Transcript: Esoteric Guides TV - Mark Stavish interview

[hermeticism]

This week I have something different for you. I made a transcript of a podcast, where the host, Scott Michael Harney of Esoteric Guides, interviews Mark Stavish about the latter’s predictions for 2023. The topics discussed here remain actual today. You can find the original video on YouTube.

The transcript

Host: I have Mark Stavish here. He's the director of studies for The Institute of Hermetic Studies, a lifelong student of esotericism with over 35 years in comparative religions philosophy and psychology and mysticism and you have an emphasis on traditional Western esotericism, and when I say traditional you know you follow a traditional path like Martinism and Masonry, as well as...

Mark Stavish: …Astrology, Golden Dawn, Alchemy, Kabbalah but as you would see them expressed in the Golden Dawn and Rosicrucianism and Martinism. We also have classical Theurgy and classical astrology as well so it's a nice wonderful program that we've got, a great program.

Host: Yeah, in fact what's the website for that?

Mark Stavish: hermeticinstitute.org where the Institute for Hermetic Studies is. So, if you just Google us we'll show up several hundred times there's no problem finding us. Institute for Hermetic Studies.

Host: Yeah, wonderful series of courses and teachings there. So, now we're about to enter 2023 and you had some very interesting insights last year. Actually, I think you are right spot on particularly with your insights into the media. So, what do you see for 2023?

Mark Stavish: As I mentioned to you last year, some people would ask me why I didn't predict the war in Ukraine, and I said I did, I just didn't want to feed into it. This is really an important part of our discussion today, and really any discussion of predictions. You know, when you take on the role of a prophet, there's a certain amount of moral and ethical responsibility that goes with what you say. The role of making a prediction is very often to give people a heads up, to give them a warning about what is coming their way so they can try to avoid it. You know, it does no good to just say to your friend, "Oh, you know the train is coming, the train is coming," but not yell it to the person standing on the tracks. And it also does no good for the person standing on the tracks to hear it if they don't get off the tracks and out of the way, if they expect someone to pull them out of the way. And I think that's where we're at when we look at predictions. I mentioned to you that this may be one of my last sets of public predictions for that reason. We're in a situation as a world that is quite precarious, and I don't think the listeners get it. And not just your listeners, I don't think many of the listeners seem to get it. There's a lot of interest in predictions as a form of information entertainment, but not in what they are meant to be, which is a warning. And when I said, you know, I looked at the chart and I kind of downplayed the Ukrainian conflict, it was for the reason that we're seeing now. We have two of the world's most heavily armed nuclear states, not quite toe-to-toe, but in a very dangerous dance with one another. And that's all there is to it, it's a dangerous dance. We have people talking about the ability to fight a nuclear war, to survive a nuclear war, and to win a nuclear war. And I want your listeners to really wrap their heads around what we're talking about here.

This doesn't mean it will happen, you know. This doesn't even mean we're even close to it. But as one person said, if there's even a five percent chance of that happening, is that something you want to bet your children and grandchildren's future on? So, when we look at all of these predictions that we're hearing, we have to ask ourselves, you know, what responsibility are we taking for making the world a better place? And that's really all it comes down to. So, in a sense, it's, you know, predictions be damned, because anyone with half a brain can look at where their life is now, look at how things went for the last year, and pretty much extrapolate how things are going to go into the next year or two. So, it's not as if you need to be terribly psychic or even terribly good at astrology. In fact, you can be very psychic and very good at astrology, and that's worthless if you don't have some common sense or even a good sense of history or human psychology. So, what I'd like your listeners to hear about the future is that we are in a very dangerous situation, and they have an obligation as people who say they're on some spiritual path to act in a manner that is going to create a future for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren.

I've mentioned this to you and I've mentioned this to others, and it's like one of those hand-to-the-head "I could have had a V8" moments, if anyone remembers that commercial. It's so obvious and yet it's missed. How many people do you know that will tell you they believe in reincarnation and then they'll turn around and say to you, "Oh well, I'm not going to have to worry about that problem, I'll be dead by then." Well, where do they think they're going to reincarnate to? I mean, you think this is like a rock star, you get to trash the hotel room and then they give you a new one? Well, even that new one cost somebody something. So, we have to start looking at, instead of predictions of what we think is going to happen and then passively sit by and go down a checklist or did or didn't it happen, how accurate was I or wasn't I, as to what is the world we are building for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren, and ultimately ourselves, because we're going to be coming back here, probably whether we like it or not.

Host: So, my question is, in the past, we've been through a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and then we moved ahead of that. And people were talking about peace, getting along, but now our current leaders, and I talk about not only US but Europe, they don't seem to have that awareness or even desire for peace. What do you attribute this to, like from an esoteric point of view?

Mark Stavish: Well, I mean, esoterically speaking, this isn't rocket science. You know, you have a situation in various countries in which there is a certain disconnect that wealth and poverty create. So, when you're very poor, you're too busy surviving. When you're very wealthy, things don't really bother you. And wealth, of course, is relative on a personal scale. So many people have just not taken an interest in the political situations in their countries, or they have and come to the conclusions that there's very little they can do about it. Now, on that part is where we see many people in the spiritual community, and I have to say, that the contemporary spiritual community, and that would be from really the 1980s on but really in the last 15 or 20 years, has really been very cynical. And that kind of cynicism is counterproductive to spirituality, which generally requires, if not demands, a super heroic positivism about your capacity and potential. It doesn't mean that you're going to solve every problem perfectly, whatever that means, but it means that you have a potential and a capacity to address problems and make them better. So, what we've seen is spirituality, and I've mentioned this many times, move from being a practice to a form of political movement. So, we see generally most Western new and emerging religions, most religions in the West, do an emerge in religious movements, Buddhism, Hinduism, not that is non-native, various forms of New Age spiritual, neopagan, and esoteric movements have almost wholeheartedly in the last 10 or 15 years embraced politically progressive ideas. That is the true religion of most modern religious movements, and that in of itself is an abdication of personal responsibility and power because they're always then looking for someone to do something for them.

The true purpose of spirituality is to come to understand yourself and develop your own capacity. Once that is done, it is to then expand that into different areas and arenas. So, if someone wants to — it's a contradiction to say there's nothing I can do, but I want to vote for these people who've promised me stuff for nothing, but I'm studying esotericism, which has to do with my full actualization of my capacity. But again, there's nothing I can really do, you know, there's just too many contradictions that are built into the movements and the systems at this time. And one of the things we forget here or is woefully ignored is that our capacity as individuals when we come together to formulate ideas and beliefs can be very powerful. What we have to do is not have those beliefs guided or spoon-fed to us by media or the powers that be, but focus on something very general but at the same time beneficial to yourself and everyone else, which is some kind of generalization of peace. And I find that a lot of people in the spiritual movement fall into one of two categories, again, this is my experience after four years: they either make fun of the peace movement, you know, they used to be the jokes, "We're going to come together to meditate for World peace" or they tend to ignore that there really are some bad people in the world who do evil things and how do you contain them?

So, coming together, or coming to grips with these two dichotomies, is what we now have to do. We have to find a way within ourselves, individually and as a group, to address this reality that we are, as a nation, once again ramping up a very expensive military-industrial complex. And that's also cued in, by the way, Eisenhower's speech cued that into the education complex, so let's not forget that, although that often is, and with that, scientific research. They should read the full transcripts of the speech. But we see other nations doing it as well. We see that in Russia, we see that in China, we see that in all sorts of places, and all these resources being poured into weapons that want to be used. A weapon does not exist to not be used.

Host: Right. Same thing for armies.

Mark Stavish: Yeah, so we have to really take this seriously now, and again, not just for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren. And if we believe in reincarnation, where is it that we're going to come back to? Because I can't stress this enough, we are in a very dangerous situation. But we can avert it, we can fix it, we can change it for the better.

Host: So, what would you say as the role of spiritual practitioners, esotericists, or spiritual practitioners? What should our role be in this, you know, in creating a better world, in preventing this potential war?

Mark Stavish: Well, you have to spend time, of course, watching your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. So, where are your thoughts going? Where are they getting directed to? And then, how do you reel them back in and focus them on something that is, okay, that is the case, or maybe the case, but what can I do about it? And then you do something. And you may not be able to do anything about it directly, but you can generate goodwill. You can encourage others, people, to generate goodwill. You can try to slow this process of militarization of everything down. And, of course, what's really very important is the mental attitude, because the emotional content, the psychic content, that psychic energy, is what shapes the ultimate outcome of actions and events. So, the more we can get involved in—I hesitate to say peace movements because they have a patina to them that is reflective, again, of a definite political shade—but if we can get people involved in this notion of "peace is patriotic," that, I think, we need to recognize that.

Host: Right, yeah.

Mark Stavish: And again, I know what the world is like out there, I'm not foolish, you know. I know what kind of people there are. There's a reason we have prisons, you know. There's a reason a lot of people are in prison, who are in solitary confinement, because they don't even play well with others in jail. So, there's no, we're not saying to be foolish about this. What I'm saying is that with the current situation and the level of weaponry involved, we need to really slow this down.

Host: Steve Speer, who's gonna appear on New Occultism in Politics Year's Eve, he's an occultist, and his whole new attitude is, um, "politics is the new occultism." Financially, so he ran for Congress in the Medical Freedom Party. So, what's your opinion of that, of, you know, occultists actually getting involved in politics?

Mark Stavish: Well, I think that they have to decide what they're, what they are, and they better be very well established in the nature of their own being because politics is a rough and tumble business, and we saw what happened to many of your listeners may not remember, some will, but, Bill Scranton Jr. when he was running for, I believe it was governor of Pennsylvania, and of course, Carville, the political mastermind behind the Clintons, pulled out that wonderful campaign of having him dress, you know, they had pictures of him from when he was in India, dope-smoking hippie, okay, instead of the hero of Three Mile Island, which he was. So, you know, that's an early example of the kind of people you're dealing with, you know. So, we could have had a fantastic Republican governor, possibly presidential candidate at that point, but that was undermined by the Democrats. So now, let's flash forward, you know, we have some nonsense in the White House during the Clinton administration around spirituality and New Age movement, of course, you know, they care nothing for that except what it'll get them, and that needs to really be understood. I mean, for people who've known them. And then, of course, you flash forward to the last campaign, and who was it? Marianne Williamson was running, and of course, she lasted all of six minutes. So, I think when you go into this business, you have to be a politician first. You have to have a spiritual practice, right, that is really geared towards leadership. What does it mean to be a good leader, a strong leader within the spiritual domain?

Now, if you look at certain practices, they exist in other systems. Within Vajrayana Buddhism, they have the Gesar practices, Gesar of Ling, which is fascinating because those have been recently co-opted and politicized by the Chinese. So, you know, when you're dealing with practices like that, then you're getting into the nature of the egregore, what is the egregore you're dealing with? We see a lot of political practices during the Renaissance, and of course, Peter Mark Adams wrote his book "The Game of Saturn" on some of those, which were quite razor's edge, if you will. So, the idea that politics is the new occultism, I don't really even understand what that means. I would say that, if an esotericist or someone involved in occultism were to enter into the political arena, they better have a really good platform, and they'd better be able to really hold their ground. If they're advertising the fact that they're an occultist, I'm going to tell you right now, they're probably a pretty bad one, and they're going to be a pretty bad politician, because silence is where all this takes place. So, it should be done in silence.

Host: Yeah, though Tulsi Gabbard seemed like she still maintained her... I thought she did pretty well in the election, and she still has a pretty good public perception at this point.

Mark Stavish: I guess so. I mean, I watch her once in a while, but, you know, her background is…

Host: ISKCON.

Mark Stavish: ...and this puts her in a unique situation because, as much as they want to go after her for being ISKCON, they can't, because they'll come off as being a sexist, what else? I don't really want to say, "racist" is such an overused term. I'm looking for something more precise, some kind of bigotry towards her religious background. Because even though it is ISKCON, it's still Hinduism of some form, so it's too, it's too mainstream in a sense, even though it isn't, it's too big, that's still a third rail, it's not quite saying something about someone being Jewish, that's the real third rail that'll get you, but this, this is close to it. You could still say something about someone being Catholic because you'll go after maybe the questions on abortion and all that, but you know, that's not the point. The point is that all of these, those are all mainstream belief systems that have a strong entrenched presence in the political structure and system. Coming out and saying you're New Age or Wiccan or neopagan or this or that, that doesn't have a place in most people's framework, you know, it does more harm than good. You need to be a good politician in that second, and if you're looking for an example, look for the great stories of St. Germain. If you read his really only decent biography, which is by Jean Overton Fuller, there's almost no mention of his occultism or alchemy in there. It was just his life in politics, and that, of course, his involvement in Freemasonry and some other secret societies that are somewhat known from the period, that takes a secondary role, yeah, but if you organize meditations for peace, if you organize events for peace, then it doesn't matter.

Host: What are you seeing in 2023? You mentioned Egregores, and I know you wrote a book, a very successful book on it, because what are you seeing like right now for 2023 in that realm? You know, the movement of these Egregores right now, particularly in the United States.

Mark Stavish: It’s always the same ones. It doesn't change a lot because they're like balloons, they take a while to inflate, they take a while to deflate, and fundamentally, we're looking at the big one, of course, which is what I said earlier: this obsession with militarization. All the other ones come secondary to that.

Host: Right, that's strange because even in the Antiwar movement, the left has always been anti-war, but now you're getting people like even AOC who traditionally would be anti-war, supporting the Ukraine war, which is strange. The only anti-war voice is really hearing it are on the fringes of the Republican Party.

Mark Stavish: Well, and of course, things go, you know, that's the beauty of how things change. I mean, you know, we're talking about one and a half billion dollars on the books; we don't even know what's offline. It's one and a half billion dollars a month poured into this war. People need to stop and recognize this is going to be devastating to countries for at least a decade. At least a decade.

Host: Yeah, well, hopefully cooler heads will prevail. Um, there'll be some wisdom that will prevail at some point, you know, in the administration.

Mark Stavish: Well, and that's only going to happen if we force it though. The cooler heads will not prevail on their own. If they could have, they would have. It is our obligation as esotericists to get together on our own, meaning make it a focal point of your practice to engage in activities that promote peace. That's it.

Host: Absolutely.

Mark Stavish: And I can't say that's strong enough, because you know, if they could have done it, they would have done it. And it hasn't happened. Cooler heads have not prevailed because we're expecting too much of them. You know, we're expecting too much of people who fundamentally are dishonest.

Host: Yeah, they actually don't care, it's true.

Mark Stavish: And well, yeah, I mean, I don't want to put too much of a point on that. I mean, if you understood what goes on in Pennsylvania politics, so when someone says, you know, “Biden's from Scranton,” I'm saying, “you'd never vote for anybody from Scranton if you knew what went on.”

Host: Ha-ha, right!

Mark Stavish: I was just up there. It's a point where people, I think, that the average person doesn't want to realize just how precarious things are and just how uninformed and mismanaged things are. Now, that's not to say everyone is incompetent. There are a lot of good people out there, a lot of good people doing things. But that's why, if you really want to make a better world for yourself, your children, and your grandchildren, you have to make an effort at it. It's not going to happen on its own. There may be some candidates out there you can support—get behind them and support them. But more importantly, you have to generate goodwill. You have to generate the desire, the overwhelming condition, and quality of peace.

Host: As you mentioned before, I think a big part of this is the media and the perception that the media is giving. The media is definitely slanted. I graduated from journalism school way back when, at Boston University, and we were always taught to be objective, not take any sides. But, I mean, it's very hard to find that right now. I know you spoke extensively about the media last year. What are your views? Do you think the media is going to continue its same trajectory?

Mark Stavish: Oh, definitely, yeah. I mean, I was surprised. If you look at the reports within the media on the media within the last week, I mean, it's just eating itself. They're just laying people off because no one's paying attention to it, which means no one's paying for it, which means it's losing money. So, they're going to shed jobs. The notion of activist journalism, which dominated journalism probably for the last 20-25 years at least, has proven to be detrimental to long-term trust in the media. Activist journalism is not the same as investigative journalism. Investigative journalism takes time, money, and resources from the news department. Activist journalism just means you're advocating for a policy or position in your role as a journalist, and it's really detrimental. It's similar to what you see in judicial legislation - that is, legislation that won't make it through Congress is then enacted at the bench, which is why judicial appointments are so critical.

Host: I mean, I think Elon Musk seems like he's opened up some public space on Twitter, at least in my estimation. I think it's gotten a lot more interesting since he's taken over. What's your impression?

Mark Stavish: I don't pay too much attention to Twitter. I've only seen a few things, so I can't really comment on it, but he seems to have really stirred the bucket.

Host: Yeah, definitely. He's taken the curtain away, which is, you know…

Mark Stavish: Now notice how quickly he gets turned on. Now they're going to go after him with a hundred lawsuits for this, a hundred lawsuits for that. This is why, again, people don't want to go against the machine. But if you truly believe in reincarnation and you're not working to create a better environment for yourself, your children, and your grandchildren, you know, you could be a coward. Go ahead, be a coward, don't go against the machine. But who are you going to blame when you end up coming back to a place that's very undesirable because it's what you've made for yourself?

Host: Exactly.

Mark Stavish: Look, there was a picture going around — I don't know, it comes up every four years. It's supposedly of a crowd, and of course, we have to use the whipping child, the Nazis, because, of course, they're going to be the ultimate organized evil. Everyone's there giving a salute except one guy, and the guy is circled. I see all these people who think they're going to be that guy. Now, I knew people who went through the Nazi regime. I grew up around them, and it was a pretty terrible thing to experience. There was a lot of fear of arrest and terrible things. People think they're going to be that guy.

Host: Right.

Mark Stavish:Well, let me tell you, if you're not that guy right now, when you've got lights on and heat and food, you're not going to be that guy when you go to cryptocurrency. When they can just shut everything off, you know, based on a social credit score or something.

So, if you really think you've got the balls, if you've got the courage, it's time to show it. It's time to stand up and make intelligent, decisive decisions and actions geared towards peace, goodwill, and personal responsibility. Everyone here is going to be responsible; no one's going to get a free pass.

Host: Yeah, the thing about the media now, which I think is important as a former journalist, is that media is so dispersed now that there's no shared narrative anymore. There are many narratives. I think that's one of the issues as well. There's no shared sort of stories culturally that we have, you know, and it's creating, I think, a very fractionated society. That's my take on it.

Mark Stavish: Yeah, but that was inevitable. When, look, there's no such thing as multiculturalism. There's always a dominant culture. So, when you've destroyed the dominant culture, you're going to have some form of balkanization, as we call it. That's not rocket science; that was inevitable and predictable.

Host: Exactly. And then shared stories, I think, are very important.

Mark Stavish: The shared stories now are media stories. Because when you push everything down to the lowest common denominator, what's the lowest common denominator? Well, you know, it's going to be shelter, food, sex, clothing - your interpersonal value structure on a social level. And that's dominated by or defined by pop culture. So, when we look at the media structure and what dominates the last two generations, I see with my kids all the time and with their friends, you know, they don't care about anything but media, entertainment. And it's constant and relentless.

Yeah, so until that plug gets pulled, there's almost no reason to change, and that's the dangerous part. That's what the listeners need to understand. We're in a loop here, and getting out of that loop consciously is increasingly difficult because we've destroyed the necessary - what we mean is that we've allowed the educational system to degrade over the last 10 or 15 years, destroying the essential intellectual and cognitive skills necessary to advance on a spiritual path.

Host: Right, yeah. So, do you have any closing advice or blessings for 2023?

Mark Stavish: It just goes back to what I said earlier: we have to stop looking at predictions and prophecies as a form of entertainment. They're meant to be a direction and a warning, and we're to act on that. I would encourage listeners to go to Vox Hermes and read the essay that was posted there on predictions for 2023, 2024, and beyond.

Really take it to heart, and then start talking to your friends, talking to your family, talking to people you know who have some belief in these ideas - these spiritual ideas - and say, "Okay, what are we going to do to make our community, our neighborhood, our place the best we can without forcing others to do something? What are we going to take responsibility for?" Then go do it. Let that be the light you light - the city on the hill - the light that can't be put under a bushel. Then you know that you have done everything you can, and you get to live out your days and die very comfortably, knowing that you've done what you can. That's the best advice I can give you.

Host: Yeah, and now's the time for heroes to emerge.

Mark Stavish: I think that's right. Now's the time.

Host: So, I highly recommend to all of you - visit hermeticinstitute.org. I'll put the link in the YouTube description. You have a great school, and I think your school is a guide for people who are looking to get in touch with their inner selves and to make a difference in society.

Mark Stavish: Well, thank you very much. There are some great courses, and one that is six hours long, and it’s free: "Unfolding the Rose." Just sign up for it, and there's a lot of material there that'll make a definite difference in your life, a definite change for the better.

Host: Wonderful. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Blessings and Happy New Year!

Mark Stavish: Yes, very much.

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

After some digging, the essay he is referring to is here.

[hermeticism]

Thanks for this!