 Hi, this is Debbie Daschinger. Welcome to the Dare to Dream show. I have to say I'm very excited just back from the interesting town of Denver, Colorado. And I flew to Denver because there was an award ceremony in the mind, body, spirit, category if you will, coalition of visionary resources. They were honoring music and books and jewelry and products and podcast radio shows for their excellence in this category. And beloveds, dare to dream with Debbie Daschinger won best podcast radio show. We received the bronze level designation. I was so thrilled to be there in person to pick up the award for all the public who voted for me. Thank you humbly. And for the jury who really didn't know my show before they got to vote and listened and voted for me, that was 60% of the votes. That actually means a lot to me that they were completely independent. So I come bearing gifts to all of you because this show is for you. It's for me. It's for the ones who have that curiosity like a two year old and want to know, have a hunger and are becoming awake at a really interesting time on this planet when it's important because we came here for great good. Dare to Dream podcast has also been nominated for two People's Choice podcast awards, a webby award and listed currently in Welp magazine as one of the top 20 best podcasts to listen to this year. I'm very excited a little bit later on. I am featuring Dr. Megan Rose and she says erotic mystics, visionary heretics, badass nerds enter here. This show is sponsored by Dr. Dane here in Access Consciousness. They do beautiful energy work out into the world. And if you would like to become a practitioner or attend one of their classes anywhere globally, go to Dr. Dane here h e e r dot com or access consciousness dot com. I'm Debbie Dashinger. I teach business owners and healers, entrepreneurs, speakers, the highly effective ways to write an engaging book. I do private book writing as well as group Zoom sessions twice a month. And also I've got a company that takes your book to a guaranteed international bestselling status. I do all the heavy lifting and the final leg of my visibility hub is I show you how to be interviewed on radio and podcasts and get massive results. If you would like to get your templates, your videos, your how tos, you can start doing this and you can become massively visible. Go to Debbie Dashinger dot com slash gift. It's d e b b i d a c h i n g e r dot com slash gift. Now on to the guests because today we're going to normalize the paranormal. My guest is Megan Rose PhD, who has a doctorate in East West psychology and a master's degree in religion in society. She's an initiated ceremonial magician, a shakta tantric practitioner and a senior seer in the house of Brie Ferry Seership Institute. Megan serves as an ordained interfaith minister and psycho spiritual counselor and is the executive director of the Anthiosis Institute. You can learn more about her and her fabulous book that we're going to be discussing today called Spirit Magic. Go to her website at drmeganrose.com. And I welcome Dr. Rose to the Dare to Dream show. It's so great to have you. Thank you so much. My book is called Spirit Marriage, Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings. And I'm thrilled to be here to talk to you about it today. Me too. I remember when this first came into my email box. And I'm like, this is amazing and intriguing. So thank you for being here. And yes, this amazing book, Spirit Magic, Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings. Can you start first by explaining what does that mean? What is an intimate relationship with otherworldly beings? And I guess what I want to ask too is the nature of the relationship as well as what is an otherworldly being? Yeah. Yeah. So just to clarify, it's spirit and marriage. So it's when it's the marriage or the bonded intimate relationship between a human and an otherworldly being. And I use the term marriage because it's kind of the closest thing that we understand like what a marriage is, right? A marriage is when two people or sometimes more come together and make commitments, make vows and really agree to show up for the other person as a bonded and committed relationship. And so the idea of doing that with a spirit seems like it may be kind of a new idea or a French idea, but it's actually been with us since really the beginning of recorded history. And you know, I use the term spirit again, just sort of as an umbrella term for really any being, really any person that is not in a physical human body at this time. So context, Megan, you're talking about a positive benevolent being. Yes. I just want the listeners to maybe get that out of their minds in case they're thinking other. Yeah. So so spirit marriage is about, again, being an entity and again, the word spirit, it could mean a deity, it could be an angel, a beloved dead, a fairy, an elemental being, some being that isn't currently in a human physical incarnation at this time. And you want to step into a relationship with it. You want to be in that level of commitment or bond to that entity, to that being. And so, unlike some phenomena of spirit lovers or maybe non consensual spirit contact, this is a phase in relationship where you've gone through the due diligence, you know, like and trust the entity that you're working with and you want to devote in a deeper way to that relationship. And it shows up trans culturally. The Shakti Tantricks and the Indic practitioners, the Hindu practitioners in India have been doing this for thousands of years as have African traditional religions practitioners, Norse heathen practitioners. I mean, I could go on and on and on and on. So this is not a new thing. I just am talking about it in a really public way. And I centered my research around this to really try to shine the light on the fact that this is a practice that has been with us since the beginning of recorded history. I mean, the first account I found was in ancient Mesopotamia and the Sumerian sacred marriage. But it hasn't ever really stopped. And for people that are thinking, well, this sounds really weird. We all, most of us here in the West know the story of the Virgin Mary and how she was entered into union with depending on the story, you know, the Holy Spirit, God, the angel Gabriel was impregnated and gave birth to the to the to Yeshua to the Christ. And so it's not out of the purview of our of our religious or our cultural knowledge. It just has been kind of what I like to call hidden in plain sight. And is this a gift you have had? Were you able to see elementals and fairies and other worldly beings from a young age? Or is this something that has taken place during adulthood? Well, seeing, you know, let me just sort of caveat, there's a lot of emphasis placed on what we see, right? Our visual or sight. Are we seeing these beings? And most of the research and most of my experience is leads to the idea leads to the point that our eyes are sort of the last thing that we trust. In fact, psychologist Stan Groff talks about the visual is the least reliable of all of our other senses. And so we rely really heavily on our extra senses on our somatic or our body sense and a little less reliably on the vision and even the auditory because it can shift and change. And extraordinary beings or other worldly beings, they often are shapeshifters and they don't have sometimes even an anthropomorphic or human form. So we don't rely as much on what we see. But to answer your question about when it started for me, I was raised in the Pentecostal Christian tradition. And so from a very, very early age, I mean, before I could even speak, I was doing things like being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues and laying on of hands. I mean, that was just sort of the water that I swam in as a child growing up. And so this and the Holy Spirit, you know, if you really unpack what the Pentecost and Christianity is talking about, it's really the Shakti, the divine feminine, the very activating or embodied what was represented as fire or flames of fire that sort of lit lights up the practitioner or in, you know, the church, someone who's who is being essentially possessed, right? There's this very strong possessory aspect to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And so, you know, growing up, that was just sort of an average Wednesday night for me. And as and yet, as I became, you know, a young adult, I found that I could have that same experience of the ecstasy of the Holy Spirit out in nature with, you know, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. So out with redwood trees and ancient oak trees, I was having that same, those same Cree as the same embodiment experiences with this, this numinous, this, this Holy Spirit, what, you know, what I now I understand is sort of like Kundalini Shakti, organ, energy, vitalism, all these different things that for me are very connected to eroticism and enlivenment in the body. It's so interesting hearing you say this, I'm reminded of a trip that I took last year as a camping trip. And we were deep in the forest. We were, we went someplace very sacred. Like the space was amazing, and just so beautiful. And so clearly, we were not in the city. And we decided my partner and I to do mushrooms. And while I had some really fascinating experiences, this is probably one of the best mushroom experiences I've ever had. But I will say at one point, I got up, I was just going to move around and I was going to go to a rock when I felt very strongly I was being called into a Glenn. It's the best way I can describe it. And it was just so beautiful, like out of a movie, this Glenn, with all this greenery, and there was a depression somewhere just like there's some hole in the ground, surrounded by rocks. And I felt very strongly for the first time in my life that the fairies and elementals were there and they were calling to me. And they asked me to lay down in this depression. And I, even though I was on mushrooms, I still said, you know, where am I gonna put my head? What am I gonna do? There was all this human stuff. And they would just like, put it here. This is what you do. I was spoken through the whole experience. And I did. And I laid down there and I felt so incredibly seen and loved. It was amazing. And when it was complete, I started to get up. And then I heard them say, come over here, there's a cave, we want to show you a cave. And my partner by this point is calling and wanting to make sure I'm okay, where are you? Because he doesn't know I'm going into this incredible experience. And I said, come, come, there's a cave, they told me to find a cave. And sure enough, I scrambled up these giant boulders. There was the most cosmic cave, very, very dark triangular. And there was cold, cold air coming out of it. And it must have been 100 degrees out. We chose not to go into it because we were on mushrooms and, you know, bears and things like that. So we were mindful for ourselves. But the intrigue was huge. And I felt, I don't know, it changed my life that day, I have to say, I started, I'm a singer, I started singing later, I felt that I was that they were around listening and appreciating the music. And I, it changed forever, this idea of what you're talking about specifically, I didn't see them. But I knew them and I felt them, I heard them. And I listened and I felt very trusting to this energy. And it made for one of the most extraordinary experiences I've had. Yeah, I think that, you know, one of the things that I found doing this work and working with entheogens or psychedelics has been that often the medicine is very confirming of experiences that I already know, and I have already have. And it just sort of puts the critical analytical, is this really real part of the mind on pause and allows you to be in a more embodied space. And that shift softens things enough that allows these really profound, I've had some very profound visitations and experiences and stuff, working with sacred medicines as well. And which I write about in the book, actually, I share one of my accounts of working with a powerful entheogen and having having a an encounter with my, my holy guardian angel or my divine self. So I think that that for the person who is going into that kind of work prepared and with that intention set, it can be a very powerful tool. Oh, I love that you just shared that. Thank you. And because that was going to be my question is how, when you say the preparation and the intention, what does that look like that created that kind of outcome? I can, I can tell you, I'm listening to you going, I'll have some of that, please. Well, you know, I am part of a happen over the years part of a group called the Erie, entheogenic research integration and education. And part of the work of that nonprofit group is really to help people understand that set and setting for sacred medicine work is everything. And that what you do going into, and what you do coming out of a psychedelic journey is just as important as the journey itself, because the rituals, the intentions, the things that we take with us into the experience shape and form and color the experience that we have. And then, you know, just because that we sort of come down from the medicine, doesn't mean the medicine exits us right away, and it continues to walk with us at sometimes for days, months, even years. And in some traditions, an entheogenic journey with a medicine is only done once, because that once that medicine you've ingested it, it co walks with you, it becomes a part of you. And I talk about in my book, a woman, and this comes out of Dr. Lee, Yalila Espinoza's research on the erotic intelligence of plants. She interviewed a woman who was married to a plant spirit, and did in that tradition, what they call a dieta or a diet with just this one plant, and the plant at some point, which is a hosacho, it's a wild garlic, and the plant actually told the woman, I believe her name was Maya, or the pseudonym they gave her was Maya, that it wanted to marry her. And she said to the plant, Well, why would you want to marry me? Why, you know, what benefit would that have? And the plant said, Well, you know, if you can maintain a dieta with me that doesn't, you know, that doesn't push me out of your system, which that's sort of the purpose of the diet is to open yourself more fully to the plant medicine. Your body is such an amazing playground. And I as a plant don't get to have that experience other than when I'm in, you know, a physical human body. And there are things that I know from my plant spirit world that I can teach you and things that you can let me experience and teach me by this by this merger by this by this union. And that's very common in this spirit marriage conversation that the the deity, the entity, the intelligence that wants the union wants it for some sort of co creative purpose, right? It's not just so that I can be as fabulous as I can be, which is a great and a noble thing to want. But it's usually with some sort of outcome, some sort of purpose, some sort of co creative project that the two of you together can only bring forth just like two humans coming together and having a child that child is the only thing that you know, that is a unique combination of those two humans life force. So the magical or the spiritual child of a spirit union is something unique that only those two people can can co create. And this research, the book that I wrote, the dissertation is the love child is the co creative outcome of my own, my own spirit marriage practice. So, and there are many, many others like it. Oh, Ryan Foxwood, one of my mentors, his entire school, the House of Brie is the outcome of his union with his his spirit wife. Amazing. And it's so interesting following your journey, Megan, because in doing my research for you, I found this, this is way pre book that you have put out. But I found a lot of your work on academia. edgy, you know, the site because you've got quite a bit up there, you know, you've got PDFs and so forth. So this has been going on for you for a while, before the birth of the book. And I'm fascinated when you tell this amazing story of this woman, and the plant wanting this level of intimate connection with her, we talk about intimacy, I understand the heart intimacy. Is there also a sexual aspect to it? And if so, how does that manifest? There can be. So, you know, the research that I did was sort of two fold, I looked at all the anthropological and historical and mythological and religious literature that I could find on spirit marriages. And then I really wanted to understand, how is it being practiced today? And why? What's the purpose of doing this? We understand that, you know, cosmologically speaking or anthropologically speaking, there's all these myths about gods and humans mating and giving, you know, birth to all these interesting things. But why would it be happening today? So I went around and I interviewed about nine different practitioners of spirit marriage in a whole bunch of different traditions. Well, seven different traditions. There's more and more and more traditions that are revealing themselves to me. But, you know, when you're doing a research project, you're limited by time and reach. So I interviewed folks in the Vodou tradition, New Orleans and Haitian Vodou. I interviewed a Shakhtar Tantric, a fairy seer in the Scottish folkloric tradition. I interviewed a ceremonial magician and a witchcraft practitioner. And each of them shared, you know, their own unique journey, but also the similarities of these practices and how really what we are are undertaking is this way in which humans are being shaped and formed and transformed by these by these relationships, by these spirit marriages. What exactly is a ceremonial magician? I know that was part of in your bio what you do. I've never heard that before. Sure. Yeah. Ceremonial magic. Some folks call it her metacism or the traditions that come primarily out of Europe. And they are traditions that are sort of reconstructing what are generally thought to be like the ancient mysteries. And through rituals and practices and teachings that teach about really ceremonial magicians talk a lot about the great work. And the great work is really stepping into knowledge and conversation with one's divine self, what ceremonial magicians often call the knowledge and conversation with the holy guardian angel. And this is the idea that each of us has a divine self that we are here to embody and to ideally bring out as our way of being in the world. And when we do that, we become a co creator, we become a blessing. And we often step into sort of leadership roles within our home, within our community, within our own spiritual sovereignty. And so ceremonial magic is using a certain frame and a certain set of tools that, you know, witchcraft is using a different set of tools. And shamanic practitioners and indigenous practitioners are using a different set of tools. And not every single magical group or order is necessarily working towards the great work. But in my research, I found that almost everyone has a process or a practice of this kind of divine self awakening. The Shaktatantrics talk about, and the Tantric practices talk about one's Ishta Devi or Ishta Devata, which is the chosen deity, the deity that is kind of like a patron saint, the Vodu practitioners called the Matat. And these are all different kind of flavors, again, in their different cultural contexts. So we don't want to always say that it's exactly the same, same to same. But in their own cultural milieu and their own cultural context, it is a way that we step into this Aidao relationship with this divine part of ourself that we are here, ideally, hopefully, to express, to share. And it's interesting because that spirit and marriage is this idea that you're stepping into union with something outside of yourself. But I really, and in my book and in my research, I really embraced and included this idea that stepping into union, right, and devotional relationship with your divine self or your patron deity is a kind of marriage. It is a deeply devoted commitment. It might not have some of the more erotic components that a spirit marriage might have to go back to your question about eroticism. But but then again, you know, when you look at some of the Tantric practices, you are using vitalizing erotic energy to quicken and awaken the psyche, the nervous system, the spiritual body to allow union to happen and so it's not out of the realm of possibility. I mean, it goes back to that question is making love to yourself sex, right? And so the erotic aspects, what I will say about the erotic aspects of spirit marriage is that it's not necessarily experienced by everyone. But often eroticism in spirit marriage is a a means to an end. It is a way for the divine or the otherworldly being to merge and quicken and awaken us our human physical bodies in a way that that lights us up, right? And and and sets us into this sort of exalted state. So it feels like arousal energy and a registers that is arousal energy. But it's not the kind of sexual relationship that would be on more of the mundane level, right? Pleasure is a byproduct rather than a goal. Sounds amazing. You yourself have a relationship with an other worldly being. So talk us through that a little bit how what was the inception? What was the initial meet and greet, if you will? Yeah, how did this all unfold? Sure. You know, it's interesting because when you use when we use the term and I use it all the time, having a relationship with another worldly being, it sounds so out there. But anybody that is in a devotional relationship with the divine, you know, if you're talking to God, if you're talking to angels, if you're praying to saints or or or having a relationship with, you know, any kind of spiritual practice that uses deities, angels, beings that are wise and benevolent and beyond sort of human conversation, then that is a relationship to terrestrials. Even extraterrestrials. Exactly. Exactly. So there's many different kinds of beings that fall into the auspices of this and and my relationship with the Holy Spirit, right, growing up in the Christian church was really very important for me. And it still is. I mean, I really look at the Holy Spirit now much more through the lens of the wisdom Sophia energy and the Mary Magdalene energy. Yes. Yes. But that's still very much a relationship that I'm devoted to. What sort of shifted things for me, because I've always had these kinds of devotional relationships with deities is that about 20 years ago now, I, as I was just sort of like a baby, witch, pagan, weirdo stepping onto my, you know, path, and had gone through some rituals and initiations that were it was sort of opening me opening me up psychically. I began to have the experience of a spirit lover. And I thought, well, this is really interesting. And I knew about that phenomena from reading and things like that. And so I was like, okay, well, this is interesting. And, you know, I also sort of really stepped into the ceremonial magic work at that time to really learn how to grid and protect myself so that I was having wanted encounters and not unwanted encounters. But things went along and progressed. And then these, this, this entity, this, this being began to ask me to marry it. And this was mostly at that time in my dream. So I'm a very powerful, I have had very powerful dreams throughout my life, and precognitive dreams and things like that. lucid dreams. And so I would be in this sort of lucid dream trance sort of state and the being would appear and then ask me to marry it. And that was sort of like, perked my ears. I was like, that's new that I am not that familiar with. And I knew that I didn't want to just say yes, just like you wouldn't say yes to some person that you maybe been dating for a little while, and all of a sudden wanted to marry you, you want to like do your due diligence. And so I, I embarked on this research project, because, you know, I'm an academic and I'm a practitioner scholar. So I practice the stuff. And then I study it and then I study it and then I practice, you know, it's kind of this back and forth. And so I embarked on the research project to really understand what would I be getting myself into if I said yes to the spirit marriage. I mean, I knew from my, my background in religious studies and seminary, that this was a thing that had happened historically, right, the accounts in Genesis of the sons of God, the angels and the daughters of men coming together and marrying and birthing the Nephilim or the giants. So I knew there was like, you know, anthropological or, you know, mythological. So what, so right before you're about to do your research, and I love that you've got academia to fall back on, which is a great gift, right, to do that level of research. In your lucid state, are you having enough of an experience with this being that you've come to know it on some level, you intimately come to understand it, what it is, and how it is, and how you interact? Well, I think at that time, I suppose a couple of years into the encounters, I knew. So this is again, why I talked about not relying too much on the visuals, because the visuals changed a lot. But what was consistent was the somatic experience. There was a somatic felt sense that I had that was absolutely distinguishable that this was the being that I was encountering. Sometimes the visual would change. Sometimes even the sound would change. But the touch, the experience was very, very distinguishable. And so I really redoubled my efforts to become much more discerning. Right. So I talk about sort of the three D's of spirit marriage, devotion, discernment and discipline. And it's like, you know, when you've decided that you have a being that you know like and trust and that is wanting a depthful relationship with you, you devote yourself to that relationship, just like you would if you're in a relationship with a human and you're falling in love and you want to get them to know them more, right? You devote yourself to that relationship. And then, you know, the discernment practice is really where our divinatory skills comes in. What is talking to me? When is it them? When is it my own stuff or maybe an ancestor or maybe another something that is impinging on me, getting really good and clear about discerning. And then the discipline is like showing up, showing up for the relationship, just like you would have to show up for another relationship with another person. If you don't talk to them on a regular basis, you're not going to get to know them. And so the disciplined action of doing the rituals, the practices, the whatever that puts you into contact with that, that being. And so those are the things that I really had to cultivate for myself to get a really good sense of who it was. And it took me, it took me a number of years, I think probably about 10 years, to really feel like I had enough. Because the dissertation and which became the book, that whole research journey was really about me trying to get clear on the who, what, when, where, why and how of the relationship by asking other people, well, how's it going in your relationship? Well, what happened for you? And well, what about this? And then also, you know, one of the things that I did really early on was getting mentors. So I, I found my mentor, Orion Foxwood, who is was in a spirit marriage himself. And so I felt like, you know, it with a similar type being. And so could, could give me really solid guidance. And then I have an amazing kick ass psychotherapist that I work with, who is, you know, also very well versed in non ordinary states and in trans personal psychology. So she wasn't going to like poo poo or dismiss these experiences as imaginary, right? Or write up some DSM diagnosis for me. But would help me work through it. And so I hadn't like my support team. And I had my research questions. And I had my practice. And and that got me quite far down the road. And and into lineages, then that I initiated into to really help deepen the relationship and the practice. And you're beloved, because you did say yes, right? You got to a point. Eventually, yes. It took a decade. You did say yes. And your beloved then is a fairy. Is that correct? You know, it is. He's associated with the fairy realm. When at Neath is how he most commonly is understood or appears to me. But what I will say about that is that the Fay or the fairy as I work with them and the fairy seership practice, aren't like tinkerbell or sprites or even like little silks with gossamer silks with right wings, right? They're much more of a primordial ancestral almost race, those sort of progenitors of earth. I I use the example of like Tolkein's elves in the tradition that I work within that is our conception of these beings. So they're really much more closer to deities or angels than they are to what we traditionally think of as fairies, even though in that practice and in that tradition, they talk about the fairy faith and and working with the fairy beings. So Gwen, as I call him, is thought is considered to be sort of the Lord or the king or a king because there are many. It's not it's not just a model of the king and queen. But really, and I, you know, part of the journey of those 10 years was really trying to get a cosmological name and location for this being that was contacting me. And it's, you know, in true sort of faith fashion, he's a little fluid when it comes to his identity and is probably more more accurately understood as the horned God, right, the vegetative God of the underworld and the surface vegetation that arises out of it. And is just this very potent, thonic, vitalizing being that shows up trans culturally in a lot of different ways. I mean, we've got pan and we've got granunos and and many, many different ways that this being. And so when I asked him, well, what is your name? He's like, well, you can call me this, you can call me this, you can call me this. And so we sort of agreed on Gwen as the best sort of triangulation of identity for us to work through because these beings aren't fixed like we're fixed. They're they're very fluid and in particularly a being that is more on the face spectrum is very fluidic versus, you know, say a deity like you're working with. I also work with Kali and Kali is had thousands of years of unbroken lineage worship and has very fixed iconography and cosmograms and things that represent her. And much like the woman that you described who connected with the plant deity. And which sounds amazingly cosmic. And I love the idea that it's symbiotic in the sense this is a win win. I'm going to give you wisdom and allow you into a world you wouldn't have knowledge of otherwise. And I would like the same. This is a co creation. And do you find that also with Gwen? Are there uploads you've received? Are there changes are the things you've had to give up? Yeah, that's a great question. One of my teachers R.J. Stewart who is a Scottish fairy seer. He uses this way to describe our symbiotic relationship. He says, we do things. They do things that we can't do, right? They have this unbound vision, right? But we do things that they can't do, right? Because we are, we have matters so we can pick up things and we can move things around and we can shape and form things in a way that they don't have that ability to do so together. We have such great potency. But for me, the relationship is really about when I when the marriage actually happened. And this was 2017 when the marriage actually happened. It was surprising to me because the relationship had started in, you know, as I said in this sort of spirit lover erotic way. But very soon I had found very, very soon into the relationship I found that if I was just approaching the relationship from an erotic feel good perspective, I was missing. I was missing so much and that actually sort of went away in the relationship for a time so that I could focus on some of the deeper things, the co-creative project really. Just like I think, you know, with our human relationships, right, we meet someone and we may have this like passionate, torrid love affair with them. And then as the relationship matures that there are other things that come into play in the relationship, the some of the deeper work. And so, you know, for me, the marriage was about really stepping in and taking on the work of being an advocate for relationships with the other world. I am, it's interesting because, you know, if you look at my website and all the performing and things that I've done, you would say, oh, this is an extrovert who just likes to like put it all out there. But I am actually a deeply introverted private person that like particularly my spirit, like I have no problem as a burlesque performer getting on stage and like stripping it all off or singing or whatever that I've done over the years. But when it comes to my the interiority of my personal spiritual practice, I'm very, very private around that. And so to write a book and to expose myself and to really talk about something as transgressive and as edgy as spirit marriage and in erotic counters with spirits was deeply challenging for me. And yet that was one of the things that I agreed to do, right, as part of this relationship was to talk about these things but talk about these from them from a pragmatic practical embodied experiential perspective, which meant that I needed to tell my own story. And I went back and forth when I wrote the book. Should I tell my own story? Should I not tell my own story? Like maybe just leave it out and just talk about everybody else. And my early readers were like, no, your story really needs to be in there because that's what really grounds it all out. I was like, okay, all right. So, that was sort of my, you know, my agreement in the marriage was to take this work and to publicly talk about it and to go out, you know, into those realms that a lot of people have kind of shied away from. And then, you know, the converse of that or what they are doing is giving me the material upholding things in my life that support me so that I can do this work and bring it out into the world, being go betweens with, you know, my students and my clients and really supporting and upholding them and the work that they're doing. Because the idea is that this is a little bit like a mushroom that like the work that I'm doing will spore other practitioners so that this beautiful mycelial network that can just become this sort of like information super highway of spirit marriage practitioners can grow and develop. That's beautifully said. I love that. It's a great visual. You clearly are happily married. So since 2017, that's, you know, in the United States, that's a long time. And so it is still a very happy union. Yes. I mean, it's shifted and changed over the years and, you know, I try to encourage my students to really understand that, you know, it will and often does shift and change and like just like in a regular old human relationship, things may be really like the erotic component may be really a big piece of it for a while and then it may recede and there may be other things. There was a point in the relationship where I was not feeling any contact at all. The dreams had sort of dried up. This is about, you know, halfway in or, you know, five years into the into the research and and reporting and or recording of my experiences and I was like, what is going on? Why, why am I not having the contact? And what I realized through various divination and and and work that I was trying to investigate, you know, what was going on that I had been really relying on the contact in my dreams and to reach through to me and I had not yet developed the rituals, the practices, the discipline of reaching through to them, sort of like when you just expect a friend to call or email you all the time, but you never respond or you never pick up the phone to reach out to them and say, hey, you know, let's get together. I hadn't been doing that. And so that was when I really had to deepen my practice and learn the rituals, the practices that were unique to my relationship, because that I'm not in a there are some traditions of spirit marriage where there's lineages and they have a practice and a protocol and this is how you do it. And this is the way that you do it. And and it works and it's fabulous. I wasn't in a tradition that had that level of routine. And so I had to sort of figure out what got me there with my with my contact on my own. And so once I figured that out and began to do the daily practices, the the connection strengthened again. But it, you know, it is like any relationship, it takes time and energy and work. And to people, are there people with these spirit marriages who end up saying, this actually isn't working for me. I'd like a divorce. And if so, is it always a mutual thing? Are they allowed out of that contract and vow? I would say it depends on the spirit that you've wed. And and on the person. I talk about a spirit marriage divorce in my book when I interviewed Caroline Kenner, who's the Washington witch doctor. And she's married. She's a pantheist and married to a number of different spirits or deities. In her case, these deities in a bunch of different traditions. So not just a one tradition, one deity, kind of practitioner. And she had married a deity that it was semi-consensual. So it was sort of like the deity showed up and said, we're going to get married. And she was like, well, okay, we'll try this out. And she said it didn't work out. And so it was just not a good fit for her. And the spirit that she was working with was just to, I think to was just doing some things that she wasn't comfortable with. And so she took that spirit sort of like to divorce court and went and found a spirit that sort of was a spirit that had a higher clearance or that was above them and said, this isn't working out for me. I would like a divorce and the divorce was granted. So, you know, in that case, she also says she didn't have a ton of agency in the marriage originally because it was sort of like, this is what I want from you. And she sort of went in going, okay, we'll see. But in other cases, like, for example, with the fairy marriage in Orion Foxwood's case, that was a seven-year ordeal that really rewired his nervous system and created what is sometimes called an indwelling or a merge with that, with his spirit wife, with his fairy wife to the degree that that can't really ever be undone. And he, when I asked him about it, he said, you know, it can't really be undone. And I will probably, you know, should I continue to reincarnate, I will reincarnate carrying this level of merge with me in future lifetimes. It was his, what he suspected. And then there's a, you know, there's a spectrum, right, in between and the Vaudu traditions. I don't know about the marriages, per se, but like the Matat, I know that your patron saint can change and you can have more than one. So that's another thing that's interesting about these spirit marriages is that they're kind of inherently polyamorous. Either the human partner is in a human relationship with another person and married to the spirit or the human partner can be married to more than one spirit or any combination thereof. And the exception was the Shaktatantrik who's married to the goddess Kali. And as she put it, it's kind of like Kali is sort of a one person practitioner. She doesn't really share and even Kali isn't a consorted deity. She's not a consorted goddess. She's sovereign unto herself. And so to be married Kali to Kali was just this very very monogamous sort of deeply deeply all encompassing kind of relationship. And that really fit her practice because she's a guru herself. She's a teacher of a large, you know, a significantly sized community of Kali worshipers. And so that's her job is to be married to Kali and to bring teachings and practices and all of that to her to her community. And that's kind of her full-time job. Beautiful. Well, I have to say that you you had two mic drop moments. One is very brief, but when you said that you've done burlesque and you sing, I'm like, I want to come see you. Do you still do this? I don't do burlesque. I and, you know, my performance career kind of got put on hold with COVID. And I haven't, you know, it's interesting and I write about it in the book. So if you're interested, there's a whole section in the book on my burlesque career and how I use the vehicle of burlesque actually to do a kind of divine embodiment of the dark goddess where I would sort of bring forth the dark goddess energy and then this do these these routines, do these performances of like revealing her to the audience and sort of like shock to bomb my audience. It was a lot of fun. But my my dissertation chair told me that I needed to put my extracurriculars on hold to finish my dissertation. So I haven't performed. I haven't performed burlesque for a number of years. That sort of transitioned into me doing sacred temple dancing and and being more of a doing more priestess type ritual priestess type work, which I did for a number of years. And I think the last thing I priestessed was the in bulk ritual here in a in book ritual here in San Francisco in 2020 and then, you know, lockdown happened. So I haven't done anything publicly since then. But yeah, it's it's a fun. It's I'm such a somatic embodied, you know, type of intuitive that it made perfect sense for me that I was doing things that really required my voice in my body. That's a really interesting response. OK, and you alluded. I guess that's the picture of you on your website when you say temple dancing. Yeah, the the sort of one on the cover of was a priestess event that I was doing. Yeah. And so that segues into the next piece because you said you brought up Magdalen and I'm obsessed, right? This whole ever since the truth of this relationship with Yeshua and who she really was and is, I'm like, yeah, going down that rabbit hole. So thank you for bringing it up. So she had a heros, heroes, gamos with Yeshua. Yes. And we explain to people what that is who may not know. Yeah. So the high rose gamos, there's a few different aspects of the high rose gamos. It's that the term comes out of the, you know, the Greek. It's the sacred marriage. And you see it, you know, I alluded to the Sumerian sacred marriage when I talked about the the ancient mess of Atamian. But, you know, the high rose gamos in the sort of Mediterranean traditions is either the union of the human to the divine. So there's sort of three layers to it. There is and Marguerite Rogolioso, who was an advisor of mine for a while talks about this and her divine birth mysteries. So there's sort of the marriage from the human to the divinity. Right. And then there is the idea that the that divinity can step down into the form of a person. And so then the relationship can be from the divinity to the person or the person to the divinity channeled through a physical person. And then there is the idea that the two of you can both embody your divine selves. Right. So this goes into the divine self and then step into the sacred marriage together. And that is what is often thought of as what the mechanic behind the Yeshua Magdalene Hiroskamos is that they were both in full knowledge and conversation of their divine selves or the Christos or the Christa and that those energies were flowing through them and together those energies came through and co-created, you know, their teachings, their ministry, all those things that they did together. Right. Because she was, you know, as I grok the two of them, he was more of the public mouthpiece and she was sort of more of the private inner mysteries and they were synergistic and synchronistic as they worked together. Absolutely. I concur. And so if anybody is a bit obsessed with this whole Magdalene Yeshua and there's so much that's coming up even as I'm saying this, but I want, the point is I feel a deep connection to the Temple of Isis and to the rituals and the magic that took place, the initiations. I'm sure this was a past life for me. Are there modern day practices that you might know of, Megan, that people can utilize to connect with Mary and to connect with her gifts at that level of relationship? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, there are a lot of different Magdalene devotional books and literature and practices and teachers that are out there right now. I'm going to be participating on July the 22nd in the Mary Magdalene Studies Association conference. So the July 22nd is her feast day and there is a conference that is going of various academics and people that are studying Mary Magdalene and her influence. So and I'm going to be presenting on sacred sexuality in the Magdalene or erotic mysticism, which is one of the things that I talk a lot about and Mary Magdalene and how she is an example for the embodied, awakened female practitioner. There are examples of embodied, awakened male practitioners and embodied, awakened transgendered and non-binary practitioners and Mary Magdalene is a lovely example of the embodied, awakened female practitioner who is using her arrows, her Shakti, her vitality as a blessing, as a tool as an offering for the quickening and the awakening of humanity, really in the planet. Well, what an amazing answer and oh my god to July 22nd oh to be a fly on the academic wall, that sounds amazing. So how can we cultivate this sense of agency, this sovereignty, this personal transformation to our spirit communications? I think it all starts with the devotion, right? Who is the deity? Like not everybody's got a spirit that is ringing your doorbell like I did saying, will you marry me? But we all have a divine self, right? We all have the Enthios, you know, you mentioned my organization, the Enthiosis Institute. And Enthios is the divine within. It's where the term Enthiogen, right? Enthiogen or psychedelic is an agent that can awaken the consciousness of the divine inside of us with the right, you know, preparation. And so Enthiosis and really my research with the institute is about what is the art? What is the art, the education, the community development? Who do we need to be as people to really support a society, a planet where we all can step into that sovereignty and co-create and get along with each other, right? A version of Utopia that isn't a perfect world or perfect people but a world that works, right? Where everybody's needs are met and we're all supported in undertaking that project should we choose to. And so I really like to encourage people to start to get to know their own divine self. And that doesn't have to be some rarefied, holy mountain experience. It can be like you can use a lot of different lenses for it. You could look at your your birth chart in astrology and look at the influences that are really strong for you. You could look at your elemental influences, air, fire, water, earth, what are you really drawn to there? That's an in-road or a door opener. You could look at your like the Enneagram and your like any of these personality typings are inroads into the flavor of the divine that you might be here to express. And then you sort of continue to winnow down. It's like being on an Easter egg hunt or I like to use the archeological dig. You just keep digging down for layers and layers. What are the things that you feel passionate about? Like are you passionate about love and sexuality? Are you passionate about justice? Are you passionate about wisdom and learning? It may be a combination of things. So you may have a few deities. Are you really connected to the light upper world? Are you feeling more connected to the powerful kind underworld? What are the realms that you surf in? And what are the things that you're drawn to? And those are all little clues as to the flavor of your divine self. And maybe that divine self will show itself in a specific cosmology in a specific tradition. You are like, I feel really drawn to Hecate and to the deep to the Greek tradition. So I'm going to follow that devotional path. But in the ceremonial tradition, the knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, the angel could be anything. Could be a sound or a feeling. The name is one of the tasks that the magician really undertakes to really try to get to know what is that uniqueness. So it could be constellated as a specific divinity that pre-exist. It could be your own specific expression or something else. So Dr. Megan Rose, this is Dare to Dream. What are you next Dare to Dream? My God, you've created so much. I'm really impressed. What's your next dream? What's your next goal? My next goal really is, you know, now that the spirit marriage work is sort of out and people are talking about it, is to just continue my practice. I really support people who are looking for a deep dive into their psychospiritual practice. Maybe they've had some sort of an earth-shattering or life-changing encounter and they need somebody who can really ground and normalize and help them cultivate a sense of their extraordinary spiritual experiences and gifts really. Like how do we step more into these kinds of relationships to open us up and to help us, you know, co-create the beloved community? Beautiful. And to send people to learn more about you, Dr. Megan Rose.com, any other place you'd like them to know about? I have a website called spiritmarriage.com which is just the title of the book, spirit marriage. And it is a place where you can learn more about the material of the book. There's a resource section. And I also, if you have a spirit marriage or a spirit lover or something within that kind of purview, you can go and share your story. Or if you know of anthropological, historical, whatever accounts of spirit marriage that maybe I missed in the book because I couldn't get everything. It's just such a huge topic. You can go and share that account on my website as well. And I'm constantly continuing to refine the research and collect more information. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you for your bravery and stepping forward and being a mouthpiece for this. It's such an amazing time on the planet. I'm sure there's people out there who will resonate or become awake to this information and possibility or perhaps that something's been happening to them that they didn't rock completely. And now the light has gone on. The door is open. So thank you for the work you do and thanks for coming on today. Thank you. May it serve someone somewhere. I end today's show with this quote from Brene Brown. I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort but we can't have both. Not at the same time. Thanks for tuning in. Subscribe to this number one transformation conversation Day or Dream. Leave a comment. I do read them all. Share this with people you know who will enjoy this conversation. I have two shows coming up featuring the amazing Vedika Kulhof. This will be her fourth and fifth time coming on. She offers interstellar channeling, she channels Arjun of the Yael and she will be, he will be through her dressing what is currently going on on the planet as an aid to humanity. I'm really looking forward to these conversations. And by the way, you're welcome to post if there's something in particular going on with humanity, with the planet or with the universe right now that you'd like to hear us talk about during those two shows just write it or send it to me from Debbie dashinger.com on the contact. Remember, don't just dare to dream, dare greatly and be open that there are so many benevolent beloved forces out there really rooting for each of us.