David Mathisen, Myths and Roman Trauma |503|

David Mathisen on the connection between star myths, Roman cults, and our parapolitical reality.

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Audio Clip: [00:00:00] Between Bobby and the FBI possess all the time he’s gone fucking crazy. Tell Jimmy I’m sorry for his troubles, the old time is no deal man, they’ll talk to him at some point they’ll straighten it out for him. Yeah but he can’t understand and I gotta be honest with you I don’t understand either, I used to help get those two fucking kenzi pricks elected in the first place, It don’t make no sense to him, that’s for sure. He doesn’t have to understand everything. You know what I’m talking about, sometimes it’s better. So when I see him like that, I don’t you know, I feel bad, I want to help him in some way. Listen, he’s too emotional, like some guy who’s always rushing all over the place and they missed the big picture. Like Cuba. Getting us back in the casinos, getting us back into Havana. Like getting rid of that fucking Castro prick. The old timey spoke to the old man, the old man talked to his son jack and he told them don’t forget who the fuck he owes. He knows who the fuck he owes.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:07] That’s of course Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, a clip from the Irishman. I know it’s a rather long clip but It’s an important clip and it’s history. I think a lot of people, I guess maybe younger people don’t realize it’s of course a fictional account but it’s history, this is what happened. There was this guy who ran the Teamsters union called Jimmy Hoffa in the Union back then was unbelievably powerful, It ran the country, it ran the trucks, if they shut down the union you know, no one got that and all the rest of the stuff, he had a lot of power. And he was very tight with the mob and the mob was taking care of him and he’s taking care of the mob, and he was loaning all the money to build the casinos in Las Vegas, and this was the dynamic and also back then the mafia organized crime was super powerful, much more powerful that we can kind of even imagine today. And what they’re talking about in this scene in particular, is how some people in the mafia felt betrayed by the fact that Joe Kennedy, who was JFK’s father and who amassed all of his wealth by smuggling alcohol from Canada to the US and was tied in with all organized crime. And he’s the one who had gone to the mob and said, hey maybe you can help here with my son. They felt betrayed that now, JFK and in particular Robert Kennedy who was Attorney General was, really going after the mob and was stamping out organized crime all this at a time when the top cop J. Edgar Hoover, because he was compromised because he was a gay man and like to dress up in women’s clothes and because some people in the mob had pictures of that and because human compromise is always in play, is always your number one go to tool, a lot Jeffrey Epstein. So that’s why the top cop in the United States publicly stated that there was no mafia. Again, if you don’t know this history go back and read it because you’re really gonna have to understand it, to understand where I’m going, and understand why I keep hammering on the Romans, and why we have today’s most excellent guest David Mathisen, author of Myth and Trauma, Higher Self Ancient Wisdom and Their Enemies, along with a number of other books. You might understand better why he says…

David Mathisen: [00:03:25] I would say that the imposition of literalist Christianity was a deliberate, it just doesn’t happen that Christianity just took over the Roman Empire the way we’re kind of taught.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:03:37] But back to the clip, back to history, back to what really happened because of course what happens is, JFK is assassinated and clearly the mob is part of that and clearly the CIA is part of that and clearly LBJ as part of that, and if you haven’t read any of the 200 or 300 books that are published on that, then you don’t know that history. But so many people that we’d expect to know that history, don’t know that history or faking that history. You know, one of my favorite podcasts for a long time has been hardcore history with Dan Carlin. It’s extremely popular one of the most popular podcasts in the world. He believes Lee Harvey Oswald was alone not assassin. This is inconceivable to anyone who’s investigated it, to anyone who’s really studied the history. You know I recently had an interview, I was on this guy’s show, Jeffrey Doherty and indoctrinate yourself had a great time on a show and actually I was supposed to do an interview with him today and he backed out. But it was a great interview, it was all about Christianity and false narratives and all that stuff. I found out that he is somewhat of a holocaust denier and as offensive is that is morally to think that we would want to apologize for such an evil act. It again strikes me like Dan Carlin, how do you process that history in that way to come to that conclusion? Well, I would suggest that as I continue to plow through this Roman history that if I do my job, you will find what we’re talking about with first century Roman history is almost as clear cut as JFK. And almost as clear cut as the absurdity of denying the Holocaust. And the hardest part of really processing all that is going to be wrapping your head around how so many people cannot see what really becomes obvious, the further you look into it. Here are some extended clips from my upcoming interview with David Matheson.

David Mathisen: [00:06:05] So here’s Archer Titus 81 CE, built by his younger brother to mission after. Do you think Domitian killed him? I don’t know. People know Titus said I only made one mistake and that was, there was a plot and it was tied to his brother, instead of killing his brother Domitian, he banished him and then a year later, he gets assessed and he said, I only made one mistake. It’s compelling, there was a lot of assassinations going on. This is the famous cave four, where the vast majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are found, the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 1940s fragments of over 900 texts, manuscripts, and in 1000s of pieces like jigsaw puzzles discovered in the 40s and then given into the hands of an international group of scholars who kept the Dead Sea Scrolls basically under wraps for their entire lives. They didn’t let anyone see anything but there’s one scroll known as the Copper. The Copper scroll, and you see it on the right hand side of your screen, it looks very different than the written scroll, The Copper scroll it was all rolled up on copper and so all of that they had to cut in part and so that’s why these pieces now look kind of like a half of a tube. What is the copper scroll? It’s basically the list of treasure, this is how it reads, this is the first words of the copper scroll, not the part that I’m showing by the way that’s like piece number 18. But on this one it says, in the ruin, that’s in the value of a core under, the steps with the entrance at the East. So go to the ruins find the entrance is on the east, then under the steps, a distance of 40 cubits a strong box of silver and its vessels with a weight of 17 talents, which by the way a talent at that time, New Testament talent or not period talent, 129 pounds, so that’s 129 pounds of silver times 17 that’s a lot. Oh, by the way at the end of The Copper scroll, it says this is a copy. This is a copy you know we put it on this, they don’t say it but why would you put it on copper, so it can’t burn. So look this treasure is important we don’t want to lose it, we’re going to put the treasure map or the treasure instructions, it’s not really a map, on something that can’t be destroyed, copper and this will be the backup copy. Well who had the other copy? I bet you Josephus knew how to find it. And that’s why this Pasian and Titus got all the loot, and were managed to become Emperor’s and that’s, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that, I mean as you said Josephus didn’t get all those things because you know, he said, I think you’re going to become the Emperor. Okay, thanks a lot cut off his head. He said, I know where the treasure is buried, please don’t cut off my head because you won’t get any of it.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:08:59] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. Today we welcome back David Matheson to Skeptiko. David is, well he’s really quite an amazing author, researcher, thinker and we’re going to talk a lot about why I think David is so interesting and important because I think that’s kind of a big part of this story actually, how somebody can do what he’s done and reveal to us what has always been right there in front of us. When somebody does that, that is really pretty remarkable and that’s exactly what he’s done. We’re going to talk about, or well we may talk about a number of his great books that I’ve just pulled up here on Amazon, he’s got many of them in there, really quite terrific, quite amazing. But we will probably spend more time on this one in particular. Myth and Trauma, Higher Self, Ancient Wisdom and their Enemies. So it’s a book that was published just last year, so it hasn’t been out that long. It’s great, like a lot of David’s books, it’s really terrifically illustrated you know, a lot of stuff he talks about, he’s talking about the stars and the constellations as we know them, and you need to see it. And then you need to see the art associated with it, the myths associated with it and he’s done that, extensive notes in this book, extensive references in this book, like all his books, so this is something that is valuable for someone who’s interested in something beyond the story, although the stories are all super great too. So that’s all what’s coming up. David welcome back to Skeptiko, It’s great to have you here.

David Mathisen: [00:10:58] Thanks so much, Alex. It’s great to be here I was looking forward to it.

Alex Tsakiris: [00: 11:02] You know, before we jump too far into the books, I hope you will take a minute and go over your background a little bit because I think it’s quite unique and quite interesting and I think in a way, turns out to be relevant to this story. So the brief bio thing.

David Mathisen: [00: 11:20] Yeah, happy to, sure. Well I really grew up loving the stars and the constellations. My dad used to take me out where I lived , where I grew up in San Mateo, California which is in the Bay Area, and we look at the stars and we used, even from really before I can remember you know, I can’t remember not having these books by HA Ray, who does the outlining system HA ray is famous, we’ve talked about it before on this show, is famous for, along with his wife Margaret Ray, creating the Curious George series of books starting in the 1940s. He also wrote a very important book called The stars A New Way To See Them, a new way to see them in 1952, which turns out to be a very ancient way to see them not a, you know there’s a mystery there. But I grew up seeing the constellations using that system and I also grew up loving the myths, I ended up going to West Point and I graduated high school in 1987 13 days later, I trotted off to the east coast and got my head shaved and started getting yelled at at the Military Academy and…

Alex Tsakiris: [00:12:40] Can I interject something, because I had never really made that connection. You’re in San Mateo and now you’re going to upstate New York. Did you have any idea what you were getting into there, that kind of culture change that you’re thrown into?

David Mathisen: [00:12:53] Well, I had been back to visit so they do have like visits for candidates, kind of like a recruiting thing for football, but I was in a football player. And I had also spent the summer before that the summer before my senior year at Harvard summer school. So that was a real eye opener to see the kind of the East Coast the Northeast for the first time. I mean, it’s really much more densely populated than California is, even the Bay Area and you know there’s a lot, there’s obviously a lot of differences. When I first you know, flew back there with my dad and we were in Watertown and the waitress said something about, would you want a quota and she was talking about a quarter, I was like, I can’t believe you know, people actually do talk like this and I went to all the, from Harvard I would take the red line to the green line, and I went to all the Red Sox games in the bleachers that year for three bucks. That was the year 86, Summer of 86 they went to the World Series against the Mets. So I did have a little bit of an immersion in the East Coast that summer, got to see Roger Clemens, I sat in the bleachers you know, Roger Clemens in the bullpen right there. We’re getting off track but it’s a great question. It is you know, I would say that at 17 I didn’t appreciate the difference as much as I do today. Now I’ve got grown sons, I took one of my sons back for a basketball camp in the summer around Boston and I was, then I was really impressed by the difference I was like, I didn’t really perceive the difference as much as I do coming back, I don’t know if that makes any sense.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:14:34] You know, one of the reasons I guess I think this is important to talk about is, this is a very, very big idea kind of book, larger than the book, It’s your whole work, is a big idea kind of stuff. It’s kind of audacious to even think that someone could say there’s these ancient esoteric myths in the stars and they’ve basically been forgotten, been written out of history. And they’re highly relevant to our world today and they’ve been relevant to every culture throughout time. I mean, who the hell are you to say that? It’s just, it is you know, just ballsy to say that. So one of the things I think we’re going to talk about today is, hey why doesn’t that come out through our history? Because as you lay out your case, it’s remarkable but it’s really solid in it, a lot of it has been there. So one of the questions is, why don’t we have access to it? And so you know, West Point, you have a military background. I don’t want to get conspiratorial on that because I don’t think your story goes that way. But I think it changes your orientation. I think it changes your way of viewing things, the way of kind of take that hill mentality in some way that allows somebody to do this kind of stuff. Because otherwise, you look at your work and go bullshit you know, how many emails like, not a lot, but emails a theory of everything. Hey you know, I’ve studied this stuff on my own, in my basement, I got it all figured out. It’s just not credible, but in a way for you to, you’re transcending that. But you’re not coming from Harvard, you don’t you know, you’re not professorship, all that stuff. So I think we have to fill that in. I think that’s part of, I think that’s part of your story and I think it’s also part of the story that we’re in right now in terms of our culture and I think people are more and more open to saying, maybe this guy did do it. Maybe this one guy on his own, did kind of crack the code on this. What do you have any thoughts on that stuff?

David Mathisen: [00:16:54] Well, thanks for those kind words and I would say it’s not, first of all, it’s not one guy on his own because there are people throughout history who have noticed connections between the myths and the stars. I would say that I got obsessed with it, I compare it to the movies where you get the guy out in the shed with all the red string you know, in his backyard, and the shed and his wife comes out and finally opens up and says, what on earth is going on here you know, the board with all the strings connecting, I kind of became that individual. But you know it’s interesting, use a metaphor of it’s kind of a take the hill mentality, but I would use actually a metaphor of almost an outsider. In the sense that, if you think of Sherlock Holmes and the pattern that Conan Doyle came up with in the Sherlock Holmes books or even Edgar Allan Poe who was famously kicked out of West Point, who kind of invented the modern mystery story, it’s an outsider a lot of times or an even better example is the Scooby Doo cartoons that I grew up watching. They come along and there’s some mystery that’s going on and the authorities have got it all figured out. And they are not particularly happy when Sherlock Holmes shows up or when Scooby Doo and the gang show up because it is, it’s an outsider who’s looking at it from a different perspective. And I would say that you know, certainly coming from California going to West Point, you get you know, those same kind of jokes that you see in an Officer and a Gentleman, well you’re from California, while they get from their his fruits and nuts or you know, other things that you can fill in the blanks. It’s kind of an outsider and I did actually growing up, you know I was thinking about it. Just generationally, I’m in the Gen X generation, that’s the first generation where both parents typically worked. And they were called the latchkey kids you know I grew up you know, displaced a lot. So moving schools a lot, getting picked on, has a kind of a nerdy kid, maybe that influence, psychological key go into West Point, who knows but it’s almost like the outsider can see things that the authorities haven’t seen. There are people who have been on this trail of clues before me. But it’s almost like once you start to see it, it’s all there you know, it’s not that amazing that I’ve produced all these books because frankly, I can’t fit the evidence. You know, this is just scratching the surface, It’s really the metaphor I use, another metaphor is like, if in my backyard there was a big storm and it washed away a goalie and there’s millions of dinosaur bones on the side of the goalie and I start bringing them to the museum and they say, how is one person producing all these dinosaur bones? Well Alex, they’re right there, they’re right there, It’s in the myths, It’s right there in front of you, the myths are based on the stars, all of them. The Bible stories are based on the stars from first to last, the myths of ancient India in the Vedas, which there’s 1000s and 1000s of Gods and Goddesses in stories, it would take lifetimes to go through them all and yet, they’re based on the stars and can be shown to be the Greek myths, the Norse myths, the myths of the Maya, all the way around the world, Africa, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, they’re there it’s beyond doubt in my opinion, the evidence is overwhelming that they’re based on the stars.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:20:41] Well, I like the way you kind of cut yourself there, because it’s not even based on your opinion, it’s just based on the evidence and you just lay it out just one after another and I almost, I’m not going to apologize for doing this, because that was the whole intent of doing it. But I’m kind of going to pull you away a little bit from that awesome body of research. But I really want to encourage people to go check it out, we did a previous interview where we just kind of again, just kind of tapped into it. But you know, these books and this latest one and I don’t even know if it is the latest one, but Myth and Trauma which we will be referencing. Great, great, great stuff in that one too and a lot of new and surprising stuff. But the reason I kind of say that is you know, I emailed you because kind of strange coincidence, that isn’t a coincidence. I’ve been really stuck on this idea about Rome and I’m kind of at this hidden in plain sight moment that intersects in a way with a tiny bit of what you’ve looked into to which is super interesting. And we’re gonna, I really want, so I’m kind of pulling you into that as well as an authority to fill in my missing pieces on this. But for me the psyop in plain sight is that Christianity is started as a psyop. Whether it turns into what it turns into all the rest of that, its kind of up for grabs. But I think when you just lay it out, the evidence seems pretty clear that its origins are, hey let’s try this, this is a tried and true, tried and true formula for us, is screwing with religion as a way to you know, boost our power to supercharge our military might, Its social engineering project. And so this then intersected with some of the writings that you’ve done on your website, which is equally you know, super strong and the reading the blog posts are there and you can search through them but I won’t reference any of those right now but you’ve written about this, and you’ve written about this time period and you’ve written about Josephus and people get tired of hearing me talk about to Josephus but he’s important to this. So I want to pull you into all that. But before we even get there, I wanted to touch on a couple other things because one of, there’s three ways that I think we’re kind of kindred spirits on this thing. One is that I get the hidden in plain sight thing, I get that that can happen. I believe that, one I believe what you’ve found because the evidence is compelling. But I also believe that it’s possible. I believe that David Matheson can really have kind of crack the code on something that so many other people didn’t see and if you don’t believe that’s possible, then you can’t really get into your work fully you know, because you’re always gonna be like you know, check yourself like no this can’t be true. And then the second point is that I think we’re kindred spirits on is, in my investigation so far, I’ve come across just how miserably incompetent, what we call history or academia in a lot of cases. It’s just ridiculous, It’s just insane and you have to kind of pull up yourself and go, well can it really be that bad? And I’m just gonna tell you a really quick anecdote because I just interviewed this guy named Dave Brody. He’s written this really cool book called Romerica about how the ninth Roman legion might have warmed up in America in the second century. So good story he does and he has all this great evidence in archaeological evidence and all the rest of this stuff, carbon dating part of the evidence are coins, coins that seem to wash up every 10 years, there’s a major storm and there’s second century coins that are washing up on the East Coast, down where he lives. And here’s the point of this is that he said that you know, this clearly points to the natural conclusion that there is a sunken ship out there that has coins in it that’s washing up. But it doesn’t fit the the narrative that we have because second century there couldn’t have been any Roman you know, ships out there. So what does academia do with that? Think just come up with the most bizarre explanations and he’s kind of saying look what I’m up against. I have historians that say, well maybe a coin collector went to the beach and lost his coins. And we’re both kind of laughing you know and after I was like you know, I can’t even believe that. I mean, Dave is a good guy and stuff but he’s making that up, that can’t be real. So I said, Dave send me the reference to that and he did and there it is you know. This guy from Michigan State University published in the peer reviewed journal, the coin collector, I’ve talked to content. And I’m just like, it’s unbelievable how miserably incompetent some, not all but some of these people are. And I think that you know, typically people like you and your theories have had to push against this perceived you know, ivory tower that knows so much. And when we push into that a little bit and we find out that it’s just really, really poorly done, I think that is kind of a big thing. Do you have any thoughts on that?

David Mathisen: [00:26:26] Yeah it’s a great subject Alex, its a great subject. And I, you know, I applaud your show and its approach because you’re tackling this. This is kind of one of the themes of your show is tackling this, you know just defer to the experts I saw, you know and we’ve all now experienced a year of just absolute you know, try and figure out what you know, we won’t even go into it. But if you’re not, right a lot of deferring, if you’re not entertaining at least some possibility that there are narratives, we could call them conspiracy agendas, other than what necessarily you’re being told at this point, you’re just not paying attention because some of the things make absolutely no sense that are going on. But we’ll just set that aside, we can all refer to our own experience and our own position on that. But I saw a cartoon where there’s a man and a woman standing in a rain shower and he’s holding an umbrella to cover them both and he says, looks like it’s you know, it’s pouring and she goes, who do you think you are, a meteorologist you know, you can’t say that until you’ve got a degree, nobody believes you are until so. But when you’re saying just the level of ignorance and in competency, I would say Alex, thank you for being so generous and imputing to them, that it’s mere incompetence rather than deliberate obfuscation, which I can point to, in today’s conversation. I mean, I think you can tell me in the audience, you sent me an email kind of where you want to go, I think I can get to some examples of it’s almost impossible to believe, just plain ignorance going on for over 100 years in certain subjects. Not you know, not even the subject of all the myths being based on the stars, which the evidence is overwhelming. And yet so far, I haven’t been you know, academia is not busting down my door to say hey, I’d like you to come lecture my comparative religion department about this this seems interesting. And you know I’ve experienced kind of like polite encouragement like you know, very good you know, thanks. And you know, run along kind of when I’ve reached out most of the time but anyway, so that’s fine, I’ll publish it you know. I think it’s important to share with people who are looking for it and make it available to people who are looking for it and you can decide for yourself and I’ll show some evidence for people are saying, what is he talking about next based on stars because I want to show what has been lost. Before we get into the story of how did it get lost and Rome is right at the center of that story. So that’s, I think that’s where you want to go and you want to just…

Alex Tsakiris: [00:29:22] No well I want to, I want to pick up on a couple of things you said because I think they’re important and If we get off the trail, this will just be kind of the first cut of it and then we’ll come back and talk about the substance because, again, I can’t stress enough you’re in a unique position in terms of what you’ve done here. That like you immediately go to where I would go, which is you know, my thing was science and I genuinely didn’t know that it was conspiratorial you know, you’re a biological robot in a meaningless universe. I like Gosh darn, those guys are so dumb they don’t know it, that you know, I did it for five years. I’m like wait a minute they knew it all along, they’re just pushing. They’re advancing of certain agenda for certain reasons. Okay, now it seems obvious to me. But I can tell you, I was doing a lot of interviews and it didn’t seem obvious and I was interviewing skeptics and I thought well, they just really don’t know darn it, I got to convince him. So that’s number one, is that I think there’s a lot of different shades of kind of not knowing on both sides. One, like the consumers of the information you know, the guy on my side on the outside, docent know, but I think the guys on the inside don’t know too. The guys in the ivory tower you know, there’s the useful idiot thing and then there’s the player thing and then there’s a lot of things in between. So useful idiot is just someone who doesn’t know it. He’s just seems to be, he’s advancing the narrative that they want, so that he doesn’t realize it but they’re just laying down a little cheese in his maz and he’s just following it and he’s doing their bidding without knowing it. And then there’s the player the guy who we find out is totally dialed in and his CIA or NSA or one of your guys you know, Navy intelligence, military intelligence, but then there’s a lot of things in between that, too…

David Mathisen: [00:31:10] I’m not, I’m not, I’m not connected to military intelligence anyway. All right.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:31:15] Continue. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’m sorry.

David Mathisen: [00:31:17] I’ve just said it was a low level. I got to the rank of captain and I was in the infantry and I was a, uh, I was an infantry officer. That’s what I did. I wasn’t dialed into. And I wasn’t privy to any secrets, the layer

Alex Tsakiris: [00:31:29] system. And you know what, even that I have to say.

Because I made a major misstep in saying that because lot of people will go there. Cause I get this all the time. People are like, uh, wait, no, it’s not necessarily. So, you know, but, uh, I’m, I’m gonna digress too far. One thing I want to interject is you are qualified, you know, like before you, you, didn’t just not only West point, you got a master’s degree, you went back and did you did teaching it?

Where are the bore college or at West point?

David Mathisen: [00:32:00] I taught at West point. Yeah. I taught in the department of English and philosophy at West point. In fact, I had the wonderful opportunity to teach the Odyssey. I always mentioned that because it was such a highlight because I’ve loved the Odyssey. Like the Odyssey could be your Bible.

If you want to use the Odyssey as a Bible, that is, it is as profound as any other literature on the planet. And I got to use the translation by the late great Robert Fagles. He was a professor at Princeton and he came and spent time with us while we were teaching his translation of the Odyssey. So I’m always partial to his translation.

It’s a fantastic translation, but he was a wonderful scholar and wonderful. Just a gentlemen, uh, just a wonderful person. So that was a great experience. Yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:32:46] Just as an aside where you turned onto the star myth at that time, were

David Mathisen: [00:32:49] you making those? No. No. So that’s the thing. Yeah, Alex, I loved the stars. I loved the myths.

I was a very conservative literalist Christian at the time I was not looking for this. That’s the other thing, you know, people can say, Oh, maybe Dave’s a, you know, an insider. I was not even looking for this. So if I said, so if I’m giving away, uh, information, it wasn’t, if it was given to me, it was given to me by some kind of brain wave weapon that I don’t know what was happening.

I was not looking for the Bible to be all based on the stars. In fact, I was very resistant to that idea. I was reading the Bible on Sunday, exclusively. I was not reading secular literature on Sundays. That’s how serious I was about, you know, that was the, you know, the commandment of the Sabbath. You don’t.

I even, when I was going to grad school, I didn’t read any of my study materials on Sunday. I just went to church and read the Bible. And so later when I started to see the connections between the myths and the stars and seeing that their Bible was also based on the same system, uh, you know, I had a choice to make the evidence kept piling up.

I had to either change. Really radically. My, my point of view, which changed a lot of other things about my beliefs on politics and economics and other things. Um, but it changed my whole life, really. So I was not looking for it. I don’t know if that did I know.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:34:20] Let’s see. No, no, that’s it. And because you know, that, that relates directly to this kind of third point where I think we kind of, for people to understand what we’re going to talk about.

They have to understand these three intersections in our kind of approach, because I see you as this understanding spirituality at a deeper level, not in terms of your personal spirituality, because I don’t know what your personal spirituality is, but I understand that you understand that it’s in play here because so many times when I talk to, I think it’s a major failing of history.

And when I talked to historians kind of mainstream historians, how they pulled out this undeniable fact that each one of these people we’re talking about are leading rich spiritual lives. And that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that it’s a good bridge spiritual life. I mean, whether it’s angels or demons or satanic, or, you know, Mithra or whatever it is, they are having the same kind of rich spiritual, you know, who am I, why am I here?

What happens after I die? What is the way that my soul is there a moral? And to take that out of the equation, to me, you, you can’t write it. You can’t understand it. You can’t begin to. And I think that is so, uh, so much a part of, uh, of really your work in a way that you don’t always put forward, but it’s certainly right there.

I mean, right under the surface is that those people that were staring up at the stars, there was a connection on a, on a very deep, spiritual level that they were trying to understand. And then you’re saying that there was another, that they’re really connecting to something else, but that’s almost secondary to the fact that there is that spirituality in people that so many times history leaves out.

David Mathisen: [00:36:09] Yeah. This is an important point. And so, you know, you said something earlier about Christianity being OSI op or, you know, convince it, being convinced that Christianity is a sigh up. And I would

Alex Tsakiris: [00:36:20] the, the origin. And let me, let me make sure, cause I don’t want to go off on the right thing. The, the initial.

Origins of it, the start of it. I think it turned into something completely different than what they could have imagined, but I think we can trace back to it. It was just something, an operation that went really, really so much better than they ever could have imagined. But anyways, go ahead. Maybe you don’t

David Mathisen: [00:36:44] know.

I, I would say that the imposition of literalist Christianity was a deliberate. It just, it just doesn’t happen that Christianity just took over the Roman empire and the way we’re kind of taught that, Oh, you know, just, um, we can get into that, but Christianity itself or the scriptures, the ancient stories that are in the Bible, the old Testament and the new Testament, I believe are very ancient, very profound, very positive, very beneficial, and speaking in and speak to people.

And that’s part of the reason why, you know, I, like I said, I was, I found a lot of truth and meaning in the Bible while I was taking it, literally, however, I believe that taking it literally inverts, I think what happened was ancient. This ancient system is related to all the other myths that the stories in the Bible, or related to the myths of Oh Cyrus or the Gilgamesh and Ana and the stories that you find in the Americas.

They’re very profound. They have a very positive potential use, but like a martial art as that kind of say, in the book, a martial art can be used for very positive things. It can also be used for negative things and what this imposition of this literalist, um, structure that then became basically an imperialist structure that went out and started stamping out other stamped.

At first, they stamped out all the Roman and Greek gods and the Egyptian gods, and then they started stamping out what was in Western Europe. And then Northern Europe came later like Scandinavia the North Smiths, and then it jumped across and started stamping out whatever I could find in the Americas.

It is a world dominating, uh, system, which the, the good teachings of those ancient stories are still there. But when you start to understand that they’re not literal, I believe you can. It is, it is profoundly positive and you get rid of the negative parts that come along with the literalness the most of the negative aspects of it come from the literalist imposition.

Which is a mistake or a twisting and inversion of the stories in the first place. Maybe I’m getting a little ahead cause I haven’t even shown anything, but that’s, I wanted to kind of make that clear. I’m not trying to bash anybody’s deep beliefs. And if you have deep beliefs in something, uh, if you know Jesus or whatever else, I’m not trying to take away from what, what, what works for anybody.

But this is, this has been very profound for me. And I, I think it’s definitely worth sharing and, and seeing, Oh my goodness, I know an entire new depth of multiple depths of meaning come out when you start to actually listen to them in the language that they’re speaking, which is an esoteric metaphorical language, that is a celestial based on celestial metaphor.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:39:52] And I’m okay with that, but I’m not interested in it, but understand why I’m not interested in it because I don’t want us to get kind of at cross purposes. I’m not interested in it because I just want to drive towards a couple of data points and then let people run wherever they want with them. And it is, as you said, first, my first inclination is kind of deconstruction and destruction in a lot of ways.

So I’m not interested in preserving somebody’s a belief system or interjecting my belief system. I’m just interested in. Laying out the facts. And again, , go to David’s books and learn all about the myths and the connection I’m saying he is understood.

He understands the spiritual connection, but here’s where I’m trying to go. I’m talking too much. I want to start chapter 13, the cult of Mithras in this book, myth of trauma, because to me, I want to pull you into focus on this point, because I think it’s a pivotal, pivotal point in history and it’s not obscure history.

Like, like the thing that people should get excited about your work is it’s ancient. But it’s immediate it’s right now, it’s happening. And I say the same thing about this, you know, you’ve got to talk about, uh, Mithras, you immediately go to Julius Caesar. Who’s interesting. And Brutus and Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, it’s all right there.

And then you go to, you know, Jesus, it’s that time period and all right there. So you should be interested in all those reasons, but the real reason you should be interested in it is you’re living it right now. You are living the result of that cult and what they did and how they socially engineered our spiritual yearning into something that they want.

So I’ll just start with the history and pulling you to chapter 13. What is the cult of,

David Mathisen: [00:42:02] yeah, I know you and you’re absolutely right, Alex. It is, it is, this is the biggest conspiracy in history and it’s still going on and it impacts, you know what, wherever you are on the political spectrum, that political spectrum is a playing out of this same, same thing that’s been going on forever.

And, uh, I will show you, I’ve got slides in here for Mithras. So the cult of Mithras is often portrayed as. Arrival to Christianity. There are all these different mystery religions floating around in the Roman empire at that time. And people were experimenting with all these different things. And, um, Mithra ism started getting traction, especially among the army.

It was definitely among the army, the Praetorian guard. If you’ve seen the movie gladiator, actually that movie for whatever reason happens to focus in on almost the crucial juncture in this whole conspiracy, the handoff between Marcus Aurelius, who most people have heard of, and his son comedies, who was played by walking Phoenix in that movie.

And, um, we’ll get into that. But so the cult of Mithras or the, the society of Mithras or Mithra ism is often portrayed as well. It was gaining a lot of traction at the same time that Christianity was gaining a lot of traction and both w and, and history was in the balance and it could have tipped one way or the other, but, uh, Christianity went out why?

Well, probably because Mithra is only allowed men into the lodges. It was a little more exclusive and Christianity was a little more inclusive and Christianity, you know, Jesus famously hung out with prostitutes and, you know, everybody was welcome. Whereas Mithra ism was a little bit more, uh, you know, the army or the.

Praetorian guard or certain people who were in the kind of the equities, the equity, uh, uh, equestrian class and therefore Christianity won out. It’s totally false.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:44:11] Yes, that’s, that’s the whole, but none. And that’s all great. So, but, uh, let’s break down for people because, uh, this term cult is really interesting, cause it kind of has a different meaning for us than it did for them back then.

And, and, and so let’s talk about what cult meant and then it’s really interesting, you know, I would interject a little bit is that the whole culture thing starts with Julia Caesar who is kind of this pretty big ego guy. And he says, you know, the, the Senate and kind of democracy thing is a big enough, how do I give them bigger?

I make myself a God, you know, well, I need a God, I need a way to worship and that’s becomes the origin of the cult. And then that works. So it’s rebooted over and over again. But, uh, add to that. But you know what I mean, cult is what we would understand to be the Catholic church would be exactly equivalent.

The, the, the Roman would see absolutely no difference between what we’re, what they’re calling a cult and a Roman Roman Catholic.

David Mathisen: [00:45:16] Right. Well, you know, the, the term cult in our, in our society has been heavily impacted by what happened during the sixties where you had. What we’re basically intelligence operations and creating Colts like Manson.

That was, that was a complete operation. Um, Jim Jones, if you, if you dig into the Jonestown, you will uncover the threads that pull apart. You know, the entire wall that’s been pulled over your eyes as a, you know, as, as Morpheus famously says in the, uh, in the matrix, if you pull on Jonestown, the whole will, the world that’s been pulled over, your eyes comes apart.

Um, and John judge Rohde, uh, uh, like a longer than essay about Jonestown that really shows you that that was an operation. So these Colts, like if you watch the movie bad times at the El Royale where there’s a cult in there, uh, it’s, it is that, that is like the sixties, um, re-enact and, or use weaponization of, of certain things that, that the, that this group has been, has known how to do for a long time.

Um, now I’m saying too much scratch that from the record area, Alex so Colt, I have this idea that I’ve called, that’s been basically impressed on us because of the Moonies and, uh, uh, you know, Jonestown, all of which have intelligence connections. And this whole thing that I’m talking about is.

Intelligence agencies are basically the modern in modern arm of this cult of Mithras or operation of Mithras. But the word culture comes from the word culture. It means something that grows. If I cultivate the land, you know, I can make barley grow or I can make flowers grow. I can grow. And we, human beings, everything we do is culture, whether it’s, um, you know, you can read, you know, like I said, I, I, I got a master’s in English and read a lot of Fuko and, you know, the, the dairy diet in the, these, uh, scholars in the sixties who started to say, let me examine the phenomenon of Friday night fights and what that that’s a cultural manifestation of the fifties, or the types of cars, people drive that is culture.

And so once we start to identify ourselves with certain, well, I dress this way, I’m sending you signals in and you basically create a culture which, uh, an, uh, a cult has kind of religious or spiritual aspects to it. And there was a lot of that floating around in the, in the period in the Roman period, you know, we found the dead sea scrolls, and they’re a big part of this story.

And I think you want to get to those. And I’ve got some things to say about the dead sea scrolls, because they, uh, have, they have tremendous evidence that points to something went on that eliminated the ancient wisdom. I think. Really, what I want to do is show what kind of, uh, uh, a couple of slides that maybe give some people who are right now, maybe spinning going, what the heck is David and Alex talking about?

Um, just to put a little bit of a framework on it, to show what was lost, what we had was ancient wisdom that was given to every culture around the world. And then it got stamped out. And around the time it got stamped out, there were Colts circulating around. You have the S scenes, which a lot of people associate them with the dead sea scrolls, where they had a very strict, you don’t get into that community except through like two years of probation.

Well, yeah, we’ll let you in. But every six months, we’re going to talk about your behavior and see what, Nope, he didn’t button his bottom button on his tunic. That guy is too radical, kick him out. And they weren’t necessarily, the scenes were a cult, but they weren’t necessarily gathering people in. People were coming to the scenes.

They weren’t running around trying to impose their views on others. At least most scholars say they weren’t. Then you had kind of apocalyptic cults who were actually actively going out and seeking members and saying, listen, the world is fixing to end in a couple of years. It is time now to quickly sell all your possessions and start doing the right thing.

Or you’re going to be burned up instead of going to the good place and that was going on and they were aggressively going out and, you know, gathering or spreading their message. And you listened to, you know, scholars talking about John, the Baptist will say, look at John, the Baptist. He is saying, the ax is at the root of the tree.

It’s about to come down, repent, get in the water right now and change your life or else because the tree is about to get chopped down now, um, that was going on at this time. So that’s more of what we think about as a cult. A cult goes on TV and has ads and says you should come and do, do this and get, and get right before something bad happens.

The UFO comes and takes us. You know, I was out in the desert when that, that whole, uh, Hale-Bopp comment. I was out in the national training center under the stars. And I looked up and I said, that’s a comment. I didn’t even know. There was a comment coming. This was in the 96, the hell bought, bought comment.

And there was the heaven’s gate cult. You remember that? And they all, you know, committed suicide because they thought that the UFO was coming. So anyway, um,

Alex Tsakiris: [00:51:00] we’ll, we’ll hold on. Cause you know, there’s a couple of different ways to go there and I don’t want to slow that down and I want you to go ahead and do those slides.

Um, but there’s something might beneath the surface there that we have to kind of bring out is that. For whatever reason, we all have programmed into us, this positive thing about cults and this negative thing about cults in terms of our participation in them. We need community. We like community, we like fellowship and we like structure.

We like rules and that isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes that gets out of control. So, you know, you’re talking about the dead sea scrolls and some of the evangelical groups that are described there. I mean, it’s wacky, it’s just like you’re saying they’re different versions of the same thing that we see today.

And we see that people, when they get together, have a tendency to do that. I think what your book also, or your whole work also relates to though, which is the in difficult thing to balance. And I don’t know if we’re going to be able to balance it in this conversation is there’s a genuine spiritual yearning in these people.

So a lot of times when we look at that from an atheistic perspective, Oh, that was fucking Moonies. What idiots, you know, or those Jim Jones being well, how could you be so stupid? How could you inject that Kool-Aid into your daughter’s mouth? Well, I would suggest again that those people are having rich spiritual lives.

Now, maybe it’s, they’re talking to. They’re being influenced by malevolence. I don’t know. I don’t know what their spiritual life is, but I think we make a mistake. If we think that they’re not trying to figure the shit out in the same way that we are. And you’re not saying otherwise, I’m just saying when we start pulling that apart, there’s those two aspects of it.

And then there’s this third aspect of it, which I’m going to turn this into a question. Cause I don’t know, but my little riff on the Imperial cult that was really started by a really is after Caesar. Cause you know, really this is the great grand it’s his great grand uncle or whatever C uh, Julius Caesar is, but he wants to wrap himself around that.

So he says, no, I’m going to create the Imperial cult is about Caesar and you guys want to worship Caesar. He was like a God. And then he goes and who am I? Well, I’m the adopted son of the God, isn’t that pretty good? And he starts building these temples, these Colts, these temples all throughout the empire too.

Again, I think it relates to what you’re saying to kind of mirror compete, uh, offer a counterbalance to the other temples and things that are going on because he sees that that’s kind of an important thing. And that Imperial cult thing that starts with the kind of that then gets rebooted. And it’s going to get rebooted later in later and later because it becomes this.

Lay that we can kind of turn in. And, and then, so we’re going to tie that into the cult of Mithras. Maybe the cult of Mithras has going on all through this or not, but what would, what do you think about any of that? Do you have any

David Mathisen: [00:54:14] thoughts or that’s okay, so, so the first, so the first part, um, so I think you’re thinking of Augustus.

You, you, you slipped and said that’s okay though, but actually, so the, um, you know, the association of Kings with gods in ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia is not really that uncommon. It is uncommon in Greece, right? Greeks would have none of that crap. They’d be like, no, no, no, no. Right. So, but there’s a reason I would say, you know, is a bit of a tangent, but it’s not really because it’s, uh, it’s almost like a political question of the gifts of the gods to a nation include the rivers, include the fertile soil.

All those things were seen as coming from the gods and the gifts of the people, the children that are born are born there by the, by the will of the gods. And you Alex have certain gifts and makeup that is just yours. You have certain. Personality traits and interests. And like, you will take the conversation in a different way than any other podcast or that I talked to you because you’re Alex, right?

You’ve been given that those gifts by the gods and that this was the ancient perspective. And so who protects those or the King is responsible for making sure that those gifts are benefiting the whole land and are not taken over by oligarchs who just use them for themselves. The tyrant was actually the guy who came in and smashed up the oligarchs when they got to, uh, grabbing and taking all of the gifts of the gods away from the rest of the people and just benefiting themselves.

So the King was there as like a representative of the gods, too, prevent to ensure, ideally I’m saying ideally that, okay, ancients were fine with democracy and they were fine with monarchy. They weren’t too keen on oligarchy, which is basically what we have today. But anyway, um, the, the corn would have pictures of the gods on them because the whole economy comes from the gifts of the gods.

And sometimes they would also have the King on there because he or the queen is supposed to be like the intermediary for the ruling on behalf of the gods for, for the benefit of the people. Yeah. Long tangent. But so I would say that what’s, you know, Julius Caesar is not my expertise. And I think that the whole imposition of the myth wrist movement came after in the time of Vespasian, which, you know, you’ve talked to Joe at-will a few times and we can get into that whole thing, the whole, the Vespasian, uh, um, Titus and demission the Flavian dentisty or dynasty is a crucial turning point.

It’s it’s after the Caesars it’s after Nero it’s right after. Yeah,

Alex Tsakiris: [00:57:14] absolutely. Absolutely. So, and I want you to, to go on that and, and to, to, to move there, um, I just wanted to, I was hoping that I was building on what you were saying, and I I’d kind of, I don’t think that last part of what you said is a tangent at all.

It’s something that it’s going to be impossible to wrestle to the ground, but I think it’s fundamental to your work. And I think it’s fundamental to basically what I’m saying too, is that I don’t know what these extended realms are, but you just gave one possible narrative for how we interact with these extended realms.

Right. Which is there is some moral. Imperative. I always say there is some moral good, there is some moral direction there it is accessible. It was designed to be accessible to the people, through the people who rule them. That sometimes goes awry and it gets, you know. Awesome. Awesome. And I, I mean that, you know, so then I think that’s a good, a good thing to have on the table, Dave, cause we gotta kind of establish where we’re coming from.

And again, w we might not get all the way through to where we want to get today, but we have to do this. Otherwise it doesn’t really make any sense. So the only reason I want to talk about Josephus, I want to talk about the Flavian. I think that’s where the action is. I want to talk about Josephus that’s where that’s the part that’s really got me excited.

But when I w my kind of quick read through it found that really this, this whole idea that we can kind of reboot this idea of the cult we can reboot, which pops up directly into what you’re going to say with, you know, it’s not that far from Vespasian. And I think when Vespasian does it, and then really, you know, when we’re going to talk about the flavor ones we got and we have Titus who only serves a very short time, and then we have demission and a lot of people, I don’t know where to think, but to read that history, it looks like the mission killed.

Titus. I mean that a lot of people suspect that in that could be true. And it’s kind of interesting. Cause then he, of course really reboots the, the cult and really advances that thing, which is like, Oh, the glorification of my brother and my father, which weekend would be typical, you know, play in the playbook of how to kind of, I another play in the evil playbook, but I’m just jumping in there.

I mean, we don’t have to take us to the slides that you have. Maybe this is

David Mathisen: [01:00:04] interesting. Cause I, I, I think it’s really interesting the direction it’s kind of, that’s, what’s grown up out of the cultivation of our conversation so far that, because I think that the smashing of that ancient understanding was in order to grab the resources among certain families, which is exactly what happened after the, after the Roman empire was dissolved Europe, especially Western Europe, because the Roman empire cracked into Eastern and Western and the Western Roman empire cracked into feudal fiefdoms, which then feudalism came in.

That is the part of the world that basically then went out and colonized everybody later on, it became the colonial powers that started taking the resources from Africa, America. Asia India, everywhere else. So this whole story and actually, yeah, I mean, I think they were distraught. They were dismantling the Roman empire.

They were not exalting the Caesars. They were basically trying to get the Caesars out of the way and all the mechanisms of basically communal the communal mechanisms that could stand against the oligarchs had to go. And that’s, that’s what I would, I would argue. This is more about oligarchs overthrowing, anything that changed them down.

That’s why I’m not a libertarian.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:01:32] Well, and again, it’s, it’s hard to unpack all this because one of the things I think I see differently, I’m really hung up on this idea of this, uh, spiritual life that people are living. And I think like even in this Roman empire, I see people that try and put it back, try and put it back on course and the power of the cult, the power of the evil, which is kind of, and the attraction of that.

Um, kind of wins out. Sometimes it doesn’t win. And then at other places and other parts of the world, it doesn’t. So I think it’s kind of a IOC. It is kind of a mixed bag as history progresses. And then also, you know, I think when you jump to the end game, literally, which is totally true, like, uh, like what you’re saying, the way I interpreted is that these guys, at some point, realize, wait a minute, this Christianity thing is the best fucking game in town.

We can I have a great quote in the thing. It’s like, you know, it’s the better way to rule it’s it’s if I have two, uh, different groups that hate each other, but they’re both Christian and I’m the Pope, I, this is the best possible situation they’re struggling. They’re at odds with you, they’re fighting each other and I’m above.

I’m always above. I’m always above. It’s the best possible thing, but where we kind of maybe see it slightly differently is I don’t think they had, I don’t think it had set a great plan. I think the plan was kind of like, you know, like a lot of things that we see in real life, it’s like, Oh shit, I did. That was a mistake.

Well, wait a minute, maybe it wasn’t such a mistake. Maybe we can go to the next, maybe we can get this done, you know it, and so, uh, that’s always in the back of my mind, is that. You know, bring her back, but we’ll let this conversation, like this is going to throw people are going to be like, whoops. But like when you were talking about Corona, uh, I don’t think these guys had any clue that they would be as successful with this social engineering project as it was.

I don’t think in their wildest dreams, they thought they would get everybody to just turn upside down, give away all their rights that it would just be kind of just, you know, everyone just turn over and say, okay, I’ll do whatever you say. Not in their wildest dreams. And the radio was the way I relate it back to is I look at like a climate change.

They tried that fucking global warming shit for 20 years and it didn’t, it didn’t work if they were geniuses, they would’ve made that work. And you can see they’re trying to bring it back now, but the thing is, they don’t always have the answer. It’s just, they got a lot of guns. They have a lot of, uh, bullets, you know, and they could keep firing and keep firing.

So th th I think that’s at play here and you might not see it that way, but I don’t think they could have possibly seen how successful this game would be until it started to unfold.

David Mathisen: [01:04:46] Yeah. I, um, you know, I’m not unwilling to go down those roads, but I do want to actually go back to, because you’ve dropped this idea a couple of times and I haven’t picked it up because I, um, About people searching for they’re searching, they join a cult because they’re searching the, the whole central thesis of myth and trauma.

The book, myth and trauma is that these ancient myths are actually they’re, multi-multi layered, but they have as a central theme, the repair of trauma, the repair of that alienation, that, that, that hunger that we have inside our ourselves, what are we looking for? We’re searching for something the myths are talking about that.

And it’s very, very powerful and it’s very, very beneficial. And, and what we’re looking for is ourself. You’re looking for yourself, you’ve been alienated from yourself. That’s why there’s so many myths about twins. And there’s some, I can show you beyond doubt that the myths are talking about that and how to repair that.

And we’re looking for that desperately. And, um, that’s the only way to actually live up to our full potential. I would argue is to recover that connection and get back in touch with who we are that because otherwise we’re sabotaging ourself all the time. And I think probably every listener, certainly myself, I have plenty of experience, uh, With self-sabotage like, I think we all know what that feels is and feels like.

And so getting back in touch with yourself, think how much, you know, if you could live up to your full potential, think how great that would be. Well, if, if the myths are about that and you’re trying to impose tyranny oppression, and, uh, you know, taking away resources or imposing poverty and you don’t want P you don’t want that.

And that’s why, why

Alex Tsakiris: [01:06:54] would someone do that? Why would someone go down that path? Why would someone do those things to other people?

David Mathisen: [01:07:00] Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:07:02] uh, no, no. I’m, I’m asking it as

David Mathisen: [01:07:04] a real question. Yeah. To, in order to take over and be, look, if I’m the only one who knows Kung Fu in the village, I can run that village.

Now you

Alex Tsakiris: [01:07:16] want to run that. Why do you even want to run that? Why do you want to run that this is what we’re going to

David Mathisen: [01:07:19] go right. To, to their self that’s. Why? Cause if they were, they’d be like the Kung Fu master who comes in and says, I’m here to help. I’m here to help. Uh, I look, I’m here to help prevent bullying.

You know, th the, if you think of like the Kung Fu movie, it’s usually the Kung Fu master wanders in, and he’s there and he’s, he’s protecting the woman from being abused and he’s stopping the, the robbery that’s going on. And it usually turns out that the central villain is also a Kung Fu master and he’s using his Kung Fu.

To oppress the village and then they have a big fight and that’s kind of the that’s, that’s the plot, how to write a great Kung Fu movie. So why is that? Why what’s wrong with that bad Kung Fu master that he wants to take over the village and steal from everybody there’s something wrong inside that needs to get reconnected with that person.

And I, and I, I think every single human being on this planet is a potential ally. I don’t want it. I don’t, you know, I think every single person, even the ones who are doing very bad things can see the earth, their ways and, and, and turn towards, uh, spreading the truth. I don’t know if this is answering your question directly, answering

Alex Tsakiris: [01:08:36] your question.

And I agree. So I agree that everyone has the potential to turn towards the light, but I also think, and like, I, I just wrote this book why evil matters and we’re not talking about this book. And the point of the book is that we have to ask ourself why. How this evil thing works and it, it, it has to be more than just our answer of just I’m all about, uh, look to the light.

The secret of the scent is to always look up. I’m always about that. But there’s another level of that, that we have to understand. I interviewed this guy. He’s a prominent book is a clinical psychologist from grand Rapids, Michigan. Right? So he’s just working with patients. I’m afraid of spider has helped me.

I’m afraid of the water. It starts interviewing people and they have satanic ritual abuse in their background from when they’re a kid, you know, you’re four years old, you’re getting satanic ritual abuse. Cause your parents put you into that a hell of a hell of a way to come up. But there’s an evil there that we need to understand beyond, you know, we need to understand.

And, and th you know, I always tell the story, but tired of it, the guy who wrote that book, uh, and the guy who’s the clinical psychologist in there, he reached out to me and he said, Alex, you don’t understand evil. You don’t understand evil and darkness and darkness is just there. It’s like gravity and evil is our need to explore darkness at different times.

And so if the myths that you’re talking about are engaged in that, like you’re saying, they are then that’s useful, but I think it’s also useful to understand on a practical level that people are having extended. Consciousness experiences with malevolent entities that want them to do bad things, and they are being influenced in different ways.

And they’re being influenced. We’re all being influenced on this plane in on other planes. So I don’t need you to believe that or endorse that, but I equally don’t need to believe or endorse, you know, a different belief about how, you know, people are processing that. And we have, no, everyone can be an ally.

It’s like, ah, I kind of think that some people in their current where they’re at are just from a practical standpoint are not going to be allies. And as a matter of fact, I think if we see them as allies, I think that’s a kind of a, a weakness that we have in our culture that, you know, we have to see, Oh, everyone, you know, there really is.

No, God, there really is no extended consciousness. So potentially, you know, it’s just all our social concepts. No, there’s people out there. It’s not like we’re talking about the COVID. I mean, there’s an agenda there and the people are running. It are not nice people, but they are spiritual people. They just haven’t connected.

If you want to say, you know, they haven’t connected that part. That’s fine. But I think we have to look at what they’ve done and that’s the history that we’re talking about.

David Mathisen: [01:11:42] Yeah. I don’t disagree with any of that, Alex. I don’t, I don’t disagree with any of that. And I’m certainly not a sugar coating ne I mean, You know, I talk about, I talk about a lot of bad things in that book.

And, you know, you talked about abusing children that is going on systematically, right? Uh, it’s not, we shouldn’t call it pedophile either. Cause the root of that is like, you know, love, it’s molestation, abuse, you know, uh, uh, rape. So, um, and it’s systematic and it’s been systematically covered up. So I’m not denying any of that.

And I would say that as connected to this story as well, I don’t, you know, go down that path. I don’t tend to gravitate towards talking about that, but I talk about Nazi Germany in that book. And I talk about, um,

talk about the things that, the things that were done to the native Americans in central America, in India, I mean it still going on. So, so yeah, I mean the, the, the, the, the problem of evil is certainly in the myths. Don’t deny that. I mean, the myths are actually very brutal and, um, Explicit and bizarre in many ways.

And you have gods who are capricious and you have gods who are malevolent and you have gods who just you’ve got, you know, just go into the Greek myths, which are very familiar to a lot of people. You’ve got a Thena and she is a war goddess in a sense, she wears a helmet, she’s got a spirit she’s for justice and then there’s areas and he’s a war.

God, and he’s completely different. He’s like, who can I stab in the guts right now? Because I just feel like seeing some intestines fall out right now, I’m in that kind of a mood right now. Yeah. It’s a completely different and Athena is always getting angry with Aries and they’re, you know, they’re constantly kind of bringing their battles in front of Zeus, but there are malevolent, um, entities throughout the myths and, and, uh, you know, I’ve, I’ve written, you know, you mentioned my blog and I’ve now been doing it for over 10 years.

There’s over 1300 posts. And there’s one in there where I’m talking about there’s this, um, the gentleman who, who channels the guides and he’s so able to, he says it so fast, he’s talking so fast. He’s hearing it from, and I asked the question, is that from outside himself or inside himself? And the answer I say is, I don’t know, but actually I don’t think it matters.

The gods work their way out through men and women, whether they’re external or internal, whether. Whether it Athena is inside of a deceased his head when she’s talking to him or she’s in a different dimension.

I’m not the expert on that. Um, I can show you that the myths are based on the star, so they’re not literal. They’re talking about metaphor. I do believe that they’re talking about the infinite realm and that’s one of the reasons they use the stars. When we’re looking up into the stars, we’re looking into an infinite realm and they’re using no visible aspects to paint a picture about invisible truths.

That’s all going on. I’ve talked about that extensively. So, um, I do think it would be good to show, you know, just, I don’t know if we’re, we’re at the end of the show, but, uh, to show some of the actual to show what was lost and we can jump into Josephus at any point, but I would like to just show it because it’ll show, when we talk about Mithra ism, then you’ll have a framework to put it into.

When I say that’s also less Joel, that was imposed by people who understood this ancient system at the same time, they’re smashing the ancient system, they’re using it for their benefit. And you know, it makes sense if I show you the slides, cause then, then people can go aha. Everything that, let me go back and start again at the beginning, because now what he’s saying makes sense that it’s all based on the star.

Now I’m going to share my screen. I’ll move through this kind of fast, cause I know you want to get to some Josephus, but this really helps. And I chose some things from ancient Greece for you, but this is actually a Maya cup.

I started with a Maya cup. This is I think so powerful. This was brought to my attention by someone commenting on one of my YouTube videos that said, Hey, this, this Maya cup looks like it’s got the same thing going on. I see in my animation, I didn’t get rid of that one line. Sorry, I’ll get to that later.

But there’s all the data. You can see this in the metropolitan museum of art in New York city is from the seventh and eighth century. Ady and or CE, if you prefer from Maya, this is a rain. God, whose name is chalk. He’s a reign God of the Maya he’s well known. They have, you know, glyphs that say his name.

So we know that that’s chalk look at his posture. He’s got a lunge posture, rear hero race. I’m just going to go through it really fast. Some people have heard this before, but it’s really powerful when you see it, he’s holding a weapon. This weapon is kind of over his back. It’s an ax. I’ve drawn an arrow to it.

That squiggly line is supposed to come in later. And I apologize that it’s still there on the screen. That’s my drawing. It’s not in the artwork. He’s also got another arm. There’s one over his back with a weapon. This case in acts other ones reaching forward. It’s actually grasping this circular kind of disc thing.

Then he’s also got this loin cloth that he’s wearing around his waist. And there’s this long Tuft that kind of comes out. I’ve circled it there, but that’s that Tuft right there at the end is important. Just note that here’s just moving really quickly, obviously artwork from a different culture, a different century, a different continent.

This is ancient Greece. This is Zeus. The great God Zeus. We know it Zeus the ancient artist or at least the ancient artists’ friend who could write Zeus has written the name there. So we know it. Zeus, look at the same posture we’ve got, and this is from five 40 BC or thereabouts. We’ve got again, the rear, this big lunge rear heel raised, he’s got one arm over his head holding a weapon in this case, it’s a Thunderbolt, but he’s also got this outstretched front arm.

Zeus’s son, Hercules almost always depicted in this posture, same rear heel and weapon over head, this case, the Veys kind of curves away. So you can’t see exactly what he’s wielding, but it’s probably his favorite weapon, which is a club. And he’s got this outstretched arm and it’s near the crest. He’s fighting the Amazon warrior women in this one of his 12 labors of Hercules.

But you see grasping or nearly grasping something kind of circular or semi-circular. And looking at that little tail on his, I put one more arrow. You see that tail of his lion skin Hercules is almost always depicted in a lion scan with the thing over his head. See the Tuft of the lion’s tail right there.

Notice the similarity to chalk and I’ll show it again. Here’s one more of Hercules this time. He’s in a different battle, but he’s got that rear heel raised. He’s got one arm holding the weapon over his back in this case. There’s that lion’s tail with a little Tuft. It’s pretty, it’s kind of like artsy looking.

This is kind of, it looks almost like art deco period of ancient Greece. But, uh, in this case, Hercules is actually grasping the crest of his opponent’s helmet. I’m going to blow it up so that people can see it on their screen. A little bit bigger route. There’s the same painting. You can see his hand right there, grasping the crest.

Can you see that his hand is grasping the crest. Look at chalk. He’s grasping a desk. Look at Hercules. He’s grasping a crest. Why? Because this is the constellation Hercules. Sorry. That squiggly line is not part of the constellation. That’s supposed to come in as a big reveal later, but my animation skills somehow missed that.

Um, but this is the constellation, the outline of the constellation called Hercules in the sky. Actually it looks a little like curious, George. Um, this is the ha Ray outline of Hercules now near Hercules. There’s this beautiful arc called the Northern crown, but in Latin, it’s actually called Corona.

That’s Corona Borealis, the Northern crown, the crown of the North. Look at where it is in and look at Hercules. He’s got the rear heel, he’s got the lunge posture. He’s got a weapon over one side. He’s reaching out with the other hand and the other hand could be envisioned as grasping Corona Borealis. Now let’s go back to chalk.

See, look, I didn’t. I didn’t change the outline of Hercules and I didn’t change chalk on the Maya cup that was founded in the America is nowhere near Greece. And I can show you this from around the world. I could show you this from India, with their rain, God Indra, who wields the weapon, which is like Zeus has Thunderbolt.

Zeus is also a storm. God, chalk is a storm. God, look at what he’s grasping. He’s grasping the Northern crown. And by the way, there’s this very bright star named Vega. That’s what the squiggly line is pointing to. That’s the Tuft of Hercules, his tail. That’s the Tuft of shocks a loincloth. I’m going fast, but hopefully this makes sense to people that is the star Vegas, the fifth brightest star in the sky.

It’s that it’s right there next to Hercules and this beautiful piece of artwork I’m going to get now. And we’re going to go to Josephus in a second. I know you’re chomping at the bit to get to Josephus, and maybe we have to save some of it for another time. But this was only found in 2017, this is called the Pylos combat agate.

It was found in Pylos on the Western Peloponnese in Greece, from a tomb that was sealed up and undisturbed since 1500 BC is very ancient. This is way before classical Greece, which was like 500 BC. Um, this is the tomb. Was sealed up in 1500 BC, who knows when this Pylos ag it was made, it could have been made in 100 or 200 years before that, for all we know it’s only 3.5 centimeters wide, which I could spend an hour talking about the detail.

How did they do this? But let’s look at the celestial elements. We’ve got an exaggerated lunge posture. Very clearly. We’ve got the raised heel. We’ve got the old sword or weapon arm over the back, and then we’ve got the other arm reaching out and what’s it doing? It’s grasping another circular crest of a helmet that they’ve put onto this amazing piece of art, which was only uncovered in 2017.

They found this tomb, but it’s Corona already out there. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is based on the stars because I’ve seen it many times before 2017, I’d already pointed this out. And then this thing gets uncovered in 2017. And by the way, do you see that this warrior who’s about to stab the other warrior has a sword, a scabbard on his waist with a pommel right there.

See that bulb of a pommel that’s indicating the position of Vega. Again, the stars are all in the right places. This is clearly based on the stars. And you could say, but that doesn’t mean the Bible is based on the stars. The Bible doesn’t have pictures, it’s text all the things that they’re describing.

The Bible can be shown to be using this same system. This system is worldwide. I just showed you in. You know, the Maya and in Greece, and I could show you from Egypt, I could show you from Mesopotamia. It is worldwide, and it’s all through the Bible. This is a shared system that should actually unite us all.

And, um, but as the literalist Christianity, so how did let’s uh, that’s that’s what happened to my squiggly thing. So let me just, this is go Beckley Tepi I’m just going to put it up on the timeline as it was deliberately buried, not later than 8,000 BC only recently uncovered, I just want to put a framework together and then we’ll get into what happened.

That’s what’s been lost. When did it get lost Roman period. We’ve already been talking about that for an hour. Here’s angel in Egypt. It’s like civilization emerges out of nowhere around 3,500 BC in places like Mesopotamia in places like ancient India, ancient Mesopotamia, ancient China in the Americas.

There was stuff going on in this time. Period is Graham Hancock has recently shown evidence, advanced things going on. And then there’s the Roman period. This is Marcus a really, so I think is like one of the last good guys, frankly, there’s Marcus released one 21 to one 80. That’s the father of calmness that you see in that movie.

Um, this was according to the theory that I argue about in the book that it was originally proposed by Flavio Barbaro. He’s a Italian retired Admiral. He’s written a whole 500 page book about this theory of Josephus and comedies. Who may or may not have killed his father. Marcus Aurelius was the first Sol Invictus Mithras practitioner who got into the office of emperor.

So just I’ll stop in one second and pause. I think there was a time at a very ancient time. There’s very ancient wisdom. Whenever this system was set up, I think there was quite likely a catastrophe. You know, you hear people talk about the common impact. They’re a younger Dryas impact theory or Robert Schoch talks about, uh, extreme solar storm, like a coronal mass ejection or, or solar activity that wipes out whatever created this system.

And then humanity almost basically goes underground or lives in caves for a long time. And then it just re-emerges in the time of Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient, India, et cetera. And I call that wisdom. So there’s something even before, cause this was already fully formed in the myths of India already, fully formed in the mess of ancient Egypt.

So it came from somewhere before I’m just laying out kind of, I think the timeline was there was a catastrophe, probably a natural catastrophe, a comment or something that wiped it out. Then civilizations arose that still remembered it. I still have pieces of it. Ancient Greece obviously still had pieces of it, but then there was another catastrophe in the Roman period.

And since then, This ancient, well, even the ancient wisdom, whatever was left over after the catastrophe has been forgotten or deliberately stamped out that kind of breaks it into three pieces, which I think is a helpful framework.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:26:44] So I interviewed a guy, a few, I don’t know, probably a year ago at this point.

His name is Bruce Fenton. Fantastic love him. And his and his wife two together wrote this book and they have some really good, um, evidence for, uh, 780,000 years ago. Yeah. I’ve heard that. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s really good. He has the tech tights in, and then he has the genetic information and he has all the rest of that.

So that’s like a stake in the ground for me. I look at his work, spent a lot of time where it looking at his work spent a lot of time putting the movie together. And that whole thing very solid how you look at it, 780,000 years ago. So that doesn’t. So when I hear people talk about it, when I hear you talk about what is it?

David Mathisen: [01:27:40] Yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:27:40] Go back with Tempe. I always, I always stumble on that go Beckley Tappy. Oh, great. How does that fit in the 780,000 year kind of thing. And similarly, when I hear, you know, the Romans stamped it out, you know, it’s like, yeah, I don’t know a lot of different people. You know, a lot of people don’t like, Gangas Kahn.

Some people in some parts of the world, love Gangas Kahn, you know, it’s, uh, there’s a lot of different shit going on, you know, at any time. And it’s like, this should unite us all. When you say that, it’s like, nah, I don’t, I don’t come to that same conclusion. I come to the conclusion that we’re all leading rich spiritual lives that are meaningful to us.

And that the people who are, you know, involved in a satanic ritual abuse cult in grand Rapids, Michigan, who are abusing their four year old kids. I don’t know what their spirituality is, but I believe that they’re on some sort of spiritual journey and maybe some point in their life in this lifetime, they will, like, we’re saying, you know, look up, see the light and be transformed, or maybe they won’t and maybe their children will, or maybe they won’t.

So I’m just not willing to, I, I just not willing to accept it should be meaningful to all of us. It should pull all of us together. I don’t, it sounds good, but I don’t know if that is true or it isn’t true. I just got done interviewing to the top in history, near death experience researchers, uh, Bruce grace, Jeff Long, and I’m interviewing another N D E guy that, um, that everybody knows Eben Alexander go look at the near death experience research and the database that put together all the accounts that have been put together and have been reviewed medically and all the rest of that.

I think it’s. Enormously significant for what we’re saying about it’s about love. It’s about forgiveness. It’s about compassion. That’s what it’s about, but people have very different experiences in their journey there, and it sure looks, and then go talk to Gregory shoeshine. Who’s looked at near death experiences across culture across time as best he could, 600 years ago, 500 years ago.

His conclusion is near death experiences are the foundation for all afterlife beliefs, because there’s the same thread in all of them. So I’m down with everything that you’re saying. I’m just not down with your conclusions about it. I’m not against your conclusions about it, but I just, I’m not willing to say, Oh, okay.

That’s the answer. What I want to do is keep pulling on the threads and look at, you know, pull apart what, what happened as best we could realizing that we’re, we’re all disadvantaged in the vantage point that we’re looking at it for. Cause you know, that’s the other thing. It’s the last point. And then I’ll stop my long rant.

One of the things that your work teaches us, that we can never fully grok, you know, we can never fully get there is that we are by our nature, unable to understand this. Because we it’s telling us that there is a much greater in every, you know, near death experience is telling us this alien abductions telling us all this, suddenly there’s an expanded consciousness and you’re not there.

You’re on the other side of it. And yet we all want to look and that’s our human nature. We want to look and try and understand the best we can. But what I hear over and over again is you’re not, you know, you’re kind of like the dog, you know, I just, the foster dog we have out there. Who’s wonderful. And she’s beautiful, but she doesn’t really get me, you know, fully.

What do you think about any of

David Mathisen: [01:31:39] that since we just kind of go all over the place? Well, dogs definitely don’t process exactly the same way we do. But, um, you know, the, uh, uh, I’m not gonna argue about some of those, some of those points look, what I, what I often say is I can prove that the myths are based on the stars.

I think I just showed some evidence that, you know, if people, maybe if I went too fast, they can watch it. If you slow it down, maybe, and say, what did he just say? What star was that? Okay. But that evidence is pretty powerful. I can prove that now where it came from, what it means. I have opinions about that.

I don’t have, I’m not a. You know, a guru or a privy to it. I don’t hold myself up as an ascended master. Who’s been given some special knowledge to now proclaim to you. Um, I’ve got some opinions about where it came from and what happened, but could it have come from, I have heard Bruce Fenton on a podcast, uh, interviewed and talking about his research.

Um, I haven’t examined it myself, but, um, could, when I say the very ancient wisdom, how far back does that go and where exactly did it come from? And we’ve talked about this in our previous episode. I don’t know. I can show you that the myths are based on the stars. What does it mean? I don’t know, but I’ve got a lot of, uh, arguments as to what it means that I think are backed up by pretty good textual evidence.

Pretty good. Interpretive of the myths evidence. The part about this should unite us all. What, um, I mean, just to take it to its most simplest level when I’m talking about is literally, as Christianity has said, our stories are based on history, everything else is wrong and therefore you need to get rid of what was given to you and adopt what we’re telling you.

These stories were given to all cultures of the world, whether that is intended to unite or not. We could argue, but we won’t get anywhere because I’m not an expert one way or the other. I believe they’re like an ancient treasure. That is for our benefit. That is to get us because we’re disconnected from ourself.

They show you. And that is the biggest problem that we have that we are trying to find who we are. I use that I use the point break, where Johnny is searching for something and Bodie point pokes him in the foreign and says, you, you, you haven’t figured it out yet. Have you surfing? You know, surfing is where the place where you find yourself and you lose yourself and you don’t know it, but you’ve got it right there.

And he taps him in the third eye bump. Um, that’s what we’re looking for to find ourselves, but to lose those anyway, not to get to, uh, you know, dive into the navel, but talking about it should unite us from this idea that one set of myths needs to go out and stamp out everybody else’s inherited wisdom that they got, and that has happened over the past 17th centuries and continues to go on.

And that’s a problem because the myths of the Maya are based on the exact same system as the stories in the Bible. And they both are actually telling you the same things, just with different stories and characters and, and. They’re absolutely pointing to the same truth I would argue. And so you don’t need to get rid of any of them.

D do you know who

Alex Tsakiris: [01:35:25] Michael Aquino is?

David Mathisen: [01:35:27] Yeah. Oh yeah. To major Aquino.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:35:31] Yeah. Major military.

David Mathisen: [01:35:33] I forgot that Lieutenant Colonel. Yeah. He’s now deceased.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:35:37] Yeah. Now deceased just recently. And he was the head of the template set. He was a Satanist, right. He wrote the chaplains manual for all the chaplain. If you’re Christian, you’re Muslim, it’s his, a PSYOP guy from

David Mathisen: [01:35:51] the beginning.

He was cereal cereal abuser of children, I think by pretty, yeah,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:35:57] in the most horrific, horrific way with, uh, in very, very, uh, satanic way with, you know, alters and, you know, mixing in of all kinds of spiritual stuff and then abusing, and probably we suspect killing kids, but the evidence of his abuse, his direct testimony, direct evidence against them.

And, you know, anyone can go do that. So somebody tapped him on the forehead too and said, you’re trying to figure it out. And he figured it out. It was Satan. It was some evil, Monette, violent being that guided him. And his turns out his, his, his mother was into it. It turns out his grandfather was into it in different way.

And his grandfather committed suicide, eventually slit his own throat and bled to death. Somebody tapped him on the forehead to didn’t have anything to do with the myths. They weren’t tied into the myths. They were on a different plane and a different thing. So I don’t know how all these things fit together, but I just, I just hate when it gets to, like, this is the way that we got, uh, we got to look, I mean, I think it’s like, I don’t know what influenced, uh, constant Constantine is the figure, you know, w we ever get back to that gods of teens, a great, you know, the great Saint Constantine, you know, the story.

I always remember remind people, Constantine killed his son because he thought his son was fucking his wife, his wife sends it. Hey man, your son is, I don’t know how to keep him off me. He’s coming on to me all the time. He’s right there. You know, he kills it. Then he finds out that his wife and this is after he converted to Christianity.

Right, right. Then he, then he finds out that, Oh, his wife actually made that up because she wanted her son from another marriage to get in there. And that he was in the way and dah, dah, dah. So he kills her. Right. Which however you process that, but that is the founder of this. Cult that we have it, you know, the Christian cult, which just replaced the cult of Mithras, it’s just an exact like carbon copy, stick in the different pieces and wrap it up and call it something different.

The thing I learned from your book, you know, for 60 years in the, the what the, what becomes the, yeah. Tell that, tell that part.

David Mathisen: [01:38:37] Yeah. Let me react to what you said though. First about my Michael Aquino. Um, so what I would point to, and I point to it in the book, but it’s really one of my favorite examples and it’s in the scriptures of first Kings, where Solomon is on top of a mountain making sacrifices and they’re pleasing to the almighty and God says, Solomon asked, ask me anything.

What do you want, whatever you want. And Solomon says, you know, I’ve been made King over these people, so many people. And yet I feel kind of like a little child in terms of my understanding. I’m concerned that I’m screwing up right and left. As I’m trying to judge these different cases that are brought to me, give me a wise and understanding heart in order to judge the people rightly and the text says that response pleased the Lord now.

Pause. We find that exact pattern in myths around the world. We find King Midas is asked by diagnosis, diagnosis. Thanks for returning my drinking buddy. To me, when he got lost, asked me anything, what do you want? What is my to say? I want everything I touched, turned to gold. Okay. Or we have, um, you know, we have that pattern over and over, um, choose what you want.

And going back to the Solomon incident, God says, the text says that answer pleased the Lord. And he said to Solomon, you could have asked for long life, you could have asked for riches. You could have asked for the life of your enemies. It specifically says the life of your enemies, but you asked for wisdom to help the people.

So I’m going to give you wisdom to help with the people. And I’m also going to give you long life and riches. Now that implies that the you can go to the invisible realm or you can go to the, what the myths are pointing towards. I would call it the other world, invisible world, the inner world. The dream time, you can go there for many different and you can get many different things from there.

And we see this pattern over and over. What do you want, what do you want from the invisible realm? What do you want from the divine realm? Riches Midas. Wrong choice. It turns out very badly for Midas. He has to eventually say, I made the terrible choice. Can you please undo this choice? I’m going to die. If I keep eating golden hot dogs, they’re going to kill me.

So he, and does it. the divine realm and does it. But Solomon could have asked for the life of his enemies, he could have used the divine realm for not just power over his enemies, but to kill his enemies or to bring harm to them is what the text implies to me. You can use it for different things, but the correct thing is for wisdom in order to live up to your potential and to help others.

That’s that’s what Solomon asked for. He said, I want wisdom, not just so I can be the wisest person in the world, but to help others with all the problems that they have. So I would argue that what Aquino was doing, and I talk about it in this same book, myth and trauma. I talk about Croley Croley was searching for his higher self and he, when he took on his magician persona, he was taking on this other CRO, who is a very, uh, evil figure, right?

And Aquino was a very evil figure. You can use this for different things, but the original purpose is pretty clearly stated as it’s for wisdom to help others. It’s not for chasing after riches Midas, come on, Midas, figure it out. You’re already the richest King in the world. Why do you need more riches?

What’s your problem? What’s wrong with you inside that you are still not satisfied as the King of Phrygia who is already, since you were a child, it was predicted that you’re going to be the richest man in the world. And yet when I come to you and often you, anything, you want to turn everything to gold.

Okay. Have fun. There’s something wrong inside that you’re still so insecure. You need more goal. So anyway, that’s my response to the queen of, uh, being on a spiritual quest. Yeah. And you can, you can use it for the, you can use it for those things, but that’s not the right thing. And that’s not the, that’s not the beneficial way to use it because it’s going to destroy you like a destroyed Midas.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:43:11] You know, one of the things I, one of the things I’m kind of keen on these days is to tell people that you know, this amazing database of near death experiences that Dr. Jeff Long has in his white Jodie have compiled and they’re medically reviewed. And they’re carefully done through this long survey that kind of weeds out.

It’s a clean database. I just did an extensive database. I did an extensive interview with the guy. And the main purpose of the interview was to say, is your data reliable? Are you filtering it? Are you in any way? So it is, it is. I was telling people go Google, N D E R F near death experience. Research foundation.

Love. Jesus God, you know, any of those things, anything you want, but then go do, Croley go do Satan, go do, do what? They’ll wilt, go do magic, go do all that. It doesn’t get, you know, how much, my times that comes up, zero love comes up all the time, right over the top. Compassion comes up all the time.

Forgiveness comes up all the time. Uh, but so in a way, you know, we always give me these ecclesiastic debates that are what we set out to do to me, David, it’s a different, there they are. The near-death experience accounts are telling a slightly different story. They’re telling the difference of the story of truly all you have to do is seek love and compassion on one hand versus kind of your story has kind of a Gnostic feel to it.

Like there’s this battle, you know, and there’s these two kind of things. Th the, the near-death experience accounts are really kind of saying something different. Ah, there, there, there was a battle, but you really kind of created the whole battle. You know, it’s just really, all you have to do is just seek love and in everything you do.

And we’re actually in agreement on that, but where we kind of, I always slip up is that I don’t think that captures what you just said. I don’t think that captures a Kino. A queen. Oh, I guess it is. Yeah, it is. Yeah. It’s like, you know, I just watched, uh, and I hate him watching these things, but somebody who stuck into them on, um, Ted Bundy and, uh, he’s talking about his experience in him growing up and how he just had this kind of just a little, almost understandable attraction to a certain kind of porn, you know, and it just kind of grew and it just kinda grew.

And eventually it became what he felt was an entity inside of him, a spiritual entity that was battling with his soul. And, well, we all know the story. What happens to that? I’m just reluctant to, you know, I don’t, I don’t know what any of these things mean, so I’m just plowing ahead. You’re plowing ahead to, I mean, you do the same thing.

You’re just plowing ahead with your thing. Like you just said it, you know, wind up just, well, each might’ve seen the same thing over again, and I’m with you, you know, the myths are reflected in the stars. There are no way that, that my in thing completely matches the constellation. And what’s the name of the constellation hurricane fucking Hercules fucking Hercules.

Right. Which is like,

David Mathisen: [01:46:40] we’re going to have to curse the constellation Alex. Come on. Yeah. It’s

Alex Tsakiris: [01:46:43] the, that’s your Christian. Lineage popping in there. It’s it’s like it’s from a completely different culture. There’s the name itself is all we have to say. That guy matches up to the constellation and the constellation has gotten the name Hercules.

I mean, it’s end of story.

David Mathisen: [01:47:02] In terms of, yeah, no doubt. And so it’s interesting that you said I feel kind of Gnostic and that the part that, that you kind of started off on of all you need is love. You know, I am not actually saying let’s just, um, connect with our higher self and kind of meditate and, you know, the equinos of the world or Aquinos will do their thing.

I actually believe that things have gone very wrong, that that people who want to inflict trauma, you know, you can, you can build a society that’s less traumatic or more traumatic. And there are people who want to deliberately inflict trauma. And I think those people need to be stopped. And I think they are, uh, they’ve, they’ve gotten control of the levers of a lot of places, including, you know, look, we had a lot of assassinations in this country, including everyone elected president and then Robert F.

Kennedy, his brother, when he was about to get the nomination and was for sure going to become the president. And he got assassinated too. You have. Levers of power being students out

Alex Tsakiris: [01:48:07] there, right. It’s Reagan that Reagan was attempted, you know, that he got the message. And then, you know, the story I always said to people is Jimmy Carter remember him, they attempted to him and the, uh, assassins were, uh, wanting to get this right.

It’s like something Harvey and Oswaldo, this and that. They took the, to the CIA said, Hey, we figured out who the two assassins were. And if you just take the two names together, they were a Harvey Oswald, like, get the message here, we’re pulling. And then, uh, uh, Carter comes out and says, I’ve lost control of the government after that.

So just to add to your th that is the same. So,

David Mathisen: [01:48:43] so yeah, so, so I would say, you know, we have to, um, we have to work on our own individual, getting in, getting in touch with ourselves, get re reconnecting with who we are, because that’s a huge part of our mission, but there’s also people who are inflicting trauma on the world that are enemies of humanity that need to be stopped.

So, uh, you know, I’m not just Gnostic, uh, withdrawal to withdrawal into a Hermitage. I think that these are things that the people need to, I believe in giving the power to the people, all the power to all the people. So, um, uh, I was gonna, I was gonna add one other thing on there, but this is a story that has to do with the taking away of what belongs what’s given was given to the people in their ancient myths and the resources of the gods that are given to the people that people that are born into the land are allowed to be born into the land by the people.

There’s this story of the collaborators, the conspirators against that. Okay.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:49:53] We’re an hour and 49 minutes in. Let’s tell them let’s no, no, no. Let’s. So now is now we’ve set the stage. Let’s tell him, tell him what happened. Tell them,

David Mathisen: [01:50:03] Oh, you want it? You want to, you want to drive on?

Alex Tsakiris: [01:50:06] Yes, I, I want to, but I want you to do it in 10 minutes.

I want you to tell him, tell him what happened, tell them how they did it. Tell him the, the, the short story of the cult of Mithras and how they made it, how they made it work and how Josephus played a role in it. And the space. Let me,

David Mathisen: [01:50:24] let me, let me do it with some visuals too, and I’ll keep it to under 10 minutes.

Visual AIDS. Good. Visualize better. Yeah, of course.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:50:33] Whatever, whatever you want.

David Mathisen: [01:50:35] All right. Let me share a screen.

All right. So here’s Titus arch in Rome, Archer, Titus 81, CE built by his younger brother who, whom you’ve already mentioned Domitian after.

Do you think demission killed him? I don’t know. Um, I don’t know I’m agnostic on that one, but

Alex Tsakiris: [01:50:55] just, just so people know, just so people know, Titus said I only made one mistake and that was, there was a, there was, uh, a plot and it was tied to his brother instead of killing his brother Domitian he banished him.

And then year later he gets assessed and he said, I only made one mistake.

David Mathisen: [01:51:13] It’s compelling. There was a lot of assassinations going on. Uh, you know, we just mentioned a couple in the United States and you can add Martin Luther King in there and you can add Malcolm X, you can add Fred Hampton. And I would say that that same pattern, there’s a reason why that pattern is connected.

Um, they use of assassination, obviously it’s worldwide, but this is this group. Uh, does it a lot. So. Arch of Titus. I’ve got a slide with all the Roman emperors to just put it into people’s perspective. I started here and you can see on the inside of the arch of Titus right here, this is the sack of Jerusalem.

This is the fall of the temple. This is where Josephus comes into the picture. This is on the side. You can see they’re carrying off the temple treasures in the, uh, there was a revolt in Judea started in 66, a uh, 80, 66 or 66, CE Vespasian was the general who was sent to, to put down the revolt. He had two sons that were with him on this.

Uh, well, Titus was his, like his main Lieutenant on this military operation Titus that you just mentioned possibly being killed by his brother demission, but this is the arch of Titus. So Vespasian, um, went there and was putting down the revolt. Josephus was by his own admission, a member of the revolt, in fact, a leader of the revolt, in fact, a son of a priest of the priestly lineage of the temple and very, you know, us, uh, Supreme pedigree, Josephus, um, surrendered to Vespasian.

And we can go into that story, but since we only have 10 minutes, um, This is not, this is not unknown history. You can look all this up. The people who were writing about this in 18 hundreds, I have leaned heavily on the work of Flavio Barbie arrow. I do not agree with every single thing that Flavio Barbaro has to say, but he has tons of evidence to argue for what Josephus did.

And that’s what we’re primarily talking about here. Barbera treats Moses as if Moses is a historical figure. I believe Moses is a constellation. I can show you that Moses, as a council relation, I can show you the John, the Baptist is a constellation of can show you that Jesus is a constellation series of constellations, but the, uh, the, the temple was ransacked.

Nobody denies that. And it was burned to the ground, but the treasures were taken out. We can see it right here on the arch of Titus. That’s very important piece of evidence. That’s Vespasian, that’s the father of the,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:53:54] well, hold on, hold on. Cause you’re just you’re you’re just to think about, I’ve already said this a bunch of times, so people might get tired of it.

This is like a really key point that you were making. Is that yeah, they sack the city. Yeah. They burned it down and yeah, they took all the loot. And this is what I got from Dave Brody, who. Uh, I told you wrote the book, Romero Yucca, and he traces this thing happening again. 60 years later, when the ninth Legion is called in to put down the next revolt in Judea in one 30, and they walk away with a ton of loot.

And the better reading I think of this story is that Josephus knew where the gold was because you think about it. You’re under siege for 90 days. You’re a military guy. Do you, do you just sit there and say, okay, leave all the gold right there, out in the open. If they get through that door, they get all the gold hell no, you’re going to bury it.

Right? That’s people have done throughout time. You bury it, you hide it. That’s why when you watch that show Oak Island, there’s digging for the buried gold. They buried it, the Jews buried it. And you’ll see this said, I’ll tell you what he did that the story again, it’s so miserably stupid to say that the reason that the spazy and put them in the townhouse gave him gave free passage to 200 of his, uh, uh, best friends and had them write all the history was because he did a prophecy of, you know, he, he did a fortune telling forum.

What nonsense, what he did was he said, I’ll lead you to the gold. I know where the gold is at and nobody else does well. And

David Mathisen: [01:55:33] that’s why I was saying like, Josephus was very high up in the hierarchy and this is what Flavio, Barbaro argues. Uh, you know, uh, in the 18 hundreds, 17 hundreds, there’ve been scholars who said Josephus was the biggest trader of all time.

Now there are modern scholars who are pushing back against that. But, um, I think they’re probably trying to cover up what Josephus did, because this is the points you’re making are all absolutely, uh, supported by the evidence. And I’ll show you some of the evidence. And I talked about the evidence in this book and also in the undying stars, which was 2014, but here’s Vespasian so, as you mentioned, so he was the general, who was, he lived from nine CE to 79 CE.

He led that first campaign to put down and then the rebellion and then Titus his son. So he, he became emperor after th the, the, the temple was sacked in Ady 70, very important to just know that date here’s Titus. He live from 39 to 81. He was the one who basically, you know, they said, how come this rebellion?

We’ve put them down with Vespasian his army, how come they won’t give up? You know what I think we’re gonna, uh, be siege the temple and then they’ll give up, you know, if they see that we’re, you know, we got, we’ve got the military machine of Rome camped outside the temple. You’re not getting out. And if, if you don’t give up, we’ll burn it down.

Do you want to give up? Well, apparently the answer was no, but as you point out. Josephus had already surrendered to Vespasian and go back to Rome. And then he came back with them. Titus, uh, Josephus and Titus are about the same age. Here’s Josephus. I put his name upside down. He’s a, he’s a trader. He’s like a Benedict Arnold to his people.

He lived forever 37 to 100. So you can see that he and Titus are basically the same age, he and Titus. So he surrendered. He has this big story in his accounts where while we were all surrounded it Joe dupatta or y’all y’all yo pot. Um, w w we were surrounded by the Romans, but we didn’t want to give up.

So we decided we would all commit suicide. So we would each kill one another. We draw our swords and we, we just pair up and kill each other. We draw lots to see who would go first. And then everyone told each other, except for me and my guy, we decided not to kill each other. And, uh, because I had a vision that Vespasian was going to become the emperor.

And I came out and I told him, you know, I’ve been told, uh, our scriptures actually say that you’re going to be the emperor. And, uh, and so therefore Vespasian then eventually becomes the emperor and loves Josephus so much for telling him that, that he, as you said, gives him his old Villa that he used to live in, gives him an annuity for the rest of his life.

A stipend he’ll get paid for the rest of his life. He won’t have to pay taxes. He gets to take on the name, Titus Flavius. He becomes a Friedman. Well, as you’ve argued in just a minute ago, and as other people have argued, there’s gotta be more to the story. Tituss knew where the treasure was. Vespasian these emperors or these generals were always having to keep their troops fed and paid if they wanted them to keep fighting for them in order to take over the empire, which is what

Alex Tsakiris: [01:59:00] Vince does.

And especially if it’s Bayesean right Vespasian was kind of the soldiers general, he kind of knew he understood the psychology of the soldier in that way.

David Mathisen: [01:59:09] Right? So there’s absolutely, he was, he was, these guys were competent military leaders and he, he used that he was running out of money in Egypt, in campaigns, in Egypt in any way that the theory is that he used so Titus and Josephus during that siege, that the treasure had been buried in various hiding places and Josephus and Titus dug it out.

And, and that’s how Vespasian was able to pay the troops to continue to stay loyal to him long enough to March on Rome and take over and defeat all the other challengers to be the emperor, because I’ll show you, it was tumultuous times. No, no,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:59:51] that’s, that’s hugely significant. And, and I know I said 10 doesn’t know,

David Mathisen: [01:59:55] Russian,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:59:56] hold on.

Cause there’s a couple of points there that I think are super significant. Well, and it’s always kind of react to this idea that, uh, Josephus was a trader to his people. Um sure. Yeah. I mean, he’s kind of undeniable and that he’s Jewish and he’s this kind of elitist Jewish guy. But the other thing that you said, I can even edit that out cause that’s stupid.

It doesn’t matter. The other thing that you said, I think is super important, what he writes, because to me, this is the beginning of the PSYOP inaction, the beginning of the social engine and inaction, he writes that, Hey, you know what, not just the prophecy that just that of a spacing is going to be emperor.

He says the people of Judea and he speaking of them as if he’s not one of them, one of the reasons they were so mad at the Romans was they thought that the Romans went against this prophecy, that someone from their own soil would rise up to be the leader. And they said, you know what? They kind of misread it a little bit.

And I should know, because I’m a super Jew, like you said, I’m elitist, I’ve gone to the temple and know the law. And I now see what the law really said. And the law said this Bayesean. Is our Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, and the reason this is so important is from, and you can say, well, that’s a failed thing.

It never worked out that way, but what they were trying to do, and this goes back once we said two hours ago, in my opinion, and not all these things work, I think this is a failed PSYOP. They said, Hey, let’s try this. Maybe we can get the Jews to kind of come over to our side, if we can convince them that their Messiah is really Vespasian and the Jews don’t really respond to that because there’s all these other in the Bible, there’s all these prophecies that would have to be met for that to happen, but still it was an attempt to do that.

And I think that’s significant, particularly as you go on in the story in terms of how it plays up, because they keep trying to play this social engineering game. Do you have any, any thoughts?

David Mathisen: [02:02:09] Yeah, it’s certainly it’s, you know, it’s more than a, it’s certainly more than a 10 minute conversation, but I don’t actually, so, you know, Joe at-will, I’ve read his book several times and I heard him speak, not,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:02:22] uh, well, everything I just said it’s nothing to do with it.

Okay.

David Mathisen: [02:02:25] But, so I don’t believe that, um, the Josephus wrote their gospels. I think these were ancient stories that were updated.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:02:36] if you want to pause and I don’t think we should, I will, but I already sent you the exact quote from war, the Jews where Josephus says

David Mathisen: [02:02:47] those are good points. Those are, those are good points.

What I’m saying is that, I believe that Josephus well, I guess I’m not, I’m not arguing with that as a possibility of what you’re saying. I’m not arguing with that. I’m just, I’m trying to clarify that. I don’t think that the gospels, if it’s, I don’t think that the stories of the new Testament,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:03:06] see, I’m not going there.

We’re just going to cloud the water. We’re just going to call the water

David Mathisen: [02:03:10] with them because I’ll just leave that aside. Okay.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:03:13] I think my point actually aligns perfectly with what you’re going to say about the Mithra Sola Victus is that, you know, here, here is a pattern of, we can do this.

Let’s try this. Let’s try. So it’s like a first attempt at, you know, it’s, let’s try global warming, global warming doesn’t work. Oh, this pandemic thing. Let’s see if we can get that to get to our new world order kind of thing. This is the first attempt. But when you say, when you say I’m a super Jew and that’s what Josephus says he is, and he says, you know what.

Quirky little thing has happened here. You guys just kind of slightly misread the prophecy, the prophecy, because there’s a tricky little part in here. What you’ll see if it’s right is like, look, you guys weren’t stupid. You understood the prophecy, but what you didn’t get is that little part where it said Jewish soil and the, an, our soil will, it turns out quirk of quirk of history.

The spazy is, was named emperor when he was in Judea. So that actually fulfills the prophecy when a guy is spinning it that hard to me that can’t, that’s not accidental. It’s an attempt to really,

David Mathisen: [02:04:34] you know? Yeah, yeah. So we’re not, we’re actually not disagreeing. So I jumped in with just a cautionary that I liked.

Joe had a little bit, I don’t agree with all of his things because sometimes that could come in, but absolutely Josephus is the most unreliable source. And yet he’s relied on as well. We have this, here’s our sources for, you know, for the dead sea scroll era. Well, we’ve got the dead sea scrolls now, but before that, all we had was Josephus and the new Testament.

And I’m saying you can’t use either of those as history because basically they’re both based on the stars. I can show you that when Josephus was writing about this or that battle, he’s using the same system he’s talking about. Well, they were speared like fish. Well, that’s funny, here’s a passage in the Odyssey where a just says men were speared like fish.

I mean, Josephus was well read in ancient literature and he was well-read in ancient in this ancient wisdom system, I believe. And he absolutely,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:05:31] And so to two things on that, and then I’m going to try and make it quick too. But one is a total propaganda agent.

Totally agree with you. And the point that you made, I think is so significant is to say, we can’t put these things on parallel and say that they’re all equal. And again, it gets back to his point about how his history is so corrupt and then you jumped in there and made the important point that maybe intentionally.

So, but to think that Josephus, once he’s been discredited, as fully as he has clearly just a propaganda agent, and then they go back to them time and time again to use him. Logically, there must be something else, uh, going on

David Mathisen: [02:06:13] here because he’s part of a conspiracy that’s still going on is what I would say that I would say he’s part of a conspiracy that’s still going on.

And here’s some evidence for that. Let me go back to Sharon. Cause we’re, you know, you said you wanted to do a finish, finish up and let me sh let me share with some evidence that shows. That this conspiracy is still going on. Everybody probably knows where this is. This is Qumran Wadi. Qumran. This is the famous cave four where the vast majority of the dead sea scrolls are found the dead sea scrolls found in the 1940s.

The, uh, you know, fragments of over 900 texts, manuscripts, and in thousands of pieces like jigsaw puzzles discovered in the forties, and then given into the hands of an international group of scholars who were almost entirely, as you may know, uh, high up in the Roman Catholic priesthood. Okay. Roland Devo was the, the head of this international dead sea scrolls committee.

And in his Lieutenant was J T Mileke. And, um, they kept the dead sea scrolls, basically under wraps for their entire lives. They didn’t let anyone see anything, but the manuscripts that were translations of biblical old Testament texts, this was, these are all, um, old Testament. This is, uh, this is part of Judaism or not even, we shouldn’t say Judaism because that’s a later development.

This is part of, um, Jewish, different esoteric communities and studies that were going that were all over the place. Not just in Judea. There were lots of. Jewish scholars in Egypt, there were lots of Jewish scholars in what we call Mesopotamia.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:08:04] Well, because I have to put an exclamation point on something you just said, because it’s so fricking significant.

And I think that the, you know, we have a problem talking for a long time. Cause there’s so much to

David Mathisen: [02:08:15] process. I’m trying to go fast. I’m not,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:08:17] no you’re doing it. You’re doing so great. You’re doing so great. I mean, the only point I was just going to make is that last point you made is so fricking significant because to me, you say it slight in slightly different language.

Like it’s still going on today. And I think that kind of freaks people out. How could that be? But it’s still going on today because if you talk to the average person, they go, Oh yeah, the dead sea scrolls. Oh yeah. They kind of, uh, uh, in some ways they support

David Mathisen: [02:08:45] Christianity.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:08:47] That’s right. They kind of support Christianity, but it also kind of introduces some, you know, possible contradictions and stuff like that.

But what they did, which is to me, another play in the playbook is they did the four corners stall in basketball. Right. So they completely, they do come out and understand the subtlety of it to me is to begin to understand the mechanism of control again, if we ever get back to it, I mean, that’s what they figured out way back.

The Romans figured that out really early, as, you know, just control all the little stupid bureaucracies control the DMV and the water department. Just get your tentacles and all that stuff. And you’ll have a lot of benefit. So the way they do it here is they get the dead sea scrolls. And I go amazing discovery, amazing discovery.

And they do a four corner stall for 50 years. And by the time it eventually comes out and people are going, wait a minute, this says completely different because it does come out eventually. And then, so for anyone who complains and says, well, it says, well, they did this well, then they point to and go, wait a minute.

We released it all. And it’s, it’s so subtle. It’s so subtle, I guess is my point.

David Mathisen: [02:10:04] Yeah, it is really, it is the story. So you can, there’s actually a great podcast by someone named Gary Stevens called history in the Bible. And he goes through this whole scandal of the dead sea scrolls in episode 18 of his podcast.

And you can listen to that and you can, it wasn’t just this committee, they had help. And so the, , they released the parts that were already, you know, books of the Bible that we’ve seen, that was a 20%. And they kept everything else under wraps.

And it was, it was because of some micro film kind of photographs of them that they finally came out in the work of people like, um, Uh, and forgetting I’m blanking on his name, but it’s a big, long drama soap opera. Finally, in the eighties and nineties, all these pieces finally are coming out and they show something very different than the kind of story that this group that wanted to keep them under wraps, wanting to say that they were, but they did release.

Let me show here’s some pieces of one of the scrolls. Um, most of the scrolls or on leather or on vellum, which is made from leather or some onto pirates, but there’s one scroll known as the copper, the copper scroll, and you see it on the right-hand side of your screen. It looks very different than the written scroll.

The copper scroll. It was, it was all rolled up on copper and so old that they had to cut in part. And so that’s why these pieces now look kind of like, like a half of a tube. What is the copper scroll? Basically a list of treasure. It’s a list of treasure. This is how it reads. This is the first words of the copper scroll.

Not the part that I’m showing by the way, that’s like piece number 18, but on piece one, it says in the ruin that’s in the Valley of ACOR under the state apps with the entrance at the East. So he’d go to the ruins, find the entrance that’s on the East. Then under the steps, a distance of 40 cubits are strong box of silver.

And it’s vessels with a weight of 17 talents, which by the way, a talent at that time, new Testament, talent, or not period talent, 129 pounds. So that’s 129 pounds of silver time. 17. That’s a lot. That’s just one. This thing just goes over and over. Here’s where you find this treasure and here’s, what’s there.

Here’s where you find it is. It is tons of silver, gold jewels, et cetera. Well, on that, on that panel of experts, there was one, there was one, uh, Maverick named John Allegra, and most people have heard of John Allegra. You’ve probably heard of John and Larry wrote the sacred mushroom in the cross, uh, in, in early seventies that, uh, it’s all about, um, mushrooms, you know, psychedelic mushrooms.

He was actually pushing for the publication of the scrolls. He was, he was the one Maverick who was pushing. He actually said, this is a treasure map. I’m going to go search for it. He never found any of the treasure. Why not? Well, so how is this, like, how does Wikipedia tell you, what does Wikipedia tell you about the copper scrolls?

Or what, what did those th th th what did, um, JT Mileke tell you the copper scroll was, Oh, it’s just a child’s exercise book for learning writing. Oh, really say that’s one of the things that they said. I mean, it, you know, the scenes could have never had any of this treasure. Of course, they were this aesthetic community, which, you know, they, weren’t a set of community who says all these scrolls belong to the scenes.

You see, this was probably the trove, the library of the temple, so that the Romans don’t burn it down and the treasure of the temple. So if the Romans don’t get it and someone new, Oh, by the way, at the end of the copper scroll, it says, this is a copy. This is a copy. You know, we put it on this. They don’t say it, but why would you put it on copper?

So it can’t burn. So look, this treasure is important. We don’t want to lose it. We going to put, we’re going to put the treasure map or the treasurer instructions. It’s not really a map on something that can’t be destroyed copper. And, um, this will be the backup copy. Well, who had the F who had the other copy?

I bet your Josephus knew how to find it. And that’s why this patient and Titus got all the loot and were managed to become emperors. And that’s, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that. I mean, Joe, as you said, Josephus, didn’t get all those things because you know, he said, I think you’re going to become the emperor.

Okay. Thanks a lot. Cut off his head. He said, I know where the treasure is buried. Please don’t cut off my head cause you won’t get any of it.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:14:47] The other thing you’re adding to the story that’s really significant is there’s this incredible chaos in Rome and who will become emperor is really up for grabs.

And what you’re adding to the story is one guy comes over and goes, you know, I think I should be emperor. And I got tons and tons of gold and silver that agrees with me. And he does. And he walks in the arch Titus and he builds the calcium. He does all that kind of

David Mathisen: [02:15:17] makes for a good story. It makes for a good story and the money he doesn’t get there by greasing people’s palms.

He gets there by having an army. He’s got the muscle behind him and pay the muscle with that money. Good money is used to buy the mercenaries

Alex Tsakiris: [02:15:33] because he takes, he kind of takes his time. And again, the way conventional history writes, it it’s stupid. It doesn’t make any sense why he’s kind of in the running or elected emperor.

But then he takes his time. He goes and gets his stuff together. He goes and gets his army together and he’s like, okay, here’s how it’s going to

David Mathisen: [02:15:52] work. Th the, the whole thing, I mean, and then, so then comes the takeover by. The sole Invictus Mithras acting in conjunction with literalist Christianity. It’s like a pincher movement.

They’re not enemies. They’re two sides of the same operation.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:16:13] We’ll we’ll we, we got to tell people as quickly as we can. And we did, I think we’re doing as good as we can in the time, but this Sol Invictus, because it’s a classic secret society, just a classic secret society, and you’ve already tied it to the murders that it commits, but it’s just, it’s evil.

It’s like an evil secret society that we would, you know, uh, understand in, in modern times.

David Mathisen: [02:16:42] Well, you know, that’s interesting. Um, you know, we’ve talked a lot about evil and, um, I would say it is a hierarchical and so, so here’s why it’s not a religion. It’s usually posited as, , a rival to Christianity that they’re Mithraic are scattered all over Europe in significant places, a lot around Rome or a lot in ostia into Antigua, which you can visit today and explain what the myth Raya is.

Yeah. So it’s a small meeting clubhouse basically, and it always has this scene when you enter that’s on the far wall and then it’s got benches. Arranged in a U in a diagram in the book. And lots of you can read about this. Lots of scholars have talked about it, but once again, the history of scholarship of Mithra ism is again, rife with OBS curation, obfuscation, um, wrong leads.

There was someone who said in the 1860s, the right answer, and he was ignored. And then finally in the early seventies, some scholars came up S uh, the right answer, but I wouldn’t say it’s evil, what I would say well, okay. Th the goals of the operation were to take over the, the runway empire and to impose feudalism and impose literalist Christianity, and, and all kinds of evil things were done.

But the save a low ranking members, you could be a member of one of these logs, and they could only see like 10, the 15 to 20 people, the size of these it’s basically like a diner room, kind of a setup. Okay. And only like 15 to 20 men, it was exclusively for me. It was like a dining club you’d go in there.

And it was very hierarchical. It had seven ranks at the, so you could keep people, well, kind of in the dark, in the lower ranks, it was only in the higher ranks where it was a perfect, it’s a structure for secrecy. And taking over. So if you let someone in, you can observe them at the lower ranks and decide, Hey, should we let this guy to the fourth rank where we start giving them some secrets or not.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:18:50] As you point out in the book, there’s some people that actually make it to the level of emperor for a brief period of time. And they’re only level

David Mathisen: [02:18:57] three. That’s right. That’s right.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:19:00] So imagine, imagine how, how compromised your position is when you know that there’s all this, that these are the guys who are basically calling all the shots, but you’re in the position of emperor and you’re only level three, you know, your days are numbered or, you know, better yet.

You know, you better March to what they say, right?

David Mathisen: [02:19:22] And in, in history, in Flavio, Barbie arrow kind of points this out, over and over, the history is full of. And then that emperor was removed, you know, assassinated. And so he said, look, he, he tried to cross Sol Invictus because now he thought he thinks on the emperor.

I can do what I want. I’m going to start throwing my weight around. And they’re like, okay, get rid of him. Because these Mithraic pop-up. The first one is in the, is in the vicinity of the Praetorian guard, which is like the emperor’s body guard. And they quickly. ,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:19:56] let me just interject, you know, since we’re throwing out a ton of stuff, th th the spazing was one of the first ones to really clue into how important it was to really keep the Praetorian guard close, because he had seen in previous destabilizations that, you know, that would be the easiest way.

It’d be like the, what would we say? Like the secret service or somebody like that, you know, as close to the president. I mean, they, if they wanted to, they could take out the president. And so he kind of saw it, right. Am I right about that?

David Mathisen: [02:20:29] Well, so part of the theory is that, um, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t use Romans in the Praetorian guard.

He would use people who had a debt to him, like did Josephus, Oh, Vespasian yeah. Josephus owed Vespasian his life. Right? Those other look, the people who are leading the rebellion were warriors. They were fighters. They were hard rebels. And Vespasian said, Josephus, you can bring over, you know, some of your friends, some of those friends could be installed in the Praetorian guard because now they are loyal to Vespasian.

Whereas if you bring someone in who grew up in Rome, who knows who that guy is loyal to, he might be working for a different faction, but these guys, these are my guys, I’m going to put them in charge of the Praetorian guard. So you’re right. But I’m not alleging that Vespasian was actually the first Sol Invictus emperor, according to.

Barbie arrow’s theory was common. This was communist and Marcus. A really, as his father was trying to figure out what was going on, who is trying to take over the empire. And Marcus Aurelius was persecuting, not Sol Invictus, but the Christians. So it was like a two-pronged approach. Solon Victus was this underground.

They met in these underground, or they were made to look like they were underground, secret meeting places where it was very small in number. It was not a big congregation of 50 or a hundred or 500 people. It’s very small. And it was that’s the planning, that’s the secret part. And the heat shield that draws the anger.

When the emperors are trying to figure out who is taking over the empire, they persecute the Christians. They’re like these Christians are trying to stir things up, but they never got to the nerve center, which was this underground society of solar Invictus. Okay. I’ll tell

Alex Tsakiris: [02:22:22] you what, as we try and wrap this up.

You’ve got to tell this. This is a no, it’s all great stuff. I so appreciate you spending all this time. And like I said, we’ll, we’ll have to find a way to do it again. Maybe in a more, more organized

David Mathisen: [02:22:34] focused way, or maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe this is good,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:22:38] but the whole story of the, the Mithra that lasts 60 years.

David Mathisen: [02:22:45] After Constantine

Alex Tsakiris: [02:22:47] builds his church. If this isn’t the clincher, it’s a good way to end it. Cause it’s like, if you have any doubt about how fake this, you know, establishment of the Christianity literalist, Christianity, Christianity is by Constantine in the Roman empire, this seals, it just seals it.

David Mathisen: [02:23:10] So yeah.

So let me show you. So I just argued that there are two sides of the same coin. That’s actually Barbie arrow’s phrase, Flavio Barbera wrote in a Virgin essay called Mithras in Christianity or Mithra is, and in Christianity two sides of the same coin they are operating together. And yet history continues to tell you, you can still find history books, recent ones talking about tourism.

Oh, it was the rival to Christianity at our almost took over the empire. You know, if only more people had joined in with Mithra ism, we’d all be Mithras today instead of Christians. No, it was, uh, it was, uh, it was the underground arm is a secret society. And the reason it had blood curdling oath of secrecy, if you betray what’s going on inside of this meeting, you will be killed.

Why? Because their lives are on the line. If they got caught with what they were trying to pull off, the Romans would have. Completely had no mercy for them. So this was a V it was structured in a way to keep it secret, to prevent infiltration. And it apparently was very effective. And it is so we’ll, we’ll end on that point that you make, these are two sides of the same operation, but let’s just look really quickly.

I think I have Y yes, there it is a constellation. This is so for a hundred years, there’s the scholarship of Mithra. Ism has said, Oh, this came, you know, this is based on, uh, there’s this scholar named Kumar. And I go into all the, um, the history, but in the seventies, a bunch of scholars said, this, this whole thing that we’re being told about the origins of myth Rezum are wrong.

It looks like it’s based on the stars. And David, you Lancey wrote a really good book that argues that Mithra slaying the bull is based on the outlines of the constellation pursues, which you can see right here. This is pursues. I’m showing this as a segue into two sides of the same coin, because remember, we’re not told that Christianity is based on the stars, Mithra ism can be shown to be based on the stars, soaking Christian or so can the stories in the Bible?

Let me just say stories in the Bible. I’m separating that from what we think of as literal as Christianity. So Mithra is a Ms. Consciously using this ancient system. While it destroys the rest of the ancient system for everybody else. It destroys the ancient wisdom of the gods and goddesses that were given to the Romans, given to the Greeks, given to the Egyptians and imposes literalist, Christianity.

And yet it’s using this ancient system. Here’s why Mithras is, um, killing the ball. There’s pursues, there’s tourists. I could show you all the connections between these two, David, you Lancey wrote a book in 1989 showing these connections and he’s absolutely right, and this is all, there’s the Zodiac right there.

This is all the ancient system. So now I’ll stop sharing and just tell that story to finish off the, the, the underground cult or secret society of Mithras that public facing inclusive. You know, Hey, we let everybody in. Literally as Christianity, we’re operating together, they’re both using this ancient wisdom is based on the stars, but literally as Christianity won’t admit that they won’t say, Oh yeah, all our stories are based on the stars.

They’re telling you have to believe in it as if it’s literal. So the, the, the seven ranks of Mithras and they, they go, um, I think it’s Raven. All right. Raven nymph, soldier lion, um, sun runner Persian. I may have that backwards, Persian sun runner and then father pots hair in Latin pots. Hair is the top of the top of the pyramid.

So each lodge has a Potter. The head of each lodge is the potty chair. And then there’s people who are at the lowest level. You know, they’re, they’re just the Raven. Or then they become a nymph, which means a bridegroom basically. And then they become a soldier and they probably don’t get past that level unless they’re really trustworthy.

Then they become a lion of Leo, a Persian, a sun runner, only the, you know, only they’re super trustworthy. Cause this is a secret society that is trying to take over the Roman empire. The Patera is the head of that lodge, but all the lodges are headed by a myth radium. That’s in a place called the Phrygian, him and it’s in Rome.

And the head of that lodge is called the Potter patron, the father of fathers. He’s not just the father of the lodge. He’s also the father of all the fathers of the other lodges. He’s the father of fathers and the Phrygian him is located beneath St. Peter’s Basilica to this day, Saint Peter, you know where the Bishop of Rome has, his headquarters is built right on top of where the Phrygian, the head that the head lodge of Mithra ism and.

As you’ve alluded to the last,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:28:32] hold on. Cause we were told, we’ve been told all along that that’s a kind of representation of how Christianity defeated and just kind of rubbed it in their face that we’re on top of it,

David Mathisen: [02:28:44] right? Yeah. They were enemies. But um, when you look at the dates of the, the death of the last father of fathers of Mithras, and before they finally said, okay, let’s shut down.

Mythicism we’ve got the empire purchase, it’s done its purpose. Let’s put, let’s put it on ice. Well, we can, we can bring that Terminator back out whenever we need it, put it in the freezer and we’ll bring it out again later to weaponize it if necessary. But that last Potter pot from of Mithra ism was, was operating in the Phrygian, him after the first historical Pope for 60 years, not 62 years at the same time.

And then finally they shut down Mithras. And so their coat, their headquarters were in the same basic building for 62 years operating completely peacefully together. And then

Alex Tsakiris: [02:29:46] was always in the deal Constantine from the beginning. He never gave up his, what do you think level, what do you think level Constantine was that?

David Mathisen: [02:29:55] Well, so, so, um, So what happened was, but, but just the, the final kind of, or there’s a few points to show, look, the Pope, the name Pope is the Bishop of Rome. That is a contraction of the words Patera patron. So he basically took over the title of the head of Mithra ism. And Favio Barbera says he actually uses the same chair as the head or the Mithra, and that has Mithraic things carved on it.

And the, you know, the hat that a Pope wears or the headgear of a poke is called a what a bishops do, you know, MITRE MIT are a Bishop’s miter, which is basically linguistically related to the word Mithra ism. So the symbols of Mithra ism survive in literalist Christianity, because they were two sides of the same operation.

It is not. Um, so just really quickly, the, this is like my, my research is about the connection to the myths and the stars. You asked about, you know, where does Constantine fit into all of this? Let me just show this. Uh, so there’s the year of four emperors that kind of chaos that Vespasian and his line was able to capitalize on and become the emperor is way up there in 68, 69, and then Vespasian becomes emperor in 69.

The, this operation. Is carefully working behind the scenes. We see kind of the first Mithraic start to pop up towards the end of the first century I E in the eighties and nineties in the time of demission right around the Praetorian guard, as we mentioned, and it is working in the background and building and building it’s stepping stones and Marcus surreally.

I put him in capital letters because I think that was an important turning point because he seems to realize something was going on. He’s called one of the last, um, Edward Gibbons, you know, in his big 17 hundreds book decline and fall of Roman empire calls. Marcus really is the last of the five good emperors Nerva Trajan Hadrian Antinous and Marcus, a realist.

You can see Marcus realist and verus were at the same time, but I really just outlived him. Um, he was considered a very good emperor. He was a philosopher. We know he’s a stoic. He wrote, you know, his meditations that you can still read today. They’re excellent to read his son comedies Barbie argues was the first time Sol Invictus was able to maneuver a sole Invictus emperor into the role of emperor.

And they put to keep an eye on him, his wife, or his concubine, Marcia was a Christian. So, um, and. She may have conspired communists was, was, it was murdered by the head of the Praetorian guard, uh, in conjunction, I think with Marsha, when he got to cry, I mean, he was crazy. He was, he was a, he was a megalomaniac just like walking in Phoenix shows in that movie.

Um, so this battle is going on. The Senate is not happy with Roman empire being taken over. So there’s a battle between they don’t want the old gods to be shut down. They don’t want their gig to be folded up and closed down. And so there’s a pull, pulling a push, the first actual literalist Christian, who says I’m a Christian was down there, Phillip one, uh, down in two 44, two 49 there.

And he called Philip the Arab cause he was born in what’s today, Syria. Um, he was a general galley. Anus was also a galinas was also a, uh, uh, may have, may have had some Christian leanings, but then you had this thing coming called the tetrarchy. So these emperors are getting, you can see they’re getting eliminated often, very quickly after they get put into power, if they mess up or if the secret society decides that we need to move him out.

The tetrarchy was this system that was set up by four emperors that said, look. Let’s let’s the four of us basically become two presidents and two co two vice-presidents or two emperors and Tuesday,

Alex Tsakiris: [02:34:04] because they saw the gig, they saw what was going on and they said, maybe you can assassinate me. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, which is super, super important. I mean, the whole reason they did it was, it would be like, I mean, does this again, folks is this play to modern times? It’s like, how do we, how do we, it seems impossible to stop this machine that we’re in the big guy in the middle of, if you believe the kind of I’m in the new world, order stuff is so in your face right now, I don’t know how anyone can deny it.

But if you were, if you believed that and you were going to try and derail it, how would you derail it? It seems even possible to set it up. Well, that’s what these guys said, like, look, it’s impossible to derail it. Maybe we can split it up. Maybe they had some kind of right. I mean, is that kind of a parallel

David Mathisen: [02:34:50] with this?

Yeah, they, they basically, it’s a terrible governing structure. You ‘wouldn’t, you wouldn’t do it for efficiency. You don’t say, well, the best way to run the countries, they have four presidents and they can all argue with each other. No, you do it for this way. If I’m president, I know they can’t take me out because I still got three of my buddies, you know?

Alex Tsakiris: [02:35:10] And even if they’re not my buddies, I still got some kind of play

David Mathisen: [02:35:14] in the thing. Actually, you know, you may have heard of Mae brussell Mae. Brussell actually recommended the president after the president gets elected. Should only afterwards, get to pick the vice-president that way, because basically what you have happening is here’s a guy who’s behind, you know, you mess up.

We got, uh, we got the vice president right behind it. That’s the one who’s really most of the time pulling the strings, right? I mean, you mentioned Reagan. I’m not sure he was actually pulling the strings on Iran-Contra, but we’ll set that aside. So the Sol Invictus said the secret society said, you know, this tetrarchy is a problem.

And by the way, one of the tetrarch started persecuting Christians, very ferociously because they knew that this is a tug of war. This is a major battle. The game is raging. It’s like game of Thrones. And they’re like, someone is trying to take over. And I think it’s those Christians. And one of the Tetra arcs was just massacring Christians, right.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:36:15] And left. And, and we should interject that this is often used by Christians as a way to kind of smokescreen this whole thing, whether they’re doing it knowingly or not, it’s like, well, how, of course it was a battle. Look at how they’re look at how they’re going after the Christians. And as you point out.

At one way and then I’d add to the other thing, is it doesn’t mean that everybody there’s all these different levels, right? So these people that are in the highest position, they might not be in clued in to the actual, you know, they might not get the newsletter that, Hey, w our plan really is to use these Christians, you know, uh, that’s in play too.

Right.

David Mathisen: [02:37:00] Absolutely. I don’t think that, uh, not

Alex Tsakiris: [02:37:03] everybody knows exactly what’s going

David Mathisen: [02:37:04] on. No, look, I think, I think most people, as I did sign up for the army, um, out of good intentions and they, and the whole time I was in the army, I never, I never, uh, glimpsed a single conspiratorial thing, you know, in the 11 years of active duty and four years at West point.

, there’s people who are in the Christian Church who are absolutely sincere and, um, and well-meaning, I believe, but, um, you know, there’s certain people at the top and it doesn’t take that many as, as the sole Invictus shows, shows. Yeah. They, they knew what they were doing and they did it.

I think they did it pretty effectively and systematically. And, um, and they had a way of passing it down. Cause this took generations, as you can see here. But so after the tetrarchy, they said, we’ve got to. Constant team came in. They said, look, we’re going to put in an emperor and he’s going to declare himself to be openly Christian.

And he’s going to make Christianity official. Not that it was Theodosius who said, you can only be Christian. Constantine said, Christianity is now the official religion and everyone, you know, can do it without being persecuted. And, um, that’s when Solon Invictus finally starts to shut down and fade out of the picture because they decided, well, if we’ve got the emperor and now we’ve got literalist Christianity in the driver’s seat, then we don’t need to operate in the secret part anymore.

We’ll just operate through the public part, the, the literalist Christian mechanisms and, , so you mentioned, you know, how do Christians kind of spin this? Like, how is it that Christianity, which was never a very large percentage of the empire constant team decides I’m a Christian and let’s make Christianity, did he have a legitimate conversion?

And this was the hand of God? Or was it a, some people say, Oh, it was a cynical move. He was doing it for power and control, you know, to, to, to cement control over the emperor. The empire and Flavio Barbera says that’s ridiculous. No more than at the most. 20% of the population was Christian in the empire at Constantine’s time.

There was no, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to do that for political purposes, it didn’t gain him anything. It was, uh, it was this, this long, careful operation said, okay, here’s how we’re gonna, here’s how the tetrarchy really screwed things up. Here’s what we need to knew. We need to come out of the shadows and make Christianity, the advisor to the emperor.

And by the way, let’s move the emperor right on out of Rome, which they had already moved the emperor out of Rome earlier within Italy to Ravina or Ravenna. But where did Constantine move to the head of where does the emperor go? Constantinople? Where does the church stay? Rome? Right. So now we don’t have pesky emperors, marching.

We don’t have game of Thrones happening in Rome anymore. It’s like the church can, the church takes Rome and says, emperor, you go off over there into Turkey. And any game of Thrones activity will happen. Thank you very much and Theodosia is basically after him, the emperor split in half and, and they shut down the empire.

As you said, it’s much more, uh, what happened after that is it’s much easier to govern through the, through the origin of the church. And the, uh, that, that had control over all these fiefdoms, all these separate Kings, um, there was

Alex Tsakiris: [02:40:49] Just like you’re saying, you combine the church with the Empire with the army, you got it you know, you go in to whatever barbarian quote unquote, tribe and you say okay, you’re all Christian now, right? So we all get along so listen to me and if you step out of line, I still got the army.

David Mathisen: [02:41:13] That’s right and you know, during the Middle Ages the kings and the nobles and the aristocrats were you know, basically they were eating all the fat of the land and the people around a subsistence kind of in there like yeah, the nobles had more weapons but still, they didn’t have more people. That that mind control part of, well the noble is over you because of God’s will. And yeah, you may be able to mass enough people to have a rebellion and kill him. But then you will burn in hell forever and here’s some of the tournament’s that will happen to you do you really want to risk that? Yeah, you’re right. Risky to try and overthrow them and certainty of eternal punishment. Okay, you know, it was an essential part of the oppression that was Judaism and we’re still fighting that battle today I would argue, so anyway. How many hours that we just do?

Alex Tsakiris: [02:42:23] Two hours and 45 minutes, but it was great. I love the way you, I love the way you wrapped it up. I think that really kind of brought it into focus. So David as we do, wrap it up. Tell folks more about hey and let’s go here because I haven’t gone there yet. Your website star myths of the world, and that is star myth world.com. And tell folks what they’re going to find there in particular, beyond the amazon books that we’ve already shown.

David Mathisen: [02:42:57] Sure well yeah, as you may have seen at the top, there’s a books section where you can see inside the books, you can see that on Amazon as well. But there’s also videos section I’d made you know, many dozen videos, not all of them are up on the website, there’s a podcast archive, I’ve been on a lot of podcasts. And I’ll put you know this video in there to the podcast archive, when we’re ready and there’s a blog, that’s a long running blog that’s fully searchable. So you can go to the blog and then you can search for Mithras if you want to see anything I’ve written about that or you can search for different gods or goddesses or different constellations if you’re interested. So you know, I mean all that, my real focus is on the connection between the stars in the myths all this history stuff, that’s you know, that’s things you can also learn from other researchers. But I obviously, it has a connection. Something has been lost, I think that that story that I just sketched out is a very valid explanation of how this wisdom was lost. I think it was lost twice as I mentioned, but I think that the suppression of this wisdom is still going on deliberately but I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to know what the Bible is really saying. I mean, no matter how much you love the Bible and I would think that the people who make it their full life would want to know the language because the language of the stars that is in the Bible unlocks the message, unlocks more profound aspects of the message. So anyway, that’s what I try and talk about in my books and my writings and videos.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:44:52] Well put, I really do think you brought it together in a new way I keep getting stuff. It is fantastic for you to come and spend all this time. Your research, everything I said at the beginning, I double down on all of it. Who else has kind of been able to pull so many pieces together and it’s just awesome talking to you. Dave Mathisen, thanks again.

David Mathisen: [02:45:15] Thanks so much Alex and I’m still learning. I still have lots more to learn.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:45:20] Thanks again to David Mathisen for joining me today on Skeptiko. One question I’d have to tee up from this interview, kind of a litmus test question. Do you think the Mafia, the Sicilian Mafia, the descendants, the Romans, did they have anything to do with the assassination of JFK? What’s your opinion? The history is almost 60 years old so it’s okay to talk about it right? Love to hear from you, let me know on the skeptical forum or anyway you reach me, plenty of stuff coming up. Stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care and bye for now.  [box]