The Mummy: Greed & Energetic Zombies

Topics - Divine Trines, Twin Flames, The Frequency of Greed (ft. The Epstein Files), Balancing Faith & Intellect

Rabbit Hole: A weaving of many threads regarding burial vs. cremation, beliefs of what happens to the soul after death, and the horrifying possibility of zombies already existing (just not in the way we think)

***Trigger Warnings: 

mummification, body horror, bugs eating flesh, sacrificial rituals, mummies as zombies, supernatural terror, parasitic control, cordyceps, cannibalism 

**Spoilers for the movies: Weapons and Last Christmas

*I 100% own my novice capabilities regarding microphone work, sound mixing, and editing. I apologize if the imperfections take away from your experience and will always be working to do better.

Keep watching, reading, listening, and weaving - the answers are waiting for you!

With unending love,

Katie

Medium: medium.com/@genofvenus

Reach out with requests and/or stories: sharethelovewithgen22@gmail.com

Transcript

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Howdyo, Ranger Joes, and welcome to Popcorn for the Soul, a podcast where I decode spirituality and universal guidance in our favorite pop culture. My name is Katie, student of life, lover of stories, and cosmic weaver pulling at the threads that connect it all. Top of the episode disclaimer: I am not a critic. I am not here to give you my ratings or tell you whether or not a piece of work is worth your time. I do not believe in other people telling you how to feel about a piece of art. I also am not claiming that the creators of any of these stories are at all conscious or not of the connections that I will be pointing out. And most importantly, I am not here to tell you that your interpretation or enjoyment of your favorite stories is in any way incorrect. I am simply hoping to offer you a deeper perspective based on my own knowledge and experience. The things I discuss are real concepts that I have learned about through my own study and research, all available across multiple sources and platforms for you to learn more about yourself. Except for the rabbit hole portion, that's where I get a little crazy, and I will preface this one by saying, yeah, it's a little extra crazy this time. If you haven't been with me from the start, all good and welcome. I do recommend at least listening to the intro episode to understand my framework a little better. And I didn't think that I would have to say it, but I also recommend, of course, watching the movie or show that I will be talking about because if you have no point of reference for what I am pointing out, then yeah, you're this is all gonna go way over your head. So please watch the movie. And last but not least, thank you so much for being here. I truly hope that I can offer you some insight into life's mysteries. Even the tiniest spark of illumination is enough for me, because that's where it starts after all. Okay, trigger warnings. We are talking about mummification, body horror, bugs eating flesh, sacrificial rituals, mummies as zombies, supernatural terror, parasitic control, cordyceps, and cannibalism. For our spoiler-free general themes, the spectrum of knowledge concerning basis and intellect and logic, two belief in the supernatural and the importance of finding a good balance, the importance of a soul tribe and individual skills combining to successfully complete a mission, the power of the divine feminine overcoming misogyny to prove oneself as the key to success, greed as the frequency of demise, how a good heart and intentions ultimately overcome 3D weaknesses to align with abundance frequency, secret societies and the mission to protect hidden truths, love as the strongest guiding force even across reincarnation and different lifetimes, and of course, ancient Egyptian lore. For our spiritual journey overview, this movie kicks off in my favorite way, a lore drop. Add to that the fact that it's ancient Egypt, and we're off to a strong start regarding my personal tastes. To understand what's about to go down now, we gotta know what went down then. Kind of like any spiritual journey. To learn what you're here to do, you have to see how the past has set you up in the present. Your own personal lore drop to set the scene of your own story, if you will. To the surprise of no one, all of the problems arise from men who want power above all else. Sure. There's a love story in there, and a woman who kills herself so that she can no longer be used and abused is the property of one of those men of power. Fair enough, as far as the times go. But if love was Imotep's only motivation, I really feel like there were solutions much more feasible and less gruesomely deadly for multiple people. But I am no expert of ancient Egyptian society and their politics, and it's unfortunately true that fear still keeps people in toxic relationships even in our time, so I digress. Next we meet Rick O'Connell, played by the forever wonderful Brendan Fraser. When I was a kid and only knew about this movie by title and background cable viewing, I thought he was very much your bumbling accidental hero archetype, but he's actually a badass. Did you ever notice his read of the candle on the boat? Learning that immediately changed what I originally believed the tone of this movie to be. Foreshadowing his importance, he's backed into a no-way out situation and ready to accept his death, until not only divine timing, but literal supernatural forces intervene and save his life, which happens a lot. Then we're introduced to our inspiring, beautiful, courageous, intelligent heroine Evelyn, played by, I'm not actively a lesbian, but she's certainly got me thinking about it, Rachel Weiss. She's in a job where her skills are being underutilized and she is entirely unappreciated. Yes, she certainly makes a big oopsie, but what's his face is excessively demeaning. And anyway, who decided the domino setup was a good idea? Talk about tempting fate. It's at this sense of rock bottom that Evie's brother Jonathan shows up with the key to everybody's point of turnaround. Pun, very much intended. Jonathan is useless as far as providing any knowledge regarding its significance, but this moment establishes his ironic ability to get his hands on exactly what the team needs throughout the movie: the frequency of nonchalance, or surrender flow. From this jumping off point, paths fueled by a whole spectrum of motivations converge, spanning from greed to a debt of gratitude, to the pursuit of experience and continuous search for knowledge. We journey along and witness the consequences of these differing motivations and belief systems with horrifying deaths bestowed upon those in the game for material wealth and the promise of a new enriched life for those just enjoying the ride. Well, when the ride isn't absolutely terrifying. And most importantly, we see how our actions and choices in no way ever affect only ourselves and what it means to take on the responsibility of cleaning up our own messes so as to contribute to the betterment of the world in the ways we are uniquely qualified. How if we work to forgive our shortcomings, act from a place of respect, and care about other human beings, we gain more than what we ask for, especially in the form of the greatest wealth of all, love. Okay, so for our divine trines, this movie is a great chance for me to show you how simple it is to identify these archetypes in your favorite stories. Here's where I usually offer the keywords of each energy as a quick reminder to preface the breakdown. But without the reminder, I'm going to do simply this. Think of these three characters: Rick, Evelyn, Jonathan. Now, hear these words and based on your instinctual association, assign them yourself. Mother, child, masculine. I'm positive you nailed it, because yep, it's as simple as that. The breakdown just takes the analysis a little further. Twin Flames. So for our twin flame reminder, this is the idea of a single soul separated into two bodies destined to find each other across lifetimes by aligning with the power of unconditional and divine love. Individual characteristics mirror each other's strengths and weaknesses, life milestones and interests parallel, three-dimensional circumstances suggest an unlikely pairing, and union is meant to raise the vibration of the collective through their combined third energy of divine mission in the form of children or creative endeavors, and by providing an example of how true love can be expressed in many different forms. Meeting your twin catalyzes self-growth through understanding that true union involves balancing all energies within ourselves, awakening that which is already in us but what we thought to be missing. I obviously assigned the twin flame dynamic to Rick and Evelyn. Holy whew! My partner had said that when he watched The Mummy Returns, the sequel, as a child or teen, Evelyn triggered in him a sexual awakening. Well damn, the same thing happened for me as a fully grown adult in this movie. Her separately, Rick separately, and then their relationship to each other. And it's not even overtly sexual. It's just them as the beautiful humans they are, their immersion as actors fueling the chemistry between their characters, and the totally natural, believable respect and admiration-led progression of their love. The understanding with twin flames when they first meet is that the connection is overwhelming and confusing, and that the divine feminine is usually the one to wake up to it first and naturally takes on the role of the chaser. The divine masculine is often designated as the runner. Those terms carry so much more weight and nuance than anyone who hasn't studied up on this journey can fathom. So I'm going to ask you not to make any assumptions here and just work within the dynamic by identifying that Evelyn masks her desire with repulsion, but ultimately can't get Rick's passionate on death's doorstep kiss out of her head. And Rick, well, he's simply oblivious. But he's extremely grateful that she saved his life and wants to repay the debt. Then, if we consider the divine mission, Evelyn is the one who wants to stay and face the problem head on, whereas Rick wants to run away from it. When it becomes clear that they have no choice, Evelyn offers herself up to keep the peace, and Rick then has to go after her to save her life. And it's not just about the debt anymore. He's absolutely in love. It's said that the runner-chaser dynamic is constantly shifting based on where each individual is at on their own side of the journey until they have realized the full potential within themselves. It all comes together when union becomes not about completing each other, but about what they can contribute to the world as a unit. The romance is a bonus. In regard to the mirroring and shared interests, they each make up for what the other lacks as far as the skills needed to accomplish their shared mission. Rick has the field experience that Evelyn has been denied, and Evelyn has the knowledge and passion that presents Rick with the chance to put his street smarts and physical prowess to use in a situation much more fruitful and useful than treasure hunting under the leadership of greedy people. Rick also offers Evelyn a safe space and actually encourages her to declare her truth and prove her worth, showing her that not all men are the tactless, perverted, entitled, superior, andor immature type that she is accustomed to. What I like to call the game changer. There are obviously multiple scenes that put his admiration on full display, but my favorite consistent clue is that he always calls her by her full womanly name of Evelyn over the more girlish nickname Evie. Or, you know, just straight up insults. It's real, it's beautiful, it's earned. So more than just that activation of the sacral chakra, we're working with activation of the heart chakra. Not just a sexual awakening, but one of unconditional love as well. And that's the whole point of the twin flame journey. Next topic: the frequency of greed. Simply put, everyone following a path motivated by greed dies. Gruesomely. Except for Jonathan, but we'll talk about that. While greed is the common thread between the victims, they all boast other deplorable tenets across the spectrum of deplorable tenets, and to believe in karma is to know that they'll get what's coming to them. As Evie tells Benny, who is just the worst of the bunch, quote, nasty little fellows such as yourself always get their come up bits, unquote. Personally, I believe this wholeheartedly. That's how I hold out hope for our world. It may take time, but if you're paying attention to the little things, you can see it happening day by day, bit by bit. As Jesus says in Matthew 10 26, the New Living Translation, but don't be afraid of those who threaten you, for the time is coming when everything that is covered will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all. Or in Luke chapter 12, verse 3, New Living Translation, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear. Or the multiple other versions of this throughout the Bible that reference the idea that God sees what's really in your heart and soul, and those filled with hate and greed will be exposed. The easy example of this right now in the real world is these damn Epstein files. They've been hidden for a long time. But as more people wake up to the absolutely disgusting reality of the situation, the more the truth is coming out. Those whose lives will be ruined are doing whatever they can to keep it in the dark, literally by redacting most of the information by way of those insulting black lines. But those band-aids will be ripped off and the ship will sink. How many more metaphors can we fit in here? The more they try to manipulate what we know, the more truth we will demand, and as is the way of things, the light will illuminate all. Back to our movie. The warden imprisons and watches people die for a living. He attempts to bargain with Evelyn by touching her without permission and requesting sex. Well, he now gets to watch his own death at the hands, or teeny little pincers, of a scarab crawling under his skin and eating his flesh and brains, imprisoned in his own demise until he has no choice but to instinctually end it quickly himself. The Egyptologist knows enough to understand that the statue they're trying to open is booby-trapped and offers up slaves as the guinea pigs. He and the Americans watch, horrified, as these just as human as them people melt right in front of their eyes. But is that enough to scare them off? Of course not. They still go back the next day and literally read the consequences of their potential actions out loud before deciding to venture forth anyway. They open the box and unknowingly receive the curse. Believing there's no actual treasure, one of them kicks it out of frustration, which, as provided by this cursed frequency, opens the hidden compartment containing objects that they see as money bags. But surprise, they're actually beacons that lead death straight to them. They then have the pleasure of living their final hours, knowing exactly what's coming for them. Then there's Benny, spineless, brainless, traitorous Benny, always hopping back and forth, aligning his fickle loyalty to whoever or whatever benefits him the most. He certainly finds the treasure, but he dies with it, suffering the same fate as the evil being he ultimately chose to serve, the punishment reserved for the worst of the worst. Alone, entombed in the dark, and eaten alive. So let's see what we're working with here. Men who represent those with no regard for human life, a sense of entitlement towards women and their bodies, an obsession with gunpowder, and a belief that consequences don't apply to them. Oh, and there's also an attempt to keep a black book of world-shattering information close to the chest so that someone else won't read it and unleash hell. Am I sensing some parallels here? We'll leave the metaphorical to real-world results to the imagination for now. Life, and therefore karma, don't happen as fast as in the movies, but they're happening on a worldwide scale, on a national scale, and in your own life. The secret is to not want it so badly, because that means you're hoping for someone else's demise, and that is its own form of greed. When you can let the desire for revenge and vindication go and worry entirely about bettering yourself and living from a place of forgiveness and love, that's when you'll start to see it. Not because you earned it, but because they did. And just to quickly touch on Jonathan here, yes, it appears that his motivation is greed, but if you're really looking at his choices and the things he says, I don't think it's because he wants power. My theory is that he, like many of us, has tried to fit into a mold deemed worthy by society, only to see no success. Our first interaction with him is Evelyn asking, Have you no respect for the dead? He responds, Of course I do, but sometimes I'd rather like to join them. Did Jonathan just tell us he wishes that he was dead? That certainly coincides with his alcoholism. When he presents the key to Evie, we see the desperation and hopes that he finally found something of importance. It seems like he was in a line of work that simply didn't align with his natural abilities, and it proved entirely fruitless for however many years up until he was fired. I don't think he's greedy in that he wants power. I think he just wants to feel useful and like he contributes. Don't we all? But his superpower is nonchalance, or what we in the spiritual community call surrender. What most people call going with the flow. By keeping calm and bringing the goofy, lighthearted energy to the group, things just fall into their collective lap, like how his careless golfing in an ancient tomb causes the sarcophagus to fall. And because no one takes him seriously, he's able to go unnoticed when retrieving necessary items. The ability to surrender to life in this way is one of the ultimate goals of spirituality. Once you see how it works for yourself, you understand why it can be called a superpower. Today's society and belief in hustle culture leave no room to appreciate it. So anyone who lives there naturally is seen as lazy, foolish, selfish, worthless, etc. But as anyone who has learned the art knows, and as evidenced by Jonathan, it's actually a big part of the key to success, contentment, and fulfillment. And to wrap up my defense of this man as opposed to the others, though I am in no way promoting alcoholism, I'll leave you with this excerpt from Paolo Coelho's Noctube. And just for the record, I looked up how to actually pronounce his name, and the first three examples that I got were all different, so I just went with what was easiest and made most sense to me. Quote: A master had hundreds of disciples. They all prayed at the right time, except one who was always drunk. On the day of his death, the master summoned the drunk and revealed to him all the hidden secrets. The other disciples were furious. That's disgraceful, they cried. We have sacrificed ourselves for a master who is incapable of seeing our qualities. The master said, I needed to pass those secrets on to a man I knew well. Those who appear to be virtuous are usually concealing vanity, pride, and intolerance. That is why I chose the one disciple whose defect was plain to see. Drunkenness. Alright, next topic: balancing faith and intellect. Balance. Such a significant word. A gigantic zip file of guidance to peace and fulfillment. When it comes to food and libations, we say everything in moderation. Strong relationships are a healthy give and take. We're shedding more light on the importance of the work-life balance. It is an ideal big enough to have its own major arcana tarot card, Temperance, which funnily enough is also the name of my hometown. And tarot was invented way back in the 1400s. Your balance may not look like somebody else's. We're all unique in a hundred different ways. What works for you probably won't work for them. That's why advice can only go so far. This also means that there are a hundred different facets of our lives that need to be individually balanced so as to find our overall and very personal equilibrium, stability, and sure footing on the path of life. Is it the meaning of life? Who's to say? But it certainly gives purpose to the full experience of it. One of the most important of these facets is the balance between faith and intellect, inner knowing and knowledge, intuition and intelligence, heart and head, belief and brains. This movie teaches us the importance of finding that middle road by showing us the consequences of leaning too far into your reliance on one over the other. Some people might think you have to choose between the two, but I'll counter with this quote from Critical Role Campaign 4. Octus says something about being too much of an intellectual to be able to grasp the idea of faith. And Dr. Talter of the Totality, whose work is tackling issues of faith academically, responds with, quote, I, in my experience, have not found it to be the case that the presence or absence of faith is a predictor for the presence or absence of intellect, unquote. I fully agree with that. Easiest to pinpoint, the intellect end of the spectrum, Evelyn. She is absolutely the smartest person in this ensemble of adventurers. Essentially a walking library that ultimately saves the world. But is she not also the one who endangered it in the first place? She doesn't believe at all in the ghost stories or hokum as she refers to it. She even states that if she can see it and touch it, then it's real. Well, Evie holds no space for the spiritual power of those things that she is seeing and touching and kicks off the apocalypse. Oops. The Egyptologist seems to have a pretty good balance between the two, but since his scale of wealth is leaning so profoundly toward that of money and power, it's basically entirely negated. The Americans appear to have no knowledge of the culture whatsoever, and any faith that they do have is more along the lines of superstition to which they pay no actual heed. Bye. Jonathan is knowledgeable enough, but like his sister, he doesn't seem to put too much stock in anything beyond his own material desires. And Rick has knowledge specific to the treasure, but he's much more concerned with the evil he felt the first time he'd visited Haminopter. He references a couple tribes where he learned about the curse. His response to Evelyn's belief system is, I believe in being prepared. He reacts and readies himself whenever there is a mention of the afterlife or undead or any weird occurrence that everyone else shrugs off as coincidence. But he comes at everything with a gun. We know how well that works out for him. Then to the other end of the spectrum, pure intuition, no applicable intelligence, Benny. He has the instincts to run away when he knows crap's about to hit the fan, and he knows to be cautious and scared of the curse and all of the supernatural stuff. But he has no intellect to help him make the right choices or contribute to solving the problem at hand. We see this plain as day when Imhotep is cornering him. Benny has a multitude of necklaces representing different cultures and religions and knows how to speak the languages, but doesn't know which one will work to communicate with an Egyptian. And it almost costs him his life. Seems like that might be why he changes loyalty so quickly. He can't figure anything out for himself, so he's constantly searching for someone to hand him the answers and tell him what to do. A strong sense of self-preservation, but no smarts. I think I may have just defined for myself the traits of an enabler. Anyway, I love all of this for explaining further the purpose of divine trines as a storytelling tool. Rick, Evelyn, and Jonathan are separate representations of the differing perspectives and traits that combine to reach the balance needed to accomplish their mission. The different skills, knowledge, and belief systems that we cultivate within ourselves to find balance and maintain peace while reaching our highest potential. Okay, this is not a very dense episode, so we have already arrived at the rabbit hole. Here's where I ask you to trade your PC thinking caps for your mad hats and follow me down. Remember in the trigger warnings I talked about body horror and zombies? This is where that comes in. Seriously, this is going to get a little disturbing and yucky. You've been warned. We're gonna bullet point some threads here. I'm thinking this rabbit hole also won't be particularly long. When we die, we have the option of being buried or cremated. Being raised Catholic, I was led to believe cremation was not in the cards for me. Do I remember exactly why? Of course not. But I think it was some mumbo jumbo about the body being sacred and needing to be whole if you wanted to cross over into heaven successfully, and what I was told was what I believed. I'll also point out that this was reason to be anti-organ donation. Really good lesson for a child about Jesus' teachings regarding unconditional love and giving to others in need. Different cultures have their different beliefs. Obviously, we know that in ancient Egypt they mummified people, most often the wealthy, elite, and revered, as they believed in resurrection, which did happen with Lazarus and Jesus apparently, but Jesus only stuck around for a little while after his own resurrection. I'm still not grasping the point of this myself, but I'm sure I'll get there one day. Those who believe in reincarnation, on the other hand, understand that souls leave their physical bodies at death and enter into a new body to experience life from a new perspective, collecting information and wisdom to contribute back to the single source of consciousness. In almost every bit of Viking lore I've ever seen, or really, you know, any medieval timepiece, they burn their dead. In the show Supernatural, whenever a hunter dies, the other hunters burn them on a pyre so that they cannot be possessed and use as a vessel, or meat suit, as they often like to call it, for demons and angels. In the Lost City of Zed, when the explorers encounter an indigenous tribe, they see that a dead human being is tied up and being roasted over a fire, the way most of us would envision a pig. The group freaks out because they have stumbled upon cannibals, but Percy explains what it actually means to them as more than just a food source. He says, the chief explained it's a dead member of their tribe. His spirit will enter them if they eat it. In our current movie of reference, Imotep collects Anaxunamun's five vital organs into separate jars, as they will be necessary for bringing back her soul from the underworld to complete her resurrection. The Last of Us is a story about a zombie takeover by cordyceps, a real parasitic fungus that infects its host nervous system, taking over its body, bending it to its will, and preventing decomposition. The goal is to replace the organism's tissues with its own mycelial network, ultimately sprouting a mushroom from the brain and head that will release its spores and continue the cycle. In our current reality, this only works on insects and not humans because our body temperature is too high for the fungi to survive. The Last of Us goes down its own rabbit hole of global warming, forcing the fungi to adapt to the higher temperatures and therefore become capable of infecting us humans. Yikes, yikes, yikes. In the movie Weapons, which will absolutely be getting its own episode, there is the underlying theme of parasitic infection. It's never overtly stated, but it's kind of the whole revelation of the story. Then, when you watch it again, if you didn't already notice it the first time around, you'll see that on the teacher Justine's board, their current lesson in school is on parasites. In the principal's home, there is a program on TV showing the time-lapse infection of an insect by one of these fungi. Gladys uses hair, blood, and energy to take control of the other humans. In the spiritual community, we identify certain people and their aura and or presence as that of energy vampires or energetic parasites, those at a lower vibration of any sort hate, fear, despair, manipulation, lies, narcissists, etc., who are drawn to and sap the higher vibrational energy of those who are living at a frequency of love, joy, peace, hope, and the like. In What We Do in the Shadows, a satirical show about modern-day vamps, one of the coven literally self-identifies as an energy vampire. He's your stereotypical nerdy white guy dressed in a polo and khakis who feeds off the energy of his victims by talking them into boredom and exhaustion. There is endless lore and speculation surrounding ghosts and spirits of the dead sticking around for any number of reasons. Some are benevolent, some malevolent. Some are thought to stay behind to provide guidance to their ancestral heirs, and some are thought to haunt and possess. Then there is the idea of tortured souls who are stuck here. Why? Well, there are a gabillion number of beliefs across all the different cultures and religions, but it's just one of those things that we may never know for sure because it can't be proven yet, anyway. Gotta lean towards the faith end of the spectrum with this one. And finally, when studying astral projection, one has to overcome the fear of what it feels like to consciously leave your body. You're taught to remember that you are safe because of a silver cord tethering your astral body to your physical one. So this portion I'm adding in after everything has already been written and recorded. An epiphany, or what some of us like to call download, brought to you by The Witching Hour. I remembered a 2004 TV movie called Searching for David's Heart, where Danielle Panabaker plays a girl who is searching for the transplant recipient of her brother's heart after he died in a car accident. If I can remember correctly, the search is very much led by intuition and divine timing. That had me thinking about all the sweet occurrences and videos of people listening to the heartbeat of recipients of their loved ones' hearts and the truly visceral reactions of those listeners and all of us watching. Then I recalled a friend telling me the plot of the movie Last Christmas with Amelia Clark and Henry Golding. Big spoilers here. Turns out that what you believe to be a rom-com type relationship is actually Amelia's character, quote, hallucinating, the person whose heart she received in a life-saving transplant. In Callie Hart's Faye and Alchemy book series, we learn that the main male character Fisher saved the life of one of his current soldiers after finding him almost dead on the road by offering up a part of his essence, life force, whatever you want to call it. And we learn that because of this choice, if Fisher were to die first, his soul will be stuck in the in-between until his friend dies because he has established a tether. To consider all of this now helps make sense of why some religious practices would be entirely against organ donation if the belief is that your soul can't fully cross over to the other side as it would be tied to another human being who is still living. But like the book suggests, maybe that's something you're willing to offer so that somebody else has another chance at life. Free will and sacrifice, you know. But paradoxically, it also gives more clout to the idea that maybe cremation is the way to go. To dust we shall return, right? Why prolong that process for years, especially if it's actually mucking up the evolution of our energetic grid, which will make more sense in a minute. Besides, I've spent my whole life wondering with every graveyard I pass what happens when we run out of room. And don't even get me started on how expensive tombstones and coffins are, the latter of which you're hopefully planning to never see again. So, what if, what if, what if zombies are already real, just not in the way we're picturing. Let us consider energetic zombies. And seriously, let me preface this by saying I'm not excited about it. To reference Chris Evans and his niece with a quote I use quite often, I don't like it. Say the soul somehow stays attached to the body, even in death. It slowly dissipates into the ether as the remaining body parts slowly decompose. If there's any way that this is true, sign me up for cremation right now. What if souls are sticking around because they're literally stuck? To think about these souls slowly oozing out in itself already sounds torturous. Then I think of mass graves in general, but specifically those related to the Holocaust, where those bodies and souls perished horrifically, spending their final days in persecution, fear, terror, torture, hunger, illness, pain, loss, grief, etc. If the spirits of all that torment still linger through their body tether, that's a lot of dark energy hanging out in our collective grid. I've talked in multiple episodes about the ramifications of World War II and the Holocaust still affecting us today. What if this is one of the most tangible ways? Now, add to this the idea of cordyceps or any of the innumerable parasitic fungi that exist. I know, I'm sorry. What if they're infecting the dead bodies? Obviously, temperature is no longer a problem in that case. Then it's like not only would the bodies be halted in their decomposition, making souls hang on even longer than they've already been sentenced to, but the organs and brain which carry the energetic signature of the previous inhabitant are being controlled by something nefarious while being eaten at the same time. As talked about in the opening scene of The Last of Us, many hallucinogens come from fungi. They have the ability to alter our minds. And certain fungi aren't in it for the kill, they're in it to control. Their ultimate goal is to, quote, spread the infection to every last human alive by any means necessary, unquote. So, like, again, I'm sorry, but what if the fungi are exacerbating the pain of the souls to feed directly into our collective consciousness and add to our daily suffering and lack of hope? Using the horrors, failures, mistakes, and pain of our past to keep us from believing in any sense of betterment for the world. It's well known that fungi and mushrooms are everywhere and spread across the earth in networks that span miles and miles. Do they actually want to take over? Or maybe they're just doing their thing with what's available to them and we're unknowingly suffering the consequences. And just to say, if this were the case, what would we do? Well, simple enough. It seems like we're able to ingest many of these fungi. Not only are we able to, but they appear to be extremely beneficial to our health. There are cultures who've already been using them for centuries, and actual studies are being done today that suggest, with cordyceps specifically, they may improve energy production for more efficient exercise, immune and organ support, libido, and anti-inflammatory functions. Maybe the answer is this. Eat up. I don't know. This one is crazy and horrifying. As with all of these rabbit holes, I'm not declaring that it is true. I'm just posing the question of what if it was. And I'll end it here with an interesting extra little tidbit. As a friend reminded me, in that wild and extremely effective opening scene from The Last of Us, the epidemiologist who so succinctly and potently sets the tone is played by none other than John Hannah. AKA, the same actor who plays our dear Jonathan in the mummy. Just something to think about. As always, keep watching, reading, listening, and weaving. The answers are waiting for you.