Campfire's Edge [https://runesoup.com/2017/01/campfires-edge/]

• the impact of the spirit world on the development of human culture.
  • Studies have shown that hunter-gatherer cultures talk about different topics during the day than they do at night. Daytime: practical matters. Night time: stories, myths, rituals, healing songs & dances. The ability to control fire was integral to developing symbolic thinking.
  • Symbolic thinking developed much earlier than generally acknowledged, as early as 100,000 years ago. Symbolic thinking = magic. Scientific thinking also developed very early too: it was essential in tracking and hunting animals. ~ magic and science developed in tandem.
  • South-East Asia is a very important region, but much of it is underwater now, so we are unable to access what is there. Is this where Atlantis was??
  • The wobbles of progress are easy to see in the historical record. (examples are given) "Progress" is incorrect -- complexity increases but it can also decrease. Complexity should not be too high, or it will collapse. Balance (stability?) is also key.
  • There are structures in the Amazonian forest that predate it. Terra Preta from over 10,000 years ago.
  • Book: Deciphering Ancient Minds by Genevieve von Petzinger. There are repeated symbols in cave art all over the world (not just Europe) -- are they a written language?
  • Snakes appear in cultures and mythologies the world over, and in most represent wisdom. Why? Could the snakes represent the spirits, and the wisdom we have received from them?
  • cf. the Trickster archetype in myth and the devil in Western tradition. (Me: The Trickster is a civilising influence: forcing us to think out of the box, but the devil has been subverted into a thing of fear and discouragement of independent thinking.)
  • The experiences people have now are no different than those in the past, we just give them different names and view them differently, discrediting instead of being open.
  • The idea that the universe sprang into being out of nothingness at a single point, for no reason at all is actually the least logical, least believable hypothesis. Science is in crisis. Replicability cannot answer all of (the most important?) questions; string theory is not testable or observable yet physicists accept it simply because it's more 'elegant' than any other theory; evolutionary biology is in a mess; very little new is happening in medicine. This is a worldview dysfunction, not a methodological one
  • Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) appear on disturbed ground. Humans had no need to disturb the ground until we started farming. It's one of the best ways to communicate with the spirit world. Is there a correlation? Is it deliberate?
  • Interaction with the spirit world is so ingrained in Western (world?) tradition that it can be said it is the Western tradition. The concept of spirit has survived so many different ideas of what god is, that it's tempting to say that the spirit world is what's real and deity is a human-created extension of it.
  • Messenger RNA sends signals between species. It is passed down unchanged with DNA. 8% of our genome is composed of viruses. The first detected lifeform on earth was a virus (MIMI). They can survive in space. Did we come from space? Did someone plant us here deliberately? We have several things different from mammals, even the ones most closely related to us. (Me: it's accepted that we're very closely related to pigs, using them as human analogues in experiments, but no-one questions how that is.) Where did they come from? "We are a genetic experiment performed by an alien species embedded in the environment."
  • There is evidence of structures and bombings on Mars. Xenon 129 levels extremely high. (Is found in atomic bombs.) (Me: "Mars" = war.)
  • They're not imbedded in our world, we're imbedded in theirs. Grimoires are just a guide for interacting with spirits, not the rules.
  • A materialist worldview blocks the possibility of magic and the spirit world. We must expunge ourselves of this before we can move forwards. It doesn't mean returning to a pre-industrial world, but embracing new technology, getting Balance and Complexity right.
  • UFO encounters are the ultimate because they are mythology made real - stories that actually happen. They are undefineable: material and mental at the same time, objective and subjective at the same time. This is why the government doesn't understand them and is so freaked out about them.
  • Charles Fort: Three ages in the early-modern era: Dominant of Religion > Dominant of Science > Dominant of Witchcraft.

Gordon on Psychedelic Milk:

• if you imagine the universe as a nervous system, then people who practice magic are like nodes in the system: they can receive and send out signals more clearly and strongly than others.

NEXT UP [https://runesoup.com/2017/01/gordon-on-thc-talking-animism-and-pieces-of-eight-full-episode/]