Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Today on Super Normalized, we have Gordon White. He's, for want of a better word, the dean of Rune Soup University, I would call it. It's a place where people get to learn a greater magical understanding of themselves, their lives and the world.
Gordon is a writer, media producer, podcaster, and a prolific one at bat. And he has helped me understand personally how to connect with the world in a magical way that enhances and enhanced my life and the life of all the people around me. The depth of this man's knowledge is. Is outstanding. He's got multiple books out that are amazing. I am absolutely happy to have him on the show and to have him express his ideas towards the world. People need to know more about this connection that's possible through magic. Now, if you're interested in connecting to the world in a deeper way, this one's for you. On with the show.
Looking at the statistics that I have for YouTube and for my podcast apps, I have a lot of listeners and viewers that aren't yet liked and subscribed. So if you're on YouTube, like, and subscribe, it's free. And if you're on a podcast app, please give me five stars. That'd be really cool. It helps other people find these great conversations, too. Thank you.
Hello, good morning. Or actually good afternoon for you. Isn't it, Mr. White?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm. I am more than familiar with the early shift, trust me.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty awful, but I'm getting used to it too. I've actually learned the trick. Get up an hour earlier. That way you don't look like you're still asleep.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Exactly. And I used to do that with work, like real jobs anyway, where I'd get. I'd leave two hours early just so it didn't feel like the whole day was my fucking job. It actually, I had time for that.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've learned that trick too. And I end the other part of the day very early so I can actually have time to do other things.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Tell me, why are you in Asuncion? Have you escaped because the bowling frog has shown an indicator?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Well, I did that the first time. So, yes, it's more about building out a second life. And the same thing happened when I first moved to Tasmania, which was I need a life that's pretty good for an apocalypse that I also like if it turns out that the apocalypse doesn't happen.
So I have two. Two versions of. Of the future. One that involves the World War III that's going to happen and the One that doesn't. And the one that doesn't is me living my best Germaine Greer life.
So for most of her life, and I think she's too old to travel now, but she would skip the English winter and go to Queensland and she had a place in the Daintree. And so I'm doing that but horizontally rather than. Rather than vertically. That's. That's the general. That's the general plan because I do like it here and it's very good for work. And honestly. So I've been to Peru. I'm going to Peru in a few weeks again. That'll be three times this year, which sounds impossibly indulgent from Australia because it is.
But here it's like going from Hobart to Sydney.
It's a couple of hours. Hours on a flight. It's the same like the internal flights are cheap, certainly compared when I'm converting it back to Australian prices. So I can get on a plane in the morning here in Asuncion and I can be in Cusco too early to check into my hotel on the same day. And you and I both know that just doesn't compute for Australians. Like. What?
[00:03:40] Speaker A: No.
Yeah, well, that's part of the reason why we don't go to South America because, you know, the. The travel is ridiculous and the cost is ridiculous. So, yeah, getting it is ridiculous.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Once you're here, it's all right cost ways.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Yeah, right, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Now we're actually look again looking at the idea of Asia, and P. Nang has actually raised its head, said, how about you come and visit us? And so it's been showing us a lot of things on the Alos. And we're like, oh, maybe. Maybe that could be cool.
You know, food capital of the world, apparently, for really good foodie stuff. So that could be fun.
And the prices are ridiculously cheap. You know, a price of our house there, which is amazing, is like 700,000. We're in Australia. That's like 3 million. So it's like.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah, anyway, I'm aware.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: All right, so what I should do is actually introduce you and we'll get into it. So I'll say, welcome to Super Normalized Gordon White.
Now, Gordon, we've known each other now probably, I'd say since 2016, when you started the. The Rune Soup members part of the. Of the.
I'd call it the Rune Soup University.
And you're on a mission, it seems to wake up the world to the potency and importance of magic.
Would you say that's True.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: That. That's very nice. It might have been.
It was maybe version one, or the first half of the project would have been on a mission to wake people up. There was a hard pivot in, or a realization, you know, in the, oh, I don't know, 2020-2023 era in Australia, where it's like, oh, actually, you can't wake anyone up, but you can help people who are, who are in the process of waking themselves up.
So it's. That now it's less, it's less proselytizing. It's. I've, I've healed my inner activist if I, if I talk about it, like Kelly Brogan.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Well, I should ask you then, because one of the things you used to ask on all of your podcasts was, were you a weird kid? I know you were, but are you a weird adult?
[00:05:56] Speaker B: No. Completely normal. Nothing.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Completely normal.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Okay.
Nothing odd about me at all. Definitely don't live in a shadowy South American country or a little farm in Southern Tasmania. No.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: You don't feel the need to wear purple and lots of rings and hang out in psychic conventions talking about phases.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: We, we all go, we all go through them. Yeah, we all, we all. And I, I, I have love for all of those phases. Right. Like when you actually are called to perform your difference because you are affirming it like that's, it's all good and it's, it's part of the, it's part of the journey. And honestly, some people crystallize in that form and that's what they want to look like, and that's fine. But, yes, if you, if you scroll back through the Google photos of life, you see a lot of phases.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I can attest to that, too. I'm a bit of a chameleon.
I wear what's best to blend, but there's a lot of weirdness on the inside, so I stick with that.
And one of the things I wanted to cover off was the idea that we do have a bit of an apocalyptic mind when it comes to reality. But that also does blend in with the facts that the astrology is saying that there is some ugliness coming for us front on.
Do you think that magic can help solve that for at least part of society?
[00:07:18] Speaker B: I don't think you solve seasons. Right. Like, I don't think you can solve the, the onset of winter with anything. You can mitigate and attenuate.
And, and that is the role. That's the, the, the archetypal shamanic role for a tribe is that it's to essentially make sure they get through the season and not piss off the spirits and so on. So it absolutely can do that. When this is talking about the activist wound, right, like there, you can. How to say this without being too mean.
Very often, especially with beginners on this journey or people who haven't done the inner work, which is where all the change happens anyway. The, the desire for transformation is outwardly expressed in the form of cursing world leaders or what have you.
And that runs up against Bayou Komalafi's perfect question. What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis and you're actually just putting more energy into the system?
So the, the wisdom and the insight and the transformation of the cosmos happens internally, which is then reflected externally. So if magic can get you there and plen things can get you there as well, but if magic can get you there, then yes, you can. You actually can. Like Jung said, you can prevent nuclear war.
Well, depending on how many of us integrate our shadow, we'll be able to duck nuclear war, which is also why nuclear war is on the cards between now and 2028.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like there is. There is a great healing that is going on as people become more conscious. And I remember as a. A youth talking to spirits and nearly all of them were saying that, yes, it's coming, it's coming, be patient, be patient. People are going to wake up. And I'm like, how long do I have to be patient for?
But it seems to be now that I can be around other people that I would, in previous time would have considered to be completely normal. But they raise all of these issues too now. And, and they do so consciously with understanding of what's going on. And I can't think of anyone that I know now that believes anything that's been reported in any news whatsoever. It's like the whole world is being turned upside down when it comes to consciousness and being conscious of what's actually happening.
So that's a good thing. A good thing for sure.
Now, you've got such a diverse background spanning chaos, magic, shamanism, permaculture and media work.
How did these paths come together to shape who you are today?
[00:10:01] Speaker B: Arguably out of sequence.
So I think about this often. I didn't find out anything about permaculture until I got to London, and that was in my late 20s.
And that initially annoyed me because I'm like, hang on a minute. This is actually what I was looking for. I've told this story a Few times elsewhere. But when I grew up in Newcastle, Australia, and we're getting to the end of high school, and I decided I wanted to be an environmental engineer because I discovered magic and I was, you know, a bright young neo pagan, and. And my mother said, why would you want to be an environmental engineer? They just dig out stormwater drains around business parks. I'm like, no, they don't. Because in my head I'm picturing like, reforestation and all this cool stuff. And so we went to the Newcastle University Open evening for kids who were graduating high school, and I go to the environmental engineering one, and the first slide is like, here is a stormwater drain we've built around a business park. So, needless to say, that wasn't for me. But it turns like the career path that I was feeling into at the age of 18 would have been like permaculture. If I'd known, I would have just gone up. Bill was still alive, but I would have gone up and interned with Jeff for a year or two, and my life would have gone off in a very different direction. Right. And none of that happened. I did media, which turned out to be really good for magic. And then I used to joke that I was like the black widow of world economies because the. The New Zealand economy, which isn't really a world economy, crashed when I first moved there after university.
And then I showed up in London in 2008, just in for the Lehman Brothers collapse.
But what was quite good, in retrospect about having a career that's predisposed to layoffs at the best of times is you got pretty good at career magic, you got pretty good at forecasting, you're pretty good at sigils and so on, because it was like a survival game. And so I had some wild adventures mixing the magic that I sort of discovered after some dream experiences when I was 13, in with it all. And so that was the sequence that it went like magic and then media and then.
And then sort of permaculture and sitting with how they all interacted as I'm like, building out how I would like to participate in the world.
Then there was a call to move eventually from London after 15 years, out of 16 years out of the country, back to Australia, but to New Zealand, to Tasmania to buy a little farm, which we did. And that's what I did in 2016, 2017.
So that's how they all kind of. They came together out of sequence. And I definitely know that, particularly on the farm and having to participate in its recovery from being overgrazed sheep paddocks into like an organic heritage cider orchard which still doesn't yield any cider because heritage variety trees take quite a while to grow. One of the reasons you have, you know, modern high, high yield varieties, they go so fast. But we're very happy with how it's going. Right. And so all of that custodianship and spirit work and being on country and noticing. So, so Lee Morgan, who actually lives up the valley from me and is a writer on Witchcraft, calls the site the Noticing. He says sometimes I think it should be called the noticing. And that's so much better because actually it gives it to everyone, but it's, it widens out the permission field to, to really step into what, what that feeling is, particularly when you're in a custodianship relationship with land or kids or pets or what have you. That's the, the, the function that allows you to participate in the more than human. So that's, that came through out of sequence and then cohered in a quite joyous way in the last few years.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: It sounds like throughout that there's the thread of right relation coming to the fore for and then living that.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say. So it's a belonging journey, which is archetypally a human incarnation. Right. So my belonging, my feeling of belonging is, has always been more than human and even spooky more than human. Like I'm, I'm the shark kid, like that, that's still like my cuddly animal. So.
But it's, it's, it's finding where you belong. Right. And I think we all do actually belong in the cosmos. It's just part of my journey in this incarnation is to explore that and to rediscover that which I suppose I deliberately forgot.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I had a sky goddess as a girlfriend for a while and that was weird.
It was weird, but fun.
So tell me, one of the things you actually talk about in a lot of your work is, although not a lot, but part of your work is becoming invincible and how that changes perspective on everything. And when it comes to your experience of life and your experience of magic, when was your invincible moment that changed you exponentially and turned you on a different path?
[00:15:05] Speaker B: So again, it came through out of sequence because sequentially I would want to say it is some sleep paralysis experience, recurrent experiencer events that happened when I was a kid around five or six. But I didn't realize that until I got into my 20s and was in a UFO phase and worked out that oh Hang on, that stuff happened to me in practice. It was some of the early, early magic I did, like, because I found it at the age of 13 in my first ever ceremony.
I'd read all of two and a half, upwards of three Llewellyn publications and I was ready to do this. And it was all like ir, like the sort of Irish magic that people who've heard about Ireland on the radio can put into book form. And so I. My parents had a house that was. That had like terraces or levels on a hill in Newcastle. Looking at the water, it was actually quite lovely to go up there. So one of these terraces we didn't really use for anything. So it was just grass on this terrace and there was some extra big rocks, boulders around and I'm like, all right, I'm going to make myself a certain circle for this. So my parents had left, my whole family had left. I had Those rare opportunities, 45 to 90 minutes, where you get the house to yourself as a kid and you know, it's either masturbation or magic. And I went with magic that time. And so I started laying out these stones in a circle. And the grass, one of the reasons we didn't use it was you couldn't get the lawnmower on it because it's very uneven piece of land. So the. The grass was about 20 centimeters high, which is also snaky. But anyway. And so I'm moving the. The stones around and this being. And it initially looked like Predator in his camouflage suit, which was about a little bit taller than or around the height of the grass, just moved and then morphed into view and it was made of the grass like a humanoid being and then morphed into view briefly in front of me and then off it went and it was a fucking fairy.
Like, wow, magic's great. I bet this happens every time, which it doesn't. But that was my first. Like, oh, hang on a minute. Like these, these precious books are dealing in real wisdom.
So. And then when I. Speaking of another misfired attempt in Newcastle at Glenrock Lagoon, which is a. We used to be able to walk to. It is a national park area and it has a waterfall and talk about learning custodianship. We did none of that, my friend Owen and I, and we went and did a. A self initiation into some kind of neo pagan Wicca druidry melange that we concocted and we got followed back. You had to walk down a track beside the waterfall and then onto Burwood beach and then it was about 4km along Burwood beach and scramble up a hill to get to my parents place.
And I mean like followed by spirit beings that we could both visibly see, kind of like almost escorting us and making it go faster. We would absolutely not welcome. And we had upset some beings when we were there.
So when I say becoming invincible and it's the same as the weird kid question for the podcast. If you were raised in a haunted house or had been alien abducted or for whatever reason, Discovery Channels done a show on your childhood home, like you probably already know that the universe is too big to be contained really by anyone's narrative, but most especially by official reality. Most especially and most certainly. And there's no way back from that. You don't ever play a smaller game ever. That's what becoming invincible is. Your, your morality shifts. There are things that are worse than death. There are things that mean nothing now. Things that mean nothing.
You know, what, what perfect strangers think of you and so on. Like it' incredible. And that's becoming invincible. That's when you become like a immortal citizen of the cosmos. You, you have a cosmic, a cosmic frame and a cosmic morality and cosmic concerns. Which doesn't mean that you don't do the laundry, but it means that you, you can plan lifetimes. Right? So I didn't, I didn't know this at the time, but it's something Martin Prechter said that I really took on board. It's the.
An intact culture is one that can perform actions whose outcomes it will never see.
And if you look at that classic indigenous Turtle island indigenous idea that all decisions were made for the benefit or the attempted benefit of seven generations hence, that's an intact culture. That's an, that's a culture that will make decisions for a future they will never see. And that's not exactly what happens to you when you become invincible. But it's like that. You, you have, have, you have different time frames and, and anything. It can be a trauma experience. It is for a lot of people to, to blow up the, the puny controlling version of official reality and then it's up to you to, to play a bigger game and, and the game that you're called for. And that's the sort of thing we're in soup is for.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Do you think that people are in a way tapped on the shoulder for this change in their lives? Or does it happen to only certain people?
[00:20:22] Speaker B: It is technically available to everyone because everyone is an aspect of the one thing, obviously, like holographic instantiations of the One thing that said, as with all we kind of do when we're down here, we sign up for most of these choice points before we get here. And so you tap yourself on the shoulder that's, that's kind of. And it's like you only have yourself to blame.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: But that's, that's how it. And it. Look, it's very interesting. I just finished recording a video about this.
We. It's a perception error being down here that everything looks preordained. It's not quite that because you are continuously co creating that is the case before you get here and when you're here. But there's just like simple reframes you can do or, or think with that make that more efficient. But broadly speaking it's not for everyone in every lifetime. But, but nothing is because the cosmos is ideally exploring in the direction of novelty. So it actually does need new things and new combinations.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. A part of that you said there is that we're living in a space of co creation which is a firm belief that I have as well. And I came to that from exploring myself with plant medicines amongst other things. And I came to the conclusion that this is the heaven that we all create together.
But it's not necessarily that we agree on it. It's just whatever you're putting into the world creates the world.
And we observe the outcome of that creation in the everyday from even the smallest of thoughts and how we actually believe in ourselves and others.
Do you think that worldview is something that are swinging towards or changing towards as we come towards this apocalyptic moment?
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yes, I think they can feel it more easily than they can describe it. So Charles Eisenstein's very good at describing this because he, he emphasizes that the, the last couple of centuries of our culture here have prioritized bigness and have prioritized material effects.
And so then it's not good at seeing the thing that's actually our felt experience of life which is that the, the, the, the most powerful and transformative things are the, the smallest or the least physical or mechanical which would to be love and so on. So he's very good at going like we, we mistake bigness for effectiveness and, and those are two different things. And it's, we just.
He's so good at explaining it because he spent like 15 years visioning and imagining whole economic systems without like money and capitalism. So he's very good at like living in a world where the, the, the curses and, and scarcity thinking that we have all inherited are Quieter. Right. Most of us aren't. So we feel it in our hearts. That's why it's the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. And I think that's part of the, the role of people who've woken up five minutes before the alarm, like us, that you will find it. It is plainly part of your job to not tell people but hold a field for them to discover that for themselves. Because at the moment it can't be articulated. And that's actually by design. Anything that can be articulated and planned and programmed is part of the world that's going away.
So you, you cannot get to it any other way than by feel.
And, and that to give people that permission is, is really, really powerful because there's not. If it was, if there was a roadmap, if there was 10 steps, it would be part of the system that is going away. That is a system of control. And it's almost like this is where. How it hides or how it wins. It's a very using a hobbit to, to destroy the ring kind of energy like it can't conceive of, of something that isn't planned.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yeah. It seems like on one hand there's pure creation, on the other hand there's distraction. And it's like you get the choice, which one do you want? You know, and that conscious choice leads you down a path of growth or stagnation.
Yeah, yeah. So you do permaculture as a part of your farming practices and it's definitely a fitting complement to your magical work. And how does farming and ecological design inform or intersect with your spiritual practices?
[00:25:11] Speaker B: I'm not sure I have spiritual practices.
Like there's. So at the moment I'm plant based but we still have animals. We still have like chickens and ducks and geese and things. Things. But in the morning there are tasks, there is daily prayers, there's like letting the birds out and so on. So it's being able to observe and, and have that.
Mostly it's the, the observation and participation. And that's not even just the things that are growing on my farm, like having. It's really fun having. This is a weird way of saying it. Eagles.
When, when we lose a chicken to the eagles, it's a good day. Like oh my God.
And they are huge. Like those Tasmanian sea eagles, like and these wonderful, wonderful things just being so far down. Because we're in southern Tasmania, technically we're closer to Antarctica than the top of Australia.
So you get big, powerful, exciting weather. And unfortunately because it is Australia Lots of colonial ghosts and memories and stories. And this all feeds into what it is really anywhere to. To live, I think in 2025. So in that sense it feeds into each other, but also being able to observe really strange things. Like we've had hundreds of chickens.
Most of them are much for muchness. And once in a while you will get a hero chicken and she will. Just because it's usually because we. Obviously they're overwhelmingly female. She will just. We had one that I called Whitney who would just like leave. She. We just opened the gate and she'd worked out that we don't electrify the fences. So she'd just hop over it and she was quite. She didn't like the other chickens and she just spent her whole day like she'd leave the farm, go off and do her own thing. She was laying. We found like 20 eggs somewhere. Like she was going somewhere else to lay. But she would also come up to my little wizard hut and look in the door and like chat to me and see what was going on. And this was some kind of, I don't know, human or super chicken come back to earth. We called her Whitney because there was a male chicken that we believed was leading her astray. So we called her Bobby and Whitney.
It was a beautiful doomed relationship.
But it turns out she was leading him astray.
He died first. She carried on doing it after all of that. So you just, you see, you go through phases in an animist in integrating and reintegrating animism back into your life.
And so you move from dead universe materialism into I guess it is all alive. That involves a little bit of anthropomorphization.
Right. And that's one of the criticisms and it's, it's fair early on as you're. You're building out your, your. Your widest sense of community cosmos and then you move further along and then you then actually some beings are different to other being things and of the same order. And that's when that's been one of the, the gems actually to, to understand that variety. You're not making it up like there's variety in. In the more than human and agency. Like this chicken was a CSIRO breed that is bred for eggs. That's it like it's. It's a Italian leg bar csiro blend of some description. So it's a, it's a. A mutant of capitalism.
But nevertheless she was this like super chicken. And that's, that's good. That's one of those encouraging like, huh, Things. But broadly speaking, you learn to fold and you'll. And this is actually advice.
Don't separate the spiritual tasks from the farm tasks. In the morning, there's prayers and let the chickens out.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It speaks back to the Zen idea of chop wood, carry water before and after enlightenment. So, yeah, for sure.
Shadow work and spiritual awakening are recurring themes in your teachings. What advice would you give someone just beginning to explore those areas with their own magical practice?
[00:29:19] Speaker B: The shadow work one is so the, the. It's difficult, right, because it's like, well, how much do you know about it? Have you just heard the term on TikTok? Because if that's the. Then you want to do some reading first.
You want to do some reading. But let's assume that you understand the, the notion of the shadow as that which you excise from yourself and, and, and put in the corner in the dark so that you can build your ego, your egoic form to carry on in life. And that's the. What I really like about Jung, amongst many other things, is that the ego isn't bad, right? Like, it's a, It's a necessary accretion that the psyche develops to be able to get through life. Like you, you need one.
You can, it can certainly do with some improvement, a little touch up here and there, that's for sure. But, you know, a little, little Botox, little prp, but you don't need to destroy it.
And so the shadow is all the things that you hope other people don't notice. You really are.
Right. And that's venal. That's. That's a villain, that's angry, that's selfish. That's all these things, things. And shadow work is the process of allowing and facing that, turning a friendly face to those things that you had, understandably, as a kid in adolescence, excised so that you don't keep bumping up against them in the form of other people and repeated situations. And so in your life. So whatever process you need of, of coming to that awareness, I usually tell people when you hit a repeated situation, ask yourself, how have I made myself a match to this?
What is. What am I seeking to solve? The goal of shadow work is to stop bumping up against things that the psyche continues to show you in the hopes that this time you will alchemize them. So that would be the process. It's like get clear on what Jung means by it and then however you want to do it, journaling, soul retrieval, any of that kind of stuff. There are innumerable courses what have on how you integrate those things that appear as repeated patterns. And it's, it's the most powerful manifestation techniques because the. You are always getting in your own way.
There's no one else to do it. There's no one else to get in your way but you. And, and clearing the path for all those good things is, is the shadow road.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Part of my major shadow road work for myself was actually my Saturn return, which turned really wildly weird when I was attacked by a shaman on a walk in Byron Bay where he put onto me a couple of entities to skin ride me. And I didn't realize it was going on at the time. I'd been warned about it by a psychic a year and a half before even the exact event and the exact day and told me what to look out for. And at that time I just didn't recognize it.
And it took me months to get it off. But as a part of that I learned a whole lot more about myself. So, you know, all credits to the, to the. To that shaman that woke me up in a certain sort of way. But it was a real hard kick in the pants. But sometimes shadow work can be like that.
So speaking about spirits and being clear, how much of our.
Would you say our negative personalities are actually some sort of entities that just sitting on our shoulder, just whispering naughty things into us to distract us from the truth?
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Well, interesting.
I start the frame a little bit beforehand so I have a shamanic view of the human psyche which is as a ecology. Right. So as a community of beings, which it has to be if it's going to, you know, hermetically be the microcosm to the same thing in the macrocosm.
And so very often, yes, it's crowded in there even without entities.
And so you will have soul parts that trying to do the best thing for you are going to be running some really dark scripts in your head. And like the most famous one, which we kind of learned from internal family systems, like the inner critic is criticizing you internally so that you adjust your behavior before you have the chance to be externally criticized. Criticized. Right. So it's actually trying to save you from the experience of being criticized as a child by, by caregivers and so on. So it's crowded in there and often mean even before we get to entities where you definitely do find them now. And they're funny enough, you find more of them in. In the unintegrated west because we have all these, these parts that are still roaring around their heads and those are typically the things that these other entities get their hooks into to. And it almost comes back to the parts work thing, but it's more, it's more like individuation, integration. There's, there's no way out but through.
So I, you can clear. And this happens. It's happened to any practitioners. You can clear entities off people and they'll come back by the next session. And it's because the thing that they've been hooked onto hasn't been healed. They can still get back in like the, the, the dark thoughts can be in there now. That being said, you can actually approach them. The only way out is through.
You can and probably should in this era do some regular spiritual cleansing. So I used to, for years, I still, I don't now, I don't know why, but I used to have sea salt in a plastic cup in the shower and I would just fill that with salt water and say Asperger's upload and have that. So I remember every morning to do an energy cleanse. I do that pretty regularly now anyway. But any of that stuff that you can do about clearing your own energy field using, using Palo Santo, anything like that, always good. Because it's just like, well, if you pick the right plant ally, it's not going to hurt. Salt is not going to damage anything in your energetic system and neither is Palo Santo. But it is going to make it cleaner when it comes to, to other beings. So that's, that's kind of my answer to that. As for our world leaders, it's a different story. They're, they're definitely, there are definitely loud and unpleasant voices in the heads of people near the red button.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: I think those same people are actually loud and in people's heads of people that don't think all the way through too when it comes to whether those things should be influencing every part of their lives, if you know what I mean.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: The Devil's cleverest wild.
[00:35:59] Speaker A: Okay, so as someone deeply involved in teaching magic authentically, what do you see as the big biggest misconceptions people have about contemporary magic today?
[00:36:12] Speaker B: These answers changed over time as well.
The west does have an authentic and valid magical tradition, current lineage.
And it is not the.
It can be in the right hands, but it's not like a 19th century golden dawn down to Thelema, down through whatever sex pest orders continue today under those brands. The Western tradition is a cunning tradition.
It is.
And it has conserved practices across time. It has allies and prayers and, and spirits and all of these things. And we Know this, by comparison, it looks like Kuran derismo. It looks like traditions, lay traditions, if you will, peasant traditions around the world. So I would say the biggest misconception is the necessity or this, the seeming necessity to like invent or hypothecate a tradition based on literally like the 19th century version of the new age and what have you. And when you do that, that's again, it's a permission field. It's like, oh yeah, that my mother and I worked that out, that her grandmother was one of these women in Ireland. And you know, these were the prayers that she would use and she used to say this and use these herbs and it's like, oh my God. It's, it's been there, it's been there the whole time. And it's not some, you know, tubby middle class Englishman in the 1880s talking to Horace. It's, it's, yeah, it's prayers over crops and, and, and hanging little rosary beads over bassinets and all this kind of stuff. Like the west has a tradition and that scales up to like summoning angels.
But I think that's the biggest misconception, that the west not only has a tradition, it's a spirit tradition. Like that's there. And once you have that, and I think if you, you kind of got to get right with that or get in and underneath that current one way or the other. And it doesn't mean that once you find it, you have to do rosaries every night and you have to work with St. Anne and you have to work with mugwort and all this. It's not that at all. It's like, oh, the shape of it is I have spirit allies and I have plant allies and I have a sacred calendar and I have the work to do.
That's the tradition. And that's, I think people take a while to find that. And because once you found that whatever is on your heart and whatever beings want to co create and work and play with you, well, that's up to you. That's always been up to you. If you look at the, the history of the witch trials, particularly in England and Scotland, they have, it's all different. There's not even. Scotland is quite a bit of the devil. But like if you look at the English stuff, it's fairies, it's, it's different. Like, like we would say spirit guides now, but it's familiar and the familiars are teaching them what herbs to use and helping them with prayers, healing sick kids and all this kind of stuff. And you don't necessarily need to go into that practice. The point is to look at the metaphor of. Of magic and go, all right, so it's allies and prayers and. And timing.
That's the form. And we always had that. We didn't need to memorize the Hebrew Alphabet to mispronounce some alleged kabbalistic words while calling on Horace in, like, a Ladbroke Grove drawing room. Like, that didn't. If that's your vibe, go for it.
But that's the biggest misconception, I think.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think as a part of my growing up, magically going from, well, I can do anything anytime to actually doing anything with a bit of structure from learning from you.
It. At first I thought I've got to do it a certain sort of way and to make it work, but then I actually figured out, no, no, no, you're actually thinking too structured still. You've got to. You've got to sort of blend those things together to make your. Your own personal understanding that actually activates all of the things in the right way. And once I got that, I was like, oh, okay, no, no, don't be so anal about this.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: And it will be yours, and it will be your. Your version of it. A really odd example, now that I think about it, or metaphor, is driving.
I remember when I was on my L plates, a friend of mine, Sarah, she had a boyfriend who was two years or a year and a half older, which means he was on his P plates. And so he and I used to go driving and smoking because he looked old enough to buy cigarettes.
And he said, you don't know anything about driving when you're on your L plates until you're on your P plates and then on your main license. And it's because you learn the rules in your lips, but you become the driver that, like. So you're still more or less obeying the rules when you're driving. I mean, you are in the sense that you're not going off the road into a field. You might have. You might play fast and loose with the speed limit. Right.
That's what magic you begin with the structure of, like, okay, oh, it's spirits and it's timing and. And it's allied, like, it's allies, and it's timing and noticing. Start there. And then as you did, like, you find exactly what kind of magic driver you are. Like, what does timing and allies and all of that stuff look like for you or for whoever?
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I found personally, over time that I'm being Backed up by a whole cadre of spirit team.
And it's a matter of directing that in the right direction to make things work. And yeah, it feels good to be that sort of supported and to recognize that.
Can you talk about the community aspect of your group, Rune Soup Premium membership and how important is that connection with other practitioners for personal transformation?
[00:42:11] Speaker B: I would say it's very important, which is honestly why it's been a priority.
When I started the podcast, so before I even knew the website was ever going to have a membership, there barely were memberships.
I remember growing up in Newcastle, Australia, which I don't love, and I would read these books by like, Peter J. Carroll, and he was one of the founders of Chaos Magic, and I'm like, who is this incredible. Does he live in a tower? Like, what. What is happening? Because he's. Peter in particular is remarkably good. You will not find an image of him on the Internet. I have no idea how he does it, but I've met him since and he does not look like take any of the images when you Google image searching, which is amazing. Anyway, so I had this. Then I moved to London after New Zealand and whatever and ended up meeting some of these people, including Peter. And some of them became quite good friends. And I decided to do a podcast for Gordon for like the. The kid in Boise or the kid in Newcastle, who just knew about these people through books and then to be able. Because I always found the podcast form. Form very intimate. Like I was listening to them back when it was an actual, you know, ipod and it was pretty much just BBC podcasts back in Auckland, because you put the earbuds in and you're walking around the street and I would listen to radio plays and I'm like, this is a very intimate form, but nevertheless playing with the world. And I wanted that with, at least initially, the voices of these people. So I always had.
I guess it's a little bit selfish, like myself as a kid in mind, but more.
A lot of people, the majority of people on the magical path, just because it is solitary from a human perspective, do miss out on having colleagues, I guess, and just knowing they're there is enough. The membership over the years has gone camping together and we've done events in New Zealand and Ayahuasca trips and people just, you know, meeting up for coffee. And as far as I know, no one's got married yet because people actually ask that. I think it's because they're all sluts. But anyway.
But the point is, like, it's just it's one of those groups of people that's really nice to know is there even if you're not particularly involved.
But you, you are because you're like in the field of it in the college. Right. In the, in the sense of the invisible college. Right. You're, you're part of the mission and, and that, that's always been. I mean maybe there are other ways to do it, but that's been my priority since before the membership is that that sense of collegiality and. Because the word community is so overused and it is a community. But yeah, that's for me it's always been there. Like it's just been what I've wanted to see in the world. So that was my. Well, that is my best effort in manifesting it.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Yeah, we've seen great benefits in that. I mean personally, I remember the time that your farm was threatened by fire and we all got together and, and petitioned and prayed and, and, and what happened?
[00:45:21] Speaker B: We summoned a water dragon and it put the fire. That's remarkable. That's all on the Internet and in my book. But yes, that was the. What was that? The 2019, 2019 Tasmania fires. Yes.
So 20, January 2019 and those that 60,000 hectare fire got within 3, 400 meters of the farm. But we used, we, we relied on some friends who had some very good Vedic astrological knowledge and picked the right window to summon Vasuki, which is one of the.
Essentially a water dragon from, from Vedic cosmology. And I saw exactly when it was going to happen and said it and, and it was, it ended up being that, that Wednesday night after the Monday or something like that. And there was no rain on the radar because it's February in, in Tasmania and we needed 20 mils and we got to put the fire out. That was according to the fire chief. And we got 22 mils. It's a remarkable experience. When I went back to the farm, you could feel, because the clouds are obviously very low, it was pouring and it was like a UFO event. Like I couldn't see the being in the clouds, but it was as if a plane, not the sound or anything, but you know, if a plane was flying low, you could just kind of like feel it. That was the, the experience. It was remarkable. So yeah, if you, if you need a dragon, turns out you need to call up a hundred wizards.
[00:46:48] Speaker A: I, I didn't encounter anything that I needed to have to fight against in that way except for when the. I installed a 5G tower across the road from where I was living at the time. And I went at that time, we had the forums and I wrote into the forum, please help, please help. And at that time, I think about 20 people wrote all these different ideas and I did all the things and within a month of it being turned on, it was turned off with a sticker stuck on the side of it that said this has been turned off. And I was like, what's going on? Looking in the news.
The whole network had been turned off Australia wide because it was actually based on Huawei and they discovered there was back doors in it. So it's never going to be turned on. It's in court battles forever.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: We apparently have back doors in those solar panels too, so we'll see if they get turned off.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, I heard about that too.
So you have a series of books too, and the ones that come to mind right now, the Chaos Protocols, Pieces of Eight and the other ones have just left my mind right now. So what is your purpose and aim in your books? I mean, they, they, they're obviously directing people towards a connection to magic.
Tell us more.
[00:48:05] Speaker B: The, the first few books, there's like the practical magic books, which is Chaos Protocols and Pieces of Eight and Pieces of Eight in particular, or Chaos Protocols in particular rather, is a, is a Llewellyn publication. And I was very grateful for that because my editor really held my feet to the fire to make sure that, that it was a beginner's book. Like I said, this isn't going to be the first book people pick up on magic. And she's like, yeah, but what if it is? She kept asking that and I'm like, all right. And so consequently I'm, I'm quite happy with, with that as the introduction.
The other book. So my Scarlet imprint books, My Dot trilogy, which is Starships and Animistic, is a different project. That's my, my magical cosmology. Right. So Starships, I hate Prehistory of the Spirits is telling the story genetically and mythologically of how what we know as, I guess the, the western magical ecosystem came to us and is ultimately a hundred thousand years old. Like as far as we can tell, probably earlier. That's according to like official human timelines, which is a rabbit hole for another time.
And Animistic is my book on animism and, and the more than human world and how we, how we upgrade and transform our theory of mind so that almost like we no longer need a theory of mind, but that moves us into the cosmos as a community of beings and the final one of them will be how, how they're activated essentially. So all that stuff we spoke about with regards to the cunning traditions, it's more in that direction. Which one is. Which is one of the reasons why I'm here. So I don't know if I have an, a goal or an aim.
I'm gonna finish that DOT trilogy, but I don't know if I ever got like, oh, I'm trying to do something different with the books. I definitely am. I think I'm just trying to express myself creatively. The book thing in 2025 is interesting because the, as an author, the things you get out of having a book is people engaging with your ideas and giving you feedback which having mentioned the Rune Soup community, like we all already have that. So it's like, okay, I can shorten cycle from the 18 month publishing cycle and just get feedback and share material that way. And that's good and bad. Like it's good for me and presumably good for the membership, but it's bad if I ever want to get to finishing the old bookie work. And I even noticed that when Animistic came out so from people would engage more. Even like online, the Internet, it was easy to track where things were being engaged online. So when Chaos Protocol came out, more people were still blogging and so you could see people working with the ideas and wrestling with it. By the time Animistic came out, I certainly wasn't using Facebook. But in, in a social media context you don't really find anything like that. Just it's probably happening somewhere but it's not like it's not indexed like it is when it comes to like blogs or live channel. So I was actually a bit disappointed and the book sold really well and you know, is well reviewed and people loved it and whatever, but I'm like, oh, there's a disconnect that I had, I guess unconsciously solved to my own satisfaction by being in digital community and that that makes it a little bit challenging to. Because writing a book is unpleasant, frankly. And, and for it to be an unpleasant experience followed by nothing, you have to be mentally prepared for that. And I make the joke that I'm going to read all the boring books of Plato. So I've read all the good Plato books I'll read, but I'm going to read all the boring Plato that I haven't read yet and I'm going to finish my own book during World War iii. So that's my plan.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: Wow, cool. All right, look, I can attest to the, the hard part of actually birthing a book. I mean, for me now it's 25 years, I'm still writing this same book and I'm so close to the end. And my friend Nathan, you know, Nathan C. He's keeps on kicking me in the butt saying, come on, give me the book. I want to, to go through it, but I'm actually at the point now I'm looking. Oh, I'm not even sure if people want to read this.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: That's normal. That's absolutely normal.
You need someone to tell you that. My favorite, I got 4/5 of the way through Starships and we were in New Zealand for a wedding or something, I can't remember. And I just been to, just been to the museum in Wellington and it's like I love, love Polynesian cosmology and I've always loved Maori cosmology and whatever. And I realized that there's this because there's a bit, quite a bit of Polynesian mythology in like in a chunk in starships. So I emailed Peter at Scarlet Imprint and go, tell you what, I don't know if this starships book is any good.
What about a book on Polynesian mythology? And he took me down off the ledge of like, this is normal. No, starship is really good. Just, just finish the damn book. This happens to everyone. I'm really glad that happened because I, I had lost my mind. I honestly thought like, you know, I could just make that section bigger. And I have this book on and I genuinely believed it. I wasn't panicked. It was this clear what I assumed to be like an emotion free, sober judgment that what I needed to do is scrap Starships and write a book on Polynesian mythology.
And if I didn't have someone to say no, there's always a moment where you think this is the worst book in the world. And that's probably where you're at now. Always.
[00:53:45] Speaker A: I'll get to the end very soon, I'm sure and I'm looking forward to that. Just to also see what happens.
It's been one of those books that sort of like echo my life when it comes to this podcast. For example, super normalized that I'm trying to get into book format. The understanding that all of this magical experience of life, life is normal.
And that's, that's basically what I'm trying to do. So hopefully that comes through.
Okay. So considering all that and your work with Rune Soup, I call it Rune Soup University, what's one powerful lesson or insight from chaos Magick or shamanism that listeners can start applying every day in their lives. Right now I know that's distilled.
[00:54:35] Speaker B: Not so much the distill. Like a powerful insight because I almost want to steal one from Don Alberto, from Alberto Violdo because he writes like diet books as well as a medical anthropologist. And he gets asked like, what's the single biggest change people can make in their diet right now to improve their health? And he says, bless your food, food.
And I want to steal that from an insight.
The insight is like the.
You run on energy, you run on energetics. And a lot of that more than you realize is you are sovereign over. I was about to say in your control. That's wrong. You are sovereign over.
And bless your food is if you think like, oh yeah, I'm. I'm magic adjacent in my interest. Cool. Do you bless your food food.
Do that one. And that is enough that from like a nutritional perspective, but also, oh yeah, I am it. It is a more than once a day call to be a citizen of the cosmos. So I think it's something like that.
Otherwise it's, it's really nice. But glib stuff like you literally aren't alone.
Death is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. Things. So there's insights, but there's also like actions that will rather than baby step big step you into playing a bigger game, I suppose. And that's. That's a deceptively simple one.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
I like the idea of blessing your food. We've been doing that a lot. But I also take that to the next extreme. And I bless parts of my life and I drive a lot and as a part of my driving I see roadkill and I always bless every animal and, and, and try to raise its soul and send it off to the next realm if it's stuck there. If I feel that.
And I think just generally having more of a what you would say a right relation sort of focus helps in every possible way. And a part of that story for myself is recognizing what isn't good for me. And it took me a long time to get there. And it wasn't, wasn't like obvious until it was really obvious. And a part of that was not involving myself in any content and media, which is horrible and awful and just brings up more of the garbage that the world is. And you know, for example, you know, flicking on, turning on Netflix or some streaming service and just watching people murder each each other and in gore porn as if that's.
[00:57:10] Speaker B: And yeah, I We. We have a book club in the. In the membership and we are doing a book for the zodiac each of the zodiacal months. And for Taurus we did the Leopard and that's a. A limited miniseries based on the same book on Netflix, which is apparently good. I will open up Netflix to watch that, but I otherwise don't because the entire thing is either debasing or mind control. But yeah, that's a really good insight. Right. Like guard your Energetics. This, this stuff is all ready feel and, and, and. And develop that feeling body. The, the heart centered body that, that knows these things. And to your point about the, you know, the, the roadkill which I do the same thing and it's what your. Your experience earlier. The psychedelic understanding your thoughts and your intentions. There are no small intentions back to what Charles said and, and so on you. It actually it is retained in the cosmos longer than the actual corpse of the. The animal will remain stable. Like it will decay and your intention and your prayer will last longer. Like we're switched.
The. That is the real game. And whatever can get you there is really good. But it's a really good one. Like be. Be sovereign and custodian of your energetics.
[00:58:27] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Well, Gordon, we've come towards the end of the podcast and I wanted to help people find you. Where would they go?
[00:58:38] Speaker B: Runesoup.com obviously is sort of a hub where you can find everything but the. All the writing these days is on substack. So run soup.substack.com and there you'll get. There's links to the membership on either of them. And I'm doing a lot more YouTube. I mean a YouTube sprint, which I'm really enjoying for the next couple of months.
[00:58:56] Speaker A: I've noticed it's. You're prolific and it's fantastic. There's so much stuff that you've. We've come out with lately on YouTube that I plan. I'm like, oh my God, that was just like a therapy session to play.
[00:59:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm loving it. Like it's, it's. It's funny. Like it's the same thing with books. It's what's my purpose with it? It's like I'm really enjoying it. I'm really enjoying the form. That's such a pretentious thing to say when it's YouTube. I don't mean it like that but I'm just like, oh, this is fun.
Podcasts are good. I've shifted the podcast to being almost more solo shows and whatever at the moment with some sporadic interviews, but it's just creatively where I'm at. So I've got. I've got a bunch more and it's just really fun. But yeah, if you just Rune Suit Soup, you'll find it anywhere. I'm not. I technically still have my X account, but don't.
It will be a while before I get back to you there.
[00:59:45] Speaker A: Wow. That's a time hole in itself, too. So I understand.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: Substack runesoup.com all good?
[00:59:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing with everyone your understanding of the world of magic and your experience of it.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: It's.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: It's been. Pleasure. Pleasure.
[01:00:01] Speaker B: You're very welcome.
[01:00:03] Speaker A: All right, I'll say goodbye to listeners.
A huge thanks to Gordon for coming on the show. That was absolutely perfect. And I'm so glad that Gordon's in the world because of the learnings I've got from his understanding and his dedication.
That's very, very driven. If you've enjoyed today's show, reach out to Gordon at Rune Soup and say thank you so much. That'd be really appreciated. And join the membership. That'd be really good.
And if you've liked this episode, like, and subscribe, or even if you didn't like and subscribe anyway.
And yeah, if you're on a podcast app, give us five stars, say something really nice. And until next episode, it's bye for now.
Sam.
[01:01:22] Speaker B: To.
[01:01:39] Speaker A: Subscribe.
