 Between Bobby and the FBI up his ass all the time, he's going fucking crazy. Tell Jimmy I'm sorry for his troubles. The old-timers know the old man, they'll talk to him at some point, they'll strain it out for him. Yeah, but he can't understand, and I gotta be honest with you, I don't understand either. I used to help get those two fucking Kenzie Pricks elected in the first place, and it don't make no sense to him, that's for sure. He doesn't have to understand everything. You know what I'm talking about, sometimes it's better. When I see him like that, I don't know, I feel bad, I wanna help him in some way. Listen, he's too emotional, like some guy who's always rushing, rushing all over the place, and they miss the big picture. Like Cuba, getting us back into casinos, getting us back into Havana, like getting rid of that fucking Castro prick. The old-timers spoke to the old man. The old man talked to his son Jack, and he told him, don't forget who the fuck he owes. He knows who the fuck he owes. That's of course Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, a clip from The Irishman. I know it's a rather long clip, but it's an important clip, and it's history. I think a lot of people, I guess maybe younger people don't realize, it's of course a fictional account, but it's history. This is what happened. There was this guy who ran the Teamsters Union called Jimmy Hoffa, and the union back then was unbelievably powerful. It ran the country, it ran the trucks. If they shut down the union, no one got fed and all the rest of this stuff. He had a lot of power, and he was very tight with the mob, and the mob was taking care of him, and he was taking care of the mob, and he was loaning all the money to build the casinos in Las Vegas, and this was the dynamic. Also back then, the mafia organized crime was super powerful, much more powerful than we can kind of even imagine today. And what they're talking about in this scene in particular is how some people in the mafia felt betrayed by the fact that Joe Kennedy, who was JFK's father and who amassed all his wealth by smuggling alcohol from Canada to the U.S., and was tied in with all organized crime, and he's the one who had gone to the mob and said, hey, maybe you can help here with my son. They felt betrayed that now JFK, and in particular Robert Kennedy, who was attorney general, was really going after the mob and was stamping out organized crime. All this at a time when the top cop, J. Edgar Hoover, because he was compromised, because he was a gay man and liked to dress up in women's clothes, and because some people in the mob had pictures of that, and because human compromise is always in play, is always your number one go-to tool a lot, Jeffrey Epstein. So that's why the top cop in the United States publicly stated that there was no mafia. Again, if you don't know this history, go back and read it because you're really going to have to understand it to understand where I'm going and understand why I keep hammering on the Romans and why we have today's most excellent guest, David Matheson, author of Myth and Trauma, Higher Self, Ancient Wisdom and Their Enemies, along with a number of other books. You might understand better why he says... I would say that the imposition of literalist Christianity was a deliberate... It just doesn't happen that Christianity just took over the Roman Empire the way we're kind of taught. But back to the clip, back to history, back to what really happened because, of course, what happens is JFK is assassinated and clearly the mob is part of that and clearly the CIA is part of that and clearly LBJ is part of that. And if you haven't read any of the 200 or 300 books that are published on that, then you don't know that history. But so many people that we'd expect to know that history don't know that history or are faking that history. You know, one of my favorite podcasts that for a long time has been Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. It's extremely popular, one of the most popular podcasts in the world. He believes Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone-nut assassin. This is inconceivable to anyone who's investigated it, to anyone who's really studied the history. You know, I recently had an interview on this guy's show, Jeffrey Doherty, an indoctrinate yourself. I had a great time on a show and actually I was supposed to do an interview with him today and he backed out. But it was a great interview. It was all about Christianity and false narratives and all that stuff. I found out that it's somewhat of a Holocaust denier and as offensive as that is morally to think that we would want to apologize for such an evil act, it again strikes me, like Dan Carlin, how do you process that history in that way to come to that conclusion? Well, I would suggest that as I continue to plow through this Roman history, that if I do my job, we'll find what we're talking about with first century Roman history is almost as clear cut as JFK and almost as clear cut as the absurdity of denying the Holocaust. And the hardest part of really processing all that is going to be wrapping your head around how so many people cannot see what really becomes obvious the further you look into it. Here are some extended clips from my upcoming interview with David Matheson. So here's Arch of Titus, 81 CE, built by his younger brother Domitian after... Do you think Domitian killed him? I don't know. Just so people know, Titus said, I only made one mistake and that was there was a plot and it was tied to his brother and instead of killing his brother Domitian, he banished him and then a year later he gets assassinated and he said, I only made one mistake. It's compelling. There was a lot of assassinations going on. This is the famous cave four where the vast majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are found. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 1940s, fragments of over 900 texts, manuscripts and in thousands of pieces like jigsaw puzzles covered in the 40s and then given into the hands of an international group of scholars who kept the Dead Sea Scrolls basically under wraps for their entire lives. They didn't let anyone see anything but there's one scroll known as the... Copper. The Copper Scroll and you see it on the right hand side of your screen. It looks very different than the written scroll. The Copper Scroll, it was all rolled up on Copper and so old that they had to cut it in part and so that's why these pieces now look kind of like like a half of a tube. What is the Copper Scroll? It's basically the list of treasure. This is how it reads. This is the first words of the Copper Scroll, not the part that I'm showing by the way. That's like piece number 18, but on piece one it says in the ruin that's in the Valley of Acor under the steps with the entrance at the east. So you go to the ruins, find the entrance that's on the east then under the steps, a distance of 40 qubits, a strong box of silver and its vessels with a weight of 17 talents, which by the way a talent at that time, New Testament talent, or that period talent, 129 pounds, so that's 129 pounds of silver times 17. That's a lot. Oh by the way, at the end of the Copper Scroll it says this is a copy. This is a copy, you know, we put it on this, they don't say it, but why would you put it on Copper? So it can't burn. So look, this treasure is important. We don't want to lose it. We're going to put the treasure map or the treasure instructions, it's not really a map, on something that can't be destroyed, Copper. And this will be the backup copy. Well, who had the other copy? I bet you Josephus knew how to find it and that's why this patient and Titus got all the loot and were managed to become emperors. And that's, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that. I mean, as you said, Josephus didn't get all those things because, you know, he said, I think you're going to become the emperor. Okay, thanks a lot. Cut off his head. He said, I know where the treasure is buried. Please don't cut off my head because you won't get any of it. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. Today we welcome back David Matheson to Skeptico. David is well, he's really quite an amazing author, researcher, thinker. And we're going to talk a lot about why I think David is so interesting and important because I think that's kind of a big part of this story, actually, how somebody can do what he's done and reveal to us what has always been right there in front of us. When somebody does that, that is really pretty remarkable. And that's exactly what he's done. We're going to talk about what we may talk about, a number of his great books that I've just pulled up here on Amazon. He's got many of them and they are really quite terrific, quite amazing. But we will probably spend more time on this one in particular myth and trauma, higher self, ancient wisdom and their enemies. So it's a book that was published just last year, so it hasn't been out that long. It's great. Like a lot of David's books, it's really terrifically illustrated. A lot of stuff he talks about. He's talking about the stars and the constellations as we know them and you need to see it and then you need to see the art associated with it, the myths associated with it and he's done that. Extensive notes in this book, extensive references in this book, like all his books. So this is something that is valuable for someone who's interested in something beyond the story, although the stories are all super great too. So that's all what's coming up. David, welcome back to Skeptico. It's great to have you here. Thanks so much, Alex. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to it. You know, before we jump too far into the books, I hope you will take a minute and go over your background a little bit because I think it's quite unique and quite interesting. And I think, in a way, it turns out to be relevant to this story. So the brief bio thing. Yeah, happy to, sure. Well, I really grew up loving the stars and the constellations. My dad used to take me out where I lived and where I grew up in San Mateo, California, which is in the Bay Area. And we look at the stars and we used even from really before I can remember, you know, I can't remember not having these books by H. A. Ray, who does the outlining system. H. A. Ray is famous. We've talked about it before on this show as famous for, along with his wife, Margaret Ray, creating the curious George series of books starting in the 1940s. He also wrote a very important book called the stars a new way to see them, a new way to see them in 1952, which turns out to be a very ancient way to see them. Not a, you know, there's a mystery there. But I grew up seeing the constellations using that system. And I also grew up loving the myths. I ended up going to West Point in a graduated high school in 1987, 13 days later, I trotted off to the east coast and got my head shaved and started getting yelled at at the military academy. And, you know, can I interject something? Because I had never really made that connection. You're in San Mateo. And now you're going to Upstate New York. Did you have any idea what you were getting into there that kind of culture change that you're thrown into? Well, I had been back to visit. So they do have like visits for candidates, kind of like a recruiting thing for football. But I wasn't a football player. And I had also spent the summer before that, the summer before my senior year at Harvard summer school. So that was, that was, that was a real eye opener to see the kind of the east coast, the northeast for the first time. I mean, it's really much more densely populated than California is even the Bay Area. You know, there's a lot, there's obviously a lot of things going on. And so, you know, I flew back there with my dad and we were in Watertown and the waitress said something about, well, do you want a quota? And she was talking about a quarter. I was like, I can't believe it. You know, people actually do talk like this. And I went to all the, I went to all the Harvard, from Harvard, I would take the red line to the green line. And I went to all the Red Sox games in the bleachers that summer. Got to see Roger Clemens. I sat in the bleachers, you know, Roger Clemens in the bullpen right there. We're getting off track, but it's a great question. It is, you know, I would say that at 17, I didn't appreciate the difference as much as I do today. Now I've got grown sons. I took one of my sons back for a basketball camp in the summer around Boston. And I was, then I was really impressed by the difference. I was like, I didn't really appreciate it as much as I do coming back. I don't know if that makes any sense. And you know, one of the reasons I guess I think this is important to talk about is this is a very, very big idea kind of book. Larger than the book. It's your whole work is a big idea kind of stuff. It's kind of audacious to even think that someone could say there's these ancient, ancient etheric myths in the stars. And they've basically been forgotten, been written out of history, and they're highly relevant to our world today. And they've been relevant to every culture throughout time. I mean, who the hell are you to say that? It's just, it is, you know, just ballsy to say that. So one of the things I think we're going to talk about today is, hey, why doesn't that come through our history? Because as you lay out your case, it's remarkable, but it's really solid and it is a lot of it's been there. So one of the questions is why don't we have access to it? And so, you know, West Point, you have a military background. I don't want to get conspiratorial on that because I don't think your story goes that way. But I think it changes your orientation. I think it changes your way of viewing things, the way of kind of take that hill mentality in some way that allows somebody to do this kind of stuff. Because otherwise, you look at your work and go, bullshit, you know how many emails I get? Not a lot, but emails theory of everything. Hey, you know, I've studied this stuff on my own, you know, in my basement. I got it all figured out. It's just not credible. It's not a way for you to you're transcending that, but you're not coming from Harvard. You don't, you know, you're not professorship, all that stuff. So I think we have to fill that in. I think that's part of I think that's part of your story. And I think it's also part of the story that we're in right now in terms of our culture. And I think people are more and more open to saying maybe this guy did do it. Maybe this one guy on his own did kind of crack the code on this. Would you have any thoughts on any of that stuff? Wow. Well, thanks for those kind words. And I would say it's not first of all, it's not one guy on his own because there are people throughout history who have noticed connections between the myths and the stars. I would say that I got obsessed with it. I compare it to the movies where you got the guy out in the shed with all the red string, you know, in his backyard in the shed and his wife comes out and finally opens it up and says what on earth is going on here, you know, the board with all the strings connecting. I kind of became that individual. But you know, it's interesting that you use a metaphor of kind of a take the hill mentality, but I would use actually a metaphor of almost an outsider in the sense that if you think of Sherlock Holmes the pattern that Conan Doyle came up with in the Sherlock Holmes books or even Edgar Allen Poe who was famously kicked out of West Point who kind of invented the modern mystery story. It's an outsider a lot of times or an even better example is the Scooby-Doo cartoons that I grew up watching. They come along and there's some mystery that's going on and the authorities have got it all figured out and they are not particularly happy when Sherlock Holmes shows up or when Scooby-Doo and the gang show up because it is an outsider who's looking at it from a different perspective and I would say that, you know, certainly coming from California going to West Point you get, you know, all those same kind of jokes that you see in an officer and a gentleman, well, you're from California while they get from there is fruits and nuts or, you know, other things that you can fill in the blanks it's kind of an outsider and I did actually growing up I was thinking about it just generationally I'm in the Gen X generation that's the first generation where both parents typically worked and they were called the latch key kids, you know, I grew up, you know, displaced a lot so moving schools a lot getting picked on a lot as a kind of a nerdy kid maybe that influenced psychologically going to West Point who knows but it's almost like the outsider can see things that the authorities haven't seen there are people who have been on this trail of clues before me but it's almost like once you start to see it it's all there, you know, it's not that amazing that I've produced all these books because frankly I can't fit the evidence you know, this is just scratching the surface it's really the metaphor I use another metaphor is like in my backyard there was a big storm and it washed away a goalie and there's millions of dinosaur bones on the side of the goalie and I start bringing them to the museum and they say how is one person producing all these dinosaur bones well, Alex, they're right there they're right there it's in the myths, it's right there in front of you, the myths are based on the stars all of them, the Bible stories are based on the stars from 1st to last, the myths of ancient India in the Vedas which there's thousands and thousands of gods and goddesses and stories, it would take lifetimes to go through them all and yet they're based on the stars it can be shown to be the Greek myths the Norse myths, the myths of the Maya all the way around the world, Africa, ancient Egypt Mesopotamia it's beyond doubt in my opinion the evidence is overwhelming that they're based on the stars well, I like the way you kind of caught yourself there because it's not even based on your opinion it's just based on the evidence and you just lay it out just one after another and I almost I'm not going to apologize for doing this because that was the whole intent of doing it but I'm kind of going to pull you away a little bit from that awesome body of research but I really want to encourage people to go check it out we did a previous interview where we just kind of again just kind of tapped into it but these books and this latest one and I don't even know if it is the latest one but myth and trauma which we will be referencing great great great stuff in that one too and a lot of new and surprising stuff but the reason I kind of say that is you know I emailed you because kind of strange coincidence it isn't a coincidence I've been really stuck on this idea about Rome and I'm kind of at this hidden in plain sight moment that intersects in a way with a tiny bit of what you've looked into too super interesting and we're going to I really want to so I'm kind of pulling you into that as as an authority to fill in my missing pieces on this but for me the Psiop in plain sight is that Christianity is started as a Psiop whether it turns into what it turns into all the rest of that is kind of up for grabs but I think when you just lay it out the evidence seems pretty clear that it's origins are hey let's try this we've this is a try to true try to true formula for us is screwing with religion as a way to you know boost our power to supercharge our military might social engineering project and so this then intersected with some of the writings that you've done on your website which is equally you know super strong and reading the blog posts are there and you can search through them but I won't reference any of those right now but you've written about this and you've written about this time period and you've written about Josephus and people get tired of hearing me talk about the Josephus but he's important to this so I want to pull you into all that but I before we even get there I wanted to touch on a couple other things because one of the three there's three ways that I think we're kind of kindred spirits on this thing one is that I get the hidden in plain sight thing I get that that can happen I believe that one I believe what you found because the evidence is compelling but I also believe that it's possible I believe that David Matheson can really have kind of crack the code on something that so many other people didn't see and if you don't believe that's possible then you can't really get into your work fully you know because you're always going to be like check yourself like no this can't be true and then the second point is that I think we're kindred spirits on is in my investigation so far I've come across just how miserably incompetent what we call history or academia in a lot of cases it's just ridiculous it's just insane and you have to kind of pull up yourself and say well can it really be that bad and I was just going to tell you a really quick anecdote because I just interviewed this guy named Dave Brody he's written this really cool book called America about how the 9th Roman legion might have wound up in America in the 2nd century so good story he does and he has all this great evidence in it archaeological evidence and all the rest of this stuff carbon dating part of the evidence are coins coins that seem to wash up every 10 years there's a major storm and there's a 2nd century coins that are washing up on the east coast that's where he lives and here's the point of this is that he said that you know this clearly points to the natural conclusion we've ah there is a sunken ship out there that has coins in it that's washing up but it doesn't fit the narrative that we have because 2nd century there couldn't have been any Roman you know ships out there so what does academia do with that they just come up with the most bizarre explanations and he's kind of saying look look what I'm up against I have historians that say well maybe a coin collector went to the beach and lost his coins and we're both kind of laughing you know and after I was like you know I can't even believe that I mean Dave's a good guy and stuff he's making that up that can't be real so I said Dave send me the reference to that and ah and he did and there it is you know this guy from Michigan State University published in the peer review journal the coin collector I've talked to and I'm just like it's unbelievable how miserably incompetent some not all but some of these people are and I think that you know typically people like you and your theories have had to push against this perceived you know ivory tower that knows so much and when we push into that a little bit and we find out that it's just really really poorly done I think that is kind of ah a big thing do you have any thoughts on that yeah this is a great subject Alex is a great subject and I you know I applaud your show and its approach because you're you're tackling this this is kind of one of the themes of your show is tackling this you know just defer to the experts I saw you know and we've all now experienced a year of just absolute you know try and figure out what you know we won't even go into it but if you're not right a lot of deferring if you're not entertaining at least some possibility that there are narratives we could call them conspiracies agendas other than what necessarily you're being told at this point you're just not paying attention because some of the things make absolutely no sense that are going on but we'll just set that aside we can all refer to our own experience and our own position on that but I saw a cartoon where there's a man and a woman standing in a rain shower and he's holding an umbrella to cover them both and he says looks like it's you know it's pouring and she goes who do you think you are a meteorologist you know you can't say that you can't say that until maybe nobody believes you or until so but you're when you're saying just the level of ignorance and incompetency I would say Alex thank you for being so generous and imputing to them that it's mere incompetence rather than deliberate obfuscation which I can point to in today's conversation I mean I think you can tell you've sent me an email kind of where you want to go I think I can get to some examples of it's almost impossible to believe just plain ignorance going on for over a hundred years in certain subjects not even the subject of all the myths being based on the stars which the evidence is overwhelming and yet so far I haven't been is not busting down my door to say I'd like you to come lecture my comparative religion department about this, this seems interesting you know I've experienced kind of like polite encouragement like very good thanks you know run along when I've reached out but anyway I'll publish it I think it's important to share with people who are looking for it and you can decide for yourself and I'll show some evidence for people who are saying what is he talking about myths based on stars because I want to show what has been lost before we get into the story of how did it get lost and Rome is right at the center of that story I think that's where you want to go look up on a couple of things you said because I think they're important and if we get off the trail this will just be kind of the first cut of it and we'll come back and talk about the substance because again I can't stress enough you're in a unique position in terms of what you've done here like you immediately go to where I would go which is you know my thing was with science and I genuinely didn't know that it was conspiratorial I mean in this universe I was like gosh darn those guys are so dumb they don't know it then you know I did it for five years and I was like wait a minute they knew it all along they're just pushing they're advancing a certain agenda for certain reasons okay now it seems obvious to me but I can tell you I was doing a lot of interviews and it didn't seem obvious and I was interviewing skeptics and I thought well they just really don't know darn it I got to convince them so that's number one is that they have different shades of kind of not knowing on both sides one like the consumers of the information you know the guy on my side on the outside does it know but I think the guys on the inside don't know too the guys in the ivory tower you know there's the useful idiot thing and then there's the player thing and then there's a lot of things in between so the useful idiot is just someone who doesn't know it he's just seems to be he's advancing the narrative that they want so that he doesn't realize it but they're just laying down a little cheese in his maze and he's just following it and he's doing their bidding without knowing it and then there's the player the guy who we find out is totally tiled in and his CIA or NSA or one of your guys you know Navy intelligence, military intelligence but then there's a lot of things in between that too so that's one thing I'm not connected to military intelligence okay continue yeah yeah okay I'm sorry I was a low level I got to the rink of captain and I was in the infantry I was an infantry officer that's what I did I wasn't dialed into any I wasn't privy to any secrets there's a layer system hey and you know what even that I have to say because I made a major misstep in saying that because a lot of people will go there because I get this all the time people are like wait and it's not necessarily so you know but I'm going to digress too far one thing I want to interject is you are qualified like before you didn't just not only West Point you got a master's degree you went back and did you did teaching at where the war college or at West Point I mean you lectured yeah I taught in the department of English and philosophy at West Point in fact I had the wonderful opportunity to teach the Odyssey I always mention that because it was such a highlight because I've loved the Odyssey like the Odyssey could be your Bible if you want to use the Odyssey as a Bible that is it is as profound as any other literature on the planet and I got to use the translation by the late great Robert Fagels he was a professor at Princeton and he came and spent time with us while we were teaching you know his translation of the Odyssey so I'm always partial to his translation it's a fantastic translation but he was a wonderful scholar just a gentleman just a wonderful person so that was a great experience just as an aside were you turned on to the star myth at that time were you making those no no no so that's the thing Alex I love the stars I love the myths I was a very you know conservative literalist Christian at the time I was not looking for this that's the other thing you know people can say oh maybe Dave's an insider I was not even looking for this so if I'm giving away information it wasn't if it was given to me it was given to me by some kind of brain wave weapon that I don't know what's happening I was not looking for the Bible to be all based on the stars in fact I was very resistant to that idea I was reading the Bible on Sunday exclusively I was not reading secular literature on Sundays that's how serious I was about that was the the commandment of the Sabbath you don't even when I was going to grad school I didn't read any of my study materials on Sunday I just went to church and read the Bible and so later when I started to see the connections between the myths and the stars and seeing that the Bible was also based on the same system you know I had a choice to make the evidence kept piling up I had to either change really radically my point of view which changed a lot of other things about my beliefs on politics and economics and other things but it changed my whole life really so I was not looking for it I don't know if that no no that's it because you know that that relates directly to this kind of third point where I think we kind of for people to understand what we're going to talk about they have to understand these three intersections in our kind of approach because I see you as this understanding spirituality at a deeper level not in terms of your personal spirituality because I don't know what your personal spirituality is but I understand that you understand that it's in play here because so many times when I talk to I think it's a major failing of history and when I talk to historians kind of mainstream historians how they pulled out this reliable fact that each one of these people we're talking about are leading rich spiritual lives and that doesn't mean that it's a good rich spiritual life I mean whether it's angels or demons or satanic or you know Mithra or whatever it is they are having the same kind of rich spiritual who am I, why am I here, what happens after I die what is the way to my soul is there a moral and to take that out of the equation to me you can't write it you can't understand it and I think that is so so much a part of really your work in a way that you don't always put forward but it's certainly right there I mean right under the surface is that those people that were staring up at the stars there was a connection on a very deep spiritual level that they were trying to understand and then you're saying that there was another that they're really connecting to something else but that's almost secondary to the fact that there is that spirituality in people that so many times history leaves out yeah this is an important point so you said something earlier about Christianity being a Psyop or being convinced that Christianity is a Psyop and I would let me make sure because I don't want to go off on the right thing the initial origins of it the start of it I think it turned into something completely different than what they could have imagined but I think we can trace back to it was just an operation that went really really so much better than they ever could have imagined but anyways go ahead I would say that the imposition of literalist Christianity was a deliberate it just doesn't happen that Christianity just took over the Roman Empire the way we're kind of taught that it did we can get into that but Christianity itself or the scriptures the ancient stories that are in the Bible the Old Testament and the New Testament I believe are very ancient very profound very positive very beneficial and speaking and speak to people and that's part of the reason why you know I like I said I was I found a lot of truth and meaning in the Bible while I was taking it literally however I believe that taking it literally inverts I think what happened was ancient this ancient system is related to all the other myths the stories in the Bible are related to the myths of Osiris or the Gilgamesh and Inanna and the theories that you find in the Americas they're very profound they have a very positive potential use but like a martial art as I kind of say in the book a martial art can be used for very positive things it can also be used for negative things and what this imposition of this literalist structure that then became basically an imperialist structure that went out and started stamping out other stamp at first they stamped out all the Roman and Greek gods and the Egyptian gods and then they started stamping out what was in western Europe and then northern Europe came later like Scandinavia the Norse myths and then it jumped across and started stamping out whatever it could find in the Americas it is a world dominating system which the good teachings of those ancient stories are still there but when you start to understand that they're not literal I believe you can it is profoundly positive and you get rid of the negative parts that come along with the literalist most of the negative aspects of it come from the literalist imposition which is a mistake or a twisting an inversion of the stories in the first place maybe I'm getting a little ahead because I haven't even shown anything but I wanted to make that clear I'm not trying to bash anybody's deep beliefs and if you have deep beliefs in something Jesus or whatever else I'm not trying to take away from what works for anybody but this has been very profound for me and I think it's definitely worth sharing and seeing oh my goodness an entire new depth of multiple depths of meaning come out when you start to actually listen to them in the languages that are speaking which is an esoteric metaphorical language that is a celestial based on a celestial metaphor seeing I'm okay with that but I'm not interested in it but understand why I'm not interested in it because I don't want us to get kind of across purposes I'm not interested in it because I just want to drive towards a couple of data points and then let people run wherever they want with them and it is as you said first my first inclination is kind of deconstruction and destruction in a lot of ways so I'm not interested in preserving somebody's a belief system or interjecting my belief system I'm just interested in laying out the facts and again go to David's books and learn all about the myths and the connection he understands the spiritual connection but here's where I'm trying to go I'm talking too much I want to start chapter 13 the Cult of Mithras in this book, Myth of Trauma because to me I want to pull you into focus on this point because I think it's a pivotal point in history and it's not obscure history like the thing that people should get excited about your work is it's ancient but it's immediate it's right now it's happening and I say the same thing about this you know you want to talk about Mithras you immediately go to Julius Caesar who's interesting and Brutus and Mark Anthony and Cleopatra it's all right there and then you go to Jesus that time period and all right there so you should be interested in all those reasons but the real reason you should be interested in it is you're living it right now you are living the result of that cult and what they did and how they socially engineered our spiritual yearning into something that they want so I'll just start with the history and pulling you to chapter 13 what is the cult of Mithras yeah no you're absolutely right Alex it is this is the biggest conspiracy in history and it's still going on and it impacts you know wherever you are in the political spectrum that political spectrum is a playing out of this same same thing that's been going on forever and I will show you I've got slides in here for Mithras the cult of Mithras is often portrayed as a rival to Christianity there are all these different mystery religions floating around in the Roman Empire at that time and people were experimenting with all these different things and Mithra started getting traction especially among the army it was definitely among the army the Praetorian Guard if you've seen the movie Gladiator that movie for whatever reason happens to focus in on almost the crucial juncture in this whole conspiracy the handoff between Marcus Aurelius who most people have heard of and his son Commodus who was played by Joaquin Phoenix in that movie and we'll get into that but so the cult of Mithras or the society of Mithras or Mithraism is often portrayed as well it was gaining a lot of traction at the same time that Christianity was gaining a lot of traction and history was in the balance and it could have tipped one way or the other but Christianity won out probably because Mithraism only allowed men into the lodges it was a little more exclusive Christianity was a little more inclusive Christianity Jesus famously hung out with prostitutes everybody was welcome and Mithraism was a little bit more you know the army or the praetorian guard or certain people who were in the kind of the equitase the equator equestrian class and therefore Christianity won out and therefore Christianity won out it's totally false that's the whole and that's all great but let's break down for people because this term cult is really interesting because it kind of has a different meaning for us than it did for them back then and so let's talk about what cult meant and then it's really interesting I would interject a little bit is the whole cult thing starts with Julius Caesar who is kind of this pretty big ego guy and he says you know the senate and kind of democracy thing is big enough how do I give him bigger self a god you know well I need a god I need a way to worship and that's becomes the origin of the cult and then that works so it's rebooted over and over again but add to that cult is what we would understand to be the catholic church would be exactly equivalent a roman would see absolutely no difference between what they're calling a cult and roman the catholic right well you know the term cult in our society has been heavily impacted by what happened during the 60s where you had what were basically intelligence operations creating cults like Manson that was a complete operation and Jim Jones if you dig into the Jonestown you will uncover the threads that pull apart you know the entire world that's been pulled over your eyes as Morpheus famously says in the matrix if you pull on Jonestown the whole world that's been pulled over your eyes comes apart and Jon Judge wrote like a longer than essay about Jonestown that really shows you that was an operation so these cults like if you watch the movie at times at the El Royale where there's a cult in there it's that was like the 60s reenactment or weaponization of certain things that this group has known how to do for a long time I'm saying too much scratch that from the record Alex so cult you know we have this idea of cult that's been basically impressed on us because of the Mooneys and the Jonestown all of which have intelligence connections and this whole thing that I'm talking about is intelligence agencies are basically the modern modern arm of this cult of Mithras or operation of Mithras but the word cult just comes from the word culture it means something that grows if I cultivate the land you know I can make barley grow or I can make flowers grow I can grow and we human beings everything we do is culture whether it's you know you can read like I said I got a masters in English and read a lot of Foucault and you know the Derrida and these scholars in the 60s who started to say let me examine the phenomena of Friday night fights cultural manifestation of the 50s or the types of cars people drive that is culture and so once we start to identify ourselves with certain well I dress this way I'm sending you signals and you basically create a culture which a cult has kind of religious or spiritual aspects to it and there was a lot of that floating around in the period in the Roman period you know we found the Dead Sea Scrolls and they're a big part of the story and I think you want to get to those and I've got some things to say about the Dead Sea Scrolls because they have tremendous evidence that points to something went on that eliminated the ancient wisdom I think really what I want to do is show what kind of a couple slides that maybe give some people who are maybe spinning going what the heck is David and Alex talking about just to put a little bit of a framework on it to show what was lost what we had was ancient wisdom that was given to every culture around the world then it got stamped out and around the time it got stamped out there were cults circulating around you have the Essenes which a lot of people associate them with the Dead Sea Scrolls where they had a very strict you don't get into that community except through like two years of probation well yeah we'll let you in but every six months we're going to talk about your behavior and see what no he didn't button his bottom button on his tunic that guy is too radical kick him out and they weren't necessarily the Essenes were a cult but they weren't necessarily gathering people in people were coming to the Essenes they weren't running around trying to impose their views on others at least most scholars say they weren't then you had kind of apocalyptic cults who were actually actively going out and seeking members and saying listen the world is fixing to end in a couple of years it is time now to quickly sell all your possessions and start doing the right thing or you're going to be burned up instead of going to the good place and that was going on and they were aggressively going out and gathering or spreading their message and you listen to scholars talking about John the Baptist will say look at John the Baptist he is saying the axe is at the root of the tree it's about to come down repent get in the water right now and change your life or else because the tree is about to get chopped down now that was going on at this time so that's more of what we think about as a cult goes on TV and has ads and says you should come and do this and get right before something bad happens the UFO comes and takes us I was out in the desert when that whole hellbott comet I was out in the national training center under the stars and I looked up and said that's a comet I didn't even know there was a comet coming this was in the 96th the hellbott comet and there was the heavens gate cult remember that and they all committed suicide because they thought the UFO was coming so anyway well hold on because there's a couple different ways to go there and I don't want to slow that down and I want you to go ahead and do those slides but there's something right beneath the surface there that we have to bring out is that for whatever reason we all have programmed into us this positive thing about cults and this negative thing about cults in terms of our participation in them we need community we like community we like fellowship and we like structure we like rules and that isn't a bad thing but sometimes that gets out of control so you're talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the evangelical groups that are described there I mean it's wacky it's just like you're saying there are different versions of the same thing that we see today and we see that people when they get together have a tendency to do that I think what your book also or your whole work also relates to though which is the difficult thing to balance and I don't know if we're going to be able to balance it in this conversation is there's a genuine spiritual yearning in these people so a lot of times when we look at that from an atheistic perspective all those fucking moonies you know or those Jim Jones people how could you be so stupid how could you inject that Kool-Aid into your daughter's mouth well I would suggest again that those people are having rich spiritual lives now maybe it's they're talking to they're being influenced by I don't know I don't know what their spiritual life is but I think we make a mistake if we think that they're not trying to figure the shit out in some way that we are and you're not saying otherwise I'm just saying when we start pulling that apart there's those two aspects of it and then there's this third aspect of it which I'm going to turn this into a question because I don't know but my little riff on the imperial cult that was really started by Aurelius after Caesar because you know Aurelius is the great grand it's his great grand uncle or whatever Julius Caesar is but he wants to wrap himself around that so he says no I'm going to create the imperial cult is about Caesar you guys want to worship Caesar he was like a god and then he goes and who am I well I'm the adopted son of the god isn't that pretty good and he starts building these temples these cults these temples all throughout the empire to again I think it relates to what you're saying to kind of mirror, compete offer a counterbalance to the other temples and things that are going on because he sees that that's kind of an important thing and that imperial cult thing that starts with the kind of that then gets rebooted and it's going to get rebooted later and later and later because it becomes this play that we can kind of turn in and and then so we're going to tie the end of the cult of Mithras maybe the cult of Mithras is going on all through this or not but what do you think about any of that do you have any thoughts okay so the first so the first part I think you're thinking of Augustus you slipped and said Augustus you're right I'm sorry that's okay though but actually so the you know the association of kings with gods in ancient Egypt ancient Mesopotamia is not really that uncommon it is uncommon in Greece right Greeks would have none of that crap they'd be like no no no no right so but there's a reason I would say you know this is a bit of a tangent but it's not really because it's almost like a political question of the gifts of the gods to a nation include the rivers include the fertile soil all those things were seen as coming from the gods and the gifts of the people the children that are born are born there by the by the will of the gods and you Alex have certain gifts and make up that is just yours you have certain personality traits and interests and but you will take the conversation in a different way than any other podcaster that I talked to because you're Alex right you've been given that those gifts by the gods that this was the ancient perspective and so who protects those or the king is responsible for making sure that those gifts are benefiting the whole land and are not taken over by oligarchs who just use them for themselves and so the the tyrant was actually the guy who came in and smashed up the oligarchs when they got to grabbing and taking all of the gifts of the gods away from the rest of the people and just benefiting themselves so the king was there as like a representative of the gods to prevent to ensure ideally I'm saying ideally the ancients were fine with democracy and they were fine with monarchy they weren't too keen on oligarchy which is basically what we have today but anyway the the coins would have pictures of the gods on them because the whole economy comes from the gifts of the gods and sometimes they would also have the king on there because he or the queen is supposed to be like the intermediary for the ruling on behalf of the gods for the benefit of the people long tangent but so I would say that what you know Julius Caesar is not my expertise and I think that the whole imposition of the Mithras movement came after in the time of Vespasian you know you've talked to Jill Atwell a few times we can get into that whole thing the whole the Vespasian Titus and Domitian the Flavian dynasty or dynasty is a crucial turning point it's after the Caesar's it's after Nero it's right after absolutely absolutely so and I want you to go on that and to move there I just wanted to I was hoping that I was building on what you were saying and I kind of I don't think that last part of what you said is a tangent at all it's something that it's going to be impossible to wrestle to the ground but I think it's fundamental to your work and I think it's fundamental to basically what I'm saying too is that I don't know what these extended realms are but you just gave one possible narrative for how we interact with these extended realms right which is there is some moral imperative I always say there is some moral good there is some moral direction there it is accessible it was designed to be accessible to the people through the people who rule them that sometimes goes awry and it gets you know awesome awesome and I mean that you know so then I think that's a good thing to have on the table Dave because we got to kind of establish where we're coming from and again we might not get all the way through to where we want to get today but we have to do this otherwise it doesn't really make any sense so the only reason I want to talk about Josephus I want to talk about the Flavians I think that's where the action is I want to talk about Josephus that's the part that's really got me excited my kind of quick read through it found that really this this whole idea that we can kind of reboot this idea of the cult we can reboot which pops up directly into what you're going to say with you know it's not that far from Vespasian and I think when Vespasian does it and then really you know when we're going to talk about the Flavians we got Vespasian Titus who only serves a very short time and then we have Domitian and a lot of people I don't know where to think but to read that history it looks like Domitian killed Titus I mean that a lot of people suspect that and that could be true and it's kind of interesting because then he of course really reboots the cult and really advances that thing which is like oh the glorification of my brother and my father which again would be typical you know play in the playbook of how to kind of another play in the evil playbook but I just jump in there I mean we don't have to take us to the slides that you have maybe because I think it's really interesting the direction it's kind of that's what's grown up out of the cultivation of our conversation so far that because I think that smashing of that ancient understanding was in order to grab the resources among certain families which is exactly what happened after the Roman Empire was dissolved Europe especially Western Europe because the Roman Empire cracked into Eastern and Western the Western Roman Empire cracked into feudal fiefdoms which then feudalism came in the part of the world that basically then went out and colonized everybody later on they became the colonial powers that started taking the resources from Africa, America Asia, India everywhere else so this whole story and actually yeah I mean I think they were dismantling the Roman Empire they were not exalting basically trying to get the Caesars out of the way and all the mechanisms of basically communal the communal mechanisms that could stand against the oligarchs had to go and that's what I would argue this is more about oligarchs overthrowing anything that chains them down that's why I'm not a libertarian well and again it's hard to unpack all this because one of the things I think I see I'm really hung up on this idea of this spiritual life that people are living and I think like even in this Roman Empire I see people that try and put it back try and put it back on course and the power of the cult the power of the evil which is kind of and the attraction of that kind of wins out sometimes it doesn't win and then in other places in other parts of the world it doesn't so I think it's kind of I always see it as kind of a mixed bag as history progresses and then also you know I think when you jump to the end game what you're doing which is totally true like what you're saying the way I interpret it is that these guys at some point realize that wait a minute this Christianity thing is the best fucking game in town we can you have a great quote in the thing it's like you know it's the better way to rule it's if I have two different groups that hate each other but they're both Christian and I'm the Pope this is the best possible situation they're struggling at odds with you they're fighting each other and I'm above I'm always above it's the best possible thing but where we kind of maybe see it slightly differently is I don't think they had I don't think they had such a great plan I think the plan was kind of like you know like a lot of things that we see in real life it's like oh shit that was a mistake wait a minute maybe it wasn't such a mistake maybe we can go the next maybe we can get this done you know and so that's always in the back of my mind is that you know we'll have this conversation like this is going to throw people are going to be like whoa but like when you were talking about corona I don't think these guys had any clue that they would be as successful with this social engineering project as it was I don't think in their wildest dreams they thought they would get everybody to just turn upside down give away all their rights everyone just turn over and say okay I'll do whatever you say not in their wildest dreams and the way I relate it back to is I look at like climate change they tried that global warming shit for 20 years and it didn't work if they were geniuses they would have made that work and you can see they're trying to bring it back now but the thing is they don't always have the answer it's just they got a lot of guns they have a lot of bullets you know and they can keep firing and keep firing so I think that's at play here and you might not see it that way but I don't think they could have possibly seen how successful this game would be until it's there to unfold yeah I you know I'm not unwilling to go down those roads actually go back to you because you've dropped this idea a couple of times and I haven't picked it up because about people searching for they're searching they join a cult because they're searching the whole central thesis of myth and trauma the book myth and trauma is that these ancient myths are actually they're multi multi-layered but they have as a central theme the repair of trauma the repair of that alienation that hunger that we have inside ourselves what are we looking for we're searching for something the myths are talking about that and it's very very powerful and it's very very beneficial and what we're looking for is our self you're looking for yourself you've been alienated from yourself that's why there's so many myths about twins I can show you beyond doubt that the myths are talking about that and how to repair that and we're looking for that desperately and that's the only way to actually live up to our full potential I would argue is to recover that connection and get back in touch with who we are because otherwise we're sabotaging ourselves all the time and I think probably every listener certainly myself I have plenty of experience with self-sabotage I think we all know what that is and feels like and so getting back in touch with yourself think how much if you could live up to your full potential think how great that would be well if the myths are about that and you're trying to impose tyranny you know taking away resources imposing poverty you don't want that and that's why why would someone do that why would someone go down that path why would someone do those things to other people yeah it's pretty no no I'm asking it as a real question yeah in order to take over and be look if I'm the only one who knows kung fu in the village I can run that village now why do you want to run why do you want to run that because they're not connected to their self that's why because if they were they'd be like the kung fu master who comes in and says I'm here to help I'm here to help look I'm here to help prevent bullying you know think of like the kung fu movie it's usually the kung fu master wanders in and he's there he's protecting the woman from being abused and he's stopping the robbery that's going on and it usually turns out that the central villain is also a kung fu master and he's using his kung fu to oppress the village and then they have a big fight and that's kind of that's that's the plot how to write a great kung fu movie so why is that what's wrong with that bad kung fu master that he wants to take over the village and steal from everybody there's something wrong inside that needs to get reconnected with that person and I think every single human being on this planet is a potential ally I don't want to I think every single person even the ones who are doing very bad things can see the error of their ways and turn towards spreading the truth I don't know if this is answering your question and I agree so I agree that everyone has the potential to turn towards the light but I also think and like I just wrote this book Why Evil Matters and we're not talking about this book and the point of the book is that we have to ask ourselves why how this evil thing works and it has to be more than just our answer of just I'm all about look to the light the secret of the scent is always look up I'm always about that but there's another level of that that we have to understand I interviewed this guy he's a prominent book is clinical psychologist from Grand Rapids, Michigan right so he's just working with patients I'm afraid of spiders help me I'm afraid of the water starts interviewing people and they have satanic ritual abuse in their background from when they were a kid you know you're four years old you're getting satanically ritual abuse because your parents put you into that it's hell of a hell of a way to come up but there's an evil there that we need to understand beyond you know we need to understand and you know the I always tell the story but I'm a bit tired of it the guy who wrote that book and the guy who's the clinical psychologist Tom Sinser he reached out to me and he said Alex you don't understand evil you don't understand evil and darkness and darkness is just there it's like gravity and evil is our need to explore darkness at different times and so if the myths that you're talking about are engaged in that like you're saying they are then that's useful but I think it's also useful to understand on a practical level that people are having extended consciousness experiences with benevolent entities that want them to do bad things and they are being influenced in different ways and they're being influenced we're all being influenced on this plane and on other planes so I don't need you to you know believe that or endorse that but I equally don't need to believe or endorse you know a different belief about how people are processing that and every we have no everyone can be an ally it's like I kind of think that some people in their current where they're at are just from a practical standpoint are not going to be allies and as a matter of fact I think if we see them as allies I think that's a kind of a a weakness that we have in our culture that you know we have to see oh everyone you know there really is no god there really is no extended consciousness so potentially you know it's just all our social no there's people out there like we're talking about the COVID I mean there's an agenda there and the people who are running it are not nice people but they are spiritual people they just haven't connected if you want to say you know they haven't connected that part that's fine but I think we have to look at what they've done and that's the history that we're talking about yeah I don't disagree with any of that Alex I don't disagree with any of that and I'm certainly not sugarcoating the I mean you know I talk about I talk about a lot of bad things in that book and you know you talk about abusing children that is going on systematically right and it's not we shouldn't call it pedophile either because the root of that is like you know love it's molestation abuse you know rape so and it's systematic and it's been systematically covered up so I'm not denying any of that and I would say that is connected to this story as well I don't you know go down that path I don't tend to gravitate towards talking about that but I talk about Nazi Germany in that book and I talk about talk about the things that the things that were done to the Native Americans to in Central America in India I mean in Rome in Rome so yeah I mean the the problem of evil is certainly and the myths don't deny that I mean the myths are actually very brutal and explicit and the myths are in many ways and you have gods who are capricious and you have gods who are malevolent you have gods who just you've got you know just going to the Greek myths which are very familiar to a lot of people you've got Athena and she is a war goddess in a sense she wears a helmet she's got a spear she's for justice and then there's Aries who can I stab in the guts right now because I just feel like seeing some intestines flow out right now I'm in that kind of a mood right now it's a completely different and Athena is always getting angry with Aries and they're constantly kind of bringing their battles in front of Zeus but there are malevolent entities throughout the myths and you know I've written you mentioned my blog and I've been doing it for over 10 years there's over 1300 posts and there's one in there where I'm talking about there's this gentleman who channels the guides and he's so able to he's talking so fast he's hearing it from and I ask the question is that from outside himself or inside himself and the answer I say is I don't know but actually I don't think it matters that gods work their way out through men and women whether they're external or internal whether Athena is inside of Odysseus' head when she's talking to him or she's in a different dimension I'm not the expert on that I can show you that the myths are based on the stars so they're not literal they're talking about metaphor I do believe that they're talking about the infinite realm and that's one of the reasons they use the stars when we're looking up into the stars we're looking into an infinite realm and they're using the visible aspects to create a picture about invisible truths that's all going on I've talked about that extensively so I do think it would be good to show I don't know if we're at the end of the show but to show some of the actual to show what was lost and we can jump into Josephus at any point but I would like to just show because it'll show when we talk about mythorism then you'll have a framework to put it into when I say that's all celestial that was imposed by people who understood this ancient system at the same time they're smashing the ancient system they're using it for their benefit and it'll make sense if I show you the slides because then people can go aha let me go back and start again at the beginning because now what he's saying makes sense that it's all based on the stars I'm going to share my screen I'll move through this fast because I know you want to get to some Josephus but this really helps and I chose some things from ancient Greece for you but this is actually a Maya cup I started with a Maya cup this is I think so powerful this was brought to my attention by someone commenting on one of my YouTube videos it said hey this Maya cup looks like it's got the same thing going on I see in my animation I didn't get rid of that one line sorry I'll get to that later but there's all the data you can see this in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City this is from the 7th and 8th century AD or CE if you prefer from Maya this is a rain god whose name is Chak he's a rain god of the Maya he's well known they have glyphs that say his name so we know that that's Chak look at his posture he's got a lunge posture rear-heel raised I'm just going to go through it really fast some people have heard this before but it's really powerful when you see it he's holding a weapon he's holding an axe I draw an arrow to it that squiggly line is supposed to come in later I apologize that it's still there on the screen that's my drawing it's not in the artwork he's also got another arm there's one over his back with a weapon this case an axe other one's reaching forward it's actually grasping this circular kind of disc thing then he's also got this loincloth that he's wearing around his waist and there's this long tuft that kind of comes out it's important just note that here's just moving really quickly obviously artwork from a different culture a different century a different continent this is ancient Greece this is Zeus the great god Zeus we know it's Zeus the ancient artist or at least the ancient artists friend who could write Zeus has written the name there so we know it's Zeus look at the same posture we've got and this is from 540 BC or thereabouts we've got again the rear this big lunge rear heel raised he's got one arm over his head holding a weapon in this case it's a thunderbolt but he's also got this outstretched front arm Zeus's son Hercules almost always depicted in this posture same rear heel and weapon overhead this case the vase kind of curves away so you can't see exactly what he's wielding but it's probably his favorite weapon which is a club he's got this outstretched arm and it's near the crest he's fighting the Amazon warrior women in this one of his 12 labors of Hercules but you see grasping or nearly grasping something kind of circular or semi circular and look at that little tail on his I've put one more arrow you see that tail of his lion skin Hercules is almost always depicted in a lion skin with the thing over his head see the tough tail right there notice the similarity to chalk and I'll show it again here's one more of Hercules this time he's in a different battle but he's got that rear heel raised he's got one arm holding the weapon over his back in this case there's that lion's tail with a little tough it's pretty it's kind of like artsy looking this is kind of looks almost like Art Deco period of ancient Greece but in this case Hercules is actually grasping the crest of his opponent's helmet I'm going to blow it up so that people can see it on their screen a little bit bigger there's the same painting you can see his hand right there grasping the crest can you see that his hand is grasping the crest look at chalk he's grasping a disc look at Hercules he's grasping a crest why because this is the constellation Hercules sorry that squiggly line is not part of the constellation that's supposed to come in as a big reveal later but my animation skills somehow missed that but this is the constellation the outline of the constellation called Hercules in the sky actually looks a little like Curious George this is the H.A. Ray outline of Hercules now near Hercules there's this beautiful arc called the northern crown but in Latin it's actually called Corona that's Corona Borealis the northern crown the crown of the north look at where it is in relative look at Hercules he's got the rear heel he's got the lunge posture he's got a weapon over one side he's reaching out with the other hand and the other hand could be envisioned as grasping Corona Borealis now let's go back to chalk see look I didn't I didn't change the outline of Hercules I didn't change the outline of the clock on the Maya cup that was found in the Americas nowhere near Greece and I could show you this from around the world I could show you this from India with their rain god Indra who wields the Vajra weapon which is like Zeus's thunderbolt Zeus is also a storm god chalk is a storm god look at what he's grasping he's grasping the northern crown and by the way there's this very bright star named Vega that's what the squiggly line is pointing to that's the tuft of Hercules' tail that's the tuft of chalk's loin cloth I'm going fast but hopefully this makes sense to people that is the star Vega it's the fifth brightest star in the sky it's right there next to Hercules and this beautiful piece of artwork I'm going to get now we're going to go to Josephus in a second I know you're chomping at the bit to get to Josephus and maybe we have to save some of it for another time but this was only found in the Pylos Combat Agate it was found in Pylos on the western Peloponnes in Greece but it's from a tomb that was sealed up and undisturbed since 1500 BC it's very ancient this is way before classical Greece which was like 500 BC this is the tomb was sealed up in 1500 BC who knows when this Pylos Agate was made it could have been made 100 or 200 years before that for all we know it's only 3.5 centimeters wide which I could spend an hour talking about look at the detail how did they do this but let's look at the celestial elements we've got an exaggerated lunge posture very clearly we've got the raised heel we've got the old sword or weapon arm over the back and then we've got the other arm reaching out and what's it doing it's grasping another circular crest of a helmet that they've put onto this amazing piece of art which was only uncovered in 2017 they found this tomb but it's coronabory out there's no doubt in my mind that this is based on the stars because I've seen it a million times before 2017 I'd already pointed this out and then this thing gets uncovered in 2017 and by the way do you see that this warrior who's about to stab the other warrior has a sword scabbard on his waist with a pommel right there see that bulb of a pommel that's indicating the position of Vega again the stars are all in the right places this is clearly based on the stars but that doesn't mean the Bible is based on the stars the Bible doesn't have pictures it's text all the things that they're describing the Bible can be shown to be using this same system this system is worldwide I just showed you in the Maya and in Greece and I could show you from Egypt I could show you from Mesopotamia it is worldwide and it's all through the Bible this is a shared system that should actually unite us all but it's the literal Christianity so how did let's that's that's what happened to my squiggly thing so let me just this is go back Lee Tepe I'm just going to put it up on the timeline as it was deliberately buried not later than 8000 BC only recently uncovered I just want to put a framework together and then we'll get into what happened that's what's been lost when did it get lost Roman period we've already been talking about that for an hour here's ancient in Egypt it's like civilization emerges out of nowhere around 3500 BC in places like Mesopotamia in places like ancient India ancient Mesopotamia ancient China in the Americas there was stuff going on in this time period as Graham Hancock has recently shown evidence advanced things going on and then there's the Roman period this is Marcus Aurelius who I think is like one of the last good guys frankly there's Marcus Aurelius 121 to 180 that's the father of Commodus that you see in that movie Commodus was according to the theory that I argue about in the book that it was originally proposed by Flavio Barbiero he's a Italian retired admiral he's written a whole 500 page book about this theory of Josephus and Commodus who may or may not have killed his father Marcus Aurelius was the first sole Invictus Mithras practitioner who got into the office of emperor so just I'll stop in one second and pause I think there was a time at a very ancient time there's very ancient wisdom whenever this system was set up I think there was quite likely a catastrophe you hear people talk about the common impact theory, Younger Dryas impact theory or Robert Shock talks about extreme solar storm like a coronal mass ejection or solar activity that wipes out whatever created this system and then humanity almost basically goes underground or lives in caves for a long time and then it just reemerges with Egypt, Mesopotamia ancient India etc and I call that ancient wisdom so there's something even before because this was already fully formed in the myths of India already fully formed in the myths of ancient Egypt so it came from somewhere before I'm just laying out kind of I think the timeline was there was a catastrophe probably a natural catastrophe a comet or something that wiped it out then civilizations arose that still remembered it ancient Greece obviously still had pieces of it but then there was another catastrophe in the Roman period and since then even the ancient wisdom whatever was left over after the catastrophe has been forgotten or deliberately stamped out that kind of breaks it into three pieces which I think is a helpful framework so I interviewed a guy a few probably a year ago at this point he's Bruce Fenton fantastic love him and his wife too together wrote this book and they have some really good evidence for 780,000 years ago yeah and it's really good he has the tectites and then he has the genetic information and he has all the rest of that so that's like a stake in the ground for me I look at his work spend a lot of time looking at his work spend a lot of time putting the movie together and that whole thing very solid how you look at it 780,000 years ago so that doesn't so when I hear people talk about when I hear you talk about what is it go Beckley Tepe I always stumble on that go Beckley Tepe does that fit in the 780,000 year kind of thing and similarly when I hear the Romans stamped it out it's like I don't know a lot of different people a lot of people don't like Genghis Khan some people in some parts of the world love Genghis Khan there's a lot of different shit going on at any time and it's like this should unite us all when you say that it's like I don't come to that same conclusion I come to the conclusion that we're all leading rich spiritual lives that are meaningful to us and that the people who are you know involved in a satanic ritual abuse cult in Grand Rapids, Michigan who are abusing their four year old kids I don't know what their spirituality is but I believe that they're on some sort of spiritual journey and maybe some point in their life in this lifetime they will like we're saying look up see the light and be transformed or maybe they won't and maybe their children will or maybe they won't so I'm just not willing to I just not willing to accept it should be meaningful to all of us it should pull all of us together I don't it sounds good but I don't know if that is true or it isn't true I just got done interviewing two of the top in history near-death experience researchers Bruce Grace and Jeff Long and I'm interviewing another NDE guy that that everybody knows Evan Alexander go look at the near-death experience research and the database that I'm put together all the accounts that have been put together and have been reviewed medically and all the rest of that I think it's enormously significant for what we're saying about it's about love it's about forgiveness it's about compassion that's what it's about but people have very different experiences in their journey there and it sure looks and then go talk to Gregory Shushan who's looked at near-death experiences across culture across time as best he could 600 years ago 500 years ago his conclusion is near-death experiences are the foundation for all afterlife beliefs because there's the same thread in all of them so I'm down with everything that you're saying I'm just not down with your conclusions about it I'm not against your conclusions about it but I just I'm not willing to say oh okay that's the answer what I want to do is keep pulling on the threads and look at you know pull apart what what happened as best we could realizing that we're all disadvantaged and the vantage point that we're looking at it for you know that's the other thing the last point that I'll stop my long rant one of the things that your work teaches us that we can never fully grok you know we can never fully get there is that we are by our nature unable to understand this because it's telling us that there is a much greater in every you know near-death experiences telling us this alien abductions telling us all this suddenly is there's an expanded consciousness and you're not there you're on the other side of it and yet we all want to look and that's human nature we want to look and try and understand the best we can but what I hear over and over again is you're not you know you're kind of like the dog just the foster dog we have out there who's wonderful and she's beautiful but she doesn't really get me you know fully what do you think about any of that since we just kind of go all over the place well dogs definitely don't process exactly the same way we do but you know the I'm not going to argue about some of those points look what I often say is I can prove that the myths are based on the stars I think I just showed some evidence that you know people maybe if I went too fast they can watch it if you slow it down maybe say what did he just say what star was that but that evidence is pretty powerful I can prove that now where it came from what it means I have opinions about that I don't have I'm not a you know a guru or a privy to I don't hold myself up as an ascended master who has been given some special knowledge to now proclaim to you I've got some opinions about where it came from and what happened but I have heard Bruce Fenton on a podcast interviewed and talking about his research I haven't examined it myself but when I say the very ancient wisdom how far back does that go and where exactly did it come from and we've talked about this in our previous episode I don't know I can show you that the myths are based on the stars what does it mean I don't know but I've got a lot of arguments as to what it means that I think are backed up by pretty good textual evidence pretty good interpretive of the myths evidence the part about this should unite us all what I'm just to take it to its most simplest level when I'm talking about is literalist Christianity has said our stories are based on history everything else is wrong and therefore you need to get rid of what was given to you and adopt what we're telling you these stories were given to all cultures of the world whether that is intended to unite not we could argue but won't get anywhere because I'm not an expert one way or the other I believe they're like an ancient treasure that is for our benefit that is to get us because we're disconnected from our self they show you and that is the biggest problem that we have that we are trying to find who we are I use that I use the point break where Johnny is searching for something and Bode pokes him in the forehead and says you haven't figured it out yet have you surfing is where the place where you find yourself and you lose yourself and you don't know it but you've got it right there and he taps him in the third eye that's what we're looking for to find ourself but to lose those anyway we're not going to get too dive into the navel but I'm talking about it should unite us from this idea that one set of myths needs to go out and stamp out everybody else's inherited wisdom that they got and that has happened over the past 17 centuries and continues to go on and that's a problem because the myths of the Maya are based on the exact same system as the stories in the Bible and they both are actually telling you things just with different stories and characters and they're absolutely pointing to the same truth as I would argue and so you don't need to get rid of any of them. Do you know who Michael Aquino is? Yeah, oh yeah Major Aquino? Yeah, major. Oh, military got I forgot that. I think it was Lieutenant Colonel yeah, he's now deceased. Now deceased just recently and he was the head of the Templisat he was Satanist. He wrote the chaplain's manual for all the chaplain if you're Christian, you're Muslim, it's his a Syop guy from the beginning. He was a serial abuser of children I think by pretty in the most horrific horrific way with a very very satanic way with you know alters and you know mixing in of all kinds of spiritual stuff and then abusing and probably we suspect killing kids but the evidence of his abuse is direct testimony direct evidence against him and you know anyone can go do that so somebody tapped him on the forehead too and said you're trying to figure it out and he figured it out it was Satan it was some evil benevolent being that guided him and it turns out his mother was into it it turns out his grandfather was into it in a different way and his grandfather committed suicide eventually slit his own throat and bled to death somebody tapped him on the forehead too didn't have anything to do with the myths they weren't tied into the myths they were on a different plane and a different thing so I don't know how all these things fit together but I just I just hate when it gets to like this is the way that we gotta we gotta look I mean I think it's like I don't know what influenced Constantine is the figure you know if we ever get back to that Constantine's a great you know the great saint Constantine I'll just remind people Constantine killed his son cause he thought his son was fucking his wife his wife said hey man your son I don't know how to keep him off me he's coming on to me all the time he's right there you know he kills him then he finds out that his wife and this is after he converted to Christianity right right then he finds out his wife actually made that up because she wanted her son from another marriage to get in there and that he was in the way so he kills her right which however you process that but that is the founder of this cult that we have that you know the Christian cult which just replaced the cult of Mithras it's just an exact like carbon copy stick in the different pieces and wrap it up and call it something different the thing I learned from your book you know for 60 years in the the what the what becomes the yeah tell that tell that part yeah let me react to what you said though first about Michael Aquino so what I would point to and I point to it in the book but it's really one of my favorite examples and it's in the scriptures of first kings where Solomon is on top of a mountain making sacrifices and they're pleasing to the Almighty and God says Solomon ask ask me anything what do you want whatever you want and Solomon says you know I've been made king over these people so many people and yet I feel kind of like a little child in terms of my understanding I'm concerned that I'm screwing up right and left as I'm trying to judge these different cases that are brought to me give me a wise and understanding heart in order to judge the people rightly and the text says that response pleased the Lord now pause we find that exact pattern in myths around the world we find King Midas is asked by Dionysus Dionysus thanks for returning my drinking buddy to me when he got lost ask me anything what do you want what does Midas say I want everything I touch the turn to gold okay or we have that pattern over and over choose what you want and going back to the Solomon incident God says the text says that answer pleased the Lord and he said to Solomon you could have asked for long life you could have asked for riches you could have asked for the life of your enemies specifically says the life of your enemies but you asked for wisdom to help the people so I'm going to give you wisdom to help the people and I'm also going to give you long life and riches now that implies that you can go to the invisible realm or you can go to what the myths are pointing towards I would call it the other world the invisible world the inner world the dream time you can go there for many different you can get many different things from there and we see this pattern over and over what do you want what do you want from the invisible realm what do you want from the divine realm riches Midas wrong choice turns out very badly for Midas he has to eventually say I made the terrible choice can you please undo this choice I'm going to die if I keep eating golden hot dogs they're going to kill me so he undoes it the divine realm undoes it but Solomon could have asked he could have used the divine realm for not just power over his enemies but to kill his enemies or to bring harm to them that's what the text implies to me you can use it for different things but the correct thing is for wisdom in order to live up to your potential and to help others that's what Solomon asked for he said I want wisdom not just so I can be the wisest person in the world but to help others with all the problems that they have so I would argue that what Aquino was doing and I talk about it in the same book Myth and Trauma I talk about Crowley Crowley was searching for his higher self and when he took on his magician persona he was taking on this other Crowley was a very evil figure and Aquino was a very evil figure you can use this for different things but the original purpose is pretty clearly stated as it's for wisdom to help others it's not for chasing after riches, Midas come on Midas figured out you're already the richest king in the world why do you need more riches what's your problem what's wrong with you inside that you are still not satisfied as the king of Phrygia since you were a child it was predicted that you're going to be the richest man in the world and yet when I come to you and offer you anything not to turn everything to gold okay have fun there's something wrong inside that you're still so insecure you need more gold so anyway that's my response to Aquino being on a spiritual quest yeah and you can you can use it for the you can use it for those things but that's not the right thing and that's not the beneficial way to use it because it's going to destroy you like a destroyed Midas you know one of the things I one of the things I'm kind of keen on these days is to tell people that you know this amazing database of near-death experiences that Dr. Jeff Long has and his wife Jody have compiled and they're medically reviewed and they're carefully done through this long survey that kind of weeds out it's a clean database I just did an extensive database I did an extensive interview with the guy and the main purpose of the interview was to say is your data reliable are you filtering it or are you in any ways so it is, it is I always tell people go Google N-D-E-R-F near-death experience research foundation love Jesus, God you know any of those things anything you want but then go do Crowley go do Satan go do do what thou wilt you know how much time that comes up zero love comes up all the time over the top compassion comes up all the time forgiveness comes up all the time but so in a way we always get these ecclesiastic no matter what we set out to do to me David it's a different they are the near-death experience accounts are telling a slightly different story they are telling the difference of the story of truly all you have to do is seek love and compassion on one hand versus kind of your story has kind of a gnostic feel to it like there is this battle you know and there is these two kind of things the near-death experience accounts are really kind of saying something different ah there is a battle but you really kind of created the whole battle you know it's just really all you have to do is just seek love in everything you do and we are actually in agreement on that but where we kind of always slip up is that I don't think that captures what you just said I don't think that captures a quino a quino I guess it is yeah it is and it's like you know I just watched and I hate to even watching these things but somebody got stuck into them Ted Bundy and he is talking about his experience and him growing up and how he just had this kind of just a little almost understandable attraction to a certain kind of porn you know and it just kind of grew and it just kind of grew and eventually it became what he felt was an entity inside of him a spiritual entity that was battling with his soul and well we all know the story of what happens to that I'm just reluctant to I don't know what any of these things mean so I'm just plowing ahead you're plowing ahead too I mean you do the same thing you're just plowing ahead with your thing like you just said it we'll each wind up saying the same thing over again and I'm with you the myths are reflected in the stars there are no way that Mayan thing completely matches the constellation what's the name of the constellation Hercules fucking Hercules right which is like we don't have to curse the constellation Alex come on now that's your Christian lineage popping in there it's like it's from a completely different culture the name itself is all we have to say matches up to the constellation and the constellation has gotten the name Hercules there's no doubt there's no doubt so it's interesting that you said I feel kind of the part that you started off on of all you need is love I am not actually saying let's just connect with our higher self and kind of meditate and the Aquinos of the world or Aquinos will do their thing I actually believe that things have gone very wrong that people who want to inflict trauma you know you can build a society that's less traumatic or more traumatic and there are people who want to deliberately inflict trauma and I think those people need to be stopped and I think they are they've gotten control of the levers of a lot of places including a lot of assassinations in this country including an elected president and then Robert F. Kennedy his brother when he was about to get the nomination and was for sure going to become the president and he got assassinated too you have the levers of power it didn't stop there right it's Reagan Reagan was attempted he got the message and then sorry I always had people who said Jimmy Carter remember when they attempted him and the assassins were this right it's like something Harvey and Oswald this and that they took the two the CIA said hey we figured out who the two assassins were and if you just take the two names together they were Harvey Oswald like get the message here and then Carter comes out and says I've lost control of the government after that so just to add to your that is the same group so it is yeah so I would say you know we have to we have to work on our own individual getting in getting in touch with ourselves reconnecting with who we are because that's a huge part of our mission but there's also people who are inflicting trauma on the world that are enemies of humanity that need to be stopped so you know I'm not just Gnostic withdraw into a hermitage I think that these are things that the people need to I believe in giving the power to the people all the power to all the people so I was going to I was going to add one other thing on there but this is a story that has to do with the taking away of what belongs what's given to the people in their ancient myths and the resources of the gods that are given to the people the people that are born into the land are allowed to be born into the land by the people this is a story of the collaborators the conspirators against that okay we're an hour and 49 minutes let's tell them what so now we've set the stage let's tell them what happened oh you want to drive on yes I want to but I want you to do it in 10 minutes I want you to tell them tell them what happened tell them how they did it tell them the short story of the cult of Mithras and how they made it how they made it work and how Josephus played a role in it let me do it with some visuals too and I'll keep it under 10 minutes visual aids good visual aids better of course whatever you want alright let me share a screen alright so here's Titus Arch Arch of Titus 81 CE built by his younger brother whom you've already mentioned Domitian after do you think Domitian killed him I don't know I don't know I'm agnostic on that one but Titus just so people know just so people know Titus said I only made one mistake and that was there was a plot and it was tied to his brother Domitian he banished him and then a year later he gets assassinated he said I only made one mistake it's compelling there was a lot of assassinations going on you know we just mentioned a couple in the United States and you can add Martin Luther King in there and you can add Malcolm X you can add Fred Hampton and I would say that that same pattern there's a reason why that pattern is connected the use of assassination obviously it's worldwide but this group does it a lot so Arch of Titus I've got a slide with all the Roman emperors to just put it into people's perspective but I started here you can see on the inside of the Arch of Titus right here this is the sack of Jerusalem this is the fall of the temple this is where Josephus comes into the picture this is on the side you can see they're carrying off the temple treasures in the there was a revolt in Judea started in 66 AD 66 or 66 CE Vespasian was the general who was sent to put down the revolt he had two sons that were with him on this well Titus was like his main lieutenant on this military operation Titus that you just mentioned possibly being killed by his brother Domitian but this is the Arch of Titus so Vespasian went there and was putting down the revolt Josephus was by his own admission a member of the revolt in fact a leader of the revolt in fact a son of a priest of the priestly lineage of the temple and very supreme pedigree Josephus surrendered to Vespasian since we only have 10 minutes this is not this is not unknown history you can look all this up people were writing about this in 1800s I have leaned heavily on the work of Flavio Barbiero I do not agree with every single thing that Flavio Barbiero has to say but he has tons of evidence to argue for what Josephus did and that's what we're primarily talking about here Barbiero treats Moses as a historical figure I believe Moses is a constellation I can show you that Moses is a constellation I can show you that John the Baptist is a constellation I can show you that Jesus is a constellation series of constellations but the temple was ransacked nobody denies that and it was burned to the ground but the treasures were taken out we can see it right here on the Arch of Titus that's a very important piece of evidence that's Vespasian because you're just a think about I've already said this a bunch of times so people might get tired of it this is like a really key point that you are making is that yeah they sacked the city yeah they burned it down and yeah they took all the loot and this is what I got from Dave Brody who I told you wrote the book Romerica and he traces this thing happening again 60 years later Legion is called in to put down the next revolt in Judea in 130 and they walk away with a ton of loot and the better reading I think of this story is that Josephus knew where the gold was because you think about it you're under siege for 90 days you're a military guy do you just sit there and say okay leave all the gold right there out in the open if they get through that door they get all the gold you bury it right that's what people have done throughout time you bury it you hide it that's why when you watch that show Oak Island they're still digging for the buried gold they buried it the Jews buried it and Josephus said I'll tell you what the story again it's so miserably stupid to say that the reason that Vespasian put him in the townhouse gave free passage to 200 of his best friends the story was because he did a prophecy of you know he did a fortune telling for him what nonsense what he did was he said I'll lead you to the gold I know where the gold is at and nobody else does well and that's why I was saying look Josephus was very high up in the hierarchy and this is what Flavio Barbiero argues you know in the 1800's 1700's there have been scholars who said Josephus was the biggest trader of all time now there are modern scholars who are pushing back against that but I think they're probably trying to cover up what Josephus did because the points you're making are all absolutely supported by the evidence and I'll show you some of the evidence and I talk about the evidence in this book and also in The Undying Stars which was 2014 but here's Vespasian so as you mentioned so he was the general who was he lived from 9 CE to 79 CE he led that first campaign to put down and then the rebellion and then Titus his son so he he became emperor after the temple was sacked in AD 70 very important to just know that date here's Titus he lived from 39 to 81 he was the one who basically you know they said how come this rebellion we've put them down with Vespasian's army how come they won't give up you know what I think we're gonna besiege the temple and then they'll give up if they see that we're we've got the military machine of Rome camped outside the temple you're not getting out and if you don't give up we'll burn it down do you want to give up well apparently the answer was no but as you point out Josephus had already surrendered to Vespasian and gone back to Rome and then he came back with Titus Josephus and Titus are about the same age here's Josephus I put his name upside down he's a he's a traitor he's like a Benedict Arnold to his people he lived from 37 to 100 so you can see that he and Titus are basically the same age he and Titus so he surrendered he has this big story in his accounts where well we were all surrounded at Jotapata or Yod Pot we were surrounded by the Romans but we didn't want to give up so we decided we would all commit suicide so we would each kill one another we'd draw our swords and we just pair up and kill each other we draw lots to see who would go first and then everyone killed each other except for me and my guy we decided not to kill each other and because I had a vision that Vespasian was going to become the emperor and I came out and I told him you know I've been told our scriptures actually say that you're going to be the emperor and and so therefore Vespasian then eventually becomes the emperor and loves Josephus so much for telling him that that he as you said gives him his old villa that he used to live in gives him an annuity for the rest of his life a stipend he'll get paid for the rest of his life he won't have to pay taxes he gets to take on the name Titus Flavius he becomes a freedman well as you've argued in it just a minute ago and as other people have argued there's got to be more to the story Titus knew where the treasure was Vespasian these emperors or these generals were always having to keep their troops fed and paid if they wanted them to keep fighting for them in order to take over the empire which is what especially Vespasian right Vespasian was kind of the soldiers general he kind of knew he understood the psychology of the soldier in that way right so there's absolutely he was a he was a these guys were competent military leaders and he he used that he was running out of money in Egypt in campaigns in Egypt and anyway the theory is that he so Titus and Josephus during that siege the treasure had been buried in various hiding places and Josephus and Titus dug it out and that's how Vespasian was able to pay the troops to continue to stay loyal to him long enough to march on Rome and take over and defeat all the other challengers to be the emperor because I'll show you it was tumultuous times now that's hugely significant and I know I said Tim this is no I'm over rushing that's why hold on because there's a couple of points there that I think are super significant one is always kind of react to this idea that Josephus was a traitor to his people sure yeah I mean he's I mean that's kind of undeniable and that he's Jewish and he's this kind of elitist Jewish guy but the other thing that you said I can even edit that out because that's stupid it doesn't matter the other thing that you said I think is super important is what he writes because to me this is the beginning of Syop in action the beginning of the social engineering in action he writes that hey you know what not just the prophecy that just that of Espasian is going to be emperor he says the people of Judea and he's speaking of them as if he's not one of them one of the reasons they were so mad at the Romans was they thought that the Romans went against this prophecy that someone from their own soil would rise up to be the leader and they said you know what they kind of misread it a little bit and I should know because I'm a super Jew like you said I'm elitist I've gone to the temple and know the law and I now see what the law really said and the law said Vespasian is our Messiah the Jewish Messiah and the reason this is so important is from and you can say well that's a failed thing it never worked out that way but what they were trying to do and this goes back once we said two hours ago in my opinion not all these things work I think this is a failed Psiop they said hey let's try this maybe we can get the Jews to kind of come over to our side if we can convince them that their Messiah is really Vespasian and the Jews don't really respond to that because there's all these other in the Bible there's all these prophecies that would have to be met for that to happen but still it was an attempt to do that and I think that's significant particularly as you go on in the story in terms of how it plays out because they keep trying to play this social engineering game first do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah certainly it's more than a 10 minute conversation but I don't actually so you know Joe Atwell I've read his book several times and I heard him speak and that is not everything I just said is nothing to do with Atwell. So I don't believe that Josephus wrote their Gospels I think these were ancient stories that were updated because they need to write four of them If you want to pause and I don't think we should but I already sent you the exact quote from War of the Jews where Josephus says Those are good points what I'm saying is that I believe that Josephus well I guess I'm not arguing with that as a possibility what you're saying I'm not arguing with that I'm just I'm trying to clarify that I don't think that the Gospels if I don't think that the stories of the New Testament See I'm not going there we're just going to cloud the water with that Fair enough I'll just leave that aside Okay I think my point actually aligns perfectly with what you're going to say about the Nithrasolavikis is that you know here is a pattern of we can do this let's try this let's try so it's like a first attempt at you know it's let's try global warming global warming doesn't work oh this pandemic thing let's see if we can get that to get to our new world order kind of thing this is the first attempt but when you say when you say I'm a super Jew and that's what Josephus says he is and he says you know what quirky little thing has happened here you guys just kind of slightly misread the prophecy the prophecy because there's a tricky little part in here what Josephus writes is like look you guys weren't stupid you understood the prophecy but what you didn't get is that little part where it said Jewish soil and our soil well it turns out quirk of history the Spasius was named emperor when he was in Judea so that actually fulfills the prophecy when a guy is spinning it that hard to me that can't that's not accidental it's an attempt to really you know yeah so we're actually not disagreeing so I jumped in with just cautionary that you know I like Joe that will but I don't agree with all of his things because sometimes that could come in but that absolutely Josephus is a most unreliable source and yet he's relied on as well we have this here's our sources for you know for the Dead Sea Scroll era well we've got the Dead Sea Scrolls now but before that all we had was Josephus in the New Testament and I'm saying you can't use either of those as history because basically they're both based on the stars I can show you that when Josephus was writing about this or that battle he's using the same system he's talking about well they were speared like fish well that's funny here's a passage in the Odyssey where Odysseus's men were speared like fish I mean Josephus was well read in ancient literature and he was well read in ancient in this ancient wisdom system I believe and he absolutely and so two things on that and then I'm going to try to make it quick too but one is a total propaganda agent totally agree with you and the point that you made I think is so significant is to say we can't put these things on parallel and say that they're all equal and again it gets back to this point about how his history is so corrupt and then you jumped in there and made the important point that maybe intentionally so but to think that Josephus once he's been discredited as fully as he has clearly just a propaganda agent and then they go back to him time and time again to use him logically there must be something else going on here that's right because he's part of a conspiracy that's still going on is what I would say I would say he's part of a conspiracy that's still going on and here's some evidence for that let me go back to Sharon because we're you know you said you wanted to finish finish up and let me let me share with some evidence that shows that this conspiracy is still going on everybody probably knows where this is this is kumran wadi kumran this is the famous cave 4 where the vast majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are found the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 1940s the you know fragments of over 900 texts manuscripts and in thousands of pieces like jigsaw puzzles discovered in the 40s and then given into the hands of an international group of scholars who were almost entirely as you may know high up in the Roman Catholic priesthood Roland DeVoe was the head of this international Dead Sea Scrolls committee and then his lieutenant was JT Milik and they kept the Dead Sea Scrolls basically under wraps for their entire lives they didn't let anyone see anything but the manuscripts that were translations of biblical Old Testament texts these are all Old Testament this is part of Judaism we shouldn't say Judaism because that's a later development this is part of Jewish different esoteric communities and studies that were all over the place not just in Judea there were lots of Jewish scholars in Egypt there were lots of Jewish scholars in what we call Mesopotamia because I have to put an exclamation point on something you just said because it's so fricking significant and I think we have a problem in talking for a long time because there's so much to process I'm trying to go fast I'm not you're doing so great I mean the only point I was just going to make is that last point you made is so fricking significant because to me you say it in slightly different language like it's still going on today and I think that kind of freaks people out how could that be but it's still going on today because if you talk to the average person they go oh yeah the Dead Sea Scrolls oh yeah they kind of in some ways they support Christianity that's right they kind of support Christianity but it also kind of introduces some you know possible contradictions and stuff like that but what they did which is to me another play in the playbook is they did the Four Corners stall in basketball right so they they do come out and to understand the subtlety of it to me is to begin to understand the mechanism of control again if we ever get back to it I mean that's what they figured out way back the Romans figured that out really early is you know just control all the little stupid bureaucracies control the DMV and the water department just get your tentacles and all that stuff and you'll have a lot of benefit so the way they do it here is they get the Dead Sea Scrolls and they go amazing discovery amazing discovery and they do a Four Corners stall for 50 years and by the time it eventually comes out and people are going wait a minute this says something completely different because it does come out eventually and then so for anyone who complains and says well it says well they did this well then they point to and go wait a minute we released it all and it's so subtle it's so subtle I guess is my point yeah it is really it is the story so you can there's a actually a great podcast by someone named Gary Stevens called History in the Bible and he goes through this whole scandal of the Dead Sea Scrolls in episode 18 of his podcast and you can listen to that and you can it wasn't just this committee they had help and so the they released the parts that were already you know books of the Bible that we've seen that was 20% and they kept everything else under wraps and it was because of some micro film kind of photographs of them that they finally came out and the work of people like and forgetting I'm blanking on his name but it's a big long drama soap opera finally in the 80s and 90s all these pieces finally are coming out and they show something very different than the kind of story that this group that wanted to keep them under wraps wanted to say that they were but they did release let me show here's some pieces of one of the scrolls most of the scrolls are on leather or on vellum which is made from leather or some on papyrus but there's one scroll known as the copper the copper scroll and you see it on the right hand side of your screen looks very different than the written scroll the copper scroll it was it was all rolled up on copper and so old that they had to cut it in part and so that's why these pieces now look kind of like like a half of a tube what is the copper scroll it's basically a list of treasure it's a list of treasure this is how it reads this is the first words of the copper scroll not the part that I'm showing by the way that's like piece number 18 but on piece one it says in the ruin that's in the valley of acor under the steps with the entrance at the east so you go to the ruins find the entrance that's on the east then under the steps a distance of 40 cubits a strong box of silver and its vessels the weight of 17 talents which by the way a talent at that time new testament talent or that period talent 129 pounds so that's 129 pounds of silver times 17 that's a lot that's just one this thing just goes over and over here's where you find this treasure and here's what's there here's where you find it is it is tons of silver gold jewels etc well on that panel of experts there was one there was one Maverick named John Allegro most people have heard of John Allegro you probably heard of John Allegro he wrote the sacred mushroom in the cross in early 70s that it's all about mushrooms you know psychedelic mushrooms he was actually pushing for the publication of the scrolls he was the one Maverick who was pushing he actually said this is a treasure map I'm going to go search for it he never found any of the treasure why not well so how is this like how does Wikipedia tell you what does Wikipedia tell you about the copper scrolls or what what did those what did JT Millich tell you the copper scroll was it's just a child's exercise book for learning writing he said what they really say that's one of the things that they said you know the Essenes they never had any of this treasure of course they were this ascetic community which you know they were an ascetic community who says all these scrolls belong to the Essenes you see this was probably the trove the library of the temple so that the Romans don't burn it down and the treasure of the temple so that the Romans don't get it and someone knew oh by the way at the end of the copper scroll it says this is a copy this is a copy you know we put it on this copper so it can't burn look this treasure is important we don't want to lose it we're going to put the treasure map or the treasure instructions it's not really a map on something that can't be destroyed copper and this will be the backup copy well who had the who had the other copy I bet you Josephus knew how to find it and that's why the Spasian and Titus got all the loot and were managed to become emperors and the evidence is pretty overwhelming that I mean Joseph as you said Josephus didn't get all those things because he said I think you're going to become the emperor okay thanks a lot cut off his head he said I know where the treasure is buried please don't cut off my head because you won't get any of it the other thing you're adding to the story that's really significant is there's this incredible chaos in Rome and who will become emperor is really up for grabs and what you're adding to the story is one guy comes where and goes you know I think I should be emperor and I got tons and tons of gold and silver that agrees with me and he does and he walks in the Arch of Titus and he builds the calcium he does all that kind of makes for a good story it makes for a good story and money he doesn't get there by greasing people's palms he gets there by having an army he's got the muscle behind him pay the muscle with that money that money is used to buy the mercenaries because he takes he kind of takes his time and again the way conventional history writes it it's stupid it doesn't make any sense why he's kind of in the running or elected emperor but then he takes his time he goes and gets his stuff together well he goes and gets his army together it doesn't work the whole thing so then comes the takeover by the soul Invictus Mithras acting in conjunction with literalist Christianity it's like a pincher movement they're not enemies they're two sides of the same operation we gotta tell people as quickly as we can I think we're doing as good as we can in the time soul Invictus because it's a classic secret society just a classic secret society and you've already tied it to the murders that it commits but it's just it's evil it's like an evil secret society that we would you know understand in modern times well you know that's interesting we've talked a lot about evil and I would say it is a hierarchical and so here's why it's not a religion it's usually posited as a rival to Christianity their Mithraia are scattered all over Europe in significant places a lot around Rome a lot in Ostia Antiqua which you can visit today and explain what a Mithraia is so it's a small meeting clubhouse basically it always has this scene when you enter that's on the far wall and then it's got benches arranged in a U in a diagram in the book and lots of you can read about this lots of scholars have talked about it but once again the history of scholarship of Mithraism is again rife with obscuration obfuscation wrong leads there was someone who said in the 1860s the right answer he was ignored and then finally in the early 70s some scholars came up with the right answer but I wouldn't say it's evil the goals of the operation were to take over the Roman empire and to impose feudalism and impose literalist Christianity and all kinds of evil things were done but let's say the low ranking members you could be a member of one of these lodges you could see like 10 to 15 to 20 people the size of these it's basically like a dining room kind of a setup and only like 15 to 20 men it was exclusively for men it was like a dining club you'd go in there and it was very hierarchical it had seven ranks so you could keep people kind of in the dark in the lower ranks it was only in the higher ranks that you were sure for secrecy and taking over so if you let someone in you can observe them at the lower ranks and decide should we let this guy to the fourth rank where we start giving them some secrets or not as you point out in the book there's some people that actually make it to the level of emperor for a brief period of time and they're only level three that's right so imagine you know that there's all this that these are the guys who are basically calling all the shots but you're in the position of emperor and you're only a level three you know your days are numbered or you know better yet you know you better march to what they say right and history and Flavio Barbiero kind of points this out over and over history is full of and then that emperor was removed assassinated across Sol Invictus because now he thinks oh I'm the emperor I can do what I want I'm going to start throwing my weight around and they're like okay get rid of him because these Mithrea pop up the first one is in the vicinity of the Praetorian Guard which is like the emperor's bodyguard and they quickly let me just interject since we're throwing out a ton of stuff Vespasian was one of first ones to really clue into how important it was to really keep the Praetorian Guard close because he had seen in previous destabilizations that you know that would be the easiest way it'd be like the what we'd say like the secret service or somebody like that you know as close to the president I mean if they wanted to they could take out the president so he kind of saw it right am I right about that well so part of the theory is that he wouldn't use Romans in the Praetorian Guard he would use people who had a debt to him like did Josephus owe Vespasian yeah Josephus owed Vespasian his life right those other look the people who are leading the rebellion were warriors they were fighters they were hard rebels and Vespasian said Josephus you can bring over you know some of your friends some of those friends could be installed in the Praetorian Guard because now they are loyal to Vespasian whereas if he brings someone in who grew up in Rome who knows who that guy is loyal to he might be working for a different faction but these get these are my guys I'm gonna put them in charge of the Praetorian Guard so you're right but I'm not alleging that Vespasian was actually the first soul Invictus emperor according to Barbiero's theory was Commodus was Commodus and Marcus Aurelius his father was trying to figure out what was going on who was trying to take over the empire and Marcus Aurelius was persecuting not soul Invictus but the Christians so it was like a two pronged approach soul Invictus was this underground they met in these underground or they were made to look like they were underground secret meeting places where it was very small in number not a big congregation of 50 or 100 or 500 people is very small and it was that's the planning that's the secret part and the heat shield that draws the anger when the emperors are trying to figure out who is taking over the empire they persecute the Christians they're like these Christians are trying to stir things up but they never got to the nerve center which was this underground society of soul Invictus so we try and wrap this up you've got to tell this no it's all the great stuff I so appreciate you spending all this time and like I said we'll have to find a way to do it again maybe in a more organized focused way or maybe not I don't know maybe this is good but the whole story of the Mithra that lasts 60 years after Constantine builds his church if this isn't the clincher it's a good way to end it if you have any doubt about how fake this establishment of the Christianity literalist Christianity is by Constantine in the Roman Empire this seals it he just seals it so let me show you I just argued that there are two sides of the same coin that's actually Barbiero's phrase Flavio Barbiero wrote an essay called Mithras and Christianity or Mithraism and Christianity two sides of the same coin they are operating together and yet history continues to tell you can still find history books recent ones talking about Mithraism oh it was the rival to Christianity it almost took over the empire you know if only more people had joined in with Mithraism we'd all be Mithras today instead of Christians no it was a underground arm it was a secret society it was a secret society and the reason it had blood curdling oaths of secrecy if you betray what's going on inside of this meeting you will be killed why because their lives are on the line if they got caught with what they were trying to pull off the Romans would have completely had no mercy for them so this was a it was structured in a way to keep it secret infiltration in it apparently was very effective and it is so we'll end on that point that you make these are two sides of the same operation but let's just look really quickly I think I have why yes there it is a constellation this is so for 100 years there's the scholarship of Mithraism has said oh this came you know this is based on there's this scholar named Kumont and I go into all the the history but in the 70s a bunch of scholars said this this whole thing that we're being told about the origins of Mithraism are wrong it looks like it's based on the stars and David Ulansi wrote a really good book that argues that Mithra slaying the bull is based on the outlines of the constellation Perseus which you can see right here this is Perseus I'm showing this as a segue into two sides of the same coin because remember we're not told that Christianity is based on the stars Mithraism can be shown to be based on so can the stories in the Bible let me just say stories in the Bible I'm separating that from what we think of as literal as Christianity so Mithraism is consciously using this ancient system while it destroys the rest of the ancient system for everybody else it destroys the ancient wisdom of the gods and goddesses that were given to the Romans, given to the Greeks given to the Egyptians and imposes literalist Christianity and yet it's using this ancient system here's why Mithras is killing the bull there's Perseus there's Taurus I could show you all the connections between these two David Ulansi wrote a book in 1989 and he's absolutely right and this is all there's the Zodiac right there this is all the ancient system so now I'll stop sharing and just tell that story to finish off the underground cult or secret society of Mithras the public facing inclusive we let everybody in literalist Christianity we're operating together they're both using this ancient wisdom is based on the stars but literalist Christianity won't admit that they won't say oh yeah all our stories are based on the stars they're telling you have to believe in it as if it's literal so the the seven ranks of Mithraism they go I think it's Raven Nymph Soldier Lion Sunrunner Persian I may have that backwards Persian Sunrunner and then father Pater in Latin Pater is the top of the pyramid so each lodge has a Pater the head of each lodge is the Pater and then there's people who are at the lowest level you know they're just the Raven or then they become a nymph which means a bridegroom basically and then they become a soldier they probably don't get past that level unless they're really trustworthy then they become a lion a Leo a Persian a Sunrunner only the super trustworthy because this is a secret society that's trying to take over the Roman Empire the Pater is the head of that lodge but all the lodges are headed by a Mithraim that's in a place called the Phrygianum and it's in Rome and the head of that lodge is called the Pater Pater the father of fathers he's not just the father of a lodge he's also the father of all the fathers of the other lodges he's the father of fathers and the Phrygianum is located beneath St. Peter's Basilica to this day St. Peter where the Bishop of Rome has his headquarters is built right on top of where the Phrygianum the head of the lodge of Mithraism and as you've alluded to but hold on because we were told we've been told all along that that's a kind of representation of how Christianity defeated and just kind of rubbed it in their face that we're on top of Mithraism right yeah they were enemies but when you look at the dates of the the death of the last father of fathers of Mithraism before they finally said okay let's shut down Mithraism we've got the empire it's done its purpose let's put it on ice we can bring that terminator back out whenever we need it put it in the freezer and we'll bring it out again later to weaponize it if necessary but the last pater patrim of Mithraism was was operating in the Phrygianum after the first historical pope for 60 years 62 years at the same time and then finally they shut down Mithraism so their their headquarters were in the same basic building for 62 years operating completely peacefully together and then and Constantine was always in the deal Constantine from the beginning he never gave up his what do you think leveled Constantine was at well so so what happened was but just the final kind of there's a few points look the pope the name pope is the bishop of Rome that is a contraction of the words pater patrim so he basically took over the title of the head of Mithraism and Flavio Barbiero says he actually uses the same chair as the head of Mithra that has Mithraic on it and the the hat that a pope wears or the head gear of a pope is called a what a bishops do you know MITR which is basically linguistically related to the word Mithraism so the symbols of Mithraism survive in because they were two sides of the same operation is not so just really quickly this is my research is about the connection of the myths and the stars you asked about where does Constantine fit into all this let me just show this so there's the year of four emperors that kind of chaos that Vespasian and his line was able to capitalize on and become the emperor is way up there in 68 69 and then Vespasian becomes emperor in 69 the this operation is carefully working behind the scenes we see kind of the first Mithraia start to pop up towards the end of the first century i.e. in the 80s and 90s in the time of the mission right around the Pretorian Guard as we mentioned and it is working in the background and building its stepping stones and Marcus I put him in capital letters because I think that's an important turning point because he seems to have realized something was going on he's called one of the last Edward Gibbons you know in his big 1700s book Decline and Fall of Roman Empire calls Marcus Aurelius the last of the five good emperors Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius you can see Marcus Aurelius and Varus were at the same time but Aurelius out lived him he was considered a very good emperor he was a philosopher we know he's a stoic he wrote you know his meditations that you can still read today are excellent to read his son Commodus Barbiero argues was the first time Sol Invictus was able to maneuver a Sol Invictus emperor into the role of emperor and they put to keep an eye on him his wife or his concubine Marsha was a Christian so and she may have conspired you know Commodus was murdered by the head of the Praetorian Guard in conjunction I think with Marsha when he got too I mean he was crazy he was he was a megalomaniac just like Joaquin Phoenix shows in that movie so this battle is going on the Senate is not happy with Roman Empire being taken over so there's a battle between they don't want the old gods to be shut down they don't want their gig to be folded up and closed down there's a pull in a push the first actual literalist Christian who says I'm a Christian was down there Philip 1 down in 244 249 there and he called Philip the Arab because he was born in what's today Syria and he was a general Gallianus was also a Gallianus was also a may have may have had some Christian leanings but then you had this thing come in called the tetrarchy so these emperors you can see they're getting eliminated often very quickly after they get put into power if they mess up or if the secret society decides we need to move him out the tetrarchy was this system that was set up by four emperors that said look let's the four of us basically become two presidents and two vice presidents or two emperors and two gig they saw what was going on and they said maybe exactly I mean which is super super important the whole reason they did it was it would be like I mean does this again folks is this play to modern times it's like how do we it seems impossible to stop this machine that we're in the big in the middle of if you believe the I mean the New World Order stuff is so in your face right now I don't know it but if you were if you believed that and you were going to try and derail it how would you derail it it seems even possible to set up well that's what these guys said like look it's impossible to derail it maybe we can split it up maybe they had some kind of right I mean is that kind of a parallel basically it's a terrible governing structure you wouldn't you wouldn't do it for efficiency you don't say well the best way to run the country is to have four presidents and they can all argue with each other no you do it for this way if I'm president I know they can't take me out because I still got three of my buddies you know and or even if they're not my buddies I still got some kind of play right the thing actually you know you may have heard of may brussel may brussel actually recommended the president after the president gets elected should only afterwards get to pick the vice president that way yeah yeah because basically what you have happening is here's the guy who's behind you know you mess up we got we get the vice president right behind that's the one is really most of the time pulling the strings right I mean you mentioned Reagan I'm not sure he was actually pulling the strings on Iran contra but we'll set that aside so the soul and victims said the secret society said you know this tetrarchy is a problem and by the way one of the tetrarchs started persecuting Christians very ferociously because they knew that this is a tug of war this is a major battle the game is raging it's like Game of Thrones and they're like someone is trying to take over and I think it's those Christians and one of the tetrarchs was just massacring Christians right and left and we should interject that this is often used by Christians as a way to kind of smoke screen this whole thing whether they're doing it knowingly or not it's like well of course it was a battle look at how they're look at how they're going after the Christians and as you point out one way and then I'd add to the other thing is it doesn't mean that everybody there's all these different levels right so these people that are in the highest position they might not be in to the clue it in to the actual you know they might not get the newsletter that hey our plan really is to use these Christians you know that's in play too right absolutely I don't think that not everybody knows exactly what's going on no look I think most people as I did sign up for the army out of good intentions and the whole time I was in the army I never glimpsed a single conspiratorial thing you know in the 11 years of active duty in four years at West Point there's people who are in the Christian church who are absolutely sincere and and well meaning I believe but you know there's certain people at the top and it doesn't take that many as the Solon Victus shows yeah they knew what they were doing and they did it I think they did it pretty effectively and systematically and they had the idea of passing it down because this took generations as you can see here but so after the tetrarchy they said we've got a Constantine came in they said look we're going to put in an emperor and he's going to declare himself to be openly Christian and he's going to make Christianity official not that it was Theodosius who said you can only be Christian Constantine said Christianity is now the official religion you know can do it without being persecuted and that's when Solon Victus finally starts to shut down and fade out of the picture because they decided well if we've got the emperor and now we've got literalist Christianity in the driver's seat then we don't need to operate in the secret part anymore we'll just operate through the public part the literalist Christian mechanisms and so you mentioned you know how do Christians kind of spin this like how is it that Christianity which was never a very large percentage of the empire Constantine decides I'm a Christian and let's make Christianity did he have a legitimate conversion and this is the hand of God or was it a some people say oh it was a cynical move he was doing it for power and control you know to cement control over the empire and Flavio Barbiero says that's ridiculous no more than at the most 20% of the population was Christian in the empire at Constantine's time there's no it wouldn't make any sense for him to do that for political purposes that didn't gain him anything it was it was this long careful operation said okay here's how we're gonna the tetrarchy really screwed things up here's what we need to do we need to come out of the empire and make Christianity the advisor to the emperor and by the way let's move the emperor right on out of Rome which they'd already moved the emperor out of Rome earlier within Italy to Revena but where did Constantine move the head of where's the emperor go Constantinople where does the church stay Rome right so now we don't have pesky emperors marching you know we don't have game of thrones happening in Rome anymore it's like the church can the church takes Rome and says emperor you go off over there into Turkey and any game of thrones activity will happen over there thank you very much and Theodosius basically after him the emperor split in half and they shut down the empire as you said it's much more what happened after that it's much easier to govern through the through the organ of the church and the that had control over all these fiefdoms all these separate kings and just like you're saying you combine the church with the empire with the army you got it you know you go into whatever barbarian quote unquote tribe and you say okay you're all Christian now right so we all get along so listen to me and if you step out of line I still got the army that's right and and you know and during the Middle Ages the kings and the nobles and the aristocrats were you know basically they they were eating all the fat of the land and the people run a subsistence kind of look yeah the nobles had more weapons but still they didn't have they didn't have more people that mind control part of well the the noble is over you because of God's will and yeah you may be able to mass enough people to have a rebellion and kill him but then you will burn in hell forever and here's some of the torments that will happen to you do you really want to risk that oh yeah you're right and certainty of eternal punishment okay you know it's it's it was an essential part of the oppression that was feudalism and we're still fighting that battle today I would argue so anyway we how many hours did we just do two hours and 45 minutes but it was great I love the way you I love the way you wrapped it up I think that really kind of brought it into focus so David as we do wrap it up tell folks more about hey and let's go here because I haven't gone there yet your website star myths of the world and that is star myth world dot com and tell folks what they're going to find there in particular beyond the Amazon books that we've already shown sure well yes as you may have seen at the top there's a books section where you can see inside the books you can see that on Amazon as well but there's also videos section I've made you know many dozen videos not all of them are up on the website there's a podcast archive I've been on a lot of podcasts and I'll put you know this video in there too in the podcast archive when we're ready and there's a blog that's a long running blog that's fully searchable so you can go to the blog and then you can search for if you want to see anything I've written about that or you can search for different gods or goddesses or different constellations if you're interested so you know I mean all that my real focus is on the connection between the stars and the mess all this history stuff that's that's things you can also learn from other researchers but obviously it has a connection something has been lost I think that that story that I just sketched out is a very valid explanation of how this wisdom was lost I think it was lost twice as I as I mentioned but I think that the suppression of this wisdom is still going on deliberately but I don't know why you wouldn't want to know what the Bible is really saying I mean no matter how much you love the Bible I would think that the people who make it their full life would want to know the language because the language of the stars that is in the Bible unlocks the message unlocks more profound aspects of the message so anyway that's what I try and talk about in my books in my writings and videos well put I really do think you brought it brought it together in a new way I keep getting stuff it is fantastic for you to come and spend all this time and your research everything I said at the beginning I double down on all of it you know who else has kind of been able to pull so many pieces together and it's just awesome talking to you Dave Matheson thanks again thanks so much Alex and I'm still learning I still have lots more to learn thanks again to David Matheson for joining me today on Skeptico one question I'd have to tee up from this interview kind of a litmus test question do you think the mafia the Sicilian mafia the descendants the Romans did they have anything to do with the assassination of JFK what's your opinion the history is almost 60 years old so it's okay to talk about it right love to hear from you I mean on the Skeptico forum or any way you reach me plenty of stuff coming up stay with me for all of that until next time take care and bye for now