Everything You Know is Wrong — Disinformation: The Podcast Series Finale
Everything You Know is Wrong — Disinformation: The Podcast Series Finale
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This two-hour edition of Disinformation: The Podcast is the final episode of the series. Join Raymond Wiley, Joe McFall, Austin Gandy, and Joe Nolan for one last journey into the bizarre undercurrents of the human psyche. Raymond talks about the recent release of his first book, The Georgia Guidestones: America’s Most Mysterious Monument. Austin Gandy’s Invisible College returns with a new take on the infamous Knights Templar, and the Oslo shootings they are said to have inspired. Joe Nolan’s Insomnia delves into the undying myths of Carlos Castaneda, and the New Age subculture they have inspired. Finally, Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall present a retrospective discussion of their podcast careers, along with impressions of the occult mysteries, conspiracy theories, and obscure realms of belief featured in their seminal broadcasts. After 7 years, 80 podcasts, and more than a million downloads, these two friends say thank you and goodbye to the audience … For now.
Woman ‘Cooked To Death’ At Guru’s Self-Improvement Seminar
Be careful what you consent to in the name of new age-y self actualization — it can go horribly wrong. From the National Post:
Quebec police officers have completed their report into the bizarre death of Chantale Lavigne — who was “cooked to death” at a personal development seminar.
Lavigne died in hospital after she and eight others in a personal-development seminar called Dying in Consciousness were covered with mud, wrapped in plastic, put under blankets and immobilized with their heads in cardboard boxes for about nine hours, under instructions to hyperventilate.
Gabrielle Frechette, a self-styled therapist, was the seminar’s operator. According to Radio-Canada, Frechette has been running self-improvement courses for about two decades, and claims to be channelling Melchisedech, a Biblical figure.
How To Start A Dance Kult
Let’s start with what God is: the Father, Son & Holy Spirit.
The confusion about the nature of God starts with the idea God is separate from Existence. Also, there seems to be a tendency to treat the Father as God itself and the Son & Holy Spirit as a part of, but not equal to the Father. From these simple misunderstandings comes the logical paradoxes we’re all familiar with.
So here’s where we begin to clear things up. God is the single thing, but there are three aspects that make up the totality of God. Here’s the analogy: we take a piece of cheese. The cheese is one thing; however, there are aspects to the cheese that make up the whole thing: we have the shape, color & taste of the cheese. So where does the cheese end and its aspects begin? Well obviously that’s an impossible question.
So now the issue…
Sex On The Brain: Orgasms Unlock Altered Consciousness
Kayt Sukel writes in New Scientist:
With a click and a whirr, I am pulled into the scanner. My head is strapped down and I have been draped with a blanket so that I may touch my nether regions — my clitoris in particular — with a certain degree of modesty. I am here neither for a medical procedure nor an adult movie. Rather, I am about to stimulate myself to orgasm while an fMRI scanner tracks the blood flow in my brain.
My actions are helping Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and colleagues to tease apart the mechanisms underlying sexual arousal. In doing so, not only have they discovered that there is more than one route to orgasm, but they may also have revealed a novel type of consciousness — an understanding of which could lead to new treatments for pain.
Trial Of New Age Guru Reveals Bizarre Practices
In October 2009 reports of mutliple deaths at an Arizona sweat lodge retreat led by New Age guru James Arthur Ray (one of the “teachers” in the hit movie and book The Secret) rocked the self help world. Now that he’s on trial, details of his bizarre practices are emerging. Mark Duncan reports for the Daily Courier:
Echoes of a lost life hung thickly over Judge Warren Darrow’s courtroom Tuesday after a jury heard the recorded voice of Kirby Brown, one of three people who died after a sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona in 2009.
The deaths led to charges of manslaughter against noted motivational speaker and author James Arthur Ray, who has pleaded not guilty.
“When we started the (Samurai) game, I was like you,” Brown said on the recording, which was made just before she and the other attendees entered the sweat lodge. It is a segment from recordings made during four…
Vale Kenneth Grant, 1924–2011: Grandfather Chaos and Flying Saucerer
Kenneth Grant by Austin Spare (c. 1951).
Finally unpacking the books bequeathed to me by my late ex-Freemason father-in-law’s estate has put me in a wistful mood. I just keep being reminded of how many 20th century disinformationists we’ve recently lost: John Keel, John Mitchell, Zecharia Sitchin — and a loss equivalent to the space filled by their contributions to occulture.
Stacking my now prized Golden Dawn collection turned my thoughts to Israel Regardie and so Crowley — and to his other spiritual son and former secretary, Kenneth Grant.
Both did a great deal to popularise modern post-Thelemic magic. I’ve got some fond ’80s teenage memories of coming across them all in the Psychology section (?) of my local library and reading furtively with one eye over my shoulder. It was the start of an endless study of esotericism.
So I was not surprised when I read that Kenneth Grant had passed away in…
Study Shows Meditation Changes Brain Structure in Just 8 Weeks
Photo: Sarvodaya Shramadana, Colombo, Sri Lanka (CC)
Christie Nicholson writes in Scientific American:
The benefits of meditation have received newfound evidence from neuroscience in the last five years, as researchers are finding real physiological changes due to a sort of formally practiced introspection.
Recently scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital had 16 participants take an eight-week mindfulness meditation program. This sort of meditation focuses on nonjudgmental awareness of sensations and feelings. Subjects practiced for about 30 minutes a day.
Brain images were taken of each subject before and after the training. Scientists found increases in gray-matter density in the hippocampus — an area responsible for learning and memory. And they saw decreased density in the amygdala— which is responsible for our anxiety and stress responses …
All this reminds us of two things: 1) The brain is much more plastic than scientists thought even just a decade ago and 2) the way we feel—calm or anxious—can be…
Evolver the Podcast: Exploring Prehistoric Man and the Changing of the Times
Evolver the Podcast: Exploring Prehistoric Man and the Changing of the Times
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Hello everyone and welcome back to Evolver the Podcast. In this episode we have interviews with Graham Hancock, bestselling author of Fingerprints of the Gods, The Sign and the Seal, Supernatural, and most recently Entangled. After that we interview Robin Gunkel who is a regional coordinator for Evolver Baltimore. Then we have Erin Shaw from Evolver LA interviewing Daniel Pinchbeck, co-founder of Evolver, and bestselling author of Breaking Open The Head, 2012 the Return of Quetzalcoatl, and most recently Notes from the Edge Times.
Damanhur: My Sci-Fi Theophany Under the Mountain
Joseph Allen writes about his visit to Damanhur, a sizeable New Age commune nestled in the Italian Alps. The community is best known for the stunning Temples of Humankind. From Confessions of a CyberCasualty:
December, 2007. The distant Alps are covered in snow. Small flakes swirl in the wind, dancing around red clay statues of muscular giants and voluptuous goddesses, reminiscent of Egypt. Most prominent is the falcon-headed god, Horus, facing the Fire Altar where the looming statues converge.
I start to walk into the grove of the Earth Altar, but my guide Shama tells me I should go no further.
“It is dangerous for anyone who is not spiritually prepared,” she warns me. “Very dangerous.”
I would be willing to chance it, but I suppose rules are rules.
In the distance is Monti Pelati, the sacred mountain of the Damanhurians. It is said that more Synchronic Lines converge there than any place in the world. These lines are like the Earth’s…
Daniel Pinchbeck’s Business Shamanism
Daniel Pinchbeck. Photo: Herwig Maurer (CC)
I wonder if this essay by Daniel Pinchbeck will, years hence, be looked upon as a seminal point in the transition of the “consciousness” movement, for lack of a better term, from an idealistic remove from the mainstream a la Burning Man (which of course is completely unsustainable despite it’s worthy goals), to a pragmatic vision of how to change the world. From his Reality Sandwich blog:
Now that the Evolver network and brand have established themselves to a certain extent, I want to look ahead to developments I hope to see in the near future, with this organization and other initiatives. For the next phase of development, I propose the term “business shamanism.” “Corporate alchemy” would be a viable alternative.
First, some context: As I write this, the ruling regime in our rotten republic of Obama-stan is seeking to ignore the pain of the sheeple and extend…
God May Not Be the Theoretical Higgs Boson: SHE May Be the Already-Discovered Weak Force
Dickey Eason
We all have our ideas about how the world and universe work. Some of us see the hand of “God” in everything. Others are atheists or agnostics—still others are guided by spirituality. But no matter where we are on the “believe” spectrum, most of us see a rather benign universe. By that I mean that we do not see specific forces struggling with one another in the cosmos once we get away from earth, which is interesting to me. We see conflict and battles on earth but not in the rest of the universe.
We view it much as we do a documentary—no plots, no dynamics—just an intriguing show. We look at ourselves—human life on earth—as being the real show. But that separation has, I believe, caused us to distort our perceptions of the Big Picture. I think if we start seeing the natural conflicts that exist in the universe,…
Discover The Lost History of ‘Hidden Wisdom’
Here’s author and Freemason Tim Wallace-Murphy speaking at the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of the Grand Lodge of New York in May 2010. This presentation is based on his book Hidden Wisdom: Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition.
Laughter Yoga Is For Everyone
Free Laugher Yoga in NYC
Next month disinformation is releasing a new film from documentarian Albert Nerenberg, Laughology. It’s the fourth film we’ve distributed for Albert and we have a lot of faith in him, even if we had never heard of Laughter Yoga before.
It turns out it’s massive and the public library next door to our office in New York has free classes, so a few of us went along. If you can get over the embarrassment factor, it actually does seem to work. The New York Times has just discovered the same thing:
I was in a vile, despicable mood when I arrived at laughter yoga. It was Wednesday, and my brain felt torn in one too many directions; the usual, only worse. Laughter seemed a remote possibility.
I waited patiently inside a nondescript office at 40th Street and Broadway among a group of wildly divergent strangers, with only my skepticism to keep…
We Sold You The Secret – Now Buy The Power
Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, originally released as a film, became a book publishing phenomenon in 2006, with 19 million copies printed in 46 languages, not to mention disinformation’s own Beyond The Secret, in which Alexandra Bruce dissected the teachings of Byrne and her fellow “life coaches” that comprised the so-called “Secret.”
For reasons unknown (to us and the rest of the general public, anyway), Rhonda won’t be promoting the sequel, The Power. Could it be that she really can’t think of a way to tell interviewers what’s different in this book from the fluff in the previous one? Her publishers have resorted to advertising on TV with the promo below — it goes on sale at midnight tonight…
Discover ‘Hidden Wisdom’ with Tim Wallace-Murphy
Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition. Painting by Cristiano Banti (1857).
Chris Orapello writes on The Infinite and The Beyond:
Tim Wallace-Murphy, co author of Rosslyn, The Knights of the Holy Grail, and other books dealing with the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, presents humankind’s pursuit to enlightenment with his new release Hidden Wisdom, Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition.
In this book Tim Wallace-Murphy takes a look into the evolution of human spirituality and its relationship as a species to divinity and the manifested world throughout the periods of civilization. Starting with the dawn of time and continuing up to the present day, he provides a historical commentary on the growth of thought and through his focus establishes a chain of understanding while revealing some of the pivotal relationships that exist between the faiths, theologies, philosophies as well as the political, social, industrial and technological elements of human growth that have developed over…
Evolver the Podcast Episode 3: Magic and the Occult
This is my favorite episode we’ve done so far. We have three amazing interviews.
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The first is an interview with Jonathan Talat Phillips interviewing Gary Lachman the rockstar (guitarist for Blondie) turned occult author. The focus of this interview is to discuss Gary’s new book Jung the Mystic. The next interview is a conversation between me and Baza Novic, one of the regional coordinators from Evolver LA. We talked about his involvement with Evolver and how it has been driven by his esoteric practice. The Interview is opened with a meditation from Baza. Last we have an interview with Raymond Wiley, that was conducted by Jennifer Palmer. This was a real treat for me. |
A couple years ago when I first got into the counter culture and the occult my sort of crash course was Raymond’s podcast Out There Radio, which I was introduced to from the first Disinformation podcast that he did, and it’s been a crazy ride every since. It was awesome to be able to do a podcast with Raymond. This interview is a fantastic conversation between Jennifer and Raymond about the “occult” in a very broad way. Raymond also discusses the importance he feels there is in us recognizing the rich history of the Western Esoteric practice. If you would like to listen to more of Raymond like I mentioned he has a 50 episode series called Out There Radio and he is also doing the Disinformation podcasts. Check them out!
The Revolution that the Divine Mother is Preparing
Andrew Harvey
At the end of his life, the great Indian mystic Aurobindo is said to have said, “If there is to be a future, it will wear the crown of feminine design.” Unless we awaken to the mystery of the sacred feminine, of the feminine as sacred, and allow it to glow into, irradiate, illumine, and penetrate every area of our activity and to create in them all harmony, justice, peace, love, ecstasy, and balance, we will die out and take nature, or a large part of it, with us. Unless we come to know what the sacred feminine really is—its subtlety and flexibility, but also its extraordinarily ruthless, radical power of dissolving all structures and dogmas, all prisons in which we have sought so passionately to imprison ourselves—we will be taken in by patriarchal projections of it. The Divine Mother, the fullness of the revolution that she is preparing,…
Uncover ‘Hidden Wisdom’ With Tim Wallace-Murphy
Below is the first five chapters of Tim Wallace-Murphy’s new book Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition available on Scribd. Here’s a quick bit about the book:
From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.
This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals, leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools, on philosophers, playwrights and poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake and W. B. Yeats, on artists and renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern…
Uncover ‘Hidden Wisdom’ This Week with Author and Freemason Tim Wallace-Murphy
If you will be in the New York-metro area this week, please come and join us for a talk and book signing for Tim Wallace-Murphy’s new book Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Please RSVP on Facebook (see links below) or if not there, then by comment on this article:
Thursday, May 6, 2010: East West Living Bookstore and Cafe
Saturday, May 8, 2010: New York Theosophical Society
Monday, May 10, 2010: Livingston Masonic Library
Whether you can make it or not, here’s the first five chapters of Hidden Wisdom available on Scribd:
From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes in Hidden Wisdom a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.
More info at www.hidden-wisdom.com.
