Conspirituality

Episodes 36 & 37 cover how Guru Jagat (Katie Griggs) and her Venice Beach RAMA Institute have pivoted in the COVID era to a new area of focus: anti-lockdown, anti-“woke” rhetoric, anti-masking, and anti-vax propaganda. As the center of her own weather system in the wider Kundalini Yoga / 3HO cult, this serves Griggs in a number of ways, from driving engagement to obscuring 2020’s revelations of just how criminal her umbrella organization is.

Cults will never let a good crisis go to waste. Back in the summer, Matthew noticed that Michael Roach, who led the cult he was recruited into from 1996-99, also pivoted to COVID content. He does it with a lot more credibility than Griggs does, but in some ways, this makes it even more obnoxious. In this bonus episode, Matthew analyzes his late-summer “Love in the Time of the Virus” content as a retread of what he’s put out there for more than 20 years now.

Sinking into Michael’s vibe again after all these years brings up old questions for Matthew around earnestness and delusion, altruism and manipulation. It makes him wonder whether a cult’s dogged fixation on doctrine can sometimes be an artifact of the leader’s arrested development.

Show Notes

Nina Burleigh’s profile in Rolling Stone

Scott Carney’s investigation of the death of Ian Thorson (originally in Playboy)

My own somewhat cranky review of Carney’s work

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What happens when a charismatic yogalebrity rises to prominence in LA’s fashion and wellness scene, gets exposed as an inheritor of a notorious cult, and then gets sideswiped by a pandemic? Meet Katie Griggs, aka “Guru Jagat,” who, instead of reassessing her channelled “downloads” from the charlatan rapist Yogi Bhajan and lending a hand to public health, has chosen to boost her online game with COVID contrarianism and by platforming David Icke.

Our guests this week are Philip Deslippe and journalist Stacie Stukin. Philip’s penetrating and bulletproof research into the dodgy history of Kundalini Yoga and its criminal founder Yogi Bhajan shook the modern yoga world in 2012. Stacie’s 2020 LA Magazine feature investigation into Kundalini corruption and abuse gathered decades of buried evidence. Together they paint a lucid, non-sensationalized picture of how a high-demand religious group navigates new opportunities for manipulation.

The larger picture is that COVID has been a challenge for the brick-and-mortar assets of cults, which, like every other business, rely on pedestrian traffic and the “retail space” of ritual conversion. But in other ways, COVID is the best thing that could have happened to cults.

Kundalini Yoga was built on promising perfect health, the conversion of fear into love, and a golden age free from atheistic biotech. For people like Griggs—and her ex-con mentor Harijiwan—COVID is an opportunity to hide dirty laundry and market the same empty promises with heightened panic and passion.

Show Notes

“From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga” for Sikh Formations by Philip Deslippe (2012)

“Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse” by Stacie Stukin for Los Angeles Magazine (2020)

“Yogi Bhajan, yoga guru and founder of 3HO, ‘more likely than not’ sexually abused followers, says report” by Philip Deslippe and Stacie Stukin for Religion News Service (2020)

Text of Katherine Felt’s 1986 lawsuit against Bhajan for assault, battery, false imprisonment and more

Text of Pamela Dyson’s 1986 lawsuit against Bhajan for assault, battery, false imprisonment and more

“Wacko World of Yogi Bhajan” archived here

Be Scofield’s

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We decided to release this Monday patron bonus episode publicly after receiving a great response on Patreon. Julian draws heavily on the work of neurologist and author V.S. Ramachandran in an attempt to explore Conspirituality after the Capitol insurrection. How might an understanding of synesthesia, epilepsy, super-stimuli, hyper-reality, and fascism help us make sense of the overlap between the QAnon fantasy timeline and real world blood and guts?

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Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States yesterday, proving the long-awaited QAnon prophecy false. It’s the perfect time to talk about where mystical or deceptive knowledge comes from, how it works, and what happens when it fails. We may never know who Q was, but we can take a close look at a core feature of conspirituality technique: the transmission of secret knowledge.

Welcome to our channeling episode.

Today we discuss three Q-adjacent channellers: JZ Knight, Lorie Ladd, Elizabeth April, and also Paul Selig. What do they say they’re doing? What does it sound like? And where can we go to figure it out?

Derek looks at consciousness studies through the lens of Rodolfo Llinas, Stanislas Dehaene, Michael Gazzaniga, and other renowned researchers. Julian reviews the philosophical arguments of Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. Matthew plays angel’s advocate and interviews Professor Susannah Crockford about her anthropological fieldwork amongst the New Agers and channelers of Sedona. TL;DR: “There’s never a single answer for anything.”

In the Ticker we look at a tragic anti-vax related father-son murder-suicide in California, anti-vax groups grifting PPP money from the feds, and the Anons, exiled even from Parler, suffering from the collapse of their dream of a Great Awakening.

Show Notes

Father-son murder-suicide over anti-vax stress

The Trump administration bailed out prominent anti-vaccine groups during a pandemic

Scientists Investigate Spiritualist Mediums: Why Some People Report “Hearing the Dead”

Hydroxy-pusher Simone Gold arrested for part in Capitol Siege

QAnon will be scrutinized by National Intel Agencies

Parler refugees prepped for Doomsday

QAnon implodes online

QAnon admins nuke then restore threads

QAnauguration meltdown

Arg

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It’s been eight days since the Capitol was ransacked by a mob of MAGA supporters, Proud Boys, ex-military with tactical gear, and Nazis wearing disgustingly anti-Semitic t-shirts. The death count is six (for now), with a second police officer dying by duty-related suicide on Saturday. As more footage streams in—and the FBI says there’s still more to come—it will get uglier.

So what have our conspiritualists been up to? We’ll run it down this week. Quick story: not a single one has walked back any of their bullshit in the aftermath of the Capitol siege. Some have doubled down.

An unmasked Mikki Willis was involved in the siege as a “journalist,” giving an impassioned anti-vax, pro-liberty speech at a sideshow MAGA event in which he called the ransack that he had just taken part in “beautiful.” Christiane Northrup cheered on the alt-health berserkers during the end of her water fast. Zach Bush took to Instagram to sermonize, saying, “Just as viruses do not take down healthy humans, revolutions do not take down healthy governance.” Lori Ladd spoke in radiant non-sequiturs.

Amber Sears announced she was “preparing for civil war” while her husband JP whined about free speech as his Parler account got nuked and Trump got booted off of Twitter. Meanwhile, Kelly Brogan said nothing publicly about the Capitol siege that we could find, but cashed in on the vibes with a bloated essay on “spiritual warfare.”

We also learned a lot about Jacob Anthony Chansley nee Angeli, the Q-shaman, and his interdimensional conspirituality performance art—as well as his three-day jail fast that was resolved after a sympathetic judge guaranteed a Whole Foods delivery.

Derek interviews RP Eddy, CEO of strategy and geopolitical intelligence firm, Ergo. Eddy previously served as Director at the White House National Security Council under Bill Clinton, Chief of Staff to US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Senior Policy Officer to UN Secretary Kofi Annan. He shares his thoughts about the current state of national security.

Show Notes

Susannah Crockford on the Q-Shaman’s spiritual potpourri

Matthew’s Twitter thread on Q-Shaman fasting

COVID and tribal elders

Eugene Goodman’s fateful genius

Christiane Northrup’s prosperity gospel affiliate

Northrup as Auntie Good Death

Lorie Ladd everything i

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Christiane Northrup addresses her followers as “angel warriors.” JP Sears counsels his supplement customers to never “outsource their own truth.” Mikki Willis says he was once a “hero of the left”, and now tells audiences that he’s willing to die for the truth of his message. It’s all very grand, and it doesn’t come from nowhere. Trendy spiritualities of the privileged and disconnected have always focused on the heroic triumph of the individual, which has made them easily co-optable by the right.

But what is a real hero? Joseph Campbell contextualized their journey as a ritual of selfless wandering, undertaken on behalf of the community. The concept of the monomyth, which Campbell defined as the Hero’s Journey, has stages, and they have influenced popular culture in profound and, at times, troubling ways.

In this episode, we’ll look at how certain influencers confuse heroism for megalomania and forget that heroes and their societies are interdependent. Derek and Julian measure some of the usual suspects against Campbell’s ruler while Matthew asks questions about what makes a theory vulnerable to distortion.

In The Jab, Julian looks at the three top questions vaccine-hesitant folks have about the mRNA vaccines currently approved for COVID. In a closing essay, Matthew reflects on a space where the painful splits of conspirituality might be calmed: how the home hospice can bring together public health and private spirituality.

Show Notes

Jake Angeli, “Q-Shaman”, describing his New-Age services

CNN on Angeli, “Baked Alaska” and Barnett

The Q shaman — conspirituality runs riot on Capitol Hill

Barnett and “Save Our Children” event in AR in October

JP Sears echoes a justification for ransacking Pelosi’s office

Anti-maskers Storm California Mall, Harass Shoppers and Refuse to Leave

Why Lisa Guerrero Abruptly Ended Interview With Anti-Mask Wearer

Tommy John Sr. hospitalized for COVID

Dr. Tommy John denies his father hospitalized with COVID has COVID

(Tommy’s follow-up post shows his son (?) playing a video game in a COVID-denyi

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A rough tally of our labor from the inception of this podcast in May puts us at over 1,100 hours of treading water in the content sea of JP Sears, Mikki Willis, Christiane Northrup, and the rest of the gang. Are we getting our bearings yet? Will we see land soon?

This episode is centered on Part 2 of Matthew’s discussion with Charles Eisenstein — a bellwether for the possibility that wellness and spirituality culture can communicate clearly about conspirituality. In the discussion and analysis that follows the interview, we look at who gets to say what and from which platform, what it means to be brave versus what it means to be evidence-based, and whether South Park really did predict the Trump-Biden choice.

In the Ticker, we’ll peek into the bizarro world of Guru Jagat, run down what anti-vaxxers believe about ingredients, ogle at Michael Flynn’s QAnon merch shop, and dive into Lori Ladd’s recent video where she rallies the troops after a revelatory nap. In The Jab, Julian unravels the facts around the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Finally, in a New Year’s Eve closer, Matthew wonders, from the quietude of a recent home hospice experience, about how we might be able to slow down.

Show Notes

Guru Jagat camp grace talk

Weaving Dharma Art: Guru Jagat x Mandev

Mandev’s Yogi Bhajan propaganda film put out to counter abuse testimony

Harper’s profile on Jagat (pre abuse scandal)

Deslippe rocks the Kundalini backstory

An Olive Branch’s independent investigation into KY and 3HO historical abuse (an initial effort)

Harijiwan’s hagiography of Bhajan via Mandev’s video skillz (one example)

Harijiwan, “toner bandit”

@ramawrong’s excellent IG feed

Phil Good Life discloses three mental health related hospitalizations

Here’s How the Anti-Vaxxers’ Strongest Argument Falls Apart

Why the Government Pays Billions to People Who Claim Injury by Vaccines

Vaccine Court: The Law an

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As two coronavirus vaccines roll out we’re being flooded with more disinformation than ever. Wellness gurus are cashing in on home-made “natural” remedies by spreading unjustified fears about this vaccine, and vaccines in general.

This week, we look at Dr. Christiane Northrup’s “line in the sand,” Mikki Willis revealing that he recently helped out the kids of Covington High and Kyle Rittenhouse, JP Sears getting retweeted by Donald Trump, and the QAnon breeding ground that is the MMA. During The Jab, Julian looks at the newly emerged Covid mutation and investigates whether it nullifies the vaccines.

For the main discussion, Julian and Derek sift through the piles of vaccine and health propaganda spread by Robert F Kennedy, Jr and Zach Bush on a recent Instagram Live. Derek interviews Jonathan Berman, author of Anti-Vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement, about trying to build a bridge. Finally, Matthew reports from a family hospice experience on the generosity, discipline, and grace of frontline health care workers.

Show Notes

The Coronavirus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean for Us?

The Duesberg Phenomenon

Mikki Willis at the Red Pill Expo

My Polio Story is an Inconvenient Truth to Those Who Refuse Vaccines

History of Polio

The Denialist Playbook

Pharmacies Partner With HHS to Provide COVID-19 Vaccines

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This episode dropped for our Patreon supporters on the darkest day of the year. We’re unlocking it as a holiday gift to all of our listeners.

In this meditation, Matthew reflects on the roots and implications of “blazes of light” that punctuate the speech of both spiritualists and conspiritualists, from the spaces of patriarchal religious ritual to the claustrophobia of the manosphere. One key question: How does the manosphere shape conspirituality and its emotional disorders?

This is a tour through the trance states that charismatic men love and manipulate—how they carry streams of emotion that can never be transparently shared. Matthew investigates the means by which the podcast format squeezes entranced speech into a man-cave so that the speaker can be endlessly extroverted, but also self-protected, and mostly unaccountable.

It is an ethereal and frictionless technology, imposing no limits on the impulse to hold court or to dominate. It allows Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson, Dr. Tommy John, JP Sears, and many others to create limitless self-centered content with almost no feedback. The lack of reality-checking makes their discourse aggressive, but it’s also tragic to watch men believe they are forming relationships while they talk into the void.

No solstice bonus wouldn’t be complete without a nod to the light, however. Matthew climbs back out of this episode with some good man-news about his podcast colleagues, the Mandolorian, and the possibility that his own boys might grow up differently.

Show Notes

Jordan Peterson weeps over individualism

Instagram isolation curated by Dr. Tommy John

JP Sears plays toady to Tim Kennedy’s alpha-fashy rant

Kennedy implies he’s helping disappear protestors in Portland

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Who gets to take up space in critical times? How do we orient ourselves toward expertise? In a culture dominated by “experts” on social media, do charismatics outperform fact-checkers?

This episode marks a milestone for our podcast, as Matthew interviews Charles Eisenstein, whose essay “The Coronation” has cast a long shadow on our ongoing critique of how New Age and spiritual spaces interact with public health. It’s a respectful but robust conversation about the limits of what laypeople can know about science and journalism, the intersection between conspiracy theory and myth, what the word “narrative” really means, and whether activism on the left and conspiracy theories on the right can be equally misguided. The conversation ran long: we dish up and comment on the first hour here.

In the Ticker, we cover Gaiam TV—Netflix for the Q-adjacent—and JP Sears keeping it classy by using the birth announcement of his son to punch down at trans people. On The Jab, Julian reports on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s role in flooding social media with anti-vax ads, and targeting propaganda at minority and immigrant communities, to their detriment.

Show Notes

Suzanne Humphries on Rational Wiki

Why Dr Suzanne Humphries, an anti-vaccine activist, is lying to you about measles

JP Sears’s transphobic post

JP Sears’s squat workout / Bill Gates post

Overlap between conspirituality and anti-trans politics

Invite from the “Awarehouse”, oh and this one too

Why this mainstream yoga site is now a hub for QAnon influencers

A Thrive interviewee regrets his participation

Bell’s Palsy, Allergic Reactions, and Deaths in Covid Vaccine Trials

Funding for anti-vax ads on Facebook

RFK is

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Here’s an episode that’s been micro-brewing for a while: Bro Science: where conspirituality meets the manosphere.

We’ve even got a working definition! Here’s a taste.

Bro Science is junk science spewed by men who believe their charisma is a substitute for training. It brags, mocks, overreaches. It’s self-serving and self-interested. It can carry hints of toxic masculinity: entitlement, unearned confidence, no qualms about taking up space, repressing emotion or hiding it behind humour or grandiosity. It preaches individualism and self-sufficiency from the lonely triumph of Bro.

We’ll listen to some top “Bro scientists” to see how bro-ness reduces, minimizes, and mocks science. We’ll listen to pearls of bro-dom from JP Sears, Kyle Kingsbury, Aubrey Marcus, Sayer Ji, Toronto’s very own BBQAnon, Adam Skelly, and Zach Bush, doctor to the bros.

Dear listeners: you might feel at the end of our tour like you need a coffee colon cleanse or testosterone nootropic. But we’ve got something better: an interview with Dr. Dan Wilson, who does the opposite of Bro Science. He’s a molecular biologist who by day works in the lab at Carnegie Mellon University, but by night crushes out Dr. Wilson Debunks the Funk videos, cutting conspiritualists down to size.

Show Notes

The Lonely Descent into QAnon, Pt 1

Analysts create AI tool that can distinguish between conspiracy theories and real conspiracies

Former Israeli space security chief says aliens exist, humanity not ready

In 2020, Disinformation Broke the US

BBQAnon thinks he knows something about PCR tests

Public Health Ontario: false positivity rate is 0.01%,

Sayer Ji geeks out with Michael Sandler

Sayer Ji’s GreenMedInfo cherry-picks a vaccine study report

Here’s the actual source that GMI distorted

Dr. Maria Sundaram Twitter thread on how to talk with vaccine-hesitant people.

Covid-19, Remote Work

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This week we inaugurate “The Conspirituality Ticker,” a weekly bullet-point rundown on the ongoing pandemic of influencers who spread medical misinformation to sell disaster spirituality. We’ll also continue with “The Jab”, our segment on conspirituality-driven vaccine hesitancy.

The big news this week is the resurrection of Jordan Peterson. After surviving a medically-induced coma in a Russian rehab facility, and then COVID on top of that, Peterson has re-emerged, weakened but resolute, as both hero and provocateur. The announcement from Penguin Canada that his new book of another dozen self-help rules prompted Penguin employees to protest their involvement in an emotional town hall.

In this episode, we’ll dive into Peterson’s imaginarium. We won’t totally discount his button-down commonsensical advice, but we will explore how it has lent intellectual support to the alt-right. Is he a conspiritualist pioneer as he wars against the Neo-Marxist Cabal and dreams of a Jungian promised land? Matthew will add a view from Peterson’s hometown of Toronto, where the messianic prof has been open about his ambitions in right-wing Ontario politics. Julian interviews dissociation debunker Jeff Brown, who champions “enrealment,” and has a heartfelt critique of what he calls the “new cage” movement.

Show Notes

JZ Knight Called for ‘Military Coup’ After Biden Took Lead in Presidential Bid

Defiant Night: Hundreds Gather at Pier Bowl for Mask-Burning Rally

Toronto public health shuts down Etobicoke restaurant for allowing indoor dining in defiance of COVID-19 measures

Adam Skelly’s GoFundMe

Skelly hauled off by the po-po

$15,000 Fine After Secret Hasidic Wedding Draws Thousands of Guests

Splitting 5 to 4, Supreme Court Backs Religious Challenge to Cuomo’s Virus Shutdown Order

Supremes’ opinions

Canadian Bar Association on c16, which Peterson didn’t understand

Peterson co-presents with Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes

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Do famous people become famous for staying in their lane? Do some find fame by carving out a lane that never existed before? What is the disruptive promise of charisma in this wellness space, which draws consumers burdened by a double disillusionment? They arrive, disillusioned by conventional medicine and conventional religion. What can the charismatic influencer offer them, and how do they do it?

In this last free bonus episode, Matthew explores the charismatic logic of wellness, in which yoga teachers can become famous by playing at being doctors,  and doctors can become famous by playing at being priests. Starting with the strange tale of BKS Iyengar (and how he stretched his way into all three roles through sheer will), this journey will lay out how the basic schtick of the 20th-century the wellness personality has primed the ground for our current explosion in conspirituality.

Matthew will look at how MDs like Tom Cowan, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, and Zach Bush all run the “Iyengar Arc” in reverse. Where the yoga master was unschooled in medicine, these doctors are unschooled in spirituality. But that doesn’t stop them from pretending to be experts in a weird cocktail that fails both. In their aspirations to spiritual leadership, they each screw the pooch. Cowan ends up shilling for Rudolf Steiner, who knew nothing about viruses, and even less about how not to be a racist. Brogan thinks that Kundalini Yoga is “thousands of years old” even though it was invented by a sociopath in the 1970s. Northrup seems to think that angel channelers are qualified to tell people how to live. And Zach Bush recounts a mystical experience to a group of retreatants in Italy, in which he became a sardine, and realized he wasn’t afraid to die—partly why he uses Reiki instead of pain medication when he’s on the hospice shift.

Ultimately, the “charismatic collapse” between doctor and priest distorts medicine and makes spirituality banal. Perhaps if we see this clearly, we’ll look for better leaders.

Show Notes

Iyengar’s Light on Yoga wiki

Foucault’s Les Mots et Les Choses wiki

Brogan’s Vital Life Project

Anne Cushman interviews BKS Iyengar for Yoga Journal, 1997

About Siddha Yoga

Tom Cowan’s disciplinary rap sheet

Cowan’s disinfo vid

CBC debunks Cowan

Dr. Wilson

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Though we’re all staying put this holiday season, we continue to super-spread our conspirituality vibes. This week we’re fielding listener questions for our first-ever non-Patreon AMA. During this episode, we’ll be talking about our own spiritual beliefs, finding meaning in crisis, Matthew being canceled, and more.

For a holiday treat, Matthew interviews friend of the pod, the fabulous Alex Auder, about what it means to satirize free-birth influencer @bauhauswife, who’s putting the fash back into fashion.

Show Notes

Four Quartets — TS Eliot

Is Stephen Mitchell a translator? He “translates” so many languages!

Then there’s Jan Van Buitenen, the unknown

Matthew’s elegy for Michael Stone

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Diversity has lost some of its strength as a term in our bifurcated world, and yet in nature diversity has always mattered. Our apprehension of using the word points to our further alienation of nature—and ourselves. Derek discusses the power of diversity in three realms he has spent decades studying: international music, fitness, and psychedelics. He also contemplates why diversity matters when considering the growing influence of conspiritualists.

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Trump’s personal pastor Paula White seizes the podium to speak in tongues and prophesize that angels from Africa will certify her master’s electoral victory. Evangelical Kenneth Copeland laughs maniacally at the devilish proposition that Biden has won. They both yearn to squeeze some drop of ecstasy from the husk of conservative politics. How much of the emotional terrorism rolling through these times is the return of the repressed?

In our weekly reporting, Derek looks at Australian chef Pete Evans and his nostalgia for fascist mysticism, hidden beneath green shakes and doTerra downlines. Julian covers Dr. Northrup’s latest viral science fictions, as well as the bizarre Nazi comparisons trending on conspiritualist pages. Matthew looks at nested repressions returning with a vengeance: QAnon resurrecting the Satanic Panic, Bill Gates as the return of the vampire, and the strange new phenomenon of the Aggro-Spiritual Boss Babe Rage Witch, whose coin seems to be on the rise just as the Mark Walsh Spiritual Pick-Up Artist currency tanks. He also considers distinctions between canceling and punching sideways, picking up from last week’s episode.

Then, in a rich interview with author of The Immortality Key, Brian Muraresku, Derek explores the ancient psychedelia of Christianity, both forgotten and repressed, and hopes for its return, as it would probably make Paula White and Kenneth Copeland chill TF out.

Show Notes

Pete Evans says COVID-19 isn’t contagious

Pete Evans fined $25,000 by Therapeutic Goods Administration over coronavirus claims relating to BioCharger

Controversial celebrity chef Pete Evans canned by Seven Network

Healing hubs, a ‘sacred geometry hub’ and solar-powered cabins: Inside the new hippy commune promoted by Pete Evans where people pay to live off the grid in ‘earth ships’

Pete Evans, Truthseeker

Pete Evans shares the Nazi symbol, Black Sun

Christiane Northrup’s Nazi tweet

Northrup’s COVID vaccine interview

COVID-19 Vaccine To Alter DNA? 5 False Claims By Christiane Northrup

Nazi comparison

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As more of the world has gained access to mobile internet, populism, and the perception (rightly or wrongly) of government, corruption has steadily increased. But what is “populism?” How do populist ideas on both the Right and Left identify “the people” and their enemies? With the size of the online megaphone and Balkanized social media audiences, what role does the word magic of emotionally-manipulative language play in perpetuating division, even when claiming to do otherwise?

Show Notes

Vox Eu on mobile internet, populism and government confidence

Steve Bannon’s far right “school of gladiators“ for young populists in Italy

Populism is Morphing in Insidious Ways via The Atlantic

Coleman Hughes review of “How To Be An Anti-Racist” and open letter To Ibrahim X. Kendi

John McWhorter’s review of White Fragility

In Defense of Looting —one author’s controversial opinion via NPR

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On Election night, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, Del Bigtree, and the conspirituality glitterati gathered in Austin for a prayer meeting for Donald Trump. Willis pitched his new documentary and complained about Marxist professors pied-pipering children towards BLM before a new-age preacher sold allotments in a new alt-health ranch community in Texas. Derek covers this ultimate reveal of the conspirituality grift: predict the apocalypse, then sell off-grid cribs on a five-acre manmade lagoon. Fill the swamp, indeed.

Meanwhile, Julian covers the election of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, QAnon arrests in Philly, and the shitstorm of irate comments against YogaGirl as she stands up for decency.

The election over, our critical work continues. How do we keep it on target? How do we make sure that we don’t become so cynical—or so attached to the process of criticism itself—that we can’t find solidarity? And how do we look for solutions while enthralled by social media, as opposed to being invested in society?

Our guests this week are Clementine Morrigan and Jay from Fucking Cancelled. Matthew will be asking them about the work that the digital Left can do to foster solidarity, loyalty, and freedom. It’s an important conversation because we have to assume that some of the redpilled were already being pushed out the door. Why? Because among the woke-ish, it can be easier to fight each other than to punch up and get things done.

Show Notes

Yoga Girl boosts Black girls as President on Instagram

My Dark Journey Into the Soul of a Model Young Republican Candidate

QAnon goes to Washington: two supporters win seats in Congress

Armed QAnon follower arrested in alleged Philly convention center threat linked to far-right Va. senator

Karl Marx: The Fiddler

Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand

Clementine Morrigan on Instagram and her website and Patreon

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Mark Walsh, the proprietor of The Embodiment Conference, was recently challenged by cultural somaticist Tada Hozumi in an Open Letter, penned by Hozumi in lieu of accepting the invitation to speak at the Conference. Hozumi proposed that Walsh look more closely at the exclusionary economy of his ambitious project — specifically, at how it centers white men as the heroes of the somatic techniques that colonialism handed them. The letter, dignified and sincere, offered a concise and workable framing of a fraught issue. Walsh did not respond directly, but on his personal Facebook shitposted about being oppressed by “c*ntery” of social justice “twats.”

Those familiar with this aspect of Walsh’s online persona were not surprised. He has openly risen to market dominance in the online somatasphere as a kind of Black Belt culture warrior, a Jordan Peterson in a jock-strap. In this bonus episode, Matthew reviews some of Walsh’s past online hits as a case study of how the wellness world can confuse acting out for freedom, somatic dominance for discipline, and allow charismatic men to weaponize unhealed wounds in the name of authenticity.

Show Notes

Open Letter to Mark Walsh and The Embodiment Conference

The Embodiment Conference and “somafascism”: commentary from Ben Spatz

Mark Walsh to 2020 TEC invited presenter (the audio is from 2019)

Statement: We need to divest from Mark Walsh and The Embodiment Conference

Yes, Mr. Walsh, there are Black people in Hungary. One of them was born there, in 1980, and is now an MP.

Mark Walsh documentation

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This week could have been worse; what comes now must get better. If we’ve learned anything over these six months, it’s that QAnon is to conspirituality as Trump is to the political status quo. We can debunk or vote out the fever dream, but the virus will remain.

In our first post-election episode we take stock of work yet to do. Derek checks in on QAnon mysticism. Julian speaks on the populism and language games that horseshoe right and left together, and how strong communities cannot afford horizontal violence anymore. We review a new podcast out of Montreal that studies “The Nexus” — the toxic intersection between identitarian activism, social media, and cancel culture.

Matthew crystal-balls the precarious future of post-COVID yoga, and interviews cultural somaticist Tada Hozumi on why Andrew Yang offered attachment politics, decolonizing wellness, and WTF is going on at The Embodiment Conference. “The future of global embodiment,” Hozumi says, “is also the future of global politics. Because the mind always follows the body.”

Show Notes

Sapolsky: Religious Ritual is OCD

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst — Robert Sapolsky

Most Yoga Teachers are Not Online Producers. They Have a Deeper Gift, and Now Is the Time to Trust It.

Dr. Northrup continues: now the conspiracy is electoral fraud

Fucking Cancelled podcast

Molly Meehan’s 5-part “zine”.

Molly’s podcast: “Out of the Woods”.

Exiting the Vampire Castle by Mark Fisher (who tragically died by suicide after a lifelong struggle with depression).

Open Letter to Mark Walsh and The Embodiment Conference

Why I, as a therapist, support Andrew Yang

The Ritual As Justice School

Whiteness as trauma in the body

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Derek talks with Dr. Ali Haider about being on the frontlines of COVID-19.

Dr. Haider is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tufts University Medical School. He received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Haider is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Echocardiography, Nuclear Cardiology, Interventional Cardiology, and vascular ultrasound. He is well versed in all aspects of cardiology, and his areas of interest include coronary angioplasty and interventions, and the treatment of peripheral vascular disease as well as structural heart disease.

Show Notes

Doctor Responds to COVID Over-Diagnosis Claims by White House

Ali Haider on YouTube and Instagram

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When we started this project six months ago, we could feel the cliff-edge of the election on the horizon. We could sense that our footholds of community, reasonable conversation, and consensus reality were eroding. As veterans of spirituality and wellness spaces, we’ve always known that the reality has never lived up to the hype. But the intensification of conspirituality themes, incubating during lockdown into the peak fever-state of QAnon, has made this period especially demoralizing. What do we need now, on the eve of uncertainty? What will we need going forward?

This week, we take some time to explore thoughts and feelings about this menacing week, and how we’re contemplating and committing to the long haul through our work, relationships, and self-care. We’re joined by special guests Hala Khouri, Tara Stiles, and Lissa Rankin, who all offer their wisdom.

Show Notes

Lissa Rankin takes a stand with Rebekah Borucki

Heal at Last: the nonprofit aimed at democratizing healing

Alchemizing Uncertain Times Through Writing

10 New Age Beliefs We Need To Debunk If We Want To Be Social Justice Allies

The Psychology Of People Who Believe Conspiracy Theories

Mind Over Medicine — Lissa’s book

QAnon’s Predictions Haven’t Come True; So How Does the Movement Survive the Failure of Prophecy?

The Republican strategy for every Supreme Court nominee: Hide what you believe

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Coming off of Conspirituality 22 with Rebekah Borucki, Matthew casts a wider net over Hay House’s cultural influence in two parts: a brief survey of some of their top authors, and then an examination of a root text in the Hay House world: A Course in Miracles.

ACIM’s corrupt and emotionally manipulative philosophy is the basis for the work of authors Marianne Williamson and Gabby Bernstein, overlapping almost perfectly onto “The Work” of Byron Katie. Louise Hay, for one, was fond of quoting it. Matthew proposes that A Course in Miracles is the unacknowledged in-house bible for Hay House. He has a lot to say about it as a former member of a cult called Endeavor Academy in Wisconsin Dells, which used A Course in Miracles as its core text, and primary tool of psychological abuse.

Show Notes

Louise Hay quotes A Course in Miracles

Wayne Dyer quotes A Course in Miracles

How Byron Katie emotionally dominates

Bryon Katie on feeling God as babies die and how Hitler maybe brought people to enlightenment (pp. 37-39)

Julian’s open letter to Northrup

Jivana Heyman on Louise Hay (and more)

Louise Hay and AIDS

Applying “The Work” of Byron Katie to the Pandemic

At the heart of ACIM’s influence on New Age wellness is the absurd contempt for the process of becoming sick expressed by “Jesus” in Lesson 136

Letter from Centre for Science in the Public Interest to the FDA detailing Joseph Mercola’s fraudulent COVID cures

An early marked version of A Course in Miracles

A history of A Course in Miracles editing

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Author and publisher Rebekah Borucki joins the Conspirituality team as our first co-host for this episode. She’s got a story to tell: the culture of her publisher, Hay House, was so resistant to taking a position on the racist attitudes of some of their leading cash-cow authors that she ditched her contract and her job with the company as a diversity mentor.

We’ll be talking about the money and politics of New Age media, as well as editorial standards, ghostwriting, cult apologetics, and the responsibility of publishers to deplatform authors that are hurtling toward QAnon. New Age media isn’t all love and light—it’s a pathway into consumers’ vulnerability, and sometimes a recruitment gateway for cults.

Also this week: Derek interviews Dr Jay Mohan on his gruelling COVID front-line work as an interventional cardiologist in a Detroit suburb.

Show notes

Rebekah on toxic White Women Wellness

Rebekah on the silence of Hay House authors

Rebekah on leaving Hay House

A Critique of Abraham Hicks & the Law of Attraction

Celery Juice: The big problem with a viral Instagram ‘cure

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More than 20 years ago, Richard Vaughan wrote Matthew a very kind and perceptive letter, asking him to reconsider whether his participation in a Buddhist cult would forever alienate him from the real world, and his real friends. Matthew reads this letter here.

It’s on his mind not only because there are so many people who are now struggling with having lost friends and family members, but also because Richard—only 55, and a hero of Canadian queer literature—has been missing for a week.

Show Notes

N.B. writers and LGBTQ community ‘very worried‘ about missing mentor Richard Vaughan

The Seven Good Reasons Why the Boys in the Band Could be a Musical or, I am the Dollar in the Dolorosa

QAnon Casualties

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We still can’t believe alt-health Bali retreat rockstar Sacha Stone called for the “evisceration” of public officials last week. Are conspiritualists really crossing over into militancy? Are the products of wellness so boring, and are the markets so saturated, that messianic influencers have no choice but to up the ante? Stone’s recent interview guest, Christiane Northrup, recently invoked the sacred power of the Sheriff as the highest law in the land for anti-lockdown folks who believe they’re being oppressed. That argument was first made by the white nationalist Posse Comitatus in the 1970s — the seed group for many of today’s militias.

This week, we investigate the means by which religious cults and conspiritualists rattle sabers and poison people. Derek reviews Japan’s AUM cult as a prelude to Julian’s riveting interview with AUM expert Sarah Hightower. Julian reports on the Northrupian intersection between militia movements and alt-health ideas of “sovereignty.” Matthew discusses violence in ISKCON as the Hare Krishnas parade mask-free through Glastonbury.

Show Notes

Rajneeshee leaders take revenge on The Dalles’ with poison, homeless

Cult Leaders & Psychopaths: Power Beyond the Grave

We Need to Talk about the Rise of White Supremacy in Yoga

Epic Yoga San Clemente

Alan Hostetter playing a singing bowl in a Trump t-shirt

Reddit thread on Q Casualties Dating App

Sex and Death on the Road to Nirvana

Amy Coney Barrett uses her children in different ways

What the Second Amendment really meant to the Founders

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Who’s right, who’s confused, who’s noble, who’s the bad guy?

Nothing exists in a cultural vacuum. The emergence of yoga as a hugely popular and lucrative phenomenon in the West is no exception.

In this bonus episode, Julian discusses a recent article that was posted, and enthusiastically liked, shared, and commented upon in sincere solidarity by yoga folks contributing to the conspirituality zeitgeist.

This despite the article being written by a respected brown scholar and activist and posted by an earnest white yogi—and being about a billionaire with some questionable history.

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The reality of a second COVID wave started back in the Spring. Now that With over half of American states are experiencing increased cases, the conspiracy theories are surging. At least 32 White House staff and allies, as well as the president and his wife, have tested positive, likely originating in an unmasked close-quartered super-spreader Rose Garden celebration of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

As Trump poses for wheezing conquering hero propaganda following his questionable return from Walter Reed, another type of second wave is being led by brandwashed conspiritualists. Yoga and wellness loyalists are pushing back against criticism of their use of Q hashtags while reveling in mask opposition, anti-vaxxer agendas, and a distorted slacktivist approach to child trafficking that forms the foundation of QAnon. Pastel Q is surging.

This week, Julian investigates the terrifying Line In The Sand online conference, which featured friends of the pod, Mikki Willis, Zach Bush, Christiane Northrup, and many others. Matthew focuses on the chaos of charismatic leadership, weighing Trumpian tactics with the likes of Chogyam Trungpa and Yogi Bhajan. Derek explores the importance of creativity in the time of quarantine, leading into his interview with musician and former cult member, Ben Lee.

The entire crew also discusses Yoga Journal following the lead of the NY Times and Rolling Stone by reporting (and then bearing the backlash) on yoga community leaders taking a stand against QAnon—and getting trolled by Q devotees in the process.

Show Notes

Julie Salter describes Swami Vishnudevananda, abuser.

NewEarth Haven bio-resonant investment pitch

Trump Supporter Wears ‘COVID Diaper’ to Prevent Coronavirus Farts

Episode 94: The New Age to QAnon Pipeline by QAnon Anonymous

The Case against Swami Rama of the Himalayas

Future Self Summit

Reclaim Your Lives Conference

Leaders in the Yoga Community Speak Out Against QAnon

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Bill Gates is unknowable—except to close and estranged friends, family members, his therapist if he has one. His empire sprawls; his philanthropy is tangled. He’s clearly not any one thing. But what is the one thing conspiritualists fantasize him to be? What archetypal role does he play for those who hate him?

In this meditation, Matthew zeroes in on the briefly-mentioned biographical datum that Gates was bullied as a boy to unfold his symbolic power as neuroatypical scapegoat. If we listen carefully, he argues, we’ll hear something very high-school-ish, laced with homophobia and latent violence, in the lazy defamations slung at Gates. 

Is it a surprise that Trump graduated from the New York Military Academy in 1964—the same year that a horrific hazing incident cost several administrators their jobs? Is it a surprise, given what we saw in that so-called debate, that Trump’s school had written hazing into their cadet manual? No, it’s not. And when Biden pauses and smiles, and shakes his head, and his gaze falls, is he remembering what it was like to have had a stutter in an all-boys school? 

We spend a lot of time on this podcast unravelling the shoddy thinking at the heart of our conspirituality and political landscapes. These 24 minutes tackles primal cruelty that is up to men to address—if they can remember it, and challenge that sad assumption that it’s simply the way of the world.

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Thirty-two days out from the election and every hour reveals another layer of intensity. The more widely conspirituality and QAnon spreads, the more normalized mundane political violence becomes.

In this episode, Derek looks at how the virus of conspiracism is now overtly threatening the basic premises of voting, as Emperor Trump projects a fiction about electoral fraud, even as he loses his clothes. Matthew looks at a crucial part of this normalization: how Q himself, whoever he is, is now brandwashing, advising followers to abandon familiar Q-words. How then are resisters like Seane Corn to address this brainworm as it shape-shifts, co-opting the visuals of wellness and even the jargon of social justice? Julian steps back for a broader look, reviewing the pod’s discoveries and themes so far, and visualizing where they might lead.

We interview Mike Rains, one of the brave moderators of the 25K member subreddit QAnonCasualties, who has a lot to say about what the Q-hole feels like when it rips up hearts and homes.

Show Notes

Q suggests going stealth

r/QAnonCasulties

Donate via QanonCasualties SubReddit to a real charity that does real work to help combat child trafficking

Insights into the Personalities of Conspiracy Theorists

Why Do Some People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?

People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories Share a Cluster of Psychological Features

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For our inaugural bonus episode of Conspirituality Podcast, we feature a single interview: a deep dive into the demonology of QAnon and Xtian evangelicalism with Dublin-based Religious Studies scholar Jonathan O’Donnell (pronouns: they/them).

O’Donnell took Matthew through a tour of modern demons: how they show up and how believers relate to them. They also explore the amazing world of “spiritual warfare handbooks,” which have a history in US evangelicalism, are bestsellers in Q-land, and in some ways resemble new-age self-help manuals. They discuss prophecy, speaking in tongues, and the impacts of demonology on marginalized identities. 

Professor O’Donnell specializes in American Religious and Cultural Studies, with a focus on the religious right and systems of dehumanization. They study Islamophobia, antisemitism, transphobia, and religious nationalism. Their current research analyses the relation between evangelical demonology, authoritarianism, and “post-truth politics” in Trump’s America.

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Some wellness influencers offer compelling critiques of Big Pharma, factory farming, and psychiatric malpractice. What happens when their arguments become honeypots for snake oil? In this episode, Derek provides an overview of modern pharma practice and its discontents. Julian delves into the muddy culture of yoga and antidepressants—the bad advice, the stigma, the magical thinking. He also reviews the latest Q-adjacent content of Canadian self-help celebrity Danielle LaPorte, and checks in on Kate Northrup’s interview with Zach Bush.

Derek and Julian interview Matthew about his recent feature investigation on conspirituality power couple, Dr. Kelly Brogan and Sayer Ji. There’s lots of material that didn’t make the final copy, like how Brogan’s conspirituality could endanger the mental health of her online clients, and how her usage of Kundalini Yoga as a supplemental therapy is riddled with false historical and medical claims. Also: why didn’t Sayer Ji denounce QAnon when given the chance?

Finally, Derek digs into the podcast origin story with an interview of Jules Evans, who helped “conspirituality” become an almost-household term.

Show Notes

Inside Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying, Vax-Resistant Conspiracy Machine

Popular Health Guru Sayer Ji Curates the Scientific Literature with His Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy

Matthew’s review of Brogan’s “review” of Yogi Bhajan survivor Pamela Dyson’s memoir

From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga

Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes: A Case-Based Guide to Critical Thinking in Medicine

An Olive Branch Report on Yogi Bhajan, the abuser

White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan

Trump Claims He Invented the Term “Fake News”—Here’ s an Interview With the Guy Who Actually Helped Popularize It

Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content

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At this point, we can say for sure that American spiritual and wellness communities are not only vulnerable to conspiracy brainworms but they’re actively hosting and spreading them. Seane Corn joins us to discuss what to do when QAnon rhetoric and hashtags co-opts lurches through yoga communities.

But is this really unexpected from a historical point of view? Our second guest, cult researcher and historian Jared Yates Sexton joins us to talk about his new book, American Rule. He discusses the longstanding conspiracies that have influenced America since its very founding as well as the chronic problem of American exceptionalism.

We all add in our own reflections on 9/11: how close to home it came, how one of us was in a cult when it happened, and how we learn and manage fear.

Show Notes

Thread on Pastel QAnon

The Birth of QAmom

Wellness Influencers Are Spreading QAnon Conspiracies About the Coronavirus

Seane Corn’s anti-Q post swarmed by QAnons

Inside Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying, Vax-Resistant Conspiracy Machine

The Brightest Stars Shine In The Deepest Dark

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Yoga-crazed Hindu nationalists murder Muslims for eating beef, believing that the cow embodies the religious gift of India’s soil. American white supremacists chug gallons of local milk to prove their lactose tolerance and their claim that they alone should occupy the Global North.

Extreme examples aside: it’s clear that key elements of the alt-right and the New Age agree that the Earth is sacred. Bountiful and healing, the Earth preserves everything lost to industrialization, Big Pharma, and globalization. Home is where the soil is. But whose home? Who’s welcome here? Who can afford it? Who’s allowed to own it, and who has to slave-labor on it? For all the supposed concern for ecology, why aren’t we seeing conspiritualists and QAnon devotees marching against carbon emissions, celebrating the carbon drops of lockdown, supporting the migrant workers who pick their arugula, or starting community gardens in their food-desert cities?

This week Matthew reviews the soft-fascist “blood and soil” themes of conspirituality culture. Derek gives some background and context on the romanticization problem with agriculture. And Julian looks at the quasi-scientific premises and promises that podcast fave Dr. Zach Bush offers in response. We also bring you an interview with farming activist John Roulac, who’s incensed at how conspirituality is ripping up progressive foodie movements. In a recent article, he called out his old friends and associates (like Mikki Willis and Christiane Northrup) for what he calls their “body-snatching” beliefs. Matthew closes with a view from Manitoulin Island.

Show Notes

Is the Wellness Movement Being Tainted by QAnon and the New Age Right?

John Roulac tangles with Mikki Willis

John’s projects: Kiss the Ground | Nutiva | Rebotanicals

Matthew’s feature on Pattabhi Jois, yoga guru and serial sexual abuser

When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers

A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz

Why factory farms are a “perfect storm” for disease pandemics

Brian Rose on Zach Bush

Our COVID-19

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For decades, Neo-Tantra has focused on sex workshops and orgasmic bliss, overlooking the fact that the Kama Sutra is effectively a patriarchal instruction manual as well as Tantra’s grassroots origins in the lower castes in Indian society, which were responding to lofty metaphysical ideas with practical rituals everyone could partake in. From that perspective, a modern industry marketed with Shiva-Shakti figurines is yet another example of capitalist yoga in a privileged society.

Derek opens this week discussing a redpilled-lite video by Danielle LaPorte, while Julian discusses an intensely personal story related to Tantra; he also explores the role of the Aghoris. We break from Tantra talk during Matthew’s interview with Alex Auder, a veteran yoga instructor who uses comedy as a relief mechanism from the QAnon craziness in the yoga world. Matthew ends this week’s episode with a reflection on his history with Tibetan Buddhist Tantra, and how he sees echoes of its archaic elements showing up, in undigested form, in the QAnon imaginarium.

Show Notes

Danielle LaPorte’s video

How tantric sex trains people to have more intense orgasms, and why it’s so controversial

The Mysterious Death of a Tantric Sex Guru

Sex Messiah: A Tantric Odyssey

Not for the Faint of Heart: The Aghori and Their Unorthodox Path to Enlightenment

Reza Aslan (almost) loses his head

Yoga: An Evolving Story Of Cross-Cultural Innovation

Julian Feeld at the Hollywood Blvd QAnon rally

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This week we announce and discuss a refinement in our podcast’s direction. Real talk: conspirituality has clearly become both a front and a gateway for the fever-dream of QAnon. As mainstream news outlets wake up to the sordid reality that independent journalists have been tracking for two years, we find neither stream truly conceptualizing answers or methods for recovery and healing. Going forward, we’re going to concentrate not only on critique, but also offering solutions.

Our guest this week is Lorna Liana, publisher of Entheonation. She tells Matthew about the insurgence of conspirituality in the plant medicine and ceremony world. Some neo-shamans, she says, are redpilling plant worshippers during vulnerable states. Julian and Derek chime in with their own experiences of psychedelics.

Show Notes

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

What Are the Coronavirus Risks with Ayahuasca Ceremonies?

Can Ayahuasca Protect You From Coronavirus?

Is Tobacco Antiviral (& Can It Treat COVID-19)?

Plant Ceremonies and Your Safety in the Midst of a Global Crisis

COVID-19 Denialism is Rooted in the Settler Colonial Mindset

A Neuroscientist Explains What Conspiracy Theories Do To Your Brain

The Danger of Manipulative Love-Bombing in a Relationship

The Certainty Bias: A Potentially Dangerous Mental Flaw

Dopamine, cognitive biases and assessment of certainty: A neurocognitive model of delusions

The Dopaminergic Midbrain Encodes the Expected Certainty about Desired Outcomes

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Dr. Theodora Wildcroft joins us again to take us through the basics of contemporary Religious Studies. She discusses how the discipline approaches issues of ritual, value, meaning, charisma, and role-playing, while also leading us through the process by which objects, places, and people become sacred. Spoiler: it’s more about what we do than what we believe.

Wildcroft also dissects the chronic problem of conspiritualists weaponizing myths of rebellion and recovery.

Matthew gives a brief rundown on the trainwreck of Mikki Willis’s “Plandemic 2,” and also talks about the Q-map as an artistic (if delusional) landscape of comfort and connection. Derek contemplates the chemicals we don’t question while putting onto or inside of our bodies, while Julian homes in on one particular chemical: the pyramid scheme propped up by Big Essential Oil.

Show Notes

The QAnon map

How to spot a conspiracy theory – Expert guide to conspiracy theories part one

Mandala Offering – Ring Set Version

Lotsawa House: Mandala Offering

Deep State Mapping Project

Was Lewis Carroll a Pedophile? His Photographs Suggest So

Travis View on Twitter

2019 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report

Risk Associated with Bee Venom Therapy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Class Action: Young Living ‘Nothing More Than an Unlawful Pyramid Scheme’

Multi-Level Vaccine Refusal

Very simplistic visual example of how conspiracy theories can become transnational

Deconstructing the placebo effect and finding the meaning response

T

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Last week, we started to explore how the real issue of child trafficking is being weaponized by bad-faith actors. This week we’re joined by two experts that explain the overt and subtle impacts involved.

Regan Williams, CEO and founder of Seen & Heard, a nonprofit that provides youth in foster care with professional and personal development via the performing arts, offers a ground zero perspective of trafficked children and teens (and the people that actually care for them) being made even more invisible by conspiratorial clicktivism.

Religious Studies scholar and trauma-sensitive yoga consultant, Dr. Theo Wildcroft, joins us from England to discuss the consequences of trauma histories being hijacked for political and emotional manipulation. She offers insight into the mythic elements of conspirituality-to-Q that cannot be ignored if we want to understand how trauma is both stored and resisted.

On This Week in Conspirituality, Matthew considers the absurdity of David Wolfe accusing the medical community of not doing anything about cancer. Julian investigates anti-Semitic blood libel themes in QAnon and Derek discusses the chronic dangers of seeking utopia.

Show Notes

To report abuse/neglect, call the child abuse hotline: 800.540.4000 (LA county) / 800.422.4453 (National)

Epstein is a real pedophile. Why are QAnon and Pizzagate so focused on fake ones?

The Dark Virality of a Hollywood Blood-Harvesting Conspiracy

Just how anti-Semitic is QAnon?

QAnon isn’t newly anti-Semitic—it’s always been that way

Q supporters are incorrectly doxxing journalists who report on QAnon as Jewish

Nearly 600,000 people have voted for candidates who support QAnon

Here are the QAnon supporters running for Congress in 2020

QAnon Supporter Who Made Bigoted Videos Wins Ga. Primary, Likely Heading To Congress

Prominent Republicans back a conspiracy theory-promoting congressional candidate in Georgia

Argentino on

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Two of this podcast’s hosts have been involved in destructive cult dynamics. Matthew’s three years with Michael Roach and three years at Endeavor Academy are at the root of his cult research and journalism. Julian’s six years in the inner circle around what he describes as Ana Forrest’s incendiary and manipulative approach to yoga left him with repressed memories. Those experiences also left his family deeply scarred by some of the same Satanic Panic themes prevalent in the QAnon movement. His ongoing work advocating for critical thinking and community health is part of his recovery.

Derek describes himself as being “cult-adjacent”—not uncommon for a lifelong wellness industry professional. In this episode, he’ll interview Julian and Matthew about their cult experiences, the recovery process, and cultic dynamics in modern yoga, Buddhist, and New Age communities informing the growing field of conspirituality.

They’ll also discuss cultic organizations being ideally positioned to sell “Disaster Spirituality” (props to Naomi Klein) in times of crisis. Cult leaders understand the power of charisma, the attractiveness of transcendental ideology, and what it takes to make vulnerable people feel like every question is answerable with jargon, intrusive eye contact, and deeply deceptive shit. Matthew will ground the discussion with a synopsis of cult research, basic concepts, and useful definitions.

Show Notes

The David Wolfe video about pedophilia and Trump

United States of Conspiracy | PBS documentary

QAnon Casualties: stories on Reddit

Steven Hassan’s “Influence Continuum,” which is helpful for assessing the health of influence

Great podcast about James Arthur Ray and the question of undue influence

Tony Robbins’ PR defends him when people are injured at his firewalking events

Excellent podcast series on Heaven’s Gate

The conviction of Keith Raniere

Peter Georgiades on the legal barriers to cult litigation

Daniel Shaw on “Traumatic Narcissism“

QAnon Anonymous

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A recent report by the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate found that anti-vaxx organizations reach 58 million people on social media. The total amount of money spent by anti-vax groups and advertisers targeting their followers on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube is roughly $1 billion. The majority of the money funding the most prominent anti-vax groups is by just two men: osteopath Joseph Mercola and fund manager Bernard Selz. All of this makes you wonder: Why is so money being used to target anti-vaxxers?

Derek interviews Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, about how anti-vax leaders and groups are using social media to target and recruit followers. The stakes are higher than ever, as the vaccine argument has transcended autism and is threatening to endanger public health during the pandemic.

Julian considers the vaccine fears of parents as well as the shadow of the Tuskegee Syphillis Study, and how anti-vax alliances are targeting black communities, which could be a disastrous Trojan Horse for COVID-19, while Matthew serves up his This Week in Conspirituality segment in the epilogue, looking at how the leader of the high-demand group he was indoctrinated into over 20 years ago, led by Michael Roach, is rebooting old content as a COVID-era grift.

Show Notes

History of Vaccines

A History of Measles in the United States

Measles Cases and Outbreaks

MMR Vaccination | What You Should Know

Mercury, Vaccines, and Autism: One Controversy, Three Histories

Aluminum in vaccines

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines

CDC Global Health – Polio – Our Progress

Christiane Northrup: Triangulation, regret, Gardisil, civil disobedience

How the Public Learned About the Infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Anti-vaccination leaders fuel black mistrust of medical establishment as covid-19 kills people of color

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Percolating alongside racism and classism, one of the most pernicious subtexts of conspirituality propaganda is ableism. Proponents spout accusatory mantras like: “You have an immune system!,” “You’d have nothing to worry about if you were vegan!,” and, of course, “Living in fear is the real cause of disease.”

Not only do these ideas have nothing to do with virology, they also condemn everyone who is immuno-compromised, living in a food desert, or managing trauma to the margins. COVID-19 has exposed the ugliest secret of wellness culture: the glorification of the self over concern about the community.

None of this is news for disability activists. In this episode, Matthew interviews Jivana Heyman, founder of Accessible Yoga and longtime AIDS activist, about walking the anti-conspirituality line between yoga and public health. Heyman also reveals how the past and present intersect in Tony Fauci, a leading figure in AIDS research during Reagan’s tenure who is now being muzzled by Trump.

In This Week in Conspirituality, Julian looks at the fear of death through the lens of Ernest Becker and Joseph Campbell, Derek discusses free speech after Twitter removes 7,000 QAnon accounts, and Matthew tries to empathize with the “awakened” aspect of conspirituality, i.e., What have they woken up to?

Show Notes

A Force In The Universe: Brad Ramsey

Advanced Asthanga practice video with Pattabhi Jois

The Prophecies of Q

Twitter Removes Thousands Of QAnon Accounts, Promises Sweeping Ban On The Conspiracy

What Does Free Speech Mean?

As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn’t Like

Statistics & Information on Childhood Sexual Abuse

Matthew’s tribute to Jivana Heyman

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As Christiane Northrup’s social media feed descends even further into the delusional zone — this week she retweeted explicitly identified QAnon content — we ask Professor Jacqueline Antonovich of Nursing Clio about the history of charisma, magic, and entrepreneurship in women’s wellness. When asked if she was surprised by Northrup’s conspirituality spiral, Antonovich was clear: “Not at all.” She carefully unpacks why.

We also look at the role of media in conspiritual thinking and discuss Northup’s enthusiastic endorsement of the movement to “make Americans free again” by becoming single-issue voters—the issue being vaccines.

Show Notes

Marshall McLuhan | The medium is the message

How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society?

In 1947, the press reported on the Hutchins Commission report

Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times

Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist

Hundreds of hyperpartisan sites are masquerading as local news. This map shows if there’s one near you.

Make Americans Free Again | The New Normal: Citizens In Charge

Jacqueline Antonovich | Nursing Clio

Northrup’s retweet of a QAnon account boosting the red shoe conspiracy

Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper“

Ricki Lake’s “Business of Being Born“

On Lydia Pinkham

On Mary Putnam Jacoby

Sarah Swedburg on Louise Hay

How New Age Guru Louise Hay Harmed a Generation of Gay Men

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OB/GYN Dr. Christiane Northrup has been a giant in women’s healthcare advocacy for decades. She has persuasively argued for lower-intervention childbirth, an end to circumcision, and policies that place family unity at the heart of health care. She’s known and loved for challenging her medical training with faith-based values and an intuition framed as feminine (if not feminist) and “sovereign.”

Northrup draws on astrology, feng shui, chakra theory, and “vibrational” healing as modes of resistance to what she sees as medical patriarchy. This resistance began seamlessly intersecting with COVID trutherism in April, when she started posting daily Facebook sermons to her half-million followers. The series is called “The Great Awakening” — a phrase first used to describe 18th-century American spiritual revival movements, but was recently co-opted by QAnon conspiracists to describe the inevitable triumph of Trump over the Deep State.

Northrup’s sermons, combined with her posts of Plandemic, Tony Robbins interviewing anti-vaxxers, and a podcast with “Andy” Wakefield in which she called COVID a “flu” and expressed concern about Bill Gates taking over public education, give a rich glimpse into the seduction of conspirituality in the hands of a wellness matriarch.

Most recently, Northrup has strengthened her alignment with QAnon by posting a trailer for a follow-up to a key recruiting video. With up to a dozen QAnon supporters running for office in November, Northrup is positioned to nudge middle-class white wellness women with money into a cult that believes Trump is a messianic figure.

This week’s interview is with Britt Hermes, who earned her doctorate in naturopathic medicine from Bastyr University in 2011. After three years of practice, Hermes left the profession to became its most vocal public critic. We asked her to weigh in on women’s wellness in the pandemic and the appeal of Dr. Northrup.

Show Notes

Pharmaceutical Ethics and Grassroots Activism in the United States: A Social History Perspective

Just 50% of Americans plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s how to win over the rest

To celebrate the Fourth, Michael Flynn posts a pledge to conspiracy group QAnon

How New Age Guru Louise Hay Harmed a Generation of Gay Men

How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread

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It can be as hard to talk with your well-meaning yoga-world friend about their COVID-conspiracy beliefs as it is to talk with a family member about their devotion to Donald Trump. This isn’t an accident — but it’s not exactly by design, either. Both figures can seem trapped in filter bubbles of jargon that hypnotizes and cancels critical thinking.

In this episode, we talk with pre-eminent cult researcher Steve Hassan about his new book, The Cult of Trump, and explore the overlaps between the cults of personality that destroy political, wellness, and spiritual cultures. We discuss changes in cultic technique in the age of lockdown, and how best to maintain contact with a person transformed by manipulation. The interview with Steven begins at the 37-minute mark.

Show Notes

Troy Casey video

UFO Conspiracy Theorists Offer ‘Ascension’ From Our Hell World for $333

The Prophecies of Q

How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online

Anatomy of Delusion: How Otherwise Conscious People Descended into the Darkness — Stephen Dinan

Shift Network courses

Matthew on the Shift Network

The Cult of Trump Media Page

Steven Hassan’s BITE Model

Influence Continuum

“I Am Not Your Guru” — Tony Robbins documentary

“Hacking the Consumer’s Brain” — Moran Cerf

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Conspiritualists are compelling for numerous reasons: they’re charismatic; they claim to transcend polarized politics; they claim to speak the unspeakable in a quest for hidden truths. It makes sense that a key rhetorical instrument in their toolbox is poetry.

“The real virus is fear” is a unifying metaphor for conspiritualists, but there are others. In conspiritual-ese, the immune system is like the Christian soul: eternal, perfect, and solitary. Masks are signs of submission that symbolize the suppression of free speech and even slavery. Public health departments are bureaucracies of death. Vaccines are poisons designed to demand compliance. Vaccinators are Satanic agents compelled to enter the sacred space of the body — especially the child’s body — in order to possess it.

In this episode, Derek (cancer survivor), Matthew (pulmonary embolism survivor), and Julian (Lyme disease in remission) discuss the function of the beautiful and delusional metaphors of illness and transcendence in conspiritual-ese, applying the discoveries of Susan Sontag and Eula Biss. Maggie Levantovskaya, an Adjunct Lecturer at Santa Clara University, discusses her essay, “My Disease is Not a Metaphor.”

Show Notes

“My Disease is Not a Metaphor” — Maggie Levantovskaya

“Don’t Thank Me for My Sacrifice” — Maggie Levantovskaya

Resilience and Possibility Conversation with Zach Bush MD

Mary Baker Eddy: American Religious Leader

The Science of Mind — Ernest Holmes

“The Trouble With Medicine’s Metaphors” — Dhruv Khullar

Travis View on adrenochrome

Internalised Ableism: The Tyranny Within

Ableism and internalized ableism

“Will you Go with a War-Cry or a Whimper?” — Ben Ralston

On Immunity: An Inoculation — Eula Biss

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On one hand, we have the CEO of Crossfit tweeting that “Floyd-19” is the real problem. (He got canceled.) On the other, COVID-truther psychiatrist Kelly Brogan is using Hopi mythology to support the fantasy of a Corona consciousness-awakening — while the Hopi themselves live within the Navajo Nation, which has the highest infection rate in the country.

WTF is going on with white wellness people?

For this episode, we’re joined by New School historian of American fitness, Dr. Natalia Petrzela, who sheds light on the historical links between physical culture and racism, and Dax-Devlon Ross, an anti-racism and civil rights educator, on what white wellness ideology does to Black people.

Show Notes

Dr. Petrzela on Ahmaud Abery

A Letter to My White Male Friends of a Certain Age — Dax-Devlon Ross

Glassman’s FLOYD-19 tweet

Buzzfeed covering Glassman’s Zoom

Dr. Petrzela tweeting on McFadden and Sandow

One City’s Struggle to Police the Police — Dax in The Washington Post

Kelly Brogan using “sovereignty”

Kelly Brogan appropriating a Hopi text

Something we didn’t cover: A Wisconsin “I Can’t Breathe” workout

A BUNCH of white spiritual dudes claiming that the “I can’t breathe” protest chant is a spell to program people for slavery to the Deep State. They advise taking strong action with deep breathing exercises and antidote mantras.

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Right-wing conspiracy theories are being marketed in wellness communities as a form of spiritual freedom. While pattern recognition is an essential survival instinct, it’s being exploited during a time of a global pandemic, governmental collapse, and social paranoia. Tragically, so-called spiritual leaders are trafficking in propaganda while advocating for individual sovereignty.

We also discuss the history of and science behind 5G and vaccines.

Show Notes

Ivanka Trump’s graduation speech to Class of 2020

Can a Vaccine for Covid-19 Be Developed in Record Time?

Louis Pasteur, from crystals of life to vaccination

The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t

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To the layperson, Dr. Zach Bush’s vision of a resurrected microbiome as being the answer to modern illnesses sounds appealing. His basic argument: we’ve been weeding ourselves to death, externally and internally, depleting the biodiversity of our soils and bodies. He seems to have done typical clinical work (in mostly private settings) in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care. But with no publications or experience with epidemiology, why is he being tapped by anti-vax activists to speak on COVID-19.

Perhaps because when he runs up against the limit of his knowledge, he offers spiritual sermons. J.P. Sears does something similar, though from a different direction, without being signal-boosted by anti-vaxxers. Sears’s deeper colors show when he reaches the limits of his satire: he’s a life coach medical libertarian who’s willing to cherry-pick data and mock concerns about the immunocompromised in support of…we’re not quite sure.

Show Notes

Zach Bush interview with Del Bigtree

Zach Bush monologue with Rich Roll

JP Sears videos: Media | Response to Media | Blue Pill People

JP Sears’s podcasts: Tim Kennedy | Viral Video

Summary of Santa Clara study cited by Bush and Sears

Sayer Ji’s Instagram meme

Tim Kennedy and waterboarding

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Barely two weeks into various stages of lockdown around the world, New Age philosopher Charles Eisenstein published a 9,000-word essay on the meaning of the pandemic. He summed up his core theme with deft wordplay at about the 7,000-word mark. After suggesting that the global crisis afforded a kind of transformative opportunity, he writes

“Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation? The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. ‘Novel coronavirus pandemic’ means ‘a new coronation for all.’

What was so captivating about this essay that Jack Dorsey tweeted it to the 4.5M followers on his platform? What are Eisenstein’s premises, credentials, rhetorical techniques? What are his connections to medical libertarianism, and how does he manage to endorse conspirituality while seeming to deconstruct it?

Show Notes

The Coronation — Charles Eisenstein

CORONATION UNVEILED: A Critique and Cure for Charles Eisenstein’s Fairy Tale Pandemic Essay — Jack Adam Weber

Daniel Pinchbeck’s response to The Coronation

The Conspiracy Myth — Charles Eisenstein

Covid-19 Is A Rehab Intervention: Charles Eisenstein | Rich Roll Podcast

Charles Eisenstein / Sayer Ji discussion

During COVID-19, Charles Eisenstein Invites You to Think Deeply About His Awesome Writing — Matthew Remski

Transformational Weight Loss — Charles Eisenstein

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Conspirituality started with Julian and Matthew as guests on Derek’s EarthRise podcast. We’re reposting these episodes for you to hear the origins of this project.

In episode 0.2, we discuss suspect medical claims made by Kelly Brogan and Sayer Ji. We also talk about Julian’s new essay, “The Red Pill Overlap.”

Show Notes

The Red Pill Overlap

Why We Stay Asleep When COVID-19 Is Trying To Wake Us Up

What Mandatory Vaccination and the 5G Rollout Have In Common

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