Lucid Cafe

INTRO
You're listening to Lucid Cafe.

Hi there, I'm Wendy Halley. Thanks for joining me for another episode of Lucid Cafe, a podcast exploring healing consciousness and the complexities of being human. Today's episode is brought to you by my old pal, Jackie. She reached out earlier this year and suggested that I have a conversation with her friend, Taylor Ellwood, who's an author, about his magical practice.

Taylor is a mighty dedicated practitioner of magical arts and has written an impressive number of books sharing what he's learned over the years. His practice is an amalgam of different traditions, plus a good dose of experimentation. His seemingly insatiable curiosity led him to create his own systems of magic, exploring topics he's interested in, like spacetime magic, pop culture magic.

Today we talk about elemental magic and his latest book, Walking with Elemental Spirits how to Work with Elemental Spirits and get consistent results.

Please enjoy my conversation with Taylor Ellwood.

Wendy: Taylor, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Taylor: Thank you for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here and happy, uh, that we were able to work this out.

Wendy: Yeah, me too. I didn't know if it was going to happen, given our crazy schedules.

Taylor: Yeah, well, the stars didn't look like they were going to align and then suddenly they did and here we are.

Wendy: Yeah. I was wondering if maybe you worked a little magic to make my Saturday open up.

Taylor: I didn't, but I'm not going to complain that it did.

Wendy: It'd be good marketing for you if, you just sort of said, yeah, I totally did that. Well done, me. All right.

Taylor: Yeah. I'll claim responsibility for things that I know I've done, but in this case, I can't claim that responsibility.

Wendy: Okay. Integrity. That's a good thing. As I was saying before we started recording, you're quite prolific. Can you tell me a little bit about the scope of your writing?

Taylor: Sure. I've written at this point over 45 books, actually.

Wendy: What?

Taylor: Yeah, almost done with book number 46. And, I've been writing since 2002. I have written about three books on well, no, about five books on business. And then, I used to be a business coach, so did that. I've written about, 12 or 13 books on fiction, superheroes, and zombie apocalypses and stuff like that. And then, I've written a ton of books on magic in the occult. And my most recent book that just came out is called Walking, with Elemental Spirits. By the time this show airs, it'll probably been out for a few months, but it's, all about elemental magic and how to work with, the elemental spirits. That's kind of me in a nutshell. My website, for anyone who's listening, is .magicalexperiments.com.

Wendy: Great! All right, our conversation is going to be focused on your magical work and writing. Let's start from the beginning. What was it that transpired in your life that said, yes, this is something I want to pursue. I want to incorporate magic into my life.

Taylor: I first started practicing magic when I was 16. And I think in most people's teenage years, we're looking around, we're trying to find answers. I mean, I think we are all of our lives, but the teenage years are notable for that. And so for me, ironically enough, at the time, I was a born again Christian, but I had yeah. And, there's just fundamentally something that just didn't work for me. I'm not going to knock anyone who has Christianity as a particular belief. For some people, it works. For some people it doesn't. It didn't work for me, and that's okay. I didn't feel like all the answers could be found in that particular religion. And I was doing a lot of searching and discovery.

And I had a friend one day. He wasn't a friend at the time he became a friend, but I was reading a fantasy book. And he came up and he started telling me this wild story about how he had Astral projected and encountered demonic spirits. He's doing it to try and freak me out. The last thing he expected was for me to very quietly look at him and say, so magic's real? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, well, then bring me proof. Bring me some books to read. Show me some stuff. So the next day, he brought a couple of books in, a couple of pamphlets and other things, and I read through them and did the exercises and devoured them. And by the end of the week, I was over at his place reading more and starting to practice magic. And that was kind of the start of my journey.

And, at the time of this recording, I’m 45. I might be 46 by the time it airs. And so I've been practicing magic for about 30 years now, and it gave me the permission to ask all the questions that I wanted to ask and find the answers that I wanted to find. But it always continually gives me more questions and more answers to look for. And I think that that is something that I really appreciate about it, because I have insatiable curiosity. I want to learn about, the world around me.

And I don't limit my studies just to magical studies. I actually just finished reading a book, the other day called The Process of Life. It's a book about architectural design and how to build structures Daoshengfrom a very organic place in terms of how you build it and gradually unfolding from the center. And with system structure preservation. I'm not interested in being an architect, by the way. So why am I reading it? Because I thought it would be really interesting and how it might inform my approach to magical work.
And so, I share that because I think that you can find answers outside of even just people tend to specialize a lot, and I won't say everyone, but a lot of people specialize. And I think sometimes you have to branch out of that specialization and, uh, explore the world around you from many different angles. And that basically sums up the way that I approach my life and my work, both spiritual, work, writing, art, and also even my day job.

Wendy: No, I think that's cool because I think you can get stuck in a mindset, right? And to expose yourself to different ideas and different philosophies, different practices can kind of help you get outside of your own box that you create for yourself, that we all create for ourselves. So what was it about practicing magic that helped you answer questions? The big questions, I'm guessing.

Taylor: Well, big and small, it's because with magic, there isn't a specific creed at heart. I mean, you have different paths. You might have like a Wicca, for example, where the law free, full return and all that. I never got into it, so I'm not going to comment on any further than that. Or you might have Thelema or other various other branches or schools of magic. I never got into a specific school of magic again. I just branched out. I started out with Elemental Hermeticism. So I was studying Elemental magic. I was studying Hermetic principles of as above, so below, as of and so without.

I got into Neoshambinism and then I graduated from there into ceremonial magic, chaos magic, Taoism, Daosheng, and a bunch of other things. And came up with a whole bunch of different systems of magic, my own. And the reason I bring all that up is because for me, the way that I found that it allowed me to ask and answer questions is that it really allowed me to delve into the mysteries of the universe. And explore these questions from place where I found the answers through the spiritual practice, but also through the various disciplines that I studied and applied toward those spiritual practices. And it really came down to this, I think. And I think this is really important living your life. You're never going to have all the answers, you're always going to have questions. But the beauty of at least the approach that I have as a saying that I say, which is this challenge what you know by discovering what you can learn and what it really means is this what we know becomes our blinders. We know this thing well, how do we know it? We know it through experience. We know it through knowledge. We may have learned something or whatever else, but it becomes a blinder that stops us from seeing all the possibilities and potential. And it's it's a very comfortable space, what you know, because when you know something, it brings a kind of stability.

The problem is what you know is an illusion. At the end of the day, under, uh, the right circumstance, anything can change. Or under the wrong circumstance, if you want to put it a different way. So by challenging what you know to discover what you can learn, you're always intentionally choosing to put yourself out there, recognizing that what you know only provides a semblance of security, a semblance of knowledge that's not really the real deal. And that by continually learning and discovering and challenging things, challenging what you know yourself, you end up beginning to uncover how you can grow and evolve and how you're growing and evolving with the universe and how you're growing and evolving with other people and systems and things like that. You discover that you're really part of this dynamic interconnected system and it changes your approach. Because unfortunately, we live in a culture in the west and I think really even just the world. I'll be very general here.

My magical partner accuses me sometimes of being too generalized with my statements. Fair enough. But I will say that uh, she's funny like that. But I appreciate it about her. She challenges what I know all the time so that I could discover what I could learn a little bit of it that way. That's one of the things I appreciate about her. But one of the things that I have found is that we've gotten to the point where we live in a very commercial society. We live in a very society that silos things out. And the more it silos things out, the more separated and disconnected we become. And we have things like social media and all that that pretend to connect us, but a lot of times it's just not the same. I think that the pandemic really revealed that for us because in a very real sense, we were suddenly isolated from even that casual contact that we needed. Now, as people are starting to go out into the world again, it's just kind of like, oh, wow, I'm suddenly realizing the value of human connection and how I need to really connect with people and do things well. That only happens if we break away from this siloed approach to life. And that's where, for me, magic has helped me find my answers because it's allowed me to reconnect with the world around me in a very deep and meaningful way.

And I've already dated myself, so I grew up during a time where I did go out outside a lot of the time and would be out for hours at a time unsupervised. You don't really see that these days with kids. Instead, kids are supervised by their screens, which is an unfortunate thing. But I know for myself, I cut out a lot of screen time as much as I can, even as a writer, because I find that too much screen time dulls the imagination and creativity and dulls the connection with the world. There's something to be said about going outside, for example, and gardening for a while, or going outside for a walk or connecting with people by going and playing some board games or doing something else along those lines, or whatever else. Because at the end of the day, a screen cannot bring you the level of connection that you need.

Well, it's the same thing with magic. We're doing rituals to spirits. We're connecting with these spirits. We're connecting with these forces. We can't connect with them through a screen. We have to actually put ourselves out there and allow ourselves to experience them and embody that experience through ourselves, but then challenge that experience later on by bringing in more experiences and examining and experiencing these things as much as possible. So that's basically what sums up my path in a uh, roundabout way of answering your question.

Wendy: Okay, so what you're emphasizing is the importance of relationship, whether it's with other people, your practice, and I think, most importantly, the natural world. I think that I'll get up on my soapbox and talk about how unfortunate it is that we are gravely disconnected from the natural world collectively. Not everybody, but collectively, we have a pretty, I think, sad relationship with the natural world, if there's one at all, for a lot of us.

Taylor: Yeah, it's really true. It's interesting. As I was telling you before we started the recording, I recently, bought a house, and so for the first time ever, I have a yard to really work with. And so I started gardening, and my partner is teaching me how to garden. She's got a lot of background in that, so she's like, okay, we're going to pick these plants out, and this is going to be a process. And it reminds me, when I was a teenager, my mom would be like, okay, you got chores to do. And some of the chores were inevitably digging up weeds and planting stuff. And at the time, I didn't appreciate it. Now I do, because having spent so much time in technology, I can tell you that it's just not the same thing. Whereas when you go outside and you're playing in the dirt for a little bit, it does change things. And so, as you said earlier, it is about relationship. At the end of the day, we need to have relationships, uh, with the world, with each other, of course. With our pets, with the plants, with everything. And a lot of times, we get separated out from that. And so we don't really appreciate our connection to the world. And I think that that is what has led to a lot of the problems that we see in our modern society.

Wendy: I'll drink to that. Yeah.

Taylor: Everything ranging from racism to gun violence to these international conflicts and everything else. It boils down to the fact that we have lost a fundamental connection with each other. We're not seeing each other or the world around us in the way that we need to. And what we need to remember is that we're not above the world. We are part of the world. If we don't have the world, we don't exist.

Wendy: Well, I think you hit on a key point there. I think the original lie that we started telling ourselves we humans is that we are not nature. That we're somehow separate from it, and therefore we can exploit it to meet our needs. I guess I'm still on my soapbox a little tiny bit, but I'll get off now and change gears a little bit here. Well, a little bit. The relationship piece. So what you're inviting folks to do is not just to be in relationship with the people around us, the natural world, but also, once you open up these magical doors, to be in relationship with the spirits on the other side.

Taylor: Yeah, very much so. Because we don't just live in a physical environment, we live in a spiritual environment. Of course, some people might disagree with that, fair enough. But I find that it's very much a reality in my particular case that I am connected with the spiritual world and that the spirits do play a part in my life in a way that is meaningful to me and that there is a relationship there. And again, some people have a knee jerk reaction to that because for some, it might be okay. Like I'm working with a deity, for example. Am I putting this deity above me? Or things like that. I'll tell you, my approach is this. Every type of spirit that I work with, whether it's an elemental spirit, a demonic spirit, angelic force, or a deity or whatever else, it is about working with, not working for, working with. It is about collaboration. Because again, I think that that is where we need to redefine our relationship with things.

So much of the problem that we have in society is a hierarchical problem where something is placed over something else. And because of that hierarchical approach, it's caused us to divorce ourselves from the world around us, from the spirits, from each other. Because we're always trying to categorize and define things and place things within neat little boxes. But that's not life. Life is messy. Life is an experience. And all of these different things that are around us can't just be categorized to the point that there's no life in them.

And really, this is a problem I see in occultism and magic as well. I definitely do see a lot of categorization occur in Western occultism in particular. So I'm not saying that you go and start practicing magic that all of a sudden you're going to have this. This is something I've had to work at for 30 years to get to this point.

And I think that it's really an important point to make, that this kind of relationship is something that is discovered over time. It gradually unfolds organically. As we start to change our approach to life, we start to discover, well, there's a lot more going on around us, there's a lot more happening. And um, we start to experience the world differently. We start to experience the connection with the spirits and things like that. I'll give you a good example because I have been doing a lot of work on the land. One of the homework assignments that I was given by my magical partner was to do the weeding around the house. So I started doing the weeding and as I'm pulling out these weeds and everything else, I'm really connecting with the land. Well, the land is a spirit as much as a physical reality, but it's not separate from each other. And again, we've had this cartesian duality where we separate the spirit from the body, but the spirit and the body are one and the same.

The spirits are around us all the time. It's just a matter of whether we open ourselves up to them. So I'm working with the land, working on the weeding and everything else. And I just feel the shift in the approach to the work I'm doing with the land. Because all of a sudden I'm feeling this intimate connection as I'm weeding, I can feel the land responding. My next assignment is to work. There's poison ivy on the trees. I got to start working on getting that off of there. And it's kind of an interesting thing because again I'm sure that I will bond and connect with those trees as I'm doing that process. And I think that when we open ourselves to the world around us, we discover that the divisions and the categories and the definitions that we put into place are largely artificial, very convenient. But the problem with that convenience is that it does create this comfort that allows us to ignore the discomfort. And by ignoring that discomfort, what we end up doing is we end up creating situations like we're dealing with. Like as an example with global warming and climate change and all that. We have placed our comfort, the temporary comfort I might add, over the discomfort of being disconnected with the environment. We've placed our temporary comfort of categorizing things, everything else. And it's caused us to lose relationship. Well, now we're dealing with the consequences of that.

Wendy: That's a good point. So you've used the word experience a lot. And I think that's a really vital part of someone's spiritual explorations is to have a direct experience. So I'm curious, how have your direct experiences changed you? Going back over the trajectory of your life when you opened these magical doors back when you were a teenager to now. How would you say it's informed you and who you are and transformed you?

Taylor: I think first and foremost, when you open yourself up to an experiential approach to the world. It helps you to become more comfortable in the world in a very real way, because you're not blocking things out. I mean, certainly that was the case for me when I started practicing magic at 16. Of course, I was a teenager, awkward, young, trying to find my way. I was not very well liked. So I was the nerd. And, uh, it was one of those things where practicing magic gave me a sense of belonging instead of trying to fit in, which didn't work for me. And I think it's something, again, where people often sacrifice themselves to fit in. They sacrifice a vital part of themselves. I discovered with magic that I could belong in entering in this, having these experiences with the spirits or whatever else, that I could have a sense of belonging and connection.
Wendy: Belonging to?

Taylor: I would say belonging to the world, belonging with those spirits, belonging to myself.

Wendy: Gotcha. Okay.

Taylor: Allowing myself to really belong to myself. And I think a lot of times we we give that up too. You look at the state of how people relate to each other a lot of times. And I'm not saying having been married twice and not have those marriages work out so well. I can say that. I mean, sometimes you have to compromise. Some compromises are important. But there is at the same time, there's also a necessary truth that you don't want to compromise so much. That you just start finding yourself trying to fit in, trying to give away.

Wendy: Or you lose yourself.

Taylor: You lose yourself. So for me, what magic has taught me over the years is how to have a better relationship with myself as well as the world around me and with other people. When I started practicing magic, as I said, I kind of had these initial experiences as I continued to practice throughout my life, I started to become more comfortable with my body and to achieve an awareness and a connection with it that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. I became more comfortable with my creativity and my imagination, which is part of what has led to being so prolific as a writer and as an artist. And I became more comfortable with other people because I started recognizing where I didn't have to give away something of myself in order to be around those people. And I found that it would just naturally gravitate towards the people that were the right fit for me, where there was a deep sense of belonging. But when I talk about experience, too, I'm talking about something that a concept that I write about in some of my books, which is called experiential embodiment. And experiential embodiment is very much a case where we open ourselves up to the experience so that instead of trying to define things, define spirits. For example, so often, if you pick up a grimoire or a book or whatever, you'll see, uh, like a catalog of spirits and here's what the spirit's name is and here's the correspondences and here's everything else. It's useful information when you start out. But one of the questions I've been asking is what would it be like to connect with that spirit without the preconceived notions of what I would expect? Because with most of these grammar they'll say, okay, you're going to summon the spirit and you want the spirit to appear in a specific form and speak your language and everything else. All very convenient for the human experience, all very centered around the human experience, but not centered necessarily around the organic experience of the spirit. So for me, experiential embodiment was really about redefining the relationship in a way where I opened myself up to how the spirit would appear or manifest itself. And that might not be through visual thing. We value our eyesight more than we value our other senses, unfortunately. But the other senses are just as important. It might be a tactile or kinesthetic uh, experience, it might be a temperature experience, it might be something else. Along those lines. Well, by opening myself up to those experiences, I really began to appreciate the richness of life itself because I started to more fully embrace what it's like to live here and be here and what the miracle of having a body is. Because when you think about it, a body is manifestation and it is our ability to manifest. So many people with these different religions and everything else are so that they want to they want to leave, they want to move on to the next thing, they want to move on to nirvana or Ever or whatever else. But what they don't realize is they're giving up the body experience which is something that they'll never get back.

Wendy: It's pretty extraordinary if you think about it. Yeah. Being in a physical, very dense body that has all of these sensory experiences. It is actually quite a gift if you think about it. All of the enjoyment and then all of the not so enjoyable aspects of it, they all lead to a growth experience of some sort. And so it's a rich opportunity, I think, for us to have this experience.

I joke about how many of the folks I've worked with who have I mean, a lot of us have really challenging lifetimes, really difficult circumstances and they'll say that this is it after I finish this life, no more. And from my experiences, and you may not see it this way or whatever, but my experiences have shown me that. And for anybody who might be listening - I hope somebody's listening, that, otherwise this is just a lovely conversation I'm having with Taylor! - That the part of us that craves this human experience is very excited about it and it is very much not human. And so the idea of trying to imagine a nonhuman part of us that's creating this human or dreaming this human experience into existence is kind of, abstract. But boy, from what I could tell, it sure gets excited about this idea of being embodied, of having time on this incredibly beautiful planet, having all of these really rich sensory experiences, and then also understanding the growth potential of this kind of experience.

Taylor: Well, that's just it. And the people who say this is it. What they don't realize is that they're actually setting themselves up to have a lot more experiences. You don't get away from it because you have the lessons and experiences that you have to learn. And not only that, but I mean, we're part of something much faster than ourselves that is actively, in my opinion, learning from us, learning through our experiences. You think about the universe as a living being. How does it learn? In part, it learns through us, through experience, through experience. And we bring those experiences back to it. So of course, it's going to, uh, continue to want to do that. I don't think you can get away from it. I think, if anything, it's really an honor and an opportunity to embrace and discover the joy and purpose of life. And yes, there are hard times. I mean, I've been through hard times. One of the books that I most recently wrote, Inner Alchemy of Wintering, was about spiritual burnout and wintering experiences. Like what it's like to go through very rough times where your life is just out of control and you are at the mercy of things and you just have to try and do the best you can. I just came out of that experience recently, and it's been a multi year experience.

Wendy: Not fun.

Taylor: Not fun at all. But you know what? I wouldn't give it up for anything. I wouldn't give it up to become disembodied and not have that experience because I have learned and grown so much. And it's that richness of life that even in the hard times, those hard times are balanced by those wonderful times as well. And those wonderful times are appreciated in light of having those hard times occur.

Wendy: Well said. Yes. So it sounds like through your practices, that what has been a byproduct of your practices is an intense focus on the subtle. So when you are connecting with a spirit that you are not just focusing on the visual aspect of it, which I'm guessing you mean interior, visionary experience, but also all the other senses as well. And it takes the keen amount of focus to be able to notice the really subtle differences when you're doing this kind of work. Right?

Taylor: Yeah. You got it. Right. I mean, that is very much what's happening. It's learning to pay attention to all of those subtle signals and that information and bringing that in and expanding yourself as a result to meet it and engage. Uh, and it's really the same thing where we have. Access to all of that, even in our everyday life. I mean, when people talk about their intuition, your intuition is a sense, it is an awareness, it is an experience that you can open yourself to. We have more senses than the five senses, I'll put it that way. I think that the five senses is just a very, again, this goes back to this Western culture thing of trying to define things and separate stuff out. Well, when we define things to that point and we separate stuff out, we miss out on, um, the subtle experiences, the richness and depth of things. And so by reintegrating that in and embracing a holistic approach to life, what we end up discovering is that there is a much deeper variety of experience and embodiment in that experience that opens doors for us in and of itself. I mean, if you spent a year just paying closer attention to the different experiences that you were having, and you didn't quickly label them, but really just open yourself to them, that year alone would change your life fundamentally.

Wendy: I mean, I think that's why a lot of people are drawn to, let's say meditation, for example, because what we're all kind of discovering in the Western world, many of us, is that we have a lot of internal noise, right? And it's really hard to perceive intuitive hits when there's so much fucking noise in your head, in other parts of you, or in the outside world that you're focused on. So this idea of turning your focus inward, right, and trying to sort through all of that stuff to get to and I'm not a meditator, let me just say for the record, I do a more shamanic type visual form of meditation. So, I'm not an expert in meditation, but I'm just curious if that's what a lot of people are experiencing when they're exploring that discipline, is that they're getting exposure to these subtleties when they're sitting quietly and focusing inward.

Taylor: I can only speak to my own experience. I'm not going to speak for other people per se, although it might be true. But I think that when I'm and I do many different forms of meditation as well. So I've done shamanic, work. I've done Taoist Kian body work. I do, of course, just regular meditation, all that, just to make that point. But I would say, for myself, at least, in doing that kind of work, it has definitely opened up the doors of experience to me, because I am paying more attention. I think when we enter into a very intentional relationship with our body, we discover all the things that our body has been trying to tell us all along. Your body has its own intelligence, it has its own awareness.

Wendy: Hell, yeah.

Taylor: And when you start to really pay attention to it, it tells you, and you can work through a lot of things. Not that I have an uh, absolutely pain free life. But through the different work that I've done over the years it has made a significant difference in my relationship with my body right down to what kind of food I eat versus what I don't eat. Because I'm paying attention to what my body is craving and wanting and what it says works for it. And not everyone's diet. There's no one size fits all diet. For some people, what works is not going to work for somebody else. But part of that is based in part on paying attention and learning to listen to and connect with our body. And when you connect with your body, you start to connect with it on all of its processes. There's something else speak to here because I think this is really important to speak to is that for a lot of people the main focus on their bodies is sex. That's all they care about is sex and how does sex feel. But pay attention to drinking water, pay attention to eating, pay attention to passing waste and all that other stuff. Pay attention to all of those things because those are experiences in and of themselves and they can tell you a lot about your experience. And if anything, as you learn to integrate all of those other experiences in you'll find that the sex is a lot better because you're suddenly experiencing it on a much deeper level because you're paying better attention to your body than you were before.

Wendy: It makes perfect sense. Yeah. All right, so I want to shift gears a little bit and touch on your most recent book, Walking with Elemental Spirits. How do you describe elemental magic?

Taylor: So the classic western approach to elemental magic is you have five elements earth, air, fire, water and quintessence or spirit. In Hinduism and Daosheng it's earth, air, fire, water and space. And in Taoism it's earth, fire, water, metal and wood. Now just as a quick note and an interesting thing in Dallas practices, what they're really describing is the way that the energy of the body works. When you're working with metal energy, for example, you're clearing your mind. When you're working with wood energy, you're working with growing energy. Earth encapsulates everything. Fire is very passionate inferior waters for rest and regeneration. The other systems that I mentioned tend to focus more on working with the elements as spiritual beings. They'll still say that the elements are part of the building blocks of life, that they're in all of us, et cetera, et cetera.

And there's a certain fundamental aspect of that. Now my own approach to elemental magic has actually kind of gone in a little bit of a different direction because what I've done is I said, okay, we've had these five elements in the west earth, air, fire, water, contestants or spirit. They've been written about for over 2500 years and very little has changed all that time. That's a long time for something to stay the same. But what I've done is I've started looking at what if there are other elements? I mean, if we look at elements as being the building blocks of life why couldn't gravity be an element? Why not magnetism? But why not also, for that matter, why not love or stillness or movement or other things? So my approach to elemental magic has really been based around working not just with the classic elements, but also working with other elemental forces, at least in my mind that I feel are essential to the building blocks of life. And also move us. I say move us because I think that we are moved by what we connect with. Sometimes we move it as well, but we're moved by it. We act on and we are acted upon.

And that's a very important thing to note because, again, we have this notion that we're above things that we're acting upon but we're also being acted upon. We don't live and avoid. Uh, And I think it's interesting when people get caught up in that notion. So, for me, I think about gravity. We're living with gravity every single day. It's pulling us down. But it's not even just that. We are also dealing with the gravity of the moon, for example.

Wendy: Right?

Taylor: Our bodies have a different response to it during the full moon versus the dark moon or new moon. This is very obvious in particular for women with their cycles and stuff. But I also think it's true for men as well. I mean, men have their own cycles. They're just not as obvious. But they are there. There is physiological proof of that. So, I mean, I think that's true. And then you look at the other planets. And, planets also have their own gravitational influence. And the fact is, they're all acting upon and being acted upon by each other. So that means that there's some influence there that could explain, for example, the astrological significance of planets. Whether that alone is the only reason or not, that's up for debate. But that's certainly one of the things that I've thought about quite a lot.

And you think about magnetism. Well, I mean, we have electromagnetic fields ourselves. We actually have that experience. Well, that is something that is part of us. So it is a building block of life. And then we look at space and time. And space and time are things that we are wrapped up. And we can argue that time is just perception, and maybe it is, but it's something that still nonetheless affects us on a very deep, primal level.

So when I look at the elements, I don't look at them as just earth, air, fire, water and spirit. I look at all these other forces, and I've worked with them. And I first started this back in 2004. I came up with a ritual called the elemental balancing ritual. And the elemental balancing ritual was kind of based around the idea of okay, I'm out of balance in certain areas of my life. How can I work with an elemental energy spirit to bring some balance? And I started working with water because it's a very intense person and I needed to, to wash that out a little bit. Well, at the end of that year, uh, I knew I wanted to continue working with elements, but one of the things I wanted to work with is I wanted to be better at communicating and a little more assertive. And I could have worked with the element of air, but that just didn't fit. So I decided to work with sound as an element. There was nothing in any of the books that I read that said that sound was an element. But I was like, why not? It's a building block of life that's essential. I mean, we're using it right now to communicate. People who are listening right now to this, they're hearing sound. Sound is the reality. It's something that's my approach to elemental magic, and that's what the book is about, is describing not just the five classic elements, but also exploring all the other elemental powers that could be and how you can work with them. And you don't have to agree with my system. I'll say in all my magic books, one of the caveats always put in there is like look, I'm writing this and these are my experiences. And here's the exercises you can try. But at the end of the day, you have to make it your own. So you don't have to agree with me. You just learn from it and make it your own. And come back and feel free to challenge me at some point if you want, because that's great. I'll learn something from it.

Wendy: I love that approach. I actually think that's really refreshing. You mentioned before working with demonic forces, and so that's a loaded one, right, for uh, a lot of folks. In what way do you work with demonic forces?

Taylor: Well, first of all, the reason that's loaded is because of Christian culture, the, the grimoire traditions and things like that, where you had these people in the m medieval ages where they were writing these books and they were writing about working with the spirits. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But of course it's kind of like if you were in communist - in the USSR or China, where you're writing these things that might be subversive to the state or to the religion. And so you have to put in certain catchphrases that say, well, and here's the thing, because we really do agree with the manifest ideology right now. But they didn't necessarily do that. They just had to portray things a certain way. So that's one thing I'm going to put out there. The other thing I'm going to put out there is that if you look at the original root word of demon. It's really daemon. And it means a spirit of wisdom and knowledge. And these were spirits that were worked with.

For example, in, ancient Greece, each person had their own personal daemon they could work with. So when I talk about working with daemonic powers, not demonic, but demonic, I'll put that stress out there. It's really about working with a spirit of wisdom. Now a, spirit of wisdom is sometimes going to lay down some information you might not like. There is some truth to that. The thing I found about working with spirits in general is that what you approach them with is in part what they will mirror back to you. So if you approach a spirit with fear, then that spirit is going to mirror that fear back to you because they are communicating with us on all levels of our being. And that's something to really remember. But I also find that in working with, daemonic spirits that they can be very powerful in terms of what they reveal to us and how we can learn from them.

One that I'm working with, I'm doing this program right now where you're working with a Goetic demon a week. And taking my one friend, Stephanie Connolly has this patreon where she's doing this thing and she's walking you through the whole thing. It's like over 72 weeks. So kind of gives you an idea of how intense this is. I'm working with the spirit of Aim right now. Aim. And this is a spirit of creativity and inspiration and knowledge. It's a Goetic demon. So some people will be like, oh, it's a demonic force, of course, be careful. Well, I found it to be very helpful this week. It's been very inspiring. Kind of helped give me a kick in the butt to get my latest fiction book written. So I found it helpful. I'm going to be doing the working later on tonight at the time of this recording, on communication with it and seeing how it can help me be a better communicator in certain ways that I feel I need to do some work on.

So I think really with anything, challenge what you know to discover what you can learn. Like, if people are like, oh, well, he's doing that kind of work, I should be careful, blah, blah, blah. Well, yeah, maybe. But look at the history behind it. Look at the assumptions, everything else. And then find out for yourself. And I'm not saying don't be cautious, not what I'm saying. But don't let what other people have told you. Don't let the quote unquote loaded terminology or anything like that stop you from discovering for yourself the reality of something. And then use that experience. And don't let what I say either. I mean, at the end of the day, this is something I always say is I'm, not the ultimate authority of anyone's life other than my own. And it's the same as for anyone else. You are the ultimate authority of your life. You are the ultimate spiritual authority. Not some god in the sky, not some demon in the underworld or anything else. You are the ultimate authority. And whatever choices you make, the only one at the end of the day you have to answer to is yourself.

Wendy: That's a great fucking message. This is one of the things I'm very interested in, is different people's take on evil or what they would call demonic forces. And I personally don't buy it. My experience has shown me that it's not really a thing, but it's more of a - and you may disagree, but to me, it puts us in a place of fear. And you don't want to be operating especially in a spiritual, magical practice, you don't want to be operating from that place of fear because then you lose personal power. And how does that help you? It doesn't help you because contrary to everything you just said right? Of trying to be your own authority. Well, if there's some kind of force out there that's trying to do you harm or you believe that, then you're going to be focused more on protecting yourself than you would be on exploration and growth. That's my take anyway.

Taylor: No, I agree with that.

Wendy: Take that with a grain of salt.

Taylor: Yeah, take it with a lick of salt! But seriously, I agree with that. I think a lot of people bring their own they bring their fear into a situation. Fear has its place. I'm not going to knock fear. I think fear actually can be a wonderful teacher. There have been times in my life where I have woken up every day feeling fear because things were really chaotic and not sure of things and all that other stuff. And fear if you can get comfortable with fear, it can teach you a lot.

Wendy: Right. And there's plenty to be afraid of, too. Just living life.

Taylor: Hey, every time you walk out that door, something could happen. You don't know.

Wendy: Right.

Taylor: You just have to make the best of it.

Wendy: That's right. But I don't want to invite people to live, like that.

Taylor: No, me either.

Wendy: But there are legitimate things that can happen. But I think a lot of us, we have anticipatory anxiety about stuff that's part of the noise, I think, that we can generate in our brain parts is the possible ways in which things could go very south and put us in a place of fear. Yeah, that's very good to hear, I think.

All right, so in your book, you have a lot of suggested kind of experimentation for the readers right, as a way to get to know the elemental spirits. Would you describe them as really accessible, or is it a challenging process to kind of get into what you're inviting folks to do.

Taylor: I would like to think the exercises make the work accessible. At the end of the day, you have to do them. If you don't do them, then you're not going to get anywhere with it. You can read a book, but not do anything with it. On that, I can't help you. But, uh, if you're willing to do the exercises in the book, they are designed to, provide some accessibility. Now, one thing I will say about it is it also requires some work. It's easy to sit down and read a book. You can read a book in a day if you really want to, sometimes quicker than that. But actually taking time to do the exercises and work could take you months, years, if you really want to do it.

One of the things that I like to say is if you're reading a book is, are you working the book? Take a book and work through the exercises. It's going to take some time. We live in a culture of push button, where you push the button and things instantaneously happen. The irony of that is that nothing instantaneously happens. As I've told people in, my day job, hey, you push the button. But just because you pushed the button didn't mean that something instantaneously happened. It took a few moments, and that's true. But we have increasingly become like, well, I want to push the button and have things happen like that. Well, it doesn't happen like that. You've got to be willing to put in the work. You have to put in the time. And, so what I would say is it's accessible, but you still have to do the work. And if it's but that's not something that people like to care. Well, I'm sorry, but that's just the truth of life.

Wendy: It's very true. Yeah. I mean, it's a discipline, right?

Taylor: It's a discipline. I mean, I didn't get around to writing all the books that I've written and doing all the work I've done that has gone into those books by not doing. So I had to discipline myself. And I mean, I still do stuff every day. It's like right now with the gardening that I mentioned earlier, I'm going out there and I'm gardening. I'm making that choice to discipline myself to do that work, because it's essential to my sense of well being and connecting with the land. Now, part of it there is definitely a spiritual component. It's inevitably, going to show up in a future book because I know myself. But the thing is, it's something that I have to go and I have to put myself out there. If I choose not to do it, well, then I'm not going to really learn anything from it. I can look at the ground, but if I don't do anything with the ground, then nothing will really happen. Other, than I'm looking at the ground and the ground might be looking back at me.

Wendy: Right? Well, I mean, maybe for those of us who struggle with discipline, we can connect with the god of discipline and make friends with it.

Taylor: Yeah, there you go. Why not, right?

Wendy: Yeah. Well, Taylor, this has been a fun conversation. Remind me of your website again.

Taylor: Magicalexperiments.com.

Wendy: Okay. And that's the best way to get a hold of you if people want to explore your books, your work. Do you have your fiction books on there as well?

Taylor: I don't have my fiction books on there. I have a different site for that. That's called imagineyourreality.com.

Wendy: Okay, cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me.

Taylor: Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. I just want to do a quick shout out to our mutual friend Jackie as well.

Wendy: Absolutely.

Taylor: For connecting us, because, that's part of how this happened.

Wendy: What's up, Jackie?

Taylor: What's up, Jackie?

OUTRO
Ready to do some magic?

If you'd like to learn more about Taylor, please check out his website, Magicalexperiments.com. And if you're curious about his many works of fiction, please check out his other website, Imagine. Yourreality.com

All right, that about does it for this episode. Thank you for tuning in. I'll be back soon with another thought provoking episode.

Until next time...