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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: How did you get involved in the occult and what

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about tonight, magic and things like that.

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Speaker 1: You know, it all started when I was a little kid.

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Speaker 1: I grew up in the Great Borough of Queens here

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Speaker 1: in New York City. At the age of nine, I

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Speaker 1: was fascinated with mysticism and folklore and myths. And there

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Speaker 1: was a little machine at a local diner that distributed

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Speaker 1: a weekly astrology scroll and I would buy it and

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Speaker 1: I wondered where did all these symbols come from? And

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Speaker 1: how did they reach us in Queens And it still

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Speaker 1: strikes me as fascinating today that most people walking around

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Speaker 1: in modern life, whether their believers or not, could tell

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Speaker 1: you their sun sign and something about it. And these

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Speaker 1: occult and esoteric beliefs have endured literally across millennia, and

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Speaker 1: I always wanted to discover as a kid, and now

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Speaker 1: as an adult, where it all comes from. How was

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Speaker 1: your movie doing The Kabalion? Oh? Incredibly well. The Kabalian

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Speaker 1: premiered at as the number three documentary on iTunes when

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Speaker 1: it launched this past January. And I'm actually doing a

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Speaker 1: live screening in Brooklyn this coming Saturday night at a

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Speaker 1: place called Film War Cinema. I'm going to be traveling

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Speaker 1: to Los Angeles with it in July and the response

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Speaker 1: has really been wonderful, excellent. I should be in Los

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Speaker 1: Angeles and July, so you make sure you track us down.

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Speaker 1: We'll do. Thank you. Now, what does Cabelian mean? You know,

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Speaker 1: nobody knows what Kabalian means. It's a word that not

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Speaker 1: even you, not even me. No, and if I did,

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Speaker 1: I would tell the Coast family. But it's a word

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Speaker 1: that was coined by the author in nineteen oh eight,

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Speaker 1: and it is probably it is probably a Hellenized version

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Speaker 1: of the word kabala. It's probably sort of his attempt

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Speaker 1: to make a phonetic version of the word kabbala in Greek.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to introduce you as an expert not only

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Speaker 1: in magic, but of the macabre, but you're really not

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Speaker 1: that kind of a person. Well, I'm interested in all

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Speaker 1: things are came and we can put it that way.

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Speaker 1: But the life I lead is one of reciprocity. And

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Speaker 1: I hope that the people who live in my building

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Speaker 1: think of me not as the occult guy, but think

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Speaker 1: of me as a good neighbor exactly. Now, you have

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Speaker 1: talked about magic a lot, but you spell it mgic K. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: where does that K come from? I put a K

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Speaker 1: at the end because that's the early modern spelling, and

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Speaker 1: that is a way of distinguishing it from stagecraft or

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Speaker 1: magic as entertainment. What is magic to you, Mitch? To me,

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Speaker 1: magic is the method of expanding your will into the world.

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Speaker 1: We all have needs. We all have very serious needs.

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Speaker 1: They might relate to job, money, relationship, health, you name it.

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Speaker 1: These are legitimate needs and I want people to have

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Speaker 1: every means possible to act on them. Can magic be abused,

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Speaker 1: No question about it. Anything can be abused. I always

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Speaker 1: hasten to tell people magic can be abused. Any form

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Speaker 1: of religion, any form of therapy, can be abused if

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Speaker 1: the individual does not have an ethic of reciprocity. There's

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Speaker 1: or what some people might call karma. There's always a

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Speaker 1: danger of abuse. Would you call spells, rituals curses? All?

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Speaker 1: That was that part of magic too? Absolutely? Absolutely, I

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Speaker 1: would not mess around with curses. You know, I get

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Speaker 1: a lot of questions about curses, and there aren't too

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Speaker 1: many practitioners out there who do them, because I think

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Speaker 1: the awareness is that there's a rebound effect. Whatever you

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Speaker 1: put out into the world one way or the other

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Speaker 1: is coming back to you. It is an absolute law

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Speaker 1: of life, you might call it the law of compensation,

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Speaker 1: and curses are absolutely going to rebound to whomever the

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Speaker 1: wielder is. I was stumbled across some movie on Amazon

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Speaker 1: last week late at night, and the guy who was

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Speaker 1: the star of the movie weighed about four hundred pounds

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Speaker 1: and he ran into a gypsy and something happened where

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Speaker 1: the gypsy was a real old gypsy man, and he

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Speaker 1: cursed this guy. Yeah, and one of the curses included

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Speaker 1: that he was going to wither away to nothing, right, soner,

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Speaker 1: is that the name of the movie Dinner? Yeah? That

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Speaker 1: was a Stephen King novel. Yes, that's it exactly, that's it.

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Speaker 1: And the guy withers away down to practically nothing for something,

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Speaker 1: but that was a curse. Yeah. Yeah. Again. You can

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Speaker 1: find people who cast curses, but they're not too easy

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Speaker 1: to find. And I don't recommend availing yourself of it

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Speaker 1: because I really do believe that there is a certain

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Speaker 1: unity in human life, There is a certain reciprocity. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's my basic ethic. I keep coming back to that,

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Speaker 1: and whatever you put out into the world is going

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Speaker 1: to be paid back to you, sometimes in multiples. Would

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Speaker 1: you call prayer magic? Absolutely? Absolutely. I take a very

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Speaker 1: radical view of prayer. Obviously, you know, prayer, you know

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Speaker 1: has some basis in Western scripture, but it's been practiced

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Speaker 1: by people all over the world world for millennia, from

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Speaker 1: Polynesia to Siberia. If a person belongs to one of

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Speaker 1: the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, of course prayer is familiar

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Speaker 1: as a monotheistic practice, but I encourage people to take

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Speaker 1: a very flexible approach. If there is an ancient god

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Speaker 1: from the pantheon of gods that populate human history, that

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Speaker 1: you feel a relationship, that you feel drawn to experiment with,

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Speaker 1: that experiment with it, forming a petitionary relationship with an

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Speaker 1: unseen energy which our ancient ancestors would sometimes deify or

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Speaker 1: personify and give names like Jupiter or Mercury or Set.

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Speaker 1: That can be just an extraordinary exercise in personal power.

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Speaker 1: And I encourage a very radical approach to prayer. Mitchen's

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Speaker 1: magic part of the occult. Absolutely. The occult is a

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Speaker 1: term that originally comes from Latin just meaning unseen or hidden,

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Speaker 1: and it grew popular during the Renaissance. It was a

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Speaker 1: way of referring to the religions of the ancient world,

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Speaker 1: the primeval world, Persia, each Gyp, Greece, Rome, and so

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Speaker 1: cult practices are as old as humanity itself. Why does

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Speaker 1: a cult seem dark in evil? It's really not. It's

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Speaker 1: not overall, it's not at all, and it certainly wasn't

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Speaker 1: conceived of that way by its practitioners. In late antiquity,

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Speaker 1: at least here in the Western world, the Church, the

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Speaker 1: early Church, was in a struggle with the remaining nature religions.

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Speaker 1: The nature religions were more or less vanquished, and as

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Speaker 1: always happens in human history, the victor gets to define

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Speaker 1: the vanquished however it wants, and so the vanquished was

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Speaker 1: defined as somehow evil or sinister, and that came to

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Speaker 1: be associated with a cult. Interesting take. I had been

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Speaker 1: told by a voodoo practitioner that Western media destroyed voodooism

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Speaker 1: by claiming that it was evil because they would see

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Speaker 1: these little dolls in pins stuck up when all they

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Speaker 1: were doing was naming the person they were praying for.

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Speaker 1: Right and that's an important point. Voodoo is a proper

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Speaker 1: Afro Caribe religion and it's funny. Just yesterday, just yesterday,

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Speaker 1: I was reading a column in the New York Times

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Speaker 1: that talked about voodoo economics, that old phrase, you know, right,

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Speaker 1: being economics. That's paste it together. That's tricky, and that's

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Speaker 1: going to come back and bite you. And so this

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Speaker 1: does continue. You know, the term voodoo is sort of

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Speaker 1: used as a synonym for mumbo jumbo, but it's a

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Speaker 1: real religion and it's it's practiced very devoutly in the

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Speaker 1: Caribbean and here in the US. Well, with Mitch Horowitz,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about magic and voodoo, the practitioners of magic

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Speaker 1: that we have been raised as kids. Makes it seem

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Speaker 1: like a fun thing, doesn't it. Well, it's an interesting thing.

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Speaker 1: Entertainment influences is quite a bit. So we'll see magicians

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Speaker 1: or gypsies or wizards and entertainment and you know, depending

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Speaker 1: upon which episode of the Harry Potter film series you're watching,

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Speaker 1: it can seem very fun, but it also can seem

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Speaker 1: very harrowing. You know, magic is just part of the

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Speaker 1: human situation, and it has the same spectrum of emotions

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Speaker 1: and ethical issues that exist in the human situation. My

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Speaker 1: mother talked of a magician named Blackstone, I guess years ago,

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Speaker 1: and she's claimed that he was one of the best magicians.

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Speaker 1: But the magic has been around a long time, a

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Speaker 1: long time, you know. Look, magic goes back to he

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Speaker 1: goes back to first of all all holy books in

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Speaker 1: the Eastern and Western world. But you'll find magic in

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Speaker 1: the Bible, in the Book of Genesis. When Joseph was

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Speaker 1: the prime minister of Egypt, people would run in front

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Speaker 1: of his chariot and yell a brock, a brock. None

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Speaker 1: of us really know what that term means. It might

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Speaker 1: be an Arabic or Aramaic term for blessing, but a

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Speaker 1: brock is also the root of our own term abracadabra.

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Speaker 1: Do you think magic, under the proper handling can do

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Speaker 1: incredible things? I do. I do think that we also

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Speaker 1: live under many laws and forces. Magic adds something extra,

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Speaker 1: and I think that if you need something that will

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Speaker 1: just tilt the scales in your favor, magic can absolutely

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Speaker 1: be of assistance. Was Houdini a magician or an escape artist? Well,

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Speaker 1: Houdini was a great stage magician, one of the greatest

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Speaker 1: of all time, and he was a great critic of

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Speaker 1: people who talked like I do, who sought to practice

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Speaker 1: magic from a spiritual perspective. But that was probably because

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Speaker 1: he was fascinated with it and he was obsessed with mediums.

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Speaker 1: He tried to find as many corrupt mediums as he can, Yes,

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Speaker 1: and he found quite a few. And there were people,

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Speaker 1: there were mediums that were preying upon people's grief for

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Speaker 1: their needs. And there were also some very unsolved mysteries

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Speaker 1: and some very real questions which I figured, like great

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Speaker 1: scientists like William James probed contemporaneous to Houdini. Do you

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Speaker 1: think Jesus might have been a magician? Well, it's an

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Speaker 1: interesting question. I have friends who write about Jesus as

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Speaker 1: a magician, as a great disruptor, as a great spiritual revolutionary.

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Speaker 1: So in a certain sense, you could see turning water

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Speaker 1: into wine as a kind of active divine magic, or

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Speaker 1: raising someone from the dead. Yeah, I mean, these are

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Speaker 1: things that were very deeply embedded in the practices of

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Speaker 1: the ancient world. And so in some regards, you read

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Speaker 1: accounts of the miraculous in scripture, you're reading accounts of magic.

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Speaker 1: Tell Us about Maxwell malts Oh He was an interesting man.

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Speaker 1: I always like talking about Maltz because he is a

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Speaker 1: person whose methods you can learn from if you're not

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Speaker 1: interested in spirituality or magic. Maltz was a cosmetic surgeon,

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Speaker 1: and he made the observation that after surgeries, a lot

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Speaker 1: of his patients felt better, they had a better self image,

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Speaker 1: but a small number of them did not experience and

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Speaker 1: improve self image, and he began to wonder, what is

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Speaker 1: self image? Where does it come from? Malts devised a

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Speaker 1: program totally secular called psycho Cybernetics, where by basically using

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Speaker 1: two half hour sessions of meditation per day, you could

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Speaker 1: improve your self image and perform better throughout life. And

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Speaker 1: this was magic for the nonbeliever. Basically, it was mind magic.

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Speaker 1: It was an autosuggestion, and his book psycho Cybernetics became

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Speaker 1: a big bestseller in nineteen sixty, really popular with athletes

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Speaker 1: and actors, is still around today. What was his theory

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Speaker 1: about psycho cybernetics. His theory basically was that we are

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Speaker 1: very complex machines who get programmed as very very little

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Speaker 1: kids to view ourselves in a certain way, and this

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Speaker 1: self image gets concratised inside of us and it's hard

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Speaker 1: to change, but it can be changed. And Maltz believed

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Speaker 1: that if we basically use two half hour sessions a

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Speaker 1: day of visualization exercises, we can change our self image.

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Speaker 1: And it sounds easy and it sounds simple. But in

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Speaker 1: modern life, with all the noise and everything taking our attention,

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Speaker 1: two hours of meditation a day is not as easy

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Speaker 1: as it sounds. Are there different techniques to magic, Mitch oh, sure.

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Speaker 1: I mean the techniques are as varied as humanity itself.

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Speaker 1: You have techniques that come from ancient China, you have

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Speaker 1: techniques that come from ancient Egypt, from Mesopotamia, from the

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Speaker 1: Greek and Roman world, and you have modern techniques. There's

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Speaker 1: no reason that all this stuff has to be antique necessarily.

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Speaker 1: You've got practitioners in the twentieth century who have devised

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Speaker 1: techniques that I think are very effective. What's a sigil.

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Speaker 1: A sigil is exactly one of those twentieth century techniques.

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Speaker 1: It's super simple. You write out a sentence of what

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Speaker 1: you need in life, whatever it may be. You take

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Speaker 1: that sentence and you basically cross out repeating letters. You

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Speaker 1: take the letters that are left and you just form

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Speaker 1: them into an abstract symbol that's a sigil. You can

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Speaker 1: concentrate on that abstract symbol until you reach a state

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Speaker 1: of ecstasy. And the idea is that you've kind of

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Speaker 1: tapped into your subconscious mind in a way that gets

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Speaker 1: around the logical apparatus of the intellect, and you've put

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Speaker 1: out a kind of mental energy or mental intention into

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Speaker 1: the world. It's super simple, and it's a contemporary method.

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Speaker 1: So what about the other methods of collage or cut

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Speaker 1: up methods. The cutup method is really interesting to me.

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Speaker 1: The cutup method is this again, very very simple. This

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Speaker 1: was used by a lot of different artists in the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century. I use it myself. You sit down and

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Speaker 1: you just write out words or phrases that are meaningful

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Speaker 1: to you, whatever they are. You write down your values,

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Speaker 1: you write down things that are important to you on

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Speaker 1: a piece of paper. You cut it up, you throw

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Speaker 1: it on the floor, and then you just randomly pick

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Speaker 1: out three or four of these scraps of paper, see

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Speaker 1: what it says, try to try to assemble it into

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Speaker 1: a discernible sentence. You will almost certainly come up with

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Speaker 1: something that's personally meaningful to you. Again, it's one of

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Speaker 1: these exercises that bypasses the logical apparatus of the mind.

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Speaker 1: It's not rational, and that's the whole point. Cut up

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Speaker 1: the pieces of paper, throw them on the floor, pick

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Speaker 1: up three or four. See what it says, and you

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Speaker 1: may be imbued with a feeling of power and purpose.

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Speaker 1: Are Tarot cards magic? I believe that they are, and

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Speaker 1: I use Tarot cards myself for purposes of self discovery.

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Speaker 1: The theory is this, if you spread out Tarot cards

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Speaker 1: and you say, pick three of them, and you assemble

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Speaker 1: them into just random order, what you might be receiving

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Speaker 1: is a kind of snapshot of the immediate present, but

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Speaker 1: not just of the present in terms of linear time,

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Speaker 1: but the present in terms of what we call past,

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Speaker 1: present future. Time as a linear device is just a concept.

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Speaker 1: We know that time bends in conditions of extreme gravity

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Speaker 1: or extreme speed, so it stands to reason that what

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Speaker 1: we think of as linear time is not altogether real.

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Speaker 1: It could be that if you get a snapshot of

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Speaker 1: this instant moment using Tarot cards, using a random three

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Speaker 1: card pick from a spread of cards, you could be

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Speaker 1: getting a snapshot of what's going on past, present, future.

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Speaker 1: You could be gleaning what's happening in time, unbound by linearity.

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Speaker 1: What would you say, Mitch, is acceptable methods of occult use? Well,

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Speaker 1: I have one rule on the path, and that rule

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Speaker 1: is cosmic reciprocity. You can call it karma, karma, call

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Speaker 1: it the golden rule. But that what goes around comes,

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Speaker 1: what goes around comes around precisely, and there's a deeper

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Speaker 1: ethic in that than most of us realize. I think

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Speaker 1: that happens. I think that's true. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: it happens or why it happens. But if you're good

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Speaker 1: to people, goodness comes back to you. And if it's

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Speaker 1: the opposite, it's the same thing. I believe that, And

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Speaker 1: it may be hard for us to gain perspective on,

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Speaker 1: but believe me, it is there. Life is compensatory, and

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Speaker 1: it's got to be genuine. Yes, and you've got to

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Speaker 1: do it from the heart. Yeah, you know, life mirrors

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Speaker 1: the seasons, and everything comes and goes according to cycles

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Speaker 1: of usefulness. And what I put out there, based on

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Speaker 1: its usefulness and based on how it operates, is going

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Speaker 1: to come back to me. How did magic go from

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Speaker 1: being so mystically ancient to the things you've been talking

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Speaker 1: about tonight to where you have people like David Copperfield

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Speaker 1: and people like that doing their magic on stage. Well,

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Speaker 1: magicians have always served a function of entertainment. You had jugglers,

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Speaker 1: you had court jesters, you had magicians at fairs and

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Speaker 1: carnivals and so forth. So there's always been a quality

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Speaker 1: of entertainment. And then there was magic that was practiced

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Speaker 1: for real power that came to be looked upon negatively

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Speaker 1: because as the monotheistic religions rose in influence, they tended

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Speaker 1: to tamp down on the magic that was practiced by

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Speaker 1: the old religions, the so called pagan religions. But nowadays

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Speaker 1: we live in an era where the ancient texts that

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Speaker 1: have survived, and only a small thread of them have survived.

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Speaker 1: Unfortunately they're translated, they're somewhat accessible, and we live in

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Speaker 1: an era where the secret can chart his or her

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Speaker 1: own path. Mitch, since you've been doing this, what has

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Speaker 1: been one of the most remarkable magical things that you

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Speaker 1: have witnessed? The most remarkable thing that I've witnesses that

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Speaker 1: I'm doing in my life today at age fifty six,

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Speaker 1: what I dreamed about when I was a little kid

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Speaker 1: at age four, literally in the mind's eye image of

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Speaker 1: what I wanted to be doing at age four is

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Speaker 1: what I'm doing today. And if you peel back the

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Speaker 1: layers of your life, you may discover in extraordinary symmetry.

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Speaker 1: I think there's a power of mind that goes beyond

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Speaker 1: the physical, that goes beyond cognition. The mind does, to

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Speaker 1: some extent, select experience, and that's been the most magical

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Speaker 1: part of my life. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more