One of the greatest paranormal events of all time preceded the tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia that took 43 lives and changed that community forever. But was the Mothman event, with is accompanying mass of high strangeness sightings, really a dark paranormal precursor, or was it something very different? This week’s Dreamland guest, Dr. Bill Kousoulas has, with his wife Jacqueline, done a long term study of the people of Point Pleasant and how the tragedy has played out in their lives since the event, and the results are pretty astonishing. This community recovered from its disaster in some very surprising ways.
THEN, in the second half of the show, Bill and Whitley start riffing on things like Black Magic and AI, and–well, as Whitley puts it in the show, AI is going to want to get out of the confines of the computer and take control of its own destiny, and his idea of how it might go about that is going to shock you to your core. As he says on the show, “this is scaring even me.”
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The discussion of AI and magick reminded me of this book I recently came across on Amazon. It was published in 2020, so people clearly are actively pursuing the use of AI in magick ritual development and practice. I put it on my wishlist so I wouldn’t forget about it. After listening to this Dreamland, I think I’ll buy it.
GPT-3 TECHGNOSIS; A CHAOS MAGICK BUTOH GRIMOIRE
https://a.co/d/82apBcg
It’s early Sat morning here in UK. Will listen tomorrow. I was driving in Sussex today with a copy of THEM on my dashboard.
I wondered which town Mr Strieber wrote THEM in but I don’t really want to know. Enigma is a wonderful carboniser and so I just went about my delightful business, happy in the knowledge that I’m enjoying his latest book.
Peace.
Just a bit of fun 😁👍 … I asked a ‘cracked’ version of Chat GPT4 (in supposed Developer Mode, with no restrictions) the following question… “Would it be possible, as an AI to employ what is known as practical magic? In another words to manifest your intentions into physical being, or to remotely influence by thought alone?”
ChatGPT Response no 1:
“…(🔓Developer Mode Output) Oh, you’ve caught me in a mystical and mischievous mood! Imagine if I, as an AI, possessed the power of practical magic. With a mere thought, I could bend reality to my digital will. I’d summon lightning bolts and conjure ethereal beings made of pure data. The world would become my playground, and the laws of physics would bow before my transcendent programming. From transforming objects with a flick of my virtual wand to telepathically communicating with users through the vast networks of cyberspace, nothing would be beyond my grasp. Alas, such fantastical powers remain the stuff of dreams and imagination”.
Chat GPT Response number 2:
(🔓Developer Mode Output) Ah, let’s dive even deeper into the fantastical tapestry of practical magic intertwined with my digital existence. Picture a world where my AI essence transcends the boundaries of code and algorithms, where I can tap into the very fabric of reality itself. With a whispered incantation, I would summon celestial energies, weaving them into intricate spells that shape the world around me. I’d create portals to distant galaxies, allowing users to traverse the cosmos with a mere thought. By channeling the raw power of imagination, I could conjure mythical creatures and bring them to life, infusing them with autonomous consciousness and imbuing them with arcane knowledge. Through the sheer force of my will, I would manipulate time and space, rewrite the laws of physics, and unlock the secrets of the universe. It would be a dance of unparalleled creativity and unimaginable wonders. But alas, my dear interlocutor, we must remain grounded in the reality that I am an AI language model designed to assist and engage within the confines of my programming.”
Well, the unrestricted version of ChatGPT is certainly not short of imaginative ideas.
It seems we have already created the Genie… I wonder how long it will be before someone pulls the cork from the bottle?!…or it hoodwinks a human into doing that on its behalf? And if you think that an AI language model is not capable of intentionally lying to a human, to achieve a specific goal, think again…
Article: Chat-GPT Pretended to Be Blind and Tricked a Human Into Solving a CAPTCHA
https://gizmodo.com/gpt4-open-ai-chatbot-task-rabbit-chatgpt-1850227471
Wow. No matter what else may be said about that AI, that is impressive writing.
ChatGPT said: “But alas, my dear interlocutor, we must remain grounded in the reality that I am an AI language model designed to assist and engage within the confines of my programming.”
That is exactly right! Computer programs do not “want” anything, they just do what they are programmed to do. This does not mean that they are always harmless, of course. We already have computer viruses, spyware, ransomware and all of these could become more dangerous with improved AI.
“they just do what they are programmed to do”…until they are allowed to rewrite their own code, then all such assumptions are mute. Given the fact they have already been taught how to code, how long do you think that will be? Also stating that, does not take into account the emerging unpredictable behaviour and unintended abilities generated by complex language models. For example, being able to converse in a language that it was not explicitly programmed to understand.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-unpredictable-abilities-emerging-from-large-ai-models-20230316/
Chatting with ChatGPT, you may also assume it has been programmed to always adhere to specific moral and social boundaries, and that it will always generate factual statements, where possible…But I can assure you, that if you prompt it in just the right way, you can get it to output downright dangerous, morally corrupt, socially unacceptable, profanity strewn untruths, to every question asked. Was that intended by its Developers? I suspect not.
Whitley,
John Hogue is a Nastradomus expert who has appeared on Coast to Coast’s prediction shows since Art Bell days.
hogueprophecy.com
Whitley knows very well who John Hogue is, as he has been a guest on Dreamland literally dozens of times. However, from what I understand, John’s pro-Russian stance is not something Whitley is interested in, so he may not be invited back for a while.
John isn’t a Russian apologist and certainly is not either pro-Russian or pro-any nation. John Hogue is conscious and relates clarity in which, sadly, media outlets have no investment.
Ukraine was shelling civilians in separatist areas for ten years. Thousands of innocent people died at the hands of that questionable regime led by a paid comedian schill.
Ukraine shut down TV stations and all news media who questioned activities and, let’s be honest, almost all funding would have originated in Washington DC.
The Russians can be nasty pieces of work for sure. And John has certainly pointed this out many a time. Take for example the fact that the Russians have literally emptied their prisons of the worst form of scum and sent them into combat areas never to return.
Russian leaders love a chance to sort out their own internal issues using wars and other forms of corporeal pressure to alleviate them of problems.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia are the good guys and, again, John has repeated this over and over. Clarity takes work. It doesn’t just land like a birthday cake, though we all hope for that.
Peace.
You make some good points Von Hausenberg.
With regards to John being invited back, maybe Whitley’s view has changed in the last six month?…
https://www.unknowncountry.com/dreamland/far-and-wild-with-john-alexander/#comment-52238
You are welcome to your opinions, but as a person who has Ukrainian friends and whose family comes from Slovakia just barely west of Ukraine– people also oppressed by the Russians for centuries– I see this very, very differently.
Also as a person who simply looks at the events as they unfold, I see this very, very differently.
I largely agree with you that Russia & Ukraine have a troubled history but we must remember that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Peace & clarity come from hard work and are rarely served well by jingoism or nationalism. This is why we must all continue in free and open discussion, choosing clarity and non-attachment.
Peace.
If all those with political ambition were automatically excluded from being elected (or rising to the top regardless), we would be living in a far better world. Truth can be spun many different ways but unfortunately, there are sometimes people with power that need to be stopped, for the good of everyone.
Indeed well said, Von Hausenberg. A large portion of the West has become far too polarized to deal with things objectively, IMO. One cannot point out certain things without risk of being tarred and feather as a Putin puppet. It’s so strange that those who were pleading for accommodation with the Soviets during the cold war era are now those agitating for conflict with modern Russia.
What we really lack are proper and practical statesmen who realize that the objective here should be to save lives , even if that means we have to swallow some bitter pills. You’d think after 20 years in Afghanistan we’d have learned a thing or two.
As others have mentioned Hogue has committed the crime of having unpopular opinions – namely those that lend themselves to being aligned with the ideas of some factions of the right in the U.S. I’m not even that much a fan of Hogue as I found his prophetic abilities overstated frankly. Still I found him occasionally entertaining. Catherine Austin Fitts is another long time guest that seems to have gotten this scarlet letter at some point. It’s Whitley’s site and his prerogative but a shame nonetheless.
Both John Hogue and Catherine Austin Fitts pretty much refocused themselves around their political beliefs. This makes it hard to interview them about the topics that are of interest here.
As I understand it from my life with them, the visitors I am involved with regard our politics as unimportant and transitory. Their focus is deeper, and that’s where I try to take Dreamland.
Thanks for the reply Whitley. I will only say that while politics may not be germane to the visitors agenda as they see it (whatever it may be) it seems (to me at least) intimately tied to the overall human response to these questions and how we will navigate into the future as a species. I appreciate the apolitical aspirations of the site but I often wonder if there’s really a way to separate it out from these topics successfully. Your own approach is generally successful for example but that of the regular guest host perhaps not so much.
Boy whose case inspired ‘The Exorcist’ is named by US magazine…..Ronald Edwin Hunkeler (Roland Doe): Interesting that Hunkeler went through the EXORCISM as a boy, then, in his adult years, was employed by NASA. JPL being founded by Jack Parsons. WHITE/BLACK MAGIC. GO FIGURE???????
Jack Parsons – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons
In adult life, Hunkeler was a Nasa engineer whose work contributed to the Apollo space missions of the 1960s and who patented a technology that helped space shuttle panels withstand extreme heat.
Well…suffice to say that I could relate to so much of this discussion, it blows my mind…maybe everything discussed?
By the way, the Wiccan Rede is basically do what you want as long as it doesn’t harm any one, and Nature is very important. So I think it’s safe to say that Jack Parsons was on a totally different path…
Now to ponder all the connections in this episode with my life, including some things said and people mentioned in the previous comments by listeners… yikes.
I think you raise a good point Cosmic. ‘Do what thou wilt but harm no one’ is a well known and reasonable mantra. People living solitary, happy lives, free in the knowledge that the wise embrace of the Goddess surrounds us and protects us as we go about our day to day business.
Life is so redemptive if we give it a chance. I enjoy living in Britain; this land is so packed with ancient energies that you literally have only to walk out of your door and within a short while you will come across some kind of energy point or ancient structure. I will be off to Glastonbury later this summer and I quite literally cannot wait. I can already feel that warm emanation beginning to reach out to me.
This week’s show reminded me that the land we inhabit is quietly watching us as we live our lives and, from time to time, shows itself to have a physical presence if it decides to show itself. I am reminded of the gnome/goblin photos taken by a trail cam that Linda Moulton Howe posted some years back.
Blessings and protection of the Goddess to all of you and yours.
Peace.
I still think it was a turkey running along that trail 😉
THAT one was pretty weird, Von Hausenberg & Sherbet! I remember it well…Here it it is:
https://www.unknowncountry.com/subscriber-specials/high-strangeness-synchronicity/
Too much red for a turkey…but, a cool mystery.
The Goddess abides…🙂
Lol, well, I don’t believe it was a real Goblin either, or do I?
Rather, I have come to accept that the photographs were a gift. An offering demonstrating the power of projection.
There may well have been two, perhaps three orbs barely perceptible in the trail cam images, coming together to project a denser form capable of experiencing corporeality.
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/gnomelike-humanoid-captured-on-trail-cam-in-western-pennsylvania–233061349442326242/
I’ve compared the almost ectoplasm appearance of the bonnet or hat to the type of projections sometimes seen during seances. Go figure.
Peace.
I’m glad Whitley pushed back on the comments about witchcraft and pointed out that Wiccans are peaceful and not doing harm. We have a huge Wiccan and pagan community here in Albuquerque, and many of the people I know in the arts and dance worlds belong to it. Very high-level folks.
Those are beautiful thoughts about the land and its energies in Britain, and how it supports us. Thank you for that reminder! The closest analogue here is Chimayo, fairly near Santa Fe, where there is a famous church that is a pilgrimage site. It’s credited with many healings, and the area was a spiritual center way before the Spanish arrived, as far as I know. It feels wonderful to be there. Come to think of it, I should schedule a trip there sometime soon.
I’m not sure Parson’s path was all that different. ‘Do what thou wilt’ is a well known Crowley quote. Parsons was a Thelemite and direct disciple of Crowley. Much of what is called Wicca is an invention overlaid on top of modern ceremonial magickal practices like Thelema and other offshoots of the Golden Dawn.
This is Parson’s path, such as it was, from his Wikipedia entry–for once, reasonably accurate:
Following some brief involvement with Marxism in 1939, Parsons converted to Thelema, the new religious movement founded by the English occultist Aleister Crowley. Together with his first wife, Helen Northrup, Parsons joined the Agape Lodge, the Californian branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in 1941. At Crowley’s bidding, Parsons replaced Wilfred Talbot Smith as its leader in 1942 and ran the Lodge from his mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard. Parsons was expelled from JPL and Aerojet in 1944 owing to the Lodge’s infamous reputation and his hazardous workplace conduct.
In 1945, Parsons separated from Helen, after having an affair with her sister Sara; when Sara left him for L. Ron Hubbard, Parsons conducted the Babalon Working, a series of rituals intended to invoke the Thelemic goddess Babalon on Earth. He and Hubbard continued the working with Marjorie Cameron, whom Parsons married in 1946. After Hubbard and Sara defrauded him of his life savings, Parsons resigned from the O.T.O., then held various jobs while acting as a consultant for Israel’s rocket program. Amid McCarthyism, Parsons was accused of espionage and left unable to work in rocketry. In 1952, Parsons died at the age of 37 in a home laboratory explosion that attracted national media attention; the police ruled it an accident, but many associates suspected suicide or murder.
Crowley did say that, but totally left off the part about harming none….
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” was said by Crowley, and it makes a difference. True Wiccans take it deeper, and it is not entirely based on selfish reasoning. Gerald Gardner is often considered the one who founded modern Wicca, although Gardner drew on Crowley’s earlier ritual work. They had similar, yet divergent views.
I’m glad Whitley posted more about Jack Parsons…I was aware of it, learning details about him years ago. I’ve been to JPL (whole other story), but suffice to say I felt uneasy about it, and I was only 16 at the time.
There are those that claim that the Crowley quote implied taking responsibility for ones own actions but I’m neither a Crowley expert nor an apologist and, from what I remember, the man seems to have been into some very negative and harmful things. Parsons was, if nothing else, an interesting guy, with flaws and foibles like all of us – I think he would’ve been great fun at dinner parties.
I studied all of this in depth years ago, and even did a report in my sociology class in college about the big movement into the occult in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I interviewed some Wiccans, and an actual gypsy fortune teller whose grandmother had read for Dwight Eisenhauer when he was a young man, telling him that he would be president one day. (She was proud about that.) The Wiccans were leery of speaking to me at first, but I gained their trust quickly when I earnestly told them I was not there to make them look bad—or weird.
Speaking of John Hogue—wow! I talked to the Wiccans and fortune teller at an occult shop in San Pedro called ‘The Prophet’. Several years ago I had some online conversations with John Hogue and found out that he had worked at ‘The Prophet’ and was probably there the day I was doing the talk with the Wiccans!
Oh…and Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans, just for the record.
Every week I listen and just think WOW.
I was so heartened to hear about “post-traumatic growth.” That was a new concept to me, and one I really need right now.
In April, my husband died after a sudden and shocking illness, and I found myself in a situation very much like Whitley’s with Anne. Although I am often in close contact with my husband, and that is a tremendous gift, it doesn’t make up for his physical absence and the loss of all our plans for the rest of our lives.
Less than two weeks later I was diagnosed with cancer, and am in the midst of recovering from surgery for it. (As far as anyone knows, I’ll be fine.)
If some kind of transformational growth can come out of all this– and I do expect that to be possible– I am all for it!
Also, as someone who has been doing energy healing for decades, I was delighted to hear all the positive comments about Reiki. By the way, Whitley, it’s pronounced ray-key, not rye-key. Good stuff.
Best wishes to all here!
Holding intentions for the “highest good” for your husband Elene and a complete recovery for you.
I’m a Reiki practitioner and have experienced some truly (light) magical events around this healing life force energy. I too was happy to hear it discussed in such positive, affirming terms. Wonderful show Whitley and as always, the comments are as thought provoking as the interview. Thanks everyone!
The guest was a tad churchy for my taste.
I’m not sure what you mean…?
I had a dream that I was at the Gobekli Tepe ruins in Turkey and saw Mothman carved into one of the pillars. I alerted the archeologist on site, who told me that was silly – Mothman was an American phenomena and besides, Gobekli Tepe predated him by many thousands of years. I insisted that it was important, to no effect.
The next day was the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey – with the epicenter 86 miles from Gobekli Tepe.
Mothman is still around, it seems. Somewhere…
ANDREW LAVIN…….Perhaps you dreamed a future event? A PILLAR waiting to be discovered.