WEBVTT - Part Two: The Surrealists Were Even Cooler Than You Thought 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:03.280 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:07.760 podcast that is expertly introduced every single time by Margaret Kildroy, 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:12.840 who is me and in particular, I also want to 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.800 introduce Caitlyn Deronte. I don't know why. It's in particular, 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:18.520 I really prove to lie about the first thing that 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:20.880 I said. But Hi, Caitlin, how are you? Can you 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:21.279 save me? 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:26.840 Oh? It's here, I come to the rescue. Caitlin in particular. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:33.560 Name Caitlin is the host of the Bechdel Cast, where 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.000 they talk about movies, but they're not allowed to talk 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.519 about men and who are in the movies because yeah, 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:41.400 which has ever made this joke? 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:47.199 Because every movie is about men? So yeah, kind of 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:49.879 really say like five words to each other and then 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:51.760 we have to end the episode. 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:55.480 I don't know what else I can talk to women 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.360 about besides men. Oh, there's a bunch of men in 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.840 this episode last Monday head well whatever, there's also some 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:10.400 women in it, so, including Sophie. Stop. Sophie's the producer. 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:16.959 Ian is our audio editor who can't say Hi, Hi Ian, Hello? 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:21.920 Unwomen did our theme music? And this is part two 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.640 in our Derive through Surrealism, which will piss off some 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.320 situation as somewhere because the situations didn't like the surrealists, 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:30.080 and then the ones who invented the concept of derief, 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:31.840 but it was based on the surrealists. That's not what 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.560 we're talking about today. Last time we talked about a 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:36.880 bunch of shit THEYD in World War Two, because I 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:38.640 figured i'd start with some of the action. This time, 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.360 I'm going to start with their precursors. I'm actually not 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:44.400 gonna I'm just gonna talk about some people who inspired 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:47.440 them because they some of them inspire me too. Some 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:53.400 of them I don't like. Yeah, so let's do it. 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:54.400 Let's do it. 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:58.880 Okay. In one of the last episodes, we did not 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.120 me and Caitlin but means we talked about John Henry, 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.840 the guy who beat the steam engine? Right, and I 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.440 actually was, wait, I want to ask I ask everyone 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:09.120 this now, do you know that John Henry was a 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:11.840 real person? I M. 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:17.680 I mean, it's a pretty generic ass sounding name. 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:19.600 So, oh, the like the guy who beat the steam 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:21.800 engine in the song maybe this is the different rocks 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:22.359 we live under. 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:24.280 I don't know this reference. 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.320 Okay, never mind, there's this like myth about the like 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:29.800 like John Henry is a steel driving man and he's 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.200 faster than any machine and he like beats the steam 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:33.320 drill and then he dies. 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.160 Right, I okay, I am familiar with this. 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.720 Yeah, he's a real person. We did a whole episode 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.680 about it, and he was a black convict who went 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.080 on to go and serve as the model for Superman 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:48.160 and Captain America. Therefore all modern comics hmmm. And our 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.640 guest prop pointed out that history keeps proving again and 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:53.120 again that black people invented everything, and he's not wrong. 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:56.480 I have this pet theory that I'm working on, which 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.720 is that basically everything to cool, everything cool that comes 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.280 out of is based on coo Europeans looking around and 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.320 being like, oh God, our society is evil and shitty, 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:09.680 what is better and finding inspiration from colonized people, indigenous people, 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.280 enslave people, and their descendants. These Western folks are desperately 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.560 trying to counteract the shittiest parts of their society, which 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:19.240 plays into the history of appropriation, capitalism and blah blah 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.640 blah blah blah. But it's also really interesting and so 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:24.120 this is my way of saying, a bunch of the 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:28.280 people who inspired the surrealists were black, and even though 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:30.000 actually there were a ton of black surrealists, and we'll 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:32.800 talk about them later, but they're not the face of 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:37.080 the movement. I want to talk about this guy named 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.720 Pascal Beverly Randolph. I'm just gonna assume you haven't heard 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:43.160 of him, because I hadn't heard of him, and no 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.200 one I know has probably heard him unless you're into 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:51.360 like specific occultist stuff. I have not. He is fucking wild. 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.840 He is one of the forefathers of American occultism. He 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:56.920 was a sex magician and a spiritualist. 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:04.360 Define sex magician. Oh we're gonna okay, good, sorry to 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.880 beat you. Yeah no, no, actually, in not fucked up ways. 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:11.360 I think that's what's the thing that's wild is I 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.360 am describing everything that would be a shitty con man 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:20.000 m hm. Instead he is an earnest seeker of wisdom 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:24.520 who is trying to help people and succeeds. Okay, great, 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:29.880 it's like the really wildest story. He may or may 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:32.160 not have been an actual doctor. He certainly called himself one, 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.480 speaking of things that are very con manny. He if 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:38.360 I had known about him before I started this four parter, 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:40.280 he might have gotten some episodes on his own. He's 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:41.280 just really fucking cool. 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:44.680 He was born in New York City in eighteen twenty 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.239 five to a free black mother and a white father. 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:49.839 Through his white dad, he may or may not have 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.080 been descended from this guy, William Randolph, one of the 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.680 founders of the Colony of Virginia, which means that our 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.400 black sex magician who helped inspire surrealism might have been 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.640 related to everyone from founding father and third President Thomas 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.200 Jefferson through the Confederate General Robert E. 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:03.599 Lee. 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:07.279 Some scholars think he made of his pedigree in order 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.159 to confront racism in his career, because racism was a 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.920 major impediment in his career, which like fair whatever. 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.320 Ah, yeah, I would make up all. I would say, 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.080 I have two masters degrees. Yeah, it's weird because they're 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:26.600 both in screenwriting, just from different schools. Yeah, University of 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:32.760 Boston and Boston University. Yeah, congratulations. We are less than 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:40.440 ten minutes in. So Pascal's dad runs out on the family. 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:42.920 I'm sure race is a factor here, the white dad. 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.760 His mom died of cholera when he was six. I'm 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.159 sure race and its attended poverty is a factor. Here 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:53.000 and he grew up homeless in nineteenth century five. 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:58.000 Points Manhattan, which is not an easy time. That's like 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.279 the like bad part of there's not a lot of 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:05.680 good parts of Manhattan. Twenty five. He taught himself how 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:07.960 to read and write, and then he fucked off on 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.200 a sailboat as a cabin boy in a deckhand and 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.560 saw some of the world. He came back after five years. 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.200 He worked as a boot black, a dyer, and a barber. 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.440 At some point he converted to Roman Catholicism. It did 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:24.680 not stick, and he studied mysticism everywhere he went, and 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.720 then he got involved in the spiritualist movement. I assume 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.400 everyone has heard Jamie Loftus's series Ghost Church, but in 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.760 case you haven't, have you ever heard of Jamie Loftus Klein. 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.720 I know the name, yeah, but I haven't. We have 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:44.800 never met. We've just we've we've done a podcast together 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.880 for seven years, but we've never met face to face. 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:53.800 And well, one of you is dead and being spoken 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.600 to by a spiritual media. No, oh, it's not gonna 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:57.000 it's me. 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:02.600 Oh dead. I wasn't going to tell you if I've 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.880 been dead the whole time. Is this the sixth sense. 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:15.720 So Ghost Church is a podcast that talks about the 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.000 spiritualist movement, and it's like people who do seances and shit. 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:20.960 That was wildly popular in the nineteenth century. It was 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.440 actually remarkably tied into radical politics in a way that 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.600 I did not expect to keep running across spiritualists as 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:31.120 I do this podcast. He gets involved in the spiritualist movement. 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.040 He doesn't stick with it, but he's there for a while, 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.880 and he goes on behalf of that movement around much 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.240 of the world. He studies at least somewhere between being 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.480 a deckhand and be working with the spiritualists. He goes 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.480 to at least Cuba, France, England, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt. 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:50.600 And you wouldn't believe how hard I had to work. 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:52.520 You might believe how hard I had to work to 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:55.160 dig up more than just traveled in Africa and find 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:59.360 an actual name of a specific country, right if Africa 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:03.960 is a country, which it's not. Along the way, probably 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.520 when he was about twenty five, Pascal married a black 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:08.920 woman and had three kids with her, though it's the 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:12.840 nineteenth century, so only one survives to adulthood. Fourteen years later, 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.960 they get divorced, and he marries a white Irish woman 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:18.920 with whom he had another kid. And both of his 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:22.360 wives were his actual partners and spiritual practitioners of their 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.600 own and he I think kept up with all the kids, 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.200 and he didn't do what his dad had done. And 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:31.960 also I had to look this up. I was like, 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.000 how did he marry a New York State is one 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:35.760 of the very few states in the US that has 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:39.880 never outlawed interracial marriage, so it was even legal for 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:43.200 him to marry that Irish woman. But he didn't last 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:46.240 long in a spiritualist movement because he wasn't a con man. 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.560 He was probably lying here and there about his past. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.239 His black wife may or may not have been an indigenous, 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.240 but was absolutely selling Native American medicine for a living. 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.960 But he he wasn't a con man because he wasn't 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.120 He was seeking actual trances, right, And he was like, Oh, 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:06.280 you all are just doing weird shit on stage or 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.040 stage magicians. This is not of interest to me. You know. 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:13.480 He was specifically into being mixed race. He didn't love 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.120 he didn't love the way that people exoticized him. But 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:19.120 he talked about how he channeled multiple racial identities and 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.640 it helped him channel the spirits. He said, quote, I 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:25.440 owe my successes to my conglomerate blood, my troubles and 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:31.439 poverty to the same source. And by eighteen fifty eight 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.600 he leaves a spiritualist movement. He's like, y'all's trances are bullshit. 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.280 You're faking, and you're a bunch of racists, and you're 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:39.160 claiming to be activists trying to make the world better, 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.080 but you're just doing it for clout and money and 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.480 fuck you. He also, in contrast to spiritualist teachings, he 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.960 was basically a universalist. Instead of believing that only select 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.679 souls are immortal, he was like, every soul is equal, 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.959 every soul is immortal. At one point he moved to 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.360 Boston and declared himself a medical doctor because he'd read 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:01.640 lots of books on the subject. So he's shaking her 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:06.240 head now the hand is on the face. I like 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.600 how this just as easily could be a setup for 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.640 someone who just turns into a terrible cult leader, right, Oh, 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:16.600 for sure. But he's like the good person one as 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.560 far as I can tell, you know. He set up 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:23.200 the first Resicrucian societies in the US, which I had 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.040 to look up. It's an occultist movement that goes back 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.640 to the early seventeenth century in Europe. Basically, they're like, oh, 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.680 there's like a secret order of like secret knowledge that's 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:35.320 going to like set the world right. He labeled his 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.560 shit as resacrution. He said that he admitted this later 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.640 because he had a lot of spiritual teachings and since 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:43.000 he was black, no one was going to take him 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:44.840 seriously unless he gave it a label that like white 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.120 people were already like new and we're familiar with. And 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:51.800 the current order that he started doesn't like to talk 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:55.480 about their founder's sex magic. But he goes around and 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:57.959 he's traveling. He's forming secret societies all over the place, 0:10:58.080 --> 0:10:59.640 or at least claiming to some of them. Might have 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.760 been like I set one up in Denver and it 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:06.320 was me and I swear there was like fifty guys there, 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:10.160 you know. But he had all these spiritual teachings. It 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:12.079 was the sex, drugs and rock and roll type thing. 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:15.160 Too early for rock and roll, but sex and drugs, 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:19.480 especially hashish, could lead to spiritual enlightenment when paired with study, 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.040 according to him. And he's selling all this shit through 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.320 mail order, Like really, I'm setting it all up, right, 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:27.640 But half of the shit that he's selling through a 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.440 mail order is free, and all of his prices are 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.120 like rock bottom, like barely breaking even because he's not 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:36.720 a grifter, and he seemed to be into free love, 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:38.440 not as I want to be a cult leader and 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:41.000 have a million lover's way, but an actual women's liberation 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.679 way like we were talking about last time. Right, It's 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:46.520 so funny that I'm so skeptical of like free love 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:48.320 and all that shit, even though like polyamory is like 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:52.880 a fairly major part of modern queer culture, you know, right, 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.360 but also as many of the same problems. 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:00.360 I mean, well, that's the thing, the lot of a 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:07.400 lot of yeah, like liberating movements can get and have 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:12.000 been weaponized against the people who are Yeah, yeah, it's 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.000 but yeah, I see what you mean. But yes, yeah, 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:19.000 polyamory all the way, Yeah, said Caitlin. 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:26.559 Yeah. He also was a gender rebel and probably pansexual. 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.880 He also makes the oldest reference to a non binary 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:34.400 gender with a specific name that I've ever read. I'm 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.560 sure there's other ones, but the oldest one I've ever read. 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.400 He wrote, quote, I believe in love all the way through, 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:43.960 and while I live, I will help every man, woman 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:48.040 and the in the betweenities to win, obtain, intensify, deep 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:53.280 and purify, strengthen and keep it in betweenity just between 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:58.040 these okay, between the y Yeah, I love it. I 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.280 know that was non binary, Like, no, I'm not non binary, 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:02.119 I'm a between. 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:04.080 Of the Yeah. 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:09.280 He also declared that earthly gender was provisional, that your 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.480 soul itself isn't gendered, just your body on earth, and 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.960 that God was both genders. He also taught both feminine 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.800 and masculine magic, but that was intentionally the gender of 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:27.240 the magic, not the practitioner, which, as my weird tangent, 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:31.280 is fairly Odin of him. Do you know that Odin 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:37.959 practice women's magic? No, the like every fucking nazis favorite 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.000 god Odin you know, oh. 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.240 Because of right Norse mythology. 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:46.400 Yeah. Yeah yeah, And he's like presented as like as 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:48.840 if he he's the all Father, right, although I like 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:53.400 the LGBT supportive Pagans who are like Odin is the 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:58.000 all Father, not the so Father, but he willingly gives 0:13:58.080 --> 0:13:59.760 up his eye. This is a complete tangent, But I 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:02.000 wrote into the script because I like this story, he 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:03.880 drinks from the pool of knowledge. He gives up his 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:06.000 eye to drinkrom the pool of knowledge. He learned satyr, 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:08.720 which is women's magic and is also the magic of 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:12.600 men who take the submissive role with other men, because 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:15.080 all throughout history running this thing where instead of like 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:17.839 there being a stigma against men being gay, there's a 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:22.480 stigma against men being the receptive partner in sex. This 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:27.000 tangent brought to you by Margaret's Adhd the Pascal. He 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:31.920 also wrote, quote, it don't follow that all who wear 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:34.360 the penis are in soul true males, or that a 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:39.640 vagina is the sign of womanness, which pushes him so 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.680 the fuck far ahead of his time from a sexology 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:48.560 point of view. Seriously, he skipped several steps. I was 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:50.720 like reading like some people were like, oh, he like 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.800 predated the inversion theory of late nineteenth century stuff. He didn't. 0:14:55.440 --> 0:15:00.680 He skipped that entirely. He went to fucking modern trans theory. Yeah, 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:02.600 he rules. 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:04.240 That's awesome. 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.600 By doing sex magic, the stuff he taught, he promised 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.280 people better sex, better health, women's liberation, and also the 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:13.560 kids you make during sex magic will be smarter. 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.200 So wait, okay, I still am not clear on the 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.520 definition of sex magic and sex magician. 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.920 I am not as versed on this because most of 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.000 the time when I meet someone who describes himself as 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:34.840 a sex magician, I am run screaming the opposite direction, sure, 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:37.800 which is not fair to many people who practice all 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.360 kinds of shit that are as cool and like enrich 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:45.960 as people's lives. I just distrust men. But I believe overall, 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:49.400 he's like turning talking about turning sex into ritual and 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:54.240 like working on like consciously developing like other ways to 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:57.440 have sex, and like be very conscious about sex. That's 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:01.040 my inference. I don't actually wrote like forty some books, 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:02.800 and I mostly just read about him instead of like 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:03.680 reading his books. 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:09.080 Okay, yeah, so it's time to read forty books, you know. 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:14.680 Apparently not me. I'm busy playing Zelda. 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:16.800 Have you started the new Zelda? 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:17.560 Yeah? 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.760 I just did like four days ago, and I've done 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:21.720 nothing else. 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:23.480 I'm surprised you didn't cancel this week. 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.400 So I honestly was like, I was like, can I 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.440 get away with playing the game while. 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:33.040 I'm I mean, I'm playing Baller's Gate three right now, 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:34.160 but that's different. 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:39.920 Sort No, But I took time out of my busy, 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:42.640 Zelda schedule to talk with you your wife. 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:47.360 I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah. So his slogan, 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.680 tied to his dislike for church and traditional marriage, was 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:56.240 quote love forever against the world. And he believed that 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:58.360 as we learn to unlock ourselves, we'll be able to 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.080 bring in a new world, a new epo of human history. 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.280 And this is where he starts getting kind of surrealist, right. 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:08.840 And he's also he has like two very different lives. 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:11.840 He has like himself as a sex magician and a 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.840 traveling actually oddly not a con man, doing all the 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.720 same things that conman do. And then also he was 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.320 an abolitionist and he was involved in political stuff, and 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:27.399 like largely the two didn't affect each other, right, Like 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.119 he didn't hide them, I don't think. But he was 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.679 all about abolition as a pre Civil war, He's going 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:35.280 around touring the South talking about abolition, spending a lot 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:37.679 of time in New Orleans, hanging out with voodoo priestesses, 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:40.480 and like being a free black man from New York 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:42.840 and voluntarily going to the South is like braves shit, 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.560 very dangerous. He took a gradualist rather than revolutionary stance, 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:50.920 which tended to offend his fellow abolitionists for good reason. 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.600 But whatever, he had more skin of the game than 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:55.920 I did do or whatever. You know, I'm not trying 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.680 to Some people didn't like him in the abolitionist movement. 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.400 During the Civil War, he spent his time recruiting black 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:05.840 soldiers for the war. He was already in his forties, 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:09.400 and I don't think he fought directly himself. After the war, 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:11.600 he spent a lot of his time in Louisiana teaching 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:14.520 thousands of black people how to read and write through 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:19.359 the Freedmen's Bureau schools during a time when white racists 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:22.440 were attacking every black person and white Republican they could find. 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:26.040 He lived there during the New Orleans Massacre of eighteen 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:29.400 sixty six, in which probably fifty black people and three 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:32.560 white allies were killed by a racist mob, so he 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.000 slept with pistols under his bed as the death threats 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.440 came in for his daring to teach black people how 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:42.280 to read. He wrote quote, if Hell is any worse 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:47.320 than New Orleans, I pity the damned. He was a 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:52.600 good writer. Yeah, he got a little millenarian after that. 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.520 He predicted a great apocalypse was coming, that the white 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:57.840 people would give the Southwest to black people and he 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:01.439 would march off towards their Zion with them. He lectured 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:04.600 and wrote extensively about black rights. Unrelated to his occultism, 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.840 he formed the National Equal Rights League. His other personal 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.879 motto was we may be happy yet, and it applied 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:17.679 to both of his interests, magic and emancipation. And one 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:19.000 of the reasons I like him so much is he's 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.840 like a he's a seeker, right, He's someone who wasn't 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.080 convinced there was He wasn't convinced he was right, but 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:27.840 he explored spirituality to the best of his knowledge, and 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:31.000 he wrote. He wrote shit that contradicted his previous shit 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.360 as he changed his mind as he learned new things. Right, 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:35.720 And that's cool. I think that's a good thing. 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:37.160 Yeah, for sure. 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:41.440 He believed in the spirit realm, and he believed that 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.439 our souls are it's like, not totally dissimilar from the 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.040 Big Bang kind of even though that wasn't developed scientifically 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.600 until the twentieth century. Basically, that like the thoughts of 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.600 God have spread out all over the galaxy, falling like 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:59.679 dust onto certain worlds where they slowly collect into geological formations, 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.560 ants and non human animals before eventually they might become 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:09.239 human souls. Then when you die, your soul returns not 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:12.280 to the dust, but instead travels to the spirit realms, 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.000 which are Sometimes he writes it about them as being 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.959 around planets, galaxies, or beyond space itself, and it depends 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:21.400 on how enlighten this particular soul is where you end up. 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:27.240 In his earliest writings with his internalized racism, he says 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:29.000 that the white souls are the most developed and they're 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:31.000 going to end up like in the coolest spirit realms. 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.800 By the end of his life, it's people of color, 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.119 not just black people, who are the most developed and 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:38.000 are in the coolest parts of space, and white people 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.800 who are damned mm hmm or have more to more 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:47.959 development to do, just not inherently wrong. Through study and 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:51.000 drugs and sex, one could drop through the outer world 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:54.480 into the world below, into the spirit realm, which he 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:57.359 sometimes conceptualizes under the earth and other times is the 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:00.880 interior of one's own soul because inside of us microcosms 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:06.399 of the universe. And yeah, he lived his life and 0:21:06.440 --> 0:21:10.960 he did that shit nice. In July eighteen seventy five, 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:14.160 at the age of forty nine he died. He most 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.439 likely shot himself in the head with a revolver. He 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:20.880 was destitute, and he was resentful of the white occultist 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.600 world continuing to ignore him. A friend and fellow occultist 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.159 on his deathbed claimed to have killed Pascal during a 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:30.880 fit of temporary insanity, but it's likely that this later 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:34.040 confession is a lie. It's likely that he took his 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:39.679 own life. And yeah, his wife continued to publish his works. 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.399 He published forty five books and pamphlets while he was alive, 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:48.399 and all of the big occult groups after he died. 0:21:49.119 --> 0:21:52.080 It drew on his legacy because black people have been everything, 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:57.520 and the Surrealists also drew on this. His writing about 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:00.440 the unconscious world seeping into the conscious world and particular 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:03.920 influence them. But a lot of the influence information about 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:06.560 black influences on the Surrealists didn't start being acknowledged until 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:08.720 the later incarnation of the Surrealists and like the sixties 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.080 or whatever. And we'll get to that at some point. 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.119 But what we're going to get to first is, uh, 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:20.840 what's something good? We can be sponsored by books, but 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:27.320 libraries lost books. Yeah, yeah, everyone listening should write at 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:29.200 least forty books in their life. 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:30.240 Mm hmm. 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:34.719