Living Mayan Magic & Decolonizing the Occult with Solomon Pakal

The Magick Kitchen Podcast welcomes occult practitioner and historian Solomon Pickle for an in-depth exploration of living Mayan traditions, decolonizing magical practice, and the importance of historical context in the craft. From ancient Mesoamerican cosmology and cyclical time to the dangers of pseudo-archaeology, Solomon shares how his lineage and research are shaping a new, authentic approach to Mayan magic. Elyse and Leandra join him in comparing global revival movements, uncovering the intersections of culture, spirituality, and modern witchcraft. This conversation is part history lesson, part call to action for magical practitioners ready to deepen their knowledge, honor indigenous wisdom, and ground their practice in truth. 

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Transcript

This time in the Magic kitchen, we are joined by Solomon Pickle. I'm Leander Witchwood and I'm Elyse Wells. And welcome to the Magic Kitchen Podcast where we talk about magic kitchen, witchcraft, herbs, and everything in between. The Magic Kitchen Podcast is funded and supported by the Witchwood Teahouse. Com offering a variety of hand-blended loose leaf teas as well as loose herbs for all of your ritual spellwork wellness and everyday enjoyment needs. If you would like to support this podcast while sipping a cup of tea, head over to the Witchwood Teahouse. Com and find the magic that's in store for you. Solomon is an occult practitioner of over twenty years in numerous esoteric paths. He is a historian, former United States Army officer, former professional and amateur athlete, and combat sports analyst. He is of Mayan descent and was raised in this tradition of folk witchcraft by his family. Growing up in the Afro Latino folk magic scene of Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland, Solomon began practicing at a very young age and was fortunate enough to train with mentors from various backgrounds. Today, Solomon is focused on spearheading a cutting edge approach to Mayan magic using traditional experience. pre-Columbian primary sources and contemporary analysis. You can learn more at Solomon Comm and Mayan Mystery School.com. And those links are in the show notes. It is so good to have you here and welcome. For those who don't know, we actually Leandro and I are recording this together in person and we know Solomon in person. So even though he's on zoom today. So it's a really fun episode that we are in for today. I love it when we can bring our friends on and chat like, this is the best. Yeah, it's an extra. It's an extra mile. It goes an extra mile on the podcast, especially like when you've had a good Italian dinner together. Oh, yes. It really breaks the ice, right? It's true. Very classic Italian dinner. I love it. So it's a good day. I got my morning coffee. The sun's risen. We do incantations to the sun every morning. And. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's. That's a pretty well kept Maya tradition. That's in the, um, people who are familiar with, like the Daykeeper tradition would be very familiar with that, because you're essentially greeting the new sun. Nice. Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah. Because I'm not familiar with it. I want to know. Yeah. And I think, like for most listeners, we were taught in school that the Mayan people are deceased and gone from this plane. Yeah, that they no longer exist. But here we are talking to one. So tell us about that. Like, who are the Maya and. Yeah. What what are some of the lasting traditions? So the Maya, one of the classic Mesoamerican civilizations of pre-Columbian societies of the Americas, um, Mesoamerica is the larger complex of the world on this side that the Maya were a part of. So you may have heard of the Aztec, but you probably never heard of, like the Zapotec or the Otomi or the Tarascans. And these are all coming from different periods of time within Mesoamerica, because Mesoamerica has a long, extensive history just like any other part of the globe. But it's often not taught in school because here in the West, we're giving a Western centric kind of view of history. Yeah. Um, but, uh, the Maya are a classic civilization, um, that is pinned by academic academics. So when you think classic civilization, you are thinking Greece, you are thinking Rome, you're thinking Egypt. Mhm. Um, societies that embody a societal structure that is very prosperous and influential and advanced in various regards art, architecture, um, uh, policies, warfare, all that. That's what makes a classic styled civilization. And the Maya had that basically every continent would have their examples of something like that. But for the longest time in archaeology, it wasn't treated like that. And people thought that only the real advanced civilizations were the aforementioned Greco-Roman world. And, um, they would be a little bit more generous towards China because it's kind of undeniable. But, um, archaeology has matured since then. Uh, you know, unfortunately, though, a lot of archaeology, I would say my archaeology too, has progressed immensely, but because of more so the pop culture barrier, you don't hear it as much. And, um, but that's on the rise. That's that's something that's being fixed. And the Maya have never disappeared. So, uh, real crash course into the, uh, like the colonization of the Americas. The colonization of the Americas didn't kill off all the Native Americans. It actually, um, it certainly killed over one hundred and fifty million people. But what people don't understand is that there was essentially a second wave of, um, population that would come across all Native American civilizations, more or less. Except the ones that were like very, very deep into jungled areas or isolated areas. But we know that disease killed off many, uh, Native Americans, uh, including Mesoamericans. But, uh, essentially they would develop resilience towards these diseases, and they would eventually their populations would regrow to a certain extent. So we do have a bolstering population that has not just survived, but multiplied since the dawn of colonization. A lot of people don't know that, uh, people think that, like, either they're all gone. Um, which is completely incorrect. Or what is almost equally incorrect is that so many of them were, like, knocked off the face of the earth, that we were just left with certain amounts. And that's where the number had stayed, when really there was a bit more growth since then. Obviously not to the extent prior to the colonization, but that adaptation to disease and adaptation to being under occupation, um, the native peoples did essentially make a comeback. In fact, you had like examples of new Native American, uh, tribes and nations, uh, like the Chichimeca, which they have pre-Columbian roots, but really their formation comes, uh, post-colonial. And the most famous one, actually the most famous one is, uh, the Comanche. The Comanche were not, uh, and they're not Mesoamerican, but they are Native American. There's a lot of there's a lot of, uh, connective minutia between, uh, what is the continental United States now and Mesoamerica. But the Comanche were not a pre-Columbian nation. They were made up of native peoples that were clearly pre-Columbian roots. But the Comanche were basically like a response to colonization. One of the signatures of Comanche lifestyle was that everybody had to become a horseman. Well, horses are not native to the United States or, you know, to the to the Americas prior to colonialization. So, um, there's been, uh, several, like, little mini nations that sprout out after colonization had happened as a product of it. So the Maya are not just they're not just still around today. They kept kind of adapting to things, just like any nation state has. Like, really the culture of the United States has evolved, uh, since like, like every couple of decades. You can't really say it's the same, uh, culture even fifty years ago. And, you know, you go back, uh, let's say, uh, one hundred and fifty years, we're talking Civil War era. That's two very distinct nations at that point. Yeah. Um, so just like any history, it is dynamic. And the reason that you may not know about its dynamism is simply because they don't prioritize teaching you in school. And it's not necessarily the it's not the low hanging fruit of virality that even history like content creators would make. You know, what is what is viral. World War two, June nineteen forty four. And it's like, well, those dates are important. It's kind of, um, playing into the the Hollywood effect or the, the popcorn effect of, of content and of history. So the Maya are still around today. They number in, uh, there's various numbers, but I would calculate them totally within like about thirteen million people that are within the bounds of Mesoamerica today. So within Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, Guatemala and southern Mexico, uh, that's about like thirteen million people that are Maya, that are registered. However, it should be stated that like us and there's been studies about this that basically up to seventy six to eighty percent of Mexico could identify as some kind of indigenous people, but it's not incentivized to identify as indigenous people, because if you identify as indigenous, you can be directly targeted, uh, for a lack of economic opportunities, uh, targeted with physical violence, racial discrimination. So I've been sharing a meme recently about how it'll show, like there's this white person wearing a, uh, like a Mexican bandana and they'll say, like, I'm Aztec. And right next to them will be this very clearly Native American person saying, I'm Spanish because it's just kind of the dichotomy of cultures. You're incentivized to kind of claim the opposite if you're indigenous for the sake of economic opportunities to provide for your family, you are financially incentivized to deny your indigeneity, whereas people that are a bit more westernized want to feel a bit spicier. So they'll claim any kind of indigeneity that they want. And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Like, nobody should be really in a position to deny anybody their indigeneity either. Um, but uh, part of the like, where are the Maya? Where have they gone? Where are all these indigenous people? Where have they gone? Uh, it's clouded by so many factors that we've just listed, but part of it is that you are not incentivized to proclaim your indigeneity, which people come from outside the culture. Like, why wouldn't you claim that? It's because back home in those countries, you can be ostracized. Now there's a governments kind of effort in the United States kind of ostracize these people. Um, and obviously Trail of Tears and lots of bad history with, uh, expansion out west on the, uh, the United States part. But, um, it should be said again as things change every couple of decades. There was a recent genocide in Guatemala towards the Maya in the in the nineties. It had just ended in the nineties and had gone on for about like forty years. And for as for all the United States faults, you can't say that they had a genocide within the last, uh, thirty to forty years towards indigenous people. Um, so like really a lot of moves to help empower indigenous people, probably coming from the United States, people that are of the diasporic, um, the diaspora of native peoples from Central America and Mexico to here. I'm a product of that. Like my mother is Kaqchikel, my father is American, so I'm fifty over fifty. But my mother, I tried to, uh, further preserve and expand the traditions of what where my mother comes from. And with the evidence that is like on temple's books, codices, ceramics. Uh, there's so much to go off of. Uh, there's so much of a living tradition. I know, at least we've had this discussion. It's just a it's a fun point of comparison. It's not flex, but it's a fun point of comparison that if you ask archaeologists like where the land of the pyramids is, it's it's in the Americas. It's not in Egypt, because there's one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty pyramids in Egypt, and there's ten thousand alone in southern Mexico. And that was ten years ago, before before all the lidar, um, breakthroughs were coming out. It's just a very different society. I mean, over there on that side of the world, they had metallurgy here, they had metallurgy, but they didn't really use it for all the advancements of tools. They also didn't. They had the wheel here, too, but they didn't use it. Part of it is because I would imagine in Mesoamerica, where it's either very, very swampy or there's highlands, there's not really much of a use for beasts of burden. Uh. It's not You can't really scale it. Uh, not until another technological breakthrough would come out, you know, like actual motorized vehicles. So it didn't really serve the people. But, uh, the Maya still alive today, still thriving. And, um, there's a big there's a big window of opportunity for indigenous philosophy to really make a comeback. And I would say we're at a crossroads for it, too, because indigenous philosophy has, uh, it's and it's no judgment because when you are working from a downtrodden position as a population, you have to work up from a bunch of misconceptions, and you may have to make compromises because you are in such a downtrodden, downtrodden position. Right? So you have had, like indigenous leaders make compromises for their philosophies in order to try and get some momentum. And I am I empathize with them, but I, I think we're at a crossroads now because there's just been so much archaeological evidence. The literacy of indigenous people has has skyrocketed. In fact, the the girl, the there's a girl who has the highest recorded IQ who's an indigenous girl from Mexico. Uh, she has the highest recorded IQ, and she's a part of their, like, gifted child's programs. But she is slated to be, like the first, um, like, very young astronaut for, for Mexico and whatnot. So it's like, uh, literacy has been a barrier that we are obviously more than capable, given that example and all the pyramids, uh, we are much more than capable of surpassing those limitations, and we can start looking to more. Trustworthy sources to inform our spirituality as well. Yeah. Trustworthy sources. And that's exactly the movement I think we're in. I announced my retreats to Delphi and Sacred Greece for twenty twenty six. In early July, and my Delphi retreat sold out in just eight days. I have now added an additional retreat for May of twenty twenty six, with payment options including biweekly payments, monthly payments or paying in your custom installments. If you are feeling the call to deepen your practice by connection to the sacred lands where many of the West's witchcraft and pagan practices derive from, join me in twenty twenty six on an immersive pilgrimage in sacred waters. Meet the monk seals the ancient seals that Homer writes about in Artemis and Eleusis. Meet Hekate and the goddesses that help us with shadow work and healing our feminine wounds. Swim at the temple of Hera. Meet the oracle. Be one of the few who have met the oracle in modern times, at sites unexcavated and left abandoned for thousands of years. I have been working intently with the land of Greece for the past five years, deepening my personal connection to the land to be shown these special places that I am now being given permission to share with you. Don't miss this opportunity if it's calling you. Visit. For more information or follow the link in the show notes. And it's interesting. I want to talk about what you said about America. How did you say it? Like like America. Some of the revivals are coming from within America because we're more suited to do it here. That's exactly what I see. It's so interesting. Okay, so that's exactly what I see in Greece as well. Like like I'm I'm same. I'm fifty percent. I'm my mom's American, but my dad is Greek and Egyptian. So I have nationalities in both of those countries. Truthfully, in Egypt it's not very safe for me to try to revive ancient traditions there. It would be, you know, literally dangerous. Like they have, um, executed people for practicing witchcraft in Egypt before. But in Greece, while it is illegal in so many ways, they've never actually persecuted anybody for it. And so I feel happy to poke that bear. Um, but my Greek friends, even though I have, I have a good solid like seventeen or eighteen people that I found over the years who do practice in Greece. They practice paganism, Hellenic polytheism, witchcraft, you know, they all have different identities, but they're they're trying to revive our ancient gods, and yet they will not speak out even anonymously, even anonymously, because they don't want to be persecuted. You know, in Greece your religion is on your ID card, so you are persecuted for your religion if it says something other than Greek Orthodox. That's why ninety eight percent of Greek citizens are Orthodox. I bet you any amount of money that there is not actually in church on Sundays. But it's got to say that on your ID card because you got to rent houses, you've got to have jobs, you know. So the threat of discrimination is so strong from within these cultures, and also something that America enables that I've never encountered anywhere else. Canada, England. It's nowhere it is doing this except America. In America, you can be both. You can be an American and be one hundred percent seen as that. You know, we are American, Solomon one thousand percent. Nobody has ever questioned that about us. And yet we also can be Greek. Nobody's going to question us about that here either. We also can't be mine. We also can be, you know, I can be Egyptian too. Whatever it is, we can be both. We can be many things. We can be multifaceted here. And so that freedom of expression and individuality is is massive here. You know, manifest Destiny was toxic, as I guess. I guess we'll just put the explicit warning was toxic as fuck. But we definitely have so much open mindedness to individuality. Like we put bumper stickers on our cars. Like it cracks me up. Like you go to Europe, you're never going to see that much identity information being shared. You know, we put like our whole family up there in Disney hats, even the dogs. And then we have like, you know, Semper Fi. And then we have like, you know, like you can learn everything about a person just from being behind them in traffic. You know, it's so American and I love it. I freaking love it. And that individuality is what allows us to express and and evolve and also talk a lot. I mean, I got three podcasts. I'm talking about it like we just share all the time, like where we're at and what we're doing, and we're so open with with our journey non-blood related people. You know, that's the other thing I've noticed in Europe and in Africa. And, you know, even Asia. And everywhere I've traveled, it's who you're blood related to that you trust and engage with. You know, in America, we're not like that. We have chosen family. We show up for each other's, you know, if we're if we're in a sorority with somebody, we're going to go to their their kid's first birthday party. It doesn't matter that we're not blood related, but like in Greece, that just wouldn't have you wouldn't even be invited. It doesn't matter how good a friends you are. So all of that to say, I really feel like that's why that's America has a very special role, the way we've cultivated our culture. And it's, it's it's much nature is what's going to allow all of these indigenous cultures to feel empowered to revive that, that unity of their individual spirit. Mhm. Yeah. No I'm like like you read like you read off like, uh, I was in the Army for ten years. I'm a, I'm proud to be an American because here we have the potential to actually make changes and whatnot. It's funny because I'm brought to this passage in the movie Gladiator with Russell Crowe, where the gladiators are basically enslaved people and they're they're talking about Rome and how bad it is. And then Maximus says that, well, Rome, for all its faults, it's the best thing that's out there. And I don't I don't like completely agree with every single thing. But the, the gist of it is true that like, that's where civilization is at and they have politics. And with that there's just enough wiggle room to make differences, because outside of that you have anarchy. Like, that's what makes civilization great, is that you have these engines that people can get their voices heard to change things. And we have that greater in America. I'm telling you, we have that greater in America than we do in Mexico or in Guatemala or many places. Uh, speaking from the Mesoamerican side. So, um, again, I don't like what's going on in this country. Like, I would be targeted for for all of my beliefs and what I am. Right. But it's like we don't need less America in order to fix the situation. We need more America. Actual America. And America is more than the Second Amendment. It's the First Amendment to freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Yeah, we need that. That First Amendment is more important than the Second Amendment. Absolutely. And so that's what we're going and I'm glad you bring that up about like the Greece, uh, like the practice, the inner practice inside of Greece, because I actually had this talk years ago with an indigenous person, and they were like, I don't want to know about indigenous philosophy. I don't care about indigenous, uh, mythology. They're like, I'm actually more interested, uh, in Greek mythology and whatnot. And because and the reason why, though, when you get to talk in this discussion, you could tell because this person was Christian, uh, it was an indigenous person that was like, was they knew about all of this indigenous magic, by the way, and they believed in it. They just didn't want anything to do it because they didn't believe it was safe. They thought, you know, Christian Cross is safe. That's safe. That keeps you safe and trending, you know, so to speak. And, um, but they there's this cognitive dissonance in Western society. And it wasn't just this person. You can see it. Yeah. For some reason, there is a leniency to believe and partake in what the West and Hollywood thinks Greek mythology and Norse mythology are as opposed to what they really are. Yeah. But you start looking at between the lines. It seems like this might have to do more with, like, um, monoculture and race politics rather than the actual mythologies themselves, because in Norse mythology you have gender fluidity, right? Uh, as a, as a concept that's not, doesn't jive well with the conservative Christian values, but they'll entertain a lot of the conservative types that, you know, go to church on Sunday. They'll have a full black and grey sleeve of Odin and Thor or throw, you know, throwing your Greek gods too. It's cool as long as like because they're kind of Jesus like or like something like there's a big cognitive dissonance, is what I'm saying. It's like, yeah, what Greek mythology actually is, what Norse mythology actually is and what Hollywood, uh, portrays it as, and Hollywood portrays it as this more nominal culture and primarily Western, Eurocentric or, uh, white politics culture, which it's not like, even if like, say, Norse complexion. Right. Accounting for that. But it's not anything to do with like nineteen fifties or twenty twenty five Christian conservative values. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. The cherry picking of mythology makes me think of like Disney trying to, um, uh, license Thor like they wanted to copyright Thor. Yeah. Good luck. Uh, yeah, there's a great there's a great, um, TikToker. I think her name is Carmi. She does a lot of ATR and African spirituality, and she was basically calling out Disney about like, why do why are, um, like voodoo and, uh, Western African pantheons painted as, like antagonists, whereas things from Greek mythology, again, Hollywood, Greek mythology and Norse mythology get Disney movies. Why are they safe to teach your kids about? Mhm. Oh yeah. Yes that's right. That's um yeah. There's, there's definitely a very it's seasoned with the patriarchy in that when we look at like the Norse deities, when we look at some of the Greek deities like the, the female characters are very much whitewashed, glitter dusted. Did. Their demure, their obedient. They don't cause trouble. Mhm. But then you get to like the Morgan or Hecate. You know all of a sudden they're evil because they are, they are, they're, they're empowered. Yeah. They're empowered. They're single. They're there to say why do we do it that way. What what's the point of this? Like, what are you gaining from this? Where's the wildness? And that's your point. To your point, Leandra. Like when you are given a, like a Valkyrie. Yeah, or a or a Morgan. They have to be sexualized. Yeah. They can't. Yes. They can't be functional. They can't be female gaze. Yeah, exactly. Now. Yeah. Step on me, mommy. Kink. And it's fine. Yeah, exactly. They have to be barely clothed. They have to be wielding, like, some kind of weapon. And it's not really for function. It's more for, like, dominatrix. Exactly. Yeah. It's not. And their hair is down, even though they're fighting. Yeah. You'd have that thing in a bond. Like you're not having your hair down or braid. Yeah, yeah. Like, the men get armor, but the women don't know. Don't need it. We're good. The women get a bra. Yeah. With lift. Yeah. Considerable lift. Boob tape. So, yeah. No. A lot of cognitive dissonance when it comes to all mythologies, and especially with Mesoamerican mythologies, because we've been, uh, a big for my upcoming work. Uh, a big portion of it is what I like to call historical shadow work, but it really does need to be it needs to be done. A lot of, uh, people within our, like, metaphysical space, they see this big divorcing between team spirit and team science. And it it's bad. It's very bad because it essentially says, I can't trust these scientists. I can't trust these archaeologists. And basically, if they tell me something, I need to make it second priority, right? That gives way for pseudo archaeologists, not alternative history. They like that term, but oftentimes it's not alternative history, because I've heard actual historians have some pretty wild takes and there's some room to wiggle there. But a lot of these pseudo archaeology archaeological claims about are actually old colonial like, colonial era narratives and straight up Nazi narratives. Now the narratives that Nazis use. Yes, yes. So so things like, um, believing in the crystal skulls or, uh, directly correlating Atlantis to Mesoamerica and, like, really believing it one hundred percent is playing into, uh, late eighteen hundreds, eighteen hundreds colonial thoughts that were used to dehumanize native peoples. Because if you can say that, oh, these are like the excrements of a super civilization, that these were like the lower class of a super civilization. Now you have more of a justification to enslave them and take their stuff. Yep. Um. Humanize, too. Yeah. And, I mean, it's like, as far as, like, the crystal skulls and whatnot. I write at length about this because I. I'm a magic person. Like, I believe in crystal magic and whatnot, but the crystal skulls are very, very clear. Um, the individual who made them actually. Uh mitchell-hedges. He's the guy who was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. George Lucas says that, uh, Mitchell-hedges was the inspiration and Mitchell-hedges was an adventure. He was not an archaeologist. Granted, archaeology was very young at that at that age. And archaeology was kind of a kind of, um, kind of a snake oil salesman art at the time. But Mitchell-hedges, uh, fabricated the story of crystal skulls using those crystal crystal skulls that were on the market in Great Britain. It was actually pretty, uh, like you would find common items on eBay. It was kind of like that. And, uh, like trending items on eBay. Crystal skulls were a trending item in, uh, like marketplaces in Great Britain at that time. And then he made up a mythology of it all. And, uh, a lot of people adopted it. A lot of people in the New Age space. But believe it or not, a lot of indigenous people did, because what does it do? It brings in tourism. It brings people in to to buy things. And like when five American dollars is the equivalent of like a week's wage and you can feed five people with that for a week. Yeah. You believe in crystal skulls real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, a lot of actual shadow work is unpacking history. You do enough historical, um, digging. It's a Gnostic experience. It's like a it's like the red pill in the matrix. Yeah. Um, uh, you see this happen with, like, um, like occult seekers and stuff that start to go a little like, they get a little crazy because reality just is not what you thought it was. And it doesn't have to be the fluoride. It doesn't have to be there hiding the UFOs. It can literally be the history of what you are doing. Yeah. Like for instance, uh, this actually ties into Mesoamerica. But if you guys had breakfast and you had bacon, eggs, maybe some pancakes, anything that was hearty, guess what it has to do with, um, the genocide and in Guatemala, because, uh, there was a political figure. I'm sorry. He was a marketing figure named, uh, Bernays. And he was essentially this head marketing expert for Lucky Strike cigarettes. At one point, he was hired by the CIA to come up with a marketing campaign that could paint, uh, the natives essentially as leftists, uh, communist sympathizers, to give the CIA a free reign to invade and overthrow the government there. But he had to test. He had to basically prove himself to the CIA that he could do this. How did he do this? He went on radio and essentially finagled some doctor's studies and testimonies that a nutritious breakfast is hearty. So this is where the the quintessential American breakfast comes from. Bacon, ham, eggs, browns all comes from Edward Bernays. That ties into the genocide that started in Guatemala to exterminate the Maya. So it's like a lot of people are closer to Mesoamerica in a in a metal way than they think. Right. Yeah. It's amazing. Not in a good way. Just like it's incredible. Like, truly, in the sense of that word. Like, how is this possible? Sometimes in the occult studies world, like the way this connects, like people ask me sometimes, like, you know, I feel like I've read the same thing again and again. Where are all the advanced books? Where's the advanced learning? Where's the really hard stuff? And I'm like, truthfully, the advanced stuff comes from you. It comes from action. It comes from experience, it comes from travel. It comes from immersive experiences, retreats, trainings, conferences. But when it comes to the books, the advanced books are going to be the deep dives into history, the deep dives into practice, the economic, the economic, the academic studies. Um, you know, like there's it's the boring stuff. That's the advanced stuff, you know, and then it's applying that. Yeah. Into an experiential existence. Yeah. And that's that's God. That is so like, especially with, like, anything Mesoamerican, uh, spirituality, mind, spirituality. I use that again. Let me clarify for the audience. So the Maya are one of many Mesoamerican civilizations. Mesoamerica would be like the overall complex. So you think about Mesopotamia. You have the Babylonians, you have the Assyrians, and so on. But, um, it's kind of like the greater, uh, geo complex of where it comes from. But, um, with Mesoamerica. America. The thing is, is that and again, I come from this kind of culture. So like I have a lot of sympathy for this, but it the term elder knowledge or oral traditions can sometimes be used as a cop out to try and get people to simply nod their heads and go forward with the teaching. Um, I'm not going to get too deep into this, but let me just say, because we were talking about advanced work there and the boring stuff, I as coming from a Brujeria background, it's, you know, you could call me a Mesoamerican brujo, I guess, but somebody who's come from Mesoamerican magic when I read an academic document, there's magic spells in there, right? But the thing is, is that like to a normal person, you're not going to see it to an to an archaeologist, you're not going to see it. But I can see that as somebody who's grown up with the culture and has reconstructed magical spells on the ground and stuff, I see it now. Why don't you have more people of Mesoamerican descent or native peoples doing that? Again, literacy is a big problem because of colonization. Our literacy, like, plummeted. Uh, and also, they're written in a foreign language. You can't expect native people to necessarily, um, become fluent in Western languages and especially Western academic stuff. Um, so it requires a lot of unique factors to get an individual to read an academic document and start reconstructing rituals from there. Yeah. Um, but a big part, uh, part of it's illiteracy. And then there's just the distrust of the West because of colonization. You're like, why should I trust these archaeologists? There's some people that have come around to that, and they've started befriending archaeologists. But that's really a big contributor of like, well, why don't we have all these rituals or like, well, the elders don't tell me that. So. But the elders tell me this. So this is a legit ritual and that isn't. Mhm. Or like the elders haven't told us about this, so why should we trust you. Because the themselves again I'm not speaking for all elders. I don't want to sound like I'm too, uh, condemning here because I'm very sympathetic, but a lot of the elders don't read those documents for whether it's a lack of interest, a lack of capability to read them, or distrust of the academic community. So that reminds me. It reminds me of something that I work with, with in my containers and with my students, what we call crazy logic. So the answer will be there. And whether it come through your guides or through your through, you know, like obscure resources, think of it as, as you're not getting the answer directly, but maybe some somebody humming the tune to the answer. So you have to decipher the song to get the answer, if that makes sense. So. Oh, gosh. Like. Like how do I how do I relate this? Um stranger things, they go to talk to the guy who, um, whose son was Vecna. If you haven't watched things, I'm probably doing spoilers. I love Stranger Things. Okay, so you get this. Okay. So, um, when they get the clue that music was the key to keeping them away from Vecna, he starts humming, um, dream a little dream. That was the answer to their question. So this is crazy logic. And this is how how I get a lot of my messages and how I do a lot of learning when I'm in trance or I'm in containers by myself or in especially in retreat settings. It seems like that's when crazy logic hits. And when I'm reading academic books or white papers, that sort of thing. Like, the answer isn't literal, it's metaphorical or it's symbolic. So trying to decipher is, I think, where a lot of people get lost. Mhm. Yeah. I mean I'm thinking of like Sumerian literature. Mhm. Not that we have a whole lot of that because we're talking like six thousand years ago. But what we do have like poetry by Nandwana and things like that. It will come forward as, yeah, confusing or like my first time reading sacred poetry by Enheduanna to Inanna, my patron goddess. It was like, you know, like the mountain will come to her and she will be of strength and you know, and you're like, is this badly translated, you know? Right. So then you have to look into it and it's like, oh, well, you know, sometimes we're able to know like that was an expression that meant something else, like it's raining cats and dogs. Imagine coming across that written on like it's not three thousand years. Yeah. Yeah. You'd be like, oh my God, that's terrifying. These people had to live with mammals falling on their cars and heads, you know? Um, in Greek we say, uh, chair legs. Chair legs. Yeah. It's raining. Chair legs. Yeah. Uh. Crazy logic. I like that because, um, so there's a big example of crazy logic within my family's practice. And that is, um, we mentioned the Daykeeper tradition. This is the most well preserved, uh, Maya tradition. They have over eight thousand registered daykeeper in Guatemala. And, um, just for scale purposes, that's eight thousand, like priests or authority figures of a tradition, not followers. There's many more followers than there are authority figures. So this is a very alive tradition. So if you thought that they were gone, uh, you've been misinformed. Um, also kind of compare that to like any other kind of esoteric society, I don't think even the Golden Dawn at its height had eight thousand authority figures. I don't think the Oto had at its height had eight thousand. I could be wrong about that one because that one lasts a little bit longer, but like just very comparative like. Mhm. Very notable. Yeah. But um the day keepers, they prioritize um. Keeping the sacred calendar. And this is a specifically time magic. Now there's many modalities to Mayan magic that people don't know about or like when they think Maya magic, they simply look at that. Sure. Uh, that watermelon tradition of time magic. And then if there's anything that's outside of that, I've heard people like go off and be dogmatic and say, that's not my magic. Well, while the Maya are still around, they're not all unanimous. They never were. There were there was never a Mayan empire. That's another common misconception. The Maya have always had their own opinions and had different city states with their own kinds of, um, subcultures. That's still the case today, even within Guatemala, because, like this daykeeper tradition, like my family comes from Guatemala, but we don't come from the Daykeeper tradition. Okay. Um, you know, it's kind of hard to actually really what our tradition is. For the longest time during the colonial era. Mind you, it was just called brujeria. But that just means witchcraft in Latin America, right? It it's really, when you look at it, it's a complex of many different kinds of surviving indigenous formulae. Now, part of that formula, this crazy logic, what I would find out and what I've been able to trace, is that where my family and what they prioritized, um, and that lineage of family, what they prioritized was not the time keeping or the sacred calendar, uh, modality of magic found within the Mayan pantheon and paradigm, but, uh, planetary magic. And I think this has vast implications, because where we find the remnants of it are within certain artifacts found near the archaeological site of Naranjo. Uh, and the books of Chilam Balam and the Books of Chilam Balam, for as enigmatic as they are. I'm actually kind of surprised nobody has ever said this is like an actual Grimoire of Magic, because it's basically a grimoire of magic and prophecies and, uh, historical accounts. Um, again, you don't have, like, people that research grimoires looking into Mexico. They're looking into Europe. Um, but what you find there is essentially a system of conjurations and practices surrounding in the West what are known as the seven traditional planets. There's even a diagram found in the Book of Chilam Balam that lists how the Maya at the time regarding there's some disputes. They're like, oh, this is just colonial era document. The thing is, is that, uh, the the artifacts at Naranjo date back to eight hundred years prior to that. So It's. I'm pretty sure that it's pre-Columbian. Also, the numbers don't match. What I'm trying to say is, is that so? We know that the planets essentially correspond to numbers in like, magic. Right. And same thing with, uh, the Mayan pantheon. But it's not just swapping one for one. Everything had a number in the Mayan pantheon. It's almost like they had their own sacred numerology, which the numbers, though, are different. They mean very different things. So oftentimes in Western traditions, six is the number for the sun. That's not the case in the books of Chilam Balam. Four is the number of the sun, and this can easily be traced. Four is the number of the sun. In pre-Columbian times, it's all over Maya stelae. Uh, so the numbers don't a Western correspondence. They match a pre-Columbian correspondence. And how I came to this conclusion, too, was by a lot of, um, crazy logic, uh, things that were said about my family in like more oral tradition ways, but they just there were these adages that were always repeated by people when they would talk to my mom about how the moon would follow her, or like how the planets would never lie to me. And, and these were like little signs and in a very like, folk magicky way. But they were repeated over and over again over the years. So where does this come from and how does it. And then we would observe our practice. Um, like my, my brother has a very, very intense relationship with Mercury. Well, the thing is, is that you don't have a lot of preservation of, uh, details of mercury like you do, say, Venus in the Mesoamerican pantheon as a planet. So where did these things come from? These more energetic types, these more intuitive ties? And when I started to find the hard evidence, like the base of the seven gods and the base of the eleven gods from Naranjo and the books of Chilam Balam, and cross-referencing my notes with, like Yucatec Maya and Belizean Yucatec Maya peoples, there was a planetary tradition within the Mayan paradigm. The things that had to do with celestial bodies. This is different than the Daykeeper tradition, because the way the daykeeper is the twenty count, the the twenty day signs, those aren't planets. It's not. You can't even like Mayan astrology. I use the word Mayan astrology to just kind of quickly get the points, but it's not even really. Astrology doesn't have to do with astral bodies. There's one day sign that kind of corresponds to Venus, but other than that, um, it's not in the hard sense what the day signs are are snapshots of mythological time on repeat. But they're geocentric. They have to do with human gestation. They have to do with, um, essentially mythology of of heroes on Earth and, uh, human civilization on Earth. The mythology of civilization. That's not astrology, but for the sake of getting the point across quickly, because you can do a lot of the same things that you do with astrology, with the Mayan calendar. Uh, you know, people just call it Mayan astrology, kind of like astrology or mytho astrology. Um, but that is distinctly different from looking up at the celestial bodies. And if you examine the base of the seven gods, you actually find day signs on the the quote unquote gods, uh, that are depicted that are supposed to resemble the planets. But the day signs are essentially like their regalia. They're like fixed as part of their clothing. So this tells me that they supersede earthly time and they have a relationship to it. And it's not about like, this thing is bigger than that thing. It's just there are echelons to the cosmos that kind of like in any other mythology. Yeah, but that's an example of crazy logic, um, where there's these things said about the tradition for ages in a much more informal, intuitive craft way. Right. And then and then somehow, some way, through hard work and investigation, you find some kind of hard link, some hard evidence link. When we first began our magical practice, it can feel really hard to trust the signs to recognize what deity is speaking to us, who it is, what they're saying, what they want from us. It can be really challenging to have a regular practice and to know what that should look like, and to know what's really working for you. In the beginning of most people's journeys, we spend years figuring that out on our own. But in my course, the witch codes an eight week online container. You will skip years of that awkward beginning stage of your journey if you're ready to step into your practice, if you're ready to really feel what magic is like and know how to raise energy and protect your own. This is the course for you. Join me in community in an all genders course beginning November fourth. Early bird registration is now live. Visit visit COVID-19 or follow the link in the description for more information. Let's set up a call and get to know each other. If you have any questions, I am here. I am waiting to welcome you. I would like to know more about how how how you or how your tradition views time. How does time play into your magical practice. Oh, um. I, I was actually talking to my brother about this last night. Um, cyclical time versus linear time. This is very this is very useful to very practical. So let me put my coffee down, roll up my sleeves for this one. Um. So obviously it's been said, especially when you compare Western kind of chronology to like the yugas found in Vedic traditions too, that the Yugas have a cyclical version of time. And the same thing meso-america like the entire solar calendar, like how things repeat. Mhm. It's a cyclical view of time. Time is a flat circle. True detective season one. It's, um, things are going to repeat almost in a kind of a Gnostic sense to, like Gnosticism, asks this question are we kind of bound to the the choices and limitations of who we are? Uh, or can we break out of it? It's kind of like that, but less condemning and a bit more like, uh, there's an acceptance to it. So linear time. The with linear time. What's good about linear time, right, is that it keeps things at least organized for the sake of progress. Like obviously it has lent to the progress the technological progress of Western society. Um, but it's also kind of based in, well, it keeps the trains running on time. It doesn't allow for society to expand despite its advancements. Like if you look at kind of like the Christian understanding of the Book of Revelation, there's a beginning point and there's an end point like this is all going to end. So it kind of begs the question, like, what's the point? Like, if it's all going to if it's all going to end and we all get our Mercedes in heaven? It's like, well, like, what's the point? Um, uh, cyclical time basically Suggests. And I'm going to give you a much I'm going to give you a bit more of a kind of a scarier response than like what a daykeeper would give you. But there's a bit more of like a cosmic horror realization about the universe with cyclical time. Um, I think cyclical time really dives into like the natural, like what we're finding in physics and stuff like that, about how and the historical record of how things come to an end. And there's new things that blossom. And this has to do with species like the extinctions of species and the risings of species, uh, cyclical time and understanding that that like that saying time doesn't, uh, or history doesn't repeat, but it's certainly rhymes. That is basically cyclical time. If I was going to sum it up into an analogy, history may not repeat, but it's certainly rhymes. That's why it's like, you know, you see, like these rise of villains, rise of villain, villain nation states, and then the rise of heroic nation states or something like that. It's a tale as old as time. Yeah. Another analogy. Yeah. But the thing about cyclical time, I think the biggest takeaway is that it allows you to have some kind of acceptance. Yeah. Um, because there are certain there's even behaviors in the historical record of the Maya during colonization that they had basically, like they knew or they like they knew the kind of gig was up. Um. So, like, there's quickly to the Aztecs, right? Like there was that there's this whole conundrum about, like, did Montezuma think Cortez was Quetzalcoatl? Um, there was a there's an element of prophecy involved in cyclical time. That is present in all of Mesoamerica. But people don't know often, don't know about this part of history that in the sixteen nineties, the Maya. Basically. Uh, there was the Maya were not gone. Like they were still fighting the Spanish at this time, not the Mexican government. They were fighting the Spanish. And they essentially came out of the jungle, the Itza Maya. And they were like, it's time for a new era, and this is your era, and I don't I don't want it to sound like we're just like giving up. But it was like it was very clear that something like civilization, the world was changing. And they were doing this based upon alignments of the prophecies and their own, like elder teachings. It was time to accept that a new era was beginning. Um, and that's not giving up because like I said, like we talked about native populations had a boom a couple of like a hundred years later after the initial colonization. So native people and they're still around today. So it's like, it's not like this giving up, but it's like you have to accept where the world is going. And this is what gives cyclical time, I believe, gives actual resilience to civilizations because it doesn't lead to this apocalyptic end. Yes. Yes. It's not this, like deadline. Like everything's got to be figured out by this deadline. So we get our our just desserts. Mhm. Because when you're dealing with linear time you're basically whatever civilization's doing you're selling like you're going out of business. Whereas with cyclical time you have more kind of like a sustainable business model if you will, of society. And where this gets really practical is right now we are on the cusp of like some very big paradigm shifts with like AI. And when I hear certain indigenous people talk about like how they hate technology or they hated social media or something, it's bad for the kids and things like that. I see that as a direct denial of cyclical time, because we literally have a day sign that encompasses the concept of technology. That's not my birth sign, which is the obsidian knife, because that is a technology. Obsidian. Uh, any kind of tool is technology. And people kind of want to see AI or like any of these tech things as like, oh, you're cheating. Well, in primal society, the monkey that wielded a club in it's in a fist fight with another monkey, I guess was cheating. And eventually they birthed tools. And the first human to bring a knife to a fist fight, I guess, was cheating. And it's like, okay, maybe in that instance. But, like, clearly that cheating, like, led to the advancement of tools to get here. Yeah. I mean, you can read about Socrates complaining about writing. Yeah. That right. Oh, yeah. Making the populace stupid because it was encouraging oral tradition to die out and all true. All true. Well, and and people like we need writing, right? Yeah. And people did that when the telephone came out. Oh my gosh, people are not going to go see each other anymore. There's not going to be any more newspapers. People won't go, you know, visit their elders anymore. And that was not true. It's just this fear mongering. Yeah. Over here. We are recording a podcast. Radio was supposed to die, you know? Yeah. Video killed the radio star. How long ago? Right. Right. That was the eighties. Yeah, that was the eighties. And it's like, uh, we're here. And things, like, they go through cycles too. Things will repeat. Things will have, like, a breath of fresh air again and make a comeback. Uh, you know, there's a great meme I saw that was going around of, like, people complaining about, like, people being on their phones, like they're saying, oh, it's bad for everybody. They're looking at their screens. And then right next to it, there's a, a scene from the nineteen thirties of people on a train looking at the newspapers, just like all down. Yeah. And this nothing is new. And that's what cyclical time is suggesting. Mhm. Is that every time there's like a new paradigm shift people are going to be all scared. Yeah. And but really nothing is new and you need to adapt to it. And that's actually part of the scariness of so is the obsidian knife. Yeah. The thing that cuts away things, it's actually very Martian like. If I was going to give a planetary correspondence, it has to do a lot with pain. So technology essentially in this regard is pain. And this gets us into like deeper concepts of Mesoamerican cosmology of how like, uh, like like the blood sacrifice and stuff like that. It's really an analogy for to have physical existence. You have to it requires constant exchange, whether it's your time, your money, your effort, literally blood manpower to, you know, manpower it takes to build a pyramid, um, manpower to defend a nation. So, uh, there's this idea of constant offering or routine offering in order to keep progress going, but that obsidian knife cuts, and that's what's painful about it. That's what's painful about technology. At first, it will always cut before it starts, you know, cutting the right way. Right. Um, with every paradigm shift. Um, and that's what cyclical time on a practical level can teach us is, because not everything is great about these technologies. When they come out right away, you know, it's like the nuclear bomb was a brand new technology, and there were some growing pains with that. But we have like the nuclear bomb, we have to learn how to use these technologies in a mature way. Um, and I think largely with the nuclear bomb we have, because we haven't used another one like offensively in seventy years. So, um, that's part of the lesson of cyclical time and, and technology as a concept found in Mesoamerica, is that all of these technologies need to be integrated into a way that doesn't lead to downfall. And I don't think, uh, a lot most of these technologies haven't. So, for instance, uh, here's some other examples. When Google became a thing, The majority of, uh, like internet communication or, I'm sorry, like telecommunications. A big, big portion of the industry was the Yellow Pages. When Google came around, all those people that worked for the Yellow Pages lost their jobs. And nobody was complaining about that. Or like, you know, people immediately were complaining about that. But what what happened? They went they learned at Google SEO or whatever was left in digital marketing, and they adapted or they went and they did something else. When the tractor was invented, eighty percent of the human population was working in farms, and people were worried that it was going to take away their jobs. And what happened? Humans went on to go do bigger and better things, right? When electricity was invented, after Edison made the light bulb and it took fifty years for electricity to be like commonplace, part of that was the infrastructure took a it was a large, you know, to make, uh, electrical power plants and stuff like that. Right. The infrastructure wasn't there, and it took fifty years. But another reason was because. And you can find it in old newspapers. There was demons in the electricity, right? Yeah. Like churches were quite literally saying that the reason why electricity can do all these things is because Satan. So. Exactly. And we're running into a similar thing with I, and I'm not I'm not trying to make this relevant. It just is by concept. Yeah. That snob would, would uh, or like this idea of cyclical time. And one of the day signs here corresponds to what we are going through. That is how applicable it is. And we have to learn how to reconcile these things. If you don't reconcile them, you risk being trampled. Even Malcolm X like, uh, there's a quote by Malcolm X, uh, about how Native Americans, northern Native Americans that held on specifically to oral traditions, they lost the majority of their culture because they didn't write things down. And he's absolutely correct. Mhm. And that's what makes, And I'm not trying to. There's nothing I'm not trying to say anything about like superiority here, but meso America, what makes them classic is that they wrote things down, specifically the Maya. But the Mexica did too. The Zapotec did, uh, they wrote a lot of things down where it was carved in stones or papyrus codices. Um, so it's like that thing about Socrates and writing, you know, and Socrates was a smart dude. Yes. Um, there's like this quiz going around by. He's a Native American archaeologist, but he likes to, uh, point this. I think it was Aristotle, though. He asked his students, are you smarter than Aristotle? And he's, like Aristotle believed in a flat earth. He was Aristotle. It might have been Socrates. It could be wrong about that. But there's more to intelligence than simply just having the facts about something. Because obviously, like third graders, or most certainly ninth graders now have a better understanding of trigonometry than Isaac Newton did. So are you smarter than Isaac Newton? You know, it's kind of like it's not a one to one comparison. Yeah. There's different kinds of intelligence too. So you have street smarts versus book smarts or. Yeah. Agricultural intelligence versus domestic household intelligence. There's different ways to be smart about things. Actually, I think that's what I love about occult studies is they encourage us to be holistically informed. Like most of us at some point will take on a hobby that is deceased from needing to be done, like spinning wool or knitting or. But we will find. Yeah. Candle making? Yeah. We find a spiritual connection to it and therefore a physical connection to it. Yes. You know, we say, okay, I actually want to do that, though. I want to make my own ritual candle. Otherwise, we maybe never would have known what fresh beeswax smells like burning and melting on a on a, you know, amazingly, maybe even a fresh fire, but a stove top and and so we can connect to to time and history that way too. And yeah. Yeah, we do have that well-rounded knowledge. I think like a good occult practitioner, a good leader of, of of their craft is going to have a well-rounded knowledge of history. And it can't just be experience in practice, but it also has to be experience in practice. Some of them only read books. So there's a lot of that armchair occultism. Yes. No, no. And I think, um, it's that holistic thing again. Yeah. I, um, I like to compare where we are with occultism, witchcraft and, uh, like even I throw in the manifestation camp with this as well because. Yeah. For, for as for as shallow as the methodology is, they want to claim that it's like The Kybalion and Emerald Tablet and stuff like that too. Yeah. They're always throwing in like it's really advanced, this and that, quantum physics, blah blah. Yeah. Um, so I would throw them all in the same camp, uh, not all in the same camp, but in the same sphere. Um, I, I see a lot of similarities of, like, where we are today with, like, how, uh, the martial arts community was in the nineteen nineties where so much prior to that, it was like all this like death touch ninja stuff and, um, just a lot of rumors, conjectures and, uh, just like myth making about people and modern day people too. Um, and then when you are able to get enough people, uh, practicing, studying and practicing and then testing things out, i.e. in a cage on TV, then you have a data pool to, uh, to, um, draw comparisons from, and then you see certain patterns repeat, uh, like they're on repeat all the time. Now, it doesn't mean that you can simply plug in a pattern. It will work all the time, but you can get like a fair percentage there. And I think that's where we're we're starting to get at with all of this occult stuff. Is that. Oh, clearly it's not just art. You know. It's not just reading books. It's not just doing investigation. And it can't it can't just be intuitive practice also because, well, that's where like, um, essentially the juice is squeezed is in the actual practice. It's got to make some kind of fundamental sense because again, it's like if you're claiming this stuff works, then there has to be some fundamental commonalities between all of these things. So I mentioned like the numerology is different between West and Native American. Right. Or Mesoamerican. Um, but the thing is, is you still have the fundamentals. Okay. So thirteen is the number of the heavens here. Thirteen and kind of like a broader Western context, right? Like Anglo-Saxon thirteen is like this evil thing because Friday the thirteenth and Knights Templar and all of that. Right? So that does not that's not a fundamental like that's not what I'm talking about. Fundamental is like the numbers mean the same thing. No, no, no, that would be a point of convergence if they did. That's different fundamentals is that numbers mean things. Yes. Numbers have sacred meaning. And you can do things with numbers. That is fundamental. What is another fundamental? And this is for people that, like I think may have some kind of unhealthy practices. Are there evil things? Is there such thing as evil that is outside that is both human and a metaphysical evil? Because a lot of this is like, oh well, the church made that up. Or like that's exclusively a Christian thing. And if you can find this concept, this fundamental concept in cultures that are alien to Christendom, then now you have a real fundamental concept that you you can't escape. And you should abide by this rule. And you find, yes, there is metaphysical evil across different cultures. You know, it's like there's plenty of that in Mesoamerica. You could give actual examples that like, these things are not just, um, uh, they're not just demonized pagan gods is what I'm trying to say. You find it in West Africa too, in, uh, ATR traditions with the ensemble. Like it's things that even the Orisha of death runs away from. So if if death is running away from it, it's not like this. Oh, you you just accept that things end. No, no no, no. Because like we have the day sign of death came in the Mayan calendar. We have a deity of death, uh, as well. And these things have to do with, like, seasonal things that you do reconcile, that you do accept. Things have an end. You do accept your own death. You accept the death of of things, uh, of loved ones and animals. But that's not evil. That's just that is a part of the cycle of life. But evil is out there, and you should not. You shouldn't worship evil. And in a lot of metaphysical circles, just because of Christian trauma, people yo yo the other way, and they're just like, oh, it's just a bunch of demonized pagan gods. That's not that's not the case at all. Even with like, Some famous names that you can trace to pagan gods. Um, it's no longer a pagan god if it's got a demonic sigil. It's a it's a blasphemy to that pagan god. So what makes you like. Why would you why would you try and worship or work with a pagan god using a a a sigil that was crafted by Christian thought, more or less to be a middle finger to pagan god? Like, um, it just doesn't make any sense. I think part of it is laziness, too, because it's like if you just did a little bit of research, you can find an old pagan effigy of what that pagan god was like. And at this point, there's Etsy sellers that make, uh, recreations. Or you can make it yourself. Exactly. Yeah. That's where my thought is. Make it yourself. Mhm. So that's what I mean by a, uh, like a fundamental concept. So we have this fundamental concept of there are things like um like seasonal death gods. right? That should be honored or recognized during those times of year or those conditions. That remains the same. Okay. That's a fundamental concept. What it's going to mean for you for like the Greek culture would be different than Native American cultures, because why maybe the seasons are different, like slightly because like timings of the year and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. But it doesn't mean that, um, it doesn't mean that it's so different enough that we don't practice like we don't practice the same thing. But it is a fundamental concept that is. Yeah. Um, ubiquitous across cultures, that kind of reverence of this, um, deceasing. And that's not evil. That's just like part of life. And then there is actual, like, metaphysical evil and and like what I mean by that is like, animism is a part of native philosophy, native occult philosophy. So that means you also have to reconcile, like everything has a spirit that includes bad things like murder and rape and pillaging and drug abuse and and things like that. That is not death. That is not that is not even warfare. That is a different kind of its evil. Yeah. And sinister. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Hey there. Witches. Did you know that there is an entire community out there dedicated to you and your journey? The Rebel Mystic community is a space where I offer my decades of knowledge and experience to witches, just like you. I do this through live events, monthly mentoring, monthly rituals, a book club, and other resources like workbook pages and meditations. There is even a complete self-paced course library you can access. Check the link in the show notes to learn more about this community and how to become a member. Blessed be. So what would be? Uh. This is like the biggest question ever, but to leave our audience with a sort of next step for themselves. Like, what would you say if they're if they're really activated by this? Like they're really feeling inspired to learn more about Mesoamerican practice. And you can plug yourself here too, if you want, uh, and your own work and also like, just, yeah, like, oh, the Mayans are real. They're out there. How can I dive deeper into this? How can I learn more? Yeah. Like, where do they go? What should they try? I will make two immediate suggestions that, um, happen even before I plug myself. I think everybody again, we live in the age of information, and you should do the free information first before you go to paid information. So find the Popol Vuh. That's the Maya creation story of the K'iche Maya people. It's not the creation story for every Maya people. I just want to say that a lot of people will just kind of say, the Popol Vuh is the Mayan Bible. And like, that's not exactly true either. But it is the most kind of, uh, intact of all of the creation stories. And it's the most it's the one that can be easily digestible. And it has a lot of, uh, great endnotes. Like if you get the Dennis Tedlock edition and what this is going to do is it's going to take you through the Maya creation story from the beginning, when there was nothing but void to when the the creative forces created the material universe, the dawn of the first, uh, humans, the taming of like what I like to call the Mayan chaoskampf similar to like, um, uh, you know, the Greek gods versus Typhon or Tiamat versus Marduk and the, uh, and the gods of Sumeria. Um, you find this tale, Tail, um, pretty ubiquitous across human culture. But the Mayan one is very, very interesting. Has some, uh, it's just like a different kind of movie. It's very fun to read. And there's. But throughout the Popol Vuh, there's, like, actual magic. And then there's, like, the hero twins conquering the underworld. And these are the fundamentals that if you don't, you should read it and start kind of intuitively connecting to the text, because it is a holy text and there's actual magic in there too. You don't have to perform it. You might not know how to perform it when you're reading it, and that's okay. Like there's people that read, there's billions of people that read the Bible, and there's actual magic spells in the Bible, and they don't know. They don't, you know, the whole book. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, um, uh, but you should start reading the Popol Vuh. Start, like, tuning into it. And that's, uh, you can buy the Popol Vuh. You can find it online, too. I'm pretty sure. Um, but it's a very good physical copy to have to. It's a nice, charming book. I say start with that second Study actual Mesoamerican history. There's enough videos on YouTube can just start looking up ancient Americas or History of the Maya and stuff. Learn the actual history and the actual historical timeline of the Maya. Because to get into actual advanced magic, knowing the history, especially for like ancestral types of magic, that knowing the history, especially of the classic period is going to be like, you gotta have it like for like because ancestral magic, for example, people think it's just grandma, you're making offerings to grandma, but there's a ton, there's tons of like, um, intermediate or intermediary spirits that are very powerful that you can get in contact with, like a big, uh, one that's very popular in occult spaces is Saint Cyprian. That's an intermediary spirit. Well, the Maya had every city state had a, uh, like a magical ruler. And all of these were commanding tens of thousands of people that were seen as essentially like the magical quarterback of the nation state. You're not going to really have a right to contact spirits like that. That can really help you out. One of them has saved me three times from traffic tickets, by the way. Um. Practical magic. But you have no rights to really call upon these people if you don't know their basic history. Right. And these are, like, very, very meaningful spirits. So actually get to know Mayan history. That will level up your magic. Let me say this. There is like so we know that there is like, you know, you perform magic, you build, you make a spell with the right correspondences and whatnot, right? Um, that's like you actually performing the techniques of magic. But like the theurgy of magic, like the mysticism of magic. And this includes history. People don't think it does, but yes, it can open gateways to mysticism. That's like your magical athleticism. And if I have an athlete that has a larger capacity for athleticism, they're going to be better at whatever technique I tell them to do. Like, if I had to pick a somebody who practiced martial arts for a couple of years but is coming off the couch versus like, um, a track runner, and I have to teach him a left high kick. I'm probably I'm more than likely depending on, like, how good that martial artist was. But I would say rule of thumb is I'm going to pick the better athlete because they just have a higher ceiling for capacity. So like the more you study the history, you're actually have a higher capacity for magic. Yeah, they have a lot more athleticism to work with. So studying the history is going to make you better at magic. Not immediately, but like is eating a handful of spinach right now. Are you going to get six pack abs in six hours. No. Like it just it adds up. It adds to that magical health and athleticism. So study the history. Read the Popol Vuh. Those are the first steps. Do that. Go on YouTube. Learn some Mayan history. That's the first steps. And if you want more, you can subscribe to my Substack at Solomon Comm. Or it's called the Mayan Mystery Codex on Substack. There I give um, biweekly, uh, trecena Mayan astrology reports that have to do with like societal trends and societal predictions. And so far I've been on a roll. I predicted the, uh, the nuclear stuff with Iran and the Elon and Trump split, uh, in two separate reports. And, uh, they have to do with the bi weekly kind of lunations. So they when you think lunatics, uh, lunacy for full moons and stuff like that, all societal stuff has to do with the moon. So, um, that's what this is based off of. Yeah. There. It's such a good Substack people like, so highly recommend. I actually got on Substack just for Solomon Substack. I'm aiming to, like, make it the premier occult Substack out there. Like, if there's any subset that's worth people's time, I this will be it. Yeah. And then I am, uh, you can go to Mayan Mystery School.com. Uh, the Mayan Mystery school on opening up will be an academy specifically centered around Mayan magic. But it's not going to be only Mayan magic. It approaches Mayan and Mesoamerican magic in a global context because, look, it's twenty twenty five. I'm half and half. Like, clearly, even Mayan history has to do with globalism. So we have to relate it to, uh, the global landscape. But also we are at a crossroads, like part of the Mayan prophecies for twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six are that we that humanity will be at a spiritual crossroads. And if you start looking at what's happening in the Middle East, I think enough people are going to start raising the question. It's like, do we really want to nuke the planets to fulfill this old Hatfields and McCoys tribalism, right. That these nations are fighting for us. We are coming to a crossroads where we are going to need essentially new religions, a new spiritual paths. And I know, like people in the occult and craft space, they hate that word religion. But at some point you would have called even pagan, uh, nation states some kind of religion or, you know, so religion shouldn't be a dirty word. Um, but we are going to need alternative spiritual paths that are well informed, not just by ancient stuff, but what we know now, like there's no reason to do. There's no reason to do human sacrifice. Right, right. So, uh, but we can learn something from it. Like, why? And how did they do it? Because learning why and how, that's another misconception. People just think that they were doing it just to get favor from the gods. God's. First of all, that wasn't the case necessarily. There was a there were some reasonings behind it. And then there was also like, uh, quickly it was the primal world where mortality was very, very common. And if you were on your way out because of a dire infection or, uh, like a collapsed lung, you the methodology was probably might as well sacrifice myself for the community to to like the sun god or the rain god, um, instead of eating up resources from the community. So like, again, primal society doesn't, doesn't have the luxury for our modern ethics. Um, so the my mystery school will be dedicated to, um, exploring intermediate and advanced occultism, manifestation craft, all of that. Uh, I have some people that I want to bring in that are experts in legitimate Jewish Kabbalistic practices, legitimate grimoire magic, legitimate ATR practices. Um. Just various. I want to bring a global kind of understanding to what magic is and and help elevate Mesoamerican practice because people think Mesoamerican magic, whether it, you know, and then they want to throw in South American stuff and say it's all the same thing. That's very bad generalization of, of races. But, um, it's oftentimes glossed over with this very like flower child shamanic veneer. And shamanism is a modality of Mesoamerican magic, but is not the only modality. There's many different kinds of modalities that you could chop up. Ancestral time we've been over, but there's geospatial, there's, uh, narrative, there is linguistic. Um, essentially the linguistics is like the precursor to sigil magic, essentially. And people don't think about this because they've been fed propaganda from the nineteen sixties and 70s that were made by essentially Hollywood actors and actresses culturally appropriating native and eastern peoples and kind of mixing it all together. So, um, the magic of Mesoamerica is as in-depth as the Pythagorean mysteries or, uh, like the I like to say like the, uh, Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa. They have much more in common with that than they do, you know, chugging mushrooms in the woods. So, yeah, that's a part of my goal, is to show the depths of the paradigm and show that it is really up there with any of the most advanced magical systems that people may be acquainted with. As of right now, yeah. I'm really grateful you're out here doing that work. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Like a few times in this interview, you said, like, somebody needs to. Somebody needs to. It's you, it's you, it's you. You're doing it. And I'm really glad it's you. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, seekers of the sacred wild. If you love what I explore how to connect to sacred places, land, spirits and ways to practice Earth based magic. Then you will love my book, Sacred Wild. An invitation to connect with spirits of the land. This book is the heart of everything I share in my work, guiding you to build real, rooted relationships with the land where you live. Pre-orders are everything. They help books become best sellers and reach more magical folks like you. Go to pre-order and you will get special bonus content for pre-ordering as well. That is Thank you for walking this sacred path with me. So tell us where. Tell our listeners where they can follow you and find all of your all of your work. So I mentioned Substack and my school.com, but you can also find me at all on Instagram, and you can follow me at Solomon Pickle on YouTube. Awesome, awesome. Thank you for being on. Yeah. Thank you. I'll mention I'll mention two more. You can cut these two out if like there's really not room. Oh, Solomon. I'm Solomon. Solomon pickle on Facebook I know. I'm like I'm a boomer. So I'm Solomon Pickle on Facebook and then I'm Solomon Pickle thirteen on TikTok. Okay, awesome. So excited for people to find your work. Instagram YouTube. Substack. I'm more interested in growing. Yeah. All right. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. This was awesome. Yeah. And we'll see you soon. And Solomon's also on my podcast, seeking Noumena the Sacred Places podcast. Um, I don't remember when that episode's going to come out, but I think it'll be out in two weeks from this episode releasing. So yeah, just check that out. Seeking Noumena is on YouTube as well as all the places so you can find it there and learn more. Because yeah, we could keep talking all day. We could. We could do a whole Solomon summit. Good. Maybe we'll maybe we'll do a summit together someday, I think. Yeah, yeah. Mary meets Mary part and merry meet again. Thank you for joining us on the Magic Kitchen Podcast. Please visit my website. Leandra Witchwood dot com for news, information and more episodes. I'm Elyse Wells and I can be found at seeking Numina on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook and seeking numinous comm that's seeking numina.