Thursday, July 9, 2020

Welcome to new visitors from Mike and Maurice's Mind Escape! (and to returning friends)



Big thank-you to Mike and Maurice of the Mind Escape podcast for having me over to discuss the world's ancient myths, their connections to the stars, and some of the implications and lessons of that connection.

Welcome to all new visitors who are encountering my research for the first time: I hope that learning more about the myths will be a blessing to you in your life. 

Our interview was recorded on the evening of July 08, 2020 and was streamed live: you can see the video of our conversation above, or by following this link.

You can also hear the audio-only version and download the file here at Soundcloud,

or here at Apple's iTunes,

or here at Spotify.

However, because I specifically prepared slides to go along with the discussion, some of which (especially towards the end) contain star-charts showing constellations connected with the myth pattern we were looking at during this conversation, I would recommend watching the video version (you can also use the "settings" icon at the bottom of that video to speed up the playback if you want).

I enjoyed getting to interact with Mike and Maurice, with whom I had not spoken previously.

Here is a link to a previous post discussing their interview with Arthur Koopman's of the Secrets of the Norse website.

At one point during our talk, I did mention that during my preparation to visit their show, I had listened to several of their episodes, all of which I had enjoyed except for their discussion of the notorious "Urantia book," which was likely produced by a very racist proponent of eugenics during the first half of the twentieth century and which puts forward a vision of space visitors coming to our planet (which they supposedly call "Urantia") who are the supposed literal beings responsible for the accounts of Adam and Eve, Michael the Archangel, Jesus, and other figures in the Bible (all of whose stories can be shown with abundant evidence to be based upon metaphor involving constellations, rather than upon actual terrestrial events involving literal persons).

I pointed out that the text of the Urantia book itself contains flat-out racist statements and concepts, particularly in books 4 and 5.

Mike and Maurice were quite dismayed to learn about that, having heard about the Urantia book from various sources which don't reveal its problematic aspects and (being guitarists and musicians themselves) having learned that various guitarists they admired including Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Steve Vai had all been known to own a copy of the Urantia book and carry it around with them on tour. They both stated very clearly that they stand against all racism, and also immediately deleted their episode about the Urantia book.

I personally believe that some of these deceptive narratives such as the Urantia book are part of deliberate operations to try and slip objectionable ideas into wider distribution under cover of sensational stories about literal aliens (who re-cast the old literalist interpretations of the Biblical scriptures into new literalist re-workings involving alien beings or intelligences in an "updated form of literalism") and that it is very easy for men and women to be taken in by some of these operations.

Below is a video I published back in July of last year entitled "Literalism and Alien Contact" in which I discuss some of the racist and literalist aspects of the Urantia book, along with the literalistic elements common in many other "UFO narratives" from the twentieth century (including the texts and belief system propagated by the "Heaven's Gate" cult, which famously committed an act of mass suicide during the approach of the gorgeous Comet Hale-Bopp, the most-recent comet to be visible to the naked eye prior to the arrival of Comet NEOWINS in the night sky just this week).

I hope you will enjoy this conversation with Mike and Maurice of the Mind Escape podcast, and that if this is your first time visiting you will enjoy looking through the material available in the different sections of the Star Myths of the World website, including archived podcasts, videos, sample book content, a "resources" page containing online texts (a link to the "resources" page being found at the bottom of every page on the site), and of course a fully-searchable blog.

I also hope you will visit again soon!

After our conversation, I got a few hours sleep and then rose early the next morning to get my first view of the mysterious and beautiful Comet NEOWISE, which made for a memorable day! You can see my description of that experience, along with diagrams and tips on successfully finding the comet during the next two days while it is visible prior to sunrise, here.