisdom that also, it lessens our ability to, I don't know what's the nice way of putting it? There isn't really a nice way of putting it.

[00:12:53] As humans, I think we have a tendency to bullshit ourselves. quite a bit.

[00:12:57] Track 1: Yeah.

[00:12:58] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: a lot of the time [00:13:00] we will choose, what's the word, what's the word putting up, we'll choose what feels relevant to us over what's true, and then we'll construct a lot of our reality on what feels relevant. And we see this a lot more, if you look at any of the kind of the modern pop spirituality, mainstream spirituality, new agey kind of movements, this is.

[00:13:19] Very big right now, right? This is the standard way of looking right now where everything is like something's validity or something's truth is put through that lens of how does this feel to me, right? This feels true to me. This is, there is this kind of discussion that you hear quite often of people going this is my truth, I'm sharing my truth.

[00:13:39] And that's completely valid. It's absolutely true. But the challenge you have with it is. Is how much can you really trust your truth because your truth is mixed up with certain passions and emotions and ideas that some of which are unconscious that you may not even be aware of. So some people may be acting, say, out of trauma when they have that.

[00:13:58] So how [00:14:00] objectively true can your individual truth be, especially when, our perception is, I don't know. It's resulting in our experience of reality, right? Our perception dictates what our reality is. If we don't educate our perception, how can we have a true vision of what that reality is?

[00:14:17] And because of that, we have a propensity to bullshit ourselves because we choose a sense of relevance over. Things that are maybe uncomfortable to us because, but they are left true, right? So wisdom to me, in a sense, which is what philosophy is aimed at cultivating is a way of seeing through that bullshit. It's a way of being able to see through where we bullshit ourselves and it's done through self referential practices that we look at and we're like, Oh, okay. Yes. This is where I'm maybe deluding myself or this is where I have a bias. This is that. And whether that comes from a ritual experience or it comes from.

[00:14:52] whatever else. It doesn't really matter as long as the wisdom ultimately is cultivated. Yeah.

[00:14:57] Track 1: Yeah. Holy shit. [00:15:00] Okay. Oh

[00:15:03] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: And I went on a bit of a tangent there, I'm sorry. Yeah.

[00:15:06] Track 1: No, it's so good. I'm like, oh my god my mind. Okay. Okay. First of all, So it's so interesting that you're talking about all these philosophers having mystical experiences because like you're right the way Where do I where I don't know everybody maybe other people are super into philosophy and I'm just like I don't know, but for me, all the things I've learned about Plato and Aristotle and Socrates was like, when I was in school, right?

[00:15:32] And they were like, these are the Greek philosophers, and they came up with ideas, and then they taught other people these ideas, and that's that. So that's just like what, I just thought they were, and for some reason, I don't know, maybe because, I don't know why, I just assumed that it was all very secular.

[00:15:52] I have always assumed that the practice of philosophy itself, or people who are philosophers were always secular, or, I was like, oh, I just assumed [00:16:00] they were all probably atheists, because why, if they have all, I don't know why, I don't, I'm not

[00:16:05] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: I have a slight answer to that you won't particularly like.

[00:16:09] Track 1: No, I'm ready for it! Yeah!

[00:16:11] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: It's largely because it's not even really your fault. It's because that's the way philosophy is taught, right? The way it's taught to us right now, because again, we still in, if we look at the general kind of worldview. In the Western world. And by the Western world, I mean specifically the Eurocentric world and then Euro American world.

[00:16:30] So people in America, people in Europe. And obviously, for reasons that we all are aware of, that is unfortunately one of the predominant world views at the moment. But a large part of the Euro American worldview at the moment is essentially atheistic materialism. It's that nothing exists other than matter there is no such thing as spirits or god or anything like that, right?

[00:16:52] Only matter exists, or maybe maybe a better way of putting it is only stuff that you can sense or [00:17:00] see with the five senses.

[00:17:01] Else is real, or in the very least they're characterized as what we call epiphenomena, which is just resulting from other stuff, right? So something like emotions, for example, or mental states, they are not quote unquote real in and of themselves.

[00:17:15] They are arising from consciousness, right? It's not a thing onto itself. It's something that's arising from. Pops and bubbles and electric signals in the brain, right? So it's a purely physical thing. At least that's the standard worldview at the moment. So you're naturally taught as kids when naturally taught things that support that worldview.

[00:17:35] Because we think it's it's true, and worldviews are valid. I think to the extent that they can deliver on the things, the theories that they put out, if a worldview can support itself and the theories that it's taking for granted then it's still valid. We can't critique it by the rule, but it's, the way something about philosophy and stuff is taught is.

[00:17:58] In my opinion, incorrect, because like [00:18:00] you said, it gives you the impression of of it being, like, either atheistic or it's a very kind of rational discourse, which is what people believed the Greeks were in the 20th century, right? We now know that's just not true. There are numerous mystical practices in the Greeks.

[00:18:16] They are very heavily religious culture. And the philosophers it's a bit of a convoluted weird thing, but if we take Plato, for example Plato, he is very rational in this, but only in the sense that he, Elevates reason as like the height of the soul, right? So the, so our sense of reason and our sense of discernment and awareness is the highest part of our soul for Plato.

[00:18:40] But the way Plato uses the term reason and rational is very different to how modern philosophers use the term reason and rational, cause if you look at if you look at the way Plato talks about the soul, right? So in Greek, soul is tsuke. Which is where we actually get the word psyche today.

[00:18:56] The way Plato talks about Zuke is [00:19:00] essentially an inner, inner bounded organ of perception, right? It's an inner awareness of ourself, right? And the way Plato talks about that is almost identical to the way a modern neuroscientist talks about our sense of consciousness on our. Our mind, so to speak, but they were a modern, atheistic, but neuroscientists will never tell you that they're actually talking about the soul because they don't want to admit there's just too much religious baggage on that, but it's a difficult thing because the philosophers, especially post Plato, they really do have They have their own kind of religion in manner of speaking, they're still operating in a Greek worldview but they are they're approaching it very differently.

[00:19:37] So Plato, as an example, if you look at something like the Timaeus, which is his sort of big main sort of creation. He's all he's all like the platonic genesis book, right? It's like how everything was made and all that kind of thing. Where there is a divine mind and a source of goodness and beauty, which is the good or god, the ultimate kind of one oneness of everything.

[00:19:58] Then there is a divine mind, the noose or [00:20:00] the demi, which creates all the or creates all the ideas and performs and stuff like that. But even in the Timaeus, Plato acknowledges all the Greek gods. He still says they're real, but they're not the ultimate divinity. Instead, there is a divinity beyond the gods, and the divinity beyond the gods is this oneness, right?

[00:20:19] This ultimate good, or the one being that's unified. That then creates the demiurge, which is the craftsman figure who fashions the basic idea. So to put it like, if I was to try and simplify this whole sort of platonic idea or creation narrative, at the heart, thinking like this, at the heart of reality, or maybe even the top of reality, because they have very sort of vertical view of it you have this singular being.

[00:20:44] That is, is ultimately God, or they call it Ortheos. So it's the God, right? So singular which is a unified deity or unified force, even that is beyond the sense of being that's everything is unified. And it's [00:21:00] ultimate, like what it does, its ultimate job is to think, right?

[00:21:03] Ultimately it thinks up ideas and things, and this is Plato's theory of forms that everything is a reflection, or every material thing is a reflection of a perfect form of it, and that those perfect forms exist in a, in another kind of archetypal ideal realm they are the ideas of it.

[00:21:23] For example, I don't know We all, you know what a chair looks like, but there are millions of different kinds of chairs. But nevertheless, ultimately like in, in your mind, because you've been brought up and all those kinds of things, you have an idea of what a chair is supposed to look like.

[00:21:37] But no matter what no matter what shape of a chair takes, if there's millions of different types of chairs, you still look at it and go, yeah, that's a chair, right? Because you have that core idea inside of you, that divine form that you, that sort of informs your reason and your noose, as he calls it and your mind of what the chair is, that you have an understanding of the form, right?

[00:21:58] And whereas the physical [00:22:00] sun. illuminates our world, the material world with light, we can see everything. The good, or the idea of the good, illuminates the archetypal formal realm, right? So this inherent unity and beauty, that kind of thing illuminates everything. And then in order to fill that in between space between the ideas and the physical world, there is another kind of lesser deity, almost, that comes out of the divine one, this one divine mind, which is the Demiurge, which is a craftsman like figure.

[00:22:30] And that his job is essentially to take the ideas that are being thought up, essentially, and then mold them into things that ultimately then get sent into the world soul which is like a little gate that sends into nature. And there's a weird convoluted thing with nature that nature is empty.

[00:22:48] in the platonic world, but it receives the forms. It's very, it's an interplay between masculine and feminine ideas as well, right? So there is the masculine mind or the reason, and then the kind of the womb and the [00:23:00] feminine nature, and they come together and that creates a matter, essentially what we experience in matter.

[00:23:05] But this is another issue that we have with Plato in that Plato has no word for matter. I've seen some translators, not so much nowadays, because I don't think many people do nowadays, but some people try and talk about, nature as being matter, when Plato talks about nature, they think, Oh, he means matter.

[00:23:21] But the closest word, I think, I can think of, To what Plato would have because later philosophers and the neoplatonists, they all have, they have Hewlett or Hewlett, which is matter but Plato, he, the closest would probably be Soma, which is body, right? So the way he talks about nature and what we would call matter.

[00:23:41] So physical stuff, he uses the word body. to refer to that, so matter is the body of the ideas. It's the body of the spiritual archetypes that come through it and inhabit it, and then that's what we experience. As reality rules, there is also a space in between our perception there which [00:24:00] creates our, creates our reality or creates our perception of reality.

[00:24:04] That's the platonic idea, of religion. And then within that, again, in the Timaeus. he still acknowledges the other gods, right? So Zeus, Aphrodite, Hera, all the ones you're familiar with from high school Greek mythology classes, right? He acknowledges those. They still exist and they have the role of fashioning our body and our experience.

[00:24:24] So they're lower gods that are ruling different elements of the world and things to keep things in balance, but they're not the highest divinity, right? They're not the true gods. And the reason for it is if you read, By definition, a god or a deity, in that sense, they're supposed to be a more perfect being, right?

[00:24:42] They're more beautiful, they're more essential, they're more archetypal, and yet, if you look at Greek mythology, the majority of stories about the gods are pretty shit. Especially Zeus.

[00:24:52] Track 1: yeah.

[00:24:53] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Like all over the place. He, he has his dick out all the time. , it's not great.

[00:24:59] Track 1: exactly. [00:25:00] It's terrible. Yeah.

[00:25:01] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: it's terrible. And this is a que this is a question that both Socrates and Plato raised quite early on in the dollar.

[00:25:06] And it, he raises it in, in in the Republic I think is quite a big one. And also in the AYA as well. But Socrates raises this excellent question. He goes, if the gods are supposed to be these beautiful, perfect divine beings, especially that we are supposed to be holding ourselves accountable to, how is that, how do we reconcile that?

[00:25:26] How do we reconcile these beings that are supposed to be all good with a story that we hear about Zeus who's going around, unfortunately doing many awkward things to women I won't say the scientific word, and doing lots of things. The gods, the gods in Greek, they are jealous they're furious, they're angry, they're sexually liberated, or that's the wrong word they're all over the place, and Socrates makes this, he has this whole argument with people, he's look these are supposed to be our gods, they're supposed to be more perfect, they're supposed to be.

[00:25:55] These paragons of moral virtue that we're standing with. And yet we have [00:26:00] all these stories about them. And so how do you reconcile that? How do you talk about how the gods are supposed to be perfect? And he basically comes up with this idea that goes, okay actually. The gods are real, but the stories and the myths we know about them are wrong.

[00:26:14] Or they're deliberately intended to be false because there is this idea. And there's a really beautiful quote, um, from the Republic where he goes, when we're talking about educating somebody, it's like he's, he uses the example of educating a child, right? So when a baby comes into the world and they need to be educated in order to be a good human being, ultimately, he goes, there are two ways of education that you need to educate the physical body and you need to educate the soul.

[00:26:39] And that sort of that experience of educating both ultimately creates a kind of a well rounded human being, right? Educating the physical body is fairly simple, right? It's eating healthfully. And he says gymnastic, which is basically their word for exercise, right? So doing good exercise, eating well.

[00:26:58] Having a strong body, [00:27:00] right? That consists of exercising the body which is, fast standard stuff. Eat do your exercise to look after your body. Typical kind of stuff, right? Very useful. The other side of it, he says, you need to educate the soul and the way you educate the soul, he says, is through music. Now people say that people it will usually be translated as music but the greek word musea that is being translated as music it basically means anything of the Muses. So the Muses, of course, are the goddesses of the arts, right? The seven there. They're usually equated with, I think, like the Seven Sisters or the Pleiades and all this kind of stuff, right?

[00:27:37] But they are, there are seven of them and they all rule over a different kind of cultural or creative art, whether it's poetry, music, artwork, any of stuff that we, like today, we would branch on the kind of culture, like cultural stuff, right? So plays, music, poetry, writing, liberal arts, basically. So when he says that you need to you [00:28:00] educate the soul through music, he means the soul is educated through the traditions and the things that are attributed to the muses.

[00:28:09] So it's educated through good music, through good stories, through good poetry, through good, all this kind of stuff. And you, like the whole idea with it is that these things have that it's building on an idea from Pythagoras called the music of the spheres. Where there is this idea that the planets are, they are rotating in their respective spheres and stuff like that.

[00:28:30] And as they go around as they go around the universe or they go around the cosmos, I should say Pythagoras had this idea, or at least it's attributed to Pythagoras that they produce the kind of rhythm or a music or a harmony that is inaudible to the human ear, but yet affects us. And this is like one of the precursors of like early astrology and stuff as well.

[00:28:48] How, the planets are moving around in a certain kind of way and their movement in a kind of the divine space. Ultimately, it creates this kind of rhythm and harmony in music that you can't [00:29:00] hear, but it nevertheless has effects on the human body. And as he's going through it Socrates continues with this whole sort of line of questioning where he goes, need to a certain extent, engaging in all these things that educate the soul, what it's actually doing is it's think of it as like a liar player playing to a child or playing to you, and you're recognizing.

[00:29:20] Good rhythm, right? You're recognizing good music, good rhythm, good harmonies, what kind of thing. And as you do that, you cultivate virtues and different kinds of things which make you into more well rounded good person and it matures the soul, right? And that, that's actually Plato's core definition of philosophy.

[00:29:36] So if you were to ask Plato what philosophy is, he actually defines it as medicine for the soul. That's the entire point of philosophy. And there are tons of like imagery for it. There's this idea that the soul has wings and by re educating the soul grows its wings back and then can fly up, back up into that divine archetypal realm of form that you reunify with God ultimately.

[00:29:58] But the way you do that is in [00:30:00] philosophy. But the, what Socrates essentially says is that actually In order to learn what good stories are, in order to learn like good education for the soul, you first have to learn the bad stuff. So you first have to learn like the shit versions before you can like to understand what makes them shit in order to then understand what is good about them, right?

[00:30:22] Or what the good one's supposed to look like, right? So you can have an idea of what the good one's supposed to look like, but you start off your education by learning The false myths and the myths that are bad, because in doing so, it brings you closer to the truth. All right, it brings you closer to the good myths.

[00:30:39] And this is also a very dangerous road for a polytheistic society who believes in these gods as the highest authorities. And this is precisely the reason why Socrates is executed by Athens. Socrates ends up getting executed very famous event and Plato writes about it in his apology.

[00:30:56] But Socrates is executed by Athens on the [00:31:00] charges of impiety. And he Plato, like the Republic is set, Plato makes some interesting digs and stuff at the Athenian democracy in the Republic about it, but Socrates is executed on the charge that he is bringing new or foreign gods to the people of Athens and corrupting the youth.

[00:31:20] That's why he's, that's why he's executed, right? In reality, what he's doing is he's trying to educate people to save, to heal their souls, right? Or at least that's Plato's understanding of what he's doing. So he's trying to do this whole thing. And he says, look, you're listening to all these stories about the Greek gods and all these kinds of things.

[00:31:40] In reality, these are all false stories. The mythologies, they're not meant to be taken literally because actually, the gods are these beautiful, unchanging beings and they are beyond. Passions, right? So things like emotions and passions and rivalries and what we would say are like, think about the seven deadly sins, right?

[00:31:58] So envy, greed, lust, all [00:32:00] these kinds of things. All those things are. a result of living in the material world, right? They're what we call sub lunar, right? So the sphere below the moon, so to speak. And they are, the harmful passions that we experience are all a product of generation that we experience here.

[00:32:17] The gods, because they're not actively here, they're beyond that. They don't, they're not affected by the passions. They're not affected by harsh emotion or harsh things. And this idea, it also becomes much more important in later Platonism. So like Neoplatonism and stuff where we get, where, we get this idea with people like Iamblichus, who is a very famous Neoplatonist or who may have actually been a Hermetist.

[00:32:41] That's a long story. But he talks about this idea that the gods are unchanging. Because they are beyond the realm of generation, the gods are just like, if the gods are good, and he has a lot of arguments to say the gods are purely good, and they exist beyond a realm, or they exist in the intelligible realm, [00:33:00] which is beyond it.

[00:33:01] change, right? So things don't change there. If they're good, then they are always good and they never change. They are always good and they are always giving and loving and ushering out this beautiful light and all this kind of stuff. Which is a great view of the gods, right? It's brilliant.

[00:33:16] The challenge,

[00:33:17] Track 1: we don't know. Yeah.

[00:33:18] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: yeah it's better than, like the mythologized versions, right? It's not always super fun. Yeah. And he was, semi popular for that, but there is a wider kind of implication with it, and we find this in stuff like Julian Hellenism so Julian the Apostate, or Julian the Philosopher, who was the last pagan emperor of Rome.

[00:33:36] And he he tried, he after Constantine, I think he tried to revert Rome back to a pagan religion and obviously failed. But he was a Roman emperor, the last pagan Roman emperor who tried to keep Rome or revert Rome back to paganism rather than Christianity. And he has this whole idea.

[00:33:51] He's like, when we, it's like, because the gods are so far beyond. They're so far beyond this world, [00:34:00] and they're not affected by the passions or sways of emotion one way or the other. This whole idea of, making offerings to the gods to get them on your side. We'll get them to look after you.

[00:34:10] It's completely pointless because the gods are already on your side. They already have your best interests at heart. They're ultimately good and they're completely unchanging. So you doing a ritual to connect with them or make an offering to them will give you, or give them tons of sacrifices.

[00:34:27] It's not going to do shit. Like it's not going to change the God's minds. Per se, because the gods are beyond emotion, right? They're not going to feel that kind of jealousy or that passion when they're like, Oh yeah, that person's really looking after me today that I'm going to favor this person because he gave me more sacrifices than that, right?

[00:34:44] He, Julian goes down this whole road of going no, like the gods of beyond that, like that kind of stuff is very human, right? Jealousy, envy, favoring one person over the other. That's all very human. The gods are way beyond that. They're not affected by that. So when we do rituals [00:35:00] and rites and sacrifices, and sacrifice doesn't mean necessarily animal sacrifice, it means any kind of work that is done, anything that's given up, right?

[00:35:08] It can include your time as well. And when we do stuff like that, it's for our benefit, not theirs. By connecting to the gods in that kind of way, we awaken and activate and heal things within ourselves that brings us closer to them because they are always good. They're always here. They're imminent.

[00:35:25] So they're everywhere. They're always connected to us. So when we do rituals to them, we are connecting for them for our own benefit, not because we're trying to sway them or get them on our side because they're again, they're ultimately good. They are unchanging. So they're not going to like you one way or the other, right?

[00:35:44] But when you're doing rituals or doing work or magic or sacrifices, whatever it is, then you're doing it for your own benefit to bring you closer to them, right? And to clear that kind of space in between. And that, that has become my, my go to philosophy when I'm dealing with [00:36:00] any spirits or anything that I work with, or any things in my own practice, my own spirituality that I'm working with.

[00:36:05] I I've lost that ability of what I've lost that way of thinking going Oh I need to make sure I keep up with my prayer. It's also very Christian, right? You must keep up with your prayers. Otherwise, God will be mad at you. Like the God, the gods or God, whatever you want to call it.

[00:36:18] It's so far beyond anger and resentment and envy and all those kind of human emotions. But it's not going to necessarily matter if you don't keep up, like you should want to keep up with things because it's good for you, it's part of

[00:36:33] Of it's like a well balanced diet.

[00:36:35] For your soul, you want to keep up with it. You don't want to be doing it. This is kind of part of my general philosophy now. And this is, I come up with this from a very kind of hermetic point of view. But your practice, at least this isn't me telling people what to do.

[00:36:48] I should say it's my practice. My approach at least is, you should be approaching, if you're working with spirits or working with gods, you should be approaching it from a place of love and connection rather than fear. You should want to [00:37:00] actively engage with these things because you are wanting to connect with them, you're wanting to create a relationship with them, not because you're afraid something's going to happen to you if you don't, that's what the Greeks and Romans would have said is superstition which is undue fear of the gods, which is something that's frowned upon.

[00:37:15] So you're wanting to connect with these things. from a place of love and connection rather than fear, as my dear in Hermetica that the, the ultimate kind of cardinal sin for us as humans is irreverence, right? So not showing gratitude.

[00:37:29] Ultimately that's the one thing that gods can't forgive.

[00:37:31] And the hermetic is pretty explicit because the gods, they don't hold, they don't hold us accountable to what we do under fate or what we do in error or what we do when we're influenced by passions, they don't care about that, they're very forgiving. They're very loving.

[00:37:44] They're very divine, very caring for us. The one thing that gods don't forgive is irreverence. So a lack of gratitude or a lack of showing reverence to the world and to nature and to them, because they actually, that's the one thing that they frown upon. It's not going to matter if you have an [00:38:00] emotional outburst where you do some bad shit, right.

[00:38:03] It's the irreverence there and the lack of gratitude. That's the real problem. So if you're approaching your practice and your stuff with that if I quote the title of the podcast if you're dining with the divines in this sense, you're sharing a meal with them, I think showing a sense of gratitude, right?

[00:38:18] Showing a sense of reverence, that's what's really important. That's what's going to connect you. I think these spirits or these entities and you're working with them, and remembering that every day and cultivating that as like a standard. practice, like a standard gratitude practice.

[00:38:31] And it's, it's funny, gratitude practices are like all the range now in, in manifestation circles and this kind of thing.

[00:38:37] Track 1: Oh, of course.

[00:38:38] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: and it's great, it's lovely to see I'll admit, someone who's who likes the history stuff. It's completely divorced from anything historical or any context or anything like that.

[00:38:47] But I'm just, I'm happy it's there. , it's like people are still doing this kind of stuff, so it doesn't, as long as you're doing it, you're sharing that reference and that gratitude. I think it's still okay.

[00:38:56] Track 1: Yeah, I oh my gosh, [00:39:00] you're very smart. I really enjoy this. I like just listening to you talk

[00:39:04] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: you may be the first. I've been told, I've been told numerous times, especially on my YouTube I get told to shut up so much. It's quite funny

[00:39:12] Track 1: No, like I'm like amazed I'm I love history, but I can never remember dates So like I love how you and like specific names or quotes. I'm just like no this happened I don't know when or who'd said it, but I know it happened. Yeah

[00:39:27] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: time. Yeah.

[00:39:30] Track 1: But Gratitude and like you're talking about the irreverent. It just makes me think of like I was Raised that way like in my family my I've grew up in a like my dad's catholic My mom grew up 70 adventist, but she isn't anymore. But Everything was always just like just be grateful.

[00:39:50] That's your number one thing. It was like even if Something bad happens to you. Like that, my, me and my sister always joke my mom would be like, it will be the worst thing ever. She's at least it [00:40:00] wasn't this let's just pray about it and be grateful for that. And I'm like, I used to be like mom like everything sucks right now.

[00:40:05] But she's no, like we have to be grateful. It could be worse. And I'm like, okay. And actually it's helped me a lot. In my life like because i'm like, you know what it could be true. Sometimes. Yes. I have my pity party It's okay to it's of course it's okay to be angry or upset about whatever probably is going through but Yeah, but same like in my personal experience It has helped me a lot when i'm like, okay Yes, i'm going through this awful thing but I need to be grateful for this and this I still have this I still have that So I think that is so You interesting And so you talked a lot about plato and socrates and the way they thought and first of all I just want to thank you because this is like a realm of philosophy Like I was saying before i've never even understood or knew known.

[00:40:51] So this completely like my mind is like what? like I didn't realize like all this stuff [00:41:00] like about Them going into ritual and having these ideas and coming out and being like, this is, in their di didactic hextameter, is that how you say it, right?

[00:41:09] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Dactylic Hexameter.

[00:41:10] Track 1: hextameter. We did a episode where we talked about the Oracle of Delphi, and we talked about that, about how Either and I think these like from what I researched it was like it depended on whether that current oracle was like a well educated woman or sometimes it would be like a real regular woman, but They would have people who would then translate it into the poetic way of explaining what she was trying to say So I think it's very cool.

[00:41:43] Like For someone to just be able to speak like that is very cool,

[00:41:47] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: interesting thing with the Oracle of Delphi. Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's there were, I guess what we can call like professional interpreters. This is it's something that's still found in some In magical traditions, we find it in say like the Greek [00:42:00] magical papyri or the, like the Coptic ritual manuals and stuff.

[00:42:03] We find it in like Solomonic text and stuff in the middle Ages where when you're doing a ritual, sometimes it, like rituals are actually like, like in comparison to what we usually think. A lot of the, the high ceremonial magic stuff, rituals, they're actually intended to multiple people.

[00:42:19] You're not meant to do them alone. Like it's there are instances, usually like the most common, like duo, I guess you can call it, but usually sometimes it's described as being like groups of people doing this, rather than multiple people, but more commonly, in the very least, you'll have two people, you'll have one person to recite the conjurations and do the actual spell, right?

[00:42:39] Or read the actual stuff. And then you'll have what's called a scryer. And the scryer is the person obviously who's like looking into the obsidian mirror or the person who's like seeing the stuff and then the person who's seeing it will relate and talk or speak about what they're seeing and then the magician or the other person will write stuff down, right?

[00:42:58] It's a carryover from that [00:43:00] older tradition where it's you have the Oracle who is, she's in a different state of knowledge, right? She's in an altered state of consciousness. And when you. Access when you go into altered states of consciousness, you access different ways of knowing as well.

[00:43:14] Cause it's we take it for granted today that like we use the word no and no is a really weird word in English. It's used really weirdly. So when we talk about knowing and know something, because we know like the word, how we use the word no is. Quite limited in English because we use it to refer to different types of knowing, and we don't have different words to refer to different ways of knowing stuff.

[00:43:41] For example, I can say, I know about astrology, or I know about magic, right? But that, the kind of knowing and knowledge that I have about magic or stuff I've read is very different to the way I know my partner, for example. It's like the way I know my partner I know my [00:44:00] partner because I've been with her, I've been near to her.

[00:44:02] We've, we shared houses together. We've done stuff together. And I know her because I like the way I know her because we've been together for a while. And there's a sense of like intimate knowing there. It's yeah, I know this person because I've known them for 10 years, 20 years.

[00:44:16] whatever it is, right? That's a different way the kind of knowledge that describes is different to the kind of knowledge that I can talk about yeah, I know about magic. So I know about stuff is very different to knowing stuff intimately and there are different kinds of knowing, but we use the same word to know, to refer to all of it.

[00:44:35] And English is quite limited in that respect. Cause we use the same word, but other languages aren't because like French, German, I think Dutch as well. They have different words for knowing and the Greeks, the ancient Greeks had them as well. But they use different words or verbs for if I'm saying a sentence, I know.

[00:44:53] If I was like, oh yeah, I know magic, right? I know about magic cause I've read about it. That's one word for no versus if I [00:45:00] say, I know my partner, that's a different word, right? It's a different word for no. And I think that kind of vocabulary is really important and we don't have it in English

[00:45:09] Track 1: yeah,

[00:45:10] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: because it lets us talk about different kinds of knowing, because not all knowledge is created equal.

[00:45:15] If you look at if you look at people who have psychedelic experiences, for example, for people who are like mushroom trips, they take ayahuasca or anything like that, or DMT, they will, they'll have these visionary psychedelic trance experiences, and they'll come back from one of the most common experiences that people report when they're on these kinds of psychedelics, is they will say, they knew, or they had this awareness that the reality in the world that they were in there was somehow more real than this world.

[00:45:43] And this world is like a fake imitation of the true world that you see on psychedelics.

[00:45:46] It's like one of the most common trip reports that people come out and experience, which is really interesting. But the kind of knowing that they're talking about there is not the same kind of knowing we rely on for like everyday things.

[00:45:59] [00:46:00] Consciousness of everyday awareness, right? Because again, because of that atheistic materialist bias that we see in, The Western world stuff right now we take it for granted that only like only sober consciousness and sober is the only one I can think of like everyday waking consciousness, right?

[00:46:17] We take it for granted that this is the only kind of consciousness that can be relied on for true knowledge. It's and we see it like if like we even see it in more or less formal, more colloquial things between your friends. If somebody does something when they're really drunk that you you just accept it a lot more than if they're sober. If someone does something while drunk, they're Oh it's fine. They were drunk. They were out of their head for a bit. That's fine. Or if someone says some stupid shit when they're drunk. It's ah, he was drunk or she was drunk. It's fine. So we don't accept like when you're drunk, you're in a different set of consciousness, right?

[00:46:46] Because the alcohol affects your brain in a different kind of way, right? It's a depressant, right? But, and it's the same thing with like psychedelics, right? So if you have a visionary experience, whether you're on psychedelics or something like that We don't there is an unconscious kind of bias that we [00:47:00] have where there's this distance that's created because we automatically assume it's like, Oh they weren't just quote unquote on psychedelics, right?

[00:47:09] Or they were just thinking something. So therefore, whatever they experienced isn't quite real. Because that, that version of consciousness that they had when they had that, the, what I, that opens them up the different ways of knowing, but we don't take it as truth, right? We take we assume in our worldview in the West the only reliable source of knowledge is sober consciousness, right?

[00:47:33] But the problem is there are, there's so many like minuscule little processes and biases that come in. Into our day to day consciousness that we're not aware of.

[00:47:44] Track 1: mhm,

[00:47:45] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: so you may be viewing when you view something through what you experience as sober consciousness, right? So sober everyday waking awareness, what that awareness is a huge mixture of your worldview, your background, your upbringing, your [00:48:00] childhood, things that were told to you when you were a kid your beliefs, your patterns, your emotions, your behaviors, your mindset, all these different things, right?

[00:48:07] And it's all comes up as this unified experience. So it's Can you experience can your sober consciousness really be reliable?

[00:48:14] Track 1: mhm,

[00:48:15] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: you actually cultivate a sense of wisdom and knowing. Can it really be reliable? Because are you 100 percent aware of every single worldview and bias that you have?

[00:48:23] Are you aware of every single emotion and mindset thing that you have right now? No. Nobody

[00:48:28] Track 1: course not, yeah.

[00:48:30] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: No one is. It's ridiculous. So it, it's when you unravel it and you think about it a little bit, when you philosophize on it, it it loses its meaning, right? It you're going like, oh shit.

[00:48:38] Track 1: Yeah.

[00:48:39] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Am I really seeing reality as the way it's supposed to be, or am I

[00:48:42] Track 1: You're like, I know nothing. Yeah.

[00:48:45] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: And that was Socrates' words, right? That was, that's the big quote that Socr, I'm like, he's famous for going, I. I, I'm wise because the wise man admits he knows nothing,

[00:48:57] Track 1: Yeah.

[00:48:58] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: like that's pure.

[00:48:59] That's what's [00:49:00] on the trees. That's his most famous quote. And it's not to say that he doesn't know stuff. It's more just like in comparison to what actually can be known and we know so little,

[00:49:10] Track 1: And oh my God. First of all, thank you. Because on a base level, I think everybody can understand that. And I think on a base level, I think everyone understands it differently. I I always understood it as like, I think there's like different ways of saying it but people always say like people who think they know everything know nothing and I always interpreted that as Because when you think you know everything You can't learn Like from other people's experiences or whatever happens but What you just explained makes so much sense on a deeper level.

[00:49:47] It's you don't even know What you don't know. So how do you know anything? So it's oh my god It's it's so interesting AHHHHH

[00:49:59] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: this [00:50:00] was, this is the experience that I often see a lot of people having when they first, when they first start out on, on, whether it's spiritual or intellectual journeys or whatever it is they have that awakening experience where you suddenly realize oh, wow, I know absolutely nothing. Like in comparison to what's actually actually out there, we we, it's not even the, it's not even that you don't know anything. It's we don't know, we don't even know what it is we don't know,

[00:50:24] Track 1: exactly

[00:50:25] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: And it's such a hard thing for people to grasp because we have I think it's natural as humans, but we have a natural, I don't know, like a natural disposition to fear the unknown.

[00:50:37] As well, when we start sitting there thinking about stuff and being like, Oh, wow, there's so much stuff that is unknown to me. We don't want to acknowledge that, right? It's uncomfortable for us to sit with the fact that we don't know stuff. And that's why, yeah, it's always a big red flag for me whenever you have anyone and you see it in, unfortunately, the psychedelic community quite a bit.

[00:50:57] Where people, go off, they'll have, they'll drink a bucket [00:51:00] load of ayahuasca or something, or they'll smoke a bunch of stuff. And they'll come back and they'll be like, I have the answer to all life. This is it. This is the way. And, people it's like those people who like drink ayahuasca and then come back and think they're Jesus.

[00:51:13] Track 1: yeah

[00:51:13] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: way I have a new interpretation of the Bible. It's all this, it's okay. It's yeah, dude. It's they come back and they're like, yes. Like of course you're the son of God. Like we're all the son and daughter of God. Like that. That's the point, right?

[00:51:23] That's the entire point of existence. like having this experience. So anytime anyone comes there is I know everything or I know the way, I'm very skeptical of them.

[00:51:32] Track 1: And also oh, sorry, I didn't interrupt

[00:51:34] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: No, it's,

[00:51:35] Track 1: But it's also like when people do that But again with what you're saying you can come back with a new knowing right of something but that is just a knowing one

[00:51:48] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: a way of doing it that you're filtering through like your perception right now. And your perception is going to change absolutely like over time, hugely.

[00:51:56] Track 1: Exactly. And that's cool. But but there's so many there's [00:52:00] so there's so many different Okay It's like even if you take it as like a base like human level Not even like on a spiritual level I will never know what it's like to grow up in calcutta Because i've never been there and I didn't grow up there.

[00:52:17] So it's like There are things that i'm just not gonna know like no matter what I don't know what it's like to be a teenager in mongolia because I was never a teenager in mongolia. So Yeah, nobody can know, even on a human level, every human experience, because you are not every single place, and in every single time, and in every single body, and if all of us, like you're saying which I also believe, if all of us are connected to this divine source, unless we are like, that divine source, you, you won't really know everything, but you'll When you learn you get see now I [00:53:00] get it.

[00:53:00] Okay, so what you learn

[00:53:03] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Yeah,

[00:53:03] Track 1: So the more you learn And the more you take in knowledge And try to learn about other things and other people and other experiences the closer you get to that Divinity that's already inside you that you are a part of does that make sense?

[00:53:22] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. It's I, the way I often see it, it's there's I got this one from one of my friends where we're coaching together at the moment, which is really fun. But the way he explained it to me, it was really good. Like one of his perceptive perceptions on it.

[00:53:36] It's there's, there's the capital T truth.

[00:53:39] The basis of reality. And then there are as many like individual, like small t truths as there are people and things in the world. It's like we're talking about human things about you're absolutely right. I have no idea.

[00:53:51] Like you said you have no idea what it's like to be a teenager in Mongolia or grow up in Calcutta. It's they're all human things right now. Imagine. [00:54:00] That's you may be able to have some inferences that are like shared human conditions and experiences of that kind of thing, right?

[00:54:06] Sure. Now, broaden your perception. Hey, we have no idea what it's like to be an animal, right? To experience the world from being a deer or an ant or whatever it is, right? And this is also a thing that you see quite extensively in shamanic practices and things like the wearing of animal imagery or animal hides or the taking on of the form of the animal because the animals are quite often seen as like liminal things that exist between this world and the spirit world it's there are like there are some interesting theories i've seen if you go back to like you know like the early humans, like Paleolithic, like Stone Age people, because like shamanism and animism is like, is very likely the earliest kind of human religion as a whole, right?

[00:54:52] And we have to be around the upper Paleolithic, we start seeing, which is about 30, 000 years ago we start seeing very more like [00:55:00] anthropomorphic and human descriptions of spirits, it's like the idea that spirits are human like, or they're like human form, then there is like a separate spirit world.

[00:55:09] That kind of kicks into action around the, around 30, 000 years ago. We start seeing cave paintings and things like that, of like half human, half animal hybrid things, which are like shape shifting shamans and stuff like that, which is really interesting. But there are a couple of theories like before that, where it's like, before that, if we're looking at like animism, it's spirits and forces. They may not have even had forms or bodies, right? Like we're bearing rivers and mountains and forests or trees. Like they're not necessarily human and you, I mean, don't think about them as human which is that is it's weird and hard for us to conceptualize that because we, again, like living in the world that we do, we have a natural kind of propensity to try and put human forms on everything.

[00:55:50] Cause we liken it to ourselves. a lot of the time. And that makes it very difficult for us to try and conceptualize anything that's not human,

[00:55:57] Track 1: Yes

[00:55:58] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: It's even if you like think [00:56:00] about it with animals, like we talk about animals having different kinds of consciousness, right? And animals like spirits in the world differently, but we always compare their conscious back to ours.

[00:56:08] It's Oh, dolphins, they, dolphins and elephants, they have very developed brains. They are, they can almost think like we can.

[00:56:14] Track 1: They have this yeah,

[00:56:16] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: memory, they have what's called metacognition. So it's the ability to recognize themselves and also recognize that they're thinking. So it's thinking about thinking.

[00:56:24] But it's think about it for a second. Like we always reference it back through our own perspective. So we always put ourselves at the center of our worldview, which is natural. It's completely okay. Cause that's what almost everything does. But like one of the, this is like something that you learn.

[00:56:38] I'm like, I've read a bit of ethnography or like people who have stopped, sat with the shamans and tribes and were like, it's one of the things they struggle with, but it's one of the things that like the shaman teachers, part of it's a part of that wisdom is like. Try to try to view the world without you at the center of it, right?

[00:56:54] Try and one of the ways that you become the animal, right? Or take on the form of the animal in these kinds of [00:57:00] practices is you want to try and empathize with it so strongly that, but you want no longer the center of your worldview. You experience the world from the vantage point of something else.

[00:57:09] And that creates a different state of knowing that opens you up, it creates a different state of consciousness and when we're in a different state of consciousness, we have access to different kinds of knowing, which give us insights into reality. So it's like we can experience what reality is like from the perspective of an animal.

[00:57:27] As opposed to what's like the human, and that gives us a whole new set of practices and set of beliefs and ways of looking at the world and these kinds of things. And again it all comes back to cultivating that sense of wisdom, right? Cause like you do that, it gives you a different perspective.

[00:57:41] It gives you a different truth

[00:57:42] Track 1: Yeah.

[00:57:43] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: gives you like an angle to view reality from a little bit better, which the more you do that, the more angles and the more sides of reality you expose yourself to. I think by it, it just, it fills out your experience and it makes things a little, it makes it more interesting, but also helps you grasp things a [00:58:00] little bit better.

[00:58:00] Oh, okay. I've seen a lot of shit. So now I'm starting to get the idea of where everything's going, but we never actually, we never fully know it.

[00:58:08] Track 1: Yes, and you know when you were talking about just now like that we try to like we're talking about like people thought of different gods with it's the god of the river or the ocean and you didn't need to They don't necessarily have a human form. Maybe they were just whatever but it makes me think of I'm obsessed with these how do we say it inakian like angels and things like that and yeah, when they when people now are like making like AI pictures of them and you're like Yeah, no, my favorite thing is when people write in the comments no wonder every time angels came in the Bible they said be not afraid.

[00:58:47] Of course, because they're fucking scary.

[00:58:50] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: It looks fucking scary as shit. Yeah.

[00:58:52] Track 1: Yeah cause if I saw that shit, I'd be like, Oh my god, please! I would be like, I'd be so but, yeah, [00:59:00] and I think, Because, if somebody's talking about and also interesting thing about, At least in this case with these angels, Is These were described in the Bible as this way.

[00:59:10] Even though in the Bible they are described this way, people were like no. We have to make them like humans because this is too much. We can't handle this. Nobody can imagine. A being with 10, 000 eyes. Not that nobody can, but you know what I'm trying to say. It's very hard to imagine a being with 10, 000 eyes and 10, 000 tongues and a million wings.

[00:59:32] That's very difficult. And everyone's that doesn't make sense. So let's just make it people who are cute with wings. That makes, that's very easy to conceptualize. And that way I can see myself in this divine thing, but I cannot see myself in a giant eye. It's scary. And it makes me nervous.

[00:59:49] Yeah.

[00:59:50] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Yeah

[00:59:51] yeah, it's weird because the thing with the angels as well, it's a lot of those, a lot of those descriptions, believe it or not, they don't actually come from the Bible itself. This is one of the weird [01:00:00] things they come either from Apocrypha, which aren't like, they're not considered biblical canon, but they're still interesting.

[01:00:05] Like basically as far as I'm concerned, any of the apocrypha it's basically just a buzzword for the actual interesting stuff, the stuff that I'm actually more interested in. If it's important for me to take it out or anything like that, but that's

[01:00:18] Track 1: Bible is pretty boring compared to everything else.

[01:00:21] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: To us, so it's like in comparison to some of the other stuff, I, yeah, I say, so it's pretty interesting. But yeah so the one of the interesting things, the only two the only two angels it depends if we're looking at the Old Testament or the New Testament, the only two angels that are mentioned by name in the Bible are Michael and Gabriel.

[01:00:37] The others any other angel was not mentioned.

[01:00:40] Track 1: Yeah.

[01:00:40] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Testament they don't mention names. But they mentioned like different classes and things. If you look at like his vision, it's like that, which is the chariot, like the, this is the, it's a big thing. Like Jewish, like much of a mysticism where

[01:00:52] It's focused around the mission of Ezekiel, where he sees these flaming wheels and these flaming chariots and stuff in the sky and the angels, there are like [01:01:00] four of them, um, and they all, they have they have four heads, like one's a lion, one's an eagle, one's

[01:01:05] Track 1: Yeah.

[01:01:06] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: these kind of weird

[01:01:08] Track 1: Ezekiel is out here.

[01:01:10] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Eze, Ezekiel and yeah, it's, again it, to me it always comes back to visionary experiences.

[01:01:16] Track 1: Yeah.

[01:01:17] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: I do think like the whole of me of mysticism, which is like the kind of mysticism that arose around Ezekiel's visions. Like I think Ezekiel is probably, or that, that book in the very, it's describing.

[01:01:29] Somebody's visionary experience, right? So I do think somebody had that experience, but whether it was a person, whether it was a group who saw that thing in a visionary trance or an ecstatic state or anything like that and prophecy and vision and stuff it's very ubiquitous in, in, in iron age Israel and like the, among the ancient Israelites, it's my profit, like prophecy and interpreting the will of God is very, it's very common in Asia.

[01:01:56] It's like much more common than it is in like second temple period Judaism. So the [01:02:00] late Judaism. So when you look at ancient Israelite stuff, um, if wider near Eastern sort of prophecy institutions are anything to go by. Dancing was probably very important. So they, they engaged ecstatic dance quite frequently.

[01:02:15] There are some potential instances that they may have involved in like self flagellation, like whipping themselves because the whipping and stuff, like the pain, it releases endorphins and it creates a, like a chain of change of consciousness as well. So all these kind of things, but again, it's intended to produce and create these kinds of visionary experiences and perceptions and things connections with God, and there are, when you look at some of the other biblical prophets some of them are quite, Weird characters.

[01:02:41] Elijah, for example, is a very strange character. He's, he's I've even seen some people like someone psychologist amongst us, say he may have been like schizophrenic or bipolar or anything like that. Even in the Bible, he's considered a very, a bit of a strange character. He's a character that's not Israelite necessarily.

[01:02:58] He exists on like the [01:03:00] periphery of of society. So he's this weird, traveling prophet almost. That's very interesting. But there is a weird yeah, there is a weird, interesting thing when it comes to the whole psychology and like biology of this. It's part of a wider, I guess really, I'd say it's really interesting for me about how and why this stuff happens, but If you look at it's not so much schizophrenics and people like that people have schizophrenia but especially if you look at people who have like frontal lobe epilepsy, right?

[01:03:28] Or people have epilepsy or epileptic fits and they have like epileptic, like frontal lobe or temporal lobe epilepsy. I can't remember which one it is. But there is a link. Sometimes in, in people who have these conditions, when they describe having seizures, sometimes they describe having religious experiences alongside them.

[01:03:49] And it's actually quite a common thing that

[01:03:51] With temporal lobe epilepsy or frontal lobe epilepsy, when they go into seizure and they have an epileptic fit, they will have a visionary or ecstatic experience. [01:04:00] And they will have some kind of vision or experience of God, or a spirit of some kind.

[01:04:04] And there are also, debates about how some people with schizophrenia, they have higher rates of certain enzymes and things in their brain or in their body that produces certain issues and certain things that may have an effect on their visions and their experiences, so that connection between religious experience and like temporal epilepsy and stuff like that's really interesting to me.

[01:04:26] Like, where's that coming from? Especially if we go back into the ancient world and people maybe are having seizures, or they're having these experiences. And, it's really interesting as well. The Hebrew Yahweh in the old Testament, Yahweh only appears. It's two or three times in the Old Testament to people actively appears.

[01:04:46] He appears once to Isaiah in the temple he appears to Moses on Mount Sinai and I think of the other time he appears, he doesn't appear directly. He appears in, in, in a kind of the Hebrew word for it, like it's like a cloud, it's [01:05:00] called the gloom. Basically, like the actual form of God is hidden in this cloud, basically. Which is also like a telltale sign that Yahweh, cause Yahweh used to originally be a weather God for the Midianites and Edomites before he became the God of the Bible. But that's another long story. But but what's really interesting when you look at. When Yahweh or the Old Testament God appears in the Bible is despite everyone saying that, God is filled with love and it's beautiful and everything, every time he appears, or like I say both times he appears to people actively and shows his form, people are scared shitless. They're terrified, like Moses and Isaiah, they come away from it visibly shaking, completely traumatized, like this is not an experience of love that they have when they experienced God, they are absolutely terrified, their body and their heart is racing. They're trembling. They go into like almost a coma for a few days.

[01:05:48] It's it's insane. It's these are. A lot of the time, this is this is the reality of divine experience.

[01:05:54] Track 1: Yes.

[01:05:55] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: something that we don't necessarily like talking about because sometimes it can be quite [01:06:00] violent. Like when you experience and come face to face with something of that magnitude and that power, it can leave on your body just isn't prepared for it,

[01:06:08] Track 1: Yes.

[01:06:09] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: And it can leave you traumatized in a sense.

[01:06:14] physically traumatized, not just mentally traumatized, but physically traumatized. Like your body is visibly shaking or you're having a seizure, it's like that sometimes for me, but that's not talked about enough because we have especially with again with modern kind of pop spirituality, it's very common now for everyone to be like, yes, the universe is praying for me.

[01:06:32] I'm here. Manifestation dah, all the kind of stuff, the experience of God is very, or I should say the experience of the divine, if I'm being more general, it's very kind of sanitized, it's very toned down a lot of the violence and a lot of the, I don't, I, it is trauma, but it's it's I guess it can be described as a good trauma because it's like a transformational experience, but a lot of the, a lot of the danger, a lot of the violence, a lot of the [01:07:00] struggle, That is found in transformation in encounters with the divine that has been watered down taken out of a lot of how we talk about God and the divine now in modern spirituality.

[01:07:12] We, people talk about, having I think an awareness of God or the universe or anything like that. And that's wonderful. It's like you look into ancient accounts of prophecy or shamanic soul flight or anything like that, like experiences where people are actively leaving their body or they're actively encountering spiritual deities, It's very rarely a pleasant experience, at least initially, right?

[01:07:34] Like it does become pleasant afterwards because you learn the knowledge, you have these incredible experiences, right? But during the time that you're experiencing that, it can be terrifying, it can be traumatic, right? And this is sometimes this is the role of the shaman or the teacher, right? It's this is why the shaman exists.

[01:07:50] It's a person who's been there and done that. And it's somebody who can guide you through that experience so that you don't lose yourself in it. Because the experience of really connecting to the divine can be [01:08:00] incredibly traumatic if you're not ready for it. And that's why the wisdom figure exists in a society to break your pattern recognition and to guide you through that experience.

[01:08:09] Otherwise you will just your mind will melt and your body will shake violently. So that's why they exist. I think.

[01:08:16] Track 1: Yes. Mm. Oh my gosh. Okay so Oh my, this has been such a great conversation. We are out of time, unfortunately. I could talk to you all day.

[01:08:33] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: Absolutely. Yeah.

[01:08:36] Track 1: But you're, I mean, maybe one day you can come back and we'll talk about more stuff because this has been amazing. Thank you so much. I literally feel like I just learned four years of school. I'm

[01:08:48] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: you sound like my students at this point.

[01:08:50] Track 1: been like an hour, 15 minutes. And I'm like, I feel like I just went to like college. I think I have a bachelor's degree in philosophy [01:09:00] now.

[01:09:00] I'm pretty sure. Great. Thank

[01:09:04] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: it's why it's what I'm starting

[01:09:05] Track 1: Oh, but Chris, thank you. And again I hope one day you can come back when you have time and we can talk more about

[01:09:16] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: I'm on, I'm happy to. Yeah. Just drop me some, drop me a message. I'm happy to come back.

[01:09:19] Track 1: Yeah, awesome. Okay. Can you just let everybody know where they can find you on the internet if they want to learn more about all this stuff and hear you talk more? Because I would like to, other people might too.

[01:09:34] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: my so my, my I'm pretty active on Instagram. Instagram is my home base. And I'm at, I'm on Instagram as mistyeofficial. That's M Y S T A I. Then official, uh, that's my main kind of home base. I am like, I do have a Facebook page, but I almost never use it. So I don't really bother.

[01:09:52] I do have a, I have a YouTube where I do other podcasts and I do, I make videos and [01:10:00] lectures and stuff on that. I post some of my stuff on that. I have a kind of a backlog of podcast episodes, which are, I'm happy with them, but at the same time, I almost want to redo a lot of them because I have had this experience with it where it's like a lot of my podcasts, they were recorded when I was like 19, 20 years old. And I am, I will fully admit, like I, like the past two years, two, three years have been quite humbling because I've been teaching quite a bit. So I've learned to show up and how to phrase things a lot more. But you know, a lot of my early podcasts or a majority of my podcasts, they were filmed when I was like 1920.

[01:10:37] So I was an insufferable teenager.

[01:10:38] And you can really see it in a lot of them. Cause I'm I, Talk a lot and I'm quite not, I'm not impatient, but I'm just, I'm not super happy with all of them, but you know, it's what you would expect from a 19 year old who gets on camera for the first time and is meeting his idols and is very excitable.

[01:10:53] So there's a lot there. I keep them up there just 'cause it's fun. I get a lovely, healthy amount of hate for the amount of time that I speak in them. It's quite fun. [01:11:00] But yeah, that, that's the whole experience. But they're up there so you, you can watch those if you want, if you can get through it without thinking I'm too insufferable but other than that I am I'm act I'm actively working to rerecord a lot of them anyway, but I'm on YouTube and stuff as well. Same there just at Misty. So YouTube slash Misty is. Also YouTube. And then for like my, I, active teaching stuff. So I, I do two, two kinds of, teaching.

[01:11:23] So I do lectures usually, or I do courses and I do live course cohorts things at the moment I am teaching a new course. We actually started about two weeks ago, so we've only just started. I'm teaching a year long course for Hertica so her or Herma Hermeticism. Which is the philosophies and wisdom and stuff of Hermes Trismegistus, who is a kind of a Greek syncretic merger of Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth.

[01:11:46] And he has a very interesting philosophy around that. So I'm teaching all about hermitism. I also have a whole other backlog of courses and catalogs that I've taught over the past three years that are all on my website, which is www. misty. co. [01:12:00] uk. So I'm in the UK. But I will also say I have an active discord server.

[01:12:04] That's always fun. It's a bit quiet every now and again, but My, my general philosophy when it comes to teaching my general approach, when it comes to teaching or doing any kind of lectures, it's like, I've always had this from the very beginning as well. It's all my live, that's why I teach through zoom and I teach live.

[01:12:19] All my live lectures are free. So anyone can come to them, doesn't matter whether you have a membership, but you have anything else, like all the live courses and stuff are free and they will always be free because I want to get the knowledge and stuff out there for as many people as they can.

[01:12:33] But if you want the recordings, the readings, the homeworks and like office hours with me and stuff, so like one on ones, whatever, then you can get a membership and you can get the courses and stuff. And that's what that's for. Purely just because I have to keep up, like I have to keep up, up You need the upkeep for my website and the stuff in the material.

[01:12:49] That's why it exists. But that's how it is So all my live classes are always free so you can come to them hear me chat if you like it and then if you want to get the recordings of the classes and the lecture notes and me [01:13:00] essentially The homework's everything then you can get a membership that's how it's always worked and then I also do like i'm getting more into like personal coaching and stuff as well So one on ones if people want to do that I am Along with a friend, I mentioned it like earlier at the podcast, but I am in the middle of, I'm launching I think pretty soon I'm in the middle of developing an app for coaching and also just for like esotericism and spirituality coaching and stuff as well So i'm in the middle of doing that and we're launching that pretty soon I think maybe in the next couple of weeks actually but we're taking on beta members at the moment to test like basically screen test the app on your phone on iphone android and that kind of thing and then we're doing kind of a group coaching thing going through that and doing, that whole thing for it's over the course of six months, it's similar to what I was talking about with philosophy.

[01:13:46] So why talk about with philosophy as a way of life and a set of practices for sort of cultivation of wisdom and that kind of thing. It's coaching in that kind of thing. So it's cultivating wisdom and living an empowered best life essentially with [01:14:00] spiritual practices and things involved.

[01:14:01] And we're doing. That in sort of six month batches of students who are taking on which is really fun. But that's how it works So I like I either work through main lectures Which anyone can come to or there's like personal coaching that you can do and that's all on my website and stuff as well But i'm all over the place, but i'm still getting set up after a while I've been i've like i've been pretty private for the past two three years.

[01:14:19] I've had a core batch of students that have stuck with me for the entire time, which has been really fun.

[01:14:24] But now I'm in the middle of launching out, which is now fun. I'm getting out onto the internet more and more. So

[01:14:31] Track 1: Yay. We like you to be on the internet 'cause I would, I love hearing you talk and I think it'll be great to hear your 19-year-old self talk. And I

[01:14:41] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: I strongly disagree, actually.

[01:14:49] Track 1: it's okay, but you didn't know what you didn't know, so it was fine. Yeah.

[01:14:53] chris-lyon--he-him-_2_02-04-2024_141803: was working with the knowledge I had at the time.

[01:14:56] Track 1: Exactly. See? You're using your own philosophy. It's great. Yes! [01:15:00] Oh, gosh. Thank you so much, Chris, and Yeah, thank you everybody for listening and you know what you're listening to. I don't have to tell you this is done with divine.

[01:15:13] We're on all the socials and if you like the show you could give you could pause and give us a rating that's always really helpful on wherever you listen to it whichever platform and if you have any suggestions for episodes or comments or questions or critiques or anything let me know and You can email me gmail.

[01:15:31] com And if you want to follow me, Ashley, I'm at SankofaHS That's S A N K O F A H S And Sankofa Healing Sanctuary on Facebook but get me on Instagram, it's easier And, okay, thank you everybody for being here And, okay, see you next week Bye!

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