Descriptions:
Video Description
What are we really hunting for when we go looking for entertainment? Lyam Christopher opens with a telling memory: a big fantasy film full of noise and spectacle that left him cold, and the quiet use of that disappointment. Mere excitement, he says, is not the real prize. The works that last, the plays and songs and movies that live beyond their season, do more than tickle us. They change us.
The hidden engine of every story is conflict, and a story only compels us when its battle touches a battle we already know. He walks through the familiar kinds, person against person, against nature, against the system, against destiny, and then lands on the deeper ones: the self and its trauma. In Jaws, the shark is only the flashy surface; the truly frightening story belongs to Quint, a man running from an old wound. We watch because somewhere inside we, too, are trying to learn how to face what haunts us rather than feed it forever.
That is the bridge to magic. Outward ritual, like a movie’s excitement, is the bait; catharsis is the deeper purpose. Real entertainment, in his view, is quietly transformational work wearing the mask of pleasure. It lets us rehearse our own dark nights safely and walk out a little different than we walked in. If the ordinary film only makes us flinch, the meaningful one helps us feel, understand, and let go.
Full Video Transcript
All right, it’s Sunday night. Time for another video. A number of years ago, I saw a movie called Van Helsing. And it was starring Hugh Jackman and a couple of other greats. And I was really excited to go see it. But by now, it might be considered an old movie, which is kind of weird to me. It seems relatively recent to me. It’s Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman. And it was a movie where I was, I think I walked through it.
out before it ended. Yeah, that’s how bad I considered it to be. And I still considered
it to be probably one of the worst films in the fantasy genre that I’ve ever seen and
horror genre. But it helped me realize at the time what entertainment actually is. So
there’s lots of entertainment going on in that film apparently, but it really wasn’t
very entertaining. So I realized that entertainment wasn’t really entertainment. Now what do I mean
by that? When we teach people advanced types of reading, we train them to identify the purpose
of what it is they’re reading. And normally when somebody is learning to read at a high level,
they should be able to identify whether what they’re reading is designed to merely inform
to persuade or to entertain as though those are the only purposes you might have for writing
something and of course as I was teaching people how to identify these things I was noticing that
when something was to entertain that usually just meant like telling a joke saying something
funny or saying something scary. So what I noticed is that real entertainment goes beyond
just titillating the audience. So there are other types of purpose for writing. And I think the real
purpose of entertainment is to transform the audience. What do we really want to experience
when we go see a movie or listen to our favorite group? Do we just want to be titillated?
excited, stimulated? Do we want that nice, luxurious feeling of listening to piano music?
I don’t think that’s what we really want. That’s what we think we want. And the works of art and
the works of drama and the works of music that survive the test of time do more than that. They
do more than just titillate. So there are a lot of things like, you know, the whole Twilight saga
of movies which has now faded into oblivion because it was mainly just a sort of you know
teenage fantasy titillating to have a sort of a bad boy boyfriend who’s a vampire there’s a little
bit more to the Twilight series than that I’m not being fair but at the same time there’s not really
much value to it or much literary value as we would say okay so what is it about entertainment
what’s really going on with entertainment okay um so we think we’re going to the movies to be
entertained when what we really want is to be transformed i think in spite of ourselves we
want to be transformed so we want the the the director and the writer and the actor to we want
all these people to work their magic on us so that we are changed in spite of what we expect
out of the film. We expect to be titillated and excited and have a good time. And in the process
of all that, they manage to do something else. Not only do they manage to titillate us, excite us,
but they also manage to do something else. And that’s the real value we get out of entertainment.
It’s very much the same with magic. There are surface elements that are exciting, dramatic,
tantric titillating right even sort of vulgar as in tantric sex yeah and yet there’s another
thing going on underneath that involves some kind of transformation that we’re not entirely aware of
so we engage in the outer appearance of something so that we get the inner benefit
the same thing goes for entertainment so what i’m proposing is that entertainment the way we
think of it doesn’t really exist. It’s all just transformational magic, really. And anybody who
puts out a movie like Van Helsing, who just, the movie is just designed to titillate the audience
with, you know, novel special effects and super exciting life and death action scenes.
What you can find is that people aren’t really that interested and the movie flopped. Yeah,
As fun as it is to watch maybe one little scene, what you find is as you’re watching it,
you don’t really care whether any of the characters lives or dies
because they haven’t really resonated with something that you need.
So there’s nothing about their plight or their story that resonates with you.
So you’re just kind of like, it just doesn’t catch your attention.
So if the monster pulls them over the cliff and they die, it’s like, oh, okay.
it’s not real anyway right but somehow if they if they if their story resonates with something that
you’re struggling with or that you need on some level suddenly you’re drawn in and it’s real
there’s a there’s a level of reality to it suddenly you’re in they got you now and maybe
the the then the drama can change you help you transform okay what um the ancient greeks called
catharsis. Somehow these dramas that you that pull you in this way actually teach you a lesson
or purify you of karma. Yeah there’s something really important about this because I know that
many people who contact me on this channel they tell me about a life that is really full of a lot
of strife and hard knocks and you know want to turn to magic so they can make that go away. Okay
well magic can do that but um not in the way you think okay and so we’re going to get to that
and it has to do with um the deeper level transformation that happens with magic we
want to get past the sort of titillating level of it to the transformational level okay and if you
can do that then yes you can keep your life from being so harsh because you can then basically use
magic to experience catharsis purify yourself of that karma that keeps beating you over the head
okay this is real magic okay that’s basically what real magic is and touching upon this going
into this saying that entertainment really isn’t entertainment okay i found it’s an extremely deep
topic it’s it’s very vast there’s many things you can talk about so all i’m going to talk about
tonight is um one aspect of the entertainment or the the movies let’s say we’re going to talk
about movies or books maybe. Just one aspect of the drama and that is the conflict. This is
probably the most important part when it comes to magic. Last week I released a video about
affrontedness. By the way, affrontedness really is a word according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Affrontedness is what we experience when reality is sort of testing us. It’s prodding us and
provoking us, triggering us. Affrontedness is what we experience. And affrontedness or conflict
is pretty much the most important part of a drama. And there are certain types of conflict
that if a drama doesn’t contain those types of conflict, we’re not really drawn in.
Because there’s certain types of conflict that we have, we are having right now, all of us pretty
much that are important to us. And we would like help resolving that. And if there’s a way to do
that, that’s sort of fun and titillating. Good, let’s do it. Let’s go. All right. And if I’m only
being stimulated with exciting scenarios, and there’s no lesson in how to for I can overcome
whatever, you know, conflicts I have, suddenly, I’ll lose interest. Yeah, I might be momentarily
interested. Oh, I’ve never seen that before. And then whatever, like, but you don’t really care
about a drama unless it echoes something that you are going through on some level. Okay, so when we
talk about conflict in movies and literature, the most obvious conflict usually is person versus
person, okay? Now, person versus person conflict, that is usually the distractor because when there
are people fighting in a movie or in a book, okay, when the characters are fighting, that is
not the real conflict, okay? It’s usually the titillating conflict that’s going on, okay?
Not always true, okay? There are some types of person versus person conflict that do sort of
rope us in, but very often the real conflict is something else. It’s not really, or the more
important conflict is not the person versus person conflict, okay? And then there’s person versus
nature like in survival dramas okay survival dramas are really not usually not very deep
okay uh they’re usually for like kids stories oh what’s it like to be on the island of dr moreau
and with all these crazy crazy creatures running around or what’s it like to be transported back
through time with all the dinosaurs around us chasing after us right uh and you’ll find that
you know person versus nature like in um a jurassic park the the most interesting conflict
is not the people on the island versus the dinosaurs that’s just the most exciting conflict
the more the more uh deeply resonating conflict is something else okay and if that deeper conflict
wasn’t there the movie would fall apart we would we would lose interest really fast you know we’d
watch a couple of scenes cool special effects yeah oh blood and gore oh yeah yeah okay then
we’re done but it’s like whatever so there’s something more interesting going on than just
the dinosaurs eating people person versus the system now it’s getting deeper right uh this is
a or person versus society okay uh conformity being the the theme that maybe that’s that’s
going on there uh rebellion um culture versus culture another common thing not terribly
interesting not that deep yet okay um culture versus culture usually has another type of
conflict that’s a little more interesting going on than just the culture versus the culture
okay and there’s also with culture versus culture a lot of times one of the cultures is being
oppressed and the other is the you know overlord who’s oppressing them um and very often when we
deal with culture versus culture conflicts like that it gets very tired really fast because
most of the um the the response that is expected out of the reader is that
we should feel for the victims but then unfortunately the sense of justice that
comes out of that really comes from a knee-jerk reaction from being victimized. And the way a
victim responds to being hurt is not necessarily the best way to respond to a social issue,
if that makes any sense. If I’m lashing out because I’m hurt, that doesn’t mean that my
lashing out response is really going to change anything or affect any deep transformation.
this is the problem with a lot of the woke movement right now that um or feminism for that
regard um a lot of feminism and wokeism uh tends to operate from a place of being wounded and hurt
and then like fighting back and it serves you right for doing this to me you know um
if it’s operating on that level nobody’s interested not even the people who have been
hurt they just get tired of it okay um a culture versus culture can be very interesting
if you deal with some other types of conflict that are more challenging to deal with.
Person versus destiny, that’s an ancient one, and it’s still very relevant today.
It’s particularly relevant to an aspiring magician in the magical work.
And heart versus head, that’s sort of like the romanticist versus the scientist.
So these are all sort of run-of-the-mill types of conflict.
They don’t go very deep.
usually the deeper forms of conflict involve person versus self okay or person versus trauma
i i know you’re probably getting tired of me using the word trauma and i’m getting tired of
me using the word trauma maybe there’s another word to use i can use the word personal demons
or demons right um and i’ve been using those words a lot too but quite frankly western style
magic is mostly about catharsis and um making friends with your trauma demons yeah or dissolving
them entirely because what lies on the other side of that when most of them are gone or settled down
is a life of pure effortless magic so yeah the most important types of conflict are man versus
himself or man versus his trauma things that are like his personal demons okay shadow work all
right so let’s look at the various types of conflict that you might experience in a movie
so the most entertaining part is like oh these dudes are going to face off and one’s a lot bigger
than the other oh no how’s the little guy going to defeat the big guy okay already you can see
there is a it’s getting us because we might feel small in a in a world of monstrous forces out
there how can we win when we feel so small already sort of resonating with us right
somewhat right but of course anybody who’s seen this film rocky the first rocky right
um knows that the conflict uh runs much deeper than just between these two men yeah the the
conflict uh the most important conflict going on is between the rocky character and himself
i hope i have that right um i actually didn’t see the film but it’s obvious to me um i’ve seen so
many clips and so many videos referring to it you know that it’s pretty clear that he goes through
some internal stuff in order to prepare for the fight of his life yeah why does the um in action
films why does the the hero often get his ass kicked in the first scene so we can see the rest
to the movie involves how he overcomes his trauma how he over how he overcomes his defeat and his
personal fear of being defeated again in order to win or maybe win okay he might fail miserably
again and we’ll learn something from that too won’t we now more interesting person versus person
conflict is one of power dynamics these can be very interesting at least to me I think they’re
very interesting. When it comes to one person being in the sway of another. Okay, so let’s
say it’s a relationship between two people. One of those people has stronger charisma
than the other, and pretty much dominates them. Usually when there’s a couple, the one
one of them is you know more charming more dominant um in most situations and what is it
like to be the person who’s being dominated by the other personality okay this is um a picture
from interview with the vampire and this these are uh the two characters louis and lestat and
lestat is the vampire in this scene and louis is still mortal he’s about to be turned into a vampire
And, of course, when Lestat changes him into a vampire, he has the upper hand
He’s an older vampire, he’s more powerful, and he pretty much has a sort of charismatic hold over him
And so we’re really automatically sucked in, especially if you’re reading the book
okay um the interview with the vampire is a classic because it’s really explores an intimate
detail the feelings and the nuances and the gestures and the and the thoughts that go on
between two people one of whom is dominant the other whom is submissive and the dominant one
is somewhat abusive actually and can’t but he knows he has power over the other and how do i
escape how do i get out from under the control of this person who seems to have you know embody
everything i want to be and yet i hate them uh fascinating fascinating um book for that and the
movie does um tune into that pretty well too the first one that is um the new series uh somewhat
the new series somewhat does that yeah um probably not as good as the book itself person versus
person and of course another power dynamic here’s a person versus person conflict these two people
are friends in the X-Files, of course, but in this series, Fox Mulder, the one on the left,
he is the genius. He’s always one step ahead. He doesn’t even have the PhD or the medical training
that, or the scientist training that Scully has. Scully is the character on the right,
and yet he always seems to be one step ahead of all the other investigators,
and his theories almost always turn out to be right and she is very much in his shadow and
as a result I think she’s the most interesting character in all of the X-Files because how she
has to wrestle with being in Mulder’s shadow the way she is she obviously falls in love for in love
with him too and has to sort of suppress that during almost all of the episodes and there’s
a conflict going on with her where she’s trying to establish her own footing as you know as an
intellectual and as an investigator and yet he always seems to know what’s going on better than
she does yeah the whole series is kind of written that way it’s sort of stacked against her but it’s
really interesting to see how she deals with somebody whose genius transcends her own this
is a very real thing that that’s why i think that’s why the x-files was so successful it’s
not because of it was so well done for as a monster flick you know uh or conspiracy theorist
uh stories it’s really more about the dynamic between these two characters and how uh she
struggles um to maintain her own footing and in the in the shadow of his genius very interesting
to see what she goes through and the transformation she goes through over time actually over the span
of what eight seasons or something like that or even more person versus nature so uh a lot of times
person versus nature is simply a monster movie at usually a natural kind of monster like you’re
being stalked by a grizzly bear but you know could be like a supernatural monster too
so the the resonance that would that this has for us is that we are all somewhat vulnerable
in the face of nature and we would like to learn a few strategies so that we can survive
okay so it gets us a little bit that way it draws us a little bit in that way
But, this is from the movie Jaws, of course, if you haven’t seen it.
The main conflict in the movie Jaws is not person versus nature.
Yeah, that’s just the titillating, exciting part of it.
The main conflict is something else.
There are two other conflicts that are really much stronger in this movie.
The more obvious conflict is not really all that important.
you know man versus beast uh and one of the conflicts that is sort of hidden is truly
terrifying and we will talk about that in a bit person versus nature once again we have this is
tom hanks in the movie cast away i forgot what his character is and um if you’ve seen the film
you know that the conflict is not necessarily between himself and the island that he’s stuck on
as a castaway um there’s more going on than just trying to survive um yeah quite interesting it’s
quite it’s a film interesting for that if it was just him surviving we would lose interest pretty
fast he has to face down some difficult challenges within himself person versus the system now if
this is the matrix probably uh many people consider it to be the best science fiction movie
of all time um if it were just about neo versus the matrix or neo versus society you know the way
the world is built really wouldn’t be that interesting so there’s a lot more going on than
just him versus this the matrix or him versus the computer generated world um in order to
learn how to face the system he has to face things within himself his own doubts things like that
and that’s what makes it more interesting also the yeah the matrix brings in a bit of
person versus destiny he struggles with the destiny that he supposedly has where other
people believe that he’s the one he’s the chosen one culture versus culture passage to india is a
really good example of that but it does sort of suffer from you know one of the cultures
is the oppressed one and the other culture is sort of the overlord culture
But the more interesting conflict is the conflict
The conflict is between in the time of the British Empire
The indigenous population of India where they are
And the British colonialists who have taken them over pretty much
The more interesting conflict is as some of the British realize
how poorly they’ve been treating the natives they have conflict within themselves and really that’s
that that’s to my mind that’s the more deeper more interesting conflict because
you the most important thing is you begin to notice how you are the way you’re living is
hurting other people and then oh my god what how do i stop and then there’s that there’s there’s
the real conflict not just being you know two cultures like you know banging their heads
together it’s like if you notice that you are your culture is hurting another culture what
what can you do about it how do you stop it person versus destiny this is probably the number one
book that people think of um because it really plugs directly into um i was surprised when i
read oedipus rex it was it’s so painfully obvious what the whole thing is about from the very
beginning. If you guys are not familiar with this, it is prophesied that King Oedipus or Oedipus will
one day kill his own father and marry his mother. And so he hears about this prophecy and then he
does everything in his power to keep it from happening. But it eventually does happen. Big
spoiler alert, okay? And then when he finds out that he has actually killed his own father and
married his mother, somehow he can’t handle that. This is such a, this resonates so deeply and
painfully, I think, in Western culture, in Western culture, probably in all cultures,
apparently because it resonates very deeply with a need that we have. We don’t, that men don’t
don’t literally need to have sex with their mothers okay but on a deep level they know they
came into this world through through their mother and they have a deep yearning to go back to go
back into paradise not into the womb necessarily but wherever it is they came from before they were
alive and the only way back seems to be through the mother and so this longing to go back gets
sort of psychologically confused with wanting to go into your mother or have sex with your mother
okay and so that there’s a very deep um anxiety apparently in men between themselves and their
mothers and between their mothers and their sons too apparently so um and this so Oedipus really
sort of drags that out and that’s why you know Sigmund Freud was famous for um for labeling the
Oedipus complex that most men suffer from to some degree the Oedipus complex among women it’s called
the Electra complex which is slightly different but there’s a longing for sexual union with the
father or something like that I’m not sure that’s really holds as much truth as the Oedipus complex
does and you know to you if you doubt this is true it’s kind of all over the vulgarity in the
language isn’t it because people say motherfucker a lot and so that repressed you know um desire
and aversion to doing that with your mother is now coming out because whatever’s repressed tends
to come out you know as a swear word as something what’s the most unacceptable thing i could say
motherfucker you know so um there’s the oedipus complex ouch and um yes and wanting to kill the
father is interesting too that’s another that’s a part of the oedipus complex being jealous of
the Father, because the Father has access to the fountain that I came from, the fountain of
life that I came from. He has access to that. I want that. And if you realize that, then you
realize, oh, it’s, well, I guess I don’t really want to have sex with my mother, do I? What I
really want is to have union with the divine. I want to experience where I came from
before i was alive and i want that now and that doesn’t involve doesn’t even involve having sex
with anyone okay now you can see the connection of this with tantra so the sexual tantra also
becomes emblematic of going back into where you came from the source of your being okay so for a
man the woman can represent the the way back to the ultimate source of who you are and because
we get that all mixed up and confused we get anxiety about what sex really means and we get
compulsive about it and all kinds of disorders result from that and it’s quite a simple thing
to sort it out actually once you’re aware of this sort of how the Oedipus complex has arisen
person versus destiny Hamlet is a really good example of that probably considered by many
i don’t know literary people to be one of the best stories or plays of all time uh hamlet
wrestles with his destiny he’s he discovers that his uncle probably conspired to have his father
killed he isn’t sure and he wrestles with whether or not he should exact a vengeance and as the play
goes on he discovers more and more evidence that yes his uncle did conspire to have his father
killed and then he proceeds to you know um to exact his revenge and he’s compelled to to um
vengeance compels him that’s interesting because it’s like i’m destined to kill you now because
you killed my father that strange code of honor just kind of sets in it’s like is that really
destiny must you do that hamlet is pretty deep it’s pretty difficult to to fathom um an easier
version of destiny as revenge is the count of monte cristo i think this was the year 2000 2000
2000 ish um excellent film if you really want to feel what it feels like to be driven by revenge
as though it’s your destiny that sort of acid burn of revenge inside you just watch this film
it’s really um powerful and there’s the nice thing about um the count of monte cristo it brings in a
a sort of christian element like there’s sort of um saving grace can come along and maybe cure you
of that um compulsion for revenge and i don’t know if you watch the film tell me if you think
it really demonstrates that that compulsion for revenge can can that be cured by by jesus or by
the love of a woman apparently like a love of a woman comes in and then he decides okay i’m not
gonna kill i’m not gonna go forward with my plan i’m not sure it quite does that but it’s a nice
try on the count on the um it’s a nice try of the author uh alexander demas to try to show how
maybe a christian redemption element can cure you of a sense of destiny that involves revenge
okay this is a cool story because the spirit of revenge makes the main character edmund so
powerful he’s almost like a sorcerer he’s just that he becomes that powerful because the spirit
of revenge just takes him over heart versus head conflicts this is very important in the wind and
magic and uh yeah these characters in the original star trek series are a really good example of
that obviously Mr. Spock represents the head McCoy the doctor represents the heart and the
really interesting thing is that the Captain Kirk is sort of the mediating force between the two
but between the heart and the head and the three of them together are amazing to watch just for the
the dynamics between them this kind of makes the show actually just as Mulder and Scully sort of
make the show in the x-files work more than any of the story writing or special effects did
these three characters here make the original star trek work really well because it’s kind of like
neither spock nor mccoy really have a good grasp on things and and kirk has a better grasp but what
you notice is he he sort of operates outside the lines of both of the of the other two he sort of
of transcends the other two and so he constantly provides an example of how to mediate between
heart and head without getting stuck between them yeah it’s not easy either for any of them
so but it’s really interesting to watch that dynamic because it teaches a lot yeah and star
trek really um delves deeply into um purely rational um characters and highly emotional
characters so there’s a lot of head and heart going on in the characters in star trek
I think that’s one of the main and driving forces of that entire franchise until recently I think
the recent films have just I don’t know they’ve gotten taken over they’ve gotten taken over by
the woke agenda a little too much and so they and also drifted into super excitement super titillation
and not very much storyline not very much heart and head anymore unfortunately and everybody seems
to know that too yeah um this the original series so the original series was among the best and of
course some of the um next generation and some of star trek voyager those were really good too
some of them and another example of heart versus head whereas kandalf is the heart and
sorrowman thinks mostly with his head the head tends to think more in terms of dominion
and control i will control my emotions or more more in terms of in terms of machines
so he’ll just you know rip down half a fangorn forest to fuel the forges to make an army
they’re just living things after all they’re not as important as my war machine
it’s head thinking and in lord of the rings it’s primarily the heart that is presented as the hero
also you might note i don’t think that harry potter has a lot of of literary value it has some
one of the more interesting things about those characters we have Hermione who’s super smart
and very powerful because of that and we have Harry who’s super brave and powerful because of
that and it would seem that the author and probably the readers too prefer uh the Harry
character over Hermione Hermione’s really awesome and everything like that but it’s the courage and
the heartfelt affection and compassion that wins the day in those books uh i don’t know many people
might agree unless you’re a psychopath and then in which case you think it’s all rather silly
all right so let’s get back to let’s get to the more important forms of trauma of trauma of um
conflict because these concern somebody who’s doing the magical work because as you can tell
if you’re engaged in the magical work there’s a lot of daily ritual and then there’s writing about
it in your journal, processing what’s happening internally, externally, trying to make sense of
the internal conflicts that are arising, okay? So what happens when you do the work, a lot of
this affrontedness and a lot of the conflicts in your life, they get magnified, they get stronger,
okay? But the nice thing is they get stronger on the internal level. That’s really important,
okay well i’m about to tell you why that’s important so those of you who say i have a
hard life i’m trying to fix it with magic it can do that okay and so but then i tell you when you
do the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram it’s going to make the conflicts in your life
stronger what that’s not what i wanted but really what it’s going to do is going to make those
conflicts stronger internally okay which gives you a chance to do something very important all
right so we return back to the movie jaws it’s not just about man versus nature okay the main
conflict in this film is is between chief brody and the uh the business uh the government of the
town that he’s trying to protect it’s a beach town and they need those tourist dollars and they don’t
want the beaches closed and of course because they keep fussing about it that people get killed and
eaten by the shark he warned them but they didn’t listen you know and they they tried to oust him
because he he was trying to shut down the beaches and which would hurt their businesses you know
anyway so he and as he’s trying to do his duty he’s up against their need to survive i wouldn’t
call it greed necessarily it’s just they want to survive they need money they need that they
they rely on those summertime dollars you know and uh and they’re not thinking about you know
that people might die be killed by this shark anyway that’s one of the conflicts okay that’s
the main conflict there’s another conflict now this is the truly horrifying one in this film
it concerns the character Quint and the movie does a better job of playing up this horror
than the book does all right so Quint is severely traumatized he was on the USS Indianapolis which
which sank was torpedoed and sank and a couple of hundred men or something like that went into
the water and they were in the water for days or weeks or even before they were rescued and they
were being picked off by sharks the sharks were attacking them at odd times during the day and
you know one by one people were being killed right in front of his eyes one of his friends had even
been bitten in half in front of him so he’s really severely traumatized by that and what the way he
responds to that trauma is really unhealthy everybody thinks it’s awesome at first okay
he basically spends the rest of his life hunting sharks and then he adorns his his his shop with
all of the jaws of the sharks that he has caught and killed as trophies so in order to deal with
this trauma he basically keeps killing sharks kill kill kill kill right as you can guess that’s not
really a good way to deal with trauma and so that trauma gets worse and worse and worse and he
escalates you know makes a full-time business out of killing sharks and so eventually the town hires
him to kill this shark now the interesting thing is that his karma his his repressed trauma has
gotten so bad that it is now ready to manifest in his physical life this movie kind of shows how
this might be a real thing okay this shark they’re going after is no ordinary great white it behaves
in ways that defy expectation it doesn’t really behave like a normal shark it seems to have some
kind of vendetta mostly against him against quint out to get him he’s out to get it it’s out to get
him it’s almost like his karma is now saying you still haven’t dealt with this this is your last
chance now we’re really gonna we’re not gonna plague your nightmares anymore we’re gonna come
after you for real now all right this is your last chance to make peace with this trauma that
you experienced does he do it no he does not to the very end he’s fighting this thing trying to
kill it it’s like keeping your trauma at bay i don’t want to face this thing i don’t want to
make meaning out of it i don’t want to reconcile with it i just need it to go away and die so
horrifying because and now the way that he dies in the film if you know all this if you can feel
all this um trauma that’s been stalking him all his life it is the most horrifying death possible
for anyone he doesn’t learn at all and in the end he gets bitten in half just like his friend
who was bitten in half in front of him you know so uh and then and it’s even more terrifying than
that because the jaws of this monster are sort of like a mouth of hell do you think this this car
this karma is going to stop even in death no you had a better chance of dealing with this while
you’re alive and so on some level we know that and so now he’s being dragged into this hell
who knows what it’s going to be like in the underworld for him right um or in the next life
or whatever you know like this thing these things keep going on and on and on yeah and they’re
probably easier to work out in a in a in a when you’re in a physical body and but all his life
he has been shirking that responsibility to the point where it’s now blown up in his face and said
deal with it or else and to the end he fails the test so horribly and horrifyingly don’t let this
happen to you so you can begin to see why we go through the process of summoning demons and
making meaning with them making peace with them understanding how they arise understanding what
they want understanding what they truly need and understanding how they will feel when they get
what they really need if we don’t rise to the occasion and deal with these things they make
our lives physically hell eventually another example of trauma this is more light-hearted
still pretty bad though um in the movie uh practical magic uh this is not really an example
of how to be a ceremonial magician this film but it’s pretty cool anyway um the character on the
left uh sally i think is her name in the film um when she’s a little girl uh she already her her
powers as a witch are pretty formidable already she cast a spell on herself when she’s when she’s
a child that she will never fall in love because she’s been traumatized um her mother that’s jillian
on the right there so those two sisters their mother killed herself because her husband died
okay so her mother killed herself because she loved her husband so much and he died so she
cast a spell on herself so to make sure she will never fall in love and that spell haunts the rest
of her life all the way up until she’s about 30 years old or so that is yeah and that’s when
everything starts to come you know make the movie progress forward that spell that she cast on
herself to prevent her from falling in love causes lots of trouble so what in other words
instead of dealing with that trauma of of um you know what it’s like to lose a mom and why and why
her mother killed herself she says i just don’t want to deal with this love thing because it’s
so painful and then of course that that she basically puts a curse on herself and then she’s
going to have to basically uh you know the whole movie and the book are about her undoing that
curse not only that curse but there’s also a curse on the whole family too but anyway um person
versus trauma yeah internal conflict so in regard to golden dawn magic uh there are lots of different
myths tied into that but you know the the primary ones involve death and resurrection death
resurrection and power i don’t know correct me if i’m wrong there might be other myths that are
primary obviously there’s some myths concerning forbidden knowledge and and the the problems that
come from learning forbidden knowledge and at least using the knowledge you get there’s also
some cool myths there as well but the primary myths and the primary stories for that the
the Golden Dawn magician deals with are about Jesus and Osiris who are dying and resurrected
gods, essentially. Not only that, but there’s the myth of Christian Rosenkreutz, who is a sort of
Christ-like figure, and they find him, they find his body, and he’s in the tomb. And anyway,
but also, not only that, but there’s also the power of light and extension. So we have Excalibur
there being extended forth from the underworld what is the secret of drawing power from the
underworld okay and also in the Excalibur myth the King Arthur myths we have the grail cycle
what is the secret of the grail so these are probably the most important stories supposedly
they’re just entertainment right no they resonate very deeply because of the deep challenges that
we face which don’t literally involve swords rising out of the water they involve how to
draw power forth from the underworld okay the sword representing that power how to set it free
from the underworld really um and of course how to um transcend our mortality if we are immortal
how is that possible so we want to try to experience that and apparently in order to
experience that, some kind of death experience is required of us. Ouch. I highly recommend the movie
The Last Temptation of Christ. Yes, it was a controversial film at the time, and you’ll see why
if you watch it, but it resonates very deeply with the plight of the Golden Dawn student and
the sort of death and resurrection experience that happens through the outer and inner order grades.
so this is a book I’m reading right now so if anybody would like to join me this is pretty much
it’s a really cool analysis of the Greek myths and you can see it’s an international bestseller
don’t let that discourage you but I’m going to be reading this so if you want to join me in
Goodreads I believe my name in Goodreads is Liam Thomas not Liam Christopher but Liam Thomas
thomas is my middle name uh so if you want to join me and and in reading this book maybe we can like
sort of chat about it together um the nice thing about this is we get to read the um the greek
myths and and have some explanation of what’s going on with them uh what apparently you know
how the how the greeks apparently saw these myths and how uh in what way these myths in what way do
they appear to resonate with the the same need or similar needs that we have today for instance the
oedipus complex i think oedipus makes an appearance in here okay um like what does medusa represent
oh my goodness there’s a feminist thing going on there um uh what is hubris hubris is a big
challenge in uh the magical work basically hubris is pride or ego inflation okay so um and of course
the biggest sin for the greeks was hubris and of course these myths supposedly show us how to deal
with hubris how to deal with that ego inflation anyway so you want to join me in that it pretty
much shows how these things that are supposedly entertainment are not really just entertainment
they give us something that we really crave on a very deep level okay some kind of deep lessons
we need to learn about i don’t know like about transcendence about how to transcend our mortality
um how to um how to accept our mortality that’s a very big one for for uh for the greek myths
apparently how to feel okay knowing you’re gonna die i think that’s a pretty big part of the greek
myths right there and also um why the greek gods appear to be so cruel that’s something i’m
interested in exploring there too because on the one hand they’re very
pure and virtuous and on the other hand to us mortals they seem to not care
very much at all just yeah just if you’re familiar with the stories okay
anyway so i’ll be reading this and maybe you guys can join me on goodreads
All right, until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher