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Speaker 1: M oh, how I wish that this was behind the bastards.

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Speaker 1: We were talking about Rick Springfield Jesse's Girl. It's everyone

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Speaker 1: here his favorite song. We all just learned, all of

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Speaker 1: us our favorite song is Jesse's Girl. Great songs. Speak

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Speaker 1: for yourself. What is your favorite song? Revert It's Jesse's

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Speaker 1: Girl by Rick Springfield. I want to, I want to.

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Speaker 1: I want to tell Rick Springfield that I love him,

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Speaker 1: But the point is probably moot. That was Jesse's Girl. Joe,

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Speaker 1: what's your favorite song? What song are you? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I don't think you can really have a favorite song,

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Speaker 1: like because songs I have songs like I have. Um,

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Speaker 1: there's a Cat's in the Cradle just different. Now I

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Speaker 1: hate that song, but like for different songs for different moments,

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Speaker 1: right like when my mom died, the first thing we

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Speaker 1: listened to was Miserrare by the Cat Empire. Um, and

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Speaker 1: that's like a song for for that particular moment um.

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Speaker 1: But like you know, I like listening to Also, it's

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Speaker 1: of ship. I like, if I'm running, I'm gonna put

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Speaker 1: on some infected mushroom or some ship because I want

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Speaker 1: to like get moving. Um, if I'm sitting and writing.

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Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna listen to like Yonder Mountain String Band

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Speaker 1: and Green Sky Bluegrass doing like live shows at Red

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Speaker 1: Rocks and Ship because that works good with writing. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I have a yacht rock moment. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like some yacht rock. I like you know who

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Speaker 1: I you know who? I Who? I like Jamie Loftus

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Speaker 1: is fucking every now and then in the right moment. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's um, um the fucking Oh god, how am I

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Speaker 1: spacing on his name? Right? Five o'clock somewhere, guy, Margarita Ville.

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Speaker 1: Got Jimmy Buffett. Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, I went to Margaritaville

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Speaker 1: last night. That sounds I did. I got, I got,

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Speaker 1: And it's five o'clock somewhere. Uh, and it costs five

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars. And then I went to see Minions Rise

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Speaker 1: of Crew all buzzed up. Wow, Um, how was the

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Speaker 1: how was the drink? How was the Buffett Margarita? It

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Speaker 1: was disgusting? Yeah, they are. I love going to Margaritaville

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Speaker 1: because it is the trashiest place you can possibly be

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Speaker 1: as a human being. There's no you can't do battery acid.

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Speaker 1: It's not it's not alcoholic. Nothing. Can't get drunk there.

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Speaker 1: You can't get drunk there. You will get disgusting. You

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Speaker 1: will give yourself diabetes before you can get drunk at

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Speaker 1: a margarita Ville. But but hey, that's why I got

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Speaker 1: I have a fake volcano, at least the one in

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Speaker 1: Vegas does. And I love showing up housed at a

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Speaker 1: Margarita Ville in Vegas. Well, you have to because you

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Speaker 1: can't really make a lot of progress there. You just

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Speaker 1: you just get completely skull fucked on, like cheap liquor

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Speaker 1: that you bought at one of the liquor stores four

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Speaker 1: miles away from the strip, so it's not like completely

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Speaker 1: not You bring a flask in with you and you

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Speaker 1: add shipped to their terrible Margarita's and you have one

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Speaker 1: of the worst hamburgers of your life while you watch

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Speaker 1: a shitty's floor show. It's the best. I can't I

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Speaker 1: can't do the food there, even as a joke. I

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Speaker 1: can't do the food there. But I think it's too

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Speaker 1: bad to even eat as a funny joke. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: if yeah, five o'clock somewhere at Margaritaville, and then you know,

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Speaker 1: you bring like a couple of nips to put into

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Speaker 1: your soda at the movies, you sort some ketamine in

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Speaker 1: the bathroom of the back of your friend's phone, like

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Speaker 1: that's okay, and then that's and some people do that.

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Speaker 1: And I'm sure they did that while I was there,

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Speaker 1: because why not, Jamie, I've done that. I've done that

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Speaker 1: probably ever been less shocked in my life, probably while

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Speaker 1: you were there. Because I'm always at margarita Ville in

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Speaker 1: some form. I feel like we would really have a

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Speaker 1: good time at Margaritaville. I thought Margariteville at an airport

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Speaker 1: and now we're fucking fuck. Yeah, that's the good stuff.

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Speaker 1: And they just called it a Margaritaville. Exactly what I want. Okay. So, Jamie,

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Speaker 1: when we last left off, Helena Blavotsky H block H black,

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Speaker 1: Oh what h black? Something like that? What do we

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Speaker 1: do for her nickname? What do we call her? Anyway?

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Speaker 1: The Black, the Blacks, the Black, the Blatster had just

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Speaker 1: made her way to Crittenden to hang out with this journalist,

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Speaker 1: Henry olcott Um, who was getting hard old coot is

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Speaker 1: in this period, just getting super pilled on the paranormal, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the future president of Theosophy himself here yeah, he and

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Speaker 1: he again he starts off as like this upper middle

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Speaker 1: class lawyer guy who had like done an administrative job

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Speaker 1: so well in for the Union Army during the Civil

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Speaker 1: War that he got made a colonel and but had

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Speaker 1: just been like waiting his whole life for something weird

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Speaker 1: to make him feel special. And again he had he

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Speaker 1: had like he's he's like abandoned his family in order

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Speaker 1: to like become a seeker um his wife and kids.

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Speaker 1: He's a cool dude, Henry Olcott him. He meets Helena Blovotsky.

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Speaker 1: She she reads his articles about this farmhouse medium thing

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Speaker 1: in Crittendon and goes over and just like immediately wraps

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Speaker 1: this dude the funk around her finger like she's she's

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Speaker 1: this is and again she is not one of the

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Speaker 1: things that's interesting about here you talk about like l

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Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard, he's conning people constantly, right, just his life

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Speaker 1: is an endless series of cons that are at least

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Speaker 1: successful for a period of time. She's been failing pretty

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Speaker 1: much NonStop, like you feel like takes a special kind

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Speaker 1: of scammer to continue persisting in the face of only flops.

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Speaker 1: She is broke most of her scams or flops. When

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Speaker 1: she gets someone to believe in her, it doesn't usually

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Speaker 1: mean much of any money, Like she's not good at this.

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Speaker 1: So it says a lot about Henry that she so completely,

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Speaker 1: like instantly just like dominates this man's life and mind.

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Speaker 1: It's very funny. Um, he was just waiting for this,

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Speaker 1: Like you get the feeling with Henry Ocott. He's just

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Speaker 1: this guy who always wanted nothing but like some occult

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Speaker 1: lady to tell him there's magic. Like he just is

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Speaker 1: ready to be a wizard immediately. I mean, people are

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Speaker 1: like always looking for confirmation of this, and I feel

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Speaker 1: like like figures like Helena Blavoski, even though she like

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Speaker 1: could not pull off a scam for so long, like

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Speaker 1: they just like live in people's rains because they like

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Speaker 1: visually represent something that people want to be true, and

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Speaker 1: even though they prove it, they're just so ready. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, it's like an anesthetic appeal to It's part

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Speaker 1: of the thing like j. K. Rowling became a billionaire

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Speaker 1: because she was able to tap into that sort of

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Speaker 1: thing just within uh, because they were all like how

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Speaker 1: many of the people listening right now as little kids

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Speaker 1: like waiting to get a fucking letter from them a

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Speaker 1: magic school and ship like that's Henry Olcott. He's like,

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Speaker 1: that's he's like the first of those guys. He's like

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Speaker 1: a fifty year old man. He's a fifty year old

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Speaker 1: man who's abandoned hisst children so that he can learn

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Speaker 1: to be a wizard. One of those embarrassing people who

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Speaker 1: was like, where are those ugly graphic teams, like still

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Speaker 1: waiting for my letters? Yes, that that is Henry Olcott

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Speaker 1: um and he yeah, he falls for her immediately. She

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Speaker 1: she does some pretty basic cons um and he starts

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Speaker 1: to write articles about her. And I want to quote

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Speaker 1: now from an article published by the Oxford Unity Adversity

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Speaker 1: Press titled The West Turns Eastward. Quote. Ocott was impressed,

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Speaker 1: he began to write about her, and she therefore became

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Speaker 1: a prominent figure in the spiritualist movement soon afterwards, defending

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Speaker 1: first the authenticity of the Chittenen phenomena against a skeptical

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Speaker 1: doctor Beard, and then the authenticity of a similar of

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Speaker 1: the similar manifestations of John and Katie King in Philadelphia.

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Speaker 1: So we're not going to get into Katie King off enough,

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Speaker 1: but she's like this guy's dead, dying yeah, you want

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Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about Katie King. About Katie King,

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Speaker 1: Katie King, I mean, I god. I I also kind

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Speaker 1: of opted not to go into her on Ghost Church

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Speaker 1: because I feel like her story is like very adjacent

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Speaker 1: to there's like a lot of stories like this at

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Speaker 1: the time. But she she was a um, I feel

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Speaker 1: like just sort of another example of a physical medium.

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Speaker 1: Who I mean, her thing was like she went fucking big.

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Speaker 1: She had like an entire separate person that she could

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Speaker 1: quote unquote conjured. There was like a lot of magic involved,

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Speaker 1: like a lot of magic tricks involved, and she was

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Speaker 1: able to like really get a gigantic following. Uh and

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Speaker 1: then you know, uh is eventually exposed and uh in obscurity.

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Speaker 1: It's the same story, unfortunately they have a million times,

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Speaker 1: but it's but she's an interesting one. She she had

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Speaker 1: a lot of eyes on her at and it was

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Speaker 1: also like the sexuality element to her performance as well.

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Speaker 1: And she is one of the things that that Blovotsky

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Speaker 1: starts by doing is backing Katie King is like like

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Speaker 1: making these like writing articles and being because she she

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Speaker 1: realizes very because again she's she is She's not been

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Speaker 1: great as a con person but she's she's figured some

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Speaker 1: stuff out. Maybe it's just that she's older and she

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Speaker 1: kind of intuitively grasps that. Like, Okay, what I need

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Speaker 1: to be doing to start is not push in immediately

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Speaker 1: with my own grift, but established myself as a credible

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Speaker 1: expert on the paranormal, and then any time a paranormal

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Speaker 1: story goes viral, I want journalists reaching out to me.

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Speaker 1: Helena Blovotsky. I want to be the one. She's just

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Speaker 1: trying to become like a point of Okay, that's yes.

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Speaker 1: I didn't realize that there was because yeah, the woman,

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Speaker 1: so k that's how she starts. Janny King is the spirit,

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Speaker 1: Florence Cook is the medium. Um yeah, I'm not you

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Speaker 1: know whatever. I'm not really anti them, and but like yeah,

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Speaker 1: Arthur Corn and Doyle was really into another guy like

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Speaker 1: Henry Olcott, who was just a perfect mark from the beginning.

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Speaker 1: Um so Dr Beard, the skeptic mentioned earlier, describes the

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Speaker 1: two of them old Coot and Blovotsky this way. Quote. H.

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Speaker 1: S Olcott is a rabid spiritualist. He capitalizes both of

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Speaker 1: the R and the S and that and HP. Blovotsky

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Speaker 1: is an occultist who laughs one who laughs at the

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Speaker 1: supposed agency of spirits, but all the same pretends to

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Speaker 1: be one herself. But the criticism so like that's like

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Speaker 1: he notes that because again Blovotsky is she's coming at

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Speaker 1: this from a different angle than the actual spiritualists. She's

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Speaker 1: backing that these people are channeling something, but she doesn't

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Speaker 1: believe it like it's ghosts. She believes it's basically kind

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Speaker 1: of like psychic imprint some people. If I'm understanding her

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Speaker 1: argument correctly, Um and yeah. So the fact that this

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Speaker 1: doctor is like attacking her and attacking old cot again,

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Speaker 1: it's the same way ship works. Now it only heightens

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Speaker 1: her prominence and the weirdo spiritualist set. The fact that

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Speaker 1: like skeptics are attacking her for branding herself as a

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Speaker 1: paranormal expert helps to set her career off. Um and yeah,

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Speaker 1: and she and and also it sounds like she's also

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Speaker 1: like she's finding a way to like capitalize on the

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Speaker 1: hype of spiritualism without fully backing it, to like make

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Speaker 1: space for her to develop her own ideology. And part

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Speaker 1: of a part of I think why she's successful is

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Speaker 1: she's she's mutating it a little bit, right, it's the

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Speaker 1: same way of virus works. Right, you want to if

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Speaker 1: you want to escape and marine capture, you have to, like, yeah,

200
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Speaker 1: alter it a little bit. And that's what she's doing.

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Speaker 1: And that the fact that she's bringing something new to

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Speaker 1: what is by eight seventy five it's kind of boring, right,

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Speaker 1: Spiritualism is not new and exciting, and she is making

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Speaker 1: it exciting again by changing changing the game. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: seventy five, she writes an article in response to another

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Speaker 1: article on Rosicrucianism, and it was here that she first

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Speaker 1: described her beliefs in a concise way. Quote, occultism or

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Speaker 1: magic stands in relation to spiritualism as the infinite to

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Speaker 1: the finite, or as the infinite to the finite, as

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Speaker 1: the cause to the effect, or as the unity to

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Speaker 1: multifarious nous. So she's like, what you're actually seeing with

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Speaker 1: with these summonings isn't like the thing itself. It's just

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Speaker 1: like one thing you can do with these spirits, right,

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Speaker 1: And people are not People have not actually been like

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Speaker 1: exploring all of the things that magic can bring you. Now,

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Speaker 1: this was which is an interesting like flavor variation on spiritualism. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: and also opens up your ability to kind of like

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Speaker 1: grift off of it significantly. So this was a really

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Speaker 1: good time to be spouting that particular line of bullshit

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Speaker 1: because it was it was spiritual and religious. But also,

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Speaker 1: and this is something you alluded to early here, it

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Speaker 1: was more modern than religion itself, which was undergoing a

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Speaker 1: crisis at the end of the eighteen hundreds. Scientific advances

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Speaker 1: and many people had come to believe that like scientific

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Speaker 1: progress and Christianity were in direct conflict. Geologists had pretty

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Speaker 1: recently shown that the world was a lot older than

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Speaker 1: people believed it was like six thousand years old because

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Speaker 1: some dude in the church like did weird Bible math

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Speaker 1: and like that. It was becoming clear that that was

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Speaker 1: not accurate. Uh, Darwin's theory of evolution was like starting

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Speaker 1: to really pick up steam in terms of like widespread

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Speaker 1: acceptance um. And also for the first time, the machines

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Speaker 1: people were making were like things that wildly exceeded anything

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Speaker 1: found in nature. Right up until pretty much this point,

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Speaker 1: the fastest way to travel anywhere unless you've got like

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Speaker 1: a train, is a fucking horse. Right now, people are

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Speaker 1: making like cars and ship there's like light bulbs and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Um right, that's yeah, that that is part of like

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Speaker 1: what is kind of like so fascinating about spiritualism was

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Speaker 1: like how they were able to at least for a while,

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Speaker 1: ingratiate themselves into like this is a scientifically bast religion.

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Speaker 1: And they still say that in every single Spiritualist service

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Speaker 1: that happens, and that Blovotsky starts. That Blovotsky is like

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Speaker 1: the primary motive force behind that switch. From the Oxford

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Speaker 1: University press quote, she described science and theology as too

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Speaker 1: conflicting titans between which a bewildered public was fast losing

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Speaker 1: all belief in man's personal immortality and in a deity

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Speaker 1: of any kind. She thought that her contemporaries needed a

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Speaker 1: religion that can meet the challenge of modern science, and

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Speaker 1: she thought that occultism provided just such a religion. So

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Speaker 1: when she's talking about the occult, she's thinking talking about

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Speaker 1: like spirits and gods and all that stuff and kind

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Speaker 1: of dealing with it technically the same way that you

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Speaker 1: deal with like physics to put a plane in the air. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: as I've noted, she is unique in that she starts

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Speaker 1: pushing this in a really public way. Um. But she's

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Speaker 1: not an original thinker. She is not creating anything on

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Speaker 1: her own, and she does her best work. She's a

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Speaker 1: fan fiction writer, right, That's essentially what she's doing. So

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Speaker 1: many like horrible like eventually horrible spiritual leaders are fanfiction writer,

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Speaker 1: and she is. She is literally pivoting not off of

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Speaker 1: other spiritual texts that people are writing, but a huge

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Speaker 1: amount of what she's writing is her taking fiction that

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Speaker 1: other people had written and like repurposing it, particularly the

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Speaker 1: works of Edward Bulwer Lytton, who's the guy who wrote

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Speaker 1: The Coming Race, which is that book about like underground,

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Speaker 1: a super race. This is the dude to her Again,

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Speaker 1: her mom had translated some of these guys books when

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Speaker 1: she was a kid. Um And and Bulward Litton's stories

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Speaker 1: often centered on like a racer, a civilization that had

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Speaker 1: been kind of the font of all human culture and science.

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Speaker 1: There was also this idea of real which is this

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Speaker 1: like basically like the spiritual equivalent of electricity is kind

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Speaker 1: of the way Bulward Litton describes it. Um. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: for Bolovotsky's unfolding, she basically she starts making the case

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Speaker 1: that like no Bulwar. Litton wasn't writing Fi and bull

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Speaker 1: where Litton was like tapping into something very true or

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Speaker 1: like you know, hiding it a little bit or whatever,

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Speaker 1: which is a fun one of Like they said they

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Speaker 1: were writing fiction, but they didn't realize they were tapped

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Speaker 1: into a higher spiritual power and it was a chance.

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Speaker 1: That's my My channeled texts are my favorite ship in

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Speaker 1: the world, because we'll be talking about that. Yeah, Jesus

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Speaker 1: wrote this like, Okay, okay, I have I have my favorite.

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Speaker 1: I own a couple when I was researching Ghost Church,

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Speaker 1: and my favorite one is um channeled from someone who

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Speaker 1: died on the Titanic. I would like that. I may

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Speaker 1: do that for my next book, but have it still

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Speaker 1: be about like Cyborg Superman fighting in a post Civil

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Speaker 1: war United States. But just be like, no, this was

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Speaker 1: absolutely written by a nine year old who died on

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Speaker 1: the Titanic, for sure. This is what the message for

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Speaker 1: the world. This is her story. I do get all

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Speaker 1: the proceeds, but this is her story. This is her

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Speaker 1: story about Horny Cyborg's in the seventies. She this is

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Speaker 1: what she wanted to teach people. It's an interesting one. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: so for Bolovotsky's unfolding spiritual cosmology, India was going to

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Speaker 1: be like what she gave as the center and source

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Speaker 1: of ancient knowledge. She wrote that although many Westerners had

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Speaker 1: seen Egypt as the source previously quote, it has been

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Speaker 1: discovered that the very same ideas expressed an almost identical language,

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Speaker 1: maybe read in Buddhistic and Brahmanical literature. Now, Orientalists at

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Speaker 1: the time had started again because she's not creating anything

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Speaker 1: out of whole cloth, She's reading other people's work, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of Orientalists had started to make the claim

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Speaker 1: that Hinduism predated Christianity. Blovotsky added their work to her

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Speaker 1: own ideas and to bulwer Lytton. She mashed in real

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Speaker 1: bits of actual religion that she had encountered while traveling,

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Speaker 1: and she came up with a brand new story to

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Speaker 1: tell people. Quote, six thousand years ago, India had contained

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Speaker 1: a brilliant civilization that was overflowing with people. Later, a

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Speaker 1: matured section of these people had immigrated to eastern Ethiopia,

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Speaker 1: where they had become known as the Mighty Builders, and

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Speaker 1: from where they had colonized Egypt. And finally, Western culture

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Speaker 1: owed much to a Judaic law that had come from

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Speaker 1: these Egyptians. There was therefore an ancient wisdom that underlaid

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Speaker 1: all religions, and this ancient wisdom had definite Indian roots.

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Speaker 1: As Blovotsky explained, there is not one of all these

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Speaker 1: sects Cabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included, but sprang

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Speaker 1: from the two main branches of that mother trunk, the

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Speaker 1: once universal religion which anti dated the Vedic ages. We

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Speaker 1: speak of that prehistoric Buddhism, which merged later into Brahmanism.

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Speaker 1: Now none of that's accurate historically, right, Um. I think

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Speaker 1: experts on Buddhism and and Brahmans would all be like, well,

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Speaker 1: wait a second, that's not that's not at all what happened.

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Speaker 1: And also experts are just like where humans like obviously

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Speaker 1: people like the first human beings. I mean, again, this

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Speaker 1: is a contentious issue, but uh, it's not that that's

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Speaker 1: not what happened. There's no like, all of the evidence

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Speaker 1: we have is not that right, It's it's so like

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Speaker 1: that is like one of my feel like the huge,

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Speaker 1: huge issues with like all branches of spiritualism is like

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Speaker 1: spiritualism as a particular issue with historically misrepresenting indigenous culture

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Speaker 1: completely and just like co opting indigenous culture to say

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Speaker 1: whatever they need them to say. And then Blotski is

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Speaker 1: doing that in the East. She is and she's not. Again,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that you might argue as positive

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Speaker 1: is that kind of previously the dominant beliefs in Western

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Speaker 1: culture had been like Hinduism in Buddhism, where these kind

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Speaker 1: of like weird pagan degenerate, like not advanced savage and

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Speaker 1: stuff like this. These were the especially the British right.

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Speaker 1: This was one of the justifications the British had for

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Speaker 1: what they were doing in India was all of these

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Speaker 1: these Hindu practices that we we're just you know, in

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Speaker 1: their eyes, horrific um. And Blovotsky is is fighting against that,

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Speaker 1: is saying that Christianity and Judaism are like them, are

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Speaker 1: themselves kind of the degenerated um offspring of of of

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Speaker 1: like the of Brahmanism, of of of you know what

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Speaker 1: people call Hinduism. Um. So you can say that's positive,

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Speaker 1: but also it's not really. Nothing she's talking about is

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Speaker 1: real Hinduism or real real Buddhism. She's like using these

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Speaker 1: words and bits and pieces of these stories and mixing

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Speaker 1: it with like her favorite fantasy author. It's like if

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Speaker 1: you it's like if you took zoro Asterianism and like

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Speaker 1: jammed it into Game of Thrones and then told people

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Speaker 1: that that was like you're an actual religion. Well that's

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Speaker 1: the thing, is like and and and you know, knock

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Speaker 1: yourself out, but like keep it to yourself, yeah, or

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Speaker 1: like make it clear that it's film start like or yeah,

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Speaker 1: don't don't start, don't start a religious cult about it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong. I feel like a fiction author of

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Speaker 1: being like, oh, these real world beliefs are interesting, and

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Speaker 1: I'm writing this fantasy book and I'm inspired by this

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Speaker 1: and by that like obviously fucked up waste. But there's

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Speaker 1: nothing inherently wrong with that idea. She is just saying, no,

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Speaker 1: this is the real Buddhism and the real Hinduism. Um,

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Speaker 1: and I'm I'm the one who actually knows what's what

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Speaker 1: these things are. That is that is extra. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's like it's one thing to invent a religion that

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Speaker 1: is all religions, but to like steal, like dishonestly steal

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Speaker 1: from other religions in order to prop up your own

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Speaker 1: bunk religion is just like extra shitty. Here's the cool thing.

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Speaker 1: She's also kind of ship talking anyone who knows anything

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Speaker 1: about these religions, including like because she's the only one

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Speaker 1: who knows, because she's been I'm gonna read another quote

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Speaker 1: about that quote. Blavatsky justified her selective use of contemporary

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Speaker 1: occultism by using two interconnected distinctions. If anyone claimed that

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Speaker 1: Indian religions were not as she said, she simply replied

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Speaker 1: that this person had focused on either modern Hinduism or

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Speaker 1: the exoteric meaning of the Vedic works, not on the

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Speaker 1: true esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanism. She argued that scholars

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Speaker 1: often fell into the trap of taking modern Hinduism or

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Speaker 1: the Vedas at face value, when the true religion of

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Speaker 1: India remained hidden in the esoteric Brahmanical teachings of the Vedas. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: whilst Orientalists rightly had dated the Vetas as pre Christian,

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Speaker 1: we should not trust their interpretations of Vetic works, since

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Speaker 1: they could not perceive the inner meanings of these works.

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Speaker 1: Blotsky wrote, our scientists do not say nay, do not nay,

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Speaker 1: cannot understand correctly the old Hindu literature. And so again

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Speaker 1: she's framing this as like Westerners have misinterpreted this, but

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Speaker 1: she is also at the same time saying, actual people

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Speaker 1: in India aren't really worshiping proper Hinduism, modern Hinduism isn't right.

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Speaker 1: They don't understand the secret message of their own religion, right,

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Speaker 1: which is just like a galaxy brain asshole behavior like yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty cool, it's pretty cool. Yeah, She's like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you think that my interpretation of an entire culture is wrong,

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Speaker 1: we'll argue at the wall. I guess you're just like, okay,

399
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Speaker 1: you just don't get the secret meanings of your own

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Speaker 1: religious texts. Um. So she began meeting with prominent Yeah,

401
00:21:46,880 --> 00:21:51,360
Speaker 1: this is this is like, this is like the absolute

402
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Speaker 1: highest tier of cultural appropriation. Like it doesn't it does.

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Speaker 1: It does not get more appropriating than this. This is

404
00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:01,000
Speaker 1: this is the top of that particular or mountain and

405
00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:06,359
Speaker 1: within spiritualist ideas that is really saying something. Yeah that

406
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Speaker 1: it is. It is quite an achievement. So she begins

407
00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:11,480
Speaker 1: meeting with all these academics, writers and celebrities. She starts

408
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Speaker 1: to get very famous doing this, like pushing this line,

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Speaker 1: bringing in these attitudes. She is part of why the

410
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Speaker 1: concept of karma gets to the United States in a

411
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Speaker 1: popular way, Um, it is because of Blovotsky and like

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Speaker 1: these this social scene that she sets up a New

413
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Speaker 1: York City that asking people how's your karma? Like becomes

414
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Speaker 1: common in the eighteen nineties. Like that is, we have

415
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Speaker 1: Helena Blovotsky to thank for that concept being part of

416
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Speaker 1: American culture in the way that it is, which is

417
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Speaker 1: not you know, to say anything about how karma is

418
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Speaker 1: actually treated in the religions and stuff, but like why

419
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Speaker 1: kind of our attitudes towards it. She starts that she

420
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Speaker 1: popularizes it here. Um, so she starts, she again, they

421
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Speaker 1: call them salons and stuff. She's always like hanging out

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Speaker 1: with celebrities and writers and ship in these like bars

423
00:22:56,640 --> 00:22:59,600
Speaker 1: and clubs and stuff, giving talks on different elements of

424
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:02,440
Speaker 1: spirit rualis um um. And she has she develops that

425
00:23:02,520 --> 00:23:05,080
Speaker 1: she builds this following all these different little tricks for

426
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: like making people convinced that she's got the truth. Her

427
00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:12,120
Speaker 1: particular favorite is she would have a mysterious person who

428
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,440
Speaker 1: was supposed to be her master kut Humi, teleporting from

429
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:18,800
Speaker 1: Tibet to like New York, deliver a letter to another

430
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 1: person who was like she was trying to bring on

431
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:23,320
Speaker 1: as a mark. Yeah, sorry, I forget. Is this a

432
00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:25,199
Speaker 1: real person or is this a person She's made up?

433
00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:29,879
Speaker 1: This isople so like basically another big spiritualism thing is

434
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:32,439
Speaker 1: made up. So like yeah, sometimes it would be like

435
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:34,720
Speaker 1: a person in a costume handing and we'll talk about

436
00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:36,720
Speaker 1: this later. Sometimes it would just be like a letter

437
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:38,840
Speaker 1: falls out of, you know, somewhere in the building and

438
00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:41,280
Speaker 1: like lands on somebody's head and it's like, you know,

439
00:23:41,359 --> 00:23:43,919
Speaker 1: this is a letter written in the handwriting of kut whomie.

440
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: This is like my my master wanted you to have

441
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 1: this piece of information, and it's it's a big part

442
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:52,600
Speaker 1: of like why people get on the Bolovotsky train is

443
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: like what she meets an individual and she's like, oh,

444
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:57,560
Speaker 1: you're a popular journalist or like you're a celebrity, you've

445
00:23:57,600 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: got some clout. I'm going to make sure you have

446
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,879
Speaker 1: this like encounter with Master kut Umi that he's like

447
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:05,280
Speaker 1: he needs you to know this. That's why this letter

448
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:09,560
Speaker 1: operated in front of you. You know. Um, And yeah,

449
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:13,680
Speaker 1: it's it's it's fascinating. Um, it's real, real cool ship.

450
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:16,760
Speaker 1: Her biographer Mary and Meade writes that in bringing Eastern

451
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:19,400
Speaker 1: mysticism to the salons and upperclass parties of New York,

452
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: Madame Blovotsky quote paved the way for contemporary transcendental meditation.

453
00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 1: Zin Harri Krishna's yoga and vegetarianism, Karma and reincarnations, Swammy's

454
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 1: Yogis and Gurus. She is the first guru in the

455
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 1: Western world in like the a proper sense. Um, yeah,

456
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:42,400
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty good stuff, really really really smearing the

457
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: name of actual gurus. Yes, um, yeah, it's cool shit, Um,

458
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 1: it's very cool. Ship Jules Evans rights quote. She claimed

459
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:53,600
Speaker 1: that she had discovered the lost city of Shambala and

460
00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert, and they're encountered a great white brotherhood.

461
00:24:56,840 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: They were led by the Lord of the World, who

462
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 1: descended from the planet Venus. Other masters included Mano Matrea

463
00:25:02,880 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 1: Jesus and Buddha Mesmer, and two Indian gentlemen called Master

464
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:08,720
Speaker 1: Moray and kut Humie. These two lived in a valley

465
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:11,479
Speaker 1: in Tibet, in an underground city with subterranean tunnels, from

466
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 1: which they emerged occasionally to guide humanity and communicate with

467
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:18,800
Speaker 1: their favorite adept Helena Blovotsky against this white brotherhood. There

468
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: was a secret order of dark forces, black magicians seeking

469
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 1: to gain power and harm humanity. In the words of

470
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: Peter Washington, Occasionally the war between the lords and brothers

471
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:30,240
Speaker 1: reaches a violent public climax, and events such as the

472
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,879
Speaker 1: Crucifixion of Jesus, when the esoteric becomes exoteric and the

473
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:40,720
Speaker 1: secret struggle is briefly revealed. Okay, so this yeah, absolutely terrifying,

474
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:45,120
Speaker 1: And I think the first time in Blovotsky speak where

475
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: this is like completely outside of anything that I've studied

476
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:52,680
Speaker 1: with spiritualism, Like this is just like, is this the

477
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: hard left moment? Like this is so people have been

478
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: writing recently some kind of more mainstream journalists have noticed

479
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: that like the the New Age community and kind of

480
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:05,080
Speaker 1: the occult community has like a fascism problem that has

481
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: been increasingly an issue. Yes, yeah, and and a lot

482
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:11,159
Speaker 1: of that has come through Q and on. There's huge

483
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:14,400
Speaker 1: New Age elements. It's very tight into like alternative medicine

484
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 1: and like uh meditation, like different kinds of like energy

485
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 1: healing and stuff. That's all really big in that community.

486
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: And there's this attitude that they're really separate. No, they

487
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 1: started these these conspiratorial beliefs about there being the secret

488
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 1: order of like white hats fighting the evil black hats

489
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: and the background of everything, and that all exogenic like

490
00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: exoteric conflicts are like really the result of this secret

491
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: occult conflict that is the start of the New Age movement.

492
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:46,960
Speaker 1: That Helena Blovotsky is the start of the New Age

493
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:50,359
Speaker 1: in in a modern sense in the United States. She's

494
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 1: the one who not only to physical health and stuff

495
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 1: like yeah, well and as it as it pertains to

496
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:59,399
Speaker 1: taking things from the East and mixing them up with

497
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 1: like other stuff too, right, Like you can't you can't

498
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 1: separate all of that, like Blovotsky is again obviously she's

499
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: not starting or creating any of this from whole cloth.

500
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: She's mixing up strands, but she gets the mixture in

501
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:16,160
Speaker 1: its modern sense right for the first time. Right, Yeah,

502
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:20,719
Speaker 1: And god that I'm sorry that that that passage is

503
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 1: really sticking in my mind incredibly fucked. It's so interesting,

504
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:29,440
Speaker 1: Like the things that she's stealing are so like I mean,

505
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:32,159
Speaker 1: she's stealing in a way that I understand why. It

506
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 1: like resonated with your audience at the time, and you

507
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: can see how it just like descends into fucking madness

508
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:42,200
Speaker 1: so quickly. The stuff with like the energy healing stuff

509
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:45,280
Speaker 1: is always an interesting discussion to me because there's some

510
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:48,000
Speaker 1: people now who, like, I think the real issue is

511
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: like when it's brought as like and you cannot use medicine,

512
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:53,919
Speaker 1: like medicine is not a thing you can use, it

513
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: can only be this, and then that is like, uh,

514
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: you're going to die, like goodbye. Um, And that's like

515
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: I think part of why like a lot of new

516
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 1: age people are so vulnerable to like anti vax rhetoric

517
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: as well, which like so many of them are and

518
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:12,439
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's weird. When I was in

519
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:15,400
Speaker 1: Florida doing research there there were some people who were

520
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 1: like energy healing overall medicine and it's like you're in

521
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 1: dangers and then there but there also were people who

522
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 1: are like I I like that kind of stuff, but

523
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:27,439
Speaker 1: but I use it as a tool, like almost more

524
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 1: of a meditative tool. And then I also go to doctors,

525
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: which I don't really give a shit about either way.

526
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: She's actually I mean part of when there are a

527
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:36,640
Speaker 1: couple of points in her life where she has health

528
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: issues and it's hard to tell what's real because a

529
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: lot of her health issues are like diagnosed by doctor.

530
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: She channels UM, so it's yeah, like that's going on

531
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: here too, Um like it's it's it's cool. Although I

532
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: haven't come across her saying anything in particular about vaccines.

533
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: Although this is the eighteen seventies so that was less

534
00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: of a thing. Yeah, but you know what is a thing,

535
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 1: Jamie loftus capitalism? Babe, Wow, hot take thank you. Here's

536
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: some ads. Oh we're back. You know what I liked

537
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: about those ads, Jamie? I like that they were ads

538
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: from Margaritaville. God, wouldn't that be amazing? What if you

539
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,480
Speaker 1: had like the Black Card for Margaritaville, Oh god, where

540
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: they put actual alcohol in the drinks? Yeah? Yeah, they're

541
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:32,719
Speaker 1: like did you know that? We don't. These bottles are

542
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 1: full of water, battery acid. With the with the black card,

543
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: you get actual alcohol and they'll go get you a

544
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 1: burger from five of guys, so you can actually consume

545
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 1: something that's that's edible or they're like at very at

546
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 1: least they're like, hey, um, so the burgers still aren't good,

547
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 1: but they're not like mysteriously wet. So there you go. Yeah,

548
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: wet in a way that isn't right for meat. So no,

549
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: it's not moist, it's we it's wet, it's soaking wet. Anyway,

550
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: go to Margaritaville. We love it so. In his first

551
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,479
Speaker 1: in his first article about Helena Blovotsky, Henry Olcott had

552
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: described her as quote a Russian lady of distinguished of

553
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:16,840
Speaker 1: distinguished birth, which is accurate. Um. He had also described

554
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:19,719
Speaker 1: her as having rare educational and natural endowments, which is

555
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:22,280
Speaker 1: also probably accurate, although I think he's kind of saying

556
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: she's hot there. Uh. Then he listed what we're becoming

557
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: the standard cliffs notes of her life. She had traveled

558
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: in most lands of the Orient, looked for and tiquities

559
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: at the base of the pyramids, beheld the mysteries of

560
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: Hindu temples, and traveled with armed escort far into the

561
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:41,280
Speaker 1: interior of Africa. Um, which I don't believe she ever

562
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: spent time in Africa other than like northern Africa, like

563
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: Egypt and stuff. But she's not in the Congo and

564
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: ship um. But that's popular at the time, right, this

565
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,720
Speaker 1: is the scramble for Africa going on Africa, Like white

566
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,680
Speaker 1: people can't not get enough stories of explorers in Africa,

567
00:30:56,720 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 1: so she's got to throw that in the resume now.

568
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: At first, Helena played koe about her beliefs regarding spiritualism.

569
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 1: She didn't think any of the mediums who dotted the

570
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: land were speaking to ghost but again basically psychic echoes.

571
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: She was also an occultist, so she believed that magic

572
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 1: could be used to accomplish things um. Once she'd known

573
00:31:13,560 --> 00:31:15,320
Speaker 1: Old Cott for a while and in the subject of

574
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:18,080
Speaker 1: several articles, she confided to him that she had a

575
00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: secret purpose in the United States, which was to reveal

576
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: the truth about spiritualism to people. So she brings Old

577
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: Catt and she's like, look, hey, this is all like

578
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: do you want to join me in my secret quest

579
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: to like pill the world about the occult um, Like

580
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: the United States needs to know that they've been getting

581
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: spiritualism wrong, and like I'm trying to sneak into this

582
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: community to to to to get this across. So in

583
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: her public writings and statements, she gradually becomes more and

584
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: more emphatic about her true beliefs, and this leads to

585
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: something of an uproar in the spiritualist community. Some people

586
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 1: pointed out rightly that it was dishonest for her to

587
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: hide her real feelings just to make a name for

588
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: herself in a field she didn't believe in. She would

589
00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:57,640
Speaker 1: later make up lurid stories about how she'd attempted to

590
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,040
Speaker 1: join occult groups in Europe and the United States have

591
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: been kicked out due to some nefarious plot. To keep

592
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: her from spreading her knowledge to the general population, she

593
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,480
Speaker 1: would like fake death threats against herself. She would also

594
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 1: fake letters from different occult organizations to Old coot Um

595
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 1: in order to like be like, you have to do

596
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 1: this where the order of the fucking I know, some

597
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: some Osiris or some ship in Egypt, and like, you

598
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 1: need to do this. Where do you find the fucking

599
00:32:23,160 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: time I did? I think it's interesting that it doesn't

600
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 1: like like she would. She would have infiltrated kind of

601
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:35,479
Speaker 1: any place that was vulnerable to her, infiltrating it. And

602
00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 1: I and I because I was sort of like, because

603
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:41,480
Speaker 1: her ideas divert so wildly so quickly, you're like, why spirituals?

604
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 1: And you're like, oh, I guess that there's only so

605
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: many religious movements that were accessible to women at all,

606
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: So that would have been an easy one. Yeah, I mean,

607
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 1: there's a number of reasons it makes sense. So after

608
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: her articles with old Cotts start to really get big,

609
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,280
Speaker 1: she gets a letter from a guy named Jerry Brown

610
00:32:56,320 --> 00:33:00,360
Speaker 1: who has a popular magazine called The Spiritual Scientist, and

611
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: he basically over time agrees to like starting with just

612
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:05,160
Speaker 1: kind of give it letting her write articles. He basically

613
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 1: turns his magazine into her personal mouthpiece, which she uses

614
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 1: to spread her belief Stephen Wider yeah Um. Eventually all

615
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:14,560
Speaker 1: the press around her earns her another interview with the

616
00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:18,320
Speaker 1: mainstream publication. Like the first real big one focused on her.

617
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 1: It's by the Daily Graphic, which is a sizeable publication

618
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 1: at the time. Mead writes quote at the newspaper office,

619
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: she blew smoke at the reporter and narrated a life

620
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: story peppered with more falsehoods than a cookie has crumbs.

621
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: Knocking three years from her age, she presented herself as

622
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 1: a former child bride married to a doddering seventy three

623
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 1: year old whose habits were not agreeable to me, and

624
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 1: as I had a fortune of my own, I decided

625
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: to travel. She mentioned, having lived in England and Egypt,

626
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: also in the Sudan, where she made a small fortune

627
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 1: after cornering the Ostrich feather market and at baden Baden,

628
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: where she lost a fortune at the gambling tables. In fact,

629
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 1: she declared moneyment nothing because fortunately she had received a

630
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:58,440
Speaker 1: sizeable legacy from Princess Bagration. Goggling. The reporter kept lighting

631
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: Helena's cigarettes and repeating that's a remarkable statement, to which

632
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: HBP would solemnly reply it's true. Name dropping constantly, she

633
00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 1: reeled off stories about Daniel Home, Charles Darwin, whose work

634
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: she claimed to have translated into Russian while in Africa,

635
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 1: Zar Alexander, and other persons likely to impress a newspaper reporter,

636
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 1: and he seems to be kind of both a little

637
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:22,759
Speaker 1: bit it's a combination of like laughing at her but

638
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:26,160
Speaker 1: also kind of dazzled by her. Um. He again describes

639
00:34:26,200 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: her as handsome and voluptuous in his article. A lot

640
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 1: of all the guys who write about her have to

641
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 1: talk about her appearance and stuff. Yeah, yeah, um, it's

642
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting stuff, um and yeah. By eighteen seventy five.

643
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: By late eighteen seventy five, she's probably the most influential

644
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 1: occult and spiritualist like related figure in the country. And

645
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 1: she decides then that it was finally the time to

646
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: form a secret society, this one themed after the Rosicrucian

647
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:56,759
Speaker 1: lodges that she believed had once existed. So she and

648
00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:59,800
Speaker 1: Olcott start what they called the Miracle Club, which sounds

649
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 1: like a modern like yeah, like everyone puts in ten

650
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 1: dollars and yeah, that does sound like a place that

651
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:11,919
Speaker 1: I could walk by. It's it's it's it's pretty good.

652
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 1: Even Lochman admits nothing too miraculous happened in it, but

653
00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:18,319
Speaker 1: he doesn't really talk about what the Miracle Club is.

654
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: Mead goes into a lot more detail. She says it

655
00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: was basically a private seiance club for New York socialists

656
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 1: who were forbidden to speak about what they saw during

657
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:29,359
Speaker 1: the seances um, which was mainly just to like make

658
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 1: them feel special, right, like if you make everyone sign

659
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: a blood introduced the exclusionary element, and this was like

660
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: a big like especially in New York City, was like

661
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: middle upper class kind of yeah, I mean to be honest,

662
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:44,880
Speaker 1: this is this is just a precursor to like the

663
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: board Ape Yacht Club and stuff like, oh you get

664
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:49,360
Speaker 1: this like secret chat room with all these influencers and

665
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 1: stuff and like nobody gets to know what goes on

666
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:54,880
Speaker 1: in there. And it's funny because usually what happens is nothing,

667
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 1: nothing at all, because these are these are very boring

668
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: people looking for something to make them feel exciting. Um

669
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:03,360
Speaker 1: So the medium that she brought on for this is

670
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:05,799
Speaker 1: a guy named David Dana, whose brother was the editor

671
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: of the New York Sun, Which is why she picks

672
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 1: him right, because she's she's always looking for publicity. The

673
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: whole thing collapses though, because Dana wanted to be paid

674
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 1: for the work that he was doing, and Blovotsky was like, oh, no,

675
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 1: you're we're not going to pay you for doing this

676
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 1: thing that's making us a bunch of money. Um So

677
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: he does the nineteenth century version of canceling her on

678
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: social media. Um Olcott later wrote quote The Wretch failed utterly,

679
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 1: not only as a medium, but was also reported to

680
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:31,279
Speaker 1: us as having spread calumnies against the one who had

681
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 1: done him kindness, the kindness of unpaid labor. Um. Yeah,

682
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:40,080
Speaker 1: he's being paid an exposure, Robert, he is getting paid

683
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,800
Speaker 1: an exposure. But also they can't talk about it. Listen,

684
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,920
Speaker 1: that's been that's look, that's how I didn't make an

685
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: income for six or seven years. Um, you were famously

686
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: channeling people from my miracle club, um, which we're not

687
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: allowed to talk about everyone. No, no, So despite her

688
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:02,719
Speaker 1: growing notoriety, times were tough for an aspiring spiritual guru. Uh.

689
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,320
Speaker 1: An economic recession had brought a swift into the easy

690
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 1: cash that some spiritual grifters had enjoyed over the last

691
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 1: few years. In a letter to a friend, Bulovotsky wrote,

692
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: there is terrible panic. Those who have got money hide it,

693
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,000
Speaker 1: and those who have not are dying of hunger. It

694
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 1: all does sound a lot like in f t S. Honestly,

695
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: like there's a weird similarity between like that crash and

696
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:24,759
Speaker 1: like the way they write about it at least, um

697
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,879
Speaker 1: I know, but it's like I also don't really by

698
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:30,160
Speaker 1: how she writes about it, Like I I just assume

699
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:33,319
Speaker 1: almost anything she says is like overblown, like blown out

700
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: of proportion because of her flair for the dramatique. And

701
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:39,640
Speaker 1: she yeah, she's she's claiming in some of these letters

702
00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: that her income, she's making more than six thousand dollars

703
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: a year, which is like a lot of money in

704
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:46,719
Speaker 1: the day. That's a very healthy income. But she's also

705
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: claiming at the same time, I'm broke because I keep

706
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:54,040
Speaker 1: putting all of the money back into the movement. Um, right,

707
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 1: So like she yeah, could be true. I mean it's

708
00:37:56,719 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: like hard to there, I know, at least with spiritualism,

709
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 1: but they're they're was always an issue with like the

710
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:06,440
Speaker 1: being like an influential movement, but the numbers being like

711
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:10,040
Speaker 1: constantly like really really really inflated to the point where

712
00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:11,879
Speaker 1: everyone was like, how could this religion be going broke?

713
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:14,279
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, not as many people are a

714
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 1: part of it, as they're saying, And it seems fair

715
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 1: to say that, like primarily the thing keeping her going

716
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,399
Speaker 1: is old Coot, who's good at raising funds, who's good

717
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:24,839
Speaker 1: at like putting money together and stuff. And he had

718
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: like pre existing class, yes, yes, and he's making sure

719
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: that there's always money, and she's kind of working him

720
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:34,240
Speaker 1: to the bone, right because she has expensive tastes, including

721
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:37,919
Speaker 1: a pound to day tobacco habit. Now. At the time,

722
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 1: the center of Bolovotsky social life was the Lotos Club,

723
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 1: a parlor where she and Oldcott held court with regular

724
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: audiences of spiritualists, mediums, and quote bright clever people of

725
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 1: occult leanings. According to old Coott. Many of the latter

726
00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 1: were scientists, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and other people with a

727
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: kind of influence and resources that could support growing movement.

728
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 1: One of them, Reverend doctor J. H. Wiggan, edited a

729
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:02,280
Speaker 1: paper call The Liberal Christian. He wrote after a visit

730
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:07,799
Speaker 1: that topics Yeah, yeah, yeah Christian, he wrote after a visit.

731
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:10,320
Speaker 1: The topics discussed in the Night at the Salon included

732
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 1: whether or not flowers had souls, penises, and religious worship, gravitation,

733
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 1: something called jugglery and chemistry. I think it's juggling science. Junglery.

734
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: Isn't that just physics? Like what? Um, that's that's it's

735
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:31,480
Speaker 1: so that like that sounds so silly. And I'm also like, yeah,

736
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: that's like exactly the kind of like conflations that would

737
00:39:34,239 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 1: happen all the time of like stuff that sounds absolutely ridiculous.

738
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 1: But like at the time you're like, yeah, let's not

739
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:43,879
Speaker 1: rule out that flowers have souls because uh, there's we're

740
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,760
Speaker 1: about to get fucking planes and like X rays exist,

741
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:51,400
Speaker 1: like and ice cream has been invented. Yes, it's it's

742
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Um and it's yeah, it's it's it's It's

743
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: interesting one of the things that this guy complains about

744
00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: that a lot of people complain about her chain smoking

745
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 1: and how bad it makes everything smell. And again, this

746
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 1: is the eighteen seventies, and dudes keep being like this

747
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:10,920
Speaker 1: lady smokes a lot, Like this lady is smoking too much. No,

748
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 1: one is never not smoking in this period, and she's

749
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:18,359
Speaker 1: smoking to alarm someone in eighteen seventy. Think about think

750
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:20,799
Speaker 1: about how much a cigarette ways, and think about what

751
00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:25,359
Speaker 1: a pounded day of tobacco actually means to smoke. That's

752
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 1: like a brick of cigars. I kind of blocked that

753
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: out since our last recording, and a pound that that's

754
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: a nightmare amount of tobacco. I hope that that is

755
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 1: the only figure in this entire story that has not

756
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:43,319
Speaker 1: been inflated. Then I don't think it is. So it is.

757
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why I think that's probably accurate

758
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,359
Speaker 1: is so many different kinds of people comment on it

759
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, this lady smokes like nobody I've ever seen. Um. Now,

760
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 1: it was from this poorous group of hangers on who

761
00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: formed Bolvatsky's Parlot that the Theosophical Society would develop meat rights.

762
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, September seven, a crowd of seventeen gathered in

763
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:07,480
Speaker 1: her parlor to hear George H. Felt, an engineer and architect,

764
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:10,319
Speaker 1: give an unusually dense lecture on the lost canon of

765
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:13,480
Speaker 1: proportion of the Egyptians. This was not Felt's first appearance

766
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:15,840
Speaker 1: at Madame's, for he had been introduced by one of

767
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,800
Speaker 1: the regulars, Charles Southern, a rare book expert who was

768
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:23,759
Speaker 1: editor of the American Biblio Bibliopolist. Helena had Felt had

769
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: found Felt interesting and asked him to give an informal

770
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 1: lecture which would offer her guests something out of the ordinary.

771
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:31,919
Speaker 1: Having brought with him some nicely done illustrations, Felt began

772
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:35,880
Speaker 1: somewhat ponderously by explaining his theory that the architectural proportion

773
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:40,320
Speaker 1: employed by the ancient Egyptians was actually observed in templar hieroglyphics.

774
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: The audience proceeded to yawn, but visibly perked up when

775
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 1: Felt went on to remark that the Egyptians had been

776
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: adepts and magical science, and that some of their hieroglyphic

777
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:52,279
Speaker 1: figures were realistic drawings of elementals, the messenger spirits who

778
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:55,319
Speaker 1: pop up at seances. He himself he added modestly, had

779
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 1: discovered an ancient formula for evoking elementals. Would it be

780
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:00,840
Speaker 1: possible for him to do a demonst ration? Could he

781
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,800
Speaker 1: actually call forth an elemental? He announced that he could

782
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: if they were willing to finance the operation and pay

783
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: for his time. Of course, Henry wrote an old diary leaves.

784
00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:12,080
Speaker 1: We passed on an informal vote of hearty thanks for

785
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:15,919
Speaker 1: his highly interesting lecture, and an animated discussion followed. While

786
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:18,080
Speaker 1: people were chatting, it occurred to Henry that it would

787
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: be good, a good thing to form a society to

788
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 1: pursue and promote such a cult research. On a scrap

789
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:25,359
Speaker 1: of paper, he scribbled, would it not be a good

790
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: thing to form a society for this kind of study?

791
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 1: And handed it to William Judge to pass over to HPB,

792
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:33,759
Speaker 1: who read it and nodded her head. Olcott got up

793
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,960
Speaker 1: and presented his idea to enthusiastic Murmurs and George Felt

794
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 1: promised he would teach them to evoke and control elementals.

795
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:43,840
Speaker 1: Thus it was unanimously agreed that Olcott Society would be formed.

796
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:48,279
Speaker 1: This is what becomes theosophy which this based on. That

797
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: description does sound kind of par for the course with

798
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,759
Speaker 1: how um the Great Beyond and science were kind of

799
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:58,279
Speaker 1: related at the time. There's usually some sort of like

800
00:42:58,719 --> 00:43:03,279
Speaker 1: scientific like intermediary So for like I mean, you know,

801
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 1: because you were you would Paul left as we're all

802
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: we're on the entire episode. It was like ectoplasm that

803
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 1: was like an excreting goop that mediums could make that

804
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:16,800
Speaker 1: would connect you to the like this this all sounds

805
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:19,839
Speaker 1: kind of par for the course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

806
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:23,439
Speaker 1: yet I feel another hard left well again because they're

807
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:26,800
Speaker 1: number one, They're they're trying to like actually control this stuff,

808
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:30,239
Speaker 1: which is which is different, but um no, it's not

809
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 1: wildly different from the kind of things that are going

810
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:35,319
Speaker 1: to come later on. And part of that, part of

811
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: like the fact that it isn't wildly different, is why

812
00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: Bulovatsky is not that into it at first. Again it's

813
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 1: old Coot. He's the guy who starts what becomes the

814
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:47,880
Speaker 1: Theosophical Society. Um. Now, obviously later on she would claim

815
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 1: that the society had been formed by her. Her master

816
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 1: in Tibet had ordered her to make a society and

817
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:57,719
Speaker 1: like that's how it had started, Um my imaginary friend. Yeah,

818
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 1: but she only starts claiming that after it gets big, right, Um, Like,

819
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:07,759
Speaker 1: at first it's it's small. There's like financial difficulties. Um yeah,

820
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:09,359
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a second. But when they

821
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:13,279
Speaker 1: form what becomes the Theosophical Society, Um, it's with the

822
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,840
Speaker 1: promise to provide seekers with quote, a synthesis of science, religion,

823
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 1: and philosophy. The Society had three objectives. Number one, to

824
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without

825
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 1: distinction of race, creed, sex, cast or color. To to

826
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science. Three

827
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:32,960
Speaker 1: to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers

828
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,759
Speaker 1: latent in man. Now, despite again her later claims, Plovotsky

829
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: seems to have mostly sat back and let Olcott do

830
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:41,520
Speaker 1: the organizing and fundraising. Will she like, smokes a bunch

831
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:44,359
Speaker 1: and goes on vacation. I mean, someone's got to keep

832
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 1: mommy full of SIGs. Yeah, keep Mommy full of figs.

833
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 1: She's she's um and you know she Uh. It was

834
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:53,439
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where she would be very hands

835
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: off until he did something she didn't like, and then

836
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: she would have she lose it. Well, she would know

837
00:44:58,040 --> 00:44:59,919
Speaker 1: she would have one of her ghosts or her spirit

838
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:02,439
Speaker 1: friends sent him a letter that's like, oh, the guys

839
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 1: in Tibet wants you to do something different, buddy, Okay,

840
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:10,720
Speaker 1: that's yeah, Um, yeah, it's pretty cool. Um. Of course

841
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 1: there were issues at once, namely the fact that George

842
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:16,920
Speaker 1: Felt never managed to summon an elemental UM. Henry was

843
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 1: hesitant to throw more of the of the Society's money

844
00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:21,600
Speaker 1: at the man, but Helena convinced him that he would

845
00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:24,800
Speaker 1: do the deed eventually, So Henry kept putting Society money

846
00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 1: into like fund. This guy who was a grifter, Felt

847
00:45:27,280 --> 00:45:31,360
Speaker 1: takes the money and like just disappears eventually. Um. And

848
00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: this causes skeptics in New York to mock the society

849
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 1: membership falls. There's like articles about this stuff, and Helena

850
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 1: herself stops attending meetings entirely. Um. Now, she had a

851
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: lot to worry about in her personal life. At this point,

852
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,879
Speaker 1: she had gotten bigumously married and was struggling to hide

853
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 1: her second husband from her first one. UM. She had

854
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:52,840
Speaker 1: also started to oh, there's these these two fucking guys.

855
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: It's not important. Um. But yeah, she's definitely like illegally

856
00:45:56,600 --> 00:45:59,959
Speaker 1: married to two people at the same time. Um. She's

857
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:02,320
Speaker 1: also started to work on a book, which Meade writes

858
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:05,239
Speaker 1: was intended to quote salvage the ancient world from the

859
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:08,800
Speaker 1: modern stigma of superstition and ignorance. In short, she wanted

860
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 1: to write a book that would synthesize all her knockoff

861
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: Buddhist and Hindu beliefs with American spiritualism. For months, Henry

862
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: funded her writing and trips to upstate New York to

863
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:20,240
Speaker 1: do more writing while she smoked and fucked her illegal husband's.

864
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 1: She is not getting a lot of writing done for

865
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 1: the first year or so that she's working on this book. Um,

866
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 1: but she is getting a lot of illegal marriage stuff done.

867
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,440
Speaker 1: So that's that's good. You know what else is illegal? Jamie?

868
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:35,120
Speaker 1: What all the products that we're about? Product this podcast?

869
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: This week is crime Week, and we are entirely sponsored

870
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 1: by illegal explosives. Umme week, controlled substances. Uh, the works

871
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 1: of Woody Allen. Yeah, um, all all our sponsors. You've

872
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 1: lost me, you've lost me. Well, yeah, you know you're

873
00:46:57,160 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: going to be into crimes. You've got to be into crimes, Jamie. Okay, Well,

874
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:05,359
Speaker 1: I I renounced. I renounced that brand of Let's just

875
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:07,359
Speaker 1: cut to a break it's just cut to a break

876
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:16,919
Speaker 1: rather than discussing the Christine Oh my God minions. Yeah,

877
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 1: I go see minions. We're back, Jamie. Do you think

878
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:28,760
Speaker 1: Woody Allen got minions? Like if they follow around violins

879
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: talking to you about Woody Allen any more? Can I

880
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: tell you something though? Um? I? Do you know how

881
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:36,839
Speaker 1: I told you earlier? I was eating easy Mac before

882
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: the episode, Yes, but only because I was eating swift Mac.

883
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 1: I was eating off brand easy Bac called swift Mac.

884
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 1: Is it easier or is it harder? It was harder

885
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:48,760
Speaker 1: and less good. Do you think the Minions had anything

886
00:47:48,840 --> 00:47:51,640
Speaker 1: to do with Swift Mac? No? I don't think that. No,

887
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:54,239
Speaker 1: because they're They're one thing get to know about the

888
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: minions are abys. They love bananas, and that's kind of

889
00:47:57,080 --> 00:48:02,359
Speaker 1: like they're only interesting. Yeah, there's something freudy and going

890
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: on there, But you think the minions are going to

891
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:08,840
Speaker 1: explore that. I don't. Speaking of bananas, um and speaking

892
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:13,320
Speaker 1: of the minions, primarily, oct is Helena Blavotsky's minion um

893
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 1: and so wow, she's she's bigorously married, she's like him,

894
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:22,399
Speaker 1: she grew he's minions. Yeah, she has definitely grew and

895
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 1: and again, she's she's kind of abusing him during this

896
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:28,120
Speaker 1: period of time because she's she is living she is

897
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 1: living well, right, She's not only like has these secret husbands,

898
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: but like she's she's living a life of leisure and

899
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 1: luxury off of society money which is provided by olcott Um.

900
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:42,960
Speaker 1: And at the same time, she has started to preach asceticism,

901
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: the idea that like, in order to be an occultist,

902
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: you have to avoid all of the pleasures of the flesh.

903
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:51,240
Speaker 1: You can't have sex, right, a good occultist isn't fucking.

904
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 1: You have to be like celibate, you don't eat meat,

905
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: you have to be a vegetarian. Um, you can't drink alcohol.

906
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:00,480
Speaker 1: And like Henry, a lot of the early ulchure of

907
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: like the salon and stuff that they ran together was

908
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 1: like based on drinking. They had a bar. So he

909
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:08,360
Speaker 1: changes his life on a dime when she starts preaching this,

910
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 1: and in fact, he gets so obsessed with like the

911
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,240
Speaker 1: different rules about food that she is not abiding by herself,

912
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:16,719
Speaker 1: but that she makes that he becomes anorexic, Like he

913
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:21,239
Speaker 1: stops eating for days at a time. Yeah, it's she.

914
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 1: She really does a number on this guy and Oh

915
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: my god, that's so um that makes me so sad

916
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 1: for that was the twist I wasn't expecting. He is

917
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:35,719
Speaker 1: such a he is such a follower to her, like

918
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:40,879
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Like again, there's it's either brain you could

919
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:42,319
Speaker 1: look at it that way and maybe that's the right

920
00:49:42,360 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 1: way to do it, or maybe it's just that like

921
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:46,239
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, this guy had a hole in his

922
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 1: life that she just figured out perfectly how to fill.

923
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: Like you do you get the feeling with Old that

924
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:54,360
Speaker 1: he was always waiting to be this guy while he

925
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:59,080
Speaker 1: was like kind of like sleepwalking through life successfully. He

926
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:01,080
Speaker 1: was like this is the thing that he wanted was

927
00:50:01,160 --> 00:50:08,520
Speaker 1: to like be this which lady wizard ladies yeah yeah yeah.

928
00:50:08,880 --> 00:50:13,800
Speaker 1: Um so while while he's living this way at her orders.

929
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:19,400
Speaker 1: Thomas Stawazinski describes Blovotsky's lifestyle. She worked on it the

930
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: book every day, stopping only for meal breaks. Her favorite

931
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:24,480
Speaker 1: food was fried eggs soaked in butter. She smoked one

932
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 1: cigarette after another. Old Codd estimated that she could get

933
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:30,280
Speaker 1: through up to a hundred cigarettes a day. Madame claimed

934
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 1: she received a lot of her materials and telepathic messages

935
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:35,840
Speaker 1: from Morea and Kut humie, but healthy lifestyle advice seemed

936
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 1: to be on the master's area of expertise um, and

937
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 1: she does eventually come out with her book. It takes

938
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:44,640
Speaker 1: her a couple of years, but isis unveiled comes out

939
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:48,360
Speaker 1: in September of eighteen seventy seven. Thomas writes, quote, it

940
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 1: was founded on one major claim. All the religions of

941
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:53,560
Speaker 1: the world, both those currently followed and the ones to come,

942
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:57,319
Speaker 1: derived from one common source, ancient her medic philosophy. It's

943
00:50:57,320 --> 00:50:59,960
Speaker 1: basic premises are contained in Corpus her medicum, a tech

944
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 1: of unclear origin, translated into Italian and popularized in the

945
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 1: fifteenth century by a Renaissance philosopher and Marsilio Ficino. According

946
00:51:08,080 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 1: to Corpus Hermeticum, the universe is an intricate system of

947
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:14,200
Speaker 1: various emanations. Material reality is a product of a complex

948
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:18,520
Speaker 1: evolutionary process which subtle spiritual levels of existence create new layers,

949
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: dinser and more physical. The history of the human race

950
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:23,000
Speaker 1: is subject to the same law, but in fact it

951
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 1: works in an opposite direction than proposed by Charles Darwin.

952
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 1: Humans evolved downwards, so to speak, from advanced spiritual beings

953
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:32,400
Speaker 1: to more lowly forms but there is another aspect of

954
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:35,560
Speaker 1: it too. The human spirit, trapped inside the physical body

955
00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,520
Speaker 1: misses the perfection of higher planes of reality. The spirit

956
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:41,680
Speaker 1: can develop and protect and perfect itself through theosophy to

957
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:45,080
Speaker 1: turn to its sources as soon as possible. Therefore, evolution

958
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 1: is too directional. Now, Jamie, does that sound like a

959
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 1: religion that's popular in the town where you currently live?

960
00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 1: Does that sound at all like scientology? To you? We

961
00:51:55,080 --> 00:51:59,279
Speaker 1: are spirit and you can teach yourself to Yeah, exactly, now,

962
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:01,120
Speaker 1: sorry for us. Good. I thought you're talking. I thought

963
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:03,960
Speaker 1: you were your ship talking Brock to Massachusetts and I

964
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:08,919
Speaker 1: was like, no, they're all Catholics there, Uh no, yes, absolutely,

965
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 1: And this is uh yes, it's it's fan fan like

966
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: scary fan fiction religionship. Yeah. And l Ron Hubbard is

967
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,439
Speaker 1: He's obviously not alive when she is doing her ship,

968
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:23,680
Speaker 1: but he is. He is he enter her? I actually, yes,

969
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:26,080
Speaker 1: he's hugely into Blotsky. He's reads her a bunch when

970
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: he's younger, like because he's he's very much into the

971
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 1: occult ship of the twenties. He has sex magic with

972
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: Jack Parsons, the inventor of the rocket and ship right

973
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:39,399
Speaker 1: like he is absolutely into this ship. Yeah, and he's

974
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:43,080
Speaker 1: clearly he's Yeah, in the same way she's like ripping

975
00:52:43,080 --> 00:52:45,520
Speaker 1: off the corpus her medical the corpus her medicum. She's

976
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:48,800
Speaker 1: taking bits of Lward Edward Bulward Litton stuff. She's mixing

977
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:51,800
Speaker 1: in like Eastern religion. L Ron Hubbard is just doing

978
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:54,200
Speaker 1: a version of what she did to her stuff too, right,

979
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:56,439
Speaker 1: Like that's and he's like mixing and in his case,

980
00:52:56,480 --> 00:52:58,719
Speaker 1: he's taking the new fairly new science at the time

981
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: of like psychology and mixing that in with this occult

982
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:05,759
Speaker 1: is stuff. Um right, well it's also and like at

983
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:09,760
Speaker 1: the beginning of psychology was also like influenced by spiritualism

984
00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 1: at the first psychological text evolved spiritualism and then like

985
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:18,320
Speaker 1: phased it out pretty thoroughly by like their early nineteen hundreds.

986
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:22,600
Speaker 1: But like early stuff which I just didn't didn't know. Um,

987
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:26,279
Speaker 1: but yeah, all this ship is interconnected. But that is

988
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:30,240
Speaker 1: that is very uh, that's that's ringing some miscabbage bells

989
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:34,520
Speaker 1: for Jamie now before isis unveiled. Helena Blovotsky had been

990
00:53:34,600 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 1: again very prominent in the New York weirdo occult is

991
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:39,959
Speaker 1: spiritualist scene because of her writing there were people around

992
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:42,359
Speaker 1: the world who knew of her. But after this book

993
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 1: is a hit, and after it she becomes a bona

994
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:48,480
Speaker 1: fide celebrity. Suddenly the Theosophical Society was swarmed with new

995
00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 1: potential members. New York High Society began to delve back

996
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,920
Speaker 1: into alternative religion, now with a much stronger occult angle.

997
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:57,600
Speaker 1: From time to time, Blovotsky would put on shows summoning

998
00:53:57,640 --> 00:54:00,400
Speaker 1: objects from far away, having letters delivered by her, reporting

999
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: spectral masters, masters, etcetera. With fame came mo money, but Jamie,

1000
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:09,799
Speaker 1: with MO money came MO problems. Journalists time I'm hearing this,

1001
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 1: I know I invented that phrase. Journalists began to turn

1002
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 1: their eyes to her budding empire, and they start tearing

1003
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 1: apart her claims of celibacy and a staticism because she's claiming, like, right,

1004
00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:21,400
Speaker 1: I have never had sex, you know, I don't indulge

1005
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:23,560
Speaker 1: in any these vices of the flesh, which like she's

1006
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:26,719
Speaker 1: out in public doing all this stuff. Like everyone who's like, yeah,

1007
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:29,560
Speaker 1: she's like bigamous, lee married, everyone talks about it, and

1008
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:32,319
Speaker 1: like she's constantly smoking and eating all of this rich

1009
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:35,359
Speaker 1: food like where it's like, yeah, like live your life

1010
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: but that's yeah, you're not composition everything you say that.

1011
00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:43,280
Speaker 1: I can't get past your use of the phrase budding empire.

1012
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:47,120
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. She's she's making an empart. Yeah, I know,

1013
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:50,040
Speaker 1: but that phrase is just really um, it's like it's

1014
00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:53,439
Speaker 1: a horny phrase. It is a horny phrase. Um. And

1015
00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:57,759
Speaker 1: Helena Blovotsky probably a pretty horny person, if you can judge.

1016
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: She was biguously married. But but we're we're not ready

1017
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:05,280
Speaker 1: to talk about that, no. Um. So it was pointed

1018
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:07,280
Speaker 1: out that many of these letters seemed to be written

1019
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:09,800
Speaker 1: in her handwriting by these journalists who start like tearing

1020
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 1: her apart um. And so it just becomes like the

1021
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:16,759
Speaker 1: fact that she gets famous also leads to a lot

1022
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:19,880
Speaker 1: of negative attention. Um. And you get the feeling it

1023
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:21,759
Speaker 1: just kind of overwhelms her at a certain point. And

1024
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:24,080
Speaker 1: now that she's got money, she has the opportunity to

1025
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: like maintain and build this religion that she started somewhere

1026
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:30,839
Speaker 1: other than the United States where people are looking too

1027
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:33,239
Speaker 1: much into her business. L Ron Hubbard does this too, right.

1028
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: He moves to England and he takes to the sea.

1029
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:38,759
Speaker 1: She goes to England first, also like Ron Hubbard, and

1030
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:43,000
Speaker 1: sets up offices there. But after she's like established theosophy

1031
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 1: in England, she moves to India, and that is what

1032
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:48,960
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in part four, along with

1033
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:52,360
Speaker 1: finally a lot more information about how she accomplished a

1034
00:55:52,360 --> 00:55:54,880
Speaker 1: lot of these tricks, because it's after India that becomes clear.

1035
00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:57,200
Speaker 1: And then we're going to talk about the Nazis. But Jamie,

1036
00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 1: you know who's not a Nazi? Definitely me? That's right,

1037
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:06,719
Speaker 1: That's right. Why don't you plug your awesome credit for me? Um? Okay,

1038
00:56:07,239 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 1: you can listen to my podcast ghost Church on cool

1039
00:56:11,080 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: Zone Media. It's about the history of American spiritualism, which

1040
00:56:16,760 --> 00:56:22,080
Speaker 1: I think we've officially now diverged from just in the story, um,

1041
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:25,080
Speaker 1: And so you can hear about the history and then

1042
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 1: me going to a spiritualist camp in Florida there or

1043
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:30,640
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter or Jamie long to

1044
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:36,400
Speaker 1: help Instagram, Jamie christ Superstar. Go find Jamie on the internet.

1045
00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:40,319
Speaker 1: Listen to Ghost Church. It is the best podcast that

1046
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:43,560
Speaker 1: you can listen to right now. Um. Your episode, Um

1047
00:56:43,880 --> 00:56:46,799
Speaker 1: was truly I think my favorite in the series. You

1048
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:49,920
Speaker 1: and Paul just really it was good. You know you

1049
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:51,960
Speaker 1: there's a lot on the cutting room floor when you

1050
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:54,960
Speaker 1: when you finally release the loftist cut um, and that

1051
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:59,040
Speaker 1: that full five hour conversation we had. Um. Yeah, I

1052
00:56:59,040 --> 00:57:01,600
Speaker 1: think that people are going to be upset, but that

1053
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:05,319
Speaker 1: people will you know, it would be controversial to at

1054
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:07,960
Speaker 1: least a lot of what was said. Yeah, And I honestly,

1055
00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:10,560
Speaker 1: you know, I've gone back and forth on this a lot,

1056
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:12,200
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of what we said about

1057
00:57:12,239 --> 00:57:17,120
Speaker 1: Donald Rumsfeld was legally slander. Um. But well, why do

1058
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 1: you think you did right? Jamie Loft is protecting Donald

1059
00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 1: Rumsfeld and you the listener go home and find a

1060
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:28,440
Speaker 1: way to protect Donald Rumpsfeld in your own life. Until

1061
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 1: Part four